So What Is Three Quarters Of A Trillion Dollars Buying Us?

The Soviets – I mean the Russians – claim to have successfully tested their hypersonic missile.

The thing goes 23 times the speed of sound.

The speed of sound is a moveable feast, depending upon how high the thing going at the speed is: at sea level, I think I remember that the speed of sound is 720 MPH.

So, if the Soviet – excuse me – Russian missile were coming at us at sea level (that would probably hit a lot of hills, dales, mountains and fast food restaurants so the Soviets probably would put it up a little in the air and it would, therefore, be a little slower) it would hit the west coast of America in no time at all.

donnie got elected by Putin and the crowd so he doesn’t give a shit about that scenario – in fact he calls all the coverage of the thing “fake news”; and Kelly Anne says we are dealing with alternate facts; and the lady whose last name rhymes with “panders” is saying that the whole thing is a “Democrat Party Plot to undermine the credibility of this president”.

I really don’t care about any of the stream of lies that flows from the white house.

But I would like to know why almost 800 billion dollars of “defense spending” leaves us exposed to a missile that travels at 16,560 MPH at sea level.

And we have no counter measures.

I know donnie is a brilliant negotiator, but what did he negotiate to sell us out to that level of exposure?

Wind Vs Wyoming

Wyoming is the largest producer of coal in the United States.

The price of wind produced electricity has been plummeting and continues to plummet.

Wyoming has a lot of wind.

Apparently the market works: Rocky Mountain Power is conducting a massive buildout of wind farms in Wyoming to take advantage of that trend.

The power is cheaper than coal the moment the turbines begin to turn and the cost of building new capacity and maintaining existing capacity is much less than coal.

The technological and economic granularity of a wind farm wins hands down.

That would seem to show that the markets have been given a self-solving equation and the markets have responded in a rational manner – just like it says in all those textbooks.

But wait.

The Wyoming legislature is going to pass a wind electricity tax that will make much lees expensive, much more environment friendly wind power non competitive with coal.

Another sham from the great free market crowd.

I predict a secondary level of sham to follow: when called on the merits of their tax the legislators of Wyoming (the folks who want to exterminate wolves and grizzly bears) will rise up all armed with fiery swords.

“We must save the Western Meadowlark and others from imminent extinction from the blades of turbines.”

It’s great when serious economists, legislators and avowed conservatives get so behind the environment.

If We Make It Through December …

https://www.bing.com/search?q=if+we+make+it+through+december+merle+haggard&form=EDNTHT&mkt=en-us&httpsmsn=1&refig=d7de27b4e35844e2d2f0199a4faca52f&sp=2&qs=LS&pq=if+we+make+it+through+december&sk=HS1&sc=8-30&cvid=d7de27b4e35844e2d2f0199a4faca52f&cc=US&setlang=en-US

Merle was a prophet.

View From The Edge Of The Abyss: From CNBC

“Markets responded to turmoil in Washington. Multiple reports said President Donald Trump is discussing how to remove Jerome Powell from his position as chairman of the Federal Reserve. That discussion, as well as the recent market volatility, spurred Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to call the leaders of the six largest U.S. banks over the weekend. Additionally, Defense Secretary James Mattis announced he would step down at the end of February, saying his views do not align with the president’s.

Trump resumed his attack on the Fed on Monday, tweeting that the central bank is “the only problem” with the U.S. economy.

“They don’t have a feel for the Market,” Trump said in the tweet.

All 11 sectors of the S&P 500 are now negative for December, the fourth quarter and the full year.

Last week the Dow lost 1,655 points, or 6.8 percent. That was the Dow’s worst week of trading since October 2008 during the financial crisis. The S&P 500 also lost 7 percent for the week. The Nasdaq Composite is now 22 percent below its record reached in August and is in a bear market.”

*****************************************************************************

Apparently the fact that the United States has no President, just a nominal entity known world wide as “That Fucking Moron” aided and abetted by a hoard of poorly qualified lackeys and camp followers has finally come home to roost.

From The New York Times

WASHINGTON — “When President Trump grows frustrated with advisers during meetings, which is not an uncommon occurrence, he sits back in his chair, crosses his arms and scowls. Often he erupts. “Freaking idiots!” he calls his aides. Except he uses a more pungent word than “freaking.”

