Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

Tempus Fugit – Part 2

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“Devon, what was your genius’s name?” I asked.  “Bertram McKenzie.  He was originally from rural Maine and all the rest of his family were working class people who labored in the fishing and lumber industries.  But he had always had a mind that looked at things differently.  When he looked at a landscape of hills and trees his mind saw curves intersecting in geometric figures.  Everything was a jigsaw puzzle waiting for him to find the missing pieces.” said Devon.

I could see he had lost focus and was stewing over whatever loss he had suffered.  I said, “Had he made any progress on your FTL drive?”  Devon startled, then nodded, “Yes, yes, he had figured out a way to produce tachyons and use them to freeze time while a vessel moving at normal speed was translated across any distance in almost no time at all.  It had to do with a particular juxtaposition of different atomic environments adjacent to an electron flow.  Very thin layers of complementary metallic elements produced a surface against which time slipped by without aging what was enclosed in the field within the surface.

He had performed thousands of tests to perfect the environment needed.  He’d been sending out orders to a firm that did atom thickness vacuum metal vapor deposition work.  He’d built small test units with a number of crazy metallurgies.  Various platinum metals with layers of gold, tantalum, niobium and several other exotic elements sandwiched between in various geometric shapes.  Finally, he identified the perfect metallurgy.  There were even hollow spaces designed to allow cryogenic liquid hydrogen and helium to be pumped in.  With these as walls he built his miniature ship, about three feet long.  Inside he installed various generators to produce electric current and a control system to run the programs that his machines needed to perform.  It was fascinating.  The test program was to place the ship on a platform at the top of a cell tower and then when it disappeared, to immediately inspect a spot fifty miles away that lay in line with the rotation of the Earth from that spot.  The first fifty-three times the experiment was run absolutely nothing happened.  The ship stayed completely still.  But Bertram doggedly retrieved his test vessel and changed some of the parameters of the equipment or the program.  On the fifty fourth run the vessel disappeared.  It did not show up at the site it was meant to reach.  A careful inspection of the ground in between found it embedded in a tree about half a mile south of the expected line of motion.  The tree had been knocked down and the vessel was a flattened hunk of junk.  But it worked.  The concept had been proven.

Bertram’s budget was expanded asymptotically.  No expense was spared.  We got to work on a prototype that would be a craft one hundred feet long and capable of flight inside and outside of planetary atmosphere.  The work was done under the highest level of secrecy.  But somehow the secret leaked out.  Intelligence agencies around the world were buzzing with news that we had a star drive.  Washington was livid.  But what could they do?

Once the vessel was built and its first few trials to the Moon had been successfully run it was decided that the first exploratory mission would be to Pluto.  After all that was a good tune-up for a stellar mission.  I insisted on being aboard and since Bertram was game, I made sure he would be there too.  And after all, he might be needed for repairs.  The takeoff was a traditional aircraft ascent into the upper atmosphere, no gee force, no rapid climb.  When we reached a cruising height the field was built up and the program was activated.  It was the strangest feeling when the ship energized.  I could no longer hear the rush of the air against the outer skin of the vessel.  All I could hear was the hum of the drive.  But I also felt some strange sensory effects.  It was as if my skin became numb and I had a feeling of depression settle on my mind.  But when the drive shut off all the effects ceased.

When we uncovered the viewing window there was the strange heart-shaped vista of Tombaugh Regio visible on the surface of Pluto!  An unforgettable sight.  I sat there and stared for half an hour before I could believe it was true.  We had a star drive.  I congratulated Bertram and realized he hadn’t heard me.  He was doing some calibration measurements for the journey home and was singing lowly what sounded like the “Ride of the Valkyrie.”  When I floated closer to where he was sitting, I could make out the words, “Death to the Wabbit, Death to the Wabbit, Death to the Wabbit.”  He really was a strange man.  But he was also the greatest genius of all time.”

