A pleasant evening's walk in Paradise...

A pleasant evening's walk in Paradise...  Miki, Race, and I took a slightly different route tonight than our usual two mile (round trip) walk.  We probably did three miles all together, including a mile or so around a field on some tracks we'd never been on before.  I noticed that the aromas from the alfalfa and barley fields had a distinctly “cooked” aspect to them, which I suspect is closely related to the (wonderful!) aroma of drying hay.

On the way up the first hill, still on our usual route, we came across a large flock (perhaps 100 birds) of white-faced ibis right in the road and not near any water.  We'd never seen them on dry ground before.  They held their place until we got roughly 50' away, then a lunge by Miki spooked them and the whole flock was gone.  They stayed in a single flock and made a long, slow loop around the entire field, traveling about 2 miles in the air, then settled back down on the same road, but behind us :)

Some photos from along the way below.  The horses in the first photo belong to our neighbors Gary and Elaine S.  Debbie says they are Paso Finos.  In the third photo, if you click to embiggen it, you can see the Hyrum Reservoir (about 3 miles north of our house) roughly in the center, below and left of a distant peak.

Want to read the full text of the Iran nuclear deal?

Want to read the full text of the Iran nuclear deal?  Here it is...

I read things...

I read things ... and sometimes don't stop before they bring on the doom.

What pathetic wimps our citizenry includes...

The Chattanooga shooting were not a senseless act of violence...

The Chattanooga shooting were not a senseless act of violence...  Mark Steyn schools us, and wonders where the righteous anger is.  Good question...

We escaped from California...

We escaped from California ... just in time...

New word of the day...

New word of the day...  Seen here.  The word is “offenderati”.  Best definition I found:

The  people in this world who eagerly await their next opportunity to take offense/express indignation on behalf of any group they feel they can plausibly claim were slighted by someone's comment or action.

Good one!

Headline of the day...

Headline of the day...  From Ace, writing at Ace of Spades HQ (which, if you're not reading daily you certainly should be.  This just may be the very best headline evah!

Gawker Staff Smears Feces On Itself, Boards a Schoolbus Loaded With Gasoline and Napalm, Then Intentionally Drives That Schoolbus Into a Cargo Train Transporting Toxic Waste and Retarded Clowns

Oh, my.  I had to sit and cherish that for a while.  Even if Ace had no content worth reading (but he does, in spades!) I'd still read him daily just for the headlines.  But this one stands out even amongst his.

This article also contains the best summary of the Gawker article that I've seen anywhere...

A very sad story...

A very sad story ... that displays the resistance here to California-style parental smothering.  In West Valley City (just southwest of Salt Lake City), a 12 year old girl was lured out of her house and (apparently) murdered by a 15 year old boy from the neighborhood.  The boy has been arrested.  The local police chief, Lee Russo, said this:

A member of the family knew she was leaving the house, but it's unclear how much her parents knew.

"This isn't about parenting," Russo said. "What we are investigating is the death of a 12-year-old girl."

From the TV coverage, I found that this was in response to a reporter's question about the parents' responsibility.  The chief's response is a very restrained version of what just about every citizen around here would say in the same situation.  That's a very different collective attitude about parenting than we were used to encountering in California.

Here in Utah, we often see:

• kids riding in the back of pickups
• kids riding bicycles without helmets
• kids, often quite young, wandering about, both in the country and in town, unsupervised
• kids roughhousing in places with glass and nails
• kids climbing trees, without safety harnesses or nets

Kids being kids, in other words.  Learning to be independent.  Learning to look out for themselves.  Learning how to deal with minor injury and pain.  Getting exposed to all sorts of bugs so they can build up their immunity :)  After being immersed in California-style parenting for all these years, it is so refreshing to experience this!

Here's something I never expected to see...

Here's something I never expected to see ... Muhu Island in Estonia, featured as a tourist destination in the New York Times.  The reasons the writer liked it are completely different than mine, of course (what I liked there most were the birds).  I visited that mansion before it was renovated and turned into a hotel and restaurant.  Mansions like that dot the countryside all over Estonia, perhaps especially on the islands.  They pop up in the most unexpected places.  Even on my last visit (in 2005, I believe), very few of those mansions had been renovated, though some had been purchased with that intent.  Twenty five years of freedom and capitalism have wrought amazing changes on the Estonia that I first knew...

