Indaba

The One who is Rightfully Yours

2012-02-18T23:55:00.000-08:00

Convent Garden – 2012 © Louise Fryer

The True Love

There's a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours
especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never
believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held
out to you this way.

Smile my heart~Smile © Louise Fryer

I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man
who would walk every morning on the gray stones
to the shore of baying seals, who would press his
hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his
prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the waters.

2012©Louise Fryer

And I think of the story of the storm and the people
waking and seeing the distant, yet familiar figure,
far across the water calling to them.
And how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking
and that calling and that moment when we have to say yes!
Except it will not come so grandly, so biblically,
but more subtly, and intimately in the face
of the one you know you have to love.
So that when we finally step out of the boat
toward them we find, everything holds us,
and everything confirms our courage.

And if you wanted to drown, you could,
But you don't, because finally, after all
this struggle and all these years,
you don't want to anymore.
You've simply had enough of drowning
and you want to live, and you want to love.

And you'll walk across any territory,
and any darkness, however fluid,
and however dangerous

to take the one
hand and the one life, you know belongs in yours.

~ David Whyte ~

linked to Recuerda mi corazon postcards from paradise

Photographer Profile: Louise Fryer

I first got into photography in May 2009, after spending some time experimenting in various different areas I found the subject that interested me the most was street photography. It is since January 2011 that I have been seriously concentrating on this area. I focus mainly on street portraiture, I try to capture sensitivity and feeling in my photographs. My inspiration comes from the people I see, my own empathy and feelings towards them. I feel a connection with some of the people I photograph due to my work and my life experiences.

“I see in black & white, colours just complicate things.” ~ Louise Fryer

Louise Hails from London and is a contributor to Shoot the Streets established to promote the art of street photography and increase the exposure of the many talented, and often unknown street photographers who live, breath and shoot the streets.

Note: You may find Louise Fryer’s phenomenal Street Photography on at the following url’s: https://www.facebook.com/StreetPortraits and http://louisefryer.tumblr.com/;google+; and shoot the street.

After the Thaw from Paul Frederick

2012-02-17T23:02:00.001-08:00

After the Thaw from Paul Frederick on Vimeo.

"Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower."
- Alan C. Kay

This celebration of spring was shot with my Sony V1 using a Letus Extreme 35mm adaptor. A few shots are without the Letus. I spent quite a bit of time on the audio, so I hope you have good speakers! The music is some that I have the rights to from Digital Juice and Music2Hues. Enjoy, comments are welcome!

Kiss–A Love Story

2012-02-09T23:45:00.001-08:00

Kiss - A Love Story from RACECAR on Vimeo.

Fresh of the the festival circuit, we proudly present the internet premiere of our short film Kiss.

"Le soleil est le passé, le terre est le présent et la lune est le futur."

As Paul Auster once said “The sun is the past, the earth is the present and the moon is the future.” In our ﬁrst independent short ﬁlm we explore the consequence of something as innocent as a kiss. A love story between the sun and the moon. We believe that every solar eclipse is the moons attempt to reach the sun...

CREDITS:
Director: Joseph Hodgson & Franck Aubry
Anmation & Art Direction: Joseph Hodgson & Franck Aubry
Production: Racecar - www.racecar.no
Sound Design: Erlend Elvesveen & Sven Erik Nordset
Sound Mix: Erlend Elvesveen
Music: 'Stille' by Bendik - http://www.nrk.no/urort/Artist/bendikmusikk/default.aspx

For more info: www.kiss.racecar.no

A Kiss is Still a Kiss…

2012-01-25T21:05:00.001-08:00

Young lovers wisely say,

“Let’s try it from this angle,
Maybe something marvelous will happen,

Maybe three suns and two moons
Will roll out
From a hiding place in the body
Our passion has yet to ignite.”

Old lovers say,
“We can do it one more time,
How about from this longitude
And latitude –

Swinging from a rope tied to the ceiling,

Maybe a part of God
Is still hiding in a corner of your heart
Our devotion has yet to reveal.”

Bottom line:

Do not stop playing
These beautiful
Love
Games.

(“The Gift” – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

About the Photographer

Trey Ratcliff

These snow monkeys are the greatest. I spent a...
... long time with them... It was very cold, and I almost got in this hotspring with them. They are all wild, and they come down from the mountains near Nagano, Japan, for several hours a day to play in the natural hot springs. They gallivant around, have fights, play with their kids, have a bit of sweet carnal monkey fun, check their email, and pose for my camera. These two monkeys spent a lot of time together... they were in maximum "relaxation mode." They lounged around in every possible position and took occasional breaks to do a bit of mutual grooming.

BRIEFLY… A PHOTOGRAPHY-CENTRIC BIO

I’m best known for, well, I suppose, this site, StuckInCustoms.com, which has become the #1 Travel Photography Blog on the internet. On average, the photos get over a million views a week, including a few from my mom. My work first became popular after I had the honor of having the first HDR photo ever to hang in the Smithsonian. After that, I was fortunate enough to be represented by Getty (who I have since dumped because they take 80%), been featured on the BBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, and NBC, and have had numerous showings around the world.

I am known generally for the unique way in which I capture and process the world around me. I have my own “take” on HDR Photography, and you can see my free HDR Tutorial right here. I grew up blind in one eye and this might have changed the way I view the world. I don’t know. It’s hard to be objective about the way one’s brain was wired. My background is in computer science and math, so I bring an algorithm-like process to capturing the scene in such a way that it evokes memories in a palpable manner. Whatever that means.

Trey Ratcliff at http://www.StuckInCustoms.com - all images Creative Commons Noncommercial

Supple Cord ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

2012-01-04T22:24:00.001-08:00

My brother, in his small white bed,
held one end,
I tugged the other
to signal I was still awake.
We could have spoken,
could have sung
to one another,

we were in the same room
for five years,
but the soft cord
with its little frayed ends
connected us
in the dark,

gave comfort
even if we had been bickering
all day.

When he fell asleep first
and his end of the cord
dropped to the floor,
I missed him terribly,
though I could hear his even breath

and we had such long and separate lives
ahead.

~Naomi Shihab Nye

(for rebecca with love)

About the Photographer

Istvan Kerekes

In His Own Words

I have been a photographer since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images. One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “the good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.

~Istvan Kerekes

Istvan’s website: http://www.kerekesistvan.hu/

*Copyrighted images are posted with kind permission of the photographer.

somewhere I have never travelled

2012-01-03T23:36:00.001-08:00

I Love the Girl With the Sun in Her Eyes Some rights reserved by Thomas Hawk

(Poem #619) somewhere i have never travelled

 somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
 any experience, your eyes have their silence:
 in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
 or which i cannot touch because they are too near

 your slightest look easily will unclose me
 though i have closed myself as fingers,
 you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
 (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

 or if your wish be to close me, i and
 my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
 as when the heart of this flower imagines
 the snow carefully everywhere descending;

 nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
 the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
 compels me with the colour of its countries,
 rendering death and forever with each breathing

 (i do not know what it is about you that closes
 and opens; only something in me understands
 the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
 nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

-- e e cummings

The Spirit of Christmas ~ Haiku My Heart

2011-12-22T21:38:00.001-08:00

The Soft Glow of Lights

The Scent of Sweet Pine Branches

The Warmth of Friendship.

-Noelle Renee

Linked with Rebecca’s Blog at Recuerda mi Corazon

About the Photographer

Thomas Hawk

Sometimes I like to think of myself as a photography factory. I see my photographs mostly as raw material for projects that might be worked on at some point later on in life.

When I'm not taking or processing the pictures I'm mostly thinking about the pictures. I'm trying to publish a library of 1,000,000 finished, processed photographs before I die.

The absurdity of my obsessive compulsive view on photography is not lost on me. But it is the absurdity of life that I find most beautiful of all. Where Sisyphus had his stone I have my camera and a bag full of lenses.

Most of my images are Creative Commons licensed, non commercial with attribution. If you'd like to use any CC licensed images for non commercial or personal purposes feel free. If you'd like to use any of my images commercially, please contact me.

"Don't think about making art. Just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they're deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol

In Times of Peace ~Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip

2011-12-11T21:51:00.001-08:00

© zoriah/www.zoriah.com The owner holds all original copyright and licenses. Republishing rights for bloggers only, companies, organizations, NGO's and similar must first obtain permission before republishing. Contact www.zoriah.com/contact for more information or email info at zoriah dot com.

Damage from attacks on a Palestinian neighborhood in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip in March, 2006

At the moment, with journalists trapped in Israel and not able to enter the Gaza Strip to report, I will focus my attention on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. If people have contrary views to mine and believe different sides of these issues need to be covered, I encourage you to get out there and do it. My assumptions were affirmed by friends living in Gaza that the situation there is quite desperate. My focus continues to be the human side of conflict and not the political side and I hope the images I am posting from Gaza will show how bad the situation is there even during "times of peace." I also encourage comments and will pay special attention to those posted by people who have lived both in Gaza and in Israel and understand both sides of this situation in reality and not just in theory. ~Zoriah

Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
~Excerpt Naomi Shihab Nye.

Marred, Lovely and Flawed

2011-12-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

Autumn Quince

How sad they are,
the promises we never return to.
They stay in our mouths,
roughen the tongue, lead lives of their own.
Houses built and unwittingly lived in;
a succession of milk bottles brought to the door
every morning and taken inside.

