Don't know till after It's written, ha ha ha...

Groups of people find friendship in their common interests, and/or common values, preferences: religion and politics play a huge role.  It's amazing, really, that friendships exist in spite of obstacles. 

On message boards sexual preference determines circles of friends. Often in life Family rules: exigencies force us to trust, and even like, our relatives; that's why, I suddenly realized, that betrayal by a relative hurts and disappoints so very much. 

Main Entry: ex·i·gen·cy


Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'ek-s&-j&n(t)-se, ig-'zi-j&n(t)-
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
1 : that which is required in a particular situation -- usually used in plural
2 a : the quality or state of being exigent b : a state of affairs that makes urgent demands <a leader must act in any sudden exigency>
synonym see JUNCTURE 

Please, I had to look it up to make sure, for myself: I do not wish to be didactic.  Well, not much, ha. 

All of this comes to mind because in the last couple of days I wrote two letters to my daughter Diana who is trekking to Australia, from California, at the invitation of my younger brother's widow. Diana's overall purpose is simply to research her own roots. If this desire has never hit you don't be surprised if one day it does intrude forcibly on everyday preoccupations. In one letter I wrote yesterday I included a copy of a photo taken of my parents, Diana'a paternal grandparents, in about 1930 in front of the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire, LA, a photo most likely taken with my father's box camera. The couple were in their early 20's. They didn't have a dime. My father is wearing the very same clothes, baggy, he wore in another box camera photo taken shortly before leaving Sydney by ship (of course), a photo taken in the garden of his mother-in-law, my grandmother Lillian.

What's particularly worrisome is how quickly family loyalty can be shaken. Most of the time, thank God, family is cohesive, but breakups can ruin lives, embitter brothers, and damage children.

In my family it was usually the mothers who sacrificed themselves for the greater good of the family. Gee, I should have saved this entry for Mother's Day.

Mother, I still miss you.

Barry

 

Moving

We're moving again. For several years I resisted the very idea of moving, let alone actually looking for a bigger place in which to bring up four young children. I've puzzled that out to a conclusion: I resisted not from sloth or stubborness, but from an exaggerated high regard for making do with what one has. I'm good at that, and weirdly never feel deprived, or poor, or in any way inferior.  And, I've lived on board USA merchant ships, Army barracks, and on the eve of flying from San Francisco to Boston to go to college, having returned from the West coast of South America, I slept in a park on a hill in San Francisco. I do remember a pang or two of shame on that occasion. But, I had to hang on to my money!

So, tomorrow we have an appointment to finalize moving into a much larger place, which has three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. The locale is perfect for our wants. I have everything crossed. And, if it doesn't work out, for whatever reason, at least I'll have up-to-date knowledge of where to look, how much it will cost, and in general I'll have made concrete my (our) plan to move.

Tidbit: the convenient highway nearby, but completely inaudible at the location, used to be called The Santa Monica freeway, and "#10." I now see on the Google map (wow!) that the name has been changed to Rosa Parks freeway. Now, wait a minute, can that really be true? What has Rosa Parks (love her!!) got on Saint Monica!???? Americans tend to be fickle. Ha ha ha ha ha...................

Wish me luck!

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

Journal Enties

Some journal entries by the gifted receive 39 Comments. It's a big day in my life when I get three Comments. [Gee, this font is no good; it's too small. We'll try another:  How's Comic Sans MS?. It's bigger, even though the setting is still #12.

To be candid I don't blog for Comments,even though I appreciate them. I blog to find out what I really think and feel. Sometimes I admit I make an entry to annoy someone specific. Wicked. Getting a rise out of someone. Fun, sometimes.

My hat is off, look it is doffed, to all those who can amass 39 Comments on only one Entry. I mean on one level or another, everyone should want to be in step with the rest of humanity, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity or religion. You know that thrill one gets when someone of an entirely different religion or race, or both different, is actually in step, not fundamentally different at all!??

 

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

My Message Board Post

[ Oops! Dan Brown, not Tom Clancy wrote The Da Vinci Code; oh well, peas in a pod.]

Gee, the SN was so long I tried cut and paste and look what happened, ha ha ha.  I'd never heard of Tom Clancy before his 'Let's spoof religion' book which sold 48,000,000 copies. Boggles my breakfast.           

The movie of that tome damaged the careers of Hanks and his director IMO. Their press talk at Cannes resulted in the director, Ron Howard, intoning, "If you don't like the movie don't see it!"  Ha ha ha ha ha.  I saw clips, that was enough for me. I tried reading the book but the introduction scenes were so poorly written I gave up. That happened to clash with similar geographic description as the beginning of The Sun Also Rises which I was re-reading at the time. I don't think Tom Clancy has read enough better novels.           

