“Are blossoms to be viewed only in their fullness,
The moon only when its round and bright?
Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) Yoshido Kenko brush drawing by Janney
A photograph of things— wall, face drawings, faces, , bicycle, boy, man — its enough things to put it together—“father teaching son to ride a bicycle..”
Sometimes its hared to know what a photograph is about, we can clearly see the things but it we cannot classify the relationship between the things ,
Sitting in a coffee shop in Dublin, felt like John Cheever grown’ old.
When you know its a photograph , that limits the search process to seeking to define “things” until enough things generate a relationship where the meaning of the word summarizes the visual experience. of the photograph into a meaning. that announces its ok for you to stop looking .
I don’t want to go there, I don’t want to take you there..
Alameda Creek
The noun, impunity, comes from the Latin roots im- (“not”) plus poena (“punishment”), a root which has also produced the word pain. Impunity is the freedom from punishment or pain. If someone has committed a punishable offense but does not have to fear punishment, he or she does it “with impunity.”
Yesterday the Eurasiagroup issued The Atlas of Impunity report, a joint effort by David Miliband and his staff and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, with analytical support from Eurasia Group’s Geostrategy team. Following are some conclusions of the report . . .
”The legacy of colonialism and the slave trade is correlated with higher impunity scores.”
“Environmental degradation is where impunity continues to thrive,”
“Violence against women and gender-based discrimination is a global problem“.”
“Human rights are being abused and accountability is falling within democracies.”
“One poor fellow, exhausted with haemorrhage, had his leg amputated as a last hope and dies ten minutes after the surgeon has left him. Almost before the breath has left his body it is sewn up in its blanket and carried away and buried the same day —we have no room for corpses in the ward.”
Florence Nightengale on conditions at Scutari Hospital outside Constantinople after the battle of Inkerman, November 5, 1854 in a letter to Queen Victoria. from The EYE OF WAR Words and Photographs from the Front Line John Keegan and Phillip Knightley
“I cannot say what kind form of trial the prisoners underwent, or what evidence was recorded against them. I merely know that they were marched up in batches, and shortly after marched back again to a large tree, which stood in the centre of the square ,and hanged thereon. This went on from about three o’clock in the afternoon till daylight the following morning, when it was reported that there was no more room on the tree . . . There were one hundred and thirty men hanging from the branches .”
Corporal William Forbes-Mitchell of the 93rd (Sutherland) Highlanders on/British retribution during the Indian Mutiny. The EYE OF WAR Words and Photographs from the Front Line John Keegan and Phillip Knightley
At the bottom of the trenches there lay frozen green Germans and frozen grey Russians and frozen fragments of human shapes, and there were helmets, Russian andGerman, lying among the thick debris . . .But now everything was silent in the fossilized shell, as though a raving lunatic had suddenly died of heart failure.
Russian journalist Alexander Werth remembers Stalingrad immediately after the the Germans surrender there, January 31, 1943 from The EYE OF WAR Words and Photographs from the Front Line John Keegan and Phillip Knightley
And most of us wash our dirty laundry, hang it out to dry and wear it the next day. Perhaps we could say that in spite of the odds, in spite of the inhumane things through history people did to each other to survive, we also developed a sense of humanity and the desire to survive in a more humane world .
“Only thank God men have done learned how to forget quick what they ain’t brave enough to try to cure.”
The Hamlet William Faulkner
EndPages
1ne thing about a photograph is that its “real”—How did these small particles, call them monads or atoms, molecules, electrons, the concept of a basic physical thing from which everything is made— get together in this place at this moment? The Universe is in constant change right before our eyes, but the photograph as a visual record of that change, something which once was but is no longer/
My mother had a stroke, suffered severe memory loss and expressive aphasia. During 3 1/2 years She lived in two different memory care facilities and an eight week stay in a nursing -rehab facility.
I used to see her almost every day and I took a small point & shoot camera with me and took photographs . originally for a legal record of my role in her care and also , she was my mother, that was reason enoguh.
Often she did not know who I was.a person, some person who showed up everyday but she had a feeling, -a memory-impression of who I was.” and it was both comforting and confusing. for her.
Good care givers know the importance of helping memory care residents keep up daily personal care. The residents may not express it or even show it, but they feel better when their hair is brushed, wearing clean clothes or clean body hygiene —simple things that give them their dignity even if they have lost touch with their memories.
Happy moments make it all worthwhile..
One of the things I like about Buddhism is Avolokitashvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, he (or she in the case of Guanyin or Kannon) who hears the suffering of the world and is the compassion for all Buddhas.
Om mani padme hu
snaegele EmptyPage Blog 