Politicking is elementary

One of the local elementary schools, Princeton Alternative, decided to throw its own national political convention. The fifth graders had apparently organized the whole thing, facilitated by one of their social studies teachers. They went through the whole shebang: voter registration, campaigning, casting ballots and then ended up with the political convention.

Yep, John McCain is actually a 10-year-old African-American kid from Birmingham. Weird how things work out, huh?Obama takes a wave while his commercial plays.
Does the other Nancy Pelosi use a stepstool? Nah, she's not cool enough. Or short enough.
Pretty intense stuff. I've seen adults with less enthusiasm for their democratic rights.

Cans! And more portraits!

One of the local high schools does a can drive every year during homecoming week -- it used to be a big competition between them and their rivals, but now it's downgraded to just a competition between homerooms and school clubs. They overshot their initial goal of 30,000 cans, and managed to hit somewhere in the range of 37,000, so the three charity groups that got to split the collection of canned goodness were quite happy. Dat's a lotta cans.

_____

Okay, I won't claim to know how to evaluate art. I'm curious about the subject, I'd like to learn and what not, but it's just not happening at the moment. It especially catches my ear when the words "controversial" or "possibly blasphemous" come into play. So when I got told to head out and shoot the artist of a "controversial" religious artist who specializes in surrealism, I thought, "cool." Honestly, though, it wasn't that bad. Maybe my sense of controversial is a little more extreme, or maybe the folks at the gallery at a little ... thinner skinned ...? Anyway, the artists showed up after a while, reminded me a lot of one of my old roommates, and things went pretty quickly and comfortably.

The last one was just playing around with a very white bench they had in the gallery. I really wanted a honeycomb or snoot or something on my flash to narrow the light, but I've yet to cannibalize any of the collected cardboard junk at my apartment into something sufficient. Soon, however -- soon. And all my problems will be solved.

Ha, okay ...

EDIT: Oh, and points to the person who can identify the roommate this guy reminded me of -- you'd have to have known me for a good while.

Jeeeez

Been a while, I know. Things have been decently busy, and I just haven't found the time to update this blog in the past week or so. The following portraits ran this morning, and I remembered that I wanted to post a couple since I kind of liked them. Little short on words at the moment because I'm a tad tired, and not looking forward to being up and mobile at five tomorrow. Between last Saturday night (if you have to ask, you don't need to know) and tonight, "miscommunication" has proven itself to be a massive, painful, ubiquitous issue that may well be the root of all evil and all the stress and unhappiness that fills the world. But, right now, "miscommunication" just means that I have to be up and across town at Lipscomb City Hall at 6 AM. Fun.

Anyway, portraits of the outgoing mayor of Vestavia Hills, a very nice and learned gentleman named Charles McCallum ...

For those crazy monkeys (no, the plural of monkey has no -ies; yes, I had to check) who may be interested, the first was shot on a pleasantly rainy/nastily foggy Friday morning, and the second and third shot within seconds of each other on a rather nice Monday afternoon. Though I personally love the rain, and would love to spendy such days splashing through puddles and running around like a madman with no umbrella, most people find it rather depressing, and I got the feeling that depressing was not the emotion we wanted to evoke with this here fella, especially after meeting and talking with him. Thus the reschedule.

I added the third to the set ... because I like things to come in threes? Well, I guess it was because I didn't know which I liked better, though the differences are all pretty subtle. Subtle to the point where I can't remember which of the two they ran. Anyway.

Tired, gotta go get some suppa, snag a showa, and catch some zzz-s.

Racing gurneys, a kayaker, and erotic still life

To begin: UAB has a traditional Gurney Derby during their homecoming week wherein teams of students from all the different schools run with gurneys down a track and compete for best time. It's all done in costume with a mannequin or some kind of set up as a "patient." Pretty fun, or at least it appeared so. Also, funny note: the team that won was the group from the business school. _____

Walking into work last Tuesday, I was almost immediately called over to the Ed's desk and reassigned to chase Ardie Olson down the Coosa River. The Alabama Scenic River Trail opened up last month (someone should fact check that because I can't rightly remember at the moment), and Ardie is trying to run it in two weeks. That's 631 miles of river, by the way, in a 20 foot kayak. He's actually from Cumming, GA, and does stuff like participate in the world's longest mountain bike race. Kudos and whatnot. Nice guy.

He works as an office manager for his wife, who is a lawyer. Apparently, he gets quite a bit of time off. The geeky coolness factor of his trip was that anyone who wanted to could track his progress via something called "Spot" online. His life jacket was equipped with a GPS tracking unit that sent out updates every ten minutes or so. Pretty nifty.

Pretty soon, parents will be able to subdermally implant these on their kids while they sleep. And we all thought we had it bad.
_____

And erotic still life. Okay, it's not really erotic, it's actually medical. Back in the day, and by "day" I mean the Ming Dynasty, Chinese physicians weren't allowed to touch or even see upper class female patients, so these dolls were made to help the doc make a prognosis. He would take the doll, pass it through to the woman, she'd mark the place of pain/injury, and pass it back. Based on this, the pulse he was allowed to take from an outstretched wrist, and, I'm guessing, pure dumb luck, he was supposed to make his diagnosis.

You know, I was all set up to have someone pose for me in the same, ahem, attire, but this is still as close as I've gotten. Ah, well, sigh ...

Ciao.

Urban Farm Interning

From my last Infocus bit -- not as "there" as the ballerina one. I'm hoping to find (in the next couple days) a church with a youth pastor or younger preacher types for the next one.

The Old Firehouse Shelter

This was the bit on the homeless shelters running at or above capacity over the past couple months. It didn't work out visually as some of the other people at the paper thought it would, but they still ran three photos.

They ran this on the front because, apparently, the editors do not want to run a photo of a homeless man on the front page.

Guests visit the clothes closet for new clothes.

Louis and Francisco prepare for a meal.

Lunch time at the shelter.

Another one they ran in the paper -- I think they just didn't want any faces.

Francisco settles back for a cup of soup after serving the other guests.

A guest makes his bed on a mattress on the floor of the Old Firehouse Shelter. Though they have beds for 50 guests, the shelter has spare mattresses for nights when they run over capacity.

The kitchen crew were really nice guys, very welcoming, and everyone else was pretty tolerant. Some of them didn't want their photo taken, and would duck or turn away or cover their faces. Most of them didn't care too much, though.

Ciao, y'all.

Whilst we wait ...

Waiting for the ever laggy server to load my gallery pages, so I thought I might go ahead and post some more backlogged shtuffs. I got a call from a gentleman last week and ended up at a chess tournament the following Saturday ... soo ... here's some photos ... Chess may be a game of intense concentration and intellect, but sometimes even the intellectual and focused get the desire to draw faces on inanimate objects.

Cheers till later!

Running through this

Almost time for me to bust out, but here's some stuff from the Great American Cross Country Festival that happened last Saturday in Hoover.

Outta here, post more later, take it easy.

And ciao ...