LaurieWrites

Walking in Charleston.

And still catching up on December Views. December 4, now, I guess? I should really get with the program here.

178 1/2 , Charleston

All I ever wanted.

I am leaving town tomorrow for a week and a half. I am so excited about this.

It's been a rough sort of month.

I have purchased a bottle of Stoli Vanilla and I plan to go visit my surly friend at the Myrtle Beach General Store from whom I can potentially purchase Blenheims spicy ginger ale to mix with this tasty stuff to make the best beach drink ever, even if it's not going to be 85 degrees on my beach like it usually is when I'm there. I will pretend. I love that beach hot or not.

I have new tires and an engine that should (please please please) work following ridiculously overpriced service yesterday, so in spite of the fact that I have to drive late into the night tomorrow I won't be as in denial nervous as I usually am about my poor little car.

I have, in my possession, all cameras, plus chargers, and also lenses, that I need to function for two weeks, both still and video (this is huge.)

Two of the sweetest little girls I know are waiting to make their birthday cakes until they get back to Georgia from Disney so we can do it together. Please to see the state of my two-sizes-too-small heart before I heard this:

And kind of what it felt like after: 

I'm not very overwhelmingly grateful right now, I'll admit it. I'm very focused on lack, and what isn't going right, and how I'm disappointing people and not succeeding in ways I'd like to. I'm all "my back hurts," because it does, like every day, and "I'm not losing weight like I want to lose weight," and "that person..." and "he...." and "Oh God I need coffee."

I need not to care about that, any of it (except I can't not care about coffee) for a week. I need to drive on other roads and think about other things. I need to figure out what's next while not thinking specifically at all about it.

Isn't that when it's supposed to figure itself out?

Lancaster

I don't have a lot today besides pictures on the brain but November marches on and here we are.

Earlier this month I was in Lancaster, Pa., where I drove around and creepy-stalked Amish people although I'm mostly afraid to take their pictures because I don't think it's nice.

I was obsessed with their clotheslines. Whatever, I'm obsessed with subcultures. 

I ate real pumpkin pie ice cream (holy holy hoLY, so good.)

(If you look closely you can see I ate some already. I couldn't help it.)

I also, with the help of Yelp - ha, the help of Yelp, that was an accident - found some really good sushi and a very, very good Mexican restaurant downtown. I will spare you a treatise on migrant patterns and why people are moving to places they previously would likely not have lived and are opening restaurants. I'll just say you need not eat only Bob Evans and, um, other indigenous Pennsylvania foods, crap, my mind is completely blanking on Amish food right now, I suck. Anyway, I'll leave it at that. 

I did a little bit of shooting too. 

I'm a sucker for record stores, and carne asada tacos.

Also sushi.

The guy who created the Evolution of Dance was a speaker at the conference I was at (don't ask) and I did not come away a huge fan, have to say. I will not lapse into slander here. I will only share the following, in a moment of silence.

You're excused.

Ninja mascara

I went to New York in September to see about a blender and not only met a life-sized Great Lash mascara in Times Square in the process but also received a free full-sized sample, which I can't believe I haven't told you about yet.

And by "I can't believe I haven't told you" I mean "I can totally believe I haven't," but it was fun. Here's the set, including this cute shot of Devra and me, not wearing ninja headbands. 

Sometimes you need to go see about blenders to have some fun, I guess. Also to have amazing rice cheese balls. Go to Bar Stuzzichini, you won't regret it.

I leave for South Carolina in a few hours, a few because I'm allowing myself the luxury of time to do what I need to do to get this done with a minimum of stress, no real schedule today because my days are currently scheduled so tightly that I've been having trouble breathing. A certain administrative aide may have lobbed a Xanax in my direction this week, just sayin'.

Let's just say there came a time yesterday when I said, after explaining the same thing - I shit you not - ten times in different words: "I do not have any other words left to use to tell you what this means." And I gripped my coffee cup as I said this and my neurons all collided and I basically freaked out, which after you do it quietly a certain number of times really starts to wear on you. Just know that if I'm smiling at the same time it's a really, really bad episode. 

As I told someone else immediately after who is kind enough to listen to such ranting from me so I'll need to bring her a present, sometimes words, like atoms, cannot be made any smaller. They are what they are and if you can't handle them in their smallest version, perhaps we need to play another game, a game that isn't a word game, like Tag or War or something. My summer weeks are like a fucked up game of Boggle, without any chemical enhancement.

