You’re traveling on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula, and you see this tourism sign:  “Duncan Memorial Cedar Tree.”

Gasoline is expensive, and the tree is a ways in on a pitted logging road. 

It’s the skeleton of two rather medium-sized cedars that have grown together, with a few patches of scrubby branches at the top.  It is not a truly big, old-growth cedar; it is dry, sick, and has no bark.  It looks more like an ancient juniper than a healthy big cedar.  It’s in the center of a scrubby, sprayed, dried-out tree farm.  The only shiny, pretty things you’ll see around the cedar are the huge, new, blue-and-white ”This is a Managed Forest” signs.

If you’re interested in what 200 years of logging has done to the native forest, it could be of historical note.  If you’re interested in seeing a healthy, magnificent, oxygen-pumping tree and forest, it’s just depressing.   Save your gasoline and offset the carbon footprint that’s been widened by this forest.

If you are determined to see it, pat it on its mutilated wood and apologize for your species.  We did.  And promised it that we’re well on the way to poisoning and diseasing our way back to a remnant population, so the planetary machine may have a chance. 

There’s always hope.

TrueMajority recently sent a message entitled:  “Don’t Let Bush Fool America About Iran.”

There may be a real disconnect on “fooling America.”

The way small towns and rural communities celebrate participation in the war, you’d think you were at a football rally.  Bush doesn’t have to fool these people.  They’re ra-rahing right along with him.  They HAND him their precious relatives to turn into soldiers and throw away on a war of resource conquest.  You’re not going to see any detemined mom breaking her kid’s foot  to keep him from getting his legs blown off in a humvee roll-over.

I’m out here in the middle of beautiful nowhere where it’s safe, but I’m not gloating over it.  Then again, I’m not whipping up the Support-The-Troops war fervor, either.

People from small towns come back and brag about how much the Iraqis like them.  Here’s a poser:  occupation troops vs. your own angry neighbors who see you as collaborators. 

First of all, no one’s going to mouth off to a member of an occupation army who’s got a gun in his or her hand.  It’s like dealing with the uniforms in this country:  status can change from Innocent Iraqi to Enemy Combatant as fast as Broken Headlight can change to Tasered Takedown, especially if you don’t look like the uniform.

Rural people actually suffer from the delusion that they can communicate better than people in cities.  They don’t realize that, having spoken to nobody but the same people in the mini-towns for their whole lives, they might not understand that not everybody has the same viewpoint.  They’ll assume everybody’s on the same page — and can be very hostile to anybody who grew up in a different way, or even just have different experiences.  These are the people who can’t understand why the kid with the scholarship got out of town and never came back; one of the most exhausting activities anyone can be part of is Dumbing Down.  It’s one thing to smile and agree politely at the local library or restaurant, but it’s hell to have to live with it 24-7, years on end.

Rural people don’t want to know.  They won’t even face or stand up to businesses that are ruining their health.  Everybody may have cancer, but nobody’s going to question a watershed full of toxins, because it might run a few fading jobs out of town.  I know how these people think — I grew up in a mill town, where the sulfur fumes peeled the paint off the house walls and the layers out of people’s lungs. 

Rural folks are not going to be hit with the real repercussions — only large coastal cities will face any real damage if any such thing as an attack happens again.  It’s the large coastal populations who know that War Doesn’t Work. 

The disconnect is the unthreatened community vs. the threatened community.  Nobody is going to bomb anybody’s soybeans in Iowa or struggling fishing fleets; they’re going to take out New York or Washington.  But it’s the unthreatened communities who think they’re the target and are endangering the communities who may actually BE a target.

The only thing the unthreatened communities are going to lose are their grandkids — when the kids they sent to Iraq don’t come home to breed.

But then, there’s something else a lot of small-town people refuse to accept:

Evolution works.

Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place - the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain

The Olympic Peninsula, especially the rural parts of the area, are not unusual in the presence of racial and religious prejudice and homophobia.  The best people will blurt out antiquated prejudices, from comments on Hemingway’s biography to just who is shooting at a whale.

But help may be on the way!

Twilight, a series of vampire genre novels for young adults, is set in the western peninsula town of Forks.  A movie may be filmed there, using local characters.

Now Forks is no worse in the presence of homophobia than any other rural American town.  All across this country, homosexual kids always need to watch their backs; being called “gay” has been proven in American towns and the military to being the preparation for a death sentence.  There is no evidence it is that bad in any way at Forks — in so many ways, it’s Live and Let Live out here.  But it’s in the atmosphere.

