This is my project in the form of a poem

"Becoming the Whole"

Koyaanisqatsi, life out of balance…

This Castle is crumblin' as I'm sippin' from my Chalice

Alas I'm just a King when I thought I was a God

Alas I'm just a Man when I thought I was a King

Alas I'm but a Boy when I thought I was a man, damn…

I used to use my hand, as if it was God's

But these puppets are alive and have broken their string

Cause I tried to make war, but the war made me

See, the war that I waged is a reflection of me

Koyaanisqatsi, life out of balance

These lips of mine have touched the liquid malice

Creatures I see as kin have helped in my demise

They want to be the ruler, and I will not suffice

Vicariously they cannot live through my eyes

So, this castle that I've built is Doomed to Fall

With pillars like toothpicks-- Oh how they perished

Setting flame to my thrown, I know now I'm an embarrassment

For Nature runs me; I couldn't run nature

Now I stand looking through the glass

Of my dilapidating Palace

And I scream, knowing no one will hear me

Here I stand apart from the rest

But once the beating ceases in my chest

I will be consumed by the flame, and covered by the rubble

Ultimately I will be one with the Others

Casa Batllo

I am in Barcelona for Christmas break and I just got back from Antoni Gaudi's Casa Batllo, which I must say is one of the most beautiful and unbelievable work of architecture I've ever seen. As with all of Gaudi's works, the symbolic universe and resemblance to places and objects in nature were ever present in his undertakings and Casa Batllo was no exception to the rule. WIth curved shapes and of a characteristic cobalt blue color, the Battlo family's property was clearly inspired by the ocean and in years to follow, these organic shapes created by Gaudi would influence new trends in modern art. The elements and spaces throughout the house evoke the marine-like universe typical of Gaudi. The entire structure was built to feel like you are in something alive. The outside of the building is called the facade and looks like a choppy sea. The first room we walked into had a sweeping staircase with the railing designed to look like a dragon's backbone. The lateral terminations of the staircase, carved from wood, are like the vertebras of the spinal column. The dragon represents Saint George's slaying of the dragon. The windows looked like tortoise shells and the walls looked like fish scales. This room was designed with no edges and completely curved formed to give the feeling like you are under the sea. Each room has a sky light to allow natural lighting in. He believed that architecture and light went hand in hand. The lighting fixtures all look like sea urchins and the ceiling moldings look like eddies (sea currents). The main room's undulating ceiling swirls as if it were a whirl pool. Curved and spiralling forms decorate some of the doors and the walls.

Walmart hates the environment

I would like to start by saying that I genuinely hate Walmart. I accompanied my friend there the other day and I was absolutely disturbed by what I witnessed. I always make a conscious effort to not use any sort of bags when I go to the store, especially plastic bags. My friend bought three things. The clueless woman at the cash register double bagged each item, separately, in plastic bags. SIX plastic bags for THREE items!? Why do people abuse plastic and act as if it's not valuable? The amount of pollution we create with our excessive use of plastic bags is catastrophic. I almost made a scene so my friend decided to put a few of the bags back. I started thinking about how if this lady gave my friend six bags for three things, and considering the amount of people shop at a Walmart per day, and considering the amount of Walmarts there are in the world, Walmart must go through MILLIONS of plastic bags each week, or maybe even each day. For no reason!! Why don't they even offer paper bags? It's truly disgusting. Someone should do a research project on the amount of plastic bags a Walmart goes through in one day.

I was venting to my english friend about this and he said that in England lots of stores charge people 10 cents per bag. Because of this, his family has the good habit of bringing reusable bags to shop - not necessarily because they are trying to protect the environment, but because they find it a waste of money to take bags from stores. I think that this is exactly what America needs. It's clear that a majority of people aren't interested in protecting the environment, or at least changing their convenient habits to protect it, but people are definitely interested in saving money. If we charged people for each bag used, then people would definitely make a more conscious effort to bring their own bags. Regardless of intentions, one bag less is one bag less.

