Confrontation and contemplation!

It’s been a confrontational day. Dumb stuff, like getting in to it with an old boomer at the grocery story who was throwing me quite a bit of shade over a question regarding the availability of one of my favorite sodas, to a more serious altercation in the park. I’ll get to all of that in a bit. For the time being, I have to start this post off by saying that despite these things, I did manage to have a productive day. I was able to send the @eos.detroit Proxy Prospectus files out the door just before I went to sleep last night. English, Chinese and Korean translations. I did make time to edit tonight as well.

Usually I do a post that centered around the shoot and photos I’m sharing. Lately, my days have been scattered in several directions, so they’re becoming more of a day to day freewrite/journal. That’s okay with me, actually. My time on Hive and the years of blogging I’ve done are meant more to chronicle my life and experiences on a blockchain. I want to reread these one day when I have the time, and remember it all as it happened. This photo isn’t part of a set, but one I was able to finish tonight. Heidi Heart. A beautiful Kiwi living in Australia. We shot this at the water’s edge in Melbourne. There is a whole set with Heidi coming, but for now, this is a preview.

Gardening is going well. We finally got the rain that was promised for the entire Memorial Day weekend. I want to soil to mix and hydrate so I can finally plant our vegetables that’ve been growing patiently under a full spectrum bulb since April. So much money and so much work. Four new raised beds were $500, and I’m in for another $650 with 30 bags of soil and compost. New wheelbarrow and fencing coming this week. My brother, @customnature said, “You know how many vegetables you could have bought with that much money?”, but of course, that’s not the point.

The drone situation and the aforementioned altercation. So, yeah. Another cop has murdered an unarmed, handcuffed black man in Minneapolis. I love my city but it’s shameful history and culture of police brutality is shameful and disgusting. My friend @boxcar and I met up in the park. He’s going through some stress of the state of the world, and as an ally to communities of color, like myself, this news was weighing heavy on both of us. I asked him if he wanted to fly the drone and he seemed genuinely excited. Right after this photo was shot, things got tense.

A homeless black man approached us, screaming that he was going to fuck us up and “…shoot that fucking thing out of the sky.”. Over the last 20 years, I’ve been a death match wrestler and worked 7 years in a psychiatric hospital outside of Philadelphia, so I’m pretty hardened when it comes to face to face ordeals. He called me a cop, maybe because I wear pins on my jacket. Not sure if he was dealing with some mental health issues, but that racial tension and stress of civil unrest was on full display. Really, my only thought was that if this turned in to a brawl and the cops were called, it’d turn in to a much more dangerous situation for him, given our cities track record. Fortunately, he walked back and we left.

This drone opens so many new possibilities for me as a photography. I’ve mentioned it here on Hive as a creative renaissance for me, but, at a price. As capable as it is as a tool, it is a magnet for confrontation. Today, it was a big angry dude in a park, and over the weekend, a pissed off Karen on a nature trail. I’m confident I’m not doing anything illegal, and I have to remind myself of that from time to time, but it’s a reality that I’ll have to accept if I’m flying/shooting anywhere near another human being. Those are my thoughts for the day. Thanks for reading.