If a movie is made in the area, Hollywood will be in town.  That’s an industry that can’t afford to excercise prejudice toward anyone with any artistic ability, because it takes a lot of people to film, act, choreograph, costume, edit, compose, advertise, and just move stuff around.  

Arts and media are a refuge and a livelyhood for many in the gay community, mostly because the GBLT community honors and appreciates education, the humanities and the arts.  Arts and music are never despised, ignored, or lost because the funding for the local high school went to the football program (the community up here that let this happen knows which one it is; we don’t need to go into personalilties).

If the smart, hard-working members of the gay community who work in film show up, working with local people, dining in local restaurants, relaxing in local bars, it’s going to do a lot of good.  These people can be role models for smart, artistic or musical kids who have never had the support they deserve in the area. 

It’s hard to practice homophobia when the local kids find out what good people gay people are.

Check out:  http://www.glaad.org

A local paper has been full of articles bragging about how an author was taken to task for writing about a local family, back in the ’50’s.

It’s well-known that the lawsuit for defamation was not started until the book — and the subsequent movie — began to make money.  The publishers and a local paper settled out of court to get rid of a nuisance suite.

This has led to a local mythology that the writer was defeated for making fun of a local family.  This myth might frighten local writers from using materials based on their own scene.

First of all, the Supreme Court has since backed the First Amendment by deciding that editorial cartoons, fictions, etc., come under “parody.”  This is part of the right of free speech. 

Unlike the time of the original case, and in direct reaction to this kind of lawsuit (and the actions of the House Unamerican Activities Committee), writer’s legal support groups now exist, including the Screen Actor’s Guild, the National Writer’s Union (AFL/CIO) and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.   

The New York Times found out what it was like to take on one of these organizations when it attempted to force an animation-industry style All Rights Contract upon freelance journalists, demanding the copyright of all articles from all authors.  It lost to the National Writer’s Union in a case that went to the Supreme Court.

Fiction is not defamation.  For example, recently someone went to one of my clients and attempted to make trouble for me with an organization I work with by partly quoting something I had said at an open arts meeting.  First of all, I have the citizen right to make such a proclamation.  As for the activity, involving literature that is written for full citizens and not children, I again have the right to be involved in that activity.  No one has the right to get between me and a client in an attempt to infringe upon any part of my business or livlihood.  The person who did it put themselves — and the client, who responded — into the position of being liable in a court. 

I do not intend to follow up or begin such legal proceedings, even though I know very well how the local court system works.  I think the people involved have realized that, in the case of property, if they did something like this to anyone else, and if they owned sufficient property, the deep-pockets syndrome might kick in.  They have to understand that is always a danger.

Fiction, however, does not come under the defamation definition.  The original author combined people, reworked situations, and generally did what a fiction author is supposed to do — rewrite from experience to express humor or tragedy or an overview of the human condition. 

So the next time anyone starts bragging about winning court cases against authors for fiction, remind them that happened in the days of McCarthyism, and that it no longer applies.

That was then, this is now.  And there’s more than one way for an author to get rich.

Tony Smith’s interview with me: 

www.associatedcontent.com/article/374013/exclusive_interview_with_the_award.html

Loads of good new stuff! 

Question:

1.  If owners of a large Akita mix which snuck into a yard and broke the back of a sleeping cat insist on walking this dog daily past the house where the predation took place — in full view of the dog’s proven hunting ground, while other members of the target species belonging to several houses are available for the predator to see and note – are the owners:

(1) Malicious

(2) Ignorant

Or (3) Stupid 

Anonymous comments will be deleted. 

Where’s a video camera when you need one?

Buddha is a handsome, friendly black lab/greyhound cross.  He looks like Anubis with floppy ears.  He prefers to catch thrown rocks (his owner requests he not be indulged).

Last week, while strolling along the surf, intent upon looking for agates, I nearly stepped on a dark, speckled baby harbor seal.  He gazed up at me curiously.  Knowing his mother had either left him while she fished, or he was out on his own, I went around him.

Dan and I went our way.  We kept turning back to watch the seal through our Russian military surplus minocular.  The seal remained on the beach, moving up past the surf, unperturbed by humans walking by, even when the Clallam Bay football team boys came down to run in the gravel.

But then came Buddha.  Oh, no!  Dog and baby seal!  We were too far away to prevent an incident, but we should have known Buddha wasn’t a problem.

