Well, that was a year, wasn’t it?
2020 was the perfect exclamation point tp the end of the Trump presidency. In all fairness, he probably would have lost this election anyway, but his lies, mismanagement, magical thinking, ignorance, finger-pointing, utter lawlessness and shocking incompetence told us all that we needed to know about this business genius, who knows less about the management of a supply chain than my dogs know about the inner workings of a wristwatch.
More importantly, this year showed us, in stark relief, what we need to understand about ourselves. A pandemic that should have brought us together only further divided us. The wearing of a piece of cloth over one’s face to protect fellow citizens from an explosively contagious and dangerous disease became a political statement. As of this writing, we have lost 350.000 Americans to this virus. In ten months. In WWII, we lost 407,000 Americans in combat. In four years.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Freedom is a s freedom does. This pandemic will continue to burn out of control, regardless of vaccines, until we reestablish some sort of community bond based in a willingness to look out for one another and make small sacrifices in order to protect and defend fellow Americans. The dumber and more self-absorbed we are, the longer the agony continues. It’s your nightmare, America. Cherish it.
Can you imagine this current population of self-absorbed whiners facing down global fascism in the mid-20th Century? Making the sacrifices our forebearers made to protect this country? Don’t like masks? Try gas rationing. Think you have a Constitutional right to go drink and party with your pals at the local bar? Try slogging through the jungles of Guadalcanal sleeping in mud and just trying to keep you and your pals alive. No one is going to miss spring break and come home with the thousand-yard stare.
If our current crop of Bravehearts were called upon to make genuine sacrifices like we did only three generations ago, then The Man in the High Castle would be actual history, instead of just a dark and terrifying alternate universe work of fiction.
Also, we learned that our tolerance for crypto-fascism is pretty high. Of course, Trump is not the root cause of this. We are our own root cause. Trump is merely an accelerator and amplifier. But then Trump did set the stage for an assault on our democracy by proclaiming, before the election, that the only way he loses is if the election is rigged. Why a Trump loss was so inconceivable to the cultists, given that Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight Presidential elections, is beyond me.
They insist, without evidence, that the election was stolen. Most Republicans believe this. If the only possible result of an election is that your side wins or the election was stolen, we are very close to Banana Republic/African dictator territory. There would be no point in having elections at all. Every recount produced the same result. Team Trump marched into court and had every challenge and every bit of supposed “evidence” thrown out of every Court in the land. No Court slammed the door harder on Trump than the Supremes, where Trump himself had appointed one third of the sitting Justices. Even William Barr, the most servile of Trump’s bootlickers, stated there was no evidence of fraud at a scale that would call the results of the election into doubt.
In one of the last acts of clownish defiance, the Attorney General of Texas thought he had the right to sue another State over that State’s duly enacted election laws. This suit was joined by several red State AGs and126 Republican members f Congress, I am quite sure that if the Attorney General of California sued Texas over laws that make it harder for minority citizens to vote, the good citizens of Texas would have a collective pants crap one could smell from space. And speaking of Texas, we should note Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-Asshat) failed lawsuit that sought to make the Vive President the sole decider of which Electoral votes should be counted, But that’s the belligerent stupidity and hypocrisy of Trump World.
To borrow a phrase from Gerald Ford, if the Founders were still alive, they would be rolling in their graves.
Yes, it was a horrible year. But we learned some truths about ourselves. These are hard to look at but truths we must force ourselves to see—that is, if we care about self-governance and we care about the American experiment continuing. 2021 is not a fresh start. The first day of the new year leaves us exactly where we were on the last day of the old year.
I remain cautiously pessimistic. Cy Vance has January 21st circled on his calendar.
Here we are again. Three mass shootings in the course of a week, 251 in the last year. We are no longer entitled to feel shocked. We should feel shocked when a week passes without one.
If the murder of over 20 six-year-olds at Sandy Hook did not change the course of the country, we are foolish to think recent events will be any different. That was almost nine years ago. The shooting up of a Walmart or a night club district or a food festival is scarcely more shocking than Sandy Hook.
Thoughts and prayers. Wash, rinse, repeat.
