Palm Springs Modernism, coming right up!

 

Ibis

 

I may be wrong and often am, but it is possible that this is a glossy ibis instead of the whitefaced ibis I normally encounter. Legs are grayish and facial pattern is brindled. If I am wrong somebody will certainly tell me.

Great horned owls

 

I've had some five drink lunches, a three dog night once or twice and even a two punch knockout.

Don't remember ever experiencing a three owl day but I was lucky enough to have one yesterday.

I was shooting with my buddy Ken, location shall not be disclosed. We hadn't shot together in a long time and it was a treat to be out with him. Have logged many thousands of miles on the road shooting nature with Ken.

Capturing the first two great horned owls was fantastic, later finding the third one by its lonesome was an absolute cherry on top! These creatures are not easy to ever spot in the daytime. They are mostly nocturnal hunters but can be both diurnal and crepuscular depending on their nutritional needs.

What was funny was that only a few minutes before spotting the first pair, Ken was talking about wanting to get a picture of an owl.

I reminded him that we had got some great ones a few years back in Borrego.

But these guys were absolutely ordered up.

They were ensconced in dense shadow and thicket and our vantage wasn't perfect but it was certainly good enough.

What a treat!

Jerry Harrison

Birdie, birdie

A couple of you have sent bird shots in.

Bill Warmboe's mom saw this pileated woodpecker back in her backyard in Minnesota. Huge, about 18" tall. 

Kent and Heidi have a whole mess of parrots (conures?) at their feeders in Oceanside.

Anybody else?

Heavenly visitor

Wild Bill told a version of this irreverent joke the other day. 

The son of god comes down to earth. All of a sudden, Jesus finds himself on the side of a road in the middle of rural America. 

He sticks out his thumb for a ride and before long a man in a truck stops to give him a lift. Not revealing his true identity, Jesus thanks the man for stopping.

 "Wow, thank you kind sir, so many people just drove by and ignored me standing there."

The man said,"Don’t worry about it! Thumbing ain't easy these days. This is just what decent people do." 

Settling in, Jesus props his sandals up on the glovebox and kicks back, enjoying the earthly scenery flying by. After a few minutes driving the man leans over, "Hey, I have this sandwich here, you want some? Let's split it."

Jesus was thrilled. "Wow, thank you man, that’s so kind of you! I’d love some." He eats the half sandwich. A few more minutes pass and the man leans over again. "Hey dude. I have a few beers in the cooler back there, you want a cold one?

Amazed by the man’s kindness Jesus says, "Sure! I’d love one. Thank you again." They each crack open a frosty brew.

After a few more miles down the road the man looks around suspiciously and says,"Hey…I uh, have a little joint here. Want to take a few puffs with me?

Jesus grimaces and pauses for a second and then says,"Ya know what, why not! What the hell. Let me have a puff. I'm on vacation."

So the man and Jesus spark one up, they drive down the road smoking the fattest doob, rocking out listening to great music and just having themselves a really good time. 

Finally, Jesus speaks up, "Okay listen! I just can’t keep this inside any longer! I have a confession to make. You have been so kind, so nice, I have to tell you… I’m Jesus! I am the son of god, the savior of mankind. I am the light and the way."

The man looks at Jesus and smiles and says, “Good shit, huh?” 

Crystalline sunburst, Arches

Happy 2-2-22! I was thinking about the pandemic and the many ways it has changed our lives. It would be banal and insensitive for me to bitch and moan about my lot when so many people have lost their lives to this plague. But I do miss certain things and one of them is traveling the rugged parts of our country and shooting pictures.

Covid has put a cramp on traveling for me. My shooting partner has to stay closer to home due to health concerns. There are places in the country that don't believe in protecting themselves or others and they are high risk for me. It has not been safe to run around. So I have stayed put these last two years, by and large.

I really miss Utah. Driving down the Shafer Trail at Canyonlands to magnificent parts unknown. The Tetons. Yellowstone. Canyon De Chelly. Bosque Del Apache.

