My paternal grandmother, "Grandma Melio," died early Tuesday. I'm not as emotional as I should be about it, 1) because I've only had occasional contact with her over the past 25 years, and 2) she's battled dementia and failing health over the past few years, to the point where passing is merciful for her.
Emelia Blaschke, 89, of Nordheim, passed away Tuesday Nov. 29, 2011. She was born April 7, 1922 in DeWitt County to the late John and Martha Skloss Gaida. She was a member of Holy Cross Catholic Church.
She is survived by her sons Joe Blaschke of Spring, TX, James Blaschke of Houston, TX and Nolan Blaschke of Columbus, TX, sister Adelene Decker, seven grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.
She is preceded in death by her parents, husband Joseph Blaschke and brother E.G. Gaida.
A rosary will be 7:00 pm Wed. Nov. 30, 2011 at Finch Funeral Chapel. Funeral Mass will be 10:00 am Thurday Dec. 1, 2011 at Holy Cross Catholic Church. Intement will follow at Holy Cross Cemetery.
Pallbearers will be Frankie Seifert, Flavis Kozielski, Gervis Blaschke, Gary Rangnow, Glenn Mueller, Keith Blaschke, Jayme Blaschke, John Blaschke and Christopher Blaschke.
Memorial may be given to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery Fund or Masses.
Arrangements by Finch Funeral Chapel-Yorktown 361-564-2277
I hadn't seen much of her for the past 2-plus decades because of a feud my father has perpetuated with that part of our family. Because of a wrong they did to him, my father cut off all contact with his mother, father and brothers as well as their respective families (a wrong I suspect, viewed through the wisdom of years, may actually be the other way around). He refused to attend his own father's funeral when Grandpa Joe died a few years back. He won't be attending his mother's funeral. He won't bury the hatchet because he'd rather nurse this hard lump of bitterness within him and play the victim, even though his siblings and parents have tried over and over again to make amends.
You know what? I'm sick of his petty, self-centered childish behavior. My five-year-old son has a better-defined sense of right and wrong than my 71-year-old father. I cannot count the times I have received messages from former students of his, telling me what a great person he was. In the interest of civility, I have bitten my tongue. No more. Nolan Blaschke is a prideful, arrogant, self-centered petty dictator who is a racist and misogynist, pretty much your all-around misanthrope. He has alienated almost all of his close family and friends over the years, and has abandoned my mother. That last part isn't hyperbole, and I will not pretend any longer. I will not make excuses for him any longer. I've been to far too many funerals and functions in recent years where I've had to make excuses for his absence or behavior, and that stops now.
If anyone asks me where my father is tomorrow, I will reply that he "Is at home, wallowing in self-pity. He is a vile, reprehensible human being, and we'd all be better off if it were him we were burying today instead of his mother."
If he doesn't want me telling everyone that, then he'd better man up, get his head on right and start acting like he has a soul, instead of just a shriveled, spite-filled cinder.
Now Playing: Berlin Philharmonic Wagner: The Ring Without Words Chicken Ranch Central
FINALLY! I am finally done with the current chapter, one that has taken well more than twice as long to write as I'd planned. One that has put me significantly behind schedule. One that was ornery and difficult to write, fighting me every step of the way. To add insult to injury, it is very much a "first draft" chapter, one in need of significant rewriting before it is fit for human eyes. You'd think that after taking up so much time, it could at least come out polished and ready for the printers, but nooooooo.
In any event, I'm very happy to put this one behind me. I had to rely on existing sources and other people's research heavily here, as opposed to my own, and it's awkward when something that's been accepted as fact by many, mean people for so long ends up being debunked by me. Or, if not debunked, at least seriously questioned. Especially when there's no clear alternative to the current assumptions, which are clearly and demonstrably flawed. Here's some of the words I close out the chapter with. Tomorrow, on to the 20th century, and my own primary research!
Prostitution may have established itself in La Grange in the days of the Republic, but the frontier was a dusty memory, as was the “anything goes” attitude that accompanied it. La Grange had grown into a modern town of more than 2,000 residents, with electric and water utilities, an opera house, four schools, three banks and five churches. With the progressive era of a new century dawning, there seemed little chance that the status quo the brothels had enjoyed for so long could continue.
