When Eastern Bluebirds Come to Call

       What are you looking at?

What is he doing??

What's that finch doing here?

Finch: Was it something I said?

Why is that finch still here??

Much better

Four of a kind beats two pair,

 

But a straight flush wins the hand

Rosa Parks, February 4, 1913 - October 24, 2005

(Sculpture by Ed Dwight of Rosa Parks in downtown Grand Rapids Michigan)

It was December 1 of 1955 when Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama. This monument to her stands in Rosa Parks Circle in Grand Rapids, Michigan.*

Parks wasn’t the first to refuse to give up her seat (look up Claudette Colvin, a 15 year old who refused to give up her seat and was arrested and jailed, 9 months before Rosa), but Parks was the one chosen by the African-American leaders in Montgomery for the lawsuit test case. The bus boycott may or may not have been spontaneous but it lasted 381 days and became a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. At the time, Parks was working as a secretary at the local branch of the NAACP.

Some claim both events were entirely spontaneous and deny any advance planning, and others vociferously argue otherwise. Those who question the accuracy of the spontaneity claim are usually shouted down with accusations of racism in diminishing what took place. And rare mention is ever made of the earlier women who “sat down” for their rights. Their names are not known by most.

Regardless of the ultimate truth, nothing can take away from Parks’ courage in refusing to give up her seat. Just a few months before this incident, 14 year old Emmett Till was brutally mutilated and murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman (his killers were later acquitted in a gross miscarriage of justice). Parks knew she would be arrested and she was. She was bailed out later that night and ended up becoming a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement.

(Photo from the internet)

Bus 2857, now known as the Rosa Parks Bus, can be found in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It was retired from use in Alabama and sold in 1971. The buyer gutted it and used it for storage. It sat in his field for 30 years. When his descendants tried to sell it, the Henry Ford Museum caught wind of it and had the winning bid at auction. They restored it and visitors can now sit in the place where Rosa sat.

We visited Montgomery, Alabama in May of 2026. Rosa stands tall at the Capitol.

She has her own museum in Montgomery (252 Montgomery St) at the spot she was arrested.

Even with all of the accolades received in her lifetime, Rosa Parks' life was anything but easy. Employment became difficult for her and her husband in Alabama (Parks was fired after her arrest). They moved to Virginia in 1957 and later to Detroit, Michigan. Parks worked as a seamstress until she was hired by U.S. Representative John Conyers as a secretary/receptionist in 1965. She remained in that position until 1988. This is the duplex she lived in from 1961-1988 (3201-3203 Virginia Park St, Detroit).

Parks continued to work tirelessly for Civil Rights, donating time and money consistently throughout her later years. Our nation was treated to a sorry spectacle during the last years of her life when a lawsuit was filed on her behalf against a hip-hop group who referenced “moving to the back of the bus” in a song. Relatives decried the suit and claimed they were kept from seeing Parks. They also claimed Parks was not aware of what was taking place. Her longtime friend and caretaker proceeded with the suit that ended up being settled. Rosa Parks passed away in 2005 and was laid to rest in Woodlawn Cemetery in a chapel that is now named for her.

She had no children but left a meaningful legacy to the world of how one person can make a difference.

“I am leaving this legacy to all of you...to bring peace, justice, equality, love, and fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die - the dream of freedom and peace.”

*The sculptor, Ed Dwight, has an interesting story of his own. Back in 1962, when he was an air force jet pilot, President Kennedy nominated him as an astronaut trainee, making Dwight the first African-American ever appointed. After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Dwight was dropped from the program and eventually became a sculptor.

(Photo from the internet)

When I first saw this work, I questioned why she was standing up instead of sitting down. But Dwight's thought was to show Parks as emerging from her seat, becoming the quiet leader that she was. I suppose we could also say she was standing up for "the dream of freedom and peace."  May we all show as much courage today.

Rosa on a mural in Detroit MI

At the MLK Jr Historical Park in Atlanta, GA, Rosa is included in the Walk of Fame.

To Blip or Not to Blip... is no longer the question.

Blip:
1.    a spot of light on a radar or sonar screen indicating the position of a detected object.
2.    a temporary or insignificant phenomenon, especially a brief departure from the normal.

If you’re not familiar with the term, then you do not have friends or family who have succumbed to the addictive power of www.blipfoto.com.

Started in Scotland by a man who created a website to upload and share one of his photos per day, the site expanded in 2006 to allow others to do the same. Like a virus, Blip spread through Europe, Asia, Australia, and made its way to North America. The stats of where these blippers are and how many there are would be fascinating, but Blip does not disclose that information. The bulk of subscribers appear to be located in Europe and I haven’t come across any journals from South America yet.

Blip has rules, some of which are applied concretely and others a little more subjectively. First and foremost, the photo uploaded must be a photo taken that day. You may upload a photo for last Wednesday but it must have been taken last Wednesday. Be sure your camera date and time are accurate or you’ll receive a message that your picture wasn’t taken on the day you are claiming. If they believe your explanation of an inaccurate camera date, your photo will appear.

You may subscribe to a person whose photos, or journals, are interesting to you. They may or may not subscribe back. Like a facebook friend request ignored, or a “follow” on Twitter that doesn’t get followed back, it may seem like a virtual slap in the face (thanks for the friend request / the follow / the subscription, but you’re not worthy of my attention - ouch!).

But time management can also be an issue. How many people can you subscribe to and comment on with any regularity? Some people upload a photo every day and others post sporadically. Either way, you could spend all day looking at photos and posting comments.