Tempus Fugit – Part 1

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He was the richest man in the world by quite a lot but he looked like he had seen a ghost.  I had interviewed him several times and had always gotten along better with him than the rest of the journalists around.  Maybe because I had treated him the same whether he was schmoozing the Democrats or the Republicans.  And that was because I found him interesting.  And that was because he actually did stuff that was interesting.  He made personal helicopters and robot servants and had invented a cure for baldness.  He was a Thomas Alva Edison for the 21st century and he was always surrounded by a bevvy of super models.  What wasn’t to like?

But when I showed up at his office for our appointment the man looked stricken.  His face was completely colorless and his eyes were blank.  I had been let into his office and he was sitting at his desk but he was looking past me at the wall behind me.  After an uncomfortable minute I said, “Devon, should I come back another time?”

His eyes slowly shifted to my face and he shook his head, “No, you’re here.  Let’s talk.  What do you want to talk about?”  I said, “Well, I guess I’d like to know what happened to you?  Was there a tragedy in your family or with your friends?”

He thought about that for a bit and said, “Yes, in a way there was.  A very sad story.  But I’ll have to tell you the whole thing for it to make sense.  Why don’t you sit down.”  He opened up a drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up and said, “For the last ten years one of my government contracts has been a research project into a faster than light (FTL) space drive.  For five years we looked at all kinds of reasonable and crazy ideas and we found exactly nothing that was even remotely possible.  I hired every physicist that graduated from MIT or Cal-Tech and every single one of them came up with nothing.

But eventually I heard about a brilliant theoretician who was wasn’t working on space travel but instead had been investigating the fundamental basis of time.  He was attempting to find the tachyon, the basic particle underlying the phenomenon we call time.”

I said, “But Devon what would this research into time have to do with faster than light travel?”  His face showed a glimmer of life for the first time, “Because in the general theory of relativity it is assumed that time is just another dimension along with the three spatial dimensions.  If you can control time, you can control the speed at which the other dimensions are traversed.”

I nodded my head with a somewhat confused look on my face and he continued, “This time researcher was a very strange man.  He was in a sense, self-taught.  He had attended a state college as an undergraduate and done exceptional work in physics but he didn’t have the money to continue on as a graduate student so he dropped out and somehow found himself at work in my company as a laboratory technician.  I discovered that one of my labs was using an inordinate amount of electrical power and I traced it back to this fellow.  He was running his own experiments off-hours.  When I told his boss to fire him, he confessed that they’d be lost without him.  He had an astounding collection of skills with the advanced electronic and high energy equipment that was needed for this faster than light research so replacing him would take months and require hiring five or six separate technicians.  I relented but ordered that the pirate report to my office for “orientation.”  I wanted to meet this strange man.

And strange he was.  He was about thirty years old.  He was about six feet tall, brown curly hair and very thick glasses.  He had an intense expression as if he wanted to ask a question but didn’t know how to say it.  This sort of intrigued me so I tried to put him at his ease so that I could delve into his peculiar circumstances.  It turned out he was incredibly well versed in almost every aspect of general relativity and particle physics.  He had a theory about the speed of light and how it related to the “viscosity of time.”  He said that photons were laminar flow phenomena and what he was investigating was turbulent temporal flow.  I at first assumed he was completely crazy.  I later discovered I was wrong.”

Real and Compelling

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For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been smugly telling myself that because of the recent cold weather I wouldn’t have to cut the grass until June or July or something.  But recent walks through the fields revealed the absurdity of this notion.  There were a couple-a-three spots that I neglected to cut at the end of last growing season and those areas were horrendous.  And the rest of it was overgrown to a greater or lesser extent depending on whether those areas get more or less light.

