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 |  Opinions are like Blogs, everybody's got one |
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Every so often I have a thought or two, I might as well write them here...they may be political thoughts (I hate war, polluters and thieves), or thoughts about American culture (which I wished we really had) or even religious thoughts (I don't play favorites)...but you're invited to see these thoughts of mine right here. Comments are welcome... |
| It’s interesting to note how our current administration is now being taken to task for spying on the populace, through the aptly named (at least in Orwellian terms) Patriot Act. It’s not surprising to me. What is surprising to me is how I’m able to continue to express an opinion counter to the administration’s, especially since we’ve been told in no uncertain terms “you are either with us or with the terrorists”. I’m sure somewhere somebody from the government is reading this and marking my name down, hopefully not as an ‘enemy combatant’ in which case I would disappear from the face of the earth, ala our former supported Chilean dictator Auguste Pinochet, whose method of getting rid of folks with differing opinions we’d trained at our ‘College of the Americas’, a most unusual campus. I have no hope our congress will stifle the fascist leanings of our current administration. The cloak and trappings of the ‘War President’ were too eagerly put on by the charlatan in charge as elected by the ‘intelligent’ citizens of this country. Perhaps it would be true to claim that we get the government we deserve, since we obviously have no idea, in re of our voting preferences. No, I’m sure the bean-head majority of congress will give carte blanche to further dismantling of our civil rights. Maybe the old US of A is ready for fascism. Especially since our foreign policy is predisposed to protect business as usual without regard for the bill of rights. All it takes to become an enemy of our government is to not allow our business the right to pillage foreign countries at their leisure. Forget WMD, forget democracy, the reason we went after Saddam is because he nationalized his oil after we had set him up, he bit the hand that fed him, so to speak. I feel sorry for our volunteer military forces, because if the President had to rely on the draft for his war, it would be quite the different story. How many representative’s and senator’s children are fighting this war? How many people gaining big tax cuts from the current administration have children fighting this war? Our president is waging war with poor people’s children to gain a big payday for his fat-cat cronies, case closed. To fight this ill-begotten war he is borrowing on the nation’s future and when the bills come in he’ll be long gone. But a lot of people will be very rich and the forgotten peoples’ children will be dead, maybe they shouldn’t have gambled on the GI Bill. However I was talking about our government spying on us. As long as you’re one of the ‘good ole boys’ you have nothing to worry about. Keep going to church and watching mindless TV and you’re the perfect citizen. The truth is it’s really better if your children don’t go to college and learn crazy ideas, get them jobs instead, maybe a career at Walmart or MacDonald’s (God knows the country needs service industry workers to service the elite). Let them vote in the charades we call elections, as if we cared, because if we don’t like the outcome we can change it through deft and timely Supreme Court nominations. But be aware that fascism, once allowed to take over, is very hard to get rid of. If Congress rubberstamps the Patriot Act than George Orwell’s 1984 has gone from science fiction to imminent fact, even if it’s twenty years later. Catch-22 said that they can to anything they want to us if we can’t stop them from doing it. As long as primetime TV, smoke, mirrors and stupidity keep us foolish we remain slaves. So much for government lips forming words like liberty. As the bumper sticker says: “Take my civil liberties, I wasn’t using them anyway.” If you think I don’t know what I’m talking about you are wrong. I found out, being in intelligence during the Vietnam conflict, how much our government was lying to the citizens of our country. If you think that is no longer the case, I’d like to sell you beachfront property in Arizona. |
