Under gray skies...

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“If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.”

~ Richard Buckminster Fuller

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I sure hope Barack Obama is as real as he comes off. I’ve just watched his interview on CBS' 60 Minutes. He definitely is smart and for sure has a sense of the everyman about him. But the weight of his responsibilities, man, he has far more than a full plate, I sure wish him well... and his obvious disdain for Dick Cheney is heartening! I see nothing I like when I see Dick on TV. But it was so very refreshing to see a real smile and hear intelligent speech coming from the mouth of our President - for a change.

I’ve often thought that what we needed as a President was an everyman... a practical, smart, open hearted man. Being able to throw a football, shoot hoops or even to get an opening pitch to the catcher without bouncing it... would be a sign for me. Well here he is.

Brother Marty actually alluded to the proposition that I’d probably lose a one-on-one basketball game with Mr. Obama. I don’t know... sure, he’s younger, taller, played college ball... plus he’s black... Me? I’m a short longhaired Scandinavian who wonders what the best route back to the old country is. With a pretty good 3 point shot.

Really tho’, is Barack Obama a common man’s man or is he another corporate shill? A lot of voices out there are saying that the megacorporate banking/financial industry has just screwed us big time. I’m inclined to agree, from my blue-collar, forklift driving, busted and broke perspective.

Which is a point Obama made that I liked. He said that a worker in (he named several states) would be glad to make $75,000 a year - without a bonus. Amen to that Mr. President, amen to that...

I swear, our obsession with stuff... with plastic googaws and shitty fast food and big fancy houses... I don’t get it. Comfortable I understand. But there is a facade we construct that allows us to fool ourselves into believing that we are it. That we are the be all and end all of life in the universe and lordy we’ve reached the pinnacle, look at us we’re just hot! But that’s my cynical view.

My real view is that mostly we are just folks. It is unfortunate that in but a few short generations we have become so dependent upon the sysyem for all our needs. From a country that for 150 years had a population that was in majority rural and lived on a subsistence lifestyle. But family farms have gone the way of the dinosaur. And it is too bad. One of the nice things about living in Oregon is that we have such a large rural population and there are a lot of small farms and ranches. This - in my mind at least - is the level of living that is sustainable.

I mean really... rich is ok. I spend a lot of my working hours these days in the homes and businesses of folks making far more than $75,000 a year. And I say thanks. I appreciate rich folks. They keep a lot of us in the service industry working. And they have lots of windows... (I clean windows, really...) and some mighty nice views!

But there comes a point with wealth. I just can’t believe that executives in a failing industry can justify million dollar bonuses. But this is an old rant (which I know I will return to) and I actually had started out just intending to post some more photos. So, without further ado...

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Wayne Eastburn

I've seen Wayne around Eugene for years. When I started shooting for the Eugene Emeralds he was a fixture and knew all the sweet spots in Civic Stadium. I always defered to Wayne... if he was in a spot that I wanted, I waited until he had moved. Standing down near third base, over the Visitors' dugout, I stopped one day to say Hi to Wayne and a fan sitting there noticed the size differential between Wayne's huge telephoto lens and mine. Wayne is of course using the Register-Guard's top dollar cameras and I'm using my affordable camera gear. Anyway... that led to a bit of guffawing as "lens envy" became the topic for some barbs directed my way. I've snuck in a couple of shots of Wayne here and there (one of those things that seems to be common among photographers is that we like being behind the camera, not in front of it). This is one shot last summer at an Emeralds' game. Wayne retired in 2008 and I've run into him a cuppla times since at the local Fred Meyer store (now owned by Kroegers). Just a real nice, old guy, with a great eye and a lifetime of experience behind the lens.

For the birds:






This isn't a photoshopped image, it is as it was. Several options for titles come to mind...



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I went for a drive a couple of weeks ago, with the sole intent of shooting some pictures. I went west out of Junction City on High Pass Road, then doubled back and went north on Peoria Rd (which cuts from Hwy 99E in Harrisburg, over to Corvallis. A real nice - but short - drive. Anyway, here are three of the images from that day:







As always, photos are © Allan Erickson, use with permission only.
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“Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.”

- Gary Snyder

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Dear President-elect Obama...

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“We always want the best man to win an election. Unfortunately, he never runs.”

~ Will Rogers
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Dear President-elect Obama...

