Shooting in The Covid Part III: Off the Beaten Path

Shooting in The Covid has translated into making trips to places that are close to home. I’ve had multiple excursions to places that I’ve visited many times before with my camera since I started doing photography in a more serious way. A serious amateur and student. I’ve always held the position that you can find interesting subjects for photography at places you return to over and over again. These same places are transformed in numerous ways. There are changes caused by the seasons. There are great differences depending on the weather. Changes can be dramatic depending on the time of day, the position of the sun, or the absence of sun. Fog and frost can create wonderful conditions for photography in nature. You can return to the same place over and over and see something new and different with each visit.

But there is nothing quite like having an adventure to a new place that you’ve never seen or experienced with a camera.

I am blessed with six beautiful grandchildren. My oldest son has four boys. My youngest son has a son and a daughter. They were Pauline’s pride and joy. The time she spent with these children was her best time. She played games with them on the floor, she read with them, she sang and told stories; she was the best Sitte (grandmother in Lebanese). The part of her personality that made her such an exceptional kindergarten and elementary school teacher for 25 years also created the most endearing Sitte to those children. I can’t be with them and not feel her loss in the most acute ways. It sucks for them and for me.

During The Covid my children have been challenged to keep these six active, creative, brilliant boys and girl engaged and stimulated in positive ways. My son and daughter in law who live near to me have done some great research to find safe places outdoors where there are small numbers of people. Nancy and I have shared a few of these excursions with the kids and have really appreciated being able to social distance visit (with masks) with our family. In these days, these visits are precious. Nancy and I have also gone to places that they’ve recommended to us based on their experiences. These places are far enough out of our city that they attract fewer numbers. They do feel safer. I am demoralized by the numbers of people who are out in central Ohio and do not social distance or wear a mask. I think we might all have to die before these people get it figured out. Do dead people experience regret?

I’m grateful that all of my grandchildren are having these outdoor nature experiences. It is never lost on me that they have so much in their lives for which to be grateful. They have good health; their parents are working and have great jobs. There is always food on the table and a very nice roof over their heads. And they are loved by everyone around them – including grandparents in every direction. Their parents are working hard to keep them emotionally grounded, intellectually stimulated, and feeling safe. They are fortunate beyond words. Such a blessing.

I’ve really enjoyed getting to some new and interesting parks with my camera. Nancy has thoroughly enjoyed the great hikes in nature. We love that our family has offered us such wonderful visits and recommendations. We’re trying to make the best of a horrible situation.

One of the family recommendations was Gallant Woods Park. My son took his family there for a hike and said that there were hardly any people around. It was about a half hour north of my home. Early in the spring, I was just testing out my courage to get out. This seemed like a safe place, and it was. Shooting in the woodlands in the early spring is a challenge. There is little color and trees and plants are just starting to bloom. It was a nice and safe hike and I did find some interesting shots. I was glad to be out with my camera.

In May, Nancy and I made a trip to Siebenthanler Fen in Beaver Creek Wetlands and Nature Preserve. We followed my son and his family and had a wonderful social distance hike in the wetlands. There is a one-mile boardwalk over the wetlands and through woods and meadows. It is a beautiful place to hike and enjoy and photograph nature. It was an hour drive southwest of my home. It was a great day also for taking photographs of my family. Remarkably, there were no insects.

Another recommendation from our family was Indian Mound Reserve in southwest Ohio. There are trails through meadows and woodlands with steep sandstone cliffs that are so common in Ohio. Nancy and I made the one-hour trip on a beautiful sunny day in early June. Our hike took us to a beautiful waterfall that was dangerously packed with reckless maniacs not wearing masks.

The Orange Emperor was giving a speech yesterday about support for the national parks. He first uttered the words Grand Canyon and then what followed was Yo Semite. He was roundly criticized and laughed at by numerous pundits. They claim he was trying to say Yosemite, as in Yosemite National Park. The critique was motivated by his attacks on Biden for being too old and infirm to be running for president. I think the entire episode might have been unfair to the Orange Emperor. He could have been calling to one of his grandchildren. Or not.

Man. Woman. Camera. Elephant. Lion. Moron.

