A warm hello from a cold part of the world (-14 C, without the windchill). Glad tidings to all those who pass by this part of the woods, whether you be regular passers-by or new readers. It looks like 2008 will be an interesting year, if only because I want it to.
As you may have noticed, I’ve been able to post more photographs lately (lest my photoblogs.org membership be contested), even though they were taken last September. I’ve been so swamped with work since then that I was only able to pick up my camera yesterday to take some shots of the new snow. I hope to have some shots up within the next month. For those who don’t know (prefaced here), I’m a traditional analog photographer – I use a Russian-made Leica rip-off manufactured in the 1960’s and shoot slide film. For all you junior rangers, that means shooting the roll, taking it to a lab, getting the slides back, scanning them, formatting/tweaking them digitally, and then uploading. You kids and your fancy-dancy digital cameras…
The new year welcomes, among many assorted developments, a new blog from the man who was my mentor at Humber College’s School for Writers, DM Thomas (author of The White Hotel). Also, as normally happens during the “holiday season”, the new year brings the beginnings of spiralling chaos somewhere in the world – this time it’s Kenya. Normally, the holiday horror is courtesy of a South Asian tsunami or some other badly-timed natural phenomena or accident (I’m looking at you Bangladesh, you and your less-than-impervious ferries). In Kenya’s case, it’s an election, the disputed results of which have inflamed tribal mistrust, culminating in the burning of a church where 50 people – women and children – were taking shelter. They all died. The Guardian has a reasonable summary of what’s going on there. Lastly, speaking of democracy, 2008 offers the possibility of an immensely entertaining spectacle south of the border as Democrats and Republicans in the US sort out their bullshit in public. I can only hope that, some day, the word “Independent” won’t be so distasteful in their political lexicon.
I’ll have more book reviews to come this year, featuring the new translation of War & Peace – but keep in mind that it’s over 1,200 pages, with the original French dialogue intact, with contextualized notes on every page…in other words, if I finish it in 2008, I’ll post a review. But I can multi-task, so there will be books read in the interim period. The previous year saw my completion of reading Solomon Volkov‘s St. Petersburg: A Cultural History – an on/off process that’s taken me a couple of years. One 500lb (226.79 kg) gorilla down, another to go.
Oh, if anyone from one of the three magazine publishers who I submitted to in the late summer of 2007 are reading this, I would appreciate something…anything from you in the mail. Even a rejection letter. It’s the waiting that is hardest.
Take care, all.
