Ernie's Place

Sacramento Meeting with Noreen Evans and Wesley Chesbro

2012-01-24T22:12:00.000-08:00

The following links are broadcasts done on Southern Humboldt school's trip to Sacramento.

KMUD broadcast on Southern Humboldt's visit to the Capitol
The link will take you to the archives. Scrool down the list until you come to "Local news, 6:00 PM edition" Tuesday January 24, 20012.
(The school issue starts about halfway through.)

This Broadcast is a report done By Lisa Morehouse who works for KQED

The photo is by Lisa Gribi. It is a thankfully fuzzy photo of me holding a sign walking in circles in front of the California State Capitol.

I wasn't part of the meetings inside the capitol with Senator Evans and Congressman Chesbro. We stayed outside and peacefully walked in circles. One of the demonstrators asked me if I was having fun, because I was doing a lot of smiling. It hadn't occurred to me before, that I was smiling. But I guess that I was. I was glad to see such a large turnout, because a few people that I know, who wanted to come, didn't make it. I estimate that there were around 300 people there. That is an outstanding turnout for a small community. To put it colloquial terms, that Southern Humboldt is so uniquely known for, the lady standing next to me said, "Wow! We don't have this many people show up to a spaghetti feed!" I knew most all of the people there, and most of the kids. It was about all the people that I thought might be there, plus a few that quite suprised me for being there.

Jim Baker and I had a talk about the history of the early settlement of the Sacramento Valley. It's much more fun when you can stand there and point out all the places. We get to talk about things that you just can't talk about without a deep background in California history. Some things just take too much explanation if you are not familiar with the players.

When the school reps came back outside, I was with Dennis O'Sullivan. When I looked to my right, Congressman Chesbro was approaching me. We shook hands and stared talking about how many people were there. Chesbro addressed the crowd and told us that he very much understood the bus situation and he was very much on our side. He told us that he expected the funding bills to pass but he was afraid that Governor Jerry Brown might veto them, but he was trying to get a personal meeting with the Governor to explain the dynamics of a small widely spread school district, and how very important busing was in so many ways.

As I was listening to him talk, I looked to my left and Senator Noreen Evans was standing beside me. Dennis O'Sullivan Introduced me, and I mentioned that Robin Shelley said to tell her hello. The Senator said that they were teen-age friends. I mentioned to the Senator that I used to do the refrigeration at A-1 Foods in Laytonville. She said that surely we had met before because she used to be a clerk there for her grandparents(?). Ain't small towns great? I told her that I was pleased that she understood small town dynamics. She replied that she was very familiar with small towns, and their people. It left me feeling like smiling a lot more. Robin has great taste in friends!

Evans echoed Chesbro in that they were on our side and they would try hard to fulfill our wishes. Evans said she had never seen such a large percentage of people from such a small town show up on the capitols steps. Wesley Chesbro said that he had listened to Lisa Morehouse's KQED's California Report and knew that other legislators had listened to it also, they mentioned that Chesbro's district was in the news that morning.

The other, most important thing that Chesbro said when he shook my hand, that he had read my blog this morning! I have witnesses! Eat your heart out Kym Kemp!

Branscomb, Evans, O'Sullivan, and Chesbro. Photo by Lisa Music

More info at Lost Coast Outpost, Kym Kemp

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Mr. and Mrs. B go to Sacramento.

2012-01-22T21:15:00.000-08:00

Janis and I are going to go to Sacramento, along with about 200 other Southern Humboldt School District representatives.

From California watch: In protest of state budget cuts that threaten school busing, representatives from the Southern Humboldt Unified School District are traveling to Sacramento to meet with their state lawmakers, Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro, D-Eureka, and Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa. The district anticipates a large turnout of students and families and welcomes other districts to join them.

"At Southern Humboldt Unified, Stewart hopes the district can siphon enough money from the classroom to provide some bus service, but it won't be "anything near" the 11 routes it offers now, he said. It also will consider charging students who are not low-income to ride the bus and ask families to carpool.
"There's really not many viable alternatives than, say, driving your kids to school," Stewart said. "When you talk about driving an hour to bring your kid to school and then you've got to drive an hour home, that's two hours, and you've got to repeat that in the afternoon. … We're talking a huge expense."
Stewart predicts that without bus service, attendance will fall, hurting funding even more.

"It's kind of a snowball," he said. "We can't get them here because we have no money, they can't get here, we have less money, and on and on."

The school district is making a government field trip for the students out of the trip to Sacramento. I understand that the students are writing essays on why they should be chosen. A lot of parents and school representatives are going along. Long time school board member Dennis O'Sullivan and other school district officials will be meeting with Wes Chesbro. Other people involved with the trip to the capitol seem to be well organized. I, however, am still a little bit confused as to our function on the trip. I am deeply troubled by the damage that not having busing in southern Humboldt will do to our small tight-knit community. More on the damage later. I am going mostly to come up to speed on the possibility to save our community for certain disaster for some local families. It is heart wrenching, in these poor economic times, to see people losing their jobs. If nothing else, I want to go along to Sacramento to empathize with the people most affected. Like I said, I'm deeply troubled by the whole darn situation.

I understand that about 47 people have been given lay-off notices. I have heard that some of them have already found other jobs, but even if they have, that is a job that somebody else won't be getting. 47 families without employment is not good. The job loss has far reaching impact to the local business and housing prices.

The students that are being bused to school will have to find other means to get there. Some have drivers licenses, but they can't drive other kids until they are old enough to have passengers. So, students can't even give their siblings a ride to school. The students that have trouble getting to school anyway may drop out. Some parents may move closer to a school in another city, that won't help our struggling school district, they already have declining enrollment.

One other big problem that I see, is the kids that already come to school hungry and malnourished. They either come from poor or neglectful families. The community has already been providing a "back-pack" program for those kids. The back-packs are filled will nutritional food that gets them through the week. It's hard for a student to learn when they are hungry. I'm not sure what will happen to those kids if there is no way to get them to school.

I'm mostly discouraged by the fact that our politicians seem to have their own priorities and I have never seen much good come out of meeting with them. Maybe I'm cynical, so I'm going with a positive attitude that we can make a difference. I personally know many of the people losing their jobs. They are generous and caring people that have helped the community in so very many touching ways that I don't know where to even begin. So, even though I don't have much hope, My wife and I owe it to these people to at least make a showing at Sacramento.

We are taking our own car, so we will be able to stop and go when we chose. Janis will take her camera and do some photo's for posterity. We don't intend to be in anybodies face. If the cops tell us to put the camera down, we will. I don't intend to risk Janis having her camera mistaken for a gun and slammed into her face like Felix Omai. And, I don't intend to be anywhere near pepper spray. If a cop tells me to "disperse" I will run in as many directions as I can. I am actually looking forward to the experience! If you are going, we'll see you there!

Gingrich rips John King

2012-01-20T12:56:00.000-08:00

For those of you who missed it.

I don't know about you, but I am sick to death with debate forums that invite candidates to participate in a debate, then hold the candidates hostage to their own agenda. Whether you are Democrat, Republican, Independent or other, I think that it is time to discuss the issues and not the "issues". Knute probably won the hearts and minds of many Americans with his wise reply to a smutty question by John King. I liked the way that he didn't even give King an easy way out, but nailed his toes to the floor as he tried to squirm away.

For those of you who missed it click on the following video.........

ADDENDUM: More stupid questions. This one is from Fox News. I just wanted to prove that I'm "fair and balanced".:

Internet censorship?

2012-01-18T12:35:00.000-08:00

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Photo by Kim Sallaway

          Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page for explaination.

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Cozumel, Here we come!

2012-01-13T23:08:00.000-08:00

I gave a peak preview in a post a while ago about going on a ten day vacation in March. We will be flying from Arcata to San Francisco on the little wind-up prop plane. I shouldn’t make fun of the plane because it is one of the most dependable workhorses in the small airline industry. It is a turboprop Brasilia. But, it has a lot of prop noise that gets right inside your head and rattles around. Anyway, it will take us to San Francisco, where we will board its big brother for a direct flight to Chicago. When we arrive in Chicago, we will be about as far away from our destination as we were in San Francisco. So, then we will board a plane for Fort Lauderdale Florida. The flights are all as cheap as we can get, so the accommodations are crowded and the seats are hard a concrete, the good thing is it is all free… more later.

Then, we will rest in Fort Lauderdale for a day, then board a cruise ship to Belize, a small country just south of the Yucatan peninsula. From Belize we will cruise to Cozumel Mexico. Then back to Florida. The cruise ship accommodations will be the lap of luxury, we will almost be able to forget the airplane rides.

Now the great part, the trip is all paid for by Radio Shack. My wife is a Radio Shack dealer, and she earned an “Incentive Trip”. That is where, if you meet certain goals, you earn points toward the trip. It’s kind of like a class average grading system, but it’s based mostly on sales. We look good because our sales were within the goal standards, and the other Radio Shack stores didn’t do as well, so we came out on top of the heap. It’s more than just a little humbling to be winning a trip. When we bought the Sears Catalogue Store in 1974, Sears was the number-one retailer in the United States and had been for a few years. Sears started their steady decline through mismanagement, and we got to enjoy the agony of the steady slide downhill. A man by the name of Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) helped Sears with their fall from grace. It was difficult to be a part of the decline. All of the managers that we dealt with were inflexible, and were quick to point out that they were the number-one retailers, and they knew what they were doing, so, the problem with sales must surely be you!

We struggled with sales the whole time that we owned the store. We actually did fairly well, and we were one of their better stores. We even won a set of luggage one year as an incentive prize. But, Sears continued to bottom-out until one morning we came to work and turned on the television display just are they were announcing that all of the Sears Catalogue stores were closed. We had leases, bills and NO business. We were able to hold on long enough to open a Radio Shack. I won’t bore you with the many sad details of moving from a Sears Store to a Radio Shack. We made way less for a while but we won a trip to Hawaii the first year. Eventually the store started making money and we have traveled most all over the near world on Incentive trips. London, Switzerland, Ireland, Bermuda, Hawaii, Alaska and more. This year, Cozumel and Belize.

The trips that we take, we could actually leave our money at home. All travel, accommodations, luggage handling and meals are provided. They pick you up at your door and take you back to your door. In our particular case “Our Door” is Arcata. Like in, “You live where???” Garberville??? Is that really a place??

I wanted to study a little bit about the culture of the places that we would be visiting, so I would know what to look for. The first place that I started to research was Fort Lauderdale. There were three Fort Lauderdales. One up river at the forks, until it was destroyed. Then one at half way between the forks and the ocean. Then the last Fort was at the ocean. Something about three different Seminole Indian wars. The Seminole Indians were never defeated by the white guys. I also found out that some of the Seminole Indians were actually blacks. They had slavery in the southern states of the Mississippi delta hundreds of years before the California Gold Rush. When a slave would escape they would head deep into the swamps to avoid being recaptured. They eventually formed alliances with the Seminole Indians. Some of them even formed marriages, and made babies. So I have a jumping off point to study the history and culture. It sounds interesting.

By the time I get to Belize, I’m sure that I will know what I want to study there. Spyrock already gave me some tips. Thanks Spy! I know that In Cozumel, back in the 1500s you could buy a wife for 200 coco beans. Coco is still the way to my wife’s heart. Maybe I will go on a coco bean trading expedition!

Bu.. buu... but, what happened to global warming???

2012-01-13T14:21:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- A Coast Guard icebreaker and a tanker carrying 1.3 million gallons of petroleum products could arrive in icebound Nome, Alaska, as early as Thursday, the Coast Guard said.

The Sitnasuak Native Corp. of Nome contracted the double-hulled, Russian-flagged tanker Renda to deliver the fuel products to the community of 3,600 on Alaska's west coast after ice formed over the Bering Sea in the wake of a ferocious November storm that prevented the last delivery of the season via barge.

The U.S. Coast Guard's only operating Arctic icebreaker, the Cutter Healy, is escorting the fuel tanker through the ice-covered waters in the first-ever attempt to supply fuel to an Arctic Alaska settlement through sea ice.

A two-ship convoy was 97 miles from Nome early Tuesday, Petty Officer 1st Class Sara Francis, a Coast Guard spokeswoman, told CNN. The convoy could arrive late Thursday or early Friday.

The Healy battled through 50 miles of ice Monday, she said, stopping for crew rest and maintenance around 7:30 p.m.

During the journey, the Healy has broken through ice ridges as high as 4 feet and plate ice up to 2 feet thick, Coast Guard Capt. Craig Lloyd, who is coordinating the mission, told CNN.

Nome's mayor told CNN she was hopeful the ships meet the current schedule, but "ice is dynamic" and could slow their arrival. Officials also want to ensure the operation is done safely, Mayor Denise Michels said.

"People are excited here in town. This is big news for us," said Michels.

Tuesday's low was around 25 degrees below zero, another shivering day in a cold snap that descended on Nome.

Francis said unmanned aircraft from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks equipped with ground-penetrating radar had flown over the ice between the ships and Nome and determined it is thinner than what the ships had been through so far.

The ships will have to break through about 300 miles of ice during the complete journey, the Coast Guard said. The tanker will get to within about a half-mile of Nome harbor and transfer the fuel stocks to on-shore storage by hose, the Coast Guard said.

Lloyd said Nome had enough fuel to last until about March, but the delivery was attempted now because it would have been even more difficult then.

The village of Noatak, near the Arctic Circle, also has reported fuel shortages, officials said.

Other towns and villages in the state are coping with separate weather-related problems and heavy snow.

Cordova, an isolated coastal town of about 2,000 people some 150 miles east of Anchorage, was one of the hardest-hit locales, with the state National Guard sending Guardsmen and resources after weeks of record snowfall left the city buried under an 18-foot wintry blanket.

Cordova is "isolated off the state highway system," according to the National Guard, and the sea and airport are the only ways in and out of the area.

The state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said 50- to 60-mph wind gusts and 18 more inches of snow to Cordova came Monday night and early Tuesday. Officials are worried about the threat of avalanches near the town's airport.
The oil port of Valdez also was coping with heavy snow loads.

In a normal year, Cordova and Valdez get about 300 inches of snow. "We have received that not in a season but the last 60 days," said John Madden, director of the state emergency department.

About 75 military personnel and civilians were assisting Cordova, with a focus first on clearing roads for emergency vehicles and ensuring homes occupied by the elderly and families with children don't suffer roof collapses from all the snow.
Two commercial structures collapsed and two boats top-heavy with snow turned over there, Madden said.

Valdez and Cordova are among the most-prepared cities in the nation for nasty weather, Madden told CNN. They have extensive plans and hold cold-weather exercises.

But "even with all their best efforts, they are falling behind," Madden said.

A storm and two avalanches, meanwhile, prompted state highway officials to close Seward Highway between Potter Marsh and Girdwood, southeast of Anchorage.

State of the weather, Jan 2012

2012-01-09T18:03:00.001-08:00

Mark Twain said “We all grumble about the weather….but nothing is done about it”. We have been having a very sunny, but cold, winter. My grandmother Ruby always said that, “A dry winter is a cold winter”. The weather has been a sure topic to get a response lately. Try saying something like, “wow, what a beautiful day”. If you are in a crowd, everybody will have a different remark. I was by a person the other day when the thought that we were having wonderful weather was mentioned, he actually got angry. He said that “if we don’t start getting some rain, it is going to be a disaster.” Than he went on to ramble something about fish runs and gardens and not to mention drinking water. Most people are slightly worried, but they don’t let it ruin an otherwise nice day.

Justt for the record, (if I had access to records) we’ve had dry winters before. Sometime in the early ‘70s, we had 22 inches of rain, shortly thereafter we had over 100 inches. In 1964 we had snow in May, the river dried up that summer to the lowest flow that the south fork ever recorded, then that winter we had the worse flood in recorded history.

In the early ‘70s we had temperatures so cold that it froze and broke the fire hydrants in Redway. Every exposed pipe, and some not so exposed, froze and broke. It was a plumbers nightmare. So be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

Back in history the world weather got so warm that people moved from Europe to Greenland. Greenland was so warn and fertile that they grew produce and grain there. They had many years of competition free prosperity. Then the mini ice-age hit. Greenland froze over. Most people starved, the rest made it back to Europe.

Ten thousand years ago the Great Lakes of America were covered with a glacier. The British Isles were also covered with ice. Global warming happened very rapidly between then and now. The only reason that I mentioned that is because I don’t think that mankind had anything to do with the global warming that melted the Great Lakes and defrosted England. But it did happen. As I said, it got so warm that they farmed Greenland. But, for some strange reason it all reversed and the world got cold again. We are on a warming cycle again, the world weather is changing. I think that we are just too comfortable taking all the blame for the weather warming.

I was looking at a chart of Antarctica the other day. The chart showed areas in brilliant red shade, that were melting, and the ice was disappearing. In the same chart, in a very faint light blue color it showed the areas where the ice was gaining and getting deeper. I thought at the time, if the colors were exchanged, and the light blue was change to brilliant red and the red was changed to light blue, it would have looked like a very dramatic increase in the ice thickness.

When I was a kid I used to pick mussels on a rock at shelter cove. We would take a twelve foot long board with us as a bridge to get out on that rock. When I go out to that same rock today. I never have any trouble getting out to it. So, either the sea level hasn’t risen, or the world has raised it out of the ocean. The sea seems to have dropped at least a foot. Shelter Cove may have lifted in elevation from some of the earthquakes. Plus, I don’t think that Shelter Cove is in the subduction zone of plate tectonics. If it is, it is on the side of the San Andreas fault that would be diving, because the fault line is east of the cove at the base of the mountain.

So, there is just a lot about the weather that I just don’t know. But like Mark Twain said. Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

Annoying “Biggest stories of 2011”

2012-01-05T12:19:00.000-08:00

Annoying “Biggest stories of 2011”
Hmmm… If the Biggest Stories of 2011 were really that big, wouldn’t you already know about them??? I secretly suspect at the end of the year news-people have kicked back just a little bit too much and got into the party spirit just a little too much. Sometime between Christmas and New-Years they have a few moments of sober thought. Their thoughts are probably filled with “Oh crap, it’s almost the end of 2011 and I haven’t gathered any news! I know! I’ll just reprint all of last years big stories!, There, I’m done. I think that I will just go sit on the couch and sip some more holiday cheer.”

Who was it that said “there is nothing more stale than yesterdays news”. Yep, that’s how I feel about it too. Especially when the best that some local news services can do is bring you the latest traffic accidents, or where they had a fire last night, probably the best story last year was where Channel-3 from Eureka did a forced interview on; “Who pooped and peed on the bank?” (they never did find out). I was always told that a lawyer or a news anchor-person was never supposed to ask a question unless they already knew the answer.

Sometimes I wish they would tell us things like “Why the Eureka officials kept the fact that Wall-Mart was coming to town such a big secret.” That would interest the heck out of me. How does it happen that a town that knows everything, and can’t keep even a small secret, keep the fact that a frickin’ Wal-Mart is coming to the Bayshore Mall. You’d think that would be important for people to know! I would have to call that one of the “biggest unreported stories of 2011”.

I know, people on welfare will care little about how the economy will be affected. And who can blame them? They need to stretch their dollars as far as they can. Then there are the poor school teachers that barely make a living, they will shop there. Actually anybody that likes to get a good bargain will shop there. You will probably even find me shopping there. But I know full well that Wal-mart will kill Eureka. Talk about “Giant sucking sounds” Wal-Mart is the suckiest. Those of us in the know, know that Chinese products will always be better and cheaper, because China keeps the value of the currency below ours. And… The big one, they don’t have any environmental restrictions.

Believe me, nobody works harder than the American worker. Those that still have jobs are being worked to death. What’s up with that? Either you don’t have a job, or you work too hard. So, China doesn’t outwork us! Should there be some news service telling us why Chinese products are cheaper than ours? Shouldn’t somebody tell us why all of our jobs, and money have moved to China? Shouldn’t some news service tell us why we are losing more and more jobs every day? Shouldn’t they tell us why we can’t afford to bus our kids to school? Why we can’t support a family with a job like we used to be able to do? Why our jobs get poorer? Why can’t we just go out and find just any job? Why dosen’t the news services tell us, in depth, how America is being sucked dry, so the average person can understand it. Maybe they could even make it interesting. Clue one and two; China Manipulates the value of the money to keep dollars flowing to their shores. They don’t have environmental restrictions.

Let’s see. How many of us know that they were going to pave Garberville’s Redwood drive, but our supervisor gave the money away to fix the road between Eureka and Arcata? What??? You say. "Garberville hasn’t been paved since the trees were planted and the power lines were undergrounded." You remember when they did that don’t you? Harry Pritchard was the supervisor. You remember him don’t you? Why didn’t we know about the money give away until it was practically a done deal. I wouldn’t have even known about the money being given away if it weren’t for Mark Lovelace saying something like, “I think that we should ask the people of Garberville how they feel about this”. Unfortunately I did not have the opportunity to scream bloody murder in time, so OUR Dist 2 Supervisor Clif Clendenen gave out road money to throw on the “Safety Corridor” between Eureka and Arcata.

Most people don’t have the time to decide how to spend county money. They split the county into 5 supervisor districts, and then they elect 5 supervisors to watch-out for our interests. How the heck does giving Garberville street money to Eureka and Arcata represent us in-any-way! ???

I would expect the Eureka and Arcata supervisors to vote to fix the corridor, and they did. I would expect the other two supervisors to be somewhat ambivalent, because it was a toss-up benefit for them, but they voted AGAINST it. But, OUR supervisor, who has the most rural roads in the whole county, voted to give road money to the most expensive nightmare in Humboldt. Plus, it is highway 101! A state highway. The state has other means of raising money. The county doesn’t. Where is the news service that explains this to us? Who was it that said that “It is time to sharpen our pitchforks?

But, what do we get for news? A rehash of last years traffic accidents, fires and marijuana busts.
Thank God for blogs!

On the lighter side, My wife and I had a very good year in business and in health. We are very happy with everything but the state of our government. Well… it’s little disappointing that we no longer have a newspaper delivered to Garberville, but, the great side is that I didn’t have to read “Biggest stories of 2011”. And we are going to lose the school busses that bussed our children to school. I don’t even see a small upside to that, other than maybe it will wake people up to the fact that people need jobs. You can’t feed anybody, or anything, shuffling money. Even the rich need to eat.

The feds and local law enforcement raided the heck out of the marijuana fields. That raised the price of weed and the people that didn’t get busted are noticeably happy. And, our DA was soft on the ones that did get busted. I guess that might have been a twice told tale in the news.

How’s your life going? Do you have a great job? I do, so I’m not complaining there, but I see a lot of people that don’t, and that concerns me. All in all, 2012 looks like it will be a banner year, one that will be remembered, and go down in the annals of history. Wanta’ bet?

Happy New Year!

2011-12-30T14:08:00.000-08:00

New Years bells

Wedding Bells

I was just over at Kate and Spences place, and I was reading that Spence doesn't have a gig for New Years eve this year, for the first time in his memory, so he and Kate are on their own for something to do. They seem to think that a nice quiet dinner, and maybe and old movie, and off to bed would be great.

My wife and I, back in 1971, merged wedding bells with ringing in the New Year. It seemed like a great idea back then, we reasoned that we would always have a party to go to on our anniversary. It was fun for a few years, but neither of us can stay up until midnight, we are morning people. That and, neither of us like to drink all that much. One drink and I am so over it, two drinks and I am so out of it, if you get my drift. My wife drinks a little more than I do, but she still fits in the light drinker category. I have an excuse, because I'm the designated driver. One drink before dinner, then no driving for at least an hour. I'm fine with that. NO hangover.

I tried to run with the party crowd, but I soon found out that I'm an amateur at partying. I got up early and worked all day, so an all night party just didn't appeal to me. I was always one of the sober ones, so I was always the one that had to try to stop the fights and keep people out of trouble. When everybody is drunk, there is just TOO much going on. I soon found out that it was wise to start leaving about 10:00 PM because the fights and B.S. always start between 10:00 and 11:00. If I am home in bed by 11:00 I don't have to witness my friends getting the crap beat out of them. I always warned them to "stay out of trouble" before I left. So, their problems were no longer mine and I would sleep like a baby.

My wife and I now find some restaurant that has fine food, but is not much of a party place. Most of them try to fake a great New Years Bash, but fall short, much to my delight. We usually get an early seating, most places will have reduced menu options because they are trying to move as many people through the dining room as they can. The early seating works good for us because we can always find something to do after dinner. That would include seeing who the band is. If it somebody good, like the Delta Nationals, we might dance a couple of times and maybe go for a walk.

We aren't very public people. By that I mean, we like people, but we don't share our private life with them. My wife and I are together at work all day, but we don't interact at work that much, she has her job and I have mine. Sometimes we share lunch and get a chance to have some "us time", but usually we don't get to share much. Evenings at home are usually spent doing a few small chores and relaxing. Most of our "us time" is in the car going down the road, or when we go out to dinner, so we very much enjoy an evening out. I really like good food, but I'm really not fussy how it is prepared, if the chef is happy with the meal that he sends out, I'm happy eating it. I will eat a steak, and enjoy, it anywhere from seared very rare to well done. So, a chef has an easy job making me happy. My wife is a little different, she likes to pre-savor her food, she asks about a thousand questions about what a meal has in it and how it is prepared. She is never surprised when it comes out of the kitchen, but she always seems to be happy with herself that she got EXACTLY what she wanted. She leaves herself no room to complain, even if she wanted to.

Anyway, we have chosen a sneaky get-away to a fine restaurant and a night at a bed and breakfast. We will be getting up in time to make it to the Fortuna breakfast in the park, to help Rotary cure polio.

Ernie’s Place apologizes!

2011-12-29T09:55:00.001-08:00

I want to offer my most sincere apologies to those people that have commented here and not been able to post. I just checked my “Spam Box” and found it full. The only thing that I delete is blatant advertising vicious personal attacks. Otherwise I allow ALL comments.

A couple of months ago I foolishly downloaded a program that was said was needed to view a file that was sent to me on biding a walk-in cooler/freezer. I became suspicious when it started adding toolbars and other stuff that I didn’t want, but alas, I was too late. My computer has been doing strange stuff and being very slow ever since. I’ve run my AVG virus program and Spybot, which seemed to clear up most of my problems, but I hadn’t occurred to me that this blog got changed.

So….. You might want to check back through the last few blog posts for new comments, and notify my by email if you have concerns. My email is in the upper left corner of the blog front page, under "Personel Bio". It’s not a link, so you will have to cut and paste it, or type it out. I can’t make it into a link because those damn spammers will use it. Oh, what a tangled web we weave….

Lunar Venus Conjunction

2011-12-27T10:54:00.000-08:00

When the Moon passes between Earth and Venus it is called an occultation.

I call them eclipses. The other night, there was a near miss during the conjunction of the Earth and Venus, but not an eclipse. It was something to look at just the same. I spend a lot of time watching the sky. It fills me with wonder, it is one of the few things that is still precious to me. Mankind has not found a way to cheapen it... Yet. We were behind a layer of clouds, but it was observable behind the mist. My good friend, Pernel S. Thysteldew lives in Southern Mexico and he was kind enough to send me this photo.

The next time the the moon will block the view of Venus is August 13th, 2012. So get your cameras ready. It is in August, so we have a half a chance at seeing it.

To see a photo display of the Moon eclipsing Venus click on this Link: Moon eclipses Venus

More about Taxco Mexico for the insanely curious: Taxco Mexico

Christmas (Shell)fish Story.

2011-12-25T21:14:00.000-08:00

Well, I went to the Cove today and went out on mussel point, on the seaward side. The waves coming in were large rollers, so I was a little apprehensive, but I found long ago that you can always get mussels at low tide. There was a minus 1.5 five at 5:00 P.M or something like that.

I started out on the rocks about 3:45 so the tide was still going out. I like to follow the tide out. That way you can always come back to shore. If you go out at low tide you can sometimes find yourself stranded out on the rocks with water coming up around you. I hate when that happens.

The mussels that you can get along the shore are small and picked over. The farther out that you go the larger they get. The big ones are on the last rock in front of the breakers. I worked my way out, picking a few of the larger small mussels, while building my confidence that I wasn’t going to get skunked. I watched my favorite rock for about ten minutes and no waves were breaking over it and it was pretty well drained off so I sneaked out and got my limit of the larger mussels.

