On the other hand, given the yin and yang nature of the universe, diversity and dissension are also good, to a point. My grandfather (not the respectable one) had a lot of friends who believed in other forms of government than the two-party system we have here. In defending it, he used to say that he preferred to keep the jackass and the pachyderm separated because while the braying of the one and the trumpeting of the other might be annoying to more refined ears and saying a lot of things that an average three year old wouldn’t buy, he considered that still preferable to the results of blending the two. That, in his opinion, is was probably what Hell sounded like to the tone deaf.
Given the earthquake and volcanic activity around the world, it’s not surprising that the Washington State Department of Natural Resources recently issued a report discussing the possibility of a major seismic event in the Puget Sound.
Seismic researchers have established that every five hundred years, our area experiences an earthquake the magnitude of those which struck Haiti and Chile this year. Strong geological evidence as well as corroborating Asian accounts and the oral histories of the Salish and other indigenous Native Americans indicates that a real shaker back place on the evening of January 26, 1700, the tsunami of which sent a 30-foot high wall of Pacific Ocean crashing into Japan.
Since none of the Puget Sound had not even been seen, much less settled, by people who replace good farmland with shopping malls and build skyscrapers which block the view of the real works of nature, the destruction we’re accustomed to associating with major metropolitan areas simply did not occur here. Obviously, a lot has changed since.
Consider, as well, that there are three active volcanoes in Washington State and several glaciers. Scientists are just now beginning to understand the interrelationship of earthquakes, geothermal events and the massive flooding which can occur when hundreds of thousands of tons of ice and snow melt quickly.
Consensus among the general public here seems to be that while natural catastrophes are certainly to be reckoned with and prepared for, they do not impact the price of coffee at Starbucks, create jobs in a Recession, or determine the outcome of the Super Bowl. So it’s like, when the ground starts to shake, we’ll devote our full attention to the reality at hand.
Oookay. That sounds like courage and defiance of epic proportion. I mean, several million people shrugging off all this imminent catastrophe. Personally, I think it’s a dumb philosophy and I do not subscribe to it. I have like this five-year plan of personal economic recovery and it does not include being here to roast turkey hotdogs and sugar-free marshmallows on the smoking ruins of this most beautiful of all emerald cities. So good luck with that one, guys.
For more on this one:
February 28, 2001 Nisqually Earthquake
On Shaky Ground: Unearthing The Faults
KUOW (University of Washington) Sources
IN OTHER NEWS
Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice this week announced the expansion by 10 kilometers/6.2 miles the boundaries of the Gwaii Haanas National Marine Conservation Area Reserve off the southern coast of British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands. This Reserve, which covers 3,500 hectares or about 13 square miles, is home to an estimated 3,500 species who will not now need to face the kind of destruction being visited by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
And speaking of that manmade disaster, we’re really so steamed about what is also becoming the media event of the new century that we’re in imminent danger of harshing our own mellow and yours. If you’ve missed any of the recent coverage, check this link out for a list of the ten best sites for keeping track of the progress being made and the damage being done. For what each of us, as individuals, can do to make a difference:
Since I’m really into them myself and have been since the ones with the big front wheel and the little back one, it was a delight to learn that bicycles have truly come into their own out here, not just as preferred personal transportation but as a source of good health and new jobs. To hear someone else’s rapture on this particular topic, please go here.
SURVIVING HARD TIMES
One of the “secrets” to surviving hard times is hearing about how others are doing it and as this Recession continues, apparently it’s becoming very cool to do that. Check this out. I thoroughly enjoyed it and there are several things I’m going to start doing as well. Yep, go here.
NORTHSTAR, THE DRAGON
There are times when I am prouder to be a journalist than there are at some other times. When someone I’ve admired for years in this business, personally and professionally, suggests that it’s time for Jews to go home to Europe, it’s clearly time for that icon of the Fourth Estate to step down, which she has. There are certain professions where an “oops and an apology” is pathetic damage control at best. We wish Helen Thomas the best in her retirement.
CROSSING OVER
The Northstar Journal joins the rest of the world of ballet in observing a day of mourning for the passing of Marina Semyonova, who for two decades was the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theatre. After her retirement in the early 1950s, she went on to teach and to discuss the passion of her life. An inspiration by personal example as well, she brought to the international community, the grace, the discipline, the dignity and the often monumental sacrifices of a career dedicated to excellence in the arts. For a magnificent tribute to a stellar individual, please go here.
ON THE CANCER FRONT
According to a recent study presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago recently, treatment for early stage breast cancer may become much easier. For more on this one and an excellent guide to breast cancer itself, please go here.
