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homeschoolers art display
For the month of October, the display in the Agawam Public Library's Double Cases will be the artwork of homeschoolers in the Pioneer Valley.
The children have utilized various forms of artistic expression. Represented are ages five through twelve and a diversity of families and backgrounds.
For more information please contact Joanne Szelag (413)-789-1550 ext. 8851
mary jeanne tash photography display
For the month of October, the Agawam Public Library's Gallery Exhibit will be the photography of Mary Jeanne Tash, of West Springfield, MA.
For more information please contact Joanne Szelag (413)-789-1550 ext. 8851
ESL: Online english learning
Learn English from any desktop, laptop, or mobile device.
To try it click the button below:
Freegal Free Music Download Service!
Freegal® is a free music download service that offers access to about 7 million songs including Sony Music's catalog of artists. Access is limited to Agawam Library patrons. Click on the button below, go to LOGIN & enter your library card number & password where it says Card Number & Pin. If you don't know what your password is try your last name in all capitals or the last 4 numbers of your phone number. If this doesn't work call the library & we can reset it for you.
Try it out today!
Childrens programs registration
Registration for children's fall programs will
begin on Monday, September 22nd, with
programs starting Monday, October 6th. All
Agawam students in grades K-4 will receive
flyers sent home from school.
Info can also be found on Channel 15, at the Children's desk and on the APL's website
Oneclick digital: new ebook service!
The Agawam Library is now offering a collection of downloadable ebooks from Recorded Books. OneClick Digital allows patrons to download a variety of titles to your tablet, e-reader or computer.
There is an app available for portable devices. Select "OneClickdigital eReader" from your app store, download it & try it out.
Click the banner below to begin!
zinio is up & running!
Zinio - the world's largest newsstand - is now on our library's website! Agawam residents with a library card can download and read full, digital copies of favorite magazines on a computer, tablet or mobile device using the free Zinio Reader app, found on the Zinio website.
Click the button below to set up your Zinio account:
Additional information on how to use Zinio can be found at the Reference desk.
Local History Donations
The Agawam Library is actively collecting Local History materials. Maps and pictures of Agawam and Feeding Hills are of special interest. Please email Reference Librarian Jerome Walczak at email@example.com or call 413-789-1550 ext. 8852 if you have something you'd like to donate. Thank you.
november newsletter
The November issue of The Bookcase, the Agawam Public Library's newsletter, contains the latest information, news and happenings at the library.
have the bookcase emailed
Beginning in October, anyone who
wishes to receive a copy of The Bookcase
should send an email to the editor at
firstname.lastname@example.com. Please
put "newsletter" in the subject area. Email
addresses and names will be used only for
sending the newsletter.
Agawam Massachusetts: A Town history
Looking for an interesting read? Former town historian, Edith LaFrancis' book Agawam Massachusetts: A Town History is available for purchase at the library for $20.00. Visit the Reference Desk on the lower level to purchase a copy.
free english class offered
The Agawam Public Library will offer an interactive conversational English class every Monday evening from 6:00 to 7:30, starting on September 8, 2014. This free class is sponsored by the Friends of the Agawam Library, and is open to all adult learners who are looking to improve their English in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This course will cover grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and various aspects of conversational English.
These classes are free and open to the public. For further information or to register, please contact Judy Clini at the Agawam Public Library – 413-789-1550 x 8855, or email email@example.com
Agawam Library's new materials available through Wowbrary
Like what you see? Sign up for a weekly e-mail update on the new materials recently purchased.
Displays for october
Fiction Kiosk - Urban Fantasy and Paranormal
Deliso Display - Health Literacy and Breast Cancer Awareness Months
Web Hosting Provided By
Upcoming General Events at the Library
Click here for a list of exhibits kids' programs, or teens' programs.
Click event name to see more.
Gallery Walls
--- Mary Jeanne Tash Photographs
Lower Level Display Case
--- Banned Books Week
Johnson Memorial Case
Double Glass Cases
-- Pioneer Valley Homeschoolers Artwork


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Milky Way, Cherry Springs State Park, Pennsylvania
photo via george
Posts tagged nature
Eastern Screech Owl, Georgia
photo credit: Graham McGeorge
location: Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia, U.S.A.
(via National Geographic)
Waves, Icelandphoto credit: Sophie Carr
This is a one-second exposure of the trails left by a crashing wave over small icebergs on Jökulsárlón beach; I think it looks a bit like an octopus.(via National Geographic)
A gynandromorph cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis): half male, half female. The red half is probably the male half.
(via Why Evolution Is True, hat tip Quipsologies)
Swifts, Iguazu Falls
photo credit: Francesco Filippo Pellegrini
(via National Geographic)
The Aurora Borealis by Kiddi Kristjans on Flickr.
Waterfall, Iceland
photo credit: Hordur Finnbogason
This is an image I have had on my mind to get for three years. To align the waterfall and northern lights that are strong enough to light up the whole surroundings. At last it happened and I was at the right place at the right time. Godafoss means Waterfall of the Gods and takes its name from the old Nordic sagas.
There was a storm in Texas. There wasn't a fence. Thus, the tumbleweeds all up in Josh Pitman's business. (That's his house in the photo.)
photo credit: Josh Pitman
(via WSJ)
This brecciated limestone, quarried near Florence, has a curious property: When it's polished it produces the image of an ancient city.
(via Futility Closet)
Source futilitycloset.com
Black Trevally and Sardines
photo credit: Nadya Kulagina
Rays of Gold by Joe Lowery
(via Joe Lowery Scenics)
Source joelowery.com
Stone Canyon by Jack Dykinga
Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness / AZ. Petrified sand dunes border "pot hole" pool with sun- bleached root in foreground.
(via Dykinga Photography)
2012 National Geographic Photography Contest, Honorable Mention
Eric Guth:
Glacial ice washes ashore after calving off the Brei amerkurjˆkull glacier, on Iceland's eastern coast. During the waning light of summer this image was created over the course of a 4-minute exposure while the photographer backlit the grounded glacial ice with a headlamp for 2 of those 4 minutes.
photo credit: Eric Guth
(via Boston.com)
Source Boston.com
From Mark Meyer's photo series An Alaska Window.
photo credit: Mark Meyer
(via PetaPixel)
Source petapixel.com
From Mark Meyer's photo series An Alaska Window.
photo credit: Mark Meyer
(via PetaPixel)
Source petapixel.com

subset: commoncrawl


text: For ages 4+ years. 36-piece Puzzle. These 4 Feet Tall puzzles are fun and educational. Each puzzle is packed in a delightful, heavy-duty, contoured-shaped box. Conforms to or exceeds both U.S. and European safety standards. Puzzles are approximately 12"W x 48"H. Boxes are approximately 7"L x 12"H x 3"W. For ages 3 & Up


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White privelege is not having your teacher be astonished that your parents are still together and that you not only know your father, but live with him and see him everyday before and after he goes to work.
White privelege is not having people assume your mother is a single mom just trying to make it in the hood.
White privelege is not having to explain to your teacher that your parents live in the same home.
Neef Fresh Photography (c) 2010
White privilege is criticizing Hispanic students for taking Spanish classes "because it's an easy A" but praising white students for taking English classes "because they want to learn more about their language".
Bonus white privilege points if the Spanish taught in the class is actually European Spanish.
White privilege is the news covering Serena Williams' crip walk of a victory dance as a "stupid and insensitive celebration", saying that it "ruined" her crowning moment because she did so "over the most lily-white place in the world", and digging up the "ghetto black gang member" association because it works for you in trying to steal her joy. (source - FOXSports)
White privilege is whenever a person of color expresses part of their culture or heritage and you're able to say that it makes you uncomfortable and expecting that PoC to abandon it completely or just not partake in it around you to cater to your needs and feelings.
Submission from kieradoe.
Oh, it's no secret.
I'm sure this cracker piece of shit is quite proud.
So rude!!!!
·Neef Fresh Photography (c) 2012·
•Location: Buckingham Palace, United Kingdon
•Model: Amanda Martinez
•Makeup: Neef Fresh
•Wardrobe Designs : Chrissie Fizz
•Follow On Tumblr: neeffresh.tumblr.com
White Privilege is having the KKK meet in the center of town and having white people in city hall defend it because "it's in the constitution" and they can assembly for a rally as long that they "don't physically hurt citizens". If a POC group want to meet in the center of town, they are suggested to meet in their "hood" to prevent "political outrage and strife" among the mass when exercising the same right to assembly.
fhgkjfldgkjdfhgkjfdlgdfg that was me loooooooooool
Slim Shay D
The big three companies are trying to make their way into the American Music industry but how the hell are you going to do that when your industry is BARELY diverse? America is very diverse and we have asian groups like Far East Movement and Quest Crew or asian artists like Honey Cocaine so why isnt Korea getting the clue??? Then I look at it like this. First of all The Kpop industry is too focused on skin color to even care about talent. I see so many black people auditioning on YouTube for some of biggest Kpop companies and I'm like Damn! And then I look at some of these groups and I'm like WTF he/she can't even sing. Secondly if ONE of the Big Three had a black kpop artist they'd make SO much money from support in the black kpop fandom. I know I'd be buying all their albums and putting my money up to support them! They should honestly think about these things but NO they're to preoccupied with trying to keep their industry as homogenous as possible because of their Korean Pride. Be happy that someone of a different race wants to do your music or wants to learn your language and take pride in that! It's 2012 not the 1900's
- Diary of a Mad Black Kpop fan
how can they accept black people when they are bashing their own for being tanned?
Best viki comment ever!!!
anon please
White privilege is explaining away Somali piracy as petty crime when it is actually a defense against THEIR governments dumping waste on the shores of fishermen whose family depends on the income from what they capture, which is nothing when all the fish have nuclear poisoning.


