WHAT CAN'T BE CHANGED

Today is the fifty seventh anniversary of MLK's I have a dream speech. You remember MLK. Made a speech. Everybody cheered. And Kink magically disappeared only to reappear in the spring of 1968 just in time to meet that bullet in Memphis. And deep, deep down you have to wonder how much has really changed. 

I’m getting a little fed up with the comments that the Irish, the Germans, the Italians etc. ad nauseum had adapted to the majority culture in the US so why can’t _______ I don’t think you’ll have to think too hard to fill in the blank.

Well for starters many of those minorities are white or at least rather tan in complexion. Lose the accent, alter your name, move to the other side of the country and you can pretend to be just about anything you want to be. If anyone is curious enough to ask, that is. Even the Italians. For every immigrant’s son who looks like Antonin Scalia, there’s a blue eyed blond from the north of the country that was settled by the Germanic tribes. Change your name from Bellini to Bell and nobody will ask any questions.

As for the minorities from the orient, they faced some very extreme prejudice in the early years. And let’s face it. I didn’t take the time to run the numbers but there just aren’t that many Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Asian Americans in this country. I suspect that there are parts of the country where the good citizens can go for years and not see an Asian face outside of the TV or movies.

African Americans have been the quintessential other from the beginning. Were they persons or property? The constitution came down on the side of what? They were persons but only 3/5 of a person and only so they could be counted for census purposes. Called “black” even though most African Americans are varying shades of brown it conjures up all those images of darkness.

The dangers of night. Going over to the “dark side.” Thanks George we really needed that and Darth Vader in his midnight black get up to let us know he wasn’t one of the good guys. The psy cops in the Babylon 5 universe with their SS wannabe’s black uniforms. The black sheep of the family. The black market. All the negative images conjured up by “black.”

You can change your name. You can get an education that lets you speak like a BBC presenter. You can get a good job and dress the part. Even buy a decent car. There are still areas where the real estate agents will try to steer you away from. You can still be arrested for buying a belt considered too nice for somebody like you. You and that nice car can still be pulled over for “infractions” that probably wouldn’t be noticed in a European American driver.

You can be stopped and questioned for walking while black with your hands in your pockets. (true story. Apparently a store owner had called because an African American with his hands in his pockets had been passing back and forth in front of the store and he was afraid he was going to be robbed. No matter that the man who was actually stopped was nowhere near the store. He was walking the mile between the house of a friend and his place about a mile away)

You can still be called every vile  name in the book because, unlike other hyphenated Americans, you can’t change the color of your skin. From the day you’re born until the day you die too many people will only look at skin color and no further. And from the comments I’ve been reading on too many stories too many people aren’t interested in doing things any different. 

WHEN ANY BLACK MAN WILL DO

Another whack job, female, at the tRump fest has a biracial adopted son. And she is on record as saying that as this little boy with brown skin grows older the cope would be wise to "profile" him. Her name is Abby Johnson BTW. She has some other out their opinions but this just might be the worst. Leonard Pitts is still a colomnist at the Miami Herald. I don't take the Guard anymore so I don't know if his work is still published. I wonder what her reaction will be if or when her son is arrested in a case where "any black man will do." Or if she will blame him for being targeted instead of questioning the cops. This is from 2005 and things sure as hell haven't changed. 

Martin Luther King had a dream. What we have right now looks closer to a nightmare.

HOW THINGS ARE

This column appeared in the Sunday edition of the Register Guard. It doesn't need much introduction except to note that I had a huge lump in my throat and was almost crying by the time I was finished reading it. Most small children have that expression that says "all things are possible." To see that change to "this is how things are no matter how hard I try" has got to kill part of their parents spirits.

LEONARD PITTS JR.: Race issue hits home with son

October 7, 2005

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.

My youngest son was arrested last year.

Police came to my house looking for an armed robbery suspect, 5-feet-8-inches with long hair. They took my son, 6-foot-3 with short braids. They made my daughter, 14, lie facedown in wet grass and handcuffed her. They took my grandson, 8, from the bed and sat him beside her.

My son hadn't done a damn thing. I was talking to him long distance at the time of the alleged crime. Still, he spent almost two weeks in jail. The prosecutor asked for a high bail, citing the danger my son supposedly posed.

A few weeks later, the prosecutor declined to press charges, admitting there was no evidence. The alleged perpetrator of the alleged crime, a young man who was staying with us, did go on trial. There was no robbery, he said. The alleged victim had picked a fight with him, lost, and concocted a tale. A video backed him up. The jury returned an acquittal in a matter of hours.

Too late now

But the damage was done. The police took a picture of my son. He is on his knees, hands cuffed behind him, eyes fathomless and dead.

So I take personally what William Bennett said. Bennett, former education secretary, said last week on his radio program that if you wanted to reduce crime, "you could ... abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."

Bennett says critics are leaving out his denunciation of the idea and the fact that he was criticizing a thesis that holds that making abortion readily available to low-income women in the '70s led the U.S. crime rate to drop in the '90s.

I get all that. But what bothers me is his easy, almost causal conflation of race and crime, as if black, solely and of itself, equals felony.

The way it is

It's a conflation that comes too readily to too many. The results of which can be read in studies like the one the Justice Department cosponsored in 2000 that found that black offenders receive substantially harsher treatment than white ones with similar records.

They can also be read in that picture of my son, eyes lifeless and dull with this realization of How Things Are.

I asked a black cop who was uninvolved in the case how his colleagues could have arrested a 6-foot-3 man while searching for a 5-foot-8 suspect. Any black man would do, he said.

So how do I explain that to my son? Should I tell him to content himself with the fact that to some people, all black men look alike, all look like criminals?

Actually I don't have to explain it. A few months back, my son was stopped and cited for driving with an obstructed windshield. The "obstruction" was an air freshener.

So my son gets it now. Treatment he once found surprising he now recognizes as the price he pays for being. He understands what the world expects of him.

I've watched that awful knowledge take root in three sons now. In a few years, I will watch it take root in my grandson, who is in fifth grade.

The conflation of black and crime may be easy for William Bennett, but it never gets any easier for me.

LEONARD PITTS JR. appears most Wednesdays and Fridays in the Free Press. Reach him at the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132; at 888-251-4407 or at lpitts@herald.com.

SLEEPING FIRE MOUNTAIN

A change from my last entry. And there just might be more as I learn more myself. A change from the political sturm and dramg this week.