| Happy Holidays! All over the country people are debating the term “Happy Holidays”, in my hometown newspaper I read many letters to the editor coming out on both sides of the debate. My feeling is nobody owns the holidays. Christians are getting their noses bent because “Happy Holidays” is replacing “Merry Christmas” and I see that reaction as intolerance on their part. The celebration of Jesus’ birth in December perpetuates a lie, historians agree his birth actually occurred in September. The Roman Catholic Church began to celebrate Christ’s birth in December as a way of co-opting the pagan celebrations surrounding the Winter Solstice. So in a sense the Christians can’t lay claim to the holiday any more than the rest of us pagans. Yet there have been movements among the Christians to boycott stores using the generic “Happy Holidays” instead of the more specific “Merry Christmas” in their advertising. Most telling of the letters are those encouraging Christians to get off their high horses and start doing what Jesus wanted them to do, namely feeding the hungry, healing the sick, clothing the poor and loving their neighbors. It appears the Christians who want to boycott stores and harass people who don’t agree with them are not remembering Jesus’ words, instead preferring to get their interpretations of the Bible from talk show hosts and angry radio voices. I don’t remember Jesus saying to harass your neighbor. This intolerance is one of many signs I see of a movement to justify America’s actions to the rest of the world. If we are a Christian nation than anything we do has the stamp of a higher power on it and if that is true then the people we are fighting a war with in the Middle East have every right to call us modern crusaders. In 1962 Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote his poem “Christ Climbed Down”, and though it was written more than forty years ago, still has the ring of truth. We shouldn’t claim to be Christians if that means we condone killing people (could we get a poll on how many pro-life advocates support the war in Iraq?), if it means we support ‘business as usual’ because it maintains poverty levels worldwide in order to be successful, if it means we prefer to spend money on fancy churches rather than on homeless shelters. The things done these days by ‘Christians’ makes me want to disassociate myself from them. So I’m okay with saying Happy Holidays to you instead of Merry Christmas. The holiday time in this country has become a time when people try to be nice to others, people of all religions and ethno-centric backgrounds. We can still have “goodwill toward others” and say Happy Holiday, even if we don’t claim to be Christian. Christians don’t own the Holidays or the Holiday spirit, we all do. Happy Holidays!! |
| Samuel Clemens once said something about golf being ‘a good walk spoiled’, and with that attitude quit the game. I don’t know how much golf Sam played or how good he was, but I have to say he wasn’t much of a masochist. Though Mr. Clemens was a giant in the field of literature, which I am not, in the fields of masochism he can’t hold a candle to me. To help prove my point about masochism I should explain a recent golfing ‘vacation’ some friends and I took over a weekend in December. I’m no stranger to masochism. For the last five years I have worked in the outdoors, most of the time camping in wilderness conditions, exposed to inclement weather, ravaged by savage insects, having to keep watch over my shoulder for large predators, and all the time dealing with difficult and challenging terrain. As you might expect this kind of work pays well and I am willing to exhaust myself with such trials and tribulations because of that reward, that payday. Thankfully where we took our golf vacation there were no large predators, I didn’t have to camp and the bugs were few. The rewards were also less tangible, the payday someone else’s, and I am exhausted. I paid good money to beat myself up and oddly enough, bruised and battered though I may be, I don’t regret any of it. We took our golf vacation along the coast of Oregon, a wild, unpredictable shoreline. Golf courses are usually remarkable for the civilization they bring to an area, green in the middle of the desert, wonderfully landscaped Sunset magazine vistas, etc. The golf courses we played were remarkable for the minimum of landscaping they used, the natural traps and hazards creating a most uncivilized experience. The courses we played were at the Bandon Dunes Resort, where they have created an Oregonian version of Scottish golf courses. There are pot bunkers (sand traps) with stairs, the unwary golfer must climb down into them to play a ball that seemed like a good shot until it rolled over the lip of the bunker. If you’ve hit a ball anywhere but in the fairway, consider it lost, and if you do happen to find the ball expect it to be unplayable. One of my companions hit into a gorse bush which caught his ball in its thorns like a catcher’s mitt, visible but completely unplayable. The scenery at these Oregon golf courses is spectacular, it is a rugged beautiful place. There is very little flat ground out there, it is not a place for the timid or weak, they do not allow golf-carts. You can hire a caddie to carry your bags, carry your own or use a pull-cart. We hired what is called a fore-caddie, he didn’t carry any bags but would tell us the best areas to hit the ball to avoid disaster, rake the sand behind us and point out the contours on the treacherous greens. He earned his money and put us to shame. The man was 72 years old and scampered ahead of us like a pointer, finding our errant golf-balls up in the brush, in far better shape than any of us. But the golf courses are unrelenting. At