pucker up

89-year-old Dorothy Wentz had a graduation party - yep, that's right - a week ago, and her son Chuck Wentz, 56, gave her a kiss goodbye. I know what you're thinking. Don't worry your purty little heads. The pictures in the paper will have her face in them.

21

John Badal, 16, left, and brother, Dom Badal, 17, duke it out in a game of 21 in Coleman on Tuesday. "He actually bet me three dollars he could win," Dom said to an onlooker. "You owe me three bucks John," Dom said to his brother when he defeated him, then Dom apparently changed his mind and said he didn't owe him money. "I'll just let you take that as a lesson, bro."

city champs

St. Stan's A.C. Polish Festival

Lori Leppek, of Bay City, dances on a beer table during "Michigan's Largest Polish Festival" last week. At right are Leppek's aunt and hubby. "I have a quote," Leppek told me. "It's not who you are, it's who you know." Below is James Raimar, of Saginaw.

A legacy of love

Out of a storm it came. Not of the kind where ominous gray clouds snarl above the earth and the wind tears limbs from trees as rain pelts the sod. No. It was the cancerous storm in the life of a man, John Konopnicki, whose grandson now remembers him as “a wonderful person ... a hard working, loved his family, loved his country kind of person.” The legacy is a simple smile, the chosen creation of a man who remembers talks with his grandfather on the grass below the spot on the barn from which it now beams. “For me it reminds me of a moment in time where ... I just shared some quality time with my grandpa,” Eric Crivac said recently from his home in Hudson, N.H., hundreds of miles away from the barn where he and then brother-in-law to be, Joe Ogrodowczyk, first etched the outline for the smiley face. “So for me, it’s all about my grandpa.”

'separation where there should be love'

It was the evening before Specialist Krysta Taylor, 20, left for Fort Bliss, Texas. I asked Krysta the question I knew I had to ask: what will it be like to leave 9-month-old daughter Alexis behind? She seemed to anticipate it as well. "I knew you were going to ask that question," she said, as she cradled her sleeping daughter in a chair by the bonfire. "I don't like it, but it's something I have to do." And then she began to cry silently. And, though I had done my job as a journalist, I felt like a jerk. The next day I met up with Krysta and her family in the wee hours as she hugged them goodbye outside the Midland Armory. And I followed them to the airport, where Krysta was separated from them by a chain linked fence with barbed wire on top. It seemed cruel, regardless of its necessity. Krysta motioned toward a building nearby and her mother carried little Alexis there, and met up with Krysta inside. I could see the pain in her Sergeant's face as he watched his soldier hold her baby one last time, and then respond to his duty to keep them separated as he walked Krysta, an arm around her, back out to the tarmac. I kept my composure until Krysta's plane was in the air and her father, the toughest looking man around, gave in to tears as his mother hugged him and told him they'd been through it before, and they'd get through it again. And the humanness of my existence overcame me and professionalism took a back seat as I turned away, ill-equipped to deal with my own emotion.

Footnote: The words of the post title are part of the lyrics to a Rusted Root song called "Cruel Sun."

Adirondack Park

Laconia

Petoskey

the pain and the glory

without a care

Something in the big brown eyes of 8-year-old Cole Ordiway gave me a vision of my younger self, when I could effortlessly lose myself beneath a bucket gradually filling with water and with sheer joy anticipate its contents raining down upon me ... and then, seemingly immune to the chill it produced, come back and do it again.

déjà vu

Senior ace Ryan Longstreth and his Beaverton High teammates are headed to the state semifinal for the second year in a row.

somewhere in Michigan

Ennui

A personal reminder never to let it get in the way of making pictures.

Congrats!

My little sister, Roxanne, isn't so little anymore. She is the last of five of us to graduate from Warwick High and I won't be there to see it, so I'll have to rely on this cyber shout-out. Roxanne, I hope you get your senior pics in time to hand them out to your cronies. Savor the day. I love you. Your big brother.

Final Fitting

Pamela is the recent victim of a mail scam that left her with three drained bank accounts and financial hardship as she prepares for her wedding on June 21. "It just all seemed too good to be true, and it was," she said of the check she received that led to her demise. Here, Pamela gets fitted for the wedding gown she plans to wear on her big day, and which she didn't want me to show in its entirety and so spoil the surprise for her fiancé.

The Fellowship is Broken

Well ol' boy, we certainly didn't see eye to eye on many things. We did, however, enjoy a game of street ball from time to time, where calling fouls was for sissies. We spent a lot of money on movies - some good, some bad - and rarely agreed on whether or not they were good. We ate a lot of good food: your chili dip is to die for and your sweet tea put me in a rocking chair on a porch in the hills of Kentucky. Whether you know it or not, you challenged me to acknowledge my ignorance. You taught me that photojournalism is primarily about people, and I can remember the one conversation we had that was a big inspiration for starting my column. I hope that you find a way to continue telling stories to people, whether on paper or by the fire, because you're incredibly good at it, and I know that whatever you wholeheartedly direct your effort toward will have great potential to influence others. Whether analyzing bat guano, fighting forest fires, or documenting your world, I believe you have a purpose on this earth that may be largely unknown to you right now, and that you will find it. Thanks for everything, Brett.

OKC

While out of town for a freelance gig, I decided to do a little personal exploration. Yes, the muddy clay I stepped in looked deceptively solid. No, my sneakers are not supposed to have red highlights.

Riley Matthew Bills

At 7 a.m. on my first day of vacation I awoke to a baby being placed next to me in bed and multiple flashes going off. I felt like Angelina Jolie must've felt on her return from Ethiopia with an adopted daughter. But any annoyance quickly passed and I lay there and talked to my baby nephew for about half an hour (picture No. 2). Riley is generally a happy baby. He sleeps a lot, and it's fun to watch him motor away on his "nook" like Kobayashi on hot dogs. He even bummed it on the beach with us for a short while yesterday. In no time he'll be chowing on Brown's doughnuts, out-putting his uncles at Gilligan's Island, attempting the "dollar trick" on unsuspecting passersby, belting the whiffle ball over the railing at the "sandlot," and strutting his stuff on the boards with his buds.

tradition

It has become tradition. Around the December holidays my brothers and I organize a paintball outing in my parents' woods and call it the "War of the Woods." This year we decided to supply our own CO2 and rigged up a system for refilling the smaller canisters that go on the guns. Incredible headache, but we did get some more pt out of it. Needless to say, I was the one who decided to do the refilling because I didn't want anyone else to get hurt if something bad happened, of which I believed there was a significant possibility due to, shall I say, suspect rigging. But I did get some help from my brothers. I should tell you that the third photo was taken for a column I recently did for the paper, but I wanted to include it because I didn't have any decent action photos from December (true) because I was always playing and never got out (not true). Hey - it's more of an essay anyway. I thought I'd post this now because I'm heading out to Jersey this weekend to hang with the fam and see the reason for my new status as an uncle.