Word and Image

Archive for June, 2017

Seriously?

You’ve been? I have. A new one opened. I cruised the inventory. I like to know what’s there and where it’s located. Okay! Diet tonic water? There are calories in fizzy water? Huh? Aged sourdough? Wait? What? Are the pretzels vintage? Clarify! Butt wipes? Adventure wipes? Oh my?! Not mine please. What else? I know where to go now. I won’t remember what shelf. That’s good?


From away

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We were in Plymouth. There were people from all over as judged by the license plates in the parking lot. People really like historical stuff. I was struck by how they came from all over to visit. I’m not so much about history as about photo ops. I’m along for the ride. An observation: most of the cars in California are CA plates. Is it because people come from away and rent a car? We noticed a distinct lack of license plates from elsewhere.


Plymouth Rock

It has a crack in it. It’s covered and protected from the elements. It is not large. It just sits by itself. What the heck? It’s not a boulder. It’s just a rock. Really. A rock of no particular note. Granted that the pilgrims set foot upon it, but, there must have been plenty of other rocks of no particular note that they trod too. And cracked? Ha. This must be a historian’s cruel joke on history. My my, it’s not a rock of much impression. And it’s all by itself. Where are all the other rocks? Or was it special because it was the only rock on the beach when “they” landed?


Tradition

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When I started in neurosurgery we had a supply of straight razor blades. They were available for us to shave the head before starting brain surgery. Really! I was of an age, then, that I shaved with a double-bladed razor that had preloaded cartridges. Bic disposable one use razors sold by the bagfull for pennies a razor. I was not too good at using a straight razor. (No practice or experience.) There were plenty of nicks and scratches and I’m sure I would not have made it as a barber. We very soon abandoned straight blades for the easy to use disposable Bics. We used them until recently when they switched us to electric razors which are shit (yeah, as in they don’t work efficiently). The batteries are weak and the blades cut slowly and very poorly. Progress, they guarantee there will be no nicks or scratches. Bullshit. But it’s mandated and you can’t fight city hall any more than you can rail against politicians. Personally, I still use a triple bladed razor and have not cut myself – ever. Go figure. But straight razors? Try to find blades. Lather up with real shaving cream. How quaint.


Wildlife

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It wasn’t that long ago we were in Sturbridge. (It occurs to me that we got around a lot since I retired.) The story is short. We were headed back from Boston. I had been there to collect a piece of luggage lugged across the seas by my buddy from Saudi. It was full of junk. It must be. I haven’t been into the bag but once since I got it home. Meanwhile, Sturbridge village is a reenactment village of colonial life. So, there were live chickens. Free. Well, roaming free. I was thinking this morning that I would take slide images at about 64 rolls of film per six months. The bulk of the slides would be shot during vacations. I developed the slides myself (don’t ask) in a single frenzied batch of darkroom work. Then, I’d mount the images into the cardboard mounts. It was a long drawn out process mainly because I like to control my work and that I was cheap. It was way cheaper to do your own. Eventually at the end I succumbed to ease and had the film developed more “timely.” And now digital is so instant and in so much volume. I found this image in review and do not remember taking it. I got it. It’s a neat image. But they come so fast I can hardly keep track of my “keepers.” My images are stored in Lightroom and they number in the hundreds of thousands. Remember I was shooting at the rate of no more than 4000 slides a month. This past April, I shot 9000 digital images. I’m not bragging. Is there more nonsense I’m shooting? I’m still getting/got a lot of nice images.


Long tailed

The striking photos are the face shot with the eyes in focus. So then how do you get the tail? I’m still working on it. It’s another gestalt thing. You have to see the cat (tail) live and in color to appreciate. My effort is feeble. The cat is between the screen and window. Nutty. I did take her out in the yard. She climbed my shirt and clung with her claws. She was mightily happy to be inside again. Curiosity has bounds.


