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If You Crave Community, Join One That’s Thriving
Hi Everybody,
How’s it going?
I’ve been away a while, but have a good reason.
I’m about 90-95% done with the first draft of my novel, and it’s taken all my creative juice, of late.
(That, plus editing two photo books for clients.)
The breakthrough, with respect to fiction-writing, was when I realized that novels are broken down into chapters, and for me, each chapter was the equivalent of a blog post.
(The long ones I used to write for APE, not the short ones I do here.)
Once I began with a clear vision in mind, my goal was just to stack chapter upon chapter, and let the story unspool. It’s worked so far, but the last month or two, I’ve felt the need to focus on that as much as I could, creatively.
Hence the quiet blog.
I’ve also been learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is a brilliant and brutal combat sport, adapted in Brazil, from Japanese roots.
Royce Gracie, the winner of UFC 1, 2 and 4. His family’s Gracie Jiu Jitsu literally took the world by storm. (Image courtesy of Bleacher Report.) It has been kicking my ass, (admittedly,) but also proved to be a palliative for something I wrote about early in the blog: loneliness.
Allow me explain why it’s helpful.
I work from home, and have since well before the pandemic.
I’m an OG, when it comes to working alone, from the confines of my house.
After the pandemic, which fucked with all of our heads, I got into martial arts classes again, but it didn’t stick. (My Kung Fu big brother Dave died, which brought down one program, and the other had bad vibes.)
So I was practicing alone, at home. (Just like work.)
Joining the Taos branch of the Jesse Jacquez BJJ program, at the beginning of February, changed all of that.
Now, while I may be alone during the day, (or with my amazing family, with whom I spend a ton of time,) I know that a few days a week, I have a group of people to connect with.
Unlike the photo festival life, where I made quick, intense bonds with new people, here, it’s all about the slow build.
Getting to know people, day by day, through sweat, hard work, and a shared passion.
(Plus lots of pain.)
When I got the first stripe on my white belt a month ago, I felt like I still knew nothing, and the people there didn’t know me.
With the awesome Coach Jenna Osuna But it was growing.
On Monday night, when one of the instructors, Professor Nate, a black belt who is (without exaggeration) 6’5″, 300 lbs, specifically called me out by name, and congratulated me for my improvement, everyone applauded.
After 4.5 months, I looked around and knew the people who were were clapping for me.
(I’m still bad, but it was true, I had gotten noticeably better.)
It felt amazing.
Actual community.
Very often, when we’re lonely, we think someone will fix it for us, or we get stuck in a rut.
If you want more community in your life, with all the accrued benefits, maybe take a look at what’s thriving out there, what you find interesting, and then take the leap?
You’ll thank me.
PS: I made an error in the last post. I forgot that Camus wrote “The Stranger,” not Sartre. Pretty cool they had us reading that stuff in French in High School. Right Kiki?
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Storytellers Are More Vital than Ever
by Jonathan Blaustein
Transitions are hard.
Honestly, of all the life phases, few are tougher.
And I’m in the middle of one.
But so are many of my colleagues: photographers, writers, artists, journalists.
Everyone is suffering right now, and I’ve begun to get those reports, piecemeal.
Certainly, when I shared my own work struggles here, people DM’d and texted, saying it wasn’t just me.
But of course it’s not just me!
The layoff reports are in the news. The very news that is the source of the employment now being cut.
BuzzFeed News gets chopped, ENTIRELY, and then I read an NYT piece in which Jonah Peretti openly embraces AI to “enhance its news business” instead.
It’s like a sick joke inside a scary sci-fi movie.
The computers are here for your jobs.
Good luck.
But of course that’s not true.
Storytellers are teachers, entertainers, leaders, guides.
We live human experience, and strive to understand it, before reporting back, giving insight in digestible bits.
These are things a computer LITERALLY cannot do, given its inherent lack of humanity.
Sartre believed what we do, how we act, determines what kind of human we are.
Jean-Paul Sartre (image courtesy of IMDb.com) Nice talk, but shitty behavior, and you’re a shitty person.
His seminal play, “No Exit,” foreshadowed my own pandemic experience to such a degree, I’d like to exhume the man and shake his hand.
Can you imagine?
Shaking Sartre’s skeleton hand?
“Thanks, bro! Appreciate you! BTW, ‘The Stranger’ was fucking dope too!”
(If only.)
My point today is, our collective struggles are a function of Late-Stage Capitalism.
There are fewer and fewer resources available to the arts, and media.
Who buys expensive prints to hang on the wall anymore?
The collectors became artists, and hung their own work on the wall instead.
(Please don’t doubt me on that.)
And it’s not just us.
If you consider the streaming wars bloat lead to massive contractions, and a writer’s strike, you’d have to say things are worse in entertainment as well.
These days, a few star creators seem to get all the gigs. (Be they photographers, writers, directors, show-runners…)
Back at the “newspapers,” staffers cling to their careers, knowing if they get a pink slip, they might not get another job in the industry.
From Google, just now If all you know is art, or journalism, if it was your life’s dream, what do you do next?
Personally, I told you guys at the blog’s inception I was writing a novel, and I’m about 85% done with the first draft.
Will it be as good as I hope?
Will it matter, even if it’s great?
Who can say?
I know one thing, though.
There is no way on God’s Fucking Earth that a computer could write my story.
I promise you that.
Bean, the baby bunny, transitioned to the next world last week. -
Special Recipe: Pickled Jalapeños and Carrots
Yesterday’s post struck a chord.
Good. I’m glad.
Enough with the articles saying the economy is fine, and everyone is fine.
Persistent inflation means everything costs more, and higher interest rates mean servicing credit card debt costs more.
Buying a house, or a car, costs more.
Taking out any kind of loan at all.
It means we all have to learn how to make our dollars work harder.
Find value where we can.
So today, I’m going to share a recipe, (and technique,) that will allow you to take the humblest plate of cheap, microwave nachos, and make it special, and gourmet.
That’s right.
We’re gonna chef it up, (for very little money,) and if you’ve never pickled before, you won’t believe how easy it is.
The Mexican pairing of pickled jalapeños and carrots is one of those perfect combinations.
The carrots give sweet to the peppers, which offer heat to the carrots.
The salt and sugar in the pickling liquid bring seasoning, while the vinegar allows for the kick, and preservation.
These bad boys will keep in your fridge for a while, so one batch will make many plates of happy nachos.
Or tacos.
Even quesadillas are perkier with the pickled veggies.
(Like Chicagoans eating giardiniera on their pizza)
So here’s how it goes:
Wash, then slice up a bunch of jalapeños and carrots.
Put them in a pot, and add about 1/3 cup of sugar, and slightly less salt. (Give or take. You can add later.)
Then put in about 3/4 cup of distilled white vinegar, and a shot of rice wine vinegar. Include one handful of peppercorns, and then fill the pot with water.
Cover, and bring it to a high simmer. Just before a boil.
Leave it for about 8-10 minutes, or until the color begins to fade.
Taste, and see if it needs more flavor, in the form of sugar or salt. (I added some.)
Turn off the heat, let it sit for another 5 minutes, then transfer to a container, and put in the fridge.
You’re done!
I used mine for nachos, which were as simple as can be.
Decent Mexican brand corn chips, canned red pepper-flavored beans, shredded Mexican cheese.
That’s it.
Three ingredients, but when you add the pickled jalapeños and carrots, it’s much more special.
Healthier too.
And the chiles and carrots, in bulk, are super inexpensive, as is vinegar, salt and sugar.
Hope you push your culinary limits and try this out.
Catch you next time!
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My Intelligence Is Not Artificial
I’m trying to find a rhythm for this blog.
(Don’t think I’ve fully got it yet.)
At first, of course I hit you with plenty of content, because I was launching the site.
