Rather have my country die for me

Shameful

Here is one that should piss you off regardless of your political orientation. Supreme Court turns away veteran with hydrogen bomb exposure.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal on behalf of some U.S. veterans who want disability benefits because they were exposed to radiation while responding to a Cold War-era hydrogen bomb accident in Spain.

The justices not did comment in turning away an appeal from Victor Skaar, an Air Force veteran in his mid-80s.

Skaar, of Nixa, Missouri, filed class-action claims seeking benefits for him and others who say they became ill from exposure to radiation during the recovery and cleanup of the undetonated bombs at the accident site in Palomares, a village in southern Spain, in 1966. A federal appeals court rejected the class-action claims. The Supreme Court’s action leaves that ruling in place.

The Justice Department, arguing against high-court review, noted that Congress last year enacted legislation that expands eligibility for benefits for many Palomares veterans. But the department also acknowledged that Skaar is not covered by the legislation.

What a despicable way to treat our veterans. 

Bobby Bare

I'm Movin' On

Waymore's Blues

Hooded Oriole

As my old friend Vlad used to say, the blog is getting awfully birdy. Trying not to regurgitate politics. Pardon me, will try to be more well rounded when I return from my trip.

As I drove out of the canyon today I saw this fat hooded oriole on a branch. This is not a feeder bird, this guy lives in the wild. Usually I see Bullock's Orioles out there but this hooded looks very comfortable.

Not sure if I have ever caught one preening before?

Many of you have asked in the past if I sold prints of my work. I have not pulled a print in over a year, it takes a lot of time to get it right. 

I have been asked to put some of my bird photographs in an upcoming show at the Fallbrook Library this November.

 If you would like to buy a specific photograph let me know and I will try to put it in the show, good size and nicely framed.

I had both hawklings on the very tip top of my redwood tree this early morning.

 

From this week's New Yorker

 

Hummer Sunday

I was going to go up to the flea market in Long Beach and hunt for merchandise Sunday morning but just did not have the energy after my treatment. I decided to stick around the house.

We made bloody mary's and toasted our departed fathers. 

Leslie had something to do or someplace to be. I went out into the yard. watered a few things.

I fixed a sprinkler and then pulled my tripod out.  

I swear I have not taken pics with the tripod for about a year. 

I pulled the good lens out too. 

I was going to hunt for hummingbirds instead of merchandise this fine Sunday.

I want to tell you something about shooting hummingbird pictures. 

Photographers are at their mercy. 

By the time it takes for me to click the shutter they have done three figure eights around my head and snickered at me on the way by.

If you manage to get a decent shot, it is a matter of luck or providence, whatever your theology decides is right.

One thing I have learned as a hummingbird hunter, and I have had my share of great shots, is that you almost don't look for the birds, you listen for their click or the soft beat of their wings, look for fleeting shadows and the minute rustle of leaves. 

Then maybe you can grab one. With a little luck.

I was out of practice yesterday. Shots came hard. I took 720 of them, mostly awful. 

Some of it was my error (I kept vr on on the tripod at first), some of it was bad luck. 

I set up in the lantana, the Mexican bird of paradise and the Russian sage and waited.

But this pair of young Allen's is so incredibly quick, it was impossible to get the money shot I was hoping for. 

Saw it, could not respond in human time. 

Had difficulty attaining focus, finally gave up when we were approaching darkness. 

Did get some shots of a Costa but nothing in full display. I have only looked at about ten percent of my output. 

I enjoyed watching them sample the aloe flowers.

One of my favorite shots was this iridescent winged carpenter bee. Exquisite!

Will give it another try again one day soon. I will get the hang of this again!

Baltimore ghost story

 Here.

Great idea!

There is an effort in Maine to create a not for profit utility company. Power companies, which include foreign entities in Qatar, are fighting the effort tooth and nail.

I always thought power companies were essential monopolies and that this would be in our best interest. There can only be one pole and grid system or things get awfully crowded. And utility companies are masters at privatizing profit and socializing debt. Consumers get screwed left and right.

Will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Slippin' and Slidin'

Funny, Terry DeWald in Tucson just sent me this John Lennon version. And last week Dave Manring sent me the Band's version which I duly posted. I feel a trend starting!

Neighbor Blues

I haven't had the best luck with neighbors. My land and the adjoining lot was owned by a brother and his brother in law. Both great guys but it was family, a road separated both the properties and the division lines were a bit blurry. The brother in law sold out to a bureaucrat who had worked for the county. He eventually joined the water board, liked to throw his weight around.

