LaurieWrites

Fallen Princesses: Art Imitates Real Life

2009-06-26T11:23:45-04:00

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

When Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in a Paris tunnel,any remaining illusions I had of charmed lives for princesses did too. I was a teenaged Anglophile, one of the millions who woke up extra early to watch her wedding day on tv, and felt real sadness - whether I should have or not - in the years after as that initial fairy tale story crumbled.

There it was. Princesses - at least one,anyway - marry people who don't love them all that much, or at least not enough to cut ties with his ex-girlfriend. She gets an eating disorder and never quite gets over her parents' divorce. She goes through a series of bad relationships and then ends up unthinkably dead in a traffic tunnel. And this when it seems, only just seems, that she might be beyond the worst part of the learning curve.

I'm tempted to sugar-coat this as some kind of life lesson but I fail miserably at that, which may be why Dina Goldstein's Fallen Princesses photo series remains very much on my mind, a week after I saw it for the first time on the JPG Magazine site.

Even Cinderella's coach breaks down in a sketchy neighborhood. All images brilliantly shot by and courtesy of Dina Goldstein.

Goldstein takes princesses - the Disney versions, this time - and depicts what may have happened after the closing credits. Cinderella's hitching because she got drunk in a dive bar. Snow White looks miserable with a house full of children. And in the ones that hurt me to look at the most, Rapunzel holds her wig of long braids during chemotherapy, and Belle lies on an operating table during a plastic surgery procedure.

As a strictly in-the-moment shooter who knows and chooses not to take on the work that goes into studio photography, I'm impressed with Goldstein's work on a technical level and also of any use of photography to intentionally comment on larger issues. It's one of its most important uses, I think.. In Goldstein's words on JPGMag.com:

As a young girl, growing up abroad, I was not exposed to Fairy tales. These new discoveries lead to my fascination with the origins of Fairy tales. I explored the original brothers Grimm's stories and found that they have very dark and sometimes gruesome aspects, many of which were changed by Disney. I began to imagine Disney's perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues.

Now, despite what any Facebook quiz would have me think, I am not any kind of Disney princess, unless upcoming releases include Princess Who Swears-a-lot, or @Laurie of Twitterlandia. I grew up in the generation after the classics were released - Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella, and they really didn't work for me. I was honestly freaked out even at an early age by the recurring theme of women needing to pass out for indeterminate periods of time in order for things to get better. No thank you. I was way into 101 Dalmations and Mary Poppins, stuff like that, and if anything really scarred me for life it was Bambi.

Real life has not been princessy either. Issues, I have issues. Externally, weight gain, a congenital facial scar, eyeglasses, unfortunate spiral perms. Internally, a crazy penchant for overanalysis and an occasional attitude problem. You name it, I got it. For more appropriate pop culture references, I was Winona Ryder in Heathers, minus the Christian Slater killer boyfriend, or Janeane Garofalo to my best friend's Uma Thurman in the Truth About Cats and Dogs. I maybe passed out sometimes, but there was no guy standing over me at the end crying. (And if there was, he needed money for the tab.)

Now that's just a cheap parenthetical joke. But the truth is, I've been jealous of women whose lives have appeared to be more charmed, more princessy than mine, at least aesthetically. I've thought that real-life girls who were popular, and pretty, and consistently boyfriended, were better off than me.

That's the truth. Sometimes I thought it because they strongly insinuated it, or because social interactions made me feel that way. Or maybe I thought it because of music videos, or movies with impossibly happy endings that looked nothing like my life (or to be honest, anyone's I knew, but we all kind of live in our own head until jarred out of it.) Even last night, watching a rerun of The Office at the gym, I was all, "Look how cute Jim is. Where's MY Jim? Pam's life is AWESOME. I'll just keep doing this here elliptical exercise for thousands more hours and some day, my Jim will come up to me in the parking lot with Dwight who will hand me things to photocopy!"

I said there were issues, right, just so we're clear? Now, I know and you know that Pam is not real, and in most cases I would not indeed like to be a paper company receptionist in Scranton, Pa., (unless Jon Krasinski really did work there, oh my word) but this is what happens to my brain while watching closed-captioned sitcoms while exercising. I have no real desire to fly around with a guy on a magic carpet Jasmine-style, or dance with talking tea cups and butter dishes waiting for a beast to transform in some creepy castle. I would not have argued, however, if Lloyd Dobler showed up in the Malibu. Alas, the person I mistook for him showed up in a trashed Jetta for which he paid $1 and moved into an undergraduate dorm five years later at an advanced age, leaving me behind with a stack of books about letting go Buddhist style and an assortment of irrational behaviors.

Would a princess have better luck? I don't know, because I haven't met any. But life proves to me frequently that real life is not charmed really, for anyone. Happiness is fleeting and weird. Princessy people are happy or sad depending, just like average people, whatever that may mean. I know people who I believe to be very attractive who pick themselves apart worse than I ever have, who are not happy with their internal or external selves. Beauty pageant winners are dethroned, while it is considered remarkable that Susan Boyle can sing at all given her physical appearance, and when she opens her mouth the world pats itself on the back for its enlightenment until she gets second place and ends up hospitalized (there's a Disney theme for you.) And you know, while I'm on the uplifting tip: nobody gets out alive.

Like my co-contributing editor and brilliant blogger Rita Arens wrote about the Fallen Princesses, happiness is relative, and hard-won:

In real life, happiness is the time spent being thankful you aren't going through hell anymore. In real life, we don't know happy unless we've been sad, really sad, or really angry, or really sick. Once we've been all of those things, we learn to appreciate moments when nothing is wrong --- and see them as happiness instead of the status quo.

If Rita's right, I should be accompanied by bluebirds 24/7, and even though I'm not currently bursting with joy, what I'm learning to identify as happiness in her terms is simple contentment, best experienced by not comparing other peoples' experiences and circumstances with mine. This may be why I choose not to watch the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

A larger aim of Goldstein's set might be to realize the very obvious and basic truth that is nonetheless easy to miss when you're caught up in bibbity-bobbity-boo and whatnot: I don't decide happy for princesses and their ilk any more than they ought to decide it for me, no matter what the zeitgeist says. And if I think for a minute that anyone is immune to common suffering like disease, addiction, lost love, or body image issues - no matter what slice of princess life we've seen in movies or through the media lens - that misconception is mostly on me.

As another well-known BlogHer, co-founder Lisa Stone wrote on Surfette in response to Rita's post:

Amen. We live, we learn, we grow up, we are thankful, we learn to find our happiness.

Unless, for some reason, we don't.

Other reactions:

A Cup of Jo finds the series "genius and heartbreaking."

Kelly at DesignCrush liked "seeing the flip side of the typical fairytale."

The Queen of the Quarterlife Crisis was "enthralled" by the images.

