http://haskinphoto.com/eeindex.php/site/index/ en julia@haskinphoto.com Copyright 2011 2011-12-09T22:13:00+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/and_so_the_days_go_slipping_by/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/and_so_the_days_go_slipping_by/#When:22:13:00Z Another year nearly finished.  Strange to consider.  ... I’m not entirely sure of my reasons for continuing - even occasionally - to post to this blog.  I mean, there’s a lot that I could talk about, but won’t, either because it’s not interesting or too emotive or not suitable for all the potential readers of this page or too much of the same thing that I always talk about.  The Big Questions are all about things that are pretty much just mine to figure out and/or involve a chain of problems that have to be unpicked one at a time, in a very slow process.  I mean, my brain at any given moment is almost certainly going to be some variation on a Venn diagram of: - missing of family and friends, both those that I haven’t talked with in months and those I have talked with in the last few days - homesickness for Portland - financial worries - worries for the well-being of various people - frustration with… well, mostly myself - awareness of the unoriginality of 99.99% of my thoughts - guilt for even feeling like I need to talk about any of this - awareness of the “#firstworldproblems” nature of most of my concerns - the everyday interactions & public face ... all of this sloshing around to some form of musical soundtrack, increasingly repetitive as my mental obsessing increases (right now, obnoxiously, thanks to work and my brain cycles, “Frosty the Snowman” is on heavy rotation). ::annoyed sigh:: In short, I bore myself AND see little likelihood of any of this changing significantly in the near future, for a whole host of reasons.  And I see little point in talking herein about the 1% of my mental obsessing that I would feel comfortable talking about freely.  So I guess the best thing for the tiny number of you who check here at all to do is to assume that, if you haven’t heard from me in a while and I haven’t posted anything here in a while, that the last conversation we had together was probably a pretty fair representation of my current mental/emotional state, and that any major changes will be communicated accordingly.  Since you are a reader of this blog, it’s also probably safe to assume that you are amongst the “family and friends” in the first bullet point up there, and that you are therefore in my thoughts. Over and out. 2011-12-09T22:13:00+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/wow3/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/wow3/#When:18:57:03Z How can it be nearly Thanksgiving already?  The speedy passage of time worries me somewhat… 2011-11-18T18:57:03+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/thank_goodness_for_autumn/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/thank_goodness_for_autumn/#When:14:28:04Z A chilly, blustery day, bright with blue skies and warm sun… 2011-10-18T14:28:04+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/wow2/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/wow2/#When:08:25:16Z Happy fifth anniversary, love.  :-) 2011-10-14T08:25:16+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/oh_yeah_fyi/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/oh_yeah_fyi/#When:16:50:34Z I did the Bristol Half Marathon this past Sunday.  I finished in a slowish 2:47:51, but hey - at least I finished!  I was having cramps in my lower left calf from about mile 10 onwards - cramps so bad that my toes curled up and I couldn’t uncurl them without stopping and stretching.  Which I did, several times, and then, about halfway through mile 12, decided I’d had it, and just ran with curled toes.  They uncurled themselves eventually, but it wasn’t the most comfortable running I’ve ever done.  ::shrug:: 2011-09-16T16:50:34+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/true_but/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/true_but/#When:14:00:09Z I read this op-ed on NY Times the day it came out, but then lost track of it before I was able to post about it.  In it, the author talks about the futility, really, of individual eco-action.  Which is true, when you get right down to it.  But what is the point of being so combative about it?  The collective action the author touts has to begin with the individual.  So getting someone into the habit of recycling, or the habit of cycling to the grocery store, seems to me to be the first, tiny step towards getting them to support the kind of collective action or resolution that can effect real change.  My friend Andy and I argued about this frequently during the two years at Tufts - incrementalism vs. paradigm shift.  He was adamant that massive change is the only way that things can be fixed in time to avert catastrophe, and he is very likely right.  But who is more naive: the person who argues for incremental steps as being (without the impetus of catastrophe) the only steps likely to be able to be effected, even if they likely aren’t moving fast enough?  Or the person who argues that the only way forward is to make drastic changes and refuses to admit the validity of smaller steps, even though drastic changes are exceptionally unlikely to be acceptable to enough people to get democratic consensus behind them?  Can we expect someone to go straight from blithely driving a Hummer to voting for full-cost accounting to be enshrined in economic policy?  