This is a photo I took last spring of my buddy, Rick, and his little boy, Wyatt. Rick's now over somewhere in Kuwait, armoring up his Humvee.
Destination: Kirkuk
New Look
I've had a little time while I'm waiting for a neighbor to come over and help me assess how to hook up this gas dryer I bought nearly a month ago, so I fiddled a little with my blog stylesheet and put on an image I've been working with for months.
That makes everything sound really planned out, which it really hasn't been.
What did happen is this: I was having a long conversation in the parking lot of a record shop with some old guys who were bitching about how there's no good bakery in Cedar City. I turned and noticed this one light in the parking lot of the local beauty college, and I said to myself, "That's the banner image for toddpetersen.org. I've bought the url, now I need to do something real with it."
So I went back and shot the picture with my Canon G5 on a tripod, and the rest is history.
My huge audience can rest assured that I'll be back in action a little more lately, since I'm aching for any excuse in the world to not grade essays. Who knows how long I'll be up and rolling because the good news around here is "no comp for at least a year." I've been dreaming for this.
There is a god.
The Loneliest Man
This is a photo of Eric Soledad, who spent five years in the Utah State Correctional System for gang activities related to the stealing of a gumball machine.
Eric lives next door to my friends Paula and Pablo Airth in Ogden, UT. I saw him shirtlessly mowing the lawn with his father in mid-October. They looked like they were having a blast.
But as soon as I realized that someone actually had "lonely" carefully tatooed across the entire beam of his shoulders, I went straight for my relatively new Canon G5. (I told my wife that this was exactly why I needed such an expensive tool/toy.)
As soon as I gathered the camera up, I stalled out, sitting on the front porch, fingering the lens cap, trying to figure out some approach that wouldn't end up with my seeming like a patronizing middle class liberal.
This is one of the great problems of photography: trying to convince someone to let you "turn them into art." If people think you're going to be ironic, then they're not going to put up with you and your expensive cameras and your "refined" visual sensibilities.
I ended up getting Pablo to break the ice.
Eric was more than willing to discuss his ink, which was more involved than the "lonely." It told an entire narrative of his former gang affiliations and incarceration. But when we got down to it, his back was really the piece de la resistance. But he did ask what it was for. My answer was kind of lame, but maybe not.
"I just like to record all the cool things I see." Then I added, "I teach intro to photography," which seemed to help.
Ultimately we got down to brass tacks. "Why lonely?" I asked.
"My name's Soledad," he said. "That's Spanish for lonely."
Right. Dumb question, Dr. Petersen.
Freedom of Speech
Obviously this doesn't exist. I've just finished a series of conversations centered around this concept. It's really frustrating since I've been having these conversations at a university.
Friends of mine who work for universities are now laughing.
Kissinger was right: academic politics are so spiteful because there is so little at stake.
Some back story: administration at my university have found it important to kibosh a number of things this year: picture of a condom on a banana in the school paper, some plays (Chorus Line, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Vagina Monologues), and honest and legitimate discussion of pornography.
But...
Rather than address the issues, the "debate" has been reduced to "axis of evil" level discussion and a bunch of name calling.
As a result, I think I'm going to put my name to my first open letter, which I'll reprint here.
Entering the Fray
I've been hesitating. I mean really hesitating. For the same reason I found it so difficult to make myself rush out to see Pulp Fiction, I find it equally difficult to rush into blogging: I am skeptical of hype. I mean really sort of afraid of it.
A few good blogs have shown me that this can be not only cool but perhaps interesting.
Now the age-old question: what to write?