Friday, October 24, 2014

Cut-And-Paste With An Ax

Sigh. 

I don't argue with fakes. But sometimes you gotta.

May I tell the person who commented on this blog that, if you start your conversation with "I'm a conservationist," then that just puts the fakery feelers right up, because any DECENT person is a tree-hugger. It's only tree-haters who can't help what follows.

Tree-haters can't help it, because, as I've heard them admit, they love the sound of destruction as a tree comes down. There are photos of them all over the place, grinning like whaling captains at the stumps and carcasses of 3000-year-old forest-system-support trees. They might as well be standing on that stack of bison skulls and waving a couple more brain-boxes around. 

"Look at me! I killed something bigger than my penis!"

And look, people, they've been warning you for ages they don't think anybody but them gets to be on the planet. You've all seen those "Working forests = working families" signs. Those just mean, "Only us loggers have babies and everybody else needs to let us clearcut next to their community so the starving predators come into their yards!"

And then we get the goofy tree-hater industry talking points, like they're cutting and pasting the stuff off their logger class notes. Stuff like, "Well, you wouldn't have a house if it weren't for logging!" Oh, please. You had to go to balloon-framing and filling in the spaces between with toxic products, like a nasty industrial wattle-and-daub. What does The Goon Show say about England after the Luftwaffe's slum-clearing program (that's an English joke, not mine), and the reason England is now all red brick? "You can't get the wood, you know." And it's getting worse, because now we're building with chipboard, the glues of which are even worse and outgas longer. "Oh, I'm sick all the time!" wails our society. Ya THINK?

Here and there we see some decent wood, used as wood works better when there's patience in the grow and harvest, but most of it's going off for something poisonous. You people will wipe your asses with the lungs of the planet and then moan about anal cancer until the chickens come home to roost. I'm not saying that's what's causing it, but then again, it may just be the wood pulp in the food. Yup, you're eating wood like the Germans did after World War One, because that's how thin your food web has gotten. If you gotta eat trees you're in big trouble.

Oh, and I see how you loggers managed to get your hands on two parks and flatten them. It's practice for the Olympic National Park, if you can manage it. If you had your way, the whole thing would burn - including the Lake Crescent Lodge - so you could brag to each other in the taverns about how fast you took down the next generation's inheritance.

And the animals? Don't even try. Rayonier has three pages - logging and chemistry, a hunting page that's obviously like the African-based bushmeating that goes hand-in-hand with logging, and then - and does it surprise anybody? Development. I've seen it happen. My parent's generation and the older members of mine fucked up bigtime - and you're just keeping up the tradition.

Does anybody here need to be reminded that the conversation has begun that ebola came into human communities because infected animals had nowhere else to go? I hesitate to even mention it, because the American method of control would be what it's been all along - extermination of any animal populations bordering on human communities. Wiping out the people, plants and animals and replacing it with our domestic versions was the intent of our ancestors and religion, remember? Taming the wilderness. Making America safe for civilization. We've all heard the nice way of saying it, but Custer and Columbus have pretty much lost their reputations.

Stop arguing with me, loggers. Stop listening to them, people. They want to continue in an extremely destructive way of life, until there's nothing left. A real American doesn't stay and fight - we yell, "Road trip!" and get the Hell out of Dodge. But now there's noplace else to go. If you want to go any further west, you're gonna need a houseboat. Like Kon-Tiki.

But the conversation is beginning to work. Loggers and fisherfolk are bringing their kids in to talk about how to survive on this planet as modern people, and have room for everybody else. It's a lot of work. There will be a lot of tweaking, changing systems, having the courage to stay and make it work.

Your kids should be able to have homes, the internet, and a decent planet for all the peoples - including the animals and plants the native people and now science says we're all related to - to survive. Stop bragging about a bad past. Stop thinking us tree-huggers are the enemy. The corporations that are ripping down your peninsula, and sending most of the money to an out-of-country hedge-fund is what you should all be fighting.

