THE FINAL DEADLINE

Sunrise at Spring Point, South Portland Maine

“The days of our years are threescore years and ten,” according to Psalm 90, and I reached that milestone yesterday, April 7th. We live longer here in the 21st century United States than people did in ancient Israel when Psalm 90 was written, but not much longer. Because of a circulatory condition I didn’t think I’d make it even this far because I haven’t been able to purchase life insurance since I was thirty-three. Yet here I am, still sucking oxygen.

Reaching seventy seems like a good time to take stock and make some changes. I began writing for publication sometime during the Carter Administration. My pieces were occasional until sometime late in the George H. W. Bush Administration when I committed to writing a regular, weekly column for various newspapers. With advent of the internet, several web sites picked it up too, and up to now about 1500 columns have been published in hard copy. Deadlines for 800-word columns have crimped my weekly schedule ever since, and that has become tiresome.

When I turned sixty, I retired from the classroom. Now, at seventy, I’m liberating myself from deadlines and returning to occasional-writer status. Why? Mostly because writing keeps me at my desk when I’d rather be outside taking pictures, especially now that spring is here. Photography is much more fun, and it scratches my creative itch more thoroughly than writing does. It’s also more lucrative.

Sunrise from Christian Hill last month

After a day exploring my environs through the lens of my camera, I still find myself sitting in front of my computer, but I’m seeing beautiful color photos instead of words in dull black-and-white. It’s relaxing and energizing at the same time — and I listen to music while I edit— classical piano mostly. With income from sales, I purchased high-end cameras, lenses and other tools of the trade and I want to use them more. Already I’m waking up with excitement as I think about where I’ll go with my photo backpack after breakfast, or even before breakfast if I feel like it.

Going into my office now, I’m eager to see what my latest photos look like on the big monitor. Although I discard most, I like using an editing program to make the rest better, but even fewer of those make it onto my web site to be offered for sale. As I said, the whole process is much more fun than writing. Conscious that this is my final regular column, I’m feel liberated from deadlines already. I’ll be free all next week, and for however many more weeks my Creator wishes to give me. Only He knows what my final deadline will be  — and about that I prefer to remain in ignorance.

Whatever occasional writing I may do will be published on my blog, and will likely be in the form of photo essays. Now, however, they can be less than 800 words, or more. I can write whatever comes to mind and go on for as long as I want. I can go off on tangents without feeling guilty for not sticking to the subject. Tangents are usually more creative than the intended script anyway. I never know where they’ll take me but the trip is always enjoyable.

Old Orchard Beach at dawn

My blog is a better medium than newspapers for photos and words and that’s where future pieces will go. If publications ever wishes to pick one up, they can, but I won’t be promoting them. I don’t enjoy marketing and have never done much of it.

Somewhere in Kennebunk, Maine

I intend to continue my TV show: “Left & Right,” because that’s only twice a month and it’s still fun. Whereas writing columns was a solitary endeavor, TV is interactive and I can invite anyone I wish. Show prep is easy because I’m always keeping up with news of the world anyway and I decide what the content will be. 

Positive and negative feedback from my columns have come in newspapers, online, over the telephone, through email, via snail-mail, and in person. It was nice to get it, negative included, and I want to thank the many people who sent it over the years in spite of, or because of, the controversy my columns engendered. I’ve saved most of the hard copy letters to the editor, opposing columns, and snail-mail letters along with digital copies of emails. Comments on my blog will be preserved as long as Google allows.

Sunrise at Old Orchard Beach, Maine

Psalm 90:10 goes on to say, “…and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

Although there’s been no shortage of labor and sorrow during my 70 years, joy has been thoroughly interspersed as well, and I hope will continue to be before I fly away.

FREE SPEECH ONLY FOR THE "WOKE"

Remember the bloody sock? It became the symbol of the Red Sox World Series championship in 2004 that ended “the curse of the bambino” — an 86-year-long drought following the Babe Ruth trade in 1918. The sock was worn by pitching ace Curt Schilling who’d just had surgery. With a bleeding ankle, he still won the crucial game six of the American League Championship series against the New York Yankees. That put the Sox into the World Series in which Schilling won game two in a four-game sweep of the Cardinals.

Schilling is a hero to New Englanders, but not to the liberal Boston Globe which ran the Sunday headline: “Will Curt Schilling’s inflammatory rhetoric keep him out of the Hall of Fame?” Sports writers cited his conservative politics for their negative votes. Now Schilling’s scalp hangs in the cancel-culture hall of fame. No one can doubt that Schilling is one of the greatest pitchers of all time, but to liberal media his politics are deplorable, especially his support for Donald Trump.

