The Return Of Abbie And Bobbie, The Blacktailed Deer (Photo Essay)

The Return Of Abbie And Bobbie, The Blacktailed Deer (Photo Essay)
I posted a photo blog on March 22, 2010, a series of pictures of a pair of Blacktailed Deer that came onto my property.

stuckinthesixties

Since then, I’ve seen Abbie and Bobbie, as I’ve been calling them, several times. Yesterday I was able to snap off some more photos, this time with several pictures showing both does together. The quality of some of these photos is sub-standard due to the poor light conditions and the limitations of my crappy camera, but worth seeing nevertheless.

Jim Marshall: February 3, 1936-March 24, 2010 ... RIP

The following text was taken from the website of the Washington Post:

Jim Marshall dies; rock-and-roll photographer shot hundreds of album covers

By Emma Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2010

Jim Marshall, 74, a notoriously abrasive photographer who helped establish rock-and-roll's public image with his intimate and iconic portraits of Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and other performers in the 1960s and '70s, was found dead March 24 at a hotel in New York. The cause of death was not immediately known.

A resident of San Francisco, Mr. Marshall was in New York to promote a new book and apparently died in his sleep, said Henry Diltz, whose Morrison Hotel Gallery represents the photographer's work.

Mr. Marshall, who shot hundreds of album covers and worked for major publications, was most renowned for his candid, mostly black-and-white shots of musical celebrities. He captured them in unguarded moments onstage, backstage and offstage, creating images that revealed larger-than-life superstars in unrehearsed vulnerability or exaltation.

"He was quick and relentless, wading in with his quiet little Leica and capturing the essence of the person and the moment," said Diltz, who is also a music photographer. "He was the guru of us all."

Mr. Marshall's best-known images included Hendrix setting his guitar aflame at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 and Janis Joplin in 1968, sprawled on a couch backstage with a bottle of Southern Comfort and appearing, at the height of her fame, to be as lost and lonely as a little girl.

"Some people said I shouldn't have published that picture," Mr. Marshall said in 2005. "But Janis said, 'Hey, that's a great shot because it's how it is sometimes. Lousy.' "

In 1969, he captured Cash before his performance at San Quentin Prison, aiming his middle finger at the lens. "I said to him, Johnny, let's do a shot for the warden," Mr. Marshall once recalled. "I guess flipping the bird was his natural response."

Mr. Marshall refused to give stage directions and preferred to shoot with available light. His only requirement was non-negotiable: unfettered access to his subjects, a condition he considered essential for the documentary style he favored.

He balked when entertainer Barbra Streisand attempted to set limits during a shoot. He said he wound up swearing at Streisand, who was aghast, and then walking out.

Despite his impatience and curmudgeonliness, Mr. Marshall befriended many of the people who agreed to his terms. In 1966, he was the only photographer allowed backstage at San Francisco's Candlestick Park at what turned out to be one of the Beatles' last full-scale public performances.

He was an official photographer at the 1969 Woodstock rock festival, covered Crosby, Stills and Nash's first recording session, and documented the Rolling Stones' 1972 tour for Life magazine.

James Joseph Marshall was born in Chicago on Feb. 3, 1936, and grew up in San Francisco. While he carted around a Kodak Brownie as a kid, it was not until junior high, when a photographer snapped a clear shot of him crossing the finish line at the end of a footrace, that Mr. Marshall became mesmerized by the art form.

Returning from Air Force service, he worked as an insurance claims adjuster until a chance meeting around 1960 with the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane in San Francisco launched his photography career.

"He asked me for directions to a club," Mr. Marshall said in 2004. "I told him I'd pick him up and take him there if he'd let me take his picture."

He hung out at North Beach jazz clubs until moving to New York in 1962, where he lived in Greenwich Village just blocks from Dylan and Judy Collins. In 1963, he was on his way to breakfast with Dylan when he snapped a memorable image of the enigmatic folk singer trailing after a car tire as it rolled down the street.

Mr. Marshall's career slumped in the 1970s and early 1980s, and his marriage dissolved. His fondness for drugs and guns led to run-ins with the law.

