Luthien Rising

Out to Sea

2011-01-07T13:26:00.001-05:00

Out to Sea, originally uploaded by Lú_.

I've been feeling out to sea a lot lately, between one thing and another. This afternoon I am reminded by a photograph from my summer holiday -- simply the next in line to upload to Flickr -- that "out to sea" can be a place of great beauty with a view right to the very horizon, to the end of the earth. Hope may be opposite of the despair, but it can be found in the same place. It's just a matter of seeing the sea in the right light.

M is for Merry

2010-12-24T11:28:00.001-05:00

M is for Merry, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Merry Christmas, from my home to yours.

The Boy is Disturbed by the Rocks

2010-12-11T12:47:00.001-05:00

The Boy is Disturbed by the Rocks, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Because things in nature aren't supposed to be in straight lines.

Castle Rising

2010-12-05T15:41:00.001-05:00

Castle Rising, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Castle Rising Castle, near King's Lynn, Norfolk, was built in the mid 11th century by my husband's 25th great-grandfather, upon marrying the widow of another 25th great-grandfather. If we'd known that, we might have tried to get there before the gates closed. Not to be forgotten in pre-holiday genealogy homework: looking up the history of every site on your route, just in case.

The Way Home

2010-11-25T19:25:00.001-05:00

The Way Home, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Once upon a time, the Fyshes lived in Norforlk, in the Fenlands outside of King's Lynn. Our branch left there, brothers together with their wives and children, long since -- first for London, outside the City, later for what was then Upper Canada. This summer some of us went back, if only for a day or two. But gravestones from centuries ago are also long since worn away, by the sea air, and even the ghosts seem to have blown across that flat landscape to the west.

Afterlife

2010-11-16T11:39:00.000-05:00

Once or twice a year I search for my name in Google to see what turns up. And at least once a year something surprises me. This time I was surprised by the living past.

My bio these days says that I'm an editor, a publishing educator, and a photographer. Sometimes it adds that I'm a mom. But once upon a time, before I was these things, I was an academic. Straight from a BA into graduate school; a PhD in English literature, focusing on literary theory, the eighteenth century, and publishing history; a couple of years in full sessional position teaching core courses and developing one of my own; conference papers and journal articles; a scholarly monograph, The Work(s) of Samuel Richardson ... and that was it. There was a tenure-track post at a university for me, but it died out in a round of budget cuts. I stayed home with my children for a while, took community-college photography courses, found a new career as an editor of memoirs and current events books and young adult fiction, and settled into a life I love. I left the academic world behind.

But last night I discovered that the academic world did not entirely leave me behind. That 1997 book of mine is still alive there. It is on an Oxford reading list and in scholarly citations in monographs, articles, and blog posts (strangely, also in a couple of Wikipedia citations). This was merely amusing until I discovered that I am in a Roger Chartier endnote! Roger Chartier, one of the chief inspirations of my graduate years! I would buy his books before they were even translated into English, and though I gave away much of my scholarly library, I kept Chartier.

For the next several months, whenever I feel that I have accomplished little in my life, I will tell myself, "Roger Chartier!" and it will be all right. There is, it turns out, an afterlife, if only in endnotes.

Lest We Forget (Remembrance Sunday)

2010-11-11T09:17:00.001-05:00

Lest We Forget, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Every Remembrance Sunday, the 48th Highlanders of Canada — veterans, regiment, chaplains, band, and cadets — gather at the memorial at the north end of Queen's Park in Toronto for a service to remember fallen comrades from the Boer War to today.

O valiant hearts, who to your glory came
Through dust of conflict and through battle flame,
Tranquil you like, your knightly virtue proved,
Your memory hallowed in the land you loved ...

All you had hoped for, all you had you gave
To save mankind — yourself you scorned to save.

Lest we forget.

God bless the 48th!

Coneygree Lane

2010-10-30T15:55:00.001-04:00

Coneygree Lane, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Where Coneygree Lane meets Snowshill Road, we stopped walking to look at a house. The couple who live there were leaving, perhaps for church (it was a glorious Sunday). We talked about living in old houses — our old Canadian house being younger than their old British house — about heating and plumbing and building materials, about the size of houses today. They left in their car down Snowshill Road into the village. We turned up the lane and began our trudge up to where we would see not just trees and dried mud but east toward the sea.

RIP Benoit Mandelbrot

2010-10-16T14:55:00.001-04:00

romanesco, originally uploaded by docman.

And thank you for changing how so many of us see the world around us.

Collaboration

2010-10-08T09:47:00.001-04:00

Sight Unseen (still), originally uploaded by Lú_.

What happens when you marry together Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo and multimedia artist/photographer Leah Singer? Pure audiovisual magic. Many thanks to Nuit Blanche for bringing Singer home to Toronto with Ranaldo, and to both for transforming Old City Hall's courtyard all night long.

MIND THE GAP

2010-09-28T09:25:00.001-04:00

MIND THE GAP, originally uploaded by Lú_.

An Assyrian Aesthetic

2010-09-23T13:33:00.000-04:00

This past summer, I dragged the kids and my husband from our mandatory stop at King's Cross Station down to the British Museum (with a long stop on the way at the British Library, where we tried not to drool on the manuscript cases, looked through all the information about the Magna Carta to find names of ancestors, and didn't miss the gift shop) just to walk inside and see that iconic architectural view.

My eldest son picked up a museum map there, too, and insisted that we had to come back, because they had rooms and rooms of Assyrian stuff!

So come back we did, and Assyria turned out to be a revelation.

The rulers of Assyria celebrated their accomplishments, from battles to construction jobs, with wall panels that both showed and told their story. The writing — in vast quantities — crosses the elegant visual representations — a reminder, perhaps, that writing is a way of drawing language.

The visuals are elegant indeed. Carved into blocks of stone, they could have been spare and abrupt, full of harsh straight lines, but they aren't. They are detailed and curvaceous, full of texture and movement.

They also reveal a society that saw detail as a crucial part of what the world is. The river that carries ships of men to battle is a river not only because of its rippling water but also because it is filled with life.

Finally, the Assyrian reality was a measured reality. Large buildings were built on the labour of men who carried and men who counted; battle was not completed until the heads of the defeated had been counted and recorded by a scribe — a man of prominence in the final wall panel that would celebrate it.

Measured, elegant, detailed, and full of story. It seems like a balance worth achieving, especially if it can be achieved without the rolling heads.

From my Faves: Like a stone

2010-09-15T14:42:00.001-04:00

Like a stone, originally uploaded by Simon Pais.

This was one of the first photos I "faved" on Flickr, back in the spring of 2005. Then, Simón Pais-Thomas was a Chilean high school student playing with a camera. Today, he's a successful fashion photographer in Mexico. Maybe in another six years he'll finally, as he once told me he'd like to, make it all the way up to Canada, if only so I can see that he's not actually a fantasy.

Buone Vacanze

2010-08-20T13:01:00.001-04:00

Grande..., originally uploaded by Giuseppe Desideri.

My daughter is away on holiday. Today she arrived in Venice. I hope it is this beautiful there.

From my Faves: Toby! Tobi! Tobé!

2010-08-11T15:05:00.001-04:00

Toby! Tobi! Tobé!, originally uploaded by Kevin Steele.

Kevin Steele is one of my favourite photographers on Flickr. He's a man who's fallen into long-term projects: one street over time (back in ... could it really have been '06? his part of a group show I was in as well kept people lingering extra long), the brand-name detritus on our streets. And he turned me into a Cat Photograph Lover.

Check out Kevin on Flickr and elsewhere.

On Exploring St. John's Chapel

2010-07-21T14:30:00.001-04:00

La chapelle Saint-Jean, originally uploaded by Lú_.

When I walked through the door from (as I recall it now) a roomful of armour and gifts to kings into the Tower of London's 11th-century chapel, I caught my breath.

There is, I think, little more beautiful than pure, unadorned architecture. The weight of stone lifting up toward the skies, the light piercing through its plain windows into what could have been an oppressively dark space — this room moved me. The recollection that my children's ancestors, the first two Constables of the Tower, must have worshipped here, and perhaps their umpteenth great-grandfather Guillaume "Le Conquérant" as well, when he was actually in England — deepened that emotion. I was fortunate; there were few visitors to that room (it must not interest the school tours much), and for one moment none were between my awe, my camera, and the light.

I have for many years now believed that emotion is among the physical entities that is captured by art, and that art can invoke in the viewer that same emotion. (I could try your patience with the long version, but won't.) Times like this, when so many people seem to be moved as I was, convince me further.

But man, that Explore creature is one strange beast.

Things I Couldn't Bring Home from England

2010-07-18T17:04:00.000-04:00

a local pub (or two), with real ales, in every neighbourhood
public footpaths through the countryside
tomatoes that taste like tomatoes
comprehensive public transportation
cream teas, "pickle" in convenience-store sandwiches, and dozens of kinds of local sausage
silence in pubs, except for the conversation
deep visible history

(I did, however, bring home a mug and a tea towel and a coaster, t-shirts, photographs, memories, and a jar of chutney.)

WCI at 50

2010-06-11T12:05:00.001-04:00

WCI at 50, originally uploaded by Lú_.

High school homecoming was a blast. Who'd have thought so, twenty-seven years ago? In another twenty-five, I hope that the Lulu's Roadhouse band still rocks - and that I can still party like the class of '61.

Queen & Manning, May 24

2010-05-24T20:10:00.001-04:00

Queen & Manning, May 24, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Straight out of the camera, which was set to RAW + B&W JPGs for a portrait shoot the day before. The rest of my photos will probably show up on Flickr & wherever else in colour, but I smell like smoke & think I'd like not to before I sit and look through them.

At least I managed to finish my beer in the window at the Dog's Bollocks and get around the corner to home before the police tape went up.

Found Verse: No Junk

2010-04-13T14:28:00.001-04:00

No Junk, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Obama Signs Stuff

2010-03-23T19:25:00.001-04:00

P032310CK-0627, originally uploaded by The White House.

Dear President Obama,

Thank you for doing that.

Sincerely,
Stephanie

P.S. Obama signs more stuff, in my Flickr Gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lu_/galleries/72157623556473443

Digging Up the Victorians

2010-03-15T20:42:00.001-04:00

Digging Up the Victorians, originally uploaded by Lú_.

