JOE BIDEN GOES ELECTRIC, AMERICA HELD SPELLBOUND BY A JERK, AUSTRALIAN LEECH HELPS SOLVE OLD CRIME

Colorful Biker has electric motor for that uphill oomph
Photo by MS(R)M

Hi again and yep, from the ramparts of the Bastion on the Puget Sound, it’s been another interesting week. Well, I don’t know about the rest of you but I haven’t paid a lot of attention to American vice-president Joe Biden since the election. Second bananas have never impressed me a lot.

Joe looks a lit-tle like Spiro Agnew, except that he keeps his hands in his own pockets. Unlike another vice president, Dick Cheney, Joe’s not a disciple of Prince Machiavelli and unlike Richard Nixon, he doesn’t have five o’clock shadow and I’ve never seen a photograph of him doing stupid things with a beagle. Oh and yeah, unlike Dan Quayle, Joe also appears to have mastered high school level spelling and grammar. So the fact that he’s a bit banal and off the scope doesn’t bother me.

I owe American Vice-President Joe Biden an apology, big time, and from now on, I’m paying more attention to him. He took a plan which originated in Berkeley, California and developed it on a national level. As San Francisco Chronicles reporter Carolyn Jones explains:

Biden's program, known as Recovery Through Retrofit, creates a framework for cities, counties and states to set up tax districts that allow residential and business property owners to install solar panels and make other energy improvements, repaying the investment over a 20-year property tax assessment.

Well, to no one’s surprise, I imagine, the swine flu is certainly impacting the way Americans live. I was in our local Safeway (chain grocery store) the other day and all of the checkers and baggers had blue surgical gloves on. A spokesperson for the store explained that there wasn’t really an official policy in place but that Safeway employees were encouraged to take appropriate steps to protect the health of themselves and their customers. The New York Times has a splendid and informational overview on this from a national perspective. Please go here.

The swine flu vaccine is now available to Canadians after Ottawa this week approved a strain of it for its citizens. Two million doses have already been shipped to the provinces and territories and two to three million a week will be distributed until the entire country is protected. Canada has a population of about 33-million.

Well, a study in Japan apparently proves that chimpanzees are capable of being nice to one another without being trained to do so. Researchers term the behavior “human-like altruism,” which sort of has me shaking my head a little. While I grant you that we are capable of considerable kindness to one another, we have also devised more ways to tease, taunt, insult, exploit, injure maim, torture, kill and annoy each other than any species – flora, fauna or hybrid – in the history of the planet and, I suspect the universe. So while I applaud the behaviour, I’m not quite up to slandering the chimpanzee by suggesting that compassion and generosity are necessarily intrinsic human traits. I suspect we learned such behaviour from high mountain gorillas, when the gorillas were in exceptionally good form.

If I didn’t live in a state whose unofficial “creature” is the banana slug, this second critter feature would tweak me a little. But in happened in Australia, where everything is upside down to begin with. Nine years ago, Tasmanian police investigated the scene of the robbery of a 71-year-old woman. At the scene they found a leech and extracted from it a sample of the blood it was engorged with for a DNA profile. When Peter Cannon was arrested on an unrelated crime last year, they took a sample of his DNA and lo and behold (I like saying that), the match placed him at the scene of that earlier crime and he pleaded guilty to it this week. Yep, I know. So check it out here. And yep, sounds like television series material to me; CSI Down Under and g’day, mate.
We mentioned last week that Vancouver, our sister city to the north, is preparing for a significant increase in electric cars thanks to a deal worked out with Nissan and endorsed by both Victoria and Ottawa. The U.S. federal government has decided to fund a project expected to put 1,000 quiet autos in the Puget Sound area and provide an “electric corridor” on Interstate Five from Eugene (mid-Oregon) to Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Washington was among five states involved in a study on the feasibility of “electrification” through a $100 million grant from the Department of Energy under the economic recovery program. For more about this one, please go here.

I used to live in Southern California back when smog and banal weather were still major pains in the psyche. One of the reasons I survived the last of my Navy enlistment and my university schooling down there was the Los Angeles Times and it’s “only the LAT could get away with this” headlines. This one got me going because I also like bicycles but I’m not a fanatic about them. I loved having one built for two and a significant other who loved to pedal. That meant that going uphill, I didn’t need to, and I’m sorry. I admit that’s not very cavalier but it is how my mind works. That’s the teaser. Check out the story here under “Electric bikes are all green (colors vary)”

And finally, since one of you asked me what I thought of that Colorado publicity junkie, his family and his balloon, I think he needs the services of a mental health professional and his kids a better paternal role model. I think that not only should he be required to pay back every cent of the cost of rescue, he should have to give all of us held spellbound and aching of heart by that particular dog and pony show $10 an hour for that monumental waste of time. I also think he should be required to spend 20 hours a week community service time over-dubbing Billy Mays infomercials. It’s creepy watching a dead guy promote stuff for $19.95 and this other jackass would make a nice addition to the weird team.

Well, that’s it for this week, folks. Take care, stay well and thanks once again for the ear.

Rusty


NORTHSTAR RECOMMENDS

TO YOUR HEALTH
If you’d like to know whether your eating habits are either adding years to your life or taking them off, take this RealAge quiz. It will not only score your real age against your health age but give you a program for improvement. I’ve been working this one for about a month now and yep, I feel a lot better.

Want to know how to live to be 100? Try this one.

Ever had trouble getting behind eating a lot of fruits and vegetables despite how good they are for you? Ever had trouble selling that one to your kids and grandkids? Ever been totally sold on the idea then gone to the market and been totally tasered by the price of good health in some places? If your answer is yes to any or all of the above, you really need to check this site out. Fruits and veggies: more matters.

ONLINE TOOLS FOR THE KIT
Free People Search – This is an American online White Pages that I found really simple, quick and user friendly. I looked for myself under the several versions of my name and it found them all. It’s also free and doesn’t involve anything to download.

Know Thy Elected Officials - Just type in your zip code and this site will supply you with the names and contact information for your legislators from the state level up. This is a two click site with a host of other relevant features.

MEDIA
BBC – Best source for international news

Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean – Live from the smallest record store in North America. Canadian humor, entertainment and commentary at its maple leaf best. Popular on National Public Radio in the States.

Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool) – The “United Press International/Reuters of the American West”. Updated and informative news shorts with links to the source. Its editors draw from a coverage area which includes Alaska, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. They also put out an excellent weekly environmental edition.

U Got Style is a monthly ezine dedicated to independent films. Fully illustrated, it features hard news, interviews, reviews and a wide variety of other information. It’s also fun to read.

The Vancouver Sun -- outstanding source for Canadian and world news.

TALENT FOR HIRE
Rusty Miller, Freelance Photojournalist – Whether it’s a one time press release, book or product review, difficult business correspondence, resume or classified ad composition you need, take a look at the services offered menu on my writer-for-hire homepage and we’ll get together on it.

Are you a travel editor looking for color shots of Seattle? Are you an art dealer looking for new work to carry on consignment? You might enjoy checking out a gallery of my work for sale

AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT WINS THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE, ELECTRIC CARS COME TO CANADA, AND ALASKA’S SEA OTTERS GET A SECOND CHANCE

Photo courtesy of National Geographic and David Menke/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Alaska sea otter now has “a fighting chance

Hi again and yep, from the ramparts of the Bastion on the Puget Sound, it’s been another interesting week. I was real pleased to note that eleven Americans, including Barack Obama, were among this year’s Nobel Prize winners.

This U.S. president joins peers Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter in this regard. History records that the American public did not totally endorse the selection of these two men at the time either. But the Nobel Prize is also the voice of the international community and for a glimpse of what they think of Barack Obama abroad, you might just want to go here.

As we mentioned last week, Seattle’s bracing for an onset of the swine flu and the teamwork among health care providers, the media and the general public is just short of awesome. Overlake Hospital, for example, is providing its pregnant patients free flu shots.

