Turkey Lives Matter

Yellville, Arkansas

 I'm here with hundreds of people who have gathered to witness what has been described as perhaps the greatest turkey event in Turkey Drop Day history. 

All I know for sure is that in a very few moments there are going to be a lot of happy people out here. Now the crowd is... ... the crowd is uh... curious but well behaved. And I think I hear something now. Uh... The crowd is moving out into the parking area. And... oh yes! I can see it now. It's a... it's an... airplane and it's coming this way! 

 It's flying something behind it and I can't quite make it out. It's a large banner and it says H A P P Y... T URKEY DROP... What a sight, ladies and gentlemen. What a sight. The 'plane seems to circling the parking area now. I guess it's looking for a place to land. No! Something just came out of the back of the plane. It's a dark object, perhaps a skydiver plummeting to the earth from only two thousand feet in the air... There's a third... No parachutes yet... Those can't be skydivers. I can't tell just yet what they are but... Oh my God! They're turkeys! 

Oh no! can you get this? Oh, they're crashing to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! This is terrible! Everyone's running around pushing each other. Oh my goodness! Oh, the humanity! People are running about. The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! 

Folks, I don't know how much longer... The crowd is running for their lives. I think I'm going to step inside. I can't stand here and watch this anymore. No, I can't go in there. Children are searching for their mothers and oh, not since the Hindenberg tragedy has there been anything like this. I don't know how much longer I can hold my position here, Johnny. The crowd... 

Dr. Johnny Fever: Phred...Phred, are you there? Phred isn't there. Thanks for that on-the-spot report, Phred. For those of you who've just tuned in, Yellvile Arkansas has just been bombed with live turkeys. Film at eleven. 

Rainy day in Florence

Florence, Italy

It's raining in the morning so we break out the umbrellas and plastic raincoats and head for the market. Our hotel is centrally located a block from the market, train station and three historic churches. The Nerbone in the market sells Staccatto (slow-cooked beef stew), Lampredotto (stewed intestines) and Panino con Bollito (sliced beef on a roll)...

The Duomo has a line of umbrellas about four blocks long waiting to get in so we go to plan B and walk the back alleys to the Pitti castle...Luca Pitti (not to be confused with Luca Brasi) built this palace ...you should read about Luca, Machiavelli and the Medici clan...somewhere in here they came up with double entry accounting...

 Same deal...long lines...my Dad told me never to stand in line so we go to plan C and walk up the hill to the Pazzalle Michelangelo which has a super view of Florence and the Arno River bridges...

 Later I wash my sneakers and jeans in a laundromat...it was one wash too many for the sneaks and the soles separate from the tops...too bad but they were stinking too much to wear in public anyway...

 We buy a bottle of Chianti to drink in the room...

 Maybe a train ride to Pisa in the morning?

 A nice day for a white wedding...

Hey little sister, what have you done?
Hey little sister, who's the only one?
Hey little sister, who's your Superman?
Hey little sister, who's the one you want?
Hey little sister, shotgun!

It's a nice day to start again
It's a nice day for a white wedding
It's a nice day to start again

Desolation Angels

 North Cascades National Park, Washington

Not that many people still remember Jack Kerouac, the "Beat Generation" or Beatniks (How many even remember Sputnik?).

 
Jack spent a winter here up at Desolation Point in a fire tower writing "Desolation Angels". We could only handle two nights with no internet, telephone, television, FM radio, satellite radio, GPS, electricity, running water or sewer connection. The trees pressed in so closely overhead that even our satellite technologies failed to work (GPS, TV, Sirius Radio). It was kind of like the 1980s when all the National Parks had pay phones from which you could call your stockbroker...if you had a pocketful of quarters...

