Two trips

One thing I wanted to do this weekend was check out some of New York that I haven't been to
maybe ever. On Saturday I went out toward Pharsalia, in not so good light, and the Tioghniouga Wildlife area. Here is some of what I saw. Check out the hawks at the end, especially the big picture, I thought I saw two, who went away and came back, but the two who came back were different, I think. The first two were Redtails. Coming back was an accipiter with a fish! Maybe a Coopers Hawk.







Included here are some pictures from today's trip to Port Jervis, Barryville, Hankins and parts north along Route 97.

8MinutesOnHigh: Short Thoughts

8MinutesOnHigh: Short Thoughts

Short Thoughts

I think I need a place for short thoughts. I'm going to try to make it here. If I can make a link to here I'll move this to that link.

Great response for Large Generalizations and Travel Time. Nice get. Thank you. I think people liked the pictures.

I'm going to try to make another placeholder for images. New ones, and newly scanned ones. I have some photos that I am really attached to, that I want to publish here.

Elegy for an Old Man

I first think of him as strong. A powerful character, my uncle. As strong a personality as ever I have met, and he was way under 5'5". He was difficult, near impossible to have a conversation with "Wait, wait, just wait", he would say. This meant it was his turn to talk. He always went first. He could interrupt. You couldn't.
He was kind. He was fair. He was measured. There could have been no better occupation for Uncle Paul than an accountant from IBM.
He was ambitious. Always looking for an angle. A legal angle. He was honest. As honest as any man. He loved his kids. He loved his grandkids. He loved his wife. They were a perfect couple, it seemed to me, with the eyes of an outsider. She, so poised and dignified, he, so correct and forceful.
He knew what he knew and he knew he was right.
In my youth, I was considered difficult. Most of my siblings knew how to get along. I was stubborn. Wrong. I liked to argue. I knew I was different.
After my Aunt passed and I began spending more time with The Unc, a light came on. I wasn't different. I was Donohue!
He never spent time professing his Irishness. But he was Irish. No question. He loved his faith.
We spent some time in the bowels of the Broome County Courthouse, and online, and at St Pat's and other places, trying to discover the correct spelling of Donohue. Chucky Donahue spelled it differently. The Unc and I found it. He was right.
He loved it when I talked about his Grandfather. "The Old Goat" I called him, Thomas Donohue.
I loved it when, on the phone, he would always great me with "Hey Steph!" When I came over it was always, "Hey Steph, come in come in!" Stephano Yevanes he would call me. I never knew what it meant.
He like to be called The Unc. In the phone book of my cell phone he is listed that way. The Unc.
He was a late braker and I hated riding with him. But I loved going to the races with him. My question was always, would the six hours in the car, be worth the day at the track, if we went to FingerLakes. It was.
I will miss Paul Donohue.
This is for him:

Old Men
by Ogden Nash

People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when;
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies.

Politics - Part III

Its not a war. Neither is the war on drugs or the war on poverty. But these bastards were just a handful of bad guys. The guys that knocked down those two towers. Just bad people. Criminals. Organized maybe. So that makes them organized crime. But it wasn't a country. So it isn't a war.

Ok. The Taliban was the ostensible government of Afghanistan. So we had a war with them. We won. The war in Afghanistan was legit.

The war on terrorists is, at the end of the day, a large action against an organized band of criminals. Crazies maybe. Murderers for sure, but its not a war. How many people were involved? Several handsful? That's not a country. Shouldn't be a war.

Get them. Make a huge effort to get them, go into Tora Bora to get them, oh wait, we had to go into Iraq. That was a war on Iraq. Not terrorists. Now there's terrorists there.

Don't call it a war. Its just criminals. Bad people. Dangerous dangerous people. Criminals.

Politics - Part II

George Dumbya likes to say that the terrorists have hijacked one of the worlds great religions. He's never been on more solid ground than when he talks this way. It makes me wonder if this could have possible been an original thought, or if his PR people gave him that one. Either way its true.

I think that George II has hijacked another one. Call it Christianity because if you granularize it you lose the concept. I don't think that George the Lesser has that much religion in him. I read an article once that said that he went to a retreat - near the beginning of his political carrier - maybe Karl Rove had something to do with it - and that when he came out of the retreat he could tell you less about the Bible than every other man (it was for men only) that went there.

I suspect it was just a PR move!

Dr. Evil, aka Karl Rove has lead George into hijacking the Christianity because he, in his wicked little dark room somewhere in the bowels of the White House, recognized that Christian Churches presented an untapped organization. Grassroots political organizations take years to setup. Karl just usurped what was already there. That was part A. Part B was to get the people in this organization so riled up that they would go vote against something that they couldn't bear. In 2001 and in 2004, it was Gays.

The gays might have showed a little political savvy and left their marriage maneuvers until after Al Gore had been elected. Once the Republican war got started the untapped, and I think unspoken, distrust of Muslims helped rally the Christians toward their leader.

Democrats have started talking about the Christ of the Beatitudes. I think this is wise. Christ said "Blessed are the peacemakers" (Brian said "Blessed are the cheesemakers"). Christ said turn the other cheek. And Christ said other things that amount to my house is welcome to all sinners and love thy neighbor.

George the Dumb said he was religious and that he's against abortion and that he's against gay marriage, but does that make him a Christian? What about being against War, against cruelty, against greed?

What about compassion?

Well you say, George says that's for Churches and Charities? George doesn't direct Churches. George directs the government! The government - still to this day - is not a Church!

He plays on the fears of the Christians about gays. That's not Christian. He lead a war of choice. Definitely not Christian. He shows no Christian compassion all the while talking about compassion which makes him a hypocrite. What I learned in Catholic School is that Christ hated hypocrites most of all.

The Christians that I know, who believe in George the Dark (or is it George Lite?) don't think that he has behaved well as president, but they support him because he talks about God and right and wrong and compassion like a Christian would. He tells them he's one of them.

He's not.

He's a liar.

I think Christians should make a break from George the Incapable, George the Inconsistant, George the Liar exactly because he does not act in a Christian way.

Irrespective of politics and competence (subjects for future discussions) George the Second is not only not worthy of their support as a Christian. I'm not sure he even IS one.

Politics - Part I

I can't help feeling that the Moussaoui verdict is the correct one. My reasoning isn't so much reasoning as a feeling that you just don't execute someone for the thing that they didn't do. I'm sure he's a bad guy. I think he has emotional problems (who doesn't) but that he's sane, whatever that means. He's definately a little boingy in that he asked to be executed and after the verdict said something like America, I won and you didn't. If he really had wanted to be executed, this verdict should be viewed as a loss. Muslims around the world will now look at American justice and its civility, or at least they won't do the oposite, which they might have if this jury had voted for the death penalty. Do we care what Muslims think? Yeah, as much as we care what any religious group thinks, or any group with a billion people in it. Silly to say 'what they think' though, as this is not a homogenious group.

Still I would like to see the war on Muslims, the war in the Middle East, the war on terrorism, or whatever you call it, be fought with public relations.

Killing people isn't good.