TRAVEL BY CARGO SHIP

my good friend bill in chicago recently sent a link to an article on travel by cargo ship. according to wikipedia, freighter travel is a viable alternative to the security hassles and weather delays of air travel, or to the much more expensive commercial sea cruise lines. essentially, you are paying a cargo vessel to transport you along with whatever they are ferrying across the sea. passenger manifests are limited to 5-10, and you enjoy a small cabin with a sea view. your meals are taken with the crew, you have access to the crew lounge, and your time is your own. it is a no-frills experience -- no upscale restaurants or ballrooms or social events. you provide your own ways of passing the time at sea. aside from books, activities might include enjoying the sea, the weather, passing birds, and land when you are near port.

passsengers tend to include retired people, traveling students, relocating executives, airline pilots, and those who simply prefer a more leisurely journey than that afforded by air travel. see the above links for more information on what to expect, as well as links to travel agents and shipping companies. as someone who worked on a freezer ship along the southern coast of alaska in 1982, i recommend freighter travel as a unique and colorful way to journey around the world.

CHRISTMAS CORPSES

if the title seems a bit macabre to you, that's because the concept to which it refers is fairly gruesome to me. the custom of decorating trees at christmastime started in 16th century germany, and spread through european countries and their overseas colonies. initially, people were content to brighten up outdoor trees with color and lights -- but it wasn't long before christmas trees were cut down to be brought indoors for decoration. as a child, i was charmed, and didn't question the ethics of killing a living thing for a few weeks of visual pleasure, much less the environmental significance of removing millions of oxygen-producers from the world's forests every winter.






















as an adult, it breaks my heart. i've lived all over the u.s., including regions where commercial tree farms raise acres and acres of monocultured trees, to be "harvested" and sold in urban tree lots like so many chickens at the supermarket. whenever i see a truck loaded with trees on their way to sale in homes (or trees to be cut into lumber -- see center photo), i grieve for all those tree corpses.














there are alternatives. we could return to decorating living, outdoor trees. we could buy live trees in potting soil, and after the christmas season, plant the trees in our yards and parks. as a substitute for trees, we could decorate live plants of any species which fits into our homes -- from bamboo to cactus to native ornamental shrubs. it's not an either/or situation.

all i'm suggesting is that we reconsider destroying entire forests of young trees every year, when the planet is in such desperate need of these organisms which live on carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen. not all customs are defensible, just because they are traditional. i'm just sayin'. (top image, outside notre dame cathedral in paris. bottom image, in a private home.)

IMAGINE

Imagine there's no Heaven

It's easy if you try

No Hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope some day you'll join us

And the world will live as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

~~ "Imagine"

John Winston Lennon

09 October 1940 - 08 December 1980

(click here to hear John Lennon sing "Imagine")

TREKKING THE AMAZON

In the realm of personal adventure, few pursuits remain unaccomplished. A former British Army captain, Ed Stafford, is undertaking what no person had done before -- hiking the 4,400 mile length of the world's most imposing river, the Amazon, from its source in the Peruvian Andes to its mouth (200 miles wide) on the Atlantic coast of Brazil. He began over 600 days ago, and hopes to complete his journey by August 2010, with no sponsors or support team, no plush gear, literally living off the land. Why? As Sir Edmund Hillary explained when asked why he was the first to scale 29,000 foot Mt. Everest, "Because it's there."

Here is the article, sent to me by my amigo Bill in Chicago, which describes in fascinating detail Stafford's journey. (click on images to enlarge)

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

~~ William Ernest Henley

PBS NEWS HOUR

For years, my most trusted sources for news have been NPR and PBS. On the latter, Washington Week on Friday evenings, and the News Hour each weeknight. Washington Week is moderated by Gwen Ifill (photo below). The News Hour is undergoing a format change. It will retain a single moderator, Jim Lehrer, and increase the presence of the program's senior correspondents. The intent is to broaden the program's coverage, both on television and online, while maintaining the journalistic integrity with which PBS has always approached the people and events which shape the news.

That integrity is succinctly summed up in the guidelines to responsible journalism which Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer (photo above) crafted 34 years ago. If all news organizations, particularly those which substitute sensationalism and political agenda for true news coverage, were to follow suit, we would be a better-informed public.

BLEEDING RELIGION

As a quiet but confirmed atheist for all my adult life, I have serious issues with the lack of tolerance, not to mention the lack of intellectual rigor, inherent in most organized religions. Particularly oppressive to me is living in a region where (for reasons of inherent insecurity in their own beliefs, I suspect) the residents feel it necessary to relentlessly advertise their particular brand of belief in a supernatural being. In few places does this occur more aggressively than in the American South. I've lived in Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and traveled throughout the region.

