Back in the summer of 2006 I set out on a project to create a body of high-resolution photography that allowed the public to use it, even alter it, without my permission.

I initially hosted this project at Wikipedia, because back then very few articles had photographs for a lack of freely-licensed imagery.  I also wholeheartedly supported what they were doing at Wikimedia and still do.   I wanted to contribute.  So I focused on what I considered the most difficult subject to illustrate: biographies.  Photos of famous people.   Not only actors and athletes, but also politicians, poets, presidents, porn stars; nobody was off limits.  Within four years I photographed over 800 people.  Very few release photos of these subjects to the public, and almost never at my resolutions.

My recent CC portraits include the Time 100, the Tribeca Film Festival and Joan Jett.

Any new work I produce–which is sporadic–is hosted at my Creative Commons Flickr Photostream.  Over on Flickr, I compiled a list of my 100 favorite portaits. Click the image below to see the ones that meant the most to me.

The FBI recently wrote the Wikimedia Foundation to demand they remove the FBI’s insignia.  The WMF and the Internet collectively laughed:

On the blog BoingBoing, Rob Beschizza writes that this is a no-win situation for the FBI.

“The part that’s hard to understand is why the FBI would seek to abuse the law in such petulant fashion,” he writes, “knowing that it will be subject to public ridicule for its actions.”

The magazine Vanity Fair posted the FBI’s seal on its website in a symbol of jest. And, as the blog Geekosystem says, an editor on the site aggregator Reddit jokes that maybe the FBI got Wikipedia confused with WikiLeaks — the site that’s been causing a stir lately over leaked war documents.

Cindy Cohn, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the New York Times, which first reported this story, that she found the whole ordeal to be “silly” and “troubling.” [CNN]

This reminds me of how the Bush Administration sent a similar letter to the satirical news organization The Onion over use of the Presidential Seal.  From the October 25, 2005 New York Times:

The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush’s weekly radio address on its Web site, where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia.

“It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site,” Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton’s office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)

Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal “is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement.” Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception. [....]

“It is inconceivable that anyone would think that, by using the seal, The Onion intends to ‘convey… sponsorship or approval’ by the president,” wrote Rochelle H. Klaskin, the paper’s lawyer, who went on to note that a headline in the current issue made the point: “Bush to Appoint Someone to Be in Charge of Country.”

It’s hard to understand how these sorts of letters to widely-followed media outlets like Wikipedia and The Onion do anything other than make the agencies targets of ridicule.

Besides, both the FBI insignia and the Presidential seal are widely reproduced all over the Internet.

I photographed for Wikipedia the awesomely huge anti-Proposition 8 demonstration organized by Andy Towle and Michelangelo Signorile back in 2008.  One of my favorite photographs from the protest was this one.

Is gay the new black?  I was approached by Looking Glass Magazine to write an article about that and the  relationship between the ‘black community’ and the ‘gay community’.

I had a lot of complicated thoughts about the topic, and I tried to lay them out simply.  It’s a difficult onion to peel. Below is the press release for the ‘Gonzo Anthropology’ magazine’s summer Black Issue:

_______________________________________

New York (PRWEB) July 9, 2010 — Looking Glass Magazine, since 2007, the quarterly “Gonzo Anthropology” journal launches its Black Issue this summer along with new online features. The new issue provocatively features Blacks vs. Gays: What’s the Real Problem? on the cover. The article, by David Shankbone, takes an objective look into new research and asks what lies at the foundation of America’s “culture-wars.” Also included is an “anthropology of fashion” report detailing the history of the black dandy, an original comic book art and fiction from N. Steven Harris, and a featured exclusive interview with poet Amiri Baraka. (Veteran sound engineer Arya Sundar produced the video, which appears on the website.)

“It’s not an attempt at controversy, we are just doing what we always do,” said editor in chief Michael Merriam. “We are getting to the bottom of something in our culture.”

Merriam is no stranger to controversy. Last year, he crossed swords with HBO’s publicity department over an interview in which Bored to Death writer Jonathan Ames was tied to a chair and interrogated by dominatrix JoYin Shih as a feature for the magazine. HBO refused to allow Looking Glass to print photographs of the event.

Merriam denies that there was any real conflict. “They didn’t want us to use photos, so we didn’t, but we didn’t compromise the text at all. Ames had a great time, Yin had a great time, we ran a terrific interview. That’s all.”

