If you read my 2024 wrap-up post–which if you didn’t, why not, and hey, it’s right here, go read it and come back!–you noted that I decided to defer any photography in that post in favor of a separate one, because otherwise the original post would have become way too long. Well, it’s time, folks!
First, here are my favorite self-portraits of 2024. In a way, they do all look kinda similar, I must admit….
Charles Burchfield Nature and Art Center
Orchard Park Railroad Station
Chestnut Ridge Park
Overalls look cool from the back, too!
My “Renaissance Faire” fit for 2024!
Now, more general photos. But first, how did 2024 go for me, photographically? I think it went very, very well. I can only remember one or two outings that didn’t go terribly well, and that’s because the light on each venture was…disappointing. That’s to be expected, honestly, and I’m still trying to figure out my approach here. Some photographers won’t even venture out if the light isn’t great, while I am definitely more tilted currently toward “Meh, go out anyway, maybe you get an image or two you can do something with, and even failing that, being out is its own reward.” Honestly it’s not the light that tends to dissuade me from going out, it’s the weather. I can’t really be out shooting a lot if there’s precipitation (Miranda, my Lumix FZ1000ii, has no weather-sealing), and if it’s extremely cold or very windy, it just isn’t pleasant.
I’ve most definitely become more skilled with the technical aspects of photography, which was the whole goal all along when I bought Miranda in the first place. I’m learning more and more about composition and exposure, and just what all those dials and buttons on the camera actually do. And the upshot of that is learning to make better photographs, now that I’m finally to the point of having a solid foundation of the techniques involved. For a while, any really good photos I got were more a matter of luck than anything else, but now I’m starting to be able to visualize and compose my shots before I ever aim the camera.
Another couple years, and I think I’ll be able to start getting really good at this!
(I think I will write a longer-form exploration of my year in photography on the Substack.)
Anyway, here’s a short selection of my favorite photos from 2024. I went through all of my photos from last year and picked out a whole bunch of favorites which I gathered into this Flickr album, for a total of 50-some shots. (Maybe 49 or 50, and then add in the self-pics above.) I’m not reproducing all of those photos here, because who wants to scroll through 50 photos, but these are representative. And at bottom is my favorite shot of the entire year. All of these were edited either with Snapseed (for photos taken on my phone) or Lightroom (for photos taken on Miranda…I also started shooting RAW in 2024).
Here we go! I’m going to group these by photography genre.
Nature/Landscape/Wildlife
I’m not sure what I’d call myself when it comes to these three related, but distinct, genres. I think “Nature” is probably the best descriptive term to what I do, because, well, I shoot anything and everything that captures my eye. I’m just as likely to seek out and shoot a spectacular vista as I am to capture a small waterfall on a stream in the woods that’s not even big enough to have a name on the map. As far as wildlife goes, I like shooting it–but I don’t have anywhere near the right equipment to really get into making wildlife photos, and I also don’t have anywhere near the knowledge the good wildlife photographers need. All of my best wildlife shots to date are birds, and they’re almost exclusively of birds taken near local waterways where there’s lots of people and walking paths and boats. Why is that? Because the birds who hang out in such places generally aren’t terrified of humans and are easier to predict and photograph.
You’ll also notice throughout, in many of my genres, that “People walking away from me” is a common thread. I suspect this is all part-and-parcel of my fascination with street photography and my slow progress at it…but more on that below.
Chestnut Ridge
Chestnut Ridge. This waterfall is very small; the total drop is probably all of three or four feet.
Pure luck! I barely registered that a bird was flying over, so I aimed Miranda and hit the shutter. I didn’t realize it was an eagle until I got home and reviewed that day’s shots on my computer.
A strong contender for my favorite shot of the year. I learned some stuff in making this one. I may discuss it in a video!
It’s amazing to me that I owned Miranda for about 15 months before I ever ventured up to Niagara Falls with her.
Golden hour at the Outer Harbor. I took a lot of good bird-in-flight shots that evening.
Streetscapes/Infrastructure
My favorite genre may well be what’s called “Street Photography”, though I’m still not entirely sure what qualifies as street photography and what does not. Does street photography require people to be present? Does it have to be an urban setting? Is it all candid, or can it sometimes be posed or at least prompted? I’m honestly not sure. I love photographing people doing interesting things, but I also love photographing buildings and architecture and roads and also infrastructure; the way things are made tends to fascinate me. So, all of this falls under that general view. My personal preferred term is Streetscapes, because it echoes Landscapes and because I think it generally sounds a bit more inclusive than Street photography.
Umbrella mobile at the Botanical Gardens.
Woman with phone, Highland Park, Rochester, NY. Taken during the Lilac Festival. She was sitting here talking into her phone. I don’t have any idea if she was on a call or recording a Tiktok or what. I like photographing people doing things. Doesn’t matter if I know what they’re doing.
Person walking along the Outer Harbor. I like the giant grain elevator as backdrop. Also, this photo was my first test-case for Lightroom’s “Remove objects” tool. Originally there were two big, ugly garbage cans marring the shot. Not there aren’t!
Acrobatics at the Sterling Renaissance Festival
Below a power-line tower, looking straight up.
Buffalo Metro Rail train arriving at the station. This is inspired by Kenneth Hines Jr., a favorite photographer and content creator online. He loves subways and public transport and trains and he always takes wonderful photos of trains in motion (or not).
The Giacomo, Niagara Falls, NY
Underside of the observation platform, Niagara Falls State Park, NY
Candid, through foliage. I’ve been practicing my framing skills.
Grain elevator at golden hour. I’m telling you, folks, Buffalo has some of the best sunsets anywhere.
Finally, you gotta get the dogs, because…dogs.
(Dogs are also great practice for wildlife action photography, especially for working with shutter speed and using burst-mode!)
Big stretch!
And here, finally, is my favorite photo of the year. I thought it would be harder to choose, but for some reason, this one just registers with me. I love that I was able to capture this…even if I may have done something slightly, um, less-than-legal to do it.