And to make sure this doesn’t turn into a Puget Sound version of a buffalo stampede, Jean Enerson, our NBC affiliate’s veteran health reporter and herself a cancer survivor (October is Breast Cancer Awareness month in the United States) has provided us with an excellent article on the reality of what we’re dealing with. It’s headlined The H1N1swine flu shot - separating fact from fiction.

Well, we’ve got two critter stories for you this week. This first one is not about bears and mountain lions reclaiming the ‘hood but about this weird thing Puget Sound owls go through every fall. These normally unobtrusive and extremely useful nocturnal feathered rodent control machines become very territorial and extremely aggressive in the protection of said turf. Several joggers in our parks here have been attacked, along with their dogs, but since this is annual behaviour, there’s been no backlash. We just avoid the parts of the parks the owls call home until after Halloween, when our feathered neighbors have chilled out. To me, it’s another example of inter-species cooperation and I totally love it. For a video on this one, please go here.

And in another outstanding example of what a government bureaucracy can do when the people running it have heart and conscience, the once endangered sea otters are no longer facing extinction. The U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife has designated over 5,000 square miles in the Aleutian Islands, the Bering Sea and the Alaska Peninsula as protected habitat for these truly ingenuous and smallest of marine mammals. Rebecca Noblin, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, explained that providing an endangered species critical habitat gives them, “a fighting chance of recovery.”

In a couple of years, the streets, roads and highways of Vancouver, Victoria and other parts of Canada’s British Columbia province are going to be a lot quieter and a lot cleaner thanks to an agreement reached earlier this month between the Renault-Nissan Alliance, the province, the city of Vancouver and B.C. Hydro.

Canada’s been moving in this direction for some time now with both the technology and the legislation necessary to establish electrical recharging stations using either 120V or 240V. Vancouver, like Seattle, is installing hundreds of these and there’s been no talk yet about charging drivers of vehicles like Nissan’s LEAF or those hybrids which run on electricity and then switch over to either gasoline or ethanol when the battery runs out of charge. Seattle this year also entered into a similar agreement with the Renault-Nissan Alliance.

Canada’s Architects For Humanity (AFH) is tackling the issue of urban density and using Vancouver as a laboratory of sorts. They’re calling for designs for homes that can be constructed in about the square area of two parking spaces (about 19 feet by 19 feet). New Science reporter Tom Simonite interviewed one of the organizers of the competition about what the AFH hopes to accomplish and it’s pretty simple. Even the most crowded cities have unused space too small for more conventional housing or commercial units. Compact, energy efficient and environmentally appropriate dwellings could provide additional residential options. For the interview itself and a look at the winning designs, please go here.

And yep, it’s also under the category of “Probably Only In Seattle Might This Possibly Work,” the merchants and landlords of Belltown have decided that playing classical music through outside speakers will discourage crime in the neighborhood. You guys still accuse me of making this stuff up so check it.

I’m thinking, if this was East LA or some other interesting places I’ve lived, no way, Jim. And here in Seattle? If it was worth it, these criminals would either take a music appreciation class, ignore it, or get together and short circuit the speakers.

Sigh. I’ve lived here for twenty years. The crime rate in Belltown is going down. I don’t claim to understand this stuff and this is a good example of why. But, like Grandpa Seamus used to say, “If it’s working, do not fix it.” If any of you decide to try it, let me know. I can always use more weird in my life.

Well, that’s it for this week folks. Take care, stay well and once again, thanks for the ear.

Rusty

NORTHSTAR RECOMMENDS

TO YOUR HEALTH
If you’d like to know whether your eating habits are either adding years to your life or taking them off, take this RealAge quiz. It will not only score your real age against your health age but give you a program for improvement. I’ve been working this one for about a month now and yep, I feel a lot better.

Want to know how to live to be 100? Try this one.

Ever had trouble getting behind eating a lot of fruits and vegetables despite how good they are for you? Ever had trouble selling that one to your kids and grandkids? Ever been totally sold on the idea then gone to the market and been totally tasered by the price of good health in some places? If your answer is yes to any or all of the above, you really need to check this site out. Fruits and veggies: more matters.

