Marblehead Lighthouse

As mentioned in my rescue blog, twice this past week I've ended up at Marblehead Lighthouse, as well as the rest of the town of Marblehead. I've been there 3 or 4 times over the years and have yet to make it during a time when we could climb the lighthouse and look out over the lake. Without that aspect of the experience, there's not much to it. According to the website, it's the most photographed landmark on Lake Erie, and since I'm always happy to be a cliche, I dutifully lined the kids up and took a couple of pictures. They were especially impressed you can see Cedar Point across the bay, so we fed quarters into the big binocular-things (hey I tried to find a proper name on google with no luck) in the hopes of focusing in on someone screaming on a roller coaster. Judging from how many people were coming and going while I was there, it's a popular park. I suppose the romantic notion of lighthouses is a bigger draw than hiking 5 miles down a rocky beach hoping to see an eagle. It's definitely worth seeing though. The lake there is especially pretty as well.

I've probably mentioned it before and most assuredly will mention it again but I love Lake Erie. Just everything about it! The parks, the birds, the wildlife, the beaches. I'm not sure why I live so far "inland" but it's a situation I plan to remedy eventually. I have every intention of spending my golden (just around the corner) years in a ratty camper in some dive campground along the lake; just me, my coffee cup, a library card, and a couple of mean chihuahuas.

for all of us Harry Potter fans

(If you haven't read the books, you won't get it. If you have, you'll laugh.)

from Post Secret

Great anti-Palin campaign tactic

This is classic. LOL

from my email:
-------
A particularly appealing guerilla tactic, dutifully forwarded from my brother. LOL!



Dear Friends:
>
> We may have thought we wanted a woman on a national political ticket, but the joke has really been on us, hasn't it? Are you as sick in your stomach as I am at the thought of Sarah Palin as Vice President of the United States ?
>
> Since Palin gave her speech accepting the Republican nomination for the Vice Presidency, Barack Obama's campaign has raised over $10 million dollars. Some of you may already be supporting the Obama campaign financially; others of you may still be a little honked off over the primaries. None of you, however, can be happy with Palin's selection, especially on her positions on women's issues. So, if you feel you can't support the Obama campaign financially, may I suggest the following fiendishly brilliant alternative?
>
> Make a donation to Planned Parenthood. In Sarah Palin's name. And here's the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. Here's the link to the Planned Parenthood website:
>
> http://www.plannedparenthood.org/

(From there, click on "Donate" to "Donate Online" to "Honorary or Memorial donations" to find the site that takes "in honor of" donations.)
>
> You'll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the "in Sarah Palin's honor" card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:
>
> McCain for President
> 1235 S. Clark Street
> 1st Floor
> Arlington , VA 22202
>
> Feel free to send this along to all your friends and urge them to do the same.

Fools and Politics

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, (attributed)

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.
-George W.Bush


I just happened across the second quote while verifying the first. If that isn't the slogan of the McCain/Palin campaign, I don't know what is.

Now Palin's husband won't testify in trooper inquiry. What a great tactic, really. "Well, because some Democrats said she is probably guilty, we cannot get a fair investigation and so we won't have one at all! Nyah nyah nyah!" You have to wonder if they came up with it before they considered her for VP, or just winged it after the fact. Who cares what really went on! We can stonewall the whole investigation until after the elections! All we have to do is blame the Dems, knowing there's enough blind haters out there, we can pull it off!

What a complete and utter joke the Rs campaign has become. Toss enough mud and blow enough smoke and at least half of the country won't even bother to follow the story line, and just BAA their way all to the polls like sheep. I do believe there are intelligent Rs out there who have to see through this crap as well, but don't care as long as it works.

In Tarot, the Fool is a light-hearted card, representing beginnings and starting anew. That's sure as hell not going to be the case with a McCain/Palin administration. I have spent 8 years mumbling or yelling I told you so!!! to the voters who blindly followed Bush, and then seemed shocked at the outcome. It cannot happen again.

September 11

Nearly every flag I saw today was at half-mast. I always twitch a bit at incorrect flag etiquette so that small detail stood out. I can't think of another holiday when everyone remembers to honor our flag.

We all have our small personal memories, juxtaposed against the nearly universal impressions we all share. One image stands out for me: going to my daughter's soccer game that first Saturday, everyone still reeling from shock and pain, yet trying to maintain some normalcy for the children. In the middle of the soccer fields, one coach had brought the flag from his home, and stuck the flag pole into the ground next to his lawn chair. It flew in the wind as the kids played their games, one small reminder that nothing would ever be the same again.

A few weeks before we were attacked, I took my daughter to "interview" my 80 year old great aunt about her memories of WWII. When she talked about Pearl Harbor, her eyes filled with tears. I've always imagined that's the way we will be, always one question away from being taken back to exactly how we felt when we watched it unfold.

My heart goes out to everyone who lost someone they loved on that horrible day. And my heart goes out to all of us too, for what we lost then as well.