My wife was mad at me for taking chances, but I assured her that it always looks worse from the shore, in fact I felt fairly safe or I wouldn’t have done it.

I usually take a rip hammer with me to pry the mussels of the rock but all I could find was a claw hammer. The claws are too curved, and don’t slide under the mussel that you want to pick. Always take a straight clawed rip hammer, or make your own tool like I used to do. You don’t feel so bad when you lose a cheap homemade mussel pick. I never lost one, so I don’t really know. I’ve lost a few Abalone irons back in my diving days. We use to make our own abalone irons out of old buggy springs, there was an abundance of springs on my Grandmothers ranch in Laytonville.

Anyway, I found the slight element of risk to not be unlike when my cousin and Oregon and I used to go diving for abalone. Time was usually the biggest factor in us going diving. Finding time was always a problem, so when we decided that we had the time we went, no matter what the weather. Oregon didn’t care about the tide but I did, I liked to dive at low tide, there is usually two of those a day so it worked out.

We would usually get up very early for the morning tide, then talk about how we “didn’t care how damn rough the ocean is, we are going to get our abalones.” We went diving in some pretty rough weather and sometimes we didn’t get our limits, but I don’t remember ever getting skunked.

One time in particular, Oregon, Bob, and I went diving off Dehaven Creek in Mendocino. We did the typical banter about getting our abalone, no matter what. When we got there, it was blowing a gale, but we decided that it wasn’t that rough. So we decided to go out. This was one of those times that it looked even worse after we got out there. The wind was so strong that we were being pushed back to shore from our diving tubes catching the wind. When the waves would break, they were breaking over us. We were taking turns diving one at a time because it was impossible for one guy to hold two tubes, let alone three. Finally one of the tubes got away from us and blew clear onto the beach. That was encouraging, so we let another tube go and started diving two at a time. The waves were breaking over us and we had to hold our breathes until the spray from the comb died down. When we came up from a dive we were allowing extra breath just in case we came up in a raft of foam that we couldn’t get our heads above. We soon found that the rip current was so strong that we couldn’t stay on our rock, but pick a new one down current every dive. It wasn’t long until we were pretty much exhausted, then we found that we had blown clear off the rocks, so we swam in.

When we got to shore we gathered up the two other tubes and put our share of abalone in each one before we brought them ashore, just in case the game warden was watching. In retrospect, that was pretty funny, I doubt that the game warden even suspected that somebody might be diving that day. He was probably home toasting his toes by the fire.

We talked about it later and decided that maybe we shouldn’t have done that, but we all had abalone dinner that night, which is a great consolation prize for not getting our complete limit. Now as a side note: I should tell you that there was a hell of a lot of abalones back in the 60s, if you could find a rock, you could find an abalone, so we were fairly sure that we could find a rock out there if we would just go out. Fun times!!!

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T11:08:00.000-08:00

You can tell me about your most memorable Christmas, or go make a new memory. At any rate, have a Very Merry Christmas!

Winter Solstice

2011-12-22T16:56:00.000-08:00

I want to make it clear, right up front, that I celebrate Christmas, and I am not doing this post to take away from anybody’s beliefs or religion. I also celebrate Hanukah, and Kwanza. In fact I celebrate any holiday that promotes peace and good will. The only other requirement that I have is that it has to include parties and cookies.

Christmas is celebrated mostly by Christians, and they call it the celebration of the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ.

Hanukah is: “a Jewish festival marking the rededication to Judaism of the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 bc and celebrated by the kindling of eight lights. from 25th day of Kislev, in December, for eight days.

Kwanzaa is: “ a week long celebration held in the United States honoring universal African American heritage and culture, observed from December 26 to January 1 each year. It features activities such as lighting a candle holder with seven candles and culminates in a feast and gift giving. It was created by Maulana Karenga and first celebrated in 1966–1967.”

I have to admit that my favorite holiday is The Winter Solstice celebration. The winter solstice has been around since the Earth first formed into a ball of space dust and started to orbit the Sun. The tilt of the Earths axis points slightly away from the axis of it’s orbit around the sun, so one half the year the center of the axis points slightly toward the Sun, and the other half the year the axis points slightly away from Sun. Winter and Summer.

The thing that I really like about the Solstice is that it has nothing to do with superstition. It can be measured. It is tangible. It has nothing to do with Mumbo-Jumbo. Although, there has been a lot of Mumbo-Jumbo created around it. The solstice is very real and scientific. You could hit it with a hammer. I would imagine that the winter solstice was the first real celebration involving a sentient group of human beings.

In very early human history, while Oog and Moog were sitting in their South facing cave, freezing their rears off, wishing that they could find some fresh fruit, they thought about the years in the past, where they suffered through a cold spell, when the Sun got very low in the sky, and it got very cold. They remembered when the sun started getting higher in the sky, it started getting warmer. They probably had rocks and sticks across the front of their caves to keep the critters out, and the warmth of their fires in. They left a few smoke holes to let the smoke out. They discovered that the Sunlight shining through the holes in their doorway took a different path across the back of their cave everyday. In what seemed like the shortest day of the year the sun started getting higher in the sky every day. The Sunlight path across the backs of their caves told them when the solstice happened. As man became smarter, they figured out how to know when the weather would be warmer, and they knew that they had to have enough food and firewood to get them through the cold season.

The first solstice celebrations must have been amazing. It was one of mans very first scientific endeavors, plotting the winter solstice on the backs of their warm toasty caves. I know how I feel when I know that some nice weather is coming, they must have been elated. They probably had some sort of a major feast. They knew that summer was on it’s way and there would once again be great abundance. So, why not eat a little extra from their winter hoard of supplies?

Soon, the elders became the wise men, they knew about the seasons and the weather, they became the tribe sages, they knew how to predict the warm weather. Oog and Mooog must of highly revered the old people in their tribe. Their knowledge must have been invaluable. Just knowing when it would be summer must have seemed to be a miracle back then. Now we take it for granted.

You already know about the Earth is tilted on it’s axis, that’s why we have summer and winter. But, do you know how long a day is? If you guessed 24 hours, you would be exactly right. That is the period that it takes for the Sun the be straight over head, until the next day when the Sun is straight over head. So, how long does it take for the Earth to revolve one revolution on it’s axis (trick question, Give up?) It is 23 hours and 56 minutes. So, how is that possible? Hint: Multiply the 4 missing minutes times 365, then divide it by 60. You should get very close to 24, the missing four minutes is lost because the earth makes one revolution around the sun every year, that moves the sun 4 minutes off every day, while the earth goes around the sun.

Now to further complicate things, the orbit of the Earth is elliptical. The Earth is closest to the sun in January. By being closer to the Sun, the Earth speeds up in it's trip around the Sun. That means that our winter seasons are faster than our summer season. We also have the added benefit of being closer to the Sun, so our winters are warmer. So if you lived in Australia, you would have shorter hotter Summers and longer colder winters. Have you ever wondererd why the ice is thicker at the south pole? Ain't science wonderful? Aren’t you glad you live in the Northern Hemisphere?

Now Oog and Moog probably didn’t know about all the rest of the stuff, but you can bet your frosty patooty that they knew about the Winter Solstice. Now you know why the Winter Solstice is the holiday of the Scientist. Happy Winter Solstice!!!! And... Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanza. and yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Redway, Santa making a list and checking it twice.

2011-12-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

Santa was in Redway today. It seems that all of Redway's children were on there best behavior. Santa said that he didn't even find one bad kid!

The Redway Fire Department took Santa up and down every street in Redway today, so he could make his list of good and bad kids, and ask what they wanted for Christmas. He said that he has his list for Redway all together now and he headed back to the North Pole to start filling the orders. He said that he will be back the night before Christmas.

The Fire department will gather at the Redway Fire house tonight to have their annual Christmas celebration.

Left to right, Roger Ralsten, Patrick Dowd, Ernie Branscomb, Vandelinder junior, SANTA, and Josh Spier. The answer to the question in everybodies mind is Jordan Vandelinder.

Not shown on Santa's crew is Pete Genolio, who had to leave early to go on a Technical Rescue in Honeydew.

Universe expanding... faster and faster... what's up with that???

2011-12-11T20:29:00.000-08:00

The universe is expanding... faster and faster... what's up with that???
No.... That can't be!
But...But... What about gravity?

Three scientists just won the Nobel Peace Prize in physics, for discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerated pace. Now, I've been happy understanding that one theory of the universe is the "Big Bang", where the universe just popped into existence in one great big, and I mean really, really, big explosion, where matter and anti-matter split apart and went into different universes, or something like that. It kinda' made sense to me that something like that could have happened. It would make sense that the universe would be drifting apart, after all everything has a tendency to drift away from an explosion. It also make sense to me that large bodies, with mass, have gravitational forces that cause them to attract each other, like the Earth's gravity holds the Moon in orbit, and the Sun holds the Earth in orbit. So, it would seem that at some point gravitation forces would slow and reverse the expanding of the universe. Then it would collapse back in upon itself in a "Big Crunch". So I keep looking to see the tangibles in this theory.

By saying that the universe is expanding, at an accelerated rate, they are saying that there is some energy force pushing the universe apart, because acceleration requires outside energy. Any action requires an equal and opposite reaction. My big question would be, "what is the source of energy that is pushing the universe apart?"

These three guys also won, no strings attached, 1.46 million dollars for their "Discovery". I assume that they can prove the theory and the results are reproducible.

Click on the following links for the story:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1004/Discovery-that-universe-is-expanding-faster-and-faster-earns-physics-Nobel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

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Marijuana 25% of Humboldt economy?

2011-12-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

According to Jennifer Budwig, a local NoHum person that recently did a banking study on the marijuana industry in Humboldt county, the Humboldt industry generates $415 million for the county’s economy. She goes on to say that her calculations are “subjective due to lack of hard data,” and the estimate to the value to the local economy goes much higher. She estimates the total local economy to be $1.6 billion. By her conservative estimates marijuana is at least 26% of the total economy.

Her job in banking, and her recent study, qualifies her very well to have an opinion. I have often been asked what my estimate to what marijuana contributes to Garberville’s local area economy. I have been quoted as saying “about 80%”. When asked how I could justify such an opinion, I have said take a walk with me and point out the people that you don’t think have anything to do with marijuana. As we walked down town it was pretty apparent that most appeared that they may have something to do with marijuana.

The impact of Marijuana on Humboldt businesses is hard to estimate. Chances are real good that Humboldt businesses could survive a 26% hit on business, if the marijuana factor disappeared. I’m really not sure that a single business in Garberville could survive the loss of the local marijuana industry. So, what does that mean in real numbers? If all the businesses in Garberville closed their doors, does that only relate to 26% of the economy? Or does it filter down to an 80% impact? Will only the government employees count? Most of Garberville’s school employees live in Fortuna, or points north. Most of the State employees live in Fortuna. Park, CHP, and to a lesser extent Caltrans employees live in the north. So, Garberville’s economy is almost only fed by marijuana dollars. Home grown, bred in the hills growers.

Also, most of the calls for emergency services, fires, medical, law enforcement, etc. in Garberville are in some way related to the drug industry, (Not just marijuana).

I would invite anyone to give a good case that Marijuana isn’t at least 80% of the local economy. I wonder if Jennifer Budwig looked into any estimates on Garberville?

Link:
http://www.times-standard.com/ci_19468078?source=most_viewed

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Protest! Lest we forget...

2011-11-22T21:57:00.000-08:00

As we get older we have a tendency to reflect on our lives, and what they were about and what we have done with them. Some of us just get set in our ways and stop thinking, we’ve seen it all, done it all, nobody cares, so why give advice? Every now and then, just as I am thinking that I’m the only one that can really see what is happening to our once great country, I see a glimmer of hope. I reflect; can other people really see what is wrong?

As I watch these recent protests and grass-roots movements springing up all over America, it gives me that glimmer of hope. In most cases the protesters don’t really seem to have a clue. It is apparent that most are there for the party, or just want to be part of something that somebody else told them was important. I see the Tea Party objecting to the obvious racist plants that have been placed in their crowds to discredit them, that, and some of their party actually is racist, but... so are some parts of America. The small amount of racism does not discredit the whole party, any more than the rest of America. It is no reason to condemn their whole movement. The fact that they know something is wrong and they want to fix it is good enough for me.

The new “Occupy Movement” is probably even more important than the Tea Party in that it really is grass roots, it really is America in it’s most basic form. Dirt under the fingernails and all. These are the people that we used to tell “Get a Job!” But, that was back when there were jobs… Those were the good old days. As people are ground-down and they give up, they get into all kinds of weirdness. They get drunk, or use drugs. They no longer become employable, and their "loser" lives become a self-fulfilling prophesy. They don’t have jobs, and nobody would hire them if there were jobs. So, what good does it do to scold them about not having a job?

Back in the days before Reagan was the Governor, tuition was just about free for residents of California. Now, if you are a “C” student, and couldn’t get a better grade if your life depended on it, you are not going to get an education unless your parents are very wealthy. Your only choice is to take out student loans. Remember, you are a “C” student. You are not going to get any smarter in college. You will still only get a “C” in college. Chances are when you get out of college you will not get a good job. Only the elite students, that were born with great intelligence, and got scholarships, and good grades in college, will get the good jobs. The "C" students will be stuck with student loans, with no way to pay them back. Their lives will probably be ruined because they were young and stupid, and they took the advice to "get an education".

To see what is going on in America right now is what I have hoped for, preached for, and wondered why more people were not paying attention. It is time for a change of direction in America. Donald trump says, (paraphrase) that free world trade only works when your politicians aren't stupid. We aren't smart enough to compete in a free trade market. There is not one single country in the world that we don't have a trade deficit with. That means that we don't make a profit on any country anywhere. Our politicians are so stupid that they can't even balance a budget. Now, Don might not be the most pleasant person in the world, but it is hard to argue with his reasoning.

What I'm saying is that there has never been a better time to protest the condition of our country. We are at the bottom in every way. We don't have jobs. We can't balance a budget. We can't provide education. We can't provide health care, because the system is broke. It's no wonder people are mad as hell, even when they don't know exactly what is wrong, but they know something is wrong, and they are protesting. No protest in all of history has been popular. If the protesters ideas were popular, there wouldn't be a protest, would there be?

Now that it is understood that no protest is going to be popular, how are we going to deal with the protesters? The rule for protests are very clearly spelled out in the very first amendment of the United States Constitution. It very clearly states that we have "the right to peacefully assemble"

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.

We have the right to assemble, and we have the right to question our government! Nobody has the right to pepper spray peaceful, albeit obnoxious, protesters... GOT IT?

Back in the '60s and '70s protesters were shot while some Americans cheered. The Viet Nam war protest was nasty and unorganized. Some of the protesters openly advocated for treason, they spit on returning soldiers, called them "Baby Killers. They openly advocated for the enemy. The mood was so contentious against the war that people like Jane Fonda somehow thought that it was okay to sit on a Viet Cong war tank and have her photo taken. Some people, like the parents of soldiers, and mostly World War Two veterans hated the protesters. The mood against the war protesters was that "they should be shot"... that was truly the case. You had to have lived in the time to truly understand the tension between the protesters, who were mostly wrong, and the people who hated them and were also mostly wrong. When the young students at Kent State were shot, some Americans cheered. CHEERED! How is it that we could slip so far? The most Iconic photo of the Kent State shooting was a picture of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling beside a student killed at the Kent State war protest. The photographer, John Filo, won a Pulitzer Prize for taking the photo. To give you some feeling for the times, His uncle told him that if he was at the war protest he should have been shot!

It is my fervent hope that we would all stop our hateful feeling against these Grass-roots protesters. Nothing good can come of it. It is also my fervent hope that the demonstrations should be dealt with respectfully, but firmly. When the protesters are out of line they need to be told so. They can't be allowed to create unsanitary conditions, or do things that might be harmful to other people. Many of these demonstrators have people that they look to for guidance. The police should negotiate with these leaders firmly but respectfully, they should offer alternatives and reasons why they are being told to leave. Peaceful protesters sitting on a curb don't need to be pepper sprayed. These protests are NOT GOING TO GO AWAY. Trust me... I been there, smelled the smells, seen the hate, tasted the violence. We don't need to control things that don't need controling no matter what they teach you in Cop School. Everybody is ultimately responsible for their own actions no matter what the "orders" are. Allowing the protests are one of the better thing that can happen. A few of them, probably less than 20% really do know what's wrong with America. I believe that they should have their chance to have their say. They could not do any worse than the people that are in charge now.

I'm including the video below as to how far we can sink when we start to hate and disrespect each other. Some of the people killed at Kent State Ohio over a Viet Nam war protest on May 4 1970 have relatives that live here. My most sincere respect and condolences go out to them. I wasn't there but, as I read and listened to the video, the times of that protest came flooding back to me, the smells of gunpowder, the hate, the need to "control the situation at all costs", the disrespect for one another.

If you listen to the video, it is very poignent. To those of us that have killed an animal, (I have), or those of us who have killed a human being in war, (I haven't) the sound of the gunshot is unmistakable. You know that the world has stopped for an innocent life. We need to never let our dislike of these protests go as far as it did at Kent State.

Aliaa Elmahdy, Titilating protest.

2011-11-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

To quote "Cable Guy", Lord forgive me for which I'm about to do. I'm not sure how much slack the Lord will cut for an agnostic, but here goes...

I was reading on CNN about Aliaa Elmahdy, who posed in full frontal nudity to make a point. And, By golly, the point was.... She had a point... oh yeah, I think she hates Burkas. Well, so do I! So, right off we have something in common.

I have only shown decently cropped photos here, because no matter how immodest young Aliaa is, I am too embarrassed to place her nude photos on my blog. I am a bit ashamed of myself for not posting them, after all it was her idea to pose nude to call attention to her cause... whatever it was... Oh yeah Burkas. Now being a young man of the sixties, I've seen these kinds of things before. Helen Gurley Brown wrote a book called "Sex and the Single Woman". After her book came out, the women of America realized that men were holding them back, and holding them to standards of modesty and morality that were NOT of their choosing. They needed to make that point clear. The method that they used was to burn their bras in mass. It was fun to watch all the women taking their bras off and burning them. Much to the guys disappointment, women seem to be quite adept at taking their bras off under a sweatshirt, without even the slightest peek at any flesh. Drat. No fun at all, but our imaginations would still run wild. The thought of all these liberated women running amock was still very exciting. I kept watching my girlfriend at the time, wondering if she was going to take part in this great and fun new movement. Somehow men's minds must be highly transparent. She just gave me "that look", if you are a man, you know "the look". She said "You can just forget it". I can't begin to tell you the frustration of being a young man of the 60's and not being able to participate. So, I've always just been a cheerleder for all of these wonderfull causes.

From CNN
Egyptian blogger Aliaa Elmahdy: Why I posed naked
Share this on:Facebook Twitter Digg delicious reddit MySpace StumbleUpon LinkedIn November 19, 2011|By Mohamed Fadel Fahmy for CNN

A crop of the nude photo of Aliaa Magda Elmahdy posted on Twitter and on her blog.Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy has become a household name in the Middle East and sparked a global uproar after a friend posted a photo of her naked on Twitter.

The photo, which the 20-year-old former student first posted on her blog, shows her naked apart from a pair of thigh-high stockings and some red patent leather shoes.

It was later posted on Twitter with the hashtag #nudephotorevolutionary. The tweet was viewed over a million times, while Elmahdy's followers jumped from a few hundred to more than 14,000.

Her actions have received global media coverage and provoked outrage in Egypt, a conservative Muslim country where most women wear the veil. Many liberals fear that Elmahdy's actions will hurt their prospects in the parliamentary election next week.

Elmahdy describes herself as an atheist. She has been living for the past five months with her boyfriend, blogger Kareem Amer, who, in 2006 was sentenced to four years in a maximum security prison for criticizing Islam and defaming former president Hosni Mubarak.

Here she talks exclusively to CNN in Cairo about why she posed nude.

CNN: Why did you post a photo of yourself nude photo on Twitter, and why the red high heels and black stockings?

Elmahdy: After my photo was removed from Facebook, a male friend of mine asked me if he may post it on Twitter. I accepted because I am not shy of being a woman in a society where women are nothing but sex objects harassed on a daily basis by men who know nothing about sex or the importance of a woman.

The photo is an expression of my being and I see the human body as the best artistic representation of that. I took the photo myself using a timer on my personal camera. The powerful colors black and red inspire me.

CNN: Who is Aliaa Elmahdy inside the body portrayed in the nude photo?

Elmahdy: I like being different. I love life, art, photography and expressing my thoughts through writing more than anything. That is why I studied media and hope to take it further to the TV world too so I can expose the truth behind the lies we endure everyday in this world. I don't believe that we must have children only through marriage. It's all about love.

In closing, I have to say that Elmahdy seems to be a very intelligent young lady, and has a sure method of getting attention. She will go far. I wouldn't be suprised if she has women out of their burkas in no time at all!

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Felix! For crumb sake!

2011-11-20T21:19:00.000-08:00

I know a woman who I've always liked. ( I know it's "Whom". Get over it, I'm not into putting on airs tonight) She is one of the most opinionated, obstinate, and abrasive people that I know. I would imagine that is probably why I like her. You never have to wonder what she is thinking, just ask her and she will tell you. I have a tendency to judge people by how they treat dogs. That being the case, I've often said that if I ever have a chance to do life all over again, I want to come back as Felix's dog. She practically packs them around on silk pillows. She is very slightly built, and she has a few joint problems, so she is not likely to be kicking anybody's butt. She describes herself as: "I'm a very loyal friend and a bad enemy." Truer words were never spoken.

So.... I wasn't suprized to find that she ran afoul of the law during an "Occupy Demonstration". I find it best to let you hear her tell it in her own words, Please find them printed below:

"My take - for the record is: I had 2 banners clothespinned to inside the fences on the 101 overpass (they could not fall into traffic and I didn't have to hang over the fwy. to to put them up) one faced north, the other south. They said "HAVE YOU BEEN OCCUPIED?". The lettering was quite large and was not causing any hazard to read.

A cal-tran's woman pulled up and told me I couldn't do that. I refused to take them down. She said she'd have to call the cops. I said go for it (we shook hands even). If she was still there I'm sure she was horrified as to what happened....hopefully HER camera was not molested and I can find her. Short, nice redhead about my age - anyone?

I refused to take the banner down for the CHP too. Cops all over the country are ripping signs down - I wouldn't have tried to stop them................but I wouldn't do it.

They asked if I had any weapons in my bag and, as I was handing it to him I said "Yeah, sure.....". This BIG nazi looking fuck freaks, snatching it. I also told them there was a teency tiny leatherman on my key chain that had a blade maybe an inch and a 1/4 ("She told them she had weapons twice" they said on the News).

I'd had my camera running (in video mode) from the beginning of my conversation with the cal-trans woman and after cop #1 (hey, that's how they signed, "1 of 2; 2 of 2) so over- reacted to my (I thought obvious) sarcasm, I lifted the camera to get a shot of his face. He jammed the camera into my face like someone the paparazzi is abusing and wham they threw me to the ground. I don't believe the word arrest had even been spoken. Now I'm on my face, tangled in my camera strap and with my left arm pinned underneath me. My "resistance" was my inability to comply with the order to give them my left hand for cuffing. With one cop standing on my feet and the big Nazi grinding my face into the pavement and kneeling on me in an anatomically inappropriate way. It was impossible. They knew they'd fucked up and took me to the hospital. They x-rayed me and took blood, cause somehow they can tell if you've got internal bleeding going on (with a blood test? Makes no sense to me, but I'm not a Doctor - but they knew they'd hurt me bad if they were looking for internal bleeding). They needed to stick me 3 times to hit a vein - inexcusable on someone as thin as I am - really piss-poor phlebotomy!

So they took me all the way to Eureka for fingerprinting. They told me people had been calling - but they didn't tell me there was someone on their way to pick me up (Sonia Bauer). So I got a straggling 'Occupier' to give me a ride to a friend's. Anyway, his phone wasn't working so I was just stuck there.

Made for a long painful bus ride yesterday...............and that's about it. Except for the fact that they failed to mention my camera in the list of my possessions. "Black, 'personal item" - when they had even noted the COLOR of the thermal underwear I was wearing. Though they did return it - they either deleted the incriminating video - it was running as I struggled, not to get away, but rather to attempt to get my arm out from under me - or screwed up my camera as it hit the ground with me. It would have been a very incriminating piece of video- but it seems unrecoverable.And now here's where you 99 %ers and pals come in - my first court date is Jan. 20th - HERE IN GARBERVILLE! Please PLEASE fill the courtroom! Can anyone afford to get some 'We are all the 99%' T-shirts? If not, I can make a stencil.

Please - they came to us this time - we want representation in County government? We're gonna have to SHOW them we're NOT just apathetic hippies. I'm sure it is not true of ALL of us..............help me help save the world. It's showtime folks!

Peace OUT!

Felix"

Maybe she made some poor judgments when dealing with the cops. But, I think that the cops are going to find that they made some very, very poor judgments by jumping on her.

I often disagree with some of Felix's causes, but I think that I could have dealt with her a little more gently than the cops did. I will be at her hearing in Garberville, if for no other reason than to witness some of Garberville's history, and acknowledge my friendship for her.

Shed

2011-11-20T19:02:00.000-08:00

I been busy...

As some of you know, I like to build things. Building things is a finite process. You measure a board, and cut it, and if you haven’t made a mistake, it always fits. I like things that are non-negotiable. Buildings are real, you can even hit them with a hammer. There is something satisfying about creating something real.

If you look through the photos, you will see that the left side of the photos has the remains of a thirty year old redwood deck. The newer cleaner boards next the house are the start of a new deck. I started building the deck one half at a time. I moved everything to the front side, took a 20 x 40 foot section of the old deck down and rebuilt it. I started this project this fall, while the weather was nice. I pretty much left my tools on the deck overnight. When the weather started getting iffy, I had to put my tools away every night. I spent more time picking up and moving tools than I did building.

On the right side of one of the photos you will see an old dove cage. The doves had long ago died of very old age, and we have been using the cage for storage. The cage is 3’ wide x 8’ long x 6’ tall. I was stashing my tools in there, but the problem is that everything that I needed was in the back. When it came time to move the cage, the bottom was so rotten that any attempt to move it proved to be futile. In my frustration with the poor storage and condition of the cage I half-jokingly told my wife, “I’ve had it, I’m going to build myself a new storage shed”. To my surprise, she said “Okay… but build it big enough, because I get half”. Wow… that was easy.

So, I started building the shed on the new part of the deck. When I get the shed fished, I will move all my outside stored stuff from the cage to the shed, then complete that section of the deck. The front deck is basically 40 feet by 40 feet. We justified the large deck because it is our only level yard. We have enjoyed it almost as much our house, so the deck has been darn well worth it. When I finish the front part of the deck, I will skid the shed onto a foundation on the front part of the deck. So, no, I didn’t build it too close to the house.

When I started it, I thought about a building permit, then I remembered that it would take a long time, so I just started building. I felt somewhat guilty, because as everybody knows, I have a thing about following rules… (NOT). I later found out that you can build a storage building of under 100 sq. ft. with NO permit! Well, that paved the way considerably.

The neighborhood people laugh at me, and my “grow room”. I’ve heard some pretty funny stuff. But, I don’t care. If the eradication teams ever want to check it, I’ll give them a key. After my wife gets through putting her stuff in there, there won’t be any room left. Can you make a deal with them, that if they check your shed, they have to take all your wife’s stuff with them?

As you can see from the bottom photo, I already have the shed filled with junk.

Pre-Occupied

2011-11-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

Pre-Occupied.

To all the people that come here expecting to read history about the South Fork Canyon, I apologize for my apparent preoccupation with the grass roots movements afoot in America. The movement is happening as we speak. But, having been there, done that, I’ve seen these things before in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Whether you agree with what is going on or not, most of you have heard of some of the rumblings on the streets. Some of you are smart enough to know that there is a freedom and democracy movement all over the world.

To the people that truly believe that “we live in a world economy now” and that we just have to accept it. I understand. You are either deluded by the media, or you are a very wealthy stockholder.

