Vacation Part Four: Yellowstone Day 1

So this was the main event! Mom wanted to go back to Yellowstone, having been there in 1985. Dave and I were there once before as well, in 1998. Yes, it was time to go back. So we drove from Jackson, WY, through Grand Teton National Park and into Yellowstone National Park. And before I leave the topic of Grand Teton, I want to urge you to drive up (or down) the east side of the park at some point or another. There’s not really anything to get out and do, but wow, the mountains are breathtaking, and you get a completely different view of them.

Anyway … We stayed just outside the north entrance, in Gardiner, WY, at the Gardiner Guest House, a reasonably priced B&B with fabulous breakfasts and charming, informative hosts. I loved this place! There are also some decent-to-excellent restaurants. Our favorite was Pedalino’s Italian restaurant.

But we entered Yellowstone National Park from the south, and all this is towards the north. So let me at least attempt to be linear and go back to where we entered. There were huge fires engulfing most of Yellowstone in 1988, burning thousands of acres of trees. Now, fire is a good thing in that it renews the forests, etc., etc. In 1998, there were all these short little shrubby trees that were part of that renewal, and they were going to grow up and be tall and take over the land where the forests had burned and it was going to be a good thing. And in 2009 … I expected the short little shrubby trees to be taller. Sort of like a 16-year-old kid looks mostly like an adult but not entirely? Well, these trees looked more like 10-year-old kids. Not babies or toddlers, not wee little things that make you think “oh, how cute,” but not out of childhood, either. Sort of in that gangly phase, you know? So there’s this whole park full of gangly-phased young trees. Which is fine and good and the way the world should work. I’m just noting it. You want magnificent, towering evergreens? Go somewhere else. Here, you’ve got mid-sized biodiversity. And maybe not all that diverse, since it seems like the trees that burned propagated themselves quite nicely and there’s mostly one tree species in Yellowstone. That’s all I’m saying. It’s not a criticism or a value judgment.

Okay, so now that I’ve dug that hole for myself, let’s talk about West Thumb. West Thumb refers to the western branch of Lake Yellowstone (or Yellowstone Lake, or whatever its official name is). And here there be geysers! Okay, not so much geysers as hot springs, though there are some geysers there, too. It’s all very pretty, along the edge of the lake:

Pretty, huh? So then we drove up the east side of the park, past a bunch of things we planned to visit the next day, and into a massive traffic jam for … a black bear! Now, Dave and I can drive 2.5 hours to Shenandoah National Park and see approximately two black bears a day. And, ironically, we drove past a very-close-to-the-road grizzly bear shortly past the black bear traffic jam, but the mobs weren’t there.

And I do have to say this, because Dave and I have made avoiding crowds into the First Commandment of vacation planning: June, or at least this June, wasn’t very crowded at Yellowstone. And visitation was up from June of last year, according to the official figures. So if you can’t go in May or September (our previous trip was in September), June isn’t crazy busy there. We were pretty happy with our timing.

Next up: Yellowstone Day 2 (and possibly Days 3 and 4).

Sorry for the Interruption: The Great Camera Crisis of 2009 — Vacation Part Two: Idaho to Wyoming

Now that Dave has recovered some of the pictures I took, I can post them.

This is Stephen, Mom, me, Joyce, and Sam. Please ignore the baby — I don’t believe in posting pictures of minor children but broke that rule this time.

Next, we visited my cousin Sandra. This is a picture of Dave, Sandra’s son-in-law Matt, Sandra, and Joyce standing near Matt’s work area. Matt makes really cool rough-hewn furniture, and I wish he had a website.

 

This is Dave’s favorite picture of Mom, holding one of Sandra’s dogs:

And I just love this picture for the sky:

Last but not least, we visited my cousin David and his family. This is a shot of me, Mom, Joyce, and David, the “just right” cousin:

But then we were off on our own adventures. There is a scenic highway, Route 89, that goes from around Logan, Utah, to near Jackson, WY. I took lots of pictures when we pulled over, and I’ll let them stand alone:

Next up: The Grand Tetons!

We’re on Hold for a Couple of Days

The Camera Crisis of 2009 is in the process of being resolved. Plus, I think linnearly and want to write about the vacation chronologically.

