Category: pondering

The lump in my throat, feeling kind of homesick, photo of the day

From the National Geographic Photo of the Day site:




(click photo to see larger size)


Photo by Troy Lim, taken December 2010 at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.

As a school kid we went on a field trip to the Bosque del Apache and I also went a couple times with my folks. It is one of the most visceral feelings I’ve ever known to sit in among the vast amounts birds at either sunrise or sunset and hear them all calling, honking, tweeting, whatevering at each other. It is a feeling, truly, that nature is much, much greater than you.

And I miss it.

Cheers to you, my Fair New Mexico.


With The Passage of Time

While toiling away at my desk job every day, I like to keep the day going by listening to the radio in the background.

Generally, I like to stream the oldies country station out of Albuquerque, channel 104.7. It is very comforting to hear familiar music mixed in with ads for local ABQ businesses. It’s also very perplexing for my coworkers, which is an added benefit.

This afternoon while crunching spreadsheets and lobbing emails over the wall, the circa 1969 song “Okie from Muskogee” came on the radio.

Now, as you know, I do love a Merle Haggard song.

For some reason today, instead of just mindlessly singing along, I listened in on the words.

It’s a pretty outdated song by many accounts, yet in some ways still feels relevant.

Take this, for example:

“We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy/
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.”

Well, for one thing, long and shaggy hair is commonplace now. It’s actually mainstream.

For another, there’s not any hippies in SF these days. I don’t think the free-love folks from the sixties would even recognize the place anymore. Funny how scads of money tends to move the needle toward conservative, no matter where you are.

That said, that’s still my favorite line in the song. I sang it at the top of my lungs when I saw Merle in concert this summer. The absurdity of singing a line deriding San Francisco while being near San Francisco was just too delicious.

Then there’s this part that has always cracked me up:

“We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse/
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all.”

So he’s singing about how being a square is a good thing. About having good clean fun. About waving the flag and being upright and just.

Oh and he’s also singing about drinking an illegal alcohol substance.

Marijuana? No. Moonshine? Just fine.

Am I the only one who finds that just a little…oh I don’t know…ironic?

Plus, I can guarangoddamntee you that Mr. Haggard has sampled of the green stuff. More than once. More than once today.

Merle has said he wrote “Okie from Muskogee” as a protest to the Vietnam protestors. He found them a little hard to take after he’d been released from San Quentin.

Oh wait. So the flag waving good clean fun guy was in prison?

Five different times, actually. Doesn’t that seem…uh…also ironic?

Which makes me remember that the whole song, while conservative and flag waving and a bit chiding in tone is really, actually, all done tongue in cheek.

It’s a bit of a ruse, and a well-done ruse. A Grammy winning poke at society.

And that’s where the title of this post comes into play. With the passage of time, The Hag starts to look a little less like a musical outlaw and a lot more like a musical genius.

Plus he helped me get through a really rough day. Thanks Hag.




I’m So Pulling out my Textbooks

Back in 1890, they passed into law this little ol’ thing called the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

From the wiki: “The purpose of the act was to oppose the combination of entities that could potentially harm competition, such as monopolies or cartels.”

Yes, this is a good thing. Boon to a free economy and such.

Well I’m ready to invoke that act on a little institution known as Getty Images.

If you look around the web and you see an image you like, look closer…odds are Getty already owns it. And don’t both trying to “borrow” it, Getty wants their money and they want it bad.

Oh, and they are large enough to bring a whole passel of lawyers along for the ride.

Getty owns most shots from any professional sporting event. Getty owns the photos of most individual players too.

Getty has hoovered up many of the great images on Flickr, too. In many cases, photographers *gladly* gave over rights to their photos in hopes of making a little money or at least getting a little exposure.

Understandable, but I don’t have to like it.

Ever visited iStockPhoto, a place where you can find a lot of for-pay great stock images? Getty.

And now, oh now, my fave royalty free photo site, stock.xchng is under new management.

You guessed it, Getty has booted the original team (ok, they probably received a nice sum for their time and trouble) and is now in charge.

I’ll betcha some cold hard cash that many of these formerly free images will no longer be free. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that stock.xchng will soon be blended entirely into iStockPhoto and s’long high quality royalty free photos.