I was reminded of the ubiquity of such in-your-face religious proclamations when a correspondent mentioned living in a rural area where signs with biblical references are common. It seems so odd that in a nation which has as one of the stones of its foundation the concept of freedom of religion, that a fundamentalist sect of one religion (Christianity) proclaims that ours is a "Christian nation." Gee, I wonder if that makes our millions of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and non-believers into non-citizens? Hmm. Whatever happened to live and let live? If I had to accept a label for my spiritual leanings (labels are so limiting), Animist comes as close as any.

I had an English lit professor who once observed that inherent in any specified freedom is the choice to abstain from that freedom -- e.g., freedom of religion includes freedom from religion. What a concept.

Especially abhorrent to me are those who not only proscelytize where they live, but send out "missionaries" to spread their version of Truth among those of other traditions. How dare they? Who conferred upon them the Only True Vision? Since so many religions believe theirs is the true vision, how can all of them be right? And if one is wrong, might not they all be wrong?

I'll stick with the principle of parsimony -- analogous to Occam's Razor -- when in doubt, the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. One does not need a god to explain where life and the universe came from. In fact past religious explanations have been woefully off the mark. Nor does one require a religion to posit a purpose to life. Why does there have to be a purpose? I'm persuaded that there is no destination, there is only the journey. It is the Quality with which we lead our lives which defines us, individually and as a species.

TEMPERATURE CONVERSIONS

The U.S. has for decades refused to join the rest of the world in adopting the metric system. This has unfortunate consequences not only for those traveling to other countries which use metric units, but also for those who study any of the sciences in college -- where lab and field measurements are commonly made using metric units.

To my knowledge, Burma, Liberia and the U.S. are the only three countries on earth which still cling to the archaic English system of measurement (with a few local exceptions). Thankfully, many charts, graphs, and web sites exist for converting between metric and English units. Here is a site which allows conversions in temperature, weight, length, area and volume. And here is another devoted strictly to temperature conversion. Please note that the latter is one of a suite of NOAA sites covering weather and climate. NOTE: As I type this, it is 6 dF, or minus 14.4 dC outside.

And here, for your edification and possible amusement, is a map showing the metric world (green), and the non-metric world (grey).

THE BAY OF PIGS

I'm reading a novel by writer and movie director John Sayles, Los Gusanos. Sayles is one of my all-time favorite directors and screenwriters -- his talent for visual and written story-telling is nuanced and finely-crafted. He researches his subjects deeply, and creates genuine and credible characters. There is a common thread of social consciousness running through much of his work.

The novel focuses on the members of several generations of Cuban-Americans, living in or near Miami. They form a rich and colorful tapestry of humanity and culture.

One of the older characters, Serafin, participated in the CIA-planned Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. Through a combination of agency ineptitude and political intrigue, Cuban security knew of the impending invasion. Cuban military forces soundly defeated the anti-Castro invaders, aided by the mysterious withdrawal of promised U.S. military support for the mission.

The following passage is a flashback memory of Serafin, one of the invasion brigade's survivors. It is not for the squeamish.

"....Serafin had thought about bullets and dying in training camp but he wasn't ready for the way the men came apart. They were men like him and when the bullets or the shrapnel hit they tore apart. They were men like him and they tore, hunks of cloth and meat and blood and gristle ripping off into the air, spilling out onto the ground. Men were hit in the face and their heads exploded, nose and teeth driven back through their skulls. When the firing lifted Serafin could feel the ground still shaking, but it was his body trembling uncontrollably. One of the men with a rifle was spitting blood as he had bitten part of his tongue off without knowing it during the fighting and there was nothing moving out on the road.

"Here were heaps of soldier left lying on the ground. Smoke. Nothing moved. Then the shadow of something crossed over Serafin and he looked up to see vultures, dozens of vultures floating overhead, wheeling lazily around the open ground, cautious at first, then flapping in to roost on what was left of a body, one by one, till the road was glistening black with them."

TRACKING SANTA CLAUS

When I was a kid, thanks to the encouragement of our culture in general and my parents in particular, I was an ardent believer in the popular myth of Santa Claus. In fact, it wasn't until the relatively late age of 11 that a disdainful classmate disabused me of that belief. Only then did it become clear to me why my parents stayed up so late on Christmas eve - they were wrapping and placing under the tree all the gifts from "Santa" which they had previously bought or made.

