A hard rain's a-gonna fall

Icarus falling

wild bird in ether

the compass heading is north

time to burn the boats.

Bill Withers - Grandma's Hands

Blast, Cliff Notes version

Since minds can no longer ever be changed, having been long ago made up, it is pointless to try to frame an argument for you regarding either a single or multiple sins of this Trump administration. I know what would happen.

The usual suspects would gnash their teeth and tear their garments in agreement and Bradford would send me the Go Trump Go email he sends me every time I get negative about his boy.

So I will merely skim over the top and give you today's Cliff Notes version.

With somewhere between 12 and 17% of the American public loathing the big tax cut for the rich that we call Trumpcare, it is no wonder that GOP members are afraid to meet with their angry constituents. The prospect of raising premiums on the poor and elderly five fold has got many people rattled, including the AMA and AARP, as well as most of the insurance and doctors groups in our country. But they will do it anyway, because if they don't the red meat base will be after their lily white asses.

And not content to dismantle and defund Medicare and Medicaid by giving inadequate subsidies to state's utterly unable to handle the task, the Trump administration and Republicans also appear to have more big game in sight.

Like killing the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known in many states by its acronym, LIHEAP.  The program currently distributes about $3.6 billion dollars to approximately 6 million households a year.

President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating heating aid for low-income Americans, claiming it’s no longer necessary and rife with fraud. People needn’t worry about being left in the cold, he says, because utilities cannot cut off customers in the dead of winter.
But he is wrong on all counts.
The heating program provides a critical lifeline for people like Perkins, and officials close to the program don’t see any widespread fraud. Guidelines for winter shutoffs by utilities vary from state to state and don’t apply to heating oil, a key energy source in the brittle New England winter.

Grandma can put on a sweater damnit. That's the problem today, the old people are getting too damn soft.

And now that the elderly are both cold and sick, they probably don't need to eat so much.

Let's go after their food stamps too.

Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) is the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, which reauthorizes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program every five years as part of a farm bill that also includes agribusiness subsidies. For weeks, Conaway has been trying to prevent Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), chairwoman of the House Budget Committee, from including massive SNAP cuts in her budget. Black’s committee has been floating the prospect of significant spending reductions since May.
Conaway said Friday that they had a deal, though neither he nor Black would reveal any specifics.
“I will leave it to them to discuss the details of their budget when they are ready,” Conaway said in a statement. “What I will say is that I am very confident that the agreement we have reached will give the Agriculture Committee the flexibility it needs to craft a farm bill that works for all of our various stakeholders.”
If Conaway is on board, that suggests Black has agreed to relatively modest reductions to programs under the Agriculture Committee’s jurisdiction. She has been seeking $200 billion in cuts overall, which would be spread across an array of unspecified programs.
A spokesman for Black said only that the chairwoman is committed to getting a budget done next month. “It’s the strongest possible step to achieving real deficit reduction, strengthening our military and beginning the tax reform process,” Budget Committee spokesman William Allison said.
Conaway has been holding hearings for next year’s reauthorization since 2015 and has kept his policy plans a secret.
One reason Black would want to cut SNAP in her budget, aside from the fact that many Republicans consider cutting SNAP good policy, is that the reduced safety net spending can be used to offset the budgetary effect of other Republican priorities, such as more military spending and less taxes.

We are rewriting our existing social contract in the most disgusting way imaginable. I imagine that these people have elderly relatives or know some poor people in their lives. What I don't understand is their deep seated need to punish them so severely.

Dinah Washington - You've Been A Good Old Wagon

Black Is The Colour.

Chromatically nonsensical landscape, Borrego Badlands

Need identification help.

I found this 13 x 9" unsigned print in an estate I purchased. Looks 1930's. I am trying to identify the artist. Might be a linoleum cut or scratch drawing.

In this powerful allegorical work the townspeople are pointing towards and throwing what appears to be a baseball at the trussed up jewish target, his cadaver partially obscured by a painted sheet depicting him as a money grubbing villain. A rat resides in the hollow crater of one of the brainless pursuers.

My first inclination was that it might be a German die brucke artist like Kirchner, Nückel, Heckel, or even the Flemish Masereel but it might also be of American origin since it does have dollar signs and what looks to me like an American style hat.

Sort of reminds me of Lynd Ward's work but perhaps a little cruder.

Any help would be appreciated. Got some interesting returns back when I stuck the print in the Google images search but no specific match.

