Stitches and Clothes

After taking a portrait of the surgeon, I asked him to take my picture. I've been wearing funny clothes lately. Like paper suits and hair nets. They don't let you in the operating room without that stuff and I've been into three operating rooms in the past three weeks. The funny thing is, I tend to squeak and faint at the sight of blood.

I was recently hired to do photos for a group of surgeons who are revamping their website. They were the nicest people I've met who wield knives on a regular basis.

A surgeon and some lungs. My job was to go into their three different locations to get portraits and action shots. And that's what I did. And it was fun. And it was gross. Because sometimes I saw blood.

Nice, happy, knife-wielding doctors.But the best news from our house is that Leah made homemade bread yesterday! Yummmm... She's also been working really hard lately. Things have been busy at work, but she's handling it like she handles everything -- with beauty and grace and karate kicks.

We've had a couple of nice weekends (although some snow this week) and so we've been able to take a few walks lately. Which has been nice.
A surgeon and his equipmentWeekends are wonderful for us because we get to relax together, take walks, and do stuff around the apartment.

Hope you're doing great and wherever you are, I hope we can see you soon!

South Africa

Leah presenting her thesis to a group of people attending the IRDC ConferenceThis past weekend, Leah and I re-visited South Africa. We didn’t go there, but so much of what we did and saw was related to South Africa, that it was like having a friend come visit for the weekend.

First of all, Leah presented her thesis results at a conference at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. She was invited to speak at the International Rural Development Conference after a friend of ours recommended her to one of the event’s organizers.

Of course, she did a wonderful job. She is a great public speaker, and she held the interest of her listeners for 1.5 hours at each session. We were also able to meet some great people who are doing international development work. It was great to hear their stories, and have the chance to share ours as well.

The snowy train station near our apartmentThen on Sunday night, we went to the Kimmel Center to hear The Soweto Gospel Choir! This was one of the most amazing live performances I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to describe the experience, but you can get a tiny flavor from their website. But if they ever come to your town, I would say that whatever the tickets cost would be worth it.

Leah and I had to take the train in because it was snowing so hard, but that was fun too. The weather here has been back and forth between sunny and snowy, frigid and simply cold. Today is a bit warmer and things are beginning to melt.

People heading to the theater to see The Soweto Gospel ChoirHope you’re doing great wherever you are!

footloose

Our dog Simon is happy and healthy and still loves to imitate Napoleon.Leah and I are doing great. We want to post more updates, but I think these things come in cycles. So maybe get ready for a new cycle of posting.

This weekend, Leah will be speaking at a development conference at Messiah College. She has a great presentation put together and I know she'll do a wonderful job.

I was wearing a puffy white hair hat when I took this shot. We've been working hard on the photo business lately. If you haven't seen our site for a while, we've updated it recently. www.AndrewHoodPhotography.com We have some weddings this summer and some engagement sessions coming up soon. I've also been doing some photography for a surgery center and this past week, I was taking photographs during a surgery! I could see them cutting into a person's leg to do a vein replacement thing. Anyway, I think I got some good shots.

Speaking of photography, I've also been writing for school lately. This month, I'm writing about photography and how I've been interested in it since I was a child. I'm even recreating some of the early photographic experiments I attempted with my G.I. Joe action figure. The shots didn't come out back then because I didn't know what I was doing, but now I can pull them off a little better.

I found the exact G.I. Joe figure I had as a kid on EBay for cheapOne Sunday I heard a sermon about the transfiguration of Christ. Something about the bursting of light made a powerful impression on me. So I went home and tried to recreate what the transfiguration might have looked like by taking photos of my G.I. Joe figure standing in a sunlit windowsill. The original photo didn't work, but here's the one I did yesterday with G.I. Joe in my bathroom window.

Anyway, long story short: we're doing great. Leah is doing well at her job and is still doing great stuff as a result of her thesis. And I'm doing photography stuff for a living now and working hard for school.

We miss you and love you and hope to see you in person soon.

33

I'm 33 today.

Leah bought me a balloon, a book, and two other gifts which I haven't opened yet. We're going to dinner tonight.

Update on Jan 16, 2007 by Drew & Leah

Followup Post~

The two packages that I had not yet opened at the time of my last posting were: an acorn-scented candle and another book!

The Vermonter

An old trestle bridge in Montpelier   The Vermonter is a train that goes from Washington D.C. to St. Albans, Vermont way up near the Canadian border. This train runs every day; and yesterday, it ran me up to Montpelier, Vermont.

It will be a cold first day at school...Today is my first day of school as I begin the process of getting a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Vermont College. The program requires two 10-day residencies per year -- one in January and one in June. During the residencies, I will be attending lectures, discussions, workshops, critiques, readings and various other gatherings in addition to several one-on-one tutoring sessions with my professor. Here is a link to my schedule for the next 10 days (Word document). Hopefully, I will have time to post updates while I'm here.

I took a walk after breafast and snapped this photo as I crossed a bridgeMontpelier is a picturesque little town. The snow helps. The fastfoodlessness helps. The Victorian homes and vintage shops and mittened, scarf-wrapped citizens help. I got up this morning and strolled around town to get my bearings. I found a pizza shop, a coffee shop, a bookstore, and a river. You can read more about Montpelier here, and more about Vermont College here.

Montpelier is the only state capitol in the country without a McDonald's.Right now I'm sitting in the library (which, based on the spiral staircase that was built when people were smaller, must be quite an old building) taking advantage of their free wireless internet and listening to Hilary Hahn on Leah's iPod that she got from work. I have a great view of the snow-covered campus from here and I can't wait to get started (tonight!) with my program.