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There's much to be proud of in being Canadian.
Being a third-generation Canuck, I'm fortunate to live a country free of the oppressiveness of corrupt totalitarian governments, civil war, and anarchy such as the current state of Syria -- for example.
|Canada only has three primary wireless
carriers -- Rogers, Bell and Telus.
However, that doesn't mean we Canadians are completely free of the corruption from politicized governments and wealthy corporations.
As murmurs trickled down about American telecommunications giant Verizon's interests in expanding north into Canada made there way up here, our Canadian telecom companies began shaking with fear.
Or more correctly, they began plotting a politically charged, purely self-interested campaign to cry like babies in need of a good spanking.
Aside from the dis-information Rogers Communications, Bell and Telus spread through television, radio and newspaper advertising about the impending doom and gloom for consumers, should their monopolies be finally broken by a foreign competitor, a far more sobering lesson was learned.
Canada's telecom leaders are wimps.
The word conjures up images of strength balanced by wisdom.
Great leaders energize their teams by demonstrating the best characteristics of humanity at work -- they lead by example.
The greatest of leaders inspire not just those who directly report to them, but even those who don't, because they are so great -- we just want to be like them.
|American telecommunications company Verizon
was showing interest in coming to Canada.
Great leaders are brave in the face of challenge, running headlong into everything that comes their way, no matter what.
They don't cry wolf.
Which is what Canada's telecom leaders did, when they petitioned the Canadian government to block Verizon's entry into their turf.
Rogers, Bell and Telus joined forces to fight Verizon before they even landed on Canadian soil, claiming the Canadian government was showing unCanadian favoritism by allocating a highly sought after wireless frequency to a foreign competitor. The big three Canadian telecom companies claimed Verizon's entry into Canada would cost Canadians more money as their wireless bills would increase, and would cost Canadians jobs as a foreign company entered the market.
Ironic, as all three of Canada's telecommunications companies either have or currently do outsource their customer service call centres to non-Canadian companies operating outside of Canada.
|Canadian telecom companies either have or currently
do outsource their call centres to "offshore" foreign
countries, which does take jobs away from Canadians.
Rogers, Bell and Telus wimped out. Or rather, their leaders did, by acting on some of the WORST characteristics of humanity -- fear, deception, pettiness, and greed.
Through deceptively worded ads, they tried to scare Canadians into joining their fight to keep their monopolies. Instead of running headlong into a challenge, they ran away from it, hiring an ad agency to do their dirty work.
Good doesn't always triumph over evil, and Canada's wimpy-led telecoms won, as Verizon announced over the weekend they decided not to come to Canada, and all three Canadian telecom companies stock prices rose with the news.
However, Canadians lost as the monopolies held by the big three continue. Canadians lost, as the big three continue to outsource some of their services to foreign contractors. Canadians lost, as the wireless spectrum continues to be dominated by companies which believe in using fear and deception instead of bravery and transparent honesty.
And far worse, Canadian leaders lost, as we are all made to look like fools, by the lack of true leadership of our telecommunication's leaders.


text:
Sold For:
or Sign In to see what it's worth.
Click here to upgrade your account
Sold Date: 02/12/2007
Channel: Online Auction
Source: eBay
Category: Ethnic, Folk & Native American Art
This Rare I mp ressive Native American Sioux Horsetail Scalp Lock that I got at the Native American Museum Auction. ..It was listed as a Sioux Horsehair Scalp Lock 1920's...It measures 24" long.. . It is sown and fulley wrapped with real sinew and it has Trade B eads sioux beaded around the top with some kind of real animal tooth or claw in between the beads. It has lots of patina . I believe this is one of the original dream catchers before the new kind that are out today.This is truly a rare find . You will not be disappointed in this wonderful collectable piece . It is much nicer then the pictures that my camera takes. It would look good hanging on the wall or in a display case..This is one of the rarest and most different Artifact that I have seen in a long time...THANKS FOR LOOKING AND PLEASE VIEW MY OTHER VINTAGE NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN, NAVAJO, AND HOPI ITEMS LISTED... .. Please ask questions and look at the pictures for more details, as I am not an expert and all items are sold as bought at the Estate Auction. Thanks for looking, all sales are final so please ask questions and I will be happy to try and help. Paypal, money orders are only accepted and must be paid within 5 days. I only ship to the US, not including Hawaii or Canada, unless additional postage is paid and contact with me has been made first. I will be happy to mail out of the Country if you agree to pay the additional cost. Thank you again.
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text:
October Antler is now available on-line.
Ed Kennedy
|Click here for Fluke
Tournament Picnic Photos
|Click here for SNCC Picnic Photos
New Grille
Room Hours
Monday through Sunday *** Opens at Noon
Kitchen Hours
Thursday Lunch, Noon-5 pm,
Johnny's Famous Thursday Buffet
Friday Night Dinners, 6-8 pm
NFL Sunday Lunches
|Special Needs Children's Committee
|National Veterans Service Committee
NVSC News
Our Vets Group is busy as always, click here to get the latest.
Don't forget the Vets Memorial Park Engraved Paver Sale.
Your inscription
can be in memory of a
beloved Veteran, Elk,
Family Member, a short thought, etc.
Download the details and order form today!
NVSC Coin on sale soon!!! Check it out.
We are currently at 139 delinquent members. If one of them is you, please send in your dues which were due on 4/1/14. It enables us to help those less fortunate in our community. The list of delinquents is posted in the Grill Room. If you know anyone on the list, please contact them. And if anyone is having a problem with paying their dues, please contact Bob Scott at 732-552-6169.
|Proposed for Membership
|None at this time


text:
Alt. Phone Number:
602-723-9353. Calls and text works, thank you
602-723-9353. Calls and text works, thank you
Step out of the cave walking on your hands, and see the world hanging upside down…
Tonight at the hard rock cafe on 2nd st and jefferson. Show starts at 8pm!
What are you doing this Saturday?
Why do I have a feeling that I feel the same way I always have? I know I don't, but my dreams tell me otherwise.
What the hell is wrong with everyone? Is there no common sense anymore?
Well cut it out, and we both know why
"Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."
— Robert Maynard Hutchins


text:
Five Reasons You Must Make it to Maui
Sara Graham | Posted 07.22.2014 | Canada Travel
Read More: Hawaii, Woody Harrelson, Maui, Conde Nast Traveler, Wailea, Best Beaches in the World, Paradise VIP, Canada Travel News
The Honokahua preservation site in Maui encapsulates the latent dynamism between Maui's history and present -- the tug of tourism in a land once given to the spirit of aloha. In the late 1980s the site was discovered just as plans for the hotel were being designed. And now, the site exists as an ancient environment which welcomes guests from the present-day.


text:
An Inside Look at 4 Developer Ecosystems
This series is supported by PayPal X Innovate 2009, PayPal's first dedicated developer conference. Register for $49 with the code ppblog3 or join us at $50 if you are a student. As a developer, you have a lot of choices when it comes to how you attack a project. From programming languages, like Ruby and Python, to development frameworks, such as Rails and Django, to deployment environments, like Amazon EC2 or Google App Engine, there is a wide range of options to get the job done.


text:
Music and text: Igor Stravinsky.
Choreography: Bronislava Nijinska.
Plot: Jean Cocteau.
Sets and costumes: Natalia Goncharova.
Premiered on June 13, 1923 by the Ballets Russes in Paris at the ThÈ'tre de la GaÓtÈ-Lyrique.
Dancers at the premiere: Felia Dubrovska (the Bride),
LÈon Woizikowski (the Bridegroom).
In the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet
since 1976.


text:
Extraordinary beer and tasty, hearty meals
Découvrez la joie d'offrir !
Give your bag wings!
The real Mile End bagel !
Beauty treatments that will give you a lift!
A little snack to mark the start of your trip!
The renowned Bentley available at the airport
For your vacation, the latest fashion trends at bargain prices!
A little snack to mark the start of your trip!
A touch of fantasy for that perfect gift!
On trend!
Exclusively imported coffees, roasted fresh daily!
Your favourite burger isn't far!
Delectable dishes by a renowned Montréal chef to savour on the spot or take to go!
See you at Bon Voyage before your trip!
A tasty snack as you wait for family or friends to arrive!
All the freshness of Portuguese-inspired cuisine!
Food first!
Bringing imagination to life
Extend your Montréal experience!
Cute and convenient!
Bouquets to go, right in the terminal!
Deliciously affordable!
Foreign currency you can trust!
For your digital life
Your airport java u!
Energy to go !
A delicious whirl of colour!
I want that.
The ultimate sports bar!
An authentic bit of Québec, straight from the maple tree!
Montréal's best smoked meat sandwich for 50 years!
Words, images and music to take you far, far away!
All your electronic needs served before takeoff!
The newsstand specialist
Your luxury hotel inside the terminal!
La Boulangerie de Montréal: culinary pleasure with a European twist
Everything convenience!
A sandwich that's a Montréal tradition, plus dishes to please every palate!
A welcome moment of relaxation before you take off!
Snacks and reading materials
Luxury, comfort and relaxation prior to takeoff!
A little love in every cup!
Safeguarding your luggage!
The ultimate family restaurant!
A mugful of flavour!
Fast food that packs a nutritional punch!
A chic new vacation look!
Inspiringly healthy catering!
A must for sushi lovers!
Always fresh!
Casual elegance, perfectly balanced
Exquisite cocktails and great food in an enchanting, decidedly urban décor
A welcoming place to find, share and enjoy great wine with a few tapas!
Variety, freshness, flavour!
Oops! Our new website is optimized for recent versions of the most popular browsers.
For a better user experience, please use the latest version of one of the following browsers:


text:
Tag: fire sale
Iris suspends development, users can upgrade to Acorn for free
I never actually used Iris (my image editor of choice is still Pixelmator), but the one-window image editor released a few years ago certainly had its share of fans. Unfortunately, those fans may be disappointed to hear that Iris' developer, Nolobe, has suspended development on the app. Nolobe's...
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Software Updatesmore updates
- Dropbox adds support for TouchID
- YouTube for iOS gets updated with full support for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus
- iOS 8.0.1 update now available (Updated -- Don't update!)
- NFL Mobile updated for 2014 Season with new Fantasy Football features, NFL Now integration
- Yahoo Mail improves email inbox searching with new filtering options
- Ember for Mac gains 'hugely-requested' screen recording feature


text:
Return to the Table of Contents.
by Kenneth Brower
HIRTY years ago, in the age before the cruise ships came, I spent four months in the Galápagos Islands with the photographer Eliot Porter. The Galápagos were wilder, less-visited islands then. They had yet to become the most photographed archipelago on earth. Porter was making the pictures, and I was gathering notes, for the first volume in what would become a vast library, that ponderous collection of large-format Galápagos books now decorating coffee tables everywhere. Porter, our first great master of nature photography in color, was then sixty-four, the grand old man of his art. I was twenty-one, just beginning a career that was to be spent in large part outdoors in the company of nature photographers. Among my duties in the Galápagos were helping to lug Porter's 4X5 camera and tripod up volcanoes, rowing dories in through surf, and hunting meat, like Robinson Crusoe, on various islands with our guide's old bolt-action .22. It was one of the best times of my life.
Discuss this article in the Arts & Literature forum of Post &
Go to part two of this article.
Go to part three of this article.
Related link:
A "Young Scholars in Computing" project that explores ethical and technological issues surrounding photo manipulation and photojournalism.
Accompanying our expedition was Tad Nichols, a former Disney cameraman, and in
the islands we crossed paths with the British nature photographer Alan Root,
then just beginning his own remarkable career. In the Galápagos I had my
first opportunity to study the habits of cameramen in the wild.
Anchored off Santiago Island one evening, over a dinner of feral goat, the photographers grew expansive and the talk turned to nature fakery. Porter was a purist. He believed in shooting straight. He admitted to having occasionally moved a stone or feather or piece of driftwood to improve one of his compositions, but he was generally opposed to this sort of manipulation, and he grew uneasy talking about it. Root and Nichols came from a more pragmatic, rough-and-tumble school of commercial nature photography. Root told us the story of a Life cover a colleague had done. The image had begun in the mind of one of the magazine's editors. By a kind of redactional clairvoyance this editor, seated comfortably at his desk in Manhattan, had seen it all clearly: leopard and its kill in thorn tree, branches framing a setting sun. The photographer set off in quest of this vision, traveling the East African savanna for weeks with a captive leopard, killing antelopes, draping the carcasses in the branches of various thorn trees, and cajoling the leopard to lie proudly on the "kill," a tableau that the photographer shot against a succession of setting suns. Tad Nichols laughed ruefully yet appreciatively. He told the story of his own work on Disney's The Living Desert, most of which was filmed on ersatz dunes built on a vast sound-stage table. Root countered with a story of some clever photoduplicity, the details of which I have since forgotten. Nichols came back with a tale of how Disney's minions bulldozed lemmings off cliffs for the famous lemming-suicide sequence.
And so it went, confession piling on confession. Both Root and Nichols affected a sad cynicism about the unseemly things they were called upon to do, but underneath, clearly, was a grifter's glee at various con jobs well executed -- and under that, if I am not mistaken, was a soupçon of genuine shame. At twenty-one, I was scarcely weaned from the Disney nature documentaries. I particularly remember one revelation of how Uncle Walt's men had fabricated the hawk-kills-flying-squirrel episode. (Assistant grip stands on tall stepladder with pouch of flying squirrels. Grip tosses squirrels -- unpaid rodent extras -- skyward one by one, as in skeet shoot, until trained hawk, after dozens of misses, finally gets it right.)
Photofakery, then, is nothing new. The first attempts at it no doubt followed shortly upon Daguerre's initial success with his camera obscura. But photography of late has entered a brave new epoch. No photographer today would bother cruising the bush with trained leopards to fake a sunset shot. Anyone with Adobe Photoshop ($589 when I last checked; $599 with a scanner thrown in) could find a perfectly adequate leopard in the zoo, digitally edit out the bars of the cage, tree the cat with subtle movements of mouse, bloodlessly procure a dead antelope (if his computer held any in files), and then set the whole collage against a virtual setting sun. Indeed, he could tree his leopard against the rings of Saturn if he was so inclined. A leopard can't change his spots, but the modern photographer can easily do it for him. With some of the applications now available to filmmakers, the photographer could arrange for the leopard to lose a fight with John Wayne, or to dance with Fred Astaire, who has been shown dancing with a vacuum cleaner in a recent television commercial.
"In a strict sense photography can never be abstract, for the camera is incapable of synthetic integration," Ansel Adams wrote in 1932. Synthetic integration, unimaginable sixty-five years ago by one of the art's great technicians, is now full upon us. The old magic is fast becoming a kind of prestidigitation.
More and more digitally doctored images are appearing in the media. The trend alarms a number of photographers. It worries certain editors, and it worries me. I am troubled not only as a colleague -- a nonfiction writer whose text often runs alongside photographs of wild lands and wildlife -- but also as a casual student of the history of nature photography, an admirer of the art, and a friend of many who practice it. I have shared tents and blinds and small boats and even the mouthpieces of scuba regulators with these people. I love them for their hardiness, their courage, and their constant griping about the weather, sticky shutters, leaky housings, bad strobes, native customs, the myopia of photo editors, and the intransigence of wild animals. I am always impressed by their skill at improvisation in the field. I admire -- to a certain extent -- their ingenuity. But it is clear to me that the photographer's work philosophy is not always congruent with the expectations of those of us who view the work. Too few photographers, I think, appreciate how directly the new technology aims at the heart of the credibility that distinguishes this art form from others.
The controversy over digital manipulation has been simmering for some time. It first surfaced in 1982, when National Geographic ran a computer-altered photo of the Pyramids at Giza on its cover. To the traditional adjustments of reality that the photographer had already made -- shooting with a telephoto lens to exaggerate the scale of the Pyramids and persuading three camel riders to pass a second time before those great tombs -- the magazine's editors added a new one: digitally moving the camels backward a few paces.
In 1991 the board of directors of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), noting that emerging electronic technology enabled "the manipulation of the content of an image in such a way that the change is virtually undetectable," adopted a statement of principle: "As journalists we believe the guiding principle of our profession is accuracy; therefore, we believe it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way that deceives the public."
The North American Nature Photography Association has yet to agree on any principle so strong. Many NANPA members feel that they have a poetic license broader than the one issued to their cousins, the photojournalists of the NPPA. Still, at the first Annual Nature Photography Forum, held by NANPA in 1994, the ethics session was dominated by fierce debate on the issues of nature photography in commercial game farms and of digital manipulation. Tom Mangelsen, a wildlife photographer from Jackson, Wyoming, lamented the new trends and tallied the damage they had caused the profession: the loss of incentive to compete in the wild, the loss of the sense of adventure, the loss of pride in one's work, and the loss of the public's respect for wildlife photography.
Art Wolfe, a nature photographer based in Seattle, was the first in the crowd to respond. "We're living in an age of back-swinging toward conservative ethics," Wolfe said. "Whenever I hear the word 'ethics,' it raises the hair on the back of my neck. The point here is that we all have different standards. I certainly don't want to be told by somebody else what I should be doing."
The debate intensified in 1996, when exposés in The Denver Post and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer revealed how Wolfe's 1994 book Migrations had been fabricated. In about a third of the book's images the wildlife -- caribou, zebra, geese, greater sandhill cranes -- had been digitally enhanced, and some had been digitally cloned and multiplied.
"Nature photographs are generally accepted as and trusted to be straightforward records of what the photographer witnessed and recorded on film in a single instant," the photographer Gary Braasch wrote in a letter to the NANPA ethics committee in June of 1996, as the debate over Migrations fulminated in the camera magazines. "This is an acceptance hallowed by years of communication among photographers, editors, publishers, and viewers."
The fact is that this acceptance has often been "hallowed" in the breach. As the advocates of digital doctoring like to point out, the old boys faked it too.
Recently I checked my recollections of Eliot Porter with John Rohrbach, the associate curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum, in Fort Worth, and the custodian of the Eliot Porter collection there. Rohrbach confirmed my impression that Porter did not believe in setups but was sometimes tempted. He corroborated my sense that Porter was uneasy discussing the matter. "We actually have a picture of him hacking away at a cactus to get a picture of a roadrunner nest," Rohrbach said. "Paul Strand was even more adamant that no retouching at all should occur. But there are prints where Strand drew in manholes or etched out people to balance his compositions."
Related link:
A brief biography with links to sites showing Adams' work.
In his first years of printing his most famous photograph, Moonrise,
Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, Ansel Adams, in his words, "allowed some
random clouds in the upper sky area to show." They always annoyed him, and in
the 1970s he arranged in the darkroom for those clouds to evaporate. In his
celebrated Winter Sunrise, The Sierra Nevada From Lone Pine, California,
Adams deleted from the dark foothills of the middle ground the big "LP" that
the little town's high school students had laid out in whitewashed stones.
This image of the Sierra at sunrise -- distant horse grazing beneath a horizon of bare aspens in sunlight; dark, unblemished foothills in shadow; and finally the bright, jagged cordillera of the Sierra in sunlight -- opens This Is the American Earth, the first volume of the "exhibit-format series" that my father, David Brower, began in 1960 at the Sierra Club. Under my father's editorship the series eventually grew to thirty volumes, thirteen of which I wrote or edited. As a fourteen-year-old, well before my father thought to press me into service, I watched This Is the American Earth come together at Adams's house in San Francisco. The creative excitement among the three principal contributors -- Adams, my father, and Nancy Newhall, the author of the text -- was a wonderful thing to behold until the martinis kicked in, always derailing Newhall first. I remember the print of Lone Pine on Adams's table. I have a vague recollection that the photographer was less than proud of having excised the "LP." My father recalls otherwise -- that Adams simply thought the town's initials messed up his picture and he wanted them out of there.
In 1964, taking a kind of sabbatical after my freshman year at Berkeley, I assembled my first exhibit-format book, a photo essay on California's Big Sur coast. Early in the editing I worked for two weeks out of Adams's new house in Carmel Highlands. By day I collected the work of the several photographic geniuses resident along that shore. By night, back at Adams's house, I watched the maestro "dodge and burn" in his darkroom. To dodge -- to withhold light from an area of the print for a timed period in the developing process -- was once considered, as the term suggests, somewhat underhanded, but it had long since become accepted practice. The same was true of burning, or concentrating light on an area of the print. Adams's darkroom, then just two years old, was state-of-the-art. He had designed it to produce mural-size prints. The enlarging camera was huge, like a Brownie from Brobdingnag. The bellows on the thing would have worked for Vulcan at his forge. Mounted on rails, the camera faced a rail-mounted easel holding the print paper. Adams wore a blue apron that protected everything but the turquoise-and-silver clasp of his string tie. Working over the nascent print, Adams would aim his great deviant beak at it appraisingly. (He had broken his nose when he was four years old, in the San Francisco quake of 1906, which had thrown him against a garden wall. In crushing his septum, the great earthquake was also responsible, I have always assumed, for the strange adenoidal quality of his voice.) His fingers, gnarled by arthritis, would hold the dodging wand. Making little incantatory circles with the wand over the area he wanted lightened, he would laugh his crazy, nasal, Mephistophelian laugh.
