Four or five times a year, I do workshops and presentations on various aspects of photography (and a few other topics). As mentioned in an earlier post, I’m moving the pages I still use in those sessions from my dedicated archive site into this stream before shutting it down.
I recently updated this page in advance of using it in a class next month. It may be of interest to you as well.
This post has nothing to do with their business practices. Even in the time BE,1 the company rarely made a profit and it was hard for anyone but a financial analyst to see how it might be worth tens of billions of dollars.
The pandemic is not over.
While I suppose you can’t blame people for wanting to just forget the past sixteen months and move on, we continue to be stuck in COVID limbo1 because of the far too many people behaving like the virus has disappeared.
Dean Shareski, a Canadian educator I’ve known a long time through his writing, Twitter, and interactions at many conferences, recently wrote on his blog that “I Don’t Think I’m an EdTech Guy Anymore”. His reasoning is hard to argue with.
Although I’ve always thought September 1 would make a much better New Year’s Day, western society has decided today will be that largely artificial dividing line. So, here we are in the year designated as 2018.
So, how will today and the ones that follow be different from the 365 that came before? Unless you came into a big inheritance when the calendar clicked over, I suspect for most of us the answer is not very.
However, after the chaos of 2017 in the US (which spilled over into many other parts of the world), something needs to change. As I wrote in any earlier rant, resistance to negative change can only take you so far. If successful, it really only maintains the status quo. Even with the small positive steps that occasionally pop up.
In 2018, we can continue to complain about what has happened in the past. Or we can plan and work to improve the future. Only one of those is worth the time and effort.
I hope we can find good people to run for leadership positions, at all levels, not just Congress, who understand this. Because real progress is only going to come from clear, creative, positive ideas for improving government and society. Not from trying to scare people. Not from asking for support simply because “I’m not that guy.”.
Maybe in this new period of time known as a year we as a society can move forward instead of ranting in place.
The picture is of sunrise over the Potomac River as seen from the Alexandria waterfront, New Year’s Day, 2012. As I recall, the temperature was much warmer that morning than it is currently.