Life Is Interesting!

The last few days have been interesting. Not particularly nasty, but enough weirdness to keep the edge on, I guess.

And then I was gassing my car, looked across the street and saw this sign.


I spoke briefly with the owner and told him how wonderful and courageous I thought his sign was. He reply, "Great, come buy a set of tires from me!"

And here is the deal. The next time I need tires I will! The store is at the corner of 39th St. and Main in Vancouver, just off the I-5 freeway. If you need tires, let's support this guy.

I've spent the last six or eight months scanning family slides and now have hundreds scanned and I'm only really getting started. But here is the fun part. As a result of getting the Mac for the office, I now have access to Photoshop. And, I've been playing with the photo restoration and retouching tools in Photoshop and what a kick!

My video training with RGB color control is finally paying off! Below is my second effort at color correction.

BEFORE













AFTER












So, it's a start. I found a great book called Photoshop: Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eisman. It is hugely helpful and I can't wait to dig into it and start turning out some fun pix of the family.

Maybe This Is It

I spent a couple of hours this morning escaping the heat (it is 77 at 6am) at Starbucks and watching movie trailers on my laptop.

Give the rather confusing state of the world, both personal and private, the last few weeks, I was looking for something amusing to watch this weekend at the local cinema.

I came across this trailer.

The US vs. John Lennon

This week we have Lebanon being "bombed back to the stone age" and Condoleeza Rice not going for a ceasefire because she "isn't interested in temporary solutions" and the NY Times pointing out that we are accelerating our delivery of precision bombs to Isreal and on and on.

I missed out on the peace movement in the 60's because I was very well indoctrinated. I've spent a lot of time getting unindoctrinated. Maybe now is time.

We'll see.

Another Day in Paradise!

Here is a fantasy of mine. . . I finally figure it out. I spent most of Wednesday in turmoil and most of the evening apologizing.

First, my lack of bookkeeping skills (shared by a couple of others in the group) led to a rather significant misunderstanding of the financial realities of a little business I am working in.

That led to a heated conference call with several of key folks in the business, which led to a rather heated exchange between me and one of the key people in the deal. It felt to me like the point I was making was being dismissed without being at least examined, so I used a communication tool which I don't use often but that I had seen used in several situations with the group. I just "went off!"

To my chagrin, the next evening, I discovered that I had missed a very significant rule involved with using this "tool." You NEVER use it on a "family member." Sigh.

So after an hour of to'ing and fro'ing and several versions of apologies on my part, we finally reached a truce, at least.

I learned several important lessons, I think.

First, don't assume you understand the rules of the game or culture until you have played for a while.

Second, it is a given that you will break rules in the learning process. If you don't have the stomach for the occasional grovel session, don't get into the game.

Third, if you are operating in an unfamiliar "culture/game," it is possible you can screw up badly enough to permanently alter your relationships in the game. Then you have to decide if the payoff for playing still exists. Sometimes you are done and it is best to cut your losses and move on. But, most times, if you can get over yourself and the nearly universal addiction we all share to "being right," the goof and its disorienting condition it is temporary.

Finally, developing the stomach for these inevitable faux pas and goofs and general stupid mistakes is probably what separates the grownups from the kids. It is very easy to slip into a paroxysm self-pity and victimhood because you have been soooo misunderstood and your intentions were soooo pure.

But, in my experience, the reality is that you chose to get in the game or engage the new culture and if you goofed, you goofed.

Hurt feelings and embarrassment, even hurt and embarrassment on a galatic scale, won't kill you. In fact, that level of feeling, if you pay attention, can contain majorly useful information about what you need to do personally to get better at "playing the game."

Ok, enough pontification for today.

The shot below I took last weekend just south of Lincoln City. I can't wait to get a little beefier camera. This one is only 4 megapixels and it leaves a bit to be desired when you get into high contrast situations. But even with its limitations, I like this shot.

The Long Weekend!

It is so rare in this day and age to find and hold true friends!

This weekend was the 3rd Annual Reunion of Boys' Club. We started meeting every Tuesday night many years ago and then as time and geography took its toll, we stopped.

After about ten years (I think) of not meeting, Paul Richardson helped co-ordinate a Reunion. It was an instant hit and it has become an annual event.

It is remarkable that after years of separation, the depth of our connection during the years we were meeting, allowed us to pick up nearly where we left off.

For me, this weekend had two highlights. First, the First Annual Boys' Club Golf Tournament. We played at Chinook Winds in Lincoln City, an eccentric little course. The tourney consisted of Paul Richardson, a first time golfer, Glen Davis and me. Paul, due in no small part to the superior coaching he got, scored his first par in his first round of golf! Remarkable!

Glen succumbed to the treacherous (and way too numerous!) Par Three holes on the back nine and yours truly picked up the win. Glen, generous soul that he is, purchased a remarkable piece of art which will serve as our tournament trophy. This will be a highly antipicated part of our yearly reunion. Well, to be honest, some of us will anticipate it highly.

The second highlight came as part of an extended conversation on Saturday morning. It was a wide ranging conversation that dealt primarily with the impact of our actions, good and bad, on ourselves, the world and ultimately, the universe!

During the years that we met weekly, Greg Leno and I found ourselves frequently bogged down in discussions that we frequently simply had to abandon. As we dug around again, he finally insisted that I listen and accept that he understood my position, which I repeatedly asserted that he did not understand. It was one of those "the light came on" moments for me. It lead to another very powerful (for me) exchange regarding my value in the world.

I have an idea that very few people in the world ever get to experience this kind of depth and intent in a relationship. It is truly a gift!

Thanks guys, for a great weekend!

The Politics of Hope

I've reference this book several times in the last week, but here goes an other quote!

In this section, Lerner is descibing the rather sad situation of the first few months of the Clinton adminstration. They got hammered, especially Hillary, for a "hopeful" viewpoint. He describes their gradual and ultimate retreat to poll reading and the politics of realism. Here is part of his conclusion.

"I am not writing this history in order to pass judgement on the Clintons. They acted the way most other Democratic Party politicians have acted for the past forty-five years, letting their own perceived self-interest trump their vision of the good. Democrats attempt to be 'realists,' assessing the political forces and acting as though politics is 'the art of the possible.'

"What the Democrats have consistently failed to recognize is that 'the possible' is shaped by our choices. You don't actually know what is possible until you struggle for it. (Italics are mine.)

"When we choose to believe that everyone else is stuck in narrow self-interest, this perception leads us to believe that there is no alternative and hence we ourselves must be careful about our own self-interest.

"When this paradigm of fear becomes dominant, politics moves to the Right, toward those who are most articulate about the need for narrow self-interest, and the voices of idealism begin to recede. Vision becomes authoritarian and is all about recreating an imaginary past that was safe and free of the interference of some Other.

"If you are on the Left--whether Democrat or Green, liberal or progressive--the strategy of realism is a huge mistake. When you stop asking, 'What do I really believe in?' and substitute instead a focus on asking, 'What is realistic?' you are on a slippery slope toward the values of materialism and selfishness that receive much clearer statement by the Republicans and the Right. When the question is 'What is realistic?' it is only the Republicans who look like they have the answer. When you believe you must always put 'me first' and play the power game, the Republicans will always appear less hypocritical, because they have been fighting for selfishness without apology."

Whew!

So the question for me becomes, "How does this apply in my personal life and my business life?" Can I survive in a marketplace that seems to be short on nearly everything?

I think the key is to look at that last belief. Is the marketplace, my life, my business, the world short of everything I need to survive?

When you are staring at red numbers in every business you are involved in and then in your own checkbook and when business partners are scared and clients are looking at you with raised eyebrows at every invoice you deliver and on and on and on, yea, it feels tough.

But, somewhere, deep in my gut, the politics of caring resonates deeply. It is how I would like to be treated. I here is my ideal world. . . someone looks at me and says, "Are you ok? Can I help?"

And so, here is my goal today for today. . . looking at everybody I meet and saying, "Are you ok? Can I help?"

The Learning Curve

Ok, so I guess it is inevitable. If I want to play on the Web, I'd better learn the language. I thought I might be able to use a WYSIWYG editor and make it happen, but that is looking less and less attractive.

So, it is off to Powell's for a "how-to" on web site construction.

In the meantime, I've have learned that I am not very skillful at creating "consensus." A four hour management meeting last night got us to a "kind of consensus" on one topic. Then we went on to the rest of the business.

I understand the need for consensus in some situations. And this was probably one of them. But what a painful process. Dredging through everybody's "stuff" to get to an action step seems painfully slow and awkward.

I'm used to the process in the creative environment. The consensus process in the creative environment usually tends to be time limited, in other words, there is a deadline. You have X amount of time to get to a solution and then you have to execute. Only then do you find out if you are right or wrong. And right or wrong is defined by "did the client like it and will they hire us again."

It seems that when you begin these kinds of discussions in the business/legal world, there is far more weight put on being right before you start! Since "mistakes cost money" and business is about making money, in the current environment, the "worst case" scenario, the scariest scenario, the most painful scenario is the one that takes precedence in planning. AND, the person who can come up with the most scary, painful scenario to plan against is deemed the most insightful! Thus hours are spent gaming the worst case scenario and the time spent exploring a best case scenario and planning that are deemed "wishful thinking."

It seems, as I write, that this might be a useful area for more exploration. I keep finding myself in groups of "worst case" experts. Fortunately, the leader of this group ultimately gets quite quickly to an action step. He is definitely inclined to act. This will save the group.

He is quite conscientious about the attempt to develop consensus. But his bias to action keeps the process from grinding to the inevitable outcome of worst case gaming, the viewpoint that we are doomed no matter where we turn.

Ok, I'm still working on how efficiently get pictures into this blog. The shot below was today's experiment. It's the main wine production facility of Beran Winery. It was shot about a month ago at wine tasting tour Andy put together.

Pix for the Day

Well, technology is great, but for reasons unknown to me, I couldn't add this pix to the previous post. But here it is!

This is a tow plane and glider over the Napa Valley in 1974. I got to ride in one these as class project and it was truly amazing!

Genius and Fear

Alright, you ask, how does one connect those two concepts? Well, this is one of those times when the only relation between the two are that ideas that I've toyed with for a long time have been very powerfully articulated in print!

First, what is genius? I won't try to rewrite the article linked below, but I would highly recommend it for us "late bloomers." I remember feeling very let down that by the time I had turned 45, I hadn't really done anything great. (Now keeping a marriage together, raising a couple of very interesting young men and several other rather interesting accomplishments don't count, because they are personal and private. I'll discuss that in more detail in another post.)

David Galenson wrestled with the same viewpoint in the academic world. 24 year-old geniuses make a huge splash, but are they the only real geniuses? Galenson used sophisticated economics data analysis tools and came to a very interesting conclusion. Those of us approaching 60? Well, we still may have it in us!

What Kind of Genius Are You?

Ok, on to the next. . . FEAR!

Previously I mentioned that I was reading "The Left Hand of God" by Michael Learner. The deeper I've gotten into the book, the more I'm liking the way this guy thinks.

His viewpoint of how fears drives so much of our culture and world view is extremely compelling.

"There is a powerful tendency inside us all toward fear. When our consciousness moves in that direction, we believe that the Other is a serious threat that needs to be dominated and controlled before it does likewise to us. The Bible describes Pharoah's fear of the Isrealites in these terms--they had to be enslaved lest they potentially ally with the enemy. His next step was to attempt to kill every firstborn Jewish male. So the genocidal tendency was there at the very beginning of Jewish history--and yet the thrust of biblical religions is a countermessage that we don't have to act out of fear. There is a different and more powerful possiblity: to respond to the voice of God who commands us to 'love your neighbor as yourself'and to not 'oppress the stranger' but to 'remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt.'

"Understandably overwhelmed by the level of carnage during the twentieth century, religious leaders all too often abandoned the hope that love and kindness and generosity and nonviolence could ultimately triumph."

In another powerful discussion, he looks at the remarkable inconsistency of anti-abortion, pro-lifers who support capital punishment and the militaristic, imperialistic world view that seeks to make the world safe by dominating it!

"Part of the energy of the antiabortion movement. . . comes from its ability to symbolically address this desire (My Note: This desire is the deep need for human connection so missing in this culture.) The fetus is a symbol of an idealized, innocent being, actually the little child within us who is not being adequately loved and accepted in our daily experience. The desire to be loved and accepted as human beings--a completely rational desire--is split off by these antiabortionists, in part because they themselves (like so many of the rest of us in this society) have been taught to view that part of themselves as scary, unobtainable, and narcissitic. . . So. . . we project this desire onto the fetus. . .Those who felt conflicted about standing up for themselves when, as children, they did not receive the love and affection they badly needed, and deeply wounded because no one stood up for them when they were vulnerable as children, can now stand up for the beautiful part of themselves, which was underappreciated, by standing up for the fetus.

"It may have been a similar dynamic that made possible in the spring of 2005 a sudden explosion of concern to save the life of Terri Schiavo, a woman who had been in a vegetative state for fifteen years and hence could be experienced as both pure and helpless, by people who had shown no similar interest in saving the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed over the previous six months as "collateral damage" during the American invasion and occupation. . ."

Well, enough quoting. Hopefully this wets your appetite because his arguments are powerful and persuasive.



Finally, the picture for the day is interesting. It's an oldy but goody.

Last Week's Posts

I'm transferring all my blogging to this location for now. So here is what I wrote last week!

The Joys of Adversity?

July 4, 2006

Adversity is highly over-rated, I think. One usually hears about adversity after someone has endured it and gone on to success. Being in the midst of it provides very little in the way of rewards or comfort.

The environment we live in tends to equate business and financial success with value and virtue and it merely looks like whining or "bookkeeping slight-of-hand" to point out "success" in other areas of life when bills aren't paid and businesses are hemorrhaging cash.

So, since today is the 4th of July, I guess one can look at George Washington and all his cohorts who endured through years of stress, deprivation and pain to success at the great American experiment. It really does seeem that very little that is great succeeds or happens quickly.

But how does one measure time in theses circumstances? Is a couple of decades or a life of struggle enough or many lives or years or decades? How long is one expected to "keep the dream alive?"

One of my favorite T-shirt slogans says something like "Losers quit when they get tired, winners quit when they've won!" Sounds good. Feels crappy.

So, looking at expectations and results? Frequently a painful situation.

But who knows. Tomorrow may look differently.

On to something that involves less navel-gazing!

I'm down the last role of slides in the my "Indonesia file." Here are couple that show a bit of what I hooked me about Indonesia. Age has taken its toll on them, but the beauty is still there, in my eyes, anyway.

This is a major thoroughfare near the compound where we stayed when visiting Jakarata. It was hot and dusty when it wasn't hot and muddy!

I shot this from the train on my last trip from Bandung to Jakarta. This was like most villages outside the big cities. Notice the complete lack of motor vehicles. These pix were shot in November of 1973.

This is one of my favorite shots. The light near the equator is unique. I managed to tweak this old slide to look a bit like what I remember the picture looking like.

Bad Theology and Bad Politics

July 3, 2006

I have been meeting about once a month for the last year with a group of guys who formed book discussion group. This group's stated focus is religion and its effect on culture. We've read a number of good books. Last month we read "Misquoting Jesus," a remarkable book on the "assembly" of the books of the Bible. Despite the rather attention getting title, it was remarkably helpful in looking at how the Bible books and text were affected by the skills (or lack thereof) of the scribes who were responsible for the care and tranmission of the documents that make up the Bible.

This month we are reading "The Left Hand of God" by Michael Lerner. Lerner is a rabbi with left of center politics who is looking at the reasons why right-wing politics and the Religious Right have become such a powerful influence in the country.

Despite a rather dense writing style, I have found his reasoning very persuasive. I've post several paragraphs below:

"It is a powerful deal that the Religious Right offers: affirmation for the parts of our psyche that yearn for the love, caring, and generosity that most people cling to even though they have been taught that these values are “unrealistic” for building an economy or society, coupled with the acceptance of the materialism and selfishness, the need for power over others and war, as the accommodation to “the real world” So every where in the world you will find some version of this Religious Right, whatever the religion in question, with this dichotomy. The right wing-churches, synagogues, mosques, ashrams, etc. can retain the voice of love, sing praises to a God or a prophet or a great teacher a or Jesus figure who embodies or preaches gentleness and caring for the poor, even while they align with a harsh, militaristic, and self-interested politics that is based on the (unstated) assumption that all that “love, kindness, and generosity” talk has no real world application outside of that church or religious institution . . ."

"The essence of idolatry lies precisely in denying the possibility of change and then accommodating to evil—whether this be the hatred and cruelty perpetrated by others or one’s own hurtfulness and indifference to the world’s suffering—as though there were no alternative. To believe that no alternative exists to evil is the essence of believing there is no God. So, from the standpoint of at least some of us on the religious Left, the problem with the Religious Right is not only bad politics and bad economics but bad theology.

This bad theology has been able to flourish in part because the political Left has given little attention to its own religious Left, presenting itself instead primarily as a secular force. Unfortunately, the Left at times seems virtually tone-deaf to the spiritual crisis of capitalist society. Lacking categories within its intellectual apparatus tha might allow it to comprehend and address that crisis. the Left is prone instead to dismiss the whole spiritual crisis as a right-wing fabrication."

I spent a chunk of the day yesterday cataloguing nearly 80 years worth of 16mm movies my Grandpa Nelson shot during his life. My sister Connie and I are working on generating the cash to get these films transfered to digital media so we can all explore them. Once we get this process started I'll be sharing some of them online.

The process of scanning slides continues. Below are a couple from my work this weekend.

This was the guy I bought my tofu from. The yellow stuff was particularly nice. It had a more chewy texture and was very good!

And this next one probably needs no explanation.

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What does it take?

July 2, 2006

Today Wired published the text of a document that apparently shows that AT&T was helping the NSA monitor email and phone messages long before 9/11.

Sigh.

I think it is time that the Bush administration got a clue. You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all the people some of the time, etc.

On to more fun stuff!

I've been scanning slides from my youth and here are couple recent scans that I find mildly amusing.

This is me on graduation day at the college where I taught English. It is circa 1973. The gentleman on my right (I'm still working on remembering his name!) was a great badminton player.

I don't know why, but I have always loved the shot below. This is in the fish section of Central Market (Pasar Baru) in Bandung, Indonesia. These folk just seem to be having fun!