Seeking a Photograph

Back on the road again in Utah
But first, an oldies but goodie...

The very first trick I learned, when I decided to try to take decent photographs, was to have two trees standing there to frame the image I was attempting to capture, cause this just naturally makes things work. Of course, the light has to be perfect, and sometimes that means you must wait an hour, or several, or even come back in April if you want to get it right.

I was just sitting at the table in our trailer, and I grew tired of staring at the magazine before me, even though it was a good magazine, and my eyes went to the window, and the image was right there. The view had been there all day, but with the descent of the sun into the west, the shadows worked their magic, and what had been beautiful, but a bit flat, suddenly emerged as breathtaking.

I used to wonder how folks could travel to wonderful places, and then look at them through windows. In self-proclaimed moral superiority, I camped out, using a tent only if sleeping under the stars was completely intolerable. I wandered about, outside in the air and sunlight, amidst the scents and sounds. But here I sat in the trailer, looking through a window at all this beauty. Had I gone soft?

Well maybe, just a little. But since the wind had been dancing through the campground with such enthusiasm that I hadn't seen a single bird beat their wings once as they sailed by, I will chalk this up to survival. Sitting outside on such a day could not be described as pleasant, while in the trailer we had merely been “well ventilated”

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but my editor will allot me only half that, and I have wasted most of those already. So listen carefully.

The two trees were some version of cypress I think, with many gnarled trunks and branches. Both had been modified by decades of wind blast. They leaned a bit. The sand dune past the trees blocked my view of the surf, but just a few degrees to the right the wind had charged the sea into foamed fury that beat on the beach at the mouth of the creek. The dune had been transformed by those aforementioned shadows into the image that so enthralled me, and the waving branches formed a living frame. Usually I have to move around to line things up, but this time it was simply perfect.

A bleached-gray wooden picnic table in the foreground lent perspective and depth. And the April-green vegetation donated color, along with the red leash we left tied to the table for tethering the dogs, even though we never used it. I stared at the scene, finding myself awed yet again by a place I have seen many times before. The raven that perched on the bush on the very top of the dune, and cast the perfect silhouette against the blue sky, was frosting on the cake. It was one of those take-your-breath-away moments that make all the rest worth tolerating.

Now, I suppose I could have simply snapped the photo, and sent it in instead of writing all that, but I kinda forgot the camera, so this will have to do.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I brought back this old column because I couldn't find the other. That other tried to explain the difference between a picture, and a photograph. In it I defined a picture as an image captured by a camera, most any image. Such an image could be that of Aunt Eunice at the church social, of the kids in the backyard, or those millions of memories from a million vacations. I saw value in pictures, which is appropriate since I've taken my share of pictures. More than my share.

A photograph on the other hand, had to be something better, or different, or even inspired. It had to be a capture of exceptional beauty, perfectly composed, perfectly lighted,,,,,,,exceptional beauty caught at an exceptional moment. A photograph was a picture that made you say, “Wow!”

Back when I found the time to take many pictures, I constantly aspired to capture photographs, and on occasion I did. Coming home, I paraded them before my friends, and some brought forth the “Wow!”. And my friends would ask, “Dude..... How do you take such beautiful photographs?”

Well, first you must travel to beautiful places.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Day three dawned quietly upon southern Utah. Twas hard to imagine that the state could harbor any beauty that could trump the previous day, but that piece of the Beehive State scheduled next would. I kinda knew this, because I had passed through once before, some twenty years earlier. I couldn't remember all the details, so there were moments that were as much a surprise to me as they were to Joie. So I made sure my camera was handy, and Joie saw that her phone was fully charged, for that is her camera of choice. Two steps out of the motel room door presented a striking mountain range catching dawn light to the north, and yet another red sandstone cliff to the south. Here we go again.

We motored past pleasant small farms, with the green of well-irrigated pastures and trees in autumn color. Streambeds glimmered with willow and cottonwood. The mountains around were tipped in snow. And here and there the exposed rocks of red, gray, and various purples poked their heads out to watch us speed past.

Where we had looked down into Bryce Canyon and its kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, on this day we looked up instead at the gather of garishly painted cliffs and towers in Kodachrome Basin. Several pixels bit the dust there.

We entered a sparse forest, leaving the colored rocks behind. My memory blurred, and I stated that all we'd have for the next two hours would be a pleasant cruise in the trees. My memory erred.

Shortly, large eroded cliffs and a curved canyon resplendent in riverbed and golden leaves led to the huge reef near the town of Escalante. Then we crested a ridge, and the viewpoint parking area beckoned. Pulling off the road, we noted that the view indeed opened. It spread before us in a 180 degree, toe tip to horizon explosion of beauty. While the engine ticked quietly behind us, we stood looking, silent, mouths gaping, forgetting to breathe.

Intense blue sky and fairy clouds. Hundred mile views. Colored rock in cliff and dome, patterns in the rock, rock carved by canyons, speckled with sparse green trees, the Grand Staircase lay naked in the sun. She was beyond gorgeous. And I remembered none of this from my last visit.

Our road pierced this wonder, narrow and sinuous, with the occasional guardrail when there was room, and else wise not at all forgiving of the careless. The view was on both sides as we dropped into the place. Each turn brought awe, ooo's and ahs, giggles. We each pointed out wonders at the same time, on opposite sides of the vehicle. We laughed. We may have cried at times. We lost our breath. Utterly spent, we followed the road as it climbed out of this wonderland, and then crawled the spine of a ridge with merely wonderful views that almost disappointed after that which we just left behind.

Neither of us had taken even one picture. The camera and the phone sat unused. We openly admitted that they were not up to the task. The place as a whole was simply too massive, too beautiful, too overwhelming. If we had a year, and could pick the best pieces, a million photographs lay hidden in the Golden Staircase for us to discover. But they would all be pieces rather than the whole of the place.

So we'll just have to go back and do it correctly.....soon.

Getting Away From It All

We were the only people in a Kaiser pharmacy designed to handle several hundreds in a day, so we expected to be in and out of there quickly. Seven in the morning didn't figure to be a busy time; the prescription offered nothing of consequence to prepare, but the staff there demonstrated the style of relaxed effort one associates with Post Office drones. They carried on with a lighthearted banter amongst themselves behind the counter, wasting little energy as they pretended to be busy. We sat in our chairs. Time passed. More time. Even more.

Oh, they were so cheerful. One....two....three pills.... Working, working, working. See, we're working.

Count the pills. Put the pills in the vial. Let the computer print a label. I've done that. I've done that a few thousand times. Every year. I know what it takes. They must be paid by the hour. It was early in the day in a hospital pharmacy, so no doubt they were tasked with first assembling the morning doses for all those folks in the beds upstairs. They had all night to do that, but likely some doctors were late with their orders. Time pressure on folks only interested in not breaking a sweat. Five pills for room 213 bed A. Three for 309, B. Don't give the anticoagulant anymore to the guy in 145 who has the bleeding ulcer, so take the time to read the directions on the computer screen. Oh, sooooo much to do. Can't stop to fill the prescription for those two sitting out there. Anonymous, insignificant people. Let them wait.

That…. is real power.

Forty-five freaking minutes waiting for one prescription. Good thing our time meant nothing. Good thing we weren't in a hurry. I watched as the spider wove the web extending from my knee to the chair beside me. Back and forth. Back and forth. The fly was caught and the spider leisurely finished breakfast. Grass sprouted. Steel rusted somewhere. Mountains grew taller.

The limited time remaining in my life diminished palpably.

We were not cheerful. Cranky bordering on desperate might better describe. Those people were burning our precious vacation time.

We'd hit the pharmacy on the way out of town. We REALLY wanted to get out of town. It was well past time for a vacation, and we churned that in our core. Too much pathos and tragedy. Too many people sucking the energy out of us. For too long. We needed a break. We NEEDED a vacation. We wanted it NOW! We really were not interested in listening to the cheerful banter of the very people who were preventing us from leaving town. They were building the Berlin Wall out of little pills, locking us away from freedom. We did not like those people.

Walking quickly out to the car, we looked up at the mountain trying to inject some calm and beauty into our morning. The first morning of our vacation.

The East County was once a pleasant place, an expanse of farms, pastures, orchards. Now it is a sea of roofs as far as the eye can see. Identical roofs. Every intersection has a Starbucks, a Subway, a hamburger place or two. The shopping center over there is considered a destination resort by the local ants.....I mean, residents. Like, wow! It has an In and Out AND Trader Joes. Movin' on up to the East Side.

The hospital pharmacy is on one edge of this scourge of suburban sprawl. Our job, should we choose to accept it was to negotiate our way out the other side.

Every intersection sports a set of traffic lights. There are several intersections. On this Saturday morning few vehicles sullied the scene. The road was wide open. We headed east. We should have easily escaped.

First gear, second, third...stop for light. First gear, second, third...stop for light. Repeat as necessary. Thanks, clever traffic engineers. I could sense our freedom out there somewhere, but I could not get there from here. First gear, second, third...stop for light. Every freaking light. A thousand stoplights. My fingers were bleeding as I scrambled up the hill only to slide back down. They've turned this place into hell.

We finally reached the Bypass.

Some folks think all this development is a good thing. I’m happy for them. I think the Bypass is a good thing. The Bypass lets me, uh...bypass the East County.

We crossed the bridge, heading north beside the river.

“Have you noticed? We haven't stopped for a stoplight for a while.”

“There aren't any stoplights up here.”

“Yeah! That's it.”

Once past Reno heading east, I could feel the cloak of oppression slip from my shoulders. Works this way every time. Behind us...Too many cities. Too many people. Too much civilization wears me down. Love the damn job, but it also wears me down. In front, as we left Reno in the dust, is all that nothing.

I like nothing. Ergo, I like driving across Nevada.

There is nothing there.

This was so good.

The little German car tripped along on cruise control, just a smidge beyond the speed limit. Nevada. Nothing but open road, mountains and endless long vistas, blue sky with entertaining clouds, the colors of desert in the autumn. The mountains were tipped with snow. The rabbit brush was yellow and all over the place. The aspen groves on the mountainsides were golden. The cottonwoods in the drainages had turned. We saw another vehicle every once in a long while. Hwy 50. The loneliest road in the nation.

Perfect.

Ely is only a short nine hour drive from home, but it seemed like the end of the world. The understatement of all time: Ely did not look, feel, nor act like...California. It proved we were on vacation. Cheap old motel. Decent take out Chinese food. Early to bed, and early to rise.

We awoke to a cold damp overcast hovering over the small, quiet town. We would be “in between” for the bulk of this day, so I topped off the tank with diesel. Still heading east. The first snowfall began in the first hour of driving. Climbing into the sparse juniper/pinyon pine zone that we love so much, we watched it snow. We were in heaven.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we came to a fork. We chose one.

We drove past the entrance to Great Basin National Park. Hadn't been up that road into the hills since 1979 and would have liked to do it that day, but the sign said, “Closed because of Tantrum”. Or something like that. Seems somebody elected a president who doesn't deserve a capital P in his title. He didn't get what he wanted, so he took his ball and went home.

The president was feeling peckish. He does that a lot. Barack is an angry man. He has succeeded in life despite having every advantage handed to him. He advanced where others failed because his skin has more color. He has benefited from everything that is good about this country, so of course he hates this country, and its people. Like many others so blessed, he wants to destroy this country. But, some stand in his way. Small wonder he is so edgy.

Sociopaths do that sort of thing. Don't know why Barack does.

Closing the national parks hurts the little people, the little people he feels should be kneeling gratefully before the throne. Some of course, do (kneel, that is). No accounting for taste. But Barack knows that many of those other proles stand in his way. In his vindictive mind, they deserve to be punished. This president thinks a little flogging would turn them to his way of thinking. Likely, he was surprised that they turned on him.

We passed by the park entrance and went on to view those parts of the country not denied us by our president. We found some good stuff. Highways 21 and 130 were simply wonderful, scenic and entertaining. We especially liked the triangular warning signs along the roadside that showed cows on skateboards. Gotta watch those counter culture bovines.

The road from Parowan to Brian Head was simply spectacular. A short spur road east into the national forest presented red sandstone cliffs and height of the season fall foliage. The top of the pass showed 10.2K on my altimeter watch and featured a scenic viewpoint into Cedar Breaks, which the president had also closed. We looked anyway, thumbing our noses at the falling snow, low temperature, and arrogant chief executive.

Continuing to Panguitch, we enjoyed golden aspen groves, pine forest, wondrous views off to the east, and the conspicuous absence of people.

That president tossed us a crumb (thank you sir; may I have another?), for when we reached Bryce Canyon National Park, the gates were open and manned. That bit worked in spite of him, so the notion that billions would soon go down the drain to plug the gaping holes in the president's failed health care experiment slipped out of mind while we could still see some of our country’s treasure. And Bryce is such a treasure.

Mommy Nature laid more snow on use, along with the cloud show as we burned up pixels trying to preserve the memories. Beauty beyond any description I might attempt to describe here was on display everywhere.

Cities and crowds, unpaid bills and taxes, biting dogs and bitching clients left far behind, we enjoyed our vacation that day.

Enjoying history, then and now

In a few years public opinion and the law were enslaved. This was the period when Goering said to Schacht, the Minister of Finance, “And I tell you that, when the Fuehrer wishes it, two and two make five.” When, despite all precautions, the most alarming rumors were current in Germany of the atrocities suffered by the unfortunates who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo, those whose consciences rebelled and who expressed their indignation were neutralized by invoking “the patriotic duty of silence.”  According to the Nazi criteria, it was not the torturer and the murderer who caused their country irrevocable harm; on the contrary, those who denounced them must be considered as traitors and chastised as such. This theory was affirmed at the commencement of the Nazi military operations in 1938. To speak was to rise up against the sadist and the criminals; it was to supply the enemy with propaganda weapons against Germany.

These arguments were accepted with relief by the “good citizens“, who asked nothing better than to be left in ignorance. As Gisevius wrote, “Millions of Germans played hide and seek with themselves, or at least feigned ignorance, and it was extraordinarily difficult to touch them because the ignorance they affected was genuine. For they never took the trouble to seek further information! As loyal citizens they were content to know what they were officially intended to know.”

As for those whom some fortuitous event roused in spite of themselves from this passivity, they were content to deplore the excesses committed by irresponsible subordinates. “Ah, if only Hitler knew!” was doubtless the exclamation most often heard during those years. The poor Fuehrer! Lost in his cloud, wrestling with colossal difficulties, struggling for the good of the people, and unaware of the abuses and horrors committed in his name! He would undoubtedly have dealt seriously with them had he known. But it was impossible to warn him.

--Excerpted from the book, “The Gestapo”, by Jacques Delarue

I’m reading this book right now. It’s rather long and involved, but in a perverse and terrifying manner it is enlightening. Not purely by coincidence, I’m also reading Mein Kampf, the autobiography written by that always sassy and entertaining dude, Adolph Hitler. All my life I’ve studied the consequences of this guy’s thinking, but I had yet to actually get the version of the story from his perspective. I considered reading this book many decades ago, didn’t, but I should have. I recommend these two books to you, but bring your barf bag.

Ya can’t help but come away with a few conclusions as you read Adolph’s take on his life and the world that shaped it. The dude was not stupid. A bit self-absorbed, but you expect that from folks who write their life story when they haven’t yet done anything with that life. They live inside that head of theirs, and the mirror shows them the importance of that person. They worry about that person, and figure all of the rest of us should, too. Inevitably, they worry about no one else but that person in the mirror.

Oh sure, Adolph was concerned about the Fatherland and his fellow countrymen, but only as a reflection of his membership in said fraternity. In contrast, he hated with a mad passion any other person or gather of persons who were not a part of his little group of select people. He hated them because they did things differently, or worse as he would put it, but also because in his mind those other persons were lined up to do harm to his group of people. It was all their fault.

To give you some idea of how well Adolf thought of himself, it’s taking him some 460 pages of his book to say what that last paragraph summed up in about 75 words.

But, I’m learning from these two books. I’m learning about propaganda, for instance. Adolph had serious opinions about propaganda. 

Somehow, I’d arrived at adulthood thinking that propaganda was a bad thing. I thought only the bad guys used propaganda, for they had to sell a bad idea to folks who’d rather follow a good. So it was interesting to get Adolph’s take on it. 

Adolph was a soldier during WWI, and he witnessed the ebb and flow of war, and the ebb and flow of the interest soldiers and civilians had in their war. He watched propaganda used by both sides in that conflict, and lamented that his side did a poorer job of encouraging folks to enjoy the war than the other side did. He thought it cost them the war. And he came out with an endorsement for effective propaganda, and of course later saw to it that his subjects got nothing but his version of their reality. 

I watched the ebb and flow of propaganda during the Vietnam War. My government had their version, flawed as it was, and the anti-war folks had theirs. And of course, later I found that much of the anti-war propaganda came from our enemies in that war, and low and behold, it was largely responsible for the shaping of public opinion that eventually brought about the unfortunate conclusion to that war that favored our enemies. If this really pissed me off, I suppose I could have written my own Mein Kampf.

Mostly I learned that just about anything I hear, pro and con about any issue that has ever popped up, will be some form or other of propaganda. But most folks still don’t admit that it’s propaganda. Adolph consistently stated in his book that this was his intent to utilize propaganda effectively. I’ll give him props for that honesty.

Politicians today rarely admit that most of what they say is propaganda, so it was refreshing, and yet alarming, when Eric Holder, the once inconsequential functionary in the democrat party, came right out and said, in 1994 I believe, that we needed better propaganda to convince the American people that they really wanted to be disarmed by their government. Now that he is the Attorney General, he is still spewing propaganda, but he doesn’t any longer admit to this. He is still ardently trying to disarm the American people, and he will use any lie available to promote his boss’s agenda to this end. And his list of dirty tricks is growing. One has to wonder if he is looking for a Reichstadt to burn. For if he was willing to provide firearms to criminals in an attempt to make American gun owners appear to be criminal, what else might he try? He is actively assuming the irresponsible subordinate role once played by folks like Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering in another administration.

The democrat party has promoted placing the government in charge of everything since around the same time Adolph imposed this same notion on the German people. And the party has also been actively promoting the disarmament of the American people since those days. You cannot really have one without the other. Adolph understood that, and he implemented it without any of the usual constraint. It’s taken the democrat party a long time to get a man in the White House this obsessed with making disarmament the law of the land.

The democrat party hired some  folks who composed a kinder, gentler propaganda for the American people, a product they called libertarian paternalism. These folks wrote the script whereby the party politicians, all in unison, are trying to sell us on our new way of thinking.

In libertarian paternalism, the government doesn’t order you to do something, but it gently shades its arguments so that you find it easier to do things that they tell you are in your best interest. This is generally a bunch of lies, but it’s nice lies packaged to lead you into thinking it was all your idea in the first place. It is clever propaganda, and it is working very well.

For instance, Americans may have the best health care in the world, but have you watched as the party convinced you that our system is too flawed to continue? Now watch how they deliberately destroy what we once had in order to put the government in charge of it all.

Watch also how they teach us that small businesses and profitable larger businesses are the enemy of the common man, only so the party can rescue us from them with…..benevolent government control.

Crime, including violent crime, may be on the decline most all over the nation, but the party is united in telling folks that crime is raging far worse. The terms their politicians and their publicists in the media have been instructed to use involve things like ”rising tide of violence”, “epidemic of school shootings”, and “common sense restrictions”. With crime rampaging this badly, of course we will all realize we need more gun control. Each attack on a different class of firearms is preceded by a campaign of demonization designed to make folks tremble at the mention of these guns. All lies, but lies repeated endlessly, by party politicians and their supporters in the media, all intended to change public opinion, with the goal of eventually disarming the public.

After hearing this litany for years, it is small wonder that in the party bastions such as California, people thus indoctrinated, people who ask nothing other than to be left in ignorance, (with what they are officially intended to know), would gladly discard our Bill of Rights for some relief from this intimated carnage. 

An armed citizenry consistently limits crime. But you won’t hear this from the party. Firearms ownership and the morals and mentality that are an integral part of this, are one of the main impediments to government control over everything, so the party must impose an end to this right. If the party can dismember the Second Amendment, then the rest of the Bill of Rights falls easily. If that means selling disarmament through a litany of lies, or worse yet by encouraging more crime and violence by removing the consequences of criminal behavior, so that politicians can then cry out for more restrictions on the non-criminal citizens….well that’s how you sell it to the masses.

The party needed to change some things to try to reach their goal. As a consequence, we are now living in a time where proper behaviors are often discouraged and punished, and the consequences of bad behaviors are removed. Self-defense is now called immoral, but when the party releases thousands of criminals from prison to prey upon the land and the innocent people, that becomes a good thing. To what end, you might ask? Well, if we cannot control ourselves, guess who the party would suggest take over the task.

The senator from California, firmly entrenched in the ruling elite, in a brief excursion from her unrelenting attacks on the 2^nd Amendment, has launched an assault on the 1^st amendment too, hoping to drive away the large array of folks on the internet who persistently oppose the party version of government rule over all. Such folks consistently poke large holes through the propaganda spewed by the party. The Nazis would never allow such impertinence, and the senator sees no reason why she should either.

Each passing day reminds me of the many parallels between the rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the thirties, and our current situation. The Nazis had strict rules against any criticism of their rule, right down to the suppression of comedic comment about the party or its leaders. Imagine how they would have reacted to a rodeo clown wearing a facemask mimicking Adolf. You will notice that the party isn’t standing by, letting such go unpunished, as we speak.

The Nazis always called such critics traitors. Now, they are attacked as racist.

Although the party encouraged and supported the rabble of Occupy protestors when they were useful in harassing the opposition to the party, they now wish to limit any protest by any groups if their target is the party or its leaders. So now they bring down the weight of government on those miscreants. 

Then there’s the NSA, busily gathering intelligence against the average citizen. Ah, so like the Gestapo.

And now the party is building vast paramilitary militias that support their rule. Homeland Security has acquired thousands of semiautomatic rifles, and many millions of rounds of ammunition, for use against who? Paramilitary militia became the SS in Germany in the thirties. And now we head in that direction.

I’m looking forward to reading our president’s first book. I understand that it is about the man’s experiences and developing mental state, written by a youth who had yet to do anything with his life. He has great ambition. And the dude is not stupid, but yeah he is a bit self-absorbed. Presumably, that mirror comes into play, along with his admiration for that face in the mirror. No doubt there will be a list of person or persons who he feels did things to harm him and his select group of people. And he won’t much like those persons. No doubt, if there was bad happening, it was all their fault.

But I will still read his book. For it is clear where this all is headed.

It helps to know and understand my enemy. For he certainly will know and understand his.

Presidential Ambition

I expect you have followed the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman circus. How could you miss it? Despite the dearth of evidence that this was a racially motivated incident, did you notice the unrelenting pressure to turn it into one by elements of the media, one attorney general, and our president?

Don’t you wonder why our president is doing his level best to exploit this incident to perpetuate and expand the divide between the races in this country? 

Thanks to media manipulation, and the man himself, you, like everyone else now know that our president says he grew up like Trayvon Martin, broken family, near poverty, aimlessly wandering the streets nightly. Our president wants you to believe this. All this solely because of the pigment in his skin.

Some others have noted subtle differences between the childhoods of these two who could have been twins separated at birth.

