Good Reputation Sleeping

List of French phrases used by English speakers.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."

(from Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, or Plus ca change, plus c’est pareil.)

Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most

Backyard Spring, 2007
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

Get out and enjoy!

Virginia Tech, The Week That Was

I think most of us are still in a state of shock. These kids were our neighbors and our friends.

The level of violence that happens in this world is too much.
The level of violence that happened close to home this week should remind us of that and call us to action.

And what should the media be doing? I talk, with others, about that here.

Pay attention to the faces, remember those who died.

Thank you, Jackie Robinson

I grew up loving baseball. My mother loved baseball and it was because of her that I did also. She was a Brooklyn Dodger fan even after they left for the west coast and, of course, it was because of Jackie Robinson.

There are many things to thank Martin Luther King and Malcom X for, but perhaps more needs to be said about the path they followed, paved by Jackie Robinson.

More you need to know here, here, and here.
Photo by Getty.

Work

A and B are also true colors.

Still Breathing

Haven't posted anything in a while; I have been down the corporate rabbit hole trying to 'innovate'.
This can leave one barely functional from the blows to the head received while banging against walls.

My sing-a-long album of the day, Surfer Rosa (Huh-Huh!)

My video of the week, 'But He Has Bud Light' from the Superbowl!

Father Robert Drinan, At Rest

Father Drinan, Model Of Moral Tenacity - washingtonpost.com.

"If you've ever wondered whether God laughs, think back to 1980, when the Rev. Robert Drinan was ordered by Pope John Paul II to get out of politics and leave Congress. The Jesuit priest, who died on Sunday, was finishing his fifth term representing a suburban Boston district that included Cambridge and Brookline. The pope had been hearing from rankled conservative American Catholics--the Pat Buchanan, William F. Buckley Jr., William Bennett wing of the church -- that Father Drinan, a purebred Democrat, was a dangerous liberal. His voting record on abortion was seen as too pro-choice.

Father Drinan's presence in the House of Representatives had been sanctioned by the previous pope, Paul VI, as well as by the U.S. episcopate, the cardinal of Boston, his own Jesuit superiors and emphatically by the voters in his district.

No matter.

John Paul, knowing that Jesuits take a vow of loyalty to popes, had his way. And who replaced the dangerously liberal Father Drinan? The more dangerously liberal Barney Frank--as ardent an advocate for abortion rights and as he was for gay rights. If there is a God, the Frank-for-Drinan trade surely had Him laughing at the Vatican's expense."

A chance meeting with Father Drinan when I was an undergraduate at Brandeis convinced me that one could be a lawyer and a politician and still have a soul.

Had he stayed in Congress I may have never become a photographer after law school. There are still many days I wonder about what working for him would have been like.

Updates on a Roll

Dr. John Maeda
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

- My life-hacking experience with Dr. Maeda was wonderful. We talked for over an hour; what a fascinating artist! I hope to find some time to head north to the Media Lab for the full effect.

- I lost my godmother over the holidays. It has been hard to write about; she was one of my parents closest friends and it reminds me of their own mortality. She was also the crazy aunt I never had, helping keep me 'real' and introducing me, to among other things, girls!

Death is a reminder to make the life you have the one you want.

- Recently had this piece published on poynter.org; its a 'rant' designed to call people out. Our industry is in turmoil but it doesn't have to be that way. Journalism has been elitist for too long, time to open the gates and let the people in to look around!

The operative word is ENGAGE.
Engage your community, engage your bloggers, engage your critics; learning shouldn't stop when we get a press card, if anything, it should become part of the job.

Momofuku Ando, At Rest

Link: Mr. Noodle - New York Times.

A wonderful appreciation for the creator of, perhaps, the greatest Japanese invention ever!

"Ramen noodles, by contrast, are a dish of effortless purity. Like the egg, or tea, they attain a state of grace through a marriage with nothing but hot water. After three minutes in a yellow bath, the noodles soften. The pebbly peas and carrot chips turn practically lifelike. A near-weightless assemblage of plastic and foam is transformed into something any college student will recognize as food, for as little as 20 cents a serving." - Lawrence Downes, NYT

More on Mr. Ando here.

Hacking My Reality

The first time the power of the net hit me was way back in 1997 when I posted my first gallery of photography, some pics of trips to Cuba, on my website. A day or so after they went up, I got an email from Japan, someone who had seen the photographs and wanted to say hi. My photographs had just gone global in an instant.

The light bulb went on, the ground shifted, hell froze over - I got it.

A few days ago I finally made good on an invite I received a couple of weeks ago from a netizen named Mike Lee. We came to each other's attention through a website called hiptop Nation where we both started posting photos from our Sidekicks way back in 2003. I soon left for the greener pastures of better voice communication and bigger phonecam pics, but we kept reading each other's blogs and soon met up again on the uber-photo site Flickr.

We had lunch near The Post and chatted about life on and off line for almost 2 hours. A main topic of conversation was our admiration for the work of John Maeda at MIT. Turns out that Mike, through his gig at AARP has spent a good deal of time in the Maeda-sphere and clearly saw my eyes light up every time he recounted some of the things he saw and did while there.

Mike, who looks innocent enough, has hacked my reality - I got an email from the good Dr.'s office yesterday and I will enter the sphere in a couple of days. Life hack, via hiptop, Flickr and the web, courtesy Mike Lee.