I’m sad.
It’s the end of two eras – and what some would call, the world coming to the end. In either instance, I’m sure the world isn’t coming to an end, but hey, shave my head, put on the “Jesus Saves” placard, and we’ll ring a bell to say goodbye and welcome in the changes of the future.

First and foremost (mostly because this does affect me as it’s part of my photography hobby), I saw today that

Polaroid is no longer making instant camera film

Having grown up with a camera in my hand – one of which was the instant one where you had to shake the picture until it came out – I feel old. I remember the days of film in my horrible kodak 110 camera which we would leave in the car until the plastic case and the film melted into a glopy mess. More importantly, I remember my first polaroid instant camera and packet of film, and running around taking pictures of random kid stuff – us in the swimming pool, the craw daddies in the creek we had caught, and just whatever was fun at the time. It was great – go out, take the polaroid with us, and just snap pictures of whatever on the way. I have a drawer full of them – fading at the edges, the imbedded chemicals gradually eating away toward the center of the picture…. It was so cool – especially because you knew within a matter of minutes (of rapidly insane shaking, blowing and flipping) if you had captured the moment. From the sound of it, the cameras are now “old technology” and only fuji is still making the film….I’m betting, however, that their ‘film making’ , much like my “instant” photographs will probabally be eaten away by time soon enough.

Secondly (and more importantly -though I’m not really sad about this one), I saw that Fidel Castro has said he’s not renewing his presidency. He’s gone, resigned, out, headed to retirement. I always thought he’d be one to die in office – (ok the other one will be Queen Elizabeth of England) – but he proved me wrong. Kudos to him for that, now if only we could get him to let democracy in to Cuba instead of his brother taking the presidency…

Oh – on a side note, special thanks to MSNBC for putting up what I would call a “nice” picture of him – as opposed to the ones where he’s speaking and in the middle of a word. No matter how crazy he has driven the US government (yes, Castro is a crazy dude), this man still deserves a little respect and dignity as the announcement of his resignation is being made.