Don't Take Your Guns To Town

Game over

Opacity. When you've piled the shit up so high that your bad dye job starts running, I think it means it's time to quit.

Lowell Fulson - Reconsider Baby

Common Courtesy

Covid has been blowing up in the Dakotas, as I predicted it would months ago. The state has averaged more than 1,000 cases every day this month. Deaths from Covid-19 have surged 74% in just the last two weeks. 

Yet the Governors of both Dakotas refused to enact a mask mandate until four days ago when the North Dakota Governor Doug Borgum finally relented. Not so with the neighbor to the south. Rising GOP star South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem believes that mask wearing is a matter of personal freedom. No mask mandates, no stay at home orders.

"There are many others who question the effectiveness of masks, and South Dakotans should take the time to read this information so they can make informed decisions for themselves and their families. As I've said before, if folks want to wear a mask, they should be free to do so. Similarly, those who don't want to wear a mask shouldn't be shamed into wearing one. And government should not mandate it. We need to respect each other's decisions -- in South Dakota, we know a little common courtesy can go a long way."

Very laudable, she doesn't want to shame people who choose not to wear one. But I wonder how fair it is to the health workers that have to clean up the mess and take care of the people dying in their hospitals when people choose to not wear masks and potentially infect others? Is it fair to infect them? Six out of ten people who get tested in her state are positive, the second highest total in our country after Wyoming,

More than 900 health workers at the Mayo Clinic in the Midwest have been infected in the last two weeks. Do you think they deserve to get sick because of the selfish and shortsighted attitudes of dumb bunnies like Noem?

*

Local politician Jim Desmond is decrying the recent purple tier shutdown of San Diego businesses. Says that most people get infected at their residences. Simple solution; don't allow anyone to go home.

Straighten up and do right - Yvonne Fair

So there

I admit that at times I am a little hostile to religion. Not personally being a religious person, it is hard for me to understand the calculus of faith at times. In the interest of balance I present a positive link on the subject; Religious faith can lead to positive mental benefits, writes Stanford anthropologist.

Whether a creator or deity exists or not may be immaterial. They evidently become real for the practitioner and worshipper.

...the puzzle of religion is not the problem of false belief, but rather of what Luhrmann calls “real-making” – how gods and spirits become real for people and what that does for those who engage in the practice.

Rather than presume that people worship because they believe, or build cathedrals because the belief is already present, Luhrmann flips the equation. She argues instead that people believe because they worship. In other words, the process of “real-making” and engaging fully in rituals and practices that bring one closer to God is so satisfying to practitioners that their faith endures.

Research has repeatedly shown that people of faith report feeling better and healthier. One of the most striking findings in social epidemiology, Luhrmann notes, is that religious involvement with God is better for your body in terms of immune functions and reducing loneliness. One explanation for this, Luhrmann writes, is that for those with an intense faith, God becomes a social relationship. MRI results indicate that in terms of brain function, talking to God resembles conversing with a friend. 

Whatever gets you through the day and night. 

Sunday Swappers

Leslie and I got up at 4:40 a.m. Sunday and drove to Long Beach for another swap meet. The onramp for the 91 westbound on Interstate 15 was closed for maintenance so we had to go east and backtrack as well as get gas.

The upshot was that we got there later than usual and the lines were super long.

I have a lot of inventory already and wasn't really too piqued. Mainly came up to pick up an antique birdbath from Cam for my garden.

Not sure of the maker, either Redwing or Robinson Ransbottom. 

Maybe even Weller. Some Ohio Pottery, that is for sure. This one is not the typical one that you see. More art deco.

In any case I really like it and am sure that the birds will too. Will let you know if I get any complaints.

I picked up some great prints as well including this very large print by Charles Surendorf (1906-1979); God comes down to inspect his creations!  From the first edition of 100 on what I believe is Van Gelder paper. It measures approx. 14 x 18" image. It is listed as both a linoleum and wood engraving, I am guessing the former. All the human avarices depicted in one powerful image and social commentary.

