Mill City Raga: A short film

Click here please: Mill City Raga: A Short Film

Photo Book, "Gathering the Sparks: Photography and text by Susan Schaefer,” to be published

Cover Image for Gathering the Sparks Book

My photography coaxes the invisible to become visible. When approached in respect and humility any subject reveals its hidden nature. Gathering the Sparks: Photography and text by Susan Schaefer, will be available for purchase shortly. Each image reflects the photographic journey of my past three years contemplating and chronicling interior and exterior life, capturing the sparks that constitute each aspect of human, natural and constructed form through my lens .  

Visual Poem

The Last Cigarette

Chester ©2014 Susan Schaefer

The Last Cigarette

I felt privileged to have had a slice of time with the man in the top hat and tails who has been a West Bank fixture for years, and my neighbor. Today, returning from a photo shoot at Mill City Farmer’s Market I felt an uncanny pull as I walked by his infamous encampment directly next to my building, Riverview Tower, tucked under the 10^th Avenue Bridge. Had I done as my entire being was directing me, I might have become the last person to see the man so many Twin Citians know as Chester alive. But I didn’t follow my instincts. And tonight, after an evening out with friends at Seven Corners, I returned home to find law enforcement quietly conducting their business exactly at Chester’s outlier campsite home. I knew without even asking that this man whom I photographed was no longer among us.

I am sure the formal details will emerge, but it seems he died of natural causes.

According to our building’s evening attendant, his female companion of years, Marcia, asked to call the police, explaining that she had found Chester “cold and motionless”.

Most old timers in our building had a great fondness for this enigmatic outsider who rode a bicycle throughout the West Bank and Dinkytown, most often soliciting change from passersby. But the afternoon I snapped my portrait on a Dinkytown corner, Chester had just given his last cigarette to another homeless young man. That’s the only Chester I knew. I hope there’s a peg in heaven for his top hat.

Photography Fest

 Heinz Yurt Maker

Honey Eater

It’s shaping up to be a busy photography exhibit autumn. The top portrait of Heinz Brummel, talented jeweler and yurt maker, is from the Ánam Cara (which translates as Soul Friend in Gaelic) series I produced in 2014 for my University of Minnesota Advanced Photography class. I posed Heinz for this shot which was recently selected to be in the Portraits Exhibition at the Minneapolis Photography Center, running from September 18 - November 1, 2015. Juried by David E. Little, the photography curator of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I am honored that my work was selected as one of 72 from a group of nearly 500 entered. 

The Honey Eater will appear in Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association (NEMAA) Fall Fine Art Show which also opens September 18th in the Solar Arts Building. The Honey Eater was captured buzzing at the Beez Kneez Booth during Seward Neighborhood’s Open Streets Fair on August 16th about to sample one of their tasty, locally products. Momentarily surprised by the click of my Nikon, he nevertheless turned back happily to his sweet sample on a spoon! 

I continue to work to improve and refine my photography, beginning my third advanced photography course in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Minnesota next week. And, there are a few more shows I hope to be in this fall. If you are interested in purchasing any of my work, or hiring me for assignment, please contact me at insights@lifeintrans.com.

Jake’s Girl: For Father’s Day

Dad, Mom and Me, 1955

The slam of dad’s 1957 Chevy Impala door was as unmistakable as it was substantial. Then, the creaking and roiling of our heavy wooden garage door on Gilbert Street in Mt. Airy at 7PM each night, precisely signaled that dad was home.

Always next came the odd sound, and smell if it was summer, as he sequentially gunned and stunned the engine of that massive Impala to coax it up the short, steep angle of the driveway, halting it precisely within an inch at both the front and back of the tight garage, gingerly centering it in order to squeeze and sidle himself out of that automotive shoe box. But my father, Jake, was an urban cowboy, and he could maneuver anything.

My blood quickened, heart pounding, love and anticipation pouring from my entire eight-year-old self, at the subsequent thud of the garage door, the back screen door squeak, the key click, and most reassuringly, his leather-soled wing tips tapping and rapping across our concrete basement floor, then thunking up the wooden back stairway into my waiting squeal, “Daddy’s home!”

