Some More Politics and the Overall Degeneration of Society as We Know It

Like a lot of Americans, I knew absolutely nothing about Barak Obama before the democratic primaries just over a year ago.  And very little about him on the day he was elected.  As Hillary Clinton said, his qualifications and achievements were limited to a "pretty speech" at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.  So how did we make him President with so little (or no)knowledge of his views and beliefs?  


I got a very interesting glimpse of the way the average, or quite possibly above average, American gathers information about politics and politicians.  I was in a hardware store and overheard the young - middle 20's - cashier telling his co-workers about the unfair criticism of President Obama's delayed response to the Christmas day attempt by a terrorist to blow up an airliner with an underwear bomb (brief bomb?, probably not, boxers are less constricting!).  He said that Jon Stewart said that the President's critics weren't being consistent.  Stewart said that President Obama spoke to the nation only 10 days after the attempt.  Mr. Bush (it's never President, or former President Bush, always Mr.) waited two weeks to say anything about the 9-11 attacks!  I was pretty sure that President Bush spoke on the evening of the attacks in a national telecast, but I am over 40, 45 now, so my memory might be foggy at best.  So I did a very un-old fogey type thing and did a search on Youtube for President Bush 9-11 speech.  And guess what?  My foggy memory wasn't as foggy as I feared!  


One week later when I was in the store again, the same young man (I have spoken to him a lot and he's very intelligent and friendly, which in itself makes this story scarier), was working.  I mentioned what I had overheard the week before and he repeated his concern about the unfair treatment of the President.  I asked him to do the same Youtube search I had done and said he would get videos of President Bush's great speech that begins "TODAY America came under attack."  Some creative, obviously young, techie types have created some very moving videos with President Bush's speech over photographs of the World Trade Center towers collapsing, spliced in with the day's news reports and music by REM and Enya.  He was very polite and said he'd look it up.


I saw him again a couple of days later and he said he had seen the videos and that obviously Jon Stewart was wrong (I'd say LYING).  Being well on my way to becoming a grumpy old man, I recommended that in the future, he should get his facts from more than one source, and the Comedy Channel is probably not the best place to start!  In complete contradiction to the stereotype, he agreed.  Maybe there's hope for us after all.

Patriots

I've always enjoyed American history.  I never have been able to get interested in world history too much.  I guess I just don't have the imagination to be able to identify with Charlemagne, the Russian czars, or King Louis I-XXXIV, or whatever.  But I love American history.  I am currently reading A Patriot's History of the United States. Unlike a lot of history books, it is very readable. And very informative.  Just a trivia note, I learned today where Cajun originated.  At the beginning of King George's War in 1755, a group of colonists took it upon themselves to take Acadia (Nova Scotia) from the French settlers.  At the end of the war, the British gave much of the conquered territories back to the French, but kept Acadia.  They were concerned about having French loyalists in their Nova Scotia, so they deported them.  A group of the deportees relocated in current Louisiana and were called Cajuns, a slurred version of Acadians.  That also explains the presence of their French influenced dialect.  Impress your friends at the bar with that little bit of trivia.  

One side note, I am reading this book on the Kindle Reader for PC.  It seems that as I am getting older more mature, those evil publishers are printing books with smaller type.  With the free Kindle Reader,I can download Kindle books to my laptop and read them in a slightly larger font.  I can also read in a poorly lit room (i.e. any room in our built in the 40's house).  Another advantage is that the Kindle version is generally cheaper than the hardback and I get it within seconds of ordering it.  There are also a lot of free books available for the Kindle.  The only downside is the fact that they aren't books.  As a former bookstore owner, I really like the smell, feel, and look of a book.  So I will probably end up buying hard copies of this one and a couple of others I have read on the Kindle.

A Thousand Words

I am changing the title of my blog to A Thousand Words.  As in a picture (or photograph) is worth...  

I just finished reading River Season by Jim Black.  It's a quick read, but a deep one.  Anyone who grew up in the 60's or 70's in a small town will identify with the teen narrator.  One of the feelings I came away with, was one of loss.  I don't think my daughter will have the same nostalgic sense of her childhood.   While the characters in this book went through some trauma, it was all tempered by an innocence that is not present today.  Even in a town as small as the one we currently live in, my wife and I would never allow our daughter to wander and explore the way we did as children.  And that is a great loss.  I think the world is a much more dangerous place than it was 30 years ago, even in small western towns.  On the more optimistic side, my parents probably felt the same way about the world I grew up in.  And my daughter will probably feel the same for loss for my grandchildren's childhood world!  I think this caution has cost my daughter some of the sense of adventure my generation enjoyed.  That is a very big loss.

Fall Color

All right, I got the political stuff out of my system. For today anyway. Just wait for what the President does next. In the meantime, here's the last of my fall color photographs for this year. These were taken in the Lake City, Colorado area this Fall. Now I'm looking forward to the first big snow and some good winter photography.