Nobs: More than just a bike shop- Final Post

The environment that I chose to study was a local bike shop. It was quite a tedious process in even finding a place to do my project. The first place that I went to the owner told me he was not too keen on the idea. When this didn't work I ended up calling up some other places around. I thought I was going to be out of luck and decided that my best option would be to just go in person. This is what I did for the place I eventually ended up--Nobs. Nobs is a small shop that is located on Oak St. about a block off of South Carrolton.

In my process of trying to find a bike shop I was able to get a sense of the differences of set-up. Nobs is a unique environment in and of itself. What makes this environment so unique is a combination of things: Service, business practice, and location. But it all comes together because of one guy, John Melton, the owner who opened the establishment in 1998. According to John, his shop has gone through a lot of changes to become what it is today. I wanted to find out what made his shop unique; so that is exactly what I set out to do. What I ended up with was an interesting insight into the bike world, an idea of what makes a small bike shop what it is, and how an independent owner must be at least energetic, creative, flexible, and personable.

To do this I asked John a bunch of questions and got a feel for what his day to day working environment was here at Nobs.

John Melton is from Baton Rouge originally and told me when he started Nobs he did so with one thing in mind, to be able to provide something that the internet cannot, and provide "American labor". John also told me that everything in the business world is changing and if he had not been able to change with it and keep up with the now that his business would not exist now. So I asked him, "How did you start working on bikes?" He moved to New Orleans with the idea to open a shop. At the time he said Oak St. was nothing like the place that it is today. There wasn't very many businesses and didn't have the almost outdoor walking mall feel. He said that he saw the potential of the area to grow into this and this is what motivated choosing the location of Nobs. When he opened the store he said that he bought the store incredibly cheap and that people thought he was crazy in his idea of trying to open up a store here. This is why he says that if he wasn't able to change his business plan and keep up with the now Nobs would not have been able to survive. He started it out as a board sports store and that this wasn't working out how he intended. He had to change from selling what he called soft goods to hard goods. This is how he incorporated bikes and bike repair into his shop which is primarily his business now.

John's interest in sports has always been apart of his life, at the age of 13 he started to race bmx and has always had an interest in bicycles and knowledge of how to work on them so the transition to selling bicycles and repairing them came easily. The mechanics of bikes have relatively stayed the same over time. Nobs, he said, now makes products instead of just selling products. Initially his business plan was selling T-shirts, shoes, skateboards and that he had to change this.

I asked him how being a smaller shop compares to other larger companies. Larger companies he said sell directly to the consumer and what he does is more service oriented. It is a completely different angle, he sees himself as being "your mechanic". He is the only one in his store that works on the bikes. About two years ago, as his customer base grew, he hired a secretary to keep up with paperwork and help him keep work orders organized.

I noticed this over my time here as almost everyone who came into his shop knew him on a personal level. They seemed like regulars for every bike need. Nobs is unique in the sense that they do not over advertise, and builds from scratch. John stated that he is, "building a product while offering a service."

All of the bikes there that he sells all looked different and are in every style from road bikes to beach cruisers. This includes a custom bike that he made called a "swing bike" that has two frames connected in the middle that swivel and allow the bike to stand on its own without a kickstand.

There were very few "new" bikes for sale there. I asked him if he just fixed bikes and how he feels his store compares to larger places. He establishes his customer base in a variety of ways. People will bring in their old bikes to get fixed and many times will not like the price that he is going to charge them to fix it, that they would rather spend a hundred dollars or so to get an entirely new bicycle. John maintains an ambiguity about this. He told me that he utilizes what he has to and has no problem with other companies or with people doing this. When people tell him this then he asks them what they would like to do with their old bike and many times they do not want them anymore and so he will buy these broken bikes for 10 or 20 dollars from them or just be given them. What he does is use the parts from these old bikes to completely build a new bike altogether by piecing them together. This is unique because he said that within the bike world every bike has completely different sizes of all the parts so you must accustom yourself with these differences in order to build the new bikes. He recycles all of the parts and builds each bike from scratch. For some parts the he needs he will go to other bike shops or the internet in order to get the part and complete the new bike.

After he spoke about how the business world is constantly changing, I asked him what he sees as the future of the bicycle world and for his shop.