For two years, Mr. Trump has waged war against his own government, convinced that people around him are fools. Angry that they resist his wishes, uninterested in the details of their briefings, he becomes especially agitated when they tell him he does not have the power to do what he wants, which makes him suspicious that they are secretly undermining him.”

************************************************************************************

That pattern cannot be described as “emerging”.

Anyone paying attention knows that this is just the way donnie is and has always been and always will be.

Just for – a few – examples:

The accretive and cumulative foreign policy and world relationship wisdom and expertise of Wilson, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and every president since Kennedy are no match for donnie’s self- vaunted “gut”.

The judicial system of the United States is his enemy because it restrains that “gut” as it attempts to single handedly run the country ad hoc and fast and loose.

Any news not from Fox is fake.

Any “fact” is either derived from “fake” news or is negotiable and transmogrifiable to an alternate Fox Form.

He has shut down the government because Democrats won’t vote like his republican lackeys.

He thinks that he should be president for life.

I guess “that’s” enough.

However:

I find that “enough” to be too much.

I don’t think that 330 million of us can afford to just grit our teeth and hope that we somehow can muddle through.

We are getting down to where this is too serious to leave to Stephen Colbert.

The Mechanics Of Democracy

I think I remember that the ancient Greeks invented democracy.

It was a form of government in which all of the citizens went to council and voted their interests and the winning amalgam of interests won and policy was promulgated implementing those interests.

Those promulgations might have been called laws.

The reason that that direct form of government was possible was because there weren’t many citizens in those ancient Greek days.  One needed to be a non-slave, male and rich; there might have been other criteria; I don’t know.

The Romans had way too many citizens to have the Greek method work.

But they were inventive: they came up with a thing they called “Res Publica”.

In English that means “thing of the people”.

The way it worked was that kluges of citizens, aligned together in some previously agreed manner, elected representatives to the assembly of representatives and those elected representatives represented their respective kluges.

The whole idea implicitly rejected another form of government, the dictatorship.

In that form there may or may not be elected representatives, but they just are there as a conduit of privilege to an already privileged class (the dictator chose them, after all – that’s pretty privileged) but the dictator calls all the shots; the privileged chosen representatives are there to cram the dictator’s dictates down the throats of the, disenfranchised, kluges; not a pretty sight, but a form that frequently is employed and often works well enough to last for a period of time.

Not surprisingly, the Romans may have invented dictatorship as a governmental form also.

The Republic (Res Publica) prospered for quite awhile.

It prospered to the point of becoming a glittering bauble of wealth and power that was irresistible to potential dictators.

One of them finally succeeded in taking over and that form of government commenced.

Nero and the fire were probably the high point of that form, from the viewpoint of the kluges; they got a major urban renewal project.

The United States is a Res Publica: kluges of Americans elect representatives to vote for them in the national assembly.

Each of those elections are almost always contested.

In America over history two major forms of opinion have developed and matured: Democrats and republicans.

Those two groups have always had different points of view and those differences have never been more stark than currently.

So, when the national assembly comes together these days one would expect there to be not only a wide range of viewpoints – hundreds of elected representatives representing kluges from all over a huge land mass must necessarily represent a variety of points of view, but also outcomes that sometimes represent one party’s point of view and sometimes the other’s point of view.

All of that occurs non respective to whatever point of the executive might hold.

For two hundred plus years that form of government has worked in America: the reps get picked by the kluges and the reps get together and argue and vote and count the votes and the prevailing vote get’s promulgated as a law to be endorsed by the – elected – executive.

One wild card is that the executive can not sign a proto law if he thinks it is detrimental to the well being of the republic.

A few days ago the assembly passed a budget funding the government.

donnie says that he is going to use the power of not signing that law as punishment to the democrats because they likely won’t vote in a manner that he has dictated on a different piece of legislation that needs to be passed by the second chamber of the assembly.

If the Democrats differ in opinion to that bill, and, as our form of government expects to happen in situations of that sort, they prevail, that bill won’t become law.

But donnie says they must vote the way he wants or else.

I hadn’t heard that democrats have to vote as if they were republicans.

