PHOTO OF THE DAY - 2/28/2006

Elbern Daisley, as a young man, riding his horse.

(Taken at the family home, Mayview, WA, near Pomeroy around 1927.)

Today would have been his 95th birthday

Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival

Jacquie and I have attended two of the three night performances. This evening will be the last one. If tonight is anything like the last two, we'll be very "Happy Campers." This Festival is one of the best I've ever been to ... and I've been to several.

Most impressive:

Benny Green: Here is an artist that can play the piano like no one I've ever seen! He is truly S P E C T A C T U L A R !

Dee Daniels: She has a great stage presence and reminds me of Sara Vaughn ... probably because she has sung with her.

Roberta Gambarini: What a show! She is a great jazz singer. (Her duet with 90-year old James Moody was a "Show Stopper!")

And the Kids: Each evening they present the winners of individual competition. These are mainly high school students from across the US and Canada. There were two young female singers that could have walked away with the #1 spot on American Idol, in my opinion. What talent some have.

New Watercolor

Here's a new original watercolor that Jacquie completed today.

(I asked her if it's for sale. She said, "Ah ... Yes, I guess so.")

A Good Read

FYI:

Jacquie has been doing a great job with her BLOG, "R J Ranch." She adds interesting pictures and stories that are different from mine. Add the link to your list.

http://rjranch.blogspot.com

PHOTO OF THE DAY - 2/17/2006

Country Roads

Heading home in the afternoon

Taken by Jacquie from the helicopter, Feb 17, 2006)

PHOTO OF THE DAY - 2/15/2006

"Just" another sunrise over Union Flats and the R J Ranch.

Roger say's "Hi."

The future has arrived!
The company I'm working with, ACN, is now offering the exciting Video Phone. Now, you can not only talk to anyone in the US, Canada or Puerto Rico, but you can see each other in live video ... all for less than $25 per month!

This is the cutting-edge, wave of the future, Voice-Over-Internet (VOIP) service.

(This is an actual photo I took this afternoon.)

Is It Later Than We Think?

The Washington Times
February 6, 2006

Commentary - By Arnaud de Borchgrave

Later than we think

The man in charge of hoodwinking the Western powers about Iran's now 18-year-old secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime. He'll be 50 in October.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Shi'ite creed has convinced him lesser mortals can not only influence but hasten the awaited return of the 12th Imam, known as the Mahdi. Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect holds this will be Muhammad ibn Hasan, the righteous descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the 9th century, at age 5. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war, bloodshed and pestilence. After this cataclysmic confrontation between the forces of good and evil, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.

"The ultimate promise of all Divine religions," says Ahmadinejad, "will be fulfilled with the emergence of a perfect human being [the 12th Imam], who is heir to all prophets. He will lead the world to justice and absolute peace. Oh mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one." He reckons the return of the Imam, AWOL for 11 centuries, is only two years away.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is close to the messianic Hojjatieh Society, which is governed by the conviction the 12th Imam's return will be hastened by "the creation of chaos on Earth." He has fired Iran's most experienced diplomats and scores of other officials, presumably those who don't share his belief in apocalyptic conflagration.

The Iranian leader's finger on a nuclear trigger would be disquieting under any circumstances. Positively alarming would be a nuclear weapon in the hands of a man who badgers Israel, the U.S. and the European Union in belief a pre-emptive aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will hasten the return of the missing Mahdi. Such an attack presumably would trigger anti-Western mayhem throughout the Middle East.

When he became Iran's sixth president since the 1979 revolution last summer, Mr. Ahmadinejad decided to donate $20 million to the Jamkaran mosque, a popular pilgrimage site where the faithful can drop their missives to the "Hidden Imam" in a holy well. Tehran's working-class faithful are convinced the new president and his Cabinet signed a "compact" pledging themselves to precipitate the return of the Mahdi -- and dropped it down Jamkaran's well with the Mahdi's zip code.

In Mr. Ahmadinejad's eyes, Iran is strong, with oil inching up to $70 a barrel and America, dependent on foreign oil, is weak. He has said publicly America and Europe have far more to lose than Iran if the U.N. Security Council votes for tough economic sanctions. He also figures if Israeli and/or U.S. warplanes strike Iran, all he has to do is give the U.S. a hard time in Iraq as American forces prepare to withdraw.

Moving two or three Iranian divisions into Iraq and activating Shi'ite suicide bombers and hit squads throughout the region would not be too hard for a country that fought an 8-year war against Iraq (1980-88) and had no compunction about giving thousands of youngsters a key to paradise and 72 virgins before sending them across Iraqi minefields.

A top Ahmadinejad officer, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Kossari, who heads the political watchdog, or Security Bureau, of Iran's armed forces, recently taunted the U.S. when he bragged "we have identified all the weak points of our enemies" and have sufficient cannon fodder -- i.e., suicide operation volunteers -- "ready to strike at these sensitive locations." Iranian television recently broadcast an animated film for Iranian children glorifying suicide bombers.

So far, Supreme Leader and Chief of State Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who sits in the holy city of Qom, has not expostulated. Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to have his religious rear well covered. His ideological mentor and spiritual guide is Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi who heads the ultraconservative acolytes who believe the 12th Imam's return is "imminent."

The son of a blacksmith, Mr. Ahmadinejad earned an engineering Ph.D. and is a former member of Iran's notorious Revolutionary Guards at a time when dissidents and "counterrevolutionaries" were executed by the thousands.

A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, first showed Iran how to build a nuclear weapon 18 years ago. He opened his nuclear black market to Iranian engineers and scientists.
The Bush administration is anxious to clear the decks in a democratic Iraq before facing the Islamist counterpart of the "Rapture" in the "Left Behind" series of books on the end of times by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

President Bush says all options are on the table. But the military option is probably the one the "twelvers" would look forward to. Some Washington think tank strategists argue if Iran's Dr. Strangelove attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon, five Iranian cities would be vaporized next day.

It might behoove the United States to sit down with "axis of evil" Iran to find out if the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine that kept the Soviet Union and the U.S. at peace for a half-century could still be made to work.

In any event, one would have to be irredeemably myopic not to see that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. The only question is how far this secret program is from delivering a usable weapon and fitting it in the nose cone of a Shahab-3 missile with the range to reach Israel. The Israeli Air Force will be "overhead" Iran long before.

Note: Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large for The Washington Times and for United Press International.

PHOTO OF THE DAY 2.5.2006

A new flag flies over the R J Ranch.

(See: R J Ranch Blog)

A Bobcat wanders through

A really big Bobcat wandered through the R J Ranch this evening, just before the Super Bowl started.

I yelled at Jacquie to take a look, while I grabbed my camera. I snapped a couple of quick pictures, however it was still set for some aerial photography that I took earlier in the morning. (1/1000 sec.) There wasn't enough light for that quick shutter speed to capture the moment.

My guess is that it weighed around 75-100 lbs. Big cat!

Question Of The Day

I usually make the coffee each morning and the standard question is: "Roger, do you HAVE to make the coffee so strong?" My usual answer is: "It's not THAT strong."

So this morning, I'll let you examine my coffee cup after finishing my first cup. Does that look like strong coffee, or what? (Oh, yummy.)

PRESS RELEASE

The prior photo posted here: "Fire Over The Palouse" was featured, in color, on both the front page and page two of the Pullman-Moscow Daily News," yesterday.

It was submitted as a Reader Photo and was selected and used.

PHOTO OF THE DAY 2.1.2006

Footprints in the Sand

(from an email I received)