Category: photog’s Corner

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

22AUG2023 – Scenes from a Family Gathering

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family , ,
Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

Driving from a rural area toward a megalopolis is almost always a frustrating experience.  The closer you get to the heart of darkness, the worse the traffic becomes and the more likely it is that you will accidentally cross the event horizon and be sucked in, never to break free of the bumper-to-bumper traffic of the black hole collapse.  Or so it seems to me.

By comparison driving in the reverse direction, away from the beast, feels like a continuously increasing sense of relief as the road and the entrances become less and less congested and the craziest of the homicidal drivers are left behind or at least no longer have the traffic density needed to ensure maximum mayhem.

Now all of that was true yesterday as I arrived and departed from the party that I travelled to.  But despite the tension of defying the human density gradient around the suburbs of Gotham City I was sorry that the party couldn’t have been extended indefinitely.

Everything about the gathering was congenial.  It was almost the entire family.  And that’s no mean feat.  We are many and we are scattered much more than in the past.  And Sunday is a tough day for travelling.  Saturday being the optimal day to allow for recovery before work resumes.

And everyone there was splendidly sociable.  The talk was the usual mixture of family events, politics, current events and reminiscing about crazier things and planning for crazier things.  And I learned things that I had never known about people I know very well.  And I saw what the youngest generation is starting to look like when they socialize.  And despite all the dire warnings and predictions they seemed quite healthy and normal.

Of course, food is always a highly important component of one of these shindigs and the hostess was extremely wise in her choices and provisioning.  There were several completely different themes with respect to the menu and there was never any danger of running out of the favorites which is always comforting.  I will admit that I no longer make the impact on the buffet table that I used to.  And that is necessary.  I wouldn’t have survived my former exploits as a trencherman.  But I still grazed high and low and tried a bit of everything.  Wonderful.

But the highlight is when the old bulls stagger into a corner, collapse into a circle of chairs and start pontificating about what’s wrong with the world and what we should do about it.  And eventually we come to agreement that things are going to go to hell no matter what we say or do and then we come to agreement that at least the world has us in it to make it a world worth living in.  Now this was what I remember when the old bulls were my father’s and my grandfather’s generations laying down the law and telling us what was wrong with my generation.  And now, heaven help me, I’m at my grandfather’s age and making my last speeches before shuffling off the stage permanently.  What a strange thing time is.

And just in time the cake and coffee are served and we lapse into a warm glow of caffeine and pastry ingredients.  And all too soon it’s time to go.  We need to leave before it’s too late to make the drive back.  But of course, there is at least a half hour of goodbyes, to each and every one.  Back slapping and hugs and hand shakes for one and all and then last-minute details remembered and plans for the next gathering.  And then we’re on the road and headed home.  But the glow from the party is still with us.  We talk about what we’ve heard and seen.  We talk about those who couldn’t make it and those who are gone.  But it’s all a happy feeling.  A good feeling.

The country and the world have gone straight to hell.  There’s no denying it.  But good things still exist.  And the best of those things is family, is the humanness of family.  The ties that bind and the hope for a future and the precious, priceless treasure of the young in our midst.

The world is not all ruin and depravity.  There is hope.  And I can see it when we get together.

20AUG2023 – The Last Gasp of Summer 2023

photog Bigus Macus, Current Events, Guest Contributors, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner, TomD ,

Camera Girl and I journey today to the southernmost border of New England where the smoldering ashes of what was once Gotham City color the horizon with a somber palette.  But we will be celebrating family and life and all that stuff.  This week will be Camera Girl’s greatest challenge.  She will be besieged by teeming hordes of berserk descendants desperately trying to fend off thoughts of the impending school year.

It will take all her powers to occupy these desperate young’uns and divert their attention from the impending horror.  Of course it will really help if somehow we can avoid torrential rains for the week.  That will provide us with so many more options for activities than being stuck in the house with the boob tube and my feeble wits.

