Poisoned Waters

Evening On Puget SoundPoisoned Waters:

"The '70s were a lot about, 'We're the good guys; we're the environmentalists; we're going to go after the polluters,' and it's not really about that anymore," Jay Manning, director of ecology for Washington state, tells FRONTLINE. "It's about the way we all live. And unfortunately, we are all polluters. I am; you are; all of us are."

Watch Poisoned Waters in full on PBS' FRONTLINEMP3: Otis Redding - You Don't Miss Your Water

GSI Outdoors

EnamelEnamel is a little bit heavy, sure. It doesn't pack down real small, no. But is there a better place to put the food you're cooking or the coffee you're pouring? I don't think so. Enamel is tough. It's good looking. It lasts a long time and makes you feel a little like putting on a Mets hat and driving cattle across the desert. And the best part? It's cheap.GSI Outdoors makes it well and has a wonderful selection of it here. The Spokane, WA company says it perfectly: "If enamelware can survive the ardors of the Oregon Trail, we're sure that it can handle anything the modern world dish out."And of course, they also sell their nFORM line of cooking gear for ultra light backpacking needs.GSI Outdoors

Wildflower Field Guide

The sun has been-a-shinin' lately, so when you're out doing that hiking and camping thing that y'all love to do, the likelihood of passing some wildflowers on the trail is getting higher. If you're out on a prairie in the Land Of Lincoln this summer and you're not sure if you're staring at a Cliff Onion or a Sawtooth Sunflower, you can take a picture and mosey on over to this amazing wildflower resource (it's not specific to the midwest) to figure out what it was you were admiring just two hours previous. If you're like me and don't know a damn thing about these colorful little pretties but have always wanted to impress your friends, then click here and let out a big sigh that you're on the Internet and not outside.I guess if you're one of those people who likes to do their research before you leave the house, there's always a book. Probably a better idea.

Everyday is Earth Day

Earth DayYou can't leave your house without being constantly reminded of Mother Earth's slow demise. Everyone in the world is trying to be more "green" and thousands of companies want your business because of their alleged dedication to the environment. As I'm sure you know, today is Earth Day, a celebration of our environment that started as a grassroots movement in 1970. Earth Day seems rather outdated in these times, but according to organizers, a billion people will observe Earth Day this year, making it the largest secular civic event in the world. What does that mean? Probably nothing. MP3: Ron Wood - Mystifies Me (thx)

Monkey Wrench Gang + Loudon Wainwright III Ctd...

Smith and the doctor passed around the firewater. Abbzug, who did not as a rule drink booze, opened her medicine pouch, removed a Tampax tube, took out some weed and rolled a second little brown cigarette twisted shut at one end. She lit up and passed it around, but no one cared to smoke with her except a relectant Hayduke and his memories."The pot revolution is over?" she said."All over," Doc said. "Marijuana was never more than an active placebo anyway.""What nonsense.""An oral pacifier for colicky adolescents.""What utter rubbish."The conversation lagged. The two young women from San Diego (a suburb of Tijuana) sang a song called "Dead Skunk in the Middle Of The Road."- Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang, 1975Youtube: Loudon Wainwright - Dead Skunk

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Monkey Wrench Gang In 1985, as part of The Monkey Wrench Gang's 10th birthday, Robert Crumb illustrated Edward Abbey's classic novel about eco-sabotage. The book is Abbey's most famous work of fiction that tells the story of an unlikely group of misfits - Seldom Seen Smith (a river guide), George Hayduke (an ex-green beret who measures the distance between places by how many six packs he can drink while driving), Doc Sarvis (a surgeon from New Mexico who loves to burn billboards) and Bonnie Azbug (Doc Sarvis' tough love "partner") - who reek havoc on the American Southwest by destroying the dams, bridges, and machines that they believe are destroying it. The Monkey Wrench Gang is widely recognized as the literature that spawned Dave Foreman's and Mike Roselle's Earth First.Dream Garden Press is the place to go to get this version of the book. I highly highly recommend spending the extra few bucks. The illustrations are wonderful and there are a few great pictures of the two men hanging out in Arches National Park.In addition to the the book, Dream Garden also sells some t-shirts of the Crumb illustrations that are cheap as hell for how great they are. They're not the "dad shirts" that you might be expecting. Go ahead and buy one. Cold Splinters is the proud owner of the Hayduke Lives! version.Look: Original Cover of The Monkey Wrench Gang