The Catholic Church published a humorous, good natured            demurral about Clancy's attempt at assassination of Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's in a tiny little booklet; it'd fit in your breast pocket for easy transport on one of your flights.  Not so kind on the subjecthas been Protestant attacks on the character of Tom Clancy from the CRI in North Carolina. (That's the Christian Research Institute.) 

Nearly always novel reading for me is never about the plot, but very much about the writing of the plot. If there's no 'music' I find myself falling asleep.           

 

Barry

Housing (Where I lved)

Where I can remember living and/or  having been housed.

Hospital in Fresno,   CA

Ships, maybe ten in all.

College dorms: two

A lady's house

Servants quarters

My Grandmother's house in Narrabeen, Aust.

Three houses on two different sheep stations

165 West End Ave., NYC

942 Green St San Francisco (You could see Alcatraz)

25th Station Hospital, Taegu, Korea.

Hospital, Koje Do Island, South Korea.

Greenwhich Village NYC

Lower East Side, NYC

Off Santa Monica Blvd, LA

Guadalajara, Mex.

Puerto  Escondido, Oax., Mex.

Redondo Ave LA

Chapman St LA

Coronado St LA

Hmmmm, where else??  Left out a lot I'm sure.

 

I wouldn't mind settling down.  Someday. (LOL)

 

Barry

PS: While writing a thankyou to Ally

(don'tcha luv her?!)  for her kind Comment

I noticed I'd left out not one but two places,

ok places, where I'd lived with  (and conceived three

children with) wife #2.  How I must hate her!

This entry was written on the eve of moving into a domicile where we'd have two complete bathrooms each with sliding glass shower doors, also new for me. That felt peculiar hence looking into EVERYWHERE I'd ever lived.  (We'll be six!)

Another omission was an apartment on the Westside of Manhattan, a short walk from Central Park. Not too happy at that time which might explain why it got 'forgotten.' To slightly change the words of the Greek original, "The unexamined life was not worh having been lived.."  Ha ha ha  ha ha ha...

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

 

 

 

Dunno

Attempting to ad pix ran into a scare. Removal of the 2 GB memory card from the camera (a toy really) into the front of the computer later caused the card to not function in the camera. After fiddling it did finally work again but I'm scared. The connection in the new computer might simply have been dirty. The card works perfectly at the CVS drug store's Kodak instant printing machine.

More serious is my family's reluctance to have their picture posted on the internet. AOL has not been protective of me in spite of my myriad written complaints. The truth is AOL staff is complict with a madman who happens to have been a photogapher. Now his fulltime occupation is being a madman.

The next try will be to use the cable from camera to computer, and leave the 2 GB card in the camera. I should have done that first. I like taking pictures. I've been giving away pictures, INCLUDING TO THE MADMAN, for most of my long life. Yesterday I took snapshots of a parent and his three young children outside the Pre-K school attended by my son Michael. Weeks ago I feared the parent might be a gang guy, and he still might be, but he's also a sensitive father. You can see that side of him in the photos. It was a new thrill to be able to take the pictures at 8 am, and deliver them to to the subject by 11 am when Pre-K let out. I'd never done that before.

That same morning I took pictures of 4 year olds, mostly girls, hovering spontaneously around the car seat on the school room floor in which our Mark Andrew was sitting. Michael was thrilled that his new brother caused such a strong ripple of identification.

I've never accepted a penny for the pictures I've taken. I do it for love.  There was one exception. Years ago (1976?) I gave model Nancy Brown a picture I took of her which she placed in her 'Book', her modelling book. Some months later I received a check for $200  sent to me by a NYC advertising company. The photo was bought right out of Nancy Brown's book when she was on a 'Go-see.' Probably saved them a fortune, ha ha ha ha.... I won't be shy, it was a thrill. I'd just moved from NY to LA and didn't have a dime. Let  me hasten to add that it wasn't hard to take a lovely picture of Nancy Brown!

Barry

  http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

 

Any ol' thing

Re pix.

Okay, there's the short connecting 'wire' that came with the camera. One end goes into the camera, and the other into a slot on the computer tower.

So what do you do then? "Whistle up a wind"?

Oh, and about Red Eye.  How do you turn the damn thing OFF!? Why doesn't it turn off automatically when you select Flash Fill? Flash fill is one of my fav. settings. Flash is so weak from my toy (Polaroid - and most likely not THE Polaroid but an overseas, 'stolen' Polaroid trade name. In every photo studio in America at one time assistants were forever tearing off the back/front? of the Polaroid shot to see if the lighting was as per demanded by the ad agency; being able to show the polaroid to the client, I guess, was like protection) camera that the flash actually restores pleasing color without looking lke flash. [Oh, and btw, there was never, ever, anything polaroid in the studio or on location with Avedon's assistants. I believe they spurned any such crutch; they KNEW without that crutch.]

Do the expensive digital cameras have batteries other than rechargable AA batteries?

Digital has killed the darkroom I guess. Many a tear has dropped I bet.

