Partial Lunar Eclipse
August 28, 2026 @ 12:14 AM
Indiantown, Florida
Camera: Canon R3
Lens: Canon 400mm + 2X
Settings: 1 / 25 sec at f / 5.6

April and I enjoyed sitting outside on the dock last night and early this morning, watching the partial lunar eclipse. The moon is not a normal photographic subject for me, but hey, it was interesting. The severe storms had moved on, so the sky was clear, and we managed to outwit most of the mosquitoes.

I’ve been posting daily photos in Substack Notes. Today’s image, above, was shot about an hour before I hiked up and over Donohue Pass on my Pacific Crest Trail hike in June, but I wanted to know exactly where I was so I could identify the mountain range in the background.

It is a black-and-white landscape. Trees. Granite. Mountains. Clouds.

There is no street sign. No house number. No license plate. No obvious indication of exactly where I was standing.

But the photograph itself has a lot more to say.

A digital photograph isn’t just a collection of pixels. It can also contain a surprisingly detailed record of when and how it was made, what device made it, what software touched it afterward and, sometimes, exactly where the photographer was standing when the shutter was pressed.

I pulled the embedded metadata from this JPEG to see what survived my normal workflow.

It is a remarkable little dossier.

The camera knows exactly when I took it

The photograph was made:

June 26, 2026 at 8:24:16.071 a.m.

Not approximately 8:24.

Not just 8:24:16.

The metadata records the time to a fraction of a second.

It also records the time-zone offset:

UTC -07:00.

Then there is another timestamp.

The photograph was modified on:

August 23, 2026 at 9:48:30 p.m., UTC -04:00.

Think about what that means.

Without knowing anything else about me, someone examining the file can see that the image was photographed in one time zone and processed nearly two months later while the computer was operating in another.

That isn’t particularly dangerous by itself. But privacy problems rarely come from one data point. They come from putting data points together.

It knows what was in my hand

The metadata says:

Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max

It identifies the rear triple-camera system and even the particular lens used:

6.765mm f/1.78

It records that this produced the equivalent field of view of a 24mm lens on a 35mm camera.

It also knows my exposure:

1/1600 second
f/1.8
ISO 80
No flash
Auto exposure
Auto white balance

For a photographer, this information is useful. I’ve looked at EXIF data thousands of times to answer the old question: What did I do to make that picture?

There is nothing sinister about EXIF.

But EXIF was designed to describe photographs, not to protect someone’s privacy.

And today’s cameras are computers.

It knows what I did to the photograph afterward

This is where the file gets even more interesting.

The original photograph was:

IMG_5101.HEIC

The copy I examined is:

IMG_5101.jpg

The metadata records that it was:

converted from image/heic to image/jpeg

It identifies the software I used:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 15.5 on a Macintosh

And Lightroom left behind much of my editing recipe.

Among other things, the file says I:

• increased exposure by 1.30 stops

• reduced highlights by 82

• increased shadows by 83

• increased whites by 8

• lowered blacks by 17

• added a post-crop vignette of -23

• converted the photograph to grayscale

It even contains information about Lightroom masks, including one named:

Vegetation

So the JPEG doesn’t merely describe what my camera did. It describes a meaningful part of what I did to the photograph later.

For most people that isn’t a privacy issue. For a photographer, though, it is fascinating. An exported photograph can carry pieces of your digital darkroom around with it.

Then there is GPS

This is the part everyone should understand. Modern phones can record geographic coordinates with photographs when location services are enabled. That can turn a picture into something very different.

Instead of:

“Here’s a picture of my dog.”

the file may effectively say:

“Here’s a picture of my dog, taken at 4:37 p.m. at these geographic coordinates.”

Those coordinates could be your house.

Your child’s school.

Your boat.

Your campsite.

A place you visit every Tuesday morning.

A secluded fishing spot.

Or someplace you very deliberately did not identify in the caption.

Interestingly, this particular JPEG does not contain the actual latitude and longitude coordinates.

The metadata I extracted contains:

GPS Latitude Ref: North
GPS Longitude Ref: West

But the numerical latitude and longitude values themselves aren’t there. So I can’t truthfully say that someone could download this particular JPEG and discover exactly where I was standing from its GPS metadata.

That’s an important distinction.

The original HEIC file, however, does contain the coordinates. I apparently excluded that information somewhere in my Lightroom/export workflow.

This image was made at:

37°44’56.3”N, 119°13’10.9”W

How did I find that out?

My iPhone saves my photos to Apple Photos, and I also have Google Photos automatically backing them up. The original HEIC contains the GPS coordinates. As soon as I had a signal and Google Photos backed up that original image, Google had a copy associated with that location.

Removing the coordinates later when I exported a JPEG from Lightroom didn’t undo that.

The location had already left my phone.

That is probably the most important privacy lesson in this entire exercise.

If you don’t want viewers—or the services you upload your photographs to—to know where you are or where you were when you took a photo, location data is the metadata I would worry about first.

Most of this isn’t dangerous

It’s easy to turn a discussion like this into technological paranoia. That isn’t my point.

Nobody is going to ruin my life because they discovered that I photographed this scene at ISO 80. The ICC color profile describing sRGB is not a privacy crisis. Neither is knowing that the JPEG is 2,048 × 1,536 pixels and about 1.8 MB.

Most metadata is mundane technical information necessary or useful for photography, color management, editing and publishing. The interesting part is how much information can accumulate in one seemingly simple file.

The useful privacy question isn’t:

“Does my photograph contain metadata?”

Almost certainly it does.

The better question is:

“Does it contain metadata I would rather not give to someone else?”

I use the free tool ExifInfo.org to see what information is embedded in image files. You can upload one of your own photographs and see what travels with it.

