Sometimes I Like Knowing My Way Around This City

I was there today, all wrapped up, near the National Portrait Gallery. Above was more or less my vantage point. The video and audio was out of sync, it was nippy right around freezing, and the moving around in the crowds afterwords was trying, but I was there, and it felt important. And at the same time it was a little surreal. For those of us that largely became politically aware in the last eight years, I think things will be disconcerting for a while. The new Whitehouse.gov is already evidence of that. We’ve had our post-election breather people, let’s lean forward and read the news again.

Blogging Kenyan Violence

Since Kenya has become/continued to be violent throughout January, I thought I’d briefly write about an excellent website/blog I was turned onto recently. If you’re like me, you like to consider yourself a somewhat well informed American. That means being able to describe what’s going in the primaries but not what’s going on in the country of Africa. But unfortunately, even many Kenyans are in the dark, as television and radio access has been spotty/unreliable. However, some very intelligent Kenyan bloggers have allied and created Ushahidi. The site impressively utilizes tech like google maps in order to keep an up-to-date map of all violent events. And if you still don’t know what I’m talking about, they have what looks like a pretty good chronology of recent events. Still afraid of googlezon? Here’s web 2.0 at its best people.

photo from flickr user ActionPixs (Maruko)

Pantless Metro Ride

I visited DC this weekend one last time before heading out to Rome on the 20th. Watch this story on Fox 5. I’m in it for a split second, but I was also there to do some reporting. I took notes and pictures for a comic, which I hope to have up here eventually. You can find all of the info here (facebook link), and in the Wapo article.

Microcredit Through Kiva.org

Here’s an except of an email I wrote to family and friends back in March:

“I have discovered something really great. Perhaps you’ve heard or read about microfinance or microcredit. Organizations like the Grameen bank give small loans, maybe $50, maybe $2000, to someone (usually a woman because they are more reliable) looking to start a basic business in a third-world environment. It’s almost always a flat loan with no interest and short, easy terms of payment. The rate of return is usually tremendously high because people take their loans super seriously.

“Sorry if you knew all of that. Anyway, some smart Americans have taken note and put together a website (I’m sure they aren’t the only ones, but this one’s great) called kiva.org where anyone can help create these loans. It’s wonderful, you can just browse through and if one catches your eye, you contribute $25 or more and that’s that. And then you wait, and you get paid back, and you can either get your money back or reinvest in someone else.”

That very day, I invested in Juliet Grace Edepi, a butcher in rural Kenya. A high school dropout and widow with five children in secondary school, Edepi stood out to me as unusually determined, but a look around Kiva reveals many hardworking people in need of an economic boost. The loan was distributed to her in April, and collected in October. I was one of ten investors and helped this woman better her life, with only $25.

Well, I got my money back. Now Kiva has grown substantially. This time I’m loaning the twenty-five bucks to Proeung Neang of Cambodia (photo above with husband). This loan is a little bit bigger, $1,100 over a year. She is better off than most, with a steady income, a husband, and kids that can work, but her motorcycle/sea food lifestyle intrigues me. That’s the beauty of Kiva, you get to choose where your money goes, and then it comes back to you.

Photo courtesy of kiva.org. I doubt they would mind, especially if someone invests because of it.

Ansel Adams’ “Born Free and Equal”

Ansel Adams is probably the most famous American photographer. He died three years before I was born, in 1984, and is responsible for the much of the American West’s iconic imagery. There is currently an exhibit of his work and another of Annie Leibovitz at the Corcoran in downtown DC. It’s worth the ten dollars. Anyway, I was writing a paper about a particular work in the exhibit that caught my eye.

Adams took the picture while visiting Mazanar, one of the Japanese internment camps during WWII. Everyone’s heard of these, but it’s often a footnote in US history. Truly and sincerely, by order executive order of FDR, the War Relocation Authority forcefully imprisoned over a hundred-thousand Japanese-Americans (many of whom were born in the United States) between 1942 and 1944. Adams’ photographs at the camps resulted in a show at NY’s MoMA and in a book called “Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans.” Believe it or not, this book has been scanned in its entirety and hosted for all to see in the Library of Congress’ free Digital Collection.

Anyone could have taken pictures of this important place and time, but it was important that it was Adams for several reasons. His approach was stylistic, and highly educated visually, but he understood the value of letting the pictures tell the stories and trying to be objective as possible. Also, he was drawn to the way that the people reacted to the harsh atmosphere of the Sierra Nevada range. This interaction between individual and place is essential to the emotional energy of his photography. He’s not a bad writer either.

NRA Pamphlet/Zine

So Wonkette recently discovered what they are calling a secret NRA graphic novel, but it is actually closer to a pamphlet or zine with really good illustrations. As you can see above, it’s called Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century. Click here to download the PDF. I’m not sure how secret it is any more or if it ever was, but from a design perspective, I’m pretty impressed.

Design is certainly alive in the activism tradition, but here’s an angle I don’t usually see. The NRA puts together some pretty good propaganda. Below is my favorite illustration, from an article about how New Orleans citzens had to surrender to their weapons to the National Guard while people mobbed and looted. (I don’t know much about this particular point, but it does seem problematic.)

The colors, thick borders and extensive hatching ironically remind me of protest artist Mike Flugennock. However, I think that this is artistically better. Being that there’s no publishing information or accreditation, it’s hard to find who did the illustrations, but they are pretty engaging. Since I’m an InDesign man, I decided to take a look at some of my favorite spreads in the PDF.

This large commanding illustration is a great visual element, and I like the grid structure they have established, but I’m not sure the lines separating columns are necessary, especially since they run up to the top of the page above the picture. Whoops.

Despite the comical nature of an angry lobster and pig, this is pretty well constructed. As an aside, I know plenty of girls who could be that girl in the illustration. The spread is consistent with the overall system of the pamphlet but still visually interesting and enticing. The illustration on the right is the perfect size for the page—it’s a great element to break up the full page of text. I think it’s kind of unnecessary to say the title, “Freedom In Peril” on the top of every page, but it looks fine.

Though every section/article starts off with the left page dominated by a large illustration, I think this spread works particularly well. It evokes a feeling out of “Grand Theft Auto” (the headline type) and “Road to Perdition” (rifles out of the old car) at the same time, which is very effective for what they are trying to do here. The hand-drawn, cross-like quotation symbols are a nice touch.

All in all, this is very ridiculous, but also very interesting.