The guy immediately claimed possession of the road and fenced me out. I could have fought it with prescriptive right but decided to chill, wasn't worth the trouble. But then one day I noticed that about fifteen of my orange trees were dying. He had come onto our property, capped the pipes to them and never told us. Can you imagine?

I confronted him and he said that it was his right, the pipe was on his land. I told him that it appeared he liked to throw his elbows around and that is not how we do things in the country. We basically never had another civil word for the next twenty years or more. I avoided the son of a bitch like the plague.

Had a bible banger on the other side, he called the county and fire on me on a couple of occasions, when they moved out they found his extensive porn collection in the attic. Very cool.

Anyway, the neighbor who cut off my water recently sold to a retired lady cop from Lompoc. I have never met her but my wife has and she says she was very nice. I guess she wanted to get on some anti marijuana strike force here. Cool. She has horses and is putting a lot of work in the place.

But she has five great pyrenees size type or larger dogs that never shut up. It is constant. All night and we can't walk on our own property during the day without getting barked at. I don't know if she is that oblivious, probably just doesn't care about anybody but herself.

The other day we had to shut our water off after a break and my friend Tom went up to the valve at the top of our property next to the fence. One of her large dogs put his head through the fence and grabbed Tom's elbow, would not let go. Tore right through his jacket, ruined it. Luckily he wasn't hurt.

She came down and apologized after the commotion, he showed her the damage. She never even offered to replace his jacket, nothing. Yesterday she installed a higher chain link fence.

I don't have real high hopes for our relationship.

*

My neighbor down the way had a new neighbor pleasantly introduce themselves last week, get a tour of his house and then hand him a legal document demanding easement rights to his property with all sorts of threats if he did not acquiesce.

What the heck is wrong with people? Fallbrook never used to be like this. Too many people moving from the cities or Lompoc or Orange County that don't know how to behave, speed up on rural dirt roads and treat their neighbors like crap. Was never the old Fallbrook way.

Wipe it

Toilet paper is being ranked for a variety of metrics and the big name brands are apparently not performing real well. 

It is an interesting article and some of the comments are priceless. Someone noted that the early advertisements promoted "less splinters." Ouch!

Here are a couple comments...

Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers

Bear's Choice

I am an art and antique dealer. While I do have a physical gallery, the lion' share of my income is made at different antique shows around the country. In order to survive in the business for over thirty years I had to have a certain attitude. Basically it was to use my eye and brain and find the best merchandise available and that somewhere, somehow, somebody would be willing to pay a little bit more for it.

Cutting to the chase I would say that a person in my world is quite narcissistic about their inventory, and eye for that matter or should be anyway if they are to be successful. We all want the best stuff. If I can make a stretch, our self worth is tied up to the quality of our merch. Or mine is anyway. 

When I ride into town I want my saddlebags full and both six guns blazing. But it is not always meant to be. 

I am on my way to Santa Fe to do a Cowboy/Indian western show. I have done the promoter's show in both Ft. Worth and Mesa and have done well in the past. But I am a little nervous about this one.

I have some wonderful art work, as usual. An incredible collection of Lawrence Murphy paintings 1872-1947, freshly framed. But I sold my last great native weaving last week. Have exactly one good basket. Some decent jewelry. No good pottery. I simply am not finding the material. What I lack in quality I do make up for in volume but most collectors want the best of the best these days so it might prove challenging.

I hate it when I feel outgunned!

What I do have is great silver, rare Tiffany, Whiting and Allan Adler. But it is not exactly western and am not sure it would find a clientele at a western show. Sometimes it pays to be an outlier and sometimes it doesn't.

Augustus Owsley Stanley III

I sat in my shop today and pondered what to bring to a relatively small space as I packed. Always the 64K dollar question?

And thought of something an old friend I knew named Stanley would tell me when he saw me, over and over again.

Stanley was a genius, a chemist, radio engineer, jeweler and soundman. He operated about ten levels above me in a cerebral sense. Very smart guy. He was known as the Bear, quite the strange cat.

He would say, "Robert, your problem is that you always want to play pinochle at a poker game."

I tried to take what he told me to heart. I think what he meant was that I wanted to change the rules of the game to suit my own strengths and wishes. And that is not how the game works in this world. You have to speak the same language as the other guys at the table.

I think I will listen to the Bear for once and leave the stuff that is not strictly on message at home. Will see what shakes down pretty quick now.

