Back to the Rat-Race

Despite gas prices and the associated uproar, we defied all communal logic and elected to extract ourselves from life-as-we-know-it and undertake what is almost an annual rite by now - the vacation road trip. As with most of these, at least in recent years, one of the themes is to avoid multi-lanes and especially interstates to the greatest extent possible. I will try to pull together a map as in years past to illustrate the intriguing obscurity of at least parts of the route I (we) adopted.

But, in sum, the themes included traversing lower slopes of multiple snowy volcanoes, barely dodging a forest fire, testing the heat in eastern Oregon, and then, as a result of that test, fleeing to the shore as alternative to original plan that involved some serious exposure to eastern OR deserts and the dehydration that would have induced. Somehow I will find a way to do the loop drive on Steen's Mountain. We were there in Spring a while back, only to learn the road does not open until July at best. Not certain we would have been able to do it this time either, but we (or I) will have to find a way to trigger collective motivation and fill a bottle or two and plunge in.

But the trip was excellent and therapeutic, though perhaps a couple weeks shorter than what I really needed. I hope to post more on trip when I find time to do a little picture-sorting.

I had not really intended or expected to experience such a high degree of radio-silence during our trip. I suppose it has been fairly routine that access to the net is spotty in previous years, but somehow it was more irksome this time, perhaps with imminent election a factor. There was basically a 10-day void.

Anyway, getting back on the horse is both important and challenging. It's taken me a couple days to get around to this blog, just as an example.

There's no shortage of important news, I find, only tidbits of which I would have encountered even had I been willing to buy and devour local newspapers in net-free burgs during our vacation. I even missed the news that a pack of wolves was called up in NE OR while we were there! This is terrific news. These great critters almost certainly had to swim the Snake River to make it into OR from Idaho, no mean feat. Somewhat in the same timeframe it appears a pack was found in the Methow Valley in our state. Wolves galore! (Well, sort of - the numbers are pretty low, and it is surprising how few breeding pairs the OR wolf plan allows for before calling for consideration of potential measures for "controlling" the numbers.) But this is exciting.

Perhaps regrettably for some, moving on to politics, even if you are not fully addicted to schadenfreude, how could you not get a kick out of the indictment of Senator Stevens of Alaska, a first-class dinosaur (ok, that's an insult to reptiles) of a congressperson if there ever was one. Possibly he was not quite able to compete with Thurmond et al in terms of overt triple-A racism, but this guy seems to be accompanied by a cloud of meanness that puts that cartoon character with the dirty bubble over his head to shame. There's plenty of coverage of this available, but in honor of the early and dutiful attention paid by the revered Josh Marshall at the ever-growing talking-points entertainment center, why not start there.

And speaking of schadenfreude, I am just finishing reading "What Happened," Scott McClellan's account of his time in the "White" House. I admit it has its' moments, but in general this is pretty sorry stuff. More or less what you might expect, a man helped onto the railing of sinking vessel suddenly finds a semblance of a twitch of a vapour of a conscience. But that george is just so likeable! He even teared up when saying goodbye! That's what I call full exoneration!

Jehosophat.

And then there's the matter of this report about the politicization of the appointment process in the formerly-admired, generally-trusted, seemingly law-abiding and even bastion of law-dome, i.e., the US department of "justice." This is truly stunning. E.g., a highly-qualified experienced and successful terrorism-prosecutor was apparently rejected for office in favor of an inexperienced candidate because the former was married to a registered democrat. And that's just berg-tip. It seems that a multitude of positions were filled on the basis of highly-ideological questioning and screening of candidates ("why is it that you want to serve george?"). Somewhat horrifyingly, the implication is that the DOJ is now to unknown degree populated by a bunch of subservient, inexperienced, unqualified, but highly politicized (and doubtless stubbornly-so, given their frat-boy guru's notorious inflexibility) dweebs who probably rarely got near anything like a properly-credentialed law-school or any meaningful opportunity at work-experience as a lawyer in the real world. Home-schooling and match-book-back parchment come to mind. And many are protected by civil-service laws (so ironic, given the union-busting fixation of their cult).

Perhaps I should have saved the good wolf news for last! How about you go back to that before reaching for that cyanide.