My friends and I have been saying for years that it's really the fairytales we heard as children that actually fucked us up. These grand illusions of men climbing up a girl's braid to "rescue her" can really give a girl a COMPLEX. Anyhow, the artist here replaces the "happily ever after" with reality that addresses current issues such as war in the middle east, addiction and self-image.

10 Summer Photo Commandments

2009-06-08T14:18:03-04:00

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

The summer solstice puts the actual season a few weeks away, but the May and June proliferation of graduations, weddings, beach trips and barbecues mean summertime even if the calendar hasn't yet caught up. Since so many events often mean much capturing of memories on memory cards (and film? Yes, please?), it seems like a good time to make a little list of Ten Entirely Subjective Commandments for Successful Summer Photography.

Let's shoot, shall we? (Sorry.)

1. Get your gear in gear. Find your battery chargers. Um, actually, find your camera. Then make sure it works. Then make sure it's charged. It's sad to head out the door to a highly photographable, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime event and find out last minute that the pictures aren't happening due to preventable technical difficulties - like I did, at my sister's graduation last week, when I walked out the apartment door with the battery still in the charger, on the wall. DUH. Besides, even if you're not that spaced out, summer is a great time to scan photo sales if you find you're in need of an upgrade, and hopefully you'll have until next year when all the new models come out and your sweet camera is obsolete. The new crop of ever-cheaper, powerful point and shoot and entry level DSLR options is seemingly endless, if a little overwhelming. The digital camera space on Cnet.com is my go-to for comparisons and reviews.

2. Make friends with your camera, if you haven't. Read - at least skim - the instruction manual, preferably the part about what the different controls mean on the main dial. Yes, this might hurt a little, and I don't want to underestimate anyone's skill level, but at the nature photography classes I teach, almost to a woman the students are terrified of their cameras beyond "auto" mode, and this gets worse as the manufacturers pack more power and picture quality into basic point-and-shoots. You don't have to be a techie to learn a thing or two about what you can make this little machine do, but if you pick up a few pointers it will show in your photos. Does your camera have a "fireworks" option? Maybe. Do you need to understand how it works? Not necessarily, but if you even just know to click over to it your 4th of July pictures will rock. And the best thing is you never have to tell.

3. Work out your shooting rhythm when traveling and/or attending events in groups. My family is used to the fact by now that I'll always be lagging behind because I'm taking pictures, and I am very skilled at spotting the backs of their heads in the distance. Good thing I'm a fast walker who likewise knows when to step up my game if we're behind schedule. It means a lot to me that they don't nag me to hurry up - much - and I think they enjoy the results of my work enough now that they leave it alone.

4. If you're always the photographer, get in the picture, even if it's one, even if it's just to say you were there. If you have "I hate photos of myself" issues (which I clearly understand) maybe this is the season to work with them a little. If you don't, and it's just because you're always the one with the camera, that's even more of a reason to work your way in the frame at some point. On our recent trip to California for my sister's graduation, a picture-taking friend was along who shot one of the nicest pictures ever of us with our parents. My Facebook friends were shocked to see me in a picture that wasn't self-snapped in a ladies room (hey, whatever works), and I'm glad to have a memento of the occasion to frame for my parents and for us. Win.

Here we are, courtesy of Holly, aka blogblossoms, parent of one of my sister's classmates. Thanks again, Holly. We really appreciate it (especially me, because one Christmas present in a better-than-average frame? Done! And no, the wine glasses will not be cropped out. Tastees, they were tastes! Thank you, Temecula, California.)

5. Only two of you, siblings, spouse, bffs?? Ask someone close by to snap your photo. I know, I know it's tempting to stick with the arms-length couple self-portrait, and I'm all in favor because they can be fun, but sometimes you want to both be in the frame without your arms freakishly outstretched. Also, return the favor. I offered to take the photos of two different families in California last week so they'd all be in the picture, and it was almost embarrassing how grateful they were. Scoping out passersby for a potential photographer can be awkward, so offering puts people out of their minor social misery and also restores a little bit of faith in humanity. Again, win.

6. If you're traveling, dump memory cards every day if you can. If you can't, either because you lack a laptop or another storage source, alternate cards and leave one in the room. If the card goes wonky or worse yet, the camera is stolen, better to lose only part of your vacation shots than all of them. I typically split trips up on a few 4GB cards, with one 8GB in my bag for video.

7. Use your mobile phone to shoot in addition to or in the absence of a camera. Some parts of my trip to San Diego last week were not conducive to lugging the big camera around, and sometimes shots happened when I wasn't prepared with anything other than the iPhone. I'm here to tell you - some of these shots are some of my favorite of the trip. Add in my obsession with the ShakeIt app that allows iPhone photos to "develop" on the screen like tiny Polaroids, and yes - I'm sold, for the 1.99 cent cost of this little gem. (Thanks to Aimee at Greeblemonkey for that tip.)

The plumeria, they're everywhere in Ocean Beach! I'd pay money to take the gorgeous smell home with me, but the photo is the next best thing.

8. Edit and upload (or even print, remember that?) as the summer rolls along - and selectively, especially if you're short on time. It's tempting to wait until you've got a chunk of time to deal with the hundreds of Grand Canyon shots, but the deal is that if you do wait, you'll end up with a family wedding, kindergarten graduation and the first crab feast to deal with too, and that will all feel even more daunting. On Flickr, less can be way more, and better to document the best of what you've got than wait for the whole shebang. And the best will stand out when you skim, trust me. You know this.

9. Speaking of mobile phones, upload to your Flickr, Facebook, Twitpic, etc. on the go. Pick your online social networking and/or photo storage spot, plug the contact information into your cell phone, and rock it out. It's the easiest way I've found to practice my moblogging skills, which is a good thing considering my current lack of frequency in even updating my Flickr stream, much less my poor little blog. I am not (unfortunately) paid to shill for Apple, but my iPhone is my favorite and my favorite thing about it is that I can slap stuff up on Flickr and, increasingly, Facebook when I feel like it. Want to make your friends and family jealous that you're sitting on a beach and they're sitting at a desk in the suburbs? Go ahead. I do. I don't care who thinks I ought be reading my book instead of geeking out on the beach. I'm making my own visual, digital archive and I love it. I can even post to Typepad - my blog platform - by putting the contact information in my phone or using my phone's Web browser if I'm feeling particularly ambitious.

10. Finally, just take - and print! - the picture. Have fun. Walk the beach. Skip posed and go candid at family events and vacations. "Good pictures" are relative, and what works for someone else may not for you. Growing into photography has literally made me see the world differently, and it's gotten to the point where I don't have to buy a bunch of souvenirs when I travel or worry I'll forget special events as time passes. My digital photo record is one of my most prized possessions and it's even better when I can share it with my family and friends. Making sure some of these shots make it to print is a bonus, especiaily for gift-giving and surrounding yourself with meaningful, hopefully beautiful, images on a daily basis.

This is the shot that I'm going to hang on my wall and put on my desktop at work, so when things are getting rough I can remember walking the glorious Sunset Cliffs National Park, feeling better than I had in months. Happy summer!

All about Facebook Mobile, from Facebook.com.

Keep your summer photo mojo going with Photojojo's (that was completely unintentional) very fun time capsule. Hook up your Flickr account with their Web site and twice a month you'll receive photos from that time, a year before. I love it.

Sheri J's photoblog entry from last year: A Few Reasons I Miss Summer.

Shutter Sisters has news about an awesome National Geographic contest. The prize is a trip to the Galapagos Islands.

Check out the Flickr blog for constant inspiration, including 5 question interviews with the likes of Barbara Fischer.

20 Photography Twitters Worth Following - and the Five Best Waterproof Compact Cameras - from Popular Photography magazine.

Give

2009-06-08T09:04:12-04:00

laurie

I Want to Save Your Life (Fatass.)

2009-05-04T19:27:07-04:00

This television "show" - called "I Want to Save Your Life" - is wrong.

I tried to lose 40 pounds on Jenny Craig in 1989 and became severely eating disordered. I called up my best friend - also a severe calorie restrictor and over-exerciser at the time - and said I needed to go have something sweet in a controlled fashion or I was going to binge. No fat, caffeine, sugar, sodium or appreciable protein in two months will do that to a girl, it turns out. I was to the point where I would circle my apple - my afternoon snack, prescribed according to Jenny on the menu sheet - and, like, wait for it and think about it until I could eat it. It was not a happy time. I thought about food constantly, constantly. I did nothing but drink obscene amounts of water and live in step classes. But the boy I'd loved for two years had recently started looking at me at work, really seeing me, it turned out, or so I thought. I was insane, and starving, but I was validated, by a 6'2", 150 pound soaking wet dude who could plow through a medium pizza and burn it off riding his bike to campus.

Anyway, my friend and I went to the mall, where we were also going to see the re-release of Fantasia. It was the fall, so I got a pumpkin frozen yogurt with granola on top at TCBY. I can still see it sitting on the counter, it's that kind of memory.

We walked through the mall afterwards, and what happened next can only be described as burnt karma on my part:

I heard a shriek, and my weight loss "counselor", Shireen, was running towards me (no joke, running) with her very hot, very tall boyfriend. Shireen was nice and actually very sweet to me, but she was a former cheerleader utterly obsessed with food, the type who'd make announcements at work (I also worked at Jenny Craig, the worst job I ever had, bar none) like "I need to walk to Safeway and get a bagel or I'm going to binge." She was way better than Susan, the nasty saleswoman who would sit at the counter and laugh at fat people getting out of their cars in the parking lot, but Susan wasn't the one in my face in the mall.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?????" she yelled. "You THROW THAT IN THE TRASH RIGHT NOW."

And she marched me over to the trash can and made me throw my beautiful pumpkin yogurt in. Listening closely, one could hear Wicked Witch-style "melting! melllllllltttttttttttt--innnnggggggggg," both from the trash can and from my brain. Hello, shame, humiliation, and no fucking frozen yogurt.

I don't know what happened afterwards, not on that day anyway. I do know that I made it to the end of November on this diet, which probably amounted to a couple of weeks. I lost 30 pounds all told in the two months I was on it. I would also, every week, after I got weighed, eat my way all night long through a gallon of Breyer's vanilla ice cream combined with peanut butter, peanut butter sandwiches (peanut butter was my trigger food for the longest time), pizza and Oreos. I'd eat like this - a classic binge - and then have the rest of the week to burn it off plus whatever else I managed to knock off my totals in six days. It was a horrible cycle.

What would turn out to be the last night of the diet was before a final exam. I ate, literally, all night long. I couldn't stop. I've never felt more out of control in my life. I've been a wine and beer drinker for my entire adult life, but never touched a drug like heroin or cocaine and when I hear people describe the feelings associated with them I always think of that night with the food and what it felt like to absolutely not be full, and to absolutely not be able to stop putting a substance into my body - in this case, a substance I absolutely couldn't live without in reasonable doses.

The next morning I went to the health center at school to talk to a counselor. I missed my final. I was strung out with a fat and sugar hangover, and I was also terribly afraid. The first thing she told me was that I absolutely needed to quit the diet, so I did. I gained seven pounds back in a week, just eating normally. I worked at the place for a little while longer, and that was the end of it.

I think Jenny Craig is evil, but that's not the whole moral of the story. The moral of the story is tied up with the mall and Shireen and the intrusion of someone else into a process that for those of us who have strong issues with food is really challenging on a good day. The deal is that in order to change your body, or anything about yourself really, you must have the will and the wherewithal to do so. Since that time I have lost a significant amount of weight once through a focused and concerted effort to improve my diet and work out several times a week, hard. I gained the weight back when I came back to Maryland and got into a relationship that took up all of my time until it wrecked my heart and head.

Four years later, I'm doing it again, because I feel mentally and emotionally healthy and at the same time physically motivated to do it. I keep telling people that I have no idea how I got back on this track again, because I was fully convinced that I was going to be the weight I was forever. I didn't see how I could do it or fix it. I didn't have the energy or the will. And now, it does take all of my will, and much of my concentration. I am finally ready to do it. But I can tell you that someone else following me around and telling me about myself - particularly how gross and disgusting or out of control I am - will not do it. And I will never starve again, and as a grown person fully aware of my starvataion mentality that only leads me back to what I tell myself I can't have ten-fold, if you tell me to throw away my frozen yogurt profanity will ensue and you'll not enjoy it.

I believe that America hates fat people. Hates. The vast majority of men here do not pursue overweight women. Many women judge each other to some degree based on appearance and body size. I occasionally, shamefully, think bad things about overweight people, and I AM ONE OF THEM. Call it projection, reflection, whatever, it is what it is.

There are movements based around fat acceptance and rejection, and I don't really engage in them at all beyond understanding what they are and why they exist, for the most part. Because for me it's not about a movement. They don't mean anything when it comes down to you and your mirror and your knees and the way you feel about yourself every day. We each get on this train alone and that's how - in my case anyway - I choose to roll, although working out with people at my workplace has turned out to be a pretty great, low-stress way to stay on track.

The weight loss industry and culture is predicated, for the most part, upon people feeling like shit about themselves. It took me 20 years to cut through the bs and decide, to have a moment earlier this year, just about a month ago, actually, where I decided that I was concerned about how I felt and how I looked, and for whatever reason my head was in the right spot to do something about it.

