"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.