Losing The Girl Next Door

Art / Photography / PotD

Losing The Girl Next Door

October 24, 2015

charles i. letbetter - not the girl next door

After Horst (2009)

Everybody always says that I’m the girl next door, which makes me think that y’all must have a lot of weird next-door neighbours.—Kelly Clarkson

When Hugh Hefner started Playboy® magazine in 1953, part of his concept was to represent the “girl next door;” someone whose sensuality was a bit understated, who had a good-girl reputation but secretly couldn’t wait to get out of her sweater. At the same time, though, there has always been a bit of glamor, with popular starlets and celebrities frequently gracing the pages over the years. The blend worked. The celebrities might not be approachable, but perhaps, just maybe, the girl in the gatefold would be. With each issue came the possibility that maybe, just maybe, that spindly-legged girl who was your neighbor might be worth a second look or more.

Over the years, that combination allowed some of those girls next door to become celebrities in their own right. Anna Nichole Smith, Pam Anderson, Holly Madison, Barbie Benton, Carmen Electra, and Jenny McCarthy come immediately to mind, but there have been several others. As the stigma of being nude faded with the sexual revolution, more girls dreamed of being on of Hef’s girls next door. Then, in 1981, the J. Geils Band captured the hopes and fears of every young man in America:

Does she walk? Does she talk?
Does she come complete?
My homeroom homeroom angel
Always pulled me from my seat

She was pure like snowflakes
No one could ever stain
The memory of my angel
Could never cause me pain

Years go by I’m lookin’ through a girly magazine
And there’s my homeroom angel on the pages in-between

The song Centerfold jumped to the top of the charts not because of its musical qualities but because it so accurately captured how we felt about the girl next door. There was no one who, if they were totally honest, didn’t at least once think about opening the pages of Playboy and finding their high school crush on the pages, whether that objective was realistic or not. The ever-elusive girl next door was the heart and soul of Playboy, the thing that made the magazine stand out more than anything else. We loved every one of those girls and wouldn’t have minded one bit had one moved in next door.[/one_half]

So, what happens to the girl next door if Playboy drops nudes? Does the gatefold go completely away? Probably. What about the centerfold questionnaire, you know, that part where the model says she likes long walks on the beach, quiet nights in front of the fireplace, and other likely fictional things that fueled are fantasies? Those are likely gone as well. If Cory Jones’ work at maxim.com is any indication, and there’s no reason it wouldn’t be, what we’re more likely to see are overly-airbrushed swimsuit models who look about as realistic as a Picasso. The entire concept of the girl next door is likely gone.

I dropped over to playboy.com this morning, just to see what Jones has constructed there. He removed nudes from the website, making it safe for work, back in 2014 and their numbers jumped. Why? Did men actually prefer a website with no nudity? Not likely. The reality there is that without nudity on its pages the URL was allowed past corporate filters that previously blocked it. More people were accessing the pages because most people still do the majority of their online browsing from work (though, that is changing rapidly as more people use their smart phones). So, what’s at the top of playboy.com this morning? An article on Indian-spiced cocktails. Below that, an article on overcoats, then one about Transformer toys, then pieces on viral videos, boxing, and remembering loved ones. If you want to even see a female, you’re going to have to scroll. So much for the girl next door. There’s hardly even a girl on the front page at all!

I found it hilarious that, when clicking “girls” on the playboy.com menu, the piece at the top of the page is a video of Miranda Kerr jumping around. Clothed. Yawn. Want to see Miranda Kerr naked? You’ll have to pick up a fashion magazine. W magazine, August 2015, is the latest of a long line of fashion nudes Ms. Kerr has done. You can find the editorial online here. But not in Playboy.

By dropping nudes, Playboy is abandoning the girl next door, one of the most basic underpinnings of the magazine. One has to seriously ask what Playboy has left to offer that one can’t find thousands of other places both on the Internet and in print. Cocktails? Seriously? The whole fucking Bartender’s Guide is available. Fashion? Please, every title imaginable sits in front of Playboy on the shelves, and is probably cheaper. What Playboy has always had was the girl next door, naked. Without that, there’s just no reason to pick up a copy of the magazine ever again.

Art / Photography / PotD

A Heart For Sex

October 23, 2015

Curved (2011)

Sex is the driving force on the planet. We should embrace it, not see it as the enemy.—Hugh Hefner

“Ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex.”

I have always chuckled a little bit at that line from an ad for a major erectile dysfunction medication. I’ve also heard apocryphal stories about Hef keeping a bowl of the little blue pills by his bed. I rather doubt that story is completely true, but the man is now 89. I think we can give him a bit of a break on the subject. I still find it humorous that an amorous individual might need to check with their physician, calling the poor guy in the middle of dinner, with, “Hey Doc, the wife didn’t burn the roast tonight. Ya’ think it’s safe for me to hump her?”

Realistically, though, sex can take a lot of heart, especially when it’s more than a physical act but rather a primary driver of one’s business. Publishing a magazine where sex is the primary motivator is far from being a romp in the park, despite the fact that Hef managed to make it look that way. Playboy® was never about page after page of increasingly raunchy photos, but about a lifestyle in which sex wasn’t something hidden or repressed as it seemed to be in other publications. Hef once said:

I have very strong theories about magazine publishing. And I think that it is the most personal form of journalism. And I think that a magazine is an old friend.

Hugh Hefner, when he started the magazine in 1953, had a heart for sex that wasn’t all that different from some of his contemporaries in the research fields, such as Masters and Johnson or Alfred Kinsey. The post-war period of the late 1940s and 50s took the cover off sex and sexuality that led to the sexual revolution of the 60s. There was a desire to understand and appreciate and experience sex in ways that extended far beyond the physical act. For all the criticism he received, the content mix Hef brought to his magazine perfectly reflected a heart for sex that fueled a revolution.

If Playboy continues to stumble, it may well be because its current leadership fails to have that heart for sex that Hef has. Current CEO Scott Flanders, who interestingly enough is an Indianapolis native, His academic studies at the University of Colorado were in economics, not journalism, and from there he went on to law school. Prior to coming to Playboy, Flanders took a beleaguered Freedom Communications Company and managed it straight into bankruptcy in 2009, whereupon he left. He sees Playboy Enterprises, which he joined in 2011, as a brand management company, not a publisher.

Playboy’s chief content officer, Cory Jones, who had the unpleasant task of telling Hef the magazine was dropping nudes, is a digital strategist who is successful in generating high hit counts and unique views. While he does have some experience working with men’s titles, such as Maxim.com and mandatory.com, he has no relevant experience in print, which, as titles such as the New York Times and Vogue are discovering, cannot be managed in the same fashion as online publications. Jone’s attention is strictly on the numbers, using whatever form of pandering necessary to get there, as is evidenced at mandatory.com.

The people at the top of Playboy’s org chart simply do not have the heart for sex that Hef had when he founded the magazine and through the years that made it great. Without that emphasis, Playboy is set up to fail. Not everyone was meant to be a magazine publisher. Publishing what was once the nation’s leading men’s magazine reminds me of the Richard Adler and Jerry Ross song from the musical “Damn Yankees:” Ya’ gotta’ have heart, lots and lots and lots of heart.

Unfortunately, the people at the top of Playboy seem to be lacking that heart for sex. Perhaps the magazine could use a little blue pill of its own.

Art / Photography / PotD

Relevant Culture

October 22, 2015

String of Pearls (2010)

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‘Is this it? Are we still relevant?’—Bono

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Marilyn Monroe. Jane Mansfield. Elizabeth Taylor. Ursula Andress. Kim Basinger. Linda Evans. Joan Collins. Drew Barrymore. Belinda Carlyle. Bo Derek. Tara Reid. Jamie Pressley. Denise Richads. Dita Van Teese. Tori Wilson. Nancy Sinatra. These are just a few of the celebrities who not only posed nude for Playboy®, but did so at a time that made their presence in the magazine culturally relevant. From the very first issue in 1953, Hef used celebrities as a way of making sure the magazine mattered, that what appeared in the magazine would be conversation fodder for water coolors and bar rooms everywhere.

Having content that was socially relevant took the magazine from something one hid under the bed or in a closet, to one that was regularly discussed at dinner tables. It didn’t matter whether one approved of the content, it was the fact that people were talking about Playboy and its nudes that made the magazine relevant. For a celebrity, being in Playboy was an instant invite to the late-night talk shows, a career booster like no other. In fact, for a set of celebrities such as Pam Anderson, Carmen Electra, and Anna Nicole Smith, their careers would not have existed without their appearance in the magazine; it was just that relevant.

Playboy has long held a very unique and even peculiar place in American society. As hard as the mainstream media tried to demonize the men’s magazine, Hef continually produced content so incredibly relevant that people had to pay attention. The magazine’s interview with Georgia governor Jimmy Carter in 1976 was one of the factors that propelled Carter into the White House. Nancy Sinatra’s spread in 1995 helped rejuvinate a career that had been dormant for two decades but was about to explode again with the Kill Bill movies. Drew Barrymore and other former child stars took to the pages of Playboy to let the industry know they were ready for more adult roles. Granted, the spreads worked out better for some than it did others, but the point is that the nudes, as well as most all the content, were relevant.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Now, ask yourself the last time you rushed to pick up a Playboy because of who was going to be in its pages? When was the last time that anyone actually cared about who was doing a spread in the magazine. While management’s decision to completely abandon nudes happened only a week ago, they’ve quietly been moving away from that format for the past three years with an increasing number of pictorals not going any further than implied nudity and several non-gatefold sets not even getting close to anyone being naked. With the base reason for picking up the magazine dwindling, the rest of the content, such as the interviews and fiction, have been largely ignored. Playboy is no longer as relevant as it once was.

Over the past few years, Playboy has stepped away from the controversy that once surrounded their nude spreads. As the quality of the photorgaphy diminished, so too did their choice of celebrities and models. One of the challenges they now face is that international fashion magazines, such as Vogue Italia, not only have more nudity than does Playboy, but they are more culturally relevant (because of the relationship to fashion) and the level of photography is arguably light years above anything Playboy is producing. Photographers such as Steven Meisel and Nick Knight are shooting the new celebrities, fashion models such as Cara Delevigne, Joan Smalls, and Karlie Kloss in nude editorials that render the mediocre nudes in Playboy almost boring.

Playboy could still come back to a position of being dominantly relevant, but it is not likely to do so by dropping nudes. The success of fashion magazines publishing creative nude spreads demonstrates that the right style of nude photography is still amazingly relevant and capable of selling print issues. Change has to happen, but dropping nudes isn’t the answer now and won’t be the answer in the future.[/one_half_last]

Art / Photography / PotD

A Shadow of Former Glory

October 21, 2015

The Smallest Light (2008)

That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.—William Wordsworth

The November 1972 issue of Playboy® sold over seven million copies. This month, they will be lucky to see 500,000 copies leave store shelves. What made that 1972 issue so popular? Was there a special interview? Were the articles particularly on point? Where the editorial cartoons especially biting? No, it was the gatefold of Lena Söderberg, shot by Dwight Hooker, that made the issue leap off shelves. In fact, it remains one of the most sought after collectors’ editions to this day. For years, a cropped version of that picture of Lena has been used as the ultimate test for dithering in color computer imaging. The gatefold is also a topic of conversation in the 1973 Woody Allen film Sleeper. Ah, the glory days.

Much of the glory, however, is gone and the reasons have nothing to do with the magazine’s iconic nudes. There isn’t a printed periodical in the country that hasn’t been severely challenged by the Internet, for starters, and more than a few great titles have completely folded as a result. Online “magazines”, not unlike online shopping, took traditional publishers completely by surprise and even those who attempted to adapt early often did so in ways that were not sustainable. Only a few titles, such as the New York Times and Condé Nast’s Vogue have recently figured out how to make their print and online presence work symbiotically. For Playboy’s circulation numbers to have fallen dramatically isn’t surprising for that reason alone.

Playboy’s circulation problems didn’t begin with the Internet, though. Numbers had been declining long before online publishing was even a thing. Circulation in the 80s was lower than the 70s, and the 90s numbers were dramatically lower than the 80s. Blaming the Internet for the magazine’s decline ignores the fact that the glory that was once Playboy was long gone before live streaming and pervasive free porn ever became a factor. Playboy was already standing on the edge of a publishing cliff. All the Internet did was push it over.

If the Internet isn’t the cause of Playboy’s troubles, though, what is? Where is the luster and glory that made the name so well known? The list of reasons could be long, but overall they can be summarized into two primary categories: 1. Hugh Hefner left the magazine, and 2. the emphasis changed. One of the most seismic declines in circulation came when Hef turned control of the magazine over to his daughter, Christie. There were already some challenges even before than happened, but, inevitably, Christie’s vision for the magazine wasn’t the same as her father’s and it had been Hef’s view of how life should be lived that had driven the magazine since its inception. Sure, his name has always been on the masthead as editor in chief, but once his voice was no longer dominant, the magazine faltered.

More critically, though, Playboy the company became the primary competitor to Playboy the magazine. Special Editions introduced in the 80s were much heavier on photographs and contained extended set not shown in the magazines. Those who were primarily interested in the pictures picked up titles such as “Girls of the Big Ten” rather than the full magazine. The introduction of videos in the 80s also distracted some magazine buyers. Over the years, Playboy the company has become more dependent upon revenue from licensing than publishing, and that distraction has stolen glory from the magazine.

Playboy dropping nudes from its magazine is a reactive strategy that is likely to only hasten its demise. While Playboy’s management is quick to tout the five-fold increase in unique views the website had when it dropped nudes, expecting print readers to respond the same way is foolish and naive. Playboy dropping nudes is like the New York Times eliminating investigative journalism or Vogue deciding to drop fashion editorials. Gutting their primary source of glory is likely to have the opposite effect and may well find its editorial staff looking for new jobs.

Art / Photography / PotD

Abandoning The Revolution

October 20, 2015

String of Souls (2010)

Sexuality surrounds us like a dangerous aura. The same reverence that is given to the spirit is not given to the flesh. We have had a sexual revolution, but the sexual revolution only has made sex more pervasive. It hasn’t granted the level of reverence and respect that it should have.—Gioconda Belli

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]When Playboy® chief executive Scott Flanders defended the magazine ‘s move toward non-nude images last week, he said, “The battle has been fought and won.” Mr. Flanders, the magazine’s first CEO outside the Hefner family, was referring, of course, to the battle that was the sexual revolution. Without question, a lot has changed in our attitudes towards sex and sexuality since Hef started the magazine in 1953. However, to abandon the very thing that has brought the magazine this far is rather like General George Washington defeating Cornwallis then, instead of becoming President, Washington moves back to Britain. Was all that effort for naught?

There is absolutely no question that Playboy® was a major contributing factor in changing the landscape of American sexuality. The magazine’s participation in that movement wasn’t always welcome, either. Those of us who are old enough remember know feminist stalwart Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny in an attempt to discredit the magazine. Others have criticized the fact that, while the country was struggling with the matter of civil rights, Playboy diverted the attention of white men by shoving the sexual revolution in their face. In the magazine’s defense, their interviews with both Malcom X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were exemplary examples of Playboy’s continual contribution to contemporary issues conversation.

Yet, for all the talk, it was always the pictures that stood out. Sure, the articles were important and timely and informative, but without that famous gatefold, would anyone have bothered reading them? Probably not. Looking at the progression of styles and poses in the photography across the years is almost like a visual encyclopedia of America’s changing attitudes toward both sex and beauty. Hair styles, grooming choices, accessories, backgrounds, and changes in body types are all indicative of the effect Playboy has had on the sexual revolution.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]But is the revolution really over?®® Is there nothing else that should be explored through conceptual nude imagery?

Whether one liked the magazine or not, one of the things I’ve always admired about the magazine is that they didn’t back down in the face of criticism. At first, Hef was demonized for the nudity. People screamed, ranted and raved when Jennifer Jackson became the first black Playmate of the Month in 1965. Mouths frothed when Marina Baker, Miss March 1987, talked about being bisexual and even more when Stephanie Adams, June 2006, came out as the magazine’s first lesbian centerfold. Playboy didn’t back down or apologize.

What’s important to our current conversation, though, is without the pictures none of those women’s contributions would have been relevant or recognizable. They all would have just been one of the millions of women battling against a status quo that shut them out. Photography can do a lot about bringing attention to issues and creative, conceptual, nude imagery is critical to that effort because of its ability to direct our attention when other methods fail. Issues of equality, such as #freethenipple, still remain. Imagine a gatefold who’s had a mastectomy; that would be leadership that Playboy is uniquely positioned to provide.

