Monday Miscellany

A collection of odds, ends and personals . . .

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From Nadia:

South Africa explained on a shirt

Every once in a while somebody gets it right. This is not yet found in the Oxford dictionary, so it was "Googled" and discovered to be a recently "coined" new word found on T-shirts on eBay. Read this one over slowly and absorb the facts that are within this definition! I love this word and believe that it will become a recognised English word.

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Thanks Nadia.

Looking into it further, I came up with a couple of relevant related items:

An alternative definition of “ineptocracy” is:

A belief that rulers should be chosen for their generally incompetent and ineffectual qualities.

Compare this with the definition in Nadia’s item:

A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers

The Nadia definition has been applied to the occupy protesters. 

It has also been applied to the Obama administration by his detractors. Here is a bumper sticker with yet a third definition:

It has also been said that an inpetocracy often goes hand in hand with thugocracy, the rule of a country or state by a group of thugs.

This has also been applied to Obama:

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Nadia had a busy week, she also sent me the classic parrot and freezer joke, printed below despite the day not being Funny Friday . . . 

Brian received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.

Brian tried hard to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to 'clean up' the bird's language.

Finally, Brian was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. Brian shook the parrot by the neck and the parrot got angrier and even more rude.

Brian, in desperation, threw up his hands, then grabbed the bird and stuffed it in the freezer. For a few minute the parrot screamed abuse, then suddenly there was total quiet.

Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, Brian quickly opened the freezer door. The parrot stepped out onto Brian's outstretched arm and said, "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my vulgar and unforgivable behaviour".

Brian was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude.

Then the parrot spoke again and said, very softly…..

"May I ask you what the chicken did?"

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Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography: 1970

Between 1942 and 1967 a Pulitzer Prize for Photography was awarded for photojournalism, that is, for photographs telling a news story.

In 1968 that award was replaced by awards in two new categories: 

· the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography (photography in the nature of breaking news);and 

· the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography (human interest and matters associated with new items). 

From1955 World Press Photo has awarded prizes for the best photographs in 10 categories, with an overall award for the image that "... is not only the photojournalistic encapsulation of the year, but represents an issue, situation or event of great journalistic importance, and does so in a way that demonstrates an outstanding level of visual perception and creativity".

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Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography
Year:	1970
Photographer:	Dallas Kinney
Photograph:	Portfolio of Florida migrant workers

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Photojournalist Dallas Kinney (pictured above) may look like he is wearing one of those comic spectacle frame-eyebrows-moustache things that you buy in joke shops but there is actually a poignant background to his 1970 Pulitzer win for his sad portfolio on Florida migrant workers, Migration to Misery. Kinney spent two and a half months with the farm workers in 1969.

His story raises personal issues as well as questioning the role of photojournalists, their professional detachment from what is being photographed and the efficacy and effectiveness of photojournalism generally.

Kinney said the man with the basket of snap beans, above, was the signature photograph for his series.

The following article by Carlos Frias is from:

http://www.pbpulse.com/news/entertainment/why-did-winning-the-pulitzer-almost-ruin-dallas-ki/nMP89/

Dallas Kinney repeats the phrase as a mantra, hoping if you hear it enough times, you will realise what his career - no, his life - has been about: Do you understand?

When he looked at the world through the lens of a camera, he wanted others to understand the story his pictures told. Whenever they missed the point, he felt it invalidated his work.

And maybe that pressure is why he lasted just five short years as a photojournalist. When Dallas Kinney won the Pulitzer Prize at The Palm Beach Post on May 4, 1970 for exposing the trials of African-American migrant farmers in the Glades, it was the beginning of the end of his career.

"Never again," said Kinney, now 73. 

Kinney had trained under one of the greats in American photography, Ansel Adams, and shot photos of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death and Robert F. Kennedy days before his assassination. 

At the Post, he had set out to alert readers to the plight just on the other side of their county: Field hands were living in crushing poverty and forced into a nomadic life of indentured servitude. 

"His pictures are haunting. They capture people's essence," said Kent Pollock, the reporter who wrote the accompanying stories for the eight-day series in October 1969. "They evoke emotion." 

But the results were nothing like what Kinney expected. More than 1,500 of the paper's 70,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions. 

When the Pulitzer Prize was announced in 1970, Pollock, just 22 years old and caught up in the moment, poured champagne over Kinney's head and that image would be on the cover of the next day's paper. At least one migrant quoted in the series, feeling used, called to remind Kinney that his subjects were still languishing in the fields. 

