I'm about due for a new journal entry... First of all, thanks to all the people who faved the ol' DD (and especially thanks to kkart for featuring it in the first place). Thanks to my new watchers, I've been having a good time browsing through your galleries. I'd also like to thank my mother, my father, my sister, my dog, my fat old cat, and the Academy, but the orchestra's starting up.


If you talk to me daily/weekly ignore this part...


I've been at UNBC since September and for various reasons I've decided to transfer back home to the University of Maine at Orono. The forestry program there is much better, especially since I'd planned to move back home for grad school (if I go that route). I'm thinking about doing a round with the Peace Corps between undergrad and grad school, it seems like my kind of thing, a great experience and a break from academia to get my priorities in order. It doesn't make sense to learn all the ins and outs of British Columbian forestry just so I can go back home to Maine where it's a whole different ballgame. I can also take many more classes on the same budget, I was paying a little more in international student fees than I'd thought... like Pete Seeger says, an education is what you get when you read the fine print, experience is what you get when you don't. I'm taking my experience and going back to where I've got my motorcycle, my dog, my family, my mountains, my trail, my home. I'm looking forward to learning from the professors at UMaine, there's some great people up there, I think it's going to be a much better fit. There's also no mountain around this continent that stacks up to Katahdin. It's time for me to go tempt Pamola some more.




Book list:

Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto. This is an even more urgent "READ THIS" than the Autobiography of Malcolm X. This is everything I've been trying to say for years, with research and experience to back it up. It really gives it to you straight. Pick it up, even just for the first twenty pages. Do it for me? Please? It just took over the "one book everybody in America should read" spot that the Autobiography of Malcolm X used to have. It's that damn important. How many people don't find time to read at all, and how many people don't luck into this book? hopefully a few less now.


The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. This man is a competent author. One idea flows into the next, each sentence is just right, it took me a few dozen pages to find something he messed up on. That's the highest praise I've given an author on his authorship... ever? Ed Abbey doesn't count, he does it on purpose. The content of the book is also interesting, if you've taken introductory psychology courses you've probably heard a good bit of it, but it's still a very good read that makes some important points about society. Nowhere near as much subversive goodness as John Taylor Gatto though, that one's a gold mine.


Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. Of course the second coming is going to recommend the original.

Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer. I've only flipped through this one for the sections relevant to current events, but it's an analysis of United States direct intervention from Hawaii to present. It gives the most relevant (and forgotten) backstory to the Afghan occupation. Find a copy and read it, this is need to know information for anyone who gives a damn.

Deer Hunting With Jesus, (Guns, God, Debt and Delusion in Redneck America) by Joe Bageant. A personal view of the effects of the policies analyzed in Gatto's book. Local cartels, how corporations and government have screwed the hardest working people in the country, and all the other fun stuff the subtitle implies. Pick it up; more need to know information.



Must reads from the summer: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and its sequel, Lila, by Robert Pirsig. Must read. The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Bury My Heart and Wounded Knee are two more books of need to know information for anyone in America who gives a damn. The Israel Lobby (I haven't read more than a few pages out of this one but it looks like something we should know about). Sun Tzu's Art of War. Laugh all you want, it's good stuff. If Bush had read it we wouldn't be in this mess. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. I'm not particularly haunted by waters, but the snow follows me everywhere I go.

and all those science and math texbooks...




Let's end it off again with the Ten Commandments of Photography as compiled by myself and RuseofPoison




I Thou shalt not allow the camera do decide its own exposure settings.
II Thou shalt expend sweat and blood in the making of your photographs.
III Thou shalt give consideration to not only your subject, but also your foreground, background, and anything else in your frame.
IV Thou shalt not upload photographs of zoo animals, and thou shalt not upload more than a few images of your pet(s).
V Thou shalt not labor under the impression that any great photographer accepted his images as his camera took them, rather than as he saw them, therefore thou shalt not write "not edited" under a poor image and expect praise because it's "pure"
VI If thou knoweth thy image is of low quality, thou shalt not upload it, thou shalt instead find images of similar subjects that worked, inquire about the artist's technique if necessary, and learn from that.
VII Thou shalt not take photographs that consist solely of clouds, and sunsets shalt only enhance your subject, not replace it.
VIII Thou shalt spend time reading the information available at your local library or on the internet regarding composition, technique, processing, etc, BEFORE attempting to make your own photographs.
IX Thou shalt not post photographs of animals you ALMOST got in focus.
X Thou shalt not abuse photoshop.



p.s. thou shalt visit [link] for Ron Bigelow's well written and well informed articles on photographic techniques.