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Magic, Ritual, and Belief

07 May, 2008
Posted at 22.11 PDT

As the years go by I find myself more and more intrigued by the political process here in the U.S. And this year, not surprisingly, I’ve been rabidly interested in seeing it develop. This year’s presidential contest is an historical step forward for us, no matter what way it’s looked at. Now I’ll admit right off the bat I’m rooting for Barack Obama. I’ve been rooting for him to run since seeing him give that famous speech at the 2004 Democratic nominations. I can still remember the goosebumps it gave me, and distinctly remember thinking, “Why can’t HE be the one running instead of Kerry?”

Still, Hillary Clinton’s bid for presidency is equally historic, being the first time a woman has been seriously considered as a front-runner. She’s always struck me as very, very smart, and (obviously) has the drive to be in the race. But I can’t support her, despite admiring quite a bit about her. This country fought a war a couple of hundred years ago, and after thought long and hard about how the government would be organized. And we broke with nearly 2000 years of Western tradition by rejecting a dynastic model of government, choosing instead a republic. It’s served us well, I’d like to think, and the influence our little experiment has had on the planet at large cannot be overstated. From France just a few years later, to the abortive European-wide revolutions of 1848, and onwards to modern time, our country’s decision to revive a republican form of government has gone on to influence nearly every country on the planet. How many monarchies are left? Democracy of some pattern or another is almost exclusively held up as the ideal towards which to strive. We should take a small bit of pride in that, despite our many failings.

Since 1981 there has been either a Bush or a Cllnton involved with the White House in some manner, either as president or vice-president. Forty per cent of Americans have never known anything BUT one of the two at the highest levels of our government. Nearly half. And for that reason alone, I found myself unable to get behind Clinton’s bid for the presidency. Bush-Bush-Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Clinton?-Clinton? No thank you. Dueling dynasties are not what I want to see in this nation. I’d rather we take our chances with someone else. Someone new. It could have been anyone. That it is Barack Obama as the viable option is, to me, just icing on the cake.

Magic, Ritual, and Belief was the name of one of the courses in the Anthropology department at the University of Central Florida. It probably still is; it’s a pretty common class to anthropology departments around the country, I assume, examining patterns of belief and behavior in human societies around the world. One side effect of studying cultural anthropology in depth, is that you can’t help but turn the lens of observation onto your own culture. It’s hard to get outside it mentally and look in, but occasionally things will stand out. Human patterns of behavior tend to follow certain trends from culture to culture, and it’s always fun to recognize things in your own culture that you’ve studied in others.

Being so interested in this election has had the direct result of me finding myself reading in depth the comments following many of the articles online concerning the election. I can’t help myself, they’re fascinating, despite the well-known phenomenon of people letting loose with the craziest vitriolic hyperbole, safe behind the internet’s anonymizing wall. It’s entertaining as all hell, as long as you can distance yourself from it, keep your temper, and simply enjoy it for the over-the-top factor of so many of the comments. (And it certainly helps to have an iron-clad will to never ever post your own comments).

But one thing in particular has gotten my attention the past couple of weeks. As it has become obvious that short of a major rejection of the will of the voters, Hillary simply can not win the nomination, many of the commenters have begun arguing their case using the dreaded ‘L’ word, attempting to claim Barack Obama is (gasp!) too..too..LIBERAL. What is fascinating to me is the utter lack of response this gets. People don’t even mention it in later comments. Even if we ignore the reality that what passes as liberal in this country would get your tarred as rabidly right-wing anywhere else in the Western world, dragging out the word “liberal” has been a staple of the conservative in the U.S. for the past twenty years or more. Until now, it has always, always, guaranteed a deep knee-jerk reaction, conservatives spitting it out like an epithet, and the democrats scrambling to distance themselves from it every time it gets trotted out. The historical reasons why this is the case are numerous, and would take a post of their own to even begin to explain why. Suffice to say it just is. This has just been one of those rules, like “the sun rises in the East.” Using the word ‘liberal’ as if it were some spooky rattle guaranteed to drive off the demons was par for the course amongst the right in this country for two decades. Its use was a ritual, the word pulled out every election cycle, a sure means of framing—and thus controlling—the argument.

