Fred Blee

No longer new, the moon was a waxing sliver last night, chasing the sunset. The skyline was already dark, as dark as the future can sometimes look these days, for we are in and age of turmoil. As Gramsci said "The old world is dying and a new world struggles to be born...." Each morning we awake to new occurences of age-old savageries while the perpetrators point their bloody fingers at the victims and justify their deeds with lies, sophistry and sanctimony. The clowns distract the audience while the cutpurses glide through the crowd unfettered. Devilish machines are unleashed, spewing hateful slogans and sowing confusion. Dieties are invoked, propitiated, cursed, denied; blasphemy falls from the lips of the pharisees and the flock murmurs "Amen." "...now is the time of monsters."

Moonsliver 20250825-1
#photography #altstories

"Only Nancy Pelosi had the power to call up the National Guard in DC."

Sarah Palin No Longer Dumbest Person to Set Foot in Alaska

I wonder if he knows that when anyone, anywhere in the world, says "that fucking idiot", everyone else knows that he is the idiot being spoken of.
#fdt

YouTube video by the Mountain Goats the Mountain Goats - No Children (Jordan Lake Sessions)

Over the decades, I've had many "favorite bands/artists" (of the moment). Recently, Hurray for the Riffraff, Olivia Rodrigo, Big Thief... but right now, it's the Mountain Goats.
#vjuke #theMountainGoats
youtu.be/s2DCdI-XXQ4?...

#photography

With every photo I post, I write alt text to not only give description of the image, but also tell a story or make a point. I don’t think many people read the alt text, and few people use it when they post.

They give you 2000+ characters, and y’all are just letting them go to waste.😎

#altstories

At nightfall, the freighter still lies at anchor, still waits. All day the crew has busied itself with the waiting, the ten thousand tasks that keep the ship afloat. Tomorrow may mean lading, or only more waiting, but for now there is only the deepening dusk and a day's work done. Some of the crew will sleep, a few will stand watch, and the ten thousand things will be there again come the dawn. And so each day for each of us, whether moored or moving, each on our journey toward the one. May you find safe harbor, good cargo, smooth sailing.

Breakwater 20250810-2
#photography #altstories

Dawn, and the little freighter rides at anchor outside the harbor, awaiting a berth and a cargo. Last night's storm, the torrential rains and the fierce winds, has cleansed and cooled the air, leaving pools of water faintly tincted with the residue of the northern wildfires. The amount of rainfall overnight was truly incredible, over 14" slightly to the north of us and from 4" up everywhere in the metro area. The last day of the State Fair was cancelled and too many folks spent their Sunday trying to salvage what they could. They are calling it a 1,000-year flood, but no one knows whether that should reassure or frighten us. There are too many 1,000-year catastrophes these days.

Breakwater 20250810-1
#photography #altstories

At dawn, the Sturgeon Moon setting in the west, reddened by the smoke from the wildfires in Canada. The city is quiet this early on a Saturday morning, but for the cries of the gulls and the occasional siren that signifes someone's day is off to a very bad start. Perhaps, though, it will turn out to be only some very bad indigestion, not a coronary, and the patient, after a few hours observation, will be sent home to question whether they over-reacted or not and to wonder if the next time will be the real thing and they will dismiss it and never hear the sirens drawing near, and to ponder on the fragility of existence and the mortal callousness of it all, how there may be no time for goodbyes, or that the goodbyes will stretch through weeks, or months, of suffering. Oh, the moon rises and sets every day, but you, my friend, you get one orbit, one brief transit, one chance to shine. Make time to look up at the Sturgeon Moon, truly listen to the gulls, and send a blessing after every siren.

Sturgeon Moon 20250809-1
#photography #altstories

At first light, the gulls begin a shrill murmur. Then one cries out, sharp and short, and they take off, wheeling through the summer morning's flat light. It will rain yet this morning, but for now the air is heavy and warm and the gulls swoop shrieking and shouting for a few minutes before settling down on rooftops and falling silent but for the occasional cry. It as if each morning's start were some astounding event, an occasion for chatter and tumult, until the novelty of it wears off and it becomes just another day. We, however, faced with each fresh miscarriage of justice, each entrenchment of an oppressive status quo, each instance of brutality or cruelty, must not roost and fall silent. We cannot allow the lawlessness, the perfidy, the treachery of those in power to become quotidian, so that our souls become calloused under the saddle of evil rulers. We must cry out, sharp in each morning's air, "This shall not stand." Our complicity must extend only as far as our lack of power, and we always have the power to speak. Resist, my brothers and sisters, and another day will dawn, brighter than this one.

