Steven C. Sorensen – Photography and Blog
I used to post slideshows of my best photos each month until February of this year. I then stopped due to illness; bronchitis, insomnia, and, lately, pollution from Canadian wildfires. The air quality has now improved as have both my insomnia and bronchitis. I’ve been able to get out again with my camera and post a Best Of August slideshow.
I recently spent three days in a hotel while waiting for the carpet in my apartment to be replaced. The hotel was an hour closer to some of my favorite photography sites, so I went out with my camera gear rather than spending the evening cooped up in a hotel room. Here are some of the shots I captured.
Playing for Change just posted their version of Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower. It’s a spine-tingling rendition of a song with some timely lyrics:
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late
I’m on my sofa watching the season opener for the Minnesota Twins. They are in Baltimore where it’s 68° and sunny. It’s also sunny here in Stillwater but only 38°.
This is the earliest opening day ever. The season usually doesn’t open until a week into April. I think it’s being done to give the players more days off during the season.
If you can’t watch or attend a game today, you could check out John Fogerty’s* song about baseball, Centerfield.
The sun came out today
We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field
A-roundin’ third, and headed for home
It’s a brown-eyed handsome man
Anyone can understand the way I feel. . .
You know I think it’s time to give this game a ride
Just to hit the ball and touch ’em all
A moment in the sun
(pop) It’s-a gone
And you can tell that one goodbye!
* John Fogerty, once lead singer and guitarist of Creedence Clearwater Revival
I’m ill; have been for two months. Lying in bed with my CPAP mask helping my lungs do their job.
I can feel the congestion, like a sore throat in my lungs; feel the tiredness that is sometimes overwhelming.
But . . .
I’m enjoying this moment.
My bedroom is a pleasant room.
It’s spring even though it snowed overnight. Now it’s early afternoon and the snow has melted.
Windows are wide open. I can feel the cool, fresh spring air.
I hear the birds: a woodpecker hammering, sparrows chattering, a cardinal loudly defending his territory.
Out of my other ear I’m listening to My Top Rated iTunes playlist.
I hear this lyric from Papa Dukie and the Mud People:
Love is a beautiful thing
I can’t wait to see what the new day brings. . .
Make you wanna dance, and cry, and
Laugh, and sing
Nananana…make you wanna holler
Nananana…down by the river
Nananana…behind the levee
I actually live down by the river and behind the levee. I haven’t been down there lately ’cause I can’t lick this bronchitis. So I just keep doin’ what I can.
Enjoy the good moments when they come.
This is my least-favorite time of year. Once the calendar tells me it’s spring, I expect blues skies and warm air. I usually get winter storms. I never learn that here in Minnesota we can’t expect winter to leave for good until well into April.
So, to counter any depression-type blues caused by the lingering winter, I’ve posted some photos featuring blue-skies-type blues.
WordPress tells me that they no longer support the theme I’ve used for years for this blog. So I have to switch. While I’m in the midst of re-designing, the blog may sometimes not look or behave well. I hope to get everything straightened out before too long.
I’ve compiled my favorite photos from January in a YouTube video.
The GoodLyrics from the MLK Song:
Well it really doesn’t matter most of the deeds I’ve done
It really doesn’t matter the prizes I may have won
I’d like for somebody to say I tried to love someone
When I have to meet my dayIn the crawl for justice
I helped somebody run
In the walk for the hungry
I fed someone
And in the march for peace
Tell them I played the drum
Mavis Staples gives the lyrics much greater emotional impact.
Buddy Guy takes the lead on “Skin Deep“, a song in similar vein produced by Playing For Change. He’s joined by more than 50 other musicians spread across the U.S. in this song that tells us that “Underneath We Are All the Same.” The video starts with a quote from Martin Luther King.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness.
Only light can do that.
This is very, very ugly. Dodge Ram Trucks using an inspirational, Martin Luther King speech to sell trucks in a Super Bowl commercial. What’s next, using the Sermon on the Mount to sell mini-vans?
Listen to it here and try to ignore the commercial bits. The speech is uplifting: Dodge Ram Superbowl Commercial
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A common bit of dialogue in the English-speaking world:
Hey, Joe, how are you?
I’m fine, thanks, What about you?
I’m fine too.
