Happy Goose Day 2010

“Eat a goose on Michaelmas Day,
Want not for money all the year”.

Thoughts for the Road - #93

七転び八起き - Japanese Proverb

Thoughts for the Road - #25

There is something beautiful about working so hard that you are reduced to silence next to your friends. Some friendships never get to the level where silence is comfortable, let alone productive or healing. Some friends will never understand the unspoken. - Kristin Armstrong, Author and runner

Autumn Time

Two Great Horned Owls woke me early this morning. They reminded me to share this pagan chant:


Autumn time, red leaves fall
While the weeping sky looks over all
Demeter sadly walks the land
The dying grasses in her hand

Thoughts for the Road - #04

Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.- Joe Paterno

Thoughts for the Road - #30

It's my own space, my own time, when I'm just out there letting my thoughts go. It's part of my day like eating, and it's one of my favorite parts. - Louise Kent

The Power of an Image

It was 75 years ago today that Nazi Germany adopted a new national flag with the swastika. Archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates from the Neolithic period and throughout the Iron Age and Classical Antiquity. The word being derived from the Sanskrit word "svastika", meaning any lucky or auspicious object, and in particular a mark made on persons and things to denote good luck.

The flag's anniversary provoked me to research how powerful images and icons can be and I came across an interesting article by Julia Tagliere on Buzzle. She focuses on photographs and how they impact our world and it's worth reading.

The Power of an Image

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Indeed, the earliest forms of communication used were symbol-based, dating back almost thirty thousand years. By comparison, writing as a form of communication only came into existence a mere seven thousand years ago. Although a multitude of people around the world today are able to communicate in written form, images are still a necessary tool of communication for many others. A 2000 study estimated that there are 862 million illiterate adults worldwide, with some seventy percent of those adults living in Sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia, and the Arab States and North Africa. For those people without the ability to read or write, images still serve as their primary means of gaining information, giving to visual images the capacity to communicate with those living in even the direst of circumstances.

An image can convey thoughts, ideas, or events to which words alone sometimes cannot do justice. Images can thrill us, like the images sent back to Earth from the Mars Rover missions. They can inspire us, like the photo of the American flag raised over the rubble of the World Trade Center by three New York firefighters on September 11, 2001. They can be heartbreaking, like the image of Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields carrying tiny Baylee Almon out of the wreckage of the Oklahoma City bombing. They can incite outrage, like the photos of the stacked bodies of Holocaust victims; they can bring us face to face with the worst inhumanities imaginable. They can bring tears to our eyes, lift our spirits, or sink our hearts. Images are powerful, and with such power must come responsibility for their prudent and thoughtful use.

In the U.S., there has always been a battle between judicious reporting (which often includes the publishing of accompanying photographs) and the public’s right to know. The First Amendment guarantees to the press the freedom to pursue its mission. Any suggestion that the press hold off on putting incendiary or inflammatory stories in front of the public is often met with cries of censorship, something no one would dare to suggest. So many times, images have served as catalysts for righting horrible wrongs (has anyone forgotten the images from the Abu Ghraib scandal?) But sometimes, an image is published and creates an unintended effect, and it is that sort of image with which the press should take more care.

For example, there appeared recently in a well-known news magazine an article about U.S. troops in a firefight Qubah, Iraq in late March. One of the images that accompanies the story is of of Qubah’s residents having identifying numerals written on their hands, while another shows simply a hand with the number written on it clearly visible. The writing of the numbers on the residents’ hands, the story and caption explain, is to help U.S. soldiers tell what part of town people were from and whether they were out during lockdown, which sounds perfectly legitimate. But the photo—what an image! The story itself only briefly mentions the assignment of numbers, but the images of the numbered hands and the residents as they receive them take up the bulk of two pages, dwarfing the intended point of the story with images that are starkly reminiscent of Holocaust survivors, their identification numbers standing out on their arms. The similiarity is chilling, especially when one notes that in the pictures, it is U.S. soldiers this time assigning the numbers.

Perhaps for many people, particularly those fortunate enough to have received enough education in order to be literate, the pictures within that story may be only sidebars, items of marginal relevance to the story itself. But for those who can’t read, or for those people around the world who may only see a picture, the story told in those two stark pictures isn’t the firefight in Qubah: the story here is yet another image of a specific group of human beings being reduced, for the second time in world history, to something less than human, to being nothing more than a number. The people shown in those pictures did not appear to be insurgents (although we are all too well aware of how dangerous it can be for the military to make assumptions about what an insurgent or a terrorist should look like); in one photo, it was a group of women and children. The reasoning behind the use of numbers, the need to create a safe environment for our soldiers once the firefight had ended, is not debated here—the issue is that the picture itself conveys a powerful image of a military subduing a group of people and reducing them to a number, removing their very humanity.

