KPLU
While living in Bremerton, didn't listen to KPLU.
Didn't like jazz. Grew up hard rock.
We moved to Clallam Bay. Couldn't get KPLU. Didn't care.
Then one day, it seemed to open up on that end of the band. They'd extended the transmission network.
And suddenly -- all we wanted to listen to was the cool jazz station. We were tired of rock, and tired of classical. But the jazz just fit everything we needed. It even calmed us down and made us feel better.
Do we get cool when we get old? Or was it a change of air?
Keep up the coolness, KPLU Tacoma (88. 5 or 6 or thereabouts...)
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Babysit My Kids For Free
Okay, NOW I get it.
I've wondered for a long time why parents are so desperate to make sure that the rest of us be forced to act like the parents of their kids.
We're to have our books, our media, the internet, even our bedrooms and who we sleep with monitored so it doesn't infringe on the way they see their kids should be interacting with their environment.
I finally GET it -- and I have a family in Clallam Bay to thank for that!
Oh, awright, it's a family that was up here from Port Angeles for the Scholarship Auction.
There was this one woman doing the usual A Cat Attacked My Kid spiel.
You know the one -- the parent describes the baby grabbing the cat, or cornering the cat, and getting a quick slap around both sides of the head.
Then the cat is killed, or abandoned, or any of the other bullying nasty things a big omnivore can do to a small animal. Because we can, or some other reason we should be ashamed for.
But did you get it up there? "Grabbed the cat." "Cornered the cat."
That's right.
Mommy or daddy stood right there, brainless and starry-eyed, and let their soft, hairless, vulnerable, soft-eyed offspring crawl right up and grab --
A HEAVILY-BEWEAPONED PREDATOR WITH THE REACTION BUTTON OF A BIRD (Read: Therapod dinosaur niece).
Sat RIGHT there and let the kid crawl up to an animal that is on the constant alert NOT to be grabbed or harrassed -- that has buttons in its head that make the knives come out and the attack-arms flash out -- and then got all surprised when the cat popped the kid!
And they should be grateful that ALL the cat did was a little quick warning slap. That the cat spared the kid in ways the parents can't even begin to realize. That the cat exercised EXTREME self-control on a kitten.
A friend of mine once tried to rescue his two big Siamese from a raccoon they were backing off the yard. He picked them up. Did they hear him coming? Did they know they were about to be boosted? Did he even realize he'd set off the flash-attack switch in their heads and spinal columns?
42 stitches. 42 STITCHES. He looked like the mummy.
And those cats never meant to hurt him. That was just a defense mechanism. The guy did no more than step on a land-mine.
He didn't blame the cats. He knew it was his fault. He's the human -- he's the responsible one.
But parents who let their kids play with predators? That don't teach their kid not to torment animals?
Talk about lazy. Talk about irresponsible. Talk about self-absorbed. Talk about a kid in danger -- and not because of a little animal.
These are the same people who dump their kids off in libraries, and bookstores, and then patrol the freedoms of adults, because they've wandered off to do their thing, and left the rest of us to deal with their kids.
In their eyes, the rest of society is just a free baby-sitting service, and they can turn their backs on their kids any time they like, just dump them out there without supervision or care, because WE'll pick up the tab.
I get it.
GAG.
Okay, NOW I get it.
I've wondered for a long time why parents are so desperate to make sure that the rest of us be forced to act like the parents of their kids.
We're to have our books, our media, the internet, even our bedrooms and who we sleep with monitored so it doesn't infringe on the way they see their kids should be interacting with their environment.
I finally GET it -- and I have a family in Clallam Bay to thank for that!
Oh, awright, it's a family that was up here from Port Angeles for the Scholarship Auction.
There was this one woman doing the usual A Cat Attacked My Kid spiel.
You know the one -- the parent describes the baby grabbing the cat, or cornering the cat, and getting a quick slap around both sides of the head.
Then the cat is killed, or abandoned, or any of the other bullying nasty things a big omnivore can do to a small animal. Because we can, or some other reason we should be ashamed for.
But did you get it up there? "Grabbed the cat." "Cornered the cat."
That's right.
Mommy or daddy stood right there, brainless and starry-eyed, and let their soft, hairless, vulnerable, soft-eyed offspring crawl right up and grab --
A HEAVILY-BEWEAPONED PREDATOR WITH THE REACTION BUTTON OF A BIRD (Read: Therapod dinosaur niece).
Sat RIGHT there and let the kid crawl up to an animal that is on the constant alert NOT to be grabbed or harrassed -- that has buttons in its head that make the knives come out and the attack-arms flash out -- and then got all surprised when the cat popped the kid!
And they should be grateful that ALL the cat did was a little quick warning slap. That the cat spared the kid in ways the parents can't even begin to realize. That the cat exercised EXTREME self-control on a kitten.
A friend of mine once tried to rescue his two big Siamese from a raccoon they were backing off the yard. He picked them up. Did they hear him coming? Did they know they were about to be boosted? Did he even realize he'd set off the flash-attack switch in their heads and spinal columns?
42 stitches. 42 STITCHES. He looked like the mummy.
And those cats never meant to hurt him. That was just a defense mechanism. The guy did no more than step on a land-mine.
He didn't blame the cats. He knew it was his fault. He's the human -- he's the responsible one.
But parents who let their kids play with predators? That don't teach their kid not to torment animals?
Talk about lazy. Talk about irresponsible. Talk about self-absorbed. Talk about a kid in danger -- and not because of a little animal.
These are the same people who dump their kids off in libraries, and bookstores, and then patrol the freedoms of adults, because they've wandered off to do their thing, and left the rest of us to deal with their kids.
In their eyes, the rest of society is just a free baby-sitting service, and they can turn their backs on their kids any time they like, just dump them out there without supervision or care, because WE'll pick up the tab.
I get it.
GAG.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Fish
A reader just asked me how the fishing is going.
Well, a couple weeks ago, after the Hat boys -- three or four plump interchangeable kids with red hair you could read by -- and Richi (the Makah kid who lives with them) headed down to the beach and 20 minutes later came back with three nice big black rockrish, I decided I was going to have a try, too.
The boys told me that they'd used a salt-and-pepper jig - a plastic fake fish/squid whatsit - to catch 'em.
While at Neah Bay for the new Chamber of Commerce meeting, I picked up a clear plastic silver sparkly jig.
Yesterday, my extremely accurate horoscope, that I read in the Peninsula Daily News, told me to go do social things today. So, today, instead of packing up the last of the Diamond order -- Dan had begged for a break from bagging books and writing addresses on boxes -- I decided to obey the stars and go fishing.
I threw a bunch of jigs -- white, red, and that silver dude -- in an old plastic sour-cream plastic, and Dan and I headed out for low tide.
On the way, we ran into an old Japanese guy ("James" -- the name he uses so round-eyes can call him something), up from Tacoma, and he asked where to go for fish. So I said, c'mon along, I'm new on this beach too, let's see if we all get lucky.
We tromped out along the pebble beach, and then out to the end of the reef point. On the way, we ran into another Japanese guy ("Jim") and turned out they knew each other. Cool. So, with Dan tailing behind watching Eagles, we continued on to the point. J and J are nattering away in Japanese -- the old guy sounding like Takashi Shimura in the Kurasawa movies -- but I keep hearing a lot of "san" this and "san" that, so I figure they're Talking About Their Friends. Don't we all...
We found a nice deep hole amongst the kelp, and said hi to a big grizzled bull sea lion who came by to bark at us and wish us luck.
We rigged up some white jigs and started throwing them into the hole and reeling them back. My jig wasn't going very far. Jim said that I needed a heavier jig. The only hook I had was a big ol' weighted head, really too big for the little silver jig. But I threaded it on anyhoo.
I'd no sooner flipped that thing out there and was slowly reeling it back -- and I got a strike.
NICE fat black rockfish.
I pulled out the hook with my Leatherman and dropped him into a pool in the rocks behind me. Oh, I should mention here I was squealing like a little girl. My dad and the neighbor used to take me fishing, and they caught lots of black rockfish, but I always got skunked. Okay, except for one baby salmon that fought like six rockfish, pulling down the end of the pole and amazing us all when the dinky 9-inch thing came to the surface. We let it go, of course, but if it had been any bigger, it would have taken the boat down.
By this time the Hat boys and Richi show up (oh, hell, when I say the Hat boys, I mean the bunch -- and that includes the little plump Hat girl, although she's all of a sudden shooting up into this tall thing with long legs who the other day I saw WEARING HEELS, so she's officially no longer one of the Hat boys). They're as delighted with my fish as I am -- but that just means the fish are biting.
So now we got two Japanese guys and me and three kids flinging lines off the same rock, and Dan watching eagles behind us with the fancy binoculars they gave him when he retired. I doubt I'm going to catch any more, but with this many jigs, somebody's got to hit.
And I do.
I'm the one gets the next one!
Even bigger and nicer than the first. You've never seen anybody do the Little Tappidty Dance on the far end of a big slippery reef she could have fallen off of into a deep current-sucking hole.
About now Jim decides to go down to the FAR point to see if there are any more fishing holes. And the current turns and brushes the kelp into our hole, and all we start catching is sea-otter salad (Sea otters munch kelp because, like us, they can't produce vitamin C). The eldest Hat boy shows me how to cut the fishes' gills so they'll bleed out and die quickly. I string 'em on a piece of rope I found on the beach and always bring along. James and I leave the kids behind, waving at us from the point.
Dan offers to carry my fishing pole, which is a good idea, because you need a hand to brace yourself in case you slip on the rocks, and one of my hands is hauling fish. About 10 pounds of fish.
Two hours, and we get in a long hike, two fish and all cleaned, filleted and in the freezer. I'm collecting fish for a party I'm having in August, and burying fish fillets in ice. Except for the skeletons -- which always have so much meat on 'em I save 'em to fry. Which is what we're having for supper tonight, with homemade bread and kosher dill pickles. And maybe a nice glass of blush wine.
Beginner's luck, huh?
Now, I will admit something.... whenever you ask fisherguys what they're using for bait, they'll tell you. They'll show you where to fish. They'll tell you what sort of rigs and gear to bring. They'll teach you to cast.
But they won't tell you the Secret Trick they use to catch the fish. That the Hats and the J's didn't see me using while I was rigging the new jig.
And I'm not telling you, either.
A reader just asked me how the fishing is going.
Well, a couple weeks ago, after the Hat boys -- three or four plump interchangeable kids with red hair you could read by -- and Richi (the Makah kid who lives with them) headed down to the beach and 20 minutes later came back with three nice big black rockrish, I decided I was going to have a try, too.
