text:
I've noticed a recurring theme in some of the stuff I've been reading and/or re-reading over the past few weeks, regarding the proliferation of photographic images, and how that proliferation changes the way we see and relate to images and to the world. It's in some respects similar to the case of the 1978 Test, although it's not nearly as cut-and-dried.
Here are the relevant bits:
Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Soundings from the Atlantic, published in the 1860's:
Form is henceforth divorced from matter. In fact, matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, except as the mould on which form is shaped. Give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing, taken from different points of view, and that is all we want of it. Pull it down or burn it up, if you please. We must, perhaps, sacrifice some luxury in the loss of color; but form and light and shade are the great things, and even color can be added, and perhaps by and by may be got direct from Nature.
There is only one Colosseum or Pantheon; but how many millions of potential negatives have they shed — representatives of billions of pictures — since they were erected! Matter in large masses must always be fixed and dear; form is cheap and transportable. We have got the fruit of creation now, and need not trouble ourselves with the core. Every conceivable object of Nature and Art will soon scale off its surface for us. Men will hunt all curious, beautiful, grand objects, as they hunt the cattle in South America, for their skins and leave the carcasses as of little worth. (pp 161-162)
Wilson Hicks, writing in a 1950's Aperture article, "Photographs and Public," reprinted recently in Aperture Magazine Anthology: The Minor White Years, 1952–1976:
[The] public is inundated today by a vast flood of images which, as Lewis Mumford says in his Art and Technics…has "undermined old habits of careful evaluation and selection." There is being waged, he reminds us, a horrific battle of man and machine from which the machine has emerged so far as the victor: witness the images mass-produced by still, movie, and television cameras and mass-repeated by the printing press. I say, "witness the images," but you dare not do that. For, as Mr. Mumford says, if we tried to respond to all the mechanical stimuli which beset us we should all be nervous wrecks. Mr. Mumford asks whether being surrounded by a superabundance of images makes us more picture-minded, and answers no; we develop an "abysmal apathy" because "what we look at habitually, we overlook." Moreover, he says, picture users, to get attention, resort to sensationalism — "make sensation seem more important than meaning" — and the shockers so prevalent today cause quieter, and better, pictures to suffer. Still further, the image producers have created a ghost-world, Mr. Mumford says, in which we lead a derivative, secondhand life in addition to our real life. This apparitional world is set and peopled with the artificial and the phoney (note many so-called news pictures). Thus in various ways are the sign and symbol of photography devaluated. (pp. 152-153)
Alec Soth, interviewed in 2010, from From Here to There:
I'm not actually killing the father, though I know that's in there. But I am interested in killing that genre of photography going forward. It exists in the history of the medium that you shoot the mundane and make it beautiful, right? So people used to take pictures of old barns. Now we all see an old barn and we say, "Wow, that's beautiful." It's a photo cliche so you don't shoot that, but the world thinks they're beautiful. That sort of goes on through time. And Eggleston took it to another level with a book such as The Democratic Forest. Just anything, and you can find beauty in it. And I agree with that. But the issue is now, in the digital age, it's relentless. You have thousands of photographers working that way. it's really hard to have that moment.
One thing I thought about on that little walk is the scene in American Beauty with the floating plastic bag. That scene has become iconic. I photographed a lot of plastic bags on that walk. In a way, they're like the old barns. We find the floating bag beautiful now because of that movie, but it's just harder and harder to do that. (pp. 143-144)
Nathan Jurgenson, writing recently, (via LPV):
Or: Given the proliferation of options, how should I document this cat?
For some, though certainly not everyone, this question is becoming increasingly difficult to answer. The most obvious answer is "don't document that cat. Enough already." I'm with you. I'm concerned about how social media documentation changes experience…I think there is good reason for why these types of documentation proliferate: most importantly, to be on social media in all its various forms is, for many, to exist. PJ Rey does an excellent job at explaining why it's not so easy to just opt-out of all of this. In any case, this is not a post about whether this expansion in the ways of documentation is a good thing, but asking if there is a cognitive limit to all of this. So, again: How should I document this cat lying next to me?….
Can one simultaneously see the photographs, video, audio, and GIFs in front of them in real-time? Can documentary literacy be refined as to intuit between what is most shareable frozen-still versus wants to be stuck in the GIF loop? Can one see the fast Vine video in the sandwich being slowly consumed? Can we keep all of these documentary-affordances and potentialities in our head at once? Is there a limit?
To make this even more complex, we modern documentarians also need to keep all of the different audiences in mind. Indeed, that we now have been connected to large audiences to share our ephemera is in large part why we are being given so many documentary options. To see something as a potential snap (sent via Snapchat) is to already know the taste and expectations of each potential recipient. Vine users are different than your Facebook friends are different than your Tumblr followers and thus expectations multiply within the documentary consciousness.
As the complexities swell, might there be in this ecology of documentary consciousness something to keep mediums of documentation from proliferating endlessly? Is there a point of cognitive documentary saturation? Can we really all-at-once see the world as photographable, GIFable, Vineable, and whatever else comes next? And are those who reach that documentary saturation first at a disadvantage, missing out on the cultural and social capital that social media documentation promises?
Perennial millennialisms
As usually, photography's chronic problem is to believe that its problems are acute. In this case, it seems that photography has, if not always, then from nearly the very beginning, been in the situation it is now: struggling to make sense of a staggering increase in the rate of production of photographs.
Much as with physical goods, I suppose, changes in abundance and scarcity precipitate anxiety about the value of things — compounded in the case of photographs by the dual impact of proliferating photographs on each other and on the world which those photographs represent. But unlike commodities, the value here is not a matter of monetary worth, but of meaning.
For Holmes, it is the value of real places, subverted by cheap access to photographs of them. (Note: Holmes was writing in a tongue in cheek fashion; he certainly was not anti-photography.) For Hicks, it is the value of "quieter, and better" images which is lost in the deluge — and a crisis in seeing itself, in which we dare not "witness," because we know that "if we tried to respond to all the mechanical stimuli which beset us we should all be nervous wrecks." For Soth, it is the aesthetic value of photographic subjects, eroded by our very appreciation (and therefore imitation) of it, which transforms the freshly discovered source of beauty into cliche. For Jurgens, it is the value of routine self-documentation (i.e., the successor technologies of the snapshot): for a given thing or experience, how should one record it — and is it even worth doing so anymore?
To put it in terms of Holmes's signature metaphor: are there too many ways to "skin" a cat? Having perhaps achieved his vision of men who hunt all things worth seeing only "for their skins and leave the carcass," are we now at the point where the traffic in those skins — what Hicks called the "derivative, secondhand life" of our visual "ghost world" — has also destabilized and devalued itself? It seems like Jurgens would object to Hicks's dualism, but shares some of his John Henryesque concerns for the limits of the mind.
In summary, does the proliferation of images sometimes depreciate the value of individual images and/or of things? Is that depreciation a problem? And is that problem newly becoming acute and dire? The answers seem positive, but at least in the case of the third question, consensus is not necessarily supporting evidence when it occurs across time.
I am suspicious of millennialisms in photography, because they tend to recur perennially. (This is also the problem with actual millennial cults. If any of them were right, there would be much fewer of them by now.) Of course, just because the end wasn't actually nigh all those other times doesn't mean it's not really nigh this time. But I am nonetheless inclined to follow the wisdom of Nick Fury: "Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on."
Tonight, on a very special…
My feeling is that anxiety about too many images takes its particular form from the specific technological and cultural situation at a given time, but is at heart more or less a constant: to put it crudely, the problem is that photography and related technologies have a disruptive impact on what is special. (There's probably a better term, but I can't think of it offhand.)
A special person or place, when subjected to mass reproduction and distribution in image form, may become less special, or the way in which it is special, and to whom, can be totally transformed. A special image — whether distinguished by technical innovation or the artist's style or perceptiveness — is easily mimicked, which eventually removes the special, distinct quality of it, aside from its historical precedence. The stunning moment of beauty and insight becomes the standard subject.
Of course, this effect is inextricable from the basic appeal of photography in the first place, which from the beginning has included the (relative) ease, affordability, and reproducibility of the images it makes possible. The camera has always been a turnkey solution to the problem of the unique. It disrupts the economy of meaning that determines what is special, because it is and always has been a tool for exactly that purpose.
Of course, the presence of perennial problems and purposes does not mean the medium stands still. Rather, they play a persistent part in shaping its progress, for better or worse. I think proliferation anxiety tends to drive a kind of arms race of innovation — an always-escalating quest for new or new-seeming or newly-rediscovered subjects and techniques to distinguish the photographer who puts them to use before they have a chance to become cliches.
