The Boy said that was very bad of me to say that Tangobaby is dead and that I should apologize.
Apparently he was not the only one who thought my sensationalism was naughty. I'm sorry. I'm not dead. Even this blog isn't dead. I'm going to leave it here for posterity.
So, I will try this again:
Hi all,
Just a quick hello because I'm headed down to LA to see my grandpa on what has to be the fastest planned trip I've taken yet. He turns 94 on Friday and this seems like it's a happy/sad visit, kind of a hello/happy birthday/goodbye visit. I'm going to try to focus on the happy part and not the sad part, if I can help it.
I didn't want to disappear without saying howdy, and also to let you know that I am typing this post on probably one of the most ancient laptops that still works. It's my dad's, and we actually have to preheat it, like a toaster oven, for about 10 minutes before we can use it. My mom says, "Sid, go preheat the computer so Julie can send an email to her friends!"
And like 10 minutes later, I can use this thing, which makes little windy whirring noises, has a plastic floppy sticking out of the drive (remember those gadgets?!) and has the screen propped up because the hinge is broken and the screen falls over if you don't hold it up with something heavy.
So while I am able, here writing on this preheated computer, I wanted to tell you that the interview I'm posting tomorrow on CALIBER is really cool and you should check it out. I have some "preheated" posts scheduled there so at least there will be something pretty to look at.
Okay, catch you later, peeps. See you when I get back from LaLa Land.
xoxo
I happened to be on Cannery Row this weekend for a few minutes. Immortalized by John Steinbeck and now completely gutted of all history and sense of time and place, the conglomeration of "art galleries" (the Thomas Kinkade National Archives, and no, I am NOT making this up, is just a few blocks away), t-shirt boutiques and ice cream vendors are all that stand for what once was.
I had to laugh, sadly. The Thomas Kinkade National Archives made me chortle with incredulity while simultaneously making my stomach turn. (It is a hope of mine that The Painter of Light will disappear into history with the passing of our generation. At least Disney tried to infuse his view of what our saccharine world should be with a bit of humor, and I can't even imagine Uncle Walt establishing his own National Archive in his own lifetime...but I digress.)
But what a very strange, feeble attempt to educate the t-shirt and seashell-buying tourist trade: the prevalence of banners on every lightpost up and down the street, rainbow colored banners sporting folksy caricatures of Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck, the reverse sides of the flags bearing quotes about Doc and Cannery Row.
I don't know about you, but as much as I have loved reading Steinbeck, I hadn't even heard of Ed Ricketts and The Log from the Sea of Cortez until about six years ago, when The Boy took me on a trip. We parked by the ocean and we sat in his vintage Jeep; he read long passages of this book to me while we watched the gulls dip into the waves and kept on the lookout for otters. Since that time, The Log from the Sea of Cortez has become one of my most favorite books. Not because it was read to me aloud, with much love and sense of sharing, but because it's a wonderful book about friends. And science. And the love of learning.
People lurching full-bellied from the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company (to think that the legacy of Hollywood pablum Forrest Gump is a seafood restaurant) to the Thomas Kinkaide National Archives will never know what those flags fluttering above their heads stand for.
Traveling to and from the Monterey Peninsula this weekend, through what I call Steinbeck Country: Salinas, Watsonville, Castroville—reminded me of the reality of what he experienced. What he wrote about. His travels, the poverty, and the love he encountered along the way. I've posted some images on flickr, with the corresponding quotes below. I have to imagine that these quotes, this sort of brilliance will survive all Thomas Kinkades and t-shirt vendors, even if the places he wrote about will never be again.
It sounds so very wrong to say "I'm going to shoot a wedding party this weekend" or "It was so fun shooting all of those little kids, they were adorable", etc. etc.
We have to come up with a better turn of phrase, us photographer types.
Anyway, I hope you're having fun doing whatever you're doing. I'm actually packing more lenses than shoes. Boy, have times changed.
This photo will be posted in all its gigantic cuteness tomorrow on CALIBER.
See ya!
When I was in the third grade, I had a green, short thermos. Wide-mouthed and plastic in that 70s avocado green that was so en vogue. The thermos was just large enough to accommodate one of the small cans of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, and for some reason, I was very aware that this thermos was lined with glass. I remember carrying it gingerly and worrying about it often. That I would drop the thermos and the glass would break. I remember that being a big concern of mine, although I was glad to have the soup for lunch. One day, at lunch on the blacktop, a boy grabbed my thermos. To my amazement, he threw it as far as he could across the playground. I remember being frozen, stunned. Shocked. It seemed that he had thrown that thermos incredibly far, and then he ran away. When I retrieved my short, wide-mouthed avocado green thermos from across the playground, it was leaking soup from its threaded matching cap and when I picked it up, I could sense the broken glass moving around inside the liquid. In my little 8-year old mind, it felt like a huge violation and a random, unexplicable act that frightened me.
