Lord Westover ıt ıs Istanbul Not Constantınople!

By Ima Somıddle Class

A Vast Estate (obvıously) -- When ın Rome do as the Roman's do - not as the sultan´s would, your GRACE! Lord Westover and the Earl of Fulton seem to be havıng too good a tıme doıng as the Sultan´s do. Try not beıng so NOBLE next tıme.

Save the United States: Help Restore America's Flagship

Video says it all...

What it Takes to Become a Wildland Firefighter

Like a mini Marine Corp bootcamp! OORAH!
What it Takes to Become a Wildland Firefighter

Digging a fireline

U.S. Forest Service Scientist Joins NASA Project for Mars Exploration

And you thought the Forest Service was just fighting wildland fires (no offence Smokey!)
U.S. Forest Service Scientist Joins NASA Project for Mars Exploration

Smokey Bear in the International Space Station

The Nobility of Gore Vidal - Where did he get it?

By Robert Hudson Westover

Love him or hate him (you have no other choice) Gore Vidal had a persistent and apparent nobility about him that could never be denied--not even by those who most loathed him.

So where did he get it?

Many will attribute this nobility to the fact that he was born into a grand political family. But so was his mother and she, by Vidal's own accounts, rarely exhibited the noble traits of her famous son. 

So how did it develop in Vidal?

I think I might have the answer and it might surprise you.

My dear honorary godmother, Countess Olga Chrapovitsky Morgan, was related to Gore Vidal through marriage. Her nephew, Hugh D. "Yusha" Auchincloss III was both Vidal’s step brother and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' (as well as a slew of other well born Auchincloss children). 

Gore Vidal

It's interesting to me that the "Merrywood on the Potomac" kids (the children of family patriarch Hugh D. Auchincloss and former residents of the famed Merrywood mansion near Washington, D.C.) who most all knew and admired Olga, had such nobility about them. And I strongly feel they all got part of their awareness of their inner nobility in large part from Olga. Not that she taught them in any sort of Maria-von-Trapp-Sound-of-Music sort of way. 

No. I think it was just her day-to-day noble actions and reactions to the world around her. I say (and believe) this because I too had the unique opportunity to be exposed to the Nobility of Olga. 

And it changed my life.

Countess Olga C. Morgan with me at her home in Laguna Beach

I wish the whole world could have had this woman as their honorary godmother. To show them, as she demonstrated to so many others, that we all have a Noble spirit within us that just needs to be brought out in our daily walk and conversation—that this world can be a much more civilized world by truly (and honestly) respecting others because they're just as noble as you and me.

Admittedly Vidal fell far short of this aspect of inner nobility! (Nobody's perfect.) But he often recovered.

Case in point. From The Guardian newspaper: 

A few years ago, when I mentioned a passage in his memoirs that admits to being unable to express any open distress after the death of Howard Austen, his supportive partner for almost 50 years, he drawled: "Have you seen that film with Helen Mirren? The Queen? Our class are brought up not to show emotion."

This effortless identification with one of the highest-born figures in history was very Vidal: both in its social self-confidence and the fact that a question about emotional evasion was itself emotionally evaded through a provocative aphorism.

Indeed.

#GoreVidal @GoreVidal

Why do I care about the natural world?

By Robert Hudson Westover

My love of the great outdoors was instilled in me many years ago when my parents loaded up the car and took us kids on an epic camping trip to a pine covered area of Northern California near the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

It was here, surrounded by the splendor of the natural world, in a secluded campsite near a stream that we sat around a campfire and Dad explained to us how lucky we were to have this great outdoors wilderness—owned by all Americas--that we can come to whenever we want.

I never forgot that trip.

Later in life I was further inspired by the tireless environmental conservation work of HRH Prince Charles and tangibly through my honorary Godmother, Olga C. Morgan and her work with Green Peace.  So at an early age I began working on environmental issues. However, this was on a voluntary basis and included things like urban and wilderness area trash clean ups and informally educating inner city kids on the importance of green areas.

I didn’t start making my living in conservation until 2005 when I landed a job with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and now the U.S. Forest Service.

Since then I have been fortunate enough to be exposed to some of the most brilliant minds in environmental conservation including several winners of the IPCC Noble Peace Prize for climate change science.