Originally from Indiana, after graduating from Ohio State University Surendorf studied at the AIC and at the ASL in NYC. In 1935 he moved to the San Francisco Bay area and had further study at Mills College. Active in the local art scene, he was director of the first SF Art Festival. In 1946 he settled in the town of Columbia in the Sierra foothills. Very creative artist.

Interestingly to me, this is the second print he created with the same name. The first one was pulled around 1938 and is pictured here, from an edition of 15.

It is smaller but equally wonderful.

In addition I bought a smaller Surendorf linocut of a woman called girl in levis and two prints from an obscure Minnesota WPA printmaker named Gerald Urlie that are also really great!

I need to learn more about him and his relatively short life.

Magic Fountain - Gerald Urlie (1911-1959)

Burial of a pig  etching ed. 3/25 - Gerald Urlie (1911-1959)

Then I found something that if right, will be pretty amazing that I won't jinx and write about. 

Oh, and speaking of prints, here is famous print dealer Roger G. inspecting a work on paper yesterday.

It was a beautiful day, nice to get away from the local rancor for a spell.

Normal swap meet cacophony but no Trump hats for once. Imagine?

I took no pictures to speak of. Except for these gents to my left, of course. People looked almost normal, very strange.

We stopped at a wonderful restaurant we like to eat at in Orange afterwards for brunch, Citrus City Grille. fabulous as always. What a nice downtown they have!

I had the baked caramel toast with pecans, dried cherries and cinnamon, etc. Unreal. Side of bacon.

Leslie went with the short rib pappardelle. Equally delectable.

Happy campers!

We got home tired but not exhausted, at a decent hour. A nice day walking, buying, eating and seeing old friends, great way to spend a Sunday.

No New Tale To Tell

Trust but verify

There were a large group of very friendly ladies on both corners of Main and Alvarado on Wednesday waving flags. It was Veterans Day. Honestly not knowing what was going on, I walked up to a couple of them and asked if there was a parade on the way? 

"No," a woman said. "We are praying for Fallbrook." From their sign I guess you could infer they were praying for the whole country and we could certainly use it. No harm in that. I asked what church they were from and they said St. Peters, the local Catholic church.

I crossed the street to the south and encountered more prayerful folk. And me being me, I had to ask them one question that was pressing on my mind. "How come only one of your group is wearing a mask? You know we're in the midst of a pandemic. Isn't that a little risky?" 

A woman in the group answered me. "We've got masks." I said, "Really, where?" She pulled the crucifix from her chest and pushing it towards me like one might banish an evil spirit, said,"Right here."

I didn't quite know what to say to that and just muttered, slightly under my breath, "Not much help for the rest of us," and walked away. What the heck can you say?

Hung Upside Down

Agent M

 

Everybody is a critic, or artist

 

I suppose that proper restoration, like art, is in the eye of the beholder. 

But people in Northern Spain are aghast at the recent touch up work performed on this bank facade, which was originally sculpted and installed in 1923. 

Provincial rubes, they fail to understand that we live in a post modern time where only the very worst can now be deemed good and acceptable. 

Everybody is an artist now, the ability to actually draw and to percieve spatially is strictly for squares. 

This particular work has been dubbed the potato head of Palencia. See more about the restoration effort here.

I think it is almost cubist in nature but unfortunately the two eyes are not on the same side of the head. Looks more oxygen deprived in the womb. If you flattened the nose and added another eye the Picasso aficionados would probably be enthralled but the classically molded and representational arms are still a bit incongruent with the doughboy noggin.

I really don't know what they are putting in the water in Spain? This ham handed debacle comes on the heels of the botched Murillo restoration.

And who can forget the job they did on the Martinez fresco in Zaragoza?

In art school we called this sort of graphic flattening of a painting image "Egyptian."

I really can't envision the most clumsy Egyptian ever painting or sculpting this badly. This kind of awful takes work.

But hey, this restorer may be selling his stuff in ten years for millions of bucks to a breathless audience like Hirst or Banksy do, acclaimed as the latest sensation by the cognoscenti hungry for bad.

So once again, what in the hell do I know?

