Last Saturday was a wonderful day. I got to document the wedding of a lovely young couple, Megan and Jeff. Warmth was the word. All day. All around.

From left, Theresa & Michael Pohle join TCNJ students and others in a lie-in in Brower Student Center to mark the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting that claimed 32 lives. Their son, Michael Jr, was one of its victims.

April 15th is tax day and that means the Coalition for Peace Action is in front of the Palmer Square Post Office with their Penny Poll asking passers-by to take ten pennies and allocate them as they would like to see their tax dollars spent. A lot of people who are naturally hesitant warm up the the idea once they find out that the coalition supplies the pennies! Afterwards,participants are given a handout which lists the breakdown of how their tax dollars are allocated in reality. The Coalition's executive director, Rev. Robert Moore is at left.

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In addition to April 15th being Tax Day, it's also local school board election day. In Hamilton Township. the polls opened at 2pm and it looked like this. This was the third location I tried. At the first two schools, I had the same experience. The principals politely asked me to hold on while they called the district office for permission (?!?) and then after a while, they came back and said they had asked the people manning the polls and they didn't want to be photographed (double ?!?). Anyhow, the way this school was set up, one didn't have to go past the office to get to the voting machines. The door at right leads directly outside, so I simply went in and discreetly made a few photographs while election workers were busily involved in their important work.

P.S. This is a digital panoramic, two frames stitched together, giving the perspective of an old panoramic camera I used to rent and use. If you care what that is and don't know, in a normal camera, the shutter opens and closes and the image is instantaneously recorded on a frame of film. With a panoramic camera, the shutter is a slit that moves from left to right during the exposure and the image is recorded over the space of several frames of film as the slit moves.

What are these 4th graders from Washington Elementary School in Trenton doing?

Helping to plow a field in the city for planting.

Reacting to red worms crawling around on their hands.

Horses (Jess & Bill) from Howell Living History Farm in Hopewell Township, were brought in to plow the field at the Chestnut Avenue Garden of Three Points. The spring plow, which included other activities such as composting, corn shelling & making animal feed, was hosted by Isles Inc.'s Community Gardening Program. Vegetables will soon be sprouting up in the city.

It would be nice to always be original, but after all these years, I'm bound to start repeating myself once in a while. Here's an example. I made this photo of the reenactment of Washington Crossing the Delaware (which appeared in the coffee-table book Christmas in America in 1988).


It was special to have a picture published somewhere that it wouldn't wind up lining the bottom of the bird cage the next day. Can you blame me for trying to re-create my past success when I spotted this?

IN MEMORIAM -

Dith Pran

Born: September 27, 1942
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Cambodian journalist, photographer, and activist

Dith Pran was a Cambodian journalist who suffered four years of abusive treatment after the Communist Khmer Rouge forces took over his country in 1975. Pran eventually escaped and became a crusader for justice in Cambodia. His story was portrayed in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields. (wikipedia)

If you aren't familiar with his story, it's worth the time to find out. Just google his name and prepare to be humbled. Since Pran worked as a photojournalist for the New York Times and I for the Trenton Times, our paths crossed occasionally on some assignments. My jaw dropped the first time I saw him because I knew who he was, a legend, standing right there in front of me doing the same job I was. I didn't know what to say and I'm not all that outgoing anyway, but he brought me out of myself when he was around. As we would see each other again, he treated me like we were old friends. I'm grateful to have known Dith Pran. I made the above photo of him at the Veterans' Day Ceremony held at Veterans Park in Hamilton Township on November 7, 2004. May he rest in peace.

On the five-year anniversary of America's involvement with the war in Iraq, at a Moratorium Day Regional Rally in front of the State House in Trenton, New Jersey, Sue Niederer, looks at a memorial with a picture of her son, Seth Dvorin, who was killed on February 3rd, 2004, while conducting counter-IED operations in the war in Iraq. Neiderer has become an outspoken critic of the war.