Graybyrd's Nest

It’s not all bad when the redwing blackbirds are building their hanging nests in the bulrushes around MistyIsle pond, but — DAMN! Spring was sure late coming this year, and it was a grey, chill, wet mess for most of April!

On the bright side, the pond is high & higher. There’ll be lots of water and cover for the nesting season.

I’ve known for several years that there has been considerable pot-growing activity on national forest lands. These have been reported to be small-scale operations by individuals looking for personal income. Forest officials in the affected areas have advised hikers and hunters to be aware of possible booby-traps around marijuana “pot patches,” but otherwise not too much was made of the situation. The public was assured that law enforcement agencies were actively seeking out and destroying these illicit gardens as an on-going part of the national “war on drug” effort.

Now comes this report from the Associated Press:

Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.

Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.

“Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they’ve gone to mega, monster gardens,” said Brent Wood, a supervisor for the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. He said Mexican traffickers have “supersized” the marijuana trade.

The report claims that Sequoia National Forest in central California is covered in a patchwork of pot fields, as is nearby Yosemite, Sequoia and Redwood national parks. Also included are eastern Washington lands of the Wenatchee and Okanogan national forests.

When I was much younger, I worked summers as a Forest Service fire tower lookout, spending the summer fire season living in a 30-foot mountain tower. The lookouts were replaced with fixed wing airplane fire spotter patrols, and the airborne smoke-jumper crews were largely replaced by helicopter-carried “helitack” crews.

Now I had always assumed that routine public land airplane and helicopter fire-spotter patrols could also pick out the brilliant green of marijuana gardens from the darker evergreen forest canopy. Maybe that’s not part of the contract description.

I don’t know whether we should accept that our government intends to hand over the public lands to the Mexican gangs; or if we’ve totally surrendered the so-called “War on Drugs,” or if we’ve simply become so incompetent or apathetic that we’re now helplessly ineffectual to put up much of a fight.

But then again, it’s a hell of a lot easier to just let the local cops arrest our kids for carrying a baggie, and we as parents and grandparents get to pay additional taxes to build yet another new prison. The number one cash industry of rural America is marijuana production; the number one employment growth industry of rural America are new prisons. Check it out.

I snapped these pix last year during a minus tide, filed them away on the ‘puter,and forgot them. Since the issue of dredging the Oak Harbor Marina has become “lively” again (we’ll be spending boatloads of cash to suck up large quantities of the sticky clay bottom and haulin’ it off to dump it down by Everett) it seems appropriate to illustrate just what happens when the assorted celestial bodies line up during the equinox events to give us a significantly “minus” tide.

Go to my Minus Tide album:

My stepfather was an ironworker who built bridges and dams. Later he became a logger. He drove a crawler tractor in the Cascade mountains above the Methow Valley in Washington State, skidding huge Douglas Fir and Ponderosa Pine logs along skid trails plunging down the steep, granite-slabbed mountainsides. His credo for remaining alive: stay “heads up” and always leave yourself a way out.

It seems absurdly simple but this wisdom is fatally easy to neglect when pressed by time or fatigue. In my stepfather’s case, he was never seriously hurt on the job and he outlived most of his peers. Some died violent deaths in a moment’s carelessness. They failed to stay “heads up” and they neglected to leave themselves a way out.

—

It was a hot day in the marina when my wife and I returned from her first cruise into the San Juan Islands. We had been gone four days and now all she wanted was a warm, lingering shower. I stayed behind to tidy up the boat and to hear the latest gossip from my slipmates.

I noticed a tall, lanky young man in grey twill fatigues and a wide-brimmed canvas hat moving easily about the topsides of a 28- foot sloop three berths over from mine. He had just rigged a handsome tackle of brass-strapped hardwood blocks from the masthead, and was now fitting a rigger’s sling to himself. It was obvious that he was preparing to go aloft. A slender young woman in sandals and a long, form-fitting, cotton print dress emerged from the boat cabin to help.