Since then it has always puzzled me why we, as loving parents, set our children up for such intense feelings of disappointment and betrayal. While we are small and innocent, the experience is magical, and of course capitalism and the media are only too happy to play along. After the disillusioning rite of passage, perhaps Santa becomes a metaphor for our parents' love. That might explain why I perpetuated the myth with my own child. It's an enigma.

Here's an interesting twist, with its roots in the frenzy of Christmas consumerism. In 1955, a Colorado Springs-based Sears store ran an advertisement encouraging children to call Santa Claus on a special telephone hotline. Due to a printing error, the wrong phone number was published, and calls poured in to the Director of Operations at the Continental Air Defense Command. The Director, upon sorting out what had happened, instructed his staff to give Santa's position to any child who called.

Three years later, the goverments of the United States and Canada combined their respective national air defenses into the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), but the tradition continued. Now major media outlets as well as children call in to inquire on Santa's location. In 1997 the service was expanded to include a Santa-tracking web site.

The fictional background storyline has changed with the world political situation. During the Cold War when the tracking team provided updates only by radio announcements, only North America was mentioned and Santa's approach was described in tense terms with interceptor aircraft being scrambled to shoot down the "bogie". Only at the last minute would the pilot realize whom he was engaging. Now the Web shows that as Santa approaches Newfoundland in Canada, a flight of Canadian Air Force fighters rendezvous with him to provide an honor guard.

In 2007 NORAD started tracking Santa in 3-D using Google Earth. His "location" is updated every five minutes. For those of you who would like to access NORAD's Santa tracking service, here is the link, with a continuous countdown clock.

HIKING THE GRAND CANYON

Today's NYTimes online features an article on something I've long wanted to do -- experience the Grand Canyon on foot, alone, with no time limitations. the "alone" part isn't adviseable for safety reasons, though Colin Fletcher famously did so in the 1960s, as chronicled in his book The Man Who Walked Through Time. Fletcher's trek took him the 200-plus-mile length of the Canyon, while most people (including the article's author) are content to hike from the rim to the bottom and back (itself a satisfying accomplishment).

If you scan the Times article, be sure to check out the accompanying slide show. No photo can do the Canyon justice, just as no photo can do the night sky justice. But perhaps the seed of your own adventure to the Canyon will be planted. Everyone should see it in their lifetime.

'Course, one of my other dreams is to kayak the Colorado River through the entire length of the Grand Canyon. But that's another story. (click on images to enlarge)

NaNoWriMo

Astute readers will recall that on 03 November, I described entering an online contest called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, or NNWM as I abbreviate it). The intent is to encourage people who've always wanted to write a novel, to do so with guidance, encouragement and a 30-day deadline. That works out to about 1666 words per day, a very manageable number, even if one works and/or has a family to raise. No one profits from your work -- in fact, after November's composition and December's revisions, the writer retains all rights and ownership, and the website deletes all entries. It is an altruistic venture in the purest sense.

The "contest" is actually with oneself, not between writers -- the challenge is to discipline oneself to sit down daily and write. The fun of it is, there's no one looking over your shoulder, judging grammar, syntax or quality of content. It is simply an exercise to boost the aspiring writer off dead center, and get into the writerly habit.

"Thirty days and nights of literary abandon"

My story centers on a man who is single, and learning about the world of online dating services. His exploration consumes most of the story, with some space devoted to contrasting being single now to being single in the mid-1980s, pre-Internet, when one's choices were limited to blind dates through friends (iffy), the bar scene (ugh), or personals ads in the local alterntive newspaper. The latter was, in those days before AIDS, actually quite a safe and fun way to meet people. A teaser -- my character learns through both personals ads experience and online experience that of those women who are reasonable prospective matches, roughly half turn out to be duds (they lied about their age or their weight or their intelligence, or were simply not a good psychological fit: another fourth rated a second or third date but didn't really go anywhere; slightly less than a fourth became relationships of varying duration; and one (the last one, obviously) becomes true love. The devil is in the details ....... the story describes examples of each interaction, with names and other particulars changed to protect the identities of the innocent (or the guilty).

Well, in spite of starting late, I finished yesterday. The NNWM website validated my word count at 50,921 -- or an average of 1959 words per writing day. The experience was a tremendous confidence booster, and an inspiration. I was increasingly aware of something that many writers describe -- how one's characters take on a life of their own, with their own aspirations, quirks, and follies. Throw in their interactions with each other, and with their social environment, and the writer starts to feel a bit like a reporter at times, rather than a creator. It is only a feeling, of course. All those people and events arise from our conscious or subconscious minds. Still, a lot of fun. I never knew from day to day, what was going to end up on the page as I sat down to write.

