Category: photog’s Corner

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

A Golden November Day

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Sun with no clouds, sixty-three degrees and a light breeze.  Well, you can’t stay in on a day like that.  Camera Girl and I took a walk in the woods today.  We haven’t since September.  It was quiet.  Then we saw why.  The streams that came off of the big lake had dried up.  The spillway from the lake was dry.  November hasn’t been completely without rain but the number of heavy rain days has drastically lowered from previous months.  So, it was quiet and that was fine.  Sun filtered more easily through the trees with only the conifers green.  We talked about the menu for Thanksgiving and we talked about leaves to be raked.  We noticed that none of the few people in the forest we met wore masks and I said that was a good sign.  She told me that very few people in the supermarket wore masks and most of those were elderly.  And I said that sounds good.  But before we knew it we were back at the car.  Just a short hour’s walk, up and down a few hills in the woods.  But it was a fitting tribute to God for gifting us a day this bright and warm, a week before Thanksgiving in New England.

 

AUTUMN (by Aleksandr Pushkin) (translated by Peter France)

…

A mournful time of year! Its sad enchantment

flatters my vision with a parting grace –

I love the sumptuous glow of fading nature,

the forests clad in crimson and in gold,

the shady coolness and the wind’s dull roaring,

the heavens all shrouded in a billowing mist

and the rare gleams of sun, the early hoarfrosts,

and distant grey-beard winter’s gloomy portents.

…

Aleksandr Pushkin (translated by Peter France)

Roll Call of Cthulhu – Dunwich Complainer – Special Election Edition

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

The final results of the November election here in Dunwich were posted today.

First Selectman –              Cthulhu – 800 votes

Selectman –                        Nyarlathotep – 800 votes

Selectman –                        Fred Peterson – 800 votes

Selectman –                        Yog-Sothoth – 800 votes

Selectman –                       Dagon – 800 votes

Treasurer –                         Azathoth – 800 votes

At the town meeting announcing the results, town resident Dave Farber raised a motion to have the election results challenged on the basis that only the incumbents received votes and all the tallies were exactly 800 votes whereas the voter rolls only included 417 registered voters.  Dave was promptly eaten by Cthulhu and the motion was not seconded.

Martha Featherstone put a question to the selectmen asking how a being of primordial chaos and bubbling space ooze could work a keyboard for the treasurer’s report spreadsheet.  Martha was eaten by Cthulhu and the only answer to the question was some muffled digestive tract rumblings from the First Selectman.  Needless to say, there were no further motions or questions from the audience.

The next item on the agenda was a report by Dagon on the Miskatonic River Reclamation Project.  It was a particularly long and repetitive power point slide deck that concentrated on the dredging of Sentinel Hill Pond to allow for stocking the pond with game fish.  Unfortunately the stock proposed were all relatives of Dagon and based on what I could see from the photos of their size any fisherman that went out on that pond in a small boat wouldn’t be coming back home.  But polite noises were made by all there because Cthulhu was starting to get a little agitated again.

The next item was a report by Fred Peterson on COVID vaccination mandates and how it would impact town government.  When Fred finished his report he mentioned in an off-hand way that all selectmen would have to be vaccinated by Winter Solstice.  All the other selectmen recoiled in fear at being exposed to this kind of health risk.  A quick vote was taken by the selectmen to vote down this requirement after which Cthulhu ate Fred Peterson.  A note was added to the minutes to reflect the need to call a special election to fill Fred’s vacant spot on the board.  Cthulhu asked for a moment of silence in honor of Fred who everybody agreed was a heck of a sweet guy and always a good sport about his minority status on the board as the only Methodist.