Merriam created Looking Glass in 2007 as a pet-project as he worked on various magazines (he’s a former editor in chief of Time Out Istanbul). Looking Glass spiraled into its print and digital form in 2008 following a New Yorker Talk of the Town profile of Merriam’s work in digital publishing and the launch of a fashion magazine for the iPhone.

Looking Glass Magazine was initially conceived to contain twelve sections. “We wanted to laser in – find ultra-niche counter-cultural content,” says Merriam. Though the traditional model of print magazine publishing is rapidly changing, Merriam contends there are no plans to abandon the print edition. “On the contrary, we are always expanding it. Jay Kristopher Huddy creates an extraordinary visual experience out of it, and the magazine just keeps getting more intense every quarter,” he said. “We are completely devoted to print, and we believe it’s the best way to serve our readers.”

Online, at www.lookingglassmagazine.com, two new sections appear this month: a sports section and a science fiction section. The Playing Field is edited by ESPN’s Eno Sarris, who also writes for FanGraphis, Bloomberg Sports and RotoWorld. “The tagline for this blog is ‘the anthropology of sports,’ and it’s a good way to sum this thing up,” said Sarris about the new blog’s in-depth, brainy, and sophisticated perspective on athletic culture.

The science fiction section, a blog called The Observatory, features new fiction by Blair Kroeber and by award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, as well as an exclusive interview with Samuel R. Delany. The magazine also will encourage writers to submit stories and pay them SFWA minimum or higher for original fiction.

Publisher Paul Nowak, who is also a video game designer, has his own take on Looking Glass and its journalistic mission. “We think of our readers as users and culture hackers.

Issues of LGM are like cultural strategy guides. It makes sense. Video games use context to heighten the sense of importance around certain objects–that’s what we do for our advertisers.”

The print edition can be purchased throughout the United States at the $4.99 price point, and will be available at San Diego Comic Con. Archives can be viewed at www.lookingglassmagazine.com

Allow me to share a bit of a thrill, because a couple of blogs that I follow–Wonkette and Towleroad–recently used my photos.  It’s cool to see blogs I read using my stuff.

The writing and comments on Wonkette helped me to stop taking my own politics so seriously, and that was incredibly welcome – thanks Wonkette!

Here’s my photo with their Chuck Schumer story from Josh Fruhlinger’s post (click to read):

Okay, the comments below about the Chuck “Moobs” Schumer photo were predictable, hysterical and I say in good humor to my senator: serves you right.

I was at the end of the 2007 New York Gay Pride Parade taking photos for Wikipedia articles (like the woman who illustrates “Dyke” – that woman died of cancer, and her friends wrote me to say how proud she was to be an encyclopedic example).

Senator Schumer finished the parade and I asked him if I could take a quick shot, and he ignored me.  He was just standing there waiting for his car (I overheard).  I asked again and he gave me a look of annoyance, and then started talking to one of his assistants.

Then I snapped this photo.

He flashed a look like You just don’t give up and turned away toward another aide, so I didn’t take another.  I was dejected.  Since I wanted to make my senator a part of my Creative Commons art project, this is what I had.  Maybe he was tired; maybe he was sick of people after New York’s gay pride; maybe he thought I was paparazzi; who knows.

It’s not the worst photo, but…there’s moobs.

Fast forward three years, and–lol–he should have been nicer to a constituent!  From the Wonkette comments:

and there’s more…click here.

Another favorite blog of mine, Towleroad, used my protest photo from the Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives premiere (also licensed Creative Commons).

I’ve photographed Andy Towle a couple of times, once on Fire Island and then at the massive anti-Proposition 8 rally he co-organized at Lincoln Center (both shots are on his Wikipedia article).  That protest also produced this cool shot of Whoopi Goldberg on “The View’s” article as well as the “Sexuality in Star Trek” article.

Interesting thing about the shots from Trannies - I was one of the only press photographers who went over to snap the protesters.  There were tons of press there, though.

Click the image below to read the story:

Click here to see all 2010 Tribeca Film Festival Creative Commons images hosted at Flickr.

Keep up with my Tribeca posts on Twitter.

This website receives an average of 800 to 1,000 article reads a day.  On days when I have a particularly interesting story, such as the Stefan de Rothschild Huffington Post hoax, it jumps to near 10,000 hits; whereas during periods of inactivity and neglect, it plummets to around 250.

