Taking down the tree
Originally uploaded by Allen Gathman.
We took down the Christmas tree today. This always gives me panic attack/depression, but it was meliorated by knowing that tomorrow I would leave to go visit my sister Gerry in Louisiana. Yay!
Christmas tree
Originally uploaded by Allen Gathman.
Merry Christmas to everyone, and a happy new year to come. As usual, we’re experiencing wretched excess here. All three daughters are home, everyone is reasonably healthy, and we all get along most of the time. Hope that the same can be said for all 6 of my readers out there.
On the road
Originally uploaded by Allen Gathman.
A lovely ride on the shortest day of the year. Now all three girls are home, and I’ve put the lights on the tree. Sophie just got up, so soon we’ll start hanging ornaments.
Originally uploaded by Allen Gathman.
Sophie hit an ice patch on Highway C on Tuesday and went down a hill and into this tree. While I wouldn’t invoke divine intervention, I am very glad that she was lucky enough not to get hurt. The car, on the other hand, is toast. Sadly, certain idiots (me) didn’t make sure that she had comprehensive auto insurance, so it’s a total loss. Aargh.
It was so far off the road that the tow truck couldn’t get it out. I just went down this morning with Larry Leimbach, who owns the land, and he pulled it up close to the road with his tractor. A very nice guy. On Monday I’m going to get it towed to the junkyard. Sigh.
Nevertheless, she’s fine, we’re fine, Cabell just got home for Christmas, and Hannah is supposed to get in tomorrow.
Or would be, except that nobody cited me.* Walt and I were looking at the county-by-county electoral map on November 6, and saw that curving blue line across the deep south. I said, “What the hell is that? It’s got to be some kind of geographic feature.” We looked in Google Earth and didn’t see anything obvious, and then I got an idea and googled “Cotton Production 1860″. Voila, the maps match perfectly. I cropped the national electoral map to match the cotton map and put them both up on a page that very afternoon.
See this post on Wonkette, titled “Slaves vote heavily in Obama’s favor?“ Wonkette got it from Andrew Sullivan, who got it from Strange Maps, who got it from Pin the Tail, who apparently got it from me and posted it a week after my page went up.
*Update: Both Strange Maps and The Vigorous North have since graciously given me credit. They also add considerable interesting content, and The Vigorous North traces the landforms and soil types responsible for this pattern back to the late Cretaceous shoreline. Worth a look.
That was the moment we knew. When Ohio was called for Obama, he had 195 electoral votes, and with the near-certainty that IA, CA, OR, and WA would follow, he had 275 votes and the presidency.
No election in my life has moved me as much as this one.
Now we’ve got what we wanted, and the real work starts — we’ve just handed Obama some of the worst national problems in recent history. I can only wish him strength, good advice, and wisdom.
Saturday Sophie and I volunteered to canvass for Obama, and although she had to work Sunday, I went back and volunteered again. This close to the election, all the effort is directed at getting out the vote, so we were visiting households already identified as favoring Obama or at least leaning that way. Even so, it was kind of a revelation to us. These were overwhelmingly white neighborhoods we were in. Most of the people we saw were elderly – just the kind of Democrats who were supposed to be pissed off because Hilary didn’t get the nomination. And yet we repeatedly heard things like “Oh, yes, I’m voting for Obama. Yes, I know where the polling place is. I never miss an election.” Or as one old guy said, “Well, I guess I’ll vote for him. I’m sure as hell not voting for a Republican!”
Considering all the right-wing rants I read in the call-in column in the local paper, it restores my faith in my fellow man to find out that there really are Democrats in Southeast Missouri. These people live in modest homes in middle-class neighborhoods; a lot of them are retired, and living on fixed incomes, and they clearly see that Obama is the candidate with their economic interests at heart. I don’t think the Bradley effect is happening here; they weren’t trying to tell me what I wanted to hear, while secretly planning to vote for the white guy. The few people we ran into who seemed like they opposed him on racial grounds were pretty openly hostile. Ironically, those few were in the poorest neighborhoods, and had the most to lose from a continuation of trickle-down economics.
Missouri overall leans slightly toward McCain, and this part of the state is strongly Republican. However, if we can get about 40% of the vote in this region, the strongly Democratic populations of St. Louis and Kansas City can put Missouri in the Obama column. The last time I actively worked for a presidential candidate was when Bill Clinton ran the first time, and I think there’s even more enthusiasm for Obama this year than there was for Clinton in 1992. Even out in the boonies where we live, there are Obama supporters – Obama yard signs in Fruitland! On highway Y! At the livestock auction yard on highway C!
