SoCal Hitch

Bravo to the gentleman in this picture for adding some creative flair to an out-of-date past time. And while I do think that the average Southern California driver would gladly take a chance on a hitchhiker over sitting in freeway traffic, sadly most of the carpool lanes that I frequent are just as stagnant as the other gridlocked lanes.

21st Century Gabriel: Lavie's "Morning Elegance"

I found this Oren Lavie video in a Mental Health Break post on Andrew Sullivan's site, and I love it. It strikes me as a 21st century take on woman with a classic Peter Gabriel video feel.

Her Morning Elegance

A Poem for 2009

The following is a poem written by my dad that he asked if I would post :)

Echoes

Little shoes clicking, clicking on the marble floor
Beneath the Great Dome

Footfalls of two little girls
Louder than a 21 gun salute

Little shoes clicking, clicking
Truer than a promise kept

Little shoes clicking, clicking
Footprints on the heart of a Nation

Little echoes rising, rising
Beyond the dizzying height of the Great Dome

Four little girls listening, listening
Hearing the echoes rising, rising

Four little girls in white dresses
Home from church at last

Four little girls in white dresses home at last
Beneath the Great Dome

Aretha . . . Warren?

A follow up to the Inauguration Gigapan:

I was just fooling around with the zoom feature on this again and decided to zoom in and look for Aretha Franklin's face by combing the group behind Obama for that big bow hat that she wore that day.

Interestingly, I've found that the picture that was taken for the gigapan view has some incomplete faces here and there, and in this case you can see the majority of Aretha's face mounted directly above the lower half of Rick Warren's face. This gave me quite a chuckle for many reasons--mostly though because his face is pretty much cut out and hers put it its place.

So out of R-E-S-P-E-C-T for the First Lady of Soul, here's an unfettered shot of her that day!

Inaugural Gigapan

Whoa! I think I can tell what color eyes the secret service posted on the far rooftops have. Very cool.

OBAMA INAUGURATION ZOOM CAM

(You can zoom in and out and adjust the angle using the tool on the left or by using your mouse wheel. Give it a second or two to refocus after you zoom in.)

BBC Interview with Former Little Rock Niner

There's quite a bit of good stuff out on the web today in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

I thought this was a pretty simple but poignant piece from the BBC:

Three Generations: Little Rock to Obama

Great Minds Think Alike

And sure enough, Zingerman's already stole my idea. Three cheers for BARACK-Y ROAD GELATO in honor of inauguration day!

Obama in your Freezer

I was kind of hoping for Barack-y Road, but I think the collective spirit of this one is probably more appropriate.

NEW BEN & JERRY'S AVAILABLE NOW!

Beach People Make Art

I can't seem to find the date that this picture was taken or what the occasion was, but it's really lovely.

A recreation of Picasso's Motherhood formed by people on the beach in Santa Monica. Photo was taken for the Los Angeles Times by Myung J. Chun.

Celebrating Charles and Abe

February 12th of this year will mark the 200th anniversaries of the birthdays of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. In honor of what is bound to be some serious bicentennial brouhaha, I plan to (or will attempt to) read and post a little something from them or about them each day this year.

To start things off, I've reopened my tattered copy of Darwin's autobiography from my Victorian autobiography class at Berkeley, complete with the neon green Ned's Used Book price sticker still on the cover.

Here is a little snippet from the first chapter written almost exactly 101 years before my own birth. It is titled, May 31st, 1876, Recollections of the Development of my mind and character.

"I may here also confess that as a little boy I was much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and this was always done for the sake of causing excitement. For instance, I once gathered much valuable fruit from my Father's trees and hid them in the shrubbery, and then ran in breathless haste to spread the news that I had discovered a hoard of stolen fruit."

An interesting footnote was also added to this anecdote by his son, Francis. It reads,

"His Father wisely treated this tendency not by making
crimes of fibs, but by making light of the discoveries."

A rather significant distinction it seems in light of the life and career that followed.

Two days in, and some questionable omens

One tends to read a great deal into the littlest of things when it comes to the start of the new year, don't you think?

January 2, 2009
Causes for concern:

1) I had 9 days off and made very little progress on my fellowship application.

2) I vowed to run everyday this year, however briefly, and then left my gym bag sitting by the door when I walked out of the house this morning.

3) I just spilled my tea all over my "To Do" list and my mouse at work.

4) I'm already blogging instead of doing my work.