Using the unpatentable Wray Jittercam, I recorded the last 100 yards (or so) of the rough path to the high cliffs of Black Head (Monhegan Island, Maine). Like any good tourist, I got lost after about a minute into the walk (even though I have walked this path for 13 years (14, if you count a day-trip back in 1970)). At any rate, after I hauled my tired old ass up there and turned off the camera, I hiked down to my own "Indecision Rock" seat on the south edge of the cliff, drank some cheap wine, ate some Fig Newtons and did my annual (out-loud) reading of Evangeline by Longfellow. Perfect!

This video is making the rounds lately and it certainly was moving for me. Give it a watch, get out the kleenex and be glad that things like this really do happen in Life!

Someone posted something in another forum that really pushed my button this morning. Just for the record, here's my response:

Kneejerk reaction warning (usually I calm down before I respond, but):

What layers of Poppycock Michael Novak piles upon his own preconceptions. That last quote of Einstein is so off the mark, that I wonder if he's taking something out of context (if not, it reaffirms my conviction that Einstein was not, indeed, a god-like ultimate authority on these matters, but, rather, just another confused bloke like you or me).

I am an atheist. I am not a slave feeling the weight of the chains I've thrown off, but, rather, the freedom of seeing the world as it really is, with all its beauty and ugliness, with all its treasures and its eyesores, with all its kindnesses and its treacheries. In short, all its soothing, inspiring, cacaphonious, jarring, grating, harmonious "music of the spheres."

All of it is reality and I can choose to do something about parts of it where I (think I) can help out and I can choose to leave other things alone and not screw things up any more than we've already done.

I try to choose with my eyes wide-open, based upon what I see and what I've learned and what exists, right now, in this one moment of choice. I don't always have outcomes that I thought I wanted or that are "correct," but I try to learn from those mistakes. Most importantly, I try not to make decisions based upon theological or nationalistic or money-driven programming that we've all had to endure for so many eons.

Again, I am an atheist. I marvel at a sunset, just like you. I feel so lucky to be alive when a small child trustingly wraps her tiny hand around my finger as we walk together. The sound of the wind high up in trees at night is the most beautiful music I can imagine. Talking long into the night with a good friend by a campfire is one of the greatest treasures that can happen.

You don't need god to "own" these things. You just need to open your own ears and eyes and skin and noses and tongues and take it in and breathe it out again and, knowing that soon, for you, it will all be over, makes it so much more precious than some promised land of milk and honey.

Speaking of "imagining beautiful music," now let's all hold hands and sing together.

Anyhow, that's the end of this outburst. It's not very well thought-out (or edited), but, well, it's what I feel right now. I prefer tar and feather to crucifixion, so have at it, folks!

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

Just realized that I haven't been posting much here of late. On the other hand, I have been entering pictures and thoughts and links at FaceBook regularly (several times a week).

The huge advantage of FaceBook (in my opinion) is that so many more people are connected there and respond (with their real names, too (GASP!)), so that, instead of the relatively lonely monologue that this thing has turned into, there are always several ongoing dialogues (or trialogues (or n-alogues)).

Another advantage is that I am now in regular communication with friends spanning all the way back to High School (Class of '62) and relatives that I never knew I had until this year - again, all using their real names. I got to spend some fun time with several members of my "new" extended family on my last trip to Indiana in May and FaceBook was one of the modes that facilitated it all.

The disadvantage (particularly for folks, like me, that don't do too much self-editing) is that, in most cases, your "thoughts" are limited to fairly short blurbs, which seem (to me) to lead to fairly superficial statements (and, in many cases, the statements are just cryptical teasers that seem to cry out for the "Are you all right?" reply/stroke).

Anyhow, because of the limited number of characters (as in ASCII, not personalities) allowed at FaceBook, I've found myself having to make two, three or more "entries" to just get whatever it is that I need to out of my system before I flush with the "share with others" button. My guess is that longer blurbs (such as this one) don't get read much anymore as folks are looking for the shorter (superficial?) "tweet."

At any rate, I have days when I just want to shut down all my accounts (including email)(particularly when I find people "borrowing" my photographs for their own use/gain). Then I could just spend the rest of my Life playing Spider Solitaire on my new laptop.

There are other times, on the other hand, that I consider posting to FaceBook AND LiveJournal (particularly when I am suffering from acute verbal diarrhea). Then there are other times I think about just posting here again, where I can be (relatively) alone with my (not so concise) thoughts.

