Desolation Canyon and A Pair of Well-Worn Drawers

On July 8, 1869, the famous expedition of John Wesley Powell down the Green and Colorado Rivers through the Grand Canyon took an almost deadly turn. 

It was not an exaggeration that, up to that point, they all survived on borrowed time, given all the accidents and close calls that they encountered along the way while running the rapids, rowing, portaging the four heavy boats with all their food, utensils, instruments, and clothes, and other needed supplies. 

The raid of a Native American garden left unattended, not far from the Uinta Indian Agency, from which they stole potatoes, vines and all, almost killed them. Sick of dried beans, bacon, and hard tack, they decided to eat the greenery too. How bad could it be, they wondered? Unbeknownst to them, a ragtag of ten Civil War veterans and adventurers, potato greens are a relative of the deadly nightshade. Both plants contain the hallucinogen solanine.  

To say that they were deadly sick in the middle of nowhere, far from any civilization and medical remedies, is an understatement. As they all recovered, there is no doubt that they were quite tough and resilient. A mile down the river from the garden, the thieving gang must have regretted their crime. Sumner wrote, "such a gang of sick men I never saw before or since." Hall wrote that "he had coughed up a potato vine a foot long, with a potato on it as big as a goose egg." Even the tough Powell was in bad shape. 

The boats pulled to shore and "we tumbled under the trees, groaning in pain, and I feel a little alarmed, lest our poisoning be severe," wrote Hall. By supper time, most of them recovered and Sumner wrote that he "didn't think potato tops made good greens for the sixth day of July." Bradley comically remarked on the poisoning incident, "we shan't eat any more potato-tops this season."

Two days later the expedition found itself in such a bleak canyon that they named it Desolation Canyon. Grey and brown rocks surrounded them everywhere and shut up hundreds of feet. Not having any ropes, safety gear, and missing one arm which he had lost in the Civil War, Powell decided to climb up with Bradley and a barometer to measure the elevation. 

They started from a gulch, passing broken rocks, crevices, benches, until they ascended six or eight hundred feet and then suddenly found themselves in front of sheer precipice. 

Inching their way up a couple of feet at a time and passing the barometer back and forth, the pair found themselves suddenly in dire straits. Powell wrote, "I gain a foothold in a little crevice and grasp an angle of the rock overhead. I find I can get up no further and cannot step back." 

Powell had no choice and called Bradley for help. Bradley was on a ledge above Powell but could not reach him nor could he stretch any stick to haul him up. If the one-arm Powell let go, he would fall. As it was, he was standing on his toes and his muscles began to tremble, an involuntary spasming called today "sewing machine leg." 

Powell wrote, "If I lose my hold, I shall fall to the bottom, and then perhaps roll over the bench, and tumble still further down the cliff." The top of the cliff was at about 1,000 feet altitude. One cannot imagine that today anyone would attempt climbing such a sheer cliff without ropes and gear, especially while missing one arm.

Bradly devised a "desperate scheme." He stripped his tattered drawers and dangled them for Powell to catch from below. The problem was that the rock was hanging above Powell's head and the drawers dangled behind him. 

To grab this unusual lifeline, the one-arm Major Powell had to let go of his handhold, lean back into empty space, grab the drawers with his left arm, and pray that he would not lose his grip and tumble hundreds of feet below to his death. 

Bradley, weighing in at 150 pounds, was able to hold onto his drawers from which 120-pound Powell was dangling with all his might. 

The pair continued their climb as if nothing had happened and once they reached the summit at 1,000 feet above the river, they were rewarded with a view of "wild and desolate outlook, with sharp, jagged peaks in all directions." 

Bradley and Powell lived another day and their three-boat expedition on the Colorado River inside the Grand Canyon continued. 

NOTE: The two stories were told in the 2001 book, Down the Great Unknown, by Edward Dolnick.