He carefully straddled the seal, which stared up at his belly.  Then he barked loudly and angrily at the water, obviously protecting the seal from the surf.  This continued for some time.  Once satisfied he’d done his duty, Buddha went trotting on his way, as the seal continued to watch him.

Buddha may not be the brightest bulb in the socket, but there’s no questioning he has a good heart.

(People have asked so heeeeere’s Buddha!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbU7OXV477Q  )

That thing up there is what’s left of a commercial flare.  This article was originally written as part of my freelance journalsit/photographer gig on the upper west end of the Olympic Peninsula.  I’ve added myself as part of the story. 

 A bright red commercial flare, shot into the water near Slip Point, in Clallam Bay, combined with Clallam County’s efficient inter-agency notification system and the ability of a small close-knit community to spread information, could end up costing county emergency services thousands of tax-payer dollars.

Clancy Phillips, of Olson’s Resort in Sekiu, saw what appeared to him to be a burning boat near the Clallam River. He and others at the resort saw what they thought were people from the boat walking on the beach.

Jim (Carl) Bryden, who lives on Slip Point, saw the flare smoking in the water in front of his house. He was joined by Clallam Bay residents Ric Palumbo and Juan Aldana.  

“They think the boaters walked to a local store,” said Palumbo, repeating what he had heard about the supposed victims.

Bryden took a photo of the flare, which he later sent to the Peninsula Daily News — when the following was all over.

The Emergency Medical Team, siren flashing, swung into the dead-end street above the beach, and was soon joined by a Border Control vehicle. The teams, receiving information from the witnesses, and assuming the flare had been fired from the boat, dashed off to Clallam Bay in an attempt to locate the boaters.

I was walking back to the house, convinced that Jim — who is quite calm and reliable — knew what he was talking about.  That’s when I got the phone call from my editor at the Peninsula Daily News, who had received information that the Coast Guard was going out to check on the boat..  At the editor’s insistance — although I did repeat the closest witness accounts — I began my travels around Clallam Bay, hunting for more information.

Dave Weiss, at Al’s Mini-Mart, the store closest to the beach, said he’d heard about a burning boat, but no one had showed up at the store.

The EMT team left with a Clallam Bay Fire Department truck to see if the boaters were in Sekiu.

Gary Ryan, of Van Ripper’s Resort in Sekiu said, “I saw the fire. There was a lot of smoke, and orange flame coming off the water. Then I saw three people in the water.”

Troy Berger said, ‘Local kids saw it. They said it was a commercial flare. They said they saw bubbles where the boat went down.”

Cassie Burrow, of Olson’s Resort, used binoculars to sight the fire.

“I saw it out the window, real close to shore,” said Burrow. “You could see a big huge ball of fire and smoke trailing off to the right. I called the Coast Guard.”

Larry Brooks, standing overlooking the Sekiu breakwater, said, “I saw two men with binoculars watching and so was the lady inside. There was no flame but what else could make that amount of smoke?”

Back at Slip Point, a Coast Guard search boat scudded around the bay, searching for any evidence of a sunken vessel.

Bryden asked, “Was it possible the people in Sekiu saw us three?” referring to himself, Palumbo and Aldana. “The flare was in the water about fifteen yards off the beach. We watched it burn.”

EMT team leader Gene Laes, watching his team walk the Slip Point beach, said, “Three or four people said they saw smoke, and then a boat that disappeared.”

Coast Guard BM-1 Brenden Conny said, “At this point, it’s a flare, according to the report from the EMT.”

A Coast Guard Dolphin helicopter arrived and circled the bay several times before leaving the area.

Cassie Burrow later said that, considering the colors and smoke, she and others were beginning to agree that what they had seen was a very large flare.

Two large red flares were shot off by non-professionals on the beach during the Neah Bay fireworks display. Dan Barr, who served in Vietnam, said they looked familiar.

“When I heard them, I flashed back to what we’d used in Vietnam,” said Barr. “They looked like military flares.”

“That covers a lot of different types of flares,” added Barr.

Barr said that he’d been in the back room of his house when he heard a pop, as though from a firework, about 10:30 on Thursday.

“It was pretty loud. I thought it was echoing off Bear Kill ridge behind us,” he said. “Our cat turned and looked at the same moment I did.”

Renee Duncan, who lives on Slip Point, shook her head and said, “This is why people should never use emergency flares except for emergencies. This will cost a lot.”

Several days later, Dan and I found a blown flare body on the beach near the Clallam Bay bridge.  Photo above.

