Jade Heart

Am I writing? Am I painting? Am I watching a film? Am I laughing with friends?
No.
I'm beading.

Some of us become true hippies late.

The Home-Office...

The 'home-office' (studio/bedroom/meditation space), as is, without any tidying up! Yes, that's a thick plastic sheet on the desk for the painting that's not happening, and another one under the layers of dog blankets. See, I am like a "little ol' Italian lady in that way - with my plastic-covered furniture'! I buy it at Honest Ed's for $3./yard, what a great price - anyone'd go crazy with the stuff! Great for painters and pets. Hey, not tooo much knicker-knacker clitter-clatter on the desk; it could be cleaned up in minutes for a painting space, now couldn't it? :::Grins::: How about your workspace?

'Collision' of Dance and Disability

Beautiful, powerful, affirming, and, wow, can these folks dance!

A video of dance & disability, a mind-heart opening for the viewer who may be stunned to see the (im)/PERFECT body in ecstatic motion like this, yet we love the courage, energy, expansion of self, and feel, ourselves, joyful in our participatory watching...of an energetic release into what is a sophisticated aesthetics of dance and an accompanying joy.

'Collision' of Dance and Disability

Source: video.nytimes.com

A New York City dance company called Gimp turns a prevailing notion of physical handicaps on its head. Then comes a leap, a pirouette, a lift....

______
(NYTimes doesn't give an option to share with Blogger, but I wanted an image of the video, so copied and pasted it. While the image seems to be an active link, please note that the titles are definitely active links, or click here.)

Tiled Discus Thrower

For days I have been trying to upload an image to tile like this on my home page at Twitter, but Twitter is hesitant, no, downright resistant.

Actually, there are currently issues with uploading background images and their technical department is 'working on it.'

Being impatient, I made a tiled image of my little discus thrower to see what it would look like!

(click on image for larger size)

Chinese zither:GuZheng 風雨 /古箏獨奏： 毛ㄚ

If you have 8 1/2 minutes, this is an amazing GuZheng, or Chinese zither, performance. Such musicianship!

This woman, who plays the GuZheng, and whose name I am not sure of, the Chinese is impossible for me, is a true virtuoso. A pure artist: a "living angel." Her performance is a dance, sensitive, powerful, and above all, graceful, with the Chinese zither, what an instrument, who is like her lover. A lover who sings to her. I've watched it over & over, transfixed.

direct url: here.

A day later, after reading the comments at YouTube I discover her name is 毛ㄚ Maoya, that she was born in Beijing in 1979, and that her latest album was issued 6 years ago in China. The piece that she plays was for a competition and is actually not Chinese, but Japanese (why I probably like it so much). As one commenter said, "Just found out that this is actually a Japanese piece that was written by a Japanese Master. Which was not meant to be played on a Chinese guzheng but rather a Japanese one. 毛ㄚtook it to another level and proved the master wrong and inspired us once again that nothing is impossible. Not only her dedication to this instrument but the way she carried herself while playing is truly masterful. Too bad she's not a performer but a music researcher. A true one-of-a-kind treasure."

'Frozen View Count' issue at You Tube

I do not make any money from my videos at YouTube, I am just an artist sharing my work. I recently posted this at a community board at YouTube:

I am wondering, since it's only one of my videos that has a view count frozen at 201, if it's because after I uploaded the video I sent links to all my friends through my private email (rather than YouTube's service since some people had complained about their addresses used for spam by YouTube).

If I sent a link to that video, which is a small 'dance/art film' piece of work to 50 people in Toronto, where I live, and they all dropped by to view it, would that appear as spammers?

Which they most definitely are not.

I spent some time writing and editing the comment in the editorial, and I've posted that video quite a few places and hence have started the viewer on it myself a number of times each time I go in to grab the code.

Meaning, is either of these two possibilities- a number of views in a short time span in one location, the city I live in, or personally going in to the site and starting the viewer each time -why that particular video's view counts has been inexplicably 'frozen'?

Or have I been targeted by actual spammers, and YouTube just hasn't informed me that my work has been hit by that kind of attack?

I'd personally like more information on what is going on with the frozen view count - re: telling us exactly what it is that's caused the lock down.

Thanks!

Brenda

Oh, the video in question is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Fgg1mx2sA&feature=channel_page

Can anyone at YouTube tell me exactly what the infringement on thisparticular video is? What exactly has caused the frozen view counts?

