’Photography is a way to be in life’
I have long admired the work of Sam Abell. This video is not just about promoting a new camera. It’s about life.
Abell is on Canon’s website as a Canon Explorer of Light so I was surprised to see him promote another brand of camera.
Books About Paris
Gregg Rutter, a photographer from Minnesota, recommends these books about Paris on episode 478 of the Join Us in France podcast:
- Paris, the Novel, by Edward Rutherford, historical fiction
- Seven Ages of Paris, by Alistair Horne, history - I listened to this sweeping history of Paris and enjoyed it very much. It’s 20 hours and 49 minutes long and worth every minute. The narration by Derek Perkins is superb.
- In Montmartre, by Sue Roe about the art scene
- In Montparnasse, by Sue Roe about the art scene
- The Paris Bookseller, by Kerri MaherEve, about the writing scene in Paris
- My Life in France, by Julia Child with Alex Prudhomme
- A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway
Gregg later recommended the following books:
- Dawn of the Belle Epoque - The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends by Mary McAuliffe
- Paris, City of Dreams - Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Creation of Paris by Mary McAuliffe
- Twilight of the Belle Epoque - The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends Through the Great War by Mary McAuliffe
The Value of Having Your Own Domain
I have always preached using your own domains for all vital email. Sure, we all have burners with various providers for all of the junk, but I would never use a Proton Mail, Tuta, or Fastmail domain for anything which is important to me, such as a financial institution or work communications. ANY service could shut down or kick you out tomorrow. When you use your own domain, you can easily forward it to another service within an hour.
The post also stresses that redundancy is also important:
I maintain a paid package through Proton Mail, Tuta, and Fastmail at all times. I can store all of my domains at any of them whenever needed. While I doubt any of them are going away any time soon, I have redundancy.
I have paid email accounts at both Protonmail and Fastmail. I’m glad I do.
Pan Am ‘First Moon Flights’ Club
Between 1968 and 1971, Pan American World Airways issued over 93,000 “First Moon Flights” Club cards to those eager to make a reservation for the first commercial flight to the Moon. The cards were free. I was a proud member.
The Club originated from a waiting list that is said to have started in 1964, when Gerhard Pistor, an Austrian journalist, went to a Viennese travel agency requesting a flight to the Moon. The agency forwarded his request to Pan Am, which accepted the reservation two weeks later and replied that the first flight was expected to depart in 2000.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step foot on the moon.
On September 9, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a 10 cent postage stamp showing an astronaut walking on the surface of the moon. It was called the “First Man on the Moon” postage stamp. According to the National Postal Museum, the stamp was made from the same master die that the astronauts took with them to the moon. Additionally, it was the largest stamp the United States had issued up to that point.
Pan Am sent members of the “First Moon Flights” Club “First Day of Issue” envelopes. I was excited to get mine and still have it. I now doubt I will make it to the moon. But it was an exciting thought.
Unfortunately, Pan Am did not survive. It went bankrupt in 1991.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress in Washington, DC is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.
Congress moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 after holding sessions for eleven years in temporary national capitals in New York City and Philadelphia. Also in 1800, as part of an act of Congress providing for the removal of the new national government from Philadelphia to Washington, President John Adams approved an act of Congress providing $5,000 for books for the use of Congress—the beginning of the Library of Congress.
However, in 1814, the British burned Washington, destroying the Capitol and the small congressional library in its north wing. Former President Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his comprehensive personal library of 6,487 books to rebuild the Library of Congress. Congress accepted his offer in 1815. Jefferson’s concept of universality is the rationale for the comprehensive collecting policies of today’s Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress is among Washington’s top attractions. Every Library of Congress visitor must reserve timed-entry pass. Passes are available here. It’s worth planning ahead as slots fill up.
Sources: Library of Congress, Wikipedia
Simone Veil (1927-2017)
An interesting podcast episode recounting the life of Simone Veil, Holocaust survivor, abortion rights activist and former president of the European Parliament.
Jodie Foster interviewée en Français
Jodie Foster est très talentueuse. Actrice et réalisatrice très impressionnante. J’adore.
