January

“Making pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.” – Marc Riboud

A new day – a new moment that tells a story. An exercise that aims to capture and celebrate daily moments that make an impression. Or in other words, a foolish fellow tries to engage with the beautiful and fleeting for at least one brief moment every day, for exactly one year.

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1/1/2012

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

1/2/2012

“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” -Nora Ephron

Newly engaged Matthew Amendt and Val Mudek share a candlelit moment.

1/3/2012

“Early to bed and early to rise – makes a man or woman miss out on the night life.” – Mark Sandman (Morphine)

A glimpse of downtown Minneapolis from a loading dock in the historic Warehouse District neighborhood.

1/4/2012

“Morning is when the wick is lit. A flame ignited, the day delighted with heat and light, we start the fight for something more than before.” ~Jeb Dickerson

The sun begins to rise over the Tangletown neighborhood of South Minneapolis.

1/5/2012

“You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner, and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imaginations. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one—well, at least one and a half.” – Winston Churchill

JB the boston terrier lives his life also by Churchill’s wisdom.

1/6/2012

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” – Susan Sontag

Departing Minneapolis for Madurai, India.

1/7/2012

“Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.” – Frank Herbert

A view of Mumbai at sunrise.

1/8/2012

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” – Edgar Allen Poe

Night has fallen at the Thirumalainayakar Mahal.

1/9/2012

“Experience, travel – these are as education in themselves.” – Euripides

Street scene in Madurai, India.

1/10/2012

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.” – Herman Melville

Grand entrance to a small Tamil Nadu temple village.

1/11/2012

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

A family in Madurai travels together.

1/12/2012

“If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.” – Romain Rolland

Madurai, India from above.

“But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.” – E. M. Forster

An elephant merges with traffic in outer Madurai.

1/14/2012

“If you nurture your mind, body, and spirit, your time will expand. You will gain a new perspective that will allow you to accomplish much more.” – Brian Koslow

Stairs leading to a temple within a cave near Madurai.

1/15/2012

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

The familiar front porch lounging but in an unfamiliar place.

1/16/2012

“In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that is, the sacred lore of priests and people… and these great stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the prescribed rules of ritual.” – William Robertson Smith

A woman is practicing the ritual of making Pongal (sweet rice pudding) for the Tamil harvest of sugar cane.

1/17/2012

“Bravery is being the only one who knows you’re afraid.” – Franklin P. Jones

A Tamil man attempts to tame a bull during Jallikatu (Taming of the Bulls) in Alankanllur, India.

1/18/2012

“Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you who you are. ~Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

A woman arranges her tomatoes for display at the Madurai produce market.

1/19/2012

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

Reflecting during a layover at Mumbai Airport.

1/20/2012

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” ~ Albert Einstein

All the bikes lined up outside of Amsterdam Centraal train stop.

1/21/2012

“There is a magic in that little world, Home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its hallowed limits.” – Robert Southey

Back home with JB, reminding me to take it easy for a minute.

1/22/2012

“This, then, is the glamour of business travel!” – Bob Webner

Work takes us to the hidden gem of Brookings, SD.

1/23/2012

“Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can.” ― Danny Kaye

Cutting through the snow blown prairie on the road home from Brookings.

1/24/2012

“We need people who think with the creative side of their brains—people who have played in a band, who have painted…it enhances symbiotic thinking capabilities, not always thinking in the same paradigm, learning how to kick-start a new idea, or how to get a job done better, less expensively.” – Annette Byrd

Time for music at a Minneapolis Montessori school.

1/25/2012

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” – Oscar Wilde

The sky over downtown Mpls – just after dawn.

1/26/2012

“Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.” – George Kneller

Collaboration in the conference room at Bolster.

1/27/2012

“Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king.” – Louis Bromfield

JB checks out a fresh loaf of Crescia al Formaggio from Jen’s forno bravo.

1/28/2012

“Compassion is the desire that moves the individual self to widen the scope of its self-concern to embrace the whole of the universal self.” – Arnold Toynbee

A group of teenagers make 2000 sandwiches for the hungry in Minneapolis.

1/29/1012

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley

The nylon six string beckons.

1/30/2012

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” – Aldous Huxley

Self portrait. Contemplating self-betterment.

1/31/2012

“My duty is to try to reach beauty. Cinema is emotion. When you laugh you cry.” – Roberto Benigni

A wheel of celluloid stands in as old-time motion picture nostalgia.