Good stuff and bad stuff

Good stuff first! I'd like to thank County Commissioner Mike Doherty and various other parts of Clallam County and the Bus system for fixing a problem that could have gotten very nasty. Okay, this is just a small problem, but hey, it shows how things can get done.

This problem was bearable, but as gas prices go up and the busses become truly packed day after day, it was getting not just horrid, but dangerous. 

Admittedly, I used scare tactics: "The Sappho bus stop - after an hour on the bus, everybody who has to make the next bus connection between Forks, Port Angeles and Clallam Bay is filling up the woods nearby with human waste! We have many foreign travelers now - we could have cholera or typhoid!"

Which, I know, is over the top, and I did it on purpose. But it's true.

Mike emailed that he'd started talking to the county, and they'd come up with a $15,000 estimate for a pit toilet. They'd be working on it.

BUT - when I rode the bus last time, there was a porta-potty at the park-and-ride.

So thank you for whoever was involved to help keep the woods clean and people from getting sick.

And to the bus-drivers, whom I have seen wedge a moment into their tight transfer schedule to let people use the toilet.

it's just a little thing - but we have a very responsive county government, and it listens. Thank you, folks!

**********************

Now for the bad - let's just put up the Times Magazine Cover. 

Cartoons speak for themselves. So here's my comment. I didn't color it or nothing. 

Hunting Like Clean People

Hm. While the clear-cut behind town goes on, and starving, misplaced predators have no home or food for winter, I've noticed many missing-small-pet posters around town. Coincidence? Really?

In Seattle, at a ghost-hunting club dinner, I met a clean hunter. He told me what one mountain-lion hunter said he did with the "cats" he shot out of trees (oh, how brave.).

"He said he just uses the skin to train his dogs."

Before you wonder WTF? remember that's how an entire resource industry works. As it comes to its end, as the resources die and fail, the resource pays for the machines to rip out the resource, to pay for the machines, to kill the forest, to pay for the system, to....

These moron hunters are hunting for FUN. For AMUSEMENT. They're like their fellows, the catch-and-release fishers. They torment and kill animals for the fun of it. Not because they're hungry, or need food. And then, when the resources or animals are unbalanced and trying to find a way to survive, they strike out at them and accuse them of infringing on human lives.

There are even books about an "attacking" ocean, as though the seas that let us breathe are some kind of enemy. Everybody is our enemy in our eyes, as though we're run by some kind of space-clearing bacteria that took over our brains. We seem to need to live in a desert with only a few tame animals and plants around us. We live in horror that the world might be different than we want it to be. We're Douglas Adams's Cricket Robots. The end of one of the books says we all have to work together to "control the planet." Can you see the coming cliff we're going to all go off of?

The Clean Hunter told me he and his friends went out for spike bucks or elk, because they taste good and have tender meat. When they get one, they quarter the animal among the four of them. 

And then he said, "But I can't help it. I kill quick, with a neck shot, but I always feel guilty."

I told him he needed to thank and respect the animal, and that would help. I told him the native peoples of the Southwest would hang turquoise in the antlers of their deer brothers, whom they considered members of generous peoples who fed the humans. Perhaps having a ceremony of ritual thanks for the animal who had died to feed and clothe him and his friends and their families would help? The Makah considered the whale they brought in to be a Great Lady, coming to Feed The People, and they welcomed Her with ceremony, gratitude and even grief for Her sacrifice.

The young man told me Clean Hunters have a word for trophy dorks, with their megastore equipment. They called them "Cabelas," after the stores and catalogs. Cabelas just hunt for anything with horns. The Clean Hunter, when I explained that big antlers meant "My daughters are good milkers," and asked if it was a good idea to shoot the biggest, strongest herd bull, just to get off on it, said it was not.

Then I told him the Cabelas, and the people who thought the environment was there to rape, would take it all away from the Clean Hunters if they got the chance. They'd move on to something else to destroy, and leave the Clean with nothing. I told him he'd have to be active socially to stop it.

He admitted he just wanted to hunt and relax in the woods, but he got the point - if we don't all join politics and become activists, if the Good People do nothing - the Good People will lose.

I hope he thinks about it, and does something about it. Because if he doesn't, he won't have any more venison or elk to eat or share or respect. 

The developers are next.

Lastly, here's an article that puts together what I've been saying for a couple years. If somebody uses the phrase "job creation," they're up to no good. 

Newspapers Can Have Very Poor Timing

We've all seen the notification that humanity just managed to drive the West African rhinoceros to extinction. Big ups there, Monkey-boys.

But get this - on November 13, 2013, within the same week this news is going around, The Forks Forum publishes ANOTHER article proving humans cannot live with animals.

