The Northstar Journal

It’s quite a legacy he left us

2010-12-25T11:56:00.001-08:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, for a great deal of the world, today marks one of the most significant ~ if not controversial ~ events in history, the birth of an extraordinary human being. Even those religions which deny that he was ~ as even some of their own prophets contended ~ the son of God acknowledge that he lived, that he ministered, that he died and that whether his resurrection was physical or spiritual, it set into motion a chain of events which defined both the capacity for divine nobility and the relentless denial of those values for which a man named Jesus stood.

Perhaps because of my own genetic blend of the two faiths Christ symbolized and because of the incredible persecution both Jews and Christians have suffered since Calvary, it is not important to me whether Jesus was the son of God. What does mean something to me ~ and it means a very great deal ~ was that this individual came among us and by both the doctrine he preached and the personal example he set, he inspired others to actively work for a more compassionate society.

There can also be no denying that the example he set resonated. Yes, it bothers me that much that was not humane was done in his name but then this too was going on long before that fateful night in Bethlehem. Like so many fine and decent things in life, his gospel has been tarnished and used to shackle those very people Jesus sought so desperately in his life to free.

A great deal has transpired since his birth. Mighty empires have risen and fallen. Even the geography of the planet has changed. In a relatively swift passing of those years, the human species has emerged from primordial darkness to claim the planet for its own and to launch its destiny into the universe.

It is somehow reassuring to me that for perhaps the most tumultuous aspect of that span, millions have continued not only to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but in their own way, to emulate his example in their own lives.

It’s quite a legacy you left the world, Jesus. Happy birthday.

IN OTHER NEWS

Well, the good news is that we’re living longer. The bad news is that a lot of us are not living longer well. Factors like morbid obesity and hypertension ~ as well as a general lack of attention to preventative health measures ~ are on the increase. To me, that suggests that life has become so difficult that subconsciously, some of us don’t want to add years to an existence which doesn’t seem to be providing a lot of joy, security or satisfaction. That’s sad but it’s also a personal choice and sometimes attitude really is all.

I’m not sure why I’m glad about this one but it might just be the smidge of French in me. Apparently, the head of King Henry IV, who was assassinated and then decapitated in 1610, has been verified as legitimate. The embalmed skull of this particular monarch circulated among private collections for 183 years and then, during the French Revolution, disappeared entirely. Somehow, now that it’s been found, the universe seems just a bit tidier.

One out of four applicants for military service in the United States Army cannot, apparently, pass the entrance examination, leading many educators and the Secretary of Education to conclude that America’s “underperforming” (Gotta love those euphemisms, eh?) education system now poses a threat to national security. Among 30 other industrialized nations, America ranks near the bottom on the literacy level.

We found the newly released 2010 Census Report absolutely fascinating. Thanks to population growth well ahead of the national average, Washington became the 13th most populated state in America and gained a Congressional seat. To see how your community has changed, please go here.

Felina: Humans certainly do take this time of the year seriously. Such delicious aromas from down in the valley and such delightful sounds. I am a little overwhelmed by the apparent diversity of beliefs involved. They do, however, all seem to be celebrating something very important. And this human, who was to some apparently also a child of the creator and the creator, this, I must admit, confuses me.

Sam: I’m going to take a shot at this and say we are not talking about Santa Claus here.

Felina: Quite so and no, not Saint Nicholas, who was of the early Christian faith when Rome still ruled the world, and who was very good to the humans he served, so much so that the Emperor became jealous.

Sam: Yep, that big Roman, Diocletian.

Felina: Diocletian, quite so. This Diocletian person tried to get St. Nicholas to renounce his faith, then imprisoned him and tortured him when he would not.

Sam: Yep. Then another Roman emperor, Constantine, came to power. And this emperor was a Christian.

Felina: And St. Nicholas found himself a hero among the people.

Sam: Particularly when he helped a poor father out by collecting dowries for the man’s two daughters and then tossing the sacks of gold down the chimney.

Felina: Ah, so that was the origin of that particularly quaint custom of theirs?

Sam: Yep, another good idea that managed to get diverted some. However, we digress.

Felina: We are the Carpenters of digression.

Sam: We are the Donny and Marie of digression.

Felina: We are the Mormon’s Tabernacle Choir of digression, which sings the praises of this human who is not Santa Claus but whom, it appears, suffered at least as much for subscribing to these particular set of beliefs humans define as “Christian.”

Sam: He was a good example of what human beings can be when they love one another enough. He was a carpenter, a working stiff as it were, who felt he had a real special relationship with the Creator.

Felina: He was apparently a very nice human so that would follow, yes. Quite so.

Sam: He was also a very caring and compassionate one who believed that all of his species should be free, not only of body, but of mind and spirit.

Felina: Like the wild oxen we have seen who prospered for the absence of the yolk.

Sam: Yep. This human told all those who would rule his brothers and sisters that no other human being had that mandate; that only that which created life had dominion over it.

Felina: And for that, those of his parents’ faith judged him a threat to society and convinced Rome that he was, as well.

Sam: Yep. They put a ‘crown’ of thorns on his head and forced him to carry the cross of his crucifixion up a big hill on a hot day.

Felina: How absolutely appalling.

Sam: The best is yet to come, love of my life.

Felina: I can hardly wait, sun and moon of mine.

Sam: They nailed his paws and feet to this cross, then put it in the ground, between two others with humans hanging from them, in the middle of what is now called a “landfill.” And they left him to die.

Felina: Only apparently he did not die, which I understand is what Easter for Christians is all about.

Sam: Yep. And depending on the accounts that one reads, this human lived a very long time and became important to people from China to both Americas. Even religions which do not claim his as the progeny of the creator do not deny that he was of, for and with the creator.

Felina: So this Christmas is actually about the birth, life and death of an extraordinary human being who loved powerfully and with the courage a good parent with a big family.

Sam: Aye, Felina, that’s pretty much it. And on that note?

Felina: And on that note, gentle readers, until next time, may the creator bless and keep you.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Surviving hard times is also about refusing to accept the status quo when said status quo sucks. In their blog Finding Rootedness, Robin Broad and John Cavanaugh report on their search for the social, environmental, and economic anchoring that sees us through tough times. I recommend this one without reservation.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

Women at high risk for cancer now have two new options, according to results of a recently published federally-funded study and presented at a meeting of the American Association For Cancer Research in Washington, DC. Yep, for more on this one, please go here .

GOOD EXAMPLES

We congratulate the American Congress and Chief Executive for making it possible for people with other than heterosexual gender preferences to serve openly in the military. One of the young people in my life, a medic with the Alabama National Guard, served with distinction in Operation Desert Storm. Her caring, courage, dedication and military professionalism were never an issue. nor was the unmitigated and public record of the service lesbians and gays rendered to their country.

Thanks to the pro bono work of attorneys affiliated with the international Innocence Network ~ a coalition of 63 individual organizations, including the Innocence Project Northwest at the University of Washington School of Law ~ three Washington state men convicted of rape were cleared this year through post-conviction DNA testing. They are among 29 individuals nationwide who were exonerated or whose convictions were overturned in 2010.

Well, one Oregon timberjack who started out augmenting his income by building storage sheds for his neighbours is now building the minimalist type houses that have proliferated in Vancouver, British Columbia. Over the last five years, he estimates he’s built 100 of these and now he’s looking at making an entire subdivision of these for people who have either lost their homes or are facing that bleak future. This is definitely an example that can be emulated so yep, for more, please go here.

NORTHSTAR FAVORITES

Finding Rootedness is perhaps the most empowering blog we’ve yet come across for those of us who are pledged to a work which improves with the subscription to and application of positive and empowering alternatives. This one is for the window pushers among us. It offers not only solid alternatives to the chaos but news of where these options are being successfully implemented.

Irish Newsletter is an outstanding pocket source of Irish life, politics and times. Particularly well written are their news snaps (shorts) which ~ according to friends of mine in Erin ~ literally tell it like it is. While the Republic of Ireland’s population is only about 4.5-million, there are an estimated 80 million people of Irish descent worldwide and email version of this reached 50,000 of them.

Meade Fisher Observes Humanity From A Safe Distance is a blog authored by an outdoor writer, photographer, West Coast kayaker and environmentalist living in the San Francisco Bay area. These short, humorous, few holds barred observations on the machinations of the human species run from the whimsical to the arid and occasionally to the quietly outraged. I’ve been a fan of this particular writer for years and I’ve always found him worth the read.

Sightline Daily is the best Pacific Northwest source of environmentally friendly news we’ve encountered yet. They draw from newspapers and National Public Radio sources in Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington State.

The Northstar Gallery features photography of Seattle available as postcards, computer wallpaper and workspace art.

Wrath of the Testament, an exciting seagoing saga of war and rebellion, is now available for $3.99 at amazon.com.

Yes magazine is the online Life and Look of the Internet combined and their present series “What Happy Families Know is both insightful and inspirational.

SEATTLE SCENES

Seattle's Union Station

Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

What’s Going On Here?

Whether you live here or plan to visit ~ and whatever it is you enjoy doing at home or as a tourist ~ you’ll find it, you’ll find it listed here at seattlepi.com.

SEATTLE FACTS AND FIGURES
Seattle Rainfall in Comparison To Other US Cities
Seattle Geography & Climate
For more information about Seattle

OTHER RELATED STUFF FROM THE SHORES OF THE SALISH SEA
For live cameras on Seattle, the Puget Sound and Washington State
Mount Rainier slide show
Eat healthy while you’re here – Seattle PCC Co-Op
Take some fresh produce back to your hotel – Seattle Farmers Markets

CRITTER STUFF

Well, for those of us who love “all creatures great and small,” wolverines have apparently either returned to the Northwest or ~ after years of being hunted and trapped nearly to extinction ~ have decided that it’s now safe for them to come out of hiding. They’ve been spotted by several wildlife groups in the region who are also busy doing what they can to make sure this extremely circumspect creature of the woods is protected for posterity.

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Okay, even for Seattle at Christmas time, this is reaching the outer limits. There’s this Jewish lady who works for the Seattle Aquarium who dons SCUBA gear and goes into the 120,000 gallon Window on Washington Waters tank with these big bags of herring, krill and squid to feed the denizens of the deep. Next time I hear about somebody dressing their hairless Chihuahua in a sweater and hat, I probably won’t be quite so quick to roll my eyes and go, “They should treat their human family so good.” Yep, for a photo and more links to Northwest weird, go here.

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for the ear. Before you leave, if you’re in a shopping mood and into some interesting choices? We’ve got a “reader stocked” General Store that you might want to check out. If you’d like to sell something with us or know someone who does, email us at minstrel312@aol.com and we’ll see what we can do.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Historically, it has never proven wise to push this Eagle too far

2010-12-15T17:06:00.000-08:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, a British judge granted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange bail at $310,000 and ordered him under house arrest at the 600 acre country estate of a supporter in the east of England. He must spend every night in the 10-room mansion and has been electronically tagged so he can’t wander too far afield.

He is also required to report to the police each day and he’s under curfew. As of this writing, he is also still in police custody pending an appeal by the prosecutor. A hearing on that is expected within 48 hours and Assange is to appear for another hearing on January 11, at which time, his extradition to Sweden to answer non-related sexual assault charges is expected to be decided.

Meanwhile, the US is seriously considering charges of their own against him and is exploring options, including the application of the 1917 Espionage Act, which was invoked unsuccessfully against the New York Times when it published the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s. Capitol Hill legislators are also drafting new legislation in these regards.

I also found it interesting that readers of Time magazine voted Assange man of the year. Over a million ballots were cast and the Wikileaker garnered almost as many of them as the dollars it’s going to take to pay his British bail. We also found it very reassuring that Time magazine itself did not accord this cyber anarchist that honor but instead polled its staff and editors and decided Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, deserved it more.

And his supporters have certainly made their impact felt, flooding the websites of his detractors with spam and otherwise causing some cybernetic havoc. We also noted ~ without surprise ~ that American film maker Michael Moore offered to pay $20,000 of Assange’s $.3-million bail.

So now, in addition to a dramatic international dialogue examining the true meaning of freedom of expression and the responsible use of it, we have a new arms race as cyber experts in the government and private sector seek better encryption and cyber anarchists, better code busters.

The thing I keep reminding myself of is that ultimately, this affects both sides and if it goes on too long, even the cyber anarchists are going to feel it close to home. I think this is a demonstration of power but it is not empowerment. It is not nearly as difficult to orchestrate such a global dog and pony show on the Internet as it is to live with the offline results.

The American Intelligence Community was caught totally by surprise just as they were on 9/11 and just as they were after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor which has managed yet to “live in infamy,” despite the reconciliation of the two nations involved.

It was one thing, I suspect, when cyber anarchists hack into financial institutions and into the accounts of entertainment celebrities. It is another, I am certain, to the American Intelligence Community, when the invasion produces casualties on the battlefield.

My concern now then is for Assange and his actively engaged supporters, however well-intentioned and passionate their motives. In this exquisitely technological society, assassination, accidents and natural disasters are often difficult to distinguish from one another, especially if engineered by those protecting the lives of their family, friends, community and nation.

Historically, it has never proven a wise idea to push the Eagle too far.

IN OTHER NEWS

A recently released British study confirms that taking one aspirin a day can reduce by from one-half to one-third one’s risk of dying from most common cancers. This 100-year-old painkiller has long been considered a “miracle drug” for a variety of health problems, including headaches and cardiac conditions. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

Torrential rains battered most of the Pacific Northwest this weekend, bringing with it widespread flooding, landslides and damage to roads and other infrastructures. I spent eight hours with my two new house mates bailing out a basement that filled with three inches of water, unclogging gutters, securing plastic drainage pipe, installing fans, heaters, water evacuation lines and drying out what property could be restored. About the only thing missing from this one was a big boat with an old man and animals.

One Seattle neighborhood, isolated for days during a blizzard two years ago, is organizing in anticipation of an even colder and wetter winter season, thanks to La Niña. Preparations include a snow brigade, with drivers and walkers to deliver groceries and prescriptions, shovel walks, drive homebound residents to warm shelters and even walk dogs. This is definitely an example which can be emulated, so for more, please go here.

Although popular in Europe for decades, a firm in Portland, Oregon is building the first power plant in America that will use food waste from commercial and industrial sources to make methane gas to power engines that will generate electricity. It will generate power per day to supply 5,000 homes and among its byproducts are a fiber soil additive and a liquid fertilizer.

We congratulate Kristianstad, Sweden for essentially weaning itself off fossil fuels. This community, perhaps best known for Absolut vodka, essentially uses no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long winter months. And they haven’t gone solar or wind power to do it. Yep, for more, go here.

Felina: Samuel, I am reading more about this misanthropic cyber anarchist. I have come across an expression with which I am not familiar.

Sam: I’m going to take a shot at this and guess that the expression is “dog and pony show.”

Felina: Quite so. I have seen American television shows in which both dogs and horses were stars but I have never watched a programme in which they co-starred with one another.

Sam: Nope and me either, Felina. Dog and pony shows were real popular in the American Midwest in the latter half of the 1800s. They were essentially small traveling circuses which couldn’t afford exotic animals so they trained domestic dogs and ponies to act solo and with one another.

Felina: Ah, so this expression started out to describe something wholesome and good for human beings, before the advent of television, which some human beings wish had not been invented.

Sam: Yep, the same human beings who walked away from fire because it only had one channel and could burn them if used irresponsibly.

Felina: But the contemporary usage of the term is pejorative, then.

Sam: Extremely.

Felina: I suspected as much, love of my life. It now seems to apply to an elaborate presentation designed to use illusion, innuendo, deceit and other tools of propaganda to convince masses of human beings to act against whatever is in their own best interests and the health and welfare of their communities.

Sam: Yep, Lass, that about covers it.

Felina: I also found it quite interesting that the readers of one of their most popular news magazines voted this Assange creature male human of the year?

Sam: I’ve noticed that humans are real fickle that way. They exalt the peace maker and the war monger alike, depending on the mood sweeping the nation at the moment.

Felina: Quite so. I have read about the American Wild West where heroes were professional assassins and train robbers and yellow-maned megalomaniacs who slaughtered those who lived in skin caves and followed the big horned thunder beasts.

Sam: And their first Great Depression when humans with interesting names like Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, Frank Nitti, John Dillinger, Ma Barker, Machinegun Kelly and Mad Dog Coll were media darlings.

Felina: Hard times do seem to transform them a bit. It almost appears many of them turn into that which they would otherwise so despise.

Sam: It’s like those who are bitten by those humans who turn into bats.

Felina: Samuel, please. I know what vampires are. And if memory serves, vampires were allegorical for how evil spreads by close association with it.

Sam: Yep. You’re not just who you eat but who you hang out with.

Felina: Quite so. As I have come so well down our years together to know.

Sam: I love you too, Felina and thank you once again for reminding me mountain lions can blush.

Felina: Quite so, my love. And on that note, gentle readers, until next time, may the Creator bless and keep you.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Sometimes surviving hard times means people in the position to make difference thinking outside the box, big time. Like a certain governor in the American South who decided, based on what his advisors told him about another successful venture like it, to create a Biblical theme park with an actual scale Noah’s Ark, with animals and human cast, on this artificial lake. During the press conference which heralded the announcement, a reporter suggested that this was not, as required by the First Amendment, keeping church and state separated. Kentucky Gov. Steven L. Beshear dismissed the allegation as nonsense, pointing out that he was not elected “to debate religion” but to create jobs. Yep, I thoroughly loved this one.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

Sometimes, surviving cancer ~ and some would say that is a miracle of its own ~ makes other wonderful things happening, like love once thought long last. Yep, this is one of those Frank Capra, Campbell Soup, feel good stories, and our thanks to Brigitta and Kenneth in Manchester, UK, for tipping us off to this one.