The people that are on the streets in America right now are people like The Tea Party, who have a more conservative bent than the Occupy group. There is also the group that fits most of us that sit at home and watch the insanity unfold on our TV sets, scan the internet and watch for the most recent updates. Small few of us change the channel, or just don’t care. But, we all have something in common, only a fool would not realize that something is wrong. So, I did a little research to see if I could find what’s wrong with America. All along, I suspected that we had no real producers in America, that Joblessness was probably the root of the problem. The unemployment figures are deceptive, because they don’t include the people that have just plain given up and moved back in with Mom and Dad, so I looked up to see how many people paid federal income tax. I thought that would give me some idea of who was working and who wasn’t. Bad idea! I found that in 2009 51% of the people paid NO tax at all, and 30% of them actually got tax credits! Hummmm…

So, I looked up the see what the wealthy 1% of America actually paid. Low and behold, they paid more tax than they ever did since the Bush tax cut for the wealthy, and they pay a higher percentage than the rabble. The rabble actually pays less than ever before. The facts are that the wealthy’s income almost doubled. The taxes that they paid dropped, by percentage of their income, however they paid more in the long run. Even though the very rich now pay more taxes, the over-all tax collection has dropped, because more people are without jobs. The rich get richer, and the rabble are getting poorer. But, there is signs that the rabble are becoming roused. Most would rather be working at a good job.

Most of the Wall Street protesters have mental problems, probably about eighty percent are homeless. New York city now has 40,000 homeless people. I can’t blame them for crowding in around the Occupy Camps. Free food and entertainment. It’s no wonder they don’t make much sense. About twenty percent of the Occupy Group have a handle on what’s really wrong with America. Those few are hard to find, because if somebody holds up a microphone the rabble run to it. Some of the reporters aren’t that much smarter than the homeless. So making any sense out of what is happening is pretty futile. It takes a little understanding to know that the reason that people are protesting is because they know that something is wrong, even if they don’t know what. Most don’t have anything else to do, so they might as well protest.

So, even if you can’t identify with the protest, you can certainly understand why they are there. America needs jobs.

Now, the people that want to talk about Bigfoot are free to talk.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/08/john-cornyn/john-cornyn-says-51-percent-american-households-pa/

http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxee

e

Bigfoot

2011-11-08T22:52:00.000-08:00

I'm working on my home computer that has so many problems that it is a waste of time to whine, but I will have to add a bunch of info tomorrow. However, I do want to get this started because it is such and interesting subject. I am surprised that I haven't done a post about Bigfoot before.

As everybody knows, this blog has an element of "bullshistory" about it. So, the Bigfoot story fits perfectly upon these pages. Most of you also know that I don't believe in anything that I can't hit with a hammer. Those of you that REALLY know me, know that I will believe most anything that somebody tells me, so I have to fall back on my reality test, if I can't hit it with a hammer, it ain't real. As a romantic, I like to believe in fairy tales and legends, but the farther back that a person goes in history, the more fantastic the stories get, to the point where most everyone might say, "That probably didn't happen". One of my favorite legends is about "Bran the Giant" who was so large that he could wade the Irish Sea from England to Ireland. There is some lingering evidence that he really existed, how large he really was is open to speculation, but the birds in wales, called "Bran", are named after him, and the Bran in Branscomb is from the birds that live in a valley in England. So, to deny legend and fairy tales would be to deny my heritage. So, let's go from there and maybe you will all keep an open mind to the possibility of the existence of "Bigfoot".

Maybe the reason that I haven't posted about Bigfoot, is that it is rightfully the bailiwick of Ekovox, who was raised in Willow Creek and went to Hoopa High school. He used to have a blog called "299 Opine". It was an extremely interesting Blog, filled with local history and comment, but alas, he was ground down by the negativism that is rampant amongst blog sites and dumped the whole thing, much to my, and many others, consternation. But, Ekovox is the rightful expert on Bigfoot stories, so my natural instinct was to hope that someday he might relate his experiences.

I must warn you about Ekovox though.... In Indian legend, the Coyote is well known as "The Trickster". The coyote can be anything that he wants to be, he can be a man, a woman, a deer, a frog or a snake. He is very smart, but sometimes his intelligence gets him into trouble. He is very magical, but most of all, he is tricky and he has a great sense of humor. Ekovox? Well... he IS the Coyote.

Once, a while back, I found a 19th century hand-carved shaving horse, made from the trunk of a white oak tree. Not knowing what it was, I wisely put it on my blog, knowing full well that someone out there would surely know what it was. Ekovox wrote to me that it was a sluice box gate lock, used in mining the Trinity River. He told me something like, "that was the base that held the lever to the sluice gate, that when the sluice box filled with gravel and gold that they would open the lever that would let the gravel out and they could just pick the gold out of the bottom." He also suggested that I should donate it to a museum. Ekovox is steeped in Humboldt history. His father was a Willow Creek and Blocksburg historian of great renown, so I trusted him without question, and went about trying to secure my new found historic treasure for a museum. I was thinking that the Willow Creek museum would be an appropriate place.

Later Don Orazem told me what it really was. If you go outside and listen on a calm night, you can still hear the Coyote laughing at me.

I told you this story so you will know that not ALL things from Willow Creek, or in the case of Bigfoot, Bluff Creek, are true. Now that we are clear, I want to tell you that I know someone, that first hand, empirical evidence, saw Bigfoot. He was running across the road between Miranda and Myers Flat, about the area of Elk Creek. This is a man that I trust to be a "truth-teller". He explains it, "I saw what I saw. It was very tall, it walked upright like a man, and in ran down the bank like a man, not a bear. You explain what I saw if it wasn't a Bigfoot."

I was talking to a lady today who does some camping at Willow Creek, she said that someone out there told her that the kids get bored sometimes and they dress up like Bigfoot, then the run across the road to see if anybody will report it. They think that it's a big deal if it makes the paper.

I'll add more sometime tomorrow, I just wanted to get this started. The main point of this story is Robin wants to know if anybody knows anything about Jerry Crew and Ray Wallace from an incident in 1958?

Addendum 11-9-11:
Here is the link to the story that Robin was asking about: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/true1959.htm

To anyone trying to make some sense out of this story, please read the comments in the post http://ernielb.blogspot.com/2011/11/nothing-holds-back-time-nor-tide-except.html

e

Nothing holds back time nor tide. Except bureaucrats.

2011-11-06T11:29:00.000-08:00

Doncha just love "daylight savings time"? Myself? I have a particular loathing for it. As many of you know, I have installed or worked on hundreds of heating and air-conditioning systems. Some commercial freezer's defrost times are critical to when the store opens or closes. So, twice a year I get numerous calls to re-adjust timers. Also, as many of you know, night setback thermostats are required by the building code. Some people just can't seem to get the hang of adjusting their thermostats back or forth from daylight saving to regular time, and in the past, power failures would foul-up timers. So, I was particularly pleased when they manufactured a thermostat with an automatic feature to reset the time automatically, and had a battery back-up to keep the time correct. Needles to say, I started using those thermostats almost exclusively. Then, the bureaucrats, in their infinite wisdom decided to factor in Global Warming, bird migration, salmon runs, and the red-tides, so they moved the day that we set the clocks forward and backward. So, all the people that I sold the automatic clocks call me and say: " I thought that you told me this clock was automatic. The time just changed and I think that there is something wrong with my clock, it's still on the old time". I patiently explain to them to wait a few days and it will automatically change. Usually the next day they will call and say that they tried to adjust it themselves and the got it wrong, so they turned their heater off because they were afraid that they did something wrong, and could I please come by and fix it, because they are freezing". Of course I go by and "fix" their thermostats. And, of course I don't charge them anything, because they bought the heating system from me, and the "setback" thermostat. And, I really am grateful for their business, and usually they are really great people. But, dang, it's frustrating.

If there is a God, please convince people to leave the time alone and drop this "Daylight Savings Time" foolishness!

Occupy Wall Street, Fourth Estate?

2011-11-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

The history bug reached out and slapped my face today. I was over at my good friend Rose’s Coffee Shop Blog reading a political cartoon, and in it the bartender asked the question: “How’re you fourth estate guys holding up working with the OWS protesters?” He was of course referring to the reporters holding up with the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The reply was: “We speak truth to power, but the filth, the rapes, the violence…!” The bartender answered; “So, report it” (pause) The answer: “We… Never thought of that”. Bartender: “Truth, powerful stuff”.

I agreed with the cartoon and chuckled a little bit uncomfortably. Although I agreed with the essence of the cartoon, I seriously questioned the right of today’s reporter to be called “The Fourth Estate“. As all of you already know “The Fourth Estate” is thought of as an unofficial branch of government. Or, as something that forms our nations laws or direction. The first three are Executive, Legislative and Judicial.

The term, Fourth Estate, is actually derived from a quote from one of my favorite people in history, Sir Edmond Burke. He uttered the words in 1787 while addressing the British Parliment. (from Wikipedia) “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.” As is often true in history, nobody is sure whether Burke was the first to use the term, or merely copied a phrase, but he understood the meaning well.

Being the Fourth Estate has variously been attributed to lawyers, the common people, or people like the Queen, who really has no power, but can be a strong force in suggesting change. Movements or protesters have often been referred to as the fourth estate. The civil rights movement that was led by Doctor Martin Luther king was a Fourth Estate force for government change.

Growing up in the sixties, I thought of the fourth estate as protest movements, like the Viet Nam war protesters, civil rights protesters, and so forth. Protests around the world by the proletariat (Po’ folk) is often referred to a fourth estate movement. There is even a famous 1901 oil painting of a workers protest in Italy that took place in 1890. The movement, and the title of the painting, was “Il Quarto Stato” (The Fourth Estate)

Even though the original quote by Burke was directed toward the press, it was more so loosely attributed anything that was a force to bring about change, especially in government. So it seems that the expression has come full circle and it belongs to the press again.

Now comes the rub… I think that the protesters deserve the title more than the reporters. Today’s reporters are nothing more than mouthpieces for their corporate sponsors. The true Fourth Estate is the movement that will bring about change. That would be the Occupy Wall Street protesters, not the reporters. The news services seem to be struggling to discredit the protests. While we are on the subject of Edmond Burke, he is also the one that said: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".

At this point, I need to make myself completely clear… I disagree with most of what the OWS protesters are doing. They are disorganized and confused, and they have no clear focus. The same could be said about the Tea Party movement to a lesser degree. What I highly approve of is the “grass roots” have realized that something is wrong with America, and they want to be a part of changing it, whether it be OWS, Tea Party, or people like you and I. Hardly anyone would argue that we don’t need jobs. The American workforce is pathetically underutilized. Few people actually understand why we are in the difficult position that we find ourselves in. However, I had a friend who predicted this whole scenario with the collapse of the American economic system. He actually predicted that we would be a “Banana Republic” by 2008. However, he failed to see that the rich would rob the poor by bailing out the stock market, banks, and insurance companies. Not even in all his wisdom did he think that America would stand for that. He also failed to realize the power of the press to convince the average American that, yes indeed we needed to bail out the fat cats or America was dead.

I’m old enough to have seen real history happen and real change come about through demonstrations. Civil rights for the black people have been an issue since the beginning of America. Wise people preached for the abolition of slavery. Many people pointed out how unfair it was to hold a man in slavery. When the black slaves were freed, there was still extreme prejudiced against them, especially in the southern states. Many rallies and demonstrations were held in frustration of the way black people were treated. Most of them were futile and widely denounced as foolish, and ill advised. It wasn’t until a strong leader came forward with a plan to bring about civil rights. Dr. Martin Luther King took charge and focused the civil rights movement. He had a plan of non-violent persistence. No matter how badly his demonstrators wanted to sink to violence, he was able to convince them that non-violence was the path. He had a dream, that all men would be judged by the contend of their character and not the color of their skin. He succeeded in bringing about civil rights for the black people, even beyond his wildest dreams. As you know, there is now a Dr. Martin Luther King memorial in Washington D.C. Most everyone views him as a great man.

The demonstrations on the streets, the last few years, are reminiscent of the first days of the civil rights movement. It smells the same. It smells like hope. Especially the last few months. I anticipate that a leader will step forward and show the demonstrators what they are doing wrong, and how to make to right. I expect this grassroots movement to continue until we finally see change. The good news… I have never seen change that wasn’t for the better!

I’m still rather fond of Capitalism, maybe it was because I was taught that there was an “American Dream”, where if you were honest and worked hard you could succeed. We trusted our government to keep the game fair and the playing field level. We were supposed to be protected against the likes of the Bernie Madofs of the world. I am very fond of even the most extremely rich people in the world. Bill & Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, and people like Richard Branson deserve nothing but my greatest admiration for the good that they do in the world, and they are very generous with their riches. But… there are greedy evil people amongst the very wealthy, people that don’t care that you don’t have a job, they would ship your job offshore in a heartbeat if it would improve their bottom line. They were taught in business school to make the tough choices. They figured out that if they controlled the media, “The Fourth Estate”, they could choose who gets elected. They have been very effective. But, beyond my sage friends ability, that predicted the collapse of America, he was unable to see that they would rob the middle class for another round of wealth and bonuses. We are now poised upon the brink again. The stock market whipping wildly up and down is nothing more than the wealthy controlling the stock market, buying low and selling high. If the market doesn’t move, nobody makes any money… Hmmm. Maybe a great leader will step forward. Maybe we can actually elect people that represent us. The government no longer does that.
“He who wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.” Edmond Burke

I know, as a consumer, you are required to get the most that you can for your money. If you need to shop at Walmart to stretch your dollar, and feed and clothes your kids, you should do that. That is simple family economics. BUT, if there were import tariffs on countries that don’t meet standards of fairness to the American worker, we would ALL be working and we would all be getting paid better. But, it is the job of our government t keep the balance of trade fair. Maybe you see things differently, but here are the facts. Lets use China for an example. The 12 year old kid that made your shoes, probably works 12 hours a day for very little. Only top communist party officials make good money. The magnificent new cities, that are being financed by the American dollar, are not for their workers, they are for the top party officials. They get their electrical power from a huge dam built across The Three Gorges. That dam is the equivalent of damming the Golden Gate and flooding the Sacramento Valley. They did it all without a permit. Can we do that in America? Would we allow it? Should we allow it? Heck no! So why do we buy Chinese products? Just because they are cheap? No, it’s because our government does not protect our markets from their unfair completion. The last point about China, is that they manipulate their money, to be valued lower than the dollar. So, that makes their products automatically cheaper, but it keeps dollars flowing to their shores.

So, I have great hopes that these grass roots movements will succeed in bringing forth a great leader.

“People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.”

Edmond Burke

Frost on the Punkin'

2011-11-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

It was thirty degrees at my house this morning, how about you?

"When the Frost is on the Punkin"
James Whitcomb Riley. 1853–1916

WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it's then the time a feller is a-feelin' at his best,
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock
Then the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries—kindo' lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover overhead!
O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps 25
Is poured around the cellar-floor in red and yaller heaps;
And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage too!...
I don't know how to tell it—but ef such a thing could be
As the angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me
I'd want to 'commodate 'em—all the whole-indurin' flock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

The joys of alcohol use

2011-10-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

Kym Kemp just did a post about the possible side affects of Marijuana use. In fairness, I thought that maybe I should give my readers a few of the downsides of alcohol use. To illustrate my point, I decided that I should use a model that was unaffected by social pressures, like maybe animals.

There is a fruit tree in Africa that the fruit ferments on the tree. Animals wait to eat the fruit until it ferments, which show some kind of pre-planing. All good things are worth waiting for! Animals of all species seem to get along great while engaging in alcohol use at the local hangout.

I laughed until my sides split watching the elephant on it's knees while snaking his trunk out to grab more fermented fruit. He doesn't have that "Help I've fallen and can't reach my drink" syndrome. His trunk is long enough to reach it anyway. The monkeys, who are obviously husband and wife, seem to get it on real good, but he seems to have and impairment...

The video is in french, which makes no difference, the language is in the universal language which seems to come to every person (and animal) when enough alcohol is applied.

I watched the video several times, I had to quit because my sides were hurting and I can't push my face back into shape from laughing. You can make you own conclusions about who has the most fun, a drunk or a stoner.

Enjoy:

E

New blog in town.

2011-10-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

There is a brand new blog in Garberville called "Garberville". You can use it for town news and events, help make your concerns public. Generally it's all things Garberville.

Please link to it if you will. I expect it to go viral. I can't believe that nobody thought of this before now.

Click on this link for more info.... http://garberville.blogspot.com/
Ernie

How many ways can you say "Group"

2011-10-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

A group of antelope is called a herd.
A group of ants is called an army or a colony.
A group of apes is called a shrewdness.
A group of baboons is called a troop.
A group of badgers is called a cete.
A group of bass is called a shoal.
A group of bears is called a sleuth or a sloth.
A group of beavers is called a colony.
A group of bees is called a swarm, grist or hive.
A group of birds is called a flock, flight or volery.
A group of boars is called a sounder.
A group of buffalo is called a herd.
A group of bucks is called a brace or clash.
A group of caterpillar is called an army.
A group of cats is called a clowder or clutter.
A group of cattle is called a herd or drove.
A group of chickens is called a brood or peep.
A group of chicks is called a clutch or chattering.
A group of cobras is called a quiver.
A group of colts is called a rag.
A group of cows is called a kine.
Twelve cows is called a flink.
A group of coyotes is called a band.
A group of cranes is called a sedge or siege.
A group of crocodiles is called a float.
A group of crows is called a murder.
A group of cubs is called a litter.
A group of deer is called a herd.
A group of dogs is called a pack.
A group of donkeys is called a herd or pace.
A group of doves is called a dule.
A group of ducks is called a brace, paddling or team.
A group of eagles is called a convocation.
A group of elephants is called a herd or a parade.
A group of seals is called a pod.
A group of elk is called a gang.
A group of emus is called a mob.
A group of falcons is called a cast.
A group of ferrets is called a business.
A group of finches is called a charm.
A group of foxes is called a skulk or leash.
A group of frogs is called an army or colony.
A group of geese is called a flock, gaggle or skein.
A group of gnats is called a cloud or horde.
A group of goldfish is called a troubling.
A group of gorillas is called a band.
A group of greyhounds is called a leash.
A group of hares is called a down or husk.
A group of hawks is called a cast or kettle.
A group of hens is called a brood.
A group of herons is called a hedge.
A group of hogs is called a drift or parcel.
A group of horses is called a team, pair or harras.
A group of hounds is called a pack, mute or cry.
A group of kittens is called a kindle or litter.
A group of larks is called a exaultation.
A group of leopards is called a leep or leap .
A group of lions is called a pride.
A group of magpies is called a tiding.
A group of mallards is called a sord.
A group of martens is called a richness.
A group of moles is called a labor.
A group of mules is called a barren or span .
A group of owls is called a parliment.
A group of parrots is called a company.
A group of partridges is called a covey.
A group of peacocks is called a muster or ostentation.
A group of pheasants is called a nest or bouquet.
A group of plovers is called a congregation.
A group of ponies is called a string.
A group of rattlesnakes is called a rhumba.
A group of ravens is called an unkindness.
A group of rhinos is called a crash.
A group of rooks is called a building or clamor.
A group of snakes is called a nest.
A group of snipes is called a walk or wisp.
A group of sparrows is called a host.
A group of squirrels is called a dray.
A group of starlings is called a murmuration.
A group of storks is called a mustering.
A group of swine is called a sounder or drift.
A group of teals is called a spring.
A group of toads is called a knot.
A group of trout is called a hover.
A group of turkeys is called a rafter.
A group of turtledoves is called a pitying.
A group of turtles is called a bale.
A group of woodcocks is called a fall.
A group of woodpeckers is called a descent .

E

Toad

2011-10-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

California, or Western Toad

Not many people here today have even seen this toad, but before 1964 there was a great abundance of these little guys. Often, after the first rain of the fall, the baby toads would migrate from the river to the inland areas to winter up. They would live in people’s yard or garden. If a board was left laying flat, a gopher or a mole would dig a tunnel under it, then the toad would take over the gopher tunnel. They could always be found in gardens and under woody debris. Every lumber pile had numerous toads under it.

In the fall there was sometimes such mass migrations that the toads getting run over on the rain wetted pavement would make the pavement slick and dangerous. In would smell like fish, and after the sun came back out it would smell like dead fish. The flies and the yellow-jacket wasps would invade the dead toad bodies.

The adult toads would mate in the river. The male grabs the female around her chest under her arms. When she lays her eggs in long strings the male fertilizes them as they come out. She lays up to 17,000 eggs. She sticks them to vegetation along the bank of a stream or a pond. They hatch into tadpoles, and feed in the pond or river until the fall when they form arms and legs. At the first heavy rains they would move inland.

Why is it that nobody wonders what happened to the once abundant toads? Can it be that they disappeared before the local environmental movement started? I wonder how many other species have disappeared without notice, because it was before our time. If I had not seen the once abundance of the toads I would have nothing to go on to know that they were even here.

Just a thought. Does anyone else remember the toads?

Reading test to see if you qualify to read on this blog

2011-10-18T15:51:00.000-07:00

Read the following with out thinking about it.
700 MUCH 71M3 0N Y0UR H4ND5? 7RY 7H15!

7H15 M3554G3 53RV35 7O PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG
7H1NG5! 1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5! 1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG 17 WA5 H4RD BU7 N0W, 0N
7H15 LIN3 Y0UR M1ND 1S R34D1NG 17 4U70M471C4LLY W17H 0U7 3V3N
7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17, B3 PROUD! 0NLY C3R741N P30PL3 C4N R3AD 7H15.
PL3453 5AY 1F U C4N R34D 7H15.

If you were able to read the above message you aren't alone. Some people can read it out loud as fast as regular print. I have to admit that I have an unfair advantage, I have practiced by reading Suzy Blah Blah.

Indigenous female person from a once great mystical land now called the Americas.

2011-10-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Explaining my writings re: the "squaw" issue

By way of explanation to readers, I wish to clarify my stance on the controversies regarding the use of the word "squaw." I have NEVER supported continued use of the word as a pejorative insult directed at Native women, and I am NOT opposed to the concept of changing place names.

What I have tried to do, is to provide background documentation and explanation of the actual linguistic origins of the word in Algonkian languages, and the relatively modern historical and social processes by which it morphed into an insult. I have asked that people try to understand, and respect, the difference between insulting uses and indigenous contexts, and between different indigenous languages, both past and present. I have also asked that people not promote fictional word origins that insult our ancestors, elders, and the many people who still speak Algonkian languages that contain some form of the word, or morpheme root of a word, commonly spelled as "squaw."
And yet, I have been repeatedly misquoted, misunderstood, insulted, defamed, and physically threatened by people who see my name associated with the word "squaw" and assume I am their enemy. I have received astonishingly vivid insults and physical threats, from people who refused to believe that "squaw" could have originated in an Algonkian language, or that it could ever have had any meaning but a pejorative one. Many people seem to believe that Europeans invented the word, and placed it on maps all over the country, with the sole intent of insulting Native women. It is even more absurd, in retrospect, to realize that some writers have been willing to hurl far worse threats than "squaw" at me, simply because I chose to investigate the history behind the problem, and the process by which the insulting meaning has come to predominate. One writer declared that from now on she would call me "Vagina" instead of "Marge," and suggested I have "squaw" branded on my forehead. And this was only the mildest of insults, compared to the profanity and physical threats I received. If we are trying to end the use of "squaw" as an insult, why must we insult each other with it?

For most of the historic era, "squaw" was a simple, non-pejorative descriptive word, a classic example of the same Pidgin speech that gave us "powwow," "tipi" and "mocassin" as generic terms, universally applied to all Native American peoples. It was widely used by both Native and non-Native speakers, and its non-pejorative meaning is amply documented in literally thousands of American and English documents and dictionaries, and both oral and written records of Algonkian languages, spanning the time from the 1620s to the pre-1970s. (When time permits, I will post some transcriptions for reference.)

Yet, in the modern era, given the tragic history of non-Native treatment of Native American Indian women, the word "squaw" is often interpreted as an insult. For some, it represents the rape and abuse of Native women by white soldiers and fur traders; for others, it represents the prejudice experienced by reservation Indians. That being said, there is no need to rewrite or reframe the history of America to imply that every instance of its use was pejorative.

If our goal is to enforce respect for Native Nations, we need to honestly discuss how and why these issues come to the fore. During my research into this issue, I have come to understand how deep the divisions can be between eastern and western, reservation and urban, traditional and modern, and recognized and non-recognized Native Nations, not to mention the racial tensions between Native and non-Native, and the differences between historical and modern applications of Native words.

Rather than twist history by insisting that the word has always been an insult, we need to understand how indigenous cultures, histories, and languages have been misrepresented. And we need to support, not modern misuse, but appropriate indigenous use, of Native names, symbols, languages, history and culture. Personally, I feel we would do best to argue for revision of "squaw" place names in the name of historical accuracy, tribal sovereignty, and basic respect, since "squaw" is neither historically nor linguistically appropriate as a universal term for Native women.

So how we can use the current controversy to further public understanding of how the colonial process, and the appropriation of things Native, has affected Native peoples? When we choose to change "squaw" place names, we can claim the opportunity to recover original indigenous place names, reinforce respect for local indigenous histories, and support Native language reclamation efforts. Out of respect, we can cease using "squaw" as a generic term for Native women, just as we can cease using "brave" as a generic term for Native men. We can educate the general public to understand the marvellous diversity of our histories, languages, homelands and cultures, instead of stereotyping all Indians as western Plains warriors in feather headdresses.

It is my fervent hope that our dialogues about the details of history will result in better understanding, and respect for, the diversity of Native Nations, the diversity of responses to the colonial invasion, and the diversity of processes for recovering indigenous histories, rather than further insult.

The above written By: Wlioni, Marge. 29 March 2001

Please click on the following link for a complete explanation from a very educated Indian Woman:

http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/squaw.html

Thank-you
Ernie

Something has made Suzy Blah Blah mad

2011-10-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

I found this post in my spam box, but nothing else:

suzy blah blah said...
okay i'll try itt one more time. maybe hes not moderating right now. (before you delete this one ernie know atht the message i get when you do theat is that you think i'm insignificant)/... Anne, if you don't get to see this ot read my email I'll phone you when i get within cell pphone reange ... but i'm posting this here for others to-
see too; This is my las t post ot this blog. Not because, as ernie used to say, Suzy's the smartest one here, not cuz there arnt some other cool intelligent peeps here too, not cuz i still couldnt learn somehting here, or maybe even teach something... but becuz ernie's been deleting my last few posts. I gave my opinion of hte indians and now it's gone. I tryed it again and he deleted it again. Why? cuz i told the truth?! He'll likey delete theis one too. Idont like being censored and I don't liek ruels but hteres one rule i keeep, if anyone Zaps one of Suzy's posts --I never come back to that blog again. Simple as that. I'm not gonna waste my time posting to the internet only to have some thick headed lout erase it. Better that he say he's irritated by them, or to say he's too busy to think them thruogh, or anything. But my time is too precious. bye bye spy, oregon, olmanriver, robin, and my other fans. You can read me on other blogs who are more accepting and tolerant.
October 16, 2011 8:17 PM

I'm not sure what is happening folks, but I can assure you that I have only deleted two comments in the last two years, neither was Suzy Blah Blah. The first I can't remember, but just recently I deleted a very personal and vulgar comment about a friend of mine that doesn't even read my blog and would have no chance to reply. HOWEVER, I have never deleted a Suzy Blah Blah comment. If they are disappearing from this blog... It's not me!

Indian Summer

2011-10-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

A little Indian lore from a complete White-Eye, albeit, I have a lot of Indian friends. Most of us live in peace together, so who says that a Whiteman can’t keep a treaty? The world is slowly becoming homogeneous. Sadly, what I miss the most, is the Indian history that has been lost and discarded. Most my relatives, that I knew, always spoke well of the Indian people, and our folks worked and played together and were friends. There are many Indian people in the Garberville area that have deep history right here in the local area. Most of them are not even thought of as Indians, but as friends, firefighters, business people, and so forth. Most of the people that don’t carry their own weight in Garberville are white.

On work parties for the fire department, we often get into respectful banter about standing in the rain or some other thing that our local Indians seem to like to point out that the white-eyes are sissies. I don’t know if they can take the cold better than me, or they are just more stubborn, but I do know that I will dive for cover before them. I know, that’s racist, but oh well. While I’m being racist, I sunburn easier than they do. Some differences are obvious and some less so, but they will be the first to point out differences. Does that mean that they shouldn’t be given the same opportunities as me? Not hardly.