What happened was this: I spent a Sunday morning shooting at the Buffalo Outer Harbor, but then when I was done, I decided to venture into the city just to see if I could find any inspiration. So I turned onto NY 5 heading east, which in this case takes you up and over the Buffalo Skyway, a big concrete bridge that crosses the Buffalo River and the ship canal area before descending again into downtown. (There’s been a lot of debate in recent years about whether or not the Skyway should be demolished, since it theoretically hurts waterfront development to have this big bridge towering over everything. I personally think that of all the problems facing Buffalo that one is really far down the list, and anyway, I like the drive over the bridge.)
The light that day wasn’t terrific, but I had a nice clear view of downtown looming ahead of me…and a glance at the rear-view mirror revealed that there was literally nobody behind me for at least half a mile. And also, I had not turned off Miranda, so the plan was simple: slow to a crawl on the skyway, grab Miranda and snap a photo of Downtown Buffalo, and then resume acting, well, normal.
It went off perfectly. A bit of processing in Lightroom later, and voila:
Downtown Buffalo, NY, as seen from the apex of the Buffalo Skyway.
Yes, it was a really good year for me and my camera. Here’s hoping for even better returns in 2025!
(Every year now, social media around the 716 lights up on the anniversary of the Bills-Oilers wildcard playoff game in January 1993, almost always simply called “The Comeback Game”. I wrote these thoughts a couple years ago when that record comeback was finally exceeded. I’ve been thinking a lot, more recently, about the degree to which numbers have taken over sport discourse in this country, and some of these thoughts might be pertinent to the current “race” for the NFL MVP award.)
From The West Wing, Season Three, “Stirred”:
VICE-PRESIDENT HOYNES: I heard you had Caps tickets.
SAM: Yes, sir.
HOYNES: How was the game?
SAM: Not very good.
HOYNES: Have you ever seen a good hockey game?
SAM: No.
HOYNES: Me neither. I love sports, I just can’t get next to hockey. See, I think Americans like to savor situations: One down, bottom of the ninth, one run game, first and third, left handed batter, right hand reliever, infield at double play depth, here’s the pitch. But scoring in hockey seems to come out of nowhere! The play-by-play guy is always shocked. “LePeiter passes to Huckenchuck who skates past the blue line. Huckenchuck, of course, was traded from Winnipeg for a case of Labatts after sitting out last season with–Oh my God, he scores!”
A warning for those who don’t care about football: Football blathering ahead!
In the Wild-Card weekend following the 1992 NFL season, the Buffalo Bills famously fell behind by 32 points, 35-3, to the Houston Oilers before coming back to eventually win the game in overtime, 41-38. The comeback was the greatest in NFL history…until just a few weeks ago, when the Minnesota Vikings fell behind 33-0 to the Indianapolis Colts before coming back to win, 39-36. So the Vikings now hold the record for the greatest NFL comeback of all time.
But…do they?
Well, obviously in one very key sense, yes, they do. The numbers don’t lie: a 33-point deficit is greater than a 32-point deficit. And much of the “debate” that followed as to whether this was really the greatest comeback of all time centered on Buffalo fans who just don’t want what’s probably their franchise’s greatest singular on-field accomplishment erased. That’s the problem with records like that: every record can be erased, or pushed to second place, eventually. Championships are forever, but records are transitory, and a record that stands for 30 years before being pushed to second place is still the second-place record. So yeah, I get it.
But…that’s a pretty starkly numerical way of looking at things, isn’t it?
You can’t escape numbers in sports. Numbers are bound up in sports. They are inescapable…probably because numbers are inescapable in life, but really, numbers are sometimes everything in sports. Tom Brady’s 7 Super Bowl rings, Nolan Ryan’s 7 no-hitters. Ted Williams, last guy to hit .400. The idea then shapes out that numbers, more than anything else, tell us everything about what happens on the field. I remember quoting Fox Mulder from The X-Files a while back, talking about how he can look up a fifty-year-old box score in a yellowing newspaper and know exactly what happened on the field that day, all because of the numbers captured in that box score.
But…can he?
I mean, he can, to a certain degree. But the numbers don’t tell everything.
You can’t look at a box score and tell how blue the sky was that day, or what it smelled like in the park because maybe the breeze was coming from the lake or the industrial park the other way (in Buffalo, with the cereal plants downtown, it often smells of Cheerios). A box score won’t tell you how scuffed up the first baseman’s jersey is after several close plays, or how the catcher is still trying to work off the gimpy ankle from that play at the plate last Tuesday night. The box score won’t tell you the crowd’s mood: Are they giddy and jubilant, or are they kind of grumblingly negative because the team’s having a rough season and they’re sarcastically cheering the guy hitting .197 who just managed to leg out a weak grounder safely to first?
The box score won’t tell you if the players are attacking an early season game with vigor, or if they are visibly just playing out the last few weeks of the schedule, mired in fifth place and just wanting nothing more than to go home and rest for about a month. The box score will tell you that a particular player homered in the sixth, but it won’t tell you that he was on a hot streak and he came up against a tiring pitcher who probably should have already been pulled and who had of late been surrendering homers to right-handed hitters at a surprising rate for a guy who, up to a few weeks before, had been almost unhittable.
Numbers are great and important and useful…but they are also a flattening force, a force that tends to flatten out story. A baseball player who collects more than 3000 career hits is almost guaranteed a spot in the Hall of Fame…but is that all that player does? All I really know about Robin Yount is that he hat 3000 hits in his career. That’s numbers: for me they reduce a Hall of Fame player to a guy who had roughly 150 hits a year over his 20-year career.
But, what if I ask a person who has been a Milwaukee Brewers fan their whole life, “Hey! Tell me about Robin Yount?” Then, I’m not going to hear about 3000 hits. Then, I’m going to hear stories.
Sport isn’t just numbers, it’s also stories. I think that’s why we follow sport so adamantly as a species–well, partly, anyway. I don’t want to discount numbers, after all. But numbers aren’t the whole story.
