My Dog Slugger

click to enlarge

Slugger had recently returned to our house after being banished for snapping at me when I was a baby. The snapshot is very likely winter 1955.
---o0o---

Uncle Guy, more hillbilly cred, and living a good life

Click photograph to enlarge
Loa Servis (my sister), Guy Huber (my great uncle), and Johnnie Brummet (aka Jack)

Of all my relatives, one of the few held in high regard was my Great Uncle Guy. He lived in a ramshackle cabin on the Cowlitz River in the rural village of Castle Rock, Washington (just downstream from Mount Saint Helens). He owned a ferry to transport people across the river (and save them the hour of driving up to the next bridge). My mom, Betty Brummet, thinks the boat was tethered to a cable anchored across the river. The boat carried one car and passengers on deck. I don't know what he charged. A quarter, four bits, a buck? Actually, a buck seems steep. . .

Uncle Guy lost a leg in his twenties. He was run over by a logging train; somehow one of his legs survived. My mom remembers hearing that he was drug away, on a mattress that soaked through with his blood, and that he barely survived. He had a wooden leg (none of these modern articulated, titanium wonders), which I just realized is perhaps the reason I have references to wooden legs in at least three of my poems. Come to think of it, I remember him having the kids give it a good kick. If you've been a reader here a while, you may also remember he is not the only person in my family missing a limb...in fact if you click here, you'll see my Grandpa Del sitting in the very same chair two years earlier, while I teethed on his hook arm!

Studying Huber family photographs, it's clear that most of their genetic flaws--girth, stubby legs (my inseam is the same as Keelin's, and she's eight inches shorter) were passed right along to the next generation. . .not to mention their heads. The Hubers had long heads, and they had big heads, a trait they passed along. My head's not in the John Kerry or Lurch category, but it's right up there. I'm a 7 7/8 hat size.

Betty Brummet remembers his cabin, rain on the tin roof, and the sound of the Cowlitz River rushing by. He was a lifelong bachelor, but had a longtime girlfriend "Sis," who promised her father on his deathbed she would never marry, and take care of her mother. I don't know if I remember eating smelt Uncle Guy brought or not, but I can't eat or hear about smelt without thinking of him. He was one of Grandma Galvin's three brothers and four sisters.

Sidebar: I ended up with three grandmas, and four grandpas.

I can't remember a lot about Guy, but I know everyone was happy when he came to town. He was one of those guys who lit up a room just being there. In the grand scale of things, it really doesn't get much better than that. (Author raises a glass to Uncle Guy).
--------o0o--------

House Republicans take the high road after the low road becomes too treacherous to navigate

House Republicans have moved to seize the initiative for ethics reform yesterday with a sweeping package of proposed changes, including banning privately sponsored travel like that arranged by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The proposed bill also eliminates Congressional pensions for anyone convicted of a felony related to official duties. That could come in handy in the next few months!

Fark.com hilariously said "House Republicans unveil new ethics plan. Said to be modeled after the 'throwing deck chairs off the Titanic to prevent it from sinking' plan."

--------o0o--------

Del Brummet's second trailer for Taracotra

Thirteen year old director Del Brummet has posted a second trailer for his film Taracotra, a mocumentary of the UFO invasion and conquest, on archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/DelBrummetTaracotraPreview2

And in case you missed the first: http://www.archive.org/details/TaracotraPreview
---o0o---

Alien Lore 60 - The George Adamski Story

There are few tales in the world of UFOlogy that don't have a lot of supporters. The flimsiest stories have dozens of web sites and blogs beating the drum for their veracity. The paranoid nature of a certain segment of that community insures that any story is too implausible or unsupported by facts is the target of a misinformation campaign (or worse). In the case of George Adamski, even some of the hard-core conpiracy-theorists admit that he was a charlatan or long overdue for a trip to the rubber room. Adamski (1891 – 1965) was a Polish-born American who said he saw and photographed ships from other planets. He also claims to have met and chatted with people from other planets, and even gone on space flights with them.

He wrote several books about his adventures with the aliens, including the 1953 best seller Flying Saucers Have Landed.

He was the most prominent contactee yet known. However his fame was as fleeting as the veracity of his story, and his followers fell away as his claims became more and more questionable amnd improbable. By the time he died, he was pretty much universally considered a hopeless nutjob. And yet, he still has plenty of supporters out there. The web site http://www.gafintl-adamski.com/html/AboutGA.htm says the following:

"In the last years of the 1940's, George Adamski was one of the very first people to publicly reveal his encounters and experiences relating to the UFO phenomena. Through his devotion and courage to speak, he personally became responsible for pioneering the movement towards establishing greater public awareness and education regarding the existence of extraterrestrial life. "

Both George, and his parents, claimed they were contacted by extra terrestrials when Adamski was very young. Eventually he would lecture on the "cosmic philosophy" of the aliens. Adamski's science fiction book was titled Pioneers of Space: A Trip to the Moon, Mars and Venus. A His idea in this book was to kind of soften up the public on the idea of aliens and space travel. He then prsented a lot of that material as fact in a later (cough cough) nonfiction book, Flying Saucers Have Landed.

In the late 1940s, Adamski and his disciples began showing photos of what they claimed were ships from other planes. According to some folks, they looked very similar to the lids from the water coolers he sold for a living.

His best known and most widespread claim (in UFOlogy circles) was that on November 20, 1952 he and friends were in the Mojave Desert where they saw a large submarine-shaped object hovering in the sky. Adamski said he believed that the ship was looking for him so he went away from the main road. A shuttle or transporter from the main UFO landed. Adamski claimed he and aan alien communicated telepathically and through hand signals. The alien, named Orthon, was Venutian, and expressed concern over nuclear weapons on earth. Later in life, Adamski claimed he met other people from Venus, Mars, and Saturn) and said he was taken on flights by them, including one around the moon where he observed valleys and bases.

