These are the stairs leading down from Mt Bonnell. I took this picture sometime in the early ’90s when I had access to a darkroom because I did the print as well.

I used to ride my bike up there pretty regularly when I was at UT, and despite many attempts to capture the views of the city or of Lake Austin and the hills, this is the only picture I ever took there that I liked.

I guess that’s how it is with photography: sometimes the best images are the unexpected ones, the subjects that weren’t your main intention but for whatever reason call to be photographed. Sometimes an ordinary set of stairs leading down through the cedar trees says more than a whole city spread out before you.

As much as I love the view from up there, especially at night when the city lights disappear out into the plains, I haven’t been there in years. I should probably do something about that.

Perhaps their fingers were crossed:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Note that the primary job of each member of Congress is to support and defend the constitution. It’s not just a piece of paper. It is what keeps us safe. It is what keeps us strong.

Allowing the Republican party to trample the constitution for short term political gain - to cast away the very values that have made this country endure - ought to be enough to provoke the outrage of this entire country, but then no one thinks that they will be the ones getting hauled off to Gitmo with no recourse to the law.

Republicans in congress say this detainee bill is necessary so that the president can keep us safe, but that’s not their job. Their job is to keep the Constitution safe from assault, primarily from within. Tyrannical government comes in baby steps, imposed from within more often than from without. The framers of the Constitution knew that, but they assumed that those in Congress would actually be interested in the longterm welfare of the republic not in their short term political careers.

The US Congress and the President are doing what Al Qaeda could never do: attack the Constitution, which is really the only thing that can destroy the country. I never imagined we’d ever argue about how much torture is really ‘torture.’ I never imagined that we’d allow so much unchecked power to go to the executive. I never imagined we’d pave the way to disappear people.

Those things are supposed to happen in other countries. We are supposed to stand for something better, something higher.

I remember shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said that we would have to crawl down into the sewer to fight these rats.

How low are we going to go?

Newsweek covers for this week from around the world can tell us a lot:

All over the world, Newsweek’s cover story is about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

In America, the cover story is a trivial bit about Annie Leibovitz.

Talk about using pretty pictures to hide ugly reality.

There’s nothing like going for a run under perfect blue skies when the air is cool and dry. Fall in Texas feels the way spring does in New England: sheer relief.

Shorter days and cooler air: this is the time to be outside.

Finally.

A campfire skit:

Performer #1 (let’s call him George) walks up waving his arms wildly. He stands in place waving his arms and jumping up and down.

Performer #2 (let’s call him American Public) walks up and asks “What are you doing?”

George says, “Scaring away dinosaurs.”

American Public says, “But there aren’t any dinosaurs!”

George says, “Well, then it’s working. I better keep doing it.”

The audience laughs because they all recognize the absurdity of George’s thinking.

Now, I’m not suggesting that there are no terrorists. Far from it. The issue is what has been done to destroy Al Qaeda. Sadly, the record is not good.

We’ve given them a country in which to train and fight. We’ve let their leadership escape. We’ve tied our military down on an unrelated adventure, allowing real threats (Iran and North Korea) to continue to develop.

I guess invading Iraq looked as easy as waving one’s arms in the air.

These days the administration’s position as I understand it goes like this:

We’ve kept you safe but you’re not safe because we’re fighting the war begun by 9-11 that had nothing to do with 9-11.

This is the ideological battle of the twenty-first century. Just like World War Two. And just as we went after Hitler with everything we had, Bin Laden will be ignored since we don’t spend much time thinking about him.

We must all pull together and sacrifice to fight this war by cutting taxes so we force the burden to future generations.

There are no secret prisons, but they work; we know because we’ve been using secret prisons. That don’t exist.

You’re a terrorist-loving traitor if this doesn’t make sense or if you wish we’d actually killed the terrorists who attacked us.

Now that I’ve gone through the exercise of typing it all out, it begins to make sense. Really it’s briliant. No one can beat these kinds of arguments.

You try. You try to understand, but then your brain starts to hurt…

You realize that reason is no match for irrationality…

You realize that facts are created if enough people repeat them…

Your head hurts…

You flip straight to the sports page, the only place where real reporting and real debate take place…

And somewhere a caterpillar sits on a mushroom smoking a hookah while a grin without a cat fades slowly into the moonlight….

Phoebe’s favorite time of day is morning walk time. She tells us all about it, and then she leads the way.

This is Daphne’s cue to run and hide and Joey follows along to see what all this walk stuff is about.

This is from my days as a camera assistant. It was taken on the set of The Substitute Wife, a movie-of-the-week that was filmed around Austin early in 1994.

That’s me with the slate standing next to Lea Thompson. Of the three stars on that set, Lea was the only one who wasn’t full of herself. The other two managed to make life miserable for everyone from the director all the way down to the lowliest film loader (me), set PA and sound assistant (my friends).

It was my first gig on a big budget set, and for the next few years, I got quite spoiled by all the perks. It was a fun and exciting career when I was younger, but as it turned out not something I wanted to spend my life doing.

