7 Color Lagoon

Weddings have been a two-sided sword in my life.  Mine (ours) was considered hippy-like back in ‘69 and hated by the respective families.  We eschewed having anything but a very private function in our favorite formal garden at Blithewood on the Bard College campus.  It was limited to my in-laws who would have wanted a large, public gathering in suburban New York, a pair of friends from law school and the Reverend David Pierce.

David saved the day by making everyone comfortable as he invented a service that met the needs of marriage-bonding and charmed my wife’s parents with his blue eyes and flowing, blonde hair.  He later “lost his calling” as an Episcopal minister, changed religions and went different ways.  We became friends when he was, many years later, our editor for photographic essays of an academic bent for the Hudson River Regional Review. 

The garden had been our favorite playground during college and was the place we returned each year until illness forced me to move us to Mexico.  It was one of the ties that bind, a ritual pilgrimage that always brought us back to the time the bees buzzed by, David intoned all the words of bonding and the sun shone on the July blooms of the 19th c. enclosed garden.

Later, as a photographer, I shot one or two weddings a year for editors and friends.  It never became a major part of my work but the intricacies of putting the wedding affair not only together but as an event that forever spells the nature of the relationship was made known to me.  It ain’t easy!  There are family frictions, tensions and worries, friends (and those who call themselves that) and associates and all the knots that bind those people together to each other and The Couple.

Beyond the emotional ties and bonds and the fears of actually “tying the knot” lay the myriad details of putting together a spectacular event that is to entertain everyone, please families who might not be as comfortable with each other as the wedding couple, and coordinate the food and venue, the band, flowers, honeymoon plans, Aunt Hattie and Grandmother Jill and all their needs and do it seamlessly, seemingly effortlessly and, if it all works, without anyone noticing that it was hard work to orchestrate.

And there is the photographer — picking one, paying one and being happy with the results.  My rules for such a choice will be held for another time.  I was a fine photographer and made, I thought, emotional and sensitive pictures in a photojournalistic fashion.  But I was not a good wedding photographer because the mechanics of putting together albums and bookkeeping the thousand pictures for all those who wanted them was too far from my usual academic and industrial work.  In these computer-days of digital photography, web-sites and emails, digital movement of images and services that will take digital files to create albums and send them to those who want them I might have looked for more weddings.

I was in upstate New York.  Now that my time is spent in Mexico (where photography is very primitive and little understood) and in Miami which is conducive to both Miami Weddings and photography because of its sub-tropical light, exciting locations (Vizcaya comes to mind along with the Biltmore Hotel), great restaurants and a place far-flung family and friends look forward to visiting.  I was directed to a web site that includes a terrific guide to creating a Miami Wedding.

This is the stuff of the modern world.  The site offers up a directory of all the services needed to plan your own wedding spectacular or have a professional planner do it for you (like Geraldine Chaplin in the Robert Altman film, The Wedding).  Naturally I was most interested in checking out photographers and found that they had ads for 9 photographers (in Miami — the site has scores of locations).  Rodrigo Varela presented a great web presentation of photos in a sophisticated flash presentation (evocative, heart-felt pictures, too) as well as more formal photographers.  The site, unlike me, also pays attention to all the details of the wedding process — bands, balloons, gowns, flowers, planning professionals, transportation services, ice sculptors, personal chefs, yachts (it is Miami, after all), Jewish wedding specialists, and, I love it!, personalized wedding chocolates.

The site is: 1 Wedding Source (.com): Miami for Miami Weddings.

This is Blithewood Garden in the Hudson Valley where we were married.  Picking a spot you will want to remember and return to to celebrate a romantic time is an important wedding decision.

We’ve been there to visit these gaseous giants. We, the race of humans, that is who sent out a robot spacecraft and sat back to await the pictures. NASA

provides such great images from Astronomy Pictue of the Day as well as the NASA site.

The Jupiter image is wonderful because of its 3D quality.

The Saturn pictue with its rings because the robot camera and its earth-based controllers didn’t just go the distance and send back a snapshot. The image reminds me of Steichen or Weston in its planes, muted color palette and “modern” composition. Wait! It is a NASA picture from space.

The last “little” upgrade of the Wordpress blogging platform left me blog-less, frustrated through a week of trying to find it in the shambles of the files for the beast and vowing only to upgrade again for the most dire reasons or tempting changes. The developer of Wordpress also had the audacity to suggest blogging about the experience and how easy it was.

“Hah”, thought I, “not very likely.”

I had just written an article for Blogcritics Magazine as a satire on the complexity and problems of running even the smallest site. Even there I had to admit to the seductive beauty of WP all pimped out and tweaked with her shiny ebony skin.

Who was I to rock the boat to go from 2.2 to 2.2.2 in one fell swoop? What would happen if the whole site was lost no matter how many backups I made? I made lots.

