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Mid day, Spider Rock
Saturday, July 12, 2025
People be gone
I should be packing but I decided to waste a little time this morning and play around with an old photo. We don't get to take vacations much anymore so we are left with old memories. One of the greatest places we ever traveled to was southern Spain, way back in 2012.
Now this was before the Americans had moved in and had reclaimed Spain and Portugal, much to the chagrin of the natives. You always had a bunch of drunken Irishmen and the English debauching on the Costa Brava but you just didn't go there. Andalusia was still good, no anti tourist protests or water pistols although we did witness an anti banker communist protest once while in Madrid.
Anyway, as any photographer knows, one of the difficult things to do is to get a picture of any landmark that is not full of those pesky humans, of whatever nationality. Extremely hard to do. They really ruin your shot.
I took this picture in Granada, at the Alhambra. Always loved the architectural form, but all those damn humans!
Well, lightroom has a new tool that does away with all that, removes their presence quicker than you can say Godzilla or Mothra. I started messing with it this morning and came up with this.
John's heart diagram
My late brother painted this. I think it was a tool in his recovery. It hung in his kitchen. I took it apart and sent it to his ex wife and children.
Friday, July 11, 2025
7/11/25
Last week's trip to Pittsburgh and the ensuing days upon my return have been among the most traumatic of my life, for reasons that I will not publicly ever go into. I think losing my siblings, first Amie in 1983, then Buzz in 2017 and now John, has personally caused me the most pain I have ever felt in my life.
I once read a psychotherapist who said that your relationships with your siblings were even more powerful than those you have with your parents, might be something to that. You spend more time with them when you are young, surely.
I cried for my lost brother every day last week, could not help it and both sleeping and keeping my mind focused was difficult.
I actually sought grief counseling this week and the experience was helpful to me. After two unanswered calls to Jewish Family Services, I sought the help of a woman I know who had a long career as a psychiatric nurse, the last ten years of her career in the jail system. She helped me to not only deal with my own grief and trauma but to better understand my late brother's particular malaise. I really appreciated her help and plan on returning for more help one day.
Pittsburgh was hot and muggy.
I awoke every day to a red dawn, which somehow was fitting.
My task was to send remembrances of my brother's life back to his ex wife and four children.
There was more stuff in the apartment then I could send so I found myself curating his life and editing it down to six large boxes; his boxing gloves, his best nikes, his diaries, his lovely collection of musical instruments.
I felt strangely at peace and comfortable in his apartment and spectral presence, considering.
He was a scientist and mechanical engineer with patents, a fuel cell wizard. His bins and instruments were well organized, soldering irons and test equipment, microscopes and every conceivable tool one could imagine. Journals held scientific computations and calculations that I could not remotely begin to understand.
Although he would cocoon himself when he was in the depressive part of his emotional dyad, he seemed quite comfortable in his own space, the apartment was clean and the walls full of bright paintings and posters.
I couldn't help notice the absence of a television, good for him.
I went through his book shelves repeatedly. He could program in any language known to man but it was evident that he also was taking time to learn other languages. He had taught himself Tagalog, Farsi and Spanish and wrote each in the most beautiful hand.
I have no idea how many other languages he had attempted to master but it was very impressive, especially looking at the lovely arabic looking scribe of the Farsi. Once again I was taken aback by my brother's genius.
On the third day I could take it no longer. I shut the door at noon and told my brother goodby and locked the door. I had done all I could do.
I got in the rent a car and drove south almost two hours, towards West Virginia.I tried to go to Falling Water but all the passes were sold out and went to another Frank Lloyd home instead, the nearby Kentuck Knob house built for the Hagen family between 1954 and 1956 and now owned by english Lord Palumbo.
It was forbidden to take pictures in the home but it was furnished with wonderful native American ollas, both zuni, acoma and zia as well as great baskets and Natzler pottery.
Lord Palumbo has a great eye, right down my wheel house.
I walked around the forest near the home and caught my first real breath in days.I was glad to have made the trip.
It was the usual upon my return.
Some people were there for me in my sorrow, a few were noticeably absent.
Some just don't do tragedy well, I get it. Not easy and it is a lot to ask of somebody.
Thanks to those of you who stepped up.
Life goes on, as always...
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Santa Barbara Antique Show and Whitehawk Show in Santa Fe
Join me next week at the Santa Barbara Antique Show, Earl Warren Showgrounds.
The show runs Friday through Sunday.
Friday 11am - 6pm • Saturday 11am - 6pm • Sunday 11am - 4pm
I can't afford a big booth in Santa Fe any longer but will do my best in a little one, it will be packed with treasures!
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Can't win for losing
Brooke Rollins, our Secretary of Agriculture, has a use for all of those scofflaws that we are about to toss off the Medicaid rolls.
They can go pick the crops on the farms that are going unpicked since we declared the present ICE war on illegal immigrants.
Now we tried this in the south a few years ago in Alabama.
.
I remember the video vividly. Might have been this one. A peanut farmer tried to hire white workers to pick his crops.
They barely lasted a day.
I hate to be a pessimist but I don't think this is going to work out real well. We Americans aren't used to hard work, in fact we have gotten pretty soft.
And I don't think people have a clear picture regarding just who is utilizing Medicaid at present. Here is a good article from 2023 that can catch you up to date.
The majority of them are working, 92%, many at multiple jobs that don't provide health benefits.
64% of those are working at least part time.
Clearly the great majority are working or trying to work. Now we are about to throw 12 million more Americans off the rolls for the crime of losing at this life game. Punish them for not making the grade, for not winning, for their ineptitude at snatching an ever shrinkening slice of America's pie. We like winners in this country, clearly.
