It was extremely strange being without elder daughter for an entire week. After our weekend in Washington, we dropped her off with some kind of maroon-shirted cult of smiling "leaders" we met at the airport, who then proceeded to run her and a couple hundred other young students all over creation -- down to Jamestown, up to Gettysburg, and I'm surprised they didn't make them bushwack the Cumberland Gap. I knew from the start this would be less about anything she might learn than about meeting people from all over the country, seeing things she hadn't seen before, and getting a chance to invent herself. And I swear she came back different. She also came back exhausted -- slept nearly all day Sunday, had to be dragged from bed yesterday, took another nap in the afternoon, dragged her way through dance and then hit the bed again. This morning she was able to get up on her own, which is her normal mode, so perhaps the zombie is fading.
Putting most of my creative efforts into photos these days, not so much the writing (as if you hadn't noticed.) Not long ago, I spent a morning shooting in downtown Schenectady, a place that may actually be springing back a little bit after decades of non-stop plummet. But I screwed up a setting mid-way through and ruined many of the photos I most wanted, so I went back on Sunday, and I'm here to tell you that downtown on a Sunday is when the crazies and the derelicts really run loose (which is saying something). Got my shots and got out of there. A number of those already done are posted here, and I'll have more later in the week.
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