Earth Album lets you see (Flikr) photos posted of any(?) place on the planet. Plus kid#2

[ConsAreLiars]

has some new photos up.

Earth Album http://www.earthalbum.com/ integrates a scalable map of the world with clickable access to rather better photos than one might have anticipated.

To credit StumbleUpon - http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1nYwu5/www.earthalbum.com/

They obviously missed some of the best. Looked for Jonny Hayseed images in the San Juans and found none, but it is a good and interesting way to see the world anyway.

So I'll post a couple from JH:


Bracken Fern and Wasp


My friend Gil getting settled


Red-breasted Nuthatch


The good things in life.

[JeffR]

1. These are wondrous.

:wow:

[ConsAreLiars]

2. Thank you. I agree.

My wish for our two kids was only that that they build lives that were fulfilling for them, helpful to others, and hopefully be without health problems.

Two complete "opposites," both with all those qualities. Complements, more precisely, parts of the same whole. Both far exceeded my anything I might have imagined. And they are totally best friends.

One (this one) a HS dropout.

The other, hard-driving and obviously brilliant, topped his (then her) graduating class, and then won a nearly full scholarship to Swarthmore. Plus additional fellowship money to be used in community service projects. This was used to successfully establish a LGBTQ alliance and organization that brought together the campus activists, the white, mostly hidden city working class, and the black, even more hidden. communities. And the first multi-cultural and thus largest Pride Parade in that city's history and the organization to sustain the alliances. Plus absolutely defeating Dworkin's all out assault and attempt to destroy the broader effort and exclude GBT and Q by first denouncing the T.

And then full tuition plus $20K fellowship to UC Berkeley where the FtM process was done and the marriage to his long time partner put on the books and the first (now approaching the second) kid was born while continuing all the courses, the TA, and outside tutoring.

JH, like many of those Thom Hartmann characterizes as 'hunters,' spent his teen and young adult years, disconnected from the standard (even the very progressive public schools both attended) learning about the plants of the Pacific Northwest, particularly their uses as herbal treatments, smoking one, and still finding his own way. Later, he wanted to get more info through a two year course at a community college on Boulder and got his GED and degree. On a visit he took us on a hike, talked to and introduced us to his plant friends. Here, in the city, he points to some 'weed' growing in a crack in a sidewalk IDs it by Latin and common names and describes the uses it has.

He has a connection to the natural world that, to me, is truly magical. Marmots come to sniff his boots, a deer sees him and comes closer, a red fox comes within a few feet and stops, and plants pose beautifully and he knows them by all their names and uses. See the wildlife and wildflowers links at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnyhayseed/ for the evidence.

Edit to add, he is now an artist-in-residence (free board and room plus some spare change) at a top-rated inn in the San Juan Islands, given to help him get his research into publishable form.