Neville Ronan Blog

Yesterday and the day before, I began each morning with a trip to Lake Parker. So there are actually two sets of pics at the end of this blog.

But it was actually at the end of yesterday, that the thought for today’s blog was formed.

And I am fully aware that just the title alone will have dissuaded upwards of half the readers from skipping this particular blog entirely.

You see, I was at the end of yesterday and Amanda reached out to me at the end of my day and asked how my day had been and I replied that it was one, that might be best described as “a cunt of a day”.

As I climbed into bed, without as yet having heard back from her in response, I mused over the word “cunt” and thought how interestingly offensive it is to many Americans and yet how utterly harmless a word, it really is.

You see, “cunt” is generally defined as a vulgar word for vulva or vagina. And depending on where you live and what sex you are, your response to seeing that word expressed here is likely to be wildly different.

In Ireland or England, the word is generally used in a number of ways and is not regarded as very offensive. For example, a man might refer to another man as “he’s a good cunt”. But here in America, many people run a mile from it and it is seen as a grave insult and seriously crude.

Yet Germain Greer, one of the pioneers of the women’s liberation movement in the 60s and 70s published a magazine article called “Lady, love your cunt.” She argued that the word vagina was actually more offensive and I agree with her.

You see, the word vagina is derived from Latin and means “sword sheath” and therefore degrades the purpose of a woman’s genitalia as being nothing more than a receptacle for a man’s weapon. Go on, argue how much better the proper word “vagina” is now!!

But beyond the whole feminism of the word, I find it wildly amusing that America is disgusted by the word cunt, yet is familiarly comfortable with words that are seriously more vulgar and graphic like motherfucker and asshole.

Think about that … an incestuous sex act between a son and his mother is more acceptable than a woman’s vulva. And the specific focus on the anal cavity (rather than the more generic ass itself) is also more palatable than the vulva.

If you aren’t immediately recoiling away from such an acceptance of sexist disparity, then I am afraid, you are a victim of today’s non-sensical mind manipulation.

Cunt wasn’t always seen as a vulgar and unusable word. It has been used in great literature works from Donne, Chaucer, and Shakespeare.

In fact it was introduced into the general English vocabulary in the early 1200’s by the Anglo-Saxons as a general name for the vulva.

But Americans in particular have a habit of taking very ordinary words and corrupting their association to have evil and aggressive meanings that have nothing to do with the words themselves.

Gay used to be a completely innocent word before it was used here as a slur. As was homo, fag, and queer.

Then we generalize words like fanny, that in other countries are seen as wildly vulgar.

Some radical conservatives will spell out s-e-x rather than say it. And switch in darn for damn, or friggin, bullspit, goldarn, and a host of other nonsensical made-up words that frankly, are pathetically stupid.

So, what is the point?

Well, simply put … words are simply words. When we use words to insult, or express even a vulgar emotion, they are still just words.

George Carlin famously listed the seven words you can’t say on TV as being “shit, piss, cunt, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits”.

While some of those have thankfully fallen by the wayside, federal law prohibits “obscene, indecent, and profane content” from being broadcast on TV or radio.

You can show violence and gore, rape and abuse, cruelty of all sorts … but for fuck sake don’t say the word cunt or we will have to lock you up.

… just a thought.

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From the early morning temperature and clear blue skies, I knew it was going to be a perfect fall day in Tampa Bay.

I got to the trails at Circle B a little after seven and so the sun was fully risen by that time. I was only the third of fourth car in the parking lot, so whatever trail I went on, I knew I was likely to have it mostly to myself. So, I chose the trail that would take me down by Lake Hancock and it was a good choice.

The half mile walk to where you first encountered the lake takes you through some wonderful live oak woods and then the trail suddenly bursts out into the open of tall grasses and interesting plants and bushes.

This time of the morning and with the temperature as it was, it was like stepping into a silver wonderland. Everything was glistening in dew and I was startled at the number of webs that were there, each one laden in dew and not likely to catch anything for their creators until the sun dried things off.

When I got to the little pier part way down the lake, there was a guy there ahead of me and he pointed out what was happening some distance out over the water. Eagles were chasing an Osprey and harassing her until she dropped the fish. He said this was the third one he had seen this morning and while I was there, there was even another one after that.

There was a parent eagle teaching his/her offspring the art of bullying and though it took place about 2,000 feet off shore, I was able to get some sort of pics to share with my big lens. Forgive the quality of those ones, I was just happy to get something.

There is a decent overall selection of shots at the end of the blog … hope you get to enjoy them.

I was rooting for the Ospreys of course, but the eagles were too many, too big, and too fast and the poor little guys had no alternatives but to dump the fish and run for their lives.

