Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Bats Can Be Victims of Ignorance

It has been way too long held that the Hippocratic Oath, the oath that many physicians take when entering medical practice, contains the admonition to at least, “first, do no harm.” Well, it doesn’t, and never did. Hippocrates did indeed originate the phrase, but it was in his writings titled Epidemics, Book I, Sec. XI, when he said, in part about treating disease, “..to help, or at least to do no harm.” If only we as humans could take the same approach when it comes to dealing with animals or wildlife. No, I’m not preaching or “soap-boxing,” but it can’t be denied in any rational way that we humans perpetuate the most heinous atrocities against helpless, defenseless, and unarmed creatures in the name of profit, sport, jobs creation, trophy collecting, and even imagined superiority.

After some water and feeding, Jean tried to see if it would fly.
It was too weak to hold onto a branch, so Jean brought it back
inside, where it soon passed away.
 
This poor creature was one of a couple Jean received for rescue, but by that time it was already too late and their fates were sealed. The ongoing drought has greatly reduced the bug population, which causes those who feed on them to starve to death. A few years ago it was purple martins that literally fell from the sky in the thousands from starvation. Now bats are suffering the same fate.

I’m a mosquito magnet, and can attract dozens of blood suckers when no one else around me is aware a single bug exists, so I’m not missing mosquitoes. When we do have them, however, bats are our best friends. A single bat can consume between 600 to 1000 insects in a single hour. A nursing mother bat will down 4,500 bugs a night, a full 100% of her body weight. One colony of bats in Texas in a prime feeding spot is calculated to eliminate 250,000 POUNDS of mosquitoes, moths, and beetles nightly. Nope, that’s not a misprint.

It seems you can’t kill bad information with a stick, let alone education, so old, foolish wives’ tales about bats persist. The first is that bats carry rabies. Bats are mammals, but carry no more rabies than any other mammal. They will nest in your hair. No, they may fly close occasionally in pursuit of bugs they see pursuing you, but both you and your hair are quite unattractive to them, and they are quite skillful flyers. “Blind as a bat,” is a misplaced insult for people prone to stumbling about. Bats in fact have quite acute eyesight, as you should expect of any creature tracking gnats in the dark. Their radar capability that supplements their sight, however, is so sophisticated that it surpasses any technology devised by man. Another silly insult was about someone having bats in their belfry. If you do, celebrate your good fortune and do two things: build several bat nest boxes to keep them safe and happy, and pull up a chair and enjoy the air show. Bats are about the most skilled of all flyers, and the only flying mammal. No, flying squirrels glide short distances, but can’t fly. Unlike insects that can breed by the millions, bats have only one offspring a year, which they nurse for six weeks until it can fly and catch on its own. The loss of one bat takes an entire year to replace.

The first bat Jean got was so weak and malnourished that its hind feet had been bound together by spider webs, and it was unable to free itself to feed, drink, or sleep, and it was found lying on the ground. The second, also too weak to fly, was found lying in a store parking lot. A good Samaritan was about to check on it when another man got out of his vehicle and used his big cowboy boot to kick the defenseless critter as far as he could across the parking lot. So, by the time Jean got it, the bat was in really rough condition. It was so starved that it was as light as a dust bunny, and it’s hard to tell what internal injuries it sustained from the kicking, but it died a few hours later. If the cowboy knew too little to know the value of bats, or how to help, he could at least have avoided doing harm.


 

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Lipsmackin' Vegetarian Backpackin'


Lip Smackin’ Vegetarian Backpackin’: Lightweight Trail-tested Vegetarian Recipes for Backcountry Trips, by Christine & Tim Conners (pub. by Three Forks, Helena, Montana, and Gilford, CT, 2004, 231pp with appendices)

This is the second of two similar books. The first was Lip Smackin’ Backpackin’, and this time they supplemented that volume with a vegetarian recipe book. It contains contributions from outdoorsmen located all over the country. There are sections for breakfast, lunch, dinner, breads, snacks and desserts, and drinks. Anyone can use the remainder of the offerings, but dinner choices rely heavily upon dehydrated ingredients, since for the backpacker, eliminating the water is not just for preserving foods, but eliminating weight from the pack. If you’re not experienced with dehydrating, there is also an appendix with suggestions for success in that field, and another listing sources for commercially pre-dried foods.