"I suffered from the arrogance of success," he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1997. "C~^z@#^ made it even worse. I was not a pleasant person. I suppose there are some people who probably think I'm still not."

Mr. Marshall, who had no immediate survivors, revived his career slowly and worked over the years with younger bands, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers and singer-songwriters Ben Harper and John Mayer.

In recent years, numerous galleries showed his work, and his pictures appeared in many books, including the one Mr. Marshall was promoting when he died, "Match Prints," with fellow photographer Timothy White.

Mr. Marshall's archive also includes portraits of jazz and blues artists, including Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. He photographed pianist and composer Thelonious Monk in his kitchen with the beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

"I'm basically a reporter with a camera," he told the Chronicle. "I don't manipulate. I don't contrive to make things seem other than how they are. I don't have a signature style.

"When you see one of my photos of, say, Merle Haggard, I want you to think, 'What a great shot of Merle Haggard,' not 'What a great Jim Marshall photograph.' "

Taking "Summertime" Entirely Too Far ... I Tend To Do That, Don't I?

Okay, here's the way this blog came to be ...

First, Lucy blogged a video by a band she likes called Saosin, and she left a comment basically semi-joking that no one liked her music. That led me to grumble to myself that no one in Wireclub likes my musical taste either, and to assume that none of my favorites would likely have any clubs devoted to them in Wireclub. So I made a blog with that idea, searching all of my favorites, and PrintScreening the resultant “No Clubs Found” pages I’d found.

Tcg then responded to my blog with his own, a nice little complimentary batch of YouTube videos of some of the artists I love. (Thanks, tcg!) One of those videos, representing Miles Davis, was Davis’ great version of the song “Summertime” from his “Porgy And Bess” album, a tribute to George Gershwin’s famous opera. Another was Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of the “Someone To Watch Over Me,” another beautiful Gershwin song.

I found this kind of interesting, and a little ironic, as my all-time favorite song is “Summertime,” and my all-time favorite version of the song is the Ella Fitzgerald-Louis Armstrong version from their own “Porgy And Bess” album. That led me to post my own blog with a YouTube video version of that rendition of the song.

While putting that blog together, I thought of all of the different versions of “Summertime” I was familiar with, and wondered how many of them would be available on YouTube. Not surprisingly, there’s quite a few. So I decided to pick a bunch of them, showing a bunch of very different versions of this wonderful song, and toss them all out here in yet another blog.

Nobody’s gonna listen to each and every version of Summertime here. But that’s okay. I present them here knowing that full well. (shrugs) Whatever. It’s a fantastic song, and the process of putting the blog together was worth the effort.


Big Brother & the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin – Late 60s San Francisco psychedelic version


Sam Cooke – smooth, silky vocals by this classic R&B artist


Billie Holiday – Frank Sinatra always said she was his biggest influence


Some operatic production seen on YouTube, that wasn’t specified as to who or what, but was really pretty, and nice to watch


The Ravens – I’d never heard this doo-w^$ version before poking around YouTube. It’s GREAT!!!!!!!!


Billy Stewart – A mid-sixties one-hit-wonder, with really a really bizarre take on this song


Kiri Te Kanawa – One of the best opera divas’ version


Miles Davis/Gil Evans – The beautiful collaboration of Davis and Evans with a wonderful, smooth, sophisticated big band approach


Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong – my favorite version of my favorite song

My Favorite Rendition Of My Favorite Song Of All Time

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong:

Summertime (George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin)

From "Porgy And Bess"

I first heard Summertime when I was a teenager, when I really thought I might become a famous rock and roll guitar player. I was into all this "heavy" rock shit, and had no use for "square" "boring" crap like adults listen to.

But someone taught me this song, Summertime. I thought it was cool, and I liked playing it. And I had an album, "Cheap Thrills," by Big Brother & the Holding Company, with a great version of the song sung by Janis Joplin.

Years later I was in the small town of Panajachel, in Guatemala, of all places, in a cafe called The Last Resort, a place that catered to the hippie backpacker traveler types passing through. Damien, the proprietor, put on a CD, a collection of various jazz songs of various artists. The first song on the CD was the one heard on this YouTube video. It's been my all-time favorite song ever since.

If you actually play this YouTube video, do yourself a favor:

When you start it, lean back and close your eyes. Shut out the rest of the world for the four minutes and fifty-nine seconds of this song, and just listen to how perfect this song is in every way. The vocals of Ella and Louis are, of course, just exquisite. But there's also the lyrics, the song itself, written by the Gershwins. And there's the arrangement of the instruments that frame this song for them to sing, and for Louis' trumpet solo as the first verse.

It's just timeless. When the latest whatever-is-popular-at-this-moment has long been discarded into the dustbin of music history, fifty years from now, five-hundred years from now, people will still be listening to this version of this song, and wondering just how someone could create something so perfect.

(I made this blog after listening to the YouTube vid of Ella singing a different Gershwin song, "Someone To Watch Over Me," that was posted by tcg to nudge me after I pouted that no one shared my taste in music.)

Okay. Seriously now. Click this video to start it, and then lean back and close your eyes and just listen to it undistracted by anything else in the world for those five minutes. Really.

Proof That No One Shares My FANTASTIC Taste In Music

Thousands of Wireclub members, thousands of clubs, etc.

But ...

There are clubs for the Beatles, the Doors, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Alison Krauss, Pink Floyd, and the Rolling Stones, so there's some hope for you.

If You Like Lichen, You'll Like These Pictures (Photo Essay)

These are some photos of various kinds of lichen growing on two downed trees on my property. There seems to be four or five distinct kinds of it.

I'm fascinated by lichen, and the various forms and structures it takes.

A Visit By A Pair Of Blacktailed Deer (Photo Essay)

Yesterday, March 21, 2010, I was sitting here chatting with my friend Bad Girl, when a movement caught my eye. I turned, looking out the windows and the sliding glass door to the right of me, and found that a pair of female Blacktailed deer were right outside of my house. I jumped up, grabbed my crappy little camera, intent on snapping some shots of the pair close up.

Unfortunately, the movement spooked them. One of the does, let's name her "Abbie," vaulted over the fence and began moving quickly away. The other, we'll call her "Bobbie," was intimidated by the fence, and rather than jumping it, began quickly moving along it, looking for an opening so she could join her friend.

Abbie continued to move off across the property as Bobbie ran in the opposite direction, finally finding the gate I'd left open. She then ran back in the direction where Abbie had disappeared, and was then gone herself, hopefully after rejoining her friend.

Hippies ...

... just in case you don't know what a "hippie" is.

A Pompous Essay On "Russell's Teapot" And How I See Things (A Blog For Geoff)

If you know Geoff, you know Geoff’s an atheist. An outspoken atheist. An unflinchingly derisive-toward-most-religion atheist. Months ago he got into a somewhat public battle with another of our fine Wireclub users who took exception with his religious ridicule. A small blowup. As Wireclub dramas go, pretty minor.

Geoff knows, and perhaps you do too, that I’m not religious. Nor am I an atheist. I'm an agnostic. Just to make sure readers comprehend the difference, generally speaking, people fall into one of three catagories:

> Religious: believes that God (or Gods), a deity, a creator, or something to that effect, exists

> Atheist: believes that God does NOT exist

> Agnostic: believes that there is no evidence, either way, that God exists, or does not exist

Not surprisingly, the skirmish Geoff was involved in prompted a bit of conversation as others weighed in with their comments, opinions, insults, jokes, etc. Geoff reacted, during one of these many exchanges, to my agnostic position by suggesting that I investigate a philosophical concept commonly referred to as “Russell’s Teapot.” I did so.

Before I continue on about Russell’s Teapot, let me elaborate on my position as an agnostic and my position relative to the religious and the atheist. As I see it, the atheist, much like the religious, relies on faith to a certain extent for this belief, because it's no more possible to prove that god doesn't exist than it is to prove that god does exist. There's no objective tangible proof for either of those positions. Atheists generally don’t like to have their beliefs associated with “faith,” but that’s how I see it.

