I Read the News Today, Oh Boy.....

Fair warning, this is going to be a bit of a polemic rant. And biased, politically. If jabs at right-wingnuts and the conservative christian right bother you, run away. Above is a 'next blog' icon. Click it. Three or four blogs on, you'll find one that starts "I live my life for Jesus, etc". You'll like that better.

So, my host here gets the NY Times, and Sundays the NY edition and the LA one. She's off for the weekend, so I brought them in, and with some trepidation, opened them up and read. Two cups of coffee didn't help. Let me say that when I do read newspapers, I like the Times better than most.  Fine writing, and I love the sports section; erudite sports writing is something of a rarity. Despite myself, I was drawn to articles about the GOP primary. I knew it was a mistake, but I read on. Later, perhaps feeling I hadn't been punished enough, I read the reviews of two books, one titled "Pity The Billionaire, and another "Rule and Ruin". Then I brooded. Next thing to sulking, actually. I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the days of Ronald Reagan or Tricky Dick. At least Reagan would sit down for a drink with Tip O'Neill. Now, the political nuts from the right can scarcely be seen in the same room with a democrat, let alone talk and come to any compromise with them. And I don't feel any kinder towards the democrats. If they're not paddling their leaking boats to starboard as fast as they can, they're cowering and chanting "Please don't hurt me."

How has it come to this? Do we actually want the moral black hole that is Rick Santorum, or the racism that is Newt Gingrich? Isn't the "Oh, did I say something rational? Let me take that back." that is Mitt Romney bad enough? Isn't it enough that we got a President that has driven to the middle of the road, and drifted wherever the political tides have flowed? I know, I know, nothing is possible in politics today that involves any real change that isn't fueled by swearing on the bible, but hell....when did mediocrity become an attribute, and intellectual prowess a liability?? It was bad enough that Mr. Cain choose that ninny from Alaska as a running mate, and she actually developed a following based on the premise that she's just dumb as a rock, and then the other woman to enter the arena, Ms. Bachmann didn't have the historical knowledge of a 3rd grader, but now these other bottom-feeders are actually pretending they should be president. President Santorum?? It's too horrid and nauseating to imagine. President Gingrich?? I'd rather have Taft back.

On to the book reviews, which didn't help my need for Prilosec. I'm not going to rely on the reviews, however. The local library will do, even if I have to wait. But the reviews, while missing perhaps the nuance of the complete book, were enough to irritate. The tea party (I want to reduce government, except that which benefits me...), the GOP mainstream (the objective: money. Tax cuts for the rich, their constituency.  The rest, a sop for the masses, a way to entrap the masses, eg. abortion, gay marriage, etc).

So, wish I had a solution. Even more, I wish a solution was possible in which our country comes out a winner. I just don't see it. We've become a culture in which every problem has to have a simple solution that doesn't hurt us. It can't be complex, it can't require compromise, or even deep thought. It's visceral, if it isn't, it does not resonate. Taxes are bad, don't ask me how our roads, schools, water lines, electricity will be maintained or improved, they just will. It's magic, it's gotta be. It'll just happen. Who cares about schools? My kids are grown/I don't have any. I don't care about the poor, I've got mine. And so it goes.

So what is to be done? I suppose the usual stuff: vote, nationally and locally. Pay attention to local issues, the school board, the city council. Be vocal. Write those in power. Live your life like you'd like others to live. Be kind to those deserving. Mock the loonies. Ask questions. Question authority.

I worked on RFK's campaign, and since several others. I've paid more taxes than most people, and don't regret any of it. You guys gotta cowboy up.

New Year

I'm back. Well, not back as in home in  Montana, but back on this blog. I figure the Road Trip is over, though miles remain at some point when I do go home, but the actual trip is over.

New Year's day is fabulous here, 10:30 am and upper 70's. This is what I've been looking for, warm, blue sky, the beach

These were taken yesterday on a beach 5 minutes away, on a day equally beautiful.

Last night the dinner was duck, brined, smoked then baked. Wild rice, cooked by soaking in first water, then bringing to a boil, letting soak, then bringing to a boil in poultry broth, and soaking again. Fresh bread, and some excellent Italian vegetable dishes. This was supplemented by L. making mimosa's, fresh oranges of course.

Today, a day of rest, will feature a walk on Redondo Beach, and calamari for dinner. And leftover dessert from last night: a zuppa inglese.

