Instead of constantly griping about major world concerns, I'm listing a number of outdoor-related products which I've sworn by because they (have) served so well. In no special order, they are:
Sears Craftsman 30-inch bow saw, vintage 1970s or earlier, inherited from my parents in the mid-1990s, and still serving well. It will accommodate a log about ten inches in diameter, is sharp and strong. Further, it takes up little space in my car.
Danner Yukon heavy-duty hunting boots, 1988-2010. With welted Vibram sole and heavy leather uppers (and Thinsulate insulation), they were no featherweights, but their performance and comfort (including while hiking) were magnificent.
Cabela's camouflage Gore-Tex rain suit, 1994- (with occasional Revive-X treatment). A bit heavy, but so is the performance, and the Cordura/Taslan nylon shell is near-bulletproof. I've since purchased newer Gore-Tex parkas, but can never forget the opening day of antlered deer season in northcentral Pennsylvania in 1994. It was maybe 50 degrees all day, with steady rain and some wind. I saw no deer, but I was able to stay out from before dawn until after sunset, because I stayed dry and warm, while remaining nearly still.
Cannondale H300 hybrid bicycle, 1995- . . . Sure, it's heavier than my newer road bike, but it's so darn comfortable, and its gearing (42-32-22 chain rings, with large cassette) is great for climbing steep hills. Wit it, I've ridden across Pennsylvania in five and one-half days (group ride, with lots of climbing in days one through three), and completed two century rides in comfort.
Sportif USA rip-stop 160-denier Cordura nylon, lightweight hiking/climbing pants, 1997-2011. These were feather wight, fast-drying, tough, and allowed full range of motion. Double-layer seat and knees helped them last longer.
Outdoor Research Seattle Sombrero Gore-Tex rain hat, 1997-2009 (when it went AWOL), and its replacement, 2011- . . . It's feather light, good-looking, totally waterproof, and perfectly suited to winter hiking/walking when combined with a thin wicking beanie (Some size adjustment helps). The chin strap keeps it on in the wind.
Aku mid-weight Gore-Tex hiking boots, 1998-2008. Lightweight, waterproof, warm (400-gram thickness of Thinsulate insulation), and rugged enough for nearly any hiking terrain- on or off-trail.
Lowe Alpine Mistral 35-liter day (hut-to-hut) hiking pack, 2007. I've used this comfortable pack for literally hundreds of hikes of three to 15-plus miles in various terrain, mostly with 12-15 pounds of stuff added, and it looks essentially new. The built-in rain cover works very well, and is easy to use and store.
Any pair of Wrangler Cowboy Cut heavy denim jeans. I don't wear these for hikes (They are, of course, cotton), except for short outings near the house.
Kahtoola MICROspikes (traction devices for walking on ice and packed snow): 2008- . . . Even I, an admitted chicken, practically danced up and over the ice-covered rocks on a section ofAppalachian Trail after a heavy freezing rain.
ESEE-4 fixed-blade, full-tang knife, with drop-point blade-- no serrations. If this is all I have, I'm confident that I'll be okay.
Duofold Vent-a-Layer Thermastat lightweight wicking, long-sleeve T-shirts. Back in 1997, I purchased two of these, at bargain prices. For high-aerobic activities, they remain superb. I've worn them cycling and hiking in temperatures as low as the 20s (F), with just a shell, (and alone, when hiking in the 40s), and have been adequately warm (too warm when hiking uphill, even in the 20s, which has necessitated an open jacket zipper, or no jacket or hat at all). Only drawback: As with many polyester products, they hold body odor. Wash often (and hang to dry). The black mesh armpits on white body look geeky (My wife makes fun of them), but the shirts are cotton soft, wick very well, and are still working great after 18 years of steady seasonal use. So, there!
MAG-lite 2-AA cell LED flashlight, 2009- . . . With about 70-lumens of light on good batteries, it's adequate for finding one's way in most night-time situations (I recommend at least 100 lumens if you need to avoid cliff edges and other dicy terrain). This has guided me back from many a hike in the dark. It also has a belt sheath, which makes it handy to wear at home when thunderstorms might trash your electric lights. I don't rank MAG-lites as the gold standard, but they're made in the U.S., are very good, and reasonably priced. As with knives, carry an extra, and (especially on the trail) always carry extra batteries in the factory packaging, and away from metal objects.
