Casual Observation

weeds

Ceremonies of Remembrance

Late saturday evening, the missus & I packed up and headed for Lahaina's Obon Festival at The Jodo Buddhist Mission. It is here that Maui's only floating lantern ceremony is held, a favorite activity for a warm, tropical summer's eve.

Mid-Summer's Catch-Up

It's been a while since we've last met here...

Since late spring, I took some time away from the camera to indulge another passion... non-commercial, community radio. Having volunteered for the past 12 years as a music programmer at our little, local low-power FM station, when news came from above that they were throwing in the towel, there were only two options.

 Option #1: Let it die a graceful death

Option #2: Convince the powers-that-be that the thing was worthy of saving, gather a small group of like-minded comrades and save the thing.

Save we did... returning to the airwaves in exactly one month & three weeks from the night the station shut down in April. And back with a vengeance, if I may say so... from 120 watts to 1200 watts and a live internet stream every bit as solid as our air signal going live around the world. You can check out the new Mana'o Hana Hou Radio by dialing your tuner to 91.7 FM if on the island of Maui. If not, go here:

http://manaoradio.com

But I didn't completely retire the camera during the frantic past 2 months. Did some traveling again for a story to soon appear in SF-based Via Magazine, taught an all day workshop on portraiture last weekend at the University of Hawaii's Pacific New Media Center in H'lulu and caught up with old camera-buddy David Ulrich who runs the photography arm of the programming. Covered a weekend-long summer food & wine festival at an upper west-side resort and spent 6 days on the east coast searching for historic old homes to remodel while I visited with family and old friends. While there, I even discovered a billboard prominently sitting alongside Route 50 & prominently featuring a photograph I had taken last summer while working on a project for a shoe-manufacturer.

Here's a quick view of the recent goings-on in photographs...

Artist & occasional elementary school carpool-mate Susan L. Russel

We almost bought this beauty and now I wish we had...