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In my portrait of her, she\u2019s examining my cat Chaplin\u2019s teeth that had a build up of tarter during that visit. Chaplin was an old gal, perhaps 16 or 17 at that visit. She was still perking along, but Rennie wasn\u2019t keen on doing a full dental on her with her advanced age. However, some manual dexterity to get rid of some obvious hunks of tarter would help to keep her teeth and mouth healthier as time went on. In her portrait, Rennie bends over Chaplin, intent on getting some of that nastiness out of her mouth, even as Chaplin wasn\u2019t very happy with it, digging in her back feet to resist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I don\u2019t <\/strong>have any children so I have no personal experience with Aloha Ramey, a psychologist here in Paducah. I met her through friends and a group we both belong to on Facebook. She struck me as both serious about her work but also endeared me with her crazy and wry sense of humor. She also brings a different perspective to our community, growing up in Venezuela, with family still residing there in all the chaos. Her journey here to the US was due to her choice of graduate programs in psychology at Murray State after receiving an undergraduate degree in clinical psychology from Universidad Rafael Urdaneta in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Murray State couldn\u2019t have been more different than Venezuela and probably not what she\u2019d heard about the United States. We\u2019re the lucky ones for her choosing to stay here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I met Aloha at her office not really knowing how I wanted to capture her in her work environment. With privacy issues it\u2019s not possible to watch her in action testing kids, so we did the next best thing. She set up one of her tests in front of me at a little table in her testing room. It was a small, windowless, nondescript place with a filing cabinet, the table and two chairs, and a few small paintings Aloha had made. As I sat opposite her and we talked about her work testing kids for such things as ADHD and autism, I took pictures of Aloha to capture the vantage point and feeling of those who would be actually taking the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I were a kid sitting opposite her playing with those blocks I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019d be at ease with her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Next up: a chef and a seamstress!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My next two participants in my women portrait series are both strong women and passionate about their work. They\u2019re both in caring professions but that care involves different species. One works with small animals, our cat and dog family members, while the other is focused on our children, testing them for various conditions that can … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.cowango.com\/accidentaltruths\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EF44D980-A02C-4FBC-A5A3-BD44FB418024.jpeg\")