Computer magnate joins Disney and Armstrong in prestigious Boy Scout Award

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.

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

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

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

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

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

A PYROMANIC THREATENS SEATTLE’S U DISTRICT, SCIENTISTS PROVE WE ARE NOT RELATED TO APES AND A STRAY LLAMA IS RESCUED FROM PIKE’S PEAK

Calm in the face of pyromania

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. Where I live is under two alerts now; one for an arsonist sliding into pyromaniac status and the other for the swine flu. This is the U District, so named for the University of Washington, with a student body of approximately 42,000, making this one of Seattle’s more densely populated neighborhoods.

Faced with a choice between the swine flu and someone who likes setting buildings on fire, I would take the former in a country heartbeat. Fire does not turn me on. If it had been left to my ancestors to invent it, we’d be eating our meat sushi style. I don’t even like roasting marshmallows. My feeling is that if the Good Lord had intended them lightly browned, He’d have made them crispy to begin with. So I’ll take mine fresh from the bush, thank you.

I also don’t like fire because I’ve seen what it can do up close and personal. We survived one in the Sierra Nevada Mountains when I was a kid growing up in Northern California. I fought one on a destroyer in the Mekong and then spent some time in an intensive care ward of a hospital ship when helicopter crash victims were coming back from Vietnam proper. Some twenty years later, in southern Oregon’s Umpqua Valley, there were two forest fires the same summer, Bland Mountain and the Angel Complex. And I’ve covered probably another twenty or so as a newspaper reporter and photographer.

What was particularly insidious about these last two incidents here is that they involved setting fire to flammable materials and then semi-blocking the rear exit of two apartment buildings. This arsonist doesn’t just want to see something burn, he wants to hurt people. And he wants to strike fear into the heart of every resident in the District. He wants to distract 42,000 students from the start of a new school year. He wants to deploy emergency services often and at the taxpayer’s expense. He wants the satisfaction of knowing that however small, insignificant, impotent and lacking in courage he himself may be, he is still capable of exercising the power of a piney woods Caligula or another legendary pyromaniac, Nero.

Well, this freak isn’t having it entirely his way. There is no panic in the University District. I happened to be out walking one night when Seattle Fire and other emergency services were called to the scene of one of these and there was no hysteria, no fright. This is a land of earthquakes, volcanoes and weather as chimeric and unpredictable as any the planet has ever known. Northwesterners do not frighten easily. They know what vigilance is like. They know how to take care of one another.

Eventually this fire fetishist will be apprehended, hopefully before his lethal hobby hurts anyone. So far that hasn’t happened but God forbid that it should. Seattle’s justice system will not be inclined to show leniency, compassion or much understanding. These young people ~ some of them veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan ~ are the future of this region. They are, in that sense, children of us all. The surest way to hell in this part of the country is to hurt one of them.

Here’s one that’ll rock your socks a little. Apparently, based on new fossil evidence, scientists have decided that human beings are not related to chimpanzees or any other simians. There is no “missing link”. We cannot blame any of our uncivilized behaviour on a common gene pool. There is no “going ape” or “aping”. We cannot fault the gorilla for our chronic chest beating nor this recurrent sport of mooning on the orangutan. I’m sure, once the word hits the jungle telegraph, that will come as some relief to them as well. It’s time to quit slandering these poor creatures and get on with it.

Well, residents along the northwestern coasts of British Columbia, Canada and Washington State are welcoming back some old friends. One of the most beautiful of all seagoing creatures and one nearly hunted to extinction is off the endangered species list and thriving. We’re talking about the humpback whale and you really need to experience this story firsthand. So please go here.

This week’s “Interesting Application of New Technology Award” goes to the farmer whose cattle were polluting a stream where salmon came to spawn and decided to try an alternative. He installed a small pump in the stream, ran PCP pipe underground and pumped water for his cattle into two big watering troughs. Where did the power to run the pump come from? A single solar cell installed with a fence around it. Now the cows aren’t polluting the stream and the Coho are starting to return in greater numbers. By my reckoning, that’s got to have applications a lot of other places besides Washington State.

