I've been pretty lax about blog entries lately. I've been thinking, I just haven't been writing. I'll get my thoughts in order and do some writing then. For now I'll post some of my other images.

Reno hot air balloon races.

Red Bull airplane racing.

Reno air races opening ceremonies.

Moubray bay, Antarctica.

Adelie penguin, Cape Adaire, Antarctica

A bald eagle in Sitka, AK.

I love digital cameras. They don't work for everything. For slow or immobile objects like Moubray bay or the hot air balloon races film can't compete but for anything moving above a moderate speed, they don't work as well because of the time it takes to scan the object. But any film images I take are scanned into a digital format. Unfortunately my digital camera seems to be on the blink.


Someone mentioned going on a trip to Davis Monthan Air Force Base in their blog. I had the great fortune to fly as part of an H-3 helicopter aircrew from Sitka, AK to the "boneyard" many years ago. We fleww down the west coast of Canada and the US to North Bend, OR then turned east and flew over Crater lake and on to Reno. From there we flew south to Las Vegas and down through Death Valley. From Death Valley we turned east again and flew down the Grand Canyon. From there we headed south to Davis Monthan to deliver the aircraft. From the wet, pine covered forests of the Northwest to the saguaro covered hills of the Southwest, it was a trip that stands out among many that I got to make. I also had the great misfortune to fly as part of an H-3 helicopter aircrew from Sitka, Ak to the "boneyard" many years ago. As the turbines spooled down at tthe the boneyard, I realized that this machine had flown in some of the most vicious weather imaginable, had (If I remember right) been part of the Prinsendam rescue, had delivered Santa to remote Alaskan villages, and had carried countless mariners to safety, and with the chocks now tucked under the wheels, it had now become scrap metal.

Dazed and confused

Well, this is embarrassing. I seem to have mixed up that kid’s story somehow. I’ve been told that the story was about Pinocchio, not Pistachio. And it was his nose that grew when he told a lie. I even get holidays confused. I used to think that if I saw my shadow on St. Paddy’s day that I was going to spend another six weeks drunk.
I liked The Song of the Dodo. I had a vague idea of what the Wallace line is but Song made it pretty clear what it is and why it is important. Wallace’s problems finding animals in the rain forest mirrors the experiences of the Roosevelt party in The River of Doubt. They had taken rifles on the expedition to supplement their food supply and nearly starved to death. Quammen draws some unusual analogies. “India rumbled off like a runaway beer truck…Madagascar stayed parked.” There’s a geological description even a frat boy could understand and his irreverence made the reading fun. Describing Wallace (seen from his companion’s point of view) as a “nutcake” was funny. I know where he’s coming from. It’s hard not think that someone who wants to fly a hundred miles to collect some penguin dropping might be a little strange.
The other readings, which will be discussed in class tomorrow, bring to mind the term ‘paranoia’. ("In the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Moneybags and his newly re-energized global monopolies and financiers...")

The remnants of a whaling boat at Cape Hallett, Antarctica. Now it serves as a shelter for Adelie penguins.

Week 2 readings

 Adelie penguin, Cape Adare, Antarctica

Having just polished off a Big Mac for breakfast, I suppose Obsessed With Nutrition? is a good place to start commenting on the readings. Bread bolstered with the Omega-3 fatty acids? I think a tuna sandwich would work just as well. Our diet is a two edged sword. The availability, variety, and freshness mean that I’m likely to eat more than I need, simply because it tastes good. That same availability, variety, and freshness also means that I can be sure that I have any needed vitamins, minerals and nutrients. And Obsessed With Nutrition? doesn’t address organic food. Thanks, but I’ll pass. Those preservatives keep the food edible longer. And besides, at my age all the preservatives I’ve eaten are likely the only thing that keeps me from crumbling to dust like Christopher Lee at the end of a vampire movie. Our collective lifespan suggest that our collective diet is fine and orthorexia is silliness.

There are numerous ways to define “region”. But I don’t believe that any single method alone can give an accurate definition. Some have used dialect or accent, others have used the ratio of mules to horse and Zelinsky used as part of his definition, the type of building materials. The influence of radio and television and the way speakers with a Southern accent are viewed have contributed to a decline in that particular accent. Since horses and mules are little used in farming anymore, that ratio would indicate that the South no longer exists. I think that building materials are more a matter of availability rather than a cultural preference. Adobe is used in the Southwest. Trees are more plentiful in the South. The Northeast has clay suitable for bricks. The Great Plains, lacking trees or suitable clay, used sod for buildings until better materials could be imported. I always thought I was in the South when I started seeing headstones in the yards. In the urban (and cooler) North, the dead were transported to the local churchyard for burial. In the rural South, the distances and the heat often precluded transporting bodies to a church for burial so they were just buried in the front yard. Times have changed but it isn’t unusual to see several moss covered tombstones in the yard of a house on a Southern country road.

Some of the readings, I’ll confess, I just don’t understand the point even after multiple readings. I just don’t get the point of Regions on the mind does not equal regions of the mind. Some I am reluctant to address because disagreeing or simply questioning certain orthodoxies can be risky. The comment “Watersheds…are seen as delimiting local natural communities” in the essay ON “BIOREGIONALISM” AND “WATERSHED CONSCIOUSNESS makes me wonder what exactly constitutes an unnatural community?