Month: June 2019

BI-WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE: THE INTERESTING EDIT – Marilyn Armstrong

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Photo Challenge: Edit

Three pictures using impressionist, graphic, and HDR styling.

A pole in the water – Abstract Impressionist

And here it is again, Cezanne-style, though not looking all that much different.

Rope on a boat – HDR with some graphics

And a Cezanne-style version …

If Cezanne painted my garden

YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY MISS IT – Marilyn Armstrong

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Last night, I spent close to an hour looking for something that was exactly where it was supposed to be. It was on the correct shelf, right in front. Nothing was hiding it. It wasn’t behind something or turned the wrong way.

I looked there — twice — and I couldn’t see it. So I looked in all the other places I might possibly have put an unopened package of medication. There’s a cupboard in the kitchen where some stuff is stored. There’s a rack in the bathroom where other supplies are kept. Otherwise, it’s either my medicine cabinet or the cabinet over the john.

I searched the kitchen thoroughly, in the process finding and tossing out several bottles and tubes of prehistoric stuff that had to be at least a decade old and which I didn’t know I still had. But, I didn’t find what I was looking for.

Finally, I began to question if the container for which I was looking existed at all. I thought I’d bought two bottles of this stuff. It’s not expensive, so I would normally buy a couple of them at a time and stash the spare in my cupboard. But maybe I only thought I’d bought a spare. Maybe there was only one.

Before tucking myself into bed, I made a final pass at the cabinet over the toilet, my default location for storing non-prescriptions medications and cosmetics. There it was. Right in the middle. Where I had looked at least three times during the past hour.,

72-bathroom-cabinet-081916_001

Despite my tendency to blame it on the dogs or on supernatural wee people, I suspected my eyes had been blind to the container. In a bright yellow box.

In bed, I told Garry I had just spent nearly an hour looking for something that was where it was supposed to be and where I had looked multiple times.

He was sympathetic. “Yes,” he said, “It happens.” So. Is it my eyes refusing to see what’s obviously there? Or is my brain unable (temporarily) to register information?

Or maybe … it really is those pesky, wee brownies, fairies, and pixies messing with me.

MOVEMENT AND MOTION – Marilyn Armstrong

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FOWC with Fandango — Movement

Yesterday, it was warm, bright, sunny and just a little bit humid. I was under the impression it was Thursday, but I woke up today and realized today is Saturday. The rain I thought was at least 24-hours away is already closing in.

Just yesterday, all bud and no daylilies.

It was sunny when I first woke up this morning. I saw no reason to get up at six in the morning, so I went back to bed and when I got up, the sun was gone. The sky was gray. The weather had moved on. But I looked out my kitchen window and I saw a bright daylily.

I was sure they would start to bloom soon. I thought they would bloom yesterday. Instead, they waited for today, so before I even got my coffee, I took myself outside to get some pictures. I think later it will rain and since it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, too … well … today was my picture day.

Still more buds than flowers, but a very quick movement

Movement. Amazing the changes that can take place overnight. I’ve lived through a warm spring day and woken to a blizzard. I’ve watched the sun blaze all morning, watched the movement of the clouds as they cover the sky and the sun disappears. Then heard and seen the first fat drops fall on the deck. A complete movement of the weather, sometimes in as little as half an hour from bright summer day to gloomy grey and rain.

At least the flowers went — overnight — from buds to blossoms. More flowers are still in bud than are in bloom, but still, it’s a big change. Next week should be even better.

I’m counting on it.

DOESN’T IT JUST FIGURE? – Marilyn Armstrong

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There’s a German word that has been adopted in Yiddish and Hebrew that means exactly this. The Urban Dictionary had a definition, which was a surprise. I didn’t know the word had crept into English.

Davka

A German or Yiddish word used in English because there’s no precise English equivalent. It is variously translated as unexpectedly, just to spite, despite everything, whaddayaknow, of course, just my luck, in fact, actually.

