By Jim Young

Heavy rains brought flooding to the Chicago area this week. Though most people were already starting the clean-up process, there was still some flooding just north of the city.

I headed up to see how they were coping since the Fox River had yet to crest. As I pulled into town, most of the area looked fairly dry but once you got closer to the lake, some of the streets were several feet under water. As I came around a corner, I could see an American flag hanging over a half-sunken retro soda machine sitting in what looked like a lake, but it was actually someone’s backyard.

The family seemed unusually calm about their circumstances. Though they had been stuck in the same flooded state for four days with more rain on the way, they had several layers of sandbags around their house and a couple of pumps going at full speed. They were just trying to hang in there and hope for the best.

The water level in the next area of town was a couple feet deeper. I put on my chest waders, grabbed one camera and a lens and slowly trudged through the water. Each step I took, the water seemed to creep higher and higher. One, two, three feet, and all the way up to my chest. I was not sure what I was walking on but it was definitely not a road and the water was too deep and murky to tell where I was going as my feet started slowly sinking into the mud. Making my way back down the street, I could see an orange object bobbing in the water. Someone had used a glove as a kind of “marker” by tying a rope to the end of it.

While holding my phone in one hand, and $8,000 worth of camera equipment in the other, I tried to keep my camera just above the waterline to shoot the picture. But I was starting to slip as I rested my chin on the water to look through the viewfinder. Yes, this was definitely not a good idea. I don’t think I could explain trashing all this equipment for an instagram…

By Jim Young

Ava and Jaidon have two moms. Theresa Volpe is “mommy” and her partner Mercedes Santos is “mama”.

GALLERY: TWO MOMS, TWO KIDS, ONE FAMILY

They have been together for over 20 years. They met each other while working for the same publishing company in Chicago in 1992. Theresa says that Mercedes is the person she was meant to spend her life with, she just happens to be another woman.

In 2002, they decided to find an anonymous donor so they could have their own biological children. First came Ava, now a quiet and insightful 8-year-old talented musician, and then her brother Jaidon, an energetic and playful four year old.

Theresa and Mercedes are part of a lawsuit to get same-sex marriage legalized in Illinois. There are nine U.S. states that recognize same-sex marriage, and Illinois currently has legislation waiting to be voted on in the House after the Illinois State Senate approved a bill to legalize same-sex marriage on Valentine’s Day this year.

After Illinois legalized civil unions on June 1, 2011, Theresa and Mercedes were one of 30 couples who had their ceremony in Millennium Park, but felt it was just the first step to their ultimate goal – to be legally recognized as married.

Two years ago their son Jaidon was hospitalized. Theresa wasn’t allowed to see her son because the hospital did not have a policy for two mothers, and Mercedes was already in the room with him.
Asked if they felt they had become “activists” Theresa says, yes, maybe but they were doing this all for their children – they needed to know that these are their rights. Theresa and Mercedes wanted them to be a part of the process and to be treated fairly.

When preparing to testify before an Illinois Senate Executive Committee hearing, Theresa told Ava to be prepared that there was probably going to be people saying bad things about “families like ours”.

Although they may not meet some people’s definition of a traditional family, they are definitely a family.

“ram nI’ tay”

Which in the Klingon language means “Festival of the long night”, because fictional alien cultures obviously don’t observe Christmas.

SLIDESHOW: A Klingon Christmas Carol

Having seen Christmas decorations up since before Thanksgiving Day and hearing the cringing sound of carols in shopping malls everywhere, I was looking for a different way to ring in the holiday cheer and what better way than to cover a take on the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol” as performed by Klingons.

Klingons, for those not fortunate enough to be raised on Star Trek as a child, are aliens from the television series and though the show has been off the air for over 40 years, it continued on through movies and devoted fans everywhere.

A Chicago based theatre company used the language created by philologist Dr. Marc Okrand, who was hired by Paramount Pictures to develop the language and it is the first full-length play ever to be produced entirely in the Klingon language.