Eva Cassidy - It Doesn't Matter Anymore

Paul Anka wrote this song for Buddy Holly. It was the last song he ever recorded before his tragic death. Been covered by a lot of people. I think Eva's version stands with Ronstadt's and the best of them.

Evening lightspeed

This shot illustrates why it is sometimes better not to shoot at maximum speed. I typically shoot birds at over 1/2500th of a second and higher. At those speeds you usually see no wing movement at all. This picture was taken at 1/1000th and you can see how much more interesting it makes the wings than a mere freeze would. Of course you can shoot much slower than that even. Try everything! Sometimes you can get lucky and catch lightning in a bottle.

Michael Cohen chimes in.

Some interesting thoughts from the President's ex lawyer at HuffPo:

“He’s going to say for the next 30 years that they stole the election from me. ‘I’m the rightful president.’ He’s going to keep his MAGA army active and engaged and constantly blow this dog whistle and be a menace.”

Cohen was asked about Trump’s new leadership political action committee, “Save America,” formed in the wake of major news outlets calling Biden as the winner of the election. The Trump campaign has been asking supporters for donations to fight the results of the election, but The New York Times reported that the fine print reveals that 60% of that fundraising is now being directed to the new PAC, which will help him to fund his post-presidency activities. 

“The reason he’s doing it is because he has no income,” Cohen said. “And you would see that if he would turn over his tax returns.”

“He doesn’t have ‘The Apprentice’ making $65 million a year,” he continued. “Most of his assets are underperforming. ... the few that he has doesn’t cover the big cost. So he’s going to use this like the Trump Foundation, as a slush fund.” “It’s all a lie, 99.9% of everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie. He’s not going to stay in the White House past Jan. 20. They will remove him. He knows that,” Cohen said.

White Bird

Tom's Dead

Tom Metzger, perhaps Fallbrook's most famous and notorious citizen, passed away last week. A friend sent me his obit. Tom was an unrepentant racist and the one time leader of the White Aryan Resistance. Moved back to Indiana a few years ago.

I never had any trouble with him, talked to him on several occasions, he was certainly bright and at times even pretty funny. I think he made a lot of money on the racist schtick, would see him leaving the post office with big fat envelopes that I believe were stuffed with cash. Racism was evidently very good business.

Not to say he was harmless, but the violence he preached strayed elsewhere, places like Portland, not his hometown. And he was seen on occasion in the company of hispanics and was even friends at one time with a black guy in town. Not an easy guy to figure out.

Tom fixed televisions and was very strict about who he would work for. A friend of mine named Fred was married to a Hawaiian Filipino woman here in town and Tom refused to work on their set because they were what he considered a mixed race.

Most of us who have lived here for a long time have had to explain to too many people that Tom did not represent the views of even a small minority of Fallbrookians.

I had one incident with him that I thought was rather funny. He was parading in front of my shop one day on Main Avenue wearing a sandwich board with the Mexican flag painted on it with a cross out circle over it (what exactly is the name for that?) I guess it is called a no circle. [Interdit]

Anyhow he was walking up and down the street bitching to anyone who would listen about hispanics in/and overrunning our schools and I said, "Hey Tom. You know I'm Jewish. Do you have any problems with my kids going to school here?"

He thought for a minute and looked at me squarely in the eye.

"No Robert, not as the constitution is currently written."

I started to walk away and he yelled after me in a louder voice.

"But, that's subject to change!"

I couldn't help laughing. I think he did too.

My friend pointed out what is perhaps the final irony and indignity. Look at the ad next to his obit, is that poetic or what?

Obviously the universe has a great sense of humor.

Jimmie Rodgers

Peregrine over the Pacific

Palace Coup

 

"There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Family Tree

If you have ever wondered about your personal ancestry, now might be a great time to get tested. 

My favorite DNA company, Family Tree DNA, is having a fall sale. You can get an autosomal test for a mere $59.

The offer won't last long, click here. I suggest that you start off with the Family Ancestry test. They call it Family Finder.

At this point, they have found over 22k cousins of mine, from second to fifth. If you join and we are related, don't think you can hit me up for a loan.