There is an obvious privacy irony here: you’re uploading the photograph to another website to inspect its privacy-sensitive metadata. ExifInfo says it deletes the original image after processing and deletes the resulting thumbnail and metadata later. If the photograph itself is sensitive, use a metadata viewer that works locally on your own computer instead.

Mobile-phone users should pay particular attention

A dedicated camera usually knows a great deal about the photograph.

A phone potentially knows considerably more.

Your phone is simultaneously a camera, GPS receiver, computer, clock, communications device and personal identity device.

When you take a photograph, some combination of that information can become associated with the image.

Then we casually upload photographs to websites, social networks, forums, dating apps, marketplaces, cloud services and messaging systems.

Sometimes a service removes metadata from the copy other people see.

Sometimes an application recompresses or rebuilds the image and much of the metadata disappears.

Sometimes metadata survives.

And there is another distinction worth remembering:

A website stripping metadata from the image it eventually shows the public is not the same thing as never uploading that metadata in the first place.

If you send the original file, the service has to receive that file before it can create a stripped or resized version.

That doesn’t mean every service keeps your original forever. It means I would not build my privacy strategy around assuming that somebody else will clean the file for me.

If you use an iPhone, you can check this yourself. Open a photograph in Photos and swipe up or tap the Info button. If the photograph contains location information, you’ll see it on a map.

When sharing a photograph from an iPhone, you can also tap Options at the top of the Share sheet and turn Location off before sending it.

But again, that only affects what you are sharing at that moment.

If the original photograph has already been automatically uploaded somewhere else, removing the location from a later copy doesn’t retrieve the information you already sent.

There is also information in the pixels

Removing metadata isn’t magic.

Look again at the photograph.

A person familiar with the landscape might recognize the mountains.

A photograph from your neighborhood might contain a street sign. A reflection in a window. A house number. A school logo. A distinctive building.

Computer vision makes extracting those clues increasingly easy.

Metadata is only one layer of information.

The photograph itself is another.

My new rule: publish a copy, not the original

For photographs where privacy matters, the safest approach is simple:

Keep the original. Publish a deliberately prepared copy.

Before putting an image online, particularly one made with a phone, think about whether you want to retain:

Location information.
Exact capture time.
Device information.
Creator information.
Editing history.
File identifiers.

For most landscape photography, I don’t particularly care if you know what lens I used.

I might very much care whether the file tells you exactly where I was standing.

The stakes become considerably higher when photographs involve children, homes, travel, valuable possessions or locations you don’t want publicly identified.

And this is one of those wonderfully strange things about digital photography:

We spend enormous amounts of time looking at what is inside the frame.

Sometimes it’s worth looking at everything traveling around with the frame, too.

What’s embedded in your images?

Give ExifInfo.org a try with one or two of your own photos. Then come back and tell me in the comments what surprised you—or whether you found anything you didn’t realize you were sharing.

It’s Sunday, August 16th, 2026. Earlier today I got a text message along these lines from a friend… I hope you’re not going to the Bahamas anytime soon.

The message relayed that the St. Lucie canal lock control building was hit by lightning and the canal between Avemar and the ocean was closed. The good news is that it’s still hurricane season here and we didn’t have plans to leave.

My problem is that I can’t get news reports with further details about what happened. The two local news sites I found that reported on the outage have subscription pay walls and I am not a subscriber. I can’t subscribe to every site when there is a story I want to read. I do subscribe to the NY Times but they aren’t covering south Florida in this granularity. Aggregation news sites I use like Ground News and Newser didn’t either.

Like I said, Avemar is fine and wasn’t leaving anyway.

I’m Not Done Complaining Yet

A nuclear power plant reactor 27 miles from me was shut down a couple of days ago. I can find vague news coverage with reporting about that shutdown but the depth of the information is from press statements from government and corporate PR sources.

The St. Lucie Nuclear Power plant had a situation last Friday where three control rods that regulate nuclear activity in one of the reactors at the plant lowered unexpectedly into the reactor core kicking off a string of events where the workers began procedures to make sure the plant was safe and shut down the reactor.

According to the company, having three control rods lower unexpectedly into a reactor core while running at full power is no cause for public concern. Paraphrasing here but they essentially were telling us, we weren’t in danger and it’s fixed now and there is nothing more to see here. That may have been true but I was taught to question authority and from the reports I read, no independent journalist or outside investigator confirmed that during the event everything was fine and that now it’s back to normal. Yes, the company says so and yes, the NRC received the required notification and classified the event as a non-emergency.

My problem is that it seems that local news stations repeated what the company said without actually committing any journalism, and then, according to their own sites, AI translated that broadcast into a print story for their websites.

Welcome to Journalism 2026

My very first thought when I learned about this would have made me ask…

“Given current attacks on critical US infrastructure, have you ruled out a cyber attack?”

Then I’d have asked: “What happened? Three control rods aren’t supposed to unexpectedly insert into the reactor core while the plant is running at full power.”

I’d Also Like to Know…

How many workers were on duty? How soon did they know? Was it ever unsafe? How soon did the workers notify their superiors? How soon did the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hear about the problem? What is the worst thing that could have happened? Are these workers heroes? Is there an ongoing investigation? If so, when will the public learn more? Has this ever happened before? WHAT??? It happened in December 2024? Three rods again? Were they the same three rods? What was the cause of the problem then? Do you know enough to know if the problem is the same problem? Why does this keep happening? Were the circumstances similar? What component, system, maintenance history, or common-mode failure could connect them? What did FPL conclude after the first event? What corrective action was taken? Did that corrective action fail? What has the NRC independently verified rather than accepted from the licensee? And has deliberate interference—including cyber causes—actually been investigated rather than simply regarded as unlikely?

The point of my blog post isn’t really about this accident but the state of journalism where not one of those questions above appears to have been asked by a journalist. The public consumes far less local news because there aren’t very many local journalists out on the street asking for answers to questions that would never appear voluntarily in corporate press releases.

