tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20083350566592865382024-03-14T13:49:31.240-05:00The Firecloud ReportUnknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.comBlogger1102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-79740019796984069442020-12-14T06:57:00.000-05:002020-12-14T17:03:53.067-05:00The Surrender of Lt. Hiro Onodo<b>The Philippine Sea, 1966</b><br />
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We departed from Guam mid-morning July 30, 1966 heading 1800 miles west to Clark Air Force base in the Philippines. We fly at 8,000 feet at 200 nautical miles an hour (a nautical mile is about 1.15 real miles). It's another nice summer day. I update my fuel consumption chart. I get a sun line every 45 minutes. As the day passes the sun line changes from a speed line to a course line.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/RhDz_vVbCSI/AAAAAAAAAd8/Je4ElLzT45s/s1600-h/c-124.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="432" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048803458645952802" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/RhDz_vVbCSI/AAAAAAAAAd8/Je4ElLzT45s/s640/c-124.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
There are dark clouds ahead. I turn the weather radar up to it's maximum range of 100 miles. I see a solid black wall 75 miles ahead. The pilot asks if we have enough gas to go back. I tell him no. He wants to know if we can divert North to Taiwan. I tell him there is no way we have enough gas.We are at 8,000 feet. Nobody predicted a typhoon. We press ahead. Night is falling.<br />
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As we enter the wall we hit a severe up draft. The altimeter looks like a clock gone crazy. We are climbing thousands of feet a minute. We pass 16,000 feet and put on our oxygen masks. It's really turbulent. The pilot noses us over into a dive. The airspeed goes from 200 to 450 and hangs there. We're diving and still going up. Blood boils above 30,000 feet without a pressure suit.. We hit 22,000 feet, still diving, still going up.It's pitch black except for red instrument lights. The pilots talk to each other..."holy shit these controls are stiff" one says.<br />
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Then comes the first down draft. The combined effects of the down draft and dive are spectacular. The pilots stop worrying about boiling blood and start to worry about hitting the ocean. They put the plane into a climb. The flight engineer kicks in the superchargers. We go to MAX power. The engines start to overheat and are approaching red lines for heat and RPM. The airspeed drops to 130 and the stall warning klaxon sounds continuously. Still we plummet. We pass 3,000 feet.<br />
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This aircraft is old. The wings fall off sometimes with just moderate turbulence. The aeroplane is climbing and falling and bouncing and shuddering on the thin edge of stalling. The stall warning horn keeps playing it's tune. The pilots talk again on the intercom. One says "don't lose it". The other grunts. Oh. Here's another up draft in the nick of time. The cycle repeats. Again. and Again.<br />
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Eventually we make it to Clark AFB. We go to the Officers club and listen to the 1940's style Filipino big band. I decorate the latrine walls with my war protest rubber stamp. General Douglas MacArthur was here and may have used this very urinal just before he allowed his air force to be wiped out on the runway on December 8th.<br />
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We go home to rest in our crew trailer. I look at the sky for vampire bats. The trailer entrance smells intensely of very rancid sweat. Cousin Rex is at Clark AFB this day for medical treatment. He has just been wounded for the third time (shot though the lung with an AK-47). I didn't get to see him.<br />
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Who would have guessed at the time that another, more dedicated, Lieutenant (Hiro Onoda) was still sneaking though the mountains of Lubang, blowing up rice crops and staging shootouts on potential invasion beaches. Here's my research on that matter:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/RhD5XPVbCTI/AAAAAAAAAeE/Uj5CLCB--8w/s1600-h/Onoda1974.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048809359931017522" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/RhD5XPVbCTI/AAAAAAAAAeE/Uj5CLCB--8w/s640/Onoda1974.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="544" /></a><br />
<blockquote>
March, 1974 - 2nd Lieutenant Hiroo Ononda moves cautiously toward a meeting with his former commanding officer, Major Taniguchi, at Wakamaya Point. Ononda suspects an American trick and dons a camouflage of sticks and dried leaves before dashing across a cleared area. His shirt has loops of fishing line sewn on the inside and he reverses it to insert the sticks and branches. Ononda plans to approach the meeting area at twilight when it is still possible to distinguish human features but still dark enough for a possible escape if the meeting is another enemy trap.<br />
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For the last 29 years, Ononda has been waging a lonely guerrilla campaign against the American army, local police forces, Japanese authorities and the Philippine army. He has burned rice stores, shot cattle, chased villagers off potential invasion beaches, killed as many as fifty of the locals and moved in a mountainous circuit every two or three days to elude capture. His diet has consisted of green bananas, coconuts and food that he has 'liberated'. Over the years his men have all deserted or been killed in skirmishes with local police, leaving him to accomplish his mission alone.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
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Ononda approaches the meeting spot and recognises the major and the student, Suzuki. The major goes into his tent and reappears in a Japanese Imperial Army uniform. Ononda stands at rigid attention while ex-major Taniguchi formally reads the ancient surrender orders. Suddenly the long bitter war between Japan and America is over. 'These are just words', the major says, 'Your real orders will come later.' Through his tears and black anger, Ononda realises that the major cannot speak freely in front of Suzuki.<br />
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'We really lost the war? How could they have been so sloppy?', Ononda asks the major.<br />
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<b>Before the War</b><br />
<br />
Ononda was born in 1922. He was small but studied the martial art of Kendo after school. He stubbornly challenged the larger, more capable students even though they beat him senseless time and again. In 1939 he went to Hankow, in occupied China, to join his older brother in a family business. He spent much of his time at dance halls doing the tango, drove a 1936 Studebaker, and collected blues records.<br />
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<b>The Draft and Guerrilla Training</b><br />
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In May 1942, Ononda was drafted. He was assigned to Guerrilla Warfare school. He was given orders to never allow himself to be killed and even to consider allowing himself to be taken prisoner if this might enable him to impart confusing information to the enemy.<br />
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His mother gave him the family dagger to use to kill himself as a last resort, rather than shaming the family by being taken prisoner. He accepted the gift but knew that he would not commit suicide even if it meant being taken prisoner.</blockquote>
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<b>Assignment to Lubang</b><br />
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By November 1944, the Americans had landed on Leyte in the Philippines. Ononda made the long trip by air and boat from Japan to the Island of Lubang. The island measures six miles by eighteen miles. From Manila it can be reached by boat, crossing the Manila bay, passing Corregidor, and travelling south-west approximately 100 miles. On 28 February, 1945, a force of fifty American soldiers landed on the island and many of the Japanese in the small garrison were killed. Hiroo receives orders from his Division Commander:<br />
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You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we'll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that's the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you [to] give up your life voluntarily.- 'No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War', Hiroo Ononda, Kodansha International, Ltd, 1974, page 44</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
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Ononda decides to withdraw into the hills and prepare for a long-term resistance. In October, Lubang natives show him the 15 August surrender orders signed by General Yamashita. These are purported to have been issued in accordance with a 'Direct Imperial Order'. Ononda has never heard of such an order and concludes that the leaflet is phony.<br />
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<b>Retreat to the Hills</b><br />
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Ononda and three enlisted men gather weapons, ammunition and food and retreat to the mountains. His companions are Akatsu, Shimada and Kozuka. They move every two or three days in a circuit designed to keep them close to food supplies, cause disruption to the enemy and avoid capture. They make the circuit through the mountains about every two months for the next 29 years. Eventually they perfect many innovations such as making sandals from old tyres and sewing fishing line loop into their clothing to hold camouflage branches. They build huts, learn to dry beef on overnight fires and invent techniques that allow them to sleep on steep mountain slopes. The ants, mouldy rice and lack of food are constant irritants. Fortunately, they all have good teeth.<br />
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<b>1949: The Desertion of PFC Akatsu</b><br />
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Fed up with constant hunger, Akatsu left the group and surrendered in 1949. He returned accompanied by a large search party and loud-speakers. The remaining three men found these appeals unbelievable and annoying. They appeared to be clumsy translations into Japanese from another language. The men found a Japanese newspaper about themselves left behind and concluded that it was 'poisoned candy', another slick psychological warfare attempt by the Americans.<br />
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<b>1953: Corporal Shimada is Killed</b><br />
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The three survivors unwisely pick a firefight with 35 well-armed villagers near a potential invasion beach. Shimada is killed, leaving Ononda and Kozuka to soldier on alone for the next nineteen years.<br />
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Kozuka and Ononda steal transistor radios and sometimes can hear distant Japanese language programmes. This convinces them even more firmly that the war is not over, since the war could obviously not end as long as a single Japanese citizen remains alive.<br />
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<b>1972: PFC Kozuka's Death Leaves Ononda Alone</b><br />
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On 19 October, 1972, Ononda and Kozuka burn rice piles after the harvest to deny food to the enemy. They linger too long and burn one rice pile too many. A volley of carbine shots ring out and Kozuka is dead eight seconds later, shot through the heart.<br />
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Ononda escapes, swearing revenge, and returns to this spot months later to find a tombstone erected with Kozuka's name, a Japanese epitaph and fresh flowers near the stone. A large Japanese search party has encamped nearby. His brother and sister have been flown in to speak to him from helicopter loudspeakers. Ononda has learned from newspapers that the Americans have failed in Vietnam and he hopes that the search party has secretly gathered intelligence useful to the Emperor. He is sure that the voices of his siblings are real and is convinced that Japanese Intelligence has organised the search to win over the islanders and gather information prior to an invasion.<br />
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He reads newspapers left behind about Kozuka's death, realises that these have failed to mention the 'thousand stitch' waistband (note 1) Kozuka wore on his waist and concludes that the articles have obviously been 'doctored' by the Americans who fail to recognise the significance of the belt.<br />
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Later he finds a Haiku (note 2) left behind by his ageing father:<br />
<blockquote>
Not even an echo <br />
Responds to my call in the <br />
Summery mountains.</blockquote>
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<b>Meeting Suzuki</b><br />
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Wakamaya Point is the confluence of two rivers. Moving silently, Ononda confronts a camper, a young man who holds his ground, trembles and salutes properly. The student introduces himself as Norio Suzuki in proper Japanese and claims to be a tourist, which confuses Ononda.<br />
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Suzuki is taking a break from school to look for pandas, the Abominable Snowman and Lieutenant Ononda. Suzuki has just hit the jackpot and they talk for several hours. Ononda disbelieves 99% of what Suzuki has to say about the war being over, but because of his slight doubt he permits Suzuki to take a joint picture with his camera and finally agrees to a meeting with his former commanding officer.<br />
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Ononda becomes suspicious of Suzuki when the student picks leaves to brew a beverage. He wonders how Suzuki could have learned this in four days when he has not learned it in thirty years. He waits for the student to finish his cup before he dares take a sip.<br />
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According to the newspapers Ononda has read, Major Taniguchi is now a book dealer, living in Japan. The fact that the major had not sent him new orders seems clear proof that the major is still engaged in secret warfare under the pretence of being an ordinary citizen.<br />
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Suzuki sets the timer and snaps the picture that will convince Major Taniguchi to return and read the surrender orders to Ononda.<br />
<br />
At the agreed meeting time, months later, Ononda glimpses the major at twilight and waits for him to enter and re-emerge from the tent in full Imperial uniform. The Lieutenant comes to rigid attention and listens to the words. If his 'real' orders do come later they are not revealed in his published book.<br />
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<b>A Hero's Welcome</b><br />
<br />
On the trip home with Major Taniguchi, Ononda is astounded to see Philippine troops lined up on both sides of the road saluting him. They treat him more like a conquering general than a despicable prisoner of war. His arrival in Japan is even more amazing. He awakens dormant feelings of jubilant national pride. His book is quickly written and becomes a best-seller. He becomes financially well-off and moves to Brazil to become a cattle-rancher.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
Ononda meets and marries a Japanese woman in Brazil and then returns to Japan to operate a children's survival camp, an occupation for which he is obviously well-qualified. He died in 2014 at the age of 91.<br />
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<b>Are There More?</b><br />
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In 2005, there were reports that two octogenarian Japanese soldiers were ready to came out of the jungle to lay down their arms after 60 years in hiding near General Santos City in the Philippines.<br />
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The stragglers were reported to be Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 83, of the Imperial Army's 30th Division. They were reported to have spent the last six decades living in remote hills of the Philippine island of Mindanao. In spite of a brief media frenzy which benefited the Mindanao economy, the story fizzled out three days later. There is an on line registry of Japanese stragglers.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