RESOURCES AND RELATED LINKS:
Cancer Research Journal
National Cancer Institute (American)
Fighting Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Survivor Stories
Science Daily: Health & Medicine News
American Cancer Statistics 2009
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009

HEALTH NEWS

Smartphones, laptops, wireless routers, wireless phones, Bluetooth headsets, remotes, printers, satellite TVs, Wii, Kindles, and at least 25 other electronic gadgets because they emit what are called electromagnetic fields are dangerous to our health, according to the authors of two recently released books. This kind of radiation is linked to a variety of diseases and conditions including sleep disturbances, memory problems, depression, poor sperm production, heart disease, miscarriage, birth defects, immune-system suppression, and even cancer and Lou Gehrig's disease. For more on this and to see what you can do to minimize your risk and those of you family, please go here.

GOOD EXAMPLES

If you need a reason to believe that human beings can be exceptionally compassionate and caring toward one another, this one might do it. There’s a man at Seattle Children’s Hospital called “The Moo Man.” He’s a nutritionist who delivers complex liquid formulas to kids, along with cookies, candy and impersonating a cow. And the kids love it. So does the staff, one of whom said that he’s the spirit of the place. And when that spirit needed a kidney transplant and had no relatives to whom to turn, one of his co-workers ~ after discussing it with her husband (also a staffer) and their seven children ~ came through. The surgery was successful. Both patients are doing fine and the Moo Man is due back on his rounds anytime now. Yep, for even more on this one, please go here.

In the midst of an ongoing recession, there are communities which are not only surviving but growing and prospering. They’re learning new ways to interact and to cooperate rather than compete. To watch a video and learn how one northwestern Washington community is going that, please go here

The latest participants to join the Pacific Northwest’s farm/garden to table movement are the region’s small forest owners and no, it’s not bark they’re bring to the feast but mushrooms, black berries, raspberries, blue berries, miner’s lettuce and a host of other staples that have been keeping the First Nation tribes alive and healthy for thousands of years. It’s one more step in regional self-determinism at the most fundamental level. Yep, for more, please go here.

NORTHSTAR FAVORITES

Sightline Daily is the best Pacific Northwest source of environmentally friendly news we’ve encountered yet. They draw from newspapers and National Public Radio sources in Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

Meade Fisher Observes Humanity From A Safe Distance is a blog authored by an outdoor writer, photographer, West Coast kayaker and environmentalist living in the San Francisco Bay area. These short, humorous, few holds barred observations on the machinations of the human species run from the whimsical to the arid and occasionally to the quietly outraged. I’ve been a fan of this particular writer for years and I’ve always found him worth the read.

The Northstar Gallery features photography of Seattle available as postcards, computer wallpaper and workspace art.

Wrath of the Testament, an exciting seagoing saga of war and rebellion, is now available at amazon.com.

Yes magazine is the online Life and Look of the Internet combined and their present series “What Happy Families Know is both insightful and inspirational.

SEATTLE SCENES

Seattle Skyline from the south Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

CRITTER STUFF

In an attempt to learn more about where they feed when they cruise a territory from Vancouver Island to the Northern California coast, federal officials are proposing tagging the Puget Sound’s three resident orca pods with transmitters delivered by dark gun to the creature’s dorsal fin. The technique has been successfully used before with other marine mammal populations to, among other things, find and protect where these species feed. The tags are transmitters about the size of a 9-volt battery which activate when the orca surfaces and sends its location to a satellite, which it turn sends it to scientists with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

A Canadian federal court judge, in response to a suit brought by a coalition of nine environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecojustice, the Sierra Club and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, decided the 300 or so orcas living in Canadian waters have not received adequate protection from Ottawa and specifically from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Said agency is reviewing the Court’s decision and contemplating a response.

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Last week, the president of a private college in Oregon ended up going goat wrangling. What’s goat wrangling? In this case, it’s what you do after your two four-footed invasive plants control agents decide to eat through a natural fence and go browsing along

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for the ear. Before you leave, if you’re in a shopping mood and into some interesting choices? We’ve got a “reader stocked” General Store that you might want to check out. If you’d like to sell something with us or know someone who does, email us at minstrel312@aol.com and we’ll see what we can do.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

International betrayal, an unenviable legacy for WikiLeaks

2010-12-04T07:51:00.000-08:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, I for one, was NOT happy to learn that WikiLeaks, decided to compromise international diplomacy on the installment plan. Even if done in the name of freedom of speech, it was also done with a sense of responsibility so narrow in scope as to suggest if not myopia, then certainly a tunnel vision view of the results of this on literally millions of people. The only thing more astounding to me is the mindset of the American soldier who made all this classified material available to WikiLeaks in the first place.

I worked in classified communications in the service and held a Top Secret clearance. Like I did to get through Vietnam in general, I trained my mind to forget things I either shouldn’t really know, weren’t healthy for me to know, or which were things I didn’t want to know because I might remember them. Even though all of us who worked at jobs like mine were indoctrinated into the consequences of leaking, it probably also helped that I was in the Navy and “leaking” is not a word a sailor wants to hear in any context. It’s like the operating surgeon going “Ooops.”

I knew too that the teletypes and dispatches I was reading and sometimes couriering were bits and pieces of a global operational matrix I was not trained ~ and very likely not intelligent enough ~ to understand. I was exposed to a lot of weird stuff, things that never made the press during my war because back then, the media worked with the military to make sure nothing was published which might get an American in uniform killed. There were exceptions and those exceptions were, in my mind, justified. But by and large, there was an operational integrity which placed The First Amendment in a context far more appropriate the times than a strict letter of the law interpretation.

And this is not to suggest that the Fourth Estate pandered to the military, to the government or to anyone else. If that had been the case, the My Lai Massacre and Watergate, to name two, would never have come to light. But this WikiLeaks is not investigative journalism and they share the blame with the media of this generation. Why? Because even though the information was offered and accepted, it did not need to be published.

So to me, this is a rank and foul abuse of an honored profession and the betrayal of all those who believe in it. When asked by a colleague this morning what I would have done had WikiLeaks approached me as an outlet, I said that I would have accepted a sample, read it and returned it to the source saying that I was not interested.

The Northstar Journal would not have published something that will very likely get several thousand people killed within the next fortnight or so. We’re small but we have a conscience and we reach around 700 of you in seven nations who do as well. There’s not legions of you but it’s a band of brothers (and sisters) and that’s more than enough company for me.

IN OTHER NEWS

Well, we found this more than a little ironic. Apparently Interpol is looking for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange because he faces charges of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. His accusers are apparently two women he met in Stockholm on a recent visit. Interpol is looking for him and he’s rumoured to be in hiding in the south of England. His spokesperson denies the allegations and says this is Sweden’s retaliation for leaking all those documents. That doesn’t wash with me. Sweden does not play cop of the world. If the allegations are true, not only is Julian Assange a man totally devoid of scruples, he’s also an amoral predator who preys on women. My hunch is this tribute to humanity has probably cut more deals with the devil than Daniel Webster and with not nearly the finesse. The Devil’s finally become totally bored and now he’s calling this idiot home.

Canadians have discovered that sewage makes a good source of electricity and an inexpensive one. Vancouver’s Olympia Village has such a generator and provides its customers with electricity at three dollars per kilowatt hour cheaper than BC Hydro. This is another exportable, one of those, “if they can do it, it might just be worth us trying it too” stories so yep, for more, please go here.

Some Canadian farmers are now producing more than agricultural products, they’re also producing electricity. Thanks to a federal program called MicroFIT introduced at the provincial level and emulated from Manitoba to British Columbia, fallow land or land not suitable for cultivation, farmers have solar panels or wind generators installed. The electricity produced runs the farm and the surplus is sold to the local utility, making these farms energy self-sustaining and reducing the cost of the harvest so these savings can, in turn, be passed along to the consumer, local or export.

Felina: Well, this person from that place on the other side of the planet that is upside down from here and where they have these big hopping mice with pouches and where wrestling with big water lizards appears to be a national pastime among them certainly seems to have stirred up the proverbial hornet’s nest now, eh, Samuel?

Sam: I’m going to take a shot at this and say we’re talking about the founder of WikiLeaks and that place he comes from is Australia.

Felina: Quite so. His name is Julian Assange and the place he comes from is also known as “Down Under” or “Oz,” which I understand the humans who live there do not like.

Sam: Yep, that’s it pretty much, Felina.

Felina: He is certainly an interesting human. He steals these things called documents, gives them to someone who does not know he does not own them and then shares these private communications with other humans to whom they were not addressed. I am searching for a parallel in the animal kingdom.

Sam: We’re both going to be old and gray and in that Big Green Valley Up Yonder before you’ll find one, love of my life.

Felina: I suspected as much, oh sun and moon of mine. And this Julian Assange certainly seems quite the global traveler.

Sam: And according to two female humans in that place up north and east of here and across the other pond…

Felina: Please, Samuel. I know where Sweden is. And if these allegations against him are true, he is not quite the lady’s man he seems to think he is.

Sam: You’re being real generous here, aren’t you, Felina?

Felina: I find that human being’s behaviour absolutely despicable and without moral precedent from the amoeba to the zebra. And what galls me even more, Samuel, is that this human is considered by many to be “successful” in the society of his species? Even the jackal and the hyena have more claim to the title of noble beast than this pitiful excuse for even a member of the species which was created last and with what mud remained.

Sam: No argument there, of occasional volcano of my life. It does make one pause to contemplate a fallible creator.

Felina: I doubt very seriously whether the Creator had anything to do with this. This one would disgrace primordial slime.

Sam: Well, look at it this way, between that gooey stuff you just mentioned and the hatred he is reaping among his own kind, he’s probably not going to last too long.

Felina: I understand they are doing great things with those metal fire canisters they send into space. Surely they could find room for him on one of those.

Sam: Nope, Felina. The universe would just bat it back to them. But where he’s going, one of those big cement caves with bars.

Felina: Samuel, be careful.

Sam: Where he’s going, he’ll have lots of help pondering the wickedness of his ways.

Felina: I hope his cell has air-conditioning. In winter.

Sam: And on that note?

Felina: And on that note, gentle readers, until next time, may the Creator bless and keep you.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Hard times can often be more difficult during the holidays and for a lot of us, the Christmas season is not the easiest time of the year to get through. YES magazine offers us the secrets of sharing and getting along in an entire issue dedicated to sharing with us what happy families know

ON THE CANCER FRONT

Surviving cancer is often also a matter of attitude and of being inspired by others. This is the story of a British man with testicular cancer who fought the disease for 16 years. Now his wife is pregnant thanks to some sperm he had frozen before the first of two operations. This is one of those Frank Capra Feel Real Good Stories and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Lung cancer among women in England is on the rise while declining among men. A recent study concluded that this was because the nationwide anti-smoking campaign focused more on males than on females. For more and what the British are doing to correct for course, yep, go here.

For those of us who don’t always sleep too well at night and then feel the heavy weight of it the next day, here are eight dynamite tips for surviving and dramatically reducing the likelihood of another insomniac night.

GOOD EXAMPLES

Anyone who works to protect kids gets a very long round of applause and I’m further delighted that this one goes out to the home of my birth. The Canadian government is now enforcing the strictest standards in the world for the amount of lead paint in children’s toys. The new amounts allowed are so small it’s apparently not worth using lead in these products at all. Way to go, Ottawa!

We applaud amazon.com for terminating its relationship with WikiLeaks, that cyber volcano of treason whose founder faces sex crimes charges in Sweden. Although they were approached by the government, amazon.com claims that WikiLeaks simply violated its terms of service by, among other things, storing too much data which didn’t belong to it on the site it rented from amazon.com. I sort of missed the fragrance of fire and brimstone around that one but I’m also reminded that a company is responsible to act ethically. It is not responsible for promoting ethics as a good business practice.

Goggle also gets an atta-person (PC rocks) for ending a practice that sort of has me admiring it for its simplicity. Seems that Google and other search engines can’t tell the difference between a positive or negative visit to a website. They rank a site by the TOTAL hits. So some merchants apparently go out of their way to be rude, screw up orders, delay shipments and otherwise generate visits to its complaint department. Goggle’s come up with another algorithm but is ~ sagely in our opinion ~ not releasing any details

NORTHSTAR FAVORITES

Sightline Daily is the best Pacific Northwest source of environmentally friendly news we’ve encountered yet. They draw from newspapers and National Public Radio sources in Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

Meade Fisher Observes Humanity From A Safe Distance is a blog authored by an outdoor writer, photographer, West Coast kayaker and environmentalist living in the San Francisco Bay area. These short, humorous, few holds barred observations on the machinations of the human species run from the whimsical to the arid and occasionally to the quietly outraged. I’ve been a fan of this particular writer for years and I’ve always found him worth the read.

The Northstar Gallery features photography of Seattle available as postcards, computer wallpaper and workspace art.

Irish Newsletter is an outstanding pocket source of Irish life, politics and times. Particularly well written are their news snaps (shorts) which ~ according to friends of mine in Erin ~ literally tell it like it is. While the Republic of Ireland’s population is only about 4.5-million, there are an estimated 80 million people of Irish descent worldwide and email version of this reached 50,000 of them.

Wrath of the Testament, an exciting seagoing saga of war and rebellion, is now available at amazon.com.

SEATTLE SCENES

Nocturnal snow, Seattle's University District, recently. Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller

What’s Going On Here?

Whether you live here or plan to visit ~ and whatever it is you enjoy doing at home or as a tourist ~ you’ll find it, you’ll find it listed here at seattlepi.com.

SEATTLE FACTS AND FIGURES
Seattle Rainfall in Comparison To Other US Cities
Seattle Geography & Climate
For more information about Seattle

OTHER RELATED STUFF FROM THE SHORES OF THE SALISH SEA
For live cameras on Seattle, the Puget Sound and Washington State
Mount Rainier slide show
Eat healthy while you’re here – Seattle PCC Co-Op
Take some fresh produce back to your hotel – Seattle Farmers Markets

CRITTER STUFF

Thanks to a unique program by Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, dozens of Puget Sound river otters whose presence at commercial and private marinas, boathouse docks and waterfront homes has posed a threat to their continued existence are now thriving and prospering on a remote stretch of the Gila River in New Mexico. I totally loved this one.

In a move which probably truly explodes the possibility of life in the universe and unknown forms of it on this planet, scientists trained a microbe to eat arsenic instead of phosphorous. The microbe decided it liked this deadly poison just fine. I definitely got a 1950s sci-fi chill when I learned that this tiny dude is a bacterium scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake, in California. It also strongly suggests to me that even if we allow ourselves and a lot of other life forms to drown in a sea of our garbage or choke on a deadly atmosphere of toxic gases, there is one life form on the planet who will probably watch that and go, “Cool. And look at all there is to eat now.” (including us.)

Recommended Related Links:
National Wildlife Magazine
Go Northwest: Northwest Wildlife Websites
BBC’s wildlife finder
National Geographic Daily News - Animals
Retrieverman’s Weblog: Engaging articles on domestic & wildlife in the American South

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Well, ever since I worked at Boeing, I have not been a real fan of going up 30,000 feet in something put together by a consortium of the lowest bidders. This article in AOL news, headlined Most Unexpected Flight Delays, has reaffirmed my pledge to remain with transportation I can swim or walk away from if it stops working. I have yet to see any human being fly away from a plane crash. At least none that were not Heaven bound. On the flip side, I also totally loved this and I think you will too.

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for the ear. Before you leave, if you’re in a shopping mood and into some interesting choices? We’ve got a “reader stocked” General Store that you might want to check out. If you’d like to sell something with us or know someone who does, email us at minstrel312@aol.com and we’ll see what we can do.

Rusty

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

RAIN, A STORY OF LOVE AND WAR IN 500 WORDS

2010-11-29T06:12:00.001-08:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. For some reason, this past week seems to have been an inordinately trying one for a lot of people under the seven flags this publication reaches. The world’s thundering some and perhaps it’s time to unplug for just a bit, draw back and contemplate by candlelight before a warm hearth. The story I’m about to share with you is something that really happened, to real people. It’s a love and war story in five hundred words and it’s entitled RAIN

They'd been married once. Younger then, their lives had been a collage of rain dimpling a duck pond, wishing games in the high branches of the evergreens, intimate meals in the kitchen and nights that grew richer with familiarity.

Theirs was a strange, almost inarticulate love best captured in the mornings she'd fall asleep at her easel, exhausted over a night's work, or the cold-coffee dawns he'd come home with a split lip and nothing to show for a week on the road with his combo.

"I like it."

"You don't think the trees are too green?"

"They're beautiful."

"I'm glad you're home."

"Me too."

"How much do we owe the landlord?"

"I'm glad you're home. The landlord will keep."

There were, as well, those funny/sad times when the edge cut so deep it blunted itself on midnight cornflake conversations.

"What are you doing still up?"

"Couldn't sleep. What's your excuse?"

"I missed you. Go for a walk?"

"Like this?"

"You look fine."

"OK."

And then they'd stroll the quiet streets, reaping a clear night star harvest, or stand alone on the levee, watching the moon play on the rolling glass river. Sometimes it was back to the all-night coffee shop, where they would sit across from each other without talking, or needing to. Theirs was the rule of no apology, and that gentle dictate blessed their lives for two years and a season.
Then time and an era caught up with them.

His best friend was killed at Chu Lai over Thanksgiving, and she sold two of her canvases, only to learn they'd been purchased for their frames. She began her rage at one end of town, he his at the other, and they met in the heat of it all at the coffee shop. She cursed him for something he said, and he slapped her. In a moment of absolute terror, they told each other they were sorry.

He came back 18 months later with a limp and a double row of campaign ribbons. They talked over coffee, and he whistled at the prices her paintings were bringing. She reached out to touch the gaunt planes of his cheeks. They dined together, then went walking.

Along dusty country lanes, they played in rainbow leaves, chased squirrels and waded in the Indian summer silt of bullfrog ponds. They renamed the trees and called the southbound geese by the colors of the palette. He memorized her eyes again, and traced her long mane from bangs to shoulder blades. She felt the gentle strength of his hands and heard the quiet joy of words a cordite-parched throat could barely speak. Loves was theirs once more -- and for an emerald instant -- time and an era left them in peace.