Anyhow, well ... let's just leave it at "anyhow" for now.

D.

I joined up FaceBook and am amassing friends at an alarming rate.

I haven't yet figured out the real-life impact of this virtual community. Someone, please, explain to me what it's all about?

Well, in Southeastern Connecticut, today was beautiful. I had hoped to bike 25 miles today, but, since I haven't been on the saddle since early December, I found that the saddle did not cooperate with my Gluteus Maximuses (Maximi?), so I ended up riding only 12 miles. Still, it was really great to be back on the bike, breathing relatively warm, fresh air as I explored the local roads.

On the return leg of my trip, I went past Odetah Campgrounds in Bozrah, Ct. I had read on the web that they now had three Colorado yurts that they rent out as cabins during the summer. Today, as I was passing by, I saw some cars and a truck there, so I decided to pedal up there to ask if I could walk by the yurts to just see what they looked like.

A bunch of friends and I built a tipi a decade or two ago (see earlier post here), but I've also been very interested in yurts, particularly the last five years or so. Done a whole lot of reading about them and surfing the web yearning at some of the pictures that I've found. My choir director has one in his back yard in which he frequently sleeps.

Anyhow, today I couldn't find a soul at the campground, so I just decided to explore for myself and, voila, just past the swimming pool, there were all three of the yurts. I walked around them and peeked in one of the doors. Maybe I should just order one of them (Colorado Yurts? or Pacific Yurts(?) or some other company(?)) and get it out of my system (being realistic, I don't think I'd ever actually get around to building one from scratch). If I got one, after I erected it and moved a few of my cherished possessions into it, I'd have my sons come and torch my old house with its lifetime accumulation of clutter/memories therein.

On my refrigerator door, the old kids' magnets spell out, among many other bon mots, "Simplify!" (though my youngest son, realizing my true nature added beneath "Complicate!").

Here's a small picture from the Camp Odetah website.


Here are a couple of other random images from google:

(Picture from treehugger.com)

(Picture from http://herrdramaturg.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/yurt_night-2.jpg)

Went for a 25 mile bicycle ride today - first in 3 months - it was wonderful to be back in the saddle again!

Clear skies, however, went south for tonight's anticipated alignment of the crescent Moon (Selene), Venus and Jupiter (a classic menage a trois, if ever there was one). Just before my giving up on seeing them, I went outside for one last try. To my delight, the clouds had momentarily parted and there they were in all their astronomical glory. Luckily for me, the planets hadn't quite hit the horizon, yet, but just after this picture they disappeared.

I grabbed my digital camera, the nifty portable "monkey tripod" that my son bought me and "wrapped" it around the back of a dining room chair as a makeshift tripod and shot this somewhat overexposed and just a tiny bit shaky picture (I was sitting on the chair to give it mass, but I guess I wasn't as immobile as I was trying to be (3 or 4 glasses of wine, by that point)) ... anyhow, it was truly a beautiful sight and this photo is only an approximation of a breath-taking moment. This particular syzygy won't happen again until 2052, long after I'm gone:



(I've promised to post my other RABRAI photos here, but I've reneged on that so many, many times ... maybe, since I started riding my bike again, I'll get them up here later this week(?))

On September 18, 2008, I finally broke the 45 mile per hour threshold on my bicycle. I've been trying to do this my whole life!

Now I can slow down, right? (Hmmm ... 46 miles per hour is only 0.4 mph away (oh, and then there's that Golden 50 mph tempting me, too!)).

I promise (if only to myself) to post the rest of my RAGBRAI pictures (previous post) real soon ... if only to close the door on that great week.

(Photo from http://s29.photobucket.com/albums/c294/quiknick311/)

The Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa starts in two days!

I'm just about to go to sleep at my old homestead in Indiana. I plan to wake up in about 5 hours and drive the rest of the way to Iowa, meeting my brother from Arizona (who is on the road, as I type) hopefully around noon tomorrow. Saturday, we go to the starting point (rear wheels of our bicycles in the Missouri River) and then, early Sunday morning, we start the actual (i.e., hard) riding from Missouri Valley with over 10,000 other cyclists. After riding for seven days (60-80 miles a day) and camping out on school football fields and town parks every night, and being hosted by towns putting on beer gardens and concerts and great company of new friends, we end (again, "hopefully?") with our front wheels in the Mississippi at Le Clair, Iowa on the following Sunday.

