9 23 12

YOU JUST KNOW IT'S GONNA BE GOOD!

 

OK, it's Sunday and I slept late!  Sat out on the porch in the quiet with my first Pike Place Roast and enjoyed sixty seven degrees, blue bird sky, no wind, no dogs barking, or trains over on Frink Street. 

 

 My current church of choice.

 

  Read a passage or two from a publication left off by the wanderer's from the Latter Day Saints, and all is good.  No self recriminations for a life past, for a change, and just enjoying a moment of quiet reflection.  Probably won't get me saved, but sure is a nice change.

 

My thoughts like the fall flow in a stream.

 

 

Old life moving on!

 

Saw the new Clint Eastwood movie about a cranky old man I can identify with.  Should be an Oscar but won't because of the empty chair.   They're a little ideological out there on the left coast.

 

My two football teams won yesterday.  Both televised at the same time.

 

It's all good!

 

I just know it will be in the eighties today.  Later on.  Three o'clock or so.  But low humidity will make it just outstanding.  Just the kind of day to do some "Free style photography".  That's where you take the camera and tripod, the car, and anybody else who happens to want to go and hit the back roads looking for subjects.  Over the years I have been blessed with (a) the opportunity to do that and (2) the luck to find some outstanding photo ops.  And it's more fun than setting up shots....well, maybe not but being behind the camera is where it's at.  All the rest of it is "Necessity", but the photography is the Nirvana.

 

 However, I find both aspects of the business better than the homeless shelter.

 

 

 

 

 

9 21 12

Guess I am lucky!

 

Just imagine having to walk through tall grass, dodging the hooves of cattle bigger than yourself, just to get breakfast.

 

America is certainly exceptional.  I have some bacon for breakfast that comes out of a plastic package bought in the super market.  I won't bore you with how it got from the belly of a pig to that package.

 

The eggs come in a non recyclable plastic container....all washed and individually stamped with some company logo.

 

My orange juice is in a paper container, so processed that it might as well have been "Tang" to start with and not a peel in sight.

 

The toast started out somewhere in Kansas and now if put in water would shrink up to a ball of dough the size of a peanut.

 

And my waffle comes out of a toaster covered with syrup (?) consisting of  more chemicals than found in a high school chemistry class.

 

But it's all good!  Until of course it's not there any more.  God Bless the "Preppers"!

 

But I have digressed.  The poor guy/gal dodging the cattle hooves is appropriately called a "Cattle

Egret".

 

 

Seen here all cleaned up in his/her mating plumage.  The image taken at the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine, Florida.

 

But of course if you're all dressed up to mate, you need one of the other side as well.

 

 

Me, I would much prefer taking a nice shower, adding some crummy cologne, and hangin out at some nice restaurant with ma sweety.  Maybe a Hardys or an upscale Mickey D's.  You can tell, I'm just all class!

 

Aint' America Great and aren't we lucky?

 

 

9 20 12

The Surf Fisherman's Exceptional American World

 

I am always amazed at what I have done in the past to pursue some of my favorite pastimes.  Take fishing or hunting for instance.

 

You get out of bed somewhere before 90% of the sane people of the world.  Endure any kind of inclement weather.  Often times the worse the better.  Head off in car or boat to reach a place that only a few people in their right minds would care to see still before old Sol comes limping up over the horizon.  Shiver in temperatures that have frozen a half glass of water on the back porch overnight.  Put enough black coffee into your stomach to burn through the bottom of an old galvanized bucket.

 

But heck it's worth it..........Right?

 

  Right?

 

You better believe it.

 

The isolation of the early day with a close friend, maybe even a son or daughter....Draws people like me to those human experiences like flies to day old road kill.  I would not miss them for all the world.  Call it camaraderie, sport, relaxation, vacation or maybe love.

 

  Maybe to some of just no interest.  I pity them.

 

To me however, the sun making it's presence felt as a red ball or as simply a light grey over the horizon is something akin to prayer.

 

 

 

  Sharing the fork of a hundred and fifty old oak tree with a teenage son on his first bow hunt for deer is a memory etched into my cerebellum forever.  So what if I missed that buck deer at 30 yards....killing is not what it was all about.

 

 

  Or when a daughter slowly pulled her first blue crab to the surface clinging to a piece of salted eel tied to the end of a cotton string.  Steamed crabs are sure tasty, but that's not what it was about.  How lucky can I be. 

 

 

 Particularly when I turn on the TV to see children of the world burning our flag, hurling rocks at some unseen person with a tear gas gun, or watching some idiot pack a child with a body suit made of TNT.