Then I found the plugin, Wordpress Automatic Upgrade, made by Keith Dsouza. The man is flirting with genius: it worked.

Instead of the hours on hours of mistakes, repetitions and worry of the last time when I followed WP instructions line-by-line and still had problems; this time the whole process took about 15 minutes. That is not counting the extra backup(s) I did beforehand just in case it did not do as promised and backup my database and all my WP files automatically.

With the magick of the Little People this plugin not only did the deed of the upgrade but my blog seems to function better. Perhaps Keith’s program was far better than my first attempts to upload a Wordpress package?  We shall see how she works.

So I have now ended up doing just what was suggested: sitting back to congratulate myself on a job well-done and blogging about it to try out the old WPware freshly minted.

Sexy Blogware Seeks Driven Blogger For Matrimony

Please help a blogger who lost his way. I have dallied with more than one piece of blogware, shamelessly used a few blog editors, and taken a web host. Do I need blogger absolution or can I learn to live with the situaltion?

I was seduced. Some pretty blogware wagged its back end at me and my mind numbed. My fingers took over and stroked those keys as if words could be coaxed from them. I admit it. I lost control. Pretty, sexy, amenable to change, she posed prettily with all her 3 columns of goodness just running over. Now she has become teasingly difficult, hard to handle, prone to tantrums, stubborn and, I fear, slower and fatter than I would have liked. There is still something about her I love but blogging with her has its drawbacks.

The foreplay to this tragic tale of being drawn like a moth to the gentle, embracing light of the computer display is that first rush of pride that the words people read, the pictures they look at, the thoughts and feelings exposed are the self-caress of my psyche. The hidden exhibitionist cries, “Look at me, world.” WordPress took me away with her into the depths of blogospherical depravity. What would I not do for a sweet, pretty, amenable, friendly and all-embracing blog system to expose for the world to see?

Blogging caught me up with my first computer a few years ago. Like my past life where newspapers, magazines, annual reports and books published my work; blogging seemed like self-publishing. Is a web log vanity-publishing or just vanity? I push “publish” therefore I am published. Or is it just another self-caress brought to us by the magic of the Internet?

I lived with Blogger for years and played around with more than one Blogger Blog and Blogger Betas searingly hot off the press. I tweaked them and pimped them, asked much and they returned my lusty exhibitionism with placid restraint and engaging loyalty.

Oh, Miss Lonelyblogs, I did not give them the respect they deserved. So now I keep some Blogger blogs in a harem. Am I a bigamist or blogamist? (more…)

I have not abandoned this blog, the site, my external blogs nor pictures and galleries. More is to come.

Recently I have been writing some sponsored posts both here and on Notes From Bacalar. Money coming in from what has been my personal diary and record of articles published is good. I feared that they would be boring but, each time I take on a sponsor company, I am surprised that getting pushed to visit their web site or find a connection to something in my life turns out to be fun, informative, amusing or interesting.

It is that time — a yearly affair — when I must renew my annual visa (the FM3) from el Instituto Naciònal de Migraciòn (INM), the Mexican version of the American Immigration Department. This year appears to be one of the less complex ones — perhaps because last year we were held up for 3 months with red tape wrapped around our lives. I need my FM3 not to leave Mexico for this epic voyage I plan to Florida and New York but in order to return without problems. Also my drivers’ license is Mexican and can only be renewed for the period the FM3 is valid. I plan to see if I can get a Florida license when I am there. Statelessness has its drawbacks. I am not stateless in that I am American — 110% true-blue — but not resident in the States at this point.

The house is being painted which causes a great degree of dislocation, noise and the company of painters and ladders. But it will glisten and shine and pose prettily for its pictures and then, it seems, I will sell it. Or so says my present inclination. I have begun to prepare the advertising blurb-descriptions and will shoot some fine pictures. I have been viewing thousands of real estate web sites for properties in Merida, around Merida, in Miami, around Miami and up the Florida coast, along the Caribbean around Tulum and still have little idea where I want to live. However, I do know that there are vast differences in the presentation of properties on the ‘Net in terms of visualizing from photographs. Some are like the architectural shots I used to do when I was working and too many are so disgustingly bad that I find it hard to believe anyone would waste the bandwidth with them.

Finally there is the stock market. I have little to say today. The roller coaster ride has been exciting. My Apple stock has still gained 103% even if some others have lost. I sold a little and picked up some Abbot Labs. All is not lost although, when thought about in pesos it seems more catastrophic than when put into dollar amounts (and there are no Mexican stocks in the basket).

All of which is merely my excuse for ignoring my writing and publishing. Stay tuned.

So little on the ‘Net — or so little I have been seeing — makes me laugh. This YouTube video I first saw on Lifehacker did.