I Do Appreciate Comments But . . .

Anonymous does not hack it!

By commenting anonymous you dillute the value of your comment and make me wonder as to your motives. Granted, 'anonymous commenting' has it's places . . . sensitive subjects, etc, etc. But for general discussion, do us all a favor and post a name so that we can sort the chaff from the real kernels of wisdom. Anonymous discourse makes a conversation one way. Blogger makes it easy to attach a name (fake, even) to your posts. Please do so.

In the future, I will refrain from replying to anonymous comments unless the comment bears response (in my opinion). I will also moderate comments by deleting them if they bear little in context with the article commented on.

So . . . 'anonymous' and I'll probably ignore you and quite possibly delete the comment. Use your name and make this a two-way conversation! Better yet, sign up for a Blogger account and sign with it.

Of course, anything even remotely tasteless will be deleted whenever I come across them.

Article: "Can Body Acceptance go too far?"

In the Naked Nudism blog, the author examines a much-thought about, though little talked, tenet of naturism . . . that of the near-universal acceptance of the body despite all the flaws that everyone has to one extent or another. The framework of the argument revolves around the idea that by turning a blind eye to the imperfections of the body . . . in this case, obese individuals . . . are we not in fact removing an incentive on that individual to practice a more healthy lifestyle?

The author writes:

. . . shouldn't we find some way to encourage healthy bodies within the framework of body accpetance? Or is this an impossible task?

Body acceptance is central to the nudist/naturist philosophy . . . not just obesity. We attempt not to make any value judgements on the appearance to others, but can we really? Nudism (and more particularly naturism as I've come to think of it) does encourage a healthier lifestyle; naturists in particular with nude activities that gradually develop conditioning (nude hiking, swimming, camping, bungeecord jumping, etc). Nudist resorts are beginning to encourage cardio-activities at their venues as an adjunct to the ubiquitous 'sunning lawns' and lounge chairs. Doing so to cater to a younger generation gently encourages partaking of a somewhat healthier lifestyle.

I'm reminded of an incident that happened at Scenic Hot Springs several years ago. A delightful lady participated in one of our cleanup activities yet deferred from the chance to soak in the hot springs after the activities. Sometime later we met at a smaller work party and we finally got a chance to enjoy that soak together in the springs, where I learned of her reasons . . . she had had a radical masectomy and now avoided soaking nude in the very hot springs that she loved . . . for chance that she might be looked upon as some freak. As close as we were in that pool, quite honestly I hadn't even noticed the missing breast until she mentioned it . . . the joking and comadre had been the pleasure of the moment.

Body imperfections can sometimes not be controlled. Obesity has many reasons . . . some of them beyond the control of the individual (my mother, with diabetes is an example). Body acceptance means we do not judge or criticize. We accept and provide a heathly venue. It is up to us as individuals to live as healthy as is practical.

But all of this just begs the question. FKK promoted nudism in the pre-war years of Germany as a way to physical conditioning. Body acceptance in the AANR and TNS philosophies fifty years later dilutes the harsh rigor of pre-war German nudism. I think that is a good thing as the movement has become more encompassing and less critical of those with less than perfect bodies (meaning, most of us). However, we do espouse a heathy lifestyle. Are we doing so in practice? I don't have the answers . . . but the practice of naturism has had a very healthy effect of my body.

In any case, I laud the blog writer. He asks the questions many of us think yet dare not voice. Are nudist resorts (and nudist venues) doing enough to encourage and promote a healthy lifestyle?

Technorati Tags: nudism, body acceptance

Goldmyer Hot Springs: December 22, 2006 access update

From: Beth

Please read the November 28th access info for wintertime things to consider.

As of December 22, the road has been cleared of all the trees that dropped over the road, as far as the river ford, during The Dec. 14-15th Windstorm. High clearance vehicles can drive to the river ford. There is some snow, but not much.... chances are that it will snow up there this week-end. The river is moderate in depth. Note that both road and river conditions can change real quick! We doubt, but don't know for certain, that vehicles can drive to the upper footbridge trailhead because of downed trees and snow.

A number of big trees came down on the Goldmyer property in The Windstorm, but none hit the hotsprings or caretaker's cabin. The water is still good and hot, and it hasn't been too busy with visitors. Great time of year for a soak! Go prepared for winter conditions!

Technorati Tags: Hot Springs, Access Advisory

Merry Christmas to all my Friends

There is much to be grateful to another great year of friendships and wonderful, life-fulfilling experiences. To every one of my friends in the naturist community in particular, and the world at large . . . have a Wonderful Merry Christmas and a Great New Year . . . Rick

Technorati Tags: Nude Christmas

AANR on MySpace

The American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR) now has a presence on MySpace, the popular social-networking portal.



