Burney Falls in the Fall of '08

Hello everybody!  I am thrilled to the bone!  How about them Democrats! It was such a sweet victory that blogging seemed lackluster by comparison, so I skipped a couple of weeks (times two).  I even bought a vintage coat on ebay to commemorate the purpling of our nation.  Yes, folks, the coat is very purple–purple mohair to be exact!

The savoring period is over, though, and now I’m back on track (ahem). But I just can’t seem to shake the feeling that some serious celebrating is still due me and my kind.  I mean it’s been 8 years since adults occupied the White House.  I am trying so hard to ignore Bush’s last stand and keeping my fingers crossed that he won’t do anything undoable.  Thank god for the (“Congressional Review Act of 1996”) a glorious tidbit sponsored by Congressman Bill Archer.

Pushing all that out of our minds for a day, my partner (Chris) and I drove to Burney Falls, which is about 60 miles east of where we live.  What a gorgeous day on the Modoc Plateau–home to the McArthur-Burney Memorial Falls State Park and the eighth wonder of the world, (reportedly designated so by President Teddy Roosevelt).

Eighth wonder or not (’cause there is a bit of controversy), here are a few pics and links with info on how to get to the magnificent falls, what to wear and some neat walking trails.  I say ‘walking’  because the paths are certainly on the hospitable side. Even your grannie could walk the 75 feet from the parking lot to the viewing area. And have I mentioned the fine steps down to the mist filled basin?

love-eagles

This northern Cal State Park is within the Cascade Range and includes 910 acres of forest, plus five miles of streamside and lakeshore, as well as a portion of the man-made Lake Britton, itself.

While walking along the shore, Chris and I were privileged to spot two mature bald eagles in flight and at rest. Follow the link for a pdf file on the subject.  I didn’t know this, but the Lake Britton/Pit River area is home to one of the largest populations of bald eagles in the contiguous United States.  At least seven pairs nest here, and it is a winter home, as well.

We sat for twenty minutes and watched these creatures on a conifer branch, hanging out side-by-side like lovebirds. One sang to the other. It was truly amazing!   Follow this link for a very short less complex version. I choose to think we heard the male serenading his mate, but it’s my romantic nature.  Maybe the boy eagle was just calling to a fish or two below.

The whole Burney Falls area is a fisherperson’s paradise. With his eagle-eye, Chris spotted some fine fellows swimming close to the shore.  He offered them vanilla Power Bar (for which I scolded him) but they weren’t biting.  A sixteen incher, however, did go for a bit of bagel.

Back to Lake Britton.  Formed by damming the Pit River, it’s fed by four (count ‘em) active creeks full of trout: Cayton, Clark, Hat and Burney.

The park’s centerpiece, however, is the 129-foot Burney Falls–not the highest or largest waterfall in our state, mind you, but often regarded as the most beautiful and definitely worthy of a sendoutcard. Not having seen all of the falls, I am reserving my opinion.  I did delight in the mist filled basin as you can see from the picture below.

About the park’s landscape:  It all began with volcanic activity. Throw in a little erosion–say millions of years worth and Voila! Everywhere you look there is black volcanic rock or basalt. This layered, porous matter holds a ton of rainwater and snow melt, which in turn feeds a very very large underground reservoir.  The basalt also hosts a ton of green moss, as you can see from this pic Chris took along Burney Creek.

Not enough can be said about Burney Falls–but how about these two items:  It releases 100 million gallons every single day and was named after pioneer settler Samuel Burney, a southerner whose offspring are credited with saving the entire area from dreaded commercial development.  Let’s hear it for the McArthurs! They bought the property and gave it freely to the state in the 1920s. it took two years for the state to accept the gift. Now those were some generous, persistent and farsighted folks!

Speaking of which…

Lake Lucille in Wasilla, Alaska

]]> http://www.talesofsendingcards.com/who-fouls-her-own-nest/feed/ http://www.talesofsendingcards.com/how-to-shrink-the-national-debt/ http://www.talesofsendingcards.com/how-to-shrink-the-national-debt/#comments Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:23:17 +0000 http://www.talesofsendingcards.com/?p=2890 Nothing sneaks up on this pair.

