Second Shift on a Sunday Night
Bicycled down to Steak ‘n Shake on a slow Sunday evening to say hi to Melinda and keep her company for a spell. Something different and fun. The way she looked at me you’d think she’d never seen me ride a bike to a particular destination — that is, for anything other than riding around the neighborhood. But she got me a glass of ice water and we chatted in between her frequent trips to look after her one table. I resisted the many entreaties from all the posters in the place to sample their delicious steakburgers, or frisco melts, or handmade milkshakes, or yoghurt parfaits.
Doris Lessing and Norman
It’s not every day that an amateur photographer’s picture is used to illustrate a Nobel Laureate’s work. While I can’t say that Doris Lessing is even aware that this online article exists, it’s still an honor for me that the UNESCO electronic publication, The UNESCO Courier, chose a photograph I had taken of Norman, a school child at the Clare school in Zimbabwe, to accompany their publication of excerpts from Lessing’s Nobel lecture, where she ruminates on schools she’s known in both Zimbabwe and London:
“…I was there some days. The dust blew. The pumps had broken and the women were having to fetch water from the river. Another idealistic teacher from England was rather ill after seeing what this “school” was like.
On the last day they slaughtered the goat. They cut it into bits and cooked it in a great tin. This was the much anticipated end-of-term feast: boiled goat and porridge. I drove away while it was still going on, back through the charred remains and stumps of the forest.
I do not think many of the pupils of this school will get prizes.
The next day I am to give a talk at a school in North London, a very good school, whose name we all know. It is a school for boys, with beautiful buildings and gardens.
These children here have a visit from some well known person every week, and it is in the nature of things that these may be fathers, relatives, even mothers of the pupils. A visit from a celebrity is not unusual for them.
As I talk to them, the school in the blowing dust of north-west Zimbabwe is in my mind, and I look at the mildly expectant English faces in front of me and try to tell them about what I have seen in the last week. […] I am sure that anyone who has ever given a speech will know that moment when the faces you are looking at are blank. Your listeners cannot hear what you are saying, there are no images in their minds to match what you are telling them – in this case the story of a school standing in dust clouds, where water is short, and where the end of term treat is a just-killed goat cooked in a great pot.
Is it really so impossible for these privileged students to imagine such bare poverty?…”
Photo © Mark Taber
Child holding a Shona school book
Hillary Speech (continued)
There’ve been only a couple brief, mild mentions of Senator Obama. Other than that, everything else was directed at squarely the Bush administration and eight years of disastrous policies and unequaled incompetence.
“it took a Clinton to clean things up after the first Bush, and it’ll take a Clinton to clean up after the second Bush.”
…”I don’t mean to pick on dick cheney, but….” (laughter , applause)
“I worked hard to bring about universal health care and I wasn’t successful, but one thing about me I never give up.”
And this was big applause line in this large public high school: “and I will end the unfunded mandate known as ‘no child left behind’” whoa, red meat!
Hillary Speech - Colleen
The audience seems to be for the most part middle-aged or beyond. And rather, um, homogeneous — something Colleen noticed since it’s in marked contrast to the demographics of the school district. Lots of union representation, with signs and shirts and all.
Good music selection while waiting, though — lots of upbeat, getting-things-done, bringing-about-change kinda songs. Springsteen, U2, Dixie Chicks, Sheryl Crow, oh, and Mellencamp too, of course
Waiting to see Hillary at Ben Davis HS
We don’t expect to be converted, but since it’s at the high school in Colleen’s school district and since it’s not often a presidential candidate comes to Indianapolis, Colleen, Christopher and I decided to come see Hillary speak at the Ben Davis High School gym this morning.
Huge line of people outside waiting to get in. And now, with an hour to go before it starts, the gym is completely full.
All the volunteers helping out are teachers, so of course Colleen is stopping to talk with someone she knows every two minutes or so. 
(don’t tell anyone, but I’ve got my Obama tshirt on under my jacket)
More later.
(Photo taken with, and posted from, my Treo — let’s see you do that on an iPhone!)
Obama in his own words
This afternoon I took a half-hour break from work to read the entire text of Barack Obama’s amazing speech (see link below) he gave today in Philadelphia.
