Thanks for your article post Bangalore.
purplesofa
JoinedPosts by purplesofa
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25
Pakistan floods
by purplesofa inthe children are hungry, .
it's a horrible situation there.. please help if you can.. have a great day, .
purps.
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7
SALT documentary
by purplesofa ini watched this documentary on pbs over the weekend, it's pretty awesome if you can watch.. purps.
synopsisin his search for somewhere i could point my camera into pure space, award-winning photographer murray fredericks began making annual solo camping trips to remote lake eyre and its salt flats in south australia.
these trips have yielded remarkable photos of a boundless, desolate yet beautiful environment where sky, water and land merge.
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purplesofa
I am really glad you enjoyed him.
The documentary really captures what he does and feels to capture the pics.
The heart he has to do what he does.
The solitude and vastness of where he is, the totally desolate place where he is.
The stars he sees are unbelievable to me, I guess with that total darkness you can see so much more.
purps
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7
SALT documentary
by purplesofa ini watched this documentary on pbs over the weekend, it's pretty awesome if you can watch.. purps.
synopsisin his search for somewhere i could point my camera into pure space, award-winning photographer murray fredericks began making annual solo camping trips to remote lake eyre and its salt flats in south australia.
these trips have yielded remarkable photos of a boundless, desolate yet beautiful environment where sky, water and land merge.
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purplesofa
He has some beautiful photography
http://www.murrayfredericks.com.au/
http://www.murrayfredericks.com.au/currentexhibition-lake-eyre0607.asp
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7
SALT documentary
by purplesofa ini watched this documentary on pbs over the weekend, it's pretty awesome if you can watch.. purps.
synopsisin his search for somewhere i could point my camera into pure space, award-winning photographer murray fredericks began making annual solo camping trips to remote lake eyre and its salt flats in south australia.
these trips have yielded remarkable photos of a boundless, desolate yet beautiful environment where sky, water and land merge.
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purplesofa
I watched this documentary on PBS over the weekend, it's pretty awesome if you can watch.
purps
Synopsis
In his search for “somewhere I could point my camera into pure space,” award-winning photographer Murray Fredericks began making annual solo camping trips to remote Lake Eyre and its salt flats in South Australia. These trips have yielded remarkable photos of a boundless, desolate yet beautiful environment where sky, water and land merge. Made in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Michael Angus, SALT is the film extension of Fredericks’ work at Lake Eyre, interweaving his photos and video diary with time-lapse sequences to create the liberating and disorienting experience of being thrown into an infinite dimension of mind and spirit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyXGwB9B6bQ
Film Description
Murray Fredericks is an award-winning Australian photographer with a penchant for photographing some of the world’s most dramatic and remote places — Patagonia, Tasmania, the Himalayas. In each case, he spends years creating photographic series that go beyond the surface to propel himself and viewers into dizzying, unbounded spaces, challenging the human sense of self and place. About six years ago, Fredericks began making five-week annual trips alone to remote Lake Eyre and its salt flats, the lowest point in Australia. He went, he says, in search of “somewhere I could point my camera into pure space.” He discovered a boundless and beautiful land where sky, water and land merge in extraordinary vistas and surprisingly spectacular colors. He also discovered a harsh place where a lone individual might easily find himself pushed to his physical and mental limits. SALT is the video diary, made in collaboration with Michael Angus, of Fredericks’ pilgrimages to Lake Eyre, a dramatic counterpart to his stunning, stark and surreal photographs.
Murray Fredericks on Lake Eyre, Australia. Credit: Murray Fredericks
Three years into his still-photo project at Lake Eyre, Fredericks began taking a video camera along to record his experiences working in such a challenging, visually rewarding environment. His reference points were a crimson, Mars-like landscape, an endless horizon and sunrise and sunset. His only contacts with the outside world were occasional satellite telephone calls with his family. The first footage Fredericks brought back was dramatic and beautiful enough to attract the attention of filmmaker Michael Angus, who began helping him by providing directions for shooting and shaping the material. Angus shot one scene that appears in the film, a spectacular aerial view of Fredericks leaving Lake Eyre. Other footage that he shot in more traditional documentary style ended up on the cutting-room floor. Both men became convinced that SALT needed to be an intimate point-of-view diary.
