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Sunday, April 17, 2011 - Utah Rt 12, East of Escalante UT

Desert Catfish, Dead, with Toes, Escalante UT, April 17, 2011
Desert Catfish, Dead, with Toes, Escalante UT, April 17, 2011

Dang, I did it again

You may recall I lost most of my nesting Great Blue Heron pictures a while back to that certain fuzziness caused by forgetting to turn the auto stabilization off when I had the camera on the tripod, trying my darndest to get some nice clean shots from farther away than I would have preferred.

Well, this morning I went walkabout with the camera, took some neat shots... and forgot to turn the stabilization ON. The sun was low in the sky and the shutter speed was adequate with image stabilization. But not without!

Tomorrow morning, maybe I'll go walk the route again - or maybe not. Clouds are rolling in. I think there's a storm brewing. If so the light won't be worth a darn. Darn.

Night camp

Boondocked - Utah Route 12 East of Escalante UT

Writing From the Inside Out

A young writer, if he is unknown, can be at a party and watch what everyone is doing. If he has a marveluos ear for dialog, he can wake up the next morning and remember all that was said and how it was said. He is a bird on a branch. Sees like a bird and writes books that are extraordinarily well observed. But once he is successful, especially if that happens quickly, it's as if the bird were now an emu. It cannot fly. It grows haunches and foreshoulders and a mane: lo and behold, it is a lion. And everyone is looking at the lion, including the birds. But it is a lion with the heart of a bird and the mind of a bird. So there is a terrible period when the transmogrified emu is trying to live like a lion and has little talent for it. Then the beast begins to experiment. When it runs, it now sees other animals scamper. It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others, and even longer to begin to understand human beings again. In the old days, he could write about friends, enemies, and strangers by intuition, by induction; now he puts it together by deduction. Of course, he does have more material on which to work his deductions.

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