Leatherman Juice S-2 multi-tool, 2015- . . . Obviously a new acquisition (and a pretty new product), so I haven't used it a lot. However, I think this will be a keeper. I purchased it based on raves from Backpacker Magazine. Already, it has helped me adjust the brakes on my road bike (It's small enough to accompany me on rides), and open some packaging The knife blade is rather narrow, but helps keep the tool compact). It's lightweight and very compact. Will it do the job of bigger tools? Maybe not, but it will be there when you need something, and the bigger tools are at home or in your car.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Saturday, July 11, 2015
When irrational fears seem rational, press your "think" button
Nearly fifty years ago, I made a friend several states away. For three summers, I visited him and his family for about a week at a time.
His parents were good people, but, from his mom, I learned how a dose of irrational fear can throw a person way off her or his axis.
In an outburst of frustration at public pay phones, she announced her fear of contracting diseases, such as colds, from placing her facial anatomy on phone receivers.
This was in the days before cell phones, and before the widespread availability of sanitizing products.
Did she have a good reason to be wary? Sure-- about the common cold. However, even my struggling early-teen brain quickly figured out that she was alarmed by something rather trivial, while ignoring what was wrecking her.
Imagine a two-to-three-pack-a-day cigarette smoker (which she was), afraid she might catch a cold from a pay phone Imagine someone doing something so terrible to his or her lungs, and then saying that.
That panic about the dangers of pay phones, while ignoring the risks of cancer and heart disease, the certainty that the smoking will ruin the body (and the bank account) is, my few readers, an irrational fear. It's being petrified by something that has a small chance of harming you, while ignoring, often at someone else's engineering, a factor that is far, far more likely to really mess you up.
When foreign terrorists murdered some 3,000 individuals on September 11, 2001, in a despicable act, those in power at the time, primarily Dick Cheney, used that tragedy to warn Americans about the threat of foreign terrorists, while they, particularly Cheney, used that opportunity to undermine, not simply the cicil rights of Americans, but their physical and financial health, by dismantling environmental legislation that saved (of at least improved) millions of American lives, and billions (or more) American dollars.
How good a job did the Cheney/Bush team do at manipulating so many American people? On a door-to-door pre-election-day canvass just prior to the 2004 election, as a volunteer for two progressive organizations, I encountered at least one sap who swallowed the Kool-Aid.
Our mission was to show issues to people, and ask them to vote for the environment, without our recommending any particular candidate. This being a weekday activity, most residents were not home, and we left paperwork for them to digest at their leisure. This particular older woman, one of the few live bodies I encountered, announced that her (irrational) fear of foreign terrorists outweighed her concern about clean air and water. I tried to imagine how any terrorist would seek out and bomb her row-house neighborhood, knowing at the same time what the domestic terrorists were actually doing to her air and water, and that air and water needed by any children and grandchildren.
If you don't think that preying on voters' irrational fears didn't put Cheney and Bush in the White House twice, and help real criminals topple many a fine, public-minded candidate in Congressional races, follow the money.
Cheney, who conducted secret (and illegal) meetings with representatives of dirty energy sources, announced the "need" for the U.S. to construct something over 150 (or, was it 180?) new coal-fired power plants, if we were not to fall back into the "Stone Age." As with most anti-public blowhards, Cheney was simply putting his mouth where his money was, though he must certainly have welcomed the feeling of power as well. One critic claimed that the coal industry contributed a total of some $100 million combined for the Cheney/Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns. Whatever the contribution ("legal bribes" is one friend's term), Cheney did all he could to repay the industry, the public be poisoned.
Cheney conveniently forgot (sure he forgot) to mention that while stolen aircraft piloted by foreign (and highly brainwashed) terrorists killed some 3,000 mostly Americans, that some 25,000 Americans die prematurely each year, simply by living near--ahem--coal-fired power plants. He did not mention, as researchers like Michael Hendryx have since proven (but which any reasonably observant individual can quickly figure), that innocents living in coal-producing areas are terribly unhealthy, and have a significantly shorter life span (by some ten years, according to Hendryx's studies) than those with very similar lifestyles, but not living in coal-bearing areas.
What Dick Cheney did (and is likely still doing), and what most Republicans in major public office are doing, is helping the coal, gas and oil industries kill us (Nukes are also terrible for our physical and financial health), send our climate spinning into rash new patterns of drought, flood, famine and more, while casting deliberate and false doubt on the solar and wind-energy sectors (Back in 2008, the wind energy sector surpassed the coal industry in providing jobs, and much more healthful and sustainable jobs, too). The culprits include our friends, possible climate-denier-in-chief James Inhofe; Shelley Moore Capito (daughter of the crooked and coal-industry-loving, former West Virginia governor Arch Moore, who served prison time for stealing from a coal miners' pension fund), whom a particular writer would label a "coal whore;" just about any West Virginia governor; Mitch McConnell; Joe Manchin (former West Virginia governor, current U.S. Senator and someone with a coal-industry background, who has been a poster boy for conflict of interest); the comically inept self-promoter known as Sarah Palin; and scores of other traitors-- strong word, but how would you define someone who uses political office to deliberately and knowingly create for his fellow countrymen and women, and for their own grandchildren, a world so unhealthy, and so bad for their family finances, while taking money from these destructive industries?
Call me names for willfully hurling stones at the coal industry, but, for some five years, I made two or three trips per year, as a documentary photographer (paying my own expenses) to southern West Virginia, where I met dozens of individuals whose lives and health, and sometimes land, the coal industry aided by elected and appointed crooks) had ruined. I witnessed the extreme poverty and hopelessness, and a fair bit of resistance, where the industry bragged about "the prosperity of coal." I smelled the poisoned air, photographed the poisoned water, photographed individuals who lost their basic civil and human rights to a political system so corrupt that most Americans would deny it exists-- within our borders. I saw and photographed mountaintop removal coal mine sites where pristine headwater streams are now buried beneath hundreds of vertical feet of poisoned rubble that was once forested, game-filled mountaintops, teeming with medicinal plants, but now an industry-created wasteland. I still maintain contact and will soon re-visit some of the brave individuals who have fought for their land and for their people-- our people.
The same goes for some gas-drilling areas in my native state of Pennsylvania, where corrupt (and, may I say, plain stupid) elected officials have sold out the residents and the land to the same criminal class who did the same thing extracting coal. Again, many of these folks prey on irrational fears of their victims.
Would you trade whatever you do for a living, for the fate of a uranium miner, who is nearly certain to die early and miserably from radiation poisoning; any coal miner, who is likely to die similarly from black lung disease or silicosis (take your choice-- underground or surface mining), or quickly from a cave-in or explosion (Yeah, some former coal miners live a long time, but not very healthfully); for someone working at a plant where cancer-causing chemicals are used to wash and "clean" coal? I think not. Would Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, or any booster of these industries (or any normal human being, for that matter) make that trade? I think not. Would Osama bin Laden have traded places with any of his brainwashed worker bees who crashed their hijacked planes into specified targets? Not likely. That would not help the hot shots' personal agendas-- like living, and having power.
Preying on voters' irrational fears is what has kept the Republican Party in power. Prey on irrational racial or sexual fears to promote your agenda. Con voters into supporting the fossil fuel and nuclear industries, or their lights will dim, and they'll be living in the Stone Age. How can one rely on the wind and sun, so, of course keep burning coal, and on and on, the blather goes, preying on irrational fears. The sun sets, and the wind stops blowing, offer some blowhard billboards rented by coal industry front groups. Of course, they neglect to mention that when the sun shines and the wind blows (which is always does at some time, in some place), energy from those sources is transported to the general grid, as electricity. They also neglect to mention that if the coal industry (where CEOs often become billionaires by externalizing every penny of cost possible as worker injury, illness and death; air and water pollution; public health crises; billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies) and wind energy sector each paid all their respective costs of operation, a kilowatt of electricity from coal would cost nearly three times that of a kilowatt of electricity from wind.
