Visit Zion National Park

We just back from a family vacation at Zion National Park  with side trips to Bryce Canyon National Park and (God help us...) Las Vegas. I can't say enough good things about Zion and Bryce...or enough bad things about Vegas.

My wife, who is a corporate travel agent, did a first-rate job of planning the trip. A visit to a national park of the size and scale of Zion requires very detailed planning. Here are some of the things that helped us.

Lodging: Flanigan's Inn in Springdale, Utah. It has a spectacular view of Zion Canyon, a health spa and exercise, a pool, five-star dining, Internet access and more...but the best part for me was the peace and quiet and privacy.

Other UseZion National Park Links:
Zion Natural History Association
National Park Service
Wikipedia Zion National Park Page

(An aside...when we got to Flanigan's, we had just come from one night at Circus Circus in Vegas, which was loud and crowded. My wife wanted to visit one night there because they have a five-acre amusement park. Problem is, the "parents" all dump their little angels at the amusement park and go gamble, so these abandoned kids wander about like pack animals.

What was funny is that the Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a large poster at the entrance of the Circus Circus amusement park. What they should have is an office at the center of the Circus Circus amusement park because they could find hundreds of missing and exploited kids each hour in that hell hole.)

Mom and Nature

Phyllis Mary Watson Curley, (May 16, 1926 - April 20, 2004), my mother, was a great lover of nature. As the months of April and May include her birth day, death day, Easter, and Mother's Day, her life and legacy always hit me hard this time of year.
One part of her legacy is that she loved nature, and especially birds, flowers and the ocean. Lillie's of the Field were one of her favorite flowers. Many times I heard her say, "Feed the birds and you'll never go hungry!" or "That little rose bush would produce one rose each day. I always thought God was telling me you can make it through one more day and here is my little miracle for you."

When time allowed, she would bundle and trundle all eight of us (Lynn, Bob, Hank, Bruce, Sue, Don, Steve and Jackie) off to Cape May, NJ in the summer to her mother-in-laws Victorian three blocks from the Atlantic, or to the parks in Germantown and West Oak Lane, or to Valley Green in the Wissahickon...or just to the nature to be found in our backyard.

She loved the ocean...everything about it...the smell, the way the waves cracking the beach were a meditation...swimming the waves...talking above them and catching up and being with her family on vacation. 
Now that so much propaganda and false science is daily being broadcast about nature and our impact on it, I thought I would honor my mother's memory here with photos of nature , photos she would have enjoyed...and maybe still can. 
The Safina Institute with its common sense approach to preserving marine life and their ocean home, would seem her kind of organized effort.

Blue Bird of Happiness


Journalists, media moguls
And Hollywood thespians
Appear daily to tell us
The world is ending,
The earth is warming.
And death, destruction,
Disease, starvation

And all form of pestilence
Are one more pollutant,
One more war,
One more way,
Other than their way,
Just about to strike.

And yet, the blue birds sing.
They arrive Christmas Day
Just when it seems
They would never appear
In the nest box some poet
Put in the middle of a garden.

They sing and sing
From God’s lips
To our hearts
To tell us the answers
Are with our Creator

If we are not so busy
Worrying and pontificating
To hear the bluebirds sing
From their holy nest box
Around the crypt, city and country
About The Gift in the manger.

Air and Space Museum

 

I spent an afternoon at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center with my son, Eamon. 

It was grand. 

The great American experiment continues. 

My father used to take us to the Franklin Institute, the U.S. Mint, the Liberty Bell, National Constitution Center (then Constitution Hall), Carpenter's Hall, the Betsy Ross House, Penn's Landing, and other cultural sites in Philadelphia when we were young, and I have continued that tradition raising my sons.

Eamon had a blast. 

He liked it all, but especially the Space Shuttle, the WWI planes, and the .50 caliber machine guns. I highly recommend a visit, especially if you have children.

The Imax movies are not to be missed. 

We saw Aliens of the Deep, which explores the creatures of a world we rarely visit or see, the deep ocean two miles down.