Now that the two have gotten the preliminaries out of the way, they can proceed to having a good talk.
I’ve lately been trying to find another way to answer the question “How are you?”; some version of which is heard in just about every meeting of two people. If I took the time to answer the question truthfully it would take twenty minutes and be boring and depressing. Does anyone actually want to know the truth? My niece says she does.
My most recent ploy is to use phrases borrowed from song lyrics. Here are the two phrases I’ve tried thus far.
The first is from Drunk As a Skunk ¹ off the album Griot Blues by Mighty Mo Rogers and Baba Sissoko. The song starts with a one-sided conversation between Baba and Mo, then poses an eternal question, “I’m in love and what can I do?” Another good line spoken by Mo just before the end of the song: “She’s breakin’ my heart, but it’s a good break.” The line I’ve tried to use when asked how I am is:
If it gets any worse, I’ll be in a hearse.
This hasn’t worked so well. It just invites more questions, and I quickly have to admit that I’m not serious, and that I just wanted to use the lyric in a conversation.
The second line is from Ghost Woman Blues ² from the album Smart Flesh by The Low Anthem.
I ain’t no lamp, but my wick is burning low.
This also doesn’t work so well. It just causes worry on the part of the other person and a desire to know more about why I’m so down; not to mention tons of advice on what I should do to fight off my black dogs of depression and insomnia.
I think I need to look for some lyrics that are more upbeat. Maybe something from The Sound Of Music. Someone asks me how I am and I reply
The hills are alive with the sound of music.
I can try it but somehow I don’t think it will work.
¹ Listen to the song here: Drunk As a Skunk
² Listen to the song here: Ghost Woman Blues
I’ve compiled my favorite photos from December in a video that is available on YouTube.
Amazon just sent me, “a valued member of Amazon Prime”, an e-mail telling me they are raising the price for Prime from $10.99 to $12.99. Two dollars a month doesn’t seem like much, but it’s an 18% increase. How does Amazon justify an 18% increase when inflation has been negligible for years and Amazon has been raking in the profits? Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is now the richest person in the world. Money Magazine estimates his net worth at a paltry $90.6 billion.
Amazon is one of the so-called Frightful Five along with Facebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Farhad Manjoo writes about
. . . the core of the Frightful Five’s indomitability. They have each built several enormous technologies that are central to just about everything we do with computers. In tech jargon, they own many of the world’s most valuable “platforms” — the basic building blocks on which every other business, even would-be competitors, depend.
These platforms are inescapable; you may opt out of one or two of them, but together, they form a gilded mesh blanketing the entire economy.
So why is [many expletives deleted] Amazon demanding from me, just an old schmuck on a fixed income, an extra two dollars a month?
Should I cancel or just roll over in a submissive posture and accept the increase?
Any reasonably coherent answers will be appreciated.
The first beautiful place is next to a glacier in the Arctic, with beautiful music done by Ludovico Einaudi. The video was put together by Greenpeace and voicesforthearctic.org. Notice how Ludovico gasps in surprise at the beginning of the video when startled by falling ice . No trick photography in this video – He is there.
Then there is Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. 2CELLOS, Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser, perform a Mumford & Sons song.
Enjoy this beautiful music and then do everything you can to help protect the wonderful places on our beautiful planet, the only one we’ve got.
Countries, societies, people all over the world want to value, treasure, and protect our beautiful, natural places whether in the Arctic, a National Park in Croatia, or Bears Ears National Monument in Utah . We in the United States have a president and an administration that do not share these values. They want to remove protections so that our natural heritage can be exploited for financial gain by a few grasping individuals and corporations. Don’t let them steal what is ours.
I’ve compiled my favorite photos from November in a video that is available on YouTube.
Sorry, this isn’t about the Disney movie, it’s about my day out in the cold working on my project to photograph the Chippewa River from source to end. It was cold: 2° F with a wind chill of -10°. I was not uncomfortable because I dressed for the weather. (I recently purchased what I suspect was the last pair of XXL long johns in Stillwater. I admit my outfit was not very fashionable, but it worked.) The only problem was my hands. I had to take off my choppers to take photos. In areas exposed to the wind, I could only manage two or three shots until my hands became too numb to operate the camera.