Basically, it’s an adverb which captures the essence of Murphy’s Law, “because of course, something HAS to go wrong.”

Notes and Usage:

Davka generally precedes the subject: “The one day I get to uni early, davka my class was canceled!”

It can also show up after the subject: “The one day I get to uni early, davka I left my pen at home!” or  “I only had time to study the first 3 chapters for the exam. Davka the essay was in chapter 4!” or  “For the first hour of the movie, I was fine. As soon as the exciting part started, davka I had to go to the toilet!” or “I leave my car for just 5 minutes. Davka I get a parking ticket!”

#yiddish#jewish#hebrew#stam#nu#murphy’s law
by AndreRD June 04, 2013

“Doesn’t it just figure … (fill in the blank).”

Examples include personal items like:

      • You delay your picnic a day or two because you think the grey weather is going to get better, but the days that come are far worse than the one from which you delayed.
      • You go out of your way to “do the right thing” and somehow, everything goes wrong and you wind up arrested by the cops or sued or some other terrible results.
      • You’ve just been divorced. You figure you’re finally past the point of childbearing and anyway, you quite enough children. But doesn’t it figure, the person with whom you fall in love also has a few kids.

You can have the same results politically. You vote for an outsider because the insiders are totally corrupt. The outsider is far worse than the people you ousted. Davka!

In Hebrew, Yiddish, and German, it’s “Davka.”

When a situation arises like that, you can skip a lot of explanation and just say, “Davka.”

For a while, when I moved to Israel, I thought my name was “Davka.” I had to have it explained that it was a contextual statement. I wasn’t personally “Davka,” but because I had shown up, a lot of other things became “Davka.”

What I discovered yesterday is that our problem vis-a-vis finding really great care for our aging dogs is a bad case of “Davka.” Not merely does it turn out to be a common problem, but it’s one of those essentially insoluble problems. Even if you have the funds to board your dog, they don’t like being boarded. No matter how good the facility is, being caged is being caged, even if it’s only part of the time.

My conclusion? We might as well vacation now. It’s going to be more difficult with each passing year. More difficult for the aging dogs and just as difficult with our aging selves.

REALITY CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE! GIVE IT A TRY! – Marilyn Armstrong

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I got to thinking about what my world would look like if I (personally) got rid of everyone who isn’t white enough for this current America. I would have to remove my husband — and all my friends. And my entire family. After which I’d have to go, too. I may be white, but Jewish isn’t really white.

realitychangedmylife

Not merely is this a bad idea, it is impossible. People love to talk about this country as if we are (kind of) akin to Germany, and SCROTUS is (kind of) a version of Hitler. Except … in Germany, the different people were a relatively small number in a country where most people were the same. It was a homogeneous country. Which made it easy to pick out the ones who were different.

That was true all over Europe. It was easy to figure out who were the “different” ones. In most European countries, it’s still true.

Germany in the 1920s and 1930s was nothing like this country.

SCROTUS isn’t Hitler.
The United States isn’t Germany.

same-but-different

The number of not-white people in this country is larger than the number of whites. Yes, you heard me correctly. If you are one of the people who believe that facts mean anything, take a look at the numbers.

This is just the beginning. Not only do we have a lot of non-white citizens from everywhere in the world, but people marry each other. They will continue to marry, have children and eventually, the current madness will vanish and never come back.

None of this means anything. It’s nonsense. Utter crap.
The world is full of hate but in the end, haters are losers. 

Eventually, we will all be some shade of slightly off-white, medium tan, or terribly freckled. We aren’t getting rid of most of our population. Really.

SCRAMBLING FOR PRESIDENT – Marilyn Armstrong

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FOWC with Fandango — Scramble

I really hate it when everyone starts to yell at each other. It’s like a big family squabble on Thanksgiving — the kind you see in the movies about what’s wrong with the holiday — and I can’t hear a thing. Maybe there was a time when I could pick individual statements from a mad clatter of voices, but if there was such a time (and I’m not sure there ever was), it has long since passed.