The dialogue spoken by the actors is translated and projected onto a screen for the audience to follow along, and although the script is modified to reflect an alien culture, the premise remains the same with an actor playing Scrooge or SQuja’ and a tiny Klingon puppet “tImHom” playing the part of Tiny Tim who brought huge laughs from the audience.

I feel a little bit more enthused about the upcoming holiday season, though I was secretly hoping Capt. Kirk would drop in as Santa Claus…

The political game always seems the same to me, only the players change.

This is my third Presidential campaign and I have always been fascinated with U.S. politics. This time around it was the early impact of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, all the way to Romney’s run up to election day that intrigued me.

It all began 18 months ago when I was based in Washington D.C. and started shooting with a Hasselblad x-pan panoramic film camera while covering President Barack Obama. I had never used a rangefinder before and had to remember how to manually focus a camera.

GALLERY: POLITICS ON FILM

Shortly after I started the project, I moved to Chicago. A year and a half before election day and the campaign was already in full swing. A growing list of Republican challengers lined up for a chance to go up against the President.

With my proximity to Iowa, I made a half a dozen trips to Iowa, the early stages of the campaign where the contenders tested their stump speech and their handshakes. Candidates came and went and in the end only one was left standing, former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney.

I like how film is timeless. There is something about the tangible nature of film, though they were just snapshots along the trail during the campaign. Maybe one day, people will look at film and wonder what it was all about but I like that there is no mistaking where the product comes from. It’s not filtered, manipulated or cropped. I shot a black and white film project with a $20 plastic film camera on President George W. Bush in 2008, a project on the Presidency in 2010 shot with a polaroid-type camera, and now the xpan.

With only days to go, I am heading back out on the trail for the last week with Romney. Though I have no idea how it will all finish, it has been an interesting story.

I think one day I will be forced to jump on the Instagram wagon but until then… I just ordered my next “old school” film camera. After all, the race for the 2016 White House begins November 7th.

1 in 88

Those are the odds that a child in the United States is born with Autism or a related disorder, according to the latest estimate from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Fragile X is the most common known genetic cause of autism.

Both of Holly Roos’ children have Fragile X. Parker is an energetic and expressive 12 year old; and Allison, though possessing the same amount of youthful playfulness, displays much milder symptoms than her older brother. They play together like most brothers and sisters, enjoy the same cartoons on television, and even play the drums and video games together. Both are enrolled in a clinical trial of a drug to help treat Fragile X.

SLIDESHOW: LIVING WITH FRAGILE X

I introduced myself and right away Allison wanted to show me her room. It was pink and purple, with toys and princesses everywhere, much like many 9 year old girls. Parker was curious at first but soon just went about his routine. After Parker went to bed, I stayed up with Holly for a few more hours just to talk and learn about their story and where they are now. As a child, Parker started out developing normally but slowed when it came to his speech development. He has been on the clinical trial drug STX209 since he was 10.

Holly says it has given them all a life and let Parker out of a “box”. Before he joined the trial, he barely spoke. She told me that a couple of weeks into the trial drug, she had not see any noticeable changes until one day Parker broke a glass and said to her, “I am sorry Mom, I love you”. She cried because it was the first time she had heard those words from her son.

I spent the whole next day with them since they were home from school on break, and it was a non-stop day of activities. Coloring Easter eggs, biking, two trips to the tennis courts, basketball, a trip to the video store, playing on a trampoline…They have a very active life.

Finally, at 9pm, Parker kissed his mother goodnight and he went to bed. I packed up and started my four hour drive back home to Chicago. Holly invited me to come along for their visit at the Fragile X Clinic and Research Program at Rush University Medical Center a week later for a follow up examination and testing. Parker brought two of his favorite inflatable lawn ornaments (he owns about 40 of them), which he uses as a kind of “security blanket”. They filled the cramped examination room. Despite the lack of space they were a playful family; tickling each other and playing games.

Holly is one of the most caring, loving and patient people I have ever met. I was exhausted just watching them all together.

