Category: Journal

I’m Back.

Mov­ing is a dis­rup­tive activ­i­ty. It made sense that I did­n’t get to blog­ging while we were actu­al­ly in the process of buy­ing and mov­ing. But we have been liv­ing here now since late Octo­ber and I am only now return­ing to the blog. We now live in a beau­ti­ful, old home in Fort Wayne, Indi­ana. I imag­ine there will be a few posts about the house in the near future.

Our com­put­er died while we were get­ting ready to move. So we live in a new (96 year old) house, with new com­put­ers, new isp, and now a new year.

Along with all that we pur­chased a new bed and had it deliv­ered as soon as we had pos­ses­sion of the house. We brought up a card table and a cou­ple of fold­ing chairs and then we spent a cou­ple of days here clean­ing before the move (not that the house need­ed much clean­ing, the pre­vi­ous own­ers left it clean). That first night we retired to the bed­room and turned out the lights.

But the room did not go dark.

We’ve lived in the coun­try for the past twen­ty years. At that house, when the lights are turned out at night, the room goes dark. Even­tu­al­ly the eyes adjust and one can bare­ly see by what starlight makes it through the window.

But not here. Here the room is still lit as the light from the street­lights comes threw the shades. A dra­mat­ic difference.

It is no big deal. We can sleep almost any­where. But it was startling.

I imme­di­ate­ly thought of my father.

I grew up in the same house my father grew up in. While grow­ing up, I nev­er even knew which room was Dad’s (Dad was­n’t much about telling sto­ries of his past). Then one day Mom made a com­ment about Dad not being able to sleep in a total­ly dark room because he grew up sleep­ing in a room with light from the street­light com­ing through the win­dow. Based on that bit of info, I have since assumed that Dad’s room was the room by broth­er had and that I moved into the day he left for col­lege (kind of rude of me, really).

This is what I remem­ber. I can not swear every detail is true.

Hap­py New Year to all!

Trig

When Sarah Palin burst upon our con­scious­ness, she brought her fam­i­ly along, includ­ing the baby, Trig.

The grand­fa­ther says Trig is named after his great uncle, a Bris­tol Bay fisherman.

I vague­ly remem­ber read­ing this expla­na­tion of the name at the time. I gave no thought to where the name might have come from beyond that.

On page 405 of Com­ing Into the Coun­try, McPhee is dis­cussing the cab­ins of Dick and Donna.

The shan­ty that Dick and Don­na use on stopovers in Eagle is only a lit­tle up from squalid…Their fish camp down the Yukon can be dis­cour­ag­ing, too – a dirty, fetid, light­less cab­in astink in aging salmon. These more man­i­fest habi­ta­tions long ago earned Cook a rep­u­ta­tion as a sloven – among peo­ple who have nev­er been here. This seclud­ed cab­in (his home of homes) is neat and tidy – in fact, trig.

Upon read­ing this, I imme­di­ate­ly thought about the Palin baby. Vis­it­ing dictionary.com I find the fol­low­ing definitions:

neat, trim, smart, or spruce.

in good phys­i­cal con­di­tion; sound; well.

to sup­port or prop, as with a wedge.

to act as a check on (the mov­ing of wheels, vehi­cles, etc.)

That is a com­pli­cat­ed four let­ter name. With luck the ironies will shift and mul­ti­ply as he grows.

Cash Not Always Accepted

Today we bought a house! Deb­by and I have been try­ing to sell the house we are in and buy a house we love. After much back and forth involv­ing var­i­ous amounts of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the buy­er we thought we had for our house backed out.

We love the house we found and Deb­by fig­ured out how to buy it even with­out sell­ing this one, but financ­ing changes were required. So there was plen­ty of nego­ti­a­tions with the bank and it was all worked out. Time was short. The real­tor was con­cerned that the sell­ers might not accept anoth­er delay of the closing.

The prob­lem is that the mon­ey has to be there. And it turns out that the bank would hold even a cashier’s check for a cou­ple of days. There was no alter­na­tive but to get cash. Deb­by went to the bank and with­drew the cash.* They put it in an enve­lope for her. She drove to Fort Wayne and pre­sent­ed the cash to the bank.