I hadn’t heard about the plebiscite ushering donnie in as dictator.

Did I miss something?

Or is all of this just foreplay?

Sort of a trans governmental branch crotch grab?

From “The Hill”

Outgoing Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) on Saturday lamented the "instability & chaos" in Washington heading into the latest government shutdown, noting that the last few days have been more turbulent than any he can remember.

"Still with the benefit (or curse) of an inside perspective, I must say that the instability & chaos in our government the past few days has been particularly pronounced - worse than at any point during my service in Congress, & really, my lifetime," Curbelo tweeted.

"Things are not well in the USA," he added.

Nice use of the adverbial form of good.

But seriously: where are guys like this – apparently rational republicans ( I might even call him a Republican) when we need them.

Which is all the time, not when they have been drummed out.

What A Nine Foot Tide And Forty Mile An Hour Wind Looks Like

When you take a movie of it from the deck adjacent to your bedroom.

Tomorrow the tide is going to be nine and a half feet.

The wind is supposed to be way less though.

On va voir.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayNsRj2Bdhk&feature=youtu.be

Christmas Card 2018

This is made from an image that I shot in a shop window in Paris in 2003.

It was on Avenue Rapp, not far from my apartment.

It was a Christmas window and I have always thought that I would use it for a Christmas card.

I finally figured it out this year.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan Said It

Speaking in court today to Michael Flynn,

retired Lieutenant general and ex trump National Security Advisor,

Judge Sullivan said to General Flynn:

“Arguably, you sold your country out,”

I can’t not feel that those same words apply to most of donnie’s “Base”.

Hillary called them a “Basket of Deplorables”.

Better to substitute “Deplorables” with “Traitors”

They really think this Russia deal is just a big fat joke.

A joke on the rest of us.

I find it hard to laugh.

Neither General Flynn nor Judge Sullivan were laughing today.

Help, Help; There’s A Disgusting Creature In My Garden

And it’s molesting my pet toad.

Why donnie Is Going To Shut Down The Government

It’s simple.

It’s elementary.

Of course it’s inane.

Of course it’s slimy.

And of course it’s unethical.

donnie is the one doing it, after all; so by definition it is self centered in Olympian proportion.

The justice Department is one of the agencies that will be shut down.

Since he can’t get anybody to fire Mueller …

Ducks Again

Pictures From Today 15 December 2018

North Carolina Voting

Irony is a beautiful thing.

The republicans in North Carolina take endless turns at the drum of voter fraud.

They beat that drum incessantly.

They have never ending relay teams moving in to relieve one another to keep the drumbeat eternal.

And under the rhythmic cover of that drumbeat they keep passing laws that don’t avoid voter fraud; instead they avoid letting “those people” vote.

No voter fraud, ever.

But now we, finally, have voter fraud in North Carolina.

A beautiful thing: it has been perpetrated by the republicans.

But lost in all the weeds and nits and lice of the details of the fraud there is a question that screams to be answered.

What kind of (expletive deleted) moron would give his or her ballot to some guy who comes to the door asking for ballots?

From The New York Times

“WASHINGTON — The latest revelations by prosecutors investigating President Trump and his team draw a portrait of a candidate who personally directed an illegal scheme to manipulate the 2016 election and whose advisers had more contact with Russia than Mr. Trump has ever acknowledged.

In the narrative that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and New York prosecutors are building, Mr. Trump continued to secretly seek to do business in Russia deep into his presidential campaign even as Russian agents made more efforts to influence him. At the same time, in this account he ordered hush payments to two women to suppress stories of impropriety in violation of campaign finance law.

The prosecutors made clear in a sentencing memo filed on Friday that they viewed efforts by Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to squelch the stories as nothing less than a perversion of a democratic election — and by extension they effectively accused the president of defrauding voters, questioning the legitimacy of his victory.”

***************************************************************************

It seems to me that there are a lot of witches being found in this witch hunt.

From The Washington Post

“New evidence from two separate fronts of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump’s version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president. Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.

Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.”

So I guess donnie is going to have to get his ol’ buddy the crown prince to chop up some more Washington Post reporters?

Or maybe the paper’s owner?

What A Fantasy

Yesterday I posted America: The Let’s Pretend Nation.

