[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLICK-TO-HEAR-brownie-to-digital-in-60-seconds.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —- brownie to digital in 60 seconds
I bought a camera the other day. It had an instruction manual that might as well have been a syllabus for a college course. 150 pages. Technical? Daunting? Oh yeah, you bet.
I remember my first camera, a Brownie. Had to crank the film to take the next picture. I remember my first Polaroid. You could watch the picture develop right before your eyes in 60 seconds. Magic in a box. Instamatics came next. You have to admit, we could all take nice pictures.
My family had a movie camera. 8mm I think — we watched those home movies like they were made by Cecil B. DeMille. About 3 minutes long, each one, but we’d wait for the next installment, rewind the little reels, splice them when they broke, change the projector light, all the nuisances worth the trouble. I loved the soundlessness of them, just the whir of the projector and the old man talking over it. I still love that.
I got myself a single lens reflex when I got out of school. Got myself lenses and the whole rigamarole. Took the film in to the drugstore to have it developed. Nice photos. Real nice photos. Later on I got a profession I needed photos AND slides. I’d drag along two cameras, shoot a million shots, keep maybe 6. Carry filters, lenses, lighting equipment, tripods, light meters. Looked like Ansel Adams on safari.
Now we got digital. I had a little bitty camera. Weighed about what a hummingbird weighs and did everything but stand on its head. Dropped the images in a computer and manipulated em til they looked great …. Or at least a whole lot better.
My new Bad Boy is digital with exchangeable lenses. It can be programmed, it can tell time, it can compensate for fluorescent lights, it can shoot landscapes or action movies, it could run for President and probably win on the GOP ticket this year.
Photography has been one of those things in my lifetime — like aviation — that makes me shake my head in wonder. If I ever figure out my new camera, the one that comes with an honorary PhD, I’ll probably sit back with no little pride that our generation dreamed this up and made it possible for me to actually learn how to use the thing. Well, at least til the next generation makes all of it obsolete….
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLICK-TO-HEAR-privatizeTHIS.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — privatizeTHIS
You know, I grew up hearing it repeated as Gospel that government was way less efficient than the private sector. I guess that’s why we’re hiring private contractors to fight our wars. Why we want to pay corporations to run our schools, run our jails, maybe even ramrod our fire and police departments. They’ll naturally do a better job for way less money.
I’m no economist, but I need more than mantras to make me want to dismantle half of society by gutting and cutting government like it was a sacrificial cow on the altar of unbridled capitalism. Wasn’t it GM and Ford and Chrysler, bastions, capitol B, of capitalism that just got bailed out by the federal government? Not just bailed out, propped up, given CPR, put on life support, brought back to life ….Oh, and brought back to profitability.
And maybe my memory is slipping, but wasn’t it the banks, the mortgage companies, the credit firms who drove this country into the worst recession in more than half a century? Maybe they were what? Too efficient? Too something, that’s for sure.
We complain about government but I don’t see the heads of government agencies or departments pulling down multi-million dollar salaries with huge mega-bonuses and sweetdeal stock options. I guess if we ran them like businesses, we’d inflate that executive pay by, oh, a hundred times or so. See how that helps efficiency. Sort of like paying military contractors way more than our military men and women — maybe why we take 10 years to lose wars now.
So before I wrapped myself in the American flag and started dismantling all our government departments and offer them up like railroad right of ways to the corporations, I’d follow the money a ways and see who exactly is going to profit from that supposed increased performance. Call me cynical and paint a bullseye on my be-hind, but I suspect it’s some of the fellows in corner suites at the top of Wall Street skyscrapers. Even if profits don’t go up, they’ll get a nice bloated package, you bet. Efficiently wrapped.
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLICK-TO-HEAR-tyee-treetop-tours.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — tyee treetop tours
SOUTH END ECO-TOURISM
No doubt all you Eco-Adventurers have got your spandex in a bunch salivating over Camano’s newest zipline ‘canopy tour’ at Kristofferson’s farm across from the Plaza Grocery. I know, you can’t wait for the aerial clothesline through the alders and out over a spectacular vista of Camaloch’s suburbs, the Plaza stripmall and the scenic highway to the South End.
But if you think that is the final word on Aerial Adventure, hold onto your zip harness. The Tyee Treetop Tours are opening this month too. One quarter mile of death defying logging cables strung over killer nettle forests, the store’s old wrecking yard, monster blackberry jungles and a pond filled with west nile mosquitoes bred in car battery water that make piranhas look as dangerous as guppies. This is no Thrill or Spill, this is South End history viewed from an eagle’s perspective and moving at 90 mph. You sign our ironclad waiver of Non-Responsibility and before the ink dries, you’re rocketing above discarded appliances, rusting 1930’s automobiles, vintage logging equipment, all with a spectacular view of Tyee Store and the adjoining Art Gallery, both untouched and unimproved since they designed and built by the now famous firm of Frank Lloyd Wrong, pre-strip mall purveyors of the early pole building school of architectural design.
Tyee Treetop Tours is a virtual time machine on a cable. Bring the kids — we’re Family Friendly. Bring an appetite — the Tyee Rotisserie Dogs are tailor made for the courageous. Bring a Bible — prayers never hurt. And they’re far more potent than a liability attorney.
Tyee Treetop Tours start at the ridiculously low price of $75 dollars per adult and half price for kids. We also offer our unique Senior Citizen Discount for you Old Timers looking for that last big thrill. No safety harness, no admission fee. Just sign the waiver and skip the small print.
So come down for the fun, come for the adventure or come for an education you won’t find at the community college. Or come for all that and more! Tyee Treetop Tours: History at 90 mph.
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLICK-TO-HEAR-driving-without-a-rearview-mirror.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — driving without a rearview mirror
Luck’s a funny thing. Some folks don’t much believe in it – or don’t want to – since they think they’re the Captains of their own Destiny. Me, I’m easily seasick on the storm tossed waters of my life … so I put more faith in luck than my own crummy navigational skills. I guess living on the South End had a lot to do with it. You find yourself on an island on the edge of a continent, you think it’s a short walk before the next move is a wet one. I came when no one had heard of Camano, few people lived here and most of the cheap land was far down at the south end where I stumbled in one dark and stormy night. Luck had pretty much run out, jobs were scarce and a bad marriage had foundered on the rocks thanks to the aforementioned maritime skills.
I bought a shack and 7 acres for the princely sum of $25,000, everything I had down, $225 a month for the next 15 years. Sound cheap? Well, I had a hard time meeting that mortgage the first few years. But a funny thing happened on the way to the poorhouse. Corny as an A.M. radio pop song, I fell in love, got married to my old sweetheart and fell in love too with my place, the South End and my life. Lucky? You bet!!
We take forks in the road all the time. I know buddies who always wonder where the other road would’ve take them. I don’t look back. I don’t use the rearview mirror because it takes all my attention to drive the road I took, the one with the NEXT fork and the unexpected curve. You ask me — and I know you didn’t —luck is part being ready for it. It’s not a lottery ticket, it’s that small opening, that slim opportunity, that sudden chance that may not come twice, the one that veers up out of the headlights and offers, for those who are ready for it, a new game, a fresh start, a brand new road. Luck, I’ll admit this: it does take some skill.
[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLICK-TO-HEAR-colton-island.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —colton island