Monthly Archives: February 2015

Far more Americans are killed each year by the shooters in our midst like Craig Stephen Hicks than have ever been killed by all the jihadist terrorist outfits that have ever stalked this earth. That’s the price, or so the rhetoric goes, of our wild freedom. But maybe to understand the Chapel Hill murders better we need to imagine how it would be playing out if it were the other way around—if some gun-toting Muslim, with a habit of posting hate messages about secular humanists, took it upon himself to execute a defenseless family of them in their home.

via The Chapel Hill Massacre Blues – The New Yorker.

In Without Sanctuary, historian Leon Litwack writes that between 1882 and 1968 an estimated 4,742 Blacks met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs. The impact this campaign of terror had on black families is impossible to explain so many years later. That number contrasts with the 1,401 prisoners who have been executed legally in the United States since 1976. In modern terms, that number represents more than those killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom and more than twice the number of American casualties in Operation Enduring Freedom — the Afghanistan conflict.

Turning to home, this number also represents 1,700 more than who were killed on 9/11.

via A Black Mississippi Judge’s Breathtaking Speech To Three White Murderers : Code Switch : NPR (emphasis added).

My evolution as a photographer

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When I found this in the middle of the kitchen floor this morning, my first thought wasn’t “ew!” but “that will be an excellent photography subject!”

Image: photo of a chunk of a wasp's nest sitting on a black background.

Image: close-up of part of the wasp's nest.

The culprit is undoubtedly Holly, our year-old Golden Retriever, who has proudly retrieved — and often attempted to eat — sticks, mulch, a bird, a plastic box containing mouse poison,* and a four-foot length of plastic piping that was only recently an integral part of our sprinkler system.  I guess the fact that she retrieved a tissue-thin wasp’s nest and deposited it in the middle of the kitchen floor shows she can be very delicate — the “soft mouth” so valued by hunters.  Given her soft mouth, excellent retrieving skills, and laser-like focus on the squirrels, rabbits, and birds that frequent our backyard, I fear she’s wasting her true talents with indoorspeople such as Tim and me.

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* After a quick trip to the vet and a couple of induced pukes, it was determined that she only ingested a couple of shards of plastic, and no actual mouse poison.