Looking back at things, I don’t think she ever had any self esteem. Who could feel good about themselves in sweat pants 5 days a week anyway.

It’s not that I cared what she looked like. But for Christ sake play the part a little. At least be something. It didn’t matter if she was broke or destitute, or completely lost and depressed. Just be something. Be a young bohemian, go out and sit at cafes all day because you have no job, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, write about how awful the world is, create things for rich people to buy and then get drunk in front of them and make jokes at their expense while they’re shelling out that hard earned money for you to blow at the bar. Just be something, whatever you are, baggage and all.

Laugh at things that make you sick, take it as it comes and realize that the universe doesn’t care, we’re all on the same playing field with no score and no 2 minute warning. So take all the shit that you think makes you a wreck and put it into something else. Everyone has baggage. It’s the people that do something with it that matter to me. Blaming things on the past is just a poor way to justify what you do in the present.

Yesterday is over, so decide what you want, take a stand, speak your piece, or sit down and shut the fuck up.

Howard Zinn, 1922-2010. He will be missed but never forgotten… http://howardzinn.org

“What I realized is that when two people are truly close and psychically connected, there is no room for dishonesty. It’s a ripple that’s felt in the relationship immediately. You might think you can lie or hide something, but it shows up on the canvas lying between you. The further people grow apart, it becomes harder to discern the blemishes, but they are still there and felt. Just much less acutely as the connection itself feels number. With a really open and honest relationship though, they show up right away. Little tremors. Disturbances.” – unknown

Recent Project: Minolta Autocord, 6×6 twin lens reflex camera. Rebuilt shutter and focusing mechanism. Recovered with gray grip-tac from cameraleather.com.

From Bostick and Sullivan / Member, Freestyle Advisory Board of Photographic Professionals

The whole modern electronic world is basically an abstraction. I came out of that world. My first computer had 90K of memory and cost about 4 million dollars. It was called an IBM 360-30. I am not going to digital bash; I just want to put it in perspective.

Walter Chapell wrote an essay in 1948 where he defined photography as being in two generalized worlds: image making and print making. Cartier Bresson = Image maker, Ansel Adams = print maker. Of course not always easy to define but the idea is interesting.

Many practical classes have disappeared from high school campuses. I am 66 and when I was in Jr. High in Shop Class we did hot metal sand casting! 9th graders were allowed to use the table saw in woodshop! Imagine a Jr. High today with students pouring hot metal out of a furnace and ripping boards on a table saw! It is possible today, not only to graduate functionally illiterate to the point that one could not drill a hole and use a screwdriver to mount a pencil sharpener on the wall.

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Lesson #425, From “Surviving The World” / More @ survivingtheworld.net »

By Dara Colwell – In the Netherlands people can be naked in their gardens, the beach and recently the gym. But in America, even chocolate sculptures can’t be without clothes. What gives?

When Catholic protesters recently shut down a New York exhibit displaying a naked, life-sized Jesus sculpted from chocolate, the outcry wasn’t totally unexpected. Labeled offensive by critics, the artwork touched an angry nerve by pushing religion and nudity — two substances that historically don’t mix — into the limelight. While the media was quick to exploit the story, it also expressed surprising modesty when it came to the naked Christ, avoiding the full frontal and opting for photos of the Lord’s backside. But in Europe, and particularly the Netherlands, where bakeries display anatomically correct marzipan nudes in their front windows right next to chocolate bunnies and chicks, such furor over confectionary draws a complete blank. On this side of the Atlantic, when it comes to nudity, Europeans happily assert they’ve got absolutely nothing to hide. “The Netherlands is a liberal country where public nakedness is allowed, and that’s the way it should be — that’s why there’s a law for it.”

Read the rest of this article @ Alternet »

By LEE SIEGEL – Whatever happened to the Muse? She was once the female figure — deity, Platonic ideal, mistress, lover, wife — whom poets and painters called upon for inspiration. Thus Homer in the Odyssey, the West’s first great work of literary art: “Sing to me of the man, Muse, of twists and turns driven time and again off course.” For hundreds of years, in one form or another, the Muse’s blessing and support were often essential to the creation of art.
Muses Through the Years

Poets stopped invoking the muse centuries ago — eventually turning instead to caffeine, alcohol and amphetamines — but painters, musicians, and even choreographers have celebrated their actual female inspirers in their work up until recent times. And now, we learn, having a muse isn’t a benefit restricted to artists.

According to a recently opened exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, “The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion,” the muse lives on as the fashion model who inspires masses of women to dress in ways that capture the spirit of the age. With all due respect to the Met’s curators — and to the alluring fashion photographs that now grace the museum’s walls — such a definition of the muse would have made traditional muses run for the sacred hills.

Read the rest of this article @ the Wall Street Journal »

“How film is made” Kodak 1958 factory documentary (part 1 of 2) Click here for part two…

Coraline shoots a Leica, how cool is that?

Utterly terrifying… Found on Post Secret… http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Written by Dave D’Esposito, found on no-spec.com. Please pass this along, and help spread the word, we will not to be bought for peanuts.

Every day, there are more and more CL posts seeking “artists” for everything from auto graphics to comic books to corporate logo designs. More people are finding themselves in need of some form of illustrative service.

But what they’re NOT doing, unfortunately, is realizing how rare someone with these particular talents can be.

To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One? …none?

More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on craigslist to find them.

And this is not really a surprise.

In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.

So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?

Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)

Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?

If you answered “yes” to ANY of the above, you’re obviously insane. If you answered “no”, then kudos to you for living in the real world.

But then tell me… why would you think it is okay to live out the same, delusional, ridiculous fantasy when seeking someone whose abilities are even less in supply than these folks?
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