As an agnostic, I only accept as reality things for which there is objective, tangible proof. Therefore, when it comes to the issue of the existence of god, I have to shrug and cheerfully admit that I simply don't know one way or the other. Show me the proof and I'll believe it, plain and simple. In my opinion, there is another word besides agnosticism that can be used for this point of view: science. I personally like science. I find the concept of science to be quite compelling and logical. I find science persuasive.

And as an agnostic, I consider myself open-minded. But not unthinkingly so. I tend to see things in a sort of duality of what is POSSIBLE, and also, what is PROBABLE. In the most absolute sense of my agnosticism, if there’s no proof for something one way or the other, I must acknowledge the POSSIBILITY for it, or against it. That’s the most absolute sense of it. The intellectual extreme.

But in my way of being an agnostic, I’m not just blindly following that most absolute sense of my beliefs. Not only do I acknowledge the POSSIBILITY for things, I also acknowledge the PROBABILITY of things. And I would classify many of the things commonly associated with popular religious beliefs as being rather IMPROBABLE. I tend to use, for lack of better words, what I’d call “common sense” in my assessment of things. Therefore, when faced with ideas such as “Noah’s Ark,” it’s only in the most extreme sense of my agnosticism that I reluctantly see the validity of that tale as POSSIBLE. But really, for all intents and purposes, I see that as IMPROBABLE to such an extreme degree that I have no problem with simply dismissing it with a contemptuous wave of my hand.

I drew a comparison earlier between agnosticism and science. Scientists, like agnostics, have a duality in their assessments of the universe. The nature of science is that the assessment is NEVER absolute. It is always in a constant state of revision as new means for making assessments are discovered or invented. The history of science is littered with assessments that were proven invalid and discarded, replaced by newer, better assessments with a higher probability of being more accurate, or even “the truth.” Yet, there are also many of these assessments that have such a high degree of probability that they are simply accepted as truth. I see this duality of science as being much the same as the duality of agnosticism.

But I’d be lying if I also didn’t acknowledge that I have at least a grain of, for lack of a better word for it, “emotionality” as a factor in how I assess the universe around me. As I look at the grandeur of this universe, I can’t help wondering about existence. My wonder about existence is to such a degree that emotionally I find it difficult to simply dismiss it flippantly. Yes, I understand and generally accept the idea of the “Big Bang” concept of existence beginning and originating with a “singularity” in “space-time,” etc. I can accept that this occurred. But my wonder is rooted in the question of how it occurred, what caused it to occur, etc. And of course, there’s always the question of whether or not there is a “why” it occurred. The profundity of these questions, and my emotionality of these questions, is the portal through which my acceptance of the validity of POSSIBILITY passes.

Ahh, but I have digressed badly here. (It’s my blog. I’ll digress if I want to.) Back to Geoff. Somewhere during his minor Wireclub drama, we exchanged comments in someone’s blog, or in a forum, somewhere. And as a commentary on my agnosticism, Geoff beckoned me to look into a concept known as “Russell’s Teapot.” I searched Geoff’s blogs (no easy task) looking for the exact comment to include here, but to no avail. I did, however, Google up “Russell’s Teapot.” Here’s what Wiki had on the subject:

BEGINNING OF WIKI EXCERPT

Russell's teapot, sometimes called the Celestial Teapot, is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), intended to refute the idea that the burden of proof lies upon the sceptic to disprove unfalsifiable claims of religions. Russell's teapot is still referred to in discussions concerning the existence of God.

In an article entitled "Is There a God?" commissioned, but never published, by Illustrated magazine in 1952, Russell wrote:
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If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
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In his 2003 book A Devil's Chaplain, Richard Dawkins employed the teapot analogy as an argument against what he termed "agnostic conciliation", a policy of intellectual appeasement that allows for philosophical domains that concern exclusively religious matters. Science has no way of establishing the existence or non-existence of a god. Therefore, according to the agnostic conciliator, because it is a matter of individual taste, belief and disbelief in a supreme being are deserving of equal respect and attention. Dawkins presents the teapot as a reductio ad absurdum of this position: if agnosticism demands giving equal respect to the belief and disbelief in a supreme being, then it must also give equal respect to belief in an orbiting teapot, since the existence of an orbiting teapot is just as plausible scientifically as the existence of a supreme being.

