Category: off the cuff

Introducing…Barbi for Prez!

Posted on by D. L. Keur

I sat in drop-jawed amazement when I heard that McCain, 72 years old with one foot in the grave already, named…who?  Palin?  For VP?  Ah….

Then I started sputtering.  Then I said some very unprintable things.  You see, Palin used public tax money to campaign for the continued cruelly barbaric annihilation of wolves in Alaska.  She’s about as anti-preservationist/anti-ecology as you can get, she’s all for killing wildlife and animals and trees and everything else not classified as human, but she thinks every fetus down to the zygote level, even if it’s the result of INCEST or RAPE, should be saved, saved, saved, this in a world suffering exTREME human overpopulation problems.  She’s a Fundy (Chirstian Fundamentalist) of the WORST variety, thinking she has the right to dictate what Americans will believe — Jesus Christ or get out of the country — and she’s BIG OIL…just like McCain is BIG OIL.  Her mores and ethics only hold for her cronies, and she’s perfectly willing to use any power at her disposal to punish those with whom she disagrees, doesn’t like, or considers enemy, ideological or any other way.  Her idea of fair treatment extends only so far as her good ol’ boys and gals.  That’s it.  And that’s not even scratching the surface of the ugliness she represents, either.  In short, I hate the woman.  I think she’s nothing but flushable — as in toilet contents…and I don’t mean water, either.  Synonyms for this woman?  Cruel, unkind, unthinking, backward, anti-American (as in Constitution & Bill of Rights), pro tyrrany.

But she’s definitely going to appeal to some just because:

She’s got great “face” — glow in the dark teeth, sparkly eyes, a very appealing to the guys feminity, and she’s well-schooled in how to be “whoever you want me to be” in public.

She’s looks like a (slightly used) dark-haired Barbi doll.

In other words, she looks VERY fuckable.

So, with McCain at 72, and Ms. Palin (oh, yeah, she likes Mrs.) at 44 and NO experience, what are the Republicans thinking?  That if McCain bites the big one…which is highly possible, that they’ve got a good face to plaster on TeeWee while they tell her what to think?

…You think?

I’m still drop-jawed.

So Now It’s the Festival at Sewer Plant & the Team Relay, Too!

Posted on by D. L. Keur

As if the Festival at Sewer Plant didn’t bring enough mayhem, with its beer tent, its liquored wastrels, and its doped-out druggies into our quiet neighborhood, to add further injury and insult, the Spokane-to-Sandpoint Team Relay has descended, boisterous and craven with their loud speakers, tents, and riotous nonsense to our quiet Lakeview Park.  Garish vans park up and down the street slathered with “bad attitude,” not-for-the-eyes-of-children-under-13 slogans.  This is not something I consider good for Sandpoint.  In fact, the only people it pleases are the Realtors and the liquor, beer, and wine joints.

Ugly.  Ugly attitudes, destructive behavior, and disturbing to the peace of the community and county.  All this added to the chaos the Festival now brings to town for two solid weeks of noise torture.

My husband supports the Festival.  He says, rightly so, that it’s the only bit of real culture we get here.  But mostly bad country music, bad reggae (can you say marijuana party?), and bad pop-rock is NOT the Pacific Northwest’s version of Interlochen, which is what the Festival at Sandpoint was SUPPOSED to be, what it started out as, but not what it became after being bastardized by the local movers and shakers.

Don’t know what Interlochen is?  Go here: http://www.interlochen.org/ It’s world class, that’s what.  What we started to build here…only to have it devolve into party-animal central, of negligible worth, each year’s level of musicians deteriorating from consistently world class to mostly “never heard of them.”

That’s Sandpoint!  Its motto? If it’s good, screw it till it reeks.

No Flys. Happy Hornets & Wasps a Boon to My Life

Posted on by D. L. Keur

I have happy hornets.  I have mellow, satisfied wasps.  And I have no flies — not white flies, not houseflies, not even aphids — all because I have wasps and hornets.

In fact, I invite hornets and wasps to my yard.  Why?  Because they keep these and other fly populations and unwanted garden pests in check.

If you watch them — yellow jackets, black baldy hornets, and the rest (Oh, I delight especially in mud wasps!), you’ll see them “hunt” the garden pests and flies, searching them out under leaves and hauling them away to their brood nests.  They’ll “helicopter” down on unsuspecting house flies, bot flies, and blue bottles, latch onto them with their legs, and lift off with their cargo.  End of fly.  Yet they leave “the good insects” alone…like spiders, bees, lady bugs, and preying mantis.

