Monday, January 30, 2006

Funeral duty today

I'm being a photojournalist today.
I'm driving up to Lafayette (Ind.) to photograph the funeral of a 23-year-old soldier in the 101st Airborne Division who was killed last week in Iraq.
The funeral will be in the Lafayette Christian Reformed Church. My first wife and her family were members there and that's where we were married, so I know the place well. The last time I was there was for my mother-in-law's funeral in 1991.
I don't plan to go inside for the funeral services because I don't want to be intrusive. So I'll stay outside and shoot the casket coming out and keep an eye out for those malignant imbeciles from the moronic Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kans., who think casualties in Iraq are America's payback for not putting gay people in concentration camps. They would have been right at home in the Third Reich.
Then I'll beat it over to the cemetery and shoot that scene.
It's overcast and it will be around 40 degrees by then. The last two funerals I shot were for police officers killed in the line of duty and they were on considerably colder days. Just once, I'd like to cover one of these things in nice weather, assuming I have to cover one at all.

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