But once the week is complete, it really will be fall.  And it’s been a very strange summer.  So much rain and so little sun has destroyed the vegetable garden.  Other than some tomatoes and what looks to be a decent crop of eggplants it has been a disaster.  I think we’ve gotten one zucchini and so far no butternut squash.  And while we’ve gotten a few red razzberries from the plants I put in last year and the plants have increased and spread, I can hardly say they have been a success yet.

And as far as the blueberries, whereas I managed to get a few handfuls of berries last year, this year the birds perfected their technique of picking the fruit precisely before I myself judged them ripe enough to eat.  And it was a bumper crop.  I guess if I’m really serious about eating any of this fruit I’ll have to start using netting over the plants.  Who am I kidding?  I’m too lazy to do that.

And likewise, the rain put a serious dent into the flowers in the yard.  The butterfly bush died back to the ground because of the lack of snow cover during the coldest part of the winter.  It sprouted from the roots eventually but was a mere shadow of its size and bloomed very late.  And many other plants were late and stunted.  The only pleasant surprise was the Inula helenium (elecampane)  that I put in last year.  The stalks were seven feet tall and there were plenty of bright yellow flowers.

Also there were very few butterflies this year.  Probably the sparse snow cover again.  Well, complaining won’t do any good so best to just move on.  I’ll just chalk it up to experience and hope that this year we get more snow.  Wait, more snow?  What am I saying?  Oh well.

So fall in Dunwich is a busy time for me.  We’ll be pretending to re-elect First Selectman Cthulhu which is always a painful process involving the loss of several bureaucrats in his entourage when he becomes aggravated and therefore hungry.  My part in the process is also, let us say, delicate.  I’m required by tradition and statute to second the motion for his unanimous re-election by acclaim.  If I hesitate by more than a split second after the original motion is exclaimed my fate will be sealed.  Therefore I have perfected the “echo method.”  As the motion is being spoken I echo the words coming out of his mouth almost simultaneously.  It sort of sounds like that scene in the movie “Pride of the Yankees” where Gary Cooper is saying, “But today … today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”  And so I can keep each word going just that little time extra needed to detect the last word and begin my sentence without any noticeable pause.  Actually quite ingenious.  It’s quite remarkable what fear can do for your IQ.

Well, it’s time to get going.  The sun is shining and nothing has burned down or exploded in the news yet so I can wish everyone a nice day with at least the hope that it’s possible.  Adios amigos.

 

Updates

Bigus Macus

It was down in the mid-sixties with low humidity this morning in Hampton Roads. It will be hotter tomorrow, but I’m ready for Autumn to start. I’m getting the fireplace cleaned and inspected this week and I need to cover the firewood for the start of the season.

TomD

Meanwhile, down here in the Florida Panhandle, fall hasn’t yet appeared on the distant horizon as we’re looking at a white hot week: in the 100’s with saturating humidity. It has been like this for a month, there is a big and stable high pressure system camped out in the middle of the country.

What we need is a tropical storm to come through and bust this weather stasis up. A similar pattern seems common in late summer and will just stay until pushed out by a big system.

Unlike California, tropical storms are common enough down here as to not overly upset us.

A few years ago, I decided to see what it would be like to ride my road bike (bicycle) in a tropical storm (wind only at that time). At one place where there’s about a 100’+ 5% grade hill to climb, the wind was pushing me up the hill at over 20 mph.

bianchi.jpg
bianchi.jpg

If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another

photog Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Uncategorized ,

Here in Dunwich, there are only two seasons; Winter and July.  So now in the first few days of winter there is a nostalgic feeling for the summer that was.  And we exchange stories about how one day it stopped raining for several hours and light appeared in the sky.  And we named that light, “the sun” and we danced around pointing at it and declaring it a miracle.  It’s good to celebrate the good times in our lives.

Today Camera Girl was purging the kitchen cabinets of old food stuffs.  And it made me sad.  There was a whole package of mounds bars that I really like but I forgot to eat any of them because I was on a diet.  And now just because of some fake expiration date she’s gonna chuck them.  Most unfair.

Back last year before Christmas I told her I wanted some traditional holiday treats that I remembered from my childhood.  I said I wanted chestnuts roasted on an open fire (or in the oven).  And dried figs.  This really annoyed her because she said this was “a stupid idea.”  Now she says that a lot about my ideas so I don’t pay attention when she says it.  After I whined on about having these things for a while, she rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders and added them to her Christmas food list.

