The New View From My Window

A couple weeks ago I made a rather long move - like a 2200 mile move - from Baker City, OR to Petoskey, MI. I'm still trying to fit a three bedroom house with a garage/shop into a one bedroom with storage. Packing, driving, unpacking, and suffering from geo-social shock explains my absence from this blog.

Looking somewhat SW from my sliding window in the living room. Petoskey is over in that general direction, past the hill and on the edge of northern Lake Michigan.  Depending on which side of town you're trying to get to it is about 5 miles.  (Click Pics For Full Size)

Out to the NE is my landlady's house and my '74 K5 Blazer. Previous to the move I sold "the fleet." While I have no use for it, I'll sort of miss the old '50 Chevy COE. I'll much more miss the '62 Chevy II and for driving and gas mileage the '04 SSR is a real loss. I needed money and I needed to not have a huge insurance bill. I've driven the '78 K20 Chevy work truck longer than any other vehicle I've ever had, but I could move one vehicle and a utility bed truck that could get all of 8 mpg and seat three tightly just wasn't in the cards.  The driveway is very light colored because it is sand, if you scrape the ground anywhere around here you get sand and it takes some work to not track it all over the house...

Since you can't go much over 10 miles in any direction with out running into water, lakes, I figured I probably needed something that floated better than the Harley which is parked in the garage past the "hole in the water you throw money into."  This thing is a '94 18' Four Winns with a 5L 215HP Ford V8 and it can scoot - the test drive showed it making 50 mph, which is darn fast on the water.  While I was paying for it and doing the paper work the shop winterized it - so I have a large expensive yard decoration that, unlike the Harley, I can't ignore... all damn winter.  Yeah, it's 11AM and 39F and over cast which isn't too bad for the last two weeks - at least it isn't raining or snowing, like it has been.  Baker County is semi-arid - which means a couple less inches precipitation and you've got desert - did I mention shock?

There are a number of reasons why this move happened and not a bit of it had to do with wanting to leave my friends and the country side of Baker City. I shut down the construction contracting business last fall since I couldn't afford to subsidize it any more and this summer my wife and I decided to divorce which meant selling the house since she was moving and neither of us could afford to buy out the other. All that and my mother's age of 85 years and the closest child 3 hours away made it seem that with little employment opportunity it sort of fell on me to get within her neighborhood. Mom's place is about 25 minutes away, close enough that I can help her out whenever she needs it and still far enough that she can - heh - still like me.

It is odd and kind of claustrophobic to ride the country roads and not be able to see anything unless you're topping a hill.  The humidity is sky high compared to Baker City, though most places aren't that dry.  The air does smell clean and 'The Big Lake" is present - in damn near everything.  The snow fall is an issue, the lack of it the last couple years - but I think I'll have to do it to judge exactly what they mean by "lack."  I lived near here for a while 30 years ago and the lake effect snow fall was considerable.

I'll make new friends and get used to the climate.  There are a lot of roads to ride and it is rural (well, crowded compared to Baker County) and I'll have plenty of water to fish and play on.  Large change is never easy and I've not only lived in Baker City for the last 24 and change years but also 22 years in my house there after never living in one place in my adult life for more than a couple years. 

Maybe I'll start putting stuff on this page a bit more regularly.  Anyhow, hi to all my readers.

Oh yeah, I won't suffer political shock of any big degree, this area is as "Red" as OR2 - lots of NObama and Defeat Obama signs, I guess with rMoney it's hard to know what to be for...

Too Bad God Forgot Intelligence

It seems some folks are mad at Dr Pepper. The Doctor made the egregious error of using the word Evolution in a rather silly Internet ad. It really is a shame that a corporate behemoth (encouraged no doubt by Obama) has kicked the snot right out of religious freedom violating all sorts of... I don't know, somethings.

I suppose that you can deny the clear trail of evolutionary evidence in fossils and existing species by making some sort of deal about the word Theory - but you know the Theory of Gravity doesn't mean we'll all float off the earth if we quit praying.  There is always the issue that Jesus stuck to the Earth (well there is the water thing) ((oh damn, I can feel my feet getting light)) and dinosaurs... well opinions differ between people riding them and Satan planting fossils.  A whole chain of oddity crops up once Evolution becomes the Satan's Tool.  If science finds something that doesn't match the exact words of a Holy Book it is Satan interfering with belief.