_____
Also, I earlier posted this query:

Besides the view count issue that I'm currently having with YouTube, and that hasn't been addressed, or even acknowledged, I am wondering why this site is able to post one of my videos when I have DIS-enabled embedding? Why is YouTube allowing this?

http://video.baamboo.com/watch/1/video/nOlfVVwa5BE/phim-video-clip-On-Butoh-based-Dance-A-Saturday-morning-amble-Brenda-.html

I am not happy with YouTube presently.

Problems. No response. Equals Unhappy YouTuber!

Addendum: YouTube suddenly released the view count on my video today, March 19th, 4 days later, without any explanation.

Addendum 2: YouTube froze the view count at 307 views on the same video, White, for 4 days about mid-April, and then resumed without explanation.

Why is YouTube picking on this small video?

Bruce Branit - World Builder (high quality)

A strange man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves. This is a short by filmmaker Bruce Branit known also as the co-creator of 405.

Filming took one day, and post-production two years. A Michelangelo of our times? As creative as painting, writing, composing... the artist is using digital tools, creating worlds, merveilleux!

An architect's dream!

___
Direct link: World Builder.


Update March 13th:

Awww, this is so sweet! This video has been viewed over half a million times, and he has time to send out these tiny batches of thank-you's...an amazing guy, clearly.

bbranit has sent you a message:

World Builder Thanks

To:[about 20 people, including me]

Thank you for your support and your kind comments. Really an overwhelming and amazing response. Now I am speechless. It's been a real pleasure to see everyone embrace this movie. The feedback has been tremendous!

If you are on Facebook please stop by and become an official fan of the short. I hope to be able to expand upon the story of the builder and his love in a larger feature film as many of you have asked about. Everyone here and their response may help make that happen. So check out....

http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Builder/73936485659

...I hope to have some updates and inside info on there every now and then.

Bruce Branit

Celestial DancerIII

Terry Snow - Healing Music (6:13min)

There have been many difficulties in my life in the past few years that sometimes I forget to stop and breath. I was transfixed by this gentle piano solo this morning.

Terry Snow writes: "A contemplative piano piece, written at a time of needing balm and comfort. The music refers briefly to the rhythm of a funeral march in the central section before returning to the "healing" theme. The piece gains warmth from being written virtually all on the piano's black keys, in the key of C sharp major.."

Direct link to Terry Snow's piano solo. "Terry Snow is a New Zealander who enjoys composing for classical music ensembles such as string orchestra, piano trio, string quartet etc."

Sweet the pleasure of your friendship

Recently I had a birthday (on March 7th) and received many birthday wishes and so I composed this little video of thanks to accompany my thanks to each person...

Photographs from my collection: flower mandala on the sidewalk in the late Summer outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival, 2008; images from Lumiere, Trout Lake, Vancouver, 2004; photo of me taken by Oswald Phills on March 2, 2008 at Sublime Cafe in Kensington Market.

Snippet of music from the group, BEMS, album "Panspermia," track, 'Forme Troppo Perfette.' A group found on Jamendo with the Creative Commons License: give credit to the artist; distribute all derivative works under the same license.

____
Direct link to this video at YouTube: Sweet the pleasure of your friendship...

White, a Butoh-inspired dance by Brenda Clews

A poetry in motion. I played with negatives. It reminds me of ice and snow, of liberation from constraint. Of imaging between being and non-being. Of the mother. Of the sorrow of the mother earth. Of disappearing into and emerging from. Of the continuous cacophony of the dance of life. Of the disjointed, an awkward grace. The film loses some of its quality in the uploaded video: the semi-opague layers appear more like faded images than the transparencies they are. Yet you let go of the white leaf and let it float out to the sea. I wanted to add a poem, and perhaps that's next. The flowers are from photographs I took last year of mandalas of fresh flowers in the street outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival. The increasing presence of the flowers behind the screen of the dance is a reminder of what is ever-present, profundita natura, the profundity of nature at its most beautiful, fragile, transitory, in the flower. I leave you with a screen of flowers, like a prayer.


Hi beautiful friends, Sharing 'White, a Butoh-inspired dance.'.. film clip from late last Summer, and then all last night editing (editing video I'm discovering is like that:-) ...layering... images, sounds, yet not wanting to disturb the vulnerability, perhaps strangeness, of this 'silent film'... Butoh can express the painful and beautiful paradoxes of life in an intimacy that is almost unbearable to watch, I don't know if this film has that, but it's in the intent.

