Copyright? What copyright?

The web is a great thing.  I don't know how I'd get along without it.  But there are some serious downsides.

I make photographs because I really like to.  No, I love to.  I like to share some of what I do.  I mean, for me, that's the point... capture a frame for the sake of its visual appeal.  Not everyone is going to like it, but some will.  So I put some up on the web and provide links for viewing them, particularly to the subjects.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at the front page of the print publication for our local community radio station and found one of my photos staring back at me.  When I looked below the fold, there was another.  Nobody had asked me for permission, and yet here's my stuff showing up in print, without attribution.

Musicians (at least the ones I like) get up on stage because they love to do what they do, because they want to share what they do, and usually because they'd like some appreciation for what they do.  Appreciation in the form of applause (at least) and in the best of worlds, some money.  Not an outlandish amount usually, just some to help offset expenses.

I don't expect applause.  Though I have to admit that when one of my subjects came up to me a week ago and told me that those were the best pictures she'd ever had from a performance, it did feel really good.

I don't expect a lot of money.  Usually, I don't expect any, but some would be nice.  I've got a few thousand dollars invested in equipment, supplies and software... think of it as an analogue to a few guitars and an amp or two.  They're necessary tools, and they're not free to me.

I do expect respect.  And sometimes it comes.  But sometimes it doesn't.

I got an e-mail from a performer who happened to be included in one of my sessions.  No compliments or anything, just "send me everything you took at high resolution".  Naw... I don't think so.  Even if he understood what he was asking for he wasn't going to get it.  I gave him express permission to use web-resolution images of the files that I chose for MySpace or Facebook use only, and I didn't charge him.  It was a better deal than he deserved, but he probably still thinks I'm being a jerk because I warned him that he really didn't want me to find that he'd used anything in print without permission.

I'm regularly astonished at what some people believe they're entitled to.  But it does make those occasions when real appreciation is shown even more memorable.

Is Oregon Really That Bike-Friendly?

And, is civil discourse as dead as it seems?

It's starting to feel like the answers are "No" and "Yes", respectively, and it's depressing me.

Two cycling-related legislative proposals have hit Salem in the last week or so, and the resultant firestorms of "debate" (applied in the loosest of possible contexts) have amounted to hate-speech.  Both sides are guilty, but the pro-car/anti-bike wing wins hands-down for both overt and covert threats of violence and preponderance of ignorance.  They've got the gross vehicle weight behind them, after all.  So, when push comes to, well... squish... the cyclist loses.

There are some pretty damned stupid "spokeys" out there, too... don't get me wrong.  A carbon-neutral footprint doesn't win you any points if you're otherwise an idiot.

Few of the combatants in the alleged debates seem to be from the "real world"... that is, people who both ride and drive and take a pragmatic view of both sides of the issues and try to find peace in the middle.  The loudest of the shouters are the anarchist bike-fans and the "you'll pry me from my car with your cold, loud Jaws-of-Life" crowd.

A news-flash, folks:  Peace is possible in the middle.  But it requires thought, tolerance and some flexibility.

Oh, damn.  I just remembered that I'm asking all three of the above from a majority of state citizens.  

Nevermind.  I'll keep an eye on my mirror for the pick-em-up truck aiming to make a hood ornament out of me.

A Surprise!

I was liberating some new shirts from their packaging tonight. I don't buy such things all that often, so maybe these aren't so new, but I LOVED the fact that the Dockers shirts didn't have pins, but these little paper clips, instead.

As I slid them off, I felt the imprints far more than read them. These are really small, after all. I looked much closer and just chuckled. I thought they were worth dragging out the camera and flash to shoot them.

Yes, I kept them all, and yes, they're being added to the paper clip collection in my office.

Inauguration Day

I took a couple of hours off to watch the procedings today. I've never done that before. Since high school (maybe before) I've understood on an intellectual basis what "a peaceful transfer of power" means, but it's taken until now for the full effect of that phrase to really resonate within me. Sorry... I can be kind of slow about these things.

I took the whole thing for granted, really. Shame on me.

But now, now that I'm the same age as the man taking the oath, it all hit home.

What's happened here is just barely comprehensible.

I have not "drunk the Kool-Aid".

I don't believe that Obama is anything more than a man.

