… HCR meter, hopeful… making the case that the Biden administration is fundamentally changing the way government works, rebuilding hard infrastructure, establishing soft infrastructure funding that will be consequential… interestingly, she points to the way the news media (liberal included) is making the story all about the “dysfunctional” Dems by reporting breathlessly on the intransigence of Sinema and Manchin, while ignoring the dysfunction of the Republican Party, which refuses to be engaged in the process in any way… Republicans, she points out, are spending the majority of their time waging culture wars that they believe will make their base passionate enough to return them to power one last time… and it will be one last time… i believe that if the current iteration of Republicans is allowed back in, they won’t leave… likewise, it will be a Democratic era if the Dems are able to hold on, which they will do in a more legitimate way, by making sure all people can vote… this depends largely on the passage of voting rights legislation, which relies on Sinema and Manchin agreeing to, at minimum, a carveout in the filibuster that would permit a simple majority to pass whatever bill it is that moves forward… so, yay for infrastructure and to returning the government to being “of the people, by the people and for the people”… it is important to do things for the people… but the peril is clear, the solution is clear, the outcome is not…

… nice dinner party last night with K and D, except H dominated the conversation, focusing on herself and making it hard for the rest of us to participate… i get it though, i think she is desperate for direct human contact… beyond that, it was nice to spend some time with K and D… and!… they bought two of my photographs!… it’s been a good year on the photo sales front… to the point where i will report the activity as income on this year’s taxes… it also reminds me that i need to get back to getting work in front of the public… loosely, i am planning to do that in the new year… starting with an application for a NYSFA grant… very competitive, probably won’t get it, but it is free to apply and as they say, “you gotta be in it to win it”…

… Fiona escaped the yard yesterday… H was in the back garden, planting bulbs… one minute she was there, the next minute Chas was trying to tell her she had escaped… i had thought i had the various under-the-fence routes plugged, but apparently not… this morning i went out with the dogs and i think i found the hole… will plug it up today… it isn’t a very large hole but she doesn’t need much… it seems anything she can get her nose through she can go through…

… Amazon Prime truck squawking like a deranged corvid bird as it backs up… special Halloween backup sound?…

… hike to the Mount Beacon trail entrance on 9d… as i walk through the parking lot of Bob’s Corner Store, the smell of bacon cooking… the store reminds me of stores in Maine, located at the confluence of local and hiking traffic… it is dilapidated… i had breakfast in the dining room a couple of times long ago… the floor was so shaky underfoot that i became convinced collapse was imminent… i have not gone in since… to the best of my knowledge, it has never collapsed…

… as i pass a backyard filled with play equipment, i remember a tether ball pole my father tried to set in the ground in a hole with stones wedged in to keep it upright and still… the setup wasn’t up to the vigorous play we gave it… the pole quickly loosened and became wobbly…

… i stop in Barb’s and pick up a chuck roast… wondering who to invite to Sunday dinner… i remember Sunday is Halloween… maybe i should freeze it and serve next weekend?…

… sitting by the dam at the Roundhouse… thick, brown sheet of water pouring over the top, breaking up into frothy caramel and white boiling at the bottom… the proverbial dull roar for sound… i remember when i first came to work in NYC i lived at my parents home in NJ and commuted through Hoboken train station for a while… i used to walk out to the end of the platform where the Engine throbbed away, waiting to haul passengers to their assorted towns… it gave a thrill to stand right next to the powerful engine… the power of the falls and rapids gives me a similar feeling…

… a lengthy article in Mother Jones (leans pretty liberal) about the (comparatively) vast numbers of people quitting… i find it a very hopeful sign that labor is on the move… that labor is beginning to reject deplorable wages and working conditions… i don’t think we have a very humane economy… so many things are wrong with it… similar things were going on in the 20’s and 30’s of the last century… we are either at a moment of rebalancing or one of great descent for the majority of the people…