On Christmas Eve she handed me a pan of chestnuts and told me to cut Xs in them with a very sharp but poorly designed knife she kept for just such an occasion.  And after cutting my thumb several times and her preparing and cooking these delicacies, every last one of them turned out to be rotten.  And when I tried one of the figs, I suddenly remembered why they were always left over after Christmas.  It’s literally like chewing on vulcanized rubber.

So, today, seven months later these same figs are going to be donated to the flock of turkeys and the murder of crows that Camera Girl attracts to her bird feeding area.  Now, I’m no fan of these avian moochers that live off of my hard-earned dollars but even I feel pangs of guilt about what might happen if one of these neo-dinosaurs manages to swallow any of these figs.  Besides the obvious risk of bowel obstruction and subsequent agonizing death, there is the very real risk of radical mutation.

Anyone who has watched as many radioactive mutation movies as I have knows what happens when you combine backyard wildlife with atomic energy.  And nobody is going to tell me that those figs aren’t some kind of atomic mutation gone terribly wrong.  They’re probably a product of Kazakhstan and were the result of fallout being used as insecticide.

Well anyway, I tried to warn her.  And when she ignored me, I went outside and spoke directly to the crows.  I warned them.  More than once.  Of course, I didn’t bother with the turkeys.  They’re idiots.  But the crows are intelligent.  I only hope they believed me.  Otherwise within a week; or at most two, there will be sixty-foot-tall crows lurching around those bird feeders.  And two-hundred-foot-tall turkeys too.  And let’s be honest.  I’ve always been a little unfriendly toward these flying rats.  With the odd pebble chucked now and then and the unkind epithet thrown from time to time I’m not exactly on their nice list if you catch my drift.

Now Camera Girl has nothing to fear.  She’s a regular St. Francis of Assisi to the local wildlife and they practically work for her.  But me, not so much.  I’ve been considering my options.  I think my best bet is to make some kind of crow suit.  Since they’ll be so big, I can hope that maybe they won’t be able to tell that it’s fake.  I think I can imitate the caws and squawks that they make.  The only thing is they might not believe that a crow can drive a car.  Or cut the lawn.  And they may think it’s suspicious that I never fly.  But maybe if I make believe that one of my “wings” is broken maybe that will work.  The other problem is they may think I’m a hatchling and carry me back to their gigantic nest.  Would I be forced to subsist on road kill that they provide me?

So, you can see I live in fear.  My only other option is to go out to the bird feeder and eat one of the figs myself and become the Amazing Colossal photographer.  It would be a horrible existence.  I’d have to turn an old circus tent into a loin cloth and it’s a cinch I’d always be banging my head on bridge overpasses.  But I guess it’d be better than to end up eaten by a giant turkey.  So that’s my plan.

Of course, I could just do nothing and hope that none of that stuff will happen.

Hmmm.

You know what, never mind.

Seven

photog Current Events, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family , ,

Six hours of Godzilla movies, some lime ices, two hours of swimming, a couple of pounds of spaghetti and meatballs, an apple pie and a quart of vanilla ice cream.  Apparently, that equals the optimal day when you’re a seven-year-old boy.  At least in one case.  Now I’m not seven.  And when I was seven, I’m guessing I would have preferred six hours of Universal Classic Monster Movies and maybe I’d have gone with blueberry pie in that line up.  But I definitely remember most of the vibe in that set of choices.

And so, I set up the itinerary exactly as specified by my guest.  And it was swell.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I would have preferred six fewer hours of Godzilla and maybe a ribeye steak would have been higher up on my list than spaghetti today for instance but bonding with the grandkids is an item very close to the top item on my list of priorities.  And because when you have several grandsons and they all differ in their preferences about everything including activities, foods, desserts and movies it sort of behooves you to divide and conquer.  So, I’ve instituted a separate day for each of them to spend the day with me and Camera Girl.  And on that day, they get to pick the activities, entertainment, food and desserts.  And they even get to decide when it’s over.