Speaking of which, Winter snuck up on us, folks—without much warning, too.  Our four-way irrigation thingy froze this weekend while we were out of town.  Water spewed around the well for three days and two nights. I think there’s some irony here.  What if I told you the seminar’s focus was on energy conservation?

Say this ain’t so, too.  Old news now, but another $140 billion of porky stuff had to be included in that bailout plan before lawmakers could bring themselves to approve it.  Hey, what’s another 100 bill when the National Debt is topping 10 trillion as we speak (10.2 trillion).

How many billions are there in ten trillion (10,000,000,000,000)?  Sad to say, I think my brain needs more place holders.  Just like the National Debt Clock in New York City, both of us done run out of space.

It’s not my fault. Numbers once reserved for the distance between heavenly bodies are now part of our daily lingo.  I think it’s high time we went to scientific notation.  Follow the link for a refresher course or better yet, here’s a quickie:

To write a number in scientific notation, put a decimal point behind the first digit, drop all those place holding zeroes, count up the dropped amount and put that number up in the air real small behind ‘x ten’.

The National Debt would look like this:  10.2 x 10″   Hmmm, still looks a bit unwieldy.  Maybe we need Astronomical Units.

An Astronomical Unit (AU) is the distance from the Earth’s center to the Sun’s center or 92,955,807 miles.  In other words, just one Astronmical Unit equals 92,955,807. If we divide our National Debt by this number, we should get the debt in Astronomical Units.   Drum roll….the National Debt is 107,578 or let’s just say 108,000 AU.  By the way, don’t try this with your hand-helds or adding machines. I found out the hard way that they don’t go up to ten trillion. (error error error)

Happy to say, at 108,000 AU our National Debt gets us out of the solar system and a bit beyond. From Mercury, it’s less than 1AU to Earth, from Venus a little over 1, and from Mars about 2.5.  Jupiter clocks in around 5 and Saturn a little over 10.  Uranus shoots above 19 with Neptune at 30 and Pluto 31.

No worries. We’ll just go to light-years. One light-year equals 5.88 million million miles or ten trillion kilometers. I’m a kilometer hater, folks, but there it is—the exact number we need, ten trillion.  The National Debt is just a little over one light-year.

I don’t know about ya’ll, but I’m feeling a lot better about a National Debt of only one light-year. Our closest star friend, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light-years from the Sun.  The Canis Major dwarf Galaxy is the nearest to our solar system and it’s 25,000 light-years away.  Astronomers who hazard a guess say that the whole universe is a whopping 79 billion light-years across.  I think I’ll stop there.  (a joke)

By the way, folks, one of the things I was supposed to learn at the seminar was how to change my perception.  And judging from this calculated discourse on the National Debt, I do believe that idea took.

Caltrans to the rescue

What a wild weekend!  Chris and I rode out the first winter storm of the 2008 season on the southern Oregon coast, Brookings to be exact.  Don’t get me wrong, we had a plan.

The plan was to ignore the nasty political climate while lolling about three stories above the beach and listening to the wind howl.

The hardest part was getting there, though—you know, driving in the pouring rain, dodging boulders and safety challenged motorists.  I’m serious. Rocks were pelting Highway 199 from thirty to fifty feet above and cars were flying.

If you’ve ever seen those signs, Watch for Rocks, they ain’t lying.  Though I don’t know what good looking up in the air does.  I think they mean we should be watching for them on the roadway.  Duh!

Speaking of which, we were lucky enough to get right behind this scooping vehicle for about five miles.  Watching it zig-zag all over the road like a rock-eating bug was kind of thrilling. Unbeknownst to us, though, we were headed for a mini-boulder pile strung across both lanes.

So everybody waited for a spell, while the scooper did its thing—very ably, I might add.  Bored and looking for something else to photograph, I happened to glance up and see this huge mass towering above our heads, ready to fall at any minute, I expect.  No pictures did our danger justice, but here’s one anyway.

You see, folks, the first rain of the season finds all these little cracks and fissures that are just waiting for that last thread of rocky togetherness to dissolve; which in turn causes rock slides on the roadway below— where we, the humble motorists, scurry about minding our own business.

It’s always a mess after the first storm, or, so I was told by a local lady, and I have no reason to doubt her small-town veracity.  Unlike one female politician we all have come to know, her word had a ring of truth.

