100 Strangers
- Refrakt - A more meaningful home for photography
- Glass — Photography Community - Glass is a paid, global community platform for photographers. With no ads or manipulative algorithms,Glass is your home for photography.
- Flashes for Bluesky on the App Store - A Bluesky client just for photography. The devs suggest opening a second, photos only account. I'm trying it out
- pxlmo - The Pixelfed server I use
- Flickr | The best place to be a photographer online.
- Best Photo Sharing Platform for Photographers | 500px
- SmugMug: Protect, Share, Store, and Sell Your Photos
- The World's Largest Free Photo Contest | Pixoto
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Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Probably the most influential time in my life were the years I lived on my uncle's farm, roughly 1979-1983. Although both of my parents were the children of farmers, I didn't have much exposure to agriculture before a fateful Easter vacation I spent with my uncle at an industrial pig farm he was managing. I was in the eighth grade, years away from being able to drive on the road. On the first day of vacation, he showed my brother and me how to operate his 1976 Ford Ranger pickup on the dirt roads of the farm. We also got to use a pressure watcher and assist in all kinds of chores, including a day in the breeding barn.
The following fall, I decided it would be a good idea to use my saved up lunch money to buy my very first joint. I couldn't wait until after school to smoke it, so I went out on the playground, in full view of an entire wing of classrooms, where all of my matches were blown out by the wind. Dejected, with no buzz, I went back into the school building, where I was immediately accosted by a teacher who'd seen me out her classroom window. To make a long story short, the school took a dime view of marijuana possession. The next thing I knew, I was on my way to a new life in a new town where they might let me go to school. That's how I ended up living and working on a farm.
My aunt and uncle treated me and still treat me like one of their sons. Their capacity for love seems limitless. Since I had a knack for getting into stupid amounts of trouble, my uncle decided to keep me too busy to get into mischief. If I weren't busy, I'd be too exhausted. It worked after a few spectacular missteps on my part. By the time I left that farm, everything else other people considered hard work seemed easy to me.
Now, I'm going to get to my point. The one thing I was bitter about in those days was a lack of praise. The old man just didn't believe in handing it out except in small amounts and on very rare occasions. I could spend an entire Saturday splitting multiple cords of firewood—some of the hardest work I've ever done, and he couldn't be bothered to acknowledge it. It drove me nuts. I respected (and feared) him too much to complain much, but every once in a while, I would say something. His standard answer was, "Do you want me to pat you on the back for getting out of bed?"
These days, he's very much a different man when it comes to handing out compliments. He makes it clear in no uncertain terms that he is proud of me, proud of my kids, proud of Wonder Woman. He even brags about teenage me and the things I did way back then.
As a result of my feelings of being unappreciated back in the day, I resolved early on to make it my life mission to hand out props whenever and wherever I could. In the years I worked in public schools, if I saw a teacher doing a good job, I'd tell them how awesome I thought they were. I'd tell the custodians, secretaries, nurses, and lunch ladies the same thing. My children have never doubted that their dad thinks they are superstars. I don't do it insincerely or to be flattering. I just think it is a nice thing to do for people in a world that can often seem cruel and uncaring.
I even hand out real compliments on the Internet to people who have been friendly and helpful. I know how good it feels to get that kind of feedback, even from faceless Internet strangers. That's why I am out here, just waiting for you to do something cool so I can let you know how much I liked it.
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Who Are You Thinking About?
There is a saying in the recovery community that if I could do anything to my worse enemy, I'd make him self-centered. There's nothing worse than continually being concerned with "How am I doing today?" I'm not knocking therapy. It's helped untold numbers of people, including me. Nor, am I smack-talking introspection because questioning your motives and evaluating yourself are healthy practices. No, what I'm getting at is the type of person who is always concerned with fairness, about what size your slice of pie is compared to his, about how life rewards you while it shafts him. I don't like that guy. I would rather not hang out with him.
What I find enjoyable is having a circle of people and a mind with enough space to let them all in. Most of us have our person, to borrow a concept from Grey's Anatomy. We have the one person whi is at the head of the line when we start making space in our consciousness when we begin to make room for something outside the scope of our wants and needs. No need to tell you that my person is Wonder Woman, my wife, my partner, my friend, and my coach. Although she sometimes doubts it, I evaluate almost every interesting fact in my life to decide whether I should share it with her. Tech-geek that I am, I have special apps and certain workflows just to be able to send her things during the day that she might like or be interested in.
