Tag: photog’s Corner

Happy Fourth of July 2025

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I learned a lesson about planning.  It should be associated with thinking.  I had an auto maintenance appointment that I wanted to get done before last week’s big trip.  But because I’ve been distracted by unfortunate circumstances, I couldn’t get an appointment on time (bad photog!).  I said, “Well give me the appointment next week.”  So, I pick the day before the Fourth of July!  Well, you know what’s hard to get to work on the day before a long holiday weekend?  Auto-mechanics!  A one-hour maintenance job keeps me waiting there for four hours.  The sad part is I could watch all the lined-up cars sitting there for three hours and then they were all done in the last hour.  A nine o’clock appointment for a mechanic who’s showing up at noon is kind of a sad situation.  Of course, some people started flipping out at eleven thirty and by 1 pm they were demanding the site manager be summoned for the maintenance clerk’s summary execution.  Of course, the site manager was on vacation until next Tuesday but it was a noble sentiment.

Being old I realized my own culpability in the whole idea of scheduling something involving waiting for the day before a major holiday.  I tried to do some on-line stuff over their customer wi-fi network.  But I got bored so instead I watched the people.  It had a certain entertainment value.  I guess the thought that I had was there are definitely two kinds of people.  The kind you would want in a lifeboat and the kind who will get thrown overboard.

Later on, we had one of those thunderstorm/hail storm/minor tornado/mini-monsoon downpour thingies here today.  It had been very hot and muggy and just walking around the yard was a major effort.  Then all hell breaks loose, the power goes off, the dogs go insane and suddenly the air is twenty degrees cooler.  And we’re watching from the window and saying isn’t it great to watch this from inside?  And it was.  The trees were whipping around and the sky was full of water and ice and the clouds were moving fast.  And then in fifteen minutes the sun was out again.  Well, no trees came down and the dogs calmed down so I went for a walk.  The air was sweet and there was a strong breeze.  Just an interesting kaleidoscope of weather.

And now we have the Fourth coming up.  Sitting in the service station watching their television I saw a news item about how some of the more progressive towns and cities were replacing their fireworks shows with a swarm of drones forming shapes in the air and changing colors.  It looked so incredibly lame and so sad I just shook my head.  The newscaster went out of his way to say how much more environmentally friendly and carbon neutral the lame drone show was than a fireworks display.  And I thought, this encapsulates the difference between people who enjoy life and people who do what they’re told is good for them.  These are the same people driving Priuses and getting their fiftieth COVID booster shot.

Well Happy Fourth of July.

All God’s Children

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Over the course of the last thirty years more and more exoplanets have been “discovered.”  In most cases the astronomers use changes in stellar light output measured by their instruments to infer the diameter of a planet transiting in front of its star.  And what they’ve discovered is there are thousands of these planets.  In fact, they seem ubiquitous.  Everywhere we look we find them.

And this has convinced an awful lot of people that life must be ubiquitous in the universe too.  And that intelligent life must be common too.  This would go a long way to encouraging the crowd who believe that human beings are nothing special and any belief in the divine origin of the human race is completely unfounded.  The story goes we’re just some monkeys that got a little smarter than the other monkeys and have become a blight on the face of “Gaia.”

I have to say, I completely disagree.  I look at the Earth and compare it to the other planets in our solar system and I’m struck by how many factors conspire to make Earth a paradise while leaving all of the other planets different flavors of hell.  Everything from the effect of our large satellite, to the strength of the magnetic field to the balance between elements and compounds that make up the oceans and atmosphere, to the exact orbit of Earth around the Sun.  And that’s not to mention the remarkable way terrestrial life has shaped the environment in remarkable ways.  Plant life has increased the oxygen content of the atmosphere and life has changed the environment in innumerable ways.

And then we have the fossil record demonstrating the prodigious changes that have gone on for billions of years to produce the current flora and fauna of this remarkable world.  From the one-celled origins of life to the present-day complexity of creatures as varied as hummingbirds and blue whales; birds of paradise and Siberian tigers; dragonflies and giant pandas.  And us.

