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The Viola Project goes public, and more …

Taking up from where we left off with Part 2 …

Try it at http://www.whitehouse.gov/taxreceipt

Emphas.is kicked off its website last month and appears to be on its way to great success.  The site accepts project proposals from visual journalists and invites “backers” to sign up to support the project of their choice for as little as $10.  This enables important photo projects to be funded that might otherwise find difficulty obtaining mainstream backing for any number of reasons.  Projects have to meet strict criteria, and are completely transparent — photographers see exactly why or why they were not funded and backers get to interact with the photographers and view progress.

One such project, undertaken by the internationally-recognized photojournalist, Tomas Van Houtryve, amassed even more than his targeted goal within a few days, drawing the support of some 127 backers. You can find more about his story on his own site, on the Emphasis.is site, on the A Photo Editor site or TVH’s Facebook page.

Today we learn that 114-year-old Walter Bruening has died in Montana. But he had a few things to say before he left.

Saturday, the small town of Mapleton, Iowa (and I mean small at 1200 population, although it seemed larger to me as a child when it was just a short drive of about ten or fifteen miles from our farm near the really tiny outpost called Castana) was hit by a tornado that leveled half of the place.  Yes, we dodged tornadoes more than once while I was growing up.  Happy to be gone from there. Perhaps my strongest memory of Mapleton, other than going there for doctor visits, was when my father bought a new 55 Chevy from Mac’s Chevrolet on Mapleton’s main street.

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