Honestly! I won’t even pretend to understand why people go to horse races. This is a racing track in Saint John. May be it was just a wrong day, but it was really, really boring.
I heard a lot about J.M. Coetzee so I finally picked up his novel Elizabeth Costello. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. I was also told that this is his weakest novel so there you go.
The problem with the book is not so much in the content – it’s really a collection of essays more than anything else- as in the form. The substance of the essays was interesting and occasionally thought provoking, but if the author felt the need to share his views on aging, animal rights, African novel, etc, etc… there was no need to hide behind a character in a novel. Just write a collection of essays. It seems somehow dishonest to invent a character that really does not experience much of anything except that she travels from one conference to another and gives lectures. Then again, why would J.M. Coetzee care about what I have to say.
Next on my reading list is John Le Carré’s Smiley’s People. I need something I can gulp down quickly…
I did some cleaning today and I found this photo from my second photography class. The assignment was “impact shot” and I agonized over it for weeks. I think I was actually two weeks late submitting it. Anyways, on my way to a class, brooding over the assignment, I looked through the window as the C-train entered a tunnel and Voila! there was my shot. It took a few phone calls to get the permission to ride inside the cabin, but it was worth it… I made this photograph just as the C-train was approaching the end of the tunnel under the Union Cemetery in Calgary. Now that is a chilling thought.
I do have a technical question though. I used B&W film for this image and I could not scan the negative because most of it is completely transparent and the scanner kept asking me to insert film. This scan was actually made from a print. Is there anybody out there who knows how to adjust film scanner for this kind of situations?
Supetar on the Brac [Brach] island in Croatia.
This cartoon was published in today’s Guardian. Steve Bell has an uncanny way of depicting even the most complex of issues. I highly recommend the archives of his work – just as a reminder of what we’ve been through over the past year and how low we stooped. I don‘t mean just British and Americans, but all of us who did not see it coming. That’s the thing about democracy – it is about personal responsibility of every and each one of us.
Canada is in the middle of the elections and I think I am going to volunteer with these guys. They’ll have a tough going in this riding, but what a heck.