The Propaganda Industrial Complex

The nostalgic posts of communists yearning for Ceausescu's communist reign of terror are the human equivalent of dogs howling because they miss their chains. - Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh

Orwell’s Novel, 1984, highlights the Ministry of Truth which controls the lives of citizens through the dissemination of constant propaganda, an unrelenting assault on reality and truth.

The infighting citizens of Oceania do not really know what is going on in the world, only what they are told. They are controlled, regimented, and mass-surveilled by Big Brother and The Party to make sure that they conduct themselves as they expect them to always behave.

The ‘proles’ are the communist-controlled proletariat who are impoverished and have no access to any luxuries enjoyed by the Party members. They have no rights, except those granted by Big Brother and the Party, and their only escape is revolt. But is revolt easy to mount without any weapons or ability to organize under the strict control of 24/7 surveillance?

Having lived for twenty years under such an oppressive regime under the boot of the Communist Party, I know that rebellion is impossible to accomplish, given the fact that the Communist Party controls everything and has a huge standing army at its disposal, security police, financial and economic police, and thousands of paid informers among neighbors and hungry relatives. What chance does the unarmed, sick, cold, underpaid, and hungry proletariat have?

There are so many similarities between the fictious population of Oceania and our current political situation, that I do not have space to compare all of them in a short article.

How many Winston Smiths are there who work for the Ministry of Truth, altering current and historical records to fit the Party’s ideology and daily narrative? How is dissent punished in our current society by the authorities?

The main theme of 1984 is totalitarianism as expressed by an oppressive government/leadership that manipulates the truth and controls every aspect of society and private lives. The severe indoctrination devoid of reality is best exemplified by the phrases, “War is Peace, “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength.”

Fear and conformity to the mandated collective are expressed through surveillance and control enabled by 24/7 computer screens and the Thought Police. Such shadowing creates constant fear and uncertainty, raising the levels of cortisol and disease.

Winston’s Party manipulates the truth, using euphemistic language and approved history through Newspeak, shaping reality in a fantasy world. In our current U.S. fantasy world men can menstruate, get pregnant, have babies, and become women on demand just by wearing a dress and declaring themselves women. And the population goes along with their insane fantasy.

How many Winstons do we have today who rewrite the truth, historical past, and present reality in the bureaucratic rule of government? And how many leftists do we have today whose well-paid jobs are to protest, riot, and destroy in the name of fighting fascism while acting like fascists themselves?

Orwell’s Winston and his love interest, Julia, struggle to find some personal freedom and individuality away from the collective which controls everyone’s lives. Their eventual capture is meant to indoctrinate the masses to the fact that rebellion is futile against an all-controlling regime.

The current propaganda industrial complex is run with the help of the government bureaucracy staffed mainly by leftists, the main street media controlled by the left, leftist Hollywood stars insulated by their wealth from the struggles of the general population, teachers, administrators, and professors indoctrinated by academia and their communist parents, corrupt politicians on the take from the highest bidders, leftist billionaires with financial interests across the globe who don’t care about their own country, and the United Nations with its myriad of leftist NGOs. Generous taxpayer contributions fund our enemies, fundings that politicians are unwilling to cut.

How powerful is this Propaganda Industrial Complex and how encroaching is it? One monarch, who controls free speech with the designation of hate speech and hate speech laws which jail the offenders, controls trillions of dollars’ worth of land across the globe.

One highly placed bureaucrat said recently, “there is free speech and there is hate speech.” Who decides what the parameters are? Have they passed hate speech laws in America? What is the punishment if one just wants to express an opinion?

Will you be defeated just like Winston? Ask the jailed Katie Hopkins what her weekly comedic routine got her in England. Ask the banned-from-England Michael Savage. He claims to have spent $400k to clear his name but was unsuccessful. One cannot win against the Ministry of Truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Occoquan and Mom's Apple Pie

Today I visited my favorite minerals store in the small historic town of Occoquan. It is a lovely stop on Hwy. 123, with picturesque hills, the Potomac tributary flowing through it, the eighteenth-century stone mansion, the ducks, the herons, the occasional bull shark caught in the nets of fishermen, the mom-and-pop boutiques, and the small and quaint restaurants on the banks of the river.