We are in the midst of “Indian Summer”. Around here that is the little bit of real good weather after the first big rain of the fall. Most places it’s defined as the warm dry weather after the first killing frost. Back east, where the term started, it was the period of warm weather that melted the first snow fall. The eastern Indians would use that period to raid the white settlements, because they couldn’t be tracked on the wet ground, and they wouldn’t leave tracks in the snow. Whether or not the raids were justified is a point for another time and place. I’m just here to say that it was named “Indian Summer” because that was the time of the year that the whites had to keep a close eye out for Indians.

Here is another story that was also from the eastern U.S. Indians. It has to do with “Indian giver” meaning something given then taken back. Supposedly, an Indian person would give a miscreant a present to change their mean or evil ways. If the person didn’t change their ways, It was considered to be a dishonor to the Indian that gave the person the gift, so it was taken back. Indian summer is a gift that is taken back when winter sets back in, so the warm weather is a gift that is taken back. Thus: “Indian Summer”.

Another story about “Indian Giving” is that there was a large language barrier between the Whiteman and the Indian. Trade between the Whiteman and the Indian often became confusing. The Whiteman would try to trade beads or some other object of value to an Indian. They would sign back and forth until they reached an agreed price. Often the Indian person would give something to a White. Indians often gave gifts, so they just took what was offered without thinking much about it, but the Indian person was really placing something of value in the Whiteman’s hands, like a bag of Salmon jerky, as a question of “what can I get for this?” When nothing was offered in return the Indian person would take it back. I can’t say that I blame them, there is an old premise that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. But, that became known as “Indian giving”.

With due respect to my Indian friends.... But, if you have any salmon jerky to trade, I'm well know as a fair and honest trader. I will trade beer or money. Charley Two Crows and I are looking for some canned pickled surf fish. Anybody else have any orders?

Homelessness Meeting

2011-10-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

I went to the meeting last night, mostly to watch Garberville sink to the lowest common denominator and see what could come of it. We made some great progress, we scheduled another meeting. What is this a government program?

As we listened, mostly to all the problems, it occurred to me that people really haven't taken the time to understand the people that live on our streets. Most are extremely dysfunctional, their bathroom habits are mostly the same as displayed in a mental ward, and they continually leave a trail of destruction and filth behind them.

I loathe to lump them all together, because some are pretty decent people, helpful and polite. Some have even done me favors and helped me out, those people are not the problem, but the mental cases and the thieves filter in amongst the simply disadvantaged. I won’t go into detail about the problems that some of them cause, because if you don’t take the time to know them, you won’t try to sort the good from the bad.

I have video’s of some of them shoplifting, very brazenly, like they have the right. One man from ***** park, came in every day, we charged his cell phone for him, no charge, it's the least that we can do for someone down on their luck. When someone pointed out that he was a thief, we went back through our store security videos and sure enough, he was a thief. In watching the video, he walked past a row of bright red radios. As he came to them, there were three on the shelf, after he passed, there were two, otherwise there was no indication that he took anything. He went to another corner and altered it for concealment. (Hey, I can’t reveal all of the security tricks that we have to use to catch thieves, but isn’t it sad that we have people in our town that think that somehow honest working people should provide for them.) We called the sheriff and they found him in ***** park proudly displaying his loot.

Now, the thing that runs through my mind is, do the people in the park know that he is a thief? Are they, compelled to rat him out, or are they complicit in the crime?

One lady got up and proudly stated the she bought the homeless a porta-potty for her birthday, and somewhat chided the townspeople for not providing toilet facilities for them. I mused about that, and remembered a time that we allowed the street people, and tourists, to use our store restrooms. Then the guy from up north came through town. He sued everybody that allowed people to use their restrooms for the general public that didn’t have a handicap accessible restroom. If you saw where our restrooms are, you wouldn’t question why we can’t make them accessible. By notice of our landlord, and by our own recognition of the problem, our restrooms are closed. Nobody is allowed to use them, that makes them equal access to all. No access! Seems like a shame, but I guess that it is fair.

The other thought that I had about the lady that proudly bought a porta-potty for the homeless. Does she know that she is in violation of a federal law, making it a Civil Rights Discrimination charge? For providing a restroom that discriminates against the handicapped? Quite a few of Garberville’s street people have been in wheelchairs, what do they do?

Anyway, I didn’t hear anything that I haven’t heard before. It was suggested that we all adopt a homeless person. I know that that might sound a little alien to you, but there was a young homeless person that came to town a few years ago that I could write book about. Myself and another fellow did adopt him. We eventually became his legal guardian. He was a paranoid-schizophrenic with a hopeless dependency to any mind-altering substance that would fit in his mouth. He proudly proclaimed that he was not a drug addict, because he would not stick a needle in his arm. He also proclaimed that he was not a bum, because he earned every penny that he ever had, which was true. He was too paranoid to seek help. He washed windows. As he would leave a job a person could see the other homeless gather around him and "borrow" his money from him. I got so I would let him out the back door with the hopes that he would have the time to get some use out of his money before it was extorted away.

Like I said earlier, I could write a book about this guy, our attempt to house him, his medical care, etc, but the long and short of it, I got an unsigned note in the mail, no return address, other than cancel stamp from some city in Oregon , that he had died.

They guy came and went, as a paraniod will do, I didn’t realize how close that I had gotten to him. It kind of took my heart away from getting too involved in helping the homeless, so I put it on the shelf for a while. Going to the Homeless meeting last night, reminded me of it all. I think that I probably won’t be attending any more meetings.

Class Warfare? Gimme a break!

2011-10-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

A fearful friend of mine is afraid that I drank Stephan Lerner’s cool-aid. Nothing could be further from the truth. For the less politically inspired, Lerner advoctes chaos and a “crisis for the rich”. He openly advocates people moving into empty houses, hi-jacking trucks, moving into Morgan Stanley’s lobby, and so forth. No sane man would follow his plan.

What I see going on in the demonstrations of America, is that people are feeling disenfranchised. They need good jobs, and they need a fair balance of trade against predatory trading countries Like China. China is not the only country that has predatory trading practice, but China is by far the major predator.

What I advocate is public gatherings where people can agree with their COMMON goals and bring about fairness in the work place. Those people that scream about the unfairness of “Class Warfare”, because they think that we are going after the super rich, are wrong. Most of us don’t give a damn about how wealthy that they are, we just want good jobs and maybe a little mad-money in our pockets. The rich can keep theirs for all we care. But, while we are on the subject of Class Warfare, why do the super rich think that it is alright to declare war against the American Worker? How many times have you heard that they had to take jobs off-shore because American workers “ARE GREEDY”? How many times have you heard the unions be criticized because they were too powerful and demanded too much?

Not too many years ago, there was a balance between the American worker and the Business people. Everybody had a good job and the wealthy were still wealthy. Somewhere along the line the wealthy figured out that all they had to do is buy the media and the politicians. They could eliminate workers rights by moving jobs to a communist country or a dictatorship. The thing that bothers me, is when it became apparent that our jobs were leaving our shores and we whimpered a little bit. The wealthy couldn’t help but gloat and rub it in. How many times have the American workers had it rubbed in their faces that “WE live in a World Economy now, get used to it!” and “The American worker is far too greedy, we needed to take our jobs off-shore” Or, how about this one, after people with limited ability, but had a great factory job for years, were told “get a good education and make something of your self” and maybe we will give you’re a job shuffling and counting our money. How utterly insulting to good honest hard working people!

My whole family had GOOD jobs in the timber and lumber industry. They watched thier jobs crumble around them. Now, most of them are out of work. Some are still working sending logs to China. But, that won’t last forever. I wonder how much longer it will be before China sends their own workers over here. Most of my family have very conservative values, are very hard working, smarter than the averages bears, and not very likely to identify with the bewhiskered dude with the blood stains in the corner of his mouth, and the google-eyed green glasses. Yes, it’s ridiculously humorous, but hardly representative of the people that want good jobs.

But, remember who owns the media! You are not likely to see much real objectivity, nor much desire to find the REAL roots of the populace movement. The movement that I’m talking about includes the Tea Party, the Democrat party, the Conservatives, the Liberals, and yes, the “Occupy Party” if you will. Right now, America looks a little Chaotic, but I doubt that we will gather around anyone that doesn’t understand our common goal. That would be, a Good job, and just a small amount of prosperity for the common man. The rich will stay rich. Unlike a few of my other friends, I don’t expect that the Dow-Jones average to dip below 8,000. But, the one thing I know is, the fat-cats will cash in on whatever happens. They are the last people on Earth that you should be concerned about.

Some people saw it coming

2011-10-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

The following is a little bit raw. (Language) But it is amazing that George Carlin had it all figured out long ago. It is also a little bit dated, because he is talking about a time when people still had jobs and houses. Little old ladys should shy away, because they will be distracted worrying about the bad language and not hear the real message.

Town Hall Meeting on the Homeless

2011-10-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

To be more accommodating, we will all be meeting around the communal fire under the Bear Gulch Bridge. No wait, somebody changed the plan, the following is official:

Another public meeting to discuss transient issues

Redwood Times, Posted: 09/28/2011 04:32:50 PM PDT
John Casali and Paul Encimer are organizing another meeting to talk about transient issues in our community and they'd like representatives from the business community and local residents to attend. A recent meeting was held at second district supervisor Clif Clendenen's office behind Garberville Library and was attended by an angry group of people.

This meeting will be held at the Vet's Hall in Garberville on Friday, Oct. 7 beginning at 6 p.m. Eric Kirk will be mediating the meeting.

The Garberville-Redway Area Chamber of Commerce is not hosting, nor affiliated with, the meeting but they encourage those with concerns and/or ideas they'd like to share to attend.

“Both sides will be there”

Oh really… we will shout and pound fists, point out everything that is wrong, when it all ends everyone will realize that nothing is going to happen. The homeless will still be squatting in their 1’’ of dust, by then, 2 inches of mud. Everybody will feel better or worse about themselves. It will be pointed out that there is really nothing for the homeless in Garberville, so why are they here? It will be pointed out that they are treated better here than most places. The growers will quite often drop a free baggy on them. Quite a few people that don’t have to live in, or run a business in Garberville, will give them money. It will be pointed out that most will use their money for drugs or alcohol. But, in the end nothing will change.

The law enforcement officers will still have their hands tied. They have less funding now than have ever had before. They never solved the problem when they had more money, so what makes you think that they can change things now? Nothing will change, but it should be a fun meeting. We can tell each other that we are acting like responsible citizens. But nothing will change. If the problem were changeable, wouldn’t we have done something by now? It can’t be from lack of interest. You can’t walk from one end of town to the other while thinking about anything but the downtrodden and hopeless that hang on our streets, hoping that their next treat might be a baggy, or maybe a twenty. For them, It’s a like fishing in a great stream.

Hey, if I were a homeless person, I would hang out in Garberville also. No rules, no restrictions, no showers. Life is good in Garberville, and you can be a complete bum, and you have an excuse, nobody will do anything for you, you have to be they way you are. But, nothing will change.
There are homeless advocates, and emergency shelters in the more metropolitan areas. But, they make you take showers, you can’t use drugs or alcohol. They make you pray, and they continually thump on their Bibles. Crap, that’s no life. Pretty soon they start helping you find a job and give your life structure. Screw that! Garberville is better, no rules, and great benefits. But nothing will change.

The good thing about the homeless is, they provide our emergency services with great practice drills! Now that it is cold and rainy, they move under the local bridges. Some idiot “Good Citizen” will see the smoke from their communal campfire boiling out from under the bridge and dial 911. He will declare an emergency that a frikkin’ concrete bridge is on fire. Of course the dispatcher is a transplant from Los Angeles, and they don’t know that concrete bridges don’t burn, so they send two fire departments to check it out. Of course we firefighters have been to all these bridges umpteen-million times, so we are smart enough to know that spontaneous combustion doesn’t just happen under bridges. Knowing what we are heading into, we have to call for the Sheriff to clear the scene. There is the standard argument that the people under the bridge are entitled to a cooking or warming fire. Then we politely explain that you have to have the permission of the property owner, and the road departments don’t allow fires under their bridges. One reason that fires are not allowed under bridges is because some idiot will call 911... I would go through the whole thing again, but you get the idea. We do this at least once a week in the winter. But, NOTHING CHANGES.

I didn’t hear whether our not our Supervisor Clendenen will be there. He was at the last homeless meeting. You do remember what came out of that meeting don’t you? Nothing changed. If he is wise, he will stay away. Nothing good can come out of getting sucked into a SoHum fight. Remember the Mateel wars over Reggae? Anyone standing near the fight got sucked in and spit back out like a plucked chicken. You just don’t want to be to close to a SoHum fight, they can change your life!

If Clendenen is there, he will have to be in campaign mode. Estelle Fennell has announced her candidacy, and she is a well know Sohum local with a long record of hard work and accomplishment. It will be interesting to get her take on the Homeless.

One big thing about the meeting that is coming up. It will be moderated by a person that will enforcing order, I don’t want “ORDER”! I want to yell and scream, pound my fist and get things off my chest. “Order” is not going to do that for me. Nothing will change anyway!

If I go to this meeting it will only be because Suzy Blah Blah says that she will be there… Hmmm. She has fooled us before, is she fooling us again????

*****************************************************
Okay, I’m going to put all of my snide cheeky stuff aside for a bit. I always said that a person shouldn't complain unless they are willing to offer a solution.

The Homeless issue is something that I feel strongly about. The people who have punched their own cards, and taken themselves out of productive society, seriously anger me. They are along for the free ride because they know that people like me feel sorry for the downtrodden and unfortunate, who, through no fault of their own, found themselves dealt with a short hand from the deck of life. The fakers are the lowest form of humanity, because the soak up all the resources and help that would be available for the truly needy and deserving. I have, on a one-on-one basis, helped many homeless make their lives better. I could tell you many stories of pure frustration. Quite unlike Reagan, I fully believe that homelessnes, and the mentally ill, is a problem that can only be addressed on a federal level. If a person can’t care for themselves, they should be institutionalized, until such a time as they can take care of themselves. If not able to be rehabilitated, at least they will have a nice warm place to live and good food to eat. Forcing a human being to live in the mud is purely heartless. Now that I’ve said that… Do I expect anything to change? NO, I do not.

Methinks something Stinks in America

2011-10-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

Even though it’s easy to see the results of the failure of our leaders, the problems with America run so deep, and so numerous, that no one man can comprehend them all. Are our leaders so consumed by their own greed that they can’t see the suffering of the people that once had jobs and homes?

People are often accused of not paying attention, or not educating themselves on the problems facing America. Most of us are steeped in the guilt of knowing that something is wrong, but we don’t know how to fix it. It doesn’t take much to embarrass us into being quiet. Some are afraid that their life-long philosophies of being a member of a group or a party may look foolish in the clear vision that something is wrong today. Were we duped? Was it wrong of us to be against the unions? I was, I now question that. Some people feel just the opposite. They are mad that the teachers want too damned much money, and the unions are insisting that they get it, to the detriment of the taxpayers. That was just an example, there are still vast difference in our philosophies.

What is wrong with America is not that the rich don’t pay enough taxes. They couldn’t pay enough to help America, the rich are a moot point tax wise. The BIG point is that our jobs have left our shores. If we all had good jobs, we could pay enough taxes to bring back America’s prosperity, and we could rebuild our schools and roads, and the rest of the infrastructure. Where the rich are our enemy is that they own our information services, and we will believe anything that they tell us. They tell us to vote for politicians that will take care of the wealthy first. The wealthy have made their fortune skimming a small percentage of the money leaving our shores. That is what has to be stopped. When the jobs come back, the rich can go on making money right here at home.

But, things need to change. Don’t be afraid to holler, even if you don’t know what you are hollering about. If you are being stabbed in the back, you aren’t going to see the knife. Scream bloody murder anyway. Our leaders need to know that they had better start moving in directions that will make the rabble happy again.

But, do me a favor, try to at least look normal... people in clown suits scare me!

At my age, of course, I have a lot of friends that have tried to figure it all out. They tell me about the Bilderberg Group, the Bohemian Grove group, The trilateral commission. The Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the federal reserve bank, and so forth. All of their theories seem to make a little sense. But, some of their theories seem to look like they’ve been led a little to close to the edge. They all tried too hard to figure it all out, but no one man can do that, be satisfied that you know that something is wrong, and make our government take that knife out of our back.

Most of the kids at “Occupy Wall Street” don’t have a clue what’s wrong… but they know it’s wrong. Sometimes that’s enough.

I have a friend who is a veteran of the Cambodian War, you know the war that they claimed didn't happen. They went into Cambodia to cut the supply lines to the Viet Cong. (I’m no expert, my friend is). It was at the top of the Flower Child anti-war demonstrations. The young demonstrators went nuts when they found out that troupes went into Cambodia. There was a major demonstration at Kent State in Ohio. Four young kids were killed for demonstrating against the war. The tide turned, and America pulled out of the Viet Nam War.

The point that I’m Making here is NOT that the flower children were right. In some cases they were demonstrating for the Viet Cong. They spit on our soldiers, and called them baby killers. There was no focus of the demonstration and no great leaders. One example of their ignorance is something that young Jane Fonda paid for until this day. She had her picture taken sitting on a Viet Cong tank! I was shocked, America was shocked, just about anybody would tell you that it was the wrong thing to do, but she was a hero to a small group of the Flower Children.

You may think that I’m way off of the subject here, but it is vitally important to my point. No matter how wrong, how stupid, how disrespectful, that the war protestors were… THEY STOPPED THE WAR!

The people in "Occupy Wall Street" are displaying the same look as the War protesters of the ‘60’s. So, when I say that they have a chance. It’s because I been there, seen that… several times before, I don’t think that this will go away, no matter what the Main Stream Media says.

Skippy analyzes Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

I asked the question, this is Skippy's answer. Thank-you skippy.

Skippy has left a new comment on your post: "UNITED States of America":

Ernie, how do we make sense out of this Wall Street protest and the UNITED States of America? I'll give it a stab.

I think we’re witnessing America's first true Internet-era movement. The mainstream media seem determined in casting these folks as a random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos. As journalists have pointed out, kids are criticizing corporate America while tweeting through their iPhones.

Are they Communists, Ernie? Anarchists? The unemployed? Union workers? College graduates left hanging without jobs, saddled in debt? The ‘99%’? Those showing up just for the fun and camaraderie? All of the above— and more.

While the Tea Party movement originated from the ‘right,’ this movement centers more from the left, I think. Their common denominator is of being disenfranchised while demanding accountability. Unlike civil rights protests, labor marches, or political campaigns, this one doesn’t take its cue from a charismatic leader, express itself in bumper-sticker-length goals, nor understand itself as having a particular endpoint. It’s not a traditional protest-- or narrative arc-- as we’ve seen in the past.

As one protester explained, "As far as seeing it end, I wouldn't like to see it end. I would like to see the conversation continue."

Yes, there's a wide array of complaints, demands, and goals from the occupiers: the collapsing environment, labor standards, housing policy, government corruption, World Bank lending practices, unemployment, increasing wealth disparity, corporate excess and bailouts, and so on. Are they ready to articulate exactly what that problem is and how to address it? No, not yet, Ernie. But neither are the Congress, the President, corporate America and Wall Street.

Anyone who says they have no idea what these folks are protesting is not being fully truthful. Whether we agree with them or not, we all know what they’re upset about. Occupy Wall Street is a social movement spreading through contagion, creating as many questions as it answers, and aiming to force a reconsideration of the way the nation does business. Yes, it’s as unwieldy, paradoxical, and inconsistent as those of us living in the real world. Precisely. This movement is merely pointing the way.

And we're watching it, Ernie, because it offers hope to those of us who previously felt alone in our belief that the current economic system is broken.

That's my two cents-- for the 99%, Ernie.

This is Ernie.
I was watching a news broadcast this morning and they were interviewing various people. It looked to me like they were purposefully looking for people to give dumb answers, which must have been true, because they put them on the air. But, they did ask one young man wearing a suit and a tie. He was involved in some way with the Occupy Wall Street demonstration. The question that they were asking is "Is this a Liberal Tea Party movement". He gave the answer (paraphrase) "It would be a mistake to label it as anything. The surface of this demonstration speaks for itself. People are unhappy with the way the country is being governed. Its not a "party" idea. it's a populace movement."

UNITED States of America

2011-10-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

There was a time that I was against the unions. They seemed to be too powerful and filled with thuggery. They participated in seniority instead of accomplishment. There was much graft and corruption in the management. I.E. the pension funds continually disappearing. If things weren’t going their way they would simply go on strike.

Then, Nixon went knocking on the bamboo curtain with the supposed premise that we could open doors to new markets, and help America prosper. It was a great idea, and heartily welcomed by the American manufacturing industries. They assumed that they would have new markets for their products. Little did they know that the great red beast would start sucking on our bones. Our bones are now almost licked clean and people are starting to wonder what happened to America. The “world market” is totally controlled by China. There is no way that we can ever compete against them without trade laws and restrictions. But China knows how to play the game. They just keep the Judas Goat (Our stock market) well fed and they will keep leading us lambs to the slaughter.

Reagan dealt the death knell to the unions when he fired all of the air traffic controllers and replaced them with non-union workers. It was a widely received signal that it was over for the American worker. Americans are so hungry for jobs that they will now cut each others throats for a job, any job, not just good jobs. The American worker has been defeated for twenty years now. The unions are now a moot point, the have no power. The can’t strike because the workers will be easily replaced by equally skilled, or readily trained workers.

It’s amazing what a human being will do to survive, pride, loyalty and honor will go right out the window when your family is suffering.

Now we are forced with forming a new country, where our politicians represent US. How do we defeat the wealth and influence of Wall Street? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a Union representing us? We need to remember what brought the United States of America together. UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL. We must stand together against the gathering tyranny of the greedy.

They say that if we impose tariffs, or import restrictions, that other countries will impose restrictions on us, and stop buying our airplanes and heavy equipment. I disagree, I think that we need to impose restrictions now, and subsidize our industries if we have to. We now have little electronics industry in the United States. The T.V. manufacturing industry was the first to go off-shore. Reagan opened the doors to trade with Japan. Japan subsidized their T.V. industry and “dumped” T.V.s on the American market. There was no way the American electronics industry could compete. People were amazed at how much better a Japanese T.V. was for the money than an American T.V. for the same price. ( Remember Sony?) Yeah, that’s because the Japanese government was paying for the difference in quality. Now that our industry in gone, they can charge anything they want. But, the Devil in the details is, that the Communist counties are doing the same thing to the whole free world. They subsidize ALL of their products by keeping the value of their currency below that of the free world. They can do that, they are a Communist country! I won’t even go into all that is wrong with trade with China. But, it is significant and onerous.

You will hear a lot about the evils of “Class Warfare”. It reminds me so much of Marie Antoinette, when she was asked what should be done about the poor starving people. She replied “let them eat cake”. To some of us that might sound like a good party, but back then “cake” was grain paste, made into a patty and roasted over a fire. That’s all they had to eat. In Antoinette’s mind. That’s all they needed, and couldn’t understand what they were complaining about. She was later executed by guillotine.

I don’t think a guillotine is needed yet, but we do need to do something more that complain. It is time... we’ve almost hit bottom. I seem to remember that some Russian fellowstarved millions of his own people to death. It seems that they wanted something. Jobs maybe?

Wall Street Protest

2011-10-03T14:27:00.000-07:00

We're mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore... Now all we need is a leader. The more that the cops try to slap down the protest, the more protesters seem to want to get involved. I wish I was a kid again. I would catch a bus to wall Street. They are finally protesting the right thing, Wall Street corruption. Why should we be ashamed of a "Class War"? Wall Street, long ago, launched an undeclared war on the working man. Sorry, I know that technically I am a business man, but if working people don't have jobs, I won't long have a business.

The populace of America is well aware that the wealth has been stolen by Wall Street. We are no longer going to be satisfied to live on Cake. If I were a Wall Street fat cat right now, I would be feeling a lot like Marie Antoinette. Their days are numbered. With the right leader, change will be as swift as a guillotine.

The Tea Party movement had promise in the beginning, because it was a true grass roots movement, but the Tea Party and the Republicans fell in love and ran off together. This latest movement will succeed, because it is founded in youth. Civil Rights succeeded because the youth of America was involved. The Viet Nam War was stopped by the young people.

I was watching Fox News this morning ( Yeah, I love the irony) They had a man that said that the kids are protesting Capitalism, and what the kids were advocating was Communism. The irony is that the "Capitalists" on Wall Street are partnered with China, a Communist country that can provide labor much cheaper than America, because they can control the value of their currency. China can always guarantee to deliver a cheaper product. America can NEVER truly compete with them. We need leaders that can regulate trade, and keep it in balance. We can't continue to borrow money from our children and give it to a Communist country.

This Wall Street movement will succeed in a heartbeat, as long as they don’t allow themselves to be hijacked by any Party. Not Democrat, not Republican, but some sort of a new party, and a new leader, not already owned by Wall Street. Can an unfunded party, that lacks the support of main street media succeed? Can a party without Wall Street backing Succeed? Time will tell.

I’ve never been so optimistic. It seems like the 60’s to me. I wish I was young again.

Who would you choose as a leader?

Meanwhile, sign up at Ernie's Place for an Occupy Redwood Drive protest. Our petition will be proof that we protested. That way we won't have to protest in the rain. The great thing is, if you don't like it, you don't have to sign. But think of all the people that wished that they had signed the Declaration of Independence.
Just leave a comment about what you would like to make Better about America. You can even pretend that you are Thomas Jefferson and be Anonymous.

Link to CNN report on Wall Street Protest

Bless My Sole!

2011-10-01T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I did a "Good Food Report". So here's a "Great Food Report!
First, my wife and I hardly ever eat out at restaurants. When we do, we mostly go out on VERY special occasions. So, I’m not to familiar with the dinner fair around Garberville. We eat lunch out fairly often. The Calico’s restaurant has one of the best “salmon Burgers” that I’ve ever eaten. The Eel River café has a “big bird” that is to die for. The Eel river also has better cheeseburgers than the top rated place in Eureka. (I won’t say where in Eureka, because there cheeseburgers are also good!) I like the “Turkey Dip” sandwich at the Water Wheel. The Paradise Grill has great cheese burgers, as does the House Of Burgess. Home Cookin’ has great take and bake pizza. And Sicilito’s has great hot pizza. At Cecil's I can't seem to get past the catfish, my wife usually has a fillet. I know that I’m leaving some great places out, but I’m getting full. Maybe some of you have some good recommendations of other places.

But, to get around to what this is all about. My wife and I found ourselves in Eureka last Wednesday evening, and it was too late to come home to eat. It was Janis’ turn to choose a restaurant, and she chose the Bless My Soul Café, on 5th street. I was surprised that she chose that café because she doesn’t like spicy food. Myself? I love spicy, so I didn’t argue. I should have known that there would be “sissy food” on the menu.

We were greeted at the door by “Sweet Daughter Desiree”. She told us to sit anywhere, so we chose a table by the front window. Desiree came to take our order. Janis knew exactly the red wine she wanted, but I wanted a beer. I don’t like the heavily hopped flavored bitter beers. I prefer something more mildly flavored. I didn’t see any thing that I liked on the menu, so I asked Desiree what she had that was like a certain “well known beer”. She told me that they didn’t have that beer because it was bought out by a major brewery, and she preferred to stock private label beers. I liked that, I like to see the small guy have a chance. She recommended a German wheat beer that was drop-dead delicious. My evening was off to a great start.

The menu came and Desiree told us about their specials and said that they shopped for, and prepared their food daily. I noticed that the restaurant was neat and clean. The table that we sat at had a full view of the neat clean, well ordered kitchen. I also Liked that.

The menu had so many great choices that I turned into a girl, and couldn’t make up my mind. Desiree was very helpful in recommending things that she thought that I would like. She was right all the way. I ordered the batter fried jerk-chicken breast. She warned me that it was spicy, I did notice that it had a two pepper rating after the menu listing. Quite a few listings had one pepper, and the hot sausage dishes had a three pepper rating. I wanted to order the sausage, but that third pepper scared me off.

We had a few choices like soup or salad and two side dishes. I had potato zucchini soup, with the appropriate other ingredients. It was delicious. The meal also came with a corn muffin. The two sides that I ordered was Creole Corn, and Sautéed Cabbage.

