We had to jettison the guy in Ohio that was helping me with my book, his 99 year old grandmother moved in and work just stopped. I have a new person who is making great progress and we have gotten the cover close to where it is going to be.
I am really excited about having this book published. I hope that you will buy a signed copy and that you enjoy the photography.
As processing technology improves it gives you an ability to go back and clean things up, reset old digital imagery and try to get things more in line with your initial visualization.
This is a shot I took in New Mexico on a trip with Ken Seals one winter.
Bit of Ed Mell and a touch of Wolf Kahn with some Robert Sommers thrown in.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history. Aldous Huxley
So where do I start today?
How about the Trump grift? Today's New York Times has a very revealing article on chief yudnick Howard Lutnick, Lutnick Pushed to Weaken Chip Rules That Overlap With His Family Business.
These couple paragraphs say it all:
In its final weeks, the Biden administration issued global rules to restrict the ability of Chinese companies to remotely access U.S. chips. But President Trump revoked those rules when he came into office, arguing that they stifled American business and innovation.
Trump officials said they would introduce a new rule to replace the Biden ones. But they have struggled to reconcile competing views in the administration about how aggressive the rules should be.
Mr. Lutnick has been described as delaying or deferring these technology controls at several points in the past year, arguing that they could affect companies like Nvidia, or U.S. trade relations with China and other countries.
People familiar with the discussions say the Commerce Department has pushed for a more scaled-back version of the rule. The department has proposed applying regulations to a handful of countries — Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa and Norway. Others in the administration have wanted global coverage.
The Commerce Department proposal would also apply only to future shipments of advanced chips, exempting data centers already filled with American technology. Companies would need to notify the government if Chinese customers use their data centers to train A.I. models. But they would not automatically need to obtain a license.
The Commerce Department had also argued for the rules to kick in when companies are using a larger amount of computing power, meaning fewer activities by Chinese companies would be regulated.
Lutnick's kids took over his old firm, Cantor Fitzgerald and they are hip deep in Nvidia.
And this is how the Chinese commandeered our proprietary chip design and technology. The Mata hari spy, Alice Huang, who was one of the three women who got Jensen Huang to take his knickers down, is now safely back in Beijing. Interestingly, her own husband set up the cuckold arrangement with the chairman. Now that is love for the motherland.
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Is it just me or are you sick of John Fetterman threatening to leave the Democratic party if they cross one more line on Israel. Leave already, you are no longer electable bud, in any party. Your Joe Manchin card has been played out and no one will miss you.
You were a useful tool for the Republicans but you think the hoodie thing is going to play over there and that they will actually elect you. Get over yourself, maybe you can get a new job as Bill Maher's Ed McMahon.
I am a centrist who believes in nuance and policy and actually agree with Fetterman on some things but he seems to stand for nothing.
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Not wanting to waste a moment thinking about what might have been, ultra right adulterer Attorney General Ken Paxton has flown to Fiji with his mistress. See Ken Paxton spotted jetting off on yet another holiday with alleged mistress the day his divorce was finalized.
Another evangelical grifter.
An investigation by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica found that Paxton took nearly 1,000 trips since 2015 accompanied by a state-funded Department of Public Safety (DPS) security detail, costing taxpayers a total of $3.3 million.
Destinations for those excursions included Napa Valley, ski towns in the Rockies, the Caribbean, Disney World, and overseas destinations such as Italy, Greece, Iceland and Dubai. Of those 1,000 trips, researchers for the Tribune and ProPublica could connect only 138 to state business.
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Donald Trump has finally spoke about the airplane grounding and the response was so predictable.
"It is all Biden's fault. And give us more money."
At what point in the current two year old Trump administration will they hold themselves accountable for their ineptitude? If you said never, you win the prize today. A day in which two more planes collided in Florida. By the way, the FAA people in the know said that the administration was completely wrong regarding the causes of the breakdown. But they are incapable of ever admitting anything or taking responsibility.
And all this happened three days after they tried to overhaul the entire system using AI. Hmmm.
