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Archives
america the beautiful
Raising up dead horses "When Barack Obama took office it seemed to some of us that his first job was to get the national silverware out of the pawn shop. Or at least maintain the world's confidence that it was possible for us to get out of debt. America is dead broke, the easy credit, phantom "growth" economy has been exposed for what it was. A credit scam. Even Hillary Clinton and Obama's best efforts have not coaxed much more dough out of foreign friends. But at least we again have a few friends abroad. "So now we must jackleg ourselves back into something resembling a productive activity. No matter how you cut it, things will not be as much fun as shopping and speculative "investing" were. "The fiesta is over, the economy as we knew it is dead. "The national money shamans have danced around the carcass of our dead horse economy, chanted the recovery chant and burned fiat currency like Indian sage, enshrouding the carcass in the sacred smoke of burning cash. And indeed, they have managed to prop up the carcass to appear life-like from a distance, if you squint through the smoke just right. But it still stinks here from the inside. Clearly at some point we must find a new horse to ride, and sure as god made little green apples one is broaching the horizon. And it looks exactly like the old horse. "Then too, what else did we expect? His economic team of free market billionaires and financial hotwires includes most of those who helped Bill Clinton sell the theory that Americans didn't need jobs. Actual labor, if you will remember, was for Asian sweatshops and Latin maquiladoras. We, as a nation one third of whose population is functionally illiterate, were going to transmute ourselves into an information and transactional economy. Ain't gonna sweat no mo' no mo' -- just drink wine and sing about Jesus all day."
life is good Sales of gordy straps keep going up. This month is on track to be my best month yet. I managed to get this weeks orders done by yesterday hoping to have a day in the basement putting up another bench and getting it organized. Instead i will be catching up on some web work. I'm not taking on any new web jobs but I still do maintenance for a few old customers. This morning I saw that Blue Moon Camera and Machine has charge me for developing my first Minox roll. It should be on it's way back from Portland today. I should get it tomorrow. I can't wait! I have another roll ready to send down and am part way through a third roll. And these are 36 exposure rolls. I haven't shot this much in a long time. It's great to see a picture and just pull the camera out of your shirt pocket and shoot. Vern has a Minox developing tank. It's as clever as the Minox cameras. The teeny film cartridge is loaded in the tank and then the film is wound out of the cartridge into the tank. None of this requires a darkroom. I want to load my own cartridges with Fuji Across 100 and do my own developing. Probably with Diafine. It's been almost 30 years since I've developed film. I've been immersing myself in photo books. Specifically, Japanese photo books. It's breathtaking. They are an inspiration for my own book projects. Japan exposures has become my candy man. The double sided paper for my own book making projects arrived. I need to do some test prints to see just how durable the prints will be. Way more projects than there is time. At least it's not boring!
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