Hope all and sundry are having an equally good day, and I wish all of you the best new year possible.
Cheers

Signs I saw on a recent road trip

A week ago, I got back from a road trip, 2400 miles. Down I15, over to Boise, west to Vale, on to Burns, Bend, where I visited the kinfolk, up on Century Drive, on to Hiway 58, past Odell lake, over to the coast, down to the Rogue, up the Rogue to Grants Pass, Medford, east to K-Falls, Lakeview, Hart Mtn, Frenchglen, and north clear up to WA, ID, and back home. Anyway, here are three signs I saw.
The first, in Southern Oregon, on the large sign outside a small gas/convenience store:
Cold Ass Beer
The next, on a actual state highway sign
Winding Road Next 99 Miles
The last was in Idaho, a very small billboard, with a badly-done drawing of a snarling wolf

This deserves some comment, I believe. Poaching is broadly defined as the illegal taking of an animal, in violation of state, national or local laws. This brings up some interesting issues....are wolves bound by law? Do they have hunting seasons? Are they going to have to work at Burger King to get the money for license and tags??
Well, you kids settle this among yourselves. Meanwhile, I'm confident the Idaho Fish and Game will be out there getting search warrants, and reading wolves their Miranda Rights.

Sunday

Some time has passed since I last put anything on this 'blog', I've moved my daughter back to Seattle, and gotten used to a quiet house. I've taken a few road trips, and seen a bit of Montana that had escaped me in the past. Summer arrived near the end of a very wet June, and Montana is as green as I've ever seen.

This is the peak of tourist season, the freeways (all two of them) seem crowded by comparison, but once off them onto the state highways it is remarkable how little traffic and people you encounter. And once off paved roads, it's possible to drive 20 or more miles without seeing another vehicle. This is the part of Montana I love.

I got back yesterday from the latest trip, just in time for Evel Knievel Days......Butte's annual 'celebration' of a famous son. It's one of Butte's less-attractive features; a weekend devoted to a man who those that knew him say was a liar, cheat, and drunken bum. I've yet to meet anyone who knew him who liked him. He seems to have had no redeeming qualities, yet a weekend is devoted to him. But I digress.

I have been fishing on these trips, mostly small streams; tributaries of the rivers still much higher flow than usual. Some have been quite good; rainbows and brookies mostly.

In a normal summer, these small streams get quite small, and the fish go downstream to larger water. This year, there are a lot of reasons to fish them: few or no other anglers and good-sized trout.

I plan on leaving early next week on another trip, north to the area of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. I've heard of a creek that is "fulla cutthroat", a statement I've heard before, and learned to distrust. We'll see. But signs like this add spice to fishing:

Connections to the past

I don't think I have anything unique in this regard, but.......one thing that drew me into history, and the grad program at UC, was the connection I've always felt to the past. I was a late child, born in 1946, to a father that was in very late middle age, at best. He was born in 1889. Yep, you read right. My father was born before the Spanish-American war. His dad was born in 1856, nine years before the Civil War. My grandfather was of an age to remember well the civil war, except he was in Oregon, where it was not a part of day to day life.

I grew up hearing stories of life in Oregon before electricity, cars, and most things we think of as everyday life. Going fishing on the McKenzie River in a wagon pulled by a horse with his brothers, camping where now there are suburbs and malls. The Willamette Valley before there were paved roads, let alone freeways. His stories of the depression, when he and his brothers took to the rails, wandering the US looking for work. He had a game-to-game contract with the St. Louis Browns, and according to his brothers was a hell of a pitcher.

I"ve always felt that through my dad and grandfather, I have memories of life long past. It's given me a life view that hasn't always been helpful to everyday life. I saw the war in Viet Nam as an extension of the policies of containment laid out by George Kennan in 1948, this while on the ground there as a corpsman with the Marines. I had a lot of Marines listen to me and shake their heads in either wonderment or boredom.

I see the drug laws and public attitude with a view of how laudanum was popular in the late 19th century.  I drive over the Willamette Pass past Odell Lake in Oregon, where the old state highway crew barracks were, and hear my dad on the radio talking to the drivers plowing snow, the only way they could communicate. I remember the kids from Brooklyn who came out to Silver Lake, to work for the USFS in the summer of 1963, as part of LBJ's Great Society program, having taken a bus cross-country. First black kids we'd ever seen, and at the time I thought of FDR's CCC program. Neither my buddies or these Brooklyn kids had ever heard of him.

I'm not saying that I have any special knowledge, or any special aptitude, heaven knows. It's just that being seeped in the past, I tend to live there, and see things through that lens.

