Tag Archives: Chris’ Camera

Bad Teacher

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I was bad yesterday, but save for this confession, no one would have ever known. I could have gotten away with it, but since getting away with it was never the plan, I am confessing my crime. Yesterday’s post was seemingly all about privacy and security on the internet, but it really was just a setup for my own cruel little joke. The link at the bottom of the page, claimed to be a link to another blog, but really, it was just a rick-roll.

Rick-rolling is an Internet meme that involves the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a hyperlink that they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been “rick-rolled”.

Only a handful of people even clicked on the link. I’m guessing that most people didn’t even read that far, which is actually somewhat disappointing. Maybe the apparent lack of interest is my own just desserts. I promise to be “good”, at least for a little while, so feel free to explore this blog, without risk. 😳

Anne is gearing up for the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) test. This is our state’s version of George Bush’s No Child Left Un-Tested. It is a big deal, at least to the teachers and the administrators, even if it is not such a big deal to the students. Results of this test have a real world impact on school funding and the educator’s careers. Unfortunately, the students are not directly affected by test results, so motivating them to perform well, is part of the job. Anne has been booked for three weeks of work. This is an indication of what a big deal the MAP test is. Normally, she is scheduled no more than a week in advance.

The title of this post is not directed at Anne or any of her colleagues, or even the school district where she works. It refers to the movie, by the same name, opening this summer and starring Cameron Diaz. Diaz plays a foul-mouthed, slacker of a teacher who, after being dumped by her sugar daddy, begins to woo a colleague, Justin Timberlake. Diaz’s character decides she needs a boob-job to woo him properly, “They’re really expensive, you know … and you have to get two of them.” And so, she also needs a lot of money. The movie is set in neighboring Illinois that apparently offers a bonus to the teacher whose class scores the highest on their standardized test. This news transforms her from slacker teacher to the one no student ever wants to get. Fortunately, for Anne and her co-workers, this movie doesn’t open until after school is out. Here is its green-striped trailer. It is safe. I promise. Trust me, please! 🙄

Chris took the picture with this post, Thursday morning. It show a monolithic pier, the remains of an old cannery, on Cannery Row. This area is now popular with scuba divers. Think Lloyd Bridges, in the TV series Sea Hunt, which was filmed underwater near here. The clouds are simply fantastic looking.

Writing on the Bathroom Wall

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I’m sitting here, before the keyboard, ready to dispense another self-absorbing cotton ball of a post, and then flick it out, into the blog-o-sphere. Drawn from the plastic, not paper, bag of my life, it is all light, white and fluffy. Dipped in alcohol, it becomes antiseptic and sodden, neither of which, is entertaining.

I crave readers and obsess over the daily hit-count parade. On a good day, the moon and the stars align, and the hits, they just keep-a-coming. Other days, I wonder, if I’d get more readers, by writing on the bathroom wall.

Navel gazing takes many forms. All such gazers are by nature self-absorbed. As a blogger, I sometimes fall prey to this inward turned vision, but is that really a bad thing? I mean, this blog is really all about me, right? I try to make each post entertaining/informative for the reader, but sometimes I don’t have much news, like today. So, informative is out, let’s try being entertaining then.

Navel gazing has as long a history in entertainment as show business itself. Shakespeare farmed the play within the play, most famously in Hamlet. Theater and movies are studded with similar examples. What better theme than a once lost, company of actors banding together to put on the show. So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let’s on with the show!

The movie, Julie and Julia, written by Nora Ephron (screenplay) and Julie Powell (book), best captures the blog, as the show within a show. Not so much the Julia Child half, with Meryl Streep, that part is like the musical numbers that are performed throughout the show, as rehearsal numbers, but with command performance perfection. I’m speaking of the Amy Adams’ half, the Julie half, the blogging half of the show. This is where my drama lies.