Thanks, among other things, to two American Belgian draft horses, a couple in Walla Walla, Washington is proving that thirteen acres is enough to not only sustain a small family but produce a surplus to sell to the local community. It’s totally organic and includes eggs laid by organically raised and fed chickens. Again, another example that is imminently exportable. For more, please go here.

And finally, I have never been to the Colorado Rockies but I have always admired the music of John Denver. For all of that, I have heard rumours of high mountain eccentricities and of the strange relationships between man and beast. Therefore, I was more than a little curious when I came across this story about the rescue of a white llama from the top of Pike’s Peak. It turns out that some hikers had seen it wandering alone, were concerned it might fall victim to a predator and decided to rescue it and relocate it to friendlier territory. My opinion, then, is some revised about people who live in that part of the country.

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

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. 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

ONCE AGAIN, IN PRAISE OF A PRESIDENT BUT NOT SO MUCH A WINNING COACH

The University of Washington's Husky Stadium (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. And it’s time, once again, to praise a president. I’m referring to Mr. Obama’s address before the United Nations General Assembly today.

From the start of the presidential primaries, Barack Obama has consistently contended that it is not up to a national chief executive, the Congress, or any other elected official or body of same alone to solve the problems which afflict this nation.

We are not a monarchy. We are a democratic republic. We elect those who govern us and we decide whether they stay in office to do what we are paying them to do. By popular initiative and referendum, we also decide for ourselves which laws work best for us and which do not. So it’s all of us working together that will bring this nation back into a realm of reasonable prosperity and good humor.

President Obama made it very clear to the UN General Assembly that, by the same token, it is not up to America alone to solve the problems which plague the global community but rather that it is incumbent upon each nation ~ however large, however small ~ to participate in that process. And he issued a stern warning to those who would stand in the way of such progress.

“The people of the world want change. They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history.”

As of this writing, there are 300,000 unemployed Americans living in states where the jobless rate stands at 8.5 percent and whose benefits will end on September 30. Congressman Jim McDermott (D-Washington) has proposed legislation extending those benefits another 13 weeks. This measure is expected to reach President Obama’s desk with no problem. It’s nice to know someone on the Hill is watching out for us. Thanks, Jim, and yep, I’m pleased you’re my Congressman as well.

Under the category, “Okay, that makes sense,” the International Energy Commission reports that worldwide usage of electronic devices and electrical appliances is making it extremely tough to fight the effects of global warming, primarily because of the number of new power plants necessary, including coal-fired ones in countries where other sources are not an option. The IEC found, for instance, that in 1980, Americans owned three electronic consumer devices. That number now stands at 25.

Many of these items waste an incredible amount of energy while operating and some continue to draw power even when they’re turned off. That means that the only way to actually keep the energy bill down is to unplug everything except refrigerators and washers and dryers, which have been under federal efficiency guidelines in America since 1990. Since then, efficiency has increased 45 percent for the former and a whopping 70 percent for the latter.

The IEC is calling for a number of measures to bring the rest of the devices we feel we need to survive under the same standards. They’re also calling for consumers to either unplug the “gadgets” they aren’t using or to use Smart Power Strips, which themselves turn off, thus denying power to everything plugged into them. For more information on what each of us can do in these regards, please go here.

Closer to the Bastion, the Northwest Energy Council has determined (and is moving to establish them) that the same tougher standards would, by 2029, reduce by 85 percent the current anticipated energy needs in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. That’s the equivalent of 20 new power plants and it is consistent with a region which has been moving in this direction for almost two decades now.

I’ve got a confession to make now, a sort of coming out of the closet as it were. (Watch the interest level zoom off the scale now.) Ever since I was small, I’ve always felt this special kinship with trees and to this day, yep, I hug ‘em. Well, University of Washington researchers have discovered there might actually be a basis for that attraction. They’ve discovered electricity in them. It’s not very much but it’s there and can apparently be boosted enough to run a monitor of its own health. Applications for this one in agriculture, forestry management, the timber industry and environmental landscaping are staggering to me.

I don’t usually comment on sports and for several reasons. First, they’ve changed a lot since the days when the Giants played at Candlestick Park and second, there are a lot more teams, especially in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, than when I graduated from California State University, Long Beach in 1976, after serving in Vietnam with the United States Navy.

