Tonight a set of quotes and sayings to raise a smile and help you have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
First you examine the environment, then you examine your gear, finally you examine yourself ~ Colin Fletcher
Today, a collection of some of my favorite and reader’s favorite posts about the AT, enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Trail Community – the piece I got the most comments and likes for this year, for good reason, trail community is the best part of hiking the AT.
Quitting the Appalachian Trail – I love this piece it speaks to how proud all AT hikers should be for whatever they accomplish on the trail, no matter how many miles.
Gaer Lists – the post that got the most views, a collection of gear lists for hiking the AT.
Appalachian Trail Happiness: Three Questions – a new way to journal on the trail
Appalachian Trail Happiness: Precious Moments – some of my favorite recollections from my hike this summer.
My Favorite Little Hiker – A post about the littlest hiker on the AT this summer, little adorable Liv
Fantastic Fungi – So many cool fungi I photographed on the trail this summer
Brassie Brook Shelter – One of my absolute favorite spots on the trail
The prettiest place on the trail – A post about a really amazing gem on the trail that I didn’t expect.
Appalachian Trail Happiness: Selfie Progression – My selfie shots along my hike
Appalachian Trail Snow Hiking Tips – self explanatory
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest ~ John Muir
The Book
So I, like many Appalachian Hikers, are not the biggest fans of Bill Bryson’s book, A Walk in the Woods. Not that I don’t think it’s a well written and humorous book, I do. To be fair that’s what the book was supposed to be. The problem with the book is twofold, first, it seems to be the only book anyone has ever read about the Appalachian Trail which is really sad with so many great books out there including Grandma Gatewood’s biography, Southbound, the first Barefoot Sisters book, David Miller’s AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, and David Brill’s, As Far as the eye can see: reflections on the Appalachian Trial. With this book as people’s limited window into the trail they have a really skewed view of what long-distance hiking on the trail is like and I think truly miss the biggest thing, the transformational nature of long-distance hiking.
Second as a comedic book, it gives a writer’s embellished view of what hiking the trail is like. The exaggerations are a necessary comedic writing tool, but quite frankly when I read this book as I prepared to hike the trail, the book really made me NOT want to attempt a thru-hike. I also think the fact that you don’t find out Bryson didn’t thru-hike til late in the book, and the line in the book, I really think we hike the Appalachian Trail, the book gets under the skin of those who have, or are about to attempt a thru-hike.
The Movie
Today I went to see the movie. Simply what I will say about the movie is that it has almost nothing to do with the Appalachian Trail, in spite of all the press about the movie centering on the trail. The movie is a nice, old-guy buddy flick where we get to watch two older guys reconnect and have a few shallow thoughts about mortality. It was pleasant enough, and provided some good laughs and had almost nothing about hiking.
To the eyes of someone who has just spent the summer hiking a thousand miles on the trail, there was a lot wrong with the way the trail and thru-hiking is portrayed. I won’t get into all of the annoying little details, it’s a fictional movie, not a documentary about the AT so it would be unfair to hammer on the film about them. However, if you’re going to see the movie to see what thru-hiking is like, this is not your film. Google Appalachian Trail Documentary, you’ll find lots of options on that front.
I think the attention related to the film, far more than the film itself, will drive additional traffic onto the AT. However, unlike the movie Wild, which drove lots of young girls onto the trail with their families this past spring, I’m not sure A Walk in the Woods will have the same effect. Wild, seemed to capture the imagination of a lot of young girls, we encountered tons this spring hiking with their families and they all mentioned the movie. Of course this was a film featuring a young woman, solo-hiking and a big star in Reese Witherspoon.
A Walk in the Woods, in my opinion, will not resonate with younger folks. Sure, the film might prod some older folks who were considering hiking the trail to give it a run, but I really don’t see the film itself pushing numbers. The numbers of attempting thru-hikers has been trending up and that will surely continue next year.
Attempting a thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail is a challenging and amazing thing to do. I would love if more of you would do it for the challenges it will present, the amazing things that will happen and the inevitable changes you will go through. And of course, because it will give you many happy days my friends ~ Rev Kane
Appalachian Trail Happiness, the book
If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are. ~
During my last visit to New Orleans during Mardi Gras I found time to get up to the World War II museum. The war has always held a fascination for me for a couple of reasons, both of my grandfathers fought in the war. My maternal grandfather was in the very first battle against the Germans in Tunisa at a place called Kasserine Pass.
