in which I look at an old photo (part 5)

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Right, quick recap: Back in the Spring of last year I was slowly emerging from a photographic funk. I hadn’t picked up an actual camera in…I don’t know, months, Several months. This had happened to me once before (see the endnote if you’re interested). Anyway, for whatever reason, I was coming out of that funk and starting to think about photography again.

That included reading about photography again. I came across an article on some photo website that suggested looking at and analyzing your old photos as if they were made by a different person. That seemed ridiculous to me. I’m not terribly interested in my old photos; I mean, I’ve already seen them, right? Why would I want to look at them again, especially when there are lots of photos by other people that I haven’t seen?

But I thought I’d give it a try now and then. This is my fifth time in nine months. I’m still not comfortable in doing this. But several years ago I wrote about Alfred Stieglitz and his notion of practicing in public. The idea, as I interpreted it at the time, is that if you’re serious about photography, you’ve got to be willing show your whole ass in public. So that’s sort of what I’m doing. So, here we go:

The metadata informs me I shot this photo on September 18, 2014 at 9:03 in the morning with my old Fujifilm X10 (ƒ/4.5, 1/450, ISO 200). It’s one of six photographs I shot that misty morning. I tend to be parsimonious when I shoot–a habit from the days when I couldn’t afford to piss away film.

I don’t remember anything about that day, but it’s clear to me why I stopped long enough to take this particular photo. It’s all about those angular lines. The railroad tracks, the dirt road, the rising line of poles, the telephone wires, and that terrifyingly flat horizon line (although I’m living in Iowa, I’m not a country boy, and I’m always a tad freaked out when I find myself in the flattest and most open parts of the Midwest countryside. There’s so much sky and so little to break up the horizon. It always reminds me that I’m on the surface of a planet, which makes me feel incredibly small and unimportant; that’s both humbling and sort of a nice reminder that everything is temporary when seen on a planetary scale).

I’m sort of surprised I didn’t shoot this photo in monochrome. If line and form are the predominant features inside the frame, I tend to opt for black-and-white (okay, yet another tangent, sorry. It’s silly, I know, but I deliberately choose to shoot in either color or in monochrome. I almost never turn a color photo into monochrome, though that process certainly gives the photographer a LOT more control over the final image). I have to assume that at the time I took the photo, I thought the mist-muted colors added something to composition. Maybe it does. I’m not curious enough to process the image in b&w to find out. I mean, this is the photo I chose to shoot, and there it is.

I like this photograph. I think I’d like it no matter who shot it. I like the simplicity of it. I like the balance. I like the emptiness.

So, is there any real value in this whole ‘looking at an old photo’ bullshit? I kind of hate to admit it, but I think there is. I may not be learning anything new, but the practice does reinforce the reality that I see and react to the world differently than regular people. That’s true of all photographers; it has to be. It validates the willingness to stop your car at some random spot, and get out in the chill mist, simply because you’re smitten by a series of visual lines that other folks wouldn’t notice.

So I’ll probably do this old photo business again in the not-too-distant future.

ENDNOTE: My first long-term photographic funk came at the end of my career as a criminal defense investigator. I used my cameras a LOT as a PI, but in a very technical forensic way. The photos I took for my work were all potential evidence to be used in court. The work was very object oriented. The photos were sometimes technically challenging (I once had to photograph the undercarriage of a wrecked car, which involved some tricky lighting and wide angle lenses while lying on a roller beneath the vehicle, which was claustrophobic as fuck). The problem was that there was no joy in that sort of forensic photography. Blood spatter patterns might be visually interesting, but it’s hard to appreciate when you’re shooting them. When I ended that career, I stuffed my cameras into my Sam Spade Conjurer’s Kit and stuck it in a closet, where it sat for about 3-4 years. I had no desire to hold a camera in my hand in all that time.

red hat ladies

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So here’s me in this small town (we’re talking fewer than 500 people) where there’s a little diner that serves the most excellent desserts (they make their bread pudding with cinnamon rolls). While I’m having lunch, there’s an impossible-to-ignore table with about a dozen older women. They’re all wearing red hats. Not MAGA hats, just hats that are red. All sorts of hats. And these women, they’re having a good time, laughing and talking.

