AN ANGRY SEA MENACED THE EDGE OF THE FUNKY LITTLE VILLAGE AT OCEAN BEACH TODAY. The pier had to be closed because monstrous waves were crashing over it. I rode my bicycle there thinking I'd get my photo-du-jour of a mad sea. Instead I was attracted to the simple cottages above the pier and found my picture there. Above the violent, noisy sea, the quiet dignity of the little house in the first picture seemed a parable.

HARBOR SEAL MATERNITY WARD: The Children's Pool at La Jolla Cove has become a battleground with wildlife conservationists on one side and on the other are local residents who insist that people be put first in urban natural settings. The little cove was long ago taken over by a colony of harbor seals who wanted a good place to rest first and a calm, safe place to give birth to their pups. February is the birthing season, and there is a respite in the battle for the cove. Maternal love seems to have conquered everybody.

The mother in these photos had given birth to her pup probably early in this morning. The umbilical cord hadn't detached completely by midafternoon. The pup was restless and hungry. Mom was tired, but she was focused and attentive. She had time for nuzzling and hugs. They were both working on the task of getting the little guy to nurse.

THE HYUNDAI building is a prominent architectural presence in Mission Valley. I've often wondered what architects think of it. In the first photograph it is reflected in the window of the building next door. In some of the others, I have taken liberties with it using PhotoShop.

YESTERDAY A WOMAN AND HER GROWN-UP SON on a path by the San Diego River encountered each other on such an emotionally destructive level that I couldn't stop myself from focusing my attention and my lens in their direction. She was coming from one direction, and he was walking from the other. I was standing at the Mission Center trolley stop above the river path. I know they were mother and son because he in his despair and she in her rage wore mother-son faces. I snapped two pictures and caught more with my camera than I actually saw. It was what I heard that stunned me.

The mother screamed, "You fucking idiot, John. Where the f--k have you been, you stupid, f---ing bastard?" She yelled in his face, "We f---ing told him we'd be there at f---ing ten, and now he f---ing won't have waited for us. You know you're f---ing useless." And she hit him. She hit him hard. She seemed to have been aiming for his face; but he was taller, so her blows stuck him hard across the shoulder and chest. He simply moved his face away and didn't raise his arm or hand to stop her. He backed away from her and sat in obvious despair on a cement table. She sat on the bench looking away from him and continued to rant. Then she stormed away.

When I downloaded the images from my camera, I saw the emotion in his hands and in his face; and I remembered the old cliche about a picture being worth a thousand words. It is his despair more than her anger that the camera caught... and the seeming response of the trees and shrubs around them. It was as if all of nature was screaming.

CHOICES... I went riding early this morning before the fog burned away and happened on a patch of poppies. The light was just right. Again I had only the small Olympus camera with me, so I felt frustrated not to have the advantage of a bigger lens. The images I got were a reminder that it's not the camera but the world captured selectively out beyond the lens that makes the picture. CHOOSING one from among two dozen images of poppies was difficult. I finally settled on white because I was stunned by the feeling of brilliant, undeniable purity of those flowers, but that still left me with the satisfying dilemma of choosing from several pictures of white ones. I narrowed it down to three and posted them here. The photo-du-jour is the one above. Click on the pictures to see them bigger.

Coming back to this spot among the pilings underneath Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach is always a bit like returning to an ancient Japanese temple. The only sounds are sea gulls and the splash of water hitting wood. Because I was on my bicycle, I had only the little Olympus camera.

Like the people waiting at the UCSD trolley stop, this image seems to me to be sort of eternal... universal.

WAITING
Robert Frost

Afield at Dusk

What things for dream there are when spectre-like,
Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubble field,
From which the laborers’ voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.

I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,
Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,
Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem
Dimly to have made out my secret place,
Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;
On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp
In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
After an interval, his instrument,
And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be there;
And on the worn book of old-golden song
I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
But on the memory of one absent most,
For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow must have known a boy like Julian Johnson. How else could he have been moved to write about a boy’s will being like the wind’s will?

My own statement about “A boy’s will” is a series of photographs of Julian. He is a whirlwind. When he goes out with me, his mother sends along a bag of small snacks. Like a hummingbird, Julian eats often to have enough energy to stay in motion. Nothing escapes him. He sees every butterfly, hears every airplane and train, confronts every pigeon in his path. Julian is joy.



69. MY LOST YOUTH

 OFTEN I think of the beautiful town  
  That is seated by the sea;  
Often in thought go up and down  
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,  
  And my youth comes back to me.          5
    And a verse of a Lapland song  
    Is haunting my memory still:  
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,  
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."  
  
I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,   10
  And catch, in sudden gleams,  
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,  
And islands that were the Hesperides  
  Of all my boyish dreams.  
    And the burden of that old song,   15
    It murmurs and whispers still:  
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,  
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."  
  
I remember the black wharves and the slips,  
  And the sea-tides tossing free;   20
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,  
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,  
  And the magic of the sea.  
    And the voice of that wayward song  
    Is singing and saying still:   25
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,  
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."  
  
I remember the bulwarks by the shore,  
  And the fort upon the hill;  
The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,   30
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er,  
  And the bugle wild and shrill.  
    And the music of that old song  
    Throbs in my memory still:  
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,   35
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."  
  
I remember the sea-fight far away,  
  How it thundered o'er the tide!  
And the dead captains, as they lay  
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay,   40
    Where they in battle died.  
    And the sound of that mournful song  
    Goes through me with a thrill:  
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,  
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."   45
  
I can see the breezy dome of groves,  
  The shadows of Deering's Woods;  
And the friendships old and the early loves  
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves  
  In quiet neighborhoods.   50
    And the verse of that sweet old song,  
    It flutters and murmurs still:  
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,  
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."  
  
I remember the gleams and glooms that dart   55
  Across the school-boy's brain;  
The song and the silence in the heart,  
That in part are prophecies, and in part  
  Are longings wild and vain.  
    And the voice of that fitful song   60
    Sings on, and is never still:  
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,  
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."  
  
There are things of which I may not speak;  
  There are dreams that cannot die;   65
There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,  
And bring a pallor into the cheek,  
  And a mist before the eye.  
    And the words of that fatal song  
    Come over me like a chill:   70
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,  
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."  
  
Strange to me now are the forms I meet  
  When I visit the dear old town;  
But the native air is pure and sweet,   75
And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street,  
  As they balance up and down,  
    Are singing the beautiful song,  
    Are sighing and whispering still:  
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,   80
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."  
  
And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,  
  And with joy that is almost pain  
My heart goes back to wander there,  
And among the dreams of the days that were,   85
  I find my lost youth again.  
    And the strange and beautiful song,  
    The groves are repeating it still:  
    "A boy's will is the wind's will,  
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Click on the image to see it bigger.AGAVE

What a way to go! At the end of its life, the agave makes a spectacular expression of power and beauty by sending up a great stalk topped by a marvelous collection of blossoms. I don't know if the stalk is considered one blossom or many. Even before the stalk withers, the plant that produces it begins to die. There is a kind of victory in the process. All around the dying cluster of spiky leaves are new plants. They remind me of pups staying close to their mother.

THIS WILD MORNING GLORY IS NO LARGER THAN A QUARTER

On the hill where I live in San Diego and in the valley below I am surrounded by things of no importance, of no apparent consequence. Today as I went walking in my neighborhood, I deliberately looked for little things that probably escape the notice of practically everybody because they are of no use to anybody. Winter rain and cooler weather promote growth of new grass where there are no cows or sheep to eat it, and little flowering plants, flowers too small and insignificant to be picked and brought inside to grace a table.

As I walked down the hill I reminded myself that there would never be another day exactly like today, that I must not give in to the temptation to dismiss it as just another day like many others. One of the great things about photography is that the act of looking through a viewfinder at the world is deliberate and purposeful. To look through a viewfinder is to want to see, and not just to see but to record what is seen.

This journal entry is dedicated to the things of no importance that are all around me. I am reminded as I write of Oscar Wilde’s play, “A Woman of No Importance.” The point of the play is that the woman in the title is, of course, of supreme important. These little flowers and wild grasses cannot be dismissed as unimportant and insignificant. They are at the very least beautiful to those who take the time to look. ON MOST DAYS A BEGGAR SITS AT THE INTERSECTION

THESE ROCKS ARE THE BED OF AN ANCIENT RIVER

TINY PRIMROSES NO BIGGER THAN NICKELS

THIS GRASS HEAD IS ANCESTOR TO GRAIN WE NOW EAT

ANOTHER SMALL PRIMROSE

THESE BERRIES FEED THE BIRDS ON OUR HILL

THE BOTTOM OF A TUMBLEWEED
A WILDFLOWER SMALLER THAN A PENNY

PRIMARY ELECTION
California, January 29

After seven years of enduring presidential incompetence coupled with dangerous ignorance, I am happy almost to the point of giddiness with the field of Democratic Party candidates; and I will be glad to campaign actively for whichever gets the nomination. Practically, it makes most sense to vote for either Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, or John Edwards because one of them will become the next president of the United States. Dennis Kucinich often makes more sense than the other three put together, but Kucinich doesn’t stand a chance of being elected; so I don’t want to waste my vote even in the primary the way many people of conscience wasted their vote in a previous critical election by voting for Ralph Nader.

Until recently I was doggedly hanging onto the idea that Hillary Clinton is the strongest, most promising candidate. I confess to liking John Edwards, probably partly because he speaks in a dialect of English which warms my Arkansas heart. That’s definitely not a good reason for choosing among the three. Lately I have been leaning more and more toward Barack Obama. Since Bush has been president I have spent many months outside the United States. People in other countries wonder if Americans like the idea of a royal family elevated by popular election. They think a weak candidate could have been elected only because he is the son of a man who had been president. While I believe it was the shady shenanigans of operatives like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney that got Bush appointed to the office, it makes me a little uncomfortable to think about one Clinton following an earlier one even if both of them are obviously capable of doing the job, especially when we have very good alternatives. It is important that America signal to the rest of the world that gender and race are not considerations in choosing a president. Either Obama or Clinton can obviously make that important statement to the world. It is important to make that point to those in our own population who cannot shed their own bigotry.

Perhaps I will vote for Obama on Tuesday. I like his freshness combined with intelligence. He wouldn’t have to be a very good orator to be an improvement over the fellow who has been speaking to us for going-on eight years with marbles in his mouth and little in his brain; but Obama isn’t just a little better, he is an inspiring, gifted speaker. America needs his kind of eloquence now to help us get out of a period of national self-doubt and to show the world that we produce leaders who think and speak intelligently. I like the fact that Obama is the one who didn’t vote for the war. (Kucinich didn’t either.) Clinton and Edwards haven’t completely satisfied me with their responses to questions about why they didn’t object strongly to the war in the first place. I believe Obama would appoint judges who may help us recover from our eight year slide toward fundamentalist hell. Bill Clinton had a bright, competent partner when he was president. Hillary Clinton was a good “First Lady.” She worked at the job. Michelle Obama is obviously a person who can make all of us proud. I think I’m on board, but there are still a few days until I cast my vote.

The Propositions

I can’t think of a single reason for supporting Proposition 91. This proposition is an example of a reason for objecting to the referendum system. I’d like to be able to trust the general public to make good decisions on complex issues, but the majority of people who vote won’t take the time to study issues in order to make intelligent decisions. We should elect competent, intelligent, thoughtful people to office in Sacramento, officials who will at least understand the issues before they vote.

After Proposition 91 finally got the needed signatures to get on the ballot, Sacramento had moved to put Propositon 1A on the November 2006 ballot, and that proposition has satisfied the proponents of Proposition 91. They are now urging a NO vote. I agree.

Proposition 92 is another of those examples of weakness of the referendum system. The language of the proposition sounds good, but it ties the hands of legislators. Of course there should be limits to power of legislators, but those limits are assured by a good constitution. I don’t like to tie the votes of people we have elected to office. I’d rather watch carefully what they do and vote them out of office if they begin to do damage to the fabric of government and act against the public good. I will vote NO on Proposition 92.

Proposition 93 is confusing. In the first place, good career politicians can make government stronger and better than amateurs might be able to do the job. On the other hand, I obviously don’t like to keep crooked, weak incumbents in office. We must protest immediately when they make bad decisions and vote them out in the next election cycle. One of the big problems with the move in many states to term limits is that the work of government is often being done by powerful lobbyists who influence both elected officials and especially the career legislative staffers. But we have to live with 1990’s Proposition 140, which presently limits politicians to three two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year terms in the Senate. Under this system legislators can serve a total of fourteen years, but in order to serve that long they must change jobs. Proposition 93 will reduce the total time legislators can stay in office to twelve years, but under the proposal a legislator can stay in the same office for the entire twelve years. I’ll vote yes on Proposition 93.

Propositions 94-97 are wrongheaded. The premise is that the state needs more revenue. How could I possibly feel good about turning to gambling as the source of needed money for essential services in California? In the first place, most of the money fed to slot machines stays with the house; the portion that goes to the state won’t solve the revenue problem. In the second place, it is plainly wrong to look for solutions to the states financial problem by taking further advantage of people of mostly modest means who desperately hope they may solve their financial problems by feeding slot machines. I will vote NO on these propositions.