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1 A piece of cotton cloth on which a departing soldier's family and friends each sewed a single stitch. This is often worn on the waist for good luck.<br />
2 A Haiku is a type of 17-syllable poem. The English translation has an extra syllable.</blockquote>
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-47979687696245404302020-11-04T10:10:00.006-05:002020-11-04T10:10:58.686-05:00Anhingas Nesting<p> </p><h2 class="date-header" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="color: #222222; letter-spacing: inherit; margin: inherit; padding: inherit;">Monday, 31 August 2020</span></h2><div class="date-posts"><div class="post-outer"><div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template" itemprop="blogPost" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting" style="margin: 0px 0px 25px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><a name="8136224476754153778"></a><h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0.75em 0px 0px; position: relative;"><a href="http://thefirecloudreport.blogspot.com/2020/08/onn-june-21-pair-of-anhingas-decided-to.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;">Watching Anhingas</a></h3><div class="post-header" style="font-size: 10.8px; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><div class="post-header-line-1"></div></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-8136224476754153778" itemprop="description articleBody" style="font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 780px;"><p>Onn June 21,2020, a pair of anhingas decided to build a nest on a low-hanging branch of an oak tree over a pond outside our bedroom window. They prefer a location over water from 6 to 20 feet off the ground.</p><p>Anhingas live in Florida year-round. They are also called "water turkeys" because of a turkey-like fantail. Some call them "snakebirds" because they can appear to be a water snake with only a long black neck and head above water. Anhinga means "Devilbird" in the Brazilian Tupi language. When we get a visit from a flock of 15-to-20 anhingas, they swim side-by-side underwater, along the length of the pond, surfacing with the small fish they spear with their sharp beaks.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJN0bkof0ubr19XfOHlsjMeWffvwVNEMrSg1KmF9HbvtJ1tcGLzlpflA4Dt96v9T8K2ulhqDhqsGxRt3fqjQ53Bt4TSm3LIJtV4vTa-xi4FZTXarKVXpuBm0sLAmheyq5Gi95cadLleSY/s2048/Anhinga+%25282%2529.jpg" style="color: #888888; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJN0bkof0ubr19XfOHlsjMeWffvwVNEMrSg1KmF9HbvtJ1tcGLzlpflA4Dt96v9T8K2ulhqDhqsGxRt3fqjQ53Bt4TSm3LIJtV4vTa-xi4FZTXarKVXpuBm0sLAmheyq5Gi95cadLleSY/s640/Anhinga+%25282%2529.jpg" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>The males tend the nest during incubation (in July) an average of 55% of the time, compared to 45% for the female. The darker male gathers about 81% of the nesting material. This male seems good at ripping off tough oak twigs and branches. When it rains, the adults spread their wings over the nest to keep the eggs and chicks dry.</p><p>Here is a video of the adults building their nest over two days in late June.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class ui-droppable" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Gc785CaOrg" width="320" youtube-src-id="4Gc785CaOrg"></iframe></div><br /><p>Anhingas can dive 60 feet deep, soar with the thermals, and fly flat and level very fast...they have a flat, cross-shaped appearance in flight. The male anhinga has black head feathers. The female has a white head and chest feathers. Their feathers are not waterproof, which enables them to dive deep for food.</p> Two to six eggs are laid every other day after the nest is complete. The eggs hatch in two weeks. This nest had three eggs and after another six weeks, the chicks are expected to have feathers capable of supporting flight.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha6Yth2r32boa8UZ4JRvUH_ellUof_5jMhsEtgD65_KGH3x0PodUfseqKJyg44Ej-sWcceNSW9WJq5bY86L3BfjpBG3d-13iS1mKO4ecS_Md5w-QzW-9jrKf4HKJytTY8BAhlMBaEwnj4/s2048/anhingas.jpg" style="color: #888888; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1650" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha6Yth2r32boa8UZ4JRvUH_ellUof_5jMhsEtgD65_KGH3x0PodUfseqKJyg44Ej-sWcceNSW9WJq5bY86L3BfjpBG3d-13iS1mKO4ecS_Md5w-QzW-9jrKf4HKJytTY8BAhlMBaEwnj4/s640/anhingas.jpg" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;">Here is a video from early August. The video shows the hatched chicks feeding. Both adults work hard tag-team feed the growing chicks. They fly off and spearfish. Then they regurgitate the fish and the chicks seem to stick their heads way down their parent's throats to eat. The parents provide all the water and food that the chicks need to survive. The smallest chick died as it became progressively less active and unable to compete with its siblings for food. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;" /><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class ui-droppable" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Yo8JJd7FOM" width="320" youtube-src-id="4Yo8JJd7FOM"></iframe></div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;" /><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><br />Aug. 19, 2020: They look ready to fly. There is much wing-flapping going on. The adults seem to be trying to entice the chicks higher in the tree. remaining two chicks left the nest for good and began to<br />explore the oak tree. They are taking short hops of a few feet between branches and getting high into the top of the tree. The adults return to feed them where they find them.<br /><br />Humans learn to walk with little steps first and anhingas must do the same. I was expecting a sudden and dramatic departure flight from the nest, but short practice hops to train first makes more sense.<br /><br />Observing this reproduction process from my bedroom during Pandemic isolation has enabled me to discover things about the meaning of life. These birds are a brilliant self-replicating design with an incredible history of lucky functional improvements. Life is the meaning of life.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class ui-droppable" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m06t88enIy4" width="320" youtube-src-id="m06t88enIy4"></iframe></div><br /><br />The two surviving chicks "fledged" on August 27th and August 29th. The first flight of the second chick was to crash land in another oak tree about 100 yards away from the nest. I was unable to videotape this event, but I observed it happen. The adult female returned to feed the remaining chick and the chick flew back to the nest very gracefully to receive lunch. </div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;">The nest is empty. The chicks may build their own nest after two or three winters. There are 200-300 breeding pairs of anhinga in west-central Florida. We were lucky to have one outside our bedroom window.</div><div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic9zSa8trVGjO803p4mL1zOvpiZWcEhRnY-egiJ5Pw-0WlT_uO9kiN3yVsn4to3JkOTXz6MYit2gFmHBxtOplNCgA-V-UDWDWFW7V_nRsywUPKhmB25sca5YZOY7E3fFWxaiMl74IdiX8/s2048/Anhing+Late+Stage+Chicks+%252812%2529.JPG" style="color: #888888; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic9zSa8trVGjO803p4mL1zOvpiZWcEhRnY-egiJ5Pw-0WlT_uO9kiN3yVsn4to3JkOTXz6MYit2gFmHBxtOplNCgA-V-UDWDWFW7V_nRsywUPKhmB25sca5YZOY7E3fFWxaiMl74IdiX8/s640/Anhing+Late+Stage+Chicks+%252812%2529.JPG" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;" /></div></div></div></div></div>Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-81362244767541537782020-08-31T09:08:00.013-05:002020-09-17T13:45:15.236-05:00Watching Anhingas<p>Onn June 21,2020, a pair of anhingas decided to build a nest on a low-hanging branch of an oak tree over a pond outside our bedroom window. They prefer a location over water from 6 to 20 feet off the ground.</p><p>Anhingas live in Florida year-round. They are also called "water turkeys" because of a turkey-like fantail. Some call them "snakebirds" because they can appear to be a water snake with only a long black neck and head above water. Anhinga means "Devilbird" in the Brazilian Tupi language. When we get a visit from a flock of 15-to-20 anhingas, they swim side-by-side underwater, along the length of the pond, surfacing with the small fish they spear with their sharp beaks.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJN0bkof0ubr19XfOHlsjMeWffvwVNEMrSg1KmF9HbvtJ1tcGLzlpflA4Dt96v9T8K2ulhqDhqsGxRt3fqjQ53Bt4TSm3LIJtV4vTa-xi4FZTXarKVXpuBm0sLAmheyq5Gi95cadLleSY/s2048/Anhinga+%25282%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJN0bkof0ubr19XfOHlsjMeWffvwVNEMrSg1KmF9HbvtJ1tcGLzlpflA4Dt96v9T8K2ulhqDhqsGxRt3fqjQ53Bt4TSm3LIJtV4vTa-xi4FZTXarKVXpuBm0sLAmheyq5Gi95cadLleSY/s640/Anhinga+%25282%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>The males tend the nest during incubation (in July) an average of 55% of the time, compared to 45% for the female. The darker male gathers about 81% of the nesting material. This male seems good at ripping off tough oak twigs and branches. When it rains, the adults spread their wings over the nest to keep the eggs and chicks dry.</p><p>Here is a video of the adults building their nest over two days in late June.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Gc785CaOrg" width="320" youtube-src-id="4Gc785CaOrg"></iframe></div><br /><p>Anhingas can dive 60 feet deep, soar with the thermals, and fly flat and level very fast...they have a flat, cross-shaped appearance in flight. The male anhinga has black head feathers. The female has a white head and chest feathers. Their feathers are not waterproof, which enables them to dive deep for food.</p> Two to six eggs are laid every other day after the nest is complete. The eggs hatch in two weeks. This nest had three eggs and after another six weeks, the chicks are expected to have feathers capable of supporting flight.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha6Yth2r32boa8UZ4JRvUH_ellUof_5jMhsEtgD65_KGH3x0PodUfseqKJyg44Ej-sWcceNSW9WJq5bY86L3BfjpBG3d-13iS1mKO4ecS_Md5w-QzW-9jrKf4HKJytTY8BAhlMBaEwnj4/s2048/anhingas.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1650" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha6Yth2r32boa8UZ4JRvUH_ellUof_5jMhsEtgD65_KGH3x0PodUfseqKJyg44Ej-sWcceNSW9WJq5bY86L3BfjpBG3d-13iS1mKO4ecS_Md5w-QzW-9jrKf4HKJytTY8BAhlMBaEwnj4/s640/anhingas.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div>Here is a video from early August. The video shows the hatched chicks feeding. Both adults work hard tag-team feed the growing chicks. They fly off and spearfish. Then they regurgitate the fish and the chicks seem to stick their heads way down their parent's throats to eat. The parents provide all the water and food that the chicks need to survive. The smallest chick died as it became progressively less active and unable to compete with its siblings for food. <br /><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Yo8JJd7FOM" width="320" youtube-src-id="4Yo8JJd7FOM"></iframe></div><br /><div><br />Aug. 19, 2020: They look ready to fly. There is much wing-flapping going on. The adults seem to be trying to entice the chicks higher in the tree. remaining two chicks left the nest for good and began to<br />explore the oak tree. They are taking short hops of a few feet between branches and getting high into the top of the tree. The adults return to feed them where they find them.<br /><br />Humans learn to walk with little steps first and anhingas must do the same. I was expecting a sudden and dramatic departure flight from the nest, but short practice hops to train first makes more sense.<br /><br />Observing this reproduction process from my bedroom during Pandemic isolation has enabled me to discover things about the meaning of life. These birds are a brilliant self-replicating design with an incredible history of lucky functional improvements. Life is the meaning of life.</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m06t88enIy4" width="320" youtube-src-id="m06t88enIy4"></iframe></div><br /><br />The two surviving chicks "fledged" on August 27th and August 29th. The first flight of the second chick was to crash land in another oak tree about 100 yards away from the nest. I was unable to videotape this event, but I observed it happen. The adult female returned to feed the remaining chick and the chick flew back to the nest very gracefully to receive lunch. </div><div><br /></div><div>The nest is empty. The chicks may build their own nest after two or three winters. There are 200-300 breeding pairs of anhinga in west-central Florida. We were lucky to have one outside our bedroom window.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic9zSa8trVGjO803p4mL1zOvpiZWcEhRnY-egiJ5Pw-0WlT_uO9kiN3yVsn4to3JkOTXz6MYit2gFmHBxtOplNCgA-V-UDWDWFW7V_nRsywUPKhmB25sca5YZOY7E3fFWxaiMl74IdiX8/s2048/Anhing+Late+Stage+Chicks+%252812%2529.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic9zSa8trVGjO803p4mL1zOvpiZWcEhRnY-egiJ5Pw-0WlT_uO9kiN3yVsn4to3JkOTXz6MYit2gFmHBxtOplNCgA-V-UDWDWFW7V_nRsywUPKhmB25sca5YZOY7E3fFWxaiMl74IdiX8/s640/Anhing+Late+Stage+Chicks+%252812%2529.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-85450563193748045632020-07-18T19:27:00.000-05:002020-07-18T16:12:40.765-05:00Memphis: The Lorraine Motel<b>Memphis National Civil Rights Museum - May 25, 2012</b><br />
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Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior was assassinated here on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in early 1968.<br />
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They've turned the motel into something called the "National Civil Rights Museum". There is a big crowd. I'm a little surprised that about half the crowd is white. Times change. When I moved to Tampa in 1953, every grocery store had four bathrooms (white men, black men, white women black women) and two water fountains (white and black). That was 60 years ago and a plumber's dream.<br />
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I suspect that Mrs. Phred might be the only real Civil Rights veteran at the museum today. Not many people had the balls to put their life on the line back then for social fairness. Mrs. Phred belonged to the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and agreed to lead a demonstration at the Florida pavilion of the New York Worlds Fair in 1964. Her sign said, "we don't want a World's Fair, we want a fair world ".<br />
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When you read the whole New York Times article, you get a sense that about 70 Pinkerton agents, ten paddy wagons, and several tanks surrounded Carol before they dared to make the arrest. The cops all had the white or black "Stetsons" and other odd hat styles that prevailed back then. So Carol went to off to jail in New York as well as in Tallahassee.<br />
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At the time of Carol's arrest, there were only three channels on TV and no remotes. You had to click the channels with a mechanical dial. LBJ and Elvis had three TV sets so they could watch all the news at the same time. Mrs. Phred's arrest was covered at 7 PM on NBC, ABC, and CBS. Mrs. Phred's Mom, Frieda, saw the arrest on CBS and blew her Jack Daniels and coke all over her MuMu. <br />
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I admit my admiration for Mrs. Phred's accomplishments as a 19-year-old..The New York Supreme Court threw out her trespassing conviction on the grounds that she had every right to demonstrate on what was essentially public property.<br />
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Mrs. Phred and I were in Tacoma when King was killed. I was a First
Lieutenant. They briefed me on operation "Garden Plot" which involved the potential of flying in massive forces of regular Army and Marine troops to American cities to put down the "insurrection".<br />
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Now we have a black President. Think of that.<br />
<span id="goog_2135920406"></span><span id="goog_2135920407"></span>Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-49870971472246761112020-07-17T14:21:00.000-05:002020-07-18T14:52:25.491-05:00Why You Should Avoid SushiIn a recent study done in Chicago, 100% of the sushi sold as tuna was actually some other fish.<br />
