Cowgirls of Montclair

Read about a mother-daughter duo who are selling ranch-inspired clothing, accessories and household goods to support animal rescue.

I wrote/shot this assignment last week, and it was published in the Contra Costa Times on Friday, 17 December 2009.

Running in Ramadan

A story I wrote and shot for Running Times magazine is now available online here.

It will print in the December issue of Running Times, which will hit the magazine rack in the next week or two. Check it out...the layout is great!

The article features Moroccan Olympian Abderrahim Goumri, who recently took second at the Chicago Marathon.

Remembering the Dead

It's been a few years since I visited Boston's Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, Paul Revere's House, Old North Church and the Copps Hill Burial Grounds. I first visited the cemetery as a grade-schooler on a field trip from New York. We made etchings by rubbing butcher paper on the centuries-old tombstones, and I remember being in awe thinking of the families who had stood where I knelt, burying their loved ones.

Death has brushed close many times since that first encounter: I've lost friends to the ravages of AIDS and the painful march of cancer. All four grandparents have died, two of them while very much a part of my daily life. I've stood helplessly by as friends have buried husbands and sons, and just a few months ago photographed my cousin's burial with full military honors (color guard, playing of Taps, 21-gun salute) at Arlington National Cemetery.

I do not fear death, although I have a strong, albeit futile, sense of how I'd like to pass, knowing from all that I've seen how unlikely it is that I'll get control over that outcome. I do, however, fear allowing my life to pass without making a mark on the world. This burning desire to have a positive impact (less than leaving a legacy, as motivates some) has been recently fueled by a less-than fulfilling work life and by reading too many books about those who have done so much. Three Cups of Tea, Mountains Beyond Mountains, even Into the Wild with it's less than inspiring ending have intensified my sense that life is passing too quickly and I must hurry and make something of it all.

It was in this frame of mind that I happened upon the New England Holocaust Memorial just after exiting the T at the Haymarket stop. Traveling as I was the day before 9/11, and being a New Yorker, I suppose it's not surprising that when I approached the tall glass towers of the memorial I immediately thought it must be a tribute to the terrorist attack of 2001.

Even the steam vents blowing up smoke in the midday heat and humidity made me think of Ground Zero. But as soon as I entered the memorial by stepping on the black granite stone path, across carvings of names like "Auschwitz," I realized I was entering sacred ground and the recollection of terror of another era.

Six glass towers, each 54-feet tall, bear six-million numbers to recall those tattooed onto the arms of those who died in the Nazi death camps.

Personal statements by survivors and witnesses also testify to the horror of what took place. I've included one here, to the right, and a photo of it below.

Writing in my notebook as I rode the subway to the airport, my simple response was this:

Glass standing tall, reflecting the financial towers nearby. I start to walk through, wondering why there is steam coming up from the ground, through the grates in each section. Poor planning? Warmth for winter tourists? Reminds me of Ground Zero.

Looking more closely I see digits etched into the glass. In white. Then words, a memory, etched in black. A woman remembers seeing her sister shot and killed. Faces of other visitors, like me, with tears in their eyes are also reflected on top of the words, on top of the numbers, on top of the reflected buildings all in this tall glass.

No, it's not a memorial for the World Trade Centers collapse eight years ago.

Those memorials, breathing the grief that is still so fresh, will be re-visited tomorrow, Friday, 9/11/09.

No, it's a reminder of the six-million who died during the Holocaust many decades before. And the grief of that memory suddenly feels as personal, as close, as the loss of DJ and Marian, Tommy and Hazel, Carl and Pop and Aunch and Corrado and so many in my life.

May I take life and run, fly, L I V E fully. Anything less is tragic and wasteful. Forgive me. Inspire me.

Published in SF Examiner

Sustainable Raised-Bed Gardening at Alameda Point
Written by David Howard for the San Francisco Examiner
illustrated with my photographs taken while doing a marketing job for Rock Wall Wines, the subject of the article.

Check out the story here.

Meet Michael Schmidt, the Young Times Writer Who Exposes Baseball's Worst

Read Meet Michael Schmidt, the Young Times Writer Who Exposes Baseball's Worst to learn how one sports writer worked his way up from pizza delivery boy to the big leagues...