Nothing else I’ve read or heard expresses so well, so succinctly — and so reasonably — the state of race in the US today. And how it relates to just about all of the other significant questions before the country as well — education, health care, jobs, the economy — for all Americans of all colors.
Reading this speech also reaffirmed to me why Obama truly is so different from anybody else I can think of who has ever before run for president. He’s not just spouting platitudes or repeating stock political phrases that have been focus-grouped for their acceptability. He clearly wrote this speech himself. It’s incredibly thoughtful and personal — as Christopher remarked, “it’s a speech he’s been writing all his life.” And it expresses an understanding or a belief, an optimistic belief, in America’s dynamic, progressive history — and its future potential — that’s very close to my own.
He’s also expressing a faith in the American people that they’re ready for someone running for president who’s truly different — and who tells them they need to think seriously about a serious topic, and to see both sides, and all the gray areas in between, of these issues. As well as to see that it’s possible to love and honor an important mentor in your life, even while you disagree strongly with some of his opinions and with the theatrical way he sometimes expresses them.
I’d encourage everyone to take the time to actually read (or watch) the entire speech, and see if it doesn’t make sense to you. I’m just afraid that all that’s likely to be repeated on the news or in most papers will just be a few, potentially unrepresentative sound bites.
Mark
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http://my.barackobama.com/hisownwords
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2007 - July through December
It looks like the second half of 2007 was rather sparsely documented. Quite a bit actually happened, so be sure to come back soon for the rest of the 2007 story.
Fourth of July Parade
The weather was hot and humid, but the band sounded really good. And Christopher said marching in the parade wasn’t as bad as he thought it’d be. They apparently do a good job of toughening the kids up in practice.
Before the parade the saxophone section had a breakfast at the section leader’s house. On the drive over Christopher was a bit apprehensive about his first social event in high school, but he says he had a good time watching videos of past band performances and getting excited about playing in one of the top high school marching bands in the country.
Here’s a short video of the band playing a pretty good-sounding Stars and Stripes Forever several times at different parts of the parade route. You can spot Christopher by looking for the tenor saxophone player wearing the black shoes:
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Sicko: See It
We saw a sneak preview of Sicko last weekend, and maybe it was the festive atmosphere of seeing it along with a full theater of similarly minded people, but I have to admit it was far more entertaining and funny than I ever thought a documentary about health care could possibly be — even a Michael Moore film.
He has really perfected his own particular genre of gonzo-satiric-documentary making. Techniques like where he plays the faux skeptic and then lets the real people he’s visiting set him straight — letting them make the point that he wanted to make in the first place, of course — “next thing you’ll try to tell me ,” he says with mock surprise to a group of Americans living in France, “is that in France the government will even do my laundry for me if I need it!” And then the next scene is of the government-paid nanny for new mothers doing the family laundry.
Or digging up archive footage of some obscure hearing to satirize the absurdity of the situation he’s exposing — e.g., Bill Frist and various US military officers going on and on and on about how well-cared-for the Al Quaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay are, and how they receive state-of-the-art medical treatment — in contrast to Moore’s 9/11 heroes who can’t get any kind of medical treatment for their conditions.
There are some things I wish he wouldn’t have glossed over or that could have been qualified even a little bit (like the care they received in Cuba almost certainly was for propaganda purposes — which he could have acknowledged without weakening the drama and irony of the scene), but overall it’s a remarkably effective, entertaining and in many ways even universal and non-partisan movie.
After the show, everyone in our group had stories of their own to relate about their experiences with health care insurers. Like my own insurer (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota) that routinely denies every single one of my claims for a particular doctor — even though these visits have been preapproved by the insurer and I have the documentation to prove it — and then just as routinely pays them immediately after I go to the trouble of calling up and inquiring.
And I’m sure there are a lot of other people throughout America, of all stripes and political persuasions, who have similar and certainly much, much worse stories to tell about their health care insurers.
So maybe this will be Moore’s more popular, most universal movie so far. Only the CEOs of health insurance companies, with their multi-million dollar compensation packages and gold-plated headquarters buildings and hospitals — as well as, of course, their bought-and-paid-for politicians who leave Congress to become lobbyists after doing the industry’s bidding — have any cause to not like this movie.