Overall, having spent two days watching both debates, I have reached a number of conclusions.

The first one is that this was an awful presentation, poorly thought out. It allowed almost no one to say anything clearly without interruption and was often a literal scrambling of candidates to get a word in edgewise or any other way.

Also, those who show the least likelihood of becoming a viable candidate (and you know who you are) should run for a different office. Senate, if possible because as much as we need a new President, we desperately need at the very least an evenly divided Senate. If your state has no available senate seat, how about Governor, or Mayor of the largest city that needs a mayor?

These are important offices too. They have a lot of clout. We can only have one president, but if the candidates spread out and get elected to the Senate, Congress, Governorship, Mayors races, we will have power in many different places and that would be a good thing.

Democratic debate – the second night

I was surprised at the intelligence of most of the candidates. To be fair, Trump has set the bar so low, it isn’t hard to step over it.

I love Elizabeth Warren, but I loved her before she took the stage. She is our Senator and I’m proud at how well she stands up for us. That Trump is always trying to cut her down to size is as far as I’m concerned, in her favor. If he weren’t pissed off, I’d have to assume she lacked sufficient status to earn his wrath.

First debate night

It is a sad commentary, isn’t it? We take the negative comments of our so-called president as compliments and relish them. If he hasn’t made up a fake name for you, you don’t really count.

Julian Castro surprised me. He was intelligent, clear, and collected. He was a good speaker — especially given the clawing and scratching the format required of all the candidates.

Beto O’Rourke seemed lost. On Colbert, Chris Christie commented (I hate agreeing with him) that he was like the kid who didn’t do his homework and hoped the teacher wouldn’t call on him. Oops. While he wasn’t a total embarrassment, he didn’t shine.

I understand that this was basically a 4-hour “say hi to the audience and say a few words” introduction, but it wasn’t well done. Aside from the multiple technical gaffs (shame on you, NBC), four hours was not enough time to even properly introduce each candidate. Not even enough time for each of them to have five minutes to speak on his or her own behalf — UNINTERRUPTED.

Returning now to Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Okay, so she was the second little black kid to be bused in California. What Biden never got to say, but which is the truth — and Garry has a couple of Emmys for covering this event in Boston — busing didn’t work. However well-intentioned it was, it did not succeed for black or white students.

Biden was against it and he was RIGHT. She got picked as one of the first children in that fight, but it was a bad fight. It was a losing fight for everyone. He never got to explain his opposition and she was busy being an effective prosecutor.

Do we need another prosecutor running the country? She might make a good U.S. Attorney General, but president? It’s not just about getting your best and most memorable jab in. That’s what we currently have. We need something better, more thoughtful, reasoned, and less single-issued.

What impressed me? That for the most part, everyone agreed on most of what I think are the important issues. From health care to treating immigrants like human beings to making sure that “regular people” can earn enough money working one job to support themselves and their family. There was minimal disagreement on the basics. I thought it was a pity we couldn’t run a bunch of them as a group.

Democratic presidential candidates from left, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney participate in a Democratic primary debate hosted by NBC News at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Wednesday, June 26, 2019, in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Personally, I agree a combination of private and public health care works well in many countries. Once health insurers are required to compete with a vital public sector, it’s amazing how effective they can be and how quickly their attitudes change.

About half the “nominees” need to find other places to run for office. Of the remaining half, we need sensible debates where people can say something. Asking any candidate for office to sum up anything in a one or two-word answer is ridiculous. It was stupid from the get-go. The debates suffered and we (the audience) suffered.

The moderators kept promising they would get back to individuals, but they never did. These should have been spread out over at least four night, not two. It was unfair to everyone, especially me.

And for heaven’s sake, whoever does the next debates, get your best technical people on the job. Our college radio station did better work than NBC!