He had considerable support from UFO proponents around the world. But just about every assertion and "fact" about aliens and UFOs has legions of believers and skeptics. If you believe the stories, you are a few bricks shy of a full load, and if you doubt them, you've been brainwashed by government disinformation agents

TIME magazine predictably called him "a crackpot from California". The scientific discovery that Venus and other planets in the solar system were unable to sustain any form of life (at least that's the current story), severely damaged his claims of talking to friendly aliens from those planets. If you talk about aliens, they need to be from Draco or Zeta Reticulon, or somewhere else we know little about.

Adamski denounced the photos from the first Russian lunar probe in 1959 as fakes. He later announced he would attend a conference on the planet Saturn. Following this revelation, most of his followers abandoned ship. George Adamski died on the east coast in 1965, but I could steer you to at least a dozen or so web sites and blogs that worship him as a prophet

----------o0o----------

Martin Luther King Day

Click to enlarge

First Prize Co-winner, 2004 Princeton University

Martin Luther King Poster Contest
Rachel Waychunas, grade 5, Sayen Elementary School

----------o0o----------

Rewind, replay, redux - Senators say military strike on Iran must be option - Same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was

Republican and Democratic senators said on Sunday the United States may ultimately have to undertake a military strike to deter Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but that should be the last resort. "That is the last option. Everything else has to be exhausted. But to say under no circumstances would we exercise a military option, that would be crazy," Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Click on the first sentence or the title of this post to read the Reuters story. This is depressing. Iraq's always been the hot spot. And we let the Bush clan's vendetta against Iraq obscure the real deal.

I'm not saying that we must go to war with Iran. . .but if we do. . .it's not like we'll be charging in fresh as a daisy. We won't have to travel far, but I'm not sure we'll be bringing a lot of our friends along for the ride. However, in light of the Irani President's statements about Israel and their apparent determination to escalate their nuclear program. . .it just doesn't look good for isolationism a/k/a emulating the ostrich.
---o0o---

300 million strong?

The Census Bureau officially pegged the resident population of the United States at about 297,900,000. The bureau estimates that with a baby being born every 8 seconds, someone dying every 12 seconds and the nation gaining an immigrant every 31 seconds on average, the population is growing by one person every 14 seconds. The United States will hit 300,000,000 sometime next fall.

---o0o---

Seattle's 28th straight rain day

click image to enlarge

The rain continued unabated for the 28th straight day today, as Seattle geared up to break the record for the most consecutive days of rainfall. The good news is the mudslides have slowed down, and the Green, White, Cedar, and most other rivers are receding...


----------o0o-----------

Scientists creating a human-rabbit hybrid

Scientists are about to create a human rabbit hybrid. Stem cell experts want to create a rabbit-human embryo. They say this hybrid will hasten research.

British scientists are seeking permission to create hybrid embryos in the lab by fusing human cells with rabbit eggs. If granted consent, the team will use the embryos to produce stem cells that carry genetic defects, in the hope that studying them will help understand the complex mechanisms behind incurable human diseases.

The proposal drew strong criticism from opponents to embryo research who yesterday challenged the ethics of the research and branded the work repugnant.
----------o0o-----------

Oops! 18 civilians killed in Pakistan.

As American military and intelligence sources giddily leaked information Friday about the death of bin Laden lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri, the rapidly emerging evidence showed that while the technology guiding the missiles to their targets was faultless, the intelligence on those targets was not. You think?

Pakistani officials said there was no evidence any 'foreigners' (shorthand for al-Qaeda fighters), were among the 18 victims. Just hapless civilians in the right place at the wrong time.

Tensions between Washington and Islamabad have grown in recent weeks as American troops have stepped up operations against militants.

Pakistan has already lodged a protest with the US military six days ago after a reported US airstrike killed eight people in the North Waziristan tribal region, a barren, deserted area of mountains south of Damadola.

The President and military officials seem to believe--and it is solid reasoning--that if we bomb enough houses, eventually we will kill a member of al-Qaeda.


Ayman al-Zawahiri: Still alive and well
----------o0o-----------

Seattle rain: 27th straight day

Seattle had our 26th straight day of rain yesterday and we're now less than a week short of the 1953 record of 33 rainy days. Daily rainfall records have already fallen in Seattle.

The biggest problem is that the saturated landscape can't hold much more water. "What we need is a reprieve," Tony Fantello, maintenance and operations manager for Pierce County Water Programs in Tacoma, told The News Tribune.

I wrote a piece in praise of the rain a few days ago. However, I wouldn't mind a "sunbreak" or two (our term for no rain and few clouds). On the other hand, we've gone this far. Let's break the record and really have something to remember and kvetch about.
---o0o---

Collage: Portrait of President Abe Lincoln

click portrait to enlarge
------------o0o------------

Keep On Blogging

Democrats complete a sweep of three branches of government

It's all over now except the vote, and perhaps a pointless filibuster. We have blown the Senate, The House, The White House, and now The Supereme Court. Even if President Bush leaves the White House early (an increasingly likely prospect...and not just statistically!), or if we win the 2008 election, we'll have the President's two relatively young appointees.

It's on now to the midterm elections and to find a Presidential candidate who might actually win. I am one of the fools who believe we could retake the house. And maybe the Senate if some more crazy stuff comes out.

Elizabeth Holtzman (our ex Congressperson in NYC) published an article in The Nation this week speculating that impeachment itself is not as insane as some would have us believe. It's pretty to think.

--------o0o--------