DRIP, DRIP, DRIP

 I tried to confirm the weekly death toll. I suspect this total might be for the Month of August. Trying to find a simple total was like bailing out a boat with a sieve. They've got bar graphs and line graphs and none of them have the information you are really lookling for.

Anyway last weekly death toll was over three hundred. In any case they died quietly. Often no familily with them. Surrounded by machinery. One by One. No one lowers flags for them. Sets out full beer mugs on empty tables. Calls on the nation to avenge them. It's like the water torture. Drip. Drip. Drip. As you slowly go mad. Or get really, really, mad. It's still more than died in that bomb attack in Kabul.

THANK YOU

 

A rosebud to say thank you to the folks who stop by to read, or at least check out, my entries. Please feel free to comment. You don't have to agree with me. In fact if you have another opinion I would like to hear it. Just keep the cussin' down to a minimum.

ANOTHER SEPTEMBER 11

Another building in flames. In a Latin American country in September, 1973. The La Moneda Palace seat of the president of the Republic of Chili. 

September 11 a date seared into American history. However there was another Septermber 11. This date was in 1973. A date seared into a genration of Chileans. The date of the coup that overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende. A coup that ended three years of US attempts under president Nixon and secretary of state Henry Kissinger to destablize a government freely elected by its own citizens. The US promptly recognized the newly installed Junta and switched from trying to undermine the government of an independent nation to fully supporting the new dictatorship. 

Within a year Augusto Pinochet assumed power. By the time he was forced out of the government to a soft landing more than forty thousand of his own people had been imprisoned, tortured, murdered under the dictatorship. The CIA disn't start the coup, but was right behind it once it started. The CIA had been stratgizing since Allende was elected in 2001. It was the height of the Viet Nam war and I suppose they were seeing dominos in Latin America as well as Asia. 

There a some folks who wonder why September 11 was chosen for the attacks in 2001. Bin Ladin published his "Letter to America." Some of it I agree with. Some of it. A few paragraphs. But why that date. It could have been any date. A strike against the economic and military power we've turned against so many other nations in the years since WWII ended. It's worth thinking about. Especially with another anniversary coming up. When the bells will toll and names will be recited. Who besides their familiws recites the names of the dead, disappeared, tortured because of that other 9/11? This date, that date, an unkown date. 

As usual I had one idea for an entry. The blog had another. 

KNOW YOUR NUTS

 What else can I say. I love the Gravy Seals though. From the web, I'm not sure who created it. 

WEAR THE #$^% MASK

 

There are some very strange people out there. This lady is at a school board meeting. The subject is requiring masks in school. She is speaking in the the negative. It's real. This is one of the links. You will notice that while she is claiming that God would have provided her with a mask if He wanted her to wear one she is not appearing in her birthday suit. So to speak. She is fully clothed and wearing glasses. 

This is just one example of the mind boggling logic displayed by the anti masker crowd. Good heaven's folks this isn't going to last forever. Although if you check out shots from countries such as Japan, flu season starts and the masks come out. 

I live in Oregon. We are in the middle of a new surge. ICU beds are almost filled. The governor has issued a new indoor masking mandate and activated fifteen hundred members of the national guard to help out in hospitals. We were doing really well until Delta showed up and now it's back if not to square one? It's really, really close. In my facility its masks in the halls and public areas vaccinated or not. Almost all of us are vaccomated BTW. Moderna here. 

This Freedumb thing is getting really, really old. Really, really fast. Heck when the polio vaccinces came out most of us ended up getting both. All those shots of wards full of patients in iron lungs. When

polio season started in the summer months cities literally closed down. Parks, theaters, bars, retaurants, even churches were advised to literally close until the outbreak passed.  

These patients literally couldn't so much as twitch a muscle. The machines breathed for them. Caregivers suctioned the mucus from their lungs because they couldn't cough it up. These were tthe worst. We have an inlaw with a paralyzed arm. He gets around really well. 

And like Covid survivors who survive the disease only to be left with damage to brain, heart or lungs polio survivors have shown symptons more than three decades after the intial illness. Post Polio Survivor syndrome they call it. Pain, muscle weakness, trouble breathing, fatigues. The doctors still are not certain what causes the symptoms. Only that the syndrome is real. Like Covid polio is spread by contact with bodily fluids. And like Delta children can be the hardest hit. 

Incidentally Leviticus 13:45.  No one is asking you to tear your clothes, leave your hair uncombed, and call out "unclean." Just wear a mask.  “Those who suffer from a serious skin disease must tear their clothing and leave their hair uncombed. They must cover their mouth and call out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’   

IRIS

I'm about as ambitious as an overcooked piece of pasta today. Guess it's just one of those days. 

