One thing I can say is that being ambulatory is pretty necessary for being a photographer. Not absolutely, but like eyesight, fair requirement.
I did have a student once who arrived at my apartment and I discovered she was legally blind. I don’t know how one qualifies for that category but she had coke bottle glasses, and missed my hand when I went to shake hers.
I know there have been blind or nearly blind painters (see many of the early impressionists) and tons of blind musicians, even deaf ones (Ludwig Van) for one; but I can understand hearing music in your head and humming it or writing it down.
And if the world is getting fuzzy and your water lilies are glowing, that’s okay. But she had a manual focus camera (this was long before phones) and every shot she showed me was out-of-focus.
But we talked for a while, and it turned out that she could see sharply when her eyes were just a few inches from the print. We also worked out a way to tape a loupe to the viewfinder, and through trial and error, found a setting where she could get the shot in focus.
What reminded me of her is that my days of walking miles of city blocks are over; at least for now. And yet, where there’s a will, there may be a way. I was thinking of Ruth Orkin’s books photographed from her window.
Trouble is, I don’t have a spectacular view of Central Park, like she did.
So that was part, a big part of the impetus for starting a new blog, where I could write. My fingers and most of my brain works as well as ever (not saying all that much). But the recuperation goes on, and I can say that it goes slowly, but it goes.
Yesterday, the home health aide (4x a week 4 hours a day) and very necessary for climbing the two flights, told me that she put water in the container of liquid detergent to make it last longer.
Flashback to the first time I had real orange juice at a neighbor’s house. Hmmm. That was good. Just poured from a container of Tropicana.
I began to watch my dad when he mixed one of those A&P frozen cans of OJ. The instructions said to mix with 3 or 4 cans of water. My father, product of the depression, emptied one frozen can into a gallon pitcher and filled it to the brim.
My mother had been watering down all the soda we drank.
It was only at my Aunt Tam’s house that you could get an undiluted drink. So this whole dilution thing was still going on.
BECK 