At this moment, I am feeling pretty mediocre. There's been some sort of virus working its way through my family, and I started feeling it Monday afternoon. By Tuesday morning just driving the kids to school caused me to break out in a cold sweat, so I wisely headed back home and climbed into bed. By late afternoon I'd started feeling moderately better, and ventured forth, to discover the nice UPS man had left me a present:
For those of you scratching your head and going "What the heck is that?" I'll tell you. It's an Astronomik CLS clip filter from Germany. It's an ingenious little device. Because of the way Canon APS-C cameras are made (those that have a "cropped" imaging sensor which is about 3/4 the size of a 35mm film frame) there is a small open space in between the mirror/shutter assembly and the rear of the attached camera lens. The German engineers at Astronomik realized they could design a filter that could "clip in" to this unused space for astronomy purposes (sorry Nikon users--your camera design doesn't allow for internal clip filters).
The CLS filter I got is a light pollution filter. Because there are so many street lights in my neighborhood, not to mention the sky glow from New Braunfels, San Antonio and Austin, astrophotos of more than a brief exposure end up having an ugly, brown fog to them. Yuck. But the CLS filter is coated in such a way that the sodium and mercury vapor light produced by most street lamps and city lights are almost completely blocked. This means longer exposures are possible without the ill effects of light pollution!
My first attempt at astrophotography using the CLS clip filter and my Canon 7D is above, the Orion constellation. I set the camera up on a tripod and shot 20 10-second exposures at 800 and 1600 ISO (I couldn't go for longer exposures because I hadn't set my telescope up, and the camera had no way to track the movement of the start across the sky). I stacked these individual images using Deep Sky Stacker, a nifty freeware program. The result isn't anything near award-winning, but it does show all the relevant stars without the washed-out effect of light pollution. And the Orion nebula is easily visible. I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with this in the future.
In a remarkably short period of time, I have become a huge fan of Australian photographer Peter Lik. I first became aware of him back in the spring, when he was featured in the June issue of Professional Photographer magazine, which The Wife gets as an active member of Professional Photographers of America. His dramatic colors and sweeping panoramas inspired me greatly, and made me think of a color-centric Ansel Adams. When we set out on our family vacation road trip out west, I was determined to shoot some landscapes that, if not Lik-worthy, were at the very least "pretty good." Although I mostly shoot as an assistant to The Wife with weddings and portraits, I've had a keen interest in landscape/nature photography for as long as I can remember. Far longer than I've had any competent knowledge of camera operation, certainly.
Sadly, the road trip did not turn out as I'd hoped. They never do. I made a few attempts, but they all fell short of the goal. Take the famous "Horseshoe Bend" south of Page, Arizona. A late start and a crush of other photographers (not to mention a sheer drop-off and cranky kids) made this a real challenge. Harsh shadows marred the lower portion of the scene. I used some Photoshop processing to pull out colors from the river, but the end result is merely a "nice try"--a far cry from the gallery-worthy shot I was hoping for.
Our visit to Monument Valley was a bust as well. A huge sandstorm blew up, obscuring the great mesas and buttes and pretty much made driving miserable. The Wife was sorely disappointed, because while she's not normally a landscape photographer, she had wanted to shoot the iconic north approach to Monument Valley herself. The one shot I got that I was pleased with (and I didn't know it at the time--the awesomeness only became apparent later on when I processed the image) came from my infrared camera. This infrared scene of Monument Valley in the middle of a sandstorm is the single best shot I got on the entire road trip, and one that I do feel is gallery-worthy. Could Lik do better? Probably, but then again, he doesn't shoot infrared, so score one for me.
After our vacation, I discovered Lik's photography television series on the Weather Channel, From the Edge with Peter Lik. I only managed to see about five of the 13 episodes before the season ended, but I found them engrossing. Granted, Lik has some financial and equipment advantages because of who he is, but it was amazing to see his adventurer's spirit at work. He really is a larger-than-life personality, sort of photography's version of the Crocodile Hunter, as some have derisively labeled him. There's actually quite a bit of derision directed his way, I've learned. Some of it is motivated by jealousy, no doubt, because haters gonna hate. But other criticism is deserved. While Lik is undeniably a skilled photographer, his greater skill may well be self-promotion. That can get old very fast, but from what I see, there is a divide between Peter Lik the photographer and Peter Lik the businessman. The photographer would be fun to hang out with. The businessman, probably not so much. The businessman also goes around claiming that the photographer uses no post-processing or Photoshop on his gallery images, which is a patently untrue. The idea that all of the dramatic colors are captured entirely in-camera has become a marketing mythology perpetrated by Lik himself--in interviews from only a few years back he had no qualms about claiming to use Photoshop to manipulate the colors in his images (the whole video is entertaining, but check out the 1:30 mark:
While an unfortunate pile of marketing hooey, that doesn't diminish the photography any in my mind. Lik still has to actually get out there and get the shot before any Photoshop magic can be done. And nature doesn't always cooperate. So I still greatly admire his eye for composition and photographer's instinct for finding that perfect shot that's just waiting to be captured. Which brings me to the beef I have with Peter Lik.