Unfortunately, different parts of the audience relate to the medium differently, and react to to its changes at different rates. A great deal of effort and attention goes into knowing what things to be over, and when. And when it comes to rediscovering the old — well, it can get awkward when one person's current/continuing practice is someone else's antique novelty. Under such conditions, it's inevitable that photography's audiences will grow farther apart, and their vocabularies, judgments, and desires become less mutually intelligible.
I think in the case of photography as art, the result is an incentive to move toward the abstract, the conceptual, and the technical, farther afield from the common use of photographic tools — and away from the devaluing impact of naive imitation by the masses. That certainly seems to be an implication (spoken or unspoken) behind some of the predicted futures of photography. (Alternatively, of course, the naive products of the masses can be laundered back into relevance through appropriation by some credentialed party.)
Stick to your knitting
Coming at it from another side, I wonder: how much of this fear of proliferating images, would be resolved by pulling art out of the equation? Or, rather, the artist? The obsession with the unique, the special, the distinguishing, and the fear for the fate of good images that may go unseen in the vast flood of others — it's not really fear about the quality of photographs or the limits of seeing. It's about the status of the photographer as artist and author.
In crafts, familiarity or commonality is not antithetical to worth. In that context, one cannot reasonably qualify a description of something beautiful or useful and well-made with a dismissive observation that it is also derivative. In folk songs and stories, the quality of performance often reflects an ability to skillfully iterate but does not require radical innovation. And while crafts, folk arts, traditional music, etc. may be perceived as belonging to the past, internet memes really work in much the same way — and like folktales and songs, they tend for practical purposes to come from a culture rather than from an individual author, even sometimes in cases where we can definitely identify such an author.
I think this is particularly relevant to the question of documentary consciousness/saturation — because I think it points to the fact that as we all become more and more skilled at producing images, and as we increasingly do so for the joy of it, we rely on the camera less as a documentary tool for memorializing moments and more to produce personal variations on standard subjects as an end in itself. Not to the exclusion of documentation, of course, but in conjunction with it. As with, say, knitting, the result is a practice that is partly aesthetic, partly utilitarian, and which imparts a satisfaction of creation without necessarily implying "creativity" in the sense of innovation.
(Please, nobody start pummeling me with your copies of Knitting for Anarchists; I know that many knitters engage in extensive design work, etc. But as far as I know, nobody points to someone knitting from a pattern and declares haughtily, "You are not a knitter.")
Wait, really?
Well…no. Or, not exactly. In fact, I tend to be on the side of the "quieter, and better" image, too. And I'm copiously on record as resenting contemporary forms of the attention-seeking "sensationalism" Hicks derided, such as the photos that, through a combination of "wow" factor and SEO, rise to the top of Flickr's Explore.
More critically, I'm concerned for the ability of photographs to let viewers partake of different perspectives (literally and figuratively). One of the most important functions of photography throughout its history is to form connections between people and between communities — even if they have all too often been simplistic and one-directional connections.
That function is not necessarily menaced by the proliferation of images. Take documentary photography, for example: the more universal, common, cheap, and easy photographic production is, and the more people are making photographs, and the more photographs they make, the more chances we have to avoid the great weakness of documentary photography: its dependence on parachuting white guys into any area that needs documenting.
But neither is there necessarily a positive correlation between a more a diverse body of photographs being made and more diverse, broadening photographic experiences for viewers. The increasingly elective distribution channels of the present are only as inclusive and interconnected as we make them. The walls formed by people letting their tastes guide them can be just as solid as those formed by institutional bias and myopia, and numbers alone will not scale them. Someone has to make windows and doors, or at least ladders. It's a task that gets far too little love.
So anyway, please take about 2-3x the usual dose of salt with everything I've said here.
PS: I was also being extremely glib in my comparison of knitting to photography. I did not include fiber arts as an academic practice, or haute couture, which would likely have created annoyingly relevant parallels. Figuring out whether and how those parallels would have undermined my point is left as an exercise to the reader.
But most significantly, in knitting and in many other crafts, there is a direct relationship between the time one must spend in physical work and the result one achieves. Photography is by no means free of work, but the relationship between the time spent in it and the nature and quality of the result one achieves is wildly variable.
The usual read of that is that photography is faster or easier and therefore it upsets balances. I don't think it's that photography is faster or easier than other media, so much as that within photography, there is no consistent relationship between the amount, duration, or kind of effort one expends, and what one achieves. I think that inconsistency breeds media-wide insecurity at an hilarious rate.
PPS: This post took me a long time, and in the time between I started writing it and when I hammered into its present, vaguely publishable state, other things have been posted that I really should take into account. But if I stopped to do that, it would be another month before I got this out there, and then the situation would just keep getting more silly. So I'll just say: read the posts linked here, here, and here.
1: America as Index
Glancing at a few posts from other folks about From Here to There: Alec Soth's America, it seems like it's almost as obligatory for reviewers to talk about the book's cover as it is for the essayists in the book to talk about Soth's 8x10 view camera. It's a fine and clever cover, to be sure, but I'm really much more taken with the book's index. Not all photobooks have them — even ones that include extensive prose sections — and it's always nice to see them. Indices are great because they're a sign that someone on the other end of the book-making process remembered that books are for getting knowledge into peoples' heads. The inclusion of an index respects a reader's time and encourages repeated readings and extended use.
Of course, the index in From Here to There isn't really an index. Or, rather, it is a fully functional index, but it's also (mostly?) a joke about indices.
- "Zen, photography as anti-, 142."
- "Soth, Alec, business cards of. 222."
- "2007_10zl0006, 47, 197"
- "men, disconsolate, as theme."
In addition to being amusing, this is representative of the book's stylistic approach, which throughout is clever and charming, although also sometimes just a bit much.
But actually it's the regular "list what's in the book" aspect of the index that I find the most interesting. It demonstrates part of the problem I've been having in trying to write usefully about this book and about Soth: talking about Soth means talking about everything.
Well, not everything. But gosh, it's a pretty healthy percentage. Here, take a look:
Of course, one could make a list of connections like this about any photographer or artist — any person at all, really. But the index is a fair representation of the actual content of this book, especially the four essays about Soth and the interview with him that form the majority of the text. A tremendous amount of time is spent using comparisons and relationships to try to pin Soth down, to define his context — and by way of his context, to define him. Frank, Evans, Weston, Winogrand, Bresson (I mean, really?), Dijkstra, Wall, Ruff, Meyerowitz, Avedon. Wim Wenders, Amy Lowell, Malvina Reynolds. It's a little like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, except instead of feeling the ears, the trunk, and the tail, we're trying to determine the elephant's species by way of his bibliography. And much the same approach is taken to Soth's diverse subject matter.
Maybe that's the only sensible way to approach Soth, whose photographic process is list-centric, after all:
[In Niagara:] From an initial search for subjects relating to the notion of love, "the realities of the place" quickly changed his perspective and parameters. He initiated the practice of driving with lists taped to the steering wheel that enumerated things to seek out ("…high school yearbooks, Polaroids, men in pajamas…). He also began to look for souvenirs: love letters and objects collected from subjects that would become a kind of "emotional scaffolding for the project. (Engberg, p. 44)
Perhaps itemization is a principle theme of Soth's work; maybe it is only appropriate to try to understand Soth in this way. Or maybe it is just that a body of work like Soth's, dense in meaning and reference, but also enigmatic, even inscrutable, needs to be cross-referenced before it can be talked about.
And yet, I have the sense with some of the essays in this book, that by the time the author is done with with the due diligence of tallying up subjects and influences and cross-references, that they've run out of steam for actually talking about Soth's work itself. Or that the framework they've built out of those references is so ponderous that to actually get it pointed in a direction and make it move is just unrealistic.
Even Britt Salvesen's essay, which is my favorite of the bunch, seems to begin seven or eight times, is largely about other photographers, and closes with what reads like a second or third paragraph composed mainly of nested lists:
Beneath an affectless surface, Soth's work contains an aspirational core. Taking up such themes as community, connection, and middle America — so laden with political assumptions as to be nearly abstract — Soth presents viable options for art and life. Perhaps these are not the inevitable options, nor the cleanest ones, but he subtly indicates that choosing them will temper other, darker American tendencies toward cynicism, alienation, metropolitanism, and obscurantism on the one hand, and fundamentalism, conservatism, essentialism, and exceptionalism on the other. A man of his time, he externalizes the dilemmas he faces as an artist, a father, and a citizen. His respect for individuality allows him to posit collective identity. Our need for Alec Soth's America makes it real.