That post discussed the pretty much inevitable fall of America from world influence.

There is though, my optimistic patriotic belief says, a way out of the mess.

Here are the steps. 

Get rid of trump.

Get rid of all the current republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Get rid of all the  Democrats in those two legislative bodies.

Have a national plebiscite for replacements to the two legislatures and the presidency that every American over 18 years old  is legally bound to vote in.

Make the criteria for valid candidacy in that plebiscite be, in fact, a criterion/candidates’ oath:

“I will sit at the table with the blank sheet of paper; and that that blank sheet shall be, when filled in by those of us elected in this plebiscite, and when deemed by the Supreme Court of the United States of America to be Constitutional and  to have fixed and enhanced and replaced the low state of all Americans be accepted without further vote (the plebiscite and its oath and Supreme Court oversite having already fulfilled that requirement)  as amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.”

The purpose of that blank sheet of paper will be to address aggressively the unacceptable implications of the statement on the national arch:

“America’s business model doesn’t support its citizens having a decent life, with buffers against disease, misfortune, or in favor of having a family, having a home, getting an education, and an honorably earned retirement; it does support gated communities, segregated schools, posse comitatus violations on the Mexican border, massive border walls, hate, racism, lies, stupidity and all their additional and extended kindred.”

The nation that I was born to did not have that business model.

FDR was President when I was born.

Emoluments were not his big thing.

The one percent were still Americans then.

The blank sheet will define in detail how all of that inhumanity will be turned on its axis and how America can begin to return to the Country I believed it to be when Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon (even) and the rest, until donnie, were in office.

I offer this as a suggestion to bring us back from the brink.

I know, this is really stupid; but anger – yesterday’s post – needs to be countered, I believe, with optimism.

So here is stupidly la la optimism.

America: The Let’s Pretend Nation

I started hearing something during the big hoorah a couple of years ago in the Seattle area.

The big hoorah was a debate centered on whether people ought to be paid enough for their labor so that they can have a home and family – or not.

The banner under which the leaders of the hoorah marched was “Fifteen Dollars an Hour”.

I was totally in favor of fifteen dollars an hour; I was totally unsure that that was a “living wage” that could allow for workers to have home and family, but I had to agree that it was a lot better than the Federal Minimum Wage of about half that.

But back to what I started hearing then.

Small business after small business said that their “business model doesn’t support that level of income”.

All I could think of in rejoinder was “maybe you have a bogus business model if it requires employees but doesn’t support paying them a living wage”.

But that is in the past.

Right now the reason I finally started writing this is that I am listening to NPR on my KUOW worldwide app.

I just head Tanzina Vega honcho a feature about the recent and ongoing romaine crisis.

The net summary of what I heard is that farmers, large and small “have business models that don’t support assuring that they don’t sell life threatening products to the public”.

Some American Association of Civil Engineers whose exact name eludes me goes on record every year with a detailed statement of the state of America’s infrastructure.

And as a summary they give a grade: D minus.

Infrastructure is what allows a country to be a world player.

Maybe we ought to be investing in it.

Maybe we should have been investing in it all along.

But, as Mitch McConnel can be heard saying “with trillion dollar deficits extending into the future as far as we can see, our business model doesn’t support infrastructure investment, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or Public Education”.

I guess when your business model is based upon distributing the fat of this fair land to one percent of its inhabitants the downstream conclusions are obvious.

But that doesn’t mean there is any sense to that.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that Mitch’s business model is designed to reproduce the serf class.

Speaking of serfs, people teetering on the edge of that economic state are everywhere in America.

And they are all one minor problem short of ceasing to teeter, but to, instead, fall into homelessness – serfdom in modern day parlance.

So what happens when people who have been hunkering down in trailers, mobile homes, homes inherited from family that they can’t afford to buy homeowners insurance for, or repair or make storm durable, because, if they hadn’t inherited it, they couldn’t be living in it in the first place - and a list of similar circumstances too long to be documented here – are hit by 18 feet of water and 155 MPH winds, or find themselves suddenly one day, in the middle of what amounts to being in a crematorium?

I suspect there are nearly a thousand who won’t have anything happen to them because they were in the middle of what amounts to being in a crematorium.

