Falco sparverius

David Gilmour

Live and die

I was at a dinner party last week and a friend asked the group how long they hoped/wanted to live? He announced that he was thinking of 130 or 140. Another fellow offered 110, 120. I said that I would be happy if I could hit my next birthday.

I guess I should fill in the conversation a bit. The man who made the query was talking about the new frontier in aging and longevity. He mentioned the Google resident genius Ray Kurzweil, father of the concept of singularity, who he said was a sixty something who now lived in the body of a forty something. The first immortal. Some time ago Kurzweil came up with the idea of nanorobots that would course through your veins and keep your systems working optimally. Who wouldn't want to extend their life? Well, maybe me...

I looked up Kurzweil, who I have  touched on before here. Hate to say it but he didn't look so good to me.

The futurist, who wrote the book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, is down to 100 supplemental pills a day from his high of 250. Undergoes weekly intravenous longevity treatments. Chelation. Much more. Think a super smart Keith Richards. And very self absorbed.

I believe that I am in the minority on this one. I would not want to live beyond what has been the norm the last forty or fifty years. I have packed in every ounce of life experience I could muster in my paltry sixty one years to date. I will leave with nothing left on the table, knowing I have gone for it at every opportunity. Will I have things left on my bucket list? Who doesn't. But nobody gets to do it all and it is a bit unreasonable to try, at least in my way of thinking.

I remember hearing an old Russian folk tale in kindergarten about a man who was granted his wish to live forever. As you might imagine, it quickly became a curse. Losing everyone you have ever loved. Tiring of life and never being able to undergo the cessation, the final sleep. Sounds horrific.

We seem to have a rather finite productive period in our lives. Even if it was extended significantly, an exponentially larger group of older people living past the century mark would put a large burden on the young. Is that fair? Those that have tried to eat of the tree of knowledge and desired immortality have been struck down in a plethora of myths since time immemorial, from Pandora to Adam. The first had an eagle eat his liver for eternity, while chained to a rock. Ouch.

Perhaps artists are somewhat different in how we wish to leave our mark, think Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, the twenty seven club. Or those denizens of Thanatos who exercised even more complete control of their final exit, like Plath and Brautigan. Say your piece, make your mark and split.

I never thought I would make it this long, frankly. I was told by a doctor that I had no more than three days to live at the age of 16. After three years of fighting chronic interactive non a, non b hepatitis, my pancreas emptied out, my feet started itching, vomiting bile, I actually started the process of dying. Necrosis. Down close to 125 lbs. Won't go into the gruesome details, saved by my mother's care and prayers, I made it. Then the eight years of continual bladder and kidney cancer. Which returned twenty five years later.  And an incident after open heart surgery where Leslie and I were informed that I had less than two weeks to live. Which turned out to inaccurate but was taken very seriously at the time. And there have been more.

Call of death, 1934 - Kathe Kollwitz

I learned long ago to live for the day and be good with that.

When you face death on a semi continual basis, you make peace and stop clinging to life in the same way a healthy person might. At least in my experience. Appreciate the moment. But a desire for eternity? No thanks. You might wrestle with death but declare victory? I think not. When my ticket gets punched it gets punched. And I am most happy with that. Maybe people who have always been healthy can't grok that.

Infidel753 wrote something tangential to this conversation on his blog today; A century from now people will look back on our time, which passively accepts aging and natural death as inevitable, with the same pity and horror with which we now look back on the age that accepted its helplessness in the face of the Black Death as something normal.

I don't know why this type of thinking is so antithetical to my own but it is. I recognize that my attitude may be in the minority. I hate the thought of gene editing too, imagining a world of perfect children with perfect teeth with all the mad skills one might pick out of the catalogue. I personally don't trust humans with such power. But a large majority of young people today favor the practice. I think I am outvoted.

Can you imagine how world weary a centenarian might get, watching humanity continue to devolve and others continually repeat the same tired mistakes? Give me a final chapter any day.

Big day

Don't worry baby

Our friend, the burrowing owl

Surf's Up!

Mike called yesterday and said that surf was supposed to be up to eleven foot high today and did I want to take some shots with him this morning? Sure. I met him at the market at six and after a quick stop at the donut shop for a cup of coffee we drove to Cardiff Reef.

The surf was pretty big and the form was excellent. Beautiful morning! We saw what looked to me were occasional sets with faces that were at least twelve feet tall and heard that they were up to fifteen earlier in the morning. Saw a couple of nice tube rides. And a lot of spectacular wipeouts.

Unfortunately not only was it a little hazy, I sort of forgot what I was doing and did not do a very good job capturing the session.

My autofocus was bogging down in the whitewater contrast and I should have tried to grab more depth of field.

Haven't shot the waves with the prime in over a year. Need to learn how to shoot surf photographs again. Next time!

Still I definitely had fun and can't wait to go back on another big day. We eventually moved to Swamis and the waves were even nicer there. Lots of people out in the lineup.

We drove up to Grandview, near my old house. That was real nice too. Afterwards breakfast at Honeys and good to go. Hopefully next time I will have it a little more together! Thanks for driving, Mike.

San Jacinto Postcard

Take off

My favorite Mongolian heavy metal band

Uighur Tragedy

There is no sadder situation in the world than what is happening to the Uighur people that inhabit the Xinjiang province of China.

A Turkic people, they have lived on their native Tian Shan for over 6500 years, they were incorporated into China by conquest in 1876. Xinjiang means new territory in Chinese.

There are said to be up to one million Uighurs in concentration camps in Western China called "re-education camps." Their language, religion and islamic cultural practices are now forbidden and they are in the process of undergoing "sinoization."

From Wiki:

Uyghurs in Xinjiang suffer under a "fully-fledged police state" with extensive controls and restrictions upon their religious, cultural and social life.In Xinjiang, the Chinese government has expanded police surveillance to watch for signs of "religious extremism" that include owning books about Uyghurs, growing a beard, having a prayer rug, or quitting smoking or drinking. The government had also installed cameras in the homes of private citizens.
Further, at least 120,000 (and possibly over 1 million)Uyghurs are detained in mass detention camps, termed "re-education camps," aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. Some of these facilities keep prisoners detained around the clock, while others release their inmates at night to return home. The New York Times has reported inmates are required to "sing hymns praising the Chinese Communist Party and write 'self-criticism' essays," and that prisoners are also subjected to physical and verbal abuse by prison guards. Chinese officials are sometimes assigned to monitor the families of current inmates, and women have been detained due to actions by their sons or husbands.
Beijing denied the existence of the camps initially, but have changed their stance since to that the camps serve to combat terrorism and give vocational training to the Uighur people. Yet, calls by activists to open the camps to the visitors to prove their function have gone unheeded. Plus, media groups have shown that many in the camps were forcibly detained there in rough unhygienic conditions while undergoing political indoctrination.The lengthy isolation periods between the two Uyghur genders has been interpreted by some analysts as an attempt to inhibit Uyghur procreation in order to change the ethnic demographics of the country.

I read an interesting article on the subject in the NYT the other day. Taking a page from Joe Stalin, the utterly ruthless and immoral Chinese are arresting Uighur poets, writers, intellectuals and scholars. Moderate and passive people. First slaughter the lambs. There are reports of mass murders being held in the camps which can not be corroborated because third party independent observers are not allowed entrance.

The concentration camps are being used to provide free or low cost forced labor. Some of the goods produced there have made it to the United States. Slavery. To companies like Baxter Sportswear.

“These people who are detained provide free or low-cost forced labor for these factories,” said Mehmet Volkan Kasikci, a researcher in Turkey who has collected accounts of inmates in the factories by interviewing relatives who have left China. “Stories continue to come to me,” he said.

The Chinese are also harassing Uighurs in foreign lands and threatening their families back in Xinjiang with retribution.

Is there a company more sinister and despicable than the current Chinese regime which appears more Stalinist, immoral and repressive every day?

Female shoveler?

Ten Years After

Mommy, what did butterflies look like?

News came down the pike yesterday that the monarch butterfly population in California has dropped 86% in the last year.

With the second of two consecutive bad years, the monarch butterfly population in California has now dropped to less than 0.5% of its historical size.

We are right at the threshold of losing the population.

