Reminiscing

While I was walking to a rehearsal space at Seattle Center on Saturday morning the view of the space needle in the morning haze caught my eye. I took a quick shot and was on my way again. I'm not enjoying stage combat like I expected. There is a young woman in the class who seems to detest me for some reason -- maybe we've met before and I forgot? That is not the reason. It has more to do with having the blues, and still being in constant pain from breaking my leg four years ago. That worries me. However, the rich and interesting dreams I had last night gave me the feeling of rounding a corner. I hope so. Today does feel brighter from the inside than it has for months. Stopping to take that picture helped.

I wasn't happy with the clarity of this shot. I hope when I go to practice this Saturday I have a similar situation. There probably won't be the nice haze, but the morning light... I like the unprocessed shot I took a lot better in black and white (it's on flickr, after I deleted the color shot I decided to add the b&w and some processed versions) The has the feel of the black and white pictures I took with an old 120 box camera when the Space Needle was brand new, and I was too.

This is one of my post-processing attempts. I used some Photoshop tools which didn't appeal to me with other shots I've played with. I step through a lot of things to find combinations and effects I like, and I tried the ones I liked before first, but they didn't work for me here. This also has a bit of a 60's feel to me. Lately I've been remembering when the Space Needle and Seattle Center were shiny and new. Maybe that is why this type of rendering appealed to me.


Now for a short political screed. 'Screed' and 'short' are contradictory, but so am I. Back in October I posited that the prosecution against Stevens was intentionally incompetent and compromised, so Stevens could avoid a conviction. Then, despite their worst efforts, Stevens apparently convicted himself by proving to the jury he truly believed he was beyond the law, while loudly blaming his wife and co-conspirators for any moral lapses. So, despite the petulance by which Stevens basically convicted himself, it looks like the plan is finally going to work, though probably too late to allow the aged crook to sneak back into office. Instead, the drones who made errors too blatant and stupid for anyone to believe they could be unintentional are getting some unwanted scrutiny. It's a shame the elitist old crook is escaping what should have been a rock solid conviction, but some of the dubya toadies who abrogated the legitimacy of the DOJ may pay a small price for their actions. Now, the thought occurs, what if these guys weren't the neo-con toadies I assumed? Rather, they'd just be an example of the type of people dubya didn't fire for ideological reasons. I'm not sure which possibility is the worst.