So this isn’t so much about athletics as it is good sportsmanship and it’s about as close to the Bastion on the Puget Sound as it gets because I live three blocks from this commentary’s source. I’m referring to this past weekend’s University of Washington 16-13 “upset” over the University of Southern California.

The UW Huskies have a new coach and that Steve Sarkasian was also an assistant coach for USC did not escape me either. In a pre-contest press conference, Sarkasian contended that it would not be long before this chronically losing football team would reverse the trend, presumably because he is now in command. Fine, a little confidence I can understand.

It was what Sarkasian said after that narrow victory which surprised and infuriated me. He told the media that the UW did not play exceptional ball against USC. Excuse me? Anyone who follows NCAA sports knows that there is only one way to defeat the Trojans and that’s by giving it everything you’ve got. And as USC’s record proves, most of the time, that’s not enough.

So with all due respect to their coach and his breach of tact and good sportsmanship, I’d like to praise the young men of the University of Washington who took their hearts to the gridiron, gave it their all, and defeated the mighty Trojans. Finest kind, mates. Finest kind.

Well, that’s it for this week. Thanks again for the ear. Take care, stay well and God Bless.

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
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, MR. SWAYZE AND WELCOME TO THE FRIENDLY SKIES OF CALIFORNIA’S WINE COUNTRY TO THE NOBLE PEREGRINE FALCON

Peregine Falcon

Hi again and yep, from the ramparts of the Bastion on the Puget Sound, it’s been another interesting week. And a sad one for the loss of Patrick Swayze, another good human being who shared the best of himself as an actor with those who loved his work; and as a good human being with those who had the honor and privilege of knowing him more intimately.

I remember him not so much for Dirty Dancing or even Ghost as I do for this outrageous film, A Tall Tale, in which he starred, along with Oliver Pratt, another of my favorite actors, as Pecos Bill. I grew up on legends like that so when I also got to see John Henry and Paul Bunyan, et al, it was like, yep, maybe not anywhere else, but in America, we have those who can lasso and ride a tornado and swing one mean axe. It was painted in the broadest possible brushstrokes and Swayze, who is not real tall, played it grandly.

The other film strikes deeper on a different level because despite the fact that the American government’s made some real mistakes abroad and her people have acted at times with what the International Community has considered incredible self-indulgence, there’s a lot more to us than that. Despite our size and power, we are yet historically a young and growing nation. Like any other, we are prone to wear our ignorance, our shortcomings, our character flaws and our mistakes in judgment on our proverbial sleeves.

I worry that groups bent on the destruction of anything not like them might read that the wrong way, and assume that Americans are not willing to die on their own shores to protect what they so cherish. The reality is that Americans die every day in defense of their country. I was raised by two generations of law enforcement and that’s the first among many examples which come to mind.

Red Dawn to me clearly demonstrated what Americans will do if pushed to the max. I don’t know how many of you remember the premise for that one but it was the invasion of a small town in the American Rocky Mountains and was a microcosm for apparently another world war. In it, Patrick Swayze starred as the leader of a handful of teenagers who rose up after their parents were rounded up and executed. That resistance group became known as the Wolverines. Yes, Jennifer Grey was his costar in that one.

It was a savage film and it was not made to glorify violence, promote anarchy, or to vilify those who brought this war to our shores. It was not meant to suggest that killing ~ under any circumstances ~ is pleasant, but rather that long after the land has restored itself, the human memories of what happened will remain. I’ve been to battlegrounds across the Pacific, including Nagasaki’s Ground Zero and yes, each and every one of them was haunted. In Red Dawn, they were too.

So to me, Patrick Swayze played to an American love of tall tales and big dreams. And he also resonated what Americans of any age will do if violence is brought to their land as it has been several times in the recent past. Our learning curve, by international standards, may be long
but we are neither weak nor stupid. It would be a tragic mistake in judgment to assume either.

