We are nearing the end stages of this "great work." CONVERSATIONS Images and Poetry will be printed and available near the end of September.
And work it has been. We have woven together my photos and Clem's poetry - a far more complicated task than either of us imagined when we began to put this manuscript together last February.
A little over five years ago, we first conceptualized putting these two art forms together. We installed several exhibits and then repeated exposure of different pieces to the public over this period of time. And we listened to people's responses.
This book has been a postponed project - a project waiting for the right time to be born. Our other books kept nudging it down our list of possible publications. When each of our books was printed, often the first question was whether our newest book had photos. The answer always was that it did not. For starters, printing photographs is a far more expensive venture requiring a photographic grade of paper.
However, it was not just the cost of such a book. There was some unconscious awareness within both of us that we were not yet ready. And actually it has been a very good thing that we waited. We both grew as artists as we experimented with this conversation. And we traveled more places and accumulated more photos and poetry from the respective pools from which we made our selections.
At this point for each of us, it feels like a masterpiece or great work. The difference between a symphony and a sonata. Whether we will ever write a second symphony is not something we can answer at this time. It is like childbirth - never ask a woman in the midst of the late stages of delivery whether she will have another child!
The publishing business is a moving target these days. Digitalization, e-books, print-on-demand, self-publishing, and difficulties established publishers are having are only the tip of an iceberg of gargantuan proportions. Predictions of the end of printed books have been replaced with research saying e-book owners are reading more - both electronic and printed. books And they are reading more than people, who do not own Kindles, Nooks, and iPads. Books definitely aren't going away! Our options and opportunities are increasing.
What would our book look like on an iPad or an e-book? We simply can't even venture a guess. What we do think is that this is a book to be savored, to come back to over and over again. It will not be a book that a person likely will read from beginning to end, like a novel or non-fiction work. Rather it will be more like visiting an art gallery and sitting before some pieces of art or coming back to them. And passing by some pieces as nice, but not what holds your attention.
We will keep you posted and let you know when Conversations Images and Poetry will be available.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
A Cheer For Return of Nines!
Would all computer "problems" be this easily fixed. A new keyboard was all that I needed. Now I have an abundances of 999999's!
Sometimes people are asked what they would keep if they were allowed only a cetrtain small number of mechanical devices in their homes. I used to say "my dishwasher." Having grown up without this invention, I would have given up any number of other things that make life work. Some people might answer, "microwave," automatic washer," or "dryer." All things that were not part of my childhood.
Now my answer would be "my computer." It is my connection to friends and to the world. And it enables me do do a host of things more easily than "by hand." I used to write on those yellow legal pads. Today I can hardly write a coherent paragraph, much less a series of paragraphs without cut, move, and paste. Or have access to Internet resources, whenever I want to check some piece of data. And my life as a poet was born when I learned to use a computer.
Unfortunately, this connectiveness brings a host of risks. Hardly a week goes by without news articles about those risks. Having your address book stolen - or worse financial information that gives someone else access to vital information - is terrible experience. Hence "secure" passwords - or at least we hope they are secure. (And my "acute crisis" when the nine on my keyboard stopped working and prevented me from doing a number of things.)
Today's intriguing news article was about legal issues arising out of use of personal devices at work - cell phones and laptops in particular. The overlap between people's personal and work life becomes blurred. And as one person said it well: there is no way to bar cell phones at work. People will bring them anyway.
There were no car accidents before the invention of cars. But who would ban cars - other than in places where cars are not really workable. I think of Venice where it is obvious why there are no cars. I think of villages build on hills elsewhere in Italy or other places in Europe where passage-ways are not wide enough to accommodate cars.I remember sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Seville watching a very animated "discussion" in which a woman was adamantly insisting she could drive her sleek BMW down an alley that all of us bystanders could see was impossible. Quite entertaining!
Computers are much the same. I never worried about anyone stealing my Social Security number in the days before personal computers! Or accessing placers in my life I wish to remain private.
Today I am simply reveling in being able to enter a nine whereever needed!
Sometimes people are asked what they would keep if they were allowed only a cetrtain small number of mechanical devices in their homes. I used to say "my dishwasher." Having grown up without this invention, I would have given up any number of other things that make life work. Some people might answer, "microwave," automatic washer," or "dryer." All things that were not part of my childhood.
Now my answer would be "my computer." It is my connection to friends and to the world. And it enables me do do a host of things more easily than "by hand." I used to write on those yellow legal pads. Today I can hardly write a coherent paragraph, much less a series of paragraphs without cut, move, and paste. Or have access to Internet resources, whenever I want to check some piece of data. And my life as a poet was born when I learned to use a computer.
