November morning in Ohio

Taken last week while in Ohio. Walking on the old towpath trail north of Canal Fulton.

In other news, the replacement at the CIA for General Petraeus is to testify CIA never requested military assistance in Benghazi.

How curious, (quoting from the above referenced article) since Fox news' "Jennifer Griffin reported on October 26th, citing sources that were actually “on the ground” in Benghazi during the attack, that the CIA contingent repeatedly requested assistance — but were told to “stand down” twice by officials in the CIA chain of command."

 OK, is it me, or does Petraeus's replacement ( Michael Morell) bear a startling resemblance to Lavrenty  Beria?

Photo Friday Challenge

Constructed

Taken in Ohio during a recent trip back there.
I have no idea what these buildings were for.
Nor was I able to get inside as they were locked up tight.

Vacancy!

Hope & Change

The Resie Falls

This is a photo of the reservoir in N.E. Massillon, Ohio where Sippo creek originates. I grew up near here and can remember when I was 8 years old, walking across the top of the falls. I and a friend were about 5 feet back from the edge. We took off our shoes and were walking on the slimy and slippery rocks of the spill way from the left to the right. The water was about four to six inches deep. It seemed so much bigger then. 

Late Afternoon in America

First, today is Vetran's Day. A thanks to everyone who has served their country.

Took a trip to Ohio this past week, to visit family. This is I an HDR image of the courthouse in Millersberg, hand-held.  My old stomping grounds of Wayne, Holmes, and western Stark counties.

Being back in Ohio for the election was quite interesting, and depressing. The majority of the area in Ohio was solid Romney country, or should I say, anti-Obama country. However, once you went into large cities, you were in solid Obama country. Not so much the suburbs, but especially in the poorer sections and campuses. In all my running around the countryside, I saw very few Obama signs in rural areas or small towns. I saw no Romney signs in poor sections of Canton, Akron, etc.

I think we've reached a tipping point in this country where the takers now outnumber the makers.

As the famous quote goes, 

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship....

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage." 

:	Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813) Lord Woodhouselee, Scottish jurist, professor and historian
Source:	supposedly from The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic, c.1799 but no book has been found.

Elsewhere, I saw this attributed to Alexis De Tocqueville.  Authentic or not, it aptly describes the situation today.

Then there is  this.

To loosely paraphrase from another famous quote, "For the first time in my life, I am not optimistic about the future of this country."

Autumn Sunset

Mt. Redoubt with Mt. Iliamna on the extreme left.


For your Saturday night viewing, Spiderbait's Black Betty

Evening Light

Another photo from Tuesday evening's walk.  Last night, my daughter and I took another late evening walk to another vantage point to shoot some photos.  Had I read this I might have reconsidered. No wonder we didn't see anyone else out.

Evening walk in the woods

Taken Tuesday evening (10/23/12) while walking along the Potter Creek Trail at almost sunset. A three exposure HDR. I like the low angle 'sunset' light. The last week the weather's been clear and it's been beautiful. But once that sun went down it got cold, fast. I've always felt blessed to be able to live in Alaska. Evenings like this reinforce that feeling. 

Knik River From Atop Bodenburg Butte

Autumn Colors

Denali & Foraker From Anchorage

I took this two weekends ago. I was almost back to the trail-head and paused to record the view. Since then, it warmed up the following week and the snow is gone, but it has now gotten cooler and it's ready to keep the snow for a while the next time we get it. Foraker is on the left and Denali is on the right. That's Mt. Crosson in the middle I believe.

For your Saturday night viewing pleasure.
(Hat Tip to: The Other McCain)

Mood: Resigned

From this past January. This old fellow displayed how winter wears on everyone.

Dall Sheep

A photo of two Dall sheep. Not to be confused with mountain goats.
Though it can be very easy to do.

One Year Later, (Plus)

Last Friday (9/21/12) I posted a view from the porch taken a year earlier. My intention was to post a photo from exactly one year later. Oh well, I didn't make it. So anyway, here's another VFP taken this morning. Snow we accumulated a few inches, though it melted away after the sun came out later in the morning.