I think it's an excellent essay. But I think it demonstrates that Soth's work as a whole is so…involuted, and so intellectually rich, that it's difficult to approach both thoroughly and deeply.
2: This Swiss Guy
One of the pleasant surprises for me in this book is that Soth managed to sell me somewhat on Robert Frank's The Americans, a book that I've always had a hard time liking very much.
When I first saw Robert Frank, it wasn't this transformational thing for me the way it is for everyone else. I came to admire him much later. But I think I'm doing very similar things to what he's doing in a way that's quite different from, say, Joel Sternfeld. And this is where I'm able to distinguish these things, because Sternfeld is actually more of a social documentarian. He really is interested in the social issues of the day, looking at them and thinking about changes.
I don't think that's what Robert Frank was about. I think he was this Swiss guy coming to America, driving around, feeling enchanted and lonely simultaneously, and it just so happens that he encounters America and aspects of it and documents some of that. And then the work is read as a commentary on America. But the work is so much more about the tortured soul of Robert Frank. And that becomes super evident in later work. (p. 145)
I think this is spot-on. While The Americans has obviously played an influential role in the context of documentary photography, and photography as political critique, I don't find it all that impressive or persuasive if directly examined on those terms. But it's pretty damn good as a photo essay about travel, recording an experience that is mostly composed of alienation and surface perceptions.
(And yes, I appreciate that alienation and surface perceptions define America as well as the experience of travel — and that the uneasy road trip is as archetypal an American experience as anything. But the book makes much more sense if you keep the "enchanted and lonely" Swiss guy at the front of your mind. The photographs carry the weight of his story better than they carry the weight of a scathing social document.)
Of course, by providing this reading of Frank, Soth is also positioning himself as well. He tends to get — well, whatever the laudatory equivalent is of "tarred with the same brush." I'm not sure why this is — and I'm as guilty of anyone of doing it. Maybe it's just the power of American chauvinism in action that photos made in America by and about lonely drivers cannot help being read as social documentary.
3: Find Ourselves in These Pictures
Among the many freewheeling comparisons and connections between Soth and other notable photographers of America that populate this book, this one by Salvesen is probably my favorite:
Although beauty and grace suffuse many of his pictures, others are tough and resistant: Soth makes no deliberate attempt to be easy and pleasing. In this he resembles the predecessors mentioned above. Evans' neutral frontality was puzzling compared to Margaret Bourke-White's more sentimental depictions; Frank was a dark and infuriating counterpart to Steichen's 1955 humanist paean The Family of Man; Shore was a deadpan riposte to bicentennial fervor; and Avedon was an East Coast urban dismantler of Wild West mythology. Soth, in his turn, does not pretend to the comprehensive sweep of A Day in the Life of America. Evans, Frank, Shore, Avedon, and now Soth have submitted American identity to serious questioning while ultimately contributing to it, even enriching it. The viewer cannot escape the challenge posed by these artists: if we want to believe in America as a democracy, as a collective of free and equal individuals, we must either find ourselves in these pictures or admit ourselves outside them.(p. 105)
I tend to dislike accounts of the value of a body of photography based on its function in calling into question American mythology, self-confidence, etc. It's just redundant, like a gripping photo essay revealing the conspiracy behind the myth of Santa Claus. Demythologization is not bad, but it is rarely interesting in itself, and if it's treated as a priority in art (either by the artist or by curators or critics) it limits the scope of its relevance to audiences who partake in the mythology or who like to chuckle at the foolishness of those who do. (Also, in the case of the photographers who tend to crop up in this particular conversation, one has to ask: to what extent can American identity be "submitted to serious questioning" by all and only white men?)
But Salvesen's "we must either find ourselves in these pictures or admit ourselves outside them," does something different (or at least additional) for me. It focuses not on the relationship between the photographers and the idea of America, but on the relationship between viewers and subjects. And while I can be as jaded and bored as I like about national mythology, this problem all Americans face — the problem of living together with other Americans — is as real to me as it is to anyone, and it is a concrete problem which is actually amenable to photographic investigation.
It's a particularly good way to approach Soth, whose work, while often as narrow and provocative and judgmental as that of any other photographer of America, is also consistently empathetic, and genuinely interested in people as such. (And not only for their iconic or representational utility.)
For example, consider this photograph:
And Soth's explanation of it:
But, over and over again, you do see real misery. So then you've witnessed the fact that, with these people, something's broken and that more often than not, there is a real hunger to engage with me. So, if I were to really leave my life, I would desperately miss it, and people. It's a case of grass is always greener. It's both being attracted to it, and then when you're in it, a bit repelled.
And on the issue of the swastika — I asked him a lot about that, and it was so clearly a case of being completely naive. I didn't want to exploit that as a major topic because I felt like the religious impulse of becoming a monk or something is not that different. It's just a different shade of the same thing, which is this hunger to latch on to some sort of system. Because there's always a belief system that's connecting you to other people.
But you know what's really interesting about him? You know the older guy who I said lives on millions of dollars of mountain? He was the guy I was going to visit. That young guy with the swastika was living on his property. The older guy is a total hippie. Not Nazi at all. I think he's gay, and likes having the young guy around. The young guy is a bit lost in life, and he hates his parents, but it shows you — in both cases — how they're not alone at all. (pp. 137-138)
I think this sympathetic, detailed, and somewhat all over the place approach to his subjects is part of what makes Soth so hard to summarize or to draw concise conclusions about. We expect a narrative to generalize, to organize, to abstract. Because if it doesn't do those things, it can't explain. And if it doesn't explain, we can't account for its accuracy. I think Soth's photography explains less about America than any of the other photographers of America to whom he is compared. Which is not to say that he doesn't provide a true and useful view of it. I'm almost tempted to say that the leaving out the explanation of America makes room in the photos for more actual America.
Although…still only so much of it. Soth's America is a very white America — not exclusively so, of course, and I don't necessarily count it as a defect. I'm more concerned with the quality with which he shows what he shows than I am with the demographics of it. And if we're talking about Soth's work in itself, it wouldn't even occur to me as an issue. But if we're looking at Soth as a name at the end the list, " Evans, Frank, Shore, Avedon, and" in terms of a tradition of photographers presenting America with challenging mirror images of itself — well, that's a tremendously white guy list. Which doesn't say a damn thing about who has made important and challenging photographs of America, but it does say a lot about who America is willing to be challenged by.
4: The Loneliest Man in Missouri
Probably the best part of Alec Soth's America is the booklet The Loneliest Man in Missouri, tucked into a little envelope on the back cover, like a circulation card in an old school library book.
(Note: Spoilers ahead. No, really. If you aren't going to buy the book (which I do recommend), you can view the series here.)
While From Here to There: Alec Soth's America includes some of Soth's most recognizable work from a number of series, mostly beautiful and reproduced with care, the photos in Loneliest Man are almost all unremarkable in appearance. They would have little recognizable value outside the context of their sequence, which opens with a man urinating against the cement base of a pole, a distant bird in a blue sky, and the handwritten words, "I spent a few weeks driving around Missouri, looking for the loneliest man I could find."
What follows are mostly photos of solitary men in cars, men walking to or from their cars, eating their lunches, and going to strip clubs. Stylistically, they resemble some of the worst sorts of street photography: voyeuristic without being provocative or informative, and in almost all cases without apparent redeeming aesthetic virtue.
Some photos are annotated with simple captions, and some narrate Soth's process, like, "I followed this man from a strip club to the casino. He was wearing some sort of complicated medical device," or, "I think his mustache was fake." Some of the men's faces are covered with colored stickers. In between photos of the men, there are photos of related scenes or objects, often from parking lots.
Then, a few pages from the end, Soth finds his "loneliest" man, Ed:
I met Ed at Miss Kitty's, a strip club in East St. Louis. He goes there 3-5 times a week.
I took Ed to dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. He told me that the next day was his 45th birthday. But he had no plans to celebrate. His parents were dead — no friends but strippers.
For Ed's birthday, Soth hired one of the strippers from the club to come to Ed's house, where she sang happy birthday to Ed and Ed read her TS Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The text of the poem is reproduced, and the sequence concludes with a photograph of Ed's birthday cake.
Loneliest Man in Missouri is invasive, creepy, ugly, and pretentious. It is also moving, contemplative, and genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny. And wonderful. It divorces Soth's fundamental concerns from the beauty and high technical standards that characterize, say, Niagara. And it somehow — I'm honestly not sure how — manages at the end to humanize the subjects without obfuscating the squirm-inducing nature of the premise or Soth's approach to it.