Unfortunately, this connectiveness brings a host of risks. Hardly a week goes by without news articles about those risks. Having your address book stolen - or worse financial information that gives someone else access to vital information - is terrible experience. Hence "secure" passwords - or at least we hope they are secure. (And my "acute crisis" when the nine on my keyboard stopped working and prevented me from doing a number of things.)
Today's intriguing news article was about legal issues arising out of use of personal devices at work - cell phones and laptops in particular. The overlap between people's personal and work life becomes blurred. And as one person said it well: there is no way to bar cell phones at work. People will bring them anyway.
There were no car accidents before the invention of cars. But who would ban cars - other than in places where cars are not really workable. I think of Venice where it is obvious why there are no cars. I think of villages build on hills elsewhere in Italy or other places in Europe where passage-ways are not wide enough to accommodate cars.I remember sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Seville watching a very animated "discussion" in which a woman was adamantly insisting she could drive her sleek BMW down an alley that all of us bystanders could see was impossible. Quite entertaining!
Computers are much the same. I never worried about anyone stealing my Social Security number in the days before personal computers! Or accessing placers in my life I wish to remain private.
Today I am simply reveling in being able to enter a nine whereever needed!
Friday, August 17, 2012
Life Without Nines
Sometimes twenty-first century life presents challenges unknown in pre-computer days. With my brain a bit soggy from the last weeks of formatting our newest book [for its next stage with our design consultant], I sat down to my computer. My intention was to check whether I needed to pay a few bills and several other tasks.
I type in my password for an account - and it is rejected. Sometimes my fingers are a bit sloppy on the keyboard, so I try two more times - more careful to key in the correct numbers.
More rejection! What is this?!
I focus my eyes on the screen to understand what my computer, also a bit soggy in its brain-department, might be adopting as a contrarian position for the day. Aha! The nines in my password are absent. And as we all know, secure sites are a bit touchy about slightly errant passwords, threatening to cut you off at the knees when you try too many times with the wrong sequence of letters and and numbers.
I tap the nine key several time. Nothing happens. I hold it down to no avail.
Oh dear - I shouldn't be surprised. The left parenthesis - on the same key - has not produced a single parenthesis in some time. I have gotten quite enamored to using brackets instead - and I had hoped the problem would go away at some point. After all, Clem's errant period on his keybord returned after wandering around cyber-space for several weeks.
I hoped my missing parenthesis also would find its way home. There was the matter of my time being consumed on the book and a lack of desire to go keyboard shopping. Keyboard acquisition is a rather unglamorous thing to be doing when there all sorts of other more interesting things to do. And course it is like shoe-shopping. A person can't just buy the first keyboard they see - one must compare options and prices at several stores.
But no nine? I can't pay bills on line, record checks online in Quicken, check Face Book or held email, and make sure I am still solvent at the bank. That's enough for a list of can't. Life has ground to a halt.
In the olden days, I kept my bank transactions in a paper register, reconciled my bank account with a calculator, and called or wrote to people with whom I wanted to talk. And bills even came due at either the middle or end of the month - none of this being spread out across a month.
Life without nines! I don't even want to find out other things I am now prohibited from doing. I'm off to the stores that sell keyboards!
I type in my password for an account - and it is rejected. Sometimes my fingers are a bit sloppy on the keyboard, so I try two more times - more careful to key in the correct numbers.
More rejection! What is this?!
I focus my eyes on the screen to understand what my computer, also a bit soggy in its brain-department, might be adopting as a contrarian position for the day. Aha! The nines in my password are absent. And as we all know, secure sites are a bit touchy about slightly errant passwords, threatening to cut you off at the knees when you try too many times with the wrong sequence of letters and and numbers.
I tap the nine key several time. Nothing happens. I hold it down to no avail.
Oh dear - I shouldn't be surprised. The left parenthesis - on the same key - has not produced a single parenthesis in some time. I have gotten quite enamored to using brackets instead - and I had hoped the problem would go away at some point. After all, Clem's errant period on his keybord returned after wandering around cyber-space for several weeks.
I hoped my missing parenthesis also would find its way home. There was the matter of my time being consumed on the book and a lack of desire to go keyboard shopping. Keyboard acquisition is a rather unglamorous thing to be doing when there all sorts of other more interesting things to do. And course it is like shoe-shopping. A person can't just buy the first keyboard they see - one must compare options and prices at several stores.
But no nine? I can't pay bills on line, record checks online in Quicken, check Face Book or held email, and make sure I am still solvent at the bank. That's enough for a list of can't. Life has ground to a halt.
