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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Saturday, August 27, 2005

The Price Of Forest Living 

...it's Saturday night, and I've got the Sharpie 500 on the TV. It's 500 laps of NASCAR Nextel Cup racing at Bristol, and for a life-long gearhead like me it's absolutely "must-see TV". Tonight, however, my attention is split between the exciting, vicious short track action on that little half-mile Tennessee bullring and the view from my deck of large ancient four-engined converted airliners carrying their 3000-gallon loads of sticky-slick fire retardant slurry toward the growing dark, menacing smoke column boiling angrily out the the woods a few miles north of my house. My home and family aren't immediately at risk - at least not nearly to the degree that they were a few years ago when some rock-dumb bastard cowboy decided to light some brush piles on his ranch in the middle of a hot dry windy late summer afternoon, which led to my whole neighborhood being evacuated and some of the neighbors having a bulldozer fire line and a bunch of blackened dead trees added to their landscaping. We had just left town, headed to Portland for a relative's wedding, when the fire started, but - long story short - we found out about it before we had hit the county line and turned around to come home and sweet-talk our way through a sheriff's roadblock to get back to Rancho Jack K., which turned out to be out of harm's way by a block or so. I've mentioned in the past that there's nothing quite so...er...stimulating to the nervous system as watching a DC-6 banking over the homestead about three hundred feet above the roof on a run in to drop retardant a couple of blocks over, and there still isn't...

...an adult life messing around with forest fires can leave a person to be somewhat casual about the proximity of such natural processes.....ok, so that's not quite exactly true, given that it's been five minutes since I typed the word 'processes', having to sprint onto the front deck to watch a P2V Neptune retardant plane blast over at about 500 feet, apparently headed to it's home base in Medford after it's last drop (in fact as I type this a DC-6 is flying over the house at the same altitude in the same direction, interesting both because they are pushing the edge on allowable light conditions and because of the fact that another fire working north of Bend must be sucking up all of the local air tanker resources). But in general it's true. Forest fires are victims of physics and meteorology; the smoke column is bending away from my place off toward the northeast, and that is the direction the fire is going because it has to. The prevailing air currents wouldn't have it any other way. That didn't stop the lovely and multi-talented Mrs. Jack K. from entering into some idle speculation about "what would you take if we had a ten-minute warning"; my 12-year-old, never one to let pass an opportunity to spin the most mundane circumstance into a potential crisis of the sort that would sweep missing blonde Aruban vacationers off of the cable channels, immediately retired to his room and packed up three backpacks and a couple of duffle bags with clothes, computer game CD's, Leggo things, and the treasured stuffed bear I got him during his hospital stay back when he was originally diagnosed with diabetes 6 years ago. So here we sit, relatively out of harms way, but the youngest is packed and ready to go and - for some reason - there are detailed county-level road maps laid out on the kitchen counter, apparently for the purpose of tracking the evacuation notices that one of the local radio stations has been broadcasting (and, I suspect, to identify a likely evac route if it were to come to that)...

...it's the price of living in a forested setting. Unlike the sorts of disasters and damage that various weather features can deliver, these sorts of risks lurk constantly just under life's surface in places like Central Oregon where fire has played a dominant role on the landscape for a number of centuries. There is usually some sort of warning of the sorts of weather that can spawn tornados or the seemingly endless onslaught of hurricanes and tropical storms that our blogging friend Bryan at Why Now has had to endure in his home on the Florida Panhandle over the last two seasons (and more, as the link shows). This doesn't in any way discount the destructive force of these events, especially the hurricanes with their widespread windfields and rainfall footprints or the seemingly ugly randomness of a tornado's path, since you can't get your property out of the way of either one of these things, either. You can only prepare so much for such things, but at least you have some sort of warning to at least be aware of the potential risk. The same concept should apply regarding living in the woods and the risk of fire, and it does to the degree that you have the ability to prepare your property to be as fire-resistant as possible, but summers are always hot and dry around here and the fire hazard always lurks (and there isn't really any such thing as being totally fire-safe unless you expunge all flamable vegetation from your property, which nobody is going to do for a host of selfish reasons), so you become complacent to the risk....until a tendril of smoke curling above the trees over yonder becomes a robust column of smoke and retardant planes are wheeling above the house and somebody is standing at the door saying you have to leave now. It's the sort of risk that can burst into reality at any moment on any hot summer day, whether as a result of unforecast dry lightning, accidents, bone-deep human stupidity, or the bizarre arsonist's quest for thrill (of which we have our share). I've often marveled in particular at the persistence and dedication of people who live in the likely path of the powerful force of hurricanes (the tornado thing is more of a crap shoot, but there are places I would be reluctant to live because of those, also). It's all about the complacency, I guess; a few hours ago I was thinking about residents of the Gulf Coast facing the prospect of a Category 4 hurricane in a day or so while, just outside my window, people I know (and more that I don't, necessarily, but they are residents of this community just the same) were being told to leave their homes right now because of an uncontrolled wildfire that didn't even exist an hour earlier. It's days like this when I suspect that some of us who don't live in hurricane country or Tornado Alley aren't as safe or as clever as we think we are...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:25 PM 0 comments