The more I watched, the more annoyed I became. In all honesty bullying of any sort is a character flaw in my books, so to witness it being taught like this was upsetting.

I have seen Osprey adults teaching their kids to fish on many occasion and it was been a joy to watch. I can’t understand why eagles feel that teaching their offspring to bully rather than catch their own fish, is something worth teaching.

Of course, here in America I am somewhat in a minority. Much of the culture embraces bullying and often glorifies it. It is why we have to have an armed forces budget larger than the next fifteen countries combined, why we sanction governments in countries that we don’t agree with, and why we support similar regimes in regions like the middle east even though we know they are the aggressors.

Our schools are rife with bullying, our colleges employ hazing, and our businesses use the threat of being fired in order to maximize profits for the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

Our sports such as football and hockey are infused with violence and intimidation and our games identify opponents as the enemy so that we can not just beat them, but destroy and annihilate them. Is it any wonder that high school last week in CA thought it was OK to beat their opponents 106-0 in a football game?

We even elected one of the most pathetic imbeciles to be our president a few years ago. And if you listen to his supporters, they love him because he is a bully. They respond fully to the hate and rage that spits from his dotard mind and they feel right to do so.

These are the folk that identify with Biff in the Back to the Future movies. Do they not realize that he ultimately becomes the joke?

At the end of the day, all bullying fails. Bullies only win for a while and ultimately they get called out for what they are. Therefore it becomes a very short-sighted view on going through life.

Eagles, throughout the world, have rarely thrived. In many ways their success is hampered, but it doesn’t help that they teach their kids to bully rather than to fish.

Osprey, on the other hand thrive.

Perhaps it is apt that America adopted the eagle as its national emblem in 1782. We and they seem to share a common path trough life.

Except for the fact that America enacted protection for the eagle as an endangered species, they would probably be gone by now. And would they be missed?

Perhaps by the nationalists and politicians, but to the rest of us, they would likely just fall into storybooks like unicorns and the dodo bird.

I suspect the natural world wouldn’t miss them to any great degree. Their size and nature allows them to bully and in effect become a parasite on the lives of those that work to catch their own fish.

And therein lies my point. Just as the Osprey have to tolerate the eagles, they would not shed a single tear should they ever fall.

Similarly, those peoples that tolerate the bullying we get away with now … they too will not shed a tear when we fall.

Empires rise and fall over the course of time. History books are littered with peoples that thought their empire would live forever.

The true path to life involves coexisting, not bullying. Accepting that others don’t necessarily see things the same way you do. And finding a way to live in harmony through compromise.

… just a thought.

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The day before yesterday’s twilight was a soft start to the day.

It became a day 1 moment in a 3 day project. I decided that if indeed I were to still be alive, I would try to get to Lake Parker at the same time each morning, to see how similiar each day would begin.

On this, the fist day, I arrived before the gate was opened for the little ramp at Lake Parker, so I just drove further down the lake and sat in the darkness.

There was only the occasional passing of a car so most of the time there was just quiet. A few chirps of wakening birds and an occasional splash of nearby fish.

I was lost in thought for a while and didn’t even take any pictures. In truth, there was nothing to take pictures of. Some nearby lights killed the possibility of any long exposure shots, so I just quietly waited until a time I felt the gates at the north end of the lake might open.

When I did drive back to the gate, it was just opening and I drove inside and parked.

I was the only person there … thankfully no boaters or joggers. Just me and whatever creature might be watching me from the dark shadows.

My first coffee was long since gone, so there was nothing else to do but take pictures. As the twilight colors began to come alive on the horizon, I would also occasionally pause and just stare off into the semi-darkness.

Once or twice a lone osprey would fly by and catch my attention, but in general my mind just blended in with the wakening colors.

Hope you like the little set at the end of the blog.

Day 2: There was serious cloud yesterday which made me rethink whether this project was worthwhile doing, but I decided to stick with it as in the end, it would probably prove my point anyway.

The clouds were all-encompassing, but I took a few pics anyway and have them at the end of the blog.

Day 3: This third day, the morning was greeted with seriously dense fog. Driving to the lake, there were moments I couldn’t see more than 50 yards in front of the car. And then, as if to make a liar of me, I arrived at the lake to find not a hint of fog. Go figure!

There was even some good coloring happening on the horizon as the cloud bank failed to totally smother the twilight. A few more pics taken, then. Also at the end of the blog.

So, there you go … same place, same time, three different days.

And that is what got me thinking about this blog today.

It is difficult sometimes to take stock of where we are in life as stresses and issues seem to take control of our days when we least expect it.

