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David Mitchell

Now das whut I'm talkin' 'bout!

 

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mark,

Getting back to you regarding the "movement" in image #13:

Over the years I have learned some tricks that, although rarely used or needed, can add a bit of interest and pizazz to photograph. I guess it falls into the category of "abstract photos". This one at first was to give the feeling of a Star Trek warp speed type of motion. However, it also seemed to fit that line in JD's song, Looking for Space".

It's a fairly easy effect to create. With a camera equipped with a zoom lens mounted on a stable tripod, use the shutter speed mode set it to about 2-3 seconds. Press the shutter release button and smoothly twist the zoom from shorest to longest focal length while the shutter is open. Try it at a few different shutter speeds and you will likely find a good shot in the group.

Janie,

I am also a big fan of wide angle shots for "grandscapes". Often I try to get down low to the ground (hard to get back up these days!) and use the CUWA technique. That means "Close Up, Wide Angle". Then, with a very narrow aperture (f18-22) just about everything from close up to infinity will be in sharp focus. It is good to have a strong "anchor" object in the foreground and something in the mid ground so that the main objects in the distance do not totally appear isolated.

Sheila,

I would love to photograph the Sierra Nevada's! 

The bucket list is long but age is creeping up on me.

Jim

Jim

Mary Ann Nolan (Thomas)

Thanks for sharing your beautiful photos and how you so clevery aligned them with John Denver's lyrics.

I knew the the Rocky Moutain High ones in #s 6,12,19,22, 25 and I think 26.

My husband and  I skiied Denver for many years until our knees gave out at about 55! (about the same time we retired from tennis after 30 years as well).

I have a funny story about meeting John Denver back in the 70"s when some girlfriends and I were visiting  Aspen in the summertime, We went into a store and while we were looking around in walked John Denver and of course we had to say hello etc. He was so nice and we were 4 giddy 20 something year olds falling all over ourselves.

You should do some more pictures with some of his other songs.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mary Ann,

Thanks for your comments and the story about meeting John Denver. That must have been at the height of his success and been a very pleasant and memorable encounter!

You are correct in that images 6, 12 and 19 were from his trademark hit, Rocky Mountain High. Picture #22 was not from that song and there were no pictures #25 and #26 in that gallery. 

Most people probably are unaware that Colorado has two official state songs, Where the Columbines Grow (1915) and Rocky Mountain High (added in 2007).  Several states have more than one state song. West Virginia (attention Mark S.) has four and one of those is Take Me Home, Country Roads.

I also appreciate your suggestion that I do another volume of pictures correlated with so many other songs he wrote. I shall definitly consider doing that!

Have a great week,

Jim

David Mitchell

Marry Ann,

John Denver's mom and dad (Mr. and Mrs. Dutchendorf) lived next door to a couple of our friends when we lived in Denver. We had kids in the same Catholic grade school, and dined together a few times at each other's homes. They told us that they would introduce us to the neigbors sometime, but that never happened. The closest we got was one night when Mr. Dutchedorf came to their door while we were sitting at dinner. He didn't stay but a moment, and did not come inside.    Close - but no cigar.

Those days of John Denver's music were special. Even more special was seeing him live at Red Rocks. He always perforned with a large entourage of backup musicians and vocal group, plus threee big screens with multi media shots of mountain scenery. And he has such a fun way with the crowd. The audiences were all ages - whole families. He always had the audiience in the palm of his hand. It was one of my favorite memories of Denver.

--------------------

While on that subject - Red Rocks - my all-time favorite artist from those days was Gordon Lightfoot ("the Canadian Mumbler"). We saw him once at Red Rocks and he was the opposite of John Denver. He and his 3 backup guitarist walked out on stage carrying 4 folding chairs. No multi media screens - no orchestra - no backup singers. They sat down and he said "Don't wanna keep you out long in a cold stamp" (it was a cool evening). They began to play and hardly ever stopped but for a couple of song introductions.

About a year later, he had a bad experience. The crowds at Red Rocks used to be no resereved seating, just first come first served. So people would go out hours in advance and take their picknick and their drinks, and get seats close to the stage. Some would have been drinking for hours before the show started. On this particular night some people right down in front were quite drunk by showtime and threw some of their food at him. He got a tomato square in the face. If I recall correcly he got up and walked off and promised never to return to Red Rocks. 

David Mitchell

While I'm on a Lightfoot tangent; here is his most famous song, and one of my all-time favorites - recorded long ago. If you see him today he looks like a schrivled old man. He had a serious disease and almost died. But he's stil performng.

I first heard this song in a most unusaul way. I was in the cockpit of a Huey (on my second tour - not in a Loach), heading back to a refueling base in the far western corner of the Delta, which gave us a temporary break from the mission. We would often quickly swicth one of our two "Fox Mikes" (FM radios, used to transmit conversation in the air - but also able to tune in the military radio station in Saigon ("AFVN" = Armed Forces Viet Nam - you remember Robin Willimas and "Good Morning Vietnam"). We switched over and were hearing this song over the air. I had never heard of this guy, but I became an instant fan. 

John Jackson

Dave,  as an an old folkie (or is it fogey?) I was (and still am) a huge fan of Gordon Lightfoot.   Over his long career, bluegrass musician Tony Rice did a great job of dusting off many of Lightfoot’s songs and keeping them alive:      

Mary Ann Nolan (Thomas)

Dave and John,

I just saw a wonderful piece on Kenny Loggins on the CBS Sunday morning show. What an incredible artist he still is. I had forgotten about all his top hits and Grammies over the years and he is still going strong.

David Mitchell

Brings back memories of Loggins and Messina, who I always liked.  Kenny Logins is still out there - he was always the better half I thought. But haven't heard a word of Messsina since they broke up.

* (update: just looked them up on Wiki and I guess they are doing some stuff together again)

Come to think of it, we really did have a wide range of good music to grow up with; Rock, R&B, Folk, Pop, Country, Gospel, Classic, Easy Listening, and all sorts of mixes and  "crossovers".

(Even "disco"- - - well, maybe not)

One of my favorite types was what we called Rockabilly. That included Elvis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly, and my all-time favorites, Phil and Don - the Everly Brothers. (Oops, how could I forget Brenda Lee?)

But in my humble opinion, this was the best "single" ever recorded;

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

I could never pick a favorite song...there are way too many of all genres & from every decade, but this song from The Seekers & some from the 60's Classics always transport me to my teen years & all the many fun memories.

Michael McLeod

We've mentioned music before but it's good to see a full fledged nostagia hootenanny break out.

The immortal Roy Orbison deserves a mention. Sue me, but I consider "Cryin'" his masterpiece rather than "Pretty Woman" or  even "Only the Lonely" his masterpiece. But that may be in part because it's the one I remember enough to get through at a karaoke bar even if I've had a few.

Also hats off to all the really bad dancing we sat through via American Bandstand. I don't mean for the dancers. I mean for us for sitting through it. 

David Mitchell

Those are a couple of great tunes also.

I was planning on putting up something fun that I just experienced the other day, but now this itsn't a very fun day. I expect my Republican leaders in Washington to make a bunch of brave and conciliatory statements, and then proceed to do absolutley nothing about more sensible gun laws. Most of them are too busy preparing to vote down the assistence package to expidite more baby formula.

Brave men.

Michael McLeod

It's unimaginable what damaged people can do. 

Be kind to everyone you see today. 

There are roughly 300 million guns in the United States. That works out to roughly one gun for every human being in this country. 

Japan has less than one gun per 100 people.

Typically, there are fewer than ten gun deaths each year in that country.

Dave: On the baby formula issue, I've been suggesting that our supreme court simply creates legislation that forces women to breast feed.

Problem solved.

