"I never lost hope that this great transformation would occur.  Not only because of the great heroes I have already cited, but because of the courage of the ordinary men and women of my country.  I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there was mercy and generosity.  No one is born hating another person because of the color of their skin, or his background, or his religion.  People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.  Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going.  Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.

Nelson Mandela hated apartheid, but he never hated its agents.

Jaimito asked me,"Daddy?  What means Black in America?"

"It’s kind of complicated, Jaimito, but let me try to explain."  So I ran through a basic primer of just what it meant to be black in America since the days of slavery and why it was still an issue.  Olaia helpfully pointed out that things had gotten better because Barack Obama was elected President.  "I agree," I said, "and I think it says a lot that the majority of America has gotten past color as a qualification, but that doesn’t mean prejudice doesn’t exist."

And that was that.  They asked, I tried to sum up years of legal and cultural discrimination over breakfast.   They seemed satisfied and a few minutes passed until Jaimito, who was obviously still pondering something, asked.

"Daddy," he began, "am I black?"

So here’s the scoop: I just had a really nice dinner made possible by the following:

1. My new super duper outdoor kitchen grill.  It’s an early Father’s day gift, a super awesome backyard propane grilling monster with rotisserie, external gas burner and 36,000 btus of gas grilling power.  Hear me roar.  I like to cook, and this makes me feel useful.
2. Squash and churrasco cooked and grilled to perfection eaten on our patio that we tiled ourselves.  It was a beautiful clear night.  The wine was delicious, the lights added a cozy ambiance, and the dinner conversation with the niños was sparkling.  Javier smacked my shoulder every time he had something to say.  He’s boricua through and through, and it tickles his mommy so.
   
3. Olaia’s iPod, loaded with my music because she knows I like it.  Such a sweet little girl.   Midway through dinner we jammed to the Digital Underground’s, Humpty Dance.  It was a riot.

It just doesn’t get any better than eating under the stars, laughing with your children, cracking each other up, and jamming to the Humpty Dance.

­

Doesn’t that look good?  It was.  I haven’t had a tomato that tasty since the ones we were forced to grow as kids.  I never would have known what I was missing.  Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Our compost is composed of yard waste (green grass and leaves), vegetable and fruit waste from the kitchen, coffee grounds, a bit of ash from barbecuing, some paper waste, and egg shells.  You should not use meat or protein as it is said to attract varmints.   Anyway, all that lead to the creation of this:

­

Lovely, isn’t it?  Isn’t nature cool? 

I planted two varieties, roma and these called beefeaters.  Today, I was surprised to find that a third variety had sprouted from the composted seeds and was bearing a different type of fruit. I imagine that even though they are from tasteless grocery store tomato seeds, homegrown they will taste much better.

I can’t wait to eat it tomorrow on an egg sandwich with lettuce, fresh mayonnaise, and cheddar cheese on bakery bread.

And then I took this little picture for Olaia for a class project as we dined outside next to our garden in the cool night air.

Chee-bow-bow, the moon.

­­

I’ve been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books to the kids at bed time.  I loved those books as a kid and now despite limited library space and an unwillingness to store any more books in this house, I can read the classics to my heart’s content.

So here’s the work flow:  Download a book at gutenberg.org, open it up in konqueror or firefox and when you come upon a strange archaic word pop it into your kdict public domain dictionary reader and peruse several different definitions and usage entries.  I’m simply amazed at how awesome the public domain is and how many volunteers have come together to make it all possible.  Consider donating to gutenberg.org.

I just noticed that the character of Tarzan went into the public domain in 1998.  Is it a coincidence that Disney’s movie was released in 1999?  Hmmm.

"Oh yeah, we have tons," he replied, "One of our members is a photographer.  He has a photography firm and he takes all the pictures for us.  El es un fotografo buenismo y toma fotos increibles.  (he is a really good photographer and takes incredible pictures). I’ll burn you a CD."  And he disappeared to his computer and the burning.

I went back to trying to figure out why Samba had decided to stop working, dumping core, and refusing connections.  Bizarre. It was doing something all right, just not what it was supposed to do.*

After a few minutes, he returned.  "Here," he said, dropping the CD in my hand, "This is from an event from last week."

I opened my laptop and anxious to see these beautiful photos, clicked it into the drive tray.  After hearing all about the photographer and his mad skills, I prepared myself for a huge pile of awesome photos for the website (http://beta.hechoenpr.com/) This was going to make my life easier.  I’ll have more to choose from.  I opened the CD and started browsing.  I furrowed my brow.  "These photos aren’t really all that good," I said, "They’re kind of bad, actually.  I thought you said this guy was as good."

