I seem to remember someone telling me that Josef Koudelka would photograph all summer long and would spend the winter printing. Don’t know if this is true or more of the romantic myth of the wandering Koudelka, but I was impressed. It was a good model of a working method that would work for me after all in the shortened cold days of winter I wouldn’t feel light envy and thus cocooning myself in the darkroom would be fine.

It seems, though, that neither is much of a deterrent. In theory I think that it is cold outside but once out in it, it doesn’t seem so bad.

While it is a warmer than usual winter here, my wish to walk down Damen from Ravenswood to Wicker Park in he drizzle proved to me that cool drizzle wasn’t a reason to stop wandering.

Doing errands in Milwaukee and needing post Christmas exercise, we walked along the lake front and the East Side. Carol and I have different walking methods. I walk and gawk slowing down for things potentially strange, she walks for exercise meaning a moments hesitation on my part has her out of site in the distance. I usually end up slowing to look then running to catch up – if there is another thing to stop me – then slowing again only to run yet again.

Headed back the next day to buy conservation board at the Utrecht – which is more money than the Utrecht in Chicago – and make the snaps that I had missed the day before.

On the first I was over prepared with a scarf, gloves and something for my ears. The second knowing what to expect, the sweatshirt and gloves – my hands get cold quickly - was fine.

It was made clear to me again that I seem to function quite well between 0 and 5C – I should know this as when I head to school I would check my comfort level with the temperature gauge at Adams and Wacker. In fact it seems that it is about perfect to keep me moving but not to the extent that I have to race walk. Changing film is a problem due to my hands getting cold – been practicing with the 10x8 here in Peasants Pissoir making a snap a day with it - but otherwise I am fine.

This reinforcement of what I know comes as a relief as it is five days and counting until the return where it is –6C.

winter solstice sun prints

When there was no time to actually finish anything, things started to come together. A sunny clear skied Christmas eve, clear sky no clouds, thought what the hell I would use the remaining Cranes cover stock to make some platinotypes.

They were perfect, no grain in the exposures spot on, even the dust seemed to cooperate by staying away pushed my luck and printed some that were giving me trouble and even they were successful. Made a dozen that could be used either for the book for Martin and Gabrielle for allowing me the use of Sullivan’s loop again or for any mishaps of prints for the show at the end of the month.

It seems that the basement had just the right amount of TB engendering dampness to humidify the paper perfectly.

The neighbours already know of the eccentricities. The people behind me have had to mow around my printing frames and have stopped to brush off the clippings that have fallen on the frame. Gave him a print. The people across the way are used to watching me chase the sun around the front garden in the morning and my bafflement in the afternoon as to where to place the frame – back garden worrying about the shadows the branches will throw – or closer and closer to the road where I am afraid someone might like the curiosity.

So I have come to the conclusion that I cannot get cocky. In fostering a psyche of slow photography I cannot approach it as if it were an assembly line, calculating how many I can make during the sunlight hours and ploughing through. If I choose to use something as iffy as the Northern winter solstice light I cannot expect to churn out prints. I'll remember this until the next time caffeine courses through my veins.

11 days

Concerted efforts at the many little tedious things that had to be done have been and I now feel in control. The film came now hope I ordered enough – I’ll have 160 rolls for the trek north and east, less than the10 a day that I was hoping for but my frugality came into play once again. I am guessing that there will be five days of less than perfect weather where the photographic quota won’t be met as I am still not sure what type of weather I’ll encounter – then again the last time on the Avalon I ran out of film on three outings but that was summer.

My usual way of doing things – sneaking up on people leaving something than going away will not be as again frugality got the best of me so I asked the alcoholic in training if he could arrange a machine via TJ. Foiling the attempt of knocking on the door of the Pipe House and asking if he fancies a pint at the Duke. By now all of Pouch is aware of the return.

TJ is out of the country so no machine until, at the earliest, 7 January. This should panic me as I had planned on spending some time in the Barrens, Placentia Bay in essence as far away from Cape St. Francis as possible for the work that I wanted to do. Surprisingly I didn’t, simply thought of places that I can walk or – for a moment forgetting the hills, and traffic, along route 20 – bike. No machine will cut down on film usage unless I fall back on another project photographing Mount Pearl – oh there are the images I want to make of pond hockey, which I have wanted to do since 1999.

During all of this I realise why I shouldn’t be allowed close to art students due to the bad influence I can inflict. The main cause of bother right now is the group show. The more I think about it the more it angers me. Not the group show aspect of it but the amount of money I am going to have to spend to hang it.

Used to think JB-H crazy when he would turn down shows – they aren’t paying me enough, he’d say. Being art school trained I had that Pavlovian response to the word ‘gallery’. Now I see better ways to throw away my money. The funds wasted could be used to make more work. For the amount of people who go to galleries, it would be cheaper to simply give them all copies of my work – wait, I know I could mail out things at a regular basis, naw that ain’t art like.

Now I have to frame 15 prints, the cost of each could pay for all my vices for a day –, stamps, gasoline, Montréal bagels at the Georgetown Bakery, samosas at Auntie Crae’s, A Big Zig at Ziggy Peelgoods, and a few pints while reading the Globe at the end of the day.

While in the glow of thinking that I was in control by what I had accomplished, I realised that the deadline for a residency at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis France is 8 January – forgot to collect letters – and for MICA is 17 January.

12 days

It is the day of the Christmas Party. A group of people younger than me who try to act even younger and end up looking pathetic, picking “hip” places that you thought had disappeared in the 80’s a place where the mediocre food is covered by the cheesy entertainment, the opposite of intimate. Again acting like 80’s refugées, flagrant excess is in play.

I didn’t go. I simply had to arrange my train into Chicago around it as it was Carol’s firm’s party, and thus the errands that I needed to do before heading back north.

The literary Texan was heading down south and some last minute tweaks to the array of plastic cameras – close focussing, real f stops the usual. The Mormon was in town. I wanted to buy paper, and check out the catalogue that was printed on demand by Daiter Gallery and do a kamikaze drop at a Wicker Park residence.

Mind set has changed. Heading down Damen and missing a bus, I reckoned that I would walk, 30 block walk. The rain had stopped – sort of – and while it was severely overcast, took out the camera when the usual suspects showed up – a pair of trainers neatly placed under a tree, a living room suite in an alley, the formalism that appears at a Chicago six corners.

The idea was to walk until the next bus came as I wouldn’t make it to meeting the Mormon on time. Since I couldn’t walk all the way the idea of endurance test and thus racing past potential images never surfaced.

A nice walk temperature was fine – 5C – but wish that I couldn’t see for miles up and down Damen - if only there was a slight bend.

Saw two people from the WGAS. Made some snaps along division before heading into Laetitia’s.

If there ever was a café in Chicago with a New York attitude this is it. The people who work there are about as friendly and welcoming as an Israeli at the denial of the Holocaust conference in Teheran.
A sign behind the counter reads
LINCOLN PARK - WICKER PARK
Venti large
Grande medium
Tall small
But after dealing with them it seems that they aren’t scoffing at Starbucks swillers but are envious of them. the lattè was decent.

While awaiting the Mormon. There was a digital camera’ed woman who was asking if she could take a snap of people with their coffee.

It would be surprising to the people at the tute how many people said yes – only one said no and only because it was a bother and he was in a hurry - but then again it wouldn’t be if they actually went into the world outside their studios.

She made the mistake of asking me. It soon became duelling cameras. I allowed her than whipped out my much bigger apparatus, extended the lens and made a snap of her – while she was trying to defuse the situation with small talk.

It seems that she worked for a San Fran firm who place adverts on coffee jackets so that the places don’t have to pay for them and she was photographing the jackets being used. We compared cameras and she as off to photograph others while I mumbled that we would all end up on milk cartons.

After the chat, the secret drop in Bucktown and a snack at Penney’s, where we came to the conclusion that all placed are messed up it is merely a matter of degrees and whether and how much they impinge on you, we parted she back to Utah, me to the Loop. I made sure that my papers were in order as I had to enter the HALLOWED GROUNDS or STALAG 280 but again with camera out in the loop photographing things left – a nice souvenir brolly, some deflated yellows balloons trapped in the trees from a DHL party in the park.

