Thanksgiving postcards, and hope in hard times...

November 23, 2023

Alpenglow and ice fog on the range near Fishtrap Lake, WA

The Daily Rhubarb would have made it’s debut last December were it not for a deadly fire in my apartment building in Browne’s Addition. I may not be here were it not for a young woman next door who was awake at the time (2:30 a.m.) and quickly called 9-1-1. It was a terrifying morning and it left me and several of my neighbors badly shaken. I’m lucky to have a dear friend, Sharokh Nikfar, who (without hesitating a moment) took me in for most of a month while I struggled to put my life back together and find a new place to live.

My oldest friend is my sister Nancy, and that’s her (below) celebrating a late November sunset about a mile from her home in Pacific Beach, WA. This was a year ago, about two weeks after the fire.

I seem to have a better knack for photographing rocks and moose than I do people. But I saw this coming as we (Nancy, her husband and I) were walking south from Moclips. I made up some excuse to peel off and position myself behind her and the setting sun. Nancy is forever young at heart and the photo captures her spirit and joy of a golden moment on her favorite beach. I couldn’t ask for a more supportive and inspiring sister, especially in the wake of a tragedy.

In addition to Sharokh and Nancy I have so many more of you to thank. The Daily Rhubarb wouldn’t be here without those of you who’ve pitched in with your subscriptions and photo purchases. To those of you who’ve added words of encouragement, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Much of the inspiration for this adventure in self-publishing comes from my father who passed away nearly five years ago. To honor him, I’m going to write a quiet part out loud.

A star swimmer, soldier, coach and science teacher, my dad was often dispirited in the year before he passed. He was most confused by the coarseness and weird vindictiveness that oozes from Donald Trump and his enablers. Among other things, he was appalled by Trump’s rejection of civility, including his criticism of John McCain who, of course, had been captured and held prisoner in Hanoi for more than five years during the Vietnam War. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump infamously said of McCain. “He’s only a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Dad and me at his parents house in Gamboa, Panama, Thanksgiving, 1962

About a year before dad passed, in December 2017, I was sitting with him while we were watching the news on television. This was in the first month of Trump’s tenure in the White House. No surprise, the news was mostly about Trump.

He suddenly grabbed at the remote and snapped off the power to the TV.

“I can’t take this anymore,” he explained.

“I get it,” I replied.

What he was responding to was Trump’s rejection of basic decency, and the threat he knew Trump and his supporters posed to his hopes as an American who believed in democracy, civil rights, science and basic decency.

The other part of this story is that, as some of you know, dad was an amateur photographer. He equipped his own dark room back in the days where we used film instead of memory cards. For him, photography was about capturing the wonder and beauty of the world. We hiked jungles and swamps together. I suppose I’m the apple that didn’t fall far from that tree. So be it.

The hardest decisions I make day to day, week to week, are how to balance my diet of grim reality and wonder (for my own spiritual and emotional well-being) and how to reflect that, here, in The Daily Rhubarb. It’s a work in progress and I hope, for both our sakes, it is on the right course.

You’ll let me know if it isn’t. Right?

Before I go, I would like to share an item from my reading, that popped up in the New York Times yesterday. It’s a tribute of thanks—including some wonderful documentary photography—to the underpaid young men and women who risk their lives to suppress wildfires, mostly west of the Rockies. Their elite fire-fighting brigade is called the “Tallac Hotshots,” and this is their story.

Blessings to all of you, and your families.

Happy Thanksgiving.

—tjc