I’m sorry, I cannot believe that all this is just the random result of fermions and bosons rattling around the aftermath of the “big bang.”  To quote the immortal words of Vizzini, “Inconceivable.”  And I know he was dead wrong every time he said it but that is my rock bottom intuition.  All of this is purposeful.  All of this was directed.  We are here because life has meaning and human life is the soul behind the giant mechanism.  We are the witness and the object for which the whole dizzying array was created.

We are the guests of honor in a parade that stretches out to the detectable limits of the universe and back and forth in time from, “Let there be light” to the end of “Revelations.”  We’re here to make sense out of the wonders of creation and to use them to figure out the full potentialities of the human mind and soul.

And I don’t believe for a minute that we’ll destroy ourselves utterly.  History has shown just how stupid and cruel we can be.  Humans can be more vicious than any predator.  There are no depths we can’t sink to.  But that is lowest part of our nature.  We have not yet begun to figure ourselves out.  We’re still ignorant children.  But we will grow up and we will grow out of our ignorance.  And then we will become what we are supposed to be.  God’s children.

Serenity Now

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So today was finally the day.  I had an appointment to get that bad tooth pulled.  I drove myself there with Camera Girl riding shotgun.  The understanding was she’d drive home after I had been dosed with enough lidocaine to allow me to chew razor blades.

We got there and the dental assistant immediately found a problem.  My dentist had listed the wrong tooth.  So, there were more x-rays and phone calls and running around in circles.  Finally, the oral surgeon walked in looked at the x-ray, looked at the tooth and said, “Serenity now!”  So of course I replied, “Insanity later.”  And he started to laugh uproariously.  If I were the type to worry maybe I might have taken all of this as a bad sign.  But I’m a Seinfeld fan and I figured that a Middle Eastern oral surgeon who likes Seinfeld must have hidden depths of wisdom.

Well, the man did his job flawlessly.  He numbed my mouth completely, pulled the tooth in one twist of his wrist and installed the implant post in nothing flat.  He was good at his job and cheerful to boot.  And a few hours later he called my home to check in on me and answer questions.  He was like the opposite of my dentist who can’t do anything and avoids contact like the plague.

But that implant post means that for the next few days I’ll probably be living off “Ensure” and very carefully avoiding the healing tissues around the implant.  Also, I’ll be on antibiotics for another week so I won’t be at my most robust.

When I got home, I decided to walk around the yard to take my mind off my medical issues and I came upon one of the preying mantis egg sacs that I planted on various branches six or eight weeks ago.  And what do you know?  The little critters hatched out today.

Now there’s scant assurance that even one of these tiny critters will make it to Labor Day.  There are just so many insects, spiders, other invertebrates, frogs, toads. salamanders, snakes and even rodents and birds just waiting to devour them that if two of them survive it will be a miracle.

But I like to bet on long shots.  When school ends and Princess Sack of Potatoes arrives to visit for the summer, I hope to point out some thriving mantids in various areas of the yard.  She is particularly enamored of the preying mantis ever since she saw one in a story book called “The Very Quiet Cricket.”

Tonight “High Noon” was on tv so Camera Girl and I watched it.  I had forgotten that Grace Kelly (playing his wife) actually shot one of the outlaws in the back and scratched the face of the head villain just as he was about to shoot Gary Cooper.

Now I’ve been aware of the political leanings of the director of “High Noon” and how the townspeople leaving the Marshall to his fate was a metaphor for the lack of support that the blacklisted film industry people got during the McCarthy era.  Well, I’ve never placed much importance to this subtext.  But I will state my opinion that Gary Cooper’s character getting help from his wife in the way he did brands him as terminally low energy.  He might as well have been Jeb Bush.  A total loser; very sad.

Well, anyway it was a very successful day and hopefully my recovery will proceed smoothly.  Serenity now.

