I approached the house at night. It was a dark house, but once I got close to the front door I realized that there was some light seen from a room in the back accompanied with the flicker of an active video screen. I knocked twice and a older man approached the door. He turned…

It was a sunny afternoon in early autumn, and I approached a house in an unincorporated suburban area. Respondents in unincorporated areas have their own stereotypes and so I had an idea what to expect. Unincorporated sounds like a precise legal term but it’s actually a generalized description of a neighborhood that varies widely depending…

I was working a survey that had an interesting method of identifying the respondent via a preliminary set of questions. So basically, I'd approach a house, gain the cooperation of someone there, obtain a list of the residents in the household, and then the computer would identify the person I would interview. I approached this…

So I don't hitchhike anymore because I'm old and whatnot but once in a while I still end up touching the road. One day I was involved with teaching a class for election judges. This class took place in the county complex—a collection of buildings including the administration center, the county nursing home, the health…

I had been given several addresses within a single deep inside a disadvantaged urban area. The notes from the previous interviewers all indicated that the doorman was refusing them entry, and with frustration and fear from the nature of the slum in which this building was in. I drove there in the late morning of…

It was a home that was likely built in the early 1900s—before the depression of the 20th Century. In some towns it would have been called a painted lady. It was three stories tall and had a large wrap around porch beside the front door. This wasn't a cold visit—I knew the name of the…

The house I was supposed to go to was one of those Victorian style painted ladies—a large home build a century ago with a large porch, rounded windows and piles upon piles of roofs and windows. Like all painted ladies she was past her prime and had succumbed to the plastic surgery of subdivision. And…

So maybe you're driving along some highway and you pass by someone's house. It might be sitting in the middle of an empty field, past it's best days and now simply struggling to keep it's occupants safe from the elements. Or maybe it's a city and you can see rows and rows of apartment towers…

  So this is a photo I took a couple of years ago while working one afternoon. It's just a single abandoned home with a marriage proposal. I doubt the person who lived there wrote the message, but I suppose it's possible. It's kind of hard to look at this house and see the vibrant…