ONLINE TOOLS FOR THE KIT
Free People Search – This is an American online White Pages that I found really simple, quick and user friendly. I looked for myself under the several versions of my name and it found them all. It’s also free and doesn’t involve anything to download.

Know Thy Elected Officials - Just type in your zip code and this site will supply you with the names and contact information for your legislators from the state level up. This is a two click site with a host of other relevant features.

MEDIA
KING 5 NEWS – for a good window on Seattle, the Puget Sound and the Pacific Northwest.

BBC – Best source for international news

Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean – Live from the smallest record store in North America. Canadian humor, entertainment and commentary at its maple leaf best. Popular on National Public Radio in the States.

Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool) – The “United Press International/Reuters of the American West/ Updated and informative news shorts with links to the source. Its editors draw from a coverage area which includes Alaska, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Update and informative collected news shorts from those sources. They also put out an excellent weekly environmental edition.

U Got Style is a monthly ezine dedicated to independent films. Fully illustrated, it features hard news, interviews, reviews and a wide variety of other information. It’s also fun to read.

The Vancouver Sun, outstanding source for Canadian and world news.

TALENT FOR HIRE
Rusty Miller, Freelance Photojournalist – Whether it’s a one time press release, book or product review, difficult business correspondence, resume or classified ad composition you need, take a look at the services offered menu on my writer-for-hire homepage and we’ll get together on it.

Are you a travel editor looking for color shots of Seattle? Are you an art dealer looking for new work to carry on consignment? You might enjoy checking out a gallery of my work for sale

GOODBYE, EUNICE, WE WILL MISS YOU; HILLARY, PLEASE CHILL & THREE NEW CRITTER STORIES

The ATNMBL isn't just "green;" it's intelligent.

Well, hi again, folks. We note with both pride and a profound sense of loss, the passing of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of the Special Olympics and the younger of the two sisters of Joe, Jr., John, Robert and Ted Kennedy.

She was a feminist long before it was acceptable and the influence she wielded among her brothers was totally in keeping with her intelligence, her compassion, her passion for justice, and her political savvy. It was said that even the Machiavellian Kennedy patriarch, Joe, Sr., considered her a force to be reckoned with.

Her marriage to Sargent Shriver, founder of the Peace Corps., produced a daughter who in many ways embodies what Eunice was and what she sought to bring to the world. After a very successful career as a television journalist, Maria Shriver Schwarzenegger went on to support her Republican husband in his bid for the governorship of California. Eunice, a lifelong Democrat, was right there for both of them, demonstrating perhaps that at least for the Irish, blood is thicker than even politics.

And we certainly hope that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is feeling better now than she did Monday, when at a town hall meeting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she fielded that question about her husband or President Obama, depending on which of several versions of this incident one accepts, by pulling off her translation head phone and snapping, "I will you tell you my opinion, I'm not going to channel my husband."

Understood, Madam Secretary, and good call. But the context begs some. This was an African student and a translator, both from a dominantly male culture, and I don’t think it was WHAT you said that made the press, but rather how you said it. I’m sure by now you’ve had some cause to pause on the difference between those who disagree with you and those who are simply trying to understand you.

That would certainly be in character with the Hillary Clinton I feel I know and whom I am profoundly honoured to have representing America. I don’t think about Bill when I watch you moving out on that international stage. And in my heart of hearts, I don’t think most of us do.

So with all due respect, Lass? Could you just chill a little in this regard? We need you too much for you to be worried about something as inconsequential as your husband having the license to be a good EX-president.

Hillary, I don’t know if you remember during your presidential campaign, one night you were in Minneapolis and at a sports bar when a wee small darkhaired woman with a brogue as thick as green butter introduced herself and said that she was sorry that you were wasting a handshake on someone who couldn’t legally vote for you because she’s not from this country. From her account, your eyes twinkled and you smiled.

“Siobhan, you may not be able to vote for me yourself, but you certainly know people who can.”

