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Hello, and welcome to my web page! I started putting this together on February 27, 2001 as a way to keep up with the exploits of the Little League baseball team I coached, but ever since baseball season ended and I stopped coaching, there has been little to update. Also, since I am only beginning to get pictures to the web myself, there aren't many pictures either. However, I have added an archive of my top 10 lists (February 2002 through September 2002) and favorite recipes and blogs. I'm always looking to add more.
The latest blog project is very small, especially in comparison to why I am writing a blog. Brooke and I are spending a Saturday night in Alton, Illinois, to view my brother's Visual Refuge project, a photography and faith project that he has worked on since summer 2004. In comparison, my one night of viewing it and blogging about it is very very small.
The Visual Refuge Project
For those of you who don't know about four centuries and a billion dollars ago, my brother, Jim, a newspaper photographer and devoted Christian, embarked on a project. OK, it was more like four years instead of centuries, and maybe a million dollars instead of a billion, but he still started a project. For the first two to three years, no one except him knew what it was other than it involved traveling to a lot of places and taking a lot of pictures. Over the past year or two, the project finally came together, and tonight, my lovely wife and I (and my mom) got to see what is now the Visual Refuge project.
It is very hard to summarize what this project is, but at the highest level, it is my brother's attempts to use photographs from nature to show us the beauty of the world to provide people with a refuge from their overly busy, overly commercial lives. I knew it involved a DVD slide show, but for the past couple of years, I know he was amassing a quantity of easels and all kinds of other things, so I didn't know what else was involved. Tonight, I found out.
My lovely wife and I headed out here shortly after lunch on what was really an uneventful trip until we stopped for gas after about 3 hours. My wife got a Diet Coke about the size of a Super Big Gulp and the need to use the restroom became an issue. Now the reason I bring this up is because of the way the Visual Refuge presentation goes. The first part was in the church sanctuary:
As we're waiting for the presentation to start, there are sounds of nature playing as background sound, and nature sounds involve a lot of waterfalls and waves crashing and rain drops and "fluid" sounds. Then Jim introduces himself and the project and starts the DVD slide show (which involves lots of pictures of waterfalls, rivers, oceans, etc.). The slide show ends with some nature video clips of waterfalls and waves crashing. The pictures were beautiful, but the presentation was not necessarily for the weak of bladder.
After the DVD, we all got up and went to another room in the church (almost like going to a wedding reception after the ceremony) where Jim had numerous displays of his pictures and some of their stories:
and Angel (Jim's lovely wife) had displayed some of her artwork:
After people got a chance to view all of the pictures and their stories (and grab some snacks that were donated by some of the ladies of the church), Angel played a few of her songs for everyone:
while Jim got a moment to look on and see the results of his four years of labor and sacrifice:
And that was the show. It was quite a large production, and the years of work show. Unfortunately, the show did not materialize without significant cost, so I helped offset their costs a little bit by purchasing a few prints. Oh, I also took pictures of the event (obviously), and some of the goofballs who attended:
Finally, for those of you purchased prints and supported this project, you were not forgotten:
I know several people wondered if their show would ever make it to Indianapolis, but I didn't ask tonight. Judging by how much stuff they have to transport and how much car they have, I would say that they had enough trouble getting their show a half block from their apartment. However, if you find yourself close to where it will be showing, I would recommend going to see it. Just be sure to find the restroom before you sit down.
About Me - More than you ever wanted to know about the man behind the website.
Pictures - Vacation pictures, whenever I get them posted (there aren't any right now)
Recipes - A list of the recipes I have posted to this page.
Top Ten Archive - An archive of my Top Ten Lists. Enter at your own risk.
Blogs - An archive of my blogs.
Links - Just some links to my favorite sites.
Contact me: jwbowl@yahoo.com