It’s an action-oriented phase, the beginning of something. And when you put ALL the effort into social media promotion, it begins to feel like a proper project.
But proper projects are work.
As an artist/writer/journalist/editor, making things is how I pay the bills. (Or teaching people how to do it, anyway.)
Lately, though, I can’t go a day without the media, (my sometimes employer) telling me that Artificial Intelligence is coming for photographers, and journalists.
Hollywood writers are on strike, b/c AI is obviously going to write scripts, but then The Taos News had an AI stock photo published, THIS WEEK, and I just read an article, THIS MORNING, about an AI girlfriend, who’s raking in (actual) money.
The image is credited to Shutterstock’s AI Image Generator The future is here.
It has arrived.
And it’s scary as fuck.
Courtesy of The Washington Post
Now, I don’t want to suggest I’m in a tizzy all the time.
I live in nature.
I’m a Dad with a wife, two kids, and four dogs. Living life, teaching them, leading, loving, it takes a lot of time and energy.
And I smoke plenty of medicinal marijuana.
But the last time my work dried up like this, as quickly, was when the Great Recession and digital camera revolution dovetailed, in ’08-’09.
I had a small digital photo studio here in Taos, and did a bit of everything, to make sure I’d be economically resilient.
Printing, scanning, shooting, retouching, I did it all.
And all of it dried up, within a few months, when the world fell apart.
This feels similar.
Not only are people hurting financially, because of years of inflation, (and now persistently high interest rates,) but they’re also freaked out, simultaneously, about The Terminator being, you know….
Courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes REAL!!!!!!
While I may not have figured out the rhythm for this blog yet, I felt a huge urge to write just now…
…so I did.
Maybe that’s the way forward?
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The World’s Best (Vegan) Soup?
Hi Everybody.
How’s it going?
Did you miss me?
It was the first significant break since I started the blog.
Luckily, yesterday, I decided to bank my creative-writing-energy for today, and instead used the morning’s energy-juice to make what may be the world’s best (vegan) soup: JB’s Coconut Dal.
There. I said it.
And the best part is: the soup is so good, you won’t care it’s vegan.
(The Earth and health benefits are a side-benefit.)
If you make this soup, and it turns out well, you will thank me.
Because it’s the kind of thing you can eat off for days, constantly absorbing the nutrients.
Let’s get to it.
There are there basic components to this dish.
The sofrito (or vegetable flavor base)
The red lentils (which turn yellow)
The liquid base (in this case, veggie stock, water and coconut milk)The Sofrito:
First, cut the best part of two leeks into three inch chunks, then cut those in half. (As cross sections.)
Fan out the leeks and wash them very well.
Then wash them two more times.
Heat up a big stock pot, add extra virgin olive oil, and sautée the leeks on medium heat, adding salt and cracked black pepper.
Because it’s a good idea to toast spices, I like to add them here, so they toast, and cook with the leeks.
For the Dal, I included ground turmeric, cumin, smoked paprika, mild paprika, and then I grated in some cinnamon.
I included one garlic clove here too.
Then you wash, chop and add four celery stalks, (or more, if you prefer,) and about 8 big carrots.
Each time, add some more oil, salt and pepper to make sure everything is seasoned.
Wash the lentils in a colander, (or two stacked, if you have them,) and then add them to the pot.
Fill up the pot with two boxes of stock, water, and a shaken can of coconut milk.
Before or after, fire up a poblano pepper on the gas stove, char it, then put it in Tupperware for five minutes, and slide off skin in the sink. Finish cleaning the pepper, chop it, and add to the soup.
Throw in one handful of baby spinach leaves, and then one more at the end.
Drop in one tablespoon of tomato paste here too.
From there, you’re cooking it for about 3-4 hours, give or take.
Add the juice of one lime and one Cara Cara orange, a few tablespoons of sugar, and more salt and pepper to taste.
Cook it down until the flavor and consistency are to your liking, and serve with brown rice.
