inspiration or infringement?

thursday night i checked my email to find the message from a friend, "stop and listen! your boy is on fresh air right now..." sure enough, terry gross was interviewing shepard fairey about his legal battle with the associated press in regards to his use of an ap photo of obama for his iconic "hope" poster. as terry states at the beginning of the interview, the outcome will not only affect artists and photographers, it could affect all of us amatures who use the internet to distribute and download...artistic content. you can listen to the entire interview by clicking the link above.

meanwhile, filmaker and activist jason pollock writes on the importance of shepard fairey on the huffington post on february 19th.

During the Inauguration festivities Shepard's image was inducted into the Smithsonian as the official portrait of Barack Obama. It now hangs proudly at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. This moment was not only huge for Shepard Fairey but also the entire art community. It was as if the old boys club of the art world had finally allowed a new guy into their membership. In a gallery where there is nothing but formal and usual portraits of our presidents now hangs a beautiful piece of street art. The worlds of art and politics changed that day and millions of street artists and political operatives will forever be able to point to Shepard Fairey as the beginning of something very new and monumental. Shepard had merged art and politics like never before and I think we will be feeling the effect of what he did for years to come.

for more shepard fairy-related posts from secret notebooks • wild pages — click here.

happy birthday, barbie

did you know barbie is turning 50 years old this week? i know, i know — barbie is impossibly, unrealistically thin, busty, and tall. her feet are shaped only for high heels. she wears permanent make-up, and lots of it. and she sure as heck isn't hitting the free weights with those muscle-less arms. as a plaything, she is controversial. in preparation for her birthday celebration the guardian explored this issue last december in the article dumb blond — or die-hard feminist?

in 1989, long after i'd put my (many) barbies away, the barbie liberation organization launched an attack and switched hundreds of barbie teen talk voice boxes with those found in gi joe action figures. gi joe now exclaimed, "let's plan our dream wedding!" and "math is hard!" while a well-coiffed barbie declared, "vengeance is mine!" indeed! you can see a video of a 1991 news piece about the barbie liberation organization's prank here.

all i know is that as a child i much preferred the grown-up and independent-seeming barbie to baby dolls that needed to be bottle-fed, burped, changed and rocked. what fun was all that responsibility when barbie had a pink corvette, a 3-story house with an elevator, a pool that blew bubbles, and a golden palomino? not to mention a boyfriend (or two) and a clutch of eerily similar-looking girlfriends...

my dolls were exceptionally well-dressed thanks to my mom, who has always had a love of elegant, well-designed clothes. she made much of her own apparel as well as mine, and with leftover fabric she designed a meticulous wardrobe for barbie. today i decided to shoot three of my favorite outfits. above is a blue, 2-piece suit she designed with 3/4 length sleeves. the jacket is even lined.

there was a slight problem at today's shoot — apparently some of the poses were too strenuous. this is how many of my barbie dolls are spending their golden years in the attic — missing arms, legs and sometimes their heads.

"pretty changes" barbie — her short, curly hair is a rarity in barbie dolls. this is a flowery halter dress with a long attached belt that ties in the back.


by far, my favorite childhood doll — ballerina barbie. my fascination had less to do with her talents as a dancer, and more to do with the dreamy innocence of her expression. nothing about her features suggests the cattiness of other barbies, and her arms hang gracefully at her sides rather than bent and on her hips. this dress has a silver detail around the waist, a ruffled bottom, and a matching over-the-shoulder cape that i didn't photograph. i'm certain my mom will remember exactly what each one of these fabrics was originally intended for, and when i see her tomorrow i think i'll ask and report back.

meanwhile, during the past week npr has been covering barbie's birthday on their soapbox blog, and has invited people to submit images of their own barbie dolls to flickr, tagged nprbarbies. these were posted today, and i hope i'm not too late to the party. either way i'm sure the ladies enjoyed coming out from storage for a shoot.

the wood pile

The Wood-Pile

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther -- and we shall see."
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather --
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled -- and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

— Robert Frost

i want to branch out

and bend when the winds blow.