… this letter, written by Todd Gitlin, Jeffrey C. Isaac, and William Kristol was published simultaneously by The Bulwark and the New Republic on the 27th of October, 2021… it is extraordinary to be living in a time in the United States of America, when conservative and liberal thought leaders see the need to come together and speak out in defense of Democracy… it’s as if, and i don’t think this comparison is remotely overblown, we are living in the ramp up to Nazi Germany…

… it was clear that the defeat of 45 and his departure from the power of the presidency was not going to be the end of the story… this is the conservative white patriarchy’s last best chance to put themselves permanently in control, and they are not going to let it slip by without a Herculean effort to do so…

… the saddest part is the way ordinary people have become manipulated puppets, embracing every fear the radical right is offering… allowing themselves to be turned to hatred of their fellow man and woman…

… federal voting rights legislation is desperately needed at this point… nothing else will matter if it isn’t accomplished… there is no gain in infrastructure, soft or hard, that is worth the loss of Democracy… this is not being taken seriously enough by the Democrats on Capitol Hill… it is an all hands on deck emergency… will they wake up in time?… i grow more afraid by the day…

… i wonder where H and I will go, what we can do, if the country turns to authoritarianism?… we will certainly not be on the long end of that stick… i fear it will leave us impoverished and tossed away in what should be the prime of our old age…

… women continue to be “supporting cast” in DW’s journals… he is all about the men and seems to manage a level of intimacy with total strangers that is surprising given my understanding of the difficult time men have talking to one another… and i wonder if any of them suspect he is gay?… the men are brief encounters as he moves about the world… none yet has become a lover, or at least, that he is willing to tell about in his journals… i imagine him as an effeminate man who aspired to take the place of the ladies the young men he befriended would talk about as men do…

… an extended set of entries describing a rogue man named Monte… this set of entries becomes the basis of a book, we are told… Monte is an incorrigible liar and confidence man… one wonders whether these entries are entirely fact or already the fictional account that will make its way into a book at a later date… DW seems to have regularly penned things into his journal that were rough drafts or sketches for something more ambitious later…

… HCR meter, encouragement to progressives… all about the stock market crash, subsequent Republican attempts to pound the people even further into poverty, the election of FDR and the New Deal, which sparked recovery and American prosperity for multiple decades following, enabling the nation to prevail in the Second WW… the thought that immediately flows through my mind, why are conservatives so bent on pounding the people back to the place of the Great Depression?… why are they so keen on dismantling the social safety net system?… is it all about greed?… about wanting as much money and as many toys as possible?… it doesn’t really make sense to me… but then, i come from a place where i don’t want much more than supports a relatively humble existence… well, we are a little better off than humble existence, but we are solidly middle class and i like it that way… i am not a fan of unfettered capitalism, which is brutal… and, in any case, wealth distorts even that playing field… it is difficult to impossible to hold wealthy people accountable… what passes for justice in this country is what keeps the masses in line… this will get worse if conservatives have their way…

… economics as if people mattered… Buddhist economics… there has to be a better way…

… made a nice vegetarian dinner and even used the Instant Pot… i don’t like the IP that much… it’s a time saving device mostly designed to help one be a last minute cook… still, it did make a lovely dish in perhaps a little less time than cooking with normal pots and pans… chickpeas and tomatoes with Indian type spicing… cumin, turmeric, Cinamon… i served it with basmati rice and a salad of radicchio, fennel and radish…

… no alcohol last night… the usual feeling much better this morning…

… we are steadily making our way through The Haunting of Hill House… we are more than half way through and just now getting to the place where scary stuff happens… so far, i am not very scared… i don’t think we will finish by Halloween, maybe a day or two after…

… i must not forget the chickens today… i have been a little off center since forgetting them last Saturday…

… i have begun the switch to Proton Mail… i have worked out a way to keep Proton Mail free of spam, i hope… my proton email address will only be shared with friends and family… gmail will be used to sign up for things… email from sources i actually want to see will be forwarded to the Proton mail account via my admin@studiombk.com address… the result so far is a very clean email experience in Proton… i am curious if the Proton email address will be harvested from someone using gmail to communicate with me?… it occurs to me, that everyone should continue to have my gmail address, i will just set up filters to forward their email to Proton… now i have to work out profiles to reply with…