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If Mary Peltola indeed has a 50% plus majority in the Alaska Senate vote and her total lead is insurmountable, larger than her two challengers combined without enough voted left to make a difference, why are the networks not calling the race for her? Stick a fork in it, Alaska, it is over.
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I feel for the poor muni golfers who are going to lose their old golf course if the petulant 🟠🤡 has his way. The current green fee is $48. Can you imagine what the Fazio course will cost, even at half price?
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Trump is so out of touch with the working people in this country, the people that don't own oil stocks or a 401k.
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Zelensky urges US and Musk to lift Starlink restrictions and be on 'right side of history.' Ralph sent me a SpaceX link the other day and I can't watch it. I loathe Elon Musk, can't stand his stupid trucks and am offended that a private citizen can play kingmaker and Putin stooge in international affairs.
Lock the son of a bitch up, send him to deep space, stick him in Paxton's suitcase and send him on a one way trip to Fiji, guy is such bad news.
Now Witkoff and Kushner are suggesting that Ukraine give up the Donbas for NATO membership. What a disaster these two.
Do you remember when we told Ukraine that we would protect them if they gave up their nuclear weapons? How did that work out?
Basically he was a walking encyclopedia with an incredible breadth of knowledge in all matters. Will was a brilliant guy with a dry wit and a love for cats and flowers along with a million other things.
Will was a Berkeley grad. I think he once mentioned that he belonged to Subud. He was an excellent writer and editor.
A friend of his found my name in his rolodex and called to tell me the sad news. I don't have any details.
Will was proud to say that he came from western stock. His father was a cowboy born in Oregon and raised in Wyoming.
I had a rare rodeo etching I shared with him and received this note from him a while back that I found interesting:
The rodeo competition event of bulldogging originated as a novelty performance by a black cowboy in Wyoming at Cheyenne Frontier Days, circa 1916. It later became a competition, but modified by the young white competitors, who chose not to bring their steers down by biting them on the upper lip, as the originator did. I’m blanking on his name as write this, to my sorrow.
I grew up knowing that story because my father, Al Chandler (1909-2001), was born in Oregon but raised from the age of 11 in Cheyenne. As his widowed mother was often ill, one of his guardians was Charles Hersig, founder of the Wyoming Hereford Ranch, where my dad spent most of his teens. Dad became a prize winning roper, and continued to compete in the circuits after he began work as a telephone lineman and wire chief for Mountain Bell in Casper.
Your comment about a nice loop inspired me to share this photo of him taken at the Las Vegas, New Mexico rodeo in 1938, age 29. Also a helluva nice loop, which the brahma calf hasn’t even noticed as he runs through it. Dad pointed out to me that he trained his horses (this was one of about 10 he owned at that time) to sit down for the impact as soon as he threw the loop. The knot is visible and positioned to throw the calf upside down, ready for the piggin string. Charlie Bennett, a childhood friend of my dad’s with a third generation ranch near Laramie, surprised him with this long forgotten photo as a Christmas present in 1988.
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Cheers,
Will
It has been a weird twenty four hours. I came home from the hospital with a splitting migraine that would not abate.
I had been given anesthesia that was comprised of versed and fentanyl. I have a somewhat spotty record with the former, once had a terrible reaction and a serious aversion to the latter and frankly any opiate for that matter.
I slept some and then had a strange case of aphasia in the middle of the night. I could not come up with the name of an acquaintance in town who I have known for years but rarely see. Undoubtedly it was because of the narcotic cocktail, which made me feel terrible.
I opened the computer at two in the morning and started searching for friends of this person, who happens to be a guitar player of some renown. Looking for a name or a clue.
Still nothing.
It bothered me that my memory, which is usually pretty freaking amazing, could not come up with a name for the face in my mind's eye.
I ended up going through every contact on my phone until I saw his name, which starts with G. This took a long time.
I don't know if I have done a top to bottom search of my contact list for years and was startled at the number of people who are no longer sharing our space on this earthly firmament. Pretty close to even. Truth is I can't bear to delete those souls that have been previously deleted by fate.
Guess I could still edit those few that still walk this earth but I just can't stand...