Recently, his company has launched a snazzy new website. There is much amazing photography on display--"Tree of the Universe" in particular is exactly the type of photograph my inner astrophotographer wants to capture. Amazing stuff. On neat perk for people registering with the site, though, is a digital download copy of Lik's Spirit of America book, which is out of print with used copies going for something north of $50 a pop. I've wanted this for a while, so jumped at the change to download it. Naturally, the first thing I wanted to see was what he came up with for Texas. Texas, as anyone who lives here knows, has a bunch of wildly differing climates and terrains. The possibilities are endless--Enchanted Rock, Padre Island National Seashore, the Guadalupe Mountains, Palo Duro Canyon, the Big Thicket... So imagine my reaction when I saw this:
Now, it's not a bad photo. The Chisos Mountains in the background have a nice red glow of sunset about them. But honestly, could Lik gotten a more uninspired shot if he'd tried? I've seen the agave-in-the-foreground composition more times than I can count, and other than the colors of the Chisos, this isn't even a particularly inventive composition. Out of the length and breadth of the Lone Star State, this is the best he could do? Even limiting himself to Big Bend, I'm thinking Santa Elena Canyon, Grapevine Hills, Lost Mine Peak, Ernst Tenaja, the Mariscal mine... but no. A random agave is what he found the most inspiring and representative of Texas? Is it so wrong for be so disappointed? Other state with much less diversity got several images in the book. I can't help but suspect Lik was already in New Mexico and just decided to jaunt down into Texas to check one state off his list. Maybe he was nearing the end of his years-long project to photograph all 50 state, and what would merely be a rejected outtake at the beginning was "good enough" by the end. I dunno.
I'm still inspired by Lik, and he's a big reason why I'm planning a trip out to Big Bend in early 2012 for photography. But if he ever wants to come back to Texas and get some shots that are more worthy of our state, I'll be happy to serve as a guide. In Central Texas alone I can think of an endless number of sites, from the Canyon Lake Gorge to Enchanted Rock to Hamilton Pool to Honey Creek to the Bracken bat cave... yeah. We can set you up, Peter. Just say the word.
When Aerosmith released the massive Pandora's Box career retrospective in 1991, they made a new video for "Sweet Emotion" to promote the occasion. It got heavy airplay on MTV, back when MTV still played music videos. This video was a revelation to me, not because of Areosmith's ironic humor that frames the video (although that's fun) but rather, I'd never heard the extended album version of "Sweet Emotion" before. I'd only heard the single version on their Greatest Hits album, which also happened to be the only version they ever played on the radio. I actually thought it was a re-recording until someone pointed out to me that I maybe ought to, you know, listen to Toys in the Attic. In any event, the album version of Sweet Emotion is probably my all-time favorite Aerosmith song, not counting odd album tracks like "Hangman Jury" and "Seasons of Wither."
As a side note, I once had a boss who looked just like Joe Perry. The resemblance was uncanny. Except my boss was a woman, and not a very good boss at that. You'll be happy to know I don't hold that against Joe Perry.
As I prepare to hie myself off to bed, plagued all of the day by a lingering headache (likely brought on by the sleep disruption caused by Bug's 3 a.m. fever and vomiting--a nasty episode that vanished as quickly as it came) I feel compelled to share with you good readers this latest strip from the geeky web comic XKCD. The point is well-made. In researching the Chicken Ranch, I've come across a number of oft-reported "facts" that, near as I can tell, were cut from whole cloth by one over-imaginative individual or another. Once a so-called fact is picked up by one publication, it's often cited by another and they all end up referencing each other with little thought given to the fact that this particular house is built upon a foundation of sand. It's an interesting companion to my musings on plagiarism yesterday.
Tonight's writing sample is a good one. A juicy one. I have to confess, I love the irony of this section and took no small amount of glee in writing this up. I could've gone on quite a bit more, but the book is about prostitution in La Grange, after all. Waco's going to have to be content with a walk-on role, even if it was a thousand times more tawdry than the Chicken Ranch ever dreamed of being!