Pour que je prenne un rôle, il faut que ce soit quelque chose qui m’obsède. Et je savais très bien que mon âge, la cinquantaine, allait être une période pauvre. C’est un moment un peu confus pour les femmes. Les gens ne savent pas écrire de scénarios pour les femmes de 50 ans. Ce qui m’intéressait, c’était de jouer des personnages plus vieux que moi, comme dans Désigné coupable [2021] ou Hotel Artemis [2018]. Mais c’était difficile, parce qu’on me proposait un peu les personnages que j’aurais joués à 40 ans. Et je n’ai plus 40 ans.
Lake Needwood, Derwood, Maryland
Lake Needwood is a 75-acre (300,000 m2) reservoir in Derwood, Maryland. Located in east of Rockville, in the eastern part of Montgomery County, it is situated on Rock Creek. The lake was created by damming Rock Creek in 1965 with the goal of providing flood control and reducing soil erosion. The Rock Creek Trail begins at Lake Needwood and can be followed along the course of Rock Creek, ending at the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. It’s a great place for walking, biking and running.
You can see more photos of Lake Needwood here.
Finished reading: Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne 📚
I listened to this superb audiobook and enjoyed it. It’s 20 hours and 49 minutes long and worth every minute. The narration by Derek Perkins is superb.
Podcast: ‘Washington Welcomes’ Hosted by David Rubenstein
The Economic Club of Washington, DC has a podcast called Washington Welcomes. David Rubenstein, co-Founder of Carlyle Group and the Economic Club Chairman, interviews global leaders to discuss the major issues of the day. Rubenstein is witty and attracts a high caliber of guests. The episodes are under an hour long.
Highly recommended.
Text-only Websites
Sijmen J. Mulder has a wonderful directory of websites composed simple, marked up, hyperlinked text. These sites load quickly, scroll smoothly, spare your battery.
There are some interesting light sites on Mulder’s list including a text version of NPR. Try them. They load lickety-split.
Report: Former Google CEO Bought Former Jackie Kennedy House in Georgetown
Former Google CEO ERIC SCHMIDT and his wife, WENDY, are the anonymous buyers of the historic Georgetown mansion that JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS used to own and that sold at auction for $15 million in November, a Georgetown neighbor familiar with the purchase told Daniel Lippman. The N Street house is formally called the “NEWTON D. BAKER House” after a former secretary of War and also known as the “Jacqueline Kennedy House” since she lived there for a year after JOHN F. KENNEDY was killed (she paid around $175,000).
USC Shoah Foundation Lecture Series on Antisemitism
With anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence on the rise around the world, the USC Shoah Foundation has launched the Daniel and Marisa Klass USC Shoah Foundation Lecture Series on Antisemitism. Leading scholars will guide audiences through the latest research and explore a diversity of approaches to understanding and combating the current upsurge.
The USC Shoah Foundation houses over 56,000 audio-visual testimonies conducted in 65 countries and in 44 languages. Steven Spielberg founded it in 1994 to videotape and preserve interviews with survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust.
London’s Wiener Holocaust Library Celebrates 90 Years of Service
The Wiener Holocaust Library in London is celebrating its 90th birthday. It is the oldest continuously functioning archive documenting Nazi crimes.
The Library has its origins in the work of Dr. Alfred Wiener (1885-1964). Dr. Wiener was a German Jew from Berlin who campaigned against Nazism during the 1920s and 30s and gathered evidence about antisemitism and the persecution of Jews in Germany.
Dr. Wiener and his family fled Germany in 1933 and settled in Amsterdam. Later that year he set up the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO) at the request of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association. This archive collected information about the Nazis, which formed the basis of campaigns to undermine their activities.
Following Kristallnacht (the November Pogrom of 1938), Wiener prepared to bring his collection to the UK. It arrived the following summer and is believed to have opened on the day the Nazis invaded Poland.
During the war, staff gathered evidence to document and publicize reports of Nazi efforts to annihilate European Jewry, including an eyewitness account of Kristallnacht.
Throughout the war, the JCIO served the British Government as it fought the Nazi regime. Increasingly the collection was referred to as ‘Dr Wiener’s Library’ and eventually this led to its renaming.
Wiener’s recognition of the danger posed by the Nazis didn’t begin after Hitler came to power in 1933. Instead, he can justly lay claim to having been one of the first intellectuals to raise the alarm about the rise of antisemitism after World War I.