I promise you. My kids freaked out. It’s that good.
Proper Indian food, for very little money.
Happy Cooking!
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The 7:30 am Dog Walk
Dogs love routine.
They crave it.
And it doesn’t take much to turn a new, random occurrence into a hard-set expectation.
In this case, I’m thinking of the 7:30 am dog walk.
Which has only recently come about, but now gets treated with the severity of impending nuclear war with China over Taiwan.
(No joke.)
The looks I got this morning, when I was dragging, and hoping they’d just forget?
Such intensity!
10 days ago, there was no fucking 7:30 am dog walk, but that was 10 days ago.
“Move your ass, man! Get going!”
(They told me through their eyes.)
And honestly, a walk in the morning is lovely.
That’s the best part: the dogs are not wrong.
Getting out into the fresh air, not long after the sun has come up, (but long enough that it’s no longer freezing,) sets my day off in a different mood.
A bright mood.
I may resent the dog pack for its requirements, (sometimes,) but I simultaneously appreciate the wisdom of their doggie ways.
Sunshine 
Olly Sunshine and Olly 
Regular Mood 
Post-Walk Mood -
Photography Review: Trevor Traynor’s Newsstands.XYZ
Definitely having deja vu right now.
It’s just like the old days.
I wanted to write for you guys, but didn’t know what to post.
So I went to my book stack, (the extra submissions being the impetus for this blog,) and found a fascinating little zine/poster, which is definitely worth writing about.
I was curious to open up Trevor Traynor’s fold out, if for no other reason than natural human curiosity.
(When there is a puzzle to solve, we want to solve it!)
This was new for sure, as the repeating patterns of words, handles, newsstand photo, and a massive QR code grabbed my attention too.
(Beyond the primal urge to unfold.)
When I opened up newsstands.xyz, again there were instances of photos, with strong repeating design, and I was hooked enough to pull out my phone, and snap the QR code for help.
Which brought me to a website offering lots of NFT information, in various forms, and it took me a minute to acclimate.
Frankly, I stopped paying attention to the NFT scene after the umpteenth crypto crash, but what did we have here?
Mentions of AI images?
Were the photos I had AI generated?
Seemed like the timeline was off.
So I kept clicking.
An older edition, the one from my poster, were photos of newsstands taken in cities, including New York, Paris, and Lima.
A new edition, also for sale, has AI generated images of newsstands in the future, I think?
Again, I’m sharing here bc I think the original photos were really good, Trevor seems to know where things currently stand in the NFT world, and maybe where they’re headed?
A person to follow on social media, for sure.
Hope you find his zine/poster interesting, and catch you next time!
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Olly and Kevin, the Perfect Pair
I’m tired of scrolling.
How did we ever get so accustomed to the habit?
Whether on Twitter, FB, IG, or I guess Tik Tok, (which I don’t use,) the act of quickly watching information and flashing lights go by, for hours a day, obviously rots our brains.
It’s designed to be too fast for us to process.
We’re overwhelmed, and then feel that way.
I’m as guilty as anybody, though I’m definitely cutting down on my Twitter time.
On Sunday, I posted the image below in IG, which I rarely do on the weekends.
The portrait of Listo the horse, (whom Theo renamed Kevin,) was too good not to share.
A portrait of Listo (Kevin) on Sunday Of course I then opened IG a few times throughout the day, to check for likes, which I would not have done had I waited to post until Monday.
Social media is insidious like that.
We crave the attention, but then it takes our attention away from better things.
(In my case, rest, and hanging with my family.)
I quick-looked at the photos, and then shared Kevin’s portrait.
But just now, wondering what to write about for you today, (I knew it was time,) I went back to the material, and realized the pull-back shot, with Olly at Kevin’s feet, was incredible.
I had missed it, in the haste.
But the pic is perfect for today.
Dependable Olly, looking solid at Kevin’s feet
I don’t write about the dogs enough, but they’re constant companions, 7 days a week.
