Karmic-Dragonfly

Couch surfer #3 stayed with me again last night. Fun guy, dinner, wine, talking. Tired now and early bed!

***
Now that I deleted that Facebook account, I have lots more time to do things, like READ!


Bone. Bombs and tantrums, when the world grew bitter because the world fell somehow short of half-remembered Eden.

Pretty depressing book! Slow moving, but good book. And I enjoy puzzling out the church Latin -- Fiat Homo. Fiat Lux. Fiat Vountas Tua. Funny how I could still understand some of the Latin -- even after all these years!

Lots of (church) Latin in the book because the story line is a monastery in the southwest US, which is preserving artifacts during the Dark Ages that occurred after the 'Deluge of Fire'.

Depressing because the basic point of the book is that mankind will destroy itself over and over again, whenever it has the technology to do it. Basically, whenever man has nuclear weapons, it will use them to end the world ("Sic Transit Mundus" -- Thus the world passes.)

So tiring!

Dinner with my Portuguese speaking friends tonight. I have not been practicing, so my Portuguese SUCKED!

And towards the end, he pulled up a Youtube of a Brazilian singer, and had me listen and repeat what I could understand...so exhausting! And good for me. And nice that he's teaching. But so exhausting!

I gave explanations to him also though. Like the meaning of 'to curse' -- from a song he wants to sing at church, and 'bottom' -- I included the meaning of 'butt', lol! And 'to realize' -- both to accomplish, and also to suddenly be conscious of something.

Back to the park tonight with a different lens...








But I didn't quite get what I wanted. First, bats just seem hard to capture. Second, omg, bugs flying all over me. Not mosquitoes. I had on bug spray. Didn't seem to matter! This photo is pretty heavily processed.


I wonder what I can do differently. I could bring along an extender for this lens...


And here are those fricken bugs that were ALL OVER ME -- even though I had spritzed bug spray! They were very small, flying, appeared to have 6 legs, a waist and a hard shell.

But the third rope was still moving: the child too light was still breathing...
....
"For God's sake, where is God?"
And from within me, I heard a voice answer.
Where He is? This is where -- hanging here from this gallows..."
That night, the soup tasted of corpses.

I just read a book written by a child who spent time with his father in Birkenau and Auschwith concentration camps.

His descriptions are pretty shocking in places. The author, Elie Wiesel, died last year.

It's hard for me to believe that there are Holocaust deniers -- most of whose "talking points" seem to quibble with the number of people killed -- by the way, the "6 million" was a number that came from a member of the German SS.

Documentation exists for 3 - 4 million people killed, and when you read eye witness accounts like this book, listen to videos of eye witnesses, read excerpts from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goebbels_Diaries>Joseph Goebbel's diaries, it becomes patently obvious that a rounding up of people for forced labor, and then death by starvation, illness, shooting, hanging and gas chambers occurred. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/how-to-refute-holocaust-denial

Eisenhower ordered documentation to be created -- https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/General-Eisenhower-Holocaust-Verification

Video of French survivor:

There are very few survivors anymore, which is why Ellie Wiesel's book and other sources are so important.


Will this sort of thing happen again? Almost surely. Hell, purposeful attempts at genocide have happened repeatedly already during wars.

Why do Holocaust deniers exist? Certainly, anti-Jewish bias is a cause. But there's more to it than that. I haven't been able to completely put my finger on it...but if the deniers admitted the Holocaust, they would have to change their opinion of 'the other' -- meaning the deniers would have to change their belief system and recognize other people and other cultures as valuable. It's almost as if the deniers are resentful of the attention that Jews got because of the Holocaust.

I didn't time this post to happen during Passover -- it's just the timing of finishing a book. But it is probably an appropriate post.

I went down to the Texas Beach trail today. I have a vacation coming up, during which I will have to carry my water for the night. So today, I stuck 2 bricks (weight a little under 9 lbs) plus my camera in my bag -- just to test it out. I did about 2 miles on Texas Beach. Definitely could feel the weight!





Garter Snake --



Remember that I often harvest a few Pawpaw fruits in late Summer? I kinda wanted to find the trees when they are blooming. Somehow I expected the blooms to be bigger!

Thanks to whoever randomly paid for a my Dreamwidth account for a couple months! I don't know exactly what that gives me, but it's very nice of someone to have done!

I'm really glad it's Friday!

I've been busting a hump this week -- and I can feel it in my hands! When I'm rushing, I type fast, and bang hard with my fingers on the keyboard. Finally getting some more hands on deck for 1 of my projects, so I'm hoping I won't have to keep this pace up after a couple weeks.

Not being on Facebook anymore, I seem to have more time to read! And reading is a much better use of my time. It's a pleasant side effect of quitting Facebook!

I was talking to a young guy the other day, and he said he 'hated' to read. He didn't say this, but I suspect he hated to read because it requires focus, in a way that a movie or a Facebook flamewar does not. It doesn't bode well for younger folks to be able to make long term decisions if they can't focus!

The Giver / Lois Lowry

This is actually a teen reader book -- so I easily polished it off in 3 sittings. I liked how the central character became the Giver, although not in the intended way. I also was surprised at the vague ending...but interpreted it as the characters dying, although the author has said she does not believe they died.

I Am Legend / Richard Matheson

I knew that the old movie, The Omega Man, was based on this book. And then there was the later remake with Will Smith. Although the Omega Man and I Am Legend were not exactly the same, I kept seeing scenes from that old movie in my head as I read it.

The next thing that surprised me was that only 1/2 of this book was I Am Legend -- then there were a series of short stories. I'm not a huge short story fan -- I don't like switching gears that often, and sometimes the characters from the different stories merge in my head.

But these stories were all nicely done, and were in sort of the same genre as the 1st part of the book. One thing that surprised me was that I RECOGNIZED one of the stories from another TV movie! And the movie and the short story were pretty much exactly the same!

The short story was called "Prey", and it was evidently the exact basis for one of the stories in the Trilogy of Terror, renamed 'Amelia' for the main character in the story. I was really surprised to start reading and to realize I had seen this story before!

It was a good weekend! Although no biking, I got some yard work done, got my Grandmother's lemon tree outside, had wine with 1 friend, dinner with another friend, and brunch with a third friend.

Not much on the camera side, except in the yard. I was pretty pleased with how this iPhone photo turned out -- just using the phone, and the built-in editing ---



Twice each year I move the lemon tree (in for Winter, out for Spring). And every year, it gets harder. One friend told me the tree must be growing, which was a much preferable answer than the sister who said I was getting older! The sister is, of course, correct, but I much preferred the other answer!

But it's outside once more!



I used the Canon with a macro lens to get a photo of a dandelion in the yard...then I ran it through Prisma for this effect --

After Republicans in House and Senate voted to allow ISPs to sell your personal browsing history (and I imagine that Jabba will sign the bill), I began to look at how I could surf using a VPN -- to protect my browsing history.

I have no desire to share browsing history with advertisers -- do they really need to know about that personal 'thing' I might have had, lol? And how exactly would advertisers make use of my interest in Old French to sell me something?

It already annoys me when I look at, say, underwear online, only to see that same underwear offered as an ad in a website. Not only is it intrusive, it's the VERY SAME FRICKEN UNDERWEAR that I just looked at! I didn't buy it the first time -- why would I want to see it again???

As I get older, I have less need to buy shit. (I also am cursing more.) And I have no need for advertisers to come find me -- i'll find them when I need something!

Anyways...I digress...

Opera comes with a free built in VPN. I figure 'free' means maybe not as robust as it could be. But free is always good, and it probably serves my purpose. So, I have switched to Opera!