I folded and stowed my jib, coiled the sheets, tied back both halyards, and watched this couple prepare for his going aloft. As competent as he seemed, she seemed apprehensive and unfamiliar with the confusion of lines and mast fittings. As he prepared to hoist himself aloft, he instructed her to tail the descending slack tackle line around the mast winch. He hoisted himself briskly, steadily upwards, while calling instructions down to her as he ascended. He paused to stand on the spreader bases, leaning back comfortably from his outstretched arm, the tackle fall squeezed fast in his hand.

He called down to her to take an extra wrap of the tackle’s tail around the mast winch. He told her how to stand, to brace herself just ahead of the mast, with her feet apart, the heavy line tailing off the winch held behind her. He told her to hold it firmly against her offside hip, tucked in against her stomach, and to guide the line off the winch with her near hand. This done, he pulled himself, hand over hand, up to the masthead.

I watched, vaguely apprehensive, my jib sheets dangling forgotten in my hand. I felt compelled to offer help, but he had refused an offer from another man. The young woman was nervous. A riding turn was jamming the mast winch. She struggled to free it. In time, he called down to her to remove the line and to rewrap it, while he held himself secured at the masthead. She did, but with doubting hesitation. Then, clearly and plainly, he called down to her:

“Belay the line to the mast cleat, but first, take out all the slack.”

She hauled the line tight at the winch, and holding the tail in her hands she looked about, hesitantly.

“Tie it here?” she asked, indicating a cleat on the mast base.

“Yes,” he said.

“There is something already tied off there. Should I remove it?”

“No. That’s alright,” he called down. “Just tie it off.”

There was a long silence while she worked about the base of the mast. I glanced down to resume coiling my jib sheets, and just as quickly heard an ominous sound. I jerked my head up and saw the rigger falling, windmilling down, his arms and legs flailing. He was clawing for a hold somewhere along that naked aluminum mast. The wooden blocks and four-part tackle were falling in a tangle around him.

His leg hit the spreader, hard. He spun then, and thudded onto the cabin top. As I stood, frozen, horrified, I heard him groan. He moved his hands down his pants leg, feebly, where the fabric was beginning to darken with blood.

The terrified woman had grabbed frantically at the line that snaked upwards in a whipping streak, wrenching her hands open each time she desperately tried to check its racing ascent, tearing and burning the fingers and palms of her thin hands.

In her anxiety, confronted with an unfamiliar task, she could not bring herself to tie the rigger’s hoisting line off to a cleat already half-filled with another line. She did what seemed safest: she uncleated that line to make more room. She did not realize that everything: the tackle, the sling, and the rigger, all were hanging from that offending line, the mainsail halyard. When she loosed it and it ran free, everything fell.

There was nothing else to hold him.

Help arrived immediately. The rigger was well attended by skilled first aid volunteers until an ambulance arrived to transport him to the local hospital. The distraught young woman was despairing while an attendant bandaged her torn hands. In tears, she blamed herself.

Silently, I blamed him.

He had suspended everything from a single halyard. He didn’t rig a safety line. He refused an offer of experienced help. He hauled himself to the masthead without taking time to talk and to coach his obviously nervous helper through every step of the procedure. And he failed to tell her that everything, perhaps even his life, was hanging from that one crucial line, the mainsail halyard, tied off to the mast cleat in front of her.

Shaken, I closed my boat and slowly walked past the scene of that frightening fall. I remembered the many times in my life that my step-father’s advice had kept me clear of trouble:

“Son, always think things through and never fail to leave yourself a way out. Stay heads up and you’ll stay alive.”

---

Caught this item from the New York Times “headline alert”:

“The Dow industrials were down 103.69 points, or 1 percent, at
9,908.54 at the closing bell. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock
index and the Nasdaq were also lower for the day.

“Shares of financial firms posted the largest losses amid
worries that they could be hurt by huge deficits in countries
like Greece, Spain, and Portugal.”