When I stood still, all I could hear was the wind hissing through the dry grass and the river ice occasionally booming and popping. When I walked, I heard the fresh snow squeaking beneath my boots and the old, frozen boards of the bridge deck creaking and snapping under my weight. I didn’t see another soul all afternoon.
Some of the lyrics from the song “Give God the Blues” by Shawn Mullins off the album Mercyland: Hymns For the Rest Of Us.
God don’t hate the Muslims
God don’t hate the Jews
God don’t hate the Christians
But we all give God the bluesGod don’t hate the atheists
The Buddhists or the Hindus
God loves everybody
But we all give God the bluesGod ain’t no Republican
He ain’t no Democrat
He ain’t even Independent
God’s above all thatBigger than religion
He’s got a better plan
The sign says, “God’s gone fishing
For the soul of every man”God don’t hate the Muslims
God don’t hate the Jews
God don’t hate the Christians
But we all give God the bluesAnd God don’t hate the atheists
The Buddhists or the Hindus
God loves everybody
But we all give God the blues
The entire Mercyland album is well worth checking out. It’s a compilation with various artists: Emmy Lou Harris, The Civil Wars, The North Mississippi Allstars, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, and others, all providing hymns a bit different from those you hear in church.
I’ve been swamped in pessimism lately; pessimism that threatens to become cynicism. The problem is that I don’t want to be either a pessimist or a cynic, but I thought that all the evidence I was seeing or hearing about the world today suggested that pessimism was justified. Is it? Even if it is justified, would it be possible to somehow escape the clutches of pessimism?
I talked to my good friend Nick, the potter and bartender. He wisely pointed out that pessimism leads nowhere and produces nothing except despair. He helped me realize that even though intellectually I was wallowing in pessimism, I’m living as if I were an optimist – doing new things, seeking new challenges, always trying to develop my skills and educate myself.
Then, I stumbled across three things this morning.
First was Andrew Sullivan’s weekly long read in the New York magazine, “Trump’s First Year Has Been a Disaster. Here’s Why I Have Hope.” Sullivan points out that “so many . . . indicators in the world are remarkably good right now.”
In a similar vein, Kevin Drum, who blogs for Mother Jones, posted this morning: “I’m Just a Big Ol’ Optimist About the Future of America Under Donald Trump.” Kevin starts
I’ve been meaning to weigh in on the latest raft of pieces about the decline of American democracy, the decline of Western liberalism, the decline of globalism, and the decline of everything else in the era of Trump. In a nutshell, I’m far more optimistic than most of the people writing about this. Unfortunately, I haven’t really thought the whole thing through rigorously enough to make a little essay out of it.
Actually, you might consider that good news. However, I do want to lay down a few markers. Here they are:
Read both these articles for welcome counterbalance to the doom and gloom in much of today’s news. (Note that neither article is by a Trump or Republican loyalist.)
My other stumble this morning was on YouTube where I stumbled on The Artist Series, videos produced by The Art of Photography. They are each about fifteen minutes long and are interviews with outstanding photographers. I watched the one with Keith Carter. Carter talks about the death of his wife at the end of an illness. Her last words after looking out the window of their home from her death-bed were “What a Beautiful World This Is.”
After watching that video, how can one possibly remain a pessimist, much less a cynic?
First, check out these songs:
A Change Is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke
Waiting On the World To Change – John Mayer
People Get Ready – The Impressions
The Times They Are a Changin’ – a Dylan song beautifully sung by Tracy Chapman
then consider:
Care more for what you do than what you have
Love not hate
Respect all other human beings, no qualifications
Nurture our planet, its air, water, soil, plants, and all its inhabitants
Observe the Golden Rule; it works
Change is gonna come from each one of us. As Red Green would say, “We’re all in this together.” Stay positive and keep the faith.
Happy New Year and best wishes to all during 2018.
A few years ago I took a photo of two, left-hand-turn signs in a field of fresh snow against a cloudless blue sky. It’s one of my favorite photos. In the intervening years, left-hand-turn signs have continued to grab my attention until now I have a small gallery of such photos.
I changed this site’s theme after leaning I was using an unsupported theme. Imagine my surprise when I found out – just now – that the new theme I selected and customized is also an out-of-date theme. Frustrating!