And which one is real?
The music in the composer's ear
or the lapsed piece the orchestra plays?
The world is a blurred version of itself --
marred, lovely, and flawed.
It is enough.

~ Jane Hirshfield ~

(Of Gravity & Angels)

Linked to A Virgin A Day on Recuerda mi Corazon

About the Photographer

Istvan Kerekes

In His Own Words

~Istvan Kerekes

Istvan’s website: http://www.kerekesistvan.hu/

*Copyrighted images are posted with kind permission of the photographer.

Prayer in My Boot ~ Robert Larson Images

2011-11-30T21:41:00.001-08:00

Prayer in my Boot
By Naomi Shihab Nye

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth

how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids

and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows

and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given,
and every future rough edge

and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep

~Naomi Shihab Nye

About The Photographer:

Robert Larson

A Journey To Haiti

“When I walk, I walk”~Jeanmary Michel

In January of 2010, I met a 27-year-old man in Port-au-Prince named Jeanmary Michel. We were strangers walking down the street together. It had been a difficult trip, and up to that point the reaction that most strangers had to my presence was hostile. This man simply looked at me, smiled and said “Whatsup?” He then continued on his way as if he had no desire to receive a greeting in return. I said hello, and asked where he was going. He said, “When I walk, I walk”.

I had traveled to Haiti in the days after the earthquake to photograph a historic moment for the world. I was in over my head. This stranger sensed my frustration and offered to show me whatever I’d like to see and to make sure I was safe. I agreed, and we spent the next 5 hours walking through the city on foot or riding in the back of taxis. I experienced more with him in 5 hours than I had in the last three days. We agreed to meet up the next morning and do it all over again.

We stayed in touch after I returned home to Los Angeles. In February of 2011, I received a grant from the Gilhousen Family Foundation to travel back to Haiti for two weeks and continue my photography project. This project had now been named Waiting for Haiti. I called Jeanmary, and we made arrangements for me to stay with him at his house so that I could experience the day-to-day life of a Haitian family. We emailed back and forth; composing a list of places that I would like to photograph, and he made a list of things he wanted me to see to better understand his country. Over the course of that last trip, Jeanmary and I became best friends. We had opposite backgrounds and perspectives, and we saw Haiti through each other’s eyes.

The more I learned about Haiti and the stronger our friendship grew, the more clear it became that these pictures meant a lot to both of us. One place that we repeatedly visited was the morgue at the General Hospital, in Port-au-Prince. Seeing the same decomposing bodies in the same place year after year and how they are carelessly stacked and slowly putrefying in the inefficient freezers; we felt deeply compelled to understand why the country functions the way it does. Jeanmary bought a notebook and began asking questions of his fellow Haitians, starting with the staff at the morgue. There were many places I could not go without him as a guide and translator. At the same time, having a foreigner by his side and a new sense of confidence opened doors for him that have always remained shut to the general Haitian population. We collected as many images and notes as we could in the short amount of time that we had.

In 2012 I will return to Port-au-Prince with the resources to help Jeanmary and myself share our story, his story, and Haiti’s story. Together with a talented and passionate production team, we will film Haiti in the way that it is. We will show the reality of a beautiful and mysterious country that has been left by the wayside. Through Jeanmary’s eyes, the film will show what a large natural disaster and subsequent flooding of foreign aid money really mean to an undeveloped and highly corrupt country. Haiti has a complicated story; its history is full of mistakes that many promise to never repeat. This project is an ongoing study of the country's future through the life of a man who calls it home.

Robert’s Website for this Project: Waiting for Haiti

Robert’s Other website: robertlarsonphotography

Yet They Behold The World

2011-11-27T23:31:00.000-08:00

My heart is so small
it's almost invisible.
How can You place
such big sorrows in it?

"Look," He answered,
"your eyes are even smaller,
yet they behold the world."

~ Rumi ~

About the Photographer

Istvan Kerekes

In His Own Words

~Istvan Kerekes

Istvan’s website: http://www.kerekesistvan.hu/

*Copyrighted images are posted with kind permission of the photographer.

Narcissus

2011-11-25T23:43:00.000-08:00

"When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else."—Georgia O'Keeffe

Narcissus – Poem by Jane Hirschfield

NARCISSUS: Tel Aviv, Baghdad, San Francisco; February 1991
by Jane Hirschfield

And then the precise
opening everywhere of the flowers,
which live after all in their own time.
It seemed they were oblivious but they were not,
they included it all, the nameless explosions
and the oil fires in every cell, the white petals
like mirrors opening in a slow-motion coming-apart
and the stems, the stems rising like green-flaring missiles
like smoke, like the small sounds shaken
from those who were beaten—like dust from a carpet—
into the wind and the spring-scented rain.

They opened because it was time and they had no choice,
as the children were born in that time and that place
and became what they would without choice, or with only
a little choice, perhaps, for the lucky, the foolish or brave.
But precise and in fact wholly peaceful the flowers opened,
and precise and peaceful the earth: opened because it was asked.
Again and again it was asked and earth opened—
flowered and fell—because what was falling had asked
and could not be refused, as the seabirds that ask the green surface
to open are not refused but are instantly welcomed,
that they may enter and eat—
As soon refuse, battered and soaking , the dark mahogany rain.

—Jane Hirschfield From THE OCTOBER PALACE

Historical Context of Poem: BBC On This Day

About the Photographer

Photo by Karen Hutton

Thomas Hawk

Introduction

Sometimes I like to think of myself as a photography factory. I see my photographs mostly as raw material for projects that might be worked on at some point later on in life.
When I'm not taking or processing the pictures I'm mostly thinking about the pictures. I'm trying to publish a library of 1,000,000 finished, processed photographs before I die.
The absurdity of my obsessive compulsive view on photography is not lost on me. But it is the absurdity of life that I find most beautiful of all. Where Sisyphus had his stone I have my camera and a bag full of lenses.
Document, explore, lather, rinse, repeat. Photography for me then becomes a kind of hyperactivity, loosely arranged and presented. My work is less about individual images and instead more about the power of a massive amount of excessive and disjointed images where stories, characters and places sometimes stay and other times reappear or disappear entirely for no good reason at all.
Most of my images are Creative Commons licensed, non commercial with attribution. If you'd like to use any CC licensed images for non commercial or personal purposes feel free. If you'd like to use any of my images commercially, please contact me.
"Don't think about making art. Just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they're deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol

Your Life Bends Down and Kisses Your Life

2011-11-24T23:27:00.001-08:00

It Was Like This: You Were Happy

It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent -- what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness --
between you, there is nothing to forgive --
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is now a thing only for others.

It doesn't matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

~ Jane Hirshfield ~

(After)

About the Photographer

Photo by Karen Hutton

Thomas Hawk

Introduction

Sometimes I like to think of myself as a photography factory. I see my photographs mostly as raw material for projects that might be worked on at some point later on in life.

When I'm not taking or processing the pictures I'm mostly thinking about the pictures. I'm trying to publish a library of 1,000,000 finished, processed photographs before I die.

Document, explore, lather, rinse, repeat. Photography for me then becomes a kind of hyperactivity, loosely arranged and presented. My work is less about individual images and instead more about the power of a massive amount of excessive and disjointed images where stories, characters and places sometimes stay and other times reappear or disappear entirely for no good reason at all.

"Don't think about making art. Just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they're deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol

Someone Saved My Life Tonight

2011-11-22T12:03:00.001-08:00

Sweet Freedom Whispered in My Ear

You’re a Butterfly

and Butterflies are Free to Fly

Fly Away, High Away, Bye Bye

~©Elton John; Bernie Taupin (excerpt)

~~~

About the Photographer

Photo by Karen Hutton

Thomas Hawk

Introduction

Sometimes I like to think of myself as a photography factory. I see my photographs mostly as raw material for projects that might be worked on at some point later on in life.

We all have but a short time on this earth. As slow as time can be it is also fast, swift, furious and mighty and then it’s over. Jack Kerouac is dead. Andy Warhol is dead. Garry Winogrand is dead. Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore and William Eggleston are not dead yet, but probably will be at some point. Charles Bukowski once said that endurance was more important than truth. Charles Bukowski's now dead.

When I'm not taking or processing the pictures I'm mostly thinking about the pictures. I'm trying to publish a library of 1,000,000 finished, processed photographs before I die.

Pinned to Jack Kerouac's wall to inspire his writing: "Art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life." -Nietzsche

"Don't think about making art. Just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they're deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol

Nurture

2011-11-20T19:12:00.001-08:00

Nurture

From a documentary on marsupials I learn

that a pillowcase makes a fine

substitute pouch for an orphaned kangaroo.

I am drawn to such dramas of animal rescue.

They are warm in the throat. I suffer, the critic proclaims,

from an overabundance of maternal genes.

Bring me your fallen fledgling, your bummer lamb,

lead the abused, the starvelings, into my barn.

Advise the hunted deer to leap into my corn.

And had there been a wild child—

filthy and fierce as a ferret, he is called

in one nineteenth-century account—

a wild child to love, it is safe to assume,

given my fireside inked with paw prints,

there would have been room.

Think of the language we two, same and not-same,

might have constructed from sign,

scratch, grimace, grunt, vowel:

Laughter our first noun, and our long verb, howl.

About the Photographer:

Blindman shooting

I have come to realize that my art has diversity with powerful individual vision, that chronicles the life of individuals. People draw me into their lives to tell their story to anyone willing to listen and validate their reason for living. My attraction to story telling grew as my life developed behind a camera. I discovered that its not how a photographer looks at the world that is important, its their relationship with their fellow human beings and these moments of connectivity that are frozen in time for all to see.
last thought for the photographer, "Whatever you look to see outside, is waiting inside you".

The Way In ~ (Prayer For Amy)

2011-11-19T20:26:00.000-08:00

The Way In

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding,
and beauty.
To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water.
To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.
~ Linda Hogan ~
(Rounding the Human Corners)

Linked to Postcards from Paradise at Rebecca’s Blog

About the Photographer

Istvan Kerekes

In His Own Words

~Istvan Kerekes

Istvan’s website: http://www.kerekesistvan.hu/

*image posted with kind permission of Istvan Kerekes

Hands of Love

2011-11-16T02:59:00.000-08:00

Hands are Here

to Reach Out in Love

To Take Hold ,

in Constant Friendship,

When Support is Needed

To Faithfully Stand By and Wait,

Cherishing Each Moment,

Quietly Listening

To Remember

The Many Times

When They were Held

in Love and Protection

To Pray

to the One Who is Love and Compassion

Who Knows How Deeply All Our Hearts Need Healing

We Offer All that We Have

and All that We Are in Peace

for Our Friend Joe Spado (Spadoman).

And Carry Our Love To Him

On the Bright Wings of Hope

and Faithful Friendship.

Linked to Recuerda Mi Corazon Circle of Love for Spadoman.

Transcendence

2011-11-15T10:43:00.000-08:00

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
~ James Wright ~

from “ A Blessing”