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84% of sushi fish samples labeled "white tuna" were actually escolar, a fish that can cause prolonged, uncontrollable, oily anal leakage. Escolar or butterfish is delicious, but is also the ex-lax of the fish family.<br />
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Escolar is a type of snake mackerel that cannot metabolise the wax esters naturally found in its diet. These esters are called gempylotoxin, and are very similar to castor or mineral oil. This is what gives the flesh of escolar its delicious oily texture.<br />
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As a result, when full portions of escolar are consumed, these wax esters cause gastrointestinal symptoms. Consumption of escolar causes explosive, oily, orange diarrhea which may be difficult to control while, for example, passing gas in an elevator.<br />
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<br />Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-32558627534636555972020-07-14T06:52:00.000-05:002020-07-14T15:18:09.642-05:00Angkor Thom Temple<b>Siem Reap, Cambodia - December 26, 2011</b><br />
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The Angkorean Empire lasted from the 9th to the 15th century.<br />
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The empire was ruled by a series of god-kings who commissioned a number of fantastic phallic-shaped temples.<br />
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The kings had extensive canals dug, which held water during the dry seasons. This water and the fish and water of the nearby Tonlé Sap (the "Great Lake") helped to proved three rice crops a year and sufficient resources to support all the construction.<br />
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The area was abandoned to the jungle because of attacks and incursions by the nearby Thai people.<br />
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The French naturalist Mahout rediscovered the area in 1860 and the French colonized Cambodia from 1863 to 1954..<br />
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You buy a three-day pass for $40 to visit all the temples you can handle. The pass has your picture and is checked at each site you visit.<br />
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The U.S. dollar is widely used within Cambodia. We're packing to fly to Hanoi today. We'll have one full day there before flying back to the real world<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-19404122992655698592020-07-09T06:38:00.000-05:002020-07-09T08:17:03.381-05:00The Bohdi Tree<h3>
<b>Phnom Penh, Cambodia - December 15, 2012</b></h3>
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Phnom Penh is the capital city of Cambodia. There are construction cranes and big buildings on both sides of the river. Investment is finding booming. I landed here once in 1967. I only remember a really muddy airstrip with metal grating. At the time I had no idea it was the Capital of Cambodia. Some of these pictures show a more rural way of life. The rice paddies stretch back about a half-mile from the Mekong, then you hit a treeline. There's no sign of roads or electrical wires until you approach the big city.<br />
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We'll be spending our 45th anniversary in Siem Reap. So far we see no mosquitoes and we're eating and drinking all the local stuff with no adverse results.<br />
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Bennett says the "strange fruit" I put in the last blog is called rambutan,. In Thai, it's called "ngoh". That word is also used pejoratively to describe people like Mrs. Phred that have kinky hair and darker skin.<br />
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We get a cyclo ride to the Palace of the Cambodian King and a museum of antiquities.<br />
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These flowers grow on the trunk of the Bohdi tree. Our guide tells us that Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment, and died under a tree like this.<br />
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I don't have time to wait for enlightenment so I'll just take a few pictures and keep moving....<br />
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Our guide was seven when Pol Pot emptied out the city and sent all the people to the country to become rice farmers. The guide lost 12 members of his family and only has one relative left. We run the numbers and figure he is about the same age as our son.<br />
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A third of the population of Cambodia was exterminated during the four years after 1975 that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge rant the country. We go to Security Centre 21, which was one of several hundred torture centers where confessions were extracted before those millions who confessed to being CIA or KGB were sent to the killing fields.<br />
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Each person who confessed after brutal torture turned in everyone he knew and they, in turn, did the same until over 1.75 to 2.5 million were killed and buried in mass graves. They dunked people's heads into barrels of excrement and urine.<br />
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Our guide was seven. He says that anyone younger was killed because they were too young to be useful and those older than 12 were also killed because their brains were too set in their ways. He is a little bald guy. Somehow he has acquired a laptop and I spend several hours with him showing him how to make bookmarks and download pictures about the Mekong for his tourist lectures. He took ammunition boxes for of excrement out of prisoners cells...<br />
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The suspects were tortured 16 hours a day until they confessed and implicated everyone they ever knew. Some tried to commit suicide by taking a header from the third floor or hanging themselves in the bathroom. To prevent this barbed wire was installed over the balconies.<br />
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Our guide had the job of emptying the ammunition toilet boxes at age seven. He says the solids were used in the garden and the "smelly" liquids were emptied into a large urn. When prisoners fainted from the torture they were revived by being dunked into the urn.<br />
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Cambodian now has fried chicken and free WiFI.<br />
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Pol Pot was reported to be a nice Buddhist boy who would never hurt a fly. However, the nature of man can be strangely plastic regardless of which, if any, religion is involved Pol Pot was either insane or operating under the insane delusion that reducing the population from 8 million to 5 million and making the remainders all farmers would be a good thing.<br />
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This is Security Center 21, where skulls were stored and confessions were extracted.<br />
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These are farmers near the memorial at one of the Killing Fields. We find lots of human teeth on the ground as we walk around the trails at the memorial.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-35093489652285992732020-07-06T19:45:00.006-05:002020-08-11T13:32:08.372-05:00Valley of the Gods<b>Southeast Utah Desert - May 1,2008</b><br />
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It's about 600 square miles of empty desert valley uplifted 6,000 feet. Twenty miles of empty dirt road winds through the valley past the strange spires.<br />
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This is BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land. Camping is permitted anywhere you can find a spot to pull off the dirt road. Light pollution doesn't exist here. There are no small towns within 100 miles and the valley is surrounded by 7,000-foot bluffs and mesas.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBpkrtoKOiI/AAAAAAAAB20/Ytz9NGne1Xs/s1600-h/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+6-13-24+PM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195575822270478882" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBpkrtoKOiI/AAAAAAAAB20/Ytz9NGne1Xs/s640/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+6-13-24+PM.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
In two days there will be a <leo_highlight id="leoHighlights_Underline_0" leohighlights_keywords="new moon" leohighlights_url="http%3A//thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/highlights/keywords?keywords%3Dnew%20moon" onclick="leoHighlightsHandleClick('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" onmouseout="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOut('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" onmouseover="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOver('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" style="-moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-size: auto auto; background-attachment: scroll; background-color: transparent; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 150); cursor: pointer; display: inline;">new moon</leo_highlight>. We'll find a spot to camp near a mesa and listen to the coyotes talk to each other.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBxhxtoKOuI/AAAAAAAAB4U/3O3dpdlNUiM/s1600-h/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+6-33-53+PM.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196135576768232162" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBxhxtoKOuI/AAAAAAAAB4U/3O3dpdlNUiM/s640/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+6-33-53+PM.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="480" /></a><br />
At 4 AM the Navigator's Triangle (Deneb, Vega, and Altair) is directly overhead this time of year. The Milky Way burns a gossamer silver swath across the sky through the middle of the triangle. The Navajos think that it is very bad luck to try to count the stars. It's hard to imagine all this springing from a point smaller than an atom at the moment of the Big Bang. Trouble is that none of the other explanations seem credible either...Just an ant wandering the inside of an empty can try to grasp what it all means...We need bigger brains.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBpk6toKOmI/AAAAAAAAB3U/vuLErnUe7wU/s1600-h/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+7-09-44+PM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195576079968516706" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBpk6toKOmI/AAAAAAAAB3U/vuLErnUe7wU/s640/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+7-09-44+PM.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
So. the evening of May 3rd, we'll be out here alone, in the inky black night, ten miles from the nearest road and thirty from the nearest electric light or human habitation.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBpksNoKOkI/AAAAAAAAB3E/LICWsr6rmBw/s1600-h/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+6-41-32+PM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195575830860413506" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBpksNoKOkI/AAAAAAAAB3E/LICWsr6rmBw/s640/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+6-41-32+PM.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
This place is not well known or widely publicized. Only one of my maps even shows that it exists. It's a lovely, lonely desert. Right now the desert is blooming with wildflowers and greenery from the spring snowmelt.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBpks9oKOlI/AAAAAAAAB3M/H7OiQlVTrBw/s1600-h/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+6-42-31+PM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195575843745315410" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SBpks9oKOlI/AAAAAAAAB3M/H7OiQlVTrBw/s640/Valley+of+the+Gods+5-1-2008+6-42-31+PM.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
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</script>Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-67620823454663772392020-06-21T20:03:00.000-05:002020-06-21T18:45:12.496-05:00Paddling the Yukon River<h3>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Carmacks, Yukon</span> - <span style="font-size: small;">August 11, 2013</span></b></h3>
Carmacks is located midway between Dawson City and Whitehorse. We decide to stay an extra day and paddle 22 miles on the fast-flowing Yukon River.<br />
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Mrs. Phred is a peach, as usual. I make a note to invite her on all my future canoe trips...We stop here halfway for lunch...<br />
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The river is clear here. It acquires the glacial silt about 100 miles downriver before Dawson...<br />
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The canoe trip takes five hours. We average 4.4 MPH, most of that is the current....we don't paddle much...<br />
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The road between Dawson and Whitehorse is sloppy clay...at least it's not heavy washboard...<br />
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I'm breaking in a new RV driver...she's cheap and cute...I'm not the man I used to be when we made it from Seattle to Miami in 72 hours on caffeine alone...Now I get sleepy after about three hours on the road...<br />
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<br />Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-36405211506186446142020-05-24T19:12:00.000-05:002020-05-29T02:09:31.420-05:00The Bad Angel<b>Tucson, Arizona - September 2013</b><br />
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There are some fascinating aircraft in the Pima Air Museum. Their collection is approaching 500 types. The Bad Angel is a P-51 that was piloted by Lt. Louis Curdes. He shot down nine German 109s and an Italian fighter before being shot down himself. He escaped an Italian POW camp and was reassigned to the Pacific where he also got one Japanese kill. One day he saw a wayward C-47 approaching Japanese held Bataan and tried to warn them off. Failing this he shot out both engines of the C-47 and the nurses aboard were rescued after the plane ditched in the ocean. He is the only pilot with German, Italian, Japanese and American kills to his credit...<br />
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The Airplane below is my old C-124. I flew 2,800 hours in them crisscrossing the Pacific. One day we took off from Guam heading 1800 miles west to Clark Air Force base in the Philippines. We were doing 200 nautical miles an hour (a nautical mile is about 1.15 real miles). It was another nice day to cross the Philippines Sea. I hum and update my fuel consumption chart. I'm dead reckoning but I can get a sun line every 45 minutes. As the day passes the sun line changes from a speed line to a course line. There is a wall of black clouds ahead. I turn the weather radar up to its maximum range of 100 miles. I see a solid wall 75 miles ahead. The pilot asks if we have enough gas to go back. I tell him no. He wants to know if we can divert North to Taipei. I tell him no way we have enough gas. We are at 8,000 feet. Nobody predicted a typhoon. We press ahead. The night is falling.<br />
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As we enter the typhoon wall we hit a severe updraft. The altimeter looks like a clock gone crazy. We are climbing thousands of feet a minute. We pass 16,000 feet and put on our oxygen masks. It's really turbulent. The pilot noses us over into a dive. The airspeed goes from 200 to 450 and hangs there. We're diving and still going up. Blood boils at altitude without a pressure suit...we hit 22,000 feet, still diving, still going up. It's pitch black except for red instrument lights.<br />
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The pilots talk to each other. "Holy shit these controls are stiff", one says. Then comes the first downdraft. The combined effects of the downdraft and dive are spectacular. The pilots stop worrying about boiling blood and start to worry about hitting the ocean. They put the plane into a climb. The flight engineer kicks in the superchargers. We go to MAX power. The engines start to overheat and are approaching red lines for heat and RPM. The airspeed drops to 130 and the stall warning klaxon sounds continuously. Still we plummet. We pass 3,000 feet.<br />
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This aircraft was old. The wings fell off sometimes in just moderate turbulence. The airplane is climbing and falling and bouncing and shuddering on the thin edge of stalling. The stall warning horn keeps droning. The pilots talk again on the intercom. One says, "Don't lose it.". The other grunts. Oh. Here's another updraft in the nick of time. The cycle repeats again and again.<br />