Kudos for the start at generating interest in the younger generations that frequent these social networks. I look forward to seeing some interactive and dynamic content being added.

Technorati Tags: Advocacy for Nudism, AANR

Insanity at Bagby: Getting trapped in a winter storm

An enlightening recap of one couple's visit to Bagby Hot Springs only to be caught under the full brunt of the winter wind storm that hit the Cascades on Dec 12-13th, 2006. Bagby is a very popular natural hot spring in the National Forest east of, and reasonable close to Portland, Oregon. The original discussion thread was posted in the Soak.net forums.

After some light snowshoeing near government camp. My gf and I headed for Bagby hot springs. We arrived around 3pm and were greeted by a nice couple who planned to camp. The weather was calm and seemingly stable. On the trail my gf and I passed two men with hoods who stepped off the trail to avoid us, they said nothing, who knows what they were up to.. With our personal safety in mind we decided not to soak until the couple showed. They arrived and headed for the back pool, Four russians were following and they chose the lower pool, my gf and I decided the Honeymoon tub was ideal. No more than five minutes in the pool and at about 6:00pm the winds began to howl... a few branches came down, then we heard rotten tops dropping, echoing like gunshots from just a couple hundred feet to several miles away... Without a word we were dressed and were conversing with the russians. They didn't seem to grasp the concept of a forest falling apart but quickly got the picture. My gf and I along with the other couple took shelter in a hollow log and the russians took shelter somewhere in the complex, time went on and we heard yelling and saw a flashlight, I believe they only had one between them. The russians were attempting to go for their vehicle, senconds after they went it was a cataclysm of events, hearing 50 to 100 trees fall in just seconds, assuming that landslides carrying everything had blocked the trail and surely killed them. All we could do was pray. We waited for over 4 hours in the middle of this mess. Out of desperation we charged the trail climbing over several insane blow downs that were 3 and 4 feet in diameter. Dodging falling limbs we made it to the car only to find more trees blocking the road..I pondered squating in the concrete outhouse, the surrounding trees were just way too big. I even considered hiding under a concrete bridge before the log but also canned that one due to the river rising past flood stage, plus I was wet and felt hypothermic, so we parked our cars.. tried to close our eyes and accepted our situation..it was miserable being in that box hearing the madness outside and wondering when a tree was going to pick us. Around 4 am the temperature dropped and snow began to fall. Several inches accumulated.. my gf and I decided then to get the hell out of there and snowshoe 12-15 miles to ripplebrook. After making it several miles and being somewhat confident in ourselves... we were astonished to see a convoy of sheriffs who had received 5 separate reports for missing persons..my g/f and I being two of them, unfortunately nobody reported the couple.. The sheriffs explained that they cleared a few dozen trees all the way from carver to get to us, it was a great feeling to know they were out there. After they cleared the last log, we were on our way home. Sleep deprived and hungry we were thankful to beat the odds, I personally heard at least 250 trees drop over the roaring 90 mph winds and pouring rain. There hasn't been a storm of that caliber in over ten years and we just happened to be in the cascades. I wish we had payed closer attention to the weather report, we've seen snow up there, landslides and people trapped but, somehow there was still no way to imagine what was in store. All in all... we coped fairly well and i've decided if someone is going to pursue the outdoors.. they are gonna learn a lesson or two along the way we sure learned ours! Those mysterious guys on foot had to be die hard to be up there with no car, who knows what they did... as for the russians it's doubtful they ever made it anywhere, they probaly just took whatever spur roads that weren't blocked. I'll almost guarantee they ended up in a miserable situation far deeper into the wilderness. We hope they're okay, But the odds for tragedy were very high.

Here is the latest from Volunteer Jack:

I was curious about the storm damage and went up Saturday to investigate. There was a sign at the beginning of Hwy 46 indicating "Storm Damaged Road". Hwy 46 had maybe 5 places where trees fell across the road and Hwy 63 and 70 had about 6 more. In each place, only enough of the tree was cut to allow a single vehicle to pass. With the ice and snow, it was pretty slow going. I moved several large boulders off the road.