"No maps, packs, firefinders, batteries, airplanes, warnings on radios, just mosquitoes humming in harmony, and the trickle of the streamlet – But no, Lord has made this movie in his mind and I’m a part of it (the part of it known as me) and it’s for me to understand this world and so go among it preaching the Diamond Steadfastness that says: “You’re here and you’re not here, both, for the same reason,” – “it’s Eternal Power munging along” – So I up I get and lunge along with pack, thumbed, and wince on ankled pains and turn and turn the trail faster and faster under my growing trot and pretty soon I’m running, bent, like a Chinese woman with a pack of faggots on her neck, jingle jingle drumming and pumping stiff knees thru rock underbrush and around corners, sometimes I crash off the trail and bellow back on’t, somehow, never lose, the way was made to be followed – Down the hill I’ll meet thin young boy starting out on his climb, I’m fat with butchers, and it’s Springtime in the Void – Sometimes I fall, on haunches, slipt, the pack is my back bumper, I burnst right along bumbling for fair, what words to describe hoopely tootely pumling down a parpity trail, prapooty ........."...Desolation Angels"

Jack ended up living with his mom in Indian Rocks near Tampa. At the end he was best known for projectile vomiting cheap red wine.



The North Cascades National Park is a huge place that is a strange combination of dams to generate power for Seattle and hundreds of miles of lovely hiking trails.



There are three big lakes up in the Cascades. They are named Gorge, Diablo and Ross. Each lake terminates in an electrical generating dam that feeds into the next lake.


We did find two tennis courts. I played well against Mrs. Phred, but I prefer not to disclose the scores. It was sort of a sports movie and I was part of it (the part known as me).

“Pretty soon...do you realize there'll be so many additional childhoods and pasts with everybody writing about them everybody'll give up reading in despair-There'll be an Explosion of childhoods and pasts, they'll have to have a giant Brain print them out microscopically on film to be stored in a warehouse on Mars to give Heaven Seventy Kotis to catch up on all that reading- Seventy Million Million Kotis! - Whoopee! - Everything is free!” -Desolation Angels

The Kenai Fjords

Fjord...a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea between high cliffs, as in Norway,Iceland or Alaska, typically formed by submergence of a glaciated valley.

Orcas or "killer whales" can eat an 80.000 pound humpback whale. In the 1950's they were much feared. Divers were cautioned to exit the water when orcas were present. There is only one documented instance of an orca biting a human and he was spit out when the orca realized that the surfer was not something that it was used to eating.

We see tidewater and alpine glaciers. This one is 700 feet high and two miles wide. It "calves" several times while we watch.

Kenny after we stop at Fox Island for salmon and prime rib. Orcas have an expanded area in the brain for hearing. Sound travels faster and further underwater. They use ecolocation (like bats) to hunt prey. They make clicks and receive echos on their foreheads.

Phred Firecloud shading his eyes. The mammal eating orcas sometimes develop fatal levels of PCBs. When they eat a seal, all the PCB that the seal has accumulated is deposited in their fat tissues. One beached orca had 15 plastic seal tags in it's stomach. Much of this PCB is deposited in the mother orcas milk and fed to her babies. Orcas have a lifespan and sexual maturity similar to humans, although the males tend to have a much shorter life span than the females. Orca pods are matriarchal  and it is thought that the older females teach their offspring how to hunt prey..

"Resident" orcas swim in pods and eat only fish like salmon and halibut. "Transient" orcas also swim in matriarchal pods and only eat mammals like harbor seals, stellar sea lions or humpback whales. The two types of orcas have separate languages of clicks and whistles and have not interbred for thousands of years according to DNA analysis..There is also an "offshore" type of orca but these have not been studied and little is known about their behavior or eating habits.

I was once the president of SLAMM (Society to Liberate All Marine Mammals) Our plan was to don our SCUBA gear at night and dynamite the holding gates of Marine World and release all the captive orcas and porpoises. Unfortunately, that plan ultimately failed to come to fruition because I was the only member of the society and had no actual idea how of to buy dynamite or how to set it off underwater.

Seward, Alaska

This puppy in Kasilof gets my attention by putting a paw on my arm. Dogs are wired to be friendly most of the time.

Ken takes a picture of Exit Glacier near Seward. The Harding ice field between Homer and Seward was first traversed in 1968. The explorers exited the ice field here. The glacier has been retreating since the last mini ice age which ended 10.000 years ago. I stopped where the glacier ended in 2005. Ken wen another half mile to the 2017 terminus.

Old passenger car at Lowell Point near Seward. A man named Ballantine dreamed of connecting Seward and Nome around 1900. After several bankruptcies and a government takeover his dream came true in 1923.

Art at the Seward aquarium.

Seabird

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