I repeatedly think about how it is that this sorry excuse for a human being attracted such a huge number of people voting for him in the last election. We live in a country that has millions of its citizens that think it is okay for this guy to be president. It is that fact that concerns me way more than this person. He will eventually disappear. Please, have a few more buckets of fried chicken; they’re small. The millions of people attracted to this creature aren’t going anywhere. We live in a democracy that is way more fragile than many of us imagined. If we’re going to live up to the ideals promised in our bill of rights and constitution, we’re going to have to find a way to unite and find common cause. Many generations have fought for these ideals – against enemies of this cause, from outside and inside our borders. These ideals are precious and we’re going to have to find a way to sustain them in the face of our differences.

Unlike Hillary, I don’t subscribe to the notion that the people who voted for him are the deplorables. Having said that, I do think he’s managed to attract all the deplorables. His peeps are the Nazi’s, the white supremacists, the bigots, and the misogynists. By his speech and behavior, he’s legitimized their venom and allowed them to crawl out from beneath their rocks. But they don’t make up most of his supporters. There is the guy the Orange Emperor has referred to as his African American.

I didn’t know very much about the Orange Emperor when he announced that he was going to run for president. I never watch reality television. I knew of him from the news and from what little I know of popular culture, which isn’t a great deal. My impression was that he was a wealthy, tacky, self-absorbed, clownish real estate developer with large numbers of wives and girlfriends. As the republican primary progressed and I learned more about him, it was clear that he was the consummate outsider candidate. He was outside of his party, outside of government, and significantly distanced from intellect, morality, compassion, empathy, spirituality, and common sense.

Why would anyone want this absurd character to run the most complicated executive office in the world? Here’s why. He was going to surround himself with the best people. He was going to drain the swamp. He was going to apply his brilliant business acumen and his impeccable judgement to running the country. That’s why. I get it.

Without getting into all the failures in our economy that has taken decades to create, there are way too many people who are suffering in our country. For the wealthiest country on the face of the earth, we have too many people living in poverty with no hope for a future. And so many of them are children. Too many people work, often more then one job, and cannot afford the most basic of necessities of life. Too many people don’t have access to the most basic health care. People don’t make enough to save to buy a home, or to help their children pay for college or to save for retirement. College has become more of a necessity and it is too expensive for most. For the first time in our history, the future looks less promising for the children of too many parents. Economic opportunity is shrinking. Economic disparities between the haves and have nots has grown to unacceptable proportions. Life spans are shortening. All bad news for too many Americans.

Washington is nauseating. People have little respect for or trust in their representatives. They are using their seat of power to enrich themselves; not to improve the lives of their constituents. People have become entirely cynical about politics and government. The wealthy make the rules, they’ve horded the vast majority of resources and they’ve squelched opportunity. In the olden days, the pitch forks and axe handles would have come out and the aristocracy would have lost their heads.

Greed and corruption never go on forever because people ultimately figure out that there’s way more of us than there are of them. When the disparities become so great that the lack of quality of life is intolerable (and it is always relative), there is going to be revolution. The Orange Emperor just might have been the revolution. The time for change was long overdue.

The Orange Emperor was going to blow it all up. The successful businessman was going to negotiate the best trade deals. He was going to run the government like his businesses.

In many respects, I get the sentiment. It is hard not to be cynical. So much of our government and our democracy and our economy is broken. He looked like the kind of outsider who could do some serious blowing up. And Hillary was the consummate insider. It would be hard to find a more inside insider.

And then I started to watch the campaign. This is not a good person.

That he was able to lock up the evangelical vote is not just amazing. It is repugnant and immoral.

I am the furthest from an expert on religion; mine or anyone else’s religion. I am an American, however, which exposes me to Christian doctrine on a regular basis, and I did live and work at a Catholic mission for two years. I lived with two Jesuit priests, five Franciscan nuns, two Dominican nuns and a gaggle of visiting priests and Catholic volunteers. I attended mass almost every weekend. I also taught social studies in the mission school, which included lots of information about the one true religion. Through this exposure, as well as the experience of osmosis one has living in a Christian society, I’ve never once heard the notion that the ends ever justify the means. In fact, I believe that it is absolutely contrary to Christian doctrine that sin is ever permissible to achieve even the most laudable goal.