Again being in between trains heading north meant that there was no reason to rush and already looking like a Christmas shopper all residual self respect was gone so I might as well look like a Christmas shopper who is also a tourist.

zip+four -1 v. @-0

a letter in a moleskin arrived in the post yesterday. take that gmail!!!!

After all these years, how I can constantly delude myself in the same way. I always feel that if I get some control over my life, I can accomplish what I need to do. Of course it never happens.

With school over I collapse. The last weeks don’t so much take a toll on me physically as they do mentally for in the infinite wisdom of the w.g.a.s., we don’t meet with the undergrads with any regularity for nearly a month – Yanksgiving and crit week. Of course this is when they need to meet with us the most. I enter the final week a nervous wreck as I am not really sure what I will encounter. I remember and try to follow one of the tutors at Goldsmiths’ who said that it would be best to keep in touch so that there would be no “unfortunate incidents”.

Now that I am free, there are errands to run and now with the impending departure to points north and east those errands have been multiplied. There are presents to be bought, the final books of the year to be sent out along with the normal pieces. I want to make something for the people at the Bristol post office for allowing me to inundate them with postings on an almost daily basis. I want to make two books to leave at Sullivan’s Loop and with my evil twin. I have supplies to buy.

Oh and a group show at the end of January where I have yet to be informed about the hanging or when to drop off work.

If I actually worked at a place where people actually made photographs I could ask all sorts of questions. I had my usual bout with logic as here I was wanting to spend thousands of dollars to build a digital workspace most of the money going from using film and digital output.

I was trying to delegate every nanosecond my time so that I could do everything I need to do before the time of departure.

To-day started out great the clear sky one gets with a cold day, perfect for platinotypes and I was ready.

Well not really as I wasted part of the morning using a paper that simply didn’t work. After that it was a two way race: would I run out of paper before the sun was too weak to use anymore. It was a dead heat and paper won’t get here in time to complete the books for Pouch. At least I can relax.

What aggravates me the most is that I put off the stuff that I want to do. There is a pile of letters to be answered. To-day would have been a great day to actually go out and make snaps.

The reason I like the rock is that I am limited in what I can do. Ironic isn’t it that I am trying to make Pouch feel like Peasant’s Pissoir which will have me flitting about rather than concentrating.

I wanted a lab – wet or dry – because the nights are long and it suits working on prints. I wanted a lab because I hate returning to the states with 150 rolls to be developed and proofed. As I have stated many times, there seems to be more time to do everything I want while I also can slack off a bit.

But I also realise that is an attempt at re-colonisation of the first Colony of Avalon by someone from the second. If I fill Sullivan’s Loop – or even the Pipe House - with my stuff, I’ll feel more like I live there (and I won’t have to trundle all this crap through airports).

My plan was to update the website – meaning down here I have to scan negs. Work on the negs that I want for the July show – meaning scanning negs down here.

I think that I shall catch up on my reading.

I am working myself into a state of hyperactivity that would even surprise and horrify my students.

To-day was the breaking point. The platinotype “incident” has calmed me. I have ordered film. I have what I need. What fits in my bags will go everything else stays. Martin and Gabrielle won’t be there until August, and my evil twin is happy downing a few pints of Smithwicks. I have never known a time where there wasn’t a horrendous backlog of film to be see “call me Winogrand”. I shall set out humming Simple Gifts.

I am amazed at what the impending return to the Avalon does. I am walking back from paying my property taxes smiling and humming the Ode.

Seeing a position open at Maryland Institute – even though it is not tenured – has me re-evaluating my feelings toward my birthplace.

Of course I would like the irony of teaching at a school where my great uncle Robert Clark(e) was denied admission due to race. Insignificant turns of events interest me it is the reason I chose the places that I explore when travelling – half hour later in…

While I am going to apply for I can only actively choose if I do apply and they don’t actively reject me, which is a very good possibility, I still am not sure what I think of Baltimore.

No. I am not sure if I like the idea of two Baltimores.

I am not used to the use of the walkie talkie option on phones so not only do you hear people yell into the device but then for free you hear the three quick beeps and the crackly voice on the other end.

I don’t know how I feel about the added security everywhere from the surveillance cameras on every street. I don’t like having my receipt checked at shops where there really isn’t anything to steal -National Warehouse Liquidators, the sorriest Home Depot in existence in the Plaza. It is so dark that it looks as if they forgot to pay their light bill but it also hides the fact that there is no merchandise. Even the Giant Foods in the Plaza has an armed security guard
-step away from the broasted chicken.

A true balamer moment, the metro comes out of the ground after Mondawmin and there, at dusk, in the distance where Reisterstown Road and Park Heights Avenue diverge the blinking blue police camera lights at every corner. How romantic and practical showing us where we can buy our crack.

There is Howard Street.

The fact that I cannot walk in any of the neighbourhoods that my family was in even though I found out that there was a designated Clark-Davis (sic) neighbourhood – now Upton Marble Hill.

Sandtown and Pigtown seem off limits, Westport abandoned, Cherry Hill the way it was when my father managed it.

But there is Hampden, Butchers Hill, Bolton Hill, Locust Point, Ridgely’s Delight. There is greenery everywhere. There are cafés, bars with good beer, trust, civility - outside of Northwest Baltimore - lacrosse, and the O’s. I can be surprised wandering. I can have a Natty Boh – yeah yeah I know it is a Miller product now and brewed in Atlanta or someplace – with my masala dosa. There was the Dime Museum. I like Sundays downtown well not downtown but Little Italy and Fells Point before they become tourist meccas. Even though it fills others with fear, I like night in the Inner Harbour – just about the only time I like the Inner Harbour. I like summer evenings in the neighbourhoods where people still come out and sit – Paterson Park the last time was great people out listening to country music.

Unlike Chicago that has a supreme inferiority complex – and justifiably so – Baltimore can laugh at itself, right hon?

When I mention the opening at M.I.C.A. to others it is rejected outright. This I also can see as Baltimore keeps its secret so while it is known for The Wire, Homicide – Life on the Street and John Waters, it suffers from the there’s no there there syndrome which suits me fine.

I am not sure which Baltimore will come to the forefront if they were to invite me and I were to accept – with my history of self destruction, these are big ifs. I move ahead cautiously.

MKE – EWR – YYT

Passage bought

A reminder of a former potential life as I headed over to the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection. Stephen Daiter Gallery with Doro at the collection were having a talk on photography books – not artist books per se although Doro pulled quite a few – but those books that one grew up with and where photographs are usually encountered first. The Americans,The Decisive Moment,Diane Arbus,etc

I was grateful that they had thought of me and sent an invite. I wasn’t shocked that there was only one other person from the W.G.A.S – figure it out – but many from that college in the South Loop knowing how the department feels about the idea of craft.

It was nice to be among people who were passionate about something that bordered on geekdom. It was interesting for me as it sort of closed a circle of my British life as one of the names in British photography that I hadn’t met but was a friend of a friend was there – Gerry Badger.

I had seen his in Creative Camera – still miss the magazine, even more so than (Swiss) Camera – had a few of his writings through the years even his early photographic work when there was British photography and European photography. Mentioned that I used to run around with John Benton-Harris who co-authored a book on American Photography.

I had forgot what I had known and how like here I was on the periphery of photography there. How I had met people who are now famous early in their careers. We talked about the days when British photography was evolving from its Picture Post past. The people then and how things have changed now that Britain has become part of Europe. Interesting observations made which in my cloistered life seemed to hold true. The hint that North American photography is over as people on this side of the Atlantic are too busy making work about the medium itself without bothering to say anything about the world around them.

It was conjectured that European photography is more interesting at the moment as Europe is coming to terms with what it is becoming – no Eastern Block, the attempt to unify the continent, working out a balance between federalism and a centralised state. Photographers investigating the meaning of the New Europe – whereas here we are investigating some photographic trope.

Sometimes I find it consoling to be among others who have a love of artefact, where the underlying theme isn’t “whatever”.

A0A 3L0

Sullivan's Loop is free in January.
Plans are in motion.

the light rail at cherry hill

i-podded, silent
solipsists v. loud talkers,
technology poor.