Some of this derives from the inability of even educated people to understand that words frequently have more meaning than the simplest interpretation or definition and that gets even more complicated once they're strung together into, you know, phrases or sentences.  There is a rule about those red octagonal signs that say STOP and if you don't follow it you can get into some trouble - maybe real bad trouble.  Now, it says STOP but there is something else involved - an understanding that it isn't all you're supposed to do, otherwise every one of those would be a trap where people starved because they never moved; yeah, "then GO" is missing from the sign.  The point being that absolute literal interpretation of words is... STUPID.

Language is a complicated thing for a couple reasons and the first is pretty simple to grasp - there is an absolute upper limit of the number of words we can function with so they will cover more ground than is absolutely simple.  Then there is the little matter of language also being a thing of beauty and art - a piece of marble on the side of a mountain is a simple plain thing but in the hands of a sculptor it can become a thing of beauty and art and language is just that.  I have to acknowledge that in my hands language is a pretty plain thing, but in the hands of some it becomes beautiful and magnificently expressive - it is art.

The idea of the literal interpretation of Holy Books is that the words are extremely limited in function, that those "divinely inspired" authors trying to communicate a basis of spirituality were that limited in their capacity.  Plainly said, it means that God has no artistry with words. God, creator of a Universe, is that limited.  I don't ascribe to any of those Books, but... WTF?

"God created man in his image," means... um, what exactly?  I sure the hell don't look much like my neighbor so literally one of us can't be that image or, hmmm - any of us?  Speaking of literal, we've already strayed way off the limits, so something more is meant.  Since the can of worms is opened then where we're at is self-imposed limits on the artistry involved and that starts to get to the issue of intelligence... or lack there of.

OK, I really don't care - but these people are so insistent on imposing their stupidity on the rest of us that even a goddam Presidential election starts to revolve around their complete and utter inability to understand their own damn Book and artistry.  Folks, we may be seriously screwed here...

Oh Fer God's Sake... or something

It seems that Rev Wright isn't around this time, so...

I'll be go to hell if anyone with any sense thinks this is going to make any sense. Now while I might take offense to the ideas that this is a "Nation Under God" when it clearly is under something entirely different and I'm real sure the my money doesn't "In God We Trust" but rather is subject to the whims of greed-headed sub-one-percenters; I know way better than to think that Pres Obama doesn't understand that there is a Religious Test for election and that he would do something to offend that Test.

Mormon Mittens is scared he'll have trouble with the Fundies and their view of his cult as a anti-Christian cult. Of course it is a cult, observe its behaviors regarding those who dissent and its actions to keep the observant in the fold. Now you could certainly argue that it isn't greatly different from Catholicism and I'd be pretty hard put to refute such a thing. But then you have to remember that I'm pretty much an equal offender in my dismissal of all those exclusive clubs called religions. I'm happy if they do something positive in your life, I just really hope you'll leave me out of your agenda and let me try to be good in my own way.

Now, if you'd like to make a case that the Religious Test doesn't exist, I'd like your estimation of exactly when an atheist, agnostic, Jew, or Muslim will get elected President (assuming you don't buy that Obama is actually an undercover... whatever). Is this a good way to chose an elected leader - I'd say no. I'd say a truthful candidate with a demonstrated interest in the general population's welfare and protection of the minority trumps whatever religion or lack there of.

A religion or lack of one is no guarantee of any course of behavior.  Despite the assertions of any one of the exclusive clubs, membership is not determinative of behavior.  Liars, cheats, and thieves have belonged to all facets of regard toward religion and, in fact, have often used their orientation as cover for their behaviors.  Well, hell - Mittens has been lying like a rug on certain matters for some time now and here he is covering himself with GOD.  The theocratic will assert that you cannot manage "goodness" without their version - what I've found it that the lack of their versions removes the cover of some Book for their hate and disdain for "the other."

