There's a Fancy French furniture store around the corner on Finchley Road displaying all sorts of improbable, high-end products -- blue sofas shaped vaguely like clams or parentheses, bright sectionals in crazy-quilt patchwork patterns. Olga and I wander past on our walks, and the other day we caught our reflection in one of a series of colorful, metallic stools in the window. If you look very closely you can also see Olga's reflection in the window itself, a hovering ghost-dog.
I'm glad Julian Assange got arrested yesterday. That situation has long been untenable -- him holed up in a tiny embassy, skateboarding through the hallways -- and it's time he face the music for his various transgressions. He had become pathetic, hiding out all these years. As for WikiLeaks, I think it provides a valuable service, but I also think (like any publication) it needs a careful editor to, for example, screen out information that could endanger lives. It lost my respect when it proved itself so easily manipulated by Russian hackers in the 2016 elections. Assange calls himself a journalist, but he seemed to disdain having to make the same sorts of journalistic decisions that real editors deal with every day.
Today's our last workday before Spring Break. Dave and I are off all next week. We have no firm plans, although I hope to walk a little more of the Capital Ring and work in the garden. I'm looking forward to having some time off with no particular place to go.
Nice photo! Makes me think of the photo of of Trumplethinskin's eye with the "enemy of the people" reflected back at us.
ReplyDeleteSome people just have a knack when it comes to photography and you have it in spades Steve. This is a wonderful picture.
ReplyDeleteBriony
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There seems to be someone standing behind Olga in the reflection. Someone or some thing. Its face is deformed - reminding me of John Merrick - The Elephant Man.
ReplyDeleteI can see the Ghost Dog!
ReplyDeleteI don't know what to think about Julian Assange but when he got arrested I thought, "Jeez. At least he can get out of that embassy."
Love the photo...
ReplyDeletedid you see the picture? he looks like an old man. can you imagine being holed up in a small building for all those years not being able to do anything, go anywhere. like being in jail, a nicer jail albeit. perhaps he was finally just glad to be able to be somewhere else. if he wants to actually do some good in the world instead of just be a spotlight junkie he should leak the Muller report.
ReplyDeleteSo, that's a stool. Really? Looks more like a trophy, the Best Dog in Show trophy with the winner inscribed on the front. So the trophy doesn't have a base. So what?
ReplyDeleteAs for Julian Assange,he doesn't look the man he was when he took refuge in the embassy, it seems he's just been deferring the inevitable. Whatever that might be.
Alphie
I could never get all the aspects of Assange except that he was a shady character who played fast and loose with information.
ReplyDeleteI love that photo. What a cool and interesting perspective it is. I absolutely agree with you about Assange. I'm not exactly sure what makes him call himself a journalist.
ReplyDeleteThis picture today is really brilliant. You framed it just perfectly. I agree with you on Assange. I saw several discussions on the subject on PBS last night. The one point that popped out was that he seemed to be obsessed with secrets of American governments but never posted any secrets from totalitarian governments. It seems to me that he was clearly being manipulated by Russia and sadly, I'm not sure he even realizes it.
ReplyDeleteExceptional photo well done, as for Assange a bit like the guest who over stayed his welcome. Enjoy your week of Steve.
ReplyDeleteThis ghost dog image is quite a spectacular picture.
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings about Assange. As a person, he is clearly messed up and paranoid by now, but the initial idea and the initial work of wikileaks esp. the work that lead to the end of the corrupt arap Moi government in Kenya and the release of the Baghdad airstrike killing of the Reuters journalists - that I found brave and important.
In a TED talk from 2010, he quotes his father, who apparently told him that "capable, generous men do not create victims; they nurture victims."
But then again, the Swedish rape allegations . . .
Boo!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/picture-media-reflected-donald-trumps-eye
ReplyDeleteA link to the orange one's eye.
The stool is beautiful, but I would be very afraid to sit on it! Olga looks like a sheepdog in the reflection.
ReplyDeleteNow that is a cool picture :)
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