Wednesday, November 28, 2007

No smiles?



No smiles?

While dropping off digital images to be printed into photographs at Flash Photo on Vashon, a curly-haired young man showed up for a passport photo.

“OK, don’t smile,” the photographer said. “The passport agency won’t take photos that are too smiley.”

You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. What about those for whom a smile is their default, if not their umbrella?

“No, they want relaxed facial muscles,” he explained.

OK.

The mood of the country.

The new default smile.

3 comments:

Appleblossom said...

Maybe this update from United World Radio will put a smile on your face!
xxoo
AB


What's Going On at UWR This Week


by Ty Adamo, 8th Grade

Things are going well here at United World Radio but that is not to say that there are not any struggles either. The different pods are coming close to if not already finished with a draft of their intro. But some groups are still having technical troubles and trouble contacting their secondary cultivators but we are still able to get around these obstacles and get the show going.

Some of what the pods are doing is, in the health group interviewing people about AIDS prejudice to help people feel open to being able to say whether they have AIDS and not having to worry about the prejudice so people can prevent spreading it.

In the environment group they are planning on interviewing the Bilston Glen tree people (bgtp) about the issue in Scotland of the deforestation. The bgtp are camping in the forest that is to be cut down to prevent it from being cut down. They have been in the forest for 7 years now and are not showing any signs of leaving any time soon. They will soon be interviewing one of the people that are staying at the forest and will hopefully gather some great information from them to aid in our radio program.

In the personal freedoms group they are working on getting an interview with the King of Bhutan. The reason for this is that instead of measuring a country by gross national product he is measuring gross national happiness. And the King’s men are conducting the interview. We do not know if the King will be speaking or if we get a translator but will soon be in and edited.

In the slavery and servitude group they are working on issues in Peru with child labor and were hoping that they could interview Wendy Augustin but she is being rather hard to track down. One of the people in the group has had her aunt looking for her and she is a journalist and she was to busy so she had her boyfriend look for her and he also got consumed with tasks and now her grandmother is looking for her. And although they would like to be able to have this interview they may have to drop her and get a new one but they need to do so very soon because it is very late in the expedition.

In the arts and technology group they are working on interviewing a theater group in Israel that are trying to use the power of theater to ease the conflict of Palestinians and Israelites.

The education group is working on getting an interview with Hugh Evans and Tom O’Conner. They are a youth group trying to raise money to get schools and school supplies to East Timor and South Africa. The reason for this is because the civil war and poverty has torn the few schools that were there apart and also many families have an extremely hard time to even feed there children let alone send them to school.

Stephen Silha said...

Indeed!

This is exciting youth journalism.

Thanks -- :)

molarbear's posts said...

ha, ha, ha...OOOPS..I shouldn't smile, should I? or laugh? *tries to keep a serious face and wanders off*