Palin Joke

Sarah Palin was seated next to a little girl on an airplane. She turned to her and said, ‘Let’s talk. I’ve heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.’

The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said to Sarah, ‘What would you like to talk about?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Sarah. ‘How about What Changes I Should Make To America and she smiles.

‘OK, ‘ she said. ‘That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?’

Sarah, visibly surprised by the little girl’s intelligence, thinks about it and says, ‘Hmmm, I have no idea.’

To which the little girl replies, ‘Do you really feel qualified to change America when you don’t know shit?’

No Parking

Something found on a dog walk.

Beginning of Hibernation

The winter is rapidly approaching, the leaves are falling and turning brown, the air is cold and crisp and evening comes around much sooner. This pending season is filled with excitement and anticipation. I feel the evolution of our cocoon unraveling the beauty within. It hasn’t happened yet, although the eagerness of it all fills us with happiness and stress. At this time, I know something is going to change for the best for us, but I just don’t know what it is. I’m ok with that. Really. Our goals are simple from our point of view, but for some reason difficult to execute. Find meaningful work. The realities of that simple statement or the complexities of the human mind, for whatever reason make that so damn hard. Both of our fields have so many paths we can choose from, so knowing what it is you want to do doesn’t necessarily answer the previous statement. The dawn of the dark and cold will allow us to hopefully answer that question and re-center ourselves individually and together. The bounty of spring will begin anew, just like it does every year, only this time we too will feel refreshed.

A Roadblock To My Art

As an artist the need to create is a need. It’s not a want, or an i’d like to, its something that has to happen. Now with that said, just like anything in life, there are roadblocks, that come and go. Mostly all are self afflicted, it’s the overcoming that helps to take the work to a new level. I find myself in this matrix of confusion. I haven’t shot anything really in months. There’s excuses I can make, that are probably quasi valid, but in the end, there’s no excuse for not making an image. This dark period in my work depicts a feeling of a plateau and a complete lack of direction. Of course my head is filled with numerous ideas, but none of them are ‘local’. Therefore I keep creating these scenarios in my head to only drive myself more crazy. I feel inadequate as a shooter right now, and my eyes are not ’seeing’ much of anything these days. I feel like i’ve let myself down and my compass is spinning out of control. Here’s what I do know. I’m a storyteller and always have been, that’s a trait, yet working as a photojournalist is working for peanuts. I now have a mountain of student debt and I couldn’t even work as a photojournalist because it won’t even cover the bills. Maybe I’m just being down right now. As a human and as an artist I believe this is my dukka. Based on a Buddhist ideology: “The first noble truth of the Buddha is that people experience dukka, a feeling of dissatisfaction or suffering, a feeling that something is wrong. We feel this dissatisfaction because we’re not in tune with our true nature, our basic goodness. And we aren’t going to be fundamentally, spiritually content until we get in tune” (The Sun, 01/2005, issue 349, Pg 7). I can sit here, try to extrapolate what in the hell is going on, or I can pick up a camera and take a walk.

The Pulse of the Blues

As many of you know my two greatest passions are my photography and music, so it seems like a natural direction for me to merge the two. As many of you also know, my head is filled with many ideas that sometimes bear fruit and others never quite come to fruition. One thing I’ve learned about myself and my ways to deal with some attention issues is to just express it, get it out. Sometimes that makes it difficult for those around me because I seem to always have half-cocked ideas and which one is the trigger going to be pulled on. I realize that I need to work on how I express these ideas, even myself knowing that many of them won’t be much of anything just a fun way to entertain an idea. Delivery and timing = maturity. Well with that in mind …. I’ve got an idea. Now, I’ve done some research here in-between jobs and it’s been done before, but I still think it could be a worthwhile project.