My wife stared reading down the menu until she got to the garlic beef. She decided instantly what she wanted she made me look more like an indecisive little girl when she ordered instantly. She ordered a side order of batter fried dill pickles. She had then when she was in Louisiana and wanted me to try them. The first one is great. The second one is interesting, the third one you eat because there are so darn many and you don’t want to be wasteful. So we took the rest home.

I was encouraged by Janis’ side order, so I ordered Crab Cakes. Any one of the dishes would have filled me up, so I also took one of the crab cakes home. I tried to guess the ingredients, but Desiree just grinned at me. It seems that the recipes around there are top secret. But, you can buy most of Sweet Mama Janisse’s secret sauces.

The jerked chicken was delicious, it was topped with caramelized bananas, a very interesting combination of sweet and spicy.

As we were waiting for our meal, Sweet Mama Janisse herself came out to our table and talked to us. It seems that we have many friends in common. I always have too many questions for interesting people, and I was able to ferret most of her life story out of her, which she shared with us graciously.

She knows Taj Mahal, and of course he recommends her café, and sings her praises. He is quoted as saying “The best food in the world”. He would know, he’s been everywhere.

If you watch the bottom video she talks about Oysters Rockefeller. She says that she doesn’t know what the bed of rock salt is for, but to follow the recipe anyway. I could have told her!!! The salt keeps the shells from rocking and turning over. She should have asked me. Oh well… Maybe she reads my Blog!

My jerked chicken was outstanding, but I told Desiree that it didn’t seem like it was a full two peppers hot, and she said that she was considering lowering the rating to one and a half.

Try it you will like it.

Oh, on a side note. You know that squeally baby that follows me around where ever I eat. Yep, you guessed it. There was an early shift baby and a late shift baby. They were seated far enough away that they were not a bother. My wife and I got a big kick out of the crying baby, it fit right in. They had some really great Guitar Blues playing over the speaker system. It came out: “My baby done left me” Waaaaaaa “My baby done left me”. Waaaaaaaa…. Somehow it just fit in, and it seemed like part of the fun.
If you go there, tell Desiree that I sent you. She might not remember my first name but she will remember “Branscomb”. She has a friend that owns property there. She connected my name to the town and asked the de-rigur Question, “Are you related to the town”? I told yes, and I even know where all the bodies are buried. I thought that would fit right in with the “Voodoo Pudding”. That’s a highly chocolate dessert that Janis had.

Vented frustrations and needed information.

2011-09-23T14:09:00.000-07:00

Spam and spammers:
Lately, I have been getting a lot of junk-type email, and comments on my blog. I know, I set myself up for it. Having a blog-site opens doors for many spammers. I do what I can to eliminate Spam. I have all comments forwarded to my email account, so I can see what has been placed in the back pages. When I find them, and I have the time, I delete them. But, some get through anyway, so hopefully you can just ignore them.

The spammers have a bunch of “pat” comments that will readily fit any blog. They will say something like, “Very thoughtful post, thank-you!” then they sign it something like, “Ralph’s Tea Cup Shop”, which is a link to an online tea cup sales site. Most people don’t bother to click the link, but there are other people that just have to click that darn link, like the people that can’t stand to ignore a phone call. If the phone rings, they have to answer. When somebody clicks that link a computer records that a successful forward came from “Ernie’s Place”. That read-out encourages the spammers to put more ads in my blog. So, don’t click on obvious spam, unless you just can’t resist.

Joining face-book was a big, big mistake for me. Yes, I enjoy getting back in touch with some of my long lost friends, but I get emails from people like “Lady Madonna” who wants to be my “friend.” Lady encloses a very provocative photo of herself. She doesn’t look like anybody that I know, and she probably wouldn’t like to know me either unless I paid her well to know me…. Oh!, That’s it… She’s in some kind of business….

Then I get notes from face-book that all my friends have some game going with farm animals and I should join them in the fun. I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like more fun than I’m all ready having. My friends must have pretty boring lives. Sometimes I wish that I could just go back to not being a face-bookie.

Post office closing:
All this brings me up to the post office. The post office claims that they are losing big-time money, because everybody started using email. That’s probably true. I never send letters to my friends, but I do email them because it works so well. So, maybe it’s just a sign of the times, and we need to get over it.

I know that it is not true of everybody, but my life would be better-off if the post office would disappear from the face of the earth. They send me more junk-mail than you can ever believe. All of the junk is cleverly disguised as “IMPORTANT MAIL” or “check enclosed”, or something else that you know full well is nothing but advertising B.S. But, some of us have to open it anyway, and be mad that we were so stupid, and that we were duped again.

At least when I open a letter, I know that it isn’t that dang tricky Nigerian that emailed me and almost talked me into sending him money to ship me his poor dead fathers gold, the gold that the government won’t let him keep unless he shares it with me. I had the shipping money in an envelope, ready to send, then I found another person in the post office had gotten the same email from Mr. Tricky. I was so mad that he was trying to share his money with everybody that I figured out that he didn’t have enough money to share with me. So, I didn’t send him the shipping money. What a dummy he was, to tell EVERYBODY… Duhhh.

The dratted homeless:
But of course, I have to start out a post like this with a few disclaimers. I probably have more experience with the homeless than most of you, after all they live on my business doorstep. Now, I’m not without compassion, I’ve also probably helped more of the homeless than most of you, so I don’t owe anybody an apology. I call them “homeless” because that is a term that everybody understands. Recently, I’ve heard some very nice names that seem to sooth peoples sensibilities. “Houseless”, “Pre-employed”, and other confusing labels. The one I like best was “alter-sheltered” Whatever anyone calls them, it will eventually become derogatory, so we might as well stick with “homeless” because it sounds better than “bum”.
Lately, I saw a very indignant post about how it would be if I were put on the street, The poster called herself “Den Mom”, which bothers me right off. It seems to me that if you have something to say, you should sign it, especially if you are suggesting that you can solve the homeless problem. You remove half of your credentials with most people when you don’t sign something.

Anyway, Den Moms advice is as follows:
“I think we should do a study. Why don’t we pick 5 people from all walks of “SHELTER”, and place them on the streets of So.hum. with no money, We will give you a very nice sleeping bag, and a back pack if you really want one (which is a sign you are homeless).No contact with any of your love ones, u are on your own and at the mercy of your community. We will keep a journal on how each day went and how easy it was to do the basic human rights, sleep, eat, and we already know we have no public bathroom, so write about how it went for you when your body wants to function. Write about how you feel alone and how you are looked at and judged by the way you look. how many times you were told to move on by our local sheriff. How hungry you got? How you survived….how it feels to live every emotion in front of your community. I think we would learn so much about this topic and what So.hum is lacking. Just skip the thought of a shower, not going to happen. I know this experience will be life changing, and some of us on here need our thoughts about this topic adjusted…
Any takers?”

I did take the liberty of correcting a few typos above, but I assure you, I never changed anything besides changing a few forgotten spaces and the like.

Den Mom's suggestion looses some of it's brilliance when you stop to figure that most of us live our lives in panic, and work very hard NOT to become that person on the street… But, thank you for the clean sleeping bag, and the back pack, I will need them. The thought of no shower wouldn’t be possible for me. I wouldn’t get dirty in the first place, but if I do get dirty, I will swim in the river and scrub myself with sand before I stay dirty. The same goes for my clothes.
I don’t know of one single homeless person that doesn’t know about welfare or homeless shelters, I would access both of those sources right off. I would not starve, I would follow all of their rules about no drugs or alcohol. Any money that I got would go to making myself clean and presentable. I would shave, and be clean, and stay sober, and seek work. Most homeless understand that people don’t like filth. Filth spreads disease and illness, so it is human instinct to drive away pestilence. Folks don’t want to bring any disease home to their families.
By far, the most of the people out there work hard to be part of society and help each other. The people on the streets choose that life, or they let the drugs they use choose for them. Most people were warned to stay away from drugs, so it isn’t like they didn’t make the choice themselves. But as Dave Kirby says:

“Having worked some 30 years in G,ville I have come to the conclusion that there is no set “type” of street person . I don’t think anything is gained by supporting or condemning them as a group. You have a diverse group here. Many are impaired. And some of these folks are heart breaking. They are not getting away with anything, they are barely holding on. Separating the truly needy from the Jr. dead heads and various scammers is difficult at best. I don’t have any easy answers other than to try and treat each other as individuals.

I see people who genuinely want to get homelessness behind them, they generally do so. Oh… the other thing that I would do is, get the heck away from Garberville. The only opportunity here is to become more deeply ingrained in becoming a loser. Garberville is the worst enabling town that I’ve ever seem. Just watch any homeless group on the sidewalk and you will see people give them all sorts of marijuana, cash and other goodies that make their live better in Garberville. What people are doing is helping them stay in their drug addled hand-out dependant life style.

The Dirtiest Man In The World
Oh, I'm Dirty Dan, the world's dirtiest man,
I never have taken a shower.
I can't see my shirt--it's so covered with dirt,
And my ears have enough to grow flowers.

But the water is either a little too hot,
Or else it's a little too cold.
I'm musty and dusty and patchy and scratchy
And mangy and covered with mold.
But the water is always a little too hot,
Or else it's a little too cold.

I live in a pen with five hogs and a hen
And three squizzly lizards who creep in
My bed, and they itch as I squirm, and I twitch
In the cruddy old sheets that I sleep in.

In you looked down my throat with a flashlight, you'd note
That my insides are coated with rust.
I creak when I walk and I squeak when I talk,
And each time I sneeze I blow dust.

The thought of a towel and soap makes me howl,
And when people have something to tell me
They don't come and tell it--they stand back and yell it.
I think they're afraid they might smell me.

The bedbugs that leap on me sing me to sleep,
And the garbage flies buzz me awake.
They're the best friends I've found and I fear they might drown
So I never go too near a lake.

Each evening at nine I sit down to dine
With the termites who live in my chair,
And I joke with the bats and have intimate chats
With the cooties who crawl in my hair.

I'd brighten my life if I just found a wife,
But I fear that will never be
Until I can find a girl, gentle and kind,
With a beautiful face and a sensitive mind,
Who sparkles and twinkles and glistens and shines--

And who's almost as dirty as me.
-Shel Silverstein

Newsy Notes about Humboldt

2011-09-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

News in Southern Humboldt is a little sketchy lately. But thanks to Skippy, I have a new link to news about Humboldt County, The Humboldt Sentinel. I'm not familiar with it, so hopefully Skippy will fill in the Blanks. He sent me this link: Humboldt Sentinel. Thank-you Skippy! You can even make comments back to the news articles. I put a link over there on your left, ( my right, stage left, if you know what that is).

As many of us, that have been around here for awhile know, news sources have gradually dwindled through the years. Not so many years ago, we had drop dead great news. Channel 3and Channel 6 both had superior news. They had such good news stories that it was hard to decide what to watch. Usually I would watch the evening news on one channel then watch the nightly news on the other. Cable news sources took the local markets away. We used to get great U.S. and world news on Cable, but to anybody paying attention, the cable channels lately are nothing but partisan politics anymore. Changing the channel from Fox News to CNBC is like stripping major gears, I keep expecting the television to explode every time I change Channels.

Now, the latest, The Times-Standard doesn't even want to deliver the news to us in SoHum. The only thing that they will deliver in SoHum is the Sunday paper,with a little bit of yesterdays news, and a horse choking supplement of advertisements. I'd give you a link to the T-S but you can only read a few articles, then you have to pay, so if they offer to pay me,I'll put a link up for you. So far this blogsite is purely amature, and I would hate to give up that status.

Most of us down here in SoHum land depend on Kym Kemp and The Redhead Blackbelt to supply us with "What's Happenin' Now". She has great news, but between news stories she talks a lot about Marijuana. Some of us prefer beer, maybe she could do a few great beer stories?

To be honest, my amature status is in jeopardy, I inadvertently accepted a bribe from Skippy. I came back to my office one of those 102 deg days,that we had a while back,and there was a quart of cold Pepsi sitting on my desk. I drank most of it before I discovered that it was from Skippy. Now I owe him. So don't forget to stop at The Corn Crib in Pepperwood, the home of the worlds most famous corn and fine produce.

Dang! I almost forgot the news about The Rotary District Conference! Click on the YouTube below.
All of the cast is in the bleachers at the end. If you look in some of the background, you will see people running like crazy to be in the next scene. The funny thing is, all of the animals hammed it up. The goat was dancing with the tune. If you watch the ladies horse about halfway through it is singing along with everybody else. I'm the guy at the end of the river-side scene holding up one end of the blue Rotary banner. Then I point to cue Suzy. Fun was had by all! The most fun part was, my wife and I tricked Erin Dunn and Ross Rowley into buying us breakfast! I hate to think what that bribe is going to cost Me!

Second video: Fortuna River Lodge ad

Random thoughts about marriage.

2011-09-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

A couple of friends of mine asked the rhetorical question: "Should we get married?" Question like that really concern me because the answers have the potential implications of phrases like "until death do us part". Anything with a death vow should be taken seriously! Before I was married, I had a lot of trouble deciding how to make a proposition not sound like a proposal. Apparently they sound very much alike.

I was 25 when my second wife and I started dating. Now, 25 is relatively young, in the scale of marriage and stuff like that. Big things are being considered, like children, education, business careers, where to build a house, and other major considerations. Being partners in ALL things is a big step. Older people don't have to consider building a life together, because for the most part, they will both have their own separate lives, already be educated, and already having satisfying careers. There is not much that will change with marriage. Maybe I'm being to pragmatic about "love" issues. I understand that is one of my "faults".

When Janis "and I" decided it was time to meet her folks, who lived in San Jose, we drove down for the weekend. Janis warned me on the way down that her family was a very traditional Mormon family. I started wondering, what is a "traditional Mormon?" We got to her folks place in the afternoon, so the evening meal was already being prepared. When it came time to sit at the table to eat, I was wise enough to know that there would probably be a "Blessing". I was right, we all bowed our heads and heard her fathers very fervent blessing. I have no problem with that. Even though I'm not religious, I honor other peoples beliefs, and indeed, I enjoy the tradition, and it gives me time to consider all the things in my "real" life that I'm grateful for.

After the blessing I noticed that all of the food on the table was placed in front of her father. He served each person in his own order. I was honored to be the first person served. It was because I was the guest in his house. The next was Janis's mother. Then Janis, who was older than her sister, then her sister, then her brother. And, of course, her dad served himself last. I wisely watched Janis to see what she did, then I watched the men to see what they did. After everybody started eating, and it looked like the blessing had chased away any pestilence from the food, I started to eat. It seemed to go pretty well, but it was obvious to me, that the man of the house was providing the food for the family table. I left the table a little hungry, because I was a young, working, country boy at the time, with a big appetite. I was proud of myself for just getting through dinner without calling down the wrath of God upon myself for some unnamed and unforgivable food sin.

Separate bedrooms that night, of course, I was also thankful for that.

The next morning, I was silently congratulating myself for staying quite and not doing anything wrong. We were called to the breakfast table where her dad had already put cornflakes in our bowls. They looked delicious, I was still hungry from the night before. Blessing? Yep! We had the breakfast prayers and started to eat. Her dad noticed that there was no milk, he said "Oh milk!" He jumped up and went to the kitchen and poured a big glass of milk. He sat the milk in front of me and sat back down. I thought that Janis must have told her father about my love for a large glass of cold milk with my meals. Being very honored, I lifted the milk to my lips and took a nice deep drink. The milk was very tasty, and very welcome, especially if all that I was getting for breakfast was a small bowl of cereal. I sat the milk back down appreciatively. As I looked around the table, every eye was on me. Her father said "the milk was for our cereal..."

It gets worse... That was the last of the milk. Everybody agonized as to "what to do.. oh, woe is us". I said, rather quietly, that when I ran out of milk at home, I would open a can of canned milk, then mix it half and half with water, it makes a reasonable substitute for milk. They had a can of milk, and I was semi-redeemed. Janis raved about how much she liked canned milk... that's when I knew that I loved her.

The only advice that I have for my friends is, don't marry anybody with parents!

Plane crash at the Reno air show

2011-09-16T17:49:00.001-07:00

(sorry, for a short time I had a video here of the crash, but youtube removed it)Many of us have attended this air show, it's always a risk that someone may crash. Those of us that have been in the crowd knows the gut wrenching fear when something goes wrong. The last time that I attended the Air show, a stunt pilot by the name of Jimmy Franklin was flying a bi-wing Waco with a Pratt and Whitney 450 engine. He was in an inverted spin when his engine failed. He got it started and pulled out of the spin at a very low altitude. Everybody thought that it was just part of the show, but nobody with any common sense whatsoever shuts their engine off while being upside down and near the ground. I remember the feeling of nausea that I experienced, seeing someone come that close to dying. To just go on performing for the crowd must take nerves of steel.

The plane was a modified P-51 Mustang. A World War Two fighter plane. The name of the plane was the Galloping Ghost. The pilot was 80 years old.

Who came first...God or Man?

2011-09-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

This is a tale for the smartest of my friends, people who have led simple lives, but are the smartest people that I know. It often amazes me the things that simple people can figure out, or just seem to know, that some very educated people never seem to get.

Did you hear the one about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac? He laid awake all night wondering if there really was a Dog… I know, most of you have heard the joke before, some of you don’t get it, some of you think that it’s funny. Some of you worry that it’s sacrilegious and worry that God might be offended.

Myself? I’m the one that the joke was written about. My life has been completely filled with worry and wonder. I know that my brain doesn’t work like most people’s brain. I worry that something might be wrong with me, and I wonder if it might be okay to not be like everybody else. I’ve always had a deep desire to fit in. But, strangely, I’ve always wanted people to accept who I am rather that try to be what they want me to be, so sometimes I fit, and sometimes I don’t. I had a friend that once said “ The tail follows the hide”, so I am what I am. Shakespeare said: “First, to thine ownself be true”. Shakespeare is as close to being a God in my life as anybody, so I try to adhere to his wise philosophy on life.

As a very young person, I started questioning everything. I had an uncle that called me “Yabbut the rabbit” because whenever somebody tried to tell me something, I would almost always come back with questions. I would start with “Yeah, but…” so I was called “Yabbut the Rabbit. I never really believed in Santa Claus, because I had a lot of cousins around that were both younger and older than me. They were anxious to trick me, so I was always suspicious of everything that they said. It was easy to ferret out of them that, yes indeed, Santa was really mom and dad, and not a “real person” at all.

Smug that I couldn’t be tricked, it never really occurred to me to wonder if Mickey Mouse was real. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Mickey wasn’t real. Everybody laughed at me that I was dumb enough to think that Mickey Mouse was real. Can you imagine the feelings of a small child that believed fervently in Mickey Mouse to find out that he was not real? I was filled with grief, like I had a best friend that had just died. My grief alone was bad enough, but on top of that, I had to put up with being ridiculed by my cousins and school friends. I vowed that I would never be fooled again. I started to be suspicious of everything.

You know where this is heading, we’ve been there before. At a certain point in my life, I started to question God, and double-especially religion. People that walked on water, turned water to wine, lived a thousand years, hung out in the sky with their winged angels and stuff like that. And, other wildly far-fetched things, that looked like another trick to me. Just like always, I only accept things that are tangible. My euphemistic phrase is, “things that can be hit with a hammer”. If it doesn’t pass my “Hammer Test”, it isn’t real.

Now, this is my same old-saw that you have heard way too many times, but I have a new twist… They are doing a scientific study about belief in God. I turns out that it is a “what came first, the chicken or the egg” story. The new theory is that God did not invent man, but conversely, man invented God. That has always been my conclusion. I often wondered why man would make up such far fetched stories as a person hears about religion and Faith. I was at a funeral one time where the young mother of a young child had died. The minister was telling the child that her mother was in the arms of God, and that someday, years from now, the child would be reunited with her mother. I was watching what I would call a deliberate lie, it occurred to me that maybe the myth about God was invented to give us assurance where there really was none to be given.

I have often admired Godly spiritual people, people with a strong faith, and a deep belief that God’s will was the best option. What ever happens, it is Gods will, and God works in mysterious ways. Too many times though, I find myself wishing that there was a God up there in that cloud that really does listen, because a have a few real bones to pick with him. I don’t care how mysterious his ways are, he is simply not fair to the children that he supposedly loves.

The scientists think that man is basically benevolent to their fellow humans. Man’s instinct is to aid mankind. I have a firefighter friend that describes being a first responder as “The dues you pay for the life you get”. I think that mankind makes up “God” as the mythological father that is always there to take care of the things that we can’t.

Here is some pretty interesting reading on the subject of “Who came first, God or Man”

Arthur H. "Bud" Harwood, 9-8-1926 9-1-2011

2011-09-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

When I was a young boy in the town of Laytonville back in the 1950's, there were two main proffesions. Most people either made logs or they made lumber. My dad always prefered to be a logger for some reason. My uncle Ben Branscomb always liked being in a sawmill. My dad always smelled like pitch, fir needles and dust. My uncle Ben always smelled like pitch, bearing grease, sawdust, with a slight metalic smell, like fresh filed sawblades. So, of course, my heroes were people that made lumber from the forests. There were no greater people to me than men like Ben Mast, Shine Sherburn, Frank Ford, Jack Crawford, my dad Everett, my uncle Ben Branscomb, or anybody connected to the timber industry, top among them was always Bud Harwood. Although he knew who I was, he always knew me as Everett and Elsie's boy. My mother and dad, and my aunts and uncles, went to school with Bud Harwood. Bud's mother, Belva Harwood, was one of their teachers at the Laytonville school.

I remember many stories from the Harwood mill, about good times and bad. My uncle Ben told me that Bud always tried to keep his mill going, even when the mill was loosing money. Bud always felt responsible for the workers and their families, many times Bud keep the mill going when he would have been far better off to have closed it. My unlce told me about at least one time that Bud couldn't even make payroll, he called the crew together and asked them if they wanted to stick through the rough time together and hope to come out when lumber prices went back up. The crew stuck with him, and true to his word, everybody got paid and they had saved the mill and their jobs together like a family might do. Bud has always been one of my most admired of men. He was a captain of his industry, and he did better at it than most.

I have copied his Obituary from the Press Democrat below:

Arthur H. 'Bud' Harwood
By GLENDA ANDERSON

Arthur H. “Bud” Harwood
PressDemocrat.comSeptember 6, 2011 6:17 PM
Arthur H. “Bud” Harwood, a key figure in the Mendocino County timber industry, died at his Branscomb home Sept. 1.
“He and the Harwood family have been important players in the timber industry for many years,” said Chris Rowney, unit chief for CalFire in Mendocino County.
His death came just five days after another iconic timber industry figure, Jere Melo, was gunned down in the forest near Fort Bragg.
“It's been a tough month,” said Rowney, who recalled being in awe of both men when he was starting out in the timber industry in the 1970s.
Bud Harwood's father, “Big Bud,” established a planer and grader operation in Branscomb in 1940. Bud Harwood assumed management of Branscomb Enterprises in 1949. He was later joined by brother Jack and sister Suzanne, and then his children: Liz, Art, Jack and Calvin.
The company was renamed Harwood Products in 1972. In its heyday, the company employed nearly 500 people.
It survived the industry peaks and troughs that grew the number of mills in the county to about 600, then cut it to fewer than six.
But in 2008, the Harwood mill fell victim to the housing collapse. It was dismantled and sold in pieces.
Even as the business declined, Harwood stuck with his ethical and moral beliefs, which meant trying to keep his community employed, even to his financial detriment, Rowney said.
“He fought to keep that mill running and to provide employment in the Branscomb area. From a straight economic point of view, it didn't necessarily make sense,” he said.
“You don't find many people like that today,” said Mendocino County Supervisor Carre Brown. “The loss to the town of Laytonville is very big.”
Harwood also showed he cared for his community by serving on numerous boards and donating generously to causes, including $60,000 to help launch the Long Valley Health Center and to the renovation of Harwood Park, family members said.
Bud Harwood was born Sept. 8, 1926 to Arthur Harwood and Belva York Harwood at their Ukiah homestead and in the same room as his grandmother, Mary Gibson York.
The Gibson's were pioneers who settled in the Ukiah Valley in the late 1850s. They migrated from Canada to Oakland, where Bud Harwood's grandfather served as assessor, according to an obituary written by family members.
Harwood's father moved to Laytonville in the 1920s, met and married Belva York, and raised a family.
Bud Harwood graduated from Laytonville High School in 1944, then joined the U.S. Navy. He trained to fly airplanes from aircraft carriers but. World War II ended before he saw combat.
When he returned from military service, he attended Santa Rosa Junior College, then U.C. Berkeley where he majored in business, played baseball and met his future wife, Virginia Zinn. They married in 1951 and together raised four children. They have nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
The couple enjoyed traveling, dancing and entertainment. They continually looked for ways to improve sawmill and forestry operations, according to the family's account.
“He never quit thinking about tomorrow,” the family's statement said, adding that he cherished his community, baseball and a good political argument.
For years, he held an annual fish fry in Branscomb that drew political leaders. He formed the Branscomb Blues baseball club and would bring in “ringers” from his old college team to play with local players. He also played for the Laytonville Loggers, which competed with teams from Oakland to Eureka.
A believer in public service, Harwood served on the boards of the Redwood Regional Logging Conference, Mendocino County Democratic Central Committee, Willits Unified School District, Laytonville Lions club, Howard Memorial Hospital foundation, Bank of Willits and the Laytonville Little League.
Harwood is survived by his wife, children, brother and sister. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday at the Harwood Memorial Park in Laytonville.
The family suggests that, in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the Harwood Park Association in Laytonville or Phoenix Hospice in Willits.

Gold! Crystals?

2011-08-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

Gold Crystal

Hmmm... What's wrong with this picture?

I've never really thought of Gold as being crystalline, but if it is vaporized and allowed to re-coalesce, it forms as a crystal. In a process, that I won’t even pretend to understand, heat, vacuum, and other chemicals leaches gold from other substances, then allows it form back into 99.99% pure gold. The picture is what the gold looks like when it joins back together. The process is called “The Van Arkle de Boer process”.

The following photo is Platinum formed with a similar process. Iron crystals called "hematite" form at the mouths of volcanoes from a natural occuring chemical/heat process.

Platinum Crystal

Iron Hematite

Touchstone for determining gold purity.

I actually found all this information while I was looking for the word "Touchstone". I knew that a "touchstone" was used as a test for quality, but I didn't know why until I looked it up.

By using a two pieces of gold, of a known quality, to make marks on a touchstone. Then one gold mark of an unknown quality, the grade of the unknown gold can be determined by using mixtures of nitric acid and watching to see which mark disoves first. The term "Acid Test" also comes from determining the quality of Gold. Not being from gold county, I probably seem a little niave to the Mother Lode people.

This blog used to have a commenter by the name of "Gemboy" that knew all of this stuff. I havent heard from him since the post that I did on the Island Mountain Copper mine.

Washington D.C. Earthquake.

2011-08-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

Back in 1981, I was waiting for a building permit for our house to be approved by Humboldt County that dragged on for months, but that’s a whole different story. While I was waiting for the permit, my wife and I decided to visit Washington D.C. We stayed with my wife’s brother, who was a lawyer with the Federal Trade Commission, back when there was “Trade”, but that’s a whole different story.

Anyway, we visited as many museums and monuments as we could. We were at the doors in the morning when they opened, and they had to kick us out at night. Most all the houses back there were very old brick houses, that go back to the 1800’s. I always felt uncomfortable around them. I asked many times, “What holds these houses together? They don’t have bolts or any kind of steel reinforcement.” I remember almost universally being laughed at. People seemed to know instantly that I was from California. They patiently explained that they had no need for reinforcement, because they “don’t have Earthquakes“. Many went on to state that they would never live in California because they were afraid of all the Earthquakes, and they felt that someday the whole west coast of California was going to shake-rattle-and-roll and slip into the Pacific Ocean. Then, it was my turn to laugh at them. I explained that most of our buildings stood-up real well in an earthquake, and most of the quakes that we have are nothing more than a fun ride.

I drew the line at the Washington Monument. My wife wanted to take the elevator to the top. I explained that it was too big of a risk to take an elevator ride to the top of a stack of rocks that was not designed to handle an earthquake. She chided me, and reminded me that one of my mottos is that “You only die once” and dirty-double-dog-dared me to take the elevator ride. So, foolishly, I agreed. A man just can’t allow his wife to think that he is a sissy, no matter what the risk!

