OK ... so my home isn't my castle????

Let me get this straight ... I am NOT allowed to defend myself against an intruder in Wisconsin?

Hmmm ... this bears some looking into.

So let's say that I'm enjoying an evening at home, stretched out on the couch, and I hear a commotion outside my door. Before I can get to the door, it bangs open and a very large, very drunk fellow subject barges in and demands to know what I'm doing in his house. Even from across the room, I can smell the beer on his breath ... but it doesn't stop me from noticing the fact that his hands are balled into fists the size of small hams ... and he's pissed as hell, and coming straight at me.

OK, got that scene firmly fixed in your mind? Let's try another scenario.

Kathy and I are asleep upstairs. Being a light sleeper, I can't help but hear the tinkle of breaking glass downstairs. Throwing on a robe, I creep to the top of the stairs. All I can see in the dark at the bottom of the stairs is a burly arm carrying a baseball bat. (After a lifetime of working in darkrooms, I have excellent night vision.) No one in my family OWNS a baseball bat, much less uses one as a "master key" to open the patio door.

(Q) What do these two scenarios have in common? (A) Wisconsin lawmakers say I don't have any real options to defend Kathy, Zak and myself.

According to Wisconsin legislators, my only recourse is to use pepper spray on my assailant and dial 9-1-1... and hopefully keep away from swinging fists, baseball bats or worse. (According to a retired police friend of mine, in such situations the police are little better than armed historians. "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.")

You see, in Wisconsin, a person's home ISN'T his/her castle, because we have no Castle Doctrine in our state laws here. We are obliged to retreat before home intruders.

Castle Doctrine exists in 31 states, and is defined thus: A homeowner CAN use deadly force to defend himself or his property, under the following conditions:

*An intruder must be making (or have made) an attempt to unlawfully and/or forcibly enter an occupied residence, business or vehicle.The intruder must be acting illegally—e.g. the Castle Doctrine does not give the right to attack officers of the law acting in the course of their legal duties

*The occupant(s) of the home must reasonably believe that the intruder intends to inflict serious bodily harm or death upon an occupant of the home

*The occupant(s) of the home must reasonably believe that the intruder intends to commit some other felony, such as arson or burglary

*The occupant(s) of the home must not have provoked or instigated an intrusion, or provoked or instigated an intruder to threaten or use deadly force

*The occupant(s) of the home may be required to attempt to exit the house or otherwise retreat (this is called the "Duty to retreat" and most self-defense statutes referred to as examples of "Castle Doctrine" expressly state that the homeowner has no such duty).

We almost had a reasonable law here, once.

The Wisconsin Assembly passed a Castle Doctrine bill in 2007, but the heavily-liberal State Senate allowed the law to die. The bill would have created immunity for an act of self-defense for any person who uses deadly force while in his/her residence and is not engaged in illegal activity.

Liberal politicians scoffed at the proposal, calling it the "Shoot the Milkman Law." (Although, I should point out that, even here in the Dairy State of Wisconsin, we haven't had milkmen in decades ... but I digress.) Media loudmouths decried a return to the shootouts of the Wild West if such a law were to pass.

But in Florida, where I was licensed to carry a weapon, no such state of armed anarchy ever materialized, despite the fact that Florida takes Castle Doctrine one step further to the "Stand your Ground Law." As my cop friend explained it, if someone was breaking into my condo (I lived on the ground floor,) all the rights in the case were with me -- the law-abiding citizen -- not the intruder.

A friend of mine on the West Coast is probably going to get pissed when she reads this. She'll likely say something like, "So, if Zak is coming home late some night, and had to break in because he forgot his keys, you'd load up a handgun and shoot?" She makes an excellent point.

The answer, by the way, to Mary's question, is "No." (Besides, if Zak ever breaks into this house because he left his keys and lost his mind, thus preventing him from using his cell phone to gain entrance, he's got bigger worries.)