We are all wired differently. I have friends whose idea of a vacation is sitting by a pool getting pampered, cuddled and fed. I appreciate that but would tire instantly. I have an incessant desire to process new information. Got no problem with cheap motels and road food if I am hunting visual quarry.

I am an explorer. I have a crazy need to see exactly what is around the next corner? Probably pathological. Luckily Leslie and Ken are game. But they know that when I am out in nature it is going to be up at dark and back at dark, squeeze every possible molecule out of our day.

Not for everybody, to be sure. But I have been bit hard by the wanderlust. And I miss getting out on the road and seeing those parts of our planet that don't get seen much.

Hopefully be back some day.

The Jaggerz

Left and right - Zyglis

 

Inspired much?

 

Garrett Soldano

For the turnstiles

Leighton - New Yorker

 

Two seconds of time, Seligman, AZ

The Mutants

Monday pearl clutching

I was driving the other day when a young man in a Toyota truck started aggressively moving in and out of lanes. When he flew by me I saw two bumper stickers blazoned on his window, Let's go Brandon and Fuck your Prius. I suppose that I could should have guessed his political inclinations from the selfish and angry way he was driving.

I understand that the Brandon slogan is quite fashionable right now, sounds rather stupid to me but that is just me, in any case the second one seemed rather course coarse and an unusually hostile thing to put on your car. I know that some Prius drivers are obnoxious but no worse than your average Civic or Audi driver, at least in my opinion. It mainly suggested that the driver of said car, was immature, stupid or excessively hostile or perhaps a combination of the three. The trifecta.

A little while later this car drove by. 

Coincidentally, a Prius but presumably not the focus of the previous driver's ire.

Now I am no prude or even a religious person but I find the sentiments expressed bottom left to be in exceedingly poor taste.

And if you haven't noticed, boundaries of decency and morals are eroding on a daily basis, hence we have Governors standing up and comparing their political targets to his dog's asshole, like Jim Justice from West Virginia does in the top photograph. Juvenile and ridiculous.

The political camps have never been farther apart but what is unusual is that in the old days, there was a center position and an attempt on both sides to find some fulcrum of moral foundation to rest their opinion on.  We no longer have a shared, or common sense of common sense, or decency for that matter.

No more, now, with twin media machines, the right and left no longer even attempt to talk to each other, just past each other, in the most vulgar of terms. The combat has become much fiercer and laced with threats of violence and antagonism. From antifa to proud boys, across the political spectrum, people are stepping way beyond previous standards of propriety. We have plainly lost our bedrock, our sense of right and wrong.

I was just on the local NextDoor pages and the vaccine debate got so heavy that the post I was following was expunged, but not before the battle lines were drawn and people showed their cards. I got some pretty strong messages, one private, from some retired cops and military, evangelical but definitely pointed.

And I have to wonder, how much of the schism is ideological and how much is generational? Look at the Joe Rogan / Neil Young kerfuffle. How many millennials listen to Neil Young or have even heard of Joni Mitchell? Not near as many as listen to the tatted up ex brawler Rogan, the most popular podcaster in the world at present. The world we have inhabited is changing and so is the value system. And many people lack the discriminatory tools cognitively to fairly evaluate both information and misinformation. Hence the Q and Pizzagate notions.

*

I am a late sixties, early seventies kid, that is the time period where my personal ethos was forged. Tried to do the righteous hippie thing, as best I could. In my day, a male with long hair, such as I had, meant that you tended to share a value system that was for all intents liberal if not radical. 

Not always, you might see long haired right wingers at a Hell's Angels rally or at a Skynyrd concert, perhaps the guy who changed your tires at the garage with the greasy locks and the hairbrush in his pocket. 

But mostly you could figure that you had a shared world view with long haired people once upon a time. One would be foolish to make that assumption today.

These people are just as apt today to be MAGA loving reactionaries.

