To mark my solidarity with all recent gun-control marches (I never see any marching at these things; plenty of strolling and slogging, even some lollygagging, but no marching), rallies, protests, demonstrations, cortéges, and various uncategorized shindigs – all lead loosely by the eternal flame of youth – I bought this symbol of my support:

AR-15 chambered for 5.56 NATO, custom-made by Locked & Loaded Arms, Seabrook, TX

This was quite a sacrifice for the cause.  At $1300, it cost money I could have spent on more necessary things (“like us”, say the cats).  But who can put a price on solidarity?

I did not need or want this rifle.  I already own more powerful and useful rifles.  I don’t particularly care for the 5.56 round; I don’t need the excess of accessories (though I admit the stainless steel muzzle brake is rather nifty); I don’t need 30-round magazines. Truth be told, I’m an old-fashioned man who prefers the pleasing human/machine interaction of a lever-action rifle.

But I felt moved to help.  Having just renewed my NRA membership for three years, I can fill a role the recent gun control drama badly needs.  For that role, I understand that I need an AR-15 with a frightening appearance.  There is nobody and nothing I wish to assault, and I don’t have a clue how to go about assaulting anything anyway, but it seems I must own an “assault rifle” to properly fill my role.

After all, with my millions of other NRA brothers and sisters I’ve been called a terrorist, a child-killer, a Nazi, a redneck f***er and other fun names…well, I must do what I can to look like one, right?  Not so easy for a balding, 61-year-old man who lives a quiet peaceful life with many more cats and books than guns or evil thoughts, but I will do what I can to look as I must.  I am needed.  Without me, how can their self-righteousness sustain itself?

Just trying to do my part…

Since Friday, we in Seabrook, like most of the greater Houston area, have been subject to quite extraordinary wind, rain and flooding – all from the wandering hurricane (now tropical storm) Harvey.  In the last two days we’ve received between 27and 30 inches of rain.  Todville Road, where I live, has flooded, and some overnight squalls have been extreme.  More is expected in the days to come; indeed, more are approaching as I write.

I’ve taken videos and photos since Friday night, including an enjoyable kayak tour of old Seabrook with neighbor Steve during a rare lull in the storm early this afternoon. I’ll share a few in this and subsequent posts.

This was taken Friday evening from my front porch, when the first rains and street flooding were beginning; the lightning and thunder add a realistic touch.  The squalls continued all night, easing somewhat on Saturday, before becoming quite more violent in the last hours of Saturday and the first hours of Sunday morning.

This was taken early this morning, after a night of the fiercest weather I have experienced since going through Hurricane Gilbert (Cat 5) on a cargo ship in Jamaica many years ago (1988?).  Weather today was comparatively mild, with only a few inches of rain falling.

This is neighbor Steve, stopping to check his mailbox, at the beginning of our kayak tour early this afternoon.

As we started our paddling tour, we visited with neighbors Randy and Holly, out doing a bit of cleaning during a rare lull in the squalls.

Paddling north on Todville.  Galveston Bay is to our right, the lagoons to our left.  The water level of street, bay and lagoons was equal, and we could paddle from one to another without hindrance – and we did!

More from our tour north on Todville.

South on lower Todville Road:

In places, the water wasn’t very deep over the road.  At one point Steve and I got out and walked.  This shows the rush of flood water into the bay right next to my house (the blue one):

One wonderful surprise from the storm: a flock of frigate birds – I’ve counted 8 – blew in and have soared along the shoreline all weekend.  They are lovely birds, not commonly seen here.  I hope they choose to stay.

It is now 11 p.m. Sunday, August 27, as I finish this.  Tremendous lightning and thunder are approaching again from the southwest, from where the storms of the last two nights have approached.  I pray for the safety of friends, family and strangers everywhere.

(Video follows text)

From Glasgow (see previous post) I flew to Dublin, arriving early Sunday morning, April 23.  I dropped my bags at the hotel – on the River Liffey, in the heart of the old city – crossed the O’Connell Bridge, and joined the throngs of people walking the Temple Bar (very Irish, but crowded) and the commercial streets that spread south and west from Trinity College.  Irish kitsch achieves its gaudiest art form here, but the place is still fascinating to walk.

