View from the Mountain

Watching from the back deck, May 26, 2010

I used to write almost daily posts with commentary on the news. I stopped when changes in our lives required more time be channeled to other activities. 

Recently it occurred to me that every day I go through a commentary on the news with close friends. An edited version of that might be a nice starting point for a regular blog post.

It ends up being an indirect look at the news and often focuses on details which rarely make it to the front page.

I spend a lot of time on our back decks whether I am in Roanoke or on the coast of North Carolina,  The one in Roanoke overlooks the town of Roanoke while our Carteret County home has a view of the White Oak River.

Both places tend to prepare my mind for a critical look at the days' event.  I don't have an agenda other than to understand what is going on around me. So here is my first shot at commenting on the top five things that interest me each day.

1. The number one thing on my mind and that of many Americans is the Gulf Oil Spill.  A while back I heard the assertion that the well was not equipped with a remote control shut off valve.  This morning I decided to search again for an article that could shed some light on the situation.  I found one in the WSJ article, Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device.  It turns out that in 2003 lobbyists convinced the regulatory folks that they did not need this switch.  We will never know whether the switch would stopped the oil, but it is interesting to note that some companies use the switch even without being required.  It is not unusual that government regulators are something like foxes guarding the hen house.
2. Next I caught a very interesting article by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post.  The article, Through oil-fouled water, big government looks better and better, was published May 4th, but I did not see it until doing some research on the oil blowout.  It is amusing that all the little government conservatives now want to the federal government to step up and rescue them.  You cannot have it both ways, you cannot have a small government which all of sudden becomes big when you need it.  I get the biggest kick out of the suggestion that the military fix the problem.  When I did a search for deep sea submersibles, all the results coming up were very old.  I wonder if research for that was cut in the last decade.
3. And this is my last thought on the oil spill.  I saw some information suggesting that Sarah Palin thinks Obama is in the back pocket of the oil industry because of campaign donations.  That one brought a good chuckle to me.  It just happened that my Happy Valley friend, Russ, sent me a link to a Ruth Marcus article, Sarah Palin's fact-free commentary on Paul and BP.  It turns out the Palin-McCain campaign got $2.4M compared to Obama's $900K.  I guess we know now who got the most money from big oil.  Then there is Haliburton which I wish would just go away.
4. I came across an interesting Canadian article, STOP THE UNILINGUAPHOBIA!.  This brings back memories of a fight I had with the minister of education in the province of New Brunswick when we were farming in late seventies and early eighties.  It was clear even then that if you wanted a really good government job in Canada, you needed to be bi-lingual even if you never ran into someone who spoke your second language.  When they announced that the local school where our daughter attended was going to drop some of the French language training,  we organized the community and started fighting the government's (school board's) decision. We ended up debating the issues in letters to the editor in the local paper.  Eventually the minister of education said we should not expect a good education if we lived in the country instead of the city.  That was the end of his career as minister of education.  I know that the school board with help from the provincial government agreed to do some modernization at the local school to help with the language training.  Whether they followed through or not is another question.  I joined Apple Computer not longer after, and we moved away.
5. If you judge from the commercials on television, Apple is serious about the iPad becoming the next thing we cannot live without.  Having worked at Apple for nearly twenty years, I am always a little leery when Steve decides that I need something.  It usually means it is incompatible with what I had before, and I have to buy all new stuff and applications.  While it might look good on the surface, there are always trade-offs when you buy Apple equipment, just ask the iPhone users who are suffering with AT&T service.  Anyway, I was pleased to see this iPad alternative, the Pandigital Novel, pop up yesterday.  It is smaller and less expensive than the iPad and comes with software that gives it easy access to Barnes & Noble's large number of ebooks.  It is built on the Android operating system, comes with a mini-USB port, and is full color.  The price point of $199 is very attractive.  If I am going to buy a gadget that I don't need, getting a cheaper ones saves some money.  I have some more thoughts on the iPad in this article, Some iPad Feedback.

That is it for today from the Crystal Coast where the driveway is still wet and the clouds are still hanging with us, but tomorrow looks great. I am ready for another beach walk and some serious fishing.

If time permits, I will try another run at another post like tomorrow. Fishing could get me to skip a day. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Fortunately American Idol is about to end for the year so I will not have to demonstrate my lack of musical analysis.  I will say that last night I voted three times for Crystal Bowersock. That covers my wife and I and one for good measure.  I think Crystal's performance last night was deserving of a win.

Savoring a Southern Fall

I recently talked to some friends who live in central New Brunswick in Canada.  They were neighbors when we had our cattle farm in the same area in seventies. 

Last week they scrapped frost off their windshields at least three times.

I am glad it was them instead of me.  I am not sure that I have time for a serious winter at this stage in my life.