What Mr. Flanders and others at Playboy seem to miss is the fact that “winning” the revolution is only the beginning. We need a magazine that takes us from the revolutionary aspects of photographic nudity to using that imagery to teach respect for sexuality, especially in the face of overwhelming amounts of porn. Who is better positioned to lead that movement toward reverence and respect than the magazine that helped get us to this position? Now is not the time to abandon nudity, Mr. Flanders. The work has just begun.[/one_half_last]

Art / Photography / PotD

Lighting Matters

October 19, 2015

A Little Light Through A Window (2011)

The great photographers of life – like Diane Arbus and Walker Evans and Robert Frank – all must have had some special quality: a personality of nurturing and non-judgment that frees the subjects to reveal their most intimate reality. It really is what makes a great photographer, every bit as much as understanding composition and lighting.—Caleb Deschanel

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]If Playboy® magazine’s chief content officer Cory Jones thinks that nudes have become passé, perhaps one of the reasons might be that the magazine has dropped their emphasis on creatively and seductively lit images. Back when the magazine started in 1953, the gatefolds were pinups in the classic style, with a careful attention to maintaining a sense of illusion. Lighting was critical. The photographs from the first few years, the ones that caught your grandfather’s or great-grandfather’s attention, look to us now almost like a set of realist paintings. They were carefully shot and carefully processed to portray a specific image that implied luxury and refinement. They were classy, not slutty.

During the 1960s and 70s, Helmut Newton came to the magazine and set the world on fire with his black and white images that were naturally lit. While the concept sounds easy, just show up someplace with decent indirect lighting and shoot where there are no shadows, photography for Helmut was never that simple. He would scout locations and check for the perfect time of day when the lighting was going to be precisely the way he wanted. Then, he was picky as hell about things such as reflection and making sure that poses put shadows precisely where he wanted them. There was never anything accidental or surprising about Helmut’s photos; what you saw was exactly what he intended.

Then, starting in 1976, Arny Freytag pretty much took over Playboy’s® gatefold and did so with highly-specialized lighting schemes that sometimes used as many as fifty flash heads to create just exactly the precise amount of light he wanted across every inch of the photograph. Arney didn’t just make sure the lighting for the model was correct, but he cared about the background as well, whether it was a complicated room full of furniture, or something seemingly as simple as a rumpled sheet. Arny would fuss endlessly over the precise placement of lights, taking endless Polaroids® until the lighting was to his critical satisfaction. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Such were the years of Playboy® at its heyday. As Arny got older, he didn’t shoot for the magazine as often and the difference was dramatic. Lighting was terribly inconsistent from one photographer to another. Some insisted on blowing out the highlights and the background. Others, especially once the magazine moved to using digital cameras, created images that were as flat as the paper on which they were printed. Shadows showed up in awkward places. Sunlight glared down on models with no filter or any form of diffusing. Editors and photographers alike seemed to rely more on Photoshop® to fix the errors rather shooting good pictures to begin with. With those attitudes, anything would quickly become passé.

When Hugh Hefner started the magazine, there was an inherent emphasis on quality because he wanted a men’s magazine that would stand out with class and not be like the low-class smut being produced at the time. He knew that was the only way to win over the large-scale acceptance of the men’s magazines necessary to make it profitable. There was no room in Hef’s magazine for bad lighting or poor photography. Even non-nude photographs, such as those accompanying the famous interview portion, were by photographers who knew how to light a portrait correctly.

Playboy® faces a tough battle ahead if it plans to go up against men’s giant such as GQ and Esquire with the bad lighting some of their photography has shown the past 20 years or so. There simply is no substitute, now or in the future, for a photograph that is lit properly from the very beginning. If an editor wants to capture readers attention, good lighting is an absolute necessity, even if readers don’t recognize it. Sometimes it’s the details that keep a magazine from being passé.[/one_half_last]

Art / Photography / pop culture / PotD

Anything But Passé

October 18, 2015

An Insufferable Desire (2008)

I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.—Camille Paglia

Passé. Nudes are passé. At least, that’s the story according to Playboy® magazine’s recently-appointed chief content officer Cory Jones. The magazine announced that this past week that it is initiating a complete re-design and re-branding, beginning with the March 2016 issue. Jones said, as part of the announcement, “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.” And with that, every male, and more than a few females, around the world sighed the deepest of sighs. There’s no arguing with the prevalence of nudity and porn on the Internet. And yes, it does make the current content of the magazine passé. Such wasn’t always the case, though, and that it is now is partly Playboy’s own fault.

Before I totally give in to ranting and raving, which I have a whole week to do, let’s be very clear about a few facts surrounding the magazine’s decision. First, what you see on the newsstands today is not Hugh Hefner’s magazine and hasn’t been for quite some time. Hef turned control of the magazine over to his daughter, Christie, in 1988 after he suffered a stroke in 1985. So, if you didn’t turn 18 until sometime after that date, you’ve not seen the magazine as it appeared under Hef’s control. Christie started making changes immediately and continued trying to keep the general content of the magazine moving forward until she stepped down in 2008, but even under her, the quality of the nudes suffered.

The magazine has been totally out of family control since earlier this year, and while Hef ostensibly has “approved” the change, his physical and mental condition has deteriorated to the point that one can legitimately question whether he really has a true concept of what’s taking place. The magazine’s website eliminated nudes over a year ago, which may be more understandable given the online competition, but then, the web version never has been anything more than a shadow of what the magazine was under Hef. One might even go back to Christie’s decision to move into video as the beginning of the decline.

Here’s the rub: poor quality nudes, such as what have appeared in the magazine for the past twenty years, have always been passé. Part of what made Playboy® the magazine it was under Hef’s control was the quality of its nudes. Not just anyone could shoot for the magazine and get their work published. Consider the list of photographers who once shot for the magazine. Arny Freytag, Pompeo Posar, Suze Randall, Mario Casilli, Herb Ritts, and most notably, Helmut Newton. The people who were behind the camera for the magazine during its heyday, who were responsible for its definitive look, were not hacks, but well-respected photographers with significant careers outside the magazine.

What happened? Expediency took the place of quality. Video was new and flashy and those early VHS tapes didn’t have to be good to sell well. Before long, the quality that had built the empire was completely gone. Never mind that attitudes about nudes and sexuality were changing, the photography by the mid-1990s came nowhere near the artistry that had existed before. Photoshop® and post-editing took over, lighting and creative posing and staging, which can be expensive, took a back seat. Models began looking more and more plastic.

So yes, the nudes that have appeared in Playboy® magazine the past 20 years are incredibly passé and changing that is a good thing. However, eliminating nudes completely is the easy way out. By going with a more glamour-oriented photography style, the magazine puts itself more in competition with titles such as GQ and Esquire. There, too, they will struggle if the quality of their photography doesn’t improve, and there’s no indication that it will.

Great nude photography will never be passé. However, mediocre magazines always will, and that’s exactly where Playboy® has landed, a fact that makes us all very sad.

Music / PotD

Everybody Has The Blues

October 17, 2015

Most Refined (2009). Model: Samantha Caster

Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It’s about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.—Wynton Marsalis

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Everybody has the Blues. I have the Blues right now because the kids are already awake and making way too much noise, and because this is the end of Blues week. I like next week’s theme of classic nudes, but this week has been rather special and I’m sorry to see it come to an end. My friends have the Blues, one from not sleeping well for several nights, another remembering, and feeling, the passing of a friend on this date some years ago. Blues happens to everyone, everywhere, all the time. There is not a day, nor even a moment that passes but what someone has the Blues.

I don’t think the Blues are something to be avoided, though. If anything, I think the Blues should be embraced, welcomed, and given the time and emotion to be felt deeply. The only way one gets over the Blues is to feel them and then to let that feeling come out in some form. Creative people have an advantage there; they can write or sing or paint or draw their way through the Blues and end up with something beautiful. Some of the most wonderful works of art have come from letting the Blues take over the creative process. When we allow the Blues to be a natural part of our experience, they participate as the balance against which we measure our level of joy. Without the Blues, how would we know how happy we are?[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]The music this week has been some of the best. One of the reasons Blues music is so popular is that the emotions from which it springs are universal; one can identify with the music because one has felt the emotion for themselves. Blues music brings us together in our pain, or at the very least the remembrance of it. For example, as I get older I think of people who were part of my childhood, people whose names I can’t even remember now, and the song, “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” plays on cue in my head. Or something happens that reminds me how much things have changed in my lifetime and the B.B. King/Bobby “Blue” Bland duet, “Funny How Time Slips Away” comes to mind.

