National Monuments in Danger: Combating Arguments Against the Antiquities Act

Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument
Photo: Patrick Alexander, Las Cruces District Botanist
May 23, 2005
CC BY 2.0
https://flic.kr/p/sZF6fa

National Monuments in Danger

https://sites.google.com/view/nationalmonumentsindanger/home

To comment on the marine monument and sanctuary review process 
(Due August 14, 2017):

https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=NOAA-NOS-2017-0066-0001

Looking at the photo above, it is hard to imagine wanting to change or eliminate Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, but the rumblings coming out of Las Cruces are that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke may be leaning towards reducing this monument.  Looking at these photos, I want to be there now, even in the summer heat, especially since it will still be cooler there this week than here in Portland, Oregon.

With the tremendous support being voiced for this monument and all the others, it seems like most, if not all, of the arguments against these 27 monuments in particular and the Antiquities Act in general should be blown out of the water.  If this was truly about the will of the people, it seems as if the people have spoken and that all 27 monuments should be left alone.

That is unlikely, though we'll see what the courts have to say about any eliminations or reductions, because this is not about the will of the people, or economics even, it is purely about politics.





So what are the arguments against the Antiquities Act and the monuments?

Last fall, before the election, H. Sterling Burnett wrote a piece for Forbes railing against the Antiquities Act, Obama's Dangerous Use Of The National Monument Law.  He feels that the law "is one of the most ill-considered laws ever written" and that it give the President unconstitutional, "dictatorial" powers.

Now, from a libertarian point of view, this fear can be seen as somewhat valid if the act was ever misused.  Burnett screams that it gives the President the power to federalize property, taking it away from private landowners, though in practice this has rarely, if ever, happened.  For the most part, and especially with the 27 monuments under review, the land was already controlled by the federal government, largely through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or the Forest Service (USFS), or it was donated, in the case of Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, by a private land owner with the specific intention of the National Park Service taking it over.

Even President Trump has spoken of the creation of these monuments as being a massive federal land grab, but you cannot steal land you already "own" or land that is being freely given over to you.

These arguments are very weak, but they play well to a base that has been living in fear of the federal government for decades.  Burnett writes, "Hundreds of millions of acres of private and public land have been placed off-limits and designated as monuments."  By leading with the word private instead of public, he makes it sound like the vast majority of the land was private, but in reality, this would be only a few handful of acres of private land, if any at all.  The vast majority, if not all, of the land in these 27 monuments, was already in public control.

The monument review process has destroyed many of the arguments against these monuments.  They were created without local support?  Well, they all have been receiving tremendous local support through this process.  Plus, we have learned about monuments, like Bears Ears, where there was a large local movement calling for Congressional protection of the lands, and that the monuments were only created when the partisan gridlock in Congress crushed the process.

They hurt the local economies?  All the data coming out through the review process shows that the older monuments on the list of 27 have been tremendous boosters of the local economies.  The oldest, and one of the most "hated" of these monuments, Grand Staircase-Escalante, has revitalized one of the most remote regions in the continental U. S. and in Maine, businesses that moved into the vicinity of Katahdin Woods and Waters are panicking until this review process is resolved (though it appears that the recommendation will be to leave that monument as is).

Energy and energy jobs?  This is another huge argument, again one really fueling the anti-Grand Staircase-Escalante movement, and one of the stated motivations behind President Trump's Executive Orders on the monuments in the first place.  Grand Staircase-Escalante has closed off one of the largest coal deposits in the state of Utah, but are the jobs really there if they open those lands up to mining?  The coal industry is not dying from regulation, it is dying from low natural gas prices and the movement away from coal in general.  Even if these seams were exploited, would the jobs even go to the locals, or would they be filled by out of work miners from other parts of the country?  That would, I suppose, be good for those folks, but it would do little to help the people living next to the monument now.

As for oil?  Well, the U. S. has solid oil reserves.  Oil we keep in the ground in case we need it later.  Oil, for the most part, that is not under national parks and monuments.  So, why drill in these monuments now?  We are not in a oil crisis.  Prices are relatively low, for the moment.  And oil in the ground will always be there, it's not going anywhere.  If a true national crisis arises and we desperately need the oil under our parks and monuments, well, let's have the debate about drilling when it happens, but until then, let's save it as just another prudent reserve.





In the western states, many state politicians would like to see much of the federal lands be transferred to the states, especially in Utah and Nevada where, to be honest, a ridiculous amount of the land is controlled by the federal government, but there are a couple of points of interest here.  First, a lot of this federal land was put under the administration of the BLM because no one owned it and no one was using it. Really, this won't change much if it transfers to state control.  But there are ulterior motives here as well. Utah, in particular, wants the land so they can lease it or sell it to industry.  It's about the money, not states' rights.

Of course, there are some valid arguments on both sides of this, but that is also why the monuments are important.  Wrangle over this parcel and that parcel, lease this, sell that, state or federal...  But let's keep these lands, the existing monuments, set aside and out of that debate.

And then, of course, the size!  Some of these 27 monuments are huge!  Too big, right?  And how can that possibly be the smallest area needed to protect the land that needs protecting?  On this, there are a couple arguments.  Often, as with the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, we are protecting an ecosystem.  Those are just big!  In other cases, as with Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, beyond just protecting a lot of special places that all happen to be really close to each other, we are also protecting what we don't even know is there yet.  The fossil beds and ancient archaeological sites in these monuments are still barely known and understood.  Maybe some of the land here does not need monument status, but we just aren't sure yet, and it may take generations to know for sure.

Finally, big monuments are not new. All of these arguments were used when the Grand Canyon National Monument was created in 1908.  It is too big.  It is a federal land grab.  What about the resources there?  It's just a big hole in the dirt, why is it worth protecting?  What about the dams we could build!  That should be Congress' decision, not the President's... All of it.





Well, let's take a closer look at that last bit.  In 1882, the first bill was introduced in Congress to create a national park.  If it had passed, the Grand Canyon would have become America's second national park after Yellowstone.  The bill died.  So did bills in 1883, 1886, 1910, and 1911.  Congress would not elevate Theodore Roosevelt's national monument to park status until 1919.

However, after Senator Benjamin Harrison's first three bills attempting to create Grand Canyon National Park failed, he was elected president.  Then in 1893, on his own, he created the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve and, in 1906, President Roosevelt unilaterally created the Grand Canyon Game Preserve before elevating it all to monument status, our 11th national monument, in 1908.

According to the NPS, "The validity of this designation was challenged, but a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1920 confirmed the power of the president to establish national monuments of any size under the Antiquities Act."

Today, the Grand Canyon is considered to be a natural wonder of the world and one of the crown jewels of the National Park Service, but it took 37 years to get the bill creating the park through Congress.

Let's be clear here, Washington was not completely anti-National Park during this time (as it seems to be now), 13 other parks were created between the first failed bill and the last successful one, but Congress clearly had a hard time, for various reasons, getting behind this one.

Imagine what can happen in 37 years.  One of the initial motivations for creating national parks in the first place was to prevent the commercialization that happened at Niagara Falls from happening at other natural wonders. I often refer to the parks as Disneylands, but they are very well managed compared to the commercial circus that Niagara became.  I've heard rumors that there is a waterfall in there someplace surrounded by all of the urban development.





With many of these new monuments, the threat is not unrestrained development for tourism, but industrial use.  If we change our mind about Grand Staircase-Escalante in 37 years, will there be anything left of the land after decades of coal mining and resource extraction?  And trust me, if this place wasn't so remote, it might already be one of the jewels of the National Park System.  It suffers from some of the same plights that delayed the Grand Canyon park for so long...  Not enough people actually know what is out there.

