And sometimes you just go "Whoa."

I got a facebook message out of the blue on Saturday night from a gentleman named Tim Nyberg. I didn't know Tim personally, but I do know his son: he's currently doing a project called "Mullet Like Me" :

In 1959 journalist John Howard Griffin darkened his skin for an undercover experiment with racial tensions that would later be publised as "Black Like Me." Now, fifty years later, a man with markedly less courage takes on a mission with markedly lower stakes.

Classy, in the very least.

Anywho, this email read:

"I'm going to do a painting based on your [black dress] profile photo...if you want to see it, contact me via Jake - or watch galleryfortytwo.com (online gallery) thanks for the inspiration - Tim Nyberg"



(the photo is the one that is now my picture here on my blog as well as on facebook and above)

I read it questioningly, sent an email to mulletman expressing my slight disbelief, and kind of forgot about it. Until today, when I received another message:

"Hi Bridget:

I did a painting based on your really nice, artful facebook photo. You can see it online at http://www.galleryfortytwo.com/recent

Hope you like it - thanks for the inspiration. - Tim Nyberg"

The painting is absolutely beautiful! I can hardly stand it. I looked up a little bit more and found out that Tim is also the author of the Duct Tape Books. (Minnesota classics, truly).

The best part is that the stories don't really end there...the original photo was actually taken in July of 2003 during All State Band Camp: I was on my way to the final concert when Matt, a trombonist, saw me twirling in the hallway. He said "Whoa can you do that again! Let me grab my camera!" I spun and spun around, and kept going til he said "done!" ---and then I fell promptly to the ground!

We sort of lost touch until my junior year of college, when he found the photo on his harddrive and sent it to me. I loved it, and it's been my profile picture ever since.

Matt did his undergrad at Duke, and he was very involved with the photography community there as well. The photograph he took of me, "Twirling Dancer," was displayed at The Duke Photo Group Student Photography Exhibition in Spring of 2006. He's now at Stanford for his masters in engineering, and is still involved in photography. See here for more of his work (it's fantastic. Texture, lighting...wow. He really has quite the eye).

This year at MIT, I met a first year in aero-astro, and she said she was from Duke...I asked her if she knew Matt, and she said she did! I then told her kind of offhand that "I think a picture of me was displayed at Duke? It's a black and white photo of a dancer.." And her eyes got huge-- "That's you? That's the picture that is on all of the Photography at Duke advertisements!"

And that's why life is amazing. Really, truly, amazing. Because there is always another story--you just have to ask the right questions.