December 2008 Portland Cold Snap - Part III

More snow pics from Tualatin Hills Nature Park, but from today after 3 more inches of snow last night:

December 2008 Portland Cold Snap - Part II

Snow off and on again through the week. Friday we had wet snow flakes falling with the sun struggling to get through.

Then Saturday the snow storm happened. I figure that I have 5 - 6 inches on my deck in the some of the lower parts with 7 - 8 inches in the ridge shown below at shortly before 9 pm.

But it's a dry snow. Here's my car. Hardly any snow on it, but it affects the wind pattern around it, so a snow drift was forming around it.

December 2008 Portland Cold Snap

I always thought it was ironic that there was a street called Winterlake Drive running along Summerlake Park in Tigard. As of December 14, 2008, Winter beat Summer. But it wasn't all snow this week. There was a bunch of wind as well.

This tree fell on Monday, December 15, 2008 (it is figured) on the wooden walkway on the Big Fir trail on the way to the Couger Trail (and Big Pond where I was heading) in Tualatin Valley Nature Park. There were no reports of any sounds as it fell because no one was around. The winds were howling that day. The park personnel I came across as they were checking the park for damage said that it wasn't down on Sunday and I came across it on Tuesday, ergo the estimate that it fell on Monday.

However, back to Summerlake Park and the frozen pond it was becoming.

That would be a nutriet walking across the lake. And here are some other pictures that I liked.

Out from my cave

After being out on disability so long, I've begun the process of beginning work again. One sign that I'm well enough to get back is my 90 minute or so sojourn in Tualatin Valley Nature Park today. These were the only two pictures I thought were good enough to go on here.

Windows

I woke up with the song Start Me Up by the Stones in my head. Don't know why. But that reminded me of the promotion of Windows 95 some thirteen years ago. Kids nowadays have no recollection typing "win" at the DOS prompt after the computer booted up to run Windows 3.1 (or anything earlier) or how frequently you got the BSOD (the blue screen of death). Worse still, how it took ten or more 3.5" floppies to even install Windows onto your computer, you know before the advent of CD-ROMs. I doubt my 26 year old sister even remembers that... though my mom wouldn't remember that either, at least by experience, as she never used a computer really back then.

Any of you remember that?

Snow & Gorge Pics

I did a the loop around Mt Hood today, but I think I overdid it... I'm sooooo exhausted now.

I had an issue with camera batteries today. I use rechargable lithium batteries. Yesterday I recharged the batteries from Monday's excursion. I'm sure that being up at Timberline for 30 minutes had something to do with the batteries losing their charge so quickly. I got rechargable batteries in Cascade Locks, but when I went to take a photo at Horsetail Falls my camera said "Charge Batteries" and then shut down. I was flabergasted. I just bought new batteries. Then I got to thinking that maybe the battery that was dying was the 3V watch battery. So I went out to Gresham, got a new watch battery, put it in, same result. So now I'm thinking the rechargable batteries I bought today weren't charged! Luckily I had a Garmin device with me, only with 3 AAs, so I put those three in and one of the old AAs in the camera, and finally it worked.

On to the photos:

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President

The Civil War, the war "testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure", which Lincoln both birthed and guided the nation through, has established himself, as if sculpted into Black Hills granite, into national rememberance. His championing the absolution of slavery has endeared him to our memory, launched him to the White House, and divided a nation.

He was a native Kentuckian, turned lawyer, then Illinois politician. Somewhere he became a gifted orator, though lost to Stephen Douglas. Yet that loss, like Reagan's to Ford, established himself on the national scene.

Lincoln was moral, and morally-guided. It helps that I agree with those morals, but it helps that his side won, else I might have altogether different views. And the victory, his ensuring that the union survived, is as important as his adherence to the prohibition of slavery. Had the union failed it is very likely that rivals would have viewed each other warily and hostily across the Potomac, the Mason-Dixon line, and however else the continent would then be divided up. Lastly, his effort at reconciliation in the post-bellum period was equally important as he did not seek to exact revenge on the ceded states.

All that said, I'm not sure if I would have prosecuted a war to maintain the union. That is a moral dilemma: to kill to abolish slavery. To shackle a man to the grave in order to unshackle his slave. Aye, there's the rub. Yet Lincoln was resolved and was able to resolve men to kill their brothers, fathers, and sons.

And he was a very capable commander-in-chief. He fired generals who weren't performing. He stayed the course with Scott's Anaconda Plan.