Kinney walked into the managing editor's office the next day, closed the door, and said, "What do I do now?" 

"Imagine winning the ultimate prize and learning you had failed," said Kinney, who had grown up a poor Iowa farmer himself. "They didn't understand, and that's why it was a hollow victory." 

Even 40 years later, Pollock, today a professor of journalism at Sierra College in California, wonders whether the champagne bath, tied with the pressure of winning the Pulitzer at just 33, doomed Kinney's career.
"The Pulitzer drove Dallas out of the business," Pollock said. "I have, for a long time, felt guilty for pouring champagne over Dallas. I'm haunted by the belief that if I hadn't done that … I suppose he might have taken a different vision of the profession." 

The following year, Kinney left The Post and never again worked as a photojournalist. He returned to newspapers as an editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, even to The Post in 1973 as an editor, and was hired to document the last crusade of evangelist Billy Graham. But he never again published another photo as a journalist. 

By February 1976, after a failed marriage, Kinney started drinking to dull his senses. 

"I was a mess," Kinney said. "Divorced. Living in a little cubicle alone in an apartment above a garage. My best friends were a bottle of scotch in one hand and a Bible in the other." 

Then a friend dragged him to a meeting of Cursillos in Christianity, a moment that reconnected Kinney to an old friend - Lillie Mae Brown, the subject of his prize-winning photos. He had always been moved by the unwavering faith she felt would guide her from a life of suffering to the splendors of heaven. 

"That connection with God is something I'd never encountered before," Kinney said. "My providential meeting with Lillie Mae Brown and getting to know the same God she did, that is the core of who I am and what I'm doing." 

That winter, he married his current wife of 33 years, Martha. They moved to Mesa, Ariz., and ran a corporate communications company for more than 20 years before the couple moved to Dahlonega, Ga. 

Kinney still photographs to tell stories through the lens of a camera, but not for mass consumption. His pictures jump off the page, haunting in their richness, but he never thought of his photography as art. 

Rather, he said the camera was a "necessary intrusion" for helping others to understand a larger message. 

"I'm not a photographer, I'm a communicator," he said. "The camera was a tool to me, not a way of life."

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The photograph referred to above:  Pollock celebrates Kinney's Pulitzer win by pouring champagne over Kinney

Pollock went to the Philadelphia Inquirer, owned a small California weekly, ran a chain of weeklies, and eventually went to the Sacramento Bee, where at one point he oversaw some 200 people. He’s now a political consultant and a journalism professor at Sierra College in Rocklin in Northern California.

Kinney left the Palm Beach Post to document the lives of American Indians, then went to the Philadelphia Inquirer, returned briefly to the Post, ran a weekly in Sanibel, worked for the Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia and ran a Christian communications business in Mesa, Ariz. He now is a lecturer and consultant in Dahlonega, Ga., north of Atlanta.

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To see more of Kinney's work, visit his website at dallaskinney.zenfolio.com.

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Kids, Dogs and Faces

The Royals have released a new family pic of William, Kate, George and family dog Lupo ahead of their proposed tour of Oz:

It sent an involuntary shudder through me and brought to mind advice my father use to give, but more of that later.

I was already going to post the item below when the above Royal photograph came out. It reinforces the comments made.

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There has been a spate of photographs that I have come across recently of babies being dressed up and photographed whilst asleep or lying down. I am in two minds about that. It’s cute but it makes me feel that the baby is a prop in the parents' activity. You decide. 

The first baby pic series that came to notice were the elaborate photographs of Queenie Liao, who must have a lot of time on her hands. Her series features her sleeping son Wenngenn in a display called Wenngenn in Wonderland. She has used household items and materials to create fantasy scenes on the floor with Wenngeen as the central feature:

See all 32 pics at:

http://wengenninwonderland.com/

Here are some examples:

Which brings us to Series #2: the work of Adele Enerson and her child Mila; Her work is quite similar to Queenie Liao:

Which brings us to the work of French photographer Malo, photographing his baby daughter June in a series called “One day, my child you will be”. He has dressed June in possible future careers. . . 

I don’t know whether June will be the first female Pope:

but I wasn’t enamoured of the boxer pic with the black eye:

Another mum and dad, Lilly and Leon, have recreated famous film scenes with their baby Orson and cardboard boxes.  According to them, having moved house and being housebound on weekends, they decided to have some fun with a photographic series they call "Cardboard Box Office":

Star Wars

Castaway

Jurassic Park

Apollo13

Die Hard

Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom

(For those experiencing cuteness overload, we are nearing the end).

