Road trips of the past (11/11/2025)

I now have taken four extended road trips since we retired two and a half years ago. I made one solo trip and three with my wife and our dogs (2023, 2024 and 2025). As part of these trips, I have seen the Grand Canyon twice (the South Rim during our first visit and the North Rim, a half year before it burned down, during my solo trip). After twice visiting the town, I have learned why folks always say, “Get the hell out of Dodge.” Maybe more about these events later, However, I do not want to make this post another report of my trips. Wherever possible, I have tried to stay away from the Interstate Highway system, interact with people I met on the way (one of my favorite books is Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon). Highways were some cases unavoidable, or they saved us a lot of time.

Now, this is going to be a long post.

The overarching item that I learned from our trips is that every state we passed through had absolutely beautiful areas. I am sure there are also horrible parts in each state, although we have not seen many of them. What I mention as ugly may be because of the place’s sordid history. Moreover, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. When I am writing about ugly areas, I am thinking of places like Uvalde (TX) that had a mass shooting and we visited the memorial. But I am also thinking of Selma (AL), where we stayed overnight and walked the Edmund Pettis Bridge. This small Alabama town seems to be very depressed and probably ignored town of very important historical significance. Sorry Alabama, the 16th street Baptist Church in Birmingham elicited a similar reaction in me. While nice looking, these spots were saddening because of what took place there.

What were the most memorable things we saw or experienced? This will be a list, and I will start with the most recent. The ferry between Ludington (MI) and Manitowoc (WI); the drive from Van Horn to the McDonald observatory (TX); Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks in Texas; Death Valley (CA); the Dignity of Earth and Sky statue in Chamberlain (SD); The Grand Canyon (AZ); Theodor Rosevelt National Park (ND); Lemhi Pass (MT and ID); Sedona (AZ); Selma (AL); Uvalde (TX); Naca Valley Vinyards (Nacogdoches, TX); and Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes National Lakeshore (MI). I am sure I am forgetting one or two, but these are burned into my memory bank.

What were the most disturbing things we encountered? Driving through Georgia and South Caroline (Macon to Savana) we were amazed by the hurricane damage so far from the Gulf of Mexico and now more than three months after it happened. It remined us of our situation after hurricane Isable in 2003. Other items that bothered us included the begging coyote in Big Bend National Park, the stop at Uvalde, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and our visits to Selma and Freedom Trail. We both graduated from Utah State University in Logan and were sadly reminded of our lives there when we visited.

Were there things we really hated? Driving a whole day to heavy rain is no fun. It ruined our driving pleasure between coastal Texas and coastal Louisiana. That drive from Victoria (TX) to Baton Rouge (LA) was stressful and horrible, oh well. It would have been nice to see the Louisiana bayous from the road or even stop here and there, but the rain was relentless.

In the western part of Texas, we were plagued by very heavy desert winds between Fort Stockton and El Paso. It is a shame because this is one of my favorite eco-regions. I got my Ph.D. doing graduate work in the Chihuahuan desert. Writing about weather, the 105 degrees we experienced in September in North Sioux City (SD) provided little camping pleasure and we had to spend that night in a motel.

While there must be nice areas in Kansas (for example the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve), the region around Dodge City isn’t it. The area is full of feedlots and slaughterhouses. The area stinks and has more flies than you can shake a stick at. It almost made us vegetarians. We need to feed the nation and therefore need hamburger producing regions like this, but it added very little scenic or cultural value to our trips.

Which folks are staying with you in your memories? Two young waitresses are still on my mind. One in Selma (AL) and the other in Pratt (KS). Both were in their late teens or early twenties. They both seemed resigned to where they were in life, but not happy. They wanted to get out of the town they grew up in, which is understandable when you examined the towns we were in. Both appeared to be at a loss on how to get out and go to the big city and have a life. They tried to make the best of it and earn some extra cash waitressing.

At the North Rim, I was served by a set of waiters that came from Turkey. They were engineering students at the university in Istanbul and spent the summer months working in US National Parks to earn some extra money and learn about the US. I had fun talking with them.

There were these two couples in the tram going up the St. Louis Arch. They lived a couple of blocks apart (less than a mile) in Madison, WI and did not know each other. They even had friends in common but met for the first time on that tram going up the Arch.