Confiture

My wife is an exquisite cook, as well as an impeccable shopper, a trait that she may have learned from her late father. Can spot a deal, knows and cares what things cost. So when she spotted the duck confit at this ridiculous price, at a store that shall remain nameless, she pounced. Brought home two large packages of legs, cooked one up for us and it was delicious.

I found a friend with extra freezer space. I went back to the market yesterday morning, Leslie in the afternoon and we sealed the deal. Bought out everything they had. Swore the law of omerta, we would not disclose the location of the store, even to close relatives, under mortal penalty.

That lasted about a day. We were both feeling guilty for being chazers. Leslie called up Connie and Dixon and told them that we were going to come over and cook for them. She even squealed about where the swag came from. Some mafiosa.

Had our sit down last night. Leslie and Dixon are natural cooks, like Astaire and Charise, they glide around the kitchen with supreme confidence. I stay out of their way.

I wish I had the cooking gene but I don't, I was born with the eating gene. It was wonderful watching them both work.

Connie is also a cook, and a baker, but tonight she played bartender and made drinks.

Delightful meal. Duck confit with cracklings on polenta. Dixon made a nice reduction sauce. Fresh organic green beans with pine nuts and a wonderful salad with fresh tomatoes from their garden on the side.

Dessert was fresh strawberries with chopped basil and precious balsamic vinegar that the Fish brought back from Firenze. Perfect balance.

We ate out on the patio, a wonderful summer's eve. Bob the dog joined us.

Great meal. I did the dishes. Many thanks to our delightful hosts.

Makes me miss the days when the Fallbrook gastronomes would get together and prepare epic feasts, trying to out do each other, like on truffle night. We all just drifted apart, went our separate ways. Sad.

Not sure how I will be feeling after I eat sixty four more duck legs.

Thorogood

Rothko seascapes

© Robert Sommers 2017

I had a rather touching moment the other day that I would like to share with you.

I live in a fairly remote river canyon. We canyon dwellers tend to live our own lives, don't intersect all that much with the neighbors.

There is a guy who lives near the ecological preserve at the end of the road that I have exchanged pleasantries with over the years, don't know him well but he is always cheerful and affable. I believe that he is a tree trimmer.

Anyway back to my story, I was standing out in the garden with my shovel the other day, doing this or that, when this person drove by in his truck. He saw me in the yard, gave me the strangest look that I really couldn't place, squealed his tires and brakes to a halt, shut off the engine and ran into my yard, embracing me in a vigorous bear hug. Tears literally ran down the tall man's cheeks.

I appreciated the spontaneous display of emotion but it was a little out of character for the existent nature of our relationship and after a few seconds inching up on his grizzled beard and sunblock I asked him what was up?

Remember a few months ago when the old oak tree fell over at the Pebbles' old place and killed poor George Bamber in his car instantly? George had a van like mine, I was on the road at the same time, saw him minutes before the tragedy occurred, sadly mused on the blog about the sudden nature of his passing.

The neighbor thought it was me killed this whole time. He drove by and thought that he was staring at a dead man. Freaked him out. Strange to be mistaken for an 80 year old but I guess I am getting up there. Still alive but I certainly appreciate the concern, love and emotion.

What is in the water?

The surreal lunacy of our nation these days is just so amazing. Do you ever wonder if this is an actual government or are we living in a Truman Show type of reality television episode? I'm waiting for a klieg light to drop out of the sky.

I wake up every day wondering what idiotic thing will be next? Today we find out that the National Enquirer has been running interference for the President in a little extortion scheme taregtting the morning television couple, Mika and Joe.

In a wonderful illustration of Zeno's Law in action, Scott Pruitt at EPA wants a new debate that will give the 3 percent of scientists that deny global warming an equal footing with the 97% that have already performed peer review.

And Rick Perry thinks that wearing smart guy glasses now gives him the intellectual gravitas and superpowers to tackle the same heady subject.

The state of New York has passed a bill that states that someone cannot ask or allow a child under 16 to beg for money or receive payment for "picking rags, or collecting cigar stumps, or collecting bones."

As I have stated before, if you don't drink, now would be a real good time to start.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of a christian minister, may have never heard about the concept of turning the other cheek. She thinks the President has a right to smite back at his enemies, but even ten times stronger.

As you can see, I am quickly grabbing at low hanging fruit. It is so easy these days. And the clear winner of the first Blue Heron Blast Charles Darwin Award has to be the young Minnesota couple that thought that they would gain fame and stardom by concocting a Youtube experiment where a mere hardback book placed over a man's chest would stop a 50 caliber slug.

