September 2025 – Mostly From Memory

Unpredictable Days

I enjoy a daily routine to an extent. I don’t necessarily want to do the exact same thing every single day for the rest of my life, but I enjoy a reliable structure otherwise I’d never get anything done. That is not to say that I always know what is going to happen through the day, I think most of us don’t. It is those nuances that make life interesting. These little encounters can crash into your routine, sometimes changing the course of things, sometimes in a big way. Sometimes they cause us to refocus and get back on track. Take the past Monday for instance.

The first encounter happened by phone before I even made it to work.

“Yes, Mr. Zane. We do a birthday party on the first Thursday of the month for all of the residents and the man who has been leading the band is retiring. Would you be interested in leading?”

This is the kind of thing that I do in my marketing role. It seems a bunch of assorted staff from the hospital get together and play music at the adjacent nursing and rehab facility. I have never met any of these people. I don’t even know how many musicians there are, but I am assuming there are no singers or they wouldn’t have asked the activities lady to give me a call.

When she asked me, I couldn’t help but laugh. I imagined a group guys in scrubs, moping like a teenage musicians because their lead singer up and quit on them. A band in existential crisis. I’ll keep y’all posted on how it goes.

The second encounter happed as I walked past the council on aging. A BMW with out of state license plates passed me as I was walking on the sidewalk , then it backed up and rolled down the window. The man in the passenger seat leaned out and asked if I would be interested in painting a mural on the side of his restaurant. It smelled like they had a pet baby skunk riding in there with them.

“I noticed you were photographing that mural, you do that kind of work?”

I told him I was capable of doing that kind of work, and I have never actually painted a mural…but I always wanted to. He said he would do it himself, but he was color blind. I got caught up in the moment and we exchanged numbers. It would be a fun job. Something that you could drive your kids past and say, “See that giant alligator eating a bucket of fried chicken painted on the side of that restaurant? I painted that.”

I think I could design a nice mural. I would paint a big guitar on fire with a snake crawling out of the sound hole. And some firefighters spraying it down with Coca Cola. Or maybe some ducks wearing WWII fighter helmets and goggles, flying in formation as batteries of duck hunters sent up volleys of anti-aircraft flak. I think that would go over well in Louisiana.

I don’t really have time to do all the things I am trying to do right now, but the draw to do something creative has always had a heavy influence on me.

I’d been thinking about that all day when I had my third encounter. I held the door open for a Thai lady in a mobility scooter at the Dollar Tree. She thanked me and then immediately began to tell me about a 72 year old lady who was working on a zero-turn lawnmower when it fell on top of her.

“She laid their for three days and three nights. A thousand pounds. She died.”

I did not know why she felt compelled to tell me this story. It is a tragic story. I was reminded of my friend Cecil who died in a zero-turn mower accident. Life is so unpredictable and sometimes we get unpleasant surprises. I couldn’t have predicted any of these three encounters if you had paid me $50,000, but really I enjoyed my day.

Photos of The Week: September 27th, 2025

These are the photographs I took this week.

I get to travel a lot for my job. So I take my camera along for drive-by photography. It seems to me that the economy in Louisiana moves East and West along I-20 and I-10. And I live in Central Louisiana. One of the recurring themes in these photographs is decaying buildings. I don’t go out of the way to find them, I have to go out of my why to find new construction. One of the things I like to imagine is what these buildings were like in their prime, with people bustling in an out of them. What kind of clothes did they wear? How did they talk? What did they eat for lunch?

I imagine this was once a thriving little grocery store. The painting makes the pain worse for me: It is fake.

I thought this man was interesting. He was shuffling material from one medical building to another across the street.

The crack in my windshield somehow makes this picture better. The kind of obscure photograph that you imagine a special agent gets on those old detective radio shows.

“These cars always reminded me of fighter planes.” That’s what the man driving one told me once at a gas station 20 years ago. His was green though.

I wonder what kind of art is produced here. I like that old chair.

Something about the colors on this building speaks to me.

It was exhilarating being this close to a train.

This is probably my favorite picture from this week. I love this time of the morning. I imagine this is a scene from a book that you can’t put down.

I love these little lizards. Anything that eats bugs can hang around my house.

Name the title of the book that this could be the dust jacket for. That’s the kind of thing I think about when I am composing a shot.

Another good cover for a book about a haunted house.

Are You A Photographer? And Other Existential Questions

I don’t really want to be defined simply by what I like to do.

Strange things have been happening to me in Louisiana. I’ll introduce myself to people and then they’ll start speaking to me in French.