It starts with Julie Powell’s moment of inspiration, “I could write a blog. I have thoughts.” Then there is the frenetic process of setting up the blog. With most modern blog host, like mine, WordPress, it is just as much fun as shopping. What theme should I choose to decorate with today? I think that I’ll choose this widget and that one over there. Eventually though, you have to start writing. There is no way around it. I went through the inspiration and shopping/setting-up phases and ran straight into the brick wall of writing.

In hindsight, I should have waited before I started this blog. Either that, or taken up a few more dangerous hobbies. Writing this blog, I am mining my life’s experiences at an unsustainable rate. If I was older, or had a few more life shortening pursuits, then maybe before my well ran dry, my obit, of course, published on this blog, might read, he died in his sleep, with a smile on his face, shot in his bed, by a jealous lover. 😉

The joy and anguish of blogging was captured in one moment, in Julie and Julia. I’m speaking of the scene where Julie gets her first comment. She is checking her blog at work; I would never do that. Overjoyed, she tells her co-worker, but then reading the comment, realizes that it is from her mother, who is not supportive and tells Julie so. My family has been supportive, critical at times, but justly so. I have another picture from my brother to show off with this post. I always have my muse at my back, even though I’d be glad to see her take her turn at the keyboard too.

Julie Powell’s blog was scripted from the start, 365 days, and 524 recipes. Her script gave her focus. My blog is about my life, where there is no script, at least none that I have read, just one day at a time. Both halves of Julie and Julia reinforce a core message of persistence. After ten years, Julia finishes her book. Julie spends a year in her kitchen and makes all 524 recipes. Isn’t that what blogging is all about, being there, day after day? I think so. See ya tomorrow!

This post features another photograph from Chris’s camera. This photo reprises two of Chris’s previous pictures of Cannery Row, The Fish Hopper restaurant and a mural, depicting two fishermen coming in with their catch, are combined into one shot. He photographed this as part of Trey Ratcliff’s photo-walk.

The North Shall Rise Again

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150 years in the making and now coming to a southern state near you, I give you the American Civil War. It has always seemed to me that descendents of the southern cause have never really come to peace with having lost the Civil War. Members of this constituency are always reenacting famous battles, holding long, somewhat one-sided conversations, with Confederate ghosts or simply whooping and hollering whenever any Rebel football team gives their Yankee opponents a good drubbing. The southern enthusiasm for this remembrance is almost never reciprocated by their northern brethren, at least not to the same extent. This is why today, on the sesquicentennial anniversary of the assault on Fort Sumter, the start of the Civil War, most northern communities are just going about their daily business, like they would on any other Tuesday. Meanwhile, southern enthusiasts are gearing up for four years of this business.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

The down economy has muted some of this celebratory remembrance. Cities and States can’t afford to do things up right. Low key events, augmented with private donations will have to suffice. Easy access to almost all of the major battlefields gives the Confederate cause a substantial edge. It may not have seem so advantageous, 150 years ago, but this home field advantage will make all the difference over the course of this sesquicentennial. There are plenty of Union generals commemorated throughout the north, and Illinois has Abraham Lincoln, but almost all the rest belongs down south, Manassas, Shiloh and Appomattox.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

I have been glib here about this subject, maybe too glib. The Civil War was a terrible time for this country, so terrible that it almost destroyed our nation, splitting it in two. While the next four years will bring many speeches, picnics and barbeques, let not this light fare obscure the heavy-hearted reality of what occurred. More Americans died in that war than in all of our others, combined. I think that the words that Lincoln once spoke and many a school child has memorized, strikes the right tone, and serves as the best remembrance still.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

The rest of today’s post is devoted to the fruits of Chris’s camera. Sunday night, he attended a class taught by Trey Ratcliff on HDR photography.

Photographs by Chris: Trey Ratcliff, above, led a walking tour of Monterey Harbor. Chris took the above picture of Mr. Ratcliff and the following picture of the harbor. Chris has more pictures, they will be featured later this week.

