More Pictures from the Greater Saint Louis Renaissance Faire

I am posting some more photographs from the Greater Saint Louis Renaissance Faire in Wentzville. These pictures are not necessarily all that unique from the ones I posted last weekend, but I am uploading them nontheless. I am really trying to get the hang of my wife's new camera (though recently it seems equally mine). This time I tried using the telephoto lens and I learned how to put it into 'action' mode where I can snap many photographs in rapid sequence. I was a little dissapointed that none of my new shots of the "Limey Birds" turned out that good, probably since a lot of them were back-lit the entire time. This weekend I took my nephew Charlie and my son John and they sure seemed to have a good time. The 'Limey Girls' picked my son out of the audience to flirt with which made it a little bit of special fun. I gave a few people my card so they could find these pictures online. I will be happy to send them any of the photographs at full resolution if they are particularily fond of them. I hope you enjoy the photographs. If you click on any of them it will show a larger image.

I took numerous photographs of one of the aerial angels. This week her sister was out of town and she performed alone (or with members from the audience). This is a truly lovely girl and I think the photographs turned out great. She wasn't backlit, in fact the background was a bunch of lovely flowers and really set the images off well.

Finally, before I just let the pictures speak for themselves I have a completely tangential comment I want to make.

I want to talk about the magnification effect of the Internet. This has come up recently with a series of exchanges between various 'bloggers' on the internet. Now, I have been having discussions using online message forums for over 25 years. Yep, for a quarter of a century I have been arguing with people online and enjoying it. Some of these discussions have even reached a certain amount of notoriety and have been reposted over the years. However, in general, these discussions just fall out of the bit stream and affect relatively few people.

I created this web log about four years ago when my friend Suzan Dodd passed away. I started this blog in her memory; mostly to post photographs and document the trivia in my life. From time to time I have posted personal rants on life, the Universe, and everything.

Over the past year, and especially in the past few months, I have written quite a bit on the topic of Freemasonry. In doing so, somehow, I started getting hyperlinked to various other web logs that are devoted pretty much exclusively to this topic. I have observed a curious phenomenon in which 'discussions' go back and forth as blog articles along with their subsequent follow up comments. I find this a most curious form of communication because, instead of being buried in the thread of some obscure message forum, it gets elevated to a much more prominent position on the Internet; often showing up when the casual browser does an internet search. Since Google owns Blogger, heavily hyperlinked blog postings move quickly to the top of many Google searches.

At any rate, the point I wanted to make is this. There are roughly four million Freemasons in the world and about 1.7 million in the United States. However, of these four million, there are probably only a few hundred Freemason themed blogs and, of those, only about twenty to forty are very active blogs (by active I mean that they make a Freemason themed blog post at least once a week). This represents approximately 0.001% of Freemasons in the world!

I believe this creates an artificial perception of importance and influence that is out of scope with the reality of the situation. Please don't take the random ramblings of a handful of mouthy Internet Freemasons too seriously (inculding me!). The exaggerated distortion effect caused by these few vocal web mongers is not reflective of the reality of millions of Master Masons meeting casually and in harmony in their lodges around the world.

When I make a Freemason themed post I am only speaking for myself. I do not presume to speak for any other Freemason, my lodge, Grand Lodge, or any other affiliated body. My personal theology and cosmology is radically different than the average Freemason and this alone makes my point of view skewed. Likewise, when other Freemason bloggers post about negative experiences or other kinds of radical views, they too are only speaking from their own personal perspective; that 0.001% of the whole.

It is truly remarkable and amazing that a handful of bloggers can create such a huge influence on the public mind but I believe it is important to recongize that, in the grand scheme of things, these noisy few do not, and cannot, reflect the views of the prudent, temperate, and discreet Freemasons worldwide.

Ok, 'nuff said. Now off to the pretty pictures.