A little bit of it’s a small world after all, (you’re welcome for the ear worm), happened last week. I have a colleague from Tunisia and after talking to him about the museum I told him where in Tunisia my grandfather had fought and was injured and it turns out the town my colleague grew up in was Kasserine. In that first battle where the US Army was overrun by General Rommel’s forces my grandfather was on a mortar crew. They were pumping mortars so quickly that the barrel overheated and a mortar exploded in the tube. My grandfather took shrapnel to the face and was evacuated, the injury probably saved his life. A total of 10,000 allied troops, including 6,500 Americans were killed in the battle.
The type of mortar that exploded in my grandfather’s face
My paternal grandfather had somehow eluded the draft the first time around. However as the war proceeded the US Army caught up to him and so he was drafted, even with a wife and four kids at home. He was then sent to basic training, then to Ranger School, then to England to prep for D-Day. He landed on Omaha Beach, climbed cliffs, lobbed grenades, somehow survived essentially the opening seen of Saving Private Ryan. Then a few weeks later fighting across France he was hit by shrapnel in the knee during a firefight and captured by the Germans. He would spend the rest of the war in a POW camp, escaping once but being recaptured.
I had two other relatives who fought in the war, my great Uncle Tony who was killed in the Pacific theater, I believe at Wake Island. And my great Uncle Joy who served in the Pacific and was one of the earliest units to land in Japan. Growing up I’d met a lot of veterans of the war and have read more books than I can remember about it, seen all of the WWII movies. I find it an utterly horrible and fascinating time in history. The museum in New Orleans is really fantastic and if you’re in town you should check it out. ~ Rev Kane
A list of dumb clean jokes to give you a laugh on a Friday! Enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Happiness is Laughter: Cartoons
A friend of mine posted this on Facebook and I believe it is some of the most amazing words of wisdom I’ve ever read about happiness and positive change.
Ozzy, it’s not really a matter of feeling worthy of love, friends, health, or wealth. Or of appreciating what you already have. Or even of learning to love yourself. These don’t have to come first. You don’t have to wear a halo to manifest the changes you want.
It’s simply a matter of understanding that if you do your part: visualize, prepare the way, and act “as if,” without looking over your shoulder for quick results, what you want must be added unto you… as will the feelings of worthiness, appreciation and loving your most lovable self.
You were pre-qualified,
The Universe
I love this for a number of reasons, first and most of all the positive nature of the statement. Second the fact that it expresses a necessary ingredient in making your life better, your responsibility to do the work. Positive change rarely just happens because we want it to and the advice here is priceless: visualize, prepare the way, and act as if you’ve already made the change. If you can do this friends I promise you positive change/happiness will come your way.
Please don’t overlook the signature part of what she wrote, that line, you are pre-qualified is huge, because you are my friends, you are pre-qualified to have a happy day, a happy life, as long as you do your part ~ Rev Kane
Mardi Gras, baby. Mardi Gras. Time when all manner of weird shit cuts loose and parties down. ~
At Mardi Gras, one of my favorite parades is a walking parade in the French Quarter named the Krewe of the Bosom Buddies and Breast Friends. I first encountered this Krewe in 2016 when I photographed them.
So this year I was really excited for an opportunity to shoot them again. This is a joyous walking krewe that parades a loop down Bourbon Street and through the French Quarter. The theme this year might of been Wheel of Fortune but I’m not really positive. A great moment I had was being quizzed by one of the Krewe about Dr. Who. I failed, but she gave me a pin from her hat anyway.
It’s a great little parade and I had a blast photographing it as usual. So enjoy the photos below, starting with the parade leader.
And the rest of the krewe.
As always, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Tonight we have a guest blogger, the fabulous Mr. Rich Krissel. Rich and I go back many years to when we were resident assistants together in college. He’s an excellent photographer, a deep thinker and always someone who has thoughtful and interesting ideas. To that end, we were talking the other day and this post is the result, I really appreciate him taking time to share his thoughts. Give a read, enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Rev Kane and I were talking about the different sources happiness, and he asked that I relay this story:
Last week a colleague rushed up to me insisting that I follow him back to his desk so he could show me something. He was bubbling with kid-like enthusiasm. I knew he had been struggling for months trying to figure out a solution to the pressure his group was under to speed up the design and hand-off of turbine blades.
Management wanted the 3-day process to go down to 2 days. “This morning,” Tim excitedly explained, “I figured out the last piece of automation that gets the process down to just 6 hours!” He was beaming with pride from his own creation, and it was infectious. (His coworkers were pretty happy with the outcome too!).