Ouch.

The pistol that they used, the desert eagle, is said to be so powerful that it can punch a hole in an engine block.

Sadly the shooter is pregnant with the couple's second child. They have already reproduced. Her boyfriend, Pedro Ruiz is dead. The dumbdown continues.

Arthur Lee and Love

Goodbye June.

It's quite tough living the retired life when one still has to pay a bunch of bills every month or face drowning. Today is reckoning day. I don't do it by computer, I handwrite every check, at times a very painful proposition. Can't help but think that I will be hustling until I am dead.

Tough as things can be, for most of us anyway, I don't think I would have changed much. Never had all that much money but was able to live my life mostly on my own terms. I was thinking the other day of the poor bastard who finally buys the red Porsche at 75, when he is too damn old to enjoy it.

Never wanted to be that guy. Tore a big chunk out of life whenever I got the chance. You wait to retire to live your life you just might get a really boring life. Don't do it. First thing you know it's the last thing you know. Security is highly overrated. Rather face continual poverty than spend a life putting a nut on a bolt and waiting for the mythical golden pot at the end of the rainbow.

*

I have this new lens and I had a little time yesterday to continue to put the nikkor 400mm 2.8e fl through its paces. Taking care of all the business I could see on the horizon in the morning, I drove up to the San Jacinto Wildlife Area in the afternoon. Lot of smog and haze across the southland. Still nice to be out in my element, in fact only me and a thousand birds and 20 thousand wild acres of peace. Didn't see another soul who wasn't on a tractor and I was down with that.

Decided to shoot the lens with my Nikon d810. No teleconverter, no tricks. Made some shots, missed some shots. Still need to dial in the focus better. Although since at times it worked perfectly the most likely culprit is probably operator error. As usual.

I have to keep reminding myself that there is little water in the ponds in the summer, hence few birds. But there were some avian friends out there. Love the white faced ibis, they were clowning around in the marsh yesterday.

Your caption here

Drove out to the Walker Ponds and saw a whole bunch of kestrels flying around. Seems like the place they like to hang. With this lens you can even occasionally get them flying and that ain't easy, it is a fast little falcon.

I'm shooting at ƒ3.5 1250th of a second, iso 64. 400mm here. Handheld mind you. Thank you, most exalted spaghetti monster, for vibration reduction. I love kestrels, so pretty. Here I managed to get one to stop and pose.

Won't bore you or draw this out. Saw a lot of egrets, some ducks. A beautiful meadowlark on a branch with a kingbird.

Flubbed quite a few meadowlark shots. Tough to shoot at 2.8 or even 3.5 when you have a pair of anything or a large object front to back. Note to self. Stopped this down to ƒ9 and it worked.

Photographers like to use rarefied terms like focus acquisition. This combo has it in spades. This lens works with the D810 like Lucy and Ricky, fastest autofocus I have yet encountered.

My friend Kerry likes to tell me that I will never be a real photographer until I start selling my work. Not that I haven't but it has never been a primary motivation.

I share a hell of a lot of work and that makes me happy too.

My fantasy would be to have enough money to spend a big chunk of a year in the Yellowstone and Tetons and get that great bison in the snowy river with the steam shot.

Publish my book and get ridiculously famous. Just give me a shot, lord.

I drove home and saw a kestrel sitting on a branch on my own road, sort of an oddity.

Not an earth shattering day, sorry, no money shot Kerry. Got a little better acquainted with my gear. Nothing gained without mileage.

Got home and the acorn woodpecker was pecking away at his power pole. Why not? It's a job.

*
Buzz isn't doing so well. I will be traveling again soon.

Go, Leave

tim buckley

The invisible stuff

I was reading about fire ants the other day. Fascinating. They form living rafts in treacherous high waters and intermittently switch places with each other so that they don't drown. The survival of the queen and future colony is paramount to the ant. The individual will often sublimate and sacrifice their life for the whole.



These huge colonies travel on the water after floods and tropical storms. They are an engineering marvel.

Kelly Loftin, an entomologist and professor at the University of Arkansas, told the Washington Post the raft building exercise is a communal one designed to keep the colony’s queen and young safe.
“The queen is kept safe in the middle of that raft,” he added. “The workers are keeping the eggs and the small larvae safe from the water and oftentimes they’re doing that by holding them in their mouth.”
The ants trapped underwater on the bottom side of the raft collect bubbles to raise up the raft so it can float, Loftin said, but the ants constantly switch positions, so that no ant remains submerged in the water for long.

