Olympic National Park

18 Aug. 2015: National Park #28: Olympic National Park, Washington

The remote and secluded Olympic National Park. It was so as we had been to Seattle a few times but not gone to these Westerly remote parts. It was almost so until we got to the Hurricane Ridge where we were almost suddenly confronted by a full parking lot. AT&T did not care. It started announcing that it will now charge us at international rates for calling to the US.

While not in Canada, the park boundaries are indeed rather interesting. 101 goes on three sides of it and you are in and out of the park several times. Besides the ridge, did the Hoh river trail. A rather dry summer has meant that the rainforest is not its usual majesty. But under the tall spruce trees and by the river it is still wondrously cool. 

And then the fantastic Ruby beach. Water recedes at low tide on this flat beach allowing one access to areas normally under water. The ample drift wood on the shores is fun to jump around on, and the rocks jutting out of the ocean provide even more photo-targets.

Some of the Spruces at one point had tumors (galls) so huge that they warranted their own name: burls.

The town of Forks where we stayed has divided its 3500 residents into 3500 businesses all to do with twilight. Bella did this here, and Edward did that there and so on and on and on ...  Fills one with pathos. Will juxtaposing the church with their celebrated high-school help?

All that crawls

 

20 May 2015: If you have not been at a Crawfish Boil, you have to try it. This Cajun celebratory cuisine is so curious. The Crawfish are not fish. They are spiny lobsters, and are boiled with corn, potatoes, and perhaps onions and seasoning and then eaten by hand (peel the crust to get to the flesh). And oh, you are not supposed to eat the dead ones. They are dead when you eat them, but if they were dead before being boiled, their tails are supposed to be straight. I had a few to remind me of the experience from a decade back. The locals can, and do, eat a few pounds.

The occasion was indeed celebratory. This was the meeting dinner at LSU, Baton Rogue, for Arlo Landolt's 80th year, over 55 of them dedicated to defining and observing standard stars (spanning 2300 nights allocated at observatories). Many names encountered while calibrating data were present in flesh. History and lots of discussion on filter systems and standard stars.

After the dinner got to climb to the top of the Astronomy building which houses the Landolt Observatory. The lunar crescent was our target. Here is wishing many more years to Arlo ...

Fantastic and Fabulous

16 Jan 2015: Seen in a bookstore (MediaMart) at the Indira Gandhi International airport at New Delhi as I was getting ready to take off finishing my trip to India. The only way I can interpret "non-fiction" here is by assuming that they meant "fantasy".

I had to go to a few places for meetings, and in the background various religion-related events were unfolding. A meeting took me to Tezpur, my first trip to the North-East. Visited Kamakhya temple where the temple opens everyday  with a sacrifice of an animal (yes, even today). Later in New Delhi stopped by the National Museum which has a reproduction of Ashoka's edicts - from the third century BC - carved on rock-face, with one of them saying: do not sacrifice animals.

Watched PK in Nagpur and many people (Hindus) who have not seen the movie tried to get it banned (as it hurt their religious sentiments - the movie of course only mocks money making). In Delhi as I was heading to the airport, I heard that a tenth of a million disciples of MSG ("Messenger Of God") descended there in support of the movie. The censor board had denied permission to it on some grounds. And now the censor board chief has quit because someone is going over her head and giving it permission to be released. In solidarity with the Censor Board chief other team members are resigning as well.

I write this sitting at the CDG airport (Paris), and it was not far from here that the massacre over a picture happened. Whether Charlie Hebdo should have printed another cartoon is a question being asked by many. New York Times has refused to republish the cartoon, but it is their issue yesterday (international edition) that had a piece by David Carr which rightly says: "News and commentary of all sorts frequently causes pain to its subjects and the audience, but it is precisely the unruly and the offensive that require protection. No one is safe from the slings and arrows of unfettered speech: an image of Christ immersed in artist's urine, Sinead O'Connor  ripping a photo of the Pope in half, Eminem fantasizing in rhyme about killing his lover - all of it is intended to offend. But each is worthy in its own way of being defended."

If we want freedom of speech and expression, we need to practice the extreme at least once in a while. Otherwise it will stay so only in theory. Violent reactions as in Paris or as on the Bhandarkar institute in Pune a few years ago cannot be justified under any circumstances.