Photog Agonistes

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About a year ago I bit into a pumpernickel bagel and there must have been a small rock in it.  Don’t ask me how.  Anyway, the molar I bit down with (I’ve since learned it’s called #31) was killing me so I went to my trusty dentist and told him I must have busted it.  He x-rayed it and poked and prodded it (Oh joy!)  And declared it okay.  Slowly it seemed to get better and I took a watch and wait approach.  Two weeks ago, I was chewing on oatmeal.  Oatmeal!  There’s nothing more innocuous than oatmeal.  Right?

Good old #31 made a cracking noise and provided me with a whole new definition of pain.  So, I knew I had a bunch of things that had to get done this week and next week so I decided that if I didn’t chew food on my right side, I could make it through and then go see the Doc.  Well two days ago that strategy failed catastrophically.  The tooth was throbbing and aching really awfully.  So yesterday I went to the dentist hoping he’d fix it before Saturday when I was starting a trip.  Instead, he punted to an outside endodontic practice.  Well, I wasn’t going to get an appointment yesterday.  It’ll be next Thursday!  In desperation I told him I needed something for the infection and pain and he gave me the generic amoxicillin prescription and a friendly pat on the shoulder.

Well, the amoxicillin has been in my system for a little over a day and it has brought the pain down from blinding stabbing pain to grinding ache.  But for some reason I’m incredibly tired and kind of feverish.  So, here’s the thing.  I have a super long travelling day tomorrow and a social occasion.  If I get home Saturday night, I’ll have Sunday to rest.  If I don’t then I’ll go from that directly to a two-day event at work with each day running about fifteen hours.  Then Wednesday I have to drive a friend to a doctor’s appointment about an hour away.  And then Thursday I get to go to the endodontist to be vivisected and dumped bleeding and groaning on the sidewalk before driving home.

This is a warning that output and quality on the site for the next six days will be very questionable.  If I start sounding loopier than usual it’s the gangrene talking and not me.  Well, anyway I’ll do my best.  The quotes and photos are already in queue and I will endeavor to get the stuff on the site but there may be some late posts.  Mea culpa, mea culpa.

Camera Girl tells me I’ve been like a pathetic loser and a baby who needs pity; pieta (although in the dialect of her family’s Italian it’s pronounced as if it’s spelled “peacod.”  Well, she’s probably right.  I would give a thousand dollars to stay home for the next week.  But promises were made and responsibilities are non-negotiable.  So, raise the curtain on my Greek Tragedy, “Photog Agonistes.”  Count no man fortunate until he is safely dead.

End of whine.

I’m Still Working Out the Details

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So, which is it?  Rage against the dying of the light or serenity in the face of the inevitable and natural cycle of life and death?  I was at a funeral and I looked at my cousins and saw what time was doing to them.  All of us were proof of the inevitability of aging and death.  Each one was a slightly different take on mortality.  Some seemed to be aging gently and they exuded humor and calm.  Others looked very tired and deeply saddened by how hard the way is.  Well, that difference comes of a combination of internal and external factors.  Luck plays a part and also wisdom and also temperament.  If I’m going to guess I’d say luck and temperament play the largest parts.  I mean I guess someone like Gautama could remain tranquil in the face of fate’s onslaught against our loved ones and our selves but most people are not so stoic.  We need some luck to keep us going.  Even Job finally had enough and wanted a word with the Big Guy Upstairs about all those boils.

So, is there a correct attitude toward the Big Sleep?  I’ve always taken a somewhat legalistic attitude about what kind of deal we get from fate.  When I was a bit younger, I used to say that fifty years was somewhat the break even point.  What I meant by that was if fate gave you fifty good years you should think that you got a decent deal.  Not great but decent.  The first fifty years are the best part of a life and with any reasonable amount of effort you can get quite a bit done in a half century.  You can raise a family.  You can become an expert in your profession.  You could even have served as President of the United States by then.

It’s not really a full lifetime but if you don’t lollygag around until forty you can cram a lot of living into fifty years.  So, if you live comfortably to seventy, I think you can feel like you got a pretty sweet deal.  I’m approaching the biblical “three score and ten” mark myself.  And even though I’m not anxious to throw in the towel quite yet I can’t see myself going through the whole wailing, gnashing my teeth and shaking my fist at heaven act.  I feel it would reflect a certain amount of ingratitude.  After all, think of kids who die of cancer or some other terrible disease before they ever get their permanent teeth.  That’s where I see someone lodging a legitimate grievance against the way the universe is run.  I’ve always been repelled by the suffering of the innocents; “the problem of pain.”