In my humble opinion, Madam Secretary, it was a good call then and it’s still a good call. We know the difference between Hillary and Bill. For the sake of this country and some for the world, I hope you’ve really figured it out too.

Well, this is where the critter news gets to happen and there’s more than one this time. And it sure looks to us like they’re taking over the ‘hood as it were and in some ironic places.

Check out this mouse who made a nest of twenty-dollar bills in an ATM machine in a rural town in Oregon. There are lots of places waaaay too tempting to go with that one and I’m sure that no matter how many of them I might go, they won’t nearly do justice to the readership. So have fun with this one, yahoos and yahoo-ettes.

And as if some non-nature types didn’t have enough to worry about with Seattle’s suburbs acclimating to bear and mountain lion, now the bobcats are moving back home.

And this last one (for this week) that I truly love because it’s happening not too far from a place I’ve lived and also because it’s another Canadian point of entry, is that apparently owls are attacking joggers on the Anacortes Community Forest Lands, a site set aside for them and other species in the first place.

What’s weird is that apparently these attacks have been going on from Vashon Island, in the heart of Seattle’s Elliott Bay, to Vancouver, BC, over the last ten years. And now they’re on the increase. And there doesn’t seem to be any scientific explanation for it.

I can think of one line of critter reasoning that MIGHT explain it. “It wasn’t your land to take away from us in the first place. Thanks for correcting for course. Now please stop running through our living room.”

It’s also not lost on me that these attacks are occurring during daylight hours and owls are nocturnal. I guess I’d be kind of grouchy if my sleep was disturbed by a bunch of owls flapping around in my house in the middle of the night. I’m not real happy when Ralph the Raccoon shows up at three a.m. with some buddies in a party mood.

But this is, after all, the Puget Sound, where earthquakes, volcanoes, Boeing, Microsoft, rain and hot summers are just another day in the life of, along with the critter invasion and eight different microclimates within the city limits. There’s something to be said for a place where all you’ve got to do to escape the hottest day on record is to go for a short walk and then go swimming. And nude if you want to. (Judah, please do not EVEN go there with this, “If you don’t put a bathing suit on your pets and stuff.” Understood, Lass)

And for the technologically enthusiastic among us, here’s an electric car that thinks for itself? Admittedly, it’s not built for speed but for surviving gridlock which is to say this little pup will, according the ABC New Technology and Science reporters Ki Mae Heussner, Liam Berkowitz and Dean Praetorius, “not only help navigate through traffic, but will also let passengers surf the Internet from the road.”

Why do I have a problem with this vision of all these people cell phoning, twittering, doing family stuff, running a home business and making all the decisions that are made online from a STATIONARY position, being made on a freeway in a rainstorm with several thousand other people depending on a car and a computer not to crash into one another? Good luck with that one. If I need to do that, someone else drives. Smiling. For more on this one, check out their homepage.

And under a final economic note and with special significance to America’s relationship with her neighbour to the (true) north, Canada just signed a deal with Boeing for 15 Chinook helicopters and at a price tag of $1.5 billion.

Despite the fact that this deal won’t produce any jobs here in the Puget Sound, it does strongly suggest to me that economic recovery is not just about one’s home. These jobs are going to the Rust Belt and maybe it’s just me, but I figure that what helps one American find work during these hard times helps all of us over the long haul.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Just FYI, this blog now reaches some 400 of you, by mailing list, in the States, Canada, the UK and France. Your emails, your IMs, the links and photos you send, it’s an impressive interaction for an enterprise as modest as ours. Perhaps even more impressive is the spirit you’re demonstrating.

You’re showing pretty good out there, folks, and we here at Northstar are honoured by your society. I wish I’d had a few more of you on a couple of teams in a long ago war. A few more of us would have made it back and in better shape. Thank you for being here now, for us and for one another.

Thanks again for the ear then. Take care, stay well and God Bless. Until next week, have a good one and keep the faith.

