This corner store on Prescott and Bond has seen better days. Today, it’s boarded up and for sale so if anybody knows any stories about it, feel free to share in the comments.

I do want to share with you an NPR story about an English village that refused to let go of their corner store. Enjoy.

Croatian word of the day: selo village

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A bunch of links today and a corner store.

A strange collection of murderous cooks, waiters and bartenders.

Two websites that allow you to create “to do” lists. Teux Deux is actually quite useful for my purposes (h/t swissmiss) and NowDoThis is not so useful, but certainly more fun (h/t Minimalissimo).

Dalton Ghetti creates the most amazing sculptures from pencil stubs you’ll ever see.

And one of my favourite website, Quipsologies, went through a massive redesign.

Croatian word of the day: kuhar cook

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Miss F. and her friends have a word they use to describe the mix of nervousness and excitement just before a good thing happens – they say they are nexcited. That is exactly how I feel at the moment, hence the 5 a.m. post.

Today is my first day at my new job as the manager of knowledge mobilization at the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development. I am super excited about it, but at the same time, after almost eight years of communications jobs, I will be doing something different and I do feel nervous.

This is, of course, great news for this blog as well. I always tried to keep my communications jobs separate from the rest of my life, but I feel no need to do so now. You can expect all sorts of posts that will deal with rural development and policy, probably a great deal more about my own graduate research in those fields, as well as a lot more about how universities and rural communities could and should work together. This also means that I feel free to pursue some other projects  that have been on hold for some time now and I am very excited about that too.

The photo above, the more I look at it, the more it is becoming one of my favourite photos of all time. If you asked me a month ago how I felt about my life, I’d probably say that I felt a bit like the girl on the right – I had plenty of rope to roam around, but it could have been yanked at any time. Today, I definitely feel like that girl jumping off the wharf. The photograph was made on Change Islands a few weeks ago during the Great Fogo Island Punt Race.

Croatian word of the day: skok jump

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Those who know me, know that I dislike being in the middle of large groups of people engaged in mindless small talk. That’s the major reason why I don’t photograph weddings – they drive me around the bend. I just spent three days surrounded by 500 people and I can’t tell you how good it felt to spend the morning picking berries with the girls and cooking a dinner for everybody afterwards. I will say that some aspects of the last three days were fun, but I desperately needed my alone time. It will take me a week to recover from this.

On that note, here is an essay by Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic that some time ago caused a bit of controversy: Caring for Your Introvert.

The photo is from Change Islands. Local residents and visitors are watching the Great Fogo Island Punt Race from the government wharf earlier this month.The race is not just a tourist attraction, but also an important part in preserving the local knowledge and tradition of wooden boat building.

Croatian word of the day: borovnica blueberry [boro vni tza]

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A few weeks ago, I lucked out and was able to photograph a little bit of The Great Fogo Island Punt Race – a 10 mile rowing race from Fogo to Change Islands and back. The rowers use traditional and locally built boats called punts. A cranky punt is a fast, but more difficult boat to handle and, when the punts were fishing vessels, having a cranky boat was not a good thing. Things have changed. Bellow is a trailer for a locally produced documentary Cranky. And the photo is of two boys on the government wharf in Change Islands where they were watching and very seriously discussing the race.

Croatian word of the day: čamac boat [cha ma tz]

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Crazy busy at work with a major event. While I wait for hundreds of photographs to run through Aperture import here is a bunch of photo links.

The photo above is from my recent one day trip to Halifax. It’s too bad it’s crooked, it could have been a nice photo.

Here is an interview with Mary Ellen Mark on her own work these days, why she decided to stick with film and the state of photojournalism (h/t Mark Hamilton).

Photographer John Cyr has a quirky project on the go: he is photographing developing trays used by film photographers.

Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has an exhibit of Leon Levinstein’s photographs that looks interesting.

And check out this early colour film of London in the 1920s.

Croatian word of the day: crkva church [tzr kva]

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I developed another five rolls of film last night – no surprises any more – it’s all recent stuff. I like this photo a lot. It’s somehow such a Canadian thing to do, to go play hockey in the middle of the summer.

I am trying to purge my links-to-blog folder. Here is a set of completely unrelated things.

The first two links come courtesy of one of my favourite websites – kottke.org.

On the day Albert Einstein was to be buried, only one photographer was allowed to witness proceedings, Life Magazine’s Ralph Morse. The photos were not published for 55 years at the request of the family, but they are available now. Check them out.

If you were a dictator, what would your private jet look like? You can take a peak inside the jets of some of the world’s dictators here courtesy of an enterprising photographer Nick Gleis.

Really nice work from various Japanese illustrators at Tokyo Illustrators Society website.

As somebody who photographs corner stores, I really, really, really like these whimsical photographs of small train stations in former East Germany by Schilling Holger.

Don’t miss Stephen Doyle’s unique paper sculptures or Margaret Shepherd’s beautiful calligraphy art.

Croatian word of the day: željeznička stanica train station [zhe lye znee chka stan itza]

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I have this long post I have been trying to write, but am too exhausted to finish. Little Miss F is killing us by means of sleep deprivation. The only thing I don’t understand is why the hell is she so full of energy.

Photo links:

Alex Webb has photographed a fascinating story for National Geographic on a railway connecting Caspian and Black seas. The story is just as fascinating as the photographs. NPR has a preview of the story and National Geographic has an extended on-line gallery.

Alain Keler from the French agency Myop has a sad and haunting set of photographs of Roma people currently persecuted quite mercilessly in France. Even some of the members of the right wing UMP are appalled by the deportations. BBC story is here.

Check out NYT’s Lens blog and the work of George Georgiou on modern Turkey.

The photograph is of Long’s Hill Convenience in my new neighbourhood.

Croatian word of the day: san sleep

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I have developed about half of the film that’s been sitting in my fridge for quite some time now and found some pleasant surprises in there including this photograph from the last year’s mummers parade in St. John’s. (You can see colour photos here and here.)

What I particularly like about this photo is the strange and wonderful mix of traditional Newfoundland mummer’s garb and a Venetian-like mask. Talk about cultural cross-pollination.

The revival of mummering in St. John’s is an interesting phenomenon itself. It is very much the work of an army of volunteers and Dale Jarvis, a folklorist, storyteller, writer and provincial intangible cultural heritage development officer. The parade was a lot of fun and my girls are eagerly awaiting this year’s event with the plans to participate to the fullest. However, mummering was banned in Newfoundland for quite some time because of violent incidents that happened in the past.

Traditionally, mummering was often associated with copious amounts of alcohol consumption and several people who grew up in small rural communities around Newfoundland told me that their or their parents’ memories of mummers are not exactly pleasant.

Croatian word of the day: maska mask

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As I was heading out the doors this morning, Little Miss F yelled after me: “Bye tata! Be careful of the biting chipmunks!”

I thought I’ll pass it along just in case…

Another (and much better) shot of Halliday’s Meat Market – one of my favourite corner stores in town. You can see the whole holga corner store set on flickr.

Croatian word of the day: tata dad [zhena]

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