Multipurpose guitar

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Poem: The Freighter at Kato Zakris

Poem: The Freighter at Kato Zakris
By Jack Brummet

Down the hill
From the Minoan palace at Kato Zakris,
A battered and rusting freighter showed up

Six months ago,
With a Pakistani crew
Under an Egyptian flag.

Now she sits 30 meters offshore,
Dead in the water,
Waiting for Euros, parts, or a new owner.

The locals don’t know
If there is a crew on board.
The waiter said

“It was interesting
The first day, after that it’s a scar
We hope goes away soon.”
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Photograph: Ike Lines Up A Putt

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor

President Dwight D. Eisenhower lines up a putt.  Although Ike is probably the most famous golfing President, as it turns out, President Obama is on track to eclipse him in the number of golf outings (presuming, of course, that he has eight years to do this).

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The most expensive whiz, ever

 

By Mona Goldwater, Public Dilemma Editor

A 21-year-old Oregon man was recently caught peeing in one of Portland's main reservoirs.   The city drained all 7.8 million gallons at a cost of $36,000. Portland Water Bureau administrator David Schaff asked reporters "Do you want to drink pee?"

This has to be the world's most expensive leak, ever.  And, when they drained that open reservoir, I bet they found squirrels, bats, birds, slugs, and other critters that makes the reason they drained the reservoir in the first place seem trivial

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Drawing: "Everybody tried their best"

"Everybody tried their best."

"Oh God."

By Jack Brummet - click to enlarge

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Del Brummet on Mt. Si

Del and Keelin took a hike on Mt. Si yesterday.   This is Del, near the top.  Mt. Si is what remains of a volcano.  According to The Wikipedia, "The 4-mile (6.4 km) long Mount Si trail climbs a total of 3,500 feet (1,100 m) reach to the summit ridge. The summit of Mount Si can then be reached by an exposed scramble, class 3, up the summit block which is known as the "Haystack"

click to enlarge

click to enlarge - by permission of the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust

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A Salute To Dean Ericksen

By Pablo Fanque, Mona Goldwater, and Jack Brummet

One of our favorite contributors to All This Is That is having a birthday today.  Dean is one of our most active tipsters, and often leads us to new and fertile meadows of starting points, content, warped stories, and strange and wonderful images.  And, to top it off, he is funny, handsome, and facile at crossing the generational divide.  He has fans from the octogenarians down to the one-year olds.  Happy Birthday, Dean Ericksen!

Click here to view Mona's photo retrospective of Dean. 

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We have to put the screws to someone. Don't we?

By Mona Goldwater
Amateur Economics Correspondent





What do we do?  If this was a real business--and it seems like we need to treat it like that once again--wouldn't we nick our employees and, especially, our vendors and buyers; we'd lower wages and raise prices (taxes) and hope we could find a middle ground on which to survive.  Despite all the moaning and groaning, hasn't the TARP money done what it was supposed to do?  In fact, haven't many/most of those "investments" been paid back, even with a little vigorish?  Yeah, we ran up deficits dealing with the late 2000's financial meltdown, but isn't it approximately time to put a cork in that?

The U.S. ran up budget deficits for nearly 30 years--from 1970 through 1997.  Bill Clinton was president in 1998, when the government finally achieved a surplus--a surplus created through bi-partisan cooperation.  And we racked up further surpluses in 1999, 2000 and in 2001.  2001 was the final year of a Clinton-managed budget.

George W. Bush succeeded Clinton in 2001, and--surprise--we had a budget deficit in 2002 that has continued every year since then.  The deficit is projected to increase massively and exponentially this year under President Barack Obama.

This isn't an editorial opinion.  I have no idea how to roll back the clock to 1998.  What do the smart people say?  What would you do? What's three trillion between friends?  Do we need to crank up the presses at The Mint?  Or sell, say, a 25% equity stake in the U.S. to The People's Republic of China?  If the numbers I see are right, we have now borrowed around $1.4 trillion from China, or, $1,000 from every one of the PRC's 1.3 billion citizens.   Where do we go from here?  How do we fix this?

And one last question?  How much gold do we actually have in Fort Knox?  I know that virtually all the gold we own there was purchased at $35 an ounce or less, and most of it was accumulated when the price was far lower than that (when we were still on the gold standard).  Why don't we break that gold out and sell it, now that it retails for around $1,500 an ounce--while all the knuckleheads are buying gold, shotguns, and canned goods like madmen?

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Painting: Map 26

Painting  by Jack Brummet
[watercolor and pen on d'Arches paper 22"x30"]

click to enlarge

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This photographer stole Richard M. Nixon's soul. . .

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor

This is a rare photograph of President Richard M. Nixon—one of the few I've ever seen (and I've seen many) that captures his heart and soul:

Several recent ATIT articles on President Nixon:

Visiting Richard Nixon

Fun with Richard Nixon's Ghost

Nixon's Back Pocket speech in case of a space disaster

RMN's Comedy of Errors

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Painting: Tell A Sad Story (from a hobo sign)

by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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iPhone photos from The Methow

The North Cascades still had large amounts of snow...a couple of days before July

Dusk on the Methow River

The Hills surrounding The Methow Valley

The Hills

The Methow River at 9 pm.

The Curran-Brummet-Ford-Sanchez-Querfurth-Ericksen-Stewart Youth (and Eric holding Olivia)

The electric insulator gazebo at Newhalem

A field along Wolf Creek Road

Golden Hills

Snow along The North Cascades Highway

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