“While overwintering populations naturally fluctuate, even by double-digit percentages, the magnitude of this year’s drop is of significant concern because the monarch population was already at a new low after the 97 [percent] decline it has experienced since the 1980s,  leading to a situation which may be catastrophic for the western population,” the Xerces Society said.

Pesticides, herbicides, habitat loss and climate change are all thought to be contributors to the decline.

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In other news, the last known member of Achatinella apexfulva, the Hawaiian Tree Snail, died New Years Day. The species is now officially extinct.

What did Rush Limbaugh once say, if they can't hang in the brave new world, who needs them?

Twilight hour, SJWA

Leonard Bernstein – Stravinsky: The soldier's tale

Magic Hour

Northern Shoveler

I went hunting in Temecula yesterday but pickings were slim so I decided to head up to the preserve in the afternoon. Go hunt with the camera instead. Already a quarter of the way there. Wasn't doing much of anything else.

As I drove up Davis Rd., a small car with two older women in it waved me down and stopped me. I must look like a birder. They told me that there was a burrowing owl not 25' away. I have never had a decent shot of one and was very happy for their help. Snapped some shots, hand held. Burrowing owls are the second smallest owl species, a mere 7 to 9" tall. This one was an adult.

They live in the ground, often adopting or sharing mole or gopher holes.

It was a nice harbinger of a lovely shoot. I saw all manner of birds, eagles, falcons, hawks, lbbs, shorebirds and waterfowl.

I had not been up there in the evening for a very long time and it felt good to once again shoot in the golden hour.

Dusk and dawn is when the magic happens.

I don't have adequate time to process today, life is calling, but will leave you with a few to hopefully whet your whistle.

I saw a few of my favorites.

Caught the black shouldered kite by accident in a tree. It was really starting to get dark at that point. Sorry, it is now officially known as the White tailed kite.

I saw the peregrine on the shoals at the Ramona Duck Club off Walker Rd., never seen him there before.

The place was fantastic as always, I was the only human around. Nice to have the intense beauty and calm to myself.

Red Shouldered Hawk

red winged blackbird

I am looking forward to seeing what else I may have captured. had a great hike, second in two days.

Must get there late again.

Nice electric sunset.

I love the big fat kestrels.

Black necked stilt

I will post some more shots once I get time.

Murder in My Heart for the Judge

Approaching storm, Tetons

President Knowitall

I know I said that it was my shutdown but now it is officially your shutdown. But we are no longer using the word shutdown, okay? It is now a strike. And it can go months if not years. And all those federal workers getting hurt? You know they're mostly democrats, don't you? The Safety Net? They'll be safe when we get a border wall. Can they hold out? Not my problem. And I never said it had to be concrete, I don't care what you have on tape. Did you know I would have made a good general? Everybody tells me...In fact, I know everything better than everybody.

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Poor Mike Pence, trying to make a deal and not give on anything this weekend. Because his boss, il orange duce, the general, cut his legs off the last time he said they had a deal, after he had received the okay from el jefe and after Mitch McConnell and the Senate had voted for it. Now the House passes the very same bill the Senate approved and it's suddenly no good. Because Limbaugh said so. No wonder the people around Trump are skittish, he pulls the rug out from under his own troops every time, some general. I don't blame McConnell for stepping out of the picture. He isn't going to put up with that moving the goalpost thing again. A deal is a deal. Trump's word is about as good as Lindsey Graham's assurances of it. The man can not be trusted, the man has never made a mistake in his life and is obviously the most brilliant leader the earth has ever seen. And every real general he has ever worked with is a dog, plain stupid and/or a democrat. The teflon don. Always right.

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For a guy who is supposedly a great deal maker, the guy has shown me nothing. All he knows is threats and brute force. Kindergarten stuff. I am going to scream and throw a tantrum in the sandbox until I get what I want. Most adults understand that you are not going to get everything you want all the time and that you need a few more transactional tools in your quiver besides lashing out and holding your breath.

But if your pop was a rich racist real estate developer who babied you, started you off with a few million and let you run the family business into bankruptcy on multiple times, the rules are indeed different. So the orange buffoon can stand up there and make a total mockery of our republic and his accomplices in the Senate and Supreme Court can stay silent and nervously fidget while eyeing the portent of the whole house of cards imploding before the next election cycle.