And it works.  Without his brothers or parents there, each kid gets to call the shots and be the king.  No one tells him to eat his vegetables or finish everything on his plate.  No one says six hours of bad movies is too much or says to get out of the pool because we have to pick somebody up from something or other.  And he even gets the chance to discuss with a supposed grown man whether Godzilla would beat King Kong or T. Rex or Indominus Rex or the Mosasaurus and why and under what circumstance.  And how Godzilla can have radioactive fire but somehow it doesn’t kill King Kong.  And he has to do it with a straight face.

And he can even eat his dinner while watching tv on the couch and not have to do any chores all day and go home as late as he wants.

But it’s also a good deal for me.  I can sort of remember caring about, “Who would win?”.  Sure, maybe it wasn’t Godzilla.  Maybe it was a Roman legion versus Alexander’s Macedonian phalanx.  Or Superman versus Thor.  Or whatever ridiculous thing I imagined that day.  But the point is I sort of recall the feeling.  Some very old neurons fire off a few synapses that I haven’t used in sixty years or so and it’s fascinating.  I almost remember being that age.  I almost remember the feelings.  And it’s pretty great.

I’m working this program youngest to oldest.  So, as we move up the line things should get more and more familiar.  Or will they?  Is nineteen any closer to who I am than seven?  I don’t know.  Each page in the book of life is an island.  A snapshot.  All of them are long ago.  But I expect to enjoy each chance to delve into their present and my past at the same time.

And ultimately, I’m trying to build a little immortality.  I still remember the times my grandfather came to visit me as I was growing up.  He understood that public relations with your descendants was terribly important.  So, he did it right.  He brought us out for the biggest, greasiest triple cheeseburgers at Wesson’s and he always had chewing gum when he came over and he always took us for a drive to the most beat up neighborhoods in NYC where he knew the most bizarre characters like a jeweler that he worked for as an armed guard.  And he always had stories about his times as a cop or when he was the mayor’s bodyguard or a private detective.  Or when he shot it out with armed robbers from the running board of a commandeered taxi.

And because he spent the time with us, in a sense, he’s still alive even forty some-odd years after his death.  And if I tell his stories to my grandkids then maybe he lives another hundred years.  So that’s my game.  I’m working on my immortality.  And I’m paying forward things that were given to me long ago.  What’s more valuable than that?

We Interrupt This Rant.  Moving Forward, Getting on With It, Recalibrating

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner , , ,

We all have to get used to the new reality.  It’s a different world we now live in and some things are no longer news and other things are still useful.  And priorities change.  In 2015 and 2016 Donald Trump opened up a new way of looking at the world and that change filled up the internet and mesmerized the Right for eight years.  Well, now that outlook has spread to everybody it can reach.  And that news isn’t news anymore.  And the Left has asserted itself and plugged up the holes in its walls and stopped the peasants from crashing the castle gates.  The party’s over.  It’s time to adjust.

For me the adjustment is to dividing up my time differently.  A daily blog post can’t be only about the war between the Left and the Right.  That will be too repetitive.  Even taking events from the news and reacting or critiquing them cannot be a daily occurrence.  There’s just too much overlap from story to story.  Too much, Joe Biden, too much Deep State, too much woke capitalism, too much fake news.  Same old, same old.

Now I’m not going to abandon these things.  I’m just going to cut back on the frequency and pick my opportunities judiciously.  I’ll look for an occasion when the example has some special emphasis.  As an example, the recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action would be an occurrence that merits a discussion.  It’s more than the usual background noise, it’s a significant story.  But it’s exceptional and it will be treated as an exception.

So then, what will I fill up my time with?  Well, two buckets.

One will be public interest.  And that can be anything that might interest people who read this site.  For instance, I like science fiction and fantasy.  Reviewing movies and books is something I like to do.  And not just sf&f.  I like all kinds of books and movies and I like to share things I think are good.  And I’ll share businesses that I find that are run by folks on our side of the culture war.  I’m hoping that will become a bigger part of the world we live in.  Hopefully one day there’ll be an ad on this site for a every product that I believe in and can recommend.  Who knows?  Maybe it’ll be for a right-wing beer company that Dylan Mulvaney won’t ever be asked to “partner with.”

