I was in the Army for three years and all I knew were people in the army – and a few Air Force – now I don't know anybody. It is a shame and – in my humble opinion – a blot on our country that we – most people – have been able to take no no part in the carnage we want other people to do in our name. Maybe, if we all had to take part, we wouldn't have as many wars.
All posts by Steve Stern
Ask for Adenium obesum; Google will give you about 12,600 results in 0.12 seconds
Or Dorstenia foedita in 0.17 seconds with about 7,830 results*. We truly live in an an age of wonder.
My grandmother was born in the late 1880s – about 16 years, give or take 5, before Wilbur and Orville first flew the Flyer – and she died after John Glen orbited the earth. I used to marvel at the change she went though, but it is nothing compared to the change we are going through.
True, from horse and buggy to orbit seems like a big jump. But very, very, few people will ever go into orbit; it just isn't part of our life. But everybody – OK, maybe not everybody, but everybody with a small rounding error – has a computer and access to the World Wide Web. Really, access to an almost infinite well of knowledge.
With a smart phone – and we will all have smart phones soon – we have access everywhere, anytime. All the time. Astounding! A huge percentage of the world's knowledge – maybe not knowledge, but facts, at least – is at our fingertips. Literally, as Joe Biden would say. What do walruses eat? When was Hypatia murdered by religious fanatics? How far is the airport from a hotel – any hotel you want – in the downtown section of the capital of Paraguay?
We are living in a time of wonders that were inconceivable 20 years ago.
* somehow I find it very amusing that Google can come up with results in 0.17 seconds but – apparently – doesn't have time to count the exact number of results
Big houses and the fall of civilization
Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate. Margaret Mead
I ran into this quote some time ago thinking about big houses and how – like everything, such as cars and wine glasses – houses have been getting steadily bigger over the last forty years. And, as we run out of resourses, I wonder if that will turn around.
About two months ago, Michele and I saw The Social Network. One of the inferances in passing – if that is the right way to say it – is that to get rich in high tech – really rich – you have to move to Palo Alto. Now that is not true, of course, but it does become closer to true if you replace Palo Alto with the inner Bay Area. Or, probably, any urban/inner suburban area.
In Palo Alto, houses are not very big – partially because of small lots and tight zoning true – but, also, the majority of the homes were built before 1980. My guess is that the average house built in Modesto, far from Silicion valley – even though much, much cheaper – is bigger than the average house in Palo Alto. Houses got bigger as the available land was further and further from the epi-center of the bay area. Because they were so much cheaper per square foot, they were cheaper, period.
So we probably have a situation where the boss lives in a smaller house than somebody working for the boss. Not always – lots of bosses live in big houses in Atherton – but often. In my imagination, after a Chistmas Party at the bosses house in Palo Alto – and a very long drive home or expensive night in a hotel – the employee will start to think about living in a smaller house.
Pixar at the Oakland Museum
Michele and I went to the Oakland Museum for our anniversary. What I like about the Oakland Museum is that the design – by Kevin Roche – is sixties superb and what I like even better is that it is about California art. Most museums – at least most US museums – aren't local or regional, they are aspiring to be national or international. So, when I go to a museum in a strange city, I don't see great local art, I see a second rate Jasper Johns or or third rate Amedeo Modigliani.
But, at the Oakland Museum of California, I see first rate California art. The museum has recently been remodeled and it was pretty busy when we were there. Maybe because of the remod but probably because of an excellent show – put together by René de Guzman – on Pixar.
For me, the Pixar show was especially interesting because I feel there is a similarity between Pixar's art and my photography. Not a similarity in quality so much as a similarity in style. Looking at the Pixar individual pictures, none seems like what I would call great stand alone art. It is story telling art. It is art because of it's context.
Standing alone, the Pixar pictures are fun but in a That would be great in a kids room. That would be great in the kitchen. sort of way. The pictures work best when they push the story.
When I look at photographs of a place that I have been or am going to and then look at my photographs of the same place; mine usually don't have that calendar punch. For a couple of reasons: most published photographers shoot at the golden hour which makes anything look good – including traffic – and photographers tend to shoot the same shots and use the same tricks, over and over again because they work. Like Pixar, my photographs usually work best when they are pushing a story.
I like to think that I have lots of photographs that stand by themselves, but I have always been a better slide show photographer than a calendar photographer. I think that is why this blog works best when it is telling a story – especially about a trip.
Black people vs. black culture
A post by Ta-Nehisi Coates – by far one of my favorite bloggers – on the culture of poverty got me thinking about people being charged as racists and their taking offense at that. It seems as if they truly don't consider themselves racists.
The problem is, I think, that even racists – OK, most of them anyway – don't dislike black people. They dislike black culture. They don't dislike a black guy who acts white, they dislike a black guy who acts black.
The racist dislikes Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or Cornell West not because they are dark, but because they act different from how the racist would act. The difference in color is not a problem, the difference in culture is.
That is pretty easy to say, now. To even see, now. But, for a long time I couldn't see it. I am sorry to admit that there was a time that I didn't like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or Cornell West. They just didn't see like my kind of people. Sure, they said the right things, but, somehow, it seemed off. All I could see was their culture, and I mistook that for who they were.
But, behind that veneer of a different culture, they are my kind of people.
In the 60's, every black person I came in contact with, acted white. Or, more accurately, they had a white persona that they wore when the interacted with me and – presumably – other white people. I remember several times when – watching a black person walking from a white group to a black group – I could actually see their body language change. It was like the son of an immigrant who speaks English at school and the marketplace and speaks Polish at home.
Somewhere between then and now, that changed. Cornell West, for example, acts culturally black everywhere and all the time. He is saying, This is who I am and I am proud of it. Michele Obama tells the world she is black with a fist bump to her husband on national television.*
For me it has gone from why do they have tp prove they are different to being fun. To hearing what Al Sharpton is saying rather than how he is saying it.
* and the racists went apoplectic.