all gothic and syrupy

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I’ve occasionally mentioned Utata in this blog. I’ve talked about how the group has helped to shape the sort of photographs I shoot, and I’ve mentioned some of the projects that grow out of Utata (like the Thursday Walks, and Iron Photographer, and our bi-annual big projects).

But I haven’t said very much about the people I get to work with, and that’s a shame because those people are completely fucking brilliant and altogether charming. I was in a state of Off-the-Intertubes recently, and when I returned I discovered these two comments in the Super-Secret Utata Staff Lounge:

“I’m in the middle of making some bramble whisky. I may strain it through an old sock instead of the more conventional muslin cloth.”

“I’m making bramble whisky too, but I must be doing something wrong as my recipe doesn’t include old socks.”

First, I should probably note that I am occasionally referred to in Utata as ‘Old Sock’ (don’t ask; it’s not a long story, but it’s a story that makes almost no sense at all). Much more important is the bramble whisky. Now, I’m familiar with brambles and blackberries, and I’ve been rather intimate with various forms of whisky — but bramble whisky? Never heard of it. And I admitted as much, which sparked this conversation:

“I highly recommend bramble booze (or sloe, elderberry, rosehip, random non-deadly-nightshade hedgerow fruit). You can take the absolute dog-roughest bathtub poitín and turn it into a magical elixir for the price of a pound of sugar and a walk in the countryside.”

“Oh how I miss sloe gin. I hate regular gin, but sloe gin tastes like something from Tolkien.”

“Following last year’s damson glut, I have a ridiculously large amount of damson gin in the cupboard if anyone is desperate…”

“You can flavour gin with quinces – the little decorative ones as well as the bigger eating ones. I have no idea if they’re any more easy to find in the US. It goes a lovely pink colour and tastes of … well … to me it tastes a bit like the perfume that my grandmother used to wear but I’m not sure that helps anybody else.”

“I made some quince brandy last year. Best described as ‘interesting’.”

“I think you need to beat those quinces up a bit. I chopped and slightly cooked mine before boozing them. Nearly killed an electric chopper with them too … they were just fractionally harder than diamonds.”

From bramble whisky to sloe gin to damson gin to quince brandy. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to discover I have some moonshiners in the South Carolina branch of the family, but to my knowledge none of my kin has created anything that sounds quite so romantic or Jane Austen-ish as quince brandy.

David Wilkinson’s quince brandy (photo by David his ownself)

Of course, I developed a strange, immediate desire to make my own bramble whisky, or something like it. So I asked for a recipe.

“Use a recipe depending on your fruit and liquor, specific ratios of fruit, booze sugar are needed, as Sam indicated this works best with hard fruits even if they’re supposedly soft fruits like cherries. If you want to go with folklore and hazy memories then here’s my description. Sit in a comfortable chair and listen to the radio. I always used a needle to prick them not a fork, and it’s been years, but the way I remember doing it with my Mamgu is to fill your empty bottle one third with the washed and pricked fruit, then pour fine granulated sugar on top till it comes about an inch above the fruit. Then we’d pour over the booze until the bottle was about four fifths full. The screw in the cork or the lid, and shake it violently.Put it in a cold dark pantry filled with jars of home-made chutney and marmalade. Shake it daily for a week or two, then once a week until shortly before Christmas. By then it should be all gothic and syrupy. Decant it and drink it from the tiny little glasses that you can’t buy new anywhere but little old ladies have millions so you’ll probably find some in Goodwill.”

There was some debate about the best way to prepare the fruit. One school of thought advocated a certain level of thuggery (“You do need to bash them up a bit”). Another seemed more appropriate to scaring off vampires (“Pin-pricking is too tedious – I take a sharp knife and cut a small cross into each damson”). But this response has settled me firmly in the pin-pricking school:

“Pricking them all over with a pin, while sitting in a comfy chair and listening to the radio (use BBC iplayer for this, they have a wacky dramatisation of Dracula this week) is the most important part. Your fingertips get stained an olive-ish purple and end up smelling like mossy hedgerows.”

And there you have it. Everything you’d ever want to know about preparing your own bramble whisky — from fruit-pricking instructions to the general ambience in which it should be prepared to the proper stemware in which it should be served.