Unlike Trayvon, maybe our president wasn’t caught with stolen items and burglary tools while he attended that exclusive, expensive prep school. You know…right before he went to the pricey Occidental College, and later the expensive Columbia University and the astronomically expensive Harvard Law School. Surely, Trayvon would have also done well at Harvard, given the same elite upbringing.

Maybe, unlike Trayvon, our president didn’t get suspended from school for using drugs. Maybe our president never bragged on social media to his friends about beating up a bus driver. But otherwise, our president and Trayvon no doubt grew up under exactly the same circumstances, so of course our president incites all those people who know in their hearts that the death of Trayvon was nothing more than the usual white guy kills black guy thing that happens ALL THE TIME, ya know.

Doesn’t matter that nobody knows what happened that night when Trayvon died. Ya don’t need to know what actually happened when you can believe in your heart that you already know what happened. This belief is called prejudice, and our president says he is opposed to prejudice…except for this time. And our president is bound and determined that every person of color in this country believes that Trayvon was murdered in cold blood, regardless of the evidence, and the white guy is always out to get them. And it doesn’t matter that George Zimmerman has less white stuff in his gene pool than…our president.

So the angry people pour into the streets, and the glass breaks and the fires start.

But…don’t you wonder why our president promotes this?

The shameless con men Sharpton and Jackson will get rich off a deal like the George/Trayvon circus, like they always do, but what is in it for our president? This isn’t about what the president can earn giving speeches after his second term ends, those fortunes like the Clintons are raking in. But what is the president’s motivation? Why is he COMMITTING HIS SECOND TERM to polarizing the country?

Don’t you wonder why our president chooses to lie so much as he maneuvers us toward the disarming of the American people? Sure, politicians lie all the time, so nothing special about this, but when the president lies about guns, which occurs whenever he speaks of them, don’t you wonder why he is so invested in this? He lies about crime rates. He lies about the guns he targets. He lies about the people he targets. And he even lies about why he wants to disarm the American people. Does he not have a legitimate argument?

Our president is obsessed with disarming America. Since the time not that long ago, when he allegedly was a professor of constitutional law at the U of Chicago, our president has argued that the Second Amendment included no individual right to keep and bear arms, and through his entire, albeit short and forgettable political career, he has at every opportunity voted against the freedoms protected by the Second Amendment. But now he lies and says he supports the Second Amendment as he tries to negate it. Who is he trying to fool? 

And why?

Our president has had pictures taken whilst he “enjoys skeet shooting at Camp David”, which was laughable in its connived posing. But he has shown his true colors when campaigning, arguing that only those fools over there who cling to their religion and guns, opposed his reelection. He was right about that part, except it’s not just those fools who oppose him. It’s not just the Americans who value their religion and their freedom to own firearms who oppose him.

Religious folks and gun owners are a big target for our president. And the movie stars and the media just love to dump on them, too. The movie stars and media help our president whenever they can. This could be funny when you realize they will be the first to go, when…

Don’t you wonder why our president is shamelessly exploiting the murders of little children In Connecticut? 

Our president seemed so delighted when innocent little children died. Our president considers this rare tragedy a once in a lifetime opportunity. His entire political party instigated a feeding frenzy when this killing took place, calling it a “make hay while the sun shines” gift from the gods. Over forty antigun laws were proposed in California alone, all by democrat lawmakers, when this opportunity presented itself.

Our president needs such tragedy, and now he revels in it. For our president knows he must disarm the people before….

Don’t you wonder about a president who wrote a book about how he must rearrange the country to make things right, because America is so wrong, long before he came into the position where he could do just that? Try not to worry about the parallels with that Austrian corporal who did the same thing with Mein Kampf. Sure, that guy steered the German people just a bit wrong, but I’m sure our president will do a better job. He is confident he will. And if he plays his cards right, like Germany in the thirties, America won’t even try to stop him.

Don’t you wonder when our president declares war on firearms and the people who own them, but when the mention of the brainwashing of our youth, the desensitization of our children by the unrelenting violence in media, movies, and video games, the actual cause of so many of the mass public killings in the last thirty years, he goes strangely silent. When the evidence has been screaming for decades that we are creating generations of children who cannot discern between normal feelings and behavior, and the lifestyle of mass killings and various other violences, our president says nothing.  Nothing. It’s almost as if he hopes that more mass public killings will take place.

Don’t you wonder why our president blames the tool when a child goes on a killing spree, and ignores the wielder of the tool who has been brainwashed into senseless, remorseless violence?

And if this seems eerily like the training of the Hitler Youth in the 1930’s, well you must be a mite paranoid.

Imagine if the violence breaks out, driven by that racial divide our president promotes. And when our president deliberately harms our economy, time and again, so that he can continue to blame others for the mess he creates. He promises benefit that government cannot afford to give, turning America into Greece. The time comes that the victimized masses pour into the streets, so betrayed and harmed by the government they trusted and relied upon. Things fall completely apart so terribly that the only fix that will hold the republic together will be the martial law that our president declares. So then he must suspend the Constitution, and build the camps to hold all those who oppose, and the people object only to find a soul less army of our own children leading them into the camps……

Don’t you wonder why our president seems to be deliberately building toward a crisis in this country that he and his minions can only solve by ending the American way of life? Our president has always despised the American way of life. If our president surprises you when he does this, then you haven’t been paying attention.

This has never been about what the president will do to get rich during his retirement. He is not another Bubba. He has no interest in retiring and he’s not worried about his library. Right now he is behaving as if he sees himself as ordained, and he has more work to do.

When the next happens, when our president gets his wish and the racial protests turn into the race riots, and when the demonstrations peopled by those betrayed by unfulfilled government promises turn into mass demonstrations, and then martial law and the forced disarming of the American people leads to history repeating itself, you won’t have to wonder why our president did all this. Then when we realize how wrong this all has been, and how wrong we have been to allow this…. 

We’ll get to go back to the beginning and make it all right again.    

  

Right?    

Content of Character

“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

Barack Hussein Obama

Ya got that right, Mr. President. He could have been.