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Cat Man Meets the Big Time 

...Senator Bill "Cat Man" Frist has not actually made a clear statement about how badly he really really would like to be President of the United States, but the twitching and drooling have given him away anyway. In his efforts to move away from his previous posting as a darling of the religious right toward the sort of potential candidate that can be more acceptable to the actual mainstream of America, he came out in favor of loosening Gee Dub's restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. Sadly, there is a cost for this sort of abandonment of the fiercly held principles of the wacko's who helped to get you where you are. First, he was openly disinvited from "Justice Sunday - The Horror Returns" in an effort by the religious right to express their disapproval of his stance. That nasty little snub may have hurt his feelings just a bit, but they weren't done yet...

...now they have decided, fully three years before anyone in his right mind would start actually campaigning openly for the White House, to run ads in Iowa chastising Cat Man for his "betrayal" of their long-held beliefs. Now, there are plenty of purely factual problems with the ads, problems of the sort that brought a brutal storm of abuse down on NARAL concerning their John Roberts ads. Primary amongst them is the simple fact that you are more likely to wake up in the morning with a wolverine sleeping at the foot of the bed where the dog should have been than you are to find the smiling face of a baby who began as an excess fertilized egg in an in vitro fertilization clinic. On the other hand, this just simply couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. It does the heart good to see the far right wing of the Republican party fishing the good silverware out of the drawer to eat one of their own in the same fashion that they have dished up hapless Democrats in the recent past...

...there's one starkly simple reason that I don't refer to this crowd as conservative Christians: They don't act that way. They have adopted the trappings of the pure secular political animal. You could scour any version of the New Testament that you could lay your hands on and not find a single verse that could even comfortably excuse many of their actions, and their efforts against Frist are just another in a long line of good examples. But this is a significant portion of Cat Man's support base, and now he is finding just exactly what selling his sole to that particular constituency was worth. In addition, it doesn't help Cat Man's circumstances that Trent Lott is now loose on the landscape, touting his new book and telling anyone who will listen to pay particular attention to the chapter that describes Cat Man's role in Lott's being deposed as Senate Majority Leader - by Frist - for his careless comments at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. This little bit of book-hawking public relations serves to reinforce the impression that the religious right has started to foster that Cat Man is just a cheap politician saying whatever works to garner the most votes. It's all seriously 'inside baseball' right now and, for liberals, ranks right up there on the tragedy scale with discovering that the two cars in the accident you just came upon contain every bastard, bully, and jerk that has plagued your life, but it is instructive of the price that power hunger can exact. The big tent may just be falling apart, those formerly sturdy main poles snapping under the weight of the hunger for power that creates a powerful weight on a coalition that so recently marched its way to power. Welcome to the Big Time, Mr. Frist! If you're feeling perhaps a little bit abused by the treatment you're getting from your erstwhile allies in Iowa, just wait until the telephone push-pollers start talking about your adopted children in South Carolina. Actually, I hope this show has some legs to it; it's fun to watch Republicans acting like Democrats for a change...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:17 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Making Air Invisible Again 

…although the jury is officially still out on the subject of global warming, the empirical evidence that supports this reality far outweighs anything that has been offered by the meteorological equivalent of Tobacco Institute science. Of course, lashed as we are under the control of this current regime, for whom science which in any way doesn’t further either their personal enrichment or acquisition of political power is simply “junk” science, we are more likely to see sheep tap-dancing down main street than we are to see these yahoos taking any action that might dimple the profit margin of, for example, their Big Auto contributors. As a result, states are being forced to take on an increasing burden in enacting the sorts of regulations that will actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Oregon is now set to take a step that will unite it with Washington and California in having strict new vehicle emission standards…