Congratulations. You have accomplished a milestone that is among the most significant in our nation's history. Becoming the first black male to be elected to the office of President of the United States is not something I thought I would ever see in my lifetime. I am sure Martin Luther King was doing beyond-the-grave handstands and backflips. He probably also smiled a whole bunch...

I thought I might see a woman President but dude, you turned the world on its ear.

Now understand, please, that I am a cynic when it comes to politics. With all my heart I hope you are that person so many of us are hoping you are... a free man, beholding to no man or group of men. My cynicism is no rarity these days. There are plenty like me. But on election night when that point was reached where it was certain you were our next President and TV news cameras turned to the faces of black America... I loved our country and our citizens like I never had. The tears and smiles, the pride... which was the point of Rev Wright's much maligned sermon... well, sir, you have inherited a heavy load with a lot of people counting on you. You also received a great gift in the opportunity to be in a position where you not only can make a difference but will -- for good or bad -- make a difference. At this point in humanity's existence we truly need for the difference you make to be for good and what is right for the people...

... not for the corporations...

... not for the lords of war...

... but for the billions of human beings teeming our world who see their leaders squandering the finite resources of a planet that is held in common by us all. We can no longer allow tens of thousands of human beings anywhere in the world to die each day from starvation and malnutrition. There is no excuse for there to be any community, anywhere, that does not have access to potable water. In an age when we can send vehicles to Mars and are a culture that worships and flaunts opulence, how do we allow children to die slow, painful deaths for lack of even minimal nutrition? Certainly sir, if we can afford to manufacture weapons that are great destroyers of life, we can afford to feed a hungry babe and save a life? Feed all the hungry babes? Perhaps the time has come when we shall spend as much on food as we do for bombs and bullets?

Even here in the United States we allow too many to do with too little. While we don't have starvation we do have too many who are hungry, who are cold, who live with no roof, no medical services...

There is a need for not just retooling the automakers and "bailing out" the self-anointed lords of finance, but for refitting our thinking. It is inexcusable that the people living in the areas of the south so ravaged by Hurricane Katrina's destruction still have not seen the assistance and comprehensive rebuilding necessary for them to resume life as whole and vital communities. When nature breaks our communities down, we need to rebuild them better than they were. Surely Mr. Obama, a mobile home venting formaldehyde gas and poisoning its inhabitants is not a suitable substitute for the solid, earth-as-foundation, framed homes with yards and gardens and neighbors that so many of our fellow Gulf Coast citizens had to flee because of Hurricane Katrina? Surely sir, when fires scorch the arid west, when floods inundate low lying communities along our great rivers in the Midwest, our National Guard citizen-soldiers should be home defending against flood, fire and then aiding those in need after disaster's devastation?

In fact sir, many of us here on the streets, here in our communities, believe - and rightly so - that our government representatives have become part of our collective woes! With billion dollar earmarks attached like blowflies to essential legislation and elected representatives voting themselves a raise when so many of us here on the streets are losing jobs and homes, how can those we elect be so stupidly greedy? We have eyes! We know many among the elected are good people eager to serve effectively and efficiently and whose time in government is marked by honesty and integrity. But we are so very aware that Mammon has far too many followers in the halls of Congress directing the disbursements from our collective purse.

Mr. Obama, yours is an unique opportunity. Your election has drawn on not just loyal Democrats, but has also drawn greatly from that 15 - 20% of us who are staunch independents. Making you our choice was a cooperative plea for a real man, not a politician, but someone who has grown up without a silver spoon, to represent us.

Please, Mr. Obama, listen to those working class citizens around you who worked with you in Illinois. Listen to our voices. Voices like that of our dear and late mutual friend, nurse, mother, wife and grandmother, Beth Wehrman, who are desperately seeking an ear that will hear our pleas for an end to the drug wars -- Prohibition II -- which do nothing to solve the crisis Prohibition is wreaking a second time upon our cities. None of us who advocate for drug legalization and (or at least) a critical investigation of our failing drug policies denies drugs can and do cause harm. What we are saying (and it is a point supported by history's examples) is that Prohibition ends none of those woes, but makes them all exponentially worse.

Please, Mr. Obama, hear us when we say our children need quality education. Education that prepares them with the skills they will need when they are ready to set out upon their own adult lives. We cannot recover from our current plight with a population increasingly illiterate. If we can read with comprehension our understanding of any field we study grows. If we can read with understanding all other skills follow.

