September 30, 2003
matthew kirby and the 40 sonnets
got an email from the Weeping Rivet folks up in new york today. matt's looking for entries for a new project they're working on. if you're a writer of any sort, and you feel like pulling together a religious sonnet, please do. the chapbooks these guys put toghether are always very cool, and seem to be drawing more attention with each one.
race for the boob
morris, brent, yukari, and i took part in the race for the cure on saturday morning here in chattanooga. we've been "training" for it, as i mentioned in a previous post. its a 5K run, about 3.1 miles, and it went pretty well. i think my time was right around 25:30, about an 8.5 minute mile. not terrible, but nowhere close to my high-school cross-country times. yukari got some photos, but hasn't gotten them developed yet. i'll post them when she does.
oh, and i just found this out... apparently i placed 12th in my age group with the time that i got (25:42). the results were posted online here.
more birthdays
we celebrated morris yaegashi and brent jackson's birthdays on sunday night. they're two of my roommates, for those of you who don't know them personally. in the picture you can see the four of us (morris, brent, isaac, me) on the couch over at lang and charity's house - the locus of most of our celebrations, birthdays or otherwise.
the picture was taken just as i was trying to explain what it is i like most about these two guys. the whole discussion was charity's idea, and though, i think those kinds statements can be awkward, i really enjoyed it. i think its important to take time to recognize what it is you love about your friends, and let them know. its seems we go far too long without letting each other know these things, especially roommates, with whom you spend most of your free time. they can be painfully unaware of how important they are to you, and of all the assumed and unspoken feelings and thoughts you have about them.
September 23, 2003
weekend update
there are few things in life more pleasant than walking into the office and finding a fresh, unopened, five-pound bag of your favorite kind of coffee sitting on the counter. especially when you left the day before knowing that all the coffee was gone and you were going to be grumpy all the next morning if somehow the situation wasn't rectified in the few hours between leaving work and returning. ahh, the pleasures of working at coptix...
well, the weekend went well - though not quite as expected. cornerstone's congregational meeting went very well, though in true opc fashion we spent way too long talking about way too few issues. i think the agenda list had about 40 items on it, and we must have covered all of about 4. but, they were an important 4, and more than anything else, they gave me a better feel about where the church is, and where its going. its exciting for me to see more and more young people getting involved. geez, i sound old. "young people" being poeple 30ish and under (like me), not 16 and under. those types still aren't involved. oh wait - there aren't any.
but climbing, unfortunately did not happen - at least not for me. ari made it, but i think tim spent the weekend "in the books" as my high-school girlfriend used to say. oh, and i bought some running shoes. i started running after chris wildeman's wedding weekend (hmm... i wonder why) and told myself that if i could keep it up for a month, i could buy some shoes. so i did.
September 19, 2003
weekend
another hectic weekend coming up... we're making slow progress on the house. the floors are sanded, stained, and polyurethaned, which means that we've been able to "move in" finally. we had our first house-dinner last night and made plans for chores and other such domestic duties. i'm afraid isaac is losing steam in the drive to finish the bits and pieces (baseboard, crown molding, etc.) that are left on the house - but i can't exactly blame him. he's really busted his tail this month to get that place livable.
cornerstone's annual congregational meeting is tonight at 7:30. from all i can tell, this is a pretty important meeting for the future direction and goals of the church. so much so that i'm actually a bit anxious about the whole thing. on saturday, if all goes well, i'll be climbing with ari, jake, and joanna in the morning and running errands all afternoon.
strangers
"...The pictures are intimate at the same time they remain mysterious. The bottom line is that every photograph finally makes a stranger of its subject."
that's the closing sentence from a recent new york times review of the latest photography exhibition at the international center for photography. the exhibit is entitled "Strangers" and reflects "the recent revival of urban street photography," according the ICP website. the idea is to somehow blur the line between photojournalism and "fine-art" photography, a distinction i've always had a difficult time making myself. i've often thought that front page photos from the new york times could easily be framed and hung as fine-art. and if art really is about some sort of communication, how better to express that than unstaged, inherently engimatic, journalistic photography?