One of my morning rituals is reading over my journal and looking at photos from this day in past years. Now that I've been doing the IndieWeb thing for longer than a year, I'm starting to see quotes from my favorite bloggers show up in my journal. I dig being able to send someone a screenshot to let them know, "Hey, I thought you were pretty astute last year and I still feel the same way." Who doesn't like to get fan mail, right?
For the people, like me, who share personal bits and pieces of their lives, well, it's better than a television show trying to keep up with what's happening in people's lives. During the day I start to wonder, How is mb feeling today, He's been ill. Or I wonder how Annie's son finished out the wrestling season or if Alexandra is freezing her butt off waiting for the bus on a Quebec sidewalk. When I think about the people working for the government, I think about Jen, Scott's wife her who had her dream vacation curtailed because of the fascists. and, OMG, if someone goes off the grid for an extended period of time, I start getting nervous. It constantly happens. Someone I enjoy reading, just gets fed up with the Internet and they disappear. I hate it.
It's a rare day when I don't send someone a photo I have of them. This week, I sent my youngest brother a shot of the one and only time he ever wore cycling shorts in his entire life. He called me stupid. I laughed. My brother-in-law scanned hundreds of my extended family's photos and shred them with us all. I like to find funny, early 1950s pictures of my dad with his flattop haircut and send those to him or pictures of my mom who was and is beautiful, just to let her know I am thinking of her. I have to stop myself from inundating my kids with constant pictures of their kids, most of which they sent me in the first place. It's just that all those grand babies are too precious not to show someone.
I have a vivid imagination. I consider it a blessing. When I was a third shift prison guard, stuck on a gun tower for eight hours, decades before cell phones were a thing, the only way I kept my sanity was an active mind. These days, I catch myself imagining the lives of my favorite fictional characters from television shows and movies. I gauge a show by how easy it is to bring its characters to life in my imagination. Take The Wire for instance. It was a show about the people of Baltimore, all kinds of people: cops, drug dealers, dockworkers, politicians, reporters, school teachers and more. One of my all-time favorites was Omar Little, a gay gangster with a penchant for robbing drug dealers, never regular people. He was courageous, funny, loving, intelligent and knew exactly what he wanted right until he was killed by a grade school kid in a corner store while buying his beloved Honey Nut Cheerios and Newport cigarettes. I think about Omar often and wonder what would have happened to him if he'd lived.
I'm not too good at striking up conversations with strangers, although in the right circumstances I don't mind it. My mother is the master at making friends with waitresses and clerks. She isn't putting people on either. She's genuinely interested in them. Mom admires anyone with a kind spirit and looks down on no one. Not once, ever. She might not approve of certain lifestyle choices, but she doesn't consider herself superior to anyone. She's just glad she doesn't have any tattoos and wishes I didn't either. My mother wasn't a big fan of me getting my ear pierced either, but that was a long time ago.
The moral of this longer than I intended post, is that if you want to be happy, think about others. Think about how you can make them happy. It will rub off. I promise.
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This Week's Bookmarks - Surviving 2025, Automation, Reprogramming Culture, Autism, Bike Route Planning, Kahneman Suicide, Locomotive Lit
Do One Thing | dansinker.com - We are living through a period of protracted awfulness, and the end is not coming anytime soon. Those in power would like nothing more than to keep you exhausted and impotent, incapable of getting anything done (especially the things that will undermine their power). So do one thing.
11 Ways to Automate Your Life (and Get Back More Free Time) | Lifehacker - Use your one wild and precious life for stuff you actually want to do.
The Anti-DEI Agenda Is Reprogramming America | WIRED - President Trump's anti-DEI playbook doesn't just affect the makeup of America's workplaces. It also impacts cultural production.
Opinion | Sorry, R.F.K.: There Is No Autism Mystery - The New York Times - I Was Diagnosed With Autism at 53. I Know Why Rates Are Rising.
VeloPlanner - From EuroVelo to national cycling networks, VeloPlanner puts the world's official, signposted routes in one place. Download GPX files, access detailed route information, and plan your next ride with confidence.
