Tuesday - These certainly are interesting times: Pence wears a mask but we still have to look at the sTrump'et's ugly face

It certainly seems as if we are living in interesting times. This year we've entered the final year of the doofus's term in office, the Covid-19 virus struck the country with unexpected and ongoing force, and finally White folk in large numbers finally are standing up with their fellow citizen of color to seek an end to the endemic and institutionalized racism that has been such an ingrained part of our culture for too, too long, and they aren't doing it quietly.

In DC, the a-hole-in-chief, the Doofus Donald, fumes and rages and pouts ineffectually against forces outside his control. I wouldn't mind seeing the spit on his face when he expectorates into the wind. 

It is interesting that the spokespeople for sTrump'et are saying that he was not verbally briefed on the Russian bounties paid to the Taliban for killing US troops. They are not saying that the matter was not contained in the written intelligence briefings he never bothers to read. I wonder, is he the first truly illiterate President of the United States? It's possible. 

The desperate and loud efforts to keep first Bolton's and now sTrumpet's cousin's books from being published are efforts to keep sordid truth from people who need to know. None of this will convince the crooked Republicans because they already know, and it won't convince the zombie-like diehard ever-sTrump'eters because they won't read it, and if they hear about it somewhere, they will think it's all lies anyway. If they have learned to believe all the manure and fetid things that emerge from the mouth of sTrump'et, the have learned to cover their ears and eyes to anything that might encourage them toward enlightenment.

What is more hypocritical than a sTumpe'eter? They throw hissy fits when someone tells them to wear a ask, they wave a flag and and gun at anyone who disagrees with them, and they call that personal freedom. The only personal freedom they care about is to shit in their neighbor's yard and screw them if they complain, but that neighbor better not do it to them or else they'll put a bullet in them. 

Let's see how they moan and weep when we unelect sTrump'et this year. This is not wishful thinking, it's a call to action: go out and talk to your sane neighbors who might still do the wrong thing and gently get them on the correct path.

Unelect sTrump'et and his ass-licking minions.

Tonight's photos are a double handful of street scenes shot in midtown Manhattan, mostly while strolling with my trusty DSLR during a lunch hour, when I was still able to get to Manhattan. I do long for that and look forward to a time when it can be done again.

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Monday - The birds are singing in the garden. Trump is braying like the mule he is.

I am sitting at my computer listening to the birdsong outside. Our garden and the woods that surround our house seem to attract a cacophony of winged animals - the birds have a diverse set of songs but also the insects that grace the evening and early morning. It's only during the earliest hours that it's quiet, and even then not as quiet as in the depths of winter. Crickets, cicadas, and other insects, and in the distance some coyotes and owls and other night animals keep up a gentle racket. But almost with first light - and I'm an early riser so I am up to hear it, the birds start their racket. 

We've got a nesting pair of Carolina Wrens, and it took us a couple of days to finally figure out what bird was making that sound and then figure out what it is. It's quite distinctive - you can search for it and there are dozens of videos of them in full-throated song. I am enjoying it.

The Chappaqua HS graduation party has turned into a small Covid-19 hot spot with more than a dozen cases diagnosed so far. The local police chief is promising his force will enforce the social-distancing rules and perhaps even fine people. There is little doubt that the combination of social distancing, masks and sanitation make a difference. The asses who think their rights are being trod upon when they are required to wear a mask are the offenders, stomping on the safety and rights of the citizenry at large. We need to socially distance ourselves from them.

It doesn't help that the a-hole-in-chief, the doofus Donald, refuses to wear a mask. And yesterday he outdid himself for doofusness, cluelessness and general idiocy. First, he claims he wasn't briefed on the Russian interference in Afghanistan, offering bounties to the Taliban and their clients to attack and kill Americans, even though intelligence sources reported it to him in March. He probably didn't pay attention, it was too complicated for his pea-brain, and went against what he wants to believe.

And then he also claims he didn't hear the White supremacy shout in the video of a Trump rally he reposted. Well, then why did he take it down? Because he got called out on it.

I imagine the a-hole-in-chief stewing in his office, wondering why he can't get away with anything, and that it doesn't even work anymore to call things false news when it's right there on tape.

Let's make sure to keep up the pressure and unelect the sTrump'et this year.

My photos tonight were taken on a trip to Buffalo, NY. They are of a railroad right-of-way that's been abandoned, the trestles and the tracks removed, left to become overgrown, walking paths and canvases for graffiti. I lived in Buffalo for a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At that time, those rights-of-way were where two branches of the old Erie Lackawanna RR crossed. I would walk there in the middle of the night and watch endless freight trains passing and crossing. Now all gone. I've written about it but not published.

These pictures are a reminder. You might think them sad, but that's what's left.

