The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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So maybe you read about the self-proclaimed shaman who claimed to have boiled bear urine that inadvertently started the fires in California’s national forests. If not, you must be getting all your news from the National Enquirer and Qanon, the rest just not believable. In which case you know that those fires were started by Jews using lasers from outer space. Me, I’m just trying to keep myself tethered to the planet these days now that logic and science are relegated to the dustbin of history. Another few months of Covid deniers and I might be boiling bear urine myself.

Although … I’m not really certain how you obtain bear urine. Seems like a dangerous undertaking and if you were capable of getting samples for distilling, you’d think building a safe fire might be child’s play. Course, I don’t know how shamans operate, maybe fire is a bridge too far. This particular witch doctor was carrying CO2 canisters and lighters plus a leafy material that no doubt was an herbal potion, but she couldn’t get a fire started, she said, so she just drank the bear urine without purifying it, then got her corporeal body entangled in brush and had to call the fire department to extricate her. Maybe not the best shaman you’ve come across, but then, how many do you really know?

I’m really glad I’m not one of the folks whose home was incinerated started by a shaman practicing bear urine distillation. An act of God, okay, but not some stoned pyro boiling bat heads and eye of newt. Some guy tailgated me for miles today going into town, then, just as we crested a small hill, ignored the no pass lines and aimed his Honda right at a line of cars at least six or seven deep, trying to shoot by me, so that all of us headed for the shoulders to let him rocket past. Ten miles later I’m still right behind him, lives risked for no speedier arrival in Stanwoodopolis. I suppose he might think too he has magical powers. All I can figure is he drank the bear urine too. I’m hoping this isn’t going viral. At least until they announce on Fox News that it’s a cure for Covid and traffic gridlock. Pity the poor bears….

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Every morning I walk downhill to my mailbox to pick up our two newspapers which I read over coffee back at the house, no doubt an anachronistic habit now that the so-called news is deemed phony. I notice most of its critics still believe the sports page and think ball scores, etc. are factual so I guess it’s only politics, science and the rest that are suspect. Me, I still trust the newspapers to be mostly true and if there’s a bias, well, I like to think I’m smart enough to notice, make allowance and still get a sense of what’s going on out there in the world beyond our driveway.

Today I read about a German laboratory where they’re toilet training cows. Faux news, you ask? A partisan article intended to disparage one of our NATO partners? Or worse, a GOP fueled call-to-arms to prevent government mandates that would require farmers in the Land of the Free to potty train their Herefords? Now, I’m not really sure what these German scientists were trying to accomplish. Maybe those Cow Pampers were costing them a fortune or possibly the point was to have the buggers poop somewhere away from streams and lakes to avoid fecal runoff. Although, the article mentioned that these potty-trainers were only working on #1 at this point, not #2.

You may well be asking yourself the same question as I was. No, not whether or not the Germans will be building bovine port-a-potties soon, but why I’m reading about this tomfoolery in the first place even if it is semi-scientific. After all, it’s not some sort of breakthrough in the quest for animal crappers, bovine bathrooms, equestrian lavatories or barnyard etiquette. Unless, of course, the damn government with its burdensome regulations is planning to mandate poop scooping for farm animals. Save a lot of hefty garbage bags to have the beasts just kindly move to the edge of the field where the latrines are waiting. Science, a powerful tool in the hands of homo sapiens!! At least for the Believers.

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If you thought work was scarce as chicken teeth down here on the slothful South End, you probably figured Covid wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference, meaning, you and me were wrong. Parents with kids who stayed home and learned virtually, well, virtually nothing, good luck finding child care. Every store has a HELP WANTED sign out, permanently. Clerks, bus drivers, bartenders, waitresses, hair dressers, all of them work awhile then quit, low pay, hassles with the anti-vaxx, anti-mask crowd, no one to take care of the kids at home, good unemployment benefits, all of the above.

Melissa Jurgenson, an old friend of mine from back when we both first moved here in the Paleolithic and did odd jobs to keep us from going back to the hell that drove us to the far reaches of civilization, just took a job clerking at the South End Camano Convenience Store, a FOR SALE sign out front on the highway, not probably a smart ‘career’ move. The current owner pays two bucks more than minimum, quite a few bucks less than a living wage and nowhere near what would qualify as fair payment for the grief she takes from customers who blame her for the trampling on their right to infect whoever they damn well please.