Awwww, that’s a pity. But not to worry, they won’t suffer too much. Come time for another round of bonuses, them financial firms can always sidle up to Uncle Sucker and get another bailout check, thanks to us taxpayers. Gawd forbid they should shrink below the “too big to fail” size, huh?

Darn, but it’s hard not to develop a dislike for them Wall $treet fellers. Specially since they learned that “private” means they get to keep the money, and “public” means we get to keep dishing it up for ‘em so they don’t lose their place at the trough.

[GB]

I’m a news junkie. I love browsing the news, trying to keep my gnarly ol’ finger on the pulse of “what’s happening now.” Like the extreme sad news of a natural gas explosion this morning that destroyed a Connecticutt power plant that killed five and injured many more.

But sometimes the news is so bizarre it jars my senses and brings a “What the hell’s with that?!” from my lips. Like this one: The RSPCA in Australia has fined ITV $3,000 Aussie dollars for … ready for this? … killing and eating a rat! “The animal was killed for a TV show, that’s not appropriate,” said RSPCA chief inspector David Oshannessy.

I’m sure the Australian rats are grateful for the protection, but I’d bet they’ll still scurry for cover whenever a TV crew comes near. Rats do that, you know. Scurry for cover.

But I’ll bet that Special Forces troops, deployed for jungle survival training, won’t be too observant of the RSPCA (“Rat” Society?) prohibitions when it comes to eating grubs, earthworms, crickets, lizards, and the fortuitous “rat on a stick” cuisine.

If the Land of Oz is so short of rats they gotta cherish them, I think we could arrange for a few 747-loads of them from Chicago, St. Louis, or New York City to be rounded up and flown down to Sydney in time for their fall house-invasion season.

Sheesh! [GB]

Ya Want REAL Cruelty to Rodents? Try this one!

A customer calls tech support; sez their printer mouse is jammed!

Printer mouse? Printers don’t have a mouse!

Ya want I should send you a picture?

Just LOOK at that poor little critter … now THAT has gotta be worth a whole boatload of Aussie Rat Society dollars!

Words to a man who lost his father this week:

At nearly 70, I can share with you that life is not quite what we envisioned it would be when we were playing in sandboxes and yanking pigtails in Ms. Grundy’s class. As a father, I can also share with you that we rarely live up to that image of us that we see reflected in the eyes of our sons and daughters. But most of us try. We do try. We try to be successful in life; we try to be good husbands; we try to be that father our sons and daughters need.

But we’re also human, and imperfect, and we rarely reach as high as we seek to reach. Sometimes its a failure within, and often its some circumstance which we cannot overcome. But we do try, and try again.

But there is one thing which a son or daughter should never doubt, never fail to grasp tightly to their own heart.

We fathers do take immense pride in our children, and we cling to them as the most precious achievements of our lives.

I see the photograph of you with your father. I read that it was a long and often isolated path the two of you walked.

But I’m a father, and I can see the joy and pride and love in his eyes.

The two of you were fortunate to have each other. Remember him.

My very best wishes for a long and gratifying life of accomplishment for you. He’ll be proud.

Gray

I got Marcia’s mailbox finished Tuesday (Feb 2), using a half barrel (oaken, from a winery; I could smell the wine) as a base for a 4 x 4 upright post, braced with cross 2 x 4′s, and supporting a base of side-straddle 2 x 4 pieces to which the sides of the mail box itself is screwed. The whole thing is strong; nobody is going to easily knock it over.

Marcia contributed her bit by sluicing cuprinol wood preservative on the barrel, inside and out, and on the support post. This will delay the inevitable wood rot, hopefully for many years.

We plan to half-fill the base with rocks, then pack coarse bark mulch over that, and then embed a circle of planters with spring flowers. We’ll set it up tomorrow.

Just think: it took only three weeks of nagging to get me to do two hours work on that thing. I s’pose we’re both mellowing a bit in our old age.

