I made this photograph with a screen door between me and this Green Anole on my front door step. If I’d opened the door, poof, gone! And this was another on my belly shot where lens height matters.
The day was wet and unusually cool for late May. Which is why it’s Brown instead of Green. Anoles are not Chameleons but do change color. And yes, step refurbishment is on my long, long to-do list.
1978 was, like a “Tale of Two Cities”, the best and worst of times. Self doubt and severe marital turbulence sent me from pursuing a BFA and Secondary Ed double Major at the College of Charleston to the temporary refuge of my parents home in Northern Ohio and pursuit of a straight job in technology. A kind Uncle lent me – I swear it’s the truth – a purple AMC Gremiln with a bashed in quarter panel to drive. Which I parked out of sight at a job interview at an office building parallel to I-90 aka the Shoreway in Cleveland , Ohio for a position in Field Service with the Digital Equipment Corporation, then the world’s second largest computer company. I wore my only, cheap polyester suit, ( from a J Riggins store in a Charleston SC mall) and carried a vinyl folio with copies on “good paper” of my Resume. And I got hired. Fast forward to 1980 and my boss made a deal with the then named NASA Lewis Research Center, (now Glenn Center), for me to be the resident DEC Field Engineer. I would be on-site, billing work at the GSA Schedule of $52 per hour. They had a LOT of DEC Minicomputers. Acres of them. Along with big Univac 1100’s and IBM 360’s. They all required constant maintenance The Univac and IBM guys had their own offices I camped out in a room with NASA techs.
Lewis was NASA’s primary power research center and technical Disneyland. Over time, the NASA folks taught me way more about DEC gear than all the DEC company schools I attended in Bedford, Mass. So I met a research guy named Ernie Roberts. He was pleasant, amiable and impeccably well groomed. And a Black man. Nine years in Navy & Submarines had mitigated the racial idiocy I grew up with in the 1950’s, just 10 miles away. In the process of routine maintenance on the DEC PDP 11-34a Mini he was using for his research, with a bunch of strange non DEC stuff attached, I asked him what he was working on. He kindly and patiently explained trying to find a way to identify unknown materials with waves of energy. By bouncing an energy wave into “X”, being able to determine the composition of an unknown substance. It was the first time I’d heard of Fast Fourier Transforms. For NASA Lewis, it was a small test cell, a small project. Today, using the very latest search capability of the Web-O-Sphere, I found this this paper he’d written, eight years previous. I’m a smart guy (luck of the draw), have an expired Mensa membership (wised up and quit paying dues). Ernie was on a whole higher level. And his kindness was even more. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/1972002456
So why the memory now? Partly due to the benefit of age. Partly due to the pile of books around my chair that I now have time to read and re-read. There is “Cosmos” by Carl Sagan. And “Stony The Road” by Henry Louis Gates Jr.. “The Pentagon Papers” as published by the New York Times – which had more influence on my life’s decisions than I had any idea. And “Late Migrations -A Natural History of Love and Loss” by Margaret Renkl. The stunning realization of how ignorant I was of human history in these United States despite that portion of college completed. And I wanted to write it out.
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