Thirty five years ago, you were attending an exclusive prep school, and your grandparents, who were rearing you and paying for that expensive schooling, would have been actively trying to keep you out of trouble.

Now imagine this was Trayvon. This likely would have worked. And thus….Trayvon would probably not have been actively expanding his misbehaviors, and he likely would still be alive.

We need people like this in the White House to tell us of such things. I guess.

So listen up people!!!

Don’t let your teenage boys run wild in the streets! Put them all in expensive prep schools and watch them every minute, and handpick their friends so they don’t follow said friends down the path to an early death. Do like the president’s family did. Don’t do like Trayvon’s family did.

Oh, the president didn’t say that last bit? Well, maybe he should have.

Oh, and I have no problem believing that when you, Mr. President, were a teenager, from time to time folks followed you through the department store to make sure you weren’t stealing stuff. You claim that this happened solely because you have dark skin. OK. Maybe that’s how it happened.

When that lady followed me around in the drug store in my hometown when I was a teenager, it was to make sure I wasn’t stealing stuff. She followed every teenager who wandered aimlessly around that store. She had good reason, because the teenagers in our little town would have cleaned off the shelves.

All those teenagers in my little town were of the lily white variety, so the lady didn’t follow them around because of the tint of their skin. I guess those people following our president in his youth had other reasons than the lady in that drug store. He thinks so.

I therefore have no reason to spend much of my time complaining about my lot in life, while wiling away my time in the White House. Like the president does.

Apparently, 300,000,000 people in this country claim to know what happened that rainy dark night in Florida when that young man died. Put the president on that long list, for he clearly is an expert on the night’s events. Everybody knows what happened. Except they don’t.

Only two people were actually there that night. And only one of them is talking. If no one else was there, don’t ya wonder how everybody knows what happened? But boy, they act like they know, and they can’t stop talking about it. But every one of those 300,000,000 people was somewhere different, doing something other, when Zimmerman and Martin were making decisions, and perhaps making their mistakes. The president wasn’t there. The attorney general wasn’t there, either.

I wasn’t there, so I’m not going to talk of my opinion of what happened that night. I have no right to even have an opinion. What happened that night happened on the dark side of the moon as far as I am concerned.

300,000,000 other people have no right to claim anything more than an opinion of what happened that night. That would include you, Mr. President. And if they think they know what happened simply because they KNOW what happened, regardless which side they support, well maybe they should look deeper into their own prejudice and their own racism. And that would include you, Mr. President, and your lackey, Mr. Holder.

Too many people are promoting racism these days. Nobody gains by them promoting racism, except those few in public life who further their political agenda this way. Everyone else loses. So thank you very much Mr. President, for making life just a little bit harder for everyone who truly wish that we could judge folks by their character rather than their skin color. Yeah, you just pulled out that famous quote for your own use today. More’s the pity that you clearly don’t know what that quote means.

Cooperisms

Cooperisms

Selections from the ramblings of a wise and well traveled man.

“Life is hopelessly complex for people who have no principles.”

“Pick up a rifle and you change instantly from a subject to a citizen.”

“Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons.”

“The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.”

“The rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependant completely upon the moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the table, destroying group enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny. In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny, since a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized.”

“Remember the first rule of gun fighting…’have a gun’.”

“Safety is nice, but it’s not first. Life is first and life is not safe.”

“Do you care about freedom? Dreams may have inspired it, and wishes prompted it, but only war and weapons have made it yours.”

“The media insist that crime is the major concern of the American public today. In this connection they generally push the point that a disarmed society would be a crime free society. They will not accept the truth that if you take all the guns off the street you still will have a crime problem, whereas if you take the criminals off the street you cannot have a gun problem.”

“The will to survive is not as important as the will to prevail- the answer to criminal aggression is retaliation.”

“One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that violence begets violence. I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure- and in some cases I have- that any man who offer violence to his fellow citizens begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.”

“We continue to be exasperated by the view apparently gaining momentum in certain circles, that armed robbery is okay as long as nobody gets hurt! The proper solution to armed robbery is a dead robber, on the scene.”

“The police cannot protect the citizen at this stage of our development, and they cannot even protect themselves in many cases. It is up to the private citizen to protect himself and his family, and this is not only acceptable, but mandatory.”

“The 1911 pistol remains the service pistol of choice in the eyes of those who understand the problem. Back when we audited the FBI academy in 1947, I was told that I ought not to use my pistol in their training program because it was not fair. Maybe the first thing one should demand of his sidearm is that it be unfair.”

“A free man must not be told how to think, either by the government or by social activists. He may certainly be shown the right way, but he must not accept being forced into it.”

“The conclusions seem inescapable that in certain circles a tendency has arisen to fear people who fear government. Government, as the Father of Our Country put it so well, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. People who understand history, especially the history of government, do well to fear it. For a people to express openly their fear of those of us who are afraid of tyranny is alarming. Fear of the state is in no sense subversive. It is, to the contrary, the healthiest political philosophy for a free people.”

“One difference between a liberal and a pickpocket is that if you demand your money back from a pickpocket, he will not question your motives.”

Jeff Cooper (5/20-9/06)

A Plane Ride...Really

Spock likely would disapprove, but I don’t have a logical mind. So I’m not strong in math. But we are talking about solving to an unknown here, and that’s math. So I guess I’m not gonna quickly come up with the solution here, and thus I live with an unknown. 

I figure I’ve got X number of mornings left. X more. X is my unknown.

So far, I’ve seen about twenty three thousand mornings. That’s a bunch. There won’t be twenty thousand more, in all probability. But if I try to solve for X, if I try to calculate how many mornings are left for me, I don’t have a clue. Really, no clue. 

What does pass for logic with me is the notion that I should make something of as many mornings as I can of those I have left. Why waste them? So, if this one Sunday morning was to be the first of the rest, I could set a precedent, and maybe try for something truly memorable. 