Clouds

Autumn Colors

This photo was taken on 9/28/11.  Next Friday it'll be one year to the day. I'll post the same view. Same image exactly one year apart. Here's hoping it hasn't been like the rest of this month, rainy, windy, & overcast.

Mt. Redoubt in the distance

On a sunny day. A closer view is here .

Heading Down

Wind Power

After all the bad weather, it was nice to have clear, crisp, and sunny days again.  there was a light frost this morning too, but it warmed up quickly. So, I grabbed my mountain bike and decided to take a little ride to a trail just a few miles up the road (and hill) from our home.  I took this along the way. This is the wind farm under construction on the south end of Fire Island.
I'll post more pics from today's ride in the next couple of days.

Big Wind

Tuesday, Anchorage had a huge wind storm. Much of town was out of power. Some areas still are as of today. We were out from around mid-night to 10:30 the following morning and we were lucky.
anyway, I took this during the big blow. Some areas on the hillside had gusts of 130mph.
It was shot at;
ISO: 200
Av: f16
fl: 27mm
Exp: 0.3sec.
Slow, yes. I was trying to somehow convey the force of the wind.

Fall Has Arrived!

A little early and with quite the fanfare. I took this on Labor Day. It was quite windy. This is a 3 image composite HDR and if you look, you can see ghosting on some of the branches. But I still like this photo, so I posted it.  Another front is blowing through today, up on the hillside up to 100mph gusts are forecast. Presently it's raining at our house and very windy. Expected crappy weather all week. But it makes for beautiful skies and lighting.

Speed

My daughter (45, Orange) finally caught the ball carrier, preventing a touchdown. Orange won the game.

Hands!

It's that time of year again. This is West High's JV girls flag football team against Chugiak. The West girls lost this game 13-0. I apologize for the somewhat blurry photo, but I had the aperture set too small and consequently slowed the image capture down. Even at 1000 ISO. But I liked this photo, so here it is.

Preview of Coming Attractions

Back after a short hiatus courtesy of modem and network issues. You never realize how much we have com to depend on the internet until you don't have it anymore.

More of those mad-cap main-stream media antics!!!  I suspect it's those layers of editors & fact checkers at work again...

 

Alas much sadder, rest in peace Neil Armstrong.

Dining Out

Something below from Paul Rahe, which pretty well sums one of the main reasons the country is turning its collective back on the democrats. Despite Obama's and his fluffing media's insistence on the non-issues of Romney's tax returns and on his time at Bain, the momentum has swung and the democrats appear to be headed for a serious and stunning defeat at the poles. That is unless major vote fraud, or some form of 'national emergency' occurs, and don't rule that out.

How Hatred Became a Liberal Value

Paul A. Rahe · 

Politics is generational. Consider the thuggery practiced by the Democrats recently in Wisconsin. Force, intimidation, and openly partisan, unprofessional conduct on the part of judges, civil servants, physicians, and policemen became on the part of left-liberals the order of the day, and no one on the left stood up to denounce this conduct. Now, thanks to our President’s admiration for the tactics of Saul Alinsky, others in other states are imitating the deportment of the Wisconsin left-liberals – not only heckling Republican candidates but attempting to storm the platforms on which they speak.

I remember when left-liberals insisted on civility. I remember when they condemned the tactics of intimidation championed by the New Left. I remember when progressives insisted on impartiality on the part of judges, civil servants, policemen, and those who purported to be reporting the news (as opposed to espousing opinion). There were always exceptions to the rule. Dan Rather was playing tricks as early as 1963. But, when caught and exposed, these exceptions took it on the chin. Today they rarely even apologize.

I remember when liberals sported on their automobiles bumper stickers reading, “Hatred is not a Family Value.” Then, back in 2003, in The New Republic, Jonathan Chait wrote an essay explaining why it was legitimate to hate George W. Bush, and the dam burst. Civility is no longer a liberal ideal. And now – as yesterday’s armed attack on the Family Research Council in Washington, the five-hour delay in President Obama’s condemnation of the act as he calculated whether it was in his interest to comment or not, and the mainstream media’s initial reluctance to report on the event, much less highlight the activist LGBT connections of the shooter suggest – left liberals are willing to wink at violence. It may be regrettable, they think, but, like stealing elections, it is all in a good cause – and before figuring out how to respond to an outbreak of violence on the part of their allies, they pause to calculate the political consequences. You will not hear liberals arguing for a crackdown on the use of force by animal-rights activists, environmental activists, union thugs, and the Occupy movement. Instead, you will find in them a desperate hankering to pin on the Tea Party responsibility for conduct the Tea-Partiers abhor and a willingness to engage in race-baiting and talk of class warfare on a stunning scale.

