Showing posts with label Week 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Week 2. Show all posts

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ode to collaboration 1/15/11

It seems 2011 is not only a year for personal creative expression, but as well as collaboration. So far this year, I've started a book journal blog with Allison, my sister-in-law, and now that I have a sister friend to share my reading life with, I feel sorta, kinda complete. I'll save that revelation for another time.

And coming soon is a collaborated food blog with a very good  friend from high school. Last night we chatted over FB about a proper name. I was going for something that had a good sound to it and easily rolled off the tongue, while she was going for something non-generic. But we agreed that it needed to incorporate both our names. So after a few cups of wine on her part, which both debilitated her tongue's ability to pronounce her suggested name and brought out the French bistro lingo in her, and some serious alliteration contemplation on mine, we finally agreed on a name. I won't divulge it now, but we're both anxious to get the ball rolling. Well, at least I am, but considering her mouth watering food pics on FB lately, I'd say her food brain is all geared up for our food blogging to begin.

That leads me to my next collaboration. Krishnaholdingthings.org. It will be exactly as the title states, and as you see in the picture, an example of Krishnaholdingthings. My good friend Krishna, who I am sure you will all soon fall in love with is goofy, sexy, passionate, audacious, tenacious, loquacious, veracious, intelligent, geeky (note: PVZ apron), nerdy, funny, compassionate, and most pertinent to the blog, adorably humorous. She's also, as the French would call her a raconteuse. A good storyteller. I think it's her robotic ability to remember the most minute of details and absorb information as if a sponge of the sea. But she is human. I assure you. Despite my metaphors, she's not some sort of aquatic robot sponge thingy goddess. Hmmm...or maybe she is...I know her name can be a little deceiving. So integrating her descriptors, her je ne sais quoi with my old school photography skills, we'll both tell stories through pictures of her holding things. Well, ok, they won't be real stories per se, but rather mini-vignettes into the human condition of one who, er, ummm... loves to hold things. Stay tuned...


Side Note: The Plants Versus Zombie apron came from my Popcap schwag rummaging husband.

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ode to phillip 1/14/11

Over the last year and a half I have known Phillip I have taken over a hundred photos of him; I can't help myself, he's got the resolve and interest that I like to photograph. On top of the fact that we always hang out at Bauhaus: a Capitol Hill coffee shop that comes alive under copious amounts of natural light streaming in through large,spacious windows. I think I like this one best. It really illustrates the heart of who he is: stubborn, disciplined, just a *tad* reactionary, and arguably a luddite. I wouldn't say he fears technology, more appreciates the old school way of doing things. These are all characteristics in him that I love, loath, and even relate.

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ode to glasses 1/13/11


My new glasses.
Originally uploaded by Autumn L. Azure
Due to irreparable and self inflicted damage to my glasses, I had to replace them. I really tried to repair my old ones...but I guess super glue really isn't all that super.

I am still pretty much a newbie to glasses, three years, I think. The first time I bought them, I really wanted the look that said, hey, I don't wear glasses, it's an illusion. However, this time around I have acquiesced to them, they are now very much a necessary fact of life as breathing is.

So when I went about searching through the many selections at Lens Crafters on Broadway, I couldn't help but remind myself that this year is not only the year of creative expression, but also nurturing my undeniably nerdy, and very literary existence. Sigh. So my glasses are an extension of myself, rather than a nuisance I'd long to do away.And that's what today's life still is, displaying my true self. Well, as true as an image can make one's self true.

The larger glasses came from Lens Crafters spare pile, buy one pair at full price and you get to rummage (for free!) through their spare pair pile, which includes the irrefutably ugly and fashionably all wrong, and these once were in fashion, but fleetingly. Very fleetingly.

The best I can describe my spare pair, which I'm actually donning at this very moment is Lois Lane -esque. The pair on the right are the ones I paid full price for and a large selling point for me is that they're made from recycled parts and are labeled as eco friendly. It was either these glasses or a pair of another model made by the same company as the eco, Modo, which were not labeled as eco-friendly, but were made in Japan and were the more expensive pair because manufacturing in Japan is apparently not cost-effective.  So the glasses I picked out coincided with my ideas on recycling, but not on my ideas of buying local, or straying away from "Made in China" products. There was a compromise. As there always is.  Because the "eco-friendly" pair donned the sticker "Made in China." Oh the dilemma of the modern-day "aware" consumer. On the bright side, the dilemma did spark an essay idea.

What does it actually mean, in our post post-modern meta-aware world when something says "Made in China?" The signified for me is the ubiquitous sweat shops of Kathy Lee Gifford, which at this point feels like a pretty archaic connection, or maybe not, and the other thing that calls to mind, are the Wal-Mart farms as seen in the 2005 documentary Wal-Mart: The Movie. But have working conditions changed at all in the last decade with these exposed exploitations? Are they better or worse, or the same working conditions? Obviously, it's still  cheap to manufacture in China, but what is the current landscape of these conditions, and the socio-political implications of our unwavering, and desensitized consumerism? Do all Chinese factories have bad working conditions? And if we are aware, and use our dollars to make a stand, when we choose the products we buy, how do we determine what's more important: local or eco? And is corporate and business practice transparency even possible with Capitalist model? And how does one reconcile the fact that "Made in China" or any "Made in [Insert Exploited Cheap Labor Country] feels eminently inescapable?

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ode to that thing called snow 1/12/11

On the rare occasion it snows in our infamously soggy city, it is both a nuisance and a form of rare entertainment. But when all is said and done and everyone is finally home from hours stuck in traffic, or finding creative ways to transform our steep hills into sledding mayhem and as the snow continues to fall, the streets become quiet and still. Almost as if we're a proverbial city with normal amounts of snow, and it isn't a rare phenomenon, but rather a fact of life. So after hours of watching the snow fall from our street level apartment I took a walk at midnight, and came across lonely snowmen, ski tracks, piles of frozen snowballs, and and one or two people with the same idea as me. It reminded me so much of when I lived in Montana and I had to be to work by 7 am, and many mornings I'd walk to work in utter whiteness and silence. Even though it was cold and annoying, I miss those quiet moments of walking through the newly fallen snow and abandoned streets because everyone was still sleeping. Not that I want to go back to that place. I'll take the persistent rain over daily snow storms any day. But sometimes it's nice to have on occasion.

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ode to the sandwich 1/11/11

Why food on this monumentally almost palindromic date? (really it's 11/11/11)  Well, for me I have proclaimed 2011 to be a new year of life, love and creative expression. And what better way to showcase the ultimate creative expression of food than a sandwich? A world wide phenomenon that is as diverse as insects, which in fact happen to be the most diverse organism on earth. And does food not provide sustenance and growth? So this Life Still is a tribute to the awesomeness of not only the sandwich, but to food and all that it can bring.


And because I'm a word nerd, here is an excerpt from the Sandwich's Wiki page on the etymological history of the word Sandwich.   (Notice I made the Sandwich a proper noun and capitalized it? I mean it does have its own Wiki page!)  For those that don't want or have the energy to read the passage, basically it was named after a guy named John who was the fourth earl of Sandwich, and one day he ordered meat between two pieces of bread and because people like to follow people who are of the important elite, they too started to order the Sandwich, by saying "the same as Sandwich!" And for you infovores, here's a link to the timeline of the 4th Earl of Sandwich.



Etymology 

The first written usage of the English word appeared in Edward Gibbon's journal, in longhand, referring to "bits of cold meat" as a 'Sandwich'.[6] It was named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, an 18th-century English aristocrat, although he was neither the inventor nor sustainer of the food. It is said that he ordered his valet to bring him meat tucked between two pieces of bread, and because Montagu also happened to be the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, others began to order "the same as Sandwich!"[3] It is said that Lord Sandwich was fond of this form of food because it allowed him to continue playing cards, particularly cribbage, while eating without getting his cards greasy from eating meat with his bare hands.[3]
The rumour in its familiar form appeared in Pierre-Jean Grosley's Londres (Neichatel, 1770), translated as A Tour to London 1772;[7] Grosley's impressions had been formed during a year in London, 1765. The sober alternative is provided by Sandwich's biographer, N. A. M. Rodger, who suggests Sandwich's commitments to the navy, to politics and the arts mean the first sandwich was more likely to have been consumed at his desk.

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