Short Pump & Richmond, Virginia
Alyona displays a pencil drawing of Shawn she recently completed.*
Linda works on a drawing of an apple during Saturday morning drawing classes at the Daily Grind with artist Paul Steinberg ...*
... while Paul hangs one of his paintings.*
After several days of rain the sun breaks through the clouds and lights up Short Pump Town Center.**
Wind and rain blew down most of our fall color during the storm, which was the remnant of Hurricane Ida.**
Shawn cleans the Daily Grind at the end of the day.**
Jenine's other front tooth has been threatening to come out for weeks, yet hangs on tenaciously in spite of her efforts to remove it.**
Jenine is also working on a book of songs for the holidays.**
Richmond
Meade Skelton and the Meadow Street Band perform at Tabernacle Baptist Church at a party for ...**
... the release of Meade's new CD and vinyl record, "From the Outside Looking In."**
*Photographed with a Leica M8
**Photographed with a Canon 5D Mark II
Sarah returns to the Daily Grind. She was a long-time employee now studying music in New York City. She's in town for a CD release by Conshafter, the band she plays in.
The Apple Store dresses for Christmas with an iPhone app tree. It's really pretty cool with app icons mixed with traditional Christmas symbols.
A rainy afternoon brings people out of the wet and cold into the warmth and fantasy of Apple computers.
Nearby Sandhu waits for customers in Vellano Luggage, his shop in Short Pump Town Center. He's an American citizen from Punjab. His mother is in her 80s and still in Northern India. She lives within a couple of hours the Golden Temple where Indian troops under orders from Indira Ganhdi killed nearly 500 Sikh citizens in 1984. The attack was launched in response to deteriorating order in the region. Gandhi was later assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.
Sadie and Toby enjoy one of the first fires of the season along Copperas Creek. 
Fall color in the rain. More rain and wind gusting to 50 miles per hour may mean most of the leaves will be gone tomorrow.
I have known Hirut for several years. She is one of the servers at Su Casa. She is from Ethiopia and has a son who was born in Richmond. Su Casa is one of those places where the wait staff and cooks don't turn over. It's not only a great place to eat, it's evidently a great place to work.
Sadie waits for me to go to bed. It's our nightly ritual.
Yura, foreground, and Galena Chekhovskiy — good friends from Belarus. We've known each other and worked together for nearly 20 years. They were in Raleigh for a meeting of ABRO (the American Belarussian Relief Organization), a 501c3 non-profit agency that works with children exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Yura is director for a sister organization in Belarus.
Galena and Yura, with Joe and Danita Strong. Joe and Danita are the directors of ABRO. For information on the organization see www.abro.org.