The Bagby trail is passable now. I cleared 30 or so large fir limbs from the trail and many smaller ones. I pushed three smallish tree trunks out of the way (8-12 inches in diameter). The only remaining obstacles are 3 very large trees that have fallen across the main trail about 1/2 mile in from the trailhead. The first tree is about 3 ft, the second is 3 1/2 ft and the last is over 4 ft in diameter. The first two are flat on the trail and can be straddled. The largest tree is two ft above the trail on one side and 3 1/2 ft on the uphill side. Hikers are ducking under the uphill side as there's no way around and the tree is too big to climb over.

Be safe, check the road conditions with the Forest Service, and make sure you know the weather forecast. Conditions can change quickly in the mountains, so be prepared!

Technorati Tags: Hot Springs, Winter Storm

The doctor told me not to wear clothes for awhile

Seriously! Well, I've never told her I'm a naturist . . . though my lack of tan lines should be a dead giveaway. Anyway, the reason (and the story behind it) is interesting and has a point about nudity . . . eventually.



When I was 12 years old I got myself tangled up in a thicket of poison oak in the hills around San Diego. I reacted so badly that my parents took me to this 'quack' who promptly injected me with extract of poison oak and then instructed my parents to scrub me down with Lava Soap. Needless to say, that was the most excrutiating two weeks of my life. My mother told me many years later that they did not expect me to survive the episode (I had oozing blisters on the inside of my mouth and nose). However, I did survive but while I seem to have developed a resistance to poison oak (and its' cousins), I have developed extreme allergic reactions to a number of other things . . . including cashews (which, by the way, is related to and a member of the poison ivy family). I avoid cashews like the plague . . . however, that is not always possible and a meal at a Thai restaurant sent me into an pretty big allergic response last week. I am only now beginning to be able to deal with the constant itching and blossoming body rash.



The interesting observation . . . besides the fact that not wearing clothes would remove a large irritant and instigator of itching . . . is that my body rash development followed a predictable route. It was the worst in locations that saw the most coverage by clothing . . . and almost negligible on the areas of skin frequently exposed to air and sunlight. I would say that is a pretty good argument for nudism. The skin is far healthier when allowed to breathe.



Fortunately, I'm almost completely cleared up and wary of the holiday treats awaiting. Tomorrow is my first nude Christmas party get-together (an informal affair with a few friends). Can't say that I've ever played Santa Claus au natural before.

Technorati Tags: Health and Nudity, Nude Christmas

Naked parties: an expose

All the fun with none of the clothes: Naked partygoers bare it all for the Orient.
December 1, 2006

By Kelsey Abbruzzese
Orient Staff
http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/

It's nerve-wracking enough to open the door at a party and find a security officer on the other side. Imagine opening that door naked. That's what happened at the first annual naked party in the spring of 2004, when Anna Troyansky '06 answered the door for a female security officer. Consistent with the theme of the party, Troyansky was completely naked.

The security officer simply asked, "Can you turn the music down?"

"I remember peering around the door, reassuring them that we would turn the music down," Troyansky said. "I think they were surprised, as well, to be greeted like that, but I don't think they realized at that point that there were another dozen naked people in the apartment. Who knows what crossed their minds."

At the inaugural naked party, Troyansky was one of only 12 people at the party that could have opened the door and given Security something to look at besides an unregistered keg. Now, the annual Bowdoin naked party thrives, with attendance reaching almost 80 people at the largest party.

"Basically, it started with us waking up one morning and deciding not to wear clothes," said Brendan Mortimer '06, who started Bowdoin's naked party tradition with Vanessa Lind '06. "But, there were pragmatic problems. We couldn't really leave the apartment without clothes on. So, we thought, 'Why don't we just invite our friends over?'"

Mortimer and Lind, who were also inspired by friends who sometimes declared "naked time" in Quinby House, held their party in Mayflower Apartments the same night as Troyansky's underwear party. Since both parties were relatively small and the underwear partygoers were halfway to Mortimer and Lind's theme, they joined the naked party.

"The proponents of the underwear party became the biggest proponents of the naked party," Lind said. "Parties tend to be pretty similar, and people love something novel in a party. It was an infectious thing, and everyone became more comfortable."

Lind explained that while there was a core of naked partygoers, mainly Ultimate Frisbee players, the party grew because of curiosity. There were the first-timers, and there were those who failed to show up but heard the party talked about enough that they were convinced they had to make it to the next one.

At the end of the spring 2006 semester, the entire senior class was invited to Mortimer and Lind's final naked party.

"It added to the anticipation," Mortimer said. "People talked the most when they had gone the first time or when they missed it. It was exciting to see."

