On our vacation...

Family visits, rest, peace & quiet, vintage baseball, fireworks, festivals, and wonderful photography opportunities contrast with the weight of war and disaster of the last three weeks


1860-rules baseball game -- my old mates on the Bruno Volunteer Fire Department invite me to come back and play each year


Bottle gentian, a somewhat unusual wildflower seen August 27 in Banning State Park, Pine County Minnesota


South shore of Lake Superior last Sunday during ``magic hour''


Tiny remnant of Katrina greets us as we return home

Posting will resume now after our 18-day trip to Midwest. We really went on vacation. I got pretty much away from the computer for two weeks. This was very healthy. But the break was tempered by the weighty matters of the world that fell during this time.

Our problems and expenses seem tiny compared to the suffering due to the Gulf Coast hurricane. While for us gas pushed $4/gal in Canada, and broke $3/gal in some parts of Maine as we returned, an unimaginable tragedy unfolded for people 2500km to the south. I can't even find the words to express the horror and nightmare I know is happening.

The shockingly inadequate hurricane response of the Bush Administration is born of years of bad security priorities. Bush was three days late in declaring the mobilization he finally got around to calling for yesterday afternoon. A political hack heads the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And I think this remark Mr. Bush made in an interview today with Diane Sawyer of ABC News reveals the true concern for Real Security of the horrifically ignorant W:

I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.

Just last Sunday, the Washington Post carried a story saying exactly the opposite: ``Experts have warned for years that the levees and pumps that usually keep New Orleans dry have no chance against a direct hit by a Category 5 storm...''

Directly related to lack of Real Security on the homefront was the heart rending yet hopeful Crawford, Texas encampment led by Cindy Sheehan, made a Gold Star Mother by Bush's Iraq war. Does Camp Casey represent a sea change on Iraq? Time will tell if policy will be dislodged in any significant way. The thing that sickens me, however, is the utter lack of leadership from the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton, for example, is nearly equivalent to Bush on these matters.

I'll close by mentioning that while in Askov, Minnesota. I had the opportunity to speak with both the brother and sister-in-law of Matt Lourey, a dedicated American serviceman killed in Iraq last May.

In closing, here are some remarks from Minnesota State Senator Becky Lourey, Matt's mom and now also a Gold Star Mother (who represented us well during the six years we lived in Minnesota), given in a Camp Casey interview. I saw this Democracy Now! interview over a friend's satellite dish while we were in Minnesota:

we'll stand behind Cindy. And I do believe that the dialogue can move this issue forward, because it seems to me that it's very, very wrong when a leader who makes life and death decisions is insulated from the people who suffer the consequences of those decisions.