When he returned to stay, she met him at the airport and saw him through the final mile home. He never smiled or told her how glad he was to see her. She never mentioned how much she had missed him. When the final strains of epitaph faded into the eternal chill, she walked home and sat down on the living room couch.

Rain fell softly beyond her.

IN OTHER NEWS

Ireland has decided to accept the European Union’s offer of financial assistance after months of unsuccessful austerity measures and the announcement last week that Prime Minister Brian Cowen will be stepping down early next year. Even the British are coming on board for this one because, as their Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out, Ireland is their closet trading partner. After the announcement was made, both European and global stocks took a jump, an indication of just how important Ireland’s economy is to the rest of the world. Related: Ireland Unveils Austerity Plan to Help Secure Bailout

Since 1930, the tidal level in Norfolk, Virginia has risen 14.6”/37cm, making it the most dramatic on the American East Coast. There’s a local debate going on about whether global warming is causing the problems this city built on a peninsula is having with particularly estuarine tides which also flood out streets when the moon is full. I found this a fascinating story about how the residents of this metropolis and its city government are dealing with this.

Felina: Such a troubled land, this place they call the Emerald Isle, across the other big ocean. Where they have this rock humans turn upside down to kiss for luck. And where there are lots of clover and not so many tall trees. And where there are miniature humans with pots of gold at the end of a rainbow. It sounds like such an enchanting place.

Sam: I’m going to take a shot at this and say we’re talking about Ireland here.

Felina: Quite so. The Republic of Ireland is also called Erin and Eire, if memory serves.

Sam: It serves you very well, love of my life.

Felina: Thank you, love of mine. Do you remember that time we visited Leon and Jill in Colorado?

Sam: The Uris’s, yep. He wrote about Ireland in two novels considered classics now.

Felina: Yes, Trinity and Redemption. I was thinking of that book of photographs that Jill produced entitled Ireland, a Terrible Beauty.

Sam: That still sends shudders through me. Her talent certainly equaled that of her mate.

Felina: Something with which I have some familiarity, as well, Samuel Alexander.

Sam: Thank you, Felina, for reminding me that cougars blush.

Felina: You do look absolutely divine in crimson, my Yankee Doodle flipping charmer.

Sam: Yep, me and that stupid St. Louis cardinal a strong wind blew too far west. We’re a matched set. However, we digress.

Felina: We are the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy of digression.

Sam: Okay, Felina, that’s a stretch.

Felina: I just cannot understand how one place and one collection of human beings can have been made to suffer so much.

Sam: The Jews, the Poles, Native Americans, they’ve all been asking that about themselves, along with gays and male humans who dare wear pink. In Ireland’s case, she had a flourishing civilization that in its own quiet way, far surpassed Athens at its zenith.

Felina: And other tribes of humans conquered them.

Sam: In successive waves, Felina, they tried. The Romans, the Vikings, the Normans, the English, they all gave it their best shot. They slashed, stabbed, burned, shot, hung, imprisoned, slammed into workhouses and starved the Irish. They impressed them into the military and sent thousands to penal colonies abroad. The result, however, is that there’s not a place on the earth where the Irish have not been, grown and prospered.

Felina: Indeed and quite so. Such a magnificent spirit the Irish have.

Sam: Yep and they’ll get through this, once the rest of the human world understands why they are so skeptical of accepting help from especially former conquerors. They want the right to determine their own destiny and they’ve been battling for that right since Moses was a wee voyager in a reed boat. I can’t speak for you or any of the rest of our species but this Yankee Doodle flipping mountain lion happens to think they deserve that right and I pray to the Creator for a helping hand in that direction.

Felina: Quite so, Samuel! Quite so! And very well put, oh sun and moon of my life.

Sam: Thank you, Princess. I love you too, Lass. And on that note?

Felina: And on that note, gentle readers, until next time. And may the Creator bless and keep you.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Sometimes, surviving hard times is also about hearing from those who are doing it? This is a gem and far better expressed than we here at the NSJ could render it.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

We just learned about the Movember Movement, which originated in Australia six years ago. Men start out November clean shaven and then get people to donate to cancer research by growing mustaches and beards. This month’s Movember is expected to raise $65-million for prostate cancer research.

People who can touch their toes while sitting down are likely to have healthier hearts and lower blood pressure than those who cannot, according to a recent study of adults over 40. Sit-ups which include that are recommended. For more and for a quick test to learn how flexible and elastic your heart and arteries are, please go here.

GOOD EXAMPLES

South Korea is waging a war on dementia and the soldiers in this one are children who are learning what it is like to have this condition and how to care for aging relatives and family friends afflicted. It is estimated that nine percent of South Korea’s population over 62 falls into this category.

We almost put this one under the weirder than usual category except that President Obama sort of got there first. The United States Army has apparently decided that using robots to fight wars would make the process a lot safer. Okay, yep, to my mind too, that is SO riddled with oxymorons. But then again, who am I to judge? I do not work out of a building that has five sides? But yeah, I could see another arms race and a battle field that looked a lot like monster trucks going at it or Saturday morning kid’s television programming. It would be another interesting way to expend natural resources other than our own youth.

Ever since I read “Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout,” I have been absolutely wired into the evolution of electric transportation. This article in the Los Angeles Times by Jerry Hirsch and Tiffany Hsu headlined “As electric cars step from lab to showroom, customers must choose: Stalled for nearly a century, electric cars are about to move into the fast lane when the first of a new generation of vehicles reaches dealer showrooms next month” pretty much says it all in these regards.

SEATTLE SCENES

A reminder of warmer days. University Way (“The Ave”), University District, Seattle

Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

CRITTER STUFF

Well, it’s sea lions versus human fisherfolk at the Bonnieville Dam and it looks like the former are winning. The National Marine Fisheries Service wanted to destroy these big marine mammals because they were eating too many imperiled salmon. It turns out, however, that sport fishing is taking as many and sometimes more so the NMFS got to explain to a federal court judge why it was okay to kill a natural predator but not restrict the taking of the same endangered species by humans. Their argument was not convincing. Yep, for more, go here.

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Playing hardball is hardly an expression new to politics but when we read that President Obama had to have twelve stitches after a basketball game with family and friends, we couldn’t help wonder if there’s not some hidden aggression coming to the surface close to home. On the other hand, a dozen stitches must, at times, seem mild compared to the drubbing he’s been taking from both his own party and those who are bound by elephantine doctrine to oppose him, whether they personally agree with him or not.

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for the ear. Before you leave, if you’re in a shopping mood and into some interesting choices? We’ve got a “reader stocked” General Store that you might want to check out. If you’d like to sell something with us or know someone who does, email us at minstrel312@aol.com and we’ll see what we can do.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

A Medal of Honor winner’s greatest battle lies ahead

2010-11-22T12:12:00.000-08:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. I had the opportunity to watch a television interview with United States Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Guinta after President Obama awarded him the Medal of Honor for heroism displayed during a night fire fight in Afghanistan three years ago.

I was struck by the total ingenuous of this professional soldier and his wife. The sergeant does not consider himself exceptional and it is very likely that he is correct. He was not saying that he is not a good soldier but rather that they all are. It is very likely he is correct about this too. He also claims that what he did was not extraordinary but rather what he and others like him are trained to do and ~ perhaps most importantly ~ do every night and every day not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but wherever American men and women under arms engage the enemy.

I admire Staff Sergeant Salvatore Guinta for insisting that he is an ordinary American soldier, for he infers that such courage is commonplace and it is. It is also why the suicide, domestic violence, and adrenaline-junkie behavior rates are skyrocketing among returning veterans.

It takes running into a hail of bullets to keep a fallen comrade from being captured to win these wars. It takes watching buddies blow up or perhaps worse, being blown up but not killed to win these wars. It takes knowing that darker side and that My Lai Massacres did not begin or end in another generation’s war.

And this generation of American soldiers goes back time after time after time. There is a limit to what the mind can take and recover. I think there must be a limit to what can be expected of these young men and women. I know two who served in the Persian Gulf War in Operation Desert Storm.

They did not believe in war, no more than I suspect many do now. They believed in answering their country’s call, in paying America back for providing them a relatively safe and nourishing place in which to grow to young adulthood. They chose the military as their way of doing that.

Staff Sergeant Salvatore Guinta is doing his best now to make sure that at least the American public understands that he represents all of them. I do not envy him the spotlight. I have memories of my own and I do not enjoy recounting them because they are not pleasant ones.

I hope we listen to Staff Sergeant Salvatore Guinta and I hope we believe what he is saying to us. This may be the bravest battle any soldier has ever chosen to fight. If he is successful, he may have just given peace one more chance and our soldiers in arms can come home and serve their nation in ways which do not destroy their souls in the process.

IN OTHER NEWS

We applaud Pope Benedict XVI for sanctioning the use of contraceptives to present the spread of AIDS. While in no way condoning their general use, his statement is considered a major reversal for the chief cleric, who on a tour of Africa last year, said condom fidelity and abstinence prevented the spread of AIDS, not condoms.

We mourn once again for Ireland as the worldwide Recession continues to destroy one of the most prosperous economies in recent European history, once again forcing thousands of young men and women to seek work abroad. It will be a sad time in Erin but it will not compromise her integrity, for as the world has learned, it is easier to wear down an iron mountain with words than it is to destroy the Irish soul by lash, rack, saber or bloody bayonet.

Last week, we reported that the Washington State Liquor Control Board put a temporary ban on the sale of the caffeinated alcohol beverage Loko, after several Central Washington University students were served it at an off-campus party, got sick and were taken to the emergency room of a local hospital. Apparently the Federal Drug Administration is taking this seriously. Last week, gave the four leading manufacturers of this product 15 days to either remove the caffeine from it or stop selling it. Now, that’s how I like to see my tax dollars in action.

Felina: This American human hero whose name I cannot pronounce so whom I will call Sergeant G., he seems like a very nice creature.

Sam: I’ll take a shot at this and say we’re talking about United States Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Guinta.

Felina: Quite so. That Sergeant G. He was wearing this decoration that looks like the ones they give at the human Olympics. It has a very pretty blue ribbon on it. With all the attention he seems to be getting, I assume this “medal,” I believe they call it, is for superb performance as a killer of other human beings in this rather quaintly lethal ritualistic paring down of their population called ‘war’.

Sam: Yep, Felina, that Sergeant G. That’s the Medal of Honor. It’s like Canada’s Victoria Cross.

Felina: The one named after that big human colony on Vancouver Island. I think that is the difference between American and Canadian humans. The one is named for a virtue, the other for a city that even I must admit is beautiful.

Sam: Felina, you do know that Victoria wasn’t born with its own name, right?

Felina: Quite so. In my eyes, Queen Victoria of 19th Century England was also a beautiful creature. If they must have monarchs, let them reign as Victoria.
Sam: Or Diana.

Felina: Quite so. Or like Princess Diana, who did not like war either and dedicated a lot of her time and energy to removing those horrible things humans plant in the ground which continue to kill, cripple and maim long after the war is over.

Sam: Land mines, Felina.

Felina: Excuse me?

Sam: They’re called “land mines,” Felina.

Felina: Ah, quite so. Such a cunning and clever device, created by the children of the Creator and totally devoid of conscience.

Sam: It’s a talent they have, creating weapons of destruction, implements of planetary population control, as it were.

Felina: And yet this same species can produce a creature as nice and as caring as this United States Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Guinta.

Sam: Whose name you’ve apparently figured out how to pronounce, yep. And in all fairness, killing is not the only thing they do in the military.

Felina: Oh, I know. It has always just struck me as very odd that so many human beings of otherwise divine character could also treat taking another human life as an honorable occupation. And bestow such glory as they do on those who excel at it.

Sam: Maybe that’s something the Sergeant G.’s of their species can change, Felina. If anyone’s got a shot at it, he does.

Felina: It would be so nice to see them rewarding the peacemakers among them as generously.

Sam: No argument there, love of my life. And on that note, then?

Felina: And on that note, gentle readers, until next time. And may the Creator bless and keep you.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Sometimes, surviving hard times is knowing when it is time to let go of certain attitudes, certain ways we ~ as individuals ~ define ourselves and those around us. This story, by former print journalist Claudia Rowe, looks at the lives of several professionals whose careers have been terminated by the Recession. Ms. Rowe is a powerful writer and this story is not a dry intellectual read. Implicit in its conclusion, however, is that perhaps it is time to stop defining ourselves in terms of how we serve the economy and once again by how we treat one another. For more, please go here

ON THE CANCER FRONT

A new gene introduced into mice whose skin cancer had spread to the rest of their system re-engineered the immune system of these rodents and the cancer went into complete remission. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

We’ve known for a long time that deep breathing has a real calming effect on the system and a rejuvenating one, as well. Researchers have found another good reason to do this. It helps prevent wrinkles. Yep, for more, go here.

GOOD EXAMPLES

In the wake of illness and death from contaminated food products such as peanuts, beef, eggs and produce, the United States Senate last week passed a bill which would give the Food and Drug Administration sweeping powers to inspect food products before they reach the market; to inspect and if necessary close down processing plants, and to enforce stricter standards to protect the public.

Last week, thanks to the efforts of the University of Washington's Student Labor Action Project, the University Book Store introduced a line of clothing from a third world country which pays a living wage. Way to go, Huskies.

Thanks to Los Angeles Times Op-Ed writer, Jonathan Bloom, we’ve discovered one way everybody can make a real difference. Eat all of the food we buy. According to Bloom’s research, 40% of what’s produced is not consumed. About 50 percent of what is purchased is wasted. That’s a real waste of the energy used to grow it, produce it, package it and bring it to the consumer. I totally loved this one.

SEATTLE SCENES

Santa came early this winter too, U District, Seattle Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

CRITTER STUFF

I’m reasonably sure everyone has heard of seeing eye or guide dogs to help the vision-impaired. But what if you came from a culture which didn’t allow canine pets or helpers in the house? For years, one woman struggled on with the help of human family and friends and then one day, someone told her about The Guide Horse Foundation and their miniature horses (NOT ponies) about the size of German Shepherds and trained to assist the visually impaired. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

This isn’t weird, it’s totally fascinating and it has the coolest photos I’ve seen in a long time. Back in February, the International Space Station got Internet capability. In June, American astronaut Douglas Wheelock, known to his nearly 68,000 Twitter followers as Astro-Wheels, took command of the orbiting facility, has been using the station’s cameras to beam down hundreds of pictures of the earth from 225 miles “up”. For more on this one, yep, go here.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Salish Sea shoreliners prepare for a stormy winter

2010-11-15T13:43:00.000-08:00

A scene from an early winter past
Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, as the implications of La Nina continue to manifest in colder weather sooner and in longer and harder stretches of rain, those of us who live on the shores of the Salish Sea are preparing for the blizzards that will probably arrive even before Pearl Harbor Day.

As http://www.globalsecurity.org/ describes it: “Puget Sound is located in an area of complex geography and topography. The central part of the Sound is bordered on the west by the Olympic Mountains and to the east by the Cascade Mountains. The two mountain ranges create a relatively narrow channel for southerly/northerly winds as they move through the area. Strong southerly winds are common over Puget Sound during late autumn, winter and early spring. The most severe wind conditions are associated with fronts and low pressure systems approaching from the Pacific Ocean. The effect of strong winds across the Puget Sound region varies greatly from location to location. Wind conditions that may adversely affect one area of the Sound may have little or no effect on another.”

The snowstorms will not arrive gently in Seattle, for they will come from the north, blasting out of the western Arctic until they reach the Fraser River Valley in British Columbia and roar down the Interstate Five corridor from the Border Crossing at Blaine. With the Olympia Mountains to the west and the Cascades to the east, it is a funnel effect, with Seattle at the spout.

When those winds hit, they will whistle and scream through our seven hills and nothing with any sense of self-preservation will move. It will freeze the snow and glaze everything with a glacial crust blue in sunlight and invisible in shadow.

It will be time to bundle up, to huddle close, to feel forces far older, fiercer, stronger and less inclined to compassion than even we, the most savage species on the planet can manufacture or muster. Unlike so much of what we consider so important that we blast the atmosphere with news of it, this will NOT be a tale told by an idiot. And the sound and the fury will mean everything.

IN OTHER NEWS

Thousands cheered when Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was released from 7½ years of house arrest. The former Burma has been under military dictatorship since 1962 and Ms. Kyi has been imprisoned several times for her implacable advocacy of democracy. For more, please go here.

We join American parents nationwide in praising the success of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s crackdown on teenaged prostitution. Their operation "Operation Cross Country V" rescued 69 children in 40 cities. In the Greater Puget Sound area (Everett-Seattle-Tacoma), 23 kids were saved and nine pimps were arrested. This is the third year in a row that our area has topped the list of recoveries. Yep, for more on this, please go here.

This week, a local rescue group saved a Seattle-born racehorse from a Canadian slaughterhouse and called for an end to the practice. The process of turning a retired four-legged athlete into dog food was been outlawed in the United States since 2007 but is still legal in Mexico and Canada. For more on this one, please go here.

Felina: Samuel, I am reading about this human practice of turning beasts of burden, leisure or profit into food for their other domesticated animals.

Sam: Interesting spin on recycling, isn’t it?

Felina: It is certainly another interesting permutation of an ancient animal behaviour.

Sam: It’s been a dog eat dog world for a long time, yep.

Felina: And certainly in nature, wolves bring down wild horses. That is probably why their domesticated counterparts love it so much.

Sam: And since wolves eat other wolves, coyotes and other canines, they like that too.

Felina: They used the meat of dead dogs in pet food?

Sam: Dead house pets.

Felina: Including what?

Sam: Before I do that, please ask yourself if you really want to go there? Even for the sake of understanding the Baby Huey of the Planet better?

Felina: It just seems so inconsistent with the adulation, praise, attention and reverence they pay their pets. Dogs, cats and horses figure so prominent in their art, literature, cinema and songs

.
Sam: Not to mention all the pet shows and the horse racing.

