Baby, it's COLD out there

One of the bonuses (bonusi? No, that's a small Japanese tree.) Anyway, as aircrew, I got to go a lot places most people don't. When the scientists need to get somewhere, we were how they got there.

H-52 helicopter on the Ross Ice shelf.

One of the more desirable flights was a trip to lake Vanda in the Wright valley.

Lake Vanda.

Me at Vanda station.
(That is a mummified seal below the sign)

Vanda station was famed for its 'swim club'. A swim in lake Vanda entitled one to purchase an embroidered Vanda Swim Club patch. The requirements for the patch were simple

1. Complete submersion in the lake.
2. No clothing with the exception of some kind of footwear. (The rocks along the shore were razor sharp.)
3. No limits on photography.

Me again. That water is cold!


But some days you're the dog, others you're the hydrant.
This is the wreckage of a Navy helo in the Wright valley.

Yi-Fu Tuan, Dominance & Affection and the FLDS

I've put this reading off for long enough, mostly because I don't have the right answer. And I've concluded that I don't even have a good answer and likely never will. I'm not a pet person and if I were, my choice probably wouldn't be a cat. But my wife and I wound up with this cat. I've taught her 'fetch' and 'shake hands' and occasionally she will 'speak' on command. When she goes outside, she is on a leash. The cat is thoroughly dominated. On the other hand, the cat has never missed a meal and her sole function seems to be converting expensive cat food into cat hair and cat turds. If she were free, she could reach her full potential as a cat. Provided of course that she weren't killed by a car or a coyote or she didn't die of disease, starvation or freezing. That is how I see the FLDS. The government could save these poor benighted women even if they don't realize that they need to be rescued. We could take so much pride in empowering those who managed to survive the predators and starvation. In fact, we don't need the government to solve our problems. Lets break out torches and pitchforks and go destroy the monster ourselves! Picture Dale Barlow limping through the compund saying "Thancthuwawy! Thancthuwawy! If this is being done to "protect the children", I wonder how a 416 kids from here would fare in terms of pregnancy, clothing, adequate food,etc. and whether their responses would be that different if they were asked the questions the FLDS kids are being asked? I think we often have things backwards. If a man fathers a dozen children with half a dozen women and abandons them all he gets a starring spot on MTV. If he takes responibility for all of them, he's a monster. Wilt Chamberlin brags of having bedded tens of thousands of women and he's a hero. Pee Wee Herman practices the ultimate in safe sex and he goes to jail. We select Presidents based how they look and pick Miss America because of how she will solve the world's problems. We used to take LSD to make the world look weird. Now we take Prozac to make it look normal. How did a nation so backwards ever manage to become a superpower?


J. B. Jackson's piece on the Four Corners and trailers makes me think of Slab City. This would be a fascinating place for a thesis. If I were (much) younger and single, I'd buy a van or a ratted out motorhome, a lap-top, a good digital camera, take a year from school, and head off to Slab City for a season. I'd want to know who these people were, why they were there, where they came from, where they went when they left... I'd like to know who made the rules and who enforced the rules. I'd wonder about the social and political hierarchy of a culture like that. If only I were the higher education type.
Anyway, why do we look down on people who live in trailer parks? "Drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park..." We don't sneer at people who live in trailers. We don't. There is a "campground" on Rock boulevard that fills with trailers in the summer but doesn't carry the stigma that a trailer park in Lemon Valley carries. The people in the campground or for that matter, Slab City, are "vagabonds" and "gypsies". They aren't permanent. The trailer park is. The trailer park is the rural counterpart to the urban housing project. The denizens are trapped by social and economic conditions but the person towing the trailer isn't trapped anywhere.


I finally got around to reading the Meinig piece. It raises questions as to what role the church played in how the colonization was done. i. e., did the Catholic belief in confession and penitence determine that the Spanish assimilated the natives while the Protestants segregated? Interesting but I take issue with the article for a number of reasons. First, he selects his imperialism. Russian expansion into Siberia is included, but the same practice in Poland is excluded. An unwary reader could get the impression that only the West ever colonized. He calls the return of the Iberian peninsula to christian control as a "reconquest" but says that non-christians were usually never more than a minority anyway. Really? The history I learned says otherwise. Finally, Meinig excludes Japanese imperialism. Japanese imperialism was a major reason the U.S. ended up in Southeast Asia. And for someone of a certain age, my age, why America got involved in Viet Nam is a very important question.

Icebergs have some interesting shapes.

And some interesting uses

The icebreaker breaking ice

Ready for a night flight
What you see at night.

The highest red and white lights are the ship's mast. The row of red lights is the hangar. The semi-circle below that is the flight deck. Aim for that. The white light at the bottom is the stern. Everything else is freezing sea water.

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.

Readings

I doubt that urban problems can ever be solved. Cities are just too diverse. A solution at one place will create problems for someone else. If we all thought and acted the same then the solutions would be easy. So, if only everyone would be just like me...
Sea and Survival reminds of the many times I spent flying along a beach and wondering if the people who lived in the houses right on the water had some sort of indicator that showed how foolish they were. Like the character in Snowcrash who has the words "Poor impulse control" tattooed across his forehead. You might think that they would at least ask why the place they were building on was called a barrier island, but nooooo... The wreckage of previous houses all around should be a tip off. The City as a Growth Machine was just plain silly. The "elites" are after us. Someone is going to make the decisions. Those decisions will benefit someone. Of course the decision makers are going to run things for their own benefit. I would. And so would most other people. It's not possible to please everyone, so as long as someone is going to be unhappy I want to make sure it isn't me. "It's GOOD to be the king!" I'd be a great king. "Wait for the shake!" Molotch says that there's no need to create jobs since the young people are going to move away anyway. And they will move where and do what, the skeptic asks. He suggests moving people from areas with too many students to places with not enough students, to solve both problems at the same time. Will just the students be moving or will the entire family be uprooted? I really should be the king here.

Above is an ice field in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica above Lake Vanda The small red spot near the edge of the ice field is one of the helicopters below.

And yes, I did join the swim club.