The View from Spokane

By R.B. Moreno









Above: morning feeding time for Lucille One and Lucille Two, a pair of Rhode Island Reds being reared by sister EM in Spokane, Wash.

The View from Ridgefield

Above: the Oaks to Wetlands trail in southwest Washington's Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, which also features the Cathlapotle Plankhouse.

Postscript (Jan. 27, 2010) -- A story about a loose bull, a SWAT team, and another nature preserve in Ridgefield is making national news today. An excerpt from The Columbian:

The bull, which had a hump like a Brahman, was killed after sheriff’s deputies, riders and its owner spent several hours trying to lasso it.

“It wouldn’t let us get near it,” said Sgt. Steve Shea with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. “We were chasing it all over the place.”

He added, “The worry was that, if someone came down the road at 50 mph and hit the bull, people could get hurt or killed.”

About 8:40 a.m. Tuesday, someone called 911 to say the bull was on a road creating a traffic hazard near Northwest 21st Avenue and 179th Street, near the fairgrounds.

Deputy Tommy Green arrived to find that someone left a gate open and the young bull was in an area that was mostly fenced. The bull had long, sharp horns and Green tried to keep it where it was.

Deputies summoned the bull’s owner, a property renter whose name was not available, to the scene. Deputies hoped she could walk close enough to rope the bull, but it was too skittish.

The owner tried putting grain in a can and shaking it, but the bull only allowed her to approach to an estimated 20 feet before bolting. Other people could get only an estimated 50 yards from the bull as it roamed the area.

Deputies also asked 911 dispatchers to call for someone with a tranquilizer gun, but no one authorized to deal with cattle was available, Shea said.

The bull wasn’t charging at people, Shea said. “He just wanted to get away from us.”

Melissa Williams of Ridgefield said she’d come to the park with a friend, Caitlynn Ralston, to ride their horses in the 300-acre park, which has more than four miles of trails.

Ralston, a Brush Prairie resident, offered to try to capture the bull with her horse, Zip, which is trained for herding cows, and her dog, Smoky, a blue heeler.

In a pasture, Williams said, “The horse got spooked about the bull and bucked her off.”

The View from Multnomah Falls

Above: destabilizing conditions await tourists ascending Oregon's tallest waterfall.

The View from the Interstate

I-80, Wyoming


I-84, Utah


Trementon, Utah


I-84, Idaho


I-84, Idaho


Boardman, Ore.

Thanks to LP for help with photos along the road to Kyrgyzstan.

RBM Goes Abroad

By R.B. Moreno

This week I accepted an invitation to assist English language teachers in the Kyrgyz Republic, better known as Kyrgyzstan, as part of a Peace Corps Master's International (PCMI) partnership with the Colorado State University English Department. Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country of some five million people that shares borders with China, Kazakhstan, and two former Soviet republics adjacent to Afghanistan.

Kyrgyzstan's territory encompasses the ancient Silk Road. The country is about the size of Nebraska, with a climate often compared to Colorado's higher elevations. The Tian Shan mountain range covers most of Kyrgyzstan, and winter snows sometimes leave outlying cities inaccessible. Conditions in the capital, according to Google, can also be challenging.

My teaching assignment will commence in March 2010 and is expected to last 26 months. Check back here for more dispatches about "the Switzerland of Central Asia." These sources, meanwhile, may be of interest:

• A U.S. State Department Background Note
• AKIpress, Kyrgyzstan's official news agency
• 24.kg, which also covers Kyrgyzstan
• The Spektator, a Bishkek-based magazine
• The Open Society Institute's EURASIANET
• The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor

A final note: this departure overseas will confirm a rumor aired last year by some dear friends at NPR's All Things Considered:

One of our own is heading off on international adventures, although he probably won't be dodging giant boulders or hunting crystal skulls. Our assistant producer, Raul Moreno, has apparently decided the Peace Corps is more exciting than working for All Things Considered. In all seriousness, we will miss Raul, and we wish him the very best in his adventures and we're betting he'll look really good in a fedora.

To donate said fedora, see "CONTACT RBM" in the sidebar.

The View from Fort Collins

By R.B. Moreno



Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are opens tonight across North America. "The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another," the original story begins, "His mother called him 'WILD THING!'" Sendak's 1963 picture book runs just 338 words, and it tells of a boy who must go to bed without supper:

That very night in Max's room a forest grew and grew––and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are.

On Thursday morning, Sendak fans might realize, Jonze and Eggers' adaptation was spectacularly upstaged. Because for a couple of hours here in Colorado, the walls did become the world around another mischievous boy––as his imaginary self took to the sky in another kind of boat. "'Balloon boy' Falcon Heene found safe in attic of Fort Collins home," is how a team from The Denver Post reports the story in today's paper, which continues:

the bizarre image of a homemade, helium-filled flying saucer — thought to be carrying a 6-year-old boy — transfixed a global television audience as it blew for 50 miles across the Colorado sky.

But the tale of a boy's unplanned flight from his Fort Collins backyard aboard his father's experimental aircraft took two jarring turns: first when the craft settled to earth with no sign of the boy; and later, when young Falcon Heene reappeared, frightened but safe, from his hiding place in the family's garage attic.

Along the way, rescue workers from several jurisdictions mobilized, helicopters filled the air, Denver International Airport rerouted planes and perhaps millions of television viewers watched with reactions ranging from horror to disbelief.

At a news conference after the boy emerged, the family said Falcon hid because his father had earlier yelled at him when he tried to climb into the craft.

Police want to know more about why Falcon hid in the attic. But last night, there was also good news for the boy and his brothers at home in blustery south Fort Collins: despite satellite trucks at the playground and reporters lounging on the front lawn, in this adaptation, there would be pizza.

Update: the county sheriff says Falcon's disappearance was part of a hoax orchestrated by his parents. In November they pled guilty to related charges; Richard Heene began serving a 90-day jail sentence in January.

Gossip!

Every Friday, our friends at the journal Suss post "some number of things currently interesting us . . . be it a book, a building, an awesome peony bush." Today's gossip includes this excerpt from "Made in China," RBM's forthcoming essay on human hair:

DOUGH CONDITIONERS reads the fine print on a bright blue box of Texas Garlic Toast. It’s made by Great Value, or GV (“When Quality Counts”). Wal-Mart, the product’s distributor, describes GV as the country’s largest food brand. Peering closer at the ingredients listed under dough conditioners, which fall just before sugar but after yeast, I spot a familiar term: L-CYSTEINE.

Some time later, deep in the bowels of the European Union’s legal archive, in correspondence with an alarmed German legislator, I find that one means of dough conditioning hinges on a process called hydrolysis. This entails boiling hair, usually human hair, in vats of hydrochloric acid for several hours on end, which makes the follicles decompose into a white, odorless powder: L-CYSTEINE.