Month: March 2021

21MAR2021 – OCF Update – Spring. Rejuvenation. Rebirth. Everything’s Blooming. All That Crap – 2021 Edition

photog Current Events, OCF, Photography

This time of the year with plants shoosting(!) out of the ground it’s hard to be downcast.  Today was so warm and sunny I couldn’t resist walking the grounds of the estate and performing baronial oversight of all my tenants.  There were the fruit flies that were buzzing around some decaying plants in the garden from last fall.  There was a small jumping spider moving rapidly through the dead grass.  I saw a blue jay searching for seeds and a chipmunk running in and out of holes in a rock wall.  All these tenants loyally genuflected to their lord and swore fealty once again.

I examined the eastern glacier and measured its retreat.

The daffodil and tulip shoots were hardly more advanced in their growth from what I saw a couple of weeks ago before the last snowstorm.

I noted the various places where the woodwork had rotted during the winter and winced as I contemplated the cost and work needed to repair these ravages of winter.  I shook my fist at the eastern glacier and laughed as the warm weather assaulted and wasted my foe.

Last night I spoke with an old friend on the phone and we discussed macrophotography.  He had sent me some links to a European macro-photographer who had a series of YouTube videos on the subject.  This fellow usually employed one or the other of Laowa’s manual focus macro lenses.  There were 60mm and 100mm lenses that reached 2X magnification and a 25mm lens that went from 2.5X all the way to 5X.  Rather unbelievably he claimed to be comfortable free handing the 5X magnification in the field.  That seemed very unlikely and based on the video he produced I think he was overstating the ease.  But it did make me think about trying some new things while shooting macro this spring and summer.

I said that I was thinking of trying my Sony 200-600mm zoom lens on butterflies and other larger insects this year.  I had pretty good success using it on hummingbirds last fall and I thought it was well worth trying it out on other wildlife including larger insects.  And my friend also said maybe I should try using a technique where I hold the camera still and move the branch on which the insect is landed toward me while using a multiple exposure burst to machine gun a good focus.  After all the nonsense of the political world in the last few weeks it was good to be thinking of something cheerful.

And I was also finally able to get my COVID vaccine appointment for tomorrow morning.  Based on the schedule for the second shot and the two-week period following it that provides me with the magic resistance so fervently desired by all good citizens I should be able to see my grandchildren in perfect safety (to whom?) in thirty-six more days.  Ah, the COVID gods are so kind.  Well, progress is progress.  Onward and upward.  Life returns once more to all creatures great and small.

Buckaroo Biden and the White Supremacist Space Pirates – Chapter 1 – The Haunted Staircase

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I guess the consolation prize I get for living in a banana republic is watching “El Presidente” swagger his way around in front of the peasants.  Well, apparently el jefe hasn’t had a lot of practice swaggering lately because of the COVID lockdown.  Swaggering has turned into staggering and Dopey Joe almost did himself in on the staircase for Air Force One.   Watch this.

He fell down three times.  Of course, he didn’t roll down the entire staircase like some Inspector Clouseau or Groucho Marx routine,  but hopefully that will come later.  I’m waiting for Jen Psaki to explain to us that the cause of the stairs mishap was white supremacists.  Hopefully the FBI is on the case and will soon round up the saboteurs and wreckers who were responsible for the assassination attempt.  Obviously, the steps were booby trapped.  I expect in the future President Biden will be loaded onto Air Force One in a cargo net.  Of course, he’ll need to be bubble wrapped and packed in foam peanuts but if they only pack him up to his armpits with his arms out, he can still salute the military guards and maintain his dignity.

So, at this point we have a commander in chief who cannot remember words like Department of Defense or the names of the major cabinet secretaries.  He can’t speak coherently and now he can’t walk up a flight of stairs.  It’s kind of exciting trying to guess what will be next.  Crude jokes about various bodily functions should be avoided but honestly, I know everyone is thinking exactly that.

I guess it’s possible if they want him to be able to keep this masquerade going for more than a few months that they will restrict all his appearances to scripted speeches using a teleprompter and avoiding any direct question and answer periods.  Or they could replace Meat Biden with an Animatronic Biden.  I’m sure if Google and Elon Musk worked together, they could have Biden 2.0 ready for use within a year or so.  It might look and sound a little different from Meat Biden, a little too coherent and gaffe free but it would serve its purpose.  After all nobody really believes Dementia Joe is either the legitimate president or even a minimally competent one.  They just need him to last for a little over two years so they can bring in Kamalarris the Blubbering Hysteric to rule us by conniption.

Well, let’s at least enjoy the show for however long Joe can keep this Curley Howard routine going.  Why not?  Hopefully no one is seriously thinking that Washington is a real government anymore, right?

Results and Conclusions From the Poll in Fold, Flee or Fight

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So here is what people said in the poll.

What's Your Guess For the Future of the United States?

View Results

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Almost a third of people said that more than twenty million people will flee the blue states for the red states.  That seems reasonable to me.  Another quarter of people said the Republicans will do absolutely nothing.  And about 40% of people said the red states will do something about the federal government’s unconstitutional overreach.  And among that 40%, 15% thought it would include secession.

Somewhat comfortingly, more people thought the red states would take action than thought that nothing at all will be done.

It’s very difficult to make any hard and fast conclusions from this poll other than that there seems to be a sense that the red states are where we hope to see some pushback against the Dems.  What it says to me personally is I should be looking for a new place to live in red state America as soon as its possible.  And if I’m smart, I should start lining something up even before I think I’m ready to go.  Things might change quickly at some point and “want” could turn to “need” really fast.

My own votes were for Flee (2) and Fight (2).  I guess I’m more pessimistic than some folks out there.  And actually, seeing that there are plenty of people more hopeful than myself makes me feel more hopeful than I was before the poll.

Thanks to everyone who participated.  This poll has clarified some of my thinking.  I am now convinced that the nothing good will happen at the national level.  I see the federal government going after our freedoms and punishing us every way they can.  The best hope we have of improving our lives in this country is finding a state or states that are willing to defy Washington and make their own policy on everything from social welfare to the Bill of Rights.

There is something very liberating about making a decision.  Concluding that the Right will not be able to pry the United States loose from the Woke Cult is a depressing realization.  But eliminating the indecision from my thinking makes the whole situation a net positive.  It is much worse to waste time and resources on a lost cause.

So, farewell Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.  Hello Brave New World that has such people in it.  Many horrible things await me and much sorrow but at least I’m heading in the right direction.  And as the Chinese Philosopher Lao Tse said, “A journey of a thousand li starts with a single step.”  Knowing which way to go is the beginning of that journey.

From now on I will give less attention to what the likes of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and John Roberts are doing and saying and more attention to what Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem are doing and saying.  Of course, there’s bound to be overlap but I won’t agonize about threats to the filibuster or Supreme Court packing or unconstitutional laws.  I assume that all that stuff will happen.  I’ll be more interested in how the free states react to those kinds of things.  Will someone stand up to this abuse.  That’s what I’m interested in.

 

Update – 20MAR2021

Looks like fight is almost at 50% now.

 

 

19MAR2021 – Quote of the Day

photog Quote of the Day ,

We must not draw general conclusions from certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No. We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield