Giving Thanks

Today is Thanksgiving Day. It is my favorite holiday of the year. It is all-inclusive without regard to religious preference. It remains relatively non-commercialized. Most importantly, it allows us to reflect on the blessings we enjoy and sometimes take for granted. Even in these difficult and anxiety-provoking times, there is a sense of peace that comes with being able to take inventory of the pieces and parts of our lives that provide contentment throughout the year.

We tend to realize how much we each have to be grateful for by comparing our own circumstances with those of others. As I write this, the morning newscaster just lead a story with "One in ten Minnesotans have no idea where their next meal is coming from . . ." A "one in ten" statistic should bring pause to all of us and certainly instill thanks in the lucky 90%. We spend billions of dollars a year on lottery tickets where the chance of winning is 1 in 146,107,962. Statistically, we are significantly closer to living in hunger than living in lottery riches. I am thankful that my family and I are hunger free and grateful that my children recognize their good fortune by supporting programs designed to eradicate hunger.

I am thankful that I live in a country that retains its faith in our Founding Fathers' vision of serial executives designed to allow new leadership to address the problems arising during the term of predecessors. Acting on this faith, we allow our system to work; we resist the temptation to panic; we do not resort to military solutions to redirect the policies of our government. This phenomenon manifests itself in the relative calm that our nation embraces as we await the commencement of the Obama Administration. The President-elect's steady, self-assured, focused and honest demeanor has proven to be a source of comfort strong enough to overcome the seemingly hopeless economic circumstances we face today. I am personally thankful that we have elected a leader who understands that his ability to deliver the promise behind "hope" requires a willingness to acknowledge the challenges we face instead of relying on empty slogans and jingoism.

We understandably count our thanks by measuring the well-being of our children. My children are now two young adults. I am proud of their values. I am proud of their ability to set long term goals for themselves and work diligently to achieve those goals. For six years, I ran a chemical dependency treatment center. On many occasions, I would meet a young man or woman whose bad decisions led to the need for treatment at our facility and think "There, but for the grace of God, goes my child." I am thankful that both children have escaped the personal devastation and replacement of dreams with nightmares that results from chemical dependency. My heart goes out to my friends and family, and to parents I have not yet met, who, tragically, are facing struggles with their own children.

My children give me other reasons to be thankful. As a preview to the 2008 Stern Family Holiday letter, I will share that Phil has moved from working with troubled youth in an Americorps program to teaching in a local school district and, consistent with his commitment to the less fortunate, has signed up to participate in the Big Brothers program. Ellie's inner compassion is evidenced by her dedication to continuing her education at the University of Arizona's accelerated R.N. program and the extra effort she makes on behalf of her patients, both in Tucson and previously at the nursing home in Minnesota where she worked after graduating college.

I am incredibly thankful for my wife, Deb. There is universal consensus that I do not deserve her. That's probably true. But until death us do part, I am thankful for her love, support, role modeling, compassion, industriousness and appreciation of a simple lifestyle.

I have the blessings of friends and family, many of which have been discussed in this blog over the past year. I have the the blessings of a career in which I can take pride in assisting others face challenges and pursue opportunities and I am thankful for the many clients and colleagues who continue to support me after my six-year hiatus from the full-time practice of law. I am thankful that I can make subjects happy with whatever skills I bring to a photo session. Their delight with the results encourages me to continue to pursue my artistic avocation. I am thankful for the strokes to my ego when one of my tens of readers comments favorably on my pondering. I am grateful that my blog mentor, Charlie Leck, continued to encourage me to write when I doubted I had anything to say. I am thankful for the relaxation I find when I take the time to write.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Find your own blessings in your life and recognize how they provide a platform from which to address life's challenges. Let the people you care about know that you care. Doing so sends a signal to the recipients that they have something additional to be thankful for.

Sam Thinks He Can . . .Lighten Up

Gongxi facai (gong shee fa tsai)! Or, for my Cantonese-speaking friends, 恭喜发财 (gung hay fat choi)!

I am a sucker for New Year celebrations. I've wanted to spend New Year's Eve in Las Vegas since watching the first Ocean's 11 on television shortly after its release in the early sixties. I love the family traditions of Judaism's Rosh Hashanah in the fall. And, as we enter the Year of the Rat, I am fascinated by the idea that 1.3 billion celebrate their new year on a twelve-year cycle whose elements are used to prophesize health, wealth and marital success (although that might just be the menus).

I was chatting online tonight with my friend Nathaniel Davis, whom regular readers of this blog will remember. He's back in Beijing, where, for the first time, fireworks were allowed as part of the New Year celebration. Although the holiday started on the 7th of February, the fireworks are still being lit. I can only imagine what the Olympics will bring in 6 short months.

This annual focus on Chinese culture inevitably takes me back to my visit to Hong Kong and Macau in October, 2000. Having had the opportunity to experience a small slice of the culture firsthand, and with a number of good friends living among the 1.3 billion, I feel a stronger affinity with the Chinese New Year than towards most other international celebrations. Of course, I regularly relive the experience through my photography.