There were also curve improvement and bridge replacement delays on Highway 199, not to mention a nasty looking crash that our sure-footed Subaru just missed participating in.

By the looks of things, somebody had lost control of his car, rolling and gouging a trench in the highway for about 25 feet before smashing against the side of the mountain wall. Better to end up there, though, than the rocky Smith River bed a hundred feet below on the other side.

The ragged vehicle was pretty near the rock slide, but I do not know if the obstruction caused the crash or not. The slick roads were dangerous enough without falling rocks.

Needless to say, Chris slowed down, after so many reminders of death and destruction.  For my part, I kept looking overhead for more of that falling rock stuff.

Here is the view of the Smith River gorge from the rock slide area where we had to wait for passage.  As you can see, it was very misty.

Speaking of which, we took a hike in the redwoods along the side of a tall hill near Brookings.  To get there, I had to drive on a sometimes muddy, birch lined, one-lane road for 4 miles, winding higher and higher into the heavenly mists.  No falling rocks or oncoming, thankfully.

The hike was steep in places, as the sign had warned us, but not really difficult. Gigantic redwoods were here and there, some of them still standing as they had for centuries, some in big pieces, some burned out but still green at the top.

This wasn’t the prettiest redwood hiking trail I’ve ever seen, but it was the only one where we encountered nothing but plant life and one, single, humongous, shiny black bug or spider. ( I couldn’t tell which.)  Such quietude was unusual for a redwood grove. Most of them are packed with foreigners in search of the esteemed ‘forever green’ Sequoia.

Sequoia Sempervirens or the coastal redwoods that we saw along the trail are the only representatives of their kind living so far north. They like to hang close to the ocean for the moisturizing effect but don’t want to breathe a lot of salt—hence the need to be a bit inland.  It’s the moderate temperatures and the coastal fog drip that’s necessary for their well being.  Fog drip….sounds exotic, doesn’t it.

For a question and answer format, You can follow this link to Ask the Redwood Doctor, Chris Brinegar (retired biology professor) for more info.  Dr. Brinegar has a unique perspective for offsetting your personal production of carbon dioxide, which he calculates at about 1600 tons per person, by the way.  If you have other burning redwood questions, he’s the man.

For a dryer approach, here’s a bit of what Wikipedia has to say: Sequoia sempervirens is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Common names include Coast Redwood and California Redwood. It is a monoecious evergreen, meaning there are separate male and female reproductive organs on the same tree.  The life span is most impressive—multi millenniums (over 2000 years).

Coast Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, reaching up to almost 400 feet in height.  Also impressive is the roundness factor, scientifically known as diameter at breast height —clocking in at 26 ft for the biggest ones.

The quietude of our hike was more eerie than relaxing.  Heavy mist and fog drip added to the other worldliness.  Once, we stopped to watch a few huge, sparklers start hundreds of feet above our heads and fall from the tree tops.

Perhaps you can imagine our faces pointed straight to the sky waiting for drips to make landfall.  Whole seconds would elapse.  Chris tried to catch a couple in his mouth. He also took this proverbial looking-up-view of tall timber.  Nice, huh.

Meanwhile, back in our motel on the beach the sky was clearing up. Patchy sun was replacing the storm, and there were many seagulls for Chris to play with.

All in all, the winter storm turned out to be not as intense as predicted.  I have this link you can follow for an update of what’s next for the West Coast.  Weather is getting easier to predict than anything else these days, especially the stock market.

Mount Shasta got its first topping in a while.  See how pretty the mountain looks!  if you’d like a greeting card (sendoutcard) with this pic on the front, just say so.  Chris (opportunityreviewer.com) can handle it.

What do those ET's want with our mountain?

What a monster!  My wide-angle lens just couldn’t get wide enough.

This lenticular cloud blew in with last night’s sunset, folks—the biggest one in some time.  If it was a spaceship, we’re all in trouble.

Technically speaking, weather people call these clouds altocumulus standing lenticularis or ACSL.  I can’t figure out why the weather-namers mix an English word with two Latin ones.

Moving on.  Wave clouds form when the wind hits a topographic feature, such as a mountain, and get deflected up and over the peak, thereby creating a gravity wave downwind of the obstruction, i.e. mountain.  The clouds only materialize when sufficient moisture is in the air, but the wave pattern in the atmosphere may still be there.

