… i am reading The Journals of Denton Welch… transcribing a particularly interesting passage into my notes… i look and see that it is 5:30 AM, time to wake H so that we can gather ourselves and go to vote…

… as i am reading, i feel i am reading in the dark… the lamp over the desk is pointed up to the ceiling so there is only reflected light… i turn the lamp around to point down at the desk… now i can see…

… voted… low turnout in this off, off year cycle…

… walking…

… a patriotic mural on the side of the DMV building… something worries me about this… there is no signature from the artist¹²…

… i pass L walking their dog and on their way to vote… we discuss briefly the Republican shenanigans…

… as i walk i consider that the next step in my photo/blogging project will be weekly summaries with Saturday and Sunday devoted to that task…

… i see a sign about the Hudson River Greenway Trail… i look it up and find maps of the entire length…

… i seem to have tumbled down a tech rabbit hole… Ulysses wasn’t syncing properly… so i started the process of moving folders to iCloud syncing as opposed to the external dropbox syncing i had been doing… trying to locate the issue… now it is syncing through dropbox properly, but i have an extended syncing operation going on the iPhone that i have to let finish before backing out of it?… dropbox seems to be preserving things like favorites better… i should learn to be patient when there is a synching problem… it usually sorts itself out…

… while i have been waiting for Ulysses to get synced, i have been collecting entries together around subject material gathered by tag searches… this is so cool!… so easy to pull related material together due to tagging discipline!… will make it easy to find my way to subjects, topics, whatever, should i want to write something more planned and considered…

… what an interesting entry:

_ I seem to have spent a great deal of my childhood in prison — other people’s prisons. The Black Tulip prison, the French Revolution prisons, the Spanish Inquisition prisons. And the horror of those prisons was so real to me that I often look back and vaguely remember straw, the filthy food, the oozing walls and the toads on the floor, as if I were really once in that situation. Whenever I hear about prisons, I seem to imagine that I have experience confinement myself._

… would one engage so strongly in prison fantasy if one were not feeling in a prison themselves?… i wonder what DW’s prison was… certainly it was his physical infirmity in adulthood, but this memory takes place in childhood before the accident that ruined his health… would it be closeted homosexuality?… that would be the major suspect, but without knowing more about his life, i don’t know if there were other prisons to be endured…

… DW describing a visit to a wealthy woman to deliver a painting of her pug… DW seems to be comfortably bourgeois… i think to myself that a painting of a pug could not be breaking any new ground in art… is it pandering to the wealthy for sustenance?… the journals so far leave me with the impression that while DW was open to experiences, and rendered them in often considerable detail in his journals, that there isn’t anything particularly extraordinary about him other than his penchant for prose writing… i will have to read one of his fictional works before i arrive at a firm opinion… in any case, my efforts are no more groundbreaking or notable… not even as notable, because i’ve had little success at being noticed in general… he is going places and doing things that i can only imagine the equivalent of in my time on earth… my movement through this time and space is more mundane… yet i write about it and publish what i write… am i any less arrogant?…

… HCR meter, democracy is on the ropes… pointing to the spreading and increasingly blatant disinformation campaign in progress by the far Right… this morning’s stars are Marco Rubio and Tucker Carlson… Rubio apparently gave a speech that would have been unimaginable just a year or two ago… a speech that indicates he is banking on victory for authoritarianism and wants to be on the right side of it when we get there… another essay in Mother Jones names Fox News and Tucker Carlson in particular, as fascist propagandists… this has got to be beaten back… my belief is that Democrats in congress could make it easier by eliminating the filibuster, at least on two issues… voting rights and the debt ceiling… i too believe that democracy is on the ropes and that we have precious little time to save it…

… a disrupted day yesterday… plumbing problems escalated significantly when sewage began backing into the toilet in the basement and then overflowing… the stench… the mess… the frantic calls to the plumber… the $200 check handed to the plumber for fifteen minutes spent clearing the house trap which had become clogged… the flow of the entire day disrupted… it is remarkable how much i depend on my expected ordered flow of things happening…

