"20 Questions" Maura Stanton

"Can positive affirmations change anything?"

From the Buddhist perspective all we can work on is our own mind. So, a positive attitude will definitely help us deal with the world in more effective and compassionate ways. 2,500 years ago the Buddha said, "The thought manifests as the word; the word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit; and habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, let it spring from love. Born out of concern for all beings....The shadow follows the body and never leaves it. In the same way, as we think, so we become."

If we examine our mind we can see that all of our actions by body, speech and mind, begin first as a thought. And where do thoughts come from? They don't arise from nothing. Thoughts manifest as a result of past causes and conditions. Therefore, in Buddhism we often recite supplications or aspirations to remind us of the positive or virtuous mind states that we hope to actualize.

As part of our daily practice we recite a type of positive affirmation known as the Four Immeasurables, which are, "May all beings be endowed with happiness; May all beings be free from suffering; May all beings never be separated from happiness; May all beings abide in equanimity, undisturbed by the eight worldly concerns." So, positive affirmations are powerful ways of reminding ourselves of our how we want to live our lives.




I received this from the Rime Center, and I it deals with a lot of the things I have been working on in my life lately... I'm trying to live my life this way...

Tuesday, November 17th You are looking ahead ambitiously as you map out a strategy to develop your career. You may be thinking beyond the limitations of your current job as you try to figure out your place in the world. But setting your expectations too high now could turn into disappointment when you realize that your thinking was unrealistic. Go ahead and dream big, but put your plan into action one small step at a time

sometimes horoscopes are creepily accurate...

Seydou Keita

memories of a former life

Last night I dreamed I was packing my all belongings and leaving the only home I knew. However, it was a dream home, where you know in the dream that this is your home and these are the people that are important to you, but the physical appearance is unrecognizable, it's just the intuitive notion that drives these fuzzy connections. It makes you wonder if these were people are from a former life, or random people that you saw on the street and their images imprinted in your mind only to resurface later in a dream, as your brain brings up past memories.
The house I was leaving, was an old almost Victorian house, with ornate rugs and chandeliers, and with narrow stair cases that lead to narrow hallways and sparsely decorated bedrooms. I was frantically throwing everything I could into boxes and crates and running down an impossibly long slender hallway, racing towards a window in the night, only to thrust my belonging on to an unknown lawn, where a young man was loading them into a beaten up truck. I was desperate to leave, but desperate to not leave important items behind, because somehow I knew this would be the last time I would see this house, and the last time I could ever return home. Fear clung to my neck as I ran back and forth from my dream room and the open window. It was fear of being caught, of not working quickly enough, but what was I running from? In my rushed escape and I clung to every last bit of reasoning and sanity my fear would allow, I had think my way through this hushed and hurried affair any small mistake could end in unknown disaster.
This fragment of memory or subconsciousness message upon waking only leaves the unsettling feeling in the pit of your stomach, as if it was almost to vivid to doubt. Feelings of loss and fear still linger in the fringes of my mind. Was this a former life, some tiny cell memory transferred from another time finding its way into a tiny vignette of my dream? If past lives exist, was this mine, and did I escape these unknown demons?

Polaroids are Fun

Long Week Ahead

I'm in the lab right now, with a ton of shit to do, and no modivation to do so. I just keep checking flickr obsessively, like someone will have commented on a photograph in the last 10 mins. Ug, my week is crazy, but it will be so much better after this project is turned in!

"The vast emptiness of the sky, as seen from the confines of an airplane seat, becomes a metaphor for the suspended travel of time."
-David Carson's Book : Fotograficks

Pesto Feta Pasta Salad

12oz Whole Wheat Pasta
2-4 Tbls Pesto Sauce
Feta Cheese
1 Bunch Green Onions Chopped
1 Pck of Cherry or Grape Tomatoes
Olive Oil if needed


Cook and Drain pasta, let cool in the refrigerator. When cool toss with onion, tomatoes, cheese and pesto. Serve.

I MADE BREAD!

So my previous bread recipe turned out like crap, even though I got some good photos of the process. This is the same type of bread but I used the recipe from the Joy of Cooking. I'll post it later, but I'm so excited! It looks, tastes, smells and is REAL BREAD! The lighting isn't the best, but its so amazing! I made real bread!

Cutest Bowls EVA'!

Stark colors provide strong and vibrant contrasts to the natural wooden log edges of these highly varied and aesthetically engaging sustainable bowl designs. Taking advantage of the naturally different sizes of the various logs you could assemble a collection and select bowls to use not based on fixed and incremental sizing (as with virtually all tableware) but instead by the size you roughly need. All in all, this is a very different way to look at and think about eco-friendly design. The key, however, is that as the customer you have to keep an open mind and accept that none of these will necessarily be what you expect.


bet they are not dishwasher safe.... -_- grumble...

