The advent of national and worldwide Covid-19 led many workers in the private and public sectors, students and families, along with all sorts of organizations to depend on communicating by Internet; doing business; meeting deadlines; submitting reports, and so on. The familiarity with competing video conference platforms grew, day by…

After seven years with a trusty Lumia 635 the lack of software support and a hint of bluish tinge on some pictures prompted me to look for a substitute every-day camera. There are times when careful composition, perhaps a tripod, and sometimes a lot of patience and determination are the…

One of the scenes in the Matrix movie (1999) shows rows and columns of recumbent humans who are plugged into some sort of infrastructure that harvests the imagination, thinking power, or electrical energy of their warm bodies. One character dismisses such figures as “coppertop,” referring to an alkaline battery brand…

A week of so before Christmas I passed one of the historical markers in the city of Grand Rapids. Pausing to look at the dates and description, and thinking of the many Christmases that have passed since my earliest memories, I began to reflect on the social changes, events, and…

The Covid-19 pandemic in year-1 had killed hundreds of thousands of people in the states and territories of the USA by November 2020. So the normally boisterous annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) was transposed into all-online video recordings and live-events streamed from the conference hosting website. But…

In middle November 2021 my education colleague in the United Arab Emirates replied to my own anecdotal observations from Covidy Michigan in the USA. The fourth surge since March 2020 is in full swing and hospital networks here and there are moving to a Condition Red so that the inflow…

A few days ago I attended the annual public outreach day hosted by the Grand Rapids Public Museum called “Anishinabe Culture Day.” Besides the booths and tables here and there with traditional craft and art makers, school curriculum options for Native American studies, and representatives of organizations of and for…

Frequently quoted is the observation that “the best camera is the one that’s with you,” attributed to Chase Jarvis, but maybe felt by fellow photographers well before that, too. Fancy gear left at home will always be beat by whatever happens to be within reach. As of 2021, some statistics…

Something about the light around the time of the equinox is magical. It is not the full-power of summer sun. Nor is it the extreme shadows and softness of the low winter light. Added to the in-betweeny position of the solar furnace millions of miles away, there is the special…