We had a great evening talking with a younger couple while sipping wine at the Naca winery near Nacogdoches (TX). She was a teacher, and we talked about education, vacations and the world in general. She would spend the summer in an RV somewhere along the TX coast and her hubby would visit on weekends.

We met a lot of interesting camping owners or hosts. The lady in Miles City (MT) was a riot, and so was the manager of the McDonalds in that town. It must have been the water. We met a couple from Florida that managed a camping area on the Blue Ridge Parkway and the lady with a colostomy bag in the UP of Michigan. A lot of the hosts were retired and got free camping in a beautiful spot or maybe a small stipend. The lady in Lisbon (OH) either made a little money or had free camping while hubby worked at a refinery nearby. They were from Billings (MT) and she homeschooled her two kids, while they followed her husband’s job.

Talking with people was fun, and I noticed that most of them are friendly and nice, especially if you treat them the way you want to be treated. We tried to stay away from the hot button issues like politics and religion. Although, when we told them during our first cross country trip that we were either on our way or returning from our daughter who was going to be or just was ordained as a minister, everyone melted and reacted very friendly.

I wanted to make this essay a lot more detailed, but once I started listing the items I noticed that I could write a book about these experiences. I hope you like this. My message is, smile, be kind to people and start a conversation.

Driving the north shore of Lake Michigan

Ready to descend into Death Valley

Wanna go down with me? (7/31/2017)

" I observe that there are two entirely different theories according to which men seek to get on, in the world," Elihu Root wrote.  "One theory leads a man to pull down everybody around him in order to climb up on them to get to a higher place.  The other leads a man to help everybody around him in order that he may go up with them."  Pretty deep isn't it; but who the heck was Elihu Root?

Root was Secretary of State and of War under President Theodore Roosevelt and McKinley.  He was a political "wise man", an adviser; he was an important lawyer; a U.S. Senator; and the recipient of the 1912 Nobel Peace Price.  Wow, and now I finally learned about the man.  Damn it, he was a republican.  But wait, that was a long time ago when we did not have that extreme political partisanship.

Why bring this up?  More and more am I getting this feeling somewhere in between bewilderment, confusion and sometimes being amused.  It sure is an interesting world we live in.  We see Root's theories playing out every day.  This past week it has been going on in our Nation's Capital, where civility seems to have taken a back seat, and people are pulling each other down in order to get ahead.  You must be living under a rock if you have not heard about Anthony Scaramucci's interview with the New Yorker.  Hopefully they are not pulling us all down with them, but it starts feeling that way.

Wow, here again I venture into politics and I shouldn't.   The minute I do this the hits from Russian internet sources to my blog increase exponentially.  I am not sure why, but somehow, somebody must either like or dislike it when I write about U.S. politics.  But regardless, it bothers me that humankind when confronted with these two pathways of getting ahead will still elect to choose to climb over others rather than work with others.  It is a dog eat dog world out there!

When I look in nature (let me remind you that I am a naturalist/biologist and not a political scientist or philosopher), the great societies are all based on cooperation rather than climbing over each other's back.  Bees and ants can only function in unison, not as individuals.  They don't climb over each other to get ahead.  Yet bee and ant colonies are among the most complex societies known to man, with strict social structures.  They tend to kill other species or intruders from other colonies, but their social organization is amazing.  Even a pack of wolves, macaque monkeys, chimpanzees, you name it, all have structure.  Yes there is competition and dominance or seniority, but I do not think that this is to the detriment of others in the group; maybe with the exception of the co-dominant in the group that gets pushed out.  That's a struggle for leadership of the group, not dominance at the cost of others.

This is not one of my better pictures (the bee is not in focus), but it shows our cup plant in bloom and a visiting bee.  Bees have a tremendous social structure that allows to function the way they do, to collect honey, from large distances.  Their communication is amazing as well.

Trees in the forest are the same; they all compete for light, water and nutrients.  Plants of the same species tend not to climb over each other, but they do compete.  In their competition they actually help each other grow faster, taller and more efficient.  What a novel idea.  Yes there are parasitic plants and vines that will strangle other plants, but as I have written before (for example in "Dog hairs in the woods") there is structure and a natural order to things.

As I tell the people in my classes, I am a master of over-simplification.  It is much more complex than this.  I just feel that currently as a society we are in a race for the bottom.  The way we are treating each other is horrible; the civility is gone; as is the empathy for our fellow human beings.  I am sorry, but after a week like last week I had to vent.  Hopefully next post will be positive again, and hopefully John McCain can come back to the Senate again to preach what seems his version of commonsense and bipartisanship.