And the other bucket is writing my book.  Currently I’ve got slightly more than 49,000 words finished.  But last year I thought I’d be completely finished by this July.  Obviously, I need to get religion.  And by that, I mean make fiction writing the first priority of my available time.  Now for the last few weeks I’ve been pulled in multiple directions and I can forgive myself for getting behind on everything; posts, pictures, quotes and fiction writing.

But I have to start somewhere and so I’ve been prioritizing the fiction writing this week.  And I’ll continue with that plan going forward.  So, while I’m adjusting there may be some dry spells on the site.  Nothing drastic just some less busy periods.  But once I get the hang of this new routine, I expect things will return to about the same output in terms of posts and other content.  The only difference will be that repetitive rants should be way, way down.

But that won’t change the fact that Joe Biden sucks.

And now having said that I return you to end of western civilization already in progress.  Have a nice day.

Caffeine is a Powerful Drug

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner ,

I love coffee.  I love the taste of it, the aroma, the way it enhances the enjoyment of various foods.  A cup of coffee with ham and eggs and a pumpernickel bagel is splendid.  A pastrami or corned beef or roast beef sandwich with coffee is incredible.  And what could be better than coffee with cake, pastry or pie ala mode?  Nothing!

It is a wonderful part of life.  At the same time coffee is very hard on my digestive system.  It gnaws at my guts.  It is not benign.

So, what’s a fellow to do?

For years I searched for the magic bullet.  Milder blends, better blends cold brewed.  Milk, cream, fat free cream, oat milk and on and on and on.

And several times I’ve given it up.  And that is an amazing thing.  I remember going cold turkey in my thirties and experiencing symptoms that were more reminiscent of heroin withdrawal.  I had the shakes and broke into a cold sweat and had blinding headaches.  Truly absurd problems getting rid of something as innocuous as the morning cup of joe.

And equally interestingly, even after getting past the physical symptoms, I eventually drifted back into the habit.  After all, I love the stuff.

A couple of months ago I decided to do something I considered smart.  I switched from coffee to tea.  And I was able to do it relatively painlessly.  The caffeine in tea apparently was sufficient to offset at least partly the craving my body has for coffee.  Maybe there were some mild feelings of discomfort for a day or two but really nothing to think about.  So, there you go.  Mission accomplished.

But I didn’t reckon with one thing.  Tea is the most boring drink in the world.  There’s no there, there.  So, I tried to jazz it up.  I tried Thai tea and chai tea.  I added sugar and honey and lemon.  Nothing.  Insipid.

 

In desperation, I asked Camera girl to start me on cocoa.  We tried 100% cocoa.  Not so good.  Then we tried some versions with varying amounts of sugar.  Too sweet.  Finally, we hit upon a low concentration that isn’t too sweet but still has enough taste to qualify as a beverage.  And so, we thought we had arrived at a workable solution.  But something happened.

Camera Girl and I were out for the day for an out of state family party.  I had breakfast with my now customary thin cup of chocolate.  No problem.  When we arrived, it was early afternoon and I wasn’t starving.  So, I sat down and was talking to some people.

And it was the strangest thing.  I couldn’t think.  I was stumbling over words and thoughts like Joe Biden without a teleprompter.  It was the damnedest thing.  And then I realized, I was completely out of caffeine.  Now granted I was also low on food at that point.  So maybe I needed blood sugar or something.  But I was so groggy that I am convinced that I now need a certain specific amount of caffeine in my body just to keep my IQ in triple digits.

I asked my host if he had any coffee or tea around.  All he had at that moment was Red Bull.  Well, it was like some miracle drug.  Within moments I was back to normal.  Later on, I had a large cup of coffee at dessert with my large piece of cake.  Of course, I couldn’t get to sleep until 3 a.m. but what can you do.

So now I’m once again in a quandary.  Do I endure the “enstupiding” whenever I’m low on caffeine or do I cave into the lure of coffee?  I stand on the edge of the cliff.  May I find wisdom.

