Antisocial Media

I was happy with some of the images I got on Kodak with this lens/camera combo; the ones of the Japanese Maple leaves were my favorites, and I loved how the two red peony photos came out. But. The finer grain and richer colors of the Velvia took me to another place. You have to remember that, when I was taking these pictures, I had no idea how they would turn out. Because the TL-Super meters through the lens (TL standing for, "through lens," natch) I was pretty confident that they would be metered okay, and I could see through the prism that at least something was going to be in focus, but beyond that it was really a wing and a prayer. You can judge for yourself how things developed: Spittle Bug Bleeding Hearts Foxgloves I Foxgloves II Columbines Interest Flower Interest Leaves Little Wildflowers No Idea Big Red Boys Anise? Apple Blossom and Ant Purple I am terrible at knowing flowers Nope. ...

These are actually my faves from that roll: Japanese Maple Cobweb on my walk to work Greta Red Peony Red Peony II

Hey, Blogger still works! These are 12 photos I took in my backyard as a test roll to see how a classic screw-mount Leica lens would work with a classic SLR body. Pretty darn well, as far as I'm concerned! It wasn't really possible to focus past a foot or so, but for close work I found I could adjust a little for depth of field by extending the body of the Summicron in and out. I was happy enough with the Kodak 400, but in the following post I'll share some of the hallucinatory fever dream that emerged in the next roll, some lightly expired Fuji velvia 50. Bumbling   Foxgloves Smiley Guy Lens-Flared Japanese Maple Little Poofies Coiled Buds   Gone To Seed Yellow Iris Peony Columbines Bleeding Hearts Columbine Yellow Yarrow

Strange Day-- Cloudy, but not the usual flat-gray-blanket-cloudy; Bits-and-pieces cloudy, But just a handful of moments where the sun peaked through. One of those warm-and-cool-at-the-same-time days, A day that feels more like Wisconsin September Than California September. A crow flew behind the pines As I walked past the parking garage. No feathers were ever so black As these, so black Against the bright cloud That they could have been nothing at all. An impossible hole in the sky. I'm sure, now, as I think about it, That if it had not flown so fast I could have seen the bright points of the stars Gleaming far away behind those feathers.

Three of you squeeze into a seat for a cozy two, Cocooned by your chatter from the texting commuters (And the occasional cycling enthusiast) On your way to tonight's game. Even the backs of your heads look young, And you in the window seat are so careful To rest your arm not across the one-and-a-half shoulders As you huddle together now On your way to the game.

Here's a trick to try out The next time you have a free minute: Step One: Stand where you find yourself. Step Two: Take a good look around. Step Three: Take a deep breath and slowly let it out. Step Four: Using whatever form of locomotion you prefer (legs, wheelchair, etc.), and while remaining perfectly still (this is the tricky part), push against the world until it begins to move past you. Step Five: Stop pushing when you find yourself where you need to be. And have a care to be considerate of others.

I decided to take the plunge into National Poetry Writing Month, prompted by my friend Aidan's facebook update. So I'm already three poems behind, sadly, but I can catch up... Here's the poem I wrote on Aidan's link: Thanks for this, Aidan! I've a deep fear of poems (My own, not others') But, in every life There comes a time when we say, "Ah, eff it, why not."

Actually, 2 years and three months. And this post is just a placeholder, really, to free me from the onslaught of comment-spam that gets dropped on you when you leave your blog in the wild to be raised by the wolves.

In a post below (titled The Perfidious Myth of the Unified Church ) I talk briefly about and show a photo of a sarcophagus in the Vatican Museum. This is officially titled "The Sarcophagus of the Two Brothers". Following is what my classmate Perry had to say about this beautiful monument: Two Men and a Sarcophagus The highlight of the whole adventure occurred for me in Museo Pius in a lecture by Professor Martin Wallraff. While touring tombstones the class gathered around a popular and somewhat peculiar sarcophagus, the Sarcophagus of the Two Brothers. Carved together on one sarcophagus and buried together within it (facts that together represent a highly unusual story) were two men. Professor Martin did not debunk the story presented of two brothers; rather, he simply questioned the interpretation as definitive. It is possible they were brothers; however, there is no Roman precedent for brothers sharing a grave anywhere in the Roman catacombs. Many examples exist of h...

So in the posts below I hope you will get a sense of the class, Rome: A Crossroad of Religion , I just had the privilege of taking, thanks to Starr King School for the Ministry, The American Waldensian Society, and Dr. Gabriella Lettini. Of course this is a fragmentary overview, and my purpose is survey and not exhaustion. I want to share some photos, observations, and in-class learnings in the hopes that I can bring to life some of the ways in which this experience came alive for and through me. Brilliant graffiti near the Roman Forum--just imagine it not-sideways... Since I'm pretty low-tech, generally speaking, this blog reads in somewhat reverse order. The first thing I wrote was an overview and introduction to the class, so if you read this in typical internet fashion it will be the last thing you read. Here is a link to jump down to that post, which I hope you will read first to get framework in which to fit the other sections of writing and photographs. Thank you for ...

The Tiber as seen from the Ponte Principe Amadeo--this sideways problem is tricky. All I can say is that portrait-oriented photos don't get sidewaysed in Preview, or in iPhoto. Computer friends, help! The interior dome of the Pantheon. The whole of the temple dome is poured concrete, with walls 20 feet thick at the base. The interior is exactly as tall as it is wide: 140 feet. It survives (at least in part) because it was made a Christian church in the 7th century. The Sacristy in Santa Maria sopra Minerva Sundown in the Roman Forum Detail of the Triumphal Arch of Titus . It commemorates the Roman Imperial sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE. This panel, from the interior of the arch's span, shows the triumphal procession parading the spoils plundered from the Herodian Temple--note the large candelabrum. Roman Jews are a distinct group, historically descended from Palestinian Jews who moved to Rome in the Second Century BCE. Thus they are neither Sephardic (Spanish) nor Ashken...

I am taking a class this semester about the teaching and theology of Dr. Howard Thurman. It is taught by Dr. Dorsey Blake, who in addition to his work at Starr King is the pastor of Dr. Thurman's Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco. In the first class meeting we watched about an hour of an interview with Dr. Thurman. At one point, when Dr. Thurman was discussing his practice of reading as meditation, looking for the occasional passage where the author's authentic voice and presence leaps out through the text, he mentioned a book on elephants he read on an ocean voyage. The book featured an entire chapter on The Prayer Lives of Elephants, which seemed silly to Dr. Thurman. But then he read something similar about monkeys, and then noticed that a certain dog in his own neighborhood would trot to the crest of a small hill every day near sunset, would sit there until the sun had gone down, and then would trot off again. He accompanied that dog a few tim...

Ruins of a Christian church built into the ruins of an ancient Insula (apartment block) in the Southwest hillside of the Capitoline. Rome, where even the new ruins are three times older than my country. Flower shop at night. It seems to me that the fellow on the right has had his fill of tourist taking snapshots. Long exposure of St. Peter's square at night. Hard to capture the unbelievable huge vastness of the space without a fisheye lens, or a spy satellite or something. When Bernini first designed the Piazza the ginormous porch had not yet been built on the front of the Basilica, and the dome was much more prominent. The porch is generally derided for its clumsy proportions and opressive and overwhelming mass. In this photo you can really see how it makes the dome (which is, uh, the tallest in the world at *450* feet!!!!) look like a pathetic little beanie. This is a trick of scale, as the dome is actually almost a tenth of a mile from the front of the porch. I know, go ...