Closeup of a really pretty bearded iris in shades of lavender with touches of yellow during a rain shower. When the Creator gets started he/she does a fantastic job.

VICTORY GARDEN

I was researching WWII history last year. Especially food rationing and civilian efforts to fill in the gaps. Especially in England. I don't know how big the bomb was that created this crater. If you look closely you can see three people in this shot. It gives you a idea of scale. Life handed some folks lemons so they turned around and created a garden in the crater.

Honestly I have no real idea what they are growing. Vegetables for sure, perhaps herbs for cooking and healing. It wouldn't have surprised me if there were a few hens scratching around for bugs and seeds. Given the fuel rationing I assume these folks lived close to what used to be a big hole in the ground. And I wonder how many other folks did the same thing but didn't get their pictures taken. Looks like an aerail shot.

There is a series on Amazon Prime, Dr. Finley, set in Scotland in the years after the war. Say forty six to forty nine or fifty. There are several remarks in different episodes indicating that some rationing is still in force. Eggs for example. And I'm assuming fuel. See just as many bicycles on the roads as cars. 

Quite a nice garden these folks have going. 

 

STOP THE WORLD

" Apparently Trump tried suggesting vaccination in Alabama and got booed. Well, you create a mean dog and then YOU get bit. What's behind Trump's movement is a 'stop the world, I want to get off' moment among the people dissatisfied with the last two centuries, let alone this one---with, thanks to the virus, a real chance of getting their wish." From author CJ Cherrhy's FB page.

I suspect they don't really want to go back to the world of two centuries ago. And don't really want to face the social stratification of two centuries ago. Especially women. No vote, no property rights, I suspect not even the right to keep your wages if you worked out of the home. Forget divorce. Once upon a time not so long ago it was almost impossible to get a divorce no matter how far apart you've grown. And in some ways nothing has reAlly changed. Remember that infamous quote from our former president. 

As for the rest . My comment editerd.

Fine you can go back two hundred years. But you have to give up all the modern conveniences. Electricity, indoor plumbing in most areas. Heck my mom went to grade school in a one room school house in Pleasant Hill just south of Eugene. It had an outhouse and a pump in the yard. 

Forget bringing in fresh food from the other side of the country. Railroads were barely getting started. You pretty much grew and ate what came in locally except for bulk items like flour, sugar, coffee, tea. Items like that. Now New England or Mid Atlantic towns could be pretty close together. At least near the coast. You take a look at a road map of Oregon and follow Hwy 99. The town tend to be ten to fourteen miles apart. You could make the round trip in a day. With horses. 

Eugene, Oregon wasn't founded until 1846 and I have no idea what the "road" was like to what is now Portland. One hundred five miles away. A good team, dry weather, you might make the trip in four days. Pre about 1850 you'd better be prepared to camp under your wagon and bring your own provisions. Forget anything resembling a system of roads. The east coast might as well have been the other side of the world in the early eighteen hundreds. 

Corvallis, Albany, Salem, Oregon City and Portland didn't exist until the late 1840's, 1850'a. You were most likely to meet eithr the local Native Americans or fur trappers. The Hudson's Bay company had Fort Vancouver. On the north side of the Columbia River. The native americans were still pretty friendly and hadn't been confined to reservations or killed off by European disease. Yet.

No railroads to speak of west of the Mississippi. Or east either come to that. The transcontinental line wasn't finished until after either the Civil War or the War of Northern Aggression. I guess the name depends on the color of the uniforms of the armies. And there is the great sticking point. 

Yes the war was largely about "states right." IE the right of a state to make slavery legal before the war and to use the law to keep the former slaves in a state of semi servitude through the use of terrror while the law either looked the other way or aided and abetted. (Here we go again. the piece is taking its bit in the teeth and heading for the tall timber. This is why most of my term papers were never really finished. I just handed in the version I completed by the due date)

Anyway. No airplanes. Didn't even get close until the early 1900's. The Wright Brothers get the credit. I guess we can credit WWII for kicking commercial aviation in the ass. All those lovely surplus planes. The twin engine DC5 and the four engine DC4 and later versions were in use until the era of the jet engine was born. 

Heck the Erie Canal the provided a link between the Atlantic Coast and the Great Lakes hadn't been finished until 1825. Main reaon one set of great granparents was born in Ohio and not New York or New England. When the Robinsons and the Heaton moved to Ohio they came as families. My great greats and triple greats upped stakes and tried their luck on what was still  close to frontier country. My Heaton great grandparents spent enough time in Kansas to have three childred and fetched up finally in Oregon by the 1880's. 

