I ran to get my telephoto but it flew.
12NOV2018 – Photo of the Day
Month: November 2018
12NOV2018 – Quote of the Day
“When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can’t run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.”
George S. Patton
American Pride
One hundred and two years ago my grandfather was a sixteen-year-old Italian American kid living in New York City. When the Americans entered World War I he wanted to join the army to fight America’s enemies but his parents forbade it and because he was under age he couldn’t join without their permission. So, he took the alias of Charlie “Young,” claimed he was eighteen and joined without their knowing. His sense of pride in being a New Yorker was such that this Italian American kid was thrown in the stockade for fighting with a southern recruit who called him a “Damn Yankee.”
I remember after September 11th, 2001 a reporter in New York City interviewed some students on the New York University campus who had just witnessed the World Trade Center collapsing into rubble killing thousands of New Yorkers. He asked them whether they would be willing to enlist to revenge the attack. And they said absolutely not. Their future was too important to sacrifice for their country. They did allow that there probably were less important people who could do it though. Probably dirt people who didn’t go to NYU.
Times do change.
What does it mean about a high school if it bans the wearing of the American flag because it’s too divisive? The only thing I can think of is that the school is outside the boundaries of the United States. What that means to me is that whole areas of the political boundaries of the United States are occupied territory. If you are in California you are no longer in the United States of America. And that also goes for New England, the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes region, the Mid-Atlantic states and almost all of the large metropolitan areas. A good rule of thumb is to use those voting maps of the United States and look at all the counties that vote Democrat, all of the blue areas. Within these areas pride in America is at least an abomination and in some cases a crime. And even outside of these enclaves, parts of your life have become occupied territory. Most of the internet is now an anti-American domain. Most of the large businesses have standardized on anti-American nomenclature to avoid being harassed in the Blue States. Most of the churches have joined the enemy and even the Boy Scouts of America has succumbed.
This situation is designed to destroy the social cohesion of the American identity. Once that is achieved, all that is left is the identity politics that the left loves so much. With everyone divided by ethnicity, race, sex, religion and ever more idiosyncratic characteristics it is easy for the grievance instigators to rig up further outrages outlined in the intersectional conflict playbook. And I think they’ve succeeded. They’ve raised up the millennials to basically ignore the idea of patriotism. Regional variation of course, exists. There are pockets of old-style American identity and patriotism even in the tattered fabric of this country. But even they are under active attack by the Left. They are ever vigilant against any signal from traditional society breaking into their progressive matrix. When it does, they send the courts and the social justice warriors to attack and destroy.
I am so sick of living in occupied territory.
My idea for fighting back is two-fold. First off, support Donald Trump. He is naming judges to the federal and supreme courts who can defend traditional Americans from the Left. If they strike down all the Constitutional protections for the leftist social programs it will allow the states to decide on their own policies. Under that scenario many states will restore the rights of traditional people to live their lives the way they want.
Secondly, I want to move out of occupied territory. With the Supreme Court holding the progressives at bay I could live in Idaho or Utah or the Carolinas or Missouri or Kansas or Arkansas or Texas or any one of twenty states that won’t make me feel like a stranger in a strange land. Imagine not having to know your vote is wasted. Imagine knowing that your neighbors don’t hate and despise you. Imagine knowing that the local school isn’t teaching your children and grandchildren that their ancestors were evil people. That is something I dream of.
If I were more of a statist, I guess I could dream of forcing the blue states to honor the memory of their own country. But I don’t. Let them go down their road. Let me go down mine.
Double Indemnity – An OCF Classic Movie Review
Fred MacMurray was a big movie star of the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s who transitioned into a beloved TV father figure in his long running series My Three Sons. In almost all of that long and popular career he was always the kind, mild-mannered and upstanding American man. There were three exceptions that I can think of. One was a film I’ve previously reviewed here, “The Caine Mutiny” in which MacMurray was a manipulative naval officer who brings about a mutiny for which he escapes blame but others are court-martialed. Another was a movie called “The Apartment where he is a philandering corporate executive. And the third is the present film, Double Indemnity. MacMurray is insurance salesman, Walter Neff. Barbara Stanwyck is Phyllis Dietrichson, the wife of one of Neff’s policy holders and Edward G. Robinson is Barton Keyes an insurance investigator and Neff’s good friend. The story revolves around the plot by MacMurray and Stanwyck to murder her husband and collect on a double indemnity life insurance policy. The details of the murder are actually kind of ingenious and the story has plenty of interesting twists and minor characters that enliven the action. All in all, the production is well acted and very well written. In particular, Edward G Robinson’s character steals the show. He is clever, likeable and provides the moral anchor against which we can weigh the evil being perpetrated by MacMurray and Stanwyck.
The only real problem with the movie is that MacMurray’s character is supposed to be a fast talking, wise cracking, hard boiled character. He’s supposed to be the kind of character that George Raft or Humphrey Bogart might have played. But he’s Fred MacMurray. So, every time he calls Barbara Stanwyck, “baby,” which by the way he seems to do about a hundred times, all I can think of is him playing absent minded Prof. Ned Brainard in Disney’s movie the “Son of Flubber.” It just doesn’t work. He’s too nice a guy to believe as a cold-blooded murderer.
The other hiccough in the plot is the scene where MacMurray and Stanwyck fall out. At one point, Stanwyck abandons here cold-blooded behavior with an altruistic explanation that must have been based on a Hayes Code requirement but just doesn’t make any theatrical sense.
