Author: Tanja Barnes

Wall Street Journal: Studies prove massage therapy to have medical benefits

Tanja Barnes

While it’s common to think of massage therapy as just a mere a luxury, recently the Wall Street Journal touted the medical benefits of massage in an article published earlier this week entitled “Don’t Call It Pampering: Massage Wants to Be Medicine“.

The article and accompanying video (above) posted on WSJ’s Market Watch stated that massage is growing in popularity among U.S. consumers despite the economy due to studies indicating it has scientifically measured medical benefits including reducing cortisol, decreasing proteins related to inflammation, increasing white blood cell count and promoting muscle recovery.

“Research over the past couple of years has found that massage therapy boosts immune function in women with breast cancer, improves symptoms in children with asthma, and increases grip strength in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome,” stated the article. “Giving massages to the littlest patients, premature babies, helped in the crucial task of gaining weight.”

It’s great to see new research supporting the benefits my humble vocation, however I feel the article completely ignores Western medical studies that has been out for well over 100 years (see my comment to the WSJ article here), and the empirical evidence of the benefits of massage that have been documented since the beginning of history from almost every culture on the planet.

Also, the article’s position that massage is a wanna-be medical modality is somewhat disappointing to me since throughout history massage therapy has always been used as an adjunct to coordinated medical care.

After all, it was the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (460 to 377 BC), who is considered to be ‘the father of Western medicine’, that once said “anyone wishing to study medicine must master the art of massage.”

To learn more about the benefits of massage therapy, I invite you to download free informational PDFs about it from my website here.

Kiva – Make a Loan for FREE with Kiva & Me!

Tanja Barnes

As some of you may know, I am a lender at Kiva.org, an organization that allows people to lend money via the Internet to microfinance institutions in developing countries around the world and in the United States, which in turn lend the money to small businesses and students.

It was many years ago that Otto Schutt initially introduced me to this organization. Since his death and in loving memory of him, I lend about 90% of my portfolio to women to help them acquire and maintain a small business in Ecuador, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Guatemala, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, Samoa, the Phillipines, the Ukraine and Pakistan.

Today you can help someone escape poverty by trying out microlending platform Kiva, and it won’t cost you a dime.

I’m inviting you to participate in the Kiva Free Trials program which hopes to introduce people to the positive impact of microfinance philanthropy, and get them to lend their own money next time.

All you have to do is go to kiva.org/free where Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn has put up $1 million of his money to enable 40,000 people give $25 microloans to help those in need start farms and general stores that can support their families.

Once again, the link is https://www.kiva.org/invitedby/tanjabarnes

TanjaBarnes.com’s Gone Mobile!

Tanja Barnes

I’m so excited to announce the launch of Tanja Barnes Mobile. It’s the same tanjabarnes.com URL but with an interface tailored to your phone.

With this webapp you can learn in a concise format the various services I provide and the cost of a treatment. You can also:

  • Contact me with the touch of a button and book a massage
  • Purchase gift certificates via Google Checkout
  • Learn a few tips on how to massage a friend or sweetheart
  • Add my new mobile app to your home screen for quick access on the go. 

For those who would like to know more, my full website can still be viewed from your laptop or desktop computer.  It provides more in-depth information about my services and includes access to my entire suite of online resources including FAQs, digital downloads, blogs, 360° panoramas and more.

Check it out by clicking tanjabarnes.com or scanning the QR code above from your smart phone to get started. And please let me know what you think

Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation

Tanja Barnes

A year ago I posted my first 360 panoramic image to my blog featuring the interior to the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation which is very similar to the image posted above. Some improvements between the one from this year and last year:

Portal of the Folded Wings (exterior)
“Little Planet” projection
  • Use of a nadir shot (to hide the tripod) using a fantastic tutorial by Florian Knorn.
  • Use of PhotoShop to post-process the image.
  • Use of KRPano projection instead of QuickTime.  I really like this method because it’s viewable on a mobile device such as an iPhone.  
  • Position of camera within the shrine (more centered within the space).

On this particular image, the use of PhotoShop is probably the most dramatic improvement overall because previously throughout 2011 all of my panoramic images were edited using Aperture.  Since I began using PhotoShop I’ve quickly come to realize what an injustice using solely Aperture was to all my in-camera work and preparation.

Moving forward for 2012, I’ll be developing my skills with PhotoShop to obtain better quality shots.  I hope you will join me in my travels and adventures.

Salvation Mountain in 360°

Tanja Barnes

View on Google Maps Street View

A year ago I blogged about my New Year’s goal to develop my chops in 360° photography. To that end, throughout the 2011 I explored and photographed spaces that artist’s work in and/or find inspirational.