In progress…

I built this! We have collected many weaving bobbins. Why? Dunno… but now they clutter baskets and stuff. Onto the rack… It’s not done. I can’t get a definitive shot. There is no angle of view. It’s the gestalt (in person) that matters. And you can’t get the gestalt in a single image. Eventually…

 

 


Cheaters never prosper…I don’t get it

Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump’s lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office.

Trump Told Public Lies or Falsehoods Every Day for His First 40 Days

The list above uses the conservative standard of demonstrably false statements. By that standard, Trump told a public lie on at least 20 of his first 40 days as president. But based on a broader standard — one that includes his many misleading statements (like exaggerating military spending in the Middle East) — Trump achieved something remarkable: He said something untrue, in public, every day for the first 40 days of his presidency. The streak didn’t end until March 1.

 

Jan. 21 “I wasn’t a fan of Iraq. I didn’t want to go into Iraq.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.)Jan. 21 “A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.” (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.)Jan. 23 “Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote.” (There’s no evidence of illegal voting.)Jan. 25 “Now, the audience was the biggest ever. But this crowd was massive. Look how far back it goes. This crowd was massive.” (Official aerial photos show Obama’s 2009 inauguration was much more heavily attended.)Jan. 25 “Take a look at the Pew reports (which show voter fraud.)” (The report never mentioned voter fraud.)Jan. 25 “You had millions of people that now aren’t insured anymore.” (The real number is less than 1 million, according to the Urban Institute.)Jan. 25 “So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can’t have that.” (There were no gun homicide victims in Chicago that day.)Jan. 26 “We’ve taken in tens of thousands of people. We know nothing about them. They can say they vet them. They didn’t vet them. They have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don’t know anything about them and you have no papers? How do you vet them? You can’t.” (Vetting lasts up to two years.)Jan. 26 “I cut off hundreds of millions of dollars off one particular plane, hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time. It wasn’t like I spent, like, weeks, hours, less than hours, and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And the plane’s going to be better.” (Most of the cuts were already planned.)Jan. 28 “The coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost has been so false and angry that the times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers.” (It never apologized.)Jan. 29 “The Cuban-Americans, I got 84 percent of that vote.” (There is no support for this.)Jan. 30 “Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage.” (At least 746 people were detained and processed, and the Delta outage happened two days later.)Feb. 3 “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” (There is no evidence of paid protesters.)Feb. 4 “After being forced to apologize for its bad and inaccurate coverage of me after winning the election, the FAKE NEWS @nytimes is still lost!” (It never apologized.)Feb. 5 “We had 109 people out of hundreds of thousands of travelers and all we did was vet those people very, very carefully.” (About 60,000 people were affected.)Feb. 6 “I have already saved more than $700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35.” (Much of the price drop was projected before Trump took office.)Feb. 6 “It’s gotten to a point where it is not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it.” (Terrorism has been reported on, often in detail.)Feb. 6 “The failing @nytimes was forced to apologize to its subscribers for the poor reporting it did on my election win. Now they are worse!” (It didn’t apologize.)Feb. 6 “And the previous administration allowed it to happen because we shouldn’t have been in Iraq, but we shouldn’t have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed.” (The group’s origins date to 2004.)Feb. 7 “And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years.” (It was higher in the 1980s and ’90s.)Feb. 7 “I saved more than $600 million. I got involved in negotiation on a fighter jet, the F-35.” (The Defense Department projected this price drop before Trump took office.)Feb. 9 “Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service’ in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!” (It was part of Cuomo’s first question.)Feb. 9 Sen. Richard Blumenthal “now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” (The Gorsuch comments were later corroborated.)Feb. 10 “I don’t know about it. I haven’t seen it. What report is that?” (Trump knew about Flynn’s actions for weeks.)Feb. 12 “Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!” (The media did cover it.)Feb. 16 “We got 306 because people came out and voted like they’ve never seen before so that’s the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.” (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won bigger margins in the Electoral College.)Feb. 16 “That’s the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports.” (Delta’s problems happened two days later.)Feb. 16 “Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives.” (The jobs are a result of its investment plans announced in October 2016.)Feb. 16 “When WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they’re not giving classified information.” (Not always. They have released classified information in the past.)Feb. 16 “We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. But we had a bad court. Got a bad decision.” (The rollout was chaotic.)Feb. 16 “They’re giving stuff — what was said at an office about Hillary cheating on the debates. Which, by the way, nobody mentions. Nobody mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates.” (It was widely covered.)Feb. 18 “And there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing.” (Refugees receive multiple background