Posts By: Ms. Jen

A Man Watching the Sunset with Two Dogs

Posted by & filed under art + photography, photos + text from the road.

A man watching the sunset with two dogs

02.26.19 – Testing posting to this blog from my phone’s browser, as the official Android WordPress app will not save a post, it just throws error messages. Also, I am testing out an Android app, Photo Exif Editor Pro, that allows one to add exif artist/author data to a photo.

How are we at 2019 and I can’t set my name and preferred copyright into my camera phone’s camera settings to automatically write the data to the exif metadata? Adobe Lightroom for Android does not allow you to make a watermark, although they allegedly do for iOS.

Photo above taken on 01.13.19 at Huntington Cliffs, aka Dog Beach, California, by Ms. Jen with her Ssmsung Note 9.

Tidbits for Monday, or the Week, Reading…

Posted by & filed under photos + text from the road, tidbits.

The White Succulent Flower that had no name sign

‘Roma’ star Yalitza Aparicio is so much more than her Oscar fairy tale

Cory Doctorow: Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me
Technological disruption is everywhere from AirBnB to Uber to… Mr. Doctorow hits the nail on the head on the Silicon Valley’s obsession with disrupting industries as toxic, his solution though is a bit hand wavey. I personally never use Uber/Lyft or AirBnB for reason that Cory details out and my own reasons of objection to the disruption of the disruption that makes it worse for everyone. I will write my thoughts up soon.

About Face : Death and surrender to the power in clothing of men.
But really a comic about the rise of lawlessness and fascism in the US. And the creepy black and white American flags.

In Defense of (Studying) Food : A Classical Zooarchaeologist’s Manifesto

Refugees Connect Their Personal Stories with a Museum’s Ancient Artifacts

“The Global Guides program at the Penn Museum hires recent refugees from the Middle East to give personalized tours. The leader of my tour was Moumena Saradar, a refugee from Syria who has lived in Philadelphia for two years.”

A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof
A hard but essential read if you are an American, visit America, or have any hopes for America’s future.

The Insect Apocalypse Is Here : What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?
I thought I had posted this link last autumn, but a search of my site has shown that I did not. Read it. Insect life is the second layer of foundation, after algae and plankton, on this whole planet. We can’t exist without them, and to kill them or ignore our responsibility in their collapse is horrifying.

Photo Essay: For Jewish Israelis of Yemenite Heritage, Reviving a Past

Pre-wedding henna ceremonies have regained popularity in Israel’s Jewish Yemenite community, an expression of ethnic pride in their heritage and traditions.

Photo of unnamed succulent flower above taken at the Huntington’s Cactus Garden in late January 2019 by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a 300mm f/4 lens.

Tidbits for a Weekend’s Reading

Posted by & filed under art + photography, tidbits.

Snowy Convict Lake Reflections

Fri. 01.11.19 – Here are a few articles to start your weekend out right. Happy Friday!

* Earth’s magnetic field is acting up and geologists don’t know why

* Memo to conservatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understands taxes better than you do

* A Moral Panic

“The real story of machine learning is not how it promotes home bomb-making, but that it’s being deployed at scale with minimal ethical oversight, in the service of a business model that relies entirely on psychological manipulation and mass surveillance. The capacity to manipulate people at scale is being sold to the highest bidder, and has infected every aspect of civic life, including democratic elections and journalism.”
“Frankly, as long as we continue to view the planet as an endless “resource,” as long as we uphold the rights of individuals and corporations to amass infinite wealth while others go hungry, as long as we continue to believe that governments do not have the responsibility to feed, clothe, house, and educate everyone—all our talk is mere posturing. Why do these simple things scare people so much? It is just common decency. Let’s face it: the free market is not free, and it doesn’t give a shit about justice or equality.”

* Arundhati Roy on How to Think about Empire

“And now we have the era of Trump, in which we learn that intelligence and nuance are relative terms. And that W, when compared to Trump, was a serious intellectual. Now U.S. foreign policy is tweeted to the world on an hourly basis. You can’t get more transparent than that. The Absurd Apocalypse. Who would have imagined that could be possible? But it is possible—more than possible—and it will be quicker in the coming if Trump makes the dreadful mistake of attacking Iran.”

* Why Rashida Tlaib’s “We’re gonna impeach that motherf*cker approach” is good for Congress

“One of those leading that charge is Rashida Tlaib, the new representative from Michigan’s 13th district and one of the two first Muslim women to serve in the House of Representatives – and she is wasting no time in making her voice heard. “We’re gonna go in there,” she said, speaking to the progressive organising group MoveOn just hours after she was sworn in, “and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.”

This caused the predictable backlash of pearl-clutching from Republican circles, whose faux-outrage at the swear-word would, perhaps, have had more moral weight if they had not spent the previous three years justifying their support for a president who boasted of “grabbing” women “by the pussy,” and attacking Democrats for their “political correctness”.”

Photo of the Snowy Convict Lake Reflections taken by Ms. Jen on 01.08.19 with her Nikon D850 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens in Mono County, California.

The London Skyline at Dusk from the Embankment Bridge

Posted by & filed under art + photography, photos + text from the road, writing + blogs.

The London Skyline at Dusk from the Embankment Bridge

Sun. 11.18.18 – Yes, I am back in London to write. I find that I write best here, for a number of reasons both known and rather mysterious to me. When I am home in California, I can muster 2000-4000 words per month, hardly words enough to finish a short story in reasonable time – let alone a book. When I am in London, I can reach that word count in two days or less.

The last two years of US politics have heavily weighed me down and when I get to London, as long as I stay off of the news and social media sites, I am able to feel slightly bouyant again. At least here, I can float in my imagination – unfettered from the fecal matter of US politics – long enough to create and write.

While I am not participating in the NaBloPoMo nor NaNoWriMo, I am doing my best to restart my blogging practice in a more regular fashion – albeit in clumps – as well as finish writing a few stories and a book.

Here I am for a month. Let’s see how much writing and editing I can get done. Wish me luck.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen from the Embankment Golden Jubilee Bridge at dusk with her camera phone.

Paddington Station in the Late Afternoon Light

Posted by & filed under photos + text from the road.

Paddington Station in the Late Afternoon Light

Fri 11.16.18 – There is something about the quality of light coming through the glass panes of Paddington Station in the late autumn at the end of the afternoon that is really beautiful. Every so often, I am able to capture it in a photo. Here is today’s iteration of this decade plus occasional series.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a camera phone after exiting a train at Paddington Station, London, UK.

More Dreams

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, travel + places.

Fri. 11.09.18 – Last night I had more bizarre dreams that bordered on nightmarish. It was truly cold here in Mammoth, with the low of 12F / -11C, and El Coache’s heater worked overtime to keep the internal temps around 54F / 12C. As a result, every time the heater cycled back on – loudly – I vaguely woke up. When one is roused from sleep on a regular basis, one tends to remember most of the dreams from the REM sleep one does get.

In last night’s case, it was dreams of other people hitting my rental car and me being stranded with a rental car employee yelling at me about my insurance. Somehow, in each dream, Family Hernandez (Alex, Paige, the boys, and Penny Laine) showed up to drive me home and rescue me from bad rental car employees.

My brain on anti-histamines and being woken up by an RV heater is a rather frightening place. And yes, with all of my serious allergy problems of recent years, I am a daily or twice daily anti-histamine taker – I like living.

I am renting a car next Wednesday and plan to pull two sets of rental car insurance, just in case – as Alex and Paige may not be available to pick me up.

Furthermore, I am wearing ear plugs tonight.