Within the future of the bicycle world John told me that there seems to be growing opurtunity for electric bicycles. I was unaware of electric bikes existing and told him about how I once tried to do a project of attaching a 1-hp motor to a bicycle before and that I have been seeing alot of those recently and what the future for these may be in comparison. The way that he sees it is that we seem to be trying to move away from fossil fuels and that that is what will hinder growth in this market. The new electric bikes are being produced with the idea of replacing your car as a mode of transportation. There is a company called Torker Bicycles that is selling these bicycles and that they can go about forty miles on their battery charge.

The new bikes are very sleek, when I looked at the pamphlet I would not have been able to tell they were electric if he hadn't told me. The only part of the bikes that show this is a large Lithium-Ion battery pack that rests parralel to the ground above the rear tire. The bikes come in many styles as well.

John told me that he has incorporated these bikes into his shop and I asked him if he had to learn how to work on these in order to do this. The bikes, he said, mechanically are almost entirely the same, the electric bikes have just a small number of parts added that make them electric. What he has to do to work on them is not much different that other bikes because if these parts break or need fixing that it is more like either they work or they don't, all the electric parts are replaceable. These new electric bikes are incredibly reliable though.

As for the bike world there seems to be a trend to revert to simplicity, that less is more. In relation to this John pointed out a line of bicycles that is strictly produced in New Orleans as of right now, the brand is called Virture and is very "old school". There is a single gear and they resemble a road bike because of the frame and handle bars. These bikes are good bikes for the city he told me.
All of these elements (e.g. flexibility, smart business strategy, management, customer-oriented service, and just plain guts) come together and make Nobs the place that it is, doing what other bike places do but in a completely unique way that makes Nobs one of a kind.

Welcome to Oceana, home of the famous crab cakes. Come in and meet our jumbo-sized owners from Lebanon. Maybe eat some gumbo.
I've been working at Oceana since mid-august and if there's one thing for sure, its that this environment is warped. First things first, it's all about the money. The more food you sell, the more secure your job is that week. Money money money. Every day before the shift we sit down and have a pre-shift where the staff chows down and the manager gives us the day's spiel. Usually something along the lines of sell this drink, tell people to add crawfish to this so they spend more money. So when I talk to a table, its a mind game. I'm trying to subversively get them to spend more than they intended to. Guys out on a date-easy money. Gotta point out something shiny to the girl and then watch him buy it for her. Usually I mention a 9 dollar drink with Malibu Coconut Rum and thats that. And the prices. Geez. $9.50 for a Hurricane and its only got one shot in it. And people buy it and smile because they're in New Orleans for a short period of time and fuck it they may as well enjoy it. And that's my job. Spot the disposable income and then rope it in, all while providing a "New Orleans" atmosphere.
All along the walls of work there are paintings like the one on the left portraying a very watered down and almost forced New Orleans vibe. Ooh we got fat cajuns wearin lipstick and makin file gumbo. Step right up. Most of our business is tourists from hotels and business conventions. Many of the people I wait on have never been to New Orleans and they just eat it all up. It's a very cleverly crafted environment, in which multitudes of people are fed satisfactorily, all spending well over the cost to make the food/drinks. Where does this money go? Large Lebanese men.

The environment of this restaurant is very different depending on whether you're a customer or a waiter. As a customer, you are given red carpet treatment. Ease of flow, relaxing music, friendly smiling faces projecting this sense of welcomeness because they'll be fired if they don't. Do we actually care that you're here? No. Sorry, its just that there's hundreds just like you every day. We greet people quick, plant some drink ideas, and then they eat some delicious food and disappear, hopefully leaving a nice tip. Interesting, the tip. The tip ensures that the waiter does a good job, it's the tables little spur with which to prompt you. Better suck up, man. You better suck up or you aint gettin paid today.
As the waiter, its a different atmosphere completely. You are at the command of random people that walk in. All night, random people that walk in off the street are your commander for short periods of time. Sometime's they're friendly and warm. Sometime's they're fucking dictators. It's a game of timing. Making sure at every moment the people are occupied with some kind of consumption because they get angry when they aren't.
Then you have the managers and owners to deal with. Some hard cases here. One fine day, during pre-shift, the manager was reading off numbers for a convention that was in town, and a couple new-hires in the back were chuckling at something. One of the owners, Rami, walked by and overheard this. He fired both of them on the spot because they were disrespecting his manager. Another day, someone came in with a very wrinkled shirt. Rami took the shirt to the grill, burned it, and then told the server he'd have to pay $100.00 for another shirt if he wanted to work that night. Also, we are banned from the bar next door(we get fired if we enter) because they're owner apparently angered our owners. These couple of men have total control in this environment. Whatever they want goes. If you so much as slip a little bit in front of one your fucked. Probably. Sometimes you get lucky.