This brought me to Salvation Mountain on Easter Sunday where not only did I meet the artist Leonard Knight (see original post) but also had a star sighting: Sean Penn and his gal pal Scarlett Johanssen. Knight appeared as a cameo in the film “Into the Wild” (2007) that was directed by Penn. It would appear that since then they’ve remained friends.

When in early December Knight was placed in a home after being diagnosed with dementia, I became concerned about the survival of his life’s work.  In my humble opinion, without the artist there to maintain it, it wouldn’t be long before the mountain suffers from either erosion or vandalism or both.

Salvation Mountain – “Little Planet” projection

So I made plans to camp at Salvation Mountain for New Years and take some panorama photos for posterity. The first time I came to visit the weather was warm but blustery winds whirled around the mountain which limited my ability to interior shots only.

This time, however,  the weather conditions were more favorable: the air was calm and still which enabled me to get a series of exterior shots that I’ve posted below.

Salvation Mountain gives curb appeal to the community of people who live in what’s called Slab City, an abandoned Marine base in the Salton Sea that’s been overtaken by squatters for the past 50 years or so. You could say the mountain is the crown jewel of the slabs.

Recently there’s been a lot of press about Slab City* that’s mostly tied to Knight’s health reports and the fate of Salvation Mountain. This has caught the attention of many journalists (of which I met several on this recent trip) that have discovered that Slab City’s inhabitants to be rich with human interest stories about outsider artists as well as survivors of the Econopocalypse.

I should say that “slabbers“, as the locals like to refer themselves to, consists of folks living on the edge: a weird hybrid of retired fixed income senior citizens and wealthy snowbirds, homeless vagabonds, itinerant Canadians (!), dirty hippies, children of the Rainbow Family and binky sucking candy ravers, not to mention runaways, alcoholics, tweekers and dropouts.

It’s not exactly a tourist destination to go to Slab City. It’s not even remotely like a family vacation at Disneyland or even Burning Man.  No, Slab City is rough yet some inhabitants have brought their families there presumably because they have no place else to go.  A visit to the slabs is like entering the world of Mad Max where all the perceived danger is real. It’s no place for kids. That said, most of the locals I met were incredibly kind, genuine and authentic.  I even met a bunch of out-of-towners like myself including a slew of hipsters from San Francisco, a contingent of Tucsonian students, and some German and Australian tourists. Of course, academia also represented: I met a sociolologist from Stanford documenting the slabbers and their urban tribal community.

While I befriended many slabbers that I consider to be the salt of the earth, I also found that a few of Slab City’s inhabitants — to quote Obi Wan Kenobi — can be described as wretched and well, downright scummy. One must be cautious when visiting this place.  If you’re thinking of visiting put your trust to the tender mercies of a man named James, a long-time slabber with the world’s smartest and cutest dog called “Spider Monkey” and tell him I sent you.

If you prefer to visit the slabs through the magic of technology, you can catch James tonight at 10pm on the History Channel: Corey’s Big Play. (2012). https://www.history.com/shows/pawn-stars/episodes/current-season.  And you can always virtually visit Salvation Mountain through the series of 360° panoramas I took by clicking on the images below:

 

Entrance to Salvation Mountain

 

Parking lot of Salvation Mountain

 

Leonard Knight’s “Yellow Brick Road”

 

The Gates of Love at Salvation Mountain

 

North side of Salvation Mountain

 

Salvation Mountain from the road

 

Interior, Salvation Mountain

 

* Slab City: Last free place in America? Imperial Valley Press, December 31, 2011
All directions point to East Jesus, Imperial Valley Press, December 31, 2011
Hard Times on Salvation Mountain, KCET, December 20, 2011
The Future Of Salvation Mountain Uncertain, KPBS, December 20, 2011
A 24 Hour Visit To Slab City…, Seattle Post Intelligencer, December 20, 2011
Living off the grid in Slab City, Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2011
Slab City, a trailer park utopia, thrives in remote desert – Los Angeles Times – December 17, 2011
 “Slab City” a desert haven for recession’s victims, CBS News – December 14, 2011

 

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1948) Max Fleischer Studios & Jam Handy Productions

Tanja Barnes

While Rankin-Bass gets all the love for their classic 1964 stop motion version of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer“, the above featured animated short by Max Fleischer Studios was actually the first telling of the original story as written by Robert May in 1939.

May, a 34 year-old copywriter for the Chicago based department store Montgomery Ward’s, was assigned to create a property in-house that could be developed into a promotional giveaway intended to boost Ward’s 1939 Christmas sales.

At first May pitched his story ideas to his five year-old daughter Barbara and within a week delivered a rough draft of a Christmas story with rhyming couplets modeled after Clement C. Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas”.

Initially Ward’s publicity department decided to pass on the story. The feeling was that the imagery of a “red nose” was associated with drunkeness, rendering May’s Christmas pitch inappropriate for children.

Denver Gillen, “Rudolph the Red Nosed
Reindeer ” by Robert May

It wasn’t until Denver Gillen, an illustrator in the company’s art department, produced some initial concept drawings that anyone realized how endearing a character like Rudolph could actually be.

Gillen’s illustrations were so cute that the publicity department came to the conclusion that there was no way people would think of Rudolph as a drunkard and the story was approved for production.

On September 1, 1939, Montgomery Ward’s retail sales department announced the Rudolph book internally to all store managers with the following: “We believe that an exclusive story like this aggressively advertised in our newspaper ads and circulars… can bring every store an incalculable mount of publicity… and, far more important, a tremendous amount of Christmas traffic”.

They were right.

That year 2,365,016 copies of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” were given away. At the time, a production run of a mere 50,000 copies could make a book a best-seller. This overwhelming success garnered the property the “largest first edition yet recorded” by the press.

In 1948, Max Fleischer, acting as Head of the Animation Department for the Detroit-based industrial film company Jam Handy Productions, supervised the first animated adaptation of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”. It is this version that is more faithful to May’s original story and Gillen’s illustrations.  It’s worth noting that unlike most Rudolph products, this cartoon has fallen out of copyright, and is now available in the public domain.

An Update on Leonard Knight, Creator of Salvation Mountain

Tanja Barnes

View on Google Maps Street View

 

This past Easter I went to visit Leonard Knight, 80, the creator of “Salvation Mountain” an on-going art installation near Slab City in the Salton Sea, California. Just last week, Knight was hospitalized. According to reports, he was suffering from cognitive issues. He was placed in observation for 72 hours and then subsequently released to a long-term care facility with a diagnosis of dementia.

Salvation Mountain is significant not only as a major American folk art installation but also because of Leonard’s heartfelt and simple message that God is love. He spent over thirty years building the mountain to convey that message and during that time he personally told each and every visitor the same thing.

If Leonard’s friendship, art or message has touched your life, won’t you take a moment to send him a note of gratitude, love and support?  You can send him a card or letter to:

Leonard Knight c/o
Eldorado Care Center
510 E. Washington

El Cajon, CA 92020

More 360° Panorama Photos from the Epicenter of Carmageddon, July 2011

Tanja Barnes

Click to embiggen

Last Saturday night’s concert of the Monkees at the Greek was awesome, especially after coming off the excitement of being on the 405 freeway when it was closed off. As promised, here are some more panorama photos taken at the epicenter of Carmageddon.

On the morning of July 16th, I decided to risk being stuck in what was being predicted to be LA’s worst gridlock nightmare. My plan was to hike up to Mulholland from the valley-side of Sepulveda in an attempt to get some panoramas. But I wanted to see how far up the side of hill I could drive before I hit traffic and then I would hoof it from there.

Photo: Malingering

Interestingly, as I set out on my daring plan the streets were really calm and practically empty. At Sepulveda and Burbank I noticed a gloved traffic cop standing on the corner looking bored. Then at Sepulveda and Magnolia I noticed another traffic cop and several more at the intersection of Ventura Boulevard. This went on for every traffic light as I headed up Sepulveda towards Mulholland and it didn’t take long before I was driving pass the Skirball Center and pass the demolition site as well.

Photo: Malingering

I tried to find a place to park but there was none to be found. I ended up turning around and parking north of Mulholland on a residential street and then walking back to the site. Along the way I met several happy spectators on foot including another blogger who had run all the way from Santa Monica with his Flip video camera interviewing people. I asked him what the name of his blog was but he wouldn’t tell me. WTH? I guess he was afraid I would cyberstalk him! Whatev. I’m glad I declined to be interviewed.

Anyway, I even met a man that rode his bike from Venice Beach. He was repairing what he said was his third flat tire and he was concerned about making it back home with no tire to spare. But I reminded him that MTA was offering free bus rides for Carmageddon weekend and he brightened at the idea of a back-up plan. It’s worth mentioning that the Metro Rapid 761 drove by as we were talking and there was nobody on it!

As I approached the Mulholland Bridge, the site was fenced off and the LAPD were everywhere. I thought for sure I would be told to turn back. But to my surprise they were very friendly and encouraged me to have a look around but to stay on the sidewalk and observe traffic lights.

Above is my second panorama taken on the tarmac of the 405 freeway. I’ve oriented the image to open up looking southbound towards the Skirball Bridge that’s currently under construction. Beyond the bridge are concrete barricades. If you scroll your mouse and do a complete 180 degree turn, you’ll be facing towards the Mulholland Bridge. Due to the nature of panorama photography, it appears tiny and way off in the distance but it really wasn’t that far. However, for safety reasons this was about as close as the press was allowed. Unfortunately you can’t really see the work crews with industrial machinery “woodpecking” away at the bridge bit by bit to bring it down.