Felina: Quite so. Where tiny humans ride famous horses with valiant names and big men who wear dark glasses on rainy days and at night give bundles of leaves to another human behind a window. And when the race is over, sometimes go back to the window for a bigger pile of leaves. I had no idea humans loved leafy vegetables that much.

Sam: They love that particular leafy vegetable a lot, Felina.

Felina: It is not wise to love abundance too much, I think. Not even Gaia herself can guarantee a good harvest.

Sam: Sometimes maybe it’s a matter of loving the beast who brought you that harvest, treating it compassionately and when its end has truly arrived, rendering its crossing without pain.

Felina: Samuel, that does seem a bit to expect when they have such a difficult time doing that with members of their own species. I am surprised cannibalism among them is not more widespread. It seems to me that raising humans for consumption would employ thousands and feed millions more

.
Sam: That would be about the only thing so far they have not raised others of their species for. Imagine little humans being told that there was an even greater good than serving your feeling man.

Felina: And that would be, being served by your fellow man.

Sam: A feast prepared by a master chef.

Felina: A cordon bleu chef. And served on the finest china.

Sam: And the royal silver set.

Felina: And the tablecloth for when the Pastor and his wife come calling for Sunday supper.

Sam: Prepared with only the finest organic herbs and spices.

Felina: And served by humans who do not belch on the bread before buttering it.

Sam: Humans of true refinement and dignity, serving a meal of human beings of true refinement and dignity, to humans of true refinement and dignity.

Felina: An unbroken circle.

Sam: The wheel of life.

Felina: The Great Mandella.

Sam: However, we digress.

Felina: We are the Wright Brothers of Digression.

Sam: The White Sands and Cape Canaveral of Digression.

Felina: The Starship Enterprise of Digression.

Sam: And on that note, Love of my Life?

Felina: And on that note, gentle readers, until next time. And may the Creator bless and keep you.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

In this cyber age, sometimes surviving hard times is knowing what not to do or where not to go. PC World and the US Office of Homeland security have published a list of the 17 deadliest sites on the Internet. Please go here.

Often, surviving hard times is also about hearing how others are facing the same issues and concerns and this segment from The Today Show’s Money does exactly that. It’s one of the best like this we’ve read in a long time. Yep, go here.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

One of the most surgically frustrating aspects of particularly insidious strains of cancer is that they can start out so tiny they’re both hard to detect and to treat. Now, thanks to the use of tiny radioactive seeds, that’s no longer the case. In the tests of this one, only something like eight percent of those who received this treatment needed further surgery. For more and a video on this one, please go here.

For years, we’ve been hearing that “laughter is the best medicine” and that’s even what one of the most popular magazines in America, Readers Digest, calls their humor section. Well, it turns out to be true, at least in part, and it could be a life-saver to those with critically high blood pressure. Researchers have found that watching just 20 minutes of a funny video lowered the BP of study participants about 10 points. They project that doing that each day, just kicking back with something that evokes laughter, could add eight years of life at the other end. Yep, for more, go here.

GOOD EXAMPLES

We applaud the Washington State Liquor Control Board for approving an emergency ban on caffeinated alcoholic beverages after several Central Washington University coed had to be taken to local emergency rooms when they drank Four Loko at an off campus party. For more, please go here.

Thanks go a cooperative effort among Western Canadian organic food producers, processors and farmers markets, consumers in British Columbia can now identify where in their own communities to find the foodstuffs they most enjoy. To see how this was organized and how it works, please go here.

NORTHSTAR FAVORITES

Sightline Daily is the best Pacific Northwest source of environmentally friendly news we’ve encountered yet. They draw from newspapers and National Public Radio sources in Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

Meade Fisher Observes Humanity From A Safe Distance is a blog authored by an outdoor writer, photographer, West Coast kayaker and environmentalist living in the San Francisco Bay area. These short, humorous, few holds barred observations on the machinations of the human species run from the whimsical to the arid and occasionally to the quietly outraged. I’ve been a fan of this particular writer for years and I’ve always found him worth the read.

The Northstar Gallery features photography of Seattle available as postcards, computer wallpaper and workspace art.

SEATTLE SCENES

Seattle Skyline

Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

CRITTER STUFF

Whales, porpoises, dolphins and other marine mammals along America’s west coast are going to be a lot safer as the result of an agreement the US Navy reached with federal wildlife officials. Sonar tests and underwater explosions will not be conducted when the presence of these creatures is detected. It’s considered a good example of inter-species diplomacy as the Navy also uses dolphins and sealions to guard the country’s coast and in its war on terrorism. Yep, for more, please go here.

Partly because I’ve never been to the East Coast and especially because I do not assciate the state of Connecticut with wilderness, I was delighted when one of you sent me an email about bears and bobcats being spotted in a town near Hartford. I was curious so I did some checking and my view of the East Coast as this vast environmentally burned out coastal dead zone between Maine and North Carolina has been revised some. Tolland County is actually a place rich in natural beauty and it also has a stretch of the Appalachian Trail. To see how the town of Tolland is handling these sitings, please go here.

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Since I love dolphins, porpoises and other marine mammals so much ~ even though I refuse to swim with any of them ~ I’m delighted when they get good press. It helps raise human awareness of the other species with whom they share the planet and one of several with a great deal more compassion and common sense. In a recent interview to promote a DVD release of the movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” American actor Dick Van Dyke said that his life was once saved by a bunch of dolphins at sea. Yep, for more, go here.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

The second coming of Barak Obama and other messiahs we created

2010-11-08T12:36:00.000-08:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, now that the dust has settled here, in my house, around the American mid-term elections, it’s perhaps appropriate to reflect a bit on President Obama’s nationally televised reaction to the results.

It was hard for me to watch a man who tried so hard to be so much because the nation whose call he answered needed what he felt he could facilitate and what he hoped he could inspire others to help with, take full responsibility for the failure of some of his agenda.

I watched him do that before a national constituency which still refuses to accept the fact that we’re in this situation now not because “they,” that nebulous place we park our frustrations because it’s easier than admitting that we are also a government “of the people,” failed us but because it meant more to us to be materially comfortable than it did to participate in a citizen-driven democracy.

We still look for others to “lead us” and as long as that’s true, we’re not going to lead ourselves. As long as power and influence and the high dramas that are played out in a town built on the shores of one of the worst swamps north of the Big Muddy, and as long as we, the rest of America, from Bangor, Maine to Bangor, Washington State take our lead from that, we’re going to continue to sink into a morass of our own making.

I am, thank you God, three thousand miles northwest of the Potomac and I’m very fortunate to live in a state where local governments are of necessity much too responsive to the needs of the constituency to either put up candidates for or sell tickets to a political dog and pony show.

From the time he got into office, this national executive who happens to be equally parts white and black has been subjected to more rabid scrutiny and more insane and bigoted speculation than any one in history since that sad day when Jesus carried his own cross up the hill to die between two thieves and crying out to his Father, the author of all divine providence, to forgive those who were killing him.

They were expecting a Messiah then too. Jesus may or may not have been that and certainly Barack Obama is not nor has ever suggested he is. But they do have two things in common. They were exceptional human beings who answered the call of the constituency. And that constituency turned on them.

I find it rather remarkable that down at least two thousand years, we still do this. I am, however, somewhat reassured by what Darwin said about survival not being about the strongest but the most adaptable.

I hope most of all that a very troubled national executive realizes that he’s doing the best he can and that some of us don’t give a bloody damn about anything except the content of his character and the integrity with which he conducts himself as a man. He hasn’t let some of us down in those regards and he won’t let me and mine down regardless of any election returns from here forward.

He hasn’t failed us. We’ve failed him and everyone else who ever cared about us as much as we should be caring about ourselves.

IN OTHER NEWS

Not to our surprise, a recent British study confirms that alcohol is far more destructive than heroin, crack cocaine, Ecstasy or marijuana. Researchers measured not only the systemic impact it has on an individual but the price society pays for the self-destructive and often lethal behavior of the addicted. It further concluded that legal drugs also cause more damage than illicit ones. For more on this one, go here.

For possibly as long as ten years, the University District in Seattle has been plagued by professional burglar (one who does it as a full time living as opposed to an amateur who just does it to help his sick grandma or his kid sister through beauty college) who specialized in fraternity houses because the residents of them are either still sleeping or profoundly hung over in those several hours between last call and dawn. However, last week, he invaded a UW fraternity house that had sober residents who were also early risers. They tackled him, held him down until 911 arrived and are now feeling duly proud of themselves for temporarily lowering the curtain on the brilliant career of a property appropriation artist who very likely became a burglar because he couldn’t get a paper route or a box person job. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

In response to a rise in suicides, motor vehicle accidents and other self-destructive behavior among American military combat veterans, Defense Department researchers are concluding that the armed services are attracting a lot more adrenalin junkies who actually love battle action and have a very difficult time living without it. I’m not sure I buy that personally after reading a first person account of what war is like in Afghanistan. This is absolutely the most vividly intense coverage I’ve ever read. The story’s entitled “The Last Patrol.”Felina: I see that humans have again “discovered” something that the rest of us have known since the first of us was created.

Sam: Okay. I’m going to take a shot at this and guess it’s not that the Law of Gravity is what keeps us all grounded.

Felina: Quite so.

Sam: Or that if they sail far enough, they’ll slip over the edge and into oblivion.

Felina: No, my love. I sincerely believe those are no longer issues with them. Samuel, is alcohol found anywhere in nature by itself?

Sam: Not that I know of, Lass. But just because we’ve never looked for it doesn’t mean it’s not out there.

Felina: But we have traveled and I remember one of the most beautiful flowers was the poppy.

Sam: From which humans made opium and then heroin.

Felina: And the cocoa leaf, which the humans south of that big belt they put around the planet in their maps.

Sam: The Andes Mountains of South America?

Felina: Yes, those Andes Mountains and quite so. The humans who live there chew the leaves of this plant to give them strength.

Sam: And other human beings take the leaves and turn them into crack cocaine.

Felina: This study lists it as a dangerous drug but not as lethal as this alcohol. And this marijuana, this I think I have actually seen growing down the mountain and across the glen. Where the humans who wear clothing that looks like trees and earth and prowl where this marijuana grows. With guns.

Sam: Yep, that would be a “pot patch”, as they call it. And those humans are guarding it.

Felina: Guarding it from what? I have never seen any other creature but humans even remotely interested in it. They put fire to it and take it into their lungs. And then they behave even more strangely than usual.

Sam: Kind of like those chipmunks who ate those mushrooms their mom told them expressly to stay away from.

Felina: It was interesting watching them try to fly. And when they tried to mug Homer the Wolverine, I thought that was so precious. Homer displayed a great deal of patience with them.

Sam: He might just not have been hungry at that particular moment, Felina.

Felina: Quite so. Though I have never considered chipmunks an entrée.

Sam: You also don’t have a wolverine’s total lack of culinary discrimination. If it’s breathing and he can bring it down, it’s on the menu.

Felina: Not unlike what humans refer to as “the paparazzi”. Those strange creatures with little boxes that flash and little metal pinecones on long sticks who surround another human being and assail their victim with words.

Sam: Yep, a lot like “the media,” I believe is the term they use. However, we digress.

Felina: We are the Romeo and Juliet of digression.

Sam: The Mike Nichols and Elaine May of digression.

Felina: The George and Gracie of digression.

Sam: We are legends in our own time.

Felina: And in our own minds. And so, this alcohol, which humans must create rather than take on the paw, as it were, is very dangerous when ingested. They appear to consume this dangerous substance in vast commodities.

Sam: Enough for every kit, female and male to have an annual consumption of seven bottles of whiskey, 12 bottles of wine and 230 cans of beer. What’s even more amazing is that one-third of Americans don’t drink and among the other nations of their society, there are 39 others who consume more per capita.

Felina: Amazing is certainly one word for it. They pay for the privilege of poisoning themselves. Others make their sustenance producing this toxic liquid and providing it to them. And it is legal to do all this while the harvesting and consumption of that which grows naturally, they punish by forced confinement in those big caves of theirs with iron bars on the windows.

Sam: Yep, that’s it pretty much. However, in a self-correcting universe, stupidity is kind of a population control device. Can you imagine them over-running the joint?

Felina: Sam, please, not this close to lunch?

Sam: Gotcha. And on that note?

Felina: And on that note, gentle readers, until next week then, eh? And may the Creator bless and keep you.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Sometimes surviving hard times is also about being inspired by a good example. This comes to us from Northern California. It’s about some students in a small junior high school who turned their newspaper into a profit-making operation and their teacher, who defied the school administrators who told them business and education did not mix. If a movie’s not made out of this one eventually, some future Frank Capra is really missing out on a prize dramatic moment. Yep, go here.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

Green salad lovers are not only good for the food chain, they’re also much less susceptible to a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. If you need another reason for eating more like a rabbit and less like a wolf, that’s as good as any we can think of. And yep, for more, go here.

As someone I loved who lost her own battle with cancer reminded me ~ and it’s as true about surviving the Big C as it is life in general ~ there is no underestimating the healing power of a good example. This story of a survivor certain falls squarely in that category. Yep, this is another one of those and if you’re up for it, please go here.

Small talk might be a pleasant way to pass the time but it’s not as good for you as an intelligent discussion of substance. A recent study of college students determined that those who engaged in meaningful dialogue instead of mind-numbing chit chat were both happier and healthier. Yep, for more, go here.

GOOD EXAMPLES

Four retired Boeing engineers are proving that you’re never too old to make a difference. Several years ago, these four friends with an active interest in “green” energy, came up with a unique way to harvest the power of waves far out at sea. Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat caught up with the creative quartet, the oldest of whom is 92 and the youngest, 74, at a recent science convention and filed this report.

This is not to suggest that God is on the side of the green but we could not help noting that the Seattle area’s first publicly accessible electrical vehicle recharging station is located in the parking lot of the Wooden Cross Lutheran Church. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

NORTHSTAR FAVORITES

Sightline Daily is the best Pacific Northwest source of environmentally friendly news we’ve encountered yet. They draw from newspapers and National Public Radio sources in Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

Meade Fisher Observes Humanity From A Safe Distance is a blog authored by an outdoor writer, photographer, West Coast kayaker and environmentalist living in the San Francisco Bay area. These short, humorous, few holds barred observations on the machinations of the human species run from the whimsical to the arid and occasionally to the quietly outraged. I’ve been a fan of this particular writer for years and I’ve always found him worth the read.

The Northstar Gallery features photography of Seattle available as postcards, computer wallpaper and workspace art.

SEATTLE SCENES

Green autumn backyard harvest, Seattle
Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

CRITTER STUFF

When Kasatochi volcano erupted two years ago, the surrounding waters of this tiny island in the Aleutian chain were covered with ash. But instead of that being an ecological disaster for the North Pacific, satellite photos showed that the marine plant life went totally nutzoid. More specifically, the plankton upon which so many species feed, including some whales, ate the ash that fell in the ocean and had a population explosion that blossomed right up the food chain producing, among things, the biggest run of Fraser River sockeye salmon in 97 years. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

And under the “I’m Kind of Glad I Wasn’t Alive Whe This One Was” category, fossil hunters in Romania last month discovered the remains of a new species of Velociraptor, the familiar single-claw predator featured in the Jurassic Park movies. This one has double claws, is built a little lower to the ground and apparently was a lot fiercer. It was about the size of a big wild turkey and lived about 65 million years ago. Yep, for more and photos, go here.

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

I found it very interesting to note that in addition to America’s chief executive needing to worrying about how his constituency at home feels, apparently President Obama has reason to be aware of how he’s received by moneys in India. I hope the Secret Service really is on top of this. It’s hard for me to imagine these federal bodyguards being taught how to handle a life form that, in some ways, is a lot smarter than we are, acts in concert with others of its own kind and has as much right to resent human encroachment on its home ground as the bear, the cougars, the owls, the mountain goats and other creatures indigenous to the Pacific Northwest. Monkeys are revered in India so euthanasia, which this writer doesn’t believe in, is not an option. Negotiation is one and this just might be Divine Intervention so President Obama can show the world what true global diplomacy actually entails. Remember, however, I also believe in the Passover Bunny and in a pair of mated mountain lions who talk to one another about humans and let me eavesdrop. So good luck with that one, guys.

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for the ear. Before you leave, if you’re in a shopping mood and into some interesting choices? We’ve got a “reader stocked” General Store that you might want to check out. If you’d like to sell something with us or know someone who does, email us at minstrel312@aol.com and we’ll see what we can do.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Can the federal government protect our children?

2010-10-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. We’ve reported several times about American youth who succumbed to suicide, most recently, University of Washington co-ed Carly Henley, We have also expressed grief and outrage for those American youth who were driven to this final tragic act by their peers. According to studies by the Center For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide is the leading cause of death of those between 15 – 24 and the fourth among children 10 – 14. More and more of these deaths are being attributed to bullying at school and on the Internet.

We were, therefore, encouraged to learn that ~ in preparation for a national conference on the subject ~ the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to American schools detailing the responsibilities of these educational institutions and in particular, how to recognize when bullying becomes a violation of the victim’s civil rights, a federal crime.

While I admit this is a good start, I don’t think it’s nearly enough. It’s just all the federal government can afford to do at present. I have some concerns now about the budgetary ability of federal prosecutors to investigate reports of civil rights violations in Academia. I am less unsure, particularly in these hard times, whether the schools alone have the resources, money or person power to effectively monitor the sadistic tendencies among their respective student bodies. And especially where lesbian and gay students are concerned, whether it’s as high a priority as preserving a sports curriculum or making capital improvements against a projected growth in the student population.

I also have serious doubts about whether increased security, greater vigilance or sterner sanctions by the government or the schools will do as much as hoped to solve the problem. There is a particular and unprecedented virulence in the cruelty our children are inflicting on one another. These are not just random attacks on targets of opportunity. They are intelligent, creatively constructed, sadistic campaigns by a group of young people to inflict maximum pain on another young person. Suicide is their ultimate goal and with the media coverage out there and a peer network online, every time a child kills themselves, other children contact those responsible to learn more about driving someone to suicide.