So that’s my somewhat simplistic but easily explainable philosophy of life and death.  God owes us fifty good years.  And we owe it to ourselves (and Him) to use the time wisely and diligently.  And this is coming from a profoundly lazy man.  No male in my family has ever truly grown up before thirty.  We have a talent for floating above the ground for an inordinate amount of time before being forced to finally settle down and get to work.  For this reason, I feel like I have been blessed in having reached my age with all of the milestones accomplished.  Of course, all of the credit for this goes to Camera Girl.  She refused to let me stall her plans and so she had her kids while we were very young.  Which means we were desperately poor for the first ten plus years of our married lives.  Which means I was that much luckier to get the whole thing to work out.

So, seeing death and dying is a humbling experience.  But it also makes me grateful for what I’ve already been allotted.  And honestly, I’m not very excited about ending up a nonagenarian or even an octogenarian.  I’m hoping for some very lazy death.  I’ve toyed with the idea of starving myself.  But I’m afraid I might keep putting it off every time I smell something good on the stove.  I’m still working out the details.

The Human Element

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Einstein is said to have made the imaginative leap when he based his Theory of General Relativity on the notion that time (t) is just another dimension to go along with the three spatial dimensions (x, y, z).  Space-time.  When we talk about the where of a particle (or a person) we must also specify the when.

So yesterday when I travelled back to the place where I was born, I would have to travel back in time to reach my place of origin (x, y, z, t = 0, 0, 0, 0).  But Einstein also said that for matter time can only travel forward.  But maybe the mind (or the soul) isn’t composed of protons and electrons; leptons and hadrons.  Because I had an uncanny feeling I had stepped back into an earlier era.

After battling New York City traffic that defied belief, to attend a family funeral, I walked into the little Roman Catholic Church that I attended as a child and was transported into my past.  Sure, a few little things had changed.  They had freshened up the paint on the ceiling over the altar and on the bas relief stations of the cross but the stained-glass windows, the icons around the altar and the pews we sat in triggered memories that perfectly mirrored my surroundings.  And then there were my cousins and their children and their children’s children surrounding me with proof that the world I left behind decades ago still existed in a very human, very tenacious way.  God said be fruitful and multiply.  And we have.  From a tiny family that set foot on this continent less than 150 years ago there are now a whole town’s worth of descendants.

And some of the latest additions were unknown to me by name.  But just looking at their faces I could see the kinship.  And in the middle of the Mass one of the youngest made such a noisy nuisance of himself that he forced his mother to retreat to the annex to return the ceremony to dignified order.  But this outburst was of the very nature of the family.  We are noisy, somewhat spoiled, sometimes rude but genuinely good natured and extremely funny people.  And we do enjoy each other’s company.  Being surrounded by this small army of family felt so right.

One of my cousins remarked that it was a pity that only such occasions rounded us all up together again.  He spoke nostalgically about when we were all living within blocks of each other within the Italian ghetto that we all were now flocking to for this solemn occasion.  He reminisced about the parties and get togethers we used to have on a regular basis; holidays, birthdays, weddings, graduations, births.  But I reminded him that no one’s grandchildren could hope to afford the multi-million-dollar price tags that now attached to the buildings in this once humble neighborhood.  What young people could afford to buy houses here now?   I kidded that we would have to buy a whole town somewhere in the middle of nowhere if we wanted to live together in this modern and expensive age.  He ruefully nodded his head in agreement.

Quickly the ceremony ended and we said our goodbyes.  I wasn’t headed out east to the Long Island cemetery.  I was headed north toward New England through the grid-lock of the outer boroughs and onto the highways beyond.  But we made one stop before we headed home.  There was an old time Italian Bakery that specialized in Italian pastries.  They had sfogliatella riccia (seashell), coda d’aragosta (lobster tail) and various other pastries stuffed with cream that we would eat on Sunday nights when we were kids.  The only problem with this wonderful store was the old woman who had run the counter.  She was a sharp-tongued shrew who carped at everyone who entered the store.