But her husband Frank – a guy I met the first visit who grunted at our introduction, grabbed a beer (my beer actually) out of the fridge, demanded to know when dinner would be ready before retreating to his room and slamming the door – well, Frank holds the purse strings. Says she can’t handle money. Says she’ll have to work for the meager things she wants to buy. Says she’s lucky to have a fiscal genius like himself. I, of course, say Gee, Melissa, it’s the 21st Century and Frank is just a little behind the times, if not actually prehistoric.

But … love, or what passes for it on the hoary South End, has no pride, just like the song says. I guess if this were a better world we’d all have great jobs, good salaries, nice bosses and spouses who treat us as equals and share the good times as well as the hard times. Melissa made her choice, stayed on the South End, raised their three kids and now probably wonders, ringing up a pack of Camels and a six pack of beer for a tourist who thinks maybe this is Paradise, when exactly did she stop thinking it is …?

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If you think it’s depressing thinking about climate change, polar bear extinctions, massive flooding, killer heat waves, famine, new diseases, melting glaciers, water wars and millions of refugees fleeing their uninhabitable countries, think how the kids must feel. I’m in my 70’s, probably not going to see the worst of what’s coming, easy to pull the covers up and go back to sleep. With all the cynicism accumulated over those decades, I don’t see much hope we’ll all make the sacrifices necessary to prevent this planetary greenhouse from becoming a steaming hotbox of scarcely imaginable nightmares.

Pity the kids. We mutter about existential threat and they hear the runaway train barreling down the tracks straight at them with no way off. Thanks, Mom, thanks, Dad. Thanks for not making any sacrifices. Don’t bother turning down the thermostat, don’t buy an electric car, don’t stop burning coal in those power plants, don’t do anything that might inconvenience you. Just stick your head in the burning sand and pretend you’ll be okay, you’ll be fine. Like the bumper sticker on the 40 foot RV reads, WE’RE SPENDING OUR GRANDKIDS’ INHERITANCE. There’s a chuckle for the next generation.

Sacrifice? It’s not a word in the Boomer lexicon. We got ours and nobody is going to take it away from us. Vote for carbon taxes? You gotta be kidding me. Vote for saving the planet? Not if it cuts into our savings. Half of us just figure it’s too late to bring the CO2 down, too late to save the polar bears, too late to keep the global temperatures from rising every year, just turn on a rerun of the Simpsons and pop a beer. Vote for a Neanderthal like Trump. What, me worry? Worst case, we’ll move somewhere with a nice climate, at least for a few years.

And besides, we got advanced science working on solutions. Over our heads, but hey, good chance these egghead A Eye guys will turn the world thermostat down, forget this gloom and doom drumbeat, we’ve got folks working on this. Not that we want to fund them. But … gee, a little seed money, they’ll figure out a way to monetize it. Look at Facebook. Look at Google. Check out Amazon during the commercial break. Little startups, now kings of the universe. And I mean universe.

No, the kids will be okay. You know, if we just stop scaring them with all this pessimism.

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I am not a crook. Course he was. I never had sex with that girl. Course he did. I never asked for a quid pro quo from that Ukrainian president. Actually, yes, right there on the phone transcripts. We are not partisan hacks. Okay, then why make a speech introduced by Mitch McConnell at the McConnell Center in Louisville, Kentucky? Same partisan hack who kept Obama from filling an empty Supreme Court vacancy, that McConnell.

Somehow, methinks she doth protest too much. The Supremes, she cites as evidence for convincing us they’re not political hacks, have underlying judicial philosophies. Ah, bet you forgot that, didn’t you? They’re not ruling about abortion from some religious, partisan bias, they’re working under Originalism. Can’t find it in the Constitution, can’t okay it in 2021. The Framers wanted to keep the country in eternal stasis. Wise men, these Framers. Far seeing visionaries.

Gimme a break, Amy. Donald J. Trump didn’t ram your nomination through in record time because he thought you were a fair and impartial judge, he ran you through because your name was on the approved list of nominees handed to him by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank only slightly left of the Proud Boys. The sheer fact that you made your public denial of judicial bias right after letting the Texas anti-abortion bill take effect, well, c’mon, your Honor, you didn’t notice Mitch smiling that turtle smirk from Louisville to Houston? Maybe you didn’t read the part in the Constitution that mentions a sitting President making nominations for your job. Before your time, I know.

So I guess we’re in good hands with you and Clarence and the rest of the gang, no hidden biases there, just thorough and impartial reading of a few centuries old document, interpreted by … Wait, not interpreted, really, just scrutinized factually. Channeling old Tom Jefferson. Partisan hackery? Ask Amy Phoney Barrett, she’s got the original news.

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