Feedback is always wonderful as I stumble down the path of this art form.

If 'White' opens something out in you, even in resistance, or in a sense of discomfort, then that is the Butoh influence, and then I'll know your reaction is like mine. For I don't know who that woman is, something else takes hold, another energy flows through.

Many thanks for taking the time to look at this. Many thanks for the blessing you are in my life,

hugs, Brenda xo


direct link to the video at YouTube: White, a Butoh-inspired dance.

Erica's 'Dance Our Way Home'

The theme was Amaterasu, Japanese goddess of the sun, a retreat to and emergence from our caves. In the slivers of mirrors we saw ourselves and we enjoyed our shining. We mirrored each others' beauty. Did we become luminous beings by the end of the day of the dance of the shining?

Our sun-wings spread like sun beams caressing the air and we flew as angels of light, I am sure of it.

Everyone's skin was fragile, luminous. Didn't matter what age we were, or size, or what life has carved on us.

Did our eyes shine delicately lit radiating out to illumine the world?

I saw the women's eyes shining; I saw them enlightening the world with their woman-wisdom, their wily smiles, their open-flowered red hearts. I saw their curvaceous dances, their plunging depths, the way they flung themselves into ecstatic states from which they would never emerge, never, if life was composed of the harmonious flowing energies of the dancefloor.

The unwinding from the tight to the relaxed was like approaching an apex and once you reach it you fly. With your feet, your hands, your twirling torso, your wildly swinging hips.

We flaunt it. Our tulle and taffeta and silk and microfibre; pinks and greens and purples and blacks; yogic symbols and alpine wild flowers. Hot breath; luminous, damp and streaming.

In the dance we are embedded in the broad sweeping swaths of sun as she revolves around the planet illumining the world as she goes, spreading rays of wisdom like falling petals of light from the crown of the thousand-petaled lotus that she wears.

We are. In our quiet ways. Or exhibitionist. Or wildly celebrating. Deep. Rich in our sorrow. Visions. Glimmering. Sparkling. Bedazzled. Radiant. Luscious.

Dancing at Erica's Dance Our Way Home (DOWH) is very sweet.




Many thanks...





Beautiful Erica Ross leading a prayer for peace at a DOWH session.


A video created during a short post-DOWH dance at Summer Solstice where my voiceover was this poem:

Oz's Photo

Oz's photo of me yesterday. Oswald Phills is a powerful djembe drummer who I know from Tam Tam along with his beautiful partner, Eve. He used to send out a great newsletter, Drumcultures, on the drumming scene in Toronto as well as life around Kensington Market, where they live, and I think he might resurrect that project in the future as a website. I knew he also was a painter but did not know about his film-making abilities, which I've been discovering on Facebook. Yesterday, at Sublime Cafe in Kensington, Oz filmed a short film he wrote with Ordo and I acting in it. I love the script, Oz's filmic consciousness is very much the 'art film.' He's a brilliant guy, all in all.

Starfire in the Night

A little painting, still wet, that I quickly painted
to accompany the poem...
(posted with the 'accented edges' photoshop filter)

sliding around the world
through many crowds
Mumbai, New York, Rio
like an image from a billboard
flat like film
a projection of light
these burning neurons
their shadow prism shifts

no separation

a market in Madrid
harsh sleet of Himalaya
blade of grass in the prairies

I could be dying

or in a spacesuit on the moon

no separation between me
and the world,
which is my dreaming paradise

nothing was lost

release the inner hold
there is no tight control
write by cell-light

dark hours of running
on this side of living
in the bright world
of the lion's mouth

flying into outer space

where the universe
contains such combustion

stars burn for billions of years
keeping galaxies alive

I searched for you
and found you
everywhere

if you could set all your dissolves
to a fifth of a second
the mathematical regularity
would be bliss

Was a stomach bug, I assume. Not "the stomach flu" (because not accompanied by the usual 'either-or-both-ends' accompaniments) but something that sets into your belly and aches worse than childbirth. I was only 5 hours in labour with my first baby, and a 3 scant hours with my second. This was worse. The gut ache was unrelenting and grumbled in sometime in the wee hours of Friday morning (sort of 2am-ish), peaked on Saturday accompanied by a mild fever, which dropped by Sunday though the gut felt like oozing palpitating ingots of rusted iron. I groaned through the Academy Awards, dang (how often have I watched enough of the nominated movies to make watching the show worth-while?) Today it's mostly gone, and good riddance to ya! Class tonight was thankfully fine - though I didn't eat all day 'just in case,' and munched on some peanuts and a cereal bar in class because I was starving. I don't wish it on anyone!

Running a mild fever, an excruciatingly sore spot in my belly - on my left, lower down, not sure what it could be. Probably they're unrelated: one the flu; the other too much of a work-out last Tuesday doing an abdominals yoga set with my son and then walking a brisk 10km two days later. So Advil and drag myself out to walk the dog in the blizzardy evening, and then rest with a heating pad and perhaps Seven Years in Tibet tonight.

A gadget-type

Speed test of my Internet provider, Bell. I think it looks good, but I'm not a techie! The site says it's faster than 81% of connections. Now what this means I'm not sure...

I admit I'm a freeware/open source gadget-type (who leaves thank-you notes for the developers). Recently downloaded Camouflage, a terrific little utility that 'hides' the icons on your desktop for instant de-clutter! And I just found a great little application, a Timer Utility for the Mac. Then I opened Audacity (another free program - I've not yet gotten the hang of how to do these little things in Apple's Garage Band, not like Apple's old Sound Studio, which was easy to use), grabbed some Tibetan Bells music, cut a small clip out, fiddled with it a bit (increased volume, a few mini cuts), saved it as an .mp3, and viola! I have the perfect "alarm" of delicately ringing Tibetan Bells for when I'm finished a yoga mediation! It's so beautiful!

Fragments towards a meditation on the body...

A recording that's bobbing back on the SoundClick charts, unexpectedly, momentarily.



If the embedded player doesn't appear (it's mysteriously absent on RSS feeds), click on these links to listen: DSL or Cable;
Dial-up.

"Mujeres," by Juan Gelman

A bello compliment I found on the Internet. Juan Gelman is a well-known Argentinian poet.

Igooh | Letras

betzalel | 18/09/2008 |

"Debía tener unas 12397 mujeres en su mujer"

"Mujeres", un hermoso poema de Juan Gelman, recitado en su voz.

Tags: juan gelman, mujeres, mujer, poema, poesía, audio, brenda clews

"Mujeres en verano". (Brenda Clews)

Mujeres



decir que esa mujer era dos mujeres es decir poquito
debía tener unas 12397 mujeres en su mujer
era difícil saber con quién trataba uno
en ese pueblo de mujeres
ejemplo:

yacíamos en un lecho de amor
ella era un alba de algas fosforescentes
cuando la fui a abrazar
se convirtió en singapur llena de perros que aullaban
recuerdo
cuando se apareció envuelta en rosas de agadir
parecía una constelación en la tierra
parecía que la cruz del sur había bajado a la tierra
esa mujer brillaba como la luna de su voz derecha

como el sol que se ponía en su voz
en las rosas estaban escritos todos los nombres de esa mujer menos uno
y cuando se dio vuelta
su nuca era el plan económico
tenía miles de cifras y la balanza de muertes favorables a la dictadura militar
nunca sabía uno adónde iba a parar esa mujer
yo estaba ligeramente desconcertado
una noche le golpeé el hombro para ver con quién era
y vi en sus ojos desiertos un camello

a veces
esa mujer era la banda municipal de mi pueblo
tocaba dulces valses hasta que el trombón empezaba a desafinar
y los demás desafinaban con él
esa mujer tenía la memoria desafinada

usté podía amarla hasta el delirio
hacerle crecer días del sexo tembloroso
hacerla volar como pajarito de sábana
al día siguiente se despertaba hablando de malevich

la memoria le andaba como un reloj con rabia
a las tres de la tarde se acordaba del mulo
que le pateó la infancia una noche del ser
ellaba mucho esa mujer y era una banda municipal

yo
compañeros
una noche como ésta que
nos empapan los rostros que a lo mejor morimos
monté en el camellito que esperaba en sus ojos
y me fui de las costas tibias de esa mujer

callado como un niño bajo los gordos buitres
que me comen de todo
menos el pensamiento
de cuando ella se unía como un ramo
de dulzura y lo tiraba en la tarde

Visitar la galería de cuadros de Brenda Clews en Flickr

"Debía tener unas 12397 mujeres en su mujer" fue publicada por betzalel el 18/09/2008 a las 11.28 en Letras.
Ha sido marcada con los tags juan gelman, mujeres, mujer, poema, poesía, audio, brenda clews
y recibido 0 comentarios.

