DARWIN REVISITED - AN NSJ EXTRA

Editor’s Note:
Since this column was written, the black bear in question has been extremely and humanely relocated. We’re a little miffed that they didn’t wait until this column was published and it is for partly that reason that we’re running it as a Northstar Journal Extra.

Hi again, folks. I’ve been working on some commentary praising President Obama on several fronts but this is the Pacific Northwest and right now what’s got my attention is this black bear living in the median of Interstate 5, that federal north-south freeway which connects Mexico to Canada, via the American West Coast.

Aware that this column reaches people who live in places where medians are like inches wide, this probably begs some explanation. This particular median is the size of a backyard in British Columbia, a small ranch in Kentucky, a national park in New Jersey, a township in Suffolk or a post-Louis XIV estate in Normandy.

Except it’s in the middle of the heavily forested Pacific Northwest, with that on either side of the freeway. It’s not like this bear escaped from the Brooklyn Zoo in a blackout or charged into Chattanooga during a particularly heavy rainstorm.

It’s also a seasonal thing. A bear matching this one’s description was observed at the same location last year this time but was some shyer because there was a lot more traffic on both sides of the median back then.

Apparently this Recession has had some impact on him and his. There’s not as much traffic so he’s showing himself more often because he feels safer. What traffic there is slows down when it sees him, making him feel even more secure. Mind you now, he’s not put one paw anywhere near the freeway or anywhere close to it. He’s just doing his bear in the wild thing.

In the median. A BIG median. In a land where eagles nest in skyscrapers, mountain lions take shortcuts through suburban backyards, along with other black bears, and where raccoons make friends with domestic cats and raid the homes of their new friends with considerably less grace and a lot more noise than human burglars.

For this black bear, it’s got to be a little different than a savagely rushing river or a canyon where the Chinooks from the Arctic roil in like the frigid wrath of Valhalla. That bear’s got to cross at least one of them too in order to get back to where it lives the rest of the year.

Like most of the true “indigenous people” of this region, this bear has this weird riff going where everything that happens is caused by a force of nature, including us. I imagine he rests some easier knowing he’s got some control over this particular crossing. If this had happened to a human being, there’d be a new religion started behind it.

The Washington State Patrol’s got the median under aerial observation and humane traps have been baited with a disgusting mixture of peanut butter, etc. that would put an epicurean on a 40-day fast and cause most teenagers to go into fits of absolute pig out.

The idea is to catch this 225 + lb. black bear in what looks like a big cat carrier, then transport it some further back into the Cascade Mountains. Yeah, that’ll work. Sorry guys, this is NOT Jellystone and this is not Yogi and Boo Boo.

Considering the human nature of the Pacific Northwest and the budgetary constraints involved, we’re either going to ignore the media coverage and do totally nothing about it or we’re going to get some of our best and brightest back in the classroom by making that bear’s behavior a major university study and applying for federal funding.

There’s also a possibility that the local communities will promote it as a tourist attraction and an equal chance that the First Nations here will adopt the bear as a cause celebre and build a gambling casino in its honor. Both also, hopefully, with federal funding but if not, probably anyway.

It’s an interesting relationship in evolution here and probably somehow appropriate that in surfing the web for some academic justification for this weird stuff you guys let me get away with week after week, I came across a quote by Charles Darwin which contends that survival is not about who is strongest or most intelligent.

It’s about who is most adaptable.

I expect “y’all” can resonate with that some now, eh? Stay the course folks, have a great weekend, and thanks again for the ear.

Warmest regards,
Rusty

HAPPY EARTH DAY

Hi again, folks. This week’s column is dedicated to Earth Day and good news. Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 but I missed it because it wasn’t quite the international event it is today and I was not living in the United States at the time.

Vietnam was not a particularly eco-friendly place back then and while I’m sure there were positive and happy things going on in the world, we were not exactly being deluged by news of them.

Both Vietnam and Earth Day have come a long way in 39 years and at a time when it seems like we’re foundering in a toxic media sea of layoffs and failing financial institutions, the evolution of global environmental awareness is producing its own positive headlines.

Wind turbines could meet all of America’s electrical energy needs, according to a report recently released by the U.S. Interior Department. While I’m certainly glad to hear that, I’m not surprised.