i want my world to thaw out

posting every day might be easy, but i've done a terrible job of tackling the nablopomo theme of "want" this month. maybe i don't want as much as i thought i did. perhaps my adoption of the word acceptance has led me to stop wanting things that simply aren't possible — which eliminates quite a bit, lately. perhaps the down economy has forced me to stop wanting material items quite so much. it's still possible, however, to have an early spring — and hope is free!

i may find the gym getting more crowded...

if michelle obama's toned arms bring the trend to the mainstream. the media is certainly all aflutter.

already, a debate is brewing about just what the first arms signify. “post-title IX arms,” robin givhan called them in the washington post. they represent achievement and self-control, wrote kate holmquist in the irish times. (buff arms say: “i’m too serious a woman to show off my legs or my breasts, she argued.)
— from today's ny times piece.

in the full february 17th piece in the irish times, holmquist goes on to say:

arms that can work and hold and inspire are an erogenous zone that all women can aspire to, while remaining intelligent women, because arms are as androgynous as they are erogenous. well-toned arms say: "i'm a woman, i'm equal but i'm still beautiful."

there are differences of opinion, of course, and kristine newhall at the title IX blog raised some interesting points about the media's attention to the first lady's arms in this january 26th post:

there is a limit to just how strong a woman can be. michelle obama and her arms fall within the limits of acceptable feminine strength. likely because she follows a weight routine that emphasizes muscle toning over muscle mass-making. because there is still the fear today, i hear it all the time, about becoming " too bulky." look around your gym, you will see a lot of arms that resemble michelle obama's. a former professor of mine called them "soccer mom biceps." they are very nice. they are certainly more built and toned than many women's arms of years past. but again, they are acceptable for a woman to have. if they were not, we would have been talking about michelle obama's arms a long time ago.

good point. i too wonder what the media would be saying if she were more massive. i doubt it would be quite so kind. on the other hand, i'm so relieved to see a woman who obviously isn't following the 3lb dumbell rule. ultimately, i think i agree with gina mccauley at the guardian who feels our attention to the first lady's clothes, hair, skin, and bodyparts resembles,

... a mass public vivisection where we project all of our hopes, dreams, fears, neuroses and psychoses on to one person." and goes on to say "... just because the nation is obsessed with what obama wears doesn't mean she has to join us in our obsession by playing the role of national dress-up doll.

ultimately, i think any step towards better health and a regular exercise routine is a positive step for women and men alike. and of course i'm interested in the first lady's inevitable role as fasion plate. but i do hope the attention will soon shift to michelle's substance over style.

just a moment

on nights when it's exceptionally cold i leave the gym, sit in my frozen car, and watch flowers of ice bloom on the windshield, germinated by the warmth of my breath and the cool, sputtering breeze emanating from the defroster. they swiftly multiply and overlap, contending for space on their plot of glass before dissolving, petals running down in thin rivulets. it's a short-lived winter bouquet — but it causes me to pause and, for mere seconds, lose sight of where i'm going, forget to curse the cold.

society is...too connected?

there’s a wonderful article in the feb. 8th issue of the boston globe called, “the end of alone” in which writer neil swidey questions how healthy our culture of constant connectivity can really be for both our intellectual and emotional development. the piece some excellent arguments that the intrusion of technology has “vastly expanded bad behavior and...is dulling our very capacity to ever be alone, or alone in our thoughts.” the constant twittering, texting, facebook updating, and cell phone talking leaves unable to step outside our comfort zones, notice the scenery around us, chat with people we don’t know and provides us with a very convenient crutch for our inherent loneliness, making us more and more unfit for actually dealing with it. it’s a fascinating article and well worth reading (and the comments are thoughtful too).

as with anything else both good and bad, i think one needs balance when it comes to connectivity. it’s easy for me to suggest this however, since i grew up without the internet and cell phones – for which i’m sometimes very grateful. actually i still manage to get by without a cell phone but must admit when i read the line, "technology simply makes things more fun, like the way my wife will hold her iphone up to a restaurant ceiling speaker and instantly be told that the vaguely familiar tune of funky '70s cheese she hears is "sky high," by the one-hit-wonder band jigsaw, rather than letting that little mystery make her cerebrum ache for the rest of the day" i had an almost uncontrollable urge to run to the nearest apple store.

