MY OFF THE WALL SENSE OF HUMOR

 Yeah, I guess I did sort of fall off the face of the earth. Or a bad case of writer's block, Or whatever. More on that later. I hope.

Last Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent. The four weeks leading up to the Christmas Season. I grew up in a Methodist church so liberal we didn't do Advent or Lent. Don't remember the prophets being mentioned all that often either. Anyway. The lead up to the Christmas season plus some reading of the prophents over the past few years plus my twisty, off the wall sense of humor produced this:

Of the few of you who actually know me you will know that my sense of humor is well, sort of off the wall. Out in far left field actually.

God has sent prophets over the years from Amos through Jeremiah to Zechariah with mixed and apparently futile results. This is how it goes in my weird imagination,

"Son we need to have a talk. Remember that conversation we had a three or four eons ago on the other side of the Milky Way."

"Yeah, the one where I end up on earth eventually learning the difference between oak and cedar and end up walking the length and breadth of the Holy Land, depending on the hospitality of strangers and all that goes with it, while basically repeating what those who came before me tried to teach?

"That's the one. It's time. I've got a great family chosen for you. Joseph is a carpenter and Mary is willing to take the risk."

"OK dad, Catch you on the flip side. I've got a feeling I'm going to get into more trouble that all the other prophets put together."

"Afraid so, Son."

STILL KICKIN'

 I did not drop off the face of the earth. No matter how it looks. Ran into some medical problems last month tied to my chronic cellulitis.talk about a gift that keeps on giving. As in a week in the hospital and the better part of a month getting my mojo back, such as it was or is, and clearing out the cobwebs. Between the meds and therapy I've been about as ambitious as a sponge on the good stuff.

Not really sure what to write about these days. but here's one. The ads have been pitching fake Christmas tree since before Halloween. Right down to the fake smell of the fake fir tree. Darn it half the fun of Christmas was decorating the tree. Picking one out that looked like a good one. Installing it in the tree stand, trying to avoid stepping on the cat's tail while she checked out the crinkly paper wrapping the ornaments. Standing up the tree and turning it so the best side was facing the room. 

And when I was little watching dad check out the lights on the string. We have at least two generations that probably don't have that memory. Sigh of relief if they all lit the first time. The going through the string one by one with a good bulb until you found the burned out one. After he had checked to make sure they were all screwed in good and tight. So you have a couple of strings of lights that light up. Those old lights were real light bulbs. They got hot. So when you put the lights on the tree you had to make sure that those lights didn't get anywhere near pine or fir needles. 

So the tree went up the week before Christmas and came down by New Years.Then it was on with the garland, the ornaments and the tinsel. Anybody remember tinsel? Remember the really good Hallmark ornaments? The skating moose. The fiddle playing bunny rabbit? The ornament celebrating the birth of my oldest nephew? A couple of really delecate ornaments that came from Grandma. 

So in reverse. Carefully removing the tinsel. Save that for next year. Rewrap the ornaments. Don't step on the cat who is batting the stray pieces around. Remove the strings of garland. Save that too. Finally the lights and all that's left are fallen fir needles and bits of tinsel. Did I mention the checking of the needles every day to make sure they are still firmly attached to the branches. 

There was that one year when we got the tree up and four days later we took it down. Little sucker was shedding needles like crazy. The only good thing about those fake trees it that you probably can't set one on fire.I don't have any pictures of those old trees. And guess what you can watch youtube videos to find out how to decorate an old fashioned tree.Youtube for cryin' out loud. 

Darn I wish I had a picture of the fiddle playing rabbit. Or the one that was ice skating. Or the drunking front legs crossed, ice skating moose. He was really a prize

SMALL BOYS

 

Yeah I haven't been posting very often but this caught my eye. It isn't the kittens. It isn't the kind of scruffy kid. The only thing missing are skinned knees. No it's the sweater. A prime example of making a virtue of necessity. Call it Fair Isle. Call it Norewegian. It's a way of using up the odd bits of yarn you can't see going to waste. Heck you probably spun and died it. Or know who did. The stripes are matched, or pretty closely. Probably almost impossible to get the kid to sit still long enough to get his hair combed but he will stop for kittens. 