It's not a documentary work. It doesn't document anything, it's certainly not evidence of anything. It doesn't explain or account for anything. It's a self-portrait by proxy* of a lonely driver. And it's awesome.
*We've talked about Charles and the men in Broken Manual, but in many ways I am closer to The Loneliest Man in Missouri than I am to these people. I live in Minneapolis, I drive a minivan. It was going to be The Loneliest Man in Minneapolis at one point, but then I thought, that's too easy. And I wanted to go even more to the middle by going to Missouri, but there is definitely a self-portrait aspect to this whole thing. (p. 145)
Until recently, hardly anyone considered why some readers might actually prefer clichés to finely crafted literary prose. A rare critic who pondered this mystery was C.S. Lewis, who — in a wonderful little book titled "An Experiment in Criticism" — devoted considerable attention to the appeal of bad writing for what he termed the "unliterary" reader. Such a reader, who is interested solely in the consumption of plot, favors the hackneyed phrase over the original
… because it is immediately recognizable. 'My blood ran cold' is a hieroglyph of fear. Any attempt, such as a great writer might make, to render this fear concrete in its full particularity, is doubly a chokepear to the unliterary reader. For it offers him what he doesn't want, and offers it only on the condition of his giving to the words a kind and degree of attention which he does not intend to give. It is like trying to sell him something he has no use for at a price he does not wish to pay.
Why we love bad writing - Laura Miller - Salon.com
This is quite interesting. While it is aimed at the problem of why people like Stieg Larsson, it is very applicable to photographic contexts, as well. (Would it be too much to say "the problem of why people like Chase Jarvis"?)
If you show the average viewer of photographs (which is to say, an average person in any country which is at least modestly industrialized) a bunch of Chase Jarvis's work and a bunch of Alec Soth's work, there's an excellent chance you'll get a better response to the former, for largely the same reasons that Lewis enumerates.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that, in photography, what the photographer or curator is "trying to sell" the viewer will in many be something that the viewer is ill-equipped to recognize. As a result, the viewer will feel that they are being asked to pay a price not only for something they have no use for, but for something which, so far as they can tell, does not exist. And this is not true only for the "unliterary" viewer of photography; consider the critical response initially received by New Topographics.
Are these situations problematic? I think in the case of literature, the answer is, not necessarily. A taste for Dan Brown novels does not preclude a taste for more interesting fare. And in some cases — for example, in the case of Harry Potter — a mediocre work can become a gateway that leads vast numbers of readers on to better works.
In photography, the situation is somewhat more dire, because it is much, much harder for viewers to move freely between the "unliterary" photographic realm and the "literary" photographic realm. There is hardly any middle ground between them, the way there is with books. (I would not personally say "middlebrow," but I wouldn't object to it, although I do generally question the derogatory connotation that word is usually burdened with.) Instead of a middle ground, there is a chasm with hardly any bridges across it.
Most people wouldn't know where to go to find challenging and interesting photographic work if they wanted to. (And what might prompt them to begin to want to?) For many people of the older generations, a good photograph is something associated more than anything else with wall calendars and perhaps magazines. For the younger generation, make that Explore and The Sartorialist.
In a bookstore, one could easily start at Dan Brown's allotted position on the shelf and then have one's eye caught by Octavia Butler, or Borges, or JG Ballard, or Kay Boyle, or Ray Bradbury. There are no (or nearly no) opportunities like that in photography. And while that precise example is not easily replicated in, say, Amazon (for which virtual proximity is a function of user tastes, not alphabetic chance), it is still very easy to start with a bad writer and stumble from there to good writers. (Because the tastes of other users are not uniform, "if you like x, you may also like y" engines do not automatically trap users in unliterary ghettos.)
To provide opportunities for everyday people to expand and improve their photographic tastes without making them feel like they are being sold something they have no use for at a price they do not wish to pay is one of the more important frontiers in photography at the moment, and one which few people are homesteading. There are a few notable and interesting attempts — I would possibly consider Pictory to be one and certainly 20x200 is — but I have not encountered any about which I do not have significant reservations.
That said—too briefly—my argument against the set-up picture is that it leaves the matter of content to the IMAGINATION of the photographer, a faculty that, in my experience, is generally deficient compared to the mad swirling possibilities that our dear common world kicks up at us on a regular basis. That's all.
A Photo Student › Alec Soth Interviews Tod Papageorge
I'm almost positive I've read and blogged about this interview before, but years ago and in another venue entirely. And in any case, this passage bears repeating, because it gets right to the heart of what riles me up about the overuse of the terms "creativity" and "creative" in regard to photography.
However, also bear in mind that Papageorge is not arguing for a photograph as document. He says just before the previously quoted passage:
Don't speak to me of the document; I don't really believe in it, particularly now. A picture's not the world, but a new thing.
"Martha and Anthony 2004" from Alec Soth's Niagara
Each time I've turned the last page of Alec Soth's Niagara I've been left feeling what I can best describe as contemplative. It sounds terribly cliché but that book makes me think about life – my life and life in general – and being human. I never see Niagara as being gloomy but that may be entirely despite the sequencing of its photos. You'll see a couple of photos of motels, motel exteriors, motel interiors, scenes from Niagara, a portrait or two – quite possibly of a couple – and then Soth hits you with the falls.
We could go on a veritable metaphor safari with the photos of Niagara Falls. The river flows to the falls, unstoppably. It all falls down in the end. And I guess that's how life is; we live it and then we die. Me being accepting of that may be why I don't see Niagara as a gloomy work. It's certainly tinged by melancholy but, for me, that's about as far as it goes down that path.
What lies behind the pictures is more intense, as Soth describes in this interview with Roger Richards in The Digital Journalist:
"Before ever having been there I liked the place. I wanted to explore the scenes of love, and approach it with a kind of lyrical sensibility," says Soth.
But what Soth found was much more than he had bargained for. "After the fifth trip, I was done," he relates. "The Mississippi work was fun. But here I was having negative experiences. After the fifth trip it was hard to go back."
Soth says that as the work progressed it became like a downward spiral, and became darker and darker in tone.
"There's this one guy named David. He may not be in the book … his girl committed suicide. He had this collection of love letters … the letters were so raw." Soth said the work was becoming too dark. He had wanted to maintain the sense of melancholy without it becoming so intense. But it was becoming harder to do.
The melancholy may never become too intense in Niagara but it is nonetheless an intense work. The sequencing of the photos, the manufactured romance of the motels and, perhaps most of all, the people in the portraits, again coupled with the landscapes of the falls. It all brings out feelings of emptiness, loss and futility. But I also find a hope of redemption in Niagara. Probably because of Soth's portraits, which are never less than sympathetic. They show people I don't imagine having much in common with, but in a way which makes me stop and look again. To transcend first impressions or even knee-jerk prejudices.
I picked the photo above because to me it illustrates as well as any one photo could what I write in this post. But I hope I also managed to illustrate thoroughly that Niagara isn't a book of portraits anymore than it is a book of landscapes. If you haven't done so already, please visit Niagara on Alec Soth's website and look through the photos. It's worth noting that although the selection of photos there is excellent the sequencing is not the same as in the book. Some photos from the book are also missing and some photos on the site are not in the book.
"Fairway Motor Inn" from Alec Soth's book NIAGARA
Since I have it on loan, I'll be doing a short review soon of Alec Soth's photobook NIAGARA. I keep coming back to this particular photo from it but I can't imagine using it with a review of the book. Finding one photo to represent Soth's work in NIAGARA will be very difficult, but what I'm sure of is that this photo isn't it. Not that it's the odd photo out but others would probably be better. This photo, however, is perhaps my favourite of all the photos in NIAGARA. Somewhat odd since other photos in the book speak to me more but perhaps understandable because I wish I had whatever magic Soth put into this one.
Soth converts the mundane into the fascinating in it. There's an abundance of lines criss-crossing it, there's sparse colour except for the red doors which match perfectly with the red Cadillac. Delicious repetitions. The grey sky and light, the patchy wet asphalt, the barren tree; desolate. I'm not sure that the red doors and car manage to provide an uplifting counterpoint to the desolation rather than highlight it. Still, the melting snow is a sign of spring so maybe things aren't that bleak. "Fairway Motor Inn" still feels colder and more detached than much of the photos from NIAGARA.
But it makes me feel like I'm there. Perhaps in a movie, standing there in the parking lot wondering what's behind those doors and what the plot is.