Last night I went and got my nails really done for a change, something I have a little trouble with because it seems like a luxury (that word again) I can ill afford and I hate to make someone else deal with my feet. It has a strange, servile connotation that I don't enjoy. But if you'd seen my toes lately you might have also been able to hear their little tiny screams, the screams of abandoned puppies who desperately needed a bath, and I just can't do it like someone else can. Am not so dexterous. And also there is the not-small matter of the massage chair, which is fantastic and it turns out I really needed it, because between flying twice and walking around Chicago like a fool at all hours of the night in heels and not sleeping but then sleeping in a super-mushy bed at the Sheraton there which was AWESOME but all the same not so good for my back, I have been in some pain.

Anyway, I like Li, my nail lady, because she uses her original Vietnamese name (I hate when they change their names to like Susie or Linda, I want them to make me learn how to say their real names because they have to say mine) and likes to talk to me about Vietnam although I broke her heart by going to Hanoi and skipping Saigon, something I've explained was not my call but I don't think she believes me. Also she's very disciplinary, which I appreciate and Lord knows I need, and it also removes all that servile baggage I mentioned previously. If anything, I'm her bitch.

"Sit there...Move your foot...Do not drop your phone in the water. You're gonna drop your phone in the water. You pay now. You dry, you never dry long enough and you mess up. No, sit down and dry."

  

All I'm looking for is some direction here, people.

Last night I ate some kickass rainbow roll and watched a stupid Bret Michaels countdown show which segued into a Metallica concert and harassed my friends via e-mail until all hours and drank a little (a lot of, yes) wine and ate five Popsicles and that was pretty much just what needed to happen to make the jump to vacation brain.

That's James Hetfield and one of my Popsicles. He's so bald. Still doing better than Lars though, wow. All that litigation takes a lot out of a boy. I've actually been listening to Death Magnetic this week after putting it off for months and I was totally prepared to make fun of it and I can't quite do it. I'm not sure who I'm more pissed at about that, them or me. Track 4, friends. Track 4. It's about beating the shit out of someone or the apocalypse or something.

Ok, so I'm going here.

This is my heart's favorite place, this stretch of what I smart assedly refer to as the Redneck Riviera. This photo was taken in 2006, from the deck of the place where we stay. Like all the ones I love it happened completely by accident, but it's my default ocean image when I go to meditation and otherwise. If I have a happy or a sacred place (besides the bathtub, which is sad. What can I say? I like water.) this is it. This is where I reconnect with my own sister and parents outside of daily life, with my father's brothers and their wives and my cousins. In spite of all the weirdness and whatever that accompanies any group related such by blood and marriage, it still makes me cry to talk about how much I love them.

And also how much I love playing Apples to Apples with them, and eating large meals and maybe drinking beer at inappropriate hours. My cousin's husband has been counting down to this trip via Facebook status for weeks now, and this year it's officially rechristened Margarita Beach, South Carolina. I should probably unplug but I probably won't because I just generally don't and I'm really ok with that right now.

I do, however, wish you golden hours, like mine, on a beach or somewhere similar of your choosing, if not this week, then very, very soon.

 Oh, and when you get there, may the nice guy who sells you ice cream have a Ravens tattoo. That makes it more fun. North Myrtle Beach, home of Vanna White and Painters Ice Cream, best in the world. 

SXSW Smiles and Photo Dreams - What's Yours?

Cross-posted at BlogHer, with a few additions here.

As a photographer and an adult with a cleft lip and palate who had a transformative experience shooting an Operation Smile dental mission in Vietnam a year ago this week, I was thrilled to see the SXSW Smiles project at the huge SXSW Interactive conference in the oh-so-awesome Austin.

Well, I didn't actually see it. I almost missed it entirely. I walked out of my last panel on the last day smack into a table that had piles of Operation Smile stickers and buttons on it (I was tired, and it turns out when you buy an iPhone you can spend a lot of stupid time looking at the ground.) It kind of hurt my knee, but it got my attention. And after a little bit of research into the project that brought a nonprofit organization like this one to a huge tech conference, I kicked myself harder than usual for not paying attention before. There's a lot to pay attention to at this conference, but this is one more thing that given my love for this organization's mission of providing surgical repair for facial differences - primarily cleft lips and/or palates - around the world, I feel like the universe should have put in my scattered, hurried path. (And the universe is like, "Hi, pay attention to the important stuff, thanks.") So I am now, and I hope you will too.