But, these purveyors of "evil genius," (Karl Rove comes to mind) as a savvy observer calls them, have fooled enough people to hurt all of us.
They haven't fooled "all of the people all the time," but they've fooled (scared) enough people for long enough, and controlled much of the media, to keep the dirty money rolling into and from their coffers, and to keep us from living in the healthful, functional democracy we deserve.
Woody Guthrie sang, "This land was made for you and me." It is ours. Own it!
His parents were good people, but, from his mom, I learned how a dose of irrational fear can throw a person way off her or his axis.
In an outburst of frustration at public pay phones, she announced her fear of contracting diseases, such as colds, from placing her facial anatomy on phone receivers.
This was in the days before cell phones, and before the widespread availability of sanitizing products.
Did she have a good reason to be wary? Sure-- about the common cold. However, even my struggling early-teen brain quickly figured out that she was alarmed by something rather trivial, while ignoring what was wrecking her.
Imagine a two-to-three-pack-a-day cigarette smoker (which she was), afraid she might catch a cold from a pay phone Imagine someone doing something so terrible to his or her lungs, and then saying that.
That panic about the dangers of pay phones, while ignoring the risks of cancer and heart disease, the certainty that the smoking will ruin the body (and the bank account) is, my few readers, an irrational fear. It's being petrified by something that has a small chance of harming you, while ignoring, often at someone else's engineering, a factor that is far, far more likely to really mess you up.
When foreign terrorists murdered some 3,000 individuals on September 11, 2001, in a despicable act, those in power at the time, primarily Dick Cheney, used that tragedy to warn Americans about the threat of foreign terrorists, while they, particularly Cheney, used that opportunity to undermine, not simply the cicil rights of Americans, but their physical and financial health, by dismantling environmental legislation that saved (of at least improved) millions of American lives, and billions (or more) American dollars.
How good a job did the Cheney/Bush team do at manipulating so many American people? On a door-to-door pre-election-day canvass just prior to the 2004 election, as a volunteer for two progressive organizations, I encountered at least one sap who swallowed the Kool-Aid.
Our mission was to show issues to people, and ask them to vote for the environment, without our recommending any particular candidate. This being a weekday activity, most residents were not home, and we left paperwork for them to digest at their leisure. This particular older woman, one of the few live bodies I encountered, announced that her (irrational) fear of foreign terrorists outweighed her concern about clean air and water. I tried to imagine how any terrorist would seek out and bomb her row-house neighborhood, knowing at the same time what the domestic terrorists were actually doing to her air and water, and that air and water needed by any children and grandchildren.
If you don't think that preying on voters' irrational fears didn't put Cheney and Bush in the White House twice, and help real criminals topple many a fine, public-minded candidate in Congressional races, follow the money.
Cheney, who conducted secret (and illegal) meetings with representatives of dirty energy sources, announced the "need" for the U.S. to construct something over 150 (or, was it 180?) new coal-fired power plants, if we were not to fall back into the "Stone Age." As with most anti-public blowhards, Cheney was simply putting his mouth where his money was, though he must certainly have welcomed the feeling of power as well. One critic claimed that the coal industry contributed a total of some $100 million combined for the Cheney/Bush 2000 and 2004 campaigns. Whatever the contribution ("legal bribes" is one friend's term), Cheney did all he could to repay the industry, the public be poisoned.
Cheney conveniently forgot (sure he forgot) to mention that while stolen aircraft piloted by foreign (and highly brainwashed) terrorists killed some 3,000 mostly Americans, that some 25,000 Americans die prematurely each year, simply by living near--ahem--coal-fired power plants. He did not mention, as researchers like Michael Hendryx have since proven (but which any reasonably observant individual can quickly figure), that innocents living in coal-producing areas are terribly unhealthy, and have a significantly shorter life span (by some ten years, according to Hendryx's studies) than those with very similar lifestyles, but not living in coal-bearing areas.
