Odd Things My Wife's Seen


March 18, 2010 —  My wife doesn’t share my compulsion for jumping into camera frame with, well, just about everything. But she does dig visiting O.T.I.S. sites with me (or visiting "O.T.I.S.’s", as some of you have seemed to noun the acronym in your emails to me). She’s been my companion on probably 95% of what’s on this site and, since she’s into photography, is responsible for most of the pictures you see on O.T.I.S., as well. Especially the ones with me in them. In my sweeter moments, my pet name for her is tripod.

Sometimes, I’m able to talk her into frame for an O.T.I.S. article, like when she put on an alleged axe murderess’ dress or fed deadly beasts from the passenger seat of a car or helped me re-enact a famous alien abduction. Don’t worry, all that stuff got written into our marriage vows, so the law is on my side.

However, every once in a while, I’m able to get her into frame just for the pure joy of having her life documented with something. Other times I have to pretend to need to take a few test shots. I usually have to promise not to put those on the site, but with the advent of this article I’m hoping that we can just make that a standing broken promise. Of course, it works only rarely, so most of my on-site pictures of her are just pictures of her taking pictures, which is a pretty funny thing to see if you’re a random passerby.

Anyway, O.T.I.S. doesn’t have a lot of scenes for you to look behind, but here’s one of them.

He's not so mean once you get to know him 

"Big Tree" at Redwood National Park in California.

We have an open relationship when it comes to other species (New England Aquarium in Boston).

That also applies to inanimate objects like the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle in County Cork, Ireland.

That "What the Heck" stance is in reference to the upside-down waterfall 
behind her at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland.

An example of her dedication on the way up the Ghost Room at Ballygally Castle Hotel in Northern Ireland.

Waiting for the spirit to move her, I guess, in the abovementioned Ghost Room.

Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA.

She does like to pose with dead animals, though, like these foxes at the 
Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in D.C. It's one of the things I fell in love with her for.

Exhibit B: Tiger at the Museum of Science in Boston, MA.

Exhibit C: Bobcat at the Libby Museum in Wolfeboro, NH.

The referenced "Blast Zone" is from Mount. St. Helens in Washington state. Many people died to bring her that photo op.

Searching for whales off Gloucester, MA

It's cold in the century-old innards of the Peter Iredale in Hammond, OR.

Had I any advertisers, this is where I would split the article into two pages for more impressions. Somebody please sponsor my life.

Of course, 50% of O.T.I.S. is graveyards, so she finds herself among the dead a lot, like this grave at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery in Montreal, Canada. 

Working diligently for a shot of the grave of famous sculpture Daniel Chester French in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, MA. Still haven't gotten around to writing about him. Sorry, Wife.

Oversized tombstones for your amusement/reverence. Still in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA.

Grave of Grace Metalious, author of Peyton Place. 
Metalious was a side note in an O.T.I.S. piece about a serial killer.

The Exeter, RI, grave of Mercy Brown, New England's Last Vampire.

Distracting the geese beneath the grave monument for General Tom Thumb for me while I scoped out P.T. Barnum's grave.

A young girl buried in a barrel of rum in Beaufort, NC.

The grave of another young girl, this one in Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA.

We were both excited to move to New Hampshire, 
but sad that the Old Man skipped town a few years before we arrived.

Shopping for a periscope for our house at the U.S.S. Albacore submarine in Portsmouth, NH.


We wanted our daughter to have Louise Bourgeois' "Eyes" (Williamstown, MA).

So that's my wife. Sometimes she quite visibly wonders what she's gotten herself into.


UPDATE: Turns out she's still with me...one and a half years later, at least.