I like trash pickers!
Trash pickers stuff their pockets, fanny packs or a pouch in their hiking packs with plastic garbage bags, especially in the Spring.
The Spring melt reveals lots of ugly trash along roadsides, trails and in public parks. Trash pickers fill the plastic bags from their pockets with this spring junk. They beautify our public spaces. They volunteer what our governments no longer consider important enough to fund.
Glorious weather brought lots of folks out-of-doors. Among them I saw many Trash Picker. I enjoyed the beauty they left behind.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
Reflections - A New Hobby
I tripped over Geocashing this weekend.
I purchased a hand held global positioning navigation unit last week (GPS). I plan hike in the area around Grand Portage up the North shore of Lake Superior. I hope to follow Old Highway 61 to the abandoned border crossing. I wanted easy (and high tech) access to topographical maps.
I discovered that people hide caches for others to find. (Another wonderful use for watertight Tupperware containers.) Web Sites dedicated to Geocaching list caches and allow you to track what you find.
My son and I went to search for a couple locations close home. We found the places easily but discovering the hiding spot took more time. He found the first cache just after we decided to give up.
Combing the listings on the Geocache site, I realize I have walked over, around, or near caches for years without knowing it.
I love the out-of-doors. Geocaching should be a wonderful addition to hiking with my cameras.
I purchased a hand held global positioning navigation unit last week (GPS). I plan hike in the area around Grand Portage up the North shore of Lake Superior. I hope to follow Old Highway 61 to the abandoned border crossing. I wanted easy (and high tech) access to topographical maps.
I discovered that people hide caches for others to find. (Another wonderful use for watertight Tupperware containers.) Web Sites dedicated to Geocaching list caches and allow you to track what you find.
My son and I went to search for a couple locations close home. We found the places easily but discovering the hiding spot took more time. He found the first cache just after we decided to give up.
Combing the listings on the Geocache site, I realize I have walked over, around, or near caches for years without knowing it.
I love the out-of-doors. Geocaching should be a wonderful addition to hiking with my cameras.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Thoughts about Obituaries
Lake Superior
A Bench by the Harbor -
I love Lake Superior. I took this photograph just a few days after our last snow. (We hope!) This bench sits close to the Duluth Aquarium.
I like the peace of this picture. Not a footprint in sight.
To be honest, I have entered the Funeral and Obituary Season of my life. Death no longer takes just Uncles, Aunts and Parents, but now cousins and friends.
I should read the obituaries. Mom read them until she died. She called when propriety required attendance at a funeral. Now my siblings and I muddle along hoping to catch them all.
True, newspapers make it easier. I can check the obits electronically. I can sign the guestbook of a friend in Fort Wayne from the comfort of my Cloquet office. Still I must remember to log in each day. Its useless to batch read obituaries a month at a time.
What do we really need? Automatic, email notification. I envision it this way.
I log on to the local newspaper and enter all those names I wish to track. When my cousin's husband, Fred, dies an email will tell me!
Yes, I see some technical problems. What if the family of my friend Dick Smith publishes his name as Richard. I think technology can handle it.
The Obit Notification may give me a number of false positives. It could email me about the Dick Smith who lives in Superior not the Dick Smith who lives in Duluth.
However, better too many notifications than missing an important funeral.
I have not solved one difficulty, however: Competition. Can you imagine graybeards my age at local bars and coffee shops. "Well, I have 56 people who are watching for my death. How many do you have?"
Ken
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Along the Superior Hiking Trail - Presumptions
We presume lots of things to be 'natural' or true. This quote unmasks the assumption.
"Tell me," the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "Why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?"
His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just LOOKS as though the Sun is going round the Earth."
Wittgenstein responded, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"
We always need to wonder what's spinning whether considering the world or the truth.
I captured this photograph during a 'false' Spring day. Two additional snow storms came later that month. I walked here many times before but a different light and season created a new view.
"Tell me," the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "Why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?"
His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just LOOKS as though the Sun is going round the Earth."
Wittgenstein responded, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"
Quoted in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
We always need to wonder what's spinning whether considering the world or the truth.
I captured this photograph during a 'false' Spring day. Two additional snow storms came later that month. I walked here many times before but a different light and season created a new view.
Taken near the western end of the trail, just off the Becks Road in Duluth.
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