Which brings me to the last, a series of pics by Jessica Shyba of her son Beau asleep with the family’s adopted puppy Theo, a part-boxer, part-shepherd, part-labrador retriever. Here are some examples:

There are a lot more but you get the idea.

Which brings me to the advice of my father.

My Dad trained dogs, German Shepherds, and was a Chief Instructor with the German Shepherd Dog League. We grew up with dogs, mostly Shepherds, and with dogs being trained. 

One of my father’s cardinal rules was “Never put your face close to a dog’s face, even if you know the dog.” It was what he drummed into my brothers and I wand what he gtaught when giving obedience training classes.

A dog that has never exhibited any snapping or biting, that is totally docile, can suddenly nip or bite when it becomes excited, or if someone accidentally causes it pain. Even cute little puppies. Have you ever felt a puppy’s teeth? As sharp as needles. Years ago my local newsagent had his upper lip split to his nose. I asked what had happened and he told me that their small, old dog, which had only about 4 teeth left, had been sitting on his chest whilst he was lying on the couch. It suddenly nipped him, not a hard bite and only one nip, but it was enough to rip his lip apart. I still cringe when I see people plant a kiss on their dog’s head or hug their dog with faces next to each other. 

My father's rules and comments:

Never put you face anywhere near a dog's head/face.

That goes whether you are an adult or a child and no matter how well you know the dog.

A dog is still an abimal, not a person, no matter how long and how well the dog has been known.

Every dog can bite and will do so if the right trigger or icrcumstances occur.

Like my father to my brothers and me, I always told my family never to put their face next to any dog, even beloved Lucy, although I think they regard me as alarmist. 

Today I stand by my father’s rules, having seen the consequences of dog bites ion faces.

If any further convincing is needed . . .

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Funny Friday

It's that time of the week again, Funny Friday, and seeing as how we have been posting about matters canine (with a few more to come), what better topic to finish off the week . . .

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I saw a dog in a cage the other day with a sign saying "I bite", and I thought, that's very interesting dog, but that's not the most important thing about you, you should make a sign saying "I make signs".

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After accidentally eating a fly, in the vein of the nursery rhyme, I ate a spider, a bird, a cat, a dog, a goat, a cow and a horse. Or, as it's more commonly known, a kebab.

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Two Scottish nuns have just arrived in the USA by boat and one says to the other, "I hear that the people in this country actually eat dogs."

"That’s odd," her companion replies, "but if we shall live in America, we might as well do as the Americans do."

Nodding emphatically, the mother superior points to a hot dog vendor and they both walk towards the cart. "Two dogs, please," says one.

The vendor is pleased to oblige, wraps both hot dogs in foil, and hands them over the counter. Excitedly, the nuns hurry to a bench and begin to un-wrap their ‘dogs’.

The mother superior begins to blush and, then, staring at it for a moment, leans to the other nun and whispers cautiously, "What part… did you get…?"

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A wealthy man decided to go on a safari in Africa. He took his faithful pet dachshund along for company. One day, the dachshund starts chasing butterflies and before long the dachshund discovers that he is lost.

So, wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the obvious intention of having him for lunch.

The dachshund thinks, "OK, I’m in deep trouble now!" Then he noticed some bones on the ground close by, and immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the leopard is about to leap, the dachshund exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here."

Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid-stride, as a look of terror comes over him, and slinks away into the trees.

"Whew," says the leopard. "That was close. That dachshund nearly had me."

Meanwhile, a monkey, who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So, off he goes.

But the dachshund saw him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figured that something must be up.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here monkey, hop on my back and see what’s going to happen to that conniving canine."

Now the dachshund sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back, and thinks, "What am I going to do now?" But instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn’t seen them yet … and, just when they get close enough to hear, the dachshund says…

"Where’s that damn monkey? I sent him off half an hour ago to bring me another leopard."

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My dog kept chasing people on a bike.

So we took his bike off him.

Then he just sat in the garden and barked all day.

So we gave him his bike back.

Because his bark was worse than his bike.

(I know that that should have been in Corn Corner but trust me, the one below is worse).

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Corn Corner:

A three legged dog walks into a saloon in the American Wild West and says "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."

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