The headache continued this morning but not as bad as yesterday. I am not supposed to lift anything heavier than a phone or glass and not drive for 48 hours. I never saw the surgery instructions until this afternoon so I have struck out on a host of things, what do you mean I wasn't supposed to drive or take a bath? But I still feel almost okay and have not started spurting blood out of my arteries or anything.
The brain fog is starting to fade. Now I know what it feels to be a normal muggle.
Frightening.
Hopefully I will feel better tomorrow. I have a lot to do this week.
We were up at four and out the door at 4:40 this morning for my procedure at Scripps. We actually were a half hour early getting to Genesee but I would rather be early than late.
I checked in and went downstairs for labwork.
The cardiologist had told me that I had a severe blockage in the lower area of my heart that would require one of three things, stents, bypass or open heart work.
Not like I am new to this having had open heart surgery way back in 2006 for a murmur and a mitral valve but not necessarily something I wanted to repeat.
I was feeling rather apprehensive about this one, was this the moment in time when the dice crapped out?
My cardiologist is on maternal leave and the man treating me was an old hand, the best in the business. He worked on my friend Joel last week and he said he felt better immediately. There was another man from Fallbrook in the waiting room so North County was really representing.
I have written about the peculiar politics in the state of Missouri before. Voters passed a referendum legalizing reproductive choice in 2024 and the Governor and legislature freaked out and tried to legislate the people's will out of existence.
They said that the people were confused and had been tricked by out of state interests.
So they created a sham referendum denuding abortion rights and tried to get that to fly this year.
The proposal had been placed on the ballot by the Republican-led legislature and it would have banned abortion except in the case or rape and incest for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy or longer for fetal anomalies.
It didn't.
Republican lawmakers placed Amendment 3 on the ballot last year, arguing that voters hadn’t understood the reproductive rights amendment they approved in 2024. But Tuesday’s results were more decisive: Roughly 55% rejected the proposed ban, compared with the 51.6% who approved abortion rights two years earlier.
“It’s hard to say this time that they were tricked,” said Matt Harris, a political scientist at Park University. “ … it’s maybe close, but Missourians have demonstrated that they want abortion rights.”
The vote preserves abortion rights before fetal viability. Abortion is available at five Planned Parenthood clinics across Missouri, including in Springfield, where procedural abortions resumed this year for the first time in 21 years.
Voters protected themselves this time, also voting for Amendment 6, which required that any legislative attempt to change or undermine a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment must receive support from at least 80% of both legislative chambers before going to voters for approval.
The Governor of Missouri, Mike Kehoe, hates these amendments. He thinks that voters should let politicians govern, that they are too easily manipulated by outside money.
Truth is that the politicians don't respect their own citizens.
And the pro-lifers will not quit. They have an incessant need to control other people's moral decisions.
State Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican who helped lead the push to put an abortion ban on the ballot, said Wednesday that abortion will always be on the agenda in Jefferson City.
Rather than pursuing another constitutional amendment, Seitz said he intends to focus on new abortion regulations.
“Incrementalism is key, especially in this political environment,” he said, pointing at the new makeup of the legislature, which is no longer controlled by a Republican supermajority.
That approach has a long history in Missouri. Over several decades, Republican lawmakers enacted dozens of abortion regulations that steadily eroded access to the procedure, even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
And their strategy is to keep putting these sorts of roadblocks up year after year, regardless of what the majority thinks or believes and beat them through attrition.
State Rep. Ed Lewis, a Republican from Moberly who lost his run for state Senate in the August primary, said outside personhood bills, he foresees reluctance to attempt to legislate abortion after what he characterized as a “strong repudiation” Tuesday.
“I don’t think there’s gonna be anything done in two years,” Lewis said. “I think that it’s just too raw, too much money spent, too much effort. We’re probably gonna have to wait and let things play out a little bit.”
But he does guess there will still be a large focus by Republicans on initiative petition reform, including attempts to limit out-of-state funding to initiative petitions efforts and raise the threshold for passage.
“I think you’re going to see this continued fight over IP,” he said. “And forcing the other side to just spend their money over and over again.”
Congratulations to the people of Missouri who stood firm for reproductive rights. And shame on a state government that refuses to respect the will of its own people.