Watch Gunsmoke and dial it back a little and that just might been what my folks were facing. Add in the heat, tornadoes, drought and what they heard about Oregon probably sounded real inviting. Fetched up west of what is now Portland. Green, rivers, good land. We don't do tornados very often. However there are earthquakes and volcanoes. You can see three from Portland. St Helens, Adams and Hood. And they've all burped in the last two centuries.

 suspect that some of these folks are looking for the "a place for everyone and every one knew their place." Except for those who couldn't change the color of their skins that has never really been true. Change your name, lose your accent, change your religion and after a couple of generations no one can tell you from a WASP.

So if you manage to go back a couple of hundred years don't assume anyone will be tipping their hats to you. You will likely either be looking after the cows and the chickens or spending a fair amount of your day mucking out stables or looking at the south end of a north bound horse, ox or mule. Oh, or knowing when the bad weather or fire is coming your way instead of finding out the hard way..

I AM

Stop in for a visit these days and you never know what will be on the menu. 

The barebones equaation that powers all life on this little blue ball. Six molecules of carbon dioxide plus six molecules of water. Add the light energy from a star. In our case the sun. The sun's energy is stored in one molocule of sugar and six molecules of oxygen. It's been a long time since i took biology or chemistry. One section on organic chemisry chemistry more than half a century ago does not make an expert and I was in no position to appreciate the beauty of the process anyway. I was too busy just trying to wade through.

Now carbon dioxide and water existed on earth long before photosyntesis and the byproduct. Oxygen. 

Anyway I wrote a version of this little meditation several years ago. To be honest I am works better for me now than I was.

I am the sun, warm rays piercing the clouds to the sea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am 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, helium and some lithium in the beginning  was created in that whatever hapened, happened. 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 heaier elements like carbon, 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. Carbon. Six protons four electrons. Needs four more to fill the next shell. Oxygen. Eight protons, six electrons. Needs two more electrons to fill that outer shell. It's almost as if those three  were made for each other. At least under the conditions found on earth.

The atoms in the water that rises to the clouds, falls as rain, trickles deep into the rocks or runs off in a million streams are 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. 

The atoms in the carbon dioxide that provides the building blocks for the sugars that power the mosses and the trees are also millions if not billions of years old. Some of that carbon dioxide remained in the atmosphere. A green house gas that kept this planet from freezing over. At least most of the time. 

When I exhale some of those hydrogen atoms may have been born in the biggest bang no one was here to see. Physically anyway. The search for who OR what has also been the oldest puzzle. Each one of us has a few of the pieces. No one has them all and anyone who claims otherwise? Probably hasn't been paying attention. 

As I reread that little piece I was struck for the first time by time. Water in whatever form is 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 and what it helps to stay alive with the respect given to any elder. 

THE UNIVERSE AS MAGIC

The Crab Nebula. Corresponds to a supernova observed by the Chinese in 1054. At the center is a neutron star/pulsar that rotates at just over thirty times per second. The remnant of an exploding star, possible a blue super giant with a diameter 25 times the diameter of the sun. Say over 21,000,000 miles in diametre collapses to a neutron star approximately eleven to nineteen miles in diameter. I have trouble wrapping my brain around that. 

I've been at sixes and sevens over which way to go the spiritual search. I believed that following the science I love and the sprit I'm trying to follow were seperate. I've come to feel that they are not. We live on a planet constantly changing in a universe constantly changing. The dominant, or attempting to be dominat, religous culture in this country claims that the earth and the univers are static and unchanging.

That road leads to Aristotle's nowhere. The other road leads to magic. I guess magic is a good word. I just wish more folks see the magic. More to follow. My biggest problem is where to start. No matter where I start there is something that comes before, and something that comes before and, I guess you get the pictre. 

THE FIFTH HORSEMAN

 

Cartoonist Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News adds a new horesman to the original four. Actually Misinformation should be leading the charge since it underlies much of the other four. Even death these days, I looked up some of his work. Can't say I agree with all of it but that's just me.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE FOR

I wrote this back in 2008. I think I had been reading a lot of Wendell Berry combined with the melt down of the economy

 A good friend wrote about dignity or the lack thereof we’re facing. Apparently the entry was in a blog that I've lost the link to. Lack of community and modern technology have created an unholy alliance that allows us to let it all hang out because nobody knows who we are and go just about anywhere we want in order to do it.

We’ve always pushed the envelope. Cromwell’s commonwealth of plainclothes, closed theaters, whitewashed churches and a ban on celebrating Christmas is offset by the Restoration. Complete with silks, satins, outrageous wigs (and that was for the men), the comedies of Wycherly, and a king who was too much a gentleman to ignore a pretty (and willing partner). Charles II fathered at least a dozen children, acknowledged them all, yet died without a legitimate heir. He was also too much a gentleman to put aside a barren queen.