This past weekend we had to take out the bricks of a long-abandoned shared chimney (we live in an old row house, circa 1880-85, sharing walls on both sides). The chimney was no longer being supported by anything that ought to be supporting it, and had been shut up in the walls for decades.

Just how many decades became clear when the first layers of modern wallboard came off. The work happened fast, but my husband and son paused long enough for me to salvage a few photographs, destined for a family photo album.

Tomorrow morning I'll salvage a piece of wall or two from the pile in the yard and bid farewell to the rest, bricks and all, a quiet piece of testimony to the families who lived here before us: the Irish widower whose four children, men and women, worked in factories and tended bar; the young English couple whose eldest son attended the local school; the Jewish family who married off three children at once one year. Then we'll paint the walls a truer white, turn up the volume on the radio station streaming from the Internet to our sound system, lean around the stoop to talk with the neighbours, and enjoy the sunshine.

Why Buy Sausage Meat ...

2010-01-18T21:36:00.002-05:00

Italian Sausage, originally uploaded by Lú_.

... when for half the cost and a small amount of easy work, you can have it freshly homemade instead?

Hot Italian Sausage meat, recipe from TheSpicySausage.com.

Happy Sir John A. Macdonald Day!

2010-01-11T17:19:00.003-05:00

Sir John A, originally uploaded by Cynnerz Photos.

In honour of our first prime minister, may you enjoy it fully, in the appropriate manner of your choice.

(Think we deserve a holiday today? Me too!)

I, Matriarch

2009-12-11T15:30:00.003-05:00

So my son's grade 11 Ancient History class went to see the King Tut exhibit today at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and people kept dragging him over to the Akhenaten statue because it looks just like him.

I am the mother of the reincarnated Akhenaten. There's a prize for that, right?

The United States Colored Troops

2009-12-09T17:28:00.001-05:00

The United States Colored Troops, originally uploaded by Lú_.

I had no idea when I photographed this (quickly, as the rain was starting to come down harder and the rest of the family was thinking about the drive to Memphis) that I was photographing the corner of that vast Civil War cemetery at Vicksburg that belonged to the USCT — the United States Colored Troops. My great-uncle Sidney must be watching over me.

If I start photographing unseen whales, I just might have to get him to explain himself.

The Public Character

2009-11-30T21:00:00.002-05:00

The Public Character, originally uploaded by Lú_.

From education, as the leading cause,
The public character its colour draws

— William Cowper, Tirocinium; or, A Review of Schools (1784)

Garden District, New Orleans, summer 2009

Because Everything Needs Some TLC

2009-09-29T14:00:00.001-04:00

Habitat 67 (4), originally uploaded by Lú_.

.. or at least self-healing concrete. For brutalism fans everywhere.

The Art in Curating: Looking at Flickr's Galleries

2009-09-17T09:45:00.004-04:00

Flickr, the photo-sharing site, sometimes gets a bad rap for being the great home of showing off: full of people who think the world must want to see every single stage of their knitting project, or endless video clips of their kids' jumping over sprinklers in the summer, or their own bodies — narcissists, every one.

But Flickr has actually never been just a place to post what you've created yourself so that others will look at you. It has always also been a place to see.

Our faves on the site have, for years, allowed someone else to peek in to see what we liked. In my case, you could scroll through thousands (literally!) of photo and video thumbnails full of things that inspired me, that made me feel good or laugh, or that part of my own social life. And many people indeed made a habit of looking through other people's favorites to find new ones of their own.

Some feel that Flickr's new Galleries feature goes too far away from that: away from the focus on that other person's photograph that you got by clicking through my faves or just looking at what your own contacts had uploaded. The ability to comment on the up to 18 other-peoples' images in the Galleries you create is, they say, a distraction from the real and proper focus on the artists — and that that's not even what real galleries do.

Not so. In a contemporary bricks-and-mortar art gallery representing artists, you may indeed just see art on a wall. But in an art museum/gallery exhibition, you will get accompanying text, and even more if there is an exhibition catalogue. Even the artist-representing galleries will typically have at least a one-sheeter takeaway.

Flickr's Galleries presentation allows for that full range of curation: a description that can function as the one-sheeter, or what you might put in an art-festival catalogue describing a show; individual descriptions that can function like those in a more text-heavy exhibition or printed book; and the option to have none of the above.

Indeed, there is art to curation: the art of seeing.

Some galleries will say more about the gallery-maker's seeing: they will say, perhaps, "This is what makes me laugh," or cry, or sing. Yet gallery-making can also bring out new or previously unseen meaning in the work curated — meaning that might arise simply from putting those images together under that unifying title and in that company and order, or that might be enhanced with commentary. In doing so, the gallery-maker enhances how we see.

It's time, says Flickr, to show how we see. Explore galleries created by Flickr members, all curated from someone else's images. Click on a favorite contact's Galleries link to see how they see. Or start with just a few:

the sneaking suspicion
curated by ~fernando

Art in the Cemetery
curated by Penny Richards

towards a word
curated by Ray Crowley

And celebrate seeing.

Reasons to Stay Indoors. #1: Swarms of Wasps.

