Category: OCF

photog Reminisces on New England Hurricanes

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New England is a benighted region.  It’s not coincidental that H. P. Lovecraft was from here.  Even though I’m not a native New Englander I have now lived the majority of my life here and so I had the honor to ride the Hurricane Bob Express back in 1991.  Bob was the last hurricane to actually make landfall as a hurricane in New England so it’s remembered fondly.

Back then I was a hot-shot process engineer working for an engineering company that had been purchased by one of the major defense contractors and therefore had plenty of money for plane fare.  We had a processing plant in Cape May NJ that needed an operational audit prior to submitting a proposal to modernize the plant.  You would have thought that a hurricane coming up the east coast was a good enough reason to postpone the trip.  You would have thought wrong.

So, there I was early on the morning of August 19th 1991 sitting on the tarmac of Boston’s Logan Airport with several of my associates waiting to take off for the relatively short trip to southern New Jersey.  Several of the passengers including the fellow sitting next to me on the flight were nervous.  I on the other hand have always felt that since I have virtually zero control over what happens once I sit down in a plane, there’s really no sense in worrying.  So, I was reading a book.

There was a substantial delay on the tarmac while the tower decided whether to cancel the flight.  We could see that the wind and rain were pretty awful outside the plane.  Finally, the decision was made to take off and away we went.  The stewardesses began moving down the aisle taking drink orders when we hit the brunt of the storm.  The sensation was like a mechanical bull.  The plane bucked up and down for several minutes with even a little lateral motion to make it really interesting.  I experienced a giddiness like you get on a roller coaster and actually found myself laughing out loud.  The personal experience of the other passengers definitely varied.  There was a good amount of spirited screaming.  The poor stewardesses got the worst of it.  They were flung out of the aisle onto the passengers.  Their heavy metal cart jumped around but stayed right side up.  The girls eventually beat a hasty retreat to the end of the aisle and stayed there.

But the funniest thing was that the passengers kept hitting their call buzzers.  They wanted their drinks.  Apparently, they needed the booze right away.  Finally, the head stewardess starting screaming over the PA system to order them to stop hitting the buzzers.  It was quite a scene.  I think my neighbor was praying.  He had his head down and his eyes shut.

Twenty minutes later we were back in the sunshine and when we landed shortly after that it was hot and sunny.  The hurricane seemed to have scrubbed everything clean and it was a beautiful day.  We did our work and caught a flight home that night.  Hurricane Bob was long gone but he had left his mark.  There was no power or phones and the bus I was supposed to take wasn’t running.

I ended up taking a subway train to a commuter train to a bus station and took a bus to a stop where I could walk down a road for about two miles to where my car was parked.  By the time I got home Camera Girl had given me up for dead but was willing to break out some food and drink for the conquering hero.  Thus ended my adventure in hurricane bronco busting.  Not exactly Pecos Bill material but highly entertaining.

So now Hurricane Henri is teed up.  Once again, it’s a hurricane with a guy’s name which is sort of disreputable to start with.  And it’s French which adds insult to injury.  It’s going to be a Category One Storm so far.  But the track is going to be dead center on target to where I live which kind of stinks.  But we’ve got a generator, plenty of food and water and an emergency of this sort provides a manly man such as myself with the opportunity to impress his damsel in distress with his prowess at fighting the raw power of nature head on.  Plus, we have pop-corn and a DVD player if things really get dicey.  Well, here’s to survival.  At least I’m not in Kabul.

20AUG2021 – OCF Update – Hurricane Henri Takes a Bead on Us

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As usual, the Weather Service has decided to mess with me.  Instead of heading for Nova Scotia this crummy hurricane with a Frenchman’s name is going to annoy me this Sunday.  I think it’s going to be 85 mph and they are talking about 3-5 inches of rain.  Sure why not?  We’ve had about twenty inches of rain so far this summer.  Why not five more?  The local government is talking about it like it’s the apocalypse and as usual everyone is loading up on toilet paper and canned food.  My generator is good for about a week of running so I guess if all the wires go down we’ll have power but it may interfere with my internet access so that would stink.  Ah well.

