POSITIVE ATTITUDE

It's impossible to make a silk purse out of burlap and it's impossible to create a pristine shoreline from one made of boulders, shale and mud but, gotta do the best I can.

I really tried to find one minuscule of "pretty" today on Cherokee and couldn't.  Just couldn't.  I ended up just cruising along staring at the water and talking to Shade.

I've realized lately that I've been sort of down with a flavor of disappointment and I dwelt upon that this morning to get hold of it.  

Not complaining but, the interstate drive to all my lakes is a test of my tolerance for idiots and when I get to the lake - it's either a mud hole or a rock quarry neither of which is easy on the eyes.  The view adds to and amplifies the miserable drive here.  Add to all that the absence of the most basic wildlife and the coming of Winter where the temps on the water are next to unbearable.  My salvation is the Holston River and I'll be losing that come January 1st.

Every radio station I can receive over here is nothing but doom and gloom about Obummer Care and how the American People are not able to afford it.  I still don't know why the term impeachment hasn't come up yet.

Above: At last - a forest.  I wondered when I'd find one on this lake.  I better drive close for a better look so I can appreciate the great view better.

Well, sort of a forest.  I know - ya can't see the forest for the tree, or trees.  Whatever!
Just when I get to feeling down I think of what you see below and realize that all this today is just a few hours of time and I feel OK.

I've been putting ideas together about the sandhill crane kill that will happen Thanksgiving day, and am preparing to write an objective piece about it or, rather what I think about it.  I'd write the thing now but I've learned not to write about important things I am emotionally involved with when I'm angry.  But, soon.  There are a lot of questions I'd like to find the answers to.  For instance, all the hunters didn't suddenly get together and collectively decide to kill cranes.  Who started it?  Was it the TN Wildlife Federation or the Fish and Wildlife Commission?  If the excuse for the hunt was that the cranes were destroying farmers grain fields then, why are only 1200 permitted to be killed.  That is a ridiculously low number for crowd control.  There are thousands upon thousands of cranes in the flyway.   In short - that number won't reduce their population for any purpose.  Or, is it that shot-gunners just want to see feathers of a different color float gently to the ground sans bird?  The facts are that sportsman dollars created the environment for the cranes to come back from the brink of extinction to the healthy population they enjoy today.  Does that give them the right to shoot cranes?  I think hardly.  Most every state management agency in the country functions directly from sportsman's dollars.  Those dollars purchase habitat and even reintroduce species back into the environments they previously lived in.  Those sportsman's dollars also go to the management of song birds, bald eagles, and all wildlife in the state, yet all wildlife is not hunted so it's a lame statement that the hunters put their money into the resource and therefore should have the right to hunt the animal.  It's also been said by a certain Fish and Wildlife Commission member that their numbers are great enough to hunt them.  How one sided is that?!  Not so.  We'll see what I think up.  I apologize for the lack of critters in this entry.  There just weren't any.