Evidently a bear was "rampaging" through the area, eating farm animals, especially lambs and goats. Of course, the bear was killed, and the paper did use the term "rampaging." I'll give the reporter credit for trying to just be a good reporter, writing what she saw and heard. She actually is a reporter, unlike me, who is actually a fiction writer (admittedly social and historical fiction, but we WILL put in what we figure out - it's what we're trained to do). And us correspondents for the paper (I'm the - ahem - "West End North Correspondent." Put THAT on a nametag) do NOT write those titles. Thank you.

Considering that the Forks area has been gobbling up all the bear's habitat with clearcuts, why would anybody be surprised? One is always amazed that people try to stick farm animals into a wilderness, with absolutely no idea of what can happen when the apex predators suddenly lose their homes and food sources. Then again, I've become more and more amazed how people - even those claiming to be rural - CANNOT read animal body language, or understand wilderness forest dynamics. I swear, these people might as well have been raised in the houses behind the 7-11 in Bremerton. They're just that knowledgeable when it comes to how animals and forests actually work.

I keep my chickens in a chicken tractor. I do not try to build a completely hard, secure cage for them (although I have one, for the dead of winter, because even we sometimes get blizzards). The reason I have a light little cage is so  I can move it around - and if a starving apex predator shows up and flips the thing, the hens won't be trapped, but can scatter. Predators will kill every last animal they can catch - they're just like us, getting everything we can get our paws on - but if they can only grab one, they'll stop to eat it, and the rest will get away. 

Every time somebody whines about a mountain-lion getting their horse, you can bet a Chinese dinner somebody just clearcut next to their place. The lions prefer DEER and ELK. Not your stupid horse - those things kick! But they'll try for the more difficult meat if it's the only thing they can get.

And keeping weak domestic animals out in a field where something that eats meat - and lives by natural rules - can do a double-take and say, "OOH! Marshmallows!" is just proof the owner is stupid, not the predator is evil.

I heard a woman on A Prairie Home Companion the other day, saying she'd begun to hunt deer as revenge for their eating her tulips. WTF? What planet do these people live on? The ONLY reason for hunting or fishing is if you're hungry or cold. Period. Not for your entertainment or ego or because you need to take it out on your ex.

In Africa, the lion populations are crashing. The Masai no longer hunt them for "proof of manhood." They now guard them. How are they paid? Tourism money.

But if we keep trying to live in the 19th century because there's plenty to kill and waste, we'll all end up having to hang our heads in shame, again, because another species went under on our watch (and the West End STILL has the shame of intentionally wiping out an apex predator - for CASH!). You'd think the Christians and Jews would be on this one - the holy book they share says "steward," not "meat-headed greedy redneck." 

The Forum (you wonder if white people have ANY sense of timing) also published a shot of beautiful big-leaf maple trees with this caption - but you can't see the photo when you go there. The shot is along the Sol-Duc river. Tree-cutting is not allowed along the river, because salmon need forests and shade.

The title and lack of photo is appropriate, considering Rayonier just wiped out all the big-leaf maples along the south side of Frontier Street. This means the older folks and kids will have no place cool to walk in the summer, or see this year's crop of leaves. 

I know, you folks from California or Nevada will call us heat wimps; well, we are. We need our shade. They couldn't have left at least that little plot of land alone while clearcutting a tsunami tunnel into the back of town? Evidently, the humans mean less than the salmon - or we all mean nothing to a corporation based in Florida.

You know - where most of the profits for the death of your tourism industry are going? 

(I am so fired).

Nice Man - Bad Bad worldview - Memorial Day

A very nice man runs a shop here. I like him a lot. He's a good fisherman - agrees fish aren't playthings, and we need thanks ceremonies for them. If you drop into his shop, it's a lovely place, with nice products, including locally-made things.

BUT - we Americans all have rats-bane in our heads. Mine is, I'm sick and tired of what I love being murdered for fun and profit. I'm not apologizing for THAT.

I hurt his feelings yesterday because I had to. As an American, it was my responsibility.

A conversation wound into our military. He said he didn't want to go there because his son has a "Navy career." And if his ship was fired on in from Benghazi, he had to shoot back because he was following ordrs. And "Our military isn't like it was; in WWI and WWII, it helped the economy."

I'm sorry it hurts, but if your kid is in the military, you need to face the facts, America. 

1. A military is NEVER about a "career," or "job" in the harmless definition (jobs used to be a harmful excuse are the same conversation). It's about killing and dying. Period. The fact Americans have to join to get health care or a college education is a sin and a shame, and ashes on our heads.

2. "I was just following orders" was disallowed in 1945 by The Geneva Convention. 

