Drugs, Heroes and Blindness

A promising young man recently committed suicide up here. According to town rumor, it's because the army decided he was "overweight" and he'd "disappointed his uncle." These are only rumors. 

I saw this kid at graduation. If the rumor is true, it's a lie. Supposedly, the army yanked away his future, and he shot himself. Again, the family is torn to pieces, and not sharing exact information - but it's all over town, through one rumor or another. 

A grandmother up here was furious about recruiters at the high-school job days. The army acts like one of those bad religious groups, looking for the suffering and dead-end to lie to and suck into the machine. I'm explaining "pension rank" to everybody - the fact that, in order to guarantee s/he'll retire as a general and not a colonel, a general really needs a war. And recruiters have quotas, and will commit suicide themselves, if they can't meet them.

While delivering food-bank food to a dying man, I saw a group of kids clustered near his door, in the parking lot. They were discussing something that had upset them. They were also waiting for their drug dealer (from the looks of them, probably the locally-produced meth). 

These kids, waiting for a pain-killer, were hurt by the death of a school hero. 

Hoquim recently put together a block watch. What are they most concerned with, about kids? Cleaning off graffiti. Not why the kids are suffering and hunting paint, alcohol and meth. Not why they're in pain and need help. They have pretty new uniforms, but where is the outreach to the suffering, and the kids already on the streets? These kids all know each other, regardless of how they try to cut them up into us vs. them. The "us" and "them" is actually by generation - and the "us" isn't doing a very good job helping "them."

The old guard up here is disgusting. Loggers are clear-cutting in a wildlife/wetland area right next to the dead boy's town. They hit their jake-brakes when going by campgrounds in the Olympic National Park. The people from the 1950's are gleeful that trees are going down. All they can see is a football game - not just cash, but the domination of the Enemy, Nature. And guess who they call "eco-terrorists?"

Wildlife and trees and tourism, that can offer so many working positions - not just jobs - for all the kids for the future. These people raise money for scholarships for kids, but how will those kids get to stay here if there's nothing?

The Clallam Bay Comicon may have to be witness to what the old guard does to the community. The place may be wrecked for our generation - but the only thing that really stopped wholesale whaling and overfishing of cod were the collapses of populations. So maybe the west end needs to die before it can live. 

But why do we always have to go through a resurrection?

We need to reach out to all the kids, because all the kids know each other. And they're asking what we're doing with their planet, and why we're only leaving them scraps and mud. That look in a sad kid's eyes? That's blame - and helplessness.

Or is it? A kid up here is going to be building an anti-bullying website. Whenever we go hiking or to the beach, there's very little litter, and since kids are the ones who run farthest, they're the ones keeping it clean. Kids who love nature and know it's the future are stewarding now. They're cleaning up water and woods. They want modern logging techniques, not just ones that pay for the machinery, in a cut pay cut pay vicious circle. Fewer and fewer people are fishing except for food. The old paradigm of animals as toys and something to play with, for trophies (training for war) or catch and release (tormenting animals for the fun of it) is beginning to fade. The horrible 20th-century myth that only humans can feel and hurt is being hunted down and dispatched for what it was and is - an industrial excuse for treating our fellow peoples on this planet as so many tools and cash bags.

The old guard calls people like us "wimps." This is another word for "meek." Only the green will survive - and who do you think will inherit the earth?

(And why am I bothering to write this? Because it's the only weapon I have against the spoilers. And so nobody can accuse me of not trying, and for turning a blind eye. I don't want to be the one to stumble in surprise on the tattered remnants, and claim I never knew. And the more I can spread this, the less able others will ever be able to say, "But we didn't know!" I don't want to have to say, "I told you so!" again - but I'll probably have to. I really hate looking this prescient, every single time, when past lessons should have taught us better. And we're still testing animals to see if THEY can learn? What was the definition of insanity, again?)

Sticks and Stones

Kids do this up here, write on the beach and make hearts with sticks and stones. I have a photo of a "skeleton" somebody built, complete with a wood-bole "skull." That's gonna have to be for the mystery series. If ever.

Logger Covers His Face

Behind county facility, in watershed

I'm not making any judgement comments, but here's today's report:

In the Quarter Store today, a worker was poking fun at her sister-in-law as an activist.

Another woman said, "I saw 18 logging trucks on the road today."

This is basically a photo essay. The cutting is going on right behind a town that is trying to revive a tourism/media/entertainment industry. The cutting probably has not taken wild-life repercussions into consideration, near a town.

