Rimrock Drive

 

Went walking along the Rimrock the other day. The snow is gradually melting in the 40 degree weather. The sky is clear but the air is stagnant. We are in an inversion.

Vachel Lindsey, the poet, when he lived here talked about and expressed his love for the Rimrock. Spokane spreads out below. In places, the path comes right up to the edge. The forest below, 60 feet below and more, is still deep in snow.

The town takes on an unreal or maybe more real quality from the Rimrock. It is always beautiful and welcoming. From a distance one cannot see the pain, the poverty, the people in distress going in and out of the courthouse, caught up in problems which bleed them and test them. A man on trial for negligently killing five children when he was driving his car one night and possibly having become distracted because he tried to call his wife on his cell phone. The mentally ill teenager who killed his parents and is now in jail for the rest of his life with thousands of other mentally ill wrongdoers, (sentanced by a judge who was once a social worker and as she laments that prisons are no place of mentally ill people)the hundreds of drivers who broke a law or two and are now going to pay a hundred bucks or so to the state and perhaps hundreds more in increased insurance premiums, the couple going through a divorce and bent on dividing the kids and the debts. Most have little or no real assets or any expectation of any sort of satisfying income to pay for help they need for the troubles they are in.

Everyone is preying on everyone. The view from the Rimrock does not show this. One has to remember what he has seen over the years a couple of miles to the east with the town lit up by the afternoon winter sun.

In the end, all one can do is pray.

River Rising

 
 
These pictures of the Spokane River upstream and downstream from the Sandifur Bridge. The river is rising. Were it not controlled by dams upstream all the way to Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho which are used to generate electricity the river would be higher and moving faster.

Sandifur Bridge Spokane River

 
The snow is melting. The sun felt warm about noon. This picture is of a bridge built across the Spokane River at the location of the High Bridge which used to cross from the railroad yards to the north and east over the river connecting to lines running south to Pasco, Kennewick, Richland and Portland, Oregon.

Recession

In Washington and Idaho one sees railroad cars used for hauling lumber on railroad sidings and unused tracks. A few weeks ago I saw miles of these cars on an unused track in Idaho on the way to Grangeville, Idaho.

What these unused cars signify, I think, is that the lumber industry is in a recession. These thousands of cars moved cut timber about 10 months ago.

The government is not going to solve this problem by borrowing billions to make gifts to people in the hope they will buy televisions and refridgerators.

Mount St. Michael

Got up to Mount St. Michael's this afternoon as I was taking an afternoon drive. Came across this young nun and older priest. What a delight to meet them. They were walking down different paths which converged where I was standing. I asked to take their pictures and they happily obliged even though I think I was making them late for afternoon Mass. Their faces were filled with simple joy. But then, you can see that.

Spokane Incinerator on a Cold Day

 
On a cold day you can see how much is emanating from our local garbage incinerator. They say there is nothing of danger coming from this "waste to energy" facility. I wonder -- we know it emits dioxin. Is there such a thing as a safe dosage of dioxin? I am not a scientist so I do not know. It seems if cancer causing agents do so because they affect the genetic library of cells then can there be such a thing as a safe dose of a cancer causing agent? Like I say, I do not know. Most of the time the emissions from the incinerator blow the other direction -- east and over Spokane.

Anatone, WA

Spokane has a few more people, cats, dogs and horses.

Anatone is south, near the northeast border of Oregon near the town of Enterprise, Oregon. The town is on the way to the Wallula Mountains of Oregon.