Yuri

Eastern Lewis County, Washington. Sixth and last in the series. I'm hoping to get back there soon- it's been cloudy lately, which means the light isn't exactly ideal, but by the time the sun is shining reliably again, the deciduous vegetation might be so dense that the light won't be ideal again. We'll see.

In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth. This date is now celebrated internationally as Yuri's Night.
In 1975 villagers in Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, UK, were watching 'Around the World in Eighty Days' on TV. Just as the show's hero was about to set off on a balloon, there was a power failure in the village. Outside the village a balloon, attempting to land, had been blown into power lines.
In 1981 a pecan tree in Needham, Alabama, started whining like a puppy. The owners were unable to find a reason for the irritating noise.

Mona Lisa

Eastern Lewis County, Washington. Sixth in a series of seven.

In 1722, Christopher Smart (author of what's probably my favorite poem) was born.
In 1956, Nat “King” Cole was attacked on stage by white audience members in Birmingham, AL.
In 1968, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law.

One man's best friend

Bookends

Eastern Lewis County, Washington. Fifth in the series.

This is hilarious- a Finnish rock band, with the Red Army Choir, doing "Sweet Home Alabama" like they're from Mobile themselves. Honest, it's a riot. I wish I had been there!

In 1973, the Kansas City Royals beat the Texas Rangers 12-1 in the first game to be played at Royals Stadium.

In 1981, a minor earthquake struck Guangdon province, China. Four-thousand junks had fled the region after astrologists and Taoist priests predicted the quake. Hong Kong authorities refused the refugees until the quake struck “right on time.”

Poisoning pigeons in the park

Eastern Lewis County, Washington. Fourth in the series.

In 1928, Tom Lehrer was born.

In 1984, the crews of four airlines reported a mushroom cloud above the 14,000ft cloud deck, somewhere between Kuril Island and Sakhalin Island, a sensitive Soviet military area north of Japan. The cloud rose over 65,000 feet at a speed of about 500mph, and expanded to a diameter of 200 miles. No traces of radioactivity were found on the planes, and the aircrafts' electronics were undisturbed.

I'm so f-ing sick of the news media that I could vomit. Suffice to say BBC continues to kiss McSame's ass; Guardian continues to denigrate the Democratic candidates whenever possible while ignoring McSame; and CNN continues to publish crap-writing and manipulated-crap for editing. All of them continue to ignore McSame's complete ignorance of economics, foreign policy (especially the Sunni-Shiite conflict), and veterans' issues.

It's bread and circuses, bread and circuses for everyone. Hooray. Now shut up and go shopping.

I'm beginning to think it's time for me to let my good light shine again; to get out and re-redefine the word eccentric.

Hi ho!

Eastern Lewis County, Washington. Third in a series.

Got some new tools yesterday, looking for more today, though I know I'll never replace most of what was lost. Hi ho! I messed up my right arm (my good arm) last week, cleaning up the yard, so I'm on light-work duty for a while. I'll clean, maybe shoot some more pictures, do some drawing/design work, and rest the arm. Hi ho!

Wikipedia

Eastern Lewis County, Washington. I was out exploring near Mt Rainier, and saw an old truck off the side of the road in some trees. It was covered in moss and rusted out, clearly deserted for generations. I got out of the car, and as I approached it, I saw that it was not alone: I was in a graveyard of old trucks, an old farm trash heap full of rust and covered with moss, so long abandoned that a forest had grown up on top of it. #2 in a series.

In 1793, France adopted the Metre as the standard unit of measurement.
In 1915, Billie Holiday was born.
In 1943, Dr. Albert Hoffman first synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).
In 1954, Jackie Chan was born.

Yeah, I know of wikipedia's "flaws." To my mind, those same "flaws" are known in other circles as "peer review." Peer review is simply the best system we have of publishing new ideas and having them critiqued and challenged in an orderly manner. The only essential difference between Wikipedia and established paper-based scientific/medical/technical journals is that information in Wikipedia can be revised on the spot, while information in journals takes months to revise. Remember: many scientists are just kooks with agendas, and many laypeople -Wiki users- are in fact just intelligent people with passionate interests.

Ghost truck

Eastern Lewis County, Washington.

Tartan Day (North America). Wear your kilt! Commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), which reaffirmed Scotland’s independence.

In 1869, Celluloid was patented. Beginning of the Age of Plastic.

In 1930, the Twinkie was invented.

Interesting development on the front. It's short: one paragraph and a short list. Critical, in more ways than one.

Fairy trail

We found this little grotto tucked away next to (well, under, really) the old Gorge Highway. It's a veritable gem. Might have been able to get a good shot of the whole thing with a different lens, but I don't know lenses really, so what am I saying? It's just a little place, the path is about 200 yards long with maybe 50' elevation gain, but very beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale. And yeah, as I recall, it's really called Shepperd's (not shepherd's) Rest. I do not know why. It's possible I misread....