So, when I heard that Saturday would be sunny in the morning and rainy in the afternoon, I resolved Friday night to get up early and cut it in the morning.  Well, of course I forgot all about that because as a special treat, Camera Girl was making pancakes and that along with a good cup of coffee is a holiday to me.  After all, pancakes and syrup are just plain carbohydrates with no redeeming quality other than human joy.  But at a quarter to eleven I realized that I’d forgotten the grass and ran outside and started doing the perimeter with the push mower.  And it was eighty degrees and I was sweating like a pig and my safety goggles (for mayfly prevention) were fogging up and I had to keep stopping to clear them with my handkerchief.  And then I did all the crummy areas that wouldn’t get done right by the sit-down mower and by then it was noon.  So, I had my lunch and then ran out and started around the yard trying to finish it before the rain came.  And I did, but just barely.  Then I took a shower and put on a movie I like watching whenever it’s on TCM; “A Man for All Seasons.”

And this movie always has the same effect on me.  It makes me serenely happy.  Not because the movie has a happy ending.  Because at the end Sir Thomas More is convicted of a crime based on perjured testimony by a former friend and in the final scene he has his head cut off.  And not because the story is exciting or the events change the course of history.  It’s not.  It’s a very small story.

It’s only because the acting and the dialog of the lead actor and several of the other cast members is remarkable.  The conversations between the lead actor (Paul Scofield) with his family, friends and even bitter enemies is altogether compelling.  The character displays a combination of intelligence, compassion, honesty, moral clarity and courage that I find inspirational.  Here is a man who is trapped between an egocentric and possibly unhinged absolute monarch and the toadies and sharks that act as his enablers, but remains faithful to his religious convictions.  As long as lawful means are employed, More is able to hold off a charge of treason.  But his most malevolent enemy (Thomas Cromwell, played ably by Leo McKern) finally employs perjury and this seals More’s fate.

But as interesting as the final duel at the trial is, the real payoff is More’s final meeting with his wife in the prison.  Seeing these two opposites, one a highly intellectual scholar and the other a woman who could not even read, is wonderfully moving.  As she scolds him for his failure to yield and he attempts to placate her we see the enormous affection and love between them and understand just how much he is sacrificing for his beliefs.

And as I was watching this familiar movie it occurred to me that here was a story that had none of the attributes that supposedly make a good piece of art.  It was backward-looking rather than forward.  It was basically a grievance story.  It lacked action, pacing or any of the other characteristics of a book or movie that makes them promising prospects.

What it did possess was human interest.  It showcased the noble characteristics of a man and allowed him to make a stand against the world.  So, in a sense, a book does not have to have the perfect plot and pacing.  What it needs are human beings who can make us believe they are real and make us care what happens to them.

And that way of writing a story seems clearer to me than the other ways of framing the process.  I think I’ll apply that same test to my own writing.  Seems about right.

Vitality and Right-Wing Literature

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I was listening to a podcast by NY Times token “conservative” Russ Douthat talking to conservative publisher Jonathan Keeperman.

Keeperman is a publisher for a press called Passage Publishing.  He has a lot of avant-garde friends like Curtis Yarvin and possibly some of the Silicon Valley folks like Peter Thiel.  He and Douthat talked (a lot) about how the Right is becoming a sort of counter-culture in the way that the Left did back in the 1960s and beyond.

It’s kind of interesting to hear them discuss this shift in the culture in general but one of the more interesting things that Douthat said was that up until now the Right hasn’t produced any real literature on its side of the cultural divide.  Then Keeperman made some offbeat suggestions saying things like Cormac McCarthy’s

“No Country for Old Men” is from the right.  I think specifically he said that the Coen Brother’s movie based on it is from the Right.  Now never in any imagining have I ever equated the Coen Brothers or their movies with anything right-wing.  So, I find this very strange.  And honestly, all the people associated with Curtis Yarvin have always struck me as hipsters.  And I have always ranked hipsters as the most left-leaning of all the various weirdos to be found in New York City.  So, none of this makes a lot of sense.

But I guess if someone interested in literature who wasn’t a Leftist wanted to talk to the New York Times about literature, he would talk to Russ Douthat and try to find some middle ground where they could both make believe that Douthat wasn’t a total leftist.

