Widow's weeds

39.1Woman
Originally uploaded by Lantern House.

I love these old photographs as both an insight into history, my own family, and for literature. "Widow's weeds" and rustling skirts are often phrases you read, but after looking at this photograph you understand it. Can you imagine washing and pressing those yards and yards of skirt by hand?

Notice, too, the photographer's studio setup, with a backdrop, chair, and table. This is one of the less elaborate backdrops I've seen. There are lots more on Flickr now, as I've spent most of the morning uploading.

The Hummingbird Project (Brazil)

I just came across this project via the Flickr Blog.

Flickr: carf: "CARF Brazil was established by Gregory J. Smith in São Paulo, in 1993. Gregory had already established The Children At Risk Foundation – CARF Norway in 1992, determined to benefit the street children of Brazil by defending their rights and offering them a dignified and definitive solution so that they could live and grow within a family-oriented context and healthy social environment."

....

The stated aim of the Hummingbird Street Migration Prevention Programme, to work for social inclusion without discrimination and its recognised competence in carrying out projects, is the distinguishing feature of our work on social intervention. Through the serious commitment and dedication with which we carry out our work, and the good results we have had in cooperative projects with other agencies, the partnerships and dialogues with CARF as an external agent for cooperative ventures has grown and strengthened, however limited funding creates certain restraints for our further expansion.

The photographs on Flickr are very moving, and the Hummingbird Project seems well worth supporting.

Computer upgrade

Yesterday, I installed an extra 512MB of RAM in my iMac -- I feel like I have a new computer! Editing graphics without enough RAM is just painful. Next time I buy a computer, I'll bite the bullet and max out the RAM at the same time.

Study

If only I could always approach my studies this way...

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.

~Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Gmail

I got a gmail account today. The interface is very fast in Safari, which I love -- I got sick of the Yahoo slug. I'm also convinced that the Flash ads on Yahoo slowed down my browser, and occasionally crashed it. I have no evidence for this whatsoever.

Anyway, if you would like an invite, go to isnoop.net. People have been donating their extra invitation codes! Thank you!

Oral history

The Rhine River: Vinland without its Map: "Too often the orality of old tales is dismissed out of hand -- usually with good reason, because the time between the usefulness of oral knowledge and the documentation is quite long, and too much time is allowed for new interpretations to take affect. (This can also be taken as a sign of genuinness: Genesis refers to customs and traditions that the biblical scribes could not have known about first hand -- evidence that the stories came from a much earlier era.)

The time between the events of the Vinland Sagas and their documentation is short -- just over two centuries. The knowledge within the sagas might still have been valid when they were written down. The sagas should always have been considered more authoritative than the Vinland Map. But the visuality of the map always made it more compelling, the orality of the sagas made them more suspicious."

(Via The Rhine River.)

Oral history is too often discounted by historians. Archaeology digs have been often offered as proof for land claims in BC, but oral histories are seldom accepted as legal proof. I suppose the phrase "hard fact" arose from our liking of concrete evidence, such as maps and rocks, not the soft facts of stories and legends. Considering how much of history is built on the study of words, one might think we would accept speech as a valid method of historical transmission. However, oral histories are not on carbon-dated paper. Literate cultures have a fundamental difficulty in understanding oral cultures.

Side note: that would be an interesting science fiction premise. How would a Terran literate space-going culture fare in first contact with a purely oral-based culture that was equally scientifically advanced?

BC Throne Speech

On the fitness issue, the government says it's going to launch an initiative called Act Now to encourage British Columbians to exercise more, lose weight, quit smoking and have a healthy diet.

Er, if I register as a non-smoking vegetarian, may I be excused from the endless stream of advertising, spam, leaflets, and guilt-trips I can see coming? Does this mean they're going to TAX CHOCOLATE? Now that's going too far!

Seriously, since when was my weight the government's business!? This is paternalism in the extreme... and people complain about those lefty NDP types. Of course, there's no such thing as a real conservative in BC politics.

Exploring Flickr!

I'm having a lot of fun exploring Flickr, as you can tell. The concept of community tagging and comments works really well. I first came across Flickr via the O'Reilly MacDevcenter, where they recently published an interview with the CEO of Flickr.

Beyond all the fun aspects of finding photos featuring the colour orange, Flickr has real utility for other uses as well. I'm exploring uploading some very old family photographs that I've scanned for other members of the family to have access to. Hopefully, wider access will turn into better identification, and additions to our genealogy project. Essentially, anyone can tag and annotate the photos, and I don't have to serve as a central resource point -- Flickr manages all of that. This will also free up room on my personal website for things other than family photographs -- like text data! Genealogy trees! Essays!

I can also see using Flickr for a professional portfolio. Adding a Creative Commons license is easy as pie, as is restricting access to full-size images.

Integration with RSS feeds is very well done. I can subscribe to a photostream, to a group or a person, to comments about my photographs, and so on. I can add a random selection of my photographs to the sidebar of my blog. I can choose a photo, create a blog entry, and post it from Flickr.

I'll be interested to see how Flickr continues to evolve; their development team is obviously on the ball and very slick.

River and sand patterns

River and sand patterns
Originally uploaded by Lantern House.

I took this photograph last August at Long Beach. After walking north along Schooner Cove, I went around the point to where a creek comes down to the sea. You can see how the water layers the sand, from the ocean tide, to the river water, and the rain. I remember how the water felt on my legs as I waded across to reach the north end of the cove.

Two music recommendations

These two singers are definitely of the vintage age, but I highly recommend giving them a listen.

Paul Robeson has a truly amazing voice. He was a favorite of my grandparents, and now that my mother has reminded me, I can hear my grandfather singing along with "Deep River". He's more studied now as a political activist, but his music is still worth listening to.

Marian Anderson is a true contralto, something very rare to hear, with an incredible range. Her music recordings range from spirituals to leider. Some of the older recordings are very faint -- if you've ever heard Caruso on LP you know what to expect. What I like in particular about the CDs I've been listening to is the sheer quality of the voice, unshadowed by the orchestration. Her delivery is unpretentious; after hearing her rendition of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", Kathleen Battle strikes me as rather mannered.

After listening to these voices for a few days, modern recordings sound a little lacking. The more popular voices don't have that intense, unique vocal quality that sticks in your aural memory. And popular rock just sounds tinny.

Quote of the day:

"For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him.  Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his Members blasted.  Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy and let there be no sur-cease to his Agony till he sink in Dissolution.  Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final Punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever and aye." 
~Curse Against Book Stealers, Monastery of San Pedro, Barcelon

That would certainly deter me!

Asparagus recipe

For the first spring asparagus, there is really nothing better (or more decadent) than this.

Take 2 slices of fresh brown bread, toasted and buttered.
Top with steamed asparagus.
Ladle with cheese cream sauce.

Enjoy! Yum.... well, asparagus risotto is pretty good too.

iWork at last

I finally got my copy of iWork and iLife '05! It took a bit of juggling to install on my old iMac G3, but it worked out fine. Pages is definitely NOT a word-processor. In fact I'm seriously considering a move to CopyWrite for drafting, and then exporting to RTF and dropping into Pages for the publishing process. I've always disliked writing in Word, and AppleWorks wasn't much better.