It was fun to see them, and I thought about shooting a photo, but decided not to. I could have justified it ethically in photographic terms, but my momma taught me that old women deserve a few extra layers of respect. So I didn’t.

But after lunch, I ran into a couple of them at a gift shop across the street. And I chatted them up, because I was curious and because I like talking to strangers. We must have talked for more than ten minutes. And at one point, I asked if I could take their photo. And they said yes.

They belong to the Red Hat Ladies. It’s an informal group of a couple of dozen women who meet for lunch maybe once a month, maybe every couple of weeks, depends on their mood. They have rules, sort of. You have to be invited to be a member. You have to be over 60. You have to be sorta kinda approved by most of the other members (they indicated that wasn’t actually a rule, but you know, there’s some folks that just don’t click). And you have to wear a red hat to lunch. Most of them also wore red coats. I got the impression that many (maybe most) of them were widowed or divorced.

And they were a hoot. I teased them, they teased me back. They were so very clearly happy with themselves, and it made me happy to see them and spend time with them. There’s something wonderful about the way older women gather together, something liberating and caring, something that leaves them highly opinionated. It’s like they’ve learned to shrug off so much of the bullshit they’ve had to deal with for most of their lives. And if they haven’t actually shrugged it off, they’ve learned to shove the bullshit off to one side long enough to get together and have a good time. You have to respect that.

I suspect (and I hope this is true) that there are similar Red Hat Lady collectives all over the world. I’m pretty sure I’d object to many of the political and religious views of these women, but I’m inclined to think I’d trust them to run the country. Certainly, I’d prefer them to the hateful crew that’s now in charge. The thing about the Red Hat Ladies, they know when to be sensible and when to stick a purple bow on a red hat and if folks don’t like it, they can go eat lunch someplace else.

I’m pretty much content with being a guy, but I’m also sort of envious of these Red Hat Ladies. They’ve got something few men will ever have. One more reason to burn the patriarchy.

trans-nuremburg

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This is how it begins. Germany in April of 1935. The Reichstag–the national parliament of Nazi Germany–passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. This was done to cull specific groups from certain professions. ‘Non-Aryans’ could no longer hold positions in the legal profession, could not be employed within the civil service, could not teach in secondary schools and universities, could not provide medical care, could not work as tax consultants or notaries.

Two years later, September of 1935, two more laws were enacted. The Reich Citizenship Law defined who was allowed to be a citizen of Germany (and more importantly, who was NOT allowed to be a citizen). The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor established who could marry in Germany (and, again, who could NOT).

The purpose of these laws was to designate specific groups of people for exclusion from society, to de-legitimize them as fellow humans. We’re seeing similar efforts from the Trump administration, specifically targeting trans people.

Yesterday Trump issued an executive order called “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” It’s directed at trans youth and the educators who teach them. It essentially forbids teachers from supporting trans youth and promises to punish them (and their school districts) for refusing to obey by withholding federal funding. The entire order is based on lies Trump told his followers during the election.

Trump has also issued an executive order called Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness, which targets trans people serving in the US military. Trump’s order suggests trans troops are somehow unfit to serve. It categorically states:

[A]doption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.  A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member. 

This is blatant nonsense in an astonishing number of ways. Here are just a couple. First (and I have to admit I’m not relying on data here, just my impression) I suspect the majority of trans troops are trans men, not trans women–and most certainly NOT ‘a man asserting he is a woman.’ Second, Trump’s executive order claims “shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex” hampers troop readiness and effectiveness. That’s blatant bullshit. One of the things the military instills in troops is that the uniform covers all other extraneous individual designations; religion, race, ethnicity, and gender are subsumed by the uniform. Putting on the uniform means abandoning a certain degree of individuality. Troops are troops.

Troops are troops.