~~~

About The Photographer

Kelli Seeger Kim

Kelli loves working on her photography and has come to appreciate the time and hard work that goes into making a beautiful image. In her spare time she loves a good science fiction novel or a great film.

Kelli has two beautiful boys, who are featured in some of her images and a huge crush on her very sweet husband. More of Her Phenomenal images can be found on G+. All images in this post are the copyrighted property of Kelli Seeger Kim. They were posted here with her kind permission. Thank you.

Broken Cord

2011-11-12T18:07:00.000-08:00

2011©Blindman Shooting

Remember

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember that language comes from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember.
~ Joy Harjo ~(from How we Become Human)

A Fight For Her Grandchildren Mirrors A Native Past

by NATHAN ROTT

October 25, 2011

Suzanne Crow, 58, has made and received a lot of bad telephone calls in her life, including the time she told her family that her 3-year-old son had died in a hospital because there wasn't a doctor on duty to care for him. Life in South Dakota as a displaced member of the Lakota and Dakota Sioux tribes can be tougher than most.

"It's affecting the tribes in more ways than just them being gone. It's affecting the genetic memory. Maybe those are our chiefs coming up and they're gone," she tells Michel during the interview.

But the phone call she received on a sunny May day in 2007, Crow says, is still one of the worst. A distant relative had just driven by her home in Sioux Falls, and Crow says what she heard instantly connected her past to her present, bringing the next several years of her life to a near stop.

"The cops are at Lena's house," Crow said the relative told her. "I think they're taking your grandchildren."

Brianna was 6-years-old. Her younger brother was 5.

Their mother had left a cousin in charge, but Lena was late coming home. Their father, who was an illegal immigrant, was caught and deported years earlier. So when police found the children in the front yard after their cousin left, there was nobody to take care of them.

The children, however, had a plan for situations like this. If they were ever left alone or if someone was drinking at home, they were always instructed to go across the street, to their grandma's. If she wasn't there, the back door would be left unlocked.

But on that May day, Crow wasn't home and the back door was bolted shut.

A Disproportionate Population

In South Dakota, where American Indians make up less than 15 percent of the state's child population, 60 percent of the state's foster care population is American Indian children.

Suzanne Crow's story is part of an NPR News investigation. Read more about the series here.

Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families

Nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota are removed from their homes every year.

It's a number that Crow is familiar with and a number that always struck her as ironic.

For more than a century, a similar number of American Indian children were removed from their homes, families and cultures and placed in boarding schools. It was part of the U.S. government's assimilation policy. She had been sent away when she was 5-years-old. Her mother couldn't afford to provide for her or her sister. So, she enrolled them at Saint Paul's Indian Mission, an Indian boarding school on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in Marty, S.D., built in the 1920s during the middle of the U.S. government's assimilation policy years.

"There is a very strong history in this country of removing Indian kids from their homes," says Brenda Child, who chairs the University of Minnesota's American Indian Studies program. Her grandfather was a student at the first off-reservation boarding school, Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

But by 1958, when Crow started school there, "assimilation as a policy had ended," Child says. Yet its legacy remained and Crow's story, Child says, is one that's familiar.

American Indian parents who lost their children forgot how to be parents and their children were no longer being raised with parents to learn those skills from. Crow still remembers her first day, walking into a long room filled with white dresses. It was a little girl's dream, she says, until she turned around.

Her mom was gone. "I cried for three days," she says.

Rules To Be Followed

It took Crow just over two hours to return to Sioux Falls the day her grandchildren were removed from their home. But it was too late.

When Crow arrived home, her grandchildren had already been taken to Children's Inn, an emergency shelter and foster home in Sioux Falls. Crow drove straight there, she says, and asked to take her grandchildren home.

"It's not that easy," says Children's Inn's Director Amy Carter. Carter didn't tell Crow no herself, she's only been director for three years and wasn't familiar with Crow's case, but she's seen similar stories. "That situation is more common than you'd like to think," she says.

Because of that, there's a system of rules that has to be followed.

"It's a complex system, but it's made that way to ensure the safety of the children," Carter says.

By the time children reach her organization, they're already under the custody of the state and the state's Division of Child Protection Services (DCPS) calls the shots. Children's Inn is just the starting point to a long process.

"I can understand why people get frustrated with it," Carter says, "and I won't deny it can be frustrating. But that's the system we're working in."

Process Harkens Back To Boarding School Days

Life at Saint Paul's was full of processes. There were routines and rules that were strictly enforced, Crow recalls

American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many

The government-run boarding schools required students to talk and dress as mainstream Americans.

American Indian School a Far Cry from the Past

Much has changed since the days when off-reservation schools were used to expel Indian culture.

No speaking in the native Lakota language, no gathering in groups larger than two, no talking back.

"At one time they had 500 children here," says David Tickerhoof, a current pastor at Saint Paul's Church. "There had to be a pretty stringent discipline system."

The school is now tribally run and Tickerhoof has only been at the neighboring church for 14 years, so he can't speak to specifics of the school's past. But from talking with former teachers and students, he understands the history of the school and its surrounding community.

"It was like the inner-city in a rural setting," he says.

Crow said she recognizes some positive things about the school. Since her mother couldn't provide for her, at least at Saint Paul's, she was fed, sheltered and educated.

But there were bad parts: Haircuts, and punishments, Crow says, for speaking in her native Lakota tongue.

"The goal wasn't to make them non-Indian," Tickerhoof says, "The effort was to really help them stand as an equal in the job environment and to do that they had to be able to communicate in the dominant society."

He continues: "I'm not going to say negative things didn't happen here, that's idealistic and naive. But I think it was hard on everybody."

To cope, Crow says, they prayed.

"We'd get up and pray at our bed, then go to church and pray, then to breakfast and pray, then to school and pray, and then lunch and pray — always praying," Crow says. "I remember praying for John Kennedy when he was shot."

But most times she prayed for something else. She says she "prayed and prayed and prayed," for her grandmother to come and get her, to find her and take her away. For 12 years she prayed.

It never happened.

"Have you ever prayed and prayed and prayed for something and then it never happened?" she asks. It still haunts her.

A Prayerful Fight

More than 50 years later, Crow began the battle to get her grandchildren back by praying.

John Poole/NPR

Suzanne Crow looks through a family photo album at her home in Sioux Falls, S.D., and comes across an old newspaper clipping of Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota like herself.

"I prayed for whatever judges were involved, whatever social service people are involved — whoever's in my path I wanted to pray for them too," she says. "So I did."

For the first months she prayed that the children would be returned to their mother. Crow offered her help, went to court proceedings and took notes, but the bulk of the work she left to her daughter, Lena.

"They tried to turn her into a professional hoop dancer, jumping through all their hoops." But the children were never released.

Within a week of being taken from their mother's, they were placed in a white foster home in Sioux Falls. After about six months, Lena gave up hope, Crow says. There were too many strikes against her, so Crow says Lena attempted suicide. That attempt, though failed, killed her chances of getting her children back, Crow says. She was no longer deemed psychologically competent to be a parent.

"So that's when I filed for adoption," Crow says, "they couldn't throw any of that guilt in my face."

Crow had a house, a salaried job as a seamstress at David's Bridal and no criminal history. The problem was, she had to convince the state of the same thing and that's hard for any grandparent to do, says B.J. Jones, an attorney and judge for various tribal justice systems in the Dakotas and Minnesota.

"The state court system is so hard for grandparents to crack and sometimes it's hard to really identify what the reasons are," Jones says.

The result, he says, is this: "We have the government being the grandparents and the government doesn't have a good track record of taking care of Indian kids. Historically that's been disastrous. It's been a nightmare."

The state's department of social services says it's not trying to usurp family ties.

"We come from a stance of safety," says Virgena Wiesler, the division's director. "That's our overarching goal with all children. If they can be returned to their parent or returned to a relative and that safety can be managed, then that's our goal."