Rusty


FROM YOU GUYS:

Hi Rusty,
There are a few things you have to know about goats. These are the following;
1. They eat all day and they poop all day and very non selective. The will eat you if you let them.
their poop is circular and spreads like raisins dropped by a helicopter. It is a vegetarian poop so it does not stink much. lol
2. If you wear a green skirt you better run. It is a skirt chaser, lol
3. It has horns for a reason so don’t even stop them from grass munching.
4. If you imitate the sound of a baby goat you will give new meaning to Mother and baby goat opera.
5. If you have decided you have enough of goats...you can eat them but cooking
might take awhile and the meat does not smell like beef. lol
6. Finally, if you decided to pass the experience to a friend, goats usually just have one or two or three goats at a time. If you really love your friends see goat virtues above. lol
Maya (MRUHlOl3@aol.com)

Maya, I imagine Judah’s reading this even as we speak. Do I expect it to deter her in these regards? Ummmmm, nope. As a kid, she used to leap over dollhouses and race electric trains. IF she decides to get the goats, she’ll have them all over Las Vegas within a year and within a year after that, she’ll have one on the City Seal. She is nothing if not ambitious. Rusty

NORTHSTAR RECOMMENDS

Other Blogs
The Tomatoman Times – a life commentary blog with the blended stylings of John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Jack London and Will Rogers. Poignant, at times rancorous but very contemporary and ultimate celebration.

Lords and Ladies of Leisure is sooooo misnamed and it’s an example of the humour with which a Seattle high tech victim deals with the wonderful world of unemployment. Kerri Marshall’s admittedly offbeat sense of humour spices up a blog also rich in practical advice. The comments from her readers are almost as entertaining of she is. If you’ve got a few minutes and want a little perspective on your own hard times, I highly recommend this one.

Ask Barbie, Advice Columnist. -- a blog that delivers the amiable maternalism of Ms. Landers, the slightly off-centre humour of Erma Bombeck and the ingenuousness of an unreconstructed romantic with no axes to grind.

Media
Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean – Live from the smallest record store in North America. Canadian humor, entertainment, and commentary at its maple leaf best. Popular on National Public Radio in the States.

Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool) – The “United Press International/Reuters of the American West/ Updated and informative news shorts with links to the source. Its editors draw from a coverage area which includes Alaska, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Update and informative collected news shorts from those sources. They also put out an excellent weekly environmental edition.

U Got Style is a monthly ezine dedicated to independent films. Fully illustrated, it features hard news, interviews, reviews and a wide variety of other information. It’s also fun to read.

The Vancouver Sun, outstanding source for Canadian and world news.

Online Tools for the Kit
Free People Search – This is an American online White Pages that I found really simple, quick and user friendly. I looked for myself under the several versions of my name and it found them all. It’s also free and doesn’t involve anything to download.

Talent For Hire
Rusty Miller, Freelance Photojournalist -- Yep, a little self-promotion here to help pay for the blog. Take a look at the services offered menu on my writer-for-hire homepage and samples of my digital lens work on my photography website. If you see something you like, email me and we’ll get together on it.

Are you a travel editor looking for colour shots of Seattle? Are you an art dealer looking for new work to carry on consignment? You might enjoy checking out a gallery of my work for sale.


COMING ATTRACTIONS

In the weeks to come, we’re going to create ~ in addition to Northstar Recommends ~ a Northstar General Store in which you, the readers, will have an opportunity to market your own goods and services and, as well, to shop here. We’re going to get real creative with this and whenever possible, we’ll have tried what we’re carrying on the shelves, as it were. We’ll be taking a straight ten percent for this, via Paypal. We’ll also consider barter and trade.

If you’ve got any recommendations of your own and are interested in the General Store, email me and we’ll talk.

GOVERNOR PALIN, LIGHTNING SURVIVORS AND A NEW JERSEY BEAR WITH A PASSION FOR HOAGIES

This nice lady and her dog very graciously posed for me in Seattle's University District. Photo by MS(R)M

Well, hi again, folks. It’s been a real interesting week on the political scene, eh? Sarah Palin decided to resign as Alaska’s governor amid speculation she’s preparing for higher office. That, coupled with her media-wide tete to tete with a highly respected comedian who is living proof that if you run your mouth long enough, it better be big enough for both feet (Know THAT one well), she’s managed to capture the spotlight brilliantly.