Where does the traffic come from?  The answer is: not Wikipedia.

From the lead photo on Madonna’s article to that on the Dead Sea, my photography illustrates over 4,000 subjects on the English Wikipedia alone (far higher if you count all global Wikimedia projects).  On each of those photos are links back to this website.

And while Wikipedia is one of the 10 most-visited websites in the world, the reality is that it provides very little traffic to here.

I’ve run this blog since 2008 and I’ve long known that Wikipedia’s ability to drive traffic is relatively limited, at least when it comes to the author links on imagery.  In fact, the Google Analytics for my website tell me that Wikipedia is responsible for only 7% of all my traffic, despite having some very high profile photographs on the site.

As an illustration, yesterday, February 14, my photograph of Salman Rushdie was featured on the main page of the English Wikipedia for their “On this day…” factoid box:

1989 – A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie (pictured) for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous.

Wikipedia’s home page is one of the most viewed Internet pages in the history of the Internet; yesterday it received 4.4M hits.  Placement on this page immediately brings a wealth of visitors to the subject articles presented. Whereas Salman Rushdie’s Wikipedia biography typically receives 2.5K hits on an average day, Rushdie’s biography yesterday skyrocketed six times that number to 16.3K hits.

What about my portrait of Rushdie that also made its way on to this highly visible piece of web property? The photo on the article is hit–as in a person clicks on the image itself to make it larger–an average of 25 times a day on English Wikipedia. On February 14, the cropped version on Wikipedia’s home page caused that number to jump to 7,000.

How many of those 7,000 hits then went to explore the author of the photograph’s website?  Two (2).

The lesson is that if, like me, you are an artist who cares more about having his work seen, there are few better public places than Wikipedia as long as you are willing to be loose with the copyright.  But if you are reading Chris Silver Smith’s blog post about the “powerful” effect of traffic to your website via Wikipedia photography, I can attest that I have seen very little of such an effect.

In contrast, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic writing two short blog posts–Stefan de Rothschild and Susan Sarandon doesn’t know what Wikipedia is–brought tens of thousands of hits.  Sullivan drives more traffic than Wikipedia.

A guy that the Huffington Post claims is part of the famed Rothschild family is actually an impostor.

Apparently, all it takes to blog there is to claim a pedigree and build a bunch of fake websites with Moonfruit: check out HuffPo’s “Stefan de Rothschild“.

All of the websites used to bolster his credibility were created by the same guy, and all are hosted by the do-it-yourself Moonfruit:

rothschildarts.org=146.101.249.107
rothschild-estates.com=146.101.249.107
rothschildglobalfoundation.org=146.101.249.107
www.moonfruit.com=146.101.249.107

None of those organizations actually exist (try Googling them with quotes).

Who is the guy who created them?  He used to go by Stefan Roberts, who has a website at stefanroberts.com.  If you look at the photo and layout, it’s the same as stefanderothschild.com

The Huffington Post was contacted by members of the Wikipedia Review, who caught on when Wikipedia was continually deleting the fake biographies of both Stefan Roberts and Stefan de Rothschild, and also Stefan’s fake father “Andrew de Rothschild” (here’s that discussion – worth a read).  However, HuffPo still has him up.

So much for the future of journalism – HuffPo is helping this scam artist, who appears to be soliciting donations through them:

Here is their (still live as of publication) biography of “Baron Stefan de Rothschild”:

Pretty comical; even by his own admission Stefan was born in 1992, which makes the claim he is a “leading voice” about anything pretty ridiculous.  Anyone who has only read a magazine article about the Rothschilds knows 1) they wouldn’t put a teenager in charge of so many businesses; and 2) they are far more private than this kid, who practically begs people to e-mail him.  Here’s the other HuffPo profile of Stefan Roberts, who has written a non-existent book:

I can’t wait to read his book on how to be liberal on some issues, and conservative on others.  Even though that describes the majority of voters, we’d all like to learn how to do it properly.

Pretty much everything about this guy is fake – but hey, now you have Huffington Post helping it (even Wikipedia didn’t fall for this).

Check out Stefan Roberts fake biography when he wanted to be known as His Excellency Lord Stefan Roberts of Jersey.

