The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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There are plenty of folks who would gladly send their hard-earned dollars to the TV ads for abused dogs and abandoned cats but would never give one thin dime to some charity that helps us humans. Which, in all fairness, is their right. Their money, their choice of charities. We can’t save the world so pick a cause and hope it does some good, maybe even makes a difference.

The Tyee Rescue Farm, just down the road from the now shuttered Tyee Store, take in unwanted dogs and cats, injured raccoons, eagles with broken wings, lost possums, unsaleable ostriches, crippled llamas, sick parrots, three legged squirrels, well … they take in whatever critter or creature gets dropped off by its owner or the Island County deputies, the concerned citizens and even Jim Jensen, the official ‘animal control officer.’ Martha Petersen started taking in strays back about 1975, built a small kennel, taught herself basic veterinary skills and within a year she was swamped with a veritable zoo of inmates, detainees, patients, the unloved and the unwanted. Which, when her husband John left her the night she drove to the State Park to retrieve an injured deer, she became too. Unloved, I mean. John said he’d had enough. “You love that rabbit more than me,” he accused her before she shut the door on both their way outs.

Martha has told that story to most every volunteer and staffer who’s helped her build her 10 acres to what it is today. Kennels and barns, sheds and walking paths, a small hospital, aviaries and pig pens. “He said I loved that rabbit with the ear half torn off more than him,” she’d narrate, immobilizing a crow’s bent wing or applying antibiotic to a raccoon’s dog-eaten tail while the newest volunteer held the injured beast. “And you know,” she’d say, pausing for effect like she always did, “he was right. The animals people bring in when they don’t want them anymore … you know what? They’re better off here.”

Love, all I can say, is love. Martha, I guess, has more than most. John? I’m betting he doesn’t have a dog or a cat or gimpy alpaca. He probably counts himself the lucky one. Maybe they both are.

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Let’s say you got a bizness like mine and maybe Ford Motor Company. Most of us corporate types worry about short term profits to keep our investors happy and our shares on the Dow Jones up. But we always plan for the future, five years or so at least. If we have a regime in power that gives incentives, say, for buying Electric Vehicles and maybe supports government investment in public art, particularly stained glass art, me and the Ford boyz will probably tool up, upgrade our facilities, plan for additional hiring and basically veer in that direction rather than, say, stick with fossil fuel guzzlers or, in my case, residential bathroom window art.

Now the Detroit crowd can’t run around the country installing tens of thousands of charging stations that will incentivize EV purchases, even with some heavy discounts on pricing, which means their investment needs that kind of infrastructure support. You drive a Model T cross country back in grandpa’s day, you wouldn’t go if you worried about locating a gas station in Nowhere, South Dakota. You might not even buy a horseless carriage at all, just stick with the nag and the buggy. And if the government’s Art in Public Places Program disappeared, why would I buy extra inventory, rent a large studio or hire assistants when all I need is a table, minimal supplies and just myself as underpaid employee?

What me and my corporate companions need most is some consistency in our government. The last thing in the world Ford MoCo wants or needs is the New Regime rolling in with a pledge to drill baby drill, discontinue buying incentives for EV’s and cutting the infrastructure funds to build a nationwide network of charging stations and loudly proclaiming that fossil fuels are the real future of America. All those cheap and very competitive EV’s being built in China, well, we’ll just ban them from being imported into our country. Trouble is, China will sell them to every other country in the world. Competition, the capitalist motto? Fuggetaboutit!

And as for public art? Well, let’s be honest here, we used to build courthouses, fire stations, university buildings, city halls and all the rest with the idea that the architecture and the art would inspire its citizenry. Think Rome, Athens, Paris, London, Stanwoodopolis and Smokey Point. They didn’t build the cheapest and quickest construction. They built modern day secular cathedrals. Those days are past for this capitalist yahoo. I only hope folks still want some artistic privacy in their privvies….

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I’m reading a book this week. Yes, a real one, not an audiobook, not an E-book, but a Gutenberg ink-on-the-papyrus novel that’s 500 plus pages. I can guess what you’re thinking: I’m missing 500 cat videos, nature flicks, influencer suggestions and who knows what else on Tik-Tok, X or Instagram. I got friends now who can’t wade through a two paragraph e-mail, not after Twitter convinced them less is more. Or at least enough.