Fuji Instant Film:

Fuji film has started making a line of instant film for old polaroid pack film cameras as well as promoting their own version of the polaroid camera. The company is facing several problems promoting its line of instant film, one being that they are living in the shadow of the polaroid name. People associate instant film with the brand polaroid and not with fuji. Changing that strong brand association will be difficult.
One of the great things about the original polaroid camera, is the connection it had to a youthful audience. The cameras were a novetly for most people, and its connection to a teenage and young adult audience carried a sense of youthful spirit to the brand the the images it produced. Even in the age of digital cameras, there is still a strong revival and demand for instant film and cameras. While their is a strong artistic following that clings to the this media there is also a large young audience who remembers polaroids and if they were more eaisily accessable I believe would want to own one of these cameras.

I picture Fuji taking this product and marketing it towards a youthful audience between the ages of 16 and 25. I imagine this brand to be American Eagle meets Urban Outfitters meets Lomography, a mix between casual teenage fun, a hint of urban trendiness, with a unique interest in the slightly obscure. The camera would be for the young adult who is slightly inclined towards hipster and trendy fads, probably has an interesting in an underground music scene, inclined to retro fashion and loves shopping at vintage stores, or at least loves looking like they shop at vintage stores.


Ecumenical Christian Ministries

The Ecumenical Christian Ministries is an amazing place on campus is amazing where people of all types of spiritual backgrounds and interests come together to form a community of intellecutally charged minds that seek to helps others, and promote compassion, open-mindedness, and are interested in active learning about issues of social justice, sexuality, environment, spirituality and other topics. The problems facing the Ecumenical Christrian Ministries much like any non-profit organization, is that they lack funds and their main proirity is serving the community, so their efforts are geared towards their projects, and not their brand or aesthetic. Some of their publications, including their website is outdated, their logo could be modernized, and their publications promoting their programs could have a more conhesive feel.
The great thing about the Ecumenitcal Christrain Ministries is their wonderful sense of community, and their home grown, grass roots appeal. I want to take that grassroots, do-it-yourself spirit, and give them a conhesive feel, and a brand that can help translate their message easily acrosss campus, so that they are easily recognized and united visually, while still maintaining the sense of individuality and staying away from any type cooperate feeling.


Community Garden Project

In todays going green movement the subject of gardening and growing your veggatbles and herbs has become a large trend and many people are becoming interested in gardening but don’t have the space or the knowledge. The community Garden Project would provide green spaces in urban urban areas, and places where their is a large population living in apartments . The Community Garden Project would also provide all the tools one would need to plant a garden, as well as providing classes to help people who wanted to learn more about a specific types of plants or just a general knowledge. Basically a person would rent out a certain sized plot of land and with that one would have access to all the toosl needed to plant a garden and classes to help them learn more about the subject. It would promote growing your own food, a sense of community and spending time outdoors. Each garden would have a meeting area where they could hold different events, such as flower growing competitions, pumpkin carving and classes.
This would be geared to a young, ecologically aware urban adults probably between the ages of 25 to 35, and possibly to young families who live in urban areas. This company would shift also to the needs and desires of that specific community garden. The look and feel would be

"common objects require uncommon photography.
uncommon objects require common photography."

[David Carson]

New Logo Idea

http://option8.110mb.com/polaroid/104/104.6b.html

Wish LIst

16-35mm 2.8 for wide shots and an 85mm 1.2 for portraits. I also use the 580 ex11 speedlight and bounce it off of the ceiling in low light situations.

http://colormekatie.blogspot.com/

Things I have learned about photography thus far

.it's difficult
.shooting expired film is difficult, annoying but sometimes yields amazing results
.digital is accurate, but where's the fun in that?
.digital is based on the film world
.its about a point of view, so I should figure one out soon
.portraits where the person is looking at the camera if done well, are incredible
.try and find an interesting angle
.look for the light
.the camera doesn't make the photographer (or at least I hope)
.concept can be everything
.just because someone takes their clothes off or you are in a foreign country doesn't make you a photographer and it doesn't solve any questions
.its hard to take photographs of beautiful works of art, and make it your own.
.photograph your passions
.photograph what's around you
.photograph with a concept in mind
.photography is work, when you take photos you are working


I don't know what I am doing.... and I am lost photographically. I'll figure it out one day, but for the time being I've lost my voice. I have serious artists block and every path I go down just feels trite, and forced. Where did my perspective go?

let's visually connect the world...

