Promises, promises, promises

Valya - 122910

Many people look forward to the new year for a new start on old habits.  ~Author Unknown

Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty.  ~John Selden


The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows.  ~George William Curtis

A new oath holds pretty well; but... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it.  ~Mark Twain, speech in New York City, 31 March 1885 

But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty?  I live according to twenty-year-old habits.  ~Andre Gide
 
May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions.  ~Joey Adams

He who breaks a resolution is a weakling;
He who makes one is a fool.
~F.M. Knowles

I made no resolutions for the New Year.  The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.  ~Anaïs Nin

Oh, the old habit to make new ones takes to my mind this time of year.  What will I start doing?  Stop doing?  Do more of?  Do less of?  Who will I do more of with?  These are all parts of the resolutions I am looking at starting at midnight Saturday.


Health - A slow diet and increased activity to shed some unwanted Michelin affliction that returned last year.  The slow diets tend to work better since they help form better and longer lasting habits.  

I really enjoy getting out and being active.  I am vague about the type because I like doing many different ones.  The perfect activities include: hiking, biking, running, lifting, sex, kayaking, skiing, and many other activities.  The key is not to get into a rut of the same stuff.  I get bored pretty fast.

Valya-122910

Art - As I mentioned a few days back, I need to work on a few aspects of my photography.  
First, I need to take more photos.  I get rusty, complacent, and bored if I am not taking photos and creating *fine images from them.  I am trying to schedule time with a great model in early February. 


Second, I need to work on getting ready for my next stage of life and art, getting an MBA.  I've said enough about that journey in a prior post.  This includes financial planning and saving for paying for the jump to school.


Third, I need to see more art of others and learn what I can steal, appropriate, and use as influences in my stuff.


Fourth,  I need to increase my skills, especially Photoshop and other application abilities.  I don't believe in heavily manipulating my images and call it truth, but I don't mind messing them up and distorting their realities.  

As for all the other stuff... maybe 2012.

The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel.  Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.  ~W.H. Auden   

*"Fine" does not mean the same as the defined "fine print" for me.  It means I have refined it down to what I want it to be.  Whether it meets Ansel, Edward's, etc.,  criteria does not matter a whit to me.

PHOTO NOTES - God, how did I miss these?  I went through my photos of Valya tonight and these two were in the discard pile.  I found a bunch more that I tossed and am happy with. 

A New(s) Cause

Photographer Unknown

America is in a shouting match and now there is a new screaming cheerleader. From the New York Times.

Sarah Palin to Contribute to Fox News.
Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has signed on as a contributor to the Fox News Channel.

This is not a post to rant about Ms. Palin or Fox News. This is a free country and as much as their views go against mine, they have a right to spew them. This post is about my supporting the news outlets I find of value.

The conservatives have Fox, Rush Limbaugh and many other broadcast or cable outlets. They also have numerous print and online offerings as well. Through these outlets, they are able to effectively get out their core message through simplistic sound bytes and yelling to their core audience and those sitting on the fence on many issues. By being the loudest and most entertaining, many viewers absorb and believe what they say. They come to believe that these are credible news outlets. As Ms. Palin said:

“I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News. It’s wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news,”

The progressives have the small radio group of Air America, which can be as vitriolic as Limbaugh and crowd. They like to do the shout down as well. I guess MSNBC also has a left lean and is an interesting sparring partner for FOX News. There are many left-leaning online and print outlets that are potential resources.

The problem though is that so many of these outlets take the issues the conservatives are raging on and fight back. That may be of value, but so much news is getting neglected by both sides.

Our country is getting too distracted by all the yelling and losing sight of the facts. The conservatives are the best at finding one little point and then blowing it out of proportion as a major speaking point. If someone disagrees, they are yelled down and labeled as "unpatriotic." I can also say the same things about the yelling liberal media as well, except the label is probably, "fascist." Why are we allowing ourselves to be distracted by the grain of sand issue at the cost of ignoring the whole damn beach?