This suggests to me that there’s another kind of greatness at play here, when we talk about “Greatest Comebacks”: situational greatness, we can call it. Or storytelling greatness? The New England Patriots trailed the Atlanta Falcons 28-3 a few years back in the Super Bowl–and they came back to win it. That’s a 25-point comeback, still a full touchdown “less” than the Bills’ against the Oilers…but 25 points down in the Super Bowl? You have to give that some special consideration, I think, because comebacks just don’t happen in the Super Bowl. The previous record for biggest comeback in a Super Bowl had only been 10 points. That means something.
And it also means something that the Bills’ comeback against the Oilers was a playoff game, at home, after a season that had been a bit of a struggle, when the Bills were banged up and missing several starters (including their quarterback and running back), and had been beaten soundly just the week before by that very same Oilers team. The Vikings’ comeback? A regular season game, at home, relatively healthy, against one the worst teams in the NFL that built its lead on a pile of field goals. The box score will tell you the Vikings overcame the biggest numerical point deficit in an NFL game to date. The box score won’t tell you the other stuff, and the other stuff is what we talk about when we sit over a beer and discuss old sports memories.
So. Is the Vikings comeback the greatest in history? Numerically, yes. Absolutely. Thirty-three points is more than thirty-two points.
But I doubt as many people will still be talking about that game thirty years from now as are still talking about that game in January 1993 when a backup quarterback erased a 32-point deficit in a playoff game.
(Credit for West Wing quote. Disclaimer: I do not endorse the fictional Vice President’s opinion of hockey.)
“Self Portrait”, Ann Clark. Tufted wool, cotton, and silk.
Across the street from the Buffalo AKG Museum stands the Burchfield Penney Art Center. This is a museum dedicated to the works of Charles Burchfield and the WNY art community in general. We finally visited this lovely museum for the first time several weeks ago.
Posted inOn Art|TaggedArt|Comments Off on From the Burchfield Penney
This feature was hibernating through December, what with the Daily Dose of Christmas, but we’re back now! We’ll start with observing the bicentennial of German composer Anton Bruckner, who was born in 1824.
So yeah, we missed it. Oops.
I like Bruckner, but I’ve never fully entered his sound world beyond listening to his symphonies here and there. Bruckner wrote massive symphonies, some of which exceed an hour of length, and his sound is such that it often sounds as if he really intended to write for the organ rather than the orchestra. In fact, his writing for organ (he was a professional organist himself for a time) influenced his approach to orchestration, to the point that each of his symphonies is written for almost an identical complement of orchestra musicians, and none call for vocal input in any way.
Bruckner was a deeply spiritual man who wrote a good deal of sacred music in addition to the symphonies that make up the most famous part of his output. His general sound has been described as “Cathedral-like”, and though he was a deep admirer of Richard Wagner, there really isn’t much direct influence to be found. However, hearing Wagner provided Bruckner the inspiration he needed to work much more seriously at his own composing, after which his own work flowered. Bruckner enjoyed little success as a composer during his life, but his stature climbed greatly after his passing.
Today, Bruckner can be a “take him or leave him” kind of composer. For some, his works are simply too long-winded, with too little inspiration to sustain them, for enjoyable listening. I personally find his symphonies highly enjoyable, but it takes a special mood. Anton Bruckner, alas, is not for me in terms of every day listening.
Hardly all of his work is towering organ-like symphonies, though. He wrote a great deal of sacred vocal music, and that’s what I’m featuring today. This is a motet called “Locus Iste”, which Bruckner wrote for the dedication of a new cathedral in Linz, Austria. Listening to this, it’s not hard at all to hear the line connecting Bruckner to earlier sacred music masters like Bach, and even farther beyond. The motet is, after all, one of the oldest forms in Western music.
A poem by JRR Tolkien. This appears in The Fellowship of the Ring, recited by Bilbo just after he has given Frodo his old sword and his old shirt of mithril. Remember that when Bilbo left The Shire, early in the book, it was in hopes of venturing far and wide again, perhaps as far as Laketown and the Lonely Mountain again, places he had visited in his earlier adventures. But once he was past the influence of the One Ring, all of his accumulated years caught up with him and he lived out most of his old age as a guest in Rivendell.
This poem speaks to me a little more each time I encounter it, and I consider this any time anyone questions JRRT’s skill as a writer.
Posted inOn Poetry|Taggedpoetry|Comments Off on “Returning feet and voices at the door”
It’s the end of 2024 (or even the beginning of 2025, depending on when I get this finished; I’m starting to write it on the 29th, but this thing often takes me a few days to cobble together. To sum up my 2024 briefly: it was a strange year, not really great but not all that bad either, at least personally. But it was a year where I spent an awful lot of time feeling like I was somehow in between places I needed to be. Strange feelings, this year. Almost like an identity crisis, or maybe it’s a mid-life thing going on–which seems a bit odd, since I’m 53 now and I should be beyond the mid-life thing, shouldn’t I?
Anyway, more on the year that was below. First, my usual roster of pieces I wrote here that I enjoyed. I was wondering how to best indicate which posts in this list are more photo-centric than others, since 2024 saw me dig even deeper into photography as an artistic and creative outlet, and I have decided that I will indicate those posts with italics.
I’m slightly embarrassed by this: I started two posts in January, one for capsule reviews of each book I read in 2024, and the other with the same idea but for movies. And I did fine for half the year! Here’s the post for books though July 1, and here’s the movies post. Then…I dropped the ball on this badly for the second half, to the point that I’m not even going to attempt recreating them at this point. I’m going to try again this coming year. We’ll see. I’m honestly annoyed at myself for this, because I read and watched some really good stuff in the back half of this year, quite a bit of which should have had notice in this space.
I am going to make a separate post containing favorite photos of mine from the year gone by, but that’s going to be separate. Otherwise you’d be here scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
So now, on with the annual quiz:
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions never change much: “Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music.” To this I have added: “Take lots of photos!” Which is something I’ve always done, but I need to reflect my new focus on photography.