How children turn out and how they behave is first and fundamentally not only the province but the purview of their primary caregivers. So when I see young human beings acting with such deliberate savagery, I cannot help but wonder what on behind the closed doors and shuttered windows of the homes in which some of these kids live.

Is that where bullies picked up the idea that predatory behavior is acceptable? Like many child abuse victims, are they rationalizing the license to do that because their parents are hurting them at home? As busy as many American parents are working 50 – 60 hours for less than they made working 40 three years ago, is this a case of children not getting enough time and personal attention at home and taking it out on some of their age peers? Are the television programs, films, DVDs and video games which have replaced pacifiers as entertainment while parents pursue the private pleasures that are sometimes the only way to cope with life stress, are these desensitizing our youth to the needs of others for understanding and compassion?

This letter the Department of Education is sending out to the schools this week should find its way into the mailbox of every American household. If our children need to be parented by a community in order to stop killing one another, it’s about time we cared about them and accepted that responsibility.

If we cannot do that, we can at least be honest with them, tell them they’re not that important and then stop preaching compassion out of one side of our mouth and laissez faire material acquisition out of the other.

IN OTHER NEWS

We reported earlier this year the arrest of a man who left vulgar, obscene and threatening voice mail messages with Washington’s U.S. Senator Patty Murray. We considered such behavior totally inappropriate and apparently so does the federal judge who put this idiot in jail for a year and a day. I wonder where a man who threatens a woman politician ranks in the prison hierarchy. I can’t believe it’s real high so I imagine he’s going to have some interesting nights. Yep, for more on this, please go here.

There’s a new dam across the Colorado River just south of the Hoover Dam that will absolutely and totally take your breath away, even if you never drive across the flipping thing. I’m real judicious in recommending any human engineering achievement which seeks to outdo the majesty of what was here first. This bridge, like Hoover Dam itself, is an example of what humankind can do when it works with nature. The story and the photographs are awesome so for more, yep, go here.

Well, it’s nice to know someone’s making out in the worst recession since the Great Depression. According to a report recently released by America’s Social Security Administration, wages for the 131 best paid workers increased five hundred percent between 2008 – 2009. Both average and median incomes dropped and one in 34 workers did not have any income at all. For more on this, go here.

Thanks to the vision, daring, courage and sheer chutzpah of a European scientifically-trained financier and investor, a “green” factory in Oregon has become one of the state’s largest employers. The SolarWorld factory in Hillsboro makes photovoltaics, which is a broad term to cover the collection, storage and generation of solar energy. Experts, including this international businessman, predict that within two years, the United States will be the second largest market for the solar energy industry, behind Germany but ahead of Japan and Spain. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

We were neither surprised nor even outraged to learn that a Congressional investigation has determined that both BP and Halliburton were both responsible for the failure of the cement which precipitated the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Debacle. I will say, however, that if BP and Halliburton were parents who birthed and raised me, I’d probably be doing some serious praying for orphanhood. And that the total lack of ethics and concern for the impact on other human beings does not also become a hallmark of emerging green industry giants. Yep, for more, go here.

Felina: Well, that one is finished and sent. Do human beings still punish the bad among them by putting them in dark caves under their domiciles and chaining them to the walls so they cannot escape?

Sam: Ummm, I’m going to take a shot at this. Do they still incarcerate miscreants in dungeons under castles?

Felina: Dungeons and castles, yes. Quite so.

Sam: Maybe back East, Felina. I haven’t seen too many castles out here in the Northwest.

Felina: There are some in Victoria. But I do not remember smelling incarcerated human beings the nights we visited them.

Sam: And you’d have noticed. That was the holiday where you tried to give a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman a pooper scooper for his horse.

Felina: He was actually quite decent about it.

Sam: Cornered in a stable, having no idea how we got in there, looking into a set of smoldering blue eyes that are impressive even to other cougars, and then discovering that something big enough to eat him can also communicate with him, yep, I can appreciate why he might possibly have been on his best behavior.

Felina: “A set of smoldering blue eyes that are impressive even to other cougars,” eh?

Sam: And obviously to this member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They inherited a stiff upper lip from the English and then made it a global behavior gold standard.

Felina: The English are those people who live on the island on the other side of the one with little humans and lots of four leaf clovers. Where that Big Clock and all the castles with dungeons are. And where they drink lots of tea, eat little fried fish for breakfast, and sometimes kill each other after a soccer game.

Sam: Yep, those English.

Felina: Ah, so “the smoldering blue eyes” was not just some of your Yankee Doodle flipping charm, then?

Sam: Felina, we’ve been mated like eight millions years or so and there’s nothing wrong with our love life. So yeah, it was some charm and the total truth. However, we digress.

Felina: Quite so. We are the Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Brownings of digression.

Sam: In a land where there aren’t very many castles so probably not very many dungeons either.

Felina: Where they punish the bad among their number by putting them together in cages in conditions unparalleled in the rest of Creation.

Sam: Yep, that about describes the American penal system. The world inside those cages is more savage that any jungle in all of time. All of the terrible things they did that got them sent there in the first place, they do to one another and there is absolutely no escape and no relief.

Felina: And the good human beings pay to keep them there and then are victimised when these savage specimens are released and again free to prey on their own kind. And this, they consider rehabilitation. Even for Jonah’s whale, that is a lot to swallow. The stupidity of it is absolutely stunning.

Sam: In a way, it’s an inspirational monument to bad examples.

Felina: In a land with so many such shining tributes.

Sam: So now that we’ve sort of re-established that, what’s with the emails and the question about those caves under the castles?

Felina: I was asking that this man who made the threats to Patty Murray be confined in such a place because I had not embraced the utter hell of those cages.

Sam: And before you found out there are no dungeons.

Felina: And before I found out there were no more dungeons. I have decided that this person is probably being punished enough. It still makes me sad but I am no longer angry.

Sam: Felina, human beings are the poor country cousins of the animal kingdom. As Dueling Banjo backwards as they sometimes appear, they are hard not to love. Just don’t let ‘em break your heart, Lass because if you care about them too much, they surely will.

Felina: Sigh. I know, my love. But they are quite talented banjo players.

Sam: They are indeed, Felina. They are indeed. And on that note?

Felina: And on that note, gentle readers, thank you and may the Creator bless and keep you.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Our thanks to Ray and Mei Ling in Brooklyn, New York for sending us this link to economic survival tips. The Recession has necessarily spawned a swarm of these but this particular website covers every from the single person renting to a home-owning family having trouble making their mortgage payments. It’s an easy site to navigate and the language is clear, concise, straightforward and friendly. Yep, for more, please go here.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

Taking aspirin to prevent colon cancer and to reduce its mortality rate has been an accepted protocol now for decades. The side affects of the recommended dosage, however, were enough for doctors to discourage the practice in those with a low risk factor. Now, it has been determined that a much smaller amount, like a tablet of baby aspirin, will accomplish the same thing but without the harsh side effects. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

RESOURCES AND RELATED LINKS:
Cancer Research Journal
National Cancer Institute (American)
Fighting Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Survivor Stories
Science Daily: Health & Medicine News
American Cancer Statistics 2009
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009

HEALTH NEWS

I do so love it when one of my alleged passions turns out to be not only virtuous but healthy. I have a passion for chocolate second only to something else which is not a food group. My wife, Loretta Joy, God rest her soul, once bet one of her girlfriends that if she could get me to eat anything as long as it was either dipped in chocolate or coated in it. I don’t know what I ate that night and I don’t ever want to know. The bet she won we spent on a weekend at the ocean so there’s one more reason for loving chocolate. Yep, all this to tell you that scientists have “discovered” that drinking a couple cups of hot cocoa every day improves the health of the brain and sharpens mental acuity in general. Yep, for more, please go here.

One in three Americans could be diagnosed with diabetes by 2050, according to a recent study released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. The disease was the seventh leading cause of death in the States in 2007. The dramatic increase in the prevalence of this disease is closely linked to an equally alarming rise in the obesity rate, particularly among children. For more, please go here.

In an effort to entice appropriate choices, rather than force them, school lunch program administrators are doing what smart restaurateurs have been doing since mammoth steaks and tusk soup were on the commercial menu. They’re presenting it better. And it’s working. Yep, for more, please go here.

GOOD EXAMPLES

As any health care provider knows, individualized attention to patients can make all the difference. A nurse practitioner in Bellingham, Washington, a community of 80,000in the northwest corner of the state on the border with Canada, visits her patients at their homes and workplaces on a specially designed bicycle and trailer. Two years ago she started Mobile Medicine and made quite an impact on the community. For more on a dedicated medical profession who found a way to return to the days when country doctors made house calls, yep, please go here.

In what is seen as a brilliant academic application of cyber technology, the Israel Antiquities Authority, the custodian of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the 2,000-year-old biblical and apocryphal texts discovered last century in caves in the Judean desert, earlier this week announced that it is joining with Google to download newly digitalized images of these ancient writings and make them available on the Internet. Now, since the reproductions are at least as legible as the originals and in some case, more, there’s no need to risk further degradation of them by exposing them to light and air. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

I’ve always been a strong proponent of fathers and sons doing cool stuff together but I’ve got to admit I’d never have imagined such a team putting a camera into outer space, recovering it and publishing some incredible photos. Then again, these two individuals are native New Yorkers and even more specifically, from Brooklyn. If I’ve learned one thing about this particular “tribe,” it is that it is they who put the “push” in pushing the window. Nice going, guys. Yep, for a video on how they did it, go here.

NORTHSTAR FAVORITES

Sightline Daily is the best Pacific Northwest source of environmentally friendly news we’ve encountered yet. They draw from newspapers and National Public Radio sources in Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

Meade Fisher Observes Humanity From A Safe Distance is a blog authored by an outdoor writer, photographer, West Coast kayaker and environmentalist living in the San Francisco Bay area. These short, humorous, few holds barred observations on the machinations of the human species run from the whimsical to the arid and occasionally to the quietly outraged. I’ve been a fan of this particular writer for years and I’ve always found him worth the read.

SEATTLE SCENES

Fountain on the campus of the University of Washington
Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

I am an unabashed, unreconstructed and unrepentant animal lover who gauges the compassion of others by the way they treat other life forms. To me, there are few higher callings than animal/wildlife rehabilitation and rescue and when it is federally funded, I am proud my tax dollars are being spent that way. Therefore, I thoroughly loved this story about how rescued seals in my state are cared for and released back into the wild. Scientists have long been curious about how many of these healed animals survive and they’ve come up with a real simple way to determine that. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

We’re pleased to announce that one of our ‘resident’ orcas had a baby and she’s a real cuter, this one. There are two pods and this is the southern one, L-116, which spends most of its time in the Salish Sea in the American San Juans and the Puget Sound. This is the mother’s first offspring but another orca was born back in August and it is doing fine. This brings the population of L-116 to 86 now. For more and a picture of mom and offspring, yep, go here.

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

There’s a heavy earth moving equipment operator in Seattle who owes his life, twice, to his co-workers. Twice within three months, working on the same equipment at the same job site, this guy had a heart attack and the other guys on the job gave him the CPR that kept him from flat-lining. I think that’s all great but at least for me, it’s also a little spooky and I can’t help but wonder if maybe the reason he had those cardiac incidents in the first place might have had something to do with his fitness for the work, job stress, maybe the equipment didn’t like him or maybe the job they’ve been working on isn’t supposed to be completed. We’re watching this one and if it happens again in three months, we’re assuming a supernatural spin on this, wishing it a good life and never ever bringing it up again. I hear Pandora’s Box was beautiful as long as it was kept shut. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Rusty

Thank you for stopping by, Mr. President. Give our love to Michelle.

2010-10-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, as I write, I’m also watching President Obama talk to some of my neighbors in a backyard not far from here. It’s going well. Under soggy skies, the rain has held off. The weather gods are not particularly cruel but as winter draws on, they have about as much patience for political scripts and posturing now as we do here down below, under the clouds. The President is here with one of our senators and my Congressman so if a lightning bolt is hurled, it’s going to be a heavenly “three for.”

He’s getting a good reception, even by the standards of perhaps the most hospital people in the Lower 48 south of Canada. He’s actually very well liked by those of us who live on the shores of the Salish Sea so he doesn’t need to spend a lot of energy defending himself or his administration. Besides, that’s not what we want to hear anyway.

We want to make sure he’s aware of our concerns, what we’re trying to do about them and what the federal government can or cannot do. We’re a very solution oriented, results propelled society here. Life’s too short to spend a lot of it in a critical mode. It’s like, “Okay, we’re all using this thing and now it’s busted. It doesn’t matter who broke it. We just need to get it fixed.”

He’s responding to our agenda in the low-key, relaxed, articulate and educated style we’ve come to appreciate. We like it that for the first time since John F. Kennedy, we have a national chief executive who doesn’t consider us too stupid for words of more than two syllables. On the other hand, I’m also glad he doesn’t use too many of those because I hate watching television with a dictionary in my lap.

Now, Mr. President is enroute to the University of Washington, where he’ll address a big indoor crowd of 15,000, some of whom have been waiting in line since four-thirty a.m. And it’s not to throw out of season produce at him either.

I’m betting he won’t get quite as smooth a reception etiquette-wise here, though. The University of Washington’s mascot is the husky and those are not known for being real quiet animals. They’re also the only canines I’ve ever seen with blue eyes and yeah, that weirds me out a little.

I’ve never understood this whole dogsled bit. Huskies are like first cousins to wolves. Wolves do everything together. Including eating other animals. So I’m betting the kids in the purple shirts are probably going to have some fun with their president.

This will be an energizing visit for an embattled leader. For a few hours, he won’t need to listen to the trumpeting of the elephants, the braying of other jackasses, the bleating of those to lazy to be anything else but sheep and the occasional raucous caws of circling birds which cannot emulate the nobility of the eagle and dishonor even the basest of those who feast on road kill.

Thank you for stopping by, Mr. President. Give our love to Michelle.

Related Stories:
Obama visit caps whirlwind week for Wedgwood family
Obama talks economy, health care at backyard chat
Top Pot Doughnut enjoying sweet taste of presidential surprise
Obama lands in Seattle to aid Patty Murray campaign
Obama's visit to Seattle expected to cause traffic tie-ups

IN OTHER NEWS

Well, this one put a real shine on the emerald, as it were. A recent study has concluded that those working “green” jobs are 40% more productive than those in non-eco-friendly employment. I’m not surprised. I saw it in Oregon’s Cascade forests. Those planting trees worked just as hard as those cutting them down but seemed to be a lot happier. And a lot less inclined to the kinds of behaviors that contribute to the higher rates of substance abuse, domestic violence and early aging among those in heavy industry. For more on this one, please go here.

I remember how cool it was when ice was discovered beneath the surface of the moon, thus facilitating scientific colonization. Now, at the bottom of a deep crater, they’ve found an oasis NASA is saying is as wet as the Sahara. Well, I never thought of that desert as being moist but what it means is that eight wheelbarrows full of crater soil could be melted to yield around twelve gallons of water. Now, if we can just get people to start going there again and yep, for more on this one, please go here.

In a related story, scientists are now calling the moon “a treasure chest of elements” in a report NASA released Thursday which has analyzed the results of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS mission of 2009, in which samples were taken from the bottom of a deep crater. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

We were not particularly pleased to read about 1.53-million Toyotas worldwide have been recalled for a faulty brake system. In some cultures, that would be considered very bad karma and the Japanese motor vehicle manufacturer certainly seems to have had their share of it. It looks like these cars and trucks were designed to use only Toyota brake fluid. (The computer industry learned the folly of that marketing strategy years ago.) The models involved are the 2005–6 Avalon; the 2004–6 Highlander (except for the hybrid) and Lexus RX 330; and the 2006 Lexus GS 300, IS 250 and IS 350 models. Yep, for more, go here.

As proud as I am of the state in which I live, it’s tough to share a story about two Washington State Supreme Court Justices acting like people for whom I’d like to have an exclusive white sheet concession. For more on these two bigots in black robes, please go here. But not on an empty stomach.

CROSSING OVER

We join millions of others under at least these seven flags in marking the passing of Barbara Billingsley, perhaps best known as “Leave It to Beaver’s” mom, June Cleaver. Michael Pollak, of the New York Times, has written a thoughtful and well-researched tribute to an individual who was complex, intelligent, accomplished and, at one point in her life, the singe mother of two boys. She died Saturday in her Santa Monica, California home at the age of 94. For Michael’s eulogy, please go here.

If Barbara Billingsley was a television mother to millions of Americans, Tom Bosley was surely a father figure to them as well. An accomplished stage and screen actor of tremendous personal integrity, he was as devoted a husband and parent off camera as he was on the set of Happy Days. Born in Chicago, he died Tuesday at his home in Palm Springs. He was 83. For a moving and resonant tribute, please go here.

Felina: Samuel, there is another one of those human transportation systems going by down past the glen. That is the fifth one today. Are they migrating?

Sam: Your eyes are better than mine, Felina. Can you read any writing on them?

Felina: There is this flat thing on their rear-ends. White and it has a picture on it. It appears to be some sort of government notice. It has the provincial name on it, some letters and some numbers.

Sam: I believe that's called a license plate, Lass.

Felina: Ah. Quite so then. And what function does this license plate perform on the transportation system?

Sam: Organically, none. It proves that this transportation system has the government’s permission to operate.

Felina: A transportation system needs a note from Victoria?

Sam: Yep, that’s it pretty much. And on the other side of the mountain too. What else can you see on the butt of that vehicle?

Felina: There is a word with which I am totally unfamiliar. It is spelled T-O-Y-O-T-A.

Sam: Oh, okay. Toyota is the name of an honorable family in Japan which makes transportation systems and sells them all over the world.

Felina: So all of these Toyota transportation systems are going to a family reunion, then?

Sam: In a manner of speaking, yep. A lot of them are going home because they were not made in the Creator’s image. The humans who use them cannot rely on them.