But hey, the rest of them can always pick cotton.
If they get hungry enough.
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It should be noted that most of the Medicaid cuts won't happen or apply until after the midterms. Very crafty.
Thursday, July 3, 2025
Saturday, June 28, 2025
It was fun for me, anyway
My short brush with fame and dream of starting a second career as a radio deejay has crashed to the earth in a lonely thud.
I speak, of course, of my recent short stint on the Sirius Radio Beatles Channel.
Relegated to the forgotten radio time slots better known as ice station zebra, I believe that approximately three people on this planet earth heard my fab four presentation.
This total is comprised of yours truly, who drove down to the trailhead to listen in his car, for better reception, my best friend Dave, who thought I was a bit wordy and verbose and my ex cardiologist Neal, who thought I sounded good but was perhaps suspiciously high in cholesterol.
Oh ya, my sister Liz in Virginia tuned in too.
Oh well, I gave it my best shot, as they say. Maybe there is a soul in some far off region of the globe, perhaps a lone hiker carving a path through the reeds at Uluwatu with his earbuds in at two o'clock this morning, that will listen to my last broadcast and have some glorious epiphany, perhaps remember where he put his lost pair of readers?
And then I will be able to depart this mortal coil and realize that I made a difference somehow, in some mortal's life and all my hard work and toil will be worth it.
Wish you could have been there.
Friday, June 27, 2025
Avian soul visitors
I am not a huge believer in signs, so easy to get caught up in indulgent self deception. But that doesn't mean I am going to stop watching and listening. The night before last, the day I learned that my brother had passed, a screech owl came closer to my upper screen door than I have ever seen or heard.
Literally feet from my door.
This is not the bird, this is a similar one I captured years ago on the telephone wire late one night.Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Weather Report Suite
John Matthew Fisher
I got an early call today. My beautiful, brilliant, baby brother Johnny has passed away. We are awaiting a coroner's report but his life had been in a spiral. Flying to Pittsburgh soon to pick up his things and clean up his apartment.
My worst fears have been answered.
I come from a very bright family. He may have been the smartest of the bunch but had been dealt a very bad hand. I will miss him terribly.
More later.
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Toronto Trip
My niece's daughter was having a bat mitzvah and I thought that for the sake of familial and filial responsibilities I should attend.
I hadn't been there since Buzz's funeral and that is eight years time early next month.
The trip gave me an opportunity to see two of my sisters that I rarely see and a bunch of other members of my family.
John is still missing in action, somewhere in Pennsylvania, hopefully alive and kicking.
His daughter showed up, with her wife.
I like Toronto, a multi-cultural city that works better than most.I will spare you a lot of the details.I won't show you mine if you won't show me yours.
Anyway, two days is sort of a whirlwind, I stayed out by the airport to save money and took public transportation in and out, a long city bus or train ride.
Unfortunately my att phone service conked out and I couldn't call an uber if I wanted to, no data signal.
Makes it awfully hard to function in today's world.
Took over three calls and two frustrating hours on hold before we finally got the no data roaming problem sorted out.
I met everybody at the temple the first day, my niece did fine with her reading but the rabbi's talk made me remember why I hated religion so much.Love the tribe, just hate the bullshit. God loves the conquerors, smites the infidels, like wiping up ants with a wet paper towel at a picnic.
Afterwards we went to Chinatown and I treated my clan to roast pork and duck at one of my favorite haunts, King's Noodles.
We walked around the Eglington area and Kensington Market and checked out the shops.
So I am the old guy now. Just how in the hell did that happen?
I didn't bring a camera but took some architectural shots of the interesting building with my phone, at least I thought the shapes were interesting.
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Distractions
YouTube viewership is now besting regular television and as of last February, more people are accessing the service on wide screens than on mobile devices.
I know I use it much more than movies or television. There is something wonderfully populist and democratic about the medium.
You can watch pretty young girls in southeast Asia catch fish, primitive families in remote Pakistan raising sheep in stark canyons, all sorts of things.
The last several years my favorites have been the polyglot Xiaoma, Ari Smith, Brad Owen playing poker, the Chess international master Eric Rosen among others.
Nowadays I am also watching Vegas Matt gamble with his cronies, Matt, or NDKayak, an angler from North Dakota who nails smallies and muskies from his kayak, Police Cam Chases, Karen videos, an occasional pimple pop and recipe and a new thing.
Hoof GP, an affable guy who trims cow hooves in Scotland, now has about 2.5 million regular viewers watching him fix cow feet. Not sure why but it is addictive. Very calming.
Mujer Sentada
I was called in early to an estate last month and my eyes chanced upon an interesting wooden modernist sculpture. Hmmm, it looked very much like the work of the British artist Barbara Hepworth. I asked the owner what she knew about it and she said, "Well, I don't know if it is a Barbara Hepworth?" What if it is, I asked her? "Don't tell me," she said.
I bought it.
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Bimorphic Theme - Barbara Hepworth |
Barbara Hepworth is a very valuable artist, like Henry Moore, her work can run into the millions of dollars. I wish that I could say that this story has a happy ending but it doesn't, at least not yet.
I sent this letter to Hepworth's granddaughter, Dr. Sophie Bowness at the Tate, who administers her estate:
I received this letter back:
Dear Robert Sommers
This work is not recorded in the very comprehensive catalogue that Hepworth herself compiled of her sculptureThe carving you sent separately is entitled Mother and Child (1934) and is in the collection of The Hepworth Wakefieldwith best wishesSophieDr Sophie BownessHepworth Estate