Occupation of Independence

One of the many things that the "Wizard of Oz" movie did right was to use the new invention of technicolor in a creative way: they essentially made a character out of technicolor by starting the movie in black and white, and then shifting to technicolor in the land of Oz. When an RV traveler is blown out of Utah by another "blue norther", and heads downriver along the Colorado River, they are doing the Wizard of Oz thing in reverse.  They are going from technicolor to brown and grey.  Does this mean disappointment? Not edited by software or AI Not necessarily. This is certainly good news and is worth explaining.  Years ago I started losing interest in landscape photography because it was too edited to believe.   I will not go ga-ga over a photo just because Photoshop Pro has reddened it too death.  It is understandable that newbies would go crazy over red rocks, but most of them will probably notice the effect wearing off pretty quickly. It is natural and healthy fo

There are people who genuinely appreciate paintings, poetry, and other arts.  I wish I did.  It seems like I only respond to music, occasionally writing, and even "architecture" once in a while. Be that as it may, this is time for our annual pilgrimage to a stony picnic table in southwestern Utah. This stone picnic table is almost a religious shrine to me. Who is responsible for it?  Surely not some BLM bureaucrats!   For one thing, the picnic table is not ADA (wheelchair) compliant.  Besides that, it is too imaginative for bureaucrats.  Perhaps the BLM offered a competition to the local schools, and one of them came up with this. There is a patio stone quarry a mile away.  In the backdrop, the photos show Gooseberry Mesa.  This picnic table should be offered in the dictionaries for the word, autochthonous.  It seems to grow right out of the rocky ground nearby, as if people didn't have to do anything to build it.  I literally fluttered my eyelashes at it. But wait -- thi

When a person follows the news, they must be careful.  They must accept good news, such as  Trump blocking certain well-known neocon warmongers from his cabinet.   But considering what a failed president Trump was in his first term, we should not be naive.  While everyone has been fooled into thinking that Trump is going to be anti-war this time around, the neocons could flap their leathery wings (I am plagiarizing Kunstler) and fly in under the radar with a lesser-known neocon who is even a viler piece of human filth than the better known ones.  That way, both sides would feel like Trump is their man.  And Mrs. Adelson would feel like she is getting a good return on her investment. It is how politics is played.  War really is the "health of the state."

Oldsters remember the troubles of 1968 and much of the world's disgust with the Vietnam War.  They remember their surprise when President Johnson announced he was not running for another term.  Nixon took advantage of the unpopularity of the war to stage a big political comeback.  In a couple years you could hear a song on the radio: "Tin soldiers and Nixon comin', 4 dead in Ohio." The Vietnam War had become the new president's war.  "Peace with honor" was the trap that Nixon fell into. The Duran laid out the Neocons agenda for the next couple months: how to turn the Ukraine debacle into Trump's debacle.  In his first term as president, he would have fallen for that trap.  Will he be smarter this time around? Ahh dear.  I must try to be hopeful without letting my expectations become naive. When the Biden administration started off by withdrawing American troops from the Afghan quagmire, he took a lot of criticism for how it was done.  But most Amer