again, i am friends with nonhuman!

you are not actually “of Winnetka” until you have lived within its borders, preferably on the east side of the railroad tracks, for a generation or more.  my mere twenty years here is just that–mere.

i was pregnant with my second son eastman (f2fb #1) and i shepherded my firstborn joseph (f2fb #61) around a town of tudor architecture and new england sensibilities. in the window of the photography store was a display of pictures of their shopping bag on its travels.  you see, the shopping bag went to paris, went to london, stopped along the chinese wall, climbed killimanjaro, and sent back pictures.  winnetka residents announcing their summer vacations with a bit of panache.

one man even put together a book. .

the store thrives, despite the changes in what it means to take pictures.  i do everything with my cell phone and a flip camera.  the flip has gone from cutting to obsolescence in the space of a year.  still, the skalski family which owns phototronics works with every technology, holding the hand of every winnetkan who says “i don’t know how to make this picture come out of my camera and land in my email account”  peter skalski gave me a bunch of phototronic shopping bags to pose along my travels. . . .

i am facebook friends with phototronics (f2fb #152), one of several non-human friends.  i did not ask phototronics out for lunch yesterday, but i did take f2fb #12 andrew pearce because he wanted to look at a particular camera.  andrew is from bloomington, indiana and drove up so that he could plot out with me the second half of this facebook journey. . . .that was an entire anxiety attack all on its own!

i have a trip out to the northwest, two more trips to the northeast and again to california (where i hope to meet with brian brethauer because brian sure lives the furthest away from anybody i know).  i have the southern states–samuel scruggs, jonathan boyd, dale morgan–whom i missed because of the disaster in tallahassee.  and i have alaska and the rest of the world (except for mexico city which is well in pocket).

i am humbled to be fifty years old and have all the help i have been given. . . but then there’s f2fb #153 who reminds me that we are all just teenagers inside!