 

 

 

In Search of a Myth

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During the lifetime of the Greatest Generation the powers-that-be created a myth of what America was.  FDR and Hollywood and everything under their control built up a story of who we are and what makes us special.  And it was a beautiful story and it was poetry.  And that myth was good enough to help them survive a Great Depression, win a World War and create everything from atom bombs to the internet.  We were the good guys.  We stood for truth, justice and the American Way.  Sure, we had some ugliness and pain in our past and we hadn’t banished poverty and crime but we were working on it.  We had a war on poverty and a war on drugs and we believed in color blind justice and we loved everyone.

But somewhere around 1960 a new generation of elites decided we needed a new myth.  The grown-ups wouldn’t buy into it so they started selling it to the kids.  And it was a depressing story and it wasn’t going to fuel a bigger and better tomorrow.  In fact, it was a blueprint to demolish the American Way.  It was about murdering America and creating a world that would feed on the carcass.  And amazingly after sixty years of selling it this new myth is the reality.  And if you think I’m exaggerating just look through the headlines of the last few years.  The majority of young people believe that America is evil and the only way to fix things is to take away the freedoms and money of the people they don’t like and give it to the people they like.  And it’s happening in real time before our eyes.  I can’t imagine that we are going to convince these people that they’re wrong.  They believe their myth.  It’s what they grew up on and it’s very real for them.  And they’re not going to convince us.  So, we’re in a new world where two peoples are living together inside one political entity.  Somehow, we’ll have to separate.  That’s a long story and we’ve been talking endlessly how that will happen.  But one thing that we need is a new myth.

We can’t keep the old one.  They blew that one up.  They polluted it and destroyed its basis.  The people who defiled it are the descendants of the Pilgrims.  They invalidated their own ancestors to destroy our myth.  We have to write a new story.  We will have to take our parts in the original story and write out the usurpers.  We have to make their betrayal a central thread in this new tapestry.  Overcoming their treason and building something new and better is the purpose of what needs to be achieved and that will be how we come up with a new myth.  We need an inspirational story of who we are and what makes us special.  And we’ll have to see who will be the heroes of this epic.  We know that Donald Trump will be in it.  He’ll be like one of the earliest chapters.  He’ll be like Samuel Adams or Thomas Paine.  Maybe Ron DeSantis will be there too.  And Barack Obama and Joe Biden will be in the story too.  They’ll play the part of Benedict Arnold or some other traitor.  And since Google and Facebook and Twitter and the rest of the Silicon Valley boys are silencing voices on our side of the fence maybe our myth will be recorded on websites like this that haven’t been silenced by the powers-that-be.

A lot of people will say that myths aren’t a thing anymore.  That people in the information age work with facts.  A lot of people would be wrong.  All we have are myths nowadays.  Reality is manufactured in newsrooms, government agencies and corporate offices.  The truth can be censored or photoshopped into anything or nothing.  We need to create our own truth.  It needs to be something that nourishes our souls.  It needs to be what will help us survive Antifa, BLM, anti-white hate, equity, diversity, inclusion, LGBTQ nonsense, transgender madness and a hundred other things that the other myth is using to destroy us.  So, with no disrespect to Thomas Paine, consider this to be my daily dose of “Common Sense.”

16AUG2021 – OCF Update – Late Summer Status

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Suddenly you can sense that people are rushing to get their bit of summer before it’s gone.  Folks are streaming onto the roads to reach the beach and up to the lakes and mountains.  But this year we aren’t doing much travelling.  Just a few day trips.  So I’ll enjoy the quiet for the next week or so.  I’ll start putting together my fall maintenance list.  There’s always plenty to get repaired before winter sets in.  In fact I never get everything done.  I’m much too lazy for that.