As an armed citizen and resident of Wisconsin, I may have -- hopefully soon -- some rights to self defense in such a case. However, I truly feel I also have the responsibility to myself and my family to ensure that deadly force is necessary and that no other way exists to protect myself and my property.

But I want the right to make that call! I want the backing of the law!

But I don't expect such a law to make it any easier on me.

This sort of reminds me of the time I was teaching my daughter Johanna to drive. A teenage girl, she was a little giddy at the prospect of freedom, as symbolized by the car keys I'd placed in her hands. I quickly quashed that with a dose of reality.

"This isn't just a car," I told her, "it's a killing machine if you use it wrong!" She quickly doused the giggles and got her head back into the driver's seat.

That "killing machine" label, obviously, applies even more to the .40 cal Springfield Armory XD pistol I now intend to keep handy. I feel that having the pistol nearby, and not needing it, is FAR better than needing it some dark night, but not having it.

But frankly, Mary's "friendly fire" scenario is going all-but-guarantee that I probably won't sleep any more soundly because of it.

Passion for photography? Oh, yeah ... I remember that!

Thanks to my daughter, Christine, I was introduced to a young (younger than me, anyway,) firebrand of a photographer today.

Erinn Finlan, red-headed, mid-30s, enters the room about 15 minutes ahead of herself, so barely contained and energetic she is. She's tall enough to be an imposing figure ... I would say she HAS to be tall in order to compactly package up the passion and energy for photography she brings with her.

Until she walked in, I had almost forgotten about that passion part.

You see, I have always loved being a photographer. I love everything about it.

I love the gear. I love the math. I love the mechanics and electronics. I love the imaging. I love looking at photographs. I love shooting photographs. I love looking down at my side and seeing my well-worn Domke bag full of Nikons and lenses. I love talking photography. I love teaching photography. Formerly, I even loved the darkroom work, even though I came out into the light at the end of the day with eyestrain and smelling of Sodium Hypo-sulfate or Formaldehyde.

So like many of my generation, who were always taught "Do what you love and the money will follow," I began shooting for a living.

I discovered I was quite good at it ... not only the image formation part, but -- and sometimes especially -- the customer care part of it. I could make a client do what I wanted them to do (so as to get a good shot,) and yet never made them feel as though I was pushing too hard. As my not-so-sainted father used to say, "Diplomacy (and sales) is the art of being able to tell someone to go to hell, and phrasing it in such a way, that they're happy to pack for the trip."

I'm frankly pretty good at that too.

One of my daughters says I turn into a one-man Mariachi band when shooting a wedding. "It's the Dad show," Johanna says. The joke around my studio always was, "There are only two people allowed to shine at one of Bill's weddings: the Bride and Bill ...the Groom is just stage-dressing."

Kathy rationalizes this process as a sense of being "... lost at sea '..." on the part of the bridal party, most of whom have never undergone the whole marriage-day thing before. Thus, when I stand up in front of everyone after the service, and say "Attention, Class! Let us now briefly review 'Bill's Rules of Group Photography,' shall we? Oh, Bill would be me!" I carry it off with enough comedic timing that everyone is glad that someone seems to know what to do next.

I liken it to being a babysitter with a camera, or perhaps an entertainer for kids' parties. But it works. My clients are always happy afterwards.

Did I mention I was good at it?

I love the sense of completion I get having met a client's expectations at the end of a shoot. Oh, yeah ... taking money for something that feels like playtime is pretty cool, too. (Although, as playtime goes, I still come home exhausted and soaked with sweat at the end of a 9-hour wedding shoot.)

But, eventually, taking money for doing something you love does seem to take some of the luster from it.

And I've been shooting for a living for so long I almost forgot about the passion part.

You see, when you shoot for a living, you are meeting Other people's needs. You are executing their vision. It's your artistry, for sure. It's your technique. It's your eye.

But they're mostly other people's images. Possibly even other people's passions, too.

