NOTICE: IF YOU HAVE BEEN FAVED OR COLLECTED AND NO COMMENT WAS LEFT: Sorry, I have more than 1300 watches to try to go through and I simply don't have the time right now to comment on every faved or collected piece. I will try to go back and add comments when the backlog is much lower.


Well South By Southwest (SXSW) is here again. I'm not working this year (darn it), but maybe next year. I'm sending this though from SXSW where we (me, Justin and Emily (his gf)) are today. She is staff, again. No tickets, so the experience is a lot less than it was last year; then I was deep on the inside, holder of a Platinum badge, now I'm looking in the window from the outside, with no kind of badge at all. The perspective is certainly different.

Haven't been working on anything much, not shooting pictures and not writing, but the itch to do both is soooo powerful right now.

Woke up today, looked outside at the snow covering the grass. The second good day weather wise in the past seven. Just two days ago woke up to one of those end of winter days where the sky is aching blue and clear except for white cotton balls of cloud drifting like tourists on vacation looking down at all the beautiful scenery. The day grew steadily more mild and pleasant, warming to the low 80's with a fair breeze to make it really comfortable. The kind of day that resurrects an old fantasy I've had on and off for years. There was a time when a new age of air travel was being born and great graceful Zeppelins (dirigibles) were flying between capitals of the world in slow, majestic,serene, even regal, splendour like living clouds. My fantasy is to build an enormous dirigible and outfit it for living and cruise the world in sedate but interesting never-ending voyages, stopping whenever and wherever I pleased staying as short or long as I pleased, but always moving eventually to some new mooring and then the one after and the one after... A tourist on vacation, drifting, drifting, drifting like a cloud, forever.

Fantasy, dream. memory? Well whatever it is I doubt it will ever become reality in this lifetime, if ever I thought to experience the experience by proxy so to speak, then I think a few years, or maybe a lifetime, sailing before the wind docking a whatever port strikes my fancy might be a close and perhaps even partly satisfying approximation of the experience.

Then today, following so soon on the heels of that one and the snow falling lightly for a few minutes and Justin walking out into the first snowfall he has ever known. It wasn't much, just a dusting on the grass and some accumulation on the sitting cars, but it was his first and it was a delight to see his delight. A little later we were over at some friends and through their front window I saw the fat snow flakes begin drifting down again and we went out and just enjoyed the pure magic of white crystals floating through the air slowly covering the world in a monotone blanket fragile as cobweb and as deadly as the most venomous arachnid, beautiful, treacherous, silent and potentially lethal. But in their manifestation today they were content to be nothing more than eye pleasing plump wet crystals of water droplets falling on upturned smiling faces, melting on outstretched tongues. I wonder why we all universally it seems do that, stick out our tongues to catch snowflakes? Do we seek to taste the magic? When magic has no taste. Failure has a taste, of ashes. Joy has a taste, sweet. Sorrow has a taste, bitter. But magic has no taste, like a snowflake.

We went to a near by place and ate lunch,, including Blizzards on the side, after the snow had stopped falling. We laughed and laughed that his very first snow ended with a Blizzard at the Dairy Queen.

I have a question.

Most educated, informed, and/or thinking Homo Sapians (Humans) have gradually come to understand that there are roughly four other species on Earth who meet our criteria for assigning a label of intelligent. Whales, Dolphins, Elephants, and certain Apes or Monkeys (yes I know the two are different species but common usage lumps them together and I shall do so also here) are considered intelligent. Some accord some of these species as having intelligence the equal of or greater than humans. Which brings me to my question and an observation.


Some or all of these species are considered as nearly, or equal, or greater to our own intelligence. Why then do we persist in nearly universally calling them Creatures or Animals? Should we not give them their rightful and proper titles as Beings?

My observation then is that the reason we do not routinely call them Beings is in part due to human chauvinism and in part because of the use we make of these Beings. I think it would be much harder to justify and continue the use of Beings rather than creatures or animals as food sources, as cosmetics ingredients, as experimental subjects, as slave labor, or any of the other sordid and unconsidered uses we humans have made for these intelligent Beings.

Perhaps it is time to stop calling them animals and creatures and begin calling them Beings so that we may also by becoming thus aware of what they truly are stop abusing and murdering Beings who are our intellectual equals.

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RETURN EXPECTED 02/04/10===================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================== ANTICIPATED DATE OF RETURN 02/04/10
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As those who are familiar already know, this means I will visit this page seldom and usually only very briefly until the return date. I will try to keep up with mail but don't really expect a reply to messages or notes until at least the return date shown above.
All is well. All is well. All will be well.































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Today was one of those brilliant fresh warm days we sometimes get just after or just before a cold spell here in Central Texas. Warm enough to open the windows and just the right amount of breeze to flap the curtains, a combination to make you think of a late spring day perhaps along towards the end of May. It was much appreciated, but soon to be replaced I'm afraid, already with the sundown, the air is growing uncomfortably chilly and I suspect the dawn tomorrow will bring an entirely different sort of day. These kind of days are nice, very enjoyable, but always serve to make one long for the seasons slow turning to roll on around to the real Spring, because despite their warmth and sun and bright skies they are appearing in the midst of the play Winter performs. And it is not over yet, more is to be experienced before we can safely assume it is behind us. Like all the Southern portions of America, Winter in Texas often saves it's wort bites for when you think it is almost finished, when all the rest of the nation is hurrying toward sweet days and milder temps, we will many times feel the gusts blowing hard out of the North and the air growing ever colder as a Blue Norther comes rushing down to firmly remind us that Winter is not yet ready to cede the stage and there's another act or two in this drama yet un-played.

Despite it's brevity, today was doubly welcome as I had slept long and well, two things I seldom do. To wake fully rested to such sweet day is one of the memories I hold from more innocent or less troubled times when they were an unremarkable part of an unremarkable life. Sadly, perhaps, it has been many years, even decades since they were routine. I would not trade the hours I've spent while others slept, but it is good to remember there were other times and other ways I lived in the world before.

Today I am at ease. Doesn't take much sometimes, a good nights sleep, mild temps, sunshine, and a nice breeze to remind us that life always has a few pleasant days tucked away and not every day will be tired and gray.