When we arrived at the monument, there was some kind of a problem with the elevator and the rides were closed for the day. I was secretly overjoyed, the stack of rocks looks even more unstable standing on the ground looking up at it. As the clouds blow by, it looks just like it’s falling over. I was ready to grab my wife and run just looking at it.

Well, you know where I’m headed with this. Washington D.C. just had a 5.8 Earthquake, a crack opened up in the Washington Monument, and it is closed for safety reasons. Now, one of my other mottos is, “Ha, ha, ha, I told you so!!!”

Link to Wikipedia Washington Monument

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This establishment is an excellent place to teach your child manners.

2011-08-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

Robin started this, because she mentioned that the newspaper that she used to work for wrote a piece about “No room at the Inn”. A pun on the fact that the Benbow Inn didn’t allow children under twelve in the dinning room back in the 70's. This is not criticism of the Benbow Inn, but a reminder about manners, and why they are important.
I intend to start on a high note, then descend into the abyss. It isn’t me, because I actually love children. So, what is it about so many children today that can be so darned annoying? Again, I know that it is not me. My child was a perfect child, always was, still is. She is… wow, I was going to tell you her age, I guess not even a father can get away with that. I’ll just say that she is past 30... I’m hoping that her perfection is not just the vision through a father’s eyes. Also, I would like to think that I had a little to do with the fact that she was delightful to be around when she was growing up, but I know full well that she was a good kid because it was her intent to be that way. She always seemed to want to be “good”. So, I know that I was not the great stern father that some like to be, but the father that allowed a naturally good kid to grow up to be the polite well liked person that she is. I only helped her to find the way.
We never tried to eat out when my daughter was an infant. It was just to uncomfortable for us, to know that a child that young can’t be well behaved. When she was about 2 ½ we started taking her out to dinner with us. When my wife and I went out to dinner and took her with us, she tried to be a brat. After just one annoying incident, my wife or I would head to the car with her and we would take turns baby sitting while the other gulped their dinner. She got one firm warning way up front, then, no second chances. After one obnoxious behavior, it was out to the car. After several times of this, she discovered that it was much more fun to be good. If you are wondering what obnoxious behavior is, stop reading now, a parent just knows. It doesn’t even have to extend beyond the table that you are seated. Even if your child’s bad behavior stays within the confines of your table, it ruins the thought of a nice evening out. We always included our daughter in our conversations and made her feel that she was a part of the festive occasion of an evening out. Of course you know that it wasn’t perfect, but it soon became a nice occasion for all of us.

One time we had a family reunion dinner at the Benbow Inn, when the Benbow Inn was owned by Chuck and Patsy Watts, they had a firm rule of “no children under the age of 12 allowed in the dining room”. We had the choice of not going, or taking our daughter with us. She was 8 years old at the time. I went down and talked Chuck about his concerns and told him that we were probably even more concerned about bad dining room manners than he was. He tentatively consented to allow her in the dining room. That evening she was part of the conversation and she was a delightful part of the evening, she kept her voice down she was polite, did not interrupt and she was as good as she always wanted to be, she achieved her own goals. After dinner Chuck wheeled out the desert cart and treated my daughter to anything that she wanted. He said that she was perfectly delightful, and was welcome at the Benbow Inn anytime that she liked. She probably doesn't even remember it, but it was a very proud moment for me to be the father of an eight year old that was allowed in the Benbow Inn.
Just so you don’t think that she was always “perfect”, her teen-age years erased many brownie points.

The Benbow Inn, under the current owners, had a “Lady” that decided to nurse her baby in the dining room. I was not a witness, nor do I even have much knowledge of what happened, but I think that it was politely suggested to her that she should use a blanket or a towel to cover her breast. The lady took great offense, and decided to make a great scene and took issue of the fact that she had a right, by law, to nurse her child anywhere, anytime, and in any manner. She told her friends how insulted that she was. She and her friends staged a “nurse in” where they all nursed their babies in the dinning room. Like I say, I’m not sure what really happened, I always miss the good stuff.

I don’t know about other men, but the sight of a female breast stops my heart for a few beats, then I put it all together that it is just a woman nursing her baby, and I can live through it. It’s cool with me, but I kinda’ prefer that they cover up. It doesn’t take much to be discrete. Then I don’t have to rearrange my mind and put it back into polite conversation mode
.
Whenever I go out to dinner I am cursed with, almost invariably, being seated next to a child. My wife laughs at me, that it just seems to be my luck. Almost always, right after we order, a family will come in at sit next to us. Sometimes it is nice, when the parents have the children under control. Well behaved children are a delight to be around, and they seem to sense that. But, other parents don’t have a clue. The kid will start off with a loud scream, and the parents just ignore it. Then it only gets worse from there. I usually just ask the waiter to doggie box my meal and leave. My sister in law has a theory that some people Inflict their children on you in hopes that you will feel sorry for them, because they have to put up with the bad behavior all the time.

I was on an airplane coming back from Dallas Texas a few years ago, and was I seated right across the isle from a three year old child. A child that got to ride free, because she was seated on her mothers lap. The child started with the loud screams, then she would look around and laugh at all the people staring at her. Then she would scream again. The female flight attendant told the mother, in no uncertain terms, to comfort the child and stop her screaming. She told the mother several more times. The woman explained to the attendant that she could do nothing about it. That that is just the way the child was, and she always did that on airplanes. To my delight the attendant told her that it was very unfortunate that she could do nothing about the child, because she was going to have the pilot land the plane in Denver, and remove them from the plane, and she would never be allowed to fly on Delta again. The woman seemed to understand, the child stopped screaming immediately and only whimpered for a few moments after that. Most of the passengers near me thanked the attendant. It was apparent that the attendant knew more about dealing with bad behavior than the passenger.

I saw a near riot in a Garberville café when a child started screaming and a few diners told the mother to control her kid. It turned into a turf battle, of who had the most rights to be there. The mother lost, but wrote mean letters to the editor for awhile.

I think my favorite place to dine out was the Benbow Barbeque House. They had a very neatly printed sign, in the finest calligraphy. It said: “This establishment is an excellent place to teach your child manners”, then they insisted upon it. Most of the kids that ate there were well behaved.

A good decision on Bear Lady!

2011-08-12T18:13:00.000-07:00

A good decision on Bear Lady!

When I was growing up, I had a lot of pet wild animals. I had ground squirrels, grey squirrels, flying squirrels, I had a few snakes for a day or two, and let them go. I just couldn’t warm up to the idea of having a snake as a pet. Frogs were much cooler. Somehow I liked the idea of raising frogs. We would gather tadpoles and put them in the stock trough. The mosquitoes, that were already in the trough, provided plenty of food. They would grow legs and become frogs. As soon as they were big enough to make it on there own we would take them down to Ten Mile Creek, that drains the south end of Laytonville, and turn them loose like proud parents pushing their children out into the great big world.

My sister and I would gather milkweed and Monarch Butterfly caterpillars. We would raise them in a shoe box. Soon they would hang from a leaf, shed their skin and become a chrysalis. The chrysalis would shed it’s akin after a while and become a Monarch Butterfly, a most beautiful creature, and still my favorite bug.

One time I brought home a baby coon, it was the cutest thing that you ever saw. I imagined the he was going to become my closest friend. My dad, who was much smarter than me, told me to put it back where I found it, instantly. He said that coons would always become mean. That they are too smart and can never really be trained. They almost always become biters and they can never be trusted. The best pet is a neutered male. But, the females always get mean. That was back before I understood all the wild animal mating rituals. Now, I understand that Mommas, as a rule, don’t put up with much of anything, but getting their own way.

Most of my family had wild animal pets through the years. All of my uncles had pet deer at one time. The deer were released and allowed to be on the ranch, but it was well understood that they were not to be trusted in any way. Just the other day I read that somebody had been killed by his own pet deer. Two bucks got in a fight and gored him to death.

It’s alright to love wild animals, but they don’t make good pets. There are exceptions, that I won’t tell you about, because I don’t want you out gathering up my wild friends just to make yourself happy. Most of the pets that my family and I had were orphans of some kind. So, it was a choice to raise them and turn them loose or let them die. One of the cutest, but least likely to be a good pet, is a river otter. I’ve handled one as a baby, but never raised one. My cousin Oregon even had a pet 'Possum. It's teeth looked like little needles and it had two or three different sets of canine teeth on the way to the back of it's mouth. You didn't want to hurt its feelings, or it would play dead. All those teeth and it's defence mechinism is to "Play Possum".

So, I guess what I trying to say is that I understand The Laytonville Bear Lady. But alas, I also understand that a person really can’t tame a bunch of wild bears. The have a tendency to become overBEARing.

The Following is from the A.P.
UKIAH, Calif. — A woman who turned her rural Northern California home into a spa for wild bears won't go to jail after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of feeding big game.

After Lynne Gravier entered her plea in Mendocino County Superior Court on Monday, Judge Richard Henderson set her sentencing date for three years from now, on Aug. 8, 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. If Gravier stays out of trouble and stops feeding bears, prosecutors agreed to drop the charge then.

Gravier, 77, known as the "Bear Woman," set up a plush hangout for her furry friends at her 40-acre Laytonville property, complete with a kiddie pool and a buffet of cornmeal and peanut butter sandwiches, sometimes laced with glucosamine to ease the arthritis pain in older bears.

Authorities who raided the property in response to neighbor complaints last August found a total of 15 black bears who regularly relaxed inside Gravier's house and on her deck. She also fed 18 cats, three dogs, 40 peacocks and other wildlife out of her home, which was covered in filth.

California Department of Fish and Game wardens called it the worst example of bear feeding they had ever encountered.
Gravier's supporters protested her prosecution, defending her as an animal lover. But neighbors complained that she drew in bears that terrorized the community by breaking into homes, ransacking feed sheds and chasing livestock.

"This lady may have thought she was doing a good thing," Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster told the Chronicle. "We don't want to bash her, but we have to get her attention and get her to recognize that her feeding the bears was causing a problem for the neighbors and, frankly, is dangerous."

Under the terms set by prosecutors, Gravier may not return to her Laytonville property. The house was condemned last year.

"The end result to me was very positive," Gravier said. "I'm glad that it is over and I can go on."

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Petite-Three Ernie Sandwiches and Beer.

2011-08-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

Well.... Recipe to go with beer :

Sandwich depicted NOT Ernie sandwich.

When eating Ernie sandwiches with beer, it’s best to try to appear like it is elegant…

Sprinkle a little powdered chicken stock on the sliced ham and let it marinate in the refrig overnight, or longer, no biggie. Or you can do like I do. I usually don't think about it in time to marinate, so I rub the dry chicken stock into the ham vigorously. Then pretend that it has been elegantly marinated. I know, I should be calling it maranaDe, because it's more elegant.

Fry the ham in hot oil to seal in the juices. Caramelize the surface slightly.

Use Raisin Bread. Toast the raisin bread slightly. To what I call soft wiggle.

Spread one piece of toast with Nuefachatel cheese. You can use regular old cream cheese, but lie and say that it is Nuefachatel, because that is more elegant.

Then spread some very thinly sliced Walla Walla onions on top the cream cheese. Regular onions are okay as long as they are mild enough to pretend that they are the very elegant Walla Wallas.

Then, fit a slice of the chicken stock ham over the top of the onions.

Spread the other piece of toast with peanut butter, then spread the jelly on that. The kind of jelly is optional. Apple is always a good choice. Quince is best, and also most elegant. Grape gives a good flavor, but if you want to try something wildly different use Jalapeño jelly, or mint.

Place the jelly side down on top of the slice of ham, I know that you would have done that anyway, but it's an important step. Some people might have made it jelly side out and been disappointed.... Push toothpicks through the sandwich, cut the edges off and set aside to be used later.Then cut the sandwich into 1 inch square pieces. You can be creative and cut them into small triangles and call the “petite-threes” it’s a real conversation starter.

Now place a very large stack of these on a serving tray and place them on a table. Then tell everybody not to touch them that it’s for the PTA fair. (I learned that from my wife)

Grab a frosty mug out of the freezer, and pour a mug of Guiness Beer from the tapper. Hold the Mug by the handle with your little finger extended to the side. That’s the most elegant way to hold it.

The smart people in the crowd will already be stealing the Petite-Three Ernie sandwiches. Then just join the rest of the people eating them. It’s fun to see how long it takes for the dumb people to figure out that they are not going to make it to the PTA fair.

When all of the Petite-threes are gone, put the bowl of edge cuttings on the table because after a few Guiness', any semblance of elegance is gone and people will be glad to have them.

I dirty double dog dare you to try them!

The Humbodt County Fair

2011-08-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

My favorite part of the fair is the ladies that are proud of their jams and jellies and pies, and peanut butter tuna casseroles.

Also, the kids with their lips quivering, because they are just about to sell their animal that they have raised from a baby, and the animal that has become their very best friend in the whole world, who has patiently listened to all their problems.

And, the dads that are proud of their kids, because the have raised them to be tough and face the reality of the world that we live in, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and go forward with their chins up.

I just love people… even the ones that sometimes make me mad. What better place than the Fair to soak in the real world.

Humboldt County Fair Home Page

What time in history would you want to live?

2011-08-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about the good old days, but would I choose to live back then? Think of any time in history that would you go back to, and live there, if you were stuck there and could never return. This is a difficult question for me, because without modern medicine I probably would have been dead about three times now. Once when I was eight years old I was hospitalized with pneumonia, modern medicine saved my life. Actually I might have lived, but it was a lot more fun to just get well. I had pneumonia another time about 15 years ago. When I get sick, I'm too stupid to slow down and take care of myself, so I end up turning a simple cold into something much more serious like pneumonia. Chances are real good that I might have lived both times.

Eight years ago, I had prostate Cancer. The Big "C". I had brachytherapy, that's where they fill your prostate with radioactive "seeds". I have about 120 of them. It felt like I was shot in the rear end with a shotgun. Which, I guess that, literally.. I was. I didn't miss a days work. Something is just wrong about having the big "C" one day, and be cured the next. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty that it was such a small thing for me. I spend a lot of time thinking about what the Indian people would have done with prostate cancer. A lot of their "cures" was done with tobacco smoke.

I have heard stories that the American Indian had a cure for all of the diseases that they got, up until the white man showed up. The diseases that the white man had killed them readily, with no defense.

The Indians had a dance called "The Ghost Dance" which was really a prayer dance for the white man to go away, and they could return to better times. I've often wondered, how many Indians would return to the times before white man today? My good friend, relative, and Humboldt county supervisor, Harry Pritchard said that when the Indians were given hunting and fishing rights, they were standing naked in the riffles netting and stabbing fish with pointy sticks. A far cry from today, where that they have every technology known to man. But, I read in The Two River tribune that they Indian People on the Klameth have a better chance of saving the salmon than the rest of America, and they have a few good ideas as to how to achieve that goal. I would like to see a few of their pratices brought to the South Fork Of the Eel. Like the deep water holes that they are digging in the river gravel to provide real fish habitat.

But, I digress, but you knew that. I was talking to a fellow today about what time in history that he would chose to live, or would he stay right here, today, with all of our problems. He said that he wanted a big-screen TV the size of his whole living room wall, A leather Lazy-Boy and a remote control that would take him to look at anytime in history, any place in the world. He could go view the Han Dynasty in China and watch Gengus Khan awhile, then he could watch Atilla The Hun, on to Julius Ceasar. Then maybe watch King Henry the Eighth, maybe skip back to watch the Crusades. Or, the "taming" of Amerca. All from his overstuffed Lazy-Boy recliner. He could even go to Disneyland.

Sadly, I think that I would chose "here and now". One, it's better than dead, which I would be by now any other time in history. If I could visit anywhere or time, then come back. I would probably choose The British Isles. Go to a real Elizibetian theater. Go to Ireland and have an original Guiness beer. Or follow my great grandfather Cull on his trip across the great plains, to find out what really happened to him. Was he killed by Indians as we have all been told, or was he bushwacked by white scoundrels?

Where would you go, and would you chose to stay if you could never come home again?

OMG!!! The reel Suzy Blah Blah dropds a nodte!!

2011-08-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

A while back, missing what I thought was the real Suzy Blah Blah, while dealing with what I perceived to be an interloper Suzy, I did a blog post about “The Legend of Suzy Blah Blah”.

Being a person that only deals with tangibles, and reality, I picked up that the recent commenter claiming to be Suzy couldn’t possibly be the real Suzy Blah Blah. She just couldn’t pass the hammer test. The interloper Suzy is also very intelligent and witty, and her comments are welcomed by us all… But she just ain’t “the real Suzy”.

So, at a time in my life, when I seriously need some reality, like only the real Suzy Blah Blah can bring me. She shows up like an answer to my thoughts in the wind. It was like she knew that I needed a little of those two “same things,” Love and Understanding. It’s enough to make a person believe in that spirit stuff.

Now, and I hope that the real Suzy is still reading, because Most of us on this blog find that our concerns are with you. Please tell us that you are okay and doing well. My heart wrenched and I felt the lonely anguish of a Humboldt Co. country girl hitchhiking in the L.A. rain. We all hope that you and your child are happy and well.

Reading the “Real Suzy Blah Blah” is like ready poetry. You have to look past the words on the page, to the feelings and “spirit” within them.

I moved her comments to the front page here, for the few of us who love the real Suzy.

suzy blah blah has left a new comment on your post "The legend of Suzy Blah Blah":

really?!! omgosh, that's embarrassing, LOL! but i love you fro making time to read it all. whew, i don't even have time to shit these days, not to mention burning sage, theres so little time, I put my kid to bed and i'm exhausted. but i relax somethimes typing and it looks like i have a few minutes to thank youuu Charlie, that's so sweet to hear. Theres been a lot of raven activity around here, very noisy. Maybe its your prayers coming through. I havto listen harder, or maybe not try to listen, . . . CAW! CAW!

thats so cewl that you made your fortune the white mans stock market LOL. it makes me smile. And i'm praying for your continuing health and that there are no relapses. Smoke that medicine. It must be awesome where you are in neveada. I love the desert, sooooo quiet and with a such a big night amazing sky. And cowboyss wearing guns to Wallmart LOL. It sounds good.

You know, I had my friend write the Suzy comments fair a spell, so it looks like everyone seems to think it wasn't me, suzy, but they don't get it. this one and the other one are both Suzy ie Suzy is one ,, LOL That's the REAL legend. Peolpe get legend confused with history. but in legend there is no linear time * line ... one doesn't come before or after the other because the other isn't in linear time ... another words you could read the old suzy comments in any order you want, you could ever read them upside down and you'd still get the same "message?", or maybe i should say "mess". LOL///

-And so that's it.
When i fierst met Ernie i parked in a position which he called "behind his truck" (but what's behind to some is in front of to another) and to his way of thinking, i blocked him in, theat was a red flag. I thought he was one of his employees when he asked me to move out of the way, and then later he said on the bolg all apalogetic, that it was him, doing business LOL@ ... I was totally surprized. I'd pictured him really really differantly. That's how visionary i am LOL

so maybe you read about hhat in the archives, i think he tried to give me a special free downtown parking spot ..LOL@ you know parking is a major problem, specially when ppl park behind you hmph. but if it's suzy that's differant cuz i'm a "legend" and everybody love Suzy (in that chapter), well, I wrot e to Ernie, " use your imagination" LOL. I wasn't really surprixed hwen he didn't get it. He always presents himself real nice though, in his misinterpretings of hte legend. Thing is, if Thay aren't "behind" you, and if theyre not next to you, they must be in front of you. right? LOL Thats what a history minded person will never understand. Because they can only understand things in order. I knew a watch repairman once who was an example of some one like that, everything needed to be in a strict order for him to have understanding of it. And it was him i was thinking of when i said, " And sometime i think love and understanding are close to hte same thing" LOL!!!!!!!
and Ernie loved that line enough to hang it on his wall LOL, thats what is cwel about misunderstanding legends. Its a whole different understanding when it comes to bullshitstory. Ha, Love and understanding? Is that from the old temstament? or was it otis redding? Whatever.

But a historian trying to historify a legend by misunderstanding the basic mystery of communication from the heart, er i mean from the start, ie REAL communication, because there IS no start, or end, to a legend except in peoples minds ... and chief seattle said the longest journey youll ever take is from the mind to the heart. But he never had to hitchhike through LA in the rain, LOL, but anyway, Charlie, thats what i mean by suzy being one. The changeless one.

but it laate now and i haveto say a bloggy goodnight to yuo. bye bye from ms american pie.
love yu charlie two crows' straight from my heart to your heart from the true, froom the legendary,\
from the one and only,
suzy blah blah

huggles,
s

Suzy
In My "Real World" watch makers don't know diddley, you have to know how to build refrigerators to be "really" wise. In My real world Ottis Redding is the old testament.
Wishing you well,
Ernie and the rest of us

Guns, Or more acurately, Firearms.

2011-08-03T16:17:00.000-07:00

Since I was a small child, guns were a part of my life. Guns were a very normall part of my life, and I grew up with no fear of guns, but a great respect for them. I know that I feel quite differently about guns than some people. There is such a wide variety of opinions when it comes to guns. So, I want to warn people not to make comments on this blog that might create problems for you, for instance, do not brag that you might have the first 44 Colt that was ever made, and it is still in the original carton, and it has never been fired, and it is worth four million dollars. Somebody might decide that they want it more than you, and you might have to shoot the guy with the first bullet out of your 44 Colt and ruin it's value.

Try to talk about guns in generic terms, and not brag about your 1000 firearm collection. Unless of course that you want to. I will say that I'm a gun owner, I won't say where, or what state of readiness that I keep them. Well okay, one of the lever action guns that I own, won't action smoothly because I haven't cleaned it in thirty years, but it's a gun to fondle, hold, and talk about anyway. But, I might have a sweet little, well oiled and polished, pearl handled, nickle, 32 cal auto. I'd have to show it to you before you could see it. So, think about what you say and whether you really want my millions of readers to know about your guns.

When a person is raised with guns on a ranch, or farm, like I was, there is always talk about gun safety. I remember one phrase, "gunpowder and alcohol don't mix". I would imagine My dad hand loading ammunition and try to mix some alcohol in the gunpowder. Finally I just had to say, "that doesn't make any sense, why would anybody say that, I don't understand." My grandmother told me "when you get old enough to drink, you will understand". Sure enough she was right, I now understand that drinking and mixing firearms are not a good idea.

When I was a kid my dad had a Winchester bolt action 22 cal. rifle with a five shot clip that I thought of as mine. It had a four power scope that I had sighted in at 100 feet, which is where I did most of my shooting. the gun was completely accurate. I remember that I would take it most places that I went. I took it to my dads logging show when I was about ten years old. The Guys on the landing were taking turns shooting it. We had set up a "Lucky Lager" beer carton about 80 feet away. They make a perfect target. I was lucky enough to find a Lucky Lager beer can on the net to show you why they made such great targets. The "T" in "dated" was the target sweet spot. I was 16 years old before I saw a round target with the "X" ring in the middle. Anyway, when it was my turn, I took the "T" out and put four more bullets in the same whole. I was so proud of myself that I almost smiled..... but, nobody on the crew would believe that I did put all five bullets in the "T". But... But... Reallllllyyyyy! I was crestfallen that nobody believed that I had done that. My dad told me later that they were just being asshole loggers. I still don't know if he was just being nice, or if they really knew that I had "Teed" the target.

When Kids grew up in the South Fork Eel Canyon, they got to start shooting when they were about 8 years old. I remember killing squirrels and jack rabbits, with my dads supervision, at about eight years old. Kids usually got their first 22 caliber rifle at about twelve years old. They got their first "Real gun" when they were about 16. Most of the people that I know that got their very first "real gun" at sixteen, treasured the rifle the rest of their life, and they would not part with it for love nor money. Literally! Most of you that got their first real gun will bear me out. It is their one priceless treasure.

My dad when he was about sixteen went to a turkey shoot in Laytonville with his dad Grampa Roy. There was a guy at the turkey shoot that had a gun like dad wanted. It was a 250-3000 Savage lever action. They had just produced the gun, and one of it's big features was that it would shoot a bullet over 3000 feet per second. He thought that was about the finest gun he had ever seen. The man with the gun could not hit the target. My grandfather said "why don't you let my kid sight it in for you?" "No", the man said that, "it wouldn't do no damn good to sight it in". He went on to cuss the gun some more, and he made the statement: "if the kid can even hit the target with it, I'll give the God-damn thing to him."

So, there were two rites of passage for a Eel canyon kid, his first 22 cal and his first real gun. My dad went on to win many turkey shoots with the 250. All of my family were very good shots. My Dad Everett, my uncle Ben, and my uncle Edwin were a good shots. back in the '50s there was a turkey shoot somewhere just about every weekend. So, when my dad and uncles could squeeze in a turkey shoot, they would. It got real humorous, because when my dad and uncles would show up, nobody would shoot against them. The turkey shoot directors would offer them a turkey to leave. They did that for a while, but they decided that was no fun, so they started a "Branscomb shoot". Where the Branscomb were not allowed into the regular shoot, but they made them shoot against each other. People would come for miles around to watch them shoot. So the turkey shoots got popular again. I would be remiss if I didn't add that a fellow by the name of Shine Sherburn was a famous gun affectionado that did quite well with the turkeys himself. It seems like some of us were raised on deer meat, salmon, and turkeys.

Never draw down on somebody unless you intend to shoot them.

Never fire a warning shot

Every gun is loaded

Never point a gun, not even a toy gun at anybody.

Stagecoach?

2011-07-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

Charlie Two Crows Wrote: "Did the stage follow the coast to mattole then come inland? Or did it follow the EEl river. Jack told me the stage from eureka went to center ville after stopping in fern dale. Jack said the stage went down the beach and came to a stage stop at there mazeppa ranch then on the wild cat route to mattole then inland. Does any one have info. On this stage line."

Charlie... Back in "The Horse and Buggy Days" all inland transportation was by saddle horse, mule train, team wagons, ox trains, or horse and buggy. Stage coaches went everywhere that they could go. The only thing that I can tell you for certain is that the the roads went down the ridges. Nobody was dumb enough to try to build a road down by the river, too many bridges, too many slides, too many river and creek crossings. Newcomers brought us the riverside technology. They reckoned that they would be below the snow level. If they had built the train higher up on the ridge, we would still have one.

Having said my piece, I'll try harder to answer your quetions. The main stage from San Francisco to Eureka, came through Ukiah, Willits, Sherwood, (up on the ridge) Strong Mountain Road into Cahto, Lick Skillet and Spat out, (Laytonville) south through Long Valley, up the Bell Springs Ridge, to Bell Springs, where they had a way-station. They changed horses and lodged there for the night. From there they went to Harris, Alderpoint, Blocksburg, Bridgeville, Carlotta, and then into Springville, near Fortuna. There was a stage that went to ferndale and points west, and another stage that went to Eureka and points north. There were numerous "Feeder" stage routes. Like the "Mud-dobber" that ran from Mina and Covello over the Dos Rios road into Laytonville. A man by the mane of John Snider drove it. John Snider also drove a 6 horse team wagon hauling dynamite from Sherwood to Island Mountain when they were builting the Island Mountain tunnel.

Now for the "bullshistory" part, because I don't really know for sure. But, when I was a wee lad I heard that there was a coach that went from Fort Bragg, Westport, Rockport, Usal, Four Corners, Thorn, Briceland, Garberville, Spuce Grove and Harris. There is still a building that they call "The Stage Stop" on a flat north of Whitethorn. I do know that there was sporadic stage coach operations on the north coast. They were about as consistant as todays coffee shops.

Humboldt Feast, Garberville Rotary Club

2011-07-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their service club. At least, so say the other Garberville Rotary Club members. So they are holding my fingers to the keyboard.

We are in the midst of the final stages of having an environmentally correct fund raiser for the many great pursuits of our small Rotary Club, September 17th 2011. We are calling the event “Humboldt Feast”, where everything served is organic and from the local area, within a hundred miles, or with good justification for coming from further away, like organic pineapples will have to come from somewhere more tropical. We will have numerous booths from which artisans will serve samples of their ware.