It was all white magic, I can't help thinking. The small adjustments to reality that occurred in Ansel Adams's darkroom, if crimes at all, were misdemeanors. That photographs should be "straightforward records of what the photographer witnessed and recorded on film in a single instant" still seems a worthy ideal, despite the fact that some of our greatest have stretched and jiggered it. Many fine principles are hallowed in the breach. This does not mean that they exert no influence, or that we should dispense with them entirely.
OST of my commerce with photographers has been in the field, not in the darkroom. Digitalization overtook photography some time ago, but I have been a Rip Van Winkle in this matter -- if not exactly asleep for twenty years, then inattentive for about that period. To bring myself up to speed, I called at the photography studio of Joseph Holmes, in Kensington, California. Holmes is an old friend whose heroes are my heroes. "Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, Edward Weston," he says. "A little Brett Weston. Monet. Van Gogh. O'Keeffe. Thomas Moran." Holmes is a consummate and obsessive printmaker, in the tradition of Adams, and he has a Porterlike eye for composition. He has published several books of photographs, among them the exquisite Natural Light (a promising title, in view of my prejudices), yet he has thrown himself completely into digitalization.
Holmes's downstairs workroom did not look like any darkroom I remembered. It held no red light, no developing trays. A scanner and ink-jet printers of various sorts lay atop a large table in the middle of the room. Stacks of books, manuals, and papers overspilled the table and completely covered the floor, except where Holmes had cleared a narrow corridor to his computer. "My curse is perfectionism," he had once admitted to me. As we picked our way through the room, I realized that this curse was confined to his printmaking. It has not yet afflicted his housekeeping. He lifted a book to clear a chair for me.
"I wind up reading stuff like this," he said, flipping through the pages. "Engineering manuals for hard drives. It's ridiculous." Opening to a diagram, he thrust it at me. "Here's how you should cool the hard drive. I like to read about stuff like this when my hard drives die from overheating. It's horrible when your hard drive dies on you."
Closing the curtain on the window above his computer monitor, Holmes sat at the keyboard. I offered to close the side door as well, which stood half open to the sunlit yard outside. For a moment Holmes seemed baffled by this suggestion. No need, he said, after an awkward pause. The color out there -- the warm light on the concrete -- was hardly the sort that would interfere with the fidelity of the colors on the screen.
With a stylus on a Wacom ArtZ tablet in his lap, Holmes summoned an image: Lily pads, Reelfoot Lake, Tennessee, 1979.
"In this special format there are two hundred and eighty-five megabytes in the image of lilies," Holmes said. "There were two ten in the original format. A two-ten-meg file -- that's seventy million image pixels. A very large number of little squares." Here, too, Holmes diverged from the master. Claude Monet was no pointillist. He liked to load up his brush. In the most detailed of Monet's lily ponds the number of brushstrokes falls well short of 70 million.
Holmes proceeded to deconstruct his lilies. With light touches of stylus on pad he instructed the computer to open an image with lots of edit layers and then to peel away layers. As he removed each layer, a kind of shiver traveled through the image. It was ominous, somehow, as if a gust of ill wind had blown across Reelfoot Lake. The lilies would darken or lighten imperceptibly. The edges of the pads would shift and refocus in subtle, indescribable ways. These tiny metamorphoses caused me to consider the great mystery of how the world -- its shapes and colors -- looks to others. The computer, it seemed, was trying to solve the mystery -- to educate the solipsist in me. This was like gazing at Reelfoot Lake through a succession of different corneas.
"I'm turning off the upper layers so we can move quickly into the picture, just to give you an idea how many pixels there are in this image," Holmes said. "This is one magnification factor of two."
The computer enlarged a section of the image that Holmes had selected. Like a detail from a painting, the fragment -- a single lily pad, and the pad's dark shadow on the water, and the bright water beneath the shadow's curving edge -- became more interesting than the totality of the canvas.
"Here's a second factor of two."
We were plummeting headlong into the lily pad, it seemed, but Holmes apologized for the slowness of our journey. He explained that the computer was reading the compressed image, decompressing it on the fly, and displaying it on the screen.
"A third factor of two," he said.
We were plunging now into the darkness of the lily's shadow, and I found myself, contrary to all expectation, very excited. I had come prepared to dislike everything about digitalization, but I loved this sensation of being pulled into the microcosm. The fascination at the core of Antonioni's movie Blow-Up was all here in Reelfoot Lake.
"A fourth factor of two."
Each time we lurched deeper into the picture, the image on the screen, though it could only be accidental now, continued to look composed. The arrangement looked intentional. What is the magic in the frame? In any frame? The simple act of framing with the hands, or a viewfinder, or a computer screen, causes a scene to jump out at us. Throw a frame around almost anything, and the elements within try to harmonize. Composition resides more in nature, maybe, and in the effort of the viewer, than it does in the sensibilities of photographers and artists.
"A fifth factor of two."
"Oh, my goodness," I heard myself say. It sounded awfully prim, like something Dorothy would cry on her departure from Kansas. I was pixilated and pixelated. Another few factors of two, I calculated, and we would be probing the atomic structure of Reelfoot Lake. The darkness of the lily-shadowed water would soon flicker with the dance of electrons and quarks.
"I could change one pixel in the image," Holmes said. "I have infinite control. This is a small part of the picture, and you still don't see any little squares. The trick in digital imaging is always to have more than enough pixels to not see them." He added that if necessary he could build something called a ramp within an individual pixel. "You can dodge and burn the tiniest thing. When you have access to complete digital control, then you can get total tonal control."
He gave me a sidelong glance and then delivered an apostasy. "I don't know if you've ever gone back and looked at Ansel's stuff. At the Ansel Adams Center, in San Francisco, they have a collection of his prints on permanent display, all dated from the early seventies. I looked at them recently, and I was shocked. They're miserable compared with recent reproductions, because the reproductions were done on a drum scanner that gave tonal control sufficient to add separation to the highlights and to the shadows. Photography has a terrible problem with highlights and shadows. It's one of the big reasons why photographs look like photographs. Highlights are washed out, usually, and shadows are black -- 'the soot and the chalk' that Ansel used to rail against. That's not the way the world really looks."
Holmes's favorite piece of two-dimensional art is not a photograph but an oil on canvas, a Van Gogh painting of olive orchards. The richness of the Van Gogh, which Holmes first saw on loan at the National Gallery, stunned and overwhelmed him. Renoir's The Luncheon of the Boating Party drives him insane, he says. Renoir's ability to explore details in his shadows far exceeds anything a photographer could do.
"Most people are oblivious of the way their eyes work," Holmes said. "They just see. They take it in, they extract the particular fact they need to deal with, and they entirely miss the mechanisms of seeing. It never occurs to them that they have a vast dynamic range in their eyes, and that they can adjust through vast light-level changes, from sunlight on snow at high altitude to starlight at night -- an incredible ten-million-to-one range. Photography is this miserable, weak little thing that can show you a print with a hundred-to-one brightness range. Or a two-hundred-to-one brightness range, tops."
Joseph Holmes's quest for the perfect print -- a crusade he does not seem to find at all quixotic -- has occupied the past twenty-three years. Ansel Adams, who shared this almost religious dedication to the print, turned to music for his metaphor and mantra. "The negative is the score," Adams would recite. "The print is the performance." Holmes spends most of his time directing the performance. His servitude to the print requires him to spend his life in the studio; his time in the field toting a camera has been reduced to three or four weeks a year. He does not like this imbalance but sees no way around it.
"Every time I try to print by a new method, it's another five-year project to get it going," he said. "It took five years to get going on dye transfer, it took five years to get going on Cibachrome, and it's taken five years again to get going on digital imaging. But it's unavoidable. I have no choice."
The rewards of his latest five-year project -- which is now actually in its eighth year -- would soon be enormous, he predicted. His average labor time on a Cibachrome print had been four hours. With digital imaging the time is reduced radically. "I could make only a few hundred Cibachrome prints a year, maximum," he said. "Ansel made, what, twenty-five thousand prints in his lifetime, of about eighteen hundred different subjects. So far I've printed a hundred subjects. I need to print several hundred subjects to have what I think is a reasonable life's work."
I could understand the allure of any process that reduced the hours of printmaking and freed the photographer to roam. I remembered Ansel Adams's old lament about the prison of his darkroom. Beside his house in Carmel Highlands, overlooking the Pacific, beneath a hill covered in chaparral and floodlit beautifully at night, was the fireproof bunker in which Adams stored his negatives. He would complain often that several lifetimes' worth of work lay there underground. It really made no sense, he said, to take a single new photograph. He laughed at the irony, but I believe that it truly depressed him. I think it diminished his thrill in spreading the legs of the tripod and disappearing under the black cloth. The backlog of negatives meant that most of the images he had seen through the viewfinder, and visualized as prints, and captured with his camera, would never grow past the embryonic stage represented by the negative. Much of his lifework would never be seen by others.
Joseph Holmes, after eight years of work with digital imaging, has become an expert in the new science of color management. Much of his income now comes from consulting for fine-art printmaking companies, lithographers, publishers, museums -- anyone with imaging problems. "It's sort of like herding an infinite number of sheep over rough terrain," he says. "All the sheep are individual colors, they're all trying to get away, and you're trying to keep them in order. It's the science of device-independent color, where the color characteristics of every device in your system -- the scanner and the way the scanner sees film, the monitor, the printer and the way the printer prints on a given substrate -- are all described in device-independent terms. Their colors are described in absolute color numbers that become a common language of color. When it all works right, the colors you see on your monitor are the colors in the print, but there are a vast number of ways for it not to turn out right."
Digital-imaging technology is evolving by leaps and bounds, Holmes said. A number of companies are racing to develop the best printers, and each year's ink-jet machines are twice as good as those of the year before. "It's endless," he said. Hearing the weariness in his voice, I asked if he worried that his labors might be Sisyphean, given the way the technology keeps changing. He denied it. He was familiar now with computer systems. Once digital printmaking really started to work, he said, it would only get better and easier.
I hoped he was right. I hoped that the grail would not keep receding -- that digital imaging would free him to take his good eye out under the sky more often. It will be terrible if he winds up an old shepherd, hunched at the screen, driving his obstreperous, bleating, multicolored flock through ever more mountainous Himalayas, stretched out range on range through cyberspace.
When I asked Holmes his opinion on the controversy over digital manipulation, he shrugged. The issue did not interest him much. "It's obvious that Art Wolfe should have mentioned in his book that he was adding extra animals," he said. "That's a substantial distortion of reality. One of the things that nature photographs do, inevitably, is to report on nature. But they don't necessarily do it in literal ways. It's not easy to define how much of a given landscape photograph consists of reportage and how much is an artistic interpretation."
"If Wolfe had acknowledged a little more clearly what he had done, it would have been okay?" I asked.
"Well, certainly. Why not? People paint things all the time. We don't think they're criminals for making paintings."
Kenneth Brower is a frequent contributor to The Atlantic, specializing in ecological issues.
Illustrations by Istvan Banyai
Copyright © 1998 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; May 1998; Photography in the Age of Falsification; Volume 281, No. 5; pages 92 - 111.


