I Has A President

Just like a couple weeks ago’s I Don’t Have A Cat post, while wandering the interwebs this evening, looking to find something to entertain me when I came across this photo somewhere, possibly CNN or maybe in an article about the Supreme President inviting himself to throw out a first pitch, and for whatever reason it too spoke to me.

It is sort of like the Mona Lisa as it mirrors the painting’s novel qualities, including the subject’s expression, which is frequently described as enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.

Enjoy!

Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV

Here are some of my favorite excepts from CNN’s online article “The 32 most bizarre lines from Donald Trump’s latest interview with Sean Hannity.”

6. “Since — it’s funny. Since I did a — I made a speech at Mount Rushmore. And since that time, it’s been really something. There’s been — I mean, before that, really. You have all of these fake, these suppression polls, and just like 2016, when they put out these phony polls, the media.”

12. “And if you are not 100% on your game, if you are not 100% sharp-plus, you’ve got a problem.”

14. “So many different things, I could go — and you don’t have enough time. I could go all night with it.”

19. “There’s tremendous — you know, you don’t see that too much in the news, but you have countries that are going through relatively what we are doing plus-plus-plus. It is horrible.”

25. “We are going to be respected. And we are now by other countries. They’re respecting us more than they have in many, many decades. I will tell you that.”

28. “Yes, no, I have thrown out first pitches.”

Long Long Short Long

We live about a third of a mile uphill from some railroad tracks. They are not just any old railroad tracks either, if you are traveling by train from Seattle to Los Angeles you will pass thru our fair city of Klamath Falls. These tracks are kind of like I-5 in that they are the main north-south route along the west coast, so freight trains also pass through here every day. There are probably ten to twelve trains total using those tracks per each 24 hour period.

A direct line along that third of a mile crosses three regular surface city streets, a bike path and one 5 lane US highway before you get to the tracks. Not too far that direct line is a street called Portland that those tracks cross. This is the only street crossing on this side of town, the rest have bridges over the tracks. This street crossing doesn’t come into play on any of our trips, so we really don’t have to worry about waiting for any length of time at the crossing when any of the long freight trains pass thru town. What we do have to contend with is the train’s engineer signaling his approach to the crossing.

It wasn’t until we moved here that we knew that any train approaching a street crossing, whether it has automatic gates or just flashing lights, the train’s engineer has to sound the train’s horn in a series of blasts – two long, one short and a final long. Because we can actually see the train through the trees and gaps in between houses in the winter from our front porch, we have no trouble hearing these blasts of 96-110 db sound. When we first moved into our house those horn blasts could be startling because our living room faces front towards the track. After a few months though, we got used to them and we are to a point that we almost don’t hear them anymore. Almost.

I have noticed that different engineer’s each have a different way of sounding that signal, some have longer longs or a shorter short blast. Because we are a stop on the Amtrak route and have a very large rail yard south of town there are probably several of this engineers who live in town. I am convinced that the different variations in the horn blasts lengths is similar to the pilot whose landing pattern took him over his house and wagged his wings as a greeting to his family, these distinctive horn blasts let their family know they are coming home.