Vegan - Not eating Eyeballs or Sweat.

In 2018, I told Dan, "The way meat's disappearing from our diet, we might as well go vegan."

He responded, "Yeah, let's do that."

This has resulted in experiments. We're really what's called Freegan - if somebody gives us meat, we'll eat it. But at the food bank, I opted out of turkey for more canned tomatoes, flour, celery, stuff like that. Here's how to have a pretty tasty Thanksgiving.

Most of the side dishes are vegan, anyway. To make gravy, just use a light miso. It's the rescue for everything. And always add a tad of malt vinegar for fermented sour flavor. For a really meaty flavor, add a shake of garlic. It adds that armpit flavor that comes from animal flesh and sweat glands. What? Let's be real here about animal parts.

Recipes:

Vegan gravy

1 cup water

3 tablespoons veggie oil

1 tablespoon light miso

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon corn starch.

Simmer first four ingredients in sauce pan. Mix corn starch with a little water, pour slowly into pan, stirring constantly. Stir until gravy becomes translucent. Tastes amazingly like mushrooms.

Vegan butter

1 cup coconut oil, melted

1/3 cup liquid veggie oil 

Tablespoon of malt vinegar

Tablespoon of light miso

Sprinkle of salt

Pinch of turmeric (for color)

Mix, pour into container, refrigerate, use like butter. If there's any leftover miso scum at the bottom, pour off and use in gravy or something.

Vegan sour cream/mayonnaise/whipped cream

Throw into a blender (including immersion kind):

A cake of tofu, with a bit of its package water.

A splash each of malt vinegar and veggie oil.

Blend. 

Vegan Cheese Whiz

Add some light miso to the "sour cream." Works on pizza.

Vegan Bacon (Great in BLTs)

Freeze a cake of tofu, thaw, press.

Slice, marinate in soy sauce, a veggie oil, smoked paprika (and a little sugar or honey if you like it sweet).

Slow dry with whatever you have. It's great on a wood stove because you can put it on the back of the stove and it caramelizes a bit. Dry the tofu until chewy, turning once. Even the carnivores up here love this stuff.''

Vegan Crumbled Hamburger

This is for the crumble you put on pizza or in a tamalé. 

Five cups dry-cooked rice
Three tablespoons dark miso (if using light miso, add a 1/4 cup soy sauce for color)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 onion (optional, size your choice)

Mix thoroughly everything but onion. Place in fry pan, slowly fry, stirring occasionally, until consistency of crumbled hamburger. If you like onion with your hamburger, chop fine, stir in thoroughly, fry slowly until translucent. Use immediately, or refrigerate or freeze. Can't say how long it will last - it never lasts that long.

EVERYTHING is Sis.

(I had to add to this article when I told a trans thread that we need to make sure transmen note that they are "born female" in medical, airline, etc., situations, because using the male-majority form of medicine for anesthesia or heart attacks can KILL a woman body. The decorative outer bits can be fooled with, but the Tinkertoys {internal organ systems} remain the same. You can carve out your uterus, but your heart will beat the same. The response I got from the thread? "I'm not a trans man." Practically code for, "I don't care about women, no matter WHO they are, even if they're transbrothers, and they're lives are endangered." Talk about male privilege. I've even seen transmen going to pieces over menstruating - is this also based in a horror of the female? We have hearts and minds that may TRULY be one gender or another, but unless we address the hardware - and what the hell it will insist on doing, blood or beard, regardless of our true feelings - there will be a lot more misery.)

 I didn't believe trans people were attacking women. I still don't believe it.

But - Lesbians run out of Pride Parade and HURT for being proud of being Lesbian? Women doxxed, threatened with death, rape and dismemberment? By a gang that uses that idiot TERF term to scoop in MRA search engines to pile on and start attacking women? (These attacks are alerting a lot of women outside the GBT community to the abuse, and they're horrified. Kinda backfired, huh?)

What. The. Holy. Fuck??

The transladies I know are sweet, busy and beautiful. Who the hell are these rotten people trying to take their place as the voice of claiming your own body?

I'll tell you who - ball boys in a dress. Do they really think they get to pull the same old macho bullshit on women they pulled before they learned how to use makeup? They've always wanted to make us disappear - and now they eplace us as "Woman of the Year."

I first ran into this personally last year when I said on Facebook, "Stop calling me cis." And what showed up? An angry transman and her MALE SIDEKICK. I don't know if the sidekick was gay or not. Robin was just as nasty and full of himself as Batman. Because the GBT community has kind of dropped the balls on this one (pun intended). I will agree that transboy was a man - he macho'd up on me like a real one. Because the first rule of being a REAL MAN is to keep a woman under control.