Now it probably sounds like I'm being negative, which I am, I guess. As warped as this environment is, it does provide me with an excellent means of supporting myself. They advertise so heavily that the resturaunt always has business and it's usually wealthy business. They are very understanding of my being in school and give me whatever schedule I request. Also, I was fired a couple of weeks ago and upon sitting the owner down and talking to him I was able to get my job back. So I owe these guys one, corrupt, greedy, and large as they may be.

Adrenaline

Today's society is one of constant accessibility. Anything that we could think to want is a mouse-click away. Food and shelter are almost a complete given in this country, and those who can't afford that can still survive by begging. So what's missing? In past times, when people had to hunt for food and a failed hunt could mean death, there were more natural instances in which the hunter would use adrenaline. Now that we have, for the most part, eliminated survival as an active day to day issue, there is very little need for us to tap into our adrenaline.
This makes me wonder if that's why people participate in extreme sports like skydiving or rock climbing, so that they can have their adrenaline fix. I went skydiving a month ago and couldn't help thinking what a strange environment/human behavior it was. We are so depraved of the rush of life, we have to leap out of the sky to satisfy it.

This is a test

Because TV says so.

Stumbled upon this picture.  What do you guys think?

something to ponder..

I found this on EcoFirms.org which is a website dedicated to linking environmentally friendly companies with clients.

City park Final Thoughts

During this project, I attempted to give readers a general idea of some of the history of the changes of the environment in City Park.  Throughout its history, the main area of the Park (the part with the museum) has gone from the home of local Native Americans, who once lived as part of the ecological mesh, to a sugar plantation, museum and golf courses. Today, when I think of City Park, I divide it into two areas:  the urban section of the Park, with the museum, and the de-urbanized section that includes Scout Island and two abandoned golf courses. When you examine the modern area of the Park and how it has shifted from the homes of Native Americans to the current urbanized setting, we see a trend of humans being part of the mesh to placing themselves above it, a trend that, unfortunately, is all too common in modern times. 

            When you compare the shifts in the modern section of the Park (e.g., from natural to urbanized) to the way Scout Island and the abandoned golf courses which have shifted from a man-made environment to a somewhat natural one, the contrast is evident.  In my opinion, this shift from constructed environments to natural ones is a step in the right direction.  However, many others disagree, whether they are golfers or pet owners who now have to deal with coyotes and alligators.  They feel that they are being infringed on by a hostile environment.  Unfortunately, this feeling in the conflict that surrounds the golf course section of the Park is an all too common one.  We hear numerous stories “problem” bears or wolves that are interacting with humans and being killed for it.  The fact of the matter is that, as long as urban areas continue to increase in size and infringe on natural habitat, these kinds of conflicts and stories will continue and become more frequent.  The degree to which modern society has become separated from the mesh is evident when one examines the common consensus on the conflict between progress and nature. 

            It seems that modern society has a sense of entitlement to the world around us, as seen in Herzog’s movie, The Wrath of God.  This sense of entitlement is viewed as unique to humans and is not extended to other organisms.  We have for the most part of history failed in our attempts to interact harmoniously with “the strange stranger” and continually place ourselves above them instead of on an equal plain.  In my opinion, it is impossible to be part of the mesh when we see ourselves above it.  This is a huge issue that has major global implications on the future of our planet’s biodiversity.  The debate about what to do with an old golf course is only a microcosm of the larger issue.  How as a global community can we deal with the conflicts between the needs of the human population and the rights of the environment?  As we have learned throughout the semester, while thinking small may be beneficial to local communities, this needs to be accompanied by a realization of the need to think big.  In my opinion, a shift in our current ideology is necessary for this realization to take place.  Our current belief centers around the idea that human needs have priority and fails to consider the implications of this way of thinking, both for the environment and ourselves. 

