Category: Personal

I take pictures. I guess that qualifies me to call myself a photographer. There’s a link on the top right of my home page that will take you to the ones I have posted on my Flickr site, Hank Fox Photos.

There’s a funny story I like to tell about how, early in my picture-taking career, I used to work so hard to get the exposure right, frame the picture perfectly, crop out all the extraneous bits in the scene, etc. — all the skill and knowledge thingies you have to do to get a really good photograph — and then somebody would say “Wow, that’s a great picture! You must have a really good camera!”

Which is bit like telling a writer who turns out a great book, “Wow, you must have a really good typewriter!”

But maybe they were even right. Because my main technique was something I learned at a Nikon School of Photography workshop: 1) Take LOTS of pictures. 2) Throw most of them away.

Flickr has this other wonderful site, Flickrvision, where you can see pictures as they’re posted, wherever they’re posted, all over the world.

This is mega-cool.

I was lucky enough to know a Great Person. He also happened to be a dog. He lived with me for about 7 years, and then passed into the keeping of my friend Carl Buell who, if anything, took better care of him than I did. And probably loved him more.

But he was in my life in all those years, and worked his slow magic on me, opening me up more to the possibilities of feeling love. And if that sounds odd, the only way I can explain it is to say I had a peculiar childhood, and love wasn’t exactly the core curriculum. Mainly, I had to learn it later … and Tito, my beloved furry friend, was one of my teachers.

You never met anybody who was such a grand soul, so adventurous, so courageous in adversity and so fun-loving in his daily life. He was one of those rare ones with so much good stuff inside him that he enlarged you just to be around him.

Today, March 4, is two years since he died.

I miss him somethin’ fierce.

Here’s a NYT story: The Bible as Graphic Novel, With a Samurai Stranger Called Christ — about the Bible presented as a Japanese-style graphic novel.

It seems obvious to me that the enlistment of new media for spreading holy stories de-mythologizes the message. Yes, you get wider exposure, but it becomes progressively more shallow. Eventually, religion becomes just another product, just another fad. God as chewing gum, or sports shoes. 

Once you throw religion onto the same market as other entertainments, you open it up to even greater competitive pressure. On any particular Sunday, if SuperJesus has to compete with TV, YouTube, iPod, Sprint, Wii and Digg, the market share of religion has to take a serious whack.

Interesting too to think that the Internet, with readily available sermons and religious readings, might be killing churches. Just as a lot of “bricks” businesses are being out-sold by their “clicks” competitors, the profit of physical churches has to be suffering due to all the online availability of churchy stuff. Watching churches consolidate and close in my local area, I have to believe it’s something like this.

Finally, the story of Anonymous vs. Scientology went viral and had what I believe to be a worldwide impact. I’d be surprised if 50 million people didn’t hear the story, and I think Scientology will take a substantial hit in membership and income, as more and more people find out just how nutty they are.

I see this as the seed of a greater recognition that ALL religion suffers from irrational and cultish elements. First L. Ron Hubbard, tomorrow Pope Palpatine!