Category Archives: My Life

A Deutschland wedding

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As I wrote here, Sara and I went to Germany for my son’s wedding. It was a wonderful trip but far too short. We left on a Wed. morning and got back home on Mon. eve.

We spent the first couple of days with my daughter-in-law’s parents in Fürth in the Odenwald. It was quite lovely and relaxing. My daughter, her husband, Sara and I took a 4-hour hike through a UNESCO GeoPark to the Lindenfels castle while there. On Saturday we (previously mentioned 4) moved to the Hotel Perkeo in the Altstadt of Heidelberg. My sister and brother-in-law were also staying in Heidelberg but at a different hotel.

The wedding was late Saturday afternoon in the Kappelle of the Heidelberg Schloss with pictures before that on the castle grounds. The reception was held at a Schützenhaus in the hills behind the castle.

Kaja and Jeremy

Sara and I were up fairly early on Sun. morning and went out wandering in a practically deserted Altstadt before almost anyone else was up, which was quite pleasant. We went back to the hotel for a short rest and second breakfast and then went wandering again. Sitting in the Marktplatz which was now full of tables, chairs, and people, dogs, bicycles and so on we relaxed and had coffee. I even had third breakfast!

More wandering, sightseeing and shopping followed after spending a bit of time checking out the Alte Brücke with my sister, brother-in-law, daughter, son-in-law and my ex-wife. Sara and I even climbed all the way to the top of the Heiliggeistkirche. We met back up with the family for lunch.

Sara and Mark on top of the Heiliggeistkirche

Later in the day, while Sara went shopping, the rest of us walked across the Alte Brücke, and climbed the hill to walk the Philosophenweg, then down the hill, back across the Neckar on the newer bridge and back into the Altstadt.

Later in the evening we all met back up with the newlyweds, Jeremy and Kaja, and had dinner in the restaurant in the Hotel Perkeo.

Late in the evening Sara and I packed up most of our stuff and at 6:45 AM a shuttle bus came to take us the the Frankfurt Flughafen.

It was amazing trip but far too short. Besides all of the tasty food and beautiful scenery we also picked up a lovely daughter-in-law and generous, bright and highly interesting (in the good way) in-laws.

Congratulations Kaja and Jeremy!

12 Books, 12 Months Challenge Follow Up

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A year ago a friend of mine suggested a new kind of ‘book club.’ See my post here for the background. Many of us joined her, and her write-ups of, and links to, everyone’s reading can be found at her blog here.

My reviews and my initial post can all be found here.

Here’s my list (minus my selection commentary):

  • Ronald Gross, Peak Learning
  • Catherine C. Marshall, Reading and Writing the Electronic Book
  • Carol Collier Kuhlthau, Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services
  • Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
  • Michel Meyer, Of Problematology: Philosophy, Science, and Language
  • George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor Metaphor and Poetry
  • Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History
  • John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information
  • Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse
  • Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights
  • Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions
  • George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
  • S. R. Ranganathan, Classification and Communication

Being me, I selected a baker’s dozen instead of twelve. I managed to read 10 of my selected 13 books. I began another but got interrupted by the start of my spring semester and have never gotten back to it (Of Problematology).  One could, in essence, say I began another (Borges’ Collected Fictions) as I read Borges’ A Universal History of Iniquity, which ends up being the 1st section of the Collected Fictions. Ranganathan never got started.

By the most direct reckoning one could say that I failed as I did not finish my 13 (nor even 12) books. But I do NOT consider it a failure; mostly due to giving myself this leeway in my original post:

Thus, I am going to reserve the right to substitute any book for one on this list.  As I see it I will probably read more than 12 books in the next year anyway so maybe they’ll only be additions. One can hope.

In fact, I consider it a rip-roaring success! Over the last year, I was able to read 10 books identified in advance—some of which have been on my To Be Read list for several years. I would definitely participate in a similar book club again.

As to the out I gave myself above regarding “probably read[ing] more than 12 books in the next year” that was easily accomplished. From 1 September 2010 when the challenge started to the end of the calendar year I finished 33 books (7 were Challenge books) and began 1 which is not yet finished. So far in 2011 (with the Challenge ending tomorrow, 5 Sep) I have finished 75 books (3 were Challenge books), began 2 (1 Challenge), gave up on 2, reread 2, and am currently actively reading 4.