… the backing up of the house trap seems an interesting metaphor for what is happening to the plumbing of Democracy…

… i did manage to make some quick revisions on J’s website and their LinkedIn page… their LinkedIn page is a bit of a mess… will have to help them with that…

… at the top of David Corn’s article, this image of Tucker Carlson…

Tucker Carlson at Politicon in Los Angeles on October 20, 2018 Christian Monterrosa/AP

… TC turns my stomach… i remember him on CNN’s Crossfire back in the day… he was an obnoxious twit back then… he’s morphed into something monstrous-to-me now… doesn’t he look monstrous in the photograph?… the point of the choice of image…

… i am toying with getting active in supporting democrats in next year’s election run up… i don’t have much money to give, but i have some time, which i’d really rather not expend that way, but i believe we are reaching a tipping point and need to be on deck in defense of Democracy…

… i was surveying the organization of my journal in Ulysses yesterday… i have this wonderful warm feeling of it being almost there as a cohesive product that could solidly support… something… but what something?… well organized thoughts and notes are the foundation of something bigger, if you want them to be… what is the bigger thing i am moving towards?… the coupling of journaling, thinking, and posting on a blog… something that develops the broad story of a particular human being at a particular stretch of moments in time grappling with the cosmos as it impinges on them… as i write this i am aware that when one has a project like this, puts large amounts of time and energy into it, one starts to desire an audience… one is supposed to desire an audience… the question sits in the shadows, what is my target audience?… my answer has been… i don’t care about my target audience… i want to craft something that is profoundly satisfying to me… this is what i seem to be on the path of now… it feels good… it needs tightening up and refining… it seems to be firing on nearly all cylinders, to use a gas engine phrase that is becoming quaint… can i push it to peak performance soon?…

… a sterling review of my niece’s new restaurant!

… i have signed up to receive emails from Jörg Colberg, one of the photobook reviewers i follow… recently he sent an email talking about The Archive of Public Protest… its a photo site dedicated to the sharing of photographs of the protests in Poland…

The Archive brings together visual traces of social activism, grassroots initiatives opposing not just political decisions but also breaches of democratic norms and human rights. It is a collection of images that constitute a warning against rising right wing populism and discrimination in the broadest sense of the term: xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, and also the climate crisis. In establishing the Archive, its creators wish to prolong the life of their images, which are connected with specific events, and whose existence ends with their publication in the press. The APP gathers together photographs in a single, easily accessible collection, which will remain accessible to researchers, artists, and activists. Additionally, use of the Archive’s resources will be open to all users who express a desire to communicate the values with which its creators identify.¹

… it’s worth checking out here…

… from, Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson…

Today the Washington Post published a long report about the events before, during, and after January 6, compiled by a team of more than 25 reporters and additional staff who reviewed video and court transcripts, followed social media posts, and interviewed more than 230 people. The report lays the blame for January 6 on Trump and warns that we are in a fight for the survival of democracy.¹

… and…

The Washington Post suggests that they made that calculation in the immediate aftermath of January 6 because Trump continued to command his base and they worried about being primaried from the right if they didn’t support Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. And so they acquitted him in his second impeachment trial and supported the “audits” of state election results that had already been proved secure.

But that leaves a circle to be squared.

Winning a primary by staking out turf as a Trump supporter would mean losing in the general election… unless state legislatures fixed elections so that Republicans would win, no matter who the Republican candidate happened to be.²

… the next three years are “all hands on deck”…

… sign up for her newsletter here…

… first day of November… the toboggan run down the hill to Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year has begun…

… yesterday i was feeling a little frustrated that i am not making any progress on my photography work… i have no projects in progress, or so i was thinking, other than cleaning up my archive, processing photographs i haven’t processed, etc… i keep thinking i should be trying to make a book… i should be submitting to calls for entry… i should be planning what my next solo show will be… i should be doing what the world of fine art photography expects me to do… i have been telling myself that the new year will be a year in which i actively return to doing all of these things…