The boys told me that they'd used a salt-and-pepper jig - a plastic fake fish/squid whatsit - to catch 'em.
While at Neah Bay for the new Chamber of Commerce meeting, I picked up a clear plastic silver sparkly jig.
Yesterday, my extremely accurate horoscope, that I read in the Peninsula Daily News, told me to go do social things today. So, today, instead of packing up the last of the Diamond order -- Dan had begged for a break from bagging books and writing addresses on boxes -- I decided to obey the stars and go fishing.
I threw a bunch of jigs -- white, red, and that silver dude -- in an old plastic sour-cream plastic, and Dan and I headed out for low tide.
On the way, we ran into an old Japanese guy ("James" -- the name he uses so round-eyes can call him something), up from Tacoma, and he asked where to go for fish. So I said, c'mon along, I'm new on this beach too, let's see if we all get lucky.
We tromped out along the pebble beach, and then out to the end of the reef point. On the way, we ran into another Japanese guy ("Jim") and turned out they knew each other. Cool. So, with Dan tailing behind watching Eagles, we continued on to the point. J and J are nattering away in Japanese -- the old guy sounding like Takashi Shimura in the Kurasawa movies -- but I keep hearing a lot of "san" this and "san" that, so I figure they're Talking About Their Friends. Don't we all...
We found a nice deep hole amongst the kelp, and said hi to a big grizzled bull sea lion who came by to bark at us and wish us luck.
We rigged up some white jigs and started throwing them into the hole and reeling them back. My jig wasn't going very far. Jim said that I needed a heavier jig. The only hook I had was a big ol' weighted head, really too big for the little silver jig. But I threaded it on anyhoo.
I'd no sooner flipped that thing out there and was slowly reeling it back -- and I got a strike.
NICE fat black rockfish.
I pulled out the hook with my Leatherman and dropped him into a pool in the rocks behind me. Oh, I should mention here I was squealing like a little girl. My dad and the neighbor used to take me fishing, and they caught lots of black rockfish, but I always got skunked. Okay, except for one baby salmon that fought like six rockfish, pulling down the end of the pole and amazing us all when the dinky 9-inch thing came to the surface. We let it go, of course, but if it had been any bigger, it would have taken the boat down.
By this time the Hat boys and Richi show up (oh, hell, when I say the Hat boys, I mean the bunch -- and that includes the little plump Hat girl, although she's all of a sudden shooting up into this tall thing with long legs who the other day I saw WEARING HEELS, so she's officially no longer one of the Hat boys). They're as delighted with my fish as I am -- but that just means the fish are biting.
So now we got two Japanese guys and me and three kids flinging lines off the same rock, and Dan watching eagles behind us with the fancy binoculars they gave him when he retired. I doubt I'm going to catch any more, but with this many jigs, somebody's got to hit.
And I do.
I'm the one gets the next one!
Even bigger and nicer than the first. You've never seen anybody do the Little Tappidty Dance on the far end of a big slippery reef she could have fallen off of into a deep current-sucking hole.
About now Jim decides to go down to the FAR point to see if there are any more fishing holes. And the current turns and brushes the kelp into our hole, and all we start catching is sea-otter salad (Sea otters munch kelp because, like us, they can't produce vitamin C). The eldest Hat boy shows me how to cut the fishes' gills so they'll bleed out and die quickly. I string 'em on a piece of rope I found on the beach and always bring along. James and I leave the kids behind, waving at us from the point.
Dan offers to carry my fishing pole, which is a good idea, because you need a hand to brace yourself in case you slip on the rocks, and one of my hands is hauling fish. About 10 pounds of fish.
Two hours, and we get in a long hike, two fish and all cleaned, filleted and in the freezer. I'm collecting fish for a party I'm having in August, and burying fish fillets in ice. Except for the skeletons -- which always have so much meat on 'em I save 'em to fry. Which is what we're having for supper tonight, with homemade bread and kosher dill pickles. And maybe a nice glass of blush wine.
Beginner's luck, huh?
Now, I will admit something.... whenever you ask fisherguys what they're using for bait, they'll tell you. They'll show you where to fish. They'll tell you what sort of rigs and gear to bring. They'll teach you to cast.
But they won't tell you the Secret Trick they use to catch the fish. That the Hats and the J's didn't see me using while I was rigging the new jig.
And I'm not telling you, either.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Kitty Pretty
One step further into helping all these yard/wood/street cats.
I won't say how, but an act of very unexpected and great kindness has provided me with a brand-new Havaheart trap.
As soon as the vet gets back next week, it'll be kitties going down to see him and taken out of the gene pool. By fixing all these guys. They'll be much nicer without all the kittens.
It's not a population control -- up here, there's only one queen and a bunch of toms. If there aren't enough queens to form a kitten-protecting pride, the toms kill the kittens. So no kittens ever survive.
This is a normal population control with cats. But it's upsetting to humans who have to live next to it. We like our peace and quiet.
Pumpkin is healing nicely. Hopefully by next year he'll have lost enough hormones not to get his head crunched open by Goucho -- and Goucho won't feel any need to do it any more.
One step further into helping all these yard/wood/street cats.
I won't say how, but an act of very unexpected and great kindness has provided me with a brand-new Havaheart trap.
As soon as the vet gets back next week, it'll be kitties going down to see him and taken out of the gene pool. By fixing all these guys. They'll be much nicer without all the kittens.
It's not a population control -- up here, there's only one queen and a bunch of toms. If there aren't enough queens to form a kitten-protecting pride, the toms kill the kittens. So no kittens ever survive.
This is a normal population control with cats. But it's upsetting to humans who have to live next to it. We like our peace and quiet.
Pumpkin is healing nicely. Hopefully by next year he'll have lost enough hormones not to get his head crunched open by Goucho -- and Goucho won't feel any need to do it any more.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Cathead Puke Theater
Dan just told me that he'd found a pool of pus about 6 inches across in the driveway.
"Yeah, the cat was just sitting there with pus dripping down the side of his head into this green pool."
Dan did time in the infantry and as a doorgunner in Vietnam, and he said he just wanted to get away from looking at the cat.
He said that pus is toxic and dangerous, and it's just natural we don't want to be around it.
Again, the cat is just fine now. Nice clean dry wound.
Dan just told me that he'd found a pool of pus about 6 inches across in the driveway.
"Yeah, the cat was just sitting there with pus dripping down the side of his head into this green pool."
Dan did time in the infantry and as a doorgunner in Vietnam, and he said he just wanted to get away from looking at the cat.
He said that pus is toxic and dangerous, and it's just natural we don't want to be around it.
Again, the cat is just fine now. Nice clean dry wound.
And me without a spoon...
Well, that's it.
Gonna have to catch and fix all these feral cats.
Been putting out food for starving cats all winter, mumbling about catch and fix. Got the SNAP program up here -- Spay And Neuter Your Cats.
Cats were all well-behaved and purry all winter. All glossy come spring.
And then came May....
Oh, God. Cats screwing in the middle of the road (trucks slowing down and the drivers and passengers laughing their fool heads off). Cats screwing on our porch and under our car. Our old cat, Spuds, stepped outside, sat down with an appalled look on his face, and demanded to be let inside again. Well, he's one to talk with his ragged ears. Nothing like a retired roue for being ultra-prude.
Then Pumpkin (I named 'em so I could talk to Dan about 'em) showed up with a HUGE swollen abcess on his head. I'll bet Goucho did it. Size of a tennis ball.
Now Pumpkin used to be real friendly, I could even pick him up -- but a hurt cat is a wary cat.
Moose Parker let me borrow his live trap. Didn't even know me. All he said was, "What are you going to do with the cats?" "Fix 'em and release 'em," I said. "And take one of 'em to the vet, because he's got a big ol' abcess on his head."
That was okay with Moose.
And all I did was catch Creamsicle, and then didn't manage to get him into a cat carrier. Rats. So now he's even more nervous.
Meanwhile, Iki, the little plump long-haired tabby-point Himalyan kinda thing, is prancing along, fluffy tail in the air, her big BLUE eyes just as wide and innocent, with all these toms paying court and humping her like a basketball team. Oh, she is such a CHEERFUL little slut. A regular bitty Mae West.
Anyway, I had to take the cage back Saturday, because Moose needed it again (is it the only one in town?). And the vet was out of town all next week. I spoke to his wife about how generous and trusting he had been and she said, "That's Moose for you."
Then I tried to grab Pumpkin.
Got him by the scruff and back, and he turned over howling. I couldn't get the blanket over him -- and he leaped loose.
And that abcess sent a flying spurt of green pus a foot out of his head.
Oh, gag. Oh puke. Oh I about fainted.
I can gut fish and clean up shit and all, but that much green pus -- I will never be a vet.
Pumpkin seemed much relieved. First pus, then red matter dripped down the side of his head. Then he got it clean.
A couple days later, he has a nice, flat clean scab about the size of a silver dollar. And is back to calling Iki to the food bowls.
I'm going to get my own live trap -- and then ALL these damn cats are getting fixed and released.
I'm not dealing with any more pus.
Well, that's it.
Gonna have to catch and fix all these feral cats.
Been putting out food for starving cats all winter, mumbling about catch and fix. Got the SNAP program up here -- Spay And Neuter Your Cats.
Cats were all well-behaved and purry all winter. All glossy come spring.
And then came May....
Oh, God. Cats screwing in the middle of the road (trucks slowing down and the drivers and passengers laughing their fool heads off). Cats screwing on our porch and under our car. Our old cat, Spuds, stepped outside, sat down with an appalled look on his face, and demanded to be let inside again. Well, he's one to talk with his ragged ears. Nothing like a retired roue for being ultra-prude.
Then Pumpkin (I named 'em so I could talk to Dan about 'em) showed up with a HUGE swollen abcess on his head. I'll bet Goucho did it. Size of a tennis ball.
Now Pumpkin used to be real friendly, I could even pick him up -- but a hurt cat is a wary cat.
Moose Parker let me borrow his live trap. Didn't even know me. All he said was, "What are you going to do with the cats?" "Fix 'em and release 'em," I said. "And take one of 'em to the vet, because he's got a big ol' abcess on his head."
That was okay with Moose.
And all I did was catch Creamsicle, and then didn't manage to get him into a cat carrier. Rats. So now he's even more nervous.
Meanwhile, Iki, the little plump long-haired tabby-point Himalyan kinda thing, is prancing along, fluffy tail in the air, her big BLUE eyes just as wide and innocent, with all these toms paying court and humping her like a basketball team. Oh, she is such a CHEERFUL little slut. A regular bitty Mae West.
