Well we'll see if I do it, becasue it will take time and energy that right at the moment need to go to hearth and home, but I intend to apply some of the things I know about photography with all of the things I learned at this workshop. I made a decision to wait and see if I really needed or wanted Zacks DVD from the one light workshop. I need it. I bought it. I will apply it. Can't wait for my grid light.  My head is swimming and so many thing are also happening at once and I have to get Liv to SF this weekend for Switzerland. But I will post for my fabulos Models, Ali Bo Liv and Casey........Girls Thank you so much you were all so fun and willing and beautiful.

 

 

I thought I would write a bit on the next few weeks in my life and some of my thoughts. I am leaving tomorrow, heading out to Redding to take a workshop with David Beacksead and Zack Arias. I wrote a little bit below about why I am so excited about this workshop. At the same time I am getting ready to send my beautiful, inside and out, 16 year old daughter to Switzerland to live with her Aunt and travel with her and help her with her babies in Switzerland. She also gets to play soccer there, she's one hell of a goalie. (So was Ian in college and Mike was as well) and she gets to take French lessons. But if she wants to learn to eat, she will learn French quick. I am a little concerned she is so close to the super collider at CERN, which some scientist are concerned it can create black holes, but it was shut down for a few months for repairs. See, not to worry, I digress....ANYWAY....

She's off in a couple of weeks and then I am in for a long winter in a little slice of Alaska, and no, I can't see Russia from here. I am hoping to paint...learn more photoshop and create a couple of my own actions. That would be very cool, something I would feel proud of. I am also hoping to grow my photography business. I really love taking picture. I am not sick of it. The more I do it, the more I love it. I really don’t like photographing the CHEESE. I find it gross, but I love making people feel gorgeous and even more I love the way they look when they see the images I take of them. I feel kind of pushed by the industry to define myself as a specialist of some sort in the photography bis. Like kids or babies or dogs or maternity or weddings. I like taking fine art portraits of everything including people in their natural emotional state. I don’t care what color, shape, size, age, sex. I don't.

I have been thinking about slogans for my business and one I already have is "Focusing on the heart of the matter." although I do think it is a bit cheesy....I like "shooting the love." That's the slogan I thought of when I saw Ben Chrisman’s wedding blog and he shot a gay Jewish wedding. Hands down it is one of the most beautiful bodies of work I have ever seen. It made me cry. I look forward to shooting like that. Looking for the love between the Lion and the Lamb or a Muslim and a Jew or two men or whatever whomever. I love shooting the emotion between two people. It makes me think of a new Slogan "Marriage is a human right?, not just the right of the religious right." Head hunters in the south pacific marry and they don't even know about a bible or Jesus, and eating one another is really a sin...there I go. I digress. Anyway. ...I love Ben Chrisman’s work. And the brass b**** he has, to put it out there. He's not only super talented he's brave and I love that.

I believe in love. I do. That's about the only thing I really am buying these days. The news is depressing and not for me. I can play KF*** all day long, on my own in my head I don't need to waste electricity doing it.

If I want to avoid a financial crisis I need not spend money I don't have and am not going to get. I have never been one really to care much about the Jones’ and what they have in fact if I did, I'd be driving a giant suburban, shopping at wal-mart, voting against gay marriage (HATIN and calling it WWJD). It’s so hard for me not to HATE the HATERS, but I believe in love so I can’t go there either…..Just take pretty pictures Kim and forget about them. Yes, I talk to myself and write to myself as well…I digress…ANYWAY….

I am sad about Olivia going...I also know it is the best thing in the whole wide world for her to go to Switzerland and get out of small town America. To go see how the world sees us and to get a giant world view. Also to see what Europe thinks of us and our values and to see more values and principles. Ultimately for her to have a world of choices, options, opportunities. Besides to learn French and learn how to eat, play, work, rest in the mind set of the Swiss. Lucky girl!

