Pixel Dance

Art is a loose term to me. When I asked Karla Dial, one of the news and magazine writers I know, to be a guest on my blog, she said she wasn’t really an artist. But I think she is. And I think anyone who watches today’s news would agree. It’s an art to come to a story, be able to assess its angles, research the facts, and propose an unbiased recounting of why it is important to the readers. Really, not many people do it well anymore. Karla does it very well. Here’s her story, in her own words:

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I got started in my career as a journalist in the most unlikely of places—the library of my junior high school in 1980-something.

I was in ninth grade, about to graduate and move on to senior high school. In order to sign up for classes, the administrators had us all fill out forms indicating our interests to help us find electives. At the top of the form was a blank to fill out titled “Career Objective.”

I paused at that point and really thought about my “career objective” very hard for the first time. Until then, I’d always wanted to be a jockey, like my hero Alec Ramsey in “The Black Stallion” book series by Walter Farley. I loved horses—but my granddaddy’s cattle ranch didn’t really provide the kind of riding, nor his Quarter Horses the kind of racing, I’d read about all those years. And if Alec had taught me anything, it was that the ideal jockey was only five feet tall, if that, and barely over 100 pounds. I was only 14, but I could tell I was going to be just a little too big for the job.

So I thought about what I was good at instead. I took Advanced Placement English, and my teachers had always spoken very highly of my writing. I’d even written a children’s book when I was in sixth grade that one of them submitted for publication. I thought about deadlines for a moment, from long-range book projects to daily newspapers, and figured something in the mid-point, like a monthly magazine, would suit me best. So I wrote “Journalist” in the blank, and that was it. A star was born!

Of course, that’s a total lie—but something really did start to happen from that day forward. I signed up for my high school newspaper, the Purple Press, and was the editor of it by my senior year, then went on to major in journalism at New Mexico State University. It might be a big party school, but it happens to have an excellent journalism program. I got a job as a reporter at the college paper, The Round-Up, and went on my collegiate way.

About two and a half years into that, however, I got very discouraged and had a hard time reconciling my career choice with my Christian faith. I remember walking across campus one day, praying, “God, I don’t want to be a journalist. The field is full of alcoholics, and they’re all so anti-You!” So I switched my major to, of all things, psychology. (Talk about anti-God!) That lasted until I had to take a course called Experimental Methods, which involves a lot of math. Nothing drives me to my knees faster than math, so I figured it was time to get back to what God was really calling me to do, and began concentrating on journalism again. A job covering NMSU football and basketball as a stringer for the Albuquerque Journal—the largest newspaper in the state—literally fell into my lap, and I started covering games on some of the tightest deadlines known to man.

The last summer before my graduation, the name of the game was all about finding a good internship somewhere—but I was 0 for six because all the newspapers in the area were into affirmative action, and I am not Hispanic. (Though a strong case could definitely be made for hiring a white girl under affirmative action in that area of the country.) One day during the spring semester, I got a phone call from my advisor, who happened to be the head of the journalism department.

“Karla, I’m concerned about you because you’re oh-for-six on internship opportunities, and the only reason is that you’re not Hispanic,” he said. “You make better grades and have more experience than all these other kids who are getting hired.”

“Well, I can’t think of anything else to do except just keep trying,” I told him.

“There’s one paper you might be really interested in,” he told me. “The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California, hires four college interns every summer, and one of them is always in the sports department.”

“That does sounds interesting,” I said. “I’ll have to check it out.”

“I thought you’d say that,” he said. “And that’s why I took the liberty of writing them a letter and signing your name to it. I just wanted you to know about it in case they call you!”

I was too stunned to even tell him how unethical that was. Not that it would have done any good after the fact, anyway. But about a week later, I did get a call from the Press-Enterprise, telling me they’d hired me for the summer.

That was a major turning point in my life. By the time I went back to school in the fall, I’d decided I would just go ahead and be a sportswriter, and if that was the case, Southern California—home to a plethora of professional teams—was the only place worth doing it. So I blanketed the region with my resume, planned a trip back over my Thanksgiving break, and set up about a half-dozen interviews. I told the editors even if they didn’t have a job opening, I would just like to meet with them and hear whatever advice they could offer me.

So that’s what I did. I rented a white Mustang convertible and met with editors in Santa Barbara, Antelope Valley, Pasadena—anywhere I could get somebody to spend time with me. The very last place I visited was The Desert Sun, the daily newspaper in Palm Springs. And as I drove through the mountains, farther and farther away from my boyfriend in Huntington Beach—the guy who at the time covered the Angels for the Press-Enterprise—I thought it was the last place I wanted to work, too. But since I had the appointment, I figured I might as well keep it.