This happened in spite of - IN SPITE, not BECAUSE - of the not-thin ex-boyfriend who tried to shame me into going to the gym on a regular basis and questioned my every move while I was there. Shouldn't I be doing intervals and not stepping like I was? Shouldn't I be lifting more? Shouldn't I do more abs? This happened in spite of the countless times I know my weight has been judged in social situations (Overheard, of me and aforementioned frozen yogurt friend: "Look, there's a big one and a little one.") and the few times that comments were made directly to me about it. This happened in spite of the time I went to a party in graduate school with my roommate and her friend, and one of the guys who lived there put "Big Girls Don't Cry" on the stereo and laughed when I walked in the kitchen. This happened in spite of the request from my ballet teacher 30 years ago that I only take half a sandwich to school because I wasn't one of the kids who could take a whole. This happened in spite of my male relatives comments in my teen years, like "You sure are packing on the Ell-bees." (My family is not for the faint of heart. I have forgiven, but you don't forget. They would never do such a thing now.)

Because if you want to make a fat person go into her hole and eat more of that food that she's not supposed to put in her greedy, ugly mouth, throw some shame on the fire. Kick at an already potentially fragile self-concept with steel toes. Do it. Because you, obviously, you're better, even though you may not even be exceptionally thin, which always makes me laugh.

Seriously, who the fuck are you? Who is "they?" (This is really underlying a lot of the Susan Boyle stuff taht I haven't had the nerve to write about yet. It's too hard, but maybe this will help it come out. Stay tuned.)

The positive feedback you get when you lose weight is a double-edged sword of weirdness. I'm already starting to see it again because I've lost probably close to ten pounds in two weeks and what isn't losing is getting whittled down because I spend over an hour at the gym most days a week right now to get the metabolism in gear. The "Hey, Skinny!"s and the "Wow, what are YOU doing differently?" are rejections of who you've been while it's a welcoming of this person who was waiting inside who, while still you, is obviously deemed better. (Not sure I'm explaining that one right on the fly - it's complicated.)

I would like to say that I accept myself equally well when I am heavier, but I don't. My face gets puffy and I don't like it. I don't like how I walk or look in clothing, mostly because it doesn't match up with my inside vibe. But more important than that, my knees are complaining and this is a frightening prospect for someone as obsessed with the concept of mobility as I am, having watched my morbidly obese grandmother become completely dependent on other people and depressed through two knee replacements and years of cortisone shots.

I don't want that kind of life for myself, and I'm at a place where I'm feeling like I'm in control enough to do something about it. But for much of my life, I have not felt that way. I have been tired, and depressed and - I'll say it - HUNGRY. Facing a pile of 50 pounds you want to lose is one of the most daunting feelings in the world, and the intrusive judgment from others does not help. Had I not reached the point again where I felt able to do something about it, where exercise felt like something I needed to do to regain my lease on life, where I decided taht it was worth trolling through my diet to find ways I could cut down reasonably without embarking on some insane plan that would have had me back into the peanut butter and Breyer's after a 20-year break, no one could have made me do it.

I think people would be a lot better off if everyone would shut up and stop judging, but that's just me. I follow Jillian Michaels and watch The Biggest Loser, yes. I'm as fascinated by it as I am some of the other reality show trainwrecks I've gotten sucked into over the past five years, which if I'd have avoided them would equate to reading War and Peace probably five times over by now. But this kind of sick-ass premise, where a man follows overweight women and confronts them and tells them how to live their lives - is just not acceptable. It's probably produced to a stupid degree. They probably know he's there. It's probably no surprise. But what it is is just not cool.

No one else can really save your life when it comes down to it unless they've got a tourniquet when you need it most. And the act of making lifestyle changes that amount to any kind of appreciable weight loss or body change is so difficult and requires such intense commitment and - indeed, yes - self-love that it's gotta be you. And I'll go ahead and say that when you do it, if you do it, you should be able to look directly at yourself and be able to say "I kicked my own ass. I saved my own life." People can pitch in. They can love you through it or be your gym buddy or show you the best way to do an interval workout. But they aren't the real drivers.

They - especially some creepy guy in a car on a low-rent reality show - shouldn't get the credit. If there's any to be had in this case, you have to carry it with you or it just won't stick. And yes, I'm biased here - incredibly so - not much I can do about that now.

Oh - and somebody get him a sandwich.

Sponsor Me at March for Babies!

2009-04-22T18:01:51-04:00

laurie

Monday (Almost) Morning Music

2009-04-20T13:34:23-04:00

This hopefully kicks off something I'm going to try to do every week - share some better than decent music to make Mondays just a bit more bearable. We'll see how it goes.

I went and saw Tift Merritt at the Ram's Head Tavern in Annapolis last night. I had no idea if there was an opening band and didn't really care. I know this is a terrible way to be but after years of sitting through shows by people I've never heard before to get to the real deal I'm probably more jaded than I have the right to be. People like Ollabelle (who opened for Hem) are few and far between, let's just say.

We made it inside when Justin Jones was a couple of songs into his set and I'm so glad we weren't later than we were. He - honestly - has the best voice I've heard in a very long time, and writes excellent songs. Excellent. He played this show with his friend Brad Tursi, a great guitarist and singer in his own right, who lives in Nashville. So of course I put it on Twitter, because I can so concentrate on two things at once. And one of my Twitter friends told me he was from DC, which floored me and also made wonder what other great local acts I'm missing either because I've been hermited away from live music for the past couple of years or I just have no idea how to find what's cool anymore.

No matter. I talked to him after the show, actually because my mother walked up to him and his group and basically offered to be their manager, but that's another story that you'll have to buy me a few beers to hear, which may or may not be worth it to you. (They were very nice to my mom, which is also worth some props.) He tours regularly and I strongly recommend checking out a show, or at the very least picking up his records.

When music works - when you catch someone who's really talented who obviously enjoys playing with all his heart and soul - it makes all the shows that weren't so great seem almost worth the price of admission. I'm rooting for this one for sure.

drafts of ideas and ideas of drafts

2009-04-20T00:54:00-04:00

I've wanted to write about a bunch of things this week, like...

*How I missed my fourth blogiversary because I thought it was tax day and actually it was April 10 and when I sat down on tax day to write about how I've been doing this for four years I got totally exhausted by my taxes and the four years concept and didn't finish it.

*How I despise the Susan Boyle hype and whereas everyone I seem to encounter on every single Web site I frequent feels awe-inspired by her courageous turn on that crappy Simon Cowell show the whole thing just made me pissed off and - again - exhausted. With all this exhaustion I may well soon be dehydrated Lindsay Lohan-style and need to go off for a rest at an undisclosed location in somewhere like Idaho or Montana.

*How much I only find joy in teaching right now and in the things I feel like I'm doing right as far as that's concerned. It's the best and most significant professional experience I've ever had. I'd really like it if other areas of my life would catch up but I don't really know if that'll happen anytime soon so yeah, exhaustion, dehydration, etc.