In interviews with NPR, Wiesler and the state's DCPS said they would not speak about individual cases like Crow's.

All those years — those 12 years in boarding school — not once did I get to be who I was supposed to be. Not once did I get to speak Lakota and see my grandma. They took our genetic thinking and turned it inside out. And then who are you?

- Suzanne Crow

Jones wouldn't either, but he did say that in his opinion, the limited access and rights of extended family like grandparents is the biggest problem with current law.

"I've seen a lot of cases where the grandparents would be eligible," he says, "but they've got to background you, they've got to license you and this, this, this, and that, that, that."

That's what Crow experienced.

"They tried to turn me into a fancy dancer too," she says.

She went through the steps, met with case workers, registered for and completed foster parenting classes for both the state and the tribe. She became a licensed foster parent and still, the kids remained in foster care for three years.

They were being taken care of, she says, just like she was in boarding school, but she was worried about them being raised in another culture.

"All those years — those 12 years in boarding school," she says, "Not once did I get to be who I was supposed to be. Not once did I get to speak Lakota and see my grandma. They took our genetic thinking and turned it inside out. And then who are you?"

A Return To Family

The state eventually released Crows's grandchildren, now ages 10 and 11, from foster care, giving custody to their stepfather, who also cares for two of Lena's other children in Pipestone, Minn.

Crow says she believes she should have custody of her grandchildren.

She sees them as often as she can. She talks to them on the phone and messages them on Facebook. Earlier this year, she saw her grandson play in a soccer tournament and braided Brianna's hair before a family member's high school graduation ceremony.

She talks to them in Lakota when they'll listen, trying to instill bits of their native culture whenever she can. It's her duty as a grandmother, she says, to help give them an identity — to fight for their future because of her past.

"I think their culture is what's going to save them," she says, "It's what saved me."

About the Photographer:

Blindman shooting

Oh Sweetest Song

2011-11-01T21:23:00.001-07:00

Song
How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

~ Rilke ~

Vietnamese Lullaby

About the Photographer:

Alfred Pleyer

Alfred loves to travel and photograph.

He hails from Austria.

You may find more of his amazing photographic captures on

http://500px.com/niklens

According to Alfred the following is true:

Citizen of the World

Living without a cat...

I Belong to group.as

I am involved in
Public Circles Project

Chop Wood, Carry Water

2011-10-22T23:11:00.001-07:00

WORKING TOGETHER

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,

and look for the true

shape of our own self
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

~David Whyte ~

© The House of Belonging

About the Photographer:

Alfred Pleyer

Alfred loves to travel and photograph.

He hails from Austria.

You may find more of his amazing photographic captures on

http://500px.com/niklens

According to Alfred the following is true:

Citizen of the World

Living without a cat...

I Belong to group.as

I am involved in
Public Circles Project

Yellow Glove

2011-10-06T21:42:00.001-07:00

Automat © 1927 Edward Hopper

Yellow Glove

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments?
I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV. When the new gloves appeared one Christmas, tucked in soft tissue, I heard it trailing me: Don’t lose the yellow gloves.
I was small, there was too much to remember. One day, waving at a stream—the ice had cracked, winter chipping down, soon we would sail boats and roll into ditches—I let a glove go. Into the stream, sucked under the street. Since when did streets have mouths? I walked home on a desperate road. Gloves cost money. We didn’t have much. I would tell no one. I would wear the yellow glove that was left and keep the other hand in a pocket. I knew my mother’s eyes had tears they had not cried yet, I didn’t want to be the one to make them flow. It was the prayer I spoke secretly, folding socks, lining up donkeys in windowsills. To be good, a promise made to the roaches who scouted my closet at night. If you don’t get in my bed, I will be good. And they listened. I had a lot to fulfill.
The months rolled down like towels out of a machine. I sang and drew and fattened the cat. Don’t scream, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fight—you could hear it anywhere. A pebble could show you how to be smooth, tell the truth. A field could show how to sleep without walls. A stream could remember how to drift and change—next June I was stirring the stream like a soup, telling my brother dinner would be ready if he’d only hurry up with the bread, when I saw it. The yellow glove draped on a twig. A muddy survivor. A quiet flag.

Where had it been in the three gone months? I could wash it, fold it in my winter drawer with its sister, no one in that world would ever know. There were miracles on Harvey Street. Children walked home in yellow light. Trees were reborn and gloves traveled far, but returned. A thousand miles later, what can a yellow glove mean in a world of bankbooks and stereos?

Part of the difference between floating and going down.

~~~

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Yellow Glove” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Source: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)
Linked to Share the Joy Thursdays with
Meri’s Musings

Haiku My Heart ~ Just Like Me

2011-09-29T20:59:00.001-07:00

You are my soul’s twin ~

nose, eyes, smile so familiar,

My heart’s guiding light.

~noelle renee 9.29.11

About the Photographer:

Alfred Pleyer

Alfred loves to travel and photograph.

He hails from Austria.

You may find more of his amazing photographic captures on

http://500px.com/niklens

According to Alfred the following is true:

Citizen of the World

Living without a cat...

I Belong to group.as

I am involved in
Public Circles Project

For More Wonderful Haiku

Please visit Recuerda mi Corazon

A Sense of Belonging

2011-09-21T21:04:00.000-07:00

A good old-fashioned cart track that takes us back in time, which is also enhanced by the black / white term. The subject is taken from Hvaler. The picture is signed by art photographer Thomas Russ Arnestad.

Everyday

You've left the big storms
behind you now.
You didn't ask then
why you were born,
where you came from, where you were going to,
you were just there in the storm,
in the fire.
But it's possible to live
in the everyday as well,
in the grey quiet day,
set potatoes, rake leaves,
carry brushwood.

An old and classic oak tree on a field right besides the Norwegian University of Agriculture in Aas, Norway. This is a well known landmark in the region.

There's so much to think about here in the world,
one life is not enough for it all.
After work you can fry bacon
and read Chinese poems.
Old Laertes cut briars,
dug round his fig trees,
and let the heroes fight on at Troy.

~Olav H. Hauge

Drops in the East Wind, 1966

*Olav H. Hauge (1908–1994) lived all his life in Ulvik, a village in the west of Norway on the Hardangerfjord. He translated many English and American writers into Norwegian.

About The Photographer:

Thomas Russ Arnestad

About Arnestad Photography

Arnestad Photography (NO 990 983 267 MVA) presents the photographic work of Thomas Russ Arnestad (b.1979, Oslo).
He works as the Head of Photography at Inviso AS, the largest real estate photography company in Norway. During low season he performs ad-hoc photographic work for numerous clients. Besides interior photography he also shoots a lot of landscape, architecture, cars, products and travel images to name a few.
His interest began, as for many others, with the fascination of light and the beautiful impact it has on the nature surrounding us. From there on, it´s been a long journey to get where he´s at now. His nature and landscape photography, is today as then, a form for recreation and an excuse to spend some time alone.
Recent photos have been targeted into more specific projects and series than before. This is the way to go for getting more thought and substance into the photography for Arnestad.

~Linked to Meri’s Musings Share the Joy Thursdays~

Haiku My Heart: A Waggly Tail

2011-09-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

The Big Trick © Andre du Plessis

Wild Waggly-Tailed Dog

Mom's All Mine: Donna & Dalina © Andre du Plessis

The View from Mom’s Sweet Shoulders

All

Day’s Bliss

~Noelle Renee 9.15.11

For more haiku my heart visit rebecca’s blog at recuerda mi corazon.

About the Photographer

Andre du Plessis

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them." -Elliott Erwitt.

I wish that I had more time to devote to photography. However, when I get that chance, the sheer enjoyment of it always makes up for those weeks of waiting. My preference has evolved from experimental to street, and finally to people.

In people photography I have found what I need, and so far it has been a very interesting journey. My preference for B&W derives from my days in the dark room, which started when I was about twelve. I once won a Jobo colour kit in a photography competition at school, but asked for the money instead in order to buy a new monochrome enlarger and lens.

When it comes to photography I see in shades of grey, and I cannot see this changing soon. I am sure that my choice of subject matter has evolved in parallel with this realisation.

I am passionate about the various peoples of that continent that I belong to, and in bringing pictures of ordinary folk in their ordinary houses to this forum (1x.com) I have started to appreciate how powerful a medium photography actually is, and the responsibility that accompanies this.

*Andre du Plessis hails from South Africa and currently lives in London where he has a medical practice. You may find more of his phenomenal pictures on 1x.com

*The Photos posted here was published with the kind permission of the photographer. All Rights are Reserved ©. Thank you.

Act Great ~ FDNY Battalion 9 Memorial ~ 9/11/2011

2011-09-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

FDNY BATTALION 9 MEMORIAL 9/11/2001

ACT GREAT

What is the key
To untie the knot of your mind’s suffering?

What
Is the esoteric secret
To slay the crazed one whom each of us
Did wed

And who can ruin
Our heart’s and eye’s exquisite tender
Landscape?

Hafiz has found
Two emerald words that
Restored
Me

That I now cling to as I would sacred
Tresses of my Beloved’s
Hair:

Act great.
My dear, always act great.

What is the key
To untie the knot of the mind’s suffering?

Benevolent thought, sound
And movement.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Photograph taken at a candlelight vigil outside the firehouse of Squad 18, NYFD, September 11, 2001.

Linked to Postcards from Paradise at Recuerda mi Corazon.

The Canticle of the Grange

2011-09-07T20:14:00.000-07:00

Victoria - 17.06.2011

HAYMAKING by EDWARD THOMAS

After night's thunder far away had rolled

The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold,

And in the perfect blue the clouds uncurled,

Like the first gods before they made the world

And misery, swimming the stormless sea

In beauty and in divine gaiety.

The smooth white empty road was lightly strewn

With leaves---the holly's Autumn falls in June--- And

fir cones standing up stiff in the heat.

The mill-foot water tumbled white and lit

With tossing crystals, happier than any crowd

Of children pouring out of school aloud.

And in the little thickets where a sleeper

For ever might lie lost, the nettle-creeper

And garden warbler sang unceasingly;

While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee

The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow

As if the bow had flown off with the arrow.

Only the scent of woodbine and hay new-mown

Travelled the road. In the field sloping down,

Park-like, to where its willows showed the brook,

Haymakers rested. The tosser lay forsook

Out in the sun; and the long waggon stood

Without its team; it seemed it never would

Move from the shadow of that single yew.

The team, as still, until their task was due,

Beside the labourers enjoyed the shade

That three squat oaks mid-field together made

Upon a circle of grass and weed uncut,

And on the hollow, once a chalk-pit, but

Now brimmed with nut and elder-flower so clean.

The men leaned on their rakes, about to begin,

But still. And all were silent. All was old,

This morning time, with a great age untold,

Older than Clare and Cowper, Morland and Crome,

Than, at the field's far edge, the farmer's home,

A white house crouched at the foot of a great tree.

Under the heavens that know not what years be

The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements

Uttered even what they will in times far hence---

All of us gone out of the reach of change---

Immortal in a picture of an old grange.

About the Photographer In His Own Words

Vlad Dumitrescu

An introduction of my work should start with a short description of Romania. The magic of this country, lies in its landscapes and in its warm people that are living in villages from very close to the sea to the heart of the mountains. Every region has its own specific habits and its own stories, which are making together the beautiful book, called - Romania. Every season is turning slowly page by page from this book, over and over again, for thousands of years. You can still find in these villages carts run by oxen, people working at the looms or in the fields with horses.
I must say that I am very lucky to live in this country, but at the same time, I am sorry to see that day by day something is changing as the modernism is cutting deeper and deeper in our old traditions.
My aim is to find during my walks up and down and around the hills, valleys and villages of Romania, old people and forgotten habits and try to bring back into present something that was lost in the past. The Romanian village is my main motive because I love its people and its habits and because I see it dying.

To find more of Vlad Dumitrescu’s Warm and Engaging photographs of Romania please take a short trip over to 1x.com where you can see many of his photos or enjoy his wonderful blog at the url you see below!
http://vlad-dumitrescu.blogspot.com/ Vlad hails from Brasov, Romania.

Linked to Share the Joy Thursday. For Greater Joy visit Meri’s Musings.Wish her a happy birthday while you are there!

Haiku My Heart: Light of the World

2011-08-25T21:30:00.001-07:00

http://jon-atkinson.com/Black%20and%20White%20New.html

To See this Child Smile

Is to Have Reached Daybreak’s Edge

Drenched in Golden Light

~Noelle Renee 8.25.11

