Sunday, November 14, 2010 - Meramec State Park, Sullivan MO
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Common Selfheal, Red Rock, East Chatham NY, July 17, 2010
Common Selfheal
You'd recognize this Common Selfheal as a lawn weed if you saw it but I just had to mess with this one. It's that pesky little square stemmed perennial with the cylindrical terminal spikes of purple to blue flowers. After flowering the stems elongate and hold the dead terminal spikes waving aloft so the kid can shoot the cat with little missiles.
Night camp
Site 45C - Meramec State Park, Sullivan MO
- The Missouri State Parks website introduces the park with: "The beauty of the Meramec River and its surrounding bluffs, caves and forests have pleased visitors since the park opened in 1927. In 1933, the craftsmen of the Civilian Conservation Corps began blending a variety of visitor facilities into the park's rugged landscape."
- Verizon cell phone is weak.
- Verizon Broadband service is available here with an amplifier.
- Locate Meramec State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Disaster and the Failure of Authority
Disasters are almost by definition about the failure of authority, in part because the powers that be are supposed to protect us from them, in part also because the thousand dispersed needs of a disaster overwhelm even the best governments, and because the government version of governing often arrives at the point of a gun. But the authorities don't usually fail so spectacularly. Failure at this level requires sustained effort. The deepening of the divide between the haves and have nots, the stripping away of social services, the defunding of the infrastructure, mean that this disaster—not of weather but of policy—has been more or less what was intended to happen, if not so starkly in plain sight.
The Uses of Disaster Rebecca Solnit, Harpers.org, September 9, 2005