Sunday, March 22, 2009
Moving Art...or Graffiti on Trains
This has become one of my favourite things to photograph and have found this art form to have a great amount of creativity and an ability to improvise and make the surface and materials as much a part of the work as the spray paint. I also love the idea of a moving gallery and covering something so mundane with shapes and colour. In my opinion as long as the subject matter isn't crude its art not vandalism. Especially when its on rusty or dull colored boxcars. So keep your eyes open and instead of being irritated or upset when your stopped by a train crossing the road, sit back and enjoy the show!!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Stop Hatin'
In a "post partisan", "post racial", "post sexist", "post homophobic" America this sign says it all. We all live here and its going to stay miserable till we say live and let live and one more thing....make a fair, unbiased, even playing field for everyone....conservative, liberal, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transsexual, asexual, black, white, Asian, Caucasian, African American, Native American, Jewish, Muslim, evangelical, Catholic, Welsh, Irish, English, British, African, Latino, Homosexual, lost, found, saved, smart, not so smart, country, urban, suburban, and the list goes on. Its time to celebrate who we are and celebrate who are neighbors are, its time to celebrate diversity; because this only makes us a stronger nation. We have millions of labels therefor we have millions of different ways to look at a problem and the ability to synthesize this into a great answer for any problem. So instead of letting these differences divide us we should celebrate it, embrace it, and take advantage of the gift it gives to us and also..we will never be bored!!! =)
Sign O' Times
This is becoming a common site everywhere you go in the US now. It is feeling more and more like the "Great Depression". Not that I know what the "Great Depression" actually felt like, I am a bit to young..=) but I have read quite a bit about it and the signs are all around us. The signs I am writing about aren't signs in the market or in the government but the sites and sounds in our communities. Food pantries and shelters filled to capacity, lines around the block at unemployment offices, job fairs packed past capacity, but these aren't the worst signs. The worst signs are tent cities popping up outside not only our larger cities, but around average towns, people having to live in garages and boxes, people like the gentleman in the sign that are begging for a little money for any labor they can do. The ones that are the hardest hit are the children. They have to fend for themselves lots of the time while the parents are looking for work and have no stable place to study, eat and especially sleep. No place to wash their bodies and clothes regularly and no food at night or on the weekends because the schools are closed. The only stable place a lot of the children have are the schools, its gives them food, shelter, and most cases love and knowledge. Things that are hard to come buy when your homeless or living in an over capacity building. Many schools are starting to launder the clothes of these children and packing food to get them through the weekend, but this doesn't address the main issue, a stable place to live!! The sad thing that is happening now is because of lost revenue (another symptom of the recession/depression) schools are feeling an enormous budget crunch. Many are having to layoff teachers, social workers, nurses, and teachers aids. The schools that provide transportation to and from school are feeling it even more, many of these schools are even considering only having a four day week to save money. Can you imagine how far behind this will put our children? We are already behind fourteen other industrialized countries and falling fast. We aren't preparing our children for the global economy already, and the summer break has been a contributing factor in this. So getting rid of a weekday will only make a bad situation worse, but the part that I fear even more are these homeless students will have one more day a week of unbearable suffering. Their one bastion of hope, warmth, and normalcy will be one less day, it will make the "weekends" feel like an eternity, something most of us can't even imagine. Why would we take away much needed class time for our students and then throw salt in the wounds of the children that are less fortunate then most of us. I can't wrap my head around why people complain so much about paying school taxes and about tax dollars going toward schools, yet we ask them to be shelters, social workers, soup kitchens, laundries, minor medical centers, day cares, psychologist, and the list goes on and on. We expect them to work miracles, and blame them for all of societies ills. Then we pay teachers less then most other workers with comparable education, give less funding to the schools for equipment, and then expect them to produce miracles and protest and cut funding or even shut them down when the miracle isn't produced. This country will continue to lose in the global economy and our children, yours, your neighbors, and the children that have no where to go are the ones made to suffer. So next time you complain about the schools, or complain about high school taxes, think about what they are asked to do and what they are given to accomplishment. Have a great week and a belated Happy St. Pat's!!
Scary pundents
I found this on a BSNF boxcar this week, it reminded me of all the fireworks that are going on in the GOP between Megan McCain and coulter & ingram. Ms. McCain has a blog on "the Daily Beast" (a political and current events blog website). A very interesting website and worth a browse everyday. Anyway Ms. McCain voiced her opinions on what the republican party needs to do to expand its tent so it doesn't get spanked like it has in the past two elections (2006 & even worse 2008). She wrote about the party trying to come to the center or at least closer to the center on social issues like most of the country has. Especially on gay marriage and a woman's choice, these issues have really change with the newer generations. She also commented on how a. coulter (I like to call her she-who-shall-not-be-named) was bad for the GOP because of her racist and bigoted speech. She-who-shall-not-be-named never responded to Ms. McCain's blog, which is out of character for her, but ingram decided to defend her. She also decided to take the low road as usual and attacked Ms. McCain for not her ideas, but her intelligence and size/weight. This is the usual tactic for these extremist right wing windbags, most of their ideas don't hold up so they attack the person. These are the tactics of a movement that is bankrupt of ideas and angry that everyone sees it now. So I am sure the more Ms. McCain points out the hard things that need to be done to put that party back into contention, the more the rush's, ingram's, ect. will take the low road and attack people's look and personalities, not debate the issues.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Hawk that Scared Me Silly!!!
This hawk found a way to make me jump higher than I ever have. I was on the edge of the John James Audubon state park trying to get a good pic of a "Red Bellied" woodpecker, when some noise scared the bird away. I was annoyed, but decided to move a little further in and try and find a good spot to find him/her or another one. Little did I realize there was a raccoon in the tree over my shoulder, I never notice him though. The reason I knew he was there was a hawk out of the blue decided he/she was small enough for dinner. He/she dove down, hit the raccoon, and broke its neck, I had no clue what was going on and the noise was intense from this epic battle (ok it wasn't a battle, I am sure the raccoon was as aware of the hawk as I was of both of them!!). I nearly had a heart attack, I had just recently heard of a man that was hit by a bullet from a stray shot of a .22 and that was the first thing that went through my paranoid head, and the next thing was why is the hawk just sitting here eating. I guess when your hungry matters don't matter =)...anyway he stayed and let me photograph him while he had dinner and then nonchalantly flew off. Made for a very exciting day out in the wilderness, very exciting indeed!!
I Need a Miracle Everyday
I was listening to an old Dead show on the way home from USI the other day. I had recieve some not so good news and was feeling a bit blue. When the song "I Need A Miracle" came on the iPod, I was thinking about how appropriate that song has been throughout my entire life and I see this brilliant sun beam touching the ground. I had to pull over and take a pic and of course that turned into a ton of pics, Can't waste a beautiful sky!! That is the one thing I am thankful about photography, it has made me see the beauty in the most glorious things and even better the most common things we take for granted. I wish everyone could see the beauty all around them, they would treat the world very differently. They wouldn't take life and the people around them for granted, and realize the little things are the things that count. The bird that flies by, the child that smiles, the way someone walks or holds their heads, and the way our pets act when we come home to them. These are the precious things, the common things we see every day and most of the time take for granted. I promised myself at that instant, on the side of the road, that I will try to realize and enjoy all the small miracles that surround me everyday, and enjoy and exhault them for how ever long I have left on this beautiful planet. We should all take time to realize what is really important and keep it in a special place in our hearts, maybe one day I will find the person that cares about things the same way I do and we can share the joy that surrounds us all. For now I will share it with the virtual world and hope I can bring a bit of happiness to others.
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