Why it is Death Valley and the Smoke Creek? I don't know, but that is how Michele and I refer to them. The Smoke Creek is a huge playa about two hours north of Reno and we will be visiting friends. From there we will probably wander east to a ghost town named Vernon in a small mountain range called The Seven Troughs. My favorite desert is around Death Valley but Michele considers that area too extreme and much prefers northern Nevada. It does have its allures.

For reference, the picture above (double click to enlarge) is from our friends place, and in the Google Earth capture (also double click to enlarge) below at the green patch in the lower left hand corner. Reno is in the circle at the upper right hand corner of the capture and the the big lake is Pyramid Lake. 

The space shuttle Atlantis returned from orbit from orbit, a couple of days ago. For the last time. It didn't even make the front page of the New York Times.
I am not a shuttle fan. I think that the shuttle and the space station have a symbiotically wasteful relationship.

The space station – which does almost nothing useful except prove man can stay in space for awhile if we spend enough money – justifies the space shuttle by giving it a place to go. The space shuttle – which does almost nothing except give a very small group of highly motivated, over competent, pilots and technicians the ride of their lives at our expense – justifies the space station by having a place to go.  

But that is just my opinion and it is the end of an era. This video is a little slow but what a great way to come home from a vacation (or three day weekend)! Probably the best thing is to double click to take you through to You Tube because, for some reason way beyond my expertize, the picture is too big here.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a blogger I've mentioned before. The last couple of days, in response to Rand Paul's comments, he has been running a series of posts on the sit-in to integrate a lunch counter in the train station in Jackson, Mississippi. Actually, Coates is reacting to both Paul's comment that he doesn't think the government should force a private business to integrate its lunch counter and that he is not a racist and would have marched with Dr. King.

I really recommend linking to the three posts (1,2,3). They are powerful, inspirational, and, in their own way, terrifying. The time was 1961, 49 years ago, and, in this black and white picture, it now seems like a different country.

In another different country, now, a similar scene is being played out.

From another different country, this photograph of a group of young men taunting a Palestinian woman
evicted from her home to make way for Israeli settlers seems eerily familiar. Both of these pictures sicken me and the bottom one sickens me the most. I grew up in a household that pretty much worshiped Israel for bringing democracy, enlightenment, and liberalism to a dark corner of the world. The Jewish equivalent of the white man's burden, if you will.

If there is any good to come from this, maybe, just maybe, it will bring on the same kind of revulsion the top picture did.