And Olly is as sweet, loyal and dependable as anyone could want.
She definitely steals my couch spot, (all the time,) but other than that, she’s the nicest pup out there.
Her sister Sunshine is a handful, but that’s another story for a different day.
Catch you next time!
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My First Big Story for HuffPost
I’ll be honest: I wasn’t planning to write today.
I was going to bag it.
In fact, I just went up the hill for a little walk, planning to come down and write a chapter for my novel.
(I got one in yesterday, as it had been a few weeks.)
Little did I know, but my phone dinged, and my son, texting from High School, LMK that my first major story with HuffPost had dropped.
And indeed it had.
I got a screenshot from a 15 year old, because I was using exercise, sunshine, and blue sky to juice my creativity.
From Theo’s school computer. Instead, I had to pivot to promotion-mode, and drop the news on FB, Twitter and IG.
Hopefully, I’ll rally, and still get that chapter in.
But I’ve been working on this story since August, so today is a big day indeed.
One day, I’ll share more details, and images.
Because my time at Wild West City was both fascinating, and dense.
Today, though, is all about the story we told at HuffPost, using photographs and good-old-fashioned writing.
No video or audio.
(Not that I have anything against those media. I love them too.)
It all began when I learned of Wild West City’s existence, randomly, because I clicked on Larry Storch’s obituary in the NYT.
(Then I called my cousin Jordan, b/c I knew he’d remember “F Troop,” from those god-awful reruns. And so he did.)
I guess I chose to write this post because I’m buzzing, finally seeing something that took so much work come to fruition.
Will the world like it?
Will it register as a blip in the Great Internet Content Machine?
Stay tuned.
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Make America Mexico Again
Quick one today.
I was just out walking the dogs, on a sunny-blue-sky morning.
Man, does good weather make a difference.
I got to thinking, and my mind wandered to my trip to Amsterdam, in late February 2020.
Hotel Room View, Feb 2020 I was there to supervise publication of my book, and Covid was making its initial march across the globe.
So little was known.
This was two to three weeks before global lockdowns began.
Each time I came back to my hotel room, I carefully took off my exterior clothing, and left it by the door.
Then, I washed my hands furiously.
Every time.
Yet as I walked the streets and enjoyed myself, I’d stop into crowded coffee shops, and smoke weed in the company of strangers.
Inside a coffee shop. We were pressed together, sharing air in small spaces, which was infinitely more dangerous than anything on my hands or clothing.
Within a month, people were wiping down their mail with bleach, but going into crowded grocery stores without masks on.
Like Rummy once said, it’s the unknown unknowns that get you.
However, when you think about it, every day we live with a fraction of the information available to the world.
Even the smartest of us knows nothing, compared to all there is to know.
Much less all the things that nobody knows?
I was thinking about this the other day too, after Theo and I drove down our dirt road, returning from town.
A huge red-tailed hawk swooped into a neighbor’s field, and then rose with a snake in its mouth.
Like, right in front of us!
We watched the bird land on a tree branch, up above, with the snake dangling down.
Theo said, “Make America Mexico Again,” and I laughed so hard.
It’s a brilliant joke.
As Mexico City’s founding was based on the story that Aztecs, heading down from Northern Mexico, found an Eagle with a snake in its mouth, sitting on a cactus, and thereby founded Tenochtitlan.
Mexico’s Coat of Arms. (Image courtesy of Militarybest.com) We live in a part of America that was Mexico, up until 1846.
Little did my neighbors’ ancestors know a tide was coming, back then, which would change everything about the context of their lives.
Seriously: who the fuck knew the country they lived in would change, based upon the whims of some greedy politicians?
Or that my son and I would be living on the land, nearly 200 years later?
Driving home the other morning, with the light so crazy over the mesa. Let’s end this one here:
Life is big and complicated.
We don’t know how it will turn out.
So don’t be afraid to take a chance, now and again.
Live a little.
Catch you next time.
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Sunshine and Olly 