Recent additions to Flattened Cans… more here…
Cass Corridor
Brenda Goodman, “Tomorrow Promise” (2017) on view at Simone DeSousa Gallery in Detroit (image courtesy Simone DeSousa Gallery)
… this article on the Cass Corridor movement out of Detroit is very interesting… i especially like the work of Brenda Goodman…
Dom Marker…
… really like this photographer… channels Nathan Lyons, Saul Leiter, and Lee Friedlander… i think his photographs are a little too obvious sometimes, some staged in awkward ways… but overall, a very interesting eye… see his work here and here…
Recent addition to my flattened can series…
You know the world situation is taking its toll when...
Fiona
We had a major upset last night.
While we were eating dinner, our dog Fiona got hold of one of my wife’s cabled knitting needles. By the time we discovered it she had done quite a bit of damage to said needle, including having chewed the cable up into little pieces. My wife gathered up all the pieces she could find and couldn’t account for what she estimated to be about 4” of cable.
Uh-oh… this was a worry worthy situation. One of my wife’s worst fears is that one of our dogs would ingest something that causes a bowl obstruction. A doggie life threatening situation.
Now, we have had doggie companions from the beginning of our relationship a couple of decades ago. As the man says in the Farmer’s Insurance commercials, “we’ve seen a thing or two.” Like the time one of our dogs got into the pill stash of a friend that was staying with us and downed a bunch of anti-depressants. Or the time when another of our dogs became paralyzed in her hind quarters for no apparent reason. Both situations required mad dashes to animal emergency hospitals. Both turned out well in the end. And through both, we managed to keep our heads about us quite well in spite of our worry.
That’s why it was so surprising (in retrospect) that we both proceeded to have complete meltdowns. Me, who’s major super power is the ability to keep a clear head in the most difficult situations, erupting into a fit of rage at my wife for leaving the cabled needle where the dog could get it. She, in ex-ICU nurse fashion assuming the worst and, in non ex-ICU nurse fashion, having a near panic attack about it. Me, completely unable to deal with my wife’s near panic attack. Fiona, sweet dog that she is, wondering what all the fuss was about.
I eventually escaped with the dogs to bed. My wife stayed up and stewed about things. I have no idea when she came to bed.
When we talked this morning we both realized that we had been overwhelmed by the situation in a way that was new and unexpected. We realized that, as well as we think we have been coping with the pandemic and its knock on effects, the horrid Political situation and winter, we aren’t.
Neither one of us has much coping reserve left.
It’s almost 24 hours later. So far, Fiona is just fine. In another 24 hours we can probably stop worrying at all.
As for us? We’ve started to strategize on how to recharge our empty coping reserves.
Week 02 Image Poem
Week 03 Image Poem…
… sitting here procrastinating about going out to walk and make pictures… it’s only 2 degrees F out… going to be like this for the next week… i will, however, persist… just need to get my inner warmth going…
The Disunited States of America: Gripping Photos of a Country in Crisis, Abigail Ronner, AnOther
FXCK July 4th: Rally cultivating change from injustice and police brutality toward women and LGBTQ+, Atlanta, Georgia, 2020
“Was the violence ‘structural’ – the result of an intersecting and overlapping complex of institutional practices: the tradition of armed police; the prevalence of mayhem in the mass media; the refusal of Congress to pass tough gun-control legislation despite the menace of one hundred million privately owned handguns, shotguns and rifles? Finally, was the society by nature violent?”
… hard to believe those words were presented as part of an exhibition in 1969… they are re-presented in a new exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London…
… i was reading up on the Ancient Greek philosophers this morning… this quote from Heraclitus stood out…
“Although this Word is common, the many live as if they had a private understanding”1
… the Word is a kind of universal truth that Heraclitus believed all people had access to although he didn’t think most people were capable of seeing it and, as a result, operated according to their personal truths… it seems people have been living in their own private Idahos for some time…
…and since Heraclitus was an influence on Plato, i was thinking this line of thinking might have inspired the famous Cave analogy?…
From my Nikon today…
… for a long time i have been photographing with my iPhone exclusively… the urge to use the Nikon came on me this morning, so i did… it is interesting… the Nikon favors the horizontal image whereas the iPhone favors the vertical image… the effects of your equipment on your production…
A bit of snow today…
Photos from this morning…
From this morning…
Some photos from yesterday…
… all photos taken at or near the shore of the Hudson River in Beacon, NY… the temperature at the time was 0 degrees F… in the parking lot there was a couple having sex in their car…
Some photos from the past week…
This article on rap music by Daniel Levin Becker catches my attention… especially this assessment of Rap music…
Rap music serves, consistently, contagiously, sometimes in spite of its own claims to the contrary, as a delivery mechanism for the most exhilarating and crafty and inspiring use of language in contemporary American culture.
