Run-Up to the Election

"Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."  - George Orwell

Silly Season - The First Shot Across the Bow!

This morning, my wife asked me for a divorce.

Oh, she didn't come right out and use the "D" word. She's much to subtle, far too clever for that. What she said was, "When are you going to put the Christmas lights up around the house?"

Concerned about Obama-trauma

"When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed." -Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Griffin

My son-in-law, Braden and daughter, Amanda have decided on a name for my grandson. He will be called GRIFFIN.

I Googled "Griffin" and this is what I found:

I personally think they're jumping the gun. How do THEY know that he will look like my wife/his grandmother at this early stage?

27 WEEKS AND COUNTING

 

My daughter, Amanda is expecting a baby boy. 

She's 27 weeks into her pregnancy.

The circle of life...no not her tummy...the whole concept.

Europe vs USA

The recession/depression that has hit the US will be felt harder and longer in Europe, Asia and Latin America than it will here. America's problem is a liquidity freeze that is thawing. 

East Asia is bracing for the hit they've already begun to feel and the Chinese are concerned.

Ultimately it will mean a stronger dollar over the next couple of years.

But it doesn't end there since there is pressure coming primarily from Europe to promote an international body that will oversee US financial systems (quas-Brussles style) which would keep this sort of disaster from happening again.

The Europeans want to see a shift in the world of economic and financial trade from the current program to one where oversight by Europeans will guarantee that the current crisis is not repeated. How will the US respond? I don't think we'll know until the next president is elected and takes office. They're pinning their hopes on an Obama-nation because he's already sold the store.

Where's Greedo?

"Greedo" is an Anna's Hummingbird who spent the summer in my back yard. He dutifully guarded the hummingbird feeder and did his best to defend it from other hummingbirds. I called him Greedo because he was as big as a sparrow, having feasted on nectar until he was large (and slow). 

Now he's gone south for the winter and the hummingbirds who are visiting are not the local bunch I got to know. They're in transit themselves. 

I hoped that Greedo would stay through the winter with an inexhaustible supply of nectar in the feeder, but nature calls and that's just how it goes. Maybe Greedo will return in the spring, maybe not. 

I like hummingbirds. I just do.

Midnight Grief

I should be asleep. But I'm not.

I'm indulging myself in a bout of selfish musing - grief if you will - for my sister, Catherine, who just turned 49, passed away. I learned about it yesterday but she died the evening before.

She lives on a farm in Central Oregon with her husband, Willy, a retired Los Angeles Firefighter. Her two children, Lee and Laurel are in college. She and Willy were sitting in the parlor and he went out to get some wood for the fireplace. When he returned, she was dead. It happened that quickly. She had not been ill.

Tempus fugit - time flies. Things happen and somehow I feel strangely disconnected - yet profoundly moved by her death. I recall the little girl, the little sister who looked up to her oldest brother. 

I recall the young lady, the time when camping in very cold weather on the north branch of the Kern River, she was in an inferior tent and an inferior sleeping bag.  It was Catherine, my brother Jim (who died in an automobile accident thereafter) and me.  She said that her feet were very cold, I asked to take a look and immediately thought that her feet were "frozen" because of the color of her toenails - She painted them black, they weren't frozen. 

I think of the innocent child with the face of an angel who shoplifted popsicles because we didn't have money for them and we children all wanted some. 

My youngest sister, Paris, has been hit the hardest by her death. Paris's oldest son, Jon died six weeks ago. Death is with us always. I know that. Grief doesn't address the loss. It's simply the process by which we cope.

And I am awake when I should be asleep, blogging because I don't know what else to do to cope with my sister's death.

Paranuweap

The Pink Coral Sands. The sand is pink as coral, it's very fine, makes for slow and difficult going, but it's beautiful.

A picture of my destination.

I have lots of favorite places to take my Toyota FJ Cruiser. The twenty-mile trip from the Pink Coral Sands State Park near Kanab, Utah - through Elephant Hill Pass and down into the Virgin River Gorge which is also called Paranuweap is one of my favorites. It's an area I have not fully explored, the wilderness study area to the south and east of Zion's National Park. It's wild country where the roads are treacherous.

If Vince Peterson (right) waited another ten feet to slide in the sand, he'd have gone over the edge of the canyon and would have dropped about 200' [living by chance].

I wonder if my friend, Jack, who reads this blog thinks I'm nuts for taking my truck into places like this. Truth be told, I'm clearly crazy by most people's standards - read my blog - however, places like this, Paranuweap, are some of the only places where I feel alive. There is a liberating feeling places like this impart.

Grand Staircase

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is just under two-million square acres of remote land in the southeast corner of Utah.

It's one of those places where you can get lost in nature because the deep portion of the Grand Staircase - the portion where few people travel because the roads are "impassable" or just plain rough - is very remote. 

A drive into this part of America feels very much like a trip back in time. There are still undiscovered fo

ssil beds and I watched Peregrine Falcons swoop

 from the ridges onto their prey below. 

You can spend many weeks here and never cover the same ground twice. However it's never a bad idea to have a winch and full range of recovery gear onboard because you'll inevitably need it when (not really "if") you get stuck.

There is a sense that comes with true isolation of

 kinship with the world that surrounds you. Coyotes call in the night and the stars are so bright and vivid in the dry night air free of light pollution that you can almost reach out and touch them. Food tastes 

better. Water tastes sweeter and all senses resort to the primeval. 

Grosvenor Arch (right) is on the edge, the borderline of the monument and you can get there without much trouble. Even so, it's worth a visit - worth a moment in a life - to sit, and look at as clouds drift overhead against the cerulean sky.