Personally, I try to avoid these sources for that reason. I need more news, less viewpoints from pundits. Online, I like to read SLATE. It, and its sister sites, cover everything from news, culture, science, entertainment and politics. I also get a chance to read Doonesbury as well. They have a good news aggregator that collects the headlines to other news sources with links to the stories. My main source of news though is National Public Radio.

My local station is the San Francisco flagship KQED which provides both PBS (television) and NPR, radio. Through listening to NPR during my commute, I feel I am getting a liberally slanted news source that cares about the news. They do offer some analysis and opinions, but mainly news. I also appreciate how they also broadcast the BBC news so I can get a little bit more of a global view.

I am a pretty smart guy. I know I don't know everything, but I do know I need to learn more before forming my own opinions about things. Too many people listen to the pundits as news, not the news then the pundits, as their information resources. We need to learn the facts and sadly we aren't.

"..."

Many may feel that this ignorance of issues does not affect them. It does. While so many are happy to watch Simon Cowel anoint the next idol we must worship, things are getting done by those who follow the news and use our distraction against us. So much of the sick stuff in the Patriot Act is buried in the language. The same goes for 2257 and other forms of censorship. Look at other personal rights issues and you can see so much happened "under the radar", but hey, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga are singing next.

This is why I just became a financial supporter of KQED. If I don't support what I ... err... support, then my words are meaningless. I just read Dr. L's post about the need for print media and how Carrie Leigh's Nude magazine is succeeding. I plan to subscribe to that as well. Information is not always free, I am proud to support it through work or money where I can. I suggest you do the same. If you find content that feeds your needs for information, support it so it does not disappear under all the yelling from the mainstream.

The Power of 10

High Desert - Town of Yucca Valley Outside of Joshua Tree National Park, C A

In middle school I had to watch a short movie called Powers of Ten. It is a short science movie about how small things are and how far away things get when you move closer or away from a subject at multiples of 10. You can see the movie below via Youtube.



At the SPE West conference last fall, one of the artists, Nigel Poor talked about her need to use counting, categorizing and cataloging stuff as a basis for her art. One of her projects was The Relative Value of Things. In this project, she cataloged things she was discarding, donating, etc. in an effort to reduce her clutter. The items were not garbage, but actual things she had been holding on to for future needs. She photographed the items as part of the catalog. In the effort she learned a lot about her own personal tastes, needs and history that can be told through what she had. I suggest you listen to her narration of the project on her website.

I am a lazy pack rat. I am not the type who walks past an old electric appliance, magazine, or other discarded or discounted item and think about all the things I can do with it, then stores it away to be forgotten. I am the type who, through living life, accumulates the daily detritis of magazines, books, tools, clothes, body weight, photographic equipment, mementos, and other stuff and is too lazy to cull the stuff to a manageable level. Over the past 40 years, that has piled up to be lots of stuff.

As a 2010 resolution I am going to steal her idea and mutate it into an introspective artistic project and a practical adventure in reducing. Every week, I am going to find 10 things to get rid of. Like Poor's project, they have to be things other than garbage. Things that come in groups will count as one item, like a box of 10 golf balls. I will give my friends opportunities to take them, or I will donate them to the local Goodwill, sell them at a garage sale, or throw them in the garbage or recycling bin.

Over time I want to see if I learn something about myself from the objects I caste off. I will take photos of the items to record all of them. What will it say about my habits, needs, perversions, desires, perceived needs, and tastes?

In the beginning, it will be hard to hold back from getting rid of more than 10 things at a time. I have so much stuff. That is where the power of 10 comes in. (Yes, I know I am not multiplying the number of objects by 10 (10, 100, 1000, 10000...) so it is not a mathematically correct name. ) The Power of 10 is that by 6 months, or 26 weeks, I will have gotten rid of 260 things. That is a lot. By the end of 2010, 520 things. It will be interesting.

It will also be interesting to see what I feel I can part with and what can not be culled out of my life. As I look around, I see many things screaming to go. First stop, my office.