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