The average household income in Occoquan is $167,767. The median age is 43.7 years: 41.5 years for males, and 47.2 years for females.

Mom's Apple Pie turned The Golden Plum is no longer the attraction as you enter the town, it is now a Cafe that still sells pies, but the name has changed. The Golden Plum served the same delicious pies with recipes passed on to the new owner, the daughter. The Golden Plum no longer sold wines and spirits to the locals. Perhaps the daughter could not get a liquor license, perhaps she was not interested in selling wines to the rich Washington bureaucrats living in the expensive homes tucked in the hills and the condos built on the riverbank, perhaps that part of the business was not bringing in enough revenue. Nobody knows the reason.

The famous designer Andre Soriano had an atelier in the downtown Occoquan, but the leftist locals did not like his Republican politics, the American flag and the Trump flag he was flying on the second floor of his rented home. The atelier occupied the first floor and the second floor was his residence. The locals hated him so much that they harassed him constantly and even tried to burn the building down. The smoke stains were visible on the upstairs facade for a long time.

The building is now empty and for sale; Andre moved elsewhere. As a jet set celebrity designer for the stars as he is, he can live and create anywhere in the world. He loved the quaint town and its significance in the history of Virginia. Our friend Alice Butler, a friend of Donald Trump, had brought Andre to Virginia in 2016 from Los Angeles. The leftist, hateful locals of Occoquan made his life miserable. Andre was going to stay despite the constant attacks, but the owner decided to sell the building - prices are good and the unrelenting threats to Andre could have burned his building down.

A small church in town sold its building right across from the former Mom's Apple Pie to Muslims. They were welcomed with open arms and now the former church is a Muslim Community Center dedicated to Peace. Because of its proximity to the former Mom's Apple Pie and its sale of alcohol, the Muslims made sure that the wine liberals in Occoquan bought their alcohol somewhere else. With a population of 1,055, it won't be long before the Muslims outnumber the aging locals of Occoquan.

The Radicalization of American Students to Communism

The radicalization of American students into communism started long time ago but it has accelerated in the last forty years. Public school teachers, administrators, academia, foreign communist activists and agitators, the mainstream media, corrupt politicians, lax parents, and organized religion are to blame.

Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, a KGB spy and defector, born in 1939 in a suburb of Moscow, the son of a high-ranking Soviet army officer, said in an interview in 1985 with G. Edward Griffin that the indoctrination in American schools was so thorough that, even when students were presented with the reality of the big lie promoted by communist activists, the students and their teachers still believed the lies of communism.

The American teachers were and are still today trained at various colleges of education in America, all following the same education courses, indoctrination models and theories of education as prescribed by the materials and textbooks originally developed and written at Columbia Teachers College where many of the 20^th century professors were European communists who immigrated to the U.S.

Bezmenov stated in the interview that “ideological subversion” was the method used by communist activists and teachers to brainwash and convert American students to believe that communism was the best form of society, without any proof or evidence. Students were not taught about the horrors of communism and the killing of at least one hundred million in various communist countries simply because they disagreed with the Communist Party’s platform and ideology.

Bezmenov said that, if you “change the perception of reality,” despite ample evidence and abundance of information, no such indoctrinated person can draw a logical conclusion.

The communist activists and their trained teachers and academia, he said, used a four-stage method to brainwash students irreversibly. What are the four stages?

Stage 1 is the demoralization of the nation, which takes at least 15 years to achieve brainwashing in one generation. Once accomplished, the students’ minds cannot be changed, the basic perception of manufactured reality remains the same no matter what you do.

No amount of common sense can be inculcated into their minds. They become the “useful idiots” described by Soviet literature and used by communist activists to achieve their goals.