“Everybody Has The Blues” seems like a fitting way to end the week. It doesn’t matter who we are, rich, poor, married, single, young, old, we all get the blues. The song, like today’s picture, is a little more refined than what we normally see from the Blues, with Ray’s orchestra and the smooth voice of Tony Bennet joining him. Yet, there’s still that tone of melancholy in the bridge. There’s no escaping the Blues. They’re going to get you. Might as well accept them and go on. Enjoy the song.[/one_half_last]

Music / PotD / Uncategorized

Got My Mojo Working

October 16, 2015

charles i. letbetter - got my mojo working

Portrait in Blue (2011). Model: Rebekkah Perigrin

I think I believe a little bit in the power of people to really cast a bad energy on you if they want to. If the bad mojo wants to come your way, look out.—Dileep Rao

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Maybe it’s just me, but I hear the word mojo and it’s almost impossible to not immediately think of Mike Meyers in the character of Austin Powers. Then I inevitably wonder whatever happened to Meyers and why he didn’t pursue the whole Austin Powers thing more aggressively while it was working for him. The only answer I can find is that he must have lost his mojo, too. That happens, it seems. Mojo has this ability to just get up and walk away whenever it damn well feels like it. Rather sucks when that happens.

Of course, not everyone has mojo to begin with. I can’t say that I’ve ever had a particularly strong mojo of any kind. If I did, it was when I was too young and stupid to recognize it and put it to work for me. Mojo seems to involve just a bit of arrogance on top of a healthy dose of self-confidence and there have been few times that my confidence has been sufficient to tip the scales in that direction. Although, now that I’m sitting here typing this, the times that I’ve been able to pull off large nude shoots almost certainly have required a bit of mojo working. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Mojo is such an elusive thing, though. I think most people don’t have mjo more often than they do have it. Maintaining mojo is hard work; it requires being at the top of your game, not letting your guard down, having everything together no matter what happens. How many people can realistically do that day in and day out? Sure, two or three days a week, maybe, and almost certainly a couple of times a month, but all day every day? I don’t think so. Not unless you’re someone supremely cool like Sir Ian McKellan or Patrick Stewart; they never seem to lose their mojo, at least not in public.

And then, like the song says, there are some people on whom no amount of mojo works. There’s nothing one can do when encountering such a person; they’re just immune to the stuff. And just because the mojo works on someone once doesn’t necessarily mean it will a second time. Perhaps there’s a little bit of deception in mojo, making ourselves out to be more than we are. Rebekkah had her mojo working the night we shot this portrait. Or maybe it was the wine. Maybe wine is mojo. Wait, scotch is mojo! Maybe. Enjoy the song.[/one_half_last]

Music / PotD

Baby Grand

October 15, 2015

Steal The Moment (2013). Model: Loren Hawk

Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano!—Frederic Chopin

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I’ve never owned a baby grand. I’ve played countless numbers of them over the years, but for a variety of reasons I’ve never owned one and that makes me a bit sad. Not all pianos are created equal, you know. Even when they’re in tune there is a significant difference in the tone between a studio piano, which is what I had growing up, and a baby grand. Of course, when I was much, much younger I thought I’d have a twelve-foot Steinway sitting in the middle of my living room floor. Perhaps, had life taken a very different turn 30-plus years ago, that might have happened, but there’ve been many times when, moving logistics aside, twelve feet was longer than any one side of the living room. A baby grand is five-foot to five-feet, four-inches long, which fits in just about any room. I still don’t have one, though.

Still, no matter what size piano or keyboard one has, they make for incredible friends when one has the Blues. A baby grand is the perfect outlet for the widest range of emotion. Sometimes, one is quiet and contemplative, and a gentle touch on the keys produces a soft tone that is reflective and peaceful, full of thought. When one is sad, all it takes is shifting to a minor key and what would be tears fall into beautiful melancholy streams of emotion. Angry? The piano has been the outlet for my anger more times than I care to count; it can not only handle the power of the emotion but sends it back with a musical force that is satisfying.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]The problem with relying on a baby grand as one’s emotional outlet is that often one feels those emotions most deeply and strongly in the middle of the night. Timing tends to be an issue for anyone not actually playing the piano. No matter how skillful the playing or how beautiful the song, people tend to not be too terribly receptive when it jars them from their sleep at 3:00 AM. I’ve even had one neighbor threaten violence over what he considered to be the inappropriate timing of my playing. During the quiet moments of the night, even the softest tones are too much for most people.

Perhaps it is better, from a relationship perspective, to put one’s worries into a good book, divert the energy toward more physical pleasures, or at least some activity that doesn’t wake the entire neighborhood. I can tell you right now, though, even taking pictures of beautiful women, such as today’s photo, as much as I love doing it, is not as emotionally satisfying as sitting down and becoming one with a baby grand. Nothing else responds to the Blues in quite the same way, personally, deeply, as though it were a part of your body, as does a baby grand. There is no better therapy.

Ray understood. Enjoy the music. [/one_half_last]

Music / PotD

What Kind Of Woman Is This?

October 14, 2015

Blue All Over (2015)

Being jealous of a beautiful woman is not going to make you more beautiful.—Zsa Zsa Gabor

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I’m going to go off script this morning, because, with a title like What Kind Of Woman Is This? I feel the need to do some explaining. We tend to look at the Blues as a way of working out something challenging to us. No, not always. There are times when all it takes is the presence of a beautiful woman. Here are the lyrics:

The gates of Heaven must be open
I think I saw an angel just walk by
Hey, the gates of heaven must be open
I think I saw an angel just walk by

I heard a blind man screamin’, say
Now there goes a sight for my sore eyes
There goes a sight for my sore eyes
Now there goes a sight for my sore eyes
What kind of woman is this?

You should be locked up, pretty girl
In my bedroom with me
Hey, you should be locked up, pretty girl
In my bedroom with me

So we can do the same thing that Adam
Did under that old apple tree
What he did under that apple tree
What he did under that apple tree

Well, well, well, well, well, well
Choke out
Here I come again

There’s always some good lookin’ girls
Hangin’ ’round this famous place
Well, hey, there’s always some good lookin’ girls
Hangin’ round this famous place, talkin’ bout legends now

Aww, but this particular one
Looked like somethin’ from outer space
She looked like somethin’ from outer space

What kind of woman is this?
Hmm, what kind of woman is this?
What kind of woman is this?
Ooh, what kind of woman is this?

Look at that, she shakes all over when she walk
She made a blind man see
Made a dumb man talk
What kind of woman is this?
Hmm, shucks

[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]What Kind of Woman is This? is the only original song on Buddy Guy’s 2005 album, Bring ’em In. That would mean he was 68- or 69-years-old when he wrote the song. Considering the fact that it really is not much more than one long pick-up line, one might think that the Blues comes from knowing he’s not going to be the one to get her. I would have to challenge that, though. Blues musicians seem to get better with age, like so many other things, and I’ve not seen one yet that didn’t have groupies waiting at the stage door.

One might also question whether the song’s title is sexist, patronizing, objectifying, or possibly even misogynistic. I think the song is actually more appreciative than anything. We’ve all been in that crowded room when a particular woman walks in and turns every head in the place. Maybe she’s wildly attractive, or maybe she’s a strong, confident woman who doesn’t put up with the bullshit she gets from men; perhaps she’s both.

So, where do the Blues come in? What’s the cause for the emotion? Can there be such a thing as a happy Blues song? Yes, there are happy Blues songs, and in some aspects this may be one of them. But what I think Guy is talking about is a distraction. Perhaps the woman’s presence was unexpected. Maybe she sat a little too close to the stage. One thing for sure is that everyone in the room, including the blind man, if more interested in the woman than in the person on the stage. Any musician will tell you, a distraction that compete’s with your performance is plenty of reason to sing the Blues.

Here’s to the women who can distract whatever is going on in any room, and here’s to the musicians who have to endure the distraction. May you both manage to keep your composure. Enjoy the song.

[/one_half_last]

Music / PotD

Dust My Broom

October 13, 2015

INTENSITY (2012). Model: Cole Prosper

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.—Maya Angelou

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]There comes a time, or two, or more, when one has to look at their life, their circumstances, and maybe even the people in their lives, and decide to make some changes, or “dust my broom.” An exact etymology of the phrase was difficult to find, but it seems to go back quite ways, which seems to make sense. I can just imagine some poor woman of the 15th or 16th century stepping to the door of her humble little house and shaking out all the dirt the broom had picked up while being dragged across the floor. Dusting the broom was just a natural part of cleaning house. “Cleaning house” is a natural part of our lives as well.

We see people dust their brooms today when they prune their social media friends lists. We collect names because they make our numbers look good, but over time we realize those names and numbers are not only doing us no good, but may even be causing some of our problems. When we hit that realization, often in a fit of frustration, we clean house and dust our broom. I did that very thing back at the beginning of the year, culling over 1,000 names that were little more than numbers. Fewer than ten asked to be re-instated. Those numbers were obviously little more than dead weight.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]If one digs down and examines the phrase, we realize that dusting the broom is the final act of cleaning house. When cleaning house, you need the broom handy to get all the dust and muck and dead spider skeletons out of all the corners and from under all the furniture. You gather everything up in a pile, dump the bulk into the garbage, and then dust the broom. Get rid of the big stuff first, and then shake off the little stuff that wants to cling on and cause more trouble. Who knew there could be such deep, introspective meaning to a Blues song?

