quackquack

Francis reading at bedtime:

The Big Treasury of Little Animals is the current nighttime favorite.

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer (via Johan M). Scruff it up and switch to lofi for your favorite alterna-church.

Julie eating her favorite pizza in the world:

Trip to Ocean City

An interesting scenario from the NYTimes blog:

Mr. O’Brien argued last week “Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet, a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the ‘Tonight Show,’ I believe nothing could matter more.” I’m sure nothing could matter more on spreadsheets and in traditional advertising meetings. But with the 18- to 34-year-old crowd, who have shown undaunted support for Mr. O’Brien, a time slot is as relevant as which brand of frying pan your favorite restaurants use to cook your meal — maybe it makes a difference in the kitchen, but 99 percent of the patrons just want good food.

Factionalism, favoritism, in-groups and gossip do immense, and I would say, often unacknowledged, damage to Quaker institutions and meetings, as well as in the wider world. I’ve seen the “mischief…

Another North Jersey corruption scandal is in the headlines, with that always potent mix of politicians, developers and religious authorities. Curious, I looked up a minor racketeering goon who was part of some research I did a year ago, wondering if he was caught up in today’s events.

I didn’t find any connection but I did find his Facebook profile, newly public due to FB’s default settings. On the right: a screen grab of favorite FB games of a low level mob moron.

Favorite quote:

The thing that confuses me is that my UU congregation seems to do a better job with living out Christian values than my partner’s Christian church does. (Yes, we are now an interfaith family of sorts.) But nobody wants to talk about Jesus.

A.K.A. the Deshler-Morris House, where George Washington really did sleep! From the National Park Service site:

President George Washington also briefly occupied the Deshler-Morris House, a two and a half story stuccoed stone house at 5442 Germantown Avenue. The National Park Service restored this building to the way it looked when George Washington was the occupant between 1793 and 1794. A group of dedicated volunteers provides tours of the property, while the National Park Service continues to maintain the house and grounds. Here in 1793, the executive branch of the government dealt with the problem of Edward Genet, the former French minister. He had commissioned privateers in American ports to prey on British ships along the American coast and in so doing jeopardized relations and risked war between Great Britain and the new nation. The next summer, Washington rented the house again hoping to protect his family from yellow fever, while he carried out his duties as president. The home became known as “the Summer White House.”

My mother Liz says she was given a lot of reading to prepare herself to give tours. I’m not too worried about qualifications, as we had framed pictures of Germantown on our walls growing up (she carefully cut out her favorite scenes from a neat old book and framed them herself with red felt matting!). I think the “summer White House” was actually one of the pictures on our walls!

Why would a social media network have a page on another social media network? Good question, but hundreds of people have signed up for the QuakerQuaker Fan Page on Facebook. And why not? It’s just as good a place to share some of our favorite Quaker media as anywhere else.

As of midnight, the fan page has an easy to remember URL. Check it out at: http://www.facebook.com/quakerquaker

If you’re a Facebook user, please consider becoming a “Fan” of the page!

For those keeping track, this is the week of FGC’s Gathering. A bunch of the extended QuakerQuaker family is over there and they is covering the tweets, photos and blog posts coming out of there.

Favorites so far: Peterson’s “Where Everybody Knows Your Name (thanks to name tags)” and Jeanne’s first photo collection. There’s also an FGC Gathering tag and feed on Twitter (#fgc09) although so far it’s mostly of use to Gathering attenders.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demonstrates the reverse-talk of autocrats everywhere.

On protesting a stolen election:
“Street challenge is not acceptable. This questions the principles of election and democracy.”

On his favorite candidate just happening to win:
“This is a sign of God’s mercy for this nation,” he said.

On the idea of a recount or monitored election:
“If we break the law, we will have to do it in every election and no election would be immune. This is wrong. This is the beginning of dictatorship.

There you go protesters, it’s you who are threatening democracy and trying to install democracy. I think the official world response should be “Pfftt!”

This was one of my favorites among the obscurities that filled my Duran Duran collection back in the day. I sometimes wished they had gone in this direction rather than the loud  glam that followed their initial rise to popularity.

Hammonton Lake Tree Slaughter:

Close to tears looking at photos of tree slaughter in favorite park (before and after shots). I was a few hundred feet from here today for a t-ball game, but couldn’t bear to look over. My boys both love the almost-daily walk we take through here and it’s all gone because some idiots wanted to be Big Men with Bulldozers and remake the park. Knowing this town, this will probably all be parking lot.

Francis, the 3yo, has a specific route he takes, starting the playground area in the background, through a specific gate, down a specific path, over a specific guardrail, across a specific marshy field, etc., etc., and will be completely besides himself when he sees this. Without a doubt this will be one of the top-five most traumatic things in his life and I’m kind of afraid to even take him.

These before and after pics via Flickr pal BACKYard Woods Explorer. Backy thinks some of the trees cut were around before the park. Some new saplings were planted just last year and are now gone, testament to the impulsive nature of this cutting.

Burnished Polaroids around Philly circa 1996: The New York Times is asking for reader’s old Polaroids. Thankfully Archive.org does a good job of keeping my old personal websites accessible and here are some burnished Polaroids from the late 1990s. From left to right:

• Walnut Street Bridge, Philadelphia. This is a favorite site of mine to photograph because of the rightward sweep of the river, railroad tracks and highway.
• Fire hydrant, Walt Whitman Center, Camden. I was waiting to usher for a Allen Ginsburg reading and combed the block looking for celebration of the day.
• Wissahickon Creek, Philadelphia. A favorite place to walk and contemplate life.

The technique (written around 1998): This is a style of photography I got into a few years ago. It’s appeal is simple: it takes little technical expertise and the process itself is limited in time. Everything boils down to basic form: a successful photo depends on setting up a good shot and then bringing it’s potential out in the burnishing.

Anyone who used Polaroids as a kid will remember the wait. When the film comes out of the camera, it’s still black. Within a few minutes a ghost of the photo begins to appear, a image which is fleshed out in about ten minutes time. During this time, the photo is developing inside of it’s plastic casing. If you press hard on the plastic before the photo comes out, all sorts of effects can be achieved. Depending on the pressure and temperature, you can get colors to bend, scratches to streak across the photo, etc. If done well, the burnishing can take on the effect of brush strokes and create an impressionististic photograph.

From Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing:

“How do you accomplish those results?” And here’s where most make the mistake of explaining the “process” of how you do what you do. Don’t do that!!! Instead, you want to tell a story. “A client I worked with recently kept getting bogged down on projects and his job was on the line. We worked together and he became the most productive person in his department. Ultimately he got a big promotion and a raise.”

I like his advice to stick to storytelling and focusing on outcome rather than process. This reminds me of one of my favorite recent quotes, “Don’t focus on selling—instead make it easier to buy.”

Via Robinmsf