I helped Amy set up a scene for a painting yesterday, and the same light she found perfect for the painting was also perfect for a few photographic still lifes of the food on the table:
The Trip to New Jersey
Five hour bus ride to New York last night. Driver was a funny Hispanic guy with large quantites of gold bling hanging from his neck, equipped with a delightful array of loud and colorful Spanish curses for late passengers, weaving trucks, and heavy traffic. Sitting beside me was a journalism student from Rockville. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was visiting New York with friends for spring break. She liked Marie Claire Magazine.
Somewhere in Delaware, the bus abruptly stopped alongside another bus which appeared to have broken down, and we picked up an extra load of stranded passengers. The bus was fairly full, so we could not take them all, and many of them were forced to stand. (Others who had been unable to get on were forced to wait longer for the next bus yet to come.) The driver turned off all indoor lights so that we could speed through the night without law enforcement noticing the standees. I stood up to share my seat with others.
In New York, Madison Square Garden was fenced off for some kind of basketball game. Searching for the entrance to Penn Station, I passed behind a CBS news anchor on camera.
At the rail station in Elizabeth, an old man in a wheelchair alternated between calling for help and yelling curses at a man passed out in the elevator, sprawled across the floor so that it was impossible for the wheelchair to get in. I offered to help. Passed-Out Guy had a pulse — and pants damp with urine — but was a dead weight, impossible for me to lift. I settled for rolling him into one corner of the elevator so Old Wheelchair Guy could roll in.
“Oh God,” said Old Wheelchair Guy, “is he okay?” He leaned over to poke Passed-Out Guy in the shoulder. “Hey Poppy, you okay?”
I shook him. “¿Despierte, amigo. Esta bien?” — is what I would have said if I remembered any of my Spanish. Passed-Out Guy blinked. There was no smell of alcohol on him, so I wondered if he had OD’d, though there was no sign of a nosebleed or vomit.
Old Wheelchair Guy — who seemed to suffer from mental as well as physical disabilities — thanked me, and we left Passed-Out Guy in the elevator. I washed my hands thoroughly on getting home.
Pandora Doing What She Does Best
More black and white photos of the cat. (Click them for larger sizes.) She’s had a touch of feline conjunctivitis lately, squinting a bit, with a crusty bloodlike discharge gathering in the corner of one eye — easily cleaned with a damp tissue.
Many EDSAs
“I had always hoped and dreamed that we Filipinos could be more intensely nationalistic, and EDSA was it. Finally, Filipino people were identifying with all that’s good about the Filipino – the sharing of the food, the praying together, the kindness and support shown for everybody, the total giving of oneself. I don’t want that changed. In fact I want many EDSAs to happen — although I don’t think that’s possible, it was one of a kind — or at least for us to learn the lessons of EDSA.”
President Cory Aquino
Mr & Ms Magazine, 7 March 1986
(emphasis added)
Dear Tita Cory: I have good news and bad news on your dalawang hiling for many EDSAs and lessons learned. Hulaan niyo na lang po kung alin ang alin.
WELCOME TO WEB 2.0
Kottke No Longer “Pro”
Oh, What a Year, says Jason Kottke, ending his “micropatronage experiment” a year after he got $39,900 from his enthusiastic audience. Here’s what I thought of it at the time, and I’m pretty glad now I didn’t contribute. I’d been hoping for two things out of the Pro Plan, which would have had me dropping a significant donation in the pot post facto: a revival of 0sil8, and a general spam cleanup. Neither thing happened.
Feedback on Metafilter is largely cynical about the whole affair. Felix Salmon talks about promises. And Bitter Pill looks at what might have been.
I think I can sympathize a bit with JKottke, though: as someone in the process of launching a semi-independent venture myself, I know what it’s like to watch the days slide idly away while plans stay unchecked on the to-do list, till, before you know it, a year has passed. A clear separation between “work” and “play” actually helps me maintain productivity in both fields, which is why I don’t think I’ll ever make brownpau.com a “Pro” source of income — never mind the unfeasability of this weblog actually being considered a genuinely marketable web publishing venture.
Hmmm. On the other hand, there is lots of room for a nice big red Chitika leaderboard at the top of the front page…
Paulo Rants About Podcasts
Window Cleaners
(Window Cleaners, uploaded by brownpau.)
Two men washing the windows of the NAR Building near the Capitol. For a few minutes their movements were almost perfectly synchronized.
FBCDC+204
Quite a lovely day yesterday: sunny and breezy, the first sign of the warming trend portending the coming of spring. It was also the 204th anniversary of my church, First Baptist DC, so the choir sang special music at service (Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine) with a guest harpist. Post-service, we had a sumptuous potluck lunch, followed by sandwich-making for the homeless. (I also found out for the first time that Gordon was engaged — I’d been away the Sunday it was announced, apparently — so a big congrats and good luck to him and his fiancé.)
I spent the afternoon with a few of of the young adults: David, Rebecca, and Lydia from church, watching Memoirs of a Geisha in Georgetown. (Excellent movie, and the Oscar for cinematography is well-deserved, but I won’t post a review until I’ve read the book and watched the movie one more time.)
Ash
It was Ash Wednesday this week, and I’ve had ash on the mind — and not on the forehead.
Coming from a predominantly Roman Catholic country whose minority of Evangelical Protestants tend to actively shun the trappings of Catholic ritual, it came as a surprise on my arrival here to discover Baptist churches which not only have Ash Wednesday services, but actually practice imposition of ashes on foreheads — my current church included. (My surprise was not unique, though: as Real Live Preacher points out, it’s the “quirky” Baptist churches that do the gimmicky Lenten stuff.)
I did attend last year’s Ash Wednesday service at First Baptist DC, a beautiful and somber time of reflection on sin and mortality, but this year a conversation with a coworker about the growing number of Protestant churches adopting this ritual, plus some points raised by Blog Corner Preacher, got me to thinking.
“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others.”
BCPreacher’s take is that the ashes are a sign from the Old Covenant, not necessarily an indicator of pride or hypocrisy, but one unnecessary to those saved in Christ. Now, “unnecessary” doesn’t mean forbidden, and symbol-on-forehead doesn’t mean disfiguring faces to be seen by others. As holyoffice reminds us, the ashen cross is a memento mori, a reminder of death (“ashes to ashes”) and a sign to ourselves to mourn for our fallenness — and to some, sadly, still a status symbol to show the world how mournfully reflective they are.
So get the ashes if you wish, if you feel that they are a powerful sign to you of death and sin, but the moment they become an emblem to show off to the world rather than a reminder to yourself, wipe them off. Wash your face.
I shall go to Ash Wednesday service next year, I think. I shall stand with my brothers and sisters in Christ, and we shall remind each other of each other’s depravity and mortality in that ashen communion, that we are dust and we will return to dust, and we will receive the imposition of ashes, with gratitude for the sacrifice of Christ and hope for the rising promised by Easter. But at the end of the service, I think I will wipe the ash cross off and go back out into the world with a clean forehead. My pride may kick in, otherwise.