In fact, this process happened more than once with Grand Canyon National Park.  In 1923, a new Grand Canyon National Monument was created to protect even more of the canyon, and in 1969, on his last day in office, at the peak of dam building fever on the Colorado river, President Lyndon Johnson created Marble Canyon National Monument, protecting the canyon up river from the national park from any future dams.  In 1975, the second Grand Canyon National Monument and Marble Canyon National Monument were incorporated into Grand Canyon National Park.

On that same day in 1969, President Johnson also expanded Arches National Monument and Capitol Reef National Monument in Utah.  Congress, of course, later elevated both of those monuments to park status.  He also decided against the creation of a 911,700 acre Sonoran Desert National Monument in Arizona at that time.  The current Sonoran Desert National Monument, one of the 27, is half that size.

This 1975 expansion of the national park, motivated, in part, to stop dam construction, incorporated parts of  Kaibab National Forest and Lake Mead National Recreation Area into the park, as well as the entirety of the two national monuments.  So, we're on our third Grand Canyon National Monument (Grand Canyon-Parashant) now, and a fourth (Greater Grand Canyon Heritage) is even being suggested... There is a bill in Congress about this now. If history repeats, best get rid of that third one, or the park might grow again, and even more after the fourth.

Looking upstream into Marble Canyon from the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers.
Photo: NPS

These are clearly not all of the issues involving the monuments.  I could go on for days about grazing issues, but I won't...  Let's just say that it is agricultural welfare, it is a waste of everyone's money no matter how much Ammon Bundy whines, and it is still permitted in monuments in general. But these are are some of the most used arguments against the monuments and the Antiquities Act.

The act is not a despotic tool for liberal presidents who want to be dictators, rather it is a check on the system for when the system fails.  Of course, it is a powerful check, and so it is hated, and these emotions are usually directed towards personalities, not towards the issues and the merits of the lands being protected.  It's us versus them, not us, all, seeking what is best for the people and the land. Because of this, these debates can get ugly fast, and emotions run very high towards hatred of the opposition.





Much of this rancor arises from the hatred of the presidents who have recently used the Antiquities Act to create monuments.  Folks like Burnett are not reading the actual Proclamations, are not looking into the arguments for protecting each of these monuments individually, they are just railing against Presidents they feel have misused their office in many different ways.  It is really a case of forcing the shoe onto Cinderella's foot...  We don't like this president, so let's create some arguments to make this look bad.

In this article, while Burnett does follow up with some arguments that a few Democrats were against the expansion of  Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, and that the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council was against the expansion, he leads off with arguments against Papahanaumokuakea, President Obama, and the Antiquities Act that are based only in conservative, emotional politics and have nothing to do with any facts at all.

Burnett seems to give his predecessors something of a pass on their use of the act, but he unleashes on President Obama with both barrels.  He writes, "Obama’s monument declarations in Hawaii and beyond are not motivated by a desire to protect lands threatened with imminent destruction; it is about building his legacy with far-Left environmental zealots."  Vanity and the desire to placate small special interest groups, he claims, were the driving motivations behind the expansion or creation of 25 monuments during the Obama presidency.

In this way, many people do not see the current administration's actions as being against the land, but merely as undoing the legacy of President Trump's much hated predecessor.  They want to hurt him and his ego, and the land is just a means to an end.





Of course, as I wrote, if you look at each monument as an individual issue, and not through some all-encompassing lens of anti-Obama or anti-Democrat venom, each monument has very valid arguments for its expansion or creation.  To understand the Marine National Monuments, take a look at this National Geographic article from February 2017, Why It’s Important to Save Our Seas’ Pristine Places.  The same issue also contains a short piece covering President Obama's actual motivations behind his expansion and creation of Marine National Monuments and his use of the Antiquities Act in general, Where Obama’s Deep Love for the Ocean Comes From.





From reading the latter article and/or watching the video above, it becomes clear that President Obama gets it.  He sees the issue of the monuments as being larger than all of us, and any single person, party or administration.  Larger, even, than our generation.  He does see legacy, but not for himself, instead for all of us, for our future and for the quality of life of our future generations.  Plus, he just, in his heart, like so many of us, understands how special these places truly are.

The people who support eliminating the monuments are, by far, not in the majority, but they are a key part of President Trump's core support demographic.  Many are small government folks who want to see no federal management of any lands, some even to the point where eliminating or completely privatizing our national parks sounds like a good idea.  They buy into all of the arguments against conservation and protection, and see these lands as nothing but a resource to be exploited for profit. They are entrenched in these ideas, shored up with rhetorical arguments about conservative political and economic myths that often have little to do with actual facts, and nothing will convince them otherwise.

Other folks who support the monument review, while sharing the general political views of the people mentioned above, may actually agree with protecting the monuments if they had the full set of facts, but life is busy, they hear a few details spun to the far right by sources they trust, perhaps having these few details doubled down on by a mistrust of the federal government and a dislike of the Democratic presidents who created the monuments, and they just roll with it since losing the monuments will not effect them at all (except for pissing off all of the "snowflakes" who like them).

These folks would probably support keeping the monuments if they saw all of the economic data supporting them, learned a bit about what the monuments were actually protecting, and understood, truthfully, the actual land uses allowed within the monuments, not the untruths, half truths and fears spread around by the monuments' opponents.





There are also folks who just don't get it, period.  Maybe they've never been to anyplace so spectacular that the sheer beauty and amazement of the sights made it hard for them to even breathe, or maybe they just aren't wired to appreciate such sights?  They truly just can't understand.

Decades ago, one politician - Floyd Dominy, Commissioner of Bureau of Reclamation from 1959 to 1969, I believe - actually suggested that we should just send out a bunch of photographers and filmmakers to the national parks and monuments to document what was there for history and then eliminate them, extracting all the resources we can out of them.  Dam up Yosemite Valley and the the rest of the Grand Canyon!  This is someone who just doesn't get it.  Though a modern Works Progress Administration style project like that sounds awesome - I'm in, sign me up! - let's keep the parks and monuments after we're done filming them!

It would be easy to dismiss this as just coarse thoughts and ethics born of different times, but believe me, there are still many people today who share this disregard for nature. They just are quieter about it these days, and they complain about the liberal P.C. thought control police who don't let anyone speak their minds.

It's like this...  While most people have at least some appreciation of music, there are a few people who just don't.  In some ways, my father was kind of like that.  He liked music with lyrics that told a story, but would usually choose talk radio over music in the car and I never got a sense that the music itself ever stirred anything in his soul.  Some people are just like that, and some people are like that with nature, too.

My youngest son is like this with much of nature, though he had the misfortune of being born into a family that was exactly the opposite.  He's an indoor kid who never got into hiking, camping, or even sightseeing, no matter how hard the rest of the family tried...





This different wiring of his became really clear to me a few years ago while we were traveling through Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  He was unphased and restless while we drove the Needles Highway, more nervous about the drop-offs and barely noticing the spectacular scenery, which was usual, he is a high strung kid with some anxiety issues, but the "condition" truly revealed itself at the end of the drive.  We came around a corner to see Sylvan Lake glowing in the sunset, one of the more spectacular sights we'd seen on a truly spectacular trip so far, and the rest of us gasped and started babbling incoherently about how amazing it was.





My youngest however just glanced and went back to his video game.  After our reactions settled down, he asked us what the big deal was, it's just a lake and we'd seen a lot of lakes on this trip.  He truly didn't understand what we found so beautiful about this lake in that sunset light.  "I just don't get it," I remember him saying.

For the first time I fully understood that he really didn't get why the rest of the family loved these sorts of places and these sorts of vacations so much.  To him, it was just the pure hell of long hours in a van and weeks sleeping in tents.  He really didn't understand what the rest of us were getting out of these trips.