~~~

Morning Has Broken ~ Cat Stevens

Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens

For more phenomenal photographs by Jon Atkinson, Simply click on the link under his photo or on his name in blue here to go to his site where you will find breathtaking images from all over the world.

~~~

For more Haiku My Heart Posts, Please visit Recuerda mi Corazon where you will be warmly welcomed and regaled with beauty and poetry. What more could you ask?

Oasis Child

2011-08-23T22:33:00.001-07:00

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.“

(Christopher Robin to Pooh)

~A. A. Milne

Zebra

~lyrics by Beachhouse

You know you're gold*
You don't gotta worry none
Oasis child, born and so wild
Don't I know you better than the rest?
All deception, all deception from you
Your love is stag in the white sand
Wilderness for miles
Eyes so mild and wise
Don't I know you better than the rest?
All deception, all deception from you

Anyway you run
You run before us
Black and white horse
Arching among us
Anyway you run
You run before us
Black and white horse
Arching among us
Your love is stag in the white sand

Oasis child, born into a man
Don't I know you better than the rest?
All deception, all deception from you
Wilderness for miles
Eyes so mild and wise
Oasis child, born and so wild
Don't I know you better than the rest?
All deception, all deception from you

Anyway you run
You run before us
Black and white horse
Arching among us
Anyway you run
You run before us
Black and white horse
Arching among us

~~~~~~~~~

PS22 Chorus singing and alternate piano version of the Beachhouse lyrics

About the Photographer:

Firman Maulana Hails from Tasikmalaya, West Java, Indonesia. He is a phenomenally talented young man whose photos can be found on 1x.com.

Linked with Share the Joy Thursday at Meri’s Musings. Drop by for more moments of Joy.

One Family, One World: Postcards from Paradise

2011-08-21T13:35:00.001-07:00

IN SILENT NURTURE

IN MOMENTS OF UNSPEAKABLE LOVE

IN THE HAND OF HEALING COMFORT

courtesy of Rebecca Brooks @Recuerda mi Corazon

AND IN THE HOUR OF DESPAIR

www.sarmaritan’s purse.org

We are all one family,

one community

on this great, revolving globe

we call home.

We all deserve nurture,

love and comfort.

Please offer what love

and comfort you have

to our sisters and brothers

in the Horn of Africa.

UNICEF offers us this opportunity

right here, right now.

Don’t wait another day or another hour.

Just click on the picture below or the words in blue

TO DONATE to UNICEF.

or click on the picture below here or the word in blue to donate to SAMARITAN’S PURSE.

BLESSINGS AND PEACE,

Noelle Renee

Please visit Recuerda mi Corazon for more amazing Postcards

HANDS: Only Kindness Matters

2011-08-16T22:09:00.001-07:00

"Hands"
If I could tell the world just one thing
It would be that we're all OK
And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful
And useless in times like these
I won't be made useless
I won't be idle with despair
I will gather myself around my faith
For light does the darkness most fear
My hands are small, I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken
Poverty stole your golden shoes
It didn't steal your laughter
And heartache came to visit me
But I knew it wasn't ever after
We'll fight, not out of spite
For someone must stand up for what's right
'Cause where there's a man who has no voice
There ours shall go singing
My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
I am never broken
In the end only kindness matters
In the end only kindness matters
I will get down on my knees, and I will pray
I will get down on my knees, and I will pray
I will get down on my knees, and I will pray
My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken
My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken
We are never broken
We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's mind
We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's heart
We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's eyes
We are God's hands
We are God's hands

~Jewel

Jewel: Hands

FOOD CRISIS IN THE HORN OF AFRICA

Samaritan’s Purse is distributing tons of food staples to fight hunger in drought-stricken Kenya, near the Somali border

As famine spreads across the Horn of Africa, Samaritan's Purse is supplying food and other aid to thousands of hungry families and malnourished children.
More than 12 million people are in urgent need of food, water, and medical care in drought-stricken Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. Experts estimate that starvation and related diseases have already claimed the lives of over 29,000 children under age five. The United Nations is calling the crisis "the world's worst humanitarian disaster.”
Samaritan’s Purse has a team based in Garissa, Kenya, along the Somalia border, where we are distributing tons of maize, beans, corn-soy blend, cooking oil, and other necessities.

Our team—which includes experts in nutrition, healthcare, water, and sanitation—is reporting that these are some of the harshest conditions they ever have encountered.
“We drove to a local cattle market, and dead animals could be seen all along the road,” a staff member said. “At the market we spoke with local residents who said this is the worst drought they have experienced in living memory. They made a point to mention that ‘even the older generation has never seen a drought this bad.’ Many of the rural residents are flocking to town because of a lack of water and their diminishing animals stocks. At the market, there were several animals writhing on the ground, left to die because they were so badly off.”
Our emergency response includes plans to implement therapeutic care and supplemental feeding programs for malnourished children. In coordination with our local partners, we have identified sites for food distributions and therapeutic nutritional interventions.
In addition, Samaritan's Purse has launched a cash-for-work program in several villages. We are paying people to build latrines, which will help with health and hygiene conditions while providing some income in these poverty-stricken communities.
"If they are in desperate need, they can use the cash for food, but they can also use it for healthcare or other necessities," said Ruco Van Der Merwe, team leader for the response.
Clean water is another dire need. In some areas, only 20 percent of the families have access to safe drinking water. Many people are now forced to walk miles to reach a water source. As populations are shifting toward areas with better access to water, community resources are being severely strained. Our team is using tanker trucks to haul water to vulnerable villages while we identify longer-term solutions such as drilling boreholes.
“Water is such an issue,” said Zeke Rhodes, program officer. “We see women in the middle of nowhere waving their jerry cans, asking for water. It’s not unusual for people to walk 10-15 miles for water.”
The crisis in the Horn of Africa was brought on by two years of drought that is the worst in 60 years. Massive crop failure and loss of livestock have led to extreme food shortages in a region straddling Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia—a region that has been labeled the “triangle of death.”
As a result, hundreds of thousands of people without food and water have fled to makeshift camps in eastern Kenya looking for emergency aid. Many of the displaced are refugees from neighboring Somalia, who left their war-torn country in hopes of finding help over the border. Much of Somalia is controlled by a militant group, affiliated with al Qaeda, that has denied that a food shortage exists and threatened to maintain their ban on food aid.
“We saw a family with a donkey cart. It was a father and mother, an infant, and two daughters,” Rhodes said. “The girls were in bad shape, emaciated, but still able to walk. It was kind of a glimpse at the journey they’ve taken over the last couple of months. They’ve come a long way, and they’re going to a camp of half-a-million people in some of the most harsh environments you could imagine. It was very sobering.”
The camps in Kenya are overcrowded, and resources are stretched beyond capacity. Conditions aren’t much better outside the camps. Samaritan’s Purse church partners are finding households facing dire shortages of food and water.
Some of the worst hit counties include Wajir and Garissa, areas considered the focal point of the Somalia refugee influx. In these areas, particularly where Samaritan’s Purse partners are involved, there is limited government assistance and little help from other agencies.
Please pray for the people impacted by malnutrition and starvation, for our staff and church partners as they respond in the Name of Christ, that the conditions that are causing this catastrophic food shortage will end, and for God's help in meeting the overwhelming needs of the region.