Childhood Living Is Easy To Do

The NYT has an interesting article about P.Z.P., an immunocontraceptive that is used to control horse and deer populations in the United States:

Dr. Kirkpatrick has one view of why it is not more widely used. “The problem isn’t scientific, it’s political and cultural,” he said. “We’re dealing with a cowboy culture. One told me, ‘We don’t do it this way; we do it on horseback with ropes.’ ”

Maynard Dixon

Born on a ranch near Fresno, California in the San Joaquin Valley, Maynard Dixon, originally named Henry St. John Dixon, became a noted illustrator, landscape, and mural painter of the early 20th-century American West, especially the desert, Indians, early settlers, and cowboys.Maynard Dixon.org

THE BALLAD OF WILLIAM SYCAMORE

My father, he was a mountaineer,His fist was a knotty hammer;He was quick on his feet as a running deer,And he spoke with a Yankee stammer.My mother, she was merry and brave,And so she came to her labor,With a tall green fir for her doctor graveAnd a stream for her comforting neighbor.And some are wrapped in the linen fine,And some like a godling's scion;But I was cradled on twigs of pineIn the skin of a mountain lion.And some remember a white, starched lapAnd a ewer with silver handles;But I remember a coonskin capAnd the smell of bayberry candles.The cabin logs, with the bark still rough,And my mother who laughed at trifles,And the tall, lank visitors, brown as snuff,With their long, straight squirrel-rifles.I can hear them dance, like a foggy song,Through the deepest one of my slumbers,The fiddle squeaking the boots alongAnd my father calling the numbers.****- Stephen Vincent Benét, 1922MP3: Steve Young - The Ballad Of William Sycamore (thx)

Thread

70_35mm-2Photographer and filmmaker Patrick Trefz spent more than two years wandering country roads, always in search of the best way to the beach. Thread follows Trefz on his travels from the Basque Country to Steinbeck country, from New York City to West African island nations, scaling fences and hunkering down in the dirt to capture his vision of the visual language of surf culture.Thread on powerHouse Books

Randy Newman

There was a guy in high school, Mark, who always smelled of smoke from the pack of Parliament Lights he kept on him. He was a black belt in karate, had a twin sister, and our senior year, he convinced me to sing the national anthem with him at a girl's volleyball game. With arms around one another, each with one hand on the cordless microphone, our bass voices spit out the most horrendously offensive version of the "Star Spangled Banner" since Roseanne. We had practiced singing together only two times, both of which were in my Jeep on the short drive from my house to the high school gym. The one or two beers we drank were meant to cool our nerves, not to provide the fuel for an obnoxious teenage prank. It just kinda came out that way. We missed notes, laughed from embarrassment, and the arms around each other thing looked more like late night karaoke than patriotism and school spirit. The audience was less than impressed.Mark was always wildly obsessed with two artists who I never paid much attention to while in high school - Cat Stevens, who I now have a great appreciation for despite the Ovation, and Randy Newman, who I couldn't understand for the life of me until the past year or so. Who woulda thought that "Sail Away" was written as a jingle for slave traders to recruit naive Africans? Not fans of "You Got A Friend In Me" and certainly not little ol' moi. "Rednecks" is the only song I own that I can't play at full volume in my apartment.Point of the story is that I've been obsessively listening to Newman's 1974 album, Good Old Boys, as of late and, Mark, you were ahead of your time, my friend. I'm late to your game. Looking back at the ol' national anthem incident, it probably woulda made a good story for a Randy Newman song about two idiot Midwest kids.MP3: Randy Newman - Mr. President (Have Pity On The Working Man)

Sea Organ

This is extremely cool:

The musical Sea Organ (morske orgulje) is located on the shores of Zadar, Croatia, and is the world’s first musical pipe organ that is played by the sea. Simple and elegant steps, carved in white stone, were built on the quayside. Underneath, there are 35 musically tuned tubes with whistle openings on the sidewalk. The movement of the sea pushes air through, and – depending on the size and velocity of the wave – musical chords are played. The waves create random harmonic sounds.

MP3: Listen To Sounds Of The Sea OrganVia YVYNYL via Arthur.