Family has been broke since the third century.

Trump 2.0

I am delighted to hear that Donald J. Trump, the titular head of the Republican Party, has decided to consider pulling a Grover Cleveland and contemplates running again in 2024. 

It is splendid news for America and for the Republican Party.

This is the party that will not recognize the President-elect, purportedly because they fear the wrath of Trump and the prototypical Trump voter, the all important non college educated white male voting block.

I fail to see how a country which just gave his opponent a record number of votes in dismissing him from office, the first incumbent to lose the crown in a quarter century, is expected to long for his return in four years, but it is certainly possible, I guess. 

Perhaps the half of the country that he attacked and despises is finally ready for him? Gamblers know that the time you are losing big is the time to double down!

When you have a winning brand like Trump, why find a new horse and develop new candidates? Who needs fresh blood when you have a populist message that resonates so well with the flock?

Of course other people I have heard mentioned for the office are Donald Jr., Ivanka, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham so it is looking to be a real clown car. It ought to make for very exciting television but I definitely think it is missing a very much needed Kardashian component and hope they can work one into the script.

Still trying to figure out how Mitch McConnell can congratulate all the winning GOP candidates but simultaneously dismiss the name of the guy on the top of the ballot? It's a head stretch all right but facts are not important here, it is feelings and the soldiers in Trumpland have been fed a diet for months that they were about to get cheated. So it is all going according to script. The sequel should be a real doozy!

Don't Box Me In

Burrowing Owl

I have about a hundred shots of this guy. I have looked at approximately ten of them the last day and have tweaked them all a little bit but couldn't really make myself happy. It is shot wide open at ƒ2.8 so the focal plane is quite narrow. No way to get overall sharpness so you just pick your spots.

Rather than futz around any more and add sharpening, clarifying, texturizing, colorizing, exposing, highlighting, de-noising, vibrating, de-hazing, providing more contrast or any of the other myriad of adjustments I could make, I decided to just leave it alone like it came out of the can. It will have to do.

Time for a time out

 

Bird Break

 

Costa's Hummingbird

Wood Duck

Hooded Oriole

Red tailed hawks

Roadrunner - © Robert Sommers 2020

© Robert Sommers 2020

Northern Harrier female

White tailed kite

Willie and Paula Nelson - Have you ever seen the rain?

Deep Shade

I have a lot of respect for vote counters and election officials in our country. Red or blue, these people do their utmost to ensure the sanctity of the vote and overwhelmingly, they do a remarkably good job. Not to say that they never make a mistake but fortunately, it is exceedingly rare when they do. 

They are truly ground zero in our election system, two people at a table, from opposite political parties, working together to sort out and establish consensus respecting the true intentions of the cornerstone of our system of governance, the markings on an individual ballot.

And so it pains me to see the shade being purposefully thrown around about a supposedly "stolen" Presidential election. Republicans did remarkably well in this purported "blue wave" election, were the cheating electioneers content only to alter the votes for the presidency, the ones that maybe didn't go your way? Now with the exception of one or two GOP Senators, they are content to keep the President-elect in purgatory while they knowingly dissemble and stretch out the nonsense. This is unprecedented of course, but we have never had such a malignant person occupying the presidency before so we are breaking new ground here.

Biden will win the Presidency without the Georgia vote, or the late arriving votes from Pennsylvania, which were postmarked before the election but not delivered because of the havoc the President created at USPS, purposefully ridding them of sorting machines. The Republican led Pennsylvania legislature wouldn't even allow them to count absentee votes early like they do in most other states and now they have the audacity to whine about a late count?

Republicans are showing incredibly bad form and sowing maximum distrust by allowing this conspiracy crap to come down the pike from the White House, without a shred of evidence. They know it is bullshit and yet they are allowing it to permeate through the fetid cesspool of Trumpdom, filtering down to the most deranged minion. 

Today an anonymous executive branch source said that they didn't truly believe that there was any vote chicanery going on but that this route is the only way to give the narcissist in chief an exit that his ego will allow him to accept, the notion that he was unfairly robbed. That is truly sad. 

