Pisces are so gullible.

What? What? We're the ones who opt for living in the caves on the top of mountains, communing with the infinite. Deranged, yes, but gullible? Gullible? Never let a good prognostication go to waste. Hup! Hup! Hup!

Back from breakfast. An avocado omelet. I seem to recall avocados aren't the best sort of thing to be eating if you're eating healthy, all those oils and such, but then, the country potatoes don't rate all that high either so we'll just say breakfast is done, it was good. The sky is overcast, by the way, with rain on the way (the weather people say, but so say anyone else who might look outside) although I'm heading down to Jack London Square later this afternoon for a photo meet up. We are preparing for a great 2010 and it's best not to forget how to put on a jacket, pick up a camera and get out, rain or not. Don't you think?

I mentioned I got little photographing SantaCon yesterday, little in the way of the photographs I'm out there to shoot. Yes, a few, but sometimes, particularly when people are first grouping together, it's hard to find anyone off in their own space. Well, I just made that up. Maybe true, maybe not. Rules are dangerous in the arts. It's much easier to get pictures like this, attractive people smiling for the camera. Nothing wrong with them, it's my definition of what people want in a set of wedding photographs, the reason I take the backup photographer's position if I'm asked, it's just not my bent, not what gets me up and about.

There's just one kind or the other?

Well, there's the betwixt and between. You get a lot of betwixt and between. Everything yesterday was probably betwixt and between, but that's the nature of the art. You're not spot on but once or twice in a day or a week or a month. It might be a year, but I don't want to think about that. Why the photographers who make good at their art spend so much time out there on the street, more time in a day than I spend in a week, more time in a month than I spend in, well, you get the idea. They also have a better tolerance for rain, I've noticed, and don't go home and crawl into bed early at night. And when they get up they go out and shoot and don't immediately drive down the street to have breakfast. The swine. Not sure how they're able to do that.

Nor do they preach.

Yes, yes. I do think about that.

I did learn something (I've know in the past, but neglected to remember) more of what needs to be done to protect the cameras in the rain (I'd made adequate preparations, but didn't go the extra step), I could have stayed longer, but it was wet, it was cold and I'm easy when “why not go home?” passes through the cortex. No complaints. Unless these are complaints.

These are complaints.

I think of it more as description, a kind of mind dump in the mornings for those who keep a journal. For a rainy day, a good day yesterday, travel and adventure with a cup of coffee and a decent walk. Cold without getting cold, travel without losing luggage, home in time for whatever was playing on television, of which there was naught.

Later. I see where Paul Samuelson, the economist, has died at the age of 94. As an economics student in the early to mid-sixties, Samuelson's text book was the introductory factor in the study of economics at the University of Washington, where I studied, and around the world. For some reason, back in the days when we formed First Montgomery Corporation, I remember him as one of the investors, thinking at the time, good grief, that's well, pretty amazing, Samuelson himself. We had a number of Stanford Business School professors who'd invested in the start up as we had close to a dozen recent Stanford Business School graduates in the company itself and this, I suppose, is what happens in these circumstances. Your better students forming a company? Why not invest? Get rich! They know what they're doing, we've taught them everything they know. In our case not such a good bet.

Still I was thinking Samuelson had been a professor at Stanford in the late 1960's, early 70's, and I can't find a reference to that. Went to school at Chicago, got his doctorate at Harvard, best known for his long term stint at M.I.T. No Stanford on the list. Joseph Stiglitz was at Stanford. Could he have been the one I'd been thinking of? Lost his money with the rest of us? Hi, ho. The memory does go, starting for me in my late twenties, I guess.

Note after the fact: Stiglitz was a professor at Stanford from 1974 - 1978. Seems unlikely as we'd long gone bust by then. And besides, I had no idea who Stiglitz was in the 70's, didn't really know until this damned recession stumbled in.