Just back in Atlanta from a holiday trip to Florida. I’ll resume posting shortly. Gosh, this page looks blank without any posts for the past week! Sorry.

Salon.com has a roundup on the recent hullaballoo (pay subscription or brief commercial viewing required for access) around the AP photographer who captured that brazen daylight execution of several Iraqi poll workers last week. Conservative bloggers (e.g. “Wretchard” of the Belmont Blog Club, whatever that is) have suggested AP’s complicity in these events. Perhaps, they say, the photographer knew what was going to happen. Huh? How do they jump to this conclusion. Unlike my earlier post surrounding Kevin Sites catching the apparent execution of a wounded combatant, this case could be more questionable – but the facts don’t really support this speculation. Rather than point a finger at the old leftist media, this case shows how unstable Iraq remains. Cold blooded daylight assasination in the middle of public streets – looks like we have a ways to go with this whole ‘democracy’ thing over there.

The website of the Ephemera Society of America discusses the newly active American poster market, resurgent in the past ten years. The number of poster auctions conducted in the United States increased from two in 1990 to at least eight in 2002. There are now vintage poster fairs in several major U.S. cities, and collectors worldwide are seeing new value in American creations in this category, especially American posters produced between the two World Wars. World War pieces, such as Norman Rockwell’s patriotic World War II quartet shown in my mom’s poster retrospective at Savannah’s Telfair Museum in 2002, The Four Freedoms, fetches over $3,000. Read more here.

Face it. For a certain type of kid, Santa is a horrifying character. Huge boots. A beard hiding most of his face. A huge, angry, red suit. Questionable breath. Well, with some Santas. Anyway, the Orlando Sun-Sentinel has published the results of a reader contest for the best photos of children scared of Santa. Click here to see the gallery.