As with any cook book, it’s a matter of picking through and finding the preparations that make sense for you. There are the staples, such as hardtack, bannock, and six different kinds of granola, but also a full range of more involved recipes. I found 14 receipies that I liked, and that I plan on trying, but also found some that made no sense to me at all. For example, if the recipe relied heavily upon commercially packaged items, sodium content started to become a serious problem. One receipe that used packaged taco filling, refried beans, and taco seasoning ended up with 2,567 mg of salt per serving. Ouch! Other examples were the few meals that really, in my opinion, went way overboard with 14 or 15 different ingredients. With that many ingredients and that much preparation, I expect to be eating with an ascot around my neck rather than a bug repellent and sweat soaking bandana. It’s all a matter of personal preference, but the question becomes how to replicate such involved preparations when re-provisioning on an extended trip. To be fair, however, the object of the book is to make meal preparations at home and package meals in individual zip-lock bags, so wilderness preparation involves boiling water and dumping the contents in to soak. In any event, there is most likely something of interest for anyone, so you may wish to check it out, especially if you want to provision with dehydrated foods. Another helpful plus is that each receipe includes full nutritional values and weight, which is extremely helpful for those with dietary concerns that make cholesterol, salt, or other ingredients problematic. The book seems to have filled a void, and has been well received, with various ratings running from 3 to 4.5 of 5 stars.





Monday, October 20, 2014

Oh no! We're Gonna Die


Credit: goodreads.com
 
Oh No! We’re Gonna Die: Humorous Tales of Close Calls in the Alaska Wilderness, by Bob Bell (pub. By Todd Communications, Anchorage, AK, 2006, 215pp.)

The book is a collection of 33 short stories about being in the wilderness of Alaska. Its aim is more toward hunting than paddling, but there is a wealth of information about being in the wilds, learning about the habits of all kinds of wildlife, the nature of the wilderness itself, and staying alive long enough to get back home, and all of those should appeal to any paddler. While a large amount of detail goes into dealing with bears, especially grizzlies, the purpose of the book, beyond spinning many enjoyable, humorous tales, seems to be the lesson that things can go sour very fast. It emphasises a truism about small insignificant wrinkles in one’s plans, and how they grow exponentially to become life-threatening disasters. If you enjoy the outdoors, you should enjoy the time spent with this book.



Saturday, October 18, 2014

3-P-100

Credit: From Nige Ayers, camping near Surlingham Ferry
Pub.  You can enjoy his blog, "Canoe and Trail Outdoor
 
You’ve done it a thousand times. You’re paddling along watching for birds, wildlife, obstructions in the water, other traffic, which all keep your mind occupied. Then you hit an open stretch where nothing is happening, and your mind suddenly turns inward. It was during one of these meditative sessions that I started thinking again about exercise. How much good is my paddling doing me beyond the pleasure of the time on the water? How long and how often do I need to exercise for my body to reap any benefits?

There are a couple tricks to keep ‘exercise’ from becoming a dirty word. Vary the activities so you don’t get bored, have a companion, which makes time go faster and makes you accountable to someone else, play a game or make it a game by competing with someone else, keep a chart of your stats, add music, or if exercising inside, do it in front of the TV so your mind doesn’t dwell on your body, reward yourself with new shoes, fitness gear, or even paddling gear when you reach a goal.

I was thinking of basic activities that nearly anyone can do, can be aerobic, and are fun. Paddling certainly qualifies, but what if the wind is blowing a gale. The next thing would be to move off the water and ride a bike. Here in NW Oklahoma, however, it is not uncommon that there’s too much wind to even stay upright on a bike, so that leaves walking. No, plodding, that would make it three P’s---paddling, peddling, and plodding. So, how much is needed?

Most agree that a caloric burn of 3,500 calories is equal to one pound of body weight. Assuming we don’t reward our workouts with sodas or extra food intake, but also try to cut the calories we consume, that comes roughly to a loss of 2.6 pounds/month or 31 pounds a year. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? To get that, we should walk an additional 3 miles a day over our current exercise level. So, 3 miles a day for a month would be 90 miles a month, but since we’re hopping on the bike some of the time, let’s just go with a round 100 miles a month, whether paddling, peddling, or plodding. Taadaa! 3-P-100, an easily attainable goal with any determination, and with exercising variety worked in. Then, if we can’t get on the water, or we miss a couple days of walking, just hop on the bike and crank out some fast miles to make up the deficit.

There is confusion over exercise and calorie burn levels, so I researched Harvard Medical, Mayo Clinic, WebMD, and a couple others, and this is a distillation of what I learned. The first obvious thing is that we need to get out and move around for anything worthwhile to happen, and it needs to be aerobic. Running down the road to a creek and stopping to watch the turtles while our heart, respiration, and body return to baseline values doesn’t do anything. The issue is how long we keep the body working and the vital signs elevated. It doesn’t need to last for hours, but it does need to be vigorous enough to raise the heart rate, increase the rate of breathing, and break a sweat. We’re all guilty of wanting to look for an easy out. I was looking at one exercise chart that listed caloric burn rates for things like dusting furniture, doing laundry, shopping, and even brushing teeth and bird watching. We’re kidding ourselves. Unless we’re brushing our teeth vigorously for five hours a day or chasing the birds and trying to catch them with our bare hands, we’re just being silly. Yes, even breathing burns calories. If you lay in bed all day and never get up, calories are still burned to fuel the body, but the levels are so low, and the muscle toning benefit for the heart and lungs is totally lacking. Nothing is being accomplished to maintain proper health. For that we need five hours of exercise a week, with at least two of those being some form of strength training. If you want to lose weight, more time needs to be added to meet the levels above.


The next cop-out is that our busy schedule doesn’t permit time for exercising. Five hours sounds like a lot of time, unless we’re indeed on the water, so some sources break it into 300 minutes a week. It sounds better. And, if you can’t take off an hour for exercise, do it in 10-15 minute blocks, but count only the time after you’re breathing heavy and the ol’ ticker is thumping. The short spurts of strenuous activity reduce blood pressure. Another trick is to take part of our walk, a mile or more, right after dinner. This reduces the formation of fats and triglycerides.

Caloric burns vary according to the level of exertion, body weight, and age. For example, as a guideline, if we canoe at 3mph, we will burn 413 calories an hour for a body weight of 130 lbs, to 651 calories for a paddler of 205 lbs. There was no breakout of kayaking, but maintaining a moderate rate will produce just slightly lower results. You’ll just go faster with a bit less effort. For peddling at 10 mph, rates will run between 236 and 372 calories for the same body weights. For walking at 3 mph, the figures come out to 195 to 307 calories an hour, again for the respective weights. For your own weight, you can do a Google search, or better yet, practice a little algebra.

I hope you’ll give it a try. 3-P-100. You don’t even need extra gear, like a pedometer. Just reach in the pack and grab the GPS, and you’re all set.




 

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Canton Day Paddle - 2


Buddy waiting on a mid-lake island created by the drought.
 
I pushed off from the ramp at 0950 and returned at 1300, so it was a short but nice paddle that gave me time for lunch on the water and a chance to see a few migrating birds. In spite of a couple stops, I managed 6.5 miles. I took the WindPaddle sail. For the second such trip, I paddled up wind in hopes of being rewarded with a nice sail back. For the second time, as soon as I came about to paddle back, the wind failed me. On the previous trip the wind turned 180-deg. and caused me to paddle against the wind both ways. This time the wind just died to a plate-glass-smooth calm.



Male avocet with its curved beak.  Unlike birds that peck or
target prey, avocets feed by sweeping their bill back and forth to
stir up seeds, aquatic insects, and small crustaceans.  The female
has an even more curved bill, and its head, neck, and chest are
copper-colored.
 
There were spiders having much better luck sailing than I was, but scientists refer to it as flying or ballooning. The spider will spew out a long silk that will get caught on the breezes, and when it is long enough to drift with the breeze and provide transport, they hang onto the end and go for a ride. I saw four such spiders sailing up the lake in the light air today. Three were entirely airborne, and one, apparently not engineering its transport system correctly, was on the water surface being dragged along by the silk thread. Scientists say spiders have traveled hundreds of miles this way, even landing on islands in mid-ocean.