2009-09-03T16:31:00.002-04:00

Originally uploaded by Lú_

(Now awaiting legions of frogs plummeting from the sky. )

The Blue

2009-08-27T19:33:00.001-04:00

The Blue, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Blue Ridge Mountains, July 2009

Here's to Ice Cream!

2009-08-15T13:26:00.004-04:00

This weekend I'm celebrating the world of dairy products, after four years (four!!) of illness-induced temporary lactose intolerance, during most of which I couldn't even eat dairy with the help of Lactaid pills.

Some day soon, I'm sure I'll enjoy some thick cream drizzled over a fine tart, or a good blue cheese on just the right cracker, feta in a salad, or a restaurant's home made ice cream dessert. But what I really missed is kid stuff.

So here's to grilled cheese sandwiches and macaroni and cheese, "shaky cheese" on a plate of spaghetti, a big glass of milk with cookies, and ice-cream-truck dipped ice cream.

And first of all
— to make a hot summer's day perfect —
Here's to the ice cream sandwich!

Ice Cream Sandwich #1, Thursday, August 13, 2009

Things I Learned in the U.S. South

2009-08-13T09:22:00.002-04:00

Pvt James V Utterback of the 25th Virginia Infantry (Father), originally uploaded by Lú_.

You can fry anything, even a pickle.

It's not just the Mediterranean that understands the value of slow.

I really do like country music, and look pretty fine in a cowboy hat for a city girl.

Carpeting on walls and ceilings is due for a revival. We need more decadence.

Once insects reach a certain size, they're really kind of funny.

Mm hm is a most useful interjection. Even eh doesn't mean as many things at once: "you're welcome," and "yes, that's what I say," and "amen to that," and "I'm done talking now" — and more besides.

The past isn't really all that past at all, and this "new" world has plenty of it. It's under our feet, and in our own family stories, and around the next corner. We just need signs to remind us.

We northerners overvalue "hot" in our barbecue. The heart of barbecue is the smoke.

One can feel alien in one's own country of birth. All it takes are a few hundred crosses up on hills, some "church vehicle" state-issued licence plates, and some state-posted yellow "CHURCH" highway signs. Warning: there's another church up ahead. And another. And another. (Do you suppose they have "Synagogue" and "Mosque" signs too?)

Waitresses can call me "honey" and "dear" all they want. Kindness from strangers should not be undervalued. And someday I'm going back for more.

Mm hm.

Photograph: Pvt James V Utterback of the 25th Virginia Infantry (Father); cemetery west of Grafton, West Virginia

Are we happy yet?

2009-07-13T20:02:00.001-04:00

Happy Ice Cream Cup, originally uploaded by Lú_.

This city outside workers' strike, a.k.a. garbage strike, doesn't seem to have the city in nearly as much of a mess as the last one — perhaps because the city opened all those temporary garbage dumps so early, perhaps because the weather isn't so hot, perhaps even because, whether for financial or environmental reasons, we might be buying less stuff.

But still ...

If you go have an ice cream in a cup with a happy face on it, could you please take that happy-face cut home with you? You'll be spreading much more cheer that way than this.

Thank you.

~ Stephanie

Floor 27, New City Hall

2009-05-28T16:42:00.001-04:00

Floor 27, New City Hall, originally uploaded by Lú_.

Thank you, Doors Open, for opening up another piece of our sky, if only for a weekend.

Observation deck, City Hall, Toronto, 1965; arch. Viljo Revell. Photography © Stephanie Fysh, 2009.

Contact 2009: In the City

2009-05-19T20:21:00.002-04:00

See (1) (Stephanie Fysh, 2009).

One of the things I've especially enjoyed about the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival in recent years is its increasing presence in the city itself — in places you might see the photographs without going looking for them.

One such this year is Harbourfront, home to Shilpa Gupta's Don't See Don't Hear Don't Speak (2008), on both sides of a shipping container in public space — and shot in different public space.

Another is First Revolution, 1839 — an excellent exhibition of early Toronto daguerrotypes and recent daguerrotypes by photographer Mike Robinson, in historic Campbell House, the oldest building that remains from the original town of York. My family went to see the exhibition deliberately, but while we were there, most people entering were surprised when asked if they were there for the photo exhibit.

Those Campbell House visitors were there to tour the historic house — new art photography was as casually encountered by them as by the tourists and lunching business people on a sunny spring day at Harbourfront. And I hope that their heads, too, were turned to see.

If Not for Flickr

2009-04-15T21:19:00.008-04:00

Today Flickr announced its 5th-anniversary party and invited us all to contribute a photograph that can be shown at the party in San Francisco — our own favourite photo, perhaps, or one that is many other Flickr members' favourite.

I glanced at the top of my "popular" photos, and started to think about what I liked best off the many I've posted there. And then I started to think about all the things that would not have been if not for Flickr: the photographs I would not have thought to take, or dared to; the opportunities to exhibit or license work that would not have come my way; the ways of thinking of myself I would not have had; the people — friends — I would never have known.

I decided that my contribution to the "5.25" party pool had to be a photograph I would never have taken if not for Flickr. And my eye fell on one that could not have been in so many ways.