            In this project, I found that it only took a five minute car ride from the New Orleans Museum of Art to Scout Island to experience the contrast in environments.  Not only was Scout Island much quieter, but it contained far more communities of native species.   While keeping and enjoying a small natural part of City Park may be a small issue in the large picture, it is my hope that, in experiencing the contrast between what was and what is, people realize the implications of our actions and begin to see that this situation is far more common on the global scale than we realize.  Personally, my love of nature and being outdoors led me to care about the environments around me and to eventually realize how interconnected I was to the world around me.  This realization motivated many of the decisions that I have made in my life, including devoting my academic career to preserving the environment.  It is my hope that, as people experience what is left of the natural world, they too will learn to love it and see its significance as I have in my life.

Cleaning up the Mesh

I'm chillin' and grillin' on location at TruBurger, and holy cow, do I have some rare material for you to flip through.  Ground yourself; and if you've got beef, I'm not all full of bull—just trying to cook up a final post that's done well.  (That's right, at Tru we serve your burger on a pun.) I'm finished, I promise.

So I'm trying to take an approach to this post that's relevant to the entire semester.  I was going to say something about how I thought doing this assignment on Tru Burger is a little bit harder than it would've been had I done a service learning project.  Yes, of course it was more convenient as far as my schedule; I'm already here 40 hours a week. But I didn't have the advantage of an outside opinion.  What would I say?  "At Tru Burger we serve burgers.  They are good. We are more friendly to the environment than McDonalds.  We are less friendly to the environment than slaughtering your own cow."  I think it's hard to analyze something that's so familiar, y'know?

And then I was reading through The Ecological Thought and remembered: duh! Week one, or whenever it was, we read what Morton had to say about the strangeness of familiarity:

As anyone who has a long-term partner can attest, the strangest person is the one you wake up with every morning.  Far from gradually erasing strangeness, intimacy heightens it.  The more we know them, the stranger they become.  Intimacy itself is strange.  As the passenger side-view mirror on your car reads, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."  We ignore the mesh because we're so familiar with it.  Our familiarity forms the basis of the threatening intimacy that we too often push to the backs of our minds. (41)

So I tried taking a step back and becoming aware of the mesh, the momentum¹ or disruption of which, didn't matter.  What can I say about the mesh as it pertains to Tru Burger?  Who are some frequent strange strangers?

So here it is: a brief object-oriented ontological criticism of Tru Burger.

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Customers and cashiers, strange strangers 4 lyf.  What is it with how we put on a show when we take on either of these roles?  Cashiers put a smile on and talk differently.  I mean I guess I understand a cashier wanting to be nice.  Hello, tips.  But are customers really fooled by this illusion of kindness?  This high pitched, you're-obviously-tired-of-saying-it "HI WELCOME TO TRUBURGER WHAT CAN I GET FOR YOU TODAY?"  I swear, I don't think some of the customers I ring up are aware that I ever leave the cash register.  I'm a cashier.  That's my box.

But am I just as guilty when I gripe about a customer not tipping me?  I immediately label them as "jerk," but am I failing to see that he actually had one less dollar on him than he thought?  And when we cashiers make signs listing the ingredients in Tru Sauce because we're tired or reciting it every thirty seconds, aren't we limiting our interaction with our strange stranger customers?  What's next, we're tired of greeting the customers as they walk in, so we make a sign that says, "HI WELCOME TO TRUBURGER WHAT CAN I GET FOR YOU TODAY?" for us?  At that point we might as well turn the cash registers around and just let the customers punch in their own orders.

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I'm deleting this section very, very soon, because if it gets around that I shared this with anyone, I'm so fired.  So read up.  Tru Burger had a mouse problem for a little while.  This room is where they lived, I think.  I know it's at least where they ate.  That green tower is a stack of bread racks, on which we keep bags of buns.  The mice eat the buns.