What Dick Cheney did (and is likely still doing), and what most Republicans in major public office are doing, is helping the coal, gas and oil industries kill us (Nukes are also terrible for our physical and financial health), send our climate spinning into rash new patterns of drought, flood, famine and more, while casting deliberate and false doubt on the solar and wind-energy sectors (Back in 2008, the wind energy sector surpassed the coal industry in providing jobs, and much more healthful and sustainable jobs, too). The culprits include our friends, possible climate-denier-in-chief James Inhofe; Shelley Moore Capito (daughter of the crooked and coal-industry-loving, former West Virginia governor Arch Moore, who served prison time for stealing from a coal miners' pension fund), whom a particular writer would label a "coal whore;" just about any West Virginia governor; Mitch McConnell; Joe Manchin (former West Virginia governor, current U.S. Senator and someone with a coal-industry background, who has been a poster boy for conflict of interest); the comically inept self-promoter known as Sarah Palin; and scores of other traitors-- strong word, but how would you define someone who uses political office to deliberately and knowingly create for his fellow countrymen and women, and for their own grandchildren, a world so unhealthy, and so bad for their family finances, while taking money from these destructive industries?
Call me names for willfully hurling stones at the coal industry, but, for some five years, I made two or three trips per year, as a documentary photographer (paying my own expenses) to southern West Virginia, where I met dozens of individuals whose lives and health, and sometimes land, the coal industry aided by elected and appointed crooks) had ruined. I witnessed the extreme poverty and hopelessness, and a fair bit of resistance, where the industry bragged about "the prosperity of coal." I smelled the poisoned air, photographed the poisoned water, photographed individuals who lost their basic civil and human rights to a political system so corrupt that most Americans would deny it exists-- within our borders. I saw and photographed mountaintop removal coal mine sites where pristine headwater streams are now buried beneath hundreds of vertical feet of poisoned rubble that was once forested, game-filled mountaintops, teeming with medicinal plants, but now an industry-created wasteland. I still maintain contact and will soon re-visit some of the brave individuals who have fought for their land and for their people-- our people.
The same goes for some gas-drilling areas in my native state of Pennsylvania, where corrupt (and, may I say, plain stupid) elected officials have sold out the residents and the land to the same criminal class who did the same thing extracting coal. Again, many of these folks prey on irrational fears of their victims.
Would you trade whatever you do for a living, for the fate of a uranium miner, who is nearly certain to die early and miserably from radiation poisoning; any coal miner, who is likely to die similarly from black lung disease or silicosis (take your choice-- underground or surface mining), or quickly from a cave-in or explosion (Yeah, some former coal miners live a long time, but not very healthfully); for someone working at a plant where cancer-causing chemicals are used to wash and "clean" coal? I think not. Would Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, or any booster of these industries (or any normal human being, for that matter) make that trade? I think not. Would Osama bin Laden have traded places with any of his brainwashed worker bees who crashed their hijacked planes into specified targets? Not likely. That would not help the hot shots' personal agendas-- like living, and having power.
Preying on voters' irrational fears is what has kept the Republican Party in power. Prey on irrational racial or sexual fears to promote your agenda. Con voters into supporting the fossil fuel and nuclear industries, or their lights will dim, and they'll be living in the Stone Age. How can one rely on the wind and sun, so, of course keep burning coal, and on and on, the blather goes, preying on irrational fears. The sun sets, and the wind stops blowing, offer some blowhard billboards rented by coal industry front groups. Of course, they neglect to mention that when the sun shines and the wind blows (which is always does at some time, in some place), energy from those sources is transported to the general grid, as electricity. They also neglect to mention that if the coal industry (where CEOs often become billionaires by externalizing every penny of cost possible as worker injury, illness and death; air and water pollution; public health crises; billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies) and wind energy sector each paid all their respective costs of operation, a kilowatt of electricity from coal would cost nearly three times that of a kilowatt of electricity from wind.
But, these purveyors of "evil genius," (Karl Rove comes to mind) as a savvy observer calls them, have fooled enough people to hurt all of us.
They haven't fooled "all of the people all the time," but they've fooled (scared) enough people for long enough, and controlled much of the media, to keep the dirty money rolling into and from their coffers, and to keep us from living in the healthful, functional democracy we deserve.
Woody Guthrie sang, "This land was made for you and me." It is ours. Own it!
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