A Bitter Pill

It has really hit home for me now just how much the Republican Party has lost its mind. Especially after the latest soap opera.

During the months that have passed since John McCain “tapped” Sarah Palin to be his running mate, I’ve had more and more trouble reconciling the obsessive adoration of Palin by so many in the GOP, including a lot of my relatives, (some of whom are very smart and successful people) with the obvious dangers of having someone like her as president. The bizarre behavior. The vapid thinking. How do they not recoil at the smug way in which she wears her ignorance like a badge of honor? It’s just amazing to me how every word out of her mouth is taken as gospel, and when she can’t even answer a softball question without struggling to form a semblance of coherent opinion, then set off against the "liberal media".

Never mind the implications of her “word salad” responses. It’s quite sad actually, especially for me to see how my own family has changed. There’s been this kind of de-evolution from a thinking, reasoned, disinterested opinion, into an irrational, crusading, narrow banded thinking process that has really made me step away from the words Republican and Conservative as labels that apply to me.

Oh well, I'm perfectly cool in the land of Independence.

The new Darkroom

Now that we’re settled into the new place, it is time to build the darkroom!
I started with a cluttered walk-in closet.



Added 2x4s for shelving brackets, then some cut plywood as the shelving.




Connected power to the light in the closet, and now to unpack my darkroom items. Most everything is already unpacked. MUCH better than what I was working with....



I use an ancient Beseler 23C II which gives me those cool borders on my prints. That and the bright aluminum negative holders. The new ones are all black.
Next few days I’ll put up the darkroom cloth and begin printing.