Let me have it and rip me apart with you comments and critique!

Who is the Common Man? (1/27/2017)

Partially thanks to an article in our newspaper on how Hollywood depicts the “common man” in movies, followed by a letter to the editor on how Donald Trump is stacking his cabinet with billionaires who are supposed to take care of the common man, have I been wondering who the common man really is, and then also what motivates the common man.

So what does one do?  You ask professor Google what the definition of a common person is.  Common person, thefreedictionary.com defines it as: “a person who holds no title.”  They have all kinds of different items in their thesaurus, a Bourgeois (a member of the middle class), a Nobody (a person of no influence), a Plebeian (one of the common people), a Proletarian (a member of the working class), and (my favorite) a Rustic (an unsophisticated country person), just to name a few. 

In a 2011 article entitled “10 Terms for the Common People” Mark Nichol listed: Bourgeoisie; Great unwashed (I love that one); Hoi polloi; Little people; Mob; Peons; Proles (from proletariat); Rank and file; and Riffraff.  In the comment section readers added some more, British readers added “chav” a word I never heard off but seems debatable, and “the chattering classes”.  U.S. readers added: the Masses, Joe Blow, John Doe, Yahoos, and Plain Jane.  As the outfall of the latest elections maybe we should we add (a basket of) deplorables? 

All I can say is let them eat cake!  Oh no that was Marie Antoinette in the late 1700 a few weeks or months before her head was chopped off by the common people. 

But walking through town in my lunch hour and looking around; am I looking at “the Masses” or “Joe Blow”, or “the Plebeians”?  They are definitively not “rustic”, and it looks like they did shower recently.  But can I call these bankers and business men, common men?  What about all those government employees; and what about those beggars, what are they, less than common?  Who are the common men or the common women and what motivates them?

When you do an internet search on "the common man" you inevitably hit on the speech by by Vice President Henry A Wallace, entitled: The Price of Free World Victory. Wallace had been Secretary of Agriculture and was VP under Roosevelt, during the time of the second world war at the time he gave this speech. While it was an anti-Hitler speech, it obviously touched the common man, Wallace said: "Men and women cannot be really free until they have plenty to eat, and time and ability to read and think and talk things over. Down the years, the people of the United States have moved steadily forward in the practice of democracy. Through universal education, they now can read and write and form opinions of their own." 

Having worked overseas in dictatorships, I have seen what literacy or the lack of it can do; or maybe the lack of credible information to read, to get from the radio or to watch on TV. We were able to compare various shortwave radio stations and compare it to the local news; things the common folks could not do, because they could not speak any other language, at least not those from the foreign radio stations and the relied to the government sponsored  (fed) news. There was fake news everywhere.  We really need to make an effort to keep our press free and resist the notion by some in the current White House that the press is irrelevant (or what they call "the Main Stream Press.") 

The speech by Wallace was so inspiring to some, that composer Aaron Copland wrote a piece of music after it entitled "Fanfare for the Common Man."  The tune was reintroduced to the next generation (mine) by Emerson Lake and Palmer (click here for a YouTube video of ELP).  

I feel that we have lost that in our society, there is no real inspiration any more, nothing that inspires people or pushes them towards the greater good.  We are all inspired against the other; this country has become one of two polar opposites.  I attended the Women's March on Washington the past weekend; it was very charging and inspiring; it was against the new administration and the fear they install in many of us.  I just wish it would inspire all common women and men to set their differences aside; that we restore civility and make sure this new political experiment we are embarking on does not end wrong; these guys have never run a country before.  But let's make sure that we stay informed and by independent, unbiased, unfiltered news sources.

I took this picture at the Women's March and to me it symbolizes what I am trying to say here.  This sign did not criticize the President or even congress but asked (in her own way) for the restoration of civility and trust in human nature.  I have no idea if she was a lone counter demonstrator or a very spiritual person, but her sign was very out of place, but so poignant. 

Catching flies or on being nice to people (8/22/2016)

Of late I’ve seen very little civility in public life.  I’ve written about it before in various blog posts <here>, <here>, and <here>, or look at my label section under tolerance.  Right now with the presidential elections in full swing there is at least one presidential candidate who’s every word is being followed; journalists are trying to figure out what outrageous thing he has said today or who he is making fun of.  His allies are desperately trying to urge him to stick to the teleprompter, but he is telling everyone that he is not going to change, that the people like who he is, as abrasive and uncivilized as ever.  I don’t need to use names, everyone knows who I mean, whether you like him or not.

While privately I may need to blow off steam so now and in public I try to be civilized and well mannered.  That is partially because I am in front of so many people.  Most of my readers know what I do for a living, or at least you think you do.  I am a teacher, an instructor; I develop courses and I travel throughout the state to teach them.  Hopefully I am a nice guy when I do that (actually, I am told I am an OK kinda guy).  

Ah, but I do more.  We have a certificate program and people need to pass an exam.  Once they are certified, they need to take classes that are relevant to keep up their certification and submit them to us.  I have the unlucky task to make sure that these courses are relevant.  This is where I often cannot be Mr. Nice Guy, and that bugs the hell out of me.

We have almost 4000 certificate holders and so there are a lot of courses to track.  Thank goodness we do this with 3 people, but I have to email the certificate holders when there is anything amiss.   I am finally at the end of 350 questionable courses that were submitted for review these past few months and let me tell you, for me this was the worst job I had in a long time.  Don't you just hate looking for things people do wrong?  Well I do!  I rather look for things people to right and compliment them for it!  I finished the other day and had three aural migraine attacks in one day after being migraine free for months.  Just coming down from the stress of it all.

So when I have to email them and deny them credit for a class, I try to do this with a smile on my face or at least in a nice email. (It still stresses me out.)  Why make them feel bad?  Some people don't care, like an ex-colleague of mine.  He was very hard nosed and  I'll call him Harry.  "Harry" I said one day, "be nice to people, it is easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar." Harry looked at me and said: "But Jan, I don't want to catch flies."  The metaphor went completely over his head, he did not understand I actually meant people not, really flies.

The ultimate bug catcher, although he looks pretty docile, relaxed and friendly, he's a pretty fierce predator when you see him moving at night on our sliding door window.  This is how I see myself auditing people's re-certification efforts.

This is another way to catch flies.

But Harry is not alone, there are so many Harry-s out there.  The world is more and more lacking compassion.  Why is that?  Maybe part the explanation lies in what I read in this article about ecological economics.  In it Robert Costanza argues that the larger to difference is between income groups, the less cooperation we have between the groups, more competition, and less productivity.  The groups are spending a lot of resources on preserving what they have (sounds familiar, doesn't it? Our politicians are for sale to the highest bidders trying to preserve their wealth and class status.).  I think you could also conclude then that this is why we probably also have less compassion between groups, or just generally in this world.  We are more interested in protecting what we have than in helping each other.

Vinegar anyone?  It is an amazing world we live in, isn’t it?  

Travels in Virginia's Appalachia (April 2016)

April was spent in the far western part of Virginia; in Abingdon to be exact.  I have either had people who expressed their sorrow when I told them this, or their envy.  For example my buddy Ben at the yacht club told me that if Abingdon was on or near the ocean and he could sail there he would move at an instance and I think I would too (but I guess and hope ocean level rise will never make it there).

I tend to stay away from selfies on my blog, but ok, I took this picture on the very first day in April that I arrived in Abingdon at the beginning of the Virginia Creeper Trail.  Amazing that people who take selfies have these terrible grins.

I spent three weeks of April in Abingdon, and yes it could be lonely living in a motel room, away from home, but the first day of each week was with someone from my office, so that was great (most of the time).  On Wednesdays the Wolf Hills Brewery (the local brewery in Abingdon) has trivia night and the first night I was there, two young couples adopted me and I played trivia with them.  We actually won and they got a $25 gift certificate for the tasting room.  So you guessed it, I was adopted by them the two following weeks as well, and every time they saw me I was greeted by them as a long lost friend.  Nothing better than getting a hug from two mid-20-ish (female) school teachers and handshakes from their hubbies, while being away from home.  I don't think you see that happen in a big town.  Abingdon is just fun small town living.

Tasting room at the Wolf Hills Brewery

It was there that I learned that one of the teachers had a run in with the police the weekend that the NASCAR race came to Bristol that weekend in April.  She was tased and cuffed; truthfully not something I would have expected to see happen to this small (5'4" maybe 130 lbs maybe) school teacher.  The three cops let her go once they figured out who she was and what her profession was.  But she had the bruises and the taser mark to show for it.  This well educated and what appeared to me well mannered girl was somewhat proud talking about it, that it took three cops and a taser to take her down.

I am definitively not planning to make this a travelogue, but want to highlight some commonalities I experienced during all three visits.  I felt at home and accepted.  Naturally, Abingdon is not off the beaten track, and Damascus is on the Appalachian and the Virginia Creeper Trails.  So they get a lot of influx from people who are from the outside, but still there is a difference between being tolerated or almost accepted.  I can feel that.  I travel so much that even in local restaurants or so the ambiance or the friendliness of the local waitstaff give you that feeling.  Some people just give you the feeling they really care, others just fake it or don't even do that.  Only once did I feel alienated when traveling out in the mountains of Virginia, but that was only the result of listening to conservative talk radio, which is difficult to escape on the AM when you drive through the area, and so are the religious stations.  I wrote about it on March 4, 2015 in my blog.  Yes people are more conservative and you notice that on the radio.  I sometimes use that as a learning moment, as long as it does not become hate speech and intolerant; anyway NPR almost reaches everywhere.  Otherwise, best to download a book or a podcast.

Walking back along Main street from the restaurant to my motel in Abingdon.  It would great to have sidewalks, but we don't even have those in York County.

The Appalachian region has been in an economic downturn for a long time.  Driving through towns like Pulaski you can see the empty furniture factories and other industrial area.  On top of that you hear about coal mines shutting down and that the area has not really returned from the depression that started at the end of the Bush presidency.  National Public Radio Morning Edition had a whole special on it; click <here> for the link to that program, you can actually listen to it.  It played one Thursday morning when I was sitting in the car and just leaving town on my way back home.  I swore that the next week I would bike part of the Virginia Creeper Trail and somehow end up at the Damascus Brewery that is mentioned in the piece to have a beer.

The Damascus Brewery serves the best Dam(ascus) beer!

Well I did it the next week.  The bike ride was wonderful, I left town and went left as recommended by the bike shop owner, away from town.  Biking through the national forest along a creek was a great experience, but you know my need for nature and my battles with nature deficit disorder.  While I only biked 3 miles out (total ride was 6 miles) it was an easy ride and the beer tasted extra good afterwards.  There I got in a long and very pleasant discussion with a through hiker on the Appalachian trail who stopped over for a few days to recharge his system.  Again, what great experiences to be had, to get off the main road and just take your time to explore and interact with people.  Books can be written about these experiences.

Along the Virginia Creeper Trail, this photo and the first photo are the two bookends of my experiences along the trail.

What did I learn or what stood out?  I did not encounter many African Americans or Hispanic during my stay in the area.  I am sure they are there, but I had none in my classes; I saw none in restaurants not even as waitstaff or cleanup staff, not even at Wendy's, but I did not eat in any Mexican restaurants this time; none of the household staff at the motel was black or Hispanic.  I think I saw one, who appeared local, African American gentleman putting gas in his vehicle when I was doing the same one morning, but that was all.  I don't want to conclude that the area does not have any minorities, but it seems much more segregated.  I also learned that it still is economically depressed, but people in generally seem to have a positive outlook on life.  The people out there are like everywhere else, they genuinely care about their fellow human beings.  But they have an edge, like my school teacher who did not think twice about taking on three cops and getting tased as a result of it (and she was not ashamed of it, to say the least).  They live in a beautiful part of the state, that they should be proud of.

Digging deeper (3/30/2016)

Boy, I only had one post in March.  Guess I had nothing to say.  Well, not really, but life is getting away from me (taxes and other writings).  Maybe I had nothing inspirational to say or nothing I have wanted to share; at least until today, when during lunch time I started looking through the on-line version of Wired and ran into the "Instagram Rabbit Hole" section of the magazine.  That was fun.  What Wired does is, one of their photographers takes one of their favorite photographers on Instagram and looks who they follow or who follows them and they go down five levels and see where they end up.  I tried it with people who follow me on Instagram and it was fun.