A diplomat's view...

A diplomat's view ... of the Iran deal.  The interviewee is Charles Hill, a diplomat with quite the impressive set of experience...

ObamaCare...

ObamaCare ... the pain has just begun.  If you've been paying attention to the facts, as opposed to the politicians, this won't be any surprise to you.  The pain isn't going to be just financial, either.  This morning I read this article in an English newspaper, the subject of which is homeopathic “medicines” and how to deal with the people who promote them, or believe in them.  But what caught my eye in the article was this passage:

Consider this in contrast to the doctor’s surgery, often over-subscribed, where patients may be required to wait up to two weeks for an appointment.  Drawing from my own experience, on a recent surgery visit I was informed that I had to pick one of the two issues I needed to discuss with my doctor, as patients were only allocated a 10-minute slot and there would not be enough time to discuss both.

Note the casual acceptance of their medical reality under the socialized medicine program in place for many years in England (the National Health Service, or NHS).  English friends of mine have many horror stories about their experiences with the NHS, and I know a dozen or so who have paid for foreign trips (including to the U.S.) in order to obtain timely medical care for their loved ones.  One particularly sad case involved a colleague's wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.K. – but only after waiting seven months for an MRI.  By that time the cancer had advanced to the point where other organs were involved, and she died a year or so later – in the U.S., where she could get timely palliative care (this is one of the worst areas of delays in the NHS).

That is, inevitably, where we're headed with ObamaCare, unless we can muster up the political will to get rid of a socialized medical system.  Debbie and I may have to educate ourselves on medical tourism if we want to get decent medical care in the future.  Estonia and India are beckoning, and so is China.  Sheesh...

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise ... the Mormon horde edition...  Yesterday morning I had the last dental appointment associated with the root canal I had done.  This was for “restoration”, which in my case meant a silver amalgam filling.  This was to plug up the hole they drilled through my porcelain crown to do the root canal work.  Since the tooth had no nerves left in it, they didn't even need to numb me up for the filling.  As usual around here (but still new and awesome for us!), everything happened on time.  My appointment was for 10:30 am, and at 10:52 I walked out the door, finished.

The rest of the day yesterday I spent doing odd chores and cleaning up around the downed outbuilding.  We cleared out a lot of junk, and in general made a big mess, while disassembling that thing.

This morning, as planned, Steve and Janae arrived with a big fifth-wheel trailer ... and a horde (nine) of Mormon “young men”.  That term (young men) has a special meaning in the Mormon church wards; they're organized groups of young men that do things together, like the service project they did for me clearing out all that dead wood.  This group is from Steve and Janae's ward.  There were also a couple of friends and relatives, a bit older.  The group ranged in age from 14 to 22, but what they had in common was (a) muscles, and (b) enthusiasm.  At right is a photo I took as they moved the first section of wall.  With eleven people on it (twelve when I finished taking the photo!), it was easy enough to carry the whole weight between us – we didn't need the tractor at all.  Even lifting it over the fence and onto the rather tall trailer wasn't particularly difficult – although as I write this I note that my arms are a bit sore :)  In that photo I'm standing at the east edge of our back yard, looking due west.  You can see our shed in the background, and over it the stormy Wellsville Mountains.  That storm starting sprinkling on us just as we were finishing up. 

We had all six wall sections loaded up on the trailer in less than 15 minutes (at left).  It took another 20 minutes to strap them all down securely, put up hazard flags, and handle the donuts and milk that Janae (the blond woman in the photo at left) handed around.  The young men made a brief detour into my shop, to give me a hand moving my air compressor.  That beast weighs 650 pounds, and I needed to move it about 18" to one side.  I couldn't move it even a tenth inch.  It took them all of 15 seconds to get it exactly where I needed it.  They left a little while ago to head up to Steve & Janae's house, where this same group will help them unload the sections.  Then, in a few hours, Steve and Janae will head back down here with the trailer, and we'll load up the shelving, lighting, and a few other odds and ends that were in that building that they have a good use for.  They're also going to load up all the junk wood and dispose of it.  Then we're done!