Walking home from school in Oakridge in winter sometimes I'd look back over my shoulder and there would be a rosy mountain looking back at me. Years later sometimes it would be clear enough to see that peak as I drove home from work and looked SE towards the Willamette Pass. Somewhere along the line I learned the name to go with the mountain, or what's left of it.

Our name for it is Diamond Peak. Named for one of the first settler to climb in 1852. John Diamond was part of a crew attempting to carve out another trail across the mountains. If the Native Amricans had a name for the mountain the settlers never found out. If anybody ever thought to ask. Because it sure as heck doesn't look like a diamond.

Although a winter scene can be pretty sparkly. That's what I saw walkiing home. Must have looked kind of funny. Me walking backwards yo catch the last of the light. Our valley was already in shadow.

It's no secret that the west coast's answer to tornados and hurricanes is volcanoes and earthquakes. Don't happen near as often but it can be spectacular. Hopefully more about that later. Diamond is classed as a shield volcano. With some small cinder cones the slopes. That's Mt. Yoran off to the left. It's hard to tell from the distance but Yoran's peak is almost one thousand feet lower than Diamond.

A modern example of the shield volcanos are the Hawaiian Islands. The lava is usually highly fluid and may flow from vents instead of cinder cones. Any one flow may not be that deep but over time it bulds up. After all the Pacific Ocean is more than two thousand feet deep around the islands and the peak of Mauna Loa is more than fourteen thousand feet above sea level.

Willamette Pass is over five thousand feet high and the cone of Diamond is over three thousand feet above that. That's after the last glaciers carved some off after the last eruption over eleven thousand years ago possibly ending a life time of say, ninety thousand years. Although the mountain is fairly heavily eroded I'm not sure if it can be classed as extinct. Very dormant perhaps.

The peak is part of a wilderness area that;s about fifty miles SE of Oakridge. It can be accessed from trails that begin near Summit Lake or cutoffs from the Pacific Crest Trail.

When I first discovered my mountain began its life as a volcano. Or that most of the Oregon we see today is the product of volcanos and lava flows.

TRAFFIC IN DEATH

Mexico has ordered the phase out of Monsanto's RoundUP. The country's plans to be RoundUp free by 2024 were announced in mid July. The herbicide has been blamed in connection with non Hodgkin's lymphoma. The current EPA disagreed with a jury finding in favor of two patients in a 2019 lawsuit. And TV is littered with ads for class action lawsuits. Mexico is working towards the traditional practices of the native farmers. Practices they've used for generations. Practices some farmers in this country have been using or rediscovering. Wendell Berry is good resource to begin with. His collections such as The Unsettling of America, What Are People For, The Gift of Good Land.

There is also some decent evidence supporting the main ingredient in the herbicide, glyphosate, as an underlying cause of chronic kidney disease in farm workers in countries including Nicaragua, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, and at least one state in India.  (the article is from a US publication by the way with links to other articles) The patients are agricultural workers in their twenties and thirties with none of the usual underlying causes such as diabetis mylitis. 

Researchers are looking glyphosate as having a synergistic effect with heavy metals, polluted water, other chemicals. In other words the chemical may not be the only cause but it looks like it's on the list. Most of the countries involved have a history of lack of access to clean water. Low level agricultural workers often are working in countries that are hot and even if the water is clean they can't always get water when they need it. 

Now we get to GMO's. The deliberate creation of plants that can be poisoned and survive while all the plants around them curl up and die. Problem is that in countries like India the plants in the farm plots are not the only plants the peasants use for food. There may be a hundred different plants on the roadside that the people use for food for themselves or their animals. Adding in the costs of extra water and fertilizer actually makes the engineerd crops no better  than the non engineered crops.

Also engineering crops like wheat into putting all its energy into grain at the expense of stalk ignores facts of life in the third world. Farmers eat or sell the grain. Their animals often depend on the straw or waste grain for food. They usually can't afford to buy extra feed. Another example of how ignorance of the third world by the first world can be lethal. And it isn't just the farmers, glyphosate doesn't break down as fast as the scientists hoped. We all are exposed to trace amounts of all those lovely chemicals. 

As RoundUp resistant "super weeds" have cause increasing problems Dow chemical has pushed for the EPA to ok increased use of 2 4 D as the answer. Trouble is plants are becoming more resistant to that chemical too. And 2 4 D has a history. It was one of the ingrediants of Viet Nam era Agent Orange.

Of creating plants can created their own pesticide. Often killing good bugs along with the target bugs. Just ask the Monarch butterflies how they are faring these days. 

Now we come to a pet theory of mine. It's been cooking for awhile. I've looked at several of the websites pushing so called Intelligent Design. Can't really find out who is footing the bills for the and lawsuits. Yes, ID is often seen as having religious foundations. But I see something else. I have an unused Anthropology degree. I've had classes in genetics and heredity. 

Anyone who has studied standard evolution realizes that RoundUp and 2 4 D and plants engineeers to make their own pesticides are doomed to failure. Not all the so called weeds or the insects eating your crops are killed by the engineered products. A few survive and they reproduce. Next time a few more survive and reproduce. Until RoundUp or 2 4 D or the cotton that makes it's own bug killer don't work anymore. We can't kill our way to success. The companies that traffic in death are just hoping they can delay the inevitible just a little longer so they can make just a little more profit. Too bad the true costs in fertilizeer run off, poisoned land, and failed farms never show up on the balance sheets.

COVERED BRIDGE

I was playing around in JigZone. JIg saw puzzle site. In the bridges section spotted a familiar name. Not because of the bridge but a street in Springfield named for the pioneer family. Goodpasture bridge is one of fourteen covered bridges in Lane county still open to traffic.

Head on shot from the puzzle site. The bridge was built in the 1930's on the McKenzie highway near the little town of Vida. Named for Benjamin Franklin Goodpasture who was born in 1877. His parents settled in Lane County in the 1850's.

Shot from Wickipedia. It's 165 feet long, carries two lanes of traffic and is the second longest covered bridge in Oregon. It is listed in the National Registry of Historic places. In the 1980's the bridge was repaired, strengthened and some access modified to handle traffic more safely. Traffic on 127 can get a little crazy sometimes. Some folks just don't believe in slowing down especially on holiday weekends. I've been by the bridge dozens of times but never crossed it. My loss. It was just kind of interesting to find my little corner of the world on a puzzle site.

WILDFIRES

Another year and California is burning. Oregon has fires but don't seem to be quite as bad as California. Yet. Last week saw temps. hit 130 degrees in Death Valley. The bad heat only lasted three or four days but in California the heat was accompanied by dry lightning. Thunderstorms with no rain. The bain of wildland forest fires.