Deborah Alexander (Rogers)

What will it take to pass sensible gun laws in this country?  How many more children and innocent people have to die before the cowards in Washington do something?  If some of these politicians were really pro-life they would stop these killings by passing stronger gun laws.  As I heard this morning, thoughts and prayers do not stop bullets.  I am tired of the platitudes.  We need action.

Sheila McCarthy (Gardner)

Dave and Mike: Let's force men to breast feed while we're at it..... (Sarcasm noted)

John Jackson

Everybody knows that guns make us safer. These kids were sitting ducks - if only they had been armed.

As always, The Onion provides prospective:

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

Today 9:00AM

UVALDE, TX—In the hours following a violent rampage in Texas in which a lone attacker killed at least 18 children and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Idaho resident Kathy Miller, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

David Mitchell

I often get the response that the Second Amendment is a "sacred rite" (yes, like the right to life itself) and cannot be changed. Yet we have "changed" the consitutution 27 times. (and we have definately fooled around with the "Right to Life" itself, which, I agreee is a different arguement than this one, but only by philosophical degrees)

So on what basis do I argue that we could alter the 2nd Amendment. I base this mostly on the history of the technology of guns themselves.

Congress passed the 2nd Amendment in 1791 - "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms."

What was their definition of the word, "arms"? At the time of it's passing, this term applied to the guns of those days, which were single-shot, muzzle-loading, ball and powder guns. No one dreamed of the changes to come. Not "clip loaded" repeater rifles, not six-gun revolvers, and certainly not semi-automatic, or even automatic weapons. These "advancements" are so dramatically different that I argue they offer grounds for "updated" laws. The AR-15 used in Texas yesterday and perhaps in Buffalo last week (a close relative to the CAR-15 with which I am quite familiar - our "Observers" carried and used them from the left seat in our Loach cockpits) are expressly designed for combat use - to kill as many humans and as quickly as possible. Some will argue they are for hunting or target shooting. That is a stretch - their designed intent is for killing in combat.

Doesn't it follow reason that these "advancements" alter the situation radically?

Yes, I have other objections - "large clips", waiting periods, mail order sales, mandatory instruction classes, and a much more efficient, nationwide background check system. And non of these seem to violate the "sacred" unchangeable status of the 2nnd Ammendment.  Please tell me whose 2nd Amendment rights ar violated by any of these ideas?

If these amendments are "sacred and unchangable", then how on earth did we grant women and African slaves the right oi vote?

James Hamilton, M. D.

Folks, 

I am certainly no expert on guns. It seems to me that some of you are quite knowledgeable about them and that you believe either more or changing laws is the answer to helping prevent these horrible events like what happened yesterday. Maybe you are right, maybe not. I am not smart enough to know.

What I do think is that there are more deaths, often in groups, from opioids (mostly illegal but some legally obtained) than from guns. There are many laws against smuggling, transporting them across borders, selling, cooking, stealing, possessing and using these substances but, for some reason, the deaths continue to rise. Perhaps you can explain to me how more laws will help this epidemic.

Jim

David Mitchell

I just heard a video fo Ted Cruz' comments yesterday about the shooting and I am moved to add one more comment to my post above;

In my opinion, TED CRUZ IS AN IDIOT !

This brings to mind a comment I shared several years ago and bears repeating here. I was driving a man from the Weston Hotel on Hilton Head to the Savannah airport. These are routine trips, lasting about an hour, and we often get into conversations withour "guests" - but we are not supposed to touch on Religion or Politics. I admit, sometimes I have broken that rule.

This gentlmen in a suit and tie got in at the front door of the hotel and off we went. I often ask where are you headed today (or where are you from). In this case he said, "Texas". Note, It was some years ago, prior to Trumps first primary season. We were just getting to know the long list of political candidates.

I aksed him what he did, and he explained that he ran a political research firm - sort of a "think tank", "under contract to the Texas Republican Party".  

So I bit. I couldn't resist. I asked what he thought of this Ted Cruz guy? 

"Oh, he scares the hell out of us." I was caught completely off guard by that, and pressed the issue. What do you mean?  I asked. 

