An Op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune

Read my Op-ed in today's Salt Lake Tribune: "Discouraging violent rhetoric". It was written about ten days ago, and is not what I would write today, but I stand by it. In a weak moment I let a particular woman from Alaska get under my skin. It reminded me of another guy that got to me last year. These people are way out of bounds.

Jon Stewart on Gabby Giffords and the situation in Tucson

A message of hope in a time of despair:

"I refuse to give in to that feeling of despair. There's light in this situation. I urge everyone: Read up about those who were hurt and or killed in this shooting. You will be comforted by just how much anonymous goodness there really is in the world. You read about these people and you realize that people that you don't even know, that you have never met, are leading lives of real dignity and goodness. And you hear about crazy, but it's rarer than you think. I think you'll find yourself even more impressed with Congresswoman Giffords and amazed about how much living the deceased packed into lives cut way too short. And if there is real solace in this, I think it's that for all the hyperbole and the vitriol that's become a part of our political process, when the reality of that rhetoric, when actions match the disturbing nature of words we haven't lost our capacity to be horrified. Please let us hope we never do. Let us hope we never become numb to what real horror, what the real blood of patriots looks like when it's spilled." -Jon Stewart

The winding down of America's manned space-flight program . . .

Astronaut Steve Bowen during the final flight of space shuttle Atlantis.

March 2011 update: NASA has scheduled one additional flight for Atlantis, with a current launch target of June 2011.

Jim Range lives through the National Casting Call in Washington, D.C.

Tomorrow in D.C. the annual Jim Range National Casting Call is taking place. They renamed the event in honor of Jim. 

 

I met Jim in 1987 and was fortunate to have him as a major part of my life until he died in January of 2009 from an aggressive form of cancer. Talk about a loss--this man had so much heart, if you didn't know him it's impossible to describe. He was bigger than life--a genuine and wonderful character. His life's work was to protect and restore habitats for all of the wild things he loved, especially fish and birds. 

The Casting Call is an annual opportunity to "provide government decision makers with the opportunity to fish for shad in the Potomac River and learn about the importance of collaborative fisheries conservation." 

Bluebird day at Alta

Trailer Trash . . . those were the days

Needless to say, this image brings back fond memories of my increasingly distant time as trailer trash.

More on those days at: http://1973airstream.blogspot.com/

Photo courtesy of Oliver Fluck. Visit his website for more of his great work.

Last month in southern Utah

A day in East Canyon, Utah

Today Pippa, Kirk, Jake, Stella and I headed up to the top of East Canyon for some cross-country skiing, snow-shoeing and a photo session. It was a grand outing.

Kirk and Stella (a pup of a certain age) not photographed.

All photos by Kirk Marshall.

Welcome to the brave new world of social media

Originally posted in July of 2009 Many of us have been drawn into the new world of social media. It’s been a very organic process. For most of us the first step was email in the early 1990s. With email it became easy to communicate written messages electronically, instantly, and for free--or at least with zero incremental cost. Never before was such a thing possible. People quickly got an email address and changed how they communicated with others. 

When the World Wide Web took off in the mid 1990s additional avenues of communications proliferated. Today, many of us use various forms of social media as part of our daily routine. Let’s consider the term itself. After all, what is “social media?” It is a very broad term that encompasses many different things. The best definition I've seen: "Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies." How did you find this posting? Email, Twitter, Facebook? Are you a regular visitor to this web page? All of these are different types of social media. It's very important to emphasize that if you use email, if you're even reading this page, you are a user of social media. You need not join the Facebook masses or the Twitterers--those are just two new, and potent, applications in this new world of communications. 

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is social media. Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia, it is also an online community of volunteer editors that created the largest encyclopedia in human history. Today, Wikipedia contains 13,000,000 articles in more than 260 languages. It didn’t exist ten years ago. There are advantages and disadvantages to social media. It's currenlty getting a lot of buzz because it describes a whole new mosaic of possibilities in the realm of communications. Take some time to better understand it. 

Read the Wikipedia article on social media to get a  comprehensive overview of the term. This article is the result of many Wikipedia editors collaborating from around the world. I don't present it as the ultimate definition of this new term, though I do offer it as an excellent start--one of the best I've seen. This is part of the genius of Wikipedia, it is ever changing. Wikipedia is criticized because anybody, literally anybody, can edit it, but the end result is often articles that are extremely well written.  

"Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies."

An Airstreamer no more

I sold the Airstream today. Read more at http://1973airstream.blogspot.com

Richland County, Ohio

The next few posts are from my recent visit to my hometown in Ohio.