But Parker is not cured. The drugs are helping him but he still throws tantrums, he sometimes slaps at his mother and himself, and he yells when he gets frustrated. He is also an enthusiastic and happy boy, and surrounded by those who love him. Holly says it’s a long way from the days when Parker would leave huge bite marks when he would clamp down on her arms, which forced her to wear long sleeved shirts all year long to hide them. But Parker continues to improve and she is hopeful that there is a life ahead for her children.

I am hopeful too…

View a large format slideshow here

Remote cameras can produce great pictures, but they are not always easy to set up. To put a camera in a position that would be impossible for a person to shoot from can produce interesting images, but it takes creativity and a lot of technical planning.

In March I went for a walk-through with organizers and news media for the upcoming NATO Summit to be held in Chicago in May. For years now we have set up remotes on the ceiling looking down on the meeting table for political summits and we wanted to set one up for this summit as well. We took a look at what would be the summit room, which at the time was completely empty and as bland as any other empty convention center room. In the week before the summit it would be transformed into a polished meeting room for world leaders and we hoped that we would be allowed to mount a remote camera as well. The idea was to shoot an overall photo of all the leaders sitting at the table for their meeting surrounding the giant NATO seal on the floor. The only way this could be done was with a remote camera because with the height we would need to be at to achieve the image, the camera could only be mounted up in the ceiling among the overhead lights.

We had never actually done this at a NATO summit before. The previous overhead cameras had been at G8, G20 and Nuclear Summits run by different organizers. In the final week before the summit we asked again. At first the answer seemed to be no, but then the officials suddenly came back with a “Yes, you can put up the camera, but you have to put it up immediately.” The other stipulation was that we could not use radio transmitters to trigger the shutter of the camera during the meeting; it would have to be hardwired with long cables.

Due to our previous experience doing this at the other summits, we had learned how to control the camera and trigger it live with a laptop at a remote location, with the photos downloading back instantly so that we could push them straight out to our clients. Our Washington pictures editor Jim Bourg had sent me some of the special equipment and software needed in advance. Here in Chicago the technical challenges of controlling the camera from afar were done in consultation with our Reuters staff technician Michael Berrigan, who has found all kinds of creative ways to overcome obstacles with our remote cameras over the years. Despite having to set up the camera immediately after the approval, we would still be setting it up well in advance of the actual meeting and would not be able to touch the camera for days before it shot the pictures. The advantage of this setup was that we would also not have to wait for hours after the event to collect the card with the images once the pictures were taken. They would be on our laptop and ready for transmission within seconds.

At the last minute we were finally given a window of a couple of hours to run the cabling, mount the camera and test it. Unfortunately, because the room was now sealed off by constructed walls, scissor lifts could no longer get access to the room.  All the work would have to be done atop a tall ladder, reaching about 25 feet up to the bottom of the light rigging.

I am not afraid of heights, but it is very nerve racking standing that high up on top of a ladder without anything to hold onto for safety. But when it came to getting the camera’s AC power adapter installed in the light rigging to power it continuously for several days, and more than a 100 feet of cabling running along a bar to the drop area behind the translation booths where we would trigger the camera, we turned to the trained convention center riggers for help.

Before mounting anything on the ceiling we first had to get the U.S. Secret Service to look at all of our gear and approve what we would be installing to make sure that it would be safe hanging above the leaders’ heads. Everything that we put up had its own safety cable attached to make sure that it could not fall from above. Once they had decided there would be no security issues I “volunteered” to climb up and hang the camera, compose the angle and focus it. The camera itself was up and running as we anxiously held our breath to see if everything would work as hoped. We launched the software on my laptop and there it was; the picture that we wanted to shoot. On the laptop we were able to see a real time live view from the camera. We would use this to decide when to shoot the pictures since we would not be able to see the actual event taking place because we were located in another room.

We would have to wait until Sunday for the real test of the planning and preparations and hoped that it would produce the photos we had wanted from the 2 days of the Summit.