Tags: Sicko, movies, review, Michael Moore
Two Freshmen
As of a couple weeks ago our family has two freshmen in it — and so the long-anticipated eight consecutive years of college for one member of the family or another begins.
Melinda attended Student Orientation at Ball State and got her official ID card and BSU email address and everything. The two-day orientation program was actually quite a bit more useful and interesting than I had anticipated. And it had the intended effect on me the parent — giving reassurance that our baby would be cared for and safe, and that she’d be given help and guidance to help her be successful academically.
And Christopher is pretty much a full-time student at Carmel High School already. Mornings he’s getting a jump on his 9th grade year by taking two summer school math classes (and getting A’s so far - whew!). And then afternoons he’s going to five-hour marching band practices — often held at the football field in the blazing summer heat. Still can’t get him to wear shorts, however.
The Graduate
And here she is, all graduated and everything. The ceremonies — a Baccalaureate Mass in the Cathedral gym on Saturday and then actual Graduation at Butler University on Sunday — were very nicely done and even moving at times, as I guess they’re designed to be.
Melinda’s now looking for a summer job to pass the time until she starts at Ball State in August with all her classes on the foundations of art and photography.
More photos are at: colleen-n-mark.com/photos/tags/graduation
Melinda Graduation Announcement May 2007
Melinda’s graduation announcement. The photo is one that she took herself in a hotel room in Kentucky while on a band trip — not a typical senior portrait, I know, but one that I think shows her as she really is more than any portrait of her that I’ve seen. I made the announcement itself in iPhoto, after touching up the photo a bit with Photoshop.
so it goes
(Photo by Colleen Taber)
After I moved back to the States from Germany in 1986, one of the first experiences I had in my new adopted hometown of Indianapolis was attending a speech made by Kurt Vonnegut at North Central High School.
At the time, I simply couldn’t believe that I was in the same room (albeit a very large one) as one of the greats of American literature. I knew he was from Indianapolis originally, but I hadn’t known that although he lived in New York, he still maintained close ties with the Indianapolis community and often visited for public and private events.
To learn of this ongoing tie between a world-famous author and his midwestern hometown was actually quite a bit reassuring to someone who was still a bit dubious about what kind of a city Indianapolis would be like to live in (after coming here from the likes of Heidelberg and Ann Arbor).
Colleen also encountered Vonnegut in Indianapolis, though in a much closer and more personal way — and even managed to speak a few words of German with him.
She happened by chance to run into him in July 2004 at the Indianapolis Art Center as she was picking Melinda up after her painting class at the Center. Vonnegut was chatting (and smoking of course) with a few members of the art center staff outside the building just before the premiere of an art exhibit featuring works by various members of the Vonnegut family. Colleen joined the group outside, shook Vonnegut’s hand, exchanged some small talk about speaking German, and (of course) took some pictures before excitedly going back inside to fetch Melinda from her class.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was to have spoken here in two weeks as part of the events surrounding Indianapolis’s "Year of Vonnegut." He will be missed.
mmm, Nürnberger Bratwurst!
Who would have thought? Nürnberger Bratwurst (appropriate for all the SUSE people in town for Novell BrainShare I guess) with Bratkartoffeln and a German beer for supper at Siegfried’s Delicatessen in Salt Lake City. They also had one of the largest selections of German specialty foods I’ve seen outside of Germany itself.
Cathedral Band in the Indianapolis St. Patrick’s Day Parade
This year the Cathedral band even lead the parade, so I videoed them along the entire route and even managed to take a few still photos. It was bitter-cold, but crisp and sunny, and all the big limestone monuments and government buildings downtown had a nice bright glow to them.
Although I think Melinda was a somewhat glad to have this year’s band season come to an end, being part of the band was an important part of her four years at Cathedral. And I have to admit that I really enjoy listening to and watching high school marching bands perform more than I ever thought I would (even when they’re just marching straight down the street and playing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and the Cathedral fight song over and over and over). I really hope Christopher follows through on his current intention to be in the Carmel High School band next year — it’ll be fun.