George at I’m Not One to Blog, But… has tagged me with the fresh meme he busted: Songs that make you cry.

I have a hard time trying to determine if a song has ever made me cry. Using bloggetic license, however, I am replacing ‘cry’ with ’so moving they inspire a sudden bought of quiet and thoughtful contemplation’ (but not like the guy who had to stop everything for “Desperado” on that episode of Seinfeld).

Here we go…

“This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” by Talking Heads

I said this in the comments on George’s blog: “‘This Must Be the Place’ would probably be the first and maybe only one on that list. It was our song at our wedding. It just makes me stop when I hear it. Actually ‘it hits me on the head, ahh ohhhh…..’”

But then I remembered that the wedding DJ lost that track so it wasn’t played, still my wife and I consider it our song anyway. It has an innocent simplicity to it that captures the magic of falling in love better than any song I’ve ever heard.

When I first heard it on Speaking in Tongues, I wondered if falling in love was really like that and I hoped that it would be.

Home - is where i want to be
But i guess i’m already there
I come home - - she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place

I know now that it is, which makes me love this song all the more. (I even used it as the title for a post once because it so perfectly captured the depth of feeling about the subject).

“Hard Times in Babylon” by Eliza Gilkyson

This meditation on the loss of a dear friend is heartwrenching. “Gotta hang together when the air’s too thin / Pass out the masks for the oxygen.” Indeed.

“Psalm” by John Coltrane

I could pick any track off Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, but this one is so understated, so quiet, and yet the perfectly chosen notes flowing from his saxophone speak so eloquently of yearning, anguish, heartbreak, hardwon wisdom and hope. It’s all there.

Coltrane wrote a prayer and then blew it into his saxophone.

“City of New Orleans” by Willie Nelson

I remember hearing “City of New Orleans” a lot when I was a kid. It made me think of wide open possibilities and yet there’s something dark there too. Something closed off and lost in those “freight yards full of old black men and the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.”

I know Willie didn’t write it, but it’s his version that moves me. He played it at ACL Fest on Saturday and it was like everything stopped happening around me for just the duration of that song.

“Nightswimming” by R.E.M.

This sends chills down my spine:

The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows.
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse.
Still, its so much clearer.  

Looking back at those reckless good times of youth and knowing that you can’t (and shouldn’t) go there again because you can’t be young again, because everything changes is captured beautifully in this song. You miss those times, those people as they were then, but it’s all memories, all gone forever. “Nightswimming” nails that melancholy feeling perfectly.

So There you have it.

I now tag Chris of Lenwood, Heather In all of Her Strangeness, Fred in the marbled halls of Ironicus Maximus (even though his blog doesn’t really cater to this kind of thing), and Jessica at 4 zillion. No pressure, folks. Except that George promised to “throw a hysterical bawling fit” if the meme dies.

Whatever idiot vandalized this sign clearly has a lot more faith in this government’s competence than I do.

Most of my ACL time this year was been spent seeing bands that I already knew and liked, but on Sunday, all I saw were artists that I had previously never heard. Amazingly, not a single one disappointed. For me, those discoveries are the best part of ACL.  

We started our day with Austin’s The Black Angels. I hadn’t heard them before, but their mesmerizing psychedelic drone hooked us right away. The guitars shimmered throughout their set that at times evoked such artists as The Doors and early Velvet Underground. 

Afterwards we checked out Finland’s Husky Rescue. Three very serious looking guys dressed in black backed up the charming singer who wore a red dress and some fabulous boots. The music was mellow and kind of quirky in a way that reminded me of early Talking Heads but it flowed like Air while the singer’s ethereal vocals floated on top. It was a fun set that had us all smiling.

The weather was nice when we arrived. Cool and overcast, but the sun started to come out and make things steamy as we headed over to see Damian “Jr Gong” Marley, another of Bob Marley’s progeny. Damian looks very much like his father and the set was groovy as reggae should be. We left while they were playing a very cool version of “Exodus” which seemed appropriate.

Afterwards we went to Waterloo for the traditional purchasing of CDs by bands we’d discovered. We picked up CDs by The Black Angels and Husky Rescue both of which sound as cool on CD as they do live.

Despite leaving, ACL wasn’t over for us. A friend had managed to secure tickets to an Austin City Limits taping of Sufjan Stevens followed by The Raconteurs at the KLRU studios. These are hard to come by so it was a real treat to finally - after eighteen years in Austin - get to see a taping.

The studio is very small, there couldn’t have been more than 200 people in there, and they serve free beer so we were all pretty happy when Stevens started his show. I’d never heard him before but I was highly impressed. He was backed by a full orchestra all of whom wore giant butterfly wings. Wearing gigantic bird wings, Stevens played a haunting set that fully captivated the audience.

The Raconteurs came on next. They rocked. I hadn’t heard them before either, but I was impressed with their sound and intensity. I don’t know when these episodes will air, but both of them will certainly be worth watching.

Finally seeing an ACL taping and getting to see two such talented acts was truly the perfect way to end yet another awesome ACL weekend.