The good news is that I will have Idaho Cousin and Grand Teton pictures by Saturday morning. And that is when I will resume.

EVERYBODY PANIC !!!

Swine flu … we don’t know where this thing is going, and it could end up being very serious, or it could be something we’ve forgotten about by June. So far in the U.S., we have one reported death, and none in Canada. But, as my online friend Karen points out, 36,000 people die from the flu in North America every year. That’s the commonplace flu we take for granted, because it always happens. More people than that die from falling in the shower, yet we continue to take showers. One person died from swine flu in 1976, too — and 30 more died from a disease associated with the vaccine. I remember this very well, because I was fresh out of college, and getting that vaccination was one of my first significant adult decisions. I remember wondering about the complications.

For the record, I believe that most vaccines do far more good than harm and that they save many more lives than the number lost to complications. It just wasn’t the case with the swine flu vaccine in 1976.

So, as I often do when posting about something other than a book, let’s move from the serious to the comic, the comic having more to do with misinformation than anything else. Adrienne, like Karen a friend from House of Fur (a site for cat lovers, since I feel the need to qualify everything today), offered this informative link on the swine flu and rumors. And in that article is a link to another article, about how rumors cost lives.

Of course, looking back 33 years, the 1976 public service announcements seem quaint and dated. Are you scared yet?

If not, this take-off on how Twitter spreads misinformation should scare you — not about swine flu, but about modern communications, with credit again to Adrienne, who found it at someone else’s blog:

The Inauguration, Random Thoughts Part One

Quick note: the concert at the Lincoln Memorial is awesome. HBO will be unblocked tonight, so if you’re not catching it live, be sure and watch!

As happy as I am about Barack Obama’s inauguration, I don’t do crowds. So Dave and I made plans to “pretend a hurricane is coming,” as Arlington County so wisely advised its citizens in a recent alert. He was going to bring over his laptop, a bottle of champagne, reading material, and several changes of clothes. I planned menus and stocked up on food. He was going to drive back and forth until Monday, at which point he’d stay here for the duration. And I wasn’t going to move my car from Friday onward. Then life interfered: his car died, as it does periodically. Dave has a great little sports car that spends way too much time in the shop. Which meant I ended up driving a bit, the last trip being around 1 today.

Driving back from his place, I made several observations. First, I thought it might be fun to get out of my car and say to the guy in front of me: “Welcome to Virginia! I hope you have a great time at the Inauguration and have many pleasant stories to take home to your family and friends. And please tell me, because I’m curious, just what does a green arrow on a traffic light mean in your home state?” I don’t really need to say much more about that, do I? Because we’ve all been there.

The other observation was that a lot of people hung the American flag from their houses. Nice touch, that.

When I got back, there was only one parking space left on my block, so I took it. My house is close to a Metro stop, and people do park here and walk over, especially on weekends and holidays when the residential parking restrictions don’t apply. The Sunday concert today’s crowd Metro’d in for started a couple of minutes ago, but I’ll watch it on HBO tonight.

Here’s a cool Joe Biden story. One of Dave’s law school buddies, Jim, is married to Jane, who was the best friend of Biden’s first wife and her maid of honor. In 1972, Biden’s first wife and children were in a terrible car accident that injured their two sons. Biden’s wife and daughter died. So that was over 36 years ago. But Biden has always honored that friendship, and so he invited Jim and Jane to be among his guests at the Inauguration on Tuesday. They will also be at a special reception he’ll have on Wednesday at the Naval Observatory, the traditional residence of the Vice President. I think that says a lot about the man.

I’ll post again Wednesday, after the main event. I can’t wait!

November 5, 2008

I live in suburban Washington DC. So I tread carefully when it comes to politics, because I have to live surrounded by people who not only encompass the entire spectrum of beliefs, but who also actually have jobs and support families based on those beliefs. In fact, my favorite neighbor is close to opposite me on just about everything political. However, I haven’t given up my right to speak out or speak up, and I have done plenty of both, just not on this blog – until today.

Yes, this is the political post. It may be my only political post for another 2 or 4 or 8 years. But here it is.