I’m seeing the early growing plants begin to die and the goldenrod is taking over from them.  The trees have more and more yellow leaves on their branches and the bugs are going through their last stages.  The butterflies are starting to look very tattered, the dragonflies are wearing out too.  A difference from most years, there aren’t as many bees as there should be.  Maybe all that rain took its toll somehow.

I packed up the Sony rental gear; the A7R IV A camera and the LA-EA5 adapter.  I’ll put out a final long report with all of my observations and conclusions.  It turned out I learned a lot of important stuff.  And some of it wasn’t things I was looking for.  I’ll start using the continuous autofocus a lot more than I used to.  It comes in very handy for things I didn’t expect.  And I have new found respect for the 200-600mm Sony lens.  It is much sharper for close-up stuff than I expected.

The political world is a shambles.  But that’s not news.  What will be interesting is how Ron DeSantis uses his current high visibility and growing popularity.  What goes on with the schools will be very important.  If they can tame the teachers’ unions in Florida that will bode well for ending the COVID scam once and for all.

Afghanistan is an object lesson on what happens when the United States abuses its armed forces and indulges in political theater.  Short of nuking the Pashtun areas of Pakistan we were never going to control the Taliban.  Why we’re there ten years after bin Laden was executed is just another indication that the people in charge don’t know what they’re doing.  But let this be a lesson for all of us.  Never trust anyone named Bush or Cheney.

Well, gotta go cut the grass.  stay tuned.

Camera Girl Saves the World One Guinea Pig at a Time

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When I was a kid if you wanted to get a pet, you went to a breeder or a pet store and looked in a few cages or fish tanks and picked one out and passed a few dollars across a checkout counter and your pet was handed to you on a leash or in a small box with some holes punched in it.  And this time-honored arrangement served me in good stead for countless pets of almost every description.  Maybe sometimes the box was a plastic bag if it was an amphibian or a fish.  If it was a snake, it would be a cloth bag with a knot in it to prevent it from trying to squeeze out of a flimsy box.  But if it was any of the several types of rodents that I have owned; mice, rats, gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs or chinchillas; there was no fanfare and definitely no discussion beyond what it ate and how to keep it from escaping.

Today I journeyed with Camera Girl across state lines to an obscure and truly annoying animal “adoption” center to be allowed to purchase two guinea pigs.  The fact that guinea pigs couldn’t be found at our standard pet store was inconceivable to me.  Guinea pigs like all rodents procreate at the drop of a hat.  They seem to be almost literally born pregnant.  How there could be a shortage of them sounded like a science fiction story plotline.  But being the mild-mannered and supportive modern husband that I am I only scoffed a little and agreed to travel to the ends of the earth to procure these rare and legendary beasts.

When we got there, I had my first nasty shock.  The nudnicks who ran this establishment required us to wear face masks to enter the sacred precinct.  Apparently, we had entered a medical facility where lockdown protocols were in place.  I asked Camera Girl if we should scrub up and put on our surgical gowns too.  She nervously shushed me and we moved on.  The surprising thing was that none of the highly trained animal adoption specialists were wearing masks.  I found this more than a little annoying.  This was the first of the little hints that I picked up that told me I was participating in a passion play.  We were performing a religious ritual where the High Priestess would coach us through our roles and provide the sacrament which in our case were overweight rodents.

The various stations of the cross included discussion about why we wanted said rodents.  I was tempted to relate a story about how a voice out of the sky told me to find the guinea pigs while I was mowing the lawn but I didn’t want to crab the deal.  So, I let Camera Girl describe her maternal fervor to save a poor orphaned guinea pig from a life of crime.  Then we had to prove that we could afford to care for these two new dependents.  I wanted to say that if the present menagerie had no complaints about the regularity of meals these two new freeloaders should be willing to roll the dice with me.  Once again, I bit my tongue.  I cautioned myself, “Patience, patience.  It will all be over soon and Camera Girl will be proud of me for being so tolerant.”  So, I held my peace while she answered all questions.  Credit reports were submitted, bank account statements were handed over, COVID vaccination papers were displayed.  Finally, it was all over.  Camera Girl followed the high priestess into the checkout area and I was left to commune with the rats while payment was made.  I felt virtuous for being a compliant chump through this embarrassing and absurd ritual and the payoff was imminent.