Please email Leah and do your best to help me keep her company while I'm gone. This will be the longest we've ever been apart and we sure do miss each other! Cheesy, but true...

Another snowy scene from the streets of Montpelier    
Vermont College!

For those who thirst for salvation: the "Beverage & Redemption Center"

Christmastime

Here is a man getting on a city bus...and the candle on my desk.When a window wants to be helpful, it not only lets you see through it, but it reflects the ghost of what it sees behind you. At work, I can look at my computer monitor and either see the text on the screen or, slightly altering the focus of my eyes, I can see the reflection of someone sneaking up behind me with a Post-It note that reads "Kick Me."

Christmastime shares that same reflectively transparent quality. It shimmers with what is past, without obscuring the present. Christmastime is brimming, on the one hand, with history and childhood and reflection -- the frosted past.

From my window before Christmas.But it is also an unwrapping of the present. Little boxes and cards strewn about with the names of those who are in our lives today.

We not only remember our own childhoods this time of year, but the childhood of God. Listing and visiting and reaching out to everyone who matters to us, we splash and swim in the flow of our lives -- carried into the current.

My window on a rainy winter morning.May you have great memories of old times and great times creating new memories!

Well you know my name is...

Simon resting in his favorite chair. Simon!

 

On Tuesday, a sick little abandoned dog wandered into our lives. Scrawny and shaking and scared. It's starting to get cold up here and so we decided to take the little dog in and call him our own. And I think he's been pretty happy with the arrangement. Right now he's sleeping soundly in his favorite chair next to mine at the desk.  

This is a picture of the dog healing. We took him to the vet yesterday and he does have some health issues to overcome. He's got a heart murmer, slight malnutrition, a previous back injury that might be from being hit by a car, a possible case of heart worms, and Lyme disease. But other than that, he's doing great! He is about one year old according to the vet, and will hopefully recover well. Today, he's much stronger and healthier looking. Only he sneezes a lot and has watery eyes. Maybe he's allergic to people....

This is a picture of Simon thinking about the future. Anyway, he's a really great dog.Totally house trained, really smart, and really well behaved. We will definitely keep you posted on his development and growth.  

D.C. Fun

The Capitol building!

Leah and I went to Washington D.C. for our 1st anniversary!

We stayed in a really cool hotel near the capitol, so we only had to drive once in our car. There are a lot of great restaurants in D.C. and we had the opportunity to eat at two of the best. This one (thanks Kendra and Adam!) was a really cool community gathering place with a rich history and delicious food. It's called Old Ebbit's Grill. But we also were able to try out a place called Bistro Bis. It's a modern French restaurant that had wonderful food, tons of great wine, and a cheese menu!

D.C. actually stands for "Drink Coffee"After living in Philadelphia, it was very interesting to visit Washington D.C. Our nation was born here in Philly, but grew up in D.C.  On my way to the DMV one day, I realized I was walking by the house where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Decleration of Independence. I stopped in to the Dunkin' Donuts next door and got a blueberry muffin. But in D.C. everything is contemporary. The buildings I see in front of me are the buildings I see on TV (and money).

Abe Lincoln looking as good as ever...Leah and I really enjoyed the FREE museums in D.C. We were blown away by the Natural History museum and the Air and Space museum even though we don't know a whole lot about airplanes and space ships and dinasours.  Most of the monuments we saw are the result of reflection on war. They symbolize war's impact on humanity, and they point to and honor the individual lives spent in the impact. They were powerful and somewhat overwhelming.

Only when you know the rules can you break them with great amusement.So, to sum it all up: we had a wonderful trip. The weather was beautiful, the city was interesting, and the company was the best I can imagine. Just as everyone wished us, we really did have a happy first anniversary! 

 

 

      

                                                   

The Hope Diamond                             

no matter what

In the days when cameras were giantsMy favorite photographer only had one arm.

Josef Sudek (1896 - 1976) was a book-binder from Prague until he found himself on the wrong side of an Italian canon on the front lines of WWI. And (so his biographies say) after the loss, he was no longer able to be a book-binder.

But it would have been just as reasonable to say that someone, after losing an arm, was no longer able to be a photographer -- especially in the days when cameras were as big as TV's. If book-binding were his art, he would have bound books no matter what. That's what artists do. They create, no matter what.

But photography was his art. And so he photographed...with only one arm.

His photographs point to the eternal -- to the natural interplay of lightness and darkness that happens within and around and upon the world and the common things of this world. Thus there is an eternal quality to a street or a lake or a wall or a twig, as long as the thing is being bathed in light and, at the same time, swallowed in darkness.

He was called "The Poet of Prague." And one gets the sense that his photographs are indeed little poems -- that the struggle behind their creation was purely ideal and not at all physical. And yet the struggle certainly was physical because Josef Sudek only had one arm, and cameras were as big as a ovens back then.

But there is no evidence of struggle, or war, or injury, or limitation in his photographs. Only something delicate and foggy and eternal in which everything else is soaking -- often unmindfully.

The next time you're in a bookstore, look for one of his books in the Photography section. They are not always in stock, but every once in a while...

And if you find him, you'll find yourself caught up -- mesmerized by his haunting and hopeful and beautiful little poems.

P.S. - I first discovered Josef Sudek on my first date-like outing with Leah. An outing that we would have blushed to call a date -- especially since it was not much more, on the outside, than a trip to Borders. And it was also while I (doubly inspired) was pouring over these photographs, that the thought first entered my mind that I must ask this girl out again -- that, no matter what, I must ask this girl out one more time...

great music site

If you like music, you must check out Pandora.com! It's a free site that plays great music. You only need to type in the name of your favorite artist and they play music from that artist and similar artists...they play music with a similar style. I've really enjoyed this site and thought I'd let you know about it...