Girls on a Beach

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The above photo isn’t from Flickr. I found it on a site of vintage photographs. There’s no credit listed since the image is clearly in the public domain (it was taken in 1905).

If we assume the fair maids in the shot were eighteen at the time, they would have been born in 1887 or so. They would each be 125 years old now. For them WWI started when they were 27, the Great Depression when they were 46; their age at the end of WWII was 58. When I was twenty they were 81. Surely by 1990 or so they were all dead.

During their lives they saw the invention of the automobile, movies, the air plane, penicillin, the telephone, radio, television, and the digital computer. They lived through two world wars, the struggle for civil rights by blacks and women, the cold war, Beatlemania, and Watergate.

How many children did each of them have? Did they have jobs or careers? What did they read? What did they believe? Who did they love…?

I wonder what they thought about the tumult they lived through. Did they embrace the vast changes they saw; or did they seek to hide from their future (our past)?

The beach loving ladies below were most likely born somewhere around 1994. Assuming a life expectancy of 80 years, they will live to see the 2070’s. What will they live through? What triumphs and tragedies will they experience; what miracles will they see? Will their lves mirror their great grandmothers’ or follow a  completely different path?

Photo by Jacrews7, remixed by me, subject to this creative commons license 

Gear!!

Why are so many of us so obsessed with the gear we have and the gear we want to have? Half the Flickr profile pages list all the cameras, lenses and other stuff the photographer toats around. Some of those lists are pretty damn impressive and make me drool. My old Nikon d50 is a perfectly adequate camera; I certainly haven’t gotten to the point where it can’t keep up to my skills as a photogorapher. I have to admit, however, that I dream about having a D300 or even a D3 (I’m a Nikon guy; we all know Canons are crap).

The same goes for lenses. I’ve got five very adequate lenses. I do mostly landscape and portrait work. I’m not shooting rabbits half a mile away at midnight or the hairs on a fly’s ass. Still, I want, want, want some of those sexy fast, long and macro lenses most of the pros have. Don’t even get me started on tripods, camera bags, back packs, rain gear and high capacity memory cards.

Will I be a better photographer if I have that D3 with a sexy fast lens up to my eye? Uh, well, maybe not… But that fact doesn’t keep me from lusting for that kind of gear. I think it’s a guy thing. “What’s ya shooting with?” My current answer, “Nikon D50,” only gets a barely noticeable nod from another serious photographer. If I could answer, with a very casual tone as if its no big deal at all, “oh, just a Nikon D3,” the other guy would whistle, immediately feel inadequate and intimidated by my primo gear and maybe even piss his pants. What a rush that would be!

Guys, including me, love gear, particular brand name gear with numbers and slashes and letters in the name. Whether its lawnmowers, rifles, fishing rods, tool boxes, chain saws, bowling balls, audio equiment, golf clubs, tires, televisions, GPS units, cell phones, cars, or, best of all, pickup trucks, those letters and slashes and numbers let us quickly sort out who are the winners with the really boss stuff and who are the losers stuck with that pitiful, plastic budget crap.

The truth is usually the actual difference in utility between that top of the line Ecletrix S9000x and the entry level Ecletrix E90 is very little. It’s also true the pro can run rings around you using that crap budget gear even if you use the   “highest rated” BLT/19000 super-titanium, triple coated, digital, lazer, hemi-headed gear that lists for just under half the GDP of Iceland. Use the best golf clubs in the world and Tiger Woods will beat you with a coke bottle. Send me out with a really good pro photographer – me with a D3 and my choice of top lenses and  the pro with a hundred dollar point and shoot. She’s going to come back with much better photographs than I am. Gear is great. I love gear! I want the greatest gear there is. But the secret of good photography isn’t in the gear, not the camera body and not the lens; its in the eye, that one damn piece of gear I will never be able to upgrade… But I don’t care. Only a handful of you out there can tell I’m at best an average photographer, the rest of you I can dazzle with my bullshit and intimidate with my gear (as soon as I can afford it…!