I'm using GBT instead of LGBT because you guys just - to paraphrase To Wong Fu - lost all your princess points.

Is it really ever a good idea to alert me to a problem? So the two of them can be blocked together. But I didn't do much more, because I figured women and trans would keep defending each other. How dumb am I, huh?

And now, before anything else happens, let's get into terminology. 

What the hell makes you ballboys think you have the right to call women by another damn label? And we don't get to control it? Well why shouldn't you - you do it in all the languages. It isn't enough that in Anglo Saxon "women" already means "Pot-belly people." Which - thank you language-geek friends - supposedly means "people who get pregnant." Oh, no, not your basic human being. "People who get pregnant." 

"PEOPLE WITH A UTERUS." Sound familiar?

People who have babies in their stomachs - because men have always thought the baby comes out of the "stomach." And invented cults that hate women and our reproductive systems SO MUCH they controlled our language to the point that even the pregnant tell the other kids that "Mommy has a little brother in her stomach." When they're not freaking out because women use tits to feed baby, instead of using them to be there for the ballboys every moment of the day.

Yeah, we've been down this road before. "All MEN are created equal." Don't think you're kidding us with claiming that means "ALL human beings." Not a lot of voting for women when that document was written. You BB's are not fooling anyone.

I have watched, flabbergasted, as the people who should be the allies of women because we're targeted for the very same reason - women's reproductive systems - attacking women, denying our reproductive capability - 

DENYING OUR JOURNEY.

So let's talk about that. First of all - Stonewall. Yes, that is an important event. We can never emphasize how important. 

But -

Transwomen were fighting laws that had been put in place to KEEP WOMEN DRESSED THE WAY SOCIETY DEMANDED.

I'm one of the girls who protested at my high school to be allowed to wear warm, comfortable trousers, instead of chilly dresses, with the expensive panty hose. The laws were written to control women. WE had to wear at least "three pieces of female dress." Bras. Dresses. FUCKING GODDAMN HIGH HEELS. I admire the hell out of the Drag Queens that do ALL of the Seattle Pride parade - but imagine having to wear that shit all the time, working, shopping, driving - not just clubbing or showing off on a runway? Imagine HAVING NO CHOICE AT ALL? No wonder the kids are saying "fuck these costumes" and basically went unisex, with flat shoes, leggings or jeans, a top and a hoodie. THEY get it. I KNOW I'm talking to older idiots.

So, yes, Stonewall MUST be recognized for demanding that cops don't get to beat on LGBT just for being who they are, or dressing the way they want, as we all should have the right to. But the journey of women to start that fight for everybody must not be forgotten or denied. 

We're in this together. The day the Right Wing makes all women Handmaids - and they're trying to - is the day all the transpeople will be left with no protection at all. There's no use asking men, gay or straight - they despise women, all of them. And if you're a guy who thinks you don't, once I post this link on Facebook, I will bet eggrolls at least two of you jump in to be the ones to redefine and in control of the the situation. 

Oh, that's right, nobody takes my eggroll bets any more, because they're sucker bets.

And now we come to some more Fancy Chinese Food subjects:

My hypotheses that there is no such thing as a male.

Can I prove this? Not going to try. Just throwing it out there. Starting with traditional terminology.

"Females" are the original DNA-carrying single-cell animal. "Males" are viruses searching to replicate a useless Y.

Over millions of years, the fight went on, until the "female" hijacked the "male" to help spread her DNA load. "He" doesn't have any.

We all start as "female" - with the capability of a full reproductive construction. But if the foetus has a Y, mom detects the parasite, and removes the reproductive capability, turning a full "female" into a kind of walking DNA spreader, with only two glands and a meat tube.

The exterior glands in "male" mammals look like a case of "Go home evolution, you're drunk." If it's not lethal, a poor system will continue to develop. The use of the DNA spreader alone to hook up the DNA looks like GHEYD to me. A lot of fish and mollusks work with more flexibility, but mammals are really a bunch of 19th-century buildings with bad wiring. No wonder the dinosaurs outperformed us.

True? Who the hell knows. It just feels like GHEYD, in so many ways.

So I've decided that EVERYBODY is "Sis" and "She." I was tempted to do a "She"/"she division between full females and half females, but no - I'm being nice. You're all Sis. La la la.

Including the wonderful drag queens. I think they know they're doing a clown version of women. I love clowns - as traditional death figures. Death is very much a woman's goddess. We need to recognize and deal with her the first time we face The Blood. But - any drag queen who tells a "female" drag queen she's doing "blackface" is obviously out of touch. A Boy In A Dress. And needs to stop touching black girls' hair.

