Tag: Dispatch from the trenches Page 2 of 3

Dispatch from the Trenches #7

On August 29, 2014

Pictures are worth a thousand words. Instead of jabbering on for thousands of words, here are three videos I enjoyed this week. I hope you enjoy them too.

THE DISTRICT

“The District” is a Washington D.C. based timelapse project I decided to take on since I’ve lived in the area my entire life and I think it has beauty and architecture that needs to be seen.

Beautiful collection of shots from around Washington, D.C. This is a beautiful city with interesting sights and architecture. This collection captures them beautifully.

Beautiful Ghost: A Filmmaker’s Look at Chernobyl

On the 27th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Christiaan Welzel and his wife, Kseniya, entered the Exclusion Zone. Christiaan’s cinematic footage captures the eerie beauty of the desolation and decay.

Haunting visit to a place of terrible things. the room full of gas masks is haunting.

Stunning Video: The Portuguese Man-of-War Up Close

The Portuguese man-of-war—a colonial organism related to the jellyfish—is infamous for its painful sting, but one photographer finds the beauty inside this animal’s dangerous embrace. For nearly two years, retired U.S. Navy combat photographer Aaron Ansarov has collected and photographed man-of-wars that wash up on a local Florida beach.

It’s a beautiful look at a deadly creature. The photos in the Deadly Beauty series are stunning.

Dispatch from the trenches #6

By Carl

On August 22, 2014

In Links and Quotes

If you’ve never needed the welfare system, consider yourself lucky. If you’ve never needed to have strangers pour over your bank balances, had to pester your landlord for a letter about your bills, your friends and family to document their financial support, or had to face the stigma of trying to buy groceries with a food stamp card, you are lucky. Next week, if things turn for the worst, you could be waiting in line to have the same process happen to you. That’s the biggest problem of all: so many people are willing to support the welfare system when they need it, but when someone else does, they don’t—especially if that somebody is black, a single mom, or both. You can’t have it both ways.

A View From Inside the Welfare System

Soul-crushing read. I’ve worked in government for years at various levels and while government is viewed as good or bad, it’s all people. It’s made up of smart, hard-working people.

As Richard says, they’re overworked and underpaid and there’s no hope of that changing soon. I’ve seen the same thing. Budgets are cut. Money is sent elsewhere. The job of 5 people is now the job of two. Or one.

It’s not just like this in the welfare system. It’s like this everywhere.

Even if you did go see it, you may have still missed it. The moment is fairly small but it’s completely deliberate. In the denouement of the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Trench” and Jet Li’s “Yin Yang” are canoodling at the team’s favorite bar when Sylvestor Stallone’s character tells them to “get a room.”
…
There are myriad reasons why this moment is noteworthy and they’re all worth mentioning: one of Hollywood’s biggest action stars being depicted as gay, a gay couple being a part of a crimefighting team, and also the subtle way the inclusion is slipped in — not a plot point, just a fact of life.

Yes, There Was a Gay Couple in ‘The Expendables 3’

I thought was interesting. It’s not a theme of the movie, but it’s there and under the radar. It’s a part of life. I like that it was treated as such.

Don’t simply focus on what you’re shooting — focus on why you’re shooting.

“SHOOT BECAUSE YOU LOVE WHAT YOU’RE SHOOTING”

I’ve thought a lot of photography lately. I’ve resisted the call of new, better cameras. I shoot with an iPhone 5. I like shooting with it because I can capture what I want, without screaming **Look at me! I am a photographers!* I’m working on a daily photo project and another smaller set of photos.

I’m terrible about posting and sharing what I shoot, even when that’s my intention. But I’ll get it together because I really like what I’m doing because it’s fun.

I’m not great. I don’t pretend to be. But I’m having a lot of fun. My short-lived Bethesdoors project was born from the same idea.

Shooting something different and having fun with it.

If everyone starts calling themselves a gamer, the stereotypes will die out, the societal stigmas will fade and the dearly needed changes to games themselves and gaming culture will start to happen more rapidly. Let’s do this.