… down to the river… an eagle calls out… i look up to see it glide by… heading somewhere rapidly…

… seagulls, corvids, geese, eagles, all on the move this morning…

… the tide is really high today, and past it’s peak… wonder if the recent rain has anything to do with it?…

… eagles very active… lots of calling… three eagles cavorting?, arguing? Courting?…

… lots of water running across the landscape towards the river… two days after the big rain event…

… as i approach Madame Brett Park, the sound of raging rapids…

… this ProPublica article is an informative read on the need for and cost of climate change mitigation (or lack thereof)… sadly, congress is not yet up to the challenge of doing all that is needed, but hopefully, in the next few days, we will see a down payment being made… if our democracy withstands its existential crises, we can hope for more…

… i tried to use the word entropy to describe a situation this morning and realized that i don’t really understand it… i duck, duck go the term and turn up this article in Wikipedia… from there i follow a link to the disambiguation of Entropy… where i find that in the study of social systems, entropy is the natural tendency for any such system to decay… and i think, that seems to be what we are in the midst of right now… the decay of our organizing democratic norms… i start to think i want to do more reading on entropy… at least come to understand it so that i can apply the concept more accurately…

… as i start to post this, a thought passes through my brain that is based on my perusal of Wikipedia articles on the Carnot Heat Engine and the Carnot Cycle, situated within the Wikipedia article on entropy… i read that the Carnot Cycle is a reversible process, that is, instead of heat being used to do work, a heat engine, work can be done to accumulate heat, a heat pump… the Carnot Cycle is reversible and thus, one can have a heat engine or a heat pump… heat engines enable heat energy to be converted to work… heat pumps use work to concentrate heat energy…

… now, in my feeble brain, i combine this idea with the idea of social entropy, which jumps me to social media, and i wonder, do you have something like Carnot Cycles in the operation of a social network?… that is, do social networks pump human emotional heat from one place to another?… is radicalization on social media a kind of social heat pump?… are then, events like the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the result of a social Carnot Cycle in which human anger is concentrated and then released in the form of an angry mob storming the Capitol?… do algorithms act as switches to determine which part of the Carnot Cycle is in operation, heat pump or heat engine?…

… we have learned from Frances Haugen, the FB whistle blower, that human anger was discovered by FB to be a powerful aggregator, much more so than love or empathy… their engineers created algorithms to use shared anger to congregate market segments where they can be sold to with pinpoint accuracy…

… it has always been that sex sells, but it appears that anger and hatred are very effective sales aggregators too… in a strict and unregulated market capitalist society, the system objective is to accumulate as much heat as possible and cause it to do work that can be realized as gain of capital… might it be possible to have a different type of social system where the emphasis is placed on the accumulation of positive human emotions and actions where social and planetary well being is the primary objective?… to create algorithms that consistently pump us in the direction of social well being?… hmmm…

… morning off to a bad start… Chas whines until i get up… it’s almost time anyway… both dogs ready to go… running around the ground floor while i weigh myself and get dressed… weight on a steady upward trend… don’t feel like i have been eating too much, but the trend is the trend… then while doing the morning set up, the dogs prancing all over the place until the side table by the couch is knocked over… not hard to do, it is too tall for the three legged slenderness of its legs, making it wobble at the slightest touch… the crash startles and enrages me, WTF! i scream several times while turning on lights to see what damage has been done and return everything to it’s wobbly higher potential energy place¹… H gets up to ask what’s going on… i explain and apologize for waking her up… i think she was up already anyway… Fiona slinks off to the second floor and back to bed with H… Chas braves my ill mood on the ground floor, then accompanies me upstairs… i let him in to the bedroom and then happily am by myself again, the house at peace…