The sounds of my father. I’d once again beheld his nightly corralling of the Impala. I was safe for yet another night. “Suselah! How’s my girl?” he would inevitably retort as he hoisted me into his sinewy arms, the waft of a cigar sweet as grass on his lips.

***

One night in the summer of 1958, mid July, the garage door didn’t groan nor the Impala gun at its fixed 7PM schedule. It was July 11^th, a week after our annual family gathering at Jardel Park in the Near Northeast.

That night summer twilight mingled with the pale flicker of our substantial RCA television console screen, bathing the living room with an eerie light. Normally by now I would have been outside playing Dishpan, Red Rover, Dodge Ball, or one of countless other summer ‘block’ games having greeted daddy and watching him settle down for his dinner before bolting out.

But he hadn’t returned, and so I held an indoor vigil, suffering the stifling inside air as our house slowly gathered humidity. The evening was already Philly sticky, the cross breeze from the open back dining room window and the front door barely stirring the clamminess, my small body seeping nervous moisture in anticipation of daddy’s return.

As always, my mother, Emma, chain-smoked Kool’s from her throne – the wide chair edged tight next to our upright Mirror Piano along the stairway wall. I’d worn a furrow in our bold cerulean and crimson Persian carpet by racing back and forth to the kitchen window, straining for any sign of dad’s return. I was now perched on the painful nylon frieze upholstery of our turquoise sectional, nursing my tender thighs, tattooed and imprinted by its rough, tough, scratchy surface. The sounds of my playmates in the street just outside beckoned, but I held my watch, half viewing Clayton Moore’s Lone Ranger, as he and sidekick Jay Silverheels as Tonto outwitted some hapless villain or another.

A whirling red light filled our small living room hideout, fracturing the activity of my playmates in the street, and din of our neighbors’ banter who were parked in webbed aluminum lawn chairs and overstuffed cushioned chaise lounges that all but filled their tiny cement front patios. Like a cloud of dust I bolted through our white aluminum screen door all but jolting it from its hinges, leaping down two sets of concrete steps. The uniformed driver exited the red car, the eponymous name for our city’s squad cars, and opened the back door where a Mummy slowly emerged. A wave of nausea gripped me, but I stayed focused, awaiting his full materialization.

Only one black and purple eye remained uncovered by gauze, my father’s almost unrecognizable blue eye surrounded from head to toe by bandages. His left arm was torqued, cocooned in a plaster cast slung from his neck, held closely to his chest. His lips peeped through the mess of fabric like two engorged slugs, and his mustache was tinted pink. His already ample nose, though bandaged, swelled like a great mysterious tulip bulb. There were more crimson smudges on the Mummy’s face, and his good right arm sprouted purple fingers as large as small cucumbers. My father was a wounded walking garden.

“Daddy,” I croaked, “daddy, daddy,” rushing to envelop him in my arms, my sobs racking my body, but the policeman who had emerged from the other side of the patrol car held me back.

From somewhere inside that wrapped orchard came, “It’s alright, let her.”

His voice, not the strong cowboy hero I’d heard my entire life, was but an echo.

“Oh daddy,” I cried, as our entire neighborhood converged upon our front stoop, my mother hovering, herself a zombie at the screen door.

***

By the end of July my father was preparing to return to his job. He had been viciously mugged on the job, beaten to within an inch of his life. I certainly did not want him to return, but return he would. “I collect money, sweetheart, so I’m a target,” was his only explanation, “but don’t worry it won’t happen again.” And it never did.

The mummy wraps and the full cast had been removed two days before at Einstein Hospital on Broad Street, replaced by a short wrist cast. His face resembled a puddle slicked with oil in sunlight – a sort of ghastly purple rainbow, but somehow he’d shaved. Both eyes still bore crimson red flecks, but those powder blue and steel irises were bright again. Most importantly, he could wink.

On a quiet Sunday morning, the two of us sat at the red and white Formica and metal kitchen table. During the intervening two weeks I’d grown up fast. Under my father’s prompting that first terrible Sunday when I’d secretly faced the prospect of life without my hero, he’d wisely and coolly instructed me how to prepare our Sunday morning favorite, fried eggs, lox and onions with toasted bagels and cream cheese.