RESOURCES AND RELATED LINKS:
American Cancer Statistics 2009
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009
National Cancer Institute (American)
Fighting Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Survivor Stories
FREE STUFF FROM THE NET
Someone once remarked, several years ago, that The Northstar Journal could not be more critter friendly if it was born in fur. I’m not sure but I think that’s a compliment. We found something on the Net that is more or less designed to teach kids more about some of our other planetary neighbors and it takes an approach that certainly brought out the kid in me. It’s called The Infrared Zoo and this one comes with a Satisfaction guarantee. Yep, check it out here.
HEALTH NEWS
I love it when something I’ve been criticized for turns out to be good for me. And for a lot of other people. My wife, God Rest Her Soul, was probably one of the most compassionate people on the planet when it came to taking in strays or taking on the causes of them.
Admittedly, according to her in-laws and mine both, we went a little overboard with the dogs, the cats, the parrot, the canaries, the plants that tried to eat the cats and an equally esoteric cast of sometime boarders with whom we went to demonstrations for human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, environmentalism and, for a little while, the movement to end our generation’s war.
We also both worked and I was going to college. We were real busy but we were also very much in love and turned on by life in general. This was back in the olden days, before passion became so passé. We had relatives and close friends, though, who were concerned about us stressing out or getting hurt, considering some of the risks involved. Loretta Joy did not brook much interference in our family life, from anyone, so she simply told people we did all this weird stuff because it made us feel good.
She’d be delighted to learn that medical researchers have determined that such altruism/activism is also very healthy and that rather than taking years off one’s life, it actually adds to them. She’d probably tell you the same thing I’m telling you now too. For more on this one, check it out here.
SEATTLE SCENES
If you’re planning to visit Seattle in the near future, you might want to check these sites out first.
SUMMER GUIDE
Let us steer you to the best beaches, festivals and fun.
Circus! Is Coming!
Pacific Science Center is preparing for the arrival of our next big exhibit. Circus! Science Under The Big Top opens June 12.→Learn More
The Pioneer Square Underground Tour tells most of us all we know about what lies underneath Seattle. It's a touristy exploration of the city's oldest basements, a jokey excursion through an urban underbelly filled with commentary about the foibles, and drinking habits, of the city's lusty pioneers. It's the closest many of us come to seeing firsthand the archaeology of the city. Yep, for more on this one:
SEATTLE FACTS AND FIGURES
Seattle Rainfall in Comparison To Other US Cities
For more information about Seattle
For live cameras on Seattle, the Puget Sound and Washington State
THE CAPITOL HILL BEAT
We’re continuing to watch Congress struggle to pass HR 4213, the American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act, which would extend unemployment benefits for all of us until the end of November. Even though things are starting to slowly improve, unemployment still stands at around 9.5 percent and there are about 45-million of us looking for work. My Congressman, Jim McDermott, understands the need to act quickly now.
“If the Senate does not act, the federal UI benefits will quickly phase out and, by the end of June, 1.2 million workers will be cut off jobless benefits. This number will grow to more than five million by the end of the year. Fewer than 46 percent of all unemployed workers have been without work for over six months - more than any time since record keeping on this statistic began in 1948. For this reason, my first and foremost priority is to ensure that the existing emergency benefits program, which allows for the provision of up to 99 weeks of UI compensation, be continued. We must also address the bigger challenge, which is how to respond to the long-term unemployment crisis and meet the needs of those workers who have reached their maximum 99 weeks of benefits. I am holding a hearing on this very issue on June 10th, and I invite you to view background materials or the live hearing itself at:”
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/Hearings/hearingDetails.aspx?NewsID=11201
We need more time and those additional several months will make the difference for so many of us. Please email your Congressional delegation, urging swift enactment of the American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act. Here’s a quick link to your elected officials. If you’re not sure, just type in your zip code.
CRITTER STUFF
As I’ve mentioned before, even though my room mate is an 18-lb Maine coon cat with a raccoon for a best buddy, I am so totally into dogs. I believe they have souls and that they are capable of acts of love which should humble even the true saints among us.
This story of a Seattle woman and the dog who discovered her breast cancer in plenty of time to catch it and take care of it. Maybe it’s just me, but that alone would be enough to make me go, “whoa, here.” But to also discover something even more fantastic about this relationship would probably make my day, if not at least my week.
It did. Let’s see if it does that for you too. Yep, go here for the story and some video.
And nope, the bears in our neighborhoods here in the Puget Sound have not vanished. For a home video that verifies that without a doubt, yep, go here.
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We’ve also found something you might want to bookmark. It’s the BBC’s wildlife finder and it’s a real handy way of getting more information about the fauna we feature in this column. MS(R)M Check it out here.