Flânerie will get you nowhere

I came to Baltimore to help my mother in her unpacking in the new condo. The boxes are not really diminishing that quickly. One can now can actually pass in the hallways but there is plenty left to do. I have stripped wall paper, insulated the windows, hung the carbon monoxide detector. The only time I have been out was to go to Sam’s Club and to drop off stuff at Good Will

<> <>I am getting cabin fever. <>

There is only just over an hour of daylight left. there is supposedly nothing more I can do so… an outing. Butcher’s Hill as that was where I left off, on through Patterson Park and into Highlandtown.

But you know me, instead of heading for the metro that would drop me off at Johns Hopkins in no time time I wander down Park Heights and seeing the M-10 decide to race it to where I can catch it as it doubles back on itself.

<>Finally Ubaldo gets some use as I am in landscape mode and photograph Western Run and then – mindful of missing the bus – some abandoned stuff left in front of some older blocks of flats.

When I could have got off at Mt Washington and still maybe made it by dark, I decide to stay on to Falls Road and Lake Avenue where I look in at the Ivy Bookshop. A walk over to the Falls Road light rail where a train just leaves I would have probably made it if I hadn’t dallied thinking on the merit of a basketball hoop, or whether I should wander Robert E. Lee Park.

<>In between trains thought that I would try once again to photograph the tangles that make up woods around here and find a path that lead to what must be a compost pit but had a nice patio set set up as if I were on someone’s back deck.

Another train passes.

<>
It is almost dark when I get down at the Yard’s and think of simply walking to the end of the Metro and heading back. Thought also about a burrito at California Burritos but there was only one person in the shop and he was sleeping. <>

Then I think, it is time for Melissa to leave work. I’ll simply go up and say hello and leave in one of my patented methods of angering people. I couldn’t leave anything on her machine as this time I was to have no free time and left the Midwest in a hurry. <>

I see her leave, walk up shake her hand and say good bye. <>

She tries the living fossil approach at conversation – want a beer.

We are off to the Wharf Rat for pints and something to eat. This beats the Ram’s Head, real beer engines my pint was hand drawn and great, was sorry I wasted bladder space with the porter even though that was great also the food though was only good enough to be a sponge. Luckily I go to drink.

<> There was a time when I saw Melissa once every 20 years, in the days of the post office we’d send post cards, now it is a couple of times a year as I like hanging out with the Ram’s Head crowd in Annapolis. <>

I was informed of all the events I missed the weekend both here and in Annapolis and the status of everyone there. I hold back on bragging about being at the G.(reatest) A.(rt) S.(chool) E.(ver). A delicate balance was had as I am a drinker who is a social talker and she is a talker who is a social drinker. It means that I don’t stumble on the metro. Even so after seeing her off on the light rail, when I get back to the condo I am scolded for being out after dark. It seems that no matter how old you are when your mother is around you are twelve.

Take back

Driving any place – say back from Richmond – gives me time to think. It seems that it is the only place where one can be quiet and not look like there is something wrong.

I noticed to-day that going through the New York Times that one of the things that I look forward to – well obviously after the arts section working at the greatest art school since the Jedi ruled the universe – that just cut everyone’s retirement benefits in half – is the Why We Travel.

I look at it for the Panasonic advert underneath of it. Most of the time it doesn’t move me at all but there is this Panasonic/Leica digital camera that causes me to drool. It looks like a real camera.

Earlier in the week I was playing web tag – going from site to site via links and came upon a Nikon SP 2005 all black. Now that was a camera. The Zeiß Ikon clones always beat out the Leica clones in their manliness and bare bones functionality. Leicas are Beemers, whereas Zeiß were true Range Rovers before soccer moms with attitudes took them over.

Because of my recent doubts about processes chemical, I was wondering what these two cameras had in common. It was the fact that they made me feel – rightly or wrongly like I was in control albeit the Panasonic did it by shape and less toggle switches than one sees to-day.

This brought me back to why I still use film with the problems of no one recognising what it is or the differences.

I recognise the differences. This came from meeting a poor misguided M.F.A. in writing candidate who wants and likes to use pinhole, plastic, primitive and past dated cameras. For the past 15 weeks I have been trying to talk her out of it but she persists.

Even though she would be assured of a result if she would just choose something digital – and the money she has spent on cheap cameras could have bought her a decent digital SLR – even though after returning from one trip to Texas – why does everyone seem to live in Texas? – half the images were less than ideal due to mistakes on her part? Even though plastic cameras are so trendy that they can be bought in Urban Outfitters and Restoration Hardware – like the only people who can afford to use Leicas are doctors and lawyers - does she insist on using them?

It is the variety. Smelly, Parkinson’s causing, land and water polluting, anti-social behaviour fostering wet photography simply has more options. By the way all the remedies that digital photography supposedly offers by being “clean” simply transfers all those problems to countries that we really don’t care about anyway.

For fear of entering the world of geekdom yet again does anyone really get excited arguing over which storage media is better

- I cannot live without San Disk? The subtle greys,

- What are you crazy? PNY is the tops! You cannot beat the tonality I get with it.

For decades despite the industry trying to do otherwise, it was the vagarities of film, paper, all the stuff that could be modified and mishandled that allowed for a richer photographic vocabulary.

Admittedly the big three – if there are still three – are pretty much the same but it is in the cheapness, the budget find, the Fomas, Orwos, and EFKEs of the world that individuality doesn’t flourish – that should still be in the maker and the vision – but where it is tailored to best suit what one wants to say.

Grain is a great tool, “Backwards” technology allows us to make use of that tool by giving us options and while I probably wouldn’t be able to tell true grain from the Photoshop grain filter, the person who made could. By changing developer, times etc I can modify the grain. What difference will there be in switching my smart media card should I use a compact flash for the Afgapan in Dektol effect? If I put a Kodak SM card in a Polaroid will i get cross processed images? How does one mess up creatively with a Memory Stick? And while photographic paper may be different as there seems to be a great many options – legit and forced – in inkjet papers, it is precisely those options that make process better suited for the syntax of the final print.

Ironic the mantra in art schools from coast to coast to coast is that there is no photographic truth but now there is a lemming like drive to standardisation to make all photographs look like…photographs that we used to believe never lied.

A cheap digital camera – is just that, it simply doesn’t have the pixel resolving power, it is not a “flawed” lens, a wonky shutter - can "wonky be used at all when talking digital - a sweet spot of focus it is simply pixilation when the image is enlarged – which isn’t grain – it doesn’t have the personality of grain it doesn't clump, it isn't random and while it will add something to the lexicon of options for photography it is a poor return on money invested. Lensbabies on digital camera is photographic slumming at it best.

Where are the Lubitels of the digital world?

So “how does one justify going through some long, drawn-out, expensive process when one can arrive at the (mostly?) same thing via a system of 0’s and 1’s??” for fear of being sued Ian MacEwen—like for plagerism this comes from a comment by R.Y. in Crisis of Faith.

Simple first the key lies in the “mostly”. For the most part digital photography is trying to imitate photography. It is like Microsoft a job well done but no real creativity of its own what-so-ever there are hints at digital building up it own syntax but for the most part it is trying to be a easier way to make what people used to do.

19^th century doubters would have a field day with the new photography, if they thought photography was easy then…

Another reason is because you like the craft, you relish the time alone when you cannot multitask. You welcome the serendipitous.

Take driving I can get from- say- Richmond to Baltimore via I-95, in doing so I can drive my good old Saturn with an automatic gear box and make it in the same time that I could using a Manual gear boxed Mazda Miata.

I could also take the old U.S 1. The outcome would be the same, the experience for me would be different. One trip four options.

I know craft is a dirty word as I was looking at the website of a university in Virginia with its world renown art department. I went to the Fibre site only to find it under the Craft heading. Tsk tsk tsk. I know that we are supposed to be professional cynical and detached even more so at Conceptual Central on Lake Michigan.

While I still feel a sense of accomplishment from a well made book of wander or a series of postcards that could only be done (reasonably) using digital output, I still feel more of a sense of accomplishment having been in the dark for a while or judging the exposure from the sun and when i should make that last print of the day. I like the risk in using Lucky Film and the antipicpation of the results. I want to see if there is a difference with Fotokemika Varykon. I know that photographs aren't real - or are only real as photographs - so I can fly down to Rio with a couple of Dianas and Fomapan 400.