…ah, yes, the power of the line-item veto is a marvelous thing to behold. No wonder Clinton wanted so badly to have it as a Presidential authority. Governor Kulongoski, in striking the provision forbidding the use of state funds to manage the stricter emissions program, is embarking down a path that will no doubt lead to much wailing and teeth-gnashing, not to mention the probable law suit or two and a bit of inevitable right-wing trash-talking. But there are benefits for many Oregonians even aside from whatever reduction we make in our contribution to green house gasses and whether or not those gasses actually make glaciers and icecaps melt and otherwise screw with our climate. I have begun to detect an increasingly noticeable tangibility to the atmosphere over Portland on my frequent visits there over the last several years, and a reduction in tailpipe emissions would certainly improve not only the view of Mt. Hood, but would also benefit the lungs and health and lives of the people who live there. And then there’s the potential reduction of gasoline consumption which, unless we are going to commit ourselves to dedicating extremely large land masses to the growth, decomposition, and pressurization of prehistoric vegetation to grow more oil, appears to be one of the most likely solutions to our energy dependency woes…and looking out my window at the price placards at the gas station down the street ($2.89.9/gal. for regular) while listening to the stories about record oil company profits, right now I’m in the mood for highways full of 60 mpg cars and oil company executives standing on street corners holding up cardboard signs…
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:35 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

A State Fruit, A New Motto...It's All Good in Oregon 

...yes, things have been pretty exciting here in the upper left-hand corner of America's map over the last few days. First there was the press release announcing that Governor Ted Kulongoski would be holding an official signing ceremony that would cement the status of the Oregon Pear as the official Oregon State Fruit (thanks to Jake at Utterly Boring for this tip). There was a vicious fight in the legislature over the relative merits of the Oregon Pear vs. the marionberry, a Oregon-bred offshoot of the blackberry, but this is - after all - Oregon, so vicious legislative battles over just about anything, including the brand of toilet paper to be used in Legislative bathrooms, is pretty much par for the course...

On top of this news was the revelation through a national survey that Oregon was the only state whose residents hadn't become more obese since the last time health professionals found that they had so much spare time on their hands that they could actually look into this issue. The results serve as a tribute to...well, something, anyway; maybe the legacy of outdoor recreation in Oregon leads to people trying to hold their own in that weight thing, or maybe we just have more skinnier Californians than usual moving to the state. At any rate, this bit of news so stirred up a typically Oregonian sense of zenophobic pride amongst the large population of mountain bikers, runners, and aerobic instructors that they immediately began a movement to change the State Motto to "Oregon - No Fatter Than We Used To Be". Most impartial observers, who are themselves generally rather obese, have greeted this initiative with a certain coolness, but it must be said that the current State Motto doesn't really fire the imagination, either. The person on the street, when asked about the subject of changing the Motto (and then being told what the current one is, since nobody has the faintest idea), usually responds with something along the lines of "'She flies with her own wings'? What the hell does that mean?" Given that Oregon is on its second Motto since 1957, it may not be prudent to bet against these advocates for the new proposal...

All has not been totally sunny skies and blueberry granola here in the Beaver State, however. There was that unfortunate dust-up that occurred when Pat Robertson, who even Oregon Evangelicals consider to be a hopeless dick-head, somehow got confused about the uncovered plot by Islamic radicals to start a terrorist training camp in the middle of a bunch of cowboys in Bly, Oregon. He apparently concluded that Governor Kulongoski somehow was a supporter of that intercepted effort and denounced Kulongoski as a danger to Americans, maintaining a stranglehold on the world's supply of hazelnuts and marionberries and working to export radical Presbyterianism and Islamic terrorism to the rest of the country. His suggestion that the Governor be assassinated by covert US assets was clearly intemperate and totally out of the mainstream, but in its own perverse way it did serve a useful purpose for Oregonians. By prompting the Governor to call up a bombing strike by by a flight of F-15's of the Oregon Air National Guard on Robertson's World-Wide Headquarters (supported by OANG KC-135 tankers to enable the cross-country trip and a follow-on flight of more OANG F-15's as fighter CAP), the Governor was able to make a stark example to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission - at least before he was talked out of issuing the tasking order - for why the Pentagon proposal to transfer the Oregon Air Guard assets to the Eastern US is just simply a bad idea from a Homeland Security Standpoint. Kulongoski was able to demonstrate the vital role that an air combat component can play in the defense of the Pacific Northwest to dangers both foreign and domestic. So even in this unfortunate instance, there was a benefit to Oregonians...

