the May 2011 russellgraves.com Newsletter

MAY 2010

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Coming Attractions The Rise of Film It seems that good news is on the horizon. In July, the documentary film that my brother and I produced and directed will make its national debut.

I’ve mentioned it before but it bears saying again: Bois d’arc Goodbye was a labor of love.

Filmed over the course of about two years, the film takes viewers on a journey down the slow, muddy creek that flows through the county where I was raised.

Part historic and part personal journey, the film is a look at the natural, historical, and cultural

importance of a creek that soon, will be flooded under a reservoir and the water will be shipped to another part of the state. When flooded, thousands of acres of farm and ranch land as well as increasingly rare old growth hardwood bottomlands will be lost forever.

The film debuts on the Documentary Channel. The Documentary Channel is available primarily on Dish Network and Direct TV but it is also available on several cable networks. With the airing, the film will be shown in an astounding 25 million households.

live now. In addition, I’ll soon be working on projects about the Red River in Texas, the Pease River and be telling the story of a high school football team. It’s going to be a fun summer and I look forward to telling these stories.

On another front, you may have seen mine and my brother’s Hunt Junky series that we did for a year or two. About a month ago we were honored to be asked to be a part of a television series.

Therefore, look for he and I to be appearing on television sometime early next year.

Have a great month!

While I don’t yet know the date and time when the film will show, I’ll be sure to send updates via this newsletter, my blog, and Facebook and Twitter pages.

russell@russellgraves.com

On other film fronts, I am currently working on a short film about where I am from as well as where I

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Featured Column Staying Connected I have two kids and a while back, the youngest spent the weekend in the hospital due to an upper respiratory issue. On the outside, he looked and seemed fine but inside (according to the caring staff at the Childress Regional Medical Center) was another story and his hospitalization was a necessity.

So for an entire weekend, my wife, a cadre of nurses, and I did our best to entertain the little guy.

We had wheelchair races, watched cartoons, and played with the buttons on the hospital bed way more than we should have. For the most part, he had a good time but

by Sunday morning, cabin fever was creeping.

While he slept on my lap on Saturday afternoon, I thought back to the first time he and I shared time in the

outdoors. I was checking on one of my photo locations and took him with me. At the time, he was about six months old and had just enough gregariousness to enjoy an outing to the country.

“He’s too young...” my wife Kristy insisted.

“We’ll be okay,” I assured.

“Besides,” I postulated with certainty, “You and your friends bond with one another by talking.

Men bond by doing things together and this is something WE can do together.”

So off we went to kick around in the mesquite brush for an hour or so. An hour, I figured, was just enough time for him to keep the diaper in which he wore, clean.

For a while, I messed with a deer feeder while he sat in the red dirt and played with a stick and a couple of rocks. I could tell he was having a great time. He didn’t know why he was having so much fun playing with innocuous objects but his intuition instructed him to enjoy the moment.

I’m no

psychologist but I think his basal instincts are common - especially since he was born to a family who makes the outdoors a lifestyle. My mom and dad loves the outdoors and fostered that love in me and I have consciously passed the appreciation on to first my daughter and now my son. My advice that I mirror for them is simple - appreciate the natural world around you and the simple things that make life notable.

I get e-mails nearly on a daily basis from folks who seemed trapped by modern life and long for a time when they were younger and played in the sun all day. In fact, a recent e-mail from a gentleman in Houston reveled, succinctly, a similar sentiment I hear from people all of the time. “...I spent most of my childhood summers and winters working farms in the blackland prairie of the Pecan Gap and Ladonia [Texas] area. I couldnʼt avoid making my way to the rat race, but I look back and appreciate the experience of small town Texas and spending my childhood outdoors.”

I’d do good to take my own advice from time to time. I too get caught up in things that when looked back upon, don’t seem nearly as urgent as they did at the time. In fact, we would all do good to heed, from time to time, the recommendation made by my little boy when I asked him what he was going to do when he got home from the hospital.

“Go outside and ‘pway’...”

From the syndicated newspaper column, “Russell Graves Outdoors”

Cowboys When you live in rural Texas, the Old West is still new.

Cowboys are an iconic image of life that’s steeped in pride of the west and, especially, in and tradition.

Texas.

I live in the Texas panhandle where the Old West isn’t that far away. Out here in the big ranch country, being a cowboy - and living a life that close to nature and livestock - is an everyday way

THE SKINNY: VARIOUS CANON CAMERAS WITH A VARIETY OF LENSES

Website Woes Technology is great as long as it works.

Check out russellgraves.com often for new photos, articles, and blog entries!

Recently, I discovered that the database on my search engine was corrupt. What that meant was that when you’d search for a keyword, the image results returned were unpredictable.

For example, when I searched the word “dove” i got images of fires, deer hunting, and some cowboys.

I believed that all is good now but if you run into any issue, please let me know.

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