So you have to be cautious today regarding who you are breaking bread with or even sharing a bong rip, especially if the fecal matter is ready to hit the twisting propeller.  Everything has been turned on its head. Things are getting uglier and uglier, the least of which is human decency and comportment. Perhaps the kids are not alright?

Nature Mort

 

The Ramones - Spiderman

Geese and blackbirds, dead center

 

Stanislaw Lem

 

Max Loeffler illustration

Great article at the New Yorker, A holocaust survivor's hard boiled science fiction.

“The difference between life and death depended upon minuscule, seemingly unimportant things, and the smallest of decisions: whether one chose this or that street for going to work; whether one visited a friend at one o’clock or twenty minutes later.” 

Stupidity and selfishness

 

Pushing a million dead in this country and we have to hear this sort of inanity? A friend of mine is recovering from a tough case. Word has it that he and his wife were dining out and he overheard the waitress casually admit that she thought she had it. They both came down with it shortly thereafter. He had a worse go than she did.

I really think that we are in a war against the unintelligent. How hard should this one be. You don't go out repeatedly and hang out with other people and you don't work around other people if you know that you are infected. Capiche?

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Deleted

Boomer Stuff

 

Sloppy Drunk

Selenicereus symbiote

I have a very large specimen pindo or jelly palm on my property. 

I had two, I planted them both over thirty years ago, but a red trumpet vine ate one of them and left nothing in its wake.

At one time the native South American palm was known as a butia capitata, but there are all types of subspecies recognized now and it may be more truthfully termed a butia yatay, eriospathea or odorata, I honestly can't keep up. It is a great palm, with the tastiest fruit. You can see the more compact cultivars planted up State St. in Santa Barbara.

Soon after the palm was planted I placed small sections of hylocereus undatus, or night blooming cereus cacti, in the crooks of the palm. 

I was the vice president of the local epiphyllum society back then.

This is now classified as selenicereus undatuus after tissue typing showed it to  be under that taxonomic botanical branch.

In any case, these epiphytes now have taken over the entire trunk of the tree, en masse. 

The sheer weight must be incredible.

It is truly something to behold, especially during a heavy bloom.

It gives me a very spectacular bloom several times a year, with flowers over a foot wide in breadth.

I have never trimmed the beard from this palm, wanting to protect the epiphyte with shade. 

Todd, the arborist who takes care of my palms, took it upon himself to trim the brown dead beard off the palm this week.

I guess that he and my wife were sick of it.

It does look better, hopefully there will be no sunburn although if the night blooming cereus can handle the sun in Hawaii, Fallbrook should be no problem.

I wonder if anybody else has ever done this before, combined butia and selenicereus? Has been a wonderful marriage.

Botanical symbiosis in action. Everybody happy, especially the bees. Hopefully the tree will be strong enough to harbor the heavy guest for perpetuity.

Mule Skinner Blues

The great Kenny Baker on fiddle.

kestrel

 

Ernest Ranglin

Speedy Haworth

Could Speedy bend those strings or what? This is 1955, pre Clarence White B-Bender.

S-h-h-h!

I don't live in Florida and so it is not really my problem. Still recent news there is very troubling from a civil liberties standpoint. A new Florida bill that has been termed the Don't say gay bill is now hurtling through the House and Senate.

A Florida bill that would limit classroom discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity and encourage parents to sue schools or teachers that engage in these topics is speeding through the state House and Senate.

It's being called a "Don't Say Gay" bill by LGBTQ advocates, who fear that if this bill is signed into law, it could act as a complete ban on the lessons on LGBTQ oppression, history and discussions about LGBTQ identities.

So the freedom loving snowflakes on the right won't even let students talk about sexual orientation now?

This comes on the heels of another ridiculous attempt at intellectual suppression and groupthink. A bill backed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is making its way through the state’s legislature and on its way to becoming law.

SB 148, called the Individual Freedom Act, would prohibit Florida’s public schools and private businesses from making people feel “discomfort” or “guilt” based on their race, sex, or national origin. See Florida could ban lessons about discrimination that make white students feel 'discomfort'.