no point is it easy. On most golf courses you’ve got to deal with trees or water, or sand-traps, but these golf courses at Bandon Dunes are diabolical. Sometimes you’ve got to hit the ball a long ways just to get it in the fairway, across waste areas, or blind tee shots hit towards a distant tree which the fore-caddie says is the right direction. Most golfers will tell you how intimidating it can be to know you’ve got to hit the ball 180 yards through the air just to be safely on the short grass of the fairway. They will also tell you how often their game lets them down when faced with such situations. My game let me down any number of times. I can usually count on four or five pars per round of 18 holes, I played 36 holes and got exactly one par. I was glad to escape with double-bogeys (two over par). On a normal golf course I will generally finish close to bogey for the round (18 over par), on these courses I averaged double-bogey for two days of masochism. And yet I had a marvelous time. The golf courses at Bandon Dunes have become famous. During the summer they get over two hundred dollars for a round of golf and people fly in to play them from all over the world. Golf magazines laud these courses as being among the best in America. To me, playing these courses is like a trip to Mecca, I may never get to play them again and it’s probably also the closest I’ll get to playing in Scotland, but I can certainly see the attraction, and the memories of both the beauty and the beastliness will remain a highlight of my golfing history. The odd thing about playing golf is what brings a golfer back to play after they’ve been drubbed. It’s perfectly clear to me why Samuel Clemens gave up the game, it shows some sense on his part. But in my case (and perhaps I’ll never be cured) all it takes is to hit a couple of good shots in a round to bring me back. On the signature hole at the original course, the Bandon Dunes, I hit one of those shots. The signature hole is the 16th, if I remember correctly, and it runs along the ocean. You’ve got to hit the ball across a rocky chasm, which drains down to the beach, and if you get over that you’ve still got to get over a sandy scrubby cliff-face to be in the short grass above it for a chance at the green sitting right on the edge of the ocean. That requires a carry of two hundred yards in the air, through the perpetual wind coming off the ocean. I hit the ball nearly 260 yards and was the only one of the foursome to have a relatively safe shot into the green. Of course I screwed that ‘safe’ shot up and settled for a triple-bogey seven. But that one shot was so glorious. Maybe Sam never hit one like that, maybe that’s why he quit, the piker. Not me, boy, I can’t wait to go back and get beat up again. I hope I get the chance. |
| You know the Amish and Quakers are familiar with the barnraisin' thing. They have a big potluck when they've the materials in place and voila there's a barn!! That is just the kind of thing I did for my youngest son the other day. He bought a house recently and the porch was creating more problems than it was solving, he asked me if I'd help him build a new one and hence, a barnraisin'. Building a deck and covered area is the kind of thing I did in Alaska for years for the company I work for. It was up to me to do the takeoff to know what materials I'd need, as well as figure out how to do the job. For that kind of activity I was paid big bucks. But for my son, I did a design/build, figuring out how to do it and what materials we'd need and then buying them. I'm not used to the buying part and my personal, private estimation was blown out of the water as I ordered all the decking and underpinning and roofing we would need. The bottom line astounded me, but I went ahead and paid it like I knew wood and fasteners and etc., would cost that much. And what a good time I had with my son as we built it! I would be a fool to carp after such a good time. So I won't. I will just call it a barnraisin'. At the beginning of my entry I explained the meaning of the barnraisin'. That's not all the story, it was also a common term and usage of a group of people believing in the 'cooperative' form of business. What better way of exemplifying solidarity among the group than to go and contribute labor and whatever you could afford for the betterment of your fellows. It's the opposite of trickle down, this is trickle up. I don't claim to be a Christian, but I very much believe we are all better people when we personally help others. God knows I'd love to be paid for doing work, I just need to accept and embrace how that pay comes to me. |