I didn't think that after the first months of the Primary it would be possible for me to have less regard for Mitt - I was wrong. 

To Really Honor The Fallen

Memorial Day - flags, flowers, and patriotic rhetoric abounds and it seems that what gets left out is that the Fallen got into that position through decisions made by those with little or no 'skin' in the game. These people fell in battles of others' choosing, people whose motives may have had little to do with the patriotism of risking your life for your country's needs.

In that selfless risk of health and life there resides a terrible gamble, the proposition that the end is deserving of the sacrifice, not to the soldier who has no choice in the matter, but to the nation which asks it. Regardless of the actual need or stupidity of the decision to go war these men and women will go. It behooves this nation to consider what it asks in that regard.

I begin my analysis of any proposition to go to war from a pacifistic point of view, that warfare is a horrible cruel enterprise dedicated to breaking things and killing people. I need to be convinced that other options have been exhausted and that the issue merits death and destruction ... and that future analysis will not judge that a mistake.

The very best way of honoring the fallen is to ensure that their sacrifices will be judged as worthy of this nation. Never forget that what we honor is their selfless self-sacrifice for this nation and we need to deserve that sacrifice.

Takng A Little Ride

Some few people may have noticed a bit over a month of no posts on this blog. Well, Harley Davidson played a rather large role in that lack. Back in March two friends and I faced with the presence of snow and stinking weather forecasts trailered our bikes south to Las Vegas for a week of riding without frostbite.

***Click the pics for full size***

That would be the Grand Canyon shot from the South Face. We rode a 580 mile loop from Las Vegas around the North Face to the South Face through Flagstaff back to Las Vegas. The problem with the North Face was that it was closed due to snow, deep, deep snow.



This piece includes a bit of the problem with the whole loop - Flagstaff is about a mile elevation and the Grand Canyon is up hill from there - ie. damn cold on a motorcycle. You'd think that if there were two live brain cells talking to each other amongst three boys from Baker City, OR at 3500 ft elevation surrounded by mountains that this little factoid would have entered our thinking. Nope. Popsicles.

Riding around Las Vegas for a week certainly doesn't explain a month. That would have a lot to do with my thinking process that included being south of snow and my son's home in Bartow, Florida about 40 miles east of Tampa. A map was generated which used "other than Interstates" diagonally from Las Vegas to Bartow. Quickly, Las Vegas - Phoenix - Show Low, AZ - Roswell, NM - Lubbock, TX - Dallas, TX - Lufkin, TX - Alexandria, LA - Baton Rogue, LA - New Orleans French Quarter - and I-10 to Tallahassee, FL and I-75 to Bartow, FL. The return trip duplicated the route minus I-75 & I-10 running up into GA east of Tallahassee and cutting across GA & MS & LA by way of Dothan, AL to Natchez, LA. The entire trip, including the Las Vegas riding totalled just over 8,000 miles with the side trip down to Key West, FL and other tourist type things in FL.

My object in the trip was to use full access roads, primarily US Highways and to a lesser extent State Routes. A motorcycle is not a reasonable method of short travel times. Given that, the opportunity to stop in smaller places and meet folks from "real life" as opposed to Freeway stops and to see the country closely pays dividends. The freeway portion of the first route was the result of a cold front in TX and northern LA - I just had to get south to near the Gulf to get away from freezing my hind end off, highs in the lower 40s are pretty brutal on a bike with no windshield or other cover when covering hundreds of miles per day. Both ways I averaged mid-400s miles per day a bit short of my goal of 500 miles, but interesting places and some cold weather interfered.



The VLA in New Mexico, not all that far from the infamous Roswell. From a distance some very large strange mushrooms out by the horizon, kinda spooky.



Kayaking east of Tampa, and yes that guy is a rather large alligator not a stone's throw away. My son and I were in a two-seater and spent around 4 hours seeing things up close and quiet.



A couple blocks from here and you're swimming to Cuba or getting your bike very wet in the waters off Key West. Mainland to Key West is 140 miles. This place is a sort of R-rated Disneyland mostly dedicated to separating you from your money, fun though. I don't guess there's any way to get farther from Baker City, OR.