Jen Gotch Polaroid Blog

A city of Facades

My goal for my photography work, is to show how obsessed our culture is with appearance, facades, down to the way we design our cities. We are so obsessed with how things appear to the forward viewer we forget we live in a three dimensional world, and in a sense we create two cities within one, we create the city that is to be seen and the city that exists behind it. Our focus is the front, and we neglect space behind it. The duality of the suburban city. We create thriving metropolises and ghosts towns at the same time.
The photographs will be taken in two sets, City A and City B. City A being the facades of all the buildings, and city B being the opposite side. The question is do I display them in sets, similar to the Bernd and Hilla Becher, or long strips of film printed on long sheets of paper, like the way a city lays out so you can see the city as it exists in space? Overall I want the cities to have a flat cut out appearance, so the shots will be taken straight on from roughly the same distance to further emphasize the idea that people only think of buildings as they would think of a drawing, only designing the front and neglecting the other sides.
Along that similar note, one could take photographs of each side of the building and arrange them in a grid so one could see all sides at the same time and see the entire building broken down and made flat. Must explore multiple approaches and see which works the best.

Richard Misrach

"i'm struck by the lightening of seeing you,
after you are gone..."
(unknown)

Thoughts On being Superficial

Indie hipster people are superficial too, deciding if you like people based on where they got their clothes, what they eat (vegan, veggie ect.), what type of music they listen to, and if their political views fall exactly in line with yours, counts as superficial. Just because the style of a hipster is supposedly anti-mainstream doesn't make less superficial if you choose your friends, or significant others based on if they look cool enough for you.
The worst is when you judge someone by their music taste, i am a firm believer that the music you like is just a part of who you are. It talks about the experiences you have gone through, reflects your mood, but most importantly the music that speaks to the deepest part of you, isn't based on what is cool or not, its just a part of you. Sometimes we need upbeat dancing music, and other times music that just narrates the day, but the most important thing is just because you like a song not in a designated cool genre shouldn't have to be hidden from your friends.
Indie hipster politics is just as hypocritical. Blindly believing another mindset, even if its not the mainstream view does not make you suddenly a independent thinker. To think independently you actually have to think about what you believe in and not just blindly accept another world view.
I'm not saying that everyone in the indie hipster community is superficial because in every group of people, some of them are truly smart independent good people, and some people just want to be a part of the group, its how all groups work. Its just I think people fail to realize even if you don't subscribe to a mainstream group it makes you an independent, suddenly not superficial person, when so many of those people really are. I don't think being indie automatically makes you judgmental but I just want to point out that to be an independent, freethinking person doesn't mean you have to be indie or even not mainstream, it just means you have to be you, and part of that is understanding why you believe what you believe and choosing friends based on who they are as a person, and not what they look like. And I guess if who you really are is fitting in and just wanting to be cool in a superficial way, then that's totally fine, just be upfront about it, you can find others that are just like you to be cool and superficial with.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
-Plato


William Kentridge

Growing Keyboard

Can you grow cress in a keyboard?

By: Johannes Hjorth, November 24th, 2005
(Svensk version, 中文版本)

My colleague Erik Fransén went away on the Society for Neuroscience conference in the USA for two weeks in the middle of November. Those of you who know Erik probably know that he enjoys playing practical jokes on his friends from time to time. This time it was Erik's turn to be on the receiving end.

I started off by locating an unused keyboard. This was not very hard since I work at the university's computer science department. The next step was to remove all the keys (easiest done with a screwdriver) and dress the inside with a soft cover of cotton.

After dressing the inside of the keyboard I put the keys back. Of course I just had to permute a few keys, but not too many since I wanted it to look like a normal keyboard at first glance.

After that it was time to pour the cress seeds into the gaps between the keys. The seeds required some blunt persuasion to take their places. An old creditcard came in handy. This took far longer than I had expected. The reason I did not place the seeds directly on the cotton before replacing the keys was that I wanted the cress to come up between the keys.

Fast forward a week with a healthy spray of water every morning and evening.

If you look closely you can see the letters "Erik" and "Hjälp?" in the picture below (which means "Erik help?" in Swedish). The observant reader also notes that the keyboard maker is not very good at counting anymore...

Erik looks a bit worried...

...but the cress looks healthy...

"I'm going to bring my keyboard to lunch tomorrow. I like cress."

Only one keyboard was harmed during the making of this joke.

Featured on Mobuzz December 16th, 2005.

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