I have a continual red ant problem at my home. I was bit several times last year and the painful bite of multiple fire ant bites on my foot was akin to getting hit with a sledge hammer. Excruciating for several weeks.

We typically forego poisons or insecticides but I put an ant bait out the other day. The bait, which looks like food, was carried to the queen. The next morning the mound was strewn with a red paste of ant parts. Felt bad for my complicity in the mass murder but it was me or them in the garden.

Curious creatures. How are their complex signals transmitted by the hive mind? We know that ants can communicate by sound, by touch, by emitting pheromone smells and by swapping fluids through their mouths.  But the precise signals to keep a floating a 500,000 insect convoy aloft, with military grade instructions on position swapping, simply boggles me.

I feel kind of bad for killing the ants. And maybe they sent a signal out that I was a schmuck. At coffee yesterday my friend and neighbor Ron asked me if I had a bee problem? Said that they had become very aggressive at his place, would strike without warning.

Went home early yesterday to fix a sprinkler, wearing my zorries. Out of nowhere a long yellow wasp struck the soft flank of my right foot. Incredible pain, all night. Did everything to curtail the agony, ice, Benadryl, cortisone cream. Leslie made a baking soda, aspirin poultice and it seemed to finally do the trick this morning.  Perhaps the fire ants have a protection deal worked out with the wasps and I am currently persona non grata in my region of the insect world? Who knows? And isn't it interesting that my friend gave me the warning on the sting that very same day?

Hive communication is a curious thing. I went to Professor's Joan Maloof's lecture on her new book dealing with old growth forests and she says that the trees are a bit player in the forest ecosystem.

The real action is the fungus, the mounds, the invisible stuff, she talked about the concept of mycelial interconnectivity, everything is connected to everything else in the old growth ecosystem. Perhaps there is a botanical group mind? Look forward to reading the book, which we bought at the talk.

Which made me think back to a book I read decades ago, by the late psychonaut Terrence McKenna with his brother Dennis, under the pseudonym of Oss and Oeric. Been a couple decades but if I remember correctly, they mapped out a big invisible interconnected fungal web over in psilocybin land. Which apparently works on connecting individual parts of the human brain that were heretofore not speaking.

Doctor Rupert Sheldrake took the concept even further, postulating the presence of electrical type "morphogenetic" fields that could transfer knowledge through the ether and change dna without having to go through traditional evolutionary processes.

I was talking on these lines with a friend recently and they said that an experiment was made in which someone performed an act deemed malicious by a crow and that future generations of crows could pick the human miscreant out of a lineup. A fascinating article on crow brains and communication here.

How is information like this transferred? How do ants know when it is time to paddle and time to surf? Beats the hell out of me. People who have explored psychedelic states of consciousness will tell you that there is definitely some arcane transmission occurring. Have seen multiple examples real time personally that I won't bore you with.

The late science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon wrote an epic and groundbreaking novel called More than Human. This book introduced the concept of the human hive mind, which he named Homo Gestalt. Wordless communication. Perhaps we could pick up a thing or two from our friends the ants?

Fire ants build Eiffel Towers out of their own bodies.

Jokers are wild

búho

End of the innocence

100% American

This kid was walking in 120˚ weather in Borrego, in front of a rather dilapidated building.

I couldn't help notice the great dual patriotic iconography.

Hooded oriole, Borrego

This hooded oriole didn't seem to mind the intense desert heat in Borrego. We have noticed that orioles gravitate to palms, they use the sisal in nest building. The washingtonia filifera is the only native california palm. Some botanists think that the tall variant is a separate sub species and call it a robusta but I'm not so sure.

Borrego reprise

If you want to tell me that we were certifiably insane for going out to the desert when the temperatures were hovering around 119˚ you certainly won't get any arguments from us. But if you will allow us to explain perhaps it will be more understandable.

It was Stanley and Tracys' 41st anniversary and they were going out to celebrate at Casa Del Zorro in Borrego Springs on our recommendation.

They had made the reservations ages ago and we had done the same, not knowing that we would all be ensnared in a severe heat wave.

And besides, there are ample swimming pools and the air conditioning is quite good, right?

We actually had a great time. We had traveled with the pair before, to Death Valley and knew that they could take the heat. But to be honest, you would have had to dump a truck full of ice in the pool to get a refreshing jolt at these temperatures.