But after twenty minutes I was still sitting there with the rodents.  We had stared at each other a very long time and I could tell they were even less impressed with me than I was with them.  So, I cleared my throat excused myself to them with the alibi that I would make their space in the car more comfortable and went looking for Camera Girl.

I found her at the counter with the thirty bucks still in her hand.  But instead of grabbing the receipt and being on our way she was filling out a stack of paperwork and chatting amiably with the high priestess (HP) about the cutesy things that guinea pigs do when you give them human food.  So, I sidled up to her and gave her a quizzical look.  What I noted was that HP was handing out these forms one at a time with copious and completely unnecessary instructions on the minutia of how this information would be used to further the continuous improvement of rodent adoption.

I started glaring at Camera Girl to make it clear I was out of patience and needed to exit this building before I told HP what I really thought of the idea of “adopting” rodents.  I could tell that Camera Girl guessed that I was getting close to announcing to HP that most of my rodent associates were deep frozen rats and mice and even several hamsters that I would use to feed various snakes that I have from time to time kept and that if I wasn’t allowed to get on my way Rodent A and Rodent B were in danger of ending up as dinner for some future serpent inmate at my home.

And as hoped the pace of checkout speeded up acceptably and we were out of there in another couple of minutes.

On the way out I gave Camera Girl a very detailed lecture on what was wrong with allowing women to run anything and more particularly what was wrong with allowing women to confuse animals with children in their priorities.  Seriously a whole industry has grown up around the idea that dogs and cats and rats need to be rescued.  But what is actually happening is that suckering these women into “fostering” animals and then suckering some other women into “adopting” them had become a scam.  The shelters were hooked up with rescuers who were breeding the dogs either themselves or through some fellow scam artists and then charging the saps hundreds of dollars to save them.

I cautioned Camera Girl that from now on all rodents we purchased would be from people who didn’t name them but calculated their value by how much grain they had consumed during residence time in the system.  I just don’t have the stomach for dealing with scam artists and I don’t want to encourage Camera Girl to humor these maniacs.

A Voice Out of the Past – Part 1

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Today I was taking care of some paperwork and a phone call came through.  Now we only have a land line.  No smartphone paraphernalia so I have to go over to the phone to see who’s there.  Well, the phone number was from the New York City area and was unfamiliar so I let it go to voicemail.  When the caller started leaving a message, I immediately recognized the voice and as he started leaving his name, I found out I was right.  It was a guy I worked with back in 1987.  I left the City in 1988 and I guess I never expected to hear from him again.

I immediately picked up the call and we started catching up.  Apparently, he retired last year and was cleaning up some old letters and photos from the time period and he decided to try and look me up.  We did the usual back and forth talking about the people we worked with back then and it was amazing how many details were at our fingertips even after thirty-four years.  As it turned out both of us left the field we were in at the time.  Which is not surprising.  He and I had separately drifted into the securities industry by getting our Series 7 license to work in Manhattan’s Wall Street district during the bull market of the 1980’s.  The fact that we both left after the 1987 crash is hardly surprising but it is gratifying to know that he also found a safe haven in the economy of the time.

Well, we swapped stories about what had happened to us since that time and then we asked each other if we knew of any of the other people we worked with.  But mostly we had lost touch with a former life.  And then we reflected on that life.  We agreed it wasn’t a place you would want to stay in for long but that it taught you a lot about people and a lot about yourself.  We exchanged info and we plan on getting together for a reunion.

But it’s got me thinking about some of the things that went on back then.  And some of them are pretty good stories.  I think they’re worth relating.

I got involved with Wall Street when I ran out of money to complete the last few credits of my engineering degree.  I had a wife and three young kids and bills and things that needed buying.  So, I decided to become a “stock broker” and make my fortune or at least get enough money to finish my degree.

