Coke Is It

I've been writing a lot about Coca-cola lately. Specifically my experience drinking too much Coca-cola in Bolivia. When you're writing about Coke, you really start to notice how very omni-present that white wave is. I liked the juxtaposition of the street-level mural of "Costa Rican life" and this huge tower of a Coke...kinda sums up some of the thoughts on cultural imperialism and the seductive powers of the hobble-skirt bottle...

I Can't Throw a Rock at my Bookshelf

without hitting a book about Burma.



A student gave me Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning on the last day of class. I started it on the plane. It's a book I've been wanting to read. When I was in Burma I had dinner with a tour guide who was incredibly well-read (before we left we rounded up every single book we could part with to give him as thank-you gifts) and he didn't have anything nice to say about this book. He wasn't exactly clear why he disliked it so much, but he clearly thought she had missed the mark when it came to illuminating the situation in Burma. The book is about a group of American tourists who get abducted while on a tour at Inle Lake. My impression of what was objectionable? Tourists aren't the ones who have to worry about getting abducted in Burma! They just prance around the country and go home. If they piss off the junta, the junta shuffles them off to the airport and sends them on their way. BURMESE are the ones who go missing, folks.

I'm a little more than half-way through. When I think of Amy Tan I picture her as I saw her at the PEN gala one year, in a hot pink prom dress slow-dancing with her dog. This makes me forget how serious and talented of a writer she is. The writing's good. I'm into the story. The characters are complicated. So far I'm really liking this book. But what do I know?

For whatever reason, I decided to break up chunks of novel-reading time with short pieces from the 2007 edition of Best American Nonrequired Reading, that clever anthology Dave Eggers does. Four essays in, I turn the page to Scott Carrier's "Rock the Junta," and boom, this reader's back in Burma. Is the universe trying to tell me something?

Well, stuff's going on. It's just too fucking nuts. Aung San Suu Kyi was recently accused of breaking the terms of her house arrest. Some American tried to swim onto her property. Government set-up? Very possibly. Her current sentence was up on May 27 - she was finally going to be released after 6 years. (This time.) Now she's on trial again, back in Insein prison, and every time she arranges for a lawyer to represent her, the junta's like, Oops! We're revoking your license to practice law! Sorry! Muaa ha ha ha.

I'm constantly amazed that this is still going on, that the junta can do whatever they want and get away with it. Hillary Clinton's all, "We call for Aung San Suu Kyi's immediate and unconditional release." Thanks, we'll keep that in mind. Obama's like, we will show our opposition by renewing those economic sanctions that haven't done a thing to change the power structure in Burma. Take that, junta!

Though I suppose all I'm doing is sitting here reading books.

If you like a good story, just follow what's going on in Burma.


If you want another opinion or two of mine? See what I wrote for The Smart Set just after the 2007 protests.

Double Dosing

As proclaimed in my bio over there on the right, My identity is that of a writer. Photography is a secondary fun-generator. (Not that it's always fun. Sometimes, when the person I'm taking a portrait of turns out blurry while the background is annoyingly sharp, I lose my cool a little bit. But even one killer picture in a shoot gives a thrill.)

However, when I really buckle down and get writing, as I have here at the Colony, I don't feel as much of an urge to take pictures. For a year, maybe two years, it was the other way around. But writing has always nagged me in a way that photography doesn't. (Thus the career choice.) So back I go.



The creative process of the two arts is immensely different for me. One involves thinking thinking thinking, and the other involves shutting off the verbal part of the brain and seeing. But once I'm knee-deep in a story, the words in my brain form and bump around no matter what I'm doing or where I am. So for the moment, this photography blog might be more about writing and the photographs might be a little raw. Such things happen when you try to double dose.

I forgot to install Photoshop on my new hard drive (the old one crashed and burned) before I left anyway.

Casita 3

I first came to the White Colony (which I try not to refer to as The Colony For White People) in February, 2005. The founder of the colony, Bill White, died the month I was here. He was old. It was natural. It was a strange and sad time. Bill was a peace activist and expatriate who started the colony in memory of his two children, Julia and David, who were both artists and died tragically (one of a drug overdose, the other of suicide). I get the feeling that the White Colony has always been a kind of dark and random place, but it's in the most sunny and alive of spots, and I've met some wonderful painters, sculptors, and writers here. And boy do I get work done. I mean, it's not like there's a whole lot else to do.