I see all this as the photographic version of word choice and placement. My problem with how others saw platinotypes is valid but I forgot myself in the process. I like making them. I like the limitations. It just could be that people prefer the inkjets to my platinotypes are because mine aren’t good enough yet. Rather than give up, I should get better.

She was correct to be stubborn and take my photographic anti-primitivism tirades for it best suits her work who cares if there are forest loads of wasted paper with clichés using the same techniques. Danielle Steele uses the same language as Arundhati Roy, should she give up English and start writing in one of the many languages of India because of this?

I was wrong to stop because Holgas can be bought so that ICP members can show their hipness with them. I still think that I should dust off the Dianas and film some Russian film and head out again – bad shutters can only improve Dianas.

Right now though, I just saw this Rolleiflex 4.0 FW which would be sooo cool with some Arista.edu ultra 400 with its deep blue base.

another stereotypical rant about air travel

<>I must be getting used to this. I have A seating assignment from Southwest, I actually leave later for the airport leave school at 4:15 but am still through security at midway by 5:10. I don’t queue up immediately but find a seat where I can read a piece by a writing grad at the world’s greatest art school – think that the visual artists are a sad lot think of writers who couldn’t find a real writing programme – and my book of strange tales from the late Ming dynasty. Even as the plane is to be late but don’t worry as people start queuing up in that southwest way that resembles a single file camp fire. I endure the two women who sit between another person and me both of us reading – they did ask if the seats were taken – then start to talk as loudly as possible why elbow wrestling me for the armrest.

But I am in a great frame of mind – surprisingly – the place is crowded but I have my reading materials. I thought that I had brought the wrong camera with me as I wanted t do a Winogrand and wander the airport thinking that all the delayed passengers would make good film fodder. I forgot that now that everything is portable one takes everything. The camera bag is too heavy to try to make snaps and manoeuvre about the place.

<>Still I am as happy as a clam. I am in full Wisconsin mode.

My mistake, I finally get into the queue and the person behind me starts chatting, I answer, act interested listen, all the proper things to do.

The queue starts moving we go silent I think of whether I want aisle or row as the plane is going to be empty. My strategy is to head for the back people will want to leave quickly and thus tend to sit near the front - I go six seats from the rear - which I equate to heading north through Maine for the New Brunswick border when everyone else is in Portland – take a window and relax.

The bloke in the queue is right behind me. Puts his bags in the over head compartment and for a moment my fears are not valid as he begins to sit in the seat behind me.

<>Then second thoughts.
-if I sit on the aisle no one will sit in the middle.

Now I have to put up that barrier, we will have to negotiate the middle seat tray and from time to time be interrupted by chatting. I think that silence is a sin in the States.

It could be worse, the perfume of the woman behind me could be even more overpowering.

mdw

Blizzard blocked airport
Laptopped passengers wander
Seeking an outlet

Out of sync

The Yanksgiving holiday has always been a time when I can get a lot of work done. With the added days off, I can multitask at will and have a preview of my working method when I can over look the North Atlantic each evening. I had made all the preparations, laid out the book of wander dealing with the Boston States. With my new prowess with black and white inkjet printing had a book of stasis ready to go along with a series of people made with the 10x8 that I couldn’t make into postcards as I didn’t know how to make a decent black and white inkjet, the negs scanned awaiting Thursday. I was also going to use the time off to try to catch up in the darkroom. I was focused. I knew what I wanted to print. I was chomping at the bit for class to end on Wednesday so that I could get started.

Ah but the week before I was making up for the time in New England and had forgot to place some orders – well every order. I had no inkjet paper for either book, no paper for the postcards portraits, no black and white photographic paper. I sat I paced. I became more frustrated as this week I am heading to Balamer – and the Ram’s Head in Annapolis but no further south heard tell that people on the other side of the Potomac can me mighty inhospitable – with all those boxes unopened.

A crisis of faith

I finally get the decision on the print that was sold via my evil twin on the rock to Chicagoans. It is a bright cold sunny day and thus perfect for making platinotypes. The one chosen wouldn’t have been one that I would have chose – did like it initially but – think that there are one that say the same thing better – and it is a bit difficult to print due to the someone fogging the film on its way from L.A. to St. John’s. I seem to be in the right frame of mind – am patient – only want two prints to come from the late autumn shortened day.

Things go better than I expected. I had given myself a week to make the prints it will be done in a day. Everything seems to click. The contrast was guessed correctly the basement – after the flooding – is just the right humidity. I even clean the glass on the contact printing frame. I have the print and a duplicate in only four tries. I am quite pleased with myself.

I head into school where it seems that for the anal retentive digital output class has acquired a set of piezography inks – inks that instead of having colour are 8 tones of grey making, supposedly impeccable black and white prints.

Tim asks if I have a black and white digital file. Why sure when do hateful photographers not have a black and white digital file on hand? It is pete’s at night – halfway through the tedious spotting process.

He takes a copy and at lunch I have this beautiful inkjet – no archival pigmented is more worthy – print. It is black and white not greenish black and white. The tone doesn’t change from light source to light source. I could never do that with my printer, I had given up on black and white and was halfway through a black and white silver print book of stasis when this happened.

I am hoping that someone will take me up on the platinotype of the month class so that I can buy the inkset.

I have seen students make great black and white prints with the colour sets in the 2400 that we have I simply couldn’t. Thought that I would try using what I had learned from the piezography experiment.

Lo and Behold!!!! While there was a difference with the snaps beside each other it was minor, and with a little adjusting the prints as good without spending money on a new inkset.

I decide to make a Yanksgiving Day card for Carol to see how it goes over. Likes the image. Likes the tonality. Wants to frame it.
Don’t bother I’ll make you a real print.

Another sunny perfect day I add to the Bonne Bay images and make a platinotype of the card I gave the day before.

She prefers the card over the platinotype. The tones are deeper, the paper stock is better the image seems to glow.

I start to protest but but but there is a subtlety to the platinotype, the shadows are more open but I am really trying to convince myself as the archival pigmented print – have to save face somehow – is more seductive.

So now what? When teaching Manipulated Pretensions, the best point of the class was the paper choice options that traditional photography didn’t allow. One could choose the process and the paper. Now that is shot as there are more inkjet paper options than gelatine silver paper options.

To the contemporary eye - trained and untrained - the images do look better, we won’t mention the gallery’s name but when I went into Schneider to show some of my platinotyped pinholes that was made into an artist book a couple of years ago she asked if they were inkjet. Now they look like bad inkjet. Or so I feel.

A crisis of nerves. How am I going to justify this image to people who don’t know what a platinotype is and will think it a bad photocopy. I make a gelatine silver contact print to see if it is better looking – only because it looks like a photograph should.

Carol chooses it.

I promised a platinotype – do I send the gelatine silver print with a wordy explanation? Do I send the platinotype with a wordy explanation?

In the end laziness comes through. I still liked the platinotype, I was bowing to societal ignorance in my doubts but really the gelatine silver print needed a lot of spotting. I sent the platinotype.

But what about my alternative process class, for years I told the students everything done in the class could be replicated easier on a computer, didn’t think that it would this soon that theory would become reality.

This changes everything. Instead of trying to commandeer the half basement at Martin and Gabrielle’s place for printing platinum -which could be a hard sell as there would be no water and in truth there is no room at Sullivan’s Loop that doesn’t have a window – I will now equip either that or the Pipe House with a scanner and a printer and away I go. I simply have to remember to call them archival pigmented prints.

Maybe it is in the DNA…

of photographers.

I am in Calumet Photographic - a rare thing now-a-days as there seems to be a crisis of identity with them – digital or wet and not really doing either well. I buy online as there seems to be more options. With wet, there are places who revel in odd papers and developers, I have to go online to buy anything for the platinotypes. With digital again the better prices for paper and inks are from office supply sites. I go into a camera shop for the same reason one goes into a convenience – I need it now.

I’m in there buying my Moab Kayenta paper and while waiting to check out, I see this beautiful 10x8 Zone VI camera – all clean and looking unused $1800 I want it. Why do I want it? I already have a camera that causes backache but nevertheless I drool. I go to look for used film holders as the pendulum swings toward the good ol days of working with it. I see myself tooling about two new nations of upper Québec and Labrador in the Saturn with it.