The driver said, "I wanna know why you're taking my picture!"

I answered, 'Don't have to." This is an unpaid photo essay, by an American citizen.

The company is cutting on either cheaply-purchased land, or forestry land. The driver said this company was Rayonier. Rayonier has worked to recover other riverside by the Clallam River. But - Rayonier's Real Estate offices are in Florida.

Does that look like selective logging?

Merrill and Ring has already accidently exposed their intentions toward the scenic route. An expensive sign campaign for "working forests" MIGHT be a real-estate scam, but I have no further information; it just looks like monkey business. Merrill and Ring cut down all the timber on the highway in Pillar Point, a State Park.

The whole operation has a real "Get it Before It's Too Late, as fast as possible" feel to it. It's cutting directly into tourism-viewing areas, seeming to concentrate on it.

Cutting toward the stream and swamp

Local children feel hopeless up here about their future, but are launching anti-bullying campaigns, especially in view of the recent suicide of a child who - according to local stories (not verified, but repeated) felt his future was blocked. 

The generation that supports clearcut logging isn't helping the future generation, nor do they seem to care. The do collect large scholarships for the kids - but it's almost as though they're massaging their consciences. High school graduation classes are down to a handful of kids, while the parking lot of a local apartment complex is the center of kids waiting for their drug dealer - and drug use is about repressing pain.

If they have a future, a real one, that isn't just selling off the place and moving to condos in Arizona, as a developer would offer, the kids will have to do that themselves, with help from the better among our generation.

Selective logging based on a 500-year cycle - and it has to be 500 years, because forests aren't corn fields - must be the future. They're down to producing chipboard, and if you've ever had to deal with wood, you'll know how bad it is, now.

These trucks are very expensive, take a lot of tree money

As the English said, after WWII, trying to rebuild with their forests gone: "You can't get the wood, you know.

Why would the driver be reluctant to show his face?

Transition Port Angeles is trying to rescue the local communities and make life better and more sustainable - but ARE they addressing the resource crash? And it is crashing, or will, if these practices continue as they are. 

It's not 1895, folks. It's not even 1954. It's 2013 - and don't let it become just another place that ate its resources and turned into more concrete or empty grasslands. 

Scotland had a forest. The Middle East and Greece were forested. Easter Island were forested. But not any more. We can destroy forests, and they don't come back, or if they do, they're ghosts of themselves, and their wildlife is gone.

And I'm from Everett/Mukilteo. Let's just say that what happened up there gave me a case of PTSD that makes me unable to ignore a place where I see the same practices - where I once saw the large park tree a couple of truckers stole to try to get on the tv show "Axmen." This place has eagle habitat - including nests along the cliffs, rivers and roads. The eagle may not be an endangered species any more, but taking away their habitat would be a good way to jump-start the status. Silver lining? Or 30 pieces of silver?

We can live in a forest - or we can live on Easter Island.

Letter I just wrote to Rayonier Hunting:

"Hi! I'm contacting you because the Rayonier Timber doesn't have an email contact, only phone, and this might be a message more along your line.

Rayonier Timber is clearcutting right into a stream area, right behind a town, with eagle habitat along the river. In the past, clearcutting near towns has driven out the resident cougar, with subsequent human/animal interactions that proved lethal to the animal.

The town is Clallam Bay. A photo the area can be seen at http://www.sekiu.com/

The point you see on the left of the picture, on the cliffs has at least two live eagle nests, and is a nesting area for other base population predators, especially along the Clallam River and another wetland stream, where eagles regularly fish and share the area with other fishing birds and animals, including otters, both river and sea.

With timber sales to Japan up in the area, just checking to make sure Rayonier knows about the habitat, and the repercussions involved in cutting that close to a town. Use lines get fudged when there's cash to be collected; a major park tree was stolen up here by unaffiliated loggers to try to get on the tv show "Axmen."

And I do fish, and enjoy a bit of venison now and again - but no hunting or fishing can survive habitat collapse, especially along a wildlife stream. This is also an Audubon area, which holds out a future for local kids in tourism, which benefits from the same forest conditions as hunting. We've recently had a suicide of a promising young man, and other kids are using drugs to repress pain. They need help for a real future.

I write as growing up in the tree-pulp industry in Everett/Mukilteo - that didn't pay any attention to its resources.

Donna Barr
CC to Transition Port Angeles"

Pain and Pretty

Spinach fruit pops at the Journey.

Just a post of pretty pictures and stuff we're doing. Today I'm really sore.

