Sloan Creative

An amazing new tool for bloggers and photographers.

A flash video generator that puts your photos to any music you choose and allows tremendous customtization.

See the product here: www.showitfast.com

Here’s a demo example I created in just a few minutes with no prior experience.

In conversation yesterday with community leader Sallie Maron we touched upon an interesting insight.

Bainbridge Island, like so many small towns, has recently seen a building boom seemingly without end.

Buildings and angst rising

As the new homes, shops, and condos went up, so did our level of angst. The “place” we moved to was being altered and, in some cases, unceremoniously destroyed by heavy equipment.

We felt the anguish of loss, but also found ourselves fairly inarticulate when it came to expressing what we’d lost.

I’ve been thinking about this situation for years now (with my friend Dennis Vogt and others) and realized that it’s hard to protect what we can’t articulate. We also realize that a picture is worth… well, you know.

A community photo album

In a recent meeting with Barry Peters about what we might do to help preserve our sense of place, we discussed a community project to begin defining what we love about our place, this island.

Many of us now have digital cameras. As we stroll, bike or paddle, we could snap images of what we love as we notice it. Here are some shots I took on a walk in the Grand Forest in 2006.

The images we take could be collected and posted on-line, maybe even on a map like the Sound Foods site, so they were available, and accessible, to all.

Gradually, we would build a library of the images that we can use in future discussions about proposed changes to our place.

What if the architectural review board had a library of what we love about our island home? The folks who designed Harbor Square would have had an easy reference for the community and context in which they were working. Might the result have been different, maybe even better; more alive?

This community photo album might create a reference tool for us to use when talking about place. Wouldn’t the thinking about Winslow way, or Kallgren, Grow, or North Madison have been a bit easier if we were working from a set of shared, loved images?

Is our place history or is history our place?
The other day, when I realized that the Historical Society was looking for ways to increase it’s fund raising abilities it became clear that relevance and visibility would be the keys to their success. It’s a lot easier to ask for money when you’ve got your finger on the button that gives (or protects) what potential donors value.

I thought, “Who better to host a community conversation about this place than the Historical Society?”

History is the story of how we became this place. What we love and don’t about the island is simply the sum total of all the outcomes of prior events… history

• We need to collect and catalog what we want to protect. Isn’t that what museums do well?
• We need to teach our community about this place; what made it and what makes it unique. Don’t museums have an education role too?
• We need to tie stories to these places. Couldn’t we link oral histories to the photos and the map, yielding a deep, rich source of connection to the the unique place we live? Museums often do this work too.

I know the Historical Society has a lot on it’s plate already. But, it seems to me, the top priority remains increasing relevance and visibility.

A deeper connection

We all want to feel more connected to our homes, our neighborhoods, and to something longer and deeper than our daily bustle through life.

This is the promise of history… a deeper connection to the time and space we live in. History gives current events context and richness, it gives that funny tree on Eriksen, a story with a beginning, a middle, and a sad end. But, it’s an end that teaches, that warns, that inspires new actions tomorrow. It all starts with the connection, the re-weaving across time and space that seem to separate us.

As Emerson says, in his essay “History”,

In reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, mountains, and waves, I feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of man, the identity of his thought.

The Greek had, it seems, the same fellow–beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. Then the vaunted distinction between Greek and English, between Classic and Romantic schools, seems superficial and pedantic.

When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me, — when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do, as it were, run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?”

Most of us who move to Bainbridge Island seek a deeper connection with a mysterious unity; call it Nature, call it community, call it what you will, but you know the feeling.

As we begin to notice, collect and catalog those reminders of unity we’ve found here on the island we will increasingly appreciate all that we’ve found.

Of course, appreciate has two meanings:

1 a: to grasp the nature, worth, quality, or significance of

2: to increase the value of

I’ll see you on the path toward appreciation, camera in hand.

Designer Quilts has published photos I shot late last year.

See my photos here:

DesignerQuiltsp48

DesignerQuiltsp49

Buy your copy here:

Presented with the kind permission of Designer’s Quarters