I visited my grandmother's grave and left some flowers.

more (and photos) when I've had more than 5 minutes sleep.

I'm too swamped at the moment to write anything, so in the meantime why not do your eyes a favor and explore some of my favorite phtooblog links...

Our baby sprouted his first tooth today. Jenn refers to it as his platypus tooth. This freaks me out. (baby platypuses have a single tooth that they use to escape their eggs.)

The city has been cutting trees around Brooklyn Heights at a scary pace. Three 50-100 year old trees have vanished just on the route I use to get to the subway. I asked a city worker why they were doing this (assuming the answer would be disease). His reply, "I don't know. They tell me to cut them, I cut them. Maybe the roots were hurting the sidewalk, but it could be anything."

It's gotta be disease, nobody would cut down a tree just because the sidewalk was a little uneven... would they?

I vary my route now to avoid the corner. Makes me sad.
. . . . .

My dad and stepmother are back in town. As Frederik of smudo.org said the other day, "the goal in life is not to be a parent, but a to be a grandparent."

"Just sniff his butt to check for poop."

"The kid's eating his feet again."

"Hey it's just a little vomit."

"The baby just pounded two boobs."

I picked up some big prints for a client today from Gabe Greenberg. Gabe runs the 20x24 Polaroid studio as well as a high end digital print service. I can't say enough good things about the entire experience of working with Gabe as a printer. His attention to detail and knowledge of digital process is top notch. I was very happy with the results.

You can see a small online version of the print shown right here.

I found this picture today of my grandparents, my dad and his sister on vacation in Tampico. Nobody looks like they are having much fun, but I remember my grandmother talking about this trip with great fondness despite having to endure many meals with the smell of fish. My grandmother, a product of the desert and inland ranchers, was a great hater of fish.

Does anyone else find it sad that these types of photo places with painted backgrops are dissapearing? Like drive in movies and a good malted they are tokens of another age.

Here is another one of these images, one of my favorites, a famous one featuring Lorca and Buñel. Lorca appear to be rather serious. Perhaps Buñel bullied him into posing.

There is a poet I like named Kenneth Koch. He has a long series of short poems called Aesthetics. They are all just a few lines... for example:

Aesthetics of Saying Goodbye to a Friend

Walk her to the place
Where she can get a taxi
And say good-bye
If she is wearing
An overcoat
Place one hand
On her shoulder-or if she is not
Shake hands, embrace
or

Aesthetics of Harshness to a Horse

You should never be harsh
To a horse. A horse is always doing
Its best. Otherwise it is a bad horse
And harshness has no effect.
anyway one is titled the Aestetcs of Lorca and I rather like it:

Aesthetics of Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca stands alone
Luna, typewriter, plantain tree, and dust
The moon is not just watching him, it is watching over him.

Why does Raul love the Japanese? This is why. Read it quick as the link will expire in a few days.

I direct you to this NASA photo of one of the Mars rovers stuck (for good it seems) in a sand dune. It was on it's way to Terra Nuevo, but it looks like this is the end of the road... and from the looks of the dunes, I imagine it will be swallowed up sooner than later.

Today, April 27th, would have been my brother Christopher's 35th birthday.

As he's been gone for a little over 15 years this fact, the idea of him as a 35 year old adult is hard for me to wrap my head around... He is always 19 in my mind or even younger.

He comes to me often in dreams and we talk about the issues of the day (actually talk is a mild way of putting it, we often debate as he was something of a contrarian). Christopher was passionate about politics and science and any number of other subjects from photography to ethology. We were often at odds, but only because we were so similar to one another. Sometimes in the dreams he just sits and watches silently from afar as Jenn and I play with our young son. I always call out for him to join us, but he always gives me a sad smile and walks away out beyond the far distance.