A couple of winters ago, Kathy Slamen (hellophotokitty on Flickr), whom I'd "met" on Flickr over some erotic photographs — hers and mine — had some work accepted for the fabulous Detroit Dirty Show but wasn't sure she could get there from Montreal. It took me about thirty seconds to decide that if she could get to Toronto, I'd snag the car and we'd make it a girls' February weekend road trip.

And that's what we did. We booked ourselves a room in a triangular downtown Detroit hotel, schmoozed with other artists at the opening, met up with local friends, rode up and down the elevator of a partly abandoned hotel in the middle of the night with two American photographers and a nude model, ate grits in a minuscule diner, got on and off every stop of the People Mover until we were too cold for more, and took a lot of photographs. This is one.

Thank you, Flickr, for opening my world wide open to erotica, art shows, new ideas and inspiration, adventures, and friends of all kinds — including friends as special as Kathy. Here's to five more years.

TV Shows I'd Like to See Filmed Inside the UN

2009-03-10T13:48:00.003-04:00

CBC News reports,

Law and Order: Special Victims Unit has become the first television series allowed to film inside the historic United Nations headquarters in New York City.

My first thought: Law and Order? You mean, the 24 hours a day of Law and Order on TV isn't all reruns?

My second thought: There must be other shows that ought to filmed inside the UN.

Jeopardy, for example — a special week in which none of the states in the "State Flowers" category are in the United States.

Or So You Think You Can Dance, with the General Assembly as the generally enthusiastic audience.

Or Lost, in which it would suddenly turn out that they're now all actually acting as interpreters for secret UN meetings.

Best, though, would be to just move the whole set of As the World Turns. That one's been around almost as long as the UN. Time for a new spin of the globe.

Mourning Memory

2009-03-03T12:16:00.005-05:00

Today the building that housed the historical archives of the City of Cologne, Germany, collapses into rubble, trapping people inside. That's the news story.

But there is more lost here than an as-yet-unknown number of lives and a 1971 building. There is memory.

The Cologne Historical Archives housed 10 centuries of wills, writing books, city council documents, monastic documents, village records, maps, posters, political party and club records, and even children's schoolwork. There are early medieval manuscripts that no hand might now ever touch again.

With some luck and earlier planning, though, perhaps even some that aren't recovered from the rubble may still be read.

The next time you hear of cuts to funding for digitization archival collections, or delays in implementation for financial reasons, or refusals of any funding at all, please remember: there is more than money at stake. There is memory.

Intervening for Joy

2009-02-14T14:49:00.003-05:00

The world needs more interventions like those of the people behind this one:

High Five Escalator

Odds & Sods for the 26th

2009-01-26T17:20:00.002-05:00

The Toronto International Film Festival wants you (or at least those of you within range and with cameras) to help document construction of the Bell Lightbox building at King & John. There's a Flickr group and everything. I'd still be tempted to stuff a copy of the press release in my camera bag for new security hires.

The University of Toronto has bought the McLaughlin Planetarium from the Royal Ontario Museum. No word yet on whether Laser Floyd will be back.

And folks wondering why they should bother paying more for exclusive, rights-managed images when there's all that cheap royalty-free imagery, cheaper microstock, and free CC-licensed content might want to take some lessons from the paparazzi on these book covers. Sometimes it pays to pay.

Join Me (in) Indicommons!

2009-01-07T09:40:00.002-05:00

launching Indicommons!, originally uploaded by Lú_.

I'm absolutely thrilled to be able to announce the launch today of Indicommons, created by some of us folks in the Flickr Commons groups to bring our celebration of The Commons to a wider audience and to spread knowledge of The Commons even farther.

If you work in a museum, library, archive, or art gallery; if you're an educator or a historian, amateur or professional; if you like to play with putting things together in new ways and even inventing the tools to do it with; if you're excited by the public domain; if you're a photographer of any kind, or you just love old photos — take some time today to visit Indicommons. Because while industrialization and all that may have had a good go at the village commons, the commons of culture is alive and thriving in the 21st century.

Bring It On, 2009

2008-12-31T10:25:00.002-05:00

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but this year seems to need a fresh sense of resolve, so I'm tossing out my anti-resolutions resolutions of the past and making real ones.

#1 Finish things. Things, that is, that I began before the new year, sometimes even before the previous one: to-do lists, manuscripts, program and project development, photo series ...

#2 Get fit. Get strong. No, really this time, and not just for a week or now and then. Build the strength and resilience in my body that I desire to have in my person — because they're one and the same.

#3 Create new things. New art, new knowledge, new food for my family, new threads in the world, new things neither you nor I has yet dreamt of.

#4 Be in the world. Step out my front door every day and look up and out. Stop into a café or a gallery or a new shop, or a bar when there's a new band playing. Read all the posters on the street. Touch things.

#5 Be passionate. Because what's life worth if you don't feel it?And because passion is contagious. Just wait . . . you'll feel it too. Open your arms wide, and welcome the new year.

The Night before Christmas, the Closing of the Calendar

2008-12-24T09:28:00.008-05:00

Santon, by .Zickie., shown here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

This year, as I saw December approaching, before I even started my baking list or dug out the first decorations, I hunded down the Flickr group that I knew would be called Christmas Advent Calendar 2008.