Once their work is completed, the communists do not tolerate such people, they have no use for them, “they will be squashed like cockroaches.” When brainwashed, such individuals are unable to assess and process true information even when presented with facts.

If they see concentration camps, the brainwashed would not believe they existed until they feel punishment on their own skin. And today’s Artificial Intelligence on all mainstream media and social platforms would make it impossible to comprehend reality. To turn the tide back to normalcy and patriotism, Bezmenov said, patriots would need a minimum of 20 years.

Stage 2 involves the Destabilization of a nation, via the economy, foreign relations, and defense.

Stage 3 will be a Crisis, or multiple crises.

Stage 4 involves Normalization after the crisis or crises, after the free markets would be destroyed. A benevolent dictator(s) will promise anything to the people, creating the false illusions that the situation(s) is (are) all under control. At that point, the nation is in an undeclared state of war, and the communist globalist conspiracy takes full control.

Bezmenov recommended a strong national effort to educate people against the welfare state, against communist infiltration because the danger is real, and to force the government to stop aiding global communism, and communist dictators. He said forty years ago, “educate yourselves, you are in a state of war, you have little time to turn the tide.”

Unfortunately, we are now past the opportunity to change the tide. Survival of the capitalist system is very unlikely. There is no other place on this planet to escape from the encroaching of global communism promoted by billionaires, the U.N., and all the NGOs who take funding from the American taxpayers to do their anti-American activities around the world.

In forty years since Bezmenov’s warning about communist indoctrination of our youth in America, the globalist communists and their billionaire sponsors have made great strides to reach their rebranded goal of global communism.

Current tactics used were:

-           mandated vaccines and passports which resulted in unemployment, spikes in vaccine deaths and the financial destruction of many small and medium-sized companies.

-           climate change industry to control everything humans do from cradle to grave in their own lives and in their economies, including land, water, rivers, sea, oceans, and all industries.

-           advertised hysteria of global warming promoted through aggressive climate change narratives.

-           lab-made viral pandemic.  

-           forced lockdowns as protection by the benevolent government.

-           mail-in voting ballots, allegedly protecting humans from contact with each other and thus the spread of death; these helped the self-proclaimed “Democrat Socialists” win elections.

-           American president with Parkinsonian dementia, who was incapable to do his job.

-           transgenderism aimed at sterilizing children early before they can reproduce.

-           weather modification to control rain, land ownership, and agriculture.

-           water control via United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

-           illegal mass immigration from the third world to the western world under the banner of the United Nations, increasing the voting bloc of the Democrat Party, and changing the face of America and of many western nations forever.

-           digital currency to control every financial transaction and the medical and social existence of every human being on the planet.

If you are a teacher, administrator, college professor, a pastor, a journalist, a corrupt politician lacking a moral compass, an NGO, a doctor, a nurse, you are part of the problem, and you created this reversal of good fortune. You radicalized entire generations of young people in the last 40 years, and you should take responsibility for your actions.

 

Western Civilization Culture and New Generations

Recently a friend lamented the fate of the generational culture in many countries. His remarks eerily described what is happening to the culture of current American society.

The number one complaint was the lack of respect and violent outbursts of young generations. Raised in an atmosphere where anything goes and nobody tells them no, young people injure the elderly, drive their cars as if they are in a race, park their cars in front of your house, in your yard, sometimes even close to your front door and, if you protest, they smile draconically. They defy and disrespect the police all the time when stopped for vehicular infractions.

These young generations live in an altered reality which defies any norms established by centuries of western culture and civilization. Somehow, in the last thirty years, kindness, generosity, and goodness have disappeared, replaced by anger, violence, and hate.

The media has helped destroy any semblance of decency, reality, and truth. Music has become a bizarre cacophony of jungle beat and vile language, and normal language has been transformed into the realm of the Twilight Zone.