Only about 15,000 of the two million military personnel serving on active duty and in the reserves are transgender. But that’s 15,000 people who have voluntarily chosen to serve their nation in the armed forces–which, it must be said, is a duty Donald Trump avoided by claiming he suffered from bone spurs. It’s 15,000 people who aren’t easily replaced. This order will actively disrupt military readiness and harm the very institution Trump claims to be defending.

Beyond that, the ugly fact is that many of the executive orders issued by Trump in his first ten days as POTUS are reminiscent of the laws passed by the Nazis in the 1930s. They’re designed to divide the nation, to direct hostility and hatred at a specific group of people, to blame them for any number of social problems. While these actions target trans people specifically, as with the Nuremburg laws, we can expect them to be expanded to cover all LGBTQ people.

We’re all familiar with Martin Niemöller’s famous quote–the one that begins, “First they came for the communists…” We’re less familiar with Niemöller’s transition from Nazi sympathizer to Nazi opponent. Although he originally supported Hitler (he voted for Nazis in 1924, 1928, and 1933) and was openly antisemitic, Niemöller objected to the inclusion of the ‘Aryan Paragraph’ (a clause added to most civil organizations that excluded ‘non-Aryans’ from participating) in the bylaws of the German Protestant church. That moral and ethical refusal to exclude others caused Niemöller to be interned in various concentration camps from 1938 to 1945.

My point (if you can call it that) is that we need to remember. This is how it begins. First they came for trans people… We need to remember and we need to stand up for the people under assault. Not just because those motherfuckers WILL eventually come for us (which they will), but simply because it’s the right thing to do.

yeah, this is where we are now

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Yeah, I don’t want to include a screenshot of this (because I don’t want it to show up in the link), but last night Comrade Donald Trump posted this astonishing and delusional comment on his Truth Social network:

The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. The day of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER. Enjoy the water, California!!!

Trump is claiming he ordered the US military (all of it? some branch of it? maybe a special secret water control operations unit?) to slip into California undetected, after which they flipped the Master Toggle Switch that controls the flow of water from the Pacific Northwest (or ‘beyond,’ whatever the fuck that is). Remember, this jamoke is the duly elected President of These United States. I don’t know if he actually believes this (which would make him actively delusional), or if he’s under the impression the citizenry of the US is stupid enough to believe a lie this blatant (and maybe they are, since they voted for him), or if he’s just bragging in order to feel good about himself (which is entirely possible). In any case, this is seriously fucked up.

Here’s the reality: The US Bureau of Reclamation (which is a federal bureau utterly lacking in troops) had shut down a few water pumps in Northern California for maintenance. The maintenance was completed yesterday and the pumps were restarted. End of.

This wildly bizarre episode is just one of dozens of equally disturbing things Trump has done in his first week as POTUS. It’s maybe the least damaging thing he’s done. The response of MAGA Republicans to all this bullshit? They’ve climbed up a tree and are hoping Trump’s wolves will find somebody else to eat first.

Republican Members of Congress addressing MAGA voters.

And the Democratic response? It’s almost as bad. The leadership seems to be attempting to sort out WHICH of Trump’s outrages they should address first, and how to craft the appropriate messaging to address that particular outrage in order to assuage the wolves.

What (in my opinion) they should be doing is standing up on their own hind legs and howling at the top of their lungs. They should be objecting LOUDLY to every single illegal command Trump has given. Hell, they should be objecting loudly to most of the legal commands he’s given, since most of those are cruel and intended to hurt people. They should be chasing MAGA up the tree.

The Democrats need to get angry and really loud and obnoxious; it’s the only way they can cut through the Trump Cascade of Bullshit. Otherwise, they’re just joining the GOP in the tree.

reflected

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So here’s me, noodling around the city, shooting photos (okay, I know it’s way too soon for a tangent, but let me just say that I’m totally smitten with my Ricoh GR3X, oh lawdy, it’s SO much fun to shoot) and basically having as fine a time as is possible on a cold January day. The sun’s out, the sky is blue, the people I meet on the street are uniformly pleasant and smiling despite the chill in the air. It’s a nice way to spend an hour or so.