I joined Flickr in 2005, planning to make it easier to show family get-together photos to other people -- and quickly found community. There was that crazy DeleteMe crowd, who were a whole lot different from the polite, if sometimes cleverly sarcastic, people in the online Tolkien community that was my other home on the Internet. There was the local Toronto group, which centered around cheerful monthly get-togethers in pubs. Then there was Utata, a brilliant loose photography collective with a face to the world. And, at the end of 2005, there was the Christmas Advent Calendar.

It's a small group by Flickr standards — just 110 members this year, its fourth. Some of the even smaller number of active participants I know year-round from other "places" on Flickr. Others I see only once a year, in the Advent Calendar, for that 24 days of posting, if we have one, a photo for consideration and then choosing a favourite from that day's offerings to help select the calendar photo.

Today our small, recurring community will choose our last photo for our calendar, wish each other a heartfelt Merry Christmas, and head off for our holidays and the rest of our lives, until next December 1st brings the few of us back together.

From us to you, 24 days of Advent — and a very merry Christmas.

Celebrating The Commons

2008-12-20T15:52:00.003-05:00

A little over a week ago, when news came out that the Yahoo! layoffs had caught Flickr's original designer George Oates, a lot of Flickr members were devastated. For some, George had welcomed them personally to the site, back in its youth. But for most of, over the last year, George was identified above all with one project she developed: The Commons. We were afraid we'd lose The Commons, too.

The Commons, if you haven't heard of it, is a space created by Flickr for museums, libraries, and other institutions to make available selections from their archival photo collections. But it's more than that, too: it's an experiment in wide-open user interaction with archival material. Flickr users can add search tags to content, provide new information about photos and correct erroneous identifications, link to views today of scenes shot a hundred years ago, and add personal responses to images. They can also use this public domain material in other ways, whether that's as blog content, in presentations and reports, or more creative, transformative uses. The Library of Congress — the first institutional member of The Commons — released, also a week ago, its first report on The Commons, which you can read here.

One Flickr member and Commons fan, who goes by BigBean, looked for a Commons fan group on Flickr, to commiserate with ... and couldn't find one. So she made one, and, sent me an email invitation — and also invited all the institutions who make up The Commons today.

Our new fan group, Flickr Commons, has already become much more than a fan group: it's a space in which museum and library staff can, in ways they couldn't before, talk to each other and to Flickr members (and staff, too). We've got discussions about how we interact with The Commons, collections of related photos curated from across The Commons institutions, and a flurry of threads full of exciting ideas about what more we can do.

If you're a fan of The Commons already, please join us! And if you think you might be one, or if you're a librarian or archivist keen on exploring new ways of doing things with your material, take a look at The Commons, and then drop by the Flickr Commons lounge and talk.

The Commons belongs to us all: let's play in it.

All I Want for Christmas

2008-12-15T20:38:00.008-05:00

#1 A Nikon D90, because its high-ISO performance rocks and so does SLR video. And because I've had my current camera a whole year and half already, so I must be due for a new one, right? Right.

#2 No debt. Not just for me — for my government too. Make that governments, plural. Wouldn't all that extra cash be wonderful, the cash that currently goes to pay for debt interest and, every once in a while, some actual debt? It might even look like a D90! Or a national pharmacare/dental-care program! Or long-term arts funding! Or my very own local subway stop!

#3 One more bedroom and a bigger kitchen. But preferably without moving. I hate moving.

#4 An iPhone, which I'll hardly ever use because one of the things I don't want is a not-at-home job. I like my home office quite a lot, particularly the commute. But the play value — think of the play value!