Oftentimes we bemoan times that have past inasmuch as we wish we could go back to a simpler time and place. We crave a feeling or a sense of balance that we may have found once and wish for it again.

But like these three mornings, there is no going back. Regardless of the fantasies of time travel, it only moves in one direction and we move with it.

You can do as I just did; head back to the same spot at the same time, but the simple truth is that it won’t be there. Something will have changed. It might be the place. It might be the people. It might be you.

Yet we all occasionally look back to when times were simpler and full of smiles. Or at least that is what we imagine them to be.

The reality is that we only perceived them to be that way. We have banished the bad thoughts and only counted the smiles when someone called out “smile for the camera”.

We create these delusions and then long for them. And when we do that, we decrease the happiness we feel today.

Yesterday may have been key in getting us to where we are today, but the moment you woke up today, yesterday has no real value. It is in the past and has to stay there.

You can’t rewrite what happened or what was said. Nor can you redo what has already been done.

So we live our lives in the present and harbor hopes for the future. But the past is irrelevant.

I don’t mean irrelevant as in we begin with a clean slate. It is very relevant in how we got to where we are. But it has no relevance in how we will get to where we are going. That’s what today is all about.

… just a thought!

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This whole 24/7 sounds well and good until all of a sudden we are presented with a day like today where fate hands us a 25th hour.

It only does this once a year, so when we are all of a sudden gifted this 25th hour, what do we do?

Lots of us sleep in, which effectively let’s the extra time pass us by in exchange for some extra dream-time. Others stay up late the night before, partying into the late hours and confident of not having to miss sleep because of it.

But me, I looked at it last night and decided I needed to do something constructive with it. You see, the cats would just think I had slept it in if all of a sudden I arrived late to feed them or let them out. Their iPhones don’t automatically correct the clock for them and I have failed in past efforts to explain daylight savings time to them.

So, letting their day start at four instead of five was only the humane thing to do.

With a clear sky and a cool morning to play with, I decided to go somewhere I had never been before. There is a rest stop on the St Pete side of the Skyway Bridge and that is where I set off to before five this morning.

Being on the interstate at five on a Sunday morning is a wonderful experience. You get to drive them in the manner they were built for; cruising at speed, with scarcely another sinner on the road to make you even have to change lanes.

So, the drive there took less than an hour and as I pulled in, I was faced with the immediate dilemma of where do I go to shoot. You see, the bridge goes (loosely) west to east across the southern part of Tampa Bay, so without being there before, I had no idea which side of the bridge I would need to be on in order to catch the twilight skies.

I guessed wrong initially and had to get back in the car to cross to the north side and that is where I found a little spot. You aren’t supposed to park there, but I figured that this time on a Sunday morning, any police handing our parking violations might be inclined to cut me a break.

I even put on a yellow reflective vest so that they would see me not too far away from the car and not assumed it was just abandoned. I also figured, in the off chance that I slipped and floated out to sea, the yellow jacket might help them find my floating body, if the sharks hadn’t eaten me first.

I left the car and climbed across some seaweed strewn rocks to get onto a tiny sliver of sand that had been exposed by the retreating tide. It is a bit dodgy, in truth, because I couldn’t see what I was stepping on and memories of the Ballast Point disaster haunted my every step.

But I made it and found myself standing on very wet sand and remnants of the tide still threatening to make it over the protection of my shoes. I had a definite sinking feeling though, each time the water came back in around my feet but thankfully, they stayed dry and I survived the adventure.

I have attached a few pictures at the end of the blog. The Skyway Bridge is that colored object to the right on most of the pics. Hope you enjoy!

As I drove home, I wasn’t particularly pleased with the images I got, but I was very pleased with myself for having found a purpose for this extra hour.

You see, I oftentimes go through life moaning about how I never seem to have enough time in my day for all I need to do. So, it was important for me to recognize when I was presented with such a gift and use it wisely.

And therein sprung the thought for this blog. Most of us are very quick to recognize when something is wrong and if you are like me, you moan about it.

Human beings like to moan and that is ok. It gives us a level of release when we are unhappy or frustrated and when we get sympathy for the moan it helps assuage the negative feeling that we are dealing with.

Some of us like to moan a bit more than others and as long as we don’t over-tax our listeners, that is OK. It is important to show a little restraint though, when life is beating us up a bit too much. Moaning too much will cause us to lose listeners and that becomes a real spiral to disaster … the fewer listeners to our moans, the more we end up moaning to them. So it can rapidly descend to where we have no-one to moan to but ourselves.

But, beyond the listener issue, the most important thing in this regard is to also recognize when the cause of your moan has gone away. When you finally get a good night sleep, or your back pain has eased off, or that sore throat is now better … tell yourself so. Don’t just let this good moment evaporate and not be remembered.