And that concluded the business at hand.  It was decided that less important items like the Christmas light displays and the somewhat backlogged missing persons report would be handled next week in a closed session before the Thanksgiving through New Year Recess.  The First Selectman thanked everyone present for their public spiritedness in showing up at a time when everyone was so busy with holiday shopping and fighting for their lives against ghouls erupting out of Arkham Forest.  He wished everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and a Blessed Kwanzaa.  I left at that point but based on what I heard later Cthulhu may also have eaten the last five people in the building on his way out.  That First Selectman!  You’ve really got to watch him.

15NOV2021 – OCF Update

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Sony A7 III, Minolta 200mm F\4 Macro lens

 

“The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;”
…
From “Ulalume” by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

I took a walk around to see if there were any photos to be had. And there were a few.  Mostly trees holding onto a precious few dead leaves.  And the sky and the leaves reminded me of those lines from Poe.  And looking it up I noted that Poe was only forty years old when he died.  Well, he was a very strange man with many problems.  But he did capture some very vivid imagery in some of his work.  And late fall is his special time of year.  October, November and December seem to be the time and mood of his prose and poetry.  Maybe Poe could qualify as one of Ray Bradbury’s “October People.”

Autumn is a very good time of the year to be in a warm house and sharing good food and good talk with friends and family.  And Thanksgiving is sneaking up on us so I checked up on Camera Girl’s holiday planning and indeed she assures me that a twenty five pound turkey will be included and that ample and various pies and other desserts will appear on the menu, so everything seems to be in order.

She informed me that Walmart has begun playing Christmas music outside the building.  Apparently broadcasting it will attract holiday shoppers by some sort of sympathetic vibration.  I asked her if the music put her in the holiday spirit and she rolled her eyes at me.  Despite her clear lack of spirit I will be starting my annual Christmas music marathon very soon.  The centerpiece of this program is the album that my parents used to play when I was about ten, “The Little Drummer Boy” by the Harry Simeone Chorale.  When I hear those versions sung I might as well be ten years old again.  For a little while I can forget the horrors of the world around us and bask in the old remembered warmth of being a kid in Real America.

13NOV2021 – Dunwich Complainer – Irregular Edition

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After a day of rain, some wonderful late fall weather has broken out in Western Dunwich.  Up here in the hill country there have been only sporadic sightings of shoggoths and the odd micro-eruption from the parallel dimension where the lobster fungi of Yuggoth hang out.  Out in the west field I noticed some strange and indescribable colors to the foliage on an elderberry shrub which I immediately attributed to a meteoric landing of the Color Out of Space.   But then I remembered I’m color blind so I dialed that back to perfectly normal green.  When I drove out to our grocery store, the one that’s housed in a ruinous, desanctified, former church the proprietor, a man named Jedediah Spoonhandle, eyed me suspiciously when I entered his building.   When I asked to buy some soap, he accused me of being in league with the devil.  But when I told him I wanted to purchase a dozen frogging gigs he became enraged and attacked me bodily.  Apparently, he has some relatives from Innsmouth who have a slightly batrachian look to them.  I finally subdued him by clubbing him senseless with a leg of lamb that was at hand.  I took the gigs and left the price in paper and coinage on his stunned carcass.

Travelling back to the Compound I reflected on the wonderful world we live in and the strange occurrences that seem to follow me wherever I go.  But then I remembered that it’s Saturday and Saturday is a strange day around here so that put things in perspective.  When I arrived home, I asked Camera Girl if anything had happened while I was gone.  She said no but looking out the kitchen window I noticed that something had flattened two sheds and about a dozen cattle on the neighboring field belonging to Josiah Whateley.  When I brought this to her attention she stopped to reflect then said, “Yes, but it is Saturday.”  So, I shrugged and said, “Yeah, that’s true.”

I hadn’t spoken to old Whateley in a while so I ambled over to his field where he was collecting cow carcasses for salvage and I greeted him cheerily.  But for whatever reason he seemed sort of quiet.  So, I asked him what was the matter and he said, “T’ain’t right that unspeakable, blasphemous, eldritch abominations from beyond space and time keep flattening my outbuildings and livestock whenever they get a notion.”  So, I said, “Well Josiah, why don’t you ask for help at the next Town Council?”  But he backed up with a look of revulsion and said, “And be branded a complainer like you?  No thankee.”