As I’m walking along I notice a mural reflected in a window. The mural includes a massive cartoon-styled woman’s face, showing alarm or horror. It’s cool, but it’s not particularly photo-worthy. But what the hell, I take a shot. Why not? I keep walking and keep looking at the mural hoping a better shot will appear, and then I reach a spot where I’m also in the reflection. There’s a giant cartoon hand reaching for me, and I’m thinking that must be the reason the giant woman is so alarmed. Still not photo-worthy (in fact, it’s even less photo-worthy), but it amuses me. So what the hell, I take a shot.

And I keep on walking (which is what you do on a photo-walk, after all). I stop now and then when the light or shadow catches my attention. I notice a particularly fine bollard. A stack of tires in an alley. There’s an ambulance and a fire truck flashing their lights in front of a hotel, but the light sucks and whatever is happening is happening inside the hotel and there’s nothing to see, so I keep walking. And I see an empty shop window, with a clothes rack devoid of clothes but with a fine collection of empty hangers. The lines are nice, the light is acceptable and there’s me again, reflected in the window along with a nice bare tree. So what the hell, I take a shot.

And I keep walking. Down along the river, which is running low. There’s about a million Canada Geese milling about as the ice is breaking up, making a colossal noise, and ignoring the mallards that are paddling around, minding their own business. Then I’m down a street with nice shops and fine restaurants, and the light is catching a table through a window, with the remains of somebody’s salad and an empty water carafe (which is a lovely word to say aloud; French, from the Arabic gharraf meaning “a drinking cup”; go ahead, say it out loud, nice and slow…isn’t it nice?). And, once again, there’s me in the reflection, ruining what might have been a nice photo. But what the hell, I take a shot.

This is a thing I seem to do…reflection selfies. They’re never good photographs, they’re never interesting photographs, and I almost never post those photos (for the reasons just stated). They’re more of a reflex action–like when your doctor taps your patellar tendon with a rubber mallet. I see myself reflected in a window, my shutter finger jerks. It’s a reflection reflex.

But as I was sorting through the day’s photos, deciding which ones were worth keeping, I found myself reflecting on my reflection reflex and c’mon, there’s no way I’m not going to use that phrase. So yeah, this blog post exists solely so I can write ‘reflecting on reflex reflections.’

neil fucking gaiman

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Bless Pearl Cleage. Because of her, I can’t listen to Miles Davis anymore. One of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, and I can’t listen to him. Why? Because Pearl Cleage told me:

[H]e is guilty of self-confessed violence against women such that we should break his albums, burn his tapes and scratch up his CDs until he acknowledges and apologizes and agrees to rethink his position on The Woman Question.

Back in 1990, a woman gave me a book of essays by Cleage: Mad at Miles; A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth and told me I needed to read it. I asked why a white guy like me needed to read a Black woman’s guide to truth. She gave me that look…the look women can give to guys that basically says, ‘I can’t even believe you’re asking me that question, are you actually that oblivious?‘ Of course, I was that oblivious, but I didn’t want to be. So I read the book.

I mean, sure, I could still listen to Miles Davis. But if I even get the impulse to listen to him, I remember Cleage quoting a scene from Miles Davis’ autobiography in which he described slapping the shit out of Cicely Tyson because she spoke to a friend that Miles didn’t like. Tyson called the police and hid in the basement until they arrived. The police spoke with her in the basement, noted that she didn’t appear to be badly injured, and the spoke to Miles, who told them, “She ain’t hurt bad; I just slapped her once.” He and the police had a laugh, they left, and according to his autobiography:

Before I knew it, I had slapped her again. So she never did pull that kind of shit on me again.

If I even think of listening to Miles Davis, I get a vision of Cicely Tyson–one of the best actors in the modern world–cowering in a basement while police have a laugh with her abuser. And nope…no Miles Davis for me. Just can’t do it.

Now it’s Neil Gaiman’s turn. Like a lot of folks, I loved Gaiman’s writing. I really liked him on Bluesky, where he was incredibly kind and thoughtful and accessible to everybody. He seemed like the nicest guy.