More photos are available in our photo gallery. And here’s a video compilation of some of the parade’s highlights:
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Disco Tunnel at Detroit Airport
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Video_032107_001.3g2
Here’s a video I took on my Treo of a cool tunnel between concourses that they have in the new Detroit airport terminal (I was on my way to Salt Lake City for a computer conference). The walls have abstract colors changing and pulsing in time with music. Really out of the ordinary for an airport! (not to mention, sad to say, for Detroit)
2007 eXcel Awards
Two of Melinda’s photos — the one of some busy Fishers, IN firemen, above, and a closeup of a certain Marine’s eyes, below — were selected as round one winners in the 2D art category of the Indiana Project eXcel awards — a state-wide arts competition for high school students sponsored by Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance (this year’s theme: "Risk").
Portfolio Review at Ball State
Update 22 April 2007: Melinda received an "Outstanding Freshman" scholarship from the Ball State Art Department. We’re incredibly proud of her.
On Saturday, while Christopher was on a church youth retreat giving a presentation about his trip Zimbabwe, Melinda, Colleen and I went up to Muncie for the Ball State Art Department’s Portfolio Review day.
Melinda was a little tense about the whole affair, but in the end her portfolio was accepted — which was the last significant hurdle for admission to the Art Department’s program for next year. In fact, they apparently liked her photographs so much, they encouraged her to submit an expanded portfolio and apply for one of the Art Department scholarships.
After the review was over we held an impromptu post-mortem in the atrium of the Art & Journalism building. Apparently, the profs liked her photo of the tidal flats at Cardiff (near San Diego) the best. Though another favorite was also one of her self portraits called "Demon Inside."
Download or view Melinda’s full portfolio in PDF format here
Snowy Days - February 2007
After shoveling some of the 18 inches or so of snow in our driveway this morning, I just had to run into the house and get the camera so I could capture the bright, sun-lit colors of this still-frigid day.
Yesterday at this time, it didn’t look nearly so peaceful and pretty.
More photos here:
http://www.colleen-n-mark.com/photos/tags/snow/
Go Colts!
The day before the Super Bowl we drove through downtown Indianapolis and for some reason blue and white colors were everywhere — even at the top of the Indiana state capitol building.
Photo by Melinda Taber.
In the Houston Airport: Colts-Ravens AFC Playoff Game
This past Saturday — January 13, 2007, Melinda’s 18th birthday — I was coming back from the sales meeting in Tucson and as I walked up to the gate in Houston for my connecting flight to Indianapolis, I noticed almost everyone was focused intently at the big screen TV at one end of the waiting area.
I glanced up at the screen and saw that it was the final three minutes of the Indianapolis Colts-Baltimore Ravens AFC playoff game, with Indianapolis leading 12 to 6. So it made perfect sense that a lot of the people in the waiting area for a flight to Indianapolis would be more interested in seeing how such a close game ended up than just about anything else, including boarding a plane that was about to take off.
But then I noticed that when the Colts managed to pick up a first down, some of the people standing around me expressed not happiness but severe disappointment. One guy even slammed his briefcase onto the floor and said something about being cursed. So I looked closer at the gate right next to ours and the flight leaving from there was going to Baltimore!
We had Baltimore people on the left side, Indy people on the right side, and the TV in the middle. And it wasn’t until the Colts definitively clinched the game by hitting a field goal with 28 seconds left, that the poor Continental Airlines people managed to get anyone on either side of the TV screen to board the planes for the impending flights.
Indiana State Museum
On Friday after New Year’s Eve we drove downtown to the White River Park with my parent to take a look at the (relatively) new Indiana State Museum.
It turned out to be a pleasant and educational experience. The displays were very well presented, with some clever and elegant touches like a display showing limestone being quarried situated in front of a large picture window that looks out on the state capitol building outside (made out of limestone).
Once we got out of the prehistoric geological displays (those first million or so years just seemed to go on forever!) the history of the state moved along at a rapid but still thorough pace.
