By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | There’s a new mug shot looking out at you today. And there’s a story behind that.
Brack
It goes back years ago to my days publishing a weekly newspaper in South Georgia. During the political season, many of the candidates would come in for the editor to help them in writing their “political announcement,” which would be a paid advertisement for the candidate in the newspaper up until the election.
We would help craft the candidate’s announcement. It might be even that same day, or a few days later, when his opponent would come in, and again we’d go through the job of putting into good form his announcement that he was seeking political office.
Sometimes, when we would ask the candidate where he stood on some of the issues, he would come back with: “What do you think?” Many of these candidates were willing to stand on either side of some issues. All they wanted was to get elected.
About the last thing these candidates did was to pull out a picture and hand it to us to run with their announcement. Often I would look at the photo, then look at the candidate (most always men), and realize that they seemed like two different persons. The photo they planned to use would almost always be that of a younger man, who looked nothing like the present-day candidate. Vanity, I guess.
Maybe it’s because of social media; maybe it’s because of digital cameras or even iPhones; but most of the candidates today offer recent photographs of themselves.
Those incidents with candidates years ago is what caused me to make sure that my photograph running alongside my column was of the present-day me, so to speak.
It’s been about five years since my last photograph, so today you see a new rendering of what evidently I look like today. (The photo was made by Tracey Rice of Peachtree Corners, in her new photographic venture after retiring. She does a good job and carefully arranges her clients to get the best view.)
Now as a consequence of constantly changing mug shots of me over the years, there’s another outcome.
We’ve had many people who I seldom see come up to me and comment on my aging in a rather nice way: “Man, you haven’t changed a bit!” What they do not recognize is that as I have routinely changed in my appearance over the years, I’ve keep new pictures before them, and what they are seeing is what they have been trained to see: more-or-less present day me.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt any that some of my changes aren’t evident when looking at my face. You see, unlike one of my uncles who was bald before he was age 40, my hairline from the front at least hasn’t changed all that much. Oh, of course, it’s no longer the brown of my youth, is thinner, and is graying more each day. Yes, I am balding, but not from the front, but from the back. (It surprises me when I see a photo of myself taken from the rear, and see this growing bald head. Yep, that’s me.)
So that’s the story of this new mug shot. If I am around in a few more years, expect another change so that people may say “You haven’t changed a bit.”
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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