Unearthing a life.....

Okay! Not a very apt title or illustration if you approach it literally. I do not fish. I have fished in the far distant past, but that was largely a mistake. Fishermen lie about everything. And especially about how much fun it is to fish. 'Angling,' they call it ... that's the attitude your bored and dozing off body takes just before you topple over ... the angle .... and then you hit your head on the bait can.

Here I am using the term 'gone fishing' to denote 'vacation', 'out to lunch', 'taking a break', etc.,. Or being lazy. Or otherwise distracted. Summer is a prime photography time, so I put more effort into my photo site during these few sunny months.

Back to fish. I may be playing into the hands of the Intelligent Design folks here, but I feel (in my Heart of Hearts) there were a number of things that God did not intend for us to eat and so he concealed them beneath a goodly layer of water. Those things he did intend for us to eat were four-legged and stuck up above the weeds where we could see them. And hunt them.

Where am I going with this? I don't hunt either. I have hunted. It was considerably more exciting than fishing. I went deer hunting with my first father-in-law and I got 'my buck'. Quite a rush! But then the gory process that followed (dressing out the deer) put me off my feed and out of the hunting business.

Hunting, as a way to supply the dinner table, was not an activity engaged in by my family of origin. That is probably because anything you shot or caught and thought to consume, had damn well better be presented to my mother in a pan-ready condition. Civilization, to her, meant never having to pluck feathers or gut fish ... or any other similar activity. She could roast a mean turkey though.

I'm dying here! Thought maybe if I just started rattling on, something would come to me. And it hasn't.

It is good to see Bookworm and Boy having such a good time at the Swim and Tennis Club. They are both the sort to bob around in the water for hours on end. I'm sure it will be a great additional & memorable bonding experience for the both of them.

Happy, happy, happy day! Sight has returned to my left eye. After four days of blindness, the eye started to recover over Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning I could detect the shape of the bookcase across the room ... by 10:00 am, I could detect the lines of the shelves ... by 2:00 pm. I could tell there were books on the shelves. And this Tuesday morning, it's almost back to 'normal'. After those four days, I had a painful kink in my neck from cheating my chin to the left to see more on my blind side. After those four days of tripping on sidewalk dips and up-ending coffee cups, I have a much deeper appreciation of the depth perception that comes with binocular vision. And after those four days, I understand the challenge that my friend Dr. Patch-Eye Bob has to cope with each day.

Yeah, not me. By all outward appearances this fellow is most likely the father of noapologies. The reason he is appearing here is the racy eye patch he is wearing. Bookworm and I are going to dinner at his home this Saturday evening and I'm wondering if it would be an insult to the host if I showed up with a competing eye patch. With canes and hats, we could do a little unpracticed dance routine as The Two One-Eyed Jacks. A revival of sorts. Vaudevillian.

My retina specialist gave me a shot of steroid medication in the left eye this past Monday and I've been functionally blind in that eye ever since. I do believe that, as the medication is absorbed, my vision will return. But it may take a week or two. In the meanwhile, I AM a One-Eyed Jack with a definite blind side and severely impaired depth perception. I hope this doesn't mean I'll be knocking over wine glasses at dinner Saturday. I'll just keep my good eye on the host and do what he does ... within the limits imposed by civilized company.

And for you fellows and gals who are out invading this morning .... clear skies are forecast and a tolerable 87 degrees by noon .... with crispy pockets reaching 3500 degrees for the short term .... have you heard the one about Brer Rabbit and the Tar-baby? No? Ah, woe is Lebanon!

Is there a familiar smell wafting on the American breeze? The odor of rotting wars ... and civilians being slaughtered by American troops, by Israeli warplanes, by their own neighbors and countrymen?

The Death Squads are back, but half a world away from Salvador this time. History repeats. The wheel grinds on, reducing bone to dust. Such a serious business, this cleansing the planet of wrong people, wrongly motivated to do wrong things.

This latest 'just in time' apprehension of a monstous terrorist plot seems sublimely timed to bolster the stock of the Bush and Blair Administrations. Put your Fear Hat back on America, the liquid explosives are coming! Little old Lutheran Lady from St. Paul, put your hair spray and denture cleaner in the airport trash. Fly Dry! The illusion of safety at the price of grinding the country to a near halt. Fly High & Dry!

The thought occurs to me that, as one of the 'big picture' objectives of the anti-American terrorists is to burn up our monetary resources and slow us to a crawl, the terrorists may have stumbled on the idea of embracing moles, then 'making a plausible plan for an attempt', leading to a life-preserving arrest. And all the desired effects of slowing down America are realized, no matter how half-assed the plan.

And where are the Democrats on this? Have they been struck dumb? Is there no oratory left in the Yankee throat? No one left to call BULLSHIT! on bullshit?

Yesterday (Monday, August 7, 2006), my sister Doris and I ferried to Seattle and drove out to our Uncle Don and Aunt Ginette's home in the Ravena area of Seattle. Doris was of the impression that his health was failing badly and so we made this journey in the spirit of 'seeing ol' uncle Don one last time', should that be what the fates decree.