Quit listening to the old cut-and-paste arguments and get to work. The old lazy things-as-they've-always-been aren't going to fly any more. That kite is going to come down harder than the ancient trees your granddaddy bragged about. Give your kids something to really be proud of. They're all you've got.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Same Old Navy, Same Old Tricks

Welp, the Navy fan-boys - and everybody IS a fanboy, about something - want to play with their toys again. Can they be trusted? Probably not. Anybody with guns that big is up to no good. And they - and whatever navies they're playing "Battleship" with - blew their cred a long time ago. 

My email, followed by the one I got - and no whining about "secrecy" on the internet. We all know that ship has sailed.

Immediate action needed New Naval Weapons testing threats here in Northwest

 
 
9:05 AM
 
To: gtwahl@fs.fed.us
Hello, Mr. Wahl.

We need more time for a hearing. Democracy is about everybody's voices.

We might consider that, if the Navy is willing to - jiggle - the debate about the harm to ocean sea mammals, can they be trusted to care about terrestrial creatures - including humans? 

Donna Barr
 
 
10/22/14
 
 
Hello everyone:

Serious new threats here in the Northwest.   People in nearby Northwest cities are asking people to call (+1-360-956-2375) Mr. Greg Wahl, a Forest Service environmental coordinator , email is gtwahl@fs.fed.us .  Please ask for an extension beyond the October 31st  deadline for comments regarding the Warfare permit, so that people can have a public hearing on this proposed testing of weapons.  Please take a moment to call or email Greg Wahl directly.  See petition link for more details, but don't just sign the petition; again please call directly requesting extension on deadline for comments and a public hearing.  There is no time to lose.  The petition link does provide background information: https://www.change.org/p/us-navy-do-not-put-any-camper-sized-trucks-with-electromagnetic-radiation-equipment-to-conduct-war-exercises-with-military-aircraft-from-15-sites-in-clallam-jefferson-and-grays-harbor-counties

Greg Wahl/ Forest Service environmental coordinator
 1835 Black Lake Blvd. S.W.
 Olympia, WA 98512
 360-956-2375

Monday, October 20, 2014

Sad Cat Update

Update on the cat found in the bag: according to the police, animal had suffered trauma to the belly, probably auto accident or animal attack. Someone had attempted to treat it, but not a vet.

Remember, we have a vet here, now. Best Friends of Port Angeles has a Wednesday and Saturday clinic in Forks.

Port Angeles number: 360 452 7387

Forks number: 374 5566

We don't have to throw family members off a boat or into the surf.

Going To Tahiti

October. Cold, windy, leaves coming down.
Salmon in Trouble.

No?

Warm enough to wade and swim in the bay. Who needs to go to Tahiti? The Maori come to Neah Bay to make the babies dance happy. We call their weather The Pineapple Express. It's blowing snow-eater winds along the beaches and through the still-green alders.

More and more sunfishes, great whites and sperm whales showing up in the coastal waters and even in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 

Salmon don't like warm water.

Salmon-fishing industry, recreational and sports - fighting over the last remaining salmon, either wild or hatchery - is just making buggy whips. And whining and crying about who's going to get to catch the last salmon. I did that cartoon just for them. Greedy, future-blind morons.

I know about buggy whips. I work in the newspaper industry. Sooner or later the Fun Paper that doesn't pay its writers is going to kill both the paper-industry papers, and then up its ad rates. It won't be able to resist. Why would it? It doesn't pay its writers. If it will treat them like a harvest, it will harvest you.

Meanwhile, the actual writers will go off to blogs - like this one - and make money off their own ads. No more invoicing! No more running asses off all over town for stories and photos that get bumped because newspapers only make their own towns' buggy-whips. No more "Be nice to the logging industry, that owns our editorial board." No more writing in the fucking Associated Press style that Hemingway hated so much. Whee!