The West has been in drought conditions for at least two decades. Ranging from semi to parts of the Central Valley in California actually collapsing as the underlying aquifer collapsed. And on the subject of climate change. In the mid seventies I bought a rhododendron for the folks for their anniversary. We planted it at the SE corner of the yard next to the porch. It was usually the last to bloom and was usually bloomed out by mid June. By the early 2000's I realized that I was deadheading that rhodie at the end of May. At least two weeks earlier most years

Drives up the river to Oakridge revealed a reservoir at Lookout Point that seldom filled anymore. So I can't prove it but I'd say the climate is warming up in my neck of the woods. Back to wildfires.

When dad started working for Pope & Talbot out of Oakridge he noticed trees that had been scorched. Older loggers had stories of how the local tribes had set small fires to burn out the brush and create more graze for the animals they hunted. Same stories about some of the sheep herders. And when a traditional logging company goes into a unit they clear cut it. Yes seedlings are planted but somehow those units don't get thinned to take out the extra seedlings. Instead of a stand of larger trees a few feet apart you get what my dad used to call pecker poles. A lot of skinny trees that don't get a chance to get big enough to withstand a fire. You get an old growth Douglas fir three or four feet, or more, in diameter and that fire probably won't affect it.

And the US forest service handbook mandated fighting every fire. Even the little ones that would probably have burned out while taking some of the fuel with them. Managing the forest they call it. Overlooking the fact that one, creation had been managing those woods ever since trees and lightning met each other. Two, because of that synergy there are tree species that need fire to allow their seeds to sprout. And there is a funny thing about forest fires. Often they skip. The wind carries embers hundreds of feet often leaving many of the trees in between unburned.

Top it off with more and more houses being built in the urban forest boundary. And frankly once a firestorm hits no kind of defensive landscaping is going to save a wood framed house. Want proof. Google Paradise, California. Fire and high winds went through that community like a bulldozer.

Anyway back in 2018 the current occuapant had to make his opinion known while the west burned. Finland, he told us, had lots of forests but didn't but they were better taken care of and they raked them.That claim had most of us going "what" and the president of Finland stating that raking wasn't mentioned that last time they met.

I doubt that the current occupant can read a map but here is the Koppen map of California climate.

 It ranges from Mediterranean in the north to desert in the south east. The thing with Mediterranean climates is a rainy winter. And the west has not been getting those rainy winters, at least not much in the way for rainy winters for several years.

Now look at Finland.

Much lower temperatures and no deserts. Also California starts at about 30 degrees latitude and goes to about 40 degrees latitude. Finland STARTS at about 60 degrees latitude and has a significant piece of real estate above the Arctic Circle. The climate is described as Boreal. Warm summers, freezing winters As in up to one hundred days of temps. below freezing and snow. Lots and lots of snow. Apples and oranges folks, apples and oranges.

Honestly I've just skimmed the surface. And the stories about the Native Americans tell me that there has never been a so called "wilderness" where man has never influenced the landscape. But the Native Americans never tried to "manage" the landscape. They worked with it because they lived in it. Europeans culture has tried to exploit and "manage' a landscape they really knew nothing about and saw it mainly as X number of board feet to be exploited as quickly possible, as cheaply as possible and then move on.

WHERE I'M STILL FROM

Back in the day the company I worked for got involved with one of these motivational gurus. Who shall remain nameless  because to be honest I can't remember his name. He did have a really cool website. If you couldn't send your employees to hia mini boot camp you could buy a set of DVD's. I believe they ran about ten grand.

I was low enough on the totem pole that I managed to avoid being shipped clear across the country. I guess this stuff works for some folks but the more I heard the less I liked where this guy was coming from. Near as I could figure out it's a cross between a mini boot camp, revival meeting and a rock concert. Someone mentioned a scavenger hunt at four in the morning. 

The rest of us were blessed with a mini taste at an office meeting and when I asked one "graduate" what the loud music was supposed to do I was told it was "part of the program." I still haven't figured out how keeping me up most of the night three days running or trying to fracture my eardrums is supposed to improve my team building skills. I guess this is why they paid him the big bucks.

Having figured out where I didn't want to go, I found myself trying to put where I was comong from into words. I think what still troubles me the most it the effort to keep us all running so fast we don't have time to think. To keep the man made noise so loud that we can't hear what the world around us is trying to say.

Anyway this is what I came up with. If you were to bet that I never shared this with anybody at work, you'd win. Junction City was definiely not Springfield or Eugene. I think what bugs me the most was  the idea that you can do it by yourself. The old visualize success and it's your fault if your vision doesn't come true. That may be true to a point. But nobody and I mean nobody makes it alone. And that is what brought this little entry to life.

Earth, Air, Fire and Water, each element has a voice-but it can't sing without the others. Without the Earth in the form of the moon there would beno tides-no waves. Without the waves there would be no hiss of the little waves meeting the sandy beach. The great booming roar when tons of sea water meets two hundred feet of black basalt cliffs would be lost forever. Without the mountains to form cliffs and steep falls the roar of the waterfall would not exist. Without the rocks and stones in their beds, rivers and streams would lose their voices

Fire has a quicker, harsher song. Without water to make steam and sizzle,without trees or wood to burn, Fire would have almost no voice. As a lava flow cools the rocks grind together and the escaping gasses hiss and twist. Take away the fire from the earth's mantle and these fall silent.

Air has a voice when it meets Earth and what grows from the Earth. The sighing of the trees, the lonely whistle around the cliffs, the cry of the gulls carried from a windy beach, the rustle of the grasses, these come together to make a chorus when the Air sings its songs.

Earth sings some of her songs alone; the sounds of rocks falling and sand or gravel rustling when someone walks across it are earthly solos.  But many of Earth's songs are sung by what grows from the earth or swims in the water. But, without air to carry birdsong or the sea  to carry whale songs the world would be a quieter, lonlier place. Let us join our songs to the songs of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Together these are the songs of Creation

HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE

I keep getting hung up on words. Big words. Little words. Crazy words. And I find myself wincing more and more as words that used to mean one thing are used to describe actions that are total opposites to the original meaning. 

Trying to read the writings of a mystic is like trying to trap the wind in your hands and expect it to keep moving. Or try to bail the ocean with a teaspoon or count the grains of sand in a handful. Assuming you can keep the sand from spilling while you’re counting.