I decided I could march a mile up a forest road to visit Camp David Jr., skid down a cliff to see a three-headed creek, butt my way through a quarter mile of downed timber and swamps on the shore of Lake Crescent, and finally get cut off by somebody's lake house and have to scramble back up another cliff, holding on to swordferns to keep from taking a lethal header back down. I used to do this stuff when I was a kid; what possesses me to do it when I'm in sixth decade, the godlets only know.

Lake Crescent Maple tree, human added for scale.

A day with the ducks.

The Makah lady in the lovely cedar hat has invented her own fruit pops - including a lovely spinach-mango concoction I was given a sample. Well, I am the local reporter - it's my JOB. She was selling them at the Journey event in Neah Bay. It's part of people up here figuring out they don't - and can't - strip the land and resources any more. The Makah have been training all their kids to canoe around the Olympic Peninsula. They know our infrastructure - including roads - will collapse someday. All it takes is Tim Eyman keeping on. He's another of those people who think the whole planet is there just for THEM. We had a cat once who thought the whole human race had evolved so she alone could have a lap, but it was a lot less harmful. 

The Clallam River mouth, on a foggy summer day.

The maple tree was part of our lake visit yesterday. It was at the start of my march from hell. The nice tourist posed to show human scale. "Add a human!" she said. Somebody doing an indie film with hobbits could use that area right under the tree. It's big enough. 

The ducks are part of Dan's view all day, on a little secluded beach. "Do not feed the ducks," said the sign. Yeah. Wild ducks, never fed, really do get THAT tame. He had a lovely day. I'm taking pain pills.

Here's the beach, on a summer day, with the fog in. When the tide is out, at least in this part of the yearly sand-movement revolution, the river forms a tiny island, with a very wade-friendly side-creek. Well, wade-friendly for adults. Like any river mouth, it's not really kid-friendly. That place is up by the Park bridge, where the kids can splash around with a nice, firm gravel bottom and no hard current.

Grass Hay - Not For Sale

Just a little hay in the front yard.

You can't buy grass hay, at least not this kind. We use an electric mulching mower, and no artificial fertilizers or toxins. 

It makes the best chicken nests. It can be flipped daily for cleaning and re-fluffed, and then the hens can form new nests in it. It's not for eating, so any old soft plants, including whatever weeds or plants, can be dried along with the tall grass.

We simply leave the edges of all grass areas to grow up, and harvest it when the lawn matures and starts to dry out. We don't cut it; we wear garden gloves to rip it up, so the spreading roots of the lawn are weakened and thinned as we go.

Discovered the hay that grows in comparative dark, between the lines of stacked wood, comes up clean, weed-free, soft, fine, and tall. It tears out easily, from above the roots, handfuls at a time.

In the photo, the hay is drying to form an upper thatch before we flip it. It just went through a light rain, and it's fine. 

This is all the hay we'll need to store the potato harvest, and use as the hen nests as the year turns.

Thank You, Builder of Bothies

Tired, overworked, pissed off, cabin-fevered. Went to find another beach to unwind. Yes, we needed to get another beach than the one we can walk to in one minute. Oh, poor us.

Somebody had built this tiny shelter against the wind; call it a "bothy." 

 

It was built into satiny-soft fine sand, warmed by the sun, and even little benches and windows. I spread my old raggedy, patched, favorite Marine blanket over one end, and went to sleep in the shade, with the sound of waves behind me, and a gray whale feeding near the beach.

It was the best sleep I'd had in ages. I'd still be there if the cats didn't need fed. Whoever built this, thank you. You save my life. 

Not really kidding.

Come Help Us Save This Place

"There will always be logging!" Blurted out by one of the librarians the library ONLY hires from logging families (yes, they do). Then again, one of them not only told me Douglas Fir couldn't survive against salal - and was totally boggled when I told her salal was a native plant. Then again, another one of these people claims the native alder is an import. It's not only a nitrogen pump like peas, but the ancient firewood tree of the Pacific Northwest; it falls and shatters and kids can pick up pieces. Then it rots quickly into fertilizer.

But this person also told me a tree is like a stalk of corn. She seemed confused when I told her the growth cycle of a forest is 500 years, not 50. I'll be none of these people know about the 40-tree fungal root connection in a forest. But as another person - becoming enlightened, by the way, as some of them are - told me, "Well, they were just told to get in there and get the wood." Yes, we've all heard a version of "We were just following orders."

Soon to be gone.