I should have known that even in the heart of a quagmire of unspeakable horror that good old Yankee independence would recoil against asking for help from his neighbors.  I agreed with Josiah and mentioned that one of his flattened sheds looked like it could be used as a patch for one of his other sheds that had only been half flattened and that his smashed cattle would make a very good mulch for his alfalfa field.  I like to think that my talk cheered him up some.

As I walked back to my house, I noticed that a tentacle about as thick as a telephone pole and about a hundred feet long was dragging a full-grown black bear into the swamp.  The panicked roaring of the animal as it was pulled under the surface reminded me that life in Dunwich was full of unexpected problems that could ruin your peace of mind if you didn’t make sure to look on the bright side of things and whistle a happy tune.  I thought, “That poor bear, he probably forgot to look on the bright side of things and he certainly wasn’t whistling a happy tune, and now look at him.”

And by golly now I was right back in step with the world.  I dashed for the side door just as a squadron of eagle sized dragonflies made a bee line for me.  I beat them to the door just in time to hear them slam into the outside of the door after I had drawn the deadbolt.  Suckers!

After a wonderful dinner I sat down in the living room to write up this little post when the motion detector on the west side of the house activated the flood light.  In the dazzling light half a dozen ghouls were staggering back toward the tree line.  I thought about running for my rifle and trying to pick off a few of them but I remembered that ghoul hunting season didn’t start until December so I smiled sheepishly and went back to finishing this report.

Well it was a quiet day in Dunwich today but enjoying nature and the simple pleasures of interacting with neighbors shows you what’s really important in life; timing, muscle memory and pure dumb luck.

Mild November Days

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We’ve had about a week of night time temperatures slightly below freezing but I went out this afternoon and found activity.  Tiny midges and Asian ladybugs were flying round.  I found a salamander in a mouse nest under a tin that I put out to find snakes.  The only vegetation (other than the pines and other evergreens) that’s still green is the grass and two metasequoia trees that stand at the edge of the forest.  There’s no ice on the pond yet.  We stand suspended at the edge of the precipice of winter.  And it’s supposed to warm up for at least a week coming up.  With above freezing night time temperatures and daytime temperatures flirting with sixty!  As much as I am a devotee of summer, I have to admit that this year, fall is mellow and very pleasant.  It’s as if New England is trying to make amends for what will follow.

We’ll be celebrating Princess Sack of Potatoes’ third birthday with a party here and it will be a very happy occasion.  And then in two weeks there is Thanksgiving with all the grandkids coming here and that will be Camera Girl’s magnum opus for the year.  Turkey and all the fixings and pies and traditional holiday movie selections.  The March of the Wooden Soldiers, Gulliver’s Travels and I think I’ll start my annual Christmas Carol marathon.  All wonderful things to make this a bright and happy time of the year.

And now I’ll admit my evil nature.  The fact that Dementia Joe’s popularity has tanked and there is a good chance that his America demolishing legislation will stall out long enough to be finished off by the 2022 mid-terms has triggered a wonderful case of schadenfreude in me.  I’m taking enormous joy in the misfortune of these reptiles.  My whole attitude has improved and there’s a spring in my step that’s been missing since last year’s election fraud debacle.

I’ve found myself reading those articles in the Atlantic and Slate and even the New York Times where they try to make the case that Joe Biden is really much more popular than believed and that once they pass the “reconciliation” his poll numbers will skyrocket into the stratosphere.  Of course, they don’t explain how exactly they’ll do that while two of their senators refuse to sign on to the absurd agenda that this bill represents.  And they further state that the runaway inflation and broken supply chain aren’t things that Americans worry about.  Apparently five-dollar gasoline isn’t a problem (when you work for the Atlantic) and anyone who says it is must be a liar and possibly an insurrectionist.  As far as these writers are concerned if the economy isn’t good enough for these deplorables let them eat cake.