It’s too early to say for certain, but I think the magic word has lost its mystic power. Like the boy who cried wolf, it just might have been used as the magic bludgeon for so long, that it no longer has the power it once had. It’ll be interesting to see if this is the case. Maybe, just maybe, we can shed some of the emotional baggage that conservatives have inserted into the word, and get back to its true meaning.

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The Opiate of the Masses

20 Apr, 2006
Posted at 00.02 PDT

Seven hours, 40 minutes.


That’s the amount of time the television is on per day in the average household in America. Seven hours. The mind reels, to quote Audrey Hepburn. That’s a jaw-dropping number. Americans spend nearly one third of their day with the television set turned on. Even creepier, if you assume an average day consists of at least eight hours away from the house spent at work, and another eight hours spent sleeping (and here I’m assuming the television is off, not a safe assumption, I’m sure), then that means the damn thing is on almost the entire time people are home.

Come August, it will be five years since I moved to Seattle, and five years since I’ve owned a television set. Am I proud of this? No, not really. It’s not something about which I give much thought, frankly. But TV Turn-Off Week is coming up, and running across the information on MonkeyFilter got me to thinking about it.

First, a bit of a confession. As an adult, I never did watch much television, so giving it up when I moved out here was no big deal. Come to think of it, I can’t really remember watching much television regularly at all since about 1990. I can remember there were specific shows I liked to catch, especially early on, but as the years went by, I did so less and less, and I haven’t had cable television since the eighties. My last year in Orlando, I do remember watching what seemed to me to be an inordinate amount of television, but that consisted of making sure I caught Frontline and Nova each week on PBS, not exactly a heavy habit. When I moved out here I did so with a limited budget—and a packed subcompact—so leaving it behind was a no-brainer. TVs are so cheap I figured I could always replace it if I so had the urge.

Well, that was five years ago, and I’m still waiting for the urge to show up. And as time goes by, I like the idea of owning one less and less. My disdain for it has grown to Olympian proportions. In large part this has to do with advertising. One thing I’ve noticed by refusing to watch TV is that my tolerance of ads has dropped through the floor; I hate modern advertising with a passion bordering on the absurd.

People look at you funny when you admit you don’t own a television. “But what do you do?” they’ll gasp, a horrified look of pity on their faces. If you own a television set and ask me this, you have no idea how much of an absolute and utter idiot this makes you appear to me. What I do is not spend my time staring blankly at a glowing blue pane of glass. I don’t mean to offend those reading the blog who DO watch television, I just get so damn pissed off when choosing not to do so is treated as some sort of social disease. People get so damn offended when they find out you don’t own a set.

But enough ranting. The folks over at TV Turn-Off.org have some interesting bits of information, and I think they’re fighting a noble, if pointless, battle. One of their PDFs is where I snagged that little nugget at the top of the entry. But nothing gets American’s eyes to glaze over more quickly than a list of facts and figures. The truth is boring, ladies and gentleman, especially when it’s competing with exciting, rewarding fare like reality television. You know, the stuff that really enriches the mind and improves us as human beings.

You know the biggest change I’ve noticed since giving up TV? I have a lot less fear.

One of the hallmarks of television’s early career was a belief that it would act as a benign influence, educating people, showing them our similarities outweigh our differences. I’d argue just the opposite happened. Sure, the perceived size of the world shrank, but what glues eyeballs to the box is excitement. And there’s no denying that murder, death, and horror are more exciting than peace, love, and happiness. Take your local news for instance. Sucks, doesn’t it? If you watch it regularly, what you see are local news stations salivating over every murder, the more gruesome the better, brought to you in lovingly intimate detail. The truth of the matter is, most humans aren’t evil. They’re not bad people. In point of fact most of us are good at heart, trying our damnedest to make our way in the world without stepping on the toes of others. In short, most people are like you. But if you watch television news, you’d never know it. You’ll also never see local news bothering to point out that crime is at near historic lows. Why would they? If you’re not scared, you might actually get up and go outside. And where’s the advertising revenue in that? TV teaches us to fear.