Kati Couric

I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 — and I would again given the same choices. So would tens of millions of other Americans, but our vilification is accelerating. In 2016 Hillary Clinton called half of us “deplorable” and “irredeemable.” However, two weeks ago former mainstream media news anchor Kati Couric suggested we need to be “deprogrammed.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson echoed that saying: “there are millions of Americans, almost all White, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed.”

How would that be done? Gulags?

WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin

Fellow Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin said: “We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party” and leave no survivors. She also said we have to blacklist Trump supporters from universities and media. And it’s not just media; Former FBI Director James Comey said: “The Republican party needs to be burned down … It’s just not a healthy political organization.”

James Comey

Does that sound like inciting violence? Just as Cool Hand Luke was warned, you conservatives have to “get your mind right.” I only hope the above-named “progressives” envision only a night in the box and not life in a concentration camp or a bullet in the back of the head. But, then again, WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin said: “We have to level them, because if there are survivors… they will do it again.”

Leftists in academia control what students learn, but Pew Research said last week that almost all Americans increasingly get their news from their smartphone or tablet, often on platforms like Twitter and Facebook and Google. These are owned and operated by liberals who use their power to censor news like the Hunter Biden laptop story they spiked until after Biden won the election.

Smith College Professor Loretta Ross

For years now our colleges and universities have banned conservatives speakers. Now Smith College Professor Loretta Ross says Trump supporters must be: “treated with the same public condemnation that the Nazis received after World War II.” For Professor Ross, “The term “Nazi” is not even strong enough to convey the opprobrium and disgust human rights activists feel for those who brazenly claim they are simply patriots with different opinions.” It’s hard to believe students pay Smith $75,000 a year to learn this stuff.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley says: “Many professors admit…they are afraid to speak out… about the rising level of intolerance [for conservatives]… In over 30 years of teaching, I have never witnessed the level of intimidation at colleges and universities that we have today.”

Democrats, and some Republicans, are pushing impeachment of President Trump because of his remarks at the White House on January 6th, which they claim incited a violent takeover of the US Capitol the same day. In a column January 7th, I called on Trump to resign for the same reason, but what is the point of impeaching him after he’s gone? None I can see except spite and fear he might run again.

Now my newspaper column is affected by the leftist cancel culture. My piece last week explaining why I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and listing his accomplishments was spiked in one of the newspapers that has carried it nearly every week for decades. The Conway Daily Sun had no problem running the previous column telling Trump to resign, but the publisher claims he spiked last week’s (and others recently) because of “factual errors.” I responded that he owns the paper and he can print or not print whatever he wants, but scoffed at his pretense of political objectivity. He has agreed to discuss his claims with me face-to-face on my local Valley Vision TV show “Left & Right” February 3rd.

That should be interesting.

Working With Words and Images

This weekly column pleases some and annoys others. One of the newspapers in which it runs editorialized years ago that people either love it or hate it. Last week’s edition featured a letter from Connecticut residents who summer in Casco, Maine and describing my columns as “filled with vitriol and hate.” The writers threatened to cancel their subscription should the columns continue to appear. This week, a letter from a local woman appeared declaring the columns to be a “breath of fresh air.” She sends them to friends in Connecticut who “enjoy [my] approach on state and national issues.”

My photographs are received differently. Some people love them while others just seem indifferent. Photographs don’t generate controversy the way columns do. They either resonate with viewers or they don’t. Some people like them well enough they throw down money for enlargements to hang on their walls, but no one has yet felt compelled to express a negative opinion.

Thinking and feeling go into creating both a photograph and a column. When I see something beautiful or dramatic, I have to think about how to frame the scene — what angles to use and what settings to make on my camera and lens. Then come cropping and editing. Lastly, I must decide which photos to keep and which to discard. Columns and photographs each communicate my view of the world to others, yet some ideas expressed in the columns grate on people while images in the photos do not.

Often I need a break from writing when my brain gets tired as I struggle to find words that adequately express what’s in it. I’ll get up and walk around a bit, then return to the computer and pull up photographs to edit instead of the unfinished column. I’m using my brain again, but a different part of it. Working with images can energize me after a search for words has exhausted me.