Can’t Believe I’m Saying This, But…

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Rush Limbaugh is an asshole. A prick. A villain. An all around rotten to the core ogre…

When he was on in the morning on one of our more offensive radio stations, whenever I felt sluggish I’d listen to him for a matter of mere minutes till his outrageous statements would wake me up. “I can’t believe he said that!!”

Of  course he latest outrage was no fluke, just a bit more vile than usual. Everyone is up in arms and for good reason.

But the effort to get him kicked off the air is horribly misguided. He didn’t advocate the overthrow of the government, didn’t call for the assassination of Obama or other hight government officials. All he did was make a vile comment about a woman who spoke publicly about a matter of political concern.

If we all start trying to silence speakers for what we consider comments beyond a certain line,  surely we must grant the same right to those on the opposite side of the political divide. After all, Bill Maher, may no god bless him, does say some outrageous things on Friday nights on HBO. Doubtless countless folks on the right are genuinely outraged by his profane, snide – if  hilarious – commentary.

Political and cultural debate in mass media is already stunted. Some poor TV pundit gets axed monthly, it seems, for making “inappropriate comments”. Juan Williams was dumped by NPR for revealing his fear of Muslims on airliners (a wrongheaded attitude no doubt shared by a big chunk of the flying public).  Lou Dobbs  got eased out by CNN for making inflammatory comments about undocumented aliens.

Strictly speaking, secondary boycotts of those who sponsor some pundit we abhor do not raise First Amendment concerns (the amendment only applies to efforts by government to censor comment). But we are better served by public debate having a wide range of voices. Yesterday’s censored speech may be tomorrow’s conventional wisdom. We must consider all ideas, hear all voices, to advance in the constant process of reforging America.  If we start silencing those whose voices we find anathema, we will end up with a mere exchange of unthinking platitudes and talking points by pundits too frightened of losing their place in the lucrative talking head biz. If each side declares a fatwa on those it considers too obnoxious, if both sides engage in jihad, we will soon be left  with a very narrow range of political discourse on public media. Tweedledum will be vigorously opposed only by Tweedledee.

The remedy for bad speech (I know you’ve heard this before) is more speech. Feel the outrage – speak your outrage – encourage others todo likewise – but don’t try to muzzle your opponent. He may end up muzzling you instead….

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Now here’s a really lunkheaded idea: some sober group or other wants TV and radio stations to refuse to run political ads that aren’t “true”. Imagine the debate and battles that would engender! In politicas truth is in the eye of the beholder…

Kiss of the Rain

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes 

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When I was a child, perhaps five or six, I would sometimes stay at my maternal grandparents  home in St. Charles, Virginia. Their white wood house, the largest in the small coal mining town (my grandfather managed the mine), nestled against a steep, heavily forested hill. In the level front yard studded with crab apple trees, halfway to the road and a mere foot or two from the whitewashed wooden fence marking the boundary line of my grandparent’s property, stood a working round, stone and cement fountain some six feet or so high.

In the late fall, as the trees lost their color and the grass withered to a dullish brown, it often rained in the morning. Not a hard rain but a long and drenching one; a rain that roared in a whisper, a constant hissing sound that harmonized with the gurgling of the fountain and was backed by the rhythm of raindrops splattering on the sparse leaves remaining on the apple trees.

Those mornings, after breakfast, I would sit with my grandfather on the wide screened porch. We would sit in old, white wooden rocking chairs and listen to the rain and gaze silently out at the gray, drenched landscape. The air was uncomfortably cool and smelled both wet and sweet. Time seemed to stand still, the rising sun’s light completely masked by the hard, colorless sheets of the morning rain clouds. Nothing moved those mornings except the dying leaves trembling or falling under the unrelenting assault of the rain. No dogs barked. No birds sang. No cars rumbled up or down the narrow road leading to my grandfather’s mine that passed by just fifty yards or so beyond our porch. The only sound was the rain; all else was mute.

Now, some fifty six years later, I recall those gray mornings I spent under the spell of the soft and steady Virginia rain as intervals of damp enchantment. Now, when the rain delays or stops me from accomplishing whatever urgent business I believe, in my aging adult way, must be done, I try to calm myself by remembering those mornings on my grandparents’ porch; those mornings when the steady, autumn rains embraced the world and me in liquid tranquility. Now I try to remember there is nothing more important than the rain.

