This wedding was truly a family affair.  My aunt and uncle hosted the wedding at their home. My cousins and the groom’s friends set everything up. Two of my best friends decorated like mad. My aunts and cousin Chelsea transformed about fifty pounds of sugar into about as many pies and cakes. I officiated, and my cousin photographed.

Because I was just shooting for myself,   I had the freedom to just take  lots of candid, informal photos of whatever struck my fancy, without worrying about whether or not they looked like “wedding photos”, which was a lot of fun. Here’s a small sample of my crazy hilarious, lovable family and friends just being themselves — but with even more wine than usual…

My cousin Carmen, a haridresser and makeup artist, helped my sister get ready.

Getting ready.

My aunts, Ruth and Mary.

Our friends helped us make about 16 miles worth of paper chains out of old sheet music.

Mary and Bridget share a dance.

Colleen and one of her oldest friends, Stephanie.

My cousin Chelsea, a talented baker, made this beautiful cake.

Chelsea helps Johnny remove the cake my sister and Peter had just smeared all over his face.

Cake aftermath.

My niece Scarlett and Uncle Mike, overwhelmed by dessert options.

Sparklers for the first dance.

Alyssa and Scarlett light up the first dance.

Johnny and Colleen.

One of our oldest friends, Lisa, demonstrates how to dance like a Motley Crue groupie.

The groom keeps The Ladies entertained.

The coaches were remarkably unguarded, and they didn’t hold back much with the players, who ranged from about 5- 14 (although a mom confessed to me that some families sneak kids who are still in preschool into the league). Over and over, I saw coaches get directly in the boys’ faces, screaming at them, sending them off to do drills, letting them know in uncertain terms when they had disappointed.  At one point, a little boy was scolded for leaving to get an X-ray, and a second-grader was dispatched to  Coaches’ truck to fetch his flask of whiskey!

If a coach were to treat a kid that way in the everybody-gets-a-trophy-because-we’re-all-winners-on-the-inside atmosphere of a Portland youth league, I suspect he’d be out of a job pretty quickly, but in Kentucky, moms stood on the sideline, watching approvingly. “The principal hates it when football season ends,” she told me, “She says discipline problems go way up!”  And these boys, for whom football has always been not so much a part of life as a way of life, bore up under their coaches demands like, well, champions, sniffing back tears, enduring the cold, and going back to run the drills until they got them right.

I was a little taken aback by the harshness of both the practice, and the coaches’ behavior, but I could see how much of themselves they put into what they did, wearing out their voices, freezing their butts off. I could see that they worked at least as hard as their players, and that they really cared.

Youth League Football has everything a good story needs- tension, risk, drama, face-painted moms praying. It reveals so much of what is essential about small-town life, and I’m now completely obsessed with the pursuing this as a subject.

Distasteful as it is, it’s hard to talk football now- especially boys’ football- without Sandusky casting his long, dark shadow over the subject. But it’s made me think about how a seemingly fluffy can open a dialogue about more serious issues-  about the trust we place in the people we revere, about how  we teach  boys to become men,  about the terrible motives that can ‘kindness’ can hide, and the kindness that sometimes masquerades as cruelty.

The Occupiers were evicted exactly at closing time- a first.  Following their eviction, most decided to move to City Hall, but they weren’t really sure what to do once they got there, so people stared getting a bit silly.

That was when the gentlemen in this picture decided to scale City Hall, and set up camp, and do a little Christmas Decorating while they were at it.

So, I'm not really sure how there came to be a Christmas tree with a Guy Fawkes mask sitting in front of City Hall in the first place, but there it was.

And then there were these two guys who climbed on top of City Hall. The guy on the left decided to set up camp there.

His friends quickly tied his gear to a rope, and he hauled it up. Then someone dragged the tree over, and they decided it would be funny to put that up there too.

People were saying the police were on their way, so the effort to get the Christmas tree up there became a race against time.

It's amazing what you can accomplish with a little teamwork. The guy on the right scaled down the building before police arrived. I belive the guy on the left stayed, and was later arrested, via Cherry Picker.

]]> http://theprofessionalforeigner.com/2011/12/occupy-portland-decorates-for-christmas/feed/ 0 http://theprofessionalforeigner.com/2011/11/being-a-mall-cop-stinks/ http://theprofessionalforeigner.com/2011/11/being-a-mall-cop-stinks/#comments Sat, 26 Nov 2011 06:14:09 +0000 Natalie St. John http://theprofessionalforeigner.com/?p=1566

I noticed this young woman today, when I went to the mall to photograph a ‘flash mob’, organized by members of the Occupy Portland movement.

