Ophileia- A Candid Conversation With a 3 year-old

This morning after finishing my work-out as I was making my back to my belongings I encountered a brutally honest 3 year ago. “Why are you walking with that stick,” she asked. “It helps me walk better,” I said. “So you can be really fast?” she said. As I pulled on my sweats she continued chatting away, “this is my nana,” motioning to a grey haired woman slightly older than I. “What’s your name” I asked ? “Ophelia,” she replied. “I know a song named Ophelia,” I said as I looked at Nana. Nana gave me a nod to affirm that I was correct Then Ophelia looked out at the men playing basketball shirts vs skins. “Why are they playing naked,” she asked. “Men can do that sweety, we can’t,” said Nana. “That man has boobies,” she said pointing at a chubby bball player. “He doesn’t” motioning at me,. “Mommy has boobies,” she continues, Nana stands up, hands Ophelia her coat and says “let this poor man finish getting his coat on.” I am so glad Ophelia didn’t say I had boobies. That would have shattered my frail male ego

 Ophelia The Band

A picture is worth a thousand words

Good photography and good writing are each, both an art and a craft, requiring intangible talents and learned skills.  More often than not, endeavors in each medium require refinement before the piece is finally finished. Writers go through countless sheets of paper as they write, rework and rewrite. Photographers snap innumerable images and employ a myriad of techniques to capture the desired essence of an image.

I first began to dabble in photography my senior year of college. We studied basic camera functions as well as composition, lighting and darkroom techniques. The image to the left is that of a “Comparison” darkroom assignment, where the identical negative was developed numerous times using different processing techniques. Aside from requiring a darkroom and darkroom equipment the whole process was quite time consuming and you had to wait hours or days from time the picture was taken until you could actually view the end result.

Let me give you some examples: As I mentioned in my “Handcycle Diaries” blog on my rides in the summer I had spotted a couple spots that I thought would be provide ideal locations for fall foliage pictures. For whatever reason, the leaves of this past fall weren’t as vibrant as I had envisioned and I was a little let down with raw pictures I had taken.

There were a few that I liked but none that jumped out and screamed fall…but let me share with you two examples of ugly duckling photos that actually turned into pictures I am proud of.

This photograph was taken in early October on a ride at a nearby forest preserve. I liked how clouds and tree-line reflected on the water but there isn't any of your typical fall colorings. Some of the tress had already lost their leaves while others had muted colorings and many remained green.





My MacBook has HP PhotoShop as an editing program which I began to experiment with

Black & White and Sepia coloring

are shown here

These pictures are examples of some of the "special effects" options

The image shown below is the one that I chose to go with...by making adjustment to the color "saturation" levels (whatever the hell that means) I finally achieved a colorful fall image.

Since I was having trouble getting colorful fall pictures I turned my attention to the ground level and can up with these images.

"Cropping" the image tended to bring you in for a closer view and I felt the Black&White version was more striking.

 An Olympus E420 was used for these pictures.

A Ford Man

                                   

         My late father was a Ford man.  I never knew exactly why he had such an affinity for Fords: maybe it was the fact that his father liked Fords and he grew up with Fords on the farm. Perhaps he was impressed by the Henry Ford story and emulated Ford’s success. Maybe it was that in his youth, my father shared some traits with the young Mr. Ford. Like Mr. Ford, my father was raised on a family farm, and, like him, aspired to be a mechanical engineer. But as it did with the lives of so many others of his generation, the attack on Pearl Harbor forever altered my father’s life. He withdrew from the engineering program at the University of Illinois and enlisted with the Marine Corps where he eventually became a pilot. 

         Whatever the reason, over the course of his life, my father bought a lot of Fords. He also told me a lot of stories about his life on the farm before Pearl Harbor, and these stories were filled with Fords: Ford cars, Ford trucks. “Have I ever told you about what my brothers and I would do to the Model-A Ford before we headed in to town on Saturday night?” he would ask.  Or, “Your Grandpa Wert had such a way with animals, he trained a crow to ride on the Ford tractor with him as he did his field work,” he would say. “That damned crow was so smart, he inched his way closer to the exhaust pipe for warmth as the air temperature dropped the later we got in the harvest season.”

Once he was in his story-telling mode there was no stopping him. He retold his stories, over and over, every time with the same words, cadence and inflections. Again and again he would recount his Saturday night exploits- how he and his brothers would mount the mud tires on the Ford truck backwards so the treads would create a loud rumble as they headed down the blacktop. He always ended that story with: “The town-folk called us the ‘Prairie Ramblers’ because of the rumble that truck made as we sped into town.”  And Dad would always end his crow stories with a postscript, explaining how a hired-man brought on to help with the harvest shot the pet crow bringing about the family’s only war causality.

For some reason in the early 1960s my father broke from tradition and bought a Chevy. I don’t know whether he succumbed to Madison Avenue advertising, or if the decision was prompted by mid-life identity crisis. Maybe the analyst he and my mother were seeing suggested a new car as a way to spice things up.  Evidently, the analyst himself was driving the coolest little Alfa Romeo, so maybe envy influenced my father’s purchase, because my father bought a Chevrolet. Not the sensible full-sized, four-door family car that you would expect for a father of three, but a snazzy little two-door Chevrolet Corvair.

         His venture away from the Ford family was short-lived. Almost as soon as my father purchased his first-ever and last-ever Chevy, all sorts of negative news concerning the safety and performance of this car became public. Because my father was very safety conscience, it didn’t take him too long to recognize the folly of buying a Chevy….As a form of penance perhaps, to trade it for a Ford Custom, the most stripped-down, back-to-basic, no-frills Ford available.