We’re trapped in what our human abilities can perceive with our five senses and further trapped by language when we try to describe it. I’m coming to believe that words are as imprecise as particle physics. If you know where a particle is you can’t know how fast it’s traveling. If you know how fast it’s going you can’t know where it is. And this from somebody who used to think that if you just had the right words you could explain something in a way that anybody would understand. Yeah, right. Between the current administration, the talking heads and the news that isn’t really news I think there’s a new Tower of Babel being built and it's just down the street.

If I say something is blue. Which blue am I talking about? Blue bells, blue birds, blue jays, the almost blue white of the sky in the east just before dawn on a clear morning or the almost blue black of the western sky at the same time? 

How about smells? Something smells sweet. Carnation sweet? The sun just went down and the garden smells like heaven sweet? I’m standing in the middle of a field of lavender sweet? Just bathed and powdered little baby sweet? Just took a big, three-layer devil’s food cake out of the oven sweet? (and how did something that tastes and smells so wonderful get called devil’s food anyway)

Someone could writean entire book on roses. How big they are, what colors they come in and then you come to the two kickers. You can only describe how a rose “smells” or how the blossoms “appear” by referring back to a rose. A rose smells like a rose. A rose looks like a rose. If someone has never seen or smelled as rose, telling them that it doesn’t smell or look like a lilac will tell them zilch. About all you can say is, there’s a rose garden, go have a blast and watch out for bees and thorns. 

I’m currently working on the autobiography of a former Catholic priest who got drunk on the mystics and ran afoul of folks who would like to convince us that when they say something is blue everybody will agree about the shade. Or if we don’t agree about the shade we’ll keep our mouths shut anyway.

Maybe creation is trying to tell us something. When you stop to think about it, the best roses often

have the biggest thorns and we all know what kind of protection those little honey producers carry.

STAR SISTERS

After spending a little time on the news feeds today I went searching through my astronomy photos. 

This cluster of young stars called the Pleides. The stars are Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeano, and Alcyone. In Greek mythology the stars were the daughters of the titan Atlas. In one legend they were pursued by Orion, in deperation they called out to Zeus who transformed them first to birds and then stars. The cluster forms the shoulder of the constellation Taurus, the bull. 

The bull being eternally hunted by Orion, the hunter. Who according to one legend boasted that he would kill all the animals. In defense Artemis and his mother Leto sent a scorpian to kill him. The battle caught the attention of Zeus who placed them both in the sky in part as a reminder to mortals to curb their ambitions. So you have Tauraus hunted by Orion who is pursued by Scorpio. Their stories were their books. 

Most of the stars in the cluster are about 100 million years old and only (so to speak) 425 light years away. Barely out the back door in stellar terms. The brightest stars are visible from near the north pole to the tip of South America. Almost all the stars in the cluster are moving in the same direction. The entire cluster contains hundreds of stars barely out of their gas cloud swaddling clothes. Eventually gravity will pull the "sisters" in different directions and the cluster will slowily disappear.

Six of the seven are easily visible but there is evidence from more than one culture of a seventh, slighty dimmer star. It's possible that modern light and industrial pollution have caused just enough changes in the atmosphere to obscure that seventh star. 

TOO BAD WE CAN'T IMAGINE

I posted this back in 2005.  We literally have a man in the oval office who obliquely calls for civil war if we dare turn him out of office. It's not as if we haven't seen car bombs, drones, brutal idiocy since we unilaterally went into a war of choice, not necessity, and watched it unfold on cable. Some of us anyway. Too many of the rest were worrying about the Kardashians or other people famous for being famous. Ok my cranky genes are in full play today and I can't say better now what I said before. 

One of the excellent documentary series in my DVD collection is the British series The World at War. It was originally broadcast on PBS in the seventies. I’m not sure you’d call it enjoyable but it’s close to the real thing most of us are going to get. The set includes a “how we did it and why” documentary with the producer. Either film footage and or on screen interviews. No reenactments, period. There is some footage that was staged for the camera but you are told about and why it was done. Excellent, and I do mean excellent narration from Lawrence Olivier. That man could do more with a slight inflection of voice than a paragraph of prose.

They managed to get interviews with soldiers and pilots from both sides. There are interviews with Hitler's secretary and German civilians who opposed the war as much as they could, including Dietrich Bonhoffers' sister in law. They tracked down Holocaust survivors and Heinrich Himmler's attache. And got him on film. Oral history at it's best.  

For me, the most effective footage is of bombed out cities, columns of refugees and interviews with survivors of the bombings. On both sides. Allied or Axis, in the end the civilians took it in the teeth, as usual.

Americans haven’t had anything like this happen to our people since the Civil War. Parts of Kansas, Missouri and sections of the south saw devastation nearing the scale of some of the earliest bombing raids. By the time the allies perfected long range bombing they were able outdo the Luftwaffe on a scale of at least a hundred to one.

Nothing on the scale of Hamburg, Dresden, Stalingrad, Tokyo or the fall of Berlin has ever happened on American soil. Sorry folks, as bad as September 11, 2001 was, it wasn’t even close. According to the series the Russians had nearly 200,000 casualties in the taking of Berlin. There’s never been an accurate count of the German casualties when the city fell. And that was one city. Just one city out of hundreds of cities and villages on both sides of the war.

The generation that fought in WWII is passing. The Vietnam generation is aging. None of politicians currently in office have seen combat or cities in flames. I’m willing to bet that very few of them have seen this series. Our leaders criticize European leaders for being unwilling to go to war. We don’t have any room to put the French or Germans down for their reluctance to send their citizens to war based on evidence that hasn’t held up. God knows they’ve seen enough destruction in the last century to last anyone with an ounce of empathy for several generations.

American cities have never had to endure night after night of bombing. We’ve never had a city with so many fires that the river supplying the fire crews literally dropped below the water intakes. Or had fires so fierce that it didn’t matter if the city was blacked out. The flames lit up the Thames so brightly it was like a beacon.

I never, ever want our people to find out first hand what such a war is like. But, maybe if we could imagine it just a little we’d be a little less eager to inflict it on someone else.

Oh, and that goes double for the ones setting off car bombs. But, what did we expect? The Sunnis have held the power in Iraq for several generations. Watching what the current party in power in our country is willing to do cement their hold on political control can we really expect the Sunnis to do any less. As least we’re still content with verbal dynamite. At least most of the time.

DON'T MESS WITH MOMMA

Sometimes when you can't come up with an entry the universe hands you a story on a platter.

A gal from Iowa was attending the motorcyle rally in Sturgis SD took a side trip Custer State Park to visit the buffalo. You know. The critter that can be over six feet at the shoulder, up to eleven feet long,, weighs up to a ton or so, and the bulls and cows both have horns. Anyway she got a little too close to a calf. This is the result. Luckily her belt broke. The critter got the pants and she got a trip to the hospital.