And very much like Fredericks’ still work, SALT retains an unerringly clear-eyed point of view — that of a photographer heading deeper, visually and spiritually, into a vast landscape, even as he begins to unravel a bit under the stresses of working at Lake Eyre. His struggles with rain, mud, lightning, equipment failure and the ever-corrosive salt, not to mention isolation, are punctuated by his gentle dry humor and phone calls with his wife in Sydney, during which they discuss everyday family events, like their kids’ grades, and larger issues, such as when he will be returning home. Sun and sand, sky and land — everything begins to mix and merge. It’s enough to make anyone begin to question just what he’s doing and why. Yet Fredericks doggedly carries on, andSALT is a remarkable and whimsical diary of the artist’s thoughts and feelings as he grapples with his materials and subject, and his own deep-seated needs and desires.
Interweaving photos and time-lapse sequences with Fredericks’ video diary, SALTrecreates a spectacular and severe dreamscape, unhinged from a certainty of time and place. A visual delight and an exceptional portrait of an artist at work, SALT is also a philosophical meditation on the drive to know the world beyond the boundaries of one’s self.
“When Murray showed me the first footage he had shot at Lake Eyre, I was stunned,” says co- director Angus. “I knew there were the makings of an extraordinary documentary about his inner and outer journeys on the lake. Integral to the process was Murray recording his own thoughts, feelings and satellite phone conversations with his wife, Franca, back home in Sydney. I felt it was essential to the project that it be an honest and human portrayal of the artist. My aim was to create within the film itself enough space for viewers to imagine and feel something of the experience for themselves.”
SALT is a production of Jerrycan Film.
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62
"Hell is the Invention of the Church"
by leavingwt inbishop spong, on hell.. .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf6i5vszvqc.
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purplesofa
He says, Religion is in the guilt producing control business!!!
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35
Russia in COLOR, circa 1910
by compound complex ini just received this in the mail: i've never seen color photographs from pre-wwi .... .
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html?p1=well_mostpop_emailed2.
cc.
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purplesofa
I have always wanted to go to Russia, I love the Architecture there.
beautiful photos,
thanks for sharing.
purps
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25
Pakistan floods
by purplesofa inthe children are hungry, .
it's a horrible situation there.. please help if you can.. have a great day, .
purps.
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17
Cooking opinion
by beksbks inok, i have a huge basket of cherry tomatoes from my garden.
no way will we be able to eat them all, and i have already given some to neighbors.
how does a sauce made from them sound?
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purplesofa
I just saw on Rachel Ray yesterday a sauce she made using cherry tomatoes.
Make a sauce!
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17
Anybody interested in attending a professionally-arranged conference addressing cultic group issues to be held in Nashville, TN?
by AndersonsInfo inone of the paramount non-profit anti-cult organizations headquartered in the us would like to arrange a two-day conference to be held in nashville, tn in the fall of 2011. this organization sponsors conferences, workshops, local meetings and special lectures, seminars, and other events all over the world for those interested in this subject.
at a nashville conference there will be opportunity to network with and listen to experts in the field and with people adversely affected by cultic experiences.. recently, when examining their records, this organization found that former jehovahs witnesses made up the bulk of those attending their anti-cult workshops which definitely indicates that many former witnesses are seeking help to overcome the damage from cult abuse.
however, the nashville conference will not be solely for former jehovahs witnesses, but will encourage attendance by anyone interested in hearing the experts address psychological manipulation and abuse in cultic groups, alternative movements, and other environments.
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purplesofa
About a five hour drive for me, I am interested.
purps
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25
Pakistan floods
by purplesofa inthe children are hungry, .
it's a horrible situation there.. please help if you can.. have a great day, .
purps.
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purplesofa
FRIDAY, AUG 20, 2010 13:30 ET
The female victims of Pakistan's flood
Women face starvation, disease and sexual assault. They're also not supposed to get aid from male relief workers
BY JUDY MANDELBAUMJust when you thought the "ground zero mosque" was our most pressing concern, the floodwaters of Pakistan arrived to create "probably the biggest emergency on the planet today,'' as UNICEF puts it. It is a disaster that contains the germ of many others: starvation, epidemics, climate change, political instability and future violence. Heavy rainfalls have placed some 20 percent of Pakistani territory underwater, an area greater than Italy, killing more than 2,000 persons and displacing and destroying the livelihoods of around 20 million more. Six million require immediate assistance. As always in disasters of this kind, it is women and the children they care for who tend to suffer the most -- both in the immediate disaster and in the long, uncertain aftermath. This suffering manifests itself in ways that raw statistics cannot measure.
According to the RHRC (Reproductive Health Response in Crises Consortium), 85 percent of persons displaced by the flood are women and children. As the floodwaters rise, they are at acute risk from starvation, exposure, sexual assault and water-borne diseases. However, providing them with assistance is more difficult than these basic facts suggest. In traditional Pakistani society, it is taboo for women to receive aid or medical care from male relief workers, preventing many of them from seeking such aid in the first place.