*I don't know. Something. Have I mentioned I have seven chins now, at least? I'm doing a Biggest Loser-style competition at work which is actually going pretty well. My knees have hurt lately to a degree that they ought not, so I'm focusing on fixing that because I'm not ready for a scooter yet.

*How I'm doing this March of Dimes walk next Saturday and I finally got my ass in gear and sent an e-mail to many people I know this weekend to ask for donations towards it and how much I really hated doing that but you know, I've bought a bunch of stuff from people (not most of the people I asked, of course, and this is really not the point anyway but this is how it's going lately, I start writing something and get all paranoid and weird about how people will react and so I embark on some annoying, bulky parenthetical statement and get all dehydrated again and need to stop for a snack or so I tell myself and don't finish the fucking post so whatthehellEVER) over the years, like COOKIES and WRAPPING PAPER and decorative GOODS and whatnot so one walk solicitation in that time, eh, not so bad. I don't know if anyone else will donate besides a couple very generous people, actually, and that has to be ok. I just care about the cause. I know it's hit or miss. I'm just happy to be doing it.

*How after four years, or maybe nine, depending how and where I start my count, I finally feel angry and not so much sad anymore about a particular person's impact on my life, just ANGRY AS ALL HOLY HELL and how whereas this is probably good and even freeing in some ways, my God is it exhausting, if not terribly dehydrating. It's crazy how deep you can bury things and how reliable the grief stages are no matter how long they take to work themselves out, and anyone who has any feelings about how this is too much too late can go shit in his or her hat as far as I'm concerned. Also I hate Facebook. (This one is the big one, by the way. This is the unwritable story that I have to write right now or I'll freak out just short of dying and I'm trying to figure out the best way to do it. It's driving me insane. Notice? Thanks.)

*How live-Tweeting the Sound of Music with one of the funniest women I know is a perfectly valid way for a no-longer-practicing Catholic to spend Easter Sunday night. It's stuff like that that's making me laugh out loud at the moment, girl can't help it.

*I started researching international adoption this weekend. Me, with the limited funds and the roommates and the whatevers and wherefores. Vietnam is still restricted which makes me sad. Hopefully in three years when I'm ready it'll all be straightened out.

I don't know, it's just the plodding along right now. I'm still very grateful for good things and actually spending a lot of time immersed in music and things that make me happy, but I'm edgy and agitated inside and outwardly just...whatever, and I honestly (really) don't want to be comforted out of it or told it'll pass, because sometimes that's how I feel when shifts occur. Anybody with a platitude at the ready pretty much gets a nice cup of STFU at this point and it's nothing personal, which is my personal dismissive platitude of choice at the moment. Whatever this phase is, it's so not pathological or in need of medication, cause I've been there in recent years and that was way different. This is actually kind of motivational. I feel like I just woke up and looked around after I was asleep for years and people had been stealing my stuff and toilet papering my house and I just was all lalala about it forever and now I'm not and have my hand on the receiver ready to call 911. It's interesting. I don't have a tremendous amount to offer to anyone right now, especially anyone needy or whiny or passive-aggressive and I don't even feel guilty about it, which is refreshing too. I don't want to make complicated plans. I don't want to be excessively in charge of anything. I don't want to have to work on any relationships right now. If it doesn't flow and isn't reasonably enjoyable, I don't want it. I'm done. Sorry, wrong number, try again. How about never? Is never good for you?

Yet. And still. I still have pretty low expectations in the face of what I've found are pretty extreme ones from most people (really, some people need to slow their roll big time, I'm just sayin) and I'm trying to work that out, but really? I'm just here. That's all. And no matter how this sounds, I really am ok with that. It's spring cleaning on the most basic level.

I don't know what this life will look like next year but I hope it's different and I feel that it will be. Sometimes I'm excited about that but mostly I'm just nervous still. I feel like I torched things completely recently, some of it against my will, some of it with my full cooperation, and now it's rebuilding time. I fucked up my life so badly starting a decade ago and now that that gigantic error has shrunk down to a new avatar with another woman in it, I don't have many or any of those chunks of time left to play with. It has to get better, at least as much as it's within my control. The things I want, the things I feel like I need to feel more satisfied, they're not that huge (who am I kidding? They're gigantic) but at the same time they're not anything you can pick up off of a shelf or get in a comment and you certainly can't find them on the Internet.

It may be funny around here again soon. No promises. Meanwhile, here's a monkey. I love monkeys, and the Big Picture. Also, I'm seeing this lady tonight. She's amazing.

Purple for Maddie and Much Love for Thalon

2009-04-14T10:29:21-04:00

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

"So shines a good deed in a weary world," Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice. Gene Wilder repeated it in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The line jumped out at me when I watched it for the millionth time on Sunday, reminding me of the community of parent bloggers, friends and allies who reached out this week to support two families who suffered the unthinkable loss of their babies.

The funeral of Maddie Spohr, 17-month old daughter of Heather and Mike Spohr of The Spohrs Are Multiplying and The Newborn Identity, is today in California. Thalon, the 16-month-old son of Shana of Gorillabuns, died this weekend.

I honestly do not know where to begin to sum up the online and in some cases very much in-person reaction from thousands of bloggers, because I know I can't, but I feel it bears mentioning. There is so much - SO MUCH - out there, a tremendous outpouring from people all over the Internet who care about these children and the people who have lost them that it's struck me silent. And while my heart and brain are full, I've been doing basically everything I can all of yesterday and today to avoid writing about the deaths of two small children, even though it was the only thing that seemed important enough to write about this week. I've watched post after post flow from the fingers of people all over this continent (and likely the world, if you've seen posts from beyond North American borders please link them in the comments.) And I've been reading them obsessively, amazed at people who can so readily find the words, at people who are responding to these losses with so much generosity and kindness, who are donating to the March of Dimes in Maddie's memory, who are traveling to California for her funeral to stand with and support her parents, who are turning their avatars and blogs purple in her memory. (Thanks much to Velma for helping me out with mine.)

Last night I ended up stuck on Bejeweled, a horribly addictive game that kills one lobe of your brain with stupidity while it frees the other one up to think about more important things, because I haven't been able to slow my brain down enough to knit this all together in a clean white text box. And after I couldn't do that anymore, I was ready to try to write about it, because even though I know for sure I can't do two baby lives and the immeasurable pain of two families justice, I need to talk about what happens when people all over the world come to care, consider themselves community, and have the technological means combined with the oh-so-human heart and spirit to do something about it.

I'm going to mostly let these people speak, but first of all, the facts, in case anyone reading missed them: Maddie died on April 8, 2009. Born 11 weeks premature two years ago, she had health issues throughout her life but had been doing well until the infection set in that took her life. Mom Heather and dad Mike wrote about their experiences parenting her, from the difficulties of prematurity and NICU to the everyday joys of watching her grow. Mike was a stay-at-home dad for much of Maddie's life. They are both on Twitter, Heather at @mamaspohr and Mike, @newbornidentity.

Shana's son, Thalon Bruce, died suddenly on Saturday.She shared the news yesterday.

There are countless communities on the Internet, with amorphous boundaries, knit loosely together in a global sense but with some of the tightest human relationships I've ever seen. The parent blogging community has been deconstructed in detail, but when it comes to losses like this, the rate and speed of organizing is remarkable. There's the ability of a stranger like myself, not a parent but certainly with the compassion for the inexplicable loss of a baby, to send a comment or an e-mail, to get sucked into the most beautiful pair of seventeen month-old eyes, and to cry for people I've never met because reading the accounts of their daughter's life are almost too much to bear. And if I feel this way? Who could imagine their grief.

In comments and on their own blogs, people reach out. And as usual anymore, Twitter is a communications hub, so intrinsic to online community building that I fail to engage when someone questions the value. You get it or you don't.

Still - human beings have to hit these keys and make the plans, and that is what has happened in both of these instances. Meghan at a Mom Two Boys is the kind of friend I hope I'd have on my side in a situation like this. She originally announced her loss on behalf of the family, has been instrumental in fundraising efforts, and has a For Maddie hub on her blog with links to (currently) 410 posts submitted by bloggers in her honor. March for Maddie has more, including videos and photos.

Lotus Carroll at Sarcastic Mom also has a page with every conceivable Maddie link, including the 50 teams who will be walking in her honor in the March of Dimes March for Babies in a couple of weeks. Donations to Maddie's March of Dimes page are over $25,000 so far (it's often down due to volume, so a trip to Sarcastic Mom's links are the best bet, I've found.)

The women of Room 704 (or, more recently, Seven-Oh-Spohr) are selling bracelets with the bulk of the proceeds going to the Spohr family. Yvonne of Joy Unexpected went out and bought a Nikon Coolpix camera instead of directly donating. Every ten dollars donated to the family gains donors one chance at the camera. Instamom is doing the same with a Nintendo DSi.

Bloggers including Mrs. Schmitty will be posting a photo of Madeline from this post at 2:30 p.m., PST today to coincide with her service. The For Maddie Flickr pool includes purple balloon launches and people wearing purple.

Shana's friend Sarah at Whoorl set up a Love for Thalon PayPal link, alongside her post about his loss.

Thalon passed away yesterday afternoon surrounded by his adoring family.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention wanting to punch the universe in the mouth right now. Really hard.

Heather B. met Thalon in January.

After the last two weeks I keep shaking my head because babies should never die. It’s not right and it’s the most fucked up thing I have ever heard. And yet it keeps happening and all I want to do is sit here in my pajama pants and wonder why? None of the above makes any sense. And I don’t even care. I’m just torn up on the inside and questioning how parents do it. How do you spend the rest of your life constantly worrying that in any minute your heart might break into a million pieces? None of the above makes sense because it shouldn’t. It - the death of a child - shouldn’t happen but it does.

Twitter searches for Maddie and Thalon are updated in real time.

The LA Times ran a story about the online response to Maddie's death. Heather Spohr will speak at her daughter's funeral.

The comments for both of these babies are countless, but this one from Flicka sums up what many feel:

Saying that I am so sorry seems woefully inadequate right now. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family, now and in the days ahead. This internet stranger is hugging you from afar.

Kate from SweetSalty left one on this beautiful photo of Maddie:

Everyone's twittering and blogging and remembering and I'm just completely and totally stunned. Had to come here and see her. My god, she was some kind of imp or sprite or otherworldly girl.
I've spent almost two years reconciling the mysteries of what else is out there, having a 6-week-old premature son who is on that other side, and has all those answers. And yet I look at Maddie's gorgeous face and all over again, I can't make sense of it.

Maggie's post at Okay. Fine. Dammit is beautiful. Genius apparently causes blog crashes, because I can't get there now, but it says everything I wanted to but can't find the words.

Eight hours in the car today and I kept checking Twitter on my phone, and I swear for the first time ever I’m not annoyed by hashtags, I’m seeking them out, the #maddie’s, the #thalon’s, like beacons, and it’s so strange, isn’t it? In times of great confusion and profound tragedy we just want to be among others who are equally impacted, like after Columbine or September 11, and so this is what we do, we head to the chapels and the temples and the public parks and the malls and we shuffle together slowly, as one, taking comfort in the lull of the sound of our communal footsteps and that’s really what the blogosphere has become to me, you know? And everyone was there today, following the hashtags, each tweet and post a gonging of the bell, the Church of Twitter.

Forget about weary. The world ought to really lie down exhausted every time a baby dies, but then if it did it would never get up. It happens all the time, every day, all over the world. But every time, it seems like time ought to stop and remember.In the loss of these children, there is compassion for all children, for all families who lose them. There is not much more to say than that, except for whatever it's worth - which I'm not sure how to quantify but what do you do in situations like this other than things that seem like they might help, like they might have meaning? - I will wear purple today. And if there were a color for Thalon, if one pops up soon, I'll do that too. It's the least I can do for these kids and for their families.

Please feel free to share remembrances, updates and links to posts in the comments. I write at LaurieWrites. I will walk in the suburban Maryland March for Babies on April 25, in honor of Maddie, who joins the kids with cleft lips and palates who I will always walk for. Please visit my page if you feel so moved, and pitch in for all of these kids. Thanks. This is a particularly meaningful year.

Bringing them home.

2009-04-06T02:55:25-04:00

This is the saddest thing that has pleased me to my core in a very long time.

President George H. W. Bush placed a ban on media coverage of the return of bodies of American troops 18 years ago and through that time, including six long years of war in Iraq, it has remained. President Barack H. Obama has lifted it, and in the name of truth and an informed democracy that should honor the sacrifice of its soldiers while it questions the manner in and the reason for which they died, this journalist is thankful.

It's up to the families to make the return public or not. It should of course, necessarily, be respectful coverage. But the bottom line is that the deaths of these people deserve the light of day.

England Dan

2009-03-27T02:36:54-04:00

England Dan Seals died yesterday of lymphoma at his home in Nashville. I purchased "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" (his hit with John Ford Coley, because "Nights Are Forever Without You" has always just bummed me out) in homage.

