Bloodroot Revisited

Today I went back to Stone Valley to check on the bloodroot. They still were not open so I walked down the trail for a while and photographed some other things, waterfalls, rock textures and the like. While I was walking the trail the sun broke through and when I got back by the bloodroot patches at the trail's start the blooms were beginning to open.

I posted some bloodroot photos last year in May and because I am photographing very close with extension tubes the pictures make them look large. For those who have never seen them I should mention that the actual bloom is only 1 to 1¼ inches across. The leaf (one per plant) comes up on a separate stem from the blossom and is folded around the bud and bud stem. They unfold later. It gets its name from the red sap that comes from the stem if you pick it, which you shouldn't do. Like trillium they are endangered plants. I found this one peeking out from under a log.

Early Spring

Just a quick post to add a photo of some Bloodroot at Stone Valley. I heard on the radio yesterday that they were up but none were actually open this morning. I shot a few photos of buds and will check on them again on the weekend.

Would Ansel Adams Like Digital Photography?

That question has arisen repeatedly over the years in my discussions with fellow photographers. I've always held that he'd not only like it, he'd be on the leading edge of digital just as he was with chemical photography in its day. In an interview that Jim Hughes conducted with Ansel in 1979, when digital was still mostly theoretical, Ansel pretty much confirmed what I have always thought. He'd love it. Read excepts from the interview on today's T.O.P. blog post entitled "Ansel Redux".

Mystery No More

I planted my peas today. I have been finding crocus in places where I don't recall planting any and today I found 7 in the vegetable garden where I know I didn't plant any. At the same time the ones I did plant aren't coming up. I attribute it to our farmer chipmunks. Every year we have clumps of sunflowers, a dozen or more seeds in a tight cluster, pop up in odd places throughout the garden. The chipmunks gather up seeds beneath the feeders then dash off with their cheeks bulging to stash them. Apparently they are burying them in the garden. In past years this activity has been limited to sunflower seeds but now the crocus that I planted in the bed by the front gate are missing but there are crocus in the raised garden beds. As a further tip off, one of the relocated crocus was right next to a chipmunk burrow. I've marked them with bamboo stakes and after they've stopped blooming I'll move them back to the flower bed and scatter some moth balls around them. Moth balls deter rabbits. I'm hoping that will work for chipmunks too.

The Way We Weren't

In this morning’s local paper (Watertown Daily Times) there was an article from the Washington Post about the anger of some over the health care law and it quoted one of the opponents, Hugh Pearson of Bakersfield, who expressed a desire to return to life the way he remembers it in the 1950s. He remembers the America of the ‘50s as an “Ozzie & Harriet” and “Leave it to Beaver” existence. “Now we have MTV, expose-yourself stuff, and we have no morality left, not even by legislators” he said. Apparently He'd like to go back to the '50s.

Mr. Pearson’s comments brought me back to the 50s too but I don’t remember them the same as he did. I’m 65, a tad older than Hugh and I remember the 50s well. I remember poverty. Not everyone lived in nice middle class neighborhoods with a station wagon in the garage. I remember that people did “fool around” and get divorced. Although we didn’t know it at the time even “Ike” had a mistress. People lived together in the ‘50s without getting married. We had a neighbor who had a “live-in housekeeper”. I remember backroom abortions, with women dying from botched procedures. I remember being whacked with a ruler in grade school when I didn’t write my letters and numbers to look just like the ones posted on green cards over the blackboard. I remember being told that the Russians could drop a nuclear bomb at any time and that we needed a bomb shelter in the backyard to escape being vaporized. I remember during the McCarthy hearings the teacher reading a list of the sorts of things commie's say and telling us that if we hear Mom or Dad saying anything like that we should turn them in. I remember discrimination, not just toward blacks for whom there was a long list of epithets not just the “N” word. Italians, Irish, Polish, Jewish and native Americans all were treated to derogatory references, not to mention gays, women and Catholics. If you were anything but white, male, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant you were less than equal. The “Ozzie & Harriet “ life was a very closed community.

