everything was beautiful and nothing hurt

Feeling rather depressed tonight. Not sure why, although I'm sure exhaustion has something to do with it. Been working overtime to prepare for the first day of classes on Monday. Strangely enough, the last couple of weeks has been enjoyable in the sense that the start of the school year really brings energy and focus to my work. There's a sense of urgency and teamwork that's energizing. But for some reason, I feel off tonight. Bleah.

I'm re-reading Slaughterhouse Five...it's been many years. I'm about halfway through, and what's struck me right off the bat is how Jacob's Ladder, the early Tim Robbins film, bears striking resemblance to Vonnegut's novel. Specifically, Tim Robbin's character, like Billy Pilgrim, the main character in the novel, becomes "unstuck in time." (Robbins plays a Vietnam vet. In Slaughterhouse Five, Pilgrim is a veteran of World War Two). This theme can also be found Tim O'Brien's excellent collection of stories about Vietnam called The Things They Carried. Only in O'Brien'scase, he writes about himself as someone who shuttles willingly between past and present, deliberately blurring the line between memory and fact. What these stories share in common is a protagonist who has problems distinguishing what is real. What is real, as opposed to what is a dream (Jacob's Ladder), or what is a story (The Things They Carried), or what is the future (Slaughterhouse Five). Sure, it's easy to make the link between the chaos of war and protest art. But war and alternate realities has an equally venerable tradition which doesn't get nearly as much press (I should also point out Joseph Heller's Catch 22, which I've not read, would seem to also fit in this conversation).

You'd think that a book or movie which offers a disjointed view of reality,
which makes an effort to confuse the reader or viewer, is bound to be nihlishtic. Strangely enough, both Jacob's Ladder and The Things They Carried end on an affirmative note far from nihilism or despair. That is, perhaps, the most remarkable thing about these stories. Take The Things They Carried:

But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kioa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I once lifted and dumped into a truck. They're all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, they dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world. (Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried, Penguin: 1990, p. 255).

Brave New Dentistry

Seen on a marquee outside a dentist office in Dubuque: "Conscious Sedation"

the limits of digital photography

I recently posted a link to an article in the New York Times about HDR, a new phenomenon in digital photography to make pictures even more accurate in terms of exposure, lighting, and color. Just days later, the Times, in some kind of yin-yang reporting, interviewed John Coffer, an old-schooler who specializes in tintypes, a medium popular during the nineteenth century. Coffer also lives a nineteenth-century pioneer lifestyle, living in a log cabin he built himself. His photos on the NYT website are beautiful, and a reminder of the limits of digital photography (regardless of Photoshop). There is something magical and mysterious about old photographs - especially daguerrotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes, and the like.

a family torn asunder

Heartbreaking article from the New York Times about a family torn apart by the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. A reminder that the wages of war are too often paid by civilians, on all sides.

HDR and digital photography

Vancouver HDR Landscape
Originally uploaded by Buffett Jr.

After casting about on Flickr for a while, I've come across something called HDR, or high dynamic resolution. This is a photograph consisting of several photographs - all of the same subject - which have been taken at different exposures. The result is a photo with a wide range between shadow and light. For example, if you shoot someone standing at an open window, you can expose for the person, which means the window will be overexposed, or you can shoot for the window, which means the person will remain in shadow. HDR takes both exposures and combines them for the best of both worlds. I was originally suspicious of the technology, but this article in the New York Times makes a good argument for it.

seen on a t-shirt

"Sports do not build character; they reveal it."