While looking for the film holders I run across a used Leica M6 - $1200 – don’t know what version, don’t really care. I want it even though I have a hard time reconciling 35mm, even though I have a hard time using the format. I see myself wandering urban areas with it – better yet I see myself back in Niterói , in the hotel in Ingá, with two rangefinders wandering the former capital more slowly than in 2001. Niterói is rife with crooked streets and things surreal. Days reacquainting myself, nights in butequins on the street having cold Antárticas watching the world go by. Trying to show some rationality I look at the new Zeiß Ikon ZM.

I now realise that I am the photographic equivalent of Billy Liar.

I am in a local Kenosha camera shop to buy some Dektol and looking in the used case I see a Nikon FM2 - $200…

all in all...

with a week of hindsight and some decent snaps – more the second - the hub doesn’t seem so bad. I know that it has to do with a diminished expectation but I did manage to focus enough to have a book of wander come from it.

Whenever I got the chance I was out making snaps simply wanting to get out of the house no matter the rain or that it was pitch black out.

Even with the security of carrying black and white I managed not to fall back on it – much – and dedicated the trip to colour. The grey days and the muted colours were my worse nightmare seeing colour as more specialised than black and white – colour of sky and time of day really don’t effect black and white the way I expected it to do with colour. Seeing the results of the rolls after I made scans from them as I cannot tell what anything looks like seeing colour negs, not only did I like the results but went straight away to editing a book of wander.

Staying north of the Hub influenced my outlook on the area. The large properties where the houses were well away from the road and all seemed uninhabited. The mix between the McMansions and the active decay of other houses that I saw a pull downs as soon as they were sold, had me using the same strategy of approach when I was in Cambridge – lots of foliage, objects implying habitation blurring property lines. Now being more aware of time of day and quality of light, they became something I looked for.

meanwhile...

A phone call from Carol's mum who is watching the cat in Peasants Pissoir. The water heater is broken and we now have a basement wading pool.

Wake up to another grey day but for the moment not raining. We are planning to go into the hub most likely Cambridge as Carol wants to go to bookshops around Harvard Square – it seems we need a destination. I want to get out.

I pack up Ziquinho – and being a coward – Joãozão the rest of the film and wait.

And wait.

It seems that everything takes an eternity as even though we have decided we have to agree a strategy for approaching Cambridge. Where will we park, what path will be take. Where we will eat. When we will eat. It seems that there is a problem even in walking. Should we? YES!!!!!

We can park near someone’s house in Inman Square get a visitor’s parking permit then walk – two miles oh dear – to Harvard Square.

This brings up the debate on whether they would like to come along more negotiations. Do they want to come along when do they want to come along, do they want to go with us now or go out for food when we come back.

Around noon we arrive. It seems that we are going to wander about Inman Square until the baby wakes up then we will head back, pick them up and head over to Harvard Square.

Fine with me, I just want to get out and Somerville has potential. Started with some New England formalism which is messier than that in Baltimore and dirtier than Chicago the lines aren’t as clean, it seems that urban pioneers here aren’t so anal retentive. It was the mixing of houses and front gardens that worked so well. Duplexes helped.

I missed alleys though. Every time I thought at I had found one it was simply a long driveway. Went on to photograph things. Madonnas of the bath tubs, piles in houses that looked abandoned. Basketball hoops, flags, the usual suspects. While it was damp and drizzly it was warm so while the rest tended to spend their time in a bookshop I went for these wanders.

Somerville also had potential due to the Portuguese speakers. While the area was definitely slanted toward Portugal there were enough Brasilian establishments to keep me happy. Combed some of the markets to find how well stocked they where and they had all the junk food I would need to kill the longing to be back, Guaraná Antártica, polvilho salgado.

I am happy. I am out and about making snaps and staring like an idiot. I am close using up my quota for the day in film and making up for what I hadn’t.

We are awaiting a baby to awake for the grand trek to Harvard Square. I wander the neighbourhood.

And wander.

And wander.

Finally we head out.

To eat at Bukowski’s

A misty grey day light waning and we will spend the rest of it in a restaurant.

Am constantly reminded of my vegetarianism as if it were difficult to find food in the early 21st century. I had a vegan meatball sandwich.

Mood darkens but had a great beer, Smutty Nose IPA and was allow to taste a Maine brew Gritty’s Black Fly.

The rain comes. Then stops. Then doesn’t let up.

It is dark so I am simply wandering to Harvard Square looking at all the snaps that could have been. I want to go to the newsstand which was my link to the outside world when I was an au pair in Brookline. Pick up the guardian. Look for a Jornal do Brasil.

Want a coffee.

The evening was mitigated by the Harvard Book Store. Simply the best bookshop I have been in a long time. so long that I had forgot what a non Boredoms type of shop was like. Thought longingly back to the old University Bookshop in Madison before it became the University Gift shop. Spent a lot of time drooling as I have to follow my rule of only buying a book when I finish one – and I had just bought REAL PHOTO POSTCARDS edited by Laetitia Wolff and a monograph on Pedro Meyer.

Still I bought STRANGE TALES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO by Pu Songling.

Past lives were proven past as Ferranti the camera shop was gone. Couldn’t find Underground Camera.

They found Au Bon Pain for coffee. Ah again forgoing all those local coffee shops for an overcrowded dirty national chain. Was in luck though too many people with the laptops to find a place to sit so saved we walked back in pouring rain – even so it was more enjoyable than trying to sit in Au Bon Pain – to 1369 Coffee House in Inman Square.

You could tell you were around MIT as the laptop score was PC 10 Macs nil.

You could tell I was with suburbanites by the comment used when people who didn’t fit the norm came in.

What a character – about one person who was dancing to Paul Simon and talking to himself.

Nice individual - about someone who dressed a bit differently

I was simply glad to have coffee.

Problem was it was only 7PM and even with the hour it took to say good-bye and a rush hour ride back north, there would be three hours of Bergman like conversation before one could make an excuse to go to sleep.

Sign of the day: WHOLESALE GOURMET PASTA.

I came here not expecting much. I brought Ziquinho and 15 rolls of colour film which - while that may be a lifetime’s supply for some – is only two days of mediocre wandering. I reckoned that the day of arrival would be a bust as would the day of departure. It seems that even my diminished expectations were too high for this trip.

Part of it is my fault, I was going to use this trip as an experiment in with colour but – as usual didn’t follow the rules that has worked so well for me in the past – don’t bring a safe option. I brought Joãozão and 15 rolls of black and white. It was this camera that was on my lap as we wandered through Cambridge heading for whatever Bostonians call suburbs. I made all these images that could have been part of the project if only I hadn’t played it safe.

In truth I don’t know how they will turn out as it seems that even though it was in the 60’s everyone was cold and they had child proofed the windows so that they wouldn’t open. I reckon that I could Todd Hido it.

To-day went to a rustic little bakery – Panera – to buy bagels and bread. Light drizzle but what I remember as New England colours muted, toward the darker end of the end of the spectrum.

Strange sign of the day “30 minute parking Police take notice.”

There was a potential snap where we stopped – somewhere between the Ace Hardware, the CVS pharmacy, a gas bar and the intersection of two main roads - but wasn’t lucid enough at the time to recognise it.

I wanted a New York Times but had resigned myself to reading it on line.

I needed coffee I had been up for 45 minutes and still no caffeine.

On the way back he put on a hip hop cd, nothing sadder than two late middle aged men listening to hip hop in a Honda Civic especially when one thinks that the Civic is a European performance machine and the roads in Northern Massachusetts are along the French Riviera. I was trying to concentrate on the scenery trying to get my bearings as one of the nice things about New England is that I can get lost. The curves of the roads require that I concentrate if I am ever to find my way back to a potential snap.

This is chalk up to too much time in the Midwest where all the parallel roads make one lazy. I don’t have to pay attention for a road going south always goes south so one only need to pay attention to the turns. After knowing the initial direction one was headed.

Here there is no assumption like that. I have to remember curves, position myself in relation to the sun – nonexistent so far. Even so I find that I am constantly fooled.