Tuesdays seem like they might be a good time to dust the broom. Monday delivers a lot of garbage and we tend to let that mess just accumulate and stack up. Time to get rid of it all. Sweep out the nonsense, tidy things up, and put everything back in order so you can get on with your week. Dusting your broom is an act of empowerment, you taking action to put your life back in balance, being done with yesterday’s dirt, and moving on. So grab that broom, shake the dust out, and then put on some blues. We’ll all feel better for having done so.[/one_half_last]

Music / PotD

They Call It Stormy Monday

October 12, 2015

charles i. letbetter - call it stormy monday

Solitude (2012).

I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30.—Groucho Marx

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I know, Monday. Erg. No one likes Monday because it means going back to work. And there’s the rub, how much of our lives do we spend hating one-seventh of our week? Any way you come at this, you end up with the blues. Monday means an end to the fun, an end to the play, an end to family time, an end to leisure. Who wants to give that up? Well, unless, of course, you’re an NFL player or something related where you work on Sunday. I suppose the Peyton Mannings of the world look forward to Monday as a chance to recuperate from Sunday. That would be another reason we’re jealous of the rich bastards, and another reason to have the blues.

Preachers typically like Monday, too. I know Poppa did. Mondays were his quiet day, or at least he tried to keep them as quiet as possible. He put everything he had into those two services on Sunday. Monday was for him. He’d get us kids and Mom off the school and then hit the coffee shop, or donut shop depending on where we were living. He’d sometimes hang out with other preachers, maybe go to lunch, and then take a nap before we all came busting through the door as noisily as possible, absolutely destroying his solitude. There are probably a lot of people who look at Monday as a relief, but doesn’t mean they don’t still sing the blues.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Actually, you realize we have unions, industrialization, and that whole 40-hour-work-week thing to blame for our attitude about Monday. Prior to that whole 40-hour thing, Monday was just another day. Sure, folks would take a pause on Sunday for church and such, but there wasn’t any difference between Monday and any other day of the week. There wasn’t such a thing as the weekend. There was no Friday night football. No Saturday afternoon football. No Sunday night football. Good god, how in the world did those poor people survive without football? No wonder they had short life spans.

Music gives Monday a bad rap, too. Rainy days and Mondays alls ways get me down, you know. Manic Monday. Blue Monday. Monday Monday. Blues great T-Bone Walker sings about Stormy Monday below the break. The thing about Monday music, though, is it actually seems to help one feel a little better about getting the day started, or surviving the whole thing. That’s what the blues does for you, gets out those negative emotions so you can feel better about yourself and get on with your week.

Although, Tuesday’s just as bad.[/one_half_last]

Music / PotD

Damn Right, I’ve Got The Blues

October 11, 2015

Feelin’ Blue (2012). Model: Aubrey Carr

The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn’t know how other people would take it.—B. B. King

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I listen to a lot of music while I’m sitting here editing pictures. Walk in on me during one of these sessions and you’re likely to hear anything from The Gaither Vocal Band to Florence + The Machine. The playlist that I hit most often, though, is four and a half hours worth of the Blues. Everything from remastered Robert Johnson and B. B. King to Bonny Raitt and Aretha Franklin is on that list. The Blues get me through those sessions when I’m just not feeling it; when I’ve lost the emotional connection I might have had with a picture. One thing photographs have to do is make people feel, and if I’m not feeling anything chances are pretty high no one else will, either. The Blues gets me over that hurdle because the Blues are little more than pure emotion given some rhythm.

Contrary to popular belief, having the Blues doesn’t mean one is depressed. Depression is a serious mental illness. The Blues are just the realities of living and the challenge of living them. A Blues singer wails about what’s bothering them, whether it’s a lover that’s done them wrong, a boss that demands too much, a car that won’t run, or a leaky roof. Sing it out. Sing through what you feel. Put it out there, let it be what it is, and then move on with your life. A good Blues song doesn’t try to solve life’s problems, but unites us all in the fact that we all have the same issues, that we all survive, and we all keep right on going, because that’s what people do.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Musically, the Blues aren’t especially difficult to play. Take a smooth walking bass line and drop three, maybe four, chords over it, and then take that wherever you’d like to go. The Blues don’t require one to have a lot of musical skill or training, but simply that one has the ability to feel. Sure, there are some people who do it better than others, but it’s the emotion, not the music skill, that they bring to the song that makes the difference. The deeper one can feel and communicate that feeling, the better the song.

So, all this week, we’re going to have the blues. The pictures are all processed with a blue tone, using a variety of different processes. No two are processed alike. Then, we’re going to pair those pictures with some of my favorite blues songs, which I’ll include with each picture. The pictures don’t have any direct connection to the songs chosen, but our hope is that between the photograph and the music your day will be a little bit better.

What’s important in life is that we are not afraid to feel, and that we find positive and appropriate ways to communicate that feeling. We don’t need anyone else getting upset and picking up a gun, or taking out their frustration physically on another person. Sing it out. Even if you can’t carry a tune, you can still sing the Blues. We don’t mind. Go for it. Feel better. Enjoy the Blues.[/one_half_last]

PotD

Growing Up Too Fast

October 10, 2015

Uh-oh, Dirt; How Did That Get There?

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.—Phyllis Diller

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]All too quickly, our week of baby pictures comes to an end. I could easily go another week or more, but I’ll save those for another time. We need to move on here, just as babies move on with their little lives, growing up right in front of our eyes. Growing up happens much too quickly from a parent’s perspective, and too slowly from the child’s. Growing up is why we take pictures, so we have a record, so we can look back and prove that we really were tiny, cute, and cuddly. While our personalities develop in ways that may make us grumpy and prickly, pictures show us that we were once small, and probably even lovable.

None of us actually remembers growing up. If your parents took a lot of pictures and tell a lot of stories, it can feel like you remember that period of your life, but fortunately, we forget the sensation of sitting in a wet, poopy diaper and being force-fed strained peas. We forget the frustration of being immobile, or the fear of thinking that anything, or anyone, not directly in our line of sight was gone forever. Be thankful we don’t remember trying to put everything we touch into our mouths, or that diaper rash that your mom could never quite get to go away. Growing up definitely has its advantages.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]When it comes to our own children, though, growing up is something that happens much too quickly. We put them to bed at night, and wake up the next morning to find they’ve grown two sizes. They go from nursing to demanding pizza in a heart beat. When someone says one of my sons’ names, my first thought is still of them being little and riding on my shoulders. Now, they’re all well over six feet tall and could more easily carry me than I them. Birthdays whiz by at alarming speed and our babies go from playing with cars to driving them.

Watching your kids growing up is challenging not merely because we lose the baby and trade them in for adults, but because all the while they’re growing up, we’re growing old. There’s no escaping either condition, no matter how much skin cream one uses or in how good of shape one stays. By the time our children are grown enough to be out of the house, we’re old enough to be ready to sell it and move to an apartment near a beach. Life is rather cruel that way, isn’t it?

Growing up is inevitable. Growing up happy is a gift. Having pictures to remember it all is a treasure. [/one_half_last]

PotD

Uncontained Cuteness

October 9, 2015

While On A Walk

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.—Margaret Atwood

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I once heard someone say that Humans would never have survived as a species were it not for the fact our babies come filled with cuteness. Otherwise, ancient parents would have killed them the first time they threw up on mom’s favorite loin cloth, dented dad’s new wheel, or drew on the cave walls. Being cute is a necessity for a child to survive. I’m not sure how much they realize that their ability to live to the ripe old age of ten relies on their cuteness, but it certainly does. Just because we live in a modern, slightly more civilized and allegedly forward thinking age we don’t occasionally think about how nice it would be to sleep past 6:00 AM on a Saturday.

Cuteness isn’t necessarily distributed evenly, though, even among children. Adults don’t like to admit that, but we know it’s true. Our firstborn had a way about him, an ability to look up at someone with those big blue eyes, and just cause any adult to melt. Neither of his brothers could do that. We still loved the other two, of course, but we didn’t get stopped at the grocery store to compliment them the way we did with the first one. Cuteness comes in varying degrees and some kids get it by the barrel full while other have to quickly learn to either be cute or get used to sitting around in dirty diapers all the time.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Sometimes I think little girls get more of a break in the cuteness department. We put things in their hair, or if they don’t have hair we give them darling little headbands wth flowers the size of their skull and that distracts adults enough to think the kid is cute. The only accessory a little boy gets is dirt. Even with dirt, though, girls get more attention. Any time a girl gets dirty, it’s cute. When a boy does the same thing, we just dump him in the tub and blame his father. No one ever likes to think of cuteness being sexist, but it is, and it always has been in most places, excusing those moments in history when being a girl could get you killed.

