News...what News?

Is it just me that feels that the soul purpose of the news media is to dumb down the people of this country, or what? I'm not just talking the stuff on television, but the print media as well. I know I am not the first person to complain about this stuff, so I will attempt to not,... turn this into some incessant banter, but here goes. We have news casts that are supposedly thirty minutes long. In this news cast their is approximately eighteen minutes of stuff that isn't commercials. Take out the Sports....which isn't news... it's entertainment. Take out the entertainment section because, well.... it's the same as Sports. So now we are down to roughly ten minutes of stuff to talk about. They spend another three to five minutes doing crap like, try it before you buy it, or their investigating report on someone on the city counsel that parked in front of a parking meter that was broken so they wouldn't have to pay! This passes for news? Throw in the other everyday stuff about a house fire, a car wreck, and Paris Hilton doing a photo shoot in Atlanta. That gives you three minutes to talk about the war, politics on the hill, the financial debacle that the nation is in, and a ten second sound bite of the president,.... in where ever he is for the day!
The print media is not any better. The sensational stuff makes the headlines. The rest of the real news gets a paragraph on pg. 12 buried between the Lipitor add, and the Spring white sale at Wal-mart. When as a culture we don't read, and our kid's don't read, and pop culture makes the "news" as the way that we define ourselves in some sort of ego extension. When critical thinking skills become less important than the shoes that we wear, or the car that we drive, or neighborhood that we live in. That to me is the real news! That is why everyone has an opinion on Iraq, but no one can find it on the map. Most people couldn't tell you weather Saddam was a Shite, or a Sunni. It feels that the only place that you can get an accurate report on the news is on your local PBS. station or the BBC. It is definitely the only place where you can listen to two sides, with opposing views, actually talk for more than two minutes on a particular subject without some interruption informing me of some other late breaking news. Like congress investigating baseball and steroid use. It's the entertainment industry. They get paid for putting butts in seats for money. Who cares! When Sit-coms become funny, and reality TV becomes real, and the lobbyist in D.C. have used up all of their multinational petroleum industry's money buying seats in congress, and the White house. Give me a call. That will be news!

Global Warming?

I don't profess to know much about anything real or imagined, but here is what I do know without a shadow of a doubt. I have been going down around the Lake of the Ozarks for over thirty years now, and the one thing that has been more than blatantly obvious is the fact that the armadillo has begun a more than subtle push northward. Upward from it's more southern climates of the southwest and the deep southern states. Until around ten years ago the only place I ever encountered these opossums on the half shell was south of Springfield, Mo.

What gives? Could it be that the little critter has finally morphed to the point that it can tolerate, and even survive a colder climate? How can it do that when its primary diet is insects / bugs, grubs and other little invertebrates? I understand during our milder winters that it could be possible for the insects to remain realitivily active, but how does this explain how they ( the armadillo ) can survive the two to three weeks every winter when we get the Alberta clippers, that blow in artic air, and freezes everything solid enough that kids can ice skate on the area lakes? Have they developed the ability to somehow go into a sort of suedo hibernation? If this is true.... then we as humans have probably just witnessed one of the most amazing feats in nature that happened so effortlessly that we didn't even notice. And we consider ourselves the developed ones......shoot we can't even take care of our own young in the richest country in the world! Go figure !! p.s these photos were taken in Climax Springs, Mo. by yours truly,... in January 2008. I have also witnessed dead Armadllo's on 50 Hwy. in Lee's Summit MO.

THE END!

Hoppin down the bunny trail

With Easter on our door step it just seems apropos to look at where we are and, where we are going. Seeing how Easter represents a fresh start, or a new beginning from our longest days of winter, I am always excited as the vernal equinox approaches. It is the balance point between winter and summer when you need your heater in the morning, and a T-shirt in the afternoon. When you can still get hypothermia, and sunburned all in the same day! When upland chorus frogs call in the after afternoon, and get quite in the evening. When tom turkeys gobble,.. but are still in winter flocks. It is still neat to watch everything try to reach a homeostasis. As the year ramps up into full speed ahead we are often given the opportunities to take a new path or direction. I am thinking that we shouldn't spend a lot of time worrying whether a certain path is the right one, but to just follow our instincts for a change. After all... it has been working for us for thousands of years, and so far so good. It all balances out.
If following your instincts is good enough for the birds, bee's, bunnies, and bison, it ought to be good enough for us! It's just the fear of the unknown that screws us up. Heck... we ain't gettin off of this mud ball alive anyway. So if we aren't afraid of dying, why should we be afraid of living?
For those of you who recognize where these pictures are from, you know these roads are completely different...and coming from different directions, but the destination still ends in the same place....where it all began.....home.


Have a great spring, we deserve it! Yohon.

You see it... we saw it !