I’m a proud, angry liberal. The last 8 years of deliberate, seemingly malicious, government mismanagement have made me angrier than I ever thought possible. I’m trying to think of some aspect of life in America that has improved since 2000, and I can’t. Bush screwed it up in every possible way, and he’s going to keep screwing it up on his way out the door, destroying environmental and consumer protections that were put in place by not just by Democratic presidents but by his father, by Ronald Reagan, and even by Richard Nixon. Oh, and let’s not talk about the economy, it’s just too depressing. Who was it – Reagan in 84? – who asked if people were better off now than they were 4 years before? That’s a no-brainer now. And let’s not kid ourselves, a McCain/Right-Wing Barbie administration would have been more of the same. They can call themselves “mavericks” all they want, they brought no evidence to the campaign that there would be any improvements.

What’s sad is that they, as the current crew before them, abdicated the cause of conservatism. That’s right, they didn’t even stick with their own alleged beliefs. Let’s see what Tony Fabrizio and Craig Shirley, two conservative pollsters, said on Politico.com : [T]he brilliant conservative theoretician Frank Meyer devised “fusionism” in the 1950s — which brought together the social right, the foreign policy right and the economic right under a philosophy opposed to oppressive government that later evolved into a political movement — a conservative one based on “Freedom.” This culminated in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and all sides understood their end of the bargain. … The Republicans of late, however, decided to trade in the “less government, more freedom” model that had worked so well for Reagan and conservatives. … Rove, Bush and the modern Republicans have treated Americans like crack addicts, giving them tax cuts but also federal boodle, so tax cuts look more like an appeal to downright greed.

Okay, I was never a fan of Reagan, but Fabrizio and Shirley accurately make the point that there once was a strong philosophical foundation to conservatism and the Republican party. This foundation was built up painstakingly by people like Meyer, William F. Buckley, George Will, and others, then carried forward for quite a few years. Remember the Contract with America of the mid-1990s? I didn’t agree with it, but it was a campaign of ideas, and I had to respect that effort. But did we hear any discussion of conservative philosophy from McCain or Right-Wing Barbie? No. Their entire focus was on winning. Sorry, folks, but if you want to win my vote, you have to give me a reason. And fear of the unknown is not a reason, especially when I fear continuation of the disastrous known more than anything. McCain gave a gracious concession speech last night. Had he campaigned in the same voice, this might have been a much closer race.

On the flip side, I was thrilled with Barack Obama almost from the beginning. I say “almost” simply because I decided to ignore all presidential campaigning until January of 2008. That’s the earliest I think it should start, and that’s the day I began looking at websites for Democratic candidates. Before I ever watched him on TV or otherwise heard him speak, Obama impressed me with his reasoned positions. And, for the most part, he avoided my pet peeve about Democratic politicians: instead of being prescriptive, he was often (not always) descriptive. Let me explain that. When confronted with a problem, an unfortunate tendency of some Democratic politicians is to prescribe a solution. In other words, instead of saying “lower the level of this type of pollution to 90% by 2012,” they’ll say something like “lower the level of this type of pollution to 90% by 2012, using this technology.” So they prescribe a solution, preventing the marketplace or emerging technologies from offering the possibility of a more efficient, less costly solution. Obama does this sometimes (see biofuels, for example), but Hillary Clinton and some of the other candidates did this with much greater frequency.

Obama has been called slick. I prefer to think of him as calm and even-tempered, which are admirable qualities in a leader. I think that’s a big part of what he’s got going for him. Because my family is from Illinois, I know some of his background in the Illinois state legislature, where he went from being an outsider to being a leader who brokered deals on a regular basis. Some people just know what they’re doing. Between his general demeanor and his positions on the topics that matter most to me, Obama has impressed me pretty consistently.

I’m looking forward to his administration, just as I’m eager to get the horrors of the W administration behind us. I think we chose the right man for the job this time. I think America finally got it right.

As an aside, I just returned from a 2-week vacation. I’ll be blogging about that, and I also have a stockpile of about 8 book reviews that I’ll be posting over the next few weeks. But as anyone familiar with this country might guess, a pre-election vacation in no way insulates a person from the campaigning. Here’s a vignette from that aspect of our trip:

I seldom buy political gear. However, one afternoon in Santa Fe I saw a bumper sticker and my mind snapped. “I have to have a t-shirt with that logo!” And so Dave and I went on a search-and-destroy mission that sent us online, on the phone, to one of the two Santa Fe Obama field offices, and to one of the six (six!) Albuquerque Obama field offices. And I finally found the t-shirt with Obama’s circle logo blended with the New Mexico state flag, as you can see in the photos. I bought two, one for me and one for Dave.

