February 28
today holden turns 2….
just 2 years ago this was him
now this is him
im horribly proud and confused all at the same time…. more parental emotional documentation tonight when I have more time
today holden turns 2….
just 2 years ago this was him
now this is him
im horribly proud and confused all at the same time…. more parental emotional documentation tonight when I have more time
so in case any one is keeping track, we started our photo project baltimore, meet pittsburgh. One catch is finding the time, and realizing that really everything will be posted at night more than likely…. ehhh… but it definitly does motivate me to get out and get darby walked in the a.m. to get some early morning light. Ill upload mine from this morning, but in the mean time… here’s what you might have missed from friday and this weekend.
so, yeah…The last time I made and entry on Geekpunk was May 2005. I was at a hostel in Prague. It’s now February 2006 and I’m at a desk in Pittsburgh. I’m not sure where the time went exactly, but wherever it went it went there very quickly.
From January 2005 to January 2006 I travelled a lot. I put 30,000 miles on my car, at least 3,000 miles on rental cars, flew approximately 18,000 miles, and clackity clacked over 1,400 miles on trains. I was in Toronto five times, travelled from Germany to Czech Republic to Austria to Italy and back again for 3 weeks, went to SF twice and travelled in California for a bit, as well as the east coast of the US. In all my wanderings in other countries I came back unhappy about (among other things) the public transportation in Pittsburgh, the crappy rail system in the US, and how other American travellers were ignorant of the culture they were in. I’m also jealous of the fact that they all have prettier money than we do.
It was a year of firsts for me…I finally made it to Europe, I asked what seemed like hundreds of times “WC please?”, spent the night in a sleeper car of a train (from Venice to Munich), swam in Lake Champlain, got my motorcycle license, got my credit report, had a silly string fight in a moving van….there were a lot.
I also finally stepped into the digital age and bought a digital camera. I’ve hated it for the most part. I use my regualar slr primarily to shoot bands and other more documentary type stuff. The rest of the photography I do I use a medium format camera or toy cameras and pinhole cameras. With the digital I thought I could shoot bands and get the photos to them quicker and with less of my time eaten up, with a giant added bonus of cutting down on the amount of chemicals I’m dumping into the earth and paper and film I’m using…all solid reasoning. The problem was and is still that I’m having a hell of a time wrapping my head around it and fighting the urge to use a Nikon D70 as a very expensive point and shoot slr. I could think of nothing but selling the damn thing, until the opportunity arose to actually do so. Then I started rethinking my hatred. Some of my displeasure, and yes this is snobby and I don’t care- I’m o.k. with being a snob, is based in people picking up digital cameras and calling themselves photographers. In my mind unless you’ve done darkroom time, you don’t deserve a whole lot of my respect in the photography arena. I also don’t think you’ll truly understand what you’re doing in photoshop with your digital images or your digital slr unless you’ve got a background in traditional photography. Again…snobby assumptions, but well yeah…I don’t care.
“What do all these snotty assumptions mean to me?” is probably what you’re thinking (as well as why the hell does this girl ramble so much and gee I’m GLAD she’s been absent for the better part of a year). Well what this all means to you is that thanks to Mike coming up with the Baltimore meet Pittsburgh project we’re going to do, along with Cherokee, you’re going to get to see every week day the fruits of my digital frustrations. I hope by the end of the month we’re going to do this project that I’m more comfortable with my digital camera, and digital photography in general…well within reason, and that you dear reader get to see some decent images.
Now here are some photos of my travels over the last year…and yes they’re all digital.
heres a neat lecture series about our fair city.
so starting tomorrow me, cherokee, and missy are gonna do a photo project, that were going to post in the gallery.
Heres the rules….
as an effort for us all to get more comfortable w/ our high priced toys, I mean artist instruments…. were gonna do a photo project.
1) All photos must be taken in fully manual mode (although if you like you can do the auto focus)
2) All photos have to be taken in our fair citys.
3) All photos can be adjusted on the computer only to change colors/contrast etc… no serious altering or cropping.
I say we do it for 1 month. So every day we each take a picture, and upload it to geekpunk.
more to come starting tomorrow
holden did his best to try and help
so me and jim played in a band called the allied war effort, way back in the 90’s we released a cookie packaged as a record. Really this was half a joke at ourselves for never really getting around to releasing a record, and part a statement about the sillyness of diy record culture et all. You can only make fun of something you really love.
This weekend we started working on the great 709 compoud declurterisation, and got a smaller tv unit deal w/ doors, and took down a shelf which was basicly there to hold nick naks and records. The records are now on a shelf in the basement. A whole floor away from the record player its self. For a while now I have been thinking about completly selling off the turn table and the vinyl its self (with the exception of stuff me and cherokee put out), but I just cant bring myself too. Sure most of it I dont listen to anymore, and is very much as this post says a document of who I was, not who I am. If you were to look at my records you would think im an early 20’s sxe hardcore kid. Not an early 30’s indie/punk kid who finds him self listening to reggae more than anything else these days. So the question is do I sell, or just store as an archive. I feel like I should keep burning stuff to mp3, and sell them so some one else can get excited to hear los crudos and end of the century party as much as I did. But just cant bring myself to, yet. So in the mean time my music streams from my ipod and sirrus radio, and the turn table, doesnt turn as much as it once did, and i feel ok about it.
its been a hard transition this week from european tourist to american worker bee. We made sure to take down notes about our trip, but as not to be redundant in my documentaion… Ill list out a top 5 realizations while walking around paris.
1) time does make the memories more grand and more simple. I had been to paris for a day in the summer of 1997, I had before we went back this time grandious memories of the city of lights. When we were there this time, everything seemed smaller and larger all at once, grander and simpler. Its funny how time can play tricks on your memories.
2) as a nation, our lack of respect for the international community is a shame. We sat in a brassarie where a waitress waited on 3 tables w/ 3 different languages. Now im not to say that understand/respect for language == respect for culture but its a start. We as a nation are ones who divide and conquer, and expect to not adapt. One of my resolutions is to become more proficient in a foriegn language (probably spanish) and teach holden that its necessary as well.
3) as americans, we need to chill in the job/life department. after we got through the catacombs, we were meet by a really nice early something year old guy, who followed us to the metro. While talking we learned, that he had been working the job for 5 years, he had 3 kids, lived in paris, was about to go on holiday to germany, and was on his 2 hour lunch break. His day started at 10… at 1:00 he left for 2 hours, and then was done w/ work by 5. Imagine a worker bee at aquarium getting those kinds of benefits and making a living wage.
4) is it possible for cities who have been left behind in the public transportation relm to ever catch up. The paris metro is astounding in size and use. Its also very old, as is the london underground, and new york city subway. With the lack of understanding of common good in american socitety, will any modern american city be able to build a public train system where before there was none, or did the advent of aforable cars and the coolness of fixed gear bikes ensure this will not ever happen?
5) its highly possible that this will be our last holiday alone together w/ out holden. This trip would have been way too much for him, and us both. Thankfully he enjoyed his time w/ his grandparents allot. Even though we missed him horribly and both spoke of him allot, we also enjoyed explorering just the two of us. We both came back revitalized with each other, and looking towards the future even more.
reminds me im no longer hopping metro trains to musuems… but instead killing myself in commutes and wallowing at work. A much longer post and picture thread / gallery to come. In short, were home, were tired, ive come to love nuetlla, and holden can now thanks to his nonnie say 2, after being asked how hold he is (after first requesting choclate).