And the rains are taking their remains off to oblivion.

Lest you think that I think that I am making an allusion to a lyric from Bob Dylan, I am not.

I know what oblivion means.

From Webster: 1. “the fact or condition of not remembering” or 2. “the condition or state of being forgotten or unknown”.

Sounds like America’s imminent future.

For legions of us.

And what other kinds of catastrophes are lurking out their just waiting to continue the onslaught?

“America’s business model doesn’t support its citizens having a decent life, with buffers against disease, misfortune, or in favor of having a family, having a home, getting an education, and an honorably earned retirement; it can’t or won’t honor the promises made to its military veterans; it does support gated communities, segregated schools, posse comitatus violations on the Mexican border, massive border walls, hate, racism, lies, stupidity and all their additional and extended kindred.”

This rather long quotation is destined to be emblazoned on the arch spanning a path.

The path leads to a second arch on which is emblazoned: “ thou art a villein and a villein thou wilt remain”.

Setting the dramatics of the arches aside, the remaining conclusion is that America is a pretend nation.

For sure the facts don’t line up with the long believed bullshit about the city on the hill.

So Jeff; Where Are You On This?

If Bezos doesn’t write something of a level scathing enough to be in synch with his obvious intellect, in support of one of his employees, who was killed and dismembered at the order of an out of control saudi child, he isn’t the man I believe him to be.

Hey Jeff, Phil did it; you can too.

Turn It On Its Axis

I saw Joe Biden interviewed by Stephen Colbert the other night.

Joe was impressive as always.

I saw John Kerry interviewed by Stephen Colbert several weeks before.

John was as impressive as he was as Secretary of State (which was way more impressive than when he was a candidate for President) or maybe more so.

Both Joe and John were ostensibly promoting their new books.

But we all know what they were really doing.

They were getting ready to run for President.

Due to either of their credentials, intelligence, experience, charisma and knowledge of the world, top to bottom, I wish I was getting excited about the prospect of either or both of them running.

But I can’t get there, and the space that I occupy while not getting there is dark, hollow and sad.

Because either would be a great President.

But they are both too old.

Not too old to win, maybe, but too old to swiftly turn the current mess on its axis; if either were to win, the old tried and true methods would be the rule of the day; and those rules are the rules that have gotten us into that current mess.

Too old, once the mess had been turned, to move in a new direction.

We need someone who can and will, by inspiring the real majority of American people to vote, be swept into office despite the rigging of the Electoral College and with coattails long enough to bring in a Senate and House of Representatives swept clean of the “I’ve got mine” generation and work quickly and effectively with those new legislators to usher in the New Regime: Humanity, Equality and Opportunity for all.

We need an American version of Emanuel Macron.

Puteaux

I f you are going to have skyscrapers why not move them out of town and let ‘em rip?

The arch in the middle of the image – more or less – is on a line from the center of La Louvre, through the rosé petite arch celebrating napoleon, the pool and fountain at Tuilleries, straight through the middle of the oblisque at Place de la Concorde, the Ferris wheel – in season – the Arche de Triomphe, and then, La Grande Arche de la Defénse.

Whenever I get lost I just look down that axis to figure out which direction I need to go.

This shot is from the other side of the river from La Défense  so you can’t see many of the skyscrapers in the complex.

They are legion; and, if you like that kind of thing, spectacular.

Henri IV with a tern that doesn’t give a shit. 

Or has he/she?

This was when I was on the way to Metro Stop Chatelet, so it wasn’t on the island.

I was however on another island: Isle de la Cité.

Bronze sidewalk plaque; America might be behind?

This sure as hell isn’t West Virginia.

Here is where I was.

After crossing the bridge from where I took the picture of La Défense.

They have roses there.

Et champignons.

Nice day In Paris

After two days of that trademark Paris low hanging gloom, just short of real fog, and well on its way to being frozen fog – a kind of weather, that for some reason, I love – today was brilliant blue.

So I took some pictures.

I always take pictures.

Today I took my little camera because I was going to Luxembourg Gardens, the day was brilliantly bright, my little camera has a 720 mm optical zoom that, when it is brilliantly bright, yields some spectacular results, and I wanted to see if the longer zoom and bright day could get me some great parrot pictures.

