Freelancing can be a tough gig. We’re not complaining—we love our bosses, working in our jammies, and meeting new people all the time. But the flip side of that coin is the lack of 401Ks, sick days, paid vacation, and, most of all, group health care coverage. Luckily we’re young and healthy so the risk we take in not having health insurance is considerably lower than some other people who aren’t so lucky in our country and really have few or no options. This issue has been in the forefront of a lot of our minds for many years, and it is finally in the limelight nationally, so when we learned about Robbie and Robert Bailey’s Face 4 Reform project, we didn’t hesitate to volunteer. Bailey Photography’s project shows the faces of the vast and diverse pool of Americans who are uninsured. They’ll continue with these portraits until health insurance reform passes. Check out their fantastic project (complete with our mugs!) on their Faces 4 Reform website.

I was flattered when an editor at Argentinian newspaper Diario Perfil contacted me over the summer about featuring my photography in their home supplement. The article came out last weekend, and I seriously blushed when I read it (thanks to my Spanish degree!). I’ll humbly skip translating it here and those who are dying to read it can try out their own habilidades de la traducción. But I do love this last sentence: Por tierra, aire o mar, no hay destino que se escape de la lente y la curiosidad de Jackie Caradonio :: By land, air or sea, there is no destination that can escape the lens and curiosity of Jackie Caradonio!

It’s great to be back after a post-graduate road trip through the desert Southwest and northern Mexico. After a while, the wide open spaces had me longing for the confined claustrophobia of the city. I walked or drove through five international border stations, saw the sun rise over the Oscuras Mountains, toured a missile park and decommissioned nuclear silo, walked the Spiral Jetty, dreamed of lightning in central New Mexico, swam in the great Salt Lake, slept in a utopia, sped through a dystopia, shopped with polygamous Mormons, and hiked next to a legal brothel. All in all, I clocked over 6,000 miles in six weeks. You can read about the trip origins and research goals here and, because there’s still so much information to parse, you can follow the progress here.

We loved our unique Venice apt., but the narrow layout posed some challenges in arranging the spaces. Thus was borne a tv stand unique in its own right. Like Norma Desmond theatrically strutting into a room, the design snakes around the awkward corner created by the protruding rear door. It maximized the space in a way so efficient that our landlord chose to keep the can-can dancer around for future guests in what will now become a vacation rental.

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