I was interested to read that Keeperman has published illustrated editions of H P Lovecraft and Robert E Howard and that leads me to think that maybe he’s not a leftist.  The Left despises both of those old authors and would never publish their works under any circumstance.  So, I need to find out a lot more about Keeperman and his press.  It could be interesting.

But he said one interesting thing about the current state of right-wing literature.  He said that the problem with most of it is that it’s mostly just grievance based.  It exists to rail against and blame the leftist society we currently live in and therefore loses the chance to be “vital.”  Essentially, it’s existence is only as a protest against the status quo and therefore only has a negative presence.

And that interested me.  Because my book is in a real way, exactly that.  It is a war being fought against the status quo.  And so, I have to look at what I wrote and see if his criticism of this kind of story is a legitimate case against the value of the story I have written.  In order to do that I will have to look at what gives “vitality” and entertainment value to a story.

Of course, all things are relative and being objective, especially about something I myself wrote is fraught with peril.  Probably the only way to know for sure is to attempt to get it published and see what results.  But it has given me pause and I will think long and hard to see if I think there are any aspects of the story that lack “vitality.”  Whatever that is.  Boy when it rains it pours.

Curses!  Foiled Again!

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Ah, the whiplash sting of rejection.  My manuscript has been rejected by Ark Press (see bold text below).

 

Thank you for submitting to Ark Press.

The Ark editorial team has reviewed your work and given it careful consideration. We appreciate the opportunity to review your treatment and manuscript, however, The Sniper isn’t right for us.

We would, however, love to see another project from you. The writing was quite good and the story kept us engaged. Please do keep us in mind in the future

Best of luck with your writing,

 

If I were a drinking man I’d probably go on a two-week bender and drown my sorrow in 180 proof rum.  But the show must go on!  I will gather up the jagged shards of my dreams and limp off stage to nurse my wounded pride and super-glue my shattered dreams of literary glory back together somehow.

I told Camera Girl of this crushing defeat.  She told me to suck it up and stop whining.  Not the sympathetic shoulder I was hoping for.  In another age maybe I would have run off and joined the French Foreign Legion but I don’t think they allow enough free time for macrophotography and right-wing punditry in the Legion.  Vive la France!

Well, it wasn’t all bad.  They did say the writing was pretty good.  I mean, maybe they were just saying that to soften the blow but I’ll take a positive spin on that and continue to work on finishing the book and then either get it published or self-publish it on Amazon.

Honestly, I was very glad that they got back to me.  And I liked the polite and professional remarks they sent.  I think a lot of publishers don’t even bother to send rejection letters anymore.  So, an honest rejection is actually kind of comforting.  But still, there is a disappointment when you don’t win the prize.  But we know that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.  At least that’s what that crazy atheist said back a hundred and some odd years ago.  And he should know because he went crazy and died!

So, the show must go on and all sadness and chagrin must be pushed aside and efforts must be redoubled.  I intend to memorize a hundred new adjectives every week, take up MMA fighting and try my luck at swordfishing to increase my relatability with the reading audience.  After all Hemingway did some of that stuff and he was very relatable.  I wonder how good Camera Girl is at MMA fighting?  She’s pretty strong and agile so maybe she would be a good sparring partner.  But she is kinda mean and I can’t afford to be injured too badly before I get into the octagon with my real opponents.  Maybe she’ll agree to fighting me blindfolded and with one arm tied behind her back.  That seems reasonable.  But just to be sure, maybe I’ll also tie her ankles together.  Yeah, that would be good.  I could definitely take her then.  Alright, I love it when a plan comes together.

Make Way for the Expedition!

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Voigtlander 10mm e-mount trees in vertical

Camera Girl is an excellent wife.  She understands the nuances and challenges of being married to a profoundly disorganized man.  And what she has done is become my enabler.  She knows how lazy and easily distracted I can be so she goes out of her way to find things in the real world that can help me in my stated goals.