England Dan & John Ford Coley, I'm not even kidding, because if there's one thing about which I don't kid, it's the light rock. I've reviewed the Ambrosia situation before, (with a shoutout to England Dan & John Ford Coley, check it - who I seemingly cannot call by any fewer than their five given names.) And I have to tell you, there are some Ambrosia freaks out there, if my Google search tells me anything. I still harbor Rhiannon as my secret dream name if I ever had a daughter but I totally probably wouldn't call a female child Rhiannon. I can also sing all the harmony parts to Linda Ronstadt's "Love is a Rose" so basically do not fuck with me where the 70s are concerned at all. (Also, "Still the One"? It's Orleans. And Charlene has still never been to herself.)

"I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" and I go back a long way. When I was in high school, my best friend was trying to date this guy, and he gave her a poem he wrote. And she read it to me aloud, like, isn't this sweet?

"I'm not talkin' bout movin' in," he had copied on the page. "And I don't want to change your life...I won't ask for promises, so you won't have to lie. We've both played that game before, say I love ya and say goodbye."

First of all, we were 16. 16! Dude!

Because I could not allow England Dan and John Ford Coley to be so misrepresented, I had to be the buzzkill.

"He did not write that."

"Who did then?"

"England Dan & John Ford Coley."

"Who?"

"WASH-FM, okay? Just...WASH-FM! 'There's a warm wind blowin' and stars around'? Seriously, he did not write that."

Already a teacher, I guess, no one was plagiarizing on my watch, and also not ripping off the best five named, two-man light rock band ever.

So on behalf of the dudes from Firefall, and Player, and Steven Bishop and Orleans and Ambrosia - and that creepy Marie Osmond with whom you sang "Meet Me in Montana" - I wish you safe travels, England Dan. I'll admit it. I really, really love that song.

ZOMZombies!

2009-03-26T15:32:31-04:00

Tweet it.

Fourth- Fruit, flowers and...appliances.

2009-03-24T02:42:07-04:00

As of April 10 I will have been writing in this blog for four years. FOUR YEARS. This is just astounding to me for some reason.

Four year anniversaries call traditionally for fruit and flowers, which are quite nice, and in modern times, for appliances, so if anyone wants to pony up a high-end espresso machine in April? Well, thanks.

This has been an amazing, intense, difficult, depressing, exciting and very, very daily four years. I've had some awesome experiences and some really, really shitty ones. I've been down in some psychic - and one or two literal -holes for part of it and I've felt at times like the scene in front of me was never ever going to change.

Journalism graduate school really hurt this blog. It took the time I had to write and sliced it into less than half, and often times it jockeyed for time and space with other, graded or deadlined writing, and this was the first to go.

I went to an event last week that in positive and negative ways inspired me to try again. At the very least it motivated me to create again, to talk my way into whatever is supposed to come next. So for the next two weeks, I'm going to commit to writing every day. I may post more than once, I'm not sure. I'm going to go back to the beginning and unearth some things. I'm going to dig around in the dirt of why I started this in the first place and see what comes out on the other side.

It's appropriate. The spring equinox just occurred. The season's changing. My travels have stopped for a few weeks. I'm digging into work and teaching and writing and learning again. I'm aware of the need to be mindful and make plans.

So I hope, if you've been around for awhile (thank you) or if you're new, you'll understand what's going on as a process of excavation, and of setting out on a new path, an overdue one I think. Or maybe I'll just kind of recycle old new Facebook memes, because that 25 Things thing, that really had some juice left in it, I think.

#14 I really, really like espresso, and the lattes it produces when milk is involved. Thanks.

Why Am I Here?

2009-03-24T01:05:26-04:00

There's so much to do before I die that this question is absurd. But ok.

Parent a child.
I don't know how, or whose, or when, but I have an intense desire to be a mother and I think it's important to my experience here to see if I can make it happen. I also think I'll be pretty damn good at it, and those are the things I like to try for sure.

Visit all 50 states.
I started traveling this country on my own three years ago and I'm constantly amazed by what I see and who I meet. I won't stop til I see the whole beautiful mess.

Own a home
I haven't, and I'd like to. I'm a roamer and a bit of a flake, it seems. I've tried on and discarded a few careers and a couple of towns. I think I'd just like to wake up quiet on a Saturday in my own house and work in the yard if I feel like it. It's not so complicated.

Fund a project that is of use to other people or animals
I'd like to move forward knowing I did something of value for someone or some greater good along the way.

Make a living primarily from writing and photography, but not a miserable, scraping one. One that allows me to live happily and stably and creatively all at once.
I believe in working. I've had a job since I was 18 years old and every day off since has been tinged with some kind of guilt, however slight, about what I'm not doing or ought to be doing.

I'll never starve for art because I think that's silly, but it would be nice to be compensated for my truest talents, even if it's not exactly what they're worth.

Have a season, just a season, of peace.
I'm tired of worry, of stress, of being sad and lonely and unfocused. With a season of contentment to possibly blend into the next and the next, who knows if the other problems would seem as bad?

I remembered that I lost you.

2009-03-23T02:34:42-04:00

I'm at my most emotionally vulnerable on airplanes, it seems. I fly a lot, although it unfailingly scares me, because the thought of never seeing as much of the world as I can, which is pretty much all of it, scares me more. I have pretty significant crash paranoia and I'm just about the most satisfied when I land and get in the car that's statistically much more likely to kill me. Our brains are funny.

On the plane home from SXSW Interactive in Austin last week, I sat down in my usual aisle seat, close to the front, next to two jackass guys who had been at the conference too, talking about their iPhones and inappropriate texting with girls named Ashley while married, and pointedly ignoring me. I was exhausted.

I had spent five days in a bubble of weird, frenetic activity, learning a lot and seeing and hearing some very interesting things, but not for a minute of it feeling cool enough, or connected enough, or where-I-wanted-to-be-in-the-world enough. I struggled to focus, to repeatedly answer the "what do you you do?" question with some kind of solidity that stayed elusive.

I had been surrounded by nice people (who actually in a few amazing cases gave quite of a bit of a damn about me, as it turned out, and were very kind and generous.) and great ideas and good food and also a lot of bullshit, quite frankly. A lot of chatter. A lot of social and status whatever. Oh and I also broke my computer and my camera was long-dead, and as it turned out I still loved Shiner Bock and barbecue and was utterly hungover from both.

When I sank into my seat, I opened up my notebook to get some of the stuff out of my head, because time trapped on a plane is often some of the best for purging my brain. The notebook is the daily calendar/Moleskine variety, and I had marked January 2nd with a prayer card for that lady holding me in that baptism picture up there (that is imprinted on my heart such that I can see it when I close my eyes,) who died on that day this year. The card fell out on my lap. I picked it up, noted the date and was oddly shocked that it had only been two months and some change, mostly because I don't like to think of her as gone and never will and it's better if I don't think of the time that's passed since in such concrete terms.