I'm interested to hear who among you joins me in being inspired by Schmidt's rise while also saddened that he climbed on the backs of supposedly anonymous players to get to his perch?

Tempest-Tost

On this 4th of July, New York City celebrates the re-opening of the crown of Lady Liberty, closed in the wake of the 9/11 attack.

The Statue of Liberty's face was created to look like the French sculptor's mother. A chain that represents oppression lies broken at her feet.

How ironic that women, many of whom are mothers, are often barred from our country? Women who face violence at home, violence along their journey to our border, violence when they are captured, criminalized and deported?

Some words from the poem, "The New Colossus," written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 speak to Lady Liberty's intended message of hope for people seeking freedom:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

A beautiful message for many immigrants -- which is most of us who now call ourselves American. My own family came from Ireland and Poland, Italy and Germany.

But for those who come from countries less popular than that of my ancestors, Lazarus' poem doesn't ring true.

Women and men detained in federal or local prisons are often denied access to their American citizen children, to legal representation, to sufficient medical care or protection from felons.

Few feel the compassion nor recognize the justice our country offers others when they're tossed back into the teeming shore that was their life back home - an existence so dire, so frightening, so deadly that they risked their lives to come to America in the first place.

What I witnessed, and the first-hand accounts I recently recorded while traveling across the border into Mexico woke me up to the cycles and layers of violence inflicted on migrant women - not just those coming from our Spanish-speaking neighbors to the south, but to women who flee, and those who are unwittingly trafficked into the U.S. from European, Asian, South American and Middle Eastern countries.

Images and testimony to be published at a later time. For now, I sit with this knowledge, hearing the voices of the women migrants I met, praying for their deliverance to safety.

Relay for Life

When our fearless captain, Marc Trotz, announced that we were going to call our merry band of lawless runners "We're Keepin' R's," I should have known we'd be in for trouble.

Better stated, I knew we'd BE trouble.

The Relay benefited Organs 'R' Us, and here we were announcing we planned to hold onto ours. Just think of our poor volunteers, shame-faced and blushing, feigning amnesia when asked by the event organizers what team they were supporting.

Of course, at some level not too far below the surface I knew all too well just how in-your-face, bold and boisterous we were bound to be, which is why I readily jumped in the van to head to Calistoga for a two-day running adventure of blood, sweat and tears.

I'll post a longer story of our adventure down the road, but for now, here's a teaser:

199 miles, give or take a few based on road blocks, detours and missteps. 12 runners, 3 legs each, almost 30 hours of continuous running from 1-2 May.

Numbers can't begin to quantify the magnificent challenge, nor can mere words on a page or monitor begin to speak of the transformation we lived as individuals and as team.

We're Keepin' R's, Touchstone-Berkeley rocked the house and lived to tell the story. Stay tuned...

photo credit of me running goes to teammate Aaron Steele. Check out more of his awesome shots on his picasa album. Not bad for a dude with a camera phone!

Windows on a World

Windows on a World is an audio slideshow of Sam Paino, a street-level window washer working in Queens, New York, that I started while a grad student at the International Center of Photography in 2006. I finished my last interview with Sam when I returned from Africa in November. You can view it now on my website.

Large sheets of glass trace the line of a skyscraper ever upwards, offering a heroic backdrop to the work of a big-city window washer.
Sam Paino remembers working that line, but has spent most of his past thirty years closer to the ground than to the sky. After serving in Korea he sold shoes before buying the window washing route he still works today. He’s earned enough to buy a pleasant home on Staten Island and to put his two daughters through college and graduate school.
The sole employee of Fieldstone Cleaning, Sam works an often invisible trade along the streets of Queens. Throughout his mornings, he stops for “coffee or bullshit” with long-time customers who have become his closest friends.
Cancer took twelve long years to drain the life out of his wife, Yolanda, who passed away in the middle of the year I photographed him. In her absence, Sam leaves home before 4AM to get on with life rather than linger in the silence left behind.

Chocolicious Fun in San Francisco

A sweet few hours were spent elbowing children, pregnant women, connoisseurs and other thousands wanting to get the most for their $25 tickets at the San Francisco Chocolate Salon today at Fort Mason. Met up with Dizzy D (Andrew Rogers) and we tag-teamed on interviewing and photographing some characters there.