I entered the store today and found the shelves still lined with all those Italian delicacies.  But now the store was run by a Chinese family that had bought the recipes for the pastries when they purchased the business.  And thankfully the pastries were just the same!  And even better, the young lady running the counter was entirely friendly and polite.  A miracle!

After too many hours I returned home with my small cache of desserts and told Camera Girl of my epic journey.  We’ll eat the cakes with our coffee this week.  And that will remind me of what I learned.  Einstein was wrong about not being able to go back in time.  You can.  What you can’t do is go back to the same place.  It’s always different.  But it can be worth the trip.

Circling Back

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The next couple of days will be different.  I have to attend a funeral for a close relative.  She was ninety-seven and so I’m travelling both closer to my geographical origin and back in time to my childhood.  I’ll be going back to the Catholic church I attended as a child and seeing the neighborhood I lived in.  And a lot of my cousins will be there and my siblings.  I probably will also see some old acquaintances for the last time on this Earth.  And that is a thought that gives me pause.  This is the second death of that generation in the last few weeks.  Those folks had a lot of vitality.  All of them on that side of the family have reached their nineties.  I’m not exactly sure how I feel about that legacy.  It’s not an unmixed “blessing.”

I’ll look over the old neighborhood.  Last time I was there it had become a Southeast Asian enclave of one sort or another.  I’ll be interested to see if the homeless and the illegal aliens have shown up to any degree.  I suspect things will look worse than even it looked a decade ago when I passed through.  The only thing that seems to have endured since my childhood is an old-fashioned Italian bakery that somehow has endured.  The family still runs it and from what I’ve been told they still make crumb cake and crème doughnuts that are worth buying.  So, after the wake and the mass I intend to stop by that store and buy some pastries to bring home to Camera Girl.  She’s partial to good crumb cake and I like it too.

When I get back, we’ll have some good coffee and enjoy some pastries while I tell her what the old neighborhood looks like.  And I’ll tell her who showed up for the funeral and who didn’t.  What everybody looked like and any family news for good or bad.  And hopefully, there won’t be any new feuds breaking out to report.  At this point in the cycle, I’m hoping everybody is looking to let bygones be bygones and go quietly into that good night.  But you never know.  I come from some pretty ornery stock.  There are old feuds that go back well over a hundred years that I’ve heard about and as far as I know are still being honored.  But hopefully those folks won’t be showing up for this family gathering.

And in fact, I know of at least one party who will attempt to spark a gathering of the clan for a summer party sometime in the summer.  I used to have one every summer about a decade ago at the Compound but people got older and travelling became more difficult so it subsided.  Maybe this will revive the custom.

So, I’ll see what I can do to keep this site active while I’m on the road.  At the very least there will be pictures and quotes.  I’ll see if I can get one more post scheduled after this one to fill in the gap.  But we’ll see.

Well, back I go.

Phoning it In on Friday Morning

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Thursday was just such a busy day that I didn’t get anything done on the site until late at night.  I had to process some photos and set them up.  And so late at night how can I think of a topic no less speak intelligently on it?  My mind is a spent force.  So, I’ve just watched Orson Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight.”  This was Welles’ cut and paste job from the two Henry IV plays to showcase Falstaff and his time with Prince Hal.

And it’s a brilliant idea that should be remade again.  But who could be Falstaff now?  Who’s funny enough?  Who’s fat enough.  Who can act Shakespeare?  No one.

But no reason to be gloomy.  These things will turn around.  All the nonsense that has been pushed on the kids for the last thirty years will not last.  All of it is rot that won’t last.  All those who truly believe it are self-selecting themselves for extinction and they will leave room for those who don’t.  There are plenty who make believe that they believe for self-preservation.  But when the winds change, as they already are changing, they’ll move on to where their advantage lies.

