11 29 12

I am sleep deprived because I stayed up late last night to see the numbers!

 

Well once again my government has let me down.

 

 

 

  I mean, I was really looking forward to all that free money from the lottery.  It's just like Obama money!  But wait a minute, that's right I don't live in Detroit and they no longer need my vote.....so I'm not entitled.  Just think, I could have paid off my grand kids share of the national debt, not to mention my own.

 

And what we could have done with that money!  Given portions to kids and grand kids and needy cancer kids and wounded warriors and people on the dole what actually really do qualify for dole and pregnant teenagers raped by horny great grand fathers [not necessarily related] and people whose life was wiped out by a national disaster....and on and on and on.  All in trusts [like a Romney trust]  so we would have somebody else to demonize because he became successful.  But then again we wouldn't be demonized because we could also start some kind of windmill farm on the roof tops of buildings in New York City, so that could get us off the hook with the occupy types.

 

  Otherwise let's see.

 

Of course any of it we spent would probably qualify for some kind of sales tax or other depending upon the state we spent it in. 

 

Federal, state and local taxes would take an immediate big chunk.  Then when I die, the inheritance tax (death tax for those of you with a public education) takes another chunk and by then I am sure that they would get hit with an income tax on that.   And by then this bunch of greedy incompetents in DC with have devised a wealth tax [which is coming by the way], and which the progressives think is just lovely.  So that initial windfall would probably end up being taxed six or seven times by people who produce absolutely nothing for a living or the economy.

 

Finally, at the end, my people not even born yet would have to sell the ranch that their people not even born yet bought with the money they inherited and paid tax upon from other people not even born yet.....just to pay the final tax bill.

 

Maybe just as simple to go to Vegas and drop it all in a slot machine.  Same effect...different thugs.

 

Probably not worth it all in the end.  But a couple of mill in the short term would have been nice.

 

Oh and did I say...."This society is all mucked up"

 

500 Million dollars...............Really?

 

11 26 12

"CONJURING"

 

Yesterday was one of those days when I was able to do some chores and enjoy myself.  Chores included working the Internet and social media to promote my photos and the website that I refer fondly as simply "The Galleries".  Then there were the leaves to be raked in the front. Back yard leaves will get theirs today.  For the first time in my life, this yard work is actually manageable.  I can cut the grass with a "Push me pull you" mower instead of the old John Deere riding second mortgages.  John Deere incidentally make the best lawn tractors...I have worn out three in my lifetime.  But here south of the sun, the property isn't that big and can be "Manicured" as opposed to "Mowed"

 

With the chores done, football took over.  At mid afternoon the alma mater played Wisconsin in an amazing game.  First you have to know that I was blessed to spend eight years at Penn State earning two degrees and learning how to be an alcoholic.  Ain't education grand?  This year has been a real disaster for the blue and white.  You have all read or heard of the troubles endured by the student body because of a jerk of an assistant football coach now in prison for the rest of his life. 

 

 I watched Joe Paterno coach his first game and saw Rip Engle coach, so I go back a bit with those guys.  Short version is that the current players had nothing to do with all the troubles despite the NCAA and the media trying to involve them.  And the whole thing literally killed Joe.  The players were given the chance to leave the University, and some did.  Those that stayed weren't expected to win more than a couple of games.  Long story short, they went 8 and 4, and I have never been more proud of a bunch of guys that got dealt crap and turned it into manhood.  Thank you to the players and new coach.  But not so much thanks to the University itself or the NCAA for that matter.

 

The second half I watched my adopted thugs soundly beat Clemson.  It was a good game but I had no vested irrational desires regarding either team.  It was a good game.

Then Notre Dame put together a fantastic good old fashioned goal line stand for five plays from the two yard line.  All pure football with people who don't make millions of dollars [the players] to do so.  Don't like Notre Dame much either, nor USC but then again what do I know?  I'm just a grumpy old man!

 

11 24 12

One of those "Conjuring" mornings

Conjuring what I am thankful for!

 

Just sipped into the first lick of Pike Place and felt the tang in the taste buds on either side of my tongue.  Sunday mornings around here in Shangra La South are generally quiet and this morning is no exception.  That leaves me with the computer, a blank slate at this point, a warm cup and the constant ringing [more like a buzzing] in my ears.  Doctor says nothing to do about that.  Tinnitus or some such fifty cent word for ya had your bell rung too many times and your hearing now isn't what it should be.  Sort of like a white noise background that doesn't and will apparently never go away.

