Monday, July 25, 2016

more of the baby bears...so dang cute

 still looking at more pics.  more fun shots.  wonderful trip but hope i don't bore you with bear photo's.  i took a million and a half of them.  haha.
 pretty rainy out today.  at times pretty solid down pours. the pups just stood at the door not wanting to go out there.
 finally, made our way out to walk..gotta get those 10,000 plus steps in.  we did.  just did the bog and then took off into the neighborhoods and down Patterson. that extends the walk. we stopped a few times so i could let dogs off leash to run.  they like that.  all training and no play isn't good for any of us.  they get frustrated, i get frustrated.  so we play.  not many people out playing on the trails in the rain anyway
 i find it's tough to get motivated to get out, but once i'm out i actually enjoy the rain and the colors are so pure in the rain as well.
 these bear cubs were playing/resting fairly close to us. i felt pretty good that the mama bear felt safe enough around us to turn towards the water with her back to us all.  she seemed to feel pretty safe with us humans...
 she'd had an encounter with a boar...not that we could stop that.  we did see some super huge bear tracks.  never saw that bear but guessed it close to 800 pounds.  those tracks were huge!!
 not much social interaction for me today.  did chat with my friend Natal in CA.  we always chat.  her name isn't really Natal, but my silly answering machine has terrible English skills and misstates stuff all the time...so she is now Natal.
 ran a few errands.  grabbed several books of cabinets at Lowes so i can start to seriously ponder the remodel of the Kitchen idea. my kitchen is old, outdated, poorly planned and it's just way past time.  it's a frightening project though that i just keep delaying.
 then i stopped by Bed Bath and Beyond...that store is dangerous. i rarely go there but it's packed full of cool stuff.
 actually broke down and bought one of those teeny fans.  i get the flashes at times so it's nice to have one on the desk here in the office.
 a girl at work lived in Nome for a bit and her pilot boyfriend still lives there so she was telling me they were flying around and saw lots of dead walrus on beaches.  not really stuff i want to hear.  so hard to know the legality...it's so easy in those remote places to shoot walrus and then come back later and harvest skulls/tusks because they were just found there dead.
 apparently in the winter they are shot on the ice but fall into the water or something..not always retrieved, meat wasted...not stuff i really want to hear.  so frustrating.  it's how it is though.  so much waste and so many people who just do not behave responsibly.
 i guess it's like being a nurse..people assume you want to hear the horrible stuff just because you are involved in walrus advocacy.  never heard back from the fish and wildlife service when i've asked what is going on with the investigation from the fall.  i think their hands are often tied.  subsistence rules and must keep up relations...difficult to prove what happened with animals.  difficult to do necropsies on such large animals in remote places.  finding a bullet on a beach on a bloated, deceased animal...nearly impossible
 very frustrating.  as the friends group for Walrus Islands Sanctuary i am in a position to be a general walrus advocate.  as far as i know they aren't really very closely watched over by any groups in particular. i did contact the local office of WWF and was told that walrus weren't one of the animals they were really working on.  enough letters to them may help them take an interest.
 most folks don't realize that we have Ivory poachers here in the United States. the focus is on Rhino's and Elephants...but there are plenty of poachers here.  just so much tougher to even research the exact extent of the issue in Alaska.  miles and miles of shoreline...most of it totally unmonitored.  don't think anyone really could tell me even a rough estimate as to the number of walrus poached out there.

 cute baby bears playing.
 watched a few doc shows on specific elections.  one was JFK Vs Nixon. JFK barely won and that was quite possibly due to voter fraud in Chicago...dead people were voting.  Nixon bowed out rather than battle it out.  fraud and trickery have been a part of elections for years.  i suspect we find out more about it now, but it's been there.  the other program highlighted the battle between Bill Clinton and George Bush SR.
 some just talking about how television has changed the game quite a bit. also speaking of the black vote and how the Republican Party was the Party of Lincoln, the party that free'd the slaves and that really had a much higher percentage of the black vote until JFK.  it started then...during that election.  Martin Luther King was arrested during a protest right before the election and though Nixon was friends with him he was unable to get King out.  JFK's family had connections.  first JFK contacted Kings wife to let her know he was supportive and then his dad got King out.
 then LB Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.  it was purely a political move on LBJ's part from all accounts.  manipulation of voters.  that manipulation is not just for the black vote...they constantly are trying to manipulate the hispanics, the women, the young,...
 the system keeps getting more and more corrupt.  that is one of the reasons why voters stay home, they feel their vote doesn't matter....but if enough folks do show up they really can have an impact. i have seen it happen. like i said before...we the people need to step up and take back our Democracy.  we can't save this POTUS election...we have two terrible candidates running...but we can send the message through the congress and house.....i think i read there are over 80 spots that are coming up...i wish we'd vote on term limits...the people would no doubt vote that in.  will we ever get the chance though?

 pups got to make a trek into PetCo.  another fun place.  they were a bit wild at first but then behaved.  they are still puppies so subject to moments of excitement.
 mama bear headed our way
 baby bear totally headed our way.
 this little guy got within 15 feet of us.
 they are so fluffy...adorbs!!

 he debated turning back but then decided he really wanted to check these humans out closer.

 such confidence
 checking out some dried seaweed.
 mama bear had to come over, close to us, to get him to move on away.

 she didn't want baby bear to do a meet and greet with the humans...we were find skipping that as well.  the last thing you want is to tick off a mama bear.
 i've seen those claws and teeth super close and i do not wish to be that close to a bear again.
 and then they start to head back into the woods...and we didn't see them again after this i believe

 here she is giving the little cub a scolding.
 he looks back at us one  last time before heading off with his cute bear family...actually he is taking a little poop here, tail up.
 so i guess that is what he thinks of us.

 bear butts

 cooling off at the creek as they head away
 so many angry references in the convention too about being politically correct.  just made me think.  i mean yes, we have gotten a bit too overly sensitive and yes it gets ridiculous, but the funny thing.  mostly being politically correct as it were means not offending others, being kind.  made me think of another very humble and kind leader that walked the earth some 2016 years ago or something who taught kindness.  who wanted us to be kind and who delivered his message with kindness and humility. who suffered but did not complain.
 sure i miss saying "stupid" and "retard" some days..or acting out those things, but i do realize that those were not kind things that i did and that we all did. that making fun or others in general is a bad idea.  being more sensitive to others is a valuable thing.  it's a good lesson...one that yes has been taken too far, but then again...there are still some who seem to have been oblivious to the message behind it all.
grateful for:  A. rain, the sounds, the sight of it and the need of it.  B.  laughing along with the puppies.  C.  that there are still kind people, truthful people out there.

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