POLICE STATE In the past two weeks I have been pulled over by DPS and local deputies for minor infractions. One said I did not turn on my headlights which come on automatically when the engine is on. The other gave me a warning for not signaling to traffic when I made a right onto the Post Road from my house around 12:30 at night. In the first incident it was dusk and a judgement call whether I needed running lights in the first place. Also, I had not driven more than 600 feet before I was pulled over, not enough time for me to assess if I actually needed them or not. In the second incident the DPS officer gave me a warning for not signaling to traffic. There was no traffic. Not one car. Also when he whipped his car around to speed up on my bumper he did not use his turn signal. I watched him through my rear view mirror. Are they above their own law? If you travel to Marfa, Alpine, Marathon or Fort Stockton you have to be keenly aware of your speed or any infraction you may or may not know that you are committing with your vehicle. Even that, though, doesn't mean you will not be stopped. It is totally unnecessary and ridiculous. It is a waste of taxpayer money. It is terrible for business and tourism. People staying at the Gage Hotel have told me some of their traffic stop stories. Personally I have been driving longer than most of these officers have been living. I had one accident 37 years ago. I suggest that the Chambers of Commerce unite in getting these trainees out of our communities. We are law abiding citizens. We are smart enough to know when to use a turn signal or to turn on running lights. Stop terrorizing our communities. It is no more than annoying harassment, and a waste of time. Yesterday I was riding my bike and rode past a horned lizard. I turned around to pick it up and remove it from the highway, and I swear I was no more than 6 feet away when a red tailed hawk swooped down and snatched it off the highway. It was amazing. I yelled hey, give me my lizard as it flew up to a tall gate pole. There was a little bird diving at the red tail, but it didn't seem to care. Why do you need a license to fish, while any moron on the planet can have a baby. Shouldn't there at least be an I Q test or something? LOUD HARLEYS SUCK Over the past several years the increase of motorcycle riders in Big Bend has been phenomenal. These weekend warriors with their trailered motorcycles play Easy Rider from their city. It's good. I understand that part. Every year one makes a mistake and ends up in a wreck, an accident, sometimes fatal, adding another memorial on the side of the road. To all that visit the Big Bend area, please realize, if you get in trouble and need medical attention you are hours away from health care at best. You can die on the way or lose the window of opportunity that is needed where a simple problem becomes a serious one. The Big Bend offers an amazing feeling of freedom. I love that, but it also is very unforgiving if you make a mistake. The other issue I would like to raise is a ban on loud exhausted motorcycles in the Big Bend. It is so stupid and disruptive to hear these packs of cyclist coming down the road. You can literally hear them for miles, and it seems very selfish that these cyclists have no consideration for their surroundings. You hear them early in the morning and late at night. Revving up their motors, just to hear the noise. I propose a quiet exhaust system be implemented by the park service and our local government, with enforcement through fines and warnings. Noise is pollution too. The freedom to ride is one thing, have at it, but to upset the whole environment for your ego is wrong. Outside is the side I take © 2004 Self Portrait Firing Gun ARTIST STATEMENT I moved to Marathon, Texas 20 years ago because an opportunity opened up in the form of a job at the Gage Hotel as a cook. I learned this on the way into the park Thanksgiving weekend 1998. I had visited the park three times before and on the very first trip I met Mama and Toni Garcia. ( I made a portrait of them after I moved here.) However on this trip I met and partied with locals Uncle Joe and Aunt Roberta and John Suffaco. It solidified, for me, that these were my kind of people. On the way home I stopped back by the Gage and applied for the job. Ever since I decided to be a photographer (in my early 20's) I had been searching for the thing. The thing being my niche, what would be "my" work. Portraiture fit me best. I enjoy the one on oneness of it and the collaboration between the two of us. It can be very intimate. Landscape work I had not been as comfortable with, but I knew if I was going to do it I would have to be as true and as honest as my approach to portraits. Even now, I see myself as a portrait photographer living in a beautiful landscape, however last year I felt that I had finally achieved landscape photographer status. 20 years of watching and photographing this desert has given me a profound understanding of light. I love Big Bend. I love the desert. I love the heat. I love the mountains. I love knowing what phase the moon is in and seeing planets and stars and constellations and the feeling that you are living on a world. I love seeing wild animals and trying to communicate with them. I love being naked in the desert, physically and metaphorically. Making art is a journey through ones personal imagination, growth, and influence in their surroundings and discoveries; an interpretation of these things. We don't necessarily do anything new, but recycle it through our own imagination. I am keenly aware of time in the big picture, and how fast it passes and how tenuous health is. I feel fortunate to be healthy. Describing oneself an artist is uncomfortable to me because an artist is not necessarily one who paints or makes sculpture or photographs or whatever. Being or becoming an artist to me is more about approach. I think it is something we are born with and develop through time, or resist, or ignore. As much as I like recognition and accolades and I do appreciate that people collect my work, I have come to realize that the real reward is being able to do the work. Not much else makes as much sense to me.