One announcement

There is one thing worth reporting: I've joined up with the amibitious folks over at Utata.org. I should be doing some writing on photography for the still-primordial site (which I'll cross-post to Mr. Wright).

The site itself is a project spearheaded by Catherine Jamieson, a Flickr contact of mine who, I found out later, has been variously acknowledged as one of the best photobloggers on the Web. I watched from a distance as she assembled a crack team of hardcore Flickrites and was about to launch this group photoblog devoted to online photo publishing. When I saw one columnist position remained open, I threw my name toward the hat at the last second and made it in just before the door closed and this whole thing took off. The site will serve as a companion to a book Catherine has been commissioned to write on the subject of online photo publishing. I believe our most recent state goal for the site was world domination, but being a useful resource for all sorts of photo buffs would probably suffice.

But what the hell is an Utata? I just looked this up myself. Catherine says:

Once, many years ago, I wrote a story in which one race of long-lived people performed a ritual whereby they recorded their life stories in a strip of intricate tattooed symbols that ran down the sides of their bodies. In fact, they did not die until the tattoos, or utatas, reached the soles of their feet and their stories were complete.

There you go, and that's that. I'll let you know as this progresses.