Thursday, August 21, 2008

Maybe I'm Heartless

Have you read any of the many articles on CNN about the baby whale in Australia that has lost its mother? Well, after multiple failed attempts to reunite the baby with its mother...or some other mother that would feed it...authorities have decided to euthanize the whale, which is going to die anyways.

Lots of people are very, very upset about this. I don't get it. I also don't get why they're going to the trouble of euthanizing the whale instead of just letting it die naturally or become a meal for some other hungry animal.

This is nature people. The mother probably left the calf for good reason. Or maybe the mother fell victim to the food chain. Without the mother, the calf cannot survive. Period. End of story. Is that sad? Maybe. If you want to feel sad, I'm okay with that. But spending time, money, and energy on trying to rescue the whale seems silly to me. Quit trying to fuck with the circle of life. And if you're so compassionate and have so much money and time, I'm sure there are plenty of starving people who would be happy to have your attention.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Cape Cod Article in Frederick News-Post

A few weeks ago, when I had approximately 3.5 free seconds, I decided that was way too much free time. Being completely out of my mind, I sent off in that moment a query to my editor at the Frederick News-Post and ended up with an assignment to write an article about Cape Cod. I managed to pull one together in about a week's time, and it was published last Sunday (I'm late posting this notice, but if you saw the state of my house right now, you'd understand). You can read it here. I would have preferred the story to be no more than the first section on the Cape Cod League, but the FNP wanted a more general story, so that's what it is. The print version has 7 photos enclosed. I'm sorry they aren't all available online, but you've all probably seen them before as many appeared with my recounting of our trip on the blog last August/September.

I haven't posted this to my writing website yet and probably won't for a while. I'm hoping to revamp the site while I'm in Sweden. We'll see if that happens... I have many good intentions these days, but I need the days to be about 48 hours each if I'm even to stand a chance at getting them done.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

The Hiking Book in Numbers

As of last Sunday, all the hiking for my book is complete. Now it's just finishing up the writing and editing. Hooray!

A look at the experience in numbers:

I did 80 hikes with a total distance of over 400 miles.
The longest hike was 10.7 miles.
The shortest hike was 1.25 miles.
The most hiking I did in one day was 21.1 miles.
I hiked on 36 different days between March and the first weekend of August.
In the process, I drove (or rode) over 4,375 miles.