This first book is not likely to see publication -- though the premise is relevant and the prose is passable. I almost feel possessive of it, wanting to share it with only those few whom I trust. We shall see. My thanks to my friend Celeste for introducing me to NNWM. I shall forever be in her debt.

LEOPARD SHARK

Regular readers know that I'm an avid advocate for predators in general, and the big cats in particular. I happened upon an article about a non-feline predator with a partly-feline name, due to the markings on its skin. The leopard shark ranges along the Pacific coast of North America, from Oregon in the north, to Mazatlan in Mexico in the south. a relatively small shark, the four to five foot long leopard shark often swims in large schools in coastal waters less than 13 feet deep -- bays and estuaries, intertidal mud flats at high tide, or rock-strewn areas near kelp beds or reefs. Since most leopard sharks live within a defined territory, there exists genetic divergence between populations of sharks living in different areas within the species range. such divergence is one of the many possible sources of speciation, i.e., the splitting of one species into two or more distinct sub-species,

Leopard sharks are harmless to humans, and sadly are harvested both for food, and to stock exotic salt water aquaria in offices and homes. (click on image to enlarge)

CHEETAH

Documented as the fastest land animal, the African cheetah can reach speeds between 70 and 75 mph, in short bursts covering distances up to 1500 feet. It has the ability to accelerate from 0 to 65 mph in three seconds, faster than most supercars. North America's pronghorn antelope is marginally slower, but can sustain its speed over much longer distances than the cheetah.

Cheetahs exhibit very little genetic variability among individuals, the result of a prolonged period of inbreeding following a genetic bottleneck during the last ice age. one consequence is that the entire species is highly vulnerable to any potential infectious disease that is species-specific. New research indicates that the last known common ancestor to all cheetahs lived in Asia 11 million years ago.

There is a popular film that provides a window into the life and personality of a cheetah that was raised as a pet and returned to the wild -- director Carroll Ballard's Duma.

THE OTHER THANKSGIVING

I refer to how white America's celebration of Thanksgiving tastes to most Native Americans -- like bitter ashes. European American invaders used disease, lies and the fine art of massacre to steal Indian land, and tried to obliterate their culture, language, traditions. Confined to ghettos euphemistically called "reservations", decimated by broken treaty after broken treaty, Indians have become the forgotten minority in the U.S. -- the most oppressed, the most impoverished, the most plagued by alcohol and unemployment.

And yet, against all odds, decent and informed (and sometimes justifiably angry) Indian voices persist -- writers, scholars, historians, activists. There is as much variety of opinion and behavior among Indians as there is among whites, with this difference -- whites hold the financial and political power, but seldom the moral high ground.

On this day, I am thankful for those other voices, which sit on my shoulder and whisper into my ear about conscience, honor, pride.

MILKY WAY

some images just don't need the clutter of commentary -- this splendid APOD photo of our Milky Way galaxy is one such. click on the links for descriptions. click on the image to enlarge. enjoy.

FARM TOWN CROPS

For those of you who use the app Farm Town on Facebook, here is an updated chart showing all existing and new crops, grouped according to how long they take to mature. Within days-to-mature groups, all crops are arranged in ascending order of profit per day. This gives you a much more useful comparison than simple seed cost, or simple harvest yield. Time, cost of seed, cost of plowing, and harvest yield affect your profit and profit per day, and are figured into the chart.



Crop...........Time to Mature....Profit... Profit per day

********************************************

Raspberry......2 hours..................12..........(depends on # plantings)

Grape..............4 hours..................16...........ditto

Beets...............4 hours..................18...........ditto

Squash............8 hours..................24...........ditto

Basil................8 hours..................28............ditto

Asparagus....12 hours..................27............ditto

Sugar cane...12 hours..................31............ditto

*******************************************

Strawberry.....1 day....................35...............35

Watermelon....1 day....................37...............37

Potato..............1 day....................39...............39

Cabbage...........1 day....................42..............42

Eggplant...........1 day....................47..............47

Sage..................1 day.....................52...............52

*******************************************

Tomato............ 2 days..................70...............35

Wheat.............. 2 days..................80...............40

Rice...................2 days..................90...............45

Peas..................2 days..................92................46

Carrot...............2 days..................98................49

Pepper..............2 days................108................54

Blackberry.......2 days................120................60

*******************************************

Coffee................3 days...............128.................43

Corn.................. 3 days...............135.................45

Sunflower..........3 days...............142.................47

Onion.................3 days...............148.................49

Blueberry..........3 days...............177.................59

Pineapple.......... 3 days..............192.................64

Rosemary..........3 days...............211................70

*******************************************

Cotton.................4 days..............160.................40

Pumpkin.............4 days..............176.................44

Broccoli...............4 days..............197.................49

*******************************************

NOTE: Farm Towners, if you would like to see the complete chart, which includes seed cost, plowing cost, time to mature, harvest yield, profit, profit per day, and XP (experience points earned), let me know, and i'll send you an email with the chart as an attachment.