When I walked up to the sports desk, there was just one guy sitting there—Larry Bohannon, the golf writer.

“You must be here about the prep job,” he said.

“What prep job?” I asked. “I’m just here for a meeting.”

As it turned out, the paper had fired the prep sports guy a week earlier for making up quotes and only pretending to go to games. The sports editor liked my resume because I was somewhat familiar with the area already—having spent the summer just 45 minutes away in Riverside—and asked if I could stay long enough to try out for the job. I said no way! I had papers to write, finals to take, back in New Mexico. So we scheduled a tryout for right after graduation instead. When I came back in December, they showed me around the valley, took me to look at apartments, wined and dined me quite a bit, and had me go out to interview a guy at a church about a car racing team he was organizing. I had to write the story in the office, on deadline—while everyone there was bouncing off the walls and having a Christmas party! They figured if I could write under those circumstances, I could handle anything, so they offered me the job. And to paraphrase an old proverb, a job in the hand is worth two on the beach—so I took it.

So that’s how I got started in journalism. Obviously, it’s not where I ended up—I now run a monthly newspaper on education reform for a libertarian think tank in Chicago while freelancing about bodybuilding for Muscle & Fitness magazine and conservative grassroots activism for Citizen. But isn’t that exactly what I said I wanted to do when I was in ninth grade?

The one thing I would really like to say about the beginning of my career, though, is that when I got that job in Palm Springs, I was a Christian, but I wasn’t letting Jesus control my life. In fact, I’d chucked my Christianity into the corner completely because I was tired of feeling like I had to perform well enough for the Lord to love me. I could never be good enough, no matter how hard I tried! So I had decided that I would rather go to Hell in one piece than live my life in two pieces, if that was what Christianity was.

I thought I got the job because I was just so smart and so talented! But three months into it—with my boyfriend 100 miles away in Huntington Beach and my family 1,000 miles away in New Mexico—I was more alone than I’d ever been, and both my job and my attitude sucked. That’s when I was sent out to write a feature story on Lyndee Hovsepian, a sophomore at one of the high schools I covered who’d just qualified for the Olympic swim trials—and during that interview, she and her mother invited me to go to church with them sometime. I said to myself, you know, I might be the biggest screw-up Christianity has ever seen, but I am not completely stupid—and I can tell when it’s time to take care of business.

So I went to church with them the next week and met the rest of the family. As I was walking up the sidewalk, the dad took one look at me, pointed right at me, and said, “You’re an answer to prayer!”

While I inwardly freaked out, thinking, “Man, this guy has been out to lunch a LOT longer than an hour”—I mean, who had ever said anything like that to me in my entire life?—I politely asked him what he meant. He said the family had known for a long time that Lyndee’s talent was going to attract attention, so they’d been praying for the right journalist to come along to write the story. And that person was me.

Long story short—I rededicated my life to the Lord that day. The Hovsepian family basically adopted me. I broke up with my boyfriend and started really growing in the Lord for the first time—coming to realize that I wasn’t in Palm Springs, in the job that I had, because of my own talent or brains. The Lord had simply been orchestrating my steps all that time. And my performance had nothing to do with His love for me. No, I could never be good enough, love God enough, to be saved—so all I could do was rely on His grace and let Him love me. That totally changed my perspective!

About 18 months later, a new guy was hired as one of the assistant city editors at the paper. He was six months out of rehab for—you guessed it!—alcoholism. He asked me what brought me to Palm Springs, and I told him this story. Not too long afterward, he asked Jesus into his heart—and two days after that, the Lord said to me, “That is your husband!” Sure enough, six months later he asked me to marry him, so I said yes. About 18 months into our marriage, he took a job writing for Citizen magazine at Focus on the Family, so we moved to Colorado Springs. He’s now the vice president for media relations there, and I do all my freelance work from home. God has an amazing sense of humor.

Sherri asked me to tell you what my forte is as a writer. I’ve always been very intrigued by crawling around inside other people’s heads and finding out what makes them tick, and then helping them tell their stories. My favorite thing is to tell stories like this one, though I usually find it easier to do when they are other people’s stories and not my own! (They’re easier to edit that way.) So as it turns out, journalism is not as anti-God as I thought it would be in college. If God can use me, He can use anything!

The best advice I can offer anyone is that whatever you do, do your best. Give your heart to the Lord, and let Him orchestrate your steps—and then stand back and watch as He creates art out of your life.