Link to the original page.

Why do we write? Or create?

Why do we write? Or create? For moi, it's over-ripeness... and for you?

Click here, if the embedded video doesn't appear.

Figurative No.1

for my son

It may or may not be finished, but feels as if it is. I'll call it a figurative abstract.

(click to enlarge)

First Wash of a new painting...

This drawing sat on my desk, it's 55mm x 74mm, 300lb archive watercolour paper, on that piece of plywood, under tissue paper, since last Summer. Many things have rested on it, papers, purses, gloves, hat, scarf, sweaters, until I cleaned it all up a week ago. Yesterday afternoon I threw water all over it, which ran everywhere, on the floor, all over my class notes (requiring a 'drying out' on a towel in the living room) but never mind that, and started rubbing paint in.

The painting wasn't too bad, really it wasn't. But for no reason that I can think of I found a Waterman fountain pen that still had ink in it (oh, rue the day for pens with ink when you shouldn't!) and inked in the figures, after they'd had their first wash of paint. I only looked at the lines, was comforted in the process of outlining and ignored the whole painting in my act.

What a mess! Why'd I do that? Inking by rote, rather than with a sensitivity to the image?

Now I have to try to clean up- the inked lines far too dark and insensitive. Because I drew them after the first wash of colour, the colour doesn't adhere to them, nor did they bleed into that first wash as would normally happen (since I used to ink first, then paint).

Oooh, la!

Is this why it sat like an accuser on my desk for over 6 months saying, paint, paint, when I would choose the 'by rote' path rather than the 'in the moment' shifting and changing as light and colour asked, and be forced to confront my own predilections, my own habitual patterns, all the immovable grids in my perception?

Arghhhh.........

Playing with an Animoto slideshow...

Does it work, or not? Doesn't matter. Just playing. Animoto mades a video out of whatever photos you upload, and adds whatever music (in this case an .mp3 of a poetry recording I did some years ago) to it. It's a 30 second freebie. The slideshow video is here (if there's any problem with the embedded one below). The poem, Whorls of Angels, of which there is a snippet, can be found here. Hope this posts alright!

Happy Cupid's Day!

´ ¸.♥¨) ¸.♥*¨)
(¸.♥´ (¸.♥´ .? *¨* ¯¨*´¸
`*.¸.*´* .• *¨* ´¸ .`¯¨*•´
¨*• *´HAPPY CUPID DAY!!!!!¸
¨*• .*¨¸ ¤.¸ ´•.¸ * ´¤.¸ ¸.
.¸.*´¤ ¨.*• ¤.¸
¨* *.¸.*´*¸ .• *¨* ´¸ .`¯¨*•´
¨*• .´ *¸ .• •**”˜˜”*°•. ˜”*°•♥•°*”˜ .•°*”˜˜”*°•.
♥-:¦:-•*'''''*•-:¦:-•:*♥*:

-•:*'''''*:•-:¦:♥
(¯`v´¯) (¯`v´¯)
*`•.¸(¯`v´¯)¸
★ º ♥ `•.¸.•´ ♥ º♥.•*¨`*•♥.•´*.¸.•´♥


(gotta thank Carmen Colmenarez for an extraordinary explosion of happy punctuations!)

DVE Course trailer assignment

Looks innocent. Yet this little 2 minute 'trailer' for my Digital Video Editing course took, well, an all-nighter and then some. First I spent many hours cutting it up into tiny 'best shots' sub-clips, 35 in all. Then I took some still photos of backgrounds to try. Then I started to put it all together. I think I got into bed at 6am for about 2 hours. And it wasn't finished.

In class last Monday, where we got an extension of 2 weeks, whew, I realized that what I was doing was a 'mini' version of the story, and that's not what's required in the 'trailer' assignment.

So, begin again... (or finish this and begin again)

Final Cut Pro (in class) and Express (what I work in at home) is drag and drop, and ooh la! I think trying to line up a snippet of a scene with the layers I like to work with and with dissolves in and out would take minutes rather than an hour if it were all done with a time line, with numbers. But I am told once I get used to the drag & drop interface that I'll find it very easy to work with. I haven't crossed that threshold yet, still being stuck somewhere on the learning curve like Sisyphus.

