Need Mo' Sunshine

« A cute barcode sticker reads "I need mo' sunshine" on a grey day. »

November is only a few days away and summer seems like it never really came this year since it rained more often than not. The days already are dim/dark by 5pm and the disorientation of sunlight at midnight seems like a vague memory. All those endless hours of light will be replaced with darkness. The upside to the sun not rising until 9am is that even night people like me can feel like there's hope for us becoming morning people afterall, even if it is only a solar illusion. November is very aptly named the 'Dead' month as without the colour of the autumn leaves or the brightness of snow, it is the darkest and most dreadful month of the Finnish year. I'll take -25C with snow in January before any day in November with it's dark gloom.

I read recently that a group of sticker graffiti artists were nabbed in a big bust down on Iso Rooba, in particular the prolific "Let me love?" person, which was very sad news. It's difficult to defend an urban artform that so many people dislike on perfectly sensible grounds, but the sticker and stencil art is often well done and they never do what the teenage fuckheads with the cans of spraypaint do, namely write fuck in as many forms possible on any surface they come across, including beautiful Jugend buildings and stonework where it is butt ugly and difficult to remove. Sticker and stencil art is often found on downspouts, ugly metal utility boxes and other places where they aren't going to do any permanent damage. I wish the cops would bust the kids who always seem to have a spare can of paint around and not a single grain of sense.

And, some people might remember Aaron Huey who walked across America with his Leica and his dog, Cosmo. I asked two publishers where I knew a few people to consider publishing his book, both of which came back with a "not original" rejection which, in publisherese, means something like "it won't sell". Updike just published his latest in a long, long lifetime of "not original", but somehow it sells. I don't understand how a guy this talented could get the HAND while some of the photobloggers who take random pictures of their feet, dinner, window, etc. are supposedly getting book deals these days. I really hope to see American Ocean in print someday. In the interim, he has finally been featured in Smithsonian Magazine's November Issue so maybe there's hope that someone will see what I see in his pictures and publish the book.