We believe what we want to believe and damn the facts. And some of our beliefs are so outlandishly stupid that they approach comedy.
Ohio Repressive Candice Keller posted on social media just after the Dayton attack that the fault lay with drag queens, open borders and even Obama. She then went on to accuse liberals of playing the blame game. Really.
And there is the Lt. Governor of Texas who said these events are the result of not allowing students to pray in schools. Really.
I could fill this post with hundreds of pages of politicians and their cowardly deflections-playing to the stupidity of the people who keep electing them. It’s mental illness. It’s video games. It’s open borders. It’s gun-free zones. It’s Obama. It’s drag queens. It’s preventing students from praying in schools. (Note: there will be prayer in schools as long as there is algebra.)
But you know what it’s not? It’s not the rise of white nationalism/supremacy/terrorism. It’s not easy access to lethality that the Founders could not even imagine in the late 18th century when they drafted Amendment Number Two. It’s not racism. It’s not unbridled and irrational fear of “the other”.
And it’s certainly not the rancid elephant in the room…Donald J. Trump.
There is no need in this post to go into his long history of racism (1973 Consent Decree, Central Park Five, birtherism, etc.). That record is clear and thoroughly documented. What is also clear, for those supporters who have the intelligence and courage to look, is his record as President:
- Encourages violence at his rallies
- Gives a wink and a nod to right wing violent extremists after Charlottesville
- Labels asylum seekers as “invaders”
- Incites hateful and un-American chants of “lock her up” and “send her back”
- Tells duly elected members of Congress to “go back to the countries from which they came” (all citizens, all women of color, and three of which were born here)
- Cancels, by executive order, an Obama era regulation making it difficult for mentally ill to buy a firearms
- Makes a joke of a supporter’s shout of “shoot them” (immigrants, that is) at a
MAGA rally
And for those who need to be convinced of Trump’s complicity—read the El Paso shooter’s manifesto. See if you can tell the difference between that and one of Trump’s rally speeches.
Teleprompter Trump lumbers out to the microphone-looking like someone who has a gun to his head-and attempts to say something Presidential. He says:
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.
These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul…”
To which I say—you first, Mr. President. How about some personal responsibility? Responsibility for your divisiveness, your hatred, your racism. Your intentional playing to the fears and bigotry of the stupid.
This is not leadership. This is cowardice. We will see how Twitter Trump aligns with Teleprompter Trump. We will see how your next MAGA rally goes. We will watch what you do, not what you say.
And to the supporters who get ramped up by this behavior…that’s not intelligence. That’s stupidity. And to the supporters of these antics: you are not just complicit in the problem. You are the problem.
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?…Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!…WHAT HAVE I DONE?
-“Once in a Lifetime”, Talking Heads
Making sense of the 2016 Presidential election has been a challenge. This goes beyond the normal ebb and flow of American politics. This is a genuine point of inflection where the American experience changes direction in a dramatic way.
We have elected a man based on fevered populist rhetoric and visceral, irrational hatred of the opposing candidate. The Electoral College was designed to prevent a demagogue like Trump from becoming president. What was designed to be an emergency brake turned out, in 21st Century America, to be an accelerator.
Anything resembling principle has been replaced by partisanship and naked lust for power. The Republicans could not get enough of Clinton’s email mishap but Lt. Gen. David Petraeus was on the short list for Secretary of State, who, one would assume, had to notify his probation officer that he was leaving the state to go interview for the job. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who has had his own “classified material” problem, will be our new National Security Advisor.
Mishandling classified material is not such a big deal after all, unless, of course, it was done by Hillary Clinton. Down the rabbit hole we go.
Trump promised he would “drain the swamp”, bring manufacturing jobs back and be the voice of the “little guy”.
Let’s think about bringing the manufacturing jobs back, including opening the coal mines. Trump and his supporters are peddling the false notion that the loss of American manufacturing jobs is due solely to unfair foreign trade. The fact is (to the extent that facts even matter anymore), automation, innovation and increased productivity has killed far more American manufacturing jobs than NAFTA, Mexican rapists sneaking across the border or Chinese currency manipulation.