| People who know me on this site know that I come up with odd contests involving writing that pushes the comfort envelope of most folks. It's fun to try and master unusual forms or niches of literature. Well my latest adventure is Tabloid writing, as if I were writing for the tabloids. I encourage anyone reading this to take part, you can get to the contest by clicking on this link "Invalid Item"  .This kind of writing is a curious mix of fiction and non-fiction. We're used to reading newspapers because they tell us the truth about the world we live in. Tabloids tell us the unbelievable truth about this very strange world and we're not really sure if it is truth or not. In our lifetimes we have things happen to us that sometimes are incredible, but I've found trying to write about them creates a feeling in a story that is almost contrived. The thing seemed unbelievable when it happened and still feels like that on paper. So I think maybe fiction is more real than reality itself. One night on PBS I saw a book review for a newly published collection of the author's Tabloid stories, stories that had been published in tabloids back when he was poor and casting around for some way to make money. For years the author was almost ashamed of the stories he'd written, but now he sees them as examples of a genre, tabloid writing. That got me to thinking tabloid writing would be a fun contest and after writing a couple examples for the contest I knew how much fun it was and also how much fun folks would have writing for the contest. It's fun to kick it out once in a while. We all are serious writers, working to perfect our skill in recognized forms of literature, most notably poetry and prose. But I think writing badly, or perhaps I should say writing non-traditionally is a wonderful exercise. It gets your brain to thinking in different ways. Tabloid writing requires incredible imagination. The way I do it is to first think of some unbelievable fact, like a pig sacrificing itself so the family that loves it won't go hungry, and then weaving the fact into some tapestry of possible, if unlikely, truth. It's harder than it seems it would be, but very entertaining, hopefully to read and definitely to write. I'm all for no borders, lol...see you in the tabloids!! |
| When my Dad died a couple of years ago I stayed with my Mom for a week or so after the funeral and tried to help her deal with her loss. They'd been married nearly sixty years, so there were little pieces of Dad scattered all over the place and a lot of them could be removed to somewhere she couldn't see them and be freshly moved to tears. So we went through their house and I began to pack things of Dad's out to my car. Out of sight, out of mind, or so they say. Mom was of two minds about Dad's clothes. It seemed so final to her to take them out of the closet they'd shared, which was hard for her, but at the same time she welcomed some more space for her clothes. When I got back to Eugene (they lived in Idaho), I took the clothes out of my car and put them in my front room, where they stayed for two years. For some reason I had resistance to taking them to St. Vinnies. A couple of times I tried and found some reason not to do it, a few tears were shed in the process. My front room is not a place I use to live in. I go straight through it to my bedroom/computer room. In the process the front room has become a catchall for tools, projects, dad's clothes, etc., definitely not the place to entertain, in fact hardly any floor space left from all the clutter. This year when I came back home finally, after spending a good part of the summer in Alaska and finally California, I've been pestered by my conscience to do something with the front room. The concept is still kind of nebulous, but today I made some significant progress in there, taking all of Dad's clothes and some of my old ones as well to St. Vinnies. It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. Maybe I'm closer to closure after all. Mom has gotten over it better than I have, she's even remarried. But now maybe I've gotten to a place where I can deal with Dad's things, the clothes were only part of it, a big part, but not the whole enchilada by any means. But I've made a start anyway, the clothes were the hardest part, I'm hoping. But I intend to sort it all out and soon, the front room may still be a nebulous concept, but it's going to need some help to take shape and foot-dragging doesn't help. |
| And today an announcement from the President for Life, George Bush, that the energy conglomerate Exxon/Mobil/BP has bought the rights to all the energy produced by our sun. Speaking from his throne in the Oval Office, President Bush declared a bright new day for stockholders of the energy giant. Although details need to be hammered out, it appears each citizen will be billed for the sun’s output on their monthly statement from EnergyCorp, the governmental agency responsible for collecting on the nation’s energy usage. So far the response from the public has been very positive, helped to that response by the Freedom Police’s recent crackdown on nay-sayers who have disagreed in any way with the President’s wishes. And we would like to add right here and now our enthusiastic support of anything our beloved President has said or might say in the future. The President went on to say this new development by the energy moguls will enable his continuing war around the world to bring ‘the American way of life’ to backwards countries. The