NOTE: As always, your available time, personal preference and aesthetics trump this chart. This information is intented solely for those who seek to maximize their profit for a given time period. :)

SADDLE UP

I've discovered a weekly show on PBS which focuses on the humane training of horses. It's called "Saddle Up", hosted by Dennis Brouse. The show is remarkable for two reasons. The first reason is that the training practiced on the show is clearly influenced by Monty Roberts and other so-called horse whisperers, trainers who "adopt a sympathetic view of the motives, needs and desires of the horse, based on natural horsemanship and modern equine psychology." Both the book and the movie The Horse Whisperer were based loosely on Roberts' life and philosophy, in which the emphasis is on paying attention to the horse's behavior, in effect listening to its non-verbal language, and on negotiating with a horse to form a voluntary, non-violent relationship with the trainer.

The second reason is that in addition to helping individual horse owners to train their animals, Brouse introduces his audience to different horse breeds, and to the variety of ways in which humans and horses associate, from trail rides to polo to steeplechase.

My own experience with horses is mostly limited to having ridden bareback as a child, during a time when my dad had his own farm. I still prefer riding bareback to a saddle -- there is a more immediate connection and communication between rider and animal. It feels more like a partnership, rather than one being imposing its will on another. But to each his/her own. I can well understand the enhanced control and safety which a saddle affords.

CLIPPER SHIPS

when i was a lad, i spent much time outdoors, exploring the prairies and mountains of northwestern Montana. during those times when i was indoors, i could be found either reading voraciously (which i still do), or assembling models from kits. those models not only taught me about planning, constructing and artwork, they also seized my imagination. models ranged from military aircraft, classic cars and medieval knights to naval warships and sailing ships. of the latter, one of my very favorites was the Flying Cloud, a clipper ship built in 1851. clipper ships were designed for speed, with a long narrow hull, and billowing mountains of square-rigged sails mounted on multiple masts. they were merchant vessels, plying the trade routes that ran between the u.s. east and west coasts via south america's cape horn during the california gold rush, and also the routes to asia from the u.s. and europe. the Flying Cloud set a speed record of 89 days for the cape horn trip in 1853, a record for sailing craft that stood until 1989.

ultimately clipper ships, whose visual image blended an impression of immense speed with powerful grace, were replaced by steamships, and their doom was sealed by the construction of the suez canal, though elements of their design were incorporated into modern warships. today three clippers are known to survive. of those three, only the Cutty Sark remains in serviceable condition. it is being renovated to become a floating museum in greenwich, england.

BLOODY SUNDAY -- 1920

the Irish War for Independence was a guerrilla war mounted against the British government by Irish citizens. the revolt began during the Easter Rising of 1916, during which various factions proclaimed an independent republic. during the subsequent period of violent repression by the British Army, by its intelligence agency MI5, and by the loyalist Irish Auxilliary Division, rebel factions united under the umbrella of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), led by Michael Collins. in 1919 the IRA's political arm, Sinn Fein, under Eamon de Valera, issued a formal declaration of independence and established an elected assembly, the Dail Eireann.

the war continued until July 1921, when the Anglo-Irish Treaty ended British rule in most of Ireland, establishing the Irish Free State. however, the northeasternmost 6 of Ireland's original 32 counties, being predominantly Protestant and loyal to the Crown, opted out of the treaty, choosing to remain under British rule as Northern Ireland. the remaining 26 counties, mostly Catholic, form the present-day Irish Republic.

during the war, one of the most significant events was Bloody Sunday -- 21 November 1920. on that day, an IRA operation in Dublin led to the deaths of 12 British agents and 2 Irish sympathizers. in reprisal, that afternoon the British Army and the Auxiliary Division surrounded and attacked unarmed civilian spectators at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, massacring 14 Irish men, women and children, and wounding many others. although the IRA's attack provoked condemnation from the British government, it was the British reprisal which solidified Irish opposition against the Crown, and which fueled world criticism of the British government.

the foregoing is only a cursory summary of the events and participants of those violent times. for greater and more colorful detail, i recommend Morgan Llywelyn's "Irish Century" series of novels -- 1916, 1921, 1949, 1972, and 1999.