checks, taking up to two years.)Feb. 18 “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” (Trump implied there was a terror attack in Sweden, but there was no such attack.)Feb. 24 “By the way, you folks are in here — this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks.” (There was no evidence of long lines.)Feb. 24 “ICE came and endorsed me.” (Only its union did.)Feb. 24 “Obamacare covers very few people — and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them — it was taken away from them.” (Obamacare increased coverage by a net of about 20 million.)Feb. 27 “Since Obamacare went into effect, nearly half of the insurers are stopped and have stopped from participating in the Obamacare exchanges.” (Many fewer pulled out.)Feb. 27 “On one plane, on a small order of one plane, I saved $725 million. And I would say I devoted about, if I added it up, all those calls, probably about an hour. So I think that might be my highest and best use.” (Much of the price cut was already projected.)Feb. 28 “And now, based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning to do just that.” (NATO countries agreed to meet defense spending requirements in 2014.)Feb. 28 “The E.P.A.’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands.” (There’s no evidence that the Waters of the United States rule caused severe job losses.)Feb. 28 “We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials.” (They can’t lobby their former agency but can still become lobbyists.)March 3 “It is so pathetic that the Dems have still not approved my full Cabinet.” (Paperwork for the last two candidates was still not submitted to the Senate.)March 4 “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” (There’s no evidence of a wiretap.)March 4 “How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” (There’s no evidence of a wiretap.)March 7 “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” (113 of them were released by President George W. Bush.)March 13 “I saved a lot of money on those jets, didn’t I? Did I do a good job? More than $725 million on them.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)March 13 “First of all, it covers very few people.” (About 20 million people gained insurance under Obamacare.)March 15 “On the airplanes, I saved $725 million. Probably took me a half an hour if you added up all of the times.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)March 17 “I was in Tennessee — I was just telling the folks — and half of the state has no insurance company, and the other half is going to lose the insurance company.” (There’s at least one insurer in every Tennessee county.)March 20 “With just one negotiation on one set of airplanes, I saved the taxpayers of our country over $700 million.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)March 21 “To save taxpayer dollars, I’ve already begun negotiating better contracts for the federal government — saving over $700 million on just one set of airplanes of which there are many sets.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)March 22 “I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a massive riot, and death, and problems.” (Riots in Sweden broke out two days later and there were no deaths.)March 22 “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that.” (It has fought terrorism since the 1980s.)March 22 “Well, now, if you take a look at the votes, when I say that, I mean mostly they register wrong — in other words, for the votes, they register incorrectly and/or illegally. And they then vote. You have tremendous numbers of people.” (There’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud.)March 29 “Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!” (It didn’t apologize.)March 31 “We have a lot of plants going up now in Michigan that were never going to be there if I — if I didn’t win this election, those plants would never even think about going back. They were gone.” (These investments were already planned.)April 2 “And I was totally opposed to the war in the Middle East which I think finally has been proven, people tried very hard to say I wasn’t but you’ve seen that it is now improving.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.)April 2 “Now, my last tweet — you know, the one that you are talking about, perhaps — was the one about being, in quotes, wiretapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true.” (There is still no evidence.)April 5 “You have many states coming up where they’re going to have no insurance company. O.K.? It’s already happened in Tennessee. It’s happening in Kentucky. Tennessee only has half coverage. Half the state is gone. They left.” (Every marketplace region in Tennessee had at least one insurer.)April 6 “If you look at the kind of cost-cutting we’ve been able to achieve with the military and at the same time ordering vast amounts of equipment — saved hundreds of millions of dollars on airplanes, and really billions, because if you take that out over a period of years it’s many billions of dollars — I think we’ve had a tremendous success.” (Much of the price cuts were already projected.)April 11 “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve.” (He knew Steve Bannon since 2011.)April 12 “You can’t do it faster, because they’re obstructing. They’re obstructionists. So I have people — hundreds of people that we’re trying to get through. I mean you have — you see the backlog. We can’t get them through.” (At this point, he had not nominated anyone for hundreds of positions.)April 12 “The New York Times said the word wiretapped in the headline of the first edition. Then they took it out of there fast when they realized.” (There were separate headlines for print and web, but neither were altered.)April 12 “The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that a long time ago and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism.” (NATO has been engaged in counterterrorism efforts since the 1980s.)April 12 “Mosul was supposed to last for a week and now they’ve been fighting it for many months and so many more people died.” (The campaign was expected to take months.)April 16 “Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!” (There’s no evidence of paid protesters.)April 18 “The fake media goes, ‘Donald Trump changed his stance on China.’ I haven’t changed my stance.” (He did.)April 21 “On 90 planes I saved $725 million. It’s actually a little bit more than that, but it’s $725 million.” (Much of the price cuts were already projected.)April 21 “When WikiLeaks came out … never heard of WikiLeaks, never heard of it.” (He criticized it as early as 2010.)April 27 “I want to help our miners while the Democrats are blocking their healthcare.” (The bill to extend health benefits for certain coal miners was introduced by a Democrat and was co-sponsored by mostly Democrats.)April 28 “The trade deficit with Mexico is close to $70 billion, even with Canada it’s $17 billion trade deficit with Canada.” (The U.S. had an $8.1 billion trade surplus, not deficit, with Canada in 2016.)April 28 “She’s running against someone who’s going to raise your taxes to the sky, destroy your health care, and he’s for open borders — lots of crime.” (Those are not Jon Ossoff’s positions.)April 28 “The F-35 fighter jet program — it was way over budget. I’ve saved $725 million plus, just by getting involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)April 29 “They’re incompetent, dishonest people who after an election had to apologize because they covered it, us, me, but all of us, they covered it so badly that they felt they were forced to apologize because their predictions were so bad.” (The Times did not apologize.)April 29 “As you know, I’ve been a big critic of China, and I’ve been talking about currency manipulation for a long time. But I have to tell you that during the election, number one, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.)April 29 “I’ve already saved more than $725 million on a simple order of F-35 planes. I got involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)April 29 “We’re also getting NATO countries to finally step up and contribute their fair share. They’ve begun to increase their contributions by billions of dollars, but we are not going to be satisfied until everyone pays what they owe.” (The deal was struck in 2014.)April 29 “When they talk about currency manipulation, and I did say I would call China, if they were, a currency manipulator, early in my tenure. And then I get there. Number one, they — as soon as I got elected, they stopped.” (China stopped in 2014.)April 29 “I was negotiating to reduce the price of the big fighter jet contract, the F-35, which was totally out of control. I will save billions and billions and billions of dollars.” (Most of the cuts were planned before Trump.)April 29 “I think our side’s been proven very strongly. And everybody’s talking about it.” (There’s still no evidence Trump’s phones were tapped.)May 1 “Well, we are protecting pre-existing conditions. And it’ll be every good — bit as good on pre-existing conditions as Obamacare.” (The bill weakens protections for people with pre-existing conditions.)May 1 “The F-35 fighter jet — I saved — I got involved in the negotiation. It’s 2,500 jets. I negotiated for 90 planes, lot 10. I got $725 million off the price.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)May 1 “First of all, since I started running, they haven’t increased their — you know, they have not manipulated their currency. I think that was out of respect to me and the campaign.” (China stopped years ago.)May 2 “I love buying those planes at a reduced price. I have been really — I have cut billions — I have to tell you this, and they can check, right, Martha? I have cut billions and billions of dollars off plane contracts sitting here.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)May 4 “Number two, they’re actually not a currency [manipulator]. You know, since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation with respect to them and other countries, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.)May 4 “We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world.” (We’re not.)May 4 “Nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters.” (Polls show most Americans do care.)May 8 “You know we’ve gotten billions of dollars more in NATO than we’re getting. All because of me.” (The deal was struck in 2014.)May 8 “But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high — highest rating. The highest rating he’s ever had.” (Colbert’s “Late Show” debut had nearly two million more viewers.)May 8 “Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows — there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.” (Clapper only said he wasn’t aware of an investigation.)May 12 “Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.” (The F.B.I. was investigating before the election.)May 12 “When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?” (Clapper said he wouldn’t have been told of an investigation into collusion.)May 13 “I’m cutting the price of airplanes with Lockheed.” (The cost cuts were planned before he became president.)May 26 “Just arrived in Italy for the G7. Trip has been very successful. We made and saved the USA many billions of dollars and millions of jobs.” (He’s referencing an arms deal that’s not enacted and other apparent deals that weren’t announced on the trip.)June 1 “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.” (The agreement doesn’t allow or disallow building coal plants.)June 1 “I’ve just returned from a trip overseas where we concluded nearly $350 billion of military and economic development for the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.” (Trump’s figures are inflated and premature.)June 4 “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” (The mayor was specifically talking about the enlarged police presence on the streets.)June 5 “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.” (Trump signed this version of the travel ban, not the Justice Department.)June 21 “They all say it’s ‘nonbinding.’ Like hell it’s nonbinding.” (The Paris climate agreement is nonbinding — and Trump said so in his speech announcing the withdrawal.)June 21 “Right now, we are one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.” (We’re not.)


