design is fun

I've been trying to upload my two videos but i'm having trouble because the internet here is ghostly. now you see it, now you don't. But I am working on a brochure with my  images for MAHENDI. Any input would be great, specially from you design people. It's exciting to see my images working, not just sitting on my hard drive. 

These are the outside elements; so the last section is the first page and the middle is the very last page (back) of the brochure. It's still a work in progress...so keep that in mind and give me some input.

Inside pages: This one feels a bit wordy and busy. Could use some help...

late...as usual

Hello and sorry this is so behind. I just got back from a trip to Janakpur. I'm working for a small non profit that seeks to lower the mortality rate of women and children by training Skilled Birth Attendants. I shot the condition of the hospitals in the region. It was hard and devastating to see lines of women in labor on the floor, waiting to give birth in a room where one lady was assisting three births at a time.  Hopefully my organization will do what they can to help.  Here are some images from my take. These are my favorites...I promise to upload more soon.

hairy happenings

tomorrow morning i'm making the hairy 2-day trek from Kathmandu to Thuman village. last time i went, i was confident that riding in an ambulance with 2 nurses and a doctor would have been the surest way to get there unscathed while still soothing my adventure itch. but like a fingernail-happy kid with fresh mosquito bites, my itch quickly turned into an irritated wound after a couple of hours on the trip.

we got stuck on the mountain in fog as thick as my mom's cheese grits. had to have two guys walk ahead to make sure we didn't glide off the side of the cliff. like a puberty ridden teenager with too much makeup in hand, fog caked over the pimply cliff only an arms length from our shifty convoy. we stopped often to dig ourselves out of the days' previous landslides. all laughs and the nurses in high heels, we dug a path and slowly bumped our way to the next stale landslide.

the nurses, 23 years old and complete virgins to village life, got back into the ambulance shrieking like seagulls who had just eaten alkaseltzer. what on earth? leeches. im not talking Stand By Me leeches. these are conveniently small black slivers of slime. they hide in between your toes, only detectable by a sting and itch after finishing their dinner. without a word i picked them off of the girls and threw them back to their jungle. their mouths, in return just as silent, looked at me like i had eaten a baby.

 

at dawn, we abandoned the ambulance and walked 10 kilometers (the nurses in their high heels) to the medical workshop camp. of course i developed diarrhea on the walk and had to pop a squat every 2 kilometers. my abdomen has a special knack for cultivating diarrhea at the most inconvenient times. as soon as we arrived, i devoured rice and lentils with a tinge of disdain. the girls had refused my carefully planned and packed goods the night before because they weren't spicy enough.

 

after the workshop that day, they went back to their cozy (leech-less) homes in Kathmandu and i headed out on my 6 hour trek to the village (diarrhea-less). im working on a story for an NGO about a pregnant woman who survived a 6 hour trek to the nearest hospital - epileptic and in the throws of birth. she is the reason MAHENDI was created: to aid villages without proper health care nearby. i hung out with her and her bubbly bundle of baby fat. nepali kids are so damn cute.

 

 

uncomfortably enamored.

 

my body is exhausted. i just walked off a homemade 30-seater Indian bus filled with no less than 60 nepali people on the inside. at least 20 fearless nepali men rode on the top, enjoying fresh air and holding on for dear life. from my seat, the smell ranges from old cheetos to sour milk throughout the ride - either from me or from villagers going to town who normally live with no running water and no electricity. i train my ears to enjoy the offbeat techno hindi music blaring through speakers probably made for a tape recorder. two times throughout this 11-hour ride i seriously question if i'll survive. this is risky. my last trip to nepali villages found me on a rickety crop duster with lawn chairs for seats flying to the plains of nepal: no off-road bus rides teetering 2 feet from cliffs that look like old landslides. at the beginning, i asked to sit on the widow side to see the amazing view but after 4 or 5 hours ascending into the himalyas, i realized my stomach worked better sitting on the inside, unaware of how close the bursting bus was to the edge. but we made it. the fearless, teenage and somewhat bored bus drivers make this drive sometimes 2 times a day.

thanks to a good friend, I got a gig shooting multimedia for an NGO run by two young women who educate villagers on basic medical procedures. i lived in close quarters, in a one-room, wooden, tibetan-style house with my traditional Tamang family in the Thuman village near the Lang Tang mountains. we drank milk chai every morning that tasted like licking a goat's backside and it took my eyes a couple of days to stop burning from the smoke from the open fire in the room. i ate rice for every meal and at this point vomiting doesn't sound far off if i think of eating curried veggies and milk chai any time soon. i "hiked" 6 hours uphill (close to vertical) to get there and it was a 2 hour run downhill to get back. the only other time ive ever been pushed so hard physically was coach andrew's soccer practice, my freshman year of high school. i took on the village custom and i didn't shower for the 8 days i was there. it was cold anyway.

the mountains are an incredible place to live. never have i felt so uncomfortably enamored. after the rough trek to my village, i suddenly understood the fascination with living such a hard life-stlye in exchange for the breath taking sunrises every morning with 360 degrees of white peaked himalayas wrapping around me. in the valley below, rocks that look like boiled potatoes sprout up through the raging river and if it's really quiet, i can hear the water below and fields of wheat move together in the wind. and although i love looking at the mountains, and i definintely enjoyed my mountain experience, i've learned that the mountains are not for me. i discovered my wimpery when i was out of breath every time i left our little house for anything. the only horizontal place in this village is in the houses, thank god. i kept trying to justify my out of breathness; "I don't have these leg muscles. I grew up in a place where for exercise, we surf or run on the ellipticals at the gym." i cursed all those times i ignored the stair masters at the gym.

