Since my recent posting of some Vietnam photos online, I've been getting a fair number of emails asking about travel there. Americans especially have distorted opionions of the country.
My advice is simple. The war was a long time ago. The majority of the people alive in the country weren't even born until after the war ended. Vietnam is one of the friendliest countries I have visited. There is great grace to the land, the food, and way people live. It's beautiful and you should go.
I generally don't feel old, but looking at this picture from the summer of 1971 or 72 with the towers unbuilt and my mom at 25, 13 years younger than I am now, I feel old.
It's big and heavy.
It's loud. Sounds like an old Volvo.
It's fast (65meg/sec transfer), but not nearly as fast as the 90meg/sec claimed by LaCie.
If I had to do it over again I would have probably bought a 2 500s.
Little known bee fact. Bees, those members of the genus Bombus, are often held up as models of discipline and order--worker bees (sexually undeveloped females), drones (fertile males), and a queen all working in perfect harmony each in it's caste working productively until the hive gets overcrowded and the old queen flies off with some drones to establish a new one, while the remaining bees raise multiple queens waiting for them to hatch and then fight to the death to establish a new ruler. And generally, generation after generation, that's how it works.
But sometimes, very rarely, something goes awry. A group of workers will surround the queen denying her food. Eventually one will sting her, then the others join in until, inevitably, she succumbs. Workers try to mate drones. The brood is killed off one by one and work on the hive ceases as chaos and fratricide become the order of the day. There are no survivors of this breakdown of social order. It is said other bees will avoid recolonizing the broken hives for years to come.
I got 3 emails about baby pictures today...
Here are 2 from a few hours ago.
Someone told me the other day that babies don't blink. My unscientific observations confirm the statement. This freaks me out.
All you New Yorkers should check out a screening of The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a documentary by director Jeff Feuerzeig. I've had lunch a couple of times with Jeff in LA and if anyone can do Daniel Johnston justice, he can as he's someone who lives and breathes punk rock. Film and ticket info at Lincoln Center's New Director's Program Page. It plays March 30th and April 1rst.
My brother-in-law Paul who is in Seoul sent me this link to some interesting North Korean comics today.
Browsing around led me to this link with North Korean propaganda posters.
I've long been fascinated with Communist propaganda and have been collecting Chinese posters for years. If you want to kill some time, check out Stefan Landsberger's vast collection of Chinese Propaganda Posters. Stefan wrote the book (literally) on the subject. His collection contains images that will blow your mind.
I used to have this image on my old website with the caption, "fun for you and your lady" it's from a Chinese poster (1980's).
The other must have book on the subject is by photographer Michael Wolf. His book is a bit easier to find than the other: Chinese Propaganda Posters: From the Collection of Michael Wolf
So this was the scene this evening over here in Brooklyn:
Jenn was out at one of her writer's workshops. The baby was fussy, so I went down and held him in the darkened living room until he went to sleep. People always complain about time moving fast, but time can also be deliciously slow. Lying back on the couch, baby as warm as comforter on my belly, soft breathing... I see him going into REM sleep and then his body goes slack and floppy as he moves into deep sleep. No need to move. Just watching the shadows on the ceiling. I click on my ipod, shuffle play. First song . Out of season, but perfect for my mood. And then this. :)
Flickr user Neil Kandalgaonkar aka brevity has created a script to average photos in the manner of artist Jason Salavon. Cool stuff.
Some links:
Brevity
Eiffel Tower
Photographer's Own Shadows
The Seasons
Salvon
Every Playboy Centerfold from the 1970's
Top Grossing Film of All Time
Class of 1967 vs 1988
This Kodachrome slide was marked "March 18, 1970. It's me and my dad in a park in Houston... my guess is it's the park near the art museum. The bonnet is embarrassing, but give me a break. I was 3.
I own two Tibetan skulls. Both were at one time used for blood ritual. One was bought by my dad in Venice from a Tibetan ethnographer who travelled in Tibet in the 50's. The other was given to me by a monk in a monastery in Dege in 1992 after I pointed it out as a match to the one my dad found. An artist named Benedict Carpenter does drawings based on descriptions of things. He then posts the results on the net. I submitted a description of the skull and he came back with this drawing. Surprisingly accurate considering the description.
