Marc Johns; Oh how I love you.

I love this. I love Marc Johns. I love post- it notes. I love this blog that talks about him.

Please look at his stuff on rat traps. It is a treasure...

We're Farmers. We Farm.

I joined a farm. a community garden of sorts. We rented land from this lady here in Utah County... $1.50 an acre- pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.

We're planting peas and lettuce and chard and carrots and beets and corn and pumpkins and tomatoes and a lot of other stuff... I'm not sure about what all we'll be planting- just a lot of stuff.
We meet every Saturday at 8:30 for breakfast and then go to the farm about 9, work til noon or one. This was the third week we've been working, and it was a good week. We made beds, tilled the soil, and built a fence for the goat run, wherein the goats that we will one day milk and learn to make goat cheese will roam. This will be a good day, I can feel it already.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we effect the world around us. Last year, about this time, I read a book that changed my life, The Unsettling of America, by Wendell Berry. He talks a lot therein about how the way that we treat our agriculture reflects our deepest beliefs and directly influences our culture, and ultimately our individual bodies. Agriculture= Culture = Bodies.

I think that this is a beautiful concept, and I think it might be true.

That being said, I am getting myself ready for my season vegetarianism, round II. I start this when the world gets warm... summer time. There are many reasons for this, first and foremost, that I feel like summertime, of any time, is a good time to be vegetarian, if one feels so inclined. I feel so inclined. If I am growing a garden in the warm weather, I will eat the things I grow- seems utterly sensible.

I am excited about our garden. I love it. I want to go back tomorrow.

Psychological Portrait

I am writing a paper about Philippe Halsman. I mentioned it before...
In my research inot the history of phychological portraiture, I have come across many interesting things, including, but NOT limited to the work of Sam Taylor-Wood:


If I were you, I would put this video on mute and play the song Measuring Cups by Andrew Bird, off of his 2005 Mysterious Production of Eggs(... or you could just watch him for a few minutes/ hours/ whatever... both are great-seriously one of the best shows I have ever been to, but that's a story for another post. This song just goes well with the video above. Try it. You'll like it). I really like the way that Taylor-Wood is pulling so much out of her sitters. I want to know how she got such a reaction from them. I guess ethically, It matters how she got them to cry... regardless, they are beautiful images. The men portrayed are actors, and might, therefore, be faking their tears and various states of emotional breakdown, but the way that she portrays these men who have carried around our contemporary cultural ideal of masculine machismo in childlike tears, overcome with their emotions is splendid. These are candid looks at an emotional gravity yet largely unavailable to men in our society.

And they are beautiful.