Some journals are worthy of a subscription regardless of whether or not they subscribe or comment back (depending on your photography interests). Follow the blips of a soldier in Iraq; a photographer capturing daily life on the streets of Cairo (oops - account suspended!); a woman exploring the people, food, and ruins of Tuscany (Rest in Peace, Molly); a Dutch captain of a ship in the North Sea; or a woman sharing her rural life in New Zealand. 

In Blipland, it’s not just about the photos. Many people create stories or poems to accompany the picture. Others post appropriate quotations or songs, or provide historical information to enhance their photos. Some write-ups are very personal and relate traumatic events that have occurred or are occurring. Check out the Spotlight Feature and you’ll see a lot of so-so photos with fascinating or very personal stories. You will also see some extraordinary photos without much text at all.

The formula for reaching the Spotlight page is known only to Blip Central. It's an automatic  mathematical configuration based on views and comments, and perhaps, ratings. If a photo is awarded five stars, and by the more people the better (you have no idea how people have rated it and who they were), the threshold for hitting Spotlight is much lower. One of my rated blips hit Spotlight with 89 views and 22 comments. An unrated blip recently arrived on the Spotlight page when it hit 117 views and 31 comments.

5/9/11 Update: The "automatic formula" has now been disproved. They modify and moderate. They have also raised the bar for hitting the Spotlight.

The other scenario is that ratings are not involved, just the views and comments as they compare to other blips of that day. Your image can hit Spotlight but as soon as another image tops your mathematical total, you're off the page. There's also a time limit, somewhere under 24 hours, for your photo to reach the Spotlight threshold. You may have a fabulous blip that day but if other blippers do too, and blip world is active with views and comments, you may not ever hit the page. Images drop off automatically after a certain time period, if they haven't already been pushed off by others.

And here's a third observation/theory: if you don't comment on other journals, the threshold for hitting Spotlight is lower. So if it is important in your mind to hit Spotlight, you are in effect encouraged to make few, if any, comments. This seems like an unfriendly blip idea/procedure.

Membership level defines the depth of your activity on Blip. If you are a paying member, you can “favorite” someone’s photo and upload a picture starting from the day of your birth, assuming you were there to take a photo (okay, you’re taking a photo of the old photo :). Otherwise, you may upload only from the date you subscribed. Everyone gets to award one to five stars on any photo. And there are some (one?) who will reduce the number of stars awarded to a photo. This affects the placement of the image on the Ratings page, i.e., your photo may have moved back a few pages. Disillusioned with having awarded stars later reduced by someone else, some blippers remove the ratings option from their journals.


(March 2011 Update:  star ratings have been revised. You now have the opportunity to award stars on each image but can see only the stars you have awarded. The image-taker sees the total stars awarded but still not from whence they came, unless the commentators have stated so. In effect, the star-reducers now only add to the total stars award.)

Composite photos or montages are permitted so long as each image was taken that day (at least those are the rules). Usually, a current photo of an old photo is passable as is a photo taken of your computer screen displaying an older photo. But if you don’t write up an adequate context for it, Blip might suspend it. You may link to your other uploaded photos (on Flickr, Picasa, TwitPic, etc.) but need to avoid linking to “commercial” sites, the definition of which can get tricky. There are trollers out there looking for "cheaters" (get a life, trollers) to report to BlipCentral. At times the application of the rules can be a little fluid but Blip attempts to keep any disagreements private (there was a recent public exception to this philosophy). Controversial forum threads get “locked” to end the discussion. 

There is a great divide between "oldies" and "newbies" that you can see by looking at subscribers/subscriptions. Otherwise, people seem to stick together by interests.
    
Here’s the upside: you will look at the world around you through new eyes. You will observe things and people you otherwise would not have noticed. You will make friends and see parts of the world you would never have otherwise seen. On the whole, it’s a very polite community. You may receive a little constructive criticism here or there (some blippers remove the comment capability after receiving less than welcome statements). Generally, people here are just nice, and very encouraging.

The responses give you a sense of who is out there and when, and I believe that Blip never sleeps: when Europe goes to bed, North America carries on, and as they turn their lights off, blippers from Asia are turning theirs on; next up, the Mideast. 

Blip on, my friends.

8/24/11 Update: After I hit 365 blips in a row, I decided to back off from what now felt like an obligation to post and to comment. I also reduced my subscriptions to alleviate what had become to feel like a burden. So now I post when I have something, and I comment when I can. I had to take my life back from blip...

2015: I quit Blip when it was sold to Polaroid. Peace out, photo friends!

Watching An Afternoon Move Into Evening on a Florida Beach

Late afternoon light dances on the waves. The sun plays with clouds and changes the colors of the sea. Green and blue ribbons of water gently roll under the purple and blue slices of sky. Purple now touches the sea forming a harmonious, fluid palette, merging together, pulling apart, hues and positions in constant motion. No photo can capture this beauty.

A brown pelican drops vertically into the sea. After finding his target, he rejoins his squadron. Their formation breaks one at a time after which they float amiably together before synchronously taking off for another flyover.

A team of terns dives on cue, black beaks pointed down and wings folded back. Flighty plovers and sanderlings, like hummingbirds of the shore, move with quick, unending steps, waltzing with the waves on the sand. Stately herons fearlessly and patiently wait by nearby fishermen for any opportunities that may present themselves. 

The setting sun moves from yellow, to orange, then red, and crumples on the horizon, evidenced now only by lit tips of clouds. Pelicans float together offshore forming an island, waiting for sunrise. Orion displays high above, our Michigan winter constellation. It seems out of place in warm weather, but it’s only my perspective that’s off. Orion unwaveringly remains on its celestial course, as the world continues to turn.