After that, I wandered into the garden.
September 9, 2008
The sublime moment of the day.
I was just walking home from work.
After that, I wandered into the garden.
After that, I wandered into the garden.
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A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds
That threatened it -- did run
And crouched behind his Yellow Door
Was the defiant sun --
Some conflict with those upper friends
So genial in the main
That we deplore peculiarly
Their arrogant campaign
-- Emily Dickinson
Been waiting to use that for just this kind of photograph, during this campaign season.
Very nice photo, Ann.
Cheers,
Victoria
Hmmm. Neither photo has a pig in it.
Nice photos, professor, and what do you think about those leaves changing already. What are the squirrels doing?
This should also serve to remind everyone to pack away those short pants till next year .
The first one particularly is stunning.
You were just walking home from work, and it's light outside?
By my estimates is close to midnight in Wisconson. As a matter of fact, your neighbors have spotted you, in the dark, walking the floors in your quilted nightgown.
They say you spent all of last night pacing back and forth. Figuring, plotting......
Toldja to get curtains on those windows.
Much better than Brooklyn, even though the WORLD CHAMPION NEW YORK GIANTS play somewhere near there.
It's a beautiful campus. And if you'd lingered the light would have changed with dusk. All night it would still be beautiful.
That hill has some of the best views in town. But I prefer the Union terrace because there's also beer.
One of the reasons Maxine reads people so well, is that she always has her antennae out---always suspecting the worst in people.
And, she's usually right !
I'm surprised The Christoper has managed to meet her rigid, exacting standards.
She's extremely assessing---always having to look people up and down, before she deigns to speak with them....
Top: Looking northwest across Lake Mendota. In the direction of Alaska? I see the tip of Picnic Point. My first memory of that peninsula is now over 40 years old. God I feel old. I knew that landscape well once.
Bottom: where exactly is that? The Botanical garden below Bascom/Law school?
Nice.
Serene.
Angst-free.
I see a smashing success.
Back in the 1970's and early 1980's there was a big debate about acid rain. Sulfates, particulates and nitrates in coal soot was causing rain to become very acidic as it included sulfuric and nitric acids.
So a lot of people suggested putting in scrubbers to get rid of nearly all the pollutants. Conservatives screamed that if we did that then all the electric plants would go out of business and we'd all 'freeze in the dark' (their exact words.) Even if the utilities stayed open, electricity would become so expensive that only the super wealthy would be able to turn on their television set for more than a couple of hours per day.
And you know what? Liberals won that debate. We won, and legislation was passed and the scrubbers were required.
So now the air is much cleaner, the forests are much healthier and the utilities are still burning coal and people are still getting cheap electricity.
Eli,
Yeah!
They also won the arguments about: not building new nuke plants, new refineries, new oil wells, etc.
And now energy IS really expensive, and people DO freeze to death in the dark.
So, it's not all cherries.
Not that I'm not grateful for the clean air. But if energy continues to cost more, concern for the environment will be the first casualty.
Beautiful photos--as usual. From that vantage point, the top one almost has the illusion (at least imo) of the lake being above the trees.
(sigh)
Let me rebut you point by point, blake:
1. Yes, we liberals did win on nuclear power (with an assist from Three Mile Island and the final nail in the coffin driven in at Chernobyl.) In fact, I personally am not even necessarily against nuclear power provided you can find a way to deliver it safely and to be able to dispose of the waste safely (a Nevada mountain that sits astride two fault lines is not a safe repository.)
2. Refineries. It appears that you are part of the herd that have been hoodwinked on this one. It would have been sold as the fault of environmentalists too, except that leaked internal memos from three oil companies expose an insidious plot to boost profits by limiting refinery capacity, all the while blaming environmentalists. Educate yourself.
3. New oil wells: Why not drill on the 68 million acres in leases that the oil companies have already paid for but are not drilling on right now? If they were drilling to capacity then I might be convinced that we needed more drilling-- but otherwise I'm not convinced.
