Tag Archives: 1950’s

Blue Buffalo Series # 3

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The camera likes blue. if you walk around at night and see people’s TV sets on, almost always the screen will appear blue. There is some technical reason for this that has to do with cathode tubes and the matrix of the phosphorus coating on the TV’s backside and the fact that the guy who invented TV was really into blue. He didn’t like any other color. A lot of the stuff that is inside TVs is now inside modern cameras. So ergo, cameras like blue too.

There was also that big censorship thing back in the 1950’s about “blue movies” being shown on TV. Since all the so-called blue movies were actually shot using blue light, hence the name, if they are projected onto a blue background they become invisible and good people wouldn’t be able to see anything the bad people were doing.  Blue on blue is just blue. So if you were watching TV back then you probably saw some of those blue movies and didn’t even know it. It wasn’t until the crazy 60’s that other colors of lights were added so now you can see everything. Boy, did that make the censors nervous.

Nature is kind of into blue too. If you go outside at dusk and I highly recommend that you do, you will notice the sky gets like, really super blue just before it goes dark. After exhaustive study we have found that the warmer colors, your reds, your yellows, your ambers and Atomic Tangerines are not what they call ‘mature’ colors yet. They’re still young colors in a cosmic sense, and as such are not allowed to stay up as late as the more mature colors like your indigo’s and your blues and purples. Consequently as the day ends the warmer colors of the spectrum are sent off to bed, usually with a large amount of hollering and screaming. If you see one of those incredibly vivid sunsets where there is this phenomenal explosion of colors, all in the warmer tones, reds, oranges, scarlet etc., that’s just the kids throwing a tantrum and making a scene before they go to bed. It is best just to let them get it out of their system and then send them packing.

Up in Yellowstone it’s the same thing. They don’t get any special considerations up there just because they’re a National park. Come dusk, the younger kids are sent off to bed and the light turns blue. Here are some buffalo getting ready to call it a night. The mother is taking her two kids across the river just as the last blue light is falling, to a spot where they can bed down. The kids are balky, straggling along, they know this means bedtime and like all kids it doesn’t sit well with them because they’re not tired. Even though the kid right behind mom is so beat he may not make it across the river before he goes out.

You may not have even known anything about this whole blue light deal but now you know everything there is to know about blue light and its effect on people. So if you have trouble getting your kids to bed just turn out all the red and yellow and other warm colored lights and pretty soon the kids will be zonked. This is Blue Buffalo Series # 3.

Monument Valley Morning

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Monument Valley              Click to enlarge

For some of you it still feels like Winter, I know it and I feel your pain, but believe it or not there are places in our world, right now, where the sun is shining and you can go outside without long underwear, excuse me, they call it base layers now, and not freeze your fuon buey bueys off.

In fact the other day as I was lying on the couch in a carbohydrate-induced coma, I felt something warm and comfortable slide across my face, no it wasn’t the dog’s tongue, I’m out of dogs at the present, it was sunshine. Yes, sunshine. Well I was surprised I can tell you. I immediately jumped up, well, to be more accurate, rolled off the couch and crawled to the window to see if it was real.

It was and what’s more the snow that had been steadily climbing up the side of the house covering the windows and burying my car, had disappeared. You could see the ground. But the biggest miracle was that the lucky Aspen tree, the one we call Dead Tree Walking, the one that is still alive after all the attempts were made by the elements to kill it, had buds on it. Big ones too, like they were going to open tomorrow kind of big. How’s that for giving one hope?

I could feel the blood starting to move slowly and sluggishly around in my body, pressing up against the various valves in my veins, saying “open up, open up we need to get to the brain, we’re about to lose this guy!” and they did, those little valves, they opened and soon the flood gates were down and I was walking and talking and going outside and looking around, staring at the sun like some peyote-crazed Aztec. I marveled at the fact that white was not the dominant color anymore, that I hadn’t been trans-located to some black & white movie, set in Croatia or somewhere worse, like 1950’s Czechoslovakia, you know, all coal-fired steam trains, cold dark fog, grey with soot everywhere, all filmed 20 minutes after the sun went down.

As the sun warmed my head little thoughts started to dart around in my mind like those minnows you see at the edge of the shore, you remember, the ones that flit from one shadow to another at the speed of light, not staying in the sunshine for one moment longer than they need to, lest something bigger make a meal of them. Then bigger thoughts arrived, then bigger yet, edging into my imagination like the berthing of the Queen Mary. Huge ponderous thoughts like I used to have before Winter caught me and turned me into a couch dwelling, TV watching, soulless lump, nearly one of the undead but not quite.

One of the biggest thoughts coming up out of the murky depths, brought to the surface by the slow turning of the great props as the Queen of the Sea was slowly  brought dockside was ” I could go somewhere.”  yeah seems obvious to you I bet, but it was a revelation to me. I thought I was going to die on that couch. Never seeing the beauties of the world again. Alone, staring at the ice encrusted windows as the world turned slowly grey then black. So you can see how a guy would suddenly be GobSmacked, his life returned to him in an instant, full of hope and joy with the idea that there was a future.

Where to go though. I quickly ran to my computer and began feverishly going through the images I had placed in the folder labeled, “Places I want to go again if I live through this Winter” and up popped this image of one of my favorite places in the universe, Monument valley. It is early morning, the sun just rising high enough to clear the buttes, lighting my way to a secret place deep in the desert where no one has ever taken a picture before. The wind making a keening sound as it rounded the spires and towers as it finishes writing its name in the sand….. Listen I’d write more but I have to go pack the car. I got to go before Winter changes its mind.