I didn’t have a photo for this week so I’m posting this iPhone pano from a few weeks ago, before the weather turned recently. It’s an unremarkable photo of an unremarkable spot in my neighborhood. I often walk through here on days when I work out of the local library and need to head to downtown Takoma Park for lunch. I took the photo on one of those walks.
There’s some kind of energy pocket there, I’ve noticed it twice as I’ve passed through. Something in the mix of sound and geography and atmosphere triggers memories and a certain vibe I can’t describe. I wanted to see if I could capture it somehow (nope), see if some clue would emerge, or at least it could help me remember the feeling. Have you ever been in a place like that?
I literally stopped and looked around trying to figure it out. It’s not even close to the most attractive part of the town but for some reason it always gives me a feeling of ‘I love this place’ combined with deja vu.
I have to say, I really do love Takoma Park, more and more. Especially after such a topsy-turvy past couple of years bouncing around, I’m grateful to be where I can go deeper rather than farther.
Kind of a hodgepodge of updates today, sorry. A lot going on lately.
About a year ago I first wrote about Resistance Tech. Now I’m calling it ‘Ethical Tech’ which I think is more apt and approachable (if not as militant, though Ethical Tech is still a form of resistance). ‘Ethical’ meaning apps and platforms that help us get off the surveillance/data-harvesting model: a good balance of ease of use, data privacy, integrity of ownership, environmentally-minded, and ideally not based in the US to avoid government or corporate overreach.
I did a community workshop last week at our local library on all this stuff, and I’m doing it again this Wednesday. Went well, there seems to be interest. In an attempt to start putting resources and info together in one place I made a new Ethical Tech page on my website. Hope you’ll check it out, and let me know if I can help you stick it to our tech-bro overlords.
Getting set up (photo by Phil Shapiro)
I also added an Events page. Guess it’s an attempt to keep moving things off Meta and bring them here under one roof to my Squarespace. Though any event I’d post still needs to be shared to FB, so I dunno. You can drive yourself crazy :).
I reshuffled the site organization a bit to separate my main categories of photography, music, and tech. I didn’t really have a proper Music section at all before, my album was lumped together with my other projects.
Come on, Crandall, time to tighten your shoelaces since you’re getting out there more. Now at least I’ve got a little music bio and photos page in progress.
I don’t intend to say no to any paid gig at the moment (and I’m certainly doing plenty of unpaid). One recent paid one was at an assisted living place for St Patrick’s Day, so I learned like four Irish songs. Another one was a house party in VA, which sounded great until I got there and it was for like 2-3 families after their dinner. Then the kids had to get off to bed so it was an audience of like 5-6 people in the living room. I have to say it went well and they were lovely and attentive but um, yeah, felt a bit strange. Next up is a pool party in a couple weeks, glad I’ve been beefing up my covers list.
(Full circle, I think a pool party was one of my first band gigs when I was 14! Not sure if that’s good or pathetic…)
Recently I posted photos from our Sanctuary benefit show for CASA, which was standing-room only for our lineup of poets and singers. That was an offshoot of the Vocal Takoma popup thing we’ve been doing. Next up for VT is something we’re planning for outside People’s Book store, and we’ll be at the downtown clock tower on Sunday mornings in nice weather.
Photo freelancing is starting to show some signs of life, let me know if you need me. It’s actually been sort of energizing in a way to reassemble that former life of mine, get my ducks in a row.
I’ve got an idea for a zine.
Phew. It’s a lot, yeah. But with our family and job situations (IYKYK) still in flux I’m just pushing in every direction all at once with everything I know how to do.