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The B-29 below was the technological wonder of its time, it cost $600,000 a copy, it made for a $3 billion wartime Cadillac investment. The 250 mph jet stream over Japan fouled up plans for the high-altitude bombing. Navigator genius Curtis Lemay stood methods on their head by stripping armament and machine guns and sending in waves of these giants and their children crews with 10-pound incendiaries at night, at 500 feet, to set fire to hundreds of thousands of women, children and old men.<br />
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The names of these lovely shining birds included:<br />
• Sentimental Journey <br />
• Laden Maiden <br />
• Liberty Belle <br />
• Uninvited Guest <br />
• American Beauty <br />
• Lethal Lady <br />
• Lucky Strike <br />
• Arson, Inc <br />
• Bad Penny <br />
• Blind Date <br />
• Enola Gay<br />
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A silhouette of "Fat Man" and "Little Boy". Fat Man was designed with a 64-inch diameter girth to fit into the B-29's bomb bay.<br />
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Only three of these Columbia X5Cs were built in 1947 due to structural problems. We are leaving the RV in Benson for a week for structural repairs and taking a road trip to southern California.<br />
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36 of these Martin PMB-5As were built in 1940.<br />
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Three F-107s were built in 1956. They lost out to the F105 which had an internal bomb bay for nuclear missions.<br />
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The SR-71 Blackbird could do 2200 MPH at 85,000 feet. I saw one land at dawn in Okinawa in 1966. Actually, it was the single-seat early model A-12...but the same deal basically...Mach 3 at 80,000 feet...<br />
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The Douglas B-18 Bolo came out in 1936. It was obsolete by WWII and was used to detect submarines.<br />
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The A-10 Warthog is built around a 30-millimeter cannon that spews 4,200 rounds a minute. It's heavily armored and has a top speed of 380 MPH...<br />
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The Grumman F-18 came out in 1974. It has a speed of 1544MPH and a range of 2,400 miles.<br />
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F-18 front view.<br />
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F4C<br />
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<br />
<br />
B-24<br />
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<br />
Douglas A-26<br />
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<br />
B-25<br />
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<br />
Spitfire<br />
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<br />
German V-1<br />
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<br />
<br />
F4C<br />
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<br />
F105 "thud"<br />
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<br />
C-141<br />
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<br />
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<br />
B-52<br />
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<br />
B-47<br />
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<br />
B-50<br />
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<br />
C-124<br />
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<br />
C-133<br />
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<br />
C-130<br />
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B-25<br />
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<br />
Mig 15<br />
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Allison engine used on the P-38, P-39 and P-40.<br />
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<br />
B-58<br />
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<br />
Mig-29 "Fulcrum"<br />
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<br />Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-36928651887616495902020-05-19T18:11:00.000-05:002020-05-19T13:41:25.220-05:00Improbable cross examinations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="color: #6000bf;">East Texas State Park -April 4, 2011</span></b><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #6000bf; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: black;">We moved 200 miles west into east Texas. It started to rain so we pulled in early, but the forecast tornadoes and severe thunderstorms have turned to afternoon sunshine.</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GijGpCHwhjw/TZpJQIgzmVI/AAAAAAAAHj0/BN18aSS61jY/s1600/DSCF3305.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GijGpCHwhjw/TZpJQIgzmVI/AAAAAAAAHj0/BN18aSS61jY/s640/DSCF3305.JPG" width="640" /></a><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #6000bf; font-size: 13.5pt;">ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?<br />
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'<br />
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?<br />
WITNESS: My name is Susan!<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>______________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?<br />
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.<br />
_____</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-size: 13.5pt;">It's probably still 600 or 700 miles to the Big Bend National Park in West Texas. I'm thinking that the cactus should be in bloom.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="color: #6000bf; font-size: 13.5pt;">_____________________________<wbr></wbr>______________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?<br />
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>______________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?<br />
WITNESS: Yes.<br />
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?<br />
WITNESS: I forget.<br />
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>_____________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?<br />
WITNESS: We both do.<br />
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?<br />
WITNESS: We do.<br />
ATTORNEY: You do?<br />
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>______________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?<br />
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>______<br />
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ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?<br />
WITNESS: He's 20, much like your IQ.<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>_____________<br />
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ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?<br />
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>___________<br />
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ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?<br />
WITNESS: Yes.<br />
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?<br />
WITNESS: Getting laid<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>______________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?<br />
WITNESS: Yes.<br />
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?<br />
WITNESS: None.<br />
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?<br />
WITNESS: Your Honour, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>______________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?<br />
WITNESS: By death.<br />
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?<br />
WITNESS: Take a guess.<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>______________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?<br />
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard<br />
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?<br />
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>_______<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?<br />
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?<br />
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>___________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?<br />
WITNESS: Oral...<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>___________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?<br />
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM<br />
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?<br />
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>______________<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?<br />
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?<br />
______________________________<wbr></wbr>________<br />
<br />
<br />
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?<br />
WITNESS: No.<br />
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?<br />
WITNESS: No.<br />
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?<br />
WITNESS: No.<br />
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?<br />
WITNESS: No.<br />
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?<br />
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.<br />
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?<br />
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.</span><br />
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Social Hour at Betty's RV Park in Abbeville, Louisiana. </div>
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-14529370700752083742020-05-18T05:55:00.000-05:002020-05-23T15:42:45.015-05:00Running Around With Her Hair on Fire<b>On the Mekong River -12/23/11</b><br />
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The boat cabin came with an adapter that seemed to work OK with the laptop, which needs 12.5 volts of direct current. I plugged in Carol's hair curler and she mentioned that it got hot really fast. Then her hair started to smoke. <br />
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So I plugged in the transformer we carry that steps down 250 volts alternating current to 110 volts.<br />
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One thing is still the same as it was in the 1960s. It's the depressing poverty that you see everywhere. One difference is that the thatched huts and sheet metal dwellings usually have a TV antenna or even a satellite dish.<br />
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This morning we trudged up a hill to visit a temple/monastery. I forgot my camera sim card. Some kids took me to the school where the monks were learning math. There was a sign that said, "THE TIME IS MONEY". I thought that was very zen.<br />
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The Mekong means "the mother of all rivers" so when you say Mekong River, you are saying "Mother River River".<br />
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We visit more Cambodian hilltop temples in the morning and afternoon.<br />
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Finally, we visit the Amica village. they are harvesting rice and carrying it to store on carts, in baskets on poles, and carrying baskets of rice on their heads.<br />
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Before going to the village we stop to buy toys, pencils, and notebooks for the village children.<br />
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TV antenna on the upper right.<br />
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We transfer to a bus today for a four-hour drive to Siem Reap. Angkor Wat is nearby, which should be a high point of the tour.<br />
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This is the first place we go with no children asking politely for money. Here they know that the tourists will give small gifts as they leave. They sing for us and we sing for them (If you're happy clap your hands).<br />
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It takes a million bamboo poles to build this bridge. They put it up every year and take it down before the rainy season. It can handle a car.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-74181992265790052592020-05-14T06:49:00.000-05:002020-05-14T14:22:43.870-05:00San Juan River Raft Trip<b>Bluff, Utah to Mexican Hat, Utah -July 2008</b><br />
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At 4:32 AM this morning the International Space Station became visible in Bluff, Utah. It wasn't as bright as I expected it would be. You would think anything with a $190 million dollar toilet would be dazzling.<br />
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The raft trip departs near Bluff at 8 am and ends up in Mexican Hat, 26 miles downstream, around 5 pm. Our guide, for some reason, wears a striped necktie with his straw hat and tennis shoes. <br />
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The first stop is a sandstone wall with 150 yards of petroglyphs. The earliest of these may date back 10,000 years to Clovis Man. More elaborate designs are about 1,000 years old by the basketweaver culture. I suspect that the ones that say "BLM Sucks" are fairly recent additions. One recurring enigmatic design appears to be Kenny from South Park.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SB71EdoKOvI/AAAAAAAAB4c/evydkn55c-k/s1600-h/IMG_2233.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196860477053483762" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SB71EdoKOvI/AAAAAAAAB4c/evydkn55c-k/s640/IMG_2233.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
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We see more Indian ruins, after a 1/2 mile hike, a little later in the morning. These were the <a href="http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/northamerica/anasazi.html">Anasazi</a>, ancestors to the local Zuni, Hopi and Ute tribes. The cliff shelter forms a natural amphitheater. I can clearly hear the group conversations from 100 yards away. You can imagine voices from the inhabitants on a warm summer day.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SB71EtoKOwI/AAAAAAAAB4k/q19wizjkSDo/s1600-h/San+Juan+River+Raft+Trip+5-4-2008+1-06-12+PM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196860481348451074" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SB71EtoKOwI/AAAAAAAAB4k/q19wizjkSDo/s640/San+Juan+River+Raft+Trip+5-4-2008+1-06-12+PM.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
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We run into some mountain goats about halfway through the float.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SB71E9oKOxI/AAAAAAAAB4s/eVxRPsQlZRM/s1600-h/San+Juan+River+Raft+Trip+5-4-2008+4-01-52+PM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196860485643418386" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SB71E9oKOxI/AAAAAAAAB4s/eVxRPsQlZRM/s640/San+Juan+River+Raft+Trip+5-4-2008+4-01-52+PM.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
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It's interesting to watch the layers of sandstone along the river. One yellow layer traps petroleum. Sometimes it dives into the earth, sometimes it reappears...Mrs. Phred claims she can smell the oil. The red layer is Navajo sandstone, petrified ancient sand dunes. There is one very old layer called Paradox. It is believed to have originated near the equator, in a shallow sea, back before the continents drifted apart. <br />
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The thing about the yellow layer of rock is that it's fairly impermeable. If you can find a place where it folds up into an <a href="http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blanticline.htm">anticline</a>, the low-density oil and gas bubbles up and accumulates at the top of the dome or fold. It's the kind of structure that gets oil geologists really hot.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SB71E9oKOyI/AAAAAAAAB40/YjUiW2spCOs/s1600-h/San+Juan+River+Raft+Trip+5-4-2008+5-47-50+PM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196860485643418402" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/SB71E9oKOyI/AAAAAAAAB40/YjUiW2spCOs/s640/San+Juan+River+Raft+Trip+5-4-2008+5-47-50+PM.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
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I like this picture of a desert bee chowing down on a prickly pear flower.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-40246858471566048502020-05-11T19:58:00.000-05:002020-05-11T01:30:41.120-05:00Throwback Thursday?<h3>