And there you also have a brief introduction to the sort of people who staff Utata. Smart, funny, and infinitely helpful. That I get to work with these people makes me feel all gothic and syrupy.

inadequate

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Today the House Oversight for Government Reform Committee is holding a hearing on the September 11th attack on the temporary US consular compound in Benghazi. Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is expected to be severely critical of the State Department’s decision not to increase the number of security personnel, as requested by some of the security staff.

That sounds like a reasonable criticism, given what happened as a result of the attack. Four deaths, including the Ambassador to Libya. The total destruction of the compound and its furnishings and equipment. The ransacking of intelligence documents that couldn’t be destroyed in time. It was, by all accounts, a disaster. Chairman Issa calls it the result of “inadequate security.”

Benghazi assault (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

In the hearing today, we probably won’t hear Issa address some of the more inconvenient facts. He probably won’t mention the fact that those security personnel would have been stationed in Tripoli, not in Benghazi — so their presence wouldn’t have had any effect on the situation. Nor are we likely to hear that one of the reasons the request for additional security personnel was denied was budgetary. That’s significant because since President Obama assumed his office, Congressional Republicans (including Darrell Issa) have consistently voted to reduce the budgets of the State Department in general and embassy security in particular.

In fiscal year 2011, House Republicans reduced the president’s budget request for the two agencies that provide security for the State Department by US$127.5 million. For the current fiscal year, they cut the budget for embassy security by $330 million. That’s almost half a billion dollars over the last two years.

It takes a lot of balls to complain about the lack of embassy and consulate security when you’ve spent the last few years reducing the funding for embassy and consulate security.

It’s also important to keep this event in context. An estimated 120 attackers armed with small arms, RPGs and mortars launched a coordinated surprise assault on a temporary consulate building that was only partially equipped with bulletproof windows and reinforced doors — a structure protected by only a handful of security personnel. Four American personnel were killed. Three days later 15 well-armed attackers launched a coordinated surprise assault on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, the largest and most secure military base in that country, housing nearly 30,000 coalition troops and contractors. During the four hour firefight, two US Marines were killed and aircraft valued at $200 million were destroyed.

Surprise is an effective combat tactic. If Congressional Republicans are going to blame “inadequate security” for the deaths and damage resulting from a surprise attack by 120 insurgents on a lightly-protected soft target like a temporary compound, then don’t they have to also claim inadequate security for the death and damage done during a surprise attack by 15 insurgents on the most secure military base in all of Afghanistan? Are they going to claim the attack on Camp Bastion could have been prevented if they’d had an extra dozen security personnel?

? Chairman Darrell Issa

What happened in Beghazi was tragic. Nobody would claim otherwise. Congress has the right — even the duty — to investigate how that tragedy unfolded. It would be nice, though, if Chairman Issa was sincere enough to ask if budgetary cuts he supported played a part in the tragedy. I doubt he will.

I’m also willing to bet that Issa will continue to vote to reduce the budget of the State Department by hundreds of millions. And that he’ll vote to give military contractors another $200 million to replace those destroyed aircraft.

Congressman Issa is correct when he blames the event in Benghazi on inadequacy. But it wasn’t just the security that was inadequate; it was the competency of Members of Congress like Darrell Issa.

my favorite interruption

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It’s an interruption of light. That’s all it is. But it fascinates me — visually, conceptually, artistically, emotionally. Most photographers look for good light; I look for good shadow.

A tree in this small alley-turned-courtyard obstructed the sunlight falling directly on the burnt sienna wall, resulting in a dark, self-similar shape of that tree. We’re able to see that tree because light within a certain spectrum falls on it; we see its shadow because light is prevented from falling on the wall. A shadow is the only thing we see because of the absence of light.

The term ‘shadow’ comes from Old English, the language spoken by Anglo-Saxons between the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. It shares the same linguistic root as ‘shade’: sceadu, which referred to a place protected from glare and heat. ‘Shadow’ itself, however, comes from a somewhat later and more narrowly defined derivation of the term: sceadwian, which referred to the act of creating a small bit of shade (most beautifully defined by one etymologist as ‘to protect as with a covering wing’).