… i struggle to get very much into Rap, even as i am aware of its enormous significance… i keep trying though… this article may be a window in, as it analyzes lines from a number of songs (raps?) and so could point me to some raps to listen to…
This is just it: taking words at face value is what good rappers almost militantly don’t do. They find the blind angles, the shortcuts, the secret overlaps, and use them, sometimes, to build stunning models of invention and entente, spaces where small discords combine into larger resolutions and we see, hear, how boring it would be to live in a perfect world where like belongs only with like.
… hmmm… saving this article…
… i read Heather Cox Richardson and get the overwhelming impression that democracy is crumbling and there is little we can do about it… its not a good start to the day…
228.2 lbs
… weight down when there was the possibility of up… that’s a good start to the day…
… BP has been running a little high… not sure why… weight is down overall from a year ago… need adjustment in meds?…
… yesterday filled with tech frustrations in addition to not feeling very well… hangover… headache all day… went to bed early and slept reasonably well… seven hours in bed, about six hours good sleep?…
… strained muscle in left hand… evidently my fall the other day did hurt a little something… really lucky it was not worse…
… depressed that the dems don’t seem like they will be able to get voting rights legislation passed… feels like it spells doom for democracy in the country… i struggle to believe the times we are living in… it also doesn’t feel like the Biden administration is being very smart… lots of missteps, unforced errors… also bad luck… it isn’t that we didn’t see Omicron coming… the scientists probably did… but probably didn’t see such a contagious version… the scientists are saying that most everyone will get it… one should still try to avoid it but the odds are against success in that department… how is it we don’t have adequate testing?… it’s a miserable time…
… my deep reading project is managing to uplift my spirits… having something meaningful to concentrate on helps…
… i have been carefully making my way through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, taking notes, saving quotes as i go… it is a book i have read several times and it inspires me in all kinds of ways… it is part of a list of texts that i have read and been inspired by that i have decided to re-read and really pay attention to… my quest is to see what they might have in common and weather they together have a message on how one should embrace their life, find meaning in it… a big spiritual mountain to climb, but i have been all around the base and part way up the sides in numerous places numerous times… it is time, i am thinking, for an all out assault on the summit… my 4K weeks are well beyond half done…
… Heather Cox Richardson post this morning is largely about voting rights… Biden and Harris went to Georgia and made a speech vowing to protect voting rights and urging legislators everywhere to stand up for Democracy… the Senate is the roadblock… the filibuster is the roadblock… Senators Manchin and Sinema and possibly a few others are the roadblock… all the news analysis is suggesting that Manchin and Sinema will not budge… i am presently skeptical about whether Democrats are going to be able to do anything… but, as Rachel Maddow might say… watch this space…
This may well change by the time the weekend gets here, but whoah!
…it’s late in the day… relatively speaking… i usually make my first note somewhere around 4:30 AM… its going for 3:30 PM… i started reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance… an important chapter it turned out… lots of significant content… in any case, it was time to go for my walk before i knew it…
… the day has been a little odd in structure and feeling… i told H that severe cold is coming and a snowstorm to boot… H got immediately concerned about the generator and whether it would work and so forth… we haven’t cranked it up in years so i am afraid it won’t work… the electrical system in the house has been altered so i am not even sure it will hook up to the house the way it should… i am embarrassed that we haven’t done the little maintenance needed to keep it as an option… the whole conversation sent me into a tail spin… it left me feeling so inadequate and pissed at them… uggh…
… then deal with bills that need to be paid… i adopted a policy of every piece of mail is dealt with and disposed of/filed before i can move on… traditionally i have let mail pile up on my desk, dealing with only the must pay bills and letting the rest languish… not today… successfully cleared the mail away…
… then it was prep for Salon which took longer than it should of… had to track down the emails… had to acquire the shared dropbox folder, etc., etc., etc… a full crowd sharing tonight… pent up demand i am thinking… we skipped salon last month…
… just finished editing photographs… there weren’t too many… it’s been very cold and i haven’t wanted to be out too long…
… i am tired and a little depressed…
This article on Letters Home, by Adolphus and Jonas Mekas catches my attention…
When Jonas Mekas died in 2019, aged 96, he left behind a monumental legacy. Widely recognised as the “godfather of American avant-garde cinema”, the auteur and poet’s boundary-breaking works propelled the New American Cinema movement of the 1960s and 70s to brave and brilliant new heights.
… it mentions Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg and Maya Deren as friends and collaborators with Jonas Mekas… i know of two of the four…
… Deren’s film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) “has been one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema history… the film is short and can be watched through its Wikipedia page…
… here lies a rabbit hole of substantial proportions…