New photos on the left: a trip to the ship graveyard on Staten Island. I've been neglecting digital in favour of print (sorry) but am making amends with these pix from our adventure.

I love those guys at B & H Photo. Not one person laughed when I explained I needed their help figuring out how to put an infrared filter on a toy camera... in fact... they helped me find a cheap way to do it. Off the ship graveyard to try it out!

On Saturday I went to Coney Island to play with my Holga in the cold, dark rain. As you might imagine, mixed success there. The main problem was the vicious guard dogs and the barbed wire fences that stood between me and some gorgeous photos. Sigh.

Artist Bob Herdlein sent me a wonderful gift last weekend - a link to his paintings inspired by the Children's Crusade: "They set forth about the time of the Pentecost... and left behind their plows and carts, abandoned the animals they pastured. Many took up pilgrim costume, wide brimmed hat, palmer's staff, gray coat and a cross sewn to the breast. By repute they numbered twenty thousand. Some leapt and danced like storks prepared to migrate. Thus wrapped in mighty delusions they walked from Cologne to Basle, to Geneva, traversed the Alps near Mount Cenis, by which time half had been lost, murdered, starved, frozen, drowned in raging mountain streams, devoured by famished wolves."

A few new links:

• the official Canadian temperature chart at deweydecimal.ca.


• the camel library via liberry blooze


• the pinhole photography of Mary Fahy

New to my list of places to go: the Festival to Thank Dolls at the Meiji Jingu shrine, Tokyo. Every year people send their unloved or unused dolls to this shrine. The dolls are displayed, thanked for their service, and then "disposed of."

He put coffee
In the cup
He put cream
In the cup of coffee
He put sugar
In the coffee cup
With the little spoon
He stirred it up
He tried a sip
He put back the cup
He never spoke
He lit
A cigarette
He made rings
Of the smoke
He put the ashes
In the ash tray
Without talking to me
Without taking note
He stood up
He put
His hat on his head
He put on his raincoat
Because it was a rainy day
And he went away
Without a word
Without a glance aside
And me I laid
My head in my hand
And I cried
-- Jacques Prévert (1900-1977)