My family’s known about the power of wind ever since a very great grandfather contracted a dissolute Member of Parliament from Birmingham, an evangelical minister from Edinburgh, a noted Celtic philosopher and dramatist from Dublin and a famous solicitor (lawyer) from Cardiff to get him and his family out of Ireland during the Potato Famine.

This distant and long dead relative chartered a small ship and put his hired help behind the sails. Whenever the wind died, he plied them with poteen and got them debating about who was actually responsible for the deplorable state of the human condition.

The Atlantic Crossing was made in record time and such was the force of this human generated wind that The Molly McGuire was halfway up the St. Lawrence River before the anchor took hold and halted her western migration.

California continues to find new and better ways to harvest the sun. There’s a ten square mile solar generator plant under construction in the desert to the east of San Diego which is expected, when completed in five years, to provide for the electrical needs of 600,000. And in the Imperial Valley, near the Salton Sea, there’s a five story thermal generator producing enough electricity for 300,000 homes.

Both of these projects have, of course, created local jobs and proven yet again that green can work on a couple of different levels when it comes to environmentally appropriate technology.

Our neighbor to the north continues to take on an emerald glow as well. The British Columbia provincial government just gave $2-million to help fund construction of the first commercial-scale tidal current electrical turbine in North America.

The Canoe Pass Tidal Energy Corporation reports that the underwater turbine will be up and running in the tidal channel between Quadra and Maude Island, north of Campbell River, before the end of 2010.

The potential for the same energy generation in the Puget Sound has been confirmed by a study conducted by the University of Washington. The Sound’s strong currents have long been considered ideal for such technology and the Snohomish County Public Utility District is building three tidal turbines which will produce electricity for about 700 homes in that rural area between Seattle and the Canadian Border.

I wonder, once we have tapped into the same “limitless” sources of energy that have been available to the rest of life on this planet since it was created in primordial soup, what kind of world will we will build with it. Based on our track record so far, I believe that’s an issue which merits some concern.

Happy Earth Day, folks. Keep it clean and green. Until next week, take care, stay well and God Bless.

SOME CALLS TO ARMS ARE BEST TOTALLY FLIPPING IGNORED

Hi again, folks. Well, under the category “Just About The Time I Truly Think I Have Seen It All,” here in Washington State, a Mason County commissioner has come up with a rather “interesting” response to proposed cuts in the law enforcement budget. He’s urging the locals to arm themselves.

"It certainly is 'open season,'" said Tim Sheldon, chairman of the Mason County Commission. "There is no bag limit on criminals who try a home invasion in our communities."

Okay. There are also only around 50,000 people in Mason County, Commissioner. This is not Charles Bronson and New York City, where despite the fact that lots of criminals have guns, not very many of them are members of the NRA and even fewer of them spend time at the range polishing their proficiency in these regards.

This is the Pacific Northwest, the rural Pacific Northwest. Are we thinking pickup trucks and gun racks yet? Are we thinking people who work in the woods and go deer hunting every year? Are we thinking the American Legion and the VFW? Are we thinking male and female children who are taught to shoot about the time kids in Texas are taught to ride horses?

I started out in a mountain community and grew up in law enforcement. I covered crime and the courts for awhile as a newspaper reporter and editor. Burglary is a crime of stealth, not of confrontation. The majority of those who commit it are NOT armed. They don’t want to shoot anyone because that’s a lot more time in prison if they’re caught. They certainly do not want people shooting at them. Sometimes the result of that can be irreversibly life-changing. Most burglars don’t have a death wish.

Again, in looking at the numbers and the geography, I’m thinking that with a population that small and the whole county off the main north-sound (Interstate 5) corridor and not even close to any big highways headed east, any residential or commercial business establishment break-ins will likely be committed by someone somebody else in Mason County knows.

It comes as some relief that the Mason County law enforcement establishment is not real thrilled with the idea of an escalation of arms among the local citizenry. They expect the good people of their jurisdictions to remain law-abiding and to exercise appropriate vigilance, knowing that poverty ~ and particularly the sudden variety of it ~ can often motivate people to do things they would never, under any other circumstances, contemplate.

