http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=99415376069
P.S. This brought me to tears...
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Saw this on someone's Facebook today...
Law of the Garbage Truck
One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!' This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, 'The Law of the Garbage Truck.'
He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so...Love the people who treat you right. Pray for the ones who don't. Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!
One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!' This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, 'The Law of the Garbage Truck.'
He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so...Love the people who treat you right. Pray for the ones who don't. Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!
Friday, June 12, 2009
The following is an email that my father's step-mom, Gloria, sent out to a handful of individuals this evening...
I’ve always had an interest in photography long before I owned a camera.
Growing up in a modest household, the whole idea of a child taking pictures with a camera was out-of-the-question. My parents couldn’t afford the film and the processing for themselves, much less for a kid.
Throughout my childhood I spent hours in the library studying photos in Life Magazine and National Geographic. I also spent time analyzing the works of great photographers such as Gordon Parks, Ansel Adams, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Dorthea Lange, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, and especially Margaret Bourke-White whose work (next to Parks) I most admired.
Access to these giants of photography was limited to the times when Dad drove to Traverse City (a city in northern Michigan—a 60-mile/100 km round trip from our home in Leland) and was willing to drop me off at the city library. I couldn’t check out books but I hauled the huge photography books down from the shelves and spent hours studying them in the library.
I may not have had a camera, much less the money to operate one, but I constantly sized up everything I saw in my life as a child as if I were taking its picture.
It wasn’t until I was in high school that I got my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, as a birthday present. I took a couple of rolls of our senior class trip to New York City for the World’s Fair and shots of my graduating classmates but that was the limit. Film and processing still were way too expensive for me.
I took the Kodak Instamatic with me when I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and there I learned that I could cut my costs by joining a student darkroom and processing my film and photos myself.
I sent some of my photos back home and Dad hung them in the post office where he worked.
An elderly man from LaFayette, Indiana who spent his summers in my home town on Lake Michigan stopped by the post office to pick up his mail and asked the postmaster who the photographer was. Dad told him and the man asked if I’d like to have a camera and a set of lenses.
Dad called to tell me that this was a very expensive set—an SLR camera with interchangeable lenses—then the latest in photo technology so I took the first available bus home for a weekend.
The elderly man had powerful connections in the world of photography. Each year he received the newest in camera equipment—and each year he passed some of this equipment on to young people he thought had some potential. I was to be that year’s lucky recipient.
I not only used that equipment to learn how to take pictures; I made money with it to help me through college.
I didn’t do weddings.
What I did was take photos for doctoral students and research scientists who paid me for photos they could use in their doctoral papers and research articles. My work appeared in a fair number of technical magazines and in National Geographic as a result of this alliance between me and almost every scientific or engineering Ph.D. candidate in Ann Arbor.
Later, when I launched myself into my own graduate studies, the camera got bigger—the Earth Resources Satellite, then in low earth orbit and in the early 1970s, it was one of the earliest (and largest) of digital cameras. I learned a lot about digital photography (then classified as secret by the U.S. government) at the Willow Run Infrared Optics laboratory.
When I left Ann Arbor, I had to go back to working with film until digital cameras began to appear commercially several decades later.
Although I used the small, pocket digital cameras supplied by the company I worked for, I knew better was coming and that I just had to wait for it.
Finally, Nikon came out with its first digital camera for the professional photojournalist—the D1, which I bought.
When I upgraded to the Nikon D2X I gave the D1 to my eldest stepson, Mike, who is as passionate about photography as I am and had a complete set of Nikon lenses to go with the camera body I was giving him.
Last week Mike triggered my latest round of high-end camera buying.
He called me to share the news that he bought Nikon’s latest in lenses—the VR (vibration reduction) lenses. These lenses compensate for slight twitches or imperfections when a photographer hand-holds the camera instead of uses a tripod.
Although I’ve always been a fine marksman—both with a rifle and a camera—this new feature has added appeal because as I get older I’ve become less steady with the camera. Vibration stabilizing lenses also would improve my success rate when I’m doing telephoto work or when I’m shooting indoors using only existing light.
So I went out and bought a set of VR lenses and it was then that the saleswoman who had sold me my current camera asked me if I’d like to buy the latest—the Nikon D3X for $8,800.
I told her I’d wait until next spring—after I get back from New Zealand and then I’ll see how much money I still have left.
Two days later, I got a phone call from the camera store—they were willing to sell me the camera at their list price—$6,900. That’s what I would pay an on-line Internet store for this camera.
The side of me that’s female couldn’t resist such a nice discount. Besides I had slept most of the winter and as a result, I hadn’t spent much money during that time.
So now I have helped stimulate the economy—at least in a South Bend, Indiana camera store.
What’s even nicer is that I have an opportunity to pay back the elderly gent who started it all.
I checked with her parents and found out that my husband’s granddaughter, Rachelle, still is as passionate about photography as her Uncle Mike and I are—so Rachelle will be getting a set of lenses from me, and her Uncle Mike will be sending her the D1.
