This Just In...

Views of the news and other stuff

From...I'm bragging!

OK, I am going to brag...don't do that much but hey, I deserve to!!!

I got an email last week from the Deputy Editor of a British photo magazine asking if they could use a photo they had seen on my website in an upcoming issue of the magazine. I wasnt sure which one they were talking about so I ended up sending them two....they wrote back and said they wanted to use both of them--one for next months issue, the second for the month after...

Cool huh? And here are the two pics (I won't tell you the name of the magazine until they are actually published--just in case there is a glitch and they aren't published--in which case I shall wipe egg from my face). The first is a "pencil sketch" of the pier at Surfside Beach SC...took the original photo and played with it with Paint Shop Pro Photo. The second is of the sunrise at Surfside, took the shot and then ran it through HDR processing. You can see much larger versions at my Flickr site...click on the Flickr thingie to the left of the blog.

posted by: JustMe63 at 13:18 | link | comments (1) |

From...F**k the Olympics..

I have often said to friends that if I had my life to live over again, the one thing I would do is try my darndest to make the Olympic team. Whether it be in swimming (I swam competitively through my freshman year in college); ice hockey; soccer; doesn't matter which sport, I would go all out to make it. I still get goose bumps watching gold medal ceremonies. In particular, I get tears in my eyes when I watch Chandra Crawford singing the Canadian national anthem at full voice after she won a gold medal at the last winter Olympics. Any athlete winning a gold medal should sing their national anthem at full voice---I know I sure the hell would! (ok--the links are still not working--so here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBnF08Xn06g)

Now, here we are, just a couple of days from the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics... and I am fed up with them. I am fed up with the human rights crap that China has exhibited lately, most recently the taking away of Joey Cheeks visa to go to the Olympics; I am fed up with the IOC and their cowardly approach to dealing with the Chinese and their broken promises;  I am totally fed up with those hypocritcal governments, including ours, who are letting the Chinese and the IOC get away with it; and I am tired of corporate America waging their tails to every beat of the IOC and  Chinese drum so they can access the Chinese markets. Sally Jenkins had a most appropriate column the other day in the Washington Post...she expresses my sentiments exactly. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/04/AR2008080401942.html). She says "But the bad air here has shown the IOC and its commercial sponsors in an especially ugly and damning light. They have been conspicuous cowards in dealing with Chinese officials, and maybe even outright collaborators, on every issue from human rights to the environment to censorship. The silence of IOC President Jacques Rogge in the face of the continuing dissident sweeps amounts to complicity. "In view of my responsibilities, I have lost some of my freedom of speech," he said last week. Rogge's idea of a solution to the thorny problems of these Games is to hope "the magic" will take over once they begin.:

I shall probably watch the Olympics. But I hope one of the scenes they put on TV is that of some athletes telling the Chinese to go piss up a rope.... so what if the Chinese are embarassed. (I saw a thing on TV the other night in which they talked about how delicate they have to be with the Chinese--they are easily offended). Well fuck them...they should be offended. And best of all, the IOC should be scraped, and the whole idea of the Olympic movement should go back to square one--- with the athletes calling the shots.

Whew..just had to get that off my chest.

And on another topic... Barack, if you really want to win this election, all you have to do is align McCain with Bush-- hell, if any Democrats want to win, just align your Rep opponent with the current crew in office...the Republicans have screwed us royally over the past 8 years; folks are plenty pissed; so dont take the high road; hell you don't even have to get nasty.... just remind us that a vote for any Republican, from McCain on down is a vote for 4 more years of the same. Simple isn't it?

posted by: JustMe63 at 15:37 | link | comments (4) |

From...Is This Right?

I am all in favor of companies trying to make a profit. After all that is why they are in business in the first place. And I am all in favor of stockholders getting a good return on their investment. But I find this quite sickening. How about you?
Addendum---ok the link above isn't working (seems Motime has been having a lot of problems with this kind of thing doesn't it?) Here is the link written out
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080102930.html

posted by: JustMe63 at 12:55 | link | comments (3) |

From...Random Thoughts...

Here we are, almost the beginning of August.Summer is more than half way over- it has been good so far. But not without trials and tribulations....

About a year ago, I met a couple who were taking photos at a park that I love to photograph. We talked for a long time at the park, shared flickr addresses, and emailed several times back and forth..sharing photography thoughts and ides. I hadn't heard from them for a while--about 6 months. So I emailed them about a week ago...still no response. I knew what the wife did, so I googled her....and found that she died last month...very suddenly. She was found slumped over the steering wheel of her car at the side of the road. Only 50... and I feel so badly for her husband and kids...have emailed him expressing my sadness...

And I havent felt so hot for the past 2-3 weeks myself. Felt nauseus and really out of sorts. Had moles under my arm pits which were itching like hell...so went to the doc yesterday. She ran a bunch of tests, did the blood work...talked with her this morning, and she can't find anything wrong.... moles are nothing. Says I am in great health and may have had a touch of the flu. Grateful for that, but at my age I find myself stressing over real and perceived illnesses. I do need to get over that.

The tomato crop has been huge this year. But it is a race with the squirrels to get to the tomatoes. The little buggers have had their share now, and a blast with a slingshot awaits the next thief. Ahhhh, fresh picked tomatoes, with fresh basil (another huge crop), splash of EVO and balsamic, with some fresh mozerella cheese..... mouth watering, no?

Another sorrowful event of the summer...I had to cut down our huge oak tree in the back yard. It was a good 5 feet at the base...the drought last summer did it in, plus a couple of others in my yard, and more in the neighbors...... the tree was the home of my kids treehouse when they were growing up, a source of wonderful shade and wonderful memories of the 25+ years we have lived here. I sobbed when I made the decision to let it go. And many more tears when I paid over $3,000 to remove it....

Taking a lot of photos, learning lots, and more or less having a grand summer. And tomorrow going to Chesapeake Beach on the Bay with the grandkids to look for sharks teeth.....Hope your summer is going well as well...

posted by: JustMe63 at 17:00 | link | comments |

From...More of the beach

Experimenting lately with black and white photos..here is one of a sunrise at Surfside Beach SC

posted by: JustMe63 at 14:11 | link | comments (2) |

From...The Beach

Returned yesterday from a week at Surfside Beach SC...perfect weather, perfect food (way too much), and just a blast....and here is what you get when you get up at 6am to walk on the beach...
Cool huh?

posted by: JustMe63 at 17:27 | link | comments (6) |

Fom.....Yeah, that's the ticket, more guns!

This damn fascination we have for guns has to end! Using guns for hunting is one thing, but I am certainly not convinced that keeping them for self defense is defensible...Obviously the right wing Supreme Court thinks otherwise....and again we become the laughing stock of the rest of the western world..... what a shame. We fall back on that damn second ammendment every time, and I am convinced the writers of the constitution would be rolling in their graves if they see what we have become...

OK--once again the Motime engineers have fallen asleep at the wheel...the hyperlinks arent working properly... I click the hyperlink icon, type in the url to be linked, click on ok, and it show that I am linked but it doesnt go to the link when activated.....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr---it has been like this for a few days now.

Here is the link for the article above http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080626/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_guns

posted by: JustMe63 at 16:00 | link | comments (1) |

From...Fear Knows No Bounds...

America lives under a reign of fear...no, not from terrorist or the threat of nuclear war, rather from the ingrained fear put into us by the Bush regime. Ever since 911, we have been lectured that at any moment, some terrorist with a shoe bomb is going to attack us, some kook is going to put some deadly chemical in our water supply, some idiot is going to let loose a dirty bomb. Our recent elections have been tainted, nay won, on who is best to handle terrorists. And in trying to prevent such a calamity, we have spent billions on putting up barricades in front of every major building in the country, employing closed circuit cameras everywhere, acckkk you know what I mean. And the worst of all, the damn TSA, which has made traveliing through airports hell. Take off your shoes, untie your belt, no more than 3 oz of deoderant, you know the drill.

In all of this we have lost so many civil liberties, diverted billions of dollars away from repairing our infrastructure, providing health care and food to the poor, and of course the big lie---Iraq has WMD's, thus we send thousands of our young men and women to die.

Well a fascinating article in the Post Sunday by Becky Akers----listen to these figures: In commenting on the uselessness of the TSA...

The TSA's checkpoints have been delaying passengers for six years now. With roughly 720 million "emplanements" every year, the TSA has searched almost 4.5 billion fliers. No screener anywhere has found a single terrorist. That's because terrorism is one of life's most improbable dangers. In fact, it's so remote that the National Safety Council only calculates how likely we are to die from "war and other sequelae" -- and in 2004, Americans ran a mere one in 10,487,744 chance of becoming such a casualty. By contrast, those who climbed into a car stood one chance in 19,216 of traveling in a casket next. Anyone who moves is an even greater daredevil: walking, climbing stairs or rolling over in bed makes your odds of dying from a fall one in 15,614.

Kinda makes ya think doesn't it.....

NOTE-- for some reason the links to the article are not working in Motime. Here is the complete URL for the Akers article...http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062002227_pf.html

posted by: JustMe63 at 20:09 | link | comments |

From...Another Sadness

Just heard that George Carlin died....Being a child of the '60's he was one of my favorite comedians. Yes he tended to be very off color, but what the hell....he usually told the truth, and it was an "intellectual" type of comedy that made you sit back and say, "yes...he is right."

It was recently announced that he was going to be presented with the Mark Twain Award by the Kennedy Center. Sad he won't be able to accept it in the city that gave him so much grief...

posted by: JustMe63 at 14:27 | link | comments (2) |

From...This and That...

This will be a “this and that” post. Just got back from a most interesting day. I am currently taking a photography course, our last class is next Wednesday, and we have to have ready a portfolio of photos based on a theme. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do until 3:30am last Monday, when I sat straight up in bed with one of those “ah ha” moments…my project is going to be a “trip” up the Potomac River. So today I drove down to Mt. Vernon, the start of the “trip,” to take photos. Then I stopped at each and every  place to stop between there and Alexandria…a total of about 8-9 places, and took pics of the river…different scenes, different objects, but with the river as the main theme.

The Potomac really is quite a beautiful river. When you get south of DC it really becomes quite placid…it is even quite placid as it passes DC…but go just a few miles upstream and you are in to a raging torrent, especially during flood season. Each year sees a number of folks loosing their lives when they fall into the river. Today I made it as far as the Alexandria waterfront. Tomorrow I will finish the trip at Riverbend Park, just north of Great Falls National park. If time permits I might even get up as far as Harpers Ferry, where the Shenandoah River meets the Potomac, but will have to wait and see.

Once all the pics are taken, I want to process them into either black and white prints, or infrared…will try both.

In other news…

On Monday, I went to St. Albans School for the public wake for Tim Russert. I didn’t always watch “Meet the Press” but when I did I was always impressed by the commonality of the man. And thousands of other must have felt the same thing--- they stood in line with me.  This was the first of these kinds of things I have attended, but I felt I really needed to go. I never went for Reagan (heaven forbid) or Ford or any other celebrity. None. The lines stretched for blocks, some folks coming from way out of town. The outpouring of both grief and tribute to Tim has been quite astounding. Dana Millbank’s column today really described the overall feeling that has been conveyed.

I think one of the reasons why so many people feel this way towards Tim is that he always put himself above the fray. He was first and foremost a common man, a son of  Buffalo. In many respects, I found that the questions he asked of his interviewees in Meet the Press were the same questions that I would ask if I was there…. And many folks felt the same way.  For those of us living here, he was also another citizen of DC. He was proud of the city, not because it was the nation’s capital, but simply because this is where he called home. He could be seen at the Wizards and Nationals games, the shopping malls, walking the Mall… just another frumpy guy in shorts and t-shirt…no different in that respect then the rest of us. So when every Sunday morning he hosted MTP, and was interviewing some famous politician or public figure, he was representing us. And gawd don’t we need more of his kind…especially now, with the bad shape our country is in…and politicians not really keen, or even willing,  on doing very much.

And on this….what the hell is it with Dubya and McCain wanting to go drill offshore for more oil? Yeah, another wonderful solution to our energy crisis…..more petroleum, that’s the ticket…pay no never mind to the fact that we will, some day, run completely out of oil….with probably no alternative energy sources in sight! I read that the amount of oil reserves calculated to be offshore would take just a tad over 2 years to use up at the current rate we use oil. And sure enough some oil spill will take place, which takes 100  years to clean up thoroughly. But isn’t that typical Republican thinking? Short term results, greed, and go Haliburton!

Those poor folks in Iowa, and now Missouri and Illinois as well…devastated by the floods. Dubya flew over the area today, and talked with some folks there…did anyone hear if he said “Way to go…good job xxxx” to anyone. Does the name "Katrina" bring back memories?

And Tiger Woods wins the US Open on a buggered up knee and a busted leg to boot! Wanta bet ever other golfer heaved a huge sigh of relief now that Tiger is out for the rest of the season…

Supper is now calling….pork chops on the grill sounds wonderful..

More later…

 

posted by: JustMe63 at 21:57 | link | comments (3) |

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