Politics

I have always been fiscally conservative, but generally socially liberal. While I voted for McCain, I never felt that Obama was dangerous, or really that different from McCain. I believed that anyone who made it that far in the process was intelligent and mainstream enough to at least be relatively harmless. Wow, was I wrong! From the bailout that had to be passed RIGHT NOW or life as we know it will end!!!! To the takeover of two of the big three US auto makers. To the takeover of the banking industry. To the appointment of admitted communists, socialists, and marxists to major cabinet or czar positions. Not to mention a tax cheat to Treasury Secretary! To the rush to pass cap and trade legislation that is based on veeerrry shaky global warming (excuse me since it's no longer warming we now call it climate change) science. The rush to health insurance reform in an attempt to take over 15% of the U.S. economy (in addition to the majority of the auto and banking industry). Where will this administration stop?????? Oh, apparently on defense. Can't rush into a decision to back our troops in Afghanistan with an increase in troops as requested by a general on site. Let's take over 100 days and then give them 37,000 troops instead of the 40,000 requested. It seems like a pure power or ego driven decision. It took 100 days to decide that the general was close to right, but not quite. And it took our President to make the adjustment.

Let's just get back to the Constitution. You know the one that both the President and all the Congressmen in office took an oath to protect and defend. A recent poll showed that less than 5% of the people could name 5 rights guaranteed in the Constitution. Let's get back to the basics. Here's a link to the Constitution http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html By the way, it's not nearly the 2000+ pages needed for the health insurance reform bill.

Fall is coming

Fall is coming!! It's getting down into the low 30's in the morning here. And the leaves are starting to turn. We went for a hike into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and got these shots. The aspens are starting to turn. I drove to Lake City yesterday and they are really turning up there. This weekend we will be camping west of Crested Butte near Lake Irwin. If it's not too cold or rainy. We got rained out last weekend. Either way, I plan to go "leaf peeping." For my Texas family and friends where the foliage goes straight from spring green to summer brown & crispy, leaf peeping is looking for fall color. Hopefully I'll get some good shots.

The Old West

The rodeo was in town. Cattlemen's Days in Gunnison draws visitors from all over the world. We had tourists from Germany, Japan, and Switzerland. Not to mention those from nearby Connecticut and Vermont. When we would take vacations in Arizona during the American vacation offseason of May or October, we would hear a lot of European vacationers at the Grand Canyon. Especially German and Japanese travellers. It seems like people from all over the world are fascinated with the American west.

Wigwam Motel

I am about to have one of my photographs published in a newsletter published by the Arizona Office of Tourism. Their manager of creative services found my photograph of the Wigwam Motel on Flickr and asked permission to use it in an upcoming newsletter promoting travel on old Route 66.


The Wigwam Motel is a unique motel in northern Arizona, where, as advertised on numerous highway billboards, you can "sleep in a wigwam tonight." The motel received a boost from the animated movie, Cars, which featured a small town motel with traffic cone shaped rooms. The Wigwam capitalized on this exposure by bringing in vintage cars closely matching those in the movie and parking them in front of the rooms.


The Galaxy 500 and Impala were two of my favorites. My earliest childhood memory of our family car was of an Impala like this, only a kind of rusty brown color. And my Grandpa Doode had a yellow Galaxy 500, predictably called "Old Yeller."


I also liked the old Pontiac, at least the cool hood ornament. And of course, everyone likes 'Mater from the movie.

I also got some good photographs of the neon signs in front of the motel, using a no flash setting, and long exposure. And of course a tripod. Converting the photograph to black and white in Photoshop gave it a more nostalgic look.




You can see more of my photographs of Arizona at my website.
http://www.mountainsandcanyons.com/

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Wildflower photography

I finally invested in a new lens for my Nikon D40. I bought a macro 70mm to 300mm zoom by Tamron. Living in a small town, most of my purchases like this come from EBay. So I had bid on several before I got this one. Good news is that I got a good deal on it from a member who had bought it only a couple of months earlier and then received a Nikon zoom for Father's Day. So it is in perfect condition and I couldn't tell that it had ever been used.

Nothing like a new toy to get you going again! My first experiments were with the macro function. The first photograph above is an extreme zoom on a dandelion head. The second is on a wildflower in a field near Taylor Park, Colorado. The first rule in using a strong zoom, is use a tripod. The second, third, and fourth rules are use a tripod, use a tripod, and use a tripod. The zoom not only magnifies the subject, but also any movement. The constant wind also made getting a clear shot a challenge.

We drove over to Crested Butte to get more wildflower shots and came across a herd of horses just north of town. They were in a valley below us, with some nice wildflowers on the slope between us. I was able to use my new zoom to get a couple of more good shots, again using my tripod!

Check out my website for more of my outdoor photography of Arizona and Colorado.
http://www.mountainsandcanyons.com/

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Fourth of July Balloons

Gunnison, Colorado has some event planned for practically every week from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Last night's fireworks were impressive, especially for a small town. Today was also the final day of the hot air balloon festival. Unfortunately the first two days were either to humid or windless. So Friday they didn't get to fly. Saturday they tried, but ended up just bouncing from block to block, not really getting airborne. Today was great though. I got to Jorgensen Park in time to take photos of the balloons inflating and taking off. Of course the alien was the most popular. The colorful balloons make for very good photographs, even while on the ground.

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