The parrots didn’t co-operate.

I heard a few, but they were few, and they were elusive.

But the Gardens always have some interesting stuff going on, so I got a few interesting images.

And later on, with a magic setting I discovered by accident several years ago, I got a couple nice post sunset scenes coming back from le Depart.

They look almost like shaggy manes

I guess this is what they look like when they get older; I can empathize with that.

How many seas can a white dove sail?

Pont Neuf

Boulevard St. Michel

Le Depart St. Michel

A Pirate Looks At Eighty

Yesterday a long term friend of mine sent me one of his occasional emails – an email to me, not to undisclosed recipient – that brought me up short.

It was, because I know him very well, simultaneously light hearted and deadly serious.

But, more interesting to me, it was poetic.

I was unnerved.

Out of the typical kluge of words that he sends in such emails select words leapt out at me; and they told a story; and it was a Bruce Springsteen story.

All the thing needed was the pre-story.

And I was pretty sure I could write that.

I knew him; I knew the place his email was talking about; I had had several other – close – friends over my wandering life that had come from right close to there; and had a web of stories from that group that could be distilled into that pre-story.

So I got out my yellow pad of paper and started to write.

I was surprised at how quickly it flowed.

And then the email did the rest.

The poem was done overnight.

Then I keyed into the computer, formatted it, and made the decision that no punctuation would be included.

In the final analysis it turned out that what I produced looks like a Bruce Springsteen poem written by Jimmy Buffet.

Here is the email that got this started:

“The more I think about the craziness going on maybe moving back to the town I grew up in might, I stress might, be a good idea. 

In 70+ years not much has changed. 

The harbor has filled in with sand and no one is dredging it out and they now are charging an admission fee to drive your car out on the sandbar that has formed there. 

No new business no new hotels and just plain nothing or about nothing affects it. 

Still cold as hell and tons of winter snow but the population is still about the same as it was somewhere between 9-10K depending on who's count you use.

As I think about it I do own property there two cemetery plots!

That's what happens to me now when the weather turns cold/cool it's in the low 40s here today.

My brain stops

So here is the poem:

My family didn’t have too much

But we never really cared

America was always there for us

And most of us all shared

Just put a boat in the harbor then

We could always catch some perch

And laying off their skeletons

We’d take them to the church

Where Fridays after work was done

We’d fry the gathered catch

And pretend we all were rich folks then

As a kid that seemed the best

The best that life could ever be

The best of times so far

But darkness lurked all over us

Like being trapped inside a jar

A jar so full of smoke

That nothing could be seen

But nothing seemed enough for us

So we made the most of lean

Lean times, slim pickin’s was all we had

Clouded by that jar

The best that life could ever be

The best of times so far

I was different from most of them

I got a college rag

I got a job in Mammon Town

Success was in the bag

But darkness lurked around me still

That jar now clear to see

That nothing was too great for me

So nothing would I be

I made a lot of money

And pissed it all away

Finally moved to somewhere warm

That’s where I am today

And thinking thoughts behind me

I finally may believe

That going back a lifetime

Is my last reprieve

Now I sit here wondrin’

Why I even care

Michael didn’t get me

And nothin’s really fair

My mind goes back at night time

To the fish out on the bay

That bay’s all filled with sand now

But why should I just stay

Stay here among the dying

The crippled and the dead

When packing up when dawn comes

All of this could be shed

And trek back to where I came from

Back up in the north

Back to where I came from

Back up in the north

Back to where the sandbar

That once had been the bay

Is now a metered parking lot

The perch all gone away

Still cold as hell in winter

With tons of winter snow

No new business no hotels and nothin’

Nothin’ for to show

For all the time now long gone

For all the smoke that’s cleared

And America still is there for us

So nothing should be feared

And trek back to where I came from

Back to where I own

Some land that once was left to me

Two plots with each its stone

The graveyard plots of yesteryear

The prize left me to win

Or prizes left me to own

The Future Of Image Sampling?