We’re all hoping this camera will open up some good career opportunities for this talented young lady—and so Mike and I will have passed on the legacy, just as the elderly gent did for me 42 years ago.
Love, Gloria
Jack the family cat by Rachelle Salavarria 
Rachelle Salavarria
Growing up in a modest household, the whole idea of a child taking pictures with a camera was out-of-the-question. My parents couldn’t afford the film and the processing for themselves, much less for a kid.
Throughout my childhood I spent hours in the library studying photos in Life Magazine and National Geographic. I also spent time analyzing the works of great photographers such as Gordon Parks, Ansel Adams, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Dorthea Lange, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, and especially Margaret Bourke-White whose work (next to Parks) I most admired.
Access to these giants of photography was limited to the times when Dad drove to Traverse City (a city in northern Michigan—a 60-mile/100 km round trip from our home in Leland) and was willing to drop me off at the city library. I couldn’t check out books but I hauled the huge photography books down from the shelves and spent hours studying them in the library.
I may not have had a camera, much less the money to operate one, but I constantly sized up everything I saw in my life as a child as if I were taking its picture.
It wasn’t until I was in high school that I got my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, as a birthday present. I took a couple of rolls of our senior class trip to New York City for the World’s Fair and shots of my graduating classmates but that was the limit. Film and processing still were way too expensive for me.
I took the Kodak Instamatic with me when I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and there I learned that I could cut my costs by joining a student darkroom and processing my film and photos myself.
I sent some of my photos back home and Dad hung them in the post office where he worked.
An elderly man from LaFayette, Indiana who spent his summers in my home town on Lake Michigan stopped by the post office to pick up his mail and asked the postmaster who the photographer was. Dad told him and the man asked if I’d like to have a camera and a set of lenses.
Dad called to tell me that this was a very expensive set—an SLR camera with interchangeable lenses—then the latest in photo technology so I took the first available bus home for a weekend.
The elderly man had powerful connections in the world of photography. Each year he received the newest in camera equipment—and each year he passed some of this equipment on to young people he thought had some potential. I was to be that year’s lucky recipient.
I not only used that equipment to learn how to take pictures; I made money with it to help me through college.
I didn’t do weddings.
What I did was take photos for doctoral students and research scientists who paid me for photos they could use in their doctoral papers and research articles. My work appeared in a fair number of technical magazines and in National Geographic as a result of this alliance between me and almost every scientific or engineering Ph.D. candidate in Ann Arbor.
Later, when I launched myself into my own graduate studies, the camera got bigger—the Earth Resources Satellite, then in low earth orbit and in the early 1970s, it was one of the earliest (and largest) of digital cameras. I learned a lot about digital photography (then classified as secret by the U.S. government) at the Willow Run Infrared Optics laboratory.
When I left Ann Arbor, I had to go back to working with film until digital cameras began to appear commercially several decades later.
Although I used the small, pocket digital cameras supplied by the company I worked for, I knew better was coming and that I just had to wait for it.
Finally, Nikon came out with its first digital camera for the professional photojournalist—the D1, which I bought.
When I upgraded to the Nikon D2X I gave the D1 to my eldest stepson, Mike, who is as passionate about photography as I am and had a complete set of Nikon lenses to go with the camera body I was giving him.
Last week Mike triggered my latest round of high-end camera buying.
He called me to share the news that he bought Nikon’s latest in lenses—the VR (vibration reduction) lenses. These lenses compensate for slight twitches or imperfections when a photographer hand-holds the camera instead of uses a tripod.
Although I’ve always been a fine marksman—both with a rifle and a camera—this new feature has added appeal because as I get older I’ve become less steady with the camera. Vibration stabilizing lenses also would improve my success rate when I’m doing telephoto work or when I’m shooting indoors using only existing light.
So I went out and bought a set of VR lenses and it was then that the saleswoman who had sold me my current camera asked me if I’d like to buy the latest—the Nikon D3X for $8,800.
I told her I’d wait until next spring—after I get back from New Zealand and then I’ll see how much money I still have left.
Two days later, I got a phone call from the camera store—they were willing to sell me the camera at their list price—$6,900. That’s what I would pay an on-line Internet store for this camera.
The side of me that’s female couldn’t resist such a nice discount. Besides I had slept most of the winter and as a result, I hadn’t spent much money during that time.
So now I have helped stimulate the economy—at least in a South Bend, Indiana camera store.
What’s even nicer is that I have an opportunity to pay back the elderly gent who started it all.
I checked with her parents and found out that my husband’s granddaughter, Rachelle, still is as passionate about photography as her Uncle Mike and I are—so Rachelle will be getting a set of lenses from me, and her Uncle Mike will be sending her the D1.
We’re all hoping this camera will open up some good career opportunities for this talented young lady—and so Mike and I will have passed on the legacy, just as the elderly gent did for me 42 years ago.
Love, Gloria
Lupines by Rachelle Salavarria
Jack the family cat by Rachelle Salavarria
Rachelle Salavarria
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