Isn’t that all we really need to know to consider just how absurd and irrational and illogical and spiritually wrong-headed it is to justify all of the crude, sinful, bad behavior the Orange Emperor engages in daily to get judges who will support anti-abortion laws and court decisions.

He revealed himself quickly in the campaign as a racist. He rolled out his candidacy by stereotyping Hispanics as drug dealers. His attacks on the Latinx community have been relentless, including all the crazy diatribe about the border wall that Mexico was going to pay for and the unconscionable separation of children from their parents as a strategy to discourage their coming to America. He characterized Muslims as terrorists and wanted to limit their entry into the US. He urged Blacks to vote for him, because what did they have to lose. Turns out, quite a lot. By identifying the good Nazi’s and white supremacists in Charlotte he has encouraged virulent racism and anti-Semitism.

His manifest racism has been way more than disconcerting. He owns the whole Obama conspiracy theory about being Muslim and not being born in the US, which would make his presidency illegitimate. The entire notion was absurd and disturbing. His racism pretty much goes downhill from there. He’s a prolific racist. Keeping Blacks out of the suburbs is the most recent example. Protecting the monuments of confederate generals who were traitors to America, fought against the US, and immorally fought to keep slavery. That he would have the vacuosity to claim that no president has done more for Blacks than perhaps Lincoln is more than wild. The person at the helm of the most powerful army on the face of the earth is entirely out of touch with reality. I repeat ... the man with the nuclear weapons codes is just not right in the head.

After doing a search of National Geographic maps to better understand where all of the shit-hole countries are located, I came up empty handed. There were no keys on any of the maps which identified any geographic region as being shithole in nomenclature or geography. Through the application of common sense, I’m guessing that Norway, Sweden and Finland aren’t shithole countries.

He’s managed to alienate the Asian community in the US and refers to Covid 19 as the China flu. He's fomented distrust of our Asian community by gullible Americans. He’s pretty much an equal opportunity bigot for most minorities in America. What he has said about women that we’ve heard him say aloud has been disgusting. The numbers of women who have come forward to accuse him of abuse has been staggering.

People are allowed to believe what they want to believe. That is a bedrock proposition in America. The first amendment protects people’s rights to express their moronic beliefs and to protest against all things decent, respectful and sane. It is just one monumentally bad idea to have a person so filled with hate based on stupidity sitting in the oval office and trying to run the most complex government in the world, and negotiating our relationships with countries around the world at the most complicated time in anyone’s lifetime. What he thinks is dysfunctional. How he thinks is destructive. And he has no curiosity or motivation to learn about anything (outside of himself). His people have tried to give him critical information in classic comic books, but he won’t read them or even look at the pictures. To quote his former secretary of state, he’s basically a fucking moron.

We will never have a swampier administration than the one created by the Orange Emperor. When the history is written, it will be filled with corruption, theft and abuse of power. This horrid behavior has gone on by he and his family and by his appointees. Anyone with integrity and a conscience has left his government. He’s fired many of the watchdogs and he has punished whistle blowers who have communicated their experiences and observations with illegal, unethical behavior – from asking Ukraine to interfere in this election to covering up his asking the ambassador to England to ask to have the British Open moved to his golf course.

He’s had more crooks and thieves around him than Nixon, and that’s saying a lot. At least Nixon was smart and could read.

While he regularly expresses great love for his generals, they’ve all pretty much managed to escape or are awaiting sentencing.

A few of his campaign officials have been tried, found guilty and have gone to jail. In time, we are going to find out everything that has gone on over the past four years. His taxes will be made public. His relationship with Russia will be uncovered. All the stealing and underhanded deals will be exposed. We have a free and aggressive press protected by the first amendment. They will uncover all of it. It isn’t beyond my imagination to think that the Orange Emperor could end up in jail. My great hope is that he ends up in one of them that has been privatized.