so perhaps before long we’ll all end up emotionally stunted with the attention spans of fruit flies, but there are still lots of advantages to being connected — as this blog post from yesterday’s ny times, “facebook: finder of lost-wallet owners” reminds us.

i do love this topic and seem to blog about it quite often. here are some related posts:
• how we connect online (if we connect online)
• distracted and multitasking but trying to stay connected
• why i blog
• crowded emptiness
• life online

mushroom magick

you know i love fungi so i wanted to point out this beautiful, soon-to-be-released book — 144 pages of arik roper's exquisite painted portraits of hallucinogenic species of mushrooms from around the world. with text by writers daniel pinchbeck, erik davis, and gary lincoff of the new york mycological society. hardcover, 144 pages, published by abrams and available for pre-order here.

a stairway to the stars, northampton, ma

out yonder where the blue begins
the moon will guide us
as we go drift drift drifting along

—ella fitzgerald, stairway to the stars

booth service

kathy's diner on strong ave, northampton.

here is the church, here is the steeple.

the church of st. john cantius on hawley street, northampton.

sunset on pearl street

more images from my brief trip to northampton on saturday...

this family-owned camping supply store in northampton has been around for over 50 years.

i've always loved the building and classic signage, and can just imagine what a photo hunt through this building would reveal.

something will shine in the backyard

the plan for today was supposed to involve traveling to rhode island to visit my mom and brother, a plan that the convergence of two storm fronts over northern new england put an end to. instead i sat at the kitchen table watching the snow simultaneously fall down and pile up while the birds flocked around the feeders outside.

wouldn't it be nice to show some video on the blog of these birds gathering at the feeders? i thought. and thus the fate of the afternoon was determined. while this little movie didn't come out exactly as i envisioned, i think it's the best i can manage with both my limited software (i-movie), limited experience with said software, and limited patience for learning it. some of the video footage was taken last week, but the snowiest scenes were taken today. despite uploading the full quality video to youtube, the quality of this embed isn't very good and i regret that my transition scenes of today's falling snow get lost and pixilated.

the song, by the way, is called "birdless" and is by the innocence mission, a lovely canadian band. enjoy!

it's a bird, it's a plane

it's late afternoon light in northampton, ma saturday. more pics to come...

design meme - album cover

i found the following meme on the how magazine blog this morning and because i can't resist a creative challenge i've spent the last hour working on it. actually it was a great creative exercise, and if you decide to try it let me know!

here are the rules:
1 - go to "wikipedia." hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
the first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - go to "random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - use photoshop (or similar) to put it all together.

in case anyone's wondering, a lester solus was an english automobile built in shepherd's bush, london only in 1913. a single-seat cyclecar, it ran on an 8 hp JAP or precision v-twin engine with friction drive and belts to the rear wheels. i thought this was a fantastic random wiki article to arrive on.

the original hyacinth image is here.

saturday morning funny - mahna mahna

"mahna mahna" has been stuck in my head since 1977. i don't know whether to find this disturbing, comforting, or a little bit of both.

a self-portrait and some pre-spring training talk

taken for february's self-portrait challenge theme of "introduce yourself." i uploaded a slightly different version of this shot to the group pool on flickr today, then decided i preferred this one, not that it really matters either way.

as february winds down so does the three day a week weight training routine i decided to try at the start of the month, deviating from my comfortable and familiar 4-day split and incorporating more compound exercises like squats, bench presses, pull ups, and dips. (and you thought i'd be writing about baseball, ha!) though the program promised "quick mass gain," i made one major adjustment that i hoped would result in more strength than mass — rather than doing the suggested "one set to failure" i did 4 pyramid sets of each exercise. overall, this seemed to work well. another reason i deviated was because i really like to be at the gym, and the thought of keeping my time in the weight room to less than 45 minutes made me a little sad. the best part of this particular routine has been discovering 1) how essential a day of rest between weight training days is and 2) how helpful eliminating the 20 minutes of cardio i usually squeeze in before lifting is as well. on weight training days i now do the 20 minutes first thing in the morning at home. on "off" days i go to the gym anyway and focus entirely on cardio for at least 45 minutes. i've been much less sore this month, and able to focus all of my energy on my three lifting nights, which i'm sure has helped contribute to my strength gains.

