Month: December 2025

Old Guy – Version 2.1

I wrote last January, 2025:

Post retirement (old guy) reflection on my work as a photographer, created an itch I’ve been scratching, to curate and show the result of a dozen years. Still early on and skimpy. May take a year or so: http://www.brookemeyer.com

Almost January 2026: Nah! It’ll take a LOT longer! Just imagine, an endless supply of paper and crayons with no Bell Schedule! Can spend hours reading about Lady Day and Dorthea Lange! After 75 years of perpetual motion, time to savor my great good luck.

And I think Kurt Vonnegut had it right: “The moral of the story is, we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don’t realize — or they don’t care — is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.” 

Photographer & Clients at “Picture Days” 2016

Bravo Academy of Dance – Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Old Dogs In Winter

Like “Mac”, I find sleep and comfort irresistible. And good food . I made all of his. No convenient bagged junk. Real Chow: Half can of Salmon with a shot of Olive Oil in AM (and Cosamin DS for bad joints, same as I still take to not need knee surgery) split with our attitude Lab, “Rocky”. PM, Bone In Raw Chicken Wings. Later, as he and Rocky got older, ground up raw Chickens, cooked Rice, Collards and Sweet Taters.

Mac

Saturdays, a “Trotter” on the deck, from Nahunta Pork Center at the Raleigh Farmers Market – which got disappeared in 45 minutes! Never had to have their teeth cleaned.

Disclaimer: I once wrote to a young lady from a Navy Training School who later told me my letters were complex and hard to read – she was right).

We both aged to relish and enjoy quietude. This is almost, a self portrait. We both got grey muzzles. And shared a deep love of our missus, whose side he would not leave in her illness. As she would not leave his. The hard part of love is good bye. Eventually, account balance is zero, with no credit line. So it goes.

Sunday Oasis

A friend told me about this a few weeks ago at the Cary Photographic Artists Holiday Party. Found and purchased on Goodwillbooks. Merry Christmas to me! $8.58, delivered!

My bookshelf AM/FM Receiver/CD/USB Player has an audio out jack – key to my purchase decision. Headphones & extension cable facilitate couch lounging and blocks the howls and barks of the poor dog in the apartment behind me. Acoustic peace and great music! Add Lager & Bourbon – I’m good!

Ray Sings Basie Swings

A Christmas Tradition

Watching the Cary Ballet Company “Nutcracker” last night was wonderful.

I didn’t know it then, but this photograph from 2021 would be the last I would make, after a dozen years of CBC productions. It was inevitable. As Chaucer wrote in 1395: “Time and tide wait for no man.” Decided the next fall, without regret, it was time to retire.

Cary Ballet “Nutcracker” Final Bow | Cary Arts Center | 19 Dec 2021

The extraordinary performance I saw last evening was deeply life affirming. Being part of that, lasts forever. About as long as it will take me to really curate about 5 TB of Digital Negatives! The luxury of time & absence of needing to earn is a new kind of freedom that I fully embrace. Like the hugs I got last night.

It Snowed On Christmas – IV

Last week, driving by the spectacular Town Hall and Academy Street Christmas displays, the child in me, marveled! The old man in me, finds peace and comfort in the simplicity and elegance of 15 years ago.

Ambassador Loop Lamp Post| Cary Town Hall Campus | 26 Dec 2010

It Snowed On Christmas – III

Page-Walker Arts & History Center started life as a railroad hotel next to still used train tracks. So I occasionally had to pause teaching Thursday night Photography Classes on the second floor, while Trains rumbled by with their warning horns. Freight and Passenger!

Page-Walker Arts and History Center | Cary Town Hall Campus | 26 Dec 2010

Brooklyn Bungalow

We are, I believe, tied to our upbringing. A 75 year old in a mirror, finds it, inescapable. Along with all the stuff NOBODY could make up. Like being six and parked on a sofa in pajamas with my younger brother as EMT’s took my father out the front door – I can still see the flashing red lights.

Didn’t know then about my Maternal Step Grandfather who:

1. A Widower and Hungarian Immigrant, married my Hungarian Immigrant Divorced Grandmother (Catholic Shame but the hubs left!). My Mom was 3.

2. Rolled a 30’s Dodge Touring car with a trunk full of Bootleg during Prohibition. Cost him a year in a Federal Pen

3. Ran Charlie’s Cafe at Woodhill & Buckeye in Cleveland through Prohibition. Defied Cleveland Police for increased bribes by replacing the “Water Heater” full of Bootleg with a real one, before the raid he knew would come .