Sometimes I think they're from other planets, and breathe ammonia. Why else would one guy say, "I hate trees!"? Evidently he doesn't breathe oxygen - or perhaps he thinks his children or grandchildren won't need it. I wonder what his wife thinks of that and his claims that as long as the earth is here for him, it's fine. "We have grandchildren!" has gotten the smug, short-sighted husband slugged, at least once.

Well, they're clear-cutting by our road. I'm thinking about putting the company on notice for damages when I have to protect the homeless cougar from slavering rangers - unlike the 3 young ones the owner of Triple Nickel Farm CLAIMS a ranger shot and buried on his property (did he think he was bragging to me? Or just want to get a ranger into trouble?). AND lose property values. Look, logging is over; we're down to chipboard and wood our grandfathers wouldn't have used for kindling. It's over, people (and don't get smart, fishing resources - you're down to shipping slime eels to Korea. Buy a clue). And I'll bet a Chinese dinner these guys' idea of legal forest space around the Clallam River is one tree deep. If at all.

Meanwhile, there are only a handful of kids graduating from school, the biggest town is panting after its park trees because they've run out of anything else this size, and one promising young man just shot himself because:

This is an awful thing I'm going to do - use his story to blockade against future misery. I don't know the family, but I do know at least one of his friends, and I've seen the other children. Hearts have been torn out and crushed by this. They can't talk about it. The local newspapers don't want to run the story because it may set off more suicides. 

But suicide doesn't just show up out of nowhere. Some of the kids I saw were sharing the story - while waiting for their drug dealer, who cruised by as I was delivering food to a man who was dying after a lifetime of drug use. The little old ladies who twitter, "It's so nice up here!" just don't have a clue. That, or they're putting up a brave front, which I'll give them credit for. They've been alone so long, they have to make do with what they have, and they're blamed when they need help. 

The dying man's care-giver sneered, "Oh, he doesn't need extra food!" The heartlessness expressed toward the miserable shocked both me and Dan, my husband, who was helping me deliver the food. The man is dying. We can't share out a few mouthfuls of food? What's wrong with that kind of mind? That kind of mind killed a promising young man.

This is only 2nd-hand; the army said the poor young man who committed suicide was overweight, and yanked his whole remaining future (other family details buttress the story, but these are very private, and again, I'm not going to approach these poor people about this terrible moment).

Overweight? In the '70's, they just sent such people to the Fat Camps and got 'em into shape. If the story is true, what the army said is a goddamned lie, because I have photos of that class. Then again, it might be a cover story. I'm not verifying here; nobody can. Remember, the armies are so desperate for volunteers for their wars they've said women, gays and Germans can join the boy's club.

I covered the graduation ceremony for the local papers. I remember wincing when I heard someone at the graduation had a military scholarship (details bad, I'm afraid; I think I'd gotten to the point in the ceremony when I was scribbling "Kill me now" on the program, and was only trying to get nice photos. Oh, YOU go to ever graduation in the place for the past 8 years and see how you feel). Anyway, I remember shaking my head and thinking, "Damnit. Someday the army they're handing their kids to is going to get one killed." I am so sorry for thinking that, and I'm not using the opportunity to say I'm right. It's just what went through my head.

How do I know why these kids join? Because I've heard one say he joined to get a bonus to buy a truck, as though any military is just a job. I was the same kind of forest-ravaging-industry kid who just HAD to get out of town in 1970. Same damn fool reasons, same lies and bait. Yeah, and two friends dared me, and we all joined up together. But - 3 girls? Preferring the ARMY to a life at home? Really? I was so desperate not to end up on the factory line - a factory that had crippled my father and later injured my sister - that I went into the Green Machine.

But I learned stuff. I said "Pension Rank" to a Marine Brat at Photosynthesis Festival, and he fell over laughing. Remember this: generals don't get Pension Rank unless they can have a war. A peace-time General could be a retired Colonel. Your kid could pay for his extra star - and that extra condo in Florida. It's all they care about, no matter what comes out of their mouths. 

Now come to the (links here) Clallam Bay Comicon, and help SAVE this place before it ends up like MY home town: Everett, Washington. That was a pulp-mill town. Tree paper, that is destroying the Library of Congress as the high-acid material flakes apart. Paper can be made out of anything, including corn stalks - but then, these people think a tree is the same as a stalk of corn, don't they? 

Or do they? More and more, when I talk to people - especially young people - it's like they've been dying in a desert, and what I'm telling them is fresh water; they want more. I had to stop and ask one of them, "Am I horse-shitting you?" Eyes glowing, she shook her head, and kept listening.