Mailbox Flowers

Marcia went to Mount Vernon Wednesday with a friend. I took the opportunity to set the barrel up on a support base of bricks to hold it clear of the ground, and I filled the barrel half full of rocks and gravel. Over this I poured a bag of “bark nuggets” which is a euphemism for log bark peelings, and into this I set eight small flowerpots of blooming primroses which Marcia had picked up at the local “Wally World” store.

Color her tickled. It does look nice sitting out front. The fact that I surprised her? Priceless!

[GB]

Lest we think that global supremacy is something the Celestial Being automagically granted the US of A simply for being the land of the free and waving fields of grain, think again.

We’ve shot our wad. Like the prodigal son that inherited the benefits of his Granddaddy’s and his Daddy’s foresight, sacrifice, and hard work, we’ve gone to Las Vegas and blown it all on the craps tables. We’re so deeply in debt to the Asian nations—principally the Chinese—for funding our profligate over-spending ways, that they’re now in a position to call the shots and there’s little we can do about it.

By the by, “implacable” means, according to my dictionary: “unable to be placated : he was an implacable enemy of Ted’s. • relentless; unstoppable : the implacable advance of the enemy.”

China is a 2,000 year old culture. They’ve learned to take the long view. The U.S. is not yet 250 years in existence, and we can hardly look beyond the next presidential primary.

Consider this: from today’s AP news reporting, China is pledging to retaliate against the U.S. over arms sales to Taiwan [which was promised under W's administration-GB] and is warning of further damage to ties if President Barack Obama meets the Dalai Lama. Also, the report says there’s likely to be further upset ahead over trade friction, currency rate troubles, and recent accusations of Chinese-sponsored cyber-spying and attacks against scores of U.S. and other western corporations, seeking to steal industrial trade secrets and to raid email listings of dissident Chinese who use outside resources to maintain internet contacts.

Beijing holds $2.4 Trillion in foreign debt, about $800 Billion of which is invested in U.S. Treasury securities.

The report quotes Edward Friedman, a China specialist at the University of Wisconsin: Since the 2008 financial crisis, Beijing has concluded that the world’s developed democracies “are badly wounded and therefore a healthy and growing China can now impose its will all over the world.

“It therefore has become more assertive and uncompromising and self-confident, such that its actions seem arrogant to many,” he said.

Political pundits have already agreed that the national deficit is so great that the ability of any U.S. President to initiate new domestic initiatives is severely hampered. Add to that the fact that our military has been exhausted, worn out, depleted, and stretched dangerously too thin in the Middle East.

Implacable.

Think about it. [GB]

This is one of the most disturbing reports I’ve read in a long, long time.

Being a card-carrying member of the “elder” class (read: fossil) all my life I’ve heard references to severely brain-traumatized patients as “human vegetables,” basicially unaware of their surroundings, unable to function, to respond, to hear or speak. In short, possessing all the cognitive functions of a rutabaga.

Now, the Brits in a continuing series of brilliant medical studies have shown us that in many cases, this simply isn’t so. Which leads to many disturbing questions, not the least of which: when is it permissible to pull, or not to pull, the plug on these patients.

The link: Scientists have been able to reach into the mind of a brain-damaged man and communicate with his thoughts.

The story reported that with one patient – a Belgian man injured in a traffic accident seven years ago – they asked a series of questions.

He was able to communicate “yes” and “no” using just his thoughts.

The team told him to use “motor” imagery like a tennis match to indicate “yes” and “spatial” imagery like thinking about roaming the streets for a “no”.

The patient responded accurately to five out of six autobiographical questions posed by the scientists.

For example, he confirmed that his father’s name was Alexander.

Here’s the “Catch 22″ phrase: “It does raise many ethical issues – for example – it is lawful to allow patients in a permanent vegetative state to die by withdrawing all treatment, but if a patient showed they could respond it would not be, even if they made it clear that was what they wanted.”

Good question!

[GB]