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE AN APPLE PIE

 

Perhaps if all our recipes began with "if you want to make ____________ first create the universe we'd be reminded of our place in it/ SF classic author Robert Heinlein is said to have began his recipe for rabbit stew with "first catch the rabbit." To be honest the aple pie in the Cosmos segment needed a pie crust. This one sounds like a Dutch Apple pie with a crumble topping. Both are delicious. 

MORE PIPEDREAMS?

 US drought monitor map as of July 19 of this year. Parts of eastern Oregon and northern California have eased up. A bit.  Includes Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

Oregon and Washington aren't quite so bad off although there is a dark brown area that looks to be about where Bend and Sisers are located. Just dong a little sifting throught the websites yesterday apparantly the flow on the Columbia is down from the old normal. Say about fifteen to twenty years ago. The last time any water gushed around here was back in the nineties. 

A map of the area drained by the Columbia River system. Rising in British Columbia the rivers drain an area the size of France. By volume it's the fourth largest river system in the US and the largest draining into the Pacific. Small wonder greedy eyes to the south covet the waters of the Columbia. 

The system supports over sixty dams tying toether irrigation, hydropower and a network of locks and barges that ties the Port of Lewiston to the Pacific. And has cut down the salmon runs to almost nothing including the destruction of the fishery at Celilo Falls. Somehow I don't believe that naming the reservoir Lake Celilo quite makes up for that. 

The Snake and the Columbia form the squiggly sections of the borders between Idaho and Washington. During the low flow parts of the years Spring, Summer and Fall waters from the Pacific can flow up to one hundred six miles up the river. So far seawater hasn't made it into the Willamette River which joins the Columbia just over one hundred miles from the Pacific. 

There are four dams on the lower Columbia between Oregon and Washington; Benneville, The Dalles, John Day and McNary. All four have lochs and power stations. The Columbia reaches Oregon just east of McNary dam. And the weirdest thing happened when Rick took us over to the Washington side where the loch is located several years ago. We lucked out and the loch was in use. As the water drained out to the lower level the illusion was that we were going up, not that the water was going down. Reeealy weird. 

Unfortunately I can't find an opinion piece I read yesterday asking why water from the Columbia can't be sent via pipeline to the southwest. One of the comments on the piece claimed that diverting ten pecent of the flow from the from the point where the river enters Washington. I can only assume the commenter hasn't seen a topo map of my home state. 

See that green area that ends at the point the state border becomes a straight line. That's where the river enters Oregon. The green you see is the lowest elevation. The shades of purple to blue are progressively higher in elevation. The cerntral plateau averages about three thousand feet in elevation.

His theory was that diverting ten percent of the flow would not harm the salmon runs. Any more than they already are. More on that later. I'm assuming some sort of pipeline. I'm guessing they'd want to tie into the Colorado system somehow, somewhere. I believe the closest the Colorado comes to Oregon is donn the corder of Utah. A long way to go and a lot of rugged real estate in the way 

Now about that ten percent of the flow. How will that affect power generation. Can wind generation take up the slack? How will losing ten percent of the flow affect barge traffic. And how will that ten percent really affect the salmon runs. Will the diversion cause the waters in the reservoirs to warm up even more? Warm water and salmon don't exactly mix. 

Water from the Pacific already makes it just over one hundred miles up river. What would be the effect of a ten percent diversion have on possibly increasing that distance. The mouth of the Willamette is one hundred one miles from the mouth of the Columbia. Could this affact water quality in the Willamette. What if any effect would this have on wells near the river? Add in rising sea levels and what happens to the that equation?

This tale certainly grew with the telling. Haven't written anything like this in a very long time. Feels good. 

A SCARY PIPEDREAM

 A bit of a change brought on by this article. One of several published in the Desert Sun, a Utah newspaper, over the past month or so. A quick Google hasn't uncovered much along these lines from other sources. Probably because Southern California has already understood that there are limits to what can be extracted from the rest of the country. I posted this on FB and this is what I wrote to go with it with a few additions. 

You chose to live in a desert. You are encouraging more population to move to your desert. And basically mocking anyone who points out that it is a desert and pointing out that other civilizations came a cropper when the water stopped flowing.

Once that pipeline is built it won't stop with just a portion. The rest of us will hear a giant sucking sound as every drop of fresh water is diverted. Earlier in the last century a plan on paper would have diverted fresh water from just about everywhere including the Great Lakes.