For instance, I’ve been complaining about needing a photography trip to get a bunch of new pictures.  So, she took it upon herself to research day trips to photogenic locations.  Car shows, museums, stuff like that.  Well, she asked me if I want to go to a botanical garden on Friday.  Apparently, the weather is going to cooperate and she was able to get discount passes from one of her library friends (she loves discounts passionately).

“Perfect!” I said.  And so tomorrow morning I will assemble my gear and she will act as my native bearer or sherpa guide.  With her carrying all the weight, my inner vision will be free to unlock the mystical dimensions of the secrets of nature.  Like a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci (only without all the gayness) I will frame the photographs that will capture truth, beauty and small insects everywhere I go.

Like Frank Buck and Ali “bringing ‘em back alive” or Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquering Everest, we shall conquer new frontiers of arboreal greatness together.  I with my Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens and A7IV camera and Camera Girl with her 83-pound backpack with forehead strap to take some of the weight off of her shoulders.  To some this may sound excessive.  On the contrary, I’m leaving behind the laptop, larger tripod and the flash gear.  Everything I packed is critical; the portable generator, my yoga mat and the collapsible hammock for my 1:30 pm siesta.  After all we’re not barbarians, are we?  And she knows that the roll of a good producer is to, “keep the talent happy.”  After all, without my perfect composure and comfort the whole thing will be for naught.  Remember, art is the hardest thing in the world.  We must be perfectly in tune with the astral plane or it will collapse like a deck of cards or some other analogy.

As the kids would say, “I’m stoked.”  And I predict the most amazing results from this expedition.  I do intend to bring along some other lenses.  The 10mm Voigtlander should be useful for capturing some of the vertical shots of the trees and I’m considering bringing the Sony 200-600mm zoom for any shots of birds up in the higher branches.  And I guess I’ll bring the Sony 35mm f\1.4 for some landscape shots.  I’m not sure if I’ll bring the new 135mm f\1.8.  It’s kind of an in between lens.    Not really long enough for wildlife but too tight for landscape.  But it has great bokeh for backgrounds so I probably will bring it.  Ah, decisions, decisions.

So, I’ll be away for a chunk of the day.  The site will be quiet but I’ll be home in time to catch up with everything.  “Ali!  Where is my elephant gun you lazy heathen!”

Even Barabbas Couldn’t Dampen This Day

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Such a good day.  Camera Girl cooked up a storm.  Beef and pork roasts, vegetables, mashed potatoes, biscuits, gravy, stuffed mushrooms and more.  And then the desserts. At my insistence there were five different flavors of ice cream.  That’s because I know the kids crave it (well me too).  But she also made eclairs, tiramisu, ricotta cheesecake, chocolate cake (for the kids) and pineapple upside down cake.  I never even got to the pineapple cake.  I was too stuffed.  And the coffee was hot, strong and good.

The kids were busy with all kinds of silly games and gadgets.  But they were good.  When they started to get bored, I put on the original “King Kong.”  The family Godzilla aficionado was unimpressed with King Kong’s susceptibility to fifty caliber machine gun bullets.  He informed me that a real monster is unkillable with anything up to and including a thermonuclear warhead.  What could I say?  I pointed out that he did manage to kill a T Rex and also a Manhattan elevated subway train.  But apparently Godzilla is so incomparably superior to actual dinosaurs that conquering them is as nothing in the context of what Godzilla can do.  I was made aware that if Godzilla needed to, he has a mode called “thermonuclear” whereby he can emit the equivalent of a fifty-megaton hydrogen bomb against his surroundings.  This I was informed would utterly consume everything within a forty-mile radius around him.  I confessed defeat and asked if we could still watch the end of the movie where Carl Denham tells the cop that “It was beauty killed the beast.”  He rolled his eyes at the screen and shook his head.  Well, anyway, I still think Fay Wray is pretty good looking.  I don’t blame old Kong for carrying her off twice.