3. Bombing or shelling a city for any reason is a war crime. According to the Convention, soldiers are required to report war crimes - or be guilty of a crime of omission.

4. Whether the other wars helped an economy or not - there are plenty of links for that conversation - the idea that ANYTHING is valid because it "creates jobs" or "helps the economy" is, in the end, a dangerous idea. Kentucky has banned private prisons for more than one reason. However, wars are ALWAYS for resources, land and borders. Soldiers aren't called cannon-fodder for nothing. Think of them as Washington State loggers who risk getting a leg off while all the money goes to Florida. 

We are in an OIL war, and have been for decades. We've destroyed democratic societies, destroying their educational systems, because decent, educated people would have protested our presence in their countries. Their children grow up ignorant, angry, and violent - as now, do ours.

5. If you're a parent or spouse or any relationship to anyone in a war, if you really had loved your DNA, you'd have prevented it going into a war zone.

6. Soldiers are not the heroes of war. The women and children attempting to live in war zones are the heroes, but we're unable to see them, for the same reason Lewis and Clark thought they were pioneering when they were fed by women caring for children. Soldiers are not the point. When they come to think of themselves as the point, they cause the same problem as bad cops, who also think they're the point. Soldiers continue and support wars, especially today - because they all went willingly. It is their fault, private to general.

7. War is for stupid people. If you're in a war, you've fucked up. You have no excuse. Somehow, both sides have screwed up. Everybody involved is stupid, lazy and unable to think his or her way into the future realities. 

8. If your kid gets killed in a war, everybody who supports that war - for any reason, even if you support that war because you have some twisted idea you need to because it ate your kid - you are in collusion. 

9. Generals very often cannot retire at pension rank unless they've participated in a war, as part of their "career." War is their job, in their own heads. 

Happy Memorial Day - maybe next year, we'll have fewer new crosses, and fewer damaged or murdered women and children in the war zones.

Greens, Ghosts - and Fake Greens.

Goddesses just do what they want.

From about 1998-2002, I did a comic strip series, "Rental Goddess," for the magazine PanGaia. I forgot how many I'd done, because most of the pages went to San Diego State Special Collections. 

So out of the blue, the proofreader for the magazine sends me paper copies of all the strips, including the introduction of the Deity Kun-Rah, Goddess of Not putting Up With Crap. Damn, these are funny. And what timing! As soon as my lovely new friend scans 'em, I can post 'em at Webcomicsnation. 

So I guess I'd better get to the work of Not Putting Up With Crap, because Kun-Rah says so, and I don't want to meet her third ritual.

There are two futures for all of us - and I do mean all.

If you're a Green, if you really try to limit your footprint on the earth - regardless of how completely successful you may be - if you realize your position as a human on the earth, then you're going to survive, or at least the younger people around you have a better chance of survival. 

Admittedly, there will be a couple generations of misery, if any of us do make it, but we can remember who survived - and who didn't - and why. Greed will be of evil memory, and a terrible warning, the province of ghosts.

The Greeds will all be Ghosts. And your chances for making it into the future will depend on what you really do, not what you pretend to be. It doesn't matter if you're a Fake Green. A lot of Greeds are realizing it's good to come off as a Green. Why? Do they think we'll be more likely to feed them, in the coming bad days? Of course we shall - but their own shortcomings are taking out their DNA, even now.

But you can spot Fake Greens, because they don't walk the walk.

1. You may be all artsy, hippie-dippie and spiritual, but if you puff yourself up over your brother who killed a cougar, bragging how long its tail is (and how Freudian is THAT?), you're a Fake Green.

2. If the first thing out of your mouth about the end of food stamps in the US is how people in Australia showed up in sports cars to scam the system - assuming that, if a few people are butt-heads, everybody should starve - you're a Fake Green.

3. If you tell people nobody has to worry about local conditions - endangering their future - because your god told you "there would be no tsunami," you're definitely a Fake Green. And a mean one, at that.

4. You're Green, and you start "intellectual discussions" on why the 2nd Amendment can't be updated or nothin'? I think I'll just stick to the reason gunbillies are going to end up Ghosts; practicalities. I have a scary feeling they think they can get sulfur and saltpeter by just running down to the local garden store. They're all into the Frontier, but seem to forget the Frontier was the creep of civilization - and even Mountain Men had to come back in every 6 months or so to get flour, sugar, salt, coffee - and gunpowder. If the environment REALLY collapses back down onto a handful of gasping humans, we're going to all find out how hard it is to get salt, let alone sulfur. If you really want to be Green, you might want to start figuring out how to build a really good bow and arrow - by hand, not bought at Wal-Mart - or, more simply, learn to make nooses and nets and fishing line. Start now; it's not as easy as it looks, and takes a lot more time than you think.