Anyway, I had to take the cage back Saturday, because Moose needed it again (is it the only one in town?). And the vet was out of town all next week. I spoke to his wife about how generous and trusting he had been and she said, "That's Moose for you."
Then I tried to grab Pumpkin.
Got him by the scruff and back, and he turned over howling. I couldn't get the blanket over him -- and he leaped loose.
And that abcess sent a flying spurt of green pus a foot out of his head.
Oh, gag. Oh puke. Oh I about fainted.
I can gut fish and clean up shit and all, but that much green pus -- I will never be a vet.
Pumpkin seemed much relieved. First pus, then red matter dripped down the side of his head. Then he got it clean.
A couple days later, he has a nice, flat clean scab about the size of a silver dollar. And is back to calling Iki to the food bowls.
I'm going to get my own live trap -- and then ALL these damn cats are getting fixed and released.
I'm not dealing with any more pus.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Death by Lipsynch
Drove up to Neah Bay on 112. Incredible shimmering bright day, woods full of brilliant new green, the Strait still and glimmering. Attended the institution of the Neah Bay Chamber of Commerce. First First Nations C of C in I don't know how many miles of coast.
That night, attended the Sekiu Community Center Tea. "Dress to impress," said the flyers.
At the door, a pretty teenage girl asked me if I would like an escort. Well! Very elegant. I hooked my hand into her proffered elbow.
Inside, tables set diagonally were covered in green cloths. One of the retiring teachers had lent part of her huge tea-service collection for the event. Everyone had a different teacup and saucer. It was like tea with the Desert Peach. Gardens from all over had contributed bouquets -- so there was a lot of rhododendron and lilac. Student projects along the walls, including a couple of nice quilts made by a local boy (don't you love how the kids are dumping those stupid sex roles?).
Poetry, essays.
Fashion show.
Funniest damn fashion show. Wonderfully elegant dresses, including a black wrap-around over cobalt blue embroidery. One VERY tall skinny kid (musta been a van Riper) in a brilliant white suit and little round black sunglasses. Girls walked as they usually did in blue jeans, and everybody was giggling their heads off. A boy all in black tried to keep his face straight reading very haut coiture descriptions of the outfits, but, as he'd said before, "I don't do dresses." He got most of the words right, anyway.
Then they all came out to take a bow, and the band started a dance on the runway area.
God. FUNNY. They were doing all sorts of comedy dances. In these long formals and fancy suits. Tromp and jump and stamp and just howl with laughter. Log-camp dancing in fancy dress. They asked audience members up. I could NOT stop laughing. Across the runway, I saw a woman in her '70s's, and she was laughing as hard as I was. The sense of put-on was just tooooo delicious.
Afterwards, when everybody had stopped gasping, three boys and a teacher got up. In stupid wigs.
"The girls were going to have a lip-synch contest," one said. "But then they decided not to. So we'll just do this."
Okay. THE funniest -- and most spot-on -- lipsynch of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Teacher on air piano. Another kid on air guitar.
Two huge kids doing the lyrics.
By Mama mia, mama mia the audience was laughing so hard it was crying. I swear. I mean, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I've had my endorphin shot for the whole year.
Finally they tore off their raggedy outer shirts and revealed the Bruins' (local highschool) Football Team T. Howls and stomping and even more laughing.
Who says we don't have a club scene?
Drove up to Neah Bay on 112. Incredible shimmering bright day, woods full of brilliant new green, the Strait still and glimmering. Attended the institution of the Neah Bay Chamber of Commerce. First First Nations C of C in I don't know how many miles of coast.
That night, attended the Sekiu Community Center Tea. "Dress to impress," said the flyers.
At the door, a pretty teenage girl asked me if I would like an escort. Well! Very elegant. I hooked my hand into her proffered elbow.
Inside, tables set diagonally were covered in green cloths. One of the retiring teachers had lent part of her huge tea-service collection for the event. Everyone had a different teacup and saucer. It was like tea with the Desert Peach. Gardens from all over had contributed bouquets -- so there was a lot of rhododendron and lilac. Student projects along the walls, including a couple of nice quilts made by a local boy (don't you love how the kids are dumping those stupid sex roles?).
Poetry, essays.
Fashion show.
Funniest damn fashion show. Wonderfully elegant dresses, including a black wrap-around over cobalt blue embroidery. One VERY tall skinny kid (musta been a van Riper) in a brilliant white suit and little round black sunglasses. Girls walked as they usually did in blue jeans, and everybody was giggling their heads off. A boy all in black tried to keep his face straight reading very haut coiture descriptions of the outfits, but, as he'd said before, "I don't do dresses." He got most of the words right, anyway.
Then they all came out to take a bow, and the band started a dance on the runway area.
God. FUNNY. They were doing all sorts of comedy dances. In these long formals and fancy suits. Tromp and jump and stamp and just howl with laughter. Log-camp dancing in fancy dress. They asked audience members up. I could NOT stop laughing. Across the runway, I saw a woman in her '70s's, and she was laughing as hard as I was. The sense of put-on was just tooooo delicious.
Afterwards, when everybody had stopped gasping, three boys and a teacher got up. In stupid wigs.
"The girls were going to have a lip-synch contest," one said. "But then they decided not to. So we'll just do this."
Okay. THE funniest -- and most spot-on -- lipsynch of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Teacher on air piano. Another kid on air guitar.
Two huge kids doing the lyrics.
By Mama mia, mama mia the audience was laughing so hard it was crying. I swear. I mean, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I've had my endorphin shot for the whole year.
Finally they tore off their raggedy outer shirts and revealed the Bruins' (local highschool) Football Team T. Howls and stomping and even more laughing.
Who says we don't have a club scene?
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Clarice Doorknob
Well, I've found another way Clallam Bay is more civilized than Port Angeles.
Jury duty yesterday. Sitting reading Les Miserables (finally -- huge thick book you can't get through in jury duty), in the Port Angeles Courthouse.
Nice little old lady and nice little old man had the following conversation (I'm not bothering to point out which was which. It's equally nasty, but you can probably guess from the tone):
"Oh, the way those indians stopped the graving yard. I mean, what is wrong with them? That would have been lots of jobs. It's just spiteful."
(The Port Angeles port was going to just go ahead and put a graving yard on top of a native graveyard, but the natives stopped them. Mostly by bringing to light the nasty racism that's still going on in that town. As these conversations illustrate).
"They've had all this welfare all these years. They want to live in the best of both cultures."
(Yeah. Being forced to be on the kind of sour-faced stingy welfare our mean-spirited government gives. Oh, that is SOOOO the best).
"The government should just take away all those reservations and just make them citizens. And what's the problem with the bones? I don't care what they do with my body."
"Neither do I."
(Oh, right. Just throw 'em out in the yard for the dog to eat. I'd like to see what their relatives and friends do then.)
"They should be happy with a few of those bones for museums. What more do they want?"
I'd like to buy those two a clue -- the Indians will forgive US the theft and destruction of their graves, way of life, land and water when the Jews forgive the Germans the concentration camps -- FOR THE SAME REASONS.
Okay? Does that put it into perspective?
You never hear that crap up here. It's because so many people are related to the natives. Their kids play together, and go fishing, and everybody owns the same dogs.
And the Makah are the funniest and nicest people on the planet (I'll bet the Elwah are, too).
But you know white people -- if somebody else has a mouthful of water, or food, or an inch of land, or a tree that WE want, then we go to pieces.
Greedy, greedy, greedy.
I wonder why we don't just get rid of the eagle and take the ravening hog on as our national symbol?
I couldn't butt into this conversation, of course, or start vomiting, (I wasn't raised in a barn), but today I realized how I could have expressed myself (They sure as hell were!).
Fake cell-phone call. Who would know? People set those things to Vibrate these days.
"Yello. Yeah, we're still waiting. No, I decided to catch the bus. Was great -- got to look into the woods all around Lake Crescent, saw all kinds of cool streams."
(I'm usually the driver. Don't get to see anything.)
"Oh, and I picked up some great dialogue for the next book."
At this point, repeat the nasty sludge Mr. and Mrs. Master Race were spewing.
"Yeah! Oh, I've got her named already. Yeah. Clarice Doorknob. What? (Laugh). Chester Butthead! Naw, that's a little too obvious. But it's great lines. People ask where I get dialogue. Why write it when it's all over the place? Yup. I told 'em I needed to catch the 5:00 pm bus. Pick you up some apples? Will do. Okay. See you tonight -- or earlier if they let us out."
Hangup.
Quietly go back to my book.
And if they get all appalled and try to butt in -- glare at them and snap, "Do you MIND? I'm on the phone here! These minutes add up!"
And you know they would have hated it. Take comfort in this -- no matter how nasty somebody is in private, he or she knows it's wrong and don't want it published.
So we DO have a sense of decency as a species.
At least when somebody offers to tell somebody else.
(How to stop nasty email: "I have a long email list. And a forward button. And a SHORT TEMPER." They'll take the clue.)
Well, I've found another way Clallam Bay is more civilized than Port Angeles.
Jury duty yesterday. Sitting reading Les Miserables (finally -- huge thick book you can't get through in jury duty), in the Port Angeles Courthouse.
Nice little old lady and nice little old man had the following conversation (I'm not bothering to point out which was which. It's equally nasty, but you can probably guess from the tone):
"Oh, the way those indians stopped the graving yard. I mean, what is wrong with them? That would have been lots of jobs. It's just spiteful."
(The Port Angeles port was going to just go ahead and put a graving yard on top of a native graveyard, but the natives stopped them. Mostly by bringing to light the nasty racism that's still going on in that town. As these conversations illustrate).
"They've had all this welfare all these years. They want to live in the best of both cultures."
(Yeah. Being forced to be on the kind of sour-faced stingy welfare our mean-spirited government gives. Oh, that is SOOOO the best).
"The government should just take away all those reservations and just make them citizens. And what's the problem with the bones? I don't care what they do with my body."
"Neither do I."
(Oh, right. Just throw 'em out in the yard for the dog to eat. I'd like to see what their relatives and friends do then.)
"They should be happy with a few of those bones for museums. What more do they want?"
I'd like to buy those two a clue -- the Indians will forgive US the theft and destruction of their graves, way of life, land and water when the Jews forgive the Germans the concentration camps -- FOR THE SAME REASONS.
Okay? Does that put it into perspective?
You never hear that crap up here. It's because so many people are related to the natives. Their kids play together, and go fishing, and everybody owns the same dogs.
And the Makah are the funniest and nicest people on the planet (I'll bet the Elwah are, too).