Though shade and shadow are essentially the same phenomenon, we experience them as very different beasts. We tend to treat shade as a form of shelter; we generally see shadow as only the reverse projection of an object. And that’s a shame, because when you raise an awning to shelter you from the sun, you’re using a shadow to create shade. You are, in effect, mimicking a bird tucking its head under its wing. If you can’t see the delicate loveliness in that, there’s no hope for you at all, at all.

I entered this alleyway/courtyard seeking shade. In it, I found a shadow. And I was content.

this guy…

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Here’s a question: why do we bother to have a House Committee on Science and Technology if we’re going to assign people like Paul Broun, Jr. to sit on it? This is a committee that helps establish and oversee policy decisions dealing with (surprise) science and technology. And this guy…

Representative Paul Broun, Jr. – Republican, Georgia

…this guy thinks the Earth is “about 9,000 years old.” Seriously. This guy believes evolution is a lie “straight from the pit of Hell.” He believes climate change is a “hoax” and is part of a conspiracy “perpetrated out of the scientific community” in order to…well, it’s not quite clear exactly what this conspiracy is attempting to do. Something sciencey. But whatever it is, the scientific community’s purpose is evil and wicked, and this guy doesn’t like it..

This isn’t Broun’s only controversial position. He claimed President Obama’s call for a civilian national service corps was “exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did.” He believes the president is a Marxist. When the Centers for Disease Control instituted a campaign to promote a healthy diet, Broun told his constituents the government  was going “to force you to eat more fruits and vegetables. They gonna be calling you to make sure you eat fruits and vegetables, every day.” He attempted to defund the enforcement provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Broun believes Social Security is “unconstitutional,” as is the entire 16th Amendment to the Constitution (that’s the one that allows Congress to levy an income tax). He doesn’t appear to understand that when you amend the Constitution, that amendment is, by definition, constitutional — and yet Broun himself wanted to amend the Constitution to permit castration of people convicted of raping a child under age 16. And at a town meeting, when one of his constituents asked “Who is going to shoot Obama” (and the people attending laughed), Broun’s only response was “I know people are frustrated.”

Oh, and he’s a born-again Baptist married to his fourth wife.

He’s been re-elected twice. And the Republicans have put this guy on the House Committee on Science and Technology.

unasked questions

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I love a mystery. I love a mystery so much, I’ll often go out of my way NOT to solve them. Once a mystery is solved, then it’s obviously no longer a mystery.

Yesterday my companion and I stood for a moment on a bridge and watched a young man repeatedly throwing stuff into the river. I assumed it was something like bits of dried bread, maybe to feed the fish. She thought it might be corn or some sort of grain. It wasn’t at all clear. Not a huge mystery, but enough to make me want a closer look.

We followed the stairs down to the river and I asked the young man what he was throwing into the river. He said, “Candy.” He showed me his knapsack, which contained a plastic shopping bag full of small individual-sized packets of M&Ms. He also had a box filled with packets of some other candy.

“Is this for the fish?” I asked. He spoke in a half-whisper, saying something that included the word fish, but I couldn’t quite understand him. He seemed mildly reluctant to look at me, but was certainly polite and patient and quite willing to answer questions. Rather than pester him, though, I simply said “Enjoy yourself,” and we continued down the walkway along the river.

Looking back at one point, I noticed him standing and watching us. I held up the camera in what I hoped was a universal ‘Can I take your photograph?’ gesture and waved to him. He waved back, which I chose to interpret as ‘Sure, go ahead.’

The whole thing seemed a wee bit odd, but I figured the guy was possibly developmentally disabled or maybe stoned. Either way, it was no big deal and we continued to walk along the river.

On the walk back, the young man was still there. As we approached he pulled on a bright blue jacket and I decided I was going to ask if I could shoot his photo. Before we got to him, he stepped onto the small sand bar that had formed along the walkway and began burying some things. Digging small holes with his hands, dropping in whatever he was burying, filling the holes, then patting them down tidily.

He’d just finished burying the final thing when we arrived. “Would you mind if I took your photograph?” I asked. I was going to give him my name and hand him my card and explain why I wanted to take his photo — but he just stood up, returned to the walkway, turned and stood there. Like Gort awaiting orders from Klaatu.