If I get a chance and can figure out the technology, I'll try to update this with news of our progress and (just maybe) a few pictures. Wish us luck! It should be great, great fun and my brother and I are both stoked about riding along together.

UPDATE - JULY 28, 2008

We did it! Even though there were a few really rough days when I wanted to throw my bike in a ditch, it was quite moving to actually end up with all those other people with our wheels in the Mississippi River.

I just now got back to Connecticut after driving the 1300+ miles in two days and I will post a few pictures and tell a few stories in the next day or so.

Going without the Internets and email and such for (what is it now?) about a week and a half was interesting, because I didn't miss it at all!

I just got back home yesterday after six days of camping at Hopeville Pond in Connecticut.



My campsite at night. I've been staying at this particular campsite
(E11 - right on the water) now for, oh, about 15 years or so.

For several decades now, my Unitarian Universalist congregation has been camping on the weekend before Memorial Day. I, myself, however, have been going out earlier and earlier (Wednesday) and returning on Monday after the weekend to bookend my wonderful time with friends with a bit of solitude and peace (I also get to have the whole campground practically to myself for a couple of days).

( 11 more pictures of the All Souls campout )

We're IN!

For years now, my older brother (Arizona) and I (Connecticut) have been talking about doing a long bike ride together. Today the RAGBRAI lottery was held to select 10,000 bicyclists to ride across Iowa for seven days in July (60-100 miles a day) and we were selected.


(Photo from http://www.overlandtouring.com/)

You start with your rear wheel in the Missouri River and end with your front wheel in the Mississippi. We camp at school football fields and such (and it sounds like there is a bit of partying that goes on each night, too). You eat at food stands set up by every boy scout troop and church and civic group along the whole route. There's about 22,000 cumulative feet in climbs (Iowa is not flat ... who'd of thunk it, huh?), but I sense that Connecticut just might be a bit hillier (average distance between hills here is about 200 feet). Iowa heat and humidity in late July might be a concern, but there don't seem to be very many "serious" bikers on this; most seem to have big grins on their faces (in spite of their hangovers).

Now, I need to start some "serious" training. I did a 40-mile ride last Thursday (felt fine for first 30 miles, but couldn't walk a straight line after the last ten), but have kissed off until today (a week later). Being accepted means I need to start riding just about every day with a goal of doing two 60-mile rides on two consecutive days.

If you want to read more about this, read RAGBRAI Guide for Virgins.

We're psyched for this; it will be great to ride ... it will be great to be with my brother again!

See you on the road!

This picture reminds me of the high-school girl who organized a protest in Norwich, CT three and a half months before the invasion. I was impressed by her resolve and courage, and, being retired with "nothing better to do," I drove through the snow storm as soon as I read about her plans in the morning paper. There were just a few of us there, but her youthful indignation was the catalyst that got me out of my own indulgent and slothful "retirement rocking chair" and out on to the streets.

( Here's the old Norwich Bulletin article that I just now found in the detritus of my hard drive. )

Our First Earth Day Maypole (40 ribbons - over 30 feet tall)



New London Earth Day is no more. Over the past several years, we did a few good things (three successful Earth Day celebrations, advocating for preservation of city parks, organizing a public forum and high-level press conference to oppose the Broadwater Liquified Natural Gas barge in Long Island Sound and proposing the creation of a New London Sustainable Community Initiative committee to the City Council. When the Council approved our proposal, we then recruited qualified New London residents to be members of this important citizen task force. The City Council has officially appointed our candidates and they are now working to make New London, CT a more environmentally sustainable community.

After our small committee (at last count we numbered only six) did all the hard work of getting this initiative off the ground, somehow our sails were left luffing in the wind and we all eventually moved on to other things. The wake for this organization will be joyously celebrated at some local pub in the near future for all past members of New London Earth Day.

Today, in Hartford, CT, there were a few rallies to protest the war in Iraq. All Souls Unitarian Universalist Congregation (of which I am a member) bussed about 60 members to this event to join a total of about 200 from all across Connecticut. Here (and behind the cut) are a few pictures that I took.

It rained. Here is my waterlogged poster.

( and here are 19 more photos: )

Wednesday night's lunar eclipse (lousy photo, but, well, it was beautiful ... you should have been there)



Tomorrow (today? Thursday!) night, I get to substitute for a flutist in a concert given by a small (about 30 players) local orchestra. I'm really looking forward to it!