war, which so far has been a resounding success, can now proceed as planned, with the hope that South America will soon see the error of their ways, like Europe and the Middle East have done. As the President has pointed out, South America is key to Homeland Security, and he would hate to have to resort to his ‘China Solution’ again. For those with memory loss, the ‘China Solution’ involves calling down fire from heaven to punish those who disagree with the President’s dream for America. “The sun has always been important to Americans,” the President noted, “and it’s good to bring it under American control. People who have been using the sun up to now have gotten a free lunch, now they’ll have to pay Americans for the privilege, as it should be. I have been assured by former Vice President Cheney, the CEO of Exxon/Mobil/BP, that a portion of the profit from the sun will go to establishing more ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ facilities worldwide, including Christian Cadet Day Care Centers to help weed out the pernicious influence of other wrong-headed religions. If God had wanted people to worship other religions than Christianity he would never have made me President.” In a related story, Crown Prince Jeb Bush, the head of the Freedom Police, warned citizens the new EnergyCorp bill was non-negotiable and that people who were late on their payments would have their citizenship terminated. As Prince Jeb is fond of saying, “if you want to live in the land of the free, you’re going to have to pay for it.” |
| I enjoy watching the Antiques Roadshow on PBS. There is a magic in ordinary things, things we’ve had around forever, things we buy for cheap at garage sales, things we hope have more value than we ourselves place in them. When folks bring in a vase they bought for a song they really don’t know if it’s real or not. Who knows, maybe the mark on the bottom was faked, a common tactic by knockoffs, but just maybe it really is a vase made by some strange social experimentation via pottery in Ohio back in the 19th century. And if it is genuine, then the five dollars paid for the vase turn into thousands. It’s almost like the lottery, except for the more tangible results. It would never do to put a lottery ticket in the middle of the table where Grandma’s fish-plate had held sway for decades. There’s something about family items that give them intrinsic worth way beyond money. In fact it’s common for folks to show no apparent interest in selling something that has been tainted by their family, and therefore must be passed along. I guess that shows the two kinds of people who frequent the roadshow venue. Half of them have stuff passed down and half have stuff they’ve bought on a hunch. Of the two kinds of people I like the folks who have things passed down. Gun collectors who have done all kinds of due diligence and research, sure they have some rare piece, are folks I enjoy watching get their comeuppance. They’re so sure of themselves, so sure they’ve found the pot of gold beneath their .55 caliber black-powder rainbow, they hate it when the appraiser tells them it’s a fake. People who get stuff handed down are often disappointed by the value, as if their ancestors were not the gold-plated forebears they claimed to be. But it doesn’t matter if the side-table with sawed-off legs isn’t a Chippendale or better, they can’t wait to pass it on to their kids’ kids. And if by chance it is worth something they can only hope some junkie down the line doesn’t trade it for peanuts, but by God they’re not going to! On the other hand the kids are the best. Something worth hundreds of dollars is huge to them and their delight is wonderful. It was something they watched their mom drag out of a dumpster and now it’s worth hundreds of dollars, wow! Adults will show that kind of delight as well, but only if the thing turns out to be worth tens of thousands and up. There are rare cases where someone paid 5 bucks for a box of stuff at an estate sale and scores big from a couple of things in the box, but most folks are not that excited by mere thousands of dollars of worth. Kids are precious, I hope if by some miracle I were on the show my treasure’s appraisal would generate that same enthusiasm and joy in me as the kids show. Like finding a rock on the beach that turns out to be a huge diamond washed across the ocean, it just looked like a dirty rock but it’s worth hundreds of dollars, wow! People with that kind of luck must be blessed in some way, don’t you think? Thank the Lord I’m not inclined to frequenting estate sales, there’s only so much room here and I’ve already filled the space with stuff. I’d have to get a whole ‘nother place, preferably with lots more space, if I were to make a habit of browsing for treasures. I’d also have to think about my other priorities. I would rather keep up on the local bird population, enjoy a rose’s moment in the sun, feel the wind and decide which side of the green to aim my golf shot. A treasure is too mercurial for my taste, one moment it’s junk and the next it has value, it’s all in the eye of the beholder of it. Life on the other hand can be valued as it happens and is probably not worth a thing except for some kind of innate and priceless quality. Maybe I’m too wealthy already to care about enriching myself with stuff. That’s a good thought even if I’m either naïve or too self-aware to actually think it. |