I realise why I haven’t got my coffee, all cups are made individually via an espresso machine, in which the beans are weighed out on a scales similar to the one used to weigh out chemistry for Maxim Muir’s Blue Black Developer. When he is finished I get a cup - Larger than a cafèzinho smaller than a decent cup. I down it and ask for another. Then another. Then I wait until he asks if I want another. Yes.

They area astounded thinking that I am going to climb the walls when so far I have had maybe one decent cup and the caffeine would come faster in an I.V drip.

The downpour starts so does the cabin fever, I start to pace. I find a room where I am as close to outdoors as possible – an anteroom which in most houses would be a mud room or a back kitchen if it were in the rear of the house, windows on all sides. I bring down the laptop and try to read the times on line. Cannot. Work on the website, then the slide’s –well Keynote presentation for Wednesday’s class then start to rant and pace.

The cabin fever is aided by the fact that whenever someone comes to a window they remark on the rain and how good it is to be indoors – think that we could be “indoors” in a motorcar where I could get a decent coffee.

Meanwhile in the rest of the house one has been preparing for a dinner party at six. They started at 10AM.

The good news, the rain stops. The bad it is 3PM and heavily overcast, the light will disappear by 4:30. I pack Ziquinho and seven rolls of film – talk about rampant optimism – and head out.

IT is warm out. too warm for the sweatshirt and scarf but I guess that I look suitably New England. The walk has potential as I find a giant tarred over circle with a basketball hoop in it. I work with the fact that houses seem to be lurking beyond property lines and in the trees, not so that they are really obvious but that you know that they are there.

Photograph things New England – the empty Busch Beer quarts in the verge by the fitted stone fences the steps leaning against trees. The abandoned houses. The placard announcing nothing.

The area is not suited for walking as the roads are barely wide enough for two cars much less someone too poor to own one. Saw only two others out and about, one was running the other seemed to have been forced by his dog. Saw a lot of cars though. Either I was desperate or there was a lot to be seen as I went through three rolls of film.

Walked until it was dark then turned around for round two of cabin fever. Mentioned that I found a path. A debate ensued on whether I would contract Lime disease or a poison ivy rash first. The dinner party had the computer crowd and the political whining bunch.

I drank.

The Boston States

We head over land and out into the ocean before the plane banks and heads into Logan, like the time I headed down the harbour through over the Narrows out to sea before the plane banked to land at the airport. Both times land disappeared but this time the implication of people didn’t there were boats, people jet ski-ing – yes in November what global warming?

While admittedly it was after midnight landing in St. John’s so nothing really could be seen the arrival was more dramatic - pitch black, the glow of the capital on the horizon then the city surrounded by darkness, even on the Avalon and the landing. Populations on the rock seemed so tenuous whereas in the hub humans were hinted at long before landfall here it is breakwaters, parasailing and gasometers.

Logan seems completely inhumane and the less said the better. I felt that I was being let off in a tunnel. I was trying to ignore it, hoping that being in New England would be close to the feeling of the Maritimes and thus one step removed from Atlantic Canada. Was clutching at straws – Tim’s, Irving Gas Bar, constant searching the number plates on the machines on I-95...

It didn’t. Driving north out of population – well driving north as there wasn’t a time when we weren’t out of populated areas – I was looking for those clusters of houses bunched around an independent village. What I found were single houses sounded by a lot of land, with strip malls. I didn’t feel like I was between places for there were always a house in view, nor did I feel like I was getting anywhere as there was never a town centre passed through.

There were exceptions, Ipswich, maybe Newburyport, but the later seem like it could have been anywhere.

An outing to the ocean at Crane Beach furthered the detachment as with the exception of a few spots along the Great Northern, Cow Head, land and sea are well separated and the water not friendly and welcoming at all.

There were hints of being somewhat close to the Atlantic Time Zone when the air smelled like northern pine forests with a hint of the damps leaves composting. Otherwise I could have been in Door County or Portugal Cove/St. Phillips or worse C.B.S.

We are so tantalisingly close to New Hampshire and Maine that I want to make a break for it.

I cannot say that Schneider doesn’t effect my thinking she does. When talking, she brings up the how much the works shown go for and whether they sell. Knowing that I cannot justify $1000 for a snap of mine nor can I guarantee that any will sell. I don’t push – and she doesn’t seem interested.

While Jim will tell me about shows of his that sell out, it doesn’t carry the same weight – this is due to the fact that it is usually over the third or fourth pint of Smithwicks in Clarke’s Beach or if you must Baird’s Cove at the Duke. He has, also, knowing full well my record -which is better up there than below the 49th parallel – asked if I want to have a show or curate one – four goes at the gallery since 1999 and one where he commandeered Duckworth Street.

This time though I want to make money for him. I am trying my best to curtail my usual manner of overfilling the space – and want to make six to eight large images 40x32 or 40 inches square – that can be sold for a decent sum while I see if the images hold up that size and since the gallery is know for painting see if they can hold up to that.

I am trying to limit the images to the ikonic. I am worried that they will read beautiful in a tourist board type of way as I photograph the same things. I have two sets of six to eight images picked out depending on how brave I am. Really brave and they will come from the work I did in Gros Morne, less so and it will be from my marling about the rest of the island.

It is hard to limit myself to six images. It is hard for shows are hard to come by and when I get one I want to show all the backlog – to which my evil twin says “Mies van der Rohe”. Hard because I like to build narratives with my misguided ikons. I like to contradict myself. I like to skirt issues. I cannot do that in six to eight snaps.

I am already hedging my bet thinking that yeah right I’ll have few images on the walls but I’ll have a book of platinotypes. Underlying all of this though is the wish to actually sell while using the space to experiment.

Later that same evening…

Another missive from the alcoholic in training with a link to a myspace site for godslastname. Link to it as I am curious and because what little I have had to do with myspace has baffled me as again it seems to be made for the a.d.d. cyberspace.

Imagine my surprise when I see two of my snaps next to the downloads for two songs.

I am supposed to be outraged but I slip into third person mode and want to do some sluthing. Also due to the condescension of Schneider I like how the world seems to go through Pouch. The band say there are from pouch, but none of them look familiar. They don’t even look like the lads of summer who are up there when the residency is in full swing.

The picture behind doctor looks familiar sort. could that be Martin and Gabrielle’s place? Read their bios and they are Upper Canadians from T.O who came to the rock via Kingman’s Cove.

OK there are six houses in Kingman’s I know two of them and they don’t look like the people the Tibbos would hang out with.

But Hansen would, he is from Toronto, likes music – jazz more his style and Mike has a link to Pouch as the only person I know who has skied Cape St. Francis – he was also the first person I met when I first did the residency in 1999.

Knowing Hansen and moving up to Pouch means that only one person could be involved and yes it ended back where it started with my evil twin, who came up with the name, put them up at the pipe house and wrote one of the songs. Love it when this happens, these tenuous links to the rest of the world.

Am late heading over to Schneider gallery for an opening. Even though she represents me my ever getting into another show there much less having an individual one is as close as some tenure track faculty actually making more than one image a year.

Haven’t been in the gallery in over a year, half due to the fact that I haven’t really been in River North in about that time, not true I haven’t been in the gallery because I haven’t been in the gallery.

Walking over – well racing as I wanted to get on the 6:31 train – forgoing all the potential snaps that I saw on the way, I played with the all the retorts I could come up with to somehow have her at least thinking. She scoffs at my adopted province, a gallery and a website at the edge of the world, not realising that that website at the time wordplay got 10 000 hits a month and location is nothing in the cyber world.

Mentally made notes of all the rockbound doings to blurt out when she asked.

She didn’t. The gallery was empty as I keep forgetting to come fashionably late – all these people at the art school to end all art schools said that they were heading over but when I got there the gallery was empty, the plastic wine cups still in neat rows as one walked in.

The show looked great, the whole space was to devote to the work so that it didn’t have to compete with pottery, or peripherals. There was space around the images – but that could have been due to the fact that the gallery looked more like a Tuesday than a Friday opening – again I am sure that this is to me treating galleries the way that seniors treat dinner – but I doubt that there is an early bird special with art.

Left to make the train but not before hitting Daiter – better food and a nice show that I have to bring my class to as it was all about first edition books and the translation from photograph to print. Spent some time babbling to Paul, Stephen and Michael about the show and books, Stephen gave me some pointers when he realised that I didn’t buy books for investment but to look at – trade-em and get the ones you like.