Dad had sensed my fears, wordlessly providing stability and safety in a simple cooking lesson. He had instructed me how to crack an egg without the shell falling into the mixture; how to pour a droplet of milk in, and beat it using a light wrist motion and long-tonged fork. Slicing the onion had been quite another lesson. Holding his razor sharp kitchen knife with extreme caution, I listened carefully as he explained how to make an almost nub of my diminutive hand over the onion, slicing it first in half, then peeling, then placing the blunt edge down, again with the nubbed hand so as not to cut myself. I bore the stinging tears of success, welcoming my moist, salty eyes since I’d tried not to cry when I looked at his brutalized body. Lox, eggs and onions provided a recipe in courage throughout the rest of my life.

We were a team my dad and I. Fortune had bestowed us that curious condition. My mother’s overall proficiencies in our life were quite limited. Directly after my birth at age 40, she had suffered what was then called a nervous breakdown, but later would be more properly known as severe post-partum depression. The result, never mind the terms, was the same – she functioned on the sidelines of our life, leaving me to learn early self-care, fervent father adoration and teamwork. My dad cared for us both generously.

Jake worked two jobs, salesman and installment broker for Sam Axel on Columbia Avenue, and the world’s best lox slicer at Ben & Irv’s Delicatessen at 77^th & Ogontz Avenue. He was 50 when I was born, grandfather age really. He had been previously married and his adored first wife had died young of breast cancer, leaving my father to raise a teenager, my half brother Allen, as a single father. My dad was, for all intents and purposes, twice a single dad in an age when most men weren’t.

On all accounts he never showed his burdens. His optimism could fuel the emerging space program, and like the astronauts who were the new cowboy heroes of my age, Jake saw limitless frontiers where others found obstacles. My father matched my adulation for him, and raised me one.

XXX

Jake’s Girl is part essay, part reflection. Mostly it is an early coming-to-age story of myself as the daughter of one incredible, older father, Jack Schaefer, who for all the burdens of his life never failed to provide his daughter with a sense of security, safety, and everyday heroism. His bravery allowed me to grow up as a self-assured woman, grateful to him, and fathers everywhere like him.

Every Day is Earth Day

PRSA Journal, April 1991 article

by Susan Schaefer

Earth Day, more precisely, environmental stewardship, has been a main focus of my life and livelihood since the beginning of my career in the late 70s. I have been an advocate of organics, strict legislation, and individuals and organizations who understand how vital it is to tread lightly on our earth and leave a minimal footprint. 

I am very proud of my professional work in this field as an early and avid environmental communications executive, and perhaps no program has as warm a place in my  heart as the MobiusTM Program I conceptualized and implemented for the then waste giant, Browning-Ferris Industries, BFI. Mobius has won countless awards, was selected as the educational program of countless agencies, including UNICEF, and has been translated in over 40 languages. 

Please enjoy the cover article I wrote for the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) monthly Journal, Big ‘Green' Brother is Watching: New Directions in Environmental Public Affairs, for their Earth Day issue that I was also asked to co-edit about the history, evolution and revolution of trends in environmental public affairs. Give it a chance to load - students of the history and evolution environmental legislation and organizational practices will find a treasure trove of references.

Jamaica Many Moons Ago

Aves of Auschwitz - A Visual Poem Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of Its Liberation by Soviet Soldiers

Aves of Auschwitz

Along Mississippi’s river road,

at the stroke of full moon midnight,

winter’s wind whips

a coven of crows;

midnight-hued ash flakes,

Corvus chorus

cawing

swirling

whirling

fiercely descending,

peppering the ancient ash tree

like so many beastly ornaments -  

a spontaneous memorial marking seventy years

since other dust stopped raining over Oświęcim.

Were any trees left in Poland?

Or were all hewn to stoke ovens reducing humanity to slag?

This murder of crows fractures my evening

Robbing the respite of this ordinary drive.

©Susan Schaefer

3/5/15