| Isaac Newton predicted that the battle of Armeggedon would happen in the year 2060. I feel a lot better knowing that. I would be 111 years old then and I'm pretty sure I can't live that long. I guess that means I'll die before the rapture, I won't have to suffer like the folks in that Christian End-times series, "The Poor Saps Left Behind" (or something like that). Whew! I put my faith in Newton here, history has proved he was a forward-thinking individual, with a brilliant handle on math and stuff, some of his things we still believe. Gravity comes to mind. He might even have been smarter than Pat Robertson, though we will only know that centuries from now, and given the limited time we have, we may never know who is smarter. But I am relieved I will be spared. I would be afraid that God would select me for the rapture, in spite of my sins, and I'd have to spend eternity playing pinochle and listening to reruns of Lawrence Welk. Although the endtimes has been predicted as being right around the corner for nearly 2000 years, this time might really be the nut. How can we know? God seems to be thrashing us lately, for whatever reason, surely He is giving us a sign here, we're in deep doo-doo. I've written before in this diatribe about how I think President Bush is to blame for God's disapproval of America right now, I'm not budging from that opinion, right-thinking people can't help but come to the same conclusion if they study the facts and who God is smacking around. It could be that Bush is also the Anti-Christ, which would cause the clock to be ticking when it comes to the Armeggedon thing. I don't believe that Bush is the Anti-Christ, Cheney is. He makes Charles Manson feel like a stuffed puppy-dog. But, no matter, I don't have to worry about any of it. I can retire when I please and live off the land, eat fish and grow liver spots. The younger ones among us should be concerned. God knows, if I were younger I'd be concerned! |
| From Washington to California mountains give way to the sea. They aren't tall mountains, but in many places they are quite rugged and any roads through those passes are twisting and windy. The main route from Grants Pass, Oregon south to Crescent City, California follows the fall line of the Smith River, through rugged country. The road signs warn the approaching driver, "Road Narrows", "Road getting really narrow now" and "Road Narrower than a footpath between the trees". And that's the main route. The coast route south from Oregon into California is much mellower and when the fog hasn't socked it in is also quite scenic. The ocean smashes into rocks throwing spray into the air as if there were no separation between the two states preiviously mentioned. A recent story in the paper told of a woman from Northermost Idaho bringing her husband's ashes to a beach close to Port Orford. She and two sons were washed away by a 'sneaker wave'. A pacific ocean in name only. Along the way are American Indian reservations and a number of casinos. I find this curious and ironic, perhaps a form of what we could call "Geronimo's Revenge", where the Indians finally get their own back. More power to them, I say, the ancestors of Westerners who stole the land are soft and easy to take once they stray into the casino. A regenerative scalping, since the same folks will be back again and again. Northern California is a lot like Oregon. Logging and fishing communities, small, scenic mountain communities. Towns that got their start historically, as mining meccas. I wonder how California hasn't ruined it yet, like the rest of the state to the south. I think it will be a long time before Northern California has sprawled like the Bay Area and SoCal, the country is too rugged. Wildness itself will hold our brand of progress at bay and yield slowly to it's blandishments. Difficult country spawns people who are different than flatlanders and city folk. There are more 'characters' per capita in rural towns. The same is true of coastal fishing communities or logging towns. People become characters telling unbelievably true stories of 'back when'. I like that in a town and gravitate toward those 'characters' as if I were one of them. On my last trip North, my part of our job finally done, I had to stop on the road, Highway 101, to allow a large herd of elk to decide if they were going to cross the road or keep grazing in the nice park. Civilization sat idling while wildness held the upper hand, so to speak. Long-live the narrow, winding cart-path twisty road if it protects those wild things from the likes of us. I admit it, I'm a 'character', probably even a Luddite. Look it up in your Funk and Wagnall's, there's my picture. |
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