Roam, roam around

Two walls in a to-be-remodeled office.

Light of late afternoon at the bathroom…

Four images without obvious stories. It was the light that first struck me. But now when I look at them, I start to guess the stories in them. Who used bed sheet by the window? Which part of the world are/is they/he/she from? Who slept in that bed? Who sat in the couch? Are they – if it was more than one person – in a romantic relationship? Maybe a secretive one? … Objects reveal if they are examined, esp. by archaeologists and anthropologists. I love objects in old places with good lights. They particularly have more stories.

The clouds get darker, heavier and lower. Then come thunders, followed by rain drops. But I don’t worry about the rain as I did two days ago when I had to photograph soccer games in the heavy rain. It is my day off and I have the luxury of sitting in my music and reading Woody Tasch’s slow money philosophy.

Tasch asks us to rethink this globalization, that has fascinated the whole world for some decades now. He despises quick money, cheap, mass production, greed and irrational economic developments. He calls for a return to more organic economies. He talks about poetry and beauty (e.g. an organic farm) vs. ugliness  (e.g. the parking lot of McDonld’s) in economy…But Tasch can’t provide any solution to that catch-22 of having to produce enough cheap food to feed the masses while high-quality, locally grown food is available only to those who could afford it. And I guess those who could afford it include those who know how to make quick money, and probably those who mass produce the cheap food…

I am from a nation with at least 1.3 billion people, a population that requires quick, cheap mass production of food and everything else, so people don’t starve or chill. After starving for so many decades, the nation is passionate about our growing economy. Everyone is craving for quick money. (Seriously, who wouldn’t like quick money?) Consumerism and materialism and greed overwhelms our world.

Yet, as economy grows and grows very fast, as is often reported, the environment deteriorates, social disconnections increase, the gap between the have and have-nots widens and deepens. Some, with their stomachs satisfied, begin to miss Mao’s era, when they believe they were not that lonely and desperate as they are now. Some get so desperate that they turn to violence. Tragedies seem unavoidable. Earlier this year, in different parts of the country, innocent kindergartners were killed out of some social revenge. This worries me because my little niece will soon start her kindergarten life.  A couple days ago, at a fresh market in my hometown, a butcher killed one government official and critically injured another out of rage. (This worries me, too, because my parents go to the fresh market every morning. I don’t want them to witness any violence at a place that is supposed to be lively and fresh instead of bloody.) It was said the two government officials, who had the power, overused their power and enraged the powerless butcher…You can’t say this is not connected to our economic growth. They are related somehow and somewhere.

To me, it seems the growth in economy leads to a loss of common sense and a loss of balance. Our ancestors in ancient China have worked so hard to teach their offsprings to appreciate and keep a balance, but we are losing it. We know we are losing it and deplore this horrible loss.  So we know something is wrong, just like Tache. But we simply don’t know how we can feed and clothe at least 1.3 billion people without losing that balance.

It’s been a long, long, long time since I last updated the blog. It’s been busy…but also had some fun photographing some interesting people and places… Here is something from a dream assignment: driving along The Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina for a week! No better assignment than that because it was like vacation for free, except that you have to get up at 5 and shoot till dark even after dark.

Squatting at a tiny square space between a travel agency and a high-end shop on 15th Street in downtown Washington DC, sat a man two names: William and Mark.

I asked him why he had two names, he mumbled some words like “for business’ sake.”

“What kind of business?” I asked.

He showed me several different cards, other people’s cards, which I don’t understand. Then he showed me an American Express Credit Card.  It was obviously not his, and possibly an expired or discarded card.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked, knowing this is a very naive question.

“I don’t have money,” he said. “I have no money,” he repeated.

“Why are you here? Do you live here?”

“No, I don’t live here,” he said. Then he added, “I am here … because the travel agency is here.”

I drove to Venice, LA this morning, hoping to photograph the oil spill aftereffects. I was not able to get on a boat, which took some media people to where the wild lives have been affected. It was a limited tour, I heard. I was disappointed. Several other people were also denied the access. I suggested to them looking for some local fisherman, who might be willing to help. This was how I met G. (For safety reason, I am not going to give out his name and post his pictures.)

G, 62, is very concerned about the oil spill, not only for his fishing business’s sake, also for the environment. He is also concerned when we asked if he could take us to where we could see the oil at the ocean, as he was already given two tickets for fishing in the wrong zone after the oil spill. BP had done many things to keep the fishermen silent, he told me. That includes giving them food and making them sign contracts. Plus he didn’t have a great boat, which means it could be dangerous if storms come up. I decided not to push him to help. So we sat at his friend’s porch and chatted.

G has a university degree and is well read. He loves Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, because that was exactly his family’s history. “What is your favorite part of the book?” He asked when I told him I loved that book, too. “The scene where Rose of Sharon became a mother, lost her baby, then saved a starving men with her milk.” I said. “That was exactly my favorite part!” He exclaimed. He decided to take me to the dock and meet some other fishermen, then around the town. He even let me sit at the top of his truck to photograph the birds!

I like to think this bird worries over the oil spill.

Fishermen chat about oil spill and their fishing business.

This fisherman told me he was angry about the oil spill. “Business turned bad because of that.”

Roam, roam, and roam…I walked from 1o am to 6 pm, with only a 30-min coffee break and 20-min lunch break. Exhausting? Yes! But also quite fun. I experienced the most fun protest ever today. It was a group of people marching in French Quarter again BP oil spill. Their way to protest was to play jazz! When a street performer “talked” with his  music notes, high pitch, one of the players in the march responded, with great humor. So there was that witty conversation in music in the square, attracting a growing audience.

Then there was that pink pig, as a pet, put on the street, making all the pedestrians stop for her, taking her pictures, including me. She reminds me of the pig in “The unbearable lightness of being” by Milan Kundera! Then there were those two dogs…

Got to New Orleans around noon. I stay at a youth hostel, where I was surprised to find more local people here than international travelers. But it is still an international hostel. I share a dorm with a Canadian musician and a Russian college student. The Canadian musician is quite a character and she started drinking beer with the local southerners right after she arrived. The Russian girl came to work at a bar in New Orleans. She hardly interacts with others.

After living in Athens, Ohio, where my famous party school is, I am not very surprised by The French Quarter in New Orleans. It is very much like the Court Street in Athens, except that is bigger and with more tourists than college students…well, maybe.

I am a tourist these few days, a tourist at a loss. So I can only take tourist pictures, at least here in Lafayette, LA.