4. Flew up from retirement in Florida after my Dad was hospitalized and next day, paid his Step Daughters Mortgage – my Brooklyn Bungalow & home.

5. And explains my Fathers relief when I walked in as an adult as he’d just hung up the phone (Long Distance) having sent Charlie the last mortgage repayment.

That post-WWII house was where my Dad kept a Blue Star in the window all nine years I was Navy. And where I never dared think about inviting my best friend in the Navy, who was Black, to visit. Later, I had to tell my Dad he would die soon (Lifetime Smoker) and that we would look after Mom. And later, I would lie to my Mom when it was no longer safe for her to be alone – tricked her to a safe place. And made sure she was safe and not alone when she died.

It was refuge for a brother during a divorce. He took care of it, had the old foundation properly repaired. Which made it a reason for me and my Sweetheart to do the next generation Mom & Dad thing and helped her daughter buy it. That didn’t last, she chose as poorly as I did with my first marriage.

Strangers live there now (owned by an LLC so I suppose, a rental). Strangers live in the home I sold a year ago. And so it goes.

The Trouble With “Modern”Men

When I met my Sweetheart, I couldn’t even find the light. She was all I could think about. Still is, five years a widower. And we’d both do it again.

Now, a 75 year old Male Curmudgeon, I’m astonished hearing my 20 something Neighbor/Dog Rescuer/Teacher/Soprano/Fellow Chef and Fortuitous Confidant about modern relationships. Discovered there’s even a name for it: Hetero-fatalism! Maybe, a la William Shakespeare, it isn’t a really new idea.

It Snowed On Christmas

Early last evening, I went to the Cary Photographic Artists Holiday Party at the Herb C Young Community Center in Cary.

Got waylaid by a bunch of Labrador Retrievers on the way in. Sent my heart into overload. Never did find out what the meetup was for but – oh my.

Christmas Day through the 26th of 2010, it snowed in Cary, North Carolina. Rare event. Beginning with my two Labs, I made photographs of our “White Christmas”. Spent the next day making photographs in Downtown Cary. Which looked a LOT different tonight, driving down Academy Street.

But this is really about two dogs whose ashes I’ve kept to go to sea with mine: Melanchete’s MacGyver AKC CGC & Melanchete’s Rocky AKC CGC.

Oral History

After reading today the latest news from our nations capital, I shared, with a young woman I have great respect for, the literal meanings of some traditional, military acronyms: SNAFU & FUBAR.

I did not include the favored description of chaos from my last IBM manager: “Goat Rodeo”

Love Story “Just One Look”

Five years a widower, walking out of the Cary Arts Center yesterday night, a tall woman with family on each side looked at me and I looked back. She was age appropriate and elegant and lovely. And I walked to my truck – a little shaken.

17 January 1992, Friday, about 6 PM, I parked in the lot of a neighborhood saloon to avoid going home to a failed and contentious marriage. Separate bedrooms for 4 or 5 months. Two very young sons kept me captive.

And I saw a woman with a car stuck in snow (Northern Ohio). Helped push it out. We spent the next 30 years together. Till death we did part.

Not A Safe Place

Leaving a Harris Teeter today with some necessities (Beer), I saw two ICE Officers walking into the store, guided by a Harris Teeter Manager wearing a Corporate Logo Shirt. I heard him say “she might have gone left”. To their credit, the young ICE Officers were not wearing Helmets, Sunglasses or Masks or had Weapons drawn. I had no idea if they had a court ordered Arrest Warrant. Two Town of Cary Police SUV’s were parked nearby.

Pushing my cart towards my truck (old widowers need to get their steps in), I made eye contact with one young ICE Officer, rolled my 75 year old salty veteran Submariner eyes and shook my head in disapproval. Midway to my truck, in my peripheral vision I saw a young Hispanic woman, also in a Harris Teeter Company shirt looking past me as she walked quickly away, as unobtrusively as possible.

And I thought about my immigrant Grand Parents and Great Grand Parents. And why they came to a foreign land without even knowing the language. And I thought about the poem by Emma Lazarus on the base of this statue.

A decade ago, I made this photograph. A proud American Veteran.

Now, I fear the fate of our Better Angels.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris 2015