This is the second time I've seen my model bike on the actual road. This was ridden by a gal in the Lakeland, FL HOG Chapter. I spotted the bike on the way to a rally in Leesburgh, FL.



I have no idea how many bikes were at the rally. For about a mile the street was parked both sides with bikes backed in side by side and about 6 blocks of downtown also had bikes parked side by side on the center line.



Before I left Las Vegas I had a 30K mile service and on the return trip the next 5K had turned over outside Roswell, NM so after spending the night Sunday morning I went to the Harley dealer to see about that. Closed. Being shut out of my service and Harley coffee I went to a nearby gas station to at least get coffee. This bunch rolled in and as per usual my bike invited conversation and the up shot was I went on a run with the Roswell Eagle Riders and Scuffy put me up for the night.



Monday morning I got my service at this dealer. Yes, aliens are, well, a thing there.



At least it was pretty warm up here. I suppose just being here made it worth a picture.



Northern Arizona and southern Utah are the Navajo Reservation and the country is spectacular - so much so that a camera doesn't really capture it. The wind eroded buttes and plateau faces make it easy to see how people could get mystical about the country.

The last day was 620 miles from Price, UT home and it involved once being over a thousand feet above the snow line, lots of cold and rain off and on including a down pour in Boise. A rough last day and one that made me very happy to be home from a trip that started 3/19 and ended 4/20.

Every place I spent any time I found people being nice to me. More than a couple times I had people trying to kill me with their vehicles, which is why you stay very alert. The bike performed flawlessly and a hat-tip is due some Harley dealers - Henderson, NV Harley (service), Lakeland, FL Harley (tire replacement), Roswell, NM Harley (service). This is about absolute friendliness, timeliness, and quality of service. I stopped at too many dealers to note for coffee, a stretch, and maybe a T-shirt and found with only a couple exceptions the same dedication to customers or just a Harley rider from far away. As I noted, this bike starts conversations, especially being a rare cruiser bike* so far from home.

*A cruiser has no windshield, faring, or built-on bags, rare is 2500 in the world ever. This is the FXSTSSE3 - Screaming Eagle Springer Soft-tail CVO (Custom Vehicles Operations). Screaming Eagle is Harley's performance and pretties division and everything on the bike is from them other than the stock main frame. It is a pretty hot-rod Harley with outstanding handling and power.

Roswell Eagle Riders

Confluence Of Circumstances

The other day while riding my old scooter home from the west side of the state I reflected while going through a curve that a set of events coming together at the proper time would be the end of me, despite my best efforts. It is a bit easier to see this when you are essentially naked at 65 miles per hour and flesh mangling objects are hurtling past at not much more than arm's length. This fact applies to much more than motorcycling.

All through our lives circumstances come together and create a reality that is counter to our plans, for good or ill. We have plans and we have ideas and yet a confluence of circumstances will drive our lives. Many of the cultural wars erupt from denial of this piece of life reality. Whatever ideas you may have about your children, abortion, gayness, ad infinitum are not it, and yet abortion and gayness and all the rest arrive into people's lives daily. Almost everyone knows intellectually that things happen, unforeseen and unplanned. But that happens to other people, not me.

Horseshit. Certainly men don't get pregnant, but someone in their life may and then the crapshoot starts. However that pregnancy occurred in planning, its happening alone is took quite a few factors coming together in rare confluence. Fortunately for the earth and humankind, conception isn't a foregone conclusion and from there it stays an iffy proposition, both physically and within the life situation of the mother and father. Pretending that one-size-fits-all is ludicrous and yet that is the debate.

People wind up gay. It happens and we all know it does because they exist. It isn't a part of anyone's plans to become a member of a despised minority. The fact that a majority of Americans don't despise them is small consolation in the face of the ones who do. Plans and ideas have nothing to do with it, a confluence of circumstances happened to someone and that's their life. We who were missed by it can't really understand but we don't have to in order to avoid actively making their lives miserable. It doesn't take an advanced degree in psychology to figure out that there are ways to avoid harming others, whether we understand them or not.