So, how did I do? Not bad, in terms of reading and photography. Writing, though…this was tough. 2024 was a struggle for me as a writer, to the point that I struggled with my actual identity as a writer. It wasn’t Writers Block, it was…do I still even want to do this? I delved more into those thoughts and feelings in a post linked above.
Where am I now? Well, I think now it’s a matter of finding some balance in all this stuff as not just a writer, not just a photographer, but as a content creator. I think that’s where I’m heading, and I’m going to lean hard into this in 2025. I’m not getting any younger, after all. I did start making video content in 2024 (check out my YouTube channel!), though I didn’t get as much done there as I wanted to; one thing I’m doing now is putting together a strategy for that sort of thing in 2025.
As far as eating healthier, enh…maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. There’s always room to improve there, I suppose.
Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.
Did anyone close to you die?
No.
But…with Mom dying in November of 2023, it still feels like someone close to me died in 2024. It was a hard year, with that hanging over me the entire time.
And…well. Dad is…not gone yet.
What countries did you visit?
Just America. Here’s hoping we still can leave the country in the future.
What would you like to have in 2025 that you lacked in 2024?
A better sense of who I am right now. I think I’m starting to figure it out. Seems awfully late in life for a midlife crisis, but here we are.
Also, another year gone by without getting hit in the face with a pie. What am I doing!!!
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Developing my photography skills. This was the real goal I had for this year, and I most certainly got that done. In fact, that’s going to have a post of its own, sometime in the first week of 2025. In a year when a lot felt…off, somehow, including my literary work, photography is the one thing that felt absolutely right.
I also did start doing video work, though my efforts were halting…but they were there. I did some of the work. I got a bit more comfortable doing my thing in front of the camera, which is huge. I have high hopes for more consistency in that realm in 2025.
Oh, and I started using Lightroom for photo editing.
What was your biggest failure?
I don’t think it was a failure, really, but I had to do a lot of grappling and introspection around my identity as a writer. There was a lot to work through. I only think of this as a “failure” inasmuch as an awful lot of time got spent not writing that could have been spent actually writing. But sometimes you have to spend the time the way the time needs to be spent.
What was the best thing you bought?
If you really want to get technical, it’s not a thing I bought in 2024; it was a Christmas present for The Wife and myself in 2023. But 2024 is when we started using it: a Contributing membership in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Not only is the museum itself an amazing place and we love going there, but this level of membership gives us free admission to other museums all over the country and even other countries. We’ve taken advantage of that benefit just a little, but just you wait, folks. Just you wait.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Sigh. A year ago I wrote this in answer to this very question: American voters do seem to be less-than-sold on the creeping fascist behavior of the Republican Party, though.
Let me just say that this year has not left me in a celebratory mood. I have said a number of times that I’m bullish on humanity, but I am much less so on America, and nothing I saw in 2024 gives me pause to reconsider that stance.
So let me cite one thing that has brought unvarnished joy to Buffalo, at least: Josh Allen. It boggles my mind to think that there are people walking the earth who dislike this man.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
I’ve been saying “Republicans” for years now, but this year? It’s the American people. Everything that is about to happen will do so because we collectively decided that it should.
Where did most of your money go?
Food, booze, and honestly? That’s about it! Paying down bills, too. This was not a big year for consumption. I bought very few books in 2024, because my focus was on reading some of my huge library for once (and supporting my local huge library). I did buy some overalls this year, because hey, I’m still a collector.
What did you get really excited about?
Photography. I had some amazing days spent doing photography this year, and the art has started to really shift and impact how I look at the world.
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
I don’t know. I’m definitely calmer, though. That’s something.
Thinner or fatter?
I’m pretty sure I gained a bit of weight. Not a lot, but just enough that I know it’s time to get some focus going in the other direction.
Richer or poorer?
Richer, but not by a lot. I have hopes and goals, though.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Even more photography! And I went through a lengthy reading slump in late summer and early fall. That wasn’t fun.
And zero pies in my face. I have got to get some of that scheduled for 2025.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating junk food. There were times when it was way too easy.
How did you spend Christmas?
Just the three of us: myself, The Wife, and The Daughter.
It was actually our second Christmas since Mom died, but she died in November of 2023. The feelings were still fresh and raw, and the activities were still going on, and everything was still a whirlwind last year. This year is the first one where the reality has had a chance to settle in: the traditions are just memories now, the voices and the laughter are only in my mind. I thought about that a lot this year.
Did you fall in love in 2024?
I wonder what the official count is on times I looked over at The Wife this year and thought, “Wow….”
How many one-night stands?
I always think I should just delete this question, and yet, here it is, every year.
What was your favorite TV program?
The Repair Shop marches on. We also attended upon the newest season of Bridgerton, and we found ourselves caught up in the flannel-clad soap opera of Virgin River, which is a lot of fun if you want a flannel-clad soap opera. (Nobody in it wears overalls, though! This I do not get.)
Food shows continue to make us happy: chief among those are Somebody Feed Phil and Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, which are both food-based travel shows (or are they travel-based food shows?). Both approach the world with wonder and love, and the Ramsay show is especially terrific because he ventures to places that aren’t the “usual suspects” of the food world. He did an amazing episode in the most recent season in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and now I actually want to go there.
It just occurred to me that I should mention YouTubers that I like in this space, but I think I’ll save that for another post, or maybe the Substack.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
If you’re a Republican who supported the incoming President, and I learned your name this year, guess what.
What was the best book you read?
I’m on Goodreads, by the way, if you want to see my actual reading rosters for this (or any other) year! I know that mostly we’re down on Goodreads, and many are moving to something else, but I’m lazy and Goodreads works for me. All I want is something where I can look up if I’ve read a book (if I don’t remember it) and see a little of what I thought of it. My “reviews” there aren’t really even reviews, honestly; other readers looking at my blurbs to see if they might like a book might not find me terribly useful as a resource.