<b>Grand Tetons and West Yellowstone - July 1, 2015</b></h3>
It was 1969. I had completed my five years in the Air Force, flying back and forth to Viet Nam. I was 25 and Mrs. Phred was 24. I learned to make beer that year with an 18 percent alcohol content and put up 15 gallons. It struck me that a party might be fun and I issued an open invitation to anyone living in Tallahassee.<br />
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Three of my beers would stun you. Six would cause unconsciousness. I am told that over 100 strangers came to the party, including a prize winning poet. I was unconscious before the party began. In the morning, as the sun came up, there were 15-20 people passed out in the living room and in the bushes outside.<br />
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Mrs Phred helps with the driving on the trip from Alpine to West Yellowstone.<br />
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After Gunnison in Colorado, we drove up to Vernal, Utah for one night and then to Alpine, Wyoming just West of the Grand Teton. The Tetons are always photogenic.<br />
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The best part of our RV park is that it's four miles outside of Alpine so I got to do several eight mile hikes in the morning....I bought a cowboy hat in the local tack store.<br />
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A Dam in the Teton National Park.<br />
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This bird was on my morning walks.<br />
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After three days in Alpine, we moved up to West Yellowstone. We're staying in a place where Idaho, Montana and Wyoming converge.<br />
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These horses were on my walk in Alpine.<br />
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We went on a five mile hike at 8,000 feet today. We went up to Cascade Lake.<br />
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In the morning we will do some whitewater rafting in Montana on the Gallatin River.<br />
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A Selfie....<br />
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<br />Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-59201112080132883482020-05-03T10:56:00.000-05:002020-05-03T21:51:22.445-05:00The Golden Triangle<h3>
<b>Northern Thailand - December 2012</b></h3>
The strange thing about these sculpted hands and skulls reaching up out of a pit where bad folk go, is that someone has painted a single fingernail red. <br />
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<span class="line line-s" id="line_1">Where do bad folks go when they die?</span> <span class="line line-s" id="line_2"> </span></div>
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<span class="line line-s" id="line_2">They don't go to heaven where the angels fly</span> <span class="line line-s" id="line_3"> </span></div>
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<span class="line line-s" id="line_3">They go to a lake of fire and fry</span> <span class="line line-s" id="line_4"> </span></div>
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<span class="line line-s" id="line_4">Won't see 'em again till the 4th of July</span></div>
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There's an Opium Museum up on the Thai/Laos/Burma border. It's mostly about the British squaring up their balance of trade with opium balls. It's a fine museum, but leave three or four hours to visit and take it all in. There are movies about the CIA and all kinds of Golden Triangle history things that you might find interesting. We had to cut it shorter than I would have liked..busy schedule.<br />
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The visit starts with a walk up a dimly lit long tunnel with eerie music and tortured human images carved into the tunnel walls.<br />
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There is no order to the pictures here today. Just another weird day in the Golden Triangle. Cooking eggs in boiling hot springs for breakfast, talking to bald-headed monks, seeing surrealistic strange structures, eating the local food...<br />
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The inside of this temple had a lot of white strings in it which created an interesting visual view of the Buddha. The visual view is not as redundant as it sounds. Consider spiritual view, overview, or other views...<br />
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This old, bald monk is building a new place for the young monks to sleep and cook. It's all open air. The weather does not require heaters for the most part.<br />
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This is an adjunct structure going up near an old temple along a remote river off the beaten path. It's sort of a boat-like temple thingy.<br />
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Our driver, Ken on the temple boat.<br />
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Carol and Bennett draw a stick in the temple which gives a number that leads to a written fortune. Their fortune says that the new baby is not expected anytime soon. Nailed it in one.<br />
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Ken tells me that the people who use the temple make these things and people vote for the most beautiful by placing money in them. The money is used for maintenance and additions...<br />
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The old temple next to the new boat structure on the river.<br />
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We are the only customers in this open-air restaurant. The food is good and very spicy. Fortunately, both Bennett and Ken are fluent in Thai.<br />
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Down the road, This ultra-modern temple has some odd images, including all the hands coming out of the pit. Maybe they are drawing on Christian images. Maybe we were once visited by really ugly aliens? Interesting use of Spanish Moss?<br />
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The temples vary greatly in design. This one is fairly new. It was built by a really wealthy businessman. As far as Bennett knows, it was built to make merit. He doesn't accept large gifts, support monks or do good works. We think we see him sitting by the temple entrance...<br />
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The Red Rose Hotel in Chaing Rai is built around a Disneyland motif. It is intended for only short-term occupancy (prostitution) We drive all-around at night to look for it because Ken and Bennett think we will find it interesting. We went into one very humid room that had some kind of bugs that bit Mrs. Phred. I wonder what Walt Disney would think?<br />
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This is the little mermaid room.<br />
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I think this room is the little engine that could.<br />
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Behind Carol is Burma. Behind Bennett is Laos. They are standing in Thailand. The three countries are divided by the Mekong and the smaller river that joins it from between them to the left.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-81150774046897558902020-04-22T21:21:00.000-05:002020-04-22T02:54:12.630-05:00Leaving Hanoi<h4>
<b>Hanoi, Vietnam - December 27, 2011</b></h4>
Hanoi was an interesting place. We only had one day there to see things and now we are having breakfast in the Hanoi Airport and are 3 hours into our 36-hour journey back to Sarasota. The picture below shows Ray inspecting a column of NVA veterans. The veterans are visiting the Ho Chi Minh memorial complex in the center of Hanoi. Ray is now in his 80s. Ray is a veteran of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam and has his veteran hat on for the picture. Ray's wife passed away a year ago during the holidays. He's taking this trip by himself.<br />
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You can't take any pictures in the huge mausoleum. They move small groups though quickly. Ray comes close to collapsing from shortness of breath and I fall back and help him slowly move past the body. One of the Honor guards approaches and asks if Ray is all right. Another guard motions impatiently for us to move along more quickly. We ignore him and move past the body as soon as Ray can begin to catch his breath. <br />
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Uncle Ho wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread in both halves of Vietnam after reunification, but they ignore his wish<strike></strike>es and do a Lenin style display of his body in this giant mausoleum. They close the memorial two months a year to refurbish the body. Uncle Ho died in 1969 before he could see the reunification that occurred in 1975. <br />
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In the market, I see a street artist doing a copy of a stylized portrait of Hunter S. Thompson.<br />
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The wiring in Asian cities we visit always appears as if it would be difficult to troubleshoot. We really like our Vietnamese guide, Tony. Tony says that when they have an electrical problem, it is not uncommon to just give up and string a new wire.<br />
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We see the lake in the center of Hanoi. They fished John McCain out of it with a broken arm after he parachuted out of his Navy fighter jet. This dragon is on the lakeshore.<br />
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The dragon seems to have a happy face (and so does the statue in the background).<br />
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They customize scooters and bicycles in very innovative ways to transport goods. <br />
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The weave and dance of vehicles through intersections and roundabouts are completely amazing. They all seem to ignore what traffic lights there are. A double beep on the horn seems to mean "watch out, I'm coming past".<br />
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We visit the Hanoi Hilton, where some American fliers were imprisoned. The building below was right at the edge of the little historic prison, which was also used by the French. It had a guillotine at that time. The prison itself is just not all that photogenic. The cells are very dark and do not photograph well. There is a video explaining how well the Air Force POWs were treated. I'm sure that when Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib become museums, we will produce something very similar. The victor gets to write the history.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-34798556246918735882020-04-19T00:30:00.000-05:002020-04-19T11:58:59.389-05:00Whittier, Alaska<h3>
<b>Fresh Salmon for Dinner - August 5, 2013</b></h3>
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We're in the Williwaw campground of the U.S. Forest Service outside Whittier....according to Wiki, "a sudden blast of wind descending from a mountainous coast to the sea. The williwaw results from the descent of cold, dense air from the snow and ice fields of coastal mountains in high latitudes, accelerated by the force of gravity. Thus the williwaw is considered a type of katabatic wind."<br />
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The campground itself is very beautiful and there are salmon nearby...<br />
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You can only reach Whittier by sea, air or a 2.5-mile tunnel through which train and vehicle traffic take turns in a single lane....the tunnel was built during WWII to disembark troops and supplies...<br />
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Whittier has about 200 permanent inhabitants, but this swells in the summer with tourists, fishermen and cruise ship passengers. <br />
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The tunnel costs $12 for a passenger car....most of the inhabitants live in a single building which was once the largest building in Alaska...It's a former U.S. Government structure which has been converted into condos...<br />
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The other large building has been abandoned. It's a wreck and full of asbestos, ice, bears and collapsed walls, windows, and pipes.<br />
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Right now the port is full of commercial and sport fishing vessels.<br />
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This is the Buckner Building. It was badly damaged by the 1964 earthquake and tsunami... Demolition is impractical since the debris would have to be removed by boat or through the tunnel...<br />
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There's not much to do in Whittier so Mrs. Phred and I explore the building. The stairwell leading to the basement is in total darkness and at the bottom of the stairwell is "The Door". Through the door is the basement which, although caved in, is still accessible. In the Eastern corner is access to an underground tunnel leading towards the city. It runs downhill for over 500 yards, ends abruptly and is completely immersed in darkness. We explore the tunnel for about 400 yards but are chased out by a large animal or creature of some sort....possibly a bear or troll...<br />
<br />Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-59861521451763345132020-04-17T17:54:00.000-05:002020-04-18T01:52:41.370-05:00Black Buffalo Woman<h3>
<b>Little Big Horn River, Montana -June 15, 2013</b></h3>
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Custer made Major General during the Civil War at the age of 25. He had eleven horses shot out from under him during the Battle of Culpepper Courthouse. He was 37 on June 25, 1876, when his career came to an abrupt end in Montana.<br />
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I'm not one to criticize a great military leader, but it seems odd that Custer would divide his forces into three prongs at the banks of the Little Big Horn River and then subdivide his remaining third into two wings.<br />
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He asked his second in command, Major Reno, to attack the Lakota camp from the South. Reno's men were routed as the Lakota boiled out of camp like hornets.<br />
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Custer's own 209 men, after attacking from the North, moved to a hilltop, shot their horses in the head and used their carcasses for what has been described as well-organized breastworks and last-ditch bid for survival.<br />
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The whole thing was the result of a land grab by American authorities who had reneged on a previous treaty because of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills. The slaughter of the buffalo upon which the Lakota depended as food was another cause of the conflict.<br />
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The Bighorn Mountains were off to our left as we moved up through Buffalo and Sheridan...antelope and deer browse the grassland with no apparent fear...<br />
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They've placed dead soldier markers all over the battlefield where Custer's last command was wiped out. A CSI type investigation of firing pin marks on cartridge cases and arrowhead types and broken finger bones and crushed skulls was also done...it all jives very closely with contemporaneous Indian accounts of the battle...and they were the only ones talking...<br />
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There is a National Cemetery here. The first 200-300 graves are for Custer's soldiers, civilians and Crow Indian scouts ...<br />
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after that, you start seeing old Indian Scouts, Spanish American war vets, WWI soldiers and eventually WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan...totally cool...I could be here someday...or not...LOL...My outfit was the 7th Military Airlift Squadron running cross-Pacific missions in and around Viet Nam...we used to joke that we were the offspring of Custer's 7th Cavalry.<br />
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This is a shot of The Little Big Horn River today...The Lakota and Cheyenne had established a large camp on the river in search of antelope when Custer decided to try to force them into a smaller reservation...<br />