A most pleasant surprise – and escape from the crowds – was a tour of the Irish Whiskey Museum.  Though in the middle of rows of tacky tourist stores, the museum is surprisingly authentic and blessedly free of kitsch.  The tour was historically interesting, finishing with a leisurely lesson in the finer points of appreciating the many forms of Irish whiskey.  Though a Scotch whisky man myself, I gained an appreciation for the varieties of ‘uisce beatha,’ the Irish water of life.  An odd way for a Texas Methodist boy to spend a Sunday morning, but the stuff was perfected by monks…

I wandered on as far as St. Stephen’s Green before turning west to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and park.  Tour buses were pouring people into the cathedral, so I soon walked on to the lovely, very old and quieter Christ Church Cathedral and Dublin Castle.  In the late afternoon I returned to St. Patrick’s to attend evensong service (I’ve made a tradition of attending these on every visit to the UK).  I finished the day with a hearty meal of Irish stew and locally-brewed stout at a pub in Temple Bar, enjoying the live Irish music far into the evening.

The next morning I made the long walk along the river to Phoenix Park and the Dublin Zoo, detouring through side streets here and there.  I was eager to see the Amur (Asian) tigers (the largest cat in the world) and the snow leopard, my favorite cat and, in my opinion, the most strikingly beautiful.  The park was quiet and pretty, but the zoo disappointed: the leopard never showed itself, and the tiger pair were in a space which, though realistic enough, confined them too much.  I don’t care for zoos any more, though I know many of them do good work.

I walked back into the old city to view the Book of Kells at Trinity College.  The manuscript is astonishingly beautiful (cats were a popular illustration!).  That was worth the 30-minute wait to get in.  I finished the afternoon by visiting the Irish Rebellion museum at the General Post Office.

I left early the next morning, taking a train across the island to Galway.  I would return to Dublin on the 27^th, walking a few favorite spots before boarding a plane home.

In late April I was called for meetings with my clients in England, near Whitehaven in the far northwest of the country, bordering the famous and beautiful Lake District.  (Interesting historical note: during the American Revolutionary War, John Paul Jones sailed to Whitehaven, shelled the town and attempted to invade it; though unsuccessful, his raid was the only American attempt to attack England during the war.  On my first visit there, many years ago, my clients were tickled to treat me to dinner and drinks at the popular John Paul Jones Pub in town, which thrives to this day.)

My time there was happy, especially my reunion with dear friend John Riley and his wonderful companion Jennie Bailie.  Not only did they host me in their lovely Cockermouth home for my last night in England, but they drove me (and their two sweet dogs) through the fells of the Lake District and treated me to a lovely dinner in the delightful town of Keswick.

Early on my first morning free, John drove me to Carlisle from where I took a train to Glasgow.  I spent two wonderful days there, after which I flew to Dublin (more later on that and Galway).  With my hotel near the main train station as my base, I walked many miles, covering all of the old central city.  The video below includes a montage of photos of my excursions.  It leaves out many of the lesser but happy places I visited, people I met, and things I did (especially a memorable concert by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra) but captures something of the spirit of the city.

Though it didn’t displace Edinburgh and the highlands in my heart, I was glad to meet Glasgow.

Testing for posting fix.

I’ve been dreaming of snow and mountains since summer.  Last week I indulged that dream by driving to Wolf Creek ski mountain, near Pagosa Springs, CO, then to Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico. I began the new year in fresh powder at Wolf Creek, where I spent three days, and finished with a day and a half at Taos.  After 4.5 days of frenetic skiing, I was physically spent and very happy about it.

Below is a montage of photos taken along the mountain roads.  I took a few videos while skiing at Taos, which I’ll share later (I have none of Wolf Creek – the battery was dead when I tried to use it my last day there).

This was something of a sentimental excursion.  I learned to ski at Wolf Creek, in March of 2015, but had less than two days there.  I next skied Taos, in December, 2015, but the mountain being so steep (considered one of the most difficult in North America) and my skills being so paltry, there were few runs I could enjoy without difficulty; I vowed to return often to gauge my progress.