Vegas Consumer Electronic Show 2007

The Consumer Electronic Show (CES) of January 2007 in Las Vegas showed that there are technologies being released at warp speed right now. There are many bloggers out there who are trying to figure out what is going on. Here are two that I think get it.
Dabble... What the Dewey Decimal System is to organizing the books and media of libraries, Dabble is to organizing the chaos of video on the Web. Dabble understands that broadband access has created the pipeline and influence that only Hollywood has enjoyed to date...but unlike Hollywood, they care about the individual. They help filter out "what is not safe for work", which is valuable to many workers, companies, and families. And...it's FREE! Join! PodTech ... is a portal to Web 2.0 and all the technology, companies, and geeks who are changing the way the world works. They are doing a first-rate job of recording, analyzing, defining and presenting CES 2007. Robert Scoble works there everyday. Enough said. The Scoble Show is worth checking out daily, as was (and is) Scobalizer.

Rocky Mountain Voices and The Next Gear are two of my favorites.

Carroll County MD Rural Life

I took these in a half hour drive only two miles from my Mt. Airy, MD home. What good, hard working, and spirit-filled people have created this over the centuries. This is worth preserving and fighting for...for us, for our children, and for our children's children.
Like all great civilizations, ours is based on agriculture and we need to make national policy with that fact front and center.

Volunteer Mobilization Center

Know where your local Volunteer Mobilization Center is BEFORE disaster strikes!!!

Volunteers for America:Here are some tips for how to set up one piece of the an emergency management and continuity of operations plans, the Volunteer Mobilization Center (VMC).
Volunteer Mobilization Center Sample Floor Plan Click the Sample Volunteer Mobilization Center Floor Plan icon on the left to print a larger copy. Neighbors helping neighbors, strangers helping each other who then become friends...i.e. Volunteers... are essential to the American Way of Life. The Volunteer Mobilization Center is where it all comes together and those friendships are cemented.
The VMC sample floor plan here shows the arrangement of the supplies, furniture, and flow for the various volunteers and their duties. No matter what the emergency, this is a good place to greet, identify, organize, train and dispatch all the volunteers who arrive to assist.
Tip: Identify and prepare the VMC BEFORE a disaster. For example, establish the local library, a church basement, fire house basement, or other room as THE central location for volunteers to go to and be organized to deal with the event.
Stock the VMC with tables, chairs, white boards, pens, wrist band identity bracelets, thin film solar batteries for back power for laptop computers, water, food, and all other supplies necessary to get it going and to maintain it.
VMC Support Staff - Core Staff Roles: * VMC Manager * Logistics Coordinator * Security Coordinator * Data Entry Staff * Agency Liason * Runners * Media Coordinator * Greeters

There would be no America without volunteers Barn raisings that were critical to early farm life were done by volunteers. From the early settlers, to George Washington's Continental Army, to every religious, military, fraternal, association, we have depended on volunteers. There are cemeteries all over America with with white marble crosses and stars of David with hundreds of thousands of America's best volunteers.
Recently, just look at any area of America recently hit by earthquake, flood, ice storm, extreme wind, jihad's, hurricane, fire, chemical spill, or any of the other man-made or natural disasters that strike as regularly as the change of seasons.
Volunteers mitigate, plan for, respond to, fix, clean, repair, medically assist, and undertake the hundreds of thousands of individual tasks that mean survival, recovery, and a brighter day.
Basically, a core of professionals (fire fighters, police, emergency operations center managers and staff, doctors, nurses, and so forth) are supported by a deep bench of spontaneous volunteers who contribute mightily in any successful disaster mitigation, planning, response, and recovery.
It was true when the British occupied Philadelphia and American volunteers had to survive at Valley Forge, to World War Two when American's saved their spare iron coat hangers and oven grease for the war effort, to the thousands who showed up to help with the work to be done at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attack to the current work of repairing the Gulf after Katrina.
To all the American volunteers who have given and now give their time, talent, treasure...and often their limbs and lives... for their family, friends and strangers...my and my family's deepest gratitude.


Additional Resources
Citizens Corps
Fire Corps
FEMA Training