it's important to keep changing a training routine every 4-6 weeks and i've until now i've been resistant to do so because i fear stepping out of my comfort zone. for years i've depended on the same exercises in the same order and wondered why i find myself hitting plateaus and becoming discouraged. as nice as it is to feel mentally comfortable doing a certain routine at the gym, flowing mindlessly from one muscle group to the next, once your body decides it's comfortable you'll stop achieving your physical goals — be they mass, strength, weight loss, speed...

so what's next? for march i'm going to follow todd opheim's lower body slim-down/upper body mass gain routine making only tiny adjustments to it due to a lack of decent equipment at my gym. i'm also going to substitute front squats for "regular" squats after deciding that regular squats are over-training my gleuteus medius (i'll spare you the gory details). is it bizarre that i've missed many of my familiar and favorite exercises this past month and am excited to see them incorporated into todd's routine so i can return to doing them? or odd that walking into a gym always makes me feel like a kid at the playground, sprinting towards the swing set and clamboring onto the monkey bars? does all this weight-training talk fit in to secretnotebooks • wild pages? i think it will have to, as j can only take so much of it and there are only a handful of people to talk to at the gym. so if you've made it this far and are still reading — thanks!

up for debate

the colbert report's interesting (and of course funny) commentary on the associated press vs. shepard fairey lawsuit.
via omg posters!

winter's rip tide

for the past two nights heavy snow has slowed my drive home from work down to a crawl— just me, my car, and the road beneath my increasingly worn out snow tires passing an hour together at the end of the day. with no streetlights to illuminate the winding mountain road, i depend on the tire tracks of preceding travelers to guide me through the darkness. last night, dinner plans kept me out later than usual and as i progressed homeward the tire tracks in front of me began, one by one, to curve gracefully off the road, turning left, turning right, disappearing into long, unknowable driveways. by the time i'd reached the edge of my town i felt like the last commuter on earth, a pilgrim with miles to go before my wheels could bend from their route.

tonight the wind blew so hard it animated the falling snow, assembling it into wicked shapes — ghostly waves that crossed the road in front of me, crashing against the guard rail, breaking and curling backwards on themselves; blanched tornados spinning up out of front yards; pearly curtains drawn suddenly across the way to hide my view. to me, the hardest part of winter is passing through it in a car.

love thursday - strings of hearts

a night window on wickenden street, providence, ri.

life cycle vs. cycle of life

when my mom was in the hospital she referred to the "life cycle." those two words struck me, because my mind immediately wanted to replace them with "cycle of life."

to me "life cycle" brings to mind an individual life's beginning, middle and end, a biological course. "cycle of life" evokes a certain cyclical continuity, shared by all. yet when i googled these two terms i arrived at the same places, without much distinction. is it just a matter of semantics or are there legitimate distinctions between these two terms? or is it too early in the day to be thinking about such things?

sticks and stones

though the kitchen painting project may outlast even this long winter, the white mantle (even with only one coat of paint) is such a clean palette for seasonal arrangements. at the moment i have four vintage bottles filled with leafing dogwood branches, these birds, and a scattering of smooth beach and river stones. in the center, a white candle illuminates the scene at night. you can see a hint of the new gray paint color behind the candle.

i kept a whitewashed pot of thyme alive on the windowsill through most of the winter. it only recently dried out in the heat and dry air from the woodstove. this coming weekend i hope to trim some branches from my forsythia shrubs and bring them inside to flower, replacing the dogwood branches. do any of you find yourselves bringing the outside in during these cold winter months?

lunchbreak video

working for a book publisher makes this video especially amusing.
via the art department.

the slow changes

the amaryllis has proved far more fascinating than my usual winter paperwhites (though far less fragrant). next year i should try both species, lining the windowsills with february blooms. as you can see from the top photo, one of my spring projects will be reglazing many of the windows, a task i'm not looking forward to. one more session and the interior kitchen painting will be finished though. it's moving almost as slowly as the bathroom tile project...

the empty chair

sophie

the rat-terrier mix at my nephew's 6th birthday party on sunday.