Everything went perfectly. We could see a military ceremony taking place in the center of the table with all the leaders arrayed around the sides and then later a clean picture of the seal and all the leaders at the table holding their meeting, exactly as we had hoped for. From the time we pressed the virtual shutter button on the laptop screen it took just a second or two before the pictures were on the laptop to be prepared for transmission. I edited the images as soon as they dropped into a folder on my computer, captioned them and got them ready to be transmitted before the 15 minute event was even over. NATO would not allow us to transmit from inside the room, but after a 5 minute walk back to our filing area, images were ready to be sent to our Global Picture Desk in Singapore to go out on the wire to our clients. Overall it was a very successful operation for us, albeit a scary and anxious setup, but it in the end it produced an important image of a historic event.

Now will anyone volunteer to go up and get that camera down from there?

I found out about the program, “Ballet Class for Kids with Movement Disabilities”, while flipping through a brochure as I waited for my daughter at her ballet class.

I contacted the instructor Dr. Citlali Lopez-Ortiz, who has a Ph.D in Kinesiology and a Masters in Dance, to see if I could photograph the weekly class. A week later she said the parents and instructors agreed and I could join them on Sunday.

I met eight-year-old Samara Almanza, who was dressed perfectly in all pink; tutu, tights, ballet shoes and all.

She was all smiles as I introduced myself to her and her father. He has to hold her to keep her upright but says she loves the class and anxiously looks forward to it every week. Her grandmother arrived and was overjoyed to see her. The class uses a group setting so the children can be with their peers and use ballet as a creative outlet as they move; blending it with physical rehabilitation to improve posture and motor control, and by using live piano music to facilitate the movement.

Samara was helped into class by 4 instructors, one holding her head; the others helping to move her limbs to simulate walking.

It was a very energetic and physical class with constant interaction between the instructors and the students. Each child has two assistants and Lopez-Ortiz moved from child to child to ensure the proper technique and to motivate the class.

The children all have varying degrees of Cerebral Palsy but one thing is clear; there is a love of the class by the students and by the volunteers too. The class ended with them practicing their bows in the mirror. Laughing and smiling, its was just like watching my own daughter out there.

(View a slideshow of images here)

“How does a trip to Revillo, South Dakota sound?” asked my editor. “Sure, ok?! And where is that exactly?”

I have been to quite a few places in my life, but I don’t think that is one of them.

It was for a story on 12 foreign exchange students, mostly from Asia and Europe who came to this town in the middle of America, population 152, to attend a school which is one building housing 140 students from kindergarten to grade 12.

My day started at 3am to head out for a flight to Minneapolis, followed by another 3 and a half hour drive to the town. First, never trust your GPS getting to Revillo. I made it the first 160 miles in good order but the last 10 miles put me on a makeshift gravel road with farm fields as far as the eyes could see in all directions. When recounting the story to the locals, they had a good laugh. They too were not even sure what “road” I was on.

I was curious as to how the students assimilated into the school and their life after hours. Not only did they have to cross barriers of language, culture and thousands of miles from home but also to adapt to a Midwestern winter climate and the isolation of small town America, where everybody knows everybody.

I met with the principal of the school and was quickly introduced to the students before they broke from lunch and scattered to their classes. It would be hard to get lost, since all of the high school classes are in one hallway.

There was no shortage of activities to fill up their time after the final bell rings for the day. Tina and Amy, two members of the school’s cheer team, took time to teach the younger kids some choreography to the song “Footloose”, followed by a fill of Valentine’s Day spirit by inflating mylar balloons to distribute to student’s lockers and cutting out paper hearts to use as address cards for flowers. It was almost 7pm, hours after the final school day bell had rung and they were still scurrying down the halls as I ran off to visit one of the host families who have invited me into their home. The family sat down to dinner and a prayer was given in thanks for their food, and for having me come into their lives. I was completely taken off guard; we had only just met a couple of minutes earlier. But it had become clear to me that was who they are…a family always reaching out and sharing their home with others.

Hee-hyeon Han, one of the girls from Seoul, referred to her hosts as “second family”. She called them “mom” and “dad”. This was her home and she had no desire to want to leave, though she had spent more than a year in the U.S., away from her family in South Korea.