Fortunately she was not seriously injured. When seeing baby animals do not get anywhere near them. You never know where momma is or what she will do. This has happened enough times that the park service has put out a poster.

Similar to the cat petting chart. At least your cat can't butt you into the next time zone. Take your pictures. If you want to be in the picture use Photoshop and make sure you tell the truth about it.

ANNIVERSERIES

I originally wrote this back in 2005. And if mom had made it to July she probably would have reupped for another year of the Geographic. In the past fifteen years a few things changed. Besides moving. We stopped taking the Portland paper. Thanks to competition from the net, 24/7 news, and the general apparent dumbing down of my neighbors the Portland Oregonian basically quit servicing the rest of the state outside the metro area. 

Yes, you can access the paper online but it's not the same as thumbing through the paper getting ink on your fingers. And the specialty sections are subscription only. 
The Eugene Register Guard is still a family owned paper, but frankly all the extra paper is something I just don't needed. 

The nephews still don't read anything more than they need to. Somehow the reading genes from mom and dad landed on me. I got the double dose and proud of it.

Sometime this year there is a fifty-year anniversary. If I wanted to dig through the stored National Geographics I could find the exact month we started taking them. I think it was July actually. There were two constants when I was growing up. No matter how tight things were the subscriptions to the Geographic and Reader’s digest were renewed. We still take the Geographic; we’ve always taken at least two newspapers. I can’t remember when I was introduced to the local library. It wasn’t half bad for a logging town of about 3500 people.

I used to joke that I was born with a book in my hands and I’d read darn near anything. Books about rivers, mountains, submarines, other countries, dog stories, cat stories, historical novels, science fiction, fantasy, encyclopedias, aspirin labels, the first aid book. If it was that black on that white I answered the siren call. I’m not sure that my folks always knew what to make of me. I went to Ben Hur in the fifth grade and promptly went to the library and checked out the book-the unabridged version. I never much cared for romances though.

You may ask what brought on this little meditation. I’ve got five nephews and I don’t think any of them read just for the fun of it. They all get excellent grades; they pass their tests with flying colors. They play sports: the whole modern child hood bit. Video games all that great expensive stuff but the magic isn’t there. Henry VIII is as real to me as Bill Clinton. Paul Revere’s Boston as familiar as down town Eugene, Anne McCaffrey’s Pern is as real as my back yard. (I’ve always had a thing for dragons.)

And honestly I don't know how I got turned on to science fiction and fantasy. Maybe there was a copy of Amazing Stories or Galaxy when I hit the comics section at the local store. Have to admit that some the authors I loved when I was a kid haven't aged that well. Heinlein for one. And I still have a thing for dragons, hobbits, robots, and sandworms. And Star Trek. Original Trek, and maybe Picard. Not JJ Abrams. Not much anyway.And Khan played by a Brit? At least Montalban "looked" like he could have been a Sikh. 

We were members of the Methodist church in Oakridge and mom was active in Ebbert in Springfield. Anyway. She went with the Springfield UMW group to a yearly meeting in Roseburg, I think. One of the Oakridge delegates was the retired city librarian. We moved in 1968 and this was around 2012. She asked about me. I guess it isn't so strange I was in there about once a week for I don't know how many years.  And given the relative size of Oakridge and Springfield, Oakridge actually had the better library. In my opinion.

Oh, well I keep hoping lightning will strike.

TO THE CREATOR OF US ALL

Just a blast from the past.

Tewa is a language group spoken by Pueblo peoples including some Hopi.

I found this lovely little prayer in a book called American Indian Healing Arts.

O our Mother the Earth,
O our Father the Sky,
Your children are we, and with tired backs
We bring you the gifts you love.

Then weave for us a garment of brightness.
May the warp be the white light of morning.
May the weft be the red light of evening.
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.
Then weave for us a garment of brightness
That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,

O our Mother the Earth,
O our Father the Sky!

Which led to this variation from me.

Only Child of the One who created us all,

We have brought to You the best we have.
Weave these threads together into a new world.
Use our hands to weave the white light of morning and the red light of evening.
Use our hearts to weave the blue of moonlight and the silver of rain.
Use our minds to weave the green of grass and the gray of mist.
Use our joy to weave the thunder of the sea and the whispers of the wind.
Weave throughout the threads of peace, justice, compassion and generosity.
Over all place the glowing rainbow of the promise and the sparkling stars.

Only Child of the Creator weave us a new world.

Inspired by a Tewa Pueblo prayer

A MICRO WORLD

You drive west on West D street in Springfield until you hit the end of the street and either turn left to pick up the parking area/boat ramp (sort of a ramp) bike/hiking paths or right onto Locust. There used to be a building there that had something to do with the water system. Frankly I forget because it was torn down about forty years ago. The land was eventually turned into a little park and some houses were built along the access road.

Near as I can tell that building was the only reason there is a little creek running off the Middle Fork, down by what used to be a landfill, now bordering the bike path, and rejoining the main river at Alton Baker Park. Anyway there is a short bridge across the creek that allows park personnel access to the bike path.

At the southeast end of this bridge there used to be a beat up stump about say, eight inches across and three feet high. That stump was its own little world. Of all the places I took pictures of I never thought to take a picture of that microworld. I remember at least two kinds of moss. The green velvety kind and the rougher yellow green kind.

After a rain there would be a little cluster of midget toadstools about and inch or so tall. A few grass seeds would come in on the wind, looking like tiny trees with their seed clusters. If you looked closely there might have been a lady bug or two and the tiniest daddy longlegs spiders. At least they looked like daddy longlegs. On a foggy moring there might be a tiny spider web woven between the grasses and sparkling if a puff of breeze parted the mist. Midget spiders weaving webs to catch even smaller prey.

The bark on the stump was raggedy with moss in the cracks. It had either been a very small tree or a bush with delusions of grandeur. I don't remember how many times I stopped by that micro world and almost got lost in that world. It's been years since I remembered that little world. May have been a couple of collections of haiku no longer hiding on my bookcase.

ALIEN THRONES

I am a sucker for NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site. Lately if I can't come up with something? Well I go looking there. NASA has been posting a picture every day since the mid nineties.