Don't worry, it's easy to spot a bag of buns that's been torn into, and we'd never serve a bun that came from that bag.  This point is not about food safety, though, it's about Tru Burger's solution to "the mouse question": traps.  Some other employees and I, upon hearing about the infestation and proposed solution, suggested the traps be of the no-kill variety.  So Tru Burger did not get the Tom and Jerry style traps.  Instead it got these:

You're supposed to put peanut butter or some other thing that takes forever to go bad in the center of these pads.  The mouse will obviously go for the food, and gets stuck to the point of immobility.  (Sounds a little like entrapment to me.)  There's no way any mouse is going to get free unless someone peels the mouse away from the pad, potentially tearing off its skin or limbs.  I guess we got what we asked for: it's not the traps that kill the mice, it's the starvation or the removal from the traps.² I know, you're thinking, "Those poor, cute little mice," right? Wrong! We don't call them cute, remember? I just think it's a little screwy to sentence something to certain death all because it just wants a bite to eat! What if I trapped and starved every neighbor of mine who picked from my orange tree? I don't have an orange tree, but what if?  There is such a thing as a truly no-kill mouse trap.  

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Finally, let's talk beef.  We go through so much beef at Tru Burger.  We cut, grind, and patty at least 100lbs total of short rib, chuck, and brisket each day.  I know some of you may find that disagreeable, but that's the part I'm cool with.  As long as the meat is feeding someone, it's okay that the cow died.³ What's not okay is the amount of meat that gets thrown away when the prep cooks mess up on a cut, or when a line cook (including me) messes up an order and must remake it, or when a customer doesn't understand the point of fresh ground beef and sends a burger back because it's pink in the middle.⁴

Throwing away perfectly good food, or food that should have been perfectly good, is counterintuitive even if we completely disregard the ecological thought—it's not like we didn't pay for that meat that was just thrown away.  This kind of disrespect just isn't compatible with efforts towards a more democratic world.  We cannot treat our strange strangers like renewable resources.  Hell, can we even treat renewable resources like renewable resources?  I guess not; just because we have a bunch of something doesn't mean we can or should get rid of more of it.

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1. I was gonna say "stability" but that's not really a characteristic of the mesh. "The mesh isn't static." (Morton 30)
2. I did successfully rescue a single mouse from one of these traps.  I endured two bites through that experience, and I no longer actively seek opportunities to play superhero.
3. See my little beef boo-boo.
4. I didn't understand this until I worked here.  We cook our burgers medium unless a customer specifies that he or she would like it at a different temperature.  The reason you can't get your McDonalds burgers rare (or anything but well done) is because yuck, that meat (if it's even meat) is so old.  Beef is not really meant to be eaten well; it loses a lot of the nutritional value and pretty much all of the flavor.  The whole draw of in-house, fresh-ground beef is the ability to get it at lighter temperature than well.  Basically, ordering a well done burger at Tru Burger is like asking for Kraft singles at St. James Cheese Company.  Okay, maybe it's not that bad but it's heading in the same direction.

My Final Service Learning Moment

During my service learning experience I got to tutor high school and middle school basketball players. I was able to help the students study for their test and in some cases I helped them study for their ACT/SAT test. The program’s goal is to prepare these athletes for a higher education so that they could not only be athletic, but also have the academic skills needed to pass their classes and graduate.
On the surface, the program seemed to be a very well rounded play to tutor, but once I was able to work with some of these students I realized that their minds were focused on other things. Many times I would try to get the students’ attention towards their homework or other studies and all they wanted to do was talk about basketball or surf the web. Many times the students would even ask me to do their work for them in order for them to go to the gym and practice their basketball skills. With the students that I was able to work with, I saw no real learning improvement and/or growth with the time that I was there.