The blues are so entrenched in American music, it is the foundation of so many different musical genres, even with the shit that’s out there today jammin’ up priceless airwaves. Since our American culture continues to be divided between the haves and the have-nots, I believe that it’s so much more important. If we listen not just to the rhythms and find the beat but really listen and feel then some of these issues that face us today will disperse. I’m not trying to say that the blues is going to solve our problems, but it may be a catalyst for change. Highway 61 is approximately 700 mile stretch of road between Memphis, TN and New Orleans, LA that is also known as the Blues Highway. It is along this road, somewhere near Clarksdale, MS that the late great Robert Johnson met the devil at a crossroad and sold his soul as long as the devil tuned his guitar and made him the best. What do you know, less than 10 years later, he was a household name and even to this day his legacy lives on. I do wonder who would be standing at the crossroad today, I bet the devil would have stepped aside to let Karl Rove purchase souls, he’s even more evil than the devil, but that’s another post. So here’s what I purpose, a rented Cadillac and an exploration of the Blues Highway, documenting the music, the culture, the food and the pulse of Americana along the delta. Ending up in New Orleans.

I figure the finished piece would result in a print show, a book and a multimedia piece. I figured the entire trip would be about 14 days, with 3-4 days in Memphis and in New Orleans and the rest along the highway meeting people. Right now this is just a thought nestled somewhere between reality and what was I just saying?

Yin and Yang of CFL’s

Living green, trying to do a little something to help reduce energy can also have a negative side. To weigh the good over the bad is left to you after you read this. I’m baffled and feel either duped by general info that’s out there and then again this is what I get for letting my guard down and by not doing my own research. The topic today is those wacky looking CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lights) bulbs. The amount of information as a consumer that I am given is that these lights, albeit a bit more expensive up front, will reduce your energy bill by as much as 30% over the course of a year. Plus, they last longer up to 10,000 kwh over the traditional incandescent bulbs that last 1,000 kwh. All this seems good, lower energy usage, last longer …. this is GREAT! Move over Thomas Edison, you’ve just been replaced.

Well maybe not yet.

What all the info out there doesn’t tell you is that each of these CFL’s contain mercury. According to a Portland Press Herald article (Feb. 26, 2008):

“Mercury is a toxin that affects the nervous system and can harm brain development in young children and fetuses. A compact fluorescent bulb contains only about 5 milligrams of mercury, enough to fit on the tip of a ball-point pen. An old-fashioned mercury thermometer, by comparison, contains about 100 times that amount. But if a bulb breaks, the small amount of mercury can create high levels of vapor in the air, the study showed. The mercury-vapor standard in federal and state safety guidelines is 300 nanograms per cubic meter of air. Broken bulbs created levels that often exceeded that standard and sometimes exceeded 25,000 or even 50,000 nanograms per cubic meter for short periods of time, according to the study.”

Light-bulbs break, it’s inevitable, now that you have one of these broken bulbs, what are you supposed to do for your clean up, well with an incandescent bulb, I’d sweep it up and throw it in the trash, with my biggest concern being that hopefully either myself, my wife or my dog don’t step on a piece of glass shrapnel that I forgot to clean up. With CFL’s and according to the EPA there are detailed specifics on how to handle a broken CFL, first and foremost you should evacuate your home, then below you’ll find the list of the other clean up steps:

Before Clean-up: Air Out the Room
* Have people and pets leave the room, and don’t let anyone walk through the breakage area on their way out.
* Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.
* Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.

Clean-Up Steps for Hard Surfaces
* Carefully scoop up glass pieces and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
* Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.
* Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place towels in the glass jar or plastic bag.
* Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.

Clean-up Steps for Carpeting or Rug
* Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
* Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.
* If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area where the bulb was broken.
* Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag or vacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag.

Clean-up Steps for Clothing, Bedding and Other Soft Materials
* If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, the clothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing or bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage.
* You can, however, wash clothing or other materials that have been exposed to the mercury vapor from a broken CFL, such as the clothing you are wearing when you cleaned up the broken CFL, as long as that clothing has not come into direct contact with the materials from the broken bulb.
* If shoes come into direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from the bulb, wipe them off with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place the towels or wipes in a glass jar or plastic bag for disposal.