… HCR meter, Alarm! Alarm!, democracy is under assault… yes it is, and whether congress is going to do anything about it is a serious question… so far, it doesn’t look like it… all kinds of sinister shit going on… contemplating the need to get involved locally… it’s all hands on deck for the 2022 midterm elections… congress must stay in the hands of Dems…

… drank too much last night… feeling the effects this AM… combination of needing to relax in a very worryingly unsavory national climate and just liking the effects of a drink or two at night… during dinner H wonders if we should line up to get our free joint on Friday… a store is giving them out two Fridays a month… i am sure they will be selling when the state works out the appropriate licensing regulations… i thinking that might be a better way to relax… less unpleasant effects the next day?… or would i overdo that too?… i wonder if there is a legal limit to pot and driving?…

… H and i got our booster shots today… Moderna… wish it made me feel like i could drop the mask or be in crowds again, but it doesn’t…

… cloudy, dark, windy… car plastered with pine needles…

… at the Roundhouse i stop on the bridge over Fishkill Creek and thrill to the raging rapids… heavy rain yesterday, heavy rapids today… i like to think of the spot as a cosmic destructive/creative rip in the time/space continuum… one of countless numbers in the cosmos…

… a distant drumming, as if someone were banging on the bottom of a giant plastic bucket…

… siting by the side of Fishkill Creek… banks normally walkable are flooded…

… now sitting on a bench across the street from the falls… this bench is notable for an attractive and friendly young woman who sits here with her dog in the early morning…

… DW appears to be a bit of an aristocrat in attitude if not in actual wealth… he seems to admire the trappings of wealth, refined things, interiors, private pew boxes for the wealthy…

… and then, a passage describing an encounter with a young working class man… he seemed to be attracted to pleasantly muscled with labor and tanned from sun exposure young men… it’s his version of a pinup that he might pleasure himself to… it’s rather contradictory, a bit Lady Chatterly’s lover, LGBTQ+ version…

… John Cowper Powys A Philosophy of Solitude is mentioned… Wikipedia describes this book and two other non-fiction products as better aligned with the self-help books of the modern era… offering advice on the achievement of happiness in an otherwise ordinary and mean existence…

… DW goes on at length about all the “boys” he encounters in the landscape… very few women and when encountered, a more matter of fact and brief assessment… well healed and well connected women are worth his time in description but mostly he has eyes for the men… homosexuality is a clear subtext of his observations of men and boys… so clear that it is frank and honest without being in your face…

… was looking through a selection of photographs from Photo Vogue Festival and this:

A photograph by Kennedi Carter from “10 Years of PhotoVogue”

… immediately reality is distorted and the mind bent… woman or man?… it’s a bit erotic… a bit forbidden delight… hmmm… an image that really explodes the idea that gender is tied to the genetic sex of the body… amazing image for the way it crystalizes the fluidity of gender…

… HCR meter, broken record, except, it’s a really important broken record… conservative forces that are in the minority are trying to seize control of the government… right now, they are on a track to succeed, unless, something is done about voting rights… will Manchin and Sinema come around to altering the filibuster?… no signs yet that they will…

… spent a bunch of time making my computer work better (more rapidly) and fussing with other issues, like my proton mail account which i am trying to make my email for correspondence with people i know… part of my withdrawal from Google… i have made decent progress on that front… oh, and i also installed Monterey, which appears to be not much of a change, except, shortcuts… i will be exploring the usefulness of shortcuts…

… COVID booster shot today… yay!

… the rain gave way to wind last night… no more rain for today, but more tomorrow and into the weekend…

… H woke up when i went to the bathroom and worried that the tree of life would be blown down… i told her there wasn’t enough wind to do that… she said the ground was saturated… i didn’t reply but maintained my position in my thoughts… if it ever did come down it could be a problem… it’s huge and would easily reach our or our neighbor’s house if it fell in either direction…

… i am trying to forward email from my mkriegh@studiombk.com email account to Proton, but so far, it hasn’t worked… it keeps going through gmail… and then i figured it out… i had two studiombk email addresses and had only configured the admin one to forward to Proton… i log into the mkriegh one and discover that lots of stuff goes through it from apple and adobe… so much for not having that email spammed… still, it is better than gmail which is spammed beyond belief…