Northern New Mexico was like Obama-land, by the way. It was saturated with yard signs, and even the merchants and restaurants all had them in the windows. In Arizona, McCain’s home state, there was little indication that a presidential race was even happening. Every sign was for the Congressional races. I know enthusiasm doesn’t add anything to the vote count, but I thought this was interesting nonetheless. When we spoke with people, they just assumed we were for Obama. Anyway, Dave and I wore our t-shirts to a party on election night, and they were a big hit.

Next up: vacation stories!

My Father Is Gone

My dad died last night. He was 87 and had been in poor health for several years, especially since November. On Tuesday, he had his last lucid conversation. From Wednesday on through his death on Saturday, he was semi-conscious at best and gasped for air like a drowning man. We decided to put him into hospice on Thursday, which happened on Friday, and I saw him for the last time on Saturday morning, before I boarded a plane and flew home, over the bumpy air above the Appalachians and into another time zone. An hour after I walked in the door, my mother called to say he had just died.

Although I was prepared for it, this is hard. It was much harder watching him struggle for breath, however, and I’m grateful that he doesn’t have to endure that any longer. Even though it was only a matter of days, the fight to breathe went on far too long. Patrick, the family attorney, was one of my best friends in childhood, and he later formed a close bond with my parents. He went up to see Dad Thursday evening. The next morning, we talked on the phone for a while. He said that Dad had recognized him and tried to say a few things but couldn’t. One thing he did say with clarity, however, was “worn out.” Yes, he was worn out. Very worn out. I also wonder if he held on until he could see me on Tuesday, then let go.

People speak of the death rattle. I don’t know what the death rattle sounds like, but I suspect it’s much like what Dad’s breathing was for those four days. He smoked for 40 years, then quit 27 years ago. Quitting bought him the 27 years, but the 40 years of smoking finally caught up with him.

So now I am making arrangements to fly back. Good friends are staying with my mother, who is managing pretty well. Mom has been a one-woman nursing home for the past few months. So she is experiencing a combination of shock and relief. She says it seems surreal to her. She’s going to need help managing details and making the transition, but ultimately she will be fine. She is bright and realistic, a good combination. I often describe her as “the most competent person in the family.” I’m still going to check in with her a lot. She’s a young 75, but she’s also now a widow.

Interesting, creative people are often difficult, as Dad was. He was frequently demanding and even bullying at times. I stood up to him more than anyone else in the family, and yet he favored me. I think by standing up to him, I somehow bought myself the luxury of appreciating the many wonderful things about him: his endless curiosity, his quirky sense of humor, his innocence, his unparalleled love of animals, his generosity, his openness, his optimism, his love of reading, his liberalism, his horror at the suffering of others, his capacity for affection. He drove me crazy, I drove him crazy, and we loved each other like crazy.

As his dementia ate away at our ability to sustain the depth of our relationship, I had to remind myself of who he had been, but I never forgot. I am proud to have been his daughter, and I’m glad that the last thing I said to him before leaving yesterday morning was “thank you.”

Still Learning — An Overzealous Spam Trap

For the first time since I started this blog in December, I visited WordPress’s spam trap. And I found several legitimate posts there, which I just marked as “not spam.”

Unfortunately, the spam trap clears itself every 15 days, so there may have been some legitmate posts before January 15 that I didn’t find in time to clear. Therefore, please accept my apologies if you tried to post and it didn’t show up. I will be more vigilant henceforth.

Working on it

Yeah, my new blog, The Dog Doesn’t Die, is under construction. It may take me a few days to get it set up the way I want.

But let me at least explain the title. Last weekend, I finished reading a book in which there were several animals. Some people, myself among them, worry about the fate of animal characters — are they safe? are they going to live? And it occurred to me that since I would of course include the occasional book review in my blog, I’d write about whether the book was “safe” for animal lovers.

I also plan to include observations from my work as a writer and editor, as well as recipes, links, and random thoughts.