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.

Now comes this report from the Associated Press:

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.”

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]

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]