… the wind blowing outside… a rushing sound…

… DW recounting a reunion at the boarding school he ran away from… the young men he describes seem to be gay, or willing to allow themselves close physical proximity to DW, who is… in an odd way, a partially closeted gay in his own journals… walking up to the subject of attraction to other males, and even sexual experiences with them, without being point blank explicit…

… DW receives news of his father’s death and confesses to little sadness about it… echoes of D’s death and the relief felt… engaging with M easier free of D’s angry, jealous presence…

… as i continue to read DW’s journals i am getting the sensation of Proust with the attention to detail and the amazing memory… i wonder if he really remembered in such fine detail or embellished with details as one might add color to the outlined spaces of a coloring book… that is, the outlines are accurate but the details are imagined and hung on the skeleton of the outlines…

… it is so interesting how he describes enthrallment with the body of a young man, a little older than DW, who walked up to him by the banks of a stream… removing his clothes and going for a swim… not minding DW’s longing(?) gaze passing over his body… no need to bluntly proclaim the obvious… he states it in every action and gesture described… it reminds me of my young manhood just after college… a young black man took an interest in me… he was gay and courting me, dangling his editorship of some design magazine… asking me to dinner and making his desires clear (did i really not know?)… i was not repulsed, even somewhat attracted, but demurred… i had a couple of sexual experiences with boys my age when i was a randy teenager exploring my sexuality… gay men were from time to time drawn to me… i didn’t mind but steadfastly proceeded down the path of heterosexuality where i have been since… sometimes i wonder what it might have been like if i were more adventurous, more willing to break the norms…

… i reach a place in DW’s journals where he is being compared to Proust by a critic… it’s nice to have such a thought confirmed from other sources… gives me confidence in my ability to assess and understand what i am reading…

… heavy rain last night… woke up intermittently to the sounds of splashing water… gutters that are clogged and overflowing?… don’t think it’s our gutters… the houses next door?…

… HCR meter, interesting and disturbing… more and more information coming out about January 06, the administration of 45 and Facebook… a lot of evil afoot… it’s more and more likely that the insurrection was planned… Republican House members are implicated… 45 is implicated… there seems to be a “festering turd” pile of rich conservatives trying to cement power towards an autocracy… HCR points to 1903 as the last time the wealthy made such a significant play for control at the expense of democracy… it was turned back then… there is no guarantee it will be now… even so, with so much coming out, there is plenty for the people to act on and a number of actors intent on doing that… hoping the people prevail again…

… made Moela (or Moelas, as a Portuguese contact spelled it) last night… chicken gizzards… it’s a good way to make them… H is not a fan of gizzards in general but said she liked this dish, as she has in the past… it wasn’t quite spicy enough… omitted crushed red pepper in favor of two fresh poblano peppers instead of the one called for… the long cooking tempered the heat of the poblanos to the point of non existence… should have kept the crushed red pepper… next time… my Portuguese contact has promised to compare my recipe to his mother’s and let me know of differences…

… there will be no photo walk today… rain all day… not really interested in a photo drive as i used to do on such days… will just skip the day in photograph making and focus on processing and other photography practice objectives…

… i over-drank last night… not badly, but enough to feel effects… sigh… it’s a struggle…

… i remember that D and K are coming for dinner on Friday… i remember that there is money owed me… will this be the day i communicate with people such that it will come to me?… i have been oddly resistant to doing that… in one case, i am not ready to start the work again… or at least hesitant about doing so… in the other i am unclear of the price i should ask… anyway… lets make a pact with ourselves and get it done today, shall we?…

… i couldn’t resist… started the download of OS Monterey… several hours of wait and watch i expect…

… wishing there was a way to capture smell the way light can be captured in a photograph… i have a Portuguese chicken gizzard stew on the stove and the aroma is out of this world…

I have been collecting flattened can images for a long time. I am interested in the collision of massed produced near perfection and entropic forces of the cosmos. I am interested in the archeological aspects of what brands wind up in the streets over time. I am interested in the idea of uniqueness as the product of entropic forces.