But talking with another photographer today, one who is young enough to still be passionate about the 'biz,' and yet old enough to have already lived through a few photographic nightmares of her own, was not only refreshing, it was ... stimulating.

As Kathy and Christine developed the familiar "Dan-Quayle-deer-in-the-headlights" look that non-shooters get sometimes, Erinn and I got quickly dived into f/Stops and focal lengths, go-to lenses, strobe and guide numbers, and location scouting.

Beyond that, looking at her work, I feel "reignited." Self-taught as a photographer, she has a killer eye for composition ... and the courage to break the rules that many of us classically trained shooters had beaten into us at an early age.

Regardless of what comes next, I am determined to go out more with Nikons, perhaps a little less with firearms, and find out what I have left to say photographically of my own.

Thanks, Christine. Thanks, Erinn. I needed that.

Ten Years After--Who really remembers anymore? (Ans: We do!)

We in the military often are accused of being slow to adjust to change and the passage of time. We are told to "get over it and move on."

Get over it? I don't think so.

After the Imperial Japanese attacks on the US Navy Base at Pearl Harbor, HI, the entire country was aflame, just as the sad hulks continued smoldering away at their moorings on Battleship Row. Everyone in this nation was shocked and angry ... and wanted to hit back. Records show that the nation stayed involved, stayed angry, throughout most of World War II. Everyone was directly or indirectly involved with the war effort.

There were meatless and wheatless days at home, so US troops in the field wouldn't go hungry. Gas was rationed. Nylon was rationed. Scrap metal drives insured there was enough metal in the foundries to make armaments and munitions. Women's groups would meet weekly to roll bandages for the troops. Recruiters' offices were mobbed. Families proudly hung out flags with service stars, quietly boasting how many family members were in uniform. Some families shared their grief by hanging out gold service stars, mutely stating for all to see that some in their family had paid the ultimate price for freedom. US and Allied battles merited front page coverage in every newspaper.

We as a people, arose and answered the Call to Arms.

Now? Ehh.

Except for that tiny percentage of Americans actually in military families, almost no one is connected to the war effort. Most high school graduates are far more worried about getting into school than they are getting into their country's service.

Daily I talk to people who tell me that military service is fine for those who can't get into a good school, but their kids are going to college to get a good job. Military recruiters tell me they still treated like pariahs in Milwaukee Public Schools, even though statistics show that only 1 out of 4 high school graduates are actually cut out to finish college.

The US populace is far more interested in the fact that the Green Bay Packers beat the New Orleans Saints in the NFL opener recently, than in the fact that the job of making this country safe against terrorism is not yet finished!

I seriously doubt whether anyone in this country has actually forgotten the events of 9/11. Even if they did, the plethora of TV and Internet images depicting flaming crashes and falling towers will remind them what happened on that otherwise beautiful fall day ten years ago.

But as I reminded a Marine friend of mine on Facebook today, the nation has lost sight of its sense of anger ... righteous indignation ... of having been stabbed in the heart for virtually no other reason than the fact that we don't follow a 13th Century nightmare version of Islam.

But we in the military are your corporate memory on this issue. We remember not only the events, we remember also feeling the wrongness of what happened, and how we individually and collectively vowed to help right those wrongs.

We, each of us, vowed to carry the fight to the enemy that had reached across oceans to kill us. We, each of us, vowed not to quit and leave the job half-done.

I recall one of the Guantanamo detainees -- a Saudi Arabian cardiac surgeon who studied at Oxford and who speaks better English than I do. He likened all Americans to "insects," saying that if he could push some button somewhere that would instantly annihilate our babies, he would already have done so and lost not a moment's sleep over it.

Like insects, he said, we needed to be exterminated and forgotten about by history.

We in the military are still cold inside at the thought of those who wish to kill as many of us as they can. We are still "cold angry."

This post, then, is a plea to the rest of you.

Never forget. Never forget!