Clearly, though, not everyone lacking this wiring to appreciate the land is against the parks and monuments.  Some will appreciate them for the science, for the history, for the economics...  Some may not be phased by the land, but will fight for the critters living on the land (my son is like this, not a fan of mountains or sunsets, but he loves animals).  Some will even defend them purely for the joy they bring to others.





I suppose my point with this anecdote is this...  Most of us who are rallying to this cause cannot imagine why anyone would want to eliminate these monuments, why anyone would be against the national parks...  We can search through motives of greed, perhaps, or fear of the government, or just pure hatred of previous presidents to find some understanding of our opponents' points of view, but I think, for most of us, it is really hard to wrap our heads around the idea that the parks and monuments are not a good thing and that the Antiquities Act is, rather than one of the greatest laws ever, one of worst ever.

But some folks, really, just can't understand why we are so adamant in our support.  We're not all tree huggers or socialists.  We're not all vegans or hippies.  We're just normal people who's souls are nourished by these places.  Of course, all of those types do exist within our ranks, but so do hunters, fishers, loggers, miners, ranchers, farmers... Folks who enjoy recreational opportunities on these lands and folks who make a living off of these lands.  Looking at the current assaults on our parks and monuments, we find one of the only issues this year that shares support from the majority of both parties... very few actually feel that eliminating monuments or changing the regulations of our national parks is a good idea.

Even among the ranks of those who support the reduction or elimination of the 27 monuments, the majority still agrees that most of these lands deserve some sort of protection and regulation.  Their arguments in favor of the review are based more on the politics of how the monuments were created rather than a desire to see any real harm come to the lands being protected by them.





Now don't get me wrong, I think that eliminating or significantly reducing the size of any of the monuments is a terrible idea, but if it happens, because of the folks like the ones I mention above, and because of the great job the agencies are doing managing these lands, it is not the end of the world.

In places like Grand Staircase-Escalante, in most of the places within the monument the BLM will continue to manage the land much as they do now, little will change except for a change in the signs. The same with Bears Ears, I was there several months before the monument designation, and I am sure that all that really changed with the creation of the monument in the places I visited was probably just the some simple signage.  The BLM is doing a great job managing their land.

What I fear, more than the reduction or elimination of these 27 monuments, is that these sorts of changes will kick the door open to further reductions and eliminations, which may extend all the way to the National Park Service lands, which are essentially are escaping unscathed (aside from Katahdin) at this point.  I fear, even more, that straight up elimination of parks and monuments is not really what will ruin these places, but that our lands are in danger from the quieter, more subtle threats of budget cuts, deregulation, and privatization.

Hetch Hetchy Valley, early 1900s, from the southwestern end, showing the Tuolumne River flowing through the lower portion of the valley prior to damming.
Public Domain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHetch_Hetchy_Valley.jpg

Everyone will scream if the Trump Administration tries to eliminate Yellowstone National Park or Grand Canyon National Park, but they will let these 27 go with barely any notice.  Most people have never even heard of these places, even fewer have ever visited them, and all but one are outside of the National Park Service system.  Hands off Yellowstone, of course, we're not monsters!  But who cares about Ironwood Forest or Upper Missouri River Breaks?

On the other hand, how many will notice if the Park Service is gutted to the point, and the protections are stripped to the point, that the nature of our parks is fundamentally changed?  People might not notice when the laws and policies are being changed, but they'll sure notice when they visit.  Clear cuts around Yellowstone Lake and no longer being able to tour the springs and geysers of because there is no money to maintain the walkways?  That would get folk's attention.  Privately owned and operated trams in and out of the Grand Canyon?  Hard not to notice that.  Oil wells and mining inside of the parks...  Hunting (which I am not against in principle, just not in the parks)... A dam in Yosemite Valley, just like Hetch Hetchy, just as Commissioner Dominy dreamed of back in the 1960s?  Southern California is thirsty!

Hetch Hetchy, Taken From Near the Dam
Photo: Andrew Thompson,  May 24, 2005
Public Domain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABeautifulHetchHetchy.jpg

These Executive Orders, really, I fear, are nothing more than a quick test of the waters to see what the President can get away with.  If we aren't careful and vigilant, in a few years Zion National Park will probably still be there, but there may be a two golf course Trump resort filling the entirety of Zion Canyon...

This is the future we are resisting.

Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument

https://sites.google.com/view/nationalmonumentsindanger/the-27-monuments/organ-mountains-desert-peaks

New Mexico
2014
496,330 acres
BLM

27 Monuments Stop #2 (June 19, 2017)
http://rubble.blogspot.com/2017/06/organ-mountains-desert-peaks-national.html

Current Map (June 2017):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5qJHnJC9HuAcGc5SWhPMURuUW8/view

To comment on the marine monument and sanctuary review process 
(Due August 14, 2017):

https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=NOAA-NOS-2017-0066-0001

Links

Forbes: Obama's Dangerous Use Of The National Monument Law (October 12, 2016)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/10/12/obamas-dangerous-use-of-the-national-monument-law/#233516a44122



National Geographic

Why It’s Important to Save Our Seas’ Pristine Places (February 2017)
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/02/saving-our-seas-president-obama-oceans-conservation

Where Obama’s Deep Love for the Ocean Comes From (February 2017)
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/02/interview-president-obama-underwater-snorkeling



Marble Canyon National Monument
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2009/01/pruning-parks-whatever-became-marble-canyon-national-monument-1969-19753395



Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

H. R. 360:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/360

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/GrandCanyonWatershedNationalMonument

President Obama Should Proclaim the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument
https://voices.nationalgeographic.org/2016/08/15/president-obama-should-proclaim-the-greater-grand-canyon-heritage-national-monument

GreaterGrandCanyon.org
http://www.greatergrandcanyon.org



Ford Library: 1973 Grand Canyon National Park Expansion Documents
https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0055/1668930.pdf



NPS Monuments List
https://www.nps.gov/archeology/sites/antiquities/monumentslist.htm



Popular Science / Fox News: What are national monuments and why is Trump reviewing them? (April 27, 2017)
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/04/27/what-are-national-monuments-and-why-is-trump-reviewing-them.html







Las Cruces Sun-News: Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks supporters, critics await Zinke recommendation (July 28, 2017)
http://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/2017/07/29/organ-mountains-desert-peaks-supporters-critics-await-zinke-recommendation/521634001



Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks NM - BLM:

Website
https://www.blm.gov/nlcs_web/sites/nm/st/en/prog/NLCS/OMDP_NM.html

Map
https://www.blm.gov/nlcs_web/sites/style/medialib/blm/nm/programs/nlcs/organ_mountains-desert/maps.Par.49542.File.dat/NM_OrganMountainsDesertPeaks_NM.pdf

flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mypubliclands/sets/72157644369932549



organmountains.org
https://www.organmountains.org/




Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks NM - Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_Mountains-Desert_Peaks_National_Monument



Wilderness.org:

It’s official: New Mexico's Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks is our newest national monument
http://wilderness.org/it%E2%80%99s-official-new-mexicos-organ-mountains-desert-peaks-our-newest-national-monument

National Monuments in Danger

https://sites.google.com/view/nationalmonumentsindanger/home

SnapJudgment: "The Finger"

An interesting or funny or interesting and funny story...  An old post from years ago that got lost in draft hell and was never published before...

The Finger by SnapJudgment on SoundCloud
http://soundcloud.com/snapjudgment/the-finger

A medical student loses his finger on a Caribbean island in the middle of a hurricane. Can his fellow med students get him to an airport, off the island and to a hospital in time to save his finger?  Produced by Rebecca Hertz.

http://snapjudgment.org/

The Barbarians at the Gate: In the Digital Age, Is Photography a Trade or an Art?