On the other hand, if you don't think of yourself as Green, but you feed the poor, save animals, clean beaches, take only what you need and try to give back and be grateful, and can make a Hoko River splinter knife out of what you found on the beach - you're a Green. 

Greens party better, and we're going to survive. Come to the verdant side.

Good Morning, Seattle PCC Natural Markets

Sent to PCC this morning:

"Good morning, PCC;

Living in Clallam Bay for 10 years, I still remember PCC fondly from my Seattle days, and appreciate your continuing efforts. 

Reading your latest insert in The Stranger (or it might have been The Weekly; I pick them both up), I discovered the recommendation in "What's in Store."

Under Ganapati Studios and Positively Green, you note, "use paper sourced either from managed forests or post-consumer waste."

"Managed forests" is a prettified term, covering that paper products from wood are always toxic and environmentally heavy. I say this as someone who grew up in the pulp industry. I saw the paint peeling off homes near Scott Paper in Everett, a result of the heavy fumes from the chemicals required to cook down wood to release the pulp fibrers. Not to mention the huge amount of water required in the process.

Paper, pulp, or other secondary products are the worst things we can do with trees. There's little enough actual wood left on the planet, and using every last scrap of a forest, including saplings instead of carefully-managed selectively-harvested adult trees, ignores the fact that trees are a large part of our own survival systems, that include oxygen release, carbon sinks, and planetary cooling. Trees are not corn.

You may not be aware of what is happening on the Olympic Peninsula, right now.

Please, for the good of your customers and all our futures, note these links:

Lollipop law (use of friendly terms to cover dangerous practices):

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/113-2013/h483

Out-of-State pulp company, presently tearing through the "managed" State Trust Lands:  

http://www.rayonier.com  

(Note that they have a hunting page AND a real estate page. As soon as animals are driven from their homes, in a state of confusion, hunger and homelessness, they are hunted down - especially cougars. Yes, the bushmeat system - logging then opened hunting - is going on right here on the Peninsula).

For the past couple of years, I've been collecting incidents, photos, etc., on the situation. I am a fiction writer and artist. I admit this is about me writing in a comical style, and not attempting to be a legitimate reporter. But what I've seen, I've seen.  I am serious when I say the next target will be the National Parks. 

http://clallamatbay.blogspot.com

Thank you.

Donna Barr

Author of "The Desert Peach" comic book series"

Warning to the Logging Industry

I'm not allowed anyplace near a clearcut, because not even reporters are. The logging, oil, mining and other eco-net-destruction industries keep even professional reporters away, and threaten them, worldwide, as they try to report on ongoing ecological disasters.

The clearcut is creeping closer to us. So here's the promise of what I will do. If any judge asks me what I'm doing, the reason "guilty" nor "not guilty" but "self defense." 

1. I will need tranquilizers to fight nerve damage. I have nerve gas damage from the army, and the realization of what this clearcut will do to my future health - and the health of this whole area, human and animal - is impinging on my health.

2. The local real-estate person thinks the loss of the forest will have no effect on my real-estate values. Maybe not, but she only sells to local people - and as their jobs disappear because of the ecological destruction, they won't be able to afford to buy here, or anyplace - and how to sell to more knowledgeable people who won't be fooled by the logging industry's excuses?

3.  I'll have to take this to court, even if it's only a small-claims court. I will lose, no doubt, because the area is owned by these industries. But I can begin the process of showing people how to do it.

4. If the Olympic National Park is torched, I'm going to make sure the authorities know the Forks Forum constantly described the profits made in the logging area, the last time the park area burned. Of course there's freedom of the press - but there's also reckless endangerment. Prosecutable? Perhaps only in the court of public opinion. And that doesn't have any access to eyeballs all over Facebook, does it?

5. If H.R. 1526 is used to cut down the National park, under the excuse of "community and forest health" - both of them specious - and any of you whine and moan about it, I'm going to "I told you so!" too. 

This goes for any organization that didn't try to stop it, Wild Olympics, the Elwha tribe, whoever. We let 'em get away with this, this time - fuck all of us. 

Why not? We're fucked anyway. I'm tired of hearing people blame kids for hanging out on the net all day when the poor kids don't have the oxygen levels we did. Wake up.

I Can Read Their Minds, Now

A few years back, we helped rescue a dog from an abusive cage situation, by one of the Sheriff's deputies.

The same guy keeps cougar-hunting dogs in the back yard.

And a very cute miniature horse.