The photo above was taken on Victoria Peak, overlooking Hong Kong and Kowloon Harbor. It's actually a sandwich of two square images taken on my medium format film camera.Be sure to click on the image to see a larger version. I had dragged two camera systems and a tripod up to the observation area. I was with my law school roommate Robert Cohen and Nathaniel. It was hot, even at dusk. I was looking for my "money shot" for the trip, hence the plethora of equipment. The views were spectacular. Most of the other visitors had ridden the famous tram up the side of the mountain to get there. We had taken a cab to the site. I remember that the sun was setting, I was losing my light, and I couldn't get a decent reading off my light meter to figure out the correct exposure. So, in the tradition of Luke Skywalker, I abandoned my electronic devices and used the "Force". I think that's why I love the shot so much. I was so close not to getting it but did so by relying on myself.

We took the tram down part way to return to the city. We exited at one of the first stops and walked down hill the rest of the way. Because it was HOT, and because I insisted on carrying all of my equipment by myself on the theory that if I personally carried what I brought along, I could sound like a martyr seven years later, we had to stop and rest. Nathaniel brought us to a courtyard in the St. John's Monastery. I was walking around a bit, looking for photo opportunities. Much to my amazement, the second lifetime opportunity of the evening presented itself.

I had spent the week looking for examples of the old juxtaposed against the new. I had expected to find some quaint, centuries old example of Chinese culture set against an icon of the modern Hong Kong. I had not been particularly successful in capturing the image that filled my mind's eye. But during the break on the way down from the Peak, I found myself staring at the modern glass skyscraper of the Bank of China, gleaming at night through the monastery's stone archway leading to the courtyard. I set up my medium format camera, guessed at the exposure, and shot.
I was happy enough with the shot to use give it to one of my hosts during the trip as a gesture of my appreciation. She was apparently thrilled with the gift and reciprocated, unnecessarily, with a set of gold Chinese stamp proofs.

In honor of the Chinese New Year, I'm posting a few additional shots from that trip. I'll resume more serious blogging once the fireworks stop. Again, 恭喜发财 !

Sam Thinks He Can . . . Learn New Software

I have been a Apple guy since 1985 when I bought my first Macintosh computer for $2,500 (1985 dollars). It had a nine inch black and white screen. There was no such thing as an internal hard drive or networking capability. The computer came with MacWrite for word processing (and MacDraw for doodling) and required swapping 3.5 inch floppy discs in and out of the drive slot. One disc would hold the software, the other would hold the data being created. The printer was a dot matrix thing of beauty, not, and I have a hard time believing that its output was accepted as professional work product in my law practice.

I have purchased a significant number of Macs since the first one, both for home and for business. Ironically, it seems that each enhanced version acquired configured for my needs also cost $2,500 in current dollars, effectively dropping the price dramatically by the time I purchased my current MacBook Pro with its 15" screen, 90 gigabyte hard drive, Super Drive for viewing and burning DVDs and CDs, built-in wireless capability, built-in camera and multiple networking capabilities.

I am self-taught on Apple/Mac products and have been one of the fabled loyalists since the first purchase 23 years ago. One of the attractions has been the intuitive nature of using Apple products and the ability to apply previously learned lessons to the newer iterations of hardware and software. Many of you reading this will recall our frantic conversations with me as your technical assistant, working through some issue or another that, on a PC, would have turned your computer into an expensive paperweight if left to me to resolve. Because of the institutional history engineered into Apple products, a lesson learned on one product remained useful years later on a more modern product. Various software designed for the Mac generally operates similarly regardless of the task at hand. Keyboard commands tend to do the same thing whether you're writing a letter or editing a photo. With only a little bit of effort, Macs make the concept of "user friendly" a reality.

Enough accolades. I thought my streak had ended when I purchased the latest version of iLife, a suite of software used for editing photos, making movies and burning DVDs. I had read rave reviews about how much easier it was to work with than the last version. I needed to put together a slide show with more than 1,000 photos for the year-end Central States Dressage and Eventing Association (CSDEA) awards banquet and figured the time I would save using iMovie '08 and iDVD '08 made upgrading worthwhile. I was horrified as I started working on the slide show and discovered that Apple's traditional ways of compiling a media presentation had, in many important respects, been abandoned. I managed to cobble together the slide show, but it took forever and, had I not promised delivery, I probably would not have bothered.

Last night, at about 11 p.m., I returned from the CSDEA banquet where I had served as event photographer. I needed to organize a number of images of award winners and some portraits I had taken of friends. It was late and I was exhausted but I was drawn back to iLife '08. It didn't make sense that Apple had come out with difficult-to-use software and I was determined to give it another try. This time, I thought about what I was doing instead of rushing into a project assuming the new software would work exactly like the old software. The more cautious approach worked. The product is a significant improvement; it just requires tweaking the old process to assure getting the right result. I'm still not at 100%. But I decided that the lesson here is that if the old dog is willing to at least take a look at a new trick, there's no need to be left behind in the dust of technological enhancement.

