Your Picture Here

Su-Lin Fantella (Australia) wrote
at 1:14pm yesterday
Karen, why do you stay out of photos? You look GREAT and exactly the same as you always have!!! Don't shy away from the camera, lady!

Karen Runquist (Calgary, AB) wrote
at 1:18pm yesterday
Su-
like you I a not all that comfortable in front of the camera. I think that's why I became the resident photographer, just so I would have an excuse to stay out of the frame!! PS- thanks :o)
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I read the above exchange and, after resisting my first impulse to comment on the irony of who was making the comment (an impulse that I obviously just succumbed to) I began to write on Karins "wall" in face book about why she should be in more pictures. I discovered that yes there is a limit to wall posts (1000 characters). So I moved my comments here.

My theory about why you should have your picture taken, now.

1. First you have to accept the idea that youth = beauty.

2. Then you can accept that you are never going to look better tomorrow than you do today (see youth = beauty above 1). So more pictures now = better pictures. Also reference my pictures from 20 years ago and your pictures from the same time - don't you wish you had more because youth = beauty. Now you may think that it's too late as youth is gone therefore beauty has left, that is true only if you die tomorrow. Believe me, you look way better now than you do at sixty.

3. Also - to be considered, you are not invisible. Wether or not someone takes a picture of you, they can still see you, having your photo taken dose not make you visible.

4. Be in as many pictures as possible, more pictures of you = greater chance of good pictures. People like to post good pictures, or really bad ones. The really bad ones make you look like a good sport thus making you look good anyway. (Magna is a supreme example of this).

5. "But I'm fat. I don't want my picture taken." Again reference #3. Also consider it as before picture, you know. You see these people who have lost weight and either there is no picture or some grainy awful image. You may think - "I'm never going to get thinner" - then reference reason 2. Also this smacks of "waiting to be happy" the idea that happiness is something that will happen later, after a certain event like, being rich, or thin. Those may bring happiness, but why wait? Enjoy the journey, and who doesn't take pictures of journeys? Stupid people, that's who.

6. Do it for the children. As an act of love. I heard a piece on the radio about this guys mom who despised the idea of having her picture taken and always disparaged others as a pointless exercise. After her death he and his sister stumbled upon a few seconds of film footage of her walking out of a door at some family reunion. They watched it over and over, it was the only image they had of her. I don't doubt that she would have thought that stupid - but it mattered to them.
I love my pictures of my mom, especially the ones that are perhaps unflattering, the unposed shots, this is her. I love her and always have from the my earliest memories, I don't know why having images of her make me glad but they do.

7. Finally. It is important, I don't know why it's important, not really. But I know it is. Ultimately the only pictures you will regret are the ones that were never taken.

I dreamt a dream

I had a dream last night, I was in London, boarding the Titanic with Laurie, Tony, Su-lin, Cam and Elaine.
This wasn't the original Titanic, but a restoration. I noted that Tony and Cam were getting on really well, and I was saying that my Grandmother had survived the original sinking*. We were walking the length of the ship. I then found myself and about half a dozen others on a lifeboat off the ship. We were told they had overbooked and we couldn't stay on.
I returned to port and watched the ship sail without me, but with Laurie, Su, Tony, Elaine and Cam still on board.
I waited at the dock, which now began more and more to resemble an airport, or train terminal.
As I waited I sorted through my satchel and my camera back popped oven briefly - probably ruining the film in it.

I woke, feeling vaguely depressed.

*(this is not true, but in the dream it was).

Hat Metamorphosis

This was originally bought as a "summer" cotton Greek Fisherman's Hat, in Sanoma - on my honeymoon I think. I bought a wool one too, but certain hats I just can't seem to hang on too, wool Greek fisherman's hats and berets.

I think I was able to hang on to this one because I made the choice to wash it, in the washing machine. Don't EVER do this if you want your hat to look remotely the same as it was when it went in. My hat's aren't "collectibles" I ware them, a lot. This means they get dirty.

After the wash it was a cap, yes, but not a fisherman's hat. Turns out it wasn't exactly color-fast and the bill if the cap I think was stiffened with cardboard. This wash made it look, well "legitimate" comes to mind. In no way would some one ware this as a statement of style, it was the real thing, what thing I discovered while researching some of my other hats.

I saw a picture of a cap, and it was called a "fiddlers" cap. I'm pretty sure that was attached to the style after Fiddler of the Roof. Although the style itself is very old - predating even the early nineteen seventy's. I tried to find out how old, but the difficulty level exceeded my determination and so I gave up.

What I DID discover is hat's are REALLY out of Vogue. In my search I came a across a site that looked like it was designed about ten years ago. It had a links page, of the eleven links, nine of them were dead. One looked like an even earlier design. It made me feel really special.

