Yosemite Butterfly

We landed in Saint Louis around midnight last night. Joanie graciously picked us up and drove us home. I was up at six the next morning. Anne transitioned from her California vacation to her summer vacation. School is out for summer! It must have been a good vacation, because when I got to work, I couldn’t remember my PIN. I managed to skate through my first day back at work, almost. I should have left work early. After all, it was only my first day back.

The photograph with this post was taken on a bridge overlooking the Tenaya Creek. This bridge is at the beginning of the path from the eastern end of Yosemite Valley, up to Mirror Lake. We had rented bikes that day, but were required to leave them near the trailhead. The rentals were cruiser bikes and only had coaster brakes. The climb to Mirror Lake was too steep to safely descend on them.

Now that I’m back in the real world, it is time for a bit of a political diatribe. Mitt Romney’s campaign launched their iPhone App yesterday. Unfortunately for them, there was a misspelling on their splash screen. Now, I shouldn’t be too critical, something about rocks and glass houses comes to mind. The Perma-Bear has dubbed me the Great Dissembler, which I guess is fair. I do have a propensity to mangle the English language, both written and spoken. What about the facts, you might ask? I say, why let the facts get in the way of a good story. With that being said, maybe the Romney campaign didn’t make a mistake. Were they trying to send a secret message? I’m sure that some people from other countries believe that we really are Amer-CIA.

A Better Amercia

Speaking of the iPhone, I would like to make a recommendation. No, I’m not suggesting that you download the Romney App, just to see if the error is still available on iTunes. I guaranty that doing so will ensure that you get daily solicitations for the rest of your life. Dana Steven’s made this recommendation on Slate’s Cultural Gabfest. I’m speaking of “Shakespeare’s Restless World”. This twenty episode podcast is available for free on iTunes or direct from BBC 4. It is the successor series to their, “A History of the World in a 100 Objects”. As the name of the predecessor series implies, both series use a historical artifact as the focal for each episode. Choosing something tactile as the launching point for the discussion of ephemeral ideas is always tricky. It is even more so on the radio, which is what BBC 4 is all about.

The episodes for “Shakespeare’s Restless World” are short, less than fifteen minutes. Each episode, each artifact describes an aspect of Elizabethan England. More interestingly, each aspect described, is drawn out from Shakespeare’s writings, through readings of his words. The overall effect is to give the modern listener a feel for what Shakespeare’s contemporary audiences heard and thought of his words. Think of each episode as a lesson in Elizabethan shorthand for the digital age. I’m only a quarter of the way through this series, but I plan on breezing through it and then going back to hear “100 Objects”.