That’s why you don’t see airplane pilots (unless they’re gliders) buzzing around tall topographic features like mountains.  The downdraft could suck them under.  Here’s the thing, folks, lenticular clouds may look like they’re standing still, but they ain’t.  These clouds are constantly forming in the updraft and dissipating in the downdraft and sometimes contain winds of 50 knots or more.

So let this be a lesson to you. Don’t fly your motorized vehicle near a mountain. If you’re a glider pilot, though, be my guest.

The same combination of winds and updrafts that allows the cloud to form also provides a rapid lift and a long flight in a glider.  Glider pilots spend long hours trying to catch the wave or be the wave.

Mountain wave schematic

~moon rising before sun~Mount Shasta

When I got up this morning (still riled up about last night’s debate) the sky was pretty dark, but there was this incandescent spotlight peeping over the southern rim of Mount Shasta.  Within seconds the crescent moon, its dark side back-lit by the sun, rose up to complete roundness, complete with a bright white sliver.

This was the first time I had ever seen such a thing, so I made a lot of noise so Chris would have to wake up and get a good picture of the event for posterity’s sake.  The fate of the world aside, folks, sometimes it’s just good to be alive.

Back to politics.  Last night, Chris and I watched the presidential debate.  I can’t believe it, but we actually sat through the whole thing twice, the second time on CNN:  There were these six score cards along the sides, and three lines down at the bottom supposedly graphing the democrat, republican and independent reactions.

Following these constantly changing lines during a debate seemed stupid, though.  It was more interesting to watch the negative and positive points appear.  “I think Bennet fell asleep,” Chris kept saying.  “Why didn’t anybody give Obama one for that?” I’d ask.  Sometimes, we had to back the TV up, ’cause a point would sneak by us.

Finally though, Chris succumbed to tiredness.  Left to my own devices, I sat up and watched three more hours of jabbering commentaries, everything from right wing conservative Pat Buchanan to the new kid on the left side of the block Rachel Maddow.  I couldn’t wait to get up this morning and see how the debate was spinning after a night’s sleep.

Now, I’ve even gone to the web for more:  The BBC online provided snippets from eight different political writers who analyzed McCain’s and Obama’s performances.  They also list some key quotes— none that memorable from my point of view, although Obama did diss McCain for singing bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran to the tune of the Beach Boy song, ‘Barbara Ann’.

Follow the link for a youtube video of the McStupid rendition of Bomb bomb Iran, complete with a defense of his stupidity. “If somebody can’t understand that,” Senator McCain said “my answer is then, please, get a life.”

Speaking of which, I find it disturbing that a world leader could sing about bombing men women and children’s body parts into oblivion.  Any analysis of his so-called joke weighs so heavy on McCain’s fitness to govern that absolutely nothing can be said to justify that kind of imprudence, no matter how much torture was endured at the hands of the Viet Cong.  Now that I know this pugnacious character, I’m not even sure I believe what he says about his imprisonment.  Whew!

Steam clearing.

I also tend to agree with the analysts who say McCain showed more passion.  But who wants that kind of passion?  You’re doing a ‘heck of a job’, Johnny, especially in the anger department.  Ezra Klein of ‘The American Prospect’ had this to say: “McCain was certainly more impassioned… His emotion, his passion, came from a nearly uncontrollable contempt for his opponent…”

The fact is, McCain, highly irritated to be on the same stage with Obama, avoided looking directly at his opponent for ninety minutes straight, even after the moderator (Jim Lehrer) ordered both candidates to face each other—something else I found obnoxious.  According to the freepress.net, however, I’m in the 10% minority with any harsh assesment of the moderator.   Most thought PBS personality Jimmy did a heck of a job.

Moving on.  In the end, it was Barcak Obama who graciously made his way across the stage to congratulate McCain.  I read Obama’s lips as he held out his hand to Senator McCain. “Good job, John,” he said patting his colleague on the arm with a smile.

For a more in-depth grading of each candidate’s performance—one that involves substance, style, offense and defense click here on Time.com. Political analyst, Mark Halperin, assigned each candidate an overall letter grade:  Mccain got a B-, while Obama snagged an A-.