But you know white people -- if somebody else has a mouthful of water, or food, or an inch of land, or a tree that WE want, then we go to pieces.
Greedy, greedy, greedy.
I wonder why we don't just get rid of the eagle and take the ravening hog on as our national symbol?
I couldn't butt into this conversation, of course, or start vomiting, (I wasn't raised in a barn), but today I realized how I could have expressed myself (They sure as hell were!).
Fake cell-phone call. Who would know? People set those things to Vibrate these days.
"Yello. Yeah, we're still waiting. No, I decided to catch the bus. Was great -- got to look into the woods all around Lake Crescent, saw all kinds of cool streams."
(I'm usually the driver. Don't get to see anything.)
"Oh, and I picked up some great dialogue for the next book."
At this point, repeat the nasty sludge Mr. and Mrs. Master Race were spewing.
"Yeah! Oh, I've got her named already. Yeah. Clarice Doorknob. What? (Laugh). Chester Butthead! Naw, that's a little too obvious. But it's great lines. People ask where I get dialogue. Why write it when it's all over the place? Yup. I told 'em I needed to catch the 5:00 pm bus. Pick you up some apples? Will do. Okay. See you tonight -- or earlier if they let us out."
Hangup.
Quietly go back to my book.
And if they get all appalled and try to butt in -- glare at them and snap, "Do you MIND? I'm on the phone here! These minutes add up!"
And you know they would have hated it. Take comfort in this -- no matter how nasty somebody is in private, he or she knows it's wrong and don't want it published.
So we DO have a sense of decency as a species.
At least when somebody offers to tell somebody else.
(How to stop nasty email: "I have a long email list. And a forward button. And a SHORT TEMPER." They'll take the clue.)
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Walpurgisnacht
Last night we were all dancing at a benefit.
On a hill, behind huge fir trees. In the Community Center
13th Floor and Mandana. Sound Garden influence and hard hard old rock.
Non alchoholic event (which meant everybody had these paper cups... and dark stuff in coke cans...)
Between midnight and 1:00 am, everybody on the floor, all ages, dancing their brains out, lights hung in all the windows and flashing overhead.
Old women dancing like girls. Old men teaching women the two-step. Boys leaping up and down before 13th Floor like Watusi. Girls stamping, arms linked.
Four women bumping in a very kinky foursquare around the bliss-faced UPS driver. He's gonna drive funny all week.
Ain't no spooks gonna get us.
Last night we were all dancing at a benefit.
On a hill, behind huge fir trees. In the Community Center
13th Floor and Mandana. Sound Garden influence and hard hard old rock.
Non alchoholic event (which meant everybody had these paper cups... and dark stuff in coke cans...)
Between midnight and 1:00 am, everybody on the floor, all ages, dancing their brains out, lights hung in all the windows and flashing overhead.
Old women dancing like girls. Old men teaching women the two-step. Boys leaping up and down before 13th Floor like Watusi. Girls stamping, arms linked.
Four women bumping in a very kinky foursquare around the bliss-faced UPS driver. He's gonna drive funny all week.
Ain't no spooks gonna get us.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Clallam Bay Murphy's Law
We have our own version of Murphy's Law.
If anything can go wrong, it will -- and it will involve a logging truck.
Warren Konopaski was just clearing brush – he didn’t mean to clear two power poles.
Konopaski, owner of the Coho Bait Shop, was using an excavator to clean brush off the breakwater across the road from the Breakwater Restaurant just west of Clallam Bay on Highway 112.
The brush had grown up around the guy wires supporting a power pole on the breakwater.
Konopaski’s excavator clipped the unseen guy wires. As the unsupported pole fell, an unloaded logging truck, driven west on Highway 112 by an independent driver, caught the wire across the front of the cab.
Ken, a witness staying at the Coho Motel, said that the wire slipped up over the cab, shattered the windshield, caught the risers on the trailer and yanked down a second power pole by the restaurant. The pole fell onto and went through the building’s roof overhang.
Another witness said, “the cab was smashed down about 12 inches over the hood.” The driver suffered small lacerations from flying glass on his face, but seemed to be otherwise uninjured.
A witness said the truck was “moving like a runaway freight train. He hit those poles and there was wood everywhere, like toothpicks.”
Another witness says that the driver was moving no faster than the 45 mph speed limit, and only the impact gave the impression of speed.
PUD crews had repaired enough of the damage by 6:30 to return most of the local power.
We have our own version of Murphy's Law.
If anything can go wrong, it will -- and it will involve a logging truck.
Warren Konopaski was just clearing brush – he didn’t mean to clear two power poles.
Konopaski, owner of the Coho Bait Shop, was using an excavator to clean brush off the breakwater across the road from the Breakwater Restaurant just west of Clallam Bay on Highway 112.
The brush had grown up around the guy wires supporting a power pole on the breakwater.
Konopaski’s excavator clipped the unseen guy wires. As the unsupported pole fell, an unloaded logging truck, driven west on Highway 112 by an independent driver, caught the wire across the front of the cab.
Ken, a witness staying at the Coho Motel, said that the wire slipped up over the cab, shattered the windshield, caught the risers on the trailer and yanked down a second power pole by the restaurant. The pole fell onto and went through the building’s roof overhang.
Another witness said, “the cab was smashed down about 12 inches over the hood.” The driver suffered small lacerations from flying glass on his face, but seemed to be otherwise uninjured.
A witness said the truck was “moving like a runaway freight train. He hit those poles and there was wood everywhere, like toothpicks.”
Another witness says that the driver was moving no faster than the 45 mph speed limit, and only the impact gave the impression of speed.
PUD crews had repaired enough of the damage by 6:30 to return most of the local power.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Burning Bush
I've been into the nettle patch behind the sheriff's deputy's house for about two weeks now, picking weirdly early new nettle tops.
About a week ago, I'd picked up a big bag of nettles and then went out gathering scallops and clams on the beach. Oddly enough, Dan and I have discovered we're not really crazy about shellfish. I like finding 'em, but I'd rather hand 'em over to some other gatherer. So I wandered over with my little bucket of finds and offered 'em to the Quilleute lady and her grandson who were gathering chitons and sand clams on the reef.
We got to talking about the nettles. She said that her people used to eat them, but she didn't know anybody who did now. But when I described 'em -- "better than spinach" -- she said she wanted to try them. So I added a baggie of nettles to the shellfish.
Later on they showed up at our place, and asked if they could wash their hands. No problem -- and they asked if we liked fish. Oh, yeah. Fish we like.
The next thing we knew, we had a fillet of bright red-fleshed silver-sided steelhead in hand.
Whoa. If you think salmon or trout are good... and steelhead is something I'll probably never catch or eat -- too many regulations for an over-fished animal anyway. Didn't want to add to the pressure. But the First Nations, of course, have always included it in their diet. So if two of 'em wanted to share -- we weren't turning it down!
(Actually, this is a gift culture out here -- turning down a gift is -- well, imagine turning down a gift from a Japanese. On that level).
A couple days ago, the sheriff's deputy's wife, Angie, and her mother saw what I was doing and asked what the heck was with picking those stinggy plants ("stinggy" -- it's a word. People use it).
So I described how to steam them like spinach, and rub them on arthritis. Angie wanted to try, so I gave her a little plastic baggie of the nettles, warning her that she had to drop them into hot water or hot bacon fat before touching them. They will sting.
Today I was walking past her house, and when she waved, I asked her if she wanted any more nettles.
She held both hands out.
Well, it's a southern family -- and you know southerners and their greens. Her mom even pulled up a few nettles to take home and plant in her garden! Hilarious -- because Lewis county is full of nettles anyway.
We've decided that our nettles are juicier and more buttery.
Wow. Nettles aren't just good for making greens and fishing line and curing arthritic pain -- they're good for making friends.
And catching fish.
I've been into the nettle patch behind the sheriff's deputy's house for about two weeks now, picking weirdly early new nettle tops.
About a week ago, I'd picked up a big bag of nettles and then went out gathering scallops and clams on the beach. Oddly enough, Dan and I have discovered we're not really crazy about shellfish. I like finding 'em, but I'd rather hand 'em over to some other gatherer. So I wandered over with my little bucket of finds and offered 'em to the Quilleute lady and her grandson who were gathering chitons and sand clams on the reef.
We got to talking about the nettles. She said that her people used to eat them, but she didn't know anybody who did now. But when I described 'em -- "better than spinach" -- she said she wanted to try them. So I added a baggie of nettles to the shellfish.
Later on they showed up at our place, and asked if they could wash their hands. No problem -- and they asked if we liked fish. Oh, yeah. Fish we like.
The next thing we knew, we had a fillet of bright red-fleshed silver-sided steelhead in hand.
Whoa. If you think salmon or trout are good... and steelhead is something I'll probably never catch or eat -- too many regulations for an over-fished animal anyway. Didn't want to add to the pressure. But the First Nations, of course, have always included it in their diet. So if two of 'em wanted to share -- we weren't turning it down!
(Actually, this is a gift culture out here -- turning down a gift is -- well, imagine turning down a gift from a Japanese. On that level).
A couple days ago, the sheriff's deputy's wife, Angie, and her mother saw what I was doing and asked what the heck was with picking those stinggy plants ("stinggy" -- it's a word. People use it).
So I described how to steam them like spinach, and rub them on arthritis. Angie wanted to try, so I gave her a little plastic baggie of the nettles, warning her that she had to drop them into hot water or hot bacon fat before touching them. They will sting.
Today I was walking past her house, and when she waved, I asked her if she wanted any more nettles.
She held both hands out.
Well, it's a southern family -- and you know southerners and their greens. Her mom even pulled up a few nettles to take home and plant in her garden! Hilarious -- because Lewis county is full of nettles anyway.
We've decided that our nettles are juicier and more buttery.
Wow. Nettles aren't just good for making greens and fishing line and curing arthritic pain -- they're good for making friends.
And catching fish.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Technohicks.
Doing layout for the next book AND smoking salmon out in the cinderblock pit at the end of the driveway. Technohick again. Over bits of driftwood. It's not very good salmon -- pretty much spawned out -- but anything's good when you smoke it.
Dan's at the beach, reading a Tony Hillerman mystery.
So any of you out there who are supposed to have gorgeous sunny weather, and are wondering who stole it -- we did.
We are going to have such a drought this summer. Everybody is out on the beach or in the woods or otherwise enjoying the sun -- and every last person is saying, "Oh, man, are we going to be in trouble this summer. There is going to be no water in the reservoirs."
I hear San Diego has our rain. Please send it home.
