Category Archives: Americana

Some reflections on a very short stay in Las Vegas

Americana, Photography

I am not a Las Vegas guy, it seems both very expensive and more like an adult Disneyland than a Sin City. Even more than Disneyland, it seems like a giant version of the cruse ship written about by David Foster Wallaace in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. It is an entire city of distractions. I can safely state that after four hours of walking the Strip from one end to the other without even getting a drink (camera in hand and in full voyeur mode). I don’t mean to say that there isn’t real Sin – when I got back to my hotel at about 10:30, there was a old, gentlemanly looking, Chinese, guy checking in with a staggeringly good looking, improbably tall, black woman barely contained by a very short dress – but that somehow, the Sin doesn’t seem real, somehow it seems passionless.

That is not to infer that everybody is there for the Sin, most people are in Vegas for the shopping, and the dining, and the shows, and the gambling. And Vegas bends over backwards to make all that easy. There are elevated walkways that cross the streets and deposit the walker directly into buildings; the Strip is designed to be walked, it is as walker friendly as any place I have ever been. In the end, Vegas turned out to be a great place to take a walk.

Vegas II

Americana, Current Affairs, Photography, Travel

 

The desert does lots of things well, in my opinion, but civilization is not one of them. Almost any built up area in the desert looks seedy and Las Vegas is not an exception. Except for the Vegas Strip: there the neon lights work just perfectly. The neon sparkles in the clear air and everything seems alive and crisp and clean.

My plan had been to park the truck at one end of the strip, walk down it and back with my tele-zoom, and then repeat with a wide angle lens. It was further down and back as well as a lot more interesting than I expected and Ed had said that he expected to put a wrap on his frolicking early, so I only made one pass using tele. So most of what I have are detail type shots with almost no street views.

As an aside, one thing that surprised me was that I saw several Muslim women in Hijabs. More Hijabs than I saw at Edwin’s graduation in Freemont which has a large Muslim population. End aside. I also saw more than several people dressed in costumes like the Hello Kitty woman below. I think that you could have your picture taken with them for a small fee – that is if you ever wanted to have your picture taken with Hello Kitty, or Spiderman, or a couple of characters that I didn’t recognize – and the costumes themselves seemed too professional and elaborate to be home made or spontaneous. (Maybe the rent them from central casting – I suspect that the women dressed as showgirls fall into that category.)

Of course there is gambling everywhere but gambling is far from the entire show. There are rollercoaster rides,

and lots of themed dining, events, shows,

lots and lots of shopping (the real American pastime),

and lots of sex in all kinds of flavors (I wonder if the HOT BABES direct to you are delivered in the truck).

 

 

 

 

 

Vegas

Americana, Camping, Photography, Travel

Meanwhile, back at Ed Dieden and my trip to Las Vegas for Ed’s Vietnam Marine unit’s reunion, we were camped in Mojave National Preserve. We spent a second night at a campsite marked by a preexisting fire ring and some nice stone chairs. I am not a fan of preexisting camp sites, the heavy use usually results in a dirtier site and the food scraps attracts rodents – which, in my imagination, at least, attracts snakes (not that I have ever seen a snake at a campsite) – but this was a nice site among exfoliating granite boulders. We got up, skipped breakfast – no stove – and after a short drive down a dirt road, breakfast at the Mad Greek’s in Baker, and a long drive down a paved road, we got to Vegas.

Once we were there, after showering and shaving, Ed went to the Hospitality Room for his Marine reunion and I was free to roam around Las Vegas searching for the Magic.

I still had my no prime lens problem, so I planned to wander around with a 70~200 tele-zoom for some details and then go back to the truck and switch to a 17~40 wide-angle-zoom and shoot some street scenes. It didn’t work out that way,

The 2012 Eclipse

Americana, Current Affairs, Photography, Sierras

Michele and I went to Pyramid Lake, Nevada to see the eclipse. (Photo above grabbed from the web.) Well, more accurately, Michele went to Pyramid Lake to see the eclipse – because the center line of the eclipse path went over the southern part of the lake – and I went because I wanted to see the people watching the eclipse. We met Michele’s sister at the family cabin in Squaw Valley and then drove the long way to Pyramid.

Starting at Squaw in the Sierras, we drove north through pines and aspens to Sierraville where we semi-picniced.

Sierraville is a scenic little town at the western edge of a large valley – surprisingly enough, named Sierra Valley – that grows drier as we drive to Nevada, heading  east and getting deeper into the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevadas. By mid afternoon, we ended up at the north end of Pyramid Lake and saw our first Eclipsers.

From there, we worked our way south to where Michele had figured would be the optimum viewing place. We found the perfect place: great eclipse viewing for Michele and great wacko people viewing for me. And I mean wacko people in the best possible way; anybody willing to drive this far to see what is essentially a non-event, is my kind of person. I learned a long time ago, when I went to my first Cactus and Succulent Society meeting, that people who are interested in the out-of-the-ordinary are the most interesting people of all.

A couple of portraits by Michele.

Then it was back to Reno through the fading light for a beer and sandwich at the Great Basin Brewing Company. All in all, a very nice outing.

 

 

“even Jimmy Carter would have given that order”

Americana, Politics

Obama is using the anniversary of SEAL Team Six killing Osama bin Laden in a campaign ad and it seems to be driving the Republicans nuts. They say he shouldn’t be politicizing it.  I can understand that argument although bragging about one’s successes seems to be fairly standard political fare. Romney, in trying to discount President Obama’s call on ordering Team Six into Pakistan said “even Jimmy Carter would have given that order” as if it were nothing.

I am not a big Jimmy Carter fan, I don’t think he had the right personality to be president – certainly not at that time – but Romney’s offhanded, even casual, slur against Carter pisses me off. Carter has more military expearance – ten years as a officer on Nuclear subs – than Romney’s whole family – about ten years more – and a much better idea of the risks involved. Cater’s call was gutsy and failed – it was close to working according to Mark Bowden in The Desert One Debacle – ruining Carter’s chances of reelection.

Romney will say anything in his effort to get elected. What an asshole.