Depraved people have become stars, high school dropouts are role models and champions of justice while they are flooding the waves with bad manners, terrible upbringing, lack of education, bad music, and self-appointed righteousness. The dumb and the low have money and power, are promoters of hate, and soap-box inexplicable authority.

Stupidity has money, power, influence, tarantula eyelashes, Neanderthal eyebrows, and welfare-entitled queens. It is visible and evident on every social media platform. Some are subtle but most are loud and screechy.

Generations since 1989 brought back the repackaged and rebranded communism under the umbrella of globalism.

These individuals, supported by trust funds, stolen wealth, NGOs, Instagram and TikTok videos, are reckless but trendy youth, with no life experience or knowledge of the past, in a hurry to find something defining, or an element that would give meaning to their empty lives they spend surrounded by blue screens.

After the 1989 coup, when communism was repealed by so many Eastern Block countries oppressed by their respective Communist Parties, George Soros and his NGO cohorts inserted themselves into those countries with his army of young writers who assembled the curricula and the textbooks for the indoctrination of the new generations into the rebranded form of communism called globalism. The main goal was and still is to turn western societies into globalism and the young generations into global citizens at any cost. And it worked in all of them at the same time.

Cultural symbols, history, religion, monuments, historical artifacts were replaced in public life in the name of freedom and of woke conscience by people who have no idea what freedom is or how to be conscientious.

Patriotism is dying among these generations because they don’t know how to be patriotic, how to preserve their language, their history, their country, their borders, their traditions, their monuments, their culture, national institutions, Christian religion, and the most basic of all, the family. They became empty humans without history and faith.

Courtship and civility are disappearing as well, replaced by a hook-up mentality heavily promoted by the new statist society. Fewer get married and have children in western cultures. They prefer to push strollers with cats and dogs. Those who do believe in matrimony and have a family, are waiting longer and longer to get married. The lack of desire to procreate is obvious in the declining birth rates in all developed nations. U.N. supplements the low birth rate in western societies by moving people from around the world into Europe and the United States. It is forced and illegal migration.

Young generations want to be sports stars, performers, influencers, social justice warriors, hoping for instant stardom and wealth. Few choose trades over worthless college degrees then whine on TikTok videos that they cannot find jobs and are thus oppressed by the capitalist system and the “fascist Donald Trump.” These generations take no responsibility for their actions and choices in life.

Going woke in a collectivist (communist) fashion is promoted everywhere including in the uniformization of buildings, restaurants, ugly clothes, drab colors, identical model cars and colors, etc. Bauhaus communist ugliness is replacing everything that was American tradition, color, happiness, even symbolism in restaurants names, buildings, and products that our parents and grandparents enjoyed and recognized everywhere.

The idea of wokism/globalism/new communism is to alienate people from nostalgia, from happiness, and from what they recognized as their daily American life. You can no longer live as you want, you are forced to live as the statist globalists tell you – drab, suppressed, uniformed, controlled, simple, poor, collectivist, and compliant lives. You achieve woke happiness and “you will like it.”  

The same woke globalists scare new generations that global warming/climate change is likely to destroy civilization if we do not accept the drastic actions they are forcing upon us. But western civilization is destroyed by the few, the extremely rich and influential who control every facet of our lives with help from the United Nations, NGOs, WEF, and other “civil society groups” with schemes and abundant money from our own federal government. And they are never held accountable for what they do to our lives and to new generations.

 

Mysterious and Fascinating Florida

Since 1979 when I first set foot in Florida, I have been in love with its beaches and historical sites. To say that Florida is mysterious, fascinating, weird, intriguing, historical, beautiful, dangerous, colorful, sunny, and magnetic, is an understatement.

One of my favorite comedic reel digital creators is “#OnlyInFlorida.” He finds hilarious videos highlighting Florida’s fauna and flora and sometimes the bizarre quirks of the human species. He is “Floridaing” every day and is glad that “I’ve got it on my flip phone.” The said phone often matches the color of his t-shirt.