The tickets will be $50.00 each. Ticket buyers will be presented with an etched wine tasting glass to taste the various wines that will be presented. The glass will be your souvenir, to keep with your collection of event wine glasses. Various cheeses will be there. Some of the world’s finest cheeses come from right here in Humboldt County. Did you know that? This will be your chance to taste some. Local produce will be presented, maybe some local mustards, or sauces. Who knows? Many people are just beginning to sign up for booths. There will be acoustic bands playing, and some organizations will be passing out brochures on what they are doing to improve the environment.

The event is what, nowadays, is called "a green event", where everything is environmentally correct. The foods served will be grown and presented in an earth responsible manner. Whether the foods are oysters, beef, barley, or mayonnaise it will be earth friendly, or at least the earth friendliest product available. Each item served will be able to justify it’s “Green-ness” The event will be held in the Garberville Community Park, in the back south-east corner, what is popularly known as, “The wedding Grove”. You will be able to stroll through the widely spaced booths on the mowed grass. You will have the opportunity to observe the many wild birds of the park, and listen to their songs. The area is tucked away from outside noise. It will be like you are attending a private party, which, indeed, you will be. It will be for ticket holders only

Rotarians by their nature have a tendency to be too modest. For instance, not many people know that in 1985 the Rotary International took on the project of curing polio in the world. We knew that it would be the largest project that we had ever taken on. We estimated (hoped) that it would take us five years to immunize everybody in the world. As you know we are far beyond that five years, but we have effectively cured polio, you probably don’t know any recent polio victims. But, we still have to immunize everybody until the disease is dead like smallpox.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gave the Rotary Club 355 million dollars to finish curing polio in the world, with the stipulation that the Rotary International would match 200 million of that amount. I have no idea how much that I have contributed to cure polio but I have given a significant amount. (To me, it’s significant) Altogether we will be spending 555 million dollars more to finish curing polio.

Curing polio is something that is near and dear to my heart. When I was a child growing up in Laytonville, I went to school with a kid that got polio. He was a great athlete, he loved to play baseball, he was vigorous and active in every way. One day I went to school and he was gone. The teacher, in tears, explained to us that he had gotten polio, and that “we should pray for him because polio was a very serious disease“. It was about a year before he came back to school, he was puffy from lack of exercise, and he had braces on both legs. He could barely get around on crutches. You have no idea what an impact that had on my young mind. Since then Polio has been a bitter enemy.

Wherever you see a child being immunized for polio in the world, you will see a Rotarian. They are down in the trenches doing the work. Rotarians are the heads of airlines, trucking companies, pharmaceutical companies, and every other walk of life. They make it happen. Whenever that I get discouraged about some small thing that someone in the local club is doing wrong, I think of my childhood friend, and know that I can put up with just about anything to cure Polio. We as Rotarians are curing polio.

The Humboldt Feast is only one of the things that we do to raise funds for the many, not just polio, but many worthwhile projects that we do. We will all be there.

Ask Dennis what the Garberville Rotary club has done for the schools. Ask Karen about, personally, planting trees in a South American rainforest to offset the carbon usage of the Garberville Rotary Club. Ask Brian Walker about traveling all over the world to cure Cleft Pallets. Ask about the orphanage in Mexico, or the one in Kenya. Ask about earthquake relief. Ask Seth about what it’s like to host a foreign exchange student. Ask Nancy about all the things that we do for the hospital and the projects that we do in the local community. Ask me about the local Culinary Arts project, or Nicks Interns that are working to revitalize the local forests and streams, or ask me what we are doing to help local workers and businesses. Ask any Rotarian what they are doing. You will be amazed at how involved that they are in the world around them.

Please link to Humboldt Feast for more information here: Humboldt Feast.

E

Hartsook Inn

2011-07-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

The Hartsook Inn

We have such incredibly wonderful history along the South Fork of the Eel canyon. Some places more than others. It is especially sad for me to drive through Richardson Grove and realize that I'm one of the few people left around here that had seen it in it's heyday.

I’ve often said that “I’m not really a historian, but I do know where most of the bodies are buried”. So, as one might guess, I know quite bit about the fabled Hartsook Inn. The Hartsook Inn was built by Fred Hartsook, (1876-1930) a man who was mostly known as a famous photographer. Fred Hartsook operated about twenty photography studios. He owned what was reputed to be “The largest photography business in the world”. He took the official photographs of most all of the famous people of the day, and all the great movie stars. He made the official Presidential photograph of Woodrow Wilson.

In 1919 Hartsook married Bess Hesby who was “Miss Liberty in the 1915 San Francisco “Pan-Pacific Exposition“. Fred took his honeymoon at a cabin in the redwoods, at the present location of the Hartsook Inn. I’m not sure how he got there, but it was about the time that Highway 101 was opened through Richardson Grove. According to Nona James, she drove up highway 101 before it was opened to the public. She said that it was in 1917 or 1918.

Bess Hartsook

Fred and Bess Hartsook had three children: Helen, Frederick, and Delyte. Fred Hartsook also had a daughter, Francis, from a previous marriage.

In the early 1920s Fred and Bess purchased 37 acres of pristine redwood forest and built the Hartsook Inn. By 1926 the resort was given it’s own township status, and was granted a United States Post Office. It even had a gas station! That makes it a bona fide town! The town was called “Hartsook” California. In August of 1927 the Hartsook Inn burned to the ground in a large forest fire. Uncontrolled forest fires were very common back then. They had no real way to fight them. Fortunately the redwoods were not permanently damaged and they grew back better than ever. The Inn was rapidly rebuilt and reopened. Fred had a good rapport with the Hollywood crowd, having taken most of their photographs. The Hartsook became the Hollywood group’s playground. Many would take extended vacations up here in the redwoods. The more notable among them were Mary Pickford and Bing Crosby.

As a side note, my grandfather Bill Rathjens, who owned a service station in Laytonville, was also a Kohler Light Plant dealer. He provided the Hartsook Inn with their first electricity.

On 30 September 1930, Fred Hartsook died of a heart attack at the age of 53. That often happens to old men that marry beautiful young women. Bess Hartsook outlived her husband by forty-six years and operated the Hartsook Inn until 1938. In 1938 the Hartsook went into receivership, strangely, the place burned down again… ( due to a fire in the kitchen… WINK) The Inn was rebuilt and reopened in 1941, just in time for world war II.

The Lingenfelters, Darrell and Dorothy, took over the management and ownership of the Hartsook Inn. They did quite well with it through the years. A fellow by the name of Chet Willows managed the place with his wife, Julie, who retired to Phillipsville and just recently died. I’m not sure of the ownership of the Inn during that tenure. Maybe the Willows owned it. I remember the Harsook kitchen back in the 60's. They had an executive Chef. (I'm sorry, but I forgot his name) The chef was the typical Chef, he ran things like an orchestra conductor. He was very firm, and he checked every plate that left the kitchen. If it wasn't perfect, there was hell to pay. Everything in the kitchen would stop, on the spot, there would be a lecture as to what went wrong and why it would never happen again. The kitchen had a "pantry chef" that did all the salads, pates, and cold appetizers. There was a souse chef, a pastry chef, and various cooks and helpers, plus a bus staff that cleaned and reset all the tables. They had a dishwashing staff that kept all the plates and silverware cleaned and polished.

The female summer help, mostly high-school and college students from Eureka, lived over the kitchen. It was hot up there, in every way. I remember coming down to the dances next door at French's campground. The girls from Hartsook would come over to dance, but they had a 10:00 PM curfew, so they had to leave early. They had a house mother that lived up there with them and she did periodic nose counts, much needed nose counts, because the girls all imagined themselves to be in love with one of the local "country boys".

While under the propriety of the Lingenfelters, there was no alcohol served at the Hartsook. No way. Absolutly not. Don't even bring your own Bottle! If God had intended for you to get drunk he would have given you alcohol! Alcohol is the root of all evil. I have heard many lectures about alcohol from the Lingenfelters. Back in 1983 I was the president of the Garberville Rotary club. Any thought of alcohol was sternly disaproved of by Darrell, who was also a member of the club. I was a juror on a drunk driving trial with Dorothy. The judge asked her if she had ever taken a drink of alchohol. She firmly stated that she had not! Taken aback, he went on to ask her, "Not even a sip? Do you know what it tastes like?" That is the first and last time that I ever heard a judge get a lecture and give an oppology. He then thanked her and excused her. It was hilarious.

My mother Elsie Branscomb and my aunt Vivian Newland owned an ice cream parlor, soda fountain, and sandwich shop in Garberville. They made premium, high butterfat content ice cream, 14% butterfat. A few people even rave about it today. (me) They made Creme-de-menthe ice-cream for the Harsook Inn. I often chuckle about knowing that mom made it with creame-de-menthe Liquor. 20% ALCOHOL.
The Inn burned down again in 1973. I was a firefighter at that fire. C.D.F Battalion Chief Harry Pritchard was the Incident Commander on the fire. Harry went on to become Humboldt county 2nd District Supervisor. I also might add that Harry and I were relatives. Both from old local families that go back to the 1800’s. I was assigned the north end of the building. AHEM… the part of the building that was saved! Never mind that it was also the only part of the building that was not on fire yet when the firefighters got there. We sent a pumper truck to the river to provide the water to fight the fire. We didn’t save much, but once again it was rapidly rebuilt. What you see today when you drive past the rapidly deteriorating building is the 4th Hartsook Inn to be built on the same basic foundation.

The most recent history of the Hartsook is, that it was bought by Richard Head, who also owned the Phillipsville Trailer Park and the Deerhorn Lodge. Head added a liqour license and bar, he also upgraded the kitchen. He had a very popular local Chef in the kitchen by the name of Kieth Tommson (sp?) Tommson operated the Trees Restaurant in Garberville, until it burned down. Homeless people had moved into the basement. Nobody asked them to leave because they felt sorry for them. It is unknown whether the fire was caused by the homeless, or if somebody burned them out. Sadly, any building the the homeless occupy, unsupervised, burns down. Fact of life #23. I've seen far too much of it.

Richard Head didn't do as well as he hoped that he would, he consequently took out a timber harvest plan to log the redwoods on the property. He cut a few, but the save the redwoods league asked him to stop. He did, and they purchased the Hartsook property. They in turn sold it to the same people that bought Heartwood College at Island Mountain, Bennett and Delphina Dorrance. I've heard numerous rumors that it may become a branch campus of Heartwood.

It's sad the way things go with some of our local history. Maybe the Dorrences will revive some of The Harsook Inn's former glory.

http://www.groupsrv.com/movie/about75181.html Click on link, then scroll down a bit for the story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hartsook
http://savetheredwoods.org/newsroom/pr/pr_hartsook.pdf
http://rosieradiator.com/id3.html

e

Wallmart?

2011-07-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my newly adopted policy of being the kinder, gentler Ernie, I’m not going to lecture, or berate. I’m simply going to underline a few things that deep down in our hearts we already know. I just want to add some food for thought. Some of us are saddened to see the direction that America has taken lately. Some haven’t paid attention, then maybe some of us are too young to know how great America once was, where a man could support his family, buy a new car every three years, pay off a mortgage, send the kids to college, and take a two week vacation to, say, French’s Campground or Richardson Grove. All that on a simple manufacturing or construction job.

The fact that Walmart may move into the defunct Gottschalk building is all over the news and blogs of late. Everybody has an opinion about how fair or unfair Walmart is to their workers. Some vow to never shop there, others don’t give a darn about anybody, all they want is the low prices. The “right or wrong” of either position is not something that I want to debate. I have thoughts about both sides and I even understand the reasoning behind both positions. So, you ask, where am I headed???

As Americans, we have been sold down the river by the ultra-wealthy. How many times have you heard the phrase “We live in a world economy now. Too bad you don’t have a job. The only thing that you can do is educate yourself, because now we live in the information age”. We can buy Chinese products for a dime on the dollar compared to American manufactured products. Our Wall street investors have shipped buying to China and other places with cheap manufacturing. On the surface you think that the Chinese are simply willing to work harder for less. When actually their choice is to work or starve. They are only paid enough to keep themselves alive. Americans have not slipped that far…. Yet.

We, in America, treasure our antiquities. We would not think of building anything on or near an old Indian burial ground. We consider our heritage as being sacred. We would not even cut two 8” redwood trees to make our highways safer through Richardson Grove. We value trees more than human life itself. Again, I’m not criticizing. Just pointing out facts that I, also, mostly agree with.

The counterpoint to America valuing our treasures is what China does with its Antiquities. They used up the world supply of scrap-iron to make re-bar reinforcement iron for the Three Gorges Dam. They also used up the world supply of premium cement for the concrete in the dam. Now, here is the part that I really want you to think about: The three gorges that they are flooding has been occupied and civilized so far back that it is forgotten in history. At the time that all of the British Isles, and much of North America were covered with sheets of ice, the three gorges were occupied by humans! Think of the antiquities, burial grounds, and simple treasures that are being flooded with water. The dam is so big that it is expected to change the worlds weather and cause earthquakes in the local region.

The reason that the Chinese built the dam was, in part, to provide free hydro-power to manufacture products to sell to people like Walmart, and in turn you and I, John Doe American.

We are supposed to be protected from unfair competition like this by our elected political leaders. But they are elected by wall street, we don’t have the money. The ultra rich also own the media. You can expect to hear “That we live in a world economy now” until you believe it. I don’t know which is the saddest. The fact that Americans would protect American trees while using Chinese toilet paper, or the fact that we are encouraging the Chinese to deface their heritage by buying their products. We would be far better off as Americans if we had a fair balance of trade. We give China Billions of dollars a year more than they buy from us. At one time, back when America was the Great American dream, we had trade laws that protected us from unfair competition. It’s my job to get the best deal that I can get for my family. Whether or not we boycott Walmart will make no difference. We need to get back the vote and elect people that will take care of us.

Any thoughts?

e

What ever happened to "Electric on the Eel"?

2011-07-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

Electric on the Eel was a dead-head event, where the grateful dead were the headliners. Jerry Garcia "got sick" during one of his famous visits to the Eel River at Frenches Campground. Jerry had a life long problem with health issues. He was overweight, diabetic and he dabbled into too many drugs. At one of his last events here, he had to postpone for a while to "get well". It was a bad week for Garberville, Jerry's fans were quite willing to take things without paying. They called it "taking back from the man".

Out of the ashes of "Electric on the Eel" rose "Eclectic on the Eel" with Ry Cooder and David Llindley. They did a lot of Sam the Sham songs. Eventually, Reggae on the River became very popular and soon surpassed all other events, and became the main focus of the local venues. Then the reggae wars started, and it hasn't been quite the same since.

Funny that you would ask, I'm listening to some great Reggae music as I type this... Reggae on the River is this weekend, and it is across the street from my house. They have moved the event to Benbow Lake State Park. They only play music until 10:00 pm, no dope allowed, Jerry would not have been welcome. Bummer.

Don't pass "Pass"

2011-07-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

I got a note the other day from an old friend and acquaintance, Mary Ann Machi. She sent me a picture of Bill Pass, and asked if I knew anything about his history. I know quite a bit of history on Bill, but my cousin Oregon knows more, if he will give us some, it would be great. Bill lived across the street from him on Oak Street in Garberville and his dad and bill pass were in the fire department together.

Mary Ann has a great history herself, being a child raised in Shelter Cove from the days when it was a simple sheep ranch, and not a town, to now, where it is a community of city expatriates. It sadens me that she thought that I might not remember her, but it is the way of things nowadays. We went from a community where everyone knew everyone else, to a community full of people with made up names, and identities. We don't know each other anymore, and when we do recognize someone, you still don't know who they are for sure. It seems that most people live lives of secrecy now.

I remember Mary Ann as a very pretty, sweet and shy person. Much like most of the local girls a few years ago. I also remember her as a very good cook... Much like most of the local girls a few years ago.

Anyway, this is what she had to say:

Hi Ernie, I'm thinking you remember me, or at least the family name (of course!) Hope this finds you well. I learned about your blog some time ago and enjoy your articles about the old days. I am scanning my Shelter Cove info collection and came across a couple pages about Bill and Ethel Pass that are attached. I know they lived in the Cove at one time. Looks like they ran a cafe in Garberville next to the theater. Would you know the name of that cafe? Would have been in the late 40's or early 50s, I think. I've looked at the theater's website and see the Black & White Cafe but that was in the 1930's. Could be theirs, or not. Also thought he ran the Shelter Cove Grotto at one time. Is that correct? Thanks so much for any info
Mary Ann

PS I've made the chowder recipe many times and it is delicious. I make it a little differently in that I only add enough water to cover the clams and vegetables and I don't do the additional 2 hours. Seems like everything is tender and tasty after the 30 minutes.

The legend of Suzy Blah Blah

2011-07-13T12:59:00.000-07:00

Because many people like to remain anonymous on blogsites, I’ve often wondered; How much reality should I attach to what they say. If their identity can never be known, there is no accountability. However, their thoughts become pure. Sadly, in most cases their thoughts are pure crap, or more often than not, pure evil, or pure hate. Other times their thoughts are delightfully filled with poetry, love, and wisdom.

I am a person that “reads” people well. If I know a person, I can tell how they want their statements to be taken. If you don’t know a person, what they say can only be taken at word value. Much of the humor and wisdom is lost. I remember one time when a person was talking about a humorous situation, where he said with great outrage: “that’s just wrong”. I remember thinking what a great sense of humor he had. Then I saw that he wasn’t kidding around, and the complexion of the situation changed dramatically. After that, anything that I said or did around this person was couched with the wisdom that he was slightly insane. So knowing who a person is can be a clue as to how they will react.

Of course you know, those of us on this blog can’t think about anonymous posters without thinking about Suzy Blah Blah. Normally, I wouldn’t post about a “Person”. I wouldn’t dane to post about somebody if I thought that it might hurt or embarrass them personally in any way. But, how can you hurt somebody that you don’t even know? Nor does anybody else know? So I’m doing a post about Suzy Blah Blah, kind of an unauthorized biography about an imaginary person.

Back in the very start of "Suzy Blah Blah", she would post as a spaced out hippie chick. She made many typo’s but her text was easy to read. There is a premise that if you use all the right letters or make a word look like what it should be, that people will read it as the word that it really should be. If you follow me there… Her comments were always a delightful play on words, and her content was usually a play on the facts of what your post was about. Just a sample of “Early Suzy” after a radio show that they did on BioDiesel:

suzy blah blah said:
Wow!! It was such a grate show on bio-deisel! On the enviramant show on kmud tonight that i am inspird to rite a free virse poem o about it!!! Did you here the Word? O lard wonncha by me a Mursaydees Bendz…!! LOL!!!

EVERY HUMAN BEEN

Every humin bean as well as soybeen is created by god and one is not too kill or commit forniication unless you do it righteously surving god so i told billy and he says that his gandmoter is of the Juicer religeon and told him that thiss is the basick ‘concept……………………….

(And so on. Ernie)

Suzy went on to comment on everybody’s blogs in the same delightful and cheerful way. Some people were critical of her and said some pretty nasty things to her. I made the comment that: “Say what you will about Suzy, she has never said anything but kind things to anybody”. Then she started to change. She started writing in full intelligent script. She stared criticizing some of what people said. Some of her criticism even became unfair. I’m reminded of when she criticized Ben’s interpretation of the Indian legend of how the three pools of Salmon Creek came about.

She started delving deeply into spiritual things. Some funny and interesting, and some in a critical manner. When Suzy really started to change was when she wrote that she got caught with a bunch of marijuana, Billy left her, she was pregnant, and she was living south of here. Recently, I asked her on Erics blog what she had done in her life that caused her to change so much, her reply was that she was not the same person. That the real Suzy got tired of it and asked her to take over. I’m not sure what really happened to “Suzy”, but she had, and still has, a considerable fan base. Many of the things that she said struck me how smart she was/ is? I made the statement once that, she was smarter than all the rest of us that post on this blog put together.

Although I’ve often wondered about who Suzy really is, but deep down, I’m not sure I want to know.

I have a habit of always listening to the things that people say, and I try hard to understand them. The one thing that Suzy said that moved me the most, and I still have it framed and hung on my office wall to remind me:

“love is always preferable to understanding anyway--- except sometimes i think maybe theyre close to the same thing…”
Suzy Blah Blah

Here's to "Understanding" Suzy

Pot Country

2011-07-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

My cousin “Oregon” was complaining that he didn’t have any redneck stuff to watch on television so I went looking on the internet for something interesting with a few rednecks in it and look what popped up. I found a couple of trailers that were hanging out there. The name of the film is “Pot Country”. Which only points out how far we’ve gone in the last 40 years, I remember when it used to be called “Timber Country”. Oh well, out with the old, and in with the new.

Last winter two Berkley university students showed up, Kate McLean and Mario Furloni. They had city clothes on, and they had squeaky clean faces and clear eyes. My first though was that they would never be able to find a job “trimming” looking like that. They said that they were trying to do a film about what the transition from logging to marijuana growing in Humboldt county was like. They said that they had tons of growers that they could talk to, but they wanted to talk to somebody that knew the history of the area. So I started by telling them about how the rocks got here, but they said that they wanted to start about 1950, the heyday of the timber industry in “Pot Country”.

We spend a couple of days talking and driving around. It was a nice trip down memory lane for me. They actually seemed to be fairly open minded. They didn’t really say much about all the trees that I slaughtered, and they didn’t seem to be down on the marijuana industry either. They tried to get along good with everybody and simply get the story. I felt that I had a lot in common with them, because the “Good Story” is what I live for.

My wife and I went down to Berkley for the premiere viewing of their film. I have not seen the final edition yet, so I don’t know if I die in the film like John Wayne did in "The Cowbys". But, I understand that the final edition was shown on KQED in San Francisco last night. Kate and Mario promised me a copy of the film once that it was published, and I have no reason to believe that they won’t send me one. They have such sweet faces, my wife fell in love with them, and I‘m sure she would have adopted them if it was possible.

The film won the “Hearst Award” which is apparently the top rated award at the school. Something like the Academy Award for best documentary at the university of California Berkley School of Journalism.

Pot Country | Trailer | 1min17sec from Mario Furloni on Vimeo.

Kym did a post on this film also: Pot Country

e

Vent your Spleen

2011-07-07T20:28:00.000-07:00

Do you feel like venting your spleen? Speaking your mind? Getting something off your chest? Expounding your brilliance? Expressing your anger, or in rare cases, your joy? Now is the time, no subject is of limits, as long as you realize that your mamma probably reads this blog.

I often get the feeling that some of you would rather talk about something else here, but you are too polite to say. So if something is heavy on your mind, now is the time to say so.

But ha, ha, I get to go first, because this is “Ernie’s Place”. Executive privilege, and all that, apply. So here goes: I’ve lost a whole bunch of faith in humanity as I have aged. It always seemed to me that people were basically honest, and they sincerely cared about what other people thought about them. (This is where that loud obnoxious claxon horn sounds when a person makes a wrong answer) Blaaaaaattt! I’ve come to the conclusion that some people would do just about anything as long as they knew that they would never get caught. Not only would they do it, they would be happy that they would get away with it, after all, “It’s all about them!”

What got me started on all of this, is that I got to thinking about Casey Anthony. She has absolutely no principles whatsoever. While she was in jail awaiting trial it came out that she had used a friends credit card and ran up a bunch of bills on it that she had no way of paying. She stole her friend’s checks and used them to buy beer and clothes. She pleads guilty to 13 felony fraud, bad check, and credit card theft counts. On top of being a thief and a fraud, she is a liar and a slut. Only a fool would think that she doesn’t have at least a small idea of what happened to her daughter.

Now, having said all that, I got to thinking about “Karma” which I absolutely don’t believe in , because I can’t hit it with a hammer, so it doesn’t work for me. The strange thing of it is, Karma always seems to come around. You will see it in most cases. Do something bad and Karma will bite you in the butt. I thought about; what is it going to be like when Casey gets out of Jail? Would you hire her to work for you? It will be darn near impossible for her to find work. Sadly, there are men out there that would like to take advantage of her drop dead gorgeous body. Maybe she could become a prostitute, it wouldn’t be much of a life style change for her, she apparently would go to bed with any man that was “Hot”. I guess the true test is what would the average man think of her?

Nobody will rent her a house. Nobody would want her next door. The tattoo that she got that says “Bella Vita” (Good Life) will be wasted. Remember the man that killed the gay San Francisco supervisor, Harvey Milk? When he got out of jail he got so much harassment that he started his car in the garage and killed himself. That was his Bella Vita after he got out of jail.

Now, I’m not sure what killed little Kaylee Anthony, but I’m sure that Casey probably knows. The one thing that I know, beyond any reasonable doubt, is Casey’s Bella Vita is over!

Spleen two: Every Lawyer that I know seems like a real nice person. So why does it seem like they are all involved in some evil lawyer conspiracy to strip the world of money? The Judges all seem like they are the sugar daddies in keeping the lawyers rich. Every legal decision seems to go toward lawyers making money in the courtroom. Hey, I know that’s probably wildly unfair. But, check the name at the top of the blog, I have privilege here, and I will make any ruling that pleases me. To say the legal system feeds its own greed pleases me.

Where I’m headed is, we have our own local Casey Anthony. Her name is Claudia Pedreros. I’m going to say that everything on this blog is alleged and everybody is entitled to be found guilty or innocent in a court of law, so I’ll just give you the hearsay. But, the hearsay is that young Claudia drove her little two year old daughter to Trinity County, took her daughter down to the creek, took her out to the middle, held her little body under until she was dead, then she just let her float down the stream. Claudia then took off all her clothes and waked down the middle of the highway. When they picked her up, she didn’t remember a thing. It was only later that she remembers and told the cops what happened.

The judge found her competent to stand trail. The lawyers are going to have to bring their wheelbarrows to take home all this money.

My spleen feels better now… How about yours?

Casey Anthony already a fellon

Claudia Pedreros

More American System of Justice, Casey Anthony

2011-07-05T21:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm surprised that I am only one of a few bloggers that is going to do a post about this trial. Casey Anthony was found not guilty of killing little Caylee Anthony by a jury of her peers. To began with, I have always found "Jury of their peers" to be a humorous phrase. It implies that a persons "peers" would be like them, as close as possible. What it really means, is people just like them, as close as possible without having committed the same crime, so that way a juror might have a better background in being able to understand if a person was really capable of committing the crime or not.

So, I guess that Casey Anthony should have had a jury of "liars and sluts", because that is what her lawyer openly called her in his summation speech. I was shocked when he first called her that, then it struck me that he had just made a masterful move. Everybody on the jury knew, beyond any reasonable doubt, that she was a liar and a slut. So, the jury was ready to believe whatever else he had to say. Her lawyer went on to say that there was not one shred of evidence that Casey was anything but a loving, caring mother. Then, that there was no evidence as to how little Caylee died, or in who's care.

The prosecutor stated to, essentially, forget all the rhetoric about evidence, and go with what you know in your hearts, that Casey killed that little girl.

If I was a juror, I would have came to the same verdict, there was no evidence that laid any direct blame on Casey.

So, what REALLY happened to little Kaylee?

American System of Justice

2011-07-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

First, this is not about the guilt or innocence of Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Nor the veracity of the hotel maid, 32-year-old, Nafissatou Diallo. It's about the American system of justice.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn was the leader of the International Monetary Fund, an organization that controls the purse strings of the world. Upon the accusation that he had sexually assaulted the maid in the hotel that he was staying, he promptly and wisely resigned his office. He knew that it wouldn't be good for one of the most powerful offices in the world to be involved in a scandal. He was jailed and held on a six million dollar bail for release.

He was a potential candidate for the president of France. On the word of one hotel maid he was jailed and his life was placed in ruin. Now, please don't get me wrong, if he was guilty of what he was accused of, he would be the lowest scum on the face of the Earth, lower than a snake, he should have to "eat dirt and die" (old Biblical saying) Remember the joy that we felt when he was arrested? Nobody, no matter how powerful, should be allowed to take advantage of a woman's charms without her permission. (Period) Most everybody would agree with me there. Say so if you don't!

Now, later, we find out that maybe, just maybe, the lady was making a little fib. I know, maybe she was telling the truth, and this is all just politics. My whole point of this post is that the man was arrested May 14th, he was released without bail on July 1st. If we are so proud of our justice system, why does it take so long to put such an important case together? There is NO excuse big enough to justify ruining a mans life. We now look like fools in the whole world.

e

Noisy Falling Stars?

