Random musings...

OK, so I put up Katherine's nine month gallery this evening, and changed the home page photo. There are a lot more great photos from Vermont coming. I expect to be picking up prints made from a bunch of slide shots in the next few days. I'll be putting up a photo-journal on my photography site.

Now for something completely different. TV. I have two nits:

1) I get very frustrated with sit-coms start taking themselves too seriously and the -com part takes a back-seat to drama. Case in point, this weeks Will & Grace, which I watched this evening with Kara through the magic of Tivo. This whole plot thing about them having a baby was all funny and stuff, but now they are in this huge fight, and it doesn't end with a funny punchline, and it's, "to be continued". Oh, pulease. This is supposed to be a comedy, and usually it's pretty amusing, but now between this baby thing and them trying to develop Karen into somekind of latent lesbian or bisexual, it's getting just too serious.

2) CSI. Why don't they ever get a crime where it's like, a high-stakes casino theft, or a missing person, or something. Does every plot on the show have to involve a gruesome murder? I mean, come on, this week it was flesh eating high school cheerleaders and a pool stalking ex-Navy Seal. If I told you that with a straight face, would you believe me? Probably not. But I, for one, am tiring of seeing stop-action motions of blunt objects and strange human body parts being disfigured in totally disgusting ways. How many times did they have to show the drowned dead guys hand being sucked into the pool vent for us to get the picture? I think this show may be taking itself too seriously now. I'd say it jumped the shark except that jumping the shark has jumped the shark.

Oh yeah, and I don't want to go to war with Iraq, but that's another story.

Dave's Vermont Journal - Part I

September 29, 2002
...As I was putting the finishing touches on the tent, some kids from the next site over came running in and said, "hi.". Their father, Daniel, came over, and we got into a long conversation. He turns out to be a part of a religious group called the Twelve Tribes.There are about 60 of them in Island Pond, and more throughout the world. They live somewhat in isolation - no public school for the kids and so forth. Anyway, Daniel got very talkative. It's as if he's cloistered, and doesn't get the chance very often. It reminded me of the sales tactic, especially by telemarketers, where they try to keep talking as long as possible. I guess the chance of a sale goes up. But he was nice enough, although I didn't really get a chance to get a word in edgewise. He talked for around a half an hour, mostly about the commune, which has locations in Dorchester, Plymouth, and on Cape Cod, and he invited me to see their shop in Island Pond.

[Note from Dave: Daniel told me that his organization was controversial, but enjoyed a healthy respect from the locals in town. I was surprised that there was such a community in Island Pond, a seemingly unlikely and remote location. I have done a bit of research on the Twelve Tribes, and have discovered that they are controversial. They are viewed by many as a cult, and there have been reports of child abuse. In addition, a number of people have been removed from the community and "deprogrammed" as if they were in a cult. A few years back, 80 some odd Vermont State Troopers raided the Twelve Tribes locations in Island Pond based on reports of problems, but I don't think anything came of it.

I clearly have no knowlege of the inner workings of this group, but I can say that I saw no evidence of the abuse they have been accused of. I saw healthy, happy children, and a happy father. According to him, they choose to reject contemporary culture in favor of religious belief. While I cannot say if their purpose is good or just, I can tell you that there was nothing suspicious about the encounter I had with Daniel and his family. He was open, friendly, and generous.]

September 30, 2002

I'm sitting here on the edge of lake Willoughby so I can write some notes about my explorations this afternoon. It's afternoon because I slept until nearly noon. I guess I needed to catch up on sleep. I talked to a woman at the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Island Pond, and she was able to give me directions to the Bluff Mountain trailhead that Daniel told me about. She said if you were lazy about it, it was a three hour round trip hike. The sun started to poke through, and I briefly considered going for it, then changed my mind. It's only Monday, and I would like to get a feel for the area. I walked around downtown Island Pond (note: this took approximately five minutes). I located the library, which is not open today, so no blogging yet. I then attempted to drive to the summit of Bald Mountain in Westmore, but it was blocked by a gate that read, "No trespassing - hikers and landowners only". But then I decided to continue over Hinton Ridge to Westmore instead of driving around on state roads, and I'm glad I did. I was treated to a beautiful view of Lake Willoughby at the top of the ridge where a landowner had cleared many acres for just such a purpose. The lake really plays with your sense of perspective. It's really an inland fiord, and when you see something on the other side that you can identify for size, you are astonished at how small it is. I'm sitting across from Mount Hor, which is 2,650 feet that drop straight down into the water. But your mind wants you to believe that it is lower than that, and so you think the opposite bank is actually closer than it is. The sky is still a featureless blue-grey. The sun has poked througha few times, but seems now to be having some trouble on that point.

[from the Dogwood campsite in Brighton State Park, later in the evening]

...After leaving the pulloff where I wrote my first entry for the day, actually, just as I was leaving, a car with Virginia plates pulled in and a scruffy guy with long blond hair got out and walked towards me. I got in the car and went to the next pullover where I took a water-level photograph with my ultra-wide angle lens featuring Mount Hor. As I was setting up, I saw a car pull over, and it was the same guy. I was down a steep embankment, and I confess, I thought of my unlocked car. He walked around a bit, and then I saw him walk past with a tripod and camera. So after I finished taking my photo, I went over and talked to him. His name was Cory, and he's a Northeastern graduate working on his photographic technique so he can go pro. He had a really nice setup - Manfrotto tripod, Nikon F-100, and a super long, really expensive looking lens. We chatted a bit, and it turns out he saw me at Eagle point on Spectacle Pond yesterday, and recognized my tripod today. I ran into him again at the South end of the lake as I was finishing up my photos of Mount Pisgah.

Dave's Photographic Exploits

Man, do I have a ton of nice pictures from my vacation in Vermont. Most of them were taken on slide film, and I am currently waiting for prints to be made from those. Some of them are on print film, though, and I'll be sticking them on the home page more frequently than I have recently, so keep checking in - there'll be a new picture every few days, and some of them are truly spectacular, if I do say so myself.

I'll be putting a photo-journal up on my photography site with all the technical details, and some of the interesting facts from the journey. I should get the prints back on Monday, so the journal will be up a week or so after that.

Excerpts from my journal will begin later this evening, when I recount the tale of Lake Willoughby, a fellow photographer, and a close encounter with a religious cult, um, community. Yeah, I have stories, baby.

Katherine Walks!

Katherine took her first steps this evening. 6 of them, to be exact, in two sets of three.

We weren't trying to put her up to this or anything. In fact, Kara was heading out for a rare night off, and drinks with a friend, and she was saying goodbye as she was getting ready to leave. She was holding Katherine's hands, and let go. Katherine stood there, as she usually does, but then she hopped and stepped three times over to me, and then grabbed on to me. I looked up at Kara, and both of our jaws were on the floor. She walked! So I turned her around, and she hopped back over to Kara. Then she got really interested in Kara's purse, and we were done for the day. She didn't really seem to think anything of it, but Kara and I were beyond ourselves. She is exactly one week shy of ten months old today.