unbillable hours

UPDATE ON PICTURE ENVY

While I have gotten submissions to Picture Envy, I'd like to get more. So, I'm extending the deadline to 12 AM Monday. Please submit any pictures, photo tips, essays/debates on photography to tpb3jd "at" att.net, along with the appropriate hyperlinks, and I'll post them here. It's a great way to get publicity for your work (or the work of others), and it's also a great way to encourage people to take part in an artistic medium that is incredibly egalitarian.

I'll open up the discussion to anyone, for example, that wants to talk about the the cleaning and maintenance of SLR cameras. I have to get the dust cleaned out of mine.

STANDING IN THE CORNER, WAITING FOR THE END

The Ruins of John Ringling's Mansion, Palisades Interstate Park, somewhere between Alpine, New Jersey, and Nyack, New York (May 30, 2004).

I came across this during a hike over Memorial Day weekend. I was up on the Palisades, the long line of granite cliffs that border the Hudson River. I had read about Ringling's estate on the Hudson, and that it was a fixture of the Weird New Jersey crowd.

I stopped at an overhand that looked down upon Yonkers, New York, and strapped on my Mountainsmith lumbar pack and my olive drab Tamrac camera bag. I started the hike amidst bus driven urbanite onlookers who had, strangely (to me), driven out of the city only to stop and find the first scenic overlook that looked back upon the city. I lost them quickly, though, when I entered the tree covered paths that went from asphalt, to gravel, to mud.

After about forty-five minutes of hiking, I came upon the ruins of Ringling's estate. Ringling was best known for his circus, the Ringling Bros. Circus, which later merged with the circus run by P.T. Barnum, America's greatest con man. His mansion must have been a gothic structure, constructed of large granite stones and wide beams. I took a few steps off the trail into the densly covered brush, searching with my boot until I found the lip of the marble stairs that ran down to the first floor of the mansion.

It was cool in the stone ruins of the mansion. Protected from the sun, the rooms had the clammy feel of a cave. In the center of the largest room on the first floor, someone had left the ashes of a small campfire. I doubted it was the product of campers; more likely, a derelict had been living there.

It wasn't until I turned the darkened corner and noticed the two makeshift altars that I reconsidered who might use the site. Both had food sacrifices on them - one had what appeared to be some sort of sweet bread, the other appeared to have chicken - along with thoroughly used candles. Both faced 14 degrees off east, which meant someone had likely set them up with an understanding of declination.

Both scared the hell out of me.

I swung back to the main room. Behind a slightly collapsed wall was a rubble pile and graffiti, most in English, although some was of unknown origin. Behind the smaller of the two altars was a stairwell that led up to a second floor. I made it halfway up the stairwell to where I could peer onto the second floor. There were food piles and evidence of further sacrifice-type uses of food in various corners. I decided to stay on the stairwell instead of moving onto the second floor. After a few moments of consideration, I decided that I would simply leave. Everything about the place gave me the sort of uncomfortable feeling sought in The Blair Witch Project. Plus, the chicken on the altar looked fresh.

Santaria, I assume. I'm going to leave it in the "I don't really need to have someone explain this one to me" list of things I don't know, much like the Welsh language.

The remainder of the hike was uneventful. Beautiful scenery, and a nice lodge just south of the New York border, made for a good long day hike.

ON OEDIPUS THE KING

Sophocles' play has served modern man and his haunted sense of being caught in a trap not only as a base for a psychoanalytic theory which dooms the male infant to guilt and anxiety from his mother's breast, but also as the model for a modern drama that presents to us, using ancient figures, our own terror of the unknown future which we fear we cannot control – our deep fear that every step we take forward on what we think is the road of progress may really be a step toward a foreordained rendezvous with disaster.

Bernard Knox, in his introduction to Oedipus The King, in Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays, 133 (Fagles trans., 1984 ed.).

I've decided to go back and read Oedipus Rex. I can't recall how many times I have read the play, but I was struck by the way Oedipus really reflects the notion of a man's struggle against an imposition of identity upon him better than most other works have done (i.e., Steppenwolf, Richard II, Deconstructing Harry, etc.). Plus, it has been far too long since I've read the Greeks and Romans, and I'm beginning to miss them.

This particular translation is by Robert Fagles, who took a much less formal view to translation than Bernard Knox (who introduces Fagles) or Robert Fitzgerald (the three kings of Greek translation). When I picked up The Three Theban Plays, I had the pleasure of comparing all three translations.[1] Fagles' translation seems the most tied to how modern language works (which makes sense, as his translation appears to be more recent than Knox or Fitzgerald).

Footnotes
1. The three translations in question, can be found by following these links below:

The Fitzgerald Translation

The Fagles Translation

The Knox Translation

Your Weekly Dose of Picture Envy

Since, this summer, I feel more focused on photography than other seasons (I'll probably get back to writing later, but I'm just having a lot of fun with the camera), I think I'm going to start a list of photos on other blogs that are great. Consider it a sort of "Carnival of the Vanities" for photographers. So, if you'd want to submit photos to what I hope to maintain as a weekly dose of picture envy, let me know.

Rules for Picture Envy (because I'm a lawyer, and need rules):

1. All submissions must be made by 12 AM, Sunday. Anything after that will not be considered. I plan on doing this over the weekend, so I can't spend my entire day waiting for links.

2. When you send me the link, please give me (a) the permalink to the picture itself, (b) the general link to the blog/photoblog/website, (c) the title and, if you so choose, any pertinent information about the picture, and (d) the title of the website., and (e) if you have a website, the appropriate link to that location (update added 6/9/04).

3. Photo tips are accepted and encouraged. If you want to submit a link to a post of your explanation of how to, say, use the zoom lens to create tracer lines. See, e.g., Meg Forbes, Zooming on the Eye
.

4. I'm going to do my best to post Picture Envy each Monday, with Monday, June 14, 2004 being the first Picture Envy Monday. Note that I said "do my best." There are going to be weeks where I may need some help in doing so, either by way of a guest host or by a rotating hosting schedule.

5. This list of rules is malleable and may change based on suggestions from you or from ideas that spring, fully formed, from my head. I look forward to your thoughts on it.

Palisades Interstate Park, Alpine, New Jersey (May 30, 2004).

"I am a golden god!"

According to new research commissioned by Penguin Books, men who are seen reading a book are more attractive to the opposite sex....

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | You couldn't make it up

Via Blog of a Bookslut.

On Petrarch

"I am a citizen of no place, everywhere I am a stranger," declared the poet, scholar and man of letters Francesco Petrarch, making explicit that sense of alienation and angst that later was to win him the title of "the first modern man."

IHT: Petrarch, the first humanist

ORDER OF THE DAY

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security to yourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have in­flicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tidehas turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Al­mighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, Operation Overlord, Order of the Day (Jun. 6, 1944).

We like Fridays.

Update: I'd like to point out that this picture becomes much more funny if you can imagine Boris dancing to Duran Duran's The Reflex, which I've got queued up in the MP3 player at present. Awesome.