It is kind of as the 7 degrees of separation, the theory that everyone on this earth is no more that 7 persons away from each other.  Fore example my wife and I have actually spent a very pleasant evening talking with the father of the king of the Netherlands (or Holland as some call it) when we lived in Yemen of all places.  Now that all the sudden brings you close to many world leaders.  I wonder how many degrees I am away from Kim Jong-un; although that would not be really be not something I to be very proud of.  But then, I have been close to other weirdos as well (see my posts on Idi Amin).

It is just very fascinating to me these kinds of rabbit holes.  When I did it to my Instagram contacts I ran into locked pages, or pages that you had to ask permission to the owners from to connect to.  Makes you wonder what they have to hide, or if they are just private.

Going to one of my favorite photographers following me: Derya or @Daltuny on Instagram from Turkey, this is one of the latest photographs by her:

Photo taken by Derya and published on Instagram

Going "5 generations" in random down the rabbit hole (avoiding locked pages and just selfies) I got here to the page of Kenny Byron or @kidd_ok on Instagram.  Kenny seems to be a snow boarder and this was a recent photograph I loved:

Photograph by Kenny Byron published on Instagram

Fun to games like this.  Next time I would end up somewhere completely different, but I am so happy I ended up here Kenny Byron takes some awesome pictures, but so did the intermediaries between Derya and him, it was a feast for the eyes.  You should try it, whether you do it in Instagram, Google+ or maybe even in Facebook.  Who knows where you end up and what you learn about the world around you and your fellow humans.

So sorry guys, no photographs or deep thoughts by me, just some observations on the inter-connectedness  of us all, something I did discuss in this post before as well.  I am still amazed how small our world is becoming and how much we depend on each other.

On cyber communities (12/7/2015)

On the road again, for the last trip of the year.  It started pretty darn shitty, but finally made it to my destination as of this writing.  Wytheville is a sleepy town in "them hills" of Virginia. I have this reputation with my colleagues of being in love with this town, and for one reason or another I used to go here very often; at least until they discovered it.

When on the road I rely a lot on my (artificial) cyber communities that we all seem to have amassed around us.  I was reminded about that today during my drive over here listening to National Public Radio's Fresh Air by Terry Gross.  She was interviewing Rick Moody about his new book "Hotels of North America".  The book is written as a set of hotel reviews.

It made me think of how I live and depend on my cyber community when on the road:

• Yelp (for restaurant reviews)
• LinkedIn (for support form like-minded professionals, kind of like a support groups)
• Facebook (mostly friends)
• Google+ (my blog, more artsy community and bonsai enthusiasts)
• Google Maps (for traffic updates and restaurant recommendations)
• Weather Underground (all about weather)

Within these communities there are also special groups that I'm a member of.  For example in Facebook I'm a member of our church group, our neighborhood group, the Virginia birders group, and a bread bakers group.  In LinkedIn I'm a member of 20+ groups.  Driving over, I started realizing that I have a lot of fake or maybe artificial friends. The interesting thing is too that all these sites keep suggesting more groups that you might be interested in joining, like trying to suck you in deeper and deeper.

I'm always amused by my 88 year old father-in-law  (who reads these posts and will probably give me grief for mentioning him), because he seems so bemused by the fact that Facebook knows so (too) much about him and it keeps suggesting potential new friends to him or trying to invite him to join LinkedIn.  He is correct it is somewhat intrusive, just look at that list of communities that know my preferences etc. and keeps tabs on me.

But yes, without Yelp, I would never have found those great restaurants, or avoided those supposedly lousy ones.  I also write reviews, usually only of good experiences and only once or twice of really horrible dining experiences (I hated those professors that graded you on your mistakes and did not look at the things you did correct).  I never review a place to settle a score or to make someone look bad; I try to be a responsible partner in my community.  Some don't; this morning there was a thing on morning edition about women being taken advantage off through on-line dating, another one of those communities.

Internet communities are great things for a lot of people including me.  They put all your friends together: it allowed me to rediscover old long lost friends; it gave me support groups; it gave me traffic information; and I had some absolutely great inexpensive food.  So yes, I like my friends on my cyber groups, my real friends or virtual friends.  Moreover, traveling is lonely and it is better than getting silly in a bar.  But I realize as well, nothing is better than real life friends in real flesh that you can talk to, have a drink with and just be with.

On trainers and teaching, Part VI, what walls? (11/25/2015)

It is always interesting to see that when you start something it has unforeseen consequences, in particular when they are positive.  Call it serendipity or coincidence, but it is often not the intent.  In my case, it brought down a few walls, or boundaries.

