Goodbye, Amiri Baraka

The real power of influence occurs when you influence people who don’t even realize that they’ve been influenced by you. They may not even know who you are. This mainly happens when your art is so deeply embedded with love and your desire to see change in the world that the message becomes detached from the author and travels on its own. From heart to heart. We felt Amiri Baraka. I wasn’t even born yet and I felt him.

—Saul Williams, writing about Amiri Baraka, who died at 79 on Jan 9, 2014.

Read more: http://www.thefader.com/2014/01/09/amiri-baraka-poet-laureate/#ixzz2q4FdkYSi

Year in Review: Google+ video edition

Happy New Year! This year was filled with many memories, and I probably took more photos this year than ever before.

Google made this movie automatically from photos I’ve uploaded to Google+ Photo Albums and added it to my Google+ photos, with a private setting. Auto awesome! Good thing I didn’t make it public, it contained photos of people who aren’t family and shouldn’t be in the video! So I edited it in Adobe Premiere and uploaded the result to YouTube, after taking out the annoying music, too.

Ideas

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Grandparents keep asking what I want for Marshall to want for Christmas (his current wants don’t really extend beyond outside no matter the temperature).

The reality is, your presence is enough. But if you must buy things that I can step on, this slideshow should generate some thoughts. Photos taken during a date-night stroll through Toys-R-Us.