So there, have fun. I'm not going to argue - I'm just going to share this link. Deny MY journey in any way, and I'm just using the link. If the best trans you can do is an angry 14-yea-old mean girl and her football quarterback boyfriend, you need a time out. Coach will tell you when you get to come back out on the floor with the NICE girls.

I love your store, but....

I know everybody up here reads Facebook. It's the rural telephone, email and Uber service. So I'll be sharing this there. 

So may I mention to some very nice people what they've done? I assume it's purely ignorance. We all know how a certain group believes #blacklivesmatter means "ONLY black lives matter," when, of course, any intelligent person knows it means "Black Lives Matter TOO." It doesn't mean other lives DON't matter. 

So here's the rub: I love the store that sponsors the truck in what looks like the stock car or demolition derby. But LoggerLivesMatter painted on the side of your truck? It means you think somebody is murdering loggers left and right, like POC, with no trial, as though just breathing makes them guilty and open for any cop or frightened gun owner (redundancy) to kill. And loggers are not. They're just NOT.

Using LoggerLivesMatter on the side of your truck is cruel and ignorant, and I  hope you folks at the nice store are NEITHER. But it's not a joke. It's not cute.

And we have so many black people up here, whom you normally do business with, and are NEVER rude to! How can you do this to them? Do you think they don't understand what that means, sitting in that yard day after day? This is Clallam Bay! I can almost understand you intend its use in Forks - which really does have to work on its inability to understand racial cruelty - but there are black kids walking by it DAILY.

You have a choice - you're either completely unaware of the state of terror our people of color live in, in this country, or you don't care, or you think only your lives matter, and it's a fan club you think you deserve to be in.

Really? Do you WANT to be the target of every racist and white supremacist with a gun? Do you want to be a legitimatized target of every cop who forgets he's a civil SERVANT, and the citizen of every race comes first, not him? 

I hope you'll not try to defend what you did, and simply paint the line off your truck. I'll say no more about it - although this post will stay in place, because the internet does not allow for cruelty to every disappear. No, I'm not posting a photo of your truck. You don't deserve to have that shared.

More and more of us up here are hard-headed intolerant Liberals, who will put up with no more cruelty to any form of life, especially when it's done for "fun" or "sport" or bully jokes.

(Local cultural note: many black people up here are also Makah, and proud of both heritages. It is not uncommon in the Pacific Northwest for Indians to celebrate both their New World and Old World Tribes. It's not a good idea to mess with the Tribe.)

(All the loggers have to fear is that a logging company pulled a scam on them, and the developers are on the way, but nobody forced them to sell their land to the company instead of the parks. At least if it had gone to the parks, the loggers' kids would be able to visit it in the future. 

Clallam Bay sold the land to the parks, when the houses are being threatened by the rising waters - there before our eyes - but their kids will be able to use those parks, and not have them locked into development. If the parks offer US money, we're not going to fight them - we'll take the good price, before the waters chew out the land, and leave us with a pittance. I always said I'd just sell to a Republican, but that would mean I'd never get to come back to these beaches.

A newspaper editor up here hates the parks because her grandfather sold his farm to them. She can still go to that park and enjoy it. He got the money - by his choice - and she'll always be able to visit that place and camp and go to the beach. 

The letters to the editors about trying to survive as loggers sound like the ones in the Everett Herald in the 1960's - before the developers gobbled up Everett, Mukilteo, and every part of a formerly small town-rural area. I've seen it happen. I can only assume you're happy it's happening, and hope to profit off it. My only recommendation is, if you love your kids - sell to the parks. Because otherwise your kids will have to move to Tacoma.)

Last Chance Horse Camp

DON’T STAY HERE.

LAST YEAR THIS PLACE PUT ME IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM.

Earth Day 2017 - Cleanup and Hicksters

Earth Day Cleanup, Sappho, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula's West End. Dan was the other half of the team, but the really good photo went to the Forks Forum.

I'll be working with Clallam Transit to get us all a dumpster! 

We gave a ride to a Neah Bay girl on the way down. When she found out that Clallam Transit was instituting a Port-Angeles to Bainbridge Ferry run - and was going to try to make it run all weekend - she was very happy. Bus riders have worked very hard, contacting all the local bus systems, to get this to happen. The fact that the new Transit Boss rides the Bus must have helped!

