Beyond Annoying

My web site host recently did a major migration, which I presume they regarded as an upgrade. But of course, like everything that goes on in business, committees, and boards, it bottomed out in mediocrity. One result was that the extremely cool WordPress blog that I had just started to host was replaced with EasyBlogBuilder, what amounts to a Fisher-Price blog editor. So at least for now, my blog is back here at its original home, blogger.com.

Please re-adjust your bookmarks... http://giantmuh.blogspot.com/

An Unexpected Visitor

Here is an email from my sister Nicole:

Hello! As most of you know, I'm often called upon, in this post-Katrina landscape, to provide tours of my house. Groups, such as Comic Relief and the National Council of Mayors, have trouped through from time to time. They're interested in what I've done to the place since the storm, and in seeing what life is like for someone living in what is still pretty much a disaster area. This morning was no exception. The Board of Directors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation arrived via Greyhound bus, and filed in one by one. I performed my usual routine -- "Hello, welcome, please come in, I'm Nicole Barron, so delighted to meet you, thank you for visiting", etc. They in turn told me their names and offered various bon mots -- "Nice place you have here, are those the original floors, I'm Bob Jones, I'm Mary Smith, I'm......" And so on. The tenth person to walk through my door this morning did the same thing -- clasped my hand, thanked me for opening up the house, and said, "Hello, I'm Diane". Diane. ...Diane KEATON, that is. Terrible picture of me, but I don't care. Love, Nicole.

My Own Horn

People have been complimenting me about this photo left and right. A stranger even called me at the office to tell me how great it was. I told her thanks, and that I hoped I never have to shoot a scene like this again.

The Predator

I've seen my share of dead bodies in my 26 years shooting news, and today was another one of those occasions. This accident happened today a few miles south of Ada, not far from where Abby works. A teenage driver, going too fast, passed a large truck, colliding head-on with a full-size pickup. The driver of the pickup was killed, and had not been removed when I arrived. Her face had been covered by first responders with a pillow from the wreckage. Also in the pickup was a toddler, who apparently survived. The teen driver in the car had to be extracted, which took 15 minutes or more, and may not survive.

It always amazes me how much energy is stored up in our moving cars, then transformed into destruction in a fraction of second when they collide. The same is true, of course, for the lives of the people in the cars.

Death is a predator who loves to prey on our mistakes. Slow down, get off your phone, keep your eyes open and wear your seat belt.

When I was done shooting this scene, I called Abby and took her to lunch. It was nice being with her.

Pictured: The scene of the accident showing the debris field, with firefighters working to extract the driver of the car. The driver of the pickup is not visible in this view, or any others, since we have a long-standing policy of respecting the privacy of these victims.

New Galleries - Lots of Photos

Hey, everybody! Check out the cool new stuff on our web site! It includes our October anniversary vacation, my Utah hiking trip in November, news and sports photos from this fall, a new art page, and my new web log. Enjoy!

http://richardbarron.net/new/

-Richard

The Best Music Video Ever

There's no need for a top ten list of music videos for me. The winner is clear. When you watch this video, you may agree - it is Johnny Cash's cover of the bleak Nine Inch Nails song Hurt, and it never fails to move me when I watch it.

Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter Cash, who are both in the video, both passed away shortly after this video was made.

"What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt"

Worried About Money? Worry No More!

Whenever I worry about money, which is probably too often, I think about this:

You will never, EVER say to yourself, "Remember that summer we didn't go on vacation so we could save money instead?"

Your kids will never say, "When I was 15, my parents didn't do anything for my birthday because they saved some money!"

Pictured: Mitchell at Great Sand Dunes at the end of July, having the time of his life tending our camp fire.

Squizza!

Forget round pizza! It's squizza, the square pizza!

I make this with soy cheese and either soy sausage or soy crumbles. Both taste a little like meat. Also in the topping is green peppers and onions over a marinara (I think it tastes better than plain tomato sauce), topped with soy mozzarella.

Vegarrito!

