The Flu Pandemic

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Many, many years ago my good friend (and fellow Flying Fish Sailor) Greg Henkel wrote a song about the 1918 Flu Pandemic that killed over 20 million people worldwide.

The Flu Pandemic song became one of our most popular performance pieces. Despite the grim subject matter, the song is often referred to as “a happy little ditty about death” and brings smiles and laughter to those who hear it.

The current swine flu outbreak has generated a lot of interest in the song and is driving a lot of traffic to the band web site.

The song is available on our Loch Ness Monster CD which is available @ amazon.com or from us directly.

Interestingly enough, there is a live version of the song that was recorded at Rockefeller’s during Son Of Blarneyfest in 1996 that I almost forgot existed. It predates the Loch Ness Monster studio recording by several years.

You can listen to it here:
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The Flu Pandemic

Copyright 1999 Topmast Production and the Flying Fish Sailors

Chorus: It was the Flu pandemic
And it swept the whole world wide
It caught soldiers and civilians
And they died, died, died!
Whether they’re lying in the trenches
Or lying in their beds
Twenty million of them got it
And they’re dead, dead, dead!

There was a soldier on the battleground in 1917
He turned there to his buddy with his face a ghastly green
He said “We made it both through Passchendaele, the Somme, and Flanders too
But now my number’s up my lad for I’ve gone and caught the flu”

chorus

Well a nurse was in the hospital when Tommy was brought in
When he sneezed she caught a face full that was flying in the wind
She wrote a letter home to England to tell them of her plight
But the letter never got there ’cause the postman too had died

chorus

From the meadow-lands of Somerset and o’er the bounding main
To the shores of old Americay they sung the same refrain
Mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts as well as the odd nephew
Brothers and sisters and bosses and lovers were all got by the flu

chorus

Well a farmer out in China watched his family dropping down
And a businessman in Cairo hit the street without a sound
And an eager little Bolshevik in old Sevastopol couldn’t keep up his grinnin’ at Lenin as Comrade Virus took its toll

God said to Noah There’s going to be a floody floody

We woke up around 4:30 to the sound of pouring rain and loud rumbling thunder. It had been raining since we went to sleep and I knew the water was likely going to be high in the streets. Looking out the door confirmed my suspicions. I shot this in the dark on a tripod just to document how high the water was.

Halfway up the sidewalk to the front door was as high as it got, thank goodness. I waited till the sun came up and the rain died down to explore further. This is the highest water I’ve seen in 15 years of living in this neighborhood.

This has to be only one of the few times in it’s life this truck is actually “practical” …

Houston International Festival – 2009

The Flying Fish Sailors performed at the Houston International Festival this past weekend. The weather held and we were not washed away in a deluge like the performers on the previous Saturday. Thanks to Elaine Mesker-Garcia (aka @cybertoad) of Fresh Photography for these wonderful shots:

We have the rest of Elaine’s shots in the Flying Fish Sailors Photo Gallery.

And thanks to Sandy Grimm for this exceptionally linear photograph of the entire band!

Venus Moon Rising


Taken @ 6:15 AM April 22nd 2009
View On Black

On the way to work Cynthia and I spotted the moonrise with accompanying Venus. It was sooooo pretty and I really wanted to get a picture. Sadly, I was not carrying the gear needed to get the shot. Cynthia was kind enough to support me in my decision to turn around and quickly go home so I could whip out the tripod and the SAL 70-300G lens and snap this picture.

I confess to a little Photoshop lens flare on the Venus part, but that’s all original for Mr. Moon.

Mini H-Town

It’s easy to dismiss tilt-shift miniature faking as nothing more than a Photoshop gimmick. But in my opinion, when done right the results are still quite compelling. There’s a method to the madness of the post-processing and even if you put aside the digital chicanery, there’s still the matter of getting the right subject matter shot from the proper angle which is instrumental in achieving the desired effect.

And besides, if the photographer is having fun and people smile and enjoy the end product isn’t that all that matters?

As Neil Young once sang – “There’s more to the picture, than meets the eye…

Click the images below to see the full sized versions

Minolta AF 500/8 Reflex

I was asked by my co-worker/friend David if I would accompany him to the crack house Camera Exchange. He had decided to purchase a digital camera and wanted my “expertise” as he entered this new and exciting realm of photography. Not being one to turn down a chance to go look at the pretty pretty camera equipment I agreed to tag along.

I introduced him to my favorite dealer sales guy and proceeded to have a look in the used equipment case. Usually they don’t have much for the Sony/Minolta platform but on this day as David and Charlie discussed the Nikon D90 and some lenses, there was a sparkling gem of used Minolta goodness.

A Minolta AF 500/8 Reflex lens and available for a very reasonable price.

I’d read a bit about this lens and it’s a remarkable piece of glass for what it is and for the price. Whereas the average 500mm reflex lens tends to be a manual focus, the Minolta/Sony 500mm Reflex lens is the only production mirror lens designed to auto focus with an SLR camera.

Very light and very compact it’s easy to carry around. Since it shoots at a constant F/8 aperture it is not a low-light performer, but @ 500mm it will literally reach out and touch someone. The re-tooled Sony version runs twice as much as what you can pic up this older Minolta version for on the secondary market and this one was priced well below even that so it was a good bargain.

In good light this lens produces good results and gives me more reach in my birding and wildlife photography. The first few test shots are quite encouraging. All of these images are un-cropped and only resized to be more reasonable for web viewing. Click any image to see a larger version.

It is not super super sharp, but the color and contrast is good. I think it will serve me well.