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Saturday, February 13, 2010 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM

Mittens in the Garden, Bosque National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 13, 2010
Mittens in the Garden, Bosque National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 13, 2010

Mittens in the garden

Hoo boy did I wish for mittens on the photo shoot at the crane roost this morning. The temperature was in the teens and the photographers were far more colorfully turned out than the birds.

Gone spineless

This cactus caught my attention on a walk about the cactus gardens at the visitor center and I snapped a few pictures of its warm, friendly, puffy, mitten like countenance and not realizing at the time - this puppy has no spines. No wonder it seems so friendly. What's with the no spines bit? Where did they go? Do they grow back? Is this a spineless species?

Night camp

Site 16 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM

Emergent democracy

Culture brings us together, usually at a very small scale through mutual belief, trust and common interest. It educes, not compels, behavior. Culture codified is law. It is as inevitable as the day the night that as scale increases, law increases. Law enforced is government. Government does not, in the main, educe behavior, but compels it. Democratic or otherwise, rarely, very rarely, does any concentration of power or wealth desire to see subjects well informed, truly educated, their privacy ensured or their discourse uninhibited. Those are the very things that power and wealth fear most. Old forms of government have every reason to operate in secret, while denying just that privilege to subjects. The people are to be minutely scrutinized while power is to be free of examination.

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