I had NY, PARIS and ROME at 18 .....thank you Martin Ryter, Oliviero Tuscani, John Casablancas...a poor kid, a high school drop out, who would have never had the option and all these men helping me and safe for me and only one was gay. I think straight men in general are way more dangerous for girls and boys, then gay men. In fact I believe it’s fact. I was respected and protected by them gay and straight. I look back and now know how big that was. I sent Oliviero an email thanking him last year and I spoke to Martin a while back about my path to photography because he is a great and wonderful photographer. John, I never spoke to, he's famous and unreachable, but he was charming and adorable and of course a totally bad boy who never gave me a lick of trouble. He was encouraging and he lectured me, I was SUCH an unprofessional model. I took up clubbing in NY and PARIS as my profession. 18 in NY and Paris and a taste for dancing...what more can I say. I loved the clubs. I loved studio 54. I was 17 in 1982 when I went there and I think it closed that year, talk about a world view. How much fun do think it is to listen to Rick James's, "Mary Jane" while in Sonoma and then Dance next to him and Janice Dickenson in NY at studio 54. It was wild and mind blowing and it opened my mind a crack that there were possibilities for me in this world. And that life could be a fun and a magical ride. And it was…and still is...,But just like my entire life I never knew it til I looked back.

And I am NOT sending my daughter off to Europe without a chaperon and a surrogate mother. She isn't going to the clubs, but a small town and some train travel...Nevertheless, it will be different than here. And different than what I had. I know I love her so much because I am letting her go and it’s what’s right for her, but for me I will be sad and lonely without her til I get distracted by art because art for me is the great translator and it will heal my sadness.

Ok I don’t know if any of that made any sense…..but I am off to a soccer game, her last one here and editing 3 more jobs before Olivia and I can take off to shoot with some great men. Oh Boy!

I am headed out to Redding with a pose of models I have scouted for a workshop with David Beackstead and Zack Arias both innovators and leaders in their fields of photography. I am honored that I get to help a little and beyond honored I get to learn from these two. I really respect both of their bodies of work. I am like a sponge. I love being the perpetual student. I never get sick of learning. I think especially from them.

The reason I am so personally excited to take this workshop is I love that they are artists first. The elements of design are in major play here and I get to learn about light and photography from two exceptional artists in their field. I also think they have stayed committed to their creative visions for themselves and they area testament they can do that and make a living. I am sure I will learn way more than taking pictures.

They are coming to Redding and there will be 30 of us working with 2 of them for three days. I am going to learn SO MUCH from so many people!!! I have looked at some of the work of the students that are coming. I would carry their cameras.

This is one of those special times for me. I love art and photography and I love to learn. I am completely grateful.

I had the worst cold I have had in at least 10 years, this week. I literally felt like I'd been through 14 rounds with Ali. I lost. Totally down for the count. And while I was down I got to feel how sad I am going to be that Olivia is going to Switzerland for 6 months. I am not going to be able to hug her for 6 months. It's thrown me into a nostalgic state and really easily pushed to tears. Ryon is off to Vancouver in 4 months for a year to attend a film school he has been eyeing for a few years. He got accepted, a big deal for him. Since he has been a little boy he and I would watch the Oscars together and he told me when he was 8 he wanted to make movies. He never told anyone else. He is one of the most amazing people I know where it comes to getting it done for himself. I am really going to miss Ryon and Liv and I miss Mike. I can't believe we won't have a photo op for 18 months. How I took for granted the nights around the table all 7 of us alive well and full of energy. Dinners were always hectic and rich. We filled a room, a home, a life and now there are only 2 children out of 5 at home and I miss my children when they were little. For that matter I miss my Grandma and my Grandpa and my brother, I really miss him. I miss Lisle and Edgar and I really miss Shirley everyday. I miss my friend Stephanie and our walks and I miss Dee. I miss my friends John and Janine. I sometimes miss Sonoma. I really miss Hellgate and lately Yosemite too. I miss my paints, I really miss those and I miss yoga with Dawn Lee. I miss Sex in the City and Deadwood and I miss how good HBO was. I miss being able to really run fast. I miss running a horse at breakneck speed and being on the back of it, going so fast my eyes would water. I miss writing and I totally miss smoking although I don't miss the side effects. I miss my dogs Bruno and Brandi and Amy and Scout. I miss the puppies. I miss seeing Dave Matthews in Concert and I really miss the Ocean and the fog and the Poehlmann’s upon on Greenwood Ridge where we were all young and there was so much magic. I miss that all the time. I miss this country under Bill Clinton’s command and I miss how we all felt before 9/11. I miss the food in Paris, New York And Rome I miss my physical youth, but not the mental or emotional. I'd say I missed my mom, but I get to talk with her often as I do with Ryon. I find myself missing my husband when he works nights which is often.