Along the south banks of the Brazos River near Waco’s famed suspension bridge, a red-light district alternately known as “The Reservation” or “Two Street” existed for more than 40 years, as Waco blazed a trail by becoming the first city in Texas to legalize prostitution. Brothels had business permits and were taxed while prostitutes were licensed and--much as the women of the Chicken Ranch would do decades later--submitted to regular, mandatory medical examinations. Although the Reservation was ostensibly supported by the political establishment as a means of keeping vice segregated from more respectable parts of the city, the vast amounts of revenue generated by taxes and licensing fees levied upon commercial sex held far more sway over public policy than moral concerns.
Hoping to get the current chapter put to bed by this weekend. Wish me luck!
You may or may not have heard of the recent plagiarism scandal centering around Quentin Rowan. It's been written about extensively, like here, here and here. In a nutshell, this guy, writing under the pen name of Q.R. Markham, published a spy novel to initial acclaim. Bully for him, right? Well yeah, except that it soon came out that the book was almost entirely cobbled together from lines and paragraphs lifted verbatim from other spy novels, with only the names changed. Seriously. Rowan stole from the James Bond books written by John Gardner as well as the works of Robert Ludlum, Charles McCarry and others. The book in question, Assassin of Secrets, was getting some good reviews before folks started putting together that it was other authors who were more deserving of credit. The publisher, Little, Brown & Co., subsequently pulled the book and it's now likely to become a collector's item.
Beyond the obvious stigma of stealing someone else's work and presenting it as your own, I have to wonder about Rowan's sanity. When college students plagiarize a term paper downloaded from the internet, that's cutting corners to save time and effort. In Rowan's case, however, harvesting so many random lines and paragraphs from so many different books and authors, then stringing them together in such a way to construct a coherent plot... that strikes me as an insane amount of work and research. Far easier and straightforward to just, you know, make up the stuff on your own.
Being a journalist by training, plagiarism's always been an issue high on my personal radar. Back in college, not a year would go by without some writer for the student paper, The Battalion, running afoul of plagiarism charges. They were invariably working for the sports desk, believe it or not. Each time, it was a columnist that got in trouble. Two were fired outright for copying a syndicated sports column and presenting as their own. The third, who happened to be working for me the one summer I served as sports editor, also used unattributed material in his column. To his credit, he did attribute the original source earlier in the column, but not when he referenced more points the original author made. In my meeting with the managing editor on the matter, we judged that it was a mistake rather than intent to deceive. So we only suspended him for two weeks. Plagiarism's serious stuff, folks.
Which brings us to today. Plagiarism has been weighing heavily on my mind long before Mr. Rowan's creative novel writing came to light. In writing this book on the Chicken Ranch, I'm putting together a non-fiction work that is not unlike journalism. I'm using many sources that came before me, and striving to properly attribute everything via endnotes. In some cases, however, the historical sources run pretty thin. Some facts and stories about the brothel can be found in a mere single source--the myriad publications that came after all cite that one source. This in and of itself is troubling for a journalist conditioned to always use multiple sources in order to verify facts, but in my case I have no choice but to go with what I can find.
My biggest challenge with this is that in many cases, these sources often presented the relevant facts in the clearest, most logical and straightforward way. Were I given this information, I'd likely write something very similar. But as I'm using them as a source, I dare not repeat those words verbatim outside of a direct quote (which I want to avoid whenever possible, as I have primary source interviews I plan on directly quoting very heavily). I'm constantly worried about reading a particularly good bit and having it worm its way into my subconscious, only to sneakily reappear later, masquerading as my own original thought. This has led to some awkward writing situations. Take last night for instance. Months ago, I'd found a section in a book that I knew would make an absolutely perfect point at this certain point in the chapter I'm currently working on. So I wrote the material down in a paragraph, added the citation, and wrote toward it. Last night I reached said paragraph, and my heart sank as I read over it again. It was perfect. Too perfect. What I'd written up to that point dovetailed nicely with the cited material. Despite the fact that the paragraphs flowed together beautifully, I steeled myself for an extensive rewrite. No matter how perfect the words were, I would not plagiarize. But folks, I'm telling you the rewrite was agony. Those words on the page were the perfect fit, and anything I came up with as an alternative read like nothing more than a convoluted work-around. After an hour or so of this, I pulled out the original source book in frustration, hoping to maybe find some little nuggets of inspiration in the text surrounding the material I was referencing.
It was then that I realized that I'd already rewritten the source material, incorporating some of my own original research as well! I'd spent the previous hour trying to paraphrase and recast what were already my own words. It was maddening. Frustrating. I said words that would make sailors cover their ears. But hey, the words on the page are mine. And the citations and reference are in proper order as well. I may yet drop the ball and botch things royally, but if I do, it won't be due to lack of effort.
