BAAAAD Reindeer — Merry Happy!
Now how are the Magi supposed to find the stable? Naughty Vixen!
Merry Happy!!!
Islam and Democracy
While on his recent visit to Indonesia, President Bush said that Islam and Democracy can co-exist.
Can any religion co-exist with democracy?
Religions do not support freedom, equality or privacy. Unless religion is constantly watched and controlled, it turns to repression and violence.
In all cases where people are free and equal, religion has been in opposition. Religion must be defeated to guarantee women the vote, black people equality, gays existance. Nothing free or decent comes out of religion.
In the United States, religion must be guarded or it will place repressive and inequal laws upon all the citizens, including those not of the religion placing the laws.
Islam cannot co-exist with democracy. Neither can any other religion, without the vigilance of a free people.
November Storm
The November 15 storm was scary and hilarious.
While checking out the beach for photos from the Clallam Bay Park, I heard what sounded like an explosion behind me. When I whirled around, the air seemed to be white, it was tearing toward me so fast. I threw myself on my back, to keep from being sommersaulted over the fences into the river.
“That’s it,” I thought. “I’m not running around trying to find photos in this! They don’t pay me enough!”
Jumping into my truck, I turned out of the parking lot in time to see huge strips of tin rolling and sliding down Highway 112 toward me; my truck and the metal did a scary little dance before l managed to skid up into the Clallam Bay Grocery Store parking lot. I hopped out of the truck into the howling storm, camera in hand, laughing my head off.
Cars and trucks skidded and braked around the big rattling pieces of tin.
Sue Heiny, standing on the deck of Sue’s gallery, waved at me. “Get this!” she yelled above the storm, pointing at gutters that had been torn off the gallery by pieces of the grocery store roof. “And look at this!” Her car’s rear windows had been shattered by more of the flying debris.
Dave Weir, at Al’s Mini-Mart, saw the roof as it lifted off.
“It came up like a big bird,” said Dave, demonstrating with his hands. “Then it ripped into pieces and flew all over the place. Cars were ducking it everywhere!”
Brian Adler saw the roof go up and and he and Patti high-tailed it down from their new home on the hill to help clear up the debris and take photos.
Arlen Olsen was unharmed when his truck took a tree right in the windshield, just as he was approaching the bridge on the west end of town. Unable to control his truck, he ran across the road and plowed into the mud. But he wasn’t hurt.
Sekiu’s By The Bay Cafe got up and running again when owner Bob Cain hooked up a generator in the morning.
“There were extension cords all over the place!” said Kathy Blevins, who works at the cafe. “But it was a needed service.”
The By The Bay stayed open late to provide comfort and sustenance to residents who had no other way to stay warm or obtain hot food, or just wanted a respite from the tension of living with a storm.
“Our customers said we had great ambiance, with all the candles before the generator started,” grinned Blevins.
Brian and Patti Adler were just one more cold, wet couple who got warmed up at the Cafe.
“Man, those guys at the Cafe are good sports for those hanging in there for us,” said Patti.
The Adlers, part of the Emergency Preparedness Team, were out seeing who they could help. Newly moved, they had stored all their emergency equipment in a local storage area. The storage area’s owner was busy digging a trench in the driving rain to keep units from flooding. The Adlers grabbed what they could and went on, victims of the cabin fever we get in a storm.
“We got so nervous looking for trouble at the house that we went out to see what we could do for cleanup and picking up Rocky Hinckle’s resort. A tree fell down in her yard and a light burst into fire, but we got that.”
The Schwans frozen-food delivery truck driver took a break from servicing his route to get a hot meal and a warm-up at the Cafe.
The Clallam Bay/Sekiu Chamber of Commerce meeting was canceled, and it was rough work trying to contact everyone, with all the phones and email out of service.
On Thursday, November 16, a bit of panic started when office people at the Forks Forum began calling Clallam Bay contacts, asking, “Where’s Denise?” The newspaper editor Denise Dunne-Devaney had not shown up at the Forum offices at her regular time and her phone, while ringing, was not answered.
Several town residents raced up to the Dunne-Devaney home on the Sekiu River Road, where they found Charles Devaney and all the dogs perfectly well. The couple had not been able to chop their way free of the windfall debris in their driveway until 9:00 on Monday morning.
The Clallam Bay Store was lit up like a cathedral by sunshine pouring in through the stripped roof. The store has been closed since April 1, 2006. Pieces of tin from the store are scattered across the whole town.
“There’s a lot of potential for more danger from that store in the next storm,” said Patti Adler. “Those big pieces of tin could decapitate someone. We need to get out there and get it cleaned up. There’s a big tree down in the Clallam River behind the RV park — if we get more trees down, we’ll have a log jam. We have to prepare for the coming storms before someone gets hurt or stranded or both.”
The Adlers’ had their own problems, when much of the roof of their new house came up; they can’t touch it until it has been examined for insurance purposes.