"New Orleans, Louisiana, 2002," by Alec Soth. From the series, Sleeping by the Mississippi. Via SFMOMA
Alec Soth is a fantastic photographer, and I was ecstatic to see this photograph — in the form of a gargantuan c print — tucked away in the middle of a miscellaneous bunch of photographs at SFMOMA. I made a point of seeing it each time I went back to go over the "Provoke Era" Japanese exhibition.
It is mundane, luminous, and mysterious. It is full of win.
I really wish I could show you the physical print, but it simply wouldn't fit in a blog post…
"Teresa 2005" by Alec Soth
I just remembered that I need to return Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places (which has sparked some thoughts I've been meaning to post here) and Roy DeCarava's A Retrospective (which I really should also write something about) to the library tomorrow. Which means it's also time to pick a couple more titles to order through the interlibrary loan service.
At first I had almost settled on getting Alec Soth's book Sleeping by the Misssissippi, as I thought it would make for an interesting follow-up to Shore's Uncommon Places. Then I remembered that Soth's website is excellent with, as far as I know, the whole contents of his books up there. So, I browsed a bit, to help make up my mind, and decided that perhaps NIAGARA would be a better pick.
Of course I'm still borrowing one of his books, if I can, since looking at prints and photos in books is superior to looking at them on a computer display. It's still fantastic that Soth makes his work accessible in the way he does. It's also a pretty good excuse for me to write a short post about getting photo books through interlibrary loans, put up a nice photo for you guys to look at along with links to virtually virtual photo books.
Apparently also an excuse for me to get too clever for my own good.


text:
Luxurious Sled Handmade iPhone 4 Leather Backs
Several of our most popular posts last year were about replacing the standard glass back on the iPhone with customizable alternatives (no surprise considering the only design options from Apple are black or white): Vivian's all-metal solution, Chris' fanciful red cover, or even all-wood options. Now there's yet another way to give your iPhone a customized look and feel to stand out from the iPhone masses...
Designed for any of the iPhone 4/4S models, the made-to-order, handmade Sled iPhone backs aren't a sticker application, but a whole replacement back which requires removing and replacing the original glass back (don't fret, the installation process looks easy for almost anyone to tackle). Afterward, the iPhone will be 1-2mm thicker than originally, but also lighter since the leather and birch construction is lighter than the original material.
One thing we like about the Sled replacement backs compared to other options are their three designs are hand constructed here in the USA (Boston, Massachusetts to be exact). There's even a "Pack" model with elastic bands designed to hold business cards, credit cards, money and whatever else you usually stuff in your wallet, alongside a 3 intial customization option for a few dollars more (not that these come cheap at $89-$99 to begin with).
6 Comments
As a technician at the applestore. I know for a fact if you bring your phone in with an alternate back you will not be helped. cool case though.
As a random person,
I know for a fact that you can't tell the difference if I switch back my original apple back casing before I bring it in to the Apple store.
I know for a fact that we check the threads on the screw every time we take it to the back. That is when the surprise and delight method of fixing you phone goes out the window and along comes the $200 replacement offer. Don't say I didn't warn you.
this is the all knowing thread.
Now, Why not just trim a piece of leather to match the back of the phone and then use dome adhesive on it? Kinda the same thing?
You check the threads on the screw?. Ok, so how can you tell that my phone was not already opened by an apple tech?
this is the all knowing thread.
Now, Why not just trim a piece of leather to match the back of the phone and then use dome adhesive on it? Kinda the same thing?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Bloomberg TV Interview
Posted by WARREN MOSLER on 30th June 2011
From Bloomberg:
"…the possibility of Geithner resigning is dominating our coverage tomorrow, and I'd hate for you to get shorted your appropriate time. Would it be possible to reschedule for Tuesday? We really think you have a great story, and would love to share it with our audience."
Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments »


text:
Most shocking but not the surprising events are unfolding in Court Cases relating to 2002 Gujarat Riots.
(News link: http://www.dailypioneer.com/169490/Gujarat-riot-myths-busted.html)
The 'signature' event of those horrendous riots was an 'case' of a Rape and Killing of a Pregnant woman (Kauser Bano) by piercing the stomach by sword, is found out to be totally False and totally 'planted'. This falsification of event has been unearthed by Special Investigation Team (SIT).
This case was reported and prepared by none other than Teesta Setalvad – the champion(??) of human rights. She was the most shriller voice for "Justice Denied", "Killer Modi", "Fascists Hindus" and much more...
How did SIT reach this conclusion??? Here is how (Quoting from the news report):
"Pointing out a specific instance, the SIT report stated how the evidence of 22 witnesses was "suspect" owing to the identical submissions made in their affidavits submitted to the court. On enquiry, the SIT found that all the 22 affidavits were drafted, typed and printed from the same computer, giving sufficient grounds to believe they were "tutored".
When the SIT questioned those who signed the affidavits, it was shocked to learn that these complainants were not even aware of the incidents."
Narendra Modi was called hundreds of names because of this 'event' alone. Media was so much shameless in its name-calling and character assassination of Narendra Modi that they forgot that they are just 'journalists' and not "Judge and Jury" blended into one. But, they are supposed to satisfy their masters in 10 Janpath.
The biggest character assassination project was executed by Media and Secular brigade in Independent India. Modi was directly linked with Hitler. Now.. to whom should I link the media and Secular Brigade?
But, more interestingly not only this event has been 'fabricated' there other events (Remember Naroda Patia 'massacre'?) too which are 'creation' of the Teesta Setalvad's imagination. Here are these (again quoting from the news):
Even the instance of dumping of bodies into a well at Naroda Patiya and a charge of the police allegedly shielding accused persons in murder of a British national was found to be untrue, Rohtagi said.
Firing a salvo at the NGO, Rohtagi said, "It is clear from the report that the horrendous allegations made by the NGO were false. Cyclostyled affidavits were supplied by a social activist and the allegations made in them were untrue," he added, with an obvious reference to Setalvad.
Now, following questions arise out of this:
1) Will media collectively apologize to Narendra Modi? Do they have ethics and morals and more importantly Courage to face him and see him in eye and say "We are sorry"?
2) How come such characterless people like Teesta Setalvad become Human Right Activist?
3) How come anyone can fabricate a story such as "piercing Stomach to kill the Foetus"? Isn't such a person can be called insane and anti-human?
4) Why this News is not being played 24x7 by all the news media channels? These folks played character assassination of Narendra Modi dialogues 24x7 and for full 6 years?
5) What is speaks about the so called "Victims" who had only one intention to "grab" maximum headlines and obviously money?
6) Can a new court case be registered against Teesta Setalvad? Why she was doing this? On whose "instructions"? Is it someone in
7) Who will provide justice to those who were murdered by terrorists in Godhara Train?
8) Will Media and the Seculars bring back the 'normalcy' in
9) Will Seculars and media people be able to restore the 'reputation' of Indians around the world, when these people themselves don't have any?
10) Will anyone take "Victims" of any communal Riots seriously in future? Will "minority insecurity" will ever be a serious subject going forward??
I know all 'seculars' will put forward excuses or even bigotry on these questions. But, today my belief in Human Right activist has taken a complete and final dive. These activists are dirtier than Journos and Politicians – Secular Brand!
Hi Ramesh,
You have asked the right questions.
There should be some way of taking action against Teesta Setalvad under penal and civil provisions so that such heinous and false activism gets discouraged!
vs gopal
This gent has covered this topic of dishonest Teesta's lies in many of his blogs for very many months at http://ambavasishth.sulekha.com/. Be sure to give him your moral support!!
Another great blog is this one
at http://hari-p-chandra.sulekha.com/blog/post/2009/04/peacefuly-violent-india-had-511-terrorism-related/comments.htm
and this one
and this one
Keep up the momentum to vote out the despotic and criminal regime now in power in Delhi. Soon, the dynamics of greed and hate driven criminality needs to be aborted and the criminal elements need to be smoked out from the rat holes. The only Indian leader who is at once charismatic and dynamic super star is making a significant positive difference in Gujarat and they deserve your love and support!! You want his efforts replicated rest of India!!..!! Mr Advani needs to win along with other BJP leaders. So, be sure to vote in BJP so that safety and security is given the top priority they ought to be !!!
Allright.. You are entitled to your views... I have no objection!!
OK... Thanks
Solution is possible to dishonest media and Teesta type slut women of mogul harem only if we link J&K with the criminal islamic burden dumped on us. The azmi-hashmi-khan type need to be part of kashmiriyat under this proposal:
"First things first, remove Jammu and Ladakh from Kashmir and place them in the Indian Union: Retain Kashmir's status as a state under Art 370 and withdraw rights for citizens of Kashmir to settle or own houses in any part of India(including Jammu and Ladakh). This one sided pandering has not delivered anything tangible and has to be stopped forthwith. Pandering should stop also within the rest of India...Rgds Girdhar"
Is kashmiriyat same as Hindutva?