If you go to StefandeRothschild.com, you come across this opening shot:

Now here’s Stefan Roberts, same outfit, just slightly different pose:

It’s my understanding that the Rothschilds (the real ones) have been alerted.

So to those victims in Haiti that “Rothschild Estates” claims it is giving $2.5M and that the Washington Post reported about?  Don’t expect to see it.  Here’s Stefan lecturing Huffington Post readers from his column “Since When Was There a Minimum Donation Amount?” (with 130 comments):

The Huffington Post’s coverage of the corporate world’s reaction to the terrible earthquake in Haiti last week has prompted a ludicrous and frankly reprehensible reaction from HuffPost readers – many of whom seem to think that businesses should have some kind of minimum donation amount.

I am on the board of a company which donated $2.5 million to the relief effort, and I am very pleased that we have made such a commitment. We donate over $50 million to charitable causes around the world every year. But these are planned and executed after months of extensive research and assessment to ensure that the money will get into the right hands.

Arianna is not going to like this one bit (now will somebody please tell her).

Update 2/1-A:  The editors of Wikipedia contacted the Rothschild Foundation, which responded:

The Rothschild Foundation replied “Thanks for your message – it has been passed it [sic] on to the relevant authorities.” It will be interesting now to see if Stefan’s fake sites suddenly disappear. JohnCD (talk) 10:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

But he’s still up at Huffington Post!

Update 2/1-B:  Baron de Scamchild is being revealed, and everyone wonders how HuffPo *still* has his blogs up:

• Felix Salmon @Reuters
• Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish
• Gawker/Valleywag: How a Layabout Used the Huffington Post to Become a Rothschild

Update 2/1-C:  Around 5:30 pm EST Huffington Post *finally* removes the “Stefan de Rothschild” and Stefan Roberts blogs; it only took all the blogging above to get them to do it.  Let’s face it: their brand is hurt.  Here’s the message on the now deleted blogs:

Editor’s Note: On February 1st, it came to our attention that this blogger had misrepresented himself and was blogging under a false identity, part of an elaborate online hoax. As a result, his work will no longer be published on HuffPost, and his previous pieces have been removed.

Update 2/1-D: Stefan took down his fake websites sometime around 7:30 p.m EST, but since he has been doing this since 2005 and his StefanRoberts.com website is still up, I imagine this ethically-challenged young man will scam again.  Seek help, Stefan.  Maybe it runs in the family: apparently dad Andrew Roberts  (“Andrew de Rotshchild”) had a fake investment group called Roberts Investments Group (see that whole mess here).

My Creative Commons photography for Wikimedia is one of the most personally rewarding things that I have done in my life, and I knew that it would be a continuous gift when I gave it all away.  Here’s one example.

Time Out New York was my main magazine–almost my bible–to learn about free events going on in NYC with notable people where I could go photograph them. One of Time Out’s graphic artists, Rob Kelly, turned one of these photos into art for the magazine for an interview with Mariah Carey.

I chanced upon the photograph because I have a subscription to TONY, and what a thrill it was to recognize an excellent derivative of my own work in a magazine that was indispensable to the project that created that very image.

I was flipping through Wikipedia when I hit the article Writings of D.M. Murdock. It stuck out.  It’s an odd title, and there is no Wikipedia article about D.M. Murdock herself.  Murdock, under her pen name Acharya S, had a biography for years; however, she has been at the heart of a controversy fundamental to Western civilization: was Jesus real?  If any topic can bring detractors, it’s the very suggestion of it.

According to her site, she has a degree in Classics from Franklin and Marshall College and attended the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Murdock/Acharya has to date written five scholarly books that argue Jesus Christ is a myth, beginning with The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. Subsequent books delve further into explaining how the story of Christ was recycled from other mythologies, and they address criticism about her or her research, which she stands by.

From Writings of D.M. Murdock:

Acharya describes the New Testament as a work of mythic fiction within a historical setting. The story of Christ, she maintains, is a retelling of various pagan myths, representing “astrotheology,” or the story of the Sun and also incorporates the science of archaeoastronomy. She asserts the pagans understood the stories to be myths, but Christians obliterated evidence to the contrary by destroying and controlling literature when they attained control of the Roman Empire, which led to widespread illiteracy in the ancient world, ensuring the mythical nature of Christ’s story was hidden.