Clallam County is ruffling with an argument over electronic or manual meter-reading machines, or whatever they're called. WTF? Solar mini-grids are coming, whether the PUD and the County want it or not. The meter machines are just more buggy whips. It's going to be another case of "There go my people! I must catch up and lead them!"

No arts or dance or music anything but industrial-lineworker production classes in the schools? No entertainment-industry preparation? Go ahead, take away the money from the schools, let the corporate test-companies eat up your curriculum, and send your kids to my comicon, where they can get what they need. Forks is about to have its own arts festival. The smartest loggers and fisherfolk are bringing their kids, because they've seen the future. 

Even the guy who cuts our firewood knows the 200-year-old "jobs" paradigm is about to run out of the steam of cheap resources. And "even?" I swear, lately, talking to the guys with the little firewood trucks, they're more on top of this than most of the people squabbling down at Port Angeles City Hall. Now that Mike Doherty's retiring, are we going to get a commissioner to replace him - the kind of professional politician who comes out here once a week because he knows where the votes are? Then again, we can always train the next one. We all have email. Or at least disposable cell-phones. They're called public "servants," people.

Forests and fisheries? Going to be harvesting a lot of palm trees, there? Or scrub oaks? Or whatever can thrive here when the weather changes - and it is. Planning to move your business north? Someplace else that will put up with a lifestyle based on grab-and-shit, when there's nothing left to shove into your industry's maw? There's a reason we've been warning you TreeHaters and Animal Players for decades - because it's been coming. Thanks a lot for being greedy AND deaf.

You can't have shark derbies - the soupfin industry saw to that. Sunfish grow too slowly and are too rare to become a halibut replacement. Rockfish are actually scorpion fish - which are tropical - so maybe they'll be happier. Good old lings and greenlings - can they be hatcheried? I dunno.

Better get to work converting those fishing boats for bird-watching. Other people have had to do it. Birder life lists are imaginary - but they pay just as much as a salmon left rotting in the hot sun in a sports boat as the owner went off to lunch. 

Hm. The First Nations will have to change their traditional fish ceremonies, because they won't have salmon any more. Then again, they're resilient people; they survived us, didn't they? 

Just don't decide to go after Monster Whale instead of grey whale. Those big southern people are hot-tempered and impatient of canoes. Ask Captain Ahab.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

The Amish Got It Right.

We need to adopt the Amish concept of Rumspringa - in which, when we're younger, we do some stuff that, later, we'd just as soon not be shunned for. 

If I were a judgmental person for silliness or just dumbness, practically everybody I know, including me, would be in a hell of a lot of trouble.

You're all lucky I'm just judgmental for bad stuff. If you've killed all the wolves in the mountains or cut down 3000-year-old trees, or joined the military from dumbness (oh, yes, I apply these mirrors to me, too), or left cats to rot in bags (The police are looking for you), you're not getting away with it around me. There may be no punishment, but there will be pointing and laughing. Or short, hard reports in the Anonymous Tip Line

But if you've done no more than wear your hair different, or THAT shirt, or made fun of your religion (who else has better right?), or crawled around drunk naked barking like a dog, or just crawled around on all fours in full fire gear so all the little school kids will learn you're not a monster but a friendly firefighter - and you're so ashamed you blame me for telling your story as fun, or silliness, or admirable - ask why you react like that.

Who's bullying you? Who's telling you, you can't have that past, just because you're trying to be somebody else, and have every right to re-invent yourself? Who's telling you in your religion you have to shut out a harmless joke when you were having fun? Who is shaming you for acting like an animal most everybody has one of up here - an admirable, noble, happy, brave, kind animal, at that?

Why this IPad Artstudio art?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Shame on them. Not you. Not me. Shame on THEM. If I told a silly story about you, it wasn't to shame you. You made me laugh back then. Or you revealed something about a group you belonged to that needed revealed. Or you did something good for children. 