It means the citizens of Mason County will also be doing all those other things that responsible people in communities small and large have always done during hard times. They will not fill their personal arms lockers with all manner of deadly hardware and ammunition and thunder about like a herd of hard-charging Rambos.

They will look out for one another and do as much as they can to eliminate the need to steal in the first place. That’s how it’s done out here and, I suspect, elsewhere.

NO APOLOGIES NECESSARY

Seattle waterfront - MS(R)M

Well, hello again from the Bastion on the (Puget) Sound. It’s an interesting place from which to study the rest of the species. The drawbridge, the moat (also a sanctuary for abandoned water pets), and the panoramic sweep of two mountain ranges, two lakes and, on a clear day, two countries also lends a certain insularity to the enterprise. We have eagles nesting in our skyscrapers so the precedent’s already been set.

Nonetheless and despite the most sophisticated of defenses, stuff from Beyond the Pale does get through. It’s not always the apparently most important but it must have something going for it to get past all the contract security staff, food and media tasters, etc.

Internationally, one of the things President Obama apparently gets to deal with is a demand that Turkey apologize for the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire against its Armenian population. I’ve studied some on that and it’s as shameless a chapter in human history as ever was written.

I’m also mindful that the folks in Ankara and Istanbul now were not responsible, no more than the people walking the streets of Berlin today caused, sanctioned or participated in the extermination of some of my mother’s people in Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Dachau, Treblinka and the Warsaw Ghetto. In two more generations, the same will be able to be said of the English, with regards to the Irish, my dad’s side. And in one more generation, for Americans, with regards the Vietnamese.

It’s probably just me but I have a real hard time asking someone to apologize for something they didn’t do. I’m also Canadian-Californian but I’m not stupid. There’s enough around here now that all of us do that we should apologize for but a lot of times don’t.

I figure I’ve got enough to do to concentrate on improving my own track record in these regards without worrying about what a bunch of people who produced me without my consultation and whom I’ve never met did way back when.

I think it’s important to keep the memories alive because what we do now does impact what happens down the road. And maybe guilt serves as a reminder to do better so the next generation is freer to create and enjoy positive alternatives and options.

I don’t personally need the reminders. Life is precious enough to me as it is and I’m fully aware that other human beings are part of the richness and texture of it. I want to use both the bad things and the good of my life, in the now, for the now and to make things better for the future. I want to enjoy myself doing it and bringing to others a celebration of life and the incredible passion our species also has for compassion, decency and freedom.

I’d like to think that maybe if we all do this a little more, maybe there actually will come a day when no one will have any need to ask for apology, or feel the need to give one.

Until next time, then. And thanks for the ear.

HAPPY NOT APRIL FOOL'S DAY

Hi again, folks, and happy NOT April Fools Day. I hate to sound like Scrooge or the Grinch, but tricking people and possibly giving them cardiac arrest is not my idea of a real fun time. Sure, it’s a good laugh for the joker but not always for the recipient. To me, that’s a little liking making love when your partner’s not in the mood. Or giving the cat a bath.

I personally suspect that April Fools Day is another manufactured holiday invented by and lobbied into existence jointly by companies who manufacture whoopee cushions and handshake buzzers and by the Benevolent Society of Sadists and Masochists.

Speaking of dumb things, someone please explain to me the logic behind an electronic cigarette. It’s advertised as “cancer free” and while the user still inhales nicotine (which is not a direct carcinogenic), what’s exhaled is harmless water vapor. Nicotine itself, however, is still a major health risk and a contributor to the growth and spread of cancer, according to Columbia Encyclopedia.

I guess that means that if you want to slowly and publicly continue to shorten your life, at least there won’t be any second-hand smoke to spread the death wish around. Real interesting how that works. I’m not an advocate of suicide but if that’s your choice, it’s nice to not consider taking anyone along for that Last Great Ride.

Apparently they’re legal and a lot cheaper than the real thing, especially now that at least Washington State seems bent on taxing "the real thing" into a price range shared with several totally illegal drugs.