...all in all, it's been a good couple of days for us webfoots. We've had all these blessings, and - along with everything else, President Gee Dub laid up just short of the state line over in Donnelly, Idaho, creating a resorty sort of housing-bubble real estate price-inflating buzz for fat cat Republicans around the high meadows/lakes region in South-Central Idaho rather that here in Central Oregon where I hide out and property prices are outside of the bounds of reason already. We're feelin' good and have a bit of a chip on our shoulders: Maybe we don't fund our schools adequately, but at least we didn't get any fatter...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:43 PM 0 comments

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Going to the 9/11 Well One More Time 

...it gets to be like a broken record..or perhaps, for the younger digital generations, a CD player with bad serious glitches (since they don't grok "record", or mayber don't even grok "grok", for that matter). Once again, Gee Dub, the master of falling back on tried and true formulas, has linked 9/11 to the war in Iraq. It's all part of the same old themes: making us safe from terrorists; defeating the terrorist threat through military action in lieu of all that prissy legal mumbo jumbo; fighting them in the streets of Baghdad so we don't have to someday fight them in the streets of Helena, Montana. This is getting to become some sort of fill-in-the-blank word game: You know you're in trouble when....and the correct answer is "you have to fall back on themes that weren't true to begin with in order to try to turn around plummeting American confidence in the stupidly arrogant path you've chosen". In my nightmares I see Condi Rice carrying on one.....more....time....about how smoking guns and mushroom clouds...

...it's almost sad, this desperate effort to reprise all those stirring lines from a happier day, saved from being so by the simple ugly fact that it is becoming almost impossible to feel even objective sadness about anything that happens to the Bush Monkeys. There is a clinging, sharp sadness for the loss of life that their actions have engendered, and there is a sadness for the plight of the Iraqi people who have been plunged into a hell of uncertainty and danger far out of any possible experience. There is a desperate sadness, tinged with a strong sense of anger, that the options left open to us are to leave Iraq now - rendering the sacrifice of nearly 2000 American lives and the health of a couple tens of thousands of others, not to mention the tens and tens of thousands of dead and injured Iraqis, totally meaningless and creating the risk for distaster in the wake of our departure - or stick this mess out to try to render some sort of order at the cost of more American and Iraqi lives and limbs and sense of security, with the very possible outcome that the government that emerges won't look anything like what we were told we were there to create...

...but there Gee Dub is, singing all the old hits like some washed up crooner whose best days at the top of the charts are in the dark distant past and is left to croak out reedy wavering covers of Captain and Tenille songs in some hotel bar outside of Stateline, Idaho. It's laughably easy to figure out why that same old connection between Iraq and 9/11 is back in play, since it played so well to the unthinking and unread in the months leading up to the Iraq invasion. This theme may even, in some perverse sense, be more applicable now than it was back in the day, given how Bush's handling of the Iraq invasion has created a terrorist situation where one didn't previously exist. Given the reluctance of the American people to support the ham-handed and useless manner in which this administration has handled the Grand Iraqi Nation-Building Adventure, it's sadly amusing - but not a bit surprising - that his handlers have decided to send him back to that well one more time...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:37 PM 0 comments

The Perils of the Incurious Mind 

...this is a story that is almost sufficient to cause a good belly laugh, if the undercurrents, backstories, and implications weren't so darkly vicious. The obvious question springs immediately to mind: how could the folks at the Port of Cascade Locks not be cynical enough to at least idly wonder why somebody wanted to have a benefit for "displaced African farmers" in the heart of the Columbia River Gorge over 70 miles upstream from Portland, Oregon? I will admit to being besotted with a well-earned sense of cynicism, but it strikes me that even the happiest, most sunny-minded fellow-loving Christian would have occasion to let the question "what the hell?" flash through the mind at a request to hold an event for "displaced African farmers" in a place that in all other respects looks like way out in the middle of friggin' nowhere for the typical metropolitan-minded citizen...

...in any case, nobody figured out what was up until early last week. All reports indicate that the event, moved to an industrial site away from Cascade Locks itself, went off without a hitch, which I wouldn't have necessarily considered a winning bet given that both federal (US Forest Service) and Tribal law enforcement personnel were enlisted to help provide security for the event. Suffice it to say that the very idea of the event was wildly unpopular with local residents and the Volksfront folks have probably held their last picnic on property under the control of the Port of Cascade Locks. On the other hand, if you or anybody you know had any desire to actually have an event to benefit displaced African farmers, you can cross Cascade Locks, Oregon, off your list of possible venues...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:59 PM 0 comments

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