We had a nightmare situation this past Sunday. We were driving by Reidsville Prison in Georgia and a little way past the gate, Helen pulled over to download some OnStar instructions. Just as Helen was starting off, a most obnoxious and threatening woman guard in a prison van with a lightbar on top drove up from behind and blocked us from going then came to the car and in an extremely confrontational voice asked what we were doing. Helen tried to explain we were headed to Beaufort and we were setting our navigation, but it was futile and we were blocked for about a half hour. She made a big deal of calling in our license plate and waiting for an answer. She asked if we had cameras. I said yes. She asked if I took any pictures going by. I said, well yes, I have taken pictures of things along the way every since we left Virginia. She said we broke the law, that "you can't take pictures of institutions!" She said also that we were in a "Restricted area" but there were no signs of any kind along the road and no signs prohibiting parking, even. This got worse and worse when another guard supervisor came out and blocked us behind as well, and that guard demanded my camera and incredibly, started punching buttons on my camera, deleting my pictures. The woman kept trying to provoke us and she looked like she would bludgeon us to death if we made the slightest protest. This was the most horrible encounter I have every had even counting wartime in Vietnam as we felt we were about to be tasered, shot, or beaten to death. After they deleted the pictures that they chose, the sergeant said we could go but we were still boxed in and Helen had to pull up and back up about a dozen times while the woman smirked and grinned at the other guard at her difficulty, then the woman, who had to have the last word, went even more extreme and said we could not proceed east and ordered Helen to turn around. Her supervisor acted scared to even countermand her, but I suppose finally figured that maybe that was not a really great idea and actually did overrule her, the first and only time. Being a public highway, making this kind of Nazi encounter from nothing but me taking a few pictures was utterly ridiculous, but that didn't faze these two sociopaths who apparently are given full rein to make up their own rules. Finally we got out with our skins and I am filing a violent protest with the state. Amazingly, we were not asked about guns or weapons, only cameras, as if cameras are the most feared things of all. I called the prison the next day and did get confirmation that they should not have questioned or removed our pictures and I am expecting written apologies, but until I get them I have a letter prepared to send to the governor of Georgia about his Orwellian nightmare. The most damaging encounter to a public image of any government operation that possibly could have been done was done in a short time by these two. We were treated like escapees, not members of an up to now supportive public. I cringe to think of what it must be like as a prisoner in that place.

Many thanks to Chip Deyerle for his review of my book, Full Moon Saturday Night that he did on Amazon. I had just read Chip's book, Last Train From Cleveland,  and I am equally impressed. His account of not only the travails of steam railroading in the 1920's but the state of medical science back then really comes home to me. I remember the trains back then, the Dixie Flyer racing down the tracks on the west side of Highway 41 into Evansville, Indiana when I was a kid, an what a spectacle it was! Those trains were the 747's of today. It was all steam back then and all very exciting. What we take for granted now about medical care is also a huge contrast to what was available back then; not much more than three hundred years prior. Anesthesia was the one big advance, but dying during surgery from anesthesia complications was certainly not unusual. Chip's book brought all that back to me. Back at IU in the late 50's, heart surgery was new and it was so scarey to see up close people go into surgery knowing that many would not come out alive, then having to watch the almost unbearable tragic effects on the families when their loved ones actually did die in surgery. That was and is the way ER work is and always will be, the hum-drum routines mixed up with the awful unexpected disasters that strike so suddenly. We interns were the EMT's back then and at the time I felt like I had found out more about life on those Marion County Hospital ambulances in my first week of that duty than I had in all time before. There were no interstates then and on those horrible gunshot, car wreck, and heart attack runs they had to bust up trains to let us through. Later, when I did over ten years of ER work, I stood it for about as long as anybody could and I am glad it is behind me. Now, there are few railroad tracks to deal with and the lights change to green in the big cities to let the first responders through, huge advances since I was growing up.  In Chip's book, Last Train From Cleveland, BL Deyerle, a steam engineer, died from surgery for a goiter. It was a tragedy for even occurring at all, given most of them were from dietary lack of iodine. But to then die prematurely from a post op infection was even worse. A great read and I urge all of you to read it.

I just finished reading a scary book called Prophet's Prey by Sam Bower about the fundamentalist break-off from the Mormon Church, called the FLDS.  Brainwashing and the use of the church as a breeding farm for innocent young girls as wives for the church's elder men while the boys were eliminated from the church and cast off with nothing to support them was a way of life.  The prophet and his ilk living in luxury while imposing a despotic rule and confiscating people's money was described. It is a tale of horror and anybody wanting to learn something of bizarre religious organizations will find a lot to consider.  I highly recommend it. 

Met Chip Deyerle at our local writer's club last night (Write at the Rails in Manassas, Virginia) and obtained from Chip a copy of his most fascinating book about railroading in the 1920's. It is about steam rail travel back in the 1920's and follows the life of one particular engineer.  Trains were in their heyday then. I remember the Dixie Flyer coming through Evansville, Indiana back in the 1940's when I was young and it was always a spectacle to see. It came down from Chicago and went on to Nashville, Macon GA, Jacksonville, and Miami.  It was operated by the C&EI railroad and that logo was on the baggage cars.  The train looked to be coming at a hundred miles an hour down the tracks on the west side of Highway 41 north of Evansville and it truly was a scene to behold.  Big black steam engines led the many cars that followed it and it must have had hundreds of people on it, probably as much as a 747 holds now.  The train terminal in Evansville was an enormous hubbub of activity as were many along the way. 