I often make this. It's a vegan burrito. Inside each one is a blend of sauteéd onions, pinto beans, corn, green chilis, rice and soy cheese. On top is the extra stuff from inside, plus chipotlé salsa.

Really, I mean it. No, seriously, this is the kind of thing that's been keeping me alive for years!

Mitchell says that corn makes it look like throw-up, but that's pretty gross, so I'll only write it in little type, which doesn't really count.

This Winter's Summer Days

It was so nice out yesterday that when Mitchell got home from school, I asked him if he wanted to go outside for a while. We didn't have anything in particular we wanted to do except be outside, so out we went, and headed in the direction of the pond. We fed the goats along the way. Down at the pond we saw that it was nearly dry again, which is common to old ponds and lakes that are filled with silt and are very wide and shallow.

The light was warm and clear, the air was still, the sky was clear. We walked around for a while longer, then I let Mitch go inside to watch TV, and I found the tiller and tilled a strip of grass that I'm adding to the garden when I plant this spring. Finally, Abby got home and we all settled in for the night.

Pictured: Mitchell and me down at the pond yesterday evening.

Clear Air vs Haze

A lot of photography depends on luck. We try to be in the right place at the right time, and often it works. Certainly we would get nothing if we didn't try. An example is the weather. Obviously, rain or clouds or other difficult conditions can put a damper on making good images, but a less tangible factor is haze. There's no good way to forecast haze in the wilderness (although it is more common in the summer), so it can squelch the best plans. In 2003 on the High Road, Abby and I dealt with haze brought about by forest fires in eastern Arizona, which spread out over a huge region.

The examples here are from Canyonlands. The first image is from March 2004 (The Confluence), and as you can see, it was very clear at the Grand View Point. The second was made in November 2007, on The Next Cairn, at about the same time of day, and from near the same spot, but you can see how much more hazy it is.

My Interweb Incredulity

It amazes me, it really does, when I meet people who use computers all day long who have no idea how to use computers. I am particularly chagrined when I tell these people to look at my web site. Often they won't be able to follow simple instructions, so I stand behind them at their monitors. One dead giveaway that I'm dealing with the compu-challenged is that their monitor is set to low resolutions like 640 x 480 or 800 x 600. Next is the difficulty I have in explaining to them where to type the URL line. "Address bar," "URL window," and similar phrases seem to have no meaning. Often I am left with "that window at the top that starts with http." Failing that, I point.

The hardest and most difficult to take is people who look at pages on my own web site, galleries of photos mostly. They bring up a page and ooo and ahh for a second. But they don't seem to get that they need to scroll down. There are dozens more photos on the page. Dozens. Scroll down!

Are the majority of viewers of my web site only seeing the first photos on each page?

Photo: irrelevant image of our son and his dog trapped in a coat hanger.

Beat Box Dude - This is Pretty Cool

A Blog Must: Top Ten All-Time Favorite Songs

I was nearly asleep during a nap this afternoon when I found myself wishing I could hear Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, a song I have heard and loved since I bought the album of the same name in 1983. It dawned on me that I should create a top-ten song list, and I should challenge my blogging friends to do the same. Call it your "desert island selection" if you must. I know it won't be easy, since there are so many genuinely great songs out there, and maybe 300 terrible ones for every great one. I'm not entirely sure of the order just yet...

1. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
2. Season of Hollow Soul, k. d. lang
3. Wild Horses, originally by The Rolling Stones, this version by The Sundays
4. America, Simon and Garfunkel
5. Crystal Baller, Third Eye Blind
6. Red Rain, Peter Gabriel
7. Spinning Away, Brian Eno
8. Is That What Everybody Wants?, Cliff Martinez
9. Closer, Nine Inch Nails
10. Full of Grace, Sarah McLachlan

I know. There are dozens or even hundreds of songs that could occupy this list. And my list could change tomorrow. Still, it's fun to ponder, list your songs, see everyone else's lists and try to see how many of their songs you remember and like. Give it a try!

Pictured: an illustration I created for a story my newspaper did on the music that plays on loudspeakers in downtown Ada.

