All I Need!

  My first gig after moving to Mandan, North Dakota was self-publishing a small, free newspaper. It was originally conceived as a local arts and crafts sort of thing, but quickly morphed into an open forum (it was called The Heart River Open Forum ) for poetry, short stories, essays, artwork, cartoons, and my monthly movie reviews. Here I am in the basement of our first house in Mandan, carefully crafting an issue, pink shirt, balding head, and all. I wish I still had that Macintosh Quadra 605.   At the time, for me, the paper was mostly a way to feel like a neo-Roger Ebert. What I most fondly remember about it now is how excited the mostly Left-leaning people of Bismarck/Mandan were to have this cool bit of alternative media in their midst. My post box was regularly stuffed with submissions. This was during the mid-nineties. It was the Clinton years and it was North Dakota. Lots of people were hungry to have their voices heard. My favorite contributor was Jon Twingley. He’d le

  In my tweens and teens, I fancied myself as a photographer in more ways than spying on Anny, the neighbor girl. I also learned how to develop film and make prints in a darkroom. The darkroom was in my sixth-grade classroom, built by the students out of cardboard refrigerator boxes. (I guess that makes me eleven or twelve here.) That was during the early seventies. Those were such innocent times. Students, parents, and teachers thought nothing of an adult male teacher spending time alone with students in a four foot by eight-foot darkened enclosure after school hours. (Nothing inappropriate ever happened—that I remember. I probably should’ve skipped this aside altogether.) I’m not sure who took this photo of Princess and me. I’m guessing Cheryl snapped it, probably with a Kodak Instamatic. This was long before I got my job as a paper goods supply warehouseman and bought my Pentax K1000 SLR with zoom lens. What I find most interesting about the shot is how Princess—who I’ve always re