Again I realise that my tastes are out of sync with my department but I like going to Daiter not only to have some perspective of what photography was, but also because they speak to me fully knowing that I cannot afford anything in their space.

Left feelling better and with time, so out came Ubaldo while walking to the train and, a roll later, I board the 6:31.

Checking my email when I get home a message from my evil twin in Pouch the book of platinotypes was well received – a book that will end up in Michigan via the rock.

He also forwarded a message from his daughter in Toronto that was forwarded from a friend of hers. She – the friend - wants to buy a print of mine that she saw on the website, mentioned by my twin and his living DNA sample, for two friends of hers who live in Chicago.

A slight smirk as James Baird is shutting out Schneider everything in what little I have sold has been through him.

Chez the Luddites.

The first day of winter time, clear cloudless sky, Hollowe'en is a Sunday holiday. I don’t read the Times, I forgo the listening of Michael Enright out of St. John’s – I like being able to pick and choose when I listen to CBC programmes - to head out and rake the leaves and make platinotypes. It is 7:30 AM Sounds alternate between the scraping of the rake over the lawn and the whoosh of whatever screen door is closest to the sun. Almost curse the blueness of the sky as I cannot get into any rhythm with the raking as it is so bright. Think better of it as this type of day won’t be around for long.

I tell my class that it is better to use a UV printer but I have better luck with the sun and there is something about dragging the green plastic Adirondack chair about the lawn to aim the contact printing frame. The leaf piles grow we start putting them by the road so that they will be picked up on Tuesday.

At 8:30 the scraping is overwhelmed by the whir of the leaf blower. He on the other side of the cul-de-sac is out. Yesterday in almost gale force winds he tried to rustle up the leaves with it and failed. To-day he is out again. he stops and brings out the lawn mower and the edger all motorised.

Then two lawns down the same high pitched whir, then a couple of lawns from that. Feel so backward but the leaf blowers seem so useless, the rake clears vast swaths of the lawn with the leaves helping in the pile. The rest of the neighbourhood seem to be blowing one leaf at a time to the kerb.

I am sure that they are pitying me as I am them and their pity deepens when I pull out the Deardorff to make a snap. A dozen prints and a leaf border at the kerb are the results.

It arrived.

I heard UPS drop off the package, I was down printing and knew that even though it was my platinum supply from Bostick and Sullivan, it would be safe on the front stoop until I could turn on the light and head up to fetch it.

I saw the box but when I opened the front door this poorly wrapped taped book with a UPS sticker that looks like the poster in the post office for suspicious packages fell into the house.

No white powder.

Ah. Here we go again an anonymous package from someone at first with stamps all over it. A return address of someone I don’t know.

I carefully slit it open and leaf through it. Found or made, two thirds of the way through I find my name.

Someone knows what I like. I go to the UPS site and track when it was sent – I know whence it was sent – Milwaukee Avenue in Bucktown. There are three suspects. But I am excited.

I try to peel by the label to see if there is a name that I know underneath but I don’t want to “damage” the work. pulling the tape only

I put it aside to take to class as a show and tell. My students are intrigued and before I can turn around they find out who it is from. Not being as delicate they peel back a loose piece of paper and see that it is someone in the class.

I have taught them well.

It’s hard

Not the withdrawal from writing the entries but the new old way of working. It is 21:30, I am the train back to Winthrop Harbour. I have time to write this so that when finally arrive home I can upload it to blogger and voilà! Fifteen minutes later I can be asleep assured of a good four hours before heading back into school.

The entry will be there awaiting mendacious comments about the pure life. I can wonder who is reading it and go about packing for to-morrow.

It is hard because while I am writing I could still be writing it on the ride home, I haven’t made the image, and while I have stamps, I still have to print out the message and the address labels. I had forgot how easy things become with command “c” and command “v”.

I forgot about the cost.

I am frantic that it has been a week and I haven’t been able to get anything out in the post. It seems that at one time all of this was second nature and I could whip things out quicker than one could say live journal. It seems that I have to get into that rhythm again. while I was complaining on how long the entries where now I cannot fill a standard 7x5inch card.

I am soldering on though, driven by the idea of relative selectivity, form liking the fact that the entry has actually existed and is passing though time and all will arrive in different states with different histories depending on how much care the various post offices will afford it along its way. I like that it is forcing me back into the darkroom to give a longer deeper look at the snaps chosen as I will have to make quite a few of them.

We interrupt this blog…

Running down my rss feeds of the latest entries in blogland, I stop to think over the musings of pen and m of why blogs die. Only a fortnight a dropped one from my tool bar there hadn’t been an entry in four months. I reckoned that the person had simply moved on.

I then thought it isn’t why they die but why we think that they have to hang around? Last summer during the CBC strike there was a blog what was run only during the walkout. When the walk out ended it ended. Using the pen part of pen and m are blogs like North American soaps that go on forever, instead of, say, Latin American one where there is a beginning middle and end. Some do run their course.

Then there are the blogs in which I tune out – as I am sure two of the three that are reading this simply because it isn’t interesting anymore – if ever.

On my tool bar I have six standing rss feeds. Some are those who are linked to mine, others have links to areas am fond off – guess – a couple are from Baltimore as there was this twist of coincidence that would only happen with a blog. Of the six only four are worth reading regularly not because the others are boring per se but they seem more like book reports – I am talking here of the diary like blogs not the political ones that I read which I look at in a different light as they are trying to engender debate. The ones that I am having trouble now are the Friendster type blog which could have been a e-mail.

I was reading Michael Winter’s blog – not only because he drinks at the Ship Inn – but because he was a writer and it was set up to have him convey his feelings during the book tour for THE
Reading it though – I haven’t read the book yet – was interesting as there was a style that came from the entries a style that although I didn’t know it as I hadn’t read his first book THIS ALL HAPPENED, was the style of the novel. This brought up the question what is destined for the blog and what for his future novel. Were these notes. He did seem to be working through styles in them.

From a Newfoundland lit link I found two other writers who while are still making entries they BIG WHY. The tour is over he is teaching in Toronto and the blog didn’t officially end – should check it out to see if it has strarted again – but petered out.
seem to be more about the promotion of their writing and saying hello to all their friends who happened to show up at book signings.

I am not saying that these should die but if circulation were one of the ways of keeping a blog alive they would be gone.

Personally I like solipsism coupled with an awareness around one – the constant question “how does one fit in.”

Making the universal personal, I wonder about YYT. It was set up as the postal system in Canada was horrific – it would take weeks to get a letter across the country even worse crossing international boundaries. My handwriting was/is terrible and I couldn’t risk the eyesight of what few friends I had.

I had done a hybrid when I was in Rio de Janeiro in 2001. spending the last hour the internet café was open around the corner from Pça Gal. Osório in Ipanema, blind carbon copying six people about the days exploits – and cursing when once I hit the plug turned off the computer and had to start over again.

I had time, late at night from IDEAS through BETWEEN THE COVERS. I would write down the days events then – and this has a lot to do with it. drive to the airport where at the time there was free wireless internet access to post the entries. I do believe that having to go someplace – the way I would to post a letter kept it going.

The blog would go into hiatus when I wasn’t on the rock. So in essence there would be anything between a fortnight’s to a month’s worth of entries then eleven months of silence.

It wasn’t needed I could use the post office.

Then something happened. I began to stretch the rules. Last winter I wrote – and bored people silly - about the preparations. It was stretched again as I then started writing whenever I was on the road, then when I wasn’t. The justification was other blogs of place where the place was being lost.

However, I was losing something else which hit me while reading pen and m. I was in the Bristol post office posting my books when Terry asked if I needed stamps.

No I didn’t but why not? Driving back to Peasants Pissoir I realised that I hadn’t bought stamps in two months. There were still some 20 odd stamps from the 40 I bought in September. I had missed the Gee’s Bend stamps, was only half way through the super heroes and barely touched the baseball ones.

Blogging being easier, had usurped my mailings. I cannot blame it all on blogging. It was things digital – I realised that while I was making a ton of snaps, I hadn’t been in the darkroom. It was all done digitally.

For some there is nothing wrong with this but for me I want that distance between the making and seeing the image. I am not so divested and this way the outing is brought back.

This semester – I still think in semester. I am only using film – hence no snaps with the entries.

As you can tell the quickness of response digitally adds verbosity, there was a time when I would have had to edit this down to the back of a 7x5 inch postcard. I liked sending the phlogs – photo logs – off. liked chatting to the people at the post office, like wondering when they would arrive and know that at least 30 people would see them – whether they would be read… I am almost sure that less people read the blog than the cards.

I liked the beginning of a subscription service that came by default. I liked getting responses in the post something that the writer had touched, it didn’t matter if it took forever to arrive from Honoka’a, Montpellier, or River Forest. It isn’t quite the same seeing a number after a name in the Safari tool bar, although I do like comment tag and I think that kept this going – that and the serendipitous comments from people who happened upon it.

I didn’t know what went where, how was I to distinguish my postcards, from the blog, from the book that I carry with me. If my real postings have suffered my notes to myself are even worse. One fountain pen broke without me knowing it the other ran out of ink. I cannot remember the last time my second and third fingers were ink stained.

I had forgot all of this and while I don’t expect anyone to be as backward looking as me and thus expect nothing in the post I am going to stop the until now invisible slide toward everything intangible and cyber and return to the hackneyed art challenged books and cards that would be at the mercy of the post and not Google. Flickr was the first to go, although I guess I shall have to add something soon so that I don’t lose the site.

This is returning – more or less - to its original idea – in use when travelling as a back up. If I have your address it things will arrive that have nothing to do with cable offers. This is in hibernation and – I hope – will wake up in January from Sullivan’s Loop in Pouch.



Besides Ubaldo and Ziquinho are back from repair.

too much time in airports

Look deal with it, I think about the Rock daily, I miss the Avalon – well except for certain parts just west of the capital - having the first sun in North America blind me in the morning, being bored with passing whales,icebergs, moose and caribou, pints to finish the day at the Duke, hating Route 20 to Pouch. I even miss the seclusion Bonne Bay and the emptiness of the Barrens, the Conception Trinity Bay loop, and can now even make a case for Corner Brook – but would be hard pressed. I want to revisit the pond ocean debate.

I am trying to make a quick trip up there so that 2006 will not pass without me having to set my watch to half past the hour - highly unlikely now.

I am hoping, planning to be up in Pouch in January – although mentioning this will probably jinx it – and while I do like trying to find real Newfoundlanders in the new terminal at Pearson’s, the first sighting of the island being darker than the Gulf and guessing what cities the lights below belong to, I want to drive.

While one can feel the distance flying, it is more or less due to the hassle of flying, not the feeling that one is going any place.

Driving in January is out of the question – I think this is that nasty thing called maturity talking, it cannot be that bad if one is patient. Ferries do run when they can tolerate the sea, and once through the Wreck House on the Trans Canada well it should be clear sailing. One needs time One cannot make time.

It could be due to the prodigal summer when while driving through Connecticut and Massachusetts was a pain, the anticipation of a world without “W”, the emptying out of people, and the symbols of safe harbour – Irving Mainways and Tim Horton’s – rejuvenated the passage through Maine.

It could be the nostalgia over taking the annoyances – I now think that the best night on the main land was Fredericton – things that at the time were bothersome are now remembered at surreal.

Nostalgia taking over again – for I swore that I would never kill myself toting a 10x8 with me anymore – but making books of the platinotypes for Amy and my evil twin is so soothing that I want to take something larger than medium format. I want to see what I have been making while there. Working digitally is not the same thing. There is no period of rest between tasks.

Mimicking the layout of the Parks House, I have this plan of turning Sullivan’s Loop into a hybrid work space, 19th century with a U.V. plate burner, and 21st with a scanner and an inkjet printer.

I want to reinitiate the slow photography movement. I want to travel around the bays and along the roads that go only to one place, Route 370 to Buchans, Route 360 to Harbour Breton making sure that I hit 361-365, 210 for the Burin Loop, 10-52 to St Shott’s. Am being realist and putting off 480 to Burgeo once again I’ll need a machine from T.J. I want to document the going not the destination as for the longest time the Republic was precisely that from trans-Atlantic flights to cable stations.

I want to do this in winter, as unlike down here people do not hide indoors, there are even fewer of them, I want the added land as ponds and other bodies of water freeze over, winters on the side that I shall be aren’t as bad as those in the upper Midwest, and I won’t sweat as much with the equipment.

Even though John Gushue has used it for his blog the series is potentially called “…” as in its double meaning it sums up what I am trying to do.

Face it I cannot approach the province from a point of ignorance anymore. I am going with a plan.

On top of everything risking my job and possibly tenure status at the greatest art school of time thanks to our fearless leader who if there were one should win the Warren G. Harding award for effectiveness in his position, I want to make content rich beautiful images. (Now using the word “images” I am going to get an e-mail from a Tulane grad candidate).

This distance and rampant nostalgia is effecting my work for at one time I wanted to return and make a series on Mount Pearl, Paradise and Conception Bay South.

Planes don’t know how to deal with plate film. They see sealed boxes and want to open them. They cannot comprehend film not in little metal canisters or at least in something. Even though it is sealed and passes through the x-rays they want to open those boxes.

Shipping them in the luggage is no longer an option. I don’t want to have to explain pyro chemistry. The only option is land based travel – remember that.

Remember talking to someone at the Deer Lake Irving when I travelled by DRL to Corner Brook who had made it up from the Boston States and was going to St. Anthony by coach. I know that I can take a train as far as Halifax and the DRL from Port-aux-Basques to the Avalon, but Halifax to North Sydney…

The series of rants started when I did some research. Three trains to Halifax – Chicago to Toronto, Toronto to Montréal, and Montréal Halifax which is only marginally faster than driving.

I long for the day when people get fed up with shoeless, liquid-less, remove everything from your pockets air travel and the return land/sea transport where the idea is to get someplace, the way the Empire Builder, Southern Crescent and Flying Scotsman did. I can negotiate planes, and feel so grown up when I do but I prefer the pent-up anticipation with the little milestones moving more slowly.

Finishing this rant, I know that this will have to be modified to turn it from a pipe dream. Another reason I like the Rock is the risks that I take, being where it is one has to commit, I just have to determine what of the above is necessity – being there - and what can be modified – everything else.

Even though I used the single trip ticket on the light rail stretching the idea of “single trip” a bit, I am still at Thurgood Marshall Airport with two hours to spare. Security didn’t even help, no unmanageable Midway type queues, no one yelling out orders, only two people in front of me. The TSA worker who went through my bags even give me tips. This time it was the film in the film shield bag. No one had to o.k. my contact lens fluid. I have even taken the time to decide where I am going to have lunch – pad thai and a couple of spring rolls – actually hot and sour soup they don’t have spring rolls - but I was thinking a burrito, by passed the three bookshops.

This wouldn’t be bad if I could pull a Winogrand and leave the bag someplace and make snaps, but I keep hearing the warnings.

I wanted to do a couple of kamikaze runs to my uncle and M. but I was trying to be dutiful and help my mum unpack a bit.

Then a moment of lucidity, and I realised that the light rail passes North Linthicum, where she parks, and since one sometimes – well never from Mount Washington - has to transfer to get to the airport I could do it there.

For some reason I got down at the Yards, thinking a doughnut but got a pumpkin cream cheese muffin which I didn’t dare eat on the light rail as getting down the driver admonished “NO EATING!!!”

Basking in the early morning sun outside the yards, I had my muffin while watching people –very few for a rush hour more cars than people the trains were empty.

A nervous moment as a fare checker got down from the northbound train and crossed the track to my side. Waited an extra train.

A slight panic at North Linthicum as the lot was fuller than expected and there was the possibility of her taking a long weekend. Systemically walked the rows found it and still had time to make a few snaps before the next train.

Now the wait pacing myself

Leaving the condo someone asked if I were driving back.
-No I have to work to-morrow.

But, leaving at 8am, twelve hour drive, am in Peasants Pissoir at 7pm. Flying leave at 8am – car to light rail to plane to Orange Line to Brown Line to Red Line to Purple Line to Metra to car will be back in Wisconsin at 6pm.