I shall now bet a Chinese Dinner that, once the clearcut releases the starving resident cougar, and guts the horse, the guy will use that as an excuse to not only hunt down a refugee bush-meated animal, but will teach his daughter the reason the horse was killed was because predators are evil vermin out to get her favorite pet, rather than that Daddy was a psychotic bully with about as much empathy - and understanding of how the planet actually works - as a crab parasite.

I expect egg-rolls with that, mind you.

Man needs a mirror. And a shot of human DNA more recent than the ice age.

List of idiot excuses for clearcutting; as they read this blog and get more desperate, they start trying to sound Green. Like they have a clue how to do that:

1. The forests are being sprayed with poisons by the government, so the logging companies have to save everybody.

2.  The forests are all going to be killed by the Fukashima radiation spreading across the Pacific, so they need to be cut down now.

3.  Forests need to be managed by humans, because there was no wildlife in them until White People got here.

Oh, poke them, and watch them come up with more excuses. All I know is, in 20 years, when the place is going to pieces again, or they're screaming to be allowed to knock down the national parks, I ain't taking the blame. They made this soup, they can swallow it, without blaming the nearest environmentalist for everything from why they can't get a job to why their kids are all on meth. I'm going to make sure they SWALLOW the soup they mixed up, no matter how hard they whimper. 

Strange Stones, Strange Minds

This post is about the mental illness that causes killing - and just some pretty pictures, at the end. 

More and more, we're seeing people posting photos on the internet of mutilated animals, often destroyed by disturbed boys defying their neighborhoods.

I've noticed that many of the people on canned hunts - confused, tame prey animals raised to shoot - resemble the kind of people who would bully human children. Someone has used Whiteout - rather clumsily - on this photo to defy anyone noting her cruelty. 

One very overweight man (and hunters are often overweight in these photos) is shown triumphant over a mated pair of African Lions. This makes me wonder if he isn't also triumphing over African humans he would like to kill - and is threatening. The basic message seems to be, "I can kill what you love." In other words, your wife, your children, your pets, nothing you love is safe from this person. What is that but bullying?

They seem to believe this is one of the criteria for being a superior human being, when, instead, it simply makes them an angry, reactive child. I've seen film on the internet of people shooting charging bears and pretending to be brave. Why not stand in front of a car, shoot the driver, and pretend to be brave? These people have caused the bear to charge, like a bull-fighter harassing a bull, or pit-bull trainers throwing insane dogs into a pit. What are they doing out there, provoking the animal in its home? What human do they really want to kill, their frustration driving them to take out their anger on an animal they don't know?

They're home-invaders, and if they were human, the home-owner would have been praised by so many humans for killing them. Instead, they pose with the animal whose home has been invaded, with powerful weapons that children can be taught to use, and pretend they're brave.

I don't bring a gun into the woods. I've gone into places that, if a predator discovered me - a predator taught that humans are ALWAYS a vicious threat, and it was kill or be killed - if I survived an attack, I would not blame that predator. 

I would blame my fellow humans who turned  a normal wild animal into a furious, frightened engine of attack, instead of what the First Nations lived with - predators whose territories they knew and wisely stayed out of, or, if encountered, used every method of defusing fear. Suggestions were made to look away from the predator, explain, even sing. I've used many of these techniques when dealing with dangerous humans, and all we animals operate on the same body language. I don't claim they'll be successful in every case, but so far, so good. 

Just a pretty photo of some sheep in Forks.

But what could I do with predators who see me as something that - like the chiefs at the Little Big Horn saw Custer - must be wiped out at last to protect future children?

I will have no chance if I face a frightened bear or cougar up here - and I blame those who chase down every predator they see, to kill for no use or reason except to show off. YOU are at fault. Not the predator. You're the human - YOU have the responsibility.

And don't tell me to stay out of the woods that shouldn't be any more dangerous than the reality of a city street; I don't wear a face veil for anybody. If you're scared of the woods you grew up in - what's wrong with you? I've realized why a man in Forks said, "I hate trees." It's because trees are shelter for prey animals. These people always claim the clearcuts offer more food to animals. Really? Is that the only reason? Or do the animals have no more homes, no place to secure themselves? What woodland animal really likes to go out into an open space, unless it must, because there is nothing else? This sounds like more Fairy-Tale "forestry science."

Mushrooms on the beach in LaPush.

It's amazing, in this time of collapsing earth systems and animal DNA, that people celebrate this behavior. It's amazing they celebrate this behavior in their ancestors.

It's time to change the ceremonies. We need to stop having festivals showing off what we've destroyed, and begin to have ceremonies of apology, thanks, memory, and the promise never to do it any more. We need to learn respect and kindness, and the bravery of kindness. Anyone can be cruel; it's often hard to be kind. It takes a special kind of bravery. Any fool can be mean, and usually are.

