Some Odds and Ends ...

We are having a beautiful fall season; we recently took a lunch and spent an afternoon driving country roads to Great Salt Plains, enjoying the green wheat fields and lush pastures. The countryside is in so much better shape now than it has been the last two years of drought.
Salt Plains actually has water in it, which is very good news. There were thousands of ducks on the lake, fishing and resting on their migration south. We also saw avocets, dowitchers and sandpipers. There were a few white pelicans below the dam in the weirs – though most of them seemed to be in the far western reaches of the lake, barely visible with field glasses from Cottonwood Point.
But the biggest pleasure was on our walk along the Eagle Trail in the Reserve, which goes north and south along the Sand Creek bay area; we could hear them "talking" away first, then begin to see small bunches of Sandhill cranes, one of our favorite birds, feeding and resting in the shallow water close to shore. Since we had our dogs with us – and they were curious about the sound, poking their noses through the bushes – the cranes took flight right over our heads! We must have seen three or four hundred, flying up and around, landing back in the water behind our path of travel. It is always a thrill to see them, especially when they are close to us.
It was disappointing the Refuge has not filled their ponds at this point, so the auto trail does not have any concentration of birds; they are all out on the lake, and therefore difficult to see. Perhaps this is because of the drought, but since the information and exhibit building was closed when we were there, I have no guidance from the rangers.
Still, a beautiful day to be out in the country. We also saw a large number of red-tailed hawks on the country roads. I am guessing they are in-migrants from the northern reaches of the Great Plains, coming to warmer Oklahoma for the winter, as they do each winter.
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Politics: It simply stinks these days. Our Congress is so dysfunctional it pains me to even talk about them.
"A plague on the houses of both parties!" as the time-honored curse goes.
I am ready to see one or more new parties created, ones that are not dominated by their radical fringes but clearly focused on the desires, beliefs and hopes on their majority of their memberships in the center. The radical edges of our societies have never built our country; that takes balanced and constructive thinking and action. But we have – by default – turned the process of governing the country to the Left and the Right radical elements.
The best solution seems to be that right-thinking and constructive people should abandon the traditional parties to them, and move on to new and center-oriented political groups.
I know I am ready to do so.
The guys in power right now – on both the Left and the Right – will pull the temple down on top of us if we continue to tolerate and empower them. They have proved their incompetence and lack of vision over and over.
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I love living in Oklahoma, especially right now. Once again, we run contra-trend to the country as a whole economically, and things are good! We have jobs galore in Oklahoma; anybody that wants to work can certainly find a job – a refreshing difference from the Coasts, that’s for sure! The revival in our oil and gas sector over the last decade is amazing and offers great advantages to our state and our people.
Our energy-producing companies have dumb-founded their critics once again – the peak-oil harum-scarum lobby of ecologists and leftists – by using new knowledge and new techniques, to seek, find and produce oil and gas. We have truly amazing reserves of natural gas developed in the last few years, and we are producing more and more oil month by month. It is truly a boon for the country as a whole, giving us more latitude economically and militarily than we have had in decades.
Now all we need is a national administration that appreciates the creativity of the oil and gas industry – and can use the leverage that energy-independence provides to good and constructive advantage for our country and the world. Properly employed, U.S. energy sufficiency can make a big difference in our foreign policy (among other things).
Unfortunately the Obama bunch simply doesn’t get it and continues to dissipate our influence abroad. Another good reason for political change!