Now for some praise and pukes: the woman who VERY carefully laid out a pair of sweatpants and lined up tightly-wrapped baby diapers on top of them: good on you. You made an effort. You tried. With no other way to dispose of these items, you didn't dump the human waste into the port-a-potty or onto the ground. You must have realized the horrible health hazard, if you threw human waste where people could step in it. You placed the diapers near the port-a-potty, but behind it where your waste was easily accessible, but out of sight. That's how an adult acts.

Guy - and we know it was a guy - who must have pulled up his truck and dumped three heavy bags of YARD WASTE under the trees: You have a yard, you have a truck - and you are expecting the rest of the tax-papers to take care of what YOU can afford. You are lazy and selfish. That's how a child acts, waiting for mommy to pick up after him.

Now for the treats: we don't normally eat the the wonderful Hungry Bear, on Highway 101, near Sappho. Old folks can't eat luscious traditional diner food. But after two-and-a-half hours of unstinting work, in which we cleaned up everything we could haul out, we got to go this wonderful old-fashioned restaurant and eat whatever we wanted! Lordy, they even have old English-style "coffin" pastry pies - the kind that were originally meant for hard wagon travel. Finally - enough crust!

Very soon, we found the staff was almost jumping up-and-down in joy over the cleanup. We all got to talking about how either the county or transit MUST face our transient and homeless population - and by that, accept that citizen tax-payers must be part of that process, to get what we want, how we want it - and give access to garbage disposal. 

One staff member said she was so sick of hearing people complain, and doing nothing. I told her there is a growing group of people who are INVOLVED. We have science and women's and climate marches in Forks. And the population publicly SUPPORTS the protesters! No fake protest attacks out here! The atmosphere became joyous.

Seattle - whining about "homeless" garbage - the West End is going to shame you, if you don't look out! Note: Transit referred to homeless as "Our Homeless." Admitting our OWN people here are in trouble. Our officials get better every day! 

(Yes, we have the usual malfeasance and embezzling you get from short-sighted idiots who don't seem to realize it's a surveillance society - and WE're doing the surveillance - but we have far, far more decent people here, in and out of County uniform. Why else would we have this bus system, that is the envy of metropolitan areas? You can contact public servants and they are happy to SERVE - and they like to hear they've done well. Call up transit or county or the Sheriff's Department or the library and say how happy you are.

If there's one thing I know as an artist, the real food we all run on is pats on the head, the same as puppies. So make a puppy happy today, and see what happens.)

Now for the bad after the good: I would warn rural areas to be on the lookout for Hicksters - and yes, it's a word I made up and first used on Twitter to the Forks Forum, The Nip and the Washington Post. 

Hickster: Metropolitan right-wing person who travels to rural areas, assuming rural people are all right-wing. 

You see this movement among those practicing Logger Chic in cities. They don't seem to realize that grandpa practiced Cowboy Chic way back when - and for the same bad reasons. Remember playing Cowboys and Indians as a Kid? Today it would be Loggers and Every Living Thing.

At the Hungry Bear, a handful of bikers were back in the bar, quietly enjoying themselves (Bikers are cool. My brother-in-law was a biker. We get lots of nice bikers up here, from all sorts of cities. They're welcome, and enjoy themselves without problems. Their rigs are gorgeous!).

But then these bikers must have heard me telling the waitress about the Earth Day Cleanup - and how, if we couldn't get to the Science marches, we made our own event. That's all the waitress and I talked about for then (because we were hungry, and wanted to address the eye-boggling mile-high fish-n-chips-clam-strips, and turkey burger and too much coffee and - I'm so sorry I ordered it afterwards, but I'm happy I tried it - Moosetracks milkshake. Let's just say that somebody with my metabolic problems should stick to vanilla. And green tea and salad).

Anyway, this set off the Hicksters in the bar, and it sounded like Fox News back there. Because I was dizzy from too much sugar and had to go out into the parking lot for a breath of fresh drizzle, I saw at least one of 'em had Bellingham plates. The staff didn't say anything to them, because - they're the staff. They don't bug the customers (although if they want to get excited about something they LIKE, they'll talk). 

The hicksters started talking about protesters "burning stuff." They probably never got near a REAL protest in their lives. The Fakes who showed up at the WTO marches - and the corporate-owned news that fell for their act - are finally getting outed. But Fox and the Washington Post are all about ten years behind the times, so how would they know? (I bet they don't know the word "rant" is code for "shut up, bitch").

Then they started complaining about the people who didn't want the Navy using a rural area to run military exercises over. They used the word "growlers" about the jets. Now that's a Navy term. You think the Navy worries about any actual infantry combat vets out here with Battle Fatigue? Vets who can't even show up to Stand-Downs because the mere thought of the military makes them shake and cringe? (And I've seen it.) Why should a bunch of anchor clankers care about anybody outside THEIR uniformed fan club? They'd kill off every last marine mammal if they got to play with their toys.