When I spend a lot of time figuring out a song on guitar, and finally get it it is freakin’ awesome. Remember how it feels to finish a college degree, or getting hired for a job – knowing all your hard work paid off? It is a major high. Man, even when I finish mowing my lawn, I always pause for a moment to admire the beauty of my efforts.
I think many people overlook this source of happiness – but achievement is built into your DNA. Humans are industrious beings, and great satisfaction comes from invention and creation (usually to the benefit of others).
So, unleash the power of your mind and GO DO something GREAT because the world needs you.
Achievement – It’ll make you happy – I promise. ~ Rich Krissel
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Masses are always breeding grounds for psychic epidemics ~ Carl Jung
So tonight’s post is a little different type of post for the Ministry of Happiness. You see our happiness is greatly impacted by stress and worry. And the current global epidemic that is likely to soon officially be labelled a pandemic is certainly causing a lot of people to worry and be stressed. So tonight I hope to do what I can do to help you with that worry and stress by providing you solid information and advice.
Yes, the coronavirus, also known as Covid-19 is a serious disease. Coronavirus is a category of viruses that includes the viruses that cause the diseases SARS and MERS. Both of these diseases and the current coronavirus are serious respiratory diseases that are more deadly than the common flu viruses we see every year. Coronavirus may also be more contagious than the flu, but this has yet to be confirmed. However, given the significant response to the virus by governments around the world and the lower number of current infections. YOU ARE, AT THIS TIME, FAR LESS LIKELY TO CATCH THE CORONAVIRUS THAN THE FLU. Also, the people that have died so far from the disease have generally been people with additional conditions, something the medical field calls co-morbidities. So people over the age of 60 and those with high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease are at a higher risk. Younger healthy people, even if infected, are likely to survive the coronavirus and currently the majority of the infections have been less than serious.
Now for me, a 55 year-old guy with all three of the co-morbidities listed above (high blood pressure, diabetes and a heart condition) I’m at a higher risk of death from this disease. So why am I not afraid? The reasons start with history.
The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 infected one-third of all of the people on Earth, over 500 million people. It killed somewhere between 20 and 50 million people including over 675,000 Americans. It was the most deadly epidemic that has ever hit the United States of America. The biological and medical communities have known for a long time that it was inevitable that there would be another global pandemic. If you want to read more in depth, there’s a great book called, The Coming Plague by Laura Garrett. There was fear that SARS would be that pandemic, it turned out not to be. It’s possible that Covid-19 will be that pandemic. If this disease continues to appear in more and more countries, and particularly if growing disease clusters occur in many countries like they have in South Korea and Italy, this is that pandemic. The only issue then becomes how severe will it be.
The world is very different in 2020 than it was in 1918. First off we have much better medicine and medical technology. We have antibiotics which would be given to anyone who is sick which stops secondary infections from killing those who get sick. We have ventilators that can help sick people breathe and increase their potential for surviving the disease. Our communication technology is better, so vital information can get to people more easily. That means that accurate info as well as directions related to quarantine rules can reach everyone. These factors should mean that we’re better suited for a pandemic not to kill 10% of those infected. It will still be serious, but likely not as serious as the 1918 pandemic. This is one reason I’m not so afraid of this disease.
How should we behave?Another reason I’m not so afraid is that we know how to behave better than we have in the past. There is lots of good information out there about how to most effectively protect yourself against getting sick. So let’s talk about what some of those things are. According to the World Health Organization the following things are crucial to keeping yourself healthy and that includes colds and flues as well as the coronavirus.
Wash your hands frequently – and do it correctly. This means washing with soap, and washing hands thoroughly, backs and fronts, between your fingers and for long enough. Singing through the song Happy Birthday all the way through is a good way to time it.
Maintain social distancing – when you or someone else is coughing or sneezing, try to generally keep at least three feet to keep from having tiny droplets travel from one person to another. Breathing in these tiny droplets is the most likely way to get infected.
Avoid touching your face – particularly your eyes, nose or mouth. Virus typically makes its way to your hands first, then gets transferred to you when you touch your face.
If you get sick isolate yourself and get medical attention early – If you feel ill stay away from other people and if you have a fever, cough and difficulty breathing, get to a medical professional, your doctor, the ER or Urgent Care and get checked out.
Notice what isn’t in that advice, wear a mask. You don’t need to wear a mask if you do what’s above, except if you’re around sick people. Or, if you are sick yourself to keep you from infecting others. And importantly, unless you are using an N95 mask, you are just as well off wearing a bandana over your face.
