A Blog In Search of a Tagline
After a couple of months of dithering, I started a Tumblr today. I’m not sure what the posting schedule will be, but I’ll be posting pictures that I take on my various trips around and outside of San Antonio there. I’m beginning with a picture that I took from the airplane as we landed in Salt Lake City.
Now to see if I can figure out how to add the Tumblr widget to the home page of this blog . . . .
I’m not a big fan of computer games. I play those Bejeweled-style things where you match up three or more matching items, sometimes when I’m stressed out I play a few rounds of Sudoku as a sort of aid to meditation, and I’m experimenting with Papa Pear Saga, but I’m about at the end of my interest on that one. I’ve always been kind of curious about video games, though, and have kind of wanted to try more.
And if there’s one thing I like to do, it’s go places and walk around. If I can meet new people in the process, that’s a plus. So, when I discovered the existence of Pokémon GO, I figured that I could go places and walk around, meet new people, and possibly satisfy some of my curiosity regarding video games.
I downloaded the game the day before we left on our vacation and went around the block capturing my first few Pokémon. I giggled the whole time.
San Antonio International Airport has quite a few Pokéstops (and that’s where I figured out what the heck those things were and how to use them; I gotta tell you, “Flying Manbaby” had me really confused for quite a while). Also, the Pokéstops are apparently left over from another game called Ingress, where they marked points of interest, and they completed a remodel in 2014. Somewhere along the line, the interesting part of some of the Pokéstops got lost, I think.
Nevertheless, I did make some progress in figuring the game out while we waited. I also caught my first Pokémon of the trip almost as soon as we landed. There was a Ponyta on the baggage carousel. That was pretty exciting, if I do say so.
As we traveled around the Salt Lake City area, I caught more Pokémon and Alex helped me figure out reliably get a Pokéstop to cough up its pokéballs, eggs, etc. (you spin the center circle by swiping). I didn’t bump into any other grown-ups playing Pokémon GO in Salt Lake City, though. A few kids, but no adults.
We didn’t have phone or internet service in Yellowstone itself, unfortunately, so I will never know what Pokémon or Pokéstops I would have seen there. However, so many people were playing in our hotel in West Yellowstone that I caught a number of them in my room, where I still was on roaming, but at least I had access to the hotel’s wi-fi.
We stopped for lunch in Jackson on our way from Yellowstone to Vernal, Utah. I had phone service there, but the Pokémon GO servers were busy, so I never even saw a damn Pokéstop on that part of the trip.
We had service again in Vernal, Utah. I caught a few in the hotel and hit a few Pokéstops in Dinosaur National Monument and again on our half-hour return to Salt Lake City.
I caught my final Pokémon of the trip at the gate at the airport for our return flight. It was another Ponyta. That made a nice bookend to the 2016 vacation Pokémon. I know that those two Ponyta and everything in between it were from that trip. Now, to wee if the Chicago trip (18 days away!) will bookend itself so nicely.
This weekend, I hope to visit an actual park, rather than just picking up stray Pokémon in the parking lot at work, and possibly to return to Alex and my project of trying to walk the entire Riverwalk. We’re down to Mission San Jose, so two more missions and we’re done.
And I only cracked a National Geographic open once. I’d better get going on that.
It was a great trip, even if I did end up spending quite a lot of it behind the wheel of a car. I’m not a huge fan of driving, but I figured I could handle a couple of days of long-haul driving. I totally underestimated the size of Yellowstone. You could drop San Antonio in the middle of the park and there’d still be about 19 miles in every direction left over. So, yeah. I spent a *lot* of time behind the wheel of the car.
I did take nearly 700 pictures, though. Well, since I was driving for quite a lot of the time, Alex took probably one in five as my agent. I’d say, “Ooh! That’s pretty/interesting/whatever! Get a picture of that!” and he’d pick up my phone and snap at least one picture, sometimes several, to get the subject from different angles as we drove.
I’m supposed to have a new post out tomorrow, and since I’m behind on the National Geographic reading, I guess that I’ll probably write about Temple Square in Salt Lake City, since that was our first destination on the trip. Well, it was our second, but the first was the Family History Library and while I think I may have found an ancestor’s birth records I can’t be sure that I did, so I’ll probably mention it in passing, rather than dedicating a whole post to it.
Or should I talk about playing Pokemon Go? Since I love to see new things and really love walking, I figured that Pokemon Go would be a good thing to try, and so I tried it on this trip. I should have been asleep half an hour ago now, so it doesn’t matter which I will do, I’m certainly not going to get it done now.
This post should launch on the day when I’ve been telling my friends and co-workers that I’m going to be eaten by a grizzly bear. Alex and I will be on our first day of two in Yellowstone on Friday, July 15 (Leap Year is so weird; last year, Friday was July 17 so the corresponding Friday this year should be the 16th, but because of Leap Year, it becomes the 15th). We fully intend to leave the path and go at least 100 yards into the backcountry. The official statistics say that something like 5% go farther than 100 yards from a paved path. So, since I like to live on the edge, I fully intend to go at least 101 yards from a paved path.
However, I’m not an idiot. At least, I hope I’m not. We’ll have fruit and water and probably something salty (because passing out from hyponatremia’s not my idea of a good time) with us and I fully intend to tell the park rangers that we’re relative newbies and ask where is a prudent place to experiment with the backcountry. I won’t have a keyboard with me, so I won’t be writing any new posts until I get back. You’ll know on or around July 21 where we ended up going.
Now, on to the issue:
In 1970, Iraqi Kurdistan achieved an autonomous status within Iraq. Iraqi Kurds had their own capital, Hewler/Erbil (depending on if the language is Kurdish or Arabic), their own President and Prime Minister (I’m not entirely sure how that works in practice), even their own army (the Peshmerga).
Since the deposition of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraqi Kurdistan has had a sort of Renaissance. The Kurds sold the oil under their land and used the money to build universities, to establish a health care system, and to upgrade their cities with malls and skyscrapers.
In The Other Iraq, Shea follows two Iraqi men, Kurdish Botan Sharbarzheri, who dropped out of school to join the Peshmerga, and Arabic Sami Hussein, who joined ISIS. Through the tales of these men, we see how Iraqi Kurdistan has suffered from the forces of ISIS.
By Shea’s final visit to Iraqi Kurdistan, Sharbarzheri has returned to school to study international relations and Hussein has most likely been executed. The of Iraqi Kurdistan is a shadow of its former self, with much of its population gone to join family in other parts of the world or just become straight-out refugees.
Tsunami Memories discusses Chaskielberg’s photographs of the people of Otsuchi, Japan, a town that was destroyed by the 2011 tsunami. Inspired by faded photographs that Chaskielberg saw in a waterlogged photo album, Chaskielberg took black-and-white photographs of the residents of Otsuchi in the places where they lived, worked, or played. He took his photos at night with a long exposure so that the images turn out slightly blurred and then added colors on his computer using a palette based on the colors in the damaged photo album.
I’ve basically gotten no sleep tonight, because I’ve been too busy trying to get packed and get my last-minute cleaning done. Alex is sleeping right now and I have to get him up in pretty soon so that he can get his last-minute stuff done. I’ll sleep while he does that, then he’ll make sure I get up an hour before the cab gets here to take us to the airport. That way I can get some breakfast in and shower before we leave.
And then we’ll be off to Salt Lake City, Yellowstone, and Dinosaur National Monument. I’ve queued up blog posts for the week (only one National Geographic post because I’m a smidge behind on my reading) and when I get back, I’ll probably temporarily suspend the My Travel Memories posts to write up this trip. I’ll also hopefully have read at least the May 2013 and possibly even the April 2016 issue so that I can get those written up as well. One more issue after that and I’ll have finished reading four years of issues (1888 and then April 2013 through April 2016).
Less than 12 hours until we’re in Salt Lake City. If all goes as planned.
I don’t know when I’m going to get the reading done for this post, but I’m going to get started writing it up anyhow. Hopefully I’ll get the reading done on June 28 or 29 and get this knocked out by the end of the month. I may also get a start on the July 13 post, which will probably be another San Antonio city park, between now and then, as well.
The day after this goes live, by the way, Alex and I are leaving for our Salt Lake City/Yellowstone trip. Assuming that the flight is uneventful, we’ll be landing pretty early in the day, getting our luggage and our rental car, and heading off to Pando, the most massive single organism in the world.
July 6 – I was sort of close. I got part of the reading done in very early July but then stalled. I intended to finish up the second article while waiting for a doctor for some jaw pain I’ve been having lately. I got right in to see the doctor and got right back out again. It’s now July 6 and I’m just now starting on the writing.
First, the meaning of the term “want” had moved from “the lack of” to “a desire for” by such an extent by my own childhood, that it took me a very long time to figure out that “waste not, want not” didn’t mean “if you don’t waste it, you won’t want it.”
Second, this article returns us to the Future of Food series for the first time since I’m-not-sure-when. It’s been so long that the “future of food” tag doesn’t even show up on my widget.
Now, onward.
A shocking amount of food is wasted in the world. Some of it is food that was purchased in grocery stores or restaurants and went uneaten, but a lot of it is actually disposed of at the site where it is grown. Sometimes it comes out malformed and the buyers, either the shoppers themselves or the buyers who work for the retail industry. Sometimes there is actually something wrong with the produce, such as a fungal infection or an infestation by parasites.
We follow Tristram Stuart as he puts together meals from discarded food. We see him buying crookneck squash that took their name just a little too seriously, for example. These squash become part of a squash tempura, turnip dumpling, and zucchini noodle meal.
In this article, we go on to France, Kenya, Peru, and back to the United States (Las Vegas, this time) to see what Stuart, and others, are doing to use unsalable food.
With the increasing warming of the Arctic region, several countries, including Canada, Norway, and Russia are attempting to harvest the natural resources that are coming closer to (and sometimes actually reaching) the surface. Norway is drilling for oil in the Arctic Circle, and Canada is mining gold and iron. Additionally, some ships (including a cruise ship) are taking advantage of the melting ice to take the proverbial “Northwest Passage” from Europe to Asia through northern Canada.