I was watching the movie “Fury” today with one of my friends.  I had never seen it.  Brad Pitt is an American tanker in WWII.  He and his men including a raw recruit are deep into German territory in 1945 and everywhere they turn they’re hip-deep in death.  The action and personal actions of the soldiers are as gritty as can be.  I won’t give away the plot but suffice it to say that the tank crew was beyond hardened.  They were approaching psychotic.  But they had a camaraderie that was stirring.  My friend told me that the movie’s ending was based on a true story although instead of an American tank in WWII it was based on a British tank in WWI.  Well, it is a rousing battle scene.

You know, YouTube is an interesting concept.  They must know I’m writing a novel because I keep finding videos on fiction-writing in my feed.  And one of them was by Vonnegut.  And I watched it and it reminded of when I met the guy by accident at the carousel in Central Park.  And it’s funny, I wasn’t a fan of his writing but he came across very friendly and normal.  And it got me thinking which other celebrities are regular people when you meet them off the cuff.  I once spoke to a car service driver who brought people in and out of the Northeast casinos.  He said Jerry Seinfeld was an arrogant jerk.  Well, I won’t say that shocked me.  The one guy I’d really like to meet completely candidly is Donald Trump.  He’s a complete enigma.  How much of the Trump we see is real and how much is make believe?  And is he crazy?  Well, I’ll never find out so I’ll just have to keep making stuff up.

I hope to catch up on the website chores tomorrow so I’m not working from behind.  I guess Dunwich is a busy mythical place where even humans find themselves trapped in warped space-time.  But this will have to do for tonight.  Good night and good morning.

The Mass of Men

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Henry David Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..”

Well, I don’t know.  I’m not sure I’m the quietest (or the loudest) of individuals.  And as for desperation and resignation that seems a bit much.  For most people work can be a rat race but, is what we do just resignation?  I hope not.  Now, sure, we all have to reach that endpoint and when that gets a lot closer, desperation and resignation start to sound more fitting, more apt.  But Thoreau said the mass of men.  Well, most men aren’t about to face death.  We get a decent shot at a pretty decent span; “three score and ten” the Bible says.

And even when the end is in sight isn’t there any consolation in reflecting on the fact that you spent your life doing what you thought was best?  Maybe it’s a matter of temperament.  I guess Thoreau was a product of Yankee New England upbringing.  And those people have always seemed a little cold and humorless for my taste.  Maybe it’s a combination of puritanism and bad weather but they always seemed like they just bit into something that tasted bad (or maybe it was their reaction at seeing me).  Maybe I’m just naturally cheerful.  Call it my Mediterranean predisposition but I just think that every story has a happy ending.  And this even though I look around me in every direction and I see wrack and ruin out to the horizon.  And sure, when it’s time to start hauling away the wreckage I’ll swear and grumble and complain.  But I’ll still look forward to a lunch break and quitting time.  And then there has to be some human joy somewhere in that mess.

I know some people who live the other way.  And they are quite a bit better off than I am.  That grim determination has its advantages.  You can stuff a 401k plan with quite a lot of money if you’re grimly determined.  And maybe they will have an easier time of it at that last stand knowing that everything is paid for.  I guess it’s kind of the Cheops or Ozymandias option.  But it still feels kind of grim to me.

So, I like to think that most of us try to live lives of quiet or not so quiet inspiration mixed with perspiration.  I think the guy who said, “Where there’s life there’s hope” had it right.  While there’s still blood pumping through your veins and air being sucked into your lungs there’s hope and more than hope.  There’s at least a little excitement.  Even if you’re a hundred there’s still the challenge of trying to get on your feet and remembering what it is you have to do to keep breathing that day.  And until that gets to be too much for your spirit you have a reason to greet the day.

And if you still have anyone in your life who cares whether you live or die you’ve got a world outside yourself to think about.  Maybe people call that quiet desperation.  Or maybe I’m the exception.  Maybe I’ve just been blessed with much more than the mass of men have.  But I kind of doubt it.  I’m just an average guy with the average life.  Well, except for Camera Girl.  She’s pretty great.  But don’t tell her.  She might demand a better contract.