That was a different world.  You see the retail brokers of back then were being replaced by the “discount brokers.”  And shortly both would be replaced by electronic trading that would sweep away the old Wall Street completely.  But back then we still had accounts and clients and commissions and had to wear suits and ties.  We had to know the floor brokers and know how to deal with the various options exchanges and we had to at least hint to the customer that we could do magical things with his order.  There was a definite P.T. Barnum aspect to the customer relations side of the job.

And this bull market was a magnet for people looking to live in the New York City area and wanted to “get rich.”  Almost all of the brokers traded their own accounts and many of them dreamed of building up a stake and making a living day-trading.  And it was this powerful force that ensured that the entrants were a motley crew.  We had all kinds.  And some of them were quite colorful.  Some were actually crazy.  This was partly due to the drug culture of the time.  Several of the people I worked with had a cocaine problem.  One fellow in particular named Joe eventually was forced out when he started having real problems.  Joe was a colorful character.  He was always using small exercise devices to strengthen his hands and wrists and he was constantly throwing karate punches and blocks in the air around his desk.  He was quite a sight.  On Halloween he brought in a black velvet bag that had what looked like an actual human skull.  And one evening when his supervisor Rich was berating him for not handling his fair share of the work load Joe picked this little man up by the forearms and walked him over to one of the windows and asked him if he’d like to be thrown out.  Joe was a pretty big guy and we were on the 15th floor of an old building that had old style windows that could be opened.  Nobody thought Joe would throw Rich out the window, except maybe Rich, but it was a serious breach of office etiquette to say the least.  Luckily for Joe, Rich never said anything about it and afterwards gave Joe a wide berth.

Later on, I was Joe’s supervisor and he came to me to complain that people were talking about him.  You can imagine I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear this.  So, I took him into a conference room and asked him to tell me about it.  He said that he heard them talking about him in the lunch room.  He was sitting next to the soda machine so he was sort of hidden from the rest of the room.  He heard some comments about himself that were very insulting.  They made him pretty mad but rather than start a fight he came to me.  I complimented him on his restraint and then asked him who made the comments.  He said, “The soda machine.”

Well, that slowed me down.  I said, “Joe, I’m going to have to kick this upstairs to Bill.”   Bill was the senior manager for the brokers.  I said, “Bill deals directly with all vending machine related issues.”  Then I told Joe that he looked a little tired and considering what he had been through I thought he should take the rest of the day off and get some rest.  He thanked me and went home.  When I passed this along to Bill his eyes bugged out and he told me to leave this to him and not mention it to anyone.  Joe never came back to the office.  But about three months later he called me at home and told me that the company had helped him find a good rehab program to get off the cocaine.  And he had left Wall Street behind and was working for his uncle who had a printing business in Brooklyn.  He sounded as happy as I’d ever heard him.  Joe may not have been the craziest guy I worked with on Wall Street but he was surely one of the most colorful.  And he had one of the happiest endings to his story there.

12AUG2021 – OCF Update – Work, Work, Work

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Camera Girl had me in the garage setting mouse traps in anticipation of the fall return of Mouse Man.  Why mice in a garage is a big deal I don’t know but women fear rodents.  So Mouse Man must die!

I’ll be out this morning stalking the elusive hummingbird and I can already tell the heat is gonna be something.  But we all must suffer for our art so high ho, high ho.

I’ll return later to see what’s brewing.  Apparently Joe Biden wants the King of Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil.  Yeah, right.  Maybe he can make Andrew Cuomo the ambassador to Saudi Arabia and they can chase the Saudi king’s various dancing girls around the pool.  But I think the price of oil is only going one way.

To be continued.

05AUG2021 – OCF Update – This ‘N’ That

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I continue to be impressed by the backbone that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is displaying.  The usual suspects in the press and the feds are attacking him tooth and nail and he’s standing his ground remarkably.  I think he’s shown himself to be a savvy politician and someone who will be worth watching going forward.