… at the same time, i have been questioning my participation in what Jörg Colberg and others call “photoland”… something doesn’t feel right about it… as Colberg points out, it is a self-contained and incestuous land… photographers, gallerists and the wealthy having a limited conversation of limited value and importance… and that conversation has a limited set of formats in which it can be conducted… and the economics of it is a false economics… a photograph is infinitely reproducible… and yet, artists and gallerists rely on artificially limiting the product to make it valuable and then sell that exclusivity to the well-enough off-to-afford-it… it’s an elitist system… something’s not right…

… for some time i have been frustrated by the artificial limitations of format that photoland places on photographic artists… for a long time i have been working on a project that has been through a number of iterations of title, but in the end is the same project… going for daily walks and photographing what catches my attention… whatever it is… i write about what i see and experience too…

… this project demands a daily display of photographs that are “of the moment”… it needs an extended format of ongoing presentation…

… it finally struck me yesterday that I have been working!… daily… for a long time… and this is what i have been working on… this is the project!…

… the current iteration of the project is this blog, Notes On Attention Paid (NOAP)

… i must continue to refine it… articulate what i am doing… come up with an artists statement… come up with a way to connect it to photoland without allowing photoland to artificially constrain it…

… this will be the work of the new year…

Walking…

… a warm morning with, as M put it, interesting clouds… i would add interesting light too…

… now that there is update capability between Ulysses and M.b, i am daring to post as i go… i started this morning with a picture post when i am only half way through my walk…

… signs that there may not be a farmer’s market this AM… transitioning indoors?… they usually break for a week when they do that… no signs of vendors at either the DMV parking lot or the VFW…

… sitting by the falls, the “dull roar” masking all other sounds…

… very interesting email from Jorg Colberg…

Farmer’s Market…

… stripped bass for dinner, Chas eagerly waiting for fish skin dog treats… radicchio, carots, fennel, broccoli… D and K… S and S… Chas and Fiona’s #1 fan… kids in costumes… rainbow storm trooper, ladybug, Godzilla, Jack Skellington… fish lady dressed as an octopus…

Later in the day…

… preparing the pot roast for the oven… classic old horror movies on the television… waiting to see if there will be trick-or-treaters… and now, Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu… what a great movie!…

… i decided to read all the posts i made last week… it takes a while… i write every day and post most of it… i make photographs every day and post many of those too…

… my overall impression is that i am very pleased with it… it reads well and is interesting, at least to me… does it matter if it’s of interest to anyone else?…

… the main topics were my walks, The Journals of Denton Welch, the need for voting rights legislation, forgetting my chicken tending duties, the Carnot Cycle and how it might apply to the “mechanics” of social media… there is something really interesting about that last thought… something that needs pursuing…

… i am sitting here contemplating the use of Obsidian as the primary journaling and note taking app, cutting and pasting over to Ulysses when i want to publish something… the reason to do this is to make use of Obsidian’s ability to interconnect things and display a map of those connections… this in turn will make it easier to see relationships in the stream and develop them into… what?… more full blown and refined writing about the relationship nodes… a journaling process meant to surface connections and relationships that are easy to follow… i do this in Ulysses through tagging… the question becomes, is it worth the extra steps to cut and paste into Ulysses for publication to Micro.blog… and, is this part of a shift away from the journal to blog direct posting and towards more considered and complete articles or posts?… what would be the value of this?… fewer posts?… more interest?… and there it is, a shift being contemplated partly because i want to see the structure of my meandering and partly because i want to arrive at content production that will be more interesting to others…

… and then i discover how hard it is to insert a link to a web page… it can be done with proper syntax but it is not an intuitive or easy process…

… i really want to find a use for Obsidian, but it just seems unnecessary complication for the thinking, reading and writing that i do and the way that i do it…

… sticking with Ulysses for everything for now…

… halloween… we are ready for the trick or treaters, except we never get very many… we bought good chocolate so we would be willing to eat what is left over… a stash that could last the year depending on how many come to our door tonight…