The national polls and electoral maps look good. Still, I’m anxious. As one of Cabell’s friends blogged, “”I feel like it’s Christmas Eve, only with the suspense of wondering whether Santa is going to bring me a pony or set my house on fire.”
A contact of mine in Flickr posted this pic of a defaced Obama sign, I commented sympathetically, and one of the people in the comment thread wound up sending me this Flickr Mail message:
:: OBAMA
HE WENT TO CHURCH FOR 25 YEARS WITH PREACHER WRONG. HE SAID
HE WAS ONE OF HIS TOP ADDVISERS. WRONG 5PREACHED HATE
AGAINST WHITE MEN AND OBAMA ACCTED LIKE HE NEVER SAW
ANYTHING BULLSHIT. HE FINALLY THREW WRONG UNDER THE BUS
WHEN HE SEEN HOW PEOPLE WERE TURNING ON HIM. BILL AYERS
AND HIM ARE LIKE BROTHERS AND THE MAN IS A TERROIST. HE
SAID HE WILL MEET WITH ALL THE ROGUE COUNTRIES LIKE IRAN
WITH OUT PRE-CONDITIONS HELL THAT CRAZY. HE USE TO BE HEAD
OF SIGNING PEOPLE UP TO VOTE WHEN THEY DIDN’T HAVE
ADDRESSES. HE HAS FLIP FLOPED ON EVERTHIG HE HAS SAID IT IS
JUST WHAT CROWD HE IS PLAYING. HE WANTS TO RAISE TAXES WHEN
THE IN A RECEASION. HE IS THE MOST LIBERAL PERSON IN THE
SENATE. HES FRIENDS WITH LUIS FARAKKAN. HE WILL NOT PUT
HIS HAND OVER HIS HEART WHEN THE PLEGE OF ALLEGANCE IS
SAID. HE WILL NOT WEAR A AMERICAN FLAG PIN. WHAT DAM MORE
DO YOU WANT THE SON OF A BITCH SHOULD BE RUN OUT OF THE
COUNTRY. IF DON’T SEE IT YOU NEED A SHRINK. BUT IF HE DOES
WIN IT WOULDN’T SURPRISE ME IS SOMEONE DIDN’T TAKE THE
BLACK BASTARD OUT BEFORE HE GETS TO THE WHITE HOUSE. ONE
MORE HOLIDAY. THANKS PS IRAN NUKE THE BASTARDS. HAVE A
NCE DAY
Now, my initial response is two words: Snopes.com. But this guy is pretty clearly immune to rational argument. Actually, I’m a bit disappointed that he missed the late-breaking news that Obama is actually the illegitimate son of Malcolm X.
What is it with the all-caps crowd, anyway? I used to say it was the equivalent of shouting all the time, but I think it’s more like shouting all the time and spraying spittle in the process.
I don’t guess the Secret Service would consider this guy’s message an actual death threat against Obama, but I do hope that security is tight. How do Republicans who actually have two neurons to rub together feel about the supporters they’re courting? Bill Buckley must be spinning in his grave.
Let’s see — it’s a weird and twisted journey that gets me to the point of this. I was doing my patriotic duty by watching the debate and reading Wonkette’s liveblogging of it, and Wonkette pointed out that, in the process of pandering to the middle class, both candidates managed to say “Hey, Joe”. This led to this video clip. And then, of course, I spent way too much time looking at related clips, winding up with this one. The thing about Red House is that hearing it always makes me so sad that Hendrix died so young. Imagine the blues he’d be playing now. It’s a tragic loss to all of us.
On the plus side, a contact of mine on Flickr just posted this:
The day before his 81st birthday, playing in Rotterdam. Thank you, God, but why the hell couldn’t we have Jimi that long?
Having bought a nice new camera a month ago, I’ve been taking lots of pics. This morning I thought I’d try to do some HDR* photography. Basically, you take several shots with different exposures, then use software (such as the free version of Photomatix, which I just downloaded) to combine them. You can get some interesting effects.
Like this view of our house, looking rather surreal.
Or this more natural-looking one of the Hope farm, seen from our yard:
In any case you get more detail in a wider range of dark and light areas than you would in a single exposure. Of course, the full software gives you a lot more control (actually the first pic was done with the trial version of that, and therefore has a Photomatix watermark on it). But for $99, I’ll wait a bit and mess around with the freeware.
*Link takes you to Wikipedia. Beware: you can wind up wasting a lot of time.