For the sake of easy reading in the future, I'm going to try to remember to use colored text to define different parts of this blog. Personal stuff and notes about my pictures will be in black. Historical factoids will be in green. News will be in blue. Links will be underlined. This will make it easy for you to skip what you're not interested in.

Obladi, oblada.

Last summer, again. This is between Mt. St Helens and Spirit Lake, an area called the Plains of Abraham. In June-July (I think), the lupines turn it all blue.

I'm expecting to hear from the insurance company today, with the settlement. Our losses totalled over $4,000.00. I know I'm being pessimistic, but I doubt we'll get half of that from Farmer's. Le sigh.

Life goes on, bra! La la how the life goes on.


In 1979, radioactive steam leaked into the atmosphere from the Three Mile Island nuclear power facility, in Pennsylvania. In the film “The China Syndrome,” made before the incident and released just twelve days before, a character remarks that a cloud of waste could wreak death and destruction over 'an area the size of Pennsylvania.' Earlier in the year, a local magazine had run a fictional story called “Meltdown at Three Mile Island.” They even got the date right.

In 1930, over five hundred years after Constantinople fell to the Ottomans (who changed its name to Istanbul), the western world recognized the city as Istanbul.

move along, nothing to see here

I am having a hard day. It's not been a particularly good year, so far. I don't have the enthusiasm to dig a picture out of my -whatever- today, but I don't suspect it'll be missed. No events from history either. We're going to war with Iran, but you didn't read it here.

Think! It ain't illegal yet!

I was right again (scroll down to March 11): Spitzer was targeted, and that makes the investigation illegal. In America, we don't prosecute for political reasons. Er, didn't prosecute for political reasons, before Bushcheney.

John McCain goes to Iraq and makes a few socio-political blunders, showing off his ignorance of foreign policy, but the mainstream media focusses on the bullshit Clinton-Obama "war." What does that tell you? It tells you that the media would rather have you focus on the weaknesses of the Democratic candidates, than reveal the weakness of the Republican candidate. Now, what does that tell us? It tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the mainstream media operates as an organ of the Republican party.

Let's have a look at a sample page. If you're seeing the same page I saw, you're seeing eight headlines under the "Election Coverage" banner. There is no mention of McCain. In fact, Bush is at the top. Hello? Rather, we find three headlines for stories which appear to be bad news about Obama, and one which leads with the phrase "Anti-Clinton." One other head suggests that Bill Richardson is 'loyal' to the Clintons, but the story is about his endorsement of Obama (more conflict inside the party, see?). The general effect of the page is to emphasize that the Democrats are not organized or focused enough to be able to focus on policy, and are therefore not fit to be President.

As long as we read/view mainstream media, we are in their thrall. This is the kind of enemy I'm fighting.

Think for yourself, and my fight is won.

It's International Waffle Day today.

Bela Bartok, Aretha Franklin, Frank Oz, Elton John and Sarah Jessica Parker were all born on this day (1881, 1942, '44, '47 and '65, respectively).

If you must leave then go ahead

John Wesley Powell was born on this day in 1834. William Morris was also born on the same day.

In 1973, Pink Floyd released "Dark Side of the Moon."

Daisy

Today in 1743, Georg Friedrich Handel premiered The Messiah.

In 1910, Akira Kurosawa was born.

Why do you make me blue

From last summer. I've been too busy pruning and recovering to do any hiking, though the weather has been quite tolerable. Pruning: what I thought would be a one-week project at most, is turning out to be far more complex and time-consuming. Who knew there was so much wood in a tree? Egad man, we have carted away two 50-gal containers of very chopped-up branches so far, and I am only now beginning to see a dent in the tree itself (and that's to say nothing of the piles of branches remaining in the yard). This is clearly an annual job, which had been ignored for years. And I haven't even started on the pear tree. And the time is very ripe for starting a garden again....

But in 1895, the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere showed their first motion picture.

In 1903, Niagara Falls ran dry due to drought.

In 1930, Stephen Sondheim was born. William Shatner followed a year later, and Andrew Lloyd Webber came along in 1948.

In 1962, The Beatles released their first full-length LP in the UK, Please Please Me.

And in 1986, the chief librarian of Wilberforce University in Ohio, one of the oldest predominantly black universities in the United States, was puzzled to find a copy of Scriptores Reis Rustica (Writings about Country Life) printed in Bologna in 1496, while rummaging through some old magazines. The 300-page volume had been rebound using the original wooden covers. No-one could guess how it came to be there.

No rest for the wicked

Found these growing in the 'V' between limbs of one of the apple trees.

My new favorite blog

Johann Sebastian Bach, Modest Mussorgsky, and Florenz Ziegfield were all born on this day (1685, 1839, and 1869, respectively).

ambiguous, not ambivalent

I enjoy a bit of ambiguity now and then. Ok I won't lie: I thrive on it. I eat, breathe and poop ambiguity. Nothing is fixed or certain. What is this picture? It's a composition, a study, a background, a texture, a photograph of a log, nothing.

In 721 bce, the first lunar eclipse was recorded, in Babylon.

flight of the bumblebee

Not my photo. So ya know. Seemed pretty appropriate right now, though.

Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov was born on this day in 1844.

available balance

No, really!

It is, of course, St. Patrick's day. I'd be celebrating on Montserrat if I could (it's an official holiday there). Maybe some day.

It's also Nat King Cole's birthday (1919).

Ol' man

In ancient Rome, today would be the first day of Bacchanalia. Hello spring!

In 1926, Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket.

In 1968, more than 500 Vietnamese civilians were killed in the My Lai massacre.

And in 1995, the Mississippi state legislature finally ratified the 13th amendment to the U.S. constitution, formally abolishing slavery.

Turkey buzzards

On this day, apparently according to time-honored turkey-buzzard tradition, the Turkey Buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio.

And in music history, Lightnin' Hopkins was born on this day, in 1912.

In 1783, George Washington asked his officers to not support the Newburgh Conspiracy, a potential officers’ insurrection due to long-overdue wages. Washington subtly revealed that he had sacrificed much as well, and the officers relented.

If we make it back

My latest. An original design, based on 1) images of shoes from Carolingian and early Christian art, 2) extant late Roman-era shoes, 3) period design motifs and 4) period construction techniques. I think they would have looked exotic but not eye-poppingly out-of-place in Charlemagne's court.


How we deal with this will be very telling. I suspect we'll ignore it, or call it an 'internal issue for China,' or something, at least until BushCheney's out of office, but it's a growing problem (and if XinHua acknowledges it, then it's probably getting hard to suppress). Predictably, India is staying out of it as much as possible (that's their policy, I presume it secures something like peace along their long border). It will affect the Olympics, though, perhaps even lead to some privately-organized boycotts, and therefore will affect trade, and that is the only thing that matters these days. Disrupt Chinese-American trade, and you've disrupted the global economy.

This is amazing, though, amazingly cool.


Georg Philip Telemann, Casey Jones, and Albert Einstein were all born on this day, in 1681, 1864, and 1879, respectively.

And in 1840, the Times reported that, for the second winter running, foal-like tracks, but 'of considerable size' were discovered, running for 12 miles through the glens of Orchy, Lyon and Lochay, south of the fairy-haunted Rannoch Moor in Scotland.

In the balance

My shop was broken in to the other night. F-ing thieves cleaned me out: merchandise, materials, tools, Phil's bike, gone. At least $5k lost. Hi ho. Life (and business) goes on. I'm rebuilding.

In 1921, Mongolia (then Outer Mongolia) declared its independence from China under the leadership of the Black Baron (aka the Mad Baron and the Bloody Baron, ahem) Roman Ungern von Sternberg, a Russian-East European aristocrat disenfranchised by the October Revolution.

old brown shoe

Probably obvious, but this is not my work. Not my photograph, not my shoe. It's a Roman-era shoe, which I used as part of the inspiration for the pair of shoes I just delivered, which you'll see here, tomorrow.

Some very interesting reading about the Spitzer hoohah.

In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi started a 240 mile march to the sea, in protest of the British monopoly on salt in India.

My sentiments, only better

Larisa Alexandrovna sums up my sentiments on the Spitzer hoohah. She concludes:

Spitzer's sexual activities really only affect his relationship with his wife and family. They only affect us if those relationships are illegal, which in this case it appears to be so. But to target and investigate someone in hopes of finding something illegal is also illegal. I am not comfortable right now that Spitzer was legally investigated, despite the allegations of what he was actually caught doing and the fact that it was a criminal activity.

And I am certainly not comfortable with the hysteria over two consenting adults having sex, while no one cares that the Bush administration lied us into an illegal war in which nearly a million Iraqis have been killed and tens of thousands of Americans have either been destroyed or killed. I am also not happy that the illegal domestic spying this administration has engaged in appears to have nothing to do with terrorism. I am not surprised by this, of course. What I am surprised by is that no one else seems to care that the White House is more interested in sex between consenting adults than in catching a terrorist.

Siegelman, Spitzer... who's next?

I'd like to share this with you. I think it begins to approach a difficult issue. That's a big step, considering the issue (more on that later).

The fact that Governor Spitzer's activity with a hooker is being reported as hot news is puzzling, so I thought about it: Why is some straight guy being persecuted for hiring a hooker? A female hooker? I think we all assume that everybody in Washington does that, don't we? So, why him? Why not the many guys guilty of much dirtier stuff?

I personally think this story is two things: 1, a "Look at that interesting thing over there!" story, a distraction from another, more threatening-to-whoever story; and 2, a case of a Bush-appointed D.A. acting on orders from above, a la Alabama. I just think the timing is interesting, following his scathing criticism of the Bush administration, not too long ago (criticism was published in October '07, the recordings of the governor were made in February '08). The schadenfreude coming from Wall Street may also be telling.

To say the details of this investigation are murky and dubious (as Sam Seder just said on the radio) is to give them great credit. Something is rotten here. My advice to the Governor: Don't resign, but for god's sake stay out of convertibles and small aircraft.