I give a skeptical look at Santa Claus in Fall River, Ma. I was born 14 months earlier at the U.S. Naval base on Goat Island, Newport, R. I.
Happy enough in the housing projects of Hartford Connecticut in 1954. Note the natural gas tank in the background. The poor always live with such niceties. My first dog, Kimie, is back on the grass, chewing something unpleasant.
Rice Heights Housing Project- mercifully now a muddy field.
My brothers and sister. The gas tank remains in my life. Starting with giant me on the left, then there is David, Paul, James and Linda. Looks like Easter, 1966. Behind us I-84 is being built, having destroyed the wetlands I played in along the Hog River.
My first telescope- a Criterion 4" Dynascope. I saved my school lunch money to reach the $49.95 price in 1965- I still have the telescope!
My High School, Hartford Public High School, founded in 1638, making it the second oldest high school in the United States after Boston Latin. You can see the dome of the 10" Alvin Clark Refractor. HPHS had just moved into a new building so I had the benefits of new science labs including a planetarium.
In one of my high school activities, I am pictured here, in the nearest seat, as the President of the Astronomy Club. The woman in white to my left became my first wife in 1972- a sweet and sour marriage. The photo was taken in the planetarium which used the same projector as the Bassett Planetarium- a Spitz A3. Why is everyone so glum? It could be the weight of the world on our shoulders in 1969.
A photograph of sunspots that I took in 1968 through the 10 inch Alvan Clark Refractor.
In 1971, I started working as a nature counselor at Camp Timberlake of Farm and Wilderness Camps. I was junior counselor in the Trappers cabin. I spent the next three summers at F&W. No, I am not the guy with the beard, but the skinny one third from left, am apparent victim of hyperthyroidism.
I show Duncan, the Great Horned Owl I raised in my first job after college as Curator of Natural History at the Children's Museum of Hartford. This is at Camp Courant in the summer of 1976.
This Bobcat was brought into the Children's Museum after being hit on Farmington Avenue in West Hartford, CT. I have a penchant for seersucker shirts. That is probably my last analog watch.
Here I calm down a Tawny Eagle from Africa. Looks like I am wearing the same shirt!
In 1976 I took the position as Curator of the Pember Museum of Natural History in Granville, NY, an eclectic collection consisting mostly of mounted birds, mammals and eggs.
Here I am with one of the many Passenger Pigeons in the collection.
Here I pose for an article for Adirondack Life with a mounted Grizzly Bear. At the end of this photo story look for my 15 year old son Orion with the same bear- 30 years later!
Sally Waisbrot and I decide to get married and come to graduate school at UMass, she in Computer Science and I in Education. We leave our jobs and start lives as poor grad students living on Hobart Lane- long before the days of the Hoedown! It is 1979.
Three years later everything has changed! We have two children, Nate and Rachel. We buy our first house. I quit grad school finding it meaningless compared to raising children. Sally stops after a Masters in CS and starts work programming computer games for Milton Bradley. I become the homemaker, shown here having spent hours making wooden bead necklaces.
After being featured in the newspapers in Hartford, Ct and Granville, NY because of my photogenic associations with kids and museum animals, I am surprised to find myself in an Amherst Bulletin article on Dads for father's day. 1985.
It is March 22, 1986 and Halley's Comet has returned. We wake Nate and Rachel up at 4 A.M. with a temperature of 10°F for the walk up Mt. Pollux. They are exhausted but too dazed to resist this mug shot.
Halley's Comet above the Holyoke Range to the Southeast. Not terribly impressive, but Sagittarius and the Milky Way are nice.
Later that year we buy 12 acres in Ashfield and build our own house. We did much of the work- the cedar shingles, the deck, the greenhouse, the screen porch, interior woodwork, finish electric, plumbing. The house is dead center on the 12 acres, along the banks of the Swift River. We do not see neighbors and they cannot see us.
Here I am setting the stringers for the second story deck. Not a gray hair in 1987! The boxes for the greenhouse are in the yard by the thermometer.
Our land is home to the best of Massachusetts wildlife- Black Bear, Otter, Fisher- all come regularly to our yard. This is at the top of the driveway after following this bruin in my car.
Everything about the house and land in Ashfield is wonderful.
One of my great joys is a family road trip. Think Chevy Chase. Here I am unpacking the Taurus station wagon after a 1993 cross-country camping trip of 8,000 miles in 30 days. Note the National Park stickers on the cargo carrier, aka "the giant clam".
My favorite National Park- Arches in Moab, Utah. The clarity of the air, the heat, and the views are enough to cause ecstasy and hallucinations.
Now in Bryce Canyon, Sally cannot stop laughing at my naturalist's gear. Here I am loaded down with 3 cameras, 1 8X50 binoculars, water bottle, hat, sunglasses, compass, belly pack, and backpack. It is 110° F.
Another favorite vacation spot is Popham Beach, Maine. It is on the coast east of Bath. Gray hair catches up with me.
Another wonderful family trip to the battlefields of the Civil War. High above Harper's Ferry I sit on Jefferson Rock. Thomas Jefferson sat in the same spot before it was stabilized with those lovely triassic sandstone columns.
Since working at the Pratt Museum of Natural History I have added neoichnology to my photographic interests. That is the study of modern traces. Edward Hitchcock was the founder of paleoichnology. Here are some crow tracks in fine mud showing toe pads, claws, scale impressions and the bird's tarsus.