News on Jim Putnam

Jim has provided his own update, and so this post has been taken down.

C Melodies

For anyone who knows and has enjoyed Clarissa Vincent's Juggler and Storm Petrel journals, there is now a musical exploration in the form of an "online album", C Melodies.

The lost continent of good intentions

Julie Heyward, of Unreal Nature fame, today reappeared (after a long absence) where I originally encountered her: on Photo.net's "Philosophy of Photography" discussion forum.

After some initial excitement, I dropped out of that forum when I discovered that only a half a dozen of its participants (of which Julie H was the most incisive) were actually interested in the philosophy of photography ... but I've kept a notification alert running, and so was called back by the welcome reappearance of Julie's name on a new post.

I won't waste time or space by duplicating any of the resulting discussion thread. Julie asked readers whether they sought to pose questions or provide answers through their images. If you are interested in the discussion, you can find it here.

My reason for mentioning the matter here is that She Who Must Be Obeyed used the occasion to remind me en passant of my failings as a respondent. "Felix, I will be waiting, impatiently for your conclusions. I hope this is the accelerated pupation schedule, not the one where I'm still waiting six months later (there are quite a few still in the oven – don't think I've forgotten about them)."

Like most people, of course, I had hoped that my failings had been forgotten. I am guiltily aware of the many, many unwritten replies which I have never gotten around to writing, and was working on editing them out of my own memory on the naïve ostrich principle that nobody else would then remember them either. Now that my pathetic strategy has been held up unavoidably before me, I shall just have to brass it out.

There are many people I just cannot keep up with. Dr C is one of them. Ray Girvan, over at JSBlog, is another. My "pending" tray is overflowing with responses to both of them which I shall never find the time to make. Undisputed queen of the bunch, however, is Julie Heyward who seems to live in a different universe from me: a parallel universe of 3600minute hours, 168 hour days, 24 day weeks and 365 week years, where one can read seventeen books and a hundred or so journals simultaneously with making the toast for breakfast, write several blog posts, go for a long hike, and all without disrupting the main business of generating art images of astonishing quality and quantity.

There are people who think I am prolific; they just haven't encountered Ms Heyward.

So, I admit it: I have many times said "more on this later", meaning it genuinely at the time, only to lose track of the issue in the onward avalanche. No, they will never emerge ... like King Alfred's cakes, they will remain in the oven until some child hauls out the charred cinders of my inadequacy... I'm sorry, mea culpa.

As it happens, this fits well with a post on memory, on which I'm sporadically working. More on that later (ho ho).

The wrong future

Close on the heels of my earlier post "Whither education" comes issue 1 of a new online publication, VIVID, and in particular one article within it: "Schools are preparing children for the wrong future".

I must declare an interest in VIVID. It is the brainchild of, and labour of love by, chemist and science journalist Vanessa Spedding. Vanessa has been a friend for a dozen years, over which time my admiration for her determination and integrity have steadily grown.

Having said that, I now urge you to go and give VIVID a try. Consider subscribing (it's free).

Comments

Comments have been switched on and off for a while, as I try to decide what to do about them.

After much thought, I've decided to switch them off.

My reasons for this are fuzzy and various, and I acknowledge the very cogent reasons offered (especially by Ray Girvan) for keeping them, but...

Regardless of whether I have them on or off, (almost) all of my feedback continues to come by email. This may, of course, be because my readership has gotten used to that method; perhaps, in time, if I removed the feedback address in the header box, they would adjust; but, truth to tell, I prefer the sprawling flexibility of email to that cramped and limited little comment box.

So — 'tis done.