text:
|07 Jul 2013
BSOD ntoskrnl.exe, dxgmms1.sys and others
I had a tons of various BSOD, still can't figure out the cause. It happens randomly (but I get most frequently when I play, for example Battlefied 3), got some when I was away from my PC.
I tried already:
- Memtest86: 8 hours run, no error
- Windows Memory Diag, no error
- Windows 7 Reinstall
- Newer ATi driver (and after the win reinstall, I installed the newest drivers I can get)
- Uninstall Avast!
- Installing Microsoft driver to my sound card
- Disable my onboard soundcard and use my USB one (C-Media)
When I first tried driver verifier It got a problem with daemon tools's driver, had to disable it, I didn't try it since.
I had some problem with the SF tool, got an exception when it tried to copy the update log.
I lost half of my memory dumps, becouse I ran CCleaner recently and forgot to turn off the dump clean.
Thank you in advance for your help!
- Never overlocked anything.
- Ran Check disk on my drivers, got no error
- Sea Tools, short drive self test, all Pass
My Power Supply: HKC USP5565 ver2.2 (Maximum power: 565 W )
|My System Specs
|07 Jul 2013
Daemon Tools, Alcohol 120% and Power Archiver Pro uses SCSI Pass Through Direct (SPTD), which is a well known BSOD causer. Disabling it is not enough. Uninstall Daemon Tools at first. Then download SPTD standalone installer from Disk-Tools.com, and execute the downloaded file as guided below :
Download, install and update those, and then run full system scans with both of them, one by one.
Some game specific crashes are there, caused by battlefield.
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_RAISED_IRQL_FAULT_bf3.exe_nt!KiSystemServiceExit+245 BUCKET_ID: X64_RAISED_IRQL_FAULT_bf3.exe_nt!KiSystemServiceExit+245
Always try use the up-to-date display driver, unless it is a faulty one.
fffff880`07228000 fffff880`07d3e000 atikmdag T (no symbols) Loaded symbol image file: atikmdag.sys Image path: \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\atikmdag.sys Image name: atikmdag.sys Timestamp: Thu Dec 20 02:08:55 2012 (50D225DF) CheckSum: 00AC6529 ImageSize: 00B16000 Translations: 0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4
You can get it from the link in our forum, Latest AMD Catalyst Video Driver for Windows 7, or you may go to AMD Graphics Driver and Software and opt for Automatically Detect and Install the appropriate driver for your card.
During installation, you may opt for advanced installation, and install the display driver only, not the Catalyst Control Center.
Stress test the Graphics Card using Furmark.
Video Card - Stress Test with Furmark
Is the computer hot? Report us the heat of the computer after a couple of hours of your normal usage. Upload a screenshot of the summery tab of Speccy.
Check if the Power Supply Unit (PSU) supplying adequate power to the computer or not.
eXtreme Power Supply Calculator
At least 30% extra is safe. Also let us know the wattage of your PSU.
BugCheck 1000007E, {ffffffffc0000005, fffff8800813ecee, fffff88003cbb6a8, fffff88003cbaf00} Probably caused by : dxgmms1.sys ( dxgmms1!VIDMM_GLOBAL::ReferenceAllocationForPreparation+22 ) Followup: MachineOwner -------------------------------------------------------------------- BugCheck 4A, {76d0167a, 2, 0, fffff88009345ca0} Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!KiSystemServiceExit+245 ) Followup: MachineOwner ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BugCheck 1000007E, {ffffffffc0000005, fffff88006b107e1, fffff880031bcb78, fffff880031bc3d0} Probably caused by : aswrdr2.sys ( aswrdr2+27e1 ) Followup: MachineOwner ---------
|My System Specs
|07 Jul 2013
Thank you for your reply, now I am working on it, I will keep you updated.
I uninstalled Avast! a week ago, reinstalled when I got BSODs despite I had no Antivirus.
I had no SPTD to begin with, but I uninstalled daemon tools now. (What should I use instead? I always used daemon.)
My PSU: HKC USP5565 ver2.2 (Maximum power: 565 W )
I calculated ~388W
My Speccy, without heavy load, but I never experienced high values:
|My System Specs
|07 Jul 2013
Speccy looks good. It is not overheating.
With or without SPTD, Daemon tools is a crasher. I would suggest you to use 7-zip or winrar instead. They can extract any ISO file.
If you have avast .... uninstall it.
|My System Specs
|07 Jul 2013
I uninstalled Avast!, it is not like I am stick to it. Right now I am installing the vga driver as you suggested (driver only).
Sometimes I can play a day without a BSOD, so maybe this discussion will be drawn out.
|My System Specs
|08 Jul 2013
I got no BSOD since the daemon/avast uninstall and the vga driver reinstall. I will mark the thread as solved in a few days.
I am using Virtual CloneDrive as an alternative to Daemon. (http://virtual-clonedrive.en.softonic.com/)
|My System Specs
|09 Jul 2013
Right when I thought everything is ok.
IRQL_GT_ZERO_AT_SYSTEM_SERVICE 0x0000004a ntoskrnl.exe+7f1c0
|My System Specs
|09 Jul 2013
Your crash dumps are not showing any finite probable cause. In such a situation, it is better to enable Driver Verifier to monitor the drivers.
Driver Verifier - Enable and Disable
Run Driver Verifier for 24 hours or the occurrence of the next crash, whichever is earlier.
Why Driver Verifier:
It puts a stress on the drivers, ans so it makes the unstable drivers crash. Hopefully the driver that crashes is recorded in the memory dump.
How Can we know that DV is enabled:
It will make the system bit of slow, laggy.
Before enabling DV, make it sure that you have earlier System restore points made in your computer. You can check it easily by using CCleaner looking at Tools > System Restore.
If there is no points, make a System Restore Point manually before enabling DV.
|My System Specs
|13 Jul 2013
I didn't got a BSOD since I enabled driver verifier (enabled it right after your answer).
|My System Specs
|13 Jul 2013
First make it sure that the verifier is actually running. Run the following command in a command prompt ....
BTW, I will not go with VirtualCloneDrive or any other program as an alternative of Daemon tools; as it works at the same way. It puts a similar SCSI adapter like SPTD. Better I'd use either 7-zip or winrar, which can extract any iso image file, and thus does the job. Moreover, for a desktop PC, it is good to use a real ODD, not any emaluator one. Those are thoughts of netbooks.
|My System Specs
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The Sandbox: Craft Play Share
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Greedy Grub
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Doodle Grub - Twisted Snake
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text:
Primera semana en Guatemala!
¡Hola nuestros amigos!
So here we are after our first several days in Guatemala sitting in t-shirts in the middle of winter, enjoying the gorgeous view from our school, CASAS. It has been nice to start settling into a routine here as we get up each morning around 7 and begin Spanish class here at 8:30. The classes are very small – with two to three students for every teacher. Class is difficult but we can definitely tell that our Spanish is already improving. We have class until 12:30 and then it is lunchtime. The food here (at school and Guatemala in general) is AMAZING. We had mentally prepared ourselves for rice and beans all day everyday so now that we are having chicken, papaya, pineapple, plantains, and salads, we are ecstatic. Unfortunately, the change in diet, schedule, and water has been hard on many of our bodies. Many of us have felt quite under the weather this week, but we're remaining optimistic because we know that our bodies will adjust and we will quickly feel fine again.
After lunch, from 1:30 to 4:30, we do something as a group. Yesterday we went to the Central Plaza and the market (both are gorgeous) and today we are having a siesta and time of rest. We have already discovered a shopping center within walking distance of the school and after lunch several of us like to walk there and purchase pastries at Isopan (a wonderful bakery) and explore the city. Around 4:30 we return to our host families and it is there that we do our homework, talk with our host families, sometimes pretend to understand them, but overall enjoy experiencing Guatemalan culture and life with them. The two of us are extremely grateful that our families typically eat dinner around 7 instead of 9 or 10 like some families.
So far the things we like the most about Guatemala are the pretty flowers, the different sounds of the birds, plantains, the view that we have at CASAS of the mountains and the volcanos, the bright colors, and the willingness of people to open their hearts and homes to newcomers such as ourselves.
We thank God often for the caring people who have taken us in as their own. Although we are all having different experiences, it is meaningful to see God working in each family and student. Each morning we look forward to getting to CASAS to share and hear stories from everyone's evenings with their host families. Many of our families attend church on Sunday. Andrea had an interesting experience at her first Mass, where the priest asked her (in Spanish) to collect the offering. She accidently agreed and found herself a part of the service. Cluelessly she attempted to follow the example of the other collectors but completely missed the part where the collectors kneel before the collection baskets and bless themselves. She felt relieved when it was over and could return to her seat. Each experience is an opportunity to learn and grow and we are thankful for the ways in which we have been able to connect with the people living in Guatemala, our host families, and each other as a group.
Overall, the last several days have been busy but have been full of promise. We are excited to be here and are thankful to God for health and peace. We are so grateful for your continued prayers and we look forward to sharing more stories soon.