Fresh hay at Sandstone Farm.

Posing on the tractor at Sandstone Farm

Amish country

The area includes many Amish and Mennonites. Both are rooted in 19th century ways (some more so than others). The two groups don't mix.

Western saddle, restored by an Ohio Amish craftsman

Meanwhile, back at Sandstone Farm . . .

My friend Francis has been working hard since I last wrote about her cool Ohio farm. While she has not yet made it back in to the main farm house she is inching closer. For nearly two years now she has been living in her cabin while plotting, planning, and working to finance her move in to the old farm house on her property.

This is a monumental project and it has been her dream for many years. It is a labor of love.

This month some additional restoration work is scheduled to begin on the main house and she hopes to move in this fall--an ambitious goal. She wants to have running water in the house along with other bathroom facilities. There is no running water on the farm. She showers daily, but it involves a drive of more than ten miles.

Other than an aborted attempt to dwell in the neglected house nine years ago, it has not had people living in it for decades. It was originally built in 1849. The stone construction is unusual for a farm house in this part of Ohio. Her top priorities, in addition to running water, are to seal the house up again with windows, and rebuild a collapsed wall.

The roof was replaced a few years ago.

The main house.

The cabin. A.k.a. the cottage or yard barn.

Icons

Photographed at the White House, 1984. From the National Archives.

Consider this photo--here is Michael Jackson at age 26. Look at his outfit. It's both ridiculous and spectacular. He is at the White House with the President of the United States. It is arguably the power center of the world. Reagan understood how to communicate with the masses, just as Jackson did. There is a natural symbiosis between Reagan, the politician in an election year, and Jackson, the pop star. Jackson's confidence and sheer gall are something to behold. While still a young man, Jackson was already a seasoned veteran with two decades of experience in show business at the time of this photo. Both of these men knew what they were doing. What unique men they were--icons of their time.

Update from San Diego

November update: Our time in SD was limited to about three months. It was a good sojourn and our last stop as Airstreamers.

Jake and I have been in San Diego for 15 days now. It's been an adjustment.

Dog Beach at San Diego’s Ocean Beach is one of our favorite spots. We're living 27 miles east of the Pacific, and have found some spectacular hiking in the mountains nearby our new homestead as well.

Work is going well. I am here on a writing assignment, one that will hopefully last for a while.

Writing and living in an Airstream is a whole different experience compared to traversing the continent selling meteorites and connecting with friends and family. It's a MUCH more solitary existence.

Work, yoga, and getting Jake out sums up my current routine. It's not super exciting, but not bad either. Of course there is the excitement and strangeness of being in a new town.

San Diego is gorgeous. Jake and I are both psyched to be missing a Sonoran summer. Last summer about did us in.

I've also discovered Facebook--where I've wasted a lot of my spare time lately. The good part of it is that it provides a way to stay in contact with close friends who are geographically dispersed. The bad part? My new found Facebook Scrabble addiction is one example. Luckily it's an addiction that's already ebbed considerably.

Doing many more updates on Facebook these days than updates here. My most recent Facebook post is recreated below--on D-Day.

Cheers from San Diego County,

Jim and Jake

D-Day +65

Members of an American landing party lend helping hands to other members of their organization whose landing craft was sunk by enemy action off the coast of France. These survivors reached Omaha Beach by using a life raft.

-Photo by Weintraub, 6 June 1944

"What we must not forget is that D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century."
-Barack Obama, 6 June 2009

Windmills: The sentries of San Diego County

These 21st century sentries stand guard in the mountains above San Diego greeting travelers from the East. Our culture demands energy--driving the economy, and delivering the comforts of contemporary living. Clean energy from wind, solar, and other non-traditional sources is an important alternative to carbon generating coal-powered electricity plants. Coal power is currently the number one source of electricity in the U.S.

Reducing my carbon footprint

My restored 1973 Airstream--home for over two years now. Living in a space with less than 200 square feet requires far less energy to heat and cool. The tiny space requires less cleaning materials and demands the accumulation of less stuff. The Airstream also took less materials to build than a traditional home. Re-using an older trailer cut down on the demand for new materials. My Dodge diesel truck gets about the same mileage as my previous car, a Subaru, and I drive about the same number of miles as I did when living a more traditional life--though my goal is to drive even less.

Ascent into the mountains on Interstate 8

California arrival

The entrance to the gardens

The art of Dale Chihuly, at the Desert Botanical Gardens, Phoenix.

Boat with glass in desert, and more color

The art of Dale Chihuly, at the Desert Botanical Gardens, Phoenix.