There’s a lot more to this as you might expect of any activity that absorbs one third of the average American’s day. To think such activity doesn’t have strong effects is to lift denial to a level beyond laughable. You’ve no doubt noticed recently the media have been raising the alarm about obesity, as well they should. We’re fat. Disgustingly so. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of television. You cannot spend hours every day sitting in front of the television, bombarded with unceasing ads for junk food, and fail to begin putting on the pounds. Every hour spent in front of the television is an hour robbed from doing something else (not eating, for one). Want to lose weight? Shoot the TV. I’m not kidding.

Television’s effect on American culture has been profound, to say the least. Our habits, beliefs, architecture, lifestyles, slang, have all been remolded in its image. I do not say this as some anti-television zealot. That I’m not. Hell, I download and watch episodes of Lost and Battlestar Galactica from the iTunes music store (when I can remember to, that is), and I enjoy watching them. A little teevee isn’t gonna kill ya. What I am is not a zealot, but a trained historian and cultural anthropologist (Why else do you think I’m a computer technician? You sure as hell don’t make a living as an anthropologist) Observing cultures is what I do. It’s what I find fascinating. All you have to do is observe, and think. It’s easy. You could do it too. Just turn off the TV for a week, and see how much you’ll learn.

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eBay: Freaks on Parade

31 Mar, 2006
Posted at 22.48 PST

Another bit from the other half of the site, an entry from last year.

So I’m selling an old iBook on eBay, and I get the following email:

“Hello seller, I will like to buy this item…cus i have been looking for this kinda item that will be packed..and will be exactly composed like this…..I want to buy it ..and will like to pay you in cash via Money Order…But i will like you to ship this item as soon as you have recieve a confirmation e-mail from Western Union that the money order has been confirmed… I also promise to add you an extra $350.00 to the reserve price of the item …to end this auction early for me….cus i need it very urgenttly…. i sent the information of this item to my customers for Year 2005 …and i have had enough of good offers from them..so i woun’t like to miss the offers from them nor will i like to loose any of my customer…So send me your address for the payment…and the total amount exclud shipping …I will like to handle the shipment myself by using my fedex discount account. Thanks”

I’m mostly amused by it, as this sort of thing is a well known scam on eBay.  It usually involves sending the item to Africa, but hey, at least he’s trying for a little variety.  At any rate, I’m amused enough to respond—and post the response publically on the item’s page—maybe it’ll let others know I’m not interested in ending auctions early and completing the transaction through email, not least of which is because it is against eBay policy.  Here is my response:

Are you insane?

Even ignoring the suspicious nature of the request and the blatant abuse of grammar, spelling, and ellipses, it is unethical to end an auction early solely for the convenience of a single person. In short, please find the nearest large body of water and jump into it.

Concise, unlike my would-be scammer’s rambling missive with its strange mix of misspellings and tense changes.  Why waste words, no?  And that, I figured, was the end of it.  It’s not often one gets to respond to something so unethical with a snidely humorous response—and get to feel a little self-righteousness to boot!  So I was feeling a bit pleased with myself. 

 And then it got better.  I got a response. 

Now  I am terribly tempted to play this through, but my sense of better judgment forces me to decline, sadly.  I mean…well…wow.  It’s apparent I’m in over my head.  After all, he uses lots of exclamation points!!!!!!! (Remember children, one will do)  And notice the use of ‘u’ in place of the word ‘you.’  Ooh, how l33t.   (And how terribly professional).  How can one respond to such an erudite display of wit and education?  Truly, I am humbled by this individual’s obviously superior intellect.  Out of my league, don’t you know?  Now that I’ve been so eloquently put into my place, I guess I’ll just have to take my toys and go home. 

