Just when I begin to feel guilty...

Although I have only one follower (thanks, Andy!), I begin to feel guilty when I don't update this fairly frequently.  After all, isn't that the point of this whole instant media thing?

I was brought to think of it because one of the blogs I normally follow hasn't been updated since the 7th.  It's a professional site, so while someone is paid to do it, I understand that they also have other things to take care of.  Still, hunt something up.  Really, what's the point, otherwise?

It makes me think of all those companies, as the web was really gaining traction, that paid huge amounts of money to have pretty websites built that did absolutely nothing.  They were nothing but electronic billboards, and often indecipherable ones.  They threw up whatever the web geeks told them, because marketing said they needed "web presence."  But no one really knew what that meant...

Apparently millions upon millions of blogs are created every day.  I guess the world is a big place, and everyone has something to say.  However, as Robert Wilensky now famously said, "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."  And statistics I've seen show that millions upon millions of blogs are abandoned every day by people variously losing interest and discovering they don't have the time and (in many cases, thank God) discovering they've run out of things to say.

Well, you're stuck with me.  Or, perhaps, as Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "There's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out." ...

Anger management...

Not really a fair title, as I'm not really angry.  Not even really frustrated, which is the usual source of anger for me.  However, I can't bloody well figure out how to cut-and-paste text into this blog.  Once I do find out how to do it, I'm sure it will be embarrassingly easy.  In the meantime, it may improve the post ... or at least keep it shorter.

What I wanted to put in was an interesting little sermon on anger and grudges that a friend sent me.  (I wonder why; it's not like I'm known for my temper ... am I?)  It came at a time when I was thinking on a similar line, about how I review the past and wonder about those I knew.

I assume that everyone occasionally ponders what might have been.  What if you'd gone for this college major or that, dated this girl instead of the other, stuck it out in that job you didn't like, but might have made something of -- unanswerable, unrecoverable alternate timelines.  I generally keep this at bay, assuming what happened was what should have happened.  What is is what should be.  (It's very Zen ... give that thought a minute.  Or perhaps it's just very stupid.  Your choice.)

However, there's a dark underside to it.  All ex-girlfriends must, in my imagination, be tragically bereft of my company, wishing it had worked out, and ex-professional rivals either failures or empty commercial successes, wishing they had, in at least some way, my life.  It's a personal, adult version of your Mom saying the kids who teased you to tears are just jealous.  (Before you get all condemnatory of my selfish, dark vision, ask yourself if you don't, in some way, do the same thing.)

But Google and Facebook and websites let you find the truth now, and the truth can be ... disappointing.  Ex-mates are married and happy, with children and homes, and your business enemies have great jobs, with good-looking successful mates and a couple of beautiful kids.  At first, it's like fingernails on the blackboard (even as I ask myself why?  Why the need for schadenfreude?)...

When it occurred to me: That's what the whole forgive and forget thing is all about.  Take a deep breath and jump in the deep end ... and enjoy their success, their great lives.  If someone asked, you'd say you wished them the best.  And what if they have it?  Wasn't that your wish?

I don't know what clicked.  Maybe it's the Lenten thing, but in a moment I was able with that deep sigh to release them to good lives, instead of the dark, regretful Purgatory in which I had placed them in my mind.

Go forth and be happy...

You've gotta' check this out...

I've been working on a story for "News Photographer" magazine about the recent lifting of the photo coverage of US military dead returning to Dover Air Force Base.  There's a lot more history and background to the subject than you might think; like, for example, did you know that we only really started returning the bodies of US soldiers as a matter of course -- in other words, immediately shipping the dead back, rather than burying them where they fell and straightening it all out when the war was over -- during the Korean War?

At any rate, as an example of earlier procedures, I'm using the return of the first Unknown Soldier -- the one from World War I -- as an example of what was done after that war, and I've used the account of that from the AP articles by Kirke L. Simpson, which won the Pulitzer in 1922.

Lately, I keep sending people to look at those articles (most easily available at http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/wwi-unk.htm).  Man, this is writing.  I mean, real writing, the kind of writing that makes you just want to quit trying to do it, or maybe try harder...

Oh, yeah...

Aside from learning what I already knew (that I know nothing about retail, and am not suited for it), I've relearned a valuable lesson I'd forgotten over the years: I don't like doing public relations, and I'm not really suited for that either.

There was a time when I was actually paid to do PR.  Fortunately, I discovered my shortfall in that area before my bosses did, and quit to move on to other stuff before anyone noticed I wasn't ... well, I wasn't relating to the public.  They -- particularly the media -- weren't interested in the things I was promoting.  Specifically, there's a P.G. Wodehouse line about a novelist expecting a reaction being like throwing a piece of paper into a well and awaiting the splash.  I know the feeling...

I suppose I can't complain.  Our Karant Jou gallery (which is the cause of all this personal growth and discovery) opened to decent crowds, congratulations from friends and some press attention (including a really nice listing in the Staunton paper's weekend section: www.newsleader.com/article/20090226/NEWS01/90226004)  But others I would have thought might have noticed, let alone covered us, have said nothing.

Ah, well, I guess I must keep a sense of perspective...

Our viewers are our eyes...

I actually heard this on the local news tonight.

After showing a collection of photos of our weather -- a surprisingly strong snow storm -- the Sunday anchor said, "We love our viewers' pictures.  Really, our viewers are our eyes and our ears out there."  Now let us pause for a moment to contemplate the many meanings of this.

First of all, aren't you the news show?  As viewers, shouldn't we be waiting at home for you to be our eyes and ears in the community? I know you can't be everywhere, but we as individuals can be only in one place, and be there not as professional observers and reporters.

Secondly, as a professional journalist and especially as a photographer, I'd like to make my public declaration of objection to the increasing dependence on free pictures sent in by innocent people.  This is wrong in so many ways, and before you say it's sour grapes on my part (I'll squeeze those grapes in a moment), let me say that they are ripping you, the innocent who sent in his picture, off.  You should be paid for this stuff.  You put in an effort, and you expended some (although with digital photography, minimal) expense.  They owe you for your work.

And this is work, which gets to the sour grapes.  I do this stuff for a living, people, and you're just giving it away?  And they'll gobble it up, because that means some smart, creative, hardworking person won't have to be paid.  How would you like it if someone just walked in and did your job for nothing?  "But," you'll say, "I'm a doctor" or lawyer or insurance salesman or whatever.  "It's dangerous for any old person to do this.  They'll screw it all up."  Well, believe it or not, you can screw up photojournalism too.  Ever heard of the phrase "out of context?"  How about "misidentified?"  All of this leads to the lawyers doing their job, called "libel" ... at best.  At worst, a large part of a community can be left with a very wrong impression about something.  After all, they saw a picture, and photography is never wrong ... right?  But let's just let out the sour in the grapes: you do your job and I'll do mine.  Okay?

Finally, I can't help but be amused (and in some ways impressed) by the philosophical conundrum in the statement.  "Our viewers are our eyes."  Einstein would have had a field day, or maybe Heisenberg.  Can the viewer be the viewed?  Or create the object the viewer views? How does that affect the reality of the thing viewed?  Is it trapped in an infinite loop, like when two mirrors reflect one another?  Does that mean, in a philosophical sense, the local TV news has an audience of one ... over and over and over and over again?  What would be the Neilsen rating for infinity?