Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Super Blue Moon Night

There was a super blue moon tonight. It's the second full moon in a month (hence the blue moon) and it's super because it's about 20,000 miles closer to the earth than normal. There won't be another one for 14 years and who knows if I'll be around to see that one? So, we drove out west to Dick Young Forest Preserve to watch it rise and try and get some pictures. None of my moon pictures turned out, but I did get one of a tree that looked pretty cool. Even though my pictures flopped, it was a gorgeous night and it was worth it just to sit there among the crickets and frogs to watch the moonrise.



Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Geneva Car Show

 On Sunday I attended Geneva's Concours d'Elegance car show. (Stupid name in my humble opinion, but a pretty great car show) The weather was perfect and even though I got there a half hour before it officially opened, there was already a big crowd.


There were a lot of really expensive cars in the show: Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bentley, Rolls, but I tend to gravitate to the American cars and quirky little sports cars. 































Saturday, August 19, 2023

Saturday Pictures: August 19, 2023

 It was a beautiful morning here in the Fox Valley are of Illinois. It's going to get really hot later in the week, but today was in the 60s and breezy -- perfect weather as far as I'm concerned.

Looking west from the Geneva Metra station

Metra commuter to Chicago. There's a large group of people at the station because of the Air & Water show downtown today.

This and the rest of the pictures are of Metra's F59PHI locomotive.





Saturday, August 12, 2023

Saturday Morning Clouds


I thought the clouds looked interesting this morning. Lately it's been cloudless or a dull uniform gray. 

Summer is ending, at least for the kids. Around here they start school next week. Some people say summer goes so fast, but I think all time goes fast. I wish I could figure out how to slow it down! 

 

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Scammers are Preying on Writers!

I've been writing and talking about writing scams for years. Here are more heartbreaking stories from an article in the most recent copy of Poets and Writers. One guy lost almost $800,000! Please, if you are contacted out of the blue by someone who claims to be an agent or publisher with an offer that is too good to be true, be skeptical. As soon as they ask you for money, hang up, delete their email, just cease contact! 

Read the article:

https://www.pw.org/content/scams_bait_selfpublished_authors

Friday, July 28, 2023

Last Saturday Pictures

 I head out Saturday mornings to a coffee shop here in town. I usually bring my camera just in case I run across something interesting. 

This is one of my favorite views. It's looking northwest from a park near my home. The cornfield belongs to Mooseheart. I like the spacing of the five trees.

The same view in December of 2022.

Engstrom park. The five trees are to my left. I like the shadows and the dappled sunlight early in the morning.

The farmers market in Batavia is pretty busy. These people are crossing what I call the "Peace Bridge" from the west. Still no good looking tomatoes today though -- too dry early in the summer?

The Peace Bridge (probably not its official name) from the Wilson Street bridge over the Fox River.


Sunday, July 16, 2023

Fake News / Lying Press: Parallels


Years ago I attended the local March for Science in 2017. It was a lovely day and I had a great time. What I didn't get was an opportunity for further involvement. At the end of the march we ended up in a beautiful park. A guy tried to speak, but there was no stage, no sound equipment. There was no one there collecting email addresses or asking anyone if they wanted to get more involved than a nice walk on a nice day. I'm convinced that if a right-wing organization had planned this it would have been very different. Money would have been raised; email addresses would have been collected to further spread propaganda.

You really must give the right credit. They are far better organized than the left. They play the long game and have recently scored some wins via Supreme Court decisions. But the right is not done. One of their tactics that they continually hammer away at is "fake news". The campaign to sow distrust in the press is part of the fascist playbook.

The Nazis used it quite successfully too. Starting in the early 1930s they consistently referred to the "lying press" in their propaganda. Over the course of time the populace began to believe the government version of events over what the press reported. In the summer of 1939, before the Nazis invaded Poland, they stopped referring to the German press as the "lying press", only using that for the allied press: primarily Britain, France, and the United States. Why? Because by then they had "synchronized" (their word) the press. All German press reflected the government explanation of events, so of course they were now to be trusted.

The right still talks about fake news, over and over and over. We don't have a synchronized press yet, and hopefully we never will. But don't count out the possibility. If you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it. Joseph Goebbels said that - and it turned out he was right!