From Studland to Obama Land?

Last post before I fly. I wanted to post a picture of what I'll miss, but I don't have a heart pic with Vick, Sunny Herb & Rosie Dog in it. I'll only be away for a week, but I get homesick very easily. I'll miss the beach, too, so here's a picture of that, at Studland not Swanage, but you've had a few of Swanage lately. This was a couple of years ago, but I have about 20 that Sunny spotted with me at the end of the summer but I've yet to put them together.

I'm going to be in New York for the last 5 days of the presidential campaign. America decides! The rest of the world holds its collective breath and thinks 'Not McCain, you fools, not McCain!', though a large proportion of middle-aged men seem to have a thing for the crazy Creationist. It amazes me how most people who you hear about who believe in Creationism seem to have missed the good philosophies of the New Testament and sided with the nasty bits of the Old. I suppose if you can't understand the difference between myth, storytelling and reality, it's difficult to have empathy for people different to those around you.

Anyhoo, enjoy wherever you are. I'll be sporting an Obama badge and looking up at buildings a lot, and I'll type more when I return.

Marilyn Monroe, Love Hearts & Guerrilla Advertising

A week today and I jet off to New York. I'm only there briefly, but I plan to use my time to take as many photographs as my camera can manage, as well as seeing everything, doing everything, eating everything (vegan) and supporting my good friend Rachel in her bid to run the marathon in under four hours... I'm sure she'll manage as long as I run alongside, shouting supportive things as I munch on a vegan burger, waving an Obama flag and photographing all I can see.

I had a nightmare the other night in which I'd been there 4 days and hadn't found a single heart. I can assure you, dear reader, that will not happen! It must not happen! I will not allow it! And even if it does, I'll return with a thousand 'very New York' photographs to pick from, as I'm already planning a show of sorts. No idea what, but it'll include graffiti, skyscrapers, taxis and a hotdog seller, I'm sure.

The picture above felt a little New Yorky - it's from an alley in Bournemouth, my local metropolis, and makes me smile. I really enjoy finding witty graffiti, and I really love this type of sticker street art. It can look fantastic and it eventually rots away, so it's eco friendly too. The stencilled graffiti I find interesting, but I have some problems with it. This can be found in a few places around Bournemouth - check out the website it advertises if you like. It's an unusaul and economical way to promote yourself, but it is vandalism, just as any graffiti is. I'm happy to see graffiti in many places, but advertising.... not so sure. And isn't it inviting the local authorities to look you up and prosecute you for defacing a public space? If it isn't, you may start seeing http://www.love-landscape.co.uk spray painted around the place... though I don't think it would make me very popular.

Love at Low Tide

One of the bestest things about living by the seaside is, without a doubt, low tide. There is nothing finer than walking on the firm sand among the shallow puddles of sea water left behind by retreating, gentle waves, looking for familiar shapes among the wormcasts.

Seeing your treasured dog leaping along in the shallow water, exuding the purest joy, makes this even better. I am at once relaxed and a million miles from this infernal computer, and filled with happiness in seeing the joy in her. Wonderful.

There's been a geography field trip in town this week, probably from London, where low tide brings a bad smell and dusk is lit by orange sulphur. I hope they appreciated the differences, though I know I think of London and long for the scale of art & culture we lack here. In their passing along the beach the teenage geographers left behind them a trail of footsteps, dragged equipments and exotic names scratched in the sand. They also left a few hearts. I missed most, as I only saw them after dark, but Hannah and Andy are celebrated here, along with the last of the setting sun as it picked out the boats on the bay.

It's a Kaupthing...

"It would be fun to kill all capitalists". So says one of the elephants in this picture.It's probably an obscure reference to something, somewhere in Venetian pop culture, but I just thought it was funny - and I'm posting the picture now because it seems so appropriate. Capitalism appears to be killing itself.

Don't get me wrong - I do understand that, given time, the greedy extreme of capitalism will be back in full swing, with city types making a short term killing at the expense of all of us. And we'll let them; we'll let them because so many of us think that one day we could do that too, if we tried, and why stop the very greedy getting richer if one day we might like to do that too. In the US they call this the American Dream, and it's why the American poor tend to be more supportive of the right to be extremely wealthy than the middle classes are.

Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't let it return, though? Wouldn't it be nice if people had a better understanding of the possibilities of liberal socialism, and if we all worked for the benefit of not just ourselves, but for the benefit of the wider community? It won't happen because it isn't in the anglo-saxon nature - we have gradually moved towards a US style attitude of looking after ourselves first, and forgetting about anybody else around us. We complain about the 'Nanny State' and 'big government', but nobody seems to mind when Nanny fixes the dodgy heart you've gained because you didn't listen to advice on diet and smoking, or when big government bails out the greediest amongst us - the banks.

It's hard work being a lefty most of the time, but at the moment it's hard not to walk around holding a 'told you so' placard... in the meantime, I must transfer some cash to pay my credit card bill, then make sure there's still enough in the account to pay the mortgage, oh, and Vick's off to Tesco in a bit, so I need to write a list....

Escalating Laziness

Just a quick post - another from Barcelona. This was the end of somebody's tag - it seems a popular way to end a tag, actually, unless I keep seeing the same tag in various cities. One of the things that amused me in Barcelona was the way that the hill rising up to and beyond the Magic Fountain had escalators taking you as far as the art gallery. Very sensible, I'm sure, and very popular with my kids, but such an odd thing to see outside!