I too shed tears that evening of your election. Knowing that Black America's head now rose proudly, saying to all "yes, by god, we can, we now have" gained an equal seat at the table, was a crowning moment for us as a nation.

Please sir, be real. Of all the elements that make a man a leader, the one that now matters most is that you be real. A real human being, being human.

Thank you, Mr. President-elect.

Respectfully,

Allan Erickson
Eugene, Oregon

... a baker's dozen... more or less...

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"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

~ Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
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What a beautiful fall... November so far is a mix of wet and dry, nice and not-so-nice but with snow falling in the Cascades this weekend its all pretty normal. When Halloween comes up at Jawbone Flats, odds are in favor of at least a modest dusting of snow. Some years tho'... the first snow may be a few days late, but generally... within 2 - 3 days of Halloween.




I love my Oregon...

Here at the farm the rain has turned the browned pastures back to green... trees in the copses and yards and streets have been ablaze in color for the last few weeks, the autumn sun is lowering to the south and the light and clean air make for beautiful days and give some great sunsets. Sunrises can be pretty cool too, especially when the fog lies low at dawn:



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And in about 2 months and 2 weeks the US will have a new President. I'll have much more to say about Mr Obama as we get closer to coronation day. ... rrrr... I mean the inauguration. One of the strongest sets of images from the hours and days after Obama's win has been those of our nation's black citizens. There is such a visible shine of pride, of relief... at last, at last...



And while I remain a doubter, I sincerely hope that President-elect Obama is at least part that which so many hope him to be... because it was not just the blacks that celebrated what is truly, truly an historic moment in our nation's history. Obama created a voting coalition that covered the spectrum. Looking at the voter percentages it is interesting to note that all the independent candidates combined garnered only about 2% of the vote. Ross Perot, when he ran as an independent garnered what, about 15% of the popular vote? There is quite a mandate on our next President's plate. Not to mention a major quagmire (and no, not Family Guy's Glenn Quagmire) or two. A couple of wars (I can count a handful without any effort) and an economy that oughta wake everybody up... if he shows himself to be some of what many hope him to be we may find a way to solve many problems. If he conducts business like just another Party shill... I see not much good ahead in these next four years.

But for our nation to actually elect a black man as Prez... wow. I'm proud of my country. To think that it has been but a mere 2 generations since our nation's black citizens were treated like this:



And all in a struggle waged over and over and over throughout human history. But these days are different. No longer are we a world of distant and relatively isolated societies. We are truly at a critical pivoting point in mankind's time here on earth.
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Because I am out of the closet -- so to speak -- about my cannabis use I thought I'd share this picture of the truck I used to drive when I worked for Bill Conde at his Redwood Lumberyard outside of Harrisburg, OR.



I put tens of thousands of miles on this truck, delivering redwood lumber throughout the western half of Oregon. And even tho' the truck is quite obviously covered in cannabis leaves I never was pulled over. In fact in all those miles I received one negative response. Driving north on I-5 one day I actually got flipped off... but that was the only time. Usually it was honks and waves, peace signs and lots of gaping. And the occasional offer to stop for a smoke (which I politely always declined). Even had folks asking to take a picture of the truck.

For such a benign and multi-faceted plant cannabis sure receives its share of grief. And of course I must note that President-elect Obama admits that when he was a young man he actually inhaled. A black man and a cannabis consumer... but ya know... he never would have gotten here if he had been arrested for possession of pot, back in da day... so, while smoking pot doesn't disqualify him for our nation's highest office it is important to make that connection that a conviction would have. And these days? We arrest almost 100 people every hour for pot here in the US. Isn't it time to drop that charade? Is it any of our business what our neighbors smoke? Pot has never killed anybody on its own while tobacco deaths (just in the US) number about 400,000 a year. Isn't that a bit incongruous? How many hours of police time do that many arrests take? How much court time? And the occasional jail time? Aren't there better allocations of our police and criminal justice system's resources?

Prohibition II will become an issue that garners this nation's attention as we look at ways and places where we can start not-spending money. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy directs most drug policy moves and comes up for reauthorization in 2010. I say axe it completely. How does a free nation -- a democratic republic -- even think that naming a bureaucrat a czar (as in Drug Czar) is acceptable? Especially when he directs and advocates policies that are repressive and grow ever more intrusive of Constitutional protections. We cannot protect our precious liberties by allowing the government to declare a "drugs exception" to the Constitution...

