Barr Camp, April 30th 2006

From left to right: Jack Ramsey, Glen Ash, Theresa Taylor (feeding a chickadee from her hand) at Barr Camp, elevation 10,200'.

626 Ruxton

The roof of my new house as seen from the lower Barr Trail: Manitou Springs, Colorado. 

Peter Daou: Ignoring Colbert: A Small Taste of the Media's Power to Choose the News

Peter Daou has a good piece on last night's performance of Stephen Colbert skewering GWB at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Colbert was masterful. The dinner was televised on C-Span last night. Crooks and Liars has a good long clip here. One Good Move has edited versions here. You gotta see them!

It should be big news, but alas it looks like it's being buried by the "liberal media".

Transcript from Daily Kos.

Palau Island Home

Interesting ad in "The Caretaker Gazetter":

Caretaker needed on a remote island in the South Pacific. We are looking for a caretaker to live in our house on Angaur, an outer island of Palau. Visit
Palau Island Home for details about this house. No pay, but no costs either. Experience living and/or working with indigenous people preferred but not required.

Neil Young - Living With War

Click here to listen...

Email to my "conservative list"

Friends,

Are you in the 32% that still approve of GWB's running of our country??

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/24/bush.poll/index.html

I have to say that I can't imagine that the percentage is that high. He truly is the worst president in the history of our country by an order of magnitude.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/profile/story/9961300/the_worst_president_in_history

I truly cannot imagine ANYONE that approves of this simpleton--he is a psychopath who seeks simple answers to complex questions and alienates the world body and makes a shambles of our diplomacy.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr (author of 1000 days, the official account of the Kennedy presidency) has this to say: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042301014.html

Anyone who voted for this nut in 2004 is RESPONSIBLE for the downfall of our nation. We are going down as a consequence of our hubris. The latest cost estimates for the Iraq debacle are now $1 Trillion. Where does that money come from? Debt to our children. Where does it go? Down a hole. For what purpose? To create more terrorists and to destabilize the Middle East. Shame, shame, shame.

Sam the Wolfdog suffers stroke

When I went downstairs this morning to start the coffee, Sam jumped up from his pad in order to ask to go outside for his morning constitutional. Something was terribly wrong though. He collapsed in a heap on the floor. When he tried to stand up again his legs were wobbly. I walked outside with him and helped him down the stairs off the deck to the backyard. He could urinate, but was unable to squat to defecate. His rear legs wouldn't support him.

Sam has been my constant companion and best friend for nine and a half years. He has climbed 52 of the 54 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado under his own power. In 2001 he got lost in the South San Juan Wilderness for 35 days, surviving on his wits and the occasional rabbit or whatever he could manage to catch. I am in despair.

I took him the local Colorado Springs vet, but finally this afternoon when he was not getting better I took him to Denver to the Emergency Vet Center in Englewood. They have one of the only 100 neurological veterinarians in the world, Dr Stephen Lane. Though he wasn't there today he will look at Sam in the morning and decide whether to do an MRI. The doctor who examined him seemed to think it might be a brain tumor on account of his drooping left eye lid and his pronounced difficulty with his right limbs.

Sam is in the clinic for the weekend at least... 

San Diego CityBEAT Interviews Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter can at least say "I told you so...":

"Back in the fall of 2002, six months before George W. Bush sent U.S. troops rumbling across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, a Time reporter noted to Scott Ritter that some right-wingers were calling Ritter “the new Jane Fonda” and wondering what he’d call his new exercise video.

“If they want to have an exercise video,” snorted Ritter, “then why don’t they come here and say it to my face and I’ll give ’em an exercise video, which will be called, ‘Scott Ritter Kicking Their Ass.’”"

panopticist: William F. Buckley Interviews Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac on the Steve Allen show in 1959 and an interview with William F. Buckley.

I'm the Decider

The Prez is the Decider: "I am me and Rummy's he, Iraq is free and we are all together
See the world run when Dick shoots his gun, see how I lie
I'm Lying..." 

A conversation with climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert | By David Roberts | Grist Magazine

A conversation with climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, the journalist whose closely observed pieces in The New Yorker have now been collected and expanded into a book: Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. I just finished listening the short book on audio CD. Highly recommended!

Neil Young album on Bush impeachment

I knew I should have blogged this when I saw it 10 days ago. Now Drudge has it! Neil Young's new album. May the worst president in the history of the United States go down in flames.

Scenes from our run to Barr Camp yesterday

 
 
 
  

626 Ruxton

 
I just bought this ultra-unique home in Manitou Springs, Colorado!