As a case in point, let’s turn to Trump’s first intervention into private enterprise to “save” jobs—the much-reported Carrier escapade. This was designed to be a PR stunt and to that extent, it was brilliant. But what about the substance and how did this stack up against Trump’s promises?
There are still more Carrier jobs leaving Indianapolis for Mexico than staying. The taxpayers of Indiana got shaken down to the tune of $7 million to save 850 jobs (for who knows how long?). Trump promised he would impose a 35% tariff on companies who shipped jobs overseas on those products coming back into the US markets. Does Carrier face such penalties?
Nope. And as a bonus, there is the cruel irony that even the people whose jobs the deal did not save will be paying taxes to subsidize the jobs that that were. This is not the Art of the Deal. This is Trump jangling the keys to distract the people who voted for him while he lines the pockets of the crony capitalists.
These jobs are not returning, no matter what Trump promised. Trump is not going to unplug the computers, disassemble the robots or make American manufacturing less efficient. The coal jobs are not coming back unless coal can become price-competitive with other sources of energy. Trump, for all his boasting, cannot turn back the tide of economic globalization or world commodity prices.
Turning now to “draining the swamp”, let’s see how that’s going so far.
The incoming Secretary of the Treasury made a fortune by foreclosing on people during the Republican-inspired financial collapse of 2008.
The incoming Secretary of Commerce made a fortune as a vulture capitalist closing plants and shipping jobs overseas.
The incoming Secretary of Labor made a fortune by marketing hamburger porn and wants to replace his workers with robots.
The incoming Secretary of Education has never had children in a public school, but is a billionaire and a major contributor to the Trump campaign.
And let’s not forget the incoming Secretary of State, who has no diplomatic experience, but does have experience cutting giant oil deals with Vladimir Putin.
Drain the swamp? Maybe when he said “drain” he meant “fill”. In the post-truth Age of Trump, anything is possible and language no longer has meaning.
As the oligarchs gather, who in their right minds think that this is good for the “little guy”? No, Trump is setting up a Putin-style kleptocracy that we can only presume will have Putin-style results. This crowd does not have the backs of white, blue-collar and frustrated workers.
“What is that beautiful house?” Something that we will soon not recognize.
“Where does that highway go?” Nowhere that the disenfranchised white blue collar workers think.
“Am I right?…Am I wrong?” The Trump supporters will answer this for themselves. Time will tell how long it will take them to realize they have been conned, especially when they will no longer have the jangling keys of Clinton’s email and other cheap tricks to distract them.
“MY GOD!…WHAT HAVE I DONE?” No more Obama to blame. No more Clinton to blame. No more evil libtards to blame. They will soon see that insults, falsehood and empty promises do not make for good policy.
Portland Oregon may be unique among cities in the United States. Apart from having a section of the old airport carpet attaining a semi-cult following (it was the Grand marshal of their Starlight parade, after all), it is a weird and wonderful place, and filled with activists, pot users (now legal!), counterculturists, hipsters, artists and unemployed or underemployed young people. Occasionally, you can find Green-Peacers hanging off bridges.
Speaking of bridges, a visit to Portland will undoubtedly mean crossing one of 21 bridges. The Willamette River cuts through the city and the mighty Columbia flows past just to the north.
The Portland bridge that caught my eye was the Hawthorne. It is the oldest bridge in Portland, built in 1910 replacing two prior bridges built on that spot in 1891 and 1902, respectively. A complete history and description can be found here.
It is a typical truss bridge with an atypical vertical lift draw. The towers and the counterweights of the draw mechanism makes this bridge visually attractive, to me anyway.
The Hawthorne Bridge at night:
Hawthorne Bridge, Portland OR,
Geeky Stuff:
Nikon d800e
Nikkor 70-200mm 2.8
ASA 200, f/16 30 seconds
Love and support of friends and family
Bodega CA is a small village near the Northern California coat in Sonoma County. Alfred Hitchcock set his avian nightmare “The Birds” in this quaint and unassuming place and it does not appear to have changed much since it was the principal location of the movie.
Interestingly, the film does not have a musical score and the words “The End” do not appear at he end of the movie. More about the film, including interesting trivia can be found here.