Regency excess was followed by Victorian whalebone. Clingy empire waistlines gave away to corsets and crinolines. Seventeenth century lace and frills (again for the men) gave way to sober shirtfronts and starched collars.

 America’s Gilded Age was a glittering era of starched shirt fronts, bared shoulders, glittering gems and Robber Barons. The Grover Cleveland of the 1880’s joined list of public men with private affairs (and children born on the “wrong” side of the blanket) that included Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton.

The Roaring Twenties gave way to a worldwide economic collapse followed by a World War followed by what I guess you could call the fit in at any cost fifties.

Through the years there was an unwritten code that allowed the private affairs of public men, and women in some cases, to stay private. Was this wink, wink hypocrisy? Or was it simple acknowledgement that no one is perfect? Most of us tittered when Bill Clinton claimed he smoked, but didn’t inhale. Perhaps it would have been better if he’d just said “mind your own business.”

The generation that helped win WWII was also the generation of the Organization Man. If the corporation said “move to LA” the answer wasn’t “but my whole family lives in Chicago.” It was “how soon to I need to be there.” The family scattered and the folks got too old or tired of shoveling snow and moved to Florida. We lost not only family ties but community ties.

We traded the Ma and Pa diner on Main Street for the McDonalds near the new freeway exit. We gave up the folks who knew our names for the harried sales help with name tags. We gave up the gal or guy behind the counter who knew just how we liked our coffee, that the eggs should be over easy and the hash browns extra crisp for fix your own coffee, eggs cooked to fit a biscuit and potato patties in greasy little baggies.

We traded the local shoe store where they knew your size and the clerk would probably tell everybody at the pub about your new pumps for do it yourself at Fred Meyer.

We traded the local hardware store and the guy behind the counter who probably helped you plan your new kitchen and would sell you three widgets if you needed them for plastic packaging with two more than you needed.

We traded the local meat market where the meat in the back was probably chewing grass in the next county  a couple of weeks ago and the butcher knew who was in the market for soup bones for CO2 treated meat in plastic packaging and E coli.

We traded the anticipation of the first local tomatoes of the summer for red “things” that look like tomatoes and taste like plastic.

There were three or four TV channels and we all watched Ed Sullivan or the Untouchables, or Laugh In. Folks knew which friends or relatives probably wouldn’t answer the phone when PBS ran the original Forsyte Saga back in the sixties. It was a community of sorts. New shows had at least half a season to find an audience, maybe even a season or two.

Now we have I don’t know how many channels and shows that don’t find an audience within the first couple of weeks simply disappear. They’re gone before I even know they’re there. I loved the X-Files. After I stumbled over it half way through the second season and eagerly looked forward to any reruns from season one so I could catch up.

We traded standing on the stool watching and “helping” mom make dinner for soccer moms, video games and little kids who have to have their moms figure out when they have time to play together.

We forgot, if we ever realized it, that businesses are in the business of selling “something.” The move towards preserved prepared foods had been slowly growing for over a century before WWII. And the first efforts at preserved foods were to supply the military, long distance shipping and the pioneer trade. There was a huge need during the war for food that could be prepared and preserved or shipped as mixes for military use.

After the war there was all these consumables needing consumers. We found ourselves with a new label. We were no longer customers we were consumers and Madison Avenue stepped up to the plate. The cake from the mix was “in” and do it yourself was out. Even if the home made cake tasted better. Somehow dinner in a can was trendier than what you cooked in your own pan at home. There was this new line in the national ledger. The consumer price index. And forty years later we found out that what we’d been consuming had more in common with the chemistry lab than the pantry just off the kitchen.

We woke up one day and discovered that the local shops where your custom (patronage) mattered were gone. We ended up with big box stores that advertise gift bags for the first five hundred customers who show up at 2 AM on Black Friday and are “shocked” when everybody stampedes through the door trying to be first. And happy as hell that the stampede made the regional cable news channel for a bit of free advertising. They ran it over and over and over.......

And the elected hired help has cooked the books so that only the finished products and the money used to buy them are counted in the national ledgers. Mom staying home and baking bread or cookies isn’t even a blip on the radar screen. Mom going out and working so she can buy bread and cookies for her family is part of the Gross National Product. Jerry was the guy downtown who sold hardware, not Jerry’s, the big box store across town that you can use for your daily walk.

I don’t want to go back to the days when we had to make everything ourselves, a bad harvest meant everybody in the neighborhood might go hungry, or it taking a week to get to Portland by horse and wagon. There has to be a balance between being a consumer and a customer. We aren’t going to be treated with respect or allowed any kind of dignity unless we demand it and work towards a day when the threat to take our“custom” someplace else means something.