Memories cannot be just the bad moments, or times when things are not so great. Because then when we look back on our time, we only remember the struggles. And that can be very defeating.

Sometimes moments where bad things aren’t present have to be acknowledged as good moments. Yes, it is just a mind game, but our mind is exactly where our sense of happiness springs from.

… just a thought.

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Yesterday morning’s rain didn’t dampen my hopes for getting out with the camera. In fact, I could see from the weather app that we were in for about 36 hours of rain, so I decided to try to use it to my advantage.

When I left home, my intention was to get to downtown Tampa but when I got to the end of my road, I turned left instead of right and went to downtown Lakeland.

Downtown Lakeland is much less urban than Tampa and to me it feels like a very non-descript little town. But it has streets which would be wet in the rain and on a weekday morning it might have a little traffic that I can use. Hell, it even has a railway line crossing the road … my god, what else could I ask for?

No, but seriously, I have shot long exposure within the tall buildings of the Tampa streets so I figured it might make a change to work within the confines of smaller buildings and wider roads.

The only real negative that I experienced was the fact that it was still raining and that meant the lens was going to get wet. And it did, continually. So I spent a lot of my time down there wiping the lens. By the time I was finished, the lens cloth was soaked and offered no further use in drying the lens, so frankly, that is how I decided when the shoot was over.

It was still a fun little adventure though and I was glad I went. The warm-burning street lights cast a lovely amber glow across each shot and the wet streets gave me the kind of light reflections I was hoping for.

I wandered a block or two east from where I parked and came across a fountain that gave a lovely misty effect when shot at a four second exposure and there were come cool light streaks happening in some of the surrounding trees that added an unusual effect in the darkness.

I hope you enjoy. My favorite (by far) is the very last shot. I set up beside a bus and a pickup truck that were waiting at a red light and when the light turned green, I clicked the shutter and let it expose again for about four seconds. I love the end effect.

My thought for today’s blog didn’t materialize until I got home though. You see, I had deliberately left the door to the office ajar so that the cats were neither locked in or out in the rain while I was gone. I know I took a gamble with potential pilferers, but I decided their comfort was more important to me than anything in there that could have been stolen.

I also imagined that it might let any of the wild-life creatures in, should they want to eat from the cat food dishes inside and sure enough, when I got back, there was a lovely little possum munching happily away.

The cats didn’t mind. There were two or three around him and they all seem to get along. I’ve noticed the same about the raccoons that come by too. They and the cats seem totally comfortable that they share a space without incident.

When the possum saw me, he immediately left though. Apparently I don’t have the furry charm of a cat. And that is what got me thinking.

He obviously decided “foe” in the friend or foe question and with our difference in sizes, he made what he felt was the best decision for his well-being, and left.

It upset me (on a tiny level) as I try hard to present myself as a friend to all creatures … particularly the wild ones. My Dr. Doolittle impression obviously fails as even though I try talking to all of them, it rarely reassures. But I keep trying anyway.

Over time, I have made a little bit of progress with some possums, raccoons, and birds, but nothing that will line me up for the main role in the next remake of that movie. But even a moderate amount of progress feels good on my end and hopefully reassures them on their end that this strange old man means no harm.

This friend or foe decision for creatures is very much a life-level decision and so I completely understand their reluctance to give me a benefit of the doubt.

But we humans also make many friend or foe decisions that have much less personal danger involved and that is the road my thoughts began to take.

You see, we continually try to determine or characterize things as good or bad, black or white, right or wrong, when 99% of everything we encounter is not an “either or” situation.

You would think by now, we would understand that everything in our lives is merely a shade of grey and not absolute in any direction. The notion of pure good or pure evil is a religious concept that has spilled over into how we view so much of what happens around us. The battle of god vs devil is a fantasy story that shapes our mind into thinking that anything that contradicts our notion of a god must therefore be something evil.

And we carry that characterization into everything we encounter.

When armies go to war, everyone believes they have god on their side, so therefore the opposition must be evil. This characterization allows us to hate …. the evil nazis, the evil confederacy, the evil brits, the evil gooks … whoever loses was the evil one.

As Hitler once said “history is written by the victors” and in so writing it, we assume that the good guys always win. But there are no good guys. There are just guys. Guys with a different take on life than the guys they are fighting against.

Generations of Hollywood goers have been treated to endless movies that repeat this same formula … the “bad guy” always loses in the end. And even when a good guy loses or dies, they painfully seek to express some character flaw in the guy, so that we don’t bemoan his death too much.