Sandhill cranes with their distinctive red cap.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Canton Day Paddle

The water level is slowly coming back up at Canton Lake. The change is so slow that it’s hard to tell unless you know specific places to look for differences. For example, the boat ramp at the end of the Canadian Campground is located in a cove. Months ago the entire cove was dry, and it was still necessary to walk out a good ways to reach the water’s edge. The difference on the daily Corps of Engineers levels report shows that the lake level has progressed from -81% to the current -79%. It is hard to imagine that 2% could make such a difference, but there is now enough water in the cove that powerboats can be launched from the ramp.
 
I had this turtle nicely framed in the shot while it was sitting on
top of the log, but by the time I pressed the shutter, it
was in mid-air.
 
A tornado a couple of years ago completely destroyed all recognizable traces of the campground as it was. Only scattered debris, some concrete rubble, and twisted tree trunks remained after the storm. The Corps of Engineers redesigned the campground, and while the camping spaces are a bit too close together now, the number of sites was greatly increased. Each space now has a level concrete pad and covered picnic table. Each separate camping area has new restroom and shower facilities that are designed to be tornado-proof up to an F-3, and young trees have been planted. Wait 30 years or so, and it will once again be a nicely shaded campground. While the Corps of Engineers can’t undo Mother Nature’s destructiveness, they have done wonders to rebuild a new facility.

The light was just right to highlight the folds in the layers of
earth.  Before the drought, I could paddle right against the
face of the cliff.  Erosion of the cliff face has created the
raised knoll along the base of the cliff.
 
On a topic unrelated to the campground, they are also building a new relief overflow around the dam. In the event of that “100-year storm” that would flood the area, to prevent destruction of the dam gates, the overflow relieves the lake of destructive flood water levels.

This picture in 2011 shows me taking a break on the Big Bend
Campground boat ramp.  The same ramp (below) is nowhere
near the water now, and both the ramp and boarding float
are buried in weeds.


When I arrived at the campground, I saw about 50 people working in the campground. My immediate thought was, “Wow, they’re really going at the project. It must be to get everything done for spring before winter comes on.” I later learned that everyone was there to trap the hundreds of prairie dogs so they can be relocated elsewhere.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Feedback

Just a comment on comments before moving on. My son sent me an email saying he thinks he is finally able to post comments on my blog posts. It makes me doubly happy to learn he is reading them. I’ve never achieved the interaction I’ve wanted with those who read the posts, and thanks to all of you who do, but I love seeing feedback and shared experiences from all of you. Indeed he did post a comment to the last picture of the day. He did say, however, that the process for setting up the Google account that enables leaving comments probably required more authentication steps than needed for launching a missile. I have heard from others that they felt uncomfortable answering all of Google’s privacy questions, but I haven’t heard of anyone having any problems coming from having followed the process. So I don’t know if the demanding process is due to something I’ve done in setting up my profile filters, or is just the result of wading through Google’s demands, but if you can pull on the high-top boots to wade through the mire, I’d still love to hear from you.

I do try to hold the line on a few things. While I do unavoidably fall prey and get hooked in sometimes, I try my best to avoid discussions about politics, religion, race, and some other hot-button issues that serve no purpose beyond alienating people. One of the reasons I enjoy paddling is the chance to get away from all that media-generated stress. I also don’t feel comfortable communicating with people shielded in a cloak of mystery and calling themselves ‘anonymous.’ I did try giving one such person a go, but he started linking commercials to my posts, and that was a definite faux pas. I’d love to hear from the other 98%. Happy paddling.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Picture of the Day

Credit: birchbarkcanoe.net
 
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what
dies inside of us while we live.
Norman Cousins

Friday, October 10, 2014

Wake of the Wnd Dancer

Jacket cover credit: Barnes and Noble
 
Wake of the Wind Dancer: From Sea to Shining Sea by Paddle and Shoe, by Karl Adams (iUniversity, Inc, Bloomington, IN, 2003, 269pp.)

My first surprise in this book appeared when I opened the cover. The author, Karl Adams, had autographed the title page of a copy of his book and presented it to the Collins Memorial Library at the University of Puget Sound. I now had this gift in my hands thanks to the interlibrary loan program.