The Bottom Line

In the past, if a South Florida nuclear power plant had an accidental shutdown, that news would have been an above-the-fold story. Closing the St. Lucie Canal would have at least made a local news jump page.

In a few days I’ll be heading to Campo, California to start the Pacific Crest Trail, beginning a long walk from the Mexico to Canada.

I’ll be joined again for this hike by my niece, “Sparky,” who I hiked with in 2023 on the Appalachian Trail.

Pace Setter, now Mrs. Blevins, is going to be supporting and visiting me a few times as I head northbound, but she has adventures in her plans for this summer as well.

As you may know, April is a long-time reading and writing specialist. Her focus for the past few years has been tutoring children with dyslexia.

Last fall, she was invited to work as a reading coach this summer Camp Spring Creek in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. The camp is highly regarded for using the Orton-Gillingman method of instruction, April’s specialty!

At camp, she’ll have her own private suite, complete with her own office for one-on-one tutoring sessions. Students stay for six weeks so the camp has a ton of outdoor activities – including BACKPACKING and HIKING! April is thrilled at the mix of two of her passions in one job.

When April decided to take the position, she suggested that since she would be gone this summer that I should thru-hike the PCT. We worked out the details to hurricane-proof our home, Avemar, and now we have a plan! We’ll both be in the mountains and hiking!

I am not going to post full YouTube videos on this hike like we did on the AT last year but I do plan on recording a short YouTube Short ever day. I will also keep sharing the “One Year Ago Today” notes from the 2025 Appalachian Trail thru-hike.

Finally, both for this article and because I won’t be staring at a computer screen programming an app anymore, the Hiker Trash app is ready for the Apple Store for iPhones and the Google Play store for Android!

If you are a through hiker on long trails or would like to log your day-hikes, join the tramily and download the app. If you just want to follow along as I log my daily miles for this 2600 mile through-hike, click here to see my progress in your web browser.

Happy Trails!

Uncle Bill

It’s Car Photography Week. To see more car photos visit:
https://randomcapture.substack.com/p/carweek

For years, we both had show alerts set for Jon Batiste and Trombone Shorty.

April’s Jon Batiste alert hit first and she bought us tickets as a Valentine’s Day present. They were performing TOGETHER!

Last night at The Hangar, the stars finally aligned. Seeing them headline the 2026 Montreux Jazz Festival in Coconut Grove was spiritual.

I’ve been shooting concerts since Crosby, Stills & Nash–yes, the concert where Neil Young surprised everyone with the encore performance–at The Mothership in '86.

This shot from my iPhone last night is easily in my Top 5 concert shots from the past 39 years.

If you aren't listening to these two, you’re missing out!

One year ago today—February 13, 2025—April and I passed under the stone arch at Georgia’s Amicalola Falls State Park. It was the first step of a seven-month Appalachian Trail thru-hike that would eventually lead us to the summit of Mt. Katahdin in Maine.

Why did we start in February when most hikers wait until late March or April? Well, April (later known as “Pace Setter” on the trail) grew up in southern Florida and had never seen snow. She suggested February, and since we were already looking at a mid-month start, I suggested Valentine’s Day.

The day before our official start, we checked in at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy office, registered our thru-hike, and posed for the classic photo under the arch. After a short hike up the mountain past the famous falls, we spent the night at the park’s lodge. The next morning, we hiked to “Mile 0” atop Springer Mountain to officially begin our journey northward.

Throughout the trek, we posted YouTube videos whenever we could. We called it the “AT Comedy Channel,” and we’ve been told they’re pretty entertaining—but I’ll let you judge that for yourself.

Tomorrow, exactly one year since we first stepped foot on the AT, I’ll begin posting “One Year Ago Today” photos in the Notes section of this site. I’m actually preparing for a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike in April 2026, but I plan to edit and upload these 2025 AT photos daily as internet access allows.

As for April’s wish for a snowy February start? It worked out. Oh, it worked out! She saw snow—lots and lots of snow.

April and I completed our 2,000+ mile Appalachian Trail thru-hike on September 24, 2025. After the trek was done, we returned to our sailing home, Avemar, in Florida, where we’re already planning our next adventures.

We’re still hiking and walking almost daily. The photo above was taken this evening on a walk through the scrub—deep sandy trails in Seabranch Preserve State Park—near where we’ve been moored through the holidays.

Since we’ve returned, April has been rebuilding her tutoring company, Your Next Chapter Tutoring, where she remotely teaches students with dyslexia and other reading challenges, helps students with scholarship applications, and supports language arts and literature coursework.

You may remember from earlier posts that April was in the classroom for 33 years, teaching across every grade level. She retired the day she moved aboard Avemar—back in May 2024—on her last day of school.

I know I wrote about it at the time. She left her classroom that day, locked the door, drove to the boat, and we left Port Salerno, Florida. That evening we were already offshore in the Gulf Stream, sailing north toward Rhode Island.

April specializes in helping kids with dyslexia learn to read and write and perform at grade level. She’s been using research-based methods in her private tutoring work for ten years, and she’s now training as an Orton-Gillingham Associate-in-Training. The Orton-Gillingham approach is widely considered the gold standard for teaching struggling readers. Her final assessments are at a summer camp in the mountains of North Carolina in summer 2026, where she’ll be teaching and hiking with her students.

And there’s more: April is also working part-time at Western Governors University in a role where she evaluates student teachers during their in-classroom practicums before graduation. In other words, she helps determine when they’re ready to teach.

With her hands full this year—and with the goal of getting back to 100% remote work so we can keep exploring the world on Avemar—I’ve got plans to do something new as well.

On April 13, I’ll be starting a NOBO hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s a 2,600+ mile trail from Mexico to Canada through the deserts and mountains of California, then north through Oregon and Washington to the Canadian border. We’ve got a map on the wall, and we’re planning the towns along the way where April can come hike a bit and visit during breaks.