 

Makes your thoughts turn inward and as we all now that is not a good thing for me to do.  Makes me conjure!

 

There's that 40 degree morning on the big lake in a borrowed canoe.  Salmon flies dragging

about seventy feet

behind.  Nothing but crystal clear nature all around.  The salmon even left me alone that morning....more conjuring.

 

 

I have been blessed!   Despite all the rotten things I have done in my past.  There was that wild and turbulent morning on the Outer Banks, more years back than I wish to admit.  Not totally alone, but placed alone by a storm that the night before had been a hurricane.  That morning I put the nose of the Ford Explorer into the wind and driving rain, sat on the open, protected tailgate and watch mother nature tear up that famous spot called Cape Point.  North Carolina's premier surf fishing spot that day held one crazy cameraman, his wife and a far crazier lone surf fisherman.  Just the right spot to conjure.

 

The Chesapeake bay was for fifty years conjure central for me.  I was blessed again in having a camera and one hour lab business for a bunch of years.  This allowed me to buy film wholesale, which I did, and burn it I did.  There is so much to photograph on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay and I had the first and last hours of each day to go out and conjure.

 

So, as it stands this morning I took the chance to wander back to the index of my mind and drag out a few memories for which I am ever thankful.  As a photographer, I am beginning to understand more and more just how much each image means to me.  It is personal even if at the time the camera was on super burst taking six frames per second.  It's not because the pictures are pretty, striking or even award winning.  No, it's more about the remembering and the "Conjuring" of the event for which I am thankful. 

 

 

11 23 12

THE MORNING AFTER

 

OK, I slept in.  Ten AM and the second cup of Pike Place....Bless your heart Starbucks.  We along with a lot of other folks got through another turkey mauling yesterday.

 

Fortunately, this year I did not
Over do" with turkey and gravy, which I love but also which drives my stomach to the barking point.  Yup, barking....that's just a shade this side of barfing!  So it's all good.

 

 

 

The local food pantry was doing a brisk business and yes, Mr. President....you did build that!

 

No Black Friday silliness for me today, although I do have to go that that adult candy store for men.  You know the kind with row upon row of enticing stuff that you have to put in a plain brown wrapper just to get in the house.

 

  Of course, it's Lowes.

 

  The local Christmas tree dressing and erecting...see I told you it was an adult store, starts today.

 

  The neighborhood sells Christmas trees to the residents for the front lawns.  Everybody... Dan and Ginny...is supposed to dress them with white lights so that the streets are all bordered with lights at night.  Colored lights are gauche!  Bet you thought I didn't know such a word, didntchya?  I am told that I need a Camo cord to run from the house to the street.  Camo electric cord?...where the H do you buy that?  Lowes, Bass Pro Shop or Duck Commanders?

 

Finally, you have only till the first of Dec. to take advantage of my surprisingly generous [but ridiculously small] discount at the website.

 

SPZMXM

 

Use it at checkout and have a great black Friday!

 

 

 

 

 

11 21 12

Wishing all my family and friends a very happy Thanksgiving.

 

 

11 19 12

PRE BLACK FRIDAY!

 

That only means it's not Thanksgiving yet.

 

  Duh! 

 

 I bet you thanked the "Great Turkey" every day when you lay your head down, for ending the political funny season. 

 

Now I lay me down to sleep,

Obama only makes me weep!

 

Please make Nancy's face lift disappear,

And Boehner's balls re-appear!

 

Mitt ya shoulda spoke Spanish,

And hung out more with MSNBCish!

 

The "Great Turkey" really does reside in Washington, DC don't ya know.  He is all knowing and learning more about ya every day, so "Ya better watch out!"

 

OK, that's over. 

 

More on that later!  But if you thought the election stuff, which has been going on for four years without anybody actually governing.............then you're going to love this blog for the next month.

 

 

  Yup....Christmas is coming and I am lurking for your last cent of disposable income.  Only so I can have some disposable income to continue to perpetrate the season.  You see when you spend money for Christmas or one of the other holidays.......it just circulates around.  Economists say that it multiplies, but I cannot attest to that.  I know it circulates tho.....you pay me.....and I spend it.  Just that fast.  It's a simple concept interrupted only by those greedy people who work for the Great Turkey.  Taxes and death sort of thing there.  Wait till next year....death may be the economic answer to the tax deal.

 

Until Dec. 1 I am giving you a small discount at Fine Art America.  Buy something and use the following code at check out.

 

SPZMXM

You can find the website here, but to make it easier just click on easier.  Think Christmas cards....yeah I have holiday and seasons greetings cards as well.  You will find a large sepia and black and white gallery right up front.  Also if your decorating, think groupings.  Like in three pictures or five hangings.....I get to redistribute your wealth to my creditors.  Works for me!

And don't forget to look at my most bought and visited piece.  You can buy it and the rest of the stuff in a whole bunch of presentations, all with a 30-day money back guarantee.

And remember the "Great Turkey" is watchin ya!

 

 

 

 

11 17 12

More back roads to the front of my mind!

 

In that twilight when the alarm has gone off twice and your mind is working and you wish that it wasn't.

 

Perhaps you begin to feel the chill of the morning.

 

Or you start to think of all the chores you have to do around the house.  After all it is Saturday and I slept in already.

 

 

You drift off again and can really see just what those chores can do.

 

 

God Bless the guy that invents the twenty five hour day!

 

 

.

11 16 12

 

More back roads to the front of my mind

 

 

An apparent student driving a year old Beamer speeds by the old man without a second glance.  At least he could have thought I was a vagrant with my walking stick he muses.  What can he be, seventeen maybe a precocious eighteen driving a forty thousand dollar car?  He shakes his geriatric head remembers his first.  A 1940 ford coupe, painted  [at the time] a sharp metallic green waiting in the driveway on his 17th birthday.  A $100 gift from his father just waiting to be made into the hot rod of the day.

 

Then he hears it.  A ghost of those formative years.  Off in the distance, hidden between the sounds of a train's mournful train whistle and a plane on line to land at Philadelphia International.

 

  The distinct sound of a baying beagle dog with his nose full of rabbit scent and screaming his delight loud enough to be heard for a number of miles.
 

 

 "Pal" he thinks and a small tugging begins in the corner of one eye.  No one knows where he came from or how he adopted the old man, but the dog known simply as "Pal" became a constant companion to the boy.  Furthermore, no one knows what happened to the dog when the boy moved away.  He might have even slept by the back step at the Corner House but he was always there.  Never happier than when the boy would embark on one of his daily adventures.  Following along at his side no matter what.  Except when rabbit filled his nose.  Then he would disappear for long howling stretches of time.  But then that was the way it was with a beagle.  Fiercely loyal, but all rabbit hound.

One last thought of pets while sitting there.  His parents bought a lamb which he had named "Jerry"  to help keep the grass down at the Corner House.  There is no known explanation for the name, but he recalls that Jerry made just wonderful lamb chops.

 

 



11 15 12

More back roads to the front of my mind

 

Let's see, when you are in the third grade...your what 8 or 9 years old.  So any cogent explanation of the world has to wait for sixty or seventy years to make any sense to anyone over the age of 12.

 The old man thinks that is a pretty good explanation for his thoughts as a turkey buzzard drifts over his head making lazy circles and feeling the atmosphere for any rotting debris below.  Amazing how those birds have a totally different view of the world than do we.  Sure it's an areal view, but the scent is the thing that grabs them alighting only to feed on the carrion it finds. 

 

 The barn of his youth is gone. Probably would have been smaller than he remembers anyway.
 

But just like the buzzard, he can almost remember the feelings in his nose and even on the taste buds of a large working barn with thirty milk cows and three horses.  On the ground floor there is the scent of cow and horse waste. Not really all that bad once you get used to it.  The second floor and the tell tale musty sniff of ground corn and wheat mixed with some soybean meal to provide feed for the farm animals and chickens.  The third and most exciting floor smells of dried hay and straw baled into building blocks for the forts of nine year old minds.

 

"Jim T" ran the barn.  Literally ran [managed] it.  Took care of the farm animals.  Hand milked the cows, twice a day, every day, every year.  He fed the myriad of cats milk, directly from the source, hitting them squarely in open mouth every time.  That source of calcium kept them balanced with all the mice they were in charge of corralling.  He mid-wifed more pregnant cows than probably now inhabit that urban county.  In fact he helped to deliver the first live birthday gift given to the old man by his grand parents.

 

 

 

 

11 14 12

More back roads to the front of my mind

 

Sitting on the knoll overlooking the scene of his youth, the old man leans heavily into the split rail fence post of a decorative corner in what was once a field of wheat to his left (East) and the fields leading to the Corner House to the west,  It hasn't been that long a walk from the parking lot but speed is not the purpose of this visit.  Memories are!  A little to his left and somewhat behind lies the home of his great grand parents...called by the family the "Big House".  He never did get an explanation from his father or grand father for the reason of such a name.  Other than it was the original home of the family and Big House just seemed appropriate as a sign of respect for those who lived there.  That was the home of the first "Francis" and the one who was the secretary of Agriculture.  The family is now up to Francis the fifth. [Poor kid]

 

 

Picking peonies for the table and not market.  Otherwise, why the neck tie. 

 

He did remember having to deal with those folks on one occasion, probably on the event of the birth of his sister.  For some reason he recalled that he was exiled to spending the night with them in the Big House.  Those folks were seventy years beyond dealing with someone his age, he thought.  They just didn't understand that it took time to get from one end of the farm to the other and would hence make him late for dinner.  As punishment he had to eat cold cereal without milk for dinner.  That he can remember, but not the folks that perpetrated such a sentence.  His answer to this was to run to his grandmother's and explain his lack of nourishment.  Upon which she cooked a full course meal for him before he had to return to the old folks to spend a fitful night.

 

He chuckled at the apparent competition between his grandmother and the older folks.  She [Anna] was a round lady with grey hair most of the time pulled into a bun in back.  Grandfather [Paul] he recalled, was a tall figure in a Lincolnesque sort of way.  These were all no-nonsense people.   In fact, grandfather's  middle name was Lincoln, leading all of us next generationers to claim some sort of relationship to the famous president. 

 

 

His mother Jeanne was a very tolerant woman, but there was also some competition there with grandmother as well.  It's seems to him that grandmother was the center of more than a few squabbles with her in laws.  But to the old man, she was the go to person when he was in trouble or needed something.  All of which brought back memories of a near death experience he had with grandfather.

 

  They bought Studebaker vehicles for family use and one day he went with Paul on a trip to West Chester on some mission or other.  Now Studebaker's were made with doors in the back seat that opened reverse to how they are made today.  In other words when they were opened in a moving vehicle they caught the wind and were pushed open harder, faster and further than expected because of said wind.  The boy had seen his father or grandfather open a door when moving slowly and pull it closed to make sure the latch was firmly caught.  Never a problem.  Shaking his head and trying to reason the reasoning of a nine year old, the old man laughed out loud and said...."How'd I make it this far?"

 

As they sped along U.S. route one on their trip, one of the back doors shook, obviously not closed tightly.  Doing what he saw his mentors do many times, the boy open a back door hoping to close it tightly.  Of course he had no idea they were speeding along at 40mph.  Well, long story short he recalled telling his parents and grandmother..."the wind caught the door and I played Superman, flying out of the car to save Metropolis!"  They picked stones and cinders out of his body for weeks as his entire front took the brunt of the flight from car to roadside.  Grandfather had no idea what happened and had to be pulled over a half mile ahead by another driver.  Superman?

 

11 13 12

More back roads to the front of my mind

 

The farm belonged to his grandparents and lies roughly between Station Road on one side and Temple Road on the other.  The other two borders of the property are Smith Bridge Road and a nondescript one track railroad, along which a small stream held some errant trout and many creek chubs that helped develop the old man's love for fishing. 

 

The old folks [grand parents] were of the old and proper school that seemed to make children with a firm belief in God and Country.  Those people scratched out a living early on but were more successful as transportation improved and they had better ways to get their crops to market.  Great Grand Father was once the Secretary of Agriculture for the state of Pennsylvania, but this current old man could not seem to gin up any memories of him.

 

Grains such as wheat and corn were the primary crops, but mushrooms grew in six or eight buildings.  Stopping for a breath and view down hill he wondered which it was....six or eight?  They were all gone.  He did recall the times when he was allowed to go and help pick that crop,,,,A totally dark room which ran for some fifty yards and housed a half dozen levels of horse manure which was the soil of choice by those famous Pennsylvania mushrooms.  The houses were so dark that miner's lamps had to be worn just to see which delicacies to pick.  There was also a three acre plot where peonies were grown and in the spring the blooms would be picked, packed and shipped to the markets in Chester and Philadelphia.  Asparagus was another of the plants grown for home consumption and the market.  And of course there were some thirty to fifty dairy cows milked daily by a tenant.  Baling and storing hay and wheat straw was a dirty, dusty and sweaty job in which he had taken part.  Following the potato harvester and picking up the spuds was another tedious job he did.  At least he was able to pick up garden worms at the same time and that supported his growing fishing habit.

 

His gaze carried along the field bordered by Smith Bridge, looking west to the first childhood home he could remember.  Simply called the "Corner House".

 

 

The dwelling that seemed gigantic back in the day, but today would be seen as a Cottage.  Remembering that it was up until the third grade that he lived in that home.  Today he can see that the acre and half lot is really not the football field sized image of his historic recall.  Again there were other memories which bubbled forth.

 

Looking east past the central barn and over the primary cow pasture there is a low spot and a weathered tree, all that remains of the tenant's home and the old man's first childhood playmates.  There was "Jim T", the tenant and almost father figure.  Two of his children were Tommy and Herby and he can't remember the rest.  Certainly not the girls, because from third grade and younger who needed girls anyway.

11 12 12

A back road to the front of my mind 

 

The old man parked his vehicle in a maze of blacktop and white lines, all never meant to be found where they were.  Just like the brick buildings which covered a favorite rabbit hide of years past.  Instead of bucolic scenes of milk cows chewing their cuds, the county school system spread before him.  The early morning sun on the horizon betold of the time of day and the parking lot was still driver's choice.  But in a couple of hours he knew that choice spots would require a favored parking sticker obtained only by years of tenure doled out by a teacher's union for which he had little respect.  This Pennsylvania school district is of today and not the hundred and twenty five pastoral acres of his youth some 65 years ago.

 

With a heavy sigh and knees that scream at him as he swing his legs out the door, he none too gracefully lands on solid ground, holding on for dear life to the steering wheel and open door frame of the SUV.  Maybe it was time to give up his pride and get one of those smaller, foreign, "Green" cars which would not be so difficult to enter and exit.  One which would cut his travel expenses in half.  But then after all the years with the SUV's,  he would feel as though he were driving a skate board.  And if in a crash in one of those things, the only result could like a crushed egg in crumpled tin foil.  A smaller lower car would also only mean that he had to climb UP, instead of fall DOWN, when he got out the the vehicle.  And which was easier anyway.  And maybe this year gas would actually go lower, though he knew that was just wishful thinking on his part.

He had driven up the long drive past the homestead house and was now walking slowly down the hill towards "The Farm".  The Farm was and still is bordered by three country roads and a non-named single rail road track.  The walking stick had become a part of his outdoor activity in the past few years.  Mainly to fight off neighborhood dogs at first but now more for support when stepping on errant unevenness in the ground.  The ever present camera slung over one shoulder and sunglasses to give the impression of being hip, but more to cover  the glare from the cataracts.

  Somehow with all the "Growth", or was it urban sprawl, around him had completely changed the photos in his memory bank. The border of a three acre field was still maintained with the hedgerow of Lilac bushes, sixteen feet high 60 years ago.  A great place to push rabbits and pheasant alike to the end only to have them disappear rapidly into an adjoining wheat field.  But to a child's mind, the hedgerow held more anticipation than actual satisfaction of having shot something.  Shooting and killing was never really the point of it all anyway.

Further down the hill on the left was the primary pasture for the milk cows and then the barn.  On the right was one of the first mushroom houses in eastern Pennsylvania.  Past the barn, the complex roles  of  farm management and animal husbandry were played out in different buildings.  A circle surrounded by farm house, milk house, barn, mushroom house, all purpose office building and garage.  Now the farmhouse is an historical sight and museum with only the garage standing the rigors of "Development".  And so called renewal.

 

 

 

8 15 12

What a way to start a work day.

 

Sure it's Friday, but a work day still....We're not France yet!

 

The first cup needs to be replenished and warmed, just so.  Coffee seems to be my current recreational drug of choice.  So as soon as my fingers start to tremble  I will know the caffeine has taken hold I will be able to type much faster even though with perhaps with pretty much less clarity.  And that is my dirty little secret to putting together something for a somewhat awake readership.

 

For a large chunk of my adult life, my drug of choice has been alcohol, even though I am allergic to it.  Stuff makes me do and say stupid things. Inflames my liver which argues with my brain about when enough is enough.   But I would not make it illegal.  We tried that when a bunch of goodie two shoe woman forced the national no drink laws.  How'd that work for ya?

 

  I see a couple of states out west coast [where else], have just legalized pot [I really can't spell marijuana, and maybe that's why the also call it Mary Jane.]. 

 

 Now there is an idea whose time has come.

 

  We already have a vast majority of the populace who naturally have no clue about what's going on in the world .............. without drugs.

 

  Now we put those same people on pot and say "Have at it"!  A clear pathway to more hallucinatory govt activity.

 

To legalize pot is to just put stupidity on steroids.  But the ruling class has found another source of tax revenue.  So follow the money!  Maybe we should just legalize the whole damn bunch of illegal drugs and thin out the ranks of the stupid.  That way we could raise a bunch of taxes to pay for the mistakes Washington makes in their own display of stupid....................AND ultimately end up with all those that vote for large intrusive socialistic govment taking overdoses.  A road to smaller govt. growth through drug attrition.  Probably just create a who new bureaucracy to tax and control it.  It would probably work because the number of doctors needed to treat these hip, educated, publicly accepted potheads has already been reduced by the clairvoyant law called Obama Care.

 

And don't say that I have no sympathy for those poor addicted leader folks.  I do!  Just think how difficult it is to have to spend a few hours each day lying to one another, whilst standing erect on the house floor. thus making it even harder.   And then being forced to go to phony, plastic rock n roll cocktail parties each night with other shallow people, who talk only to themselves, and who daily decide the destiny of 300 some odd million equally stupid people stoned up on their own drug of choice.  And all the sexual high jinks with the leaders would never make it into the papers because, well who remembers anyway.  The press sure won't follow up on such silliness.....Hell they're part of it.   It is really a hard to lead..."Bless their Hearts".

 

We could even go so far as to draft a new bill of rights and wrongs for the lambs out in the public to follow.  "The dooby do bill of dooby do rights and dooby do wrongs" And before each congressional session, a huge cauldron is lit with of course only the best grass wafting through the chamber full of ethereal enthusiasm.

 

Hell, I may have stumbled upon a new direction for the country.  The new and enhanced "Sodom and Gomorrah" fine tuned by your hippity dippity senator  who can afford the better stuff than you and I which makes him or her smarter than you or I.  After all, we voted them into office.

 

Oh what fun..........Then we truly could "All just get along"

11 8 12

Remembering

 

It's 37 degrees this morning at 7:37 (interesting play on numbers there) and the cup of Pike Place Roast actually has steam rising over the edge where I place my lower lip.  The dog and I have chased the eighth million squirrel this month off the bird feeders.  For an urban setting things are pretty quiet still.  No sirens blasting over in the hood but I notice there is a train disturbing our world as they make their way through road crossings hauling their loads of granite from one of the two quarries.

 

 

These are actually awesome places to see and as I said we have two of them.  Columbia sits right on the line where the sand of previous oceans meet the rock of the midland plains which lead up to the upstate hills and eventually over to the Smokies of Tennessee.

 

Incidentally, there is a sizable of wild Elk herd roaming the northeastern part of the Smokies.  A long way in mind and deed from the quarries of the Midlands.

 

 

I have no idea who the urban mountain man is, but he followed us around for the better part of a week. 

 

Amazing just what a hot cup of coffee will do to the imagination of people.  But the squirrels are temporarily gone as is the train and once again I am left with my fractured thoughts.  I guess it's a sign of old (er) age that the mind wanders to things past more readily than things immediate....like "Why did I come into this room again?"

 

But I am not ready for the big dirt nap yet" 

 

 Which reminds me yet of another item of the past in a head stone company I frequented a number of times.  Remember it like it was only yesterday..... now where did I put that pen?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 7 12

Let the National hangover begin!

 

On top of the list is congratulations to the president and his loyal followers.  You have signed up for the following tasks in my opinion.  Tasks for which I will personally hold you liable.

