Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Little Dove -- I am not Feeding Her

For a bird that's had its sticks tossed out twice, she's proving more stubborn than me.

I'm not feeding her.

The cat may have to stay indoors when he visits.

Resident Dove

This guy (?) has settled in.

What is it about my little place that say, "home"?

I've tossed out his sticks twice, and he's back with Big Mate planting herself on the railing below (I don't know where she's hanging out, but it's not the same planter, thank God).

Uh oh . . . maybe it is the same planter.

I can't watch it all day.

Grumble.

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Just stepped out on the balcony; chased him off; attached wind chimes to the bottom of the basket.

Felt like crap watching the two of them, homeless, hanging out on a tree limb.

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Poured a cup of coffee.

Cooked an egg (so much less fortunate a bird).

Looked out the window: the two have returned.

They're going to destroy the pansies and have little doves out there.

I know it!

The Garden This Year

It had been a hard winter--cold, much rain, girl, cat, 850-square-feet of floor space and much living and working in it.  At the end, I missed . . . a lot of things and most of all space, freedom, time. 

Anne has moved to the south side of town.

I have made it my mission to continue distilling my arts and bringing new order to my place.

In photography, quite soon, the fine art mission may be the one that lifts my boat.  The series at Antietam will tell.

In living: this year's garden has so far cost about $30, a little more than the cost of a dinner out, for a spring basket, above, two English ivy plants, a fern, a six-pack of Begonia, and a fistful of Viola.

Surviving the winter, miraculously: Dusty Miller, yellow Pansies, possibly Rosemary (although I bought a new plant and gave it its own container), Sage (no question: there's new growth in that plant), and possibly Thyme, which I've pared back to stubble (and also bought and planted not far from last year's a new "German Thyme").

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Art - Leisure - Work

As a Mustang owner (2000, v6, Silver), I've made it a point to not put on the calendar the sort of gig--say, as a music act or wedding photographer--where not showing up would be a disaster.

Where other, heavier vehicles and 4-wheel-drive units may brave heavy snow and some ice, I'm wary of the suffering involved if the drive should take a slippery turn. 

Business and interviews that may be put off on account of weather are another matter.

Still, from January to March, from darkness and freezing rains into near spring snowfall and still bitter days, one may work on catalog, as I do, and read at length, which I think a necessity.

Freedom of mind, academic freedom, freedom to follow one's curiosity and do so not only by flitting across the web but also by sitting on a bed thoroughly involved in a long book: such things should be the province of many, not a few.

Today is a good day for that.

I have work to do by way of advertising and promoting my photography, but I have also time for Aperture and Black and White, two of the art magazines in photography.

Also recently arrived: the companion to The Arab Mind, scholar Raphael Patai's The Jewish Mind.  What's fair is fair--having given much time to the former, I feel obligated to provide the same to the latter.

Photography, Local Economics, World Peace

"Balance" was not a term that came up often, if at all, during my studies of the psychology of discretionary time--or "leisure"--in the University of Maryland's then Department of Outdoor Recreation, a part of the College of Health and Human Services.  It was through that experience that I found Maslow, and then through Maslow's philosophy found my way back to an English department, at UMD the "Department of English Language and Literature."

How I have for so long managed to juggle interests in the fine, literary, and performing arts along the lines of "writer, photographer, musician" and sub-definitions like, "editor and writer" or "copywriter" or "journalist" . . . well, the life wants for balance.

Those have followed my little arc know of the death of the parents, which harvest by God completed early in 2004, a bit of wrangling in the family over money, giving up on one girl and finding another (who is here), an apartment building fire on Feb. 3, 2006 in Laurel, Maryland, where I had lived for 15 years, and a move to what I like to call the "Santa Barbara of the D.C. area--specifically, Hagerstown, Maryland USA.

I moved up here as a photographer, and so be it, but "cookie cutting" that business to fit preconceived notions about photographers proves another challenge.  The few things I know: I have, can, and will continue to shoot weddings.  If you're not rich and can do it, you do it as "high wire" and pressured an engagement as it may be. 

I know too that I am bringing out new catalog for commercial, decor, and editorial use, and that's work, no question.

Here, I may want to start covering The Great Recession, which may implode all the way into a Great Deflation, which we're all going to hate, but the politicians, local and national, are never so powerful as we would like to think them.

The plain fact of the matter in the sub-prime mortgage disaster is that legislators and bank officers both enabled and bank assigns--mortgage brokers--wrote billions of dollars worth of questionable loans and a great good many, possibly 5 million, have come home to roost.

No home?

• No shopping for home improvement items at any of the country's big boxes.
• Minimized personal stability if the apartment business doesn't pick up the slack.
• Nothing like adequate return-on-investment or loss-sustaining amelioration for the banks, their investors, and, frankly, the entire body of the economy.

