Mike Fuchs

I have spent the last week in Phoenix, AZ photographing my paternal grandparents.  I think that this will become part of a project I’m calling short thoughts.  I have been making photographs in places that I have been traveling too that have little to nothing to do with the Twice Westward work.  The longer I spend in a place the less about the surface or even the less about the place the photographs get.  In the break between ending my road-trip and getting through the 50+ rolls of film I’ve shot.

As with allot of the parts of seeing my family along my route is to document their life as it pertains to me.  With this I see my future and parts of my present.  Being here has been nice and a bit strange, I need to spend more time with these photographs.

Poppy waiting at the optometrists office for some ointment.

Going to the clinic is quite convenient being that in the community doctors seem to locate them around patients who are concentrated so much around the elderly.The ceiling fixture in their house was really ugly, it’s good that they replaced it.  The company that replaced the fixture was mostly staffed by immigrants.  Poppy being an immigrant loves to talk about how hard they work compared to my generation of kids of “entitlement” who will “never work a real day in our lives.”  The immigrant experience is the cornerstone of his criticism of me.Birdy and Poppy like to pool walk, it’s a social thing they say.  They have a routine where they usually go in at a certain time and they befriend each other.  When I arrived they wanted to pool walk and I got there rather late in the day so there was a completely different crowd and kids.  They love to complain about how much they don’t like the noise kids make.  It’s funny how not typically old they usually are then they drop something like that.  Oh those damn noisy kids and their noise.  I think it’s because they now surround themselves with other old people.

Poppy being from the Czechoslovokia ( when there was still such a thing) has a fondness for things that slightly remind him of Europe.  He loves IKEA breakfast and IKEA in general.  They needed a knife to cut meat.  I recommended a flat blade rather than a curved one.Poppy reads the newspaper.  He actually reads six or seven in many languages.  He reads most of them on the computer.  It’s funny because Birdy really doesn’t read the paper anymore.  But she watches the news and complains about the lack of news on there.  Those can be fun arguments when we get into that.

Poppy driving his golf cart back from the dealership.  He claims it makes a noise.  I could not hear it.

Poppy and Birdy cover the plants when it freezes.  That doesn’t happen often in Arizona.  Birdy is the green thumb of the two but Poppy has the final say in the design of the garden.  He’s stern like that.

Poppy likes to make work for himself.  Closing the blinds at night is one of his self assigned jobs.

Poppy dealing with a man from the neighborhood assosciation.

Birdy looking at chotchsky’s in the backyard of an estate sale.  Those are really creepy, the clothes left in the closet and stuff splayed all over the place.  They have friends that have furnished their houses only from estate sales.  Strange form of recycling.  And frugality.

You want to go somewhere swingin on a friday night.  Go to the elks lodge.  That evening it was all retired/elderly folks.  While I was taking this picture a woman came up to me and said we got to talking about what I was photographing.  She started to complain about her grand kids not coming to visit.  I told her she was to young to have such progeny  and she responded “I’m not young.  I am old!  And I am having fun!”.Rearranging the antiques after the installation of the new light fixture in the kitchen.  Poppy likes everything just so so he took pictures of how things were arranged before the work was done.  Poppy stood by yelling at grandma to make sure all the items were placed at pleasing angles.  It was funny, they act just like the honeymooners yelling sarcastically with the immediacy of two people hard of hearing.

Poppy learned spanish when he was stationed in south america during WWII.  He was an engineer so he saw no active combat but made maps.  He keeps up spanish through Destinos a kind of soap operah meant to teach spanish.  I went through that in high school.  It was fun.Rabbit in the front lawn.  Birdy didn’t believe me when I told her that it was there.  During the winter they hide apparently because the birds of pray fly down from the mountains.

I keep having conversations about how americans feel so entitled and whatnot with Poppy.  I say that the greatest sign of american decadence is the fact that people live in the desert.  Where they should not be.  I think one thing about his immigrant narrative is the duality that he likes what American Values are but wants to claim no part of it due to how he finds many of its side effects disagreeable.  Instead of bucking up to the consequences of the lifestyle they’ve chosen.

Poppy love to use his go-kart, ez go I think it’s called.  They go to all the activities in their kart.

We played mini-golf.  I won.  Birdy was close, Poppy made the maximum stroke amount except for three wholes where he achieved a whole in one.

Poppy and Birdy learned CPR.  It was really odd to watch.  The questions people asked were also super depressing.

thoughts?