Summertime

We have now migrated to Alaska for the summer, and the fact that I am just now getting around to writing a post announcing that I won't be writing much for the next five months shows you just how sparse the posting might be!

For those of you who don't know, we run a guiding outfit in Wrangell-St. Elias, the largest national park in the country, located in south-central Alaska. It is an incredible place! We open on Thursday, so this week has been busy opening the place up and getting new guides trained.

I will try to continue to post regularly, although less frequently, throughout the summer, probably mostly on what is going on here rather than political or philosophical stuff. If you want to see a bit about what we do, check out the websites for St. Elias Alpine Guides & Copper Oar Rafting.

Here's a few photos of what it's like here right now... Enjoy!

The Value of Regulation?

Amit has another great article on Pajamas Media, this time titled, "Questioning the Value of Regulation." As always, it is clear, compelling and to the point. I recommend checking it out.

Cutting spending by one cup of coffee

Courtesy of the TK Lounge comes a link to this article on Obama's spending and spending cuts. It is simple and easy to understand, complete with simple graphics and a brief analysis from a Harvard economics professor. How on earth are we going to get ourselves out of this mess?!

Neighborhood wildlife

I've been having fun watching the birds that have been coming to our feeders the last few weeks. We've got a seed-filled feeder in the backyard and a block of suet in the front yard. We commonly have chickadees and some unidentified brown birds on the seed feeder and some beautiful northern flickers on the suet. A couple kinds of blue jays hang around as well and robins, thrushes and doves pick the leftovers off the ground. This last week a flock of these guys (see photo) showed up. Using the miracles of the internet, I have identified them as evening grosbeaks. Super pretty!

I've put more photos on Facebook (you don't have to be a member to see them).

Last Minute Tea Party

Yesterday afternoon, as I sat on the couch with my cheeks puffed up feeling out of it (I had my wisdom teeth out on Tuesday), Wayne mentioned that there was a tea party tax day protest happening downtown from 3-6pm. I wasn't feeling good, he was busy, and we both figured it would pretty small in this town. On his way to take Duke for a walk at about 5:30, Wayne drove by and found that there was actually quite the crowd. On a spur of the moment inspiration he ran home, we printed a flyer on Atlas Shrugged, ran 100 copies at the local Mail Boxes, Etc, and we were off to spread the word.

There were a dozen or so people standing on the corner with signs and they were getting an encouraging amount of honking and cheering from people driving by. In the park nearby there was a speaker when we arrived, and a bunch of people were gathered to listen. While the speaker (and I'm sure a large percentage of the attendees) were clearly conservative religious types, at least they had the right idea in relation to taxes. After a few minutes of observation, Wayne started walking through the crowd and handing out the fliers and I grabbed a stack and stood at the gate giving them to people as they wandered in and out.

Everyone was very receptive and interested, and Wayne had a few people immediately turn to their spouse/friend/brother and say, "Hey - this is the book I've been trying to get you to read!" I had a few people ask me what it was about, etc, and unfortunately my mouth was so swollen that I could only get out a few words and I don't think even those were all that coherent!

All in all, a success for a (very) last minute effort. Even if only a couple of the the 100 people who got those flyers read the book and/or become interested, it was worth 20 minutes and a couple dollars in copies :) Duke even made a new friend (see the last picture, and note large amount of said friend's slobber on his head!).