(Dan's dad was at D-Day on a ship. NOT ONCE did he ever try to make out that he went through what was close to what the infantry faced. He saw some bad shit on the ship, but even then he wouldn't have sneered at the drafted grunts.)

Then the hicksters gave themselves away: I heard them talk about "building houses out here." I've been warning people of these guys for years. Everett and Mukilteo used to be like out here - until the logging interests simply sold everything to the developers. 

For years, somebody posted green-lettered signs basically saying nobody but loggers had families (well, what else does "working forests = working families" mean?). This was part of a campaign to stop the parks buying land for more parks - which is always an excellent investment for the future of the citizens, and an industry that can only grow, and can only fall apart if natural beauty is destroyed - tourism. Then the land was bought up by a company whose signage uses the same color green. You think an artist would miss that?

Now you have a choice, folks. You can sell what land you might have held onto to the parks - at a much lower rate - or to the developers. The logging company will be selling it. THEY're down to sticks and chipboard! I've seen this failure rate, before.

Out here, several houses are being bought and torn down by the parks, because climate change has raised the water levels so high those houses are in real danger. I live in fear of the logs and bulwark-stones being flung through the windows on a high-tide stormy night. I deeply hope nobody's in those houses when it happens. I'm so glad to hear they'll be getting out.

BUT - the parks is probably going to be paying a much lower price, now. The owners are the sort of folks who thought they'd actually bought beaches - back when we had some really nasty real estate companies that have been wiped out by the crash. They've learned better, but it must have been rough, paying that much for what was not the companies' right to sell. And now they'll have to take what they can get from the parks. That's sad for them, but good for the citizen tax-payers.

(We had a joke up here for friends who feared we'd never be able to sell our place if the water threatened it: "We'll just find a Republican." Denying Climate Change can be personally painful, and fewer people up here care to do that, when it's so in-your-face all the time. But I guess we'll always have hicksters, and their victims.)

Those few who think we want development to do what's done all over America: for the sake of a handful of ephemeral jobs, do you really want me to be able to say I saw you coming out of Wal-Mart and saw you get into a truck with a "Buy American" sticker? Been there, done that!

Do I need to say the hicksters were very vocally pleased about Mexican immigrants being shipped out? In a restaurant with a customer and staff base that had relatives and friends from all over? When four what looked like Middle Eastern guys came in and were put at a nice table by the window, the hicksters shut up. And got real polite. Score one for the decency of the Hungry Bear. Score zilch for racism.

I hope the hicksters saw the "We support LGBT rights" Gay Pride Poster by the bar when they went to pay their bill. It must have been shocking, after hickster city newspaper had told them they'd find their idiot buddies out in the sticks.

Just sent this message to Clallam Transit, Clallam Department of Health, Clallam Waste Management and all the County Commissioners: 

"Hi!

Talked to one of the Clallam Transit supervisors the other day. So Transit is aware of the Earth Day cleanup at the Sappho park-and-ride, carried out by me and my husband Dan.

I've attached a photo - it's a horror! Baby diapers, industrial filth, broken glass. A real - and dangerous mess. Think what would happen if ONE carrier of typhoid or cholera came through - especially a baby! The port-a-potty helps with the adult human waste, but does nothing for baby waste.

Somebody in local government - either one of you with the others' support, or all of you - needs to step up and realize we need a dumpster out here. I've talked to local folks, and they're for it. They know it's taxpayers getting a public service, and they want it.

Yes, there will be transients and our homeless using it - we know that - but where else are they supposed to throw the garbage? Let's not be like Seattle, blaming the helpless for their garbage when there is no place to put it.

There's no use fining people - they'll just haul their stuff 'way back into the woods. The solution has to be - getting the stuff OUT of there. And this pile is cumulative - if a dumpster is in place, it probably won't be bad under day-to-day use, for regular maintenance.

Work with us! We'll cooperate every way we can. You ARE our public servants, and we  value you all as such - and really excellent ones.

Donna Barr"

Votes Remain Uncounted in 2016 Presidential Election

For the 2016 Presidential Election, 125 votes were not counted in Clallam County.

These ballots were in a box marked for handicapped use by the curb near the Port Angeles County Courthouse. My household and I thought about putting our ballots into that box, then thought better of it. It turns out we made the right decision, because those ballots were neglected to be collected, and not counted in the election.