Father’s Day 2023

photog Current Events, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family , ,

Ah, Father’s Day, that most inexplicable holiday in the calendar.  Children, wives and the fathers themselves walk around that day with confused expressions on their faces.  What are they all supposed to be doing, or feeling or even pretending to be feeling?

Everyone understands Mother’s Day.  The bond between mothers and their children is self-explanatory.  Even the act of becoming a mother to a child is one of self-sacrifice and love.  Even husbands are unable to be completely selfish on Mother’s Day.  We’re forced to acknowledge that our role in the circle of life is the easier side.  And we do.  Every man in a good marriage honors his wife on Mother’s Day and tries to show some class on that day.  And so, he encourages his children to gather around his wife and celebrate the nurturing nature of mothers.

But Father’s Day?  I mean, we try to be good fathers.  We spend time with our kids and teach them things and show affection.  But do we want to be applauded and be fussed over about our role in the family?

Honestly?  No.

What we’d prefer is to get up late, have a nice big breakfast, watch some really bad movie or go fishing or read a book then have a steak dinner and then watch another bad movie and go to bed.  Of course, this leaves room for variation.  Maybe instead of fishing you’d rather work on restoring an old car or head to the gun range or have a catch with your grandson or something.  And I even know some fathers who aren’t happy unless they’re doing home repair projects on their day off.  There’s a natural range.

One of my favorite fatherhood memories was taking my son to the north shore of Lake Champlain to fish for pike and bass.  It was a long trip and we didn’t know any of the local details for fishing so we tried a row boat which turned out to be a dicey thing on a lake with a particularly strong current.  But we caught some fish and ate some bad food and spent a memorable weekend together as father and son.

I guess it’s natural for us to think of our own fathers and try to figure out how we stack up.  My own father had six sons and he spent most of his time with us trying to stop us from hitting each other quite so much.  He was one of the most aggravated individuals I can remember.  He was just outnumbered was his problem.  But deep down I think he liked us most of the time.  And since I feel that about him, I would conclude that he was a successful father.

So really none of us get to decide if we were successful at fatherhood.  It’s the kids who get the last word (although the wives probably would like to add a footnote or two as usual).  So, if after they’re grown, they’re still talking to you and if from time to time they still talk about any of the things you did together, then a case can be made for you as a good father.  Anyway, that’s my take.

06JUN2023 – Coffee Walk Reunion

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

From the farthest reaches of the known universe, a hardy crew of hard-bitten desperados descended upon a tavern to relive old glories and trade lies about their exploits.  Well anyway I had to travel for an hour or so.  So, I sojourned out beyond Dunwich to consult, confer and otherwise hobnob with my fellow wizards.  Old times were remembered.  Fallen comrades and enemies were recalled and mockery for the masters of the universe that we had suffered under flowed freely.  So many funny stories.

And we compared notes on the worst of the changes that had slowly turned our former corporate home from a great place to work to a bureaucratic hellhole.  And all agreed that the problem could be described with three letters … DEI.  The most recent outrages were some of the worst.  DEI has become embedded in the goals of every manager.  But how can you advance DEI when there’s no budget to hire new people.  Surprise, surprise.  You have to eliminate white men.  And the way to do that in the zero-sum game of corporate competition is to give them bad reviews.  No matter how valuable they may be or how carefully they work to accomplish their goals it is absolutely critical to advance minorities and women.  So, the white men must be demoted.  And if you’re a normal man and that’s what you’re told to do it’s going to stick in your craw.  Eventually if you can, you walk away.

And that’s not an easy thing.  These jobs pay very, very well.  The perks include stock options, five figure bonuses and retirement plans that any peon would give his right arm to have.  But at a certain point stomaching the things you have to say and do can become too much.

Opinions were espoused about the 2024 race.  I was sort of a downer with my, “We can’t vote ourselves out of this” schtick.  But I was happy to listen to everybody’s opinion on the Trump versus DeSantis question.  And everyone laughed at Biden’s last few fails like tripping over the sandbag and wandering off stage whenever his handlers lost track of him.  And gallons of beer (no Transheuser Busch ordered at that table) were imbibed and mass quantities of meat were wolfed down.