Alex Jones was at the Phoenix protest yesterday and I thought, great, these people are now listening to a pathological liar with a bullhorn who has tried to convince parents at Sandy Hook that their children were never actually murdered and that Dems were using pizza parlors as a front to drink christian babies' blood.

The whole futile exercise is so utterly trumpian really. Throw the most unfounded allegations at the wall, no matter if they have any bearing on reality or not and see if you can get anything to stick.

A pox on Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Kevin McCarthy, Kristi Noem and all the other enablers, sycophants and ass kissers who allow this evil pixie dust to be spread. They don't have an ethical bone left in their collective bodies. Their only hope is that the Supremes will deliver a hometown ruling for their petulant man child or that they can somehow convince state electors to break their moral oath with the voting public.

Shame on them.

John Denver - Darcy Farrow

Be sure and take the rest of them with you when you leave.

This is tough. I didn't have enough spaces on the grid. Had to make some hard decisions.

How could I forget Larry and Peter? We will have to find a bigger grid...

Oh and this guy.

Crawl into the Promised Land

Thanks to Gary Linscott for sending this over.

POTUS #45

Queens man evicted.

Baron Wolman

 

The great photographer Baron Woman has passed away. Baron is on the left here, standing next to our mutual friend John Morris.

Baron was responsible for some of the most iconic photographs of the rock and roll era. His photos in the book Festival with Jim Marshall are the best that were ever taken in my opinion.

I met him when I was very young. My mother was a writer and editor in New York in 1970. She was hired by Rolling Stone to travel on their chartered bus to a concert at a commune in Warwick, Massachusetts and possibly write a story. 

She took me along. The commune was called Spirit in Flesh and it incorporated a weird religiosity into the standard hippie ethos of the day. Anyway, Baron traveled with us on the bus up to the Berkshires from Manhattan.

I was blown away when I got there, music, weed, free love, girls that didn't shave, full hippie thing. Some young girl sat me down in the grass in front of a barn, legs spread and tried to get me to stay. I'm thirteen at this point and the place was admittedly enchanting.

Baron was not impressed. He stood up on the bus on the way back to the city and started talking to the rest of us. "This is how fascism is born. Did you see the commune leader's picture in every bedroom?" He started to run down just how full of shit the place actually was and I got a much needed lesson in critical thinking, exotic hippie girls notwithstanding.

Later I met the man in Santa Fe, doing my summer shows. A kind and humble titan of the captured image.

Your Saving Grace

Eight handed

 

Lena told me to watch My Octopus Teacher on Netflix quite some time ago. Not sure why I waited so long.

It is a truly remarkable and beautifully filmed documentary.

You will never think of this amazing species the same way again. I will definitely never eat one again.

I lived in Greece with a fisherman for a short time in the 1970's on the Island of Ios in the Cyclades.

I went out with them fishing one night and watched them kill an octopus trapped in their net. They bit the eye. The octopus let out the most blood curdling sound I have ever heard. I still feel terrible for what I witnessed and doubly so now.

I had no idea they are such an intelligent and incredible species. Highly evolved, almost beyond reckoning. I learned a lot.

"What she taught me was that you are a part of this place and not a visitor. That is a huge difference."

Last ditch effort

 

What I Got

I read the news today oh boy...

What the hell is with the orange face thing anyway? Kabuki?

Counties With Worst COVID-19 Surges Overwhelmingly Voted For Trump.

Smiting democratic demons for Trump. I'll have what she's having...

U.S. sets new daily Covid record.

Thursday saw at least 118,629 new cases nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. There were at least 1,187 reported deaths, a near 20% increase from the same day last week.

As the US continues to shatter daily case records, so too do states across the nation: Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Utah and Wisconsin are among those that set new daily records for infections on Thursday.

Presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway thinks it is inappropriate for the Biden camp to predict victory until the last vote is counted. Which is exactly what the President claimed Wednesday night.

Idiot Wind

Best laid plans...

Trump is already talking about a 2024 run. Right. Like he will be out of the New York State prison by then...

You're shitting me.