Check out Cadillac Desert. There once and is on file somewhere a plan that would have diverted water from ALASKA via British Columbia down to the southwestusing a network of dams and pipelines. The Canadian Prime Minister thought is was a good idea. A great many of his potential voters weren't too cool fwith the idea though, since the plan involved building that huge dam and creating a reservoir five hundred miles long.

Most of western Canada probably looked at THEIR rivers that were awfully close to that network and wondered how long it would be before the US cast our greedy eyes towards those rivers. There are limits damn it. We either learn to live within them voluntarily or the universe will impose the limits and believe me, we won't like it. Although I probably won't be here to see the fallout. Not so sure about my great nieces and nephews.

And how blithely the commenters spoke of diverting just ten percent of the flow from the Columbia. Won't hurt the salmon since we won't need to build any new dams. Yo, we have a drought up here too. Maybe Oregon and Washington could build greenhouses and supply some of those out of season vegetables.

And what would a ten percent decrease do to Portland's viability as a port? And what would ten percent mean to pulling sea water up the Columbia River. The whole "we need it so let's figure out how somebody else can give it to us." Incidentally the Columbia was placed off limits by congress two generations ago and believe me we will fight to keep it that way. Thank you senators Jackson and Magnuson of Washington. You see some folks down south just hate of idea of ANY fresh water making it to the sea.

Once upon a time the Colorado reached the Pacific though wetlands and delta rich in plants and wild life. The Colorado reaches the ocean maybe every few years and then only a trickle. The Colorado network never carried the water it was assumed it would provide and that was over allocated. There are limits folks. Don't assume that the rest of the country is going to bail you out without some draconian limits placed on your dreams. If the dreams are fulfilled at all.

We might be convinced to keep the lights on and the faucets flowing for the population you have NOW. You want more people you figure out how to get the water. You won't get it from us. We have our own lights to keep lit and our own faucets to fill.

NOW THAT HE IS SAFELY DEAD

  

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service I really do hate that statue. It doesn't do the man justice. Has he been safely dead long enough to quit running edited videos of that "I have a dream speech/" And I have never been able to get around Blogger's formatting issues. Sorry.

 Several years ago I ran across a skinny little volume of poems and essays remembering the death of MLK. Ironicall while Drum Major for a Dream was edited by religious studies professor Ira Zepp and Del Martin who teaches literature, writes some poetry. Both were respeccted instructors at Western Maryland University. The volume was produced by the Writers Workshop - Indian Creative Writing in English headquartered in, wait for it, Calcutta. India. 

Now that he is safely dead

Let us praise him.

Build monuments to his glory

Sing hosannas to his name

 

Dead men make such safe,

Convenient heroes:

They cannot rise to challenge the images

We would fashion from their lives.

 

And besides,

It is easier to build monuments

Than to build a better world.

 

So, now that he is safely dead

We, with eased consciences

Will teach our children

That he was a great man…knowing

 

That the cause he lived for

Is still a cause. And that the dream

For which he died is still a dream.

A dead man’s dream.

 Carl Wendell Hines Jr. in Drum Major for a Dream

This piece was written in memory of MLK Jr. Screen shot from the Amazon Books website. The volume only has seventy or so pages. Bound in the cloth used for saris. Not the really nice, shimmery ones. the kind of cloth the village women wear. Poems, short essays, some very angry. I believe that only one edition was produced by this group. If there is an earlier version I haven't found one. The only copies avaiable are used and they are pricey. Very Very pricey. Believe I will do a little digging. Now if I can just solve the formatting issues in word.  Grrrr. 

 Actually this is an update of an earlier journal entry. This piece was written in memory of MLK Jr. However it could also describe the fate of the teachings of a certain footsore rabbi who came a cropper when he went against the combined power of Rome and the Jerusalem power structure. However unlike MLK who left his letters, speaches and sermons that footsore rabbi left no written record. We don’t know what HE taught. He didn’t write anything down. People with their own agendas did write things down and out of those writings at least one author has identified eight distinct theologies in the New Testament. And he believed that seven of those were wrong. Unfortunately that book didn't make the trip to Eastern Oregon and damn if I can remember the author or the title. 

 Now that He is safely out of the way we can make just about anything we want out of the scraps that were allowed into the accepted canon and proceed to beat each other over the head with them and build fences with safely locked gates. Above those gates are the words Keep Out.