Several months ago, the world watched in dismay as the Muslim world rose up in fierce anger over a cartoon depiction that they believed had insulted their faith. It is hard to imagine there would be Americans today who would advocate censorship in any case, but that ferocious backlash, resulting from an image, should have reminded us all that there is a fine line to be walked between freedom of the press and the responsibility that the media bears as our "arbiters of truth". More consideration should be paid to the selection of images that will accompany those articles.

In a report dealing with U.S. soldiers’ continuing efforts to fight the insurgents in areas removed from Baghdad, what purpose could there be in choosing images that have so obvious a visual connection to one of the most horrific events in history? Was the visual link between a heartless Nazi tactic and a current U.S. military procedure deliberate? Was is it unintended or not thoroughly thought through? If a picture paints a thousand words, then what was it that this picture was intended to convey, particularly to those without the literacy needed to read the accompanying story?

With images wielding such tremendous power to stir up emotions, to change events, to break our hearts, to inspire us, it is difficult to see a picture of members of our own military writing numbers on a man’s neck as he sits surrounded by what appear to be his wife, in tears, and his children. Is the man an insurgent? Is his wife? We don’t know—we are forced to rely on the image, which is disturbing in its similarity to the numbered arms of Holocaust survivors. Moving? Absolutely. Poignant? Without a doubt. But necessary? No one would advocate censorship or limiting the freedom of the press we enjoy so thoroughly in this country, but there are times when the responsible parties should take a step back, and look at the images they are sending out with a fresh eye. Long after the words to that article have faded from memory, that image, of U.S. soldiers reducing human beings to numbers, will stick in the mind. Is this the image of the U.S. soldier the magazine intended to convey, or was it incidental? The answer doesn’t really matter at this point; that image is out there now and that image is what will endure. This is the power that an image inherently possesses, and as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility—the responsibility to question what even the incidental impact of a visual image may be to the world and to measure whether that gain is worth the cost.

Thoughts for the Road - #98

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else. - Steve Prefontaine, American middle and long-distance runner

Thoughts for the Road - #37

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. - Walt Whitman

Thoughts for the Road - #53

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence."– George Washington, 1st U.S. president (1732–99)

New Moon - Cranberry Harvest

Cranberries are harvested in the fall when the fruit takes on its distinctive deep red color. This is usually in late September or early October. To harvest cranberries, the beds are flooded with six to eight inches of water above the vines. A harvester is driven through the beds to remove the fruit from the vines. For the past 50 years, water reel type harvesters have been used. Harvested cranberries float in the water and can be corralled into a corner of the bed and conveyed or pumped from the bed. From the farm, cranberries are taken to receiving stations where they are cleaned, sorted, and stored prior to packaging or processing.

Thoughts for the Road - #28

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
Maya Angelou

Thoughts for the Road - #59

The great advantage of our sport over all others is that we don't need a ball or a team or a field, or even, according to some, shoes. We just need to stand someplace, imagine ourselves in the center of a circle, pick one out of the 360 degrees available to us, and head thataway.
Peter Sagal, a 3:20 marathoner and the host of NPR's Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!

Cats, Out to the World

Miles - zonked

Birbanto - snoozing

Mooch - never quite asleep if the boys are. "Why waste good time sleeping when I haz my freedom?" she asks.

Thoughts for the Road - #48

“Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.” - Buddha

Hurrah September!

September begins on the same day of the week as December every year, because there are 91 days separating September and December, which is a multiple of seven (the number of days in the week).

The scents of Autumn are creeping in as Summer draws to a close. Unlike the verdant smell of Spring, September is a mix of hot grapes on the vine, parched earth and late summer flowers like the honey scented butterfly bushes.

Students and teachers are back in school. My morning runs are again treated to friendly waves from kids on school buses. My afternoons are a bit more free when I treat myself to a few rounds of DDR. Only homeschooled kids are waiting for their turn or asking to double up with me until after 3PM. Their demeanor and conversations are always engaging.

First harvests have passed with Lughnasad and Mabon's second harvests are quickly approaching. My first name reflects that of the reaper. I have sown over 300 miles this year and hope to reap a 1/2 marathon in a month. What will you aim to reap this year?