Photo: Anthony Citrano

I have to say: it was pretty epic to be standing on the closed off freeway with nothing but what sounded like jackhammers taking down the bridge as well as the sound of helicopters of overhead.

Some folks want to know how I got down to the tarmac. The story is pretty cool, IMHO. Not too far from where all the action was happening was the media village that was chockablock with news crews and satellite dishes. Most of them were just hanging around. One guy even fell asleep upright in his folding chair while his buddy was mischievously taking his photo.

I started talking to some reporters when suddenly the press was invited to walk down the freeway ramp and report from there. Since I didn’t have a “press pass” or any sort of official badge, I was asked by an LAPD officer what news organization I was with. I told him I was a blogger and that was that. Away I went along with the press to photograph this historic local event.

While on the freeway, I met a news crew from Time Warner and happily took photos of them with their iPhone after they had just captured their story. I also talked to a camera operator who told me he was 17 years old when the freeway opened and that he was one of the first to drive it as he flew down the hillside towards the San Fernando Valley on his motorcycle breaking the speed limit. He said at the time it was pretty cool but that now — 51 years later — to be able to walk on the very same spot was pretty amazing, too.

Below is the last of my panorama photos from the epicenter of Carmageddon. As I’ve mentioned, for safety reasons, no one but the demolition crew was allowed close to the Mulholland Bridge. While it was pretty darn amazing to be down on the tarmac when the freeway was closed off, the viewpoint wasn’t too great. In an attempt to find an optimum view I walked up Skirball Drive to Mulholland to where the road turns into Mulholland Bridge.

Click to embiggen

Unfortunately it was all fenced off and it was difficult to see much or snap a worthwhile image. But while I was there, I ran into a long time client. She lives about a mile east on Mulholland and she was there with her family to check out the momentous occasion. So I took the opportunity to capture the moment for them. Off in the distance on camera right beneath the green traffic lights you can see some of the demolition taking place. If you can imagine, where the dust clouds are coming from below about 100′ is the 405 freeway. Incidently, the dust was being watered down by a long hose which is not really clear in this image.


While I had a great weekend not only for the fact that I got to take these photos and see the Monkees in concert, the apocalyptic reality of “Carmageddon” itself was about as underwhelming as the Y2K bug. On the news this morning Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky was quoted as saying “Carmageddon, shmarmageddon!” and suggested the city make the event an annual holiday. While I don’t think Los Angelenos will be duped again to the media frenzy and fear tactics that went into play for the second half of the Mulholland Bridge demolition slated for next year, I do hope that maybe the citizenry can join together with local government to make this unique experience happen again soon.

360° PANORAMA OF CARMAGEDDON! THE 405 FREEWAY CLOSURE @ MULHOLLAND

Tanja Barnes


This image is my first in a series of the epic Carmageddon weekend in Los Angeles. More to follow but for right now I’m off to see the Monkees (hey hey!) perform at the Greek.

Please excuse the stitching errors but this pano is a rush to publish. If you’re from Los Angeles I’d love to hear how your weekend is going.

If you’re viewing this image from the RSS feed, be sure to click through to the site of origin. Most 360° panoramic vr photographs that are embedded in my blog do not show up correctly in my feed due to permissions settings.

If you are unable to see the described panoramic image click here to view it on the site in which it is hosted.

I’d love it if you would click through on the link to rate this image. Pretty please???

Interior of a 1937 Pierce Arrow Trailer at the Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar, California

Tanja Barnes


1937 Pierce Arrow Trailer Interior at The Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar

In memory of my father and grandfather, for Father’s Day this weekend I visited the Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar, California, to have a look at some of the world’s greatest antique, vintage, classic and special interest automobiles on display.

Growing up dear old dad drove a black convertible 1955 Cadillac El Dorado which was his daily driver. Occasionally on the weekends he’d take out the blue hard top 1955 Coupe de Ville for a spin. In the late eighties, he traded them both in for a gold convertible 1971 Cadillac Ed Dorado which he also commuted with daily.

But there were more than Cadillacs in our two car garage. We also owned a red 1945 Packard that my dad would cruise Van Nuys Boulevard on Wednesday nights with the family.  And then there was our beloved blue 1955 Chevy Bel Air which was my mom’s daily driver that she drove well into the nineties.

Touring the Nethercutt by myself made me nostalgic. I didn’t have my grandfather around to talk stories about the past and I didn’t have my dad to share the history of each vehicle. I miss them both.

On my own I explored the fully restored 1937 Pierce Arrow trailer and tow car simply because I could step inside and capture this 360° image.

What’s great about visiting the Nethercutt is that it is completely free. Be advised that the Museum is a self-guided tour that is available on a walk-in basis however next door, the Collection (which in addition to classic cars features rare collectibles ranging from mechanical musical instruments and antique furniture) is only available to view by guided tour so make a reservation in advance.

More information at NethercuttCollection.org