This was one of those books that was hard to put down. Part of this, I guess, is that it closely relates to the kind of paddling expedition that I’ve dreamed of doing. In fact, dreaming is where this story starts. As a youth, Karl had often dreamed about the expeditions that early explorers had made across our country, explorers like Ponce de Leon, Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Hernando de Soto, and Lewis and Clark. When he retired in 1985, he decided to put together a trans-continental trip that would combine all of their routes from the Columbia River of Washington and Oregon, to the southeast coast of Florida. The route would take him up the Columbia River and Snake River. He would then portage his kayak 355 miles through the mountain passes of the Bitterroot and Rocky Mountains, pulling his kayak up through passes that reached 6,325 feet in altitude. Once he reached the Missouri River, he would paddle it to meet the Mississippi. Going down the Mississippi, he would turn up the Ohio River from Cairo, IL, for 46 miles to meet the Tennessee River at Paducah, KY. This he followed for 215 miles to meet the entrance of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which would take him to Mobile, AL, and the Gulf of Mexico. Turning east, he paddled the West Coast of Florida. His intention was to continue south until he rounded Cape Sable, the southern most point of the U.S. mainland, but an approaching Hurricane Floyd had him divert into the Okeechobee Waterway, which cuts across the lower part of the Florida peninsula. He rode out the storm in a motel in Stuart, and then continued south to Miami to conclude the trip.

In all, his trip would take him 5,111 miles in 201 days. He made great time during the trip, making an underway daily average of 40 miles a day. The hardest part of the trip, he said, was pulling his kayak and a couple hundred pounds of gear through the western mountain passes. The second hardest part of the trip was getting the cooperation of his wife. She threatened to divorce him when he proposed the idea of the trip, again when he bought the kayak, again when he started, and again while he was underway and vowed to continue. By the trip’s end, she decided to remain married to him, but only on the condition that their marriage would be on a daily basis. Each morning after the trip, she would let him know if she would remain married to him for yet one more day.



Wednesday, October 8, 2014

A Second Daysail


It was Labor Day when we last took our son’s Cape Dory 14 out for a sail. James had a day off last Sunday, so he invited me along for another sail at Kaw Lake. This was his first trip out with the boat since the work was done on it, and I was anxious to see how he liked it, and how the new brailing line worked.
 
The Dory closehauled in a light breeze on Kaw Lake.
 
This was the third run on the road with the trailer since we had put new hubs and bearings on. We stopped twice to check the hub temperatures, and they were just slightly warm to the touch---perfect. Most experienced trailer haulers get in the habit of checking their hubs at every stop as soon as they roll out of the vehicle. Jean used to work in a trailer supply establishment selling spindles, hubs, wheels, axles, etc., and did a brisk business with those who didn’t. Also, when any bearing or hub work is done, they should be checked every mile or two for a number of stops. If anything starts to go wrong, it can go downhill fast, and you will know something is wrong by the excessive heat on the hub. I got bit by such a problem once. I had hydraulic brakes on a trailer at the time, and hadn’t yet learned the necessary habit of always pushing back against the trailer when it is being dropped, after the reverse solenoid is unplugged, to make sure the brake cylinder is fully retracted. On the next trip, the disc brake pads were just touching the brakes. The friction heated the brakes, then the wheel, until the heat blew the bearing’s grease seal after just nine miles. Well, enough of the technical stuff.
James enjoying the shade of the mainsail with the tiller
tucked under his arm.
 
Unlike Labor Day when we had to wait in line for an hour at Sarge Creek ramp to take out, we now went straight in and straight out with no hindrance at all. Instead of hundreds of boats on the lake, I believe I saw about five.



American Pelicans making good use of a sandbar.  The
lake level is dropped each fall so they can seed the exposed
shoreline with grasses for the migratory birds.
 
The wind was again light and variable, but we had a couple short runs at close to five knots. We got into some previously unexplored areas in Washunga Bay, and in spite of spells of light air, as close as I can recreate our track on Google Earth, we still did about 8 miles. It was a pleasant and relaxing day. The brailing line worked well, but a couple practices will get it perfect.


 

Monday, October 6, 2014

Spirit of the North

Credit: wikipedia images
 
Spirit of the North: The Quotable Sigurd F. Olson; edited by David Backes (Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2004, 142pp.)