As the appointed time for the flashmob came and went, more and more decidedly non-mallish people gathered on the bridge over the skating rink, and milled around, trying to seem non-chalant. She had been assigned to babysit the assembled crowd, and she appeared to be taking her job very seriously, and also to be taking their presence in her mall as a personal affront-I  approached her just in time to hear her saying something to a mall patron about how the occupiers were “smelly”.

She told me that the mall cops’ mandate for the event was to focus on preventing fights, and that she wasn’t sure what to expect, because the Occupy People hadn’t been ‘straight’ with anyone about their goals.

“I’m curious about something I heard you say to that other person- would you really crack down on someone for being smelly?” I asked her.

“Well, yes, if people are being smelly, making noise, throwing things around, we’re gonna throw them out of here- this isn’t a public place- this is private property.”

“Yes, but would you really throw someone out of here for being stinky alone?”

“Well, if a person had poor hygeine…” She seemed to lose her steam for a moment.

“Have you ever done that?  How would you feel about doing that?”

“Well, personally, I probably wouldn’t feel that comfortable with it, but yes, if someone is smelling to the point where they’re bothering other patrons? We’d kick them out.”

“Is that really a stated mall policy?”

She reached into her breast pocket, and pulled out a pad of printed policies “This is a non-exhaustive list of all of our policies,” she said, handing me a green card.

“OK, so, I understand throwing people out of here for being disruptive, but doesn’t it get kind of dicey with ‘smelly’? I mean, some people can’t help the way they smell. Isn’t that getting awfully close to discrim—–”

“Excuse me.”

And just like that, she was gone.

Here  are a few things that are not allowed in the Lloyd Center: Annoying others through boisterous activities, interfering with the patrons’ view of windows, depositing matter of any kind on the property except in designated trash receptacles, singing, playing of musical instruments, engaging in non-commercial expressive activity, failing to be fully clothed, unauthorized scavenger hunts or photography (ZING!), and….”any other behavior that is perceived to be offensive to the general public.”

Gotcha, suckas.

So, there it was – the  mall cop– a veritable poster girl for the 99%- doing her best to defend the forward march of commerce at the possible expense of human dignity, for ten-fifty an hour (or whatever the Lloyd Center deems this service to be worth), and facing off with her purported champions on a bridge to nowhere.

When the flash mob finally happened, and it was really more of a flash demonstration- she reappeared, standing in the midst of the shouting, dancing, crowd, wearing the grave, determined look of a person who is trying to give the impression that they have a hopeless situation under control. Standing there looking really, like a perfect metaphor for the working class.

The dilemmas protesters face inside the foyer of the Chase bank seemed emblematic of the type the movement has faced as a whole;  While a few demonstrators climbed the fixtures and screamed obscenities, the others in the room admonished them to have more respect for people and property. A man smoked a joint, while a woman held a sign up to the bank tellers and guards, telling them that their demonstration was directed only at the decision makers in the company, and all demonstrating came to a halt when the assembled crowd agreed to part to let in a man who was about to be late with his child-support payment.  The room cleared, but the bank wouldn’t open the doors, and in the meantime, the man disappeared.

Protestors and officers alike appeared to have much less patience for one another today.  I watched an officer very roughly shove a man standing next to me back onto the sidewalk, then threaten him with his baton.  It became ever more apparent that the cops have reached the limits of their tolerance and energy minutes after I left, when officers finally used the oft-threatened pepper spray, notably spraying a young woman in the face.

Shoppers and employees barricaded inside of a beauty supply store observe the passing demonstration.

Demonstrators in front of the Bank of America Building Burn money and bank deposit slips.

Police lined the outskirts of the Bank of America building, as sitting demonstrators blocked the front entrance.

Demonstrators inside the foyer of Chase Bank criticize employees on the other side of a locked glass door.

As midnight approached, demonstrators pushed into SW Main and SW Third streets, resulting in an hours-long detente between the Occupiers and Bicycle Police, Mounted Police, and Riot Police.  There were a few pretty tense and scary moments  but overall,  peace and safety were maintained by all involved.

Portland Tribune photographer Chris Onstott and I teamed up for the night, and if you’re interested in seeing more shots of the events, the slideshow on his website is well worth checking out.  We pulled an all-nighter, and left just before six, as tensions (and numbers) appeared to be dissipating. A few hours later, tensions rose again, as the camp was forcibly evacuated, but by then, I was finally getting some desperately-needed shut-eye.

While the majority of attendees were committed to a peaceful gathering, firecrackers and bottles were launched in to the crowd in a few brief, isolated incidents.

A cat, belonging to a homeless resident of the Occupy Portland campsite, took shelter inside its owners' tent, as demonstrators gathered outside.

When I described the place to my old neighbor Terry (although neighbor doesn’t even begin to cover all the things Terry is…), she laughed, and said, “So, it’s basically his ark on Mt. Ararat?”  So naturally, I cracked up when I got there and discovered Mr. Knight was in the process of building an ark.