Ed Dieden and I went on a long planned trip to Nevada to photograph. The weekend ended up being about a twenty hour drive to spend two hours in the ghost town of Bodie CA. But, hey! we both were born in California, so driving twenty hours in two days is an act of Western Patriotism. Our first stop was to be Bodie, California, a popular photography destination. To get to Bodie, first we had to get to Highway 395 and, to get to Highway 395, first we have to cross the Great Central Valley, the Sierra foothills, and, then, the High Sierras. In the foothills, it was early summer and the grass was just starting to turn from green to golden.

In the High Sierras, it was early spring with the wildflowers starting to bloom,

mother ducks were teaching their ducklings to swim and forage,

Lake Tenaya was looking very blue nestled in its granite valley,

and smaller lakes were doing their best to provide Kuhlmanesque reflections.

On the eastern side of the Sierras, the road drops like a rock and we were soon on Highway 167 going east to the turnoff to Bodie.

As an aside, the West is characterized as wide open spaces, but almost any long drive in the West involves lots of up and down. We left our homes at sealevel, went over Altamont Pass at a little over one thousand feet, drove across The Great Central Valley – the largest, flattest place in the western hemisphere, flatter than Kansas or Iowas – and then crossed the Sierras at Tioga Pass – just shy of ten thousand feet – and down to Mono Lake at 6382. Then it is up to Bodie at 8379 feet.

Our plan was to go to Bodie on our first day and photograph it in the warm, afternoon, light and then spend the next couple of days wandering around the area to the east of Bodie. Bodie is now a State Park and closes at 6:00 pm. For a $50 extra permit, we could come back the next morning before dawn. We passed on the permit and followed Bodie Creek east to find a place to camp.

We drove for about an hour on a slow dirt road and camped at a still pretty high elevation. That night was very cold. The next morning, both our bags were covered in frost. Lots of frost! I had brought my summer bag, thinking we would be camping lower, so I spend a chilly night. Ed was recovering from a bout of strep-throat, just getting off of penicillin a couple of days before, and he was even colder. His doctor probably would not have recommended that he sleep in a below freezing environment. Then again, Ed is a former Marine – actually, there is no such thing as a former Marine – so maybe his doctor would have recommended it.

Either way, Ed was knocked back by the cold night and didn’t feel great the next day and, then, I began to imagine that I had a sore throat. We continued, listlessly, down the Bodie Creek Canyon, past fields of wild Irises and wild rose bushes. The canyon was lovely.

Eventually we got Hawthorn Nevada at about four thousand feet. Hawthorn is a small city – using the term city very loosely – in a large valley that has been denuded to store military ammunition. Any kind of ammunition; small arms ammo, bombs, missiles, grenades, depth charges, anything that can kill people. Hey! our country likes to kill people and we need a place to store the tools.

Hawthorn used to have a population of over 35,000 during WWII but is now down to about 3,100. The main tourist attraction seemed to be the Hawthorn Ordnance Museum where, among other things, our guide told us that housing in Hawthorn is an excellent buy. He paid, only $29,000 to buy a home with two lots and a swimming pool. Standing in the heat on the empty main drag, it actually seemed a little over priced.

On one wall of the museum was an hammer award and I couldn’t help but think of the axion If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To us, I think, everything looks like a place to be bombed. Looking around the museum, I felt mostly sad.

Then it was back onto the road and over the Sierras to home where the Japanese were beating the American women in an overtime soccer match.

I’m not sure where. Somewhere off of 395 , one of the most amazing roads in the world, and so close.

For all you Battlestar Galactica fans, not that kind of fracking – that fracking  may be good for plants – the kind of fracking that means hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing is a way of getting more Natural Gas by blasting a mix of water, sand and  secret chemicals into sub-surface shales to create fractures that ease the flow of the recoverable gas therein found. They are – so far – been able to keep the chemicals secrete because they are trade secrets and protected.

Now a study in West Virgina shows that fracking kills about 50% where the waste water is deposited. This is not just anecdotal evidence, this is apparently an objective study.  But I think that everybody who cares about the environment has known that fracking really is fracking up the environment. The problem is that we want the Natural Gas; it is, after all, a clean fuel. OK, maybe it isn’t clean, but it is a fuel and we really need fuel. Almost by definition, fuel is what powers our economy.

The study also suggested that it might not be as toxic if they spread the waste water out more. We really do need that fuel. If we started a Marshall Plan kind of green energy program right now – which we aren’t – we would still need to frack short term to keep the lights on. So maybe the question is How much are we willing to damage our planet to keep our toasters?

Athena, the cat, increasingly known as Precious Mae, or Miss Mae, or Miss kitty, has been with us for almost a year and she has been a definite addition to our home and lives . But, she is not the companion we expected or – in a technical sense -a pet. She is an outside cat who spends time in the house. She is never nasty, often sweet, usually interesting, and always marches to her own drum. Almost any time of the day or night, if we are inside and walk towards a door, she will streak over to get out. And, then, bam! she is gone. Often for the rest of the day or night.

At first, we tried to keep her in at night, Michele more than me because Michele was afraid the coyotes would get her, but getting out became her – her being Precious Mae – main goal and, eventually, we let her live her the life she wanted. Now she is out most nights and comes in to feed and sleep off her nightly escapades.  When we are around her – meaning outside – or she is around us – meaning inside, she brushes us against us, walks by, or sits by us watching to make sure we don’t get too close. If one of us is between where she is and where she wants to go, she will walk towards us sizing up the situation, get close, and, then, make a low run past us so we can not touch her.

If we sit or stand still, we can sometimes entice her over; if she is sitting or lying still, we can go over and pet her, pick her up and cuddle and scratch her; but when she is on the move, we can never track her down. We can pet her exactly as long as she wants, then she says Enough! by a gentle bite and a push away with all four feet.

Occasionally, she will come over and stand by me on her own – so I can pick her up and put her in my lap; or, she will jump up on the couch next to Michele to be petted. If one of us is in bed, she will jump up to snuggle. If the other one of us gets in bed, she leaves. Usually to go under the bed – purring – to sleep. And, after she has been out for most of the night, she will jump up on the bedroom counter and go to sleep in her little beddy-bye behind the printer, by a window.

The chart above is ripped off from a James Fallows blog post that says:

Chinese chart of the day: airfares on the highly lucrative Beijing-Shanghai route, before and after the arrival of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train. This via the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, in Sydney….See if you can guess when the high-speed rail service began.