The Studio Q Show - May 22, 2021 - Special Guest Dr. Sheldon Solomon

I hope this finds you well and healthy. I just got word that Sheldon Solomon will be my guest this Saturday on my show. This is very special because, for several years now, I’ve been a little preoccupied with Ernest Becker and his book, “The Denial of Death” (1973).

The book deals with our knowledge of our mortality (that we are going to die). It clearly defines what the theories are based on and makes a solid case for the truth of the theories.

Sheldon and his cohorts, came along some 10 years later and decided to put Becker’s theories to the test - will they stand up to the rigorous lab and field tests? Yes, they do. This is what Sheldon and his team lay out very clearly in his book. “The Worm at the Core - On the Role of Death in Life”.

Join me Saturday, May 22, 2021, at 1000 MST on my YouTube channel or on Stream Yard. Sheldon will discuss his studies on death anxiety and terror management theory (TMT) as it relates to artists.

Our Backyard This Morning...

Good morning! Stunning light and content!!

Looking West-Southwest from our kitchen.

Looking West from our kitchen.

Looking West-Northwest from our kitchen.

Colorado Red Fox

We’ve been battling a bit of weather up here - a little cold and snowy, on and off. I think after today, we’ll be back in the Spring has sprung mode!

We’re still working on the greenhouse! I like the design, but it is pure hell trying to put it together. We’ve assembled and disassembled the rear gable three or four times now. The tolerances are tight on all of it!

Jeanne and I were chilling out at the kitchen counter yesterday and she said, “Look! What is that?” I said, “That’s a red fox!” I didn’t grab my phone right away, we watched her for a few minutes. She actually caught some kind of rodent and then attempted to bury it on our dirt hump. She didn’t get it buried. She eventually ran up the meadow into the rock outcropping where I think she had some pups.

Greenhouse Foundation - April 2021

We are meeting our monthly goals for our projects. The greenhouse is a big one for us. This year will be an experimental year for growing. Our seed bank is big and we’re ready to experiment to see what will grow well at 8,500 feet (2.600 meters) and a lot of UV light!

Our greenhouse is facing directly south. There will be a massive amount of light every day from May to September. And it will be close enough to the house to make it convenient to walk to and haul food from! We have a composting bin (large) near it too. Our plan is to use all of our kitchen scraps and any “composting” type of waste in the bin. We already have about 500 cubic feet of organic living soil (OLS) that I started in 2017. That will be the basis of our composting bin. This will be split into two areas. One “composting” and one “composted” for use.

Our greenhouse arrives this week from Climapod. We’re excited! We have the pad, foundation, vapor barrier, and stone in place. Today, we will add concrete to the floor (edges) for rigidity and stability. We don’t have really extreme weather up here, but it can get windy at times and there is snow in the winter! This design and construction will be more than enough to withstand whatever the Rockies want to throw at it.

The 9’ x 21’ (2,7 x 6,4 meters) Passion Climapod Greenhouse.

Our goal next month is to start on the 20’ x 30’ Studio/Darkroom building. We are looking forward to having everything completed in June. The greenhouse, the Studio/Darkroom building, and the forge/shop. We’ll be tired, broke, and happy. Let’s see if we can do it!

Our Little Book About Our House...

Greetings!

We hope you are all safe, healthy, and happy. We are. We’re so fortunate to be up here in the “sky”, alone with nature. The value can’t be calculated. Spring is arriving here. We saw a big herd of elk yesterday. God! They are amazing animals! We’ve seen some Abert Squirrels too! Anyway, back to the house, book and photos….

Jeanne and I decided to take some snapshots around the place and put together this little (8” x 8”) photo book of some of our work in 2020. We made this little book for Jeanne’s mother and my father. They’re not on the computer and can’t do what you’re doing right now. So, it’s for them but wanted to share with the rest of the family and friends (for those interested).

These are just some of the pictures in the book - Quinn just snapped them with his phone.

Barcelona, Spain - 12 Years Ago!

Pretenses of Civilization

George Bernard Shaw once wrote that “when the angel of death sounds his trumpet the pretenses of civilization are blown from men’s heads into the mud like hats in a gust of wind.”

Homomortalis

“Homomortalis” The eternal man.