         I think the only features the Custom had that weren’t available on the Model-A of his youth were an electric starter, a heater and an AM radio. Aside from those upgrades, this car was basically four wheels and an engine. No power steering, no power windows, no air-conditioning, no decorative trim, no padded dashboard.

He justified this Spartan purchase by calling it his “airport car”: because the car had nothing worth stealing, it would be safe to leave it unattended while he was away.

As an expression of our  distaste for this new purchase, we children nicknamed the car “the Ford Dog" and as a joke, would sometimes chain it to the flagpole in front of the house with a bowl of water and a bone near the front bumper. 

"By the people...not Buy the people"

At the start of this year I joined the environmental ministry team at my church. I really wasn’t sure what they did exactly, but with what I see occurring around me vis-à-vis drought, record heat waves, super storms, hurricanes & melting icecaps, I felt I had to do something. At the very least I would like my children to be able to say, “Dad tried to do something.”

Joining at mid-year there were already many projects that were already under way, but somehow I found myself volunteering for the letter writing aspect of our mission. (Go figure)

At the time I didn't really understand what types of letters we were trying to write. But being the political maven that I am, an article I read on Huffington Post or Think Progress, jumped out and grabbed my attention. A resolution calling for the end of corporate personhood was introduced on to the floor of the US House of Representatives in early February.

We all know how Mitt Romney’s, "corporations are people too, my friend"  snippet  resonated on the campaign trail,  but surprisingly enough, the statement is true. Back in 1886 the Supreme Court declared that corporations were “persons” and they enjoy the same rights as human beings.  

Although not your run of the mill “Save the Whales” issue, I explained to my other team members how the Citizens United decision regarding money, “freedom of speech” and corporate personhood affects EVERYTHING: Analysis of the 2012 Presidential elections by the Illinois Public Interest Research Group found that the presidential candidates raised $310 million from 3.7 million small donors. This same research showed that the top 32 Super Pac donors, who gave an average $9.9million apiece, raised almost $317million; This 02.20.2013 Think Progress article by Josh Israel Illustrates how corporate money is another illustration of how special interest groups are able to influence public policy.

After seeing all of this they understood the relevance of my interest in the

“We the People Amendment & http://www.represent.us/citizens-united-2/ We are still trying to work out the kinks of how to package and deliver this message to our congregation but I thought I would go ahead and share this message with you.

I don’t think that the BIG GUY up there will mind too much

So please do yourself and me a favor and sign these petitions:

http://movetoamend.nationbuilder.com/petition

http://www.represent.us/citizens-united-2/

If you are really motivated you can write to your US Congressional representative here:

US House: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

US Senate http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

I am reluctant to use my blog to air this bit on American dirty laundry, because, believe it or not, the www. really does mean world wide web and readers from around the world have “enjoyed” my postings. If you think about it, we “America” should be embarrassed by this display of the “American Way.” Our democracy is supposed to be “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Not this “of the Inc., BUY the Inc and screw the people” deMOCKracy thing that is going on now.

Anyway, peace be with you my friend

New Dawn

Mayan Long Count Calendar Reset
5,125 More Years 
USPS Forever Stamps Save the World 
<;-)

PREPPERS BE DAMNED

USPS Forever Stamps Supersede Mayans
Long Count Calendar Reset to Day #1

Oh Really!!??? A Three Shell Limit for Duck Hunting... WTF!!??

I just heard something on the Thom Hartman show that really, really, really bothered me.

A caller asked Mr. Hartman if he was familiar with the 3-shot duck plug rule. Mr. Hartman said that he didn't hunt so he wasn't familiar with hunting rules and regulations.

Apparently the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has the following rule:

No person shall take migratory game birds: With a shotgun capable of holding more than three shells, unless it is plugged with a one-piece filler, incapable of removal without disassembling the gun, so its total capacity does not exceed three shells.

In deference to waterfowl, hunters are only allowed three shots because the birds would probably be out of the kill-range of the shotgun blast after 3 shots.

I typed the following in my browser:  (Why is there a 3 shot duck plug rule?) 

and the following was one of the answers;

 ....in the land of the free we think conservation is a good thing. The 3 shot cap for sporting guns gives a little edge to the birds we hunt. Makes it sporting... rather than laying down a anti-aircraft barrage when a bird passes by.

So what does that this about us? Out of our concern over “sportsmanship” duck hunters can only take 3 shots before they have to reload. But a paranoid concern over protecting ourselves and our 2^nd amendment rights somehow makes it ok for some HUNTERS/SPORTSMEN/GUN ENTHUSIANTS to own a semi-automatic gun with a 110 round magazine.

I don’t know, but if you need more than 10 shots to protect yourself you should either: 1) get your eyes examined or 2) move to a safer neighborhood…

Call your representatives and urge them to back the Senate bill introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and the House bill introduced by Rep Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) & Diana DeGette (D-Co) that would prohibit the manufacturing of high-capacity magazines.  

Find Your Representative Here

Find Your Senator Here





Melt The Guns by XTC 1982   After thirty years, this song is still relevant. 

Or Lynard Skynyrd's "Saturday Night Special" from 1976
Hand guns are made for killin'  
Ain't no good for nothin' else 
And if you like your whiskey 
You might even shoot yourself 
So why don't we dump 'em people 
To the bottom of the sea 
Before some fool come around here 
Wanna shoot either you or me