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I’m sure you can tell from the story many of the other reasons I love Karla – she’s hilarious, smart as a whip, and always has the perfect thing to say in any circumstance. It would really be worth your time to pick up Muscle & Fitness Hers, where Karla writes a monthly column. She is a fitness guru, and competes in fitness competitions, so she knows what she’s talking about. She’ll quickly become one of your favorite reads, I’m sure.

It’s my favorite time in the garden. Everything’s dead. The frost has put things to rest. And there, in the dry, monochromatic landscape, hidden to all but the seeing eye, is life.

For those of us who are Christians and who tend gardens, resurrection is perhaps the easiest part of the Savior story to comprehend. Out of death, life. A seed is planted, but in its due time, bursts forth with an entirely new kind of life, a new body.

The seed is dull and small and hard, and sometimes barely visible. It has no signs of life, and oftentimes falls to the cold dirt, or rides the gusty autumn winds, with virtually no fanfare. Only those who really know what’s happening can even pick it out. To most, it is completely unrecognizable, and completely unimportant.

This is the time when all of the energy of the former plant is infused in a power-packed little pellet. Everything the plant has worked for and proven rests in the hands of this tiny bit of resurrection power. All its hopes laid to rest, with only the hope of resurrection.

Then, in the spring, when the harshness of winter has torn against the barrier of the naked seed, when the piles of snow have burdened its being, and when the rains and storms of early spring have pushed it to its limit, that tiny miracle begins to show signs of life. It breaks open, and the most delicate shoot of little green life pushes with great power through the dirt. Uncanny power. Resurrection power. Something so small, so fragile, should never have the strength to do what it does. But so it does. And to those of us watching, it is jaw-dropping.

From death, life. From cold, motionless seed, breathtaking beauty; delicious food; sustenance for a microcosmic civilization; a buffet for birds and bees feeding from the river of life in its pollen, dusting the earth with the powder of potential. Life anew. A life never imagined in the mind of the seed, but gestating there all along.

So I am out in the yard, where every year I harvest a selection of seeds for my seed collection. I leave the rest to find their way to the ground, and I wait for resurrection power — the joy that is to come.

I’ve got another talented friend for you to meet. Reg Francklyn is a photographer that has consistently done great work for us at Citizen. You can throw him into any situation, and you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to get. He has a great eye for the story, captures all the right moments, and is as flexible as all get out (these kinds of jobs can give you whiplash). Here’s his story, in his own words:

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I have always enjoyed taking photos. I started using a darkroom in the 6th grade thanks to a math teacher who set one up at my elementary school. I did not really know anything about what a good photo was, but I loved the look of a print revealing itself in the developer. I took a few more pictures in High School and worked in the darkroom some more. I really did not take what I considered to be a decent photo until I was in college, when I went to the Sand Dunes and to shoot some 2 ¼ black and whites. Kind of hard to take a bad photo there.

While I was at the college I was influenced by Ben Benschneider and Myron Wood. Ben had a long history as a commercial photographer and Myron was well known for his documentary work on Southwest Colorado and New Mexico. Myron made exquisite black and white prints from 35mm copy film and special developer.

I graduated from Colorado College with a degree in Political Science and a minior in photography. After waffling for a few months I decided I really wanted to go to Art School and was accepted at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena , CA (http://www.artcenter.edu/accd/index.jsp)

The program was 8 semesters. After going 4,and needing a break, I decided to work as a photographer’s assistant for a while. I was also out of money. I got to work for some well known LA photographers and saw lot of shooting styles. After a year of doing that, I moved back to Colorado Springs and tried to get some work. I started out doing some freelancing for the now defunct ” Colorado Springs Sun,” a daily paper. I then got a job a KOAA channel 5, working as a part time freelance photographer, and later working full time in the studio, which I did not care for. The pay was lousy, but the access to interesting new stories was great.

I got a big break when I started doing a lot of work for Hewlett-Packard with product photos, environmental user shots, and some travel to HP plants around the US. Many of the photos I took were used as magazine covers for trade magazines. I did in-camera photo composite work using multiple 4″ x 5″ cameras and complicated lighting setups. I went to do a lot of work for different high tech companies form there.

Focus on the Family moved to town around that time, and I helped with a lot of product photos. I shot covers for Focus on the Family magazines and features for many of the other magazines.

Shooting for Citizen magazine has been my favorite assignment, and I even went on a few international trips with writer Steve Adams. Sherri has been a great editor and champion of my work, and I love working with her.

Along the way, I got into aerial photos, construction photos, and Architecture. I still don’t have my license yet, but I do have over 200 hours of flight time at the controls and 400 landings in the Cessna 172 I use.

