Wow, long dry spell for doing photography or showing latest work here. Unfortunately it has been a very busy few weeks. The first two weeks of school, the so-called “census” period, was, as usual, full of some standard “start-of-the-semester” chaos that has increased as the budget cuts have forced us to cancel more and more classes. And it is just getting worse. We had already had some noticeable cuts for Spring and late last week we were notified we had to cut another one.
In the infinite wisdom of California liberal politics, the governor announced a few weeks ago that if he did not get his millionaire’s tax increases now on the ballot for November, education would be the first thing to get cut. That is, to anyone who thinks education is the key to the future, an appalling position for any politician to take. Education should be absolutely the last thing cut; and it should be AFTER salaries for politicians are cut.
But across the state it gets worse. Some schools and programs have already shut down. We just received word that Long Beach City College has a new VP who is proposing eliminating most of that college’s vocational programs including photography. The idea that cutting programs that are in business to prepare students to enter the workforce in favor of foo-foo courses such as Poly-Sci and diversity studies which neither have nor provide any known entry point into the workforce is totally, utterly, inexplicable to me. So far our district has not even remotely suggested such a thing and here is hoping that they will not. Even a devastated program can still do some good.
I know, such political stuff is normally reserved for the other blog (and recent events have inspired a new post or two there); but in this case the politically motivated cuts may end up having a direct effect on the workshops and seminars we intend to put together. I can have no impact on whether or not the benighted State decides education is critically important or not, but I can have some impact on what extracurricular presentations can be made available via seminars and workshops.
If you have ideas for topics and/or locations for such presentations, do please let me know. And if you want to be on the email list for notice of such events when we finally get them together, also, let me know.
I did shoot a demo for the portrait class of both low and high key lighting using nearly identical set-ups yesterday and will have them ready to show by mid week, so do check back later in the week.
Travels with Rocinante 