Archive for December, 2010

We have to give thanks and praises to Maury Maverick, attorney from Texas who, on May 21st 1944 coined the term gobbledygook while describing the pompous outpourings of politico's and pundits everywhere. He said they just go struttin' around gob, gob gobbling about this and that, ending up with the characteristic "gook" sound (sort of like a turkey clearing its throat) that follows the fowl's rantings. The man knew his turkeys. We are hitting a peak of gobbledy-gookery hitherto unknown. Check out the mountain of gook surrounding wikileaks founder Julian Assange, a PhD physicist  who appears to be one of the most calm, rational, well spoken, single minded advocates for unearthing scumbaggery wherever it may be found. Witness the piles of gook surrounding things like repealing "don't ask don't tell"  (whoopee, we can wear pink chiffon to the mess hall), and passing unemployment extensions (a given to anyone who runs sane), while off on the sidelines the largest defense budget in the galaxy passes, leaving us free to continue wars, ill begotten, illegal and immoral on six fronts. G-g-g-gook. And while the gook gobbledy's, Monsanto hires out Xe (formerly Blackwater), because every wondrous deadly chemical, nature meddlin' pecker-wood corporation should rent its own mercenary army, if only to cover security on corporate junkets to Dubai and to assist traditional subsistence farmers in the transition from their land to the Nike factory. I'm not terribly political, but to follow the action is to have the equivalent of a socio/cultural sanity barometer hanging next to the conventional weather variety. One whose settings range between "so what" and "get the fuck outahere", with intermediate settings at "mildly interesting", "gonna look into that", "happy to know that", "you can't be serious", " not amused," and "no freakin' way." These days, I'm not amused. Anyone? In that sphere, where the definition of sane behavior has become so elastic as to allow for prominent political showmen to call for the assassination of Assange without anyone batting an eyelash leaves me a tweensy bit unnerved. Anyone? Bit of a V for Vendetta scenario coalescing. Here's hoping it doesn't lead to the Big Ugly. I'm buying a Guy Fawkes mask just in case. There have been predictions for a wet winter this year. So far, that's been a radical understatement. It's all we can do to keep up with the explosive growth brought on by regular and sometimes heavy rains. I think we've probably gotten nine or ten inches in the past couple of weeks. That's nearly half our annual average. Nice comeback. Now those of us who have settled in out here on the dry side have done so 'cause we like it dry. Wet is nice as a novelty, but too much causes a weepy kind of gnashing. A kind of irrational fear that the sun has forsaken us. A searching of the soul as to what sins of commission or omission have been committed that would lead to such karma. Six strait days of wet!! Is this a rain forest in Borneo? Can those be rain clouds building on the mountain yet Again? Is climate change caused by me? Hail Mary, full of Grace..................... Aside from the state of dementia I am reduced to in such wetness, the orchard trees can be affected in a number of ways. For instance, trees flowering during such times are likely to set less fruit. Trees not flowering are likely to go into maxed out vegetative growth and potentially forget about reproducing till the next dry time. And trees that are bearing fruit are likely to lose more to rot and insect damage, but they look spectacular doing so. On the positive side of the ledger, the fruits that hang unharmed, plump up like Oprah on holiday. Then there's the mosquitoes. We're just not used to mosquitoes like the folks from the wet side. They just know its not prudent to set foot outside during certain times of day. They dress appropriately. They have caches of mosquito coils at arms reach and bathe in citronella as a matter of course. I've heard that if you stuff a mating pair inside a marshmallow, roast it and eat it, it acts as a homeopathic remedy. Around here we forget that when its wet, the mosquitoes find ways to drop their spawn in obscure pockets of water that collect in out of the way places spewing squadrons of flighted bloodsuckers whose only purpose in life is to seek out mammalian hemoglobin. Following trails of CO2 and their relentless instinctual urge to reproduce, they home in on our unprotected bodies and before we know it, we grow faint, somehow recalling every vampire film we've every seen before our vision begins to blur. Finally, the dim humming sound of the swarm clues us in to the dozens of small red sacs hanging off our arms and legs, growing impossibly large as the little vermin wax giddy with the taste of sun soaked human. We recoil in horror as they detach from their fleshy moorings, frantically beating their wings to stay afloat for long enough to attract a male of the species whose pecker is so hard by then that the rendezvous and docking goes off hitch free. Most of the little duck ponds and water features have these cute guppy lookin' fish called Gambusia that consider mosquito larvae to be like unto truffles to a pig. Why, I've seen a duck pond infested with larvae get cleared out within days of putting a couple of dozen of the little darlings in their midst. They must act as a psychedelic 'cause I sometimes see the fish swimming  in sync forming Jewish stars and I Ching hexagrams. One time they came together to form a thousand petaled lotus floating above the head of Alfred E. Newman. What, me worry? All the tribulations, large and small that accompany this farm, this rag tag family diggin' in the dirt, this life of toil and contentment are but a distant echo compared to the day and night struggles of billions of people living without adequate anything. The degree to which our expectations that this vast disparity in living standards can or should be maintained carries with it the scent of rot and the promise of despair. Not the kind that we see day to day like those who have to walk for miles to get drinkable water, but the kind that eats away at some core of common sense that compels us to fight for the kinds of changes that bring back equilibrium and restore health to the whole system. With senses bombarded by information oozing out of every media pore, we save up the seeds of wisdom that pass through our hearts and plant the seeds of sustenance that guide our hands. We can Only do So much. An oxymoron brimming with hidden hope. I'd like to say Happy New Year, so I will, knowing that there is a certain hollowness to the phrase. Knowing that the zeitgeist doesn't merit the sentiment and that optimism without a coherent plan is like a grizzled old tom cat peeing on your favorite alpaca sweater. Got Plan? See you on the flip side. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp