August 18, 2008 – So I entered eight of my photos in the Washington County Fair in Greenwich, N.Y., and it opens tonight and I don’t know if I won anything or not. The judging was yesterday. I got a sobering when I dropped the photos off and one of the judges offered an amazing critique on my composition. Then I saw a bunch of other photographers – farm wives and kids, mostly – bring in these amazing photographs taken with simpler, cheaper cameras than mine. Wow, I thought, this is going to be rough.
 Today, I went and helped Keith Mann, my friend, and the dedicated (and cheap) honcho at hospice, set up my Hospice Journal photos in the hospice booth at the county health building on the fairgrounds. Izzy and I will be there tonight and Lenore will come sometimes also. Come see me, Izzy and the Hospice Journal photos and meet Keith Mann and the other hospice volunteers and officials. We all understand that people don’t really want to encounter hospice at a county fair, but we are actually a fun crew.
  I never entered any contest before, and I have never won any ribbons of any kind, really, but I decided it was important to put it out there, to take my work and bring it out into the world and let people who know what they are doing look at it, and to take my chance. This is, I think, practicing what I preach. Sending out my signal. This is part of my life. A big part, part of the reason I came to the farm in the first place. I ought to take my work and show it to the world and take my chances, like anybody else. Scary though. Always hard to put yourself out there in that way, and good for the people who do it. I’ve already learned a lot.
   Like a lot of people who move from cities to the country, I can drift into elitism – when I strolled into the photo booth with my fancy camera I think I doubted that the competition would be too rugged. How many people up here have expensive Canon cameras? They don’t need them to take great photos. When I left, I knew there was a good chance of getting thumped. That’s okay, too, although I am insanely competitive, and like to win. If I get a ribbon I will paste it on my forehead and walk around for days.
  Either way, I’m glad I did it. Part of growing up, I think, knowing who you are.