Florida’s fun in the sun residents do not stop at displaying trash cans and mailboxes that are elaborate and beautiful works of art; they decorate with giant concrete or fiberglass creatures of the sea, dotting the landscape in the most unusual places.

Where else can you find more gators and pythons than you can shake a stick at while stepping on shifting wet grass and trying to capture that perfect photo of a white crane balancing on top of a dead tree, surrounded by murky water?

There are 1.3 million gators in all 67 counties in Florida. The estimated population of Burmese pythons across more than 1,000 square miles of the Everglades is 30,000-300,000. The invasive species of snakes have caused significant ecological destruction.

Driving on the Tamiami Trail across the Everglades, a sign pops up now and then indicating a panther crossing. I have never seen such a creature cross the highway but its existence in the surrounding swamps with thick and lush vegetation and palm tree forests is fascinating.

Florida may hide the famous fountain of youth and its burial grounds in St. Augustine. La Florida was the magical land where Ponce de Leon and his Spanish conquistadors landed in their search for eternal youth. The place where Ponce de Leon and his crew first arrived a thousand years ago is now the Fountain of Youth Park.

There is a coral rock castle and garden in Homestead, Florida, built out of 1,100 tons of rock for a mysterious purpose that only the Latvian American eccentric builder, Edward Leedskalnin, understood. He had hoped that his labor of love work of oolite limestone would eventually attract his beloved who had spurned his marriage proposal previously in Latvia. Sadly, he died alone in his castle.

Where else can you come in contact with invisible and stingy no-see-ums, with sharks, manatees, sting rays, man-o-war jelly fishes, see-through moon jellies the size of UFOs that sting even when dead, and other dangerous creatures right at the water’s edge?

Where else can you visit the opulent mansion of the Barnum and Bailey Circus Museum with its gorgeous grounds, flora, and statuary, but in Sarasota, Florida?

Only in Florida, between Arcadia and Bradenton, you find in the middle of nowhere, passing by swamps, more swamps, and pastures, Howard Solomon’s medieval residence. The sculptor built a 12,000 square foot castle from refuse. Resplendent with a moat, towers, and eighty stained-glass windows, his castle is silver in color because it is covered with aluminum printing plates from a local newspaper.

His shiny castle, which has a real, full-sized Spanish galleon, was built by necessity as his property flooded during the rainy season and he did not factor that in when he bought the land. A real gator is “guarding” the tenth century galleon.

Sadly, Floridian Horse Creek would never rise high enough to float the galleon out to the emerald, green ocean. Howard not only turned recyclable trash into a local curiosity, but he also became the “Rembrandt of Reclamation.”  Nobody knows the effect that so much aluminum has on the surrounding swampy environment.

Only in Florida can you sit on the sugary white sand, watching the green waves crash against the pristine shore and suddenly you start coughing with hundreds of other beach goers surrounding you in a giant coughing unison.

It is the unpleasant and dangerous side-effect of red tide, an algae bloom, being blown from far out at sea. This toxic red tide bloom constantly affects Tampa Bay and its vicinity, and it is caused by poor water quality and pollution from fertilizer plants and other sources. It increases if the Gulf water happens to be warmer than usual. The east coast has an equally toxic algae bloom called the blue-green algae, sometimes affecting the St. Lucie River estuary.

Caren Schnur Neile wrote about the online headline of February 14, 2019, news story from WBGO public radio from Newark, “After 16 months of Dead Fish, Manatees and Dolphins, Florida’s Red Tide Ebbs.” How much it ebbed is revealed in the photo underneath with a row of dead fish on the pristine white beach.

Only in Florida you can find an apple tree that can kill you and gators love its fruits when they fall in the swamp. The Tree of Death, Hippomane mancinella or manchineel grows in South Florida’s coastal areas, South America, and the Caribbean.