Well, under the category of “Happy Irony,” looks like loggers and mill workers in the Northwest are really going green and getting paid for it. According to the New York Times Weekender,

Some mills that once sought the oldest, tallest evergreens are now producing alternative energy from wood byproducts like bark or brush. Unemployed loggers are looking for work thinning federal forests, a task for which the stimulus package devotes $500 million; the goal is to make forests more resistant to wildfires and disease. Some local officials are betting there is revenue in a forest resource that few appreciated before: the ability of trees to absorb carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas that can contribute to global warming.

The U.S. Agriculture Department’s country-of-origin labeling program (COOL), went into total effect last month. It doesn’t include the ingredients in processed food but what it does mean is that if you’d like to support your local food producers even though it might mean paying a little extra, you can buy avocados that were raised in California rather than Mexico.

On the other hand, if you’re a fan of bacon from north of the American border, you can preserve your international culinary integrity now just by reading the package. I imagine that’s going to come as great news to millions of pigs the length and breadth of Canada.

In a continuing effort to reduce the size of The Bastion on the (Puget) Sound's carbon footprint, I came across a free (and Northstar tested) download which, according to PC World, “calculates your carbon footprint” by entering in “data to figure CO2 generated from activities including transportation, energy, trash or waste, recreation, purchasing habits, food, and more. Learn where you can go green by calculating your carbon footprint and then focusing on areas where you can make the most positive impact on the environment.” You can download it yourself by going here.

And to help with the internal environment, in terms of weighing enough to be healthy, I found a Body Mass Index calculator download which gives a range rather than a single ideal standard. I’m not just recommending this to people who might be packing a little too much, either.

Personally, I’m at the other end so this is good for thin people who have a tendency to skip meals and risk a variety of conditions that are just as potentially lethal as those associated with obesity. You can check that BMI calculator out here.

On that same download page is a Food Additives dictionary which indexes additives. When you click on one, it lets you know what the health risk is and other things I found pretty useful.

Until next time, then, take care, stay well and God Bless. And thanks again for the ear.

Rusty

YIELD TO NEITHER GOD NOR GOOD SENSE

Well, now that S. is back from Ireland, the stupid argument as a form of recreation is once again resonant within the cold stone walls of the Bastion on the (Puget) Sound.

We have been following the emerald popularity explosion of environmentalism that appears to be sweeping the nation and much of the planet. Like millions of our species, we are appraising its applications to our lives personally.

S. is already a vegetarian who, at 4’10” and 100 lbs., does not take up much space on the planet. She has, however, an appetite that would do justice to a Dublin soccer team; in total.

Our neighborhood association offers garden plots for the cultivation and harvesting of table vegetables. Now that it is spring, we will probably work our own and sharecrop three others.

We are also dining at home more now because we feel guilty that even before the Economic Downturn; S. put two local restaurants out of business simply by dropping in during All You Can Eat For $7.00 Hour.

S. is not a glutton nor particularly hyper. She is simply multi-dimensional. In the other reality she occupies, she is about the size of a Dublin soccer team, all of them standing on the shoulders of one another.

She walks Godzilla on a leash and swings through the jungle with King Kong. She also swims with the great whales and dances with Greyhound buses. That’s a lot of exercise, which requires a lot of fuel. Our annual grocery bill exceeds the gross national product of several small industrial nations. Combined.

To lighten the load on the power grid, we have decided to open up the fireplace and install a carbon burning stove. We both grew up with these so the selection of one was a matter of quick consensus rather than historical debate.

Now, we are ‘discussing’ the virtues of two fuel sources in terms of their aromatic merits. She favors peat and I am an advocate of Douglas fir.

She grew up cutting her choice out of bogs with her family and that’s an ancestral thing that goes all the way back to when the Gallaghers wore animal skins and painted their faces. She knows people in the peat business and the cost is do-able.

I’m Irish too but the McGuires were Vikings and we had tall evergreen trees where my forebearers came from. The concept of burning squares of sod is not a constituent ingredient of my genetic soup. I am not a big fan of dirt. I joined the Navy because the idea of a foxhole held absolutely no allure. Dirt is for growing things or paving over for shopping malls. It is not for dying in or lighting on fire.

No, I have never smelled peat. I have never even seen it up close. I cannot even remember having been shown pictures of it. I am totally peat challenged. S., on the other hand, has never hugged a Douglas fir (Washington’s unofficial favorite past-time), much less toasted marshmallows over a crackling blaze fueled by this source.

