Ptown afternoon

I'm in Portland this weekend visiting my daughter and her husband. And Owen, the golden boy and Willie Nelson the cat. They are snoozing nearby. Lovely sunny day here in stump town. Truly, September is the sweetest month. This all by way of seeing family before M. Lee and I leave for Central America. Countdown a week and a half. I wish I'd been coming up here more often. This is only my fourth visit in two years. When I'm in my daily life routine, my blood gets thick and everything appears so far away and uphill both ways. Seems I need terrifying possibilities looming on the horizon to rise to life. Backpacking through Central America is just enough to bring me to the table. So here I am and it's lovely. Asia just got back from a run so, after she showers, we are going to meet up with JudyBlueSky and eat hand picked wild sweet homemade Oregon blackberry pie. Mmmmmmm... pie.

Just for the record, baby Owen is older than he is in this fetching photo and his chewies have grown accordingly. I was, in fact, shocked at the size of the bone he is currently devouring. He could literally eat a cow, horn, hoof and tail.

Hilarious. Jon Stewart exposing Republican hypocrisy

During their reign of terror, Republicans shameless took hypocrisy, corruption and folly to dizzying new levels. Now they are tripping over their dicks whining that Palin is the victim of a double standard. John Stewart has some hilarious clips of them whining and contradicting themselves now that the high heel is on the other foot. Pathetic.


Hypocrisy Republican style

Loose cannon McCain

John McCain's explosive, hair-trigger temper is well documented. Dr. Phillip Butler, a former POW incarcerated with McCain, says McCain's anger problem makes him unfit to be President. I could not agree more. We can't afford to have some old loose cannon "maverick" prone to rage and impulse decisions answering a 3 am call on the Red Phone. And Mrs. "Iraq is a Task from God Palin" a heart attack away? Nightmare.

McCain's short circuit


4:10



John McCain Sarah Palin maverick

All the lovely creatures...

Polar bears drowning
due to global warming

Now too the fireflies are disappearing from the earth. Like polar bears. Sarah Palin sued the US government this spring when polar bears were put on the endangered species list. What an idiot. I don't have the heart to make a list tonight but species are endangered and vanishing right and left, due to human pollution. We have got to do better. Even selfishly this is a disaster. Fireflies and polar bears are indicators of how pollution is turning our environment hostile to life as we know it. Humans are not immune however, in our hubris, we imagine ourselves above the laws of nature.

The wild, beautiful, fragile, exotic, wonderful, impossible creatures of earth...

"When the little glow bug
lights his lamp,
the air around
is surely damp."

vanishing .......

Gustav's claws

Gustav & Hanna


I talked to my friend Marsha yesterday. She grew up in Florida so has lived through many hurricane seasons. In five minutes I learned more about highs and lows from her than made sense in a lifetime. By Republican logic, living in Florida would qualify her to head FEMA but she has enough sense to reject such an offer. Anyway, given that major hurricanes are grinding their way through the Caribbean, I wanted to know how she lives with them. To me they are colossal electro-magnetic cyclop ant-eaters lumbering through ankle-deep oceans rummaging for prey. They have lightning veins, thunderbolt hearts and claws of hail and rain. They ransack everything they touch, sea and land, jamming their whirling razor-edged snouts into the fray, sucking up everything in sight. She seems them as weather.

Typical Marsha, she'd been out sailing the gulf in the morning and got back just as Gustav's rain set in. Her sense of timing is well honed but then she uses NOAA to monitor winds even as they are born moving across the deserts of Africa. She watches them cross the Atlantic and follows their arrival via local TV and radio when they finally approach landfall. As a kid, gulf water made it all the way into the kitchen of their little island home. That would be enough for me but, like she pointed out, everybody's got something. I'll take rattlesnakes.