Of course Digital now rules the roost for photographers. I was a pretty early adapter of Digital, shelling out $6,000 for the Nikon D1 . It was pretty hard to learn to work with the photos because computers were weak and expensive and the internet was not the wonderful place for learning it is now. The learning curve was steep.

Right now I like that the digital SLR can do just about every job, from a 10′x 12′ mural at a tv station to a small illustration. Although I am now pretty good with Photoshop, and even teach it at a community college, I mostly like straight photography. I do like the instant image feedback so I can review pictures with the user when appropriate. I am always looking for that “decisive moment” and the freedom one gets with digital is a big help in capturing it in low light.

I have to say right now I am having a lot of worries about photography as a career. There are many people who want the lifestyle and will do the work. Fees and usage are under pressure as many users expect all rights for the assignment. Photography assignments often can dry up in a recession as well. The key of course is self-promotion, which I am terrible at and need to do a better job with.

So, I am keeping my options open and trying to self assign more work. I am pretty sure that things will improve and get better–there will always be an assignment for photographer with a good eye.
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And Reg is a photographer with a good eye. If you have any photography needs, look him up. You can post to the blog, and I’ll pass on your interest to our friend. Thanks, Reg.

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

This is the first stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride.” When I was a child, instead of reading bedtime stories, my dad would read me this poem. His warm, professorial voice would ride the words, just as Revere galloped along the route to Lexington and Concord. The story, in its cadence, felt powerful, full of weight and meaning. He would rise with the tension, let off on “Middlesex village and farm.” It was hard to fall asleep, because I wanted to know what happened, even though I had heard it time after time.

Every 18th of April is a holiday to me. It’s the day I remember the covert operations of a few farmers and small businessmen who valued their freedom over anything else. I applaud the men of our Revolution, who staked their lives on liberty, and followed through with their threats.

Some of you know that I am part of the family of President John Adams. Paul Revere rode that night to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams (yes, relation) that the British were coming to capture them, to seize Patriot ammunition, to put down the uprising that was coming to a head. The Sons of Liberty (Hancock, the Adams boys, Patrick Henry, and many others) had formed in the 1760s to oppose first the Stamp Tax, then other taxes and, by 1773 (The Tea Tax), their zeal for freedom from Britain brought them to Boston Harbor. It was the beginning of real revolution. Then, two years later, the Patriots received word from spies that the British were done with the rebels, and were sending men to silence the uprising. A call to arms rang throughout the land.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

Paul Revere eyed the top of the Old North Church, waiting for one light, waiting for two. Ready to ride! Without him, Hancock and Adams would have been captured at a house in Lexington. Who knows if the uprising would have lost its steam in that cold April morning. Would liberty have lost its footing? Such men — such moments.

So now here we are, 233 years away from great escapades of audaciously patriotic men. Let’s not forget who they were. And let’s not forget who we are. We are the Patriots of today. Now is our time. We stand guard for liberty. She is ours to keep, to protect, to fight for with our full breath. Let us watch the horizon, stay ready to ride.

The Founding Fathers set in motion a set of ideals that continuing generations have fiercely protected. Valiant men have fought and died for the principles that we hold dear. They pass a torch of trust that is firmly in our grip. May we understand its power.

In this election, our voice still resounds with a chorus of tenacious patriots who would not let tax, war, terrorism or depression diminish freedom. Do not underestimate the cause, or the calling. Centuries of human beings have longed for the flame which is lit in our hands. It is sacred. It is priceless. It is worth our everything. And we honor those who have given their everything for its sake.

Millie, our dalmatian, is going on 13 1/2. She’s a tough puppy. Two years ago, we had to remove her leg because of bone cancer. They said she had a small chance of living up to 2 years, (most likely it was 6 months) and if she lived longer than that, she would be a wonder dog.

Well, 2 years and 3 months later, we are still overjoyed to have our Super-Wonder-Lemon Dog with us. Here are some things I’ve learned:

Sometimes you do have to go to heck and back. Life can throw some pretty nasty stuff your way, and you have to find a way through it. You have to integrate it. You don’t get to stay there. The day Millie’s leg came off wasn’t the last day of her life. She learned to balance on three legs. She learned to find the routes without obstacles in the back yard. And she learned to bark for help when she couldn’t get up. Sometimes the only success in life is to take the next step.

It’s only bad if you act like it. Every day that dog acts like she has four legs. It rarely occurs to her that the fourth one isn’t there. And if it does, she patiently waits for one of us to figure out she needs a little assistance. She has created a runway for herself so she can make a running jump up onto the couch. And many mornings we find the couch pushed several feet out of place, an indication of the tenacity of a dog who doesn’t care what she doesn’t have, but presses into what she does have.