A reader sent me a godawful huge surf pole -- now I'm itching to go try it on something. I dunno what. What comes into the surf that could be this big? Most of our big fish are out in the deep holes -- and I don't have a boat. Not that I really need or want one. But if somebody ever wants me to go along on a fishing trip, I have a pole!
Been out riding with Teresa on Lightning again. That boy is getting into shape. No more sweating and wheezing just because he walked up the hills too fast. Lots of deer out in the woods right now.
Oh, if you need to ask about local herbal medicine or food plants, go to www.ozettewildcraft.blogspot.com Ed Wilbur's been studying our woods for decades. He does walks and tours and lectures, too -- you have to email him to ask for a schedule at wilburs@olypen.com The guy knows everything.
Doing layout for the next book AND smoking salmon out in the cinderblock pit at the end of the driveway. Technohick again. Over bits of driftwood. It's not very good salmon -- pretty much spawned out -- but anything's good when you smoke it.
Dan's at the beach, reading a Tony Hillerman mystery.
So any of you out there who are supposed to have gorgeous sunny weather, and are wondering who stole it -- we did.
We are going to have such a drought this summer. Everybody is out on the beach or in the woods or otherwise enjoying the sun -- and every last person is saying, "Oh, man, are we going to be in trouble this summer. There is going to be no water in the reservoirs."
I hear San Diego has our rain. Please send it home.
A reader sent me a godawful huge surf pole -- now I'm itching to go try it on something. I dunno what. What comes into the surf that could be this big? Most of our big fish are out in the deep holes -- and I don't have a boat. Not that I really need or want one. But if somebody ever wants me to go along on a fishing trip, I have a pole!
Been out riding with Teresa on Lightning again. That boy is getting into shape. No more sweating and wheezing just because he walked up the hills too fast. Lots of deer out in the woods right now.
Oh, if you need to ask about local herbal medicine or food plants, go to www.ozettewildcraft.blogspot.com Ed Wilbur's been studying our woods for decades. He does walks and tours and lectures, too -- you have to email him to ask for a schedule at wilburs@olypen.com The guy knows everything.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Saturday, February 12, 2005
MartyHalfhorse
Cutest Christmas present of 2004 -- I win. Because one of my readers sent this very neat little hand-made doll -- it's a toy as would be played with by my half-horse characters. A kind of Raggedy Cheiron doll.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Back At The Beach
Sat quietly on the beach and let a fish fight it out with my line -- until it finally bent the hook in half. My fish stories have evidence. I was kinda glad it got away. I was sitting there with the pole stuck in the ground, just watching the end tremble and jerk now and again, and reeling in when I could. Imagine cleaning that thing.
I guess I'm going to get my short ocean pole down there. I hate my ocean pole -- too stiff, very hard to cast. But it's got 80-Lb. test on it, and I have some huge hooks and weights. Maybe I just need to learn to cast with it.
I've gotten to the point where I can go get greenling or perch like I'm going to the store to get a pint of milk -- we've plenty of frozen and pickled fish, now -- now I'm wanting to duke it out with the big guys. These are predators. And they'll have a lot of meat. Worth smoking.
By the way, pickled greenling is really good. And now I'm salt/sugar curing
a jar-full.
I'm glad it's raining today -- I can work on my art instead of listening to the siren call of the fish! The fishing is a challenge -- after 45 years, the art is -- just art. Breathing isn't very interesting.
Sat quietly on the beach and let a fish fight it out with my line -- until it finally bent the hook in half. My fish stories have evidence. I was kinda glad it got away. I was sitting there with the pole stuck in the ground, just watching the end tremble and jerk now and again, and reeling in when I could. Imagine cleaning that thing.
I guess I'm going to get my short ocean pole down there. I hate my ocean pole -- too stiff, very hard to cast. But it's got 80-Lb. test on it, and I have some huge hooks and weights. Maybe I just need to learn to cast with it.
I've gotten to the point where I can go get greenling or perch like I'm going to the store to get a pint of milk -- we've plenty of frozen and pickled fish, now -- now I'm wanting to duke it out with the big guys. These are predators. And they'll have a lot of meat. Worth smoking.
By the way, pickled greenling is really good. And now I'm salt/sugar curing
a jar-full.
I'm glad it's raining today -- I can work on my art instead of listening to the siren call of the fish! The fishing is a challenge -- after 45 years, the art is -- just art. Breathing isn't very interesting.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
A Little Jesusland here, too.
Okay, okay. Living in Clallam Bay isn't perfect. We've got our bit of Jesusland, here too. By that I mean, stubborn lame-brainedness, ignorance, prejudice and mysogyny. I mean, this IS part of America, after all. Leviticans we all have with us.
So, to get the party started, witness this conversation between a trio of testicles at the Breakwater Restaurant (and nothing against the Breakwater, by the way, which serves THE best Reuben sandwich this side of Manhattan. I mean, a pile of top-quality pastrami, and sauerkraut so mild and juicy even Dan will eat it -- and he hasn't eaten sauerkraut since he was poisoned by it as a kid a half century ago).
Anyway, these SoftandDangly guys were discussing what was a Slut, and what was a whore, and who could you call a whore? Did it depend on whether or not she was a prostitute. They all decided that a woman could be a whore without being a prostitute.
Isn't it great to see that the Ballocks are still having so much fun sitting in public defining what kind of sex life the Human Beings have? These are three adult males, with no female company, making rude remarks about females, loudly enough for all the females in the restaurant to hear.
And these are also the guys who use "gay" as an insult. Will they just buy a clue and go to bed with each other? They will probably find their resentment of females will just evaporate, if they'll just admit it and come out, to themselves, if no one else. Or maybe to everybody else, so they don't have to keep pretending they're hostile to the sex that gave them life. And maybe they should meet some gay people, so they find out that that's not how gay people act.
One of these guys, by the way, is a truck hunter. Means he runs up and down the roads and shoots at deer from his truck. I guess it's easier. Gay AND lazy. Not a combination you usually see. Most gay folks I know are the hard-workingest folks you want to see, and the cleanest. This guy is definitely the exception that tests the rule. Oh, boy, just what I want, to duck bullets while I'm trying to negotiate curves on the way to pick mushrooms.
He's probably like my gun-nut Testicle friends -- can't shoot straight. Like drug-dealers. The reason drive-bys are dangerous is because those guys can't aim.
Let's see. Forks. The local logging town. The guy down at the second-hand fishing shop who says, "I hate trees. It would be easier to get the elk if there were no trees."
Yeah, he's probably trying to torque me off. He should probably hang out with the Breakwater boys, if he gets off on pissing off women. And what's with not liking part of the machinery that produces the oxygen that keeps his lungs pumping?
OOH! I just sussed it -- these people never look quite human, do they? A little narrow between the eyes. Usually not quite clean. And don't care about oxygen or clean water. Well, what does that tell you? Does the word "alien" spring to mind? Is it possible we already have creatures from other planets living here?
Or maybe he doesn't need as much oxygen as those of us with the larger brains.
It has been said that "loggers are afraid of trees." This has been tossed around locally since the Forks library lost its trees because, or so it's been reported to me, "They were afraid the trees would fall on the library." Well, of COURSE, loggers are afraid of trees. They're afraid of them the same way Ahab was afraid of Moby Dick -- you really hate anything you've hurt, because way down inside you know it will come after you some day. And trees really can come after you -- especially if you top 'em wrong.
Let's face it, most of that logging money left town to send other people's families to college. You need to get a copy of the video Cuts to see the damage logging has done to people -- and done nothing to fix the damage. You just need to see the clear-cuts up here to know that they're ripping out everything they can get before controls or regulations are put on the rampant ravaging of the crop. The full logging trucks come whipping out fast like bandits -- literally.
Let's see. Local names for animals.
You know how in an actual Jesusland state (Kentucky) they call green peppers "mangoes?"
Well, here are the local (non-Makah) misnomers (so far):
"Civet cat." It's what they call the striped skunk. They insist it isn't a skunk. We don't have civet cats in Washington state. It's a skunk.
"Duck." Any water bird, including grebe. Though, if all you want to do is fish, whether or not a bird is a duck probably isn't important. Though I would be learning the habits of these water birds if I wanted to fish.
"Black bass." It's what they call the striped sea perch. I mean, they are absolutely adamant that embiotoca lateralis (as in http://www.oceanlight.com/spotlight.php?img=09010 is an "immature black bass." I guess their fathers tell 'em stuff like this, and it gets passed down.
THIS is a black sea bass: http://www.oceanlight.com/spotlight.php?img=07613 I know. I used to catch these things when I was a kid. Or at least my dad caught them. I would sit with my hook in the water a lot.
And they all hate that the Makah are being allowed to whale. They have no idea that once the Makah found out what the whaling commissions from Iceland and Japan were up to, they immediately cut out fraternizing with those people. All the Makah want is a whale or two a year, to eat, that they get from a canoe. The gripe is that the Makah still have whale in the Halibut Morgue in Neah Bay, and so don't need any more. I wonder how much elk, deer and salmon these gripers have in their freezers, regarldless of the regulations.
The people who bitch about it the most are the guys who stand right there and try to catch lingcod out of season. Whose ancesters let salmon rot at the canning piers -- by the TON. Whose relatives slaughtered those whales by the thousands -- and used the oil to lubricate sewing machines. Don't get me started on the bison genocide -- or the idiocy of replacing a large native meat-producer with an animal that has to be babied every step of the way. I mean, putting an African animal -- the cow -- into North Dakota? Where were their brains?
And food prejudice: I eat bullheads, if they're big enough. I'm told, "EWWW! They're bottom fish!" And this from people who buy beef in the supermarket. I mean, they'll eat an animal that eats cardboard, dead cats and dogs, dead sheep, and cannibalizes dead cattle -- and they won't eat a bullhead that's been devouring crabs, mussels and barnacles?
And yes, I do fish. But I fish my limit, and I only take what we can eat. And if I don't like it, I put it back.
Yeah. Now I'm getting spoiled. I like greenling, but striped perch aren't as good, so I put 'em back. Picky picky picky.
Okay, okay. Living in Clallam Bay isn't perfect. We've got our bit of Jesusland, here too. By that I mean, stubborn lame-brainedness, ignorance, prejudice and mysogyny. I mean, this IS part of America, after all. Leviticans we all have with us.
So, to get the party started, witness this conversation between a trio of testicles at the Breakwater Restaurant (and nothing against the Breakwater, by the way, which serves THE best Reuben sandwich this side of Manhattan. I mean, a pile of top-quality pastrami, and sauerkraut so mild and juicy even Dan will eat it -- and he hasn't eaten sauerkraut since he was poisoned by it as a kid a half century ago).