What an amazing home this is! The steep staircase, the electric tram for groceries, the four decks, the absolute quiet (except for the COG railway and the creek), the feeling of being in the mtns, but oh so close to the city, the aery perch, the views to downtown Col Spgs, the views to Gog and Magog and Cameron's Cone, the hot tub on the sunny side, did I mention the covered decks?, the pellet stove (highly efficient), A/C. It's small though (1500 sq ft), but that's okay. I need to reduce my footprint. Simplify my life. Reduce, reduce, reduce. 

VILLAGE VOICE FIRES JAMES RIDGEWAY; SYDNEY SCHANBERG QUITS

Two fine reporters go down to right-wing think. I'll nver read the Village Voice again...

Climate Change Shattering Marine Food Chain

Climate Change Shattering Marine Food Chain: "Vast swaths of coral reefs in the Caribbean sea and South Pacific Ocean are dying, while the recently-discovered cold-water corals in northern waters will not survive the century -- all due to climate change."

AlterNet: Bush's Final Jeopardy

Bush's Final Jeopardy Question:


"Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected -- as well as false and misleading -- portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a 'former Hill staffer' to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

The answer is obvious: No. Such a misuse of authority is the very essence of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. It is also precisely the abuse of executive power that led to the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon."

A conversation with climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert

I just finished listening to the audio version of "Field Notes from a Catastrophe" by Elizabeth Kolbert. Read it or listen to it, but don't miss it...
A conversation with climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert | By David Roberts | Grist Magazine: "Though her writing is never hectoring or overtly ideological, what she found left her deeply alarmed. The book ends with these chilling words: 'It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.'"

Greg Palast: Gangster Government -- A Leaky President Runs Afoul of "Little Rico"

Greg Palast: Gangster Government -- A Leaky President Runs Afoul of "Little Rico": "On February 10, 2004, our not-so-dumb-as-he-sounds President stated, 'Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing. ...And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it.'

Notice Bush's cleverly crafted words. He says he can't name anyone who leaked this 'classified' info -- knowing full well he'd de-classified it. Far from letting Bush off the hook, it worsens the crime. For years, I worked as a government investigator and, let me tell you, Bush and Cheney withholding material information from the grand jury is a felony. Several felonies, actually: abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and, that old standby, obstruction of justice."

Happy Birthday to Me!

This is how I spent part of the afternoon on my 51st birthday--in a cool pool of Lime Creek in SE Utah on the 4th day of a solo canyon walk. I'm reading "Mexico" by James Michener. 

Tal Afar: The Real Story

George Packer talks about his article in this week's The New Yorker on Tal Afar, Iraq to an accompanying slide show.

Seeds of Change | Permaculture

Bill Mollison Interview: "Recently declared 'Ecologist of the Century' in Australia, Mollison conceives permaculture as the 'conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.' and 'the harmonious integration of landscape and people...' permaculture design he points out, stems from 'protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour:' In short, its goals are energy and water conservation, sustainable local food production and regional self-reliance. As conceived by Mollison, permaculture is nothing less than a 'sustainable earth-care system' capable of providing our food, energy, shelter, and other needs while conserving the world's resources."

Short of starting a farm, what can we do
to make our cities more sustainable?

MOLLISON: Catch the water off your roof. Grow your
own food. Make your own energy. It's
insanely easy to do all that.

More Lime Canyon

No, we didn't go into Dark Canyon, nor Grand Gulch. Grand Gulch was nixed on account of no dogs allowed below Collins Canyon and I decided against Dark Canyon after consulting with the ranger at Kane Gulch Ranger Station. Dark Canyon is at a higher elevation and they still had snow pack, which would mean a muddy hike at best. So I ad libbed and chose a Cedar Mesa canyon that I haven't yet visited. I'm very glad I did...

Here is a view from the canyon rim... Believe it! I coaxed my 9 and a half year old wolfdog Sam both down and up the canyon walls just as precipitous as these! Very proud of the old dog. Shades of old times when he scaled some of the most difficult 14ers... 

Lime Canyon

If you are looking for solitude--go here. 

Lime Canyon, SE Utah

Sam the Wolfdog and I just emerged from a 6-day trek through Lime Canyon and Cedar Mesa in search of the Ancient Ones, during which we didn't see a modern soul through this truly isolated segment of our country--we did see much evidence of a robust and joyful life some seven centuries ago, however. Full trip report to follow on Steve Bremner's North American Outdoors.