Perhaps the bullies are going to tell you I'm a tattle-tale, not keeping all the secrets to myself. You know why people can't tattle on me? Because I don't have any secrets. I don't care. If I did something mean or cruel, I can't apologize and take it back or hide it. I did it. I'll own it. I'll try not to do it again - unless it's really funny and you laugh at me, and then I won't be able to help myself continuing the performance any more than the local old I'll-do-what-I-want AND play-music guy throwing his grandkid off the bridge to go not-quite bunjee-jumping (nobody was hurt. This is what rivers are for).

A bunch of bullies once called my brother a Tattle-tale. He turned and sneered, "You're not my friends."

If you do it to my friends or my community, and make them blush and hide, godlets help you if I find out. I'll draw pictures of your crap - and I'm a cartoonist. Nobody should be making you ashamed of your past, even if it was a little past the Rumspringa. 

"High school is never over."

(Oh, and if you don't want people telling stories about you and even tagging you - what are you doing on Facebook? REALLY?)

Note: I know local folks are not all as stupid as they pretend. They may BEGIN by telling you that "all these new flu's" comes from fruit flies (WTF?) but if I jump right in there and say, "No they don't, the flu evolves very quickly," they'll suddenly show they know better. Imagine living in a community where you have to test the waters for the mean and stupid. Gave an old native guy a ride, who started by ragging on "Indian nets," and I said, "Nah, nobody's nets are good." After that, we could talk. I hope to introduce the concept of "Bullshit!" to the community.

Oh, and you with the logging truck, running your engine in a sick woman's yard. If you mean to piss me off, I grew up with the things. I pretty much engine-deaf. But where I grew up, I think it was a law that they were not to be revved up in a municipal neighborhood. Now why would that be a law? Because some numbnuts Tree-hater had done it one time too many, probably next door to the county judge or something. As the Clallam County clerk whimpered to me, "Please, don't make new law." The reason you're not allowed to keep an elephant in your basement in one of the States is because somebody let an elephant die down there - and the fire department had to clean out the goop and bones.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

We Told You So.

Cleaning files, found this from 2009. Really? It still applies? Can Americans not learn?

Losers

Ryan's pissed off.
He wants to know why
Why the No-Wars don't care
That he has to die.

I'm fighting for freedom.
I'm fighting for them.
What's with all these pussies?
What about all our men?

While we take the bullets
From rag-heads and sheikhs.
These losers sit safe;
Just where are these freaks?”

He can't understand
Why these peaceniks won't come,
Why they just shake their heads
And act like he's dumb.

When he talks about “freedom,”
They tell him “oil money.”
When he says, “democracy,”
They say, “Ain't that funny.”

And this crap they all talk
about banking his sign-up?
He bought a new ride;
Those jerk-offs can line up

And kiss him right here
Where the sun never shines.
They're traitors, all yearning
For un-American times.

They tell him they're tired
Of gagging like lushes
on Nixon's bad booze:
Cheney, Reagan, the Bushes.

They say, time the people
Who helped make the mash,
Start cleaning the stills out,
Without taking the cash.

They drag up old history
And all of that bother:
The equivalent of
Our Founding Fathers.”

The British, the Shah,
Who got out and who got in,
The Iran-Iraq war;
His head starts to spin.

His strong point was sports,
Anything with a ball,
Like he's got two of now,
And they've got fuck-all.

They told him “Don't go,”
They warned him invasion
Would catch him resentment,
Confusion, contagion.

They warn him his money
Is to buy him new legs,
'Cuz the government won't,
When he's shipped back like eggs.

Smooth on his knees, where
IED's took his shins;
That bonus-with-interest
meant to build him new pins.

But a man has to do
When a man has no choice.
Third rotation, or sixth,
One more silenced voice.

Too many rotations
Will end like they said,
Blown up in the desert,
Shipped back maimed or dead.

No babies for him,
No grandkids for mama,
His gene-bags stop here;
still blaming Osama.

While all those smart-asses
Who knew “freedom” ain't “oil,”
Will have kids and grandkids,
Their futures unspoiled.

