Yep. More eagles

Ok. I had a bunch of stuff to do today, but I couldn't resist going back to Deposit. Today, not a good weather day, I decided to go back through the Cannonsville Reservoir road (Rt 10). Lately I've been going down Rt 8. Good choice. I took about 350 pictures today!!

All of these pictures have been adjusted. I kept bugging this pair of eagles and I saw two different flocks of turkeys. Ben Franklin notwithstanding, I concentrated on the baldies.











































Check out this one. I think he's blinking!

More Movies: Little Miss Sunshine, The Prestige, and the Libertine

Little Miss Sunshine: Steve Carell, Craig Kinnear, Alan Arkin. The little girl in this is wonderful, just like everyone said. All the cast is flawed. All the characters are flawed. Each has a trauma on the way to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. Its a road film and its a good one. The timeline of the script gives it tension, the incredible bad luck that befalls the road trip makes the tension. It keeps getting worse. Deeply damaged characters must contest with a world that seems intent on breaking them. Despite the minimally heroic salvation at the end, none of these characters are lovable. Yes, even the little girl. But they're all likable.

Alan Arkin wins as usual as the granddad. Carell is warm and subtle in a genuine acting role. His comic style is underplayed and winning. I don't like him, and I liked him.

See it.

The Prestige: Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, . Clever story about competition, between friendly rivals. The competition goes wildly wrong in this twisted, and convoluted story. There is some really winning acting in this and not by my girl Scarlett who was merely ok. The rest of the cast was brilliant. The clever story is not so clever and the acting saves it.

In a close one ... See it.

The Libertine: Johnny Depp and a cast of unknowns. The women in this movie were brilliant and of course Johnny Depp in the lead role was too. An historical story of a lecherous, drunken, artistic arristocrat proves a winning movie indeed. All the reason that I can figure that this movie didn't receive bigger notices, was that it was about a character who lacked character. A well formed, if slightly long, sympathetic screenplay serves to explain how someone with so much could destroy themselves in such a way. The seeming celebration (for a while at least) of the license and lesciviousness of the lead character must be why it wasn't lauded more.

Don't watch this with the kids! Don't expect to like him ... but,
See the Libertine! (Unless you're offended by lewd and crude because while more is suggested than showed, there's a lot of wickedness in this movie!)

An impeachment sidetrack Volume I

Ok. I'm speculating here, based upon watching shows like Hardball with Chris Matthews. Got no proof of what I'm saying.

Cheney was running the war machine before the war. G Dub thinks that's ok. Trip to Niger. Cheney says "Leak it", about Wilson's wife because he doesn't like what Wilson said.

Here's where I speculate. Cheney doesn't have ANY authority to declassify documents. He's just the VP. VP's have NO authority.

Supposedly there is a document, from Bush, giving Cheney this authority.

No one can find it. It must be classified. Let's have a public outcry to see this document. What if it does exist? What if it has been tampered with; post dated or forged or changed in some way that is detectable. What if it is just a lie!
Lets see it. We all know it exists now anyway! Supposedly exists. I want an expert to examine it.

IF Cheney did NOT have this authority at the time. Then he is Guilty of a High Crime. If George went along with falsifying a classified document, HE is Guilty of A High Crime.

Impeach the bastards. I bet there's evidence to do it with.

Wait you say...We don't want to go through all that again. I say, Hell yes we do. We owe it to those kids who are wounded and dead. We owe it to the Iraqis. We sincerely owe it to the world.

We owe it to ourselves. The decent American people defrauded and shamed by a liar and a war monger.

And we owe it to History!

An answer to Kev. What I think really happend with G Dub and Darth Dick.

I think that Bush W is / was merely intellectually lazy. Have you read that "Dunce" column by his old professor at Harvard? He's also mean. I read once where he was the 'ass kicker' among the staff on his fathers campaign.

I agree that Cheney has had control of the levers he's wanted. I often think about W saying that he asked Cheney to form a Vice Presidential search committee. I think this is true, at Dad's request. What I really wonder about is who's idea it was to pick Cheney. I could see it going either way. Bush wanted to be lazy. Or Cheney wanted control. Or ... they just dovetailed perfectly.

I think the Cheney, Rummy, Wolffy group were intellectuals that were flat wrong about their strategy, but intellectual just the same. Add a sense of Devine right.

Lazy mind meets wrongheadedness.

And George wants revenge.

But sometime. Maybe last fall. Maybe continuing on... George begins to think. Rudimentarily maybe. But on his own. No more "What should I do Dick?" This time its "Hey, YOU guys got me into a mess." I think it may actually bother him that the American people don't like him. Perhaps even he is beginning to own some of the death he caused.

Just a crack of doubt. But its growing.

And I think that now that Saddam is dead (and captured would have been fine thank you. Justice will arrive eventually) his vague, dormant, warped sense of morality/guilt/obligation/duty/justice peeks through the crack, looks back and says bad things happened, maybe I should have stopped them. This is not "I am responsible" This is, "Since I'm right, what did I miss?" But I think I see the edge of doubt.

So now I see a boy who is failing, saying that he's going to study from now on.

Too bad his teachers taught him this way was the right way. Too bad the intellectuals were flat wrong.

I think now he doesn't trust his handlers, and he's trying to be his own president. He's just unimaginably unqualified.

But that's what I think.

Eagles

It was a very good day...
This is an adult. This mated pair was in camera range on Saturday.




These young ones were there Sunday.
This guy is a Red Tail.
But I had a good shot at him while in the car ... These were taken through the windshield.
Below were taken just outside the car on Sunday.










Well, I had a pretty good weekend. For a long time I've tried to get a good picture of a bald eagle.

I only recently learned that the eagles in Deposit have stayed all winter.

I think this is very strange, but a man told me there are at least two nests of them.

Most of these pictures are of young eagles. Judging from the colors I would say 3rd year, but I don't know.

But it was great visibility for taking pictures.

I have hundreds from just this weekend. Many didn't come out.

I've learned that shooting on the 'action/sports' setting on automatic is probably my best shot. Still not sure if setting a 'film speed' makes a difference on automatic.

I've also learned that on manual settings I'm better of for moving subjects to do shutter priority. And under shutter priority, its better to have the white balance be automatic than custom.

Also, more importantly, you can't push the shutter too fast, the aperture can only compensate down to 5.6.

Still, I've tried a lot, learned a lot. Got some good pictures. Saw a LOT of eagles and some other birds.

And generally had a good day! And a good weekend.

I'll try to publish a few more of the better ones from the hundreds.

I'd say I have at least two good pictures here. Probably nothing professional quality. But they're getting better. And I know where to go to get some more good shots.

The baby bird in the tree ... well there was no place to get out of the car. When I walked back there he took off....

The Blues

I'm not going to get overly self indulgent here. Just feel like I need to post a marker. It was a tough tough week for me. Tough at work. I hate a bad time at work 'cause its almost my only human interaction, but its just work. Then its Friday. Friday's worse. One more week. Shhh.

Meaning

I think a lot about leaving a 'mark' on the world these days. Most people leave children. The biological imperative. And most likely what we are 'meant' to do, if we are meant to do anything.

As I roll toward 50! My god. 50. I realize my chance to leave a mark that way is really slim.

So I'm hoping to make art again. Visual. Written. I don't know. I would just like to believe that sometime in the future, there may be somebody that said "he was important. Let's find out more about him." Or maybe just "He was interesting."

Sometimes I feel like I'm screaming in a vacuum.