The winner of the Crab Cake Eating Contest at the Chesapeake Seafood Festival could have been beaten by any number of people I know in San Diego and at least one guy, Sam Jirjis, in Detroit. The winner was the one who could down the most crab cakes in five minutes. The winner barely finished six. I think I could have taken him.
Clearly the most popular concession at the seafood festival was the yogurt truck... I think these Chesapeake Bay gulls are smaller and less aggressive than our Southern California gulls.Sandy Point State Park's beach doesn't look anything like our San Diego beaches... no surfing here. Maybe it takes an ocean to make white sandy beaches.The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is one of the most spectacular bridges in America.

PILGRIMS IN THE LAND OF PROTEST

Yesterday Margaret and I arrived in Washington, D.C. almost in time for a demonstration on the Capitol Mall by folks who said they believe, among other things, that President Obama’s agenda is to bring socialism to America. Here are some of their expressions of concern:

Socialism: trickle up poverty (professionally printed signs)

Don’t Tread on Me (on yellow flags)

“Hell hath no fury like a taxpayer ignored” (Andrew Moylan, head of government affairs for the National Taxpayers Union)

“We own the dome!” (a chant by the crowd as they pointed to the capitol)

SOCIALISM (T-shirts and signs with President Obama made up to look like the Joker)

“You will not spend the money of our children and our grandchildren to feed an overstuffed government. Now a new generation of Patriots has emerged. You are those patriots.” (Rep. Tom Price (R-Georgia)

“Health care is not listed anywhere in the Constitution.” Brian Burnell

How Is That Hopey Changey Thing Workin’ Out for Ya? (Brian Burnell’s placard)

“You want socialism? Go to Russia!” Susan Clark’s message through her bullhorn

Socialism is Unamerican (Handmade sign)

King George Didn’t Listen Either (Handmade sign)

Terrorists won’t destroy America, Congress will (Handmade sign)

“Nobody’s standing up for us, so we have to stand up for ourselves.” Phil Chancey

“We’re all endangered. We’re all endangered because they’re pushing socialism on us.” Dave Rue

WE CAME UNARMED FROM MONTANA AND UTAH... THIS TIME (signs with AR-15 Assault rifle pictures carried by eight people from Salt Lake City)

“We want our country to go back to the roots of doing what our Founding Fathers wanted us to do-- less government in every aspect of my life.” Debbie Wilson from Florida

Thank You Joe Wilson (Professionally printed placards)

“We’re the forgotten people, and he has given us a voice.” Dee Meredith of Virginia said about Joe Wilson.

Liar! Liar! (Handpainted signs)

Blatant Disregard for the Constitution (Hand painted sign)

Preserve, Protect, Defend (Hand painted sign)

Then there was the sticker below plastered all over the place... I guess it's the one-size-fits-all sign... a deliberate enigma or just plain failure to understand?
...in Washington, D.C. area visiting Nancy for a few days... There's a new (to me) National Harbor just across the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge from Alexandria and Mount Vernon... on the Maryland side of the river. Fascinating place...

The hibiscus is a plant in the mallow family. I like these small ones that seem to dance... with a light coming from inside.

The Moon in Broad Daylight

The connection between me and all that stuff
out there beyond the moon and even the sun
hasn’t been made absolutely clear by anyone
even when the speaker delivers ex cathedra
with firmness and threats of excommunication
the news that God is in his heaven and all’s
right with the world, the true world, the world
that began they say six thousand years ago,
give or take a couple of decades depending on
the calculation and who’s doing the counting.


I can’t ignore reason and especially the Hubble
telescope sending back to our modest planet
pictures of dying stars and shimmering nebulae,
pictures of things that don’t even exist any more,
a picture of the Big Bang itself being a possibility,
giving us, I guess, a look at ∞ or whatever comes
closest to the far edge of infinity, but that’s beside
the point of this writing which I began just to say
how absolutely wonderful it was to see the moon
this morning in the part of the universe where I live.

(I took the picture above this morning around 6:30 with a 250 mm lens on a Nikon D2X. Later in the morning, around 11 o'clock, I noticed the moon still visible below a thin cloud. This time I used the Nikon D100 with a 200 mm lens.)IMAGES FROM THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE

I went out looking for a butterfly this afternoon, but I came upon an impossibly beautiful bunch of bird of paradise flowers and quit the search for insects. Once again the photograph for the day doesn't fit the writing, but you're getting both anyway. My writing is less a rant... more an expression of sadness.We live in troubling times. The president of the United States made arrangements to speak to elementary and secondary school students at the beginning of the new school year. Some Republicans said they feared the President might inappropriately seek to indoctrinate them with the evils of socialism in his twenty-minute talk, so they urged parents to boycott the speech by excusing their students from the classroom if the speech was part of the school day. A few school boards ordered schools not to broadcast the talk. An apparent favorite rationale given was that speaking to youth was a tactic used by totalitarian dictators in other countries and therefore should not be allowed in America. It was mentioned by some that the President might speak about health care. The actual event passed with few problems. Parents were allowed to keep their students safe if they thought the President’s ideas would harm them. President Obama's speech urged students to set goals, to work hard, and to achieve academic success. The event was more like a good uncle or a grandfather urging people he loves to do well in school than anything like a dictator indoctrinating the impressionable young.