But here are a few books I liked a great deal:
Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created NANCY, Bill Griffith The Innocent Wayfaring, Margaret Chute Lost Spells, Robert MacFarlane Kind of a Big Deal: How Anchorman Stayed Classy and Became the Most Iconic Comedy of the Twenty-First Century, Saul Austerlitz The Sun Over The Mountains: A Story of Hope, Healing and Restoration, Suzie Fletcher
I also started reading through the Ian Fleming James Bond novels (part of a possible future project) and a Guy Gavriel Kay re-read, of which I have thus far only re-read The Fionavar Tapestry.
What was your greatest musical discovery?
I’ve known about The Killers for years, but this year I really started listening to them. (And I did so before “Mr. Brightside” became an improbable stadium anthem for the Buffalo Bills.)
What did you want and get?
Time shooting photos.
What did you want and not get?
A nation where fascism is not a tolerable option for the majority of voters.
What were your favorite films of this year?
I loved Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, La La Land, and Woman of the Hour.
What did you do on your birthday?
We made our annual trip to Ithaca, and a great time was had by all.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2024?
It’s just all-overalls, all-the-time now. I also added a ballcap to my hat collection, which now numbers…two. Go figure!
What kept you sane?
Long walks with the camera. Petting dogs. Good food and drink. Museums and the Botanical gardens. Reading. Music. I suggest “burying myself in art” is going to be more and more of a thing now.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I already mentioned Josh Allen, so I’ll mention Josh Allen.
What political issue stirred you the most?
Abortion, climate change, and America’s ongoing flirtation with shitcanning democracy.
Who did you miss?
My mother.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2024:
I always recycle this, plus some things I added last year:
Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!
To this I’d add: The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.
And, via Letterkenny: “More hands makes less work!”, and “Pitter-patter, let’s get at ‘er!”
For 2024, I would add: Take pictures. Lots of pictures. And if all you have is the camera on your phone, who cares? Take the pictures!
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:
I’m going to defer this one to my Photography Wrap-up post, which should be along sometime soon.
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I mentioned The Killers above as my big “musical discovery” of the year. I tried to–and did!–listen to a lot more new and unfamiliar music this year, but one album I kept returning to was the live album recorded from a Killers concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It just sounds like it was a fantastic show, and I love the band’s sound: optimistic technopop, is how I’d describe it. Or, to quote Mr. Clark, “It’s got a great beat and you can dance to it.”
Anyway, I waffled on which Killers song to mention here. Their biggest hit, I think, is “Mr. Brightside”, which has more recently become an unofficial stadium anthem for the Buffalo Bills. They play the song at the stadium and put the lyrics on the SuperJumboTron and the whole stadium sings it. We were out walking the dogs one night (I think it was the Chiefs game), and the weather and the winds were such that it was one of those nights when we can hear the stadium like we’re there, and let me tell you, 70,000 happy Bills fans singing “Mr. Brightside” is a hell of a thing.
But no, I’m going to go with the song that’s something of an anthem for me, personally. It’s the song that leads off that album: “Human”.
I did my best to notice When the call came down the line Up to the platform of surrender I was brought, but I was kind And sometimes I get nervous When I see an open door Close your eyes Clear your heart Cut the cord
Are we human Or are we dancer? My sign is vital My hands are cold And I’m on my knees Looking for the answer Are we human Or are we dancer?
Pay my respects to grace and virtue Send my condolences to good Give my regards to soul and romance They always did the best they could And so long to devotion You taught me everything I know Wave goodbye Wish me well You’ve gotta let me go
Are we human Or are we dancer? My sign is vital My hands are cold And I’m on my knees Looking for the answer Are we human Or are we dancer?
Will your system be alright When you dream of home tonight? There is no message we’re receiving Let me know, is your heart still beating?
Are we human Or are we dancer? My sign is vital My hands are cold And I’m on my knees Looking for the answer Are we human Or are we dancer.
So, that’s 2024. I don’t have great feelings about 2025, if I’m being totally honest. But there’s going to be plenty of time for that, isn’t there?
“The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart.”
The quote in the title of this post is from the West Wing episode “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen”, the second season premiere, in which the present-day Bartlet White House is reeling from the assassination attempt on the President, coupled with flashbacks to the early days of the campaign. In one of the flashbacks, Leo McGarry says those words to then-Governor Bartlet, who is the good man who has not entirely signed onto the whole idea of running for President in the first place.
Jimmy Carter was absolutely a good man who got elected President. He chose his moment with incredible vision: when the country was still recovering from the excesses of Richard Nixon. It might have been the only time someone like Carter could come out of nowhere and become President of the United States.
Much as been written about Carter’s great humanitarian work after he left the White House; I won’t rehash that here. It’s been pretty much an accepted view that Carter was, at best, a lackluster President, but I’ve seen some interesting reappraisals of his time in office–here’s a good one–and honestly, he was followed by some of the most stupendously awful Presidents in American history, so he looks good by comparison to them, too.
Carter is also, to this day, the only President I’ve ever seen in person. I was seven years old when we were living in Elkins, WV, and Carter came to appear in the town’s annual fall festival, whatever it was called at the time. I remember going out, all our family, to sit in the stands and wait for the parade to start and for the sighting of the President. This was mumbly-mumble years ago, so I don’t really recall details at all…but I remember the moment he was there, right down there on the street, walking and waving and grinning that famous grin of his. Jimmy Carter, the President of the United States. The photo above is from that very day; just after he passed where we were, on foot, he got in the limo and popped up through the sun roof. The other man is Senator Jennings Randolph.
Jimmy Carter was a great man, and his commitment to humility and to service should be a model to everyone. Perhaps, one day, he will be.
Posted inPassages|TaggedPassages|Comments Off on “They say a good man can’t get elected President. I don’t believe that. Do you?”