When these characterizations only exist in the extremes of conflict and wars, that is bad enough. But I have noticed in recent evolution of culture wars, the same characterizations. Evil democrats steal our elections. Evil doctors abort innocent little babies. Evil government is trying to take our guns away.

Wherever you stand on any issue, the other side is nearly always characterized as evil any more.

When we characterize in this manner, it allows us to hate and nothing mobilizes the masses more than hate.

In my opinion, hate is the most powerful feeling on the planet. It can drive us forward more than any other emotion. Love, on the other hand is a softer emotion. It drives us a certain distance but almost never to an extreme.

Harnessing hate has been a practice that certain groups have cultivated over the years and by confronting it head on, we will always lose. You can’t beat someone out of hating, but you can educate them.

You educate them on understanding.

And in understanding others with different viewpoints and motivations, they will have to discard their own feelings of being absolutely right about anything. Which means the god concept has to stop. Absolute good and absolute truth only exist in fairy tales.

Real life requires understanding and acceptance.

… just a thought.

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Yesterday was one of those days that just fried my brain and by around 4 in the afternoon, I was exhausted.

At that stage, I faced the prospect of quitting work and heading up to where the sofa would happily give rest to my body until it was time to go to bed. I had done this earlier in the week after the Miami trip and the grueling day Monday where I just couldn’t catch up with all that needed to be done.

So, looking at a third day of just collapsing until bed time, really didn’t have much appeal. I needed a different end to the day or else I would begin to question what I was doing with the twilight years of my life.

I grabbed the camera and with enough daylight to cover one of the trails there, I headed off to Circle B and took the trail that circled back onto Lake Hancock.

I can’t remember the last time I was on that route in an evening. It is my favorite path for sunrise and watching the creatures gearing up for a new day and catching their breakfast.

So by this time of the day, the sun was long gone from the lake and my expectations of getting any noteworthy shots was quite low. But it presented a walk that could be done in the time left before sunset and it also met my prime objective, being to fill my lungs with fresh air away from a sofa.

Herons were out in force but the majority of all creatures seemed to be settling down for the night. A large number of birds seemed to have found their place to roost for the night and presented little real opportunity to be shot in an engaging way. Thankfully, there were a few stragglers that gave some purpose to the heavy lens I was carrying and I have a selection of shots here at the end of the blog of herons, butterflies, turtles, and a happy little gator who I just couldn’t get to face the camera for me.

As I finished the part of the trail that ran along the side of the lake and did the last half mile back to where I had parked, I spotted a couple of Anhingas that had bedded down for the night on the branches of a big old tree that stretched its limbs out over the lake. I just stopped for a moment and looked at them and I thought about how sheltered and safe we humans are in not having to worry about being part of the food chain.

There is a certain degree of comfort we get when we close our eyes and pull up the blanket each night, that the vast majority of creatures in the wild never get.

Yes, there is the vague possibility that we might die in our sleep, but more likely than not the odds are in our favor that we will open our eyes again in the morning and another day will begin.

The chances of being eaten while we are sleeping, or falling off a branch into an alligator’s mouth below, are pretty low in most houses in suburbia.

And it got me thinking while I took the drive home, how we go through life taking things for granted that most of the planet wishes they could.

We take people in our lives for granted until they are gone …. that’s the big one that is obvious to most of us immediately. As soon as we lose someone, that reality slaps us in the face.

But there are far more things that we just assume will be always be there when we need them. We assume we will always have enough food and even choices in food. Much of the planet goes hungry.

And when we have a roof over our head, a job, money, we just take for granted that these will always be there too.

Health is something that almost everyone takes for granted until one day it is gone. Health worries are mainly the domain of old folk.

In each of these instances, there is someone around to wag their finger at us and warn us against the follies of taking any of these for granted. They can point to real life instances of loss and we all go “ooh, how awful.” We can empathize with others that have already experienced such losses. And in the empathy, we are reminded not to take such things for granted.

But what really struck me as I drove home was how almost everyone takes the planet for granted. And there is no one around who has lost it to where we can empathize. So, the argument relies on us being able to listen with intelligence to an argument that talks about global warming, greenhouse gasses, reliance on depleting fossil fuels, and so on.

But therein lies the problem!

Understanding all the other losses that were taken for granted, requires no intelligence. Even the biggest dumbass on the planet can empathize with losing a parent or a child, or a job, or a home. No intelligence is needed … there are so many examples around, you would have to be a sociopath not to be able to identify with such losses.

But it takes some degree of effort to understand global warming. You have to have a slight modicum of intelligence and a willingness to put some effort into understanding the fine balance of ecosystems that keeps our planet as a suitable host for life.