So what am I talking about?  As I recently mentioned in a post I was developing a course on wetlands and how it relates to stormwater and erosion and sediment control.  We felt there was a tremendous need for a class like this, since we always talk about wetlands in our classes and the need to avoid impacting them.  We felt that I was the person to do this because I have worked as a wetland scientist throughout the U.S.A. since the early 1990-s.  Well, we have rolled out the class and given it at two locations.  The class has been well received and the evaluations are great.  Both the materials and the teacher (me) are well liked.  So there is something to say for being multifarious, a jack of all trades, it helps in thinking things through in developing a class and standing in front of a room and talking about a subject.  I discussed that in this post as well.

A tidal salt marsh in a creek that is a tributary to the York River.  Tidal marshes are really interesting, to the eye they may seem fairly uniform and only occupied by a single species.  But this is far from the truth.  During high tide they are teaming with small (young fish) and at low tide they have fiddler crabs and other critters.  The plant species in them have a very narrow tollerance range of water (tidal) depth.  It is a really neat system.

Why then the unforeseen consequences?  That for a big part may have to do with my personality.  While I love to teach and be in front of a class; I hate to practice, do dry runs of my classes, tell people how it goes, what I am doing, you know it.  I find it difficult to develop outlines of what I am doing or how the class will go (a waste of time almost, I rather be developing the class or think about it).  For me developing a class is an organic I start out with a few ideas and things go from there I put things before it and behind it, wherever it makes sense in my eyes; I brood.  This can be infuriating to my supervisor, although he has learned to live with it and understands it.  However, you can imagine that people who do not know my style and more vested in the subject matter can get concerned when they experience my style first hand.  I do not like to rehearse my classes, and when I do, I find it difficult to treat a group of my colleagues, who I assume know as much as I do of the subject, as the students I am supposed to teach and know very little.  It feels like I am talking down to them and that is something I cannot do.  I like to talk to people at their level, which is probably why people rate me so high as a teacher (am I too arrogant here? I really don't like talking down to people, unless I don't like them, then I talk down to them like the best of them!).  Moreover, I do not rehearse my classes.  As I tell my students in the first class: “You guys are the dress rehearsal and the main event all at the same time!” 

During the development of the class I’ve felt two or three times that the class would be cancelled because of the sensitive issues that wetlands raise in this country.  We understand more and more about their importance as an ecosystem and habitat that needs to be protected, and for that matter the push back that conservationists have had in the past from the development and home building community.  So it is logical that this class was under somewhat of a microscope to start with.  Moreover, people are protective of their own turf, so it is difficult to have an outsider like me teach a subject that another group in our department is responsible for; they are the experts and they had no idea what my level of expertise was or what my teaching style was.  On top of that was my style of course design and development (in other words don't do as I do when you do course design) and my marginal ability to articulate it.

However, I can report all is well and I have received compliments from the group that considered asking us to cancel the classes and we received an offer from them to co-teach the class with me, the greatest compliment I can get.  I consider it a breaking down of a virtual wall between groups that is there whether you want to admit there is a wall or not.

But one thing is for sure you never get to tear down walls or get these neat unforeseen consequences if you don't try!

And yes, I need to really try to be more transparent in my course design, I guess.

Virginia Beach (5/12/2015)

This week's travel takes me to Virginia Beach.  At least I had a chance to walk along the beach after the "Stormwater Plan Review" class that I taught.  As usual, I was exhausted from a day's worth of teaching, but it was still nice to be out there.

It was warm, with temperatures in the high 80s (30 to 31 degrees Celcius) and there were a fair number of people on the beach for a Tuesday afternoon.

Virginia Beach is a great place for a family vacation; for us it is so close but so far away.  Political leaders in the area are desperately trying to make the Hampton Roads area one community,  but the tunnels actually divides the area into the south side and the peninsula.

What amazed me during my walk on the beach was the number of people on their smartphones.  Darn, it seems that people cannot just enjoy their surroundings and the environment but have to be connected all the time.  How many times do you sit in a restaurant and a couple comes in and after being seated and ordering they ignore each other and just stare at their phone.  While phones are a god sent for us travelers  (we stay in touch with spouses and find the nice restaurants on Yelp), it seems that human relationship seems to suffer.  Even on this beautiful beach, couples were sitting on benches staring at their phones instead of looking at people, the beach and the ocean.  So close, but so far apart.