At this year's annual naked party on November 11, partygoers, who asked to remain unnamed, agreed with Mortimer and Lind that after the initial five minutes, the nakedness was no longer awkward because everyone disrobed before entering the party and because there is an the acceptance of everyone's nakedness, regardless of body type. As a condition for reporting this story, the Orient agreed not to disclose the location of the party.

"What keeps it from being awkward? The fact that everyone's naked and they don't want people staring at their genitals, so they don't do it to other people," said one.

"When everyone's shown everything, there's no need to be awkward," Mortimer said. "Most people have the realization later in the night that, 'Hey, everyone's naked and it's been like that.'"

"I think a lot of people feel much more comfortable with and confident about their bodies and feel very liberated after attending a naked party," Troyansky added.

The core of naked aficionados is accepting of newcomers and of all body types, stating that everyone embraces the diversity of the bodies walking through the door.

"There's a veteran community of naked people who welcome new participants without scrutinizing," one newcomer said. "They're actually very supportive, but not so supportive it's awkward."

One partygoer's comments didn't even necessarily pertain to nudity: "The most interesting thing about naked parties is that tattoos start showing up so much."

Minus the grinding and clothes present at most college parties, the naked party is just like any other party. There's music, beer pong, and yes, even keg stands.

"Miraculous things happen," one partygoer said of people who are on the fence about attending the naked party. "People get drunk and start thinking, 'What would that be like?'"

When pressed further as to what "that" was, he answered that students' curiosity often leads them to forgo their inhibitions and strip down.

"You weren't curious when you came?" he asked. "You thought we might be cheating?"

A naked party is a hard theme to fake, and one that demands total participation to make it work. One house resident, who wasn't in the main party area, was naked in his room doing schoolwork.

"I'm naked in spirit," he said. "And, well, I'm actually naked."

A disrobing room outside the actual party made it so everyone kept the "no nudity, no entry" motto without freezing in the Maine weather. If it's difficult digging through coats in a crowd, it's hilarious digging through socks, shoes, boxers, and bras with five other people.

For a good portion of the partygoers, it was their first foray into party nudity. But, because of the support and the acceptance of all body types, that foray wasn't as difficult as many initially believed.

"There's always the next group that's convinced they have to go," Lind said, who has done interviews about the growing naked party trend for Canadian nudist magazine "Au Naturel" and "The Daily Free Press," Boston University's independent student newspaper.

If nothing else, according to Lind, "Being naked is a good way to keep Security from coming because sometimes they just don't want to deal with the consequences."

Just keep the music down and the clothes off.

Technorati Tags: Nudism Article, Nude Party

Kaiser Warm Spring, Arizona Update

This report from Camilla and Bill


Dear Sister Brother Soakers,

We're happy to report that Kaiser is alive and well. The pool has been rebuilt and is a good warm weather soak, due to the 95 degree water.

Catastrophic flooding the last two winters have lowered the canyon floor as much as ten feet in places. It's down so far that we walked by the Touchhole Mine on the right, just before the spring, and didn't even see it, because now it's about ten feet up in the air, whereas it used to be near the canyon floor.

The soaking pool at the warm spring now sits about three feet lower than it used to be. The concrete pool and shade structure are gone, but a new stone and sand pool is in place. Cool swimming 150 yards down canyon in Burro Creek is still nice in hot weather.

Nude soaking, hiking, and soaking are always the norm at Keiser. High clearance 4wd ingress can be made to the edge of the canyon only, one quarter mile below the bridge. The canyon is so badly washed out and filled with huge boulders, hiking is the only possible means of travel from there down.

Nude Naturally,
Camilla Van Sickle Bill Pennington

Stock image of Kaiser Hot Springs,
Photographer Unknown

Technorati Tags: Hot Springs

Wanna Buy a Hot Spring?

http://www.californiamountainproperties.com/bigbend.htm FOR SALE: Historic Big Bend Hot Springs in Northern California



140 Acres and nearly a mile of Pit River frontage only a quarter mile from the town of Big Bend. Hundreds of GPM's of 180°F artesian water. Unlimited potential for power, recreation, or other commercial ventures. Currently operated as a limited use campsite. $2.5 million. For more information, contact Al Swan or visit California Mountain Properties



Technorati Tags: Hot Springs

Sespe and Willard Hot Springs closed

According to a commentor on my CommunityWalk Interactive Clothing-Optional Map, Sespe and Willard Hot Springs in central California are closed at least until Spring 2007 due to the Day Fire which burned the area in the summer of 2006.

Technorati Tags: Hot Springs, Advisories

hike NAKED - are you cazy?