And yes, you read that right. It also affects private speech at private businesses. You can't talk about racial history without the threat of a lawsuit or jail time, even at your own workplace.

The measure would bar teaching in grades K-12 that could make individuals feel responsible for historic wrongs because of their race, color, sex or national origin. At work, employment practices or training programs that make an individual feel guilty on similar grounds could be considered an unlawful employment practice – and subject a company to a lawsuit.

My those Floridians are sensitive. And how exactly do you assess if people are being made to feel guilty? What is the standard, the metrics and observational tool used to determine culpability?

Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, said that Diaz’s proposal poses a threat to Florida businesses. She said the legislation potentially opens the door to lawsuits against employers, a stand the governor has sought in his “WOKE” proposal to deter companies from policies that may cross the line he’s drawing on race.

Polsky cited an example of a male employee dismissed from a company or passed over for a promotion who could make the claim that employment diversity efforts worked against him.

“How is a judge supposed to determine if a person is made to feel guilty by proper diversity training, sexual harassment training or any kind of policy that a company has in place to prevent discrimination?” Polsky said.

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Art Spiegelman once wrote an excellent graphic novel called Maus that depicts the Holocaust from the point of view of jews on their way to extermination.

They are depicted in the story as rodents. 

I read it when it was written, it won a Pulitzer prize in 1992. Very wonderful, touching story. Highly recommended, have to find my copy.

And it is being banned by a school board in Tennessee. They are worried that impressionable young minds might be triggered by the sight of nude cartoon mice.

A Tennessee school board has voted to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus” from an eighth grade language arts curriculum due to concerns about profanity and an image of female nudity in its depiction of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust.

The Jan. 10 vote by the McMinn County School Board, which only began attracting attention Wednesday, comes amid a number of battles in school systems around the country as conservatives target curriculums over teachings about the history of slavery and racism in America.

“I’m kind of baffled by this,” Art Spiegelman, the author of “Maus,” told CNBC in an interview about the unanimous vote by the McMinn board to bar the book, which is about his parents, from continuing to be used in the curriculum.

“It’s leaving me with my jaw open, like, ‘What?’” said Spiegelman, 73, who only learned of the ban after it was the subject of a tweet Wednesday – a day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

He called the school board “Orwellian” for its action.

Spiegelman also said he suspected that its members were motivated less about some mild curse words and more by the subject of the book, which tells the story of his Jewish parents’ time in Nazi concentration camps, the mass murder of other Jews by Nazis, his mother’s suicide when he was just 20 and his relationship with his father.

Of course, it is not just Florida, Texas and Tennessee, the drive to ban books is now nationwide. See The right's book-banning campaign reaches a new level.

It was last fall when local Republicans' efforts to ban books started to look like a national trend. A county in Virginia removed LGBTQIA fiction from school libraries. Around the same time, a Kansas school district started pulling several well-known novels from school libraries, including "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood and a Pulitzer Prize winning play from August Wilson.

It was against this backdrop that a Republican state legislator in Texas put together a list of 850 books he believed might make students feel uncomfortable — and then asked schools which of the titles are available to students.

The same language curiously runs through all these threads, we can not make people "uncomfortable" about our history under any circumstance. Because all the isms of the past, sexism, racism, anti-semitism, anti nativism, misogynism, gay bashing, etc. they were all vanquished long ago. Nothing but clean hands in America, don't you know? Mustn't upset anyone by having an honest conversation about race or sexuality. Talk about snowflakes...

Wednesdays are for sunsets

I sent out a cell phone picture from our front yard to a few friends yesterday evening and got some really nice views back in response.

Lena sent these two over from Cardiff.

Someday all the power lines will be underground and she will be in heaven, view wise.

Dave offered this San Francisco shot from Pacific Heights.

Retha and Doug share the beautiful and gorgeously soft view of Vancouver Island from San Juan Island.

Thanks all!