It’s not all rosy, though. The Arctic Circle is so remote that workers need to be brought in in groups, the workers then live in those groups for weeks or months, and then they get shipped home. Also, ecological damage is being done. There are no oil pipelines that far north, so the oil has to be dumped into tankers, which leads to the risk of an oil spill. And, of course, mining always leads to damage.
The Azolla Event, which is the proliferation of azolla fern that led our carbon-rich atmosphere to go into an ice age, locked up more carbon than just the carbon in the fern. Some carbon dioxide was dissolved in the water and once the water froze, the carbon that was dissolved in it was trapped. Cold Rush points out that the melting ice is releasing further carbon into the atmosphere.
1. It looks like my step count will likely be a lot better for June than it was for May. It’s bedtime on June 9 and I’m done with my average step count through June 11. I will still have to get the actual steps on those days, but if I’m two days ahead already, I doubt that I’ll end up behind like I was in May. Also, hopefully July will be pretty easy to take care of, despite the 2nd and 3rd being weekend days because July will be our big vacation and I suspect that between running through two airports twice and visiting the Fishlake National Forest*, Salt Lake City, the Golden Spike National Historic Site, Yellowstone, and Dinosaur National Monument (also, possibly Craters of the Moon National Park), I can probably come up with a few steps. It probably won’t be as step-heavy as Italy and New York were because we will have a rental car with us. I have pretty high hopes for August, though, since we’ll be spending four days in Chicago without a rental car.
2. Originally, our 2017 vacation was supposed to be our return to Europe. To that end, I started saving up for our 2017 vacation when we returned from our 2014 vacation. Since we’re not going to Europe, but Canada instead, I’m now done saving up for that trip. Now I am going to continue saving money for two smaller trips next year — a long weekend in Southern California (the last time I was there, Alex was a baby) and the eclipse weekend. Let’s see how that goes.
3(a). I still have a box full of envelopes of pictures to scan, but the other day I passed the 20,000 picture mark. I really need to remember to pick up two more SD cards to back up the pictures. Then I have to remember to take them to my safe deposit box. No sense making a backup if I then lose it in a fire or something.
3(b). My dad has a shelf full of genealogical materials. After I finish my photo scanning project I will, likely, begin scanning all of that in. Wish me luck.
*Because if you’re that close to the most massive single organism on the planet, it would be foolish not to see (and photograph!) it. I doubt we’re going to get far enough east on our planned 2018 trip to Washington and Oregon to visit the largest organism in terms of area.
So far, this issue is going much better than the previous one. Let’s see if I can keep up this momentum.
A couple of times in my life I have traveled somewhere just in time for something interesting to happen. The most notable of these was my family’s trip to the UK. I had breast cancer in 2001 (it’ll be 15 years this October and I haven’t seen any sign of it since then, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay at this point) and decided that I wasn’t going to die without ever having been to the UK, so we made our plans. As we finished the plans, we realized that we’d be there just in time for the Queen’s Golden Jubliee celebrations. We also were in London on June 7, which was the day of the World Cup match between England and Argentina, a match that England was apparently expected to lose, but which it won.
How does this tie into my National Geographic project? For 2016, National Geographic is doing a series on the National Park Service in honor of the Park Service’s centennial. I didn’t even know that 2016 was going to be the centennial for the National Park Service when I planned a three-national-parks-and-a-national-forest trip which includes the oldest National Park, Yellowstone. This was a complete coincidence.
Just like it says on the label, this article goes into the history of the National Park Service and tells how they decided on a single vision for national parks. The photographs in this one are awesome, even for National Geographic photos. Wilkes set his camera up at an elevation and took thousands of pictures of parks (Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and West Potomac Park) over one day. Then he pasted them together into panoramas showing the vantage point through the night and the daytime.
This is Your Brain on Nature is about the health benefits of getting out and getting some “green time.” Williams even goes so far as to say that people may have lower incidences of physical ailments if they live within half a mile of green space. On the other hand, there is the “urban advantage,” where people who live in cities tend to have have longer, healthier lives than those in rural or suburban areas. Some of the “urban advantage” probably comes from access to health care, and others come from being able to walk to destinations rather than having to travel in a car to get there. I wonder, too, if the presence of urban parks makes a difference.
And tomorrow the credit card payment should clear and I can pay it off.
In 2016, Alex and I will be adding five new states to our collection: Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Not that we’ll be doing any of them in too much detail. We’ll be traveling to Pando (never pass up the opportunity to visit the world’s most massive single organism (as opposed to the largest, which is a fungus in Oregon)), Salt Lake City, Golden Spike National Historic Site, Yellowstone National Park, and Dinosaur National Monument.
I’ll be getting my city fix in August when Alex and I are planning a four-day trip to Chicago. Hopefully I’ll be able to take some pictures to spruce up my Northern Illinois Destinations posts while there.