So… what are YOU going to do about it?

 
I don't normally write about politics in my blog, and especially not world politics… but I just spent twenty minutes on this great educational web site called "The Story of Stuff" and it has moved me to speak out. So I am hereby speaking out. Admittedly, it was a somewhat painful twenty minutes, but I couldn't turn away because I care too much about leaving this world a better place for the next generation — for our children !!

Click on the image on the left, or just go to: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ and listen to Annie Leonard's description about what's happened to "our world" — the real story about what have been the driving forces in our world for the last 50 years.

And when, like me, you find yourself thinking "Oh, I've heard this all before…" and the little monkey in your head says "I don't have time for this"… ask yourself how much it's worth to you to sell your children out so that you can go "get one more task-for-the day accomplished". Consider that maybe the real reason is: you're in denial.

More important than "how we got here"… listen to what Annie Leonard says about the change in context that is the only way we're going to turn this ship around. In a nutshell, it's "Think Green" but way more than thinking is called for. After watching this I finally get a much better perspective on why this is important and why we really have to make the switch to a different way of thinking, a different way of living. Mankind's continued existence depends on it !
 

What I Wanna Be When I Grow Up

 
Recently I blogged about this fabulous wedding I went to… but one of the things I neglected to mention was that the professional photographer for the wedding was a good friend of mine, Jon Fischer of Jon Fischer Photography. Since Fischer and I collaborate together as professionals, I've heard about him doing wedding gigs for quite a while. But I had never had the opportunity to see him in action — doing his job as a professional photographer — until this wedding. And afterwards, in order to highlight that, I created this subset of my Flickr pictures of him doing just that. To see them via the Flickr SlideShow below just click on the "Play" Icon (or anywhere on the picture below).

Watching my friend and colleague in action reminded me of my own passion for creatively working with digital media, especially with precious memories of special events such as this wedding. And seeing how skillfully Fischer simply got on with his job, taking pictures in such a way that people hardly even knew he was there, reminded me that it really is possible to be part of events like this — unobtrusively — without altering events as they unfold. Yet you can still be right in the middle of everything, capturing it all from the vantage point afforded only to a professional photographer. And though what I do as part of DigitalMediaMagik.com (my company) is distinctly different, I do it with the same dedicated passion as Fischer as I go about creating unique, long-lasting memories using a variety of digital multimedia techniques.

Jon Fischer — Photographer at Work

Some day, someone will document me working my craft, as I follow my passion to turn DigitalMediaMagik.com into a name that people know they can rely on to deliver innovative digital products and services to people worldwide.
 

A Wedding to remember: Munafo+Hendrie 09-07-08

Wow ! Yesterday my sweetie and I had the honor and privilege of attending one of the most memorable and meaningful weddings — other than our own, of course — in recent history. Shown on the right… the newly weds just before the first dance.

The ceremony & reception were under a huge white tent — on the lawn in front of Annie's house, right on the ocean — shown as a panorama animation, below.
Especially if you look at that Under the White Tent panorama in full size, you see what an impressive collection of people were there from the Munafo - Hendrie extended family. Equally awesome was the wedding ceremony itself (or this, or YouTube), meticulously created by the wedding couple, featuring a unique "circle" layout, and made available to others so they could use it as a blueprint for their own services. Possibly because Lynn and I did something similiar for our own wedding… I loved the way they included so many people who were special to them in the service, in this case representing the 8 Human Archetypes — a superset of the ones we talk about in Legacy Discovery. What a joy it was witnessing all of them fully participate in the ritual !!

Personally, what was very special to me was being at this event with my beloved — after all, it was a wedding — along with so many of my men, many of whom you see in this Flickr album (or SlideShow). In addition, there was ample time to take the dozens of snapshots (not in Flickr album) that went into creating the sequence of panoramas starting here, from which I have chosen one and two Ocean Views plus The Big White Tent to highlight on my DigitalMediaMagik.com site. See also these fabulous Munafo - Hendrie wedding pictures where Munafo took the time to caption and organize them appropriately.
 

Check It Out — an embedded Flickr SlideShow !!

 
Given that you have a perfectly normal Flickr album, such as "Jillian Gaye turns 21", you can use Flickr's high-level interface to "customize" the slide show, and then it's another one of those cut & paste operations — you simply embed the Flickr SlideShow into any html, such as this blog posting!!!


Once you "start" the applet (by clicking anywhere on the picture viewer), you have all the usual slide show controls — including the "Full Screen" icon on the far right-hand side. Conveniently, these controls appear only when you move the mouse into the bottom part of the SlideShow screen. And all this is all done with Flash! Does it work for you without having to download anything special?
 

