The week before Christmas I drove myself and my parents down to see my sister in Suffolk, VA. My sister and her husband were unfortunately not going to be able to join us for Christmas at my other sister’s house in Centreville. Since my folks were in town from overseas, it was deemed opportune to get them down to Suffolk that week.
While we were there, my sister, my mom and dad, and I went to Williamsburg to check out the holiday festivities. It was a cold, breezy day but we managed to stay comfortable by hitting the shops, having a nice lunch, and walking the main promenade. Walking the promenade included viewing the Christmas decorations, many of which were elaborate Christmas wreaths, displayed on the homes and shops.
And since I was taking pictures like crazy, and my mom and sister prompted me to take more, we have located here the WWW, otherwise known as the “Williamsburg Wreath Walk.” Below are a couple of my favorites.
A month ago we had two feet of snow and temps in the low twenties…unusual for Virginia. Today it is almost seventy and partly cloudy. If I weren’t gainfully doing some work and if we weren’t expecting more rain, I’d be on the ZXR-1200 burning up some road!
If you haven’t heard about the tragedy in Haiti, pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV. It is a disaster of epic proportions in a country that was already in disastrous shape. I feel for all those dead, injured, or otherwise impacted.
On the home front, a good friend of mine lost the offices of his business last night in a fire that burned them to the ground. Also lost were his boat and the company mascot, a beautiful dog. I hadn’t immediately thought of it but what that dog must have gone through as the building burned down around him but it had to have been hell on earth. No one (that we know of) was there or hurt in the fire but then there was no one there to get the dog out either.
Since I helped with the installation of a computer-based surveillance system, I got a couple of calls from the fire investigator asking for anything I had from the system that could help with their investigation. I was able to provide them some alerts that I got over the day that may or may not be of assistance. Unfortunately, since the system the data was recorded on was in the office, the data isn’t readily, if it will ever be, available.
So where is the supreme being I ask and why do I ask? I had not really thought about it until some do gooders came to my door right after I got off the phone with the investigator. They were talking to people about the tragedy in Haiti and asking what we thought God had to do with it and why. Perhaps they eventually were going to get around to asking for donations but I did not let it get that far. I said I didn’t believe in a supreme being.
When asked why that was so, I said science was much more compelling than religion and that were there truly a supreme being overseeing us all, I couldn’t image that we should have so many tragedies befalling us. I wish I had thought to mention my friend’s, his family’s, and his employee’s loss. It sure is closer to home.
According to the Washington Post article, “Legacy of a lost wolf,” dated 25 December 2009, by Betsy Karasik, Mexican gray wolves are one of the most endangered mammals in North America. Despite a campaign by farmers, ranchers, and government agencies to eradicate the wolves, eleven of them were reintroduced to the wild in Arizona and New Mexico in 1998.
Unfortunately, ranchers have cattle on millions of acres of federal land in the West supported by government subsidies that cost the U.S. taxpayers 135 million dollars a year. Apparently under an Agricultural Department program, we the taxpayers for the benefit of said subsidized ranchers, exterminate more than 100,000 carnivores deemed to be detrimental to the ranchers that we subsidize. Animals exterminated include bears, wolves, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, raccoons and cougars using methods such as leg hold traps, aerial shooting and poisoning.
The article focuses later on a breeding wolf female who was shot, which is tragic. What is more tragic is that the female and family were targeted for preying on livestock for which the ranchers are compensated. Why should we kill a predator of livestock and then compensate the rancher for the death of said livestock? If we, “the effing government,” are going to pay ranchers for livestock killed by an endangered species, what is the justification for killing the predator?
I have noticed, in Internet Explorer, that, once you hover over and pop up an image from the “Gallery Images” widget on the left side of my blog home page, the image does not disappear in a few seconds as it normally should. I am researching the problem. Oddly, or not, it the widget still works as it should in Firefox. Thanks again Microsoft….
We are having our first snow of the year. It looks great but who knows how much we’ll get and/or how long it will last. I slept on my sister’s screened in porch last night and woke up to rain at some point in the wee hours. Since I really never pay attention to the weather forecasts, I forgot that it was supposed to snow.
I was reminded once yesterday when I made the mistake of going to the grocery store at five pm. That is bad enough on a Friday but a Friday before the potential for a snow storm? Forget about it. I got my beer and headed for the hills!
Anyhow, I was back home this morning reading and listening to the rain when I realized it had stopped. I looked out and saw that the rain had changed to snow. Since it is only about 40 degrees out I was a bit surprised. It’s fine with me though. I just started some turkey soup and we’ve got West Virginia football on the tube at noon.
Maybe I’ll be able to break out my cross country skis tomorrow morning. I think we’ve only had enough snow here to cross country ski once in the five years since I bought them.
On the way from Northern Virginia to my sister Kim’s house in Suffolk yesterday, I stopped at the James River near Surrey to throw my kayak in the water for a couple of hours. Oh it was sweet…it had been a couple of weeks since I’d been on the water and I expect that yesterday’s and tomorrow’s paddles will be the last of the season. It is getting a bit chilly and I really need to get the rack off the roof of my car so that I can give the car a serious washing!
Yesterday was very windy and cool, about 50 degrees or so. While had mostly sunny skies on the drive down, once I got in the water and looked around, I saw pockets of dark clouds and rain all around me. Fortunately I only got rained on for about ten minutes. I stayed mostly dry since I had a rain jacket on and was using my splash skirt, due to the choppy water.
I put it at the Carlisle Tract, part of the Hog Island WMA, boat landing on Lawnes Creek and paddled out onto the James River. Upriver a bit is the Surrey Power station which I had not desire to get too close to since who knows what it was putting in the water and what kind of security they had in place. I did head up that way just to see what I could of the shoreline. Then I headed back downriver to do the same. Downriver is a boat graveyard across from Fort Eustice. I had no desire to get too close to that for the same reasons I avoided the power plant.
Having perused a bit of the James, I headed back to Lawnes Creek where I went upstream and took all the offshoots I could find that wound their way through the three to eight foot high reeds. It was nice to get out of the wind and waves. As I prepared to wind up up my paddle, I became increasingly concerned about developing storms. It still looked nice to the southwest but it was very dark and obviously pouring in the northeast on the other side of the James in Newport News.
I paddled furiously back to the boat launch area and got my boat up on the rack. It started to sprinkle as I was changing into warm, dry clothes but I managed to finish up and get into my car just before it started pouring. Timing is everything!
I didn’t see much in the way of wildlife but did see the usual Great Blue herons, Double-breasted cormorants, an Osprey, and, for the first time in the wild this year for me, a pair of Bald eagles. One was flying overhead of me for a while and the light was just right so the contrast of white head and tail against the dark body was very vivid. That sighting made the paddle particularly rewarding!