I also wanted to note that I’ll be posting more on Substack—sharing briefs and photos as I hike the PCT this year—and then as we prep the boat with two major projects this fall so we can begin cruising full-time in early 2027.

During 2025, I couldn’t post much from the trail beyond the occasional link to our YouTube videos. Now that we’re back and settled in, I’m going to remove the posts that are only a YouTube embed to clean up the homepage.

Our 134+ Appalachian Trail YouTube videos can be found in a single playlist here:

If you’ve been following along on YouTube, you’ll notice the videos are still catching up—we’re currently posting the New Jersey section even though we finished the trail on September 24, 2025. I have over 13,000 photos and unedited video from the remainder of the hike, and I’ll keep adding episodes to the playlist incrementally until the full journey is documented.

I’m mostly posting so we have the entire hike preserved, but I’m also thrilled that people have enjoyed following along. I’m a bit sad we couldn’t post videos in real time, but on-trail connectivity was spotty at best—and once I got behind, it was hard to keep the timeline synced with our progress. Either way, I’m going to post all of the videos from the trail.

My goal for 2026 is to post at least one Substack “Note” per day. It may be only a photo. It may be a video. It may be a short note about the day.

You’ll find “Notes” in the top menu bar of this site. I’ll do my best to share at least one update per day for the entire PCT hike here on Substack.

I did purchase a ZOLEO satellite communicator for this hike, which I did not have on the Appalachian Trail. If I can’t get a post to upload, I’ll send it to April to schedule for me so we can keep a steady flow of updates.

I hope all of you are well—and for those in the Southeast and Northeast right now, I hope you stay safe, fed, and warm as this storm rolls through over the weekend!

Thank you for watching the first video of our adventures as we through hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. We took video and photos for the entire hike and if you want to follow along, they are all posted on our YouTube channel and you can click here to jump to that playlist.

While preparing to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail this year, I’ve been refining how I want to manage my photo workflow and file storage on my iPhone and Fuji camera on the roughly 2,200-mile trip.

The Photographer’s Playbook includes 307 photography ideas, lesson plans, and assignments contributed for publication by photography teachers.

I picked an assignment to complete on a 2-mile walk from the boat to retrieve my mail this morning.

I shot “from the hip” with my Fuji X100VI every 60 seconds. Here are a few of the 57 unedited images.

Over the past few weeks, I've been trying to figure out what to do with my "these are too big for a backpack" cameras while I'm thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail this year.

This morning, I decided to let someone enjoy these two camera bodies instead of having them sit in a closet for seven months this year.

Canon R3 body, two batteries, and a charger. $3200

This Canon R3 is the best camera I've ever used. It's in perfect working condition. The clairvoyant mind-controlled* autofocus is so good I’m not even sure how it works. It just works. Perfectly. If you are into shooting sports, wildlife, or any subject where very fast and precise autofocus is needed, this is the camera for you. The continuous eye-tracking when photographing animals is insane. This camera is amazing. SN: 12031000172 Shutter count: 38,000

Canon RP body, extended grip, two batteries, and a charger. $600

My Canon RP was my first mirrorless camera. In fact, I’ve owned two of them in the past. I love this little camera! I’ve owned several Canon mirrorless cameras since I purchased this RP, but I kept this one because it’s so small and made for a great backup body if something ever happened to one of the others. It’s a perfect entry-level camera for beginners who want to shoot mirrorless but have the option to control every setting. It’s a great street photography body, too. This RP reminds me of my very first camera, the Pentax K1000, but one with a modern-day brain. This body includes an extended base to give those with larger hands more surface to grip. It was very lightly used and stored in my camera bag. It looks great and operates perfectly. SN: 52022001437 Shutter count: 15,000

I'm firm on the prices. Please share with your photo geek friends!

*Hat tip to my friend Ken Rockwell for that description of the R3 autofocus. Please check out his site for extensive reviews of both of the cameras listed here. In fact, visit KenRockwell.com for everything you want to know about any camera!

YOU are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives because of a thing called fascism. Our country was attacked by the fascist aggressor, Japan. The "Sons of Heaven" were promptly joined by their fascist partners of Germany and Italy.

"Fascism" is a word that's been used a great deal these last few years. We come across it in our newspapers, we hear it in our newsreels, it comes up in our bull sessions. We've heard about the cruelties of fascism, its terror, its conquest of country after country. We've heard of its concentration camps—like Dachau in Germany and its torture chambers—like Maidanek in Poland. We've heard of its planned mass murder of whole peoples—which scholars call "genocide."

Some of the things that have been done to people by fascists seem too horrible to believe, especially to Americans who believe in "live and let live." Hardboiled American correspondents, formerly skeptical, now believe because they have seen.

We Americans have been fighting fascists for more than three years. When Cecil Brown, one of the leading war correspondents, came back from the battle fronts, he went on a trip that took him into big cities and small towns all over America. He talked and listened to all kinds of people. He found that most Americans are vague about just what fascism really means. He found few Americans who were confident they would recognize a fascist if they saw one.

And are we in uniform any more certain what fascism is—where it came from—what made it strong? Do we know how fascism leads men to do the things done to people at Maidanek? Do we know how it leads them to attack helpless nations? Are Maidaneks and war inevitable results of fascism? Do all fascists speak only German, Italian or Japanese—or do some of them speak our language? Will military victory in this War automatically kill fascism? Or could fascism rise in the United States after it's been crushed abroad? What can we do to prevent it?

Perhaps we ought to get to know the answers. If we don't understand fascism and recognize fascism when we see it, it might crop up again—under another label—and cause another war.

Fascism is a way to run a country—it's the way Italy was run, and the way Germany and Japan are run. Fascism is the precise opposite of democracy. The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.