Most kids hit that period of unrestrained cuteness about the time they’re four months old, and typically hold on to it right up until the point they grab hold of the tablecloth and send the entire Thanksgiving dinner crashing to the floor, or smear lipstick all over Mommy’s new Dior dress, or do something to send the neighbor kid to the hospital in an ambulance.

Cuteness doesn’t last forever, which is a sad thing. I know more than a few adults who would have done well to hold on to theirs. [/one_half_last]

PotD

Siblings

October 8, 2015

Hey, Little Brother

If parents are the fixed stars in the child’s universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.—Alison Gopnik

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Siblings are a mixed bag of nuts, is what they are. Your parents reach into a bag and you never know if they’re going to pull out a glorious cashew that will be your best friend forever or one of those huge hazelnuts that everyone leaves in the bottom of the nut bowl. I got lucky, my brother is more of an almond: a little bland at times, but mixes well with others. There is almost five years between us. After having me, the doctor advised my parents that having another was highly unlikely, so we were all happy he made it here, even if it did take forever for him to get big enough to be a good scapegoat, er, I mean playmate.

Three years separate each of my boys, almost exactly in the case of the last two. I rather like that gap; it’s long enough that each developed their own personality and sense of personhood, but close enough they each had someone with whom they could play. The middle one is the glue that holds the other two together, even now. I don’t think any of them would have handled being an only child well. The youngest is getting a bit of a taste of that now that his brothers are grown, but when they were small it was always the three of them, tearing through the house, or out in the yard, or up and down store aisles.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Kat’s two are closer, a mere 17 months apart. The difference in dynamics is amazing. There are times they love playing together and are each other’s fiercest friend and protector. Then, there are other times, often no more than five minutes from being best friends, that they are each other’s worst enemy. As they explore who they are and who they want to become, they test themselves out on each other. Sometimes that works well. Other times, they end up with their faces covered in magic marker, and somehow that’s never their own fault.

I’m not sure how kids without siblings survive childhood. My brother and I were never overly close, but we still need each other. Without siblings, there’s no one to share your thoughts in the quiet moments of the night, no one to plot your next great triumph, and no one to blame when that triumph turns into disaster. Even half-siblings that one doesn’t get to see every day is better than growing up alone, I think.

So here’s to siblings, their wonderfulness, their joy, and even the times they’re a pain in the ass. Thank you for making our lives interesting. [/one_half_last]

PotD

Bath Time Memories

October 7, 2015

Pure Innocence

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.—Sylvia Plath

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]One of the most interesting experiences is bathing a baby. I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but it was quite possibly the most fun ever had in our kitchen. The little infant tub fit nicely across the kitchen sink and we’d carefully make sure the water was all nice and warm before getting the baby wet. Of course, he’d immediately pee all over the place once his skin touched water, so we’d pick him up, sanitize everything again, and then put him back down in the tub. This was quite possibly the most perfect ending to any day. Their little laughs and splashes not only got them clean, but momentarily wash away all those parental anxieties that plague your mind when you have a little one.

I think one of the main reasons babies like baths so much is that the warm water reminds them of being in the womb, except that now they actually have room to squirm and move around. They aren’t quite sure what to do the first time or two; it takes a while to get accustomed to having all that space. I think it was our second one that took nearly two weeks to adjust. Being unswaddled was an anxious moment for him. We learned to strip him down to his diaper and give him a few moments to get used to the air meeting his bare skin before putting him in the bath. Once they adjust, though, they love every minute in the water. They love the warmth, the liquid, and the attention.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]The down-side is that babies are slippery when wet. Did you ever try taking a shower while holding a baby? It sounded like a good idea: have some bonding time with the little guy, save some water and time. Babies become the most slippery objects on the planet once they’re wet, though, and holding on to them is practically impossible. He loved the spray of the water and would start kicking and laughing as babies are prone to do when excited. I had to call for backup before I dropped the little bugger. Baths in a tub are much safer when sitting down anyway. We quickly abandoned that idea.

Of course, once they’re big enough to sit up a bit on their own, the kitchen sink is the perfect size for a little one’s bath. Just toss them in like a load of dishes, except leave out the dishes; that’s another one of those things that isn’t quite as good an idea in practice as it may sound. Every baby tries to nurse the kitchen faucet while sitting in the sink, which makes for awkward pictures to show their first, second, eighteenth girlfriend. Who knows, should one of them ever get married, maybe we’ll pull out those pictures for the reception.

Bath time was some of the best memories ever. I rather miss that. They grow up too soon, you leave them alone in the bath, and next thing you know they’re moving out on their own.[/one_half_last]

PotD

Let Sleeping Babies Lie

October 6, 2015

Ballets and teddy bears

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.—Leo J. Burke

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I never knew how important sleeping is until we had a baby. Not so much my sleeping, mind you, but the baby’s sleeping. It really is a big deal and, like much of everything else, it varies greatly from one child to the next. All three of our boys were different. The first apparently read the textbook while he was in the womb and followed it quite precisely. He spoiled us. The second didn’t read anything and came out ready to play, not sleep. EVER. The third, bless his little heart, slept through the night from day one. That seemed to upset the pediatric nurses, but when you’re on baby number three you’ve learned: let sleeping babies lie.

When you’re about to be a new parent, you slowly become aware of just how much work this new child is going to be. Your life patterns and routines are going to be dramatically altered. As you consider the growing list of things you’ll need to do, you begin to wonder how it is all going to fit. Then, you tell yourself the biggest lie ever: “I’ll get it done while the baby is sleeping.” No, you won’t. By the time that precious little squirt finally falls asleep, you’ll be too exhausted to do anything else. You decide laundry can wait, dishes can wait, exercise can wait; pretty much everything can wait while you take a quick nap.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]”Put your baby on a schedule,” pediatricians and mommy blogs tell you. Yeah, right, like a baby can read a schedule. That approach might work once, if the child decides to agree, but be prepared to negotiate the sleeping schedule with your infant. Be prepared to lose those negotiations. The baby doesn’t understand a thing you’re saying. They’ll either laugh and coo because the big people look so funny when talking to the baby, or they’ll cry and spit up because, even at two-weeks-old, they’ve already had enough of your bullshit. Trying to put babies on a sleeping schedule is like trying to walk a cat on a leash: just because someone on the Internet says they did it doesn’t mean it’s actually possible with your child/cat.

Before you know it, your entire world revolves around the baby’s sleeping schedule. Getting them down for a nap is a precise routine you could, and sometimes do, perform with your eyes shut. You warn friends to not call or drop by while the baby is sleeping. You re-arrange your schedule, your meal times, and your entire life. There is no force or power on earth as strong as that of a sleeping baby. Be very quiet and tiptoe away.[/one_half_last]

PotD

Diaper Changing Stations

October 5, 2015

Dad’s Hat

Always remember your kid’s name. Always remember where you put your kid. Don’t let your kid drive until their feet can reach the pedals. Use the right size diapers… for yourself. And, when in doubt, make funny faces.—Amy Poehler

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I still remember the first time I changed my eldest son’s diaper. Everything was so tiny. The diaper was tiny. His butt was tiny. The poop was tiny. Changing that first diaper made everything seem so easy. And while, on an intellectual level, I knew that the amount of poop in the diaper would grow and that it wouldn’t always be so easy, my feeling in those first hours of his little life was one of confidence. Diaper changing? Not a problem. We’ve got this. This whole baby thing is going to be a breeze.

Yeah, that was total naiveté at its worst. Not only was there not sufficient warning as to the extreme amounts of excrement this child would produce, I did not have the experience in greased pig wrangling that one needs to adequately diaper any child more than one-month-old. Sure, we had heard horror stories, but we never thought that our darling little boy would ever produce such a challenge. We watched what we fed him, we monitored what Mom ate while he was nursing, and we even carefully measured the amounts and types of liquid in his bottles. We really thought we had a handle on things. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

Our little guy was about four months old when disaster struck. It was a bright, sunny, Saturday morning. We had dropped off Mommy and were on our way back home when I heard a noise from the back seat that caused me to shudder. By the time we arrived at home, the fragrance was enough to tell me that we had not encountered anything quite like this. I knew that this wasn’t going to be the average diaper change, but when I opened the car door and realized that his entire car seat was covered in poop, I momentarily stepped back and questioned where I might borrow a hazmat suit. EVERYTHING in the back seat of the car had to be cleaned. Who knew one little boy’s bottom could be so very explosive.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]At least we were home to take care of that particular disaster. Even more challenging, if that’s possible, is trying to change a baby using one of the baby changing stations found in public restrooms. Like most parents, we generally avoided having to use those questionably-secured plastic tables largely because one could never be too certain as to how clean they might be. There are times, however, when one really doesn’t have a choice. When you look at your child and realize that the poop has gone up their back and into their hair, you can’t just do a quick change with the baby in the stroller. You need access to water and towels.