I also observed at this service learning that the students were very much reliant on the internet. One student had a book that was less than 120 pages and asked me if he could find this book’s summary on SparkNotes. Another student was taking an open book take home quiz and googled every answer instead of using his books and notes.
One student in particular, was searching the internet for the summary of a book he needed to read for a project due the next day. The book he had to read was Fahrenheit 451. To make this long story short, the book touches the topic of the importance of books. In the plot of the story, books are banned for their portrayal of “life's tragedies and of the fact that books contradict and refute each other.” There are certain people in the story who wish they could have defended books or could have saved books from abandonment, and regret taking the books they once had for granted. Throughout the book there are—not specifically in the place of books or trying to replace books—many “advanced” electronics and different technologies that the characters use. The author of the book Ray, Bradbury, says that the story was “about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of factoids, partial information devoid of context.”
I gave that particular student the example of today’s society and how many people in our generation would rather sit in front of a TV or computer and get their daily information verses reading a newspapers or book. I tried to plant in the student’s mind the idea that the book may be trying to tell its readers something about the value of books and the knowledge we can obtain from them.
The student did not understand the connection that I was trying to make with the book and “real life”. I began to connect the actions of the students in the room to the actions of some of the characters in the book. I mentioned the other student, who would rather look on SparkNotes than simply read the short book. I gave him the example of his friend who used google to answer every question on his take home quiz verses using his notes and book. I even used the example of the other tutors in the room and how they interacted with the young athletes—the tutors were engaging in a full debate about the NBA lockout and Chris Paul being traded instead of helping the student athletes study and do their homework.
All of the other tutors were looking up videos on ESPN.com or recalling something they saw on TV the other day. I seemed to be the only one sitting back from the rest observing this supposedly “learning environment.” I explained all of this to that student and he began to understand where I was coming from. He then started to tell me how people only want the fast and easy way. He also gave me a long drawn out explanation as to why he feels books should one day really be banned. The student also said, “books are boring and they take too long to get to the point . . . plus if we banned books wouldn’t that save more trees or something?”
I could understand what that student was trying to say about saving trees, but to never be able to pick up a book again would seem unrealistic; where would people’s facts and references come from if not books? The internet is changing every day and can be altered by any one at any given time—in most cases. With that being said, the next generations to come will lack more and more knowledge—actual knowledge and not just want they see on TV or read on the internet.

Do not get me wrong, I enjoyed my time and experience with Elevate. I want to become a teacher, so it was a great opportunity, not only for my resume, but also for me to actually practice the field in which I will one day work in. I just a flaw in the program that could be fixed before the students get this idea that the internet and TV is their only source of information and knowledge.

Artists Vs. Photographers

When I make my photographs in the darkroom, my environment is important. First of all the darkroom is very cold, quiet, spooky, and obviously dark. I only like to make prints in the darkroom starting very late at night because usually no one else is in there and I like privacy when creating any type of art, whether being music or photographs. Being in the darkroom is like being in a cave completely cut-off from the rest of society. You cannot use your phone or anything with light because it will ruin the chemicals and any exposed photography paper. The only way to get an idea of what time it is is by looking at the clock on the wall, which happens to be broken. When I was in a film photography class I would come to the darkroom at around 11 pm, stay until 9 30 am, and then go straight to photo class down the hallway. This wasn’t necessarily on purpose, but when you’re completely focused and in the zone in a dark room with no windows and no working clock, you really lose sense of time.

Siblings

I have to listen to music when I make prints. Music distracts me from the spookiness of the darkroom and keeps me focused on my photographs. I like to start off with either Creedence Clearwater Revival or The Allman Brothers Band because I can listen to their albums straight through. Since making prints takes a lot of concentration and memorization the last thing I want is to get distracted by a bad song and have to choose a new one. I am very indecisive and suffer from attention deficit disorder especially when it comes to music. If I’m not hyper focusing on making prints then my photographs come out looking terrible.

Wonder What She's Thinking....

My environment for taking photographs is a lot different than my environment for making prints. I only like taking photographs outdoors because I appreciate capturing things in their natural environments. I love taking pictures of people. Capturing stories and emotions in my photos is my main goal. I think if you can tell a person’s personality and their emotions by looking at a photograph then the photographer did his job. I’d like to be a documentary photographer or a photojournalist, so I like to go to obscure places to investigate interesting people and environments to photograph. One of my favorite places to photographs was the third ward. There were always groups of people sitting on stoops, drinking beer, smoking blunts, just living their lives. Their surroundings were nothing to be desired – lots of blight, broken windows, and ripped couches used as outdoor furniture. I was very intimidated the first time I went. After bonding with some of the guys, they let me take their pictures. My photographs show these guys looking soft and almost endearing in contrast to their extremely tough surrounding environment. Unfortunately, I was stopped and yelled at by cops for hanging out in that neighborhood. They told me a four year old girl was shot dead sometime that week and I was a fool for thinking I was safe. Even though I was getting great pictures, I decided it was probably in my best interest to switch environments. I love talking to and taking photographs of French Quarter street performers when they aren’t performing. This interest of mine started when a gold robot told me he would travel an hour each day to perform downtown, and leave with usually only $20. He actually made me buy him a 24 oz. beer before he agreed to chat with me. I loved how his costume didn’t affect his attitude in the slightest. He was smoking cigarettes, drinking tall boys and cursing up a storm. I’d think a guy who pretends to be a robot for a living would have more of an adolescent charm to him. I love photographing people who contradict typical expectations.