These two considerations aside the movie is an entertaining story with an engaging plot and good acting by both the primary and secondary characters. Even with my reservations about MacMurray’s believability as bad guy I can still see this movie over and over and still enjoy it. The secret I believe is Edward G Robinson. His character allows us to side with the forces of rationality when they intervene and subdue the chaotic outbreak that Neff and Dietrichson unleash with their clever plan. And Robinson gets to hammer home his side of the story in the final scene where he confronts his murderous friend and tells him how it all will end. The only accommodation he makes to their old friendship is lighting a match for Neff when he is too weak to light his own cigarette. And in a 1940’s movie, if you can’t even light your own cigarette you know you’re as good as dead.
11NOV2018 – Photo of the Day
11NOV2018 – Quote of the Day
“Why is it that all battles are fought in the middle of the night, in downpouring rain, and at the corners of four different maps?”
George S. Patton
Murphy’s Law must also apply to war.
10NOV2018 – Photo of the Day
10NOV2018 – Quote of the Day
A prince ought also to show himself a patron of ability, and to honour the proficient in every art. At the same time he should encourage his citizens to practise their callings peaceably, both in commerce and agriculture, and in every other following, so that the one should not be deterred from improving his possessions for fear lest they be taken away from him or another from opening up trade for fear of taxes; but the prince ought to offer rewards to whoever wishes to do these things and designs in any way to honour his city or state.
Niccolo Machiavelli
10NOV2018 – American Greatness Post of the Day – Don’t Give in to the Left’s Moral Blackmail
Jeremy Carl should be commended. As a Jewish American there is enormous pressure from his friends, relatives, acquaintances and colleagues in the Jewish community to fall in line with the progressive narrative and blame President Trump for any acts of violence committed by any maniac that can’t be undeniably proven to be funded directly by George Soros.
His American Greatness article addresses the elephant in the room, namely, that the face of Progressive Leftism is riddled with liberal Jews who play the anti-Semitic card as a means of pummeling Republicans into guilty silence. And he identifies the objective of the strategy, to paralyze the victim and make him a sitting duck for the sucker punch that will surely follow. So, blame Trump and the Republicans for a crazed anti-Semitic murderer and follow up with the gun control offensive. The perfect one – two combination. Mr. Carl spells out the fact that President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law are Jewish and that the ploy has lost its punch against him. And he also addresses the extreme anti-white hatred that some Jewish Progressives have now openly displayed.
My favorite passage is, “Nor should we sit silently while Jewish leftists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg attempt to exploit the atrocity in Pittsburgh by echoing the phrasing and vision of white supremacists by celebrating the demographic decline of white people in America like a cartoon Jewish villain from a Neo-Nazi propaganda piece.”
I think this gets right to the crux of the matter. If your aim is to avoid anti-Semitism it would seem the best strategy would not be to exhibit anti-white bigotry.
It’s refreshing to see a Jewish conservative finally calling out his coreligionists on something that is a divisive and dishonest tactic that feeds an image of the Jewish community that they would be better off not encouraging.
Macrophotography and Me – Part 1
We’re entering the winter months in New England (also known as frozen hell) and at that point shooting outside is not only less interesting but also much less comfortable. Luckily, macrophotography is something you can do from the comfort of your nicely heated home. I like to do macro indoors in the winter. To accommodate this, I look around during the year for interesting subject matter that I can bring inside for the winter and also try to improve on the set-ups I use to make indoor macrophotography more convenient and effective.
For instance, real macrophotography (which involves at least 1X magnification) requires extreme stability because even a tiny vibration will be noticed when apertures are small and magnification is high and exposures can be long. One of the things I have lacked in my equipment is a table top tripod. Up to now, I’ve compensated by setting up my full-sized tripod near a table and stood up while working. I will be the first to admit that this isn’t a comfortable arrangement but I was always preoccupied with lens and camera buying priorities. But now that I’ve got the A7 III I’m where I need to be for camera and even my Minolta 200mm f\4 macro becomes convenient enough for indoor macro work. So, it’s time to look at the table top tripod. The other thing that I wanted to add to my set up was a macro bellows. It’s a bellows with a camera connection on one side and a lens connection on the other. This allows you to increase the magnification with even non-macro lenses. I’ve just purchased the Fotodiox Macro Bellows for the Sony E-Mount. This adds 150mm of extension when completely extended. And just in case I want to go completely macro crazy I can add my Kenko Extension tubes. That adds another 68mm of extension. Between the two extenders I can reach a little more than 2X magnification with my Minolta 200mm macro lens. And with shorter focal lengths I can probably do even better. If I add a lens reverse mount then I can take a wide-angle lens like my 10mm and get some really ridiculously high magnification but that may be a bridge too far right now.
I’ve got to mount all this paraphernalia on the table top tripod with my 200mm macro and camera to really test its stability. I’ve selected the JOBY GorillaPod 5K Stand. The sales literature says it can hold eleven pounds. Between the camera, lens and macro thingamajigs it won’t add up to eleven pounds but it will be four or five I’ll bet. If it turns out that this is not stable enough, I may have to add a rail to stiffen up the set-up but at that point I might as well paint it with purple polka dots and donate it to the circus with the other clown props. Stay tuned and I’ll follow up with some photos of the rig and macro shots that I take. It may be interesting or ridiculous but I’m sure to learn something.