"Well, we dont think he's fit to gather trash along the highway." 

(so much for a Harvard law degree)

-----------------

Also posted a few years ago,

It so happens we used to have a regular "guest" who commuted often from his home on Hilton Head to his office in NYC - an executive of Blackrock - worlds largest Hedge Fund. This young guy (a Notre Dame grad) managed the entire "energy" sector at Blackrock. He would be on the phone while riding in the back seat - conversing with poeple llike the female Vice President of Argentina, or the finance minister of Quebec. He knew Oil, Gas, Turbo power, Hydro-electric, Solar, Wind - you name it. He funded huge projects all over the world in any of these fields

He mentioned once that he had met Ted Cruz, and gotten about 90 minutes of face to face alone with him. He explained his shcok as he realized this Senator from Texas knew "aboslutely nothing whatsoever about the oil business."

David Mitchell

Jim,

just remember,

"Guns Don't Kill People" but those damn little bullets that they fire sure make a hell of a mess. 

Nasty detail - sorry to be so gross, but;  Someone correct me if I am wrong, but don't guns like those AR -15's have "non-rifled" barrells, causing the bullets to tumble in flight instead of spin, and therefore riping much more lethal holes as they puncture the body. The rounds from "rifled barrells" make a "cleaner" entry, and are often able to be surgially removed in a cleaner way.

Not that it makes a huge difference but I think that is the case.  

James Hamilton, M. D.

David M., 

I did not know that!

So, is your point that, perhaps if a law be enacted that all firearms have rifled barrells it would help prevent these massacres?

Jim

Mary Ann Nolan (Thomas)

Jim opioids are self inflicted, these were innocent children killed because an 18 year old was allowed to walk in to a gun store and buy two AR15 like assault weapons and kill innocent children with no questions asked. 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mary Ann, 

Point well taken.

But I put drug dealers and pushers who start children of various ages on the path to addiction - and often to death - right up there with the shooters. Pills, injectables, inhaleables and bullets all can be killers. The mass gun involved killings are obviously more dramatic and precipitate a larger and louder outcry but all of these deaths are a travesty for which laws have had an incomplete effect.

Jim

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

David Mitchell

Jim,

I should have been clearer with my point about "rifled" barrels.

My intended point was to emphasize that there is but one purpose for the design of the AR-15, (als CAR-15, MAC-10 and others like them - I think also the M-16). They are designed to kill humans - in great numbers and quickly. Yes, other guns can be used to kill, but these guns have one sole purpose in their design, and it is my opinion that they should not be sold to the general pubic - at all !  They are designed for military use and nothing else.

If the gun lobby claims that this is an unjust restriction, then why do they accept the restriction against "fully automatic" guns?  I think that is a very telling question. In other words, why can't the general public buy machine guns? Where does it stop? Can I buy rocket launchers to carry in my car, or a howitzer for my front yard?

While we're on the subject, I have another idea that I am sure will never get anywhere. Why are 18 year-olds allowed to buy guns anyway? Why not require gun owners to be 21? Or, even more complicated - why not require gun buyers between 18 and 21 be required to have a parent or guardian purchase the gun with them and sign a sort of co-ownreship document that holds the adult liable for the actions of the youynger buyer until he is 21?  Beleive me, I know how silly that may sound. My second wife grew up on a farm south of Circleville, and her father gave her a shotgun for her 16th birthday. She learned to hunt pheasant on her own porperty in a strict Catholic family and her father only let her use it when he took her out to hunt with him. Whole different set of circumstances.

Complicated? Hell yes. It will never fly. But think about how many of these shootings are done by young, angry, lonely, white men (boys)? Of course, that gets us into issues about our society, our schools, our moral training (which is absent in most pubic schools), and of course, social media - the latest curse of mankind.

I simply fail to grasp why we can't restrict gun ownership ages or certain types of weapons. Not a 100 solution, but I would argue that partial solutions are worth trying.