Thus, since the Challenge started I have finished 108 books, 10 of which were Challenge books. I don’t think anyone can complain about the amount of my reading. I certainly am not going to.

My reviews can all be found here.

Many other reviews can be found by browsing the Books category on my blog. Reviews of the following books read during the Challenge period appear on my blog:

  • Abbas, Structures for Organizing Knowledge
  • Martignette and Meisel, The Great American Pin-Up
  • Bauer, jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams At Home
  • Peterson, Understanding Exposure 3rd ed.
  • Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
  • Sontag, On Photography
  • Armstrong, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life
  • Nardi and O’Day, Information Ecologies
  • Maines, The Technology of Orgasm
  • Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
  • Armstrong, A Short History of Myth
  • Jewel, A Night Without Armor: Poems
  • Hey, How It Seems to Me

Of course, all of my Challenge book reviews can be found via that Books category link, as can older reviews and other posts related to books.

More, usually shorter, reviews of even more books can be found at my goodreads account. I do not post them all on my blog.

I am posting this ~30 hours before the end of the Challenge as there is no way I can finish Meyer’s Of Problematology, nor can I read Borges or Ranganathan before then. I won’t even consider trying to do so. I am reading other things currently, much of which is homework and must take precedence. All 3 of those are still on my TBR ‘shelf’ and I hope to get to them in some version of soon, as I hope to get to many others.

 

Upcoming fall semester

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Thought I’d post a little update regarding my plans for fall. First, a quick update on where I am currently.

Update

My hours at the BCU library were bumped up to 6 (from 5) hours/week so I could take on a weeding project of my own. I had already cataloged the backlog and current acquisitions and I was removing bibs and holdings from our Sirsi catalog and from WorldCat.

About a month ago I started weeding the PZs. I began with the PZ7s and up, skipped the small amount of PZ5s for now (less than one shelf), did the PZ4s, and am now a bit over halfway through the PZ3s. This leaves the PZ1s, which are mostly sets, to do when I finish the PZ3s. So far I have weeded approximately 1000 titles from the collection. Many of these books have not circulated in 30-40 years (or more). Some, of course, had never circulated. A few were in lovely editions over 100 years old. But if they haven’t been checked out in 50-60 years and no one teaches them anymore (if ever) then our small library does not need them. Of course, I have also been removing the bibs and holdings for these.

The wife

The wife is keeping especially busy and is reasonably stressed; reasonably as in she has good reason to be, and also as in not breaking down stressed. All of this year’s incoming freshman at BCU are getting iPads, as are many of the graduate and some of the returning undergrad students, along with many of the faculty and staff. There will be another opt-in period for returning students who have not done so shortly after school starts. As the Director of Educational Technology, this project is kind of her baby. Other folks certainly have their own crosses to bear in this als0; like the head of IT and the hoops she’s jumped/ing through to get the campus wireless upgraded to handle ~500-600 wireless devices where before there were only a handful.

Added on top of that stress for the wife is that we are leaving the country for close to a week right before/as school starts. So she has spent most of this weekend on campus trying to do all that she can to make this all go as smoothly as possible without her direct input when it happens.

Wedding in Germany

We are heading to Heidelberg, Germany for my sons wedding! Both the bride and groom were born there so it is a particularly apt setting. We only wish we had a lot more time to spend in Deutschland; we both miss it dearly.

My fall semester

I am taking one class, which I was asked to take by the professor. Advanced Briar Cliff Review is a one-hour credit class in which interested students, primarily English and Writing majors, do much of the selection work for the short fiction that makes it into the Briar Cliff Review.

I will also be sitting in on 2 classes; Modern Grammar, and Classical Literature and Mythology. I was, as of a couple months ago, planning on sitting in on Shakespeare also but have decided I would actually like some sort of life. Shakespeare is taught regularly and frequently, so I hope to catch it the next time around. There are, of course, several other classes I am interested.  Most were winnowed out earlier due to scheduling conflicts but, despite freeing up some time, I see little point in rebooking that time.

I am looking forward to the upcoming semester. I’ve had a mythology class but this one will focus on myth through the classical lit itself, instead of being condensed versions of folktales, and I can use more exposure to classical lit. As a critic of orthodox grammar and linguistics I can definitely use a formal class. More importantly, I hope it will help me describe and discuss that which I have known at a deep and intuitive level for most of my life. I’m also looking forward to reading the BCR short fiction submissions. I don’t read much short fiction, at least not for a long time, and I look forward to discussing and engaging with it critically. Also, how often does one get asked to take a class by the professor?