We did not discover that our vote had been endangered - and the votes of handicapped people uncounted - until March, when the Peninsula Daily News headlined the situation on their website. We could access no further information with our browsers.

I immediately emailed the County Auditor, Shoona Riggs, requesting further information, and quickly received a 58-page report in the form of a pdf, covering discovery of the situation, and actions taken.

However, my instruction that I - as a citizen - be provided with the names of the parties involved brought no response. I will be pursuing this further, under our rights as citizens for full disclosure of any situation involving our votes.

You can get a copy of the report by contacting Shoona Riggs. Be sure to ask for the names of the people involved with the neglected ballots. What did they know and when did they know it?

Shoona Riggs

Clallam County Auditor
Auditor's Office | Clallam County
(360.417.2222 |6360.417.2312
sriggs@co.clallam.wa.us  |http://www.clallam.net/elections

2016 Neah Bay Fireworks

Neah Bay, Washington: Amerexit fireworks AMAZING. Had the BEST frybread ever, now Pat's is out of their little trailer and now have their own little shop.

Fireworks were hilarious. The beach fireworks had gotten really wild. The main guys shot off traditional shots, about ten of 'em, and it was hard to tell from the kids' fireworks, which seemed the same size because they were closer. People were saying, "Have they started? Is that them?"

Then, the professionals cracked their knuckles and said, "Okay, amateurs, watch THIS." The mad moment - about five of 'em - was really all there was, and the last one rained down all over us and Front Street like a giant silver octopus. We were all screaming in terror and joy. People were speaking squeaky for a about five minutes, gasping and giggling. Best. Practical. Joke. Ever.

There are probably videos of these fireworks on YouTube. I just sat and enjoyed.

Note: Neah Bay keeps fireworks on the beach, away from the rest of the town or wildlife. Well, except for eagles that grew up with them and sit in the trees and watch. Stupid people around here blowing off M-80's and stuff last year got fireworks banned this year. Drunken Sailors, of course (my word for White People). Making New Law because somebody had to be stupid and selfish, and ruining it for everybody.

Where are the eagles, Grandpa?

Rusting ship knees on Slip Point, Clallam Bay
Nature bats last. And hardest.

Hello, everybody. Including Olympic Peninsula communities who are waking up to what's happening to you.

Olsen's Resort in Sekiu has been reborn as a company that understands the old days of destruction for profit might not make a very good future for this area.

They have begun to offer much more in the way of scuba-diving and canoeing, and understand that the Olympic Peninsula has the prized status of Audubon areas.

They understand that - with all wild animals now at refugee status - we need to stop sanctioning killing and destroying for fun - an antique and unhealthy practice, especially for the minds of children - and out-of-date resource harvesting for profit. Destroying the wild for profit ALWAYS results in the final death of any profit at all.

Right now, on this Peninsula, logging is going on in wetlands, wildlife areas - including areas with long-time eagle nests - and even in county parks. The destruction of the forests of Pillar Point and Tumbling Rapids, and the clearcutting of the wetlands around Clallam Bay, are cause for shame, not celebration. 

Clallam Bay's eagles and all other animals are under siege. Neah Bay does not allow cutting anyplace near an eagle's nest. What's wrong with us outside the native communities?

Who did such destruction benefit? Money went into pockets for the short term, while threatening what could be a permanent future clean industries - birding and careful forest management - and took away access to forests for the elderly and children. Kids and people on canes can't tramp around in logged regrowth, and we all know it. 

Forests are massive, complicated systems, not crops - a tree is not grass. ANYTHING made from a tree that is not wood has some level of toxicity. As a girl from a pulp town, I've seen the paint peeling off the walls of houses around the Everett pulp mills. 

Tearing down the peninsula's future for low-quality acid paper and outgassing building materials, and all those pallets for shipping goods from China is no kind of future.  The forests could be preserved for careful harvesting of large, quality trees, which would allow for wildlife to thrive as well as people.

People would stop freaking out if there was the "waste" left for wildlife, including snags. They could be taught that the reason for large forest fires was because every last forest fire - the ones that cleaned out dead undergrowth, allowing fresh, clean plant growth, good for all living things - were extinguished by humans who thought all fire was bad - rather than the native communities who had used fire carefully for centuries. Food plants could return - real ones - not intrusive non-native plants. People could learn.

I've seen what happens when an area was ultimately - as usual - destroyed for forests, and caved under to development. Mukilteo-Everett used to look like the Olympic Peninsula. Look at it now. 

This might make developers happy, but its future is Seattle - and look at Seattle's prices, now. The only thing land is good for there is real-estate churning. Who from out here can afford to live there? 

