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December 8, 2006Desertscape: A Photo CalendarThe Desertscape Photo Calendar is the realist counterpart to Desert Dreamscapes, which I showed off earlier today. The limitation of wall calendar format is that is works best with horizonatally rather than vertically oriented photos -- something I found a bit challenging since a lot of my best shots are tall rather than wide. It was also a lot of fun to match photos to months. I've got one more calendar planned -- sunsets and sunrises and stormy skies.... 
One of the last cabins in the ghost town of Pareah, nestled in the Paria River Valley at the Southern border of Utah. John Ford and other directors have featured the gorgeous scenery in their films.
Mud in the Paria is thick and deep and it dries quickly after flooding. The pattern of cracks and ridges is always fascinating and often quite beautiful.
A view from the Kaibab Trail, leading from the top of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon down to the Bright Angel Camp. The trail descend 5,000 feet over six miles. It's hell with a 50 pound backpack, but it's beautiful enough to make up for the pain of the hike.
Desert mud comes in all the varied and beautiful colors of sandstone. And life emerges everywhere, breaking through and flourishing in the most difficult circumstances. Posted by kalital at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack Desert Visions: Original Photography and Art by Kali TalIt's a little late, but just in time for last minute Christmas shopping! I just finished the Desert Vision Wall Calendar, which showcases some of my favorite visionary images of the desert southwest. The artwork in the calendar is based on original photos I took while hiking and packing in the backcountry. The imaginative artwork I make out of the photos is based in my emotional and spiritual experience in the desert, and I create it through a process that often requires printing a photo, painting or drawing on it, rescanning it, and then using digital manipulation techniques, repeated until the image resembles what I saw in my head and heart. Here are a few of the images you'll find in the calendar: 
The stream just below Havasu Falls on the Havasu Reservation.
A wind-twisted oak near Canyon de Chelly.
Hoodoo monument between Dead Horse State Park and Goblin Valley.
Posted by kalital at 11:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack December 2, 2006More on Racism and CitizendiumHere's Gina de Miranda's letter to Larry Sanger and Citizendium. I encourage others to write and express their opinions to Sanger as well.: From: benet_gesserit@sbcglobal.net I read postings by Kali Tal and Florian Cramer that delineated their reasons for withdrawing from your project at Citizendium.org. Then, as is appropriate preparation for determining the merits of their allegations, I went to your site. They appear to have a credible basis for taking you to task for your decision as regards Ethnic groups and women. You, sir, are not trying to put together a project that will add to the wisdom of the world. You are shrinking knowledge and thought to fit within the paradigm of the "PC" academia. I want you to know how that feels. You seem to believe that women have been given equal treatment in academia as regards what is written about them or by them. How did you arrive at this determination? Had you read medical literature, you would have discovered that the relatively recent requirements to include women in FDA studies revealed that men and women metabolize medication very differently. You would have discovered that the knowledge of these differences has changed treatment regimes and made them dependent upon gender. Is that politically correct? I think that it is actually appropriately neutral and efficacious. If you had read literature about women in political science, sociology or half a dozen other disciplines, you would have discovered that women think and act differently from men in a wide variety of ways. Women are geared towards cooperation, fairness and building consensus in group settings. Women bring problem-analysis and problem-solving skills that are different from those of men. By virtue of these differences, the writing, thinking and analyses provide more varied ways of considering any issue. Surely, the significance of these facts is not lost upon a man who prides himself on neutrality. Why on earth would you wish to reduce the richness of thought that different genders and ethnic communities bring to interpretation, analyses and problem-solving? Instead of opening up the process to the vivid panoply of human perspectives that might result in a more robust cogitative activity, you've put blinders on. How sad that we have learned nothing from the last 6 years where US policy was driven by a similar myopia.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "A brave heart is a powerful weapon" maisoon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Posted by kalital at 3:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack |
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