Thursday, June 03, 2021

The betrayal.

 

Sometimes as an adult you learn things about your family that you never knew.

My mom was visiting and we decided to try to find "the house on Liberty Street" --  the house my great-grandfather built from a Sears kit after the flood of Vanport, where my grandmother was raised. My grandmother had taken me by there just a few weeks before she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. I had tried to re-find it a number of times over the years, but never could find it.

So, I drove us out to Northeast Portland to find Liberty St. When we got to Northeast, I knew vaguely where it was but told my mom to look it up in Maps. She opened maps and said aloud "Ok, North Liberty Street" as she typed. 

"Wait... did you say North? I thought it was in Northeast?"  

"Me and Aunt Karen were always told it was in North Portland."

"Oh well no wonder I couldn't find it again! I was looking in Northeast Portland!"

Liberty Street is a very fractioned street -- it is present in multiple places along a 3 mile stretch, but does not exist for long stretches and each stretch is just a block or two long before dead-ending.  So, we decided to just go to the first "North Liberty St" section that Maps took us too, and then figure out how to check the next section from that point.

It turned out that grandma must have been guiding us because as soon as we drove down the street I recognized it... the blue kit house with white trim. We pulled over and snapped some photos, and I googled what Sears kit houses looked like to see if I could find the model. It was an adaptation of the "Franklin" model.

All of those years I kept trying to find it and I was looking in the wrong part of town!

The next day, walking home from brunch, we were talking about my great grandpa. I remembered his little green house in St. Johns with the train set in the basement and the chartreuse ceramic cantering horse statuettes that used to decorate the 1950's style room divider shelves. I remember staring at them while my mom brushed my hair... I digress. 

"What happened to that house? It would be worth so much money now," I said.

"Well Jim stole it all when your grandma passed away. There was a ledger.  Your grandmother was a wealthy woman and had multiple streams of income coming from many houses that your great grandfather fixed up and sold. Your great grandfather carried the contracts." 

"What?!" Shock. I thought we were generationally poor. I thought Jim was from a wealthy family since he owned the cattle ranch. I didn't know my grandmother owned anything outside of the marriage.

"She told everyone she wanted Jim to divvy it all up fairly between us kids. He decided to keep it all. Including our family rings and your great great grandmothers wedding ring that was supposed to go to Aunt Karen. He did the same thing to his first wife Vera."

I knew that he was supposed to pass out the rings. And I knew that when I signed up for a photography class and asked him if I could have my grandmothers camera (she was an avid photographer), he told me his new wife (he re-married 2 months after my grandmother passed) said no, because it might be worth something. But I didn't know that he stole our family's generational wealth from us by completely disregarding my grandmother's last wishes as she was dying, very suddenly, from long undiagnosed pancreatic cancer.

Now it all makes sense. Why he suddenly didn't want us over for holidays. Why he said no to giving me my grandmother's camera. Why he stopped returning phone calls. It was because he completely and utterly, shamefully, disregarded my grandmothers dying wishes and instead, kept it all for himself. He died a couple of years later. No one in our family went to his funeral. Despite having already purchased a double plot and headstone, he did not get buried next to my grandmother. His date of death was never added to the tombstone. We don't bring him flowers or think of him fondly. We simply remember the betrayal. We thought we were family for life, but he decided, 2 years before his death and 2 months after my grandmothers death, that wealth was more important than family; that families are easily replaced -- simply marry a new woman. 

And I wonder how our family would be right now if, instead of going down a path of poverty, we had had access to the wealth that should have been ours. Would I be drowning in student debt? Would my mom and aunts live in trailers? Would health issues have been taken care of in a timely fashion? What choices would my cousins have made differently? College instead of drugs or immediate child-bearing? Home buying instead of perpetual rent? Wealth building instead of giving it all away every month?

Sunday, March 07, 2021

I'm back! and I've come a long ways.


 Hi! It is interesting looking back on the years. I have become a professional photographer but I must admit that I am no longer enamored with photography. In fact, I dread picking up my camera. Im not sure what it is actually, just this sense that I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing... that I am not on my path. Maybe it was my path but I was supposed to get off of it a while back, only I didn't know how, so just kept moving, or attempting to move, forward. I don't know, maybe it was the 16 hour days that killed it, or maybe it was that every time I tried to move forward I was told my images weren't good enough, didn't have that "je ne sais quoi." Hearing that multiple times from agencies starts to make you wonder why you are shooting for other people if no matter how many hours you spend studying and practicing technique it doesn't seem to move your career forward. How does anyone ever get a hand up to push their career forward? I don't know. All I know is that the doors seemed closed more often than opened, no matter how long and how hard I knocked. 

And then of course, the long hours of marketing and lukewarm response. The posting to social only to get a paltry number of likes after spending 8 hours pouring my soul into creating an image. The hours of creating and doing presentations and zero new clients. Okay, so people don't like my work. Fine. I will just do it for myself and only me.

I feel so wistful looking through my blogger and tumblr. Those times I was posting to both were times where I loved taking photos and was excited for my career. I look at those images and it is obvious to me and I don't understand how so few others saw it, saw what I see in them. 

So, I am looking for a job. Something that will allow me to take a break from making money off of my photos, and hopefully give me the time and space to take a step back and forge a new relationship with photography, eventually.  I want to use the skills I have gained meanwhile, or the skills I gained in college. Something in sustainability would be nice, but I'd love to work for a state agency. I always wanted to work at the DEQ after my internship there. They weren't hiring "for the foreseeable future" due to the great recession, so I became a photographer instead.

I'm proud of how much my eye developed over the years. I am proud that I can look at a pinterest board, get an idea of what the client wants lighting wise, and then deliver that. I learned natural and studio lighting, architectural lighting, portrait lighting, composition, etc. and so much more, but somehow I lost my ability to have fun with it. Still, I am proud that I was able to teach myself so much just from watching YouTube videos and CreativeLive, and reading forums and books.  I never really made enough to do any high end workshops... or to buy a house... or to become financially free. And since those were all some of my goals in life, it's probably just time to move on.

This sounds sad, but it really isn't. The only sad part to me is that I no longer love photography. But I want to love it again, and so... I must leave it for a bit. I am looking forward to it. There is so much more to life than being self-employed and spending all of your time looking for work or working. I'm excited for the future fun, less stress and a new relationship with photography coming my way, and excited for whatever job I take and my new colleagues!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Welcome...

Welcome to my old blog. I haven't updated it in years, and likely won't be back. If you're interested in what I'm up to these days, check out my tumblr at www.mayflyaway.com. Say hello if you do!