Weekend Roundup:Updated

I went back up to Alleghaney to try and find the Dragon Lady's childhood home but many of the roads were gated, I would imagine because of the viability of the many mines in the area. This is the view from high above Kanaka creek and just outside town.

The old H.L. Johnson mansion, one of the towns founders, and owner of the Tightener mine one of the richest in the area, the 16-1 still works the same vein today and still turns a profit.

The location of the worlds first long-distance telephone line connecting French Camp to French Lake about 60 miles away. There were many firsts that came out of the Gold rush days, the Pelton Wheel and hydro electric power being the most significant.

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Update: This soldier in Ramadi posts about an interesting new metric he sees in Iraq, new glass in houses and store fronts indicating things are calm enough that the owners feel that it won't just get broken again. Its the old "broken window theory" that Rudy Giuliani used as Mayor of NYC to clean up his city. It goes that if a window is broken and left unfixed more will get broken in a downward spiral of neglect. When someone starts to clean things up and fix those broken windows it lifts in an upward spiral as more and more people start to clean up and take pride in their neighborhoods once again. I know this on my own street, when I bought my house just 2 1/2 years ago the street was all overgrown and looked blighted. I cleaned up my yard and planted flowers and kept it mowed and low and behold the neighbors started mowing and cleaning up their yards and now about half are neatly manicured and more are starting to improve their homes, new paint and a major addition to one, trashy rental properties are being fixed and cleaned up by the landlords, junked cars have been hauled off etc.. Nobody likes to be viewed as being trashy scum and the Iraqis are no different now that security has returned. New glass windows are a great metric if you ask me, it signals a return to normalcy, something the Iraqis barely know.

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Blackfive has some good pictures from Afghanistan and the Taliban's backyard, beautiful country filled with bad guys.

Eighty Deuce has a hilarious tale of a 'Demon' dog encounter at his base and an attempt to bring his adopted pup home with him or get him shipped home to his family. He has a good feel for the war, endless boredom mixed with short spurts of high test adrenaline and fatigue.

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Update: Townhall blog has lots of video and pictures of the Texas GOP convention and straw poll since they were a major sponsor

Hugh, Mary Katherine and Matt discuss Ron Paul and his fanatic following.



NeedI say more about the Paulites.