A Panoramic View of CTS's Surroundings, Number 03

A Thought…

I often imagine that I am a boy or girl or whatever scout from the planet Zarg who wants to earn a merit badge in primitive cultures, so I came to this piece of debris orbiting a middle aged, yellow dwarf star.

My first impression was that there are no highly intelligent species on the planet, so I looked at lower lifeforms. Certain creatures that you call insects have highly evolved societies that work very well together. Then there are funny creatures in your seas with 8 (to use your number system) legs. They are also very intelligent and flexible too.

You have air breathing creatures in your seas that also have organized societies and even speech, which is quite interesting, even though nobody else on your planet seems to understand it.

I decided that I would settle on the technological beings: a bipedal species that your documents call homo sapiens. The main reason for this is that this species actually documents what it does. I don’t know why. If I acted the way you do, I’d be ashamed to admit it.

When I look at your culture from the outside, I see that it is both tragic and comic at the same time. Most of the things you take as sacred are arbitrary.

One of the things that confuse this scout is all the infighting. You all look the same to me. There are some minor, trivial differences, but you are more than 99% the same. Even though I am only 12 Zargian years old, I can see that you have much more to gain by cooperating with each other than fighting each other.

Silly Oblivions (our name for your planet is Oblivious).

P. S. I hope Google Translate did a good job with this.

— dflak, Calvin and Hobbes comic letters

A View of Our Beautiful Area From Overlook Mountain's Fire Tower

View from Overlook Mountain 03

This view is looking southwest from Overlook Mountain, towards the central Catskill Mountains. As you can see, even though it was in the the winter (New Years Day 2005, to be exact), the atmosphere was unusually hazy. Very pretty, but not good for detailed photographs. Anyway, on the left is the frozen Ashokan Reservoir, with its weir structure dividing the western (right) and eastern (left) halves. The reservoir was constructed between 1907 and 1914 was was considered a major engineering feat at the time. In the foreground is the south shoulder of Overlook Mountain (3140 feet/957 m); beyond it is High Point (3080 feet/938 m).

Faintly visible is the WAMK (90.9 FM) transmitter, a low power repeater for WAMC (Albany Medical College/Northeast Public Radio 90.3 FM).

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View from Overlook Mountain 03 with annotation

southwest spur of Overlook Mtn., 3140 feet (957 m)
East Basin, Ashokan Reservoir
Dividing Weir, Ashokan Reservoir
West Basin, Ashokan Reservoir
Ohayo Mtn., 1310 feet (399 m)
Tonshi Mtn., 2020 feet (615 m)
Ticetonyk^[1] Mtn., 2510 feet (765 m)
High Point, 3080 feet (938 m)
Peekamoose Mtn., 3843 feet (1171 m)
The Wittenberg, 3780 feet (1152 m)
Mt. Guardian, 2090 feet (637 m)
Cooper Lake (Woodstock)
WAMK transmitter on southwest spur

^[1] Also spelled 'Ticeteneyck' (among other spellings), which more closely follows the mountain's namesake, a New Netherlands patent holder named Thjis ten Eyck (pronounced like 'Tice ten Ike'). Much of the mountain is owned by the Hellman family, of mayonaise fame.

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A Thought…

A View of Our Beautiful Area From Overlook Mountain's Fire Tower