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This idea of shutting the border with Mexico completely by executive order as he declared the other day. How ludicrous. Do you know how much business is transacted annually between the two countries? Over $557 billion dollars in 2017. Think all those rich but loyal Trump supporters that depend on cross border trade in Texas are going to cotton to shutting it all down?

Mexico is our third largest trading partner. Makes a lot of sense to slam the door on them. We Californians export an average of $127 million per day of merchandise to Mexico and also import an average of about $73 million per day of goods from south of the border. The President would hurt lots of people on both sides of the border if allowed to indulge and make good on his infantile threats. By the way Trump's hated NAFTA was a major success by almost every metric, it more than doubled trade between its signatories.

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The President says he can declare a national emergency and do what he wants, when he wants it. Build his stupid wall. Harry Truman tried to do something similar once.

On April 8, 1952, the day before the steelworkers’ strike began, President Truman issued Executive Order No. 10340. It directed Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to take possession of the nation’s privately owned steel mills and keep them running.

On June 2, 1952, the Supreme Court, by a 6–3 margin, ruled that President Truman’s seizure order was unconstitutional (Youngstown, Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579). Justice Hugo Black, writing the majority opinion, concluded: "The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times."

It would be interesting to see how this current SCOTUS would swing, if faced by a similar pronouncement from our mad king. I am sure Alito and Thomas would cover for Trump if he was shooting salvation army bell ringers from his limo. Not sure about Kavanaugh or Gorsuch but I think Roberts would do the right thing if our leader started acting like a madman. Or should I say, more of a madman? Hope that we never have to find out. We don't give anybody absolute power in America, or at least we didn't. The Republican Senate, with two or three notable exceptions seems all in with Trump. Wonder what the people in charge of checking and balancing will allow our country to become?

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Alan Dershowitz had a shit fit the other day, said that calling Trump Hitler demeans the holocaust. I think he is a little mistaken. It is not that Trump is contemplating genocide that makes people refer to him as a Hitler like character, it is the fact that he comports himself like an unhinged lunatic and has no respect for the truth. People, and I include myself here, are worried about what our orange emperor is truly capable of? The blind tolerance of his base, no matter what, does remind me a bit of 1938. Yes, I do think this is how fascist authoritarian regimes start.

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Did you hear? 18 immigrant children died under while under custody of the Obama Administration? Trump has only lost two kids so far, he's doing great. Well, the first thing never happened.

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A couple newspapers, like the Post, suggest that since Trump campaigned on the wall, we should give him just a little piece of it, let him save some face with his base. Give Trump a small win and be done with it for the next two years. Give the baby his bottle and maybe he will stop screaming. Sounds absurd to me. Can you see the GOP giving Obama any sort of win if the tables were turned? As Beto amply shows, the Wall is a stupid proposition on many fronts, especially since the boundary is in the middle of a river for quite a stretch..

It requires more eminent domain and taking of private land, more no man's land, more militarization of our border, more environmental degradation, seals off animal corridors, splits off native communities like the Tohono O'odom that have existed on both sides of the Rio Grande long before there even was a United States or Mexico.

Love Revisited.

DG just sent me this link, Leslie and my favorite band, Love, played in San Francisco last night. They never play anymore. Even without the late Arthur Lee, the band is amazing, every single one of them and original lead guitar Johnny Echols is still playing with them. Baby Lemonade played far longer with Arthur than the original band. All good.

Unfortunately it looks like the show was a one off. They are now off to England soon. If you ever get a chance to see them, do so.

Jimmy Reed - I'm going upside your head

issued on Vee-Jay as VJ622 in1964

Shiker iz der Goy

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools. 
Ernest Hemingway

Drunkard's cloak and brank

I am not much of a drinker, never have been. Never had the taste for beer and I developed an awful allergy to wine and champagne somewhere along the way.

One pop and I am sneezing in thirty seconds and clogged for three days, sulfite or non sulfite. It is alright, don't feel sorry for me, I make up for it in other ways.

Like Vodka. Vodka is always good. Could 144 million Russians be all wrong? I tend to mix it with citrus, fresh satsumas the other night, heavenly. But not too much vodka. I don't really need the buzz and I frankly prefer the flavor of the tangerine.