To see the relationships and bonds they have developed was astonishing. None of the 12 knew each other before coming to the United States in August, but you would never know it. They were so open and tightly knit with each other and their host families after such a short time and to overcome the language was amazing to see.

I was up at 5am the next day to take in the morning bustle of the Hoyles’ household, who were hosting two of the girls, and it was time to celebrate their first Valentine’s Day.

Posing for photos, opening their presents, just like Christmas morning, which they also celebrated for the first time just two months earlier. Joking and playing with their host families even well before sunrise, you would swear that they have been a family their whole lives.

Later that day, a bus load of students headed out to Waverly for a mini tournament with their school’s rival. The cheerleaders and basketball teams were well represented by the town’s new residents

It was a great experience to see how these students explored the new world they found for themselves. Having lived in the United States for the last six years, I sometimes feel like a stranger in my adopted country; a feeling that I don’t think ever crosses their minds.

(View a slideshow of images here and a full story here)

Adding to the toll, a 53-year-old man who was trapped in his collapsed home in Harveyville, Kansas, was removed from life support at a hospital and died, state officials said on Thursday.

Another nine people in Kansas suffered storm-related injuries that required hospital care, state emergency management spokeswoman Sharon Watson said.

The worst loss of life from the line of “super-cell” storms, which marched across the Midwest and produced 35 tornado reports from late Tuesday through Wednesday, was in Harrisburg, where six people died.

A powerful tornado tore a path through a residential neighborhood and a shopping district that were virtually unrecognizable.

Scores of volunteers poured in from around the region along with offers of food, clothing and construction help.

“We are wonderfully overwhelmed,” Harrisburg City Clerk Sally Wofford said. “We still have a lot of areas to clear. We live in a town where people help people.”

Power company crews were out on Thursday restoring electricity, and several residents sifted through rubble for something to salvage. Occasionally, a chain-saw roared to life, breaking the quiet.

Another 100 people were injured in Harrisburg, authorities said. The local hospital sustained damage and evacuated some patients, but its emergency room was functioning.

The storms were also blamed for three deaths in Missouri, and three others in Tennessee as the violent weather moved eastward, officials said.

The body of one of three Tennessee victims, who were all women, had not been recovered yet from the ruins of her home, which was teetering on a hillside, officials said.

“It is a very intricate operation” extricating her from the home that was blown off a hill, said DeKalb County First Department spokesman Brandon Smith. “It’s resting partially on the hillside in some trees and limbs and unstable soil.”

Friday could bring more rough weather, forecasters said.

“Tomorrow looks like it’s going to be another bad day for severe weather. All the parameters are coming together — humidity, wind shear, a very strong jet stream,” said AccuWeather.com meteorologist Henry Margusity.

He predicted multiple lines of thunderstorms crossing Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee — with several densely populated areas in the storms’ likely path Friday evening.

The tornado that struck Harrisburg was rated an EF-4 by the National Weather Service, one notch below the strongest category and capable of leveling buildings. Margusity said the same storm cell produced a suspected twister that damaged the tourist strip in the music city of Branson, Missouri.

Kentucky emergency management spokesman Buddy Rogers said officials will meet with National Weather Service forecasters to “get a feel for what could happen tomorrow.”

This week’s deadly storm outbreak raised concerns that this year could see a repeat of 2011 when 550 people were killed by twisters, the most in nearly a century.

(Reporting By Jim Young, Bruce Olson, Tim Ghianni; Writing by Andrew Stern; Editing by Paul Thomasch)

(Click on the images to view in high resolution)

The Fair is one of the first unofficial steps in the run for the Presidency. The candidates go through their rights of passage from flipping pork chops, eating the latest deep fried concoction, and shaking hands with anyone within arm’s reach, while the sights and smells of the Fair conjures up memories of my own childhood.

The candidates roam around the grounds holding their walking photo-ops, with the press corps following their every move, though I found myself occasionally walking off in brief downtime between candidates to grab snapshots of the environment.

The images are paired together as two parts of a whole from the same assignment. One half is the news and my job, the other stemmed from my memories and how the two are strangely connected.