These people are in deep trouble. Their kids know it - and are beginning to ask what they did with the natural treasures up here. The place needs a generation to heal and recover, or be lost forever. I lost my home town. Maybe that's why.

Note: CGI is expensive. If Vancouver doesn't have to paint out clearcuts, and has built their infrastructure from the hobby level, they're going to get the films. Responsible film-makers understand that bribing companies with no or low taxes is a fool's bargain. We have to start small, with indie films. 

Speaking of responsible indie film makers, I just reminded Johnny Depp he made Dead Man with people from Neah Bay, up the road. That's what his agents get for posting their fax number. I was very delicate and only gave contact info to them. I was trying to be a GOOD fan. I dunno if he'll ever see it, or they'll just wad it up and basket it (And don't get in a huff about his movie "The Lone Ranger." He was reprising the role Gary Farmer had in the Jim Jarmusch's film, of the overdressed rejected outsider. Yes, Farmer would have been nice - but the company wouldn't have hired him).

Frontier Street, looking West

Port Angeles actually has a website about a future. They're a lot less brutal than I am, there. But I'm kind of on the front lines, here, whether I want to be or not. Wrong metaphor? People are dying, immediately and day-by-day. I think that counts. 

Frontier Street, looking East

One last note: When the Scenic Byway was opened on Highway 112, I was covering it for the Peninsula Daily News and the Forks Forum. Mr. Gregory, of Merrill and Ring, evidently considered me an employee of papers which - as I've discovered - are an arm of the logging industry, even under their new Canadian owner. Should I say "especially under the new owner?" Don't get me started on the ignoramus wildlife stories they've been publishing. Oh, do - write and ask if that last one in which the guy doesn't know a hungry wolf from one protecting territory let those wolf pups starve - or went back and skinned them for the bounty. 

And if they continue to accuse wolves of eating people, yes they do - when you leave a battlefield or a plague village full of free meat, or native villages full of disease dead. Basically, IF any wolves in this country ever ate humans, they'd gotten the taste from genocide. I wouldn't be bringing that up any time, soon - especially not up here. Where the natives are getting a bit tired of the Beaty Eye ("Blame the Indians" every time the other towns can't get every little thing they want or think they're entitled to - and to ME! As though I wouldn't be insulted when they do that!).

Mr. Gregory didn't not realize I'm a freelancer - and Green. I'm not even a professional freelancer - my Indian Name might as well be, "She who saves the papers gasoline."

Mr. Gregory smiled and said, "We're going to show these city people what a working forest looks like."

I'll swear to that in court.

I don't know where Merrill and Ring owns property (or rents for shoddily cheap from you and me), or who's in on it - but Highway 112 has been butchered, and they're continuing all up the road. Including the big maples of Pillar Point State Park. I have a photo of who signed off on it in Port Angeles. That will come back to haunt somebody in county government, someday. Yes, it will. Just ask.

Basically, Mr. Gregory said his company was going to destroy part of the tourism industry. Oh, tell me what else he meant, considering the aftermath? The only other option is, he's clueless, and thinks everybody else is, too. It's either he's Big Mr. Greedy Meanie, or he laughs like Mortimer Snerd. Hey, I didn't twist his arm and make him say it! I'm just the messenger. Don't Bradley Manning ME.

Cancer rates are extremely high, here. Poisoning after logging isn't as bad as it used to be - but there are still poisons in the watershed. It's worse than Bremerton (those idiots put a golf course in their watershed - one with nary a weed).

I've been a member of a lot of class action suits, for bad actions from bad businesses, and I'm now part of the class action suit involving Anniston, Alabama, and everybody who served in Fort McClellan going back decades, who were poisoned by the nerve gas our country later sold Saddam Hussein to poison the Kurds. These gears grind slow - but exceedingly fine. If I were in the logging industry, I'd be doing research into forest tourism - including working tourism to help with the recovery (yes, city people WILL pay to come to hard work, just for the fun of it), retraining my people to take advantage of the Audubon areas, and generally not ending up like the Tobacco Industry. They - and their kids - live here, too. And those kids want a real future, not one based on an imaginary past where nature was an enemy to be - as Ann Coulter put it - raped as we choose. 

NOBODY has to be locked out of the future. If there's one thing I know from long experience, it's that gatekeepers, sooner or later, lose the battle - and end up the only ones locked behind the gates. Join the future while we have the chance. And we still have one.

I had a perfect title for this posting, but it was too horrible as a pun. Let's just say it had to do with an old method of fighting pain. Even I'm not that clueless. Or mean. 