“Two more performances like that and he (Obama) will be very tough to beat on Election Day,” Halperin said.

.

It is not yet time to flee. Take heart and concentrate on the spinning spiral while imagining a brighter day.  (This hypnotic moment brought to you courtesy of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory AOML.)

Moving on.  As our country threatens to make landfall somewhere in the vicinity of social capitalism, people are putting all sorts of spin on the phenomenon.  I’ve listened to the different takes on our nation’s financial meltdown and here’s mine:

Spin is like religion—a mater of personal preference, so why not be proactive? In other words, don’t let the spin choose you, go out there and find one you like.  Happy to say, you’re allowed to bounce off as many conflicting conclusions as you want on the way to settling down.  Senator McCain does it all the time.

Sad to say, folks, this is one presidential candidate who knows all about the bouncing technique—in a matter of days, he went from the ‘economy is fundamentally strong‘ to we’ve gotta drop everything and fix it.  If someone standing in the brightest limelight imaginable can change his position faster than a tweaking chickenheaded hoebag, then so can those of us standing out here in the dark.  No need to be an expert on economic meltdowns.  In this youtube video, McCain says he’s no expert, either.

Generally speaking, economics is touted as too mind-boggling and dry for the likes of us taxpayers, and, therefore, better left to comrades Paulson, Greenspan and Bernanke.  But you might be surprised how simple and juicy the subject of economics can be, even for the common person.  Just imagine all that juicy emotion out there on the web waiting for your clicks.  I urge everyone to visit the minds of other folks, i.e. tap into what the experts are feeling about Bailoutgate.

Wanna feel riled up?  Bill Perkins is definitely your man.  This 39 year old dude took out a $139,104 full page advertisement  in the New York Times depicting Mr. Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke trampling on the graves of private enterprise and capitalism. “I see it as trickle-down communism,” Mr. Perkins said. “We have a communist action where everybody is paying for the benefit of the few and hoping the benefits will trickle down to everyone else.”

Wanna feel less riled up?  Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post is standing by with his more genteel take, A Bailout or a Bonanza: “The uber-capitalists of Wall Street are all socialists now. Free-market ideology, it turns out, doesn’t pay the mortgage. That appears to be a job for, ahem, Big Government.”

Wanna gloat a little?  Read “McCain Loses His Head” by conservative columnist George F. Will:  Mr. Will likens Senator McCain’s threat to fire the head of the SEC (Chris Cox) to the fat-cat Queen of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. “The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ she said without even looking around.”

I choose to remember the words of George F. Will, however. To hear a conservative diss his own candidate makes me smile: “It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?”

Spaceship headed for Mount Shasta

Here it is, folks, the only evidence that the weather forecasters knew what they were talking about.  Our 20% chance of thunderstorms all boiled down to this one cloud yesterday.  But what a cloud it was!  My pic doesn’t begin to do it justice.

As a ‘know-nothing’, I’d call it a lenticular cloud riding a  little thunderhead, but there are many names for lens shaped clouds: Cap or pileus clouds, Lenticular, orographic and banner clouds, not to mention spaceships.  Any one of these refers to the round, stationary, atmospheric formations of condensed water vapor or ice crystals that most often hang out above or near high geographic formations such as mountains.  (My very own definition!)

Mount Shasta creates many beautiful cloud types and formations of water. Follow the link for more photos and copious cloud talk.

Back to lenticulars. For some reason, they fall into one of three categories—altocumulus, stratocumulus or cirrocumulus depending on something or other that I was too lazy to figure out.

If you’re feeling mentally spry, click to the AMS* or American Meteorological Society. For my present mental state, I found their definitions too long winded and circular.  (Get it?)  Just the statement of purpose was a bit on the dense or cumulus side: “The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications.”

When it comes to cap clouds, or lenticulars sitting atop a mountain peak, I think the Brits say it best:

red sky in the morning~Chris Tatro (sendoutcards.com/site) photo

Hello and a red sky good morning to everyone! There’s a 20% chance of rain for our area in the form of thunderstorms. It would be exciting to have the rain but we don’t need any lightening.

Speaking of excitement, Chris and I awoke at sunrise to a stunning sight. Every window facing East was ablaze with blues, pinks, and oranges. It was a fast changing light show of rippled clouds that got redder and redder with the sun’s climb.