As you are no doubt aware, all things MAGA have been soundly beaten in the last week. The repudiation of Trumpism has been total and has reached across every election booth in America. It has been interesting to see the reaction in some right wing circles. According to them the problem is that the candidates weren't MAGA enough.
Supposedly Talerico and Hinojosa won because Rove and Abbott were RINOs and Cornyn didn't "help enough." Please. The honest truth is that Cornyn would have probably swept the floor with Talerico but Trump's hand picked candidate the Adulterer went down in flames instead.
Ultimately, those Republican candidates who hitched their wagons to Trump went down in a fiery pyre and frankly he could not care less.
Always only about him.
Hey, he wasn't on the ballot. Those crowds of his...
You would think that a party that just absorbed such a historic ass whuppin' would engage in an honest bit of self appraisal and see where they lost their way.
Think again.
Donald Trump set the stage for his administration to lurch further to the right this weekend, claiming the US had taken a “giant step back” by widely rejecting his party.The US president’s hardline aide, Stephen Miller, will begin as White House chief of staff on Monday. He will also meet with Dana White, CEO and president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, after offering him the job of press secretary.“America took a giant step back in History with the results of the last Election,” Trump claimed in a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday morning, citing the sharp sell-off in global markets, fueled a rout of US tech stocks. “But have no fear, we will be back, BIGGER AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!”
He still thinks that he is the greatest president that has ever lived and now has appointed his own little Goebbels as Chief of Staff. Ostensibly, he is a lame duck settling down in his bunker for the next two years ramming gilded vanity projects up America's posterior.
Leslie told me a joke that is going around today, when Stephen Miller takes viagra he only gets taller.
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I look to the current political situation with a little hope but also a lot of pessimism.
I am a centrist who gave up his Democratic registration over two years ago.
I think I know what is about to happen.
The progressive left will overestimate the strength of the election win and over reach, guaranteed.
They will forget that the election was basically about beef and gas prices and start all the stupid woke shit again, like allowing biologically born males to compete in women's sports and reparations. You like socialism? Look at the miserable records of the socialist mayors in Seattle and Oakland and get ready for disaster.
Eating the rich will not bring jobs and stability to your community as unfortunately they are the ones that usually provide jobs, not those playing in drum circles and balancing your chakras. Good luck with that.
Get ready for the progressives to stick their knives in any of the old guard that got them there, people like Schumer and Jeffries, the bearers of institutional knowledge that actually know the territory and paved the way.
And then there is Israel. My feelings on Netanyahu are pretty clear. But he still leads the only functioning democracy in the middle east, one where even muslim arabs have a vote. If the roles were reversed in Palestine, how do you think the Jews would fare?
El Sayed is the golden boy right now, polished and articulate. But I could not vote for either him or his opponent Mike Rogers, a MAGA anti abortion rubber stamp for Trump.
One of his own staff members, Mariam Odeh, was involved in some pernicious behavior that got her indicted. Some in the group talked in text mesages of poisoning jews in Michigan.
Odeh allegedly participated in vandalism and protests that included putting fake corpses on the lawns of faculty members, as well as spray painting anti-Israeli sentiments on the driveway of the president of the university at the time, according to prosecutors.
Federal officials announced Friday the addition of four more alleged co-conspirators to the indictment.
“No one has the right to threaten, intimidate, and coerce public officials, law enforcement officers, community institutions, or their families. In the dead of night, masked and hooded defendants allegedly threw noxious chemicals through the windows of families’ homes and taped demand letters to their front doors. At every step they attempted to cover their tracks and delete evidence of their crimes,” Jennifer Runyan, special agent in charge of the FBI Detroit Field Office, said in a statement at the time of the indictment.
When the synagogue pre-school was bombed in West Bloomfield, El Sayed tried to justify the action by saying that "hurt people hurt people." Obviously you could use the same logic for every other form of terrorist activity, from 9/11 to the Achille Lauro.
Somebody was hurting inside so they get a pass. I'm just not ready to celebrate the "armed resistance" that murdered 1200 unarmed innocent people, many of them young kids enjoying an electronic dance music concert in the Negev on October seventh either. Even if they were hurting.