While he did look old (and he is eighty-six), and he did use a cane while going up and down stairs, and his eyesight is failing badly .... still, he did not seem like a man on his last legs. He just seemed like an elderly gentleman whose youthful faculties were no longer in strict attendance. I know how that goes. Experiencing some of that sort of thing myself from time to time.


This is 'Old Uncle Don' (as he refers to himself) with his pet pig back about the year 1924. And this would be grandpa Charlie's homestead out near Deadman Lake, a few miles northwest of Othello, WA. I think -- anyway, it looks like it ought to be. I'm sure there were some legitimate crops involved with that homestead, but the boys recall that it mainly produced rocks and rattlesnakes.

Now ... this is Don with his three older brothers about 1932. Left to right they are: Forrest, Gilbert (my Dad), Harold and little Don. In a year or so, Gilbert would marry a local tomboy, Lucile 'Alyene' Roach, and shortly (though appropriately) thereafter, I would be thrust into this life that I am still enjoying. Despite .... despite the misadventure that befell me at the age of six months ... when my tomboy mother decided she wanted to take a picture of her infant son sitting on a horse. My father was off at work on the railroad, so she enlisted the assistance of uncle Don (now fourteen). He was to stand on the opposite side of the horse and hold me in position withour letting his hands or head show. His grip was light, the horse moved a bit to the side, and I fell to the good earth of Othello and land on my head. When Dad, that evening, inquired as to the source of the scratches on my head, Mom told him that I had been napping on the bed and rolled over and got my head wedged between the mattress and the plaster wall.

Don went off to war as a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corp. He participated in the invasion of North Africa and was stationed in Casablanca when Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met there. Then he was involved in the invasion of Italy and then on to France and Germany. Amonst the trophies of war that he brought back (postage stamps, foreign currency, Nazi toy soldiers, old coins) was a sixteen year old French wife by the name of Ginette. Ginette of Dijon, France. He had to leave her in France, but she arrived in America a few months later and was given a military escort as she came across the country by train. The photo below was taken the day of her arrival in Othello .... here with Dad and Don (above).

So here are Don and I (yesterday) demonstrating our 'do not fall off the horse' grip.

We had a lovely vist with Aunt and Uncle. Don was full of "You remember whens...?" and occasionally Ginette would have to remind him that I was just an infant at that time. And he'd get into a story and then stop and ask "Where was I going with this?" ... and she'd be right there to get him back to his tale. And Doris came home with three bags of cuttings from their shrubs and bushes.

Kansas is known as a flat place in mid-America - where out-sized whirlwinds sweep up little girls and deposits them in the Land of Oz - where animals are more often than not created by magical means.

Despite being a terrain heavy laden with fossils from ages so far back that Kansas was a mere chunk of ocean floor, the State has evolved a history of extreme conflict with the theories of the late, late Charles Darwin. The Kansas Board of Education had recently, and yet again, like yo-yo dodos, issued edicts that the Theory of Evolution should stand no higher in the classroom than the Theory of Intelligent Design.

In rude dismissal, let me state clearly that the Theory of Intelligent Design is an intellectual work on a level with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It evidences no intelligence. It shows no discernable design. It has no supporting evidence of any sort, no learned papers written in scientific journals, and no expeditions scheduled to far off lands to correct any of these shortcomings.

It is a 'position' that holds that nature by itself cannot account for life's complexity. Not that man, by any means, comes close to understanding even a small percentage of nature's complexities ... or powers ... or processes. Intelligent design is simply another visit to Oz, another opportunity to quake in awe of the magnificent Wizard. You know .... the little guy cowering behind the curtain with a megaphone.

Currently a tornado of Kansas voters is in the process of tossing the bums out. The Fundamentalist Board members are losing their majority. A return to reason is standing in the wings. But I doubt the ghost of Darwin will rest easy on the Kansas plains ... he has been exorcised before and will likely be exorcised again in the future.

PHOTO: The hole in the ground that Neil and Rosie and I dug in Eastern Washington ... to the greater glory of Chas. Darwin. And from which we finagled the three million year old bones of some 90 species of terrestrial critter .... many, if not all, in the throes of evolution.

BrownShoes and Bookworm have been getting on my case for absenting myself from these happy blog pages. But I have been very, very busy. Watching Mariners' ball games. Visiting fledgling vineyards. Manufacturing a 'Bride's Book' from my recent wedding shots. Making an image history of the housing development going up practically next door. And, in general, just enjoying the hell of Summer of Freedom 2006.

These deer shots are from my 'housing development' effort. One of the excavators shoved over an apple tree and four deer came in to scavenge the downed apples. This doe with the white butt has been around this neighborhood for years. I think this 'group' consisted of her, a yearling of hers, and two fawns. In my judgement. The other fawn didn't cotton to my being there, so he 'ponged' over to the backside of that black plastic barrier.

Castro's illness has prompted several TV Talking Heads in talking about 'bringing Democracy to Cuba'. I wonder if that can be done at the same time as our 'bringing Democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq'? And what about Iran? I thought they were next in line(?). So confusing. I don't think anyone has stopped to plot out the shape of the dry world once the oceans have risen twenty feet. The powers-to-be should look into that. We oughtn't be spending men and money to bring Democracy to countries that will be submerged.