Getting Back to Morel Mushroom Hunting in Indiana

After many years off following the death of my mushroom hunting partner (my father) I've begun hunting morel mushrooms again. This time, it's with my better half. She and I have both decided that as our kids are finishing high school, we're going to start living again. Just a little, even.

My wife and I went out on April 26th here in southern Madison County, Indiana but we found only one morel. I'll have you know it was a nice one and yes, it was delicious!

We also stumbled onto a nesting smallmouth bass that looked to be a couple pounds or so. We couldn't get a good photo of it, but trust me - the overhanging tree nearby is permanently burned into my memory as a landmark in case I get to wade that section of the water with my trusty Shimano ultralight spinning rod in the coming days...

We saw a few deer and a coyote, and it's always a nice outing when you can see a critter or two. Even seeing fresh deer and coon tracks reminds us of how we're just visiting in their habitat, and it's interesting to imagine how they use the area and what role it plays in their lives.

On that trip I picked a tender, nice-looking "Pheasant's back", also known as "Dryad's saddle" or polyporus squamosus. They smell like cucumbers or watermelons. Opinions vary.

I rinsed it, peeled it with a paring knife and sliced the innards into small short slices, then fried them slowly in Promise margarine with a dash of garlic salt.

Sadly, I didn't really care for it since it had a fruity flavor, but some folks really like them. I may try them again sometime with a different recipe, but I imagine I'll still prefer morels by a mile!

We went out again on April 30th for a couple hours and came up dry in the morel department, but it was still a wonderful day for us. She bought me a new digital camera for our anniversary, and we really enjoyed seeing various critters and wildflowers. She took some shots of Virginia bluebells and phlox, Canada Geese, and some mallards.

We've found what looks to me to be a much better location in the area, and we plan to hunt it Saturday or Sunday. I think it has been too cool and too dry here so far, but maybe our next trip out will be more fruitful. I'll post back after this weekend if we have any luck or come across anything remarkable.

UPDATE: May 17, 2007

Jackie got a pretty bad upper respiratory infection around the first of May, so that pretty much knocked the last part our morel season in the head.

But I did do a little enhancement of the photo we took of the smallmouth bass I mentioned earlier, and I found the fish in it. May not be too impressive, but we were tickled to find it!

June 1, 2008: Still can't find it?! Look below!

Obama finds his testes (not really, Michelle still has them)

.

So now (finally) Barack Obama is (hold the presses…) angry and upset by his former pastor’s comments!

Sorry, but it’s too little too late…

If Obama can’t “read” his own pastor of twenty years, whom he sat and listened to (almost) every Sunday, how can we expect he’d do in a face-to-face with America’s enemies and adversaries?

He’s already said he would gladly have a sit-down with such despicable characters as Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Hassan Nasrallah, Khaled Mashaal, Ismail Haniya, Kim Jong Il, Vladimir Putin, and Hu Jintao.

Maybe he already has enough personal experience with such radical anti-American types that he could actually get along very well with them, too.

Obama talks about how Bill Ayers (whom anyone could blithely call an unrepentant and murderous domestic terrorist) committed his heinous acts when he (Barry O.) was only 8 years old.

Well, I’m the about the same age as Barack, and I can tell you that I remember these reprehensible acts of the Weather Underground, and they were (and still are) well enough documented and verified that Obama could (and should) have taken a stance on them long before now.

Yet all he seems to be able to say is that they occurred when he was only 8 years old. Does that even matter?! People died from their acts!

Bill Ayers is on record (right after the 9/11 attacks, as a matter of fact) as saying, “I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

It’s pretty clear to me that any lack of a stance by Obama is still a stance for anyone who’s running for high office.

So millions of Americans will have to thoughtfully (hopefully) decide if his off-handed dismissal of Ayers’ infamous misdeeds is okay or not.

They’ll have to decide whether they can excuse someone who excuses and scoffs at domestic terrorism as the former Weatherman Bill Ayers has become a pet appointee of Mayor Daley, the current boss of Chicago’s political machine, to which Obama owes his political ascendancy.

Gosh, that was such a long time ago, yet there remains no statute of limitations on murder…

My Democrat Pick for 2008

.

I am painfully torn as I try to decide whom I want to see as the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee.

Before I continue though, let me make it clear that I am not and never have been a Democrat.

While throughout my political life I've been infinitely more comfortable with Republicans than Democrats, I'd have to classify myself as a conservative, a Constitutionalist, and a Libertarian. If it weren't for my differences with them on a few social issues - not to mention their lack of electability - I'd vote consistently Libertarian.

In 1980, I was proud to cast my first presidential ballot for Ronald Reagan. In 1984, I was happy to do so again.

In 1988, I voted for the elder George Bush, but without much enthusiasm. Keeping Michael "Do-cock-us" Dukakis out of the White House was my primary motivation, even though I knew the outcome in my Hoosier State of Indiana was assured even without my vote.

In 1992, I was not in the best of health, and I didn't vote. Laziness was my only excuse for failing to cast a ballot in 1996. But Dole carried Indiana anyway. (I would have been much happier with Jack Kemp!)