- Andrea King & Savanna Lester
Joining the biblical story
On our first morning in Giza, only a few hours after our 30 hours of travel to Egypt ended, our bus shoved its way through the dusty streets. Everyone with a window seat stifled gasps, fearing first that we would ram into truck full of oranges, then that we would kill the family of goats led by a young Egyptian, or any number of other possibilities leading to a traffic jam across seven unofficial lanes of vehicles. Our panic quieted only after three huge triangles loomed out of the dusty, fogged sky. Our first morning in Egypt, and we had already encountered the Great Pyramids! Many mornings and amazing sights have followed, like the Sphinx in Giza, King Tut's golden mask in Cairo, the Nile in Luxor, the gorgeous sandstone walls of the Siq in Petra, and the salt crystals edging the green-blue waters of the Dead Sea.
Each site is also part of a story – the pyramids were there when Joseph gained power in Egypt, St. Catherine's contains the well at which Moses may have met Zipporah, and in the Cairo Museum we looked at the same Pharaoh that Moses pled with to "let his people go." Another part of what makes each day exciting is the deepening relationships within the group. It's amazing how close people grow through shared stories of inconvenient diarrhea and Chaco blisters. As we follow footsteps of various travelers in the Old Testament, we have become travelers ourselves, joining in the story in some ways.
Evenings, which are generally less structured, have become a time for tea or soccer games with friendly locals, as well as a time to shop, nap, journal, explore, or play cards. Organic interaction and recovery from long hikes are important components of our evening time.
Despite these amazing experiences, not everything has been easy, as all cross-cultural groups surely could attest to. We have had to maintain awareness of safety concerns, especially through Cairo and the Sinai as violence, protests, and extremist actions continue to boil up in some areas. Our privilege as Americans and tourists is made especially clear by our preferential treatment in customs, by the 'tourism police' that accompany us, and by the poverty we see around us which contrasts sharply with our nice cameras, clothes, and hotel rooms.
If there were any one experience I could share with my friends and family back home, it would be the moment while climbing down Mt. Sinai, that I looked up and saw the night sky draped over the endless red desert, and I recognized that the same stars that shone down on me shone down on Moses as he made the same climb thousands of years ago. This moment symbolizes our story connecting with the biblical story in a striking way, and is a feeling I wish everyone could experience.
All of us here are grateful for the continued thoughts and prayers from our various communities, and we look forward to being in Palestine tomorrow and more exciting adventures in the coming weeks and months.
-Ben Mast
Photo Gallery-Guatemala/Mexico 2014-1
The Longest Week
Three airports, two complementary beverages, and a quick sprint to catch a connecting flight later, we were in Arizona ready to take on the semester. Our first stop was the Florence Detention Center where our host showed off what could be described as the poster-child governmental institution for detention. He made sure to show us the nice soccer field that was there and how the place goes above and beyond the standards that the government sets. It is important to state that these are not inmates because they did not commit a criminal act. We then made our way to the Florence Refugee Project where the director filled us in on the legal details of our nation's immigration system and told us about the free legal services they offer to those who are fighting their case for asylum. While the detention center said that the FDC and FRP had good relations, it was easy to see that they did not see eye to eye on a lot of things.
Friday started early as we headed to Nogales. We were led by the director of the organization HEPAC. Before going to HEPAC we stopped on the US side where we saw the fence for the first time. It is hard to describe such a structure to anyone who hasn't stood next to it or have seen it stretch into the distance only to never end. We made our way into Mexico and stopped at Groupo Beta, an organization that helps the most recently deported migrants. We listened to stories from some men and then shared a prayer with them at the end which was really nice. We then went up to HEPAC where we ate with some of the children. After a short presentation about the organization which aids the financially disenfranchised, we made a stop at the local dump where we talked to some families that were living in the trash and have children or have been themselves involved with HEPAC. For supper, we were invited to some houses that were about the size of most of our living rooms. The food was great and the conversations or playing with children was even greater. We ended the night at a vigil for a young man, Jose Antonio, who was shot through the fence after allegedly throwing rocks over the wall. We all had rather heavy hearts on our way out of Mexico.
Saturday we made our way to Douglas/Agua Prieta where we were to spend the week with Frontera de Cristo. We arrived at the office where we were introduced to Mark Adams (pastor/Frontera de Cristo leader), Josias Casanova (group leader for the week), and Jack Knox (one of the drivers for the week). We talked about our hopes fears and expectations individually and were given a quick overview of what we would be experiencing throughout the week. We drove up to the fence and stopped at a set of flood gates to talk a little bit about what these migrants were facing. We then took a quick hike up a hill where we could see the sun set behind the mountains. It was absolutely breath taking; from the light purples where the sun was disappearing behind the hills, to the deep blues of the sky behind our backs, to the almost bright colors that the desert emitted in this magical time. We then went and settled into the community center in Agua Prieta. Little did we know the cold we were about to experience that night.
Sunday started out with breakfast in the morning at the Community Center in Agua Prieta where we were staying. Mark Adams then came and led us in a Bible study over a passage in the Gospel of Mark. After the Bible study we were given a short break to clean up and get ready for church. We attended Mark's church, Lily of the Valley or in Spanish El Lirio de los Valles. This is a Spanish speaking Presbyterian church. We were welcomed in with open arms as if we were already family. It was hard to understand and gain meaning from the Spanish service but the songs were pretty. We sang two songs in front of the congregation and they loved it. It was really interesting and different to here Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow sung in Spanish. The church ladies made us a delicious lunch of enchiladas with mole sauce. After relaxing in the warm sunshine in La Plaza (a park), we returned to church in the afternoon to attend another Bible study. After a mix up over dinner plans we ate out together at a Mexican restaurant and got the experience of reading the menu in Spanish.
Monday I learned just how privileged I am financially in the United States. People in Mexico move closer to the border to try to make more money. One of the better paying jobs is working in factories, or maquilas. Maquila workers make anywhere from 65-91 pesos a day ($5-$6) which barely gives them enough to spend on the essentials. We were given a set amount of money and told that we had to go buy enough food for dinner that night, as well as breakfast and lunch the following day. This was an eye opening project just to realize how much certain items cost. Buying food for a family of nine on a maquila salary has to be done strategically but we ended up have money to spare at the end to spend on snacks.
Welcome to what was possibly one of the longest days of our trip so far. This was also a day filled with fluctuating emotions. It started out with an early breakfast that we cooked for ourselves from the food we bought the previous day. After cleaning up the kitchen we departed for a day in the desert. We drove into the desert through thorns and over bumps on the most uneven dirt road I have ever been on. We were all bouncing around in the van. Once the van parked we got out and walked a short ways to where CRREDA had their water barrels. CRREDA refilled the water barrels for the migrants that pass through there. We had our maquila salary packed lunches in that spot around a low sprawled out tree. After our bellies were satisfied we started our walking journey through the desert towards the border. It was hot, rocky and thorns surrounded us. There were gullies that we climbed in and out of and shrubs that we jumped over.
Once we were at the wall we had an amazing encounter with two border patrol agents on the US side. These agents were friendly and willing to answer our questions. It was very encouraging to see that they had feelings and cared about people despite their reputation and their job. While sitting at the wall we also had a Bible reflection over mark 5: 1-14. In this passage it mentions the desert more than once and so we talked about all of our new meanings of the desert now that we were in the middle of one.
After hiking back to the vans through the desert we crossed into the US and visited the School Sisters of Notre Dame. Here we watched a presentation of the organizations they support as well as receiving instructions on how the vigil would work. We then left the Sisters and went to a public walking path along the border and participated in a vigil. The vigil consisted of many white crosses with names of people who died in the desert crossing the border. We made a procession along the sidewalk and each announced a name on the crosses we were holding. We were right along the street that leads into Mexico so there were many cars passing us. After announcing and setting every cross along the street we formed a prayer circle and meditated over the lives that have been lost. This was a painful realization for me to see how many lives just in that small area of Agua Prieta had been lost.
Wednesday was a day full of emotions. Our day started off visiting Café Justo. This organization works to keep the profit of coffee sales in the hands of the farmers who grow the coffee beans. It was such a great experience to walk into a business and just sit down with the staff and share the word of the Lord. This rarely happens in companies in the US. Not only are the farmers benefiting from this company but they are also working to solve the root problem of migration which is a poor economy. Before lunch we made a quick stop at the Migrant Resource Center. This is a place which gives clothes and a meal to migrants who have just been deported to Mexico. They also help them make connections on where they are going next. In the afternoon we went to visit the Border Patrol Station in Douglas AZ. While we were there, they showed us a couple of videos in which they called the migrants "aliens, clutter, and undocumented." They also talked a lot about their way of approaching the issue. In the early 2000's they had more money available and were spending a lot on new technology and man power when they could have used that money elsewhere. Recently as the excess money has diminished, they are in a risk based approach. Now they focus on surveillance and information and the increase in man power has stabilized.
As we neared the end of the week, most everyone was mentally exhausted, but we had not had a physically demanding week up to this point. This all changed Thursday morning when we went to DouglaPrieta Trabaja, which is a community garden as well as educates people about gardening. While we were there we had the opportunity to help out with two projects. Half of the group worked on digging a swell (aka a ditch) while the rest of the group moved 35 lbs. adobe bricks. After eating lunch we worked a little while longer before we headed across the border to talk with Tommy Bassett. Tommy has been all over the place and had a lot of advice for us. The main point of his talk was about who is receiving the profit from our spending. Café Justo is just one example of a company where the money is actually going to the ones who do most of the work. In the evening we spent our time at CAME Migrant Shelter. Here we were challenged to only speak in Spanish while we talked with the migrants staying there who had been deported. Part of our group had a rough time there with stories and things that had been spoken but in the end Love prevailed and the whole group worked to comfort each other.
Friday was supposed to be a less stressful day but while we were at a house in the community we had a brief encounter with the local authority. This was more intense for the group but again in the end God was with us. Despite the craziness we still were able to enjoy our time listening to the family's story. After that we made our way across the border and said goodbye and had our closing reflections. We safely made it back to Tucson AZ at 8 p.m. We are heading to CASAS in Guatemala City where we will spend nine week in host families and studying Spanish. Mail can be sent to the address below up until March 6.
CASAS Semilla
Apdo.11, Periferico, Zona 11
Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala
-Stephan Goertzen, Isaac Driver, Katherine Graber
Huangshan and Nanjing: A Medley of Experiences
After bidding our Anqing host families farewell, we hopped a bus to the foot of Huangshan, or Yellow Mountain. The following morning, we rode out to the mountain, where we experienced a wealth of people queuing up to take the cable car up the mountain. For me, at least, this was a time where the number of people packed into one place (and particularly the pushing while in line) became almost overwhelming. However, the view in the cable car was spectacular: trees dotted the mountain all over, and the beauty was unmistakable. We then took a somewhat arduous hike to a hotel (not ours, mind you), where we ate a simple lunch of vegetarian dishes and a single meat dish of bone-ridden fish. We hiked around to different scenic spots before finally reaching our hotel. Rooms were a bit tight, with many bunks crammed into the room, though it wasn't uncomfortable for most of us. We spent the night on the mountain, and we even saw a bit of snow, amidst chilling winds. We spent a wonderful time reminiscing as we began to plan for our last week back at EMU. The sound of our laughter could be heard several rooms away.
After descending the mountain the following day, we visited a small, ancient village, which was more of a tourist attraction than we thought, but still intriguing. Unfortunately, it rained, so we didn't stay long. From there, we took our bus to Nanjing.
Nanjing in Chinese means "southern capital" (Beijing would mean "northern capital"), and the history we saw in the city made that apparent. We visited many museums and historical sites, such as the Nanjing Massacre Museum, the John Rabe House, a collection of Ming Dynasty tombs, Sun Yatsen's tomb, and the Taiping Museum. They were all very interesting, and reinforced things we've learned from Myrrle in our study of Chinese history, both ancient and modern.
Each morning we met for a couple of hours with Dr. Wang, a good friend of Myrrl's and a professional psychological counselor, who is a pioneer in mental and emotional counseling for Chinese people through the idea of "zhi mian", which he has adapted from Chinese writer Lu Xun. "Zhi mian" translates to "facing life directly", a sometimes contradictory idea in a culture where keeping harmony and peace often trumps confronting an issue and resolving it. We were able to talk very openly with Dr. Wang about some of our more sensitive questions about Chinese culture (like the one-child policy or the continued veneration of Mao Zedong by many). Our dialogues with him were both refreshing and eye-opening, and it was a unique opportunity that I am thankful we had.
Of course, as our journey in China is winding down, some of people's extraneous money went toward Nanjing's excellent shopping. I think many of us found many cool gifts and keepsakes in Nanjing; I know I did!
We ended the week in Nanjing by visiting Nanjing Union Theological Seminary, the largest in China. We had a jiaozi (dumpling) party, in which we joined many seminary students in making what I'm sure were hundreds of dumplings, which the students then cooked. While I'm terrible at making things like this, the experience was fun, and it was nice to connect with the seminary students over our delicious dinner of both meat and veggie jiaozi. We ate SO MANY, I thought I was going to explode.
Nanjing was an incredible place, and definitely one of the highlights of our cross-cultural for me. If ever you are in China, Nanjing should be on your "must-visit" list!
- Alex Bender
Photo Gallery – Spain-Morocco Independent Travel
New Friends in Anqing
We have been in the city of Anqing for only 11 days and it already feels like home to me. Anqing is a "small" city of 700,000 people and even though I come from a town in Ohio with only 1,670 people, I still feel comfortable here. The fact that my host sister's middle school alone has over 3,000 students is a little daunting, but the amount of people does not lessen their generosity and hospitality. This is our second home stay and I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we are more comfortable this time around simply because we have dealt with this before.
For me, Anqing has been an enormous blessing. Unlike in Nanchong, we have personal Tutors to help is with our less-than perfect Mandarin. Our tutors are all students at Anqing University who are majoring in teaching Mandarin as a second language. Having this time every day with students as our tutors has been a great opportunity to make new friends and to really connect with Chinese people in the same stage of life as us.
The university has a drama/music department, which houses their very own Huangmei Opera troupe, put on a show for us last Friday. The local news station caught wind of this and thought that a bunch of foreigners watching traditional Chinese opera was news-worthy. Thus, we were interviewed and caught on camera. Here is a link to the news cast, our part starts at 11:40
My tutor's name is He Yu and her English name is Halinda. Every day, I get off of the bus and she is waiting for me with a hug and a smile. Brittany, her tutor (Jojo), He Yu, and I have become a small group of friends who just sit and chat every day. While we maybe learn a little less Mandarin than some of the other students, I am not upset because, in my book, a new friendship is just as valuable as knowledge. I am actually dreading leaving Anqing (in 2 days) simply because I don't want to leave these new friends behind, but I can at least look forward to coming home to my friends and family at EMU.
Emotionally torn,
Emma King
Lijiang Free Travel
November 2-9, 2013
This week we were in Lijiang, which is located in the Yunnan Province of southwestern China. Much of our group chose to go their separate ways for this week of independent travel. Two groups tackled the hike of Tiger Leaping Gorge while another group decided to stay behind in Lijiang to explore the city and the surrounding areas. One of the hiking groups then went on to the city of Shangri-a while the other rejoined the group in Lijiang and traveled to Dali. I was in the group that stayed in Lijiang Old Town.