This time I am in the furthest casita from the public road.
(That's my house! The cute little pink house sticking out...see?)

There is nothing between me and the rain forest.
I walk the loop around the compound every day. Mangos and bananas grow with no one to pick them. On my first day a mango (a green one even, not even ripe!) landed like a bullet in my path.


I do yoga daily and base my diet around the godly avocado. My friends are geckos. I have a good groove going. And when I feel I deserve a break? There's the pool.
That white chair is where I sit and read Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007. I highly recommend the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. I love her!

Costa Rica: Birds of Paradise

I'm spending the month at the Julia and David White Artists' Colony in Ciudad Colón, Costa Rica. I have a little writing studio with a 10-foot window that looks out over the rain forest. It's not one of those showoffy Costa Rican rain forests - no monkeys or sloths here - but there are some rather cool things growing outside my door.

Breaking the No-Kids Rule, Again

Baby Alea (with mama Kate Bowen behind).

A Couple of Kate

Two portraits of Kate from Antigua, Guatemala.

Chichicastenango, Guatemala

Chichi is known for its market. Kate and I ventured out on our second day in Guatemala. What we bought was not what we might have expected to buy. I was drawn in by these wooden painted religious statues. Who knew I'd have the Virgin staring down at me from the shelf over the desk where I write? She would not approve of some of my subject matter.

These are film.

Film Photography Was Even More Fun

once you could scan the prints and edit them digitally.

These are some of my favorite photos from Cuba, taken in 2003 and 2004. The pool sweeper I did not touch after scanning. For the other two, I used the same super-crappy scanner, cropped them, and edited for color and contrast. Voila.

One of the Fun Things about Film

is that sometimes, you unzip your camera from its bag to see that there's a mysterious half a roll still in there, and there's going to be some great surprise when you get the roll developed.

That's my niece, Taya, one year ago. I always had a vague memory of taking her picture in front of a pile of sweet potatoes.

Drama For Sale

This is the photo up at the Bromfield Gallery.

Bromfield Gallery 12x12 Holiday Show: Dec. 5-20

I have a piece in the Bromfield Gallery 12x12 Holiday show. This year they took one from a series of nighttime photos. (Last year it was one of my Burmese Dreams pix that I wrote about in "The Burmese Dreams Series." Hear me read about it here if you wanna.)


Opening reception is TONIGHT at 5:30! Arrive early and you can probably score a couple of glasses of Two Buck Chuck.

Bromfield Gallery
450 Harrison Ave.
Boston, MA 02118
http://www.bromfieldgallery.com/current-exhib.html

Sticks and Bricks

My amazingly talented friend Liz Karney just opened a furniture refinishing store in Northampton, Mass called Sticks and Bricks. Kate and I swung by when it opened. In the front, showroom. In the back, studio/workshop. Liz made everything herself. She has a spy at the dump who calls her when the good stuff gets thrown away. And Liz turns it into gold.


This is the window display. My guess is that Liz put this together the way it is usually done in cartoons. One second there's a bunch of chairs sitting around. Liz grabs them and for .5 seconds there's a blur of arms and chair parts and dust. Then the dust lifts and Liz is standing there with her hands on her hips admiring the sculpture she's just thrown together. Yes, she's that good!



Kate tried to convince me we needed this piece for our dining room.


Kate and Liz on a loveseat Liz made out of a bed.


Liz's tools on the wall in the workshop.


See more on Liz's blog: carpenterant.blogpot.com.

Little Children Part IV

My cousin Kim asked me to do a little photo shoot of her kids while we were in North Carolina for Thanksgiving.


Ain't my people handsome?

Oh: And When I Said I'd Been Busy

...part of that whole busy thing was about getting engaged.


There's us! In Ogunquit! The day we got engaged!

We're getting married next summer in Wellfleet, where Kate spent a lot of time growing up, two towns up from Provincetown, where my Pilgrim ancestors dropped anchor and hung out a while before moving onto way-less-cool Plymouth. The outer cape feels like home to both of us. And lucky ladies that we are, we found the perfect boathouse in which to hang paper lanterns and have a killer party.

Please do not ask me what I'm wearing. I have no idea.