Horrified by the surge in anti-Jewish right-wing nationalism that he encountered when he returned from the trenches to his homeland, in 1919 Wiener published a tract, “Prelude to Pogroms?”, in which he warned: “A mighty antisemitic storm has broken over us.” If left unchecked, Wiener predicted, this antisemitism would lead to “bestial murders and violence” and the “blood of citizens running on the pavements.”
Sources:
Blogs I Like
I like traditional blogs, which harken back to the early days of the internet when people wrote to share for the joy of sharing. The main goal wasn’t to make money via advertising or subscriptions. It was people sharing and connecting with other people. There aren’t as many blogs like this around anymore. I value the ones that remain and share this list in the spirit of sharing and connecting person to person:
- Om Malik – Knows Silicon Valley first hand; great writer; excellent photographer.
- Scripting News – Dave Winer’s eclectic posts.
- Pixel Envy by Nick Heer – Blogs about tech and other topics. Well curated and interesting.
- Worms and Viruses – A tech blog by Jack Wellborn.
- The Euro TV Place – Reviews and clips of European TV available in the US. It amazes me how much European TV can now be streamed in the United States.
- Michael Tsai’s Tech Blog – Michael pulls out the essential nuggets from many sources and posts them on his blog, It’s a real time saver and his site loads likety split.
- Philip Greenspun’s Weblog – I have followed Philip Greenspun since he founded Photo.net, which I loved. Now he blogs about lots of stuff. Sometimes I agree and sometimes I don’t but I keep coming back to read what the founder of Photo.net has to say.
- Visual Science Lab – Written by Kirk Tuck, an excellent photographer in Austin.
- Paris Diary by Laure – An excellent blog about what’s happening in Paris
- Mal Warwick on Books – Has been reviewing books on his blog since 2010
- The Homebound Symphony – A well written blog by Alan Jacobs.
- Matt Mullenweg – A founding developer of WordPress and the CEO of Automattic.
- Swissmiss, A popular design journal and more.
The list is in no particular order. Please suggest other blogs to follow.
Last updated: February 14, 2024
Podcast: ‘Travel with Rick Steves’
Travel with Rick Steves is a weekly one hour podcast with guest experts and callers about travel, cultures and people. This, in my opinion, is the best travel podcast.
Steves is well-traveled, bright, articulate, positive and most of all curious to learn about the world and the people who inhabit it. Although Steves’s guidebooks and organized tours focus on Europe, the podcast covers the world.
Guests include authors and professional guides Steves uses for his tours and guidebooks. The information he provides is timely and accurate. For example, Steves has interviewed great authors such as Paul Theroux and David McCullough (1933-2022).
After listening to the interview of David McCullough, I was really charged up to get out and explore the world, in part because McCullough started his life and explorations in my hometown, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. McCullough has written extensively about the United States starting near home with the The Johnstown Flood. He was also a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. That’s the caliber of guest Steves can corral. And he does it once a week.
Recommended TV Series
These are among the TV series I’ve enjoyed, in no particular order:
- The Honourable Woman
- The Americans
- Bureau des Legendes
- Liaison on AppleTV+
- Les Engrenages
- Astrid et Raphaëlle - Autistic archivist Astrid Nielsen and impulsive inspector Raphaëlle Coste work together to solve crimes in and around Paris. Over time, they develop a touching friendship. Highly recommended.
Last updated: February 10, 2024
Daniel Lubetzky, CEO and Son of Holocaust Survivor
Daniel Lubetzky, the CEO of KIND, is the son of a Holocaust survivor and a Mexican Jew. KIND makes popular fruit and nut bars. He was born in Mexico City and moved to the United States as a teenager. He’s also a Stanford-educated lawyer.
Lubetzky’s father was liberated from the Dachau Concentration Camp. When Lubetzsky was just nine years old, his father started describing his experiences during the Holocaust. His father felt that if he lived through the Holocaust, his son could hear about it even at an early age.
Lubetzky explains in his book entitled Do the KIND Thing: Think Boundlessly, Work Purposefully, Live Passionately:
Being the son of a Holocaust survivor marks you and makes you acutely conscious of our human frailty. My burning commitment to build bridges stems from a survival instinct: to prevent what happened to my dad from happening again to other human beings. Part of the reason I exist today is that my grandfather and my father were always kind to people.
KIND is privately owned and has nearly five hundred employees.