TWO BEAUTIFUL BABIES... Cousins, Elizabeth and Brystal
No text is necessary.

Ed and Elizabeth

Brystal and Margaret

DIGITAL MAGIC...

Occasionally I find someone who has resolved never to enter the world of digital photography... and I can appreciate the sentimental attachment to the smell of darkroom developer and fixer; but it’s the image that interests me, however it is produced.

  

I actually like processes... guidelines... even rules... maybe so I can break them.  With digital photography, there are no rules other than the ones imposed by nature and by the technology.  When the technology changes, I get in line to try it... and to play around with it.  

Today was another cell phone day... with a good deal of fooling around with Photoshop... With editing software I can try new ways of seeing, which isn’t a bad idea sometimes.

From Boston to Bangladesh... April has been a hell of a month.  Thoughtful people all over the world have been trying to make sense of it... trying to figure out why a couple of young brothers who came to America from Chechnya... seeming to be men with good prospects and bright futures in the land of the free and home of the brave... before they took ordinary pressure cookers and turned them into bombs that killed and maimed innocent people.  Then in Texas a fertilizer plant carelessly sited, tragically operated and negligibly inspected exploded killing and injuring many innocent people.  On the other side of the world in Bangladesh a poorly constructed eight-story garment factory collapsed killing more than 300 people and injuring hundreds of others.

You know how it is sometimes when you think you’d like to talk with someone about something, but it’s impossible... for all kinds of reasons, the most absolute of them being that the person you’d like to sit with at a coffee shop for a long chat is, well, dead... and has been for more than half a century.  I realize this journal piece is beginning to ramble, so I’ll get right to the point.  I’d like to chat with George Bernard Shaw because I think he was on to something important that I should very much like to know about being human.

I know... I know.  It’s ridiculous... but did you know that George Bernard Shaw, besides being an Irish playwright and poet and critic was an enthusiastic photographer.  He didn’t do photography for a living but for fun.  He got his first camera sometime in the 1880s. I’d like to talk with him about taking pictures... about what he was trying to see in the world and how he went about looking at it.  I’d like to tell him about digital photography... about my cell phone... and... and... and...

But the main reason I’d like to have the conversation with Mr. Shaw is that I’d like to ask him what he thinks goes wrong with people, people who seem quite ordinary, people who do things like make bombs that kill and hurt even children... and about people so eager for profit in their businesses that they are willing to put hundreds of people at risk of being hurt or killed or just being abjectly poor and miserable for a whole lifetime trying to make a living. Did I mention that George Bernard Shaw was fascinated by the stories he heard about Native Americans?  He once told about a Native American elder who described his own inner struggles in this manner: “Inside of me there are two dogs.  One of the dogs is mean and evil.  The other dog is good.  The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.  When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.”

LINDA VISTA STREET FAIR... 

Celebrating Diversity

My Friend Tom Fagan's mural at the Linda Vista Library is the center of the community. 

Linda Vista is a constant reminder that I lie down to sleep every night just 20 miles from the busiest border crossing in the world... Living here lets me never forget that I am a citizen of the world... and all of the people in the world are my neighbors.  Our village rainbow flag is the perfect symbol for our part of San Diego.

Nobody has explained the nature of friendship better than A.A. Milne...

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh?" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. "I just wanted to be sure of you.” 
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Rhoda and Mack Bradshaw

Friends from the days when we lived on the same street in Singapore.

They now live in Manila.

Life is Good.

Jan and Lyle, Helen, Margaret, Rhoda and Mac, Elaine, Jerral

The Way I See San Diego...

This third view of our city skyline was taken from the west end of Balboa Park.  It’s easy to remember when the old El Cortez Hotel (now a condo community) was the highest point in Downtown.  I got the other pictures (flag and plane, homeless people, and the iconic tower and dome of The Museum of Man) by stopping my bicycle, pointing and shooting.   I rode down to Nelson's in Little Italy then to North Park to leave posters promoting a Photographic Competition at George’s Camera Store.  Below please find a WEB address for dates and instructions for the competition and exhibition to be held at Trotter Chapel, First United Methodist Church, in September and October. 

The theme: Visualizing Social Justice.  Photographic entries are invited from all over the world.  In the meantime, keep your camera handy and your mind and eyes alert for winning photographs.

http://www.fumcsd.org/get-connected/adult-studies/school-of-christian-studies/visualizing-social-justice/

Life is good... for some of us; and I’m assuming people who read this blog join me in trying to make it better for people less fortunate than we are. 

A print above the entrance to a gallery in Little Italy

fits the theme of visualizing social justice.

San Diego School of Christian Studies presents

Visualizing Social Justice:  

Preparing for the Photography Exhibition

Wednesday, May 8 ~ 7-8:30 PM ~ The Cove

Panel: Mary Beth Klauer, Dr. Russ Locke, Jerral Miles 

Tuition: $10, students with I.D. Free.

Register: https://fumcsd.wufoo.com/forms/w7w0z5/?utm_source=eNews+4%2F24%2F13&utm_campaign=eNews+4%2F24%2F13&utm_medium=email

SOME THINGS DEFY EXPLANATION...
... like why the strangely dressed young man triggered in my memory an image of my Grandfather standing on the porch of his house in central Arkansas almost seventy years ago watching me watching him.

WHEN I WAS TEN

My Grandpa, a tall thin man, standing on the porch smoking his pipe...

I remember moustache and white eyebrows in the Sunday sunlight,

his soft eyes looking at me inviting questions I never thought to ask...

I didn’t recognize until it was too late that his invitation meant he knew

I’d someday look back on the day and wish I had known what to do.

I wonder now if he was thinking then about his grandfather... wishing

he had known enough to ask, “Grandfather, please... who am I?

Did Grandpa want to tell me things I should know about what life is...

how it goes on and on and on without stopping until it’s finally over.

Did he see himself in me and decide not to intrude on my innocence?

OUR AND ABOUT on San Diego Bay...