LAS VEGAS WAS TERRORISM

    A horrified and heart broken nation must endure more needless pain as the NRA whores for more of their gun industry pimps.

    The NRA, more than anything else, has twisted and distorted the constitution. They've done it for money.

     Legislation is now pending that would make suppressors more readily available in the US.

Photo by Niki Chan Wylie for NPR

      They are also called "silencers." What you need to know about silencers is what you've seen in film, television or have read about in fiction.

      The gun industry is now trying to say silencers will protect the hearing of hunters. That is Wayne LaPierre style bull shit at it's million dollar best. There are other ways hunters can protect their ears.

     Suppressors also suppress flash, meaning in a situation like Las Vegas a silencer would have made it more difficult for law enforcement to sight where the shooter was. 

     The only people who "need" silencers are assassins or criminals, or the agents of government trying to combat them.

      The NRA may once have provided an important role in American culture. That ended when they became shills for the gun industry. They lie and they distort and they help kill.

      I hold Wayne LaPierre partially responsible for the Las Vegas slaughter. I add to that those members of the US Congress who defeated gun tightening legislation that followed the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre in Newtown. The majority of Americans wanted the legislation and it looked as though lawmakers got the message. That is until LaPierre and the NRA began spreading their favors. They enable terror. Their fingerprints are all over Las Vegas.

      See you down the trail. 

     

      

    

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

BUT FIRST, THESE ITEMS

    Television news producers called it a false lead-that headline in yellow gold above, a case in point. Get your attention with it, but do another story or two first.  Sometimes because the headline story wasn't ready, perhaps a technical issue, or simply to make you wait through earlier info.

     HISTORY TELLS US THIS IS A GREAT DAY

  This photo and an accompanying letter has been passed down through our family since the 1940's.  More than once it was a topic of a school essay or report.

    Orville Wright, who with his brother Wilbur created the age of air travel, is a cousin. It was on this day at Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina the Ohio brothers alternated flying for the first time, as captured in the photo.  Orville's letter of May 2, 1945, to a relative genealogist verified her research that our family lines joined with Edmund Freeman, born in 1590 in England.  He came to Boston in 1635. His research and hers were consistent. The Freemans, Booths and Jones-part of the English line were my father's mother's lineage.

     I remember the night my father and I drove to cousin Rhea's home to see her massive genealogical charts and I can still remember her great excitement at making the Wright Brothers connection, some ten years prior to our visit.  It was a big deal in the family.  

DICKEN'S BIG HIT

    The Charles Dicken's classic A Christmas Carol made its first appearance on this day in 1843.  I loved it from the first telling by an English uncle and in my later first reading from an old English illustrated copy.  I've seen it staged more times than I can remember and assume by now it has become part of my bones.
     The best Scrooge I've seen, and in fact some of the best staging ever, was the Tom Haas adaptation performed for years at the IRT in Indianapolis.  I'm drawing a blank, if you can remember the fine Rep actor who played Scrooge several times at IRT, let me know, please.  

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

    That was the best question to come from the hours of coverage and reportage on the Newtown tragedy. America has been through this too many times.  As always we resolve to something.  We do nothing and politics always intrudes.
      As I have posted previously I've covered this sort of violence and wrote and directed a documentary which dealt with the topic.
     I am a firm advocate of the Bill of Rights, but I wonder if there isn't some way to develop a standard that closely approximates the type of fire arm the writers of the Second Amendment would approve.  
    I think a good case is made the Second is focused on the right of people to keep and bear arms only as a means to organize a regulated militia for their defense. It is not about keeping specific firepower.
   Clearly the firearms of 1791 were less sophisticated, but couldn't there be a way to equate what was available and in use in those days, and bring the standard forward to include modern technology, but draw the line some place? If self defense is an operating principle then some of the weapons available today clearly go beyond that.  Automatic weapons are meant to kill, rapidly, efficiently.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is a fool and or apologist.  Assault rifles are meant to be used as tools of war and to kill.  
    I wonder what James Madison, George Mason, Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton would think.  How would those writers of the Second Amendment react to Newtown, or Aurora, or Columbine, or etc, etc, etc.?
    Can't we find a way to define classes of weapons, or ways to categorize what is consistent with being able to mount a militia?  Though I confess those who are overly obsessed with being able to create a militia seem a little shaky themselves.
    I don't profess an answer, but the question needs to be
answered.  What are we going to do about it?

See you down the trail.

WE ARE ALL STAKE HOLDERS

SOME THINGS HAVE TO BE SAID

     Despite my intention to provide only art and beauty in this first post of the week perhaps an obvious statement needs to be made.

      How many Americans need to be gunned down before citizens demand that something be done?  No other nation on the planet has as many murders. I am a full supporter of the Bill of Rights.  The first amendment is my favorite, but all of them are important.  So I'm not trashing the Second. Still something is profoundly wrong when deranged people or hate filled bigots and zealots can so easily destroy life.

       We cannot continue to take these shocks and refuse to do something to prevent them.  We all have a stake in this.

DAY FILE

LINES AND TEXTURES
a collection of scenes where I was struck
by linearity and patterns

In the shot above and below is a pattern of lines in confluence.

   Kelp, seaweed trailing on the surface of the water.

   These are shots of light captured on ripples in the Pacific

   Lines of an emerging lean to

FOR CLASSICAL MUSIC LOVERS ONLY
A CAMBRIA LOCAL

   Camp Ocean Pines, which is very true to its name, hosted

an extraordinary musical event this weekend.  Under the towering Monterey Pine, with window peaks of the deep Pacific Blue warmed by dappled sun beneath the arch of cobalt blue skies, musicians filled the air with classical beauty.  Performers had completed the Summer Strings Workshop under the guidance of the San Luis Obispo Symphony.  Here is a sample.  My apologies the video quality is not more fitting the quality of the music. We gleaned this with a hand held iPhone.  Still, you'll get a sense of the special afternoon.