Yes, the "barbarians" are at the gate!  Run, hide, and feel insecure about your craft!

 

The following was in my email this morning.  I didn’t really want to take the time today to write a long post, but I’ve had some thoughts on this subject brewing in my head for a while now and seeing this article this morning brought it all together for me. 

 

So, here we go…

 

First, a clip from a post on the MCP Actions blog on the terrifying photo below...

 

MCP Thoughts on editing photography images:

I had posted this image on the MCP Facebook Page in February showcasing our newest Lightroom presets (InFusion and Illuminate).  I never expected to hear anything except, “cute kids” or “how did you do that?” or “great save.” No laws were being broken.  No kids were harmed.  It was an image that was not exposed properly.  That’s it!

Instead, I had angry photographers blame me for all kinds of “crimes,” such as:

• Ruining the photography industry

• Teaching people to fix images in Lightroom or Photoshop so they do not need to learn their cameras

• Helping new photographers undercut experienced pros

• Showing images from people who have no business being photographers

And well, the list was longer than that but you get the idea…

Wow.  …though anyone with any familiarity at all with the current state of the photography industry will recognize these reactions immediately.  Fear is the driving force in the trade right now.

Of course, I am sympathetic to those who currently make a living from photography, especially those with families to support who feel their livelihood threatened, but I am also realistic about the changes the digital age is bringing not just to photography, but to all of the arts, and in many ways these changes are creating the sort of conditions in the photography world that have existed in the other artistic trades all along. 

Essay: The Decline and Fall of Free Will: JE to the Evangelists

Tonight, my oldest son wrote his first "serious" paper.  He's in the 7th Grade, so it's not that serious, but it actually has MLA citations.  It was a battle, but he got it done.  While it is very rough, it actually touched on a couple of interesting ideas.  However, since it was a last minute cram job and already a day late, he didn't get to travel down those interesting paths as far as I would have liked to see...

Anyway, I babble and I miss the point.  He is definitely after my own heart.  The paper's title? "The Biblical History of the Israeli and Palestinian Conflict."  Right down the center of my academic studies...  The primary focus of his paper was the history of the Abrahamic and Davidic Covenants.  Damn.  I love that boy.  It wasn't even my idea!  He came up with it on his own.

It reminded me of a paper I wrote back in 2005, dealing with the covenants.  I thought I'd dig it up and take another look before passing the hell out.  Another long day.  Another long week...

Link to PDF: The Decline and Fall of Free Will: JE to the Evangelists

April 16, 2005

The Decline and Fall of Free Will: JE to the Evangelists

The concepts of free will, responsibility and the punishment of sin in the Hebrew Bible and in the Christian New Testament transform slowly over the course of the text, reflecting the views of different writers living in different societies and times.  Essentially, the Israelites’ covenant with Yahweh, binding them to a god who delivers divine guidance and punishment for their actions and failures, is defined early on by the J (Yahwist) and E (Elohim) writers, is modified by the Deuteronomists who live in a new social situation, and then is completely replaced with a new covenant by the Evangelists in the New Testament Gospels, resulting in the redefinition of the nature of sin, the revocation of Torah law, and the essential elimination of the concept of free will.   

In the early JE texts, the first humans and then the Israelites have more free will coupled with the lightest responsibilities to God than at any other time in the course of the Bible.  These writers cover the creation of the Abrahamic Covenant and Mosaic Covenants, covering the first limitations on humanity’s free will, but the original demands of these covenants and the punishment for violating them is light compared to what follows.   In Who Wrote the Bible?, Richard Elliott Friedman writes, “[Wilhelm] Vatke … concluded that J and E reflected a very early stage in the development of Israelite religion, when it was essentially a nature/fertility religion” (25).  A religion in this stage is not concerned as much with obeying God and his representatives on earth, nor in the fate of a dualistic immortal soul, as it is with the cycle of the seasons, prosperous crops and herds, and the general well being of the tribe.  And in the JE texts, we see that Yahweh’s major concerns are not with making rules and punishing sinners, but with the second creation myth, cult legends (especially when relating to future centers of Israelite worship), etiologies ranging from the salt pillars near the Dead Sea to the foundation of Israel’s claim on Canaan, and fertility issues, where many women, starting with Sarah, require Yahweh’s divine aid to conceive.

This is how it sounds when the world ends...

Been meaning to post this one for a while, but I have been busy and distracted by other things...

Game Over | Snap Judgment:

The tape rolls as we witness the tearful end of a perfect online world.

Produced by Roman Mars, based on a story from Robert Ashley's brilliant A Life Well Wasted internet radio program


'via Blog this'

The Black Page: The 9/11 Live Blog...

September 11, 2011 - Ten years.  My annual re-post of my live blog from 2001, written as the events unfolded.  Thought about talking about this and that, reviewing the last ten years or looking at how we are different now than we were ten years ago, but really, I think it is better just to leave this as it is.  I call this "The Black Page" because it was white text on a black background on my website ten years ago.

September 11, 2010 - I like to repost this on September 11. I spent the day liveblogging the events as they happened, and it captures a lot of the fear and confusion that gripped the country on that day, the craziness and the rumors and fears... I've never gone through and cleaned it up, so it is full of typos and what not, but it is an interesting document of that day nine years ago that refefined our country and shaped who we are, as Americans, for better or worse, today...

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

    

Friday, December 14, 2001 – It is three months later, but I find myself updating this page again.  I read this quote this morning on a web site.  It is the best words that I have seen yet to describe my feelings on the 11th of September.  I’ll let “Coyote Beautiful” speak for me…

I was very numb, but compulsively checking the net for the latest rumors and reports. I had this need to be the one with the most up-to-date information, the most accurate information. The one who was “right.”  I think because there was so much emotional response going on around me that I needed to stick to stuff that was as non-emotional as possible, and facts are about as non-emotional as they come.  

Thursday, September 13. 2001 - What follows is an account of the events on 9-11-01 as seen by an shocked observer watching his television from a safe place several thousand miles away from the carnage.  I “went live” with this page immediately and it was constantly updated on my site throughout the day. 

Later it was brought to my attention that a number of people came to this page that day to find information about the attack when the major news sites were clogged up and unavailable.

So what follows is very rough, full of clumsy typing, speculation, and barely attributed information- some of which is just plain wrong, but I have decided not to edit this page, to leave this how it is, warts and all, as some sort of document on how I felt and on how I reacted to what happened on that one evil day...

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 - I watched the second plane hit.  Now, 6:41 PDT, an explosion at the pentagon.  This is not good.  Will there be more?  I feel like throwing up again.  I already did once this morning.  And now they are saying it was a plane crashing into the Pentagon as well.  I have a very bad feeling about this.  Very bad, and now they are evacuating the White House, and now they've shut down all air traffic in the U.S....

7:00 AM PDT – Hijacked planes crashing into both of the twin towers.  Another plane crashes into the Pentagon.

One of the twin towers collapsed a few minutes ago. 

I am still in shock.  All air traffic in the U.S. has been halted.  And I only have one cigarette left until 9AM.

Knowing how long it took to evacuate the Trade Center in 1993’s attack, we probably just watched thousands of people die when the tower fell.

Compared to N.Y., the Pentagon doesn’t look too bad.  But it is the Pentagon. 

They are now calling it the most serious attack on the continental U.S. since the War of 1812.

7:20AM - One plane was a 767.  ABC is reporting that the tower still standing is buckling and leaning.

