Firepit Lessons

Things I learned, or was due to be reminded of, by the firepit that my son Waldy dug in the back yard so his friends could hang out around it:

** If you just dig a hole in the dirt, the fire will eventually burn away the dirt and sink deeper and deeper into the ground. That's why you should go to the sand and gravel store and buy a bucket of sand.

** Although sand and gravel stores are mainly in business to sell truckloads, they don't mind selling you one measly little bucket, since they can get a dollar for a teensy little scoop of sand.

** People like to sit around a fire, even if it is a warm night and there are bright artificial lights nearby.

** The temptation is great to build up a fire to a really ridiculous size, especially if you aren't paying for the firewood.

** When you hose down the fire for the night, the sand will be hot enough to keep the water boiling merrily for a surprisingly long time.

** Small scraps of firewood can be obtained by just keeping an eye out while you walk around town.

** Sooner or later, somebody will arrive carrying a wooden pallet, fencepost or something else that's obviously not "from a dumpster" like they say.

** A young person who has finally broken free of parental authority has a hard time with the concept that anybody ever has the authority to tell them not to do something -- even the owner of a place where they are a guest, even if the something is actually illegal.

** Sooner or later, you have to tell everybody that the party's over -- for the night, or for the summer.

The Party's Over

The other day, Kathe-my-sweetie put up signs on the front door and by the entrance to the back yard, warning that only those of us who actually live here are allowed to walk in unannounced.

It makes me sad, but I knew it was inevitable. Besides, it hasn't been all that uncommon for the kids to do any number of stupid and inconvenient things while we weren't watching.

So, we'll have the house back. That should make for a pleasant change.

Republicans for Not-Bush

I don't think John Kerry appeals to Republicans the way Jimmy Carter did in 1976, but I do think that there are a substantial number of Republicans who loathe George W. Bush the way they did Nixon.

All the ones who take seriously all that talk about limited government and fiscal responsibility, a humbler foreign policy and a distrust of Big Projects like nation-building.

In other words, the ones who actually believed Bush's campaign platform of 2000.

The Verdict of History

George H.W. Bush 41
William J. Clinton 42
George W. Bush 43*

One More Yahoo Group

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aortic_stenosis

I created it, like similar groups devoted to the pineal gland and hemochromatosis, just as a convenient format for a presentation in my Anatomy & Physiology class, but now I have a new member who has joined the group looking for information about aortic stenosis, so maybe I should keep the group around for awhile.

In anout ten hours comes the final. Really, I should be doing last-minute studying. I guess that makes this blog a work-avoidance tactic. Yeah, maybe so.

Accusations of Atrocity

Just what kind of black hole is Abu Ghraib?

Every report is worse than the last.

"Almost like torture."

"Meets the legal definition of torture."

"Tortured so badly they died."

"Children tortured."

Children tortured.

And still, the Bushists insist it wasn't all that bad. Not real bad. Not serious bad. Not somebody gets fired bad. Not criminal charges bad. Not vote for Kerry bad.

Jesus W. Christ, Jr.

What does it take?

Term Ending

Just two more meetings of my Anatomy & Physiology class, and then it will be over.

Just like that, over. All done with.

And then a month off until the third A&P course.

Still no indication of whether any of this work will get me into nurse school.

And why do they make it so hard to get into the nursing program, if there's such a terrible shortage of nurses?

Also in the news: I've been working on my rock garden / mosaic alongside the porch, trying to make the potsherds and marbles look more like a work of art and less like a smallish spill.

I bought a bucket of river rock from a sand and gravel place, or as it's commonly known in this family, a dirt store. I appreciate the dirt seller taking the time to assist me with my measly little one-bucket purchase, when they're really in business to sell truckloads.

I'm sorting the rocks by color, making big patches of red, blue, yellow, &c. Of course, they all look sort of gray when they're dry. Maybe I shoudl oil them, or varnish them, something like that.

Dangerous Minds

Does anybody out there know anything about a group called Dangerous Minds?

They came to Corvallis the other night and gave an "educational presentation" in which they essentially told an audience of teenagers that everything bad they'd ever heard about anarchism (violence, thieving, self-indulgence) was true -- yee ha.

It would be good if some real anarchists could try to give the kids a little perspective on this, to explain some of the ethical and moral principles behind anarchism, and show them some of the good that anartchists have done in the world.

At the very least, they need to be told that if all they want out of life is to abuse innocent people and live parasitically off what others produce, corporations and bureaucracies will welcome them with open arms.

Boob Job

A woman opined to me today that she could never imagine getting breast implants under any circumstances.

I pointed out that some women have profoundly lopsided breasts due to abnormal development, or weird-looking constricted or "tubular" breasts, or have abnormal breasts due to disease or the treatment of disease.

Her reply surpised me at first: "I'd just have them removed. I think I'd look good without breasts."

But you know, I think she would. Better than she'd look with Pamelas, certainly.

An Over-The-Top Thriller

I'm getting the crteepy feeling that the career of Hugo Chavez is a work of fiction, specifically a cheesy, overblown thriller based on the events of Bill Clinton's Presidency.

The author set the story of a leftist head of state beseiged by right-wing elements who will do anything to bring him down in a foreign country in order to make the attacks more direct and destructive (a coup d'etat, a national recall plebiscite).

Not the first time I felt like I was living in a work of fiction.