...the bike ride, which is mainly organized by Philly Bike On Your Left, is being done on the eve of the 88th anniversary of "Kristallnacht" or the "Night of Broken Glass," a night in which Jewish citizens in Germany saw their businesses and synagogues torched while tens of thousands were taken to concentration camps.
The organizers behind this bike ride claim they are not antisemitic, but "anti-zionist." A flyer for their bike ride includes the names of multiple Jewish-owned businesses, including a mac and cheese shop and a deli, with those names crossed out. The organizers said these "zionist establishments must go."
So now I get to go after the right and the left, with equal fervor, just like I always have and please nobody, as usual.
Yesterday was a long day. I have suddenly developed an old man's prostate and I went to see a doctor to see what we could do about it.
Due to the particular physiognomy of my prostate I am in line for an old fashioned TURP, looks like beginning of December.
It will be her birthday tomorrow.
My routine after these sorts of medical events is to go get Chinese on Convoy but I thought that I would mix it up yesterday.
I had heard about a place in Chula Vista with the best tacos in San Diego and food far different than the normal fare Aqui es Texcoco.
It was only seven miles from the cemetery.
After a short cry I made my way down the five.
Let's get real, where else around town can you find a whole lamb's head on a menu?
In addition were fresh tortillas and a cup of a lamb consommé with chickpeas which I poured on the taco and then drank like a soup.
The food here was truly incredible for me, a lamb lover.
I was full after the lamb plate and looked at the quesadilla with dread and foreboding.
Could I take another bite?
But it was truly different and totally out of my gustatory experience and I am glad that I ordered it.
Washed everything down with a Jarritos Mandarin.
Yo me gusto mucho y quiero regreso pronto.
520 Broadway 5 & 6 Ste 5 & 6 Chula Vista, CA 91910
Monday I get my stints.
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| My bobblehead from BigDave |
It was a long show but a good show, I sold fairly steadily and met some nice people and new clients. Weather was near perfect with just one day of rain that I remember. Driving home was a different story but not too terrible.
I got to Round Top on a Wednesday and drove over and picked up a lovely germantown Navajo blanket that I had purchased from a friend. I love germantown eyedazzlers, they were made between 1865 and 1915 and were some of the most lovely and unusual native weavings.
The wool was imported from a suburb of Philadelphia, the brightly colored commercial yard had four times the normal knot per inch count and allowed the Navajo to weave some of the most optically and visually interesting patterns that have ever been created.
I started setting up Thursday morning.
For the last couple years I have favored a buff or sandstone backdrop paper but signals were crossed and I was instead given a bright yellow forsythia.
I had about three days to setup, which is way more than enough so I had time to shop the other dealers and make some good buys including a room size Navajo that I sold to a California client.
Buying is always way more fun than selling in my line of work.
I also bought the two most beautiful aesthetic pieces of silver I have ever owned, sterling and mixed metal, replete with bugs, fish and turtle ornamentation.
Sold to a client instantly!
They threw in an outside wall which really helps.
I wasn't sure about the dealer across from me but he turned out to be as toxic, abrasive and sarcastic as I am and we ended up being a great fit together.
The show is more decoratively oriented than collector based so my inexpensive paintings sold first but I sold high end as well.
I have heard Roundtop referred to as the Texas Catwalk and it seems somewhat accurate.
Many of the women in Texas are stunningly beautiful and they parade through the show in similar dress.
I noticed much less ink than I see in California and far fewer full Ferdinand the bull style nose rings.
Breasts are not as augmented and eyebrows tend to be fuller and less plucked.
There were less prairie dresses this year and possibly more plunging backlines.
All in all, quite lovely and entertaining.
Found a great barbecue nearby in Burton, Truth Barbecue, their second location.
One of the big Texas magazines calls them third best in the state.
Brisket was good but honestly the ribs were the best I have ever had.
Really nice guy.
I'm not going to talk to much about the food, was good and bad, ate too much beef and had some mediocre seafood.
Had two good meals at Las Patronas, quail and ribs.
Went to all my old haunts.