Odd stone, Clallam Bay beach.

One country on this planet has realized a horrible history and tried very hard to teach its children never to act in that manner again. It has tried to understand its weaknesses and the development of cruelty and destruction, it's attempted to assist what remain of its victims, and learned not to take pride in that destruction. It's the only country on this planet to do it, probably in the whole length of human history. 

And it ain't America. They're beating the crap out of us on solar usage, too.

Pretty stuff: just some recently-sheered sheep near downtown Forks; pardon the IPod camera. Some mushrooms - possibly Gypsy? - down on the Quilleute Nation. And one of a number of strange stones that show up on the Clallam Bay beach. These look oddly like something organic and fossilized. They're not stromatolites, but they're intriguing.

Small Narrow Heart = Small Narrow Mind

Cut by the area's wealthy man.

Today's post is all over the place. I'm going to just label the photos; you're smart enough to click them for larger reading and study.

The Egyptians said we thought with our hearts. We say we feel something in our guts because "having bowels" was an old English phrase for pity.

Speaking to a Clallam Bay librarian. Of COURSE, the Affordable Health Care Act came up.  

She said she was talking to a friend from Sweden. She thought the reason socialist health care works in Sweden is because "it's a much smaller country." I pointed out that that was "apples and oranges," and the reason it works in Sweden is, it's single payer and there are no corporate middle-men involved.

I was explaining socialism and capitalism to her (and some people up here DO get it): how S is for neccessities, C for luxuries. I offered, for example, the roads - and the bus system. 

Indica? Sativa? No - carpet fluff! :D

Immediately, she said the buses were too expensive, cost too many taxes, and "I might as well take a taxi for what they cost me." She then added that the buses went by her house all the time with only one person on them. I tried to explain that I often ride the busses and they're packed, and load and unload completely depending on the route. She kept saying she saw only one person on them. 

I couldn't understand what she was trying to prove. I didn't think she was lying - I thought she might honestly think she saw that. I got home, described this to Dan, and got a real facepalm moment.

Dan, "She sees them at the beginning or end of the run. They don't fill up until further along the route."

God, I feel stupid, for not thinking about that at the time. But he's right.

The shadow remainder of a beach-flea kelp feast.

Now, what have I said about the library hiring from logging families? Resource workers, and many people in uniform, think they're the point. They can mourn a community cat - but not even recognize the clearcut the dear animal was buried on is ghosted with the dead and refugee spirits of the animals that had to run or die. They have no mirrors, they cannot think out side themselves. They can't understand how everybody needs certain things, and they truly seem to believe that anyone who can't keep up should be allowed to fall by the wayside. When did we start ascribing to the morality of the Bataan Death March?

I told her the day would come when people in my age group our her age group would not have cars. Not everybody up here has an extended family. Not everybody can afford the $30 in gasoline it takes just to drive to and from the only large city on the peninsula, with the only vet's outpatient clinic - the very people who need to go there. I told her we all pay taxes so we can ALL use the buses or roads - nobody is denied their use. I told her that her own kids can buy a cheap summer bus pass, and a full day on Clallam County busses - to anywhere - was $3.00. How is this NOT a good investment?

Now, did I not say she worked at the library? According to her idea of how this works, if she goes into the library at night and nobody's there, then all the libraries need to be shut down. And libraries are expensive, so everybody should just buy their own books and media. Of course, she'd be out of a job - but it's always somebody else's life that doesn't count to the logger tribe.

I should have pointed out the Quilleute run a free bus on the hour to LaPush. The native peoples understand that everybody needs transportation. And you do know who's helping fund that - Ms. Stephanie Meyer, and her Twilight series.

Ghosts on slip point. Gone, or going.
So much for their real future of beauty
and health in media and tourism.
They've cut their own throats.

Now, I thought about writing about the local communities and the local tribes, except I felt that would be presumptuous (I'm talking the tribes - you white folks have SO not earned my consideration). Ms. Meyer, like so many fan writers, just slogged ahead, with no thought for anybody's feelings. The Quilleute understandably blew up over her mistreatment of their culture; just another white person sticking feathers in a character's hair and getting the names wrong.

BUT - let's hear it for her or her agent. They sucked it up, worked with the Quilleute, and made sure the tribe benefited from the series. Which is a lesson for all of us; just because you fuck up, just hand over your head on a platter and apologize and try to fix it. Bad can become good. Evidently, vampires have more humane consciousness than loggers. Oh - is that why loggers hate the vampire people? They make them look bad? They make their horrible history look bad? 

