I have been spending my blogging time remodeling Crackpot Chronicles' design. I hope you like it! The new Mediaista sidebar is a notion in development; stay tuned. The home website is also going to get some long overdue maintenance as well.

In passing, I'd like to note that I got a recorded phone call from the Republicans (huh?) today citing Obama's "close ties" to domestic terrorism -- it's desperation time for the pachyderm party.

Gas prices have recently plunged, hovering the $3.00 mark, down lower than it was last year at this time, if memory serves. I reckon the stock market implosion kicked some speculator hiney. Not all the economic news is bad, I guess.

More posting when web design tasks are finished and cross-browser hair-pullers are resolved. Be safe out there.

This is my comment on Huffington Post in response to an anti-Palin screed by Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood (and daughter of the late Ann Richards, whom I love). A link to the offending post appears below mine. You can read it if you like, I won't propagate it here. With liberals like Cecile Richards who needs Republicans?

@Huffington Post

This column is a disgrace. Richards is the kind of cultural ignoramus that costs Democrats election after election by disaffecting moderates, offending women deeply and mobilizing the right.

First of all, calling abortion a "women's health" issue is disingenuous. Second of all, the morning after pill is not contraception, as another commenter pointed out. Third, and most importantly, the notion that abortion is the linchpin of feminist issues is an enormous and disastrous misconception (sic). There are pro-life feminists, stay at home mom feminists and feminists that would like to have sex education taught in a manner consistent with their own cultural values. They believe in equal pay, equal opportunity, abuse protection for women and children and authentic women's health issues, like more breast cancer research. To dismiss this element is to insult and marginalize a segment of the electorate, mostly in the fly-over states, that can swing an election. "Chicken voting for Col. Sanders?" [one of Richards' bon mots] Rhetoric like that is why the women you vulgarize voted for Bush's second term even though they realized it was against their economic interest.

Like her or not, Palin does, demonstrably, represent a significant portion of the women in this country, on kitchen-table issues, as a woman of achievement, as an outspoken leader of a constituency you can't just dismiss by insult.

Calling Palin an idiot makes it all too easy to demonize (what you misrepresent as) leftist, progressive and feminist thought. You're an extremist to moderates and although I agree with your end game--electing Obama and Biden-- I cannot abide by your regrettable and ultimately defeatist tactics.

***

This post is in reply to" Women's Health:
Yet Another Issue Sarah Palin is Out of Touch On

After the post she urges readers to "Sign our letter today -- tell Sarah Palin that she is not your candidate." And the letter itself is the height of arrogant sophistry.

Ya, you betcha. I'm steamed. And eagerly awaiting tonight's vice presidential debate.

Mooshead Lake is the largest lake in New England and a place dear to Henry David Thoreau, who came there in the mid 1850s to retreat and explore. He wrote "A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." Thoreau crossed the lake in a birch bark canoe with a native guide and explored the deep wilderness of the North Woods.

The wilderness around Moosehead lake is still rhapsodic wild, but accessible, and among the prime hiking, exploring and water transport ways in the East. It is ever so lightly developed with elegant rusticity, though I hear in the summer "you can hardly turn around" in the tiny port of Greenville. But on our day, the Katahdin was only half full, Greenville was virtually empty of tourists and the weather was sparkling crisp and clear.

Crossing Mooshead on the Katahdin, following part of Thoreau's route, at the first blush of autumn, the sense of Thoreau was palpable.







Mt. Kineo, where native tribes came for the rich deposits of flint.



The restored Katahdin, the last surviving vessel of a steamship fleet that plied the lake carrying passengers and freight and towing booms of lumber.



Katahdin in the Port of Greenville






Mountains along the shore