330 Million (Var.)


I received a half dozen emails over the past week from various sources inviting me to think about what Independence Day, and correlatively, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, mean to me? What does the Bill of Rights mean to a progressive, feminist, environmentalist (contrasted, for example, with someone whose life passion is to prove that true freedom is the right to carry a gun)?
When was the last time you thought about the Bill of Rights? What does it mean to you? Does it have a different meaning for you as an individual and you than as part of a collective?
A friend wrote an email to me this morning that in a recent office move, the plaster ganesha he’s had on his wall broke. Not to worry, though, he had been given another one to sit on his computer. Ganesha, though sometimes hailed as the remover of obstacles, does not so much remove them as help us navigate through life so that the inevitable challenges and hurdles will feel less like insurmountable obstacles and more like opportunities to move in new directions.
It seemed almost everywhere I turned in India, I bumped into another image of Ganesha. He’s a powerful one. I did not attempt to photograph them all, and these are not all the photographs. One of them is not ganesha–sometimes an elephant is just an elephant, even in a sculpture devoted to the gods.
If you are enjoying one of these images in particular, click on it so that you get to it at the largest size and then right-click to make it your wallpaper or background. Enjoy!
Thinking about privilege, including the privilege to choose whether to take time away from the conflict and not think about it. I’m trying to be conscious of that particular privilege whenever I find myself instinctively trying to turn away and then to gather myself from the recognition of my good fortune and reengage.