don’t panic

It’s a silly thing really, but somehow it was enormously important for me to see it happen… To document it. Maybe it was a sign of something in my life that I could control, or wanted to. Maybe it was a marker of time in a seemingly endless desert of similar days. I don’t know. I certainly don’t think of my life as boring, but lately, it just feels like our family is waiting. I’m not even sure what for, change perhaps.

There are so many dreams that we felt we should have had established by now… A house… Our own bookstore in some quiet little coastal town. But life never gives you what you expect it to. Sometimes it’s more. Sometimes less. You think you have it figured out and WHAM… Life adds something to “the list.”

The List is just a bunch of things that make living complicated. They have no value or priority, no regret tied into them or displeasure. They just are. But the longer The List is, the harder it is to keep things juggled. Sometimes it’s the bald tire on the car that you know you have to replace. Or maybe that loose crown in the back of your mouth that’s acting up again. Other times it’s more intangible, like the growing sense of loss we feel knowing that there is no possible way for us to ever own a home in Southern California anymore. We might have pulled it off five years ago… well maybe not… but it’s simply not possible in the current market. So we talk about moving. And that’s another item on the list.

So life rolls by. The List gets shorter one day, and longer the next. Each member of our family does the respective tasks that we have all come to express as our “normal” day, and it’s mostly just the same from one week to the next, with a semi-random sprinkling of spice to keep us from going insane. A “night-out” here, an earthquake there. And suddenly (it seems) our daughter has finished the second grade. The normal day shifts a little, rattling over the speed-bump of change and moves on. A small event in the larger scheme of things, but an event none the less. It’s like driving past the “last gas for 50 miles” sign on a long desert freeway. You see it, you know it’s important, and you hope to God that you are prepared to deal with what comes after.

But it’s just a sign.

In and of itself it has no meaning, sinister or otherwise. It’s just a marker in life that you need to pass in order to get along down the road.

Well, it would appear that you can now be denied service at your local Walmart photo center because your photos look “too professional.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/personaltech/20050530-9999-mz1b30snap.html

Yup. Large corporations are actually being sued because they reproduce digital photos belonging to a professional photographer. Aside from the obvious stupidity of this in general, has anyone considered that we are putting the entire legal judgement for copyright law into the hands of some pimply-faced teen with a summer job making 32 cents over minimum wage? Yeah, that’s brilliant.

And where does it end? Should we also sue the manufacturer of the photo processing machine, the paper and chemical suppliers, and the corporations that make the CD media and Compact flash cards we use to transport said violations of “ownership”?

As long as we’re at it, let’s sue the maker of the computer that copied the files, and the power company for supplying the means for that computer to make illegal reproductions.

But you know what the real problem with this scenario is? It’s that huge corporations like Walmart would rather just settle and issue some insane in-store policy than take it to court and get the law reexamined. And sadly enough, if you look at it from a strictly financial point of view, they are probably wise to do so. Taking on copyright law is expensive stuff. But if not them, then who? If the largest corporation in the world isn’t willing to pony up to do what’s right, then what’s the point in having a legal system in the first place? Everyone’s “rights” are protected, but only if you have the money to take it to court. And now, even that doesn’t matter. Principle has been tossed out with the bath water folks.

So, the next time you’re shooting pictures of your kid’s birthday party with your brand new $1,500 camera, be sure to throw off the focus and composition or you may not be able to get prints made of your work.

With the recent shake-up in the Public Broadcasting Service, conservatives are claiming that the long-standing bastion of free access is giving them the shaft. Okay, but how is this something new?

By nature, to have a “conservative” view means that you err on the side tradition and non-change. When you put moral issues into that pot, things get a bit more complicated. Moral values are supposed to be absolute. Something isn’t a little bit sinful. It either is, or it isn’t. The problem with this is, to use a biblical analogy, you can’t be unequally yolked.

Conservatives feel that the PBS is too liberal. Well duh. Of course it is, but that’s the whole point. The only way the conservatives would be happy is if it were dedicated 24/7 to strictly right-wing programming. The moment Postcards From Buster breathes even the slightest idea of a family with “two-mothers”, the show gets labeled as subversive to children. My daughter and I watch that show. I think we even saw that episode. We never even noticed the reference.

Does this mean the show is subversive? Is everyday life subversive? Probably, but that’s a good point, isn’t it. I certainly don’t want to raise my child in a bubble, only to release them into the “wild” world completely unprepared for what is actually out there. And that’s the reason Postcards From Buster is on television in the first place – to educate children of our cultural differences, whatever they may be. I’m sure most of the conservative right wouldn’t have had a problem had Buster gone to visit with a family of Bible-thumping Baptists who prayed at every meal and attended church. Yet, in my eyes, that is far more subversive than an offhand mention that some kids were being raised (well) by two women (one woman is okay by the way… but two… GOODNESS, no).

We can show different religious faiths (a point that has brought about the worst, most horrific wars in history no less) but we balk at the slightest hint of a “deviant” sexual behavior that has become so mainstream that it’s not even a taboo subject anymore.

What the conservatives fail to understand, what they can’t understand, is that Public Broadcasting is just that; for the public. It’s representative of the greatest majority of the people. Period. To say that it isn’t conservative enough should be high praise, not something that needs to be changed.

Yup. I mean, aside from the fact that they seem to be going out of their way to give Our Lady of the Forest the shaft with big oil and the worst environmental record in history, now they actually seem to be changing the facts to cover their tracks.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/06/11/climate.official.resigns.ap/index.html

Man that sucks. I think resignation is a little light. How about they drop this guy out on a glacier, with no shirt, and no sunscreen. When he comes limping into some town looking like a crusty beet, maybe he’ll be a little more sympathetic to the scientists who are saying things are changing in the world.

Oh yeah, Cooney is a lawyer without a background in science, and once headed the oil industry’s lobbying on climate change.