I’m sorry but I’m okay with that. If that’s what the public needs right now to cope with all this other “interesting stuff,” Sarah’s one of the best shows in town. And it’s admission free. Sarah, for some reason, reminds me of someone I dated back when chivalry was still an overcoat across a puddle.

She was a beautiful lass, this one, with a lot going for her. But she was extremely concerned about her health and had a real sincere and independent interest in things involving medicine, health, etc. She was also acutely empathetic and had a habit of acquiring personal symptoms from a spectrum of sources.

I happened to know a doctor with an extra big heart and I suggested she might want to talk to him to see if he could help her deal with her apparent hypochondria. Yep, you’re way ahead of me. She ran off with the doctor and they’re living happily ever after.

Sarah Palin reminds me of Shakespeare’s classic use of fools. It’s one thing to act like one. It’s an entirely different matter to be one. And the Bard knew something the younger of the Smothers Brothers played to the hilt. We all love watching a fool, don’t we?

If Governor Palin indeed IS a fool ~ and before any of the Conservative readership starts trumpeting or the Liberals braying, I said IF she’s a fool ~ look at the attention she’s getting and ask yourself, for one fleeting second, what that says about those of us who keep her in that spotlight in the first place. Personally, I’m off the hook. I’m just here for the company and the free popcorn. Aaaand moving right along here and stuff.

This past Fourth of July proved, despite a statewide ban on private fireworks, a little more dazzling than most of us would have liked, I suspect, for a Washington State couple who pulled their car over during a thunderstorm and still got hit by lightning when a bolt ricocheted off a tree and into their rig. The vehicle in question suffered two flat tires and a fried ignition system. The couple were unharmed but, I rather imagine, some thoughtful about such arcane matters as luck, Fate and that ubiquitous and all-encompassing, “sometimes ‘stuff’ just happens.”

This week’s critter story poses a couple of unique demographic/cultural challenges for me because while, on the one hand, it involves a bear, it’s about one “east of the mountains,” as we say here. That’s a term that we use locally to describe that part of Washington state on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains. In a broader sense, it can include everything up to and including the Atlantic Seaboard.

I have a native Northwesterner’s mixed feelings about people from the East Coast. I admire and respect especially New Yorkers. I have cousins in Flatbush with whom I speak occasionally and while they talk so fast that I have to record them and then play it back at half speed, they suggest, and perhaps rightfully so, that they could retire before I finish a sentence.

On the other hand, considering I can get mugged by a squirrel for a peanut butter sandwich at the Washington State Convention Center and yet never have been bitten, clawed, scratched or really inconvenienced by anything in the Deep Woods or the Seattle suburbs from a cougar to a lost topcutter (lumberjack/timber jockey) on payday Friday night strongly suggests to me that I’d last about 15 seconds on the wild streets of the Big Apple.

That having been said, when 9/11 happened, like much of the rest of the world, I raged, wept and rose up in unmitigated and unqualified admiration for those alleged victims/survivors. There was nothing ‘victim’ about the emergency personnel and the ‘average’ New Yorker to suggest running away or amok with this. They dug out the living, buried the dead, held the requiems, repaired, reinforced and rebuilt. They vowed it would not happen again in their city and it has not.

I’ve spoken with several friends who survived the Blitz bombing of London during World War II and the more recent terrorist attack on their subway system. The most succinct but perhaps profound expression of empathy and identification came from a Manchester-born cabbie who said, “Every once in awhile, I almost feel like inviting a Yank home to tea. As long as he’s not from bloody Boston.” Has he done so yet? I don’t know. I think I knew better than to ask? Eh?

We need to say thanks to the reader from Vancouver, British Columbia who sent us this photo and story about Canada’s preparation for electric transport. The picture portrays what looks like an ordinary gasoline/petrol pump replete with hose and nozzle. Except these are designed to keep engine blocks from freezing during extremely cold weather.