Breakwater 20270726-1
#photography #altstories

This is a piece of art by Tory Tepp called "Revenant Canoe" captured during the Farm/Art DTour 2024 in Sauk County, WI. We had stalked it all the morning of our first day until we stumbled upon it behind the meeting house at the Witwen Tabernacle Church Campground. Despite its attempt to conceal itself behind some reeds, we snapped it standing fully erect and a quarter submerged in a small pond between the North Fork of Honey Creek and Honey Creek proper, apparently its intended posture and habitat. I have to look up revenant to see how a canoe could be so, and it seems this canoe is back from the bottom, a corpse of a canoe that came back as a cabinet. It stands mutely, startling and stark and sharp against the green sward that lay beyond it. And then a finch swoops and hops into the orange and white birdhouse. Suddenly the canoe is no longer a bashful artifact, but one with the landscape. The mirrors become eyes, and a face, not visible to us before, appears in the area below the birdhouses. The lantern becomes a helmet. We see the canoe as a figure crouched on the bank, waiting. We saw a lot of other art that day, took pictures of many pieces, always felt the slight disappointment one can feel because the pictures are never as good as what you saw, like memories. Even when we've adjusted the image and crafted the story, we're not.... there. Because we're here. We keep taking pictures, though, and looking at art installed up to its knees in a Sauk County pond, wondering why Tory Tepp would use the word revenant. Perhaps it really is a salvaged canoe, and all the objects in it found, discarded, and they've come back to tell us "Be kind to each other and to things", for there's a face where you least expect it and art in farmers' fields and a blue canary in the outlet by the light switch who watches over you. I can't suppose that Tory Tepp intended all that, or ever heard that song, but I'd like to think he and I are on the same wavelink, if only a bit.

Revenant Canoe

Tory Tepp

Tampa, FL & Sauk County, WI

Image made: 20241010

#photography #altstories

The balustrade is trompe-l’oeil, isn’t it? Lovely room.

#altstories

Do you read the alt stories?

Mount Antero girdled with early morning clouds while its peak juts into a clear Colorado sky. If you stop your car at a crossroads in the hills across the valley from Antero on a gorgeous spring Sunday morning, you could see something like this. You might just jump out of the car and stand there a bit to soak it all in, forgetiing for a moment the ill temper you left the house in and the chill you'll walk into when you return, all over what? Control, you suppose. But standing in that crossroads you get the inkling that control is overrated, and often illusionary, and the seeds of apology begin to form in your heart. Because one thing the mountain does is humble you. You can be sure this mountain will not come to you at your bidding; you will have to go to it, across that valley, beneath those clouds, up the snow dusted foothills. And it's that way with an apology, too. You have to traverse a valley of apprehension and perhaps receive a frosty reception. Still, they say that regret is the forge of character where ones moral awkwardness is hammered back into plumb and square on memory's adamantine anvil, and you've got to gird up and make what poor amends you can, for only you can do it. Of course, that's pretty much your situation generally: you've got to whistle up your nerve and begin to repay the debt you owe the world and accept the fact that only you can do the work. The mountain isn't going to come to you. The mountain isn't even going to care what you do. The valley is wider to walk across than look across. The clouds may or may not disipate. Nothing is known about the journey ahead, but you get back into the car and drive to a rustic minimart in a hopeless quest to procure gluten-free bread. That failure will do nothing to sweeten the morning, and your mood is dark and fearful despite your time gazing at Mount Antero. Courage, my friend, courage.

Mount Antero 20180520-1
#photography #altstories

Imagine starting a car that hadn't run in 21 years, that's 15 billion miles away in interstellar space. That's what the NASA team just did with Voyager's thrusters. People are amazing. jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-v...

YouTube video by KLF The KLF - Justified & Ancient (Official Video)

Tammy Justified
#vjuke
youtu.be/XP5oHL3zBDg?...

The French Colonial influence pops out in the whole composition... not just the building, but the arrangement of peoples, the overarching foliage, even the side street to the right . A little piece of France grafted onto a culture half a world away, yet now as much a piece of the place as anything.

