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| Earth and Water |
| At this time of 'extreme' in our planet's journey around the sun, we take a week to photographically explore the five elements, as relevant to classical thought, as they are to Hinduism and Buddhism. In Hinduism, the four states describe matter, and a fifth state describes that which is beyond physical knowledge. Similar concepts existed in ancient China and Japan. In Buddhism, the four great elements, to which another is sometimes added, are not viewed as matter, but as variations upon our sensory knowledge. Look at the world around YOU in terms of these five classical elements. Use any combination of elements, all five, or just one. Your choice. Base your response upon the area in which you live, your 'city'. In your text, of close to 100 words (in English OR your native language), tell us what this element means to you and how your image represents both the element AND the personal meaning that it has for you. |
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| Air and Spirit |
| Earth is the sustainer of life, the solid foundation. Water is the giver of life, that which quenches our thirst. Fire is the destroyer. Air is the creator. Spirit is that which is beyond our everyday knowledge. This mid-month portal theme will be held from 8pm Sunday 16th June until 8pm Friday 21st June. The variable time zone for this theme is London (UK). For your guide here is that time in other zones:
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| Fire |
12 comments:
I'll be away all that week - got some guest posts scheduled - good luck with the theme
Thanks for letting me know, Gerald. Enjoy your week away.
I usually skip mid-month themes, but I am very sorry I missed this: it was a good idea and to post a photo for each of the elements would have been great. Maybe next year...
Nice idea, something to warm to on these cold winter days.
VP - it is not over yet! It starts this coming Sunday.
Next year the MMM will be about the seven deadly sins and the five senses. I have given myself more time to design it, so there will be an over-arching narrative to the entire year for mid-month. 1st of month will stay very similar to what it currently is.
“OR your native language”?
This is moving (for me - too far...) away from Eric’s original philosophy of a shared environment with a laissez-faire approach (one of which was to specify a language that is commonly understood) and stability.
Much as I recognise and appreciate the effort put into reviving the site, the current approach comes across as too frantic (as if there are KPI targets which need to be met) with no clearly declared goals and I for one don’t care for the unilateral and arbitrary nature of decisions such as threats of sanctions, the ban of posting when off-site and the elimination of the traditional Photo of the Year on 1 January, now dismissed as being “self-indulgent”. Self indulgent? It served to remind us of how many skilled photographers we have in the group.
I now read that the first of the month “will stay very similar to what it currently is”. Why not EXACTLY the way it’s been since 2006 with a theme selected by popular vote?
I trust that this is a “polite” enough response....
As neither a hindu nor a buddhist what am I, an old-fashioned atheist and sceptic, to make of this mid-month's solstice theme?
Anoint thyself with woad and get thee hence to Stonehenge....
Where is the linky for this one? I'm having to monitor so many different spots these days to try to keep up and am finding it all rather cumbersome.
I note that both JB and BB do not want the working of CDP to change
Ali, the only site that you need monitor is the portal, which is the home of everything CDP.
I am working on the Linky for the Festival of the Solstice at the moment. It opens in about 22 hours.
I don't think either JB or BB are saying they don't want change at all but are questioning the reasoning behind some of the changes - anyway I'll be offline now for 8 days - as always I've arranged posts to continue on the blog in the old spirit of continuity. Hope you are all still here when I get back.
I'd agree with Gerald that the interpretation of my comments is unnecessarily narrow.
My experience of Change Management (I've directed and lead global projects) is that you do it either to avoid or mitigate the impact of negative externalities or to achieve positive outcomes.
I see a few of the latter, but many changes don't meet either criteria.
Again - no January Theme Day (just because it’s been decreed as being self-indulgent?), arbitrary changes (voting procedure being one), the change from "Here's a platform, feel free to use it" to "Here are the guidelines/rules, we decide what's good for you and if you voice an opinion we don't agree with, you're against change. And we reserve the right to refuse to accept and/or to remove any blog from the portal for any reason whatsoever and in that event no correspondence will be entered into", the latter being a direct quote.
And being admonished to “be polite” just rubs me up the wrong way - I can’t recall abusive or flame threads on either the current or the legacy portals that would call for such a warning
I use CDP differently to the pre-Facebook group era: I look here and vote for Theme Days, but I rarely look for newly published posts here, Theme Day being the exception - I’ve always used RSS feeds and Google Reader/Feedly for blogs that are of interest and I stumble over new ones on FB or via comments.
I use FB (and CDP is the ONLY reason I'm there..) to "Like" without negotiating Captchas or be "Liked" without the dubious added value [sic] of "I'd like to eat a strawberry right now" comments.
Again, I appreciate the work that's been done, but we might have to accept that Facebook (and other platforms) are a more user-friendly substitute for many people and we’ll have parallel universes with Venn diagram overlaps...
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