Link to my dad:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=65493319

Montefioralle

While living in Germany, we took several trips around Europe. Our favorite, at least my favorite, was Italy. We went to Venice for the first Thanksgiving, and in March went to Tuscany for a week. A friend from the states came over for the trip, and through contacts of hers we were able to rent a house in Montefioralle, a hilltop 'castle village', overlooking Greve in Chianti.

Montefioralle was first noted in documents around 1050, and was a military and administrative center for the local governing family. It had, and has, a wall around the town, with houses built into the wall.

It has a 'street', generally too small for cars of any size, going around inside the town. I would guess the population is around 500, and when we were there no tourist housing was present. We were fortunate to have our friend, L., along, who had a friend that had family that owned a house. Also, she speaks Italian, a big plus, it wouldn't have been the same trip without her.

Our place was the first door on the left side, two stories, a worn stone staircase going up to the second floor, where we lived. My understanding is the second floor had been constructed in the mid 1700's, and electricity brought in perhaps in the '60's....wires coming through the windows and walls. The bathroom was about 5x4', sink and toilet, and the 'shower' was a faucet head in the middle, near the window. One had to take everything out of the bathroom to shower, and the hot water would last maybe 3 minutes. There were two 'water heaters', one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen. You had to be careful about using too many electrical things or a fuse would go. A couple doors down the street was the birthplace of Amerigo Vespucci, marked only by a wasp engraving over the door.

The view from the kitchen

The hills of Chianti from the terrace outside the kitchen, opposite side from the previous picture

The same street on the other side of the village

The land around the village was agricultural, with lots of olive trees. Down the hill in Greve, you could get olive oil in a couple shops from a big vat, you bring your own container. If you've never had good olive oil, it's delicious. One can actually sip it like wine, it's that good.

Olive orchard just outside the village

In the week we were there we took day trips, to Sienna, where the famed exercise in treachery, bribes and anarchy, the Palio, occurs every Summer. It's a horserace between districts of the city.

We also went to San Gimignano, the city of towers

We also too trips to Rome, Pisa and Florence, I'll post pictures of that another time.

My Sojourn in Europe 2007-08

Late summer of 2007 my company asked if I would go to Europe to work with our German branch to integrate their product into our corporate fold.....be the borg, so to speak. I agreed, feigning reluctance, and stated my conditions: a company apartment and car, and some autonomy regarding actions while there. The German branch had been acquired a few years before, and had not successfully been integrated into our way of doing things; of business and the company mind-set. We'll set aside the notion that I was the wrong person to send: I don't like Germans (as a group), and have little patience with those who don't agree with me professionally. So...an experiment doomed to failure: sending an intractable geezer to work with German engineers to convince them to modify a product they deemed perfect.

What it did do, was give me 9 months in Europe. My youngest daughter, Emily, upon hearing that I was going, said "Hey, me too!" So I had a companion, a 21 year old who had not been to Europe. "Cool", I thought, "What could possibly go wrong with this!?"

Nothing went wrong, to fend off misconceptions, it was a throughly wonderful experience for her and me. To see  Europe through new eyes was a great thing. I had been several times, but never for more than 2 weeks at a time. I found the experience of actually living there, day to day, shopping, getting laundry done, cooking, etc, quite different than living in a hotel.

In early October, 2007 we flew to Frankfurt, a driver picked us up, and drove us 140km to Bad Kissingen, the town near our German branch. They had a 2 bedroom apartment ready for us, quite spacious by European standards, and we started our stay.

Directly behind the yellow vehicle is the Weiss Haus, a great restaurant where we ate at least twice a week. our building is the next one behind it.....built in 1793, remodeled several times.

A block away, the river Saale, taken on a Sunday morning early. Once I was standing looking, and saw some rise-forms on the river, and found later there were trout in the river.

Me 'working' from home.

Ah, the food available there:  the kitchen was the smallest I'd ever had......the stove had two burners and a small oven...the fridge was 3' high, the sink water heater was above the sink on the wall, and would heat about 2 gallons of water at a time. But the food we could get at the local markets. The wurst, brotchen, brot, rabbit, fish....man. There were 5 bakeries within walking distance, all with different breads available each day...geez. And of course the local beer.

I'll do posts about the trips we took while there: Venice, Florence, Rome, Tuscany, Austria, Munich, Erfurt and the UK.

The news about Bin Laden is just breaking, I hope that we don't see too many repercussions from it. My son came back last summer from his second tour over there, and I'm happy they got him. I just hope our troops don't pay too heavily for it.