 Recently, I heard a contractor, being interviewed in Afghanistan, say, “Watch your back, watch your front, but have fun.”

This is pretty good advice for traveling anywhere. Women, of course, know we’ve been born into a war zone. We’re targets, no matter where we go, mostly because of the homo sapien breeding strategy. The common term for a woman who won’t recognize this — and goes through life thinking somebody else is going to keep her safe – is “Statistic.” But if you’re a guy, you can pretend you’re a woman when you’re out-of-town and not let anybody get to close behind you. This applies to any neighborhood, anywhere in the world, even in your own country.

There are stories going around about friends who have ended up drugged and stripped of their valuables. The friends usually don’t tell the whole story. My husband, who spent years in the hotel and tourism industry in the United States, has heard this one before, and knows why people get drugged for talking to people they don’t know. If you really need a prostitute or drugs or that stiletto that the border guard is going to take off you anyway, then make a discrete contact in a good hotel. Don’t mess with the street skanks when your concierge can get you a nice, clean call-girl or groomed boy.

As an American, find out what your corporations have been exploiting. If the local Native population is fighting the gold-mine that is dumping arsenic in the local river – the only source of drinking water – and is being decimated by the local militia because the white boys from up north — whom the Natives know bought the gold mine – have defined tribal protesters as “terrorists” and paid off militias to take the fight to the villages: DON’t WEAR GOLD. The same goes for anyplace that’s using slave labor to mine diamonds. Keep the sparklies at home if there’s any chance somebody whose mother lost an arm to a militia machete might go ballistic if they see you wearing blood diamonds. Besides, the wedding-ring finger won’t have that ugly tan line when you get back home.

If you’re going to eat the local food, remember that you don’t have the same bacterial gut culture. No matter how clean something is, you’re still going to get sick because the new gut bugs will be fighting your own bugs. If you live in a place for a year, you’ll develop a new gut culture. Then when you get back home you’ll get sick all over again; well, at least you’ll be used to it. Do what the locals do in so many places: pile on the hot peppers. Not only are the firey condiments great disease fighters, they’ll also make you sweat. And they are so yummy! Try them on vanilla ice cream – it’s to die for. Drink lots and lots of HOT tea with them. It will clean out your system and the boiled water will guarantee you won’t be drinking the live bugs. Beer works, too, if you want something cold.

When traveling, don’t make fun of the locals. Don’t laugh at them or point or sneer at their food. How would you feel? Be the kind of traveler that doesn’t make your compatriots cringe and mutter, “I’m not with THEM.” If nothing else, think of the dignity of your people! Have you seen yourself in those Bermuda shorts?

The cliché you travel with will be the cliché you get. If you expect to be cheated or mistreated or despised, then that is exactly what you will get. If you expect to be delighted, amazed, surprised and thoroughly entertained by every new thing – no matter how scary – then that is what you will get. Try this experiment: if you expect to see little old men with berets, and accordion players, in Paris – they will materialize. If you expect drug dealers or angry extremists don’t hope to enjoy.

If you can’t learn any other words – and considering the American education system, nobody much expects you to – at least learn “Please,” “Thank you” and “Magnificent.” The last is what you’ll answer in case a translating friend asks you what you think of the local town. A big grin and high praise will make them do everything but wag their tails. Everybody likes to have nice things said about their town. If you start complaining, guess how you’ll get treated. Serenity and joy just seem to rub off on everybody. You may get a free bottle of wine with dinner, especially if you just hand the waiter all those napkins you’ve been drawing on for free. In some countries art is as good as money. Send your kids to art classes if they’re going to be traveling.

Don’t go into war zones unless you have a press pass. Everybody involved in whatever struggle is going on do not have time to watch you or your kids. You’re not a reporter, and you’re not being paid to carry a gun. Stay out of those arenas; those are not your playpens.

A lot of this applies if you’re going to retire to a place. Don’t expect to get what you got in your own country. There will be a lack of things you always took for granted, but there will be lots of wonderful things you can’t get back home – it’s a tradeoff. Decide what you want. Go to a place you think you’d like to retire. Learn the customs, the ins-and-outs, the way people do things. Make friends! The day you decide to retire to their country, you won’t run into the problems you’d get if you march in full of ignorance and arrogance, expecting the locals to be your quiet little colored servants. Everybody’s got their own culture, their own way of doing things. If you’re dumb enough to expect a flush toilet in a desert country, and refuse to turn the handle on the composting bin once a week, or recognize you can’t throw Styrofoam garbage into the methane pit if you expect them to work, then retire in your own culture. You’re too tame, and you need to stay within the domesticated fences.