Our Empty Nest

The long-awaited empty nest has finally arrived … though it's odd to say that because it seems more like something has left than that something has arrived. During the last 2 weeks in August we helped one daughter move across the NEU campus, to start her year as a "Middler", and we moved our youngest daughter off to RWU where we took part in this most elegant convocation — a traditional RWU has that neither of us had ever heard of before. And all that has left us with what we've long known was coming but are only just beginning to fathom: our very own Empty Nest !!     I am struck by the juxtaposition of profound saddness, for the loss, and giddy excitment for what's yet to come for my sweetie and I. YMMV as in my friend Simonne's "Empty Nest" article.

This morning, as I sat pondering this tantalizing new chapter in our lives, I opened up this month's UU World (check out my Unitarian Universalist connection) and decided to share the following quote from it:

Douglas Steere, a Quaker teacher, says that the ancient question,"Who am I?" inevitably leads to a deeper one — "Whose am I?" — because there is no identity outside of relationship. You can't be a person by yourself. To ask this deeper question is to extend the context far beyond the little self-absorbed self, and wonder:
"Who needs you?" "Who loves you?" "To whom are you accountable?"	"To whom do you answer?" "Whose life is altered by your choices?" "With whose life — whose lives — is your own all bound up, inextricably, in obvious or invisible ways?" —The Rev. Victoria Safford

See what happens to empty nesters ? — They start thinking too much !!

Jean Audrey Pammett — Feeling Your Presence

 
I cannot let this day pass without writing a tribute to my Mom, Jean Audrey Pammett, who died on this day in the year 2000. After a few short months of her final battle with cancer, and having exhausted every option the doctors came up with, she was ready to give us her blessing and entrust to us her warm spirit — whose presence I always feel… but especially on this day.

So how am I going to mark this day of remembrance?

My first thought was "Amazing Grace" — the song we sung at Mom's memorial service in Belleville, Ontario. So I scanned YouTube for what I hoped would be a fitting rendition. But alas none of the many versions I found felt right to me. So then I resolved to sing my own version "for Mom" and post that to YouTube… but just when I went outside — on this beautiful day in August — to do that… it started to rain !!    So I took the proverbial hint and came up with the above photo of one of my favorite works of art that my Mom left us: her hooking of the majestic "Snow Osprey" that she created in 1981. A close second to that was Mom's Red Rose, 1982 which I've always loved for its intense color and depth; and the Eagle, Bison, and Pacific North-West Indian hooking that she created after her trip to Vancouver back in the early 90s.

All of Mom's art — mostly hookings and quilting — is extremely well documented in the fabulous "Tribute Book" that Nanci published after Mom's passing. But alas that was before we could post stuff so freely to the internet so you'll have to see Nanci or I to appreciate that book in print.    I sure miss you, Mom !!
 

Lucky, in the Autumn of her Years

 
Recently I've been taking "Lucky", my aging 15-year-old black lab, with me more and more — in the car, "riding shotgun". She loves getting out — being with me in the car — and I have been taking every excuse to bring her along. Who knows if she has any idea where we're going? She gets excited and knows as soon as I begin planning our weekly trip to "the dump"; it's a perfectly fine destination as far as she's concerned. It's a noble pursuit; worthy of her dutiful attention.

This weekend when I took Lucky with me "off on an errand", I noticed that (again) I had to lift her up to help her get into the car. Her legs just aren't strong enough to make that jump up any more. But once she was in her seat she took her stand, held her ground firmly as the car swerved, and resolved to keep herself as much as she could at the top of her game — watching out over everything that passes, making sure that the world is as it should be.

Even though we both know that's not true.

Lucky is failing. Sometimes, it seems she's failing fast. She is still eating, though not as much these days. Her keen sense of hearing has long gone, though she still comes if you call her persistently and loudly enough. And she's been losing weight for about 18 months, though only very gradually. She is pretty much capable of getting up the steps from the garage into the house, though she doesn't come up the stairs inside the house — up into the computer room where I am — except when she's been lonely long enough downstairs alone that she figures it'll be worth the trek. But either way, she doesn't seem to be in any pain, and I like to think she's happy… though I've noticed that her tail's not wagging when she comes into the house in the morning, unlike always in the past.

I guess I have to admit that it seems like Lucky knows her days bound to this Earth are numbered… though she's not about to allow that to make any difference to her presence — the vivacious spirit that she always brings. Lucky continues to live every day as though it were her last, determined to teach us all to do the same.