*(Message Above Taken Directly from The Samaritan’s Purse Website).

Please Take a moment to watch this amazing short film to see what Samaritan’s Purse is doing in Kenya right now!

Here is a link on the Samaritan’s Purse site to some quite amazing photographs of the area that will give you a much better sense of what is taking place there right now.

You may find the link to this charity’s Financial Report Here.

In addition, a link to start a sports event or any special event and create a team page on Samaritan’s Purse to raise money for the project of your choice is right Here.

Open Your Heart, Your Hands and Your Eyes to What is Going on in Our World. According to statistics on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, this morning, 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are suffering from famine, 3.2 million, Somalis. We Are Not Alone. Children are Hungry and 29,000 Children under the age of Five are no Longer Alive because they have been claimed by Lack of proper Nutrition and the absence of Clean Water.

Be Mindful and Compassionate toward those who are Suffering. Starvation is not something you can hear or see until it actually happens and it is often too late. It is a silent killer. Today on NPR, I heard that there was a measles outbreak in several of the camps because Al-Shabaab disallowed children from getting vaccines, believing it was a Western plot. Something as simple as a vaccine can save many lives. Samaritan’s Purse also offers a World Medical Mission for doctors to volunteer on short-term mission trips. You may read more about this wonderful program Here.

Thank you for coming here and taking the time to read and watch. May Your lives be surrounded by Kindness and Compassion Every day,

Noelle Renee

My Thanks to Istvan Kerekes for his amazing photograph. Istvan, you bless me with your images and I am so grateful for them. I am also grateful for Jewel’s beautiful song, “Hands”.

Postcards from Paradise: SMILE

2011-08-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

Little Family © István Kerekes

Smile

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it's breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll see the sun come shining through for you
Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

~Nat King Cole

Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” with Michael Jackson’s “Smile” accompanying.

Story behind this photo from Istvan Kerekes:

The boy in the background is the one on my After Dinner ( featured in a previous post). The girl answering the door is his little sister. The room you can see on Little Family is their home, it is the one and only room in their hut. No running water, no electricity....The father is a shepherd (the mother left them) and he has to leave their children alone every day because of his job. So the two children spend their days together, alone on the edge of a forest with no neighbours. When I think about them my heart breaks because I also have two children and I can't image them living like that. :-(

In his Own Words:

~Istvan Kerekes

*image posted with kind permission of Istvan Kerekes
Linked to Postcards from Paradise: Please visit Recuerda mi Corazon for more fascinating postcards and insights.

The Wearer of Shadows

2011-08-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

My shadow leaps on me
each time I sleep
to devour me.
Yet still my mornings
find me whole
and at each waking
there my shadow hangs
like an empty pull-over
against my wall -
wholly at my disposal.
Rogan Wolf
April 1994

Dans l’ombre

Un film noir avec des ombres.
A film noir with shadows. (English subtitles).
Narrateur : Roger Candy.
Ecrit et réalisé par Fabrice Mathieu.

The Storyline: A shadow is telling its life story with his "Wearer", a flesh and bone double, who one day it decides to get rid of...

About The Photographer:

Istvan Kerekes

In his Own Words:

I have been a photographer since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images.One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “the good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.

~Istvan Kerekes

*image posted with kind permission of Istvan Kerekes

When Art Becomes Life

2011-08-10T21:00:00.001-07:00

Cloudy Bell Jar

by Delilah Miller

Someone remind me it's a beautiful life;
even if it's the ground keeping you the right way up.
Trip yourself, pat down yourself, unwind yourself and brush off yourself.
I do it all like I've done for everyone else.
The bubble of loneliness always seems ready to pop
while I try to give it a happier name,
As in art, light and movement persist to never stay the same,
Watching summer fade out of my skin
and my eyes and the air I breathe.
Still the ground's under me

and I'm under a huge cloudy bell jar.

England riots: Tariq Jahan, father of Haroon Jahan, one of the three people killed in Birmingham, speaks to the media. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP ~guardian.co.uk 8/2011. Link to story is Here

‘I don’t want you to fight.

I’m lost for words. Go home please,

go home.’

~Tariq Jahan , father of one of the murder victims, addresses the crowd desiring revenge for the deaths of the three in Birmingham.

‘It doesn’t matter what colour you are.

For anyone to lose a son is sad.

I’m just praying that nothing more happens tonight.’

~Carol White, 50, a black mother of four who has lived in Winson Green all her life.

More on this story Here

Although these are not quite haikus, I thought that the words of Haroon’s father and some observers of the scene were powerful enough to stand as such.

Linked to Haiku My Heart. For more Haikus Please visit Recuerda mi Corazon. Thank you.

About the Photographer:

Heather Buckley Photography

I simply love photography. Since I gave up commercial photography and just do it for the love of it, I probably do even more! I would take on a commission if it really excited me so do get in touch if you think it will – but right now I am really happy just taking images, experimenting with style and processing and having some fun.

I do sell my images of course and you are free to browse the gallery – images are available as prints, canvasses and downloads.

*Photo of London Busker South bank published with author permission.

Lost

2011-08-07T01:14:00.001-07:00

The only chance this Romanian boy, living in extreme poverty has for dinner is a glass of milk taken from cows who return home in the evening having spent the day in the fields...This plastic cup is the only cup in the household... ~Istvan Kerekes

Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
~ David Wagoner ~

(Riverbed)

To understand how to help change child poverty and hunger in Romania, please click on the link HERE.

Istvan Kerekes, In his Own Words:

I have been dealing with photography since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images.One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “the good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.

~Istvan Kerekes

*image posted with kind permission of Istvan Kerekes
Linked to Postcards from Paradise: Please visit Recuerda mi Corazon for more fascinating postcards and insights.

Haiku My Heart: Mayda

2011-08-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

The Heart is not laid bare,

When Little is offered for

The Soul’s protection.

~Noelle Renee 8/4/11

The Iguana

by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
from Out of Africa

In the reserve I have sometimes come upon the iguanas, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring.

They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green, and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.

Once I shot an iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale; all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the iguana was as dead as a sandbag.

Often since I have, in some sort, shot an iguana, and I have remembered the one in the Reserve. Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue, and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my own arm than it gave up the ghost. It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the duet between the turquoise and the 'nègre' -- that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native's skin -- that had created the life of the bracelet. *

In the Zoological Museum of Pietermaritzburg, I have seen, in a stuffed deep-water fish in a showcase, the same combination of colouring, which there had survived death; it made me wonder what life can well be like, on the bottom of the sea, to send up something so live and airy. I stood in Meru and looked at my pale hand and at the dead bracelet. It was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in a book that I had read as a child: "I have conquered them all, but I am standing among graves."

(Dinesen’s story is of course about Kenya)

More information on the Colonization of West Africa and its long term consequences Here and the culture of Mali Here.

The Following video needs little introduction: K’Naan’s “Wavin Flag”. K’Naan hails from Somalia originally, a land that is currently seeing a world of struggle.

The Bozo People

The Bozo are a West African ethnic group located predominantly along the Niger River in Mali. The name Bozo is thought to derive from Bambara bo-so, 'Bamboo house'; the people accept it as referring to the whole of the ethnic group but use more specific clan names such as Sorogoye,Hain, and Tieye themselves. They are famous for their fishing and are Bozo languages).occasionally referred to as the "masters of the river." Their languages, belonging to the Soninke-Bozo subgroup of Northwestern Mande languages, have traditionally been considered dialects of one language, though in reality there are at least four distinct varieties (see Rock drawings linked to the Bozo area date back as far as 6,000 years, but many aspects of Bozo culture took shape under the 10th century Ghana Empire, when the Bozo took possession of the banks of the Niger. The Bozo were the founders of the Malian cities of Djenné and Mopti.

Though the Bozo are predominantly Muslim, they preserve a number of animist traditions as well. Their animal totem is the bull, whose body represents the Niger and whose horns represent the Bozo fishing pirogues.

Present-day Mali was once part of three West African empires that controlled trans-Saharan trade: the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire (from which Mali is named), and the Songhai Empire. In the late 19th century, during the Scramble for Africa, France seized control of Mali making it a part of French Sudan. French Sudan (then known as the Sudanese Republic) joined with Senegal in 1959, achieving independence in 1960 as the Mali Federation. Shortly thereafter, following Senegal's withdrawal from the federation, the Sudanese Republic declared itself the independent Republic of Mali. After a long period of one-party rule, a 1991 coup led to the writing of a new constitution and the establishment of Mali as a democratic, multi-party state. About half the population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.^[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_people

_______________________________________________________________

About the Photographer:

Carlos Duarte hails from Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. His favorite interests are, travel and, of course, photography ~ mainly social, portrait and landscape photography, where he sees very clear connections. You may find his exquisite photos on 1x.com and also on his extraordinary blog. His travels led him to Africa, where he spent nine days in Mali and had the good fortune to photograph ‘Mayda’ which won a prestigious award from an international National Geographic contest. Africa “catches you,” he says on his blog. If you look at Carlos’s work you can see the beauty of his images and the love that went into creating them, even the ones that show struggle and pain. We should all be grateful for such artists among us.