Notice how the minority savages always use barbaric methods to subjugate gentle natives or gentler cultures in the majority:=
The minority nazis of Germany (against gentle Jews like the gentle Hindus) and majority xians of EUROPE,
the minority KKK{Ku Klux Klan} of USA (against Afro-Americans),
the minority secularists of IRAQ {that Saddam Hussain was against the majority SHIAS},
the minority BNP in the UK (against non-White immigrants who are like the dark-skinned Hindus),
the minority population of India and their ISLAMIC OUTFITS (against Hindus & Sikhs) actively justify and promote many categories of violence -- allegedly in "defense" of their superior colonial culture as the ex-rulers ignoring they had actually brutally persecuted the majority - be it in S AFRICA or INDIA or MAJORITY ANTI-NAZIS OF EUROPE.
The minority 'secularists' of Saddam's Iraq stand out as having been crushed by USA. We need such power to crush the communal savage secularists of Hindustan who have xenophobic communal hate towards us !!!
There is so much hatred against us, that is why they do genocide endlessly, declaring India a communal state and promoting tyrants like maino-mms-kalam - virtually one-party system. Yes, we want a democratic (rule by the majority) secular state, we should get it seeing what these islamofascists have done to us and our women. I know we can do anything to save our destiny from continued control by our enemies.
Many dont realize that the anti-Indians such as Teesta who maliciously hate His Excellency Honorable Modi-ji and who label us as 'communal' are a liability on the Nation which is the result of our blunder of 1947 for letting them stay as our guests! Instead of being grateful, they not only preach us to hate our own leaders but also continue to indulge in savage serial mass murders over so many centuries. Now they are unwelcome in our midst being uninvited economic and criminal burden.
When they label us communal with hatred and evil design, they need to know communalism began with colonialism- targeted exploitation of one group, the exploited class of mogul days and british days. That continues on. We are targeted for murder for Danish cartoon riots, our heroic and patriotic leaders targeted for speaking out; etc. Let me complete in lyrics what I began to express how I feel ...
Is it the islamic brief
public always be in grief?
plus our leaders heroic
and very patriotic?!
Why is it so hard to decide
which islamic genocide
is worse than the last?
is this worse than prior blast??
Why so many islamic crimes
are so hard to explain?
crimes economic, social
political and cultural??
Why small minority 'secular' pimps
always act like sub human chimps?
Causing riots, rapes
robbery in every case??
Why the green chaddi dudes
always dance in the nude?
depite all congi corruption
and islamic deception??
Why is savage islamic feudalism
better than one on secular HIduism?
Why r javed-ghaffor-khans
n azmi-hashmi-kalams
so very special
when so communal??
Y r so generous n gentle Hindus
savagely targeted than wild Jews?
with many in defense of islamic savagery
using wild n imaginative imagery??
Y r the secular public not in revulsion
with so many islamic genocidal convulsions?
why is feudal saudi king and racist public
better than a poor Hindu king in his republic?
Y r islamic savage exploitation
so very common than rare public reaction?
multiple revenge vigilantism
is fine with savage indian communism?
Do you see any of vhp-rss-bjp varuns
in riots for saddam n danish cartoons?
such hatred is naked
despite the fake racket!
Why inhuman islamic dictates
need to decide our fate?
secularism n islamic theocracy
besides imposed savage mobocracy?
Why secularism thrives
when public cant survive?
with islamic stranglehold
no native foothold?
Why the brit colonials left
but the islamic ones are kept?
were they more civilized
or less secularized?
Why communal colonials
r so darn perennials?
Y v watch as they kill
with no political will?
Why the vote bank politics
saps the nation's public?
why the public dont know
it is so dangerously so?
What else it can be?
when we see
so many atrocities
over so many centuries!!
That we have been denied the joie de vivre - joy of living by islamic criminals is undeniable fact. Teesta in the mogul haram is merely a cowardly pawn in the barbaric game of the islamic communalists. She is not alone as she is joined by many other indecent and dishonest criminals.
Even the Westerners are guilty of denying us normal lives knowing post-Godhra was treated with hateful malice by western media as well.
Incidentally, Ram Shay likde these lines-
Why the brit colonials left
but the islamic ones are kept?
were they more civilized
or less secularized?
Ramesh-ji, Most of the time I like what Seetha Raghavan writes with much analytical skills. I read and re-read her comments to get the fullest satisfaction. Besides, I respect upper caste folks. I also agree with Begum Unnisa for her honest frankness.
Both Shri Modi and Holy Father Pope, are saying the same thing:-
"On Saturday 16th September, Pope Benedict XVI declared in a speech at Regensburg University, by means of a quote from the fourteenth century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his comment to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Shri Modi is like Varun Gandhi who was voicing concern over the ugly levels of abduction and rapes of Hindu girls in his constituency. Isnt that legitimate? I dont hate either the Pope or Shri Gandhi!! Hatred begets hatred.
As a Harijan, I can understand the pain and suffering of all Hindus. We are the most oppressed and persecuted class in India today. Those people who are with the wicked politicians, are either misfits or unfit to live with us. If they get civilized, we may see them living in peaceful coexistence.
I posted my comments from another blog - that of Maddss. When you talk "about goons and criminals "... I dont agree, because I have not seen any.
The Hindus are merely defending themselves from Godhra type killers when Mr Modi-ji was most perniciously maligned while the real culpability lies with Kalam. Everyone has a right to defend him-/her-self. Nations do it. U.N does it as well.
How can anyone equate 1788 lives with one ruined unused building? Isn't that a savage equation?
Unnisa2009 posted 1 min ago
Dear Sir,
You said, " I have stated clearly all culprits who initiated the riots by burning the train and than what followed must be brought to justice!"
I have these comments:-
1) You are allowed to retaliate in self-defense; so, whatever happened in post-Godhra from Indian citizens cannot be prosecuted because they were merely protecting themselves form further violence of the type seen in burning alive of women and kids in the Sabarmati Coach. They were also facing savage marauders during the riots when many women of the public got their face disfigured permanently by acid from the Godhra killers.
Even U.N allows deadly retaliation.
2) Post-Godhra happened after many series of barbaric attacks in that town, called Godhra.
The citizens had no other option.
3) The public fury or outrage had to be given vent. If not, it might have spread to other towns in disgust.
4) The culpability of Kalam is more than that of Teesta and other journalists. He had the army in his hands. He willfully delayed the army to give a bad name for the heroic leader of Gujarat.
5) Teesta had a spat with Tavleen who finally yielded in writing a book with Shabna Azmi, the movie nautch female who has been made a billionaire by the secular public that is also enriching other actors like zillions of Khans who have infiltrated into cricket.
6) VHP paid compensation to the criminals but nothing was paid to the victims who suffered at Godhra as well as post-Godhra such as this one:
"With this the death toll in Vadodara went up to three in communal clashes in the last 24 hours. Twenty-three-year-old Paresh Purushwani was going on a scooter with a friend at around 11.30 am when he was attacked by a mob of around 200 with sharp instruments. He was brought to the SSG hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The fate of his friend was not known till Friday afternoon. "
So, if you are to do anything, you need to begin a movement to boycott cricket and the Khan movies and related business like ICICI bank that employ SRK as a beedi type ad man.
If you think the Muslims are misfits to live in India, I very well understand it. India deserves better people as citizens, as only civilized people can advance its economic growth. We are yet to learn to live as peaceful neighbors to the secular public. I am not sure when most of us who are still in the stone age will get civilized. I am sorry we are dragging the country down to the dark ages, politically, economically with so many social, political and economic crimes with no justice to the Civil Society who are mostly poor or very poor.
Thanks for visiting Mr Ram.. somehow your comments and Seetha Raghavan's comments have uncanny similarity! :-)
Slice of nature by Madhur Dharmadhikari
Grow flower garden by magesh v


text:
PICKENS — Undefeated Wren (3-0) will travel to still winless Pickens (0-3) for the first region game for both teams on Friday.
LIBERTY — The Powdersville Patriots will take their undefeated record on the road to face a Liberty Red Devils squad :53 shy of undefeated themselves.
CENTRAL — The top five ranked AAA Daniel Lions play host to upstart West-Oak this week, hoping to remain among the undefeated ranks in South Carolina.