We are hoping to publish a story, so I won't give it all away here. However, a few photos of the folks we met today I'll let you peak at below.

I was most impressed with two sisters, one the baker and the other the entrepreneur, who stand behind Socola (Vietnamese for chocolate).

Cookbook author Barbara Passino (Chocolate for Breakfast) opened our eyes to the politics of wine and chocolate pairings while hovering over the table for Omnivore Books on Food.

Jack Epstein, purveyor of decorated boxes and other people's chocolates ("they have a synergy," he told us more than once), runs a Noe Valley shop called Chocolates Covered.

Back in my 'hood, turns out there is a chocolatier (which is not a chocolate maker; go to wiki if you want to know the difference) artisan and teacher named Philippe Lewis who sells truffles in Berkeley at Edible Love.

There were even young things painted in chocolate - not selling themselves but their cacao body frosting made by Chocoholics Divine Desserts.
And, lest I forget, the very tasty shots of Vermeer dutch chocolate cream liqueur. A number of us were caught licking the sides of the tumblers to get every last drop as we walked away, forlorn. While others looked perplexed at the idea of chocolate makeup...

Time Trial Three-peat

Levi Leipheimer won the Solvang Time Trial for the third year in a row, beating out Dave Zabriskie of Garmin-Slipstream by just 8 seconds. Australia's champion, Michael Rogers, came in third, seventeen seconds back from Leipheimer.

Check my FLICKR page for more images of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California Time Trial.

The Wet and Green of CA Farmland

The 2009 Amgen Tour of California wound its way from San Jose to Modesto on Tuesday, 17 February.
The race started in relative sunshine, which broke into a sprinkle as the riders signed-in at the start line in front of Adobe in San Jose. By the time they hit the farmlands outside Modesto, it was a full-on downpour.

My favorite moment of the day? Catching the riders in a dry spell along Patterson Pass, image above.

Check out additional images on my FLICKR page.

Women Rock

Brooke Miller (USA) and Ina Tutenberg (GER) at the start line of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California Women's Criterium in Santa Rosa on Sunday, 15 February.


Miller, the current US Road Race Champion and Tutenberg were considered the race favorites. However, neither landed on the podium after the hour-long stage in a torrential downpour, but their teammates did. Columbia-Highroad's Emilia Fahlin, the Swiss National Champion won the race, and Lauren Tamayo (USA), on Miller's Team TIBCO placed second.

See the article I photographed and contributed to in the New York Times about the uber-educated and professional women cyclists racing today.

Tour of California Prologue

Lance Armstrong back on the bike and in California for the opening Prologue in Sacramento of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California, Saturday, 14 February.

I will post more photos on my FLICKR page before the end of the Tour.

Columbia-Highroad Schwag & World Class Women

Ahh, to be back again in the Bay Area. Sweet.

I drove up to the state's capitol from San Francisco yesterday to pick-up my press credential, meet some of the riders and soak in the excitement buzzing the day before the start of the fourth-annual Amgen Tour of California.

Team Columbia-Highroad was holding a breakfast meet-and-greet at the DoubleTree in Sacramento, featuring their riders and their home-brew coffee from San Louis Obispo. The company's PR guys made sure to point out that carrying their travel coffee mug on the course entitles you to free coffee on what is an often chilly and wet week of riding.

Lots of great "schwag" was distributed, but most important, I enjoyed a private audience with the women's team and staff.

You won't find much news about the women's criterium being held in conjunction with male-dominated Tour. The women were originally going to race three stages, from Sacramento to Santa Cruz, but that got turned into just one stage - a criterium race - to be held at the finish line of the men's race on Sunday in Santa Rosa.
Mara Abbott (American National Champion), Kim Anderson, Ina Tutenberg, Emilia Fahlin (Swedish National Champion) and Alex Wrubleski (Canadian National Champion) were great to interview, and I plan to follow-up with them and other women's teams in the coming days.

By the way, if you're unfamiliar with the terms of bike racing, including schwag or criterium, check out the handy online glossary the Tour organizers have posted.

