Student’s Toy Ploy Brings Smile to Candidates’ Faces

CLINTON, Iowa — It’s not at all unusual for folks in this town to meet at least one of the presidential candidates. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Chris Dodd et al. have campaigned amid Clinton’s 27,000 residents in recent months.

What’s unusual — okay, a little odd — is for someone to have met almost all the candidates and taken photos of each one smiling with his Mr. Potato Head. That’s right. Mr. Potato Head.

“The candidates have been in Iowa forever. Why not have fun with the whole process?”

The story of the young man and his spudhead began in 2004, when Green inherited the toy from his dying grandfather. Grandpa Robert had kept the faux spud on his bedroom shelf, Green says, and treated it like nothing more than a decoration. Green, however, wanted to show the toy around. So wherever he went — and Green’s traveled quite a bit — so went the spudhead. To the Statue of Liberty, Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, the Marine Corps War Memorial.

His parents and younger sister have a three-word explanation for this.

“That’s just Andy,” says his mom, Jenny Green, a secretary at Clinton Community College.

Naturally, when the candidates started holding events near the University of Northern Iowa, where Green is a sophomore, he jumped on the opportunity.

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Living in Three Centuries – The Faces of Age

The photographs for this portrait series were taken in various locations around the world between 1987 and 2005.The idea to photograph people who have lived in three centuries evolved over the course of the project. First, I was simply interested in taking portraits of people who appear worn beyond their years by living extraordinarily hard lives. Those experiences drew me to centenarians, and on to supercentenarians and their stories.

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Born again, Vegas style

img_6755.jpgI met Heather Veitch and Annie Lobert at the Cheesecake Factory, across from the Green Valley Ranch casino. We had to wait for a booth because Lobert’s stories about her years working as an escort in the Vegas resort corridor can get graphic.

Many years ago Veitch used to be a stripper in Vegas. Now both women are Christian activists trying to reach out to women in the Las Vegas adult industry.

They are in the midst of gearing up for Adult Entertainment Expo, the biggest adult industry convention in the country, which takes place in Vegas every January. This convention includes the adult movie version of the Oscars, the AVN Awards.

I discovered the duo through a series of popular YouTube videos they did called “Saving Sex City.” Episode 3 features the two walking the Strip as showgirls carrying placards with Christian messages.

Even before uniting for the video series, Veitch received a lot of media attention. She thinks it is because she doesn’t look like your typical Christian preacher. In fact, her look has been a major factor, she says, in the Christian community being slower than the worldly people of Vegas to accept her.

One Vegas topless bar allows Veitch to come at night to buy lap dances and use the time to talk to the dancers about Jesus. I have been invited along for a future trip and am very curious to see how that works out. Veitch says she has received almost no hostility from the people she is trying to reach in Vegas, even those not at all interested in her message.

On the other hand, selling her fellow Christians on her project has been difficult. Veitch has found that some churches are not interested in populating congregations with strippers she has invited to services. And then it always comes back to her look. Veitch says, “The Christian community can be very judgmental. But we think our look lets girls in the industry identify with us.”

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