The same 120-volts can be used to recharge hybrids, which only use their motors at low speeds before the engine kicks in, and ‘true’ electrics which only have an electric motor. I’d suggest a term like Canadian Ingenuity and come up with the French equivalent. I am bilingual but I am not fluent in French and I have too much respect for you folks to even make the attempt. However, I still think it’s a good idea and Seattle’s had recharging stations for about as long as we’ve had electric buses.

And definitely under the category of “Just No Pleasing Some Folks,” it appears that some concern has been raised that electric cars are too quiet. I didn’t particularly like the stealth/terrorist lead on this story but this is the New York Times and they do that sometimes. I got passed that quickly and I see some legitimacy to the fear that the blind may not hear them coming or that other ambient noise may totally muffle the noise of, let’s say, a Prius.

Two things bother me about the time and energy involved in this one. Because of the sensory compensation factor, most blind people hear better than those of us with sight. Second of all, if they can put a bell on a bicycle and chirping birds on a crosswalk sign (Seattle), it doesn’t seem like a monumental engineering challenge to put a voice on quiet car.

It also probably wouldn’t hurt most big city pedestrians to pay a little more attention to what’s going on around them in general. Having gotten so lost in thought myself that I almost got broadsided by a Metro bus in rush hour, again, voice of experience suggesting here. It is one thing to focus. It is another to get yelled at by a public transportation driver who can cuss the bark off a birch in three languages. Slow learning curve but I do have one. Sometimes. Nevermind. I digress.

And finally, our gratitude (I think) to the reader who sent us the Crosscut.com article headlined “the many uses of manure”. I’m not quite sure on what or how many levels we’re supposed to take that but it was an interesting read.

Manure’s been used for a long time here to generate gas for heating, etc. but now apparently, the methane itself can be used to generate electricity. Thanks to the Bonnieville Power Administration, electricity in the Pacific Northwest is incredibly cheap so thus far, it hasn’t been cost effective.

However, that could certainly change and this is in keeping with the general trend here toward integrated energy sources. It’s like a spare parachute; nice to have just in case and it might as well be one you either packed yourself or wasn’t packed by an angry spouse or someone who owes you a lot of money.

On that note, that’s it for this week. Take care, stay well, God Bless and thanks once again for the ear.

Rusty


NORTHSTAR RECOMMENDS

The Tomatoman Times – a life commentary blog with the blended stylings of John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Jack London and Will Rogers. Poignant, at times rancorous but very contemporary and an ultimate celebration.

Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean – Live from the smallest record store in North America. Canadian humour, entertainment and commentary at its maple leaf best. Popular on National Public Radio in the States.

Ask Barbie, Advice Columnist. -- a blog that delivers the amiable maternalism of Ms. Landers, the slightly off-centre humour of Erma Bombeck and the ingenuousness of an unreconstructed romantic with no axes to grind.

Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool) – The United Press International/BBC/CBC/Reuters of the American Northwest. Delivered by email to subscribers and available on their web site, they offer news shorts with links to the source. Its editors draw from a coverage area which includes Alaska, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. They also put out an excellent weekly environmental edition. And they’re growing.

U Got Style.com – Those of you involved in or aficionados of independent films and the arts in general will totally love this one. The writing is lively, the interviews engaging, the artwork original and occasionally delightfully retro. Definitely worth checking out.

Rusty Miller, Freelance Photojournalist -- Yep, a little shameless self-promotion here to help pay for the blog. Take a look at the services offered menu on my writer-for-hire homepage and samples of my digital lens work on my photography website. If you see something you like, email me and we’ll get together on it.


COMING ATTRACTIONS

In the weeks to come, we’re going to create ~ in addition to Northstar Recommends ~ a Northstar General Store in which you, the readers, will have an opportunity to market your own goods and services and, as well, to shop here. We’re going to get real creative with this and whenever possible, we’ll have tried what we’re carrying on the shelves, as it were. We’ll be taking a straight ten percent for this, via Paypal. We’ll also consider barter and trade.

If you’ve got any recommendations of your own and are interested in the General Store, email me and we’ll talk.

MS(R)M