Sakim

I just took the one shot. “Can I ask your name?” I said. He spoke very softly. “Sakim.” I showed him the photograph and he smiled. “That’s good,” he said.

I wanted to ask him about the candy again. I wanted to ask him why he was throwing candy to the fish. I wanted to ask him what he was burying in the sand and why he was burying it. But if you ask questions, you get answers and I’m not convinced the answers would have been nearly as intriguing as the questions.

this is how it works

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Marc Thiessen was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He also wrote speeches for Donald Rumsfeld when he was Secretary of Defense. He’s the author of a book (I hesitate to call it ‘non-fiction’) entitled Courting Disaster; How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack. In part, the book argues that the use of torture (redefined as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’) is legal, moral and effective. Thiessen is associated with the Government Accountability Institute, which is a conservative group that claims to investigate government fraud. He also writes opinion pieces published in the Washington Post.

Recently the Government Accountability Institute issued a report claiming President Obama has ‘skipped half of his intelligence briefings.’ That claim is based on the number of times the president, after reading his daily intelligence briefing, decided he didn’t need a more detailed in-person follow-up briefing. Let me clear about this: there were, in fact, NO skipped briefings; there were only briefings that were sufficiently clear that President Obama didn’t require any additional information.

Marc Thiessen

Thiessen, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, repeated the ‘Obama skipped half of his intelligence briefings’ claim. Thiessen not only neglected to report the facts on which the misleading claim is made, he failed to note his relationship with the group that made the claim. Right wing bloggers picked up the claim and began to repeat it, without bothering to check its accuracy. American Crossroads SuperPAC, one of Karl Rove’s political attack machines, featured the claim in a pro-Romney campaign advertisement, noting the Washington Post as the source in order to validate the claim. Bloggers, right wing pundits, and contributors to FOXNews began to complain that the ‘mainstream press’ was deliberately ignoring the story.

And now there is a portion of the U.S. population who believes President Obama actually skipped half of his intelligence briefings.

If you ever wonder why a third of the Republican Party believes the president is a secret Muslim, or that he’s a socialist, or that he was born in Kenya — this is why. This is how the Republican Party works these days.

sacrifices

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I took the 9AM bus to the downtown farmer’s market this Saturday morning. It’s a short trip, but circuitous, traveling mostly through working class neighborhoods. By the time we reached downtown the bus was about three-quarters full. There were maybe five white folks, all of us with empty ‘green’ bags, heading to the farmer’s market to buy fresh vegetables, artisan cheeses, fresh-baked pastries and breads, local jams and jellies, ethnic delicacies, locally grown eggs, wines from small regional wineries.

All the other bus passengers were African-American or Hispanic. Most, if not all, of them were going to work. Several of them were wearing restaurant garb — smocks from fast-food restaurants or polo shirts with the names of restaurants embroidered on them. A couple of guys were wearing steel-toed boots and carrying their own tool belts.

[T]here are 47 percent who are with [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax…[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

Those folks going to work, they’re the people Gov. Romney counts in his 47%. I suspect most of them pay little or no federal income tax — not because they don’t work, but because they don’t earn enough money. Some of them probably get food stamps, several of them almost certainly receive the Earned Income tax credit, some of them may get some sort of government subsidy for heating in the winter, a fair number of them probably had done military service (or had a relative in military service). They still probably pay state income tax, of course, and sales taxes, and a host of other taxes.

These people are most definitely not victims, and don’t see themselves that way. Not one of them, I’m sure, has ever attended a US$50,000 a plate fund-raiser dinner to complain about how unfair life has been to them. And I think I can say with a high degree of confidence that not one of them has ever filed a 379 page income tax return.