Here in America this rules out 74,222,958 adults who think it is all a hoax because the dotard on fox news once told them so. Not to mention the idiots cutting down the rainforests in south America, or the huge coal burners in Asia that think net-zero carbon is for flaming liberals to worry about.

Optimists keep thinking the young generations in schools right now will save the planet …. look at all the information being give to them! They will fix everything that us old folks turn a blind eye to.

Truth is, they have been hanging hopes on the young generations for decades. But then they too become old and greedy and self-involved and devolve into new conservatives that rank making money as more important than saving the planet.

Saving this planet requires the intelligence to understand what is happening and the will to make changes that can alter the outcome.

Without both, all that happens is those flaming liberals keep making noise about it and conservatives just keep tuning into fox news.

… just a thought.

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There is just the one pic in this blog but it is a beauty. Or actually, should I say it is OF Beauty.

You see, Beauty is the smallest of the litter that Daisy had in the middle of last year. Three were identical, one was jet black, and this little lady had an amazing coat that was heavy on the black and light on the tabby. Yet her face was totally tabby.

I found the five of them under the rider mower outside and mommy Daisy being feral, figured it was a good place to hide her newborns of just an hour or two.

I had never been around newborns before and really had no idea what to do. I just knew that I couldn’t leave them exposed like that to whatever fate might have in store for them. So, I grabbed a little box and one by one lifted the kittens into it, under the very protective watch of Daisy.

I moved them all into the bathroom just off the studio and made it unavailable for the next six to eight weeks as it was now the new nursery.

Daisy proved to be an amazing mom and even though she was feral, she trained these little guys for their new indoor (and ultimately indoor/outdoor) life in a way that was magical to watch. Her motherly instinct were amazing and though I had nothing to compare her to, I just knew she was proving to be a superb mom.

When they were old enough, she began to take them all outside and my open-door policy on the office here, meant that soon they were all coming and going as they pleased. Yes, there was always the risk that one day they might leave for good, but they always had a bed here and they knew it. So, thankfully they would return each night for dinner and bed and then each morning have breakfast and then back outside to exploring as they all saw fit.

Of the five of them, Mercury left and never came back and that hurt. But I hope that she found happiness somewhere. I choose to believe that.

I think it was around six months, disaster struck. There had been some kind of a fight and within a day or so, Beauty’s right eye was seriously red and swollen and she was in bad trouble.

I whisked her off to the vet and that’s when the vet gave the bad news that unfortunately the best thing to do was to remove the eye. There was a bad scratch and a severe infection and they gave little or no chance that things wouldn’t just continue to get worse regardless of what we could do.

But, I didn’t have it in me to allow them to take her eye. I couldn’t condemn her to a life with just one eye despite all their ominous warnings.

I was on very thin ice from a knowledge point of view. I had no real experience in dealing with anything like this in the past. But I just couldn’t give up on her like that.

So, Morgan and I kept her in our bathroom for over three weeks, and three times a day we subjected the poor little soul to different syringes of medicine and applications of antibiotic ointment in her eye.

We would have to wrap her up in a swaddling blanket and then I held her while Morgan did the ointment. I was strong enough to do the syringes of medicine, but holding her still was all I was able to do when it came to the ointment. Thankfully Morgan was more resilient than me and she handled the tough part.

The poor child was bone weary from being kept isolated in the bathroom for such a long time and yet she never once got nasty on us. She put up with it all and proved that you don’t have to be the biggest and strongest in order to be a super trooper.

She toughed it out and in the end, she won.

Her eye was saved and her eyesight unaffected.

Since then we have kept her indoors with the three indoor guys and though the smallest, she rules the roost with her endless personality and sense of mischief.

She will climb up the door casing of any door and perch on the narrowest of edges atop the door. Each time I leave a ladder unattended, she climbs up to the top to see where it might lead her.

There is no obstacle that she cannot overcome, much as she overcame one of the biggest a little creature could ever face.

And as I wandered past the sofa an hour ago, I saw her curled up and happy in my spot … making it her own. That’s when I took this pic.

It all makes me think back to the dark days when the professional’s advice was to just take the eye and be done with it. “Cats fare quite well with just one” she said.

So, the word expediency springs to mind. It’s definition is: the quality of being convenient and practical despite possibly being improper or immoral; convenience.

I am not normally accused of being proper or moral, but apparently in this instance, I made the right choice.

… just a thought!

It was a dark cloudy start to this Halloween morning. It had rained overnight and although it had ushered in a cold front, it did nothing to dispel the clouds.

I could have stayed home but I was determined to shoot something. So I thought of the old Tampa graveyard that is downtown. It was the bay area’s first official graveyard.

I knew it wouldn’t be open but decided that maybe a shot of the entrance might help give my images a Halloween flavor. And I wasn’t wrong.

