Mark Twain was dead on the money...

What a scribe, that man, Samuel Clemens. And I'll throw Will Rogers in on that heap, as well. So what do those two have in common? They told it like it is, with just enough humor to make you smile but at the same time say "does he really mean to say -------?" Reflection is a good thing...

(This reflection is from French Creek in Custer State Park in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota)

Of Mark Twain's many sage words, one quote stuck out in particular as I pondered what to write about for this blog entry. To paraphrase, "There are 3 types of lies in this world: Lies, damned lies, and statistics." Amen, Brothers and Sisters! Statistics are something thrown out so everyone can oooh and aaaah and take it for gospel when, in fact, numbers only say what someone wants them to say. OK, they can serve a good purpose, but all too often we just accept statistics at face value and never ask our own probing questions. Statistics can easily be massaged to lead lemmings over some appointed cliff. Accepting some fact and its meaning blindly is ignorance; power comes from knowledge, which we gain when we question who is feeding us these numbers and why. Make your own decision. In fact, I should make a bumper sticker that says:

"DON'T BE A LEMMING!"


(Time to reflect again...this is from Rapid Creek which is the namesake of Rapid City, SD, and the site of a devastating flood in the 1970s...)

I bet you'd like to know what prompted my choice of words this morning, eh? Tuesday at 7:46am the U.S. Census Bureau says the U.S. will hit the 300 million population mark. One, two, three......"ooooooooh" and "aaaaahhhhh!" Please spare me the theatrics. We shouldn't care about the number...we SHOULD care about what the number represents, which is burdgeoning development all around the world with limited resources and dangerous increased levels of environmental degradation. Feel free to put on your party hat and have at it...I'm sure it will be quite the media circus for a brief bit.

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Nice-N-Fresh outside today, eh?
Time for a pleasant cool-down which will help us to remember that it is the middle of October...even with abundant sunshine we sould enjoy coolish days this weekend under mostly sunny skies. Enjoy, revel, and relish! Lows Saturday and Sunday morning are going to be down in the 30s, with scattered frost likely in the favored areas along the VA border, especially. 20s in the mountains....perfect leaf-peeping weather is waiting in the wings for the weekend.

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I am driving to Cleveland early Saturday morning, and will make a short post to let you readers know I won't post on this blog until Thursday of next week sometime, unless I have comptuer access where I'm heading. It's the National Weather Association's annual meeting and conference...don't know if I'll bring back lots of information to tell you about, but I know I'll bring back some fall photos from other regions/areas to put in the blog! HA! You know me and those side-road diversions!