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This is a highly cropped-in shot of fallen fall foliage, in front of the last church we visited.
Tomorrow we move on to the next series, which was captured on the island of Maui. Having been to Alaska, England and Hawaii in a year's time (and, my wife and I just decided, Taiwan this coming May, which would make four trips within a calendar year), the blog these days has turned into a travel-intensive endeavor. Not necessarily a bad thing, but lends to more of the iconic landscapes, etc., of which there are already quite literally a million pictures, and which I generally avoid. Nevertheless, looking forward to sharing the blogworthy pics from "The Valley Isle"...
A closer-in shot of the sanctuary front, with quaint scene on the left and probably one of the funniest-looking pulpits I've ever seen on the right.
And this'll do it for Organ Day in Fort Worth; the next post will be from one of the church lawns and will serve as a bumper post between this and the Maui series. I'd like to publicly (as "publicly" as this blog gets) thank Jordan Yerkes for sharing this part of his life and work with us, and for spending an entire day to make my brother Mike's 50th birthday gift a time to remember. Thanks again, buddy...lots of love to you and the entire clan.
Looks like quite a different scene, featuring a pretty good reflection from the floor, a quaint scene in the background (though why it's there I wouldn't know), and all-natural light beaming in at an angle. This checks all the boxes...
It sure was nice being in all those churches while they were totally empty; being Saturday, they were very clean, allowing for reflection shots off the floor as in this one. This is the St. Stephen Presbyterian Church; the organ can be seen at center in the back balcony. Very different from the first organ we visited, which was literally up front and right in the center of the stage where the altar was, in a position to gain more attention than anything else going on during the service.
While we were up there looking around, the Sunday morning organist came in to practice for service the next day. While all that was going on I swung the Bigger Cahoona out over the sanctuary to capture a play on light, and got an all-time favorite from this day's activities (to be posted tomorrow).
This will be the last "coincidence" in this series.
Being married to the Chinese culture, I tag along whenever the wife wants to go to Chinatown (Bellaire area here in Houston) to do some grocery shopping. At the right time of year this can be an interesting experience, as they celebrate the Chinese New Year by setting off firecrackers in front of stores as a way to ensure prosperity. There's also the dancing dragons with the drumbeating, etc. Makes shopping for groceries a little less of a chore, though the crowds are much larger.
Years ago when we went shopping during the New Year at one of those grocery stores the crowds were thick with people both outside watching the spectacle and inside to shop. While the wife shopped I'd stayed behind to watch some of what was going on when a girl of about four bumped into my legs. I said "Excuse me" in Chinese. The girl looked up at me, let out a little gasp, and ran off. I didn't think much of it.
Well, unbeknownst to me the girl ran straight to her mother and told her that there was a white guy over there that could speak Chinese! (and unbeknownst to her, it was one of only very few phrases that I knew at the time) She took her mom by the hand and dragged her over to where I'd gone, by which time I'd caught up with Chenjean and her sister.
Instead of looking at me, her mom took one look at Chenjean and let out a squeal. Turns out they were classmates in Taiwan! Very interesting turn of events...they caught up and talked for about 20 minutes before everyone went their way.
The rest of the posts in this series feature just a few snapshots that I thought might be better than average...
Today is my son's birthday. Happy birthday Andrew!!
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This "coincidence" takes place in Wilmington, Delaware. I had joined the church of Christ the previous summer, and while visiting family up north was looking for a congregation for Sunday morning worship. The first one I found was a small African-American church near downtown. It was a service I won't forget because there was a baptism that day, and since there was no baptistry in their little building we all got into our cars - every one of us - and drove in sleet and rain to one of the larger congregations in a suburb of the city.
After being let in, there were about 25 of us waiting for the baptism when someone got the idea that we needed to sing a song. Then the idea hit that I would be the best person to do the song leading! I'd never done anything of the sort, but nervously got up and had them turn to "How Great Thou Art", figuring that I had a smaller chance of blowing it with one that I knew well from childhood. This was my very first song-leading experience, but certainly wouldn't be the last, as I later became the regular song leader for the East Main Church of Christ in Nacogdoches, on and off, for four years.
The following Sunday I decided to attend service at that larger church where the baptism had taken place, since it was closer to Dad's house and less of a hassle to drive there (it had been snowing with icy conditions). I arrived just before service and it was crowded so took a seat in the very last pew.
After the last song was sung and we were dismissed, a girl my age sitting with her family in the pew in front of me stood up, turned around, looked me in the eye and asked, "Are you from Orange, Texas?" After my Yes she revealed herself to be none other than Pam Mansell, a 7th-grade classmate whose father, like mine, had also transferred to Wilmington with DuPont some years before. Not that much of a surprise, though, since between Orange and Wilmington the DuPont world isn't so big...
I'd be sure there's a story behind why a wooden hand was carved into this ornamental piece, and why it is pointed downward. Everything about these things must have some sort of symbolism and meaning in the church's history.
Today is my daughter's birthday. Happy birthday Allison!!