In 2000, I was reenergized, and I voted for George W. Bush with much hope. Despite my continuing differences with him, I was so happy to have him after we were hit by terrorists (yet again) on September 11th.

In 2004, I was happy enough with "W" to reelect him. And of course, one should be loathe to change horses midstream or while at war.

But really, who in their right mind could have welcomed John Kerry as the leader of the Free World? Unless of course we could have amended our Constitution to allow for the office of Dork in Chief... *shudder*

Whenever I go to the polls, I always wear a black NRA cap adorned with a 1980 Reagan campaign button featuring him in the famous cowboy hat pose. Thusly dressed, I briskly stride into my local polling place, and the various competing campaign volunteers surrounding the entrance to my town’s civic center rarely accost me. Coincidence? I think not...

But I digress...

As much as I would love to see Hillary's political future crash and burn ala McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry, I truly do fear an Obama candidacy. At least Jimmy Carter was old enough to have a few wrinkles... Get my drift??

But Obama has become a phenomenon. While I don't think for a minute he could fully withstand the heat of a general election campaign and debates against an old warrior like McCain, that actually may not matter.

Casting ballots is still what wins elections, and facts, history, experience or principle will not sway many of Obama’s followers. They will respond only to emotion.

So as distasteful as it is to say, and as anxious as I am to rest assured that Hillary will never again occupy the White House, I think it may be better for us if she wins the Democrat nomination.

Not only will her party have been battered and bruised, but also much of its enthusiasm will have faded. And many if not most of Obama's new registrees will become disillusioned and will sit out this election, and maybe even all subsequent elections. This can only be good for the country.

So maybe I'm ready to reluctantly endorse Hillary Clinton as the Democrat Party’s nominee.

Now the most exciting decision might be who McCain will pick as his Vice Presidential nominee.

What a difference a century can make… sometimes…

What a difference a century can make… sometimes…

(OR: How can we go from the first powered flight to the second(!) Space Shuttle disaster in just 100 years while another hundred-year span sees all the US Presidents photographed in black and white?!)

The difference can be dramatic, but other times we are left to just shake our heads at the frustrating lack of apparent progress…

On one hand we can go in a hundred years from the first sustained, controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight (the Wright Brothers, Dec. 1903) to the second(!) time an already humdrum(!) Space Shuttle program manages to reignite our flagging attention – but only through a spectacular disaster.

This latter horror was when Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry over our incumbent President's home State of Texas on February 1, 2003.

I was at my son’s basketball game enjoying his budding defensive play and the diversion of my Walkman knockoff when the sad news came in via radio.

While the game was interrupted by an announcement and a moment of silence, I think that most of the kids (mercifully) didn’t really get it, even though we adults took the event very much to heart.

Sadly, in addition to our American crew, the accident also killed an Israeli hero, their first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who also participated in Operation Opera that finally destroyed Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti’s Osirik nuclear reactor in 1981.

Here is a little more on Ramon, from Wikipedia on April 1, 2008:

• Ramon was born in Ramat Gan, Israel and grew up in Beersheba. His mother and grandmother were survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp.
  
• Although apparently a secular Jew, Ramon sought to follow Jewish observances while in orbit. In an interview he said, "I feel I am representing all Jews and all Israelis". He was the first space flight participant to request kosher food.
  
• He also gathered rabbinic opinions from the local Chabad-Lubavitch representative Rabbi Zvi Konikov, about observing the Jewish Sabbath (Shabbat) while in space, since the period between sunrises in orbit is approximately 90 minutes.
  
• Aboard STS-107, Ramon carried a pencil sketch, "Moon Landscape", drawn by 14-year-old Petr Ginz, who died in Auschwitz.
  
• Ramon also took with him a microfiche copy of the Torah (from the Holocaust) given to him by Israeli president Moshe Katsav.
  
• Ramon asked the 1939 Club, a Holocaust survivor organization in Los Angeles, for a symbol of the Holocaust to take into outer space with him. A barbed wire Mezuzah by San Francisco Artist Aimee Golant was selected.
  
• Ramon also took with him a dollar of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson.

Ramon and the rest of the Columbia crew died over Texas in the Southern United States during entry into Earth's atmosphere, 16 minutes prior to scheduled landing. He is survived by his wife Rona and their four children.

By contrast, the first shuttle disaster was in 1986 during Challenger’s 10th (and by then already routine) launch.

Pretty diametric opposition, eh?

But compare that dramatic and expansive technological era to the apparently slow progress we made in the field of photography over its seminal hundred-year span.

The President who was elected in 1860, one Abraham Lincoln, was probably the first one who was widely photographed. (Sure, one of his predecessors, William Henry Harrison, is the first to have his picture taken in 1841).

But a full hundred years later, many if not most of the photos of President John F. Kennedy (elected in 1960) were in plain old black and white.

If you doubt this, bear in mind that it was less than two years after JFK’s death that the first color episode of the Beverly Hillbillies appeared. Do I know from bellwethers?!

It just goes to show you….

Oh yeah – welcome to my blog.

P.S. Sorry if I don’t add links to everything I reference, but I assume that most of you are big boys and girls and know how to use a search engine. If not, how can I save you?!