Salina, Kansas: May 1952 It's an ordinary town near the geographic center of the contiguous United States. Spring has brought green to the gentle hills, birds to the leafing trees, puffy clouds to the humid air. It has also brought the last member to an established doctor's family. "Lise, you have a new baby brother. What would you like to call him?" She had to think about this, but not for long. "The Gingerbread Boy" was foremost among the books she'd read recently and her four-year-old imagination seized the memory. "Let's call him Ginger!" That didn't last long. I wound up being Laurence, after my father and his father; perhaps they were just tired that day and couldn't come up with anything different. It doesn't matter. A life isn't contained within the few syllables of its name. Nor can it be contained within one Web page. If you want the real scoop you'll have to read this entire site. Still, that might leave you wanting more so I've written out some background material here. Call it influences that led to this Experimental Museum.
I was about seven years old when someone gave me a Brownie camera. Or maybe nine years old? Anyway, the square prints it provided were fascinating little windows of memory. Imagine: that tree out there, fixed forever in shades of grey on this piece of paper. The magic was expensive, and I uninterested in earning money enough to keep it going. Imagery remained latent. I was nineteen when photography came back into my life, with an inherited Kodak Instamatic and slide projector. It was a good camera, with a rangefinder and sharp lens, and seeing the square images burning bright upon the screen was dazzling. I took the camera with me on hikes, social events, bike rides. Along the way other influences made themselves manifest. My mother had done watercolor for a few years, and always was interested in decorating the house. From her I learned that the arrangement of things can be done with an eye to design that is itself attractive. Photography wasn't so much different: the result is a flat image whose elements are arranged within a frame. The Instamatic's square format eliminated guesses about format. I had to concentrate on what was within the viewfinder. Moving a few steps this way or that, crouching, changing the aim a bit right or left. Ah, there it is. Click. One day it didn't click. The camera was old and well travelled when I got it. I rode my bicycle over to the camera store that had been selling me film for years. "They don't make these any more." "What do you recommend?" "For creativity, you need one of these." It's frustrating. All of the things my old camera did automatically I now have to figure out for myself. The results are inconsistent, the rectangular format strange but I'm still in thrall to the glowing image on the screen when I manage to get it right. Gradually, fingers more accustomed to rock and wood become familiar with the delicate knobs and rings. Strangeness recedes. Light takes over, its color, its moods, its magic. If it is made of light some of its spirit can be caught and viewed again. The photograph is not the object, but a thing in itself worth making.	Yeow, I hate this. All this effort, it's hot, my sweat is dripping onto the newsprint page. All so that I can prove to someone who doesn't care at all that I can write letters between the lines. This way, not that way. No, no, that's all wrong. Do it again. The best thing in the world is the weekend, when I can ride my bicycle and imagine. Now it's required. Write the paper, read it and write in corrections, do final editing on the fly with the new typewriter. Something begins to awaken: words, stories, memories living on the page. Not so much for anyone else but because the process itself is interesting. Ordering the right words clearly. Wordy. It's too easy, this bright screen and sensitive keyboard. Fast fingers follow mind and words glow. Too many of them, but there's no going back to manual labor. Learning. Paring away the excess words, making the story quick like a continental divide storm. Fast flash, downpour, over and past. More learning. Most amazing: people will read what I write, and ask for more. The long silence breaks and the practice turns writing into a steady craft. It's like building. Selecting a word, placing it just so, feeling how it relates to the other words. Another surprise is how much work it is; a few hours of writing leave me wrung out, as if I'd made a sculpture or spent the day photographing. Gradual development. "Sorry, Don, I won't be hiking today. I have a story to finish." I see it. It's there in front of me. I can feel the road, the wind, the lean as I make the curve and the tires grip. Clouds, mountain, sparkle of water, oaks dark against the slope. It's there. Now make it words. Build a bridge that will carry the hills to someone else. Make the words live, leap off the computer screen and sear their minds so they will never forget: the purpose of motorcycling is beauty.	Images. But it's not safe. So, I clown around in the art classes, making sure nothing that means anything to me ever comes close to the clay. Still, my fingers enjoy the touch. In secret places my fingers explore materials. Clay made from carefully kneaded shale dug from the flood control channel. Smooth pieces of wood left dry when spring meltwater receded. Rough broken rocks, or round ones pulled from water that was ice an hour ago. New pale green needles on fragrant Douglas firs, soft and springy. My eyes follow the long curves of parallel mountainsides, wondering. Why are they formed this way? What are they made of? It is a sculptured world. Clouds rent by storm, or formed smooth and layered by steady strong winter winds over long ridges. Water, patient maker, worrying its way into fractured rock, finding its way. Year by year the land changes, carved, shaped. Signs of the shaper are left behind: dust in pockets, water in shallow descending flowlines. These are all things that take time to notice. Sensitivity. The secrets are hidden until you look, until you walk the land with open eyes, open ears, ready hands and fingers. Time, flow of color from white to new green to summer green to golden to white again. Cycles flowing within cycles, all absorbed by one fascinated boy. I try to tell others but the attempts die for want of time. Sand whispers in my hands. Quickly formable, soft and damp, staying where it's put. An arch. Build, feel, fail. And fail again, and forget until the whispering returns. An arch. Built of sand, standing. More arches, bigger and then modified. Another place, another arch. Falling, gone. Another pile of sand, ready. Boredom? Curiosity? Remembrance? Finally finding a way to put all of those feelings into a solid object? Carving, exploring, finishing, fascinating. That was in the fall of 1983. Seventeen years later I'm still fascinated with the shapes that remember the wind, the stone, the water and trees and time.
The $7600 Web Site It's yellow. My motorcycle is shot. For that amount of money I could get just about anything, but this one is yellow, waiting. Colorado. It's time to ride. Snow convinces me otherwise; I hole up in Tehachapi and watch the clouds fly overhead. Whatever happens here will hit Colorado in a couple of days; I return home. There's still time. From freezing rain to heat. Continuing, roasting. Where'd this come from? Day after day, closing the long desert passage. Time. It's a gift. Another is from Don, a collection of images from his backpack trip, with his notes, viewed in my new computer's Web browser. An illustrated story. It looks simple.

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larry.htm 1999 October 27, November 13, December 5
2000 February 17, 20 (design experiments)
2002 February 2 (finishing titles, HTML modernization, minor editing)