I was named for the patron saint of photographers and filmmakers. My father, Gilles, a photographer and filmmaker, insisted. (My mother wanted to name me Katherine, a great name with no end of easy, breezy nicknames. Considering my entire given name: Veronique Jean Marie Solange Auzias de Turenne, easy or breezy would've been good.) But dad, who went on to work with Roger Corman, whose later career included Falcon Crest and The Dukes of Hazzard (picture Jacques Cousteau saying the words "Dehzee Diukes" and "Bass Hugg", and pitching log lines like "...zee Zgheneral Lee, eet flies - boom! - ovair zee swamp") won the name game.

It was St. Veronique, the story goes, who gave Jesus a sip of water on his way to Calvary. When she wiped away his sweat with her veil, the image of Jesus' face appeared on the fabric. "The first photograph!" my father would say, his eyes wild with religious fervor. (My mother, unable to reconcile that whole virgin birth thing, went on to convert to Judaism.)

Which is all an impossibly roundabout way of getting to the point that my sweet, little Olympus digital camera just croaked. I've jiggled and jostled, checked and changed the battery, begged, threatened and shed a tear. Nothing. (Full disclosure: I've got a gorgeous Canon digital SLR that's so freakishly complicated, whose sadistic manual was translated from Japanese into English by someone who was either very, very angry or very, very drunk, that so far I can't even figure out how to charge the damned battery let alone shoot a single frame.)

So today I'm off today to seek a point-and-shoot replacement. Because even though I'm a writer, it seems I'm a photographer as well. Without a camera, I feel blind. Something of my dad in me, like being tall or having blue eyes or needing to live near the sea.

Happy New Year, everyone.