50 years since Dr. King's speech

President Obama just finished with a real potboiler of a speech. Very inspiring. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter preceded him on the podium; I liked their speeches too.

Earlier, there were other speakers including Congressman John Lewis. All in all I enjoyed listening. WFSU began its live coverage at 2 PM (podcast available here)during their afternoon show, Here and Now.

It was good to hear the President finally discussing Race in America from a personal perspective. Now that he's in his 2nd term, he may feel more free to speak on the issue. Now, I hope he prods Eric Holder to take North Carolina to court over the restrictive voting laws that the NC Legislature tripped over itself to pass before the ink was dry on the Supreme Court decision that freed North Carolina from clearing its voting law changes with the Feds. (Phew! I'm out of breath from that sentence.)

I still haven't been on Facebook this week. I have a bunch of photos from last week's hike up the west side of the Big East Fork. The most interesting thing I saw that day, amongst the glory of nature, was what I call "The Valley of Things On Top of Other Things."

As you head upstream above the bank of the river, there are many places to pitch a tent and plenty of access to the river itself. Most of the campsites are high above the water, where they won't flood. But if you stick close to the river, eventually you clamber down some tree roots onto a large sand area that is probably 50' x 100'. It surely floods easily, but the water has been dropping and there was evidence of recent occupation.

Rocko played in the water and I sat down on a big rock for a few minutes, taking a few pictures as well. We got up and headed upstream. It was a picturesque spot, so I took a few more pictures as we slowly made our way to the far end of the sand. And then I noticed the rocks. Of course there are rocks everywhere, it is a mountain stream, but there were standing stones with smaller stones on top of them. There were stacks of rocks on boulders. Here, there, in the middle of the river, everywhere.

A couple of them, probably the originals and the inspiration for the other primitive copies, were really impressive. I'd like to post some photos, but right now there is something funky going on. I tried to add a photo and got a NoScript cross-scripting error. Oh well, I'll get that figured out and eventually the pics will be on Facebook too. Just in time for another hike and more pics.