We've found out since I orginally wrote this. We are for buying what somebody wants to sell us if we can come up with the purchase price. If we can't? If we don't want to work for no respect and rip gut wages? We're ungrateful, lazy wretches who should be forced to work where we are told to. 

I really do need to dig up those guided imagry entries. 

LIVE FREE OR WHAT?

 OK. I may alienate some folks here. This is the Gadsden flag. Popular with the continental marines during the revolutionary war. 

Also often used by gun rights activists and supporters, often armed, of small government and the military. Note: I support the men and women in our military. I'm not sure about the weapons systems that suck up the billions without giving anything back. 

Moving on. Somtimes these flag images have an accompanying caption. "Live free or die." The idea that if I can't live free under my terms I would rather die. As the Delta strain surges and some states, Oregon my Oregon, reinstate indoor masking requirements we are continually faced with this BS.  Oregon's governoer has also alerted the National Guard in case our hospitals get to the critical point. 

Trouble is folks are full on for the "live free" half of the equation. Its the "or die" that doesn't seem to enter the equation. 

Radio host Dick Farrell who mocked the Covid vaccine and lambasted Dr. Anthony Fauci changed his tune when he contracted the virus. He lated died of the virus, in the hospital and presumably takine up an ICU bed. Phil Valentine of Tennessee also changed his tune. As of August 10 he was in critical condition and presumably on a ventilator. His family is now urging their fellow citizens to get vaccinated ASAP. To be honest I'd be more impressed if it hadne't taken a member of their family, who urged listeners to NOT get vaccinated, getting the virus to now support vaccines. Yes being a citizen makes you eligible for certain rights. However the rights come with responsibilites and obligations. Looking out for and not endangering your fellow citizens comes to mind. 

My heritage is mainly Puritain and Quaker. Granted the Puritains took minding other people's business to extremes Quakers were believers in the I'll reqpect your rights and you respect mine. Some of that respect, in my opinion, means making sure you don't endanger your neighbors. 

Note to you folks that claim your immune system can handle anything. Rumor has it there is at least one more varient percolating in the the wings. Lambda. First discovered in South America. Cases have been found in Japan, the Phillipines, and yes it's turning up in the US. Texas, South Carolina and California so far. Thanks heavens for high speed computers that can sequence the genetics of a virus quickly. So far lambda is a "person of interest" version of the virus. No one is hoisting the danger flags yet. 

This entry is reading a little disjointed. Sorry. Get the jab. Wear a mask. I'd say live up to your beliefs and don't go the the hospital, except you'd just infect more victims. And if the folks helping you happen to be in uniform? Be sure to thank them. Kind of hard if you are sedated and on a vent. 

I think I'm going to did up one of my old guided imagry experiments. I really need to refocus.

DANGER MINI RANT AHEAD

I am on my second to last good nerve, passing third and heading for home. Fights do no exist without esposibilities and looking out for your fellow citizens is one of those responsibilities. Viruses don't have brains. They don't think "hey I need new victims to keep going." A few viruses mutated a bit. Landed on youonger targets, multiplied like crazy and went on to do what the damn things do best. Infect new hosts and keep on multipying. And mutating. This little begger seems to mutate like ctszy.

As of today, August 13, Oregon is returning to mandated masks indoors. I'm assuming this means any public buildings, they can hardly check to see if you are wering them at home. We were this close, this close, to fully opening the state. At least that's what was going through the usually reliable rumor mill. I'll need to check with my fourth grade teacher sister to see what the elementary school will be doing since that age group isn't eligible for the vaccines yet.

Researchers have been working on SARS vaccines for eighteen years. Thank you the folks that develped th high speed computers. I don't believe we could have gotten anywhere this fast without them. 

I was in rehab, still getting antibiotics that made me a little dizzy and a little queezy. I got my second dose of the Moderna vaccine and that made me a little dizzier and a little queezier. Lasted a couple of days, then fine. If I can do it. So can most of the rest of us. Didn't much care for the mask when I had to do PT but heck, I'm 71. If I can do it so can most of the rest of us. Wear the masks now wo we don't have to do so later. 

OK. I took biology twice. High school and university. I do not claim to understand all the mechanics of the process used to manufacture a vaccine. This material looks pretty good. And this looks like a standard handout that state governments are using. And I can hardly wait for some of THIS material to be added to that standard anti vaxxer rants. 

So do us all a favor. Wear the mask and get the jab.

THE WHITE LILY

 Down memory lane with a really beautiful lily. I've spent years believing it is one word. Casablance like the city in  Africa. Turns out it's two words. Casa Blanca. Works either way for me. 