Oookay, off the soapbox and moving right along here, I have got to love the reader who felt the need to share this bon mot of human behavior. Seems there was this couple in Wichita, Kansas whose options for romantic privacy were apparently slim next to none. They climbed into a dumpster to cuddle and stuff and were interrupted (apparently during the “stuff” part) by two old guys who robbed them at pocketknife point and then departed. The police apprehended the ‘perps’ so the couple got their belongings back.

I’m just trying to imagine, from both the police officers’ perspective and the couple themselves, the dialogue that must have gone on around what they were doing in the dumpster in the first place. What this also tells me is that this is NOT Dorothy’s Kansas. You guys accuse me every once in awhile of making this stuff up. So if you don’t believe me, check it out here. This was weird.

Closer to home, we here in Seattle are saying good-bye to a woman who not only proved there was no gender ceiling but also who epitomizes the best in community law enforcement. Her name is Linda Pierce and she was one of four assistant chiefs of police. Her time with the Seattle Police Department included, according to Seattle Times reporter Steve Miletich, command of “the Special Operations Bureau, overseeing operations and planning, the arson and bomb units, Harbor Patrol and the operational support and criminal intelligence sections.”

Chief Pierce is leaving to run the public safety department for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. She and her husband, who recently retired, have a home back there in this extreme northeastern part of Washington, on the Canadian border. We wish her and her family well and express our sincere gratitude for the exemplary service she gave this community.

As far as critter stories, there have been no new mountain lion incidents up our way but as I got out and sampled local opinion, I found some profound misconceptions about cougars that, if acted on, could really make things complicated for all involved. So far that hasn’t happened yet here but it has other places. So here’s a site that tells you how it really is with these magnificent cats. I’m suggesting reading this before you try to pet one or reach for the Winchester on the gun rack.

Well, vineyard owners in California have come up with a way to protect their grape harvest from the hordes of starlings which swoop in on them each year this time and which so far have proven pretty much immune to any other measures employed in these regards. I’m not a fan of starlings. I wouldn’t be if I was a bird. They are second on the obnoxious scale only to bluejays, with whom I also have issues.

So it comes as some personal satisfaction to learn that peregrine falcons are patrolling those friendly skies. Falconers hire out to individual land owners in an arrangement that seems to be working very well and is certainly not without precedent. Anyone with the slightest interest in falcons knows that they’ve been doing things like this for at least as long as the first wild dogs decided to share a cave and a fire with us. For a look at one of these noble works of talons, beak, feathers and superb aerodynamic engineering, please go here.

I’m also some relieved ~ as I’m sure most of you will be too ~ to learn that scientists have apparently decided that a squid’s brain may not have been as good a model to study how human gray matter works as they for awhile thought.. Apparently it’s taken them fifty years to reach this conclusion. Yep, I’ll give you a sec with that one.

First of all, I want to know what madness possessed these over-educated idiots in the first place. I have bad hair days but I have never remotely resembled this weird looking thing out of a Jules Verne nightmare.

Second, what conclusions were reached and what was tried on humans as a result of this profound hiatus from good sense? I mean, rats are a stretch for me too in these regards and I do not keep them as pets because with a Maine coon cat for a roomie, anything caged, breathing and smaller than a German shepherd puppy is a Sasha meal waiting to happen. There is totally no way a squid fits into this scenario. Now all that needs to happen is to learn that it’s been for half a century also in part funded by tax dollars. Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere made better sense. At least it was good practice for those who planned and built it.

And on a final note, I was absolutely thrilled to learn that the University of Washington (three blocks from here) has been awarded a $126-million grant to build a 500 mile power and Internet grid along the floor of the Pacific Ocean on the Juan de Fuca plate. According to KING FIVE (NBC affiliate) television news reporter Lori Matsukawa:

“Researchers believe the data gathered will help them understand all sorts of natural phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, storms, rainfall patterns, tsunamis, algae blooms, oxygen depletion and sea life. Natural events that influence climate change.”

These are good things for us who live here to know and what’s cool is that so much of what can be learned can be applied, appropriately modified, elsewhere. To me, it’s an appropriate use of both science and the funding source. I like it a lot better than thinking about my tax dollars going into finding out how much like a squid we’re not.

Until next week then, thanks once again for the ear. Take care, stay well and God Bless.

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
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

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.