Journal Entries
Following the Colors South (a rant)
Posted Oct 21, 2006
Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia – October 21, 2006
We stayed here with friends two months ago. Since then we have spent time exploring the Blue Ridge mountains, Pennslvania anthracite mines, the Finger Lakes and the Thousand Islands areas of upstate New York and watching the leaves change in Vermont and New Hampshire. We’ve been playing three or four sets of doubles tennis here every day. The leaves in Virginia have begun to turn scarlet, red, yellow and orange.
A nice thing about retirement is going to the movie matinees during the week. We saw “The Departed” today with Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. It was well worth the matinee ticket price. Most of the audience were seniors who hobbled slowly out of the theatre, blocking our way.
The lake is virtually vacant during the week. It is surrounded for the most part by vacation homes that are only occupied on the weekend. The people that own these homes have assets that they park in a second home. As investments they have done well over the last three or four years. What makes this area especially attractive is very low real estate taxes and cheap hydro-electric power. I’ve always wanted waterfront property and always felt I was late to the party.
The gloom and doom sentiments causing weak demand for lake front homes has sharply dissipated in the last two months. The impact on consumer sentiment of gas prices falling from $3.12 to $1.99 has sharply boosted consumer confidence in a short period just in time for the mid-term elections.
We requested absentee ballots from Florida several times over the last two months, but they never arrived. It’s our fault for being registered as Green and Democrat. We will have to return home to vote.
The situation in Iraq is grim. A respected scientific think-tank doing a cluster sample estimates that 600,000 Iraqis have died in four years, ten times the official US estimates. I’ve only heard one possible viable option for avoiding an even bloodier civil war. Perhaps we could divide the country in a federalist scheme with great autonomy granted to Shiite, Sunni and Kurd regions and mass transplantation of non-conforming populations. One wishes that ethnic partition had occurred to the British when they dominated the region. Why does this remind me so much of the French colonialist legacy of mistakes in Indo-China?
On the bright side, Terminator 2 was shown on TV last night without commercial interruption during a rare period of insomnia. One only wishes that the US Presidency did not require the candidate to be born in the USA. I’d trust Arnold to pull us out of this ridiculous dilemma. But, let’s see if democracy really works in two weeks.
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time" - Abraham Lincoln
"Yeah..well..maybe" - Formerly Phred
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Latest reply: Oct 21, 2006
Markers
Posted Oct 18, 2006
Pennhall, Virginia
October 18, 2006
You could easily overlook the little graveyard by the side of the gravel road. There are about 20 graves clustered together under two oak trees. The simplest markers are simply a stone moved from nearby. Perhaps no one knew the words to carve a remembrance. It was illegal to teach slaves to read or write. Some of the gravestones have a few words carved rudely “Fannie -1909”. Others with dates are from 1906 and 1913.
These people worked the fields and at a mansion just down the gravel road called “Pennhall”. They may have been slaves who stayed on to work the farm for the masters after the Civil War ended in 1865. They were poor people, in contrast to those that lived in the big house.
There is one marker made of concrete which has broken in half and is flat in the dirt. I pick it up to try to reset it. There are worms making a home there so I put it back. There is no sign of the old slave quarters.
A local electric company purchased the mansion and grounds and uses the house for employee meetings in the country. They lease the land to local farmers. A huge black bull moves lazily to the middle of the road, blocking our exit for a time.
http://community.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=554924131
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Latest reply: Oct 18, 2006
Accidents of Geography
Posted Oct 10, 2006
Lake George, New York – 10 October, 2006
We are parked under an oak tree on Lake George. Acorns have been landing on the RV metal roof all night like small cannon balls.
There are a series of lakes and rivers that nearly connect New York City and distant Montreal on the St Lawrence River. The Hudson flows north from New York City. Near Albany, navigator Henry Hudson found the Hudson to be too shallow to be navigable, but the river was accessible by smaller boats to near Lake George.
A small strip of land, Ticonderoga (land between the waters), separates Lake George from Lake Champlain. The wide Richelieu River flowing out of Lake Champlain allows access to Montreal with only a short portage near Montreal. It was inevitable that a clash of the French and British superpowers would occur at Ticonderoga.