That money, however much it may come to and for whoever was left holding the bag, has gone the way of smoke.

Vanished.

Hmm.

I'd like to blog more.

I would really like to get out of the "second row seat to history", which is the chair in front of my computer monitor, and out on a story no one else can see until I tell it.

I could do with an annual grant for an "Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quanity" of western Maryland-based local and international reporting.

Then there's photography, the declared, also well accounted, insured, and tax paying business: is it a part of everything else?  Is it the real thing I do?

I'm going to advertise this winter for weddings.

I'm going to continue putting up on my web (www.communicating-arts.com) more JPEG's in galleries representing saleable, print-ready images.

And if "go out on a story", the cameras are coming with me!

Balance.

Then too, I expect to continue playing guitar and singing in bars, now and then, to my dying breath; also reading as I see fit; workin' things out with ma babe; going for a few more drives, a few more walks around small towns and parks.

And if you happen to know a magazine editor who needs to send a photographer to visit a garden, you have my e-mail address.

Balance?

Nothing sets the anchor like a paying gig.

A note on the photograph: recorded April 13, 2005, Patuxent River, Savage, Maryland, and it is a gorgeous 3008 x 2000 pixels, about 17 MB for printing.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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What I / We Have Been Watching: Movies

Netflix forever!

I in 2006 and then Anne and I here in 2008 really enjoy movies, so much so that a week rarely passes without firing up the "home theater" (a standard JVC television and an Onkyo driven 7.1 "surround sound" speaker system enjoyed quite from the comforts of a big ol' brown leather sofa) and catching something usually pretty good.

Here's the list from the start of my Netflix subscription:

Full Metal Jacket
01/25/08
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
01/24/08
Key Largo
01/15/08
The Lives of Others
01/14/08
Is Paris Burning?
01/08/08
Anna Karenina
01/04/08
Casablanca
01/04/08
The Big Sleep
01/04/08
Requiem for a Heavyweight
12/18/07
Gone With the Wind: Collector's Edition: Disc 2
12/18/07
Gone with the Wind: Collector's Edition
12/18/07
Around the World in 80 Days: Special Edition
12/13/07
Around the World in 80 Days: Special Edition: Disc 2
12/13/07
The Shoes of the Fisherman
12/10/07
La Strada: Special Edition
11/30/07
The Blue Angel: Disc 1 (2-Disc Series)
11/21/07
The Blue Angel: Disc 2 (2-Disc Series)  11/20/07
Jean de Florette / Manon of the Spring
11/19/07
The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo
11/06/07
Helmut Newton: Frames from the Edge
10/22/07
The Man Who Would Be King
10/10/07
Born Into Brothels
10/10/07
The Seventh Seal
10/08/07
Samurai Trilogy 3: Duel at Ganryu Island
10/03/07
Kurosawa: A Documentary on the Acclaimed Director
10/03/07
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
09/11/07
Rambo III: Ultimate Edition
09/06/07
Ran (Kurosawa)
08/23/07
Throne of Blood
08/23/07
The Wild One
07/18/07
Rashomon
07/18/07
Zorba the Greek: Bonus Material
07/12/07
Zorba the Greek
07/09/07
Seven Samurai
06/26/07
House of Sand and Fog
06/21/07
Bonnie and Clyde
06/13/07
Munich
06/06/07
Das Boot
06/01/07
Nosferatu the Vampyre
05/16/07
Splendor in the Grass
05/09/07
Diamonds of War: Africa's Blood Diamonds
04/19/07
Rebel Without a Cause
04/19/07
Nashville
04/03/07
On the Waterfront
04/03/07
To Kill a Mockingbird
03/27/07
Blood Diamond
03/27/07
Under Fire
03/23/07
Salvador
03/19/07
Heaven's Gate
03/14/07
The Last Waltz
03/12/07
Tess
02/27/07
Lord of War
02/27/07
Marie Antoinette
02/21/07
War Photographer
02/12/07
Short Cuts
02/07/07
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan: Disc 2 (2-Disc Series)
01/24/07
Taxi Driver
01/24/07
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan: Disc 1 (2-Disc Series)  01/24/07
Schindler's List
01/17/07
Apocalypse Now Redux
01/17/07
Schindler's List: Disc 2
01/17/07
Michael Collins
01/16/07
Gandhi
01/04/07
The Last Picture Show
01/04/07
Summer of '42
01/03/07
Raging Bull
12/27/06
Midnight Cowboy
12/27/06
The Sacrifice / Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
12/26/06
Brokeback Mountain
12/19/06
Jarhead
12/13/06
The Constant Gardener
12/12/06
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
12/07/06
City of God
12/07/06
Amadeus
11/24/06
The Phantom of the Opera: Special Edition
11/20/06
Bukowski: Born into This
11/20/06
Memoirs of a Geisha
11/15/06
Capote
11/15/06

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Web Transition

The business, if you will, of "migrating" an old FrontPage 2000 web, or, as it was toward the end, web concept, to a spiffy v.9 Dreamweaver shindig goes both painful and slow.

