This is what happens when you turn your daughter loose with a camera in the woods. See the whole set on flickr.

Fred Leonhard has a great op-ed in the Eugene Registar Guard comparing Portland and the Neil Goldschmidt child rape story to the title city in Ursula K. Leguin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” (Both The Oregonian and Willamette Week declined opportunities to publish this piece.)

The parallels to LeGuin’s story are powerful and haunting.

Many, many still-powerful Portland figures knew about the ongoing child rape. They are accessories to a crime that claimed the life of a girl. So far, nobody’s saying names out loud (ahem– Greg Kantor, Earl Blumenauer), but suffice it to say, the list is extensive and almost all-inclusive. Will nobody pay any price for this woman’s life?

Only Fred has (so far?) had the moral conviction and courage to speak out.

The giant Asurindarahu wanted to see the Buddha, but was reluctant to bow before him. The Buddha, while lying down, presented himself as much larger than the giant. He then showed him the realm of heaven with heavenly figures all larger than the giant. After all this, Asurindarahu, the giant, was humbled, and made his obeisance to the Buddha before leaving.

This month marks the 5th anniversary of this blog, and the sixth anniversary of Wacky Mommy. We started Internet publishing back in 1997 with a little-known literary arts magazine, before anybody had heard of “blogs” and when Mark Zuckerberg was 12 years old. Around 1999, we started another site that morphed into something blog-like after veering through a number of different styles, and in 2005, when blogs were just taking hold, we started writing and hosting our own. In 2008, we started an influential public policy news and opinion site which we ran for two years in our spare time.

Now that Zuckerberg owns the Internet and all your personal data, to be sold on the free market to advertisers, blog traffic is way off. Many, many people don’t venture outside of the walled garden of Facebook… unless there is a link posted there.

Who remembers RSS feeds and readers? (I do!)

The thing is, this technology still works great, and there is great potential yet to be realized. We shelved our New Media networked journalism meta project almost a year ago, but now we’re thinking of dusting it off.

Now, here I go to link this post on Facebook.

???-54 ? ????? ??? “???????? ???????” from North Pole on Vimeo.

Watch full screen. A Russian research ship on a supply mission to Antarctica. Some really surprising and amazing imagery.

In rainy December, it’s always nice to get the heck out of Puddle Town. Los Angeles is usually quite nice this time of year, but this year they got more rain than they know what to do with (as illustrated by this giant mud puddle on Mulholland Drive).

We did Disney (in a fever, on one of the busiest days ever)…

But also the way cool (and way less insane) Page Museum at La Brea Tar Pits.



We enjoyed the local fauna, too, and also a nice, intimate New Year’s Eve party, thanks to our extremely gracious hosts.

And of course, the drive is part of the vacation. We have a special place we like to stop at for dinner in Sacramento, and we love the Mt. Shasta area.

Many thanks to M & S for hosting us, and happy tree rat hunting to them!

…as viewed from Nutrea Henge (sun rises directly over Mt. Hood on the equinoxes).

John Candy as Divine. On ice.

A Great Egret foraging at Nike World Headquarters, Washington County, Ore. I think She’s hiding her feet so the shoe police don’t kick her out for not wearing Nikes.