Commentary & Pubs

Photo journey: Geometry

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By Ande Jacobson

I have always been intrigued by geometry and interesting shapes and perspectives in pictures. In fact, going through school, geometry was my favorite math class and not just because of the beautiful logic proofs, but I digress. In photography, sometimes a rather mundane scene can be fascinating when approached from a unique angle. Other times, the shading can even make common shapes pop. As mentioned in previous essays, I have spent a lot of time wandering through the exhibits packing the various Smithsonian museums over the years. While the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, D.C. is my favorite Smithsonian location by far, I also appreciate several of the others in its vicinity. The Museum of Natural History has much to offer, and although the easiest way to get a good picture there is to buy one of their brochures which are filled with many elegant professional photographs, where is the fun in that? It’s far more satisfying to discover a unique perspective and capture it directly if possible. Continue reading →

Photo journey: South Meadow Fence Road

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By Ande Jacobson

As mentioned in an earlier installment of this series, I traveled to the Washington, D.C. area frequently at one point in my career. While I was a complete weather wimp being used to a very temperate climate in the San Francisco Bay Area, I found the mid-Atlantic intriguing in a number of ways despite loathing the oppressively humid summer weather. On the other hand, I rather enjoyed the other three seasons, even winter with its bone chilling cold from time to time. The two months of the year I enjoyed most in that region were October and March. October was by far the most comfortable month. The summer humidity was gone, the days were often warm and quite comfortable, and the nights were cool and crisp. Beyond that the leaves always started changing color at that time. My previous essay in this series opened with one of my favorite scenes from the greater Gaithersburg, MD area, Lake Whetstone on a nice October day. In this essay, I return to a Montgomery Village neighborhood adjacent to the lake, but this time in March. Continue reading →

Photo journey: Reflection obsession

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By Ande Jacobson

I’ve had an obsession with reflections in photography ever since high school when my mother showed me a prized black and white photograph she took of me as an infant. She captured a picture of my grandfather gently holding me in a hooded baby towel after a bath, and she not only captured a very sweet picture of us, she also captured a reflection of the shot in the bathroom mirror. As a result, I have played with reflections from time to time with varying degrees of success. Continue reading →

Photo journey: My quest for the perfect capitol shot

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By Ande Jacobson

Artistic expression can take many forms, and so far, A Good Reed Review has focused on music, theater, and the written word. This essay expands that focus a bit and opens an ongoing, non-chronological series on my photographic journey.

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and that is very true although the number of words can certainly vary depending on the story behind the picture. I eventually hope to write a book discussing my family’s photography given my parents had a keen interest and significant expertise in that art form and instilled a love of photography in me. While I’ve spent most of my creative energy in music and writing, I have a natural inclination toward photography as well as bit of an obstacle. Continue reading →

My magical, musical journey: Part 6 – outside challenges

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By Ande Jacobson

My journey through Part 5 of this series hasn’t been all that unusual. Like many others I studied music throughout my childhood and college years, and even though I pursued a lengthy career in the sciences, I never left my music too far behind. I was fortunate to live in an area where musicians of all levels could find opportunities to play and continue to grow musically no matter their primary career paths.

The pit orchestras in which I’ve played or directed have been composed of talented musicians of all ages including advanced young music students and adults from a wide range of professions, some musically related, some not. Beyond straight music endeavors, the San Francisco Bay Area enjoys a vibrant theater community at all levels that draws large, loyal, local support. The community of musicians that supports the musical theaters has thrived for decades … until that fateful year, 2020, which brought unprecedented challenges. Continue reading →

The American story continues: Getting ready for the Biden Inauguration

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By Ande Jacobson

I watched the 17 January 2021 episode of 60 Minutes the next morning while exercising on my elliptical trainer, a fairly common Monday morning routine. Two of their stories from the previous night were on political events – preparations for Wednesday’s inauguration, and what happened on 6 January 2021. I’ve already written about the coup attempt in my essay entitled “6 January 2021: An American Story,” so that’s not my focus here. Instead, the first 60 Minutes segment, “Against All Enemies,” hit me particularly hard. Continue reading →

6 January 2021: An American Story

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By Ande Jacobson

On 6 January 2021, the story unfolding in real time was more confounding and disturbing than any work of fiction I have ever read, and I couldn’t look away. Sadly, it also wasn’t unexpected based on the sitting president’s behavior throughout his term of office and before that as a private citizen. This administration was the runaway train that would inevitably crash where it did on this day.

Continue reading →

A fitting end to 2020

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By Ande Jacobson

It seems fitting that 2020 is a Leap Year. Leap Years are special and just a little bit strange. With February longer than usual, that means the year has an extra day making Leap Years 366 days long which seems a fitting end to the most frightening and bizarre year in the memory of most of those alive today. While we would like this year over sooner rather than later, we have to wait an extra day to say goodbye to 2020.

At the beginning of the year, 2020 seemed like it would just be a particularly rough election year with an extra day in February. Most of the public had no idea how different 2020 would be until after 29 February even though it turned out that the dangerous SARS-CoV-2 virus had already been spreading since late last year. Continue reading →

We need a little SaxMas right now!

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By Ande Jacobson

Today was the third Saturday of December in the year 2020, and to paraphrase a lyric from a show I played 14 years ago, we need a little SaxMas right now. This day should have been the 27th annual gathering of sax players of every shape and size playing saxophones of every shape and size in San Jose, California. Although SaxMas founder, Ray Bernd, held out hope for as long as he could, because of the pandemic that didn’t happen, and for the first time in 27 years the event was formally called off in late October. This special event is one that players and audience members look forward to every year because it’s festive, musical, and gleaming with all that holiday saxophone goodness. Over 200 saxophonists playing holiday music together is a sight and sound to behold, and it’s one that’s not soon forgotten. At the end of last year, I wrote a piece reliving 2019’s SJ SaxMas, and I watched the included video of that concert again this morning to put myself in the SaxMas frame of mind even though I had no place to go because of our necessary lockdown. That still wasn’t enough holiday for the day. Continue reading →

How is living through the pandemic like space?

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By Ande Jacobson

I have long loved the world of Star Trek and science fiction in general. I can remember imagining possibilities as a child while walking to school, wishing that it were possible to be beamed up to a starship to travel to new worlds and join with others in exploring the vastness of space. In the real world of my childhood, I got to watch, along with the rest of the world, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked and jumped on the moon for the first time. Although very different from the pictures painted by my favorite television series, it was a breathtaking adventure that sparked many dreams. I later studied space travel and learned how manned space flight changed over time beginning with the U.S. Gemini and Apollo programs through the advent of Skylab, Mir, and the International Space Station. Various probes and telescopes continue to explore beyond the earth’s boundaries to give us crucial information about what’s really out there. We still haven’t achieved the level of development depicted in the Star Trek universe, nor have we discovered the kinds of life imagined by various science fiction writers, but we have grown outward and created stories, both real and imagined, related to what’s beyond our little blue planet. Continue reading →