Ross Cunniff

I wrote this letter to the Fort Collins Coloradoan on September 11, 2001 (it was published a few days later). With the 20th anniversary of the date coming up, and with our recent withdrawal from Afghanistan, I thought it would be interesting to repost it. I chose to post it today rather than on September 11 because there is a political nature to it, and I wanted to avoid the actual date out of respect for the families and friends of the victims. I feel the same today about this as I did 20 years ago. Blood Begets Blood Ross Cunniff, September 11, 2001 My heart cried out for blood when I heard the news this morning.  Bloody vengeance against those who had committed this unspeakable crime against thousands of innocent people.  And my heart was not discriminating: it wanted vengeance against all, past, present, or future, who had terrorized the world through their words and deeds.  It echoed the sentiments of persecutors past who said, "Kill them all; God will know His own!"...

This post summarizes our whole two-week trip to Yellowstone / Grand Teton. The first post covers the week from May 23 to May 28 . The second post covers the second week from May 29 to June 5 . All of the photos in these three posts can be found in this shared Google Photos album . More photos may be found in these shared Google Photos albums: Birds Mammals Landscapes Here is a collage of all the bears I photographed - 14 in all (we saw 16 total, but I did not get pictures of two of them): From upper left, the bears were found at: Grand Teton National Park "likely bear spot" South of Canyon Junction Between Mammoth and Tower Between Mammoth and Tower (through the windshield, sorry) Between Mammoth and Tower (a couple of miles from the previous group) South of Mammoth Near the Yellowstone / Grand Teton border Grand Teton National Park "likely bear spot" Grand Teton National Park "likely bear spot" This is a collage of all 8 Moose that we saw on our trip: Fro...

This is part 2 of 3 of our 2021 Yellowstone adventure, covering May 29-June 5. Part 1 is here, covering May 23-May 28 . You can also read a shorter summary of our visit . May 29 we got a slow start in West Yellowstone, so we decided to take it a little easier and visit the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center , which we had never visited before. It is a nice little preserve. The animals there cannot be released into the wild for a variety of reasons (largely, habituation to human presence and human garbage). You can see bears and wolves much closer than you typically can in the wild. including this fine wolf: They also have River Otters. Sadly, these are the only River Otters we saw on this trip: We did see this nice Violet-green Swallow perched on a roof peak: We drove on to Madison Junction for some other meadow time. Among other small animals, we saw some Sandhill Cranes: Our big hike for the day was up to Grebe Lake. We did see Grebes. We also saw Barrow's Goldeneye, including t...