Maybe I should have called it, "It's a long worm that has no turning."

Talking Chickens

Pretty picture of a red elderberry

Yacking with somebody I found by accident, raising chickens in Yakima. We were talking about coyotes and peacocks (The picture of the elderberry tree is just for pretties; high summer is the sight of red berries, the sound of the salmon-berry bird, and the taste of thimbleberries). Anyway, this is me, and it should be clear enough how the conversation went:

"Wow! You are the poultry MASTER! You should have a blog. We had guineas, too, when I was a kid. Another weird cry that I miss.

I just keep chickens like on board a ship - a little chicken tractor that gets moved to new grass every day. At least 2 other tractors, locally, nice ones. Mine can't have any wheels because of small predators, so it's pretty ugly/lightweight wire, but it does it the job. 

Four Easter-Eggers sold to me as Amaracaunas (oh, don't get me started on that whole "what's an Araucana?" mixup). The rooster - "Mr. Kate" (go ahead, laugh now) went off to a flock of 15 Amaracauna hens. Talk about a food vacuum. In an open situation, he'd have been magnificent - white as snow, obviously leghorn blood - but like I said, we just have a small egg coop.

Sounds like somebody took away all your big anchor predators. We had a few cougars when we were kids - we have 'em up here. So no, we're not up to our eyeballs in coyotes. Or, to put it more properly - the coyotes aren't up to their eyeballs in humans (trying to be fair, here; this was their home first).

A neighbor up the river lets her big, weird flock run free. Another neighbor said his sister keeps poultry in a wildlife area. First couple of years, lots of kill-off. Then the chickens got smart (or the dumb ones got et). Poultry is from jungles, after all. Those wild gene files are just sitting there. Well, that's not a surprise; poultry were the last animal that domesticated themselves - even after cats"

Mr. Kate Goes To The Farm

Mr. Kate has a new home.

Oh, those of you with chickens KNOW why he's called "MISTER" Kate. Now go ahead and laugh.

He was sold to us by a feedstore in Port Angeles as an Amaracauna hen. Obviously, he's an Easter Egger - you can't see it, but his legs are green. Easter Eggers are Amaracauna/Other crosses. That looks like he's got Leghorn in him. He's tall and heavy, even though he's only learning to crow and only has nubs for spurs, and he has a wide stance. His daughters are going to be top layers.

Now, since we run this place like a ship - including having only room for the four laying hens - and he's too big and rough for the small space, he's gone to Joe Gregory's farm. Where he shall be placed in a cage with 15 Amaracauna hens. Oh, boo hoo for him, how awful.

And no, Joe's not going to eat him. Everybody knows Joe doesn't have a farm - he has a petting farm. He refers to his animals as "cute."

Kitten Rescue

Knocking on the door yesterday. On the porch were a very worried-looking woman, her guy, and their child. In a nice clean box full of pretty baby blankets, a tiny wounded kitten.

They'd been directed to me by the staff at the Three Sisters of Clallam Art Gallery, because everybody around here knows I'm the kitten whisperer. However, I made it clear I don't normally take kittens that have a human attached - and that the only reason I was taking the kitten was it had a superficial wound in the throat (probably from a dog that thought it was a toy), and I have antibiotics. The only reason the vet lets me do that is because we're 60 miles round trip from a vet. And, as yesterday, this stuff happens on weekends. I suspect it was actually their kitten, but they didn't know what to do. Which is fine; I don't expect people to think in an emergency. They did a kindly thing.

Anyway, she's in the back bathtub, all wrapped up, and after a kitten dose of amoxicillin and a bit of warm milk, this morning she's purring (well, it's kind of a grunty sound) and wanting more of that nice Nutrical ® stuff, and ate about a quarter-teaspoon of wet food. 

She doesn't walk or move, but upon massaging her body and limbs, I don't find them completely limp. I'm hoping it's just dehydration and not being a dog toy. Wish us luck.

Unfortunately, because Helpless was playing on the CD, I keep thinking of her name as that. I need a better name.

Latest note: her little front legs seem quite limp. Massage has brought reaction back to back legs. She has urinated - not a lot, but at least that works. Ate a bunch of water-soaked kitten food, seems to be responding well to antibiotics. 

Front legs not bent, or completely limp, and seem to have all their bones, although the shoulder girdle seems oddly loose. Googling "kittens front legs don't work" turned up several conditions, but even if front legs don't work, cats seem to survive as pets. 