Boston Indoor Games

Check out RunningTimes.com for my race recap and photos of the Reebok Boston Indoor Games held at the Reggie Lewis Track Center in Roxbury, MA on Saturday, 7 February 2009.
A few extra photos, below, and also on my FLICKR photo page:

Jenn Stuczynski sets a new American Record in the women's pole vault, 15 feet 9 inches.
She collected $25,000 for the record, as did Shalane Flanagan for trouncing Marla Runyan's 2001 record by 20 seconds in the women's 5,000-meters with a time of 14 minutes 47.62 seconds.
American Record Holder in the mile, Alan Webb, stumbled with 600 meters to go. The men's mile came down to the final 20 meters, with NZ Olympican Nick Willis pulling out a 3:53.54, followed by Mexican Olympian Pablo Solares in 3:54.52 and American Chris Lukezic holding for third in 3:56.04. Webb finished fourth, four seconds behind Willis.

Passing the Torch: Ireland to Kenya via NYC

An assignment on the Millrose Games that I covered (photo and writing) for Running Times is now available online. Here's an excerpt:

Perhaps he's a prophet or just an expert in the field, but the Irish running legend Eamonn Coghlan had predicted two-time world champion Bernard Lagat's win at the 102nd Millrose Games on Friday night at Madison Square Garden.

He wasn't the only one, as Lagat himself had proposed as much last year. After winning the famous Wanamaker Mile for the sixth time in 2008, Lagat announced he would come back in 2009 to take a stab at Coghlan's meet-record seven wins.

Born in Kenya, the 34-year-old American fought a strategic race against New Zealand's Nick Willis to finish in 3:58.44 for his seventh win, tying the record of the earlier favored son of Millrose.

And some additional images of mine to what is posted online:

Traveling with Obama

Inauguration Day. A day we will all remember. A day our children and our children's children will prompt the question, "where were you when Barack Obama was sworn-in as..."

the 44th President of the U.S.

the first African American President of the U.S.

the first bi-racial President of the U.S.

Or the day Bush flew over the Potomac no longer the President of the U.S.

Tomorrow I will post images and audio, hopefully a slideshow, of some of the amazing people I met today while marking this historic day in my personal storyline. I will tell my children, or your children - someone's children - that I spent this great day in the way that means the most to me: hearing people tell their stories, sharing their dreams, and collecting a photographic memory of their stories to add to my own.

I am ending my day in Jersey City - an enclave just west of the World Trade Center site - with a Kenyan community galvanized by the election of a man who's father was Kenyan. President Obama, in one of the highpoints of his inaugural speech earlier today, suggested people might open their fists when an open hand is extended to them. As one man I interviewed, David Asige, said, "[Obama's] Kenyan father and his white mother held hands together to make the man that became this dream." This is only part of what makes this day so historic for everyone around the world.


I got to watch election history being made in November from the flat of my friends Rich and Hannah in Dublin, Ireland. Rich has been active in the Democrats Abroad contingent (check out his hilarious tongue-in-cheek piece in The Dubliner Magazine) and was glued to his laptop most of the night. Well, when I wasn't stealing it out from under him to track stats, predictions, commentaries and returns on my favorite sites. A room full of Irish and stomachs full of homemade pizza (way to go, Hannah!), we were a happy and overtired group by 5:30AM when I cried in delight as the new first family, a beautiful black family, walked onto the stage.

Today, back in my country of birth and near family I was born into and family I have come to adopt as my own after my trip to Africa, I raise a hand, sing an "Amen!" and kneel in gratitude for this new day that has dawned.

United

U N I T E D

In consensus?
No, almost half the country that voted dimpled a chad or pulled a lever for someone other than Barack Obama.

In crisis?
Perhaps.
Our economy is hemorrhaging, our jobs are failing, we're in acknowledged war in two countries (and who knows what we're waging in the shadow of the unknown).

But is it consensus or crisis that unites us, that transcends, in President-Elect Obama's words, blue states and red states to re-create the United States?

Maybe I'm fooling myself and we're not united, nor are we transcending that which divides us, like race, gender, faith, economic status, education level, geography, etc. etc. etc. But as I observe the build-up to the Inauguration tomorrow, I am intoxicated by the enthusiasm and energy that is swelling across the country - indeed, across the world.