The World, Bright Around Me

Sometimes the world is just so beautiful to me, even in the humble confines of this small Oklahoma town. I shot this on my way to work this morning, a cold, clear, perfectly still morning. I felt happy.

I Forget Myself

When we get home from our hiking trips, I edit all the photos, publish galleries on our web site, burn the images to CD, and store them. Sometimes in the excitement of having so many beautiful images, and in the flurry of editing, I forget about them.

When I recently had the logic board in my iMac replaced, I took the opportunity to reformat and rebuild my hard drive (which includes zeroing all my data and starting from scratch, which I think is a good idea about once a year or so), and restore everything from backups. In the process, I decided to also rebuild my screen saver image folder, and as I did, I found dozens of images I had not seen literally since they were edited the first time. These images, like the attached picture of the desert floor at Hatch Point in Utah from our second anniversary trip, "Twelve Legs," are kind of orphaned, and I am glad when I can give them a second lease on life.

Forget Myself by Third Eye Blind:

Cause I keep on forgetting myself
And I keep on forgetting myself
I keep forgetting myself
And I keep on forgetting myself
Who am I, we both don't know
Time ticks by, where did you go?

Road, River and Rail

Dream last night: I am back in college, but for some reason I live in the executive suite in the dorm. It's pretty nice - about three times the size of a normal dorm room, with large picture windows, mahogany desks, track lighting. I am upset when I discover someone at a computer in my closet, but soon become distracted. I am then seamlessly walking down the street, when a railroad car falls from above and lands not far in front of me. I run forward, looking up to see a huge, beige, spider-shaped rail car carrying machine. It is hundreds of feet tall, and is moving down the tracks, in my direction. For a moment I feel concerned that it might drop a rail car on me, but I then gather with some others near where the rail car dropped. It then seems to be Sunday afternoon in the summer in downtown Ada. We watch as the giant car carrier machine heads for a huge sliding door that appears to be the way out of town to the west. As the door starts to close, the machine speeds up and seems to be going at race-car speeds into the sunset.

A Trip to the Basement/Wind Comes Right Behind the Rain

At about 8:30 tonight, there was a close lightning strike, and we were plunged into darkness. For a few seconds. We Barrons are a little weird about flashlights - we collect them like some people collect stamps or coins. In spite of the nearly-instant re-lighting of our lives, the computers shut off, as did the stereo, which was playing Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Muh. We reported the outage using a cell phone, and about 15 minutes passed before a truck appeared, looking at our power lines.

We sat and read, but before long there was a text message on Abby's cell phone, saying TORNADO WARNING! It occurred that me that my police scanners were, of course, off, since the power was off, so I turned on a hand-held scanner to hear the Byng Fire Department telling their volunteers, "Take care of your families first, we've got enough personnel at the station." Then they decided that since the power was out at the siren tower, they would roll through town with sirens blaring and announcing the warning on their PA horns.

We calmly and quickly got our shoes on, grabbed the dogs, flashlights and radios (scanner and ham), and headed down to Dorothy's house. She was asleep, so we woke her up and we all went down into the tiny basement below her garage. We waited for no more than ten minutes, after which police and fire departments reported that the threat area had moved to our northwest.

This time last week it was too cold to move.

Pictured: National Weather Service WSR-88 image from tonight. The star I added shows Byng.

La Mort Heureuse

Yesterday my doctor told me what I already knew: my blood pressure is too high. Technically, I have stage 1 hypertension, which is high, but not scary high. He started me on Diovan, a popular and effective medication that has few side effects. He also took blood and did a finger stick to check my cholesterol. It, too, is too high, but not in the scary range. He urged me to start a daily flax seed oil regimen.

The irony of these findings is, of course, that I live a lifestyle that is about as healthy as an American can be. I live in the country where pollution is low, I am active and exercise all the time, including tennis and hiking, I don't smoke, I drink alcohol only in moderation, and I am a dietary vegan (and thus consume zero cholesterol.) So I really have only my heredity and the luck of the draw to thank for these risk factors.