Not that long ago

Tech – technology comes and goes. Record, CD, DVD… cloud. Film – digital. Try as you might, you cannot wish film back. Lenses – latest greatest – glass, multiple elements costing thousands of dollars. Big view camera? Small brass lens and a large negative, black and white – this is not an Instagram. The stereoscope? This looks like the precursor to a movie. The images we saw of Ansel Adams at the Biggs Museum were truly amazing. Today, we snap shot iPhone, done. Maybe it was good to hike and compose and develop slowly slowly?


In the moment

Have you any pictures you don’t remember taking? We walked the sheep fair. I took these pics. They were in my camera on my card. The first man asked me to take the shot because I had a camera dangling on my shoulder. The second man was helping out in the auction tent. Why did I get his pic? No idea. None. Nada. Is my memory slipping?


Waitin’

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I’ve been waiting for this shot. It’s a car shot. It did not rise to the level of actually stopping the car by the side of the road. Go away. No welcome. No one lives there. No one probably will again. Done.

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Crossing

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I’ve been philosophically musing about my images. It’s sometimes astray from my origin in giving the story behind the image. Or? Crosswalk. They were in it. I presume they have pedestrian right of way. I waited. I shot… right out the car window again. Hey! I was stopped for ducks. …my story and I’m stickin’ with it.


Devil is in the…

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One thing about a “striking” (image) is detail. Get closer. You know what’s a horse. And you get rid of the distracting background. Of course, there has been many a time when I’d like to see the bigger picture. But, as you see, the detail is in the devil?


Food Photography

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I’ve been guilty of taking food pictures. You might miss my Red Sea fish? Yet? And, I’ve been dissatisfied. You really need food stylists. What makes the point and what makes it gloriously appetizing? I just snap, close my eyes and hope for the best. That’s not how it works. But, it’s a hobby not a job. The home fries are truly memorable. They were hot and crispy! The crispy crust had me wax poetic. Not the second time. They were merely warm and crisp – the difference between good and great. Not! You can’t go back? And the chicken pot pie fritters were imagined. (They were “out” the last time we tried.) They were nothing special. Styling could have made things more “sexy.” Meanwhile, I’m not taking any more time than to shoot quickly before I eat.