Hmmm... I know a WHOLE lot of crap about local tribes I shouldn't have access to. All kinds of screwy stuff has happened to put me in the know about things I shouldn't know.  Maybe I should be looking at zombies.... :D

Yeah, I'm talking to you, Makah tribe, with your "Rayonier Logging Company cooperated with us" down on your hatchery sign. What was THAT about? Or was it another case of, "We get our fish back, or you LEAVE"? Because those treaties are loans. Based on contingencies. 

Tomorrow, I'm going to start the campaign to really go after Hunting-For-Fun. And starting the process for pointing out which candidates are posting photos of themselves with dead animals as trophies. You know who you are. And White-out for writing on photos? Do you NOT have children who know how to use Photoshop? Or GIMP?

How We'll Finally Get Single Payer

Let's see... I'm just sayin' - and I said it first:

1. Let the Health Insurance Industry (HII) cram itself into an attempt at a public health system.

2. Because capitalism (luxury/cheap resources and labor) cannot handle the needs of socialism (necessities for everyone), the system is made to go to pieces.

3. Try to return to the old HII mess, and hear from small businesses angry because they thought they'd got HII off their backs.

4. Turn health care over to socialism, which is the only system that can handle it.

5. Hello, Single Payer.

When This Place Works - And Could Work Better

Beautiful October day over dry grass.

Yesterday's dental appointment was at 2:30 pm, and I had to take the 9:20 bus to Forks, so even after some small errands, had so much time left. Grabbed the Quilleute Tribal bus (runs on the hour) and went down to spend an hour at LaPush on the beach. 

On the busses, my position as the West End North Correspondent came in handy. Yes, that's my title - and get THAT on a nametag; the smaller the job, the longer the title.

The Mother Log on the LaPush beach.

I as able to start linking people up with the new health care system in Washington State, and maybe help a woman - and local vets - get coverage for dental, using specialized funds.

Discovered that people read this blog - where else would they be getting this information? - and they're learning and listening. 

Women agree boys, by hyperlinking on the internet and having to learn to spell, are getting smarter and listening to their mothers. They agree that trophy hunting - hunting for sport or "fun" - is a gateway drug to joining the military, where the ultimate prey can be accessed. We were talking hunting. I said there was NO problem with getting food if it was needed, and a hunter or fisher who fed the family has every right to be proud of that. We're omnivores - we put anything in our faces we can pick or catch. But triumphing over dead animals as though they're an enemy is reprehensible. If you're hungry, hunt and fish and eat. If you're not, leave them alone.

A woman liked the idea of having a yearly thanks ceremony to recognize the animals and fish who feed us, with respect and love and sorrow. As the Makah elder said, weeping as the whale came in: the young men had their tradition back - "But one of our brothers is dead."

A young man on the bus was upset about cash money, as opposed to barter. Somehow the rumor has got running around here that the Federal Reserve is a corporation, and not part of our government. I think it might originate in the prison being privatized. 

Amanita in the RV park

Let me explain money really quickly; it's not little pieces of paper. It's numbers. You may want to barter salmon for everything, but if you want to keep using that cell-phone, Centurylink does not maintain a Halibut Morgue (that's a local reference, to the holding freezer for fist at Neah Bay). If you want to barter, you have to get off the bus, and stop driving because Clallam County needs to run the busses on roads - and you'll have neither, because they don't keep a place to put cattle or dried elk meat. And somebody has to say how much those numbers or worth. Do you want to haggle over all your service bills? Actually, you can negotiate a lot of things - but it's a full-time job.

Credit cards are just numbers without the paper, and they provide short-term, high-interest loans, without application to a bank. That's all. Get 'em paid off on time, and no interest. Do NOT use those numbers unless you HAVE them! It's just a way not to carry paper in your pocket - as money was originally a way not to carry a cow in your pocket. 

Now here's a real - as the Makah call it - Rumor to Rumor moment. I was in a business, and a couple of old guys were angry because their pensions were being messed with. Something about how "specialty pulp" was involved. They mentioned the Florida logging company - the same one ripping the limbs off the Olympic Peninsula forests - was changing pensions. Some kind of trouble with the market. 

NO, I didn't ask. They'd have shut up. Resource-rip workers are like football players; they think the entire society needs to revolve around them, regardless of those damaged or left behind. It's only when their own lives are going to pieces because of what they did that we have to listen to their whining and blaming. And THIS environmentalist isn't going to ever let them get away with it again. Suck it up boys; if you're out of a job and your town goes ghost in the future - IT'S YOUR OWN FAULT.