Found the young man who brought her to me, and explained not only how spaying a feral colony keeps out more unspayed cats, but also keeps out rats - which have just arrived in Clallam Bay. However, they're not here on Slip Point, yet, and the cats can keep it this way. The young man seemed very willing to take the kitten to the vet for an exam. It's Sunday, and I've emailed Spay N Save, and called Friends of Forks Animals to look for funding  (they did cover the exam - and the vet gave us - the Other Things. Read on).

Update: Poor little thing didn't make it. Not only front legs helpless, but - probable cervical damage and brain swelling, inability to pass waste, heart murmur - and she was blind. I'll fight for a kitty, but it was probably her own mother who took the poor little thing away from the other, more healthy kittens. I'm so sorry, but Helpless didn't make it. 

She passed away with hands around her, unable to purr - she never did, and probably couldn't - wrapped in her baby blanket. I left her there, all covered up, to be disposed of by the vet, because "She wouldn't care," and the only reason the cats who die at the house get fancy ritual is because it would break our hearts just to put them to a Dirt Nap. They don't care, either; funerals are for the living.

Last night I dreamed Helpless was a wild thing running all over the house, knocking things over, purring, and seeing. Dan sees them in the daytime young and healthy, and I see them in dreams. Thanks for all the good wishes, folks. You're very kind.

On the Record for Re-directing the Glacier

Okay. Miss Mouth has run her opinions about Only The Green Will Survive up here for ten years. Why? Because I had one of those clear dreams when I got here that ONLY when the town has a yearly high-class raft art and media world show out in the bay MAY I move, if I ever want to.

All this in a logging and sports fishing and trophy hunting area, where the main small town is convinced the cougars and wolves are out to get them (and the other small town laughs at them for it). 

After blathering with a co-op member the other day on the phone, Miss Mouth got herself invited to speak at a special co-op treasurer's meeting on how to make the future work, hooking up media, the green agenda, bla bla bla. So finally my junkbox brain and nosiness (I have a license for that, being the local stringer) finally come to some use. 

Oh, and the line I use that everybody now agrees with: "When you're down to slime eels and chipboard, your resource industries are DONE." (And thank you Twilight for teaching the larger town that MEDIA MAKES MONEY).

And the Comicon starting to roll probably didn't hurt either: 

 

You'll All Be Welcome In Virginia

Crap all over a beach.

People up here are really getting into loving and taking care of the planet they live on. It's amazing to watch their energy. They're rescuing a little river, and picking up the woods.

But we came upon a kids' campfire that looked like it was out of 1954. Garbage all over, burnt bottles and cans, dumb overuse of the wood. Okay, they're kids. But shouldn't kids know better? They have grownups who teach them, right? My mom taught US to pick up after ourselves, on the beaches of Mukilteo and Everett - back when Mukilteo was like out here, before the pulp industry ate it (Paper From Trees is From Stupid People. Period).

Then we saw what these kids had been using for firestarter - pages of a magazine. Kids get magazines from home, where they're received by adults. Take a look at who publishes this magazine. 

Guns and garbage.

Anybody surprised? They talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk. Anybody who claims to "Love America" and want to protect it needs to do better than this. In training their kids in something better than just AIM and believe bullets evaporate (oh, and they all do). And they do everything they can do to keep wiping out native species, like buffalo, wolves and cougars.

They really don't like it here. After all, the English ancestors got here with the hope they'd get to go back and be Dukes with their ravaging wealth - and everybody afterwards mimicked the bad example. WHEN will they ever learn?

And yes, we'll keep cleaning their nasty campsites and picking up their garbage - because WE're grownups. Maybe someday the little babies can be housebroken - or we may have to accept they're mentally limited and have to be treated like the kind of yard dogs who never get to learn how to behave like adults. Butt-wiping of the immature we shall always have with us.

Ruby Beach is Creeping?

Garnet sand?

Patches of garnet sand on the Clallam Bay beach? These usually only show up at Ruby Beach, down the Pacific coast.

Building on the beach.

Here's a shot of a little pile of driftwood several people seem to have been working on as the days goes by. Sometimes it's a house, sometimes its collapsed into a decorative heap. Sometimes the sea takes it back.

Happy dog

And fun with dogs up on the Hobuck Beach, near Neah Bay: Shaun Allyn and two unidentified dog regulars at Hobuck Beach. It seems to be a local law that, if you go to the beach, you will be issued, like Allyn, with a large, friendly Beach Dog, who will return all those precious sticks you so carelessly throw into the surf. 