Renee Alexander Hamilton, Operation Smile's Social Media Strategist who represented the project at SXSW Interactive, tells the story on her blog, SXSW Smiles Journal.

-I told her about my new role and how now I am trying to do the same thing we do in Donor Relations online and in person at events. I explained that while in the past social networking tools like chat rooms were thought to divide people and keep them at home in a dark corner having "virtual relationships'. Now with Facebook and Twitter, these interactions are actually driving in-person meet-ups and beyond that they are inspiring ACTION.

So I guess you could say I'm in Austin for a little Smile Action!

SXSW Smiles set up shop outside the very cool Beacon Lounge for nonprofits and social change organizations in the Austin Convention Center, with the goal of enough donations for 10 new "smiles" - repair surgeries for kids with cleft lips and/or palates- each estimated at $240.

Directions were simple. First, pick up or download a "Make Me Smile" sign, and write whatever makes you smile on it. Upload a photo of yourself with the sign to Flickr with the "sxswsmiles" tag. Donate by texting "smile" to 90999, or dropping it off in the Beacon Lounge.

Check out the Operation Smile SXSW Flickr set here, hosted on Alexander aka Entropy Art's photostream. The answers are fun to read - "Bhangra," "our absurdly clingy dog", "hot salsa"- and you'll also get a peek at some of the folks roaming the halls of SXSW, if that's a draw. I would include them for you here, but "all rights reserved" is what it is.

The SXSWSmiles project is part of a larger $240 Smile Challenge March (aka Smile Month.) The cause's Facebook page says that $4203 has been donated so far and $3710 is still needed to reach their goal of providing 20 repair surgeries to children. Check it out.

While this is so much on my mind, Lenovo Microsoft is asking people to "Name Your Dream Assignment," asking "Where will your lens take you?" on a photo project for which they will give a prize of $50,000, a video camera, a blog and a computer to record it all. I haven't entered, but mine? To go on a mission - a surgical one this time, and to shoot it. I don't know when or how this will happen, but I believe that it will, and just as I felt in Vietnam, I think it'll be one of the most important things I ever witness.

And why? I'm as idealistic as I am hardcore about photography, and that's a lot. Photos can change lives, I will boldly, idealistically, perhaps overdramatically say - whether they're photos of people talking about what makes them smile or, maybe more importantly, photos taken before and after cleft lip and/or palate repair. No pictures exist of me prior to my lip repair at six weeks old. Hospitals didn't take photos of babies with facial differences then. I'm not sure what the deal was in my family, honestly - I do know my mother was never ashamed of me, in fact saw beyond my flaws as mothers most often do. Who knows what pressures existed on a 20-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man, in the days before cameras were omnipresent, everywhere, where images were immediately available.

But photos are essential and I wish there were some. I would love to see what I looked like before this repair, to see the reality of this situation that has affected my life like no other. And I like seeing the impact a simple repair surgery can make on a child who may otherwise walk around in their impoverished town or village with a gaping whole where there ought not to be one. Photos can inform and change perceptions and raise awareness just like, and sometimes even more than, words can. It can be difficult to see if you're unaccustomed, but just like with many things that present challenges that can't be easily solved, or aren't so pretty, or disturb on some level, they don't go away just because we don't pay attention.

When its in a picture in front of your face, it's hard to ignore, so may there always be pictures of important things in front of our faces.

Me, exhausted, at the end of a harrowing trip, happy nonetheless to be spending time with the very important kids at Hanoi Medical University, March, 2008. Many had just received their first dental exam. Photo kindly taken by their teacher. (The whole set is here. I love these pictures.)

And I can easily say that Operation Smile is my favorite new Twitter contact from SXSW Interactive.

Other photo dreamers for this and other causes:

Joanne Bamberger/PunditMom's dream assignment is to tell the stories of moms keeping their families afloat in tough economic times.

Katie Ring's Photography and Life blog with footage of Operation Smile patients in India and her photos of a mission there.

