Home Of The Free Project

Went to Denver Thursday and got back late Friday afternoon. I went in to attended the opening of a new photo exhibit at the Colorado History Museum last night. The exhibit is made up of regional winners of the Home of the Free Project sponsored by Washington Mutual. Washington Mutual gave seventh and eighth graders from the Denver area digital cameras, put them together with local photojournalists and sent them out to shoot pictures of government workers. Each school that participated then picked 15 of their photos and sent them in for regional judging.

The winning photos are the ones on display at the museum. I was surprised by the quality of the photos taken by a group of 12 and 13 year olds. These kids have "a good eye" and you can tell they thought out their photos before shooting . Most of them were there for the opening and they were all very excited to see their photos up on the wall. They deserve to be proud.

These photos will be submitted for national judging alone with photos from students in New York City and Chicago. The one winning team from each city will then go to Washington DC for the opening of the national exhibit. A lot of excited talk from the kids about that.

The Rocky Mountain News had an article about the Denver project and Washington Mutual's website has posted all the winning photos.

(And, yes, my niece was one of the participants.)

Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz

I listened to my Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits CD on Monday and now I can't get her singing this out of my head. Maybe if I write the lyrics down here the "song that will not stop playing in your head curse" will pass on to someone else. So, here goes:

Oh Lord,
won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches,
I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime,
no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

Oh Lord,
won’t you buy me a color TV ?
Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery
each day until three,
So oh Lord,
won’t you buy me a color TV ?

Oh Lord,
won’t you buy me a night on the town ?
I’m counting on you, Lord,
please don’t let me down.
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh Lord,
won’t you buy me a night on the town ?

Everybody!
Oh Lord,
won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches,
I must make amends,
Worked hard all my lifetime,
no help from my friends,
So oh Lord,
won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

That’s it!


Ladies and Gentlemen, give it up for the late, great, Janis Joplin!

Testing out Haloscan comments on my blog now. I think I may switch over to it from Enetation because it is faster and people say not so problem prone. It's the one on the right.

Conversations With a Bottom Feeder

Comments are a problem some times. It is extremely frustrating when they don't work correctly. Now we have something more aggravating to deal with- Comment Spam. For those of you who have not heard of this it is exactly what you thing it is, unwanted advertisements showing up in your comments box. Over at Reading and Writing, Joseph Duemer has written about his battle with comment spam. You can find two of his entries about this scourge here and here.

To Be Or Not To Be

I appear to have lost the will to blog
-Blue Witch

Next month will be the first anniversary of my blog and for a while there I was not sure if I this blog was going to make it until then. Like Blue Witch I seemed to have lost the will to write. If you look at a couple of my last post you will see that one is a photo of a cat’s butt and another is a list of the music CDs I own. If my blog was entertainment that’s sort of on the level of making shadow puppets on the wall with your hands in the beam of a flashlight- not that much effort needed to do either one. Well, shadow puppets are a lot harder to do when you think about it.

I started this blog in order to write about my walk across Spain. I see now it was something I had to do. Something that had to be written. Something that, in a lot of ways, was written without my help. It flowed out of me without effort sometimes. I would sit down, start typing, and watch as lines of words appeared across my monitor screen. The aftermath of the walk was a little harder but I still felt pushed to write it all down. But after that, I don’t know, the need wasn’t there anymore. At the same time I liked the process of writing and I did not want to stop but felt I had nothing more to say.

So, for the last few months I have been stumbling around trying to figure out just what I wanted to say. Trying to figure out why I am doing this. Trying to figure out if I even enjoy doing this. Well, I do enjoy doing this, which is the reason why I am doing it, but what is it I want to say?

Nothing profound, I just want to tell stories. The stories of my life. I realize that each time I write about something that has haunted me from my past, the act of writing it down seems to make the ghost vanish. I see that each time I pretend the ghost is not there it tries harder and harder to get my attention and the more energy I have to use to ignore. But if I turn around, “see” the ghost, and tell it, “Look, I know you are there and I’m not afraid of you anymore,” it leaves. The sense of relief after this is amazing. I feel lighter and not under so much pressure. The past can be very heavy if you try to carry it with you all the time. I’m going to try and drop as much of it as possible.