Blue eyes crying in the rain

Quizzical

 

Some bird shots from yesterday

 

Crow, Lake Wohlford

House wren, Lake Wohlford

Canada Goose, Santee Lakes

Least tern, Santee Lakes

For as long as I can remember there has been an egret plundering the outfall pipe at Santee Lakes

Not the most exciting day from an avian perspective but I got to watch the ducks and sit in nature and take a nice hike so it can't be too bad. I really like using the Merlin id app. 

I sit on the couch and it tells me which birds are singing outside the window. It is really helping my sound and song recognition ability. How else would I have known it was a bewick's wren singing this morning?

Download it to your phone, it is free.

A Day In The Life

I was trying to remember why Ringo was my favorite drummer? Then I listened to this and knew.

Denali Bound

My friend's Jeff and Gina split their time between Bonsall and Alaska. They live in Fairbanks but had or have an inholding in Denali and cabins in a couple other places. 

They are the nicest couple you could ever meet. Gina is a master cook and baker and Jeff is a very hardworking and competent contractor.

Yesterday he sent these pictures from Denali. 

He is building a new structure there and was putting the trusses on, with his grandson Brodie and a friend. 

It was a three hundred mile round trip commute and he does it three times a week and works twelve hour days. 

And he is older than I am. 

Amazing guy, proud to know him.

Alaska is on my bucket list. One day...

The New Tweedy Brothers

This is rare footage of one of Oregon's most legendary psychedelic bands, The New Tweedy Brothers, circa 1967. 

The producer was Clark Santee, who created some amazing film and musical productions in his Emmy winning fifty year career. 

I was watching his video from the 1970 Philadelphia Folk festival and fell down the rabbit hole.

 Subscribed. 

Check out his videos, there are some rare and amazing performances. 

Early Steve Goodman, James Taylor, Willie Dixon, Mountain, Bill Haley, Melanie, too much great stuff!

Too much information

This week has taken a lot of logistical planning. At the risk of fetishizing my medical condition and travails and in case you are remotely interested, I think I will give you a peek into my world, for better or for worse. 

First, the back story: So as I have mentioned countless times before, ad nauseam, I have fought cancer in one form or another for thirty eight years. Four years ago, it returned in a bad way. I went to three doctors, including the leading Keck USC and they all wanted me to have my bladder and prostate removed and replaced with a neobladder that would be fashioned out of my intestine. I had previously lost a kidney and did not want to go there again.

I found a wonderful doctor in Hillcrest who agreed to put me back on BCG, an inoculated tuberculin vaccine that works as an immune stimulant. I had been part of the research study at UCSD for this treatment in the mid 1980's and it worked.

Blog followers know that I was stage 4 cancer in the bladder wall two or three years ago and things weren't looking too good. After my prodding, we started back on the BCG and while I still have cancer it is low level now. My doctor wants to keep it that way and suggested a prophylactic round of BCG again. It requires five consecutive weeks of treatment. I agreed.

There are a couple problems with this, mainly I have to make a living and have a show in Santa Fe next weekend and one in Santa Barbara the following month. So she is letting me split it up a bit. This morning was to be my first treatment.

Can we talk about my condition? I have what is referred to as an old man's bladder at this point, it is seamed and has little caves in the side called diverticuli and really isn't working very well. My late urologist John Greisman said I had an angry bladder after operating on it for the umpteenth time and removing hundreds of tumors. It has not been my shining feature.

And one of the problems I have is that I develop infections very easily due to its miserable state, after about half the time anybody administers a scope or a treatment. So I am wary as the pain can be excruciating and prostatitis is close to the worst pain I have ever felt. Anyway post treatment complications usually knock me out of the box for about two to three days. My response can vary from a trifle to nausea and terrible pain for several days. When it gets really bad I typically will take 5 to 8 hot baths a day to relieve the anguish.

So I finished 90% of my show packing yesterday, just in case. Honestly, I have taken so many antibiotics for these UTI's that I don't know how long they will still work on me. Two months ago I had a biopsy that required a double dose of two different antibiotics.

Let's talk about the procedure, shall we? A nurse typically comes in and puts a clamp on my penis, cleans it and she them administers a numbing agent that takes a few minutes to work. A tube is inserted through my penis into my bladder, never comfortable.

The BCG is administered through the tube and I am instructed to lay on back, front and both sides for fifteen minutes a piece before I go merrily on my way, in order for the vaccine agent to thoroughly coat the bladder.

