I was completely taken up by this story. And even more taken up by the documentary photographs Vivian Maier took on the streets of Chicago using black and white film. The format is two and a quarter inches square using a twin-lens reflex camera.

The story of Vivian Maier is so incredible that the man who discovered her says: "If you made this up for Hollywood it would be like, 'Oh, come on, that's too hard to believe.' She is," he adds, "the most riveting person I have ever encountered.

Following links on this story I see that there is a documentary film being made about Ms. Maier as well as a book of her photographs. But what really interested me was a comment made about her in an interview. Along with all the great qualities about her photographs she was complemented on being a really driven photographer. And she certainly was. Her days off were spent taking photographs. There are years worth of images which nobody saw, except her. There were boxes of undeveloped films. Images even she hadn't seen.

Driven? It wasn't fame or fortune that had her taking pictures. It wasn't necessarily that she was interested in the photographs as photographs to display - the undeveloped rolls speaks of that. (Well maybe she ran out of money, who knows.) Putting myself in her position, and in fact I was in a similar position in my teens as a nanny taking pictures on my days off, I think she just delighted in seeing. Of catch that moment. That seems to be IT. She was taken up with the act of picture taking.

What I know of documentary photography I see a cracking good collection. Almost every image matches or surpasses those of the great documentary photographers. Feast your eyes.

Excitement over. Back to my little point and shoot digital wonder.

Hat tip to Iain from Little House in The Paddy for putting me onto this story. He talks about Square Images in his post on this collection of photographs. I notice the angle of view the pictures are taken from. With a twin lens reflex the camera is held around waist height and one composes the picture looking down on a ground glass screen. I feel there is more of an intimate connection between camera and subject as a result.

(Note: the twin-lens can be used at eye level but I rarely used it that way.)

Well, this article is certainly an eye opener and a half.

How is a group its own worst enemy?

So, Part One. The best explanation I have found for the ways in which this pattern establishes itself, the group is its own worst enemy, comes from a book by W.R. Bion called "Experiences in Groups," written in the middle of the last century.

Bion was a psychologist who was doing group therapy with groups of neurotics. (Drawing parallels between that and the Internet is left as an exercise for the reader.) The thing that Bion discovered was that the neurotics in his care were, as a group, conspiring to defeat therapy.

There was no overt communication or coordination. But he could see that whenever he would try to do anything that was meant to have an effect, the group would somehow quash it. And he was driving himself crazy, in the colloquial sense of the term, trying to figure out whether or not he should be looking at the situation as: Are these individuals taking action on their own? Or is this a coordinated group?

He could never resolve the question, and so he decided that the unresolvability of the question was the answer. To the question: Do you view groups of people as aggregations of individuals or as a cohesive group, his answer was: "Hopelessly committed to both."

From a talk given in 2003 by Clay Shinky A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

All good stuff to be aware of for those working towards building community on-line.

This is in memory of Chester who died nearly two years ago. He was a lovely dog and apparently he could sing! This video is for your dog, or children but most definitely not for you cat(s).

There is nothing like a dog howling. I loved to howl along with our dog as a child. He would sit at the door wanting to go out and we would sit there together. Howling. Yes, I did encouraging him but it didn't take much to get him going. There is something to penetrating sound and we use it in Buddhism. I'm thinking of the Conch shell used during the last ceremony of Jukai. The Ceremony of Recognition.

It is said that the sound of the Conch penetrates the far reaches of the Universe. It is an exclamation, an exaltation. To sound a proclamation that these people have received the Precepts and become Buddha. Dear Chester is proclaiming however I'm not sure what exactly. Hope you and your dog(s) enjoy the video.

On the theme of sounds. A monastic friend announced his new word as we ate our lunch together today. Xylophonically, to speak xylophonically means to sound like rattling wood. (Xylo apparently means wood.) Rather like how one might sound sporting wooden teeth! However the definition can be expanded but I'm not going there....

There must be a word that describes the sound of the Conch, and dogs singing. Xylophonic I think not!

Many tributes to Chester were attached as comments to the Post Animal Rescue- Animal Friends.

Molly - right here, right now and on the altar!

If you can disappear when all about you
Are madly searching for you everywhere,
And then just when they start to leave without you
Turn up as if you always were right there…
After Rudyard Kipling

Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse, Henry Beard.

Thanks now to Molly and all at the Berkeley Buddhist Priory including all those who I've seen and spent time with during the past ten days. I was so glad to catch the Molly cat peacefully perched on an altar - waiting.

Goodness what a find! Colour photographs from the Farm Security Administration collection taken during the depression in America in the late 1930's and early 1940's. Those photographic icons in black and white are joined by...well, go take a look and be disturbed. The whole set can be seen here. There are images here that are every bit as powerful as those B and W's we know so well.

These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.

From One Cool Thing A Day.

Thanks to Walter for his comment on this post which included this translation of the quote by Hippocrates, the Greek Father of Medicine:

Ars longa,
vita brevis,
occasio praeceps,
experimentum periculosum,
iudicium difficile

Usually translated as:

[The] art is long,
life is short,
opportunity fleeting,
experiment dangerous,
judgment difficult.

A pause now, for thought.....

See also here for more on the Oath.

Also Jacks comment (and Angie's) on the The Other Side Of Medicine - Easing Death.

This post has been modified on 3rd August. The Hippocratic Oath and the quote above, while related, are not the same thing. It would seem....