I got a very nice email today from the editor of Best Hike, a blog on hiking (duh? obviously). It was an apology from a flippant article he had written entitiled, "hike NAKED - are you crazy?" A followup article apologized and accepted that "Nude Hiking is for Real".



The chance for friendly and honest conversation is always welcome by me. The original question being asked is 'Why hike nude?'. Many people don't undrestand why us Naturists do so and I'm always happy to point out a few things that may . . . just may . . . change opinions.



The question as to ‘Why Hike Nude’ has many answers but the one I like to point out to the genuinely curious is the matter of comfort. We are all aware of the intense amount of heat our bodies generate on a hot summer day with a heavy backpack. The burden of the clothes you wear make hiking as exercise of overheating and sweating.



The human skin is the largest sense organ we have yet we cover up 90 to 95% under a layer of perspiration-trapping, bacteria-inviting moisture. We do not feel the nuances of the kiss of sunlight or the caress of a breeze because of the clothing we obtensively use to protect ourselves.



A friend of mine once issued a challenge to would-be nude hikers. He suggested that you find a nice wilderness area, take off all your clothes and stack them in a neat pile, and then walk in any direction for a hundred yards or so and back . . . that by the time you got back to your clothes you would have had an epiphany and understand why we enjoy so much hiking nude . . . au’ natural and in total immersion with your surroundings. That huge sense organ (the skin) draws in so much more of the environment . . . you! become that much more aware!



Nudist and naturist philosophy goes deeper than that,of course. Nude is not lewd is a common slogan. Steve Gouge, the Naked Rambler, perhaps does more harm than good with his insistence to being naked even under inappropraite circumstances. Most naturists do not abscribe to that sort of ‘in your face’ nudity. When I hike nude I go out of my way not to put people I might encounter into uncomfortable situations. But neither am I ashamed of my nudity . . . there is no sexual component to it. It is just free and natural!!!



The blog article opined that the answer for more profile is to get female (nude) hikers. I’ll clue you in . . . women do hike nude and the numbers are growing. Unfortunately, the very suggestion for more female nude hikers also reveals a sexist component to the statement. The women I have hiked with are well aware of the voyeuristic tendencies of any immature male hikers they may encounter on the trail.



Try it! You’d be surprised how comfortable hiking nude can be. If you need help or more information contact any number of naturist clubs in your local area and you’ll find them the friendliest people around. Or you can contact me with questions . . . I enjoy advocating. An excellent resource is “205 Arguments to Become a Naturist (Nudist)” which can be perused here.

Technorati Tags: Nude Advocacy, Nude Hiking

Naked Nudism: The Web and Nudism, Part 1

http://nakednudism.blogspot.com/2006/12/web-and-nudism-part-1.html

Some really good, thought-provoking ideas about us, as nudists and naturists, promoting our lifestyle on the Internet . . . if for no other reason than to take back the web (and the Google-search listings) from porn sites. A short except:

The problem is that as the web grew... the nudist web didn't. Many of those same sites I discovered 10 years ago are still around, but haven't been updated in years - they're mired with broken links and graphics. Some resorts have among the ugliest, most useless sites on the planet, if they have web pages at all. There are few to none that take advantage of all the tools that are available today: Maps, blogging, RSS, calendaring. Heck - a decent utilization of email remains a rarity. While the number of nudists must number in the millions, there are a grand total of perhaps six nudist blogs, including my own (The exact number is hard to get at, as there are several which simply don't get updated).

Google delivers search results based on a number of factors, the most prominent of which is link-love. Sites with a lot of other sites linking to them get ranked higher than sites with few. Resources like AANR, TNS, resort and club pages aren't present in the top 10 Google sites because there aren't enough other sites out there saying "Look at this great nudist site: AANR". Instead we have sites like BeBareToo, which simply sell nudist porn.

The dangerous consequence of this is that people like me, open to nudism, may never find out about nudism if those first Google searches turn up junk. The nudist community needs to be much more involved on the web if we want to change that; we need to make sure that information about ourselves and our lifestyle is plentiful and easy to find wherever someone might be looking.

I agree with this blog post. The legitimate nudist and naturist organizaions shy from using the Web 2.0 tools of the online world and thus we fail to make outreach to the very generation that might be amenable to our wholesome lifestyle. As the author notes, we also relagate ourselves to backseat while the porn and sex peddlers claim 'ownership' rights to the very words that define nudism and naturism. We are buried in the search engine listings.