The Old Town was a wonderful place; very scenic and full of things to do. For the most part, there were a lot of shopping areas and food stalls selling local specialties. Outside of the ancient city were some beautiful sites to visit. One such site was the Black Dragon Pool park. The park offered a great walk around the pond and a gorgeous view of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the distance. The only downside to the park was the entrance fee to get in, which was 80¥.
Next to the park was a place called the Museum of Naxi Dongba Culture. According to a website I had read, this museum was a great place to go if you were at all interested in the local culture. Our group was very interested in the Naxi culture, but unfortunately we didn't get to the museum in time because I made the mistake of thinking that the museum was inside the park. Thus, we never found the museum and ended up wandering around for a while. This was my one regret of the week because I was very curious about the Naxi culture.
The next destination on our list was Dali. It was about 3 or 4 hours from Lijiang by bus. The bus ride was good until the last half hour or so, when the driver decided that it was time for a lunch break. We were literally a half hour away and he pulled into a restaurant in the middle of nowhere for a 30 minute lunch. We were all forced to get off the bus for that time, much to the annoyance of those who were napping.
Once we arrived in Dali, we settled in at our hostel named the Jade Emu (coincidence? I think not). The old city of Dali was similar to Lijiang's but there was more to do. We went to see the famous Three Pagodas and it was beautiful with the misty mountains in the background. Afterwards, the group took a bike ride to the big lake surrounding the town. Carissa and Malika decided to go on a horseback ride up the mountain and then watch the local fisherman who have trained birds to catch fish for them.
We all met back in Lijiang Old City on Friday, where we shared stories of our travels and took some time to rest up for the following day of travel to our next adventure in the Anhui Province.
From the desk of the Chairman,
Derrick Turner
Travels in Germany, Czech Republic, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal
Mattie, Mandy, Roberto, Holly
Mandy, Mattie Roberto and I spent our week of independent travel in Germany and the Czech Republic. Although collectively our German and Czech skills were zero, we learned a lot of life skills. For example, nefe in German means yeast (not butter), "classic" water is carbonated and the Czech Koruna is 18 koruna to 1 US dollar. We spent the majority of our time in an apartment we rented in Dresden, Germany where Becca Martin, an EMU student who is studying near Frankfurt, Germany this semester, met up with us to explore the city, and also to take us to Berlin. We also spent one night at the end of our trip in Prague. Highlights of the trip include colorful leaves at the peak of fall in Germany, (there was little of that in Spain) the picturesque beauty of Dresden, a museum on the history of the Nazis' rise to power and secret police force (right beside the Berlin wall) a semi-spontaneous trip to Saxony Switzerland National Park, an excellent free tour of Prague that was based on tips, and seeing the turn of the hour on the clock in old town Prague. We had a great time eating German and Czech cuisine while trying to take in the reality of very intense stories of the past that took place where we walked. All in all it was a very rewarding trip, and a nice change of pace before heading to Morocco.
-Holly Jensen
Lucas and Matt
Our trip started out with overnight flying to Beaouvois, followed by a morning bus ride to Paris. Upon arriving in a rainy Paris, we looked for food and a place to stay then spent some time walking around and resting. The next two days involved a lot of walking around the city to see landmarks such as the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, a lit up Eiffel Tower at night and a short trip to Versailles to see the famous Chateau. Friday night we boarded an overnight bus (not our greatest idea in retrospect) and arrived in Strasbourg at 4:30 a.m., walked to the train station, and waited for the next train to Soultz Sous Foret, a small village situated in northeast France close to the German border. We were welcomed by a Mennonite family that Lucas' mom had lived with 30 years ago. The weekend consisted of some hiking, rock climbing, castle ruins, great food, hospitality, rest and relaxation, learning some French and even a Sunday service at the local Mennonite church. This was by far our favorite part of a very eventful trip. On Monday morning we took a bus to Munich, where we would spend the next few days. While in Munich, we were able to see some beautiful buildings, the site of Octoberfest being taken down, the wonderfully preserved park from the 1980(?) summer Olympics, and even the picturesque Austrian city of Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. After a lot of time spent flying, waiting and on buses throughout Thursday, we arrived back in Granada, ready for a short break before leaving for another new country.
-Matt Nyce
Kara and Phil
Yo soy un Pelegrino. We, Kara and I, walked over 220 kilometers (about 150 miles) in eight days on the Camino de Santiago from Ponferrada to Santiago de Compostela in the Spanish province of Galicia. So why be a pilgrim and walk the Camino de Santiago? To think, ask questions, to discover friendship, to experience nature, to feel pain, suffer and keep going, to listen, to share, to laugh and maybe to rekindle faith in humanity. Our pilgrimage was nothing short of incredible–how could I ever put it into words? Our first overnight stay in a pilgrim hostel (called an albergue) we met Fred and Roy, two pretty cool dudes. Fred, retired and still going strong, and Roy our tall friendly Dutchman, journeyed with us and became like family. Sometimes we walked together, sometimes solo, but now we are forever kindred spirits. Fred had a saying he would say each morning–rain or shine– as soon as we stumbled sleepily onto the path, "it's another fine Camino morning." Now we've been thrown into the next chapter of our adventure (into the wonderful world of Morocco) but I know that the lessons we learned–about ourselves, others and the world around us, will stay with us for the rest of our journey.
-Philip Yoder
Alex, Angelina, Josh, Amanda, James and Sarah
For free travel some of us wanted a more laid back break from studies. It worked out that there were three couples in the group who all had this idea, and we found a cheap beach front apartment in a very nice town called Port de Pollensa, on Mallorca which is a Spanish Island in the Mediterranean.
On the Island we found exactly what we were looking for–a laid back week at the beach. Our typical day consisted of sleeping in, a late breakfast and then going to the beach at about 12 or 1 for a couple of hours. We would normally have lunch at about three or four, which we prepared ourselves, and then relax or go shopping until dinner. We only ate out one time for dinner. We did breakfast and lunch as a couple and then took turns cooking dinner for the group.
Some of the other activities we did included a hike to another nearby beach, (Mallorca has beautiful mountains) renting bikes for a day and a two hour snorkeling trip. We also had movie nights and game nights as a group. Overall Port de Pollensa made for a very fun and relaxing independent travel and although we didn't leave Spain, we were able to see a very different part of the country from Granada.
-Alex Witmer
Mckenzie, Michelle, Melinda and Becka
Mckenzie, Michelle, Melinda and I spent a week in the sleepy town of Reggio Emilia, Italy for independent travel. We spent one night in Malaga prior to leaving Spain which consisted of a makeshift lunch of chocolate, nuts, crackers and sliced cheese (because we were too cheap and hungry to go buy lunch), downtime by the pool with a beautiful view of the beach, and colorful conversation with an Irish man we befriended during our stay. After a taxi, plane, bus and train (every form of transportation except a boat) we arrived in Reggio around ten, starving and ready for some motherly love from Michelle's aunt Sharon who we were staying with!
Some highlights of our trip include an exclusive tour of the pamagiano reggiano cheese factory (with free samples) a gondola ride in Venice, quality time with Sharon's crazy cat, Maurice, and FOOD! We had the most amazing pasta including ravioli filled with squash which was specific to Reggio and we learned how to make gnocchi. But that's not all, the pizza and gelato were out of this world! Best food ever! Also while in a town called Parma, we ran into a couple from Baltimore who saw my EMU shirt and immediately thought Harrisonburg! Such a small world. Overall, it was a relaxing week spent with some great friends, and I have many memories that will last a lifetime.
-Becka Richman
Annika and Taylor
Our independent travel was all about relaxation so we headed to a small town in Portugal called Albufeira which is located along the Atlantic Ocean. We rented a small studio apartment just big enough to be comfortable. The first three days were warm and sunny, so we gladly lounged around the pool to soak in the sun. We also wandered around our little town finding groceries, touristy shops and restaurants.
The beach was just a five minute walk away from our place, so while it was a bit too chilly to go swimming, we enjoyed the sand and shells. A highlight of our time in Portugal was our day trip to Lagos. We explored the city finding the location of an old slave market, a fortress and a museum of Lagos history. We returned to Granada and the rest of the group rejuvenated and ready for the next chapter of our cross-cultural in Morocco.
-Annika Maust


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