These portraits are worth seeing up close, so click on the the picture to enlarge it.
This is ChaChing, whom I see on Wednesday mornings at Starbucks in Mission Valley. I have the feeling he was once quite a fop, a dandy, a swell, a dude; but, alas, he has settled down. Nowadays he is usually with Nona and their baby.
Mama Nona
BABY

PHOTOGRAPHERS ON PHOTOGRAPHY
After a day-long workshop on the subject of digital photography, I began to want to know what some of the world's best known photographers have had to say about photography. I found most of the quotes at the following WEB site, and I give credit to the people who did research to find them:
http://www.photoquotes.com/default.aspx?charAlpha=z

"There is no such thing as bad light."
---Ernst Haas

"Wherever there is light, one can photograph."
---Alfred Stiegliz

“Not everybody trusts painting but people believe photographs.”
---Ansel Adams

"I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do -- that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse."
---Diane Arbus

"A good photograph is like a good hound dog, dumb, but eloquent."
---Eugene Atget

"The very secret of life for me...was to maintain in the midst of rushing events an inner tranquillity. I had picked a life that dealt with excitement, tragedy, mass calamities, human triumphs and suffering. To throw my whole self into recording and attempting to understand these things, I needed an inner serenity as a kind of balance."
---Margaret Bourke-White

"Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!"
---Bill Brandt

"A photographer's main instrument is his eyes. Strange as it may seem, many photographers choose to use the eyes of another photographer, past or present, instead of their own. Those photographers are blind"
---Manuel Alvarez Bravo

"Of course, it’s all luck."
---Henri Cartier-Bresson

"Luck is the attentive photographer's best teacher."
---John Szarkowski


“It is a peculiar part of the good photographer's adventure to know where luck is most likely to lie in the stream, to hook it, and to bring it in without unfair play and without too much subduing it.”
---James Agee, writer and photographer

"I'm paid to be lucky and that means making your own luck - getting yourself in the right position, in front of the right subject at the right time, and in the right light."
Michael Yamashita

" Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow."
---Imogen Cunningham

"If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time."
---Robert Doisneau

"Unless a picture shocks, it is nothing."
---Marcel Duchamp

"When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear."
---Alfred Eisenstaedt

"Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long."
---Walker Evans

"A technically perfect photograph can be the world’s most boring picture."
---Andreas Feininger

"Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference."
---Robert Frank

"If it's a likeness, alone, it's not a success. If, through my portraits, you can come to know the subjects more meaningfully, if it synthesizes your feelings toward someone whose work has imprinted itself on your mind--if you see a photograph and say, 'Yes, this is the person,' with a little new insight--that is a beautiful experience."
---Yousuf Karsh

"When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph."
---Annie Leibovitz

"I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before."
---Robert Mapplethorpe

"I think you reveal yourself by what you choose to photograph, but I prefer photographs that tell more about the subject. There's nothing much interesting to tell about me; what's interesting is the person I'm photographing, and that's what I try to show. ... I think each photographer has a point of view and a way of looking at the world... that has to do with your subject matter and how you choose to present it. What's interesting is letting people tell you about themselves in the picture."
---Mary Ellen Mark

"The best part of us is not what we see, it's what we feel. We are what we feel. We are not what we look at . . .. We're not our eyeballs, we're our mind. People believe their eyeballs and they're totally wrong . . .. That's why I consider most photographs extremely boring--just like Muzak, inoffensive, charming, another waterfall, another sunset. This time, colors have been added to protect the innocent. It's just boring. But that whole arena of one's experience--grief, loneliness--how do you photograph lust? I mean, how do you deal with these things? This is what you are, not what you see."
---Duane Michals

"Some people's photography is an art. Not mine. Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine art crap is killing it already."
---Helmut Newton

"The photographer begins to feel big and bloated and so big he can't walk through one of these doors because he gets a good byline; he gets notices all over the world and so forth; but they're really --the important people are the people he photographs. They are what make him."
---Gordon Parks

"Photographing a cake can be art."
---Irving Penn

"A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph."
---Man Ray

"Photography has no dark sides."
---August Sander

"...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude."
---Susan Sontag

"No photographer is as good as the simplest camera."
---Edward Stichen

"Anything more than 500 feet from the car just isn't photogenic."
---Brett Weston

"The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process."
---Edward Weston

"I am always mentally photographing everything as practice."
Minor White

"Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed."
---Garry winogrand