most of the last 9 days i spent hacking my lungs out. maybe the worst cold i have ever had. the only good part was that guiltlessly it allowed me to pass time more slowly.

I read The Race Beat, by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff. Basically it is the story of journalists covering the Civil Rights Movement.

From Random House,

“This is the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see, hear, and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial segregation in the South—and the brutality used to enforce it.

It is the story of how the nation’s press, after decades of ignoring the problem, came to recognize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turn it into the most significant domestic news event of the twentieth century.”

This book almost makes me feel like my job might still have purpose - sadly a feeling all too fleeting these days.

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A new photo collective launched. My buddy Matt Eich, along with Elyse Butler, Yoon S. Byun, Matt Mallams, Chris Capozziello and Andrew Henderson, launched AEVUM. From the website, “We believe that photography is a priviledge; one that allows us to give a voice to others and a chance to voice ourselves as well.”

Truly inspiring to look through the work on this site. Good luck to you all.

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I watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It was visually stunning. i guess many folks didn’t like it, but i thought it was beautifully shot. the visuals were thought out and paced in a way that does not often happen in mainstream film. Maybe this alone made it interesting to me - it had a visual point of view - a rarity in daily life and the media universe. Most of the time all we get is visual vomit - visuals that do nothing more than illustrate words, dialog. Rarely do we see images that do something that only an image could do. In the words of Mike Davis, “A photograph should never be able to be described in words.”

In the film, there must have been 2 dozen shots through an old glass window - and while not nearly as beautiful as the film - this view from the bed where i spent most of my last week.

Back to the world of the living this week. thank god.