But it goes.

Having removed virtually all of the small jpeg inventory from the main site server (for www.communicating-arts.com), I've left a lot of empty picture signs here and elsewhere.

My apologies.

I am working (also slowly) to upload to this blog pictures referenced from the other server.

The work's tedious but sure, and it will get done.

Winter, Cumberland Valley, Maryland

I chose the town for proximity to the replication of a bar at which I danced for ten years; I chose the apartment complex's location in relation to the neighborhoods and amenities associated with the city's "North End"; on the apartment itself, a small two-bedroom corner unit with a balcony abutting woods to one side and the footprint of a local developer's home directly out the back, I got just plain lucky.

It's Friday morning, and we have just finished watching Anthony Quinn in The Shoes of the Fisherman, a marvelous way to wake up, revisit the 1960's, study film, and here, I think, draw down my journey into what I once called "computtering"--i.e., fiddling with and lately building the hardware and software systems for my photography, music, and writing. 

I am done composing the computer and may again look out the window now and then.

Off the 'Net and Back

I suppose I won't be done building the new computer until I officially remove the old one from the iTunes registry.  Nonetheless, it's good to be back online with much updated technology (Asus motherboard, Pentium dual-core, Western Digital "Jaguar" and Seagate "Barracuda" drives, etc., also a color correct LaCie 320 monitor).

The medium hasn't been the message for at least a decade and neither will be the computing system or the Internet.

Among the thoughts driving this round, which included my building the "box" from scratch, was to get the technology set to let me do the things I do while leaving room to upgrade to, say, 64-bit applications when, if ever, that makes sense for my small enterprise.

Also, the expanded competence in building and administering the unit should abet upgrades within the system, that as opposed to buying a new box off the retail shelf every three or four years.

Who thought photography (or poetry) would ever become so expensive.

All in all, it's done.

I'd like to say the world seems not to have changed much during my  month-long absence from the Internet (the new build was inspired by a monitor that crapped out after about 15 minutes of use plus mechanical equipment failure on the motherboard in the Athlon 64 box), but it has changed remarkably.

Pervez Musharraf, for one thing, has taken to wearing mufti full-time (many had refused to see that coming).

Somalia has a new Prime Minister.

Life in Gaza stinks more by the week, especially for those with but loose interest in politics and religion, which leaves suffering without recourse to sense of any kind--to others, of course, what Gaza suffers matches life in war zones around the world in the way of reduced public services and increased rates of disease and mortality.

One hopes for change.

One always does.

Going On in the World . . . .

I'm not missing it, but in the way of the 21st Century, I am procuring the parts to and building a new computer.

The old one, an Athlon 64, 3200 running Windows XP-SP2, home edition (HP Media Machine) has started falling apart.  First, it's video card or board has been cutting signal to my monitor, making it brown out, a condition entirely unsuitable to photography; then, also, its main heat sink pulled an anchoring pin from the motherboard and has dangled loose for a while.  I've reattached the piece with Arctic Ice Silver, a compound, not an adhesive, that keeps the heat sink in place as long as I keep the unit  on its side, which, I'm sure, will result in the misalignment of both my internal and external hard drives.

What to do?

For repair of the machine at which I'm working, Dow-Corning has promised to send a sample of thermally conductive adhesive.

I'm going to try it.

I may also replace the video card with whatever I may scrounge from Ebay.

Still: In with the new!

New Egg: ordered Monday; arrived this afternoon: an Antec P180 case, an ASUS motherboard using the latest RAM; 4 GB of that RAM; and a Western Digital "Raptor" hard drive--have I got some work to do tomorrow.

In addition, to add more gel to the deep water into which I am already swimming, Anne has moved in with her cat, Snoopy--but I think he's getting older, more catty, and we may call him "Blanco", short for "Blanco Zapatos" soon (full name: "Snoopy Elmer Staypuff Blanco Zapatos").  We believe he's a Turkish Angora, a lovely, intelligent, sweet, and gentle cat; nonetheless, he will scratch on your eyelids at 4:30 a.m. if he's hungry.  To cure him of that, we've gone to an automatic feeder, and so reduced our association with his being fed.

All in all, I am busy--with a woman around and far less cause for going dancing, I'm back to reading a lot, and will have reviews here indicating so, and have also been practicing and playing music (open mics and paid gigs) some. 

If I've been remiss regarding Pervez Musharraf's declared state of emergency for Pakistan, the UN's interest in Somalia and the interesting Ogaden territory, and all that--well, I am custom building the tools I wish to have for the next six years or so.