 

beginnings

ive been eating rice now for 8 days. so nice to be simple again. rice for lunch; rice for dinner. no questions asked unless absolutely necessary. for fun i eat snacks and drink homemade whisky with friends and family. difficult things usually involve visas or doctors.

on day one i let the laid back air of nepal wind my sails and watched my american worries blow away. the pace here is slower. not much happens like it's supposed to and questions asked are seldom answered correctly. it's hard to explain but the 'don't worry be happy' lifestyle is a very important lesson in disguise.

kari walked in one morning and told me that the water wasn't working. i shrugged my shoulders because honestly the water only works when it wants to. then she said, "some things work here and somethings dont." it's simple but true. things are just a little faulty here and im thankful to have learned the exact meaning of 'go with the flow.' i just have to be mindful of not adopting the water's philosophy of working when i want.

even though it's thrilling to be challenged to think differently, im trying hard to maintain a balance between two mindsets: american uptightness that causes ulcers and nepali philosophy that generates well, constant and perpetual fun. im  a little worried i won't get anything done and of course there's the ever tenacious agitation that i won't succeed. but my mom told me i can do anything if i put my mind to it. amen.

so the first month im here will be spent enduring 3-hour nepali lessons from a tiny 75 year old nepali man with no teeth. and of course i'll need a month of spending time with my family and friends submerging myself in the culture. then, kari and i will be more equipped to conquer the world through photography and multimedia.

i've included a precious picture (see below). it's something i spend most of my time looking at already: the bathroom wall. my good friend kiwako gave me some japanese minerals to take one day after i spent a little too much time looking at the bathroom wall. kiwako's medicine has really cut my bathroom time in half. she's a gem. maybe i should move to japan.

inward orbit

we are small countries orbiting inwardly, intricately smashing into one another.

new york shrinks me. i sit with my head down; let the people of new york fold around me. i see a world of cultures from this chair. i have only to lift my head, look at the faces and hear bits of conversations around me to know, not only how vast and eccentric the world is, but how shallow and insignificant my egotistical world was 10 seconds ago. travel does this. 

some plane wisdom:
"But each of us should be striving to reach the center, not the periphery...We should be so constituted that we can at any time be placed in a different position without offering resistance or loosing our heads...The truth is lived, not taught." (Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse)
 

outside goodbyes

 

Tomorrow is my last day at the newspaper. Today they found out they're being sold. Seems I'm on the cuff of the perfect time to leave. But I'm leaving a great bunch of photographers and friends.

Goodbyes are odd. Two short sentences encompass months of experiences.

I'm very lucky.
I feel that I meet fantastic people over and over again. I'm amazed that they flitter in and out of my life. Like Kerouac writes,

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes Awww!

 
I find myself oooohing and aaaahing wherever I go in the brilliant spray of light these people cast over my head.  

I learn from every goodbye.
Thank you friends for teaching me.

offbeat season

I haven't figured out why, but my brain does not function normally. I think most people dream of pieces of comfort in their head: house, dog, job...steady things. when i close my eyes and think of that place where i'll be happy in years to come, nothing comes to mind.

i visited my family this weekend. i repeated my travel plans and ideas on my travels several times and even tried to voice my abnormal dreams. earnestly, i searched for words that describe my stance, my nomadic heart. i felt the need to justify my vagabond dreams. i felt like i had to say new york times and big words like advocacy journalism.

the truth is, I just want to experience the world. i want to fuse my story with the stories of others.

my wide-eyed, selfless, loving aunt asked me, "but what is it about Nepal?" and my answer fumbled. i don't think it has anything to do with nepal and everything to do with widening my understanding of life. i get high from the vertigo a new culture inflicts on my horizon of life.

we're not that different, you and I. that feeling that drives you to success, that drives you to read a book, go to a movie, eat favorite foods, make babies, make an advancement on your career ladder - this is the same drive I feel when I suspend my cultural norms to absorb completely new ones. im just trying to figure out how to make a career out of it. (if anyone has any ideas, im interested)

a phase.

i dislike that phrase. if it makes everyone feel better, call it a phase. that's fine. but i'll never stop widening my horizon. i'll do it however i can. through books in a hammock, living out the "normal" life if that happens. i have many goals - many dreams: chef, teacher, anthropologist. im not a photographer, but a person who wants to help who happens to know how to take pictures (sometimes).

one of my favorite authors, Henry Miller, wrote: One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

connections

this is my amazing family. we are beautifully flawed.
well, all of us except griffie and poppaw, here.
im proud to be related to these people.

 

I don't care what you call it

"...story-telling is too F*****G important."