To re-cap (pun intended) My Greek Fisherman's Hat turned into a Fiddlers Cap, and being interested in hat history is very, very fringe.

Put A Sock On It

Hat of the week ~ variant of 15th century sock hat.

I wear this hat when doing christmas related work, decorating the tree, supervising present opening etc.
Good memories - my first "santa hat" came as a gift from a neighbor on the first christmas with Laurie, I have a picture of that, I was wearing nothing but the hat and my underwear.
I'll have to post it.
We had bought the tree the day before for half price. Classically we had little, but the first Christmas as "us", we were quite happy.

This Christmas eve I rapped some 20 presents, most having been bought earlier in the day. Jane asked me today if there would be presents from "Santa" this year, "no" said David.
Jane, "Will you be rapping presents tonight?"
David, "yes"
Jane "To make it like there still is Santa?"
David "no, it's because I left it to the last minute"
Jane was amused.

My Dad didn't find it funny when he found out the reality of Santa. His reaction was a deeply personal one. One of deception, lied to, it was the lies that hurt.
So - there was no Santa in the Petty house the next generation, just the truth. Thanks to overwhelming social pressure we did have Christmas, but we never got presents from Santa.

Due to a magical experience Laurie had as a child, there was Santa this generation, till last year, when Anna fest up she wasn't buying it any more.

It's after 3 now, and stayed up, just a little more to post this ~ because I wanted to say I love you to my friends, but that sounds a little to much but, @#&% it's late, and I get emotional when sleep deprived.




The white sky has come down, close to the ground, the night is brightened and quieted. The sky has lain down, the ground is white with it, quieted.

To my friends. Some of whom I'm related to. Like music you make my life happier.

A Company Man

As I mentioned before I don't consider baseball caps really hats. Mainly because they are socially accepted head-ware. So when I wear my caps, I feel like I am in disguise - as a normal person. Or more accurately I feel like I am in disguise as an american.

To heighten this sense of conformity most of my caps are company hats. These are hats that were bought en-mass for a company event to be worn by company employees, to denote that they were, employees.

I have had a strict policy about logo-ed attire, since my time of hanging out with radicalized university students. (This was before I actually became a student and actually attended a radical campus, radical in the fact that it was so conservative it bore the distinction of being one of the only universities NOT to have student protests during the 60's).
That policy was NO LABLES. I refined that to "if I'm going to ware a company logo they better be paying me to advertise for them." I have stuck to that policy.

For a history of baseball caps.

Music Makes Me Happier

These are albums, and occasionally the songs that take me to time and place, they were the sound track of my life.

From about 1983 until my Mission I listened to music a LOT of the time, because I had limited means, the music like my wardrobe was on, again and again. Often they were lost, and so when I hear them again it takes me back.

I plan on continually updating this, and expanding on the music, and why it was significant to me.

1983
Simple Minds - 81-82-83-84
The Cure - Faith
B52's - B52's
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriels 3rd self titled album
Yazoo - Upstairs at Eric's
Eurithmics - Sweet Dreams

1984
Talking Heads - Take me to the River
OMD - Dazzle Ships
New Order - Power Corruption and Lies
Kraftwerk - Computer World
Madness - One Step Beyond...
Eurithmics - Touch
The Cure - The Walk
Heaven 17 - Penthouse and Pavement
The Smiths - The Smiths
The The - Soul Mining
Japan - Oil on Canvas
Human League - Travel Log, Dare
DEVO - New Traditionalists
Depeche Mode - Speak and Spell
Midnight Oil - 10987654321

1985
Flock of Seagulls - Flock of Seagulls, Listen
Blue nile - Walk Across The Rooftops
Ice House - Flowers
Fiat Lux - Hired History
The Cure - Head on the Door - Jason and the southern Road Trip
OMD - Organization, Architecture and Morality, CRUSH
New Order - Everything's Gone Green
Depeche Mode - Some Great Reward

1986
Fine Young Cannibals - Fine Young Cannibals
Peter Murphy - Should The World Fail To Fall Apart Don
The Cult - Love
Big Country- The Crossing
OMD - Crush

1987
Billy Brag - Talking to Taxman About Poetry, Spy vs. Spy
Shriekback - Big Night Music, Care, Jam Science, Oil & Gold
English Beat - Best of. Strongly tied to Su-Lin
Simple Minds - Empires and Dance Paul
Smiths - Meat Is Murder, The Queen Is Dead
The The - Infected
Talk Talk - Color of Spring Su
China Crisis - Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, Working with Fire and Steel, Flaunt the Imperfection, What Price Paradise
Love and Rockets - Express, Seventh Dream of a Teenage Heaven
OMD - Pacific Age
David Silvian - Brilliant Trees
Fad Gadget - Gag
U2 - Indian Summer Sky - after I first kissed Su as I went home
Crowded House - Crowded House
Depeche Mode - Music For The Masses