I don't believe that any one person can heal all of the wounds and right all of the wrongs of the last eight years.

But I do believe that one man can lead the people where the last was led by greed and vanity and the military-industrial complex that a former leader of his own party warned about two generations earlier. "The People" ended up being dragged along in increasingly unwilling numbers.

The holes that have been dug by the previous administration (and those started decades ago and deepened through benign neglect or malignant intent) will take a lot of time and effort to fill.

One man can't do it all.

But one vast country still can.

Well, now... that was impressive

On a spectacularly ugly night to be out and about (rain driven by frantic gusts of wind), attendance vastly exceeded any expectations at a movie preview/anti-LNG meeting at The Loft in Astoria.

For anyone in the dark about this, LNG is liquified natural gas.  Basically the same thing extracted from Canada and the US Rockies, except that LNG is extracted in other parts of the world, supercooled to a liquid state, poured into massive ships and then offloaded, re-gassified and then distributed via pipelines around the US.

So, what's the problem?  It's just another energy source, isn't it?  Isn't gas cleaner than coal?

Oh... where to start?

While this wasn't really touched on at the gathering tonight, I'll start at the mouth of the river, since that's where it first begins to touch our lives.  The mouth of the Columbia River is one of, if not THE most dangerous ship passage in the world.  And we're talking about making regular transits of it with some of the most potentially dangerous cargo in the world.

Should an accident occur and even one of the holding tanks be breached and its contents ignited, the "blast zone" or area of fire hazard would extend for a mile and a half on either side of the vessel.  My house is much less than a mile from the center of the navigation channel.  Most of downtown Astoria is far closer than that.

"OK, but accidents like that are unlikely."  I'd say that that's true enough, but an accident like the Exxon Valdez or the New Carissa was unlikely, too, but they did happen, and those were just relatively recent events on the west coast of North America.  And both of those happened when "terrorism" was something that happened elsewhere.  These days, an LNG tanker is a floating, slow-moving bomb that any inept "pilot" with a couple of days of training could fly a light plane into.

But, what if we ignore the fire or terrorism threat?  Why all the NIMBY attitude?

How about:  "We don't need it."  Can we be more plain?  The state of California has denied any siting of LNG terminals, but they still use gas, a lot of gas.  The state of Oregon's natural gas needs even at current levels and possibly higher can be met handily for at least the next thirty years by domestic production.  California's demands are far higher.  In fact, California's demand is far more than double that of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Nevada's usage combined.  But they won't host a terminal.

Which brings up the other major problem with LNG:  moving it to its market.  Which would be California.  There's an existing pipeline that runs from British Columbia to California, passing through eastern Oregon.  The current plan is to tie the Columbia River terminals to the existing pipeline via the Palomar project, joining the lines near Maupin, OR.  

If you're unfamiliar with Oregon's geography, all I can say in short order is that Maupin is two mountain ranges and thousands of creeks, rivers, farms and forests from here, and that's mostly because the most direct route would be through the City of Portland, and you know damn good and well that will never fly.  So the developers took the assumed "path of least resistance" through farmlands and forests.  If you are familiar with Oregon's geography, the damage is enough to make you weep.

And I'm not meaning to gloss over any of the other salient points:  creating another dependence on a foreign-based fossil fuel; the carbon cost of liquification/transport/regassification (makes it only second to coal for power production as a global warming contributor); the environmental impact (especially at Bradwood for our already threatened salmon runs), and the long-term lack of contribution to the local economy while simultaneously threatening the flow of shipping for an entire region.

But there IS resistance.  Rural Oregon is fighting back.  Farmers, fisherpeople, First Peoples and everyday citizens are staring big business (none of the developers are from Oregon... who would've guessed that?) and the Federal Government in the eye and saying "You have to go through me."

And several hundred of them braved the winds and the rain to show up in support of keeping the projects from moving forward.

More info:

http://www.nolng.net/ (an issue-specific site of Columbia Riverkeeper)

http://www.columbiariverkeeper.org/

or contact Dan Serres at (503) 890-2441

Alderbrook, Christmas Morning

Aside from the fact that it was a most unusual morning for weather, there's not a lot to add to the title!

A Whole Lot of Weather Goin' On

No, this isn't the norm around here.