Lynn Olsen, of Olsen’s Resort in Seikiu, said, “Barometric pressure at Olsen’s resort was at 29.3.”
The Resort’s storage building was badly damaged by the wind, as was the sign at van Riper’s resort, and the roof at the Sekiu Community Center.
Winds at Olsen’s were clocked at 91 mph — powerful enough to throw the Resort’s big wooden folk-art elk on its side with its head in a shed.
Fire Chief Gene Laes will address Emergency Preparedness at the town meeting 6:00 Tuesday evening at the Sekiu Community Center.
Race-y 1959 Movie
For a production in 1959 that dealt with race, and yet seemed to fly under the radar of controversy, watch John Ford’s “Sergeant Rutledge” (originally titled “Captain Buffalo.”)
A superb cast of black actors and a no-nonsense plot dealing with (supposed) black-on-white rape and murder should have made this screen explode, especially in the South.
The black actors who play the troopers range from the tall, dark, handsome Woody Strode who plays the lead roll, with his deep voice and superb posture, to a light and whiny kid, to an ink-black fiercely aquiline man with obvious Spanish background. The actors speak with many different accents and appear to come from many different levels and backgrounds in society. It’s obvious they’ve been chosen as a kind of black bomber-crew, but who else at the time was trying to do this, at least in mainstream movies?
The man playing the old bearded sergeant is almost two people: a sharp, hard-voiced old trooper among his own unit, and a quiet, soft-voiced, diffident person when dealing with white people. The character was a slave, and learned how to stay alive in a dangerous time.
Note: a southern friend pointed out that the rape victim was something most northern audiences would not have recognized, and that gave the film added levels: the young actress had black ancestry. The Colonel who is her father used to own slaves.
Looking Bad
Several letters have been sent to the letters column of the Peninsula Daily News to say ugly things about a wedding between two people in love.
Whose business is it that two adult people love one another and want to enjoy each other’s lovely bodies?
These letters make everybody in Clallam County look like mean, cowardly, poorly-educated, prudish, stupid busybodies – when most people up here are very kind, loving, smart, giving people, open-minded and open-handed. The only time they bother with their neighbors’ business is when their neighbors are in trouble and need help.
Stop writing mean letters. It’s embarrassing. And insulting to the entire community.
Jehovah’s Witnesses — Support Groups
A local family hears about people who are unhappy or having trouble and then swoop down like vultures for the emotional leavings. So if anybody wants to get away from the JW organization, here’s help:
http://www.virushead.net/exjw.html for people who want to get out of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
http://www.virushead.net/jwhumor.html Jehovah’s Witnesses jokes. (”Why do mobsters hate Jehovah’s Witnesses? Mobsters hate all witnesses!”)
“What were you doing to the cat?”
Okay, here is a very very very simple rule in life:
Don’t tease the cat.
If you don’t get bitten or scratched by the cat, ask yourself the question my mother always asked me:
“What were you doing to the cat?”
If you come to my door and push my buttons until you hit a sore spot — and you do it on purpose — do not — DO NOT — be all surprised and worried when I blow up and in the kindest way possible take your face off.
Do this stuff in public, okay? So we can both look like idiots.
Witchy Girl
Danielle looks just like the Halloween Witch by our driveway.
Deja vu all over again.
Someone recently said I sounded “bored” with the world.
It’s my own fault: I read too much history.
Safe towns in Vietnam or Iraq are the safe castles or hilltops during the Hundred-years’ war.
Iraqi snipers schooling to take out occupation troops by one bullet from an unassailable distance through known body armor openings: the English archers taking out the French knights at Agincourt.
I could go on - and on - and on — but… it would be boring.
We may know history, but the events are always wearing a different costume – so we’re condemned to repeat it anyway.
Cackling Geese
Recently we’d been listening to strange calls passing over the woods near our home on the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Our neighbor said they were Canada Geese. But they didn’t sound like Canada Geese. They were more high-pitched, more duck-like.
A birdcall recording on the radio program Birdnote solved the mystery. They’re Cackling Geese! They look like a big harlequin duck of a different color. Little fat faces, short bills.
Speaking of harlequins, our gang is back for the winter on the rocks of Slip Point.
During the plankton derth last year, there was a fish and bird die-off. Except for the family of one fat little harlequin duck, who had figured out a different way to feed.
The first time anybody saw her feeding behavior, we thought she was wounded. She was being rolled about like a football in the surf over the pebble beach, as though crippled. Binoculars showed she was happily gobbling fat beach-fleas, with no care whether her feet were in the air or not.
The next year, she’d taught a daughter how to do it.
During the die-off, their kids — at least five of them — continued to eat and stay fat. They don’t need to do it now, and it is less common, but one smart little duck kept her family line going through the bad times with a very funny feeding strategy.
Go fishing on the beach to see loons. They come right up to the line to see what bait you’re using.