Now there is one major problem with living an hour away from your doctor and taking BCG. BCG can not be released into a public toilet, it is very powerful and can kill the baby of a pregnant woman. What if the person who cleans the toilets is pregnant? I used to carry bleach with me to appointments and I would clean public restrooms after using them because I don't want to hurt anybody.

I am so very freaked out by this possibility. Once I mutually planned a stop with a friend on the coast to use his bathroom post surgery and he changed his mind after the procedure and told me I could not stop. Time got short and there was nothing to do but piss myself in the car. I have never spoken to him since. It was a definite low point in my life but I couldn't take the risk. Don't need friends like that.

Today, I timed it differently. I melted some metal at the refiner down on Convoy and had an early breakfast at the Original Pancake House. 

I was still early and drove through Balboa Park afterwards, which is part of my normal routine. It always chills me out. Love the park.

The nurses today took extra care with soap and betadine to try to avoid infection.

I got my dose without too much trouble and drove to Santee Lakes afterwards to try to grab some shots. No luck.

As you know, my passion in life is bird photography, especially large raptors. 

Except for my own neighborhood, things have been really slow on the bird front of late. 

Shut out, I drove to Lake Wohlford to look for eagles. 

Nothing there either but I hiked far enough on the Osprey Trail to find a spot where I could relieve myself without the possibility of hurting anybody. 

Mission accomplished! 

Saw a house wren and a pacific sloped flycatcher but nothing serious. Ended up driving home the back way from Valley Center to Pauma Valley, almost went up the East Grade of Palomar but felt like I should not push it any farther.

So I had a only slightly miserable procedure but then spent the day in the country enjoying myself and am now laying down and seeing how my body will react for the next two days. 

Wish me luck!

Pretenders

Max breaks the record!

Congrats to a proud papa

Al Pacino, 83 and his girlfriend Noor Alfallah, 29, are welcoming a new baby boy into the world today. That is so cool. Congratulations to both of them. The equipment still works, Al!

While he may not be able to have a game of catch with his kid in ten years when he is 93, perhaps the boy will be able to plug in pop's oxygen or feed him some gruel or something neat like that.

My friend Ken had a kid in his mid sixties. Didn't end up real well, Ken died of Alzheimer's complications at Silvergate and that is all I will say about that.

Daphne Todd - Last portrait of mother

Buteo View

 

The Sufi Choir - Rumi Blues

Cetacean payback

shutterstock

I heard on the radio that not only are orcas in Europe attacking boats, they appear to have a ringleader. They have sunk three boats so far in the wave of attacks but have damaged many others. Interesting story. 

What flipped the switch?

A killer whale, known to locals as 'White Gladis' has declared war on luxury yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar, and may be training an army of juvenile orcas to exact her revenge.

Sometimes called the 'devil fish of Gibraltar', the orca has waged a reign of terror for the past few years.

It's believed she and her pod may be responsible for having sunk three yachts and damaging hundreds more.

The spate of attacks is getting ridiculous.

In 2022, there were 132 reports of interactions between passing vessels and orcas around the Iberian Coast, with another 256 passages occurring without incident or interaction.

That is over 30%. And why is a part of me rooting for the Orcas in this inter special kerfuffle? And what bee got under Gladis bonnet? A Spanish biologist might have a clue.

Spanish biologist Dr Monica Gonzalez believes White Gladis may be out to destroy luxury yachts after suffering an injury from a fishing trawler, proving that hell really hath no fury quite like a whale scorned...

"Our theory is that this orca, White Gladis, had an adverse moment, perhaps related to a fishing boat while hunting tuna," the biologist told Yachting Monthly.

"We think that this orca had an incident and [now] she is trying to stop all boats. We think that the other orcas are juveniles and are copying her behaviour because she is an adult and they think that as an adult we need to do this to survive."

So far the marauding army of whales has grown to at least 13 juveniles and two adults. The second adult has been dubbed 'Grey Gladis'.

*

I looked killer whale White Gladis in the eye as she tried to sink my boat – now I know exactly why she’s on the rampage - The Sun

Morning hawk shot

 

Not bad for iso 5600!

Expanding the critical period

I don't know how many of my readers have experimented with psychedelic substances at some point in their lives? 10%, 20%? I have no idea.

You read about all the microdosing going on today but it's not like people hang a sign around their neck saying "I am tripping." So who knows?