Winter takes time and planning.  In Tay Creek where we had our farm, you had to be especially careful to pick up your tools in the fall.

The reason was that snow could blanket the ground at any time after the first of October.  It was not that unusual for it to come in November and the ground stay covered until late April.  You could spend a lot of time digging around in the snow for a chain that you thought you left in a certain spot.

Given that history, it was with great pleasure that I snapped the knockout rose picture in the post this morning as I walked back from the mailbox.  Our temperature are still mostly in the eighties so shorts and sandals are still our uniform.

My second crop of tomatoes planted on August 22 have a few serious tomatoes on them already.  I am curious how long they will produce.  Yet I am not concerned about it since fall brings so many other pleasures.

Sunday we went for a wonderful beach walk at Atlantic Beach.  The water has actually warmed a little from earlier in the month.  I am pleased with that since one of things I enjoy most is wading along the shore.

Saturday was as much or more fun.  We went for a boat ride in the morning and hit the beaches in the afternoon.

It is not that cannot go for a boat ride or walk the beaches in Canada in September.  It is that blue jeans are going to your uniform on the beach and boating is going to be pretty nippy.

We have just come through our humid August so having slightly cooler temperatures is a real treat here, but the best of fall is still around the corner for us.  Soon we should get some decent fishing weather, and all of our fall festivals are on tap.

About the only thing I miss is the certainty of cool almost cold weather for Thanksgiving. There is just something wrong about a hot Thanksgiving. Usually we get that cool weather, but we can be warm even later into the year.

Of course all things are relative.  We enjoyed living in Canada and thought fall with its changing colors was a wonderful time especially since the black flies disappeared.  The weather was great for working.  My Canadian friends said September has been their nicest month this year since it rained most of the summer.

Like many others I would not mind if the rain slacked off for October.  We had 8.3 inches on Labor Day and last night we had 2.4 inches.  I know we have had some additional rain during the month.

Still I am not going to complain about my Southern fall, I could be feeling around in a snowbank looking for tools.

The greening of the valley and mountains

It is the start of spring, and the Roanoke Valley is not going to disappoint us.  The grass is turning green, the Bradford pear trees are in full bloom, and the daffodils are probably at their peak.

Certainly they look a little perkier than the ones in my post, Damp Daffodils, from March 27, 2005.

While today the temperatures only got into the mid to upper sixties, the forecast for the next week has the Roanoke area getting to seventy by the end of the week.

I wish it had come a week earlier.  We drove up from the beach earlier in the week.  Just before we left, we had been enjoying some very good beach weather which required shorts.  When I got out of the car in Martinsville to pump some gas, it was pretty obvious that the temperature outside the vehicle had dropped around thirty degrees.

While the temperature is all over the place both at the beach and in the mountains, the swings are becoming more tolerable. Also a cool morning is a lot easier to take with blooming trees and bright sunshine.

I was kayaking on the river by our house earlier in the week.  It was great to be out on the water, and it was especially nice to see some fish jumping.  Before we left, I also saw some strawberry plants blooming down at the coast.

It is no surprise that the grass is starting to grow quickly in Roanoke.  Some eager beavers have already mowed.  Since I have been keeping records for the last four years, we have done our first mowing of the year in Roanoke sometime between March 24 and March 29.

From the looks of our yard, we will once again fall right in that range.  We have a few spots that already could use mowing, but by the middle of next week, the whole yard should be ready for a clipping.

After everyone has done that first mowing, the Valley will be truly green, and I suspect also decorated with Redbuds.  Today we saw the first Redbuds starting to show some color along Route 419 between Oak Grove Plaza and the Post Office.

Early spring in the Shenandoah and Roanoke valleys is about as pretty as spring gets.  A few years ago I issued an invitation to Canadians to visit in early spring. While our Ace Hardware that I mentioned in the post is long gone, spring is still outrageously beautiful here in Virginia and North Carolina.  

April is usually a great month in the south.  You can enjoy all the blooming things, and by then some fresh produce is starting to hit the market. Once you have tired of the beauty in the mountain valleys, you can head to the coast.

Since we have been spending time on the North Carolina coast, we have had fresh local strawberries before the middle of April each year.  It is also in April when the beautiful flowers of Tryon Palace in New Bern, NC are at their peak.  We visited April 20 last year and just missed the tulips but caught lots of other flowers and plenty of warmth.

If you cannot stretch your visit until the middle of April, you can always swing by Newport, NC and visit their Barbecue Festival on April 4 which is billed as the largest "whole-hog" barbecue contest in the US.  I can vouch for the deliciousness of their eastern NC style barbecue.

If you can make the visit last into April, northerners have been know to stick their feet in the southern ocean water before the end of April.