Note: people who formerly cheered to see burning clearcuts on Vancouver Island are now seriously worried as the clearcuts come close to their home. They know they'll suffer everything from flooding to hill collapse to refugee predators in their yards. 

Forks already has a recent shameful record, when a bear living near the town was driven from its home by a clearcut, and slaughtered because it had nothing to eat but farm animals. Cougars show up in yards, trying to get at the chickens - are caged chickens natural diet for anything but a starving predator? Does nothing change? Can none of us learn? Or see?

Only caring if it affects us is what being a NIMBY is all about. "Not In My Back Yard" only happens when a bad system develops far away and then crawls closer to home.

Whoever up here works to save the eagles, the trees for a better future, and all the wildlife for all life will be praised. Whoever helped kill everything from selfishness and short-sightedness or simple destructive ego, will not be forgotten. Just not in a good way.

Someday, a community will say "Enough!" and organize a class-action suit. Think it can't happen? As an army vet, I'm part of a class-action suit against the army for nerve-gas poisoning, along with the whole town of Anniston, Alabama. If it can happen for military poisons, it can happen for thoughtless resource extraction.

it's not city vs. country - American cities and country swap populations all the time. Those of us from cities grew up in what used to be country, and understand the dangers. People growing up in cities are trying to save what little they have, or reintroduce preservation. Should we be far behind them?

The Olympic Peninsula has only one history that counts - the destruction of the forests, and the extermination of the wolves. Anything else is pretending. It began to do penance by the establishment of the parks.

One side or the other will be remembered. Which shall it be? And whose children will ask: "Where are the eagles, grandpa?"

Congratulations on the Nature Conservancy's recent purchase in the Hoko area - there is a future. And shame on Clallam Bay, that fell for those Working Forests = Working Families signs, as an excuse for logging-company land-grabs for cheap, with no future. Is it too late for Clallam Bay? Or will it learn in time?

Self-Employment Galore!

Solar "meeting" at the Sunsets West Co-op: Initials KM actually posted the meeting at the post office and co-op - and even though it was only she and I there, she'd been researching on the net, brought a list of questions, and LISTENED to me. She was finishing my sentences. Over hot cups of chai, and in the course of the meeting, she learned how solar doesn't have to cost the price of a small house, and how it's best we don't hook into PUD. If the power goes out up to 8 times a year up here, we need batteries. 

I have the small-solar contact shop lined up: Anchor Marine, down in Port Angeles. It's a boat and RV shop. Of course, they already understand small solar. Ask for Eric.

Then we started discussing diagrams, and how much less it would cost her to find and build the parts. Which moved on to her finding and building the parts for other people - and - voila! - she creates her own job.

This would be at the dinky level. Unlike installing wood stoves, you're not going to kill yourself with a couple of batteries and solar panels, and some small 12-volt appliances or an inverter. You might startle yourself, but you're not going to burn down your house. Not if you have a lick of sense (and there are people up here who can blow themselves up making budder, so THINK).

How to not freak out PUD: remind them they could be the bulk near-cost supplier for parts for small solar builders and householders. It's the future - might as well make like a Boy Scout ("be prepared," not "despise gay people").

I might have launched the West End's first small-off-grid solar builder. Cross your fingers! Note: we agreed I'd not be part of any formed groups, because then, due to conflict of interest, I couldn't report to the papers. But I'll teach her and anybody else how to write press releases.

Now if I can just launch the person who will start ripping out car engines and replacing them with batteries for full electrical. If anybody can do it, it's this gang. Self-employment galore.

Note on Tesla: I think it's Arizona - or one of them thar western states - that has brought in Tesla for full electrical auto production - but lured 'em by loading the taxes they should be paying onto the citizenry.

WE, of course, know what happens when Boeing doesn't pay its taxes - everything falls apart. To our utter shame, we even lose our parks. And sell our forests to overseas hedge funds.

Butts About to Be Bitten

You know, I tried to leave you to your own devices, but I guess I don't get to do that.

I've been cornered by somebody who knows all about a local person who has been cutting timber in riparian areas, other people's property, and even cutting down an eagle tree. 

According to what's being said, somebody in Clallam County Government knew and did nothing about it. The person who came to me has your name.

Because cutting timber in flow areas could be contributing to road damage, and you never know if a car is going to go over - all of you had better hope a car doesn't go over the edge and kill somebody.

As it is, the road damage is going to probably make it necessary to move the road back. Into the clearcut property. Eminent Domain for the Greater Good. Screaming and the beating of breasts, but nothing to be done about it. Pointing and laughing.