I agree that full-cost accounting needs to be put into official policy, since self-interest does tend to be a much greater motivator than self-sacrifice (as the author says).  And that collective action is needed.  But rather than being dismissive of the things people do already, why not approach it from a good-first-step, encouraging point of view?  I don’t think that individual action is incompatible with the push for drastic change, nor do I think that it necessarily “distracts us from the need for collective action.”  We should reframe our individual actions as the first step in a marathon, rather than as the completion of a very short race, and rather than as a pointless waste of personal energy.  In general, we’re not very good with marathons; what we need more than hecklers is encouragement.  I’m guessing that there are very few of us who can’t be dinged for hypocrisy on one point or another.  The amount of plane travel I do, for instance, does call into question my so-called environmentalism, something of which I am well aware and puzzle over a lot.  The fact that I am far from most of my family and friends and miss them all constantly is a major factor in my internal equation, although I know full well that that doesn’t account for all of my international flights.  It is, however, a factor, and one which would likely still lead me to take at least one international plane trip per year, even were full costs brought in.  Does that make me selfish?  Well, yes.  But frankly, I don’t know how else to reconcile some of the major conflicting aspects of my life.  I couldn’t help falling in love with an Englishman.  I can’t help that most of the rest of the people I love are scattered across the United States.  There is nowhere I could be that there wouldn’t be someone I was missing, terribly, somewhere else.  So I fly, and try to make up for my flights by choosing well in the rest of my life, as best as I can.  Even knowing that it’s not enough.  I’m not giving myself an out - I’m just saying that I have run up against a problem that I can’t solve, given who I am, and for which I have chosen a compromise that, like pretty much any decision, is open to criticism. Full-cost accounting will shift people’s choices.  But it won’t mean that they always make choices that you’ll agree with; I’ll still fly.  So why not encourage good habits, however small in impact, which contribute something toward balancing out the selfish choices that will still be made?  Of course recycling is not a solution in itself.  Nor is cycling to the grocery store.  Nor is growing your own vegetables, or line-drying your laundry, or installing a low-flush toilet… or full-cost accounting.  It ALL contributes, however, to what will necessarily be a complicated solution to a complicated snarl of problems.  So why not reserve some praise for small actions? Of course, the author that prompted this diatribe did, to be fair, finish up his op-ed by saying that his readers shouldn’t stop recycling.  He’s encouraging extra action.  So, really, he and I are saying the same thing.  We’re just saying it in different tones. 2011-09-16T14:00:09+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/getting_there/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/getting_there/#When:14:25:38Z Tuesday, August 2:  2.75 miles in 33:24 Tuesday, August 9:  5 miles in 1:00:42 Monday, August 15:  5 miles in 1:01:41 Wednesday, August 17:  5 miles in 58:44 I may not be like some people that I could mention, nonchalantly completing ultra-marathons and enormous bicycle rides.  But I’m gradually getting back into some semblance of shape, after the mostly-sedentary two years of grad school.  (I did a lot of walking and bicycling for commuting purposes during that time, but my body’s used to that, and it didn’t really help my fitness.) On the downside, my knees are now clicking when I go up and down stairs.  ::sigh:: 2011-08-17T14:25:38+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/crossing_against_the_flow/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/crossing_against_the_flow/#When:12:29:36Z Just thought you might be interested in reading this short article about the difficulty pedestrians have in many places - this article focuses particularly on Florida - in getting from Point A to Point B in cities designed around the car.  It ties in with the book that I’m reading at the moment, Anthony Flint’s “Wrestling with Moses”.  You know, I’m not explicitly an urban planner - my interest lies primarily in parks/open spaces/wilderness, both in the city and out of it - but it’s hard not to get caught up in puzzling over what makes liveable, workable cities tick.  And it really is a puzzle - thousands of little pieces.  Some work in one setting, others work in another, but hopefully there is an underlying logic, themes that can be adapted to each setting, so long as we stay observant and keep questioning processes and results. 2011-08-16T12:29:36+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/well_now_thats_a_surprise/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/well_now_thats_a_surprise/#When:16:45:44Z I never thought I would find myself saying anything like this, but… go, Warren Buffett! 2011-08-15T16:45:44+00:00 http://haskinphoto.com/site/the_golden_road/ http://haskinphoto.com/site/the_golden_road/#When:12:27:08Z “To learn the age-old lesson day by day: It is not in the bright arrival planned, But in the dreams men dream along the way [...]” ~ James Elroy Flecker, The Golden Road to Samarkand 2011-08-15T12:27:08+00:00