I’ve shared my method of preparing chili several times in the past, but it’s been more than two years since I reposted it here, so it’s time to bring it around again! As I am preparing this post it’s Sunday afternoon on the 29th of December, and the house is nicely fragrant from the pot of chili I have simmering away in the crockpot. There’s another few hours to go until we dish it up, though. Sigh…anyway, I believe that people should have at least some rudimentary cooking skills and a few dishes they can make without even consulting a cook book. Chili, by this method, is one of mine. I do have to resort to a cookbook or an online recipe if I want to make White Chicken Chili…and also, you’ll see below my ambition to try my hand at Cincinnati Chili. That still hasn’t happened. This winter, I…hope!
With the arrival of cooler weather comes the appetite for hearty crock-pot dishes, and a favorite of ours is good old chili! As I write this, the chili is crockpotting away in the kitchen; as you read this, we’ve already eaten a bit of it. With some cornbread!
(I’ll have to supplement this with a white-chicken-chili recipe I’ve found, next time I make it. And I also want to do Cincinnati Chili sometime this year, which I love and haven’t made in years.)
And now, the post:
I saw this pic on someone’s Instagram story last week and it made me laugh, because when it comes to food, I think I may be part-Southerner, in a lot of ways.
I have no idea whose IG account this is from! If you recognize it, let me know and I’ll credit!
The first pot of chili of the season is a big deal for me! I love chili. I love making it. I love how easy it is to make. I love how versatile chili is in the way you serve it. You can do so much with the leftovers over and above eating re-heated bowls of chili for the next four days. So yes, as a Northerner*, I get it!
Now, I make no claim that my way of making chili is “authentic” or “definitive”. Chili is like pizza or sandwiches: subject to enormous variety in how it’s made, from ingredients to flavor profile to cooking techniques used. I don’t even make one kind of chili! I have a recipe that I recently found to my liking (after trying several over the last few years) for White Chicken Chili, and I also love Cincinnati Chili, which is its own thing entirely, being at its root more of a thick chili-like meat sauce with Middle Eastern flavors enhancing sweetness rather than spiciness.
By way of some food history, here’s an excerpt from what Jeff Smith**, the “Frugal Gourmet”, wrote about chili in his cookbook The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American:
Most Americans think that the wonderful rich, beefy, and beany dish that we call chili came from some other culture. Mexico, perhaps, or Spain. Not so. I am afraid that both Mexico and Spain refuse to have anything to do with what we call good old American chili. One Mexican cookbook even goes so far as to scornfully describe chili as “A detestable food with a false Mexican name sold in the United States from Texas to New York City.” Hey, watch that! The rest of the country loves chili, too!
The original dish is truly American, though I have found that a lot of Americans in different locales think that it was invented in their backyard. After much research (two days) I have come to the following unquestionable decision. Chili was invented in San Antonio, Texas, in 1840. It was a blend of dried beef, beef fat, chili powder and spices, and salt. It was pressed into a brick and it was so potent that it would not spoil quickly. It was then taken by the prospectors to the California gold fields. There it could be reconstituted with water and cooked with beans. It was very much like the pemmican that had been used in earlier times but with spices added….
San Antonio has the distinct privilege in history of laying claim to “Chili Queens”. These ladies had little carts and tables and would appear late in the evening and sell chili and whatnot…I expect more whatnot was sold than chili. They were forced to close down in 1943 due to city health regulations of some sort…mostly sort.
I would have thought that all of Texas would have been involved in wonderful chili. But in 1890, when chili arrived in McKinney, a town just north of Dallas, all blazes broke loose. It seems that some wayward ministers claimed that chili was “the soup of the devil–food as hot as hell’s brimstone.” I wonder if these clergy ever bothered to taste a good pot of chili.
Well, isn’t that to be expected. Show me something, anything, being enjoyed by someone, and I’ll show you some tight-assed cleric who thinks it’s evil or the Devil’s work or some bullshit.
Anyway, I fully expect that most of you have your own method for making chili. I don’t say “recipe”, because I honestly believe that one should have a basic chili method that is so ingrained that the idea of referring to a recipe is simply nonsensical. Here is mine. Now, while I note above that I do make other kinds of chili, this is what I make when I simply say that I’m going to make “a pot of chili”.
This is a dish for the crockpot. We own two; for this I use our smaller one. I have no idea what the size is in terms of quarts. Into the crockpot (spray it first with cooking spray!) go the following:
1 can crushed tomatoes (28oz)
1 can diced tomatoes (15oz)
1 can black beans (rinsed)
1 can dark red kidney beans (rinsed)
1 can “chili” beans in sauce (not rinsed; I like Bush’s)
Half (or so) of one bottle of commercial chili sauce (I buy my store brand)
Hot sauce. No idea the measurement. I pour a bunch in and taste it. This is how hot sauce should always be used in recipes. If a recipe specifies an amount of hot sauce, ignore it.
I try to buy the “No salt added” versions of those first four canned ingredients, but it’s not a deal-breaker.
Here’s what all this looks like, if you want to see a picture of a crockpot full of cans of stuff that’s red:
Chili stuff. In the crockpot.
Obviously you can use a can of whole tomatoes, if you like your tomatoes in bigger chunks, and obviously you can change up the beans. I like a blend of beans and I like a lot of beans in my chili.
Meanwhile, into the frying pan goes:
1 onion, diced
However much garlic seems reasonable, and then double that
1 lb ground meat
Several tablespoons chili powder
(Sometimes I add 1 bell pepper, diced, if I have it on hand. Today I do not.)
Well…hold on. That all doesn’t go in at once. Heat up the pan, then add a few tablespoons oil and then the aromatic veggies. (Add the oil to the hot pan. As long as we’re talking about the Frugal Gourmet, remember his rule: “Hot pan, cold oil, foods won’t stick.” This actually works.) I like to saute the onion, garlic, and optional bell pepper on a high heat for a minute, and then reduce the heat to medium to sweat the veggies for a few additional minutes before I add in the ground meat.