"Oh, I’m sorry, those are actually photos I took.  I have a crappy little camera.  They are just snapshots."

"Hmm," I replied.  "After all the talk about this professional guy, I was worried.  Okay, I’m glad.  Do you want to know how to make your shots better?  You could improve a lot with just a few simple tips, even with a crappy camera."

"My wife takes nice pictures," he said. "Her photos are a lot better.  She has a lot of artists in her family.  Her brother is an artist."  I could tell he was a little embarrassed by my accidental bluntness.  But, hell, I’ll just go with it.  I am not a mealy-mouthed type.  He could spent the rest of his life taking shitty photos and never have anyone give him any pointers "to save his feelings," but I wanted his photos to say something or at least fake saying something, anything but stand still.

"Yes, an artist probably has some formation and training for using the space and telling a story, showing action or whatever.  I have a couple of basic tricks to go from beginner to amateur.  Do you want to know what they are?"

"First, is the rule of thirds.  It goes like this.  Take your canvas and divide it into thirds, horizontally and vertically.  Your intersecting points are interest areas.  For example, why do shots of the ocean always fail to live up to the moment?  I’m sure you’ve taken lots of shots of the ocean, beach, la isla, and they never come out the way you remember them, right?"

"Yes, pictures never capture how beautiful it was," he agreed.  He was shuffling his feet and seemed to be losing interest.  They are forever polite and have little capacity to deal with uncomfortable moments.

Hang in there a little longer, and I’ll have you fixed up, I thought.  "Okay, so a little trick for the ocean is to make sure that the sky always takes up either one third or two thirds of the frame.  Never half.  If the ocean is two thirds, the sky is one third.  If the sky is one third, t­he ocean is two thirds.  If the ocean is in the middle, the way your eye perceives it, you end up with a boring shot.  The shitty picture that you all know and ends up in a box with the thousands of others."

I continued, "If you are shooting people, make sure you get close.  If it’s a group, apart from a planned group portrait, try to focus in on one or two people.  Basically, just get closer.­  When in doubt, get closer.  Those are my two tips, and they will cover 99% of circumstances.  As you improve, and believe me, I’m no professional, you can break these guidelines.  But to start out, they’ll help you turn snapshots into art.  Really great photographers ca­n tell amazing stories with bigger groups, more complex elements, and from farther away, but the beginner doesn’t know how how to balance so many things at first.  Just be patient and get closer.  Stick to one or two elements and tell a simple story."

­­­

­"Okay, thanks James," and he excused himself.  I could tell he was only being polite.  It’s probably why his pictures will continue to be shitty.  But that is another story.  I decided that I was going to write down what good art looks like, feels like, and is.  Since I’m a multi-disciplined person I think I am qualified to define what makes good art in a variety of media.  I think I can even tie it into what makes a good battle plan and a good life.  I use the word "good" because to be "great" you’ve got to dedicate yourself to one thing.  To be merely good, requires only a little bit of passion and purpose.

So let us begin, shall we?

The photography/graphic arts "rule-of-thirds" is really just a trick.  You trick your viewer into believing something is happening in the frame.  Take the sky and ocean example.  Put the ocean in the middle and it is stagnant, locked in stasis with the sky, a stalemate, neither giving nor receiving.  The sky and ocean just sit there.  The photo says nothing and gives nothing either way.  Should, however, the sky yield to the ocean or the ocean to the sky, now you’ve got something.  Movement.  Purpose.  It is small, yes, but with the ocean spilling into the sky or the sky pushing down the ocean you have begun a process  It is this something, this movement, that makes the picture interesting.  Bingo.  It’s not the greatest picture in the world, but neither is it the worst.

Instead of shooting a person right smack in the middle of the shot, put them off to one side.  Which way are they looking?  Are they leaving the frame, or entering it.  If they are in the middle, most of the time it’s a boring photograph because the perception is that nothing is happening and the space around the sub­ject it distracting or wasted.  Maybe you should crop it or get closer or offset the subject.

­

There’s a lot of clutter behind, little Mr. Asier, but instead of putting him in the middle frame with clutter all around, I have his motion moving in frame with the clutter blurred and de-emphasized.   A great photographer might have planned this better, but sometimes you just have to shoot what you have in front of you.  With a few simple tips you can turn ho-hum snapshot into something you and others will adore.