A friend of mine from Lopez sent me an email, I guess, in response to some Paris images that I had sent her via a mailing list I have set up for such things.

https://nyti.ms/2D9sBxY

I responded: “I haven't read the article, except this beginning:

"PARIS — Is it possible to create meaningful photographs in a world awash with images? Or should photographers instead work with the flood of images already out there? Could photographs from the past help us understand who we are today? Does photography necessarily require a camera?"

My reaction to those questions is "Oh no; we're not going to do 'sampling' to images like what we are doing to music, are we?"

And I sent her this image.

donnie Can’t Fly In The rain

This one is for Joe, Marcus, and Ann Claire: this is what a real bool court looks like.

And what an advanced civilization it is that just puts these places for people to use hither and yon around a city.

This one is the one in the direction of La Bastille; there is also one behind me, if you place me as the photographer, in this image forefront.

Some kind of nut; the tree looks like a really big hazel nut.

On la Promenade des Plantes, which was the idea that New York subsequently stole to create their repurposed elevated railway line.

Anybody got any ideas? The post is a tie down for barges on le quais de la Seine; but I have no idea what the graphic means.

Sometimes Seine people are pretty contrived; this guy rang true for me.

“Our wants are lawlessness” or “shambles” or “disorder”; or, all of the above, I guess.

In a separate note, donnie was here today and didn’t go to a WWI cemetery because it was raining.

I walked a half mile in the rather mild rain to have an extended lunch at Le Depart; and, oddly enough, saw a helicopter flying down La Seine.

I guess helicopters really can fly in the rain, especially when it’s not very heavy rain.

donnie is pretty delicate though.

And he’s pretty heavy; maybe there were no massive freight choppers available today.

And what a patriot; we can now add not going to an American cemetery on the 100th anniversary of WWI because it was raining, to his bone spurs.

What a guy.

Paris Images From Today: November 8, 2018

After a day of rain, cold and wind, today was beautiful.

So I went for a walk.

Here are the images that I thought were emblematic of the route that I took.

Alexandre III

A chunk of major Paris motorway has been re-purposed to be a pedestrian only place, with some riverside environment: trees, bushes, creatures and associated marché de environment..

To make that an ecological fact, barges have been permanently moored at the quai and have been planted with trees, bushes, roses and other plants to make the new configuration a safe harbor for merles noirs (European blackbirds) ducks and whatever else likes a little ecological niche on the beautiful Seine.

What can I say”

Starlings are a really beautiful bird.

The crane in the background is the beginning of the restart  of the Ferris Wheel.

Fish Today

It rained.

What a surprise.

In Paris?

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One of the reasons I keep coming here - with some segment of the sojourn being Novembre - is so I can be here for days just like today: cold, nasty windy, rain on and off, and  – when on, really on – just miserable.

For some reason I love that.

In Seattle, where I exist when I am not in Paris, that sort of weather pretends to be, frequently; but it never rises to the standard of magnificent Paris misery, coldness, and utter from-the-north-sea-bitchiness.

It just kind of feels like what one would expect from a vastly overgrown village of fisherman: bitter, yes; but charm?

No.

Just fishermen and bitchy weather.

Now the weather in Portland, not far south of Seattle, seems more like Paris weather.

I think it has something to do with the people.

Or maybe because, Like Paris, Portland is a few hundred miles downriver from the sea.

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Anyway, since I had seen on my computer, on the Weather Channel (an IBM company) that today was going to be of the sort of Paris weather that I perversely love, I said to myself “we go to the aquarium today".

I always go to the aquarium on days like this.

Or to Invalides.

Or Le Louvre.

But today it was the Aquarium.

So here are a few images from le Aquarium Tropical de Paris.

I love this place: one of its endearing features – for me – is that, being a topical aquarium, it needs to be kept QUITE WARM; that means, that when my clothes have begun to defy the definition of the boundary between solid and liquid, I get to leave and go to Les Cascades for a glass of wine.

That usually takes about an hour, which is enough time for me to look at all the aquariums and get some pictures.

Here are a few of them from today.

I Told You So

Here are some of the non-crow pictures that I took today.

I guess the light was so different that I was moved to take so many pictures.

Ginkgo trees are all over Paris.  In the fall they get beautifully yellow.

Hotel de Ville was beautiful.

Nice Japanese Maples

I have no idea

They welcomed me as I came into l’Arsenal.

Bastille

La Seine