You know what they say, though: Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning.

red sky sunrise

Speaking of warnings, I just watched a handful of young Black protesters in  Coral Gables, Florida interrupt a Barack O’bama campaign speech.  They were holding scribbled signs that linked this dark-skinned man to the Ku Klux Klan.

I guess all the red skies we’ve been seeing these last couple years weren’t kidding.  Everything seems to have gone haywire—we’re poised for a storm, the likes of which most of us have never seen.

Trying to link the KKK with Obama just doesn’t make any sense, though.  Having grown up in the South, I’m very familiar with the Ku Klux Klan and its pinpoint focus, i.e. against everybody but White Anglo Saxon Protestant Rednecks (WASPR).  Could they have changed that much? I don’t think so.

A red-faced Klansman of monumental girth and meanness lived on my street. As fathers went, he was the scariest by far.  Late, one Friday evening, I saw him waddle out to the family Pontiac wearing what looked to be a long, white mu mu.  He was in a hurry but stopped long enough to model his tall, white pointy hat with eye-slits for us. Did he ever look dumb driving away with half that mu mu hanging out his car door.

Though his values live on, the neighbor died a long time ago—he died of a gigantic heart attack. For good or ill, that KKK image of him burned itself into my memory banks. This was the very same redneck who stormed in our back door like a clumsy bull one Saturday morning because my sister had invited a ‘Negro’ schoolmate home to bake some chocolate chip cookies.

Moving on. It’s a mystery to me how African American protesters (mostly male) could put Obama and the Klan in the same thought, much less the same sign.  Someone must have done their thinking for them. After searching the web, I found out more about these strange protesters: “Blacks Against Obama,” they call themselves—and they’re even against Oprah.

Ideologically speaking, the young black dudes are all over the place.  A couple of them said  Obama was “endorsed by the KKK.” Others said he was for abortion and gay marriage.  Still another sign read, “Jesse Jackson hates Obama.”

According to the article I found, Obama knew these protesters were in the crowd. He originally said they could stay inside and listen to his speech.  But the kids had to be escorted to the door when they wouldn’t stop shouting.

I find Obama’s equitable behavior laudably fair, seeing that McCain would not have allowed any known dissenters within five hundred yards of him.  What I don’t understand is how these African American protesters made the odd leap about the KKK backing Obama for President: Not under any circumstance, past, present or future, would the Klan support an African American for anything.  Unlike most things these days, that you can bank on.

If anyone needs some historic reminders of KKK activities, here’s a weird one from the early 1920’s.  I found an astounding article about the KKK’s political takeover of Anaheim, California.  Yes, folks, Anaheim as in Disneyland.  The KKK had plans to make this mostly white town a ‘model klan city’. Follow the link for more info.

Twentieth Century crossburning in Anaheim, California

Back to Obama:  I worry that race will be the deciding factor.

My eighty-eight year old daddy, for example, grew up in the bottom lands of Mississippi, just a bit southeast of Memphis.  His mother was Choctaw and Irish; his daddy was Cherokee and English.  Neither family owned land after the ‘white’ man came. They were the kind of Native Americans that intermarried and became sharecroppers.

My daddy is one of those American success stories, though.  He grew up to be small business owner and a middle class citizen.  Recently I asked him about politics and his answer made me really sad.  I found out that Daddy will never vote for an African American; never mind that Obama is half-white, or what used to be called ‘high yellow‘.

What you’ve got to understand, folks, is this: My daddy is not a total redneck, especially in the Lady Rothschild sense of the word. This is the very same ‘Daddy’ who stood up for my sister’s right to have an African American friend; the same ‘Daddy’ who went out to the car and shook the hand of the ‘colored’ girl’s daddy when he dropped her off in broad daylight in our all white neighborhood; the same ‘Daddy’ who loaded his shotgun because the KKK neighbor threatened to burn a cross in our front yard, the same Republican-voting ‘Daddy’ who said he would vote for Hilary Clinton just a few months back.

I am so disappointed—so disappointed to have to admit that Daddy can’t make that final step to freedom.  If it’s in his DNA, thankfully it didn’t get passed on. All his five kids are liberal as heck.

Too many oxymorons spoil the stew.