snap crackle revolution

as much as i love my i-pod, streaming radio, mpegs, and mp3's there's really nothing like the warm sound of vinyl, each record possessing it's individual pops and crackles, the occasional skip to rouse us from our daydreams, a deep, rich warmth filling the room as the record revolves, the arm of the record player moving lazily from the outside in.

play me your past

there's a fun meme going around on facebook in which you choose 15 albums that bring you back to a particular time, place, or event. albums that changed your life, consumed you.

if you'd like to play along, leave a comment — i'd love to find out what's moved you. personally, i had trouble choosing only 15 albums, and didn't even include the cocteau twins, who i've been listening to for so long they simply remind me of being alive. oh, and looking up at the moon.

as a kid:
1. michael jackson: off the wall. soundtrack to a family road trip/vacation we took to wolfboro, new hampshire one summer. at the time i was convinced michael jackson would love me, if only he could have met me. in retrospect, a perfect example of "be careful what you wish for."

in highschool:
2. the clash: combat rock. soundtrack to sticking safety pins into everything, including my ear, which i pierced a second hole in myself.
3. nine inch nails: pretty hate machine.
4. pink floyd: the wall. i still occasionally have weeks when this album obsesses me.
5. the smiths: the world won't listen
6. suzanne vega: suzanne vega
7. the beatles: rubber soul. soundtrack to staying at my high school boyfriend's parents house in providence and listening to all the records in his room with his headphones while he slept on the couch in the living room. i can still recall squinting to read the liner notes in the glow of his stereo, paulina porizkova peering down at me from a poster above the bed.

in my 20's:
8. grateful dead: skeletons in the closet
9. steely dan: gold
10. joe jackson: joe jackson's greatest hits. soundtrack to my first apartment.
11. peter gabriel: passion. soundtrack to driving a rented minivan over the blue ridge mountains at sunrise.
12: tori amos: little earthquakes. soundtrack to staring out the windows of the providence cold storage building, where i lived for a little while.

in my 30's:
13. beck: sea change. soundtrack to driving back and forth to a job i hated in a town i still strongly dislike.
14. disturbed: believe. soundtrack to the gym.

currently:
since i currently can't listen to anything that doesn't involve lots of screaming and swearing without getting depressed i have a feeling that slipknot's album "all hope is gone" will be what reminds me of this year. it certainly helped me slap paint on the house this past summer. so....

15. slipknot: all hope is gone. soundtrack to fighting depression.

in bloom

the amarylis our friends brought us for christmas is in full bloom this weekend, adding some much-needed color and life to the frosty winter windowsills.

and of course...

hearts. my humble (and rare) attempt at craftiness.

and flowers...

also for valentine's day.

one love for valentine's day

asked the spider.

is there a message in this besides, "it's time to dust?"

goodbye, blossom dearie

a friend alerted me to the passing of jazz singer blossom dearie this past weekend. having grown up in the 70's her girlish voice is very familiar to me from the saturday morning educational series schoolhouse rock.

blossom is also responsible for a song i can't believe, as a native rhode islander, i haven't heard until today - rhode island is famous for you. click here for a link to her obituary in the times.

love thursday

farm cat

number 710

a pretty, blind cow who i photographed at yesterday's outing. she lives with the calves.

a welcome change of scenery

the company i work for held our annual sales retreat at cricket creek farm yesterday. surrounded by 500 acres of rolling fields and woodlots, cricket creek is a grass-based dairy farm committed to raising healthy, happy animals in an environmentally sustainable way.



their herd of registered brown swiss and jersey cows provide the milk for three artisanal cheeses made on the premises, and the farm is certified to sell raw milk, the benefits of which you can read about here (also highly recommended in this book).

today their farm store was filled with jars of local honey, golden beeswax candles, and

a variety of fresh breads, baked goods, and granolas. a loaf of anadama bread and some "maggie's round" farm-style cheese came home with me.

the fridge was stocked with cartons of farm fresh eggs.

chicken, sausage, grass-fed beef and whey-fed pork are often available as well, and during the summer the shop offers local produce. this spring i imagine there will be a fresh batch of maple syrup.

so many reasons to return for another visit.