Green Gables Inn

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Perhaps the most beautiful and famous inn located in California, the Green Gables Inn is a historic gem with a panoramic view of Monterey Bay. Chris took and sent in these two photographs of this picturesque inn in Pacific Grove. Don’t confuse this inn with the Seven Gables Inn, which is just down the street and was made famous in a credit card commercial, for not accepting the other guy’s cards. Not much else to report. Sunday was a pretty quiet day. Sunday night, or rather Monday morning was not quiet, lot’s of thunder and lighting.

A Gracious Hello, …

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A gracious hello, here at the Phone Company, we handle eighty-four billion calls a year, serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth. So, we realize that, every so often, you can’t get an operator, or for no apparent reason your phone goes out-of-order, or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn’t make. We don’t care! – Lily Tomlin as Ernestine in the ‘80

I am a “dear customer” of AT&T. At least I am told so. I must say that being a “dear customer” comes pretty dear to me. Most months, AT&T is my biggest creditor. I purchase from them, wireless service for four iPhone, DSL internet service and our reliable old land line. By far the biggest piece of the pie is the wireless bill for the four phones. I knew it would be going in and so am not surprised or complaining about those costs. Actually, after years of Sprint service, where a turn of the roulette wheel would have been a more consistent indicator of the next month’s cell phone bill, AT&T’s bill has been rock solid. No, I am complaining about the DSL portion of my monthly debt to AT&T.

What is precipitating this rant towards AT&T is an email that they sent us this week. In this email they updated us on changes in our DSL terms of service. Here are a few of the dozen or so changes that rather teed me off:

  • We have added email as a separate service. This means that they can charge for this service separately, like after you angrily drop your DSL service or more likely as an additional add-on if you stay with AT&T.
  • We have added language that will allow us to convert customers from our DSL network to the AT&T U-verse High Speed network, where available. Apparently, the two years of solicitations that has gone unheeded, has not deterred AT&T in their goal to wring more money out of me.
  • We’ve added a link where customers can go to get information about AT&T’s data usage policy and managing their data usage. Reading the fine print here says they will start charging you extra if you exceed their limits on uploading and downloading.
  • We have added language that allows AT&T to terminate the service of customers who repeatedly harass or abuse our employees. and We have added language stating that AT&T may need to modify or discontinue your service, either temporarily or permanently. If you don’t like these new rules, too bad, we don’t care.

I am seething about some of these rules changes, especially about the forced conversion to U-verse. I haven’t decided what to do, but at least I have thirty-day to think about it, before any thing happens. Maybe it is time to break up the phone company again? Before when it was divided, it was both innovative and competitive, now it is just a dictatorial monopoly. Time to send in the drones?

The picture with this post is from Chris.

Happy Birthday Chris!

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Now, for our third birthday in a row, today is my brother, Chris’s Birthday. I won’t say how old he is except to say that as of today, his age is one year less than mine. Those that know me can do the math easily enough. And what better way to celebrate Chris’s birthday, than with a post that features a couple of pictures of Chris. I took the first photo, when last Chris and I walked the ridge top road together. Chris and our folks, live down this road. The second photograph is another one of Chris’s pictures, a mural along Cannery Row. Like yesterday’s photo, this one commemorates John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row.

Beehive, the musical that we saw on Tuesday night was fantastic! The six actresses were able to cover the entire decade fabulously. Speaking of cover, the show was basically a sequence of covers of prominent female singers of the 1960s. I didn’t mind this, because unlike their male counterparts, like Elvis and the Beatles, female covers are a bit of a novelty. The first act spaned the first half of the decade, with some thirty songs crammed into it. Special attention was given to the Supremes, Cher and Petula Clark, the designated female representative for the British invasion. There were elements of audience participation in the play, but we were too far back to be involved in any of those activities. I did get my own solo in during intermission. While waiting in line for a urinal, I slipped in beside Tom, a co-worker, and before he noticed me, I got out; you don’t love me, anymore. Pretty gay, wouldn’t you say? The second act was more focused, with only a dozen songs and a more in-depth coverage of the artists covered. Most prominently featured were Tina Turner and Janis Joplin. As I’ve said before, this was a great show and a fitting end to the season.