View the portfolio here.

… a young couple passes with luggage, hustling towards the train station… a delivery truck pulls out in front of a car driving down Main Street, leaving it little time to stop… an emphatic protest honk…

… a mannequin at lucky 31 clothing has changed into a black dress and is sporting, for a change, a sensible handbag…

… a short, stout woman, with gray hair pulled back in a bun, stands outside her building watching a video on her iPad… we say good morning and inquire about each others state of being, which is good by both accounts… i see this woman most mornings…

… the aftermath of a pleasant fall weekend, overflowing garbage bins everywhere…

… rainy day… i confine my walk to Main Street… i sit down on the steps at the falls, accepting the probability of dampening my derrier… releasing my back… as i consider the pain in my back i wonder about exercising to strengthen my stomach muscles…

… as i walk along the downstream side of the bridge near Roundhouse, i remember a chance encounter with M and their spouse P, near this spot… i catch M’s eyes and they are radiant… their smile… their green hair… the warmth of recognition layered with longtime affection… even as they lean into P, holding their hand, love obvious… every encounter with this creature is beguiling… i worry that P has noticed i only have eyes for M…

… a third of the way back along Main Street the sensation something is missing… my umbrella!… left at the falls… i turn around to head back and retrieve…

… a young woman pushing a stroller, expressionless… as we pass i notice there is no child in the stroller or nearby… i have a momentary flash of a child lost and a grief stricken mother pushing an empty stroller around as if waiting for the child to reappear and take a seat… she, suspended between incomprehension of loss and acceptance…

… the umbrella is where i left it… i pick it up and set out on my second attempt to return home…

… a lengthy, informative and interesting essay by Cathy Young in the Bulwark about what cancel culture is and isn’t…

… while accepting that serious cancel culture incidents are, in relation to the size of population, not as common as one would think given the media hype of the most dramatic stories of CC, it is none the less significant in it’s impact on the public discourse, with both conservatives and liberals being illiberal in relation to views that offend them… it’s a complicated subject and hard to draw the line between the truly abhorrent and should not be tolerated and the expression of a differing, even if on some levels, problematic, point of view… i guess i log in as a moderate in this regard… i believe in broad tolerance of expression of differing points of view while realizing that dominant cultural world views, such as the Eurocentric white patriarchal one, are so dominant that they overwhelm other significant and valid world views, subsuming them in ways that diminish them…

… so far, i am not certain of the broader value of DW’s journaling… his descriptive powers and command of the English language are, as advertised, impressive… but he seems arrogant, self indulgent and often petty in his assessments of people around him… i am not sure i see the potential for any profound observations… an observation that dives to the core of what it is to be human in this cosmos… or perhaps he is the profound observation… a complicated human being that seems more honest than many in his journals…

… most who write about him or his work excuse his less attractive qualities because of his accident and the, reputedly, constant pain he suffered… they make him out as a kind of saint to endure such affliction and produce so much so well… i think at best one can excuse him for being young and vain, complicated by his unfortunate physical circumstances and consequent short life…

… i read further and recognize the over abundant passion of a young man responding to the cosmos around him… the lovely description of an oriental lacquer screen in the fading daylight…

… and then, a really lovely entry, from his sick bed, imagining an historic old house as it might have been inhabited more than a century before… observations of the solemn, harsh adults, the contrasting gaiety of children and of servants quarreling and making love… this starts to be less the arrogant, over passionate youth, and more the maturing writer who is beginning to understand restraint and, in any case, is focused on something other than himself for the moment…

… the description of a suicide attempt… the rough draft for a story… compelling… the editor of the book warns in a footnote that the scene is fictional… still, it compels me to think it real and i wonder whether there is some basis in facts as all DW’s work is autobiographical… he writes powerfully in this passage… i begin to be a fan despite his foibles…