Felina: When we lived in Manitoba, where the humans ride horses, if one of the mounts limped, it was treated by this human with this very strange symbol on his black leather bag. When the horse was well, human beings started riding it again. Is it like that?

Sam: It’s a lot like that, Felina. These Toyota transportation systems that are going down the mountain are the children of lesser creators, gods as it were who do not love their progeny as the Creator loves us. So millions of these Toyota transportation systems came into the world with defective components.

Felina: Ah, so they are going home to become children of the greater Toyota gods?

Sam: Yep, they’re being “recalled,” is the human word for it. They’re going back to where they were made.

Felina: Several million of them. There is something rather troubling to me about this.

Sam: Just remember, this is the same species which builds on volcanoes and earthquake faults. For as busy as they appear to be, they never seem to have time to do it right the first time but an infinity to do it over and over again.

Felina: Like the American college football coach who told his players that they would run the same play over and over until they got it right. I cannot recall his name at the moment but his university is called after that large building of theirs in France where that poor hunchback lives.

Sam: Umm, I’ll take a shot and say maybe we’re talking about Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian?

Felina: Quite so. And Quasimodo.

Sam: The hunchback who lives in the big building in France.

Felina: Yes, that Quasimodo.

Sam: You are nothing short of amazing, mate of my life.

Felina: And love of it too?

Sam: And love of it too. When did you start watching American football?

Felina: Since I learned they have a team called the cougars. In some ways, their obsession with mock combat is an absolutely fascinating aspect of their behaviour.

Sam: No argument there, oh sun of my day and moon of my night.

Felina: Oh, here comes that Yankee Doodle flipping charm again. I love it!

Sam: And on that note?

Felina: Quite so. And on that note, gentle readers, until next time. And may the Creator bless and keep you.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

One way to survive hard times is to manage time better. In a delightful article headlined “'You Have More Time Than You Think,' argues author Laura Vanderkam,” it’s pointed out that while Americans work longer hours than any other industrialized nation, we also spend more time watching television. Ms. Vanderkam offers a simple five-step program for better time management. So yep, for more, go here.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

Another study confirms not only the link between hormone treatment after menopause and the increased risk of breast cancer, but also concludes that when the disease is diagnosed under those conditions, it is invariably in an advanced stage. Yes, for more on this one, please go here.

RESOURCES AND RELATED LINKS:
Cancer Research Journal
National Cancer Institute (American)
Fighting Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Survivor Stories
Science Daily: Health & Medicine News
American Cancer Statistics 2009
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009

HEALTH NEWS

This definitely falls under the category “Attitude Is All.” Researchers have discovered that optimists get less colds than pessimists or other kinds of people who tend to bring other people down. So next time you run into someone like that, hand them a small packet of tissues and say a prayer for them the next time you’re moved in that direction. For more on this and other practical tips for avoiding a cold or mitigating its impact, yep, go here.

GOOD EXAMPLES

As any health care provider knows, individualized attention to patients can make all the difference. A nurse practitioner in Bellingham, Washington, a community of 80,000in the northwest corner of the state on the border with Canada, visits her patients at their homes and workplaces on a specially designed bicycle and trailer. Two years ago she started Mobile Medicine and made quite an impact on the community. For more on a dedicated medical profession who found a way to return to the days when country doctors made house calls, yep, please go here.

In what is seen as a brilliant academic application of cyber technology, the Israel Antiquities Authority, the custodian of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the 2,000-year-old biblical and apocryphal texts discovered last century in caves in the Judean desert, earlier this week announced that it is joining with Google to download newly digitalized images of these ancient writings and make them available on the Internet. Now, since the reproductions are at least as legible as the originals and in some case, more, there’s no need to risk further degradation of them by exposing them to light and air. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

I’ve always been a strong proponent of fathers and sons doing cool stuff together but I’ve got to admit I’d never have imagined such a team putting a camera into outer space, recovering it and publishing some incredible photos. Then again, these two individuals are native New Yorkers and even more specifically, from Brooklyn. If I’ve learned one thing about this particular “tribe,” it is that it is they who put the “push” in pushing the window. Nice going, guys. Yep, for a video on how they did it, go here.

NORTHSTAR FAVORITES

Sightline Daily is the best Pacific Northwest source of environmentally friendly news we’ve encountered yet. They draw from newspapers and National Public Radio sources in Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

Meade Fisher Observes Humanity From A Safe Distance is a blog authored by an outdoor writer, photographer, West Coast kayaker and environmentalist living in the San Francisco Bay area. These short, humorous, few holds barred observations on the machinations of the human species run from the whimsical to the arid and occasionally to the quietly outraged. I’ve been a fan of this particular writer for years and I’ve always found him worth the read.

SEATTLE SCENES

Even in Seattle, moss still grows on the north side of the tree.
And the roof.
Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

A five-year-old Maine coon cat named Stewie has just replaced another of his breed in the Guinness Book of Records. The Reno Nevada feline measures 48.5 inches/123 cms. Maine coon cats are the only domestic breed native to North America. Yep, for more, go here.

Without getting totally Zen about it, I happen to believe that human beings can learn from the other species on this planet so I love it when another “discovery” is made which confirms that. This one’s a link between an African frog has that can be shared without hurting the amphibian and which will save countless human lives. What I also appreciate is that it seems to support something I’ve believed for a long time. Every living thing on this planet has a reason for being, including English lords, congenital idiots, bed bugs, bigots and the Bubonic plague. No offence to the germs intended. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

When two baby fishers, a cousin of otters, mink and martens, were orphaned several weeks ago in Washington state’s Olympic National Park by a hungry bobcat, it could have very well been the end for the pair of kits as well. Their cries of fear and hunger from their den high up in an evergreen attracted the attention of human visitors, who contacted park officials who, in turn, called the State Department of Natural Resources. The DNR sent out a biologist who climbed the tree, rescued the kits and turned them over to a local wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center. The people there taught the baby fishers how to hunt and otherwise take care of themselves and now, as young adults, the kits are back on their own in the wild and doing very well. For a video and more, go here.

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

When two baby fishers, a cousin of otters, mink and martens, were orphaned several weeks ago in Washington state’s Olympic National Park by a hungry bobcat, it could have very well been the end for the pair of kits as well. Their cries of fear and hunger from their den high up in an evergreen attracted the attention of human visitors, who contacted park officials who, in turn, called the State Department of Natural Resources. The DNR sent out a biologist who climbed the tree, rescued the kits and turned them over to a local wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center. The people there taught the baby fishers how to hunt and otherwise take care of themselves and now, as young adults, the kits are back on their own in the wild and doing very well. For a video and more, go here.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Rusty

33 Chilean miners who made it, and one University of Washington student who did not

2010-10-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, the story of the week in this house has to be the rescue of those miners in Chile. It resonates with us for several reasons that I suspect some of you under these seven flags can appreciate, as well.

It’s flat out and no debate, a story of human courage. I don’t know how many of you have ever actually been down in a mine and not. A few years back, I filed a story and photos about going down into a silver one in the Cascades of Oregon.

I was only several thousand feet underground for about what, maybe three hours? In the dead of winter with snow at the top of the shaft and sweat at the bottom. But the Canadians who ran the operation were only too glad to show me what each member of the shift did so I got to totally experience real noisy drills in action and a lot of really intense activity in a relative space that would give a canary in a Carlsbad cavern claustrophobia. And these miners have been a lot deeper and down there since August? And I whine when I’ve got to stand up in a crowded bus for a half hour? Yeah, that works in this house now.

Theirs is also a tribute to the international brotherhood of miners. This news reached every place on this planet where folks with hard hats and flashlights strapped to them go to provide for their families. That’s a consensus of opinion and action no religion, philosophy, political doctrine or pagan ritual has ever been able to achieve. The world’s miners didn’t wait on the flow tide of public opinion. They had brothers to save and they exerted their own influence.

I was also impressed by the virtually total absence of politics in this. The Chilean government moved quietly but by common consensus and anyone who has studied the history of Latin America as extensively as I have recognizes the savage history involved and appreciates the gravity of the accomplishment. The need for cyclic revolutions is over, at least in Chile. And perhaps her continental brother and sister nations will prosper from her example.

That’s also a personal prayer of mine, for latitudes and hemispheres beyond this one.

CROSSING OVER

We join some 45,000 University of Washington students and faculty in marking the passing of UW junior Carly Henley, who was found dead in the stairwell of a fraternity house on Greek row, an apparent victim of a depression-induced suicide.

Carly, a womens studies major, was also a singer and songwriter who performed at local clubs. She was a soft and totally ingenuous influence who radiated well beyond Husky Stadium. She was “special” and in her courage to be that, she empowered others.

For all of that, she was in so many ways (stereo?) typical and not likely to be noticed much in a casual walk across campus or in a big lecture hall. As unobtrusive as she was, she was among the best we had to offer current posterity.

She knew that, understood that sometimes if you talk to people about how frightened you are, you make them scared too and that’s not something you want to do to someone you care about. So you tuck it in and tough it out. For sinners, it’s acclimation to hell. For someone like Carly Henley, it was a purgatory that very, very special child did not deserve.

According to the American College Health Association, suicide is the second leading cause of death among higher education students and a spokesperson for the UW Crisis Clinic said she hopes that the very least that can come of this tragedy is more dialogue between students, their parents and friends. The Northstar Journal concurs. For more on this, please go here.

We also join music lovers around the world, and particularly those who enjoy the opera, in marking the passing of Joan Sutherland. The Australian-born soprano died at her home in Switzerland Sunday. She was 83. For a fine tribute to an international artistic icon, please go here.

IN OTHER NEWS

Thanks to, what the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, called, “Conceptually it looks to me to be one of the most interesting transmission projects that I’ve ever seen walk through the door,” much of the energy grid on the Atlantic seaboard will be reconfigured to not only redistribute energy from where it is cheap to where it is expensive but to prepare for fields of offshore wind turbines that will produce as much electricity as five nuclear power plants. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

One of the things I personally miss sometimes in reading about environmentally appropriate technology is how it impacts those living beside, say, a wind turbine or a field of solar collectors. I was, therefore, delighted when one of you sent me the link to this story, headlined, “Washington's wind power windfall: The harnessing of Columbia Gorge winds has transformed the landscape and the lives of rural residents.” It’s a beautifully written piece by Vancouver Columbian reporter Kathie Durbin with some panoramic photos by Steven Lane. Yep, check it out here.

Japan unveiled a dramatic glimpse of what life might be like in a post fossil fuels world. Called The Yokohama Smart City Project, it is an actual community unto itself, that is powered by a combination of environmentally appropriate energy sources and the resulting electricity distributed, by computers, to businesses, homes, electric vehicles and the infrastructure at large. I found this article absolutely fascinating so for more, please go here.

Our congratulations to the two Americans and the Englishman who are sharing the Nobel Prize for Economics. I found it more than a little ironic that they are being honored for explaining why unemployment can still be high despite a large number of job openings. What would have been even more impressive to me was if they’d been rewarded for finding out how to fix that. Yep, for more, please go here.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Sometimes, the real secret to surviving hard times is also being inspired by good examples of people who not only “think out of the box” but keep inventing better boxes. That concept is hardly a novel one to the Atlantic Monthly magazine. They’ve been doing it for 153 years now, which means yep, I started reading them by whale oil lamp when I worked in that industry in New Bedford, awhile back. (I was there for the commissioning of the Pequod.) This year’s list of the bravest and most daring thinkers of the year includes:

The Journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas
The Doctor Carol Ball
The Prime Minister David Cameron
The Soldier Dan Choi
The Actor Kevin Costner
The General Michael T. Flynn
The Educator Deborah Gist
The Farmer John Hantz
The Scientist John Ioannidis
The Inventor Lonnie Johnson
The CEO Elon Musk
The Congressman Ron Paul
The Historian Diane Ravitch
The Team Owner Robert Sarver
The Businessman Tom Sullivan
The Watchdog Elizabeth Warren
The Judge Jack Weinstein
The Media Mogul Guillermo Zuloaga
The Humanitarian Sakena Yacoobi

Pretty cool, huh? Except that I only recognized three people on that list and none of them impressed me much. However, there’s a photo and mini-biography accompanying this list and over tomato soup with basil and two triple cheese jack sandwiches, I spent an hour yesterday making myself a little less ignorant. Yep, I totally enjoyed it so for more, please go here.

This next one comes from an unemployed American but I sense it resonates well beyond the shadow of the first flag on this masthead. It’s entitled, “If You Really Want To Help Me.”

If you really want to help me, please care enough to experience me as the person I am. Don’t let me become a stereotype and please do not treat me like one. I’m the same person I was before I lost my job. I didn’t devolve from a working stiff to another bum from the ‘hood.

If you want to help me, remember me and all the things I can do that people need, value and pay for. It won’t take a miracle to keep me from going homeless, only something I can do and be paid for. No job too small, flexible rates and yep, I’ll work for a roof.

When you talk about me, emphasize the positives. Pick out an achievement or an accomplishment of mine so I’m not an “a” somebody but a “the” someone who did something good for his family, his community, etc. Present me as a person of value, of worth, of accomplishment. Make me sound worth a helping hand. Don’t sell me. Inform people that I am available for hire.

If you really want to help, listen when I tell you what I need and please do not presume to know how I feel or lecture me with platitudes that inevitably make me depressed and feeling invisible. That form of patronizing is perhaps the bitterest part of this experience and it is the one, which lingers the longest because it is humiliating and especially hurtful coming from people we thought really did care. I’m not another number. Please don’t treat me like one.

Finally, even if it’s an ecard, dropping by with a pie or a couple of sandwiches and having coffee, but staying in touch and letting me also give you a hand from time to time. Treat what I’m going through as a problem with a solution and accept no other outcome but success.

If you really want to help me, care.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

There’s now a blood test which can accurately predict how many men 60 and older will probably contract prostate cancer, a form of this disease which as yet has no cure but into which a tremendous amount of money, research and dedication into curing this pervasive and insidious “reaper” of the human male population. For more, yep, go here.

Cancer respects no age so a new form of immunotherapy that prolongs the life of children with neuroblastoma, a nervous system cancer, should come as very good news. The numbers on this one are impressive. Neuroblastoma claims the lives of 12 percent of cancer patients under the age of 15. For more, yep, go here.

RESOURCES AND RELATED LINKS:
Cancer Research Journal
National Cancer Institute (American)
Fighting Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Survivor Stories
Science Daily: Health & Medicine News
American Cancer Statistics 2009
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009

HEALTH NEWS

This certainly must come as good news to dieters but not necessarily to the insomniacs among us. Apparently, getting a good night’s sleep helps lose weight. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

Having a connection with an autistic child, I so loved this one. And I’m not sure who Pohla Smith of the Pittsburg, PA Post-Gazette is but the one thing I can say is that the lead to this one got me in there and delivered on a promise.

“He's a Carolina blue color with big floppy rabbit ears, and when the furry creature is happy, those ears go straight up. When he's mad, his green eyes turn a devilish red. Equipped with a movable mouth and paws, he also can express such emotions as sad, confused, surprised and embarrassed.”

This is a robotic toy that mimics human facial reactions to tone of voice and for a lot of autistic kids who come out extremely sensitive to the emotions of those around them ~ and also the chaos that can involve ~ that’s one step removed and a safe one. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

SEATTLE SCENES

University Heights, looking north
Seattle’s University (of Washington) District
Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

The results of the first Census of Marine Life was published recently and the results are stunning. Over ten years in coming together, the project was initiated by two scientists in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and taken up by the international community. Life was found in depths and conditions rivaling those on other planets and the diversification of species far surpasses any thus far imagined by the best sci fi writers. For a truly fascinating account of this and some outstanding photos, yep, go here.

In an effort to help the endangered Columbia River salmon, American federal marine biologists need to know where in the Pacific Ocean when they leave the Columbia to mature. Some 100 of them were electronically tagged this spring but managed to elude the scientists. So now, researchers are recruiting a creature which feeds on these fish to help find them. Yep, it’s a little weird but I also think it’s pretty ingenuous. As long as it doesn’t backfire. Yep, for more, go here.

Recommended Related Links:
National Wildlife Magazine
Go Northwest: Northwest Wildlife Websites
BBC’s wildlife finder
National Geographic Daily News - Animals
Retrieverman’s Weblog: Engaging articles on domestic & wildlife in the American South

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

This issue seems to have evolved around a “thinking outside the box” theme so this definitely fits. And it’s almost one of those “Only in Alaska” stories except it’s usually obnoxious Texans who are associated with having the biggest of a lot of things, including longhorn steers and born bloody liars. So not only is this probably the biggest Radio Flyer in the world now, it’s likely the only one that can cruise the highway at 60 mph/96.5 kmph. For more on this and a slide show of how these folks did this, please go here.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Rusty

Public guns & alcohol, a sure prescription for the evolution of the species

2010-10-07T19:19:00.001-07:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, as an indicator of how well Americans are adapting to changing times without devolving into a more primitive state of mind and behavior, we were not particularly pleased to learn that, thanks to two recent Supreme Court rulings on gun control, four additional states have joined the growing ranks of those which permit carrying concealed firearms into restaurants, bars and other establishments which serve alcohol.

I grew up in a gun culture. Rural Northern California was a “pickup with a Winchester in the cab rack kind of place” with a rich Gold Rush and cowboy-in-general history. Two generations of my family were in law enforcement. All of them were hunters, although for my grandfathers’ generation, it was never a sport but a nutritional necessity and the need for it did not respect hunting seasons.

Holstered sidearms in public places were as common as blue denim, leather boots and corduroy suits on Sunday. They were also, for the most part, tools of survival. They were worn on the ranch and the land in general as a defense against rattlesnakes and in winter, against starving wolves and to signal for help. They were not carried in the expectation of using them against other human beings, nor were they status symbols or badges of manhood.

It was a different America then, though. Violence had not become such a quick fix solution or so common a reaction to extreme stress. It had not become so worshipped by the media that the twisted used it as a way of going out in a blaze of glory. It was not something children experienced very often and communities here at least were still safe places to live.