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Sunday - thinking about the bit of craziness in Chappaqua this past week

I got up this morning and looked at the news. One thing I didn't expect was to read and then see that Chappaqua was in the news and not for a good reason. If you hadn't heard about it, in brief, a local HS student, just graduated, who been in Florida, flew back for a graduation party held out-of-doors in the parking lot of the train station. From what I read and heard, masks were not used by all, social distancing was not enforced and several students in attendance have come down with the Covid-19 illness and others tested positive. All are in quarantine and many who were in attendance have been ordered to self-isolate.

The reality of this is that many and perhaps most 18 years olds are not really responsible people yet. Their brains are still maturing and instead of acting with consideration, there's a greater impulse to socialize, and if school is out, to party. This they do without thinking through consequences. Thus, much responsibility has to fall on the parents who either were absent when they should have been chaperoning, or were there but not doing the right thing.

We went through a very nasty and scary period during the winter and spring of this year. The first real hot spot in NY state was in Westchester, and only through a serious community effort that included social distancing, masks and general precautions, were we able to get the numbers of new cases way down and the number of hospitalizations and deaths close to none. We don't want to backslide. We are not Texas, we are not Florida. We understand that this disease is dangerous and we will deal with it.

On the outrage front, while I am at it, what was going through the sTrump'et campaign's collective minds when they ordered management of the arena in Tulsa where the a-hole-in-chief held a rally to stop posting social distancing notices in the arena and on the seats, and then going so far as to take them down themselves. I know they are all die-hard and to the death sTrump'eters, but this is carrying their dogma too far. I guess they really have drank the Kool-aid and believe that the disease will go away if they pretend it's not there.

How many people will get sick because of this?

It should be criminal but with the most corrupt president of the century in orifice, if you are his supporter, you 'll get pardoned anyway.

Let's make sure we unelect this person. Doofus Don doesn't deserve a second term, and he probably stoe the election with the help of his Russian controllers. More on them tomorrow.

And finally, today is the 50th Anniversary of the first Pride Parade in NYC. Over the years it has become very commercialized and lost some of its edge. Last year, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, a large group organized a Queer Liberation Parade. I was there to photograph it and posted three long blog entries with many but not all of my photos.

I could not go to the smaller but still important Queer Liberation Parade in NYC today but I am posting a half dozen portraits from last year's that I have not posted before.

Black Lives Matter, Queer Lives Matter. We need to end systemic anti-Black, and anti-Queer repression in the USA.

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Saturday - the humidity rolled in but it didn't keep people from going out

The parking lot at the Kensico Dam Plaza was close to full this morning when I got there a little after 9AM, and there were at least half a dozen exercise classes of various types: intensity training, weight training, interval training, yoga, stretching, dance motion, sprints, and so on. The plaza is big enough so that a dozen or so people taking a class can stay separate and also far from the next class. 

It's a generally mellow vibe, which is nice. Nobody seems uptight about me taking pictures and sometimes I stop and say hello and take a semi-candid or posed shot, with the subject's permission. It's definitely pleasant. Yet I do feel a need to find another place to walk.

I read something disturbing this morning, about Trump's attitude toward masks. He was interviewed in the Wall Street Journal, by Michael C. Bender. I do not have access to the full article but it was reported in several places that he said sTrump'et said some Americans might wear face masks not as a way to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus but as a way to “signal disapproval of him.” 

Seriously? Once again he proves himself to be an egotistical paranoid maniac, a dangerous man who views his allies as with him and everyone else is out to get him. 

It's frustrating that he is the president of the United States, frustrating that his every fart is considered newsworthy, and all he knows how to do is fart about how great he is, how great a job he's doing and isn't he the best person in the world. This man has a most distorted self-image and the sad thing is, many people believe him, and think it impossible to disagree with him, even to the point of threatening the lives of those who publicly disagree with him. And they become outraged and violently angry when a mirror is held up so they are forced to view their own misdeeds. I am beginning to feel that there is no such thing as a rational supporter of Dumpster Donald, the sTrump'et himself.

We must unelect him if we are to have a chance of saving America from its own worst.

A few pictures of people exercising and relaxing at the Kensico Dam Plaza:

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Friday - there are advantages to working from home

Westchester is opening up but despite what those people who think only of themselves believe, masks and social distancing are still important. It's not about fear, it's about concern for your fellow humans who might catch the disease from you.

So don't be an asshole, and don't spread the disease. Wear a mask when you have to be closer than six feet from people you don't live with. We aren't out of the woods and the father or grandmother or great aunt that becomes critically ill could be yours. Or it could be your best friend!