Or, I suppose I could post this little exchange to the web, and put this idiot’s words and blinding display of intelligence up for all the world to see.  Yes kids, eBay can be fun! 

And remember:  one’s station in life is determined by his or her mastery of the English language.  Let this be a lesson to you.

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iBook HD Replacement

31 Mar, 2006
Posted at 22.40 PST

I was cleaning up the graphics side of the site, and ran into this bit: an excerpt from an email I sent a friend in London concerning the finer points of installing a new hard drive into an iBook long ago:

•The top shield has basically two sizes of screws, so it’s not as intimidating screwing it back on as it might first seem. The only exception (usually), is an extra small screw that goes in the corner at the top of the battery bay. If you get confused as to which holes need screws (assuming you didn’t mark the holes with a felt-tip or something similar), just rest the top case back in position and see if the screw holes in it have a clear path. If they don’t you’ve put one into the wrong hole. Easy to correct.

•The little metallic cloth doohickey/grounding strap at the top beside the display coming off the LVDS (Low Voltage Data Signal) cable screws on top of the shield. [If you’re curious, this is the cable that carries the actual digital signal to the LCD. The backlight is powered from the cable that attaches over by the RAM slot). The other cable, the one that attaches down by the HD is actually the mic cable. I have no idea why it attaches way down there.

•Don’t forget the reed switch magnet just above the battery bay inside the cd tray; it has a nasty habit of snatching the screw from your screwdriver. [The reed switch is a magnetically activated metal strip switch inside the display. It’s what signals the iBook to go to sleep when the lid is closed. Wave a magnet by the right hand side of the display and watch your machine magically go to sleep].

•Those four screws that are in the battery bay and CD slot?—the slightly larger two go in the battery bay, but no harm will come to the machine if you accidentally reverse them.

•Slip the top case back on over the DC-in port first, then the other sides will slide/snap down without too much issue.

•Don’t forget to attach the keyboard before screwing down the RAM shield! (I do this all the time, most irritating to have to unscrew the thing again, and a source of neverending amusement to my  coworker when he hears me say “Shit!” when reassembling one. ;-)

•AirPort card goes in text side up/Apple symbol down.

•If the iBook doesn’t power up the first time you press the button, don’t panic. Wait a second or two, and press again. It’s not uncommon. I think it has something to do with the power management unit being cut off from all current, but am not entirely sure.

•You can make the little round top case magnet jump around and chase your screwdriver pretty easily. This is vastly amusing, especially if you make little ‘Grrr, Grrr,” noises like a small dog.

•Your coworkers will likely laugh at you, not with you, if you do this.

•I speak from experience.

•Nudge the cables that come off the display back into place up under the shield’s edge as you’re putting the bottom case back on and it’ll sit easier. (This is another surprising Apple touch. Those cables are protected by wrapping them in capton tape. And because there’s a teeny-tiny chance they might show in the least bit, Apple paints them gray to match the case).

•Paying attention to the placement of the plastic shield around the ports can save you from having to remove and reseat the bottom case. (The bottom case’s edge goes under the ports shield).

•If you want some insanely strong magnets, take apart your old hard drive. If it’s been sounding as if there is a ping-pong game going on inside of it, the data is basically toast anyway. There should be two inside—they activate the read/write arm, plus a perfect mirror of a disk.

As you may have surmised, the means by which I make my living have quite a lot to do with Apple laptops.

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Stranger than Fiction

30 Mar, 2006
Posted at 22.42 PST

You can’t make this stuff up.

Second best headline ever. This, of course, is the best headline ever.

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Comment Spam

28 Mar, 2005
Posted at 00.00 PST

Sigh. It was a good idea, but writebacks have been turned off due to comment spam. They were kinda pointless anyway considering that I haven’t posted to the damn thing since August of last year anyway.

