This was my submission for world pinhole day. It was taken with a Polaroid Land 104 that has been converted to pinhole, on type 667 paper.

Check out the other cool submissions here.

Some amusing graffiti I found in an alley on my walk home the other day. Worth wasting a Polaroid on, I thought.

Much lighter than my last post, don’t you think?

For you locals, this guy is located on the south side of the alley between Dubuque & Linn Streets. Like, right around the corner from Wells Fargo on the Ped Mall.

In general, graffiti in Iowa City is usually lacking in imagination or uniqueness. It used to be better, but overall there’s been a dirth of good or amusing or cool images/slogans around town. But once in awhile I’ll see something that catches my eye, or that makes me think. This little note caught my eye on my way home from work this afternoon. One of the great things about walking or biking everywhere is that you are going slow enough that when you DO come across good graffiti, you notice it and can stop to appreciate.

I’m not sure if this little reminder is referencing a specific incident or not. But if you look closely, you’ll see the word iowa over the “city” in complicity. There was an incident recently wherein a white man verbally assaulted a woman of color in a parking lot, and she wrote an OP-ED about the incident (which I’m not linking to b/c the online version of our local paper sucks and makes you pay for the archives), wherein she stated that several people witnessed the assault and kept on walking, whether out of fear or indifference is left to speculation.

*the title quote is by the incredible Audre Lorde

I’m sure most of you are aware that today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis TN. In marking the occasion today, I listened to his Declaration Against The War in Vietnam, much of which is applicable to the situation we as a nation find ourselves in (again) today. I was especially struck by the quote below, such a simple idea, really, moving to a person-oriented society, and yet, SO incredibly difficult for our culture to achieve. If anything, 40 years on, we’re so much MORE of a material, thing-oriented society than ever before.

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin..we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

This is something I’d like to keep in mind, as I continue my journey through life; how can I pass this idea onto my son, Noah, and work to make it true in my own life.