Now believe it or not this is a real landscape in the wilderness of Ah-Shi-Sie-Pah badlands of New Mexico. It's a composite shot of foreground and background exposures taken in late May. The photographer is Martin Zajac. The rock formation is called the Alien Throne. That's the Milky Way shining ovver the rocks. The bright "star" to the left is Jupiter with Saturn below and furthere left. And darn the Milky Way doesn't look like that up here in Oregon. You have to go further south. And yeah, it doesn't look like that without multiple exposures and some enhancing but it sure is spectacular.

As spectacular as this shot is, it's too bad it's a night shot. Becuase you can't see the spectacular colors of the rock formations. The common name is a Hoodoo. It's a tall, thin, or other formation that can be found in a dry lands drainage basin or badlands. The stripes are usually sedementary rocks or volcanic ash topped by a harder rock that resists erosion. The colors can be spectacular.

This shot is from Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. The spectacular rock fomations can be found  further south in Arizona and New Mexico. Finally ending up at the Grand Canyon. Anywhere you see something green the soil has trapped just enough water to allow a little bit of green.

In what is now the central section of the US there was once a shallow sea. Between the sediments, vulcanism, time, and erosion these spires are some of the results.

As usual I started in one plae and ended up somewhere else. LOL

CHRISTMAS 1964

Actually it started on the 18th of the month. It had been really cold. It had snowed early in the month. Looked like a white Christmas was in our futures. Two days before the Christmas break. Two and a half actually when we were sent home. It was raining. I mean it was raining. I was within walking distance from home but I believe the schools wanted to get the bus kids home. We didn't even have time to clean out the refrigerators in the home ec. room. Christmas concert delayed. We didn't know it at the time but Oregon, about half of Idaho, and Northern California were about to get slammed. Drowned. Inundated.

It started with a cold snap. Froze the ground, heavy snow on top. When it warmed up the melting snow and heavy rains had nowhere to go except down river.

The media calls them the "Pineapple Express." A river of warm, very wet air that starts out near the Hawaian Islands and heads northeast. In this case it was packing rainfall of up to fifteen inches in twenty four hours. It hit the snowpacks. It hit the mountains. The USGS called it a hundred year flood. December of '64 still holds the record as one of the worst floods in this part of the US in the twentieth century. A politician in California politician called it a thousand year flood. Maybe it was. For California.

Deception Creek took out the bridge on 58 north of town. One of our neighbors parked his vehicle at the gas station where the railroad bridged the Willamette and hiked into town. The Greyhound bus made it into town before the highway was washed out east of town and after the bridge was washed out west of town. Folks in town put the passengers up until the roads opened. Good thing it was just before Christmas and the stores were well stocked. And most folks had well stocked pantries and freezers.

We were lucky. Oakridge is in the Cascade foothills, elevation about 1,200 feet. We were at the head of the valley. Heading north the water piled up. Log jams, destroyed bridges, took out the ports in Gold Beach and Brookings, the waterfall at Oregon City disappeared.

Why tell this story now. Well it's part of my history. And it's a prime example of the amount of control human beings seem to believe they have over the natural world. We can build dikes and dams. And then Mother Nature comes along and reminds us who really is the boss. It can be a big reminder and we forget for awhile. Or it can be a gradual reminder like Climate change may work things out. Or one of these days a cat 5 is going to hit Miami. Any guesses how that will work out?

My World

This was my world for over sixty years of my life. I miss my mountains damn it.

The Elijah Bristow state park is off Hwy. 58 just before you get to the first of three dams on the Middle Fork of the Willamette River. The highway is on one side of Dexter reservoir and Lowell is on the other side. The road across the lake originally included a covered bridge.

In the 1980's the bridge was retired and turned into an interpretive center coering the history of covered bridges in the county. It was replaced by a concrete bridge, uncovered. The old part of the road is popular for kids fishing off the non traffic side. Lowell has a blackberry festival every summer. The lake is popular for boating, fishing. Wonder how it's doing this summer.

At the head of the head of the reservoir and about two hundred feet higher Is Look Out Point Reservoir. I can remember, barely, the construction of the Look Out Point dam. Actually what I remember is having to wait while the nearby mountain was being blown up to provide the gravel for the fill on the dam. I was probably about four at the time. Wish I could remember what it was like to drive on the old road that went by the river was like.

Honestly this must a really old shot. I haven't seen this reservoir this full in years. Years of low rainfall have meant that the lake has seldom filled. Built mainly for flood control the dam does have a small power station at the base of the dam. The drive is sort of scenic. Can't see much of the lake at least half the time. The trees have grown up since the dam was completed and the new highway completed. Great view of mountain on one side, railroad tracks on the other and road cuts until you hit the head of the reservoir. The RR crosses the river, the trees get closer to the road, the air gets a lot cooler and, smells a lot better.

The Middle Fork of the Willamette from Black Canyon campground.The woods are mainly Douglas fir and cedar with some hemlock mixed in. These are the woods my dad worked in for nearly twenty years. He started his logging years in the Coast Range but the Cascades were his life. My life.

Another shot of the woods near the little bridge that crosses Deception Creek on the way to Oakridge.

There is a fairly straight shot on the highway then you hit a curve near the old LaDuke place and you see the first mountains. Not much really, but an honest to goodness mountain. Something that was tight insside relaxes.

WHAT DIDN'T GET TAUGHT IN HISTORY CLASS

I really ddidn't know how this post was going to work out. Guess it just depends. It's starting to look like a batch of my bread. Trying to get out of the bowl. I grew up in Oakridge, Oregon. Just under forty miles SE of Springfield/Eugene. When we wanted to go back for a visit there are two ways to get there. The fast way and the slow way.

If you are sort of in a hurry and not too much on sight seeing you can pick up the freeway, head south east and take the exit for Hwy 58. And until today I had passed through Pleasant Hill and by the Elijah Bristow State Park without too much thought. Pleasant Hill doesn't look like much from the highway but the net claims a population of over five thousand. I know mom lived there for a year or so when she was a little girl. Went to a one room school house with an out house and pump to work if you wanted a drink of water.

Elijah Bristow. Born in Southwestern Virginia in 1788. Served in the War of 1812. Got married in Tennessee, moved around ended up in Illinois. Raised a family. Left them in Illinois while he headed west with an ox team. I can't find out if he was traveling alone or with a party. Fetched up at Sutter's Fort. This was 1845, before the gold rush and Bristow was 58 years old. Headed north in 1846 following a route through the mountains known as the Siskiou Trail that later became Interstate 5. Traveled as far as the Salem area, came back south passed through what is now Jasper and forded the MIddle Fork of the Willmette.