Anyway, these SoftandDangly guys were discussing what was a Slut, and what was a whore, and who could you call a whore? Did it depend on whether or not she was a prostitute. They all decided that a woman could be a whore without being a prostitute.
Isn't it great to see that the Ballocks are still having so much fun sitting in public defining what kind of sex life the Human Beings have? These are three adult males, with no female company, making rude remarks about females, loudly enough for all the females in the restaurant to hear.
And these are also the guys who use "gay" as an insult. Will they just buy a clue and go to bed with each other? They will probably find their resentment of females will just evaporate, if they'll just admit it and come out, to themselves, if no one else. Or maybe to everybody else, so they don't have to keep pretending they're hostile to the sex that gave them life. And maybe they should meet some gay people, so they find out that that's not how gay people act.
One of these guys, by the way, is a truck hunter. Means he runs up and down the roads and shoots at deer from his truck. I guess it's easier. Gay AND lazy. Not a combination you usually see. Most gay folks I know are the hard-workingest folks you want to see, and the cleanest. This guy is definitely the exception that tests the rule. Oh, boy, just what I want, to duck bullets while I'm trying to negotiate curves on the way to pick mushrooms.
He's probably like my gun-nut Testicle friends -- can't shoot straight. Like drug-dealers. The reason drive-bys are dangerous is because those guys can't aim.
Let's see. Forks. The local logging town. The guy down at the second-hand fishing shop who says, "I hate trees. It would be easier to get the elk if there were no trees."
Yeah, he's probably trying to torque me off. He should probably hang out with the Breakwater boys, if he gets off on pissing off women. And what's with not liking part of the machinery that produces the oxygen that keeps his lungs pumping?
OOH! I just sussed it -- these people never look quite human, do they? A little narrow between the eyes. Usually not quite clean. And don't care about oxygen or clean water. Well, what does that tell you? Does the word "alien" spring to mind? Is it possible we already have creatures from other planets living here?
Or maybe he doesn't need as much oxygen as those of us with the larger brains.
It has been said that "loggers are afraid of trees." This has been tossed around locally since the Forks library lost its trees because, or so it's been reported to me, "They were afraid the trees would fall on the library." Well, of COURSE, loggers are afraid of trees. They're afraid of them the same way Ahab was afraid of Moby Dick -- you really hate anything you've hurt, because way down inside you know it will come after you some day. And trees really can come after you -- especially if you top 'em wrong.
Let's face it, most of that logging money left town to send other people's families to college. You need to get a copy of the video Cuts to see the damage logging has done to people -- and done nothing to fix the damage. You just need to see the clear-cuts up here to know that they're ripping out everything they can get before controls or regulations are put on the rampant ravaging of the crop. The full logging trucks come whipping out fast like bandits -- literally.
Let's see. Local names for animals.
You know how in an actual Jesusland state (Kentucky) they call green peppers "mangoes?"
Well, here are the local (non-Makah) misnomers (so far):
"Civet cat." It's what they call the striped skunk. They insist it isn't a skunk. We don't have civet cats in Washington state. It's a skunk.
"Duck." Any water bird, including grebe. Though, if all you want to do is fish, whether or not a bird is a duck probably isn't important. Though I would be learning the habits of these water birds if I wanted to fish.
"Black bass." It's what they call the striped sea perch. I mean, they are absolutely adamant that embiotoca lateralis (as in http://www.oceanlight.com/spotlight.php?img=09010 is an "immature black bass." I guess their fathers tell 'em stuff like this, and it gets passed down.
THIS is a black sea bass: http://www.oceanlight.com/spotlight.php?img=07613 I know. I used to catch these things when I was a kid. Or at least my dad caught them. I would sit with my hook in the water a lot.
And they all hate that the Makah are being allowed to whale. They have no idea that once the Makah found out what the whaling commissions from Iceland and Japan were up to, they immediately cut out fraternizing with those people. All the Makah want is a whale or two a year, to eat, that they get from a canoe. The gripe is that the Makah still have whale in the Halibut Morgue in Neah Bay, and so don't need any more. I wonder how much elk, deer and salmon these gripers have in their freezers, regarldless of the regulations.
The people who bitch about it the most are the guys who stand right there and try to catch lingcod out of season. Whose ancesters let salmon rot at the canning piers -- by the TON. Whose relatives slaughtered those whales by the thousands -- and used the oil to lubricate sewing machines. Don't get me started on the bison genocide -- or the idiocy of replacing a large native meat-producer with an animal that has to be babied every step of the way. I mean, putting an African animal -- the cow -- into North Dakota? Where were their brains?
And food prejudice: I eat bullheads, if they're big enough. I'm told, "EWWW! They're bottom fish!" And this from people who buy beef in the supermarket. I mean, they'll eat an animal that eats cardboard, dead cats and dogs, dead sheep, and cannibalizes dead cattle -- and they won't eat a bullhead that's been devouring crabs, mussels and barnacles?
And yes, I do fish. But I fish my limit, and I only take what we can eat. And if I don't like it, I put it back.
Yeah. Now I'm getting spoiled. I like greenling, but striped perch aren't as good, so I put 'em back. Picky picky picky.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Sensory Overload
I was going to get a lot of work done yesterday. I mean, I had a lot of plans to get a mass done, coloring pages for www.moderntales.com (and ultimately for www.booksurge.com). Oh, yes, virtue was breathing out at my pores.
But it was high tide, and sunny, and I thought I'd go down to my favorite trout hole on the river. It wouldn't take long, I was sure. And it didn't. Caught my limit -- two -- in about ten minutes. Nice cutthroats. Great! I could get right back to work.
Okay. That meant I could go back to work. But I get back and I'm in the middle of cleaning the fish when my Horse Friend calls.
"Wanna go riding? I'm taking the kids."
OOh. Well, uh -- that'll take about three hours. But -- it's excercise, right? And it's nice out, though now it's overcast and cold. So I'd better take advantage.
So we spend three hours dragging around trails not only LEADING extra horses but with KIDS on 'em, one couple being an autistic girl and the gelding who had bonded so fiercely with her he would try to run through you if you got between him and her, and thought EVERYTHING in the world, including yellow caution tape, was out to kill her.
I was leading the lazy white greenbroke mare, and the little boy who spent most of his time staring at the sky and NOT keeping her going, until she decided to trot and he hauled back so hard he nearly took my arm out of the socket with him.
When I got back, I remembered I'd promised to take the Neighbor Girl to cast, and she's officially a fisherman, cuz she got my hook in her thigh (she will never stand behind a caster again). We about froze our fingers off, so we went back to the house to drop off the fishing poles and hit some hot cocoa and raw ramen noodles (which is what we use for crackers).
And I should mention we'd invited a friend down for dinner that evening partly because we owe him for helping us haul left-over cedar ends from the saw mill, but mostly because he's a nice fun guy, and Dan and he have a load of fun talking. So I fired up the wood stove and got to cooking up dinner.
And fishergirl's mom came over to pick her up, because I'd overheated her cocoa and it was taking her a while to drink it. And F's mom stayed to chat and have some jug wine and smoke cheap cigarettes out on the porch with me.
And it turned into a party! Trout and home-grown taters and black-berry dumplings and jug wine and homemade pear ice cream. Stuffed ourselves silly.
'till the deputy's kid's miniature horse, Rex, took off down the road and F's mom and I went to the rescue in the dark and Chewie the giant malemute dog was found gently herding this tiny horse very little larger than she is back home (good Chewie!). Chris and I led Rex back, while he rubbed his head on my side. Rex only comes up to about my hip, and is just as sweet as sugar, and all furry for winter.
Nobody was home at the deputy's residence -- what's called The Lighthouse up here, even though it's just the old caretaker's house, the lighthouse itself being long gone, since they put in the buoy.
So we took the p0ny back to F's mom's house and had to call 911 so they could find the deputy, because the family had all gone to Forks and left the pony tethered right next to Bear Kill ridge, which wasn't a good idea because the bear had been coming down and snacking on the salmon coming up the river, and the cougars are always looking for McDeer's, and the little horse, Rex, is about the right size.
Anyway, Rex's owner's dad showed up and took the horse home, where he could be locked up safe. Sawmill guy and husband Dan had had a great time, talking away at the house without the womenfolks. And Fishergirl was all excited by the pony's visit. Chewie stayed right by Rex the whole time.
Ain't animals great?
And that's why I didn't get any work done yesterday.
>^..^<
www.stinz.com
Latest book: www.stinz.com/home/otherbooks/bosom04.htm
I was going to get a lot of work done yesterday. I mean, I had a lot of plans to get a mass done, coloring pages for www.moderntales.com (and ultimately for www.booksurge.com). Oh, yes, virtue was breathing out at my pores.
But it was high tide, and sunny, and I thought I'd go down to my favorite trout hole on the river. It wouldn't take long, I was sure. And it didn't. Caught my limit -- two -- in about ten minutes. Nice cutthroats. Great! I could get right back to work.
Okay. That meant I could go back to work. But I get back and I'm in the middle of cleaning the fish when my Horse Friend calls.
"Wanna go riding? I'm taking the kids."
OOh. Well, uh -- that'll take about three hours. But -- it's excercise, right? And it's nice out, though now it's overcast and cold. So I'd better take advantage.
So we spend three hours dragging around trails not only LEADING extra horses but with KIDS on 'em, one couple being an autistic girl and the gelding who had bonded so fiercely with her he would try to run through you if you got between him and her, and thought EVERYTHING in the world, including yellow caution tape, was out to kill her.
I was leading the lazy white greenbroke mare, and the little boy who spent most of his time staring at the sky and NOT keeping her going, until she decided to trot and he hauled back so hard he nearly took my arm out of the socket with him.
When I got back, I remembered I'd promised to take the Neighbor Girl to cast, and she's officially a fisherman, cuz she got my hook in her thigh (she will never stand behind a caster again). We about froze our fingers off, so we went back to the house to drop off the fishing poles and hit some hot cocoa and raw ramen noodles (which is what we use for crackers).
And I should mention we'd invited a friend down for dinner that evening partly because we owe him for helping us haul left-over cedar ends from the saw mill, but mostly because he's a nice fun guy, and Dan and he have a load of fun talking. So I fired up the wood stove and got to cooking up dinner.
And fishergirl's mom came over to pick her up, because I'd overheated her cocoa and it was taking her a while to drink it. And F's mom stayed to chat and have some jug wine and smoke cheap cigarettes out on the porch with me.
And it turned into a party! Trout and home-grown taters and black-berry dumplings and jug wine and homemade pear ice cream. Stuffed ourselves silly.