Unfortunately, public diaper changing stations are frequently ill-positioned to actually treat the worst diaper encounters. Whomever thought it was a good idea to put a diaper changing station inside a bathroom stall was an absolute idiot. If a parent is desperate enough to use a public changing station, they need access to a sink and warm water, not a toilet. We also need access to paper towels; not because we’re going to use them on the baby, but we’re going to want to coat that plastic changing station in as many paper towels as possible before putting down a changing pad, and then we may even want to coat the pad as a precaution. Changing a baby on a public diaper station just has way too many challenges.

I’m glad my boys have long left the days of diapers behind. I don’t wish to ever be in that position again, and am happy to walk right past most diaper changing stations. There is one diaper changing station we all need to frequent, though, and that’s the voting booth. As Mark Twain famously said, babies and politicians need to be changed for the same reason. Consider the voting booth your political diaper changing station and don’t be afraid to use it. Baby wipes optional. [/one_half_last]

Photography / PotD

Babies, Then More Babies

October 4, 2015

A Moment With C-Ma (2013)

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.—Jerry Seinfeld

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Babies. Why? Because you need a break from al the nudes and I need a break from trying to pander to you. These pictures may not be as popular, though they should be, but they make me happy, sort of. I love the wonder with which they come into the world, all fresh, curious, frightened but ready to explore. I enjoy watching them try new things, and the excitement on their faces when they do something for the first time. I love capturing the expressions on a baby’s face because they don’t know to hold back or hide their feelings yet.

The thing about babies is they grow up much too quickly. One day they’re tiny and sweet and the next they’re up on top of the refrigerator sneaking the cookies you thought you’d hidden so well. Some grow up into wonderful little humans. Others grow up to be just as bratty as their parents; at least, one of their parents. How many exasperated mothers have I met whose unruly and difficult children took after the other parent, the one who wasn’t there? More than a few, to be sure. Not that mothers don’t hold their share of influence, mind you. You know when your child is behaving just like you.

Fortunately, not all of one’s personality is shaped by nature. Every child has the chance to be better than its parents. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]My favorite pictures are newborns, especially within that first 24 hours of a new life. There is something about that freshness, the look in their eyes, the absolute innocence, that makes for great pictures. They don’t need to be posed, and personally I rather resent those who take little ones and try to be all cutsie and artsy by putting them in pots or baskets for their first pictures. Newborns simply need to be held, to be loved, to be given little kisses and friendly smiles. Even when we unswaddle a newborn for pictures, we don’t leave them that way long. They need comfort and care more than we need 300 shots of an increasingly frustrated and frightened infant.

So, this week we’re looking at babies, all under a year old. Each of these little ones have grown a lot and are becoming amazing little people. While it’s fun to see who they become, it never fails to make me smile to look back and see how their lives began. Babies give me hope that maybe, just maybe, the world won’t always be as full of assholes as it is now. Babies give me hope that the world can learn to love.

As long as their parents don’t blow it.[/one_half_last]

Art / PotD / Social Commentary

Love, Everyone

October 3, 2015

Welcome Home (2013)

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.—Buddha

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]What’s wrong with people? I look through the news this morning and all I see is hate. Republicans hate democrats. This religion hates that religion and both hate anyone who disagrees with them. White hates black, black hates white, and they both hate brown. If I were to do a quick, informal estimation, which is exactly what I’m doing right this moment, I would say that roughly 80% of what has been tossed at me this morning ultimately contains a hateful message. Where is the love? Where is the empathy? Where is any attempt at actually wanting to get along with other people.

Here’s the great paradox of the 21st century: we’re willing to spend billions of dollars (collectively) looking for love, trying to find love, improving ourselves so that we’re more lovable, but we don’t do a damn thing toward actually loving other people. We are as selfish about love as we are everything else in our lives. We want it all to come to us, knock on our door, overwhelm us with emotional goodies, and reaffirm our sense of how valuable we are to the world. We define love not as something we feel toward other people, but by the quantity of warm fuzzies other people give to us.

In other words: we don’t have a fucking clue. For all the talk about love, we fail to realize that love is an act of giving, not an act of receiving. Love is not something that happens to you, but something you distribute to others. Love is not doing something based on what you feel, but what you feel based on what you’ve done. Love is active, not passive. Love is not something to be found, but something we create, from the center of our being, so that we might give it to someone else. Love is not narrowly limited to a familial relationship, but an over-arching sense of inclusiveness and responsibility to the greater good of humanity.

Love holds no bias, nor fear, but includes everyone.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]So, we are, and have been for a while, at this point in the United States where we have had more mass shootings (where more than four people are shot), than there have been days in the year. We foolishly ask why this keeps happening. Some want bans on weapons. Some want tighter control on those with diagnosed mental disorders. Some want everything locked down and stored in a box where no one can get to it. None of those are solutions. We cannot solve with legislation what was not caused by government in the first place. There is only one reason we keep shooting ourselves: we’ve forgotten how to love.

It was a mere 45-50 years ago that we, my generation and those just older than us, were all about peace, and love, and happiness. We were sure that we could change the world with love, and ultimately we were correct, but we didn’t see it in the way we thought we would see it. We thought love would give us things, take away responsibility, make life more relaxed. What we failed to realize is that love creates responsibility and when we fail that responsibility, we fail love. Love doesn’t just chug along like a toy train circling the Christmas tree. Love requires maintenance, effort, and a completely selfless attitude.

Where is the American society failing? Don’t blame government, Republican orDemocrat. Don’t blame religions, present or absent. Don’t blame race or economics. Blame the total and complete absence of love. We’ve stopped loving, we’ve stopped teaching our children to love, and we’ve stopped letting love be the guide by which we live our lives. In a world where we’ve all but thrown love out the window, is it any wonder that society has gone to hell in a handbasket?

Love, everyone. You won’t learn how until you try.[/one_half_last]

Art / PotD / Uncategorized

All Tied Up

October 2, 2015

Creatively bound (2012)

Women’s fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It’s men’s way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they’re actually tied up.—David Duchovny

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Some of you are going to have difficulty believing this, since you possibly have never seen one, but there was once a time when people only had one telephone per family and that one was connected to the wall. You couldn’t take it anywhere. It had a big dial that consumed its face and one had to dial as many as eleven numbers one at a time to call anyone. There was no 911. If you needed to talk with someone in the next town over, it was considered long distance and you had to talk to an operator for that to happen.

One of the worst sins during that period of American history was keeping the phone “tied up.” This was especially serious if you shared a phone line with your neighbors, something called a party line. There was no party. At least, ours wasn’t. Sure, you could pick up the phone and listen in on their conversation, but we had boring neighbors so there wasn’t any fun in that. Instead, they complained that we always kept the phone line tied up. Poppa had calls coming in at all hours of the night and if the phone rang at our house, it rang at our neighbors’ houses, too. They weren’t especially happy.

Poppa had competition for the phone once I became a teenager. Well, sort of. I liked the concept of calling and talking to my friends, but we were all geeky and stuff and once we exchanged whatever piece of information we needed, we’d just tie up the line not saying anything.

The worst was one evening when I called the girl I was sort of dating. We tied up the phone for the better part of three hours. The conversation consisted largely of, “What are you doing?” Followed by, “Oh, not much. What are you doing.” This went on for three fucking hours. I think half the town was annoyed with us by the time we hung up, because anyone who tried calling Poppa during that period couldn’t even leave voice mail. Instead, they just got this frustrating alternating tone called a busy signal. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Keeping the phone line tied up became serious in the 90s when we started getting modems and connecting to this thing called AOL online. They gave out free CDs at the stores and for $15 a month you could connect to their computer system and read the same news that was in the morning newspaper. We were cool. We were high-tech. We kept the phone line tied up for hours. I lived several hundred miles away from my parents by that time, but I also had their only grandchild. They tried calling often to see what he was up to, but the phone line would be tied up almost every time.