 
One of our nation’s greatest blessings is our National Park System. It provides places of peace, tranquility, spiritual renewal, jaw-dropping vistas, and best of all, a promise of permanence to insure the passing of these natural wonders on to our generations to come. There are many people to whom we are indebted for the arduous work needed to make these parks and protected wilderness areas possible. The first effort to protect natural wonders for future generations was made by President Abraham Lincoln with the signing of a bill on June 30, 1864, to protect the Mariposa Big Tree Grove in California. This was a one-off effort, however, and the idea of an organized national effort to preserve our natural wonders would wait for the arrival of John Muir. Through him, a parade of people were recruited to advance the ideas of conservation and preservation, including Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, Artist George Catlin, and many more. Those that have continued the fight to preserve and protect our natural wilderness have included fellow canoeists like Bill Mason and Calvin Rutstrum. Among this group also was a man that dedicated much of his life to conservation and preservation: Sigurd F. Olson.

Sigurd Olson was born in Chicago in 1899 of Swedish parents. The family moved to Door County, Wisconsin, in 1906, and then Prentice, WI, and then in 1912 to Ashland, WI, on the edge of Lake Superior. He attended Northland College and the University of Wisconsin in Madison for degrees in agriculture, and he becomes a college professor teaching Geology, Botany, and Animal Husbandry. He and Elizabeth Uhrenholdt married in 1921, taking a 3-week canoe trip for their honeymoon.

When Sigurd learned that Elizabeth was pregnant, he temporarily dropped his graduate study programs and got a job teaching high school biology in Ely, Minnesota, at the edge of the canoe country wilderness. During the summer, and for the next 30 years, Sigurd worked as a back country canoe guide and first began the battle to protect the wilderness areas from development.

Sigurd loved writing His first published article appeared in 1921 about their canoeing honeymoon, but starting in 1927 Olson began a life-long string of writings about canoeing, the wilderness, and conservation. While continuing his work as an educator and college dean, Olson became vice-president of the National Park Association in 1951, and then president two years later. He was elected as a governing board member of the Wilderness Society, and was one of the conservationists that drafted a bill to establish a national wilderness preservation system.

In 1959, Sigurd resigned as president of the National Park Association to join the advisory board of the National Park Service, where he remained until 1966. He became a consultant to Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall on wilderness and national parks issues. In 1963, Olson became vice-president of the Wilderness Society, and a year later his efforts toward wilderness preservations bore fruit when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act, establishing the national wilderness preservation system. He moved up to president of the Wilderness Society in 1968. With the work of the rest of the National Park Service task force, efforts led to 80-millions acres of Alaska wilderness being protected by the Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act of 1980. He had long been an advocate for a national park in Northern Minnesota, and he gave the park its name, Voyageurs National Park, when its creation was signed into law in 1971 by President Nixon. In the same year, an elementary school in the Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley was named after Sigurd Olson. In 1972, the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute was established at the Northland College of Ashland, Wisconsin.

In 1974, Olson received the highest possible honor for nature writing with the awarding of the John Burroughs Medal. However, perhaps his greatest honor came in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter recognized Olson’s fifty-years of work in trying to protect the Minnesota wilderness by signing the law granting full wilderness status to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Olson never stopped writing until his death from a heart attack while snowshoeing near his home in 1982. Of Time and Place, his last of fourteen books, was published the year of his death. Listening Point was the name of his favorite getaway cabin on a Northern Minnesota lakeshore, and also the title of a 1958 book of the same name. In 1998, the Listening Point Foundation was established to preserve and protect Listening Point as a tribute to Sigurd Olson and his legacy in the field of wilderness education.

This short history of Sigurd Olson’s life is told another way in Spirit of the North. David Backes gathers all of Olson’s most memorable writings about canoeing, wilderness, camping, conservation, and the fight to protect natural wonders for future generations, and combines them in this book. They come from Olson’s books, magazine articles, papers, and even his speeches. Perhaps there is no better way to appreciate this great naturalist than by having his life and his interests and concerns brought to us through his own words.



Thursday, October 2, 2014

Picture of the Day

Credit: Alex Comb
 
The ships are lying in the bay,
The gulls are swinging round their spars;
My soul as eagerly as they,
Desires the margin of the stars.
 
So much do I love wandering,
So much I love the sea and sky,
That it will be a piteous thing
In one small grave to lie.
Zoe Akins