We moved in mid-week to another address by the President, this time to the joint houses of Congress. The subject was health care this time. In the middle of his speech someone from the Republican side of the House yelled “liar.” As far as I know, that kind of thing hadn’t happened before today.

I listened carefully to the President’s speech to students and found nothing to fear. I listened just as carefully to his address to Congress and found nothing that might be thought morally, ethically, or fiscally irresponsible. What it all means for the country, I have no idea. I will simply wait and hope this campaign of fear and anger will not corrupt our American culture, undermine critically the projects this administration has initiated to get the nation’s economy going again, and ultimately weaken and perhaps destroy our system of government. History has notable examples of nations destroying themselves from inside. I trust we are not quite to that point.

Finally, I have reasons to be hopeful. I must trust that people like young Nicholas Fudge will grow up and save us from ourselves. He is in fourth grade this year. Today when his grandparents and his sister got close to the container where his cocoon had just broken open to let a beautiful butterfly emerge, Nicholas said, “Don’t bother it. It’s just learning to fly.”

Ed's and Amanda's SKYDIVING ADVENTUREThe sign on his back says "Danger" in three languages.

Amanda Jirjis was Queen of the World today... well, at least Queen of Coronado.
By the way, you can find President Obama's talk with America's young people at the following WEB address:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

...Thanks to Walt Kelly

A RANT! A RANT! I DO CONFESS IT.

I tried to figure out how to make a connection between my photo du jour and the BLOG writing. O.K., O.K., I know it's a stretch; but that's not so unusual in these matters. SO HERE GOES: What would the Rush Limbaughs and Steve Russels in American be willing to have the President say to American school children?
The latest surge of acid partisanship in American culture is a reminder to me that I myself am deeply partisan, perhaps unreasonably so; therefore, I must continue to reexamine what I think and say and write, especially when the subject is government or religion. I confess that I sometimes (some would say “often”) move a couple of notches beyond reason in my thinking and speaking and writing about, for example, former president George W. Bush. I confess that my reactions to his speeches were usually not based in reason (...and Ronald Reagan would say, “Now... there you go again, Jerral”!)... not altogether unlike my reaction to fingernails scratching a blackboard. My reaction to Rush Limbaugh is the same: definitely not reasonable. His very appearance can set my teeth on edge even before he begins to speak. Mea culpa.

But I don't want to be unreasonable in my relationship with my friends... and I don’t expect always to agree with my friends, and I don’t expect them always to agree with me; but I do want to be clear-headed and reasonable in my conversations and other communications. One of my best, long-time friends, someone I love, responded to my September 3rd BLOG post by saying, “Re Obama's back to school speech,  first draft. Seems like a lite version of Chairman Mao's or Leader Kim's reeducation format, really.  This guy scares me. Jerral, you really got me steamed!” ...and we're not talking here about Oklahoma state Senator Steve Russel, who said, “As far I am concerned, this (Obama’s talking to students) is not civics education - it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you’d expect in North Korea or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.” My retired friend was not a civics teacher, but he and many others on the other side of the political divide from where I stand believe President Obama's speech to children is an advertising campaign for socialism.

What we have here is a popular, unusually transparent president of the United States, who is being compared by otherwise reasonable people to Chairman Mao Zedong, Leader Kim Jong-il, and Saddam Hussein. A few days ago I even heard someone compare President Obama to Hitler because he is interested in “getting to American youth.” As the kids themselves like to say, “Give me a break!”

This latest flap has me flummoxed. I would have thought almost everyone in America would think it's a good idea for an American president to encourage America’s young people to study hard, to learn their lessons well, to set high goals for themselves and to set about achieving those goals. Not in a million years would I have thought I would hear reasonable people say they think of the American president, any American president, in the same way they think of Chairman Mao, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, or Adolph Hitler. So, President Reagan, here I go again. I believe such thinking and such talk are not only unjustified, ridiculous, and altogether unmerited; I think they are just plain stupid.

I have no idea what brought this strange configuration of clouds out of wherever it is clouds come to tower above the mountains that separate coastal San Diego County from the blistering heat of the Imperial Valley. They seemed mysterious to me.