All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
At the end of last summer I had the chance to shoot hummingbirds at a butterfly bush (Buddleia) in my yard. I decided to try using the Sony FE 200-600mm f5.6-6.3 G OSS lens. I usually use my 90mm macro at close quarters but the sound of the shutter clicking does disturb the bird so I decided that distance that the 600mm would allow me to use might avoid this problem. It did and I was able to get some naturalistic shots without the nervous little buggers skittering away.
The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of its Newspapers. These preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war, with an authority which only the first Reformers, and a long-past class of Popes, were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, consolation, edification; in all ways diligently “administering the Discipline of the Church.”
Thomas Carlyle
At the end of last summer I had the chance to shoot hummingbirds at a butterfly bush (Buddleia) in my yard. I decided to try using the Sony FE 200-600mm f5.6-6.3 G OSS lens. I usually use my 90mm macro at close quarters but the sound of the shutter clicking does disturb the bird so I decided that distance that the 600mm would allow me to use might avoid this problem. It did and I was able to get some naturalistic shots without the nervous little buggers skittering away.
Back at the beginning of February some clueless loser writing for the LA Times named Virginia Heffernan wrote a screed about her non-Leftist neighbor next to her vacation home that plowed the driveway as a neighborly act of kindness. Reading the pathetic justification for her lack of gratitude over this act of kindness is painful. Putting aside the lack of self-awareness showcased, what it brought home for me was the fact that our side is full of good people and their side is composed of feckless petulant children.
But this time I think I’ll ignore the Leftist miscreants and concentrate on the good people for once. When I first moved out of the city into the suburban and rural areas, I was the newb trying to figure out how to negotiate the endless snow of winter. Kids had to get to school, I had to get to work and just shoveling it eventually was going to run against the physics of piling too much snow in too little space. And it was always the blue-collar guys who didn’t have the nicest car or whose kids didn’t have all the latest gadgets and toys who lent a hand or gave advice or volunteered to bring your kid somewhere when you were stuck in a ditch.
Luckily for me I liked those kinds of people. They adopted me and taught me all kinds of work arounds and entertaining things that could be done on short funds. Like ice fishing or where the best camping grounds were or the best cheap seats at the ball park. So, if my neighbor plowed out my driveway, I didn’t write a snarky letter to the local newspaper justifying why I shouldn’t (and wouldn’t) thank him. I immediately did thank him and asked if I could do anything to return the favor and Camera Girl would bake him a pie or some cookies the next day.
Like anything else there are no absolute correlations between political stripe and virtue. I’ve had deep blue neighbors who were good neighborly people and I’ve known a few folks on our side of the aisle that I wish were behind bars. But by and large our people are friendlier, more helpful and just plain more decent than the characters on the other side. If I have to live next door to, or be on a school committee with, or have my kids on a sports activity with either conservative folks or liberals, I’d choose the conservatives every time and I’d be right 98% of the time.
So here you have all these good people. And there you have all those creeps. And the powers that be rig the game to punish all these good people and reward all those creeps. It doesn’t take a genius to know that we have to get organized and find a way out of this trap. We have to organize to protect ourselves from the people who are trying to do us in. Somebody like DeSantis might be part of the solution. Maybe Noem in South Dakota is. And maybe the next step is these kinds of people getting together and figuring out a larger strategy.
But my point in this whole thing is this. We can’t let these good people be destroyed. That’s not just a crime against humanity it’s a sin in the eyes of God. These are the best people on the planet and they are being treated like criminals, like garbage and it’s got to stop. If we can’t find a part of this country where we can live in peace then we should form a giant migration and get the hell out. Maybe we can buy a section of Siberia or Australia for a trillion or two dollars’ worth of gold and move there together. Anything is better than letting these vampires finish off our kids. That’s my take.
Yesterday I cranked out a few thousand words to a story I’m working on and it felt great! Nothing but positive energy. Writing about something with no relation to Leftists or Wokeness was absolutely rejuvenating. So I’m going to start writing a little fiction everyday.
Spring is starting to make some headway here at the compound. I actually left the snow on the lower driveway this last snowfall and it’s melting sloppily on its own. This is big. By the end of February my back is usually pretty beat up. And because of this I’ve been very slow to ramp up my use of the rower but with the specter of snow removal slowly receding in to the rear view mirror I will start building up on the rowing.
One of the negative effects of the spring season is the reappearance of the black bears in the area. Last year they flattened Camera Girl’s beloved bird feeding pole.
This year she has vowed to pre-emptively take in the feeders when the local animal control warnings go out. We shall see.
And at long last the replacement part for Camera Girl’s beloved dishwasher has arrived from Wuhan, China. It took three months for the part to arrive. Something about interruptions at the factory. Whatever. There is much rejoicing and the repairman will be declared a Hero of the Motherland and our next dog is sure to be named after him.
So as you can see my mood is ebullient and even the prospect of Dementia Joe declaring another fatwa against me and mine just isn’t getting the job done today. Pretty soon the crocuses will be crocussing and the daffodils will be doing whatever daffodils do and I can get out with my beloved Sony A7 III and my beloved Sony 90mm F/2.8 macro lens and all will be right with the world.
Huzzah!
Back 250 years ago the Founding Fathers laid out in the Declaration of Independence why they were casting off their allegiance to King George of England. I could copy the whole thing here but that’s unnecessary. What is interesting is to see just how many of the complaints have analogs in our present situation. Let’s start with the first cause, the first paragraph.
Okay that’s enough. Only a fool can ignore the fact that we are in the same moral situation that the Founding Fathers were with Great Britain. The only difference is one of will. The colonists were brave and daring men who were used to fighting wars against other Europeans and the Indian tribes. We have become accustomed to luxury and ease. The wars we fight are fought by a small group of volunteers. And the majority of American citizens are women, something that was unheard of during the Revolutionary War. And women tend to be uneasy about confrontation and violence.
So that’s where we are. When this country was young the men living here wouldn’t allow themselves to be bullied by tyrants. Today the women and the men who emulate them are too cowed to so much as defend themselves when the government sponsored mobs burn down their businesses and assault them in the street of their major cities. They’re even afraid to demand that the teachers that they pay to teach their children either do it or stop getting paid. Hell, they’re too scared to even go to Thanksgiving dinner with their families for fear of being ratted out to the police by Karen next door.
Really the only question is how long will it take to find out if we truly are just slaves of the Left. Here’s a fair test. If you can’t get together with your family on the Fourth of July then just take your flag down and reverently burn it. The country will be officially dead. At that point look for a better place to live.
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter’s Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.
Thomas Carlyle
At the end of last summer I had the chance to shoot hummingbirds at a butterfly bush (Buddleia) in my yard. I decided to try using the Sony FE 200-600mm f5.6-6.3 G OSS lens. I usually use my 90mm macro at close quarters but the sound of the shutter clicking does disturb the bird so I decided that distance that the 600mm would allow me to use might avoid this problem. It did and I was able to get some naturalistic shots without the nervous little buggers skittering away.
I decided today was a good day to do some fiction writing. I’ve been neglecting it during the run up to the Dementia Joe inauguration and since there wasn’t anything really compelling in the news I figured I’d wait until later to put up a post. I have a post in progress for the end of the hummingbird Photo of the Day series but I’ll attach something interesting from the archive just to make this worthwhile.
To the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preternatural. This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;—that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain.
We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud “electricity,” and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
Thomas Carlyle