The New Header. and The Road I'm On

I thought this was going to be a blog post about the blog - the new header that is, but it's really not...

The new header is a slightly adjusted photo of Mt Hood, here in Oregon, taken from a gravel parking lot, just off of Marine drive, between the Sheriff Station boat ramp and PDX airport. It's a zoom in of the view I see through my windshield driving home some evenings,
if I get headed that way while it's still daylight.

I'm not native to this area. This kind of scenery is not what I was raised on. Growing up in Kansas you just don't see stuff like this. Ever.
There are a number of things I miss about Kansas.
First, that bunch of my family that's not out here.
Second, some of the scenery there. It's not as spectacular as much of the stuff out here, but it has it's own impact, it's own kind of power.
A Kansas sky, if you take the time to see it, can be pretty impressive.
It's really, really big, and sometimes way wide open, in a way you just don't see here.
I miss my friends-all three or five of them.
I miss the times I had there in my young adulthood.

I sometimes miss being 19 years old, sure I had it all ,
a happy, pretty girl by my side,
me driving my Dad's blue pickup down a mid-June country gravel road,
equally sun and tree shadow striped, with
Jackson Browne turned way up loud, both windows fully down,
smelling the summer grass and the
rippling creek under the flat cement slab bridge, while
a family of raccoons crossed just in front of me and the
Red Tailed Hawk passed just over, from left to right.


That road led to this road.

Robert Plant and Alyson Krauss turned way up loud,
the tallest volcano in the Cascade Range in front of me,
Columbia river on one side and the bustling airport on the other,
the Black Cormorants bobbing just out of sight in the river, where the Monster Sturgeon waits to pull some fisherman's boat around awhile, and the Great Blue Herons stand watching me, watching them, as the
Red Tailed Hawk passes just over, from left to right.

This life, It does spin 'round and 'round doesn't it.....

AT LAST, a moment in time

I don't do political stuff. I sure as hell don't do mushy stuff about political figures...But, just this once, perhaps-

Last night, I, along with millions and millions in the US, and around the world, breathed a sigh of relief. Sounds kind of cheezy perhaps, but, there it is. As Beyonce Knowles' absolutely belted out AT LAST, by Eta James, I turned to my wife and said "This is going to be one of those moments we look back on and say "I remember when..." . As the Neighborhood Ball progressed, the mood and the level of emotion never seemed to abate, though No one could top the obviously sincere Adoration Beyonce' evoked for the Obamas, the moment and yes, her country at that moment - along with millions of the rest of us.

It's going to be, as my father would say "A long row to Hoe". None the less, there does seem to be sense of hope and determination that I not sure I've ever seen before.

In case you missed it, here's the Beyonce/Obamas First Dance.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY6RdKtzo6Y

Now, off to work....

minimal

One summer somewhere around one of the Falls, columbia River Gorge.

I'm still here. Nothing is coming to mind worth putting in text. I swear I used to be smarter, more creative, and a whole hell of a lot more clever...Or maybe in my youthfull ignorance I just thought I was and now have learned better...

I'll try again later - promise.

I GAVE A CAMERA TO A FOUR YEAR OLD

Aaron's first evening with his new mini-vivitar.

(click on collage to enlarge)

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Those shots of him were still frame captures from it's PC CAMERA mode-

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Dad(I) chose when and clicked the mouse for those.

Ok, it's a "what was I thinking?" kind of event. This tiny little camera has only two buttons, and yet a full camera's worth of "modes" and "functions" .

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It has a tiny little pop up view finder with the worst possible plastic view lens in it. This makes it nigh on to impossible to actually or accurately see what you're taking a picture of. Framing is, at best, an approximate kind of venture.

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It has cryptic two character codes for functions which appear in the tiny and not well lit lcd display on the front of the camera. It will time itself out and turn off after a thirty second period of no button pushing. So the Dad has to tab to the correct code, hand it to the four year old and then say -

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"go take pictures FAST, but remember to be very still while shooting, and remember to keep your fingers/thumbs out from in front of the lens - even if you DO think that's hilarious, and remember it has no flash so try to shoot stuff that's in good light(try explaining the photographic meaning of good light to a 4 yr old), and no, you won't get what you want if you hold it out like Daddy does his camera, 'cause there's no view screen to aim with, and yeah, I know it's hard to see through the little view window, and, and, There you Go!, you've taken a beautiful picture of something neither one of us can identify, and SURE, we can down load those thirteen pictures so you can see them and then start all over again......."

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Ok, so it might be good to spend a little more than ten bucks for your kid's first digital camera....on the other hand, he couldn't be more thrilled with it, even if I could.

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He particularly loves the PC CAMERA MODE because he can point the camera around (as far as it's three foot patch cord will go) and see what it sees, real time, while it's doing it. I still have to point and click the mouse on the capture still frame button. He can't be expected to do that, hold, point the camera, and try to tell it a story or sing into it because he Doesn't understand that it JUST DOESN'T DO sound.

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And then the not well translated from Asian instructions on the included software will actually let you save to something else like picassa 3 so you can do an utterly heart warming, if not finely artistic, collage of your little person's first shooting experience with their own camera.

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Ok, that was SO worth ten bucks, a half an hour's worth of frantic direction deciphering, and patient camera coaching of a four year old.

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In retrospect, this would probably a lot more practical for, say, an eight year old, although an eight year old would be more immediately aware of the little camera's limitations, there by inciting I'm sure much lobbying for a bigger/better camera. Of course, I guess, many eight year olds now probably have a camera built into their personal cell phones that they can picture message with.... Ah, life in this, the best of all possible twenty first centuries........

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And so it begins.......