tuesday blahs

at least we can paint while we wait for school to resume

the teacher lockout continues in this country. if the government hadn't locked them out, they would have gone on strike, so it's sort of a six of one, half dozen of the other sort of thing. the teachers gather and "demonstrate" with smiles on their faces and lattes or beers in hand, hanging out with their friends in the sunshine on the squares of the cities around denmark. i'm not even entirely sure what the dispute is about and i frankly have read quite a number of articles about it. something about not having their preparation time dictated to them (or taken away from them). as it is, they spend only 16 hours in the classroom actually teaching our kids. that seems like not very much to me.

but most surprising is the utter lack of outrage. parents have begun to complain that they don't have any child care options (many are taking their kids with them to work). i haven't heard a single parent who was concerned that their kids are missing out on three weeks of their education and the implications of that. no, it's as if school is a babysitter where you park your kids while you go to work and when you can't do that, what do you do?

maybe it's just that it clouded up again today and was windy and intermittently the sky spat at us, but i feel a little disappointed in people. where are their priorities? where is the outrage? doesn't anyone care about anything anymore?

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when tragedies like the bombings at yesterday's boston marathon happen, the whole internet is awash with sympathy and photos and opinions. and i have a hard time relating to it. i've never been to boston. i've never run a marathon. i don't know a single person who was involved. it all feels very far away (which, in actuality, it is) and remote from my safe little corner of the world. there's nothing i can do about it. i don't have any answers. and it strikes me that people are killed in tragic circumstances all over the world on a daily basis and we don't go nuts on twitter about it. why is one place's tragedy more worthy of attention than all of the others? i'm sorry about what happened in boston, but i feel quite helpless to do, or even feel, anything about it.

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love lisa congdon's nordic adventure occasional series.

i think i need to assign myself a project.

taking a stand

sometimes you just have to take a stand. i've just unsubscribed from a number of blogs because they don't allow sharing on pinterest. this wasn't an easy decision, because it includes blogs i love, like spirit cloth and resurrection fern. now that pinterest has responded to the masses and changed their terms of service, there is no reason for this. if you're blogging your work  - you're putting it out there to be seen (unless i've completely misunderstood blogging). one of the very best ways to be seen is on pinterest. so for me, to hoard one's blog (or flickr) photos is to completely go against the very sharing spirit that is blogging. and i won't be part of it anymore. and while i respect the right of artists to protect their work, i would rather do without those blogs in my reader than support an unsharing spirit. and let's face it, a photo of the work is not the work itself, so you might argue that the work is quite safe.

to add to my righteous indignation (something of which i'm not proud, as righteousness is one of my biggest pet peeves), a couple of the people whose blogs i unfollowed (i haven't listed them all above) are ON pinterest, pinning away themselves! the nerve! they have no problem curating the work of others, but don't want theirs to be curated. how does that work?

i personally have received so much more (exposure and even income) from a spirit of sharing and openness than i would ever have gotten had i blocked everything and kept it all to myself.  my photos wouldn't be part of an article on slate or a lithuanian tourism website or in a ted talk or featured on apartment therapy or available on getty images (those are the only ones that i changed from a creative commons non-commercial license on flickr, due to getty requirements) if i hadn't been willing to share them.

i intend to continue to cull such blogs from my reader as i come across them. i'm just one person and it probably won't at all make the least bit of difference to the non-sharers, but i feel it's worth taking a stand. it's the only way to keep the interwebs free and open, as they were intended.

EDITED:  i should add that i am not talking here about photography or photos that people have for sale as photos - i'm talking about pictures of quilts and stones and garlands and vats of dye. not having photos which are for sale proliferated on pinterest is something else entirely. and many photographers have sites which are set up so they can't be tumbled or pinned - and i have no objection to that.