In 1758, British General Abercromby led 16,000 British and Colonial troops in an attack on 3,200 French defenders of Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga. The badly outnumbered French prevailed and Abercromby lost 1,900 men, a third of which belonged to the “Black Watch” regiment.
The following year British General Jeffrey Amherst returned. The French had lost men in other battles and the smaller French garrison retreated after a four-day seige, blowing up the powder magazine and rendering Fort Carillon unusable. Amherst began construction of Fort Ticonderoga and a British war fleet on Lake Chaplain.
On May 10, 1775, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold with 83 “Green Mountain boys” rowed across Lake Champlain, surprised a sleeping sentry and captured Fort Ticonderoga. In fairness, the news about the initial skirmishes at Lexington and at Concord three weeks earlier had not reached the fort. That winter, the Ticonderoga cannons were dragged on sledges over the snow to Dorchester Heights in Boston leading to the British evacuation of Boston Harbor on April 14, 1776.
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Latest reply: Oct 10, 2006
Would you mind a reflecting sign
Posted Oct 7, 2006
White Mountains, New Hampshire – 7 October, 2006
The autumn colors here in the New Hampshire White Mountains are coming on strong. The vivid reds, yellows, pinks and oranges are strongly psychedelic when the sunshine hits the leaves.
The pictures were looking washed out compared with what was really there. Google has a free image editing program called Picassa. A few clicks on “color temperature… fill light… shadows… highlights” made dramatic differences in the images. Mrs. Phred registers her shock and dismay that I’m touching up the digital pictures, but I explain I’m making them look more real, not better than real. She asks if I can touch her up a bit. I tell her she look fine.
We plan to stay here a little longer then follow the colors south to the palm trees. There’s a municipal tennis court in the village nearby. The town theatre shows a movie every day at 7:30 PM. We hiked six miles though the White National forest today, mostly either uphill or downhill. There are big rocks in the paths here. At one time, I could have jogged the whole thing in an hour. There is a section of the Appalachian Train entering Vermont that we want to try today.
Here are some “enhanced” pictures of New England in autumn.
http://community.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=554630397
“Would you mind a reflecting sign
Just let it shine
within your mind
and show you, the colors
that are real”
-Blood, Sweat and Tears, “Spinning Wheel
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Latest reply: Oct 7, 2006
I think I Can
Posted Oct 4, 2006
Mt. Washington Cog Railway – October 4, 2006
“I think I can…I think I can” said the little engine that could.
The Mt. Washington cog railroad was approved by the New Hampshire state legislature in 1866. It was the world’s first cog railroad. Some state legislators hooted and suggested approving an extension to the moon. However, the railway opened in 1869 and President Ulysses S. Grant brought his family to take the ride two months later. A lodge at the top offered the affluent cool summer views.
I stick out my head to snap some pictures and end up with tiny coal chunks in my hair and on my face. These locomotives look like a fire on the mountain from ten miles away. They burn over a ton of soft (bituminous) coal on each ascent. They force a huge amount of air through the burning coal to produce the steam and blow black smoke and coal chunks up though the stack... After a mile we stop to take on water.
The Appalachian trail intersects the rail line near the summit. The New Hampshire segment of the trail is considered the most rugged and difficult for hikers. There are hundreds of stone cairns along the trail here. We see one lone hiker. Hikers have been known to “moon” the trains but this hiker disappoints us.
As we approach the summit visibility drops to 30 feet. Winds today are forecast at 50 to 70 MPH. It is cold. I remember the rule of thumb from flying that the temperature drops two degrees centigrade for every thousand foot of elevation gain.
The coal powered steam cog train grinds to the top at 6.288 feet in just over an hour at an average speed of 3 MPH. We have ridden cog trains in Scotland and Switzerland but nothing with such archaic engines.
At the 20 minute stop at the summit, 75 old men from two trains head for the three urinals and two toilets. Time passes slowly. I can only shudder to consider what the women must be enduring.
Here are some pictures of this unique three mile railway:
http://community.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=554585269
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Latest reply: Oct 4, 2006
Phred Firecloud
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