Not part of my daily regimen either certainly but I do think my early psych exploration was formative, to say the least. And if my average reader is say 70 and you do the math and subtract 1968 from 2023, it is possible that even some of you button downs had a fling or two with Sally going 'round the roses back in your nehru jacket days. Wasn't for everybody certainly but could be incredibly enlightening if you respected it and it was right for you.

In any case, there is a point here somewhere. Or should I say, a critical but expanded point. An article at Wired, The psychedelic scientist who sent brains back to childhood. I don't think the headline is exactly illustrative of the content but I am not the editor. The article itself is quite interesting.

The poem gets at a simple, profound notion in physics—that the particles making up Huxley and those of a chair always mingle, whether the two are rooms apart or butt-smashed-to-seat. That’s how she felt, too, as if the rules that had always governed her perceivable reality were blurring with those of a different plane of being. In the midst of this creative explosion, she had an epiphany. The extreme isolation of lockdown might have tipped her into an exceptional brain state. Absurd coincidence, if true. Dölen has spent much of her career studying this exact state: a time of heightened receptiveness, usually in childhood, called a critical period. 

Critical periods are well known to neuroscientists and ethologists, because they lay the groundwork for a creature’s behavior. They are finite windows of time, ranging from days to years, when the brain is especially impressionable and open to learning. 

It’s during a critical period that songbirds learn to sing and humans learn to speak. There are critical periods for walking, seeing, and hearing as well as bonding with parents, developing absolute pitch, and assimilating into a culture. Some neuroscientists suspect there are as many critical periods as there are brain functions. Eventually, all critical periods close, and for good reason. After a while, extreme openness becomes inefficient, or downright dysfunctional. 

If you have not previously dabbled in these sorts of potions this will all probably sound like gibberish. But I think she is on to something here.

That an array of drugs have this potential also means that something deeper must unite these psychedelics in their ability to transfigure the mind. That deeper thing, Dölen’s findings indicate so far, happens not at the level of brain regions or neurons’ receptors, as scientists have previously thought, but at the level of gene expression. So far, her lab has pinpointed 65 genes that seem to be involved in this process, and their involvement suggests that psychedelics' effects last well beyond an acute “high.” Piecing together the details of this mechanistic puzzle, Dölen suspects, will keep her occupied for the next decade. 

Meanwhile, she’s got other big questions to chase. For one, each psychedelic activates a mouse’s critical period for a different length of time. The longer the drug trip, the longer the openness lasts—and, perhaps, the more durable the therapeutic response. A ketamine trip for a human lasts 30 minutes to an hour, and in mice, the drug opens a critical period for two days. The four- to five-hour trips of psilocybin and MDMA keep the critical period open for two weeks. LSD’s eight- to ten-hour human trips translate to three weeks of openness for a mouse. And ibogaine’s trips (36 hours in people) put mice in the open state for at least four weeks, after which Dölen stopped taking measurements. 

Assuming the drugs can in fact reopen critical periods in humans, Dölen’s work, which she and her colleagues published in June, suggests that the brains of people who undergo psychedelic therapy are likely in a state conducive to learning for days, weeks, or even months after the drug has technically cleared their system. This leaves room for further gains long after they’ve come down, Dölen says, and suggests that people would benefit from continued therapeutic support well after their trip. 

Anyway her mention of MMDA brings me back to a night in college. I was working on an architecture drawing for a utopian home I was designing and I took MDA for the first and only time in my life. It was a powder that you dissolved in liquid and drank and I believe they called it licorice back then.

I sat back and started on my working drawing with my pen and the most extraordinary thing happened. Plants and frogs sprung unannounced out of my pen and filled the page effortlessly and beautifully. I merely had to touch the nib to the vellum and watch my creation spill out, it was the most extraordinary artistic session I have ever had as an artist. An utter flow, rendered to perfection and seemingly on its own volition!

The next day my professor and fellow student were blown away. I didn't say a word of course. I may still have the working drawing somewhere. I will say that any attempts at creating art on acid or other psychedelics were utter failures for me, way too in congruent and disjointed to make any sense at all. But the MDA was fascinating, a one off experience in my life.

I want to back and reread the article and delve in a little more.

Beware, friends.

I received a text message from ATT the other day telling me that my bill was overdue. It was an 800 number. Shoot, I thought I had paid both my ATT bills but maybe I forgot. About an hour later they called me and left a recorded message saying I should call back. That I owed them upwards of four hundred bucks.