I continued from that shot into the Cass Ave area where the old bridge makes way for any river traffic in its almost perpetually “up” mode. CSX had security cameras allover it, so I can’t be too surprised later if there is a knock on my door later with a ticket for trespassing, but I couldn’t resist.

I walked the length of rail that goes out over the Hillsborough river … another step and I would have been in the river. The huge rusty frame and the warm lighting that comes across from the other side, makes it very appealing to the wide lens on my camera. And the views of downtown from halfway across the river are also worth taking a shot of.

Given the day that was in it, the heavy clouds and lack of sunrise provided exactly the mood I was looking for.

There are a few images at the end of the blog. Hope you enjoy.

Driving home, my mind went back onto the graveyard and while the history of the place doesn’t compare to older cemeteries in Ireland and such, it reeks with people who were once some of the most important people in the region.

It has the city’s first mayor, a governor, and many renowned judges and lawyers. There is a grave of someone who was murdered, right next to the man who was hanged for it.

So, the thought that occurred to me is how the passage of time steals any fame or notoriety from almost everyone. I am pretty sure that in their time, most of these people were household names. Yet I can’t imagine that anyone reading this could tell me a single name of anyone buried here without having to look it up.

Which only serves to remind us of how foolish the pursuit of fame is, in the grand scheme of things.

So look around you now at the people that hog the headlines today and take it as a given that three generations from now, no one will even know they existed.

I mean there are some names that are historical figures that will be taught in the history books. Some might be written about for their accomplishments and others for their infamy, but while their action may be noted, at the end of the day the person gets totally lost in time.

Julius Caesar, probably the most remembered person in all of history … what can you tell me about the kind of person he was? Who did he love? Who loved him? What did he enjoy doing? What did he want to be when he grew up? Where did he get his first kiss? What kind of dreams did he have?

All of the stuff that makes us who we are today dies with us. Our children might be able to recall a small percentage of it, but by the time our past is two generations gone, so too are we.

So the most important things we can do in life, have to do with the present … the lives we touch, the loves we share. Are the people around us better off for having spent part of their lives with us?

If the answer is “yes” then our life was worthwhile. If “no” then, rich or poor, we become simply a carved name in an old stone, that fades to obscurity with each passing year.

… just a thought!

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It was just after two yesterday afternoon and I had literally just put out the food for the raccoons, birds, and possums.

I had walked away to get a dish of water for them and when I came back with it, Ricky was already there, digging into one of the dishes. She backed off as I put the water down but then swiftly returned as I got a few yards away.

Up until a month or two ago, I had been putting the food out around four or five, but Ricky’s early arrivals were giving me reason to do so a bit earlier.

She is the early adventurer and in my opinion is a real reason to organize things early. I hate the thought that any of these wild little creatures would come to one of the food stations only to find no food.

My intent is to give any of these little guys a safe place to come for “guaranteed” food. I imagine that life in the wild is difficult, so anything I can do the mitigate the difficulties for any of these creatures, reinforces my purpose.

I managed to take a bunch of shots with my big lens, which allowed me to be a good distance away from her and still bring the view close. While I absolutely love shooting these guys, I hate to feel that I am imposing on them and making them nervous.

The lens does a good job and I have put a whole bunch of them here at the end of the blog. Hope you enjoy!

As I went back into the house, I felt proud not just of being able to get the shots, but having the food out in time for the early arrival. And Ricky being hungry that early, gave me the affirmation i needed to understand that I am doing the right thing.

As I went through the images on the PC , I began to muse over the whole concept of affirmation and why in moderation, it is a very positive influence over our lives.

There are many times where the results of our actions are invisible to us and for years now I have been putting bowls outside for wayward strangers. For ages, their arrival was always in the dark, so the only real feedback that I got was picking up the licked-clean bowls each morning after.

There was that one moment a couple of years ago, when one actually left a present for me – a shiny bauble that they carried to the site of my bowls and rested it on the edge of a bowl. I definitely understood that to be a thank you and it very much made me feel good about my efforts.

Receiving positive feedback can be a real motivator and most parents instill this behavior in their parenting in order to encourage their children to continue the good they are doing. Of course some parents never tell little Johnny he is doing good and oftentimes little Johnny becomes a low-key under-achiever because of it. Then there are other parents that lavish false affirmation on their kids no matter how pathetic their performance is and those kids grow up to be entitled adults that think life owes them something.

There is a fine balance and when we lose track of it, we end up being those losers that drive around with stickers on the back of our car telling their world that little Bradley was named student of the week for having perfect attendance.

The schools that hand out these stickers are also the kind of bad influences that give every child in the race a medal for participation.