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) head guy Jack Cole estimates that we now spend roughly $70 billion a year on Prohibition II. Well... in 10 years we would get back the initial $700 billion we (our government) just threw at this "bailout" of our financial institutions. And that $70 billion a year is just the basics of enforcing Prohibition...

A point my friend Kirk often makes -- quite concisely -- is that it was not the efforts of G-Man Elliot Ness and his Untouchables that took away Al Capone's power in the booze trade. It was the ending of Prohibition, the re-legalizing of alcohol that in one fell swoop put booze back in the hands of legitimate tax-paying companies and their tax-paying employees... and eliminated the very rampant corruption and public violence of the syndicates who ran the booze trade.
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“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

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Oh no! Not another election???

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“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.”

~ Groucho Marx
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My my my... elections anyone? Everyone is having fun I hope... I wish I could but I can't say as I am.

I have far more friends who will be voting for Obama than for McCain. I live in a blue state, what can I say? Actually the western 3rd here is green and the eastern 2/3 would overall qualify as a tan color I suppose. The desert is multi-colored, hues and shades that are phenomenal. Here in the west though, we only have 3 colors in winter... green, brown and grey. So I'm not big on that blue state thing. I think all the states are feeling a little blue these days.

So... friends voting for Obama... Me, nah. While I reserve my decision to vote until that moment I mark my ballot and stuff it in the envelope and mail it off (yes, Oregon has mail-in ballots and I like it even tho' I miss the trip to the polling place) I won't be voting for either of the two major candidates. I'm personally sick of 'em both.

And it is less anything specific than it is most things in general. I'm tired of the charade. I'm tired of the richest geting richerest (richester?), I'm tired of having my friends send their children off to Afghanistan and Iraq for multiple tours while Katrina's damage still lays heavy on the south (listen to Doctor John's latest, City That Care Forgot for one piano playin' man's perception of that fiasco).

I view the "two-party system" as one beast with two heads. While they seem to argue, they actually work in concert, to the same end. And that end, it seems, could very well be our end. John McCain and Sarah Palin are the perfect icons for our state of affairs as a nation. John McCain, whom I've never met, comes across as a snide, rude man. Sarah Palin... the young, female equivalent of that.

If I were to vote Dem or Repub I would vote Obama. While others berate his youthful activism I applaud it. Obama is smart and behaves with respect towards others. Of course him I've never met either.

Whomever you want to see as President... we'll get what we get. Heck, if we can make it (albeit just barely) through 8 years of George Bush, who knows... but whomever we get our next President he will be facing a huge challenge. Possibly the largest challenge our nation has ever faced.

We are disturbed and stretched to the breaking point. Consider that "Retirement accounts have lost $2 trillion" in the last 15 months... that is a lot of loss for a lot of folks... put that together with a country now $10 trillion in debt and what do you get? Broke, like me. Poverty can be a great equalizer.

What I hope to see is that the financial crisis is not handled like Katrina was. Word...

What I hope to see is a President who will figure out that our husbands and wives, son and daughters, and brothers and sisters can come home from the middle east. What I hope to see is a President willing to invest the moneys wasted in middle east adventures instead put those funds to work here. Fixing the south, fixing our roads and bridges, raising the bottom line on our health care system, equitably rehabilitating our education system... What I hope to see is a President who acknowledges that literacy is the key to many things, that an educated society is far more effective than a nation addicted to low grade television pap with a reading level that barely raises above the 8th grade. What I hope to see is a President who says that a nation that leads the world in its rate of incarceration cannot stake claim as the "Land of the Free."

When Katrina hit and then through the horribly slow days of misery after its departure we failed to respond. IF our National Guard troops had been home they could have set up housing and helped distribute food, water, participated in rescue and salvage... Mr. Bush could have called upon those of us with skills who are unemployed or underemployed (especially among our veterans) to come and work for a period for minimum wage, 2 squares a day and a roof (even if only a big tent) and bed.

My dad worked with the CCCs building trails in the Olympic Mountains in Washington state. When I lived in Fresno (California) many of the sidewalks in the old neighborhood where I lived bore the Works Progress Administration stamp. Many of the small highway bridges over our many creeks and small rivers here in Oregon are WPA projects.