'till the deputy's kid's miniature horse, Rex, took off down the road and F's mom and I went to the rescue in the dark and Chewie the giant malemute dog was found gently herding this tiny horse very little larger than she is back home (good Chewie!). Chris and I led Rex back, while he rubbed his head on my side. Rex only comes up to about my hip, and is just as sweet as sugar, and all furry for winter.
Nobody was home at the deputy's residence -- what's called The Lighthouse up here, even though it's just the old caretaker's house, the lighthouse itself being long gone, since they put in the buoy.
So we took the p0ny back to F's mom's house and had to call 911 so they could find the deputy, because the family had all gone to Forks and left the pony tethered right next to Bear Kill ridge, which wasn't a good idea because the bear had been coming down and snacking on the salmon coming up the river, and the cougars are always looking for McDeer's, and the little horse, Rex, is about the right size.
Anyway, Rex's owner's dad showed up and took the horse home, where he could be locked up safe. Sawmill guy and husband Dan had had a great time, talking away at the house without the womenfolks. And Fishergirl was all excited by the pony's visit. Chewie stayed right by Rex the whole time.
Ain't animals great?
And that's why I didn't get any work done yesterday.
>^..^<
www.stinz.com
Latest book: www.stinz.com/home/otherbooks/bosom04.htm
Friday, October 29, 2004
What, no gooey?
Okay, I've been here too long.
I was standing on the river bank the other day, drooling at the 3-foot-long Winter Chinooks, and just itching for November 1, when the season opens. And reminding the neighborhood boys that if they get caught with a fish before season, or over limit, they can have their licenses revoked -- for their lifetime. And letting them know that my Indian Name is "Brings The Warden."
And one of the kids, over in the bankside grasses, yells, "Hey! There's a dead silver here!"
So we go over, and yup, there's a big fish, half-eaten. Guess the bear that hoots around up on Bear Kill Ridge came down and had a midnight snack.
One of the kids says, "Look, it's full of eggs."
And I'm over there in a split second, and going "WHERE?" And the next thing ya know, I've got my hand inside that fish, ripping out those cold sticky egg masses. And when I'm done, I sling the rest of the fish into the river, and explain to the kids that the river needs the rotten fish to make food for the young salmon.
These kids are typical up here -- they all know how to kill these fish, but they don't know what helps 'em. Americans. Ya gotta -- well, not love 'em, because that would mean you had really low standards.
Anyway, the kids ask if they can have a few eggs, and I hand 'em half the mass. Before the day's done, they've just left most of the mass on the stream bank.
So I wander home with two big cold egg masses, for the bait jar (I pickle 'em in salt, sugar and Anise oil -- hardens up up and makes 'em like candy for the salmonoid fish).
And I've figured out why I'm no longer squeamish up here. In a city, you have to be careful of germs, cuz there's so many others of your own species. In the wild, we're few and far between.
Heck, the other day, I found out I wasn't squeamish about oysters either. I learned to shuck 'em -- and that's not hard, if you know the trick -- and didn't say "EEEWWWW" once. We deep-fried 'em. And deep-fried a mess of soaked Bone Polypore while we were at it.
Dan said he liked the mushrooms better. They were both pretty delectable, served up with the cold sour apple-cider we'd picked up at the cider-squeezing at the Preschool the other day. It's an annual thing, everybody showing up with plastic milk bottles and messes of culled apples from their trees. And paying $3.00 a big jug -- it all goes to the Preschool.
I tell ya, for poor folks living out here in the woods -- we're eating like we're living at the Savoy grill.
Okay, I've been here too long.
I was standing on the river bank the other day, drooling at the 3-foot-long Winter Chinooks, and just itching for November 1, when the season opens. And reminding the neighborhood boys that if they get caught with a fish before season, or over limit, they can have their licenses revoked -- for their lifetime. And letting them know that my Indian Name is "Brings The Warden."
And one of the kids, over in the bankside grasses, yells, "Hey! There's a dead silver here!"
So we go over, and yup, there's a big fish, half-eaten. Guess the bear that hoots around up on Bear Kill Ridge came down and had a midnight snack.
One of the kids says, "Look, it's full of eggs."
And I'm over there in a split second, and going "WHERE?" And the next thing ya know, I've got my hand inside that fish, ripping out those cold sticky egg masses. And when I'm done, I sling the rest of the fish into the river, and explain to the kids that the river needs the rotten fish to make food for the young salmon.
These kids are typical up here -- they all know how to kill these fish, but they don't know what helps 'em. Americans. Ya gotta -- well, not love 'em, because that would mean you had really low standards.
Anyway, the kids ask if they can have a few eggs, and I hand 'em half the mass. Before the day's done, they've just left most of the mass on the stream bank.
So I wander home with two big cold egg masses, for the bait jar (I pickle 'em in salt, sugar and Anise oil -- hardens up up and makes 'em like candy for the salmonoid fish).
And I've figured out why I'm no longer squeamish up here. In a city, you have to be careful of germs, cuz there's so many others of your own species. In the wild, we're few and far between.
Heck, the other day, I found out I wasn't squeamish about oysters either. I learned to shuck 'em -- and that's not hard, if you know the trick -- and didn't say "EEEWWWW" once. We deep-fried 'em. And deep-fried a mess of soaked Bone Polypore while we were at it.
Dan said he liked the mushrooms better. They were both pretty delectable, served up with the cold sour apple-cider we'd picked up at the cider-squeezing at the Preschool the other day. It's an annual thing, everybody showing up with plastic milk bottles and messes of culled apples from their trees. And paying $3.00 a big jug -- it all goes to the Preschool.
I tell ya, for poor folks living out here in the woods -- we're eating like we're living at the Savoy grill.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Dead Things
17 October, 2004 Payback today.
Those long sunny walks on a sparkling beach, those views of rainbowed cloud and autumn orange on Bear Kill ridge, are getting paid for today. Went up the Hoko Ozette road the other day, just to check out all the little streams that run into the Hoko. Mainly because the fishing rules on them aren't so stringent as on the Hoko or Lake Ozette, and we might have been able to pick up a nice trout or two.
We'd already been up there the last few weeks, to pick mushrooms. You don't want to go picking mushrooms with Dan – it's like a military campaign. On the best day, we lunged and ducked around through the underbrush for two and a half hours, until we had thirty pounds of Chanterelles and White Sheep Polypore, mostly, with a handful of Puffballs, Honeys and Angel Wings. We've got bottle after bottle of pickled Chanterelles and salted Polypores in the refrigerator. We won't need meat for the rest of the year – or fish. I've been cooking the mushrooms in a little water, and the juice ends up in a steadily concentrating broth that we use to make sauce or cook pasta in. Forget beef stock – you've never had rich fulfilling broth until you've cooked about four changes of mushrooms in the same water, and strained it for pine and fir needles. Needles are to mushrooms as bones are to fish – you just have to pick one out now and then. It's worth it.
Speaking of meat, the stream reconnaissance turned out to be an adventure, and not a very pleasant one. We stopped at our favorite little stream-side beach on the Hoko, and got proof, once again, as though anybody needed it, that human beings are filthy monkeys. The place reeked of rotten flesh, and as we walked down the stream, it began to smell like an old outhouse. We soon found the sources – somebody had just taken a big old toilet-papered dump, right there on the bank, where the water could get at it. Don't be telling me that humans are any different from any other monkey. We shit in clear water, or near it. And don't tell me you don't – checked out your toilet tank lately? If you're not using your gray-water to flush with, you're shitting in the drinking water, you monkey you.
And right next to the pile of shit (man-sized, of course, because they're just closer to monkeys, and anybody who knows about those broken chromosomes they have can tell you that) – was, in a kind of altar, a stack of rotting long elk-bones, with a decomposing arrangement of bits of hides and the heads of the young bulls with the tops of their heads whacked off, to take the antlers. I mean, Jesus, there aren't enough clear-cuts up here to dump rotten elk bits in the middle of? If nothing else, for Raven to find. I mean, don't these hot-shot hunters know that Raven is the Wolf Bird, and without wolf, the Man Bird, and once he figures out that humans rip open carcasses, he'll tell you where the elk and deer are? Rather than warning anybody else about you, he'll cooperate.
But noooooo, we've got to follow our monkey instincts, and dump the rotten carcasses next to the river. Some hunters. Some monkeys.
And when that's been considered, and the memory set in our minds, our trip up to see streams got screwed up when the bug's brakes decided to go completely soft on that twisty, humpy road. Oh, was that ever entertaining. When we got back, the local guy had no idea how to fix a bug, without taking three days to do it. And he sure as heck didn't have a replacement master cylinder for the leaking one we got now. So I blew half my AAA towage mileage sending the car into Port Angeles. A
And now the phone's gone out, because the wire outside has been dinged. But now the gods will leave me alone – because they finally drove me to jumping up and down and cursing them really loudly. They never lay off until I blow up, and then they quit. And I can't fish now, because last week I caught a 15-inch greenling, and her belly was full of eggs. So I let her go, and I can't fish until January, when the spawning season is over. So all I can do is sit home and write and draw and try to figure out how to color pages on the computer. Oh fricking boy.
(The neighbor, Joel, came over, and we sat in the rain and hooked the phone up again. And then his wife, Chris, came over and we sat around drinking wine in front of the fire and having long discussions, and boy did I need those).
Cross your fingers on the car.
17 October, 2004 Payback today.
Those long sunny walks on a sparkling beach, those views of rainbowed cloud and autumn orange on Bear Kill ridge, are getting paid for today. Went up the Hoko Ozette road the other day, just to check out all the little streams that run into the Hoko. Mainly because the fishing rules on them aren't so stringent as on the Hoko or Lake Ozette, and we might have been able to pick up a nice trout or two.
We'd already been up there the last few weeks, to pick mushrooms. You don't want to go picking mushrooms with Dan – it's like a military campaign. On the best day, we lunged and ducked around through the underbrush for two and a half hours, until we had thirty pounds of Chanterelles and White Sheep Polypore, mostly, with a handful of Puffballs, Honeys and Angel Wings. We've got bottle after bottle of pickled Chanterelles and salted Polypores in the refrigerator. We won't need meat for the rest of the year – or fish. I've been cooking the mushrooms in a little water, and the juice ends up in a steadily concentrating broth that we use to make sauce or cook pasta in. Forget beef stock – you've never had rich fulfilling broth until you've cooked about four changes of mushrooms in the same water, and strained it for pine and fir needles. Needles are to mushrooms as bones are to fish – you just have to pick one out now and then. It's worth it.