Now: what ground meat to use? Sure, you can use ground beef or pork or whatever, but I prefer hot (or spicy) pork breakfast sausage (Bob Evans is a fine brand, and I’m not just saying that because The Wife and I both worked for Bob Evans at points in our lives), because you get more flavor this way. Remember Alton Brown’s commandment for stews: Never miss an opportunity to add flavor! Get it in there and start breaking it up with your spatula, splitting the chunks up as you go. Oh, and a minute or so after the meat’s in there and has started browning? Dump in the chili powder. A lot of it. The color of the stuff in the pan should noticeably change.
I generally stop breaking up my meat chunks when they’re about the size of a marble, because I like the meat in my chili to be in large pieces. (I’ve even done chili with stew beef, which is quite tasty. If you do that, flour and brown the meat before anything else, then set aside and re-introduce to the pan after you’ve sweated the aromatics.)
Here’s what the action in the frying pan looks like:
The frying pan part of making chili. And really, why don’t chefs wear overalls? I always wonder this. They’re perfect attire for cooking: protective, lots of pockets for stuff, and you can even hang a towel from the hammer loop.
Then what? Well, it’s obvious: Put the frying pan stuff in the crockpot with the rest of the stuff.
Into the pot!
Stir! Stir! Stir! (Actually, you don’t have to get super-aggressive about mixing the stuff up. Just a few gentle folding stirs should do it.)
Stir it up, lid it up, set the pot on low for, I dunno, six or seven hours. I like to crank it to high in the last hour, but that’s just me. The Wife makes fun of me for this (“How can I tell you if I like it? You served me a bowl of molten lava!”), but I’ve seen her send back way too many bowls of soup in restaurants for not being hot enough, and I am not making that mistake. Top it with cheese, or not. Sour cream, or not. Guacamole, or not. Chili is the pizza of stuff-that-comes-in-bowls, when it comes to versatility. (Stay in your lane, pizza! I don’t care if Steve Martin’s first movie The Jerk has a joke about the local “Pizza In A Cup” place.)
I’m writing this post, by the way, while we’re still two hours out from eating, so I don’t have a picture of a bowl of chili yet. Stay tuned. My stuff works great for chili dogs, though! And poured atop a bed of Fritos! And though I’ve never tried it, I always think it would taste good as an omelet filling.
And that’s how I make chili. Believe me, folks: a crockpot filling the house with wonderful aromas, be it chili or something else (the natives are already starting to clamor for Mississippi Roast!), is one of the finer pleasures that the autumnal time of year can give.
* By “Northerner”, do we mean anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line, or more along the lines of the Northeast? Because Buffalo is more a Great Lakes area. That’s a thought for another time, I suppose.
** Yes, I know. But I still own his books, I learned a whole damned lot about cooking from his books and his shows, and he’s been dead for years. I grant that he was a problematic sumbitch and will not litigate it here. (I think that link is toast, unfortunately.)
UPDATE: Since I wrote this last year, a lot of the old Frugal Gourmet shows have turned up on YouTube. This is always an ephemeral thing, but I also can’t entirely fathom anyone making this big of a copyright stink over forty-year-old cooking shows featuring a guy whose career was ended by a ghastly scandal. Here’s the episode on chili. (And yes, I’ve watched a bunch of his old episodes. His episode on Philadelphia has me planning on making pepper pot soup sometime this winter, once I get myself to an actual butcher shop and buy some tripe.)
Posted inOn Food and Cooking|TaggedFood|Comments Off on The One and Only True Method of Cooking a Proper Pot of Chili. (a repost)
Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, a.k.a. “His Royal Awesomeness”
I rarely write about sport on this site anymore, but I’m going to broach the topic here just for a few minutes because there’s an interesting debate raging across social media right now regarding the NFL MVP award, and which players are worthy. As of this writing, there are four players I see mentioned most frequently. The two that I think aren’t likely to win it are Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow and Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. The debate is really swirling around the other two guys: Bills and Ravens quarterbacks Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson.
I’m not going to actually lay out the case for either player here. As a Buffalonian and someone who roots for the Bills, I openly admit that yes, I think it’s perfectly clear that Josh Allen is the MVP this year. It’s obvious, you weirdos! Just give it to him already. It’s a done deal. It’s in the bag.
But…is it?
Obviously, not really. Lamar Jackson is having an amazing statistical season; in fact, if you were to only look at the numbers, Jackson is obviously the MVP. It’s a done deal. It’s in the bag.
Only, it’s not.
The problem is with the nature of the MVP award itself. It’s an award that’s voted on by a number of sports journalists, and like all such things, it’s a weird blend of stats and narrative. Some years the stats win out, sometimes it’s the narrative that wins out. Sometimes the MVP is given to the player who obviously had the best statistical season, while others it’s a vaguer justification–the best player on the best team, perhaps. That last is one of the bigger reasons for supporting Allen over Jackson this year: as of this writing the Bills have the better record, having already won their division and being on the brink of clinching the Number Two seed in the AFC playoffs, while Jackson’s Ravens have lost more games and may not even end up winning their division (though that looks likely at this point).
It’s the word in the award itself: the most valuable player. And that makes the whole thing a judgment call, basically an opinion. Is Lamar Jackson more valuable to his team than Josh Allen? I don’t know that he is. I also don’t know–really know–that he isn’t. So what we end up with is conflicting opinions, and let’s be honest here: those opinions can shift and change depending on who it is we’re rooting for. (Right now we’re not even going to mention the fact that NFL MVP is now a de facto award for quarterbacks alone; it’s been 12 years since anyone other than a QB won it, and it’s been 38 years since anybody on the defensive side of things won one. And in a pass-whacky league, a wide receiver has never won it.)
Here’s a thought experiment: consider all the argument for Josh Allen for MVP, and all the arguments for Lamar Jackson as well. Now imagine if these two guys were having the exact same seasons–but they played on the opposite teams. Imagine Allen leading the Ravens to a 12-3 record (again, as of this writing), having set all manner of offensive records over his first bunch of years, and the stunning individual performances he’s had in single games this season. And imagine Lamar Jackson playing for the Bills, and putting up the passing numbers he’s put up this year.
