This contact sheet includes negatives from May 1978 and sometime in the winter of 1973 or ‘74 – I’ll say January and February 1974. ~ 

Cornell graduation.  Pam Cecil’s gymnastics.  Muskie basketball.  Another diverse set of negatives from at least three separate shooting occasions. 

I was not a friend of Pam Cecil’s in high school.  She was among the cool kids.  I was an untouchable.  We traveled in separate circles and, so far as I can remember, had no contact.  From what I understand she had a quick, glamorous life as a dancer in New York and died young, in her 30s.  She was among the first of the high school deaths of the cool kids and it probably greatly affected that social circle.

Muskie basketball.  I had a few friends on the team – Craig Koll and John Longtin.  Neither are depicted here.  John’s brother Jeff is among the junior varsity players in this set.  I liked shooting basketball for the reason I liked shooting other sports – it got me concentrating on the critical moment, the timing of the photograph.  I tried to emulate the photography of Henri Cartier Bresson, though I don’t think he shot any sports photos. 

Graduation from Cornell.  As momentous as the occasion sounds, I have few memories of the day.  I was deeply depressed, and undiagnosed.  I had few friends among my graduating class other than Chris Dewey.  I had isolated in married student housing, away from the dorms.  Altoona had closed and all its remaining residents had displaced the occupants of Rorem Hall.  I seldom went over to visit Chris at Rorem, though I do remember one occasion.  Janet was home and had gone to bed for the night.  I was up and wanted to see Chris.  I went over to Rorem.  Janet showed up maybe half an hour later, extremely angry.  How dare I leave without telling her or even leaving a note.  And then she hit me, knocking my glasses off.  I was able to bend them back into shape and we walked home.  I wonder why I was so depressed.

Janet and I soon moved out of married student housing, the old huts that were built as temporary quarters for a Naval Air meteorology training detachment in World War 2, thirty plus years earlier.