"If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry  (via the-rx)

(via heimweh-fernweh)


"There is, he wrote, a family tendency to get tired of doing the same thing very long."
– The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Cornmeal Yeast Bread

In honor of my mother, who makes this just for me every time I come home. Fact of the day: It is the best bread in the whole wide world. 

Dissolve:

     2 pkg (5 tsp) dry yeast in ½ cup lukewarm water

Combine in mixing bowl:

     ½ cup sugar

     1 ½ tsp salt

     1/3 cup butter

Pour over:

     ¾ cup milk, scalded

Cool to lukewarm.  Stir in:

     1 egg

     1 cup white flour

     ¾ cup cornmeal

     Yeast mixture

Beat well.  Stir in enough additional flour to make a soft dough:

     3 – 3 ½ cups flour

Turn dough onto lightly floured board and knead until satiny, about 10 minutes.  Place dough in greased bowl; cover and let rise in warm place until double in size, about one hour.  Punch dough down.  Divide in half and place in 2 greased 8” loaf pans.  Brush with melted margarine.  Cover and let rise in warm place until nearly double, about 45 minutes.  Bake at 350°F/160°C for 30-45 minutes or until golden brown. 

via the More-With-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre

"We are becoming the men we wanted to marry."
– Gloria Steinem

"we rode all the way out and never came back, really, any of us."
– Charles Bukowski

Eye Contact

Ed Kashi is an incredible photojournalist who has produced some my favorite photo stories - including a powerful one done in my ‘home’ country Nigeria (watch the Curse of the Black Gold multimedia movie) and the iconic Iraqi Kurdistan multimedia presentation. I came across a captivating new series by him today - ‘Eye Contact’ (and an interesting interview to go with it). It caught my eye, so to speak, as I too am fascinated by the moments where the subject meets my eye in my photos. Different from Kashi though, I find that the moment of contact that meets my lens is one of strength, even if there is a note of sadness in it. It’s a moment where I feel I see the person as wholly themselves - captured only a fraction of a second before they have time to build up a mask of who they should be onto their faces. Before reaction and emotion can register into the shapes and lines of their brows. I find it engrossing to stare into their eyes even years after the photo is taken. I feel I know them in a way, though the truth is more often that these individuals are strangers who only happened to cross my path for a slice of time…

Inspired, I’ll try to post a few of my favorite glances that I’ve captured over the years. Check out Kashi’s ‘eye contact’ and other works linked in above.