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[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
From this they could actually make a movie worth watching, let's hope they don't "Hollywood" and trash it: "There Is a Man Wandering around California with 3 Mules."
Singing PM: 'Fats' Putin over the top of 'Blueberry Hill' with piano solo
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| David House, a fund-raiser for Chelsea Manning's defense, was sentenced to 35 years in prison |
[From another correspondent:] As far back as the late 70s through early 90s, when I did the bulk of my international traveling that related to "sensitive" topics, I was routinely detained while officials (often on both sides of the border) took time to read through my trip notes and listen to some of my interview tapes. When we almost exclusively used Kodachrome film, which was generally processed only at Kodak labs, most of us mailed that in from out of the country. After most of the industry went to locally processed E-6 film, on at least a couple of occasions I was detained long enough for officials to process some of my film, supposedly to make sure it wasn't pornography or photos of restricted sites.
Why officials waste their time in the digital era is beyond me. Obviously any savvy enough to be doing anything suspect would simply upload their data to multiple "cloud" storage sites before they came back into the country. In the old days of cassette and micro-cassette recorders, most of us used two recorders: One that our interviewee saw, one that was hidden. That way you had two tapes, and when the interviewee asked to go "off the record," you could make a show of turning off your main recorder, knowing your backup was still running. What we would then do is mail each tape separately back to our address in the states, which I guess was the "cloud" of its day. Or we would stop and purchase a gift to mail back, and add a recorder and tape to the box.
If we found a way around the harassment back then and protected our sources at the same time, surely new-age digital journalists can do the same.
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| Someone else's wife, perhaps, or someone's mother |
The new legislature and the governor have completely sold out to the Tea Party. No matter who it hurts, this group wants to strike down all programs managed by the government. They are underfunding education, attacking women’s health, reducing unemployment insurance, denying Medicaid to 500,000 North Carolinians, and passed a voter prevention law that makes it harder for students, the poor, and the aged to vote, etc. This group has raised taxes for the poor and middle class, while reducing taxes for the rich. Sounds like something out of the Old Testament.
Moral Monday activities and arrests stopped when the legislature went home. My wife will go before a judge on her birthday in October.
...Is there existential meaning beyond religion?...In the article ["Can science deliver the benefits of religion?" at the Boston Review], I summarized some ideas from psychology and cognitive science concerning the psychological bases for religious beliefs and whether scientific beliefs can provide some of the same psychological benefits typically ascribed to religion. Although it wasn't my intention to do so, I knew that I might upset some religious believers. What I didn't anticipate was uncharitable reactions from both religious believers and atheists.[From another correspondent:] No amount of debate is going to make very many people change their minds on their religious perspective. Like drug and alcohol users, most religious and non-religious people will change when they are ready, not due to outside influence. So I think it best we not waste our time on esoteric debate, and we should instead concentrate on the legal aspects: Religious and non-religious groups should be banned by law from being able to enforce any aspect of their dogma on others by use of political influence or ballot-box stuffing. People should be able to believe or disbelieve as they wish as long as they do no emotional or physical harm to people or animals. The problem is, many religious groups do much harm, either through backing restrictive legislation, or social and workplace coercion, or in extreme cases, sacrificing animals in their rituals. As long as the line is held on legalities, I'm content to let people believe, or disbelieve, as they wish, and I think everyone should focus on holding that line rather than worrying about what people think in their pursuing of religion, or avoiding of it.
The sad ending is that in about 2010 Nik was hit by a speeding car while shopping and killed. Mila found someone to write and tell us and sent pictures of his grave. They have very fancy graveyards there. It was a real shock for us and we have not heard from Mila since.
It was so interesting, though, to hear from people who live and think, etc. so different from us.
This is Tahoe: 40-mile round trip across the lake on a Waverunner just for a breakfast buffet:
Facing a Manta Ray at an aquarium:
Limerick of the Week, in two versions:
"Don't sit directly behind me," the fly fisher slurred,
but "Sit directly behind me," his young daughter heard;
the third time he threw back to cast,
his hook caught her candy bar fast
and flung it skyward to the mouth of a fisher bird.
"Don't sit directly behind me," the fly fisher said,_______________
but "Sit directly behind me," his wife heard instead;
the third time he threw back to cast,
his hook caught her coffee mug fast
and knocked out two bass and a trout with blows to the head.
Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
| Please comment |
Wonderful creel of fish! Many serious and informative topics covered, but for me, the manta ray photo steals the show. Oh, and great limerick. I grew bored with other forms of angling and took exclusively to fly-fishing by age 12; thanks to the travails of the back cast I understood the meaning of the term "collateral damage" long before war correspondents began using it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Paul, and thanks for contributing one or two of them, which I won't identify in order to protect anonymity.
DeleteI overheard the fly fisher at a physical therapy appointment. His hook only caught his daughter's clothing. Broke his rod, it did. Big kid, I guess.
It was good fish today and as Paul said the manta ray brought the smile with my coffee. My father in law went fishing with another son in law and came back with a hook in his nose.They cut the line and fished for two more hours. After that he always carried wire cutters with him.
DeleteMorris, a fly fisher broke his rod by putting a fly into his daughter's clothing? Wow! That was really careless, and potentially disastrous. As per Ed's comment, when that hook rockets forward, it can go in deeply. I sometime wonder if the reason most fly fishers wear broad-brimmed hats and use barb-less hooks has to do with the style and catch-and-release ethic of the sport, or because the hat protects against errant projectiles and the lack of a barb makes them easier to remove.
ReplyDelete