National Parks

Fire Restrictions in Effect in Yosemite National Park

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Restrictions on Campfires in Wilderness Areas Below 6,000 Feet in Elevation

Fire restrictions for Yosemite National Park went into effect yesterday, Tuesday, July 15, 2014. The fire order restricts the use of campfires in wilderness below 6,000 feet in elevation. However, campfires in designated campgrounds and picnic areas will still be allowed.

Yosemite National Park is implementing fire restrictions due to several years of exceptional drought conditions and high fire danger. The winters of 2011-12, 2012-13, and 2013-14 were all below average precipitation. The Yosemite Region, along with all of California, is in the third year of drought. Conditions are comparable to the major drought of the 1970’s. Due to these conditions, the order is designed to reduce the chances of human caused fires in some of the park’s driest areas. Vegetation throughout the park is drier than at this time last year and increased care and caution are required to protect park resources and ensure visitor and staff safety.

Continue reading →

State Parks

“Take a Walk Through Time” at Bidwell Mansion

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

The Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park will be hosting the celebration of John Bidwell’s 195th birthday on Sunday, August 10, which is being sponsored by the Bidwell Mansion Association. The celebration will be from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Visitors will be taking a “walk through time” and participate in an evening of interactive entertainment. People in period costumes will re-enact daily lives from the Victorian era, and will include past residents of Bidwell Mansion. The celebration will conclude in the Visitor Center with a birthday cupcake for visitors, and the opportunity to enter to win a lovely gift basket in the opportunity drawing.

An original watercolor painting of the Bidwell Mansion by Nell Chapla will be on display in the Visitor Center for a silent auction. Bidding will begin at the time of the event and continue until the BMA Members Holiday Event on Dec. 5.

Continue reading →

Wildlife

Fish Gun: Salmon shooting coming to a dam near you

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

You’ll believe a salmon can fly…

It sounds like something from a Monty Python skit or maybe even from a Sunday night Fox cartoon: launching salmon across a room.  It’s not.  It’s a business.

From  Adventure Journal:

Many Pacific Northwest dams, both large and small, lack fish ladders – effectively closing off hundreds of miles of habitat to endangered salmon and steelhead runs.

Now, biologists in central Washington are testing a new technology they hope could eventually transport salmonids to currently unreachable rivers: vacuum-pressurized tubes.

Continue reading →

General

HMS Beagle library goes online

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

The Guardian newspaper reports that Charles Darwin’s library of books – all 404 of them – that he kept onboard the HMS Beagle are now online over at the Darwin Online Beagle Library project.

From the article:

The lost collection of books that kept Charles Darwin company aboard HMS Beagle and provided inspiration for his later works on evolution has been made publicly available for the first time today.

Hundreds of titles that filled the shelves of the ship’s library on Darwin’s five-year circumnavigation of the globe in the 1830s have been brought together and made freely available through the Darwin Online Beagle Library project.

Continue reading →

Success Stories, Writer Reference

Question: Why doesn’t self-publishing work?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Answer: Well, your question starts off with an incorrect assumption.

Self publishing does work.  It’s worked for hundreds and hundreds of years.  Poor Richard’s Almanack was certainly a success – it was printed starting in 1732.  William Blake was very successful self-publishing his work starting in 1783.  Jane Austen was pretty successful – although, to be accurate, she went vanity press before there was a vanity press.  Walt Whitman?  Successful.  Marcel Proust?  Another success.  Virginia Woolf?  Success.

More successes include: Alexandre Dumas, Amanda Hocking, Anais Nin, Barbara Freethy, Beatrix Potter, Carl Sandburg, D.H. Lawrence, David Chilton, Dean Wesley Smith, Deepak Chopra, e.e. cummings, E.L James, Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ezra Pound, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, H.M Ward, Henry Thoreau, Hugh Howey, Irma Rombauer, J.A. Konrath, Jack Canfield, James Redfield, John Grisham, John Locke, K.A Tucker, L. Ron Hubbard, Lisa Genova, Margaret Atwood, Mark Twain, Michael J. Sullivan, Richard Evans, Rudyard Kipling, Stephen Crane, Stephen King, T.S. Elliot, Thomas Paine, Tom Clancy, Upton Sinclair, William E.B. DuBois, and Zane Grey.

Continue reading →