Smiley Found

Last week I wrote about our faithful friend Smiley. I mentioned that I couldn't find any pictures of him and an old friend, Stewart, came to the rescue! Last year Stewart took a series of portrait photos of old Smiley and he sent several to me. Thank you. This one is typical of the look on Smiley's face when he was looking at you. See? He really does smile!

Image used with permission of Stewart.

Sometimes They ALL WIN!!

Special Olympics: People with disabilities participate in athletic events. We used to call them mentally retarded, then mentally challenged, then intellectually disabled and who knows what next. It is hard to keep up with the “political correctness” police. Some of us just call them “Special” and let the rest go fly a kite.
Anyway, my special son John was born with a severe mental deficiency. He never completed normal brain development and you can’t measure his IQ because he can’t understand the questions or formulate the answers. He is assigned an IQ of 20. But man, can he run. A regular Forest G. He doesn’t understand competition, though, or winning.
In his first Special Olympics entered one of the distance runs, I don’t remember which, but a quarter or half mile or so. He was lined up with the other guys and when the starter said “GO” he just stood there talking to the starter. He finally figured out he was supposed to run so he took off and soon passed all the others. Then he stopped, walked to the crowd and tried to talk to someone (he doesn’t make much sense, but this crowd understood that.) The folks in the crowd got him running again and once more he passed the field. Then, stopped and waited for them to catch up and he just ran along with them and was talking a mile a minute. In the end he finished near the back or maybe the back, but with a roar of approval from the crowd.
Believe me when I say it: John WON! And in every Special Olympic race since (he no longer does this) he won in exactly the same way. Good Old John.

Photo of the Search Boys (A few years ago) L to R: John, Hal and Matt.

Hops Strikes Again!!

Sitting in a quiet empty bar in Englewood finishing a nice pint of IPA. Suddenly, a drop of water comes down from the ceiling and hits my glass. Bugger!!! Maybe it’s a sewer leak? Or a sprinkler leaking? Or sweat from the AC? F**k it. This is an IPA. No worries at all.
Sal is pouring water out of her nose and her eyes are red. She is getting a cold. I said approximately (this avoids quotation marks) good thing you have a pint of IPA (she has one too.) Here is why: IPA hydrates because it is 94% water; it anesthetizes because it is 6% alcohol; and, it cures because hops is medicine. The perfect combination when you are sick.
I told Sal the next time I get really sick, get a 5 gallon keg of a good hoppy IPA like Hop Otten IPA or Terrapin’s Rye PA and let me drink that exclusively. Got to get better, and if not, I would be pre-embalmed. Win-Win. A total no brainer.
Image: http://www.ratebeer.com/beerimages/full_size/16690.jpg

Another old friend gone. انه مكتوب

As we were getting ready to leave for Asheville, we got a call from our Vet. Not good news.
When I dropped Millie and Smiley off at the Vet for boarding while we were away, I mentioned that Smiley had been sick for the last few days and asked Ivan to check him out. The call back was not good news. Smiley had an intestinal blockage that was inoperable due to position and his age. We were at the airport waiting for our flight to be called. We had to decide, not if but when, to euthanize our old friend.
Years ago we had a place that was fenced to keep our dogs in and stray dogs out. Our dogs started barking like crazy and I went to see what the hell they had. Crap. A dead dog someone tossed over the fence. Just lying there with fly eggs on its head. Sticky stuff all over its body. I went and got Sal and we took an old towel to roll the corpse on to take to the field to bury. As we rolled him over, he opened his eyes, curled his upper lip, and smiled at us. So began the extended life of Smiley. He had heart worms and every other kind of worm dogs get. Ivan cleaned him out and we cleaned him up. He thrived and smiled often. He was a consummate digger. One day we came home from somewhere and he had dug 40, count’em 40, holes in the backyard. FOURTY!!! The usual number was 15 or 20. What a pain in the ass. But he smiled and was forgiven. Later in life he got heavy and had a hard time running around. He mostly just ate and slept. Then the fatal blockage. He was in constant pain by then, and nowhere to go.
Maktoob. It is written.
So we authorized the euthanasia. We have been with all our dog friends when they died, but old Smiley was with his Vet friend. His ashes will be sprinkled over the dozen craters he dug at the new house.
I could not find a single picture of Smiley. Anybody got one?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IFpg2m9UrgY/SZOTdez41hI/AAAAAAAAELc/o4-FDrfC