Naturally, I’m only thinking of starting posting again mainly due to an itch to play around with its layout and design. Sort of the testing ground of new ideas for site layout. (That last sentence may be read as “a testing ground for stolen ideas, suitably tweaked. :-) If the design goes well, who knows, maybe it’ll spill over into the main site itself.

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Hurricane Charley

15 Aug, 2004
Posted at 14.02 PDT

Being a native Floridian, hurricanes are something I’ve always taken in stride. Or perhaps more accurately, the threat of hurricanes was always something I took in stride. It’s been over 40 years since Donna swept through Central Florida, not a bad track record for an area ostensibly in the bullseye of hurricane season.

Now hurricane Charley has broken that run of luck. And it was with considerable relief that I found out friends and family had emerged unharmed from the storm. All day Friday I was glued to my computer at work checking up on the storm’s progress with enough frequency I’m sure I was driving my co-workers nuts. Having seen the aftermath of Andrew in 1992, I was a bit disheartened to see the storm track further South than originally predicted, putting it on a direct path for my former hometown, Orlando.

I found myself Friday wishing I were back home. Not through some desire to experience the storm firsthand, mind you, but out of a perverse sense that I’d somehow deserted those I care about. But having now seen the photos of its aftermath, I think I’m happier to be here in Seattle. What a mess. The photos available at the Orlando Sentinel’s website—many from local residents—show a city mired in debris. It was especially sad to see photos from my former neighborhoods of College Park and downtown Orlando’s residential district. Now the city of Orlando is not particularly beautiful, despite its self-appointed moniker of “The City Beautiful.” In fact much of it (and here I’m thinking of the neverending strip mall culture of the town), is the ugliest I’ve ever seen, but there are parts of it that still recall how nice it must have been to live there before the 900 pound gorilla called Disney moved in next door. Old houses, brick streets, and 100 year old laurel oaks dripping with Spanish moss define the older areas of town, and are the sole reason I remained there for over ten years. One thing I always found amazing about the area was that viewed from a few stories up—high enough to get over the tree tops—what downtown Orlando most resembled was a forest. The canopy was so thick that streets, houses, and even streetlights, disappeared from view.

It was those same oaks which appear to have caused most the damage. Downtown Orlando and College Park were laid out over a hundred years ago, and the tree-lined brick streets were used as a selling point to encourage people to move to what was at the time a rather smallish sleepy Southern town. Unfortunately, the city could have used a little more foresight. The trees they planted to shade the brick streets of which the city was so proud were Laurel oaks. The only problem is, Laurel oaks only average an 80 year life-span. Most were planted over a hundred years ago. You can see the problem. Orlando is a city filled with dying trees.

To its credit, the city of Orlando has been replacing the trees as they die with longer-lived varieties. Unfortunately, they still have a long, long, way to go. Though maybe not so far now. When hurricane Charley blew through town Friday, it no doubt cleared out many of the old and dying trees. I dread seeing what my old neighborhoods look like when next I visit. The pictures I’ve seen, many from within only a few blocks of where I used to live, show massive oaks toppled across streets and houses all over the place. I do not envy them the clean up.

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Choices

31 May, 2004
Posted at 12.56 PDT

From the Washington Post concerning the campaign against democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry:

Excuse me? They don’t have a choice? I’m not sure I follow the reasoning. The statement suggests our President is incapable of winning a fair contest. The fact of the matter is, they do have a choice. They could choose not to run negative ads, and instead campaign on their accomplishments. What a novel idea!

I have had it with negative ad campaigns—from both sides, mind you. I know I can’t be the only one, but when I see a negative ad, I now assume the candidate is lying unless I personally know the facts against which the claims are being made. The implication of that, naturally, is that the candidate being attacked either A) did no such thing, or B) the exact opposite.

Negative campaign ads, especially from the incumbent, have a definite feeling of desperation. I would think the Bush campaign, already suffering from a perception of inciting fear in the American populace for personal gain, would be chary of focusing so strongly on advertising that uses even more fear as motivation.

Just a thought.