We don’t have any of those issues now, of course. Talk all you want. Text all you want. Tie up the phone all damn day if you wish. Pay a huge phone bill. I find it interesting that we consider a $50 a month phone bill inexpensive. Heads would have rolled had Poppa ever gotten a fifty dollar phone bill. I remember him once challenging a $36 bill. “No one could talk on the phone that much,” he told the customer service representative. She agreed and adjusted the bill.

Who knows what telephony will be by the time my children are my age. The technology is changing so rapidly that they likely will not have to use a device at all; voice communication will be built into clothes or, at the very least, wearable accessories. Tap an icon, order pizza. Tap a button, have a friend join you. There will be a button for calling your mother; you’ll avoid it. No one wants to tie up the shirt listening to their mother complaining about how she never gets to see the grandkids. Wearable phones means one could, theoretically, be tied up with their phone rather than on their phone. The future could be kinky.

I bet you looked at the title and picture and thought I was going a very different direction with this, didn’t you? Sorry, but I didn’t want to be that obvious. Being tied up has too many possible scenarios. I didn’t want to “tie up” your entire day.[/one_half_last]

Art / PotD / Social Commentary

Shame, No Shame

October 1, 2015

All Wash(er)ed Up (2010)

In the face of patriarchy, it is a brave act indeed for both men and women to embrace, rather than shame or attempt to eradicate, the feminine.—Alanis Morissette

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I grew up being taught that everyone had a responsibility to work hard. Both my parents worked long hours. I had my first paycheck at 14. Sitting around idly isn’t something I do well. I fail to understand this act of binge-watching television series because after about an hour everything in my body tells me I need to be up being productive. We were taught that it didn’t matter what you did, that all jobs contributed to the greater good and deserved people’s respect. Looking down on, or shaming someone, just because of their occupation was about as rude and ignorant a thing one could do.

So, as I’ve grown up and gotten a taste for how the world actually is, I am continually disappointed when this particular sin of shaming other people shows up, typically denigrating a friend for something they’ve done to feed themselves and/or their family, complete with name-calling and harassment. As this has happened within my circle of friends three times in the past five days, I’m calling bullshit on the shame patrol. There is no shame in working hard, no shame in getting one’s hands (and body) dirty, no shame in sweating hard, and certainly no shame in doing jobs you don’t especially like just to keep the lights on and food on the table.

One of the earliest impacts on my sense of work ethic was a WWII veteran named Warren Hartsocks. A short, stocky man who never lost his buzz cut, Hartsocks had dropped out of school to join the military. The US Army taught him to be a mechanic and that’s what he proceeded to do the rest of his life. If you came across Hartsocks during the day, he was likely wearing a well-stained wife-beater t-shirt and baggy grey pants, equally stained. He was missing most his teeth, eternally had an unlit stogie in the corner of his mouth, had a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush, and in the summer his body odor could get pretty strong. People called him a dirty, foul-mouthed mechanic and tried to avoid him, but he worked hard for every dime he made, was a gentle soul, and took the time to teach me how to fish. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]The list of occupations society often shames is too long, but here’s a list of the ones that I see most often:

Retail workers, because, you know, those clothes at the mall just jump on the rack by themselves.
Construction laborers; that house you live in just built itself.
Mechanics, like you can change a fucking tire by yourself.
Strippers, cam girls, etc., one of the truest forms of capitalism’s supply and demand.
Grocery baggers, who carry your chips and ice cream so you won’t snag a nail.
Janitors, because lord knows you’re too busy to empty the damn trash yourself.
Farm workers, laboring sunup to sundown because you just have to have strawberries in December.
Meat packers, constantly covered in blood.
Food service employees, because minimum wage would make them too rich.
Truck drivers, on the road too long to get you those damn strawberries.

I can only think of one occupation that deserves shame: Politicians. Our country’s founders envisioned elected office to be one of public service, not privilege or power, and certainly not one that led to wealth. The concept was that a person would give a period of time to serve the people from their elected districts, not pander to ridiculous ideologues and corporations with deep pockets. Politicians inherently serve only their own interests at the expense of the rest of us. They have taken us from being a democracy to an oligarchy. Public office was never designed to be a position of profit, but one of giving to one’s country.

Too many days I go to bed totally disappointed in the human race. We shame those who work the hardest and praise those who contribute to our demise. Perhaps the real shame is on us all.[/one_half_last]

PotD / Social Commentary

Lies, Lies, & More Lies

September 30, 2015

charles i. letbetter - lies, lies, and more lies

charles i. letbetter - lies, lies, & more lies

Bathed in White (2010)

Men are liars. We’ll lie about lying if we have to. I’m an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive.—Tim Allen

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Once upon a time, in murky-memoried days of my youth when I really didn’t know what was going on, my father used to refer to that month before an election as lying season. He would be disturbed to find that the season is pretty much continual now, with neither a start nor end point. There’s no truth coming out after an election, politicians just spread the lies on that much thicker and because they’re fed through a media machine in the form of soundbites, we swallow the greater percentage of those lies, hook, line, and sinker.

Gullible is what we are. We want so desperately to believe our leaders that we’ll believe them when they say something so enormously stupid such as, “Planned Parenthood only exists to perform abortions.” That’s nonsense and we know it, but apparently we’re not doing a good enough job calling them on it. We just let them lie.

Of course, we’re pretty good at that lying thing, too. The biggest lie we tell is, “I’m fine.” No, we’re not. We’re depressed, concerned, hurting like hell both physically and emotionally, tired of having to suck it up day in and day out to just keep things around us from falling apart, and we’re sick as fuck of all the lies. We’re done with people telling us they have a solution when they don’t even have a firm grasp of the problem. We’re upset. We’re pissed off. We’re worn out. This is the real reason so many people support marijuana legalization: we’re looking for an escape from all the bullshit.

That last line is probably a lie. I have absolutely no facts to back it up, but hey, it sounds good and fits my political opinion. If I repeat it enough times you’ll believe it, maybe. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]I am amused that we have to have truth-telling websites such as Snopes.com and Politifact.com to help us determine what’s a lie and what isn’t. To demonstrate how bad it is, I’ll post some recent lies, and then the link to the truth. You decide whether you want to click the link or believe the lie.

“When I left Washington, we had a $5 trillion surplus.” Uhm, wrong.
You can get a free Tiffany diamond ring by commenting on a video on Facebook. You know better.
Obamacare doesn’t require members of Congress “to abide by the same rules that all of the other Americans do.” Bullshit.
A video depicts Muslim refugees in the Netherlands beating a teenaged girl because they don’t approve of her Western attire. Not even close.
Mexico doesn’t have birthright citizenship, and Americans are the “only ones” to have it. So says the Oompaloompa candidate with the hair. He’s just ignorant.
Muslim refugees are demanding that the city of Munich, Germany, ban Oktoberfest. Do you smell pants burning?

Lies are all around us and a big part of the reason there are so many of them is that we don’t stop sharing the damn things. We need to realize that we can’t trust cable news outlets (any of them). We can’t trust anything posted as a meme on social media. We can’t trust pretend news sources on the Internet. Everyone is lying to us.

Except the dog. Dogs don’t know how to lie.[/one_half_last]

potd

Everybody always says that I’m the girl next door, which makes me think that y’all must have a lot of weird next-door neighbours.—Kelly Clarkson

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Sex is the driving force on the planet. We should embrace it, not see it as the enemy.—Hugh Hefner

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That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.—William Wordsworth

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I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.—Camille Paglia

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I think I believe a little bit in the power of people to really cast a bad energy on you if they want to. If the bad mojo wants to come your way, look out.—Dileep Rao

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Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano!—Frederic Chopin

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Being jealous of a beautiful woman is not going to make you more beautiful.—Zsa Zsa Gabor

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You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.—Maya Angelou

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I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30.—Groucho Marx

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The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn’t know how other people would take it.—B. B. King

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Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.—Phyllis Diller

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Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.—Margaret Atwood

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If parents are the fixed stars in the child’s universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.—Alison Gopnik

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There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.—Sylvia Plath

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People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.—Leo J. Burke

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Always remember your kid’s name. Always remember where you put your kid. Don’t let your kid drive until their feet can reach the pedals. Use the right size diapers… for yourself. And, when in doubt, make funny faces.—Amy Poehler

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Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.—Jerry Seinfeld

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Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.—Buddha

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Women’s fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It’s men’s way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they’re actually tied up.—David Duchovny

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In the face of patriarchy, it is a brave act indeed for both men and women to embrace, rather than shame or attempt to eradicate, the feminine.—Alanis Morissette

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Men are liars. We’ll lie about lying if we have to. I’m an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive.—Tim Allen

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