The 50s was a warm fuzzy time for those who were part of the minority that lived that existence but for the rest of America it was a very different time. It is easy to think of the “Ozzie & Harriet” existence being all of America in the 50s because that is what the media showed. TV was new and what it showed was the way we liked to think of ourselves and the country. The rest was ignored, the poverty, the discrimination, the hatred. We now live in a time when those things are not ignored. Get over the 50s you remember Hugh. For most people it really wasn’t like that.

Spring Has Sprung

I always count the real start of spring from when the earliest spring flowers bloom. It's a bit early this year and this flower is a surprise. It is one of two crocus I found in front of the fence (between the front fence and the road). The reason it is a surprise is that I don't recall ever planting crocus there. I moved that fence back from the road about 6 feet 9-10 years ago and I suppose it is possible that I had planted some inside the old fence line and forgotten about them but that would have been at least 15 years ago. So have they been blooming outside the fence all these years and I never noticed?  I can't imagine that they would have lain dormant that long.

The crocus and other spring flowers inside the fence aren't blooming yet. The crocus inside the fence hasn't even broken through the soil. They must think spring isn't here yet. BTW While photographing this one and it's cohort I spotted two more outside the fence that will be blooming in a few days.

Hold That Flower - A DIY Project

Someone posted a review of the Wimberly Plamp on Nature Photographer's Network's forums today. It is a clamp for holding a plant still when you are shooting a close up and the breeze keeps moving it. It struck me as a good idea but $36 seemed a bit stiff so I set about making my own.

I used AWG 12 electrical wire because it was what I had on hand. 8 or 10 gauge would be stronger and probably better for holding reflectors, gobos or shades. The clamp is one of a dozen I got at Big Lots 2-3 years ago in a package. I think I paid $5 for the dozen. The plant holder end is a wooden spring clothespin. I figured I didn't need as big a clamp on the plant holding end and the wood might be a little more 'friendly' to the plant than metal or plastic. One problem was that when I just taped the wire to the plastic spring clamp the weight of the wire would spin it under the tape so that it always drooped downward. I fixed that by feeding the wire through a hole that was already in the clamp handle (but you could make your own if your clamp didn't already have a hole) and then tightly winding the wire around the handle using pliers to make it snug. As you can see in the photo it now stays where I put it. I'll tape over it but I left the tape off for the photo. Alternatively you could attach the clamps with epoxy putty.

In this case it cost me nothing but time since I had all the parts but if you were to buy them I estimate the cost as follows:
Plastic clamp - about a dollar if you buy them singly, less if you buy a bunch (they're handy for other things too). Wooden clothespin - pennies. You can get a whole package at the Dollar Store. Wire - AWG 12 is between $1 and $2/foot for 2 wire with ground at building suppliers but there are 3 wires in the outer sheath, a black covered wire, a white covered wire and a bare wire so if you bought 2 feet you could make 3 of these. AWG 10 and 8 wire would cost more than 12 (like f/stops, smaller number = fatter wire and copper is expensive right now). The tape is black cloth tape similar to duct tape. I chose cloth because it doesn't stretch. It won't make Wimberly happy but I have my holder and my $36 (plus shipping + tax).

New Camera

I bought a Canon 7D and it arrived today. After charging the battery I just had to go out and shoot some photos with it. Although my usual subject matter is the landscape or nature details, the local landscape is not very photogenic right now. We're between snow and the beginnings of green, in other words, brown. So I decided to go for something geometric that didn't depend on weather and went to the campus of Clarkson University where there is an interesting mix of architecture. As it turned out I did get a touch of green in some of the ivy on the science building. I ended up with 36 photos before I caved to the cold. It was only 20ºF here today with a 8-10 mph wind that made it feel much colder. There is a chance that it could go below zero in the North Country tonight.

"Man is a credulous animal and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief he will be satisfied with bad ones." Bertrand Russell

Spring Came, Spring Went.

Last week we had some very nice spring weather, temperatures in the 50s and even 60ºF a couple of times. I got some of the yard raked before the weather turned but this week a cold weather system is coming through and this evening it started snowing again. This blogging program doesn't have emoticons or I'd put a frowning face here. March is always a see-saw month so it is no surprise but everyone has seen enough of winter for a while and impatient for real spring. The photo is our front walk looking out toward the driveway and road.

Early Spring?