Despite what Gov. Romney says, these folks do take responsibility for their lives. In fact, the working poor have to take more responsibility for their lives. They can’t hire somebody else to raise their kids, or cook their meals, or mow their lawns, or do their laundry. Poor city dwellers are less likely to own a vehicle, so when going to work or appointments they have to take into account bus or subway schedules (and consider the possible disruptions in service); that usually means leaving earlier and traveling longer in order to be sure they’re not late. Poor folks have to shop more carefully — for food, for clothing, for just about every goddamn thing. Being poor means making daily money decisions: do you buy fresh vegetables and the makings for a proper meal that you’ll likely be too tired to cook, or do you pay a bit more and buy a couple frozen pizzas that are filling and quick and easy? Do you buy the kids cheap shoes which will only get them through the summer or more expensive shoes that might last a year?

Poor folks are up to their necks in personal responsibility. They have less time and money to spend at weekend farmer’s markets.

The bus was nearly empty on the way back. Mostly just us white folks returning from the farmer’s market. Two women were cheerfully sorting through bags full of hand-spun yarns. Me, I picked up a nice garlic focaccia and an absolutely delicious loaf of raspberry streusel bread. I tasted an exceedingly fine locally-made Chipotle-Jack cheese (aged six months) and intended to buy it last thing before leaving, but it was clear at the other end of the market — three or four blocks away — and I might have had to hurry to catch the bus. These are the sacrifices we make.

the people are wrong

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I’ve been shooting a lot of cityscapes lately — partly because I have a new camera that’s particularly well-suited for that sort of photography, and partly because I’m a sap for the geometry of structures. It’s been pointed out to me that most of my photographs are unpopulated. Devoid of people or other life forms.

This photograph, for example, sparked a couple of my favorite internet people to make the following comments:

I’m becoming increasingly aware of how meaningfully empty and post apocalyptic your cityscapes are. I used to think it was purely a compositional choice, that you didn’t want too many people or cars cluttering up the frame, but now I’m wondering if Des Moines has been quietly evacuated

I’ve wondered, too, about Des Moines. Where are all the people?

Where are all the people? The people are all over the damned place. They’re out on the streets and in the alleys and walking through the skywalk. I don’t always include them in the photographs, though. When I’m shooting cityscapes, I’m usually drawn to some combination of light and shadow, or some arrangement of form and shape. I’m usually drawn to the geometry, and the problem is that so often the people are just wrong for the geometry in the frame.

They’re dressed in the wrong colors, or they’re moving the wrong way, or they’re standing in the wrong spot or in the wrong stance, or they’re looking in the wrong direction, or they’re looking in the right direction but with the wrong expression. Sometimes they’re just wrong for reasons I can’t articulate, but they’re clearly wrong in the frame and they distract from what interests me.

When the people are being right, I include them. But when they’re being wrong I wait until the right people come along or until there aren’t any people at all. Or I give up and go somewhere else. For example, the following photograph needs people. I noticed the light and the shadows and the reflections, and I parked my ass across the street and waited for the right person or group to move into that space. I don’t recall how long I waited — I’d guess it was somewhere between a quarter of an hour and half an hour. During that time a lot of folks entered the space, but there was something wrong about all of them. None of them contributed to the space. So I documented the light, and moved on. With the right person, it would have been a good photograph. Now it lacks life.

There are other times — less common, to be sure — when I notice people who look like they’d be right. There’s something about the person that draws the eye and makes me think all that’s lacking is the right background. So I sort of wander along with them for a while in the hope they’ll move into an interesting space with good geometry. If they don’t, they don’t. I end up with nothing. I tagged along with the kid in the next photo and his puppy for maybe ten minutes (any longer and I begin to feel like a pervert). I shot maybe a half dozen frames in a half dozen different situations — but the light was always wrong, or the shadows were wrong, or the geometry was wrong. And when the exterior factors cooperated, the kid or the puppy were wrong, or I was a half second too slow or too quick. So in the end, I got nothing interesting.

The thing is, I’ve been shooting cityscapes — photographs of the city. Not photographs of the people. This new camera is also, I think, well-suited for street photography and I’d like to start getting involved in that. Street photography is a lot more fluid and relies on a different sort of geometry. Instead of looking for the geometry of structures into which people might fit, I’ll have to learn to look for geometry and structure in how people move and arrange themselves.

Cityscapes, in my opinion, can fail if the people are wrong or if the geometry is wrong. I have the feeling that when street photography fails it’s because the photographer is wrong. That should make things interesting.