In the olden days, I kept my bank transactions in a paper register, reconciled my bank account with a calculator, and called or wrote to people with whom I wanted to talk. And bills even came due at either the middle or end of the month - none of this being spread out across a month.
Life without nines! I don't even want to find out other things I am now prohibited from doing. I'm off to the stores that sell keyboards!
Thursday, August 9, 2012
A Pulsing
In the dusk,
a nearby bush harbors
the call of a lacewing.
A first sign of fall –
a change-signaler.
Incessant –
calling for hours
without pause.
Throbbing heart-like,
comforting, assuring,
quiet, muffled, yet
penetrating.
More felt than anything.
Soft, persistent, mysterious.
Slowed by the
cool evening air –
four, green, transparent,
veined wings vibrate.
A slow ancient song
is given birth.
Always curious –
I pause to count
the pulsing calls.
48 each minute.
Same as my heart beat
at rest.
-Clem Nagel
In the dusk,
a nearby bush harbors
the call of a lacewing.
A first sign of fall –
a change-signaler.
Incessant –
calling for hours
without pause.
Throbbing heart-like,
comforting, assuring,
quiet, muffled, yet
penetrating.
More felt than anything.
Soft, persistent, mysterious.
Slowed by the
cool evening air –
four, green, transparent,
veined wings vibrate.
A slow ancient song
is given birth.
Always curious –
I pause to count
the pulsing calls.
48 each minute.
Same as my heart beat
at rest.
-Clem Nagel
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Universal Ambivalence
My gift for this morning, as I finished reading the morning paper, was a family of young blue jays in the ornamental crabapple tree that sprawls over our deck.
For all practical purposes these "babies" are full-grown. But they still want their mama to feed them. To make their "needs" known, they sit on a branch, flutter their wings, and cry pathetically. Of course, the parent birds respond - and these now-fledged birds manage to prolong their childhoods. At some point however, the parent birds will cease to hear them - and the young birds will have to fend for themselves.
How like all of us! The yearning to be cared for - and fierce independence - competing for attention within all of us. Small children declaring they can "do it themselves." And the very elderly who resist the efforts of others to assume care for them.
This inner tension does not even fall in the category of wanting "our cake and eating it too." Ambivalence is a better description. We even see its effects politically. We demand smaller government and less taxation. And then cry foul when our streets are not maintained and our libraries curtail their hours. We want to choose whether to wear helmets while riding motorcycles and demand the right to not spend a single penny on health insurance. But we expect medical care when we have been in an accident and that someone will pay for that care.
The list is long. Take care of me and guarantee my job security. Permit the wealthy 1% to engage in unfettered capitalism - but don't threaten my pension investments. Don't restrict my rights with building codes and regulations, but my neighbor had better mow his lawn or I will complain to the city.
Somewhere in the very midst of our ambivalence lie necessary solutions, created out of compromise and caring for the common good.
And those independent and feisty jays will function together in a loose community to help safeguard each other's welfare. I know I will hear them them from time to time during the remainder of the summer, their raucous calls announcing a threatening intruder.
Look out solitary hunters, such as owls and hawks. If the jays go after you, they will be determined to chase you away hungry!
For all practical purposes these "babies" are full-grown. But they still want their mama to feed them. To make their "needs" known, they sit on a branch, flutter their wings, and cry pathetically. Of course, the parent birds respond - and these now-fledged birds manage to prolong their childhoods. At some point however, the parent birds will cease to hear them - and the young birds will have to fend for themselves.
How like all of us! The yearning to be cared for - and fierce independence - competing for attention within all of us. Small children declaring they can "do it themselves." And the very elderly who resist the efforts of others to assume care for them.
This inner tension does not even fall in the category of wanting "our cake and eating it too." Ambivalence is a better description. We even see its effects politically. We demand smaller government and less taxation. And then cry foul when our streets are not maintained and our libraries curtail their hours. We want to choose whether to wear helmets while riding motorcycles and demand the right to not spend a single penny on health insurance. But we expect medical care when we have been in an accident and that someone will pay for that care.
The list is long. Take care of me and guarantee my job security. Permit the wealthy 1% to engage in unfettered capitalism - but don't threaten my pension investments. Don't restrict my rights with building codes and regulations, but my neighbor had better mow his lawn or I will complain to the city.
Somewhere in the very midst of our ambivalence lie necessary solutions, created out of compromise and caring for the common good.
And those independent and feisty jays will function together in a loose community to help safeguard each other's welfare. I know I will hear them them from time to time during the remainder of the summer, their raucous calls announcing a threatening intruder.
Look out solitary hunters, such as owls and hawks. If the jays go after you, they will be determined to chase you away hungry!
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