Bringing up the Baby

The new executive director of the LCAV has a 4-week-old baby and I am driving up into the Albany Hills to photograph the new director, not the baby. I wind and weave through streets, barely big enough to pass one vehicle and a couple of times; I need to pull over to allow a more enthusiastic motorist through. She isn't terribly fond of her baby and it’s pretty apparent. She actually says being a mother is "kinda boring," and she is ready to go back to work. She says, “Well maybe when they get older, but not right now all they do is this,” meaning cry. I tell her maybe she has to learn to enjoy the Oprah show and other stuff like that; she turns up her nose and laughs.

Modesto

I am a photographer. This is a blog about strange events that happen to me when I am on assignment.

I have about 40 minutes to kill before I meet an environmental circuit prosecutor for the State of California. I stop at a McDonalds near downtown Modesto, after passing through an arch that says “Modesto—Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health.” I don’t have much of a choice in restaurants, when I am short on time and a stranger in a strange land.

The security guard saunters over to a woman wearing a red wig and speaks under her breath, while the woman in the red wig continues to eye-ball me, popping her dentures up and down, up and down.

I try to eat my fries but they are cold and lifeless and what little appetite I have is fading fast. I open up the burger and the bun is as hard as the stares I'm getting from denture face and rent-a-cop. I toss the food in the trash and walk outside, take a deep breath and say I’ll just head to the assignment early. Being a photographer isn’t easy in more ways than one.