Lucky White Girl

someone help us out here...

  someone help us out here... 
  Originally uploaded by jessiqua.

I was shuffling through flickr today looking for photos from the big anti-war protest up in DC and I found this one... not from the protest, but

... still as relevant as ever!

Click the photo to see it bigger

Rumination on possible deaths resulting from two hunting rifle cartridges found in two different countries

It fell here at some point
on the corner of 4th Avenue and 6th Street
and I came along and found it.

A rifle cartridge.
Bright, golden, it easily caught my eye.
Look, it said, glittering in the street
My smooth shiny skin still reflects the light
of a thousand Florida suns.

I don’t know much about rifle cartridges.
All I knew is that it had come from a gun.

Maybe a cop had fired it last night
crouched behind the door of her cruiser,
shooting at the suspect.

The thought of this drama
occurring on the corner I pass
every day on my bike
was disconcerting at least.

Maybe it had fallen out of the back of
some hunter’s pickup
as they drove with the carcass
hardening in the bed,
thick with sweat from its mad dash
through the National Forest.

The light turned green.
I remembered
another time something
like this
caught my eye.

They were green and plastic
not gold and shiny.
Shotgun shells
from rubber boot clad campesino armies
half-heartedly
fighting a 40 year war.

I picked them up out of the foliage along the path near the river
and took them home.
Maybe they were shooting at a capybara.
Maybe at a tree.
Maybe they just wanted to make some noise
to sow fear into sleeping families
in case they were thinking of collaborating with the other side
I still have them in my desk drawer, years later.

Guns fire
and for all the long, complicated, painful histories of violence, oppression and death
that they leave in their wake,
these shells are the only tangible things
left for us to pick up.

I picked it up
and rode home thinking about guns and violence and death
souvenirs in my pocket.

On creating a playground for sadists

  waste 
  Originally uploaded by vista desde aca.

"This bill is not a national security issue -- this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies." 

"I'd like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis."

--Molly Ivins Why the Torture Bill Matters

mine your heart out

  mine your heart out 
  Originally uploaded by la vista desde aca.

Ok, so I promised a picture of the mountains.  There's several on my flickr site.  This is one of them.  Like I said, what I want to know is do the mountains that look like giant piles of sand occur naturally or are they an effect of the mining?

Help me out here you environmentalists!

p.s. personally I really like the title of this photo.  I was thinking about what mining does to the heart of the earth and the human tendency towards reckless behavior.  What do you think?

postcard from bahia inglesa

bahia inglesa 12
Originally uploaded by la vista desde aca.

hey everyone!

I'm in a desert!  Never been in a desert before.  Very, very, very first time.  I took advantage of the travel time to get here (12 hours by bus) to visit Bahia Inglesa, a sleepy (during this time of the year) little tourist spot about an hour from the regional capital, Copiapó where I am now.  The last Habitat project I'm visiting is in Tierra Amarilla, a mining town about 15 minutes away.  It's surrounded by mountains and mines.  Just like I got to learn a bit about what life is like earning a living working in the vineyards, now I'm getting to learn about what life is like as a miner!  Fascinating!  You can earn much more money mining but of course it's dangerous and like everything else they contract out a lot of work and it seems like there's no strong union to protect workers rights so the hours are terrible and the work is dangerous and difficult.  These are the famous copper mines Chile is famous for but there's also some gold and silver too.  I have heard that the environmental effects of mining are very bad but I'm hesitant to ask many questions about that.  The one thing I've heard though is that mining carves out the mountain from the inside right? so the mountain collapses onto itself eventually (hopefully not while the people are in there but I don't understand well how they keep that from happening).  Anyway what I'm dying to know though is how much of the scenery here, --how the mountains look, which is different from other mountains I've seen--, how much of that appearance is due to the mining?  I'll take pictures of course to illustrate but the mountains are like dry rock with no vegetation (well, makes sense, it's a desert) but also they are shaped in places like big piles of dry sand.  Very regular and smooth, like when you let sand fall through your fingers on the beach and make little piles on the ground.  That's how the mountains look.  Is that due to the mining you think?  I want to find out.  I'll let you know.  Meanwhile I have 12 interviews done already!  Yay me! ;-)  ... take care everyone!

love, barb

Lest we forget: Patio 29

  c e m e n t e r i o g r a l 
  Originally uploaded by silencio º~.

Today Chile declared the Patio 29 Cemetary a national monument.  This is where many victims of the dictatorship were buried in unmarked graves during the 70s and 80s.  Between 1973 and 1990 3,000 Chileans were killed or assassinated and 28,000 --excuse me, that number bears repeating-- twenty-eight thousand people were tortured!  Hard to get one's head around such numbers.  Anyway, it's not the first site related to Chile's painful past to be declared a national monument, but it is the latest.  There was some controversy recently recently when they misidentified some of the bodies enterred there but I guess it's a complicated process.

The above is a beautiful photo of the place I found on flickr from a young person here in Santiago, who would be too young probably to remember this era personally but perhaps the youth of Latin America can't afford to be as oblivious to the past as they are in the States. 

If I have time, I'd like to visit this place before I leave the country.

viejito

caballo.

I heart old orange cars in south american cities.

Frog mummies

Remember that underground frog zombie I mentioned digging up last week?  Well, I don't know if this is the same one because this one was in the backyard and my dog Sadie found it but here is a frog mummy.

As always click the photo to enlarge.