Here's the result of about a half hour of work (net of cropping the images) once I got the hang of iMovie '08:

Sam Thinks He Can . . . Take Decent Snapshots

I photographed this $500,000+ Mercedes at the 2006 Little Everglades Ranch Steeplechase. It was my first year as the event photographer and I was shooting like crazy to capture the ambience of the event.




Bob and Sharon Blanchard make their gorgeous property outside Dade City, Florida available for a charity event that is reminiscent of the Kentucky Derby. Horses, hats and high society abound. The infield is filled with spectators and events like Jack Russell Terrier races, dog agility demonstrations and creative hat competitions.

Earlier this week I received a call from Kevin Campbell, friend and client who has been promoting the event for the Blanchards for the past several years. Kevin told me that a national magazine is doing a story on the LER Steeplechase and he wanted to use the photo above in the story. Mercedes is a very generous sponsor of the event and Kevin, ALWAYS the promoter, wanted to make sure that they received appropriate publicity.

The funny thing is, while I like the shot, capturing both the enormous metal sculpture of a horse that is the centerpiece of the entrance to the grounds and the Mercedes dream car, it was pretty much a snapshot. I was walking back to the administration trailer to back up a compact flash card and looked up to see the juxtaposition of the two objects. Of course, I took several versions of the "snapshot" from different angles and with slightly different backgrounds. But the bottom line is that it was just a fortuitous moment of recognition that something might be there.

Now, hopefully, this is the snap that gets me published nationally. I'll identify the magazine once it's published. I've posted a couple more shots from the same event below. If you're going to be near Tampa on March 9, 2008, come to the event. It's for a good cause and it is a lot of fun. Visit their website at http://littleevergladessteeplechase.org.

Here's a few more photographs from the 2006 event. Click on them to see a larger version.

Sam Thinks He Can . . . Befriend (Graphics)

These are samples from my "Friends (snapshots)" album on my computer described in the "Sam Thinks He Can . . . Befriend" blog appearing below.





















Read the blog and see if you can tell which friend(s) match (a.) in-house counsel for the Minnesota Secretary of State, (b.) carnival owner, (c.) enthusiastic health club attendee, (d.) gourmet sausage maker,
(e.) Lallapalooza merchandise purveyor, (f.) eminent domain commissioner, (g.) waitresses at "The Best Bar in America", (h.) "little brother" born 3 hours after me and stuck with me for 52 of 55 years, (i.) Japanese steakhouse developer, (j.) Minneapolis mob boss family member. Leave me comments on the blog with your guesses and I'll let you know how you did.

Sam Thinks He Can . . . Act Traditionally

Tradition is important. The concept of doing something just because that is how it has been done in the past can prove dangerous without an understanding of the importance of tradition. In carrying out traditions, we repeat previous actions, either personally undertaken or carried out by our predecessors, because the actions have meaning to us. They signify something more than blind repetitiveness. They are guides to suggest appropriate behavior. Accordingly, traditions make us think about our behavior and drive us to act in a manner that will maintain the tradition meaningfully for those who follow us.

The image of a Tommy's "Heavy Chili, Heavy Pickles Double Cheeseburger" shown above clearly illustrates my point. I ate that cheeseburger. In 1974. In Los Angeles. But before I ate it, I photographed it with a brand new 105mm Micro Nikkor macro lens. In so doing, I started a tradition.

For the past 23 years, whenever I get a new lens, I think carefully about the first image I will capture with the glass. I was so pleased with the photograph of the cheeseburger that I made it a lifelong commitment to choose each new lens' first image carefully. Guided by this commitment, I always hope that the success achieved in 1974 can be repeated. It has become a tradition, signifying my devotion to my avocation and sealing the relationship between me and new equipment.

At this point, it would feel disrespectful to use a new lens to "snap" an image without regard to the weight of 33 years of tradition. I like to think that my tradition makes me a better photographer. It forces me to think about what I am doing with my new equipment and how I can use it to achieve the high standard set years ago.

Sam Thinks He Can. . . Write A Blog

All systems go. Welcome to Sam Thinks He Can . . .'s first blog. As time goes on, you may come to believe that these missives are prime examples of why technology is too readily available. Hopefully, I'll have something to say that is worth reading. At least I think I can.

As a fall back, I'll post favorite photos to share. After pursuing my hobby for more than 40 years, there's a few worth viewing. Friends, family and cyberspacers who come to enjoy the photographs will learn something about me that, often, not even the proverbial 1,000 words can express.

To start off, here's a photograph of my neighborhood. I am one lucky blogger.
[I'm leaving this blank as a sign that maybe technology is NOT too readily available. The upload didn't work. Blogger.com is working on the problem. More later.]

Please feel free to comment on my writing and (hopefully) my photography. Thank you for your time.

Sam Thinks He Can . . . Post a Photo

This is the image that was supposed to be uploaded to my first blog. This is my neighborhood.