Archive for December, 2009
First Ammendment rights versus security concerns
Chris Elliott of elliott.org and Steven Frischling of FlyingWithFish.com got hold of and published Transportation Security directives following the failed terrorist incident on a Detroit-bound plane. You know the story. I don’t need to recap it here. The Department of Homeland Security wants to know how these two bloggers obtained these confidential documents and have subpoenaed them to find out. No one is diminishing the need for vigilence and security when it comes to air travel, but IMO, Homeland Security is barking up the wrong tree when their concern is with who leaked these documents rather than paying full attention to plugging the holes in the security system.
In the old world of traditional news, reporters, their editor bosses and their publisher bosses stood firm to protect their First Ammendment rights (that’s the Freedom of the Press one). Think Watergate. Now independent bloggers in many cases have become watchdogs since the mainstream media is crumbling and/or becoming a vehicle for info-tainment and so-called “reality TV.” For journalists, it doesn’t get more real than the need to protect sources and maintain freedom to publish — no less online than in print or broadcast. They don’t have powerful corporations and squadrons of lawyers behind them. They should have all of us behind them. When they break news like this that affects us, they are on our side as travelers (and as travel journalists). Let’s be on their side.
Read Chris Elliott’s report of the subpoena here, Steve Frischling’s here and travel writer/blogger (and until recently USA Today travel reporter) Chris Gray Faust’s commentary here.
Photo © Michael Bednar -All Rights Reserved
I like big pictures, and Michael Bednar’s website galleries have such large photographs, that viewing them is a virtual immersion into his imagery. His photo story about the Eagle Hunters of Mongolia is a visual treat…especially since it features not only environmental portraits of the hunters and their eagles, but also breathtaking imagery of the stunning Mongolian landscape.
For Kazakhs, hunting with eagles is ingrained in their cultural heritage, and historians believe hunting with birds of prey was practiced by nomadic tribes in Central Asia almost 6000 years ago.
Michael Bednar is a travel and documentary photographer based in Vancouver. He started by discovering the diversity of life and cultures in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. After some years of globetrotting, Michael returned to Canada to attend the Western Academy of Photography and secured a diploma in Professional Photography.
He worked at daily newspapers in Southern Alberta, and eventually turned freelance, with his photographs published internationally.
Dec
31
Dec
31
This year the crop is heavy with sap,
hanging on the lee of the terrace
where the hillside bends into it,
propped by a line of boulders;
the mountain has never seen
anything like it. No shepherd has
eaten the variety nor mother cooked it;
your job is to put it in your mouth
and crush it, move it with the tongue
along the dome of your curved palate.
Eat it out, press its wine, strong
in the
Dec
31
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
© Nikki Giovanni
[source...]
One of many examples of blight in Donora, Pa.
By Scott Beveridge
PITTSBURGH, Pa. ¬ – A nonprofit in Pittsburgh that promotes smart growth is suggesting the formation of a panel to address the growing problem of residential blight in the region.
Sustainable Pittsburgh this month released a report, Southwestern Pennsylvania Blighted and Abandoned Properties Solution Project, that identified a staggering list of 67,886 abandoned housing units in this corner of the state.
“The report substantiates that addressing blight and abandonment offers the chance to build assets in a community and deliver economic, environmental, and social equity benefits for both community and the region as a whole,” the report states.
However, there is no regional plan, decision-making body or coordinated effort to deal with this crisis that has impeded economic recovery.
Teamwork would foster and environment that would help create jobs, including those associated with demolition, and increase the value of properties whose owners still take pride in them, the report shows.
Here in the mid-Mon Valley in such municipalities as Charleroi and Donora, there is a perception that blight is epidemic and that local, county and state officials are not adequately addressing the problem. Houses are added each year to demolition lists through a complicated and costly system of obtaining legal permits to tear down ugly, decrepit buildings.
However, such municipalities typically do not see the real value in buying these houses, Sustainable Pittsburgh has concluded. A municipality’s property assets can increase their bonds, and it stands to gain significant sums of taxable income by putting vacant lots back on the market.
Someone with a good job might also want to invest in a house in one of these dying towns if the blight was erased. That is preferable to every other house being stripped of their copper by thieves after their last occupants move elsewhere.
Photo © Mathias Braschler/Monika Fischer -All Rights Reserved
Vanity Fair magazine has featured the work of Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer, who dedicate themselves to documenting in portraiture the human cost of the climatic changes.
Schlepping large-format cameras from Timbuktu to Siberia, and from Australia to the Alps, Braschler and Fischer visited 21 countries during 2009, and have photographed the inhabitants of deserts, mountains, forests, and glacial valleys….thus documenting examples of accelerating environmental changes.
Both photographers were nominated in Vanity Fair’s Hall of Fame for their work.
Photo © Justin Mott/NY Times -All Rights Reserved
Continuing the wrap up of the “Best Of” for the year, here is The New York Times’ best travel photographs as picked by their own photo editors, and which were published in the newspaper’s Travel section during 2009.
The photographers whose work is shown in the feature are Chris Bickford, Peter DaSilva, Lalo de Almeida, Josh Haner and Todd Heisler, Andy Isaacson, Michael Kamber, João Pedro Marnoto, Kevin Moloney, Justin Mott, Michael Nagle, Jeff Pflueger, Susana Raab, Scott B. Rosen, Brian Sokol, Vanessa Vick and Dave Yoder.
I was surprised at the statement made in the feature that 19 photographs are the maximum number for The New York Times slide-show player, and wonder why that is so.
Jumbo jet conversion to airport accommodation
Last January, I learned of a project to convert a 747 into an airport hostel at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport and wrote a post about it. I just read a piece on a neat blog called Airport Hotels, not surprisingly about airport hotels but also related subjects, that it has been completed and is operating. Look at the image on the right and click back to the ratty aircraft the developer started with.
Airport Hotels blogger Susan R. has a fascinating post not just about the Jumbo Hostel* at Arlanda but also other interesting aircraft, grounded and otherwise. She found a 727 that has been turned into a treehouse-height executive suite in Costa Rica and a plane once used by East Germany’s iron-fisted Erich Honecker and now a luxury suite at Holland’s Teuge Airport. Susan R. also found some futuristic flying machines and has images of all the once and future airborne wonders on her post.
*The URLs to Jumbo Hostel’s English and Swedish websites (www.jumbohostel.com and www.jumbohostel.com) are not functioning right now, but you can also read about it in a profile on the Hostel.com website and see photos in article in De Zeen, a design magazine.
American Photography Magazine is featuring Images of the Year 2009 . Rather predictably (but deservedly) Ed Kashi is the Photojournalism Category Winner with his essay documenting the Trans Amadi Slaughter, an abattoir in Nigeria that had sprung up after petroleum-related pollution destroyed local fisheries.
Photo © April Maciborka -All Rights Reserved
Other winners in the Photojournalism category are Larry Louie, Ed Ou, Andrew Biraj, April Maciborka, and Achille Piotrowicz. I thought that April Maciborka’s work (above) documenting shrimp farmers in India was the best. Her toned photographs are really impressive.
I featured April Macibroka on this blog earlier this year, in which I thought that her work exemplified the essence of what a travel photographer is, or should be. The post can be found here, so I’m glad she earned the recognition that she did.