 

This is what you have accomplished in the first four years.  Fear on the part of business, and unclear policies under which business operates.  High unemployment with not clear plan.  No National budget.  Higher taxes.  Disregard for the well being of those in the service of this country.  A crippling health care bill that is a threat to all but especially to seniors.  No plan for what to do about the national debt, medicare, or social security issues.  And on and on!

 

Therefore I task you with.... 

 

1.  Get unemployment down to manageable levels that give people "Real" hope and not just some slimy political slogan.

 

2.  Reorganize  "All" Government regulations that impact business.  Eliminate all that hinder the        expansion of the Capitalist ideals that have made this country successful. You haven't created those successes, you hinder them. 

 

2.  Get to the bottom of what really happened at Benghazi.  Review and strengthen the support for all of our people serving overseas.  Redefine their purpose.  Protect them.  OH and come clean!

 

3.  Review and support a complete overhaul of our armed service  so that they are paid appropriately and taken care of on a long term basis for their financial and medical needs.

 

4.  Pass a meaningful National budget.

 

5.  Redefine, simplify, and refine the way this country taxes it's citizens.

 

6.  Downsize Government.

 

7.  Finally, allow business to grow to the extent that a new "boom" will provide decent people a decent wage that will in turn create a tax income that will naturally help lift us from the pits of financial despair so that the National debt is eliminated.  See Ronald Regan!

 

8.  Finally, shut up and do that which the people of this country have hired you to do and stop it with the ideology bit.  We have an ideology, it's called the constitution.............Follow it!

 

Mr. President, if you can accomplish any one of the above then you will  have earned my respect. But we'll see. 

 

 I just have no faith in you based upon past performance or lack thereof.

 

 

11 5 12

History, Americana and other Cogent Imaginations

 

Quite tumultuous times we find ourselves wandering around amidst.

 

  As reported here, I spent the week before Sandy (WBA) in a few of the middle Atlantic states, namely Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey.

 

  Just after we left the area ....  then there was Sandy!

 

 

 

  And we spent the next few days checking on family and friends, their well being and property conditions.  You have all seen the damage reports and the destructive force of mother ocean.  It is just appalling.

 

What all that mess served to do for me, is to remind me of just how precious our current situation is and how quickly that can become "History".  So, it is no wonder for me, that some of the images I made in Ocean City, Md are, or can, become iconic representatives of  a time or era past.  Nothing From Cape Henlopen in Delaware north to and including the Connecticut shoreline will ever be the same.  It may be rebuilt, but never the authentic same.    It's sorta like buying antiques....be careful....because there are so many reproductions today that your investment could quickly become negative.

 

 

I don't know if that sign is even there anymore.  On the Boardwalk at Ocean City, MD.

 

Now, there is another storm which has been blowing for the past two years.  About to strike tomorrow and with the same force as Sandy!  If not more because it affects the entire World and not just the devastated east coast.  That's right..............A FREE WORLD ELECTION! 

 

It's DBE ... Day Before Election!  Where will you be ....Day Of  Election... (DOE)?

Voting, I hope.  Notice I did not say for who!  Or whom?  Spell check doesn't handle that!

 

Suffice to say your vote and mine with either cancel each other out or be additive.  In the former we will just have to let other and wiser minds prevail.  In the latter, lets just hope it's enough. 

 

Becauses nothing will be the same on DAE!

 

 

 

 

11 2 12

CATCH UP

 

It's been a busy time...I've been busy....you've been busy and those of you from the Northeast to the Mid Atlantic have been extra busy.  My thoughts and prayers have been with you.  We spent the week before "Andy" around ground zero.  Well at least from Ocean City, Maryland north to North Wildwood, NJ.  Of course it was great weather and then after we returned to South of the Sun, and like you watched the obliteration of much of what we saw the previous week.

 

We lost the son of a very dear friend just after the storm.  He was helping a friend clean up a tree that had been knocked down by the storm.  An errant limb struck him and he passed a day later.  Certainly a lot different than watching television.

 

  RIP Tom Frey, you were a good and decent man only trying to help a friend.

 

I have posted some of the iconic images of the shore which may or may not still be there.  God Bless all those folks in NY, NJ, VA, DE, MD, and NC.  I hope you all  heal well.