Photo by Manuel Holgado, remixed by me, both images subject to this creative commons license

Tempus Fugit

Why does every political blog cover the exact same stories? Want to hear about Obama’s speech? You have about ten thousand choices. I read the Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo daily. I don’t know why. Both carry the same material just about every day. Maybe they steal from each other, or maybe the posters are just locked into the same mindset.

Its not just those two sites. At least on the lefty side of the World o’ Blog every blogger writes about the same subjects day after day after day after day. Yes, of course there are exceptions. Andrew Sullivan’s blog the Daily Dish deals with lots of original topics and, of course, Daily Kos discusses dozen of arcane subjects, as does Yglesias, but most blogs don’t fall far from the echo tree.

Today and tomorrow absolutely everyone will be writing about the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Most of the posts will cover the obvious and will echo each other’s point. I’m sure, by the way, it will be equally true on those despicable red blogs. And yes, the Mainstream Media will do the same in the shallowest way. Most of the stories will be the same, only the interviewers and interviewees will differ.

By the way, have you noticed how canned the news has become on the networks? Take a natural disaster, for instance. The story first tells us a tornado (or maybe a flood, earthquake or hurricane) devastated  (pick a town). Then we are shown thirty seconds of video of the devastation (we are always shown cars destroyed by the event; every flood story has  footage of shiny new Toyotas floating crookedly in the muddy water). Next we see a crying woman holding her baby, puppy, cat or father’s photograph; usually she’s obese, speaks in a redneck accent, and lives in a trailer park (her tin home was blown away, flooded, or shaken into slivers). “I’m just lucky to be alive,” she wails. Then comes the old, confused man who can’t find his wife, kids, siblings or cousins. Next we hear from the mayor, governor, chief of police, or some other political figure who tells us, in his or her ten second sound bite, how bad it was but how well the town, county or state is coping with the aftermath of the (tornado, flood, earthquake or hurricane). Finally, a chipper younger woman tells our intrepid reporter the people in (some town) are resilient and tough and, by God, won’t let this natural disaster destroy their spirit;  her husband, son, daughter, sibling or neighbor then declares he/she will definitely rebuild his or her house, store, barn, church or whatever because God will be there for everyone and his neighbors.

There’s an excellent chance the story will end with the heartwarming tale of how a dog, cat, pig, cow, gerbil or other animal, was miraculously spared by the tornado, flood, earthquake or hurricane. A video clip of the reunion of weeping human and precious fauna plays while the news anchor offers up some upbeat and  banal comment. Yes, the disaster was awful; but wasn’t it wonderful the poor guy found his dog, then he segues to a two minute piece about the health risks of potato pancakes and sour cream.

So now, of course, its time for me the share my own thoughts about that beautiful Tuesday morning ten years ago. I was in my office. My secretary had a small black and white television in her office. She interrupted my meeting with a client. “A plane hit the trade center in New York,” she said. Her report stunned me. I’m one those poor souls who live in the hinterland but are desperately in love with New York city. I didn’t end my meeting, however. Then the second plane hit; this was not a tragic accident. We were under attack. We spent the next three or so hours staring at the small TV screen.

The real impact of that unbelievable morning hit with the collapse of the first tower. As that monstrous gray cloud hurtled down to the street level I was overwhelmed and disoriented. How could this happen? How could one of those proud towers, so iconic, vanish in a few seconds. Next came the sickening realization that there were still hundreds and hundreds of people in the building when it fell.

The fall of the second tower, the spread of that hideous cloud over lower Manhattan, the news of the attack on the Pentagon, the scenes of the stunned survivors covered in that dust, and the shocked tones of the reporters deepened the sadness and drove home the monumental loss our country had suffered.