Can't Cry Hard Enough

If you've never seen this, it is beautiful and heartbreaking.

Can't Cry Hard Enough

The artist created it during those first horror-filled days. He sent it to 25 people, with no idea it would eventually be seen by millions.

by Jason Powers

Large Haldron Collider

Well they're firing this thing up tomorrow.

Large Hadron Collider.

So, Kiss the World Goodbye! haha Just kidding.

I think it's cool as hell. I'll be the first to admit I'm generally pretty lost when it comes to anything to do with physics or astronomy, once you move out of the realm of red, yellow, blue or white stars. I've been slowly working my way through

and thanks to Bryson, I have begun to understand some aspects more clearly. Still I'd most certainly fail a high school physics test, even if you left out the formulas.

That doesn't stop me from being completely in awe of space in a way I can't quite put into words. There is a reason that god and "heaven" are so oftentimes believed to be in the stars. I also believe that the answers to the biggest gaps in what we know about the universe will come once we find a way to conquer the dimension of time. Maybe this is how they will find those answers. It is plausible they will replicate a "Big Bang" and come up with a clearer understanding of how the universe began. (Hopefully before Palin starts teaching "creation science" in schools, supported by people who can't understand that all science is theory, which is not the same as religion.) (Oops political sidetrack there.)

To quote my ex, the physicist, "these researchers are like priests in the science. And we are just bunch of sinners trying to do some laser imaging."

I just hope that whatever they find out, they put it in terms I can understand. Maybe Bill Bryson can explain it.

Art In the Wild

On our way back from White Star Quarry after watching my son take his SCUBA certification testing, my daughter and I drove through the small town of Gibsonburg, Ohio (pop. about 2500.)

You wouldn't expect all that much from a town that size so I did a double take when I noticed a group of sculptures alongside a small lake in the middle of town. We decided to turn around and see what it was about. The few I'd noticed from the road lead to more and more, maybe 2 dozen encircling the lake, all by different artists. It was like happening upon a small roadside museum, just...there, with no explanation at all. In this little War Memorial Park in this tiny town. It was amazing and very cool.

Apparently it started a few years ago when one local artist was asked to display more of his work, and he invited others and it's gone on since then. I'm not sure it would be worth making a long drive but if you're out that way at all, it's definitely worth stopping to see. I'm really glad we came across it.
Small Town, Big Art

County Fairs

We went to the Fulton County Fair on Sunday. The fair is one of the truly great things about the rural area where I spent my childhood. That there are basically no other great things is why I don't live there now.

Still, the website doesn't do it justice. This is a true country fair. They have buildings packed full of livestock, horse shows, a building full of floral displays, needlepoint and quilts, arts and crafts, another full of homegrown fruits and vegetables. It's a tradition there to gather up the best of whatever it is you do best, and enter it in the fair.

I drag my kids from place to place, exclaiming at all the different varieties of chickens (as though we've never seen them before), wondering how we can ever eat a turkey after staring at them eye to eye (we get over that by November.) We pet bunnies, and horses. (Watch their ears! That one will bite!) Every time we walk through the goat and sheep barn, I tell my son the story AGAIN about when he was in his stroller, and got scared half to death by a big loud BAA!! in his face by a sheep, and how he wouldn't go back in that building for the next few years.

My kids of course go to ride rides. Unfortunately they're at an awkward age now, too big for the little kids' rides, but with a mother who is too neurotic to let them ride most of the big rides. (Hello, they put them up yesterday?! All it's going to take is one loose bolt and that flying thing will be flying right on down the midway!) So they mostly end up riding the bumper cars over and over.

I am a grown-up so of course I go for the food. We have a routine. First, we go to the french fry booth. Not all the others that offer fries but rather THE booth, the same one in the same place with the same fries (maybe even the same grease) in a paper cup I have been eating every year since I can remember. Next to that is the Dairy Barn for milk shakes and THEN to the Beef Farmers' Booth for either a roast beef or rib eye sandwich. (Sympathy for steers rarely enters into the equation. Steers are big and rather un-cute, plus when they're in their stalls all you see is their butts.) Before we leave, we get a box of fresh donuts from the Band Boosters under the Grandstands. The Grange people also grill up the best chicken halves anywhere so I usually grab one of those to go, too.

When we were kids, we all did 4-H. I started off taking sewing??? All I can come up with is my girl cousins did it, so I did too. Once. Then we had lambs. You care for your lamb all summer, feed it, keep records of the expenses involved. Before the fair, someone comes and shears it of its wool. Then you care for it all week at the fair and take it to the required lamb show. Then at the end of the week everyone takes their sheep (and other livestock) to the jr fair auction where various businesses pay higher than market price for your 4-H project. Afterwards you say goodbye to your little friends, knowing they're headed off to become someone's dinner, and collect a check. Farm kids are a tough lot.