I've noticed a huge variation in sharpness in digital photos taken with the very same equipment. So the processing machine is the darkroom. It must be.

I have six, so far, rechargeable nicad AA batteres. They take forever to recharge. And they get hot, which is scary. Some rechargers are green light to charge, and others are red light to charge. Couldn't they make an agreement one way or the other?

Digital is in shakedown. Film looks good again. But, my Leica is water damaged, and three other cameras will operate ONLY via the trigger of self-timer?!  Ha ha ha ha ha. The achilles heel of cameras with plastic parts is the button you push to take the pcture!  Groan.

Any help or suggstion will be greatly appreciated. But please, don't send me a digital Leica. I'd feel ashamed for begging.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

More On Music

Don't know if it's Kosher to mention her by name, so, lacking certainty I'll skip that and mention this entry is in reply (I've already replied in the usual way twice) to a splendid Blogger I 'Love' who posted a video clip of Martine McBride (never heard of her but then Country is not my thing) singing smoothly and professionally a song that included in the first sentence "God is Great." Now, I don't know if that's Scripture, or simply has a 'scripture' ring to it.

Here's the puzzle: a Rock Ballad I've doted on for decades begins with a very inexpert, down home old woman wailing about God being "Great."  Then, Joan Osborn, a better singer by far but definitely not showing signs of operatic skills, picks up the thread of God being great and follows through with an incredibly powerful 'topper,'  that to a Christian is like all the Angels in Heaven Singing Fortissimo!    "What if God was one of us?......trying to make his way home."

Holy smokes that gives me shivers. It just might be blasphemous to say so, but I think the power of that lyric is that the event conjectured on has already happened.

Song writers, you have us in your grip.

 

Barry

Still looking, pining for, 'Home.'  (Shivers, it even echoes "ET go Home.")

Music

Talking about, or writing about music, any kind of music is most difficult. That might be part of the appeal of music in the present day in which we are damn near driven mad by talk talk talk talk talk talk talk.

I apologize in advance for not having energy (or computer skills) enough to include music clips in this entry. For example I'd so dearly love to include the couple of minutes of The Chorale by Beethoven, in movement #3, which caused my wife the other day to gasp when she heard it and say, "My my that's pretty...". Usually I snap off the classical music when she gets in the car because it's not really her fav.

Disney Hall, (Music Center) in Los Angeles, situated on perhaps the highest hill in the heart of downtown LA, looks like a gigantic, majestic confection of very shiny curved steel. Oh! the expense! Does anyone pretend those myriad curved shapes add to the acoustic perfection of the ediface? No, no such claim is made, at least I've never heard or read any such claim. To me the amusing superfluity of steel glitter suggests our spirits can soar if we'll simply listen, and listen with, and without, the crutch of words.

Here's a suggestion that the steel is working. The other day a film company half blocked First and Grand for about a week. Off duty cops had been hired to govern the traffic. I hope and pray it wasn't just for the protection of the makers of some crummy TV Commercial, but instead a drama that might enrich our lives. We pass Disney Hall quite often because it happens to be on the most direct route to TV Cafe on Alameda, a 24 hour joint I've frequented for twenty or so years. 

The other day I found embedded in the inside rear of our vehicle a loudspeaker I didn't know was there. I found it while getting something out of the back while the music was playing. Was I surprsed! And felt sheepish: where did I think the unusually good surround sound came from?! I mention that because I've never before been so addicted to listening to music while driving.

Here's a car music anecdote. The other day while waiting for my wife at a parking meter - she was at a LONG appointment - I took a rest from Beethoven and listened to my favorite Juan Gabriel song, a Mexican singer so popular in LA that his likeness, fifty feet high, decorates the side of a building on Western facing a parking lot in front of a laundromat. The latter, and the side of the other building are Korean-owned. Only in multi-ethnic LA.

The song of Gabriel, male, I love ("Un fie"??!) is about the singer's sad goodbye to a woman he cannot love but who is desperately in love with him. Oh he is so so so solicitous, and so loves saying such a long sad goodbye, as if goodbye was his life's purpose. While I was waiting at the parking meter for my wife several Hispanic, attractive women looked into my vehicle apparently curious to observe who was listening to (perhaps) THEIR song. If I'd been listening to Beethoven the women passing by would look dead straight ahead totally indifferent. What Gringo (non-hispanic) song or singer warbles happily, or even unhappily, about his NOT loving someone? Did Elton John ever carress the message that he can't love someone or another?! I don't think so. Conclusion: In hispanic culture men still rule, and rule with a cruel and demanding total subjugation of women.

On Monday I plan to call the LA Philharmonic and ask them if performing Beethoven's Ninth is on their upcoming schedule? I've never heard it live. I want to go with all six of us. Skipping a few visits to TV Cafe might pay for the luxury. 'Ode to Joy' sure is worth listenng to. And, everybody wins!

Barry