The truth is that it is a short distance from the hatred preached by Jonathan Chait to assassination, and five and six years ago there was a great deal of open, public fantasizing along these lines by left liberals.

 Don't forget, as the democrats wish you would, this is what the elections about, not Romney's tax returns. The democrats are trying to put us on the same road as Greece.

Breezy

Dine & Dash

Ofcourse, if you're this guy, you don't really need to dash...

Where did the time go?

My daughter has hockey tryouts tomorrow. It seems like we just ended last season. Here begins another long slog to March...

Powerline Pass

An evening view, looking north across Powerline Pass. This is an HDR image composed of three exposures. It was taken hand-held, I was bicycling with my daughter up the trail one evening  and had to stop to take in the evening view.

Summer's Long Afternoon

The fireweed are in full bloom and night is returning. Summer is nearing an end. Another month and we'll be heading into autumn. Where has the time went?

Caption Contest!

Add your caption, win no prizes, get a good laugh!

2012 U19 Girls Rec. Champions

I did not take this photo.

I'm posting it on my blog though because I didn't have my camera when the girls won the Cook Inlet Soccer Club's 2012 U19 girls Rec. division championship.
They beat a team that had beaten them on three separate occasions during the season and was a heavy favorite to take their 3rd straight title.

The game ended in a 1-1 tie. A 10 minute extra period also ended tied. A five shot per team shoot off ended tied and we finally prevailed during a sudden death shoot out. I'm really proud of these girls for showing character and coming from behind to win.  Especially against a team that was actually more of a comp. team playing beneath their collective talents.

Great job ladies!

In Memorium...

In lieu of the shootings in Aurora Co., it seems the media is in over-drive, focusing on the shooter, who he was, what were his motivations, what was his life like... ad nauseum. Witnesses are trotted in front of the camera to describe the grisly horror of those moments in the theater for the titillation of the couch potato audience. Only too happy to comply and get their 15 minutes of fame. Already political grist is being made out of this tragedy. I've even seen such items on Flickr for God's sake, subtly advocating disarming the law abiding public.

Perhaps everyone should just STFU and take a moment in silence for those who didn't live to see the next day. Perhaps we might even reflect on the fact that we who do get to see another day, maybe ought to try to act like it might be our last. Maybe, just maybe if we really gave a shit...

Nah, that's crazy talk!

Through the Fog

My wife is an avid reader, more so than me. She also has very good taste in her reading material. It's almost uncanny. So when she recommends a book or an author, I usually try to read it/them.

Yesterday a book came in the mail that she ordered. God's Hotel, by Victoria Sweet who is in addition to an author, a real doctor. Obviously I haven't read it, yet but it seems very interesting. 

From the inside flap, More than 20 years ago, Dr. Victoria Sweet arrived at San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital, intending to stay for a brief time. A descendant of the Hotel-Dieu (God's Hotel) that cared for the sick poor in the Middle Ages.Laguna Honda was the last alms house in the country. ...
At Laguna Honda lower-tech but human-paced, Sweet had the opportunity to practice a kind of "slow medicine" that has almost vanished, and falling under the hospital's spell, she decided to stay. Gradually, her remarkable patients transformed the way she understood medicine. Alongside the modern view of the body as a machine to be repaired, they evoked an older idea, of the body as a garden to be tended. God's Hotel is their story, and the story of the hospital itself, which--as efficiency experts, politicians, and architects descended, determined to turn it into a modern "health care facility"-- revealed its own surprising truths about the essence, cost, and value of caring for the body and soul.

Needless to say, she has first crack at it, but I intend to read it as soon as she's finished. I've already sneaked in a few pages in the first chapter, and she's made comments to me as she reads it. I think it will be an interesting read. I'm giving it a premature endorsement.