That was the last sentence in an email I recently received from a friend regarding my latest rant about newspapers and video.

I wanted to dramatically storm out of my office after I was inundated with congratulatory emails from my normally-silent colleagues regarding my record click-breaking video: coleslaw wrestling.

I'm used to hearing: stories matter.

Not clicks, not keeping the attention of overly stimulated frazzled ADD viewers, not revenues, not keeping it under 2 minutes, not name dropping.

No, I was told that stories matter. And I still believe it.

My good friend quelled my initial desire to walk out by assuaging me with hope. She says the system sucks but we can rise above it because we're "young, energetic, innovative, smart, ambitious, compassionate storytellers and the most important charachteristic that everyone else cannot claim...is that we are not jaded (yet)."

I hope this is true.

While I have trouble admitting that I am guilty of abandoning the newspaper industry to tell stories in my own way, I will readily admit my guilt in one area: I want to tell stories.

I want to use my skills to do something greater than coleslaw videos.  I'm not discounting that those videos have their place.

Is this what those pioneer photojournalists faced when they were told to censor their photos to appease the general audience? Did they dream about documenting life without the bindings of revenues and angry phone calls from disgruntled newspaper readers? Are these the sentiments that spurned Magnum and VII? Mediastorm even?

I have not given up on story-telling or on journalism. I am simply walking away from the chaos I'm in and into the world of advocacy journalism. I'm sure the same problems exist: money and all its shenanigans. But I hope to create journalism that attempts to make a change, that attempts to make the world a better place.

Call it propaganda, call it an oxymoron if you like, but I translate this burning urge in me as a dedication and commitment to tell the truth in an attempt to make the world a better place.

Friends, fellow journalists, ambitious photojournalism majors struggling to learn multimedia because you need a job  -  take the advice of my wise hopeful friend: story-telling is too important to give up.

balancing act

"Most people are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path." Siddhartha -Hermann Hesse

 

<rant> I've been brooding about my future.  My path.  I've been told I'm like a river.  But I see myself with one foot in the flowing water and one on the stagnant land.

True to my gemini nature, I see both sides of every situation and have a hard time taking a position when asked.  Some call us two-faced.  Fickle. Confused. Fickle to others is an apt ability to perceive life's balancing and contradicting act, to equally enjoy the hardest and best parts of life to me.

As a journalist, I am blessed with the adventure of experiencing life as the doctor and the patient; as the family that lost the wife to cancer and the woman who conquered it. I rub elbows with a drug addicted transvestite and later sip coffee with an 83 year old man who built his own house boat from scratch.

I understand that there is wisdom to be gained from all walks of life. Maybe it's this wisdom that makes me feel like I don't fit in anywhere, but everywhere.

I feel this way: I have a path inside me no wind can touch.  My path is chinked with the books, countries, and people I have encountered. My goals change. It won't always be advocacy journalism.  I'd like to be a chef.  A Literature teacher.  A mother.  

Lately, I've been bogged down by the obvious questions. What am I doing here? Where am I going? The answers are always changing.  

That's what I love best about my two-faced life. </rant>

night beach ride

 

the sand almost looked like snow as i rode on the beaches of new smyrna with a friend. our bike tires crunched over the tiny shells and the moon illuminated our path. the wind pushed us forward as we aligned our bodies to the quiet waves rolling into the sand.

i felt that peace that only comes over me when i stop to enjoy simple things like wind blowing through my hair and conversation good friends can have.

this st. patty's was the best ive ever had. instead of vomiting drunk howls like the crowds around me, i actually sat on the sidelines and watched. i saw so many people living life to the fullest in those bars.

red goose bumps

im sitting in my favorite spot in my florida home: the florida room. wicker chair,
red wine in hand eating fresh veggies i sauteed with butter as soon as i walked in
the door. i just got home from a rare adventure. a good friend and i rented a
convertible, packed (uhum very) lightly and as last minute as possible on a get
out of daytona trip to the Keys.

sunburn is a funny thing. to be honest, I wanted a sunburn. i thought the red and
prickly shade would be better than the pale veiny color my thighs were painted
before i made it to Key Largo. but at this point, the wine is having trouble taking
the edge off.

this morning, after i compared my calves to the rising sun, i realized i was more
saturated with warm reds and probably just as hot as the bright ball of fire shining
through our tent site. other than the sticky fire on every inch of my skin (minus
the private parts) i had an amazing time. i got to know a good friend. i spent
alot of money on myself (something i usually don't do). and i bought my mom
this amazing butterfly in a glass box (touristy, i know). but mostly, i enjoyed
the fluid conversation and easy silence of a friend i never got the chance to know
through college. it's amazing.

this picture was taken by my cohort on the trip. he's an amazing photographer.
and an even better person.

i felt a world away in the keys. no one was speaking english at the beach-side
restaurant we ate oysters and drank margaritas at. we were the odd ones. i
love that feeling. only 2 more months and i'll be immersed in a new life in
nepal. so excited...

Travel Plans

I will be heading to Nepal from New York on April 30th.

I'll be in Nepal on May 1st.

To keep track of all my adventures, please visit often.

See you on the other side...