Just for the Record on the Turning Point

There hasn't been a lot of political postings from me recently because I've already said what I can about my beliefs and the horrifying failures of this nation to put and keep a racist, TV-star con-man in charge of our country.

Last night was a turning point in that military leaders have spoken out against the brazen and ham-handed Constitutional violation of the right of peaceful assembly just so the con-man could have a photo-op holding up a bible in front of a church.

Nothing else has done it, but this has to be it. We can't wait five more months to election day with pandemic raging and the possibility of a race war followed by a harsh, government crack-down. I'm calling it that trump is done. He may or may not resign. He may flail around in his bunker. But without the backing of the U.S. Military, he is neutered as he should have been many years ago just for for his sexual offenses.

Here is some of what I posted yesterday on Facebook and Twitter. Just for the record.

In response to this article from the Washington Post:

"Shame, shame on the U.S. Park Police! You know better! I know you had good legal advice in the past and you could get it now if you listened to the right advisers--those farthest away from trump and Secretary "Coal & Petroleum" Bernhardt!"

And here's the Post on Sec of Defense, Mike Esper, criticizing excessive force.

In response to the Post article on former Sec of Defense, Jim Mattis, I said:

"We need more of this. It's still not too late."

And then,

"The Joints Chiefs of Staff have laid down a marker that they uphold the Constitution and will not interfere with peaceful protest! Stay safe out there, People! and video the perps of violence from the left and especially from the right!"

The Waterfall, sorta Part 2

Vaughan's poem of yesterday had been weighing heavenly on me as I realized that I had to get back up with the Waterfall. My eldest grandson is "quaranteening" with us as he went on our trip to help his uncle move to Kansas for grad school. It might be a little because his parents have found out that he is a "teen." It was good to take him up there to share a place I love and give him some exercise.

It's been a mostly sedentary life for me recently. I was swimming laps before the corona hit. I have my gardening, but aerobic exercise hasn't been high on my list. My feet having given out to peripheral neuropathy that neither my foot doctor nor my neurologist know what to do with. We're testing different dosages of gapapentin to see what works best without making me stone-cold sleepy.

We left about 8 a.m. still early enough before the heat of the day. We drove up the first mile and parked. In my running days, I would think nothing of doing the whole thing right out my door, seven miles round trip. The first mile is solid elevation gain. This time we parked by the trail head.

The sun rises late over the Wasatch. And day-long shadows lie in the canyons. Right at the start is an inviting passage into the greenery. The first steps follow an old irrigation pipe on a level grade except where a landslide has dug into the mountainside. It then climbs we see what a lot of locals stop at for the waterfall in Centerville Canyon. It's more of a cascade to me.

The Water-Fall (Deuel Creek, Centerville Canyon, Davis County, Utah with my Grandson)

The Water-fall

BY HENRY VAUGHAN (1621-1695)

With what deep murmurs through time’s silent stealth

Doth thy transparent, cool, and wat’ry wealth

Here flowing fall,

And chide, and call,

As if his liquid, loose retinue stay’d

Ling’ring, and were of this steep place afraid;

The common pass

Where, clear as glass,

All must descend

Not to an end,

But quicken’d by this deep and rocky grave,

Rise to a longer course more bright and brave.

May the Forth Be with You!

After a restless night dreaming that I had gone to Europe including a free trip to Paris on a train with no seat, only a place to lie on a flat-bed car watching coracles on the river, I struggled to consciousness only to find that pestilence still ravages the land, a pest still resides in the White House, and perhaps impervious to pesticide, a killer wasp is murdering our honey bees!

While still avoiding the new clichés of the date, these photos of the Firth of Forth from last Summer seem to cheer me a little:

Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland looking to the West up the Firth of Forth

Boats beached at Lower Largo

Archaeology and Me, Part 2

918 A.D.
Her wærð Ecgbriht abbud unscyldig ofslegen foran to middan sumera on .xvi. Kalendas Iulii, þy ilcan dæge wæs Sancte Ciricius tid þæs þroweres, mid his geferum, þæs ymb .iii. niht sende Æþelflæd fyrde on Wealas abræc Brecenanmere þær genam þæs cinges wif feower ðritiga sume.

In modern English:
Here before midsummer, on 16 June, Abbot Ecgberht, guiltless, was killed with his companions. The same day it was the festival of St Ciricus the martyr. And three days later, Aethelflaed [Lady of Mercia, daughter of Alfred the Great] sent an army into Wales and broke down Brecon Mere, and took the wife of the king as one of thirty four [captives]. (from Swanton via Lane & Redknap).

This time we can be thankful that the victors wrote the history because this entry in the the Mercian version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (B) records the destruction of a royal residence that appears to have been confirmed by recent archaeological investigation. The thing is, some of my DNA was very possibly, maybe likely involved, if not at least present at least in some of the eyes looking over the nearby hills to the smoke from the burning.

Easter Poetry by Henry Vaughan (1653)

Therefore to weep because thy course is run,
Or droop like flow'rs, which lately lost the sun,I cannot yield, since Faith will not permitA tenure got by conquest to the pit.For the great Victor fought for us, and HeCounts ev'ry dust that is laid up of thee.Besides, Death now grows decrepit, and hathSpent the most part both of its time and wrath.That thick, black night, which mankind fear'd, is tornBy troops of stars, and the bright day's forlorn.The next glad news—most glad unto the just!—Will be the trumpet's summons from the dust.

Archaeology and Me

The images of body casts from Pompeii haunted me in grade school. I didn't help that we were in the shadow of sleeping Mount Rainier. It hasn't blown for a few hundred years, but St. Helens did.

Everything Egypt fascinated me and a few of us in about third grade had our own "Egypt Game" that we were going to be archaeologists. Not sure how I even came up with the word that I still have to spell check. Tutankhamun fascinated me and I saw his golden face in 1978.

Seventh Grade Science did me in when I met my first archaeologist, Dr. James Daugherty of Washington State University. We were on a Scout 50-miler hike on the Olympic Coast, Washington. We provided some service hours repairing and mucking out the settling ponds from the hydro-pressure water used in the excavation of a Makah Longhouse at Cape Alava that had been anaerobically preserved in a mudslide for almost 300 years. When pushed forward by my Dad to talk with Dr. Daugherty because I was interested in being an archaeologist, my 13-year-old little mind balked at his advice to study Science.

"Study Science, young man!"