4. You conveniently omit a big conservative victory. The victory to gut funding over the past several decades for alternative energy research, the failure until last year to pass any kind of higher CAFE standards and the gutting of the Carter energy plan that would have made us energy independent by 2000. In fact the original Alaska pipeline, which was supposed to be only a small piece of a larger package, is the only piece that the GOP kept when they took power in 1980.
5. This was not the original point I was making, but since you refer to people who actually are freezing in the dark in the United States, I happen to know some who do, personally. Only they don't do it because of electricity prices, they do it because of another conservative stroke of genius-- saving a few bucks by ending the rural electrification network early because it was '99 percent complete.' I once wrote, on a particularly somber occasion, about some friends of mine who are in the other 1%. The taking of tax dollars from some communities to help extend rural electrication to the rest of the country and then ending the program when the folks in these communities were due after waiting patiently for decades was the perfect illustration of 'I got mine, so long sucker.' The very essence of conservatism.
(sigh)
A post consisting of two gorgeous pictures naturally leads to a thought on the glory of liberalism and a following condemnation on conservatism. Yes, that's perfectly natural.
Such is the poison of partisan politics.
You sounded so smart with your link to one of the most venomous sites on the whole of the internet, but when you click on the first link that your link links to, you get a dead link. And when you click the second link your link links to you get another dead link. And when you click on the third link that your link links to, guess what you get. Go on. I'm waiting.
tick
tick
tick
Time up! Dead link. Smart ass. Your proof of oil company memos and conservative evil are all dead links. You suck.
Obviously the Huffpo isn't updating their stories from 2005. However
the original Chevron document is http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/documents/5103.pdf;
The original Texaco memo is http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/documents/5104.pdf;
The original Mobil memo is http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/documents/5105.pdf
Sorry about that, now you can go read them yourself.
1. Point is, environmentalists shut down nukes in this country. It's interesting to note all the nuclear reactors in the world and the worst events are--well, not really all that bad.
2. I'm familiar with those memos. But to me, they just raise a whole lot of questions. Not that I'm shocked (shocked!) that the idea would be floated or even acted upon, but why didn't this fiendish plan actually result in higher prices? Why has refinery capacity constantly gone up? Why are new refineries finally being built now?
And, of course, why should an industry be required to produce all they can, even when demand is low? Should refineries be run at a loss?
3. Having a lease on a land doesn't mean there's enough oil on that land to make trying to recover it worthwhile. It takes a while to figure that out. They pay money for the lease, and yearly rentals. Can this be tweaked? Probably. Is it is as simple as "drill everywhere"? No.
And consider the irony of Dems claiming to want the oil companies to drill on currently "pristine" land with dubious amounts of oil versus drilling on some other "pristine" land where quantities and qualities are higher.
4. CAFE standards are a bad idea. They brought us the SUV in the first place! And it wasn't gov't standards that made the small car popular in the '70s, and it's not gov't standards that are making them popular today.
Carter's plan--the practical parts of it--was to switch us to coal and nukes. Enviros made both of those goals pretty challenging.
5. This sounds like you're complaining about the redistribution of wealth. I agree it's a terrible thing, whoever does it.
Still. Great pictures, eh?
Chip,
Nah, it's just the only thread here you can talk about something besides Palin....
Whew, finally a Palin reference! I thought this thread was just on cloud screeding; good to see we're back on the MooseGedanken philosophic track...
This is the song that doesn't end...
Where are all the students.
Actually, I love it when I'm walking on campus and suddenly you're all alone. A nice antidote to the craziness of a college environment.
Ann, great shots capturing the sublime essence of this time of year in Wisconsin!
How about that coastal elites? Bryant Park can suck it!
Blake, are you saying that Chernobyl wasn't such a big deal, or did I miss your point?
The sky looks upside-down in that first picture.
Great pictures. The one time I've driven through Wisconsin, I thought it was very beautiful...
I call for a voluntary moratorium on politics in the picture threads. (Even if it's a picture of a politician! (Unless the pictured politician is wearing shorts. In that case, no holds barred.))
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