The Last Decision by the World’s Leading Thinker on Decisions | wsj.com - ## Shortly before Daniel Kahneman died last March, he emailed friends a message: He was choosing to end his own life in Switzerland. Some are still struggling with his choice.
Literary Locomotives: Nine Books Set on Trains That Show How They Changed the World ‹ Literary Hub - Why set a novel on a train? The answer might seem obvious: it’s a narratively and atmospherically rich space, an enclosure in which strangers are cooped up, each with their own different reason for making the journey.
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Photo Sharing Websites
I enjoy looking at my photos. I take some time every day to look back at this day in history on one of the websites where I am still storing my archive. I also have an Aura Frame and an Amazon Echo Show that display photos all day long. I never got into Instagram as a means of sharing photos socially, but I've experimented with a few other sites, some that put the emphasis on the social aspect and others that are more for "serious photographers" Whatever that means. These days, I am primarily posting a couple of photos a day on Micro.blog and Mastodon, I even have a gallery for my 100 Strangers Project.
Here are a few other places where I and others I know post photos.
The Story Behind My 100 Strangers Project
The Story Behind My 100 Strangers Project - Over 100 days I published a collection of street portraits taken in six different cities where I interviewed each subject. - louplummer.lol/100-stran…
From my 100 Strangers Project - for the last time. John, watching his friend lose to a Budweiser drinking chess hustler on the Raleigh sidewalk was the final subject in my project. I’ll be posting a link to a gallery of all 100 portraits later on today. Thanks for all your feedback.
From My 100 Strangers Project - Ricardo and his five-year old twins (yes, there are two of them in the photo) were downtown on a rainy winter afternoon looking for some hot chocolate at the local coffee shop. Sounded like a good idea to me, so I joined them.
From my 100 Strangers project - Mike said he was on the way back to his downtown office after a 30-mile ride out in the country.
From my 100 Strangers project - Elise was selling art, mostly pencil drawings and watercolors, at a street fair in Raleigh. She said businesses had been pretty good, but she was hot and tired and ready to go home.
From my 100 Strangers Project - Shayonna and her sisters were handing out flyers for a fundraiser to benefit a foundation that helps people in need in their community.
From my 100 Strangers project - Harold wasn’t the friendliest guy I ever photographed, but he’d just gotten off work and was on the way to the subway, so I cut him slack. He did affirm that he “works on Wall Street,” something I suppose a lot of bankers aspire to,
From my 100 Strangers project - Dike, a Nigerian immigrant earning a tough living as a pedicab driver in NYC was nonplussed by the police efforts to get him to move from his location near the entrance to the Central Park Zoo.
From my 100 Strangers project - Mr. Ed had his very simple shoeshine stand (a folding chair) set up outside of a subway stop on lower Broadway. Larry, the tired businessman shown, said that he stops by for a tune up every few days.
From my 100 Strangers project - Shereesa didn’t want me to take her picture at first and used Chucky as a stand in. Later she let me get a few shots once I showed her some on my camera, but I have always liked this one.
From my 100 Strangers project - Terry was the consummate, smooth-talking salesman trying to move antiques from his place at the flea market at the North Carolina state fairgrounds in Raleigh. I asked about his hat, and he told that yes, it was for sale too.
From my 100 Strangers project - Larique was shooting strangers with bubbles like he didn’t even care. I asked him if anyone had gotten mad at him and he assured me they hadn’t. “I just smile at them” he told me.
From My 100 Strangers project - Cherrelle was watching her nephews trying their hands at making free throws at a carnival booth set up in a Charlote courtyard. Like us, she was just in town just for the day.
From my 100 Strangers project - I asked LuAnn how long she had been working behind the counter at Sherry’s Bakery in Dunn, NC and she told me 17 years. When asked how many hotdogs she served in that period, she laughed and said “Lord, I don’t know. Feels like a million!”
From my 100 Strangers Project - Dallas was working in Charleston, SC, South of Broad, in bitterly cold February weather. I asked him if he was used to it and he said “Hell, no. This is supposed to be South Carolina!” #Blaugust2024
From my 100 Strangers project - Despite his fierce look in this photo, Al was engaging and funny. He was working a part time gig as a parking lot attendant in Charlotte for a Panthers game. I stuck around a while to listen to him tell stories about growing up during segregation in NC’s biggest city.