So poised for the Holidays the photog clan is looking forward to a jolly Thanksgiving and a merry Christmas.  We will pay the exorbitant prices for food and drink and buy whatever presents are still available on the bare shelves of Walmart and Amazon.  We’ll go into the new year with the hope that the Supreme Court will finally tell Dementia Joe that he can’t force us to take the vaccines or wear masks for the rest of our lives.

So, for this week at least I’m all optimism.  How about you?

Update:  8:31 pm

So, tonight Camera Girl and I watched the season premiere (two hours!) of our favorite night-time soap, “Yellowstone.”  It’s our secret shame.  It’s a ridiculous hot mess almost totally devoid of any acting.  But they do have some good country music on from time to time.  Tonight the first hour ended with Colter Wall’s “Plain to See Plainsman.”  So that did lessen the pain of watching Yellowstone so optimism still intact!

05NOV2021 – OCF Update – photog’s Chores Day

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We’ve had a decided break in the weather.  Each night dips slightly below the freezing point (27F to 31F) but each day is sunny and in the low fifties.  I’ve used this warning from the weather gods to finish up some of my more time and weather sensitive chores.  So today I mowed the grass.  That’s the last cut for the year.  Now it’s time to winterize the mowers and move the snow blower to the front of the shed and try it out.  I’ve already swept and filled the pool shed with all the pool furniture.

I’ve removed the gigantic air conditioner from the first floor window using these cool three wheeled rollers, a big yard cart and some bricks to move it without tweaking my back (which is key).  I felt like Pharoah’s  construction engineer moving monolithic basalt blocks to build the pyramid.  Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration but I did learn a thing or two from the riggers I used to hire to install the really heavy equipment when we needed it done carefully.  There’s nothing like dropping a twenty thousand pound custom chiller package to blow the project budget.  Watching those guys do their job with the minimum of power equipment was highly interesting.  It took an experienced old guy, several block and tackle set ups, 4X4 and 8X8 wooden “shims,”  heavy duty pry bars, and one or two young guys with unbelievably strong arms, legs and backs.  It truly is an art and not a science.

To say I was mowing the grass would be an exaggeration.  Mostly I was shredding leaves.  My more fastidious neighbors collect these shredded leaves and mulch them because they have “lawns.”  I have fields that are mostly covered with various grass-like vegetation.  Cleaning up leaves when you live on the leeward side of a forest is sort of delusional.  I make a last pass about this time of the year and stop thinking of the grass until it starts annoying me in late May.

I still have a card full of projects to do but the grandkids are coming tomorrow.  We’re hosting a birthday party and I’ll have chores for that and also I’m too lazy to do too many things all at once.

Today I sent off my Sony LA-EA3  and LA-EA4 adapters to a used photo equipment store.  This will mostly pay for the LA-EA5 adapter I intend to use with Sony A7 IV camera I intend to buy in January.  Looking at what I could have sold them for on eBay gave me a pang of sadness.  In fac the two of them would more than paid for the new adapter with something left over to add to my fund for the camera but fussing with eBay is something I hate doing.  And buying there is bad enough.  I hear selling is fraught with problems and real risk.  So half a loaf for me.

I enjoyed the gag of calling my town Dunwich.  I think I’ll make that a continuing saga.  I like spoofing on Lovecraft’s mythical New England.  Expect to see more eldritch horror and small town minutia in the future.

I promise to make up for chore day so stay tuned and I’ll produce some good stuff soon.