I went to their online site and strangely everything looked paid. I got another text and another call yesterday. But I noticed a small space between the AT and the second T on the phone. I called *611. I was actually all paid up. I had been spoofed.

Be very careful out there. I could have easily been had if not for a little spider sense. The criminals are getting very sophisticated.

Bizarro

 

All in the headline

 

Slippin' And Slidin'

The unwoke beer

The titanic forces pitted against each other in our societal culture wars are tearing at each other's throats like fierce dragons. Woke vs. unwoke, gay versus straight, young versus old, white against most of the other hues in the spectrum.

I happen to think that the youth of today are far less apt to be sexists, homophobes, racists or bigots than their parent's generation, which I guess includes me. And I also think that is a really good thing. Our destiny. I know people who are horrified by mixed race couples, gay couples, what have you. But they will be on the losing side of the equation in the long run.

Kids are pretty much color blind and orientation blind today and I think that is an advance. Sure, there will be troglodyte states like Florida and Texas who think that they will be able to legislate the woken genie back in the bottle for a short period of time but the kids and inclusivity will win in the long run and trust me, we will all be better for it.

The advertisers of course already know this and have placed their bet$ because they have statisticians working for them that follow the money and know who is spending, setting trends and poised to inherit the whole megillah. That is why it is so hard to find a television commercial these days featuring a straight white couple.

So I think it is sort of funny but sad that the voices of repression have set their eyes on Budweiser for daring to put out an ad with a tranny. There is a national boycott in full fury and no longer is that awful swill our top selling beer, having been replaced by of all things, Modelo.

Bud Light has been dethroned as the nation’s top-selling beer in recent weeks, a data analytics company said, a sign that the backlash the brewer received from conservatives over its relationship with a transgender influencer may be taking a toll.

Taking its place in the No. 1 spot is Modelo Especial, a Mexican beer made by Constellation Brands, making up 8.4 percent of U.S. retail beer sales in the four weeks that ended June 3, according to Nielsen IQ data analyzed by the consulting firm Bump Williams. Sales of Bud Light fell to 7.3 percent in the same period.

The shift follows a conservative-led boycott against Bud Light that started after Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, posted a video on Instagram on April 1 promoting a Bud Light contest. Bud Light’s share of retail sales has dropped about three percentage points since the boycott began.

I'm not going to cry for Budweiser, a truly awful beer that mainly acted as an alcohol delivery system for many of the sad and washed up drunks I used to hang out at the Moose Lodge with. 

But I started thinking about how the advertising minds might be whirling over at equally dreadful Coors, our number two domestic beer.  How could they now increase their market share? And I came up with this ad comp this afternoon. 

Wouldn't that be a genius way to exploit the situation and capitalize on their chief competitor's misfortune? Will be interesting to see if companies continue to pick sides in this cultural brouhaha. It will be a financial loser but they may be forced to go one way or another I am afraid.

I will trust the kids. Woke might not be perfect but it beats the heck out of dead asleep.

Queen Jane Approximately

Wisdom of Kurt Vonnegut

• "Unk, the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe that there is such a thing as being smart." - The Sirens of Titan

• “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

• “Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.”

• “Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”

• True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

• We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

• "Son, they say there isn't any royalty in this country but do you want me to tell you how to be a king in the United States of America? Just fall through the hole in a privy and come out smelling like a rose." - The Sirens of Titan

Doc Watson

Early morning red shouldered hawk, Willow Glen

 

The political situation is so nauseating right now that I am going to stick with birds and happy stuff as much as possible. So much stupidity, so much "whataboutism" it makes me sick. Talk about a dysfunctional government...

Now I could easily cheerlead but it would be pointlessly inflammatory and nerves are raw. I will comment where I feel necessary but a running scoresheet does nobody any good. No need to be pouring salt on raw wounds. We're in the midst of a civil war, damnit!

We'll talk about good things. Hmmm. The four kids in the Colombian jungle survived after forty days in remote jungle. That's cool. Nuggets finally get a NBA championship, the center from Serbia doing things that maybe nobody has done before him. If I can think of anything else I will.

*

So let's talk about photography for a second, shall we? I have a good friend who constantly tells me that my pictures appear too dark and that I should adjust and calibrate my monitor.

The truth is that I like them light at times and dark at times because honestly life is comprised of light and dark. It is true that new photo software can do a brilliant job of lifting details and lightening shadows. Everything can look like the bright sky at noon. But that is not reality. Shadow and darkness exists and should be celebrated, not illuminated at every juncture.

End of sermon.

Red tailed