April 2012

April 17, 2012

So a further 30 million dollars is to be slashed from our court system here in California, the largest in the nation? This is on top of the 70 million already taken away this last fiscal year. That’s, get this, $100 MILLION DOLLARS. This means that by the end of June, there will be:

350 fewer employees

56 fewer courtrooms

No court reporters for civil trials unless bought and paid for by the litigants (Appeal? Good luck with that. Shoot the wounded? They may now shoot the living dead)Continue Reading Justice: always delayed, often denied – now it’s…..rationed?

My youngest daughter Annabel, who took up photography, is reappearing on my radar I’m happy to say. Without any prompting, she’s joining the blog brigade, and I’m happy to link my readers to her website. Here, she chooses today to commemorate the 182nd birthday of the much neglected Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904). She shows the connection between him and the film business, for he predates Edison by several years, with his moving projections of a galloping horse and some naked models in the 1870s.  Come to think of it, he was using stereoscopic multiple cameras in much the same way that James Cameron does today. Yes, we certainly owe him!

Muybridge (birth name Edward James Muggeridge)  emigrated from England when a young man, and settled in the Bay area of San Francisco.  In his forties, he took to himself a young wife named Flora, and while away on one of his photography trips, probably shooting landscapes in Yosemite, or Eskimos in Alaska, or American Indians in Oregon, he returned home to find love-letters between her and another man. She had taken a lover, a Major Larkyns. Did she file for divorce? Did he go to California Family Court? No. This is what he did:Continue Reading Anniversaries? Never mind the Titanic, how about Eadweard Muybridge.