Obama
I had mentioned to a friend who had serious reservations regarding the new administration that I would give him the rest of the year and would suspend my evaluation. I had three things that I would evaluate him on. The first was the criminal behaviour of the prior administration The next is Financial Regulation (including the economy) and finally Health care.
Well Eric Holder is slow rolling any criminal prosecution in order to run out the statute of limitations as well as protect his fellow lawyers. Obama has not deemed it necessary to light a fire under Holder on this issue.
As to Financial Regulation, well that is good for a chuckle. When the financial and insurance finish porking the U.S. Senate and Obama has to pay back the I.O.U.'s for his campaign costs I guess it should be obvious to all who controls the country and they decide which Bimbo or Bimbo's we get to vote for each election cycle.
Health Care? See above. Although this farcical play has not run out yet.
In sum I have to say I am disappointed with the the frittering away of such promise. Any failure of this administration will not effect me as I am an old asshole and I am on my way out. For those of you younger, I guess you have to deal with it. Good Luck
Photograph and Art
This has been a good year for me doing art. I got a good DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera and damn it is really nice. I have done some interesting things as of late and the digital has allowed me to go into areas of aesthetics that I never thought I would go. (See some of them below) In addition I got an Epson 2880 Printer and have explored the use of ICC profiles in order to get a print as close as that on my monitor. The results are incredible
For Christmas Carol got me a beginners set of Studio Lights so now I can start doing still Life stuff. I suggested to Carol I could now take "Art" (naughty) pictures of her but she gracefully declined so I guess I will have to troll for some 18 yr old. (18 meets any legal obligations but trolling is not easy to do at my age).
Birds
As you might reflect on past blogs here I talked about the great failed experiment of a plastic owl to scare away birds when we let the cats out. (This, of course, was to protect the birds from our cats.) Well we now have a Harrier Hawk that loves to come into our yard and attack the birds that Carol so diligently feeds. Well now we cannot let the cats out and the birds are feed for the hawk. Although Carol is horrified and the prospect of the food chain I am more tolerant. I see the hawk as so beautiful and so perfectly designed as a predator. There is a grace there that I understand and know I will never achieve that grace. I have set out below a poem by Robinson Jeffers that says it far better than I could ever hope. It is my anthem
"Hurt Hawks
I
The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.
He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.
II
I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;
but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance.
I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.
What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality. "
Robinson Jeffers caught here, a thought that seems to get to me. Anyway The hawk let me watch him. He sits and for hours his head turning and watches all. He knows I watch and he is indifferent to me. I like that.
As to next year who knows. I will keep doing photographs and keep trying to get Carol to pose for "Art" pictures and, no, I will not troll for an 18 year old (at least while Carol is watching)
Dang these sins See you
"Pierced Walls"
"Days of Wine and Roses"
"Age of Anxiety"
"Exercise in Paper I"
Self Portrait "Old Man with History in His Eyes"
"Cat - Cleaning"