There’s deadline pressure when writing columns every week, but there can be time pressure when taking photographs too. Walking or driving, I’ll stop and try to capture a passing scene, but by the time I have my camera in hand with the proper settings, the light has changed and the opportunity has passed. In another case, I’d been watching a nesting loon on Kezar Lake for weeks, boating to the site several times trying to be there for a photo of her chick. Last Saturday I saw that she had left the nest. I looked all around that section of the lake for her and the chick but never saw them.

Some letter-writers have declared my columns are the sole reason they buy a paper. Others fulminate against them, heaping scorn on both me for writing them and the paper for publishing them. I wonder why they don’t just skip over the column. What compels them to read it? It must be something akin to attending a horror movie or reading a Stephen King novel. Why take the time to view something you know will disturb you? Is it the adrenaline rush? Maybe they’re progressives trying to expose themselves to a conservative view — and then get so incensed they must write something scathing in opposition.

When seeing my photographs hanging somewhere, people can either can stop and look or just walk on by. Unlike angry readers, those who see my photos don’t feel compelled to share negative impressions. I’ve never gotten an email, a letter, a phone call, a text, or a comment that my photos are incendiary, hateful, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, sexist, or vitriolic.

It’s not as if all my images depict beautiful things. I have pictures of gruesome things like a hawk tearing a robin apart, an eagle ripping up a fish, an approaching thunderstorm about to snap off trees or uproot them, a gathering of angry protesters, a fight between an eagle and an osprey, and hunters looking for deer to kill. People seem to just accept these images as depictions of reality, but when I write about unsavory actions by leftist politicians or by certain protected minority groups, I’m excoriated as a hate-filled villain.

Every week I spend hours both writing and working with photographs. The extra income is nice but I do it because I like it, especially moving from one to the other. Photography takes me outside. It gets me up early to catch morning light. Never do I catch all the beauty in a scene that inspires me, but sometimes I can obtain a reasonable facsimile. Writing makes me sit down and reflect on things.

I can think of worse ways to spend my remaining time on this earth, so I guess I’ll continue.

Words and Pictures

It never comes out as good as I want, whether I'm capturing an image with my camera or describing something in writing.

Photo by Vito Acconci

My camera is always with me because I always expect to see something beautiful and/or interesting wherever I go. I’ll photograph it, but the result falls short in some way. There’s beauty there, yes, but the colors aren’t as bright or as vivid as in the actual scene. The contrast or focus isn’t as sharp. I don’t get the same feeling from the image that I got when observing the real thing.

Granddaughter Lila at 7 months

It’s the same when I finish a piece of writing. Whatever words I put together do not sufficiently express what I think or feel while I’m banging them out, so I edit. Then I edit again. Then I edit some more. If I didn’t have deadlines, the editing process would never end. The piece will improve, but never to my complete satisfaction.

From elephant journal.com

It’s one thing to record an image to evoke a feeling, but trying to accomplish that by stringing words together is another matter. Nearly every week for over a quarter century I’ve published an 800 word account of whatever was foremost in my mind at the time. Subjects vary widely and while feelings drive my picture taking, thinking more often catalyzes writing. Feelings are not absent, especially when writing about family or telling a meaningful story, but making a point about something abstract involves stepping back, thinking, and analyzing. Picking something to write about means I have some feeling about it but intensity is sometimes problematic. It can energize the writing, but it can also put analysis out of balance if the feeling is too strongly in favor of a thing or against it.

Photography and writing are both limited by perspective as well. Since my camera lens goes from wide angle at 18 millimeters to telephoto at 270 millimeters, I can record a large crowd scene or zoom into an expression on an individual face to fill the frame. I can shoot the big picture or focus on a detail. The same is true when commenting. I can opine about general trends or discuss a particular aspect of whatever’s happening. The result, when published, will gratify some and annoy others depending on the readers’ perspectives as much as my own.

The same is true of the photos I take, though less so. I and others may like a particular photo of a family member or friend, but the person who is the subject of the photo may not. Maybe the pose or a facial expression displays an aspect of personality about which others are aware but the subject is not. A photo can capture mood, and it has a degree objectivity by its very nature compared to a column. “Pictures don’t lie,” they say, but that’s not entirely true.

When I post the column on my web site, I include images of whatever the words describe. Sometimes they’re my own pictures and sometimes I borrow them from Google Images, which usually has something suitable. Browsing the site, I was surprised to discover they’d posted pictures they’d mined from my blog — which is enabled by Google. Now I don’t have any qualms about using theirs. Their archive has such a wide variety, I can find shots that portray any personage favorably, unfavorably, or something in between. Doing this kind of spin myself, I more often notice when mainstream media does it. Pictures may not lie outright, but they can distort.