Pure stupid chance gave you a miss on having to deal with some issues and having to deal with others. It flatly doesn't matter if you were hit or missed by some confluence of circumstances, giving respect to those who were isn't a matter of having to experience their life. You don't get to be me and you don't have to live in my skin to be able to give me space to exist in relative happiness. It isn't about gods or books, or your personal experience in these areas, it is a matter of recognizing that life isn't predictable and has to be dealt with on its terms.

John Cole over at Balloon Juice pretty much nailed it with this line:

What this country really needs right now is a serious case of mind your own damned business. We’ve turned into a nation of busybodies and scolds, and people just need to back off.

MYOB isn't all that hard and takes a heck of a lot less energy than making it your business to make someones life more difficult. If these kinds of things aren't for you, don't do them. The fact that John Doe is gay or Jane Smith needs an abortion is about them, not you. Gay marriage and the termination of pregnancy and a whole lot of things involve no one but those participating in or dealing with it. Rather than screw with people's lives who have no effect on yours, sit down and shut the hell up while you reflect on the narrow miss a confluence of circumstances gave you.

Racist or Something 24

I've never watched this show. I've never watched it because I don't care to have Fox trying to scare me with fiction when I've got all this reality going on. Reality that's almost completely divorced from this show's premise.

CNN has an article up from AP about a Muslim organization, Council on American-Islamic Relations, that is quite upset with Fox and 24 for their depiction of terrorists who, this time, happen to be Muslims. I won't bother you with the show's disclaimers about using other groups, this is a thriller show with various villainous groups trying to do, I gather, very bad things to Americans. Oddly enough, the complaint isn't that the show is sensationalist crap built on tragedy and horror for the benefit of profiteering war mongers, no, the problem is that the villains are identifiable. Keeeerrriiiiipes....

No, I'm real far from being a PC sort of guy in this kind of thing, I value people by their behavior - first their actions and then their speech - so trying to get my knickers in a wad because the villains in a piece of fiction happen to belong to a group pretty similar to ones actually dedicated to harming the US is plain stupid. Fiction about gangs tends to have Hispanics followed by Blacks as the gang members, prison fiction tends to have large minority representation, oddly enough reflective of demographics. It is pointless to turn around and tell me how peaceful a religion Islam is, there are Hispanic and Black surgeons also, so what?

If these CAIR folks are serious about this, rather than fund raising, they should be actively kicking BushCo's butt. This fear and paranoia is a direct outcome of those people. OK, Fox is a piece of work for trying to capitalize on it, but what exactly were Hill Street Blues, Homicide, et al all about? I didn't notice that the influential movie Mississippi Burning had Black KKK'ers, seemed to be a bunch of white guys. Hey, anybody notice that the Democratic Party of Oregon has a Gun Owners Caucus despite the knuckle dragging GOP'ers image of firearm owners by some "liberals." You know what, there are knuckle dragging GOP gunowners and they're fair game.

Here's the point, if you belong to a group that has some bad actors it's pretty disingenuous to act as though having them portrayed as bad actors is bigoted. If you're afraid to go to the store, it's about something a heck of a lot more insidious than a TV show, like a government based on hate and fear.

Word Searches and Other Oddities

If you have a small enough blog and a site meter you can find out how people from where get to your site. Links are real common, the Lefty Blogs listing brings people from Blue Oregon, Loaded Orygun's sidebar link brings them, and my comments on other sites bring them. This is all pretty ordinary and straight forward, and a greatly appreciated service. These visitors intend to get here, it's the unintended that get my notice.

I put up some pics of my cowboy action shooting outfit and mentioned the shotgun as showing in word searches from a previous mention, the name in the title is currently driving 4-8 visitors per day. I already knew that, but "fancy words" in a title that finishes "for wishful thinking" is driving several per day. I'm pretty darn sure my article isn't that famous, but I'll be dogged if I can figure what it is they're looking for, as diverse a group as you can imagine, India, Taiwan, China, Harvard, Brooklyn, and more. SAA Colt is popular, but I knew that, but how about "how to butcher a turkey" hitting Geo II's pardon of a turkey or hits from all over the world on an obscure little blog for Litvenenko? I could understand AP, NYT, BBC etc, but "Chuck for..."?