After they went home, I watched Barabbas.  That’s an old Dino DeLaurentis swords and sandals epic from the 1960s with Anthony Quinn as the title character who in the Bible is released instead of Jesus for the Passover clemency.  I’ll say with no hesitation that this is one of the worst biblical epics hands down.  Quinn is playing the same part he plays in Zorba the Greek and many other Mediterranean dramas.  His struggles in a Jerusalem prison, a Sicilian sulfur mine and the Roman Coliseum all seem self-inflicted and by the end of the movie I had to wonder if even St Peter wasn’t ready to kick his butt up and down the Roman jail.  Because Barrabas mistook Nero’s blaming the Christians for the burning of Rome with a real Christian plan to “burn the old world” Barabbas gets caught torching an oil warehouse and claims he’s doing it because he’s a Christian.  So, because of this St Peter and the rest of the real Christians are crucified by Nero.  What a genius!

As Barabbas is hanging on a cross at the end of the movie making what seem to be fairly meaningless comments, it seemed to me that the whole movie was absolutely pointless from every perspective; artistically, religiously, even logically.  As spectacle it was borderline ridiculous.  Quinn has a showdown in the Coliseum with Jack Palance in a chariot and himself on foot.  I’ve never seen a less convincing, more boring fight sequence.  At the end of the battle even the actor playing Nero looked like he wanted to be somewhere else but just couldn’t escape.

I also watched an old film noir called “Steel Trap.”  That was much more satisfactory.  I’ll review it soon.  Well, this will have to do for today.  A good day and a busy day.

Easter Sunday 2025

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Well, it’s here.  If there is any more primal marker for spring than Easter, I don’t know what it could be.  The resurrection of God is about as on the nose as you can get.  This is our chance to embrace life.  Even old codgers like me, maybe especially old codgers like me get to see up close and personal the immortality of the human soul.  We see our children and our grandchildren do all the same things we did forty and fifty and sixty years ago.

We can see the little ones hunt easter eggs and gorge themselves on chocolate and complain about any of the specialty foods they hate and get bored sitting too long at the table and chafe at any fancy clothes their mothers made them wear and want to go outside and play and complain about the may flies and ask when the desserts are served and fight and fight and fight with each other.

As it was in the beginning, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.  But of course, it’s not us without end.  For me I can see that my part in the pageant is drawing to the close.  A decade or two should finish me off and leave my kids to ponder on the mysteries of the spring rebirth cycle without the incredible wisdom that they’ve come to expect!  Boy what a relief that’ll be for them.

And that’s alright.  I actually get a kind of kick out of thinking that after I’m gone, I might be the subject of some stories that play upon some of my idiosyncrasies.  In fact, there already are several stories among my children about the crazy things I’ve done that they remember.

Among my siblings, stories about my father’s expressions, habits and failings are our most cherished memories.  And to be totally fair he could take a joke at his own expense.  If stories of that sort about me became fixed in the family lore I would feel greatly honored.  It’s much better to be gently mocked by your descendants than loathed.  I’ve seen both cases and to have your foibles as the source of laughter is very strongly to be preferred.  As I’ve said before, being remembered and talked about after you’re gone is a form of immortality.  And who doesn’t want to be immortal, I ask you?

And along with all the traditions something new is being added.  Camera Girl tried her hand at a new dessert; tiramisu.  It’s very nice and I commend her ambition and enthusiasm to extend her range.  But what I want is the Italian cheesecake and a large portion of vanilla ice cream.  I’m on a perpetual diet so I look forward to these holidays as an excuse to indulge my sweet tooth with something worthwhile.  And ricotta cheesecake, vanilla ice cream and some nice strong coffee is exactly that.

So, for everyone out there who will be celebrating Easter or even if you just used to enjoy celebrating it in the old days I say, “Christ is risen!”