But he wasn’t. Back in August of last year, I wrote about the early accusations against Gaiman. I wrote that I believed the women who accused him of cruel behavior. I wrote,

[A] pattern of behavior is what defines an abuser. It’s necessary to distinguish between a person who commits a bad act and a person who’s a bad actor.
Neil Gaiman, it appears, is a bad actor.

In fact, it appears he’s more than just a bad actor. I just finished reading the most awful report, There Is No Safe Word about Gaiman’s long, sordid, horrifying history of sexually abusing vulnerable women. I was somewhat reluctant to read the article. As a fan of his work, I knew it would be painful to read; I knew reading it would leave me disappointed, disheartened.

I was wrong. It left me furious.

Sure, it seems clear from the reporting that Gaiman is massively fucked up personally. And as a Buddhist, I know I should feel compassion for him. But what I feel most at this moment is rage. Fuck Neil Gaiman, fuck Miles Davis, fuck them both in the neck. Fuck every guy in a position of power who’s used that power to abuse women. Fuck the entire patriarchal system in the neck.

Some days I find it hard to understand why women aren’t arming themselves and climbing to the tops of water towers in every community and picking off men at random.

So nope, no Miles Davis and no Neil Gaiman for me. Just can’t do it.

EDITORIAL NOTE: I’ve been using variations of this same editorial note since sometime in 2023. I’m sadly confident I’ll have to keep using for as long as I write this blog. It’s still true. We must burn the patriarchy. Burn it to the ground, gather the ashes, piss on them, douse them in oil and set them on fire again. Burn the patriarchy, then drive a stake directly through the ashes where its heart used to be, and then set fire to the stake. Burn the fucker one more time. And keep burning it, over and over. Burn it for generations.

my year in books

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On social media I’ve been seeing a LOT of My Year in Books posts, in which people report on the books they’ve read in the preceding year. I confess, I’m a wee bit baffled by these posts. I mean, I’m interested in what other folks read. I’m interested in their thoughts about what they’ve read. That can be interesting. But the majority of these MYiB posts feature the number of books they’ve read, and I don’t understand the point of such a metric.

I don’t know how many books I’ve read in 2024. It never occurred to me to keep count. It was a bunch, to be sure. Probably less than fifty, but certainly more than thirty. So let’s say somewhere in the low-to-mid forties? But really, who cares how many books I read? Some of them were books I’ve read before, and I’m not sure if people count those towards their book total. Probably, right? I mean, they still read them.

More interesting to me are the books I bought that I thought I’d read, but didn’t. Again, I haven’t kept count, but I suspect I bought at least half a dozen books that I started to read, but ended up putting aside. A very few were books I just didn’t like (and no, I won’t name them). More were books I’d probably like, but simply wasn’t in the right mood to enjoy. Like The Priory of the Orange Tree. I’m totally smitten by the title and the cover art, but I got maybe 15-20 pages in and it just wasn’t working for me. I’ll try it again at some future point. Sometimes it just happens that way. It took me at least three tries before I finally got more than a couple of chapters into Dorothy Dunnett’s The Game of Kings, which is one of my all-time favorite novels. Same with Gideon the Ninth; the first time I tried to read it, I put the book down after less than fifty pages. Now I think it’s one of the most original and delightful novels I’ve ever read.

This year, like most years, I bought some books I didn’t think I’d like, but wanted to check out anyway. Like The Bright Sword, which is sort of a sideways retelling of the Arthurian saga. That’s the thing about Arthurian literature; you can’t trust it. The Arthurian story bones are so damned good that LOTS of people try to retell the story. Most attempts are at least tolerable. A very few are brilliant. But in my experience, the majority of new Arthurian stories are both regrettable and forgettable. However, sometimes your hopes pay off. To my surprise and delight, The Bright Sword turned out to be a lovely read.

This year, like the last several years, I tended to read mostly genre fiction and very little literary fiction. There’s probably a reason for that, but I can’t be bothered to examine it. I read a few mystery and detective novels, some science fiction, more fantasy than I care to admit (I want to like that genre more than I actually do), a couple of spy novels, and some novels that are clearly genre fiction without fitting neatly into a genre category.