Fascism is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state. Why? The democratic way of life interferes with their methods and desires for: (1) conducting business; (2) living with their fellow-men; (3) having the final say in matters concerning others, as well as themselves. The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he's told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law. They make their own rules and change them when they choose. If you don't like it, it's "T.S."

They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of "blood" and "race," by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and "realistic" to be pitiless and violent.

How It Starts

Fascism came to power in Germany, Italy, and Japan at a time of social and economic unrest. A small group of men, supported in secret by powerful financial and military interests, convinced enough insecure people that fascism would give them the things they wanted.

They did so partly by clever propaganda and deception. They promised the people that fascism would bring them great power and prosperity. The details differed from country to country but the general pattern was the same. The Japanese spoke of a "greater Asia co-prosperity sphere." Mussolini mouthed humanitarian ideals and promised a re-born Roman empire. Hitler and his associates adopted the name of National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) and announced objectives that attracted many German people. The official title of the Nazi party was deliberately worded for its propaganda value, appealing to "nationalists," "socialists," "workers," and all others who might be favorably influenced by these labels. At the very time that the fascists proclaimed that their party was the party of the "average citizen," they were in the pay of certain big industrialists and financiers who wanted to run the people with an iron hand.

The fascists promised everything to everyone: They would make the poor rich and the rich richer. To the farmers, the fascists promised land through elimination of large estates. To the workers they promised elimination of unemployment—jobs for all at high wages. To the small business men they promised more customers and profits through the elimination of large business enterprises. To big business men and the industrialists they secretly promised greater security and profits through the elimination of small business competitors and trade unions and the crushing of socialists and communists. To the whole nation they promised glory and wealth by conquest. They asserted it was their right, as a "superior people," to rule the world.

As soon as these methods had won them enough of a following to form their Storm Troops, the fascists began using force to stifle and wipe out any opposition. Those who saw through the false front of fascism and opposed them were beaten, tortured, and killed.

The fascists knew that all believers in democracy were their enemies. They knew that the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few. So they fought democracy in all its phases. At the same time that they proclaimed the "superiority" of the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, they proclaimed also that the German, the Italian, the Japanese peoples were really unfit to rule themselves. It became "Heil Hitler" in Germany, and "Believe, obey, fight" in Italy. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled against each other.

How It Works

It was easy enough for the fascists to promise all things to all people before they were in power. Once they were actually in power, they could not, of course, keep their contradictory promises. They had intended in advance to break some, and they did break those they had made to the middle classes, the workers, and the farmers.

As soon as the fascists were in control of the government, the torturings and the killings were no longer the unlawful acts of a political party and its hoodlum gangs. They became official government policy. Among the first victims of this official policy were those farmers, workers, and small business men who had believed the promises that had been made to them and who complained that they had been "sucked in." Some simply vanished. Often they came home to their families by return mail in little jars of ashes.

The concentration camps and graves filled with the opponents of fascism. Out went equality before the law, free elections and free political parties, independent trade unions and independent schools, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and, in time, freedom of religion.

Pastor Niemoeller was thrown into a concentration camp in Germany; Cardinal Innitzer was "stoned," and Catholic priests were imprisoned. Jews were murdered in cold blood and synagogues destroyed. Christian ministers were ousted from Japan.

The fascists "solved" unemployment by converting their nations into giant war machines. The unemployed were either conscripted into the army or organized in labor battalions and put to work in war plants.

Deprived of their unions, the working people could be driven to work longer and harder for less and less money, so that those who subsidized and ran fascism could grow richer. By wiping out all internal competition—especially the small and medium sized business firms—profits were increased still higher for the handful on top. In some cases, the fascists then gobbled control of the top corporations. The living standards of the masses of the people declined, of course. As they earned less and less, they were able to buy less and less of the goods they produced.

Every last detail of life was regulated, with the death penalty often imposed for slight violations. One unhappy victim complained: "Fascism is a regime under which everything not prohibited is compulsory."

Once the fascists were in control of the government, not even the gang on top was safe from its own members. There would be more loot and power per fascist leader if some fascist leaders were eliminated. Some of the party "big-shots" and some of those who had helped them take over were therefore "purged." Many would-be partners in the dictatorship, including some industrialists, wound up in jail, in exile, or dead.

Fascism = War?

We have seen that the people of a fascist state earn less and less, and so are able to buy less and less of the goods they produce with their slave labor. This means that eventually the fascist leaders either have to abandon the system, or look abroad for new markets to dispose of the mounting surplus of goods that cannot be sold at home.

The fascists do not choose to abandon their system and give up their graft, and so they are forced to acquire foreign markets and to eliminate competing nations. Due to their slave labor, the fascists are able to undersell the free nations of the world. The free nations must either resort to fascism, so that with slave labor they can meet the cut-throat prices of the fascist nations, or they must erect trade barriers to keep out the ruthless fascist competition. (See Douglas Miller: You Can't Do Business With Hitler!) In either case, the fascist nation still wants the markets, and it goes after them with the same methods used in domestic affairs—intimidation, terror, and force. In foreign affairs, force means war.

The war machine is ready, and waiting for duty. To justify the building of the war machine as the "solution" to unemployment, the fascists nurture a lust for war, a desire for conquest. "Live dangerously," said Mussolini. "Man has become great through perpetual strife," screamed Hitler. A Nazi slogan was "Guns instead of butter." The hungry people were told they would get butter and other riches in due time—by way of conquest.

The press, radio, movies, stage—all were put to the task of glorifying war. The school system, from kindergarten to university, justified and exalted tyranny of the strong over the weak. "The school is the preparation for the Army," said the Nazi Minister of Education.