As some of you may have heard we are into another round of selective logging. Things have been going pretty well, and it appears that the loggers may be finished in another couple of weeks with their part of the operation. Then we plan on having them smooth out the logging roads, push the tops to the side of the ridges, push in a few ephemeral pools for the amphibians, and ground nesting,... (aka: Gallinaceous birds. ) In the mean time spring is fast approaching as always. Per usual it is hell trying to get everything done, and get out of the woods before the bluebirds start their thing.... with the turkeys right on their heels. What I wouldn't give for another month of winter! After twenty some years of doing this the feeling is the same every year....never enough time. :( On a brighter note we did seem to uncover where the inordinate amount of rust was coming from on the skidders though,....I believe that the pictures will do most of the explaining. This is a wilderness shot. The guys are whizzing on the equipment again...could not find a tree because we chopped them all down!

One of them got their zipper caught...the others looked around to see who would help. Priceless!

Sleep deprived thoughts

The lack of sleep this week has directly affected my ability to to write anything that was on my mind. Although their seems to be no end to the things that I think about, and often stare off in space, and ponder. These seem to be some of my random thoughts for the week, but by no means all of them.....not that anyone would care....just things.

Big specialty stores that once were special due to their uniqueness can not stay unique by adding a bunch of other stores in the region. I am referring to the Bass Pro Shops, in particular, in this part of the country. The one in southwest Missouri was once a mega tourist attraction drawing hundreds of thousands of people to it's location from states all around the region, but has since added other locations throughout the region, and in my opinion has diluted the uniqueness of the experience. I was in the one in southwest Mo. last weekend and the stores around it are closing up, things are looking old, and last but not least, which I feel is most important is that the energy is not the same in the building. I was their 20 years ago, and it was hopping. Move forward to this week, and I just got home from visiting the new Bass Pro Shop in the Kansas City area, and it was nice just like the old one, and it was busy (probably because it was new) but the feel was just not there. It didn't feel special. Nice, but not special. These places used to be an event, a trip, a big deal if you have it. Now it's one more mega store with a different decor.

I am currently going through a training program to become a naturalist for the states conservation department. This week we learned how to handle snakes, and other reptiles during public presentations. I learned several things. 1. I have forgotten more than I realized. 2. A snake four foot long under my shirt still makes me nervous. 3. That my ego is still alive and well when surrounded by women and children, and that I didn't....A. shit my pants. B. scream like a baby. or C. drop and roll like I was on fire. I never cease to amaze myself.

Ballroom dancing is about a hundred times more difficult than I ever realized. Their is never more than six freaking steps, and you either go forward, backward sideways or diagonal. Sounds simple, oh, and left and right,.....I guess that's sideways for some of us. Throw in some music.....follow some relatively finite pattern, and walla,...were dancing. Bullshit! Now I'm not saying I'm terrible at all of the dances like Tango, Cha,Cha, Foxtrot, Waltz etc... but this goddamn thing called the Samba is whipping my ass. I'm not sure what this dance is supposed to look like.....but after watching myself in the mirrors it reminds me of a bear trying to dance with a broom stick in it's butt. I just know that my instructor has to be laughing his ass off,....I totally anticipate to find out that he has been secretly taping my version of the Samba, and posting it on U tube, and in a couple of weeks I will get an invite to the David Letterman show for some stupid human tricks!

one more again.....sigh !

I really don't want to go down this road again,... but as we seem to be on the topic of semantics, another two words came up today at work that I am having multiple thoughts about .... the words are... request, and suggestion. At first glance their seems to be no real discernible difference. In a restaurant for instance, requesting, or suggesting a glass or water is pretty much the same thing. Is a suggestion really a nice way of requesting something. Is this the passive way of, requesting what we want, do to the fear of confrontation. Is this the safe way out to protect our inner child from the inevitable bruises in life? The possibility of rejection. If so what is our real fear? Better yet, how do we get past these fears?

hobbies vs. interests

After having a great weekend fishing, and hanging out with some buddies fishing for trout in Branson, I have a question in my mind that has been driving me crazy all weekend. I know that fishing is viewed as a hobby by most, but what really separates an interest from a hobby? Because it's possible to have an interest in a hobby, but can it be the other way around? Is a hobby defined by the frequency of the activity, or just the desire to participate in a specific activity. If golf for instance was once something that you played every week for years, but now you haven't played in years..... can you still tell people that it is your hobby, because you still intend to play again. Whats the time limit when golf just goes back to an interest? If one has a desire / interest to learn, and experience life to it's fullest potential by being curious about all things in this world, and beyond, can this too be listed as a hobby? If this is so, then we could possibly say that living is a hobby. Maybe that is why people say not to take life to seriously. Nobody would want to turn their hobby into a job!