Local Election Results in Dunwich

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Living as I do in the mythical New England town of Dunwich, election results take a little longer than they do in the outside world.  What with eruptions of elder gods and eldritch horror of nonspecific origin popping up incessantly it takes the election committee quite a lot of time to count the white and black pebbles that we use for voting purposes.  I mean when they’re distracted, they lose count and have to start all over.  And then there are the disqualifications.  If one of the candidates is discovered to have webbed fingers or toes or gills during the mandatory examination, then everything has to stop while the unfortunate individual is burned at the stake or crushed under a door stacked with large smooth stones.  Lately they’ve switched completely to door crushing because of the greenhouse gases emitted by the stake burning procedure.  Time marches on.  Of course, the runner-up is glad, as long as he isn’t similarly non-conforming.

Well, the point is we finally have our results and they are pleasing.  The stupid party was resoundingly re-elected and the evil party was gratifyingly defeated.  I performed an exorcism rite complete with incantations from the Necronomicon (or was it Comic-Con?) and rendered all attacks by the power of darkness null and void (in other words I paid up my property taxes).  And now I can expect to enjoy another two years of quiet, efficient, demonic public service by the good people of the stupid party as they do their best to hold the powers of the evil party at bay.

I intend to continue attending the local Republican Party meeting and find out if I can get involved in some less painful volunteer services.  I’d like to work with the election committee and find out how the sausages get made.  And in fact, I’d also like to find out what other functions I can help out around town.  I may be trapped here in Dunwich for a few years so I might as well make the best of it.

Who knows, maybe I’ll become an adjunct lecturer at Miskatonic University in advanced perpetual motion engineering.  We all have to do our best to save the planet.  After all, both Greta Thunberg and Cthulhu are depending on us.

Praying Mantises, Children’s Books and Pa – Part 6 – Extra Innings

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Last night I read that this week we’re expecting a hard frost.  Well, it’s November after all and nothing unusual about that.  I mentioned to Camera Girl that I saw a dragonfly circling the yard the other day and now it’ll be the end of his time with the frost.

This morning Camera Girl was getting ready to go out on an errand and she said she’d stop at the top of the driveway and put a letter in the mailbox.  I said I need some air.  Give it to me.  As I was walking back toward the house she is walking toward me instead of driving out in her car and yelling something excitedly.  She is an enthusiastic woman.  What she was saying was that she saw a praying mantis sitting on top of a gallon water jug that I had left on the porch.  She asked me to catch it and save it indoors.

And sure enough, there it was.  I scooped it up and put it in a convenient cage (the former home of one of my grandsons’ hermit crabs).

 

 

And the new plan is to see how long he can live in an indoor environment.  I’ll try to offer him raw hamburger but if that fails we’ll get some crickets at the pet store.  Well, Princess Sack of Potatoes will get a chance to study a praying mantis more closely than I thought.

My Intro to Local Politics

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So, I finally went to a meeting of the Republican Party in my town.  Being that the local election is in two weeks it was a pretty long meeting, two hours.  But it was fairly interesting to see what it consists of.  Except for asking a question of a guest speaker who’s running for higher state office I kept my mouth shut and listened.  My town is unusual in New England in that the Republicans are the dominant party.  So, it was interesting to see what they saw as the correct strategy to take concerning attacks in the local press on their policies.  It was actually heartening to hear them speak rationally about things like mask mandates and vaccination requirements.  Being embedded in a blue state means that certain things like school health requirements are off the table but it was extremely encouraging that we were sitting closely together in a conference room without any mask nonsense at all.  People even shook hands without naked fear showing on their faces.

There were a number of jokes about the crazier woke complaints that some townspeople had levelled against the town government.  One of my favorites is the calls for all Republicans to resign to atone for the January 6th “insurrection.”  The selectmen were debating whether they should address this complaint by assuring the town that they were indeed in New England on January 6th and doing their jobs.  Inwardly I was thinking that the way to answer something like this would be with snarky humor but I kept quiet.  No need to get myself labeled as an unserious person, yet.