I was glad to see that some of Indiana history’s more controversial and/or darker parts weren’t glossed over or omitted. It’s all here — information and artifacts on the state that was home to Eugene Debs and Kurt Vonnegut yet that also embraced the Ku Klux Klan and gave birth to the John Birch Society; a state that was named after the dense population of native Americans living here, but that celebrated the general who won the definitive battle against Tecumseh’s confederation.
It honestly made me just a little bit more proud to be a part of this fascinating paradox of a state that I’ve adopted as my home.
A few more photos are here: 200701-indiana-state-museum
Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for 2007!
December 2005 - December 2006: A Video Slideshow:
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Melinda’s College: Either Ball State or University of Evansville
Over the last couple weeks Melinda received letters of admission to both Ball State University and University of Evansville, the only two colleges she applied to.
Both have solid programs in “visual communication” — kind of a combination of art, photography and graphic design — which is what she’s most interested in.
Ball State is similar in size, reputation and approach to either Eastern or Western Michigan Universities. We got a chance to visit Ball State in Muncie this fall — take the official tour, talk with some students Melinda knew from high school, and explore the photography and design facilities and displays in a beautiful brand-new journalism and art building:
Evansville, in contrast, is a small Methodist-related private university on the south-western edge of Indiana that reminded Colleen and me quite a bit of Albion. Its main advantages are its smaller size and a bit more of an emphasis on liberal arts. It’s pretty isolated from the rest of Indiana, however — even from Indianapolis — though that can be a positive if you’re going to stay on campus for the most part anyway.
At this point it looks like Melinda is leaning heavily towards Ball State, though we’ll probably wait and see what kinds of scholarships and/or financial aid she can get from either one.
Zimbabwe Photos Posted
I’ve managed to post a good selection of photos from the trip to Zimbabwe that Christopher and I went on in November. I tried to whittle the set down to no more than 100 photos, but failed pretty miserably.
The best way to view the photos as a group is probably to go to my Zimbabwe set page on Flickr here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cnm/sets/72157594407278225/
…and from there either browse the set’s “detail view” or watch the nifty Flickr slideshow.
In Zimbabwe
Christopher and I are in Zimbabwe now on a mission/service trip organized and led by my parents and aunt and uncle. We left a week ago and will be back on Monday, 11/20.
Christopher is helping teach kids (and teachers) in the computer lab at Hartzell Primary School (part of the Old Mutare United Methodist mission), while Mark is helping in an Intensive English class at Africa University for students from Mozambique, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burundi.
And both of us are having a memorable, thought-provoking, and often quite eye-opening experience. It’s the first time either of been to sub-saharan Africa and our eyes — and many of our other senses, too — are constantly being bombarded with a rich feast of new experiences. As well as many, many things to think about and store away in our memory for future use.
Once we return I hope to post both our photos and a few more thoughts about the experience. In the meantime, more news and information about the trip as a whole is available at: http://vimtozim.org
Go Tigers!
(Originally uploaded by anikarenina on Flickr.)
This is so cool I just had to blog it.
I don’t remember if anyone thought to carve a “D” into a pumpkin when the Tigers were playing the evil Cardinals in the World Series in ‘68, but if they did I’m pretty sure no one took a photo of it and posted it on Flickr for expatriate Tiger fans around the world to see and enjoy wherever they might happen to be.
Indiana State Fair 2006
This year we finally managed to go with the kids to the State Fair. It’s something we had always wanted to do but somehow the timing of the show, coming typically right after the first week of school for both the kids and for Colleen, made it hard to get to.
It was a chance for Melinda and Christopher to connect with the agricultural roots of the state (and their own as well, only a couple generations back), inspecting the tractors and all the animals, as well as to generally get an idea of what a state fair is like. Melinda particularly enjoyed an exhibit of photographs entered in the fair’s competition, and Christopher definitely liked the various foods and food-like things there to eat.
More photos are in the photo album:
http://www.colleen-n-mark.com/photos/album/200608-state-fair/
And here’s a 5-minute compilation video of some of the sights we saw on our ride on the tractor-train around the perimeter of the fair grounds. It’s a pretty good cross-section of the typical State Fair sights, from farm equipment and horse barns to flashy food stands and midway rides to people and animals of every size, shape and stripe:
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