there is a large group of pigeons who live on my street. they had a little roost in my attic before the landlord closed up the hole in the roof. i think there was a pigeon sealed in the attic; we could hear all sort of strange noises for a few days. in athens we had a family of racoons who lived in our attic. i used to sit on the front porch at night doing various things (ie drinking beer) and watch them peek their little heads over the side of the roof, making sure i wasn't a threat before they climbed into a nearby tree.

it's supposed to be fall but it's ninety something degrees out. my pinholes are so far failures, although there's not really too high a level of quality to be attained for them to be successes. talked a long time last night to a very old friend on the topic of, "now that we've graduated from college, when exactly do we figure out what the fuck we want to do with ourselves?" answer: don't hold your breath for an epiphany.

i've been in the city a month, and it's finally starting to feel a little more comfortable. more familiar, i suppose, although i still get lost every day, forgetting what streets go where, and what time the streetcar stops, and which way to turn on st. charles to get to which coffee shop, or even which way goes downtown, uptown, riverside, lakeside.

i've been offered a job teaching photography after school to kids in a restoration school. i jumped at the chance, so excited, it's been so long since photography has been part of my daily life, and then it hit me. how do i teach photography without cameras? or a darkroom?

so i spent all day yesterday building a pinhole camera. and i would test it today but tropical storm humberto is raining down on new orleans right now, so i won't be able to get a proper exposure. i still need to finish building the shutter as well. when i figure it all out, and get prints, and my new scanner (which is so unbelievably exciting) i will post images.

also, i just got paid for my political work, and i can now develop all my film from tanzania. very exciting stuff. except i think i have to drive into metarie for that, i don't know how to navigate the suburbs yet.