Those of you who’ve been following this blog know that I spent the past week photographing first in Ohio and then in southern California. I finally got home yesterday – and my flight was only 16 and ½ hours late! Here’s the deal:

I had a hell of a time getting home Sunday. In fact, as I said, I never did get home! Things started promisingly Sunday morning as I drove my rental car back to the airport, LAX. The infamously legendary Los Angeles traffic jams were nowhere to be seen. I even had a celebrity encounter: on the rent-a-car shuttle bus, I met and got to speak with Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Gold Medal winner for men’s figure skating at the Winter Olympics and currently a TV commentator for figure skating. I actually recognized him by his voice from TV and he was quite personable, talking with me and the two others on the bus about figure skating, air travel and where he now lives.

Anyway, back to my tale. My flight left LAX on time bound for Dallas-Fort Worth. That’s when the trouble began. I had to change planes in Dallas, but bad weather there closed the airport and forced us to land in Oklahoma City to refuel. We sat there for three hours on the tarmac (see first photo) without A/C on a hot day, and when we finally did get to Dallas, my flight to New York had already left. So, I had to go and stand on the line to rebook at the ticket counter - for one hour and 55 minutes! (Yes, that’s right – for 115 minutes.) I was then booked on a flight to LaGuardia airport that night (even though my bags were going to JFK airport), but I had waited on line for so long that when I got to the gate I found out that I had missed that flight, too – even though the agent at the ticket counter said I had plenty of time!

At this point I was really starting to boil, but I tried to keep cool as much as I could with no alternative but to stay in Dallas overnight. The question was: where??? It was a choice of sleeping on a cot in the airport or springing for a hotel room on my own dime. (The airlines say that they’re not responsible for weather related delays.) So, with all of my camera and film stuff to look after, I chose a hotel. What a way to spend my first night in the state of Texas!

The hotel was actually very nice and the room rather luxurious (second photo), and as a stranded passenger I got a discount rate. (Too bad I didn’t have a model with me to photograph.) One of the staff at the desk even allowed me to make a free long distance call to my mom as my cell phone battery was totally depleted, and I got a further $20 reduction for not receiving my requested wake-up call. The folks in Texas were being pretty nice to me.

The next morning (yesterday) I made it back to the airport. Breakfast was a couple of Egg McMuffins (minus the meat) at the McDonald’s, which seems to have it’s own Tex-Mex cuisine as the photo shows. (Of course, there was a Texas shop, too.) Things actually took a turn for the better before eating breakfast. I had been booked on another LaGuardia flight but when I got to the airport I saw that a flight for JFK would be leaving just ten minutes earlier. Amazingly, I went over to that flight’s gate and was able to switch from the LaGuardia flight to the JFK flight - so I did get my luggage, after all!

The flight to New York was thankfully uneventful and home I returned after what I have to say was probably the worst day of air travel that I have ever experienced.

I'm writing now from the home of my good friend Dave Levingston in Ohio. I arrived here by plane last night and naturally, the flight was late. The departure time was pushed back by about 45 minutes from the original time, and once we left the gate, we had to wait in line on the tarmac for about an hour before we finally took off. (They let us use electronic devices during the wait so I listened to Frank Sinatra on my new MP3 player and new noise-cancelling headphones.) At least we made it eventually.

Well, today’s Monday for a little more than an hour, and since I missed making my regular Sunday blog posting yesterday, I figure that I ought to get it done now before today becomes tomorrow.

I spent yesterday doing…. well, what did I do? Oh, yeah. I was copying music to load into an MP3 player that I bought recently, and I was starting to use the new Canon compact digital camera that I bought Friday to replace my little Pentax. One of the reasons I got the Canon is that Canon seems to be one of the few manufacturers who still make their compacts with an optical viewfinder, a feature which I think is very important to have. Anyway, I’m planning to do some photo making during the upcoming months and I want to get some decent digital photos along with the film stuff, especially as I still don’t know when I’ll be able to develop film again.

Today was a hot day here in New York, so here are some photos of Rhowena during somewhat cooler days back in the winter of 2003. She wasn’t outside for the first one, though, but was standing inside next to a large window (more easily seen in the next image). As I’ve written here before, too bad that she retired from modeling.

Well, today is the fourth day of the month of July, meaning that it’s Independence Day here in the United States. (Yes, that’s the name of the holiday. The fourth of July is just the date. I wonder how many Americans actually know what this day commemorates – and how often have you heard Christmas referred to as the “25th of December”?)

So, in keeping with the spirit of the day, here’s a photo I took seven years ago. It was July 4, 2000, and two examples of the Stars and Stripes were hanging proudly from the balconies of this building that I passed. If you think the photo may have been made in the French Quarter of New Orleans by the look of the building, you’d be wrong – but you’d be close. I made this photo in the beautiful town of Aix-en-Provence in the south of France.

I think the ground floor held a book store – perhaps an English language book store as I recall – but I remember thinking how great I felt to be away from home on Independence Day and still able to see somebody putting out Old Glory for all to see. I guess it’s appropriate to post a photo of the American flag in France, as the French did help us to win the war against the British (the army museum in Paris has a section devoted to Lafayette and the Revolutionary War) and they did give us the Statue of Liberty.

Of course, a lot of people here in the U.S. view France very negatively due to its political positions in recent years. Well, I don’t necessarily agree with those positions, either. Some Americans say that we should boycott visiting France, but the fact is that if I chose to boycott every country whose government I disagree with, I would be unable to visit (or even live in) these very United States!

This blog is meant to be about my photography. I’ve tried to keep my political views out of it, but as Independence Day is very much a political holiday (the Declaration of Independence being about as political as a document can be), I’ll go ahead this time.

As I said, I didn’t agree with the views of the French government regarding Iraq, but they did what they did out of their own political interests just as the Bush administration did what it did out of its own interests. Unfortunately, those interests were not the best interests of the American people but rather those of the Bush administration and its cronies – and it has only continued.

The current U.S. regime has got to be one of the most corrupt, self-serving and morally bankrupt (not to mention inept and incompetent!) in American political history. Let’s see - Paris Hilton went to jail for driving with a suspended license (or some such thing), but Scooter Libby lies to a federal investigation to cover up the dirty deeds of the Bush administration and he goes free. Yes, drunk driving is a serious offense that can cause death and injury and it should be punished accordingly – but Libby lied to cover up the deceptive practices of this administration that have lead to the death of thousands. Letting him go is outrageous. I say, “Let him rot.”

And then there's Dick Cheney, who's trying to avoid accountability to the American people by claiming that the vice president is not part of the executive branch of government. Unbelievable! (Well, it should be unbelievable, but with this administration such nonsense is unfortunately all too believable.)

I’d like to think that the founding fathers of this country did what they did in the hope of bringing justice to this land of ours, but of course the Bush administration is not interested in justice or doing what’s right for all Americans. As long as they please their backers in the political and religious right, everything’s just fine as far as they're concerned.

The photo above shows a couple of American flags. That flag is a powerful symbol – but it is still just a symbol. Some people think that being patriotic means waving that flag and giving unconditional support to the president. To me, patriotism means more than waving a flag and blindly following whatever moron happens to be living in the White House. Patriotism is about supporting those things that make the United States of America a special place to live – things like justice, government accountability, freedom of expression and freedom to dissent without persecution. Unfortunately, these are things that the Bush administration has shown that it’s not interested in supporting, so the next presidential election can’t come soon enough for me.

In the meantime, enjoys your barbecues or whatever holiday meals you may be having today.

And remember to pass the Freedom fries.