It’s important to also keep the surfaces you encounter clean. So wipe down counters, tables and other surfaces. And remember to appropriately clean your touch screens. On my phone I have a screen protection film on the screen and I wipe that daily with alcohol to clean and kill off any germs. Be VERY careful though when using anything directly on a laptop or other unprotected touch screen and use something the manufacturer recommends. Remember to keep your work spaces at work clean and disinfected as well.
For the near future, you may want to consider whether or not being with crowds is a good idea. If you are in an open air setting, with lots of space, it should be no problem. As well, any place else you can maintain appropriate social distancing should be ok. I have a conference next week that I’m still planning on attend. I also have a trip to Las Vegas at the end of March, I’ll assess whether to not to do that trip based on the situation at the time. If large clusters of community transferred coronavirus are occurring I’ll personally be very cautious about being around crowds. For a change being an introvert might turn out to be an advantage.
So in addition to what I talked about above, some of the best things you can do are the things you should normally do to be healthy. So yes, eat right, exercise and absolutely get enough sleep. Don’t let worry or stress impact these things. The better your general health, the better your immune system and the less likely you are to get sick, whether it’s cold, flu or the coronavirus.
So let’s talk about the semi-worst case scenario. Let’s say the Bay Area of California, which currently has seven total cases, turns into the type of community transfer outbreak we are seeing in Italy and/or South Korea. Well what do we do then? The thing is that public health authorities will be our guide at that point. Most likely people living in those areas will find schools and/or businesses closed for a couple of weeks to help slow the spread of the disease. So how should you be prepared?
Bay area folks also live in earthquake and wildfire country and as such should already be somewhat prepared for a disaster situation. In general what this means is enough supplies to live for a couple of weeks without access to stores. My recommendations are pretty straightforward. You should have some water on hand, not that quarantine would mean your water would go off, but it’s always good to have some on hand. At least a gallon per person for three days. You should have a couple of weeks worth of food on hand, preferably non-perishable foods. This means having canned goods, dried beans, rice and pasta on hand. Top Ramen works great and is very cheap, light, and easy to store. But if this happens you don’t want to feel like you’re in prison. So root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, etc…) store well. A variety of canned food is important, as well as frozen vegetables if you have the space and some meat frozen in the freezer would be nice as well. I also recommend that you have some powdered drink mixes on hand, they store easy and since you should have access to water, they provide some variety.
It’s also important to have at least a couple of weeks of prescribed medications on hand, some basic first aid kits and given that fever is a symptom for coronavirus it’s always a good idea to have a thermometer on hand so you can have accurate information as to whether or not someone has a fever. You likely already have cleaning products to keep the surfaces in your house disinfected.
What I don’t believe you need to do, like the folks I’m seeing on videos on the internet, is to run out and by 50 pound bags of rice, cases upon cases of water or enough dehydrated food to live for a month. From talking with friends who are in China, stores never completely closed there, restaurants still did delivery and only in very rare places was there a complete community lock down that disrupted people’s ability to access these things.
Don’t Panic
I’m going to steal this advice from one of my favorite authors, Douglas Adams, who wrote the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. On the inside guide of the book are the two most important words in the galaxy, DON’T PANIC.
Seriously, don’t panic, as I’ve written above there are lots of common sense things you can do to keep yourself reasonably safe. Do these things and you should be fine, your likelihood of getting infected is still extremely low. Stay prepared and it will make you feel a little less frantic about what’s happening. Stay away from all of the crazy conspiracy theories on the internet. The government isn’t using this to take over, 5G wifi is not causing this, the simple fact is disease is a fact of life, and pandemics are inevitable. It’s been 100 years since the last really significant pandemic. We’re better prepared then we were then, we’ll fare better. So again my friends, don’t panic and you’ll have happier days, even during a pandemic. ~ Rev Kane
Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy with what you have.~Zig Ziglar
So a lot comes screaming across social media and every once in awhile something really good comes by and one today was a piece about the things we do to ourselves that holds us back. It’s a piece entitled, Thirty Things to Stop Doing to Yourself.
I particularly liked the following pieces of advice the author shared.
1. Stop spending time with the wrong people.
Your environment means a lot and surrounding yourself with the wrong people can really impede your pursuit of happiness.
2. Stop trying to be someone you’re not.
Becoming the person you want to be, revealing your inner beauty is a key to your happiness.
3. Stop trying to buy happiness
Very often the simplest and free things in life will lead to the most happiness.
Give the piece a read my friends, I think you’ll enjoy it, and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
The Ministry of Happiness 