Peterson. Understanding Exposure. 3rd ed.

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This was a pretty decent book which, while I already knew a fair bit of this info regarding exposure, did provide me with some useful tips and techniques.

It does contain a couple of minor editing/typo issues in the first few pages but then I didn’t notice any more after that. Of far more consequence, the images on p. 23 in support of “Understanding the Exposure Info in Your Viewfinder” are a complete mess. It took me a minute or so to figure out what the problem was and I understand this bit. I have real concerns for those to who are experiencing it for the first time and still need to learn it; they will be highly confused.

There are four images of a viewfinder which between them are trying to show correct exposure, 1-stop over- and 1-stop underexposure and 2/3-stop underexposure. All of the annotations/arrows to show this are in the right place on each image, but only one of the sets of labels is correctly matched as to what the light meter is actually showing. This, in my opinion, is a major blunder and might even be the most important thing in the book to have gotten correct.

I find his way of thinking about shots—storytelling, isolation, Who cares?, motion, etc.—to be a quite useful starting point. It’s not that I hadn’t been considering the reasons/techniques for my photos but this higher-level grouping/thinking adds a useful layer for me. Maybe that’s just the classifier/librarian in me, but I think this kind of thinking in advance of shooting might have led to a few of my (technically correct) shots being creatively better. More importantly, it will lead to better photos in the future; those I still have control over.

This book is probably most useful for beginning and fairly experienced photographers, or those new to or wanting to learn how to use a camera which provides a fair bit of creative control, but even those of us photographers in the great middle can learn something from this book.

Also includes access to a website currently with 12 videos on topics of exposure and 2 on important composition tips.

Contents:

  • Introduction
  • Defining Exposure
    • What is Meant by “Exposure”?
    • The Photographic Triangle
    • The Heart of the Triangle: The Light Meter
    • White Balance
    • Six Correct Exposures vs. One Creatively Correct One
    • Seven Creative Exposure Options
  • Aperture
    • Aperture and Depth of Field
    • Storytelling Apertures
    • Isolation or Singular-Theme Apertures
    • “Who Cares?” Apertures
    • Aperture and Macro Photography
    • Aperture and Specular Highlights
  • Shutter Speed
    • The Importance of Shutter Speed
    • The Right Shutter Speed for the Subject
    • Freezing Motion
    • Panning
    • Implying Motion
    • Implying Motion with Stationary Subjects
    • Making “Rain”
  • Light
    • The Importance of Light: The Importance of Exposure
    • The Best Light
    • Frontlight
    • Overcast Frontlight
    • Sidelight
    • Backlight
    • Exposure Meters
    • 18% Reflectance
    • The Sky Brothers
    • Mr. Green Jeans (the Sky Brothers’ Cousin)
    • Night and Low-Light Photography
  • Filters, Special Techniques & Flash
    • Polarizing Filters
    • Neutral-Density Filters
    • Graduated Neutral-Density Filters
    • Multiple Exposures
    • HDR: High Dynamic Range Exposures
    • Fill Flash
    • Ring Flash
    • Rear Curtain Sync
  • Index

My Digital Photography Portfolio

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Small squirrel on a deck railing

As I wrote a couple of posts back, I took a digital photography class (MCOM216) at Briar Cliff this summer. This short post is simply to provide links to my portfolio+ now that I have the pictures in Flickr.

We used Photoshop to make an HTML portfolio as part of our graded exercises but it was truly horrible. I had been hoping that I’d simply be able to upload it to my domain space and link to it but no way I was doing that. Maybe our instructor had us use settings that generated an ugly portfolio or maybe v4 of Photoshop just sucked in that regard.

Anyway, I uploaded some of the many photos I shot during the time frame of the class and put them in one set and then I uploaded jpg versions of my final edited shots and put them in another. I put fairly extensive notes on them and linked back to their originals in Flickr.

Photos for/during MCOM216

MCOM216 Portfolio

 

Vacation

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I thought I’d bring folks up-to-date on what I’m doing work-wise. Since mid-September 2010 I have been working 5 hours/week as a feral cataloger at Briar Cliff University’s Bishop Mueller Library. Technically, I am an independent contractor, not an employee.

