Category Archives: Photography

The winter of our discontent

Hall of Shame, Movies

Hopefully, history repeats.



“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York”

Those opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III are the most elegant and complex ever penned in English. Replete with metaphor, pun, humor and egotism, they say everything about the speaker, the future Richard III of England, a murderous psychopath whose two year reign came to a sticky end at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. That same battle saw the end of the Plantagenet and York dynasties.

America and the world is now confronted with a like psychopath and murderer, the abomination which occupies the Oval Office. The ‘T’ word, used in this household, is rewarded by a quick exit for the speaker, the front door shown with alacrity. Rather, the only acceptable usage is ‘Pig’, the preposition dropped as a nod to Pig’s appalling spouse, the Slovenian Slut, chest by Dow Chemical.

Why this mention of Richard III?

First, because hopefully history repeats and Pig gets his equivalent of Bosworth Field very soon. Richard’s dying cry of “My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse” will be equally apt in Pig language, with the sole change being that ‘horse’ is replaced with ‘lawyer’.

Second, because my son’s Shakespeare studies in his last semester as a senior at prep school are now focused on this finest of plays, one which reminds me of my teen years, for I am vicariously piggybacking on his work.

Those teen years saw me watching Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film of the same title, easily the most chilling performance committed to celluloid. And we will be watching it later this week, ever hopeful that Richard’s fall from his horse is emulated by Pig and his ‘dynasty’ of spawn:



Richard, with attendant sycophants. Look familiar?

You should watch it too.

A note to Pig voters: This blog is about Photographs, Photographers and Photography. It ordinarily eschews politics. However, at this time of national tragedy, a tragedy whose number of deaths has been compounded by a psychopath masquerading as President, it is every American’s duty to protest loudly and to work for regime change. If you voted for Pig last time and have come around to seeing the error of your ways, all well and good. We all make mistakes. However, if you still fall in the trap of believing that Pig is making America great again and propose voting for him again, not only are you emphatically not welcome here, your very presence disgusts me. Do the right thing. Go elsewhere with your stupidity, your ignorance and your bigotry.

Working a war economy

Hall of Shame, Photography

Use the army.



Wanted: 1.25 million delivery drivers.

The US Army comprises 1.3 million workers on the taxpayer’s tab. It costs $1 trillion (yes, that’s $1,000,000,000,000) annually and has not won a conflict in 75 years. Let’s get some value out of this otherwise useless labor.

Problem: Supermarkets are disease pits and the primary area for virus transmission. Unfortunately, they are essential to life and health. Most provide no protective clothing for employees and fail to even provide simple, inexpensive Lexan partitions between shopper and cashier. They must be closed and the model rethought.

Solution: Close all supermarkets, prohibit in-person shopping and require a ‘delivery only’ model for all US households.

Here are the statistics:

Households and available driver labor:
Households in US: 128mm
Soldiers in army: 1.3mm
Unemployed retail store workers: 500,000
Total available labor – using 80% of Army and all retail: 1,540,000

Vehicles available:
GM vehicle production 2019: 2,900,000
Ford vehicle production: 1,200,000
US army vehicles: 225,000
Conscript 3m of Ford and GM vehicle production: 1,025,000 available
Add US Army for a total of: 1,250,000 available vehicles

Unit data:
Workers per vehicle: 1.23

Put all supermarkets on a delivery only model, no customer visits to these disease pits permitted.

# of supermarkets in USA: 28,000

Drivers (army + retail) available to each supermarket: 55 drivers

Households per US supermarket: 4,570

Permitted weekly grocery orders per household: 1

Trips per driver per day: (4570/55/7) = 12

Conclusion:

By conscripting 80% of otherwise useless army labor (no cost increase – already paid for) and all laid off retail workers (to be paid by supermarkets – no cost to taxpayer) and dedicating these workers to driving delivery vehicles, the labor load per driver computes to just 12 deliveries per day to supply every household in the USA.

Interpersonal shopper:grocery store worker contact falls to zero. Drivers are tested for virus weekly, being the sole source of contact with shelf stackers, with body temperature checks daily. Drivers have zero contact with shoppers – ‘leave at door’.

Fire all cashiers, as stores are closed, and add them to the labor force too.

As for national defense, the last 75 years prove that the sole purpose of the US Army is offense, not defense, and it has had no successes in its offensive rôle. Under my model we still have 300,000 Army personnel left (not sure what they do, exactly) and the Navy and Air Force to deliver nukes if needed. And let’s recall that a nuclear submarine parked at the bottom of the Black Sea on Moscow’s doorstep is impregnable, and it carries 16 long range nukes.

T.

Kitchenaid Artisan 5-Qt. stand mixer

Cooking

An all time classic.

This is one of an occasional series on cooking devices which make a difference. For an index of cooking articles on this blog click here.

The BMW airhead motorcycle first came to market in 1922. The Kitchenaid Artisan stand mixer beats it by 3 years, having first been sold in 1919. Unlike that wonderful bike engine, last made in 1997, the Kitchenaid mixer soldiers on to this day. If you make dough for bread or cakes, it’s the only way to go and, surprise!, it’s made in Ohio. That’s Ohio, USA not Ohio, Wuhan, China.

I do not have that many hours of use on mine but the gorgeous, classic design of this model dates from 1936. Forty years of happy mixing with no failures are routinely reported:



Making bread dough.

The mixer has a sterling reputation for reliability and longevity. Repair parts are easily available and the commutator brushes are simple to replace, located under the black screw plugs visible in the picture. The mixing tool’s motion is planetary, meaning the tool rotates one way and the mixing assembly the other, conferring the folding motion your grandma used to use while kicking the dog across the kitchen. Mine came with a J hook for heavy dough and a mixer paddle for light work. The latter is ineptly designed and you will want to replace it with the scraper design which looks like this:



The scraper paddle tool.

There are all sorts of tools available and the circular chrome port on the top will accept lots of additional gadgets for pasta making and the like. I have never used that power take-off source as my main interests are making bread dough and saving my aging wrists.

That doyenne of America-French cooking, Julia Child, used one for ages and hers, along with her kitchen, appears in the Smithsonian. Only in America is this possible.



The Artisan in Julia Child’s kitchen.

Kitchenaid has other designs, including rising column ones in lieu of the tilt feature. These are for those with no sense of history and even less taste, like owners of post 1997 BMW motorcycles. Stick with the original. And it really must be white, though about five million colors are now available. The machine is exceptionally heavy and if I have one complaint is that it tends to wander over my polished marble countertop at higher speeds with heavy doughs, so I have placed it on a rubber mat. Kitchenaid needs to add a weighted counterbalancer to cancel out the vibes.

Note that it’s really not a tool you want to hump in and out of storage. It’s simply too heavy.



The original 1918 patent drawing.

If Child’s ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking‘ should be in every kitchen, it needs to share shelf space with Carol Fields’s ‘The Italian Baker‘ which does for bread what Child does for everything else.



Italian Pane Bigio, a delightful wheat bread courtesy of the Kitchenaid mixer.

Americans pulling together

Photography

My letter to Governor Ducey of Arizona.

Dear Governor Ducey –

3/16/2020

Let me start by complimenting you on yesterday’s decision to close Arizona Public Schools through March 27. Your decision, along with ASU’s action to transition to online tuition, remove large populations from the crowd risks posed by public assembly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I believe that you should also consider issuing broader regulations that seek to limit public assembly regardless of the institution, wherever possible, and require all returning travelers from foreign lands to be screened upon re-entry to Arizona. Further, visits by relatives to elder care facilities should be strictly limited as they expose our most vulnerable citizens to infection.

We have all been reading about the process of ‘flattening the infection curve’, one which seeks to delay the onset of infection and better control the spread of that infection once it is identified. Waiting for infection and death, the way some nations have, is exactly wrong. Along with aggressive testing and quarantine approaches, nations like South Korea are showing that flattening the curve is a real possibility. We must act likewise now, not when all those nascent infections in our population are eventually disclosed.

One dismaying aspect of public behavior throughout the United States has been the practice of hoarding groceries and essential supplies. A visit to any Phoenix or Scottsdale area supermarket discloses that this practice is common here, one which is contrary to the concept of ‘pulling together’ and alien to the American Way. Hoarding substitutes greed and selfishness for community spirit, is counterproductive and unnecessary. It also hurts the oldest, those least able to participate in this aggressive, anti-social behavior.

Some examples.

American hens have been producing adequate supply of eggs for American consumers since we won WW2. Hoarding a staple with a short shelf life makes no sense.

American paper manufacturers have seen to it that adequate supplies of toilet paper have been available over a like period, maintaining Americans’ high standards of hygiene. Yet visit your local grocery store and they are out.

The situation is identical for hand sanitizer and on and on.

Yet the solution is surpassingly simple. Simply require supermarkets to limit purchases per shopper. I note that the AJs chain in Scottsdale has adopted this approach and many essentials remain available on their shelves. However, other major chains like Safeway and Bashas have not, and their shelves are empty of essential goods. Trying to directly control shopper behavior, the behavior of those ‘fellow Americans’ of mine who think only of themselves, is impossible. But placing requirements on supermarkets to limit purchases by customers is easy and comes at negligible fiscal cost. Add a complaints hot line for whistle blowers and a low cost solution presents itself.

Mr. Governor, for this senior citizen to visit a supermarket and find that staples like eggs and lettuce are unavailable is unconscionable. 15.9% of Arizonans are senior citizens, the tenth highest for any state. These Arizonans are the most threatened sector of the population who most require that hand sanitizer and the protein in that missing egg. I urge you to implement these simple, low cost requirements as soon as possible.

Finally, a recent study published by the New York Times discloses that the supermarket cashier is one of the highest risk centers for dissemination of viral infection. In a week of eight hour shifts I calculate that a check-out cashier has over 3,000 unique person-to-person contacts with shoppers, all within infection range. That’s far more than any school teacher or college professor. Yet I have not seen one of these risk centers wearing protective gloves or masks. Please consider making this a requirement, one which carries little cost and brings potentially great benefits in mitigating the spread of infection.

Please consider implementing my suggested measures as part of your fight against COVID-19 and thank you again for the great work you are doing.

Thomas Pindelski
Scottsdale