Music in the Morning

coral breakers in the sky this morning,
waves of luminous red

Jamendo blog, playlist: Valentines 2009 (quite listenable, enjoyable, especially since it's a list put together by someone else, just sit back)

The Octaves

Melt into the edge of the room. Eyes shut; no-one can see me. Slide along walls, over chairs, until the table. Where I was going, I realize. Varnished wood, thick, old, probably Walnut. Carved in a carpenter's studio, perhaps. Legs spun on spindles. I imagine the tree who was stripped for the table, sawed into planks. Centuries old, sap running through limbs, leaves drinking rain and sun, rooted in earth. I hug the table, in the dark of my closed eyes. My chest to the tabletop, beating, then turning over, until my back lies flat. Reaching forward and down, from the safety of the wood, fingers groping air, the unknown. I cannot touch floor. It is the end of the world, the emptiness of the universe, nothingness. Only the wood holds me here.

The octaves. I am a child on a swing, flung out past the boundaries. My long-silenced throat clears, a tiny AUM. Louder. A simple scale, up and down.

I hope the others in the room, for we all move with our eyes shut, dancing our internal dramas, aren't irritated by my sudden child-like joy, the octaves.

I release the table, roll on the floor, light laugh,
humming.

Graceful and majestic, lyric and epic, intimate and panoramic. Very beautiful.

Ai!R, Waxworks.

Comment I left: This music uplifts and takes me to places I haven't been before. It mirrors my experience. Gentle and majestic. The intimate and the massive vision of the panorama. Very Russian! Heaven in a grain of sand, or eternity in a wildflower [Blake]. You can feel your own pulse in Ai!R's music, and the expansion and contraction, the heartbeat of the galaxies. In this flowing jungle of orchestral electronic ambient alternative music. Beauty. Longing. Gracious love. Strong bonds of the heart, warmth.

Highly recommended! Kudos! You honour us, Ai!R, with your music! Thank you....

(I posted a link to this site last month, but it had only two tracks then, the entire album has since been added.)

Flying Earth

Authentic Movement workshop this evening with Gennie, amazing expressive witnessing releasing deep painful joyful wisdom powerful.

Gennie was wonderful, witnessing, giving us her responses, the woman is a seer, a poet, she is. We got into some pretty deep stuff, some of us. Yeah - I sorta was rumbling by the last set! Authentic Movement is a beautiful process. I'm always amazed at how deep everyone can go with it.

It felt strange, for me, who is so private, to cry before others, and yet I did, and I was grateful for the 'river of life,' healing, survival, continuance, profoundly so for love, loving, and then out to torrential rains, wet-through by the time I reached home, and a fresh umbrella and a 2km dog walk, she in her leaking red nylon dogcoat, my boots leaking near the end when we came to the park, both of us waterlogged, the rivers pouring from the sky...

Post the little pastel I did after the middle set, which I won't get into, but, ahh. Well. I literally had to force myself to go to the workshop, held in my area, so close by, I've been cloistered and very withdrawn of late as I come to terms with everything that's happened.

The nearly four hours we spent together, the small group gathered, the facilitator, her perceptions, compassionate, non-judgmental, helped.

Horizon After Horizon of Singing Bowls - link to flickr slideshow

Horizon After Horizon of Singing Bowls

Bowl After Singing Bowl of Horizons, a prose poem of my life in sections, part scrapbook, part travelogue, an immigrant poem of the always arriving with its tracings of memories of the singing bowls of horizons traversed, maps a journey across continents...and is embedded in the following nineteen photomontages. The full poem is appended here.





flickr seems to do a better job of posting a slideshow of photos, it's just got limitations (of 200 photos max) on its free service that Yahoo introduced when it took over the company (flickr originally created by a small Vancouver company of 5 people, one of whom I met at a blogging conference there & talked with for about an hour). Picasa, while a great service with far more 'free' space (1GB), seems to muddle the appended text, in this case poems, by removing the formatting, whereas flickr leaves it in. And the flickr slideshow is definitely better- just image, sized to your screen, no finding what to click to render the text invisible and that you should only see if you want to look at the images individually.

I've added a link to the flickr slideshow of this autobiographical photopoem to my blogger sidebar.