The majority of what I do is copy cataloging,  although I have derived a couple of records for different editions and have done a very few original records. I do miss original cataloging but I do not miss the inordinate  increase in problems to be solved.

BCU is undertaking a large-scale weeding project so for the last month or two I have also been removing records from our Sirsi catalog and holdings. Although I almost broke the annual record for addition of records to the catalog (and would have smashed it if I had worked a whole year), I have removed even more in a much shorter time frame. Yes, this collection needs weeding but the cataloger in me would much rather add records than remove them. Yes, my job is (to help with) maintenance and creation of the entirety of the catalog and I respect that. But. I prefer creating and adding bibs than removing them. Nonetheless, good work is being done and that is what matters.

As of a week ago, I was asked to undertake the actual weeding of the PZs. To support this extra responsibility my hours have been increased to 6/wk. I haven’t physically begun but I have been doing some research by browsing the collection, noticing some of the easy decisions on reclassing into (primarily) PR and PS (Dickens, Twain, Austen, Bronte, …) and some juvenile fiction to send downstairs to the Children’s Collection. I’ve also been reviewing assorted lists of “important” fiction (the little I’m not familiar with), and looking up authors/titles in our new ebrary collection.

I am looking forward to this as an opportunity to help BCU but also as a learning experience for myself. Once I finish the PZs I am hoping to slide right into the general science Qs. Science faculty have been helping with specific disciplinary materials but no one has looked at the Qs themselves. I am at least as qualified to make decisions on Qs as I am on the PZs.

So. The title of this post? The amazing Franciscan Sister that I work with/for is at a gathering of Iowa’s Franciscan sisters for a couple of days. So I am on “vacation” until next Wednesday. Back I go to the largish Summer to-do list. Not much of a vacation really.

At home I am also weeding; trying to remove some of the clutter of stuff accumulated over 50 or so years. I am also weeding my computer and migrating my photos from iPhoto to Aperture. There are loads of books to be read, book reviews to write/finish, articles to be entered into Zotero, things to be packaged and mailed to dear people, ….

I recently got caught up putting photos in Flickr. Last year I got stuck in the midst of putting up those from our vacation in the 2nd half of July and never got started again. I am now up to those I took for my summer digital photography course and I probably won’t bother putting many of those up although I would like to put up those from the portfolio I submitted.

And then I still need to do something about our wedding photos from May 2010. ::sigh::

Not much of a vacation, is it?

On photography

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Just as I am excited about photography for the first time in a long time, Susan Sontag is killing my buzz.

I took a digital photography class this summer from the Mass Comm department at Briar Cliff. I was able to use my own camera and since we had to shoot everything on manual exposure, and build a varied portfolio, I finally learned to use my DSLR (Nikon D40X) that I got used closer to two years ago than I want to admit. [Thanks, Tracy!]

I had been shooting almost entirely on automatic even though I often knew what I needed to do to get better shots, or a shot, period. But I didn’t know how to make the setting in the camera. I used a Canon AE-1 for years (still have it) so I at least knew (once knew) how to partially control exposure on a camera. Actually, I know a fair bit about cameras and photography. I am just lazy when it comes to learning the complex features of software/electronics. I also learn these sorts of things orders of magnitude better when I actually need to use the feature and not by studying a book or manual.

Anyway. I now know a great deal about my camera, which is the primary reason I took the course, and even a little about Photoshop and the printing of color and B&W photos on Epson photo printers.

Now that I am effectively semi-retired (for the time being anyway) I have been contemplating taking my photography a bit more serious. I have no plans to become a professional but I’d like to step up my amateur game to the ‘serious’ level.

I have been reading a lot more about digital photography, perusing photo mags, lusting after things I cannot afford, reminding myself to use what I have until I reach its limits, and trying to figure out how I might get photos printed whether for myself or anyone else. I am also considering starting a photo blog with some of my better photos once I get my photo library migrated from iPhoto to Aperture.

How far any of this will go or how long it will last I have no idea. We (or I, anyway) will see.

So, Sontag? I came across a reference to her On Photography somewhere and I know that I read one of the essays a couple of years ago and thought it’d be a good idea to read all of the essays as collected in book form.

What a buzzkill! Thankfully I was already aware of much of her critique (so far. Am into the 3rd essay of 6.) so no big surprises. On the other hand, she is touching all of the right nerves with those critiques. While she is not citing any of them, she is using criticisms I have read (and agreed with) elsewhere, such as, from Jacques Ellul, Richard Stivers, and others, and from my own lived experience with photography.