Speaking of meat, the stream reconnaissance turned out to be an adventure, and not a very pleasant one. We stopped at our favorite little stream-side beach on the Hoko, and got proof, once again, as though anybody needed it, that human beings are filthy monkeys. The place reeked of rotten flesh, and as we walked down the stream, it began to smell like an old outhouse. We soon found the sources – somebody had just taken a big old toilet-papered dump, right there on the bank, where the water could get at it. Don't be telling me that humans are any different from any other monkey. We shit in clear water, or near it. And don't tell me you don't – checked out your toilet tank lately? If you're not using your gray-water to flush with, you're shitting in the drinking water, you monkey you.
And right next to the pile of shit (man-sized, of course, because they're just closer to monkeys, and anybody who knows about those broken chromosomes they have can tell you that) – was, in a kind of altar, a stack of rotting long elk-bones, with a decomposing arrangement of bits of hides and the heads of the young bulls with the tops of their heads whacked off, to take the antlers. I mean, Jesus, there aren't enough clear-cuts up here to dump rotten elk bits in the middle of? If nothing else, for Raven to find. I mean, don't these hot-shot hunters know that Raven is the Wolf Bird, and without wolf, the Man Bird, and once he figures out that humans rip open carcasses, he'll tell you where the elk and deer are? Rather than warning anybody else about you, he'll cooperate.
But noooooo, we've got to follow our monkey instincts, and dump the rotten carcasses next to the river. Some hunters. Some monkeys.
And when that's been considered, and the memory set in our minds, our trip up to see streams got screwed up when the bug's brakes decided to go completely soft on that twisty, humpy road. Oh, was that ever entertaining. When we got back, the local guy had no idea how to fix a bug, without taking three days to do it. And he sure as heck didn't have a replacement master cylinder for the leaking one we got now. So I blew half my AAA towage mileage sending the car into Port Angeles. A
And now the phone's gone out, because the wire outside has been dinged. But now the gods will leave me alone – because they finally drove me to jumping up and down and cursing them really loudly. They never lay off until I blow up, and then they quit. And I can't fish now, because last week I caught a 15-inch greenling, and her belly was full of eggs. So I let her go, and I can't fish until January, when the spawning season is over. So all I can do is sit home and write and draw and try to figure out how to color pages on the computer. Oh fricking boy.
(The neighbor, Joel, came over, and we sat in the rain and hooked the phone up again. And then his wife, Chris, came over and we sat around drinking wine in front of the fire and having long discussions, and boy did I need those).
Cross your fingers on the car.
Part of the Past.
The following article should have been posted in May.
So here it is!
Doin' The Wave
May 23, 2004
No fishing yesterday evening.
The sun was going down golden, and the water was powder-blue, and clear azure where the sunlight glowed through, and the foam was white as snow.
The tide was in, about as far as it was going to come. The waves had built the pea-gravel beach into a head-high cliff. To get to the water, a person took a jump and ran down, to keep the gravel out of her shoes.
There wasn't going to be any fishing, because the tide was in and the waves were crashing against the little cliff. But I had my fishing pole along anyway, because if I couldn't catch, I could practice casting. I'm getting pretty good at casting. I was showing my new neighbor Tracy how to caste with a bail reel, and she said that her husband had taught her to do it just that way. Which was cool, because I'd had to develop the method on my own. I've no fear that any part of civilization will ever disappear. Somebody will figure it all out of then. We'll not get into whether that's a good thing or not. I did get to tell Tracy she casts like a girl.
"I like being a girl!" she said.
"I was more of a tomboy," she said.
"That's my daughter," she said.
I'd just got done terrorizing her daughter and her friend. They wanted to pierce their noses, so I told them all about my own nose ring, and that yes, indeed, it DID hurt, and it DID take a long time to heal, and yes, it did smell pretty rank while it was doing it.
But back to the beach. The kids were all down there fishing, or sort of. Again, they were just casting. The red-headed kid who is the boss colt decided that, like me, he wasn't even going to try putting on any bait. He'd just enjoy flipping the line out as far as it would go. I was doing the best job, of course – I was using my home-made rock-and-wire weights, and those things just take a line out in a high distant arc. Lovely to see. And I'm getting better at thunking that line into just the hole I'm intending. Some of my best casts, my most heart-satisfying flight of line and weight, have happened when the weight snapped the end off the line off, and went flying as though propelled by an atlatl into deep water. No matter.
I usually carry extra weights, or a little extra wire to make a new one. My fishing kit has become my pole and reel, Dan's buck-knife (just in case I ever do get to fillet another fish on the beach), a little camera case somebody left on the beach and that Dan rescued from the tide – and it was full of big hooks and plastic worms, so I'm putting them to good use – a couple plastic bags, a small rag for wiping bait guts off my hands, instead of using my blue jeans, and a little bag of bait.
Tracy had accidentally left a bowl of big prawns uncooked the night before.
"Don't tell my husband," she'd said. "He'll kill me."
"No, that's not wasted food," I said. "That's bait!" So we'd used it that morning to get a lot of nibbles and no fish. I don't know what Jim would have said to our using big prawns to feed fish with no fillets in return. But Tracy said we'll all go fishing in Jim's big fishing boat next weekend, and since fish caught that was cost about $75.00 a pound if not more, I don't think a few little prawns come into the computation.
While the kids and I were pretending to fish, Dan was down the beach hunting agates. Meanwhile, the kids were playing I Dare You with the waves. On the way back with Dan, I started playing it myself.
By the time I got to the kids, I was ready to tell them that the way to get the big waves to come in was to stand with their backs to the water. Water and fire are carnivorous, and they'll go for you if you turn your back on them or aren't especially careful around you. Fire will literally snatch you bald-headed. That crackle and stink as your hair goes up in smoke is not soon forgotten.
We were discussing the eating habits of the elements when the red-headed kid yelled, "Oh, big one!" and we all took a quick glance and jeezus crimeny, yes, that was indeed a big one, and it was going to have our asses if we didn't jump, and jump fast. But the only place we had to go was straight up that shifting loose pea-gravel cliff.
I haven't screamed and scrambled and laughed so hard in years. We all got soaked. Then we just stood dancing around in the foam out of the pure exhilaration of having lost to the elements, becoming soggy one with them, and survived. Well, not that we were really in danger, but we could have been.
And that evening Dan and I watched "What Lies Below," with the lights out, and scared the bejesus out of ourselves. No fakey psychological thriller, that. Zemeckis promised ghosts, and he delivered. Even though we knew that ghost was going to be in the bathtub, we practically jumped off the couch when we saw her. Ya gotta love it when they're not afraid of the ghosts.
The following article should have been posted in May.
So here it is!
Doin' The Wave
May 23, 2004
No fishing yesterday evening.
The sun was going down golden, and the water was powder-blue, and clear azure where the sunlight glowed through, and the foam was white as snow.
The tide was in, about as far as it was going to come. The waves had built the pea-gravel beach into a head-high cliff. To get to the water, a person took a jump and ran down, to keep the gravel out of her shoes.
There wasn't going to be any fishing, because the tide was in and the waves were crashing against the little cliff. But I had my fishing pole along anyway, because if I couldn't catch, I could practice casting. I'm getting pretty good at casting. I was showing my new neighbor Tracy how to caste with a bail reel, and she said that her husband had taught her to do it just that way. Which was cool, because I'd had to develop the method on my own. I've no fear that any part of civilization will ever disappear. Somebody will figure it all out of then. We'll not get into whether that's a good thing or not. I did get to tell Tracy she casts like a girl.
"I like being a girl!" she said.
"I was more of a tomboy," she said.
"That's my daughter," she said.
I'd just got done terrorizing her daughter and her friend. They wanted to pierce their noses, so I told them all about my own nose ring, and that yes, indeed, it DID hurt, and it DID take a long time to heal, and yes, it did smell pretty rank while it was doing it.
But back to the beach. The kids were all down there fishing, or sort of. Again, they were just casting. The red-headed kid who is the boss colt decided that, like me, he wasn't even going to try putting on any bait. He'd just enjoy flipping the line out as far as it would go. I was doing the best job, of course – I was using my home-made rock-and-wire weights, and those things just take a line out in a high distant arc. Lovely to see. And I'm getting better at thunking that line into just the hole I'm intending. Some of my best casts, my most heart-satisfying flight of line and weight, have happened when the weight snapped the end off the line off, and went flying as though propelled by an atlatl into deep water. No matter.
I usually carry extra weights, or a little extra wire to make a new one. My fishing kit has become my pole and reel, Dan's buck-knife (just in case I ever do get to fillet another fish on the beach), a little camera case somebody left on the beach and that Dan rescued from the tide – and it was full of big hooks and plastic worms, so I'm putting them to good use – a couple plastic bags, a small rag for wiping bait guts off my hands, instead of using my blue jeans, and a little bag of bait.
Tracy had accidentally left a bowl of big prawns uncooked the night before.
"Don't tell my husband," she'd said. "He'll kill me."
"No, that's not wasted food," I said. "That's bait!" So we'd used it that morning to get a lot of nibbles and no fish. I don't know what Jim would have said to our using big prawns to feed fish with no fillets in return. But Tracy said we'll all go fishing in Jim's big fishing boat next weekend, and since fish caught that was cost about $75.00 a pound if not more, I don't think a few little prawns come into the computation.
While the kids and I were pretending to fish, Dan was down the beach hunting agates. Meanwhile, the kids were playing I Dare You with the waves. On the way back with Dan, I started playing it myself.
By the time I got to the kids, I was ready to tell them that the way to get the big waves to come in was to stand with their backs to the water. Water and fire are carnivorous, and they'll go for you if you turn your back on them or aren't especially careful around you. Fire will literally snatch you bald-headed. That crackle and stink as your hair goes up in smoke is not soon forgotten.
We were discussing the eating habits of the elements when the red-headed kid yelled, "Oh, big one!" and we all took a quick glance and jeezus crimeny, yes, that was indeed a big one, and it was going to have our asses if we didn't jump, and jump fast. But the only place we had to go was straight up that shifting loose pea-gravel cliff.
I haven't screamed and scrambled and laughed so hard in years. We all got soaked. Then we just stood dancing around in the foam out of the pure exhilaration of having lost to the elements, becoming soggy one with them, and survived. Well, not that we were really in danger, but we could have been.
And that evening Dan and I watched "What Lies Below," with the lights out, and scared the bejesus out of ourselves. No fakey psychological thriller, that. Zemeckis promised ghosts, and he delivered. Even though we knew that ghost was going to be in the bathtub, we practically jumped off the couch when we saw her. Ya gotta love it when they're not afraid of the ghosts.
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