PICKENS — The annual Football Super Saturday celebration will be hosted by the Pickens Recreation Department on Sept. 20 at the new Pickens High School football stadium.
High school students take to the courts to work on passing, setting, serving and other volleyball techniques. More than 60 middle school and high school students learned volleyball fundamentals from members of the Warriors volleyball team during the...
Undefeated Wren took down T.L. Hanna 54-40 last Friday at home in a game featuring two high powered offenses. Wren travels to Easley to take on The Green Wave this Friday. Kick off is at 7:30 p.m.
LIBERTY — The Pickens Blue Flame is still searching for its first win after a 27-16 loss to Liberty on Friday.
CENTRAL — For a while it looked as if the Daniel Lions might not rebound in time before finally taking control of the ball, the clock and the game in the second half to rally for a win against the Emerald Vikings.
SENECA — The Easley Green Wave was looking to rebound and get on the winning side of football life again but fell to Seneca on the road 21-6, dropping their overall record to 1-2.
Ride to the RockPICKENS – The second annual Ride to the Rock cycling event, held by the Pickens Rotary Club, will begin at 8 a.m. Sept. 13 in the Pickens Presbyterian Church parking lot.
OCONEE COUNTY — Liberty (2-0-1) will travel to Walhalla (1-1) to take on the Razorbacks on Sept. 12. Red Devils Coach Kyle Stewart is looking forward to the challenge of facing off with a team that runs a similar style of...
For every Kyle Busch, there's a Casey Atwood. For every Kyle Larson, there's a Todd Kluever.
6: The number of victories recorded by Team Penske drivers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series this year. It's the first time a Ford team has won more than five races in a single year since Carl Edwards' nine-victory season for Roush Fenway...
CENTRAL – Southern Wesleyan University is moving to the second year in the membership process to become a full NCAA Division II institution after all.
Ride to the RockPICKENS – The second annual Ride to the Rock cycling event, held by the Pickens Rotary Club, will begin at 8 a.m. Sept. 13 in the Pickens Presbyterian Church parking lot.
POWDERSVILLE — The 2014 season kicked off in high fashion for the high-flying Patriots of Powdersville High School as they opened the 2014 season with a 41-20 win over the visiting Mustangs of Palmetto.
PIEDMONT — From the opening kickoff until the final horn, it was a Hurricane warning over Anderson County as Wren blasted visiting Woodmont in a 62-0 blowout.
PENDLETON — The Blue Flame of Pickens was on a short road trip to Pendleton to face the Bulldogs and in the end came up short in its bid to even their record to 1-1, instead falling to 0-2 after a tight ballgame where momentum seemed to be...
EASLEY — Hosting its first ever Community Tailgate in the home-opener for the Green Wave, Easley returned home after a road win over cross-county rival Pickens to face state powerhouse Daniel, only to come up short 35-6.
BRISTOL, Tenn. – Ryan Blaney swept past Kyle Busch on a restart with seven laps to go and held on to win Friday night's rain-delayed Food City 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
BRISTOL, Tenn. – Joey Logano believes he has the car and Team Penske believes they have the team to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.
BRISTOL, Tenn. — After 62 races — the last 20 of which were in his own equipment — Brad Keselowski is finally a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series winner.
ANDERSON — The Red Devils pulled off an impressive win for their varsity football season opener at Crescent on Friday.
PICKENS — From the opening possession until the final horn, the Easley Green Wave dominated the Blue Flame of Pickens on the road for its fourth consecutive win in the county rivalry by a final score of 52-7.
PICKENS — The seventh annual Food Fight Bowl might be over, but the fundraising efforts between local area high schools won't be over until mid-September.


text:
MADISON (WKOW) -- The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is looking to buy tree seeds from the public.
The DNR has established seed buying stations around the state and at state nurseries in Wisconsin Rapids, Boscobel and Hayward.
The agency is looking for seeds for specific species, including balsam fire, jack pine, basswood with wings attached, butternut, shagbark hickory, sugar maple, swamp white oak, red oak, white oak and walnut.
The state nursery program needs large amounts of seeds every year to meet reforestation goals.


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AboutBonjour! Je m'appelle Belle. I lived in a little provincial French town, until my father disappeared into the woods. After searching, I found him trapped in a gloomy mansion, ill and taken prisoner. In exchange for my father's freedom, I promised to never leave the castle.
(Source: allie0op)
Is anyone out and about?


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John Wall is legit
The Washington Wizards were missing Nene, Martell Webster, Trevor Ariza and Bradley Beal, yet still managed to beat the Memphis Grizzlies by 13 points.
John Wall led the way for the severely short-handed team, dropping a career-high 47 points on the opposition. He also added eight assists and seven rebounds.
Ever since returning from his injury, Wall has led the way for the Wizards, who looked miserable for the majority of the season.
In the month of March the Wizards are 8-6. In the 14-game stretch, Wall is putting up 21.8 points, eight assists, 4.5 rebounds and 1.9 steals. He still needs to develop a consistent three-point shot, but his athleticism and talent are unquestionable. If he continues to improve, he would very well achieve a superstar status in the league.
Tags: Atlanta Hawks Denver Nuggets Golden State Warriors Indiana Pacers Los Angeles Lakers Memphis Grizzlies Miami Heat New Orleans Hornets Orlando Magic Philadelphia 76ers Utah Jazz Washington Wizards


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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Yeah...sorry, Krick, but maybe your team just sucked. Try starting a different class combo and you might meet with more success. I'm not saying YOU suck, it's just that some class combinations don't work in the arena.
@8 - Played much arena lately? I thought not.
@11 - I think you're basically on track, Mayo, except that there's a definite "progression" to arena gear. If you're behind in gearing up there's basically no way you're going to break into the upper echelons of arena any time soon. I'm of the opinion that my team is just a tiny bit behind the curve but I can sympathize with folks trying to break into arena late in the game. It's a long, long uphill slog. This new ratings requirement doesn't help with that. It does help with making leet items stay leet, but still...
One last point, though: what DOESN'T just require time and the right gear in this game? Spend time studying strats, gear up by spending time running heroics, earn gold for enchants by spending time farming, etc. etc. etc. It's all about time.


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The Gals of the Big "D" Jamboree remain the sweethearts of the wrestling ring
A spiffed up Hard Day's Night continues to dazzle, with its jump cuts, slow motion, and sped-up Beatles antics
Our quarterly roundup of the latest in music books
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acknowledges Scotty Moore, the guitarist behind the King
A new CD resurrects the echoes of the long-gone Big "D" Jamboree, where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and some forgotten heroes made Saturday nights swing
With his mob connections and starlet phone numbers, Dick Contino was the coolest accordionist in 1950s L.A. -- which is why he's James Ellroy's buddy
Peter Guralnick's Careless Love sheds new light on the opaque unraveling of Elvis Presley
He had 78 hits spanning five decades and revolutionized country music. Now, Fort Worth's Hank Thompson gets a new green light.
The 1994 Dallas Video Festival mixes equal parts ineptitude and brilliance


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This morning I noticed the #WhatsInYourBag post on @realMissKL and thought I'd join in on the fun and disclose the goodies in my bag. Luckily, I wasn't using my "junk" bag today. C'mon, all you ladies have that bag. The junk bag that you stuff all your shit in…from candy bars, to jewelry you wore the night before, to water bottles – you name it.
Anyways, like I said, I didn't wear that bag today cuz well my shoulder was giving out on me, therefore I had no choice but to switch it out. I opted for my super
cute badass BOTB moto-back pack (coming soon…) and because I was in a rush this morning, I stuffed only my essentials.
BOTB Leather Moto Back Pack: Perfect bag for any occasion… whether it be a night out or a full day running errands. You can fit anything and everything in this bag and then some.
Limited Edition Louis Vuitton Wallet: I got this wallet awhile back for my passport and important documents for when I travel BUT because I save all receipts I had to start using this as my everyday wallet…with the amount of junk I carry in this thing, it weighs like 5 pounds, FML.
Kiehls Hand Moisturizer: There is no hand moisturizer better than this… it's definitely a staple in my bag.
Vintage Ray Bans: These were my pop's back in the 80s and they just so happened to fall into my purse one day (hehe) and I've kept them ever since…thanks Dad!!!
White Olympus Camera: Love this camera!!! It takes the best pictures and the white case is a plus… love love love…
Paper Mate Pen: I'm a nut when it comes to pens and pencils. When I find one I love, I'll label it "Lanie's Favorite Pen"… no lie. It actually comes in handy if you work in an office full of pen thieves lol. The pen that I keep with me at all times has been with me for the past 3 years!!!