The main thing mediating her critique for the moment is her rampant essentializing and over-simplification. While I frequently agree with her, I do not agree with her universal statements. While they are rarely written grammatically as universals they end up being so as they leave no room for disagreement, present no nuance, and make the claim that “photography is this, and it is that.”

I understand that by the 6th and final essay she had mitigated the views presented in the 1st one. I am hoping so. I feel that these critiques of photography are important. But. They must be fleshed out, contextualized and, above all else, nuanced.

One example is all I will provide for now. Perhaps if I write a review upon finishing I will quote her more.

“There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera” (7).

Hmmm.

Eliot. The Mill on the Floss

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Due to my Victorian Lit class and sitting in on Modern Poetry this term my 12 Books 12 Months Challenge reading slipped a little. But then I remembered that The Mill on the Floss which I read for Victorian is on my 12B12M list.

What to say? I adore Eliot. She is an amazing observer of the human condition, whether individual or group. She is one of the earliest (and best) psychologists and the same can be said of her as a sociologist.

I have not yet read all of her novels but I have read Middlemarch and Silas Marner, along with some of her short stories, like Brother Jacob and The Lifted Veil. I look forward to reading the rest based on my own experience and my Victorian Lit prof also says the ones I have yet to read are all exceptional novels.

I must say upfront that, if read solely as a story, the ending leaves much to be desired. Nonetheless, the ending is fitting in a symbolic sense, although perhaps not on a human level. I am still working out exactly why that is and may need to address it in my final this week. All I’ll say for now is that, in the context of the novel as a whole, it works.

Be aware, this is a tragedy. It may not be epic, nor a study of grand personages, but as a tragedy of the everyday it is superb. [Eliot does comment on this but it is mostly indirect and occurs across several pages so no excerpts.]

Despite it’s being a tragedy, it can be quite humorous, particularly in that dry British way:

“Mr Pullet was a small man with a high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal ease” (56).

“A boy’s sheepishness is by no means a sign of overmastering reverence; and while you are making encouraging advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer” (91).

The whole of Book Fifth: Wheat and Tares,  ch. II, Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Tom’s Thumb (308-25) is pretty funny.

And my favorite bit of humor in the novel, which had me cracking up:

“You don’t call Mumps a cur, I suppose?” said Maggie, divining that any interest she showed in Mumps would be gratifying to his master.

“No, Miss, a fine way off that,” said Bob, with a pitying smile; “Mumps is as fine a cross as you’ll see anywhere along the Floss, an I’n been up it wi’ the barge times enow. Why, the gentry stops to look at him; but you won’t catch Mumps a-looking at the gentry much — he minds his own business, he does.”

The expression of Mump’s face, which seemed to be tolerating the superfluous existence of objects in general, was strongly confirmatory of this high praise (284).

Some of the themes we discussed in class and will perhaps see on the final Wednesday:

  • Contrast the Tulliver and Dodson mentalities, and how played out in Tom and Maggie.
  • Compare the education of Tom and Maggie.
  • Relevance of the town of St. Ogg’s as a character; the legend.
  • Eliot’s reflections on childhood.
  • Tragedy: In what sense is Tulliver a tragic figure? Can this family be tragic? How do Tom and Maggie differ in their reactions to the tragedy? Mrs. Tulliver and her family’s reactions?
  • Hellenism versus Hebraism (ala Matthew Arnold We read a small bit from Culture and Anarchy, in particular a portion of ch. 1 “Sweetness and Light” and of ch. 5 “Porro Unum Est Necessarium” [But One Thing is Needful])
  • Ethics/morality: Intentionalism, Consequentialism, principle, self-interest, Categorical Imperative, natural law, social code.
  • We also discussed relationships: Tom & Maggie; Tom & Philip Wakem; Maggie & Philip; Maggie & Stephen; and so on.
  • Duplicitousness.
  • Sexual sublimation.

I quite enjoyed The Mill on the Floss and I hope to reread it again someday soon at a more leisurely pace and focusing primarily on the story and on Eliot’s artistry.

Gross. Peak Learning

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In this post on Personal Learning I said some reasonably positive things about this book.

Now that we have finished the book I want to take most of it back.