The whitest white with pale green undertones and burnt orange stamens.

In the right light they were really spectaular.

DEPORTEE

The artist is a priest. Maximino Cerezo Barredo. OK the image is a little brutal. Or not. Christ on the cross replaced by a ragged, Latino field worker. The ones that make it to the border aren't quite that ragged. Stop and think about it. If you are just this side of starvation poor you probably can't even afford to make the trip to the border. 

Or Plane Crash at Los Gatos Canyon. The Highwaymen Version. Had the album once upon a time. That's the first time I heard this song. However the lyrics in this version are a little different from Woody's original. 

Woody Guthrie wrote this back in 1948 after a plane carrying Mexican migrant workers went down in Los Gatos Canyon near Fresno. The Bracero program was still in effect and if the employers didn't foot the bill to return workers to Mexico, as they were supposed to, the INS did it for them. Somehow, someway the pilots picked up the wrong plane. How the heck they didn't notice that the damn plane didn't have enough seats for the number of passengers, nobody knows. And it was overdue for maintenance checks. Witnesses saw the plane lose a wing, then go down in flames. When the New York Times covered the story the names of the flight crew and the INS agent were listed. The passengers wre identified only as agricutural workers whose work visas had expired. 

Twnety eight people were buried in a mass grave with a single marker. It wasn't until around 1968 that three different people embarked on a similar mission for slightly different reasons. Visa records were searched, victims identified. Finally a new marker was erected with all their names. One of those attending lost a grandfather and uncle on that plane. They had names. They had faces. They had families that mourned their loss. Their anonymous loss because they just "deportees." Not worth the trouble to send sombody to learn their names. Well Someone knew their names even if the mainstream couldn't be bothered to find out. See above image. 

Miguel Negrete Álvarez Tomás Aviña de Gracia Francisco Llamas Durán Santiago García Elizondo Rosalio Padilla Estrada Tomás Padilla Márquez Bernabé López Garcia Salvador Sandoval Hernández Severo Medina Lára Elías Trujillo Macias José Rodriguez Macias Luis López Medina Manuel Calderón Merino Luis Cuevas Miranda Martin Razo Navarro Ignacio Pérez Navarro Román Ochoa Ochoa Ramón Paredes Gonzalez Guadalupe Ramírez Lára Apolonio Ramírez Placencia Alberto Carlos Raygoza Guadalupe Hernández Rodríguez Maria Santana Rodríguez Juan Valenzuela Ruiz Wenceslao Flores Ruiz José Valdívia Sánchez Jesús Meza Santos Baldomero Marcas Torres

The reference to the crops hails back to a time when farmers were paid to destroy crops to keep the prices up. Good leftie that Guthrie was, he was mad that good food was being destroyed while people were going hungry. Although why should just lefties be upset at the waste time, engergy, sheer creation that goes into the cycle that produces an apple, an orange or, an egg. 

That's a sin. That's damn sin. It's sin against the Creator because it wastes the resources, the gifts that went to create those crops. 

Deportee or Plane Crash at Los Gatos Canyon

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?

Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

Words by Woodie Guthrie music by Martin Hoffmann a schoolteacher

It's sixty years later and too many of our neighbors use names worse than "deportee." And to be honest I'd hate to think how many of them think potatoes come in bags and oranges come in crates with no dirt or trees involved. 

SILENCE, IT'S KILLING US

There's spiritual/spirtual and political/spiritual. They overlap a lot. At least for me and the overlap will probably continue. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Under Construction.

 Penny Lernoux. White, middle class, USC graduate. Went to work for the USIA in 1961 in Latin America right before Pope John put out the calol for a Vatican Council. From 1964 to '69 she worked for the Copley News Service. Then she began a career as a free lance writer concentrating on Latin American and the impact of US policy. Critically covering US policy in Central and South America. The book is available used. The Internet Archive has several copies. If you spend a little time you can find a copy with a fourteen day borrow.

She saw the concentration of wealth of the busninesses, landlorads and, politicians contrasted with the extreme poverty of almost everyone else. Her faith became radicalized. Heck read the Wickipedia entry on her. It's hard to summarize a life. After her book Cry of the People  was published she jouned the National Catholic Reporter as a writer.. She continued to examine Latin America through the lens of Liberation Theology conentrating on the efforts of the two popes before Francis to undo the work of the Council. To be honest I can't even think about those two without coming close to cussing. 

Her work led her to an examination of banking practices in the eighties that led to a recession in this country and close to depression in some third world countries. Globalization is not good for children, other lving things and damn near everything else. The virus proved that as supply chains reached the braking point. 

I’m not sure of the date; it was probably early to mid seventies.