She argues that the canonical gospels represent a middle to late 2nd-century CE creation utilizing Old Testament “prophetic” scriptures as a blueprint, in combination with a collage of other, older Pagan and Jewish concepts, and that Christianity was thereby fabricated in order to compete with the other popular religions of the time.

Murdock continues to write a column as Freethought Examiner.  Below are five questions for her.

Five Questions: Different people, same questions

Q. What is one thing you think every American should know?

A. Every American should know that they are protected by the greatest Constitution the world has so far created and that their freedoms must not be taken for granted but must be fought for. As American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was reputed to say, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

Q. If you had the option to have been born another nationality than your current one, which nationality would you choose?

A. I have a big soft spot for ancient Greece, and I would have loved to have been active in the creation of the classical Greek civilization. It would have been amazing to be in ancient Egypt as well. As concerns modern countries, New Zealand would be lovely, I imagine. Everyone loves New Zealanders. I rather like India as well. There are many fascinating cultures and places on planet Earth.

Q. What is one misconception people have about you?

A. Many people think I am an atheist or anti-religious. I do not label myself either an atheist or a theist, and I have a tremendous appreciation for religion, so long as its meaning and origins are understood. Unfortunately, very few people are truly aware of the roots of religious ideology, so what we see manifested is often the pathology of religion, and that is all I am really criticizing. The rest of my work is designed to show the great beauty of human culture dating back thousands of years.

Q. Is there anyone’s death, either in your life or in popular culture, whose passing you were surprised by how profoundly it affected you?

A. The profundity of how my mother’s death affected me was not surprising. The most surprising sense of loss, probably, was over the death of Princess Diana. Although I liked what I knew about her before her death, I was under the false impression that she was somewhat shallow and superficial. It occurred to me after she was killed just how deep and caring a human being she was. Diana was extremely innocent and trusting; yet, she was also incredibly powerful and had been born into a world-changing role. Amazing woman, really. Her death was the end of the glamour age for royalty. I hoped that the massive globally mourning would have pulled people together, but it seems not at all. I hate to think that her life and death were for nothing. Ditto with my mom and every individual who has contributed light and love to planet Earth.

Q. In life we often have goals that we feel as if would just die if we don’t reach them. Sometimes we reach them, sometimes we don’t. The question is, have you ever worked to fulfill a goal, only to find that once you achieved it, the experience was a let down? It meant something to you when you did not have it. Then you obtained it and, after the initial excitement, you thought to yourself, “Is that all there is?” Have you ever had an experience like that?

A. LOL! Of course, I have had many disappointments in life. It’s an ongoing thing. We try not to be negative, so instead we set high hopes and positive wishes; yet, the reality frequently shortchanges our desired outcome. That’s how life is. Thus, in order to keep that zest for life alive, we must look to smaller pleasures for a sense of excitement and accomplishment, while relishing that occasional grand achievement we may be fortunate to attain.

Every year as winter approaches, I notice a change in my dog Little Man’s personality. At eight pounds, he is a small guy in a big city and he has known nothing else but this city his whole life. That is, except for travels to my sister’s in New Jersey and our month out in Colorado, New York City to him is nature.

Yet every November to December he begins his winter depression.

Little Man is known in some Wikipedia circles. He has accompanied me on the New York City Wikimedia picnics, and he also illustrates a few articles. You can see him playing fetch on the campus of Colorado College on the article about fetching; he is being cradled by Ingrid Newkirk, the President of PETA, on her wiki biography; overlooking the city skyline on the roof of my apartment with fat activist/Big Beautiful Woman Kira Nerusskaya (photo, right, from a Wikinews interview); on a platform waiting for a train on a subway station article; on the Chihuahua page he is illustrating the aggression for which the breed is stereotyped (the story behind the shot is here); and on animal communication he is demonstrating the desire to protect a bone.

He used to illustrate evolution and selective genetics in this photo of him (and his friend Paco) next to a couple of Great Danes; although the image no longer illustrates artificial selection in English, it still does in Portuguese.

He appeared on the People’s Court in defense of a dog rescue.  Two elderly neighbors have keys to my apartment so that they can take him for company when I’m at work during the day.  He is not yippy, but a brawny little bruiser with swagger and lots of heart.  He is much loved in my neck of the woods.  I last blogged about him when he was in a rivalry with my sister’s dog Riley in Colorado.