In Bentonville, Arkansas there is a restaurant named Conifer that is 100% gluten-free, and they make some of the best buttermilk biscuits you'll ever eat, glutinous or otherwise. On a recent journey through the capitals (and the Capitols) of 4 states (AL, MS, AR and KS), we stopped off in Bentonville, AR to visit the Crystal Bridges museum. Bentonville was a small town until the Waltons became billionaires and the corporation grew astronomically. It is now full of dozens and dozens of modern(-ist) buildings and thousands and thousands of new people. But back to biscuits. When the chef wandered by and greeted us, we praised the biscuits warmly and before our meal was through, chef came back with a photocopy of the maculate kitchen recipe sheet and the admonition that "it will have to be scaled down, of course." The recipe was for 30 big biscuits with variations for cheese and/or garlic. These are plain gluten-free buttermilk biscuits with a sprinkle of sea salt on the top. The museum in Bentonville is top-notch, as well. Gorgeous grounds include a Wright house that was moved from New Jersey. Imagine that. The collection is solely American art, from all periods, so there are lots of portraits of rich white people in the initial rooms, but don't be deterred by that. American art didn't break free until the 20th Century, which is perhaps a controversial but popular opinion, wasn't it?. (Lehmann tag question, rhetorical whimsey, that) There are no two opinions about these biscuits, though. Universally loved and acclaimed. Works of art. Of course, having the necessary resources to dine at Conifer and be served the biscuits, and choosing to do so, is a privilege. Even making them at home is a luxury afforded by the availability of the necessary ingredients and all that butter. Scads of butter... and buttermilk. And so capitalism serves up the biscuit and the bait, and the biscuits are so darn good. I still sleep at night, but my daytimes are troubled. Wish us luck.

Biscuits 20250513-1
#Photography #altstories

Haven’t heard this in over 50 years. This album was in heavy rotation with my roomies and I back when it came it out. Saw them on a bill with Sweathog opening and King Crimson closing. 1973 maybe.

#altstories

The plane from Atlanta arrives in Madrid early on Saturday morning, and, after a metro ride al centro, we find our hotel, drop our bags awaiting checkin time, and wander out for a late breakfast. We find this little place which could offer everything from Dewars to donuts and are soon feasting on castelvetrano olives and manchego, and yes, a slice or two of ham. A few people come in, usually just for coffee, but one intrepid customer has two quick shots of something from a bottle I do not recognize. 10:30 AM on a Saturday? Who am I to judge? No matter where in the world you go, there are folks whose troubles have gotten on top of them, and won't let them up, and you need to be kind to those people, or your luck at finding huge ham haunches will evaporate, and then you'll have more troubles to wrestle with and the cafe will never be open when you need a coffee. That's the way things *should* work, anyway, but too often the heartless knife their way to the top of the hierarchy and spend the rest of their days stepping on anyone who is a perceived threat and making the world a lesser place generally. Those people don't deserve to have jamon iberico in a dive cafe on a non-descript side street in Madrid, and if they did ever show up at this place, the owner would surely be rude to them, and perhaps even ask them to leave. Have no truck with the heartless, he'd say (but in Spanish), and vote them out of office if the opportunity arises. You should wear a red taffeta dress to their funerals. Honk at them in traffic. Mock them to their faces at christenings and other solemn occasions. Pretend not to recognize them when sharing an elevator, and push all the buttons below their stop. Right now, too many heartless are infesting our government at all levels in the US, but the day of judgement is nigh, and then the shoe will be on the other side, and they'll have to eat their own crow and learn a useful trade at a minimum security prison. At least I hope it works out that way.

Spanish Ham 20190406-1
#photography #altstories

Downtown Denver rises up from the snow-capped pines of Cheesman Park. The park, and the Botanic Garden next to it, is also a burial ground, but not a cemetery. No one has been interred there for well over a hundred years, but not everyone who was buried there has been disinterred, and so there is the occasional accidental exhumation. Not long ago a humerus was found as they made repairs to the Japanese Garden water feature. It always makes the papers when it happens, but no one ever stops to ask whether or not a Japanese Garden in a Rocky Mountain botanic garden is a form of cultural appropriation, or point out that patrons do not get the experience of being in a Japanese garden, but rather that of being in the Japanese Garden in the Denver Botanic Gardens, which is quite another thing, and that experience includes walking over the graves of hundreds, if not a couple thousand, long-dead Denverites. There is near to that garden a long shed full of tiny tortured trees, wherein one can savor an aesthetic frisson akin to satisfying the taste for fois gras, pleasuring in the result of nature perverted. One can’t spend ten minutes enjoying the simulacrum of a Japanese garden without hearing a siren, anyway. What a world we’ve built, on the bones of our dead.

Trees, Snow, Denver 20180402-1
#photography #altstories

Good stuff. If you put the tag #vjuke in the next time you post some music, I’ll be sure to see it.

The palette changes from the earlier version work. Very nice.

No, elected US officials cannot be recalled. Only impeached.

Ron Johnson represents less than half of Wisconsinites. Ron Johnson is a 01/06 denier. Ron Johnson is a shill for the rich Republicans in this state. Ron Johnson is also not all there upstairs. Recall election? Can you do that with a senator?

Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Kristi Noem and a whole lot of ICE/DHS types is will discover a Strange New Respect for habeas corpus and the rule of law when the 2029 Truth and Reconciliation Commission arrests them for human trafficking, conspiracy, kidnapping, and child abuse.

Classic... and don't forget the original Randy Newman version for even more snark
#vjuke #variegatedjukebox