Winter is coming.
To mix things up, so this space is not always a place of tension and fraught moment, an image.
Peace.…
DISTAL MUSE – OBSERVATIONS, OPINIONS, EPHEMERA, & VIEWS
I have a few things to talk about here, confluences, if you will. This is an important day in several ways.
This is my 1000th post for this blog.Â
One thousand. Averaging, I think, 3 or 4 thousand words each, that’s a lot of wordage. I don’t even want to think about what that might be had I been paid for it.
There are a handful here I thought might be worth marketing, but that’s not why I put the Distal Muse up. I did it this way to avoid being told what not to say (or to say) and because, frankly, this is all personal, which is to say entirely my bullshit.…
The title will make sense next post.
I haven’t written here much lately due to an inability to choose among the rich possibilities of commenting on the mass stupidity of my fellow countrymen. Sorting through the morass of charges and justifications for the last four years, I’ve come to a conclusion (which I will hold until new evidence suggests I have it wrong) that nothing from the Fox News-driven fanatic fringe has anything to do with policy. From what I can glean from everything I’ve seen, a significant number of people either don’t care or wouldn’t understand policy issues. That’s why there appears to be no compromise.…
Weather patterns are insane. It’s over a 100 in the Pacific Northwest and here in Missouri this morning it’s 70. It’s July. Â Our civilization is lurching toward solving what may be the greatest civil engineering project in history and hopefully reversing the last century (or more) of human-contributed climate change. Â (You know, I used to have arguments about this back in my 20s and the counterargument was always “The planet is huge! Do you know how much pollution goes into the atmosphere when a big volcano erupts? How can we possibly add so much that things could change?” On its face, a certain logic, but you have to leave out key obvious factors, like the constant production of the greenhouse gases, and the fact that the planet, if we assume a certain homeostasis with natural systems, was already at an optimal point of balance.…
I do this from time to time because (a) I’m bored, (b) I’m curious, (c) something breaks, or (d) I want people to think I’m engaged, paying attention, and updating because, you know, I’m trying to be current or relevant or…
Yeah, whatever. I’m never sure what it is I’m trying to accomplish when I switch themes. Probably the equivalent of Spring Cleaning, only not as physical.
I any event, I’ve been doing the usual gaping in dismay at the national (and state) political scene, trying to find something to say that might make it all fit an understandable set of parameters, and the last couple of posts I wrote about it were attempts at explaining larger forces.…
One of the images that came of our recent Polar Vortex Event. I’m rather pleased with this one. I like abstracts that are clearly Something. Anyway, click on the image and it will take you to the gallery, and if you’re so inclined, you may hang it on your wall. Â (Especially you folks in Florida who seem to have “weathered” this all in fine form.)…
It snowed. For a photographer, this is an opportunity to make images that will literally vanish if not made at once. Long ago, this was the only reason I looked forward to snow, which is otherwise, for me, a major inconvenience. Â (As long as I can sit in my warm house, with a hot cup of coffee, and just gaze out at it, I’m fine. If I have to go anywhere…well.)
But I did make some photographs this time, just around the house, which fortuitously offers quite a few settings for interesting images.
I am a lover of good black & white, but I confess that color has enamored me more and more since my last lab job and I was forced to learn color printing.…
It’s two days past Valentine’s Day. There’s a blanket of snow on the ground and I’m at home with my best friend. I wanted to take a little time to brag about her.
I met Donna in 1979 (correction, I am informed it was January of ’80), started seeing her in 1980, moved in with her by the beginning of 1981, and we’ve been together since. She is, simply, my best friend.
Of all the things she has done for me, the one that mattered most was that she simply accepted me. For who I was (whatever that may have been at any given moment) and supported me in anything I wanted to do. …
We stayed up till past midnight, so heard the revelry, stepped outside in the cold and saw some beautiful firework bursts, and retreated back inside where we toasted each other, wept, laughed, and made stabs at promising to have a better year. Some excellent bourbon and he late hour and I feel a bit…strained.
But it is the first of a new year, and while I am not much for symbols, I respect them to the degree that they enable rather than encumber.
This morning, we had this:
Tomorrow? Who knows? Â I exhort you all to find beauty, turn away from bitterness, do something fine in the world, and indulge your dreams (where possible).…