A nice change of pace was the sushi counter at my favorite sushi restaurant: Kyushu Japanese Restaurant on Newtown road.  I was sitting there with three other people and we had a wonderful discussion.   Kyushu is really my favorite and worth a try for all that like sushi.  The fish is fresh, it tastes great and good conversation.

Richmond (11/19/2014)

Working in the center of Richmond can always result into some excitement, especially during my lunch-time walks.  On Wednesday their was a climate/clean energy rally on capital square and I took these photos while looking at the proceedings.

It was kind of ironic that is was about the coldest day of the current fall, temperatures were 10 to 20 degrees below normal, and I am sure it probably fueled to fire of some of the climate change deniers.  Yes it was cold, and that is exactly what is predicted by researchers on climate change.  I've seen right wing pundits on TV telling me we are going into an ice age and all kinds of other propaganda.  The Washington Post has an interesting article on what's going on (see my link above), and during my dentist visit, I found an article in Scientific American (December 2014 issue) that describes the Polar Vortex in great detail.

I am sure that others will try to find fault with discussions on climate change/global warming, but so be it.  I do not think there is one climate scientist who would be be upset if they are proven wrong; who would want to see/experience global warming.  These same people that question global warming are constantly talking about the economy and want to protect those same children and grand children from the mounting debt (which is not proven either), but then turn around and question global warming.  I rather be safe than sorry.  I am just amazed that people are willing to play chicken with their future and the future of their children and grand children in both cases.

I really think this is a sign of the times.  We have liberals and conservatives and they are so entrenched that a compromise is not possible any longer.  We have a bunch of congress men/women and senators in Washington who's mission it was "to make Obama a one term president", and when that did not work, they are fighting everything the democrats propose.  This is followed up with a push back from the democratic party, and compromise is gone.  It has become of fight of principals instead of a fight for what is good for the country and the people living in it.  I really think this lack of compromise; the disrespect for education and educated people (educated elite) or rich people; the rise in college costs; and the shrinking of the middle class are going the be the downfall of our country and turn it into a third world country that much like Russia is only noticed when it flexes its  military muscle.

Oh well, enough politics for today.  If you are a regular reader, you I do not politic that often.  But if you are interested, just open the labels tab and look for the keyword politics and you'll find a few more posts).  Guess the energy demonstration did that to me.  This group consisted on people against the proposed pipeline, clean energy people, people for sustainable energy, global warming people etc.  A diverse group, and hopefully a group with a variety of political leanings, a true compromise; although I doubt it.

Seaford (7/12/2014)

Friday and Saturday were the days for a “supermoon”, or the closest a full moon comes to the earth that year.  So naturally we had our evening coffee on the boat this Saturday evening play some music and gaze at the horizon for the moon.  Truthfully, it was spectacular but nothing you can capture with your measly cell phone camera with only has a digital zoom.  But of course I forgot my hotshot camera.

There were others at the marina, drinking beer/water and enjoying in conversation.  A few had ventured out to see it come up over the bay.  Moreover, I heard (after the fact) that there was actually a moonlight (sail) race that night as well.  Sailboat owners are an active bunch, and it is fun to be part of them. 

I really think sailboat owners represent a fairly good cross section of the population.  Yes, sailboats can be expensive; in particular new ones, but the members in our club range from conservative to liberal.  They needle each other so now and then, but the one thing they have in common is their love for being on the water.   Although, some of the guys openly admit that it is nice to be out of the house for a bit on the weekends to work on the boat.  Another thing in common is the love of nature; sailing in a sewage lagoon is no fun, and most if not all are committed to keeping the Bay clean.  This is very much like people from organizations like Ducks Unlimited.  Yes they are all duck hunters, but without good wetlands there would not be any ducks, so they are a driving force in wetland protection.

I think this all comes to show that persons with great differences in conviction and belief can work together to further a good cause.  While we live in a pluralistic society, it feels more and more like we live in a polarized society.  I sense a loss of civility, compassion, and empathy, whether it is in international politics and strife, or our national politics.  I find this very disturbing, and I’m not sure what I, as an individual, can do about it, except for trying to practice empathy myself and writing this blog.

Anyway, this is my rendition of a wonderful evening of watching the supermoon and thinking about things I see and learned this Sunday in the church I attend.