As I said, if you want to look at it get it from a library. It is about 80% fluff/extraneous babbling. Of the 20% left which is of value some is so far out of date as to be of no real use. The entire chapter, “Peak learning in cyberspace,” is so out of date that maybe 5% is of use and you, dear Reader, already know those bits and so much more.

We did finish it but we really had to skim much of the last half of the book to sort the wheat from the chaff.

As for the exercises, some were of value and some were so poorly designed towards what was being aimed for that they were useless. Others were so poorly explained that while they were somewhat valuable only after we sussed out for ourselves what would work in helping elucidate the point, we shouldn’t have had to do that work; nor should the author’s explanation of the exercise confused us so badly.

Anyway, my final verdict is that while there is some value in this book it probably is not worth your time and effort to try and drag it out of it.

My Spring and Summer 2011 Classes

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After consultation with the professors and a few others (primarily the wife), I have decided which classes I will be taking or sitting in on at Briar Cliff this coming Spring and Summer terms.

Spring

Spring Term (March 5 – May 17) I will be taking one course for a grade, Victorian Lit, and sitting in on one for the fun of it, Modern Poetry. Both will be with Prof. Jeanne Emmons, who I previously took Madwomen Poets with last Fall.

ENGL 365 Victorian Literature 3 sem. hrs.
Prose, fiction and poetry including Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins and others. Works are examined both as literature and as expressions of the intellectual and social concerns of the nineteenth century in England.

The novels we will be reading are:

Thanks to Kirsten I was able to pick them all up for barely over $26 in an amazon.com 4-for-3 sale. The prof uses Oxford World Classics paperbacks, although she said I was free to use whichever editions I liked. But as I greatly dislike issues with struggling to find a passage even when using the same edition as others, and I only owned The Mill on the Floss (2 diff. editions), I decided to pick up new copies of the Oxford’s in the 4-for-3 sale.

We will also be reading poetry, short fiction, and some nonfiction prose. There will be reading quizzes, a midterm and a final, and a research paper.

This class will be a lot of work but I am really looking forward to it. I have read some Dickens but not Hard Times and I adore Eliot. In fact, The Mill on the Floss is one my 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge that I am currently participating in.

I am also looking forward to sitting in on Modern Poetry with Jeanne. There’s no way I would, at this point in my life, try to take two classes for credit from Dr. Emmons at the same time. I have the utmost respect for her as a professor and part of that is due to the workload not being a cake walk by any means. Also, this course is restricted to Honors students and English majors so sitting in also precludes hurdle jumping to get an override or any potential heartache at being denied the override.

ENGL 211 Modern Poetry 3 sem. hrs.
Major poets and poems of the high modernist era through the twentieth century are examined to gain appreciation of their formal and thematic concerns. Poets include Frost, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop,  Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, and others.

I will get to read the poems and discuss them in class with no worries about keeping up with the workload.

Summer

I have been looking for a good way to be “forced” into a structured program of learning for my Nikon DX40 camera. There are certainly tons of free ways to do so but I also know me and that I generally don’t work well on my own with such things.

Western Iowa Technical Community College has a course but it seemed far too basic. I already know, or once did anyway, a fair bit about photographic concepts from my years of shooting 35mm film on my Canon AE-1. But while many of these concepts directly translate into the world of digital photography, some of them experience some shift.

The course I am taking this summer at BCU uses Nikon DX70s but the professor said I was welcome to use my DX40 and that many of the controls will be the same. Thus, neither he nor I will be forced to do a lot of translating of how to do something on my model versus the ones the other students will be using.

I am really looking forward to this course, also.

May 31 – July 1

MCOM 216 Basic Photography – Digital 3 sem. hrs.
Introduction to digital photography. Material covered includes operation of 35mm professional digital camera including aperture, shutter and depth of field in manual control. Camera handling and care, lighting, composition, visual communication and photographic history. Extensive digital darkroom (IMC) work using Photoshop software application is required.

So, I am really excited for the coming terms. Sara had been planning on getting free ebook versions of the Victorian novels to read along with me because we love discussing the books we read with each other. Then someone else went and reminded her that these would all be pretty bleak, full of desperate people and times, and she changed her mind.

Two 3-hour courses in Spring means I will be spending a lot of time on campus. At least it will be easy to get my full 5 hours of contract cataloging work in. And, I’ll get to eat lunch with my sweetie 3 days a week. I am just hoping that I can find some place that I can acclimate to enough to do some of my coursework while there.