Perhaps if nothing else, the global population is united in this regard: we're ready for change. And even if we disagree with what that change should be, when it should happen, the tools that, morally, the Commander in Chief of arguably the most-influential country in the world has the right to wield, we agree that the world is bleeding and needs healing.

We are united at our core, I believe, in wanting to create a more sane world, however we individually and collectively define it.

The problem: we too often get in the way of our own vision by perpetuating ignorance, intolerance, violence and injustice and calling it Truth, Democracy, Freedom and Liberty. I walk into tomorrow praying that this time, in this administration, we get it right more often than we get it wrong.

Dain Bramage

It's a joke, how my friends and I refer to my head injuries as "dain bramage."

Or how my sis and I say "funny business" for when my brain does things it shouldn't. Sometimes I'm wondering in the pages of a Dr. Seuss book, lost among the silly words that sound right but make no sense, sure that I am communicating something but not sure what, exactly.

And we laugh, and it is funny, especially since here I am, alive, thinking, writing.

Those brain-shaken-not-stirred accidents over too many years in competitive sports had their impact, but in a transient sort of way.

Sure, there was a time I couldn't find my way between my apartment and my job -- even though they were two blocks apart, and I'd walked the same route many times a day over many years. And there were those bad, bad days dealing with migraines, nausea, confusion. At its worst, I'd crawl from couch to toilet, unable to stand in a spinning world (vertigo, not vodka).

Okay, I take it back. My brain was shaken AND stirred.

Overall, fingers-crossed, I came out okay especially if I use tools to accomplish tasks that used to happen seamlessly and unconsciously.

I can tell a story, even one I just witnessed, but I need to write down the details if I'm going to get it right. I can multi-task like the best of my old, over-achieving self, as long as I've gotten enough sleep and have eaten in the last few hours.

I'll remember your face, even if we meet only briefly or I see you on the subway one time, as long as there is something visually interesting about you (or I take your photo). The visual memory is, praise the Photographer God, still pretty strong.

In case you hadn't noticed, head trauma is all the rage -- it's being talked about in every forum. Among buddies pounding beer in front of the NFL playoffs; on public radio's review of the most popular interviews in 2008; in magazines and books by doctors who have faced traumatic brain injuries firsthand.

As usual, and as in my own story, it's the American love of sport that continues to bring TBI to the forefront of our minds.

In case you missed it, Ben Roethlisberger, the quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, sustained his third concussion in as many years two weeks ago tonight. After almost fifteen minutes he was carried off in a stretcher. Perhaps the artifical turf of Heniz Field softened the blow of his head being jammed into the ground because his concussion was deemed "mild" by the Steelers' concussion-management-team. It's great that football has the most advanced brain buckets of any sport, and a brain-damage-specific team of doctors as well. But it begs the question: why do we pour billions of dollars into a sport that necessitates such trauma management to protect our most critical organ?

Go ahead and beg (I can hear you), but that's not a question I plan to entertain, any more than the question of why I keep climbing back on my bike or skis, or why I drive in cars and fly in planes. It's all about calculating risk and deciding on an individual basis just how much risk we're willing to live with to entertain our interests or meet our needs.

And, yes, playing sports is necessary for me.

While spinning on a stationary bike to the blasting tune of Pearl Jam, AC/DC or Creed may be safer than riding on the road (concussions, cracked jaw, broken wrist, fractured collarbone) or trail (dislocated shoulder), one could argue it's not good for my hearing at the levels I need to play that music to be as pumped as I am after riding outdoors without music.

Running on a treadmill helps my speed and pacing, but I'm wasting electricity (how many watts does it take to power one of those beasts, anyway?). And don't make me compare the benefits of using a Precor machine versus gliding through trails of snow or climbing over and sliding down peaks in Tahoe. There simply is no comparison.

While I project a go-for-broke attitude toward the sports I love, there is the tiny voice that I sometimes admit to hearing -- but never to psychiatrists, who perk-up when they hear you hear voices of any kind, even the guardian angel type -- that suggests maybe I shouldn't go for that ride/run down the mountain. Or when the feeling in my gut says just maybe today you can scale back, go slow, cut it short.

Ultimately, though, "giving in" is just not true to me, and in the end, I only have myself to blame or applaud. At least I still recognize myself when I look in the mirror. Except on the worst days.