Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, December 30, 2010

A Truly Historic Day

Commentary By Ron Beasley



GC03STb Kodachrome
You give us those nice bright colors
You give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah!
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away


~Paul Simon


This was a historic day, Paul Simon lived to see the day when Mama Kodak would take his Kodachrome away for good.  A victim of the digital age.


Last Kodachrome Developer Stops Developing



Dwayne's Photo, a lab in Parsons, Kansas, was the last lab still processing popular film, which was created by Kodak in 1935. Dec. 30 was the last day Dwayne's would still accept rolls of the film for processing, according to Mashable.


Kodak announced they would cease production of the film in June 2009, as sales had declined. The rise in digital camera use among everyday people and professionals contributed to its decline.


At one point, 25 labs in the world processed the near extinct film, according to the New York Times. The Kodak-run facility closed a few years ago, and since then processing facilities in Japan, Switzerland, and other locations around the globe have since stopped developing Kodachrome.


Despite its use in many iconic photographs, including Steve McCurry's National Geographic 1985 cover image, many photographers have traded in for newer films or digital cameras. According to Mashable, Kodak actually gave McCurry the last roll of Kodachrome film last year, and he has since posted the pictures he took to his blog.



As some of you may know I have been making photographs for over 40 years.  I have hundreds of Kodachrome transparencies, both 35mm and a few 6 x 6 taken with my beloved Hasselblad.  I scanned some of them like the one above.  By the time it became part of history it was rated at ISO 64 but when I first started shooting it was a very slow ISO 25 which is what made those ultra fast f1.4 lenses so valuable.  The color was rich but not accurate - it always looked like a sunny summer day.  Will I miss it?  Probably not - I have been exclusively digital for about six years.  If I go back to film it will be for black and white but even that's not very likely.  But I will treasure my Kodachromes.



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  1. anna missedJanuary 1, 2011 at 7:27 AM

    (Sadly) Just picked my last roll of developed film from the last guy in my area still processing film - and he said he's closing the business as of Jan 1 2011. I still prefer shooting film over digital, mostly (at this point) because I love the old mechanical cameras and the tactile experience of taking pictures is more intimate, but then again I still like my old vinyl records better than CD's, probably for the same reasons.
    Can you have real culture, without real stuff? I'm not so sure you can.

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