I see that the photo app on this Mac will let a person select an object in a photo, draw it out of the photo as its own TIFF file with a transparent background already in place, and save it somewhere. Then it can be transformed into a PNG file, resized by appropriate pixel dimensions so as to fit into the upper right corner of posts in software like Drummer, and then posted to some web space that a writer has access to. I put the image in a WordPress blog posting, for example, then copy the image's new image URL (not the blog post URL). Paste that into a new image line in the briefcase icon area of a blog post, build the blog, and voila! There should be a window with a sailing ship included in the upper right of this posting. I'll write this up more fully.
#
- A while back the city renovated the tallest downtown building and slapped the name Liberty Tower on it. Up at the top, just L I B E R T Y in substantial letters along the ridge line with stars on each side. Out of the blue, an expression of what appears to be patriotism visible for long distances. I hate to say this, but it rubbed me the wrong way. It felt shallow. Like a mannerism. Like a cheap trick. A nearly empty gesture. A propaganda move of an old-style Eastern bloc country.#
- The thought I have is that gestures of patriotism can be meaningful and they can be shallow. They can point us in the direction of thinking about the values of the nation or in the direction of marching in step to music whose words we hardly even hear any more.#
- Elie Wiesel said something related in the 1980s about it having become too easy, too empty, to talk about the Holocaust by that time. #
- "One reaches the point of longing for the days when only a few people dared speak of it; now everybody does. Too much. And too lightly."#
- Language about the most important things mustn't be glib or rote, he suggested. If all the right words come quickly to mind, the words are probably empty. Who can remember the last time the memorized lyrics of the national anthem helped them think freshly about patriotism?#
- Language is always being emptied out. It takes the work of careful thinkers and precise speakers and people who challenge the status quo to rejuvenate the big words or replace them with new formulations for our time.#