Trapped on that plane, I left my sunglasses on and cried as inconspicuously as possible. I wrote some things down about her. I remembered for the countless time since she had her stroke 12 years ago how much this loss sucked. In spite of my pretty serious grounding in reality, I believed it ought to never happen, that I didn't want a life without her somewhere in it, so basically I intended to skip over the whole mortality concept when it came to this person who was in and of herself so much of my backstory, who frequently gave me uncommon amounts of resolve when my own so dependably shattered, who at her frailest and weakest only gave a shit about how I was doing, who never, ever let me down. I thought about how I could explain where I'd been and what I'd been doing in Texas to her if I had the chance and how she wouldn't have understood it at all but would have only wished aloud that it was a good experience for me, and it must have been if I'd chosen to spend my time there, and that I likely was working too hard again, and where the hell had I gone again anyway?

I missed her again like knives through my chest and I realized that still, no matter how much I run, no matter how much I try awkwardly to get through this phase to the next, no matter how much I dress myself up and take myself out, at my core I am a 5 year old who wants the dog and the grandma back that the last year took away. (And were I not on an honesty kick I'd have erased that already but that's the way things are right now, and the way the writing may go for awhile too, to see if it will help.) And since neither of them are going to show back up anytime soon all I can do is keep moving through what is still a weird and unpredictable river of grief that I can't believe I had the audacity to think might be more manageable this time around, until I get to a more peaceful place that "she's in a better place" has never provided for me.

Death sucks. I hate it. And good grandmas, as I was lucky for a good number of years to learn firsthand, are magic.

SXSW Smiles and Photo Dreams - What's Yours?

2009-03-22T18:18:32-04:00

Cross-posted at BlogHer, with a few additions here.

As a photographer and an adult with a cleft lip and palate who had a transformative experience shooting an Operation Smile dental mission in Vietnam a year ago this week, I was thrilled to see the SXSW Smiles project at the huge SXSW Interactive conference in the oh-so-awesome Austin.

Well, I didn't actually see it. I almost missed it entirely. I walked out of my last panel on the last day smack into a table that had piles of Operation Smile stickers and buttons on it (I was tired, and it turns out when you buy an iPhone you can spend a lot of stupid time looking at the ground.) It kind of hurt my knee, but it got my attention. And after a little bit of research into the project that brought a nonprofit organization like this one to a huge tech conference, I kicked myself harder than usual for not paying attention before. There's a lot to pay attention to at this conference, but this is one more thing that given my love for this organization's mission of providing surgical repair for facial differences - primarily cleft lips and/or palates - around the world, I feel like the universe should have put in my scattered, hurried path. (And the universe is like, "Hi, pay attention to the important stuff, thanks.") So I am now, and I hope you will too.

Renee Alexander Hamilton, Operation Smile's Social Media Strategist who represented the project at SXSW Interactive, tells the story on her blog, SXSW Smiles Journal.

-I told her about my new role and how now I am trying to do the same thing we do in Donor Relations online and in person at events. I explained that while in the past social networking tools like chat rooms were thought to divide people and keep them at home in a dark corner having "virtual relationships'. Now with Facebook and Twitter, these interactions are actually driving in-person meet-ups and beyond that they are inspiring ACTION.

So I guess you could say I'm in Austin for a little Smile Action!

SXSW Smiles set up shop outside the very cool Beacon Lounge for nonprofits and social change organizations in the Austin Convention Center, with the goal of enough donations for 10 new "smiles" - repair surgeries for kids with cleft lips and/or palates- each estimated at $240.

Directions were simple. First, pick up or download a "Make Me Smile" sign, and write whatever makes you smile on it. Upload a photo of yourself with the sign to Flickr with the "sxswsmiles" tag. Donate by texting "smile" to 90999, or dropping it off in the Beacon Lounge.

Check out the Operation Smile SXSW Flickr set here, hosted on Alexander aka Entropy Art's photostream. The answers are fun to read - "Bhangra," "our absurdly clingy dog", "hot salsa"- and you'll also get a peek at some of the folks roaming the halls of SXSW, if that's a draw. I would include them for you here, but "all rights reserved" is what it is.

The SXSWSmiles project is part of a larger $240 Smile Challenge March (aka Smile Month.) The cause's Facebook page says that $4203 has been donated so far and $3710 is still needed to reach their goal of providing 20 repair surgeries to children. Check it out.

While this is so much on my mind, Lenovo Microsoft is asking people to "Name Your Dream Assignment," asking "Where will your lens take you?" on a photo project for which they will give a prize of $50,000, a video camera, a blog and a computer to record it all. I haven't entered, but mine? To go on a mission - a surgical one this time, and to shoot it. I don't know when or how this will happen, but I believe that it will, and just as I felt in Vietnam, I think it'll be one of the most important things I ever witness.

And why? I'm as idealistic as I am hardcore about photography, and that's a lot. Photos can change lives, I will boldly, idealistically, perhaps overdramatically say - whether they're photos of people talking about what makes them smile or, maybe more importantly, photos taken before and after cleft lip and/or palate repair. No pictures exist of me prior to my lip repair at six weeks old. Hospitals didn't take photos of babies with facial differences then. I'm not sure what the deal was in my family, honestly - I do know my mother was never ashamed of me, in fact saw beyond my flaws as mothers most often do. Who knows what pressures existed on a 20-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man, in the days before cameras were omnipresent, everywhere, where images were immediately available.

But photos are essential and I wish there were some. I would love to see what I looked like before this repair, to see the reality of this situation that has affected my life like no other. And I like seeing the impact a simple repair surgery can make on a child who may otherwise walk around in their impoverished town or village with a gaping whole where there ought not to be one. Photos can inform and change perceptions and raise awareness just like, and sometimes even more than, words can. It can be difficult to see if you're unaccustomed, but just like with many things that present challenges that can't be easily solved, or aren't so pretty, or disturb on some level, they don't go away just because we don't pay attention.

When its in a picture in front of your face, it's hard to ignore, so may there always be pictures of important things in front of our faces.

Me, exhausted, at the end of a harrowing trip, happy nonetheless to be spending time with the very important kids at Hanoi Medical University, March, 2008. Many had just received their first dental exam. Photo kindly taken by their teacher. (The whole set is here. I love these pictures.)

And I can easily say that Operation Smile is my favorite new Twitter contact from SXSW Interactive.

Other photo dreamers for this and other causes:

Joanne Bamberger/PunditMom's dream assignment is to tell the stories of moms keeping their families afloat in tough economic times.

Katie Ring's Photography and Life blog with footage of Operation Smile patients in India and her photos of a mission there.

Audra, an American expat writing at Nicaragua: The Obandos accompanied her students from the American Nicaraguan School on an Operation Smile mission

Beth Kanter was a fixture in the Beacon Lounge and wrote prolifically about the nonprofit presence at SXSW and in social media communities. Her post on the Social Media Nonprofit ROI Poetry Slam is a good place to start, but scroll around for lots more. <