I am not one to look back much. I move fast. Keep the future just in front of me and I do live in the moment. But at rare times, when I do look back, it hits me how rich my life is, was, has been. How incredibly blessed I am to say I get to miss anything.

Missing for me, just means I liked it.

 

Maybe it’s because I am in my 40s or it’s because I care more or maybe it’s because we are in America's drowning lower middleclass, or maybe it’s because my ancestors came over on the Mayflower, The Winslow’s, or that my family on both sides has served their country and some got their asses handed to them in wars or my great grandmother's fought for their right and my right to vote. Maybe it’s because I am a patriot who believes in fiscal responsibility and civil freedoms and liberties for ALL men and women. Maybe it’s because I hate liars and unbridled greed. Maybe it’s because I am sick and tired of the SPIN. Maybe it’s because I have given birth to 6 children and almost died doing it. Maybe it’s because I want for them freedom liberty and a frickin chance. Maybe it’s because I am ashamed of George Bush and his vulchers and what they have done to this once great country . My daughter is traveling Europe in a month, I told her to tell anyone she meets she’s from Vancouver, Canada. I am horrified and ashamed and can not remain silent.

I just think the whole country has gone daft if we can not see the obvious. The republican party has turned into Hitler’s propaganda machine. They have spent more money on the taxpayers dime, this year alone, than any dems have put together since the beginning, of the century. This is not the real republican party.

Here’s my questions, got this from a friend……..

If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."?

Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story?

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim?

Name your kids Willow , Trig and Track, you're a maverick?

Graduate from Harvard law School and put yourself through it, you are considered unstable?

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator
representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian. Nice going John.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society. What do you call parents against sex education? Grandparents.

If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent Americas '.

If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA , your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Below a letter I sent to friends.

If your views differ I apologize and sincerely hope you change them quick.

My mother wrote me and asked me to write a piece on why I don't want Sarah Palin to be our next VP or President. I am supposed to send it to 20 people and ask them to do the same. Write a letter forward it to 20 people and so on. I just read Eve Ensler's piece and although I can write I know I couldn't write a more accurate letter about how I feel about Sarah. I have been doing my own research on Sarah Palin. I really set our wanting to vote for her. We are very similar in many respects and I like many aspects about her. She is my perfect ideal, a simple background, small town, sports mom, I have five children, I run a business, I have a hot husband, I don't put up with any ones shit and I believe in strong woman. But, after days of investigation I can not vote for her. I think the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Voting for this ticket is Bush and Cheney again. She is not my perfect ideal. I think the republican party is a depending on the stupidity of the American people and have created another pawn like Mr. Bush. She is George Bush incarnate. I find her to be mean, ignorant, vindictive, incredibly self righteous, self-willed and dangerous. She actually believes, like he does, she’s a good guy. The definition of dangerous is someone that thinks they know what’s right and is closed minded and lacks an ability to see all sides.

Truth be told, I am scared shitless about this ticket. I like McCain but he's old and he's going to die sooner than later. I shudder at the thought of 4 more years of this horror. With her a heartbeat away from the presidency and the First Dude a heartbeat away from her. My sons and daughters may not survive it. I am advising my children to live a life of their dreams, get educated, adopt children and don't procreate and yea they know how babies get made.

thank you for your time...... and now on to Ms. Ensler

 Drill Drill Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a task from God.'

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, 'Drill Drill Drill.' I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler

I am voting intelligence.