All across the Excited States of America…

Let me start by saying… I love you guys (and gals, goes without saying), I hate you guys, and I’m increasingly ambivalent about all you good-ole guys and gals and your overly-polarized, ever-narrowing worldview…

As an animated fraction(!) of the USA’s three-hundred-and-ten million citizens head out to vote today, please be aware that the “rest of the world” watches your amnesic roll to the right and political shenanigans with equal measures of concern, disbelief, and revulsion. It seems that crass, opportunist partisanship has trumped the very basic premise of engaged citizenship and shared civility that your great (OK, formerly great) nation was based and built upon… sad, very sad indeed. I’m sure I’m not alone in remembering an America of the past that seemed worth celebrating in aspirational song...

Images: an assortment of placards, signs, and shirts shown out and about the U.S. in recent days… 

Gooseneck Rocks, NW Ontario (along the road to White Dog First Nation)

I was scheduled to go rock climbing with friends at my favorite crag (the Gooseneck Rocks) this past weekend, but the combination of multiple days of rain along with flagging energy levels dissuaded me in the end. My good friend Simon Statkewich (president of the Alpine Club of Canada, Manitoba Section) did make it out however, and today he sent me the above photo of himself standing on “a wee bit of rockfall” that recently peeled off the base of one of the newer bolted climbs on the Roadside Face (about 7 meters to climber’s left of the start of the classic route Frog-in-the-Crack put up by Peter Aitchison et al in the 1970s).

A quick calculation shows that the granite “flake” Simon is standing on weighs between 40 and 60 tonnes (at 2.691 tonnes per cubic meter). Here’s sincerely hoping there’s no hapless boulderer caught beneath it… Hester? has anyone seen Rob Hester?!?

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Thanks Gregor—you know I like these… actually static optical illusions that only appear to be animations—fix your eyes on one part of the above image for a moment and the almonds stop moving… cool, eh?

(original image source unknown)

(click on image for larger size—found here)

Warstein, Germany

A nude climber stuck halfway up a cliff face in the pitch dark had to phone German police officers, who shone a spotlight on him so he could find handholds to lower himself back down, they said Friday.

The 47-year-old man was unable to explain why he had drunkenly stripped off at dusk on Thursday, packed all his clothes in his rucksack and headed up the 40-metre quarry wall in Warstein, 100 kilometres east of Düsseldorf.

Clinging to a ledge, he became too weak to proceed and could not get dressed for fear of falling. Hours later, becoming both very cold and sober, he managed to get out his mobile phone and contact police.

Police took him to hospital as a precaution, in case he had suffered from “exposure.”

Could happen to anyone… though methinks there’s a cautionary tale in there somewhere. Source: the Alpine Club of Canada newletter (thankfully without accompanying imagery).

My Lai, Vietnam

Forty-two years ago today, U.S. Army forces massacred hundreds of women and children in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai (the My Lai Massacre). No justice was ever done and only one man, William Calley, was convicted of murder—in the end he only spent 3½ years under house arrest.

The world has not forgotten…

Victor Verster Prison, Paarl, South Africa

It was (only) 20 years ago today that the great Nelson Mandela was finally freed, following 27 years in prison. I find it interesting (and seemingly as pertinent today as in decades past) to note how one group or nation’s “freedom fighters” are often labeled by the opposing group or oppressing nation as “terrorists”…

Nelson Mandela was finally removed from the United States’ No Fly List or “terrorist watch list,” in July of 2008… at the age of ninety!

Midway Atoll (middle of the North Pacific)

Chris Jordan is a remarkable Seattle-based photographer/activist who uses his skills effectively to address challenging social issues and redress problems arising from our modern lifestyles. (I’ve often shown his thoughtful and impeccably crafted photographic interventions in talks I’ve given). Midway: Message from the Gyre is a stunning photographic essay that delivers an important message (about avoiding, reducing, or effectively recycling plastics) with uncommon punch—view the entire image collection here. Following is the accompanying text by Chris…

These photographs of albatross chicks were made in September, 2009, on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles (3200 kilometers) from the nearest continent.

Keep up the great work, Chris! (thanks to friend Gregor Brandt for the link)

Winnipeg, Canada

My cousin Tim was laid to rest today…

I hardly knew you, Tim. But I’m very glad I attended your funeral. I learned more about you in an hour than I had known since you married my cousin, Ruth Koop, 36 years ago. I met your two handsome and well-spoken adult sons (for the first time)… and I listened carefully, with tears in my eyes, as one person after another stepped up to the microphone to share their recollections of you.

In case you weren’t listening in, they described you as “one of the most decent people you could ever know,” (that was your boss, by the way); as wise, rational, vital, fair, modest, understated, decent, knowledgeable, ethical, humble, good-natured, energetic, gentle, and loving; and as a brilliant thinker with a quick wit, as someone always on the side of the underdog, as someone perpetually giving and generous with your time, as a lifelong conservationist (choosing walking or cycling over driving, even in our brutal climate), as a peace-maker, as a tireless volunteer and champion of social justice, and as a man of great integrity—and few words.

I really do wish I had known you better, Tim.

Rest in peace…