We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Due to unforeseen (annoying but not serious) circumstances, we could not do the annual Manitoba hunt this fall so I will revisit it in photos and in dreams.
Enormous pyrocumulus clouds provide the backdrop for this firefighting helicopter. Taken late afternoon on Wednesday, Sept. 17th. Image by Kelli Thompson MountainWomanPhotography
The “King Fire” in California has grown from 20,000 acres to 71,000 acres overnight, covering about 12 miles. The helo is towing a water bucket to fight it. You have to love the gritty optimism and sense of duty. “Pyrocumulus” is not a word I wanted to know. Gwynnie’s home is about 12 miles directly ahead of the fire.
At the family compound in the Sierras where the snow is still slowly melting, the trout in the stream are tiny appetizers, my grandkids and nieces and nephews are all bright, cute, and well-behaved, and all is right with the world in the moutains.
Anna's mostly, I believe.
In a few months, there will be over 10' of snow here.
Here's a list of the Phoenix VA Hospital administrators and their salaries. There are no doctors in this list (wrong). This is what you get when the government runs health care..... via http://www.openthebooks.com/search/?PensionCode=840&F_fiscalyear=2013&F_Station=Phoenix&F_Name=&perpage=100
Correction -
That list did seem implausible. Sorry for conveying erroneous info! Sloppy of us.
Watching that magnificent Women’s Final at the French Open yesterday reminded us to dig up an unsigned letter written to the Middlebury Women’s Lacrosse Team on the occasion of their National D.III Championship, way back in 1997:
YOUR OLDEST FANS
I wish you could see yourselves the way the old men did who came, faithfully, each home game, to watch you play. (Did you ever even know they were there?) With too much time on their knobby hands, and being no particular use to anyone else on those spring afternoons, they arrived, punctually, to stake out the top row of the stadium bleachers. They had names like "Walter", "Bob", "Ed", "Ralph" and "Gordie". They were between the ages of 70 and 85, but not when they watched you throw and catch. When your games began, the old men leaned back against the chilly cement stadium and forgot the prisons of their own arthritic bodies. They became lost instead in the wondrous distraction of able young women playing their hearts out on a green field.
The distant mountains that lie east of Middlebury's playing fields were of a blue, on those spring days, that suggested a glimpse of heaven on earth. The old men owed you no duty to be there. They did not know you; you were neither their grand-nieces nor granddaughters. They were not trying to set right any male chauvinistic sins of their generation, or to prove their hipness to Title IX. Your gender, in fact, had next to nothing to do with the rapture that this scene - viewed from their top row seats - stirred in them. You were athletes. That is all. Athletes at the pinnacle of youth and at the top of your sport. Graceful, strong-legged, and in love with a game that required only sticks and a ball. It was the simplicity that they loved. When you played this game of run, throw and catch, you embodied such grace and apparent ease that the old men allowed themselves the illusion that you did it all through them. (This is the essence of being a fan, to feel power vicariously through the athlete observed). Each well-turned play you made lifted up the hearts of Walter, Bob, Ed, Ralph and Gordie, and made them believe in something like a heaven on earth.
For 60 minutes it made small boys of them, returned them to an age when it was not corny to invest in one's heroes. When the games were over, they left for home, winners themselves, and they felt less afraid of living in the lonely winters of their lives.
I don't know whether any of this makes sense to you, at your ages, but you did this for a number of old men who were among your greatest fans in the spring of 1997. I just thought you should know.
WHEN will The People finally realize that the Veterans Administration is National Health -- what you get when the government runs a healthcare system? Its shabby service and uninterested administration are followed every decade or so by a scandal and the resignation of an administrator or two. Doctors in private practice must build their reputations for quality service, and then their incomes will follow. Doctors in national health are secure in their income, and indifferent to their reputations. When will we ever learn such a simple lesson?
Gwynnie gets to spend part of her summers protecting a unique forest preserve in the Sierra Nevada range in a valley which was once used in the summers by the Martis Indians (see The Martis Indians: Ancient Tribe of the Sierra Nevada by Willis Gortner). According to Gortner and others, the Martis occupied the region from a time of global cooling and increased rain around 2000 BC to about 500 AD, when the climate again changed and became drier. Also at about that time, more aggressive tribes like the Paiutes had developed the bow and arrow which required obsidian not found in the area. There could have been conflict with the Paiutes or the Washoe to the East, or with the gentler gatherers, the Maidu, to the North. It was the Maidu which occupied the valley after the Martis departed to an unknown fate.
The Martis Complex left their mark on the land, however, in the form of what scholars call “High Sierra Abstract-Representational petroglyphs” as shown in the picture. All petroglyphs are on horizontal or sloping granite bedrock, with none on cliff faces or boulders, and each site has an unimpeded view of at least three peaks.
There is an interesting story behind the Metasequoia,the fast-growing, water-loving redwood from China which is now a common landscaping plant in the US.
I have this bird at my feeder in Southern New England. Why they are called "red-bellied" is beyond me because it sure is not a distinctive feature. They are fairly common up here. Wacka-wacka-wacka.
A common woodpecker over much of the South, the Red-bellied is scarcer farther north but has expanded its breeding range northward in recent decades. Like most woodpeckers, it is beneficial, consuming large numbers of wood-boring beetles as well as grasshoppers, ants, and other insect pests. It also feeds on acorns, beechnuts, and wild fruits. It is one of the woodpeckers that habitually stores food.
Breeds from South Dakota, Great Lakes, and southern New England south to the Gulf coast and Florida. Northernmost birds sometimes migrate south for winter. Inhabits open and swampy woodlands; comes into parks during migration and to feeders in winter.
The Red-bellied Woodpecker competes vigorously for nest holes with other woodpeckers, in one case even dragging a Red-cockaded Woodpecker from a nest cavity and killing it. But it is often evicted from nest holes by the European Starling. In some areas, half of all Red-bellied Woodpecker nesting cavities are taken over by starlings.
Gwynnie is glad that it wasn't her buck that slid on dry grass about 90 yards to the bottom of this ravine. The guy who shot it is glad it stopped within range of a winch cable plus 100 ft of line.
My new favorite venison recipe, Venison with Blackberry Sauce, is below the fold
We do not seem to have very many Olympics fans, or even TV-watchers, among our commenters here. However, the closing ceremony music was by Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin*, a Russian Jewish composer who emigrated to America and became one of the most distinguished and best-loved music writers of Hollywood. He won a hallowed place in the pantheon of the most successful and productive composers in American film history, earning himself four Oscars and sixteen Academy Awards nominations.
The music was composed for a movie celebrating independent capitalist values as they developed and matured over 25 years in rural Texas. The movie was Giant with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean and Carol Baker. You can listen to some of the theme in the trailer below. Think Vlad Putin knows?
There is an interesting story behind the 
