After 1869, it was the freaking Wild West out there once the flood of immigrants, investors and settlers began to board to the cars of the new railroad and head west.   Californians came East. The West was suddenly open, once the spike was driven at Promontory Summit.   Oh, it did not happen all […]

(Union Pacific Engine #119 and crew on the Promontory Trestle in Utah, just east of the Summit)   I am not from those wild empty lands Out West, but I have traveled across them many times, headed for temporary homes in Denver and Park City, or driving from Salt Lake up to Evanston at the […]

(Boston Commons)   Ray is an old pal of mine, and the most learned Master Chief Bos’uns Mate you will ever have the pleasure to meet.   He is not a Navy man; he would sneer at that. He has all his commercial papers and is a real Mariner, a commercial one, in addition to […]

(Wyoming elk herd near Johnson County, WY)   21 April 2010: Please see the Editor’s Note below for additional clarification. I have a picture of a herd of Elk out on the vast prairie. They are a magnificent animal in the wild, but they are rightly wary creatures. The image shows the animals wandering on […]

I won’t even try to say it. The people on the media have been challenged by the name of the volcano in Iceland that has caused all the trouble this week. I’ll defer to the style manual of the New York Times, which tries it as: EY-ya-fyat-lah-YO-kut.   It is the beginning of a week […]

Krakatau erupting on May 27, 1883. From Symons, G., 1888, The Eruption of Krakatau and Subsequent phenomena: Reports of the Krakatau Committee of the Royal Society, Trubner, London. It is unfortunate that the world appears to be falling apart just as I am getting read to get back out in it.   The Iceland eruption […]

  I don’t know about you, but I have a Facebook page. I am not sure why. I don’t do Mafia Wars or Treasure Isle, which is challenging old favorites like Bejeweled Blitz and Happy Pets for great ways to waste time.   I remember when my younger boy told me about it- he was […]

I can neither confirm nor deny anything, you need to know that going in. But there are some hallucinations I cannot clear from my mind, and I am not alone.   There was a nuclear museum on Kirkland Air Force Base, with a real B-29 Boeing bomber parked outside. I have written about that, thinking […]

Death…and Taxes (Pre-Department of Homeland Security Civil Defense Logo) I am not sweating this tax day. The die was cast more than a month ago for me, and with some effort, we got Mom and Dad’s done, too. For me, it seems a distant memory. The snow was deep, the forms received from the banks, […]

(The real Joe Rochefort (R) and the Movie version (L))   It was a strange day. The Nuclear conference wrapped up downtown at the convention center. The First Lady made a dramatic appearance in devastated Port au Prince. The talking heads are speculating on the impact of the retirement of Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, […]