So, no, I will not vote Democrat or Republican. A pox on both. I hope the voters deliver a message far stronger than the one we last delivered to the Republicans. The Republicans have to get off that nasty attitude high horse they're riding. The Democrats need to grow a pair.
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"If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, 'America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership."

~ Will Rogers

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Spring(?) and miscellanies...

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“When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.”

~ Robert Heinlein
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Wow. An historic moment. A milestone guaranteed to spawn a million conversations. An occurrence that will raise the hackles of bigots across the land... a black man will be representing his party as candidate for President. I'll be damned...

Now, do I think it will matter? Nah. Personally I think our "two party system" is but one party that likes to pretend it is two. I truly believe that the time has come for voters to -- as they did to the Republicans in 2004 -- dump the bums and prove that it is, really, we the people who hold the power in this country.

I believe that we the people have relinquished the power vested to us by our founders, in exchange for the ease of allowing government to not just govern representatively but to dictate to us the boundaries of our lives while expanding the bureaucracy's powers at our expense.

Remember the film Brazil, by Terry Gilliam? (if not... rent it)



a graphic and strangely dreamlike look at bureaucracy gone amok... well, thats my view of where we've come to today. A very strange world in which we operate under a mountain of rules and regulations which no sane man or woman could ever understand or even begin to fathom. And we've allowed our Constitution and its primary Bill of Rights to become the tool of government, open to its own bizarre definitions of the intent behind the words.

When it comes to the Bill of Rights, they are a pretty common sense group of Amendments, consisting not of language scrambled by legal twistings and fine permutations but presented in a manner easily compehended, with the intent of controlling not the people by government but of the people having a tool with which we control our government.

And while I'm sure the Supreme Court justices are ok folks



I seriously question their interpretations of a very common sense document. But what do I know? I'm just a barely educated forklift driving middle aged (...sigh...) longhaired white guy Vietnam era veteran with an opinion...

I do know that I love this country and I don't like where we've allowed ourselves to be led to... as we stand on the brink of a new depression... and it breaks my heart that every real leader who has stood for peace has fallen under an assassin's bullet... and I sincerely hope and pray that an epidemic of insight sweeps across the land and infects us all with the virus of compassion and tolerance.

But hey, thats just me.
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In my posts awhile back on the Olympics I posted the picture of the "tank man"... an iconic photograph that stands in my memory. Last night I watched PBS' Frontline story on "tank man." Excellent, excellent piece. An indepth look at that 1989 peaceful protest by the Chinese people in Tiananmen Square that gave me a larger picture of that story and why people should not just boycott the Olympics but continue to expose the Chinese regime as the brutes they are. And for my Chinese visitors... I don't protest you. I protest government power that goes to excess in abuse of civilians... anywhere. Like here in the U.S. One of the points that continues to stick in my craw (not craw, CRAW!) about the U.S. drug war is that we imprison black males at a rate nearly six times greater than did South Africa at the peak of their hated and universally condemned regime of Apartheid.

It would be nice to hear the Dems young black male presidential candidate Barack Obama mention that somewhere down the campaign trail.
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I went up to Opal Creek a cuppla weekends ago with son Alex. Last year at this time of year the bear grass and rhododendrons were almost done with their blooming. This year there was still snow when we got to the old mill site. And not just a dab here and there but about 2' of snow. When I told brother Marty about the snow he asked if I had seen the Opal Creek website pictures. I hadn't but then I went to the site and wow, they have had just a bit. 7' in camp. But go and look for yourself.

Alex and I didn't hike all the way into Jawbone Flats. Instead we went past the old mill and turned north into the backside of the Hewitt Grove and went stalking waterfalls. Once into the woods it was a rare sight... all the ferns and salal were pressed flat from the weight of a heavy snow pack. Nary a flower in sight. The duff was soaked, and it was like walking on a sponge. Which of course it was. Part of why we fought so hard to save that forest back in the day.

At the parking lot we saw a pair of hikers loading up their backpacks including several bottles of water. We ran into them on the road near the head of the Opal Creek Trail and I mentioned I saw their water bottles. I told them about the quality of the water in the valley and how all drinking water in camp came not from spring water but from the creek and that the forest was one of nature's best water filters.

Here are a few images from that meandering:










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“Knowledge is awareness, and to it are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wastelands to the spirit.”

~ Louis L'Amour

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