Lady Anne de Bivalve

I just got an email from an old friend who has been battling a malignant cancer for quite a while. She has discontinued treatment in favor of the most peaceful end possible. This decision took great courage and I only hope that she will find peace with family and friends. We met in 1950, and have been in contact off and on since. We had laughs together and some interesting times, but went our own ways in 1958.
A year or so ago I wrote an essay about doing the “hardest thing I ever did”, and I will add this to the list. I hate that she didn’t get the therapy needed to reverse the disease. I hate that medicine can’t get to all cancers in time. I just hate all of it.
She is a good woman with core religious beliefs, and will go to her heaven when the time comes. She won’t go kicking and screaming either. She will go with dignity and with a smile. She will be an example for us all.
Damn you Cancer. Damn you.
Image: http://www.nature.org/idc/groups/webcontent/@photopublic/documents/media/prd_023218.jpg

Steve Irwin: CRIKY!!

If you ever enjoyed Steve Irwin, take a few minutes to watch this video of end the memorial service, filmed at his home base crock farm. And listen to the song of John Williamson, a balladeer of great power.
I was writing a story about Uluru and the rain and wanted to link to John Williamson’s song “It’s Raining on the Rock”. Why? Because it’s raining here, now, and that brought me to Uluru. So I went to YouTube and whilst there rediscovered the Steve Irwin video. I couldn’t help myself. I opened it, listened and watched, and had a tear as well.
At some level thus guy was a real nutter, playing with crocks, dangerous snakes, spiders and sting rays. At another he was a consummate entertainer, and at another he was a master of showing us another world. And he died the way he probably wanted to. But probably too soon, if you could ask him.
So I watched the video and thought about all the people I know who have never heard John Williamson or his songs and though “Hell, why not?” Why not indeed. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rdyVP95XiE&feature=related
Look into my eyes. Watch it. And whatever you do, DON”T MISS THE END!!!
Image: http://www.funnyheck.com/funnypicture/steve6.jpg
Image: http://www.johnnyleeclary.com/images/irwin_steve_snake_cp_10666737.jpg

There is Something Rotten in the State of Alabama: Tomatoes.

(Before you read further, notice that the sign says “my body my choice” etc.? Yeah? Try to “choose” woman’s health services in Kanas and see who owns your body, lady.)
You gotta love some state legislators. Alabama passes a terribly strict “immigration” policy and as a result on September 28th, thousands of migrant workers stream out of the state. Then the farmers find out that local people won’t work for the wages or the back-breaking labor, so crops all over the state are rotting in the fields or on the trees. Brilliant.
Watch Florida next. A massive use of migrant labor for a multi-billion dollar agribusiness, and the assholes in the legislature want to pass a “tough” immigration bill like Arizona and Alabama. If they do, they demonstrate once again how far out of touch they really are, and what morons they are. In fact, if they pass a bill like that and it gets signed into law, Morons would be embarrassed to have them join the club. We shall see. They are now busy trying to kill the “Obamacare” program, climbing into the uteri of the women of the state, and getting divorced because gay marriage is a danger to us all. Oh yeah, and breaking up the public school system with universal vouchers, privatizing prisons and killing state workers with more job cuts and security cuts (abolition of tenure for colleges and universities) which will take our already not-world-class-anymore universities down another notch or two.
At least we got a bunch of good workers from Alabama for the moment.
Image: http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSASvnkcElJhgFRGCoL9muN_6ylWae9CLamSc9rUSLVfUfyXBGTyj_st7dW

Throw The Bums OUT!!!