I believe in the right of every American stable and responsible enough to bear arms to do so. I think it is an incredibly stupid idea to mix firearms and the public consumption of alcohol, particularly at a time when more and more Americans are still living on the edge or getting pushed over it.

I’m also perhaps more grateful than I am at most other times, to be living in a city and a state and a region where most of us have found other ways of coping and don’t need to take our guns to town.

IN OTHER NEWS

Washington State officials are breathing major sighs of relief and still sweating when they think of how close they came to witnessing a natural environmental disaster of some magnitude. In a rather innocuously-headlined story, “Boat with invasive zebra mussels stopped; local firm decontaminates vessel”, Bellingham Herald reporter Dave Gallagher chronicles how a 54-foot boat was pulled off the Great Lakes, where zebra mussels are a $500-million headache, inspected, then loaded onto a big trailer for transport west. If you like adventure stories with a bit of suspense and a happy ending, go here for more on this one

We’ve been reporting on the “electrification” of the Interstate Five corridor, that three-state/one province freeway which runs north from San Diego and terminates in Vancouver, British Columbia. Thanks to a federal grant, the State of Oregon is adding eight fast-charging stations between Eugene and the California border. For more on this one, yep, go here. And our thanks to a reader of the Eugene Register Guard Online for this one.

With the advent of the most intense La Niña conditions near the equator since 1955, the Pacific Northwest is gearing up for a very wet and very cold winter. With customary caution, meteorologists at the National Weather Service briefing held in Seattle Thursday said that there was no guarantee this would be the case this year but all indications suggest preparing for the worst. For more on this one, yep, go here.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

One of the more challenging aspects of surviving hard times is accepting responsibility for a bad decision, discussing it with those involved, coming to an understanding of how and why it happened, doing damage assessment and mitigation and then, in some cases, sharing it with others so they can learn and perhaps avoid making the same mistake.

Last month, The Northstar Journal was victimized by what turned out to be a bogus contribution of nearly $2,000. We were told at the time we deposited it in our account, by both a teller and a customer service rep, that we didn't need to wait the customary five days before writing checks against it. But we still waited four days before we wrote a big check against some back living expenses.

The donation check bounced and initiated a domino chain reaction which, while not wiping us out, has made it necessary to downsize and relocate. We're hoping to be in a smaller version of the Bastion on the Puget Sound by the end of the month. After almost eight years at the same location.

There were several people responsible for what happened. Since it's common enough with publications like The Northstar Journal to receive anonymous donations, we had no reason to doubt the authenticity of a check delivered by UPS in an envelope with a Microsoft Mail Stop return address and just a check from a foundation written to me personally.

We double checked with the bank the day we deposited the check and twice again on day four and were assured that we didn't need to wait the customary five days before writing checks against it. Had we been told, after asking a total of four times, that we needed to wait those five days, we would, of course, have done so. The bank's response to this has been to deny our version, thus making it an "I said, she said" situation.

We're a small outfit, without the resources to hire an attorney, so that's a no-win situation for Northstar and we're neither contesting the decision nor naming the financial institution involved. We also still bank there. But yes, we consider them also in the "responsibility for this" loop. And it's very likely that we'll eventually be looking for another place to dump the proverbial sugar cans.

Did this "run" on us hurt? Of course it did. It forced at least four other people to divert time and energy from their own lives to deal with this. Survival's no easier for us during these tough times than it is for many of you. We were sucker punched at a time when we didn't even know we were in the bloody ring to begin with.

Was it a torpedo that sank the ship? It's a majour inconvenience but no, that it did not do. Again, it hurt four very decent human beings and their families and it may force us to run a bit late and occasionally some smaller until we find a new base of operations and get settled in.

Will we continue to solicit donations of anywhere from $5.00 up to keep going? Yep. That's what that little Paypal gizmo at the end of every edition is all about. It’s also what publications like ours do. By your emails and occasional Instant Messenger conversations, we know we're appreciated and that there are quite a few of you who'd like to support us in other ways but simply can't. We provide the opportunity, however, and from time to time, you folks connect with it.

In closing, we're not moving, geographically, very far. But it will be a new environment for us. In the thick gray clouds so swiftly gathering around shorter days and longer nights ushering in what promises to be a record-breakingly long and cold winter on the shores of the Salish Sea, it is turning out to be an exquisitely reflective autumn.

Be careful, okay? The only thing that could possibly make this worse is if, after reading this, it happens to you. Please, since we don't need to go there? Let's not?

ON THE CANCER FRONT

Sometimes, as I am constantly learning, just because I can’t make the connection doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Apparently regularly flossing one’s teeth can also help prevent neck cancer. Yep, go here.

RESOURCES AND RELATED LINKS:
Cancer Research Journal
National Cancer Institute (American)
Fighting Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Survivor Stories
Science Daily: Health & Medicine News
American Cancer Statistics 2009
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009

HEALTH NEWS

October is Children’s Health Month. AOL has a site which is celebrating that by providing a wealth of information on a range of conditions from autism to childhood obesity and more. I’ve bookmarked this one for our personal use and I highly recommend it.

In our ongoing campaign to convert the sedentary among you to health and longevity, we found another reason for walking. In a recent study of people from 55 – 80, it was found out that this form of exercise/lifestyle helps prevent the brain from “fogging up.” Other studies I’ve read indicate walking also helps with absentmindedness, short term memory loss, improvement in overall mental acuity and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. So yep, for more on this once, go here.

Since the season is clearly upon us, we thought you’d appreciate this video on five ways to fend off a cold.

GOOD EXAMPLES

When budget cuts forced an Oregon community’s road department to revise its own pothole filling program, a private paving company came forward with a unique “Potholes for Poverty” solution. People can contact this company about a pothole and have it filled in return for a donation to a local, regional or national charity. Yep, for the whole story on this one, go here.

We are definitely banging both hands together, whistling and cheering for a Puget Sound suburb police officer who helped a woman in labor deliver a baby. She went into labor in her car, which was parked in front of Puyallup (pew-ALL-up) City Hall. Lt. Scott Engle noticed the commotion. A recent father himself, he assisted the couple and cleared the infant’s airway so the baby could breathe. Mother and daughter are doing fine. For video on this one, go here.

This week, Seattle joined four other American cities in promoting bicycles as a legitimate transit alternative. The State Department of Transportation (SDOT) installed the first of four bike boxes at an intersection near downtown. What it means is that at this intersection, bikes will stop in a green area in front of cars, trucks and buses. When the light changes, cyclists will go first, followed by the motorized transport behind them. For more on this one and to identify the four other cities also now using these, go here.

SEATTLE SCENES

These students were among the 40,000 or so who showed up for the first day of the Fall term, Wednesday, at the University of Washington. Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

What’s Going On Here?

Whether you live here or plan to visit ~ and whatever it is you enjoy doing at home or as a tourist ~ you’ll find it, you’ll find it listed here at seattlepi.com.

SEATTLE FACTS AND FIGURES
Seattle Rainfall in Comparison To Other US Cities
Seattle Geography & Climate
For more information about Seattle
For live cameras on Seattle, the Puget Sound and Washington State

CRITTER STUFF

Anyone who underestimates the intelligence of animals will probably have a hard time embracing this one. I, however, totally loved it and I think most of you will too. It comes to us from England, in the UK, and it’s about a cat who has, since 2007, boarded a bus at the same stop and disembarked, consistently, at the next one, which has a Fish ‘n Chips stand nearby. What I found so cool is that this same site has a story about another cat in Britain who did the same thing. Yep, for this one, go here.

Recommended Related Links:
Go Northwest: Northwest Wildlife Websites
BBC’s wildlife finder
National Geographic Daily News - Animals
Retrieverman’s Weblog: Engaging articles on domestic & wildlife in the American South

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

I have a passion for potatoes that has incited the jealousy of people close to me. Whether it’s my blended Irish and Russian heritage or simply that it’s one of the healthiest foods on the planet and that there is a seemingly infinite variety of ways in which it can be prepared and served, the immutable truth is that I consume at least one spud a day. I found someone, however, who is going on an all-potato diet for awhile. He’s going to eat 20 spuds per diem for two months. He’s the executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission and he’s promoting one of our most important agricultural exports. I applaud his intent but I don’t envy him the experience. There’s only one thing I know of which improves with that much consumption and it’s not a food group. Yep, for the whole story on this one, go here.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Rusty

What is a generation and why is that important now?

2010-09-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, I just read ~ in one of the most respected magazines in North America and certainly one of my favorites ~ an essay entitled The Least We Can Do.

It both excoriated and praised both “the Greatest Generation” and the one it produced, “Baby Boomers.” In four pages, it smacked of every retrospective I’ve ever seen or read and almost every stereotype. Ironically, it ended with a call to action that assumed that either or both generations were responsible for what’s happening now.

With all due respect to my Muscovite mother, that’s guilt tripping and I’m sorry, Masha, that doesn’t work this time. The reality is every generation does the best “it” could, made some inordinate sacrifices, committed some tragic and horrific mistakes and then tried, as best they could, to correct for course. Historically, they are hardly unique and it’s been going on now that way for some while.

This article irritated me because it assumed differences and divisions I don’t see and, for the most part, don’t experience where I live. It’s like the assumptions they’re making and the conundrums they’re posing (and to which I’m apparently expected to respond) and I’m going, “On what planet is this going on and why are you wasting my time with this, again?”

But what really got me? This article ended by saying that if we (the two generations involved) really regretted the mistakes we made, there are several ways, in the few years we have left, by which we could make amends.

Excuse me? Maybe that’s how it works where you live but on the shores of the Salish Sea, it’s just about people of all ages, races, genders and gender preferences, etc. pulling together all the time and as a matter of lifestyle. If you want a slice of that, visit one of our local food banks and see University of Washington students working along side retired people and the spectrum in-between.

Since we’re also ~ albeit sometimes reluctantly, Americans as well, my sense is whether it’s race, religion, political party, etc. as long as we’re going to continue to look for someone to blame ~ rather than, as a nation ~ to accept remediation responsibility, I’m sorry, but at least on this side of the Mississippi, we’re going to have to do better than a generation gap.

IN OTHER NEWS

Last week, we linked you up to a story about a million cars in Canada’s British Columbia province being electric by 2030. In the States, San Francisco is well on its way to making private, single-occupant transportation a last resort. If the tide flows south on this one, even those might hum softly. To my neighbours in Lake Merced and on Geary Street, and to the rest of the Golden Gate, nice going folks. Finest kind. Yep, for the details, go here.

We applaud American television station NBC and their Today Show for a week-long program, “Education Nation,” focused on the crisis in education in the United States. Monday morning, Matt Lauer interviewed President Obama for half an hour in the White House Green Room and unfortunately, blaming the Republicans for the abysmal state academia is in today occupied way too much of that half hour. Partisan politics (again, sigh) notwithstanding, the people of America are galvanizing behind the need to lift their education standards out of the Grand Canyon into which they appear to have sunk. Education Nation offers a fine, comprehensive and well produced overview of how this is happening from Alabama to Wyoming, so yep, for more, go here.

In its ongoing war against terrorism, the American national law enforcement establishment is seeking the same powers to “wiretap” the Internet as they now do telephone and broadband communications. The Obama administration intends to present a comprehensive bill to Congress next year which will require Internet providers who do not have the ability to intercept user communications to acquire it and to be prepared to share the technology if so required by court order. Yep, for more on this one, go here.

Despite our resident cougars’ spin on farmers (see Cougars Corners below), ours here on the shores of the Salish Sea, have been a mainstay of the community since the first plow broke ground. Now, they’re working with local schools to see that some of what they produce winds up in the stomach of our children at lunch. Yep, for the proactive among you, this is a chance to see what they’re doing and how that might fit where you live. So yep, go here for this one.

For those who enjoy a little mudslinging in their politics, it should come as real good news that the Democrats have apparently launched a campaign to discredit the opposition by digging into the pasts of said opponents for sins of the past as it were. This is being ballyhooed as something new in the history of the party and it isn’t. What bothers me is that it’s also the hallmark of a party in disarray, just like an individual who, losing an argument, resorts to name calling and other tactics which have absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at hand. I’m not recommending you go here, but if you want the details, here’s where to find them.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Sometimes, surviving hard times is knowing what not to do and as more and more of us join the Internet to look for work, promote a home business or otherwise engage, this warning about what kinds of websites to avoid certainly seems timely. So yep, for more, go here.

HEALTH NEWS

Okay, even as nutritious conscious as I’ve become, this hit me weird. How many of you have heard of or about kefir, chia and/or purslane? Come on, let’s see a show of hands. One…two…three…wait, you’re putting your hand down, sort’ve. Okay two and a half. And that’s what I thought. According to You Docs Daily, these three foods that most of us have never heard of before are among the most nutritious a human being could eat and they’ve all apparently been around since ancient times. I don’t intend to try any of these personally but I’d be delighted to hear from a more adventurous soul in these regards, especially if you can describe how it tastes in terms of something I might possibly have eaten if I’d grown up in Minneapolis. Here’s the link to what these are and here’s my email address for any comments.

Alzheimer’s is one of the most frightening conditions a human can face and as the largest generation in American history reaches the age of susceptibility, the fact that a drug already being used to treat cancer has also been found to prevent the formation of the plaque which covers the brain cells of those afflicted with what is also known as “dementia” should come as good news. Yep, for more on this, go here.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

Ovarian cancer is particularly insidious because it shows few if any early symptoms. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to diagnose until it has reached the advanced stage. Therefore, a cancer-prevention lifestyle is all the more important. Tomatoes have proven a definite anti-carcinogen and there are two more foods that will really help. For more on this one and to learn about the risk factors and symptoms of ovarian cancer, please go here.

RESOURCES AND RELATED LINKS:
Cancer Research Journal
National Cancer Institute (American)
Fighting Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Survivor Stories
Science Daily: Health & Medicine News
American Cancer Statistics 2009
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009

SEATTLE SCENES

The first day of autumn in Cowen Park
Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller.

Cowen and adjoining Ravenna Park are a ten-minute bike ride from the University of Washington. It’s a fine example of what can happen when the land is preserved in its essentially original state. Off in the distance is the start of a trail which leads down into a ravine and a stretch of northern rain forest. For more on Cowen & Ravenna Parks, go here.

We’re delighted to report that the American Fish & Wildlife Department has initiated a study of species particularly vulnerable to global warming. In conjunction with the US Geological Survey, the Department will also be measuring climate change at eight new stations. According to a US FWD spokesperson, from this, it is expected that a preservation blueprint will be evolved, one benefiting both the land and the species who live on it. Nice going, folks. This is a good example of how I like my tax dollars working.

In their never-ending war to discover how other creatures can serve us, wasps are now being trained to sniff out explosives and toxic chemicals. They’re also being trained to hunt down criminals and ward off intruders. Preliminary trials have proven them just as effective as the dogs that do the brunt of this work. And, of course, they’re a lot cheaper to feed. I imagine the media will eventually leap on this and that within five years or so, we’ll have a television series about Walter, a mild, unassuming, modest yellow jacket who answered the call of his country and became a national hero. Go Walt.

Recommended Related Links:
Go Northwest: Northwest Wildlife Websites
BBC’s wildlife finder
National Geographic Daily News - Animals
Retrieverman’s Weblog: Engaging articles on domestic & wildlife in the American South

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

I have a t-shirt which has survived the second beaching of the Ark and which proudly declares “Real Men Do So Wear Pink”. My passion for the color is local legend so I was a little nonplussed when one of you in the United Kingdom send me this story about an English lady who died her cat’s fur pink. The feline turned up missing for awhile and when discovered ignited the furor of animal lovers throughout the Isles. This is one of those “All Creatures Great & Small” stories so yep, for more, go here.

Well, that’s it for this week. If you’re in a shopping mood and into some interesting choices? We’ve got a “reader stocked” General Store that you might want to check out. We’ve stocked a bit of everything from camping gear and cookware, specialty food items, books, music, films and fun/interesting/weird things that just somehow found their way onto the shelves at night when we were asleep.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Rusty

Computer magnate joins Disney and Armstrong in prestigious Boy Scout Award

2010-09-20T21:48:00.000-07:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, I’m real pleased to report that one of our neighbors has been honored by the Boy Scouts of America in a way that puts him right up there with Walt Disney and Neil Armstrong.

I also love the name of the award this Puget Sounder received. Silver Buffalo so resonates the west. It’s in recognition of his leadership and his philanthropy and it probably also helped that before he became a trans-millennium mover, he was also a Life Time Boy Scout.

I, for one, think he totally deserves this award, the controversies in which he’s also been involved notwithstanding. Despite being one of the richest people in the world, he really hasn’t changed much since the days when his ability to so totally focus that he zoned anything else out earned him a largely unjustified reputation for being arrogantly antisocial and more than a bit the martinet.

It’s been suggested that getting married mellowed him out some but that’s really to not understand his wife Melinda, the concept of soul mates, or the notion that sometimes two very exceptional people who love one another can work as a team and from that union and partnership, create something neither of them alone could have.

So here’s a tip of the working man’s cap to Bill Gates. Nice going, sire, and congratulations, mate.

IN OTHER NEWS

Well, apparently British billionaire and adventurer Sir Richard Branson’s vision of space tourism is catching on. America’s Boeing Aircraft announced last Wednesday that it plans to start its own flights as early as 2015. To see how this is coming together and for an incredible artist’s conception of what the craft involved looks like, yep, go here.

In what could well be the most significant contribution to clean energy since Ben Franklin flew a kite and a key in the rain, researchers at Western Washington University have made a breakthrough in solar energy technology which could cut the cost of that power source to one-tenth its present rate. Nice going, folks. Yep, for more, go here.

This will probably not come as totally good news to global warming denialists of the male gender and may even backfire by pointing to this study and asserting that melting polar ice, etc. is only one of those “female things,” and like “that time of the month,” not to be taken real seriously. I’ll take my chances. The story is headlined “Why American women accept climate change science more than men.”