Love covers a multitude of pee. As I was cleaning up puppy urine at 3 am, I realized how much love really does change your attitude. I lifted Millie up, tucked my head in close to her ear, and said, “I will pick you up as many times as you fall, whenever it is, wherever you are.” Genuine love makes the disgusting into a beautiful moment. And you really come to find out who loves you when you are absolutely helpless.

Three legs can still spoon. Millie often tries to coax me to bring the laptop to the couch. And the routine is the same – as soon as she gets me settled, then she pushes me forward, wrapping herself around me. It’s as good as spooning with 4 legs. Love is love, and it’s good.

If it’s trouble, lop it off. It’s amazing what you can get by without. You can still give love and be beautiful, no matter what the circumstances bring you. In fact, most of the time you’re more beautiful with scars. Scars are life’s beauty marks, and we’d be wise to see how beautiful they are.

Sometimes I think I look a lot like Millie on the inside – a little scarred and struggling to keep my balance. But I’ve learned this: find a ramp to jump for what you want, pretend like you’re all there, and keep running with your ears flopping in the wind. Life is too exciting to focus on what’s not there.

Stop. What you’re doing. What you’re thinking. What you’re being. Stop. Take a deep breath. What do you hear? What’s around you? What’s happening in your body? Are you hungry? Do you feel sad? Frustrated? Can you hear the breath of the person nearest to you? Is it fast, short, syncopated? Is there laughter? Stop.

I am sitting here, listening to my furnace hum. My dog is breathing deeply, on the precipice of sleep. And my tiny portable printer is crankily spitting out smooth pages. The late autumn sun is streaming in the back window. I know it because I notice the angle of the sun, how it effects the blue of the sky, how it changes the shadows. I taste the bubbles of a diet drink I should have passed on. The tops of my fingers are cold, but the pads are warm against these metal keys. I have a sore stomach, and as I type this, my stress is coming down, as I breathe more purposefully, more slowly, more deeply.

I am quiet. Are you quiet? Maybe not yet. Maybe now. It’s not very often that we are quiet. That we are feeling and seeing only what’s happening now. Right now. Therapists will commonly tell patients to “stay in the moment.” It’s a reference to a coping mechanism that we often use to escape our pain. We’re not here. We’re in our past, trying to justify it, re-spin it, fix it. Or we’re in our future, planning ahead, evaluating a next move, hoping for something new, planning for one day. But now is often not so appealing. Now is bills, problems, lack of control. So we add noise. Distraction. Vicarious living. We jump out of the moment, and into the noise.

But think about quiet. Quiet, right here, right now.

Quiet is gratefulness. An inventory of what is, an acknowledgement of all. A point of view that sees past the noise that is clammering for attention. A look beyond what needs you right now, to see what you really have. A thankful knowledge of breathing, being, loving. Being loved.

Quiet is confidence. It is a sense that I don’t have to move. The opposite is anxiety. Hurry is anxiety. Unmet expectations. Not good enough. More. Quiet is fine right now. Unmoved. Unreactionary. Although noise and action might seem in control, I think when you are quiet, you are really most in control. Not acting out of defense mechanisms, and concocted manipulations. Quiet puts you in touch with who you really are deep within – the person who makes the right choices, with the right motives.

Quiet is honesty. Noise fools. Crowds drag you along with them, give you a large stick and a torch on the way to the uproar. Quiet decides knowingly, separately. Quiet listens to you, respects your opinion.

Quiet is reality. The way it is, with no dressings. No need to make it fancier. You are who you are, and the good and the bad live together, forging a soul, a spirit, an experience. A life. A precious, precious life. No matter what the noise says, you are to be commended. You’ve done well. And maybe you are to be corrected. But it’s welcome here. It’s right. There’s no fear, no disappointment. There is reality, and it is an independent voter.

Quiet is discovery. The things you secretly hope for. The things you know about yourself that you don’t let out into the open. The parts you forgot were there – the talents, the joys, the philosophies. The things you’re too old for, like dancing and coloring. But just stretch out your arm – it’s still there. It’s always been there.

Quiet is love. There’s no side to persuade you to. No hidden agendas, subversive intentions. Quiet waits to make you safe. To give you power. To let you decide. It holds your voice in its hand. It wants the best for you. Quiet is you spending time with you, getting to know you, believing the best about you. Giving you what you need.

Imagine if we all stopped. Right now. Got quiet. Lived life from here. I want to.

I hope you’ve been able to stop, to be quiet. Come back any time you need to. Quiet always waits for you.