Without ratcheting into an essay on loss of concentration, short attention spans, ADHD and the evils of social media, I just wonder how libraries still survive. Or bookstores. Or the U.S. Post Office. When was the last letter you got? How about the last letter you ever wrote — and no, that Christmas card with your signature on the bottom does NOT count. Forget about claiming your name has six letters in it, don’t gaslight me!

Sure, by year’s end AI will write whatever you want for you. Even write a 500 page novel. A poem. A short story. An essay. Lyrics to a song — and the music too.

The Tech Boyz will tell you this is the Brave New Future, faster, better, way more intelligent. Oh, I know, at first we’ll tell ourselves the Bots are merely an adjunct to human creativity, an appendage, not crutch. And anyway, you can probably tell the difference, poorer quality, so you think. But have no doubt, the machines will go beyond mere mimickery, they’ll learn our tricks and they they’ll become, for want of a technical term, creative. What, you think humans are that special?

So okay, maybe I read books to escape the world I see passing me on the shoulder of the digital highway. When I find out the author isn’t human, just a box of algorithms, those cat videos may look damn tempting. Course by then the Bots will probably be making those too.

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START THE DAY BEFORE NOON

At least on work days. The other five days, sleep in. You earned it.

LEARN HOW TO READ
Writing is no longer essential, but … the successful South Ender can tweet, twitter and text, even if spelling is marginal.

LISTEN TO OTHERS
Especially on Facebook and other social media. Keeping track of friends’ and enemies’ likes and dislikes is an invaluable tool in the South End toolbox. Decision making is easy, just see what the herd is doing.

WORK AT LEAST ONE HOUR A DAY.

No matter how severe the hangover, the lethargy, the ennui or excess hedonistic activities. Work isn’t ALL bad.

WORK OFF THE GRID

No South Ender worth his or her salt works in order to pay half his or her income to the IRS. Barter heavily with your neighbors and friends. Crab, clam, trap, fish, hunt or grow it! Food is free and food is fun! If you buy your dinners, food is neither.

LEARN TO REPAIR

Your own car, truck, toaster, well pump, toilets, etc. You can’t barter or sell busted stuff and repairmen cost an arm and a leg per hour PLUS that service fee to drive half a day to and from your hell-and-gone address. Knowing a few handyman tricks can save you another part-time job at the fast food joints 50 miles away.

MARRY UP!

Chances are you’ve embraced an aesthetic lifestyle. You artists and musicians need supplemental income and unless you plan to work full time low paid minimum hour jobs, a second salary is essential. Marry one.

If none of these suggestions work for you, plan on moving soon. Life on the South End is mostly for those with alternative-fact occupational schemes. If you landed here thinking this was just a suburb of America, get yourself a GPS and head back to the mainland. Not guaranteeing jobs necessarily, but at least the possibility exists out there in Trumpland when America’s CEO brings them back. And those of us who stay, well, we could use the extra elbow room. Good luck to ya!

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dabbling-made-easy

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While I was cutting glass in the shack for a stained glass project, I was listening to a woman who won the McArthur ‘genius’ award for her theory on ‘grit. I think maybe by that she means stick-to-it-ness, what we South Enders call stubborn as a mule. If mules and jackasses are ever considered smart, we South Enders may yet win Nobels and Pulitzers, although maybe not the McArthur award.

This Grit Theory, though, caught my interest. Awhile back a fellow named Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book that postulated that successful people put in 10,000 hours of work before they reached competency enough to be considered successful. Masters of their Chosen Field. I guess it takes true grit to put in 10,000 hours of anything so maybe they’re saying the same thing.

Me, I consider myself a Dabbler. A dabbler, if you look it up in those old dictionaries nobody uses anymore, is a person who refuses to take himself seriously. Probably drinks, sleeps in, doesn’t read directions or take instruction, would rather cut off his right arm at the elbow than shoot for perfection, can’t be bothered with too many details, probably wanders the garden rather than finish an honest day’s work ….

I’m happy to be a Dabbler. I always intended to be a Bum, but dabbling saved me from the vicissitudes of bumhood. I found this old shack when shacks cost what shacks should cost. Then I stumbled into glass art and managed to dabble myself into gigs that kept me from working. I’d tell you I have 10,000 hours logged, but hell, I’m not going to waste time doing the math, all that multiplication, and anyway, I don’t punch a timeclock. Plus, then I’d want to do some long division, figure out my hourly wage and send myself spiraling into a deep depression.

Always dabble, that’s my preference, that’s my motto. Although, I will admit, I’m pretty gritty about it.

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