Despite not having experienced each other’s choice, each of us is unimpeachably convinced of the rightness of our own. When one believes as devoutly and as passionately as we do, one need not fear being tempted by the heresy of an open mind. There is simply no room in the universe for two absolute and opposing truths.

It is likely that we will eventually resolve this issue. But we will spend a lot more time discussing it. We will talk to those friends who agree with us; put forth that research which supports our conclusions; probably even commission a couple of ‘independent’ studies whose results can be predicted beforehand.

We will probably form a special interest group to lobby for government subsidies for our choice. And we will certainly seek Constitutional insurance, lest our mettle be tested and our favored fuel source be challenged in the high courts of the land.

By the time it has been taken as far as it possibly can be, we will probably have discovered a more appropriate alternative which combines the virtues of both peat and Douglas fir.

In the meantime, we will dress in layers and wrap ourselves in long cloaks of righteous green, secure and proud that in our finest hour, we yielded to neither God nor good sense.

WHY ST. PATRICK’S DAY TRULY DOES BELONG TO US ALL

The Easter 1916 Uprising Which Gave Rebirth To A Nation

Hi again, folks, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day. The man had an interesting life for a Welsh born citizen of the Roman Empire, who, at the age of 16, got kidnapped by Irish raiders, sold into slavery, escaped after six years and then returned of his own free will to eventually drive the snakes out of a land where people worked in the dirt a lot.

By birth, I’m half McGuire and of a rebellious line. My screen name, minstrel312, comes from a song entitled “The Minstrel Boy”. In the long and rather interesting 500 year history of fighting for independence, Irish “armies” marched with a warrior among their number who also sang to inspire them. Considering the odds these farmers faced against a military might which defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, how bravely and horrifically they died and the damage they did, pikes against cannons, I’m figuring these minstrel boys had to be fair at their job.

Apparently so did the English because they caught one of them after a battle and promised to spare him if he would sing to them. His response comprises the lyrics of that song. He told his captors that he would not sing for them because his songs were meant for freedom, not for slavery.

The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you'll find him;
His father's sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;
"Land of Song!" cried the warrior bard,
"Tho' all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy right shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!"
The Minstrel fell! But the foeman's chain
Could not bring that proud soul under;
The harp he lov'd ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said "No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and brav'ry!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free
They shall never sound in slavery!"

I’ve heard a lot of versions of that song down the years, by Irish and others. The best, in my half-shamrock opinion, was by Paul Robeson, who was a black concert singer and film actor circa the Depression era. I expect Mr. Robeson identified some with the history of a people struggling to be free.

I’ve some personal experience with the Old Sod, as well. A woman I loved as passionately as I’ve ever loved any other was born in Ireland and raised during “The Troubles”. She lost two brothers and a stellar love to that sectarian violence. She was and is a strong woman who, some nights, is terrified of sleeping for the dreams awaiting.

Ireland has come a long way, even in her lifetime, but the news of three deaths in Ulster at the hands of those who claim to be splinter groups of the Irish Republican Army mitigates my celebration this year. I pray Almighty God for steady hands in Belfast and Dublin.

I am reminded, as well, that Irish blood is as thick as the Guinness of which some of us are rather fond. Like the Jews after the Diaspora and again after the Holocaust, we were scattered some after the Famine. We did not always travel first class and sometimes, like Paul Robeson’s people and the tribes of Moses, we were transported in chains and sold when we got to our respective destinations. Those of us who survived the trip.

In the melting pot that is America and Canada, there is not one of us who cannot claim a portion of that same heritage. Despite these rather labored beginnings, two strong nations were forged and continue to be strengthened by the contributions of those who come here from other lands and sometimes under less than comfortable circumstances.

To me, then, St. Patrick’s Day is far more than a celebration of the Irish. It is a reminder that freedom, the desire for it, and the incredible sacrifices paid for it are something each and every one of us who values these shares in common.

I know for certain it has made two countries I love passionately the intrinsically great nations they are and I believe will continue to be.

Until next time, then, take care, stay well and God Bless.

Rusty