While the law requires all dogs to be on a leash, in a large rural area where people need to get along, animal control's unofficial view works: if the dogs don't cause problems, the officers "aren't going to shake any trees." Friday, May 24.

Steamed Bread

Steamed, upside-down.

When I bake in the summer, I just use the microwave. Or all year, if I'm doing whole wheat, which gets tough in our little woodstove-top oven.

Recipe:

Any bread recipe.

Oil microwavable container (glass is preferable, for all microwave cooking, but plastic lets you invert the loaf).

Cooled, flipped, showing lid design in top.

Microwave at 50% for 10 minutes. Check to see if finished crumb is complete across top, if not, microwave 70% for 2 minutes.

Invert, microwave at full power for 2-3 minutes.

Remove, pull up container, let cool.  

Invert onto cutting board.  Enjoy! 

Sliced. Nice crumb, huh?

(Microwaving produces fabulous steamed Chinese breads. It makes English Christmas pudding in a fraction of the traditional time).

I Hope It's Not Naughty

I hope it's not naughty....

Just some rocks found on the Clallam Bay beach. They sorta look like Chinese idiograms, to me, especially the one on the lower left.

Any Chinese friends can read these?

Have I got them all right-side-up? 

:D

Swiftsure Sailboat Race

Swiftsure boat race evening.

Just a pretty photo off the beach, as the sailboats drove in, on Memorial Day Saturday. I liked the lens flare.

A Coelacanth in Tar?

Slip Point Tar Pits?

A Coelacanth fossil on the Clallam River bridge at Slip Point? No, but a surprisingly evocative image in asphalt left by a road-patching crew. "Fossils" - or rather shells embedded in sandstone - are a popular tourism draw to the cliffs behind the beach. Wednesday, May 22.

Sekiu Running Dog

Kim and Petey (with Mom's help).

Will Kim actually breed a dog based on Lab, Cocker Spaniel and Chihuahua? 

Petey, who hangs out at Olson's resort, is black and sweet like a lab, small and big-footed like a Cocker, and has the silky coat of a Chihuahua. He fetches, has a soft mouth, swims like a duck, and is loving but loyal. He can jog for miles, will probably hunt, and can still come in and love on the sofa or a lap without causing pelvic failure. And his huge feet just say "puppy." Yes, that's a full-grown dog.

Kim was wondering what to call it - "Cockalabahua" or something like - but we decided it needed a REAL breed name. 

And now I want a Sekiu Running Dog.

Floor Repair Gets Out Of Hand

Front room, down hallway (still a bit to do).

All we meant to do was pull up the horrible, catted-up old rug and fix holes in the old floor. Then I found the Instructables link.

OOPS. 

But - not bad for an amateur? Okay, so it's not perfect, but we're kinda happy! I made lots of mistakes, and my denoting rooms and areas with different darkness values might not have been completely successful, but man, it feels great underfoot. Holes repaired with steel sheets (which causes a bit of music here and there), but so much warmer and nicer. And so much easier to clean. 

We're not quite done - still have to put in the edging (and thus hiding all my fun with not quite measuring right on the fancy cuts) and a few more pieces. But this is mostly it.

Front room from dooway. Dan at the book-case.

I put it down with nice brass screws. No glue for me. EVER. Or nails. Well, yes, in the quarter rounds and little metal strips, but nowhere it could split wood. I'll pay the extra bit for screws because - yes - I'm always experimenting, and it's always three steps forward, two steps back, until I get it. And we don't want to waste money on an expensive project.

And the cats think it's a skating rink for toy mousies and running up and down the hallway at night. Singing.

Back bedroom from the hall.

Back bedroom from the bath.

Admittedly, though, once again I've had demonstrated to me how the forest industry is tanking from ill-planned, badly-informed overuse and lack of stewardship. As Dan said about the boards and quarter rounds - of supposed good quality - "My grandfather wouldn't have used this for firewood." I got one other word in argument: chipboard. Don't even start with me on chipboard.


Added more photos on the 26th of May. Some of the wood was a bit too pale - mostly because we couldn't use the backs, which were badly patched and touched up. Can we say, "WTF?" Again, as the old Good Show used to say, "You can't get the wood, you know."

Anyway, got out a can of mahogany stain and quickly faked in the wood grain. Was able to line up real grains with fake grains, rather nicely.  Don't try this at home - unless you're an artist with years of practice and a perfectly-developed eye. 

Flowing "wood grain" down the hall.

Bringing false into real

No, wood grains do NOT go around corners like that.