The birdbath is empty

   August 30, 2008 – For the first time I can remember, the birdbath is empty, an omen of a new season, for sure, and there are others. I got an e-mail to remember late last night, one so touching and loving I, of course, mistrusted it at first.
 It came from a photographer, a man who had e-mailed me out of the blue when I started taking photographs, and who told me the most important thing I have learned about art, is that you can make a beautiful image of anything, if you  really see it. I suspected I would never meet him.
  Artists, he said, fight for their work, for these images, and if they abandon them, and what they love, they have abandoned themselves.
  This has helped, guided and inspired me again and again. Robert had sent me photos and critiques – all good, some sharp and I haven’t heard from  him for awhile. Late last night, he was reading my blog and he liked my blue vase photos, and then he told me how I could have made them better, and then he told me he was in the advanced stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) and was still taking photos, a shutter wire attached to his teeth, and sometimes, one of his goes. I read that message a few times, and snapped out my funk quickly. Life is good, precious.
   Robert was passing on a piece of advice his brother had given him, as the illness (I have seen it a couple of times in hospice work) took away the use of his muscles. His brother said he needed to keep taking pictures. He had to fight for himself, and for the rest of us.
  So he is still taking photos and looking at mine (he loved the county fair dancers), and as it happens, he lives in a city I’m going on my book tour, and we will meet, after all.
  This morning I’m going out with Lenore and my big fat new lens and hope to take a photo for Robert. And for all the artists who fight for their lives. Life is short, precious. Fight for me. For us. For yourself.