With the growing population, everybody’s going to have to learn to use composting toilets soon enough. If you think the oil wars were bad – wait ’till you find yourself in the middle of the water wars. Don’t move to Los Vegas.

 I was a block-watch coordinator in Bremerton, Washington, for fifteen years. This is why I refuse to coordinate, oversea, organize or browbeat a block-watch ever again. But I’m certainly willing to share tips and hints if anyone wants to set one up.

First of all, let the local police know you’re forming a blockwatch. You’ll need their cooperation. If you want to get rid of the coke house or make the users stop attempting to run the kids off the sidewalks, here are a few suggestions:

1. Set up a block-watch contact with the police. Get their phone numbers and fancy brochures.

2. Have an initial block-watch meeting, and make sure you have some kind of cop there. Most towns have a block-watch contact. Make sure the kids attend.

3. Don’t haul the neighbors in every single week for a block-watch meeting. Have a complete informational meeting the first month, and then go underground until actual problems surface. It’s going to be easier to have people over to your house for cookies and action plans (and for your stupid cat to frighten with a dead baby robin) if there’s an actual problem going on in the neighborhood.

4. Remind the neighbors that they’re actually property owners and no, nobody has the right, under any constitution, to scare, bully or generally push them around.

5. Drive-by shootings are always aimed at the people actually involved in the trafficking. The clowns in the low-riders are aiming for each other, not the locals. People on drugs don’t normally shoot straight. Remind block watch members that they have a bigger arsenal than the drug dimwits – the police. Don’t let the flip-flopped idiot with the yard fixation start threatening to use his own gun; remember the block-watch slang for children: “Bullet magnet.”

6. If you’re in contact with the cops to set up surveillance for on-going criminal activity, it’s simply going to take a long time for them to build a case. If the block watch is not willing to take film of activities through the curtains at night, or keep a llicense-plate list of vehicles pulling up for five-minute stops, then don’t bother the cops about closing down the drug house.

7. If the gang-bangers try to move in and tag the garages, get out there and get those scribbles painted off. Today. Everybody can swear all they like, but paint out the marks NOW. Then wait for the next day when the bangers bring their friends by to brag about their new territory, and find out that the actual property-owning gang has un-done all their markings. Try not to laugh as the taggers nearly burst into tears. Pointing and laughing, however, is just bad manners.

8. If an obvious drug stop occurs repeatedly – especially in front of your own house – try this old Detroit trick: paint a nice neat red-on-white sign that proclaims, “Drug Parking – 15 minute limit.” The one thing the drop-off drivers don’t want is attention. The only problem this will cause is if you try to take it down later and your neighbors complain because they thought it was funny.

9. If the drop-off moves to the next house, have a party on his car. This is highly entertaining to the neighborhood, and extremely frustrating for the dealer. It’s awfully hard to bring in customers if the blockwatch is sitting around the guy’s car drinking margaritas and holding up numbered performance cards.

10. If one of the neighborhood kids starts lighting things to watch them burn, contact the fire department. Have a special meeting for Junior Firefighters. Re-direct the little arsonist’s desire for attention: make him the Chief.

11. The kids will get in on the blockwatch, whether you want them to or not. Drill it into their little pea brains that they are NOT to confront adults. If they see anything, do a slow walk-and-whistle around the block to the blockwatch leader’s house. Make sure they understand how much larger an adult is than any child – and that they are very seldom reluctant to hurt children they think is getting between them and their fun. People doing dumb things often can’t recognize other people’s children as human beings. If they could, they wouldn’t be doing the dumb things in the first place.

12. It is very very difficult, but at least try to make it clear to people that they can’t witness something and run to you to report it. You are NOT a member of the police. You are not a legal witness. People often have warrants upon them, and are reluctant to act as witnesses. At least set up a network where they can have someone else call in the problem – preferably a relative not wanted by the sheriff, if they can find one.

You’ll have to re-think your direction for any blockwatch, and make it fit your own situation. Use a sense of humor and don’t be afraid. If you’re afraid, they’re going to take over the neighborhood anyway, so you might as well get in ahead of them.

Have fun, and hook up for the National Block-watch parties. And vote in a new blockwatch coordinator at least once a year.

Before the first one loses her mind.

Donna Barr has written a lot of books. Her home page is www.stinz.com