The immediate similarity I noticed between myself as a photographer, Beth as a painter, and Mark as a contemporary artist is that we all like to create art in the dead of night. This seems to be common amongst artists for the same reason; we get distracted easily. Nighttime makes it easy to focus since there aren’t any excuses to be distracted at that time. We all like to work outdoors and are inspired by nature. The differences between us, is that Mark makes a living as an artist. He is always creating art as art. Mark’s goal is to make art and nature become one. I as a photographer am more interested in capturing what’s real. Things in their natural settings inspire me. My goal is to make reality into art, not art into reality. I can find beauty in anything that already exists, where as Mark finds beauty in his imagination and brings his visions to life. My visions already exist, I just have to explore and investigate in order to find my vision.

Girl With Attitude

Funny Boy

Caged Bird :-(

Nathan The Rockstar

Unfortunately there's no way to get my film photography online so these were taking with my digital camera. I'll bring in my film prints.

Ew

A friend shared this video with me and I thought I would share it with y'all. I have long been disturbed by the concept of Turducken (ever since a very unpleasant experience at age 11) but this is so much worse!!!



What has happened to us and our relationship with food and animals that we feel the need to degrade it like this? This is way more an expression of dominance and power than it is fulfilling a need for nutrition. I shudder to think how many animals were harmed in the making of this video.

Artists Vs. Photographers

I talked to my uncle Mark Schlesinger who is an established contemporary artist and is currently commissioned by the San Antonio River Foundation to create public art as a part of the Mission Reach Ecosystem Restoration and Recreation Project. He uses the concrete of the Ninth Street underpass and bridge as his canvas for experimenting with space and perception. His vibrant art creates a complete environment under the bridge that enthralls viewers with texture, form and color.

By day, light appears to travel in zigzag paths through the large cubes that are part of his installation. By night, bands of color across the ceiling of the underpass glow to create a colorful portal of illumination and reflection.

His second public work on the river walk is “UP on the ON” which is a large-scale abstract painting.

Mark is entirely inspired by nature and his goal is to make the river walk be apart of nature. He likes to work in the dead of night so that he is not distracted. When he was a contemporary artist in New York, his studio looked like a science experiment. There were colors splattered everywhere, shapes placed in random places, and weird objects floating around. His studio in San Antonio is the same way, except now it glows non-stop. He recently developed a glow-in-the-dark concrete for his bridge project, but now his apartment won’t stop glowing, which makes it difficult to work there at night.

Since he’s been painting the river walk, he’s been working outside. Mark says he looks at the colors of the surrounding wildflowers for inspiration. The vibrant colors are echoed in “UP on the ON”.

Using the glowing concrete he created, he hand-painted an asymmetrical design in a kinetic palette of red, gold, purple, magenta, blue and green. Eight of the blocks — painted in swirls that evoke the play of light on water — glow at night. Mark said, “What I wanted to do was create a sequence — a sequence of colors that reify the movement across the bridge.” Mark said he wanted to choose a bright palette. “The key to choosing a palette was making it bright. The second key was the wildflowers that I knew were going to be in abundance, and the third key was its relationship to the water in the sky.”

“UP and the ON” is supposed to seem like a very abstract walk through a field of wildflowers. For the project, Mark thought asked, “If a bridge were alive, what would it look like, what would it be?” According to Mark, in nature, colors are used to differentiate, attract, repel — basically for communication.