The good news, however, is abundant:

• I caught these symptoms at an early stage
• I am noted for my ability to follow through with treatment regimens and therapies
• In all other respects I am in excellent health

And, above all, even if the mother ship calls me home tomorrow:

• I have been a creative contributor to my community and my crafts, such as photography and writing
  
• I have been a powerful positive influence on the life of a child who is becoming a young man
• I have lived an excellent and exciting life, which has included achieving dreams like learning to fly and exploring the American wilderness
• And to me, most importantly, it has been my privilege to fall in love with and marry the most beautiful, wonderful, intelligent, affectionate and loving woman I have ever met

Forgive me if I sound sentimental at all, but it's certainly better to say these things now than risk missing the chance to ever say them. The human body is fragile, and our lives are fleeting but precious.

Pictured: my wonderful wife Abby.

Us or Them/Team Deathmatch/Bust a Cap

As I got dressed for work this morning, I noticed Sierra the Chihuahua whining and clawing at the China hutch. She whines and claws at stuff sometimes, so at first I ignored it. Then I noticed that the sound of the clawing didn't match the movements she was making, and decided there must be something else making the sound. I got my new super flashlight, the one Abby and Mitchell got me for Christmas, and shined it behind the hutch to find a terrified mouse Sierra had cornered. This called for Mitchell's official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle, which I got from his room (though I was not able to interest him in the project enough for him to get out of bed). I held the light along the axis of the barrel, SWAT style, shooed the dog away, and fired. One shot wasn't enough, but three more dispatched the tiny invader. I felt bad that I had to kill it, but I can't have mice in the house, as they bring the risk of disease, particularly to our curious animals. I pulled the limp carcass from behind the hutch and photographed it before tossing it in the trash can.

Add this to the two gophers I killed, one with a .22 and one with a machete, and you might think me quite the assassin.

A Few Interesting TV Tidbits

• Brady Bunch father Mike Brady's late wife and Carol Brady's late husband killed each other in a bar fight.
• Happy Days older brother Chuck Cunningham never made it back from Vietnam.
  
• JR and JFK were shot by the same assassin.
• "Skipper" Jonas Grumby and Willy Gilligan were the dandies of the island, made obvious by their complete lack of interest in Mary Ann, and their poorly concealed S&M relationship ("Little Buddy," spankings with the Skipper's hat, sleeping in hammocks 18-inches apart despite a huge island, etc.)
• Hawaii Five-O was a last minute replacement for the ill-fated Alaska Four-9.
• The donkey at the beginning of Hee Haw was drunk, and the show's producers faced several lawsuits as a result.
• H. R. Pufnstuf is often mistaken for Watergate conspirator H. R. Haldeman. They are second cousins.
• Ricky Ricardo was a total bastard to his wife.
• "COJCC," the Central Oklahoma Juvenile Correction Center, is referred to as "Kojac" in local police parlance.
  
• Scott Baio is the AntiChrist.
• Lassie was a boy (actually played by several male dogs).
• Despite the popularity of other shows in the series, NBC executives passed on the spinoff Law and Order: Foot Fetish Unit.
• The "dirtiest" line ever uttered on broadcast television occurred in 1960, when Barbara Billingsley explained to Hugh Beaumont, "Ward, I think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night."
• Julie London's character Dixie McCall on the inexplicably popular drama Emergency! was originally named Dixie Wrecht, but producers caught the mistake before production began.
• 50 migrant workers were killed assembling the set for Match Game '73.
• All of The Waltons family was either dead or in prison by 1950.
• Like NASA's Apollo program in the 1960s, it would be much, much more expensive to produce Star Trek (the original series) now than it was at the time. For instance, scientists and economists estimate it would cost approximately $2,000,000,000,000 to manufacture a time machine to bring the dead actors back to life.
• Happy Days was originally set in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942, until it dawned on producers that those weren't very happy days.
• Lavern and Shirley was initially Mork and Shirley, but studio execs felt that viewers would see Mork as a drunk idiot who worked at the Shotz brewery instead of a lovable alien, so two different shows were produced.