Now I blog and tweet regularly on environmental issues. Below are some of my blogs (and articles) on climate change and sustainability dating back to 2006:

  

Switch grass as a renewable bio fuel Chesapeake Bay environmental issues

  

DNA Research that can Assist with Understanding the Effects of Climate Change

  

Study Shows Mangroves are a Major Player in Climate Change

US Forest Service Research of Black Fingers of Death Fungus May Lessen the Intensity of Wildland Fires

U.S. Forest Service Receives EPA Clean Air Excellence Award in Technology Transfer Effort

Baseball bats are safer thanks to the U.S. Forest Service Forest Products Lab

High Wood Product Output Doesn’t Correlate to Higher Carbon Emissions According to US Forest Service Research

US Forest Service Reforestation Efforts a Win-Win for Healthy Forests

Methuselah, a Bristlecone Pine is Thought to be the Oldest Living Organism on Earth

Wood to Energy – Removing Woody Biomass from National Forests Helps Local Economies

USDA Forest Service’s Fuels for Schools program Turns Biomass into Energy

Students Impact Forest Service Planning Rule Process

US Forest Service Helps Young Adults Bring Awareness to National Forests Though a Cross-Country Adventure

U.S. Forest Service Study Finds Climate Change to Affect Future Western Trout

Resilient like a Fox

Working to Reduce the US Forest Service Carbon Footprint

Fort Valley Experimental Forest: First in the Nation to Discover the Effects of a Changing Climate on Pines

Monitoring Bald Eagles to Help Prevent Deaths from Collisions with Wind Turbines

Forest Service Research Indicates Yellow-Cedar and Other Trees in Alaska Hold Biomass and Carbon

US Forest Service Study Finds Sparse Marten Detections Linked to Decline in Habitat

Carbon Study Conducted on US Forest Service Land Reveals Unexpected Results

US Forest Service Harnesses Hydropower without Having to Build a Dam

With New Interagency Agreement US Forest Service Works on the Loss of Whitebark Pine in Yellowstone Region

Noble world in shock after Lord Westover “punked” by comedy competition

From FNN -- News Flash -- News Flash
Gentlemen clench fists and ladies clutch pearls across Noble Diaspora

Fainting couches and dueling gloves fly out the doors of retailers

The Vast Estate (obviously), March 23, 2012 – In what can only be called the most shocking event since the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, His Grace, Lord Westover, was informed by a producer [so called] of the Funniest Feds competition that he will be put on “a waiting list” in case one of the selected contestants drops out. Read more at: http://fullnoblenews.blogspot.com/

The DNC's FreeDem.com man!

At the 2000 Democratic Convention in 2000

After my failed run for Congress in 2000 I was hired as the Democratic National Committee's national spokesperson for their free ISP (it was a big deal in those days!). My goal was to get a million CDs distributed before the Presidential election in 2000. I succeeded and had a great time doing it! For more info go to: http://www.ilusa.com/News/081200dems_online4n.htm

Making Gay History!

I was the first openly Gay man to seek a national office in the state of Virginia's history. Had a lot of terrible battles but in the end was highly respected on a national level for my effort. I then got to work for the Democratic National Committee during the Gore 2000 campaign as their spokesperson for FreeDem.com.

We Are Not Amused!

The Vast Estate (obviously) March 12, 2012 – Royal watchers were shocked (and absolutely horrified) by the news that His Grace, Lord Westover, attended and actually auditioned for a spot in an obscure comedy contest called “Funniest Feds” To read more go to:http://fullnoblenews.blogspot.com/

His Lordship in comedic attitude 

My Green Hawaii

The first stories of Hawaii were told to me by my grandmother who visited there in the 1950s. She wasn't the first family member to be there, that distinction was held by my great grandmother. It seemed only natural that my family would visit the most remote archipelago on earth since Hawaii's closest continental landmass was the west coast of the United States -- a region of the country my ancestors pioneered in the mid to late Nineteenth Century. And since the 1930s, we have lived, visited and loved these beautiful islands.

Classic postcard set sent to my grandmother in the late 1930s by my grandfather

My life-partner, Tom, and I will be going to Hawaii on our tenth trip there together (not including the year we lived there in 2003). We'll be staying at the Hilton Hawaii Village resort on the island of Oahu. Since I work in environmental public affairs, I will be taking particular interest in the sustainability programs this and other Waikiki resorts have to offer. You can keep up with what I'm discovering about "Green Hawaii" on my twitter at #mrclimatechange and my follow up postings on this blog. Until then, Aloha!