Against my will, I think I may have fired up and begun to teach somebody a lot more involved in this community. An Aries born in the Year Of The Dog has horns and teeth.

It's a long worm has no turning. 

"Eco-Terrorist" on the Right Forehead.

New Year's Resolution: to paste the term "Eco-Terrorist" back onto the forehead of logging companies, newspapers owned by logging companies, bushmeating companies, ranchers and farmers who use our money to destroy wildlife and rivers, and anybody who thinks killing things is "fun," or life is to be "harvested." Carl Hiaasen can help. I wish I had an emoticon for "barracuda."

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Everybody Lost

First of all, Happy Krampus! 

Santa ain't coming to the Olympic Peninsula. The logging companies have stripped the place, and the developers are on the way.

No use writing about the place any more. Give it a decade or two, and there will be no more hunting and fishing, and locals will have to move out because the taxes will go up on the vacation homes and the towns becoming cities.

I guess nobody cared about living in the woods that much. The animals on the planet are quickly heading for extinction. Coyotes, crows, seagulls, domestic cats and dogs, and deer are probably all that makes it through. I know - "Deer?" You'd be amazed to find out where they show up, perfectly calm and happy where no humans even see them.

The churches are still trying to fool everybody into thinking they're going to heaven. If there WERE a heaven, it's referred to as a garden, or a city. If it's a garden - does anybody think the species that failed the "take care of my garden" test is going to be put anyplace but a burning clearcut? if it's a city - those places fill up with Liberals. Hell will be that there's noplace else to go, and people like me won't pick on Stupids for being stuck there, but we won't listen to their whining, either.

The wars? Well, it's the Darwin Award. Parents don't care about throwing away their DNA, so long as they can be the Twelfth Man in a football game with guns. I guess we'll have to go on paying for the military jobs, and getting nothing back in return. So much for the myth that the military took America out of the Depression. Since I pay the military's salaries, I'm not only their Commander-in-Chief, like all other citizens - I'm their boss. 

I've pretty much taught everybody how to send in articles and photos to newspapers. The editors will be very happy - they won't have to pay anybody. It might keep those papers going a little bit longer. They're not "news" papers, anyway - just rah-rah rags for the logging industry.

Now I have to decide if I should take advantage of the Lulu.com holiday deals, to get books for Emerald City, ShortRun, and my own comicon. 

I know, I know - Twain and Hiaasen say we need to keep fighting and stay pissed off all our lives. But Nature will get her own back on all of us, sooner or later. She always does.

I do more good drawing comic books, anyway. Go over to my site and get all the links for books, shows, and hopeful stuff. 

Because this place is fucked.

Sixty-Four White People

Happy Voter Sports party! 

Now I get who's helping to destroy what's left of the pittance parks out here - greedy farmers and descendants of land-grabbing settlers hooking up to developers, and not realizing they just went to bed with the hoof-and-mouth disease.

The editor of the Forks Forum - Forks Washington's hometown newspaper is running a campaign to restore Forks' white history, including columns about the "Real Forks." I suspect that one's because, rather than siding with pissed-off loggers who can't get the girls any more, everybody wants Twilight back, and are down to Twi/Squatch tours, and it always pisses off what's left of settlers when Custer gets his reputation held up for everybody to see.

And why? Because the parks "stole" Rialto Beach Mora Olympic National Park from her grandfather and supposedly turned it over to politicians to party in. Why? They're mad because they got paid and not in 2014 dollars? As for partying in the park - what? Like we all can't reserve the park to party in?

I'll bet part of the fight will be based in how much Injun blood they got in 'em. And you know the joke: "What do they call 64 white people?" "One full-blooded Cherokee." No, that's wrong. "One full-blooded Cherokee CHIEF." It's always a chief - when it's not a princess.

And you people with the Ancestor Club - why don't you be honest and just name it the "I Been here Screwing The Natives Longer Than You Club" and not be so embarrassing? 

My people got here in 1632, which means we've been bigger asswipes, longer. Might as well admit it... and not brag about it.

Speaking of loggers not getting the girls any more - dude on the bus, yesterday, talking about why the "selection of females is so small up here" - do you even OWN a mirror? Please don't tell me you think Twilight took your girlfriend away. Like you needed help with that.

(Hopefully this post will finally make our local Canadian-logging-company-owned newspapers make me go away. I never got paid enough, never knew if a story would be paid for, and had to write the most horribly censored schlock. No wonder Hemingway refused to have his newspaper articles published in his lifetime, and kept cats. I feel for you, dude.)

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.