At eight pounds, he loves heat almost to an extreme.  No matter how piping hot the fresh-from-the-dryer laundry is, he burrows into it like a mole.  If the radiator is wheezing, he sits on the shelf over it.  Summer makes him happy, but fall makes him…confused.

He sits inside the apartment at the window, and the sun through the pane makes him think it is so warm outside, just like in July.  So he begs and begs and begs.  He becomes restless if I don’t take him out.  I relent, knowing the moment he steps outside the brisk front door of the building, his ears will go down and he’ll immediately sit to show he won’t move until we turn around.

We go through a month of this before it sinks in: no more sunshine and squirrels to chase through the leafy grass.  It’s winter, and it’s cold.

In December, Little Man falls into discontent.  He no longer yearns to go outside, but he stirs.  He doesn’t know what he wants but he knows he is bored in the apartment.  Playing with me only takes an hour.  He wants to see what is happening on the block!  He wants to patrol.  Yet, not in this weather.

So as the snow falls, so does Little Man, staring from his shelf at the window that sits atop the steam radiator warming his stomach through the wood.  Wondering, when will it be comfortable to search for the squirrels through the leaves?

Until that time arrives again–if it arrives again, he frets–he cloisters in caves of blankets.

Andrew Dalby, historian, librarian and the author of The World and Wikipedia (read review here) takes time out of his day to answer five questions…

(post continues below)

Q. What is one thing you think every American should know?

A. Who am I, a mere Englishman, to prescribe what every American should know? Never mind. This will work for Britons as well as Americans. “1. Keep your head down and push.” But push gently. “2. Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too fucking much.” (John Wayne’s advice to Michael Caine.) Britons and Americans may possibly make a contribution to keeping humanity alive, but we’ll need to keep our heads down, push gently, and not say too much.

Q. If you had the option to have been born another nationality than your current one, which nationality would you choose?

A. I’ve never thought about that one. I don’t feel that nationality matters much to me. Greek, perhaps. I like the way Greeks talk — endlessly, seriously, fiercely. I like the way they eat and entertain.

Q. What is one misconception people have about you?

A. When I was employed (I worked as a librarian) my employers used to believe they knew what I thought. One or two of them used to tell me what I thought. They never got it right; they never even got near.

Q. Is there anyone’s death, either in your life or in popular culture, whose passing you were surprised by how profoundly it affected you?

A. My father. It’s an obvious thing to say. But before I left home to go to university I seemed to spend all my time arguing with him. After that, I don’t believe we quarrelled even once; but after that, as it happened, I never lived at home for very long. It was obvious that the arguing had been a waste of our time, but there were never enough opportunities to share life and talk sensibly.

Q. In life we often have goals that we feel as if would just die if we don’t reach them. Sometimes we reach them, sometimes we don’t. The question is, have you ever worked to fulfill a goal, only to find that once you achieved it, the experience was a let down? It meant something to you when you did not have it. Then you obtained it and, after the initial excitement, you thought to yourself, “Is that all there is?” Have you ever had an experience like that?

A. That’s a difficult one. Plenty of unachieved goals, naturally. And goals not yet achieved — e.g. books still waiting to be written. But you’re asking about goals that, once achieved, didn’t seem so good …

Ah, well, there was that episode two years ago when we decided to make wine. We put a lot of time and effort into it. We did make wine, within the dictionary meaning of the word: it started out as grape juice, it fermented, the sugar turned to alcohol, it was just about possible to drink it. “Is that all there is?” is exactly what we said to ourselves.

FIVE QUESTIONS – A SERIES

• Jeff Kreisler – award-winning comedian, author and sardonic scourge of Wall Street…I have five questions for you.
• Gerald Posner – Bane of Kennedy conspiracy theorists, white shoe lawyer, Chief Investigative Reporter for The Daily Beast…I have five questions for you.
• Bebe Buell – Artist, musician, scenester and lover; mother of Liv Tyler; embodiment of a rock era…I have five questions for you.
• Evan Wolfson – founder of the modern gay marriage movement…I have five questions for you.
• Jimmy Wales – Citizen of the world, sage to millions of editors of Wikipedia, which he founded…I have five questions for you.
• Billy Name – Famous Warhol live-in photographer; silverized the Factory; shot the cover of the Velvet Underground’s eponymous album; iconic portraits of Lou Reed and Edie Sedgwick…I have five questions for you.