#5 Three hundred and sixty-five days of perfect health, energy, creativity, and sunshine. But I'll take, instead, a day or two of family warmth, familiar carols and sappy movies, sparkling lights, fragrant home baking, and extra chocolate — and I'll be much, much more than happy enough.

~~~~~

Happy holidays — and joyful holiday preparations — to you and yours! If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen.

The Blogging Bookstore

2008-12-01T12:09:00.003-05:00

Over on the Booksellers Blog, Random House sales rep Ann Kingman lists 11 reasons for booksellers to blog (thanks to Media Bistro for the link). But there are more. Reason #12 is that when you blog, your blog readers – your buyers – can promote you.

They can follow you from their blogging platform. If that blogging platform shows followed blogs automatically, there will be a link to your blog from theirs, for everyone to see. You can encourage people to follow by showing followers on your blog.
They can put your blog on a manually created front-page blog list of blogs they follow. This is usually more prominent than the automatically created list. You can encourage it by selecting blogs to list on your own blog front page.
They can add your RSS feed to a public RSS reader. You can make this easier by using your blog options to create an RSS feed link.
They can link to your blog posts in their blog. You can encourage this by showing pages that link to yours. This is another common blog-format option.
They can "tweet" your blog posts on Twitter to their followers there. You can encourage this by having a Twitter account that posts each time you add a new blog post. And you can further encourage it by adding back Twitter followers, so that you follow their Twitter updates too.
They can link to your blog posts elsewhere too. That might be in an email to a friend or relative, in a Facebook post (where you, of course, can be creating a Facebook page for your store and Facebook events for people to add to their calendars), in an IM conversation. This can bring you more blog readers ... and more store shoppers.

The New AGO: The Old Henry Moore

2008-11-17T20:24:00.005-05:00

This past weekend, the "new" Art Gallery of Ontario — as reimagined in the neighbourhood he grew up in by Frank Gehry — opened. Others have rhapsodized better than I can about what Gehry's done (and it merits every word of praise). But my own first moment of rhapsody was in seeing the old corner-of-Dundas-and-McCaul Henry Moore again, Large Two Forms, the one I and so many others climbed on as children. How could anyone not grow up loving art when we got to experience it's full three-dimensionality so intimately —- and when it was just for us, not (we believed with all our hearts) for the grown-ups?

We made our way with the rest of the long line on a cold Sunday morning to the new front doors, past Henry Moore and on to the marvels of intricately carved ivories of the Thompon collection, the beautiful terror of Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents, the magic of Mark Lewis's four-minute Algonquin Park, Early March, 2002. After a few hours, the kids said that we had to get a membership — we hadn't seen everything yet, and not for long enough when we had.

Henry Moore will be there, waiting just for them.

I Remember

2008-11-11T10:10:00.007-05:00

Poppies in the Somme Valley (2005), by Stephanie Fysh

Mailing It In

2008-11-03T20:32:00.007-05:00

Don't Forget to Vote!, originally uploaded by Sacred Destinations (Holly Hayes) under a Creative Commons licence.

A few weeks ago I got my U.S. ballot in the mail here in Toronto, filled it out, and mailed it back to Illinois. I was born in Illinois over 40 years ago, and lived there for the first months of my life, with my American mother and my Canadian father, who registered me as a Canadian citizen with the consulate. Then we moved to Canada, and this is where I've lived ever since.

I've always known I was also American, but I didn't tell very many people, and when I did, I narrowed it more, and said my family was from New York. I rarely owned an American passport except when I thought I might go to school there. I learned not to say I was American at the bridge to the U.S. so as not to confuse the border guards, who clearly didn't all understand dual citizenship. When I got married, I didn't change my name on the Social Security card I thought I'd never use (and am discovering that's it's a lot harder to do if you wait!). And I never registered to vote.

Until now. This year, I'm proud to be American. I'm proud that half my heritage is that of a country that seems to be preparing to turn a new leaf, to turn back outward to the world and meet it partway. I'm proud that I belong to the country that produced a biracial politician with the intelligence and vision and oratorical talent to make that happen. I'm proud enough to have started telling people I'm Canadian and American, and to have registered to vote, and to have cast my ballot for hope—and mailed it in.

Here, with hope, is to tomorrow.

The Internet, for Real

2008-10-24T22:41:00.013-04:00

photograph by Stephanie Fysh, 2008

On Thursday night I went out to the Harbord House bar to my, let's say, twentieth Toronto Flickr meetup. And that's a pretty amazing thing, when you stop to think about it.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we interact on the internet, and how various places on the internet shape our interactions. The photosharing site Flickr — my favourite online hangout — changed its member homepage and Recent Activity page a week ago, to much uproar. Things that used to be on the right side were now on the left side! There were thumbnail links to the Flickr Blog! Ads for Flickr partners, previously minimized, were suddenly reappearing and had to be minimized again! And most shocking of all, there were other people's photo comments mixed in with our Recent Activity!

I'll admit to getting confused by the blending of the former Things People Have Said On Your Photos list (no, it was never called that) and the former Things You've Said On Other People's Photos And The Things Other People Said On Them After You list (which would have been a great name) into one big — though customizable — list. I'd always checked both pages regularly, but I had never thought of them as the same thing.

A whole lot of other people said they had never even seen that other page before, at all, and couldn't imagine why they would want to. This made no sense to me. Did they never check for the answer to a question they left? To see if other people liked the same things they did? To see our thank-you's? They knew only about the page for comments on their own photos: they didn't really care much after all about what they'd said on mine.

Then Striatic, who'd been on the site for effectively forever, and who once bunked at my place for a few weeks while his then-fiancée finished up school in the U.S., made sense of the whole affair: Maybe the purpose of the change, of mixing up the two comments streams, was to encourage conversation over hit-and-run "comments" (in quotation marks to include the various "awards" and the like that have proliferated recently). To let it become not just me there, and other people talking to me, but us. We are a web of interconnected images and words — See? It's here, on this page.

