California Highway 4

20061014 Sierras CR4 Panorama 1, originally uploaded by moheroy.

Looking Southwest from CR 4 just West of Pacific Grade Summit.

Lake Helen from Lassen Peak Highway

20061012 Mount Lassen 2 - Plumas (22), originally uploaded by moheroy.

Typically excessive South Cascade scenery.

Flow banding on Southeast Flank of Mount Lassen

20061012 Mount Lassen 1 (155), originally uploaded by moheroy.

Not all my Lassen pictures turned out badly, but then some things are hard to mess up. This is flow banding on the Southeast flank of Mount Lassen. The direction of the flow is along a line running 25° NW/SE. Which since Mount Lassen is 25° NW suggests that this is the flow's point of origin.

Hat Lake and Reading Peak

20061012 Mount Lassen 1 (102)
Originally uploaded by moheroy.

More Lassen photots, which while very pretty are kind of dull, I thought this one was one of the better ones, even though it is a little washed out. Also it gives me a chance to play with formatting.

I need to figure out how the picture size is determined. That I have a lot of html to learn is quite obvious. Until I figure this out, I don't think I will be making many more picture posts in this format, it is quite ugly. However posting vertically oriented pictures is a problem aesthetically.

Mount Lassen

20061012 Mount Lassen 1 (43), originally uploaded by moheroy.

This is from about a month ago, but I was posting these to flickr tonight so I thought I'd post a sample. Sadly I think most of the Lassen pictures are overexposed, I am still figuring out how to use this digital camera. The Nevada pictures are unfortunately even worse.

Decadence

I'm usually not a fan of Victor Davis Hanson, he is too much of the crotchety old classicist, nothing good has happened since the death of Pericles and all that. And his writing on California, or "Mexifornia" often seem to be only one step from the basest nineteenth century nativism.

But then he is also a sensitive and brilliant man, and reading him, especially his work on the Classics themselves, his book on Hoplite warfare is one of the finest works of historical imagination I have ever read, and I continue to read him. This column on the election and the decline of California is one of the most melancholic things I have read, and every word is truth. How a state so beautiful, can be so self destructive is one of the great mysteries for the ages. It is awful how belief in a modern and advanced California based on Progress and optimism, where all problems can be solved and the future is glorious is in a way of the same sort as belief in the Republican values of Ancient Rome or the idealism of Confucius lamenting the decline of morals since the time of the Duke of Zhou.

Fundamentally I believe there are no Golden Ages, and that we can only look forward, but living in California, that seems like such an antique and unrealistic belief: That belief in the future and in the idea of improvement is a dream out of another age.

Restless Heart Syndrome

I've been thinking about another driveabout, into the great basin this time, across Nevada and back again. Even though I haven't even got close to finishing my posting of my pictures from the last outing on flickr. Then I see this.

I'll be on the road tomorrow before sunrise.

How can I not? I can't wait to be watching the sunrise on US 50, America's Loneliest Road. With that sort of billing how can you miss it.

Need to get some sleep I guess...

Schonchin Butte Cinder Cone

20061011 Lava Beds NM - California (59), originally uploaded by moheroy.

Black Crater at Lava Beds National Monument

200610011 Tule Lake - Modoc War 279, originally uploaded by moheroy.

Books completed in October 2006

The Song of the Dodo. by David Quammen (Scribner, 2004)

The Machine's Child. by Kage Baker (Tor, 2006)

Gilgamesh. translated by Stephen Mitchell (Free Press, 2004)

The Sharing Knife: Beguilement. by Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos, 2006)

Berlin: City of Stones, Book One. by Jason Lutes (Drawn and Quarterly, 2004)