Many folks are afraid of wasps and hornets.  Those same folks are amazed when I walk through my yard, maybe disturb several, and, even if they land on me, they don’t sting.  Just pause a minute to catch their breath…and my scent, then fly back to their duties.

I have a nest on the big garbage can.  And that gave me pause.  Because I have to move it once a week so the truck can come lift it, tip it upside down into a dumpster, then set it back down — all mechanized, mind you.  Well, the first week, the process knocked their nest loose.

…And they rebuilt!

Darn!

So the next week, a bit trepidacious, I hauled the thing to the curb.  They didn’t even take wing.

Okay.  So far, so good.

This time, their nest held.  And when I went to haul the can back to its slot?  They flew beside me, never landed, never stung.  I got it nestled back into its hidey, and they settled in.

Next week, same program.  Except this time, one of them hitched a ride on my arm as I hauled it, now empty, back and put it away.  Once I was done, she lifted off and scooted onto her nest, her and her mates.

So what’s the secret?

Understanding.

And.

Water.

Water is critical for these creatures.

I water my pots every day. The wasps and hornets are delighted.  They even land on the garden shower head I use to fill the pots to brimming as I make my rounds.  All the neighborhood wasps and hornets join them.  it’s like a party — a benign, joyful one.  And, of course, I fill the boot drainer (where a bunch of them get water all day long) and the shallow “bug bath” (a small bird bath about the size of a saucer), along with various small, discreet, shallow plant trays I stash about here and there.

All day long during the heat of summer, they ferry water to their nests to cool them.  All day long during the heat of summer, I make sure the mud wasps have “wet spots,” and the wasps and hornets have their water trays with “safety leaves” extending into the water in case one of the “new kids on the block” doesn’t extend his landing gear properly and winds up “swimming” for it.

You can always tell the “new kids on the block” — newly emerged members of the colony who haven’t gotten the hang of splaying out their “skids” (feet) to land safely and “skate” the water.  They approach, try to judge the water, try to figure out how to land like their older, wiser sisters, and, finally opt for going for the rim or the leaf laying over the lip.  After a few demonstrations by their cohorts, though, they soon are landing like pros, setting their feet like a sea plane’s skids, wings just so to catch a breeze.  Then, as they load up with water, they let the breezes push them about sometimes, playing sailboat…just for fun, I guess…because they don’t always do it, just then and again.  After that, it’s lift-off, and off they get to the nest, only to return a few minutes later to do it all over again…all day long.  That’s dedication.

Occasionally, I’ll see one pause, and take a drink for herself, clean her face and antenna, rest a bit, maybe grab a snack of a stray aphid or inchworm, then she’s off to work again.

True joy is a happy garden when all its denizens are well-cared for.  And if people wonder at how pest-free my garden, all without any pesticides, at all, it’s because Nature provides.

Be kind to all living creatures.  They have a reason of being, and that reason is good for you as well as them.

Dawn

Happy and Not, Both.  But back.

Posted on by D. L. Keur

Time to get back into posting after an overlong suspension.  My eyes are better.  My brain is better.  There are still things not right, but at least I can get a bit of “on” time, now.

Things I’m happy with:

  • our new home
  • my new garden
  • having my full-sized piano in whim’s reach
  • having happy animals
  • having more houseplants

Things I’m not happy with:

  • my body (yet)
  • my eyes (yet)

(brain seems to be doing fine)

More things I’m not happy with:

  • not having enough time
  • the companies
  • GWBush
  • John McCain & the Republicans
  • the economy
  • world and US news
  • how damned hot it is in the sun!!!
  • the Festival at Sewer Plant in Sandpoint
  • people who insist on putting their foot in it, roaring down the street at 55 (the speed limit is 25)
  • people who do nothing but get in their cars and drive up street, then back every effing fifteen minutes (What IS this drive ALL THE TIME thing????  Are they twitchy?  Hyperactive?  Have ADD?)

I Enjoy the Quiet.

Posted on by D. L. Keur

The muss, fuss, and bother of Monday morning madness — vanquished by the retreat to office where, sipping coffee, I ponder the load of work I have today.  A trip through email nets potential irritants, and I close the client, moving on to checks the sites, the blogs, the forums.  …Well, I start.  Then, input from the tedious goads me to address some nonsense, but not quite yet.  First I’m going to enjoy the quiet of my morning without fervor.