Our snow is almost gone. It seems a bit early but I looked back at several prior year's photos and we've had bare ground this early about half the time. Other years the snow has hung on until the first week of April. Winter might be just toying with us, waiting to come back when we least expect it but the Red Winged Blackbirds are back so I'm betting that spring is really here. I just looked out the front door and there were about 3 dozen Tri-colored Blackbirds around the base of the bird feeders. Aside from our feeder they like to hang out in marshes where they perch on the cattails. Theirs is  one of the most cheerful bird songs I know.

Update: If the weatherman on the local TV is to be believed our early spring is an illusion. He's saying that next week highs will be in the low 30s and we'll need our snow shovels again. Weather.com on the other hand is forecasting 40s (one day at 50º) and only a chance of snow flurries. Who's right? The one thing you can be sure of when it comes to North Country weather is that we will have some.

The Clivia Blooms

Diane's Clivia is in full bloom and I couldn't resist. Handheld photo with a Canon G10, ISO 400 and auto-exposure. A cheery spot on an overcast day when the world outside is all grey and brown.

My First Good Camera

My first good camera was a gift from a neighbor who was a friend of my mother. It was a Voightlander Vitessa L that she had replaced with a Kodak Retina Reflex and wasn't using any more. I used that camera a lot during my last two years in high school along with a Graflex Century 23 that I later bought. Prior to the Voightlander my only camera was an Ansco ReadyFlash. Amazingly I still own all three of those cameras but only the Voighlander is currently functioning. The Ansco used 620 film which isn't made any more. I could re-spool 120 for it but the camera isn't worth the bother. The shutter on the Graflex sticks and needs cleaning. The Voightlander was in disrepair too but I had it fixed and CLD'd (Cleaned, Lubricaded and Adjusted) by Classic Camera Workshop in Huntingdon Valley, PA in 2007 and ran a roll of film through it after getting it back to verify that all was working as it should. I hadn't done anything with these two photos from that roll until yesterday when I decided to combine them into a diptych. I may have been thinking in those terms when I shot them but didn't get around to it at the time. They are certainly aligned as if I intended to use them together.

Health Care Reform

The argument has been made that the US “has the best health care system in the world” therefore we shouldn’t change it because that would lead to lower quality health care. That claim is supported by the anecdote that people come to the US for health care they couldn’t get in their own country.  While it may be true that some people, those who are wealthy enough to afford it, do come here for treatment and it may also be true (no one has offered objective evidence) that we have the most technologically advanced medical establishment, there is more to a health care “system” than technology. Equally important is access and delivery. It is inadequacies in those aspects of the system which the administration is trying to address.  If you aren’t wealthy, if your health insurance refuses to pay for it or you have no insurance, it might as well not exist.

The fact is that despite having what may well be the most technologically advanced system, the US’s health outcomes are at the bottom of the barrel as compared to other industrialized countries. Compared to the 19 most advanced nations the US is dead last (pun intended) in deaths that could have been prevented by “timely and effective health care” according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund. Forty one countries have longer life expectancies. Among the G7 nations we are at the bottom. According to Wikipedia there are 32 countries that have lower infant mortality rates than the US. Those abysmal statistics are a reflection of the failures of the access and delivery part of our health care system.

To make matters worse we are paying twice as much per capita than those countries that have better outcomes. To add insult to injury, the cost is going up at 2, 3 or more times the rate of inflation every year. We need to reform the delivery part of the system now. Not step by step over time, but now. If we allow the insurance system to remain as it is the rise in cost over the next ten years will make the administration’s reform proposal look like an after Christmas sale price and we’ll still be at the bottom of those lists because millions will still not have insurance and insurance companies will still be denying treatment. Write or call your senators and representatives and tell them not to listen to the nay sayer's and the lobbyists. Vote for change. Vote for the people they represent, not the insurance industry.

Another Snowy Morning

We woke up to a snowy morning, with snow sticking to the trees so I set out looking for photo opportunities. One of my first discoveries was this tree which still has some of last year's leaves. It was warming rapidly and the snow was already falling off the trees by the time I reached the Southville bridge from which I shot several photos of the river below. Several of the images, including this one, resemble satellite photos of the Earth from space.

The water has risen over much of the ice and only a few small patches of snow are above water. Like most of the rivers around here the water is brown from tannin which comes from leaves and other vegetation  falling into the water and decomposing.