This particularly applies to pregnant women surprised by the flood. Pakistan already had a high maternal morality rate before the flood, with 320 women dying per 100,000 live births. This rate has undoubtedly increased due to the disaster. While the Pakistani government and NGOs have sent female aid workers into the affected areas, their numbers are not always sufficient to meet the crushing demand for help. In addition, women are increasingly cut off from a supply of birth control pills and condoms (before the flood, 30 percent of fertile women were using some form of contraception). A wave of unwanted pregnancies, with all the complications that will bring, is certain.
An OCHA report from Aug. 16 states that "the large numbers of children and pregnant and lactating women without access to food and the rising trend of diarrhea point towards a clear risk of malnutrition among the affected population." But even where food aid is available, fair distribution to those who need it most is almost impossible to ensure. As 12-year-old Shahid Muhammed told IRIN News, "When food is distributed the strongest young men grab it for their own families and push us children aside."
The dislocation caused by the flood could be particularly upsetting for women in Pakistan’s traditionally conservative rural areas. Shmyalla Jawad, the gender advisor for Plan Pakistan, described what she saw to the BBC:
What emerged for me to be the most worrying thing was how women and young girls are being affected by this. Health and sanitation is a big issue. One camp set up in a government building had no bathing facility. Whereas the men and young children can take baths outside on the school lawn, women don't have that option. Many people didn't have a chance to pick up their belongings when the floods hit their village so they have no change of clothes. Many are wearing what they left home in and without being able to wash and women's hygiene in particular has deteriorated. The situation is even worse for menstruating and pregnant women.
Moreover, Jawad explained:
The camps are also culturally shocking for women and girls. Many have never been around a man who isn't a member of their family. Now they are amongst hundreds of men who are complete strangers. In some sectors of Pakistan society, apart from the religious notions of covering up and not mingling with males outside one's family, women are considered to be the custodians of male and family honor. This notion of honor is linked with women's sexual behavior so their sexuality is considered to be a potential threat to the honor of family. Therefore, the systems of sex segregation known as purdah are used by the society to protect the honor of the family. But in the camps there are no provisions for purdah. Young boys and girls have to sleep in the same room, at times next to each other, most mothers and families do not feel it's safe for their daughters, especially in the current circumstances.
Now it could be that the disaster and the world's response will "shock" Muslim women into adopting a more "modern" and "Western" outlook on life (as Naomi Klein might put it). But this is surely an untested and utterly heartless notion. The opposite result is just as likely. In any case, as government and Western aid takes its time in arriving, Islamist groupsmore in tune with local proprieties have been filling the gap, clearly jockeying for a more visible role in the reconstruction. British-Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid believes that the destruction of crops and infrastructure will lead to food riots. He believes that "joblessness and helplessness will lead to more young men joining the militants, who are propagating the idea that the floods are God's wrath against the government ... All of this will dramatically loosen the state's control over outlying areas, in particular those bordering Afghanistan, which could be captured quickly by local Taliban," leaving Pakistan as "a failed state with nuclear weapons."
Where do Pakistani women fit into this view of the future? Let's look at their past first. While they are better off than many in the Muslim world and have benefited from progressive gender policies over recent decades, they still have at best a 36 percent literacy rate. TheInternational Labor Force Survey of 1991-92 reported that only about 16 percent of women age 10 form part of the official workforce, a figure that may have doubled since then. In rural areas, it is estimated that around 80 percent of women are engaged in farming. Twenty-four percent of the population lives below the poverty level, including the majority of families headed by women.
More rain may be on the way. But when the floodwaters recede, what is next for already unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan? It is hard to identify any silver lining in the storm clouds darkening the Hindu Kush. Peter Walker, head of the Feinstein International Centre at Tufts University and founder of the World Disasters Report, says:
The immediate flooding has wiped out the asset base of millions of people, so they face a future where they have to refinance and build homes, clear debris-covered land (assuming it has not been washed away), restock shops and market stalls, re-equip small businesses, etc, etc. And all this in towns where the schools, clinics, courts, police stations all need rehabilitating. We know that Pakistan is likely to lose at least one year's good production, and may see food-production levels lowered for the next few years because of the combined effects of soil erosion, destroyed irrigation, and contaminated soil. Then we have the army as the only really effective state institution, and an insurgency, and foreign interest in Pakistan's politics. So, will the floods lead to a possible famine like situation next year? Will this be enough to topple the government, and will they be replaced by a military government? It is this complexity and propensity for one crisis to tip into another that makes Pakistan today one of the most devastating disasters.
So who will come out the winner in the coming power struggle? One thing is for certain already: It won't be Pakistani women.
