Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

The Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

Or at least the little bit of it around Lake Dorothy.

I didn’t feel like taking pictures this hike. No matter what I did this morning, I couldn’t get un-drowsy. It wasn’t until we were hiking back down that I really woke up. It didn’t help that we got rained on a little bit while having our little picnic at the lake.

M took the lion’s share of pictures, and I don’t feel good about posting them here. But here’s a rock with a crack in it and a tree growing out of the top (the boulder is about 20 feet high):

Trails like this (it’s the same cracked boulder at the top left):

And a transluscent trillium:

The wilderness is populated by lots of huge, huge trees and the associated ecosystem that comes with them. It’s a much different feeling than the second- and third-growth forests in the populated valleys. It’s really true: A tree farm is not a forest.

M was really getting into taking pictures. Lots of macro flower shots. She was having a blast. It was nice to see.

With any hike like this, it’s really sad to get back to your car. I joked that we could just hike over the passes and take a bus back home from North Bend, and for a split second it wasn’t a joke.

I went to the thrift store today (silk cycle pants: $7), and there were three camera lenses in the jewelry case. A 28mm M42, a Vivitar k-mount 70-200 (or something) zoom, and some Nikon funky thing.

Now, if the Vivitar had been a lot cheaper, I’d have liked to experiment with it, but it was $40. Too much to duplicate the zoom range of my perfectly adequate Tokina. But that’s not why I’m writing this entry.

As I was walking out, I saw a pair of guys at the jewelry case looking at these lenses. One was on a cell phone, talking to someone who was looking them up on ebay. “Wait… Are these the finalized winning prices? Are you sure?”

I met the eyes of the store employee trapped by circumstance behind the counter while they did their research. I gave him a grin and he glanced at these two guys with a sardonic look. As if to say: “Idiots.”

I promised myself I wouldn’t get any more long lenses until I got the SMCP-F* 300m. And, well, here it is. I need to stop looking at ebay.

That auction will get sniped up to $600.

Update: I was off by $200. The winning bid was $821.11.

Arianna Huffington says I’m the original ‘blogger.

No, really. She does.

And if that’s what she thinks, then maybe she shouldn’t have started a ‘blog. Ya know? It’s a big ol’ site called The Huffington Post, which is supposed to be where the smart kids are hanging out.

The Huffington Post has drawn a narrow spectrum of reactions from ‘bloggers with more net-cred, ranging from ‘so what?’ to ‘that’s kinda dumb.’ The only reason I can think why this might be is that they weren’t invited to participate.

Hey, didja hear about the terrorist threat that recently faced the White House?

Seriously, all the folks in the White House were evacuated. Everyone was taken to a ‘secure location.’ That’s good, for obvious reasons. False alarm, though, sort of. There was a private plane that went off course, into a restricted zone. Later, it was revealed that the plane was piloted by some folks who just didn’t plan their trip very well. Ooops. Sorry about the national security incedent; it’ll never happen again.

For some reason George W. Bush was bicycling at a wildlife refuge that day. I mean, good for him, out there riding around, enjoying the benefits of the sorts of preservationist policies he continues to shred with each passing moment. One wishes he’d spend more time breathing in fresh air and following the flight path of endangered bird species, wondering at their beauty and fragile existence. (Bush was cycling at Patuxent research station, where much groundbreaking work was done in the ’40s and ’50s on the deleterious effects of DDT. Rachel Carson cited much of this research in her book ‘Silent Spring,’ which pretty much began the environmental movement in the ’60s. If there’s one thing the Bush administration knows how to do, it’s irony.)

Now, if I were the President, and I were doing something as trivial as riding a bike at a wildlife refuge, and there was a potential terrorist threat against the White House (you know, the place I live), I’d want to be notified. Wouldn’t you? I’m sure there would be more important things to do in such a circumstance than to ride another lap around a pond viewing loop road or whatever. And if my staff didn’t tell me about the terror threat, and didn’t tell me about the evacuation, someone would end up without a job. They’d be fired for gross incompetence.

But that’s not the story here. See, no one told our President that he was the target of a potential terror attack that caused the evacuation of the White House. No one bothered. (Alternately, he might have been at the wetlands refuge because of the ‘attack,’ but that narrative yields a White House where they arrange potential terror threats in advance so they can know when to move the President. And while I’m pretty certain the Bush administration is about as evil as they come, I’d like to think they’re not that evil.)

The other part of this story goes like this: Imagine that it’s 9/11, and there are some fighter airplanes that are ready to scramble and shoot down some commercial jets that you’re pretty sure have been hijacked by terrorists. But only the President can give those orders. That’s the story we heard, right? Well, who was going to give the orders that would have potentially saved the White House this time? I mean, you’re keeping the President out of the loop, so who’s going to authorize shooting down the Cessna?

RealID a Constitution-killer?

This is Rosie.

She went with us hiking yesterday, to Barclay Lake.

She likes to play fetch.

But she doesn’t want to fetch just anything. She wants to fetch really big sticks.

In fact, at one point while we were hiking down the trail, Rosie wanted to play fetch so badly she tore a limb off of a fallen rotting cedar tree. She dragged it to us, about six feet long, a good six inches in diameter, and a big ol’ hunk of tree still stuck to one end. As if we could throw it, even if we wanted to. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a pic of that.

Later on, however, Rosie waited patiently while we made little cairns by the creek. M built this one. Mine weren’t nearly as cool; I spent most of my time taking pictures.

Look out for the Unitarian Jihad!

Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for “balance” by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons.

Via boingboing, we end up at Dreams of Space, an online gallery of illustrations from kids’ books about space, from 1883 to 1974.

Browsing through it, I’m struck by the complete lack of mysterious outer boundaries for kids today. Even when I was growing up, there was at least the space shuttle and Star Wars. But looking at these earnest images of illustrated childrens’ books, with their sketches of what might be, and their captions describing how it will be, I can’t help but wonder what we’re losing, what we’ve lost.

During the 50s and 60s, there was a very real effort to get kids interested in science and technology. This led to most of the technological innovations we take for granted today, and in no small part to the dominance of the US in the Cold War world economy. Now, however, we have a re-tread of the Scopes monkey trial, and an effort to undermine science in the classroom. Where will such a move lead us?

You wanna know what’s evil? I’ll tell you what’s evil. 3 for $.99 candy bars.

Speaking of moral ambiguity, I watched ‘Badlands.’ Really, really good. Lots of amazing stuff in there. For a couple hours afterwards, I was talking in a slow drawl.