My Leslie can wilt on occasion but she is smart and knows how to pick her spots. We all did just fine. Just don't put your hand on the pool railing at 120˚ or allow your bare feet to touch the pavers and everything will be copacetic. My palm and feet are still a bit cooked but then I have always been a slow study.

We had a nice couple days away and I experienced a touch of kismet. For the second time in a row, I went out to the Tamarisk Grove, in extreme heat and looked for my old friends, the long eared owls. I snuck in to the closed campground and walked every tree but no luck. Two trips around the grove, just to make sure. I was even wearing my lucky owl shirt, the same one I had on when I found the long eared owl but unfortunately no dice.

I did come across an eagle feather. And a minor league epiphany. I had the thought that in photography, art and life, you get what you get. In the words of the bard, Bobby Z, nothing was delivered and maybe Mick had it right too, you get what you need. But wishing and hoping only goes so far. You what you get. And I had struck out.

So I drove back to the hotel, the temperature pinned at about 122˚ and cooled off in the room for a minute. And within a second or two I get a call, the owl was right outside my door on the Washingtonia filifera palm tree. Who knew that they delivered? The owl came to me!

And sure as shit, here was a beautiful owl, staring like a cheshire cat, not 10' above my head. Wow.

As it turns out this is not a long eared owl like I captured last time, it is a great horned owl but like, who cares? It's my novel, it's still beautiful and the cosmic timing was incredible.

Now I want you to know that this was not taken with my fancy new nikkor 400mm 2.8 fl, there was no way I was going to let that extremely expensive piece of machinery melt in the desert. I took it instead with the Sigma 150-600mm C and the Nikon D810. More than adequate for the job. Rarely use the combination, if ever, usually needing the reach of the crop sensor on the D7200 but the resolution and image quality is actually better this way.

Beautiful raptor. Might have had its eyes and talons set on a tasty looking chihuahua by the pool. I guess there are two owls living at the resort and I did a little further research and eventually discovered their specific pad location.

Haven't really had time to go through my shots but I think I will be very pleased. Owl was going through a strange panting ritual at one point ,maybe it was hot too and this allowed it to respirate? Not sure what it was. Lots of nice birds out there, saw a few hooded orioles, possibly an indigo or lazuli bunting.

We had a nice dinner with our friends at Carmelitas, Leslie's chili verde was simply the best I have ever tasted and my mole was its normal superb self.

Ate at Carlees the second night, chicken artichoke pizza. Also quite awesome.

On the way I took this shot of a kid walking in front of a dilapidated building and thought that the patriotic motif was quite synchronous.

The stuff that comes unexpectedly down the pike is unfailingly more interesting than the stuff that you plan for.

Had breakfast at Casa Del Zorro one morning, corn flake encrusted french toast which is pretty crunchy wonderful. Afterwards we checked out all the cool Nixon and Agnew material in the lobby, after all this was a Copley hotel.

I got up at 5:30 this morning and drove with the sunrise in tow over to Palm Canyon.

I hiked part way up the desolate trail hoping my owl fortune would rub off onto bighorn sheep but no luck. You get what you get. Very hot, didn't have adequate water and didn't really feel like dying out in the desert with the keys to my van in my pocket. It would have created a lot of serious problems for Leslie getting home, among other things.

And then I thought, hey, she will still be in bed for another hour, I will drive the 28 miles one way out to the Salton Sea and no one will be the wiser (turns out I slammed the door and she had been up since 5:30 too. Sorry.)

I had met an emergency room doctor from Irvine who was taking a mental health break in the desert on his 400cc scooter and he had drove the particular route the day before. It was new to me.

And he was talking and worrying about proper tire pressure in this kind of heat, fearing a blowout from the heat expanding his tires.

And driving out there in nowhere, without much water or even my phone which I had forgotten in the room, you do kind of think about mortality a little bit. I was way out in Ocotillo Wells, how many days would it take for them to find what was left of my rotting carcass? Passed through some serious badlands this morning.

Ran across an interesting monument to the artist John Hilton, who I occasionally handle. Who knew?

I hit the Salton Sea at the Western Shore, half way between Indio and El Centro. Yacht Club Rd.

Another shattered sort of a place, a real lake of a mistake. Quite tragic. Boulevard of broken dreams.
Returned eventually, mostly in one piece.

Had a last dip and came home. Even in this same heat I would do the same thing again in a heartbeat.

The desert is good for you, it gets you in touch with something deep inside. To desert to the desert offers just desserts.

Happy anniversary Trace and Stan. Let's do it again!