Some will write this weekend of how we lost our way when we stumbled into Iraq and slashed our Constitution’s guarantee of our personal liberty and right to privacy.  They will decry the loss of the solidarity Americans had the aftermath of 9/11. They will tell us our current debt and deep recession and the insane paralysis in our political system stem from Bush’s  jingoistic, hugely expensive (in both lives and treasure) response to the collapse of those gleaming towers.

Others will defend the measures the government has adopted to protect our homeland. They will defend “enhanced interrogation” and the establishment of  the hydra headed security service that makes us remove our shoes and intercepts our electionic communications. Some of them will urge us to engage in yet more military actions against  even more Muslim countries (Syria, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan…)

Each camp will assail the other. Each will declare the other is threatening to destroy what Makes America Great. They will disagree about precisely what that is. Neither side will listen to the other. There will be no debate, just a shrill cacophony of  angry shouts. 9/11 once united us. In the twisted decade since that mournful morning the divide between us has widened into a chasm so wide we cannot even hear one another.

I have my opinions. You have yours. What I feel this weekend is not anger. Nor do I wish to pontificate, not on this day.  No, this sunny, clear first September Saturday morning is reserved for somber recollection.

This day  I feel only sadness. I sorely miss those gleaming towers. These is an ache in my heart. Whenever I see the skyline of lower Manhattan I can still sense their presence, twin ghosts, pale and translucent, haunting the city. The towers are gone, fallen to earth that September morning now ten years past. They have vanished as has our smug assurance of our invulnerability. They fell, leaving behind only that roiled, suffocating gray cloud that has now spread so far and wide it  threatens to engulf us all.

My Foolish Heart

Oh, Barrack, For a long time now I’ve been so mad at you! You broke my heart and I swore we were done; our relationship was over. Swore I’d just sit home alone election day in my pajamas and eat Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and watch Sleepless in Seattle half a dozen time.

But I miss you (even if I sometimes hate myself for that). God! How much fun we had in ’08. I was mad about you then, jus head over heels! Oh, those wonderful, inspiring speeches that sent shivers down my spine! Those heady chants of yes we can! that made me swoon. Those huge, adoring crowds! The thrill of our primary victories! You even spoke in complete sentences that made good sense! You made me believe in a presidential candidate for the first time since 1968 and rekindled my faith in America, a faith which had been killed by the assassins’ bullets that year.

OK, I knew it couldn’t last. I was aware governing would be much less passionate than the lyrical campaign. I thought I was ready to tolerate the compromises a President must make – the change from poetry to prose. Still, I wasn’t ready for the magic to end.

Then you did so much that disappointed me: the torture thing, the half assed health care thing, the willingness to cut Medicare and Medicare thing, and that killing citizens thing… Oh, Barry…I felt abused and betrayed. I tore up that signed photo of you and ripped the ’08 bumper sticker off my high milage car. I trashed you to all my friends and wrote you those harsh e-mails. Now I feel a little foolish about the nasty things I said about you; I just did it because of the heartache you caused; I wanted to hurt you back….

 And I cried. I was sure we were done.  

Then, when I though I was finally over you, you flashed me that big happy grin of yours (the one that’s so hard to resist) and talked about basketball like a regular guy… You called that poor law student Limbaugh called a slut. You gave that stemwinder speech to the UAW… You began giving it to the Republicans at last. Barry, you came back…

Can I forgive you? My unthinking heart wants to say yes. It wants to believe you are still that wonderful guy who gave that impassioned speech about race in America. Still that cool dude who came from nowhere to beat the Clinton machine and McCain. Still the harbinger of a better America and not just another lying politician. Still the leader who could make a real change in America.

Will I forgive you? Will you sing to me again of hope? Stir my soul? Speak truth and compassion? Make me believe politics is not all money and hypocrisy? My heart wants to believe you can and, now, maybe I will forgive.

I’m beginning to feel that flutter again, that old excitement. I’m beginning to hope again. Part of me knows you may break my heart again by staying timid in a second term. Right now I’m starting not to care. I’ll take the risk; I crave the feel of that magical intoxication we had four years ago. I’m growing eager to be entranced by your poetry again. I want you so much! Please take me back…

I just can’t quit you, Barry.

Photo by Ken Fager, subject to this creative commons license