Sent an incoherent e-mail to a friend of mine a few minutes ago babbling about 1941.  Probably an exaggeration.  But when they talk about 50,000 people working in the World Trade Center, and one of the twin towers is now down.  It happened a little before 9 AM EST.  Hopefully they get to work late in N.Y.

ABC: 2 American airlines planes hijacked.  One from Boston, one from Dulles to L.A.

7:25 AM – Car bomb may have exploded in front of State Department. (ABC)

Since the second tower is threatening to fall, they have to evacuate the triage site on the scene.

7:27 PDT – Just watched the north tower collapse.  I’m sick again.  I’m shaking.  1941 doesn’t sound foolish anymore.  We just lost many thousands of lives in the last two hours this morning.  Lower Manhattan is covered with dust and smoke.  When the first building fell, eyewitness were reported talking about people jumping from the building on it way down.  Or just falling.  My hands are shaking to much to type any more right now.

7:36 PDT – Smoking my last cigarette.  Thinking of putting on some coffee.  Drinking tea right now.  NBC is live on the street in N.Y. showing rescue workers trying to get to the rescue workers who were under the second building. 

7:39 - NBC is reporting the crash, via AP, of a crash of a large jet near Pittsburgh, but they are now denying reports of a car bomb at the State Department.

7:43 - NBC is reporting that air cover is flying over Washington.  Their man at the Pentagon saw an F-16.  And there are rumors that there may be another hijacked airliner inbound to the D.C. area.

767 in Pittsburgh is down, AP reports.  Unclear if it is related, but the odds?  The media is using the word war now.  “It seems a terrorist war has been declared against the U.S.”

“Nothing short but a declaration of war against this country,” Tom Brokaw, 7:46pst

7:50 PDT – For a while now, KING 5, our local NBC affiliate has been scrolling a message that the Seattle P.D. is surrounding the local federal buildings and the Space Needle, just in case…

I make coffee now.

This is like a Tom Clancy book, watching the films of  the buildings falling, it’s easy to imagine it’s good CGI in a bad movie.  It wouldn’t feel real if it weren’t for that lump in my gut.   That tells me that this is real.  That tells me that this is going to change our country on some fundamental level forever.  It’s not just the loss of life.  It’s the loss of something more profound.  Maybe they lost this in Oklahoma City a few years back, but for the rest of us, we have remained relatively untouched.  This is something on an entirely, unimaginably different level. 

They keep saying this on TV, and it is true.  This morning marked the end of Fortress America.  We are no longer untouchable.  We have been touched.

If it is over, and that is still left to be seen, where do we go from here?  Who will we be, as a nation, after this?

It is too early to answer those questions.

It is 8:00 am, PDT…  Just a little over two hours since this started.  One of the most remarkable faces of our country, the Manhattan skyline has, been forever changed.  And so has our country.

8:03 am – NBC is reporting that the FAA is confirming that there are “several” planes yet to be accounted for.  Possibly hijacked.

8:11 – KING 5 is reporting that the Bank of America building, the tallest building in Seattle, is currently being evacuated.

On NBC, in New York, Chief William Hall of the Port Authority Police – estimating roughly 10,000 people per tower.   Dug his way out of building 5 of the complex after one of the buildings fell.  (Actually it was the director of the W.T.C. that said that, but both men were together.)

8:17 - 58 and a crew of 11 on the hijacked plane from Boston (?).

Canada has shut its airports down.

FAA is saying that they have “unaccounted” for planes.  But this might just be the two planes already involved band not identified yet.

8:19 – Possible bomb in a high school in Manhattan, right behind the live NBC reporter.

Just interviewed a cop about this, he confirmed that they have a report about the bomb, but not if there really is one or not.

American 11.  American 77.  Confirmed by the airline.

Tim Russert is saying that this morning Congress convened, said a prayer, and returned home.  The buildings have been evacuated, and Hastert is being taken to a safe place, since he is 3rd in the chain of succession.

8:27 am – NBC reporting explosions in N.Y., possible car bombs.  The reporter was caught in the dust/smoke cloud during the fall, and had to break a window on an apartment building to get off the street to get air to breathe.

United Airlines is confirming that a 757 went down outside of Pittsburgh.

The Cardinal of the N.Y. Archdiocese is out side one of the hospitals giving last rights.

8:41 - Two flights seem to be out of Boston.

Thousand of Palestinians are celebrating in the West Bank, according to AP, though Arafat has denounced the attack.

Brokaw’s going off about us, as a nation, being changed now.  Hey, bud… I said that nearly an hour ago.  My site scrutinized by NBC?  Yeah, right. 

I do find the name of my site in bad taste right now, though.  I wonder if I should change it.  I named it after the earthquake and after the pictures of the Kingdome rubble, but I don’t know if it is appropriate now.  At least I don’t have a domain name.  If I decide to change it, no big deal.

We told Afghanistan that if there was a large scale attack like this against the U.S. from Bin Laden, we’d hold them responsible, NBC reports.  I missed who the exact gov’t official the quote was from.  I’d get away from populated areas if I were the Taliban.  They may not exist for very much longer.  Earlier ABC and NBC was reporting that Bin Laden was talking a few weeks back about a massive attack in the U.S.

All planes seem to be accounted for now.  The worst should be over. 

They’re giving out all the flight information now on the four planes involved, but I’ll skip the details.  64 on one, don’t know about Pittsburgh, 54 on another.  That’s not counting crews.  Assume over 200 dead just on the planes themselves, though I feel that those numbers will be insignificant compared to the number of dead in the twin towers.  We may have lost more lives there than we have lost in some wars.

8:55 – Chief of Safety for N.Y.C. Fire Department is theorizing that there were explosives on the planes and explosives planted in the building themselves.  Hundreds, probably thousands in the buildings when they fell.  He theorizes that the buildings fell when secondary explosives went off.

Now NBC is showing the West Bank celebrations.  Arafat is sickened by the whole thing.

9:00 am, PDT – I was awake when it started.  I’d just watched a re-run of Rosanne when the 6 am news came on to announce, with live pictures that a plane had collided with one of the Twin Towers.  No one was really thinking terrorists at that point, but it had only happened minutes before.  I switched to ABC, and they were talking about air routes around N.Y.C.  And, since no one saw the “accident,” everyone thought it was just a Cessna, but that hole in the building was pretty big.  As they were talking about a plane that crashed into the Empire State Building after WW2, a plane flew into the shot, and the middle of the second building burst into flames.  I’m sure you’ve seen the tapes, from many and better angles than I did live, by the time you are reading this, but that was so unexpected, so terrifying… And the plane, you knew it wasn’t a Cessna.  It was obviously intended.  Then, 45 minutes later, the NBC guy at the Pentagon, waiting for word, cuts in live to report a very large explosion on the other side of the building, workers and security personnel running to and fro.

I am typing that because, though you know the events, you know what happened…  that is almost how it felt watching it.  This.  Then this… Of course, now that… And so on, the whole time that badger in my belly gnawing with growing strength and intensity, peaking when the first tower fell, leveling off after the Pittsburgh crash, and easing off a bit with the word that all the U.S. airliners in flight seemed to be accounted for.   Now, the numbness is returning.

I had insomnia last night.  Didn’t sleep all night.  Was just going to bed when the news came on.  If I’d turned the TV off 30 second earlier, I’d be asleep right now.  Blissfully ignorant until I woke up this afternoon wondering blurrily for a brief second why there was news on at an odd time until my senses cleared and I realized what had happened.  I’m guessing that is how this morning started for many of you, the radio as you woke up… Or an overheard conversation while waiting for the bus.  A moment of television before leaving for work.

It will be one of those Kennedy moments.  We’ll remember where we were when we heard this one.