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Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were two of the best known Indian leaders. They engineered Custer's ignominious defeat. Below is an actual photo of sitting bull...Sitting Bull fled to Canada after Little Big Horn. He returned five years later and in 1890 was killed by Lieutenant Henry Bull Head. Sitting Bull's death coincided with the massacre at Wounded Knee and may explain the Ghost Dance movement that spread widely at the time.<br />
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This is an artist's rendition of Crazy Horse. A gigantic statue of Crazy Horse is being carved out of a granite mountain in the Black Hills. The project has been underway for 70 years and may take another 500 to complete. The effort makes Gaudi's church in Barcelona seem fast-paced by comparison. <a href="http://thefirecloudreport.blogspot.com/2008/06/quality-genius-vision.html" target="_blank">Here is a link to my Blog</a> about the Crazy Horse project. When finished it will be the largest statue in the world....bigger than the pyramids...carved from the hardest rock in America...<br />
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Wiki has this story about Crazy Horse.....<br />
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""In the fall of 1867, Crazy Horse invited Black Buffalo Woman to accompany him on a buffalo hunt in the Slim Buttes area of present-day northwestern South Dakota. She was the wife of No Water, who had a reputation for drinking too much. It was Lakota custom to allow a woman to divorce her husband at any time. She did so by moving in with relatives or with another man, or by placing the husband's belongings outside their lodge. Although some compensation might be required to smooth over hurt feelings, the rejected husband was expected to accept his wife's decision. No Water was away from camp when Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman left for the buffalo hunt. <br />
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No Water tracked down Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman in the Slim Buttes area. When he found them in a tipi, he called Crazy Horse's name from outside. When Crazy Horse answered, No Water stuck a pistol into the tipi and aimed for Crazy Horse. Touch the Clouds, Crazy Horse's first cousin and son of Lone Horn, was sitting in the tipi nearest the entry. He knocked the pistol upward as No Water fired, deflecting the bullet to Crazy Horse's upper jaw. No Water left, with Crazy Horse's relatives in hot pursuit. No Water ran his horse until it died and continued on foot until he reached the safety of his own village".</blockquote>
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A bronze statue by James Ford imagines Black Buffalo Woman....as she might have been...I took a long walk along a dirt road this morning just after sunrise...it's a beautiful country...a herd of about 20 mares and colts stared at me strangely on the road...they were "paints"...the creek here is named after Major Reno...After Custer asked him to attack from the South he led his men in a mad scramble to run away from the Lakota camp and lived to fight another day and bury Custer...<br />
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Reno was later charged with public drunkenness and with making unwanted advances toward another officer's wife. He was also charged with cowardice and drunkenness for his behavior at Little Big Horn and also indicted for peeking through the bathroom window of the daughter of his commanding officer...<br />
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the hilltop of Custer's last stand....the last 50 or so of his 209 men fell here at the spots indicated by markers...after shooting their horses....Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-26683665456352829032020-04-15T07:03:00.000-05:002020-04-18T01:58:56.022-05:00Parguera, Puerto Rico<h3>
<b>La Parguerra, Puerto Rice - July 5, 2005</b></h3>
Since 1995, I've been spending a couple of weekends each year in La Parguera, Puerto Rico, diving the wall with Captain Angel.<br />
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I went to San Juan, Mayaguez, Caguas, Aricebo and Ponce on business, helping one of our subsidiaries through their audit in September and installing and upgrading computers, new software, local area networks, telephone equipment, and wide area networks.<br />
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There were lots of problems with computers broken in shipment, power failures and burned out electronics. Eventually, I had all six of the Puerto Rico offices interconnected to each other, Tampa and the National Office in Atlanta by a wide area network. When we started they didn't have a single computer.<br />
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The picture above is Captain Angel. One of the fringe benefits of my side duties on the island was always a diving weekend in Parguera. I took Mrs. Phred there a couple of times. My last time I took my son. Once I took a strange consultant named "Bob" from Chicago when we changed accounting systems. When I went online to book a dive trip today, I found that Angel closed down last January. It is a shame. He is a nice young man with a lovely wife and two young children. Sometimes he would get a call on the boat and smile and say that the baby just had a bowel movement. He had a nice life running dive trips out to the wall. I had hoped that he would succeed.<br />
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The dives were among the best I've done. They started at about 60 feet and went down a coral covered wall with lots of fish and eels.<br />
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There is the last time for everything. Due to the tenuous nature of existence, we can never be sure when it's happening. I'm going to miss the Parguera Divers polo shirts and the rainbows over the phosphorescent mangrove bay.<br />
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I'll really miss the cool Parguera Divers polo shirts with the little neon fish logo.<br />
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My son enjoyed the last trip. He's a poet/lawyer/guitar player with (so far) six very handsome and well-behaved children. I'm not biased about that in any way about that.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-2705129195286716342020-04-12T06:58:00.000-05:002020-04-18T02:13:58.719-05:00Kenai Peninsula<b>Halibut and Salmon Fishing in Alaska - July 23, 2005</b><br />
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Alaska is a place of unparalleled beauty. Parts of Alaska extend past the 180 meridians making it the furthest western, eastern and northern state in the USA. There are few roads and travel to most of the state is still accomplished only by small plane or boat and sometimes by dog sled or snowmobile.<br />
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The waters of the Gulf of Alaska, including the Aleutian chain and Pribilof islands, are nourished by deep ocean upwelling which provides rich nutrients to plankton that in turn support a rich and complex food chain of sea life including seabirds like the puffin and marine mammals such as whales, sea otters, seals, and walrus.<br />
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Although Alaska is a huge place, if you like to fish, raft, dig for clams, hike and enjoy spectacular scenery (including snowcapped mountains, fjords, glaciers, and exotic wildlife) consider renting a car in Anchorage and spend several summer weeks in the Kenai peninsula only an hour to the south. Traffic is light and the natives are few but friendly. The main Kenai destinations are Whittier, Hope, Seward, Soldatna, Girdwood, and Homer. The Kenai Peninsula is adjacent to the spectacular Cook inlet, ringed by snow-covered volcanoes. This area was explored by Captain Cook, accompanied by a young William Bligh. Cook was searching for a northwest passage.<br />
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<b>Alaska National Maritime Wildlife Refuge</b><br />
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The Alaska Maritime Wildlife Refuge covers 2,500 islands, four time zones, nearly 47,000 miles (76,000 km) of shoreline and a distance east to west of about 3,000 miles (5,000 km).<br />
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The refuge headquarters and extensive exhibits of living seabirds, seals and other marine mammals are in Homer, Alaska on the coast of the Kenai peninsula. Homer is also famous for Halibut fishing. It is not uncommon to land a 300-pound (140kg) Halibut and these may reach a size of 1,000 pounds (450kg) or more. Halibut over 100 pounds (45kg) are usually voluntarily released as a conservation measure and steps are now underway to limit Halibut catches by charter boat captains to the 1999 levels to ensure the continued future health of this species.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0lT_VbCOI/AAAAAAAAAdc/gGIc6Gkamd4/s1600-h/018_018.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="424" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047731782701222114" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0lT_VbCOI/AAAAAAAAAdc/gGIc6Gkamd4/s640/018_018.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
The refuge provides a vast and rich feeding ground for salmon during their years at sea before they return to spawn.<br />
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<b>Overview of Fishing Regulations</b><br />
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Take some time to study the local customs and fishing rules before going fishing. For example, Alaskans believe that when you intend to release a fish, you should take care to avoid handling it or removing it from the water. Handling a fish removes the slimy covering and makes them susceptible to bacteria.<br />
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Where and when fishing is allowed, permitted baits and fishing techniques and daily 'emergency orders' are posted online and updated each day. Alaskans believe that tourism and fishing species conservation are closely related. The emergency orders1 may close certain types of fishing, some places to fish or they may double bag limits if there are too many fish entering the rivers or streams. Non-residents that purchase a fishing license are expected to record their catch and return the license by 30 November. Usually, the local tackle shop where licenses are sold can provide helpful current information.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0mkvVbCQI/AAAAAAAAAds/TQkLZplC2bw/s1600-h/019_19.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="364" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047733169975658754" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0mkvVbCQI/AAAAAAAAAds/TQkLZplC2bw/s640/019_19.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
The Alaska Fish and Game Department monitors 15,000 streams and rivers and offshore waters on over 47,000 miles (76,000 km) of coastline. Salmon entering rivers from the sea are carefully monitored by sonar. This information is updated daily on their website and decisions to expand or contact fishing limits is delegated to local Fish and Game officers. The Coast Guard also vigilantly patrols the Aleutian chain of islands to prevent fishing by commercial boats of other nations.<br />
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<b>Salmon Life Cycles</b><br />
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Salmon begin life as a fertilized egg deposited in gravel in a stream bed. Salmon life cycles are anadromous which means that they are born in freshwater, feed and grow there for a year or two then undergo a morphological change that adapts them to seawater. They roam and feed at sea for a few years and then mysteriously navigate back to their home stream or hatchery to spawn and die. A 40-pound (18kg) female king may contain 5,500 pea-sized eggs (roe), weighing up to 5 pounds (about 2kg). Curiously, where and when such bait is permitted, king roe attached to a lure is the bait of choice for king salmon.<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0EvvVbCKI/AAAAAAAAAc8/eUfR2XnlByo/s1600-h/014_15.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047695975558875298" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0EvvVbCKI/AAAAAAAAAc8/eUfR2XnlByo/s640/014_15.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="366" /></a><br />
<b>Five Types of Salmon</b><br />
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Alaska has five types of salmon. These are the coho or silver, chinook or king, chum, pink, and sockeye or red. Salmon farming in Alaska was prohibited in 1990 to protect the wild salmon population. Farmed salmon tastes fatty and carry diseases to the wild population. They tend to suffocate in their own feces, which is an unappetizing thought.<br />
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The king (chinook) salmon is highly prized by sport fishermen for its size, growing to nearly 100 pounds (45kg), but the sockeye or red is most sought after for its taste because of its dark color, high-fat content and firm flesh. Chum is the most available salmon but it does not travel well and most of it ends up in cans. The silver (coho) is the most aggressive and will attack nearly any type of lure.<br />
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There are other salmonoid species such as the steelhead trout that have a characteristic salmon taste and color. Semelparous species, such as salmon, spawn once in a lifetime and immediately and die. Steelheads and other iteroparous species can spawn several times.<br />
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Often precocious immature salmon return to spawn while they are very small - 2 to 4 pounds (1kg to 2kg) for a king. These are called jacks or jennies depending on sex. Jacks and jennies may be kept and eaten without counting as part of the daily bag limit.<br />
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<b>Fishing for Kings on the Kenai River</b><br />
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The Kenai River is the place to catch kings in Alaska. The largest ten kings ever recorded all came from the Kenai River near Soldotna. The largest so far was over 97 pounds (44kg). The way to catch kings is to hire a local guide and fish from a drift boat. Some guides use outboard engines and others row against the strong current. You should use a guide who has an outboard because the kings enter the river on the rising 30-foot (9-metre) tide and the local guides know where the kings will be on an hourly basis. The rowboats have a problem with mobility in the strong current.<br />
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The local guide will provide bait and tackle. Kings average 20 to 40 pounds (9kg to 18kg). After landing one you must immediately record it on your license and cease fishing for the rest of the day. Kings must be hooked in the mouth. Snagged or 'foul-hooked' kings must be released. You may also land smaller 3-pound (1.4 kg) 'jacks' or 3-pound 'rainbow trout'. These will taste very good on the grill the same evening.<br />
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The time to fish for salmon is during the summer when they swarm upriver to spawn and die.<br />
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<b>The Seldovia Bay Enhancement Project</b><br />
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The village of Seldovia can be reached by a spectacular 20-mile (32 km) water taxi ride from Homer. Things to do there include hiking, a great ice cream parlor where you can do laundry and a restaurant that also offers customers a large selection of used books to read. There are interesting bed and breakfasts there and you could consider booking a halibut fishing charter at the docks.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0l8_VbCPI/AAAAAAAAAdk/HV0wJb0J9w4/s1600-h/011_11.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="364" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047732487075858674" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0l8_VbCPI/AAAAAAAAAdk/HV0wJb0J9w4/s640/011_11.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
The Seldovia salmon enhancement project involved releasing king and red spawn into a tiny stream that runs through the Seldovia village. The mature salmon have no place to spawn when they return and are easy pickings for bald eagles, bears and Native Americans in the shallow stream.<br />