Addicted To Music

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence
-Edith Sitwell

I was looking through my CD collection this weekend and was surprised by the variety in the types of music that I listen to:

Individual Artists
Alanis Morissette
Beatles
Blondie
Bola Sete
BR5-49
Cherish The Ladies
Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions
Dave Brubeck
Duke Ellington
Edith Piaf
Ella Fizgerald
Enya
George Gershwin
Gloria Estafan
How's Bayou
Janis Joplin
Jimi Hendrix
John Mayer
Kid Creole & The Coconuts
Luar:Na:Lubre
Madonna
Manhattan Transfer
Mozart
Nat King Cole
Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra
Pat Benatar
Peter Tosh
Rosemary Clooney
Santana
Sarah Vaughan
Sly & The Family Stone
The Brian Setzer Orchestra
The Stray Cats
Vivaldi

Collections
A Cellarful Of Motown
Atlantic Soul Classics
Celtic Music For Flute & Whistle
Disco Party
50's Rock & Roll
Great Ladies of Jazz
Jazz For A Rainy Afternoon
Jazz For The Quiet Times
Latin American Folklore Favorites
Melting Pot:Global Sounds From ARC Music
New Wave
1960's R&B Classics
Priceless Jazz Collection Sampler
70 Ounces Of Rock & Gold
Snoopy's Jazz Classiks On Toys
The Blue Note Jazz Profile Series
The Fabulous Swing Collection

Soundtracks
Boys On The Side
Cooley High
Corrina, Corrina
Eve's Bayou
Frida
Kissing Jessica Stein
The Mambo Kings

What does this list tell me? First, I do not have enough Reggae (only one- Peter Tosh). Second, that I have just the right number of Country (BR4-59). Third, you only need one Enya. And, last, that I have been buying mostly collections and soundtracks the last couple of years.

Now this isn't my total music collection, I have cassettes and records too. I play the CD's because I can put six CD's in my CD player and then listen to uninterrupted music for hours. I usually don't listen to one album at a time. I'd much rather put the CD's into the player, hit random play, and let the player bounce from CD to CD and track to track. This ability is why I have been buying collections and soundtracks. I like knowing that what I am going to be listening to next may be totally different than what was just playing.

Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit
-Kin Hubbard

Random Thoughts

I saw Boy George on VH1’s series about the 80’s last week. Does anyone else think that he is channeling Jackie Coogan as Uncle Fester on the old TV show ‘The Adams Family'?

The odds of a person getting hit by lightning once in the same year are 1 in 280,000. During the making of Mel Gibson’s movie, ‘The Passion of Christ,’ two people were hit by lightning. The guy playing Jesus once and the assistant director twice. What are the odds of that happening? I’m sure the increase is exponential and does not simply double with each strike. So, would that put the odds in the millions or billions? If you were old Mel would you take this as some sort of sign that God is not happy with what you are doing?

Halloween is over which means the retail stores will have people removing the Halloween product while other employees follow behind replacing it with the Christmas stuff before the shelves have a chance to cool off. Some stores have had Christmas goods out since the beginning of September. It used to be, the Christmas shopping season did not start until the day after Thanksgiving. Not only are the stores rushing Christmas some people also push the season by putting up Christmas trees in mid-November, So, by the time Christmas gets here they are already sick of it and have the tree out on the curb for trash pickup the day after. By New Year’s Eve there is not a trace of Christmas anywhere. Me, they can push Christmas all they want, I know the season does not start until after Santa shows up at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I will start my Christmas shopping then. I will be putting up my tree on Christmas Eve like I always do and it will stay up until after “Little Christmas” on January the sixth. You can push the season but you can’t push me.