THIS Rhett Butler Will Never Die

this is a pretty amazing image, if i do say so myself! it is a collage of over 300 images compiled by using the new collage feature of Picasa 3, available for free download by The Google Company. this is a miniaturized version, viewable on your computer screen. the original, printable size is 71 x 44 inches!! the time it took to compile this image was nearly 20 min on my nearly 4 year old Sony Vaio desktop. And these are my unedited photos too. i just threw this together on a whim to see if the program and my computer could handle generating such a massive image.

Sometimes you don't know who or what you are until someone else shows you. I've been doing this "Cemetery Girl" photo project for over a year now and I've worked with close to 50 different models but it has been a rare moment when I've been caught in action. This photo was taken by photographer friend Rachel Stanich (who I met at DVC 2 years ago) when I was doing the "Maggie and Elizabeth - Cemetery Girls" shoot in, I think, January of this year.

This video was posted by Zoe Keating yesterday on her Facebook page. I urge you to take the time to get quiet in your head and your day and watch and listen to her perform. She is one of the most amazing one-woman performing shows in the world. I'm crossing my fingers that she and I will be doing a photo shoot together next month after she returns home from her current European tour. I approached her about 6 weeks ago via a letter at her MySpace page and she was very enthusiastic about the idea of becoming one of my "Cemetery Girls". Stay tuned as I'll let you know when we confirm a date.

gonna ramble a bit, get some thoughts out, get my thinker tinkering again... ideas, feelings, words to create puzzles that draw pictures to solve the questions that plague our lack of true understanding. that's what it all is anyway, right? miasmic boilings under the crust of our skulls where our imaginations forge futures and disassemble the confusions of our pasts. well i can ramble like this for a very long time without making a very edible alphabet soup. so i will stop the bs and talk about what is really going on. i turned 50 almost 2 months ago, and boy has there been a change. all this past year leading up to my Big 5-0 i had been celebrating youth. not in the sense that my youth was ending but in a celebration of actually living 50 years long. that celebration culminated in fantastic celebrations with friends on 3 different days. the celebration of my birth this year was the most memorable and enjoyable i've had in decades. maybe even the best birthday ever. since then ...

These photos are from 2 weekends ago. I got together with two old, high school friends to hang out for the day. We were acknowledging the fact that we were all still alive to turn 50 years old. I've been best friends with both of these guys, individually, and they too were best friends together. I've stayed in touch with Thor the most over the years with there only being short gaps of time in the late 80's/early 90's when we lost contact. Heffner on the other hand, I was out of touch with longer, only re-finding him about 5 years ago thanks to the internet. We are very different in our lives in many ways, yet there are many, many ways in which we are still very similar. The thing that counts is that I still enjoy their company and find them easy to talk to. Heffner and I live nearby and see each other about once a week. Thor on the other hand lives in the southland and I only get to see him about once a year. We always have some kind of adventure together. Ok, that'...

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I've been aware of and have been participating in National Novel Writing Month, respectfully recognized as NANOWRIMO by the tens of thousands that also participate during the month of November each year, since 2004. I've only reached the goal of completing a 50,000 word novel once so far, but I find this project to be the most inspirational exercise to actually get me serious about writing out there. I'm geared up to participate this year too and hope to make many new friends in the process. Write On, everybody!

Today is the anniversary of my father's birth, October 5, 1932. He would be 76 years old if he were still alive, but get this. He died 39 years ago. I am 14 years older than he was when he died. So many things to wonder about. I miss him and I'm sad that he has not been here to live life with. When I think about the things that my son and I have been able to do together in my life, and that I didn't get to have half as much fun with my father, it makes me sad. So I guess my point in saying this is if your parents are still alive, find some way to treasure that. We all will fade from the surface of this world and it will be a surprise when it happens. Listening to Johnny Cash today in dad's memory; that is one of my strongest memories of him, his love for country music. oh, and in this photo he was 16 years old.