Baker City comes up frequently, I understand that living here, but after all, we're a 10K population in the middle of nowhere. State and Federal agencies show up pretty often as visitors, I kind of assume they're Oregon transplants keeping up as are some of the high power educational institutions that visit, NASA, I admit, throws me.

I do thank the regular visitors, I'm flattered that you find this little endeavor interesting enough to come back. I hope the accidentals got some use out of this, at least more than "what do blue collar workers from Ontario, Canada do for jobs" did.

Iranian Stupidity

Every once in awhile I lose my mind and get the idea that somebody in George II's administration has brains and the ability to reason from facts. I know it's silliness and wishful thinking, but I just can't help having some faith in human beings. For pete's sake, some facts about Iran actually exist and are available to just about anyone with a 3rd grade education.

Iran has lots and lots of oil.
Iran has lots and lots of money.
Iran is a pretty big place.
Iran has quite a few people.
Iran has a strong military.
Iran has a strong government.
Iran has fought a bloody war against an implacable foe, to stalemate.
Iran has a populous willing to sacrifice for its country.
Iran is Muslim.
Iran shows no liking for the US government.
Iran has influence in the Middle East.
The US has no diplomatic relations with Iran and has some of its assets frozen.
There are a lot more facts around, but this isn't an encyclopedia.

Now the prevailing neo-con view seems to be that the US (and maybe UN) ought to make Iran act the way we want it to, and to do it while the US talks about possibly bombing the place or at least getting rid of its government. That would seem to fly in the face of the above facts, all of them. Since you're reading his I can assume you graduated 3rd grade and I don't need to point out the problems posed by those facts and those objectives. I could point out that those facts might lead to a different policy.

The above facts ought to indicate a stable powerful nation, however reprehensible its rhetoric. This is a simple reality, they may not be a likeable bunch, but it exists as is, not how we might wish. The simple act of establishing diplomatic relations is a recognition of fact, it does, also, carry the risk of a repeat of the Embassy taking, which might preclude a physical presence. Diplomatic relations might open the door to some talk about threats to Iranian security that might dispose Iran to feel nuclear arms are important. I find it intellectually challenging to propose that a country threatened by another high powered nuclear armed country should forego possessing the most powerful armaments possible. I find it even more challenging to imagine what sanctioning could accomplish in the case of a well financed resource backed economy. I do find some reason to think that recognition of a State and its right to exist unmolested could actually have a defusing effect. It is a fact that it exists, it is a fact that trying to molest it would be extremely risky and surely explosive for the region. There is no cost in reality to recognizing and reassuring Iran, we cannot do anything about it, anyhow.

Isolated nations tend to turn inward and amplify the very defects that caused their isolation. North Korea is an example, in its isolation it has become increasingly dangerous and extreme. During China's isolation it became increasingly dangerous and extreme, today, after RM Nixon's outreach China is less extreme, though more powerful. Iran can afford to politically and economically ignore the US, it cannot afford to ignore the US military in only one sense, nuclear capability. Iran, demonstrably need have no over-riding fear of the US conventional military capability; Iraq and Lebanon are military and political lessons. Its life could be made very difficult; but its survival is not threatened.

The real threat to Iran as extant is cultural. Their culture can only thrive in isolation from successful cultures. The stifling effect of the authority of a theocracy is not tolerable to a society that is not under open attack or threat. Such a government begins to lose its justifications in the citizenry's eyes without fear as a propaganda tool and the insidious forces of rationality and personal choice begin to gnaw away at the obeisance to authority. It is important to remember that the theocratic revolt against the Shah was against an imposed, authoritarian, secular government that without external pressure created a closed and isolated culture.

I do not suggest that in the near term the US and Iran will become "friends," I do propose that behavior change can better be accomplished with carrots than sticks and that in the long term actual change in Iran is more likely by cultural intercourse than isolation.