Bristow checked out the land south of what is now Springfield. Liked what he saw and named the area Pleaant Hill. Claimed 640 acres and built the first permanent house in what is now Lane County and sent for his family.Pleasant Hill was the first town in the county. Bristow became the first postmaster. He and his wife donated land for a school, a church and a cemetary. The cemetary is still there. You can see it from the highway. it isn't very big.

Well, well. See what happens when you head in one direction and find yourself exploring something and somewhere else entirly. Two of the four settled near the Bristow claim. The fourth member of the party was named Eugene Skinner. Three guesses which city is named for him. I;ll get back to him later.

Might as well stop here and pick up the road trip tomorrow.

I WANT TO BE CLEAR

That last post was a rant about a specific branch of Christianity that seems to be unique to America. But not all American Christians belong to the "I accepted Jesus as my savior and that is pretty much all I have to do."

Some of the first responders to natural disasters are often the Amish. Somebody else may be doing the driving but men show up with their tools and get to work. UMCOR, the United Methodist Council on Relief, is often there just behind the Amish and the Mennonites. Nuns run half way houses and support day care centers in inner cities. Good grief Dorothy Day is pracitically up for saint hood. Journalist, anarchist, (oh that word) and devout Catholic, she was one of the founders of the Catholic Worker Movement.

Martin Luther King was a minister whose faith was the foundation of his belief in civil and economic rights not just for African Americans but for everyone. the irony is that his growing radicalism is largely ignored in mainstream America. It's as if the last five years of his life didn't happen. He gave that famous speech, went to Memphis and, well you know the rest.

Thomas Merton was a cloistered Trappist monk whose biting commentaries in support of peace and against nuclear weapons were supported by his faith, not in spite of it.

Those few who know me, know that I have a twisted sense of humor. I just had this vision of that itinerant rabbi back up in wherever God/dess hangs out. "I tramped around Gallilee and Judea for three years. I didn't really preach anything that Amos, Micah, Jeremiah and the rest hadn't already preached. Thanks for the miracles by the way. I went up against the temple establishement who turned me over to the Romans. I freakin' died. Maybe it WAS temporary but going through the one to get to the other was pretty darn painful. And this is what some of my so called followers are claiming in MY NAME?????" Fill in the blanks after that.

If I've stepped on any toes it was not my intention. But I do have to wonder what does go on in the world on the other side of the veil. If the spirits do try to help or have so many of us have become so spiritually tone deaf that we may end up spending a few cycles as dung beatles to teach us humility.

IT STARTED AS A SHORT RANT, AND GREW

This is my place for thoughts that are more personal. If someone is taking the time to check this journal out you are welcome. Agree or disagree. Actually I would welcome good criticism or feed back. I'll be the first to admit that there is a heck of a lot I don't know.

This will be a short one, I hope. Half an eye on the tube this morning with the commercials muted and who popped up with an overlong presentation? Franklin Graham, son of the late come to Jesus revival spouting Billy Graham. Never really could stand the father and I have less use for his son.

I was raised Methodist and Methodists are just that. Methodical. At least more restrained than the Pentacostals and the Charismatics. Honestly there were some Sundays when I was more likely to dose off than to start speaking in tongues or passing out on the floor. The only thing that saved me was I was in the choir. Anywway, this is already heading out on its own.

And that original label was not meant as a complement. I don't believe John Wesley intended to split off from the Anglicans. He was a member in good standing, I believe, of the established church to the end. His targets were the poor. Mill workers, miners, rural farmers their workers. He used lay preachers. He allowed women to preach. At least until his death and his successors ended that quickly. Actually the women were better at going into prisons and work houses to spread the gospel than some of the men

And incidentally when follks start going on about going back to the Old Time Religion at the time the constitution was ratified you can forget about the Methodists and their offshoots. Those denominations did not exist. An early abolitionist his Thoughts Upon Slavery was written in the mid seventeen hundreds as a pamphlet. He did extensive research to supports his descriptions of the tribes that ended up as targets for European slavers. Especially the English God help us. Peaceful, for the most part. Living decent lives, taking care of their own. At least before the coastal rulers began raiding to provide cargoes for the West Indies, the Carribean and the colonies that became the southern states.

Anyway back to the Grahams. Billy was basically the tame preacher who pretty much supported the status quo. I'm not sure he ever came out against the Viet Nam war. He was also as far as I can  find out a late supporter of the civil rights movement. His revivals were reported as long on alter calls and short on providing those that "accepted Jesus" with follow up to help them find a church or any kind of community support.

Well what was planned as a short rant is getting a little longer than planned. Anyway, the commercial. Just accept Jesus and let Him take over your life and what? That's been my problem from almost as long as I can remember.. No pagan deity that I have studied has commanded absolute obedience. And thereby hangs the trap. When life goes wrong it isn't God's fault. It's your fault because your faith wasn't strong enough.

And on the other side we've been hit with the centuries old "God has chosen this ruler" and we have to obey no matter how ill equiped that person is for the job. Funny how Bush II and the current occuapant  were divinely appointed but somehow the man in the middle of the succession was slipped in by the devil, or somebody at the bottom of the divine hierarchy. Yes the Bible tells stories of men who sinned, King David for example, and were still used to do God's will. But David repented of his sins. I doubt if the current occupant has repented of anything or even had much of a sense of sin in the first place. My, my we are getting a little cranky this evening.

Anyway, there is an evening breeze rustling the tree outside my window. The finches and the siskins are working on their pecking order at the feeder. I believe there is a second hatching learning the ropes. I got a look at one at the feeder who still had bits of down clinging to its flight feathers. They can fly well enough but seem to have a little trouble gauging their landings.

From a good friend the mystery bird is an English Sparrow or House Sparrow. A non native so I guess that's why my searches of Oregon birds didn't bring them up. Back in Springfield some of our hummers liked to dive bomb the sparrows next door. But they also dive bombed me once in awhile. a buzz of wings. a chp, chp, chp and off they'd go.

Well, this did grow. Hopefully my next entry will be a little less all over the place.

MYSTERY BIRD

This little guy is too big for a chickadee. Beak seems too small for a grosbeak. Black chin, brown cap on the head. Net has a list for all the birds around Eugene, but just a list no internet connections. Anybody know what this little guy is?

THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN

There's a loop drive that starts in Springfield. Head east on 126 towards Sisters and Bend. 126 is a state road, well maintained but a little on the narrow side. There's the Mckenzie River on one side and mountains on the other. It's about and hour drive to Koosah Falls.

About a half mile or so further east you come to Sahalie Falls.