We asked my neighbor who's a wildlife education teacher about the underground frog and she says (it's a toad) and they do burrow into the ground when it's hot and dry and they don't have the energy to look for food.  They go into a state of torpor until it cools off and rains.

Interesting, huh?

Friday cat/dog blogging

Carnival of the Cats is celebrating its 2nd anniversary today!  The setup of this one is nice -we get thumbnails!  Go check them out.

Sadie sez.....dog blog!

Friday Ark #77

Carnival of the Dogs
 

 

Friday cat blogging

This is when it comes in handy to have a digital SLR.  Anyone who owns pets with black fur knows how hard it is to get good pictures of them.  I think it's because the automatic setting has trouble accurately reading how much light there is on their black fur.  I had to use the manual setting on my camera to get these to turn out just right so that Sugar doesn't just look like a black blob.  (This is why you've probably never seen GIL's cat pictured here before; I can never get a decent photo of her!)  The photo on the left was taken at 1/200 shutter speed at a 5.6 aperture (with film speed 1600 which makes it grainier but that's what I use when I shoot in low-level indoor light --I had been shooting in low light previously and forgot to change it).  I changed it for the photo on the right.  That one's a 400 film speed and slower shutter speed of 1/100 and the same 5.6 aperture.  It's subtle but I think I like the one on the right better.  More nuances in the shades of black.  As always you can click on the photos to enlarge them.  You like?

Friday dog/cat blogging

Friday dog/cat blogging

Sade had a bath the other day, a task she undertakes with grim resignation.  She doesn't even struggle to get out, she just lays there and lets me soap her up. 

Snookie, on the other hand has a thing about the bathroom.  He loves it.  Whenever I shower he sits on the toilet and waits for me.   I don't know what he's thinking here.  Is he just curious?  Sympathetic?  Sade just let him lick her head.

Happy New Year!

Ok we're back and you're just in time!  It's the New Year's Eve photo-bonanza.  Gil and I took a short roadtrip and we had such a fun time I thought y'all would like to come. 

It's new year's eve and we're hanging out with some friends and watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Forgive the interruptions.

Ok, here we go...

Seeing double

Hey, check it out!  Gil and I took my dog Sade, to the dogpark and there was another dog there who looked just like her and I took this picture!  Can you tell which one is Sade?

Here's a hint:
They both are. 

Click the photo to enlarge before reading further.
See the difference?

When I told the story in this way to my mom, she said incredulously "No way!  The other dog's name was Sade too??"

I had to laugh.  No, mom, the photo's manipulated.  I took two photos of Sade playing with a ball and cut and paste one on top of the other with Photoshop.  It took about two seconds.  It was Gil's idea and even I was impressed with the results.

Photos from last night

I put up some cool photos from last night on Flickr.  Here's us to the left and some friends below.  Click on the photo album to the right to see them.

Halloween dead people

What a handsome corpse he makes! 

Sure comes in handy this time of year to date someone who works in theatre.

Tonight we'll dress up again and go see Dracula, the current play at the local theatre where these duds come from.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

Cat Blog Friday

Cat blog Friday

Cloning

I'll be a true photo geek when I can do something like this with my Canon.

New photos

I've been playing around with this Flickr thing, adding new photos, looking at other people's.  There are some really good photographers out there, some of them professional but others not.  I'm tempted to buy up to the professional level, of course, but it's $23 and it just seems like yet another internet thing for me to spend hours tinkering with.  I have a blog child.  I don't need another internet baby! 

But I'll think about it.  Meanwhile, click on the little photo thing to the left to see my new photos.

Cat blog Friday: Afternoon window gazing

Stray cats

If you stand in GIL's living room and look out his window, this is what you see. 

They're strays and this is just two of them I'm particularly fond of.  And thanks to Operation Catnip, they're all fixed.  The OC operates here out of the university vet school. 

It works like this.  Say you have lots of strays in your neighborhood.  You pay a deposit of $5 for a trap or several traps, you put some food in them and leave them out over night.  In the morning you go see what you got. You take them to the drop off site, come pick them up in the afternoon and let them go.  They cut the tip of the left ear off as a sign that they've been through the process.  They can go on being strays, don't have to be euthanized at the pound but don't contribute to overpopulation.  It's a great program and if you don't have one in your city, well, that's a shame because it's been great here.

These two guys are two of the tamer ones that hang out on the porch.  I sorta want to adopt this grey one because, she's so skinny and little and I think she gets beat up a lot.  I think she'd make a good house cat.

 

Photodocumentary of Saturday night

This is Dave.

This is a drink.

This is Dave with the drinks.

Drink Dave, drink.

[Please Note: The above photodocumentary is entirely fictional and heavily influenced by extreme camera bias (meaning I was the one with the camera in hand and Dave had the misfortune of sitting directly across from me).  It does not accurately reflect true quantities of alcohol consumed or those who consumed them.]

Cat Blog Friday

Now that I have a kitty in my life again I can participate in Cat Blog Friday, a la AliThinks.  Whether the cat thinks this is a a good idea is up for debate.

Sol man

New photo thing

FYI: I signed up for Flickr, that photo sharing service, so y'all can check out some of my best photos.  Just click on that jumpy thing in the sidebar.  I'll always add my new ones there.  The Colombia photo album won't change so it's still off by itself at the bottom.  By the way, I have prints available for sale from $3 photo cards to $6-15 dollar prints with mats, if you really like my photography or just want LWG propaganda in your own home!

Babysitting