YOU GUYS THINK I MAKE THIS STUFF UP
Okay, this definitely stretches the window on weird. It turns out that the folks responsible for what some experts are now predicting will be the greatest manmade environmental disaster in human history is also funding research into alternative fuel sources which would reduce the need for its own products.
In a Sacramento BEE story headlined “BP funds source for green fuels at UC Berkeley” Laurel Rosenhall reports:
“The $500 million BP pledged in 2007 to form the Energy Biosciences Institute was the largest corporate sponsorship ever of university research. The gift – doled out over 10 years to UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – created an institute to research plant-based fuels such as ethanol.”
There’s apparently some discussion among the scientific community about the propriety of such a relationship. I’m not surprised because it’s good strategy and it protects investors and other stockholders when a company like BP looks ahead to the day when either the support or the demand for its products and starts looking for other “lines,” as it were, to go into. This isn’t a new practice and BP’s not the only one engaged in it.
As far as whether BP was buying public relations insurance is to suggest that corporations in totality are either good citizens or these totally Machiavellian industrial arch villains dedicated to world domination. Corporations are comprised, at every level, of human beings who have consciences and are totally capable of ignoring them.
They share cubicles with the rest of us and the rest of us are mostly people who try to do the right thing, don’t really want to piss anybody off but are going to think real hard about the cost to their families if they refuse to execute a policy decision; inform to the government; or go public via the media.
I don’t want to see the government go into the energy business because that’s not what these mostly lawyers are trained to do. By holding both British Petroleum and themselves responsible for the Deep Horizon spill, they’re also saying for me that this also happened because people like you and I would rather, once, have driven three blocks in a gas guzzler than walk this distance for our health and the health of the planet.
That’s obviously changed so I expect that even British Petroleum will diversify its product line and then we’re into a research and development mode. But that’s how biplanes become space shuttles, polio a notation in medical history and even cancer becomes a thing of the past.
If British Petroleum wants to invest in that kind of a future, I have no problem with that. They are, however, still totally responsible for that oil spill. They’re going to clean it up and they’re going to make reparations, criminal and civil.
Yes, that means that I fully expect those responsible to serve time in prison. In a compassionate society, that’s what happens when you contribute to the death of 11 human beings outright on a rig that should never have been and it is especially what happens when you ruin the lives of millions more human beings and poison and suffocate everything in the neighborhood that crawls, creeps, fishes, flies, slithers, swims and walks.
I also intend to stay with this and to continue to explore ways that I, as one person, can prevent this from happening again. I found this ~ Six Things To Do About the BP Gulf Disaster ~ in YES, a dynamite weekly published just across the Sound on Bainbridge Island. If you enjoy reading The Northstar Journal, you’ll want to bookmark these folks as well.
Well, that’s it for this time. Before you take off, you might want to check out Northstar Recommends, below. We’ve got a mix of resources, online escapes, free stuff and some unique shopping opportunities, including a General Store consisting of products recommended to us by our readership.
Until next time, then, take care, stay well, thanks again for the ear and we’ll see you next week.
Rusty
RESOURCES
Maker Culture: Taking Things Into Our Own Hands - For 12 weeks in the fall of 2009, 45 online journalism students at Ryerson University and the University of Western Ontario worked together to document the evolving Maker Culture community.
Maker Culture? That's coders, fabricators, foodies, artists, educators, activists, citizen and even scientists grabbing the Do-It-Yourself ethic with both hands and changing our world in the process.
These are people who aren't just making things, they're making a point of sharing what they've learned, what they've made, and why. Often, for free.
Makers are responding directly, locally to globalization, commercialization, copyright and central command and control.
This is the introduction to a fascinating series on how to become more self-reliant, live a lot more economically and enjoy the company of others doing the same. If you’re looking for ideas, inspiration and resources to get through hard times or just to simplify you life, we highly recommend this one.
PC World – This is the best source we’ve found yet for totally free, useful, reliable and secure (no viruses) downloads ranging from games through utilities and with a nice selection of screen savers, etc. What I particularly appreciate about it is how easy the site is to navigate. They also have a daily letter featuring two “daily downloads.”
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.
Stalking Resource Center division of the National Center for Victims of Crime – Internet harassment, stalking and abuse in general is now against the law. If you’re being victimized or if you know of someone who is, this is an excellent resource.
FUN STUFF
If you share my passion for American History, you’re going to love AmericanWest.com This is historical society stuff that is also extremely interesting to read. So yep, just in case you didn’t get it the first time, check it out here.
Houston At Night and other totally cool images are available at the Earth Observatory, along with an incredible array of other outer space images. This is one of NASA’s more engaging websites and it’s here, as well, that you can subscribe to their online newsletter. Whether you’re an aerospace/astronomy buff or simply enjoy stargazing, this is an excellent site.