9:15 – I just received a response to the e-mail I sent to my friend.  He must have just reached work.  I haven’t spoken to him for a while, and he was babbling on in his reply about someone he’s seeing and a mutual friend’s birthday tonight.  Suddenly he stops.  “Oh shit.  Sorry, I just heard.  Gotta go.“

I just wonder what was going through his mind when he read my e-mail.  I’m blaming a lack of coffee, or he just thought I was being weird.

Here’s what I sent….

Subject: Fun morning...

I threw up after watching the second plane hit, live on TV... Almost lost it

again when the tower fell.  Not to mention the Pentagon.  So this is what

12-7-1941 felt like.

I am guessing he thought I was referring to a hangover.  I wish he was right.

9:18 – NBC is interviewing Norman Schartzkopf and he’s mentioning the Tom Clancy book where a terrorist kamakazied his plane into the Capitol during a joint session of Congress.

KING, scrolling along the bottom of the NBC feed is announcing that the Washington State Capitol is closed.  It just reopened after it almost came down in the quake last February.  I know people are paranoid and tense, but I doubt that Olympia, Washington is a target.  Seattle, though, may have been targeted in the past; at least we had a whole load of high explosives headed here or through here.  Now it sounds like they were just passing through on their was to LAX, but I think wasn’t a bad idea this morning, when we didn’t know how many planes had been hijacked, to shut down the Bank of America building and the Space Needle.  Olympia, however, I’d be more concerned about an aftershock.

9:22 – The Taliban has now officially condemned the attack, reports Katie Couric.  Is it me, or is she just a bit too cute for disaster coverage?

9:25 – Tom Brokaw is reporting that the borders have now been closed.  The government is in bunkers. 

2400 died in Pearl Harbor.  This will probably be worse.

They just showed an amateur video shot about 3 blocks away from the W.T.C. when one of the towers, I am assuming the first, fell.  People telling stories about the dust, it reminds me of, on a much smaller scale mind you, the stories from when Mt. St. Helens went up.  People trying to out run the rubble.  Maybe it’s just videos like that showing the clouds racing down the man made canyons of the streets, the jerky camera running in fear.

Now that I think of it, it reminds me a bit too of when I watched the demolition of the Kingdome.  The dust blanketed downtown, “fogged” it in, made the air dry.  The picture I use for the About link on the homepage is a picture of this dust.  It looks nothing like the pictures I’ve seen from New York, but I was pretty amazed by how much dust there was from the dome…

9:30 – 2 United, 2 American – 50 flights still in the air.  “None appear to be hijacked or in trouble,” NBC.  All within 50 miles of landing  22 international flights still in the air.  They look good too.  Airplane totals – aprox.166 passengers, I think? 

3 out of 4 were bound for L.A., the other S.F.  They are thinking it was so they would be dully loaded with fuel when they crashed.  They also all took off relatively close to their…   end.

The Pittsburgh one still seems to be the oddball.  Is it a heroic battle, the crews trying to save the planes, or was it stupid terrorist pilots getting lost.  If they recover the recorders from these flights, they should be… I don’t know.  I’m glad I don’t have to listen to them.  Was there anyone even left alive on the planes when they crashed?  Did the hijackers kill everyone so they could just concentrate on flying, or did they leave them alive, watching…

9:40 – First reports on NBC of dead in the Pentagon.

I am getting sick of hearing about people choosing to jump from 30 floors up instead of burning to death.  I don’t even want to imagine.  Which is a worse death?  Burning or falling?  I can only think that those who jumped watched people burn to death and just said f*** that.  I think about that brokerage that got called way up there after the crash.  I think it was before the second plane hit.  The person picked up the phone, screamed “We’re f***ing dying.”  Then he hung up.  They called again a few moments later and the phone was not answered.  I would guess, at that point, unless they were actually in the part of the building impacted by the plane, that they actually died later when the tower fell.

10:05 AM, PDT – Just got back from a walk.  Took a break.  I have a little bit of tobacco left, but I ran out of rolling papers, so I scraped together some change to get some cheap papers.  You need cigarettes watching this stuff.  Thinking about this stuff.  The talking head on NBC, who was stuck in the streets when one of the towers fell, right now is saying that it looked like the scene in Independence Day when N.Y. was getting wasted by the aliens.  No one has language for this except for the language of fiction and science fiction, and movie effects.

Just heard the phrase, “can’t tell a body part from a living human being.”  Missed the context.  Might be glad of that.

Bush says we “were attacked by a faceless coward today.”  Either he knows it was Bin Laden, or one guy did a really good job of hijacking four planes at once.  I don’t want to speak harshly of our President at a time like this.  Read my Election article for that.

Brokaw and NBC are my guys.  They go from the tape of Bush to Clinton’s old Nat’l Security Advisor, Sandy Berger. 

Over and over again, the words, all morning… “A stunning failure of American intelligence.”

Outside, on my walk, it is just about the most beautiful day you can imagine.  It is already warming up.  I wore my overcoat, and I was sweating by the time I got back to my building.  It’s the type of day meant for playing hooky from school or work and going to the beach or hiking in the mountains.  It really is a gorgeous day developing outside, and beautiful days in Seattle are pretty much unbeatable anywhere. 

10:23 – John McCain is being interviewed by Brokaw now.  He’s not picking around the issue.  It was an act of war in his eyes.  Again, they keep talking about the failure of intelligence about this attack, and McCain points out that it is difficult to infiltrate groups like Bin Laden’s.  My take on all of this is that, even if they knew, what could they do?  Sure, tighten security at the airports, but it’s tight as it is.  Even if they knew the date and the plan (hijack planes, crash them into things), what could they do?  If the terrorists got through the airports and onto the planes, you could shoot down the planes, but that is about it.  Even then, though, which planes?  I am pretty sure that the F.A.A. didn’t know that the planes were hijacked… Though the current talking head says that there are secret buttons that pilots can push to notify the tower that all is not well, so they might have.  Anyway, even if you do know what planes are hijacked, you don’t know where they are going.  Evacuate Manhattan?  Impossible.  If you just evacuate a couple of skyscrapers, there are many more to choose from. 

So you shoot the planes down.  I guess that is better that what did happen, but all in all, it’s not good.  Hundreds dead in the best-case scenario.

“I don’t like to compare it to Pearl Harbor,” Sen. McCain.

Plane total – 266 dead.  Two from Boston, one from Newark, one from Dulles.

I need another smoke.  I need more coffee.  I think I’ll take a nap in a few.  I think it’ll be a bit slow on new information for a bit.  Just talking heads trying to make sense of it all as the clean up begins.

Suddenly I’m thinking back to 1989.  Tom Brokaw doing the nightly news from the collapsed freeway a few days after the World Series quake.  He was, if I remember right about 10 blocks from the rubble.  I remember him talking about the stench of death.  New York… Manhattan stinks this time of the year.  It will not be nice.  It will be very, very bad for you if you work down there.  Probably for the rest of the summer and into fall.  I don’t know, though.  I guess they sifted through the Oklahoma wreckage quicker than that, but that was a smaller building.  And there was only one of them.

10:38 - “It does look like a nuclear winter in lower Manhattan,” Tom Brokaw.

2400 dead, Pearl Harbor.  Schwarzkopf just said, “looking at what happened today, it’s hard to believe that we won’t exceed that number.”

One of the survivors from the W.T.C. just pointed out that today’s date is 9-11.  911.  I didn’t even think of that, though I wrote out the full date at the top of this page and on both my blogs.

10:46 - “Suddenly the social security lock box seems so unimportant, Tom,” Tim Russert.  He goes on to say that the leading theory is that the fourth plane was intended for the Capitol or the White House.  My guess would be the Capitol.  Congress was in session; the president was out of town.  If the bastards had their shit together good enough to pull off four simultaneous hijackings, they would know that the president was out of town. 

