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booker t
On the far southeast corner of Lubbock there is a ten-street neighborhood that’s an unusual mix of vacant houses, vacant lots, new houses, well-kept houses, and not-so-well-kept houses. It has a street named Quetzal, which is the national bird of Guatemala and a totally awesome name for a street. (Quetzal Street is between Peach and Redwood: Lubbock is big on alphabetical street names.) It has a church. And it also has an (apparently abandoned) American Legion post.
If the neighborhood itself has a name, neither I nor Google maps are aware of it.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 5.30.2025
the murder road
Probably because I’ve lived almost my whole life in places that are mostly treeless, an area that has more than six trees makes me immediately suspicious that something bad has happened in there. Or if it hasn’t happened, it’s because it is about to happen.
So naturally, I assumed this is a murder road. Or, you know, will be one at some point.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 5.30.2025
tools of the trade
I can’t even begin to understand everything we saw during the Sant’Agata procession. Devotees in the streets purchase candles (yard long ones, not like little American birthday candles) which are handed up as offerings to the men on the candalore ((gilded wooden constructions). At various points during the three-day long procession, the parade stops while candles are removed in order to make way for more. At one of these stops, we stood behind a pair of priests and I had plenty of time to work on an image of this wooden rosary and its shadow.
Catania, Sicily
photographed 2.4.2025
devotee
On the morning of the first day of the Feast of Sant’Agata, I looked out my hotel window and saw a solitary devotee heading toward the cathedral.
It wasn’t long before the streets would be filled with people, many of them dressed in the traditional feast-day clothing like this gentleman. This moment, although I didn’t realize it then, was the only bit of quiet for a long time: the parades celebrating the Saint are loud and joyous.
Catania, Sicily
photographed 2.4.2025
the way through
This is the beginning of the end of the dead-flower images. For now.
I grew up in a house full of “Early American” furniture, which featured really shiny maple pieces. My mom had a set of table pads that we put down over the kitchen table any time we used it, to protect that fancy finish.
It will not surprise you, probably, to know I took a different approach with my furniture. My own kitchen table is pine; it used to be waxed but that wore off decades ago. In the interim, it’s built up a lot of character, with scratches and marks and a variety of stains. Most of the stains fade over time, which is a moral lesson that I am too lazy right now to write about. The current most prominent stain is some turquoise fountain pen ink that got away from me. It’s already being absorbed into the wood, and on its way to becoming a forgotten thing that happened.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 5.23.2025
One Day | One Image 