Both shots from the net by the way. One of the sources for the McKenzie River is Clear Lake. About Three Thousand years ago two separate lava flows temporarily blocked the lake. When the lake started flowing again the results were two small, but beautiful waterfalls. There is a faily easy walking trail between the two. Fairly easy if you can walk fairly well. Not exactly walker friendly but really, really beautiful. 

Trees, moss covered rocks, the smell of the bark on the trail, the sound of the falls. You just might think you made it to heaven or at least Sahalie Falls. In the Chinook trade jargon the word for heaven is Sahalie. 

Access to both falls is just off the highway, but bring your own water and rest room facilities are at Sahalie and it's basically a very high class outhouse. It's a beutiful drive and a wonderfull hike.

SKY JEWELS

From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day archive. This galaxy is designated NGC2442 in the southern skies. Sometimes if I can't come up with something I go looking for jewels in the skies.

The galaxy can be found in the constellation Volans, the Flying Fish. Like most constellations a fair amount of imagination to actually "see" that fish. A distorted spiral the center glows with older stars withi the bright blue is that of younger white hot stars. The reddish glows in the arms may be clouds of gas where new stars are being born. This is a combined image from the Hubble telescope and the Europaen Southern Observatory. The light captured in this image started towards us about fifty million years ago.

Fifty million years. The surviving dinosaurs were testing their wings, mammals were on the up and coming and Oregon barely existed.

I WAS

Drop by for a visit and you never know where you will end up. 

Somethng I really should have worked on last night even if it would have made me late to bed. It's not like I have to be somewhere at a certain time in the morning. I wrote this as an experiment several years ago patterned on the Boast of Amergin, a bard and one of the sons of Mil.

"I was the sun, warm rays piercing the clouds to the sea.

I was the sea, mists rising to join the clouds.

I was the clouds riding the winds to rise above the coast range.

I was the mountain, heavy mists drifting across the cliffs.

I was the cliffs, wind carved trees clinging to the crags and bluffs.

I was the trees, leaves catching the fogs; releasing moisture into the earth below.

I was the mist, caught in the moss and last year’s leaves.

I was the moss, trapping the rainbow drops, releasing them into the soil

I was the soil, water full, drops working down, down the foundations of the mountain.

I was the bedrock, water following the cracks, pooling, feeding the deep springs.

I was the deep springs feeding the pools under the trees.

I was the pools, home to little streams bubbling over the rocks fallen from the cliffs.

I was the little streams, rushing to join the great river as it rushes to the salt marshes.

I was the salt marsh, feeding my water back into the sea.

I am the sea, sun warmed, giving up the mists to the sky."

Not too bad for an amateur. But as I reread this I was struck by time. Somewhere around ten to twelve billion years ago this universe was created. Current theories revolve around the Big Bang. Literally almost all the hydrogen in the universe was created in that whatever it was. All the rest of the elements that make up the rest of the universe were cooked in stars. 

Some shed as stars like the sun become red giants and shed rings of gas. Others, the heavy elements like oxygen and iron are created when the blue white giants die in the cataclysms of novas and supernovas. The lives of stars like the sun are measured in billions of years. The lives of the giant blue white stars can be measured in millions of years. generation after generation cooking the elements needed to build a world and shedding them into space.

Hydrogen. One proton, one electron. Needs an additional electron for stability. Oxygen. Eight protons, eight electrons. Two electrons in the inner "shell" six in the outer shell. Two hydrogen atoms will combine with one oxygen atom to form one molecule of water. 

That water that rises to the clouds, falls as rain, trickles deep into the rocks or runs off in a million streams is millions if not billions of years old. That water may have misted the first green to colonize the land. That water may have supported an ammonite or an ancient shark. Sheltered the early crocodiles or refreashed a dinosaur. Perhaps provided a bath for the first birds. Rained on the first flowers.

As I reread that little piece I was struck for the first time by time. Water in whatever form made of atoms millions to billions of years old. Perhaps even part of other worlds. The universe is a great recycler. And you might end up feeling a little humbled and maybe a little more willing to treat that precious water with the respect given to any elder. 

I STARTED THERE AND ENDED UP SOMEWHERE

I've  been thinking about the protests  since  George Floyd  was murdered. The protests, the reactions to them, and time. I was fourteen, my middle sister was four when JFK was assassinated. My little sister wasn't even born yet. Frankly the urban riots of the civil rights and anti war era were almost off the radar in rural and almost small city Oregon. The most we knew about Watts was from my uncle, an LA cop. And he was driving to Oregon on vacation his family the day before the ghetto blew up.

By the time the Viet Nam war sort of ended one sister was finish high school and the other was heading for junior high. In spite of the watching of the news, the two papers we took, and the magazines neither one was very political and both were far more religious than I will ever be.

Jump forward the fifty or so years. We all look at the protests in a different way. For me, it's we have been down this road before. In a way the protests are trying to change beliefs and actions from the top down. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now.

Barack Obama was elected and suddenly the US was a post racial society. Just ask the talking heads. Many of whom were terribly shocked when the election of the current occupant was like getting hit in the face with a bucket of ice water.

Damn this entry is taking over. The progressives hopped up and down with glee when AOC was elected from a traditionally democratic precinct. And that changed what in the bigger scheme of things. Not much. I got a ton of e mails this spring from progressive dems in Oregon trying to drum up opposition to senator Merkley. A fairly liberal Oregon Democrat. He wasn't "progressive" enough.

Yo! A senator represents the whole state, or should. And here in thinly populated Oregon east of the Cascades? That song doesn't play very well. Although there is a fairly large Hispanic population and several Native American reservations this is the part of the country coveted by some of the really far right militia groups who would like to set up a whites only enclave.

This could go on for pages or I can pause for a bit. How I react to the protests is colored by the ones I've seen before. It's as if we remodeled part of house, looked at the whole thing and said the job was done. But didn't  touch the foundations. The internet makes it far too easy to only communicate with those who agree with us. Back in the day there was no internet but a lot of good old fashioned shoe leather, knocking on doors, and talking to people.

All I can do is write. I don't even comment on FB very much anymore unless I can add to the discussion and half the time what I say gets twisted into something I never meant in the first place. A reply may not be acknowledged or it starts and endless thread. You've probably been there.

All I can suggest is that the progressives stop talking to each other all the time and get out and listen to other folks. Not everyone who voted for the current occupant is a blithering idiot. Many of them are watching their small towns dry up and blow away. Too many jobs pay too little and in some parts of the country it costs almost as much to keep a job as the job pays.

There's a lot bouncing around in the old brain box and this entry is miles from what I was thinking about when I started. Hopefully some of this makes sense.