Lorem Ipsum

When I worked at the university, which was so long ago an entire cohort of students have been and gone, I advised students who published the campus newspapers and journals. In that capacity I familiarized myself with all of the software they used daily. At the time we were using the full Adobe suite of Photoshop, In-Design, and Illustrator. I wasn't entirely proficient in any one of them, but I did enough troubleshooting to be a reliable onsite resource.

One of the things I loved about In-Design, Adobe's publishing program, was this little feature called Placeholder Text. It provided a way for students to create their templates and layouts and then fill them in with dummy text to get a sense of how it would all finally look. I loved the latin words that the program generated. They flowed beautifully on the page without distracting from the essence of layout.

I started thinking about that text the other day, when I realized that neither Roger nor I have very much to say here anymore. I could go into details about why that is, but whatever, it's just so. I googled Filler Text, thinking that I would just find that beautiful latin dummy text and place them here. I would feel quite fine and comfortable having those flowing words up on the blog for a while. Of course google gave much more than I asked for, and isn't that why we all love The Google?

So, here is the grand story of Lorem Ipsum. It's been good dummy text for five hundred years, so I think it could have a bit of a run here as well.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nulla in pede. Aliquam condimentum ultrices massa. In placerat, magna ac consectetuer laoreet, velit lorem sollicitudin elit, in venenatis lorem quam et libero. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Nulla justo dolor, posuere eu, laoreet vitae, imperdiet a, tellus. Proin tempor interdum augue. Integer posuere. Phasellus nec quam vitae turpis mollis vestibulum. Morbi ac elit. Suspendisse potenti. Suspendisse viverra eros porttitor urna. Etiam imperdiet vulputate sapien. Integer ullamcorper felis. Duis pretium blandit justo. Suspendisse eget odio.

Nunc aliquet tristique est. Integer odio nibh, interdum vel, fermentum ac, congue et, est. Fusce sollicitudin, diam nec pellentesque pellentesque, dolor augue suscipit turpis, vitae imperdiet orci magna at nunc. Morbi augue sem, consectetuer sed, scelerisque vitae, elementum vestibulum, sapien. Cras purus turpis, congue a, pharetra tempus, tempus sollicitudin, lacus. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Fusce leo tellus, luctus at, venenatis eget, condimentum posuere, sem. Vivamus vel erat non pede vestibulum tempor. Pellentesque venenatis consectetuer massa. Nam enim metus, iaculis pellentesque, auctor a, luctus et, eros.

Until we return, I wanted to share the above pic I took the other day. I loved the Jungian aspect of shadow, self, and reflection; the way all three meet in an existential kiss; and how water, sun, and sand create this triptych of being.

Stay tuned for more Lorem Ipsum and photos in the future.

The More Things Change...

just like clockwork
mused the blind watchmaker
when the migrators returned

The New Dawn of Leadership Is At Hand

PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA!

West Coast Lady

How lucky to have photographed this West Coast Lady (Vanessa annabella) on Sunday, our first day back at the coast after our long journey south. So much can transpire in such a short amount of time. Realizations about age and life, about strength and desire, about expectations and disappointments. Against the backdrop of one of the most important elections of several generations, we confront the personal, the smallest facets of what it means to be human, to grow old, to have to summon from one's deepest reserves the simplest energy to merely go on.

Beautiful West Coast Lady, when I see of you, I think of my mother who started life as an east coast lady, but who now lives here on the edge of time before it shifts to tomorrow, in shades of light and darkness that shape everything. I look at your beautiful wings and remember the bad knee on her good leg that must support the shattered ankle on the bad. So much pain. Is this how all things must finally go?

On Halloween in Leisure World, the gated retirement community where my mother lives, the retired gatekeepers were dressed as a nun and the good witch of the north. The good witch waved her wand and said, "Welcome to the Land of Oz."

Then she said, "No, really this is the land of Was."

Yes.

It is the Land of Was.

For a moment I thought of all the graveyards and of all the ashes scattered in the four directions-- all those artificial hips and artificial knees that promised everything, but most importantly, a future.

We left my mother in the kind, capable, and good hands of Nening, a woman from the Philippines, who in her own country was a civil engineer. We interviewed four home care agencies before we found this gentle, caring woman. When she came into my mother's bedroom, she and my mother hugged right away. It was the sign we were waiting for.

We're trying to figure out what it means to be human. No culture, no community, no history. We make it up as we go along. There are no reality TV shows about this. We are all that there is.

ON TUESDAY PLEASE GO VOTE.

OBAMA!