Skipping rocks

Any day you can spend at your favorite spot along the Ohio River and skip rocks for an hour with your son is a good day.

Actually, we skipped rocks at two spots for a total time of more than an hour, and it was fun. We needed a video camera to determine if my throws skipped 11 times or 16. I favored the higher number, of course.

We saw a couple of boats go by -- a small sternwheeler called the Pickett Hastings and the M/V Andi Boyd -- but they were only diversions as we searched for the perfect rock for skipping. At one point Adam challenged me to skip two rocks at once. I nestled one rock in my index finger and one in my middle finger and ... they traveled in parallel, at least ten skips each. My next five tries to duplicate that didn't work.

As I said, any day you can spend on the Ohio River skipping rocks with your son is a good day.

I'm tired of having seven things going on in my head at once, so something has to give. Unless there's big news, such as a disaster or something really good, I'm taking a break from blogging. Adam and I will be back on Oct. 1.

Who wants to be WV?

I did a short piece last week on how some folks in Oregon and Washington state want to develop coal ports to ship Powder River Basin coal from Wyoming and Montana to Asia. The mainbar is here, and the sidebar is here.

To the point: When you got outside coal-producing regions, a lot of people just don't want anything to do with coal. They don't want anything to do with coal. To them it's a mineral that is toxic to the touch and provides nothing good for humanity, so they don't want to be near it, even if it's out of sight.

I guess you could say some folks in Oregon don't want their state becoming West Virginia.

I'll have more to say on the subject when I return from hiatus, which begins tonight.