Ernest Becker - 1924 - 1973

Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker asserted in his 1973 book The Denial of Death that humans, as intelligent animals, are able to grasp the inevitability of death. They, therefore, spend their lives building and believing in cultural elements that illustrate how to make themselves stand out as individuals and give their lives significance and meaning. Death creates an anxiety in humans; it strikes at unexpected and random moments, and its nature is essentially unknowable, causing people to spend most of their time and energy to explain, forestall, and avoid it.

Have you ever wondered why human beings can’t stop killing each other? Why is there war? Why is there genocide? Those are the most violent acts of death denial (death anxiety quelled). If your beliefs are challenged or threatened, you will lash out or attack those that are threatening your system of beliefs that are keeping the death anxiety at bay. There are many other ways this anxiety manifests itself; wealth, material stuff, physical fitness, sports, heroes, etc. Most of us have what Becker calls immortality projects. Work we do so that some part of us lives on after we die. Please take a few minutes and watch Dr. Sheldon Solomon’s video at the bottom of this page. He explains Terror Management Theory very well.

I’ve contemplated what I’ve spent over 30 years doing, photographing marginalized communities and ideas, and never really understanding WHY I was doing that. Does that ring true for you? Graduate school provided a method for me to connect the dots about who I am and my work. However, that did not answer the bigger question for humanity. Why do we have marginalized communities and ideas?

Have you ever considered what meaning or purpose your life has? Of course, you have. We all have had those moments of self-reflection, or as Socrates would say, “self-examination”. Did you find any answers? I bet you had a difficult time finding good reasons for your existence. And I’m sure this topic rarely comes up in conversations that you have on a day-to-day basis. I feel confident that I have some answers, or maybe a better way to say it is that I’ve found some very powerful theories that have explanatory power.

That’s what I’m most interested in - exploring and trying to answer the question(s) of human behavior and belief. Why do we do the things we do? And, moreover, what can we do (if anything) to control or mitigate the bad stuff.

We have an epistemic crisis going on right now in the world. People are so influenced by social media and the press, they cannot, or refuse to, think critically. Most have no clue about what they believe or why, they only repeat tropes as they hear them. Confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, cognitive dissidence, all in full effect today; look around.

Dr. Sheldon Solomon sums it up like this, “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else. It’s a mainspring of human activity: activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death; to overcome it by denying, in some way, that it is our final destiny.”

How do you deal with your impending death?

Our New Place Is Coming Along: Update March 4, 2021

Greetings and Salutations!

We’ve been staying occupied (more preoccupied) with getting our place ready for the spring and summer. We moved in on January 18, 2021 (MLK Day). We’ve had a few snowstorms and a lot of beautiful sunny days. We hit 57F (14C) the other day (March 3, 2021). We have a weather station (Tempest - Mohawk Station) on our property now. It records every detail of the weather, every minute, and writes to my Google Docs spreadsheet. It’s fun to geek out on it.

What’s next? This month (March), our greenhouse is going up. If you look at the outbuilding pad photo, you’ll see to the right is a pad for the greenhouse. It’s a 9’ x 21’ ClimaPod. We plan to run our first crops this year. It will be our “trial” yeat to see what grows up here and what doesn’t.

Our “outbuilding pad” that will have our 9’ x 21’ Greenhouse and a 20’ x 30’ studio and darkroom for photography.

My studio/darkroom will be going up soon. I've just finalized the plans. It will be 600 sq. feet (20x30) and will have a north light studio at 8,500 feet (2.600 meters) and a darkroom. There will also be a small space to "lounge" in. The UV up here is insane. I'm not sure if there is a "higher" (elevation) wet collodion north light studio, but this space will give me great light and short exposures!
This is exciting! I hope I can make this happen like I did the house. This has been a long journey, I've learned a lot, but I just want to be working in my shop, studio, and darkroom as soon as possible! Looks like it's going to be a great year for my wet collodion project!!

The Studio Q Show LIVE! January 23, 2021

Join Quinn for another discussion on the wet collodion photographic process.

This week Quinn will finish the section in the Alfred Brother's book on making positives. He'll also discuss "boiling your silver bath" - is it safe or not? And the regular recommended reading, and "shout outs".

Stream Yard: https://streamyard.com/tabmz7hi5p

YouTube: https://youtu.be/ieSjYUq-Ce8

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