So that's what I took to the Toronto Flickr meetup: the place where, once a month, a decent number of Flickr members in the city of Toronto take the conversations — the us of our photosharing site — off the internet entirely, and into a local bar. Yes, there are cameras — we can't help it! And there's beer. But mostly there are friendships — friendships created and nurtured on a website set up to let you show someone your pictures when you're not in the same room as them. And at one point, I raised a quiet glass to the Flickr devs, and their visions of what else might be.

(P.S. I still want my "clear" hack back, though ...)

Remember C-10

2008-10-15T15:07:00.004-04:00

In his Conservative Party platform, released a few days before yesterday's election, Stephen Harper pledged not to reintroduce the controversial clause buried in January's Bill C-10 — a financial housekeeping bill — that would have subjected the tax credit for Canadian film (but not foreign film produced in Canada) to the government's policy concerns ... and effectively decimated the Canadian film industry.

Harper may have won his larger minority government last night, but it behooves us in the arts and cultural sector to keep a close eye on what his government does — and to remember those actions, and their effects on our livelihoods and the health of our nation, come the next election.

The Globe and Mail on Harper's withdrawal of the controversial C-10 provision: Harper scraps censorship clause in Bill C-10
Canadian Conference of the Arts: http://www.ccarts.ca/en/

I'm a sucker for ...

2008-10-14T14:11:00.004-04:00

Kitten Tuesday

Recomposing Toronto's Architecture

2008-10-09T19:49:00.008-04:00

fugue, originally uploaded by Lú_.

It's not yet completed, but KPMB's expansion of the Royal Conservatory of Music's Toronto heart promises to be as vibrant and rich as the music nurtured and played there. Can't wait for more.

» Telus Centre for Performance and Learning, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto
Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, 2008
» original structure, McMaster Hall, now renamed Ihnatowycz Hall, c. 1894
More info @ Telus Centre

photograph: fugue (2008), by Stephanie Fysh

The End of Canadian English

2008-10-07T09:19:00.003-04:00

(In a manner of lexicographizing*)

At the end of last week, the entire staff of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, both part-time and full-time, was let go.

It seems not enough of us 33,500,000 Canadians bought a dictionary recently, or replaced our old one when a new one came out. Or perhaps we bought one, but second hand, or not a Canadian dictionary. Perhaps not enough of us got excited about having a true Canadian dictionary — one that had been fully researched right here in Canada by Canadian lexicographers, building our own lexicographical database that could reflect what was already a genuine Canadian English. Or perhaps we just all looked it up on the (American) Internet.

But it's too late. Yes, there will still be a Canadian Oxford Dictionary, we are told, but its lexicographers and databases will be in Oxford University Press's UK offices, not here at home, where the language is; and the Canadians who work on it will be freelancers, who will never, as a result, be able to truly absorb the work. Maybe the next edition will standardize its first choices between coordinate and co-operate, English Canadian (adj.) and French-Canadian (adj.), thus making me a happier editor. But the loss to the language leaves me a poorer Canadian.

Pace, CanOx.

*Well, it could be a word. We just might never know ...

Art Matters Now

2008-10-06T10:22:00.005-04:00

This past Saturday night, I finally made it out for Toronto's Nuit Blanche. I felt a bit silly missing it the first two years, given that it was happening all around where I live, in Toronto's West Queen West. But the first year it rained, and the second year I had the flu. So this year was my virgin year. I sent my teenager out with friends into the night, and my husband and I dragged the younger two kids down to Zone C, in Liberty Village, to see what there was to see.

We read all the "35 steps" signs we came across; watched Michel de Broin's 3rd-storey waterfall Overflow through the chainlink fence, wishing we could get closer; listened to Brian Joseph Davis's marvellous symphony of DVDs Original Soundtrack (until the youngest couldn't take the noise levels anymore); watched Pakistani artist Bani Abidi's beautiful video RESERVED projected on a parking lot wall; wrote a wish for Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace project; played with the mascots in Jon Sasaki's night-long I Promise It Will Always Be This Way; read (and listened to) Australian artist Ruark Lewis's massive EUPHEMISMS FOR THE INTIMATE ENEMY; controlled Shilpa Gupta's untitled video project; wandered through Ulysses Castellanos and Faisal Anwar's XIBALBA and through the Steam Banya project (which I think left my daughter with a cough) and around Noni Kaur's intimate groundwork SNIFF, LICK, PINCH, NIBBLE, SWALLOW; and were entranced by the pulsations of Brandan Fernandes's Future (•••---•••) Perfect. Many more people replaced the four of us when we left.

My teenager came home later, excited about the lightshow at Nathan Phillips Square, put on by Berlin's Project Blinkenlights, the wandering interventionist projects, and the galleries he and his friends dropped into along Queen Street. They're going again next year.

At midnight, people all over the city held up, for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, handmade signs saying "ART". There was nothing in the Nuit Blanche map or on its website about this event. It didn't have an official Zone, and it didn't have corporate support — or government support.

And that was the point. Events like Nuit Blanche — a rare incentive for the general public to experience the kind of contemporary art that doesn't hang on a wall or sit still in the middle of a gallery — are held on a scale that require support. And support for the arts is essential if anyone but the wealthy in our society are to produce or experience art. For the rest of us, a helping hand is needed. And for the rest of us who are not already well-established artists, government has traditionally stepped in to fill the space between our own savings and private support. Ruark Lewis's large-scale installation had a sign in front thanking an Australian government agency for support. Without that support, the many hundreds of thousands of ordinary people at Nuit Blanche could not have experienced that work — one that held people's attention for more than most.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government believes ordinary Canadians don't care about the arts. They're wrong. Ordinary Canadians, like those who held up their "ART" signs at midnight in a project initiated by a collective called Ordinary People, do care. There aren't nearly a million wealthy elites in Toronto, but that's how many people came out overnight on Saturday to experience experimental contemporary art for themselves.

Art matters.