My Picture

Yes pholks, I know the picture of me on this column really isn't up to date.

Why, as many of you ask me weekly, hasn't it been changed? I've been getting quite a bit of ribbing over the last couple of years and the pace seems to be picking up. Of course there are a few of you who go out of your way to make your point. I appreciate that a lot. I really do. And I also enjoy getting stickers in my socks and banging my knee on a desk leg.

First, let it be known that plans are underway to update the photo. It may take a while so don't pin me down.

But before we get too far, I need to explain why the current photo continues to be published. First, and most important, is that my wife Kathy likes that photo and it was her decision, several years ago, to use it. It was about a dozen years old then.

The snapshot style photo was black and white and my wife had it framed and a copy, black and white, remains in our home. So does the large original of the current column photo.

But the events resulting in it becoming a color photo is the part of the saga have enhanced it's longevity atop Miles Around.

This is what happened:

One day Ellen Milinich, a well-known award winning artist and nurse at Kaweah Delta Hospital, came into the Valley Voice office inquiring about advertising for her pastel portrait business. Trust me, I was impressed by her samples. She has won some very high honors.

Anyway, when I mentioned that years and years ago someone had done a pencil sketch of me for the column and I would like to have another one done someday, Ellen suggested I give her a copy of my best picture. I told her my driver's license photo was my favorite but my wife had this thing for the black and white photo in the silver frame.

Of course, my wife's choice became my choice.

Ellen said it would take a week or two to do her thing and create a color portrait. Since I seemed to always get compliments when I wore a pink shirt, the artist agree the shirt would be pink.

When the project was completed I had an eight-by-ten charcoal portrait, not a colorized photograph, which was exact in every detail. All the wrinkles, the crinkled brow lines and semi-eye twinkle were all in the right places.

Of course, downsizing the portrait to newspaper column size makes those features less noticeable to the reader, but trust me pholks, Ellen Milinich does great work. I've subsequently viewed some of her collections.

That's the story pholks of why I still use that picture in the column.

Some of you suggest that I'm just too vain to update the graphic on the column, saying things like “How come you have so much hair in that picture?” Who are you trying to kid?” Why don't you use something which looks like the real you?

Those are all good questions. Maybe I'm a little vain but I don't think I'm any more vain than most pholks, I have my pride and people still recognize me via that picture so the change isn't that drastic. Age has its price. My wife still likes that photo. I love my wife very much, and, I like that photo.

As I said earlier, I'm working on an upgrade but it might take a while. You'll be the first to know. Just remember pholks, don't judge a book by its cover. And don't judge an aging columnist by his photo. He's still the same on the inside, like it or not.