the moderate revolution has begun

"Yes, government has to lead the way on education. But I can't be a parent to your child. You've got to turn off the TV set and make sure your child does their homework."

Mr. President? When 9,000 people stand in the cold rain for three hours (and that other guy cancels his rally down the road)...yeesh, it seems like it.

pch & del obispo st.

In Dana Point, that old trailer park behind the Denny's along PCH, has been fully torn down since I was home last to make way for some "downtown redevelopment." Well, fully torn down...that means the trailers are gone. Most of the electrical hookups are still there, shattered glass covers the ground, and the weeds have been left to grow wild. Not that I'm nostalgic for trailer parks, but its still strange to see things changing as they are. In its hayday, I always thought of this trailer community as, frankly, sort of a dump. Now, its just blight.







This kind of transitional space is all over Dana Point: the terraced hills over near the Camino Capistrano freeway entrance, the construction at the headlands. They're ugly to begin with, made worse by the shabby fences that the city strings around them.





In the pursuit of a new, drab design, the town ends up looking abandoned and neglected. And its not as if construction is going to go any faster in this economy. So what we have in Dana Point is all of this land that's flattened, cordoned off, covered in trash, a parking lot for construction equipment and portable buildings, or a mix of several. It just doesn't fit in a place like Dana Point, which has a reputation for being a place to "go away to" even if you live there. Yep, development here irks me.

above home

two gas stations

Wall St.

I happened to be in New York last Friday. To say the least, it had been a rough week on Wall St. So, I thought I'd pay the financial district a visit to see if I could suss out a particular mood.



At the same time I wanted to capture the actual "feeling," my expectation was to find grown men looking like this ragged, malnourished fellow:



Nothing of the sort. Press waiting outside Wall St./Broad st., where I parked myself for several hours, kept saying things like, "You should have been here yesterday. It was nuts!" I wouldn't call the mood skeptical exactly. Wary. Nervous, a little.



Other than that, things seemed pretty normal. Markets finished pretty evenly. It seemed as if the elephant in the room, imminent collapse of the financial world, was hiding behind a ficus. Overall, though, it was business as usual. The place was flooded with tourists looking to get their mug snapped in front of the big American flag and just maybe, to catch a little spectacle.



The few members of the press that were sniffing around turned their attention to this guy, a former muslim turned christian evangelist, who seemed to have the situation pretty well figured out. Before he began his shtick, he opened his arms and prayed facing Wall St:



I think a lot of men here might have prayed for salvation if it wasn't totally insane to do in public. Profanity prayers and private pleas are more Wall St.'s style. An Irish journalist asked the evangelist if there was a particular reason that he chose to preach in front of Wall St. I quote him liberally: "Here, more dan anywhere else, people need to hear de message of Jeesus Christ. Gott wants people to have money, trade, and be happy, but it's what dey do to get money dat is wrong. Peepol will do anyting for money. Anyting!"



I think, if we've learned anything from the last couple of weeks, it's a variation on his rap: the desire to make money has caused men to ignore the facts and their better intuition and rather, rely on a misguided faith in the system's ability to make things right in the end.

stacks

Post 1

If you asked me what I do, I'd say in my ho-hum way, "photographer...well, trying anyhow." I get the feeling like the work I do exists to no one but me, that it lives only in little kilobits in a tiny black box called "Maxtor HD." No more!