People were also attracted to his business acumen, the ability for him to make a deal, and his judgement. If your father handed you hundreds of millions of dollars, would your businesses go bankrupt six times? Once would be catastrophic. Six times? Stormy Daniels claims that when he had sexual intercourse with her that he didn’t use a condom. She’s a great deal more credible than he is (who isn’t). Unprotected sex with a porn star, while you’re married and your wife is pregnant? What kind of judgement is that? Is it the same judgement that goes into meeting with the dictator in North Korea and getting nothing at all in the way of any nuclear concessions (while they increase their nuclear stockpile)? Or deciding to pull out of the Iran deal allowing them to get closer to building nuclear weapons. Or strengthening Russia and increasing risk for our allies by weakening NATO, pulling out of the Paris accords, and moving our troops out of Germany, because Angela Merkle hurt his feelings. And risking the lives of the Kurdish people, our allies who have stood beside us during our conflict with ISIS, after a telephone call with President Erdogan. That’s some judgement. The list of stupid, destructive, self-serving deals and decisions is too long to review. We'll eventually find out his personal dealings with Turkey.

Beyond issues of health, safety and national security, the most important job of the government is to engage in the allocation of resources (our taxes). Republicans have been enamored with trickle down economics for as long as I can remember. How’s that been working out for you? They support cutting back (or eliminating if they could get away with it) social security and Medicare and Medicaid. They have been trying to get rid of the affordable care act since it was passed. They’ve never supported a living wage. They are totally freaked out about debts and deficits unless they are giving the wealthy and corporations tax breaks. They do little to nothing to protect or secure worker rights.

Everyone gets one vote. If you vote your economic interest, why would you vote for an economic program that will hurt you and your family for generations. These policies have hurt most Americans for years, and that is one cause of the wage and wealth gap that is ever growing between the haves and the have nots in this country.

Decades ago, The Newt developed the strategy that if republicans could get people to vote for ideological issues as opposed to economics, they could win races. Thus, gays, G-d, and guns became the rally cry for republicans.

The Orange Emperor has been peddling the same ideological crap since our economy has imploded. He is in serious denial about the pandemic. It is hard to fathom. The course of the pandemic and the future of our economy are one and the same. He needs the economy to rebound to have a chance in November, but he can’t figure out how to allow his public health and medical advisors to extricate him from this mental morass. It is hard to watch. Most people have been relegated to shrugging their shoulders when trying to understand why he can’t move forward on testing.

Earth to Orange Emperor, we can’t have too much testing – accurate testing with a rapid turn around time on results. It will change everything if you could just figure out that you have control over getting these tests produced and distributed across the country.

Yo Semite! Could you please try to tell Zadie that more tests doesn’t mean more virus?

In my hometown yesterday, the Orange Emperor claimed that Biden will disappear all religions in America; that he is against God, will hurt the Bible and hurt G-d. I’ve listened to his statement a few times and I’ve read it a few times. I really can’t say I understand what he means. I believe the first amendment of the constitution proclaims in pretty clear terms that in the United States of America, there won’t be any disappearing of one, several or all religions. The constitution doesn’t specify anything about hurting the bible or G-d. The Orange Emperor says a lot of stupid and crazy things, sometimes every hour on the hour, all day long. I don’t have a twitter account because it looks to me like a total waste of time. I get all of the crazy, idiotic stuff he posts to twitter because it is reported in the news. That’s part of the problem. Because he holds the highest office in the land, everything he says gets reported in the news. It is truly unfortunate. We would do better to ignore everything he says, and report what a kindergartner says all day long. It would likely be more astute, intelligent, compassionate, and interesting. And it would be true.

We so need to fix our economy so that there is real opportunity in this country for everyone. We need to fix the wealth disparities. We need to stop pretending that markets will fix our health care and design a universal health care system. And we need to repair our democracy. Doing these things will be difficult but doing so will go a long way toward repairing the horrible rift we have in this country between groups of people. We need to listen to each other. We need to respect each other. We need to be willing to accept different opinions. And then we need to find common ground upon which to move forward. Our democracy and the future of our country really does depend on that effort.

The Orange Emperor has claimed since March that the virus will disappear like a miracle. He needs to disappear like a miracle. Today or tomorrow would be great.