February 5th, 2011%
 I-10, Arizona, 2003. Roadtrips through the desert are intense. This trip was from Santa Fe, NM to Tucson, AZ to Los Angeles, CA.
I always think the tires are going to melt if I drive through the Mojave Desert during the day, and I hate air-conditioning.
Gas stations arrive with mixed emotions. They exist to be abandoned, but they remind us that we are not completely independent while on the road. Water, candy, salty snacks. Never enough napkins. You step out of the car and realize what it feels like to wear your skin because it’s clinging to you like a wet swimsuit.
 First Street Into Town, Tucson, AZ. 2003. Speed becomes critical. Eighty-five is too slow. A hundred is just above easy, a little uncomfortable for me, even if my car can do it.
Everytime I go to Tucson, I have to map the things I know like trees and grass to the things that are there–dirt, rocks, cactus. The things in a desert don’t take up much space. Necessary or abandoned. You can pretty much tell what works and what is just too much work. The rest is sky and land and some hint of weather waiting to kill you.
Photos & Text by Judith Ossello
December 5th, 2010%
 The Mall. Washington, DC. June 2010. Washington, DC was my first city. Prior to 1997, I had never lived in a place where you could take cabs, see rats, and hate tourists.
At The Velvet Lounge, the bartender would figure out ways to get two drinks out of the money we brought. One night, a guy came into the bar to sell a plant. He was a very good salesman, and the plant was obviously taken from a neighboring house. The bartender convinced the guy that we were all cat owners which was argued and finally accepted as a reason not to buy house plants. This conversational approach to life seems typical of DC.
I left in 1998, but I’ve gone back several times. I show up as a tourist and slip into my friend’s life as a local.
 Theater District Drama. Washington, DC. June 2010. Humidity can be a drug. You think and move a little differently. Personal space becomes public space, but you ignore 90% of it. On hot days in Columbia Heights, you can actually feel thoughts, looks and comments while you hope for a breeze from anything moving faster than you.
Plus, late night clubbing put us on “Spanish Time” which meant we ran down to the museums an hour before they closed. This was confirmed by an actual guy from Spain in an SUV asking what time things closed as we crossed the street to the West Building around 4pm.
A fight caused by traffic stopped traffic. A man hit a woman. People on motorcycles took sides. The police eventually came and listened to multiple stories. No one felt rushed. No one seemed to notice we were in the theater district.
Photos & Text by Judith Ossello
November 20th, 2010%
 Train Yard. Sri Lanka. 1999. Half-way through Peace Corps in Jordan, we got a vacation and voted to go to the nearest tropical paradise which happened to be Sri Lanka. This was 1999 or so. The airport got bombed just after we left so I guess I could get a solid date based on that. Things with Iraq and Israel were already tense, plus we were non-Muslim women living in rural Jordan so it didn’t occur to us that the Sri Lankan Civil War would impact our feeling of being on vacation. I was personally excited to wear three quarter length skirts without getting looks.
That night, we caught the last bus for Adam’s Peak which was ruled by four or five young men. They tried to make us nervous by driving recklessly through the mountains. At one point, the radio was flung out of its compartment onto a nearby seat. I figured they probably didn’t want to kill themselves and didn’t worry too much about death. However, this is probably why we got an attitude with the drunk checkpoint guards with machine guns who ordered everyone off the bus. We decided to stay on the bus with the kind of determination used to ensure we didn’t sit next to men on Jordanian buses, which is consistent with cultural norms. Patience is your best weapon in these situations. No one likes to work too hard or wait too long.
 Stairs to Adam's Peak. Sri Lanka. 1999. You start climbing the stairs to Adam’s Peak around 3am so that you get to the top by sunrise. The hotel had no vacancy when we arrived so we slept on the floor for 3-4 hours before the climb. I can’t remember if we paid for that priviledge. The Sri Lankan music and lack of sleep gave the climb a surreal, David Lynch feeling. Very fitting for a pilgrimage, regardless of the purpose.
 Adam's Peak. Sri Lanka. 1999. These photos were taken from our trip to Adam’s Peak. Maybe we took the train from Ratnapura. The train broke down, and we walked to the road to catch a bus which had no windsheild. Some people who I had shared my water with on the train helped us make most of these decisions. None of this seemed unusual to them.
At the top of Adam’s Peak, you are above the clouds, and the regulars wear towels over their heads. We didn’t know to bring towels, but it is cold and you are sweaty from the climb so it makes sense.
Photos & Text by Judith Ossello
November 13th, 2010%
Photos & Text by Thomas Hirschy
When Thomas and I talked about these photos, the subject was mainly around change: moving to a new city, returning home, and relationships. We have always agreed that the energy of a place has a profound effect on who we are and how we feel. Sometimes, you can transform a place, but when we leave or return to a familiar place, we start to reconnect by reading our old stories rather than immediately writing new ones.
I took this beautiful autumn picture of the pond in the Boston Commons. After I took it I have to admit, I cried. I was here about 3 years ago with the man I loved and still love, but now I return to the same place alone. The pond the trees and the buildings still stand, but my relationship doesn’t.
 Autumn Remembers. Boston, MA. 2010 A magical door in such a magical place as Central Park, where every view takes your breath away.
 Central Park. New York City. 2010
October 23rd, 2010%
Photos & Text by Judith Ossello
In 2003, my best friend from college did an Americorp stint in Baltimore. She lived with a bunch of Johns Hopkins med students who were always away somewhere in Africa giving shots or something, and then she lived in a cat stink, alcoholic row house that wasn’t livable until the second floor. We spent most of our time exploring the pockets of Baltimore on foot and via taxi when pocket to pocket connections were too distant or dangerous.
Baltimore at night. I remember a Whisky Bar and liking Whisky and walking a block or two outside the bounds of the safe pocket. Two guys told us we were lost and should turn around and go back the way we came. The way they said it was almost pre-apologetic, like they’d be forced to rob us if we continued on this path. So we walked another block, got creeped out, took the next turn, and walked down an alley with scattered, vacant mattresses that made us silently catalogue all the types of drugs we knew to exist.
 Baltimore Alley, 2003 Being from the Midwest, fish was either a fish stick or an weird shaped fish plank of local lake Perch. There was the Whaler, but whatever. Eating seafood in Baltimore is pretty serious. It’s kind of a physical sport when you get down to it. Impossible crab, huge shrimp, and amazing mussels. After a full day of street fair drinking, we went to some pavillion where you got platefulls of the stuff. You can see one of the strategically placed sinks to wash your hands between this couple.
 Professional Crab Eaters, Baltimore, 2003
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Writer Loop Official Photographer Jenny Hoover currently lives in Bellingham, WA.
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