Let’s ALL be gamers, OK?

Games are fun. Play games to have fun. It shouldn’t be a hostile place.

Dispatch from the Trenches #5

By Carl

On August 15, 2014

In Links and Quotes

Here’s a polite person’s trick, one that has never failed me. I will share it with you because I like and respect you, and it is clear to me that you’ll know how to apply it wisely: When you are at a party and are thrust into conversation with someone, see how long you can hold off before talking about what they do for a living. And when that painful lull arrives, be the master of it. I have come to revel in that agonizing first pause, because I know that I can push a conversation through. Just ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: “Wow. That sounds hard.”

How to Be Polite

There is so much good stuff here. While I have few friends, the ones I’ve made without the aid of geography or other people have been through listening.

I’ll sit and listen for hours. I’ll soak up information and stories without speaking a word, other than a nod or acknowledgment I am still listening and interested.

I don’t often have much to say. Unless you touch on a topic I (possibly unknowingly) care deeply about. Then the words come pouring out. Most of the time, I am happy to sit and listen. I love to listen.

I learn so much that way. Now if I could only retain half of what I’ve listened to. I could take over the world.

Charred man

The incinerated man stared back at Jarecke through the camera’s viewfinder, his blackened arm reaching over the edge of the truck’s windshield. Jarecke recalls that he could “see clearly how precious life was to this guy, because he was fighting for it. He was fighting to save his life to the very end, till he was completely burned up. He was trying to get out of that truck.”

The War Photo No One Would Publish

The face of war is ugly. Back in the early 90s in Iraq, this photo never saw the pages of media in the US. But not because of military censorship. American media did that just fine on their own.

The quiet scares me. So, I make my own noise, plugging little smooth white plastic buds into my ears to listen to podcasts, audiobooks, and loud music. It helps me work, I tell my coworkers. It keeps me sane, I tell myself. It keeps the silence away.

The Silence and I

I will go to great lengths to find silence. I will see out quiet and solitude in even the busiest of places.
I will create it with headphones. I will sneak away to an overlooked corner or nook. I will wander off under (false) pretense.
I will linger too long in elevators or stairwells. If there’s a roof access, that’s a gold mine.
Silence is elusive. I arm myself and seek it out. It’s a better prize than any stuffed head on my wall.

Dispatch from the Trenches #4

By Carl

On August 8, 2014

In Links and Quotes

I hope you’ve enjoyed these dispatches. This week I have a trio of posts that resonated deeply with me. The first is a long, dark read but it spoke to me. Like a great song that won’t stop replaying, this post has bounced around my head since I first saw it.

The second runs with the 40-hour work week and how it came to be. What if it could be better? And finally, your lifestyle has been designed for you. Corporations are plenty happy we’re gasping for entertainment with our limited free time. They’re delighted we’ll toss dollars at them for a smile.

Facebook is surface; Twitter is subtext, and judging by what I’ve seen, the subtext is aching sadness.

…

So now you’ve got this degree that’s worth fuck-all, a house that’s worth more as scrap lumber than as a substantial investment, and you’re either going to lose your job or have to do the work of two people, because there’s a recession on. Except they keep saying the recession ended, so why are you still working twice as hard for the same amount of money?

—Everyone I know is brokenhearted.

I read this post earlier this week. I’ve since read it a few more times. It moved me. It’s sums up how I am feeling. It’s a long piece and a dark one. But it resonated deeply within me.

It’s how I feel. Brokenhearted. Sad. Depressed. Just rundown and run out like there’s nothing left.

I don’t watch the news, I get my news through social media. And that’ just as bad. I’m still exposed to the suffering everywhere. But I can’t change it. It’s a non-stop misery machine.

There’s so much wrong with our country and our world. It’s overwhelming. And it’s depressing. And we’re working ourselves to death.

