Semi-Summer Hiatus

Starting this week I'll be blogging much less than usual. As you may know, my summer travel schedule is packed: flights to China and Austria at first, and then a full-blown European Grand Tour later on. Along with some in-country travels, my blogging will be intermittent from now through mid-August.

Even so, I've got plans to share pix and stories from my travels. And, of course, I've still set aside Friday, June 24th for my fourth annual edition of Daytime Dispatches! [Check out the 2010 edition.] So please be patient and check back from time to time.

Woodland may be slower than normal this summer, but the wait will be worth it!

The Depression in Color

For me, the Great Depression and World War II reside in monochrome; the struggles, values, and meanings of that time in American history possess such clarity. I recognize that things are never that simple, though. As students of Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" series know all too well, there are no easy histories. Each moment contains a multitude of dimensions. Moreover, that period in American life isn't even black and white. By way of illustration, take a look at this swell set of color images gathered by the Library of Congress.

UK Daily Mail: In the bleak light of the Depression: Rare colour photographs of the era that defined a generation

Selling [to] Women

Trevor DeVincenzi, one of my Spring 2011 COMM 101 students, clearly caught the vision of our class encounters with semiotics and gender studies by sharing this Sarah Haskins video about commercial attempts to sell "unmentionables" [Ooops! Did I just prove Sarah's point?]

It's funny, yeah, but it also makes some compelling points. Check it out!

New Del Mar Video

I dropped by the glorious Del Mar last night to test a new videocamera (Panasonic HDC-HS60) on relatively low-quality record-mode. The camera is swell, even sporting a 120-gig hard drive. It's lightweight, has lots of manual functions, and works well in low-light settings. If only the danged thing could accept an external mic. Can you believe that? A videocamera without an audio port.

As I'm prepping for two summer documentary projects - deciding what equipment to bring on my trips to China and Europe - I'm discovering pesky hassles like these.

So far, the most annoying hiccup is the fact that my newish MacBook Pro lacks a Firewire port, which means I've gotta go on campus to dub from a second higher-end camera I borrowed (a Sony HDR-FX1000, with an audio port). My Mac's got everything I need for serious video, including Final Cut Pro; it's practically an aluminum television studio. Without one tiny port, though, that Sony might as well be a paperweight.

Ah, the pleasures of getting machines to communicate.

Andy Learns to Take Care of Things

I saw this on Comcast's Something Weird collection (a favorite guilty pleasure of mine). There's something creepy about the way the narrator intones, "Wouldn't it be better for Andy if he'd only learned to take care of things?"

Oh, and don't get too attached to those tadpoles. Things aren't looking good for them!

Summer Travel Plans

This summer will be epic - at least in terms of travel. Indeed, regular fans of this blog will have to tolerate some posting delays; I won't have regular net-access for some of these trips. One thing I do anticipate: missing Jenny and Vienna when I'm traveling solo. Still, the road calls...

Here are the highlights:

• China and ROC (Taiwan): Visiting Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Taipei with SJSU College of Engineering - producing a documentary on their Global Technology Initiative.

• Florida: All-too brief return - family business.

• Bryce Canyon, Utah: Quick jaunt out to a place I've wanted to see for years. Stopping over in Las Vegas (staying at New York, New York Hotel and Casino).

• Salzburg and Innsbruck, Austria: Returning to the Salzburg Global Seminar's International Study Program - this time to shoot footage for another documentary.

• Grand European Tour: Finally an opportunity to visit some of the capitals of places I've only read about.

It's going to be an amazing (and exhausting) three months!

Gorgeous Deco Theater: Baltimore's Senator

During my recent trip back east I had an occasion to spend a bit of time in Baltimore. That's where I found my all-time favorite deco movie theater: The Senator.