Here's something I read today in the Wall Street Journal:

Younger people are getting sick with Covid-19. States that had brief coronavirus lockdowns are struggling to encourage social distancing and mask-wearing. Many people appear to have embraced their usual summer rituals. Health officials are sounding alarms about a surge in cases racing not through nursing homes, but bars and house parties. Hospitals are filling with medically-vulnerable elderly—but also 20-somethings and patients in their 30s and 40s.

I got kicked out of a cemetery yesterday. I wasn't doing anything bad but as the security person told me, "the gates close at 4PM." I imagine I could've parked on the main road and walked around but since I had to move my car, I figured I might as well head over to the damn Kensico Plaza and continue my walk there. It was simply too beautiful and afternoon to just head home.

Kensico Cemetery is a very lovely place, park-like in it's landscaping, rolling hills, hidden lake. There are lots of family plots with interesting and sometimes garish monuments, above ground tombs with lovely stained glass facing west, and plenty of famous people in permanent residence.

sTrump'et's cat's paw, the vice president, believes we are in a good place right now, ready this time if the number of cases keeps growing. But in places in Texas, hospitals are at capacity, in Washington the emergency has returned, Texas has ordered bars to close and Florida is forbidding bars from selling alcoholic beverages. I guess that will keep the crowds away. These folks who've done their best to politicize a public health crisis, are stunned by the failure of their plans.

And the sTrump'et administration pontificates and congratulates itself for a job well done while people are struggling for health care. Incredibly, they are asking the Supreme Court to decide that the Affordable Care Act is void. This without a hint of what they would replace it with. Criminal? Even if there is nobody to arrest these felons, the Republican party as sunk to a new low. Despicable is a compliment. Disgusting is better.

Tonight a handful of photographs I edited without too much concern for verisimilitude.

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Thursday - very nice day indeed - got the gutters of my house cleaned

I noticed the last time we had a heavy rain around here that on one side of the house the water was overflowing the gutter. We have deep eaves so it wasn't splashing in the house, but when I went outside later, I could see that the gutters on that side were full of leaves, twigs and some pine cones. Today, the people we use to clean them twice each year came and took care of it. Now I have to wait for the next heavy rain to know if they did a good job.

The pandemic drags on even as sTrump'et and company try to act as if it's all an illusion. I read that his campaign is trying to make sure that the convention in Jacksonville FL is not the disaster that Tulsa turned out to be, but what with the growing number of cases of Covid-19 and the number of new hospitalizations, there is reason for them to worry.

I don't want to get too optimistic. sTrump'et has to be defeated and it will take a long, active campaign to see this through. He still has more than 6 months during which he can cause this country a lot of damage. It doesn't help that he uses racist and xenophobic language all the time, that he acts as if everything is rosy and that he's done nothing wrong, only those who came before him set it up so he'd fail.

But when people such as Bolton and his cousin feel that he is simply too dangerous to be left in office, we all should start worrying.

I want to think of a way to talk to sTrump'etistas so they begin to see the picture, but I know that is simply expecting too much from those who've drank that particular poisoned Kool-aid.

So work had and work smart to unelect this minority President and get this country back on track.

Pictures tonight are all of people occupied by their mobile device, even when they ought to be paying attention to their surroundings. In particular, notice the woman crossing the street and the two men sitting on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. If it wasn't so commonplace, I'd think it sacrilegious.

Well, actually not.

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Wednesday - Nice enough day and I finally got my hair cut!

I don't know what to say. Yesterday was Primary Election Day in NY State. I voted by mail a week or so ago. On my ballot was a long slate of candidates running for the Democratic Party nomination for the House of Representatives. After a half a lifetime, Nita Lowey was retiring at the end of this term, and a spectrum of candidates from liberal to very liberal are running to take her spot of the ballot this fall. So far, with a lot of votes still to, be counted, Mondaire Jones, a Harvard educated attorney, has a strong lead. I've no objection to him. I was pleased to see that Rob Astorino, former Westchester County Executive, a committed conservative, did not run for the Republican line. He's a nice guy, I've commuted with him before he became County Executive, but politically I find many of his views too extreme. As far as I can tell, the Republican Party candidate is a sTrump'etista, and in her statements shows herself to be dangerous as well as deluded. I will actively support the Democrat.

Meanwhile, over on Pennsylvania Avenue, the a-hole-in-chief is hunkered down, surrounded by toadies and ass kissers. I wonder if they are as delusional and dangerous as our wannabe tyrant, the Doofus Donald himself, is?

Let's get them out of there and put sanity back in the executive branch. Unelect sTrump'et and his enablers.

A couple of summers ago I saw this wedding couple come out of a fairly new hotel on Orchard Street in Manhattan. They were there to be photographed so I saw no reason not to grab a few shots of my own. It's part of an ongoing series called "What I Saw."

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