“Have you ever seen the faces of the children they get so excited.

Waking up on Christmas morning long before the winter’s sun’s ignited.

They believe in dreams and all they mean, including heaven’s generosity.

Peeking ’round the door to see what parcels are for free in curiosity”

-Townshend

….and the Calm Plastic Child

Your faithful narrator was recently called in to be memory man at Kim and Puffy’s Twins’ B-Day up at Green Acres Mansion. A good scene to collect moments among some of the city’s most cherubic mega-children. It’s nice to be called in to do the big shooting, but it’s also nice to be called in to be part of the family.

Naughty is the new Nice.

Dustin Lance Black and Cleve Jones. Angel face Black wrote the new floor-you history-pic, Milk, and Cleve was the real deal dude there off the corner of Castro running Harvey Milk’s campaign back in the 70′s. These guys are doing real, tangible amazing things, well earning all the celebrating their currently getting. Black framed one hell of an American tragedy and really got right what it means to have politics guide you and to liberate yourself so much that you begin to hum and give off that glow called LEADERSHIP. What a miraculous man that Harvey Milk was, and Cleve Jones was right there with him. And he’s continued on through a life of hugely affirmative, progressive activism. He founded the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and has been a lifelong loud voice speaking out against the silence that kills integrity and individuality. Here are a couple serious insiders, one inside Hollywood, one inside Lefty politics, each at this juncture in history bringing the importance and pizazz and power of their forte’s to the other’s world. And in that juncture, we all win. These are the celebrities that turn me on.

….while driving. This D-Lux 4 is proving to be a hip-worn gem.

I just received a Facebook Friend request from an old fan. She sent a nice note along saying she was a huge fan when she was little and now she’s grown and has a lovely family of her own. I’m not in the habit of adding people I don’t know to my little Facebook community as I’ve endeavored to leverage it as a means of keeping up with those I already have a stake in and those who I might make photo business with. But I can appreciate anyone who’s willing to give a shout out so I like to say hello. I took a look at her profile to get a sense of who she might be. Indeed, a lovely woman with a lovely family. A contemporary from St. Paul who’s on largely the same page as me in her life. Bravo. And then I saw her Political Views entry: “Anyone who’s for banning abortion.” Anyone? That’s lumping yourself in, isn’t it? I find it so wacky that this can be such a decisive issue in this “free” country. It’s right up there with being able to get people to vote for larcenous, warmongering madmen who’ve pilloried this county’s coffers all because they were afraid that gay people might be able to get married (remember 4 years ago? there was another election and another big push for popular bigotry and it got the Far Right out in droves and look where we are now…) So in my belle clear head, up here now long before the dawn to get some work done before my own beautiful family wakes up, I thought I might send her a letter intoning how important I feel it is to have a politics based on the love of freedom and not the thirst for quelling someone else’s liberties:

What’s wrong with a woman’s right to choose? Lumping yourself in with any possible demagog – ‘One who uses popular biases and other aspects of cultural programming to elicit a “knee-jerk reaction” from a crowd’ – who’s ready to steal your vote by pandering to your one blanket prejudiced social more is dangerous in our open democracy. Families are the most gorgeous thing. But they can’t be crammed down people’s throats. Mistakes are made and it’s medieval to say that science can’t help a modern, liberated people to remedy those mistakes. Remember, if you ban legal abortions you don’t stop them, you just force young poor women to get them in back alleys where they often get butchered and sometimes die. That’s not sisterhood. You think rich people have ever had a problem getting what they want or need? So it’s a classist as well as sexist stance to stay you’re vehemently against abortion. Modern womanhood and a free society demands that we all respect a person’s right to free choice.

Enjoying the quick magics of my new Leica pixie cam. The trick with these little machines is to let them bleed into the moment, the moments bleeding back for you.

Never fight a child who’s fighting sleep. Just let them rock….