This sounds an awful lot like the corporate idea of "We're done with you, now starve," is in action here. I don't have details. This isn't a tabloid or junk science site, distracting from real problems; I don't claim to be an expert. But - the first damages to the communities for throwing away the real future of their forests may be happening even now.

Religious Sneakery - and Karma

First, the Karma. Guy up here was trying to rescue a bee colony from a hemlock destroyed in a clearcut. Had to prepare the chunk of log with the colony in it until he could find transport.

Later, talking to him about the news story I was covering, we wandered off on Ted Turner's capitalist (but hopefully soon to get out of his hands) attempts to save the bison. I said now the cattle were dying on the planes, the bison Turner had collected might be able to get away from him, and start the Great Herd again. The first thing out of Mr. Sensitive Bee Man's mouth?

"It'll be open season!" 

Rather than commenting on a hunter's inability to see that, if a species recovers a LITTLE is not a good time to push it back into an endangered status, I'll describe the Karma:

He showed up a couple days later with transport for the hive - and discovered somebody else had torn his hive apart and was about to transport the torn-out comb to his own bee yard. Basically, the guy declared open season on HIM.  Grab-and-growl can come back and grab.

Religious controllers up here:

When speaking to two white (not necessarily the majority) elders at a church about the destruction of the community future by the loggers, the elders were already angry about it. But their pastor - the spiritual leader who stands up and prays at community lunches because evidently NOBODY but he can talk to God? - sat there with his head down, silent. Oh, did I poke at religion's ideas that the world belongs to Satan and deserves to be destroyed? Coward. Greedy coward.

And you New Agers don't get off the hook. When a guy came into town years ago, the first thing he said to me was, "We can cure grief and guilt." Anybody here want to pin a medal on me for not punching him in the face? A spiritual friend calls this a "drive-by psychic."

A couple days ago, when I was warning that the logging industry has opened up the back of the town to a tsunami, he grinned and said, "There will be no tsunamis." His reason? He pointed overhead, and said, "We have a connection to - " What? The ceiling? 

And then he added that he was "subservient" to that thing overhead. Being a woman and being expected to always shut up and sit down when the mens is speaking, my hackles went up. And then he asked me if I meditate - like an accusation that I was getting too angry.

Meditation, you moron, is a private thing. It's about preparing for the battle, not IGNORING it, or it is for those of us in the front lines of the war for our planet. It's NOT for asking a woman if she sits down and shuts up. Especially when you tell the people who hang out at your co-op that there will be no tsunami, and just trust in the imaginary. This is about real problems, real situations, not your fairy-tales.

Oh, and I've finally tracked down those panicky chem-trail stories. They're freaking out because they misinterpreted a story about how NASA was tracking electrical fields around the earth with lithium and barium. They all claim they've SEEN these chem-trails. So they HAVE amazing long-distance space vision? And a Tardis? 

Most of the tests were done in the '70's. Trails of the chemicals were drawn across the ionosphere to attempt to mark the earth's electrical fields. NASA was disappointed with the results, because the trails were very hard to photograph, even with their extremely sensitive cameras. Recent tests have yielded no better results, so NASA is trying to find a better way to map the basic fields. NO, humans cannot see these trails, no matter how good their eyes are.

I found this out because someone I was speaking to about the logging eco-terrorism distracted onto this story - spread by a local woman, who is trying to claim the "guv'ment" is not only spraying all the country and world with poisons, but that now the trees have to be cut down to "save" us all from the poisons. She claims to have "seen" the trails when she's being doing nothing but confusing condensation from jet engines. She's either a liar or a fool or just an ignoramus with a bad agenda - one or all.

While corporate and military organizations do pull all kinds of stupid crap, this isn't one of them. But in reading the stories, I found more mad made-up stories like - get this one - "Comet Ison caused the government shutdown!" On the one hand, go ahead, believe the fairy stories and your half-understood bits of science. They can't help not being able to understand, because America has destroyed its science education. I'd just ignore them as stupid and clueless as I have in the past but - now I've realized it's just more religious distraction. 

All these ideas are about making people panic about fake things when there are real things at stake. This isn't just tabloid silliness any more. This is conscious distraction and a decision to make the under-educated believe all science is junk. And this time it's going to be lethal in a way it's never had a chance before.

I am - right now, flat-out - accusing anyone in religion or corporate-stolen  politics mis-using science to distract and scare - of being guilty of murder. Of the planet, of you, of me. 

But nobody will be around to punish them. Unless you consider suicide from stupidity a death sentence. They'll just get a reward - from Darwin.

And we'll get that award, too, if we don't get to work. We have a choice - we're on the front lines to save and protect, or we've taken the 30 pieces of silver. 

If I hear those coins clinking in anyone's pocket, I'm making sure everybody hears it.