Multiplier Effect: When you spend a buck somewhere, that buck gets spent again and again, so the effect of you spending causes more spending. Look, say you hire a painter to paint your house. You pay the painter, who then gets his car fixed. The mechanic then buys a new tool, and the tool company buys material to make more tools. That is what every government does every time when there is a downturn in a country’s economy. Except the Tea Party Republicans. They insist on cutting spending. So the result is less money in people’s pockets, less spent, and less multiplier, fewer jobs, longer recession.
Almost every economist knows that in recession the government spends, and in boom times it pays off debt. Not the other way around. Reducing spending will only drive the economy in the wrong direction. Down. One more reason to use the “moron” appellation on the Tea Party and throw the bums out next election. Yeah.
http://news.yahoo.com/p-500-enters-bear-market-europe-worries-142523281.html
Image: http://img1-cdn.newser.com/square-image/106892-20110331180345/bernanke-were-ready-to-spend-more-to-prop-up-economy.jpeg

"Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink"

And so goes the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". I think everybody knows this poem, or parts of it anyway, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. There is a good discussion about it on the Wikipedia citation below. I remember reading it decades ago and thinking that the one thing we would never run out of was water. I didn't figure on the massive population growth, the unprecedented destruction of the ecosystems of the world, or the disastrous climate changes that would plague us in the decades following the reading.
I guess most of us didn't either. But here we are. Not enough drinking water in places in Florida, Georgia, Arizona, California, New York, Africa, Australia, China, and the list goes on. And not enough water for agriculture in may places either. So crops fail, people starve etc, etc. etc.
I read a comment of Facebook this morning by a writer I don't know:

"Borden Beck: ‎"we" are apparently planning to pull water from the Columbia to replenish an already depleted aquifer in NE Ore so that life can continue... Where will Nevada get water to replenish this groundwater? Answer = nowhere... they are planning on the rapture or armageddon or the apocalypse to make concerns mute."

And you know what? I think Borden Beck may be right. There have been murmurs for years about the policy shifts in America to favor the "endtimes" and bring on the end. I have always dismissed these as lunitic fringe conspiracies. Now I am not so sure. About the conspiracy I mean. The longer the world plunges into the freefall of global disaster, the harder it will be to stop the fall and pull back. I don't see any real effort in this country to do that. Pull back I mean. Sad. Very. Bloody. Sad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner
Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Gustave_Dore_Ancient_Mariner_Illustration.jpg/220px-Gustave_Dore_Ancient_Mariner_Illustration.jpg

Starvation 2008, 1998 and TODAY!

August 9th, 2008: Mark Hawthorne writes that meat production is a major contributor to world hunger. Here is an example he cites:
Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC, states it succinctly: “People go hungry because much of arable land is used to grow feed grain for animals rather than people.” He offers as one example the Ethiopian famine of 1984, which was fueled by the meat industry. “While people starved, Ethiopia was growing linseed cake, cottonseed cake and rapeseed meal for European livestock,” he says. “Millions of acres of land in the developing world are used for this purpose. Tragically, 80 percent of the world’s hungry children live in countries with food surpluses which are fed to animals for consumption by the affluent.”
It is now 2011, and nothing has changed except there are even more people starving to death every day. I heard a guy on NPR the other day being interviewed and when asked what could be done to help the current starvation, and he said that many more tons and tons of food would be needed. But here is the kicker: he ended with this “but it is never enough. It will never be enough.” This from an advocate of feeding the starving masses.
Just what the hell will be enough, you ask? Will you give up meat and cheese because they are feed intensive? Beer uses grain. Will the world stop brewing and drinking beer? What about vodka? And bourbon. And Scotch whisky? Dog and cat food? The list of products that are not strictly needed and are made from grain of some kind goes on and on.
Now add to the problem the propensity for humans to reproduce every time they get a full belly and “it is never enough” comes into sharp focus. What is really needed is a dramatic drop in population coupled with an increase in world cooperation in food production and distribution, all without corruption. How likely is that? (Think the Catholic church, the Church of JC of LDS, and the rest of the churches that think more is better, and ignorant people who say stupid things like “we just wanted 4 to even out the family” and crap like that.) OK, so not very likely. What is the alternative? A slow degrading of the ecosystem of the world in an effort to produce ever more food for the ever more people ending with an environmental and political collapse of horrendous proportions.
Then we start again. Hopefully in a world not glowing from nuclear (pronounced new-cle-er not new-que-ler) fallout and freezing in nuclear winter.
Image of family in 1998: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/387/sudan2.jpg
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Feast-or-Famine-Meat-Prod-by-Mark-Hawthorne-080808-523.html