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The Salmon begin to run upstream in bunches with the incoming 30-foot (9-metre) tide as the stream changes from a downstream trickle to a raging reversed river twice each day. Although it is considered to be a bit like 'mugging', this is one of the few places where one can simply cast a weighted triple gang hook (after 13 June) and snag and reel in a delicious 10-pound (4.5kg) red after a fierce struggle. The remote village stream is not crowded by fishermen and it is interesting to watch the village children land these even if you choose not to fish. If you will be fishing you will need to pack a rod and a spinning reel with perhaps a 20-pound (9kg) test line. Weighted triple-gang hooks can be purchased on the Homer Spit, but buy several because you will snag the bottom. Bring waders and polarised sunglasses. Begin watching for fish to snag when the children start to congregate at the bridge on the incoming tide.<br />
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<b>Combat Fishing</b><br />
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Another way to catch salmon on the Kenai is combat fishing. In June and July, the aggressive silvers run 40 miles (64km) up the murky blue Kenai river and then dart into the clear Russian river at their confluence near the village of Coopers Landing. To catch salmon by fly fishing it is best to see them rather than merely 'flogging the water' with your fly. Polarised glasses and wading boots are necessary. Polarised sunglasses employ a magical trick to bend light waves and permit fishermen to see fish passing underwater by cutting surface glare. Keep your lunch on your back to keep the bears from raiding it so that you do not need to enter the water above the height of your waders to avoid the bears.<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0j9vVbCNI/AAAAAAAAAdU/UO67KI52HiM/s1600-h/015_13A.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="424" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047730300937504978" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0j9vVbCNI/AAAAAAAAAdU/UO67KI52HiM/s640/015_13A.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
<b>Halibut Fishing from Homer</b><br />
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Lift weights for six months before you go Halibut fishing from Homer or Seldovia and only go on the half-day trips. These only cost half as much and everyone catches their limit (two halibut) before the half-day is over anyway. The hard part is deciding what to release and what to keep. The halibut bite as quickly as your bait hits the bottom and anything less than 20 pounds (9kg) or over 100 pounds (45kg) should probably go back in the water. Keep out a chunk to make grilled halibut in the evening.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0oWvVbCRI/AAAAAAAAAd0/Aw3oJMPEkDI/s1600-h/P1010058.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047735128480745746" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/Rg0oWvVbCRI/AAAAAAAAAd0/Aw3oJMPEkDI/s640/P1010058.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="480" /></a><br />
<b>Travel Tips</b><br />
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Alaska has a very short tourism season and accommodations, rental cars, meals, and activities tend to be pricey. It is probably wise to book your accommodations long in advance because they are limited and tend to fill up. Many lodging facilities offer the use of outdoor gas grills where you can cook part of your fresh catch. Fodors.com has a chat room where you can ask questions and get recommendations from other travelers. Go frequent flyer if you can, but try to book your flight twelve months in advance before all the seats are taken. Buy a cheap styrofoam cooler upon arrival and keep it stocked with ice, sandwich makings, water, and breakfast snacks. A 2-for-1 Alaska coupon book is available for about $100 which offers half-price accommodation, horseback riding, raft trips, fishing guides, glacier cruises, and charter boat fishing trips. The coupon book is well worth the cost and may help your trip planning and budget. A good Atlas of Alaska with large scale topographic maps can be purchased online and will be useful for locating hiking trails and assessing the difficulty of the terrain.<br />
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<b>Bringing it all Back Home</b><br />
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Homer and Soldanta offer a variety of fish processing options for the traveler. It costs an average of a little over a dollar (the local currency) to have a filleted pound (454g) of fish flash-frozen and vacuum packed in one-pound fillets. For a few dollars more per pound, a portion of your fresh catch can be smoked. These companies will Fed-Ex your frozen fish back home in a special container on a day of your choice. Another option is to fly your own fish back in a cooler with frozen gel packs. This is considerably less expensive. Consider packing your clothing and a cloth travel bag in your cooler on the way over and fill the cooler with frozen fish and gel packs on the way back. This will save the cost of purchasing a good cooler at Alaska prices. Check with your airline for weight limits and surcharges for checked baggage.<br />
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<b>Fish recipes</b><br />
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Fish recipes are almost as plentiful as fish. Here are two simple recipes you could try on the outdoor gas grill in your Alaska bed and breakfast. <br />
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<b>Grilled Fresh Alaska Salmon</b><br />
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Ingredients:<br />
½ stick melted butter<br />
Garlic powder<br />
1 pound (454g) salmon fillet<br />
Preheat the grill to high heat. Brush meat side of the salmon with the butter. Place the salmon on the grill, on a piece of aluminum foil and close lid. After about six minutes, baste again and sprinkle on garlic powder cook for about 8 more minutes or until fish flakes with a fork. Do not overcook.<br />
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To Accompany:<br />
Alaskan wild berries (in season) or defrosted frozen blueberries from the local market<br />
Small red potatoes wrapped in tinfoil and cooked on the grill with butter - do not begin to cook fish until these begin to soften<br />
Choose your own wine - Washington State semmillion or Oregon Riesling<br />
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<b>Grilled Fresh Alaska Halibut</b><br />
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Ingredients:<br />
1 pound (454g) halibut fillet<br />
lemon, pepper, salt (for seasoning)<br />
Preheat the grill. Place the halibut skin side down on oiled tin foil, sprinkle with lemon-pepper-salt mix, and close the grill cover and cook only until the flesh flakes with a plastic fork.<br />
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To Accompany:<br />
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Consider sliced red peppers and mushrooms wrapped in tinfoil and steamed on the grill<br />
Wild rice is also nice if there are indoor cooking facilities<br />
Choose your own wine - French white Burgundy or California Chardonnay?<br />
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Emergency Orders and In-season Regulation Changes: An Emergency Order has been issued to raise the Kenai River bag and possession limits for salmon 16 inches (40cm) or longer, other than king salmon, from three (3) per day and three in possession to six per day and six in possession in all portions of the Kenai River open to salmon fishing except in the Russian River.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-90621661744673383372020-04-11T12:59:00.000-05:002020-04-12T11:00:41.932-05:00Charlie Don't Surf<h3>
<b>Captain Jack Armstrong - August 5, 2016</b></h3>
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I've been watching the presidential candidates and thinking about the power to launch the nuclear triad.<br />
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I tested out at the 99th percentile on my Air Force Officers Emotional Stability Quotient (AFOESQ) . I was an Airman Basic in Lackland Air Force Base in 1963 and wanting the Air Force to send me back to college for a degree and a commission under their Airman Education and Commissioning Program. (AECP). They had 100 slots a year and I wanted and got one.<br />
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The test took about three hours and had hundreds of questions that were designed to detect lying and inconsistencies. My orders promoted me to Staff Sargent (nine months after enlistment) and sent me to Florida State University to study accounting. They had 98 slots for meteorologists and 2 for accountants.<br />
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Some of the questions went like this:<br />
a. My friends usually came to my house.<br />
b. I didn't have many friends.<br />
c. I usually went to my friends' houses.<br />
d. I always stayed at home and masturbated.<br />
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Often the questions were trickier, but I thought, "How would Captain Jack Armstrong answer this question?". When I graduated from Florida State in 1965, they offered me the chance to be a pilot or a navigator. Since pilots were being killed willy-ninny in Vietnam, I chose the latter occupation.<br />
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Jack Armstrong was the "All American Boy" fictional radio character from 1933 to 1951. I caught the broadcasts on our old radio during the program's last three years. No great mental feat to promote him to a being a Captain in the United States Air Force and use him to answer all the questions...What Would Jack Do (WWJD)? Does knowing the right answers mean that I am emotionally stable? So far I haven't gone postal. On the other hand, my cousin has my M-1 carbine up in New York with the two 50 round banana clips taped together so my chances have been very limited.<br />
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Apparently, Jack passed the test with flying colors so when Mrs. Phred questions my sanity or asks if I'm depressed I refer her back to my test results...after all how many of us are certifiably that stable compared to the general population of Air Force Officers?<br />
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By the way, I recently acquired a t-shit that says "Charlie Don't Surf" over a picture of a young Charles Manson. No matter how many times I explain to Mrs. Phred why this is hilarious...she fails to see the humor...what do you think?<br />
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<br />Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-26804550544994474932020-04-09T22:04:00.000-05:002020-04-09T12:55:46.409-05:00Breakfast With the Chief of Police<b>Somewhere in New Mexico - January 26, 2007</b><br />
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We pull into a small town in New Mexico. There is a small diner open for breakfast. We walk over an icy four-lane highway and go into the restaurant.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/RbrFjFL-CQI/AAAAAAAAAWE/nvz70-WDHdc/s1600-h/P1260017.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5024545540763683074" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oPe97virjyY/RbrFjFL-CQI/AAAAAAAAAWE/nvz70-WDHdc/s640/P1260017.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><br />
There are four patrons who warmly welcome us and ask us to sit at their table close to the heater. One of them is C_____, who is dressed as a working cowboy with jeans, a flannel shirt, and a faded jacket. We speak to them and exchange life stories. They all live in town. One-by-one, everyone leaves except C_____ and the cook who is the owner.<br />
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C_____ appears to be about 50 years old. C_____ asks me about my Pink Floyd T-shirt and expresses a love for the early Floyd albums. We discuss rock concerts we have attended. He ticks of eight or nine groups. I mention a few including the free “love-in” nude "flower power" 60’s concert we attended with Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary in San Francisco. <br />
<br />
We begin to discuss Ken Kesey’s “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and Tom Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”. We both hint at a brief love of hallucinogens terminated reluctantly by impending maturity.<br />
<br />
C_____ tells us about his trips to the Mediterranean on an aircraft carrier. I tell him about seeing the Pacific in a C-124. The cook comes out and tells me that C_____ is the Chief of Police and has been making several movies with a Hollywood film crew.<br />
<br />
C_____ explains to us that there are 180 people in his town and it’s pretty boring. He says most of the people here are ranchers and haven’t really adopted big city attitudes. They have computers and DSL but are very old-fashioned in many ways. Until three years ago he was the elected sheriff of the entire county.<br />
<br />
He has been working with film crews doing remakes of “The Hitcher”, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Birds”. The Hitcher is one of my favorite all-time movies. He tells me to look out for some surprising plot changes but offers no plot-spoilers.<br />
<br />
We pay the bill and say goodbye. I tell him I seldom have an opportunity to discuss my history of drug use at breakfast with a Police Chief. He says that he would just as soon not have his constituents know about his.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Phred and I fill the RV with gas on the way out of town. A blacksmith is shoeing a horse in the snow-covered convenience store parking lot. We both agree that breakfast in small-town America often provides interesting experiences and memories.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-76506026526534205832020-04-09T19:21:00.000-05:002020-04-09T07:32:50.979-05:00Gator Grabs Naked Crack Smoker<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Lakeland, Florida - November 29, 2006</b><br />
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For reasons not yet fully understood, a naked 45-year-old man who had been smoking crack wandered into a swampy area near Lakeland at 4 AM last evening. ...His name is A____.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V8r0hbxGtYY/UB7W1HI-cEI/AAAAAAAAMI4/AethTsm3748/s1600/Gator.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V8r0hbxGtYY/UB7W1HI-cEI/AAAAAAAAMI4/AethTsm3748/s640/Gator.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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He was grabbed by a 12 foot, 500-pound alligator. Deputies wrestled him away from the gator, but not before the gator took the last grip on his buttocks after eating most of his left arm...The gator has since been captured and euthanized, in accordance with the State of Florida policy.<br />
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To followup on this story, the police found A____'s pickup truck late at night over a year later near a place called Saddle Creek Park. A license check revealed that the truck belonged to Adrian, with whom they were familiar, and who they found swimming (naked again) 50 feet offshore in an area well populated with alligator eyes.<br />
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A____ was held briefly at a mental health facility as a possible danger to himself and charged with trespassing, exposure of sexual organs and creating a nuisance. He failed to appear in court as scheduled after release on a $1,500 bond.<br />
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A month later, police found an unidentified human body in the jaws of a gator at Saddle Creek Park, leading them to do a quick wellness check on A____.<br />
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A___ has a MySpace account. He says if you want to talk about gators, he says that you have to pay him. I'm tempted to open an account so I can just be his friend.<br />
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There are two excellent writers who formerly had crime beats on major Florida newspapers and who recognized that the absurd happenings in this State created a rich opportunity for a novelist to write humorous novels about murder, alligators, and roadkill.<br />