Growing in brackish water, the manchineel thrive in mangroves. The name comes from the Spanish word manzanilla, “little apple” or manzanilla de la muerte, “little apple of death.” Touching it causes severe blistering and allergic reactions that could lead to death in some people.

There are many areas in Florida that claim the existence of ghosts, no one more famous than Henry Flagler, the tycoon who built the railroad between Jacksonville and Key West. Although he died in 1913 in Palm Beach, his body was shipped to St. Augustine by train and laid out in the rotunda of his beloved Ponce de Leon hotel. He vowed never to leave his hotel. A janitor found a mysterious tile with his portrait on it. To this day tourists are enthralled to search for this tiny tile that is alleged to have Henry Flagler’s face on it.

People would be surprised to know that Florida has an 800-year-old building, built 300 years before Columbus discovered the New World. Located on the Dixie Highway in North Miami, known as the “Old Spanish Monastery,” this building is part of St. Bernard de Clairvaux Episcopal Church. How did it make its way to Florida?

William Randolph Hearst purchased the monastery in 1925 and had it dismantled and packaged with hay in 11,000 shipping crates, carefully numbered. Two sawmills were built to make the crates.

Because of the outbreak in Spain of the hoof-and-mouth disease which could have been spread by hay, the shipment was quarantined by Customs. The crates were opened, the hay was burned, and the blocks were repackaged randomly. The crates were stored for 26 years in a warehouse in New York. Hearst sold the shipment of crates, and two men moved it in 1952 to Florida with the idea to make it a tourist attraction. Unfortunately, the entire now misnumbered shipment became a giant and expensive jigsaw puzzle.

According to the Archives, twenty-three men spent 90 days to open all the heavy crates, some weighing more than a ton. The wooden crates were then burned, and 7 tons of nails were salvaged from the ashes.

The 800-years old monastery was reconstructed in 19 months at a cost of $1.5 million. The bankrupt investors sold the building to the St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church. The baptismal font and the original iron bell are still part of the former monastery. Each stone block has the mark of the stonemason who cut it 8 centuries ago.

Florida has a true medieval structure which the Spanish began building in 1672. It is the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, a fort built out of coquina, a bonded composition with seashells that can resist cannon balls. It took 23 years to complete.

La Florida is beautiful beyond description, a remarkable place to explore.

 

 

 

Shark Biting Odds

The odds of being bitten twice by a shark is one in 9 trillion, yet one Oregon man named Seth, according to Nat Geo, was bitten twice by a great white shark, six years apart.

The first time it happened in Florence, Oregon. Seth was surfing alone.  The second time happened in the same place, while surfing with his friend Gus.

The first time a great white, attacking from below with great force, wedged Seth’s surfboard in his mouth, with Seth balancing on top. The pressure from the shark’s jaw, crushed the board with Seth’s foot inside of it. Eventually, after some thrashing, the shark let go, and Seth swam to shore. Bleeding heavily, he was taken to the hospital by a nearby cop and treated for his lacerations with 25 stitches. He was lucky to escape with his life. The marks on the fiberglass board tell the horrific fate he barely escaped.

The second time a great white knocked him off his board, and ripped into his board, which was still tethered to his ankle too close for comfort. The shark dragged him a bit, and then released the board. Seth and Gus paddled to the shore unscathed, as fast as they could.

That day Seth escaped the shark’s menu. Again. And so did his friend Gus.

The adrenaline draw of big waves and surfing drowns out any fear of sharks who also love big waves and opportunistic meals even in murky water when they cannot see well.

Brian, on the New Smyrna Beach in Volusia County, Florida, the capital of shark bites in the United States, was the second double casualty of a shark attack, a black tip this time. His two encounters happened within the same year. Both times the shark bit his leg above his foot, and the second time bit his foot almost off.  Doctors managed to repair the damage, and he is lucky to have escaped alive. He continues his relentless obsession with surfing.