As for talking to anyone from 106, I used to talk to Jorge, who was in our six grade class (do you remember him?), but lost touch with him. \u00a0Jorge also served in the Navy. After the Navy, Jorge was working as a para- professional at Bushwick High School while attending college to be a teacher. I also spoke to Pablo about 8 years ago. \u00a0Pablo was also in your class at the same time I was. \u00a0I don’t know if you remember him. \u00a0Sadly, Pablo dropped out of school and was into drugs. \u00a0It’s sad that most of the kids I grew up with ended up serving time in jail, getting into drugs, or are dead now. \u00a0I remember growing up, most of these kids made fun of my brothers and me because we had a curfew. \u00a0My parents were very strict and watched over us like\u00a0hawks. I thank my parents all the time. \u00a0I now live on Staten Island. \u00a0I bought a two family home and took my parents with me. \u00a0I appreciate them so much for how they managed to bring us up well despite the environment that I wanted them to live their last days in a peaceful environment. Well take care and God Bless.<\/p>\nP.S. I will try and send you some pictures of my kids soon.<\/p>\n
NELSON SERRANO<\/h4>\n
Nelson Serrano was a tall Spanish kid with red hair and freckles.\u00a0\u00a0 He was a gifted student by any standards,\u00a0another member of Class 6-306 some time in the early 1980s.\u00a0 He was one of the most brilliant group of kids that I ever had.\u00a0 On the city-wide tests, he scored in the 99th percentile in both reading and math.\u00a0 And he always had a neat smile on his face.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nearly a decade later I was approached by a short Spanish man while standing in the hallway outside of the office at PS 106.\u00a0 “Hi,” he said, “I am Nelson Serrano’s uncle.\u00a0\u00a0 I am not sure if you have heard that Nelson has been in prison for several years now after killing two drug dealers in a deal gone bad when he was 16 years old.\u00a0 Would you be willing to write a positive letter on Nelson’s behalf?\u00a0 He thinks that you and his sister are the only two who might be able to help him; we are trying to get his sentence communted.”<\/p>\n
I wrote the letter and a year later I received a letter from Nelson, from prision.\u00a0\u00a0 He said something like this:\u00a0\u00a0“Mr. Morris,\u00a0 Thanks for writing the letter for me.\u00a0 My appeal was turned down.\u00a0\u00a0 I would like to apologize to you.\u00a0\u00a0 You warned us of the dangers of drugs and I did not listen to you. I am sorry.\u00a0 Nelson Serrano”.<\/p>\n
It was amazing to me how some kids could be dragged under by the conditions in Bushwick while others were able to rise above it.\u00a0 Please feel free to share this with any of the youngsters in your life and ask them which Nelson they would like to be….<\/p>\n
I hope to be back soon with some M IV images to post; right now Canon has requested that I do not post any of the images that I created with my pre-production Mark IV bodies just yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two days ago, Canon released information on their next professinal digital camera body. I was fortunate to have one to test about two weeks ago. You can read my initital impressions on this BPN post:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/birdphotographers.net\/forums\/showthread.php?p=365077&posted=1#post365077<\/p>\n
The short story is that I ordered two of them immediately <smile><\/p>\n
Bulletin #301 & #302 <\/p>\n
BIRDS AS ART […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[88,27,33,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-88","category-anecdotes","category-bulletins","category-product-info-and-tutorials","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}