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One is <a href="http://timdorsey.com/home.html">Tim Dorsey</a>, formerly of the Tampa Tribune and the other is <a href="http://www.carlhiaasen.com/">Carl Hiaasen </a>of the Miami Herald. Each of these former reporters has a half-dozen excellent novels to their credit, all based in a Florida setting and chock-full of dark absurdities loosely based on real Florida life.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-70334471935360344232020-04-06T18:28:00.000-05:002020-04-09T07:16:20.371-05:00900 Tons of Rotting Tuna<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Rockaway</span></span></span> Beach, Oregon - July 26, 2009</span><br />
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It was sad when the great ship went down. It was 1976 and Betty M. was fully laden with a cargo of 900 tons of fresh tuna. She capsized in the mouth of the Columbia River. Local residents still talk about the stench that lasted for months. The diving here involves 50-degree water temperatures and 10 to 30-foot visibility. I think I'll leave the SCUBA gear in the basement until we get back to Florida.<br />
<br />
This is a picture of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Tillamook</span> Naval Air Station back in 1943. The Navy dirigibles photographed her are only slightly shorter than the 800-foot <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Hindenburg</span>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_6Jdfmfl9LBmIAWCFdOGfEoBQpqXrff7u_TbSRbCleXBh3mXeJ7xFmhjDB0gvgSsAGZA4oTUFCQEraMC8tYzwOt3iGxWkp3uUlWA0S8bjZBRW9mzK3UndRzq6fFeBJYvLED3mkfBjMeg/s1600-h/DSCF2662.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362926236039759074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_6Jdfmfl9LBmIAWCFdOGfEoBQpqXrff7u_TbSRbCleXBh3mXeJ7xFmhjDB0gvgSsAGZA4oTUFCQEraMC8tYzwOt3iGxWkp3uUlWA0S8bjZBRW9mzK3UndRzq6fFeBJYvLED3mkfBjMeg/s400/DSCF2662.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 450px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 600px;" /></a>One of Mrs. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Phred's</span></span> online friends <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">came</span> to visit. Her name is Laura. Mrs. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Phred</span></span> and Laura go to "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Garibaldi</span> days" and have excellent fried oysters for lunch. I stay home and do paperwork. I'm pleased to be able to load Laura up with fresh fish. She drove a long way to meet Mrs. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Phred</span></span>. Laura works in the Oregon mental hospital where "One Flew Over the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Cuckoo's</span></span> Nest" was filmed starring Jack <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Nicolson</span>. The book was written by Ken <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Kesey</span> who got his big start from having his brains jarred loose by the CIA during the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">MKULTRA</span> project, which involved <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">slipping</span> LSD to unwitting citizens. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Kesey's</span> fourth child, conceived with another Merry Prankster, was appropriately named "Sunshine"...<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjctcIkchOvCpU54iwZAZrrBIv1YgZN1gTc7Vr6gBumT3iWe0yXbHRu9iBpfJXRRrDMPjvOMIATWYXvhQ_lR5rq9XPUryhfK9b-4Qy3SGHbH6CmxtTEVhpEu05QP6t2x_PtPCXDJPXFw0o/s1600-h/DSCF2628.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362926872819659970" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjctcIkchOvCpU54iwZAZrrBIv1YgZN1gTc7Vr6gBumT3iWe0yXbHRu9iBpfJXRRrDMPjvOMIATWYXvhQ_lR5rq9XPUryhfK9b-4Qy3SGHbH6CmxtTEVhpEu05QP6t2x_PtPCXDJPXFw0o/s400/DSCF2628.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 450px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 600px;" /></a>Today we took a three-cape scenic drive along the coast. We both had that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">deja</span></span></span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">vu</span></span></span> feeling that we'd been here before...perhaps we had. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Tillamook</span></span></span> Air Museum is not bad. They had some very nice WWII airplanes and airplane engines on display. My own C-124 engine was there. It was the largest airborne piston engine ever deployed. It was used on the B-36 as well....a radial seven with four rows...28 cylinders...what a hog. 4,500 cubic inches...four engines...no wonder we burned 10,000 gallons of high octane on a ten-hour flight....about five gallons a mile...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLti3P_mcej5Kyeb1h9GaJDEj_ztrkiXdQ3lTo66Pt8ClpGhiIxOKaNAoFF6pfjl5_fMJQvmHxyDEcBSIK7gUIrUTzVSXqtZJ7FiyMAWFsMKviEygFRWGVvjxHgyxy3HqHglDl_JCLz7s/s1600-h/DSCF2650.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362926868693267106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLti3P_mcej5Kyeb1h9GaJDEj_ztrkiXdQ3lTo66Pt8ClpGhiIxOKaNAoFF6pfjl5_fMJQvmHxyDEcBSIK7gUIrUTzVSXqtZJ7FiyMAWFsMKviEygFRWGVvjxHgyxy3HqHglDl_JCLz7s/s400/DSCF2650.JPG" style="display: block; height: 450px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 600px;" /></a>The most lovely plane in the museum is a P-38 called the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Tangerine</span></span>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh-BUNaQdfvvmJ2F-TcCDLQ1z1R3sVpaBlr-0q3YjMZM-LbGchfXwGEK7KGE9CQc2a4vESyoYGwGTrMBmqDejznIbpF5oKiQyRxhx0j8sJ8AQ-EQSNEUKa_asUKkCImlGBi6rcyKnUhzU/s1600-h/DSCF2655.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362926247091645106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh-BUNaQdfvvmJ2F-TcCDLQ1z1R3sVpaBlr-0q3YjMZM-LbGchfXwGEK7KGE9CQc2a4vESyoYGwGTrMBmqDejznIbpF5oKiQyRxhx0j8sJ8AQ-EQSNEUKa_asUKkCImlGBi6rcyKnUhzU/s400/DSCF2655.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 450px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 600px;" /></a>I don't recognize it at first...light, flighty, lovely and bristling with 50-calibers. The engines rotate in opposite directions to cancel the effects of torque.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_tDK4zos3vVG-2wb19HAmjcW7NBk49fBxlzmjeplSX05KbdysK2_2VMwu8P1HmH-vZCXt7Vb-fUZ92WC40Z7_YBhChvheDdgF8xzxNTx8SExn9DfbCFoYPUjenTuKGlAibuvngcTVnCI/s1600-h/DSCF2656.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362926239389502802" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_tDK4zos3vVG-2wb19HAmjcW7NBk49fBxlzmjeplSX05KbdysK2_2VMwu8P1HmH-vZCXt7Vb-fUZ92WC40Z7_YBhChvheDdgF8xzxNTx8SExn9DfbCFoYPUjenTuKGlAibuvngcTVnCI/s400/DSCF2656.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 450px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 600px;" /></a>Lt. Ethell who flew one this made some kills. The people next to us gave us a plate of freshly boiled crab. It was good but it ruined our appetite for the sockeye salmon I had cooked so I made a sandwich spread from it with eggs, onions, mayonnaise, and chipotle sauce. It made about seven healthy sandwiches.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-RJTCNNVGDreS4yVT7XAD-sR-PuWynd4aXIdGjTxVqILN240c_qe9rHVmLlToKKIyJFNNyH3reX6j2ey3Xu1viNs5cz8_siM2BWZ-X8nqXBjzhPDIrRQJLxYybtvOa_9tKSFGI_NTYD4/s1600-h/DSCF2657.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362926238870351282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-RJTCNNVGDreS4yVT7XAD-sR-PuWynd4aXIdGjTxVqILN240c_qe9rHVmLlToKKIyJFNNyH3reX6j2ey3Xu1viNs5cz8_siM2BWZ-X8nqXBjzhPDIrRQJLxYybtvOa_9tKSFGI_NTYD4/s400/DSCF2657.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 360px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 600px;" /></a>Perhaps the most interesting thing about the air museum was the building housing it. They claim it is the largest wooden building in the world. It's easy to believe. They built it to house Akron Class Navy rigid dirigibles during WWII. They built two, but one burned to the ground about 20 years ago. It had been filled with hundreds of tons of hay. The building that is left houses a bunch of stored boats and RVs in addition to the air museum.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9qvAMEdPD5LqlUXlkhqnm-cFk21szre5Nasfty9Uqjt_VYTCEGpK8Lh6fXteKZcqnWzaGuhGR2LwxE8_5Qja4LLVYkv53xojifkOBgDAwxRMJ8S2ZMVM3fZ-Z7pEvBss7wnaw49o-bUI/s1600-h/DSCF2647.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362926867119107218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9qvAMEdPD5LqlUXlkhqnm-cFk21szre5Nasfty9Uqjt_VYTCEGpK8Lh6fXteKZcqnWzaGuhGR2LwxE8_5Qja4LLVYkv53xojifkOBgDAwxRMJ8S2ZMVM3fZ-Z7pEvBss7wnaw49o-bUI/s400/DSCF2647.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 450px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 600px;" /></a>Tomorrow we move on to the mouth of the Columbia where Lewis and Clark wintered in 1805.<br />
I think WWII dirigibles were very useful for convoy duty.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ZVMSHV4rX-F18ReckmXSE6pCqm5v6oXn85QEosLB860Gi1dqpTJlcvY4B0IzctPQ053b0j1uzGqTBSfQjzI98nsb52uclGIXAG_6b6hyphenhyphenwGYLWMk53O2beswd3f2jRftoqeCnde8hDDk/s1600-h/DSCF2663.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362926230750648882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ZVMSHV4rX-F18ReckmXSE6pCqm5v6oXn85QEosLB860Gi1dqpTJlcvY4B0IzctPQ053b0j1uzGqTBSfQjzI98nsb52uclGIXAG_6b6hyphenhyphenwGYLWMk53O2beswd3f2jRftoqeCnde8hDDk/s400/DSCF2663.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 600px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 460px;" /></a><br />
Rotting tuna, Ken Kesey, P-38s, the Merry Pranksters, Chipottle sauce, Project MKULTRA, the CIA, WWII dirigibles, the Oregon coast capes, fresh fish....it all comes together right here in Tillamook. It's interesting that Lt Ethell's son, Jeff Ethell, wrote a book called "Warbirds of WWII" and crashed a restored P-38 and died in Tillamook in 1997. Apparently he lost an engine, failed to maintain a sufficient airspeed and destroyed himself and one of the last of these lovely airplanes in a flat spin.<br />
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Unknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04959346632831366441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008335056659286538.post-83921222093725499682020-04-05T06:50:00.000-05:002020-04-05T20:23:48.752-05:00The Katrina Depression<b>Main Street, America - November24, 2008</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyQEmC7B7uHJH1tFO6ntBZSymg-1Zbod0dMQZwq71dNwq4dnLmgYVxO4t6nCOXI3cwO-Ba1SGr9upYHryoDklsGI7lIHdd_rSnQjKkMHT0ZoSP3iapACwysVQr3wHB84TWqZ4yV5e_6ag/s1600-h/2_great_depression.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272190648455521058" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyQEmC7B7uHJH1tFO6ntBZSymg-1Zbod0dMQZwq71dNwq4dnLmgYVxO4t6nCOXI3cwO-Ba1SGr9upYHryoDklsGI7lIHdd_rSnQjKkMHT0ZoSP3iapACwysVQr3wHB84TWqZ4yV5e_6ag/s400/2_great_depression.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 299px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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Today the Government sunk an additional $20 billion into Citibank and guaranteed them against losses of another $300 billion on their mortgage portfolio. They're swapping treasury bonds for bad mortgages.<br />
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We stood by in stunned disbelief three years ago as we watched our Government fumble and mismanage the Katrina disaster and its aftermath. There was plenty of warning. We knew the storm was coming three days in advance. We watched the disaster unfold on TV. Apparently our government officials were too busy to watch TV and seemed unaware of the catastrophe for nearly a week.<br />
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I told my neighbor that it looked like a $50 billion problem in the making as we watched Katrina move slowly north that weekend. A year earlier, I told him that adjustable rate mortgages would cause big problems for homeowners sometime in the future.<br />
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The last depression, in my opinion, was caused largely by speculative and unsound lending practices. You could put down $1,000 and borrow another $9,000 from a local bank to buy common stock on margin. The resulting wave of bank failures after Black Monday depressed economic activity and increased unemployment for a decade.<br />
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This time lending practices became even more bizarre. Mortgages were bundled into strips by the originators and sold as securities. Insurance was purchased in the form of credit default swaps. The issuers of this insurance did not have assets to cover the losses. Despite this, the rating agencies ranked these bundles of mortgages as investment grade securities. These were called CDOs or Collateralized Debt Obligations.<br />
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We all know about the subprime mortgages. Those were issued to folks with bad credit ratings. What the hell! The commercial banks and mortgage companies got fat fees for originating the mortgages and passed most of the risk on the Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac or investors. The Investment Banks racked up huge profits securitizing the mortgages and passing them along to foolish investors.<br />
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Then there were the ARMs or Adjustable Rate Mortgages. These came with a low initial monthly payment. Several years later the payments reset, sometimes to more than twice the original payment.<br />
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There were also “No Doc” mortgage loans where the borrower was not required to provide and documentation about income. The bankers amusingly called these “liar loans”.<br />
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Even more insane were the “pay option” mortgages. Here you pay a low teaser rate of interest only until your mortgage balance hits perhaps 125% of the original loan and then your payments reset to maybe triple the original monthly payment.<br />
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The speculative bubble in housing prices caused by insane monetary policy and Republican deregulation of our banking system sprang a leak and started to deflate two years ago. <br />
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We are a long way from the bottom of this economic death spiral. Houses still cost three times as much to buy and maintain as they do to rent. Even with millions of homeowners “underwater” (which is why I call this is the Katrina Depression) on their mortgages, home values will continue to decline for probably another five years until 2013. As a result, even strong borrowers will simply walk away from their mortgage obligations in droves, piling up an increasing supply of ever less valuable housing for sale.<br />
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The mortgage modification programs being implemented by banks right now will not be effective. They simply reduce interest rates and payments, sometimes adding the reduction to the mortgage balance. This keeps the homeowner trapped in an unsellable home until eventually and inevitably they walk away, leaving the bank with a bigger problem down the road.<br />
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If you own an investment home or a second home, a bankruptcy judge can modify the terms of your mortgage in bankruptcy. The judge’s options include reducing the interest rate AND reducing the principal balance of the mortgage. Due to a 1978 modification of US bankruptcy laws, this option is not available if you actually occupy your home and need it for shelter.<br />
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A further wrinkle is that most mortgages are simply serviced and not owned by banks. When a bank services a loan, it has no incentive to modify the mortgage terms. On the other hand, the bankers get paid “cost-plus” to foreclose on the home and nobody is auditing the cost or the plus.<br />
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For years, we have been living with an economic engine supercharged and overheated by cheap and freely available consumer credit. I feel a little sorry for the Chinese and the Russians. They were largely unaffected by the Great Depression. Now that we have sold them on the benefits of the capitalist economic system, we introduce them to the Katrina Depression. Surprise! <br />
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Our economic hopes rest squarely on the shoulders of Obama. I think he is “The One”...Maybe I'll rent The Matrix again today and wake up from this bad dream.<br />
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-Bob the Blogger (aka Phred Firecloud)<br />
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