Gustav will miss her area so she's got her eye on Hanna and a couple of others still far out at sea off the news radar. I suppose they'll be trouble just about the time we arrive in Guatemala. I am not a hurricane chaser. Don't want to be one and M. Lee assures me we will be far far away but crap! There is even a mean south wind raging here in Nevada this morning. I say Gustav's claws.

Playing to the choir

McCain's pick for second in command of the United States of America is mind-numbing which is undoubtedly what he's praying for. He must anesthetize the evangelicals so they will accept him as their leader, kind of like tranquilizing a mare before breeding her.

Sarah Palin has ZERO foreign policy experience. She is strongly anti-choice, even opposing abortion in the case of rape or incest. She thinks creationism should be taught in public schools and doesn't believe humans are the cause of climate change. So much for science. Naturally, she is solidly in line with McSame's "Big Oil first" energy policy and has pushed hard for more oil drilling. She even sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species, worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska. Oh, and she's currently under investigation for some shady dealings.



McCain has given us us a peak into how truly raw and impulsive his thinking is, how he reacts under pressure and what his priorities are based on ... celebrity and sensationalism. He is not the man I want fingering the Red Button any more than I want her, one heart attack away, picking up that 3 am call.



McCain Palin Sara Palin Hail Mary pick panic reaction

Alien seeking pie

JudyBlueSky is making pie today from just picked hand-picked sweet black plumb juicy August blackberries. YUM!

I, on the other hand, do not have such pie. But oddly, when I came across this photo of the Pie Town billboard in my files this morning I dragged it to my "post n dump" folder, anticipating that I'd have a reason to post it today. I took it when we passed though Pie Town, NM.


Was this because I have some kind of spooky psychic link to homemade blackberry pie? Didn't get any pie in Pie Town either. Mmmmm pie...

Hot August night

In just over two weeks we'll be leaving for Guatemala. It is no comfort to me that it is now hurricane season in the Caribbean and we are headed in that general direction. As always, I am the reluctant traveler but I am also excited. We have been getting ready for a couple of weeks already making lists, stacking and sorting piles of clothes and gear on the floor. This weekend I am going to pack my backpack and see how how heavy it is, how much room is left. All that. We are already running out of time. Our silk travel sheets arrived today. They come highly recommended. They're light, 6.3 oz, and are supposed to be an effective barrier against bed bugs and other nastiness associated with cheap rooms.


I have been cutting back on the seed in the Bird Park to prepare the birds for when we leave but the place has been hopping anyway. Pigeons cram the tubs bathing in flocks then doze in the sun. They are unique. Other birds come and go, with always an eye for death from above, but the pigeons relax and air their wings. Even sleep. I love them for it. And the quail are back, all ages. I have seen no sign of the hawk but there was some excitement this afternoon when a couple of young males had a real chest bumper. It went on for about ten minutes. That's long in quail time. All in all, the scene outside my window has been a rollicking bird circus but two days after we leave it will be empty, only an occasional bird dropping by on the chance that somehow the feeders are full again. And so it will be for months. I hate that part about going away.

Obama was fantastic in Denver. They all were. I love Biden. Clinton and Clinton were heros. Michelle Obama outstanding. Wonderful. So we shall see...

It's a hot August night here in Nevada. Crickets trilling away in the dark.

Back it up

Still reeling from losing so many files yesterday. After a night's sleep, I remember more clearly just what got sucked into the Big Black Hole in the middle of cyberspace. Every time this happens I die a little inside. And whatwhatwhat have I learned this time?

Hmmmmmmm..........?

BACK IT UP, asshole. On a regular basis. Oh and... check the back up, honey.

My big mistake rescuing files from the crashed hard drive? Didn't check to make sure files transferred properly. Lovely. I can blame microsoft. Their crappy "copy" feature, after all. But that's useless. So. Have I learned this time? Back_it_up.

Now will I do what I tell other people to do? Who's sorry now? Oh goodie. I get to practice detachment and renewal. Pruning is good for the soul.

Shit.

Thanks Hillary

"No way! No how! No McCain!"