Significant decisions often result from improbable beginnings.  I’ve never had a bad morning in Yosemite. And in the forty years I’ve been visiting, I’ve had well over a hundred mornings in that national park, and that meant sleeping in a bunch of different places. But an advertisement in a magazine led me to a different spot, one I had never considered, and it led to two more fine mornings for us.

Two months later, in that same magazine, I fell over another ad, (for no better reason than I’d found the last one there so I was poking around), this one for restored World War Two airplanes, and the folks who fly them. And this lit a fire. 

The Collings Foundation has been visiting our little city with their restored B-17 and B-24 bombers for a while. One weekend each year. Years ago, I drove to the airport to see them in the flesh, for I have a certain obsession about such things, and I met these aircraft. And that was good.

The Foundation offered rides in the bombers for a fee. But I thought I’d be practical, and I passed on that. But now years later, I did the reconsider, and went to the web site to see what a brief tango in a 70 year old bomber might cost these days. And I found instead, their P-51.

We don’t have time here for the full story. Someday, if the inspiration and the magic of fingers on keys cooperate, I might be able to explain the full story.  Just thinking about this task intimidates me right now. But let’s just say I’ve had a mad passion for the P-51 Mustang for some considerable time.

I’d like to have one. Problem is, I lack the wherewithal. Mega millions might help, but even that might not be enough. So along with a few other preposterous fantasies, I’d put this one on the shelf. I went to the occasional air show, and listened to the sweet sound of a P-51 engine start, and then I melted a little when the craft took off and that sound seared into my soul, and then when one roared past, buzzing the field, I died a little from the sheer lust of the moment. And until now, that has passed for close enough. That’s how we get by when we cannot get all that we want.

And then I found the Collings Foundation website, and right there in plain English, was the invite to ride along in their very unique two seat, dual control, P-51C. Betty Jane. And all it would take is a credit card and an hour of my precious time. I gave it some thought. I consulted with folks wiser than me, for emotion should not rule one’s decisions, and some logic should be applied. 

And then I disregarded logic, and paid heed to my heart, and I made my reservation.

So one of the Sunday mornings that I have left dawned overcast. The marine layer had slipped in under cover of darkness and that meant solid clouds a thousand feet above. That would mean no flying that day, unless it had the decency to clear away. Shucks! 

Oh, I’ll be fine. It’s just a plane ride. 

We watched as the clouds backed away from the hills to our east until we could see blue above. Hope began again. We arrived at the airfield early, for that’s how I operate. The B-17 and the B-24 sat on the pavement, looking just like those pictures from 70 years ago. The P-51 was nowhere to be seen. Oh, they probably broke it, and just forgot to tell me. No problem. I’ll just go home and get on with my life. 

No problem.

Nine o’clock and the tables were set up and the souvenirs were set out, folks were showing up with cameras and memories, and the two planes were being prepped by a covey of earnest looking men, the ground crew….and still no P-51. Pretty soon I was going to have to ask where it was. 

About then, the electric mule arrived, towing the polished aluminum, red spinner on the prop and red stripes on the tail and elevators, Mustang. Freaking awesome gorgeous in the perfect bright morning sun, my P-51 now sat just beyond the tail of the B-24. That noise was the pulse in my ears.

The Second World War had many parts, and the air war over Europe was a big part of that war. The B-17 and B-24 bombers each carried crews of ten men, and as many as a thousand bombers might head for Germany in a rather large group on any given day trying to win that war. Ten Thousand men at risk.

The Nazis objected to this, and they had many thousands of anti-aircraft guns, the 88’s, and also many hundreds of fighter aircraft, the Me-109 and FW-190, and an assortment of others arrayed to stop this. Their job was the destruction of those bombers, and the ten men aboard each. The leading Nazi ace in that war had 200 aerial victories, otherwise known as kills. Most of those victories were bombers which carried ten men to 25,000 feet above Germany, from which they fell to earth. Some survived. Others did not.

The P-51’s went along to safeguard the bombers. They were tasked with performing aerial victories against the Nazi fighters. They did well. A battle to the death, and from one point of view, of good against evil. For some then thought the Nazis should be stopped. And contrary to what some teach today, they were right.

This all was a nasty business.  I cannot even begin to wrap my brain around the courage those boys carried on each mission. For I’ve led a sheltered life.

A 737 airliner that we have all flown to 30,000 feet is a small plane to most of us, but they are larger than those WWII bombers, and the P-51 parked next to the B-24 looked like a mosquito next to that green plane. But in the inevitable evolution that war brings, in the survival of the fittest, the P-51 was the best to come out of that war. And on this morning, 70 years later, I’d be allowed to experience a tiny bit of what this airplane meant to history.

The P-51C was an engine, four 50 caliber machine guns, large fuel tanks, and a little space for the pilot to make the whole thing work. And the parts went together very well. 

I signed in at the table, and suddenly I was a VIP. I got to go over, beyond the rope, and check out Betty Jane up close. I got to know her, intimately. I met Jeff, the pilot. I took pictures, and Joie caught those photos of me next to the Mustang. We all watched the clouds to the north and west, for that’s where we were supposed to fly. And we waited on nature. And we waited.

Jeff offered the choice, to fly above the clouds to the northwest, or instead head east over the delta and into the valley where clear sky awaited. The map was marked with no trespassing zones, those places we could not clutter with our presence. The permitted open area past the delta looked fine to me. That was settled. Joie has a photo of Jeff and me, two backs, walking toward the Betty Jane.

You climb up on the port wing by stepping on the landing gear tire, and then on a shackle, and then you get a knee on the wing. The step into the rear seat is a bit of a stretch, but easier than that little move you did on Wall Street, well up on the Exum Route to the summit of the Grand Teton. (This bit is for Dad, who likely will remember) A ground crew member helps you don the parachute harness, two shoulder straps, a waist strap, two canvas loops between the legs. The seat belt with two more shoulder straps follow. 

With a smile, the guy tells you that if you need to “get out” the pilot will pop off the canopy, and you unfasten the seat belts, and pull that ‘D’ ring once you are “out”, and everything will be OK. Comforting.

The airsick bag sits in a recess next to the left elbow. The pilot says to tell him when you get the first queasy moment, but that macho part of you disregards. It’s a large zip lock freezer bag, as a souvenir, I suggest. The crew member laughs.

Jeff is futzing around in the front seat. I hear a ticking sound. The crew member stands by the port wing tip. I’m checking out the gauges on the panel in front of me. And trying to find a place for my feet, so I won’t interfere with the rudder pedals. It’s very cozy in my seat.  I have a control stick between my legs, and a throttle handle at my left. I find the magnetic compass, the gyro compass, the propeller RPM gauge, airspeed indicator, manifold pressure gauge, altimeter, g-force gauge, artificial horizon, temperature gauge, rate of climb or dive gauge, and fuel gauge. This should be easy. 

I’ve never piloted a plane before. I’ve never even been in a small plane. Those two trips in a sailplane likely don’t qualify as practice for this. But these crazy folks are going to let me fly this precious old airplane. Least I can do is do the best I can.

The engine was designed for a racing seaplane back in 1936. Built by Rolls Royce, the Merlin had powered the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire as Great Britain fought the Nazis to a tie during the Battle of Britain. The original Mustang was powered by an Allison engine, which lagged in high altitude performance, so somebody got the bright idea to put the Merlin in there, and it transformed the Mustang. The engine was manufactured by Packard under license during the war. 1650 cubic inches, and over 1400 horsepower, the twelve cylinder engine also produces that sound that so flutters my heart. No muffler on that thing.

Jeff fires the engine. A whining sound, the propeller turns slowly, and a few cylinders take, but not enough to keep it going. Smoke passes by on both sides of the plexiglass canopy. Wait a few seconds, and try again. A few more cylinders kick in this time, and the engine runs, albeit a bit rough. Finally, all twelve kick in, and the roar settles. The crew member by the wing gives a thumbs up. We are not on fire. 

I’d like to go for a ride, but first we must warm the engine at 1000 RPM. The little line on the temp gauge ever so slowly works through yellow toward green. I wait to die of old age. The cockpit fills with exhaust fumes and the smell of one hundred octane gas. I sit in a tin can with a blast of engine noise and metal rattle. This is a participatory event. I’m loving it. 

Finally, after checking with the tower, Jeff taxis off the parking area. All the folks who had been looking at the two bombers turn to watch. The sound we make is sweet. The runway goes west and east, so we must taxi to the other end. The wind dictates this. The P-51 is a tail dragger, so the nose is in the air and you cannot see to the front, so the pilot does slow S-turns the length of the taxiway lest he bump into someone.

I’m excited. 

The east end of the runway has a wide spot where you can run up the engine to see if it has any surprises waiting for you. And then after a short discussion with the tower, Jeff rolled us onto the runway headed west. The RPM gauge went to 3100, and we accelerated down the runway. The tail came up, and the speed came up, and then we came up. We had a hundred feet of elevation as we passed the two bombers, and then further up we went. 

We banked left and climbed over the city. Heading southeast and then east, we passed over our house. And then the hills passed below, the two little cities and then the delta, as we gained elevation. At four thousand feet elevation, Jeff’s voice came over the intercom. He was going to do a few maneuvers. He’d warned me that we would see 4 g’s of enthusiasm on this flight. I found a few of those g’s right away.

It kinda feels like your guts are going to come out your ass. Jeff leaned the plane over to ninety degrees. This meant that the wings which normally lie parallel with the earth are suddenly aligned vertical to the earth. The plane carves a very sudden turn. And the pilot finds out right away if that barf bag is going to be needed by his passenger. Momentarily, I wasn’t sure, until I realized that a gut shift didn’t necessarily mean the need for plastic bag. I was fine. I tightened those old belly muscles, and reminded myself to keep breathing, and I was fine. And I was having fun.

And then Jeff turned the plane over to me.

Holy crap!

I learned that the inputs to the control stick need only be subtle.  Raise the nose slightly, and then lean the plane to port, and it turns! Easy as that. I know nothing about driving a plane, but this lady is so predictable, that even a rank novice like me can easily make her behave. Turn right, turn left, 360 degree turn….no problem. I realize how easy it would be to get lost doing this, so I learn to look for the mountain, and when it doesn’t change position, I can use it to tell where I’m going. At 250 knots!

Jeff takes over, and we climb up to 6 thousand feet, and it’s time for some aileron rolls and then finally a loop or two. Weird feeling, looking up through the clear canopy as the ground shows up, up there. This all is very cool. Some quick ‘S’ turns, and then finally, the climb, roll upside down and then dive on the farmhouse below for a strafing attack. Wow, and Wow!

Then he hands the plane over to me again, and we make our way back toward Concord. I get to try some tighter turns, some 180’s and 360’s. I get nearly vertical in my last turn. I’m flippin ole Betty Jane around, looking for the Red Baron, and getting a sense for what those guys once did for a living, so they could keep on living. I’d lost the need to justify, but clearly this was worth the cost. Priceless is another word for it.

We passed over the airport at 1500 feet, and then turned round, dropped the landing gear and set the flaps. A touch of throttle, and we touched down gently on the front gear, and then waited for the tail to drop. And then it was just the runoff until Jeff tapped the brakes and we taxied in behind the B-24, turned, and then parked. The engine died. And my flight in a P-51 ended.

A ground crew member helped me with the seat belt and parachute harness, and I clambered out of the cockpit and onto the wing. A quick drop to the pavement, and I was back to earth. A hand shake and thank you for Jeff, and a quick look to Joie and her camera. 

My brain was a bit cluttered. 

I took the moment to wander through the B-17 interior. I waited for the P-51 to take off with the next passenger, and that sound seared my soul again. I wandered about the two bombers a dazed man. And I realized that it might be a while before my feeble brain can process all of this. Not even all that sure what I need to process. But I’m looking forward to whatever I discover next.

Not sure how many more mornings await, but this was a good one.

Worth the price? 

Yep.