The teller exam­ined each bill.

Deb­by now has a receipt for the $400 that the bank has deter­mined may be coun­ter­feit and is deliv­er­ing to the Secret Service.

For­tu­nate­ly, the dol­lar amount Deb­by was giv­en was approx­i­mate and the $400 was not nec­es­sary to close.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we just might be out $400.

Some­thing wrong with that picture!

The bank informed Deb­by that there have been oth­er cas­es of coun­ter­feit hun­dreds in Fort Wayne recent­ly. In exam­in­ing the bills, the teller was focused on the date. I sus­pect that the bank has been informed to be on the look­out for bills of a cer­tain date and that some of Deb­by’s bills matched that cri­te­ria. It is pos­si­ble that the Secret Ser­vice will authen­ti­cate the mon­ey. At least, we hope so!

If it turns out that those bills are coun­ter­feit, then that means that one can­not be sure that the cash a bank gives out is in fact legal currency.

*This was not tens of thou­sands of dol­lars. Just sev­er­al hun­dred to cov­er the last bit needed.

Time to Do the Time

Roman Polan­s­ki raped a 13 year old girl. He accept­ed a plea deal. He plead­ed guilty to unlaw­ful sex­u­al inter­course with a minor.

Then he skipped out pri­or to sentencing.

That was 32 years ago.

It is long past time for Mr. Polan­s­ki to face a judge and accept his sentence.

I’ve seen much writ­ten about Polan­ski’s art and how he should­n’t have to suf­fer over some­thing that hap­pened so long ago. This is absurd on its face. He did the crime, his art is irrelevent.

I under­stand his vic­tim has said that she does not want the crim­i­nal charges pur­sued. The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem does not exist to serve the wish­es of the vic­tims. Often a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal is sen­tenced to a pun­ish­ment that the vic­tim con­sid­eres woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate. With any luck, Polan­s­ki will be an exam­ple of a crim­i­nal sen­tenced to a pun­ish­ment that the vic­tim con­sid­ers excessive.

It Doesn’t Hurt…

…as long as I only pat my low­er back. Click the Mike Pence tag for my ear­li­er posts on this subject.

Mike Pence has not made any announce­ments that he is run­ning for pres­i­dent. But now he is in the top five!!!

The recent Val­ues Vot­er Sum­mit includ­ed a straw poll for 2012 and

For­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney, Min­neso­ta Gov. Tim Paw­len­ty, for­mer Alas­ka Gov. Sarah Palin and Indi­ana Rep. Mike Pence each won rough­ly 12 per­cent of the 597 votes cast.

Huck­abee won with 29%.

The momen­tum builds.…

:)

A Chuckle

I got a chuck­le* from this on page 376 in Com­ing Into the Coun­try. The speak­er is a woman named Elva. Elva has a mas­ter’s degree in edu­ca­tion and for many years ran the school-dis­tricts health pro­gram in Anchor­age. This expe­ri­ence leaves her the most qual­i­fied med­ical provider in the town of Eagle.

Peo­ple come in off the riv­er with blood infec­tions, red streaks up their arm. They get cys­ti­tis from not enough water. They come down from Daw­son with v.d. We don’t have lab­o­ra­to­ry tests. We treat on symp­toms. An out­board motor chewed on a guy’s legs awhile. We sewed him up. I tell every­one, ‘I don’t mind help­ing you out. Just don’t use me.’ We don’t want to be awak­ened for noth­ing, for some­one who is mere­ly drunk. For gun­shot wounds and stab­bings I of course get up. Oh, we have enough of that sort of thing. Yeah. You betcha. We’re get­ting ready to have din­ner with com­pa­ny and they come in and bleed all over the sink. Who needs TV in Eagle? We’ve got action enough in the streets.

You betcha.

I’m guess­ing health care costs in Eagle were (are?) on the low end.

*I won­der if I’ve ever used that word before.….

Saturation

McPhee’s Com­ing Into The Coun­try has begun to get more inter­est­ing in the sec­ond half…

On page 261* is this:

In a good fish year, two moose, two hun­dred ducks, and sev­en­ty-five quarts of king salmon will be plen­ty for one riv­er cou­ple. The upper Yukon now is con­sid­ered “full,” sat­u­rat­ed with set­tlers, all space reserved – rough­ly one per­son for every five miles.

One per­son for every five miles is con­sid­ered sat­u­ra­tion. I guess because if things get more crowd­ed a need for a wee bit of gov­ern­ment arises.

Just pri­or to the above is an account of a near­ly week long gath­er­ing of “riv­er peo­ple” for the 1976 ver­nal equinox.

It was a coun­cil of war and a par­ty, too – a time of talk and music, no booze – a way to keep con­tacts, to exchange opin­ions and information.

Then just a bit fur­ther on:

They planned a net­work of cab­ins for win­ter trav­el. They tried, with no suc­cess, to agree on a a com­mu­nal bulk food order, and on a way to admin­is­ter com­mon own­er­ship of a truck for use in Eagle. Their desire to be “trib­al” does not approach in strength their need to be self-reliant.

There always have been and always will be peo­ple who feel crowd­ed when the den­si­ty goes beyond a cou­ple of square miles per per­son. Peo­ple who want to sur­vive or fail to sur­vive on their own. Peo­ple who are unable to come to an agree­ment on a com­mu­nal bulk food order. There has always been a wilder­ness for such peo­ple to go to. Sure­ly those days are com­ing to an end. The avail­able wilder­ness is now all set aside for parks, for min­ing, for drilling, for natives.

Such a life will soon be avail­able, if not already, only to those wealthy enough to buy all the need­ed land.

*Yes, I am a slow reader.

Create Your Reality

I don’t remem­ber where I heard or read this idea, but the con­cept is straight for­ward. If you want a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion to exist, you deter­mine what the results would be if the sit­u­a­tion did exist, then you take steps to bring those results about inde­pen­dent­ly and this will help to bring the desired sit­u­a­tion into being.

This method has its lim­i­ta­tions. If one wish­es to be a mil­lion­aire, buy­ing a Porsche 911 might not be the prop­er way to go about it (though there might be cases.…)

Many years ago my broth­er urged me to answer the ques­tion of “How are you?” with “Ter­rif­ic!” regard­less of how I actu­al­ly felt. I tried it. And I was sur­prised to learn that answer­ing “Ter­rif­ic!” (excla­ma­tion point clear in my tone) actu­al­ly made me feel bet­ter and often seemed to bright­en the mood of the questioner.

Now Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can finds that my expe­ri­ence is not unique (and here I thought I was one of a kind…). Smil­ing makes a per­son hap­pi­er, at least in the short term. The linked arti­cle men­tions evi­dence that smil­ing in the face of rea­son to frown con­sti­tutes repres­sion of feel­ings that then man­i­fest them­selves in oth­er ways. So don’t get car­ried away with it.

Hat tip: 3quarksdaily

I Can’t Stand It

There is a very old Peanuts strip that I am remind­ed of late­ly. In the strip, Lucy is walk­ing with Linus and explain­ing to him the ori­gin of tele­phone poles. She says some­thing along the lines of “The tele­phone pole is actu­al­ly a tree spe­cial­ly devel­oped by the phone com­pa­ny to grow with­out branches.”

Char­lie Brown over hears this lec­ture, drops his head against one of the phone poles and says “I can’t stand it.”

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma plans to deliv­er an address to the nation’s school chil­dren that “will chal­lenge stu­dents to work hard, set edu­ca­tion­al goals, and take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their learn­ing.”

Con­ser­v­a­tives are up in arms that the Pres­i­dent wants to indoc­tri­nate the nation’s school chil­dren with his “social­ist agenda.”

So work­ing hard, set­ting edu­ca­tion­al goals, and tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty now con­sti­tutes a social­ist agenda?

I can’t stand it.