So, we commiserated and compared notes on families and summer plans and vowed to drag the wives into a larger gathering involving grilled meat of a ribeye variety that we have agreed is optimal.  Whether all can attend this upcoming event is of course problematic.  Wives are troublesome, fretful creatures who rarely acquiesce in the expansive plans that men imagine.  Their problem is that they lack the big broad flexible outlook on life.  They want to nail down time and place and attendees and food budgets and other troublesome details that just complicate their husbands’ days.  Why can’t a woman be more like a man?  Wait, scratch that.  Maybe I’m really glad that they’re completely different from men.  Look at all the trouble Matt Walsh has had just getting “experts” to define “WhatIsAWoman?”  Let them be as different as they want as long as they stay just as they are.

So, a very good day.  Reconnecting with the guys is critical.  Camaraderie is of the essence of a normal male life.  We have to spend so much time providing for our families and interacting with the wife and kids that it’s essential now and then to escape from those twittering voices and flighty emotions and hang out with coarse, vulgar, boorish, insensitive, cruel, funny, inventive, enthusiastic and masculine peers.

Well, I’m home now.  The fun is over.  Back to chores and routine.  No more pastrami Reubens.  Just healthy food and diet.   Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

01JUN2023 – Unofficial Summer Begins

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner

In his ode to summer, “Dandelion Wine,” Ray Bradbury identifies June, July and August as summer.  And as opposed to the calendar and the astronomical basis for the definition of summer that it measures, every school boy of my generation knew it to be these same months.  And this year especially, the beginning of June is every bit as much summer as the more legitimate last week.  Today will be close to ninety degrees.  Nothing defines summer more than that Fahrenheit measure.  Ninety degrees Fahrenheit is summer.

And so, the laziness that is the glory of summer already holds me in thrall.  I have a laundry list of yard chores and yet I spend my time walking around the yard looking at flowers and bugs and listening to the birds quarrel over their nest sites and the fattest grubs.  Every once in a while, I’ll pull a weed but despite Camera Girl’s hectoring, I rarely carry the plucked plant to the mulch pile.  I usually just drop it where I found it.  Just too lazy to make the effort.  And that is the beauty of summer; giving in to the pleasure of lazy heat.  Every dog, every lizard knows the ecstasy of laying in the hot sun.  The heat bakes into your bones and the oven air scorches your lungs.  It’s remarkable.  And that is why the seashore is so perfect a summer setting.  It allows you to get that feeling over and over again.  You take the heat until it becomes unbearable, then a plunge into the cold water quenches the heat and you’re ready to do the whole thing over again.  The therapeutic effects of a week or two by the sea can sometimes offset a whole year of office drudgery and even a long New England winter’s worth of cold.

And while I’m at play in the fields of the Lord I can forget for a few moments all of the absurd nonsense that infects the present-day world around me.  I can forget the culture war and the collapse of western civilization and even the internet drudgery that I have embraced.  I don’t have to read what the pundits are saying and what the fake news is trumpeting.  I can forget about war drones following their GPS paths to destruction and watch their natural world analog as a dragonfly patrols the perimeter of the yard, as mechanical and precise as the machine but much more lyrical.

Later on, today I’ll get around to reading the awful news and the boring opinions of the pundits.  And I will have to be out and about on my list of chores.  But it was nice to be up and around early this morning and see the fields while it was still cool and moist.  All that moisture will be sucked up into the blast furnace of noon and I will take another walk to experience that too.  The grasshoppers and the bees will be about their chores and I’ll look for a good photo or two (or two hundred) and I’ll even knock an item or two from the chore list.  But summer’s begun and the living is easy.  Enjoy it if you can.

Capitol L Small A. Capitol F Small O Small N Small G.

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I have an inordinate fondness for W.C. Fields’ comedy.  His henpecked, misanthropic “heroes” are among my favorite comedic characters.  Here’s a part of a scene from his movie “It’s a Gift.”  I’ve always thought that the insurance salesman sounds an awful lot like the talk show host Johnny Carson.