My other go to if I am in a social setting that requires me to imbibe is irish whiskey, specifically Jamisons but Bushmills in a pinch. I have never had the taste for scotch, rye, bourbon or American whiskey but there is something clean about the taste of Irish that I like and it goes down easy.

I have tried some of the other hipper brands of the stuff, Powers and Red Breast, Green Spot, but frankly can't tell all that much difference so I normally stick with the old reliable catholic whiskey, Jamisons.

We were at a dinner the other night and I didn't want to look like Bill W. so I asked for a shot. The hostess didn't have any Irish but gave me a shot of Glenlivet single malt. Last pour in the bottle. It was pretty good, had more notes and side flavors than I am accustomed to. Never did the single malt thing, in the past couple years it has become a rich man's game and I don't really belong. Great for people who are figuring out how to blow their big wad of cash. Alas, not I.

My buddy Pat is a Scot who lives in England and he wrote me the other day after I mentioned the Glenlivet.

Robert, 

Bliadhna ur Mhath Robert
I hope 2019 is kind to us old codgers. A little dosh wouldn’t go amiss to help us in our old age but the thing we really want is good health.Here’s to us and good health!(Takes large slurp of 12yo Highland Park .....)Px 

Jameson’s is cooking whisky but it’s okay with a mixer You would like highland park with a dash of nice water. No ice. Propre sipping dram Bliss......

Cooking whiskey, heh? He sent me this picture of his favorite libation.

Nice looking bottle, I like the celtic knot action. I looked the stuff up, definitely ain't cheap. And thanks for pouring me a shot, mate.

I think I will be sticking with the twelve year old stuff at these prices or go back to my irish.

As my grandpappy always said, go raibh maith agat.

Peregrine at Torrey Pines

The Jean Genie

Ravenhaired beauty.

I have bought and sold art since 1975. Although I only lived with my father for one or two years past the age of four, thankfully I was exposed to the joys of fine painting and decorative arts at a very young age through his excellent eye and magnificent collection. As I got older I developed a taste for both the modern and the classical and always felt that they could inhabit the same universe quite easily. One criteria; does the piece have artistic value and integrity? Very subjective, as you can imagine.

I recently took this wonderful painting in on consignment, the owner wishing to move into a new decorative phase of her life. It was bought long ago at an auction in Chicago. I just had it cleaned. On the verso it is titled in pencil, in german, Portrait of Theodora von Hermannsthal. I am not sure of the artist, it may have been on the backing paper that someone carelessly tore off at some point. I will wait until a german speaker comes into the gallery, perhaps they can glean more information from the remaining script? A cursory search has provided no clues as to the sitter. Reminds me a bit of the very much later Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka.

This is a fairly large work, the framed dimensions of the painting are 30 x 25" and the original frame has certainly had better days. The painting is painting on a very thin substrate which is glued down to board and does not extend much beyond the oval. This type of mat is called tonneau, from the french word for tunnel and was very popular in the 18th and 19th century.

Hands were the most difficult feature to paint and this approach obviated the need to render them and saved time and money for all concerned. You can tell that the painting is pre twentieth century because of the craquelure in the sitter's black mane. In the 19th century artists were still using bituminous coal pigments that tended to break down and fracture.

I have had several beautiful portraits in my twenty three years of having an open gallery. Two were from Académie Julian in Paris, where teachers like Julian, Royer, Jean-Paul Laurens, Gabriel Ferrier, Tony Robert-Fleury and Lefebvre taught many students after its inception in 1868, including noted American artists Twachtman, Henri, Hassam and Sargent.

I am not sure when this marvelous painting will sell. Portraits are soft, too personal in today's impersonal world. As are landscapes. I am hoping someone else thinks it is as wonderful as I do. I still own one of my Académie Julian paintings, obviously not having found anyone yet who treasures it as I do.

Which leads me to the point of today's tract or sermon. While I recognize that tastes change, as they always have, we are in mortal danger of throwing the past away, at least in terms of the decorative arts and literature. I have been harping on this for years like the boy who cried wolf, but it has gotten worse then ever. People seem to no longer appreciate the past and knowledge of it is at a nadir. You really see it in the art and decorative art world.