Peter Atkins said that the core point of Russell's teapot is that a scientist cannot prove a negative, and therefore Occam's razor demands that the more simple theory (in which there is no supreme being) should trump the more complex theory (with a supreme being). He notes that this argument is not good enough to convince the religious, because religious evidence is experienced through personal revelation and cannot be presented in the same manner as scientific evidence. The scientific view is to treat such claims of personal revelation with suspicion.

James Wood, without believing in a god, says that belief in God is more reasonable than belief in a teapot because God is a "grand and big idea" which "is not analogically disproved by reference to celestial teapots or vacuum cleaners, which lack the necessary bigness and grandeur".

Another counter-argument, advanced by Eric Reitan, is that belief in God is different from belief in a teapot because teapots are physical and therefore in principle verifiable, and that given what we know about the physical world we have no good reason to think that belief in Russell's teapot is justified and at least some reason to think it not.

END OF WIKI EXCERPT

I find myself somewhat aligned with James Wood. Referring back to my way of conceiving things in a duality of POSSIBILITY and PROBABILITY, only in the most extreme sense of POSSIBILITY must I acknowledge that Russell’s Teapot exists. But I’ll classify it with Noah’s Ark. Very, very IMPROBABLE. And because the level of my wonder about the existence of Russell’s Teapot is of a rather low order, I’ll dismiss it in the same way as the Ark, with a contemptuous wave of my hand.

Where atheists such as Richard Dawkins, and perhaps Geoff, err in their assessment of agnostics is that they see us as giving equal weight to all things unprovable. They fail to understand that along with the willingness to accept the concept of the POSSIBLE, we also accept the concept of the PROBABLE. And like the religious, who resent those deride their beliefs, I resent being characterized by Dawkins and his ilk as having a "conciliation" of religious beliefs. I don't conceed a f&w@$^& thing. My beliefs are my beliefs, and they aren't there to conceed any-f*~@%y~-thing to any-f~&zw*y-body.

When it comes to that huge question of existence, the atheist tends to wave his hand dismissively at us, and say, “The universe simply exists. That’s it. Get over it.” That strikes me, as an agnostic, as a convenient cop out.

When it comes to the inability of proving a negative with the impossibility to objectively proving the inexistence of god, and that being a reason to invalidate atheism, as an agnostic, I must wave my hand dismissively at them and say, “You can’t prove it, thus I don’t believe it. That’s it. Get over it.” That, of course, reasonably strikes atheists as a convenient cop out, as well.

And of course, the religious tells us that his belief is the only truth, bestowed upon us by God, and that’s it. Get over it. That is, of course, a convenient cop out too.

The irony I find here is that at the core of our beliefs, all three camps, the atheist, the agnostic and the religious, all choose, all succumb in one way or another to the acceptance of something that conveniently bolsters their chosen point of view.

I'm Deleting EVERYONE From My Friends Gallery!

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........ No, I'm not.

A Great Spot For Photos (Photo Essay)

Last year there was a fire in the hills outside of Napa. Actually, there were a few, one of which was pretty close to where I live, which gave me a chance to shoot some photos, which I posted in my Gallery and later shifted over to a blog:

http://www.wireclub.com/Blogs/StuckInTheSixties/101459

I was also able to capture in photos the first fire of last year, in a different part of the valley. I immediately made a blog of it, with some really cool pics. It was completely ignored, so I shrugged and (perhaps petulantly) removed it. But in the process of making those photos, I happened to run over near the hills that almost always appear in the background of my “Weekly Photo From My Porch” pictures. So I clicked off a few incidental pictures of those hills, with some vineyards showing. One of those pictures I eventually posted:

http://www.wireclub.com/Galleries/ViewImage.aspx?ImageId=1781558

The thought of specifically looking for good shots over in that area had been tucked away in my mind, and last month, on February 14, I detoured over there on my way home from town. I stopped the car, and took some pictures of the vineyards and the hills behind them. After shooting that shot, I glanced around and realized that not only was that shot of the vineyard and hills there, but there were other great shots right there at that location.

So I began to walk around a little, not far, no further than a couple hundred yards/meters. And I took a bunch of photos. This blog shows the best of them.