_______________________________________________

Finally, for more Haiku My Heart, Please visit dear rebecca’s blog at recuerda mi corazon where you may find both compassion and a sense of true belonging wherever you are in your life journey.

Song of Tanzania

2011-07-31T11:14:00.000-07:00

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?

I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.

Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

~ “Song” by Rilke ~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One Photographer’s Journey

Nicolino Sapio and children of Arusha

The photos you see above were taken by Nicolino Sapio in Arusha, a city in Northern Tanzania as part of a project to raise funds for Compassion.com, a highly respected and well established charity organization that helps children in 26 countries, who are in great need. Compassion International exists as a Christian child advocacy ministry that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become happier, and more fulfilled adults with a brighter future ahead of them.

One very satisfying way that you may connect with these children and donate to this worthy cause is to sponsor a child in need. Children in African countries, in particular, suffer the loss of parents to HIV/AIDS, and many children are left without food, medical help or care. By sponsoring a child, you can maintain a continued connection with that child and know his or her progress in the program and in his life in general. You may find information on how to become a sponsor Here.

Compassion.com also offers a program to Meet Critical Needs such as: health and medical, educational, and disaster relief and stability needs. A one-time or monthly donation can be made to this program to help many children. You may find out more about how to help Here.

If you make the compassionate and wise decision to donate or to sponsor a child, please add to Nicolino’s and my blessings by returning to this blog to tell us or emailing me personally. My email is listed on the blog. Thank you.

Peace and Light,

Noelle Renee

Linked to Postcards from Paradise. For More wonderful Postcards Please visit rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon. Rebecca is one of the most compassionate people I know.

*All photographs are published here with permission of Nicolino Sapio.

Happy Together

2011-07-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

I have become the best and worst I dreamed.
When I move my feet, the ground moves under them.
When I lie down, I fit the earth too well.
Stones long underwater will burst in the fire, but stones
Long in the sun and under the dry night
Will ring when you strike them. Or break in two.
There were always many places to beg for answers:
Now the places themselves have come in close to be told.
I have called even my voice in close to whisper with it:
Every secret is as near as your fingers.
If your heart stutters with pain and hope,
Bend forward over it like a man at a small campfire.

~ David Wagoner ~

(Excerpt from “Old Man, Old Man”)

The Story of this Photograph: This man and his wife live in Transylvania in a village called Nagykede where the population is only 19. The couple spends the summers in this small village, but in autumn they move back to the city. They are both around 80 ( the husband is 82 and the wife is 78 to be more precise) and, as you can see, they have been living happily together for many, many years. ~(Photographer’s narrative).

Istvan Kerekes, In his Own Words:

I have been dealing with photography since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images.
One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “the good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.

~Istvan Kerekes

*image posted with kind permission of Istvan Kerekes

Haiku My Heart: To Build a Life

2011-07-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

Stones Shaped like Bread Loaves

Form Steps for Hungry Souls Who

Stretch toward Heaven.

~Noelle Renee 7.20.11

“The moment of transformation, when one thing turns into another, is the most beautiful.”

~ Vik Muniz, Artist (From his documentary Waste Land).

To understand the lives of women who work in the construction industry in India, please read Here and Here.

About the Photographer:

Robert hails from Germany and spends much of his time photographing in various parts of India. This photograph of a female construction worker was captured in Jamshedpur. You may find much more of Robert’s deeply engrossing and beautiful work on his website and also on 1x.com.

For more glorious Haiku Magic and community connection, please visit recuerda mi corazon where rebecca will be delighted to greet you!

Bubble Up Monk

2011-07-18T21:22:00.001-07:00

Poems in Three Parts

1
Oh on an early morning I think I shall live forever!
I am wrapped in my joyful flesh
As the grass is wrapped in its clouds of green.
2
Rising from a bed where I dreamt
Of long rides past castles and hot coals
The sun lies happily on my knees;
I have suffered and survived the night
Bathed in dark water like any blade of grass.
3
The strong leaves of the box-elder tree
Plunging in the wind call us to disappear
Into the wilds of the universe
Where we shall sit at the foot of a plant
And live forever like the dust.

~Robert Bly

Story Behind the Photograph From the Photographer:

Bubble up Monk took place within the Angkor Wat Complex out side of Siem Reap at night. This young monk is plainly in the middle of a bath, standing up. I was interested in the Monks because there are Elders that are functioning as leaders. During the Killing Fields that took place 34 years back, the monks were forced to denounce Buddhism or die. Many of the elder Monks died.

As the reconstruction of Cambodia continues to build many young people have taken to the orange robes for survival being that work, food, and a place to live in can be scarce and the world beyond the community, lawless. One might become a monk because there is no other alternative or place of refuge. In fact if there is a better option many move out and explore it, but then when all fails they re-enter the order.

Buddhism today is a community of young boys learning the rights and wrongs Buddha ordained as proper conduct. A new shaved head and removal of all facial hair is a symbolic welcoming moment back in to the Buddhist order. Being a teenager with raging hormones is not an easy path without adult guidance. But in a community aging between 4 to 24, much is questioned and worked out for the good.

~Wings

About the Photographer

Wings hails from New York in the United States. You may find his work on 1x.com.

I’ve come to realize that my art has diversity with powerful individual vision, that chronicles the life of individuals. People draw me into their lives to tell their story to anyone willing to listen and validate their reason for living. My attraction to story telling grew as my life developed behind a camera. I discovered that its not how a photographer looks at the world that is important, its their relationship with their fellow human beings and these moments of connectivity that are frozen in time for all to see. Last thought for the photographer, "Whatever you look to see outside, is waiting inside you".

~Wings

Hope is Bright

2011-07-16T23:34:00.001-07:00

The Rider

(For Will)

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,
the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.
What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.
A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.
~The Rider by Naomi Shihab Nye

My Thanks to Paulo Cruz for sharing this poem. I love all of Naomi Shihab Nye’s work. She is a jewel. Click on her name to learn more about her.

Linked with Postcards from Paradise. visit Rebecca’s blog for more beautiful posts!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Istvan Kerekes, (The Photographer) In his Own Words:

I have been dealing with photography since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images.
One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “the good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.

~Istvan Kerekes

Haiku My Heart: Soul Protector

2011-07-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

Tr. “Look After Younger Siblings.”

No Stable or Star

Wise Foreign Kings Bear No Gifts

She Hums Lullabies

~Noelle Renee 7.14.11

About the Photographer:

Adhi Prayoga hails from Mataram, Indonesia.

Adhi’s hobby is photography and he aspires to be a professional. He seems to be well on his way. Currently, he works a regular job in a family business trading motorcycle parts.

The Story of this Photo:

While Adhi was cycling one day up in one of the remote Indonesian villages called love-love gunungsari west Lombok, he happened upon this young girl looking after her young brother while her mother was away at work. Their mother works all day, breaking stones for building materials and they are a very poor family. He took the picture and captured the love of this young girl for her brother and her early responsibility forever.

You may find this photograph on 1x.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For more haiku my heart visit rebecca at

recuerda mi corazon, a beautiful place to be.

For What Binds Us

2011-07-14T00:11:00.001-07:00

Silence © Dragomir Vukovic 2011 with kind permission ~ (couple pictured here had been together for 50 years),

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down --
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest --

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

~ Jane Hirschfield ~

(Of Gravity & Angels)

About the Photographer:

Dragomir Vukovic hails from Portland, Oregon. You may find his work on his personal website. You may also find his fine photographs at fotocommunity.com and finally, of course, on 1x.com. His black and white photographs are incredibly beautiful and there are hours of enjoyment to be had visiting his site.

On his website you find the following information:

Dragomir Vukovic

OCCUPATION:

Mixed with 1

FAVORITE CAMERA:

Canon EOS 1V

FAVORITE SUBJECTS:

Every-Thing

FAVORITE JOURNAL:

I am That / Nisargadatta Maharaj

FAVORITE VACATION SPOT:

India, Cuba, Brazil, B.C., Utah...

PERSONAL MOTTO:

Listen To See IT, Look To Hear IT

Whatever you are looking to see outside, is waiting inside

FATE

2011-07-13T00:21:00.001-07:00

I Wish You Knew

I wish you knew that~no matter what~ someone loves you,
I wish you knew what you mean to the world,
I wish you knew how perfect you are,
I wish you knew you aren't alone,
I wish you knew that there's nothing wrong with you,
I wish you knew how much the world loves you the way you are.

~Written by Shadow Knight

10 years old

~published here with permission and my thanks

(first published on Heaven’s Cry)

About the Photographer~

Istvan Kerekes hails from Kazincbarcika, Hungary.You will find all of his phenomenal photos on his website . The photo above and a number of other fine Kerekes photos can also be found at 1x.com. Please visit Istvan’s website for a more complete sense of his portfolio. You will find the site magical and have great difficulty tearing yourself away from the beauty of the photographic work within. I certainly did. My thanks to Istvan Kerekes for this stunning portrait.

