Marcos's Cocuy photos on PDN's Photo of the Day

Marcos's work in the Cocuy is featured on PDN's Photo of the Day. Take a look.

El Cocuy in the Times

On the Ritak U'Wa Blanco. photo: Marcos Roda

I report from El Cocuy National Park in this week's travel section.

Above the Clouds in a Secret Colombia

AS crampons crunched ice, our guide, Rubará, raised his traditional woven sisal-thread handbag by his face and asked me to snap a photo. We were climbing above 17,000 feet, just shy of the summit of the Ritacuba Blanco, a glaciated peak shaped like a soft-serve ice cream cone, at El Cocuy National Park in Colombia. Aquamarine-hued icicles hung from the maw of a crevasse and, far below, clouds blanketed the Orinoco Basin.

The landscape stretched across dozens of ice-capped peaks and deep cirque valleys. Moraine lakes, formed by the natural erosion from glaciers’ unhurried flow and retreat, shimmered in mineral hues. Nearly 30 miles away, we could just make out the telltale church spire of the town of Soatá. Save for a photographer friend and one other guide on the ice field, no other people were in view. The February day was bright. I’d finally caught my breath.

Read on here. And please check out Dennis Drenner's excellent photos in the slide show as well.


More photos, from Marcos Roda and myself, with the voice of Miguel Herrera; 2:08 in all:


Thanks to mucholoquito for creative commons use of his music, off Jamendo.
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Park Street Remembered

Window views, Park Street, June, 2009

Some ideas about home, explored in this video of the house where I grew up, in Charlottesville. A rough cut; low res; just playing around. Photos mine, from June, 2009.

Or, pay a visit of your own:

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ktbnik

I've taken on a pro bono role over at Killing the Buddha, as contributing editor [whom, as Patrick Symmes once pointed out to me, neither contributes nor edits]. I'll be trying to bring audio and multimedia to the site, even though in the area I complete the three "unders-": under-qualified, under-achieving and under-paid. I'm hoping to convince this capable ITP grad to share some expertise. At any rate, stay tuned over there.

Saint Radovan of Karadzic; or, Jack Hitt does it again

This is the story of the Multi-Zap Zapper, "Mina Minic’s New Radiesthesia With Two Pendulums," and one of the bloodiest warlords of the late twentieth century. If you haven't already, please, please read Jack Hitt's soul-divining short epic, "Radovan Karadzic’s New-Age Adventure," in this week's NY Times Magazine.

And, when in trouble, remember this escape clause: "I am a Herzegovinian woman, and this insults my honor!"

And don't miss the slide show, either.

Believer Beware launch party

See you there...

A special invitation from
KILLING THE BUDDHA

What do you get when a Buddhist raconteur, a junior high Jewish messiah, and a transsexual cowboy for Christ walk into a bar?

Find out at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City on June 29th when Killing the Buddha, the award-winning online magazine of god for the godless, releases its new anthology, Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith.

The evening will feature an open bar, door prizes, and stories by Paul Morris of BOMB Magazine, Irina Reyn, author of What Happened to Anna K., and horse wrangler Quince Mountain.

Drawn from the website created by Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau in 2000, Believer, Beware is a collection of true confessions, skeptical testimonies, and personal revelations of religion lost, found and then lost again. Library Journal in a starred review, says Believer, Beware is "shocking, exhilarating, and never dull.... Highly recommended." Publishers Weekly describes it as "smart, candid, and insightful.... The voices are refreshingly honest."

Just the facts, ma'am...

Where: Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., New York City [Google map link]
When: Monday, June 29, 2009
Time: 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Cost: Free, with open bar

- The KtBniks
contact@killingthebuddha.com
http://www.killingthebuddha.com

Shameless self-promotion

The Brooklyn Rail hosts another Rant/Rhapsody at Freddy's this Sunday. Hope to see you there.

How we got here

Fraternity from Richard Mosse.

Here's how Mosse describes the 5 min work:

Fraternity was shot at Yale University's infamous DKE frat house in under an hour. The men were happy to participate in the project in exchange for a keg of beer. They compete against each other to shout or scream the loudest and for the longest time. When they cannot scream any longer they must stop, and cannot begin again. DKE (pronounced Deke) stands for Delta Kappa Epsilon, and counts five US presidents in its alumni, including George Bush Jr, George Bush Sr, Gerald Ford and Theodore Roosevelt. Other famous Dekes include three Justices of the US Supreme Court, one Vice President, and countless State Governors, Senators and Speakers.

For me, Mosse's images of palatial ruins in Iraq match: