A scene from an early winter pastPhoto 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: 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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