Chip's book is about one train engineer who after a long career with the railroad developed a thyroid goiter, something handled routinely today.  In the 1920's, surgery for those was tedious and dangerous and this engineer, Chip's grandfather, died of post-op infection. A sad story but fascinating in describing the days and the life of a steam railroader.

And before B-52's there were B-36's.  I can remember these flying over the corn fields of Indiana back in the '50s so high I could barely pick them out.  But the sound was so distinctive I could instantly recognize one today.

                                                

Here is a view I've had many times, a B-52 getting refueled from a tanker at probably thirty thousand feet or so.  This is very routine now but at first it wasn't and in the days in the 1960's when I was a flight surgeon and required to be on both the tankers and the bombers this was a never ending fascination.  Here is the view from the tanker and what I talk about in the prologue of Full Moon Saturday Night.  Count the engines on the bomber. Eight of them! 

                                                         

A light day today as I sifted through some more Shenandoah Park pictures from yesterday.  Found one worth putting here, an in-camera panorama.  With temperatures rapidly falling into the high  60's a little ground fog was just developing.  One has to remember to take sweaters up there even in August.  I took this looking west into what should have been a great sunset except for some late clouds:

SNP is one beautiful place.  I am having this picture put into a frame. 

We took a trip to Shenandoah National Park this evening to see if we could get a proper sunset, any sunset as they have eluded us here in Heritage Hunt for the past week.  Then, the only place near here really suitable is the Manassas Battlefield a few miles away.  The colors were spectacular tonight as these shown below at  Big Meadows at Shenandoah National Park about an hour west of here. This is what happened during about a minute or so the western fiery red sun lit these eastern clouds:

The one above is at Big Meadow and is looking east along a deer trail.   The one below is a composite of three pictures blended in my camera, a Fuji X-E1 and taken with a Zeiss 12/2.8 lens. The pictures are about thirty minutes apart so the light and color does vary some:

And talk about a place to settle in and write, this would really be the place but I would have to just schedule writing and picture taking as otherwise I would be tempted to just run around snapping more pictures!

After finishing The Men Who Lost America I am pushing on to Revolutionary Summer, a second account of the revolution. This genre of books is fascinating to me and I would like to keep reading them but they could consume all my time.  I went through Theodore Dreiser, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. While I am trying to catch up on some classics, especially Faulkner's entire series, they can be so painful to read that I am doing with sampling a few.  For a change, I just read Monica Murphy's Crave, a little romance story that was as most, predictable but entertaining.  I like to read at least Pulitzer Prize winners, that series having started in 1916 with authors like Ernest Poole and His Family that describes life in New England a long time ago.  Then there is The Great Bridge, Truman and The Johnstown Flood by McCullough and his many other great books like 1776.  And then, of course, I need to be reading contemporary literature as well, and guess what?  The day runs out of hours. But oh well, I won't give up but at least continue to sample the best.

I read a quick little romance novel just to see how these are written these days.  As Faulkner advises (more or less), read them all, the good and the bad, then start writing!  This 275 page novella, Crave, was wriiten by Monica Murphy. I  saw it on GoodReads.  It has a great cover, and it reads quickly and keeps one's interest.  Here it is at Amazon:
   http://www.amazon.com/Crave-Billionaire-Bachelors-Club-Novel/dp/0062289357/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376339758&sr=1-1&keywords=crave
One thing I got from it is the feeling that more men should read one of these occasionally. It would help men better understand their wives and girlfriends.  I note that today it is still only $1.99 on Kindle. 

One of my side hobbies is photography, enough so that I completed the New York Institute of Photography course in professional photography some ten years ago. It taught me the basics of exposure and composition. For some reason I value the diploma as much as a master's degree.  In fact, it was actually about the same amount of effort expended.

Aside from composition, perhaps the most important thing of all, the course taught me some camera technicals and the basics of Photoshop.  Now, of course, if one doesn't do a lot of all three (the technical side, composition, and post-processing) one either loses some skills or stays more or less in his or her own cove of a large lake.  I have gone through a lot of photo equipment, including some pretty expensive long lenses that were fun to use out in the Shenandoah park, but also around the house where I found it just amazing how many transient rare birds do stop through in the spring and summer.  You just have to look for them. But as I get older and the aches and pains set in, lighter gear is essential and for now I am into mirrorless.  I have a Fuji X-E1, a 35/1.4, a kit 18-55 and a wide angle Zeiss 12/2.8. 

Of late I took a few online courses, the latest by an Australian, on sunsets a t this link: (http://brentmailphotography.com).  I'm still trying to find a good location around here for this time of year, but I did get a few interesting photos at the Manassas Battleground the other day.  One does two minute exposures

in bright daylight, which means low ISO and a very dark ND filter, some ten stops (1/1000 the usual amount of light). In front of that filter is another ND 3 stop soft grad filter to better balance the sky and foreground.

Anyway, one can obtain some interesting effects with this filter, although it is a pain to set up.  First, it has to be on a tripod.  Then I have to compose the picture normally and pick an exposure that requires 1/8 sec. at the lowest possible ISO.  Then I put the 10-stop filter on and this just happens to require two minutes for the same exposure. These are at 12mm.  Here, the clouds are moving and take on a rather different shape.  Now to try this technique on sunsets. 

Full Moon Saturday Night, for those who have read it, will see that it is not only a medical adventure book bordering on a thriller at times, but also a commentary on medicine as it is today.  The setting was in the 1980's but little of the real problems have changed and in fact, some are worse.  I wrote FMSN from my own experiences, first as an Air Force flight surgeon, then later as an  ER physician.  I will be happy to see what you readers think of it.

A Different Drummer