God gave us a brain,
To use when we need.
If you'll fight without thinking,
You won't get to breed.

The thinkers and artists,
The ones who can read,
The ones who know history,
Knew where it would lead.

The old Vietnam question,
Not a moment more tame:
The rich gave their war --

And nobody came.



Donna Barr © 2009

Dark and Scary Season

Beaver Creek Falls in high summer.
Another photo essay. I think I'll mostly just caption.

Kelp anchor.

"He's a chicken - right?"


Oxford Sandy & Black pigs in Neah Bay.

And the piglet.

What book? Who knows? We(s)t End Grafitti board.

Some kind of dead animal, rotted to soup.
Yes, the police know.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Just Pretty Pictures and Stuff

More photo essay than anything.
First, paper flying-eagle silhouettes in the local school. Very well done, no?

At least a little art in this school. One of the teachers yawped at me that I'd said bad things about the school, when they're a good school, and have lots of good programs.

Really? Is that why the kids can only get art classes from the local little old ladies' art club, who are volunteers, and nobody gets paid? Pull the other one. You don't have dance or music, either. Plenty of money for the football team, and the dying industries, but nothing for the actual future.

Hallowe'en skeleton with ripening tomatoes. Next year, I'm working out how to plant the tomatoes upside down, and then, when they're loaded with fruit and the frost is coming, I'll just cut 'em and hang 'em in the house to ripen and dry.


Here's a shot from last summer, when the calla lilies were in bloom. It's the newly painted empty room. That's right - we have an EMPTY ROOM. Yeah, the upper shelves are full of DVDs and the lower shelves full of stuff - but the room itself got nothing but space and Fearless; that's her curled up in the box down there.

Karin Ashton told me about the "bed sculpture" up by the mouth of a the Sekiu river. Dan and I went up and actually found it. It made for a misty, spooky, warm beach walk. Thanks, Karin! Dunno who built it - forgot to ask her last time I saw her. She's threatening to do comic books and bring them to the Clallam Bay Comicon, so I look forward to that. I wonder if she knows about Fumetti?  The American version. I love well-done Fumetti.

Somebody went to a lot of work on the campsite and bed area. The winter tides will sweep it away, but it must have been a lot of fun for parties this summer. 

There's always something like this on the local beaches. They're temporary and don't hurt anything, but they're always fun to find.

Kind of like local art installations. Could be artists, or surfers, or just bored people. Who knows?




Salmon carcasses in the Clallam River, visible this autumn off the bridge. People throw 'em in there for the otters - an to attract the silver salmon run up the river. Yes, there might be one yet, as the river continues to recover. 

Now if we can only convince the traditional ignoramus fishermen to not catch the last ones in the run, so they can breed. I sometimes think these guys believe that fish and trees just get abracadaba's back into place, just for them. 

We call those guys BWS - Born With Servants. There's always somebody there to pick up after them, starting with their moms. And godlets help you if you have to clean up after them when they move. Finally. Late. They're the same ones telling us "alders aren't native" because it gets in the way of them logging off the land so it can be sold to developers. And don't tell the game warden about any fish they caught, especially if they gave you one.

The neighbor got many cranberries from the Folly Bog up the Hoko river road. It was started a long time ago by a guy just to see if he could do it, and not only went through three generations, but continues today under new owners. really wonderful cranberries. Good with everything, and enough to last until January.

The salmon carcasses remind me of a party I went to recently. Lovely silver salmon, baked with herbs. But finding out who caught it, I said that maybe they didn't want to be telling the game warden about it. I've seen these guys brag about catching eleven fish on a two-fish limit, and then not eating them - it's all about the fish torture. And the salmon was taken in the river that was recovering. In other words, he'd taken a fish that had actually made its head cells up to go up the river to breed.

It's hard living with children who think the planet and everything on it is their playtoy. And then have to clean up and repair after them. I wish they'd learn to wipe their own butts. But not with the toilet paper they make from the lungs of the planet.