Like many, at first I was reticent about starting a naturist blog but I've been doing it for several years now and it has become fun to post about my adventures, about items of nudist interest . . . to use all those great Web 2.0 tools like RSS, blogs, forums, AJAX-enabled widgets, etc. to deliver what I believe is current, appropriate and relevant content. I've taken the attitude that since I enjoy being nude in many places in the physical world, why not share that love in the cyber-world.

Technorati Tags: Advocacy for Nudism

Britney Spears unanimously elected AANR President

Humorous article . . . all in parody, I'm sure . . . I hope . . .

Britney Spears is retiring from show business in order to concentrate on her new career as President of American Association for Nude Recreation, informs BBC news.

Ever since the break-up of her marriage to Kevin Federline also known as K-Fed, Britney Spears is fed up being hounded like a celebrity. She knows she is famous, and insists that she did not mean to attract any attention by simply socializing with top socialites Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and revealing her victoria secrets.

Britney Spears's recent display of her naturist side caught the attention of prominent naturist organisations.
Unanimously she was voted as President without her knowledge, yet accepted the post without hesitation when contacted by the nude recreation society representatives.

"She is glad that she will now be able to be herself without apologizing or explaining for her actions to anyone again", said the representatives to Reuters.

Technorati Tags: Nude Humor, Article

What's New at Nudehiker

Finally managed to find an easy way to include a 'photostream' in the blog after dealing with and becoming frustrated with Flickr . Flickr is a great service, even at the basic free service; enabling easy upload and manipulation of your photos. They also offer a feed called the Flickr Badge, that you can include on your website to stream photos from your account. However, only public, visible to everyone, photos are allowed to be streamed to a badge and that was a problem if your pictures show any kind of nudity at all. According to their terms of service, those pictures have to be kept private . . . and that defeats the entire purpose of sharing.



I checked out several other sites for photo uploading and sharing and the approach is much the same. Seems the photos you upload become available to everyone. Not that I much care if anyone sees me naked . . . I am a naturist, afterall. However, Flickr considers any nudity inappropriate and insists on tagging those images 'private' and unavailable in photostreams. All I want to be able to do is allow the readers of my site an opportunity to share my hikes and my enjoyment of the naturist lifestyle.



Last week I stumbled across SlideRoll and immediately signed up. Their description: "Slideroll™ is a photo slideshow maker that you can use to create slide shows with your photos. Publish your slideshows on the internet, put them on MySpace or YouTube, and e-mail them to friends." You upload your pictures then use the interface to make a video slideshow, complete with transitions. Best of all, you can mark your slideshows as private and yet still embed a private slideshow in your website (or share them as a link in email, if you desire).



There is a paid and free version . . . the free version limiting you to 100 uploaded images and 10 published slideshows. More than adequate for my needs. You can even add music to your slideshow (though I think that's overkill). Since you can mark your slideshows as private, the do not show up in searches nor in directory listings at SlideRoll . . . you need the published link. That's what I did and you can see the results in the sidebar of the blog. Some of the tools I'm experimenting with are Picklish, a Photo Gallery with Video editing tool that creates standalone Flash Movies, and well as the development environment called MDM Zinc. The idea is to create my own photo and video streams that I have complete control over as opposed to the photo hosting websites like Flickr, MySpace or YouTube



I've also begun the process of uploading many of my personal naturist images to Gallery Image on a website that is hosted for me . . . and for which I have absolute control. Literally a couple of thousand images of my hiking adventures, I need to categorize them. Eventually I will post a link to them and offer RSS Feeds.





New, also, are the translate links at the top of the sidebar. I don't know how accurate the translations are but I've noticed quite a few foreign visitors in the site statistics.



Finally, Amazon Recommendations. I gave up of Google Adsense because of the inappropriate ads they served up. Amazon allows me much more control over the offerings that may interest my readers.

If Yer Going to Walk Around Naked, Do It With Confidence!

© 2006 Zits Partnership, Fair Use (Educational)

"Zit's" comic strip from Dec 1st through Dec 6th has Jeremy, the 15-year old star of the strip bravely chancing to go naked around the house when no one is home. Naturally, people immediately start showing up at the front door. In the final panel (Wednesday) a friend walks in unannounced and surprises the naked Jeremy. Jeremy screams and grabs a lamp shade for cover, only to have his unfazed friend remark, "Dude, if you're going to walk around naked, do it with confidence."

Good advice for the trail when we encounter other hikers. Show confidence. We have nothing to be ashamed of.

Yahoo Video: Sitting Naked in Nature (Weir HS, ID)

Pointed out to me on Yahoo Video