 

Just lucky to have been born in a country where I can sit in that tree, net that crab, or stand in the cold surf trying to lure a giant fish to my bait.

 

 

Think about that.

9 19 12

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS!

 

 

I made this picture some years ago.  This is Annapolis, Maryland and the Naval Academy is center upper half. 

 

My partner and I decided to get a friend to fly us all around the Chesapeake Bay to take pictures of the Bay, The Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and Annapolis.  Particularly the State House.  We made about four circles around the State House snapping away...low and slow.  I might also add that because the wing of the plane was below the cockpit, we had to fly at on a ninety degree angle to the ground ...

 

 around in circles..

 

My partner was in the rear of the plane and I in the copilots seat....might as well have bee India for all I knew about airplanes.

 

At any rate after the fourth circle I said...."If you don't get this thing flying level, flying in a straight line, I will throw up all over the dials in front of me!"  It's a wonder he didn't break a wing off  the thing coming out of that flight pattern. 

 

He asked if I wanted to fly the plane....often it's easier when you drive.  I told him I could also empty a church when I sang a hymn, so flying the plane probably wouldn't be advisable either.

 

Long story short.  We got all our pics.  I wasn't sick, but wasn't right all the rest of the day either.  Haven't been right since, some would say, but that's just probably an impartial observation.

 

9 17 12

Looks like "Amazing Grace" took first place.
http://fineartamerica.com/contests/clouds-only.html?tab=leaderboard

Only in America can you enter an art contest and happen to win out of 260 entries.  Blind hog finding an acorn comes to mind.

Here are a couple of comments I stole from facebook friends which seem to make pretty good sense to me and witness American Exceptionalism.
 

The Green Thing
By Pinky Leurssen
 

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations." She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property, the books provided for our use by the school was not defaced by our scribblings.

Then we were able to personalize our books. But too bad we didn't do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building.
We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we older folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?
---

I might ad that we look at all the things my generation did (way back then) and compared to what happens today....We and our kids were/are exceptional.

---
Along the same lines another friend of a friend posted about how things have changed, for the most part to the better. 

But also witness to how some today would reasonably not  understand us seasoned citizens, she said...

"I'm going to poll my freshmen tomorrow to see who knows who the hell Joanie and Chachi are.  Heck,  they don't even know who Ron Howard is or that Henry Winkler was a bad-a mo-fo before he was that old dude principal in one of the Scream movies."
---
Maybe all that will give me the grace to help me understand how some people vote the way they do! 

AMERICA'S EXCEPTIONALISM

 

There is a man in Bishopville, South Carolina that has taken minding the lawn to a whole different level. 

 

A couple of years ago we spent the better part of a Saturday with him at his home.  Just walked up onto his lawn and he came right out of his house to greet us.  Of course we were totally unannounced, but that was not bother.  His name is Pearl Fryar and he is unbelievable.  He has created somewhere around four acres into the most fantastic Topiary garden you can imagine and it was all a hobby.

 

Go to his link above and visit his home page....Very much modernized today, but a few years ago he squeezed his hobby between his job and church.  These are some of the photos I took of the American Exceptionalism.  Visit his home page for more photos.

 

PEARL

 

 

 

9 16 12

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

 

2012-1776=236

 

No, I haven't been around that long...close maybe and some would say my opinions would have better fit in the earlier stages of that 236 years.

 

Folks, that 236 years represents the greatest experiment in human achievement the "WORLD" has ever seen.

 

In 1776 a bunch of "Revolutionaries" believed in freedom and the success of man as God saw it.  Gasp!  Did he say God?  Not a bunch of sand encrusted Imans that simply would kill all those that don't believe.

 

 

It started here with a revolution....Long and hard as at Valley Forge.

 

It took a long and costly Civil War giving us a Gettysburg.

 

But we got through all of the nasty fighting to become the greatest country that the world has ever seen.  I know some of you are gritting your teeth about that comment....if so, try Venezuela and the Dictator Chavez.  You'd probably become BFF's.  Or maybe a cave in Tora Bora!

 

The bridge above in Valley Forge is an example of the growth in achievement that this country has created.

 

 

Then in 1952 American Ingenuity produced this huge span of the Chesapeake Bay.

Those two bridges over the bay are but a wonderful example of the exceptional creativity, strength and growth of this country since the days of that covered bridge in Pennsylvania.

 

Protect it.  Protect our history.  Protect your way of life, because there are those who wish to make it so fragile.