In college at BYU I had a bishop who was a recreation professor, got paid as a consultant to do things like take river rafting trips (and I concluded that I had picked the wrong major seeing the fun stuff he got paid to do). He found a cheap solution to this problem. He just put his camera in a zip-lock bag and could even take pictures without removing it from the bag.
As a search and rescue volunteer I've found those zip-lock bags extremely useful to protect all sorts of stuff from water.
I agree that I wish we could stop buying made in China stuff. However, I see a difference between buying what their people make and allowing a foreign tyrant to interfere with free expression in this country. Freedom and progress depend on free expression and if we allow a tyrant to interfere with them, we will lose both freedom and progress.
My point of course is that Kodak is allowing one of the most tyrannical and harsh regimes on the planet to determine what they say. They have a right to delete posts the Xi regime doesn't like, but we have a right to refuse to support any company that indirectly supports Xi.
I'm not anxious to start anything political, but it appears that Kodak is kowtowing to the Chinese rulers. "The American company Eastman Kodak has deleted an Instagram post featuring images of Xinjiang, a western Chinese region where the government is accused of grave human rights violations, after an online backlash from Beijing’s supporters."
It is well-known that China continues to commit atrocities against minorities in that region. I find it obscene that any American company would allow Xi's supporters to censor speech here.
https://dnyuz.com/2021/07/21/kodak-deletes-post-by-photographer-who-called-xinjiang-an-orwellian-dystopia/
A bull moose thinks he owns the woods. Usually, he's right. One of the most dangerous animals out there.
The woman dragged from her tent in Montana is very unusual. I don't know if they've finished the investigation, but my guess is that the bear in question had become habituated to humans and expected to find food anywhere there were campers. Some people still feed the bears and that creates a big problem, usually resulting in a bear having to be killed, sometimes after that bear harms a person.
How do you tell the difference between a black bear and a griz? You climb a tree. If the bear climbs the tree and eats you, it is a black. If it pushes the tree over and eats you, it is a griz. :)
Seriously, according to Herrero's book on the subject, blacks almost never attack humans, even to defend young or food but if they do they think we are on the menu. Hence if a black attacks, fight like hell. A griz doesn't want to eat us but will attack to defend young or food so play dead.
Of course the best thing is to stay aware and a good distance from bears.
There are three symptoms of getting old. First, losing your memory, then, hmm, can't remember the others.
Thanks. It is very true that attitude determines happiness. A good attitude would not bring back that woman's leg, but would help her enjoy life. I used to have a co-worker in a wheelchair. He felt nothing and could use nothing from the waist down, but had a great attitude and seemed to enjoy life.
On the other hand, I heard once (sorry can't remember the source) of a therapy session for people trying to overcome effects of problems they had growing up. One woman had been through the holocaust, horrible treatment from the Nazis. Another man had mental issues as serious as did she. His problem stemmed from the fact that sometimes when he was growing up, his mother was late picking him up from guitar lessons. He allowed that difficulty to eat him up.
And there were likely a few collectors' items among all those coins but I'd hate to sort through to find them.
And if you are over age 62, you can get a lifetime pass for all national parks and other federal recreation areas, costs about $80 I believe.
PPS, if you drive over Wolf Creek Pass or on the road from Durango to Silverton, be sure to downshift before you start downhill. Try to go down Wolf Creek, Red Mountain, or Molas passes on your brakes and by the time you get to the bottom you probably won't have any.
I remember a football trip north of Durango when our bus just wouldn't handle those hills so we got into Silverton and they put about the six biggest guys on Trailways (a now defunct bus company). We made it the rest of the way but those guys were still shaking when we picked them up. The Trailways driver knew every curve in the road and slowed down only as much as necessary. They all just knew he was going to go off the road.
PS, you could also consider the drive over Wolf Creek Pass east of Durango. When I lived in that area I used to hear truck drivers talk about that pass with fear in their voices. It was even the subject of a country song by C.W. McCall (
https://www.lyricsfreak.com/c/cw+mccall/wolf+creek+pass_20026634.html)
I think they have widened the road since I was in the area, but should still be spectacular. Full disclosure: I never went over that pass, just heard others talk about it.
The San Juan mountains and the area from Durango to Ouray might be worth considering, the drive between the two towns is spectacular and in places not for the acrophobic. There is also a narrow-guage train with an old coal-fired engine that I think still runs from Durango to Silverton through some spectacular country, not sure if they will be able to run it this summer with the covid issues.