Ever been told you look like someone famous? Ever not been told that but would like to have been? Find a photo of yourself, go to this site, MyHeritage.com, upload it and get a gallery of celebrities you resemble, to one degree or another. Yep, it’s a total waste of time and an unabashed indulgence of ego. Probably two reasons why I totally loved it, even though a couple of my own pix didn’t turn up any results. It’s fun to play with so enjoy.
If you’re into a real interesting and visual escape, we certainly recommend The Art In LA website. It’s a virtual art gallery created by a real gentle, occasionally obnoxious but totally good-hearted soul with standards as fine as those of any engineer I’ve ever met. It’s also a good place for healthy meditation. If you’re lucky, you might just run into the artist herself. Her name is Colleen and she’s a trip, trust me. Yep, she was born under the fourth flag on our masthead.
HEALTH
Ten foods that really do help prevent cancer.
Grub you libido will love.
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.
Ever get so stressed you feel like you’re really jammed up against it? Take a deep breath and check out you’re surroundings is the advice of Dr. Roberta Lee in her book The Superstress Solution. We have and what I’ve generally found is that the outside reflects the inside. If I’m real busy, jackets get tossed over chairs, used coffee cups appear magically on window ledges and desk top clutter takes on a total biosphere all its own. Perhaps not surprising, dealing with the outside can really help you relax. And although we don’t recommend you try this at home, if you wait long enough, it can be also be real good exercise. This is a mental health must so check it out here. We’re reading Dr. Lee’s book now and we bought it here.
Want to know how to live to be 100? Try this one.
Take this test to see how your memory compares with the average.
Click here for fun games to improve your memory.
There’s a new book out now which could make a dramatic difference in the way toward the way women experience the passing of years. Despite major industries involved ~ cosmetic, fitness, elective surgery, to name three ~ the idea that women become less attractive as they grow older has also very likely contributed to more anxiety, high blood pressure, depression, etc. than any other single factor in a woman’s life except cancer and childbearing.
We also suspect that it has probably cost men just as much, if not more, than it has cost women, even in a nation historically known for its tolerance of a double standard. The book is entitled Face It: What Women Really Feel as Their Looks Change. Read about it here and if you decide you’d like to purchase it online, you can buy it here. I especially recommend this to men. It’s time our gender took more responsibility for this.
FOR YOUR SHOPPING CONVENIENCE
And for a truly unique shopping experience, drop by and browse THE NORTHSTAR GENERAL STORE.
Press Releases, Product Reviews, Promotional Copy, Digital Photography, Online Research and Investigation, Ghost Writing, Special Projects. Seattle-based and wired into the International Community. For more information, email to minstrel312@aol.com or go here -> Rusty Miller, Freelance Photojournalist.
GOOD “READS”
Books
If you’d like to read something which combines the best elements of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and a neo-eco Mickey Spillane detective thriller, you’ll love this one.
“In the brave new world of the Internet, FedEx and an international taste for the exotic, wildlife poachers steal everything from elk horns to geoducks, the world's largest clam. In the waters of Puget Sound in Washington state, state wildlife agents stalk these thieves on land and at sea. In "Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature's Bounty," Seattle Times environmental reporter Craig Welch joins these detectives on the trail of one of the region's most notorious geoduck thieves.”
Welch, a Seattle Times environmental reporter is a compelling writer and this excerpt from the book would be worth the experience even if we were not also fascinated by the subject. If, after reading this extract, you’d like to buy the book, you’ll find it for sale here.
News
BBC – Best source of international news.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (multi-media), the Toronto Globe & Mail and the Vancouver Sun -- outstanding sources for Canadian national, provincial, and world news.
KING 5 News – Best source of video news of Seattle and the Greater Puget Sound.
New York Times – Best source of American news.
Reuters – Best source of an international perspective on American headlines.
Seattle Times – Best source for news of the city and the Puget Sound. Its reportage is unbiased but their columns and other opinion pieces do reflect the predominant values of the Pacific Northwest.
Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool) – Best source of Pacific Northwest regional news. Delivered daily by email, it covers Alaska, British Columbia, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. They also put out an excellent weekly environmental edition.
Entertainment
BBC Knowledge Magazine – designed to give the American magazine National Geographic the proverbial run for its money,
TomatoMan Times -- For those who love good writing, there are fewer finer contemporary craftsmen out there now than professionally known as Tomatoman Mike. He’s as Northern Californian as John Steinbeck is, albeit with a dash of Sam Clemmons, Bret Harte and Robert W. Service in him. He’s a romp to read, trust me.
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.
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.
See you next week, eh?
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