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Another Revolution

31 May, 2004
Posted at 12.07 PDT

How odd. I don’t feel a year older.

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American Pride

17 May, 2004
Posted at 22.18 PDT

You know, there have been times when I’ve been embarrassed to be an American. Chagrined even, when our government or a citizen has pulled off a particularly ham-handed maneuver. But I can honestly say that until now I had never been ashamed of being American.

That has all changed.

The news of the behavior of some of our troops in Iraq has shocked me in a way I’d never thought possible. I do not consider myself either naïve or particularly worldly. Yet I understand that being reared in this country does not in some magical way make me or my fellow Americans somehow better than others, merely luckier. And I’m also aware of the 1971 Stanford University study that painted an unsettling picture of what the average American was capable of when placed in a guard/prisoner setting. But I had hoped that we weren’t really like that.

The Stanford study isn’t new. What it showed in no uncertain terms was that the very question of how the average German could take part in something as horrific as the Holocaust was a failure to understand the the question itself. The horrors committed by average Germans in World War II were not caused by some endemic failure of the German character, but rather by something inherent to humans in general, into which the Nazi régime simply tapped.

This failing of the human character does not make us as a species inherently evil; but knowing it exists, we must guard against it. And the fact we DO know about this tendency in ourselves makes our failure in Iraq to institute a mechanism preventing it even more horrifying. It would seem we have fallen victim to our own pride—a pride which made those in charge unable—or unwilling—to believe that Americans were capable of committing such acts. (At least I hope it was misplaced pride. The thought that those leading us in this war they’ve so eagerly prosecuted might actually consider the Iraqis subhuman is too saddening even to contemplate). It is KNOWN that strict controls are necessary in such a situation, that we as humans when placed in situations involving such a disparity of power are prone to abusing that power. Why did we not have such controls in place? This isn’t rocket science. We know how to prevent such abuses of power.

Make no mistake about it, there is NO excuse for violating the prisoners’ basic human rights. No argument can be made defending such behavior without undermining the very concept of human rights. ALL humans have them. Even suspected terrorists. To deny other’s basic rights and dignity is to become guilty of the very thing against which we are supposedly fighting. Is a contempt for human rights not a defining characteristic of the terrorist mind?

One of the saddest things about this whole sorry mess is that each and every one of the Americans shown is most likely a decent human being . Lord Acton was correct, power does tend to corrupt. The acts committed in Iraq were not made by monsters, but by humans acting in a monstrous fashion. The capability to behave in such an inhumane manner exists within all of us. A little simple oversight on the part of those in charge could have easily prevented this. All it takes to prevent such atrocities from occurring is a framework of expected behavior, and the discipline to hold people to it. This does not excuse the behavior of those taking part in those horrifying photographs, but knowing what we do about human behavior, it also places the blame squarely and equally upon the shoulders of the commanding officers as well. The abuse of the Iraqi prisoners is just as much their fault as it is the guards involved. A commanding officer is responsible for the actions of his men. This is an old and honorable principle, its usefulness proven over the course of centuries.

Shame.

I do not like this feeling.

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A (Not So) Black & White World

17 May, 2004
Posted at 22.12 PDT

It’s not something most people pay any attention to, but color photography is a lot older than you’d think.  Various techniques for achieving colorphotographs date back to at least the turn of the 20th century.  For most of us though, color photography dates to maybe the 1950s, for that was when it really began gaining in popularity.

History is a subject in which I’ve always had a great deal of interest, especially that of Europe and North America during the 19th and 20th centuries.  Along with Cultural Anthropology, it’s what I studied most in college.  There are a bewildering array of forces at work in the today’s world, and it is flat-out impossible to gain anything even approaching a gestalt of the world around us without an understanding of the origin and reasons for those forces. 

Until very, very recently in historical terms, human civilization didn’t change all that much from its beginnings, be it ancient Iraq in the West, or China in the East.  And when it did, it did so slowly, often over generations.  This is something difficult for the modern mind to grasp, being immersed from birth in constant change.  The daily life of the average person in 1750 was not all that different from the life of someone living during the height of
the Roman Empire. But then in the late 18th century all hell broke loose, so to speak.  For a variety of reasons cultural, historical, economic, and others both known and unknown, the Industrial Revolution began gathering steam—forgive the pun—in Great Britain.  Its impact was so profound that the life of virtually every human being on the planet has been utterly transformed in an unprecedented short amount of time.

Popular history dates the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution to James Watts’ steam engine.  While its roots go much deeper to forces set in motion sometimes centuries earlier (no invention springs forth from its creator like Athena from Zeus’ forehead), the steam engine does provide a convenient place to consider as a starting point.  Out of that steam engine—and the transformations wrought in the English society and economy  by it—comes nearly every object in daily life, including the computer being used to display this.

And the computer, by way of the inventions that lead to it, brings us neatly back to the subject at hand:  color photography.  Computers would be useless to people without displays, whether CRT or LCD, and display technology has its roots in the effort to create a static snapshot of what the eye sees—in other words, photography.

Photography, like the steam engine, was one of those transformative technologies of the Industrial Revolution.  We take photographs for granted today, but the ability to capture a moment in time and transfer it to a piece of paper is one of the more astounding feats we as human beings have pulled off.  Think about it a moment.  You grab your camera, digital or conventional, press the button, and what have you done?  You have in essence frozen in time a piece of reality.  No wonder we like them so much, they address a deep-seated desire in humans to remember events clearly, and enhance one of the fundamental differences between us and all other animals on the planet, namely an ability to transcend the eternal now.  Language, the defining difference between humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom, is what provides the framework for our minds to structure time and memories.  Without it, we too would be stuck in the eternal now, unable to form the long-term memories upon which our personalities rest.  (Yes, I know, there are exceptions.   But the general truth of the statement is valid).  And photographs provide a means of leveraging our talent for language into the realm of the visual, which is fortunate as we are at heart visual creatures.

One of the most intriguing elements of photography, is that it captures reality very much in the same manner we see it.  Our memory doesn’t work like a video camera.  Instead most memories exist more like snapshots, brief moments that for whatever reason have stuck with us over time.  Photography dovetails nicely with the way our minds work.  What is interesting though, is how photographs give us a sort of pseudo-memory of events that we have never seen.  Their power is evident in how we perceive historical time periods and events.  When you see the phrase ‘World War II,’ or ‘1938,’ the images that pop into your head are usually black and white.  Interesting, no?  But when Rome, or the Middle Ages are brought up, the images that come to mind are generally color in nature.  It seems an odd trick at first, but makes sense when thought about.  Our mind’s eye images of periods long ago are generally influenced, or even defined by, old paintings of historical scenes.  But then came photography, which singlehandedly replaced the painting as a means of recording moments in time.  So all our pseudo-memories of historical events and daily life suddenly go black and white around 1850, and stay that way for the next hundred years.

In 1929, those forces set in motion by the Industrial Revolution spiraled out of control.  It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but its severity is hard to imagine today.  The Great Depression dragged along for ten dreary years.  In the United States, one of the results of our desperate efforts to get a handle on what was happening was the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration.  The effectiveness of the many programs put in place in the struggle to end the Depression may be open to debate, among them the WPA and other make-work programs, but while their effectiveness may be argued, the results of many of them are still with us.  One of the many programs instituted in the late 1930s was a government effort to capture a visual record of American life and also document the mobilization effort as we prepared for war.  Its practical value may have been low, but it did provide a means of support for many photographers that otherwise would have not had work.

