"As America is beset with increasingly serious and complex problems, our distant corporate owners are turning us into a tabloid full of press releases ... we're desperate for paid subscribers but we're trying to bring them in by offering less.  It's not going to work.  It's wrong and I want no part of it."

Voice from a Baltimore Sun Guild rally video July 17th protesting the loss of 100 jobs in the newsroom.

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The world that once surrounded Warner Company's Cedar Hollow limestone mine is long gone now.  The 145-foot-deep quarry has been filled in with water.  A smoked-glass office building stands where the Warner offices used to be, right across from Solitario's Kennel, now deserted and set for demolition in a turnpike expansion.  If you turn around and look in the opposite direction, you can see the belltower of St. Peter's Episcopal Church of the Great Valley, built in 1744, perched on the very edge of the quarry's southern rock precipice.  We used to live just down the road.

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We can all debate the demise of journalism and the death spiral of newspapers, but the bottom line is that I left The Morning Call because I could no longer say I was proud to work there.

Truth is I've felt rather ashamed of what the paper has been deteriorating into for quite some time.  I grew tired of having to respond to disgruntled readers in the field.  They know the paper sucks.  They know they’re being ripped off.  The paper’s smaller, there’s less content and the price just went up. 

Turning Bill White into a religious icon is not helping to increase readership.  Putting colored boxes on the front page doesn't make people want to buy the paper—they make it look cheap, like a low-budget knockoff of USA Today.  Putting cutout pictures of white men with their arms crossed on the front pages doesn't make people want to buy the paper—they make it look like The Morning Call’s demographic is incredibly small and narrow, made up of old white Dutchies who frequent diners and shoot deer on weekends.  Who the hell is at the helm, anyway?

In 1958, two notable events happened. My brother Bob was born in August and three months later we moved down to the big house on Church Road. That farm is where all of my memories crystallize, both the good and the bad.

I thought that my first day of freedom from The Morning Call would be a happy one, full of giddy elation at being my own person at last. Instead I feel amazingly let down.

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My last day at The Morning Call passed with little fanfare.  There was no retirement party, no gold watch, no thank youfrom the president for long years of service, no cake with my picture embossed upon it, just a quiet day by myself in the empty newsroom of the Easton Bureau. 

A quiet day to reflect onthe end of my career as a photojournalist for this once great newspaper, to gather up my belongings and move on to the next phase ofmy life.

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I don't know if it's the tranquility of green and growing things or the calming trill of the many birds who find food and shelter there, but I am able to forget the stresses of daily life for a time.

     As an artist, the fodder for photography in the garden is an everchanging smorgasbord of flowers, shrubs and vegetables.  It is especially beautiful after a rain shower, when water beads glisten on the leaves and petals.  Take a moment to view the Nature photo gallery to get a sense of what I see there.  Every day the pallet of colors changes as the seasons come and go, and I never tire of watching the metamorphosis around me.

     It's been a crappy year for tomatoes, but a surprisingly good one for zucchini.  My squash plants have somehow managed to fend off the usual early death from vine borers and continue to produce perfect fruit.  Mint and basil perfume the air as I try to keep up with the ever-present crop of weeds that spring up wherever they see an opportunity.  Next year I plan to use more mulch to try to keep them at bay.

At our little twin house in Cedar Hollow, we had no indoor plumbing—running water, yes, but no bathroom. Each home had its own outhouse in the back yard. There’s no nice way to say that, but our next door neighbor, Josephine, had the prettiest outhouse on the block, painted white and all grown over with twisty wisteria vines. When that vine bloomed in April you could not imagine any finer place to take a pee. For the most part, though, having to go to the outhouse was just a step above changing a baby’s diaper.

Newspapers are not dying. We just don’t respect the people who are buying them or the people who might want to buy them.

There’s an old saying that God doesn’t close one door behind you without opening another somewhere else.  My 23 years at The Morning Call newspaper have come to an end and a new life waits on the other side. I’d always wanted to retire early, but it’s a wee bit earlier than I’d planned, bailing out on one of the last lifeboats tossed out by our parent company Tribune.  This is a double death—the death of my career as a photojournalist and the apparent death of print journalism as we know it.

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