Testicle Object Lesson

A couple months ago, I'm in the parking lot, minding my own business, when I see the little old guy who runs the Food Bank. No doubt he intends to innocently introduce me to a guy with him I don't know, but who I will later find as a volunteer at the food bank.

And it starts. Harassment, attempts - oh, in the most jovial tone - to frighten me. Passive-aggressive hatred you can just see. At the food bank. At the co-op. Wherever I see him. Who the fuck IS this guy? Who the fuck does he think I am? Some old girlfriend who dumped him?

Since I don't know him, and didn't go to school with him (and what are you people doing, still hanging out with people from high-school - is this "American Grafitti?"), I assume he does this to all women and girls.

Next time, if he tries it again - even though I've backed him off repeatedly, and the people around him showed how men and women are supposed to act - his photo goes up here. Because if he's done it with me....

There was another guy who tried this on with me, but I threatened to post his photo on Facebook, and he backed off pronto. I figure this new guy has a track record, too. 

Women face this kind of trolling, stalking and harassment every single day. We're on errands, and we get distracted from our work, and it makes more time and trouble for us. Many men don't seem to be able to act like decent people. They seem to think women are just here to entertain them, every single minute.

If you know him - warn him. People CAN be taught.

Or exposed. Call this me preparing him a nice, shiny raincoat, and socks with garters.

(And yes, I'd have the option of contacting the Food Bank's granting committees about mistreatment of women in one of their organizations, but since I've already asked the boss guy at the bank to talk to this guy, and he's a pretty good boss guy, I'll assume the moron is deaf. Or really really angry at some other woman, and like most of these morons, can't tell us apart. So, I'm giving everybody one more chance before official emails start up the chain of command. Because they are nice, decent, sweet people, and don't need one bully to ruin it for everybody.)

Don't Try Talking Like Liberals

No more chanterelles.

Facepalm.

As usual, whatever I loved or used, the clearcutters got it. Then again, I'm not the only one - everybody knows the animals are being driven into the people areas. Owls are getting hit by logging trucks. Bats with rabies flutter down from the hot, dry destruction. No use telling the pro-loggers. They repeat whatever their daddies told them. 

They have no idea that the cycle of logging will just get shorter and shorter, as the vitality in the soil disappears. They don't understand put/take. 

Then we'll have to listen to whining about, "I came up here to log and the work disappeared." 

"Cedar Recovery?" REALLY?

And watch the chipboard houses thrown up all over the place rot on riversides while the owners disappear and nobody buys. Round and round and round she goes.

In the meantime, they think using the right words will make it all better. They're using dictionaries like bandages, and forgetting we can read.

I think that's a dead sea otter, there, the second of two. I hope it's just because the populations are recovering, and with more life you get more death.

"GREEN Crow?" Are we on the same planet?

Then again, at least one drunken moron spends his days ripping around the bay with his boat. Speed? And I mean it both ways. One of our neighbors runs the motor on his bad-bargain boat all the time, gasoline fumes flying out - while smoking. On the one hand, I don't want him to blow himself up. On the other hand, when he does it at 5:00 am.... one cannot help that head file coming up. And if he does, I get paid for news story and photos. I'm only human (I make no comments on other people's genomes).

What's up with people and making as much racket as they can in the forest? I swear, so many people are scared to death of nature. It's our own planet, and so many of us act like terrified Martians. Do they think something will sneak up on them if they're not drunk and raving out there? Not the way humans smell.

Finally got the cheap but sturdy fencing for the Ugly Dog Fence (your choice on which is ugly).

I may put up a bragging sign: "Quieter than YOU." 

Dead Sea Otter #2

Oops. Better check the waffles. Or is it the tortillas? I'm cooking both in the Belgian waffle maker. To go with all the fresh blackberries. Himalayans - juiced for wine, the pulp made into dumplings or just jam.

Who cares about seeds? They're good for old people. FIBER.

Guess we better go find some other Chanterelle patch.

Cornfields and Loads of Fertilizer

Well, no more chanterelle picking up the Hoko. We knew that, sooner or later, like everything I'd actually taken a liking to up here, the woods where we found them would be turned into cash for Rayonier's out-of-country investors. 

The Hoko is pretty much a clearcut nightmare. I wouldn't be writing this, but a few people drinking beer - and they were trying to be friendly - tried to tell me it was "The most beautiful scenic drive in the world." Just because I wear glasses, do they think I'm blind? Or I can't tell scrub and plantation from an actual forest? 

The regrowth is at least alders - maybe they're finally getting that through their heads that the little firewood trees are the only fertilizer they've got.

Which brings me to the myth up here that forests are "forty-year-old cornfields."

First of all, we know the trouble cornfields and other grain ranching is in. Rivers are full of destructive nitrogen leaching into our oceans. Goodbye fishing - goodbye sports fishing and fishing derbies (which are pretty obscene, considering the extinction event we're watching unfold all over the planet). Fossil-fuel-based fertilizers are more and more expensive. Soils are filling up with salts and toxins.

Forests are the lungs of the planet, and the cooling skin we naked monkeys evolved with. It's one thing to carefully harvest wood selectively from old stands - and quite another to pump every skinny stick into the toxic pulp and artificial products industry. One that can pretty much be fulfilled by any fiber industry. And no, I don't mean cut down all the trees for hemp - that plant is a jungle plant, and grows best shade-grown. Which would be a selling point up here if anybody has any marketing brains. "Shade-grown hemp" will be a preferable commodity to an artificial crop exhausting the soil.

A lot of people in Washington State were shipped up here from the South, and by the time they got here, they were thoroughly trained in the idea of being a serf, and all all of nature being harnessed to be serfs to the same feudal masters. They tell each other this cornfield myth to - what? Assuage their consciences? Deny the inevitable future? Bullshit to make themselves feel better and hold off the moment they have to face what's coming?

Lost Resort thinks its safe - but the forestry corporations want every last scrap of land and trees. They've already cut down some State and private parks, without a peep from the locals. The investors want their hands on the national parks. The Lodge at Lake Crescent better keep on the alert.

Drink beer on the porch while you can - until the day you have to give up your homes to the same eminent domain that trapped the natives, and have to go work in a city slum. Because that's coming if you don't pay attention. I saw it happen where I'm from, and I've warned and warned you.

Stop telling this corn-field myth - because it's just one more way for the corporations to cornhole you.