In fact the two people in picture in the post almost had to be dragged off of the beach that April day.

Four years and still writing

Sometimes I briefly lose track of some of my blogs.  I have a secret spot on one of my homepages that takes me to my personal cheat sheet which has links to just about everything that I do on the Internet.

It has been over four years since I first started writing on the Internet.  My first post entitled, My Welcome to Windows, was written on November 23, 2004.

I have easily written a couple of thousand posts since then.  Yet I still enjoy writing. 

In the last few days I have written about things as diverse as the Canadian Parliament being prorogued, using a $199 HD video camera with my Mac, spam causing email censorship, seasonal peace on the beach, the Silver line in Reston, Va. and winter color saving the day.

In addition to regular posting on those blogs, I do a bi-weekly update on my Crystal Coast homepage, and now I a write a blog, Crystal Coast Living, for pay.  I also write articles as the spirit moves me.

I have a real estate blog and contribute to the new Crystal Coast Electronic Village.  I post regularly to the forums at City-Data.

I have tried just about every blog platform that has been a serious contender. I even have a blog using Apple's infamous iWeb. Some of the platforms that I have used have disappeared.

It has been a very interesting four years of writing.  I have certainly learned a lot, met a tremendous number of people, and responded to some very strange requests.

I am pleased that some of my articles and posts have turned out to be hits.  I wrote an article for the Guardian in London.  That was a lot of work, but the traffic it generated was in the tens of thousands.

Some of things that I have written have touched people.  I have received a lot of wonderful notes that keep me writing.  Over the years there have been a few nasty grams but not enough to deter me from enjoying what I am doing.

I am pleased that my travel guides to Swansboro, Emerald Isle, and Beaufort have become very popular.

I have done lots of photo sites also including the waterfront subdivision Cannonsgate, Tryon Palace, fall leaves in Roanoke and a number of other photo sites like  Emerald Isle this summer and Mackerel Morning which is just one of my fishing exploits here on the coast.

I have found that I can only write about things that I have actually experienced. My writing production is therefore limited. There has to be a real connection at some point in my life before I can write about something.

I also need pictures to inspire me.  More often than not I can be found chasing sunsets or other great scenery before I start writing.  Other times we enjoy life and the seasons here on the Crystal Coast, and the stories just come naturally.

I have expanded from photos of sunrises and sunsets into video which is just another way of telling a story.

So far I have had no trouble coming up with topics.

I plan to keep writing.  Perhaps now after four years of lots of online experience, I just might devote more time to my book project which has been on the back burner for a couple of years.

It will be interesting to see what my next year's worth of writing will produce.

The anatomy of a perfect beach day

I might be the wrong person to write this post, but it will interesting to see if others might have different ideas.

I have plenty of beach experience.  My mother told me that I was on the beach before I was a year old.

My beach exploring has involved beaches in exotic places like Australia, Canada, and Hawaii.

However, I will admit to being biased towards the beaches of North Carolina.

While my intention is to talk about the elements that make for a perfect beach day, it is hard to have a perfect beach day unless you are in a pretty good location.

I have seen some great locations yield not so nice experiences.  I still have memories of walking the beautiful sandy northern shores of Prince Edward Island only to find that my ankles were being sand blasted.

I can also remember being on the gorgeous sands of Corolla during a near miss of a hurricane. While both experiences bring back some memories, they do not qualify as perfect beach days.

Let me quickly add, even those experiences were far better than the best day behind a desk in an office.

To me a perfect beach day has to start with the right temperatures. It has to be just warm enough to be warm without being hot enough to cook your body.

My personal perfect beach temperature is around 84 degrees with a very gentle breeze. As to water temperature, I prefer around 80 degrees.

A water temperature any colder provides a little shock to the body when you first hit the water.  That's okay especially on hotter days, but not on my perfect day.

The wave action that makes for a great day depends on your age. I had someone write last night looking for calmer waters because of school age children. I'm fine in the waves and usually enjoy waves more than dead calm, but I understand someone wanting quiet waters for children.

We always handled the kids in the water issue by me being in the water whenever they were there.  That worked until they got to those teenage years when I handled it by surf fishing not far from where they were swimming.

While those aren't perfect solutions, my time in the water was never exceeded by our youngsters.  I think it was all those years of training that kept me on top of the situation.

Part of the perfect beach day also requires that the number of people on the beach fit that hard to define goal of  enough people to feel like you are at the beach without being so many that you feel crowded.

A good beach chair, something to quench my thirst, a nice towel for drying off, and some great company pretty well complete the picture for me.

Down on the Crystal Coast, I think we hit that perfect day last Saturday.  Here are a few slides from the adventure.