The church where the characters sought refuge from the attacking birds looks exactly as it did in 1963. It is an existing parish and I have pictured it below (with the church’s marquee) to emphasize its continued contribution to this small community:
Church from “The Birds”
Camera: Nikon 800e
Lens: Nikkor 12-24 zoom, set at about 22mm
Exposure: f/11, 1/500
Black and White rendering: Silver efex Pro 2
At the entrance to the Golden Gate stands the Point Bonita Lighthouse.
On a recent outing with my wife, brother and my cousin I learned a lesson that I guess I need to keep leaning: don’t over-focus.
The mind, not the camera.
We we there in the last moments of daylight and it was a perfect West Coast sunset. The lighthouse is the only one in America that is accessible only by a suspension bridge, and while on the bridge I was hyer-focused on this:
Point Bonita Lighthouse, Late Afternoon
While I was fussing with all of the doodads on my gear to get this image, my brother tapped me on the shoulder and said “You need to to turn around.”
And when I turned around, I saw this:
San Francisco Late Afternoon
The lesson is that when in the field, always take the extra moment to just turn around. Now I have two photographs that make me happy instead of one.
Life is full of surprises.
What seems to be missing in all the noise and waste of the outrage over the death of Eric Garner in police custody is how Eric Garner had so much in common with the Tea Party. In his final moments he was standing by the ideals of the Tea Party, the militia soldier-boy wannabes (Praetorian Guard!!) and the rest of the extremist right wing nut-fest that has ruined our political discourse.
First, let’s revisit Mr. Garner’s last words:
Get away [garbled] … for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. Why would you…? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn’t do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me (garbled) Selling cigarettes. I’m minding my business, officer, I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. please please, don’t touch me. Do not touch me.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe…
These words could have been uttered Cliven Bundy, except, of course, the “I can’t breathe” business because Mr. Bundy is still alive. Sometimes heroes are not martyrs.
Mr. Garner was a man minding his own business, objecting to overreach by an oppressive State, harming no one and using non-compliance to protest unjust taxation.
Resisting evil government tyranny.
So why are Sean Hannity and the other right wing yackers not lionizing Mr. Garner as an American hero the way Hannity tried to sell Bundy as an
American hero?
In fact, the American right seems to have lined up with the evil government oppressors and some are quite vocal about shrieking that Mr. Garner had it coming. I doubt very much that would have been their reaction had Mr. Bundy been killed in his confrontation last summer. Hannity would have had a field day, nominating Cliven for the Presidential Medal of Freedom and pressing Congress for a national holiday to honer the fallen hero.
So what are the differences between Mr. Bundy and Mr. Garner?
Mr. Garner was unarmed. Mr. Bundy was not only well armed, but surrounded by the ever so self-important soldier boy militia (Praetorian Guard!!). Maybe the Tea Party/Militia crowd thinks Mr. Garner should have armed himself if he was going to sell loosies on the street corner.
I have not seen anyone from the Fever Swamp make that argument. It must be something else.
Mr. Garner was engaged in chump-change cigarette tax evasion. Mr. Bundy is engaged in the evasion of millions of dollars of legal grazing fees. Maybe the Tea Party/Militia crowd thinks that Mr. Garner should have upped his game and engaged in felony-level fraud.
I have not seen anyone from the Fever Swamp make this argument. It must be something else.
When Mr. Garner said “don’t mess with me”, that is the same as the Tea Party/Militia mantra of “Don’t tread on me”. But Mr. Garner did not have a yellow flag with a snake on it. Maybe the Tea Party/Militia crowd will not embrace someone who is so deficient in political symbolism.
I am not seen anyone from the Fever Swamp making this argument. It must be something else.
Lastly, Mr. Garner was black. Mr. Bundy is white. Yet the Tea Party/Militia crowd (along with the rest of the Fever Swamp) explodes in outrage like deranged howler monkeys at the mere suggestion that this could be a contributing factor.
It must be something else.
Joucas, located in the Luberon area of Provence, is a quiet hilltop village. And I do mean quiet. It does not get much tourist traffic because it is between for more popular Provence destinations of Gordes and Roussillon. In fact when we were there, it seemed that we were the only tourists wandering the streets.