In the Photographer’s Own Words ~

I have been dealing with photography since 2007. My favourite subject is The Man. I would like to show the souls behind the faces. Everyone has feelings, everybody loves and breathes. My subjects are usually ordinary people. My main aim is to show their personalities through my images.
One of William Albert Allard’s thoughts on photos and photography is just like mine, I truly believe in it: “the good portrait is about the eye, the look, since the human soul is reflected in it the most purely.”When taking photos it is my heart that leads me. After I have tuned to the subject I act instinctively.

~Istvan Kerekes

Living Life with Compassion

2011-07-09T10:08:00.001-07:00

The Quiet Heart Views

The World through Empty Windows

Hoping to Be Seen.

~N.R. 7.8.11

At the World’s Center

Stands a Child Waiting for Love

to Transform Darkness.

~N.R. 7.8.11

Nicolino Sapio and children of Arusha

The photos you see above were taken by Nicolino Sapio in Arusha, a city in Northern Tanzania as part of a project to raise funds for Compassion.com, a highly respected and well established charity organization that helps children in 26 countries, who are in great need. “Compassion International exists as a Christian child advocacy ministry that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become responsible, fulfilled adults.”

One very satisfying way that you may connect with these children and donate to this worthy cause is to sponsor a child in need. Children in African countries, in particular, suffer the loss of parents to HIV/AIDS, and many children are left without food, medical help or care. By sponsoring a child, you can maintain a continued connection with that child and know his or her progress in the program. You may find information on how to become a sponsor Here.

Peace and Light,

Noelle Renee

Linked to Haiku My Heart. For More wonderful Haikus Please visit rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon. Rebecca is one of the most compassionate people I know

Love’s Journey

2011-07-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

Mother & Child ~ Himba tribal group Namibia, Africa

Photographer Notes: A young Himba woman from Northern Namibia, Africa nurtures a small child.

The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,

they're in each other all along.

From Essential Rumi

trans. by Coleman Barks

Alastair McNaughton Photographer.

Photographer’s Notes: A Himba woman from Northern Namibia, Africa.

Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky

And you lift me up out of the two worlds.

I want your sun to reach my raindrops,

So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.

~Rumi

From Thief of Sleep

trans. by Shahram Shiva

About - Alastair McNaughton
Australian Photographer

Alastair McNaughton's passions are people, travel and photography. Born in England in 1949, he now resides in Fremantle in Western Australia (just south of Perth WA).
Alastair's love of travel and getting to know indigenous peoples culture has led him all over the world.
Photography is the perfect medium for Alastair's creativity and has led to many major photographic awards & prizes.

Alastair McNaughton
Photographic Equipment

The Cameras used for the Photography presented in these Original Photographic Art Prints were NIKON F3 & FM2 with prime lenses 24mm/ 35mm/ 105mm Nikkor lenses.
The film stock used is T-Max 100asa & 400asa.
Alastair doesn't work with a flash, preferring natural light. As a photographer, he practices extreme patience and uses film sparingly, awaiting opportunities to capture an experience perfectly.

~ Images Posted With Kind Permission of the Photographer.

~linked to Postcards from Paradise with Recuerda mi Corazon.

Becoming A Man

2011-06-26T13:08:00.001-07:00

Making of a man..
Umkhwetha, a Xhosa initiate into manhood..
When winter makes its first hint of arrival at the Cape, then Xhosa boys prepare themselves to become men.
They prepare to become bakhwetha, initiates who undergo a series of trials in the wilderness of the Eastern Cape (or, in Cape Town, on plots of land that border the N2 highway) - trials that culminate in circumcision.
Come June, with winter at its coldest and wettest, the stories start to appear in the newspapers: the stories that tell of boys who didn't make it into manhood. Instead, they died, or were mutilated, because their operations were botched. We saw the stories last year and will again this year. However, the option of staying uncircumcised is impractical if you live among Xhosas.
Even in his book Long Walk To Freedom Nelson Mandela comments on how a Xhosa man who has not been circumcised is a paradox, because he is still viewed as a boy. Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Narrative written by David Chancellor from http://www.davidchancellor.com/docs/photos.php?id=2:7

You may find more photos of this ritual on the above site. They are more graphic in detail.

About the Photographer:

Andre du Plessis hails originally from central South Africa and currently resides in the U.K. (London) where he works in private practice as a Physician with a unique Anesthesiology Specialty. His great love for photography began when he was a young boy of five, and has remained with him steadily since. The great motivator for his photographic adventures is never knowing where they will lead him. When asked about the spontaneity of his “Street Shoots” with regard to his South African series he responded in this way:

“In general, my subjects are people I do not know; in essence they are strangers to me at first. My objective is that the images I take of these people become something that transcends this void, and perhaps bridges any distance between us. When I look at these photos afterwards, although these people might be strangers, I want the photo to express that I feel a kinship, an understanding, and that respect for one another is tangible.”

~Andre du Plessis (bio)

Added Note from Andre on Photographing Vincent:

Wonderful how you have constructed the story around this image Noelle. My own memory of this image was very special. I was traveling back from Knysna, the next coastal town down the N2, and saw this young man in the bushes as I was approaching Plettenberg Bay. The Mkwetha needs to stay away from all during this fortnight of initiation, so I was a bit hesitant to approach. However, my curiosity and wish to meet him, and photograph him, became the better, and I turned in at the township of Kwanekothule, struck up a conversation with a boy of about 18, and told him that I want to go and meet (and photograph) this man painted white that I saw.
let me say that the Mkwetha is not something unfamiliar to me. They have been part of my life since I can remember. Ever-present in any green fields outside the perimeter of any Eastern Cape city. When I played golf as a teenager, they will emerge from the bush trying to sell golf balls that they picked up. However, if there was a female present, they will not show face, as any contact with females are prohibited during this period of attaining manhood.
This is Vincent. he is 17, from the township of Kwanekothule, and in his final year at high school. he had some fellow Xhosa boys sharing his experience and camping out with him, but when I visited, they had already left. Their transformation was done, and they had re-integrated back into their soceity, albeit as men.
I saw the burnt-out patches of where their lean-to's were - they have to burn everything that sustained them for the two weeks. Shelter, cooking utensils, bedding - everything.
It is also demanded that they are welcomed back into the society with a bang:) Huge party, and the slaughter of some animal, and the words of some elder to proclaim them as wholesome and a man.
What is so special about this for me is that my house is a mere 10 km down the road, where I relax with broadband, can do online shopping, and insist on Balsamic vinegar on my salad leaves.
Yet 10 km before that place that I call my house, I can turn off the road and be transported into something so distant, so honest and so African, and so enriching.
When I spoke to Vincent he was awaiting word back from the college in Knysna where he applied for training as an IT specialist. I have lost contact with him; however, within the next few weeks I shall be traveling down there and I have promised myself that I shall re-establish contact with him, hear how his studies are going, and hand him some prints.
I have his contact details written down, but that little book is not with me now.
Hopefully I shall be able to post again here to tell you how Vincent is, and I shall ask him how he reflects on this Mkwetha time of his.

~Andre

Indaba

The One who is Rightfully Yours

Photographer Profile: Louise Fryer

After the Thaw from Paul Frederick

Kiss–A Love Story

A Kiss is Still a Kiss…

BRIEFLY… A PHOTOGRAPHY-CENTRIC BIO

Supple Cord ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

somewhere I have never travelled

The Spirit of Christmas ~ Haiku My Heart

In Times of Peace ~Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip

Marred, Lovely and Flawed

Prayer in My Boot ~ Robert Larson Images

~Naomi Shihab Nye

Yet They Behold The World

Narcissus

Narcissus – Poem by Jane Hirschfield

Introduction

Your Life Bends Down and Kisses Your Life

Introduction

Someone Saved My Life Tonight

Introduction

Nurture

About the Photographer:

Blindman shooting

The Way In ~ (Prayer For Amy)

Hands of Love

Transcendence

Broken Cord

A Fight For Her Grandchildren Mirrors A Native Past

Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families

American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many

American Indian School a Far Cry from the Past

About the Photographer:

Blindman shooting

Oh Sweetest Song

Chop Wood, Carry Water

Yellow Glove

Automat © 1927 Edward Hopper

Yellow Glove

Haiku My Heart ~ Just Like Me

~noelle renee 9.29.11

A Sense of Belonging

About Arnestad Photography

Haiku My Heart: A Waggly Tail

Act Great ~ FDNY Battalion 9 Memorial ~ 9/11/2011

The Canticle of the Grange

Haiku My Heart: Light of the World

Oasis Child

One Family, One World: Postcards from Paradise

HANDS: Only Kindness Matters

FOOD CRISIS IN THE HORN OF AFRICA

Postcards from Paradise: SMILE

The Wearer of Shadows

When Art Becomes Life

Cloudy Bell Jar

Heather Buckley Photography

Lost

Haiku My Heart: Mayda

Song of Tanzania

Happy Together

Haiku My Heart: To Build a Life

Bubble Up Monk

Hope is Bright

Haiku My Heart: Soul Protector

For What Binds Us

FATE

Living Life with Compassion

Love’s Journey

About - Alastair McNaughtonAustralian Photographer

Alastair McNaughtonPhotographic Equipment

Becoming A Man

About - Alastair McNaughton
Australian Photographer

Alastair McNaughton
Photographic Equipment