The United States now leads the pack of the wealthiest countries in annual working hours. US workers put in as many as 300 more hours a year than their counterparts in Western Europe, largely thanks to the lack of paid leave. (The Germans work far less than we do, while the Greeks work considerably more.) Average worker productivity has doubled a couple of times since 1950, but income has stagnated—unless you’re just looking at the rich, who’ve become a great deal richer. The value from that extra productivity, after all, has to go somewhere.
— Who stole the four-hour workday?

I’m working more and longer hours but not seeing any more money for it. I’m working for health insurance, since one illness could derail my entire life into bankruptcy. Even with insurance, this is still a threat.

I have very little time off which means I savor it, and spend it sparingly. I don’t schedule doctor or dentist visits because it would mean losing hours of paid leave.

Even when I’m not at work, I’m tethered to my digital leash of email and cellular technology. I’m expected to be available or to perform work on my time with my equipment. I’m expected to jump when the company says to and gleefully reply, How high?

Without time off, we lack free time and before long, I find my lifestyle has already been designed for me.

The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce.

I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing.

The one conspicuous similarity between these activities is that they cost little or no money, but they take time.

Time is the only resource we can’t get back. Our time is finite and there’s no amount of paying, praying or begging that will make more time.

There can always be more money. There can never be more time. By spending 8 hours a day working, we lose our time. Often to things that aren’t worth the investment.

And that’s only the workday. My commute is an hour each way, if I’m lucky. So there’s another 2 hours I’ve lost getting to and from a job.

I savor my evenings, weekend and the rare holiday like I do my accrued time off. But I spend it less carefully.

Weekend are usually time to sleep. And repair myself. To try to bring some balance to a life that’s far off-kilter.

I try to regain some of my humanity before Monday and the grind starts again. As the weeks go on, I am worn down and I make worse choices. I spent more, I try to find entertainment and happiness in things and not experiences or people who bring more and longer-lasting joy.

Dispatch from the Trenches #3

By Carl

On August 1, 2014

In Links and Quotes

I advise clients who are frustrated that they can’t get a domain that they had in mind to pick another, something short, easy to spell.
Something evocative. Anything, really, as long as it ends in dot com. We can build a brand and message for a new, sensible domain. But if you pick something other than .com your consumers will still end up at whatever site does end in .com.

— Modern Marketing 101: There Are No Domains But .Com — First Today, Then Tomorrow

The number of new top-level domains are nauseating. The top-level domain is the last part of a domain name. For this site, it’s .com. For schools, it would be .edu and government is .gov. There are now many, many more.

I get confused by the new TLDs, like .ninja, or .social imagine how other people who are not web natives feel.

If you’re appealing to everyone then stick to .com. Since like Randy says, that’s where they’re going to end up anyway.

Read a book instead

Reading books makes me happy. Being on my phone makes me miserable. So, I made a wallpaper for my iPhone’s lock screen to remind me that I have a choice. You can download a copy for yourself right here.

— Read a book instead

It’s easy to get stuck into the loop of lock phone. Open Twitter. Close Twitter. Lock phone. Repeat.

I like books. I enjoy reading but my reading has tapered off. Even listening to Audio-books has slowed down. This is a good reminder to break the loop of phone staring.

With all those photos being taken, chances are you and I have at one point accidentally wandered into someone else’s frame. It’s likely, however, that you’ll never really know you’ve photo-bombed someones shot. That’s why I was surprised by a Twitter message that I received
out of the blue from a photographer I’ve never met.

— I Was Hidden on This Guy’s Hard Drive for Over 6 Years

I often think about this working in Washington DC a block from the Capitol. On my lunch breaks, I often walk around the Capitol Building or the Capitol Reflecting Pool.

Even in poor weather, there are always people there. Tourists. Government workers. DC Residents showing their out-of-town friends and family the city. And they are all taking pictures.

They snap pictures of the building. Of themselves in front of it, or “holding” the Washington Monument. They snap photos of friends, family and themselves. The ducks are also a big hit with the new batch of baby ducklings furiously swimming along behind mama duck.

On my walks, I often wonder just how many people’s photo albums and Facebook posts I end up in. How many times have I been captured as I walk around on my lunch break?