waiting for the electrician

im sitting here with Dante [grandson 2 years] asleep upstairs, waiting for his brother to be born.

we were at the park this afternoon, that would be the park Fred Keeley said no one use because he's the kind of officious public servant who knows everything wrong, but is arrogant and a pissant to boot.

we were at the park this afternoon, and Dante, who is now physically pretty controlled, altho falls from time to time controlled, was climbing on structures pretty well.

he was interested in watching the big kids running, climbing and jumping on everything - but not wholly interested in being involved with them in any particular way.

which brings me to my point regarding my work.

there are seldom any people in my images, and if they are, it's unlikely they are anyone you can identify - how come?

i hadn't thought about it much until i watched Dante avoid the big kids.

when i have a choice, i don't like people. i'd prefer to be left alone - what legal scholars state that which defines the right to privacy. i'm not interested in listening to others' litany of problems, regurgitated perceptions of reality as dictated by the media, or careworn popular culture claptrap regarding the challenges of the earnest borgeouis middleclass, deflating retirement accounts and real estate, inflating butts, jowls, guts or metastases.

i don't mind an intellectual challenge, the wit or insight of the gifted and anything that offers the opportunity to experience something that will drag me outside or transcend myself, or provide the shock of the new - that has nothing to do with style.

i'm not just jaded, i'm just about 60 and i dont have the time for the predictable pathetic weight of this disintegrating culture.

so, i do landscapes devoid of people. not because the landscape is God's pristine garden, but because there people aren't there. i don't care how many feet have trod the place. i don't believe a place is any better due to the difficulty of inhabiting it.

at that moment i'm in it, it talks to me because no one else is there - at that moment, which i love - and for the image to share with those who also respond to an empty place for a moment to be alone.

Spring Creek

We went to Dorrington for the weekend, and while I didn't shoot much, I did get 4 or 5 images that I think are pretty great.

I've posted one at Fine Art America here:

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/spring-creek-larry-darnell.html

I haven't had the chance to print or even proof any of them, but I wanted to work with this one, as I also have audio to go with it.

coppermine gripe

I've about had it with coppermine as a platform for my portfolio.

I think I'll be revamping all my photo galleries in the next couple of weeks.

UPS GRIPE

I don't know why I wasn't getting UPS emails - which are the only way I get their bills, but I didn't get them for a few months.

Now my UPS usage is pretty small...I gripe about another issue later, but we're not talking about a lot of dough.

So, they get around to sending me a notice by mail about my unpaid balance, about which I was partially unaware. Why partially? Well, I gave a vendor my UPS account number and asked them to send me stuff on my account to save a shipping premium they charge. Well, I get no invoices from UPS, so I'm not aware of what I owe.

I call them, and discover, aha, here are the collect charges. They ask about my email address to make sure it's the right one, and, lo and behold, it is - I still didn't get the invoices, but I paid what I believed I owed - never got any invoices from them - by email even after I called.

They added late payments. I didn't pay them.

Now they've given me notice I've got an invoice, and I got to log in to my account, and can't. Ask to get a new password by email. I get it....can't log in with the new password. Get another password from them...can't log in with that one.

Woof - I call the number in the email states they're open Mon-Fri 8am - 9pm eastern time. The message says, they're open 8am to 8pm eastern time. Too late on the west coast to call after 5pm.

Ok, I'll call tomorrow.

How much time invested? Just 1 hour so far.

New Hope for American Art

New publication about regional artists from the New Hope, eastern Pennsylvania Bucks County region. I've just ordered this and will have a review as soon as I get it.

Available here at the publisher: Jim's of Lambertville.

Twitter Experiment

Ok, I'm trying twitter to see how else I can be distracted from doing my work. So far, I've found the article posted below, and a French photographer who's identified a couple of links to other websites where I might post my art. We'll see.

follow me here

http://twitter.com/CALandscapeArt

How the City Hurts Your Brain

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/

Landscape art for therapy