Last year I did more re-reading than I normally do. Comfort reading in uncomfortable times. I re-read books that, for one reason or another, make me happy. Rivers of London, for example; an absolutely charming story, the first book in a series of magical police procedurals that are consistently solid. Mick Herron’s original Slow Horses spy novel, which is a delight in its own offensive way. Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword, which, to be fair, isn’t quite as good as her novel Swordspoint, but remains my favorite because there’s an inherent sweetness to the protagonist. I can be a bit of a sap sometimes.

Did I have a favorite book in 2024? I guess. Sort of. I bought Nettle and Bone on a whim, based entirely on the title (which, I should point out, is a terribly stupid reason for buying a book). I have no idea what it is about the title that appealed to me so much. I was very skeptical about the novel at the beginning. I mean, it begins with a woman building a dog out of…well, bones. The scraps of former dogs. Unlike a LOT of novels in which magic is featured, Nettle and Bone doesn’t attempt to explain how magic works. The protagonist puts the dog bones together and when she’s done she’s got a bone dog…there it is, just matter-of-fact, magic exists. sometimes it works and sometimes not so much, you don’t need any more information than that, just accept the existence of the fucking bone dog and get on with the story. And that’s exactly what I did. Nettle and Bone is as dark as the darkest fairy tale (the best fairy tales are pretty damned dark), but it remained charming and amusing and incredibly emotional. Be aware that it deals very bluntly and unflinchingly with violence against women, but at the same time there’s a sweetness that cuts through the grim darkness.

Nettle and Bone was the most unexpected novel I’ve read in recent years. Is it a great novel? Naw, probably not. But I can’t recall any other novel that kept surprising me the way Nettle and Bone did. I look forward to re-reading it again this year.

i’m back

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I’ve been away for a while. Not away away. Not ‘away’ as in a different location. I’ve been away from this blog. The last thing I posted was on 16 December, almost three weeks ago. I’ve been writing this blog since 2011, and this is the longest I’ve been away from it.

Why? Family crisis. I’m not going to go into any detail (partly because it’s not my story to tell, partly because it’s nobody’s business, and partly because I dislike folks who whinge online…or anywhere else, for that matter). I’m only tangentially involved in the FamCrisis (not my monkeys, not my circus); my normally calm, quiet, incredibly happy life is collateral domestic damage, so to speak. Life here has been wildly disrupted; everything is now crowded, noisy, busy, and chaotic. It’s this way, in large part, because it was calm, quiet, and happy. I mean, where else are you going to go to escape, right?

In any event, the situation hasn’t been conducive to writing. But so what? People have written under worse circumstances. And while everything is still ridiculously chaotic and rather grim (and likely to stay this way for some time), I’m starting to acclimate to it.

Even before the FamCrisis, I’d shifted away somewhat from my usual blog posting. Most of my posts over the last several years have been political. But the 2024 election left me in an absolute funk. Since the election, I’ve written more about photography than politics.

‘Annie’ was wrong; the sun ain’t coming out tomorrow. But someday…

But in a short time Comrade Donald Trump will once again infest the White House as an expression of the will of the people (the bastards). It seems pretty obvious that we’re entering into a grimdark era. Truth, decency, logic, kindness…that shit is out. Lies, grifting, loopiness, and willful cruelty will be featured in US ‘governance’ for the foreseeable future.

Ain’t no way I’m going to shut up about that. I’ll still write about photography and other stuff, of course, but I think it’s going to be necessary to call bullshit frequently and loudly in the coming months and years. So I’m back.

Editorial Note: Many/most of the problems we face are either due to or exacerbated by patriarchy. So we need to burn that shit. Burn it to the ground. Burn it, gather the ashes, douse them in oil, and burn them again. Piss on whatever is left, then salt the earth where the burning took place. Then burn the salt. Burn it and keep burning it, over and over. Burn it for generations. Then have tea and biscuits.