And for those without that particular hang-up, it must still come as a stretch to read about tornados in New York City. With all you folks have been through back there and especially with the recent commemoration of the worst disaster in your history, I’m amazed at how well you’re taking this. But then you’re the same town that gave us the Statue of Liberty, the Yankees, the Mets and the Jets, right? You’re nothing if not tough then, eh? I’ve got very distant cousins in Flatbush with whom I talk on the phone occasionally. They speak so fast I need to record it and then play it back at half speed. Understandably, they have a problem on their end and that’s not retiring before I, a Pacific Northwesterner, finish a sentence. Across the seven flags which fly above this masthead, then, our hearts and our prayers abide. Yep, for more on why we feel this way, go here.

We’ve been following for several years now the progress that the Canadian province of British Columbia is making in electric transportation, both private and public. According to The Pembia Institute, by 2030, a third of the vehicles on the roads there will be so powered. To see how a million or so of these will be zipping over 365,946 square miles/947,800 square kilometers, yep, go here.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

With one in seven Americans now living in poverty, and jobs ~ good, bad or indifferent still hard for an estimated 45-million ~ tougher to find than they have been in my life time, these three success tips on how to land one during hard times is certainly well worth the read.

With a promised economy recovery simply not happening and the dramatic climate changes bringing unprecedented weather challenges, it hasn’t been a particularly fun time to be a human being. However, as Darwin contended, survival belongs to the adaptable. To see how some of your species mates are making these hard times work for them, please go here.

As we’ve discussed in this column before, one of the ways of surviving hard times is to lower the cost of living and that’s given birth to what some are now calling the “locavore movement,” vis a vis home and community gardens. This idea, however, did not originate with this Recession. Back in the “olden days,” they were called Victory Gardens. To read more about them, yep, go here.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

Prostate cancer is the second most fatal form of this disease in men. There are approximately 200,000 new cases a year, some 32,000 of which (16%) will prove fatal. This strain of it feeds on testosterone and there’s a drug in clinical trials now which denies it what it needs and literally starves it to death. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

Researchers at the British Cancer Institute may have discovered a successful treatment for one of the most aggressive breast cancers, “triple negative.” Some 9,000 women in that country of 51-million, are diagnosed each year. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

HEALTH NEWS

Despite our devotion to them, we never really believed that eating pizza was healthy. But apparently with the right toppings, it can actually be really good for you. Think mushrooms now, folks, and for more, yep, go here.

According to a position paper recently released by the American Dietetic Association, how long one lives may also be a matter of the right genes. Researchers, however, are quick to point out that the personal lifestyle choices an individual makes can have a major impact on longevity, as well. I thoroughly enjoyed this one so yep, for more, go here.

SEATTLE SCENES

I thought for a minute or two that this cloud was about ready to snack on this building. Stranger things have happened on the shores of the Salish Sea.
Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller

How in the world a 1500 lb/680 kg camel came to be in Oregon in the first place was a bit of a stretch for me, even though I lived among those rather interesting folk for over a decade. That the dromedary somehow got itself stuck in a deep sinkhole full of wet clay was easy to imagine. I mean, let’s face it. Mud is not something your average camel probably knows a whole lot about, right? It also does not surprise me that it was successfully rescued. Oregonians may make some weird friends but they are also notorious for taking care of their own. Yep, I loved this one, so please go here.

Biologists in remote Pend Oreille County, Washington ~ situated in the northeast corner west of Idaho and south of British Columbia ~ may be the home of the state’s third breeding wolf pack. Officials trapped and radio tagged a large male gray wolf and now they’re trying to determine if his den is in Canada/British Columbia or America/Washington. Right now, he’s apparently considered a canine without a country. Yep, for more, go here.

Recommended Related Links:
Go Northwest: Northwest Wildlife Websites
BBC’s wildlife finder
National Geographic Daily News - Animals
Retrieverman’s Weblog: Engaging articles on domestic & wildlife in the American South

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

If I wasn’t as much in love with orcas as everyone else on the shores of the Salish Sea, I would think it very weird that a University of Washington research team has come up with a way to photograph these benevolent (if you’re not on their menu) behemoths at night. At first glance, that might seem like an invasion of privacy but the project which produced the technology was initiated at the behest of a local utility district planning a tidal energy project and wanting to make sure the turbines were turned off when our two local orca pods were in the area. This is so totally us. Yep, for the story behind the story, go here.

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for the ear. Before you leave, if you’re in a shopping mood and into some interesting choices? We’ve got a “reader stocked” General Store that you might want to check out. If you’d like to sell something with us or know someone who does, email us at minstrel312@aol.com and we’ll see what we can do.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Rusty

And a tentative peace prevailed

2010-09-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, we’re glad to see that the ninth anniversary of 9/11 passed with relatively no violence. That Florida evangelist minister decided not to hold a rally and burn the Muslim equivalent of the Bible and there were no calls from the Muslim world for a jihad or holy war.

On America’s news and commentary television program Face the Nation the morning after, host Bob Schieffer, in remembering 9/11, remarked about how not only New York City, but the entire nation pulled together, including the American Muslim community. He observed that in the nine years since, we seem to have lost that ability to focus, to unite behind the same threat to the American Way of Life the destruction on September 11, 2001 represented.

He was referring to the Recession, among other things. Mr. Schieffer is not just one of America’s most astute and unbiased political reporters, he is also a student of history. He knows that there are two ways the mightiest of nations can die. They can be conquered from without or they can decay and collapse from within.

If we ~ as Americans ~ cannot put aside those “differences” we think divide us and pull together to end this Recession, provide adequate health care for our population and make peace with our neighbors so that our sons and daughters will not die ~ or in some cases, survive ~ in such far flung and distant lands as Afghanistan and Iraq, all our enemies can pretty much take a holiday.

We will have done to ourselves something in their wildest dreams they could not have done to us. And we will have no one but ourselves to blame for the demise of potentially the greatest democratic republic in the history of humankind and nations.

IN OTHER NEWS

BP has apparently decided that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the result of a chain of mistakes by all of those involved. Skeptics are calling their 103-page report detailing specifics a blueprint of how the industry giant intends to defend itself in future criminal and civil litigation. A source with whom I spoke under condition of anonymity feels that while it may indeed be that, it is also a good look at how this particular fossil fuel gets from gusher to gas tank, as it were. He contends that as such, it might also provide the basis for regulatory review and remedial action, as well. For more and for the report itself, go here.

A tip of the tam as it were to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on his announcement of a new website devoted to green jobs. Called Clean Energy Jobs, it lists 48 programs which provide training for jobs in the recycling, clean transportation and renewable energy jobs and one of its stronger points is that it represents a cooperative and comprehensive effort among community colleges, local workforce investment boards and private industries to meet a growing demand for these positions as California continues to lead the nation in the evolution of an environmentally safe and stable state economy. For more, go here.

If Washington State ever decides to take the face of its American namesake founding father off its flag, there’s a good chance it will be replaced by a salmon. Which salmon ~ chinook, king, sockeye, et all ~ will likely be a matter of some debate. It is to us what beef cattle are to other parts of the country, except that these fish were here long before we arrived. Under these seven flags, everyone has a “salmon.” To see what we’re doing to preserve and perpetuate ours, yep, go here.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Sometimes the most devastating way to NOT survive hard times is to be under informed and to keep trying things that don’t work or looking for jobs that simply are no longer there. Bad news is hard to take on the sunniest of days and there’s an understandable reluctance to look at such things as economic forecasts, job reports and other vital information simply because they’re often depressing. That certainly fits this Associated Press story headlined “Future jobs: More skills or less pay”. I read it, though, and I’m glad I did.

Does having less to spend really need to be a cause for depression, anxiety or loss of self-esteem? Apparently not, according to economics blogger Trent Hamm. His The Simple Dollar column talks about 48 things frugality has taught him. It’s a romp to read and the kind of good-natured approach which could restore thrift to its rightful place as a virtue to be emulated. Yep, go here.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

A much abused and therefore much maligned drug popular during the Sixties is regaining respectability among oncologists. In a small but significant study recently released by a UCLA research team, the psychedelic drug psilocybin, the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms," can improve mood and reduce anxiety and depression in terminal cancer patients. Yep, for more on this one.

This has got to come as good news to breast cancer patients. Malignant cells treated with peach extract or plum extract died but the healthy cells around them did not. This is a dramatic departure from traditional chemotherapy, which eradicates both and in so doing, reduces the body’s ability to fight off other infection. This new treatment also doesn’t involve the level of pain either. Yep, for more on this one.

RESOURCES AND RELATED LINKS:
Cancer Research Journal
National Cancer Institute (American)
Fighting Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Survivor Stories
Science Daily: Health & Medicine News
American Cancer Statistics 2009
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009

HEALTH NEWS

I’m not sure whether this is good news or bad news. Maybe you can help me decide. According to a report released by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), after some 40 years of continual declines, smoking rates among Americans have finally stabilized. What I found both interesting and alarming about this is who still smokes and who’s had the sense to quit. I’m in the process of moving from one to the other so this was particularly interesting to me. Yep, go here.

Okay, this one hit me as weird but then again, it does sometimes pay to keep an open mind, as dangerous as that can also be in this house. Apparently, gin-soaked raisins are effective in easing the pain of arthritis. I’m saying nothing more about this one because this story does it far better than I ever could. Yep, go here.

SEATTLE SCENES

University District Sunset Sky
Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller

We’ve had several requests now for information on creating critter-friendly gardens and mini-wildlife refuges. Depending on where one lives and the extent to which concrete and steel have taken over, it can be as simple as letting the grass grow or as complex as a good family project involving restoring the chosen site to its pre-Industrial Revolution condition. National Wildlife magazine has an outstanding website which seems to cover it all. Yep, go here.

Well, those skeptics of global warming might want to talk to the tens of thousands of walruses which have come ashore in northwest Alaska because the ice they normally hang out on has melted. It’s quite a visual, trust me. For the whole story, yep, go here.

Recommended Related Links:
Go Northwest: Northwest Wildlife Websites
BBC’s wildlife finder
National Geographic Daily News - Animals
Retrieverman’s Weblog: Engaging articles on domestic & wildlife in the American South

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

One of the reasons I enjoy living in Seattle as much as I do is that there is a quiet resonance which, at a time when the world seems so ready to kill for historical precedents, seeks to set things right in that regard, as it were. This story involves a long overdue apology and a wall of remembrance. It’s our way of saying we never want to make this mistake again. It may, as well, explain why we’re not going to be stampeded into bigotry in the name of homeland security. If you’re still curious, yep, go here.

Well, that’s it for this week. Our sincerest thanks to the Albert Coyne Foundation for their generous donation to this week’s Northstar Journal.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Rusty

BLOOD, OIL, GAS & COAL

2010-09-06T23:01:00.000-07:00

Hi again from the Bastion on the Puget Sound. Well, American Gulfporters got yet another heart-stopper this past week. The bad news is a second oil platform exploded. The good news is that there was no loss of life and since it wasn’t pumping anything, no oil or natural gas leaks.

Is it just me or is that still not very reassuring? How safe are the rest of those rigs out there? I’d love to see the actuals on a few of them. I’d also like to know what the industry considers an acceptable risk when they keep men, machinery and materiel on the job for too long.

I have a feeling I’d hear what I’ve heard before, off the record. The demand for the product determines the risk factor. And who determines the demand? We do. For as long as we’ve been using fossil fuels, miners and wildcatters have been dying hard and in inordinate numbers. That doesn’t seem to have mattered very much to us.

If that is, in fact, true ~ particularly in light of the dramatic evolution of renewable options ~ I’m wondering whether the responsibility for dead miners and wildcatters rests with those directly involved or whether it is ours.

Seems to me there’s some blood mixed in with that coal, that oil and that gas. And more than a gallon or so of widow’s tears.

IN OTHER NEWS

Last week, we reported on a rural Washington State school teacher who somehow managed to keep his job after being twice arrested for inappropriately touching his female students. State school superintendent Randy Dorn suspended the teaching license of Michael Moulton, thus ending what victims say is a thirteen-year history of victimizing the most vulnerable. We consider this a totally appropriate intervention by state government and we are actually prouder of that than we are ashamed that in our home state, that this extremely questionable excuse for a decent human being lasted as long as he did in public education. Yep, for more.

This will come as good news to those of us who love organic gardening and consuming the harvest of same. A study recently released by Washington State University (Go Cougars!) confirms that in the case of strawberries, the fruit in “Fruit and Soil Quality of Organic and Conventional Strawberry Agroecosystems, organics are better for both the consumer and the soil in which they are grown. For more on this one.

If you love a good fight for a worthy cause, there’s one shaping up in the interior of Canada’s western province, British Columbia. There’s a proposal to open a new copper mine and the First Nations are opposing it fiercely. To see what North America’s original environmentalists are doing to make a stand, please go here.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

We’ve spent a lot of time ~ and based on your emails, appropriately so ~ on the more hands-on, non-cyber aspects of surviving hard times. But I got to thinking that those of us who have access to the Net also have ways to generate an income. In my house, it’s another sugar can. I have a potential client now who produces fine walking sticks, flutes and stone sculptures. He’s also soon going to be teaching a course in the last one. The first photo below is the stone he found. The second is what it told him it wanted to be.

He’s also a performing musician who loves demonstrating the instruments he makes. I started out in life in the same art and trust me, he’s good. He’s not interested in being famous but he wouldn’t mind some land on this side of the mountains, his own place, replete with a studio where he and his protoges can create good music. He also wants a workshop for his walking sticks and stone sculptures.

Most of all, he wants an all-weather place of his own to market what he produces. That’s “real time” we’re talking about here. He’s fully aware that yard sales, flea markets, etc. are not going to help much in those regards.

By his own admission, he is totally Internet challenged. He does, however, recognise the value of online marketing. He’s got the stuff and all he really needs is to be promoted honestly and appropriately out there in Cyber Land. That’s what I’m doing and it’s worth 20% commission to him.

We’re talking website creation and networking. And yep, I’m also teaching him how to do it. Nobody lives forever and he’s perfectly capable of doing the whole nine yards himself. It’s just part of the learning curve.

And yep, since I’m also a novelist with a book for sale, I’m hoping for an ‘agent’ with as much enthusiasm for that one admittedly modest attempt at literature of mine as I have a profound appreciation of his art.

This link I found talks about a lot more ways to use the Net to make money. So yep, for this one, go here.

ON THE CANCER FRONT

This has got to be good news not only for those suffering from an admittedly rare form of cancer (tracheal) but, by implication, for all transplant patients. In this specific case, it’s essentially a donated windpipe using the patient’s implanted healthy stem cells to generate tissue which more closely resembles what it is replacing. Yep, we’re talking about dramatically reducing the risk of transplant rejection of other organs, as well. For more on this one, please go here.

RESOURCES AND RELATED LINKS:
Cancer Research Journal
National Cancer Institute (American)
Fighting Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Survivor Stories
Science Daily: Health & Medicine News
American Cancer Statistics 2009
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009

HEALTH NEWS

Good health really can be fun, as I learned once again at this website entitled Froot Facts. Did you know, for instance, that whenever you munch down on a stalk of celery, you’re eating what the ancient Greeks awarded the winners of sporting events? This is another great reference, as well, for parents to motivate their kids to eat what’s good for them. Yep, for this one, please go here.

Eating healthy foods can also be budget enhancing and according to a recent Public Health Nutrition study, one dish is as cheap as fifteen cents American. Without realizing it, we’ve been eating like this for years and our doctor, who has two kids still in college, hates us. We are contributing nothing to their education expenses. The folks at the Farmer’s Market and the PCC Co-Op, however, love us to death. Yep, for more on this one, please go here.

SEATTLE SCENES

The University District Farmers Market, Seattle, Washington

Photo by Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller

SUMMER GUIDE: Let us steer you to the best beaches, festivals and fun.

SEATTLE FACTS AND FIGURES
Seattle Rainfall in Comparison To Other US Cities
Seattle Geography & Climate
For more information about Seattle
For live cameras on Seattle, the Puget Sound and Washington State

CRITTER STUFF

Ralph

Sasha

I’ve mentioned before that Northstar’s household is critter friendly and I’ve regaled you folks with stories and video of the bears, cougars, bobcats, and bald eagles “taking back the ‘hood’” as it were out here. I almost had myself convinced it was a “Northwest thing,” so I’m delighted to report that there’s a borough in New York City undergoing an ‘invasion’ of raccoons. Yep, check it out here. (And Ralph says hello.) If it’s happening anywhere else under these seven flags, we’d love to hear about it, with a link and permission to share. Email us here then.

Well, given what we’ve reported about dolphins and sea lions being trained to protect the American portion of the Salish Sea (Greater Puget Sound), it comes as good news of sorts to learn that the American government is tightening up regulations around what is appropriate killer whale watching. Us being who we are, however, we’ll go along with it until the first time there’s a military incident in these waters. Then, you will not be able to keep us off of them. This is our home and theirs as well, so if you want to engage in this stupidity, take it outside. You’ve got the whole Pacific Ocean for this. We really don’t need this in our backyard.

Recommended Related Links:
Go Northwest: Northwest Wildlife Websites
BBC’s wildlife finder
National Geographic Daily News - Animals
Retrieverman’s Weblog: Engaging articles on domestic & wildlife in the American South

YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP

For as much as we call for an accounting of human weirdness in this column, we are nonetheless constantly on the lookout for those individuals and behaviours which ennoble the species and address the compassion, the charity, the strength of character and the integrity which is also part of the gene pool of our species. This story comes from “east of the mountains,” as we refer to that part of our state which lies on that side of the Cascades. It is headlined “German woman gets to thank Portland woman in person for post-WWII CARE packages”. Seattle Times reporter Erik Lacitis is one of the finest chroniclers of life here on the shores of the Salish Sea and he’s crafted a powerful, moving and penultimately inspiring story of friendship and love. Yep, go here.

The Northstar Journal is funded by contributions from readers like yourself. If you enjoyed this edition and would like to contribute to the next, please click the donate button below.

Rusty

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Rusty