Great to see that Gavin Newsom is looking like a dead man walking.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.  Larry Elder might be an interesting governor for California.  Because of his color it will be inconvenient for the usual suspects to use their usual methods to attack him.  Might be a learning experience for black voters to see a conservative black leader for once.

I’m trying to teach myself some Word Press design techniques to streamline some of the repetitive stuff I do such as the photo and quote of the day posts.  It’s just a matter of making some templates that are easy to use so I can avoid some keystrokes and clicks.  But you know what old dogs and new tricks are like so it is eating into my day.

Rainy, cool weather here in New England but no snow yet so that’s good.  Camera Girl is working indoors today and that means we’ll eventually have to talk to each other which is always dangerous.  She’s very excited about a new shell I bought her for her hermit crab.  I named him Buster Crabbe after the late great star of the classic Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s.  She’s so excited about him moving into the new shell that she wants me to photograph him for posterity.  Don’t be surprised if he shows up here at some point.  I told her I thought he’d be better off as part of a crab sauce over spaghetti.  She was not amused.

Haven’t seen any of the praying mantises for a week or so and I’m wondering if there are many predators in the yard that they have to contend with.  I guess frogs and toads might be the likeliest enemies around the yard.  But maybe even field mice might be a threat.  Next week will be drier and warmer so I’m hoping that I’ll make some further sightings.  Princess Sack-of-Potatoes will be sorely disappointed if they don’t reappear.  Although lately she seems a lot more interested in chasing butterflies.  I guess women of all ages are a fickle bunch.

I saw that Dementia Joe’s poll numbers have finally gone below water.  Of course Politico will put out their own poll that says he’s at 52% so they can claim the average is above 50% but looking at the main pollsters he’s now under water.  And that’s during the August doldrums.  come September when kids will be sitting in sweltering classrooms with masks over their faces I can see those numbers in the low forties.  Oh, Joe’s gonna be awfully popular.  But we’ll see.

The Congress is getting ready to sell us out again.  Joe Manchin has cut his deal.  His wife has been put in charge of a billion dollar slush fund so you can expect that the fix is in.  The Dems will use the reconciliation process to put illegal alien citizenship, statehood for Puerto Rico and DC, permanent election fraud and heaven knows what else into law this fall.  So don’t let yourself get sucked into the miasma of despair they’re preparing.  It’s coming and we need to concentrate on the things we can control ourselves.  And we need to be able to decide where our own long term best interests will be served.  All that will be things to discuss and figure out.

so that’s enough for now.  Stay tuned.

02AUG2021 – Good Morning Gulag Archipelago!

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Word today is that office workers in “health-related” fields in New England have reinstated masking requirements.  The local cable news is sounding the alarm that the delta variant is stalking the region and without masks and constant fear COVID wins.  Go Team Fear!  Of course the number of deaths seems to be completely petering out so I’m guessing that even the panic stricken New Englanders are having a hard time goading themselves into mandatory masking and the rest of the madness.  It’s sad to say but I think the delta variant is a bust.

Anyway, with my new emphasis on useful things I’m going to spend a good deal of today enjoying a beautiful early New England Winter day with temperatures in the high seventies and lots of blue sky.  I hope to get some more fiction writing done and some yard projects.  Yesterday Camera Girl lowered the boom on me and mandated that I clean out the gutters on the garage and pool shed.  This was an unsafe and unfunded mandate that required me to climb rickety ladders and face unknown dangers such as wasps, noxious fumes and repetitive motion injury.  When I finished I was hoping that at least there would be a sign or a banner declaring me “the real hero.”  Alas there was none.  The only acknowledgement I received was the news that cleaning out the gutter made the dog’s pen area “smelly.”  There is no justice.

Today I’m going to try and get some photos with the 200-600mm lens.  Camera Girl has been swooning over a family of rabbits that has been eating some of our hostas.  Since she won’t let me shoot them with a firearm I’ll see if I can get some shots with the camera.  Also birds and butterflies will be my other targets.

I can write some gloom and doom later but right now it’s too nice out to waste the time.  Go and enjoy the splendor.