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Showing posts from April, 2013

Sweet Shrub

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Sweet Shrub in our woods this afternoon. Yesterday after work Jennifer and I were doing our usual drinking beer, talking debrief of our busy lives.  Slowing both of us down to the speed of our land sometimes takes all weekend.  But this particular Friday afternoon while walking in our woods I noticed a different looking growth, tropical-like plants, budding from the ground in a dozen places each tipped with the most fragrant aroma.  Jennifer had known of the plants for a couple of years but had never seen them bloom.  We got quiet and witnessed sweet shrub .    Today the blooms have no scent at all.  The aroma is a short-lived wonder that lasts about a week.  But yesterday we accidentally stumbled into their final aromatic expression.  Jennifer pinched off a splendid specimen of leaf and bloom.  You must hold it completely up to your nose.  If your nose is more than two inches from the bloom you cannot smell it.  Perhaps it is stronger at first blossoming.  I took deep slow br

My Wood In Spring

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My reading bench this morning maybe 90 minutes after sunrise under defused clouds.  We pretty much own the view.  The leafing trees formed a canopy from whence a multitude of bird calls beckoned into the open space of my reading spot.  

A Cedar Waxwing Photo Opp

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A shot Jennifer took with our Nikon. A shot I took with our Canon on auto exposure and manual focus. Cedar Waxwings enjoy all our holly berries and other sources of nourishment and refuge on our property about this time every year.  Last night about 40 of them were perched in the top of a budding pecan tree in our back yard.  They just stayed there as Jennifer and I approached in the cool early spring sunset.  We didn't even notice them until we were standing under the tree.  It is some measure of our peaceful space that they were not disturbed by us as we approached, talking in a rather animated tone.  Of course, we got very quite after we noticed them.  The birds  were sunning themselves in the top of the tree.  They remained there while Jennifer when back in the house to get our Nikon and Canon cameras.  We took a bunch of photos over probably about 5-10 minutes before they flew off to their next destination.  We felt privileged that they posed for us.

Thumbs-Up Being

As the keyword "film" on this blog will reveal, I have always been in love with the movies. From Saturday matinee afternoons as a child and throughout my adulthood, movies have fascinated me, bored me, inspired me, taught me, disappointed me, made me want more, and made me want my money back. As with any relationship, there are ups and downs, and such is my experience with film making that I consider myself to have a relationship with movies. By extension, movie critics are of interest to me. None more so than the recently deceased Roger Ebert . I have his book  The Great Movies   as part of my library. I watched him and long-deceased Gene Siskel banter back and forth about films on At The Movies back in the day.  All my friends who have the least interest in films know what “two thumbs-up” means; it means Siskel and Ebert both agreed whatever movie they were discussing was worth seeing. I did not follow the agonizing decline of Ebert’s health with any regular

Liberty Means Nothing If You Can't Breathe The Air

The New York Times reported yesterday that air pollution in China contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010 alone.  The situation is so bad there that even a neocon like former Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson has issued an urgent plea for help .  Communist China may have greater government intervention and planning in their economy overall, but throughout its fantastic period of growth China has done almost nothing to regulate the impact of its growth on the environment. The United States is far more environmentally regulated than anywhere in the remaining communist world. That is a good thing. When it comes to environmental matters I am an unabashed big government liberal. My libertarian leanings are secondary to the best way to ensure clean air and water and sustainable use of natural resources. If you can’t breathe or drink water your liberty means absolutely nothing. The history of the West and the present experience in Asia confirms beyond all doubt what

Thomas Jefferson: My Favorite Patriot

You think politics today is polarized and confusing?  Consider the presidential election of 1800 , when then Vice-President Thomas Jefferson crushed then sitting President, John Adams , 61% to 39% in the popular vote.  But, due to election rules of the time, Jefferson became absurdly tied in the Electoral College with his own Vice-President running mate, the amazing Aaron Burr .  The election was thrown into the House of Representatives and the House chose Jefferson to be our third President after 36 ballots, a contentious affair far closer than the popular vote.  This ridiculous circumstance led to the passage of the 12th Amendment to prevent it from happening again. I just finished a book by Jon Meacham entitled Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (2012).  Meacham makes it clear that the election of 1800 was very much a referendum on two visions of government in America.  The Federalists had held the upper hand since the George Washington presidency.  Washington allowed for stro