Shoot That!

I don't have any explanation for why my stout little camera has decided to retire itself. It has no claims for workman's comp except being occasionally overworked. It neither fell off of a ladder nor was exposed to dangerous fum...well, there was New Year's Eve, but it is tougher than that. But so it is. Since around here one doesn't just pop down to the camera shop, it might be awhile. My hands are barely shaking, I can do this. In the meantime, I'll dig up some oldies and steal beg permission for other bits.

Starting off repeats with this guy, as he is probably my favortie iguana shot.

The other bit I was planning for this morning anyway came from a book I'm reading containing a poem that caught my brain. The man who wrote it, J.K. - or James Kenneth if you insist - Stephens was an interesting fellow to put it mildly. Well educated, a cousin of Virginia Woolf, tutor of Prince Albert Victor and with mental health issues to boot, he was, in my opinion, somewhat clairvoyant as well.

He was also a suspect for the Jack the Ripper killings, making him even more someone to reckon with, especially considering he died at 32. Of starvation. On hearing about Prince Albert's death. How many friends are that devoted, I ask you?

To R.K.

Will there never come a season

Which shall rid us from the curse

Of a prose which knows no reason

And an unmelodious verse:

When the world shall cease to wonder

At the genius of an Ass,

And a boy's eccentric blunder

Shall not bring success to pass:

When mankind shall be delivered

From the clash of magazines,

And the inkstand shall be shivered

Into countless smithereens:

When there stands a muzzled stripling,

Mute, beside a muzzled bore:

When the Rudyards cease from Kipling

And the Haggards Ride no more.

Rudyard Kipling called him "that genius" and wrote that he "dealt with Haggard and me in some stanzas which I would have given much to have written myself".

Since he died in a mental institution in 1892 (cause of death - Mania), I'm not going to bother with permissions. I wonder if cell/smart phones ever figured into his thinking. He'd have died all over again.

Have a tear into troubles with triumphant tremblings Thursday. Do something ticklish.