Silence = Endorsement

"This message was paid for by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."
"I'm George W. Bush, and I approve this message."

"This message was paid for by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."
"I'm George W. Bush, and I respectfully decline to approve this message."

He won't do either one, of course.
He lacks the character, integrity and moral courage to do either one.

Rock Garden

Some years ago, my daughters Michu and Biftu created garden beds alongside the front porch, bordered with bricks and planted with various ornamentals. In recent years, they've been pretty much ignored, even before the girls moved away.

Meanwhile, a couple of houses in our neighborhood have acquired gorgeous gardens consisting primarily of inanimate objects, running heavily to potsherds, burnt-out headlights and other objects that can be made to lie more or less flat.

Now I have converted one of the girls' old beds, giving it a layer of sand over the dirt, and spreading various materials over it: a spill of red clay flowerpot fragments, a handful of shards from a painted pot, fragments of a broken cinderblock, the bed of marbles that had once formed the base for a floral arrangement.

Today, Kathe and I were walking downtown when we happened upon a place where ther facade of a building had been removed, preparatory to putting on a new facade, and saw remnants of the facade before last, which had included big slabs of black glass. We salvaged some small chunks of the glass, and now there's another little shoal, amongst the other fragments.

I thought about putting down a spill of pennies, but I thought that might activate people's wishing-well circuits, and they'd be throwing in coins of their own.

Summertime Idyll

With the street torn up out in front, we're a good deal more isolated than we used to be. With no traffic going by out in front, it feels as though we were living in a cul-de-sac.

My 15-year-old son Waldy dug a firepit in the back yard, and his friends have been coming over and hanging out around the fire for much of the summer.

Tonight, it's actually cool enough for the fire to be something more than a frivolous prop.

Fall is coming. The Oregon State students will be back, bringing with them noise and traffic and money. The busy but enjoyable nights when it seemed all the punky kids in Corvallis were in our back yard and our kitchen will end. I'm going to remember this summer fondly.

No on 9 . . . 13 . . . 36 . . . .

The anti-marriage amendment to the Oregon constitution is nothing too surprising. Certainly nothing new. There's an organization in Oregon, it used to be in the news all the time: the Oregon Citizens' Alliance.

Every year or so, they'd have a new ballot measure, trying to find some way to stick it to the faggots. None of them passed, but they did have one lasting effect: anti-gay crime always rose during an OCA campaign.

I am not looking forward to the Measyre 36 capaign. People are going to die because of it.

Going to School

I'm taking courses at Linn-Benton Community College ( http://www.linnbenton.edu ), hoping to get into their nursing program. Right now, I'm in BI232, Anatomy & Physiology II.

Yesterday, I gave a presentation on the pineal gland, which was fun because of all the silly nonsense people have posted online about the "third eye" (fnord). I set up my presentation in the form of a Yahoo! group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pinealgland . That was fun.

Today I do another presentation, this time on hemochromatosis, in the same format: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newhemochromatosisgroup . HC is a subject rather closer to my heart, since my dear Kathe suffers from it herself.

Setting up Yahoo! groups is fun, and easy enough that even one as inept as myself can manage it.

Happy Birthday

It's my birthday. I'm 44. I'm coming up fast on my 20th wedding anniversary, too.

Looking back on it, I wish I could go back to there, to the summer of 1984, when I sat at Kathe's kitchen table with all five of her kids (including two now deceased), and played Anomaly with several incomplete decks of cards mixed together. And five kings of spades.

Since going back to then is not actually an option, I guess I can settle for being very, very glad that I have spent the last 20 years here at Blackberry House, with Kathe, and that if they have produced nothing else worthy of note, there are those four swell kids (all still living) we raised together,

August Ninth

9 August 1945 -- Nagasaki bombed

9 August 1974 -- Nixon resigns

What will 9 August 2004 for be remembered for? Well, probably nothing, but you never know.

They're Going to be Sorry

In 1859, the constitution of the new state of Oregon provided that no person of Afrcian descent could reside in Oregon, on pain of flogging. The provision was never enforced (neithe ron black people living here already, nor those entering the state), but it reamined in the text of the Constitution, an embarrassment, until it was removed in the 1920s.

The people of Missouri now find themselves in a similiar situation, with same-sex marriage prohibited.

It may happen in thirty years, or ten, or five, but one day the people of Missouri will have to shoulder the embarrassing chore of repealing that amendment. They're not going to enjoy the task.

This November, Oregon will be invited to jump off the same bridge. I can hardly wait.

"Friends of Saddam"?

There's a blog called "Friends of Saddam", devoted to denouncing people the author believes deserve that title:

http://www.acepilots.com/unscam

Oddly enough, it doesn't make any mention of Saddam's friends Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, or Donald Rumsfeld. If you don't think Rummy was ever Saddam's friend, look here:

http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/index012003.html

Don't Ask, Won't Tell

Let me see if I have this straight:

1) George W. Bush is running for President based on his glorious, miraculous record as our "war President".

2) Anyone who questions Bush's policies or criticizes his record of performance is unpatriotic and endangering the troops.

Of course, the second part only applies to other people, since Bush himself has never yet admitted to ever making any mistakes at all.

I think it has something to do with his being in a state of grace, within which it is impossible to do or think incorrect things. Certainly, it's been clear for a long time that Bush lives in a space, a universe, very different from ours.

Yep, he's our Warp Resident, all right.