Maggie Steber

http://imagedeconstructed.com/post/spotlight-on-maggie-steber

Maggie Steber is an award-winning American photographer noted for her work with National Georgraphic magazine. The website The Image, Deconstructed ran a feature on her body of photographs, especially in regards to an article she did for National Geographic on the subject of memory. The images shown in this feature are touching and saddening, many of them shot in a sepia color scheme to evoke wistful and nostalgic emotions. The image of an old, withered, and apparently disembodied hand appearing from within a sea of bedsheets, for instance, is just as disturbing as it is depressing, though one is unable to explain exactly why this is show. There is something metaphysical about Steber's photographs which make them seem superior to the normal experience of man. They are magical, aetherial, and entirely human.

It's All About the Grandmothers - Part the Third

After their various entrances, flourishes, and squawks, both grandmothers (actress and eccentric) settled in the living room to consume bread and hummus. They muddled through fairly well, considering they had nothing in common, and before long were on the topic of singing.

Eccentric Grandmother: I find that my voice isn't nearly as good anymore. I just don't have the range.
Actress Grandmother: O, I learn new song. Practice all the time. Moon River.
EG: Oh, really?
Actress Grandmother: Yes, it's simple. You should try it. I sing for you.

Now when someone sings, especially if they are elderly, you don't really expect much of a voice. The phrasing and the rhythm can get knocked around a little and no one notices. If the singer decides to switch keys between the verse and the chorus, you forgive them. No one really expects much in the way of vibrato, either. One does, however, expect words.

AG: Wait...how does it start.
EG: [sings] Moon River.
AG: Right! [sings]

Moon River

Wider than a smile

EG: Mile.

AG:

Wider than a mile

I'm crossing you in style some way

EG: Someday.

AG: Someday.

 

Father: [poking head from kitchen] Is that the Hallelujah Chorus?

 

AG: [ignoring son-in-law]

Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker

Wherever you're going, I'm going your way

[decides to quit while she's ahead]

 

EG: That was lovely.

AG: See? Easy.



 



It's All About the Grandmothers - Part the Second

The second (eccentric) grandmother arrived twelve minutes late in a car that I didn't recognize. After denying me the right of helping her, she trucked her twelve bags into the house, ignored the slippers we'd bought for her, and handed us a twelve-pack of sparkling water. Eventually, the small talk began to bore her and she launched into an update of her home's renovations, which she described as if relating the procedural steps entailed in a lobotomy.

Before long, the topic of dinner was introduced. We mentioned that the turkey would be ready around 6.00. She balked. Her response to our inquiries as to her reaction: "I have a date at eight."

Did I mention she's sixty-six?

And at eight she went.

It's All About the Grandmothers - Part the First

The first (actress) grandmother was scheduled to arrive at two o'clock.
The first (actress) grandmother was scheduled to arrive at two o'clock, but arrived at three.

A small, Asian lady in the essential small, Asian mode of transportation (the Toyota Camry), I stood watching in the window as she parked in the driveway. I also stood watching in the window as she did not exit the Toyota Camry, but sat placidly for over a minute. Finally, she exited, and proceeded to walk down the street in the midst of snowfall.

Did I mention she's seventy-four?

When she returned ten minutes later, I opened the door and attempted to take her bags. She unleashed a broken English harangue in which I was repeatedly reprimanded for not immediately throwing the door open upon her crossing of the driveway threshold.

The actress grandmother had made her entrance.

Political Cartoons

http://www.cagle.com/2012/11/bye-bye-birdie/

This political cartoon, wittily titled after the wretched 1961 musical, is a humorous commentary on the 2012 presidential election. The cartoon depicts the Sesame Street character Big Bird driving a car, to the top of which is strapped a kennel containing Mitt Romney. During a presidential debate, candidate Romney said that he would cut funding for public broadcasting, despite the fact that he loved Big Bird, a comment which raised almost as much ire as it did eyebrows. The point of the picture is to put a comical spin on Romney's loss of the election, showing Big Bird as the victor with an imprisoned Romney.

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/politicalcartoons/ig/Political-Cartoons/Seceding-From-America.htm

In this cartoon, the various post-election secessionist movements are lampooned in the figure of an overweight tricorne-wearing idiot exiting a house labeled "America" whilst shouting the valediction, "Don't beg me to stay, I'm seceding!" Those inside react with the murmur, "Quick! Change the locks." The cartoonist is satirizing those who wish to secede from the union in reaction to Obama's victory by portraying them as unwanted dolts believing they are making a massive statement in leaving a group who can only be thrilled by their absence.

The Dumbest Generation

was written by the most frustrating author. In particular, while the argument is fairly cohesive overall and supported by backbreaking quantities of evidence, I found that it was organized in a spectacularly strange manner. While each chapter was a neatly synthesized brick of information, I found the finished piece lacking in the structural elements necessary to piece the argument together. In particular, the book lacks much in the way of a conclusion, instead substituting a historical and literary rant that quotes Thoreau, Lincoln, and Emily Dickinson, all which the author uses to bemoan the sad state he has described in his book without really tying anything together. Bauerlein also fails to return to the motifs he used at the argument's outset, and the whole segment of the younger population as described in the introduction, a problem which Bauerlein himself calls "no less disturbing," have apparently, with the exception of the collegiate political organizations which he endeavours to discredit, disappeared into oblivion, obscured behind the two hundred pages of statistics he has carefully assembled. His argument may be a profound one, and his points may be sharp, but it has been lost in a swirling ocean of numbers and facts which neglect to align themselves with the overarching theme of the treatise, and which are thus only significant if the reader chooses to make them so. Regardless however well supported and truthful, an argument that structurally unsound will always collapse.