Disposal of Clean-up Materials
* Immediately place all clean-up materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area for the next normal trash pickup.
* Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing clean-up materials.
* Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your specific area. Some states do not allow such trash disposal. Instead, they require that broken and unbroken mercury-containing bulbs be taken to a local recycling center.

Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rug: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming
* The next several times you vacuum, shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system and open a window before vacuuming.
* Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window open for at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed.”

The last thing, is that all of these CFL bulbs are only built in China, there are no manufacturers in the US or any other nation. After finding all this information, it makes me wonder about the pros vs. con’s on these lights, especially since we just converted every bulb in our house to a CFL and we recently just had one of them break. We didn’t know this information before our clean up and we just tossed it into the trash like one would with any other light bulb. This information isn’t readily available, granted any google search will yield more than enough info, but I wouldn’t have known to google it. Below you will find a list of my resources for this article.

Portland Press Herald

Scientific American

National Public Radio

Energy Star

Environmental Protection Agency

Made in China

A Red Lunch Truck

Prior to my relocation to West Chester, on my commute I passed a bright red lunch truck. Whenever I passed it, of course I wasn’t ready, in the mornings they weren’t open and in the evenings I was too tired to stop. It was always in the back of my mind as a one day, I’m going there for lunch. Today was that day!

The bright red lunch truck, only open Thur-Sat., with it’s yellow banners saying “Glenn’s BBQ & Vicki’s Fried Fish” “Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes” always makes the mouth water. Now, I’m an adventurous individual, but this rolling lunch stand is located on the outskirts of Wilmington, DE and next to the Gander Hill Prison. So the location to some might seem, well … questionable. I don’t care. I’m in search of food. As I pull up with some fellow co-workers who too share in the love of food, the smell of smoking swine waifs into my ol’ factory bulbs causing my mouth to begin watering and the stomach to start mumbling.

We were immediately greeted by Vicki a charismatic woman with great charm, calling me sweetie. I proceeded to order a rib and chicken combo plate—I’m definitely not counting calories or cholesterol today. Vicki said she’d check on the ribs, she wasn’t sure they were ready yet. She came back and told me it was my lucky day, they were ready. Glenn brought me out my stack and told me they had been smoking since 6 a.m. I was soooo ready to dive in. Grabbed my paper towels and sat down at a concrete picnic table and begun. Glenn’s ribs were served wet, the sauce he used didn’t have to much vinegar, like I think they do with Carolina BBQ sauce, nor was it too sweet like a Memphis style sauce. Somewhere in the middle, just like Wilmington. I could tell that he seasoned them, but I wouldn’t call it a dry rub, and when I picked up the first rib, the meat just ’bout fell off the bone. They were cooked to perfection. The chicken too was prepped in some batter that must’ve been Vicki’s own concoction and fried to perfection as well. This was a damn fine lunch, and to all the fellow colleagues who though we were crazy for going to the ‘roach mobile’, you were wrong! You missed out on probably one of the best kept secrets in Wilmington.

If you ever find yourself passing though, find the prison and then let your nose guide you into the delicious smells of Glenn and Vicki.

Viva La Revolucion!

Music, like history, always has a way of coming back around full circle. Today while at work I listened repeatedly to a song over and over because I think it’s so fitting for this day and age. Here’s the lyrics and below is a link to the youtube video so you can relish in the song as well:

Dont you know
They’re talkin’ bout a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Dont you know
Theyre talkin’ about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper

While theyre standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take whats theirs

Dont you know
You better run, run, run…
Oh I said you better
Run, run, run…

Finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin’ bout a revolution

Talkin’ bout a revolution by Tracy Chapman

Who knows maybe our revolution is rumbling awake from a deep slumber just like Mt. Saint Helens in 1980. We’ll see. Viva La Revolucion!