Well done Frankie, you may have finished seventeenth in the race but hey you managed to make it into school every day this week. You, my son, are a winner!

When balanced properly and genuinely recognizing something that a child has done, affirmation can be all a child needs in repeating or even exceeding an achievement.

The same is true for adults but the world we live in doesn’t hand out gold stars when we do something right. Most parenting falls by the wayside in our adult years and work, which houses our new set of familial bonds rarely contributes affirmation on a sincere level. Work will very quickly let you know when you have done something wrong, but unless you work in an environment that I have yet to see, rarely do they give you a sticker for your car for your perfect attendance this past week.

So, we need to look outside of work and home for most affirmations and oftentimes this affirmation will come like I describe here with the raccoons.

But most affirmation needs to come from within yourself.

Knowing that you have done something positive, knowing that you have given it your best, knowing that you have positively affected a situation with another person or creature … these are the kinds of things you must recognize as you put your head on the pillow and call an end to the day.

In so doing, we become that voice that says “well done, Johnny. Keep it up and maybe one day you will get a sticker too.”

And isn’t that all we really need as we close our eyes on life for the last time?

A sticker on our life that reads more than we were here every day and participated. I aim for one that says “He wasn’t perfect, but he did his best.”

… just a thought!

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It never ceases to amaze me how much the camera can see while I can’t.

It was about 45 minutes before sunrise and that little corner of Lake Parker is as dark as anywhere, which is why I repeatedly choose it.

You see, they have added light poles in certain places close to my favorite haunts along the shoreline and in so doing, they have completely destroyed early morning photography.

So, I am limited to a single spot down by the place where the boats launch. If they get around to adding a light there, I will have to give up lake parker entirely.

The only light was a 1/8th moon overhead behind some clouds and it did its best to light up the night sky. But to my eyes, the only thing above that I could see was a collection of stars and a completely black sky.

So, I pointed the camera skywards and as you’ll see in the first shot, it looks like I was shooting in daylight.

I hung out at the pier for a while and was joined by a lone guy on a tricycle. I had seen him once before when he was with his significant other who was hooping, but this time he was alone.

He emerged from the darkness and caught me a little by surprise. He set about sorting out his fishing tackle and began to fish, while I moved around and took a few pics with him included.

I made a little small talk but apparently I talked too much because he tuned me out and didn’t even answer the last few things I said. So, I figured it was time to shut up and leave, which I did. By that stage, it was apparent that the clouds were having a party on the horizon and were going nowhere. They completely smothered the sun and not even a hint of sunrise made it into the morning sky.

As I drove home, I could see the sky was brightening. But that was it.

Anyway I have a small few pics worth sharing at the end of the blog. Enjoy!

As I drove home, I was thinking about how this guy arrived alone and chose to stay alone, as the new day dawned. He wasn’t being rude to me. He just stuck with his choice of being alone and I can appreciate that.

Humans are such a social creature that we spend so much of our time in the presence of others. Family, people at work, fellow-inmates, whoever.

I am sure the percentage of alone-time varies to a certain degree from person to person and from one time in our lives to another. But, in general, I suspect that other than sleeping, the average person spends over 90% of our wake time in the company of others.

Often time we spend this with people we love or like. But sometimes we spend it in the company of people we can barely tolerate. Sometimes we spend it in an effort we enjoy and other times in an effort that we are obliged to do.

Sometimes the company is direct and they are physically beside us, other times we are on a phone or online or some other way connected.

So most of our life is spent pushing any feeling of solitude into our bed-time. Maybe even only when we close our eyes and go to sleep.

But what I have discovered in recent years is that we humans do our most creative and functional thinking when we are alone. When we are in the company of others, we do what I call communal thinking… where our thoughts are somewhat fashioned or affected by those around us. We might be using approval or disdain to help hone our thoughts. But however the thought ends up, it isn’t just ours.

Solitude is an important condition for thinkers and for creative people. It allows us to delve deeper into our own mind and pull together some thoughts or analysis that be quite life-affecting.

For those of us who believe in the one life to live approach, solitude is therefore even more important as it means that our life choices become somewhat fashioned more by our own thoughts and plans than others.

Some people are skilled at meditation and find their solitude there. Through breathing and relaxation techniques they can find a mental escape that helps create a feeling of being removed from their current environment.

And while I am not saying that is a bad thing, it doesn’t accomplish the real benefits of being truly alone for a while. Alone to the point where you can gain clarity of thought and focus of wish.

We need to know where we want to go in life and if we don’t give ourselves the chance to decide that in a clear and focused manner, then we run the danger of ending up where someone else wants us to be and not where we would have chosen ourselves.

… just a thought.

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