The people were taught that their race was "superior." Since this concept of "superior" and "inferior" race is completely contrary to the findings of all science, science has to be as carefully controlled and perverted as the schools. No scientist in Germany could safely deny it when Hitler told the Germans that they were a "Master Race" entitled to the land and possessions of lesser folk. The Italians were told in fake "scientific" terms that Latins were born to rule. The Japanese were taught that as "Sons of Heaven" it was both their right and their duty to conquer and rule the world.

Once their people were sold on the "master race" idea, it was easy for the fascists to make them feel that other people were of no more consequence than vermin. We think nothing of killing a cockroach. They were encouraged to think nothing of killing unarmed and defenseless men, women, and children. Many even got to enjoy it. Hence Rotterdam, Lidice, Maidanek.

By all these devices, fascism creates and then is driven by forces that cannot be stopped at will. Fascism cannot stand still. Its internal and external policies are rooted in aggression. It must expand or explode. It must conquer or perish. Every measure taken by fascism—its entire economic, social, political, and military set-up—means eventual war. The war comes when intimidation and terror fail as instruments of fascist foreign policy. The war comes when other nations finally refuse further to appease the insatiable hunger of fascism for markets, military glory, and world domination.

Can It Happen Here?

Some Americans would give an emphatic "No" to the question "Can fascism come to America after it has been defeated abroad?" They would say that Americans are too smart, that they are sold on the democratic way of life, that they wouldn't permit any group to put fascism over in America. Fascism, some might say, is something peculiar that you find only among people who like swastikas, who like to listen to speeches from balconies in Rome, or who like to think that their emperor is god. Their reaction might be that it is something "foreign" that Americans would recognize in a minute, like the goose-step. They might feel that we'd laugh it out of existence in a hurry.

In a good many European nations, the people felt the same way some of us do: that fascism was foreign to them and could never become a power in their land. They found, however, that fascist-minded people within their borders, especially with aid from the outside, could seize power. The Germans, of course, made efficient use of fascist-minded traitors whom we have come to know generally as "the fifth column."

In France, which was considered a leading democracy of Europe, the betrayal was spearheaded by a powerful clique of native "100 percent French" fascists. Norway had its Quisling who was as "pure-blooded" a Norwegian as Laval was a "pure-blooded" Frenchman. The Netherlands' Musserts were "100 percent Dutch," Belgium's Degrelles "100 percent Belgian," and Britain's Mosleys "100 percent British." The United States also has its native fascists who say that they are "100 percent American." There were native fascists in the Philippines, in Thailand (Siam), in China, in Burma, in many other countries—all waiting to become the willing puppets of the Axis. Not one of these fascists is a "foreigner" who had to be imported from Germany, or Japan, or Italy.

Most of the people in America like to be good neighbors. But, at various times and places in our history, we have had sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which experience has shown can be properly identified as "fascist."

Can we afford to brush them off as mere crackpots? We once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.

In January 1944, 30 Americans, many of them native born, were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on charges of conspiring with "the Nazi party to accomplish the objectives of said Nazi party in the United States." These objectives, according to the indictment, included undermining and impairing "the loyalty and morale of the military and naval forces of the United States." The case ended in a mistrial caused by the death of the presiding judge. The question of re-indictment is still under consideration.

Whenever free governments anywhere fail to solve their basic economic and social problems, there is always the danger that a native brand of fascism will arise to exploit the situation and the people.

Can We Spot It?

An American fascist seeking power would not proclaim that he is a fascist. Fascism always camouflages its plans and purposes. Hitler made demagogic appeals to all groups and swore: "Neither I nor anybody in the National Socialist Party advocates proceeding by anything but Constitutional methods."

Any fascist attempt to gain power in America would not use the exact Hitler pattern. It would work under the guise of "super-patriotism" and "super-Americanism." Fascist leaders are neither stupid nor naive. They know that they must hand out a line that "sells." Huey Long is said to have remarked that if fascism came to America, it would be on a program of "Americanism."

Fascists in America may differ slightly from fascists in other countries, but there are a number of attitudes and practices that they have in common. Following are three. Every person who has one of them is not necessarily a fascist. But he is in a mental state that lends itself to the acceptance of fascist aims.

1. Pitting of religious, racial, and economic groups against one another in order to break down national unity is a device of the "divide and conquer" technique used by Hitler to gain power in Germany and in other countries. With slight variations, to suit local conditions, fascists everywhere have used this Hitler method. In many countries, anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews) is a dominant device of fascism. In the United States, native fascists have often been anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-Labor, anti-foreign-born. In South America, the native fascists use the same scapegoats except that they substitute anti-Protestantism for anti-Catholicism.
   
   Interwoven with the "master race" theory of fascism is a well-planned "hate campaign" against minority races, religions, and other groups. To suit their particular needs and aims, fascists will use any one or a combination of such groups as a convenient scapegoat.

2. Fascism cannot tolerate such religious and ethical concepts as the "brotherhood of man." Fascists deny the need for international cooperation. These ideas contradict the fascist theory of the "master race." The brotherhood of man implies that all people—regardless of color, race, creed, or nationality —have rights. International cooperation, as expressed in the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, runs counter to the fascist program of war and world domination.
   
   In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations. Right now our native fascists are spreading anti-British, anti-Soviet, anti-French, and anti-United Nations propaganda. They know that allied unity now foretells the certain defeat of fascism abroad. They know that post-war allied unity means world peace and security. They realize that fascism cannot thrive or grow under these conditions.

3. It is accurate to call a member of a communist party a "communist." For short, he is often called a "Red." Indiscriminate pinning of the label "Red" on people and proposals which one opposes is a common political device. It is a favorite trick of native as well as foreign fascists.
   
   Many fascists make the spurious claim that the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as "communist" everyone who refuses to support them. By attacking our free enterprise, capitalist democracy and by denying the effectiveness of our way of life they hope to trap many people.
   