“Zane Wells.”

“Jean-Claude Villeramerette.”

People that speak French talk in italics.

Aside from that, I also get point blank existential questions like when the lady at the tamale stand in Zwolle glanced at my camera and asked if I was a photographer.

I said, “Well kind of, but I’m more of a writer.”

When she found out I was a writer the whole kitchen wanted me to take their picture with their blue ribbon. I obliged. I think it was a good enough picture. But I’m not sure I am a photographer. After all, I forgot to take off the lens cap twice while I was talking to these people. That’s not the kind of thing that photographer does.

I don’t really want to be defined simply by what I like to do.

I do like like taking photographs, but I’m not sure that makes me a photographer. And I haven’t made any money taking pictures, but does making money really have a bearing on your identity? I’ve done a lot of things for money that I did not enjoy. Maybe most of the things I have done for money I did not enjoy. Then there are some things I do whether I get paid or not.

A few years ago Sarah asked Miriam what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said, “A lady with pets.”

On occasion I forget my camera as I rush out the door and it bothers me nearly all day. Those are the days that I see the most interesting compositions. Like the man demolishing a water tower with an acetylene torch in Hodge, LA. It was one of those water towers with only one central column holding the whole thing up. The kind with clean flowing lines and no sharp edges, like one of those old enameled door knobs in an ancient house. The tank was halfway gone and a shower of sparks was raining down from the lift from which the man with the torch blazed away at the thick rusty metal. I would’ve liked to have had that picture. Another time recently I saw a freshly cut hayfield and about a thousand of those pure white cattle egrets swarming around the tractor which was still laying the hay down in a neat hearing-bone pattern. Oh it was glorious! I wish you could’ve seen it. The most recent composition that I missed was also in a pasture: A longhorn bull, a donkey, and a cattle egret in congress around an ancient live oak. I imagine that these were elected officials who had met together to discuss grazing rights and what to do about the interloping deer. But I missed it and I’m not sure a thousand words could let you see it.

What I really like is story telling. And photography allows you to tell a story without any words. I only really feel like a photographer when I don’t have my camera, but I feel like a writer all of the time.

On Learning of the Death of Charlie Kirk

I was reminded of the scripture where the angels heralded the birth of Jesus Christ.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Luke 2:13-14

No one else in history received an angelic concert like this at birth, because no one else had ever brought peace and good will. After all these years, there was peace on earth and good will toward men. Only because the Prince of Peace came to earth was there ever a chance of peace. It was a manifestation of God’s good will towards us: the Word made flesh. Without Jesus there is no peace and there is no good will. Alas, we rejected peace and good will, and we crucified the Lord of Glory.

And here we are today, with the same hate and venom we had then spewing out of our mouths and onto each other and everything around us. No peace. No good will. We think we know what we’re mad about, but we only know what we’d like to be mad about. Deep down in the essence of our being we know what it really is, but we don’t like to talk about it.

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Romans 1:21

We can get mad-not just mad, but cutthroat vicious-about politics and try to make the issue conservative against liberal, but that is not the issue, so no political solution will ever work. We can get parade marching angry about gun rights, but that isn’t the issue either. We can push the limits on free speech, arguing ourselves into circles and corners high on hate, but the issue isn’t about free speech. We can get fist-fighting furious about racism and social inequality; trying to blame the world’s problems on white people, or rich people, or rich white people like they are trying to teach me in college. But if there were never any white people, the issue would remain. These are all just saplings growing out of an ancient root: Sin.

I have not studied world religions because I think there is another way, I am persuaded that Jesus is the way, but I have studied them because I am interested in humanity. Understanding someone’s religious beliefs will help you understand the way that person thinks. Outside of what we can call Abrahamic religions, there is no religion with a doctrine of sinning against a deity. Hinduism, a broad, amorphous, non-codified religion is practiced in many different ways and has a concept of not following your dharma or personal destiny, but this is not sin against God. Buddhism and Jainism, both offshoots of Hinduism also do not preach sin. Many Eastern religions involve ancestor worship, and while one can bring shame upon themselves and their families, there is nothing about Sin.

We don’t like to be told that something we are doing is something that displeases God. We don’t even like to be told that there is a God. As Paul wrote in Romans 1, we do not like to retain God in our knowledge. It is no wonder when the Apostles preached repentance that they were often stoned to death. Sin is still the issue. Many of us like our sin, and we want everyone else to like it too.

Because of Sin, we live in a broken world. But thank God, where there is sin, there is so much more Grace.

…But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound… Romans 5:20