This make Hulk maaaad.

I’m just a little personal blog. I don’t make big ad bucks. I make no bucks from my blog. I do it for the satisfaction. And oh so sorry, can’t pay for high quality photos with just my sense of satisfaction.

Bah!

Photo below, found by searching “greedy” on stock.xchng.








Photo by Svilen Milev and used royalty free (for the time being) from stock.xchng.


An Ode To The Shortest Month

Yesterday, in the midst of the weirdness and woe, there was also something magical to note.

After severe rainstorms and plenty of freezing weather, Monday was this clear, sunny, warm, beautiful day.

It was, I think, a hint of what’s to come: February.

Yes, I said February.

The second month of the year. The shortest month of the year. February is a beautiful month.

In February, winter is not quite over, but spring is not quite here. In February we start to see the brilliant yellow of blooming daffodils against the monochrome hue of stormy skies. Daffodils are the harbinger of warm sunny days to come. They gives the cold body hope.

I believe the daffodils and tulips and the snowfall of Cherry Blossoms in February are meant to keep us going like the carrot at the end of the stick. The “something wonderful just around the bend” that help the human soul stay willing to endure the cold and damp days that are yet to be endured.

In February, Punxsutawney Phil pokes his burrowing animal’s head out of the ground and lets us know the score. The planning can begin.

The ground begins to thaw. Birds start to think about coming back this way. There is hope.

Heck, February is also the birth month of at least three of my favorite people (wait, four! Just thought of another).

I appreciate we’re still a good two weeks away from February, but I’m looking toward the second month of the year with a secret anticipation.

In other words…I’m flat tired of winter.

But it’s more poetic to speak of daffodils and warm days.






**Footnote: I purposefully ignored the “holiday” in February. I’m grateful to celebrate every day with my beloved, I don’t need a certain day set aside.


Photo by Andrea Kratzenberg and used royalty free from stock.xchng.


Can’t Handle The Pressure

The celebration of New Year’s 2011 was an interesting one, at least from my perspective.

It’s no secret that times have been a little rough for the past, oh, three or so years, but on December 31, 2010, there seemed to be a lot of optimism.

The general tone of the tweets, articles and conversations I experienced was that 2010 was over, and expectations were very high for a good 2011.

Even I fell into this category, being as suggestible as I am. It felt SO good to cast off what was, but a most accounts, a crappy year and turn my face to a new year that could hold so much joy, healing and peace.

Wipe the slate clean. Start again. The market is coming up a little. Jobless rate is going down a little. It seemed like more people had jobs and a bit more money to celebrate the holidays.

These are all good trends. Heck yeah, 2011! Bring us something good!

Today, the seventeenth day of January, it feels like folks have become a little impatient.

Where is my something good? Bring it to me already!

The credit card statements are rolling in, and those fun holiday celebrations are demanding they be paid off.

A few more people have jobs, but I can’t see that any more people are particularly happy with their jobs. It is, after all, still called “work”, as much as I’d like to get up in the morning and go to “fun” all day long.

Then there was that horrifying event down in Tuscon which not only ripped apart a community, but also became fodder for the harrumphing heads (<--like a talking head only wind-baggier). The news doesn't seem happier. People don't seem happier. Things are improving, but slowly. This weekend I started looking around at my fellow man and realized something. Everyone is pissed off. There is rudeness abounding, people saying shitty things, and today at the grocery story, something went down between the checker and a customer that ended up being taken outside. At the grocery store. Ay god. Then we came home from the store to see a police car sitting on our block in front of a neighbor's house. What the f--- is going on around here? I'd like to blame my own neighborhood and say "eh, it's just turning bad" but I'm not sure that's it's just happening here. I think people are fed up. Maybe, just maybe, we've put too much pressure on 2011 to be the panacea for all of the residual worries, anger and sadness from the great recession. One month into one year cannot fix all that came before. Maybe let's give both 2011 and each other a break, ok? We've got a lot of days left to go in this year. Who knows what 2011 has up its sleeve for, say, April? Or August? Ya just never know. I still believe in you 2011. You won't let us down. Right?