The Camel Jumper

 A funny thing happened.  One of the pictures I posted yesterday on my 1933 page was of a young Afghani lad struggling to hold a camel's halter.  He's so small, and the camel so big, there's a man just laughing out loud at the sight, and the kid is laughing too.  

I found this picture in the usual way, just searching for photos on Google using the date in 1933.  The next day I was looking at the photo and the words camel jumper popped into my mind.  I knew what this was- I had a dream once about a young boy who I called the Camel Jumper. 

So I looked for my record of that dream, sure enough found it.  I'm not terribly surprised that the photo reminded me of the dream subconsciously (I was searching for what to call the kid in the photo, and came up with two names that were like camel jumper:  camel minder and camel driver) What surprises me is how I had that strange dream to begin with.  I wonder if I may have seen the photo when I was a kid or something?  Here's the dream, as recorded.  First the picture, then the dream from about 18 years earlier.

01/09/03

The Camel Jumper.

There was a playroom, or just a room with a few toys and nothing else in it.  Some children, very young children, were in it.  A boy wanted to cross this room, but at times the location would change to that of a high desert encampment.

The light in this desert location was thin and low, and it may have been cold.  A large group of robed desert people were there, and the time was long ago.  As the small boy crossed the playroom, he would appear in the midst of this circle of desert people.

He was able to save his life by doing some trick, but it was as if he would not keep these somewhat hostile people confused long enough for him to cross the room.  Fortunately, there was an even younger (or just smaller) boy in the room with him who was also travelling back to this desert.  (The change from location to location was a long, grainy fade rather than an abrupt switch.  The desert location was yellowish, and the fade would begin with this yellowish grainyness appearing in the room)

The smaller boy wasn't as far across the room, but he had a better trick.  He had some sort of a wooden contraption- sort of crutch-shaped, but with a dog-leg bend in it.  It was apparently part of the gear used to hold cargo on the backs of camels.  The smaller boy would use this stick to vault, or turn a sumersault in the air, in the midst of the circle of desert people.

It amazed them, and the boy gained their favor by turning exactly 27 perfect sumersaults altogether.  He was known as the cameljumper.

 So... there it is.  I'm certainly not clever enough to come up with a story like that one just by looking at a photograph, and you'll have to admit that some of the details fit remarkably well together.  I'm fairly well able to understand what the dream meant to me personally.  Well, just one of those coincidences.

 

Christmas Present

Someone sent us all a gift at 6:29 Christmas morning in Nashville.  An RV bomb punched a big hole in the side of an AT&T building, while the perpetrator took care to warn away anyone who might be hurt or killed by the explosion.  

In my opinion it was a direct attack meant to disable the local or regional information system for a short period of time, and I believe that whatever the purpose of doing so, the action has already either succeeded or failed.  I say this because those who were affected by it will be stepping up their defenses against this sort of thing.  Unknown vehicles won't be allowed to park next to sensitive buildings in the future.

I don't believe it was an attempt to test defenses or police responses, or to permanently "take out" any data collection going on at the site, or to send a message of some sort.  Because it was very precisely timed, and very precisely aimed, I think it's safe to say that whatever the perps were going to do when systems went down has already happened.  I'm just not smart enough to figure out what that might have been.

But for sure, the perps knew pretty precisely where to place the vehicle.  I've seen video of a hole blasted in the side of the building at the second story level, and one which showed large sections of sidewalk missing.  I don't know much about explosives, but it seems as though this one was directed at a specific part of the building. 

It was reported that 911 systems were knocked out as far as 180 miles to the east in Knox County.

Jingle Bells

 It's early in the morning, Christmas Day.  I'm on a Covid retirement plan.  Again surprised that Blogger is still a thing.  I re-rediscovered this when I fired up an old tablet I own that is running Windows 8.  I had mostly given up on the thing, but after running Win 10 for a while my resistance is lower.  It feels kinda cool and funky now.

so- spent Christmas eve on a zoom hosted by John Kelly.  It was a blast hanging out with family, even though they weren't exactly my family.  The Kellys are close, and nice to each other.  And not upset to have me join in.

I'm into the final week of the 1933 project now.  It's still fun for me.  Once the company furloughed us I had a lot more time to play with each day's posting.  It got better.  When the year ends I will need to go through the thousands of images I've got and try to put the year in some kind of order.  Fun!

I will start by defining a color palette for the project.  It was always the plan to have the graphic borders reflect the theme of the image, but until I'd seen all the years' colors I couldn't have a complete thing.  I have the Nazi color, but that's about it for specific ones- oh, International Orange for the Golden Gate Bridge.  Did you know that there are varients on that color?

Merry Christmas to all.