The San Juan mountains around Wolf Creek were in full winter dress.  Forty inches of fresh snow fell while I was there, so mountains, trees and meadows were blanketed in pristine snow.  Driving the pass – 23 uphill miles from my hotel in Pagosa Springs – was tricky, but four-wheel-drive and new snow tires got me through even the worst of it.

Wolf Creek is famous for its powder and for an abundance of opportunities to through ski glades of trees.  I spent some time on named trails, but found that off-piste skiing through trees in deep powder to be such a delight that I spent most of my time doing just that.  Snow and wind cloaked the tops of most runs in ‘flat light.’  The top of the largest lift, Treasure Stoke, was so obscure that the first 200-300 yards had to be skied with virtually zero visibility.  I found this exhilarating.

After my third day at Wolf Creek, I drove three hours to Taos.  The red rock cliffs near Chama were beautiful in snow, but the most glorious stretch was highway 64 through the southern San Juan mountains of northern New Mexico.  This was also the most treacherous, as the road is not well maintained in winter and deep fresh snow had fallen recently.  For more than 30 miles, from the western foothills all the way to the eastern descent into the high desert, I saw not a single other vehicle.  From there, the Sangre de Cristo mountains – the range most dear to me – loomed closer and closer, rising sharply from the desert floor. 

I spent the first evening wandering the historic Taos plaza – a tourist trap, but still a treat – and enjoying New Mexican green chile stew and enchiladas wrapped in hand-made blue corn tortillas at the old Alley Cantina, a local favorite.  Fuel for the mountain…

Taos Ski Valley was as challenging as before.  It is said that its green runs are as difficult as blue runs anywhere else, blues as difficult as blacks, and so forth.  Compared to other mountains I’ve skied, this certainly held true.  However, I was pleased to find that I could ski all the blue runs there, with only one – the devilish Firlefanz – really challenging my abilities.

Is it too much too much to ask of our congressional representatives that they know the most basic facts about the things they condemn?

It seems so for Sheila Jackson Lee, for 21 years the representative for the 18^th congressional district (Houston).  She seems ignorant of the fact that long guns are used in a very small percentage of crimes, and that automatic rifles are used in far fewer still.  Automatic weapons like the AK-47 are difficult and expensive to acquire.  Few Americans own one.  They are an almost inconsequential factor in crimes committed with guns.

I’ve become sadly accustomed to gun opponents’ ignorance of gun types, ofstatistics about guns used in crimes, and even of the basic operating principles of guns, but statements as foolish as this further convince me that federal lawmakers are all too often woefully unqualified to craft or pass laws which at the least will be ineffective and, at the worst, may burden further our civil liberties.

As the heat of another Texas summer deepens and prolongs – now almost six months without cease – I turn each year, for an emotional respite, to reading books about polar exploration and natural history.  In the last few days I’ve returned to “Arctic Dreams” by Barry Lopez, now 30 years since its first release.  I believe it stands at the pinnacle of achievement in the literature of American natural history.  I first read it in 1988, when it provided good company during a six-month stint on a ship sailing between Central and South American ports.  Reading it now, I feel as if I’ve been reunited with an old friend.

Lopez selects a single topic for each chapter in the book: marine life; Inuit culture; land and perception; etc.  Chapter 8, a synopsis of European exploration of arctic regions, concludes with a passage that takes my breath away, and which rewards with each re-reading:

“I think we can hardly reconstruct the terror of it, the single-minded belief in something beyond the self.  Davis [John Davis, English mariner and arctic explorer] wrote of the wild coasts he surveyed that he believed God had made no land that was not amenable, that there were no wastelands.

“Walking along the beach, remembering Brendan’s deference and Parry’s and Davis’s voyages, I could only think what exquisite moments these must have been.  Inescapable hardship transcended by a desire for spiritual elevation, or the desire to understand, to comprehend what lay in darkness.  I thought of some of the men at Winter Harbor with Parry.  What dreams there must have been that were never written down, that did not make that journey south with Parry in the coach, but remained in the heart.  The kind of dreams that give a whole life its bearing, what a person intends it should be, having seen those coasts.”