Five hours now, about three hours since the North tower fell (the second one to go).

I still haven’t had that cigarette I spoke of a few minutes back.

10:55 – The Art Institute of Seattle is closed for the day.  Honestly, if I were in school, I’d just take the day off.  Hell, if I had a job I might take the day off.  I know in either, I’d be worthless all day.  Talking then not talking, and not getting anything done at all.  I’m just writing this to keep a semblance of sanity, to take all that “OH SHIT” energy and to focus it.  Better than pacing, though I could probably use the exercise.

You know you’ve had your ass handed to you when the best you can come up with is, “At least it wasn’t a weapon of mass destruction.” (Tom Livingston)

11:01 – NBC just reported that Tony Blair has suspended all commercial aviation over Britain

Now this would suck, I just saw that a lot of flight headed for Seattle were diverted to Vancouver B.C., about three hours north of here.  But the borders are closed.  You really can’t go home again, can you?  Well, not today, at least.

11:37 -  KIRO, the local CBS affiliate is reporting that the Navy ships in Everett, WA, are putting out…  I just looked around the ThreeWay Action boards.  A lot of users there are in N.Y.C.  Some of them were close to the WTC.  One poster mentioned that a lot of her friend’s parents worked in there. 

I’m writing this to keep my mind somewhat distracted.  Going over there and reading those stories.  I am glad that I am not there.   I am glad I do not know anyone there.  And, reading those stories, I kind of feel guilty for it.  The person whose friends’ parents worked there, she mentioned the people jumping.  But there were also good stories, stories of reunions.  Another touching thing is that people from all over the country were putting up their info, opening up their homes to fellow posters who might be stranded in their city because of the aviation shut down.  I was happy to see one poster was from Seattle.  After some of the nasty things I said about Seattle a couple days ago on those boards, it’s good to see someone proving me wrong.

Another thing caught my eye over there.  Some people raving for blood, others not understanding the desire to blow a country back to the stone age over this.  I understand the compassionate view of these people, that such an attack will kill more innocent people and few, or none, of the guilty.  Unfortunately, the only way we can respond to this attack is with overwhelming force.  There is no other response.  A country may not exist after this.  Sending a couple of cruise missiles over to wherever is not an option here.  Not when we could be seeing up to 20,000 dead, God forbid.  We lost between 50 and 60,000 in Vietnam.  That is hopefully a very high end estimate.

11:46 – Donald Rummsfeld, what ever his name is at the Pentagon, actually refused to be evacuated until he helped get some of the wounded out of the building, NBC reports.  Luckily the 757 hit a part of the building that had recently been reinforced, and a part that was actually empty.

Still, (continuing from above) it is too early to be thinking about retribution.  Now is the time to take care of our own.  Those who are hurt, those who have lost someone…

12:10 – The president is in Omaha, where he will convene the National Security council.  He wanted to go to Washington, but they wouldn’t let him.  He still wants to get back there as soon as possible.  They keep speculating that he’s either on or heading for “The Doomsday Plane,” the plane where they send the President in the case of a nuclear attack.  Kind of a super Air Force One.

12:26 -  KOMO, the local ABC affiliate, is saying that the Navy has announced that three vessels from Everett are being deployed around the Puget Sound to help defend the Seattle area.

They just said something that I hadn’t though of but is a damn good idea.  Going out and donating blood.  It probably will be needed.

12:31 – One of the five members of the press who has been allowed to remain with the President today just called into ABC.  She said that none of them have ever seen any President scrambled from place to place like they have today.  He’s now in a bunker.  The journalists get to stay on the surface.  She also said that it was the emptiest they’d ever seen Air Force One.  They are at Offett AFB near Omaha.

12:41 – Peter Jennings is saying the thing about needing blood now.  And they are saying that they are just now mounting teams to try to get into the WTC rubble.  An ABC guy near the Center is saying that there are fighters patrolling the air space over Manhattan.  He compares this to covering a war.  Another ABC guy just went into the rubble with a federal agent.  “It’s the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life… There are bodies and body parts everywhere.”  Some neighboring buildings have collapsed; others look as if they might soon.

12:47 – Karen Hughes is talking.  C. Rice is at the White House.  SecDef is at the Pentagon.  Of course, Powell is coming home from S. America, but that is old news.  All planes in the air at the time of the attack were directed to land at the nearest airport, and operations are suspended until noon tomorrow.  The Stock Market, of course, is closed. 

A reporter yelled out, “If the Vice-President can stay in Washington, why not the President?”  No response.

12:54 – The Pentagon is still smoking.  The damage to that building, like I said before, looks so insignificant compared to what happened in N.Y., but it is obviously not just a chip off the façade when an airline fuel bomb plows into anything. 

A talking head on ABC is saying that the intelligence community might be afraid that this is not over, that if they let the planes up, there may create the potential for more attacks.

1:09 – ABC is showing amateur video of the rubble.  All that is left of the south tower is a single piece of wall about 50 feet tall. It’s just a chunk of the decorative superstructure.  That is it.  It looks like a scrap of paper sticking up.  You can see no bodies.  The north tower, it looked like there was just a heap of rubble.  Both are all the way down.  There is nothing left.  This film was shot by some kid who just snuck in there a little bit ago with his camera.  Firemen yelled at him not to go in.  He did anyway, and they didn’t follow.

1:19 – KOMO is reporting that a Korean jetliner has been forced down in the Yukon by the Canadian air force.  It’s on the tarmac at the Whitehorse(?) Airport.  230 passengers on board.  En route from Korea to Alaska.  One of those hijacking emergency transponders may have gone off.  Now they are saying it was just running short of fuel.  I am sure that this has nothing to do with terrorists, everything due to all the airports being shut down.  It was escorted in by the Canadian air force, though.

Now they are saying it has been hijacked!?!  I wouldn’t believe it from the local team of amateur daytime anchors.

I am running a bath.  Then I am going to take a nap. 

1:23 – There was a call out from one of the planes.  It was a former federal prosecutor, she’d been a commentator on some of the recent Condit… She was the wife of the Solicitor General of the U.S.  She said that the passengers had all been moved to the back of the plane.  It sounds like it was just a couple minutes before the plane hit the Pentagon.  So, the passengers were still alive at that point.

Rescue teams are just about to enter the Pentagon.  They haven’t yet.  It is still burning.

1:27 – Peter Jennings is saying that there had been a worldwide terrorist alert since 9/7.

Congress is talking about convening tonight.  It would probably be just to say a prayer and then to leave.  Bush is about to take off for Washington.

“This is the first time since D-Day in 1944 that major league baseball has wiped a whole day,” Peter Jennings

This is creepy:  A post, from yesterday mind you, on some yahoo board… 

Re: VVVV to THE MOON!!!!by: strategists2000

09/10/01 06:59 pmMsg: 2254 of 2275

 to the deapest part called the center of the earth by this wekend north east region will be destroyed new providance soon to fall apart

1:37 – On ABC, a survivor from the first tower hit is saying that “his sense is… I know on my floor a lot of people got out.”  8:45 is “a little early” for a lot of the offices.  There’s some damn good news.  “I have a feeling that some of the people helping other people… The people who stayed behind, didn’t make it out of the building.”  That sucks. 

Already, a memorial web site.  Click here.