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This, the third in a series on coincidences, happened during college at SFA in Nacogdoches. I lived in Dorm 16 for several semesters, and during the fall of my sophomore year ate my meals at the circular East College Cafeteria that was between us and Dorm 14, often with a friend named Robert. Kidding around I used to call him "Bo-Bart".
That winter break I went to visit Dad and family in Wilmington, Delaware, and while there made a little side trip by myself for a few days to Washington to take in the sights. While roaming around I spotted the White House and decided to take a tour. This was in 1978 or 1979, when it was basically just a matter of walking through the door if you didn't mind waiting in line.
After having toured the East Room, the line wound around and ended up going through the walkway adjacent to the Rose Garden. As we moved along I noticed someone that was familiar-looking behind me. I took a closer look and, standing right behind me, there was Robert! I said, "Bo-Bart, what are you doing here!?" He originally had been further back, and after moving ahead in line hadn't noticed that his lunch companion of the previous semester was right in front of him! As it turns out, at SFA he was in the ROTC program and was in Washington doing something related to that. The following semester we got a kick out of mentioning in front of our friends about "the time we met at the White House"...
While Mike and Jordan were doing their thing I was left to wander about with my companion, the Bigger Cahoona. We had a good time capturing shapes, patterns, and interesting plays on light. All hand-held, of course, and in the darker interiors it was a challenge...lots of bracketing and retakes.
This was a shape that caught my eye, one of those times that I knew immediately how it was to be cropped in post-capture.
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Many would say that the story in yesterday's post is an example of coincidence. But I've come to differ, having concluded that there is a purpose and plan in every interaction we have with others. Some come about to give us joy, others a challenge or test. All part of a Plan to teach us during our short stay here.
But it is interesting when these things happen. Yesterday's post was about an organist I'd known as a teenager in Beaumont, then again several decades later in Houston when we ended up in cubicles next to each other. This next "coincidence" happened in the very same building.
As a youngster I attended the Trinity Lutheran Church in Orange on 16th Street, about a block from where we lived at 1512 Chapman. (I learned recently that the place is now a Baptist church)
Once in a while at this church we would have guest musicians. One of the guys that occasionally would come and play the trumpet during service was named Alan, a teenager that was a peer of my older brothers. I remember this guy standing in front of the congregation doing his thing on the trumpet. He was known as being especially gifted in music.
Well here we go. Alan grew up to become a dentist, and established his practice guess where...in the very building where I worked, in Houston! And it was none other than David the organist that let him know of space available in our building and brought him there! So here I was in a cubicle next to David the organist from Beaumont with Alan the trumpet player from Orange doing his dentistry six floors above where I was working in Houston.
This guy is the biggest organ that Garland built and installed. After playing on the manuals and pretending to be real organ players we spent time crawling up into the guts of the thing to see how it was all put together. Really an amazing sight...very intricate and modern, with lots of computers and electronics behind the scenes. And huge. One ladder went up a full forty feet, the height of some of the wooden pipes producing the lowest frequencies.
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I cannot be in a place like this without thinking about something that happened more than 40 years ago, when I was a teenager. My family in Beaumont attended the Trinity United Methodist Church on Harrison Street, near the Longfellow Apartments where we lived. In the fall of 1976 the church decided to broadcast the Sunday morning service on KFDM, Channel 6. They installed a microwave unit in the belfry to throw the signal over to the station a mile or so away, converted a closet to house the switcher, and positioned three broadcast cameras in the sanctuary: camera 1 was in the back balcony that could capture what was going on in the front of the sanctuary; camera 2 was in another balcony above and behind the pulpit, smack dab in the middle of the organ pipes and directly across from the balcony where the organ and choir were; and camera 3 was a remote (not manned by a camera guy) off to the side for another view of the pulpit.
Having had broadcast experience in radio, I was encouraged to be a part of this effort, and was very fortunate to get camera 2 as my assignment. During the service it was my job to capture what went on below when the acolytes did their thing, when communion was being served, etc., and also to capture the organist at the right time, panning across the choir while they sang. Always loved organ music, and to be in the middle of all those pipes while everything was going on was awesome. And I liked the organist's style - deliberate, determined, and not shy about cranking up the volume when it was time. His name was David, a gentleman in his late 30's or early 40's at the time, I would guess.
But that's not the story. In 2002 I got a job with an agency in Greenway Plaza here in Houston, and was assigned a cubicle on the fourth floor of the building where we worked. Imagine my surprise when that same David, the organist from Beaumont, was stationed in the cubicle next to mine! We'd both gone through life and changes in circumstance and careers, and here we were in a different city - Houston no less - next door to each other. David had retired after 41 years playing the organ and moved on to other endeavors, eventually landing at the same agency where I'd found a job that spring.
See pic below of yours truly, age 18:
Small world, many would say...
The remainder of the pics in this series will be of church interiors that I went off and shot while Mike and Jordan did their organ thing. We visited three and I don't remember which ones, so won't attempt to name them; suffice it to say they were in the Fort Worth/Dallas Metroplex area.
Different angle of these windows below:
