Abraham Lincoln pointed out in a speech that we have never had a good definition of Liberty. That most people used the word to mean different things. At base, we can perhaps agree that two meanings offering potential conflict are (1) Liberty from and (2) Liberty to. The war of independence was a major demonstration of the driving force of the first—separation from England—while once established the subsequent political struggle from then till now has been of the latter. Because we use the terms alternately—Freedom and Liberty—here perhaps more intently, it behooves us to come to grips with what they mean.…
Month: June 2024
One More Before Getting Back To Words
This one is another from back in the film days. Chinatown, San Fransisco, 2002. One of my favorites.
And, yes, it is available to purchase here.…
The Past In Black & White
In 2001, Donna and I took a meandering road trip from Oakland to Seattle. It was an amazing trip and I made a lot of photographs. The other day, having some downtime, I fired up the scanner and worked some of those over. What follows are from some side stop in Oregon.
I’ll be doing more of these. I have quite a lot of color from the trip, too. Once again I am amazed at what these negatives can produce through Photoshop. The detail floors me every time. Of course, there are those times when the flaws are magnified, and that’s embarrassing, but in general…
I think I need to get myself an auxiliary hard drive to store these.…
Unwritten Novels
Over the last several months, things have moved, publishing-wise, that have given me some optimism about the future. I can’t talk about them yet, since I do not yet know how it will all come out, but I am not sanguine. I’ve stumbled over too many obstacles over the last 35 years to start celebrating before the check has cleared, so to speak.
This morning, as I write this, I am about as unmotivated as I’ve ever been. It will pass, I’ve been here before: a combination of disappointment, weariness, and frankly disinterest. I have projects, certainly, but I just can’t muster the energy to give a damn.…
…Freedom and Its Contingencies, Part One
Many words get thrown around with too little regard for their actual meaning and intent. Love, friend, truth…a long list. There are two languages, it seems, operating most of the time. One we could call Colloquial Usage, which basically is the common application of a blanket term to cover all possible manifestations of a subject. Friend is a case in point. we blithely label everyone with whom we have more than casual acquaintance of a positive nature a friend. We do this without thought, mainly because it’s easier than teasing apart the various components of what A Friend may really be.…