2011-06-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, while we are on the subject of celestial objects, here’s a story that comes under the heading of “Ya’ll ain’t gonna believe this stuff”.

When we were kids we would go out in the orchard on the family ranch in Laytonville on the hot summer nights. Usually at family gatherings there were 8 or 9 kids. We would find a nice warm grassy spot still hot from the heat of the day. We would lay on our backs, tell a few scarey stories and watch the night sky. We would tell stories about the big dipper, the north star, the milky way and the moon.

We would keep count the falling stars that we would see. Whoever got to see the first one got to recite the poem “I wish I may, I wish I might, make a wish on the first falling star I see tonight”. You say it your way, we said it ours. Then we would make a wish. The other rule that we had is, that you could never reveal what you wished for. Which made wishing a lot more fun when you didn’t have to tell anybody.

As we counted the stars, whoever counted the most got to win. Of course there were endless arguments over whether or not you reaaallly, really saw one. If somebody was a star behind, and they saw one “Out of the corner of my eye right over there, it was so faint that you could just barely, barely see it, but it was there!” Another kid would say; “Twas not, you cheater” and the argument was on. There was no chance that you could hear anything besides kids arguing.

My uncle, who would be in his nineties now if he had lived. A man who I would trust with my life, anywhere any time. Came out one night and told us about when he was a kid, that he would come out to our spot in the orchard and lay on his back and watch the falling stars. He said that it was so quite when he was a kid that you could hear the falling stars pass overhead. He said that they made a very, very faint hissing, sizzling sound, that sounded like the old 4th of July sparklers that were made out of magnesium powder on a wire. The 4th of July was never over until every little kid had a third degree burn or two from them. And he said that some times you could hear a slight booming sound like far away thunder after a long time, that could have really been far of thunder but he liked to think that it was the falling stars. Remember, this was back before airplanes made sonic booms, so it was strange to connect the phenomenon. But he thought that it was related.

He was sure that the hissing sound came from the meteors because you could hear them go over. In my heart, I know that he actually heard them. Can you explain this to me? Or, have you heard a falling star on a quiet night. This is not a trick or a set-up, but an actual story that my uncle told, and as I said, I believe it with all my heart, but I've never been lucky enough to hear one.

Earth off its axis?

2011-06-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

I had a chance encounter with a friend today that led to a different discussion than we normally have. Normally we talk about history, Indian wars, or unique geology. He is a man that I respect for his knowledge and wisdom. So, I was taken a little bit aback when he asked me if I had noticed that the sun had started setting somewhat north of what is usually does. I said, “Well of course, we just passed the Summer Solstice, it sets way, way north this time of the year.” He explained that no, that is not what he meant, he knew all about the solstices and the equinoxes. So, he asked again, knowing that I grew up here, if I had noticed that the sun might be setting further north than it used to. He had heard a theory that the earth's axis was changing

I started searching my memory for some way to prove that the sun was setting in the exact same place. I remember thinking the other night that the sun was setting way north, but I had no frame of reference to decide if it was setting in the normal place or simple my imagination that it was further north.

So, my stomach tensed a little bit and I said: “Well if the earth had changed on its axis, we would be having major earthquakes, volcanoes, melting ice caps and strange weather patterns. My stomach tensed a little more as I thought about what I had just said. I stared to recall that we have been having all those changes. We even had snow in Tahoe today… at the end of June for crumb sakes.

I laughed a little nervously and told him, “Well I have an open mind, and you know me, I don’t believe in anything without absolute proof, so maybe I’m the wrong person to ask.”

About then we got interrupted and we went our separate ways. I spent the rest of the day thinking about what he had said, and what I could say that would set his mind at ease. I thought about the fact that Japan had just had a major earthquake, and that it had moved the island 8 feet, and supposedly moved the earth off it’s axis about 10 centimeters, which is about 4 inches in American. I pondered that 4” shouldn’t even be noticeable. I was somewhat comforted by the thought that at least somebody is checking it. Then my stomach did that thing again. I thought: “What if the axis has already been moving? And, the Japanese earthquake just moved it that much more!” Crap, that thought wasn’t that comforting.

I spent a little time wondering if the government would tell us if the earth was moving off its axis. Then I thought about all those science fiction movies where the President gets a very serious look on his face and says: “We can’t tell the people about this, it would cause panic and people would be jumping out of windows and stuff”. I always think, what the hell difference would it make to tell people if the world was going to end anyway? That, and the government would lie to us when the truth would serve better.

At my earliest convenience I decided to use my old fall-back. I Googled it. Well that wasn’t very reassuring! I found Article after article about the earth moving on it’s axis. Now, I know that there are things that can’t be hid. Like where the needle on a compass points. No comfort there, Magnetic North is moving wildly toward Russia. Moscow will probably be the Magnetic North Pole someday. Well at this point, I need a little reassurance, can anybody tell me that we are on the same axis? It sure feels like we are. But…..

I put some links, for you to follow, down below. You can spend hours clicking through them. I had the same thought as I had with the government. Why are they spending so much time warning us? The guy down town, that walks around with the big stick, (he calls it “A Staff”) will give you his prophesy if you ask. I always feel obligated to ask him. He says that the only thing that is saving us from major tidal waves in the Pacific Ocean is God is holding them back. I’m thinking tomorrow that I’m going to ask him about this axis thing. I’m getting a little nervous.

http://www.divulgence.net/
http://educate-yourself.org/lte/earthtiltedasis17sep07.shtml
Did you look at them?
Ernie

The star that all of the others are circling in this time exposure is the North Star. The center of the Earth's axis. Photo taken from Death Valley CA.

I will have to admit that my curious friend had me going for a bit, but all-that-I-am said, “the Earth hasn’t moved.” When I say “all that I am” I mean that I started out worrying about how EVERYTHING worked, even as a small child. No alarm clock or watch was safe from me. I ruined more clocks than any kid that I know. They ticked and kept time. I had to know how they did that! I just knew that the secret was inside, so I took them apart. Wow! Gears! One gear turns left, others turn right, big ones, little ones, the little one that tick-tocks back and forth. You have no idea how fascinating that was for me. When I “fixed” a few and made them run better I couldn’t understand way people were so upset that the clock now ran two or three hours fast every day. The Grumps!

I thought of a couple of dozen very scientific ways to prove that the axis hasn’t moved. But, science just doesn’t get you very far with some people. There are those that think that the moon landing was a fake. So I wracked my brain for a few easily understood solutions. So, here they are:

1- find a sundial that has been in the same place for a hundred years or so, and see if the shadow is still in the same place.

2- And this is my favorite, because it involves duct tape! Find the North Star. It’s right there where it always is. If you can’t find it have a smart friend show you where it is. Take a 6 foot length of plastic 4” sewer pipe. Have your smart friend hold the pipe beside a pole. Sight the north star through the pipe, then quick duct tape it to the pole so it stays in the exact same position. The north star will remain right there in the middle! On the axis, unless it has moved! Okay, it wobbles a little bit because it is not Perfectly north, but it’s so close that even your smart friend can’t tell.

3- Turn on your TV, if you see a picture, the satellites are still in alignment. It seems unlikely that they would change orbit just to accommodate the Earth’s new axis. Watching Sponge Bob Square Pants works the best.

The Slippery Slope, or... Human Nature.

2011-06-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

You know how I like to go on about reality. Things have to be pretty obvious before I trust in them. I know that not all things can be tangibles, it's just a lot easier for me to grasp when they are. So, I have a tendency to discount anything that appears to be a variable, like the way that people believe. Some people are of one religion, and some people are of another. Even though most people will claim that "there is only one God", they seem to bow to their God in different directions. When there is a different perception of what is real, I have a tendency to be suspicious. I usually fall back to my "hammer test". If it can be hit with a hammer it is real. If it can't be hit with a hammer it should be viewed with a healthy amount of suspicion.

A lot has been happening in the world lately that has me wondering "what the hell were they thinking". Bloggers have a tendency to feed upon each others stories, I think that it's part of that "Slippery Slope" that we are all familiar with. A little bit of feeding on each others stories, or adding pertinent information in one's own blog is probably okay, but at some point copying other blogger's stories becomes plagiarism. Myself, I usually feel quite honored when somebody uses a quote, or part of a story that I have written. Usually it means that I've made some good points. But, when I'm using material from another bloggers story, I find myself on the precipice of that slippery slope, and I have to decide if I'm adding to a story or simply stealing it.

Recently, Kym Kemp wrote about a lady in Fortuna, So, I have to give Kym full credit for my mental meanderings here, although I'm not sure she wants the credit... She wrote about the lady that allegedly swindled people out of hundreds of thousands of hard earned dollars. Some people claim that the lady is really the salt of the Earth, and simply got caught on the down side of the cash flow and was unable to recover, others claim that she was cunning and conniving, and is the lowest form of swindler. It's always that line between what people believe and what is the truth, or in my case "reality" that causes me to wonder.

I wonder how people get so far over that slippery slope that they can never recover. In the beginning, does someone simply "misuse" somebody's money, just for a little bit? Then miracle of miracles, fortune comes their way, and they pay back the money before anybody even knows that it was missing. Maybe it works so well that they keep skating other people's money for their own benefit. Then one day they build such a huge house of cards that they are so completely dependant upon the economy improving that they have no other options. They are completely in over their heads, then the economy folds, disaster ensues and they keep shuffling money until they can no longer cover their debts, and everything comes tumbling down. Is that how Bernie Madoff got his start? When did he start dancing on the top of the slippery slope and then slip irretrievably over the edge.

The man that managed the Humboldt Creamery had a similar story. He was faking the creamery's inventory to make the business seem to be worth more. It seems like such a small thing as long as business is improving, and the income can eventually cover the fraud. Who would ever know? But, the business didn't do well enough to cover his fraud, he eventually confessed to his misdeeds and resigned. Later, to be fined millions of dollars and put in jail. What the heck was he thinking? Was it ego that made him want to appear to be a successful manager. He surely lost more than he ever stood to gain.

Is religion like that? Can the truly religious people go out and sin everyday? Then simply pray for forgiveness then start all over again with the sinning? I see a lot of that. What is it with human nature that keeps us on the edge of that slippery slope? We all temp fate. We eat too much hoping that we may not gain too much weight, but if we do we can always go on a diet... right? Then there is that car or house that we really can't afford, but our credit is good. If things keep improving we should pay everything off.. right?

I'm not saying that I'm perfect. Far from it. I'm skate at the top of that slippery slope all of the time. But, I'm ever-vigilant of where the edge is. I never want to find myself somewhere past the point of no return. I see too many stories in the newspapers about people that have been sucked over. Now, I think that I will go have the Hungry Man Special Breakfast... I will diet next week. Hopefully, before I have a heart attack.

Scotia, On the chopping block?

2011-06-25T13:42:00.000-07:00

An old friend, and former Garberville resident, tipped me off to this article on Scotia California, The squeeky clean town that was run by the company mill, Pacific Lumber Company. Pacific Lumber logged their forests on a sustained yield, selective cut, non-clear-cut, basis. Had their stock not been undervalued because they weren't cutting for maximum yield, they never would have been bought out, and there would still be an operating mill with a happy-family crew still working there.

Now the Pacific Lumber Company lays in ruin while the fat-cats that raped the forest,and destroyed the company, have cut and run with their millions of dollars, and Scotia is trying to decide how they might go on.

latimes.com

Old lumber town balks at independence

Scotia, Calif.'s latest owner, a hedge fund, is preparing to unload the town and is giving the 800 residents a choice between taking it over themselves or seeing it sold. But residents are used to not running the place.

By Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times

6:54 PM PDT, June 24, 2011

Reporting from Scotia, Calif.

The Wall Street investors who own the last company town in California want to return it to the people.

Many of the people don't want it back. They like Scotia just fine the way it is — a North Coast paradise of pastel saltbox homes and lush lawns, where the company keeps everything spick-and-span and residents don't have to worry about budget deficits and zoning spats.

"People who live in town aren't political. They don't know about planning commissions and all that malarkey," said Mel Berti, who has tended the meat counter at the local grocery for 35 years. With independence, he said, "Who the heck knows what's going to happen?"

Scotia, 30 miles south of Eureka, was built in the 1880s by Pacific Lumber Co. to house the lumberjacks and mill workers who harvested the thick forests of this isolated region.

The town was named for the Nova Scotians who came here for work, and who reported for duty on the lumber company's whistle, bought groceries at the lumber company's store and lived in the lumber company's houses.

But the tree-cutting business, shrinking for decades, finally tanked as the housing boom petered out, and Pacific Lumber filed for bankruptcy protection in 2007. Its largest creditor, a hedge fund called Marathon Asset Management, obtained the town in bankruptcy proceedings.

Now, Marathon is preparing to unload Scotia and is giving the 800 residents a choice between taking the place over themselves or seeing it sold to the highest bidder.

On Aug. 30, voters will decide whether they want Scotia to become an independent community services district within Humboldt County. On the same ballot, they'll be asked to choose five board members to run the area. A majority "yes" vote is needed for Marathon to subdivide the 300-acre town and sell it off in parcels, and to ensure that there is a government to oversee sewage, fire protection and other public services.

If the nays prevail, Marathon says it will sell the town lock, stock and barrel, since Scotia cannot be subdivided without a governing body in place. Company executives say Scotia then could wind up in the hands of a movie studio, a religious sect or the developer of a retirement community.

If the entire town is sold, Scotians probably would have to leave the community where many of their families have lived for generations — especially if the collection of old, outdated homes doesn't fit into the new owners' plans.

That residents could balk at independence might seem surprising in light of the history of the company towns built near coal mines, textile mills and steel factories a century or more ago.

In that era, "company town" often meant corporate tyranny. Employees and their families were quartered in cheap company housing and were typically paid in scrip that could be redeemed only at the overpriced company store. At its worst, the system resembled medieval serfdom.

The labor movement and the automobile helped end many of the estimated 2,500 company towns across America. Some were abandoned, but many evolved into cities of their own.

Lowell, Mass., became a commuter suburb. Hershey, Pa., boasts an amusement park for chocolate lovers. Port Gamble, Wash., a timber town like Scotia, became a tourist destination.

William Stephens, 68, thinks Scotia can have the same happy fate. Stephens, a nurse practitioner who is a candidate for the board of the community services district, envisions a new, better Scotia, with a gas station and bike trails.

"I have zillions of ideas," he said. "This town has some real potential."

Pacific Lumber started converting Scotia into a community services district in 2003. It's taken eight years to jump through the necessary hoops, and all that remains now is the vote.

For many Scotians, the case for taking a private town public is no slam-dunk.

"It's going to change too much," said Jason Calkins, 21, who has lived in Scotia his whole life. His father — who claims to be the last baby born at the Scotia hospital — was once a lumber grader, evaluating the quality of the redwood logs that came through the mill.

Calkins' life in Scotia is simple now: It takes him just 30 seconds to walk from the blue gingerbread house he shares with his fiancee, Brandy Green, to the hardware store where he works, but he's not sure he wants to stick around.

It's not just the prospect of a takeover by a religious sect or movie studio that worries residents. It's the inescapable reality that there will no longer be a benefactor presiding over the town, keeping the workers happy and the ruffians out.

"They're going to let just anybody in," said Green, 19. "It used to be you could only get in if you know someone."

The town's quiet streets, surrounded by trees sheathed in layers of fog, feel frozen in a bygone era. Outside the small grocery store, a code of conduct instructs residents not to yell, sing, deface property or sit on trash receptacles, and reminds them that "loitering, delaying, lingering or remaining idle" are prohibited.

The mill whistle still goes off three times a day, at 7:30, noon, at 4:30. Marathon wanted to turn it off, but residents protested. Drivers keep their cars in converted stables because many of the houses were built before the automobile.

Lisa Baney, a voice-over artist for audio books, moved to Scotia from San Francisco in 2009 and was immediately struck by residents' passivity.

"People here are used to getting up and going to work every day when the first whistle blew, and letting the company tell them what to do," Baney said. "They've never had to confront the fact that they have civic responsibility. They've never had to grow up."

Indeed, residents seem used to having the lumber company making decisions for them. They wave at the maintenance men who deal with their plumbing problems and cheerily mow the lawns in the common areas. It's as if they've lived in a storybook world where people didn't have to nag their local government to fill potholes and maintain parks.

Many say they didn't even know there was a vote coming up.

**

Frank Bacik thinks he can persuade Scotians to take charge. As president of Town of Scotia Co., the Marathon subsidiary that runs the place, Bacik is responsible for taking Scotia public.

Bacik arouses the suspicion of some Scotia residents because he was general counsel for Pacific Lumber Co. through its painful bankruptcy. But the stout lawyer with a neatly trimmed white goatee exudes a childlike glee over the novelty of ushering a 19th century relic into the 21st century.

He's started putting signs throughout town: "Vote YES for an Independent Scotia," in red, white and blue. He pitches the transition as a way for the town to become re-energized.

"There are cities that had no reason for being, where weeds started growing in the streets," he said. "We have been spared that, but no one knows what will happen here."

To bring the town up to code, Marathon is spending $12.7 million on improvements, including an updated sewer system and insulation for the many houses that lacked it.

Bacik has sold the power plant and is looking for buyers for industrial lots and the Scotia Inn, a stately hotel with a bar and restaurant valued at $3 million. He's recruited outside businesses, including a water-bladder manufacturer and a brewing company, to diversify the economic base.

Residents will have the option of buying the town's 270 homes, which they now rent. Houses vary in size but come in only five colors; prices would probably start at around $180,000 for a 1,100-square-foot model. Bacik is seeking buyers for the shopping center, built from old-growth redwoods, that houses the grocery, hardware store and pharmacy.

Nine people have signed up to run for the five-member board of the community services district. They are both new residents and people who have lived in Scotia for generations — a cast that includes a onetime cowboy, former lumber company workers, a truck driver and a pharmacy technician.

"We're moving along towards independence," he says. "But to keep it as a town, it has to change."

That change is what's causing turmoil among native Scotians. They feel ambivalence about the future because they were treated so well by the lumber company in the past, said Hardy Green, a New York-based history professor and former journalist who wrote "The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy."

In some company towns, goons assaulted union sympathizers, and private detectives infiltrated the ranks of labor. Scotia, by comparison, was a "pin-neat, saloon-free Shangri-La amid redwood forests," Green wrote.

"This was an amazing place," said lifelong resident J.J. Johansen, 30, as he guided his towheaded son through the vegetable aisle of the grocery store. "All the houses were nice, all the yards were nice, but now, people don't care as much. It's going downhill."

Ronda James, 49, feels the same nostalgia.

"They were so good to us. We were spoiled," she said. Her husband worked at the mill until he was laid off seven years ago; she used to rent a beauty salon in town until costs became too high.

Some new residents have brought drugs and wild parties, James says, and others just aren't friendly. Back in her childhood, families knew each other because they worked together at the mill.

But even utopias have to end, James said, sitting in her cheery kitchen as a light rain drizzled on the roof.

"What kind of real town can keep undesirables out?" she said. "You just can't."

More Skippy treasure

2011-06-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

From Skippy:

Your Own Treasure Hunt?Thank you, Ernie, olmanriver, Kym, Joel, Fred, Ben, Spyrock, Beachcomber, Oregon, Jonathon, charlie two crows, Anonymous, and all of you posting interesting discoveries. They were fascinating. May I offer an appreciation in return? Here's an easy Internet-Treasure-Hunting Adventure to have fun with-- for you, Ernie's readers, making it down this treasure thread so far.

It's called California's Unclaimed Property Fund. You might have heard of it. Think of it as a 'Lost and Found' for money gone awry due to mistakes, moving, wrong addresses... you name it. It's billions of dollars covering nearly 20% of our California residents. Fairly good odds, better than the lottery and easier than a metal detector. Searching is easy, fast, and fun. Try it, I think you'll like it.

But first, may I offer a few caveats and tips? I would kindly suggest reading this through, first, for your success and for some realistic expectations:

1. More often than most you won't find yourself listed; but you will find family, friends, neighbors, businesses, and acquaintances that you know listed.

2. Most of the amounts are small and insignificant; but 5-10% of them are very worthwhile for to pursue.

3. Put only a last name in the name box of the link, below, if you can. Leave the rest blank. I suggest only using a last name-- and leaving the other fields blank-- to broaden the search field. If it's a common last name try using a first initial, or a first name, and narrowing down the prospects below the 500 entries possible.

4. For additional searching fun, put in only a single letter as the last name, and the city. For example, "A", and the city-- say, "Phillipsville"-- and you'll bring up everyone listed in the locale starting with A; you can roll through the alphabet seeing who you might know.

5. If you come across a 'hit', click on the blue property ID numbers to the right of the listing. If the amount is worthwhile to claim, follow the instructions.

6. If you come across someone you know and like-- and the amount is worthwhile to pursue-- please let them know. It's a courtesy, a kindness, and a Santa Claus sort of thing. They usually don't know it exists; that's why their listings made it to the State's Lost and Found in the first place. If you don't let them know, chances are no one will. They'll usually be appreciative and thankful.

Good. You're set to go. Thank you for your patience so far. Here's the State's Unclaimed Property link to begin your search:

California State Controller's Site for Unclaimed Property

Don't forget to search business names, too. Yours truly found $6k for his wife's place; $7k for the vet; more for others. Some under different spellings, addresses, name variations or other errors.. Others, in plain view. Oh, and while Mr. Schwarzenegger only has a listing for 15 cents... he may want to claim it to remove his personal address from view.

...skippy has helped 150 folks find $350,000 so far. They've been very surprised, pleased, and satisfied overall. There are far too many listings for yours truly to possibly even begin to locate. Maybe you can help?

You, your friends, and Ernie's readers are next. Give it a try. It's as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. You might find hours of enjoyment searching. Feel free to pass this on to others-- and send them to Ernie's Place here for the link, won't you? Let us know if this pans out for you-- like the gold in Ernie's photograph.

--Happy hunting, good luck, and wishing you more adventure and fun for you and yours this Humboldt summer.

skippy

Skippy
As you know, I’ve found hundreds of dollars on that web-site. Most of it was from an insurance company that flaked on me. I have not as yet gone to the effort to apply for it. I hope that there is no statute of limitations, or the state doesn’t decide to steal it as unclaimed property.
Ernie

Heat wave

2011-06-22T08:23:00.000-07:00

Summer came right on cue. The temperature soared into the 90's on the 21st of June, the summer Solstice. I'm going to be busy for the next few days, so I'll be checking in less often but I will be here. I liked Skippy's post on found treasure, it was fun. Garberville had a parade last Saturday, but I don't have any pictures yet. The parade was one of the best that we have had in a long time. The Blue Room, Gary Futrel, Twango Macallen, and a few others had a rolling Honky-Tonk saloon scene and band goin, on. I didn't get to see the whole parade because I was with the Fire Department.

Well,,, I gotta' get busy...

Country Wisdom. Horse sense?

2011-06-20T20:59:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm wrong, there always needs to be a first time, but maybe I'm right, I think country people may not be smarter than city people, but they are a hell of a lot wiser. Yes, I'm picking a fight, as long as it's a fair fight. If you want to tell a story about wisdom that you've seen, it's okay, but you have to tell us about it. It's okay to point out why you think city people might be wiser if you want, I'm all ears, as they say. What made me think of this is my cousin Oregon explaining why somebody only found broken dishes in the dump sight. It just seemed reasonable to him that "I figure they only threw out the broken china." Now to a country person, that just makes plain old ordinary horse sense.

Granted, it’s been a while, but when I worked in the woods, sometimes we were so anxious to get to work on time that we would leave to work without enough gas to get home. When you work on a crew, you had to be to work on time so as not to hold other people up. There was a saying on our crew that, "If you show up to work on time, you are already late". It was imperative that you be to work, before starting time. Then we were stuck with figuring out how to get home. A lot of times we would mix all of the chain saw gas, a little bit of diesel, and siphon the gas out of the Cat starting engines to get home. Now that's what I call "wisdom". Then, the next morning we had to be to work early enough to replace all the fuel before starting time.

Now, Just to show you how wise I really am, I already know what you're thinkin'... You're thinkin' that a city person would have been smart enough to put gas in his tank. That's probably true, but, that's where the ol' country wisdom really kicks in. The city guy would have been smart enough to get gas in his tank, he would have apologized to his girlfriend, left her standin’ on the dance floor with her motor already runnin', and he would have gone to the gas station to get gas for morning, then he would have gone home and got a good nights sleep.

To me that's just plain stupid. When I worked in the woods, I would hang out on the dance floor, and dance my girl around the pool table until she wanted to go home. My wisdom tells me that you already know where this story goin’ from here, so I’ll spare a few details. The short version is I would already be awake (still) when it was time to go to work in the morning. I already knew that I had enough gas to get to work, so I would figure how to work out the details on how to get home… later. One option would be to ride with somebody else, but that would put a person on somebody else’s schedule. The number one rule of a country person is “never let anybody else run your schedule”.

I always got to work on time when I worked on a crew. I’ve seen people that thought that they could show up late and get away with it. The bull-buck didn’t even have to fire him. The crew would run him off. It’s a pretty humiliating thing to be run off by a logging crew. You would have to be a pretty valuable employee with a darn good excuse to get by without being run off for being late. A logging crew’s language can melt the bark off trees. There is no word that doesn’t get used. The logger language includes good hearted racism, sexism, homophobia, hog swill, and then really rough language. I know the city folks would say that some of that kind of cussin’ goes too far. The loggers liked criticism, when that happened, it was an opportunity to fight. Don’t get me wrong, the reason that I say that their cussin’ was “good hearted” is that they would fight FOR anybody if somebody was being unfair to them, no matter what race, creed, color, or sex. To quote a logger friend of mine, for an example. “My friends call me “Fat Boy” but you shouldn’t try it.” It was kind of a cliquish group. You were either IN or OUT, but you got a fair chance.

Wisdom: When I was young and dumb. I always thought that I could work hard enough to impress the old guys. In the winter time, a lot of the guys that worked in the woods would make redwood split-stuff, like rails, boards and posts. You always stacked the work as you made it. At the end of the day, you tallied your work. No matter how hard I worked, the old guys would always beat me. The kicker is, they didn’t work that hard.

One of the old timers said; “You know what your problem is Ernie? You’re dumb”. Now, you city-slickers would probably be insulted if somebody said that to you. But in the woods, you know that an Old-timer is about to spill his beans. My reply was: "You wouldn’t say something like that unless you intended to prove it, what makes you think that I’m ‘Dumb‘- asshole.” That’s woods talk. It’s strategy to get the old timer to spill his guts. By calling him “asshole” he knows that I respected him a lot, because I wouldn’t call him "asshole" unless I respected him. Because, he would kick my butt if he even half-way thought I was serious. So, then he knew that I respect him, and that I had just challenged him to “Put-up, or shut up”. He goes on to say. "You just gotta’ be smarter than a board to make more rails.” He went on to show me how to "push my split". When splitting boards into 2x2 rails, the work always had to be divided evenly to get the rail to split down the middle. If the split is not exactly divided in the middle it will run out to the weak, or narrow side. To split a six inch board into 2x2 rails works out that you have one narrow side. One 2" side and one 4" side. He showed me how to "fool a board into thinking it was a two by eight". You stick the board into the crotch of a tree and bend the board to the fat side while pulling the 2'x2' off the narrow side. To steer the slit you just lean heavier onto the board and the split will follow the pressure. It's easier to show you than explain it, but it works. You can steer perfect splits every time. Before that, I was loosing a 2" inch rail on every odd size split, because it would run out on me and be ruined. I had to throw it on the burn pile.

The Old-Timer explained to me that he didn't give a damn that I wasn't making better money. He said that he was tired of watching me ruin good redwood. Some people are hard to read, but I think that he liked me. It seems that I've learned everything that I know the hard way, but I had a lot of good people break the trail for me. I did notice that they still out-split me. I finally figured out that they could "read a log" and tell how good it was going to split before they ever chose it. They explained to me that some things you just have to know. That there is no way that you can be smart enough to know a good log, that's wisdom that comes with experience.

I've run into more country wisdom than most people because I've been around a lot of the wise Old-Timers. I can almost always coax a story or two out of them because I listen to everything that they have to say. That's a little of MY wisdom.

I'm open to any stories that you might have about city or country wisdom. This is your chance to defend your honor.