Ominous

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I’ve been thinking about what’s a good photo? I have good ones? I’m lazy. I have taken a lot of way less than stellar images. I’m better. …than I was… and not as good as I’d like… to be. I’m a wannabe wedding photographer. I’ve taken some nice bridal shots. But, the pressure was not on me to produce a money image. I’m impressed by what I get out the windshield. Frankly, it’s part of laziness and partly because there is nowhere to stop on the Delaware Bay Bridge. Whatever. Without this shot, there would be no musing and no post. What’s a good shot? I go by my own gut reaction.


John Brown

Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good? Henry David Thoreau

John Brown – He was a nut. Not. He just looked so. He was a radical. Right? Left? Tea party? Liberal? He died by hanging, convicted of an unsuccessful takeover of the US Federal armory at Harpers Ferry. He is credited as a catalyst of the Civil War. He was a violent abolitionist – violently opposed to slavery. The park grounds are not patrolled or guarded. The buildings are unattended. The sign (“no firearms”) on the door is oddly out of place given that this ground was the site of violence and war. I was persuaded to visit the National Park and was unexpectedly educated by the appropriateness of his (Brown’s) mark in history. Read: and note that Thoreau wrote and lamented. Yes, that Thoreau. I am often ignorant of history. I am educated once again. History has had a way of coming back to bite me on the (a..). It just wasn’t so… from a certain perspective. I’m being obtuse. You draw the conclusion. …Yes, I’m still waiting on my Republican friends.


Tenor

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The plaintiff notes of a tenor sax wafted over the pier as the fog rolled in. It didn’t matter. The player was beneath the pier using the concrete to reflect the notes give the whole scene an ethereal feel. I couldn’t locate him. I heard the notes and listened to be sure it wasn’t a canned recording. It was a live performance. I finally got an image beneath the concrete. Well done.

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A few minutes later up on the pier a bongo joined him. They spoke the music together neither musician seeing just playing off one another. Brilliant. And then they were done.


Buzz… bumble… buzzzz

They make noise! As in “bumble.” They are not bumbling. When I was a kid in West Virginia I awoke and put on my jeans one morning. All the while I heard a buzzing in the room. I walked about and the sound followed me to the window and back. When I dropped my jeans a very large bumble bee flew out. I was happy enough that he did not sting me. And he was happy to be in the world again. I do so love a happy ending.


Eagle(s)

At the Holtsville dam and hydroelectric plant there was an eagles’ nest. A man in a pickup truck kindly pointed out the nest. I actually see two eagles! He said the nest had fallen into disrepair. But look! They are bald eagles. I know you cannot make out detail.  Drat! The backlighting does not permit. But it was cool nonetheless.


African Daisy

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They are from Africa, I guess. Stunning. I don’t see them too often in the market. I got a few pots and promptly let them wilt in the sun on my deck. I’m working on reviving them now. At least I got pictures when they were looking good.


Mushroom

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Generally, I eat them and don’t shoot them. And I don’t pick wild ones because there are deadly poisonous ones out there. Geez, it would be fun to pick and eat mushrooms. But no. You don’t see wild apples growing. There are tiny wild strawberries. They taste awful. Anyway, without the expertise, I don’t eat mushrooms I find, except, in the supermarket.

 


Dogwood

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It’s a spring beauty. There’s some religious symbolism about the flower. Sorry, I’m too lazy at the moment to look it up.


Dandelion

The real trick is in shooting the seeds. Either way it’s colorful and whimsical. Why, then, are they considered weeds and universally plucked and discarded? Dandelion wine, dandelion salad? They grow up in my yard and mess up the nice green grass which has nothing going except that we gotta mow it once a week.


Old Phone

It was a dime to make a call. That would be all of my life into adulthood. When Dave was a teen the price finally began to rise steadily to reach a quarter. He was incensed, “The bastards…” By then cellphones came into wide use and pay phones disappeared. A bright recollection was during the “2003 blackout” in NYC when everyone was lined up ten deep at the payphones. There was no cell service. The system did not have backup generators. Ha!

The “real” old phone looks like a face. I’m sure you noticed.