Beginning writers are told to show don’t tell, to use adverbs sparingly.  Don’t tell me about what someone said or did.  Show me.  If someone was sad, don’t tell me:  He was sad.  Show me how he was sad.  And don’t say:  He walked sadly.  Tell me he walked without picking up his feet and the sound they made as they dragged over the dirty floor.  Tell me how his clothes drooped, or how his hair was flat and oily or how when he answered questions he mumbled or looked away and didn’t meet your gaze.   The key is that good writers can take any subject and make it interesting and put you in the moment.  Take this passage for example about coming home, sitting on the toilet and through a simple discovery realizing true love.  Sonny, true love is the greatest thing in the world. Except for a nice MLT: a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe. They’re so perky, I love that.  But I digress.

From http://sigg3.net/:

Thinking about this, I smiled as I made my way up the godforsaken five floors I have to climb every fucking day to get to the apartment. I got inside, put the groceries down and headed for the bathroom. It felt good, if you have to know. (And reading this, I suppose you do.) Went back into the kitchen, picked out the beer and put ‘em in the fridge, put the frozen pizza on the table and turned on the oven. That’s when I saw it. At first I couldn’t believe it, it just couldn’t be true. Was it really real? I swallowed solemnly while revering every inch of the realization that crept upon me like a slow sunrise in the time frame of geological foreplay.

Lady C had actually taken out the trash.

All of it.

All by herself.

from: http://www.sigg3.net/b2.php?p=1346

Note the spare use of adverbs, the build up, each mundane detail, the slow difficult climb, taking a dump, putting some groceries down, and the frozen pizza (how clever).  Each serves as contrast to the final realization: LOVE.  But not just any love.  Our writer has cleverly placed the ultimate force of the universe within the confines of a small act of refuse disposal.  Doubly clever.  Touché.  It doesn’t get any better than that folks, and is basically the rule of thirds.  Contrast, movement, purpose.  Some people do it naturally, some do not.  The key is, however, anybody can learn this.

A little imbalance allows your electrons to flow. 

Nature abhors a vacuum.

There must be movement.  Movement for movement’s sake is okay for the amateur, but your goal is purpose of course, willful story telling.

If you had to sum up good art in one word it would be "contrast."

* it ended up being a GCC 3.4.6 hardened compiler problem.  I don’t now what specifically, but after upgrading to the 4.x series GCC Samba stopped dumping core.

Hmm, that’s weird, I thought as I took out Laura’s Corn Bran and found my Honey Bunches of Oats stuffed inside.  Who did that?  Who does a thing like that, I thought, my mind’s paranoia engine at full throttle.  Let’s see what’s inside the Honey Bunches of Oats box then.  Well, will you look at that, there’s the Corn Bran.  Someone switched them.  Who does that?  Can’t they read?  

I was seriously shaking my head at the insanity of switching the cereals’ contents.  Was the universe screwing with me? 

Will this mystery haunt me for all the days of my life?  Just as I was set to call 911 and report a cereal "incident," Laura breezed into the kitchen with a wry smile.

"Hey hon, did you notice that the cereals were switched?  That was Olaia.  She wanted to trick you for April Fools."

"Oh that little girl," I said, smiling.  "That is just too cute."  I imagined her sneaking out this morning, carefully switching the cereals, and then informing her mommy.

"Mommy, you have to tell Daddy to pour the cereal this morning, okay.  I switched them for April Fool’s.  You have to make sure Daddy does it, okay."

"Okay," her mommy replied.

And there you go.  That’s how Daddy fell for an April Fool’s joke on April Fool’s Day.  You got me.

Within my kitchen, there is the toil of the ants scouring the counters for small crumbs to take back to their lair and feed their families.  I know too well how they shall never again see their homes as I crush them and wash them down the sink. 

Then there are the remnants of the children with their messy plates, forks, glasses half full of liquid.  Their little spirits are too lively to sit still for more than a moment, yet their bodies are small, incapable of pacifying the mess of life.   They make do as best they can given their small statures.

Laura too is represented here in the menagerie, for all that we consume was created by her hands, lovingly prepared for us without reservation.  There are the burned pans, stuck rice, splatters of oil and tomato sauce.  Disorder is an unavoidable bi-product of creation, I think.

Would it be better for the magician to have never brought this kitchen to life?  The tremendous gift that is a kitchen comes with an inevitable cost: The Cleaning

Is a kitchen worth it?

Someone send me a maid!

Straight away upon arriving at home Javi­er strips his clothes and replaces them with his favorite pajamas.  He likes being Batman. 

"Javier," I ask, "How come you keep taking your clothes off and putting on your jammies?  It’s not time for bed."

"I like them, and I’m hot."

"So they are comfy?"

"Yeah."

And I’m sure Batman has nothing­ to do with it.