Ryan's Journal

I got this in my email today, and will be making a call. If this issue matters at all to you, please take a minute and do the same — all that you need to do is say that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be kept wild and free from oil exploration. One person won’t make a difference, but thousands will:

This week, September 22-26, citizens across the country will join together in the fight to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling. The goal: to generate hundreds of thousands of calls to members of Congress letting them know that Americans will not stand silent while the nation’s largest and wildest refuge is sacrificed for a mere six months of oil.

As we speak, politicians are holding backroom secret negotiations. They want to add an Arctic drilling scheme to the massive Energy Bill being negotiated by House and Senate conferees. The House version mandates drilling in the Arctic Refuge, doles out billions of dollars in new subsidies and seeks more drilling on public lands across the Rocky Mountain West. To make matters worse, some members of Congress are trying to exploit the recent blackouts in New York, Ohio and elsewhere as another reason to drill for oil in the Arctic – even though almost none of America’s electricity comes from oil!

Please take a moment and call your members of Congress TODAY and tell them to reject any efforts to pass legislation that allows drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Tell them to oppose any energy conference report that includes Arctic drilling. Simply call the Capitol Switchboard Number at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your senator and/or representative’s office. (To find out who your senator or representative is, check out NWF’s new “Find Your Elected Officials” feature at http://action.nwf.org/nwf/leg-lookup/search.tcl)

The reason that drilling has never been approved is entirely due to the millions of people in every state telling their elected officials that they oppose drilling. Thank you again for your continued support of wildlife and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge!

I thought it would be nearly impossible to come up with an ugly color scheme using grey and blue. Apparently I was wrong.

Unrelated, but one year ago today the weather was cold but clear in Denali National Park and I took off on what turned out to be a twenty mile hike up to Sable Pass. Today the day started with an early conference call with the Europeans to finalize some legal requirements for German site registration. Granted, I actually enjoy the work I’m doing, but there’s a saying about night and day… retirement number two begins in ninety-six days.

My faith in Snapple trivia is shattered. Snapple true fact #121: “The only bird that can swim but not fly is the penguin.”

That is crap.

I was talking to God earlier today (nice fellow) and told him I needed a favor.

“You want me to set you up with a girl who isn’t completely freakish?” asked God. “I told you, it’s impossible until you quit working with computers.”

“No, God,” said I, “I want you to help the Browns win.”

“Oh.” said God. “That could be tougher than getting you a date. You know that they’re gonna have to score a couple touchdowns if they want to win, right? And the offense just hasn’t been doing anything so far this year. It’s asking a lot.”

It took him until the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, but God finally came through, and amongst Browns fans everywhere there was much rejoicing.

Yet another reason to like Kevin Smith. Mom, don’t click on this, he uses a word that starts with “f” and ends with “uck”.

Another Patagonia photograph from Galen Rowell. Warner Brothers isn’t getting their money’s worth from me today, but with the long hours I’ve been working recently I’m not feeling a lot of guilt about it:

So I’m a big fan of Kevin Smith, the guy that wrote and directed Clerks, Chasing Amy, and several other flicks. I started following the guy because of his films, but I’ve become a fan because he’s just a really cool individual. He posts on his web site a lot, and tonight put up this little gem from 1999 when his movie Dogma came out. Kevin is a devout Catholic, but his feeling is that spirituality should be more important than the rules and rituals which have come to surround the church. Dogma uses humor to express this viewpoint, and much like Mel Gibson’s upcoming film people bashed it and protested the film without understanding the filmmaker or even seeing the film. The photo that is linked to above is from a Dogma protest, but the beauty is that Kevin is the guy in it holding the “Dogma is dog shit” poster. He was even interviewed for the nightly news and gave a scathing view of the film, without the reporter recognizing him.

The mighty Mr. Williams was in town for a day to interview for an opening with Warners. With luck things will work out, and the Holliday-Williams team might again soon be fighting the good fight. Or something like that. In addition, along with JB we would have the kamikazee pilot, the wing man, and the wing commander, so the three C’s manifesto could be put into practice. Life could get interesting over the next few months.

Completely unrelated to Jason’s visit, this news actually gives me some hope for the future. I like John Kerry, and Howard Dean has a lot of momentum, but both of them would be fighting a steep uphill battle to become President. Clark, on the other hand, seems to me like a guy who counters all of Bush’s so-called strengths, and in many ways exceeds them. One can hope that in about a year we’ll be seeing the end of threats to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the repeal of some of the tax cuts (and thus a smaller deficit), and the re-establishment of foreign goodwill towards this country.

Johnny Cash died this morning. If you’ve never listened to his songs because you don’t like country music, give him a listen anyhow, and you might be surprised at how easy it is to relate to the subjects he sang about.

After the Antarctica trip I’ve got a couple of weeks to roam Patagonia. I still haven’t quite decided where I’d like to spend the time, but Mt. Fitz Roy is climbing the list rather quickly (photo by Galen Rowell):

Decided to change the look of the site slightly, as well as some of the navigation. Apparently not only do I have a hell of a time matching colors, but creating a layout that doesn’t look like it was put together by a three-year old using broken crayons is also far beyond my powers.

A lonely Friday evening. Spending long hours at work makes the thought of driving 350 miles up to San Francisco an unappealing one, so this evening was spent crashed on the couch watching Benny & Joon. The movie brought back memories of a night over ten years ago at the Mayfield Cinemas with a friend, and I wanted to be back in that time and place. Spent an hour afterwards walking around the neighborhood trying to clear my head. Loneliness is a bit like backpacking in the rain — you know that the only thing to do is to push forward, but the seconds drag while doing so.

Al Gore got the most votes in the last election, but because of some old rules George Bush was elected. In California three percent of the state signed a petition, and now if Gray Davis gets less than fifty percent of the recall vote he’s out of a job. However, of the hundred-some candidates, if the most any of them get is fifteen percent of the votes then they’re the new governor. How is that right? After the Presidential election the responsible thing to do would have been to ammend the Constitution, but it wasn’t even suggested. As soon as this recall mess is finished California should change the recall rules, but it won’t happen either. I don’t get it — when something is broken it should be fixed, unless it has to do with government, apparently.

As this web page’s title suggests, my current theory of life is that you have to go with the flow of where the winds blow you. However, I believe that everyone has the ability to do things that help to push them in a certain direction. Sometimes life’s currents are strong, sometimes weak, and sometimes they diverge, so all that we can do is be ready when there is an opportunity to go in a direction we want to move in. A quote from a book that I’ve enjoyed since I was a kid, Lloyd Alexander’s Taran Wanderer, seemed to fit nicely with this theory:

“Trust your luck, Taran Wanderer. But don’t forget to put out your nets!”

Between Memorial Day and Labor Day some of the best places to visit around here lose a bit of their allure due to the huge crowds — climbing to the top of Half Dome just isn’t the same experience when the sounds of hundreds of other people fill the air and you spend your time focused on the line of people on the trail rather than the surroundings. Similarly, Death Valley and Joshua Tree are off limits due to the intense heat. However, with Labor Day weekend nearly over the crowds will begin thinning and the heat should subside in the desert, meaning it’s now prime time for exploring. Warner Brothers owes me at least one day off after the recent late nights, so with luck this journal will be a bit more interesting to read (and to write) over the next several months.