I was interested to hear that the state government is policing speech at the municipal level.  They have outlawed the use of the word “character” when the town describes itself in writing.  They were told that was a dog whistle for “white.”  Amusingly the town folks were looking for synonyms for the word character to allow them to work around this silliness.  I found this approach to short circuiting the typical New England virtue signaling exemplary.  Follow the letter of the law and defy the spirit of it.

There were many mundane items having to do with budget and personnel and I could tell there were a lot of things being discussed that had a lot of history and back story that I wasn’t privy to.  But it was interesting to see how the various personalities and positions asserted themselves in the discussions.  And even though some of the subject matter was dry I found myself interested in the positions that the various individuals took.  The elected officials were extremely anxious that everything possible be done in the short time remaining to shore up their campaigns against Democrat and media attacks.  The committee members wanted to make sure that there wasn’t too much spinning around on things that had already been arranged like print and electronic media press releases.  Obviously, everyone was looking at things from his own point of reference.  But understandable considering what their jobs were.

As I drove away last night, I found myself thinking, “I wonder what will be at the top of the agenda at the next meeting.”  I left my e-mail address and phone number on their attendance sheet and I’m sure they’ll contact me to contribute money to their coffers.  But so far, I didn’t see anything that told me I shouldn’t find out more about this group.  They seemed like intelligent, normal people.  And there was not even a hint of human sacrifice being part of their initiation ceremony.  Of course, they didn’t declare me dictator for life yet but so far so good.

A Man and His Dog

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Many, many years ago I read an autobiographical short story by Thomas Mann called “A Man and His Dog.”  It’s a very charming description of Mann’s life in a rural suburb outside I believe Munich.  His dog Bashan is a German Shorthaired Pointer (GSP) or, as he mentions in the story mostly of that breed, because he mentions some irregularities of his appearance that Mann hints should b a point of embarrassment for Bashan.

When my children were young, we found ourselves looking for a family dog and I thought long and hard what breed to get.  Camera Girl is a dog lover and any breed will find a place in her heart but I insisted that it be a manly and courageous breed because I see the value of having a capable watchdog in the house.  But I wanted a dog that had the even temperament needed around small children.  So, no pit bulls or bull mastiffs.  After a thorough review of the physical and temperamental characteristics, I selected the GSP as the optimal dog breed for us.  We ended up travelling about six hours each way to get the puppy and when I brough “Max” home he was an immediate hit with the children and settled in with his family.

And I will say that he lived up to the description for his breed.  The GSP’s are incredibly friendly with children in the family and tolerant of people around the home.  But they are extremely protective of their territory if another dog enters it and will fight ferociously against an intruding dog.  They are extremely smart and amazingly fast and agile.  And as one of our later GSP’s demonstrated, powerful hunters.  Our older dog Kaylee once took down a young deer that happened to be in a field that she was running in.  It was all that we could to get the deer away from her alive.

In his story Mann mentions that the pointers can make themselves a nuisance by their single-minded approach to the master of the house.  And in a sense, this is true.  Although Camera Girl is the primary dog walker in the house, the two pointers look to me for their marching orders.  Whenever anyone enters the property, they come to me and start complaining about the intrusion looking for leadership in repelling this invasion.  And as annoying as it sometimes is to have yapping dogs running around in circles when the oil truck comes down the driveway or the Fedex guy is dropping off a package, it is a good feeling to have loyal minions whose allegiance is to the king of the castle and no one else.

Over the years we have had other breeds too.  Early on we had a Newfoundland.  Up until six years ago we had a Bassett hound.  Both dogs were wonderful creatures that we loved immensely.  And they had their own unique qualities and characteristics.  But to my mind the pointers are the best family dogs I’ve come across.  And in a pinch, if a serious animal threat wandered onto the property, I’d feel better knowing a GSP was there to look out for Camera Girl and the grandkids.

So, when I think of a man and his dog, if the man is me then the dog would be a German shorthaired pointer.

A7 III with Sigma 150 – 600mm MC-11 adapter