Audra, an American expat writing at Nicaragua: The Obandos accompanied her students from the American Nicaraguan School on an Operation Smile mission

Beth Kanter was a fixture in the Beacon Lounge and wrote prolifically about the nonprofit presence at SXSW and in social media communities. Her post on the Social Media Nonprofit ROI Poetry Slam is a good place to start, but scroll around for lots more. <

Day of the Dead

I spend time in the cemeteries every time I go to New Orleans. Lafayette No. 1 is right up the street from my friend's house in the Garden District, so it's easy to shoot there. I spent most of my time downtown on my August trip but I stayed out on St. Charles on my last night and day in town.

There are more in the set here, and in this one from the April trip, with shots of Lafayette No. 3,
downtown.

These places - their history and this way of remembering generations of a city - fascinate me. The mix of grief and joy is something so difficult to understand about how we leave the people we love behind, but as far as monuments go, I've not seen anyone do it better than New Orleans. I think you have to understand loss deeply in order to process it and represent it well, and it makes sense that the people here get it.

 

NOLA 2008

The New Orleans photo set is finally done. Visit and see how I was right there at Ellis Marsalis's feet, totally in Jane Fonda's personal space, and couldn't get a full shot of Kerry Washington to save my life. Oh, there's a shot of Val Kilmer's head in there also, but you can't tell it's him. The sighting led to repeated utterances of Top Gun quotes.

"I don't like you because you're DANGEROUS, man."

The celebrity sightings were only a small part of an absolutely wonderful experience in one of the best cities in the world. I still find it among the most photogenic and inspiring places I've ever been. I saw Habitat For Humanity's Musicians' Village, the lower 9th Ward and the devastated fishing community of Chalmette. I saw more craziness in the French Quarter and thousands of women crying and singing in the Superdome. I danced and took photos with hundreds of strangers in direct view of the Mississippi River. I spent some great time with my mom and my sister and our friend Kelly. I woke up in a cozy bed in a gorgeous room looking out over St. Charles Avenue, with the sun streaming in through the windows, and I believed I hadn't been happier in months.

I also laid down on the sidewalk to take pictures of discarded Mardi Gras beads. I loved this trip and I hope it shows.

Superlove

I leave for New Orleans stunningly early tomorrow morning, just proving the lengths I'll go to for a direct flight (hate layovers more than most things in life. Hate. HATRED. HATERADE. I reserve it all for layovers, just sayin'.)

I am very excited about this trip. My sister is coming in from California on Friday, when my mother will also come down from Maryland and our friend Kelly will be with us as well. We're going down primarily for the tenth anniversary of V-day, which looks like it's going to be the event to end all events. (I mean, who can't use a YOGA LOUNGE right about now? I know I'm all over that one.)

I asked for press access really late, which means I doubt I'll get it. I'm taking my cameras regardless and do really hope to get some footage of the attendees as well as the event itself. My friend Catherine posted a link to the art installations that will be happening, but I seem to have deleted the e-mail with the link she sent, so I have to get on that as well.

I'm really grateful to be going back to this city. I'm not really into quoting Charles Kuralt, but I enjoy these words from him:

"‘Unique’ is a word that cannot be qualified. It does not mean rare or uncommon; it means alone in the universe. By the standards of grammar and by the grace of God, New Orleans is the unique American place.'"

I agree. And I particularly love this quote because, as a word geek, one of my tics is the over- and inappropriate use of "unique". In this case it's totally deserved.

By the way, did you ever watch Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke"? It's not easy but I recommend it. Documentaries matter so much.

I love the Katrina Warriors. There are going to be some amazing speakers at SuperLove. And as if that wasn't enough, it's French Quarter Fest, (Ellis Marsalis on Friday, yay!) and Shelby Freaking Lynne is in town, friends. (Plus Amanda Shaw and the Cute Guys, a dynamo of Zydeco fiddle player and her band who just opened up for Kelly Willis here last weekend. Awesome.)

So besides great music, activism and the energy of the V-day event, I'm hoping to poke around some places in the city this weekend that I didn't see when I went the first time. I want to breathe the air and talk to the people and get some of it on film. I want to sit on the porch on St. Charles Avenue and watch the world pass by, just for an afternoon. It's one of the best places I've ever been. I admire its tenacity as much as I love it because it's beautiful.

It almost makes it less painful that I have to be at the airport before 7.

Update

I haven't been writing because I really haven't had time or energy, although I hoped to. My brain is too full though, today, so I had to get some of it out. Hence, a Hanoi update.