1988
Sinead OConnor - The Lion and the Cobra
Sisters Of Mercy - Floodland, The Damage Done, Body Electric, Alice, The Reptile House EP, Temple of Love, Body and Soul, First and Last and Always
Sugar Cubes - Life's Too Good
AhHa - Hunting High and Low
The Church - Starfish listing to it while working at the hospital

New Order - Substance

1989
Enya - Watermark
Sisters Of Mercy - First and Last and Always,
New Order - Technique
Mauve - Mauve
The Smiths - Strangeways Here we Come
The The - Mind Bomb
Chill's - Kaleidoscope World, Brave Words,The Lost EP
Dead Can Dance - Dead Can Dance, Spleen and Ideal, Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, The Serpents Egg

Mission Years 1989 - 1991
B52's - Love Shack Darwin Post Office
The Mission 3 tracks from Laurie
Bauhaus - Acoustic Track from Laurie
Cat Stevens - Moon Shadow Laurie
The Church - song Reptile would play a lot in my head

1991
Peter Murphy - Deep
David Silvian - Secrets of the Beehive Linked to Laurie - she sent it me
This Mortal Coil - Laurie
Suzanne Vega - Days Of Open Hand

1992
Sisters Of Mercy - Vision Thing Courting Laurie
Crowded House - Into Temptation Making out with Laurie in my Apartment in Provo

1993
His Name Is Alive - Livonia, Home Is In Your Head
This Mortal Coil - Blood
The Chills - Submarine Bells
Creatures - Boomerang
DeadCanDance - Into The Labyrinth
Suzanne Vega - 99.9F°
Shriekback - Sacred City

1994
Dead Can Dance - Toward The Within
Dead Can Dance - song - American Dreaming Makes me think of Laurie & I
The Jam - Greatest Hits Laurie introduces me to
Men Without Hats -Men Without Hats

1998
Madonna - Ray of Light

1999
Alphaville - Forever Young

2006
Ladytron - 604, Light and Magic

2008
This year seemed to be a reawakening in me of music as an intrigal - indispensable part of living. Two things, and ipod will all my music on, and having to spent 30 min. to 2 hrs. a day running errands and realizing if I was surrounded by music it became very bearable. Finally was Mobys Hotel, it reminded me how discovering new music is not a subtle process but an explosion of something akin to joy when you find that resonating cord in you.
Moby - Hotel

Cheesecake

Cheese + Cake how could that possibly be good? It's an unnatural, an unholy combination! There was NO WAY that the young Paul Leach could be forced to eat such an abomination. He withstood all entreaties to partake.

Then - one day, as grown man something happened (did it have to do with Allison?) and he a a peace of Cheesecake.
Oh the regret! The sorrow! All those wasted YEARS! A life hardly worth living, now made complete with the wonder of CHEESECAKE.

That was Paul's story he once relayed to me about cheese cake.

Living as a poor boy of limited culinary experience, I don't think I even had the opportunity until later in life to eat cheesecake. I was unimpressed.

It was only later I discovered I had chosen a side to which all of humanity falls - the side that like cheesecake and those that, just "have something wrong with them," as Su-Lin Fantella almost wrote.

No one gets to be over 40 without laving a cheesecake story of there own - here is mine.

I was newly Married and a student, as was my lovely young bride. We we summering with her parents, working to diminish some of our debts during the break. The location, Marin County - just out of San Francisco - some of the most expensive real-estate in the U.S. That obviously means some of the best bakeries in the nation.

Len, my brides father came from a humble laboring background and did just about all he could to forget that. One of those ways was to go and patronize the best bakeries, and bring home their wares.

In an act of generosity and bonding one night he came home with probably one of the best cheesecakes in the world, it was ostensibly a gift for me. What could I do? I graciously accepted. It was, cheesecake - undoubtably the best cheesecake I had ever had - but, still cheesecake.
I'd have rather had, I don't know - cherry pie... I said it was the best cheesecake I had ever had - and ended there. Len was happy, Laurie, my lovely young bride, relieved, and all was well.

But then, not more than a few days passed but Len brings home another cheesecake, for me. On the third occasion, I could see the lie stretching out before me, down the years... Len bringing cheesecake every time he visited, or perhaps cheesecake care packages when we lived too far for him to drive, Thanksgiving cheesecake, Christmas...

I knew what I had to do. The years of watching american sitcoms had taught me one thing, don't lie to make someone feel better, painful as that would be, the lie becomes more painful, and although hilarity will ensue, it's not funny if your the guy in the situation comedy.

So I told Len that I didn't like Cheesecake. He bought me no more cheesecake, but he never did get me any cherry pie.