the review also raises the question of "what can we ever know of somebody just from a picture." the reviewer insightfully notes the way that photographs, by their nature, make strangers out of everyone. capturing a moment of someone's life, without relational context, and often without physical context, has a dehumanizing effect on them. this is why fasion photography is often so effective. fashion photographers cultivate a sense of desire, of envy, in the viewer by presenting a situation so far removed from any sense of personal reality, that one can't help but desire it.
but i have to say that on another level, i strongly disagree with this idea about photography. not that photography can't be alienating, but rather how much a photograph can communicate about a person. that is, how well we can actually understand someone, particularly their feelings at that exact moment, by examining their body language, their facial expressions, and more than anything else, their eyes. i was just reviewing some photographs i took this summer at a wedding and was astounded at the volumes communicated in a glance, a gesture, a laugh. i felt i knew these people better after looking through these photographs than i would have after a 10 minute conversation with any one them. perhaps the old adage, "the eyes are the windows of the soul," is more than just an old adage.
September 12, 2003
going to 11
Marty: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel: These go to eleven.
okay, this is getting a bit ridiculous. it's incredible to me how far this little bit of trivia from the christopher guest mockumentary, this is spinal tap, has travelled. first it was the hipster handbook, whose "top-10" lists go up to 11 and now even merriam-webster is getting in on the comedic action (cached here, if they happen to change the homepage).
my roommates and i joke sometimes about how one day all these catch phrases we throw around are going to lose their connection with some actual event or piece of media, at least in our minds. then they'll be like the phrases that our parents use whose source no one can remember.
(thanks to 50cups for the heads up)
the man in white
"I mean, I've read books like Unbearable Lightness of Being and Love in the Time of Cholera. And I think I've understood them. They're about girls, right? Just kidding. But I have to say...my all-time favorite book is Johnny Cash's autobiography "Cash" by Johnny Cash." Rob Gordon, High Fidelity
johnny cash, the man in black, passed away last night and i suppose it shouldn't really come as a surprise. i remember thinking, when june carter cash died in may, that johnny wouldn't be far behind. well, here's to the man in black whom i hope to see one day dressed all in white. godspeed...
September 11, 2003
googlized
wow. i'm the first "andy montgomery" to show up in a google search for my name. now, why i'm going around looking myself up in google i can't really say, but i also discovered that josiahQ is also at the top (obviously) as are mesh, gosey, and probably a few others. we're taking over...
September 08, 2003
bagpipes and birthdays
there are many of you out there, probably mostly parents of covenant students, who have long wished to be subscribed to the covenant college newspaper, the bagpipe. well, now you can find it online, and thanks to JosiahQ, thousands of articles from the past few years have been uploaded. the blog-style format, with the ability to comment, should add an interesting element to the parochial paper.
also, for those of you who know my brother jesse, his 29th (i think) birthday was on sunday, sept. 7th. if you'd like to drop him a line, i'm sure he'd be happy to hear from old friends - j.montgomery AT clairvoyancecorp.com.
September 05, 2003
wildeman wedding
after great frustration and repeated attempts to get these images uploaded to snapfish.com, they're finally ready to go. if you'd like to see all the color and black and white photos taken at chris and megan (neely) wildeman's wedding you can log into my account on snapfish (login:rubbishcan@hotmail.com, password:password). you just might find one of yourself.
be warned though, there are alot of images, and they don't always load very quickly. i'm working on setting up a new way of posting images over at j38.net. beck set me up with my own account which you can check out.
September 02, 2003
sand rock
one of my favorite outdoorsy things to do, though i don't get to do it very often, is rock climbing. over the holiday weekend i went with my brother (tim) and sister-in-law (ari) and their friends jacob and joanna to sand rock, alabama. from my limited experience of climbing, this is some of the best rock in the southeast. a lot of easy climbs (good for the occasional climber like me) but also a few longer more difficult climbs (good for ego-busting). there are a bunch of pictures over at snapfish.com. you can log in with my generic information if you don't want to signup for your own account (login: rubbishcan@hotmail.com, password: password). the image quality isn't great, but its a quick and easy way to get alot of photos online. hopefully i'll have something similar on my own site fairly soon.