… no HCR meter this morning… she decided to take the night off… in her place i read a couple of articles in The Bulwark… the first is about standing up to bullies… Fox News and FN personality, Tucker Carlson are the bullies… Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger are viewed as standing up to the bullies… is it doing any good?… the good that needs doing is to ween the too-many-people swallowing Carlson’s bullshit off of the bullshit… really, at some point, the whole concept of opinion news built around personalities needs to be reigned in… news needs to go back to being news with standards of truth and fairness… personality opinion needs to be kept off the news so that it is not mistaken for news… i am sure this is free speech problematic, but there has to be away to reign in the flow of bad information and incendiary personalities…

… [the second](https://www.thebulwark.com/when-jesus-came-to-q/ “Lecaque, Thomas, When ‘Jesus” Came to Q, The Bulwark, October 29, 2021") was about a crazy Qanon conspiracy speech given by the actor who played Christ in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ… a film widely viewed as anti-Semitic as is MG… the degree of crazy in this country, at this moment, is astounding… i am very worried we are on the path to authoritarianism underpinned by this crazy… if it comes to pass, there will be chaos and abundant lives lost…

… a frustrating day yesterday… after having spent the entire day before cleaning the house and making dinner for K and D, i looked forward to Saturday being a me day where i got things done i wanted to do… it didn’t turn out that way… H wants to get a second wire crate so we could leave the dogs in crates and attend, last night, a birthday party… then there is setting it up… then there is laundering the dog beds… when i get down to the laundry room there is lots of water on the floor… drain pipes from the kitchen have sprung a leak… should i fix it myself?, or should i call the plumber… i decide to call the plumber because, the plumbing is a mess and needs to be done properly… shouldn’t cost that much and we will then be good to go into the distant future… but, because the plumbing is a problem we can’t do dishes and thus can’t cook, which means we have to order in for the weekend and the pot roast i bought on Friday needs to go into the freezer until we can cook a more elaborate meal…

… it’s almost November… most of the trees still have leaves and many haven’t begun to change color…

… feeling tired today… i’d like a day off… maybe hang out on the sofa and watch old movies… probably won’t, but that is the thought i am having…

… collecting photographs of dates on buildings and looking up what happened in that year… Wikipedia turns out to be a good source for the what happened…

… a woman jogs by…

Broomberg & Chanarin, Shirley 1, from the series How to Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light, 2012

… hmmm… the above photograph was the lead in to [this article](https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/13666/the-camera-is-not-innocent-a-history-of-the-white-gaze-in-photography?utm_source=Link&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=RSSFeed&utm_term=the-camera-is-not-innocent-a-history-of-the-white-gaze-in-photography “Miller, Daniel-Yaw, “The Camera Is Not Innocent”: A History of the White Gaze in Photography, AnOther Magazine”) about a new book, The Image of Whiteness… the title and lead in image are a bit of misdirection… intentional, maybe clever, but misdirection none-the-less… the book is broadly about how photography and photographers support white hegemony through image making… as the article describes it, it has little to do with the other type of gaze, the (mostly white) male gaze… and yet, we have a lead in image that is reminiscent of pinup girl images of the 40’s and 50’s… i think the subject is interesting… though i am personally more interested in the subject of women in photography (the more conscious reason for pursuing the article further)… in front of the camera, behind the camera, as curators, as critics… and… in general, i admit to being suckered in every time by an image of an attractive-to-me young woman… as i have said, many times, almost all of us are hardwired to have a sexual response to the encounter of possible sexual partners… whether we are enlightened human beings or not depends on how gracefully we can move beyond that first primal instinct to a fuller appreciation of all the dimensions of the human being in front of us…

… maybe this happened months ago and i failed to notice, but i am so excited to see that i can now update already published posts to my blog!… this is major for me… any other Ulysses users notice this gem of an update to the Ulysses-Micro.blog workflow?…

… 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…