My four-year-old grandson, Henry, got annoyed last week while I was photographing him as he played with his sister. “Stop doing that!” he said, angrily.

Grandson Henry: "Stop doing that!"

“What? You don’t like me taking pictures of you?”

“You don’t have to take pictures of everybody!”

“No,” I said, “I don’t. Just of the people I love.”

Grandson Luke

Later I mollified him somewhat. He likes sandwiches made with peanut butter and honey, so I proposed a deal: “How about I let you eat my honey and you let me take pictures of you?”

Granddaughter Claire

“Okay,” he said right away. We’re all good now.

Grandson Riley at Colosseum

No, I’m never completely satisfied with either images or columns, but with each I must come to a point where I have so say, “Good enough.” That I have done with over 27,000 pictures and 1200 or so columns. They’re as good as I can make them and that will have to do.

Leaning Windward

What the old man said about me was accurate. He’s been dead a while now and I’d forgotten about it, but his words have been popping back into my head a lot lately. “You have the character of the tiller,” he told me.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“You know when someone stretches way out over the windward gunnel when a sailboat leans too far? He’s trying to bring the mast upright lest the boat capsize.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve seen that.”

“That’s what you try to do in your writing.” 

He was a liberal, but more of a classical liberal than a leftist or a “progressive” as they call themselves today. He was willing to consider any idea on its merit and wasn’t dubious because it might be conservative. If he didn’t agree he would argue logically, not acrimoniously. Together we formed a political discussion group, an old-fashioned salon. For the first few years it was all men, many of them WWII vets and all somewhat left of center, I was too — then. I was the youngest member at a time when my own perspective started moving right. We met every two weeks in a library the old man had built in part of his barn.

The old man

During the ten or so years of my involvement I was still a Democrat, but the party’s movement left was accelerating. The old man saw me trying to counteract that in my writing even before I did. I had voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, but was dismayed by what he was doing and considered resigning from the Democrat Party, but the old man urged me to work from within. Our group started moving left also as new members came in and railed against Clinton’s impeachment. I began to skip meetings and eventually stopped attending altogether. Not long after, the group disbanded.

My movement right continued. I registered Republican but I was still feeling isolated as the education establishment was moving harder left along with all of New England, including Maine’s Republican Party. Some in the community began assuming that I was inculcating students with the same conservative views I expressed in my columns. I was “poisoning young minds,” they claimed. They pressured my district’s administrators, the school board, and Maine’s teacher licensing agency to discipline me and worse. My administrators knew their charges were baseless but had to respond to their complaints with an investigation. I was cleared, but being an out-of-the-closet conservative in public schools got increasingly difficult. Other leftists came after me too, which is the subject of a book I’m still working on.

Antifa

Nationwide now, acrimony dominates left-right debate and is increasing to dangerous levels — even to violent attacks by far-left "Antifa" goons on college campuses and in the streets. That’s bad enough, but what is perhaps worst of all is something The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol wrote last week:

For young Americans today, Donald Trump is the face of Republicanism and conservatism.

They don't like that face. And the danger, of course, is that they'll decide their judgment of Trump should carry over to the Republican party that nominated him and the conservative movement that mostly supports him. If he is indeed permitted to embody the party and the movement without challenge, the fortunes of both will be at the mercy of President Trump's own fortunes.

Trump’s fortunes are tanking. That scares me because I think Kristol’s analysis is on the mark. At the 41st annual convention of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists last weekend, I sat in the audience as Maureen Dowd delivered a devastatingly effective diatribe against Trump. The smart-ass Irish wit in her DNA was on full display. On Ms. Dowd’s bad side isn’t a safe place for anyone to be. Earlier that day, Manchester Union Leader publisher Joe McQuaid, a conservative, also displayed his disdain for Trump in just a couple of short remarks.

Trump and McQuaid

With majorities in the House and Senate, Republicans cannot unite behind Trump and, so far, Trump isn’t a good enough leader to bring them together. Has he got it in him to become one? I hope so, but I’m not optimistic. At this point, I’m afraid of how much more damage he’ll do to the conservative movement if he doesn’t.

In Bill Kristol, I see myself as the old man saw me thirty years ago. He’s been leaning far out over the gunnel too, trying to steer his party away from Trump. He has a bigger megaphone and might persuade more people to join him.

I’m a small-time columnist and he’s the founder and editor of a widely respected, national, conservative magazine. Can he prevent the conservative Republican ship of state from capsizing? Can he bring the mast up straight? I don't know. We’ll see.