“The atmosphere in the church was tense. Crowded inside were several hundred young Brazilians, there to attend an afternoon Mass for a fellow student killed by the military police. Outside the church, stationed in the plaza and all along the thoroughfares that crisscross this part of downtown Rio De Janeiro, were soldiers from the 1^st Division of the Brazilian Army.

Earlier in the week, after the first funeral mass for the student, mounted police had attacked all those leaving the church. On the morning of this, the second Mass, the city had been readied as though for war, with machine-gun nests at the crossroads, armored cars, barbed wire entanglements, and aerial patrols. When the Mass ended, the unarmed people inside the church would have to confront the military. Set in the middle of a large plaza/parking lot that straddles Avenida Presidente Vargas, the Candelaria church is an unprotected island, with no narrow side streets or alleys for refuge. Surely more people would die this afternoon.

One of the priests forbade any in the congregation to leave the church ahead of the clergy. Dressed in alb and stole, the fifteen priests than followed Bishop Jose Castro Pinto out into the plaza, where, holding one another by the hand, they formed a line to confront the drawn sabers of a row of mounted military police. Slowly, slowly, this strange procession forced the horses to fall back. The priests then moved down Avenida Presidente Vargas to Avenida Rio Branco, the crossroads of downtown Rio. Forming a protective arc around Candelaria until the last person had left. It was only then, in the crossroads, that the cavalry and soldiers lashed into the crowd with their batons, hurling tear gas grenades, but at least there was somewhere to flee, someplace to hide”  Cry of the People by Penny Lernoux pp 313-314. The US media lapped up the picture of the student confronting the tank at Tiananmin Square in China. Nowhere have I ever seen a picture of this. Fourteen men against an army. Standing between death and their people. 

Of course we have to protect our liberties. And we protect our freedom by working to protect the freedom of others. Too often since WWII we turned away, looked away, sat in the corner with our fingers in our ears, eyes closed, humming. Loudly. Until the nineties the excuse was “the commies are coming, the commies are coming.” Since 2001 it’s “the terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming.”

We not only closed our eyes and ears to what was happening in Latin America from the sixties to the nineties. We aided, abetted, trained, paid; gave aid, comfort and cold hard cash to murderers and torturers. The few in this country who tried to ring the firebell were denounced as traitors, communist sympathizers if not actual communists. Sound familiar? Only now the cry traitors, cowards, etc. etc, so on and so forth. Rush, Glenn, Sarah, Michelle, Alan, all the rest and especially Mitt. Are you out there?

Only now it's Boebert, Gates, Jordan, Greene. The names change the message is the same.  

Trouble is, and I can’t remember who said it or find the quote in Lernoux’s book again, “you can’t spread democracy by killing people” whether they’re farmers accused of aiding subversives tribesmen living too close to the drone strike. We weren't paying attention. We're so surprised that what worked for decades in other countries is finally being applied to us.

Pastor Niemoller’s lament updated for the late twentieth and twenty first century.

They came for the Indians in the rain forest, but it those trees and those Indians didn't live in my country and I’m not an Indian so I didn't object.

They came for the farmers trying to scratch out a living for their families. And I’m not a mestizo farmer so I didn't speak out.

They came for those who tried to protect the rain forests and all who live in them. The forest is so big how can it all be destroyed? I still didn't speak.

They came for the teachers. And still I didn't raise my voice.

They came for the workers trying to organize some kind of unions. My silence was deafening.

They came for the lay church workers, the nuns, the brothers, the missionaries. My voice was lost in a black hole.

They came for the priests, a bishop or three and one archbishop. Hello! Is there anyone out there?

Now they've come to my country. For the immigrants, the Muslims, for those who fight for enough to feed their families, for those who try to protect the land and those who live from the land, for those with skin a different color, for those who call God or the Goddess by a different name. And finally they came for me and there was only silence. 

PETTING SAFETY MAP, SORT OF

 

 

Results may vary due to time of day, how close we are to meal time, how many birds are at the feeder, the zen of cat stroking, or whatever the heck is going on in that little feline brain at that particular second. 

Midge will let me pet her almost anywhere. For a set amount of time that varies from session to session. Then you get the "grab" I say no and get the hand to safety. After a couple of minutes you may get to start over or she will take a nap in my lap. This lasts until "I'm sorry but I really have to move my leg. You can stay but my leg is asleep." Oh, and SHE loves having her ears skritched. Loves the comb down her back. 

GET IN THE BOAT!

 Courtesy of cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz. Author of the strip La Cucaracha. I've check out the beginning 'toons. I do believe he triggered a lot of buttons. 