Last year, reluctantly, I signed up for Facebook. To this day, I'm still not quite sure why I did. My sister, almost five years younger than me and more of a socially inclined person, encouraged me by saying things like, "You'll have so much fun finding your old school friends."
Which always made me laugh because we both knew darned well that I barely remembered anyone from any year of school, K through 12. And probably college, for that matter. With whom and why would I reconnect? Even my mom would ask me periodically, after some mother of a former classmate said, "Tell Julie so-and-so said hello!" and I would draw a total blank. My mom would say, "Do you remember going to school at all?" And we would laugh but it was pretty strange. I can remember my teachers, what we learned, what the classrooms looked like, but I'm hard-pressed to remember any given child besides their name. What I also discovered was how much I didn't remember about myself, which was a little more disconcerting.
Hey, you probably don't remember me but in third grade, you broke my soup thermos and I thought I should let you know. Happy Holidays!
Where I like to think a lot of my perspective comes from...
I've posted Pale Blue Dot before, and it's an essay that is worth reading often. I think when the words are juxtaposed with such beautiful visuals, it's incredibly powerful.
"Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives...."
"...To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
You can see the big image here.
***
I don't do New Year's resolutions. I might have in the past, in fact, I'm sure I did at some point in life. Somewhere along the way, I dropped that tradition. Probably wasn't making much headway in whatever I had resolved to do.
And I don't make those lists of things I did in the past, either. I can hardly remember what I did last week, let alone try to scratch out what I was doing a year ago, or heaven help me, a decade ago (this being a more pivotal, albeit still arbitrary date, people really seem to be taking this whole decade thing to heart).
I just figure if I'm going to do something, for good or bad, I'll just do it when I decide to do it. That keeps it pretty simple for me.
That being said, I wanted to give a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who responded via email or on the blog about helping HAMO and the Diapers for Everyone 2010 Diaper Drive. I have to say I'm a little behind in getting back to you all who volunteered to donate or help in some way, but know your offers are duly noted... and you'll be contacted soon.
I guess I do have a sort of resolution process. It's called Looking Forward to Good Things. Some of those things, like the Diaper Drive and working with HAMO, I know about. The rest: I'll just have to wait to be surprised!
Wishing you the best kind of New Year's Eve in whatever manner you choose to celebrate it. And mostly, a year full of Looking Forward to Good (Surprise) Things.
Can't start the new year fresh without a new project, right?
Some (many?) of you might be familiar with the young homeless family that I was helping last year. I'm assuming that most of you know part or all of the story but if not, the link is here. Blogging about K's story is how I came in contact with a lot of you in the first place. ;-)
Meeting K (the homeless mother and domestic abuse survivor) and her young children (ages 9, 7 and three months) was a life-changing, eye-opening happy/sad experience. I learned first-hand about the dangers, fears and daily life of a family living on the edge of society in my beloved adopted hometown: San Francisco.
Right after I met K, a young mother named Lisa wrote to me and asked how she could help. She met me at a run-down hotel in the Tenderloin, 2 kids in tow (ages 3 and 1), and brought diapers, bags of clothes and toiletries and nursing supplies for this family. I can't tell you enough how happy and needed these donated supplies were to K. Especially the diapers.
I came to know Lisa and also to help her when I could with her budding effort called Help a Mother Out (HAMO) which she had just started with a friend. Through constant effort, Lisa and HAMO have collected over 130,000 diapers for shelters, crisis nurseries in the SF Bay Area. The Bay Area does not have a diaper bank and there is no other organized way of helping needy families get diapers for their babies.
Why all the explanation?
When I was working with K and the kids over the course of several months, I learned a lot. Let me give you an example.
When I first met K, as a homeless mother, she was not on any sort of assistance at all. She fled an abusive, dangerous husband with all the cash she could gather and found a cheap hotel in the Tenderloin. That hotel was $60 a night. The day I met her was her last day in the hotel unless she could come up with more money (which many of you were kind enough to help with). The following month after I met her, she started to receive welfare. These are real numbers below. I became very familiar with them over the course of months last year.