   Hitler insisted that only fascism could save Europe and the world from the "communist menace." There were many people inside and outside Germany and Italy who welcomed and supported Hitler and Mussolini because they believed fascism was the only safeguard against communism. The "Red bogey" was a convincing enough argument to help Hitler take and maintain power. The Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, whose aggressions plunged the world into global war, was called the "Anti-Comintern Axis." It was proclaimed by Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito as a "bulwark against communism."

Learning to identify native fascists and to detect their techniques is not easy. They plan it that way. But it is vitally important to learn to spot them, even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.

How To Stop It

The only way to prevent fascism from getting a hold in America is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace security.

Lots of things can happen inside of people when they are unemployed or hungry. They become frightened, angry, desperate, confused. Many, in their misery, seek to find somebody to blame. They look for a scapegoat as a way out. Fascism is always ready to provide one. In its bid for power, it is ready to drive wedges that will disunite the people and weaken the nation. It supplies the scapegoat—Catholics, Jews, Negroes, labor unions, big business—any group upon which the insecure and unemployed can be brought to pin the blame for their misfortune.

We all know that many serious problems will face us when the War is over. If there is a period of economic stress it will create tensions among our people, including us as returning veterans. The resentment may be directed against minorities—especially if undemocratic organizations with power and money can direct our emotions and thinking along these lines.

The fascist doctrine of hate fulfills a triple mission. By creating disunity—it weakens democracy. By getting men to hate rather than to think—it prevents men from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem. By fake promises of jobs and security, fascism then tries to lure men to its program as the way out of insecurity. Only by democratically solving the economic problems of our day can there be any certainty that fascism won't happen here. That is our job as citizens.

Citizenship in a democracy is more than a ballot dropped in a box on Election Day. It's a 365-days-a-year job requiring the active participation and best judgment of every citizen in the affairs of his community, his nation, and his country's relations with the world.

Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance. It makes headway when people are apathetic or cynical about their government—when they think of it as something far removed from them and beyond their personal concern. The erection of a traffic light on your block is important to your safety and the safety of your children. The erection of a world organization to safeguard peace and world security is just as important to our personal security. Both must be the concern of every citizen.

Freedom, like peace and security, cannot be maintained in isolation. It involves being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.

What is true of America is true of the world. The germ of fascism cannot be quarantined in a Munich Brown House or a balcony in Rome. If we want to make certain that fascism does not come to America, we must make certain that it does not thrive anywhere in the world.

SOURCE: Army Times - March 24, 1945 (.pdf)

April and I drove to South Carolina on December 26th and hiked The Foothills Trail. This adventure was our last gear shakedown hike before we head northbound for 2200 miles on the Appalachian Trail in February.

Here is the video:

April started writing about her 2025 Appalachian Trail thru-hike on The Trek. Here’s her first post: It’s Time For A Shake Down! Am I ready?

Follow the journey by subscribing to her profile linked to the post.

Congratulations !

I once presented a research paper that discussed how news consumption patterns were rapidly changing due to several factors, none more than the profit-driven focus of traditional news media, fueled by extensive budget cuts to newsroom staff, primarily reducing the number of reporters who practiced real journalism.

The explosion of independent news publishers online was beginning.

The paper was titled: “New News Systems.”

I covered a wide range of what was then considered to be the traditional media types like newspapers, television, and radio and how changes at that time were about to drastically change those business models and ultimately lead to their demise as trusted sources of news.

Here we are in December of 2024, and the fastest-growing news source in the world, the Meidas Touch Network, was granted an interview in the White House with President Joe Biden. On YouTube alone, Meidas Touch currently has 3.36 million subscribers, and the contributors to their network publish videos and podcasts on many other online platforms, including Meidas+ here on Substack.

Prior to the interview being posted, the Biden White House held a roundtable discussion with nine other new news outlets where they talked about future of media. You will probably see interviews from some of the other attendees posted online over the next few weeks.

As we search for the truth over the next four years, don’t be surprised if you find it on one of these new news systems I wrote about over 14 years ago.

Today, I realized anyone can view my posts and notes on the same page by visiting my “Bill Blevins” profile. As I’ve mentioned in previous ‘long form’ posts, write short Notes daily, often multiple times a day. Bookmark that link if you want to check in and see Avemar’s location, see photos from where we’ve been, or read longer form posts when I have time to write.

Today, I uploaded a short video from the Beaufort to Charleston, SC leg of the journey.

I posted a really neat photo of a USCG helicopter practicing lowering a basket to a moving boat in Charleston harbor last night too.

Shortly I’m going to post a note of our current anchorage.

I’m not sure exactly where we are. Well, I know the latitude and longitude (32º 39.648’ N, 80º 16.527’ W), and Avemar is half-way between the Toogoodoo Oyster Co. and the Bears Bluff National Fish Hatchery.

We’re in Meggett, SC about 30 miles south of Charleston, SC.

Helpful.

It was a very early morning here aboard. Because it was an early morning the bridge next to where we anchored was 5 minutes away and didn’t open until 0930 today, it was a short trip!

Here is the current situation:

Below, I’ve pasted today’s logbook entry from my Sea People profile. You can visit that link to see the time and mileage, more photos and the trip log map.

Icy Double You - Day 17 Southbound

Today was a very long short day.

We covered about 25 miles, and I dropped the hook at 1430. I woke April at 0415 this morning to climb out of the V-berth. The wind didn’t feel right, and the waves didn’t sound or feel right.

Both @DamageControlSailing and Avemar had chosen a spot to anchor in Charleston on Wednesday night to avoid as much of the SW wind on Thursday as possible. I knew that after that storm on Thursday passed us, the shift would be from the North, but I didn’t know when that would happen. Well, it happened around 0400 this morning.

The depth sounder showed that Avemar was in 11 feet and the anchor was in 22 feet of water, but the chart plotter showed the stern sitting at 5.

I started the engine, made coffee, dressed, drank coffee, went up, and pulled the anchor after putting on even more clothes and two pairs of gloves!