The virus is surging in Oregon in spite of everything we can do. Surging in Florida because the Governor isn't doing a damn thing. Some folks are calling him Ron DeathSantis. Seems appropriate. The elected hired help isn't doing a damn thing to help the people who hired him. In a real business he'd have been fired a long time ago. 

STARGAZER

 

One of  my favorite lilies. The Stargazer. Not sure how the lily got it's name. There's nothing particularly "starry: about it. Except the spectacular beauty of the flower. Only Mother Gaia could pull off this color combination. Blazing pink and burnt orange. Luckily we didn't have deer passing through when these lilies were in theire prime. 

ITTY BITTY COMPUTER

 Anyone remember the scene in Apollo 13 where Jim Lovell is extolling the virtues of a computer small enough to "fit in a room/' Remember the computers in the command capsule?

I had to replace my cell phone this weekend. Got a Motorola,  not too expensive, heavy as heck. Hey larger than my old one. What I'm having a little trouble wrapping my brain around is this. Granted my laptop is a few years old but that little begger has more memory. About ten gigs more. In my frakin' hand. Nice extra. It has a stylus. A stylus that is a lot trimmer than my stubby fingers. 

This puppy is kind of heavy which should make my phone calls shorter. Or I figure out how to use the speaker phone. 

If civilians can ride a rocket with room enough to float around it's because their ride isn't filled with space eating machines with almost no memory capacity. 

HOW TO LOSE THE WAR

Or at least make sure it lasts a hell of lot longer than it needs to. 

There was a fair amount of these sttitudes in the early forties. Right up until the morning of December 7, 1941. The conspiracy theories have been swirling ever since. 

The artist's name is Kevin McShane. He has a FB page.  A prime example of what Douglas Adams called an SEP. Sombody Else's Problem. Buddy. be glad they didn't give one of those helmets that looks like a flower pot with eyeholes and a slit to breath through. 

I wonder if he draws ostriches. With their heads in the sand, ass in the air with a big fat bull's eye painted on their feathery rumps. The knight's expression says it all. "Do I keep after the dragon or do I start applying my armored boot to the right asses."Unfortunately he can't just say the hell with it and walk away.

AN OREGON RIVER

 I really do have to have sit down with that book on Cascade volcanoes. It'd there on the top of the stack just "looking" at me. If you look closely you can identify the layers of lava. Mt. Hood is only five hundred thousand years. old. I haven't dug deeply enough to know where the Mt. Hood flows end and the Columbia flood basalts begin. Those flood basalt flows were laid down between sixteen and fouteen million years ago. 

Shows how much I know about my home state. I'm really good when it comes to the Willamette Valley. Reasonably decent about the north coast. Eastern Oregon not so much. I'd never even heard of the White River until someone posted this shot on Forgotten Oregon. 

The White River falls are the upper set of falls with a ninety foot drop over a basalt shelf leading to the Celestiial Falls with drop of about fourty four feet. The headwaters are fed by the White River glacier on the south east flank of Mount Hood. 

I didn't realize there were so many glaciers on Mt. Hood. They're shrinking BTW. I'm not sure if the river is named for the glacier or the other way around. In seasons of high melt from the ice the headwaters of the river turn milky white. 

There are ruins of a power station next to the river. It supplied power to the area from about 1910 until 1960 when The Dalles Dam power station was completed. The lower river is popular for rafting and fishing inside the state park named for the river. The park is open from say May to late October, snow

season. The river is a little one by most standards. It's about fifty miles long and joins the Deschutes on its run to the Columbia. A more peaceful section of the river. Looks like it might be a section for kayaking or a drift boat. A McKenzie River drift boat to be exact. 

I'd never even heard of this little piece of  Oregon. The river originates from a glacier, there are no other tributaries. There is a so called ghost forest created when the volcano erupted in the late seventeen hundreds either burying or blowing over the trees when a new valley floor was created. 

What was a u shaped glacial valley became a steep V shaped canyon as the White River cut its way through the debris left by a pyroclastic flow and subsequent mud flows. 

Mt. Hood is classifed as an active volcano that last erupted between September of 1865 and January of 1866. Visitors to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood occaisionaly get a whiff of sulpher when the wind is right. A reminder that when it comes to the high Cascade mountain range peace can be a relative term.

Thankfully we get a fair amount of warning. After all Mt. Saint Helens didn't just blow off about a thousand feet of elevation one Sunday morning out of the blue. She gave plenty of warning. It isn't the mountain's fault that geology is a relatively young science. That the geology of Oregon is slowly becoming understood piece by piece. Or that humans, being an impatient species often choose to ignore warnings because the timing isn't an absolute. I felt that "thump" when she blew over a hundred miles south in Springfield. Just a little "thump." Got home from church and it was all over the news.