We were invited into the home of a resident for a tour of her 300 year old, four story residence. It may be that as tourists we were a rare sight, or maybe this lady invited every stranger she encountered into her home. Hard to say.
In any case, if you are ever in the region and need a quiet break from the tourist hustle and bustle of Provence, stop here and enjoy, even for a few moments, the quiet beauty of the region.
Steeple of the Church Overlooking the vinyards
Cobblestone Street
Its been a year and a quarter since I was wheeled into that operating room being almost indifferent to the outcome of the surgery. Either I would wake up and no longer be desperately sick-or I would not wake up and I would no longer be desperately sick. A win-win I thought as I started to count backwards.
Renal failure is the ultimiate perspective checker. No what happens now-the challenges, the frustrations, the seeming intractable problems of everyday life I can always say to myself (and I often do) “This sucks but it beats renal failure.”
Apparently I am the poster boy for successful outcomes for a kidney transplant. I show no signs of rejection, and all of my blood chemistry is normal. The transplant docs tell me that if they are going to experience trouble with a transplanted kidney it will most likely show up in the first year. Transplanted organs to not last forever, and I know that I may need to go throughout this again. But I have a reasonable expectation that this kidney will outlast the rest of me.
It has been an amazing year. one that I did not deserve. I am fully recovered from the surgery, I am traveling again and am doing the best photography of my life. I can walk my dogs on brilliant October afternoons while I can take in the active social scene around Lake Merritt. There are a new cast of characters in my life that would not be there but for this experience. Every moment that I am alive is a blessing.
But there is something else that is present every moment I am alive. There are thousands of people still on the road that I just left. Many will die without leaving that road. Many are not as fortunate as me in having excellent health insurance or supplemental resources needed to cope with this condition. Many do not have extended networks of loyal friends willing to donate a kidney on their behalf through the National Kidney Registry’s paired exchange program. Many do not even know about this program. I will be mindful of these people and their continued suffering with every breathe I take that I do not deserve.
I am just one survivor and I do what I can. But collectively, we all need to do more. The need is great, the suffering is real, and the resources are short. Please support research into this disease so that someday, no one else will have to go through this. Consider becoming a living donor, even altruistically. Altruistic donors start these paired exchanges that can save several lives.
Above all take care of yourselves. If you are at risk for this disease, do what you need to do to actively manage this condition as you can have many fruitful years with declining kidney funtion. And don’t allow yourselves or your loved ones make choices that put yourselves at greater risk.
Now I close this series with the pledge that I made to everyone who made this possible-I promise not to waste the time you have given me.
Ever since the collapse of a portion of the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during an earthquake in 1989, we have all known that this portion of the bridge was just one earthquake away from a total collapse (the western span, being a suspension bridge is not so vulnerable).
In September 2013, the replacement span was opened for traffic, just a mere 24 years after the original partial collapse. After all, this is California-the land of rapid innovation and first mover advantage. For the last five years or so, we watched this structure taking form and shape right beside the the the bridge that had scared the bejesus out of us generation earlier. Now as we glide over our new and improved structure, we are watching the old bridge in reverse process, disapearing before our eyes.
If you want a more complete history and context of this effort, you can find it here.
This is the approach to the new bridge, taken just after sunset. To find this spot is not hard if you know how to do it. Here’s how to do it:
Take the last exit before the toll plaza and stay on the little road, keeping the freeway on your left. Drive to the very end of the road where you will find a safe place to park (calling this a parking lot would be overly generous.) Keep walking (note-at high tide part of this pathway will be under 2-4 inches of water, bring your boots) toward the bridge for about 200 meters where you will find a small wall-just step over it and walk down to the water line.
Camera: Nikon 800e
Lens Nikkor 70-200mm zoom, taken at 200mm
Exposure: F/16, several exposures combined into one HDR image
Approach to new eastern span of the Bay Bridge
For contrast, this is an image of the old bridge being taken down.
Camera Nikon 800e
Lens: Nikkor 24-70mm, taken at 35mm
Exposure f/22, several exposures combined into one HDR image
Old Bay Bridge disappearing
bigdogdancer 