The wind chill was 31º F.

Avemar motored up the Ashley River and anchored at the entrance to the ICW to wait for the 0930 opening of the Wappoo Creek bridge.

We were through the bridge by 0935 and breezing with a nice current push at 8.5 knots. That ended about an hour later when we crossed an inlet timed with a tide change where we slowed below 4 knots due to a current of 1.75 knots against us.

April worked below all morning and had a previously scheduled video conference call to be recorded. This Perkins 4.108 is LOUD. A recorded video conference call would not be good.

I searched the charts and found a cool finger off the Stono River near MM 495 in the middle of a marsh.

We will hang out here for the night, recoup from the frigid weather, wake up well before dawn again, and take on Day 18 tomorrow morning!

Avemar’s logbook for 12-4-24 has been updated. Here’s the link:

“And A Wave We Go - Days 15 & 16 Southbound”

I’ve posted about every sailing trip this year on the Sea People app. If you want to follow April and me as we sail Avemar across the oceans in real time, click the download button at the top of that logbook page. It’s a free app.

I’ll still be posting Notes daily and longer blog posts here when I get time or inspiration to post a final version of one of the drafts I’ve started but haven’t quite finished.

Hope you are well!

It’s COLD in Charleston, SC!

We are heading onward to Florida on Monday.

Here’s the text of the post without all of the images and maps:
(You can see photos, the trip map & stats on Sea People.)

I was asleep and then was hit in the head with a Honeycrisp Apple, jolted into the reality of being in a port-side lee cloth sailing in the ocean.

I sat up, swung my feet to the floor at the end of the settee, and stepped on two bananas.

That’s pretty much the story of the second half of the trip from Beaufort, NC to Charleston, SC.

The macrame slings from Etsy that hold our fruits and vegetables inside on the starboard side had swung past the point that the cup hooks keeping them attached couldn’t do it anymore.

Fruits and vegetables flew across the cabin.

The waves were large and the boat was rocking but we were still sailing along at 6.5 knots so I took it in stride and cleaned up banana mush on the floor in the dark at 2:30 a.m.

That’s blue water sailing in a nutshell.

Our original plan was to sail to St. Augustine.

The forecasted southwest gale force winds in the ocean off of Savannah on Wednesday night, followed by strong winds on the nose Thursday afternoon heading further south caused us to reconsider our destination and so we headed into the Charleston Inlet.

We’ll miss a mooring ball, showers, mail, good food at The Drunken Horse St. Augustin’s, and amazing live music (on Sunday afternoons - I’m sure they are good every day but Sunday afternoons are over the top!) at Dog Rose Brewing Co., the Marine Supply & Oil Co which is a must-visit place for any sailor, plus the bonus of a Christmas Parade this Saturday.

As you can tell, I love St. Augustine, in short bursts, particularly on Sundays.

The constant in this sail was that the wind blew from roughly 010º. After a few slow hours leaving Beaufort, NC, wind speeds picked up and never dropped below 20 knots. Perfect for Avemar.

It was a very cold, one-starboard tack sail except for two short jibes to get around Frying Pan Shoals. Two reefs were in the main and two in the staysail. Avemar’s Wind Pilot steered for most of the trip.

The story of the trip, other than the apple-to-the-head wake-up call, was about the huge waves during the night on Tuesday. Winds were still 25 knots with higher gusts from the same direction, but the waves changed from the stern to hitting Avemar on the starboard side for a few hours. It was chaotic but we both hit the sack and got some well-deserved sleep.

As a bonus, after 34 years of sailing, I finally experienced a wave coming over the stern and swamping the cockpit with 5” of water. I was on watch at the time and thankfully I was sitting in the companionway under the dodger and only the pillows I was sitting on got wet but it was quite an experience for a first-timer!

All in all, it was fun. I got to sleep. April enjoyed her midnight to 4 am shifts at the helm and counting shooting stars. We are happy to be at anchor with the woodstove burning and waiting out the upcoming blow in a protected spot and are now looking for the next window to our next adventure… southbound!

Veterans who voted for Trump are freaking out this week after they learned they will probably lose all of their military healthcare benefits.

I took this photo below yesterday in South Mills, NC, and though I love rural and grew up in rural, this place appears to be barely holding on.

Now that the election is over, Trump (with Vance, who we'll probably never hear of again) was elected. This town will worsen.

There is nothing in his plan to help small villages like this. Most of the Project 2025 goals aim to kill all aid to these folks.

Maybe these Trump voters want to be alone, and they will figure it out without any help from the government. I hope so, but I doubt it.

I walked a mile to the only grocery store yesterday. The owner thanked me for shopping local.

I have always loved shopping locally, but in this case, shopping locally was the only choice. There is one grocery store. There is one gas station. There is one mechanic and one woodworking shop. That's all I found.

There are several churches.

The irony is I'm not local. I'm sailing down the Intracoastal Waterway, and this was just a convenient stop because bad weather is in the forecast for the next day or three.

The Great Dismal Swamp waterway maintainers here where I am today have fought hard for funding to maintain the alternate route for the Intracoastal Waterway through this area.

There is no need for this waterway except to preserve its history, which began when George Washington (the first President) bought this land and used slaves to dig this ditch. That was hundreds of years ago. The history needs to be preserved.

Under Trump's administration, cruisers like us will likely not pass through this canal or town anymore because the water depth after the next major storm could drop to six inches again. I learned that this happened after a hurricane hit here in 2016. Hurricane Michael closed the canal for a year while the government cleared the fallen trees and dredged the canal back to a depth of 6 feet.

Without the canal and its two locks opening and closing on each end working as they do now, this little township will become another signpost in history, where the area boards up and fades away because there is no demand from customers due to the government's lack of interest in preserving what was once a historic waterway.

Veterans here have two choices. Vote differently.