Kodak introduced color photography as we know it in 1936.  It was rarely used however, as the the film was expensive.  Prices remained high enough until the 1950s that most photographers avoided it.  Most, however, doesn’t equal all.  Color photographs of the period may be rare, and their quantity overwhelmed by the sheer amount of black and white pictures taken during that time, but some effort has been made to bring them together into their own collection.  And when you see them together, it is hard to overstate how they change your perception of the time period.  It’s one thing to know the world did not exist in black and white back then, but it is another thing entirely to actually see it in color.  If, like me, you value history, they are well worth viewing.  Thanks to the Library of Congress, it is now possible to do so, and they even provide free for the taking 100+ MB scans of most of them.  They aren’t color corrected, and due to their age often have dirt, scratches, and other imperfections on them, but they will nonetheless utterly change how you envision the time period.  I’ve found them so intriguing I’ve lost several hours to simply wandering through the collection, and have been taking the most arresting of them and cleaning them up.  I’ll begin posting them to the Graphics Factory over the course of the next week or so.  The link is below.  I hope this little tangent gives a bit of…framing…to the photos.

American Memory

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Remembrances of Friends Past…

04 May, 2004
Posted at 21.32 PDT

It’s always startling to hear that someone you know has died, an unwelcome reminder that nothing lasts forever. I just learned this evening that a man with whom I used to work passed away last night in his sleep—at far too young an age, and now details and memories I’d long forgotten are coming back to me in that curious way the knowledge of a friend’s death causes one to remember.

Thom Butler was one of the most genuinely nice people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. We worked together back when I tended bar at the Kit Kat Club in Orlando, Florida, and he was always fun to be around. A little too fun, sometimes, but that’s hard to hold against him. We were never particularly close, but he had a way of greeting his friends that always made me forget that. He had the rare ability to always make you feel he was glad to see you, no matter how tired or frustrated he might be.

I remember the times after closing he’d take me for rides in the sidecar of his immaculately restored Moto Guzzi. Zipping down a highway at 60 MPH at three in the morning , 6 inches from the pavement is a sure means of having fun, especially when you blow by semis and other large trucks. I’ll never forget those nights, or the care he took in restoring motorcycles, or his awe-inspiring encyclopedic knowledge of them.

I remember too him speaking of his then fiancé Sandrine. Oddly enough, I never had the privilege of meeting her in person—our paths had diverged at that point—but I can say without reservation he was head over heels in love with her in a way I will always envy.

Other little memories pop to mind too, like the time he helped me move a sofa into my apartment in College Park, and refused any compensation—not even beer! He even helped me get rid of the old sofa. (Thanks again for getting it out of my sight Thom!) The Shriner’s Nightmare® eventually wound up in his bar, and ended its days in the Bodhissatva Club’s upstairs lounge. While I may not have had much chance to visit the old sofa at his bar, having since moved to Seattle, it’s oddly pleasing to have contributed something to him, however fleeting and insignificant.

Anyone who remembers him tending bar at Go Lounge should recall his penchant for spanking the patrons and getting naked at the drop of a hat—two qualities for which I have only the utmost admiration—and I’m sure he gave full vent to his behaviors at the Bodhissatva as well. The world will be a grayer place without you Thom.

His death comes as no great surprise, sadly. He always lived a bit too far on the edge for someone with the health issues he’d had, and would be the first to admit it. He survived a devastating motorcycle accident years ago which nearly left him permanently paralyzed, and I always thought he considered every day after to be living on borrowed time, though I can’t claim to have known him well enough to say for certain—it’s just an impression I always received. Besides, the heart attack he had years ago served as a reminder of mortality, and I admire his resolute refusal to compromise his life despite the traitorous failings of his body. We should all be so brave.

At any rate Thom, wherever you may be, I know I’m not the only man who considers himself lucky to have known you, and while I may be 3000 miles from Orlando, I still wish I could have hung out with you one last time.

A year ago this past March I visited central Florida to see my father just before he died, and I still remember sitting with Thom in his bar. We barely spoke of the subject, but the look he gave me at that moment still sticks with me. In a single moment he conveyed to me that he KNEW what it was like. And I knew I wasn’t alone.

I think Thom Butler must have been the most down-to-earth hell-raiser I’ve ever known. And anyone who can combine two such disparate tendencies is good in my book.

Peace.

-Doug

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