Jack Spade iPhone Case: The eyes on this thing crack me up every time… love it!!!
BOTB Business Cards: Again… you never know when you may need to pass on your contact to someone, so these are on hand always.
Notebook: You never know when you're gonna see something that inspires you to design something, whether it be an awesome jacket or a graphic, so I keep this blank page notebook with me at all times. It's filled with doodles, notes and plenty of secrets, teehee.
BOTB, Hellz & GPPR Stickers: Of course I have these on me!!! You want some?!
That was fun… Now show @realMissKL what's in YOUR bag on Instagram using #WhatsInYourBag


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Northern Michigan Forum-Share Events, Travel Ideas, Photos, Videos
December 14, 2013 from 10am to 5pm – Downtown Leland Enjoy refreshments and seasonal celebration throughout the village. Holiday caroling by the Leland Public School Comet Chorale, meet Santa at the Leland Toy Co. and visit Santa's reindeer! Leland is… Organized by Leland Chamber of Commerce | Type: holiday
December 14, 2013 from 10am to 12pm – Horizon Books John U. Bacon, Fourth & Long: The Fight for The Soul of College Football, signs his books at Horizon Books. In search of the sport's old ideals amid the roaring flood of hypocrisy and greed, best… Organized by Horizon Books, Traverse City | Type: literary
December 14, 2013 from 10am to 4pm – Deer Creek Junk Once a month, the East Jordan studio/warehouse space of Deer Creek Junk is transformed into an overflowing showroom for discovering everything from salvage finds, unique retail items to finished, rep… Organized by Karen Brennan | Type: repurposed, art, home, decor, salvage, architectural, reuse, sale, junk
December 14, 2013 from 10am to 4pm – 4-H Center, Emmet County Fairgrounds Mixed-Media Art & Fine Craft Show Featuring a wide variety of original art and quality handcrafted goods created by Northern Michigan Artists and Fine Crafters. Free Parking & Admission! F… Organized by Pillywiggins Garden | Type: arts, &, craft, show
December 14, 2013 from 10am to 6pm – Downtown Beulah Christmas Magic in Beulah is an event for families. With face painting, cookie decorating, and birdhouse building, kids stay engaged. Santa makes his annual visit throughout the day. Gifts and prizes… Organized by Sally Zarafonetis | Type: family, christmas, event
December 14, 2013 from 10:30am to 11:30am – Crooked Tree Arts Center/Visual Arts Room In this class, students build and decorate their own graham cracker gingerbread house and create a keepsake ornament. Geared to grades 3-5. Classes Dec. 7, Dec. 14 at 10:30-11:30am with instructor Lo… Organized by Crooked Tree Arts Center | Type: kids
December 14, 2013 from 11am to 2pm – Kalkaska County Library Children's author Jeffery Schatzer is at the KCL to promote his book, The Elves in Santa's Workshop. Signed copies are available for purchase. Mr. Schatzer also plays the role of Kris Kringle from no… Organized by Kalkaska County Library | Type: holiday
December 14, 2013 from 12pm to 4pm – Raven Hill Discovery Center Come hang out with the animals, enjoy the hands-on room or even dress for the weather and head out to the tree house at Raven Hill Discovery Center; free admission for families. This second Saturday… Organized by Raven Hill Discovery Center (RHDC) | Type: nature
December 14, 2013 from 12pm to 2pm – Horizon Books Author and Illustrator Signing: Jerry Dennis & Glenn Wolff, It's Raining Frogs and Fishes, at Horizon Books. This updated edition of the national bestseller is a spellbinding look into the natura… Organized by Horizon Books, Traverse City | Type: kids literary
December 14, 2013 from 12pm to 3pm – Old Town Playhouse Old Town Playhouse's auditions for The Sound of Music are Saturday, December 14 from noon to 3 pm, and Monday to Tuesday, December 16-17 from 7 to 9 pm. Saturday auditions are for children ages 6-16… Organized by Old Town Playhouse | Type: auditions, theatre, theater, play
December 14, 2013 from 1pm to 5pm – Charlevoix Public Library Stop by the youth department during the month of December to make a holiday craft. There will be a new craft each week. Second week: Stained Glass Ornament! Organized by Charlevoix Public Library | Type: crafts
December 14, 2013 from 1pm to 5pm – Various Breweries Partnering with Celtic Shuttles, the TC Ale Trail is offering VIP Brewery Tours to almost ALL of Traverse City's craft breweries! Including tasters at each brewery, snacks, transportation and a knowl… Organized by TC Ale Trail | Type: tour, brewery, beer, food
December 14, 2013 from 2pm to 4pm – Horizon Books Author Signing: Randall Magley, Short Stories by Randall Magley at Horizon Books. This is a compilation of fictional stories of different genres and timelines. The stories have characters that interm… Organized by Horizon Books, Traverse City | Type: literary
December 14, 2013 from 2pm to 9:30pm – Interlochen Center for the Arts/Corson Auditorium The Interlochen Dance Co. and Orchestra present the story of Clara, Herr Drosselmeyer, a villainous Mouse King, and the beloved Nutcracker who comes to life. A perennial favorite with audiences of al… Organized by Interlochen Center for the Arts | Type: holiday dance
December 14, 2013 from 4pm to 6pm – Horizon Books Author Signing: John O'Herron,Up 'N Atom Wednesday, at Horizon Books. John O'Herron's revolutionary "happy atom" tutoring method has helped countless students achieve their full potential over the ye… Organized by Horizon Books, Traverse City | Type: literary
December 14, 2013 from 4pm to 5pm – Cross Country Ski Headquarters Have you ever wanted to try cross country skiing? Maybe you've tried it before, but are interested in some technique coaching? Or maybe you're interested in learning how to use your poles more effect… Organized by Mariah Frye | Type: free, lesson
December 14, 2013 from 5pm to 9pm – Boyne Mountain Kick-off the holidays at Boyne Mountain with chances to win great prizes, discover great deals and tastes of the season! 5-9pm: Holiday Open House – stores, restaurants, spa and activity areas acros… Organized by Boyne | Type: holiday
December 14, 2013 from 6pm to 8pm – Horizon Books Author Signing: Deneille Renee, Ebenezer's Eves, at Horizon Books. Deneille Reneé is an emerging author who is known for her painting, music and writing. Fifteen years have passed since that fateful… Organized by Horizon Books, Traverse City | Type: literary
December 14, 2013 from 6pm to 10pm – Ivan's Mountainside Grill at Shanty Creek Resorts Join as Shanty Creek celebrates the holiday season at Ivan's Mountainside Grill. Enjoy a community buffet, Christmas carols around the tree, a torchlight parade down the face of Schuss Mountain, and… Organized by Shanty Creek Resorts | Type: fundraiser
December 14, 2013 from 6pm to 8pm – Cross Country Ski Headquarters A full moon… wooded trails lit by torch light and a bright celestial sphere… the whisper of gliding skis over snow… experience the magic of Full Moon Night Skiing at Cross Country Ski Headquarters! E… Organized by Mariah Frye | Type: ski, outing
December 14, 2013 from 6pm to 8pm – XC Ski Headquarters Experience the magic of winter in a whole new light! Every full moon during the ski season, we will light the Trapper's Cabin trail at the Cross Country Ski Headquarters with torches, creating a trul… Organized by Bob | Type: outdoor
December 14, 2013 from 6pm to 8pm – Suttons Bay Bingham District Library The Friends of the Sutton Bay Bingham District Library cordially invite you to the social event of the season. Enjoy an evening of wine, hors d'oeuvres, music, and silent auction to help the library… Organized by Ryan Deery | Type: fundraiser
December 14, 2013 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm – Wellington Farm Wellington Farm, USA is now accepting reservations for what has been billed as "The most unique Christmas Experience in Northern Michigan." Billed as "The Farm By Lantern Light" the full evening acti… Organized by Howard | Type: theater
December 14, 2013 from 7:30pm to 10pm – Old Town Playhouse The beloved American holiday tale, by Joe Landry, comes to life as a live 1940s radio broadcast, in this adaptation of the Christmas classic of George Bailey and his search for purpose and love! A m… Organized by Old Town Playhouse | Type: theater, play
December 14, 2013 from 8:30pm to 10:30pm – Horizon Books Matt is a talented guitarist who MC's the Open Mic Night. Are you a talented singer/songwriter/musician who performs your own original music? If so, we'd like to meet you and hear your tunes! Organized by Horizon Books, Traverse City | Type: music