1:47 – Posted by minou on 3WA, “My friend is from Whitehorse and his family still lives there. He just talked to his father. They've got 3 747s on the ground in Whitehorse, two of them have been unloaded. The other one is currently surrounded by military personnel/vehicles. They've evacuated all the schools and large buildings in Whitehorse. Apparently the plane in question was sending out the "squack" signal meaning it had been hijacked”

Another post:

"The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked. The United States was at Peace with the world. We have been looking towards the maintenance of world peace. This attack was deliberately planned days or even weeks ago. The attack on our cities has caused damage to civilians and economic centers. Very many American lives have been lost.

The facts, so far, today speak for themselves. The American people have already formed their opinions, and well undertstand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. The commander in chief has directed our forces in our defense. Always, will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the America people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. We will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but we will make certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us again. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. This was an unprovoked and dastardly attack on the united states."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8, 1941

 1:53 – There is speculation on the 3WA board that the fourth plane was actually shot down.  It could be true.  Who knows at this point?  But what was it doing in PA?  I need to see a map, and all I know is that it was a United jet.   So I think, but am not sure, that it was the Newark plane.  Speculation on my part.

1:58 – ABC is showing an amateur tape of the second hit and the first fall.  He’s pretty much right below the towers.  The plane just flew straight into the side of the building, and disappeared.  You could see a little bit come out the opposite side of the building.  Half way through, the fireball ignites. (Filmed by Evan Fairbanks)

Posted on 3WA by JimNtexas –

I don't think we can do any good with conventional military forces. We don't have a country against which to wage war. Bombing a tent in the desert or killing more innocent people in some town will just make us look weak.

We need to take the gloves off and do some real covert action. The people who planned this need to start disappearing. Forget sending the FBI, this is beyond crime. We need to find them and send the CIA in to capture them, extract as much information as possible from them, and then eliminate them.

Any suspect we capture who doesn't want to cooperate should be shown the parts off his next of kin.

Conventional bombing will be a waste of time.

2:06 – KOMO is now announcing that the Korean Air jet was just low on fuel, but that there was a mix-up on the “signals.”  Called that one.  Also reporting the U.S.S. Rodney S. Davis, equipped with anti-aircraft defenses, is perched in Eliot Bay right now.

2:15 – From ABC – This has been mentioned before, but 7 World Trade Center, which contains the Emergency center, a bunker for just this very type of thing, is structurally unsound and may fall.  It is 47 stories tall.  Because of this, there are no crews in the W.T.C. rubble right now.  Much of one of the towers fell on this building.   

There are several hundred firefighters unaccounted for, says Gary Briese Exec Dir Intl Association of Fire Chiefs.  He is in Denver.  “I think it’s going to be both,” he said when asked if this was going to be a rescue or recovery operation.  Crews from all over the country are “already moving towards New York city.

2:21 – Another building has fallen, reports Peter Jennings.  There is another big dust cloud coming up.  They do not know if it was No. 7. 

AP is reporting… or not.  Within the last 5 minutes.  “It went straight down,” George Stephanopolis, 20 blocks away. Getting dust and debris 5 min. later (ABC).  In the live feed, someone is pointing out that you should be able to see No. 7, but it does not appear to be there any more. 

Coming up on nine hours now.  Overall, I am amazed not by what we know, but by how little we know.

“I think it’s reasonable, since they had this much time… that they got everyone out,” unknown official, ABC.

2:39 – It was No. 7.  ABC just showed a tape of it falling.

2:49 – A live picture of the Pentagon, showing a Marine helicopter landing in front of the devastation.  It appears that the fires are out there.  There is what appears to be a chunk of the structure, maybe a couple of bus lengths, collapsed at an angle into itself.

2:56 – Posted by eac on 3WA:

Lawrence Eagleburger just said on CNN - 'we need to kill some of them. even if they aren't the right terrorists, we know a lot of them. and we need to kill them.'

(not a direct quote, but pretty close)

I can't even comprehend that statement.

3:00 PDT – ABC is reporting explosions in the capitol (Kabul) of Afghanistan.  Now they are showing live video of burning.  That’s all you can see, burning in the night.

3:11 – They are live in Kabul on KING (CNN feed), with one of their reporters. He's talking about an ammunition dump. There was just the one explosion, and it was near an ammunition dump. They are saying it probably is internal conflict.  Tracer fire from anti-aircraft batteries was seen in the live video, though.  Nick something or other was reporting from Kabul.

3:17 – There will be a briefing at the Pentagon pretty soon.  If Kabul was an allied air strike… No one is saying yes, no one is saying no…  The briefing should clarify.  SecDef Rummsfeld will be speaking, and they are not sure why he wants to speak.

3:20 – Posted by Joanne on 3WA – “CBC (Canada) foreign correspondent in the Afghan capital (on right now) says it would be an incredible coincidence for it *not* to be related. He says about a dozen bombs have fallen. There's no official response yet, probably mainly because it's 2:30 am there.”

3:24 – “We’ve reached a defining moment.  Thing’s will be different in the future.” Warren Christopher, NBC

3:30 – NBC Nightly News is saying that the Pentagon and the CIA are flatly denying any U.S. involvement in Kabul.

3:32 - Posted by Sidhedevil on 3WA: “Nick Robertson, reporting live on CNN from Kabul, suggests that the attack is most likely from the Northern Alliance (Afghani opponents of the Taliban, whose leader was just attacked in a suicide bombing earlier this week).”

3:39 – Bush has landed at Andrews (NBC).

3:43 – KING is saying Sea-Tac will be closed until at least 9am tomorrow.

3:53 – Posted by Roo on 3WA: “Sometimes it's the small things that stick. I think that, make that I know that, one of the toughest things I've ever done was waking my daughter this morning and having to tell her that our country was under attack. Responding to her that no, I wouldn't kid about something like that.  And then making specific rendezvous plans in case anything happens around here (thankfully, nothing so far).”

3:54 – Marine One is now landing at the White House…  Bush looks like he aged about 10 years today.

4:01 – CNN is supposedly reporting that rebels in Afghanistan have claimed responsibility for the Kabul attack.

Okay.  I’ve been staring at all of this for 10 hours now.  I have to unplug, get cleaned up, and hopefully track down a beer.  I don’t think much more will happen until Bush’s speech tonight anyway.

5:25 – Borders are open again, at least the Blaine crossing is.  I don’t know when this opened up.  All vehicles are being searched, though.

Going to watch the President, and then go to a friend’s birthday party.  What a lousy day for a birthday party.  There will be beer though.  That is good.

It’s funny.  Traffic helicopters are grounded, but with all the DOT cameras, they don’t really even need helicopters to know what is going on anymore.  Those shots are just eye candy.

5:30 – Bush part 3.  Short.  A good pep talk.  “You can shake the foundations of our buildings, but you cannot shake the foundations of our country.”  No new revelations. Another good quote.  “A quiet, unyielding anger…”

5:40 - Hatch is releasing a statement saying that some communiqués were intercepted from Bin Laden about today.  I’ll still take that one with a grain of salt.  There is still some burning at the Pentagon.

I think that is it for me.  We all do what we can.  I am a writer, so I write.  Don’t know if this will ever mean anything to anyone else, but it got me through the last 12 hours.  Now it is time to take comfort with our friends and loved ones, and to pray for those who have lost friends and loved ones today.  My heart reaches out to those who don’t know yet.  To those who are missing people, not knowing what fate be fell them today.  To them, I guess, I can only say be strong, and know that the thoughts of a nation are with you tonight.

Most of us are lucky.  And there is no way that we can understand what you are truly going through tonight.  But that doesn’t mean that we cannot feel.  I am sure that we all do.  And I am certain that people across the nation are ready to go to work to help and to make the best of this situation.  It’s a cliché, but in dark times like these, our nation comes together at it’s best.

Still, a new era began today, and it will be a long time before any of us really feel safe again.