If that happened, you would see each camp still advocating strongly for their guy–but with the exact opposite set of arguments.
I do tend to react strongly against purely statistical justifications for MVP awards. I’m not a fan of reducing everything to stats, because I’m a storyteller and a story-lover at heart, and stats aren’t stories. Stats can be a part of stories, but they’re not the whole thing. Josh Allen’s story in Buffalo is amazing and compelling, and when one considers the degree to which he’s played a role in the resurgence of a franchise and the emotions of a fandom (we can talk another time about how maybe a football team’s fortunes in the field probably shouldn’t be this big of a factor in a region’s emotional life), and the role he has come to inhabit in this community, it’s hard to make a case that he’s not incredibly valuable. And most people agree on this point. So is he the most valuable? Maybe, maybe not.
The NFL MVP award turns out, in some ways, to be similar to the Oscars: it’s all about aesthetics and recognition, as opposed to rewarding a true “objective” standout. It’s clear that even with the statistical arguments, there’s no real “objective” standard of a player’s value, so again it’s the narrative that comes in to play. That also happens with the Oscars, where sometimes an actor is awarded an Academy Award less for the particular role for which they’re nominated but as a nod of respect to a career. For Josh Allen, the narrative case is strengthened when various aspects of his career are noted: the degree to which he has been responsible for the Bills winning a lot, the fact that the Bills have enjoyed an even better season this year after an offseason that left many thinking the Bills would take a step back, the further fact that Allen has significantly improved the major aspect of his game that was often criticized before this year (his turnovers).
The other problem with stats is that if a player with gaudy stats is truly the most valuable, then surely it should show up in the win-loss column. One standout weird example of this is from Major League Baseball, which in 1987 awarded National League MVP to Andre Dawson, because he had an outstanding season at the plate (49 HRs). Never mind that his team that year, the Cubs, finished dead last. Was Dawson “valuable”? Well, I’ve seen that debated here and there over the years. The NFL does have ways of avoiding this sort of thing, with its additional awards of “Offensive Player of the Year” and “Defensive Player of the Year”. MVP, then, becomes something else. Something more elusive, dealing with those pesky “intangibles”.
So, what’s my solution? Obviously, I’m a Josh Allen guy. However, there is precedent for doing something more daring: in 2003, the NFL MVP was split, and we had co-MVPs in Peyton Manning and Steve McNair. If that happened again, it would not bother me at all. (Nor, really, would Lamar Jackson winning MVP outright.) Another thing that’s always struck me as odd is why the NFL’s awards are singular. Baseball has multiple sets of awards for each league, so there is no one Baseball MVP; there’s a NL MVP and an AL MVP. Why not a AFC and an NFC MVP? (This wouldn’t help the current situation, obviously, since Allen and Jackson are both AFC guys.)
But ultimately, aside from my thinking there should be awards from both conferences, I don’t much have a problem with any of this. It gets people talking about sport and it shows the passion in the fanbases. More than anything, all these MVP candidates show what a glorious period of football this is, and how much it’s an embarrassment of riches right now. Unfortunately not many people are taking it this way, and that’s a shame. Rooting for Josh Allen surely doesn’t have to mean that I can’t appreciate the amazing football that Lamar Jackson is playing right now.
One last point: sooner or later in all of these discussions one point inevitably gets made: “Neither Allen nor Jackson has ‘won anything’ yet.” This refers to the fact that neither guy has won the Super Bowl (or even been to it) yet. And yes, that does suck. One thing I dislike about the NFL is that for whatever reason, it’s much more conducive to dynasties forming, and this is compounded by the weird way that sports fans (and some commentators) overvalue championships above all else. This is natural, I suppose–winning the Super Bowl is everybody’s goal–but I have a problem with looking at someone’s career as “lesser” if they simply never managed to win it. There’s only one Super Bowl every year, after all, and many fine careers play out in the NFL (or in any sport) that don’t include a championship. Every time I see the “Allen doesn’t have a ring!” thing on social media, I like to respond along these lines: “I have bad news for you if you ever visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame, because I’ll bet most of the guys in there never won a Super Bowl.”
So much of sport is narrative, as much as the folks who love stats would pretend otherwise. Look at Aaron Rodgers and the narrative over the course of his career. Of course, right now the narrative on Rodgers is pretty much that he’s a washed-up weirdo who is going to leave the Jets on the verge of a full-on rebuild, but for years, his story was that he’d have a great regular season, lead the Packers to one of the best records in the NFC, and then faceplant in the playoffs. Year in and year out, that’s what happened…and if any other player had that kind of record, our sporting world would label him a “choker”, fairly or not. So why was Rodgers never labeled a “choker” at all? Because one time, early in his career, he actually won a Super Bowl.
Winning a championship completely changes the narrative of a player and a coach. Win one, and all previous “failures” (and again, it’s a hell of a thing to view all sporting effort that doesn’t produce a championship a “failure”) are forgiven and forgotten. Win one early in your career, and nothing that happens after will ever diminish your sheen: you are a Champion forevermore. Rodgers illustrates the latter, and the former is illustrated perfectly by Chiefs coach Andy Reid. Reid coached the Philadelphia Eagles in the late 90s and the 2000s, and he took them to multiple NFC Championship games (losing all but one) and to one Super Bowl (which he lost). Until Reid won his first Super Bowl with the Chiefs, he was the most recent poster child for the “He can’t win the big one! He coaches small in big moments! He can’t manage a game! He can’t get the team ready to win a Super Bowl!” crowd. But all those years of falling short still happened! They’re right there in his record! But he won a Super Bowl finally (along with, as of this writing, two more), so all of that is forgotten and ignored.
Ultimately, the NFL MVP is a shifting blend of narrative and statistical excellence. This season, there’s enough of both to go around for multiple players, so much so that the award will honestly feel partially incorrect, no matter to whom it’s given in the end.
Unless it’s Josh Allen. If that happens, everything is right in the world.
