Snow

It snowed today. Good thing my daughter left yesterday. Sixty-nine flights were cancelled at the Reno airport due to equipment failure and poor visibility. Some people may be stranded here until Tuesday. On the up side, flights have been going on as usual around here.

Grackles

Sagebrush

Ghosttown Holiday

If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a nice day. My daughter came home for the holiday. She wasn't feeling well when she arrived but cheerfully took all the herbal tea, vitamin C and aspirin I put before her. She's a great sport. On Tuesday, feeling a bit better, the three of us loaded into the Jeep for a little adventure. We visited Bodie, a ghosttown a few hours south of here.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Under the weather but ready to go.
Bodie is an eerie intersection with the past. Take, for example, the school house.

Within its one dusty classroom, desks, books, papers and belongings still sit as though the children stepped outside for recess one day and just never returned.

At the undertaker's, coffins still wait for people who have long since died.


Bodie's streets, hotel, general store,




saloons,


homes,


and firehouse,


all await people and events that faded away long ago.

Lee doesn't like taking the same road both ways so we went home the back way, following a creek through the mountains and desert. It's a risky thing to do in November, but we live to tell the tale. It was great fun. On Thursday, we had a scrumptious, vegetarian feast and she left today. :(

But in three weeks we'll get together again for Christmas in Las Vegas! Woo-hoo!

Happy Thanksgiving
How about Tofurkey instead?

Photos from Mexico

Church on the beach

I took thousands of photographs in Mexico and have been planning to post some but haven't gotten around to it yet but here's one of a village church near the beach.

Thanksgiving transmogrified

Bird and Piano Wire Compass
Thanksgiving is a hellish time for the turkeys so I'm dedicating this drawing I did recently to them. I don't know about you, but we're having a yummy Tofurky for our family feast.


We're just not into supporting slaughter house food. This turkey, for example, may still be alive. By law, they are supposed to be stunned so that they feel no pain before their throats are cut; but very often the stun only paralyzes their muscles, leaving them fully conscious and filled with great fear and pain. "You are what you eat." And it is not uncommon for these poor creatures to still be alive when they are dropped into the vat of boiling water, meant to remove their feathers.

If you're like most people, this is an unwelcome subject but ignorance is not bliss. If you've got the stomach and the heart to see what happens to that bird before it reaches the table, there's a pretty good photo journal at all-creatures.org. The sit's a bit too religious for me, but I certainly agree in spirit. For instance, they believe the breeder's practice of masturbating male turkeys is wrong because it's a sin. But that's an obtuse argument, especially if you don't believe in god. It's simpler than that. The practice is inhumane and therefore a violation of animal rights. Why drag god into the argument, especially as some people think their god wants them to torture and kill. Take Bush for example. But back to my Thanksgiving rant. The turkey report is accurate and timely for the upcoming Christian holidays. Some moral majority. Didn't Falwell's Jesus tell them, "What you do unto the least of them, you do unto me."

I'm all for liberating the turkeys and feeding them pumpkin pie.

Egg goes home

~asha