jeromemartin.ca

The Summer of 2011

This is the Labour Day weekend, the time that we celebrate the passage of summer into fall. Mornings and evenings are cool, skies are big and blue, and afternoons warm and dry, just right for harvesting if you are a farmer.

This is also the time of the summer lament, the period in which no matter how warm and wonderful the summer has been some people say it should be longer and should have been warmer and what is the world coming to. But most of us love the four seasons, whether we realize it or not. Planes fly in and out of our city daily so if we need a warm interlude during the winter we can have it.

The summer of 2008 has been a remarkable time for me and my wife, Merle. Our son Paul, daughter-in-law Mona and grandchildren Emily and Aidan have moved from Vermont to Edmonton where he has taken a position with Grant MacEwan University. They now live minutes from us, and we are delighted to have them back.

The move gave me an opportunity to fly to Ottawa and drive back to Edmonton with my son who wanted to see northern Ontario rather than ship his vehicle. Driving across this grand country is a great experience at any time, but travelling with my son through Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta was a once in a lifetime experience. We kept our friends in touch with our trip by using Twitter and Facebook, ate in fine restaurants and fast food emporiums, drank Tim Hortons coffee in Ontario, and had our first meal on the road in a Don Cherry's Sports Bar. Only prairie folk think that driving 1100 km in a day in northern Ontario constitutes a normal day on the road.

Merle and I spent the first two weeks in August travelling in Ireland with our daughter Heidi and son-in-law Dale. The photographer Frederic Sommer said 'We never go to strange places'. Indeed, Ireland seemed like home to me, although I have no family connection to it. I loved the landscape and history, the art and the literature, but mostly I loved the people. I'll continue to experience Ireland with the photographs and the stories we brought back with us.

The Colours of Belize 2011-2

I'm missing Belize, but I can share some of its colours with you. I hope you enjoy these images.

The Colours of Belize, 2011-1

I returned from Belize two days ago. It was my second trip involving a Rotary project in that country.

As I travelled throughout Belize I enjoyed the colours of the country: the land, the water, the colour, the buildings.

I'll be publishing more colours of Belize in the next several days.

One note of regret: I did not have Kodachrome film to capture the colours. Digital cameras may be considered as great products, but they took my Kodachrome away. Colour images will never be the same.

Untitled

Impressions of Belize

The Rotary working group that I've been with has travelled from Belize City to San Ignacio where we stayed for several days. We then returned to Belize City for meetings and also travelled twice to Belmopan, the capital city.

Today we attended two Rotary club meetings, the morning meeting of the Belize City Sunrise Club and the noon meeting of the Belmopan Rotary Club. Both are very active, enthusiastic clubs who are doing excellent work in the community and also in overseas work (Rotary Clubs throughout the world work in community service, club service, vocational service and international service).

This is my first trip to Belize and it's been a busy one. I have not had time to do much photography but I have posted several blog entries with impressions of rural and urban landscapes. These are digital images. I've also done some black and white work which I look forward to taking into the darkroom after I return home tomorrow.

The Colours of Belize II

The Colours of Belize

Saturday in Belize

Today is our day off: no meetings, no tasks.

I'm sitting on the patio of the Cahal Pech Resort at St. Ignacio, corresponding with several people and organizing photographs from my visit to the nearby Mayan ruins. This site was occupied by the Mayan people between approximately 1000 BC and 100 AD.

Our group, six Canadians, were the only visitors this morning. We stayed for two hours, walking, climbing and trying to imagine what life was like here 2,000 years ago.

The energy of the Mayans remains in this very special place.

S

The Tao of Travel

I arrived in Belize yesterday with a small group of Rotarians and consultants who are working on a Rotary District 5370 literacy project. We met with government officials and Rotarians today and also visited a primary school in Belize City.

I hope you enjoy some of the visual details of my day.

  

BookCamp Vancouver

We are in Victoria, BC, visiting with friends, doing some work, trying new restaurants, and enjoying being away from home. It's been a very relaxing trip.

Tomorrow I'll attend BookCamp Vancouver , an unconference which will focus on exploring new ideas in books, publishing and the future of reading.Those of us involved in book publishing are experiencing a combination of panic and excitement as we look at the future. This gathering will look at open source publishing, the future of the book, e-books, new concepts of what books are and could be, and using social media and the internet in general. It will also give us a chance to talk with publishing people, young and old, from across Canada.

The front page of the BookCamp site lists the presentations for tomorrow. Many of the 200 people who are attending will be sharing their experiences on Twitter (#bcvan09) and Facebook. I expect that the conversations will continue long after we leave the unconference.

I'll be writing about BookCamp on this blog and on twitter (@pjmartin) tomorrow.

Conferences

London: Photographs by Jerome Martin

Spotted Cow Press has recently published London: Photographs by Jerome Martin, an enhanced e-book which includes text and audio in addition to photographs. It is available on the Spotted Cow Press website as a free download.

I love paper photography books and will continue to publish on paper and online. However, publishing books electronically allows us to create more of them and to include audio and video as well as the option to search for key words. They are also inexpensive to produce.

This book, published with a Creative Commons license, is a gift; feel free to pass it along to friends.

Lewis Hyde said in the introduction to his book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property that '...works of art exist simultaneously in two " economies." a market economy and a gift economy. Only one of these is essential, however: a work of art can survive without the market, but where there is no gift there is no art.'

Thanks to my colleague Lu Ziola who designed this book with style and vision. She also designed Golden Prairie, the book about the town in which I lived as a young person.

I hope that you enjoy visiting London with me. I would be delighted if you were to respond to the book with questions or comments.

Spotted Cow Press, Writing