Gold plated shit - Terrence Koh

Modernism has crept upon us like the plague. Now don't get me wrong, good art is good art, modern or classic, but the amount of vapid sludge that is masquerading as modern art at present is truly remarkable.

Think, people were actually shelling out a cool $500,000 a sculpture to get gold plated turds personally extruded from the artist Terrence Koh. Sold out or ran out.

Thanks, I will pass.

Away from the flock, 1994 - Damien Hirst - Sheep in formaldeyde

There is much modern art that I truly love. Frankenthaler, Still, Kline, De Kooning. I have sold Thiebaud, Ruscha and others. But to look at much of what passes for modern art today, without a foundation in the classic, it really looks quite obscene to me.

The whole Eli Broad thing, so cynical and artistically thin and devoid of any sense of craft or beauty. Emotionally distant. Besides a few notable exceptions like Basquiat, Gerhard Richter and Francis Bacon, how many of these modernist frauds could even load or use a brush? Or should I say, even learned to paint?

Ballerinas, 2018 - Jeff Koons

I was looking at this upcoming auction at Sotheby's, the Nahons', and thinking I would sooner slit my throat than live with art so horrible, jarring and discordant. Or have to look at this horrible stainless steel piece Ballerinas by Jeff Koons every day. To each his own I guess. But I personally find it hideous, a visual bad PCP trip.

Old Master prices are steadily declining. Is a Pollock drip painting less or more important than a Caravaggio or a Velasquez?

The Los Angeles Art Show is approaching. Costs a fortune to exhibit. I used to do it. 14k for a booth and that is a start. I did quite well there. There are now no historic dealers left, Trotter, Karges, Stern, Rutberg are all I believe now gone from the show. Maybe the venerable antique dealer M.S. Rau is still around but they are a definite outlier, stuck in the small Roots section. Now instead of traditional and modern, the two categories for the show are modern and contemporary. Shame. I believe Miami is no different.

I saw it coming, years ago. Knew that one day I would have to make a choice between awful contemporary and the 19th century or earlier. I decided that I was stepping back to starve in the past. It is very hard to sell what I abhor. Funny that way.

For the last thirty or forty years or so, American Impressionism has been the dominant leader in the American art world. Redmond, Redfield, Garber, Kleitsch, Dixon, Frieseke, Dunton, Hopper, Wyeth. Now one after another, the fabulous galleries that once sold that work are either disappearing or changing to modern in the blink of an eye.

I recently called two major New York galleries I used to sell to and if it is not a non objective conceptual abstract blob they are no longer interested. Both of these galleries were once titans of impressionism. But that was last week. Same thing is happening on the West Coast and even on my lowly level at the shows. People are looking for cold and synthetic and forsaking the warm and ambient. Strictly flavor of the month.

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Portrait of Benedetta Canals, 1905 - Picasso

Do you see how great Picasso was in the early days before he turned himself into a cliché and factory? How beautiful and sensitive.

We have lost so many categories of institutional knowledge in the decorative arts in this modern world of plastic. Silver, Oriental carpets, much Asian art, porcelain, brown furniture, bronze, pre twentieth century, I could go on and on. You see danish modern on television so that is still okay, with an eccentric ashtray or two thrown in for good measure. The people who truly knew something about these earlier periods are mostly dead and gone, their knowledge never to return in this new age of the visceral and throwaway. People are looking for seventies and eighties stuff these days, god bless them. New, new, new.

I was talking to a local teacher the other day and was informed that the new Junior High Library has no books. Imagine, a library without books? It is all non tangible now, you know... Which is all well and good but also very sad, the tomes I love from the twenties, the O Henry, the Runyan, the Upfield, the Foresters, all out of reach and invisible to the modern student.  Lost in time, I'm afraid. The reverse Flynn effect in full bore, barreling down the tonneau of the insipid towards who knows where?

Matthew Diffee - New Yorker

You can't force people to like anything, any more than you can force them to buy buggy whips or Eastlake furniture. But you, or I for that matter, can hope that they can at least develop an eye for balance and composition, an appreciation for beauty and the ability to recognize the truly hideous and garish.

It is indeed a brave new, largely illiterate world. Not sure what part I will have in it.

The Monkey