NFTNIF Episode 16

NFTNIF16

OK WINTER HAS COME FOR REAL THIS TIME

First, it rained. It started at the end of the day, drawing a soggy gray curtain over everything and as darkness fell, pulling a glistening silken shimmering coverlet of black, wet like a coat of black high gloss spray paint. Then, sometime in the middle of the night it got cold, turned to snow, and pulled the white blanket over the silvery black one. Then it stayed cold. And snuggled in and got colder. SO we got the exciting combo of cold snow over ice coating everything. It had been so nice - sunny and up into the high 30's low 40's.
I picture winter, frigid and shiny and white and blue and silver and black - all the colors of snow and ice kind of laughing at us and saying: "Oh, for real? You thought THAT was winter? I been busy elsewhere, but now I got around to you!"

Then, Wednesday morning we woke up to no electricity. Our mini heater downstairs runs on gas and it kept running, but nothing else worked. We could not even get coffee at the Speedy Mart or Maverik because they were closed on account of no power too. Dustin used his phone as a wifi hotspot and Glenn used his laptop with battery to jump online and find out that 50,000 people were without electricity. We stumbled through the cooling house and then D and I called a taxi, and went shopping at WinCo which is in Idaho Falls and had power. It wasn't very crowded and it was relaxing to be getting food again. Glenn did house cleaning while we were gone.
The taxi driver had recently moved here from Salt Lake City, and said they were getting less snow there and warmer winters every year. He was very careful, as the roads are also ice covered with snow except for the strips where people have driven so much it's melted/worn away. He also picked us up at the store and took us home. About 15 minutes after we got home the power came back. Then it went back off. Then came back on. Then went back off. Came back on. Finally it stayed on again.

We found out that this was a "planned outage". Planned? We had spent some time trying to figure out what had cause an outage of that size. We proposed and rejected a number of possibilities. What did not cross our minds was that the outage was "planned"!
I can't stop asking - "Planned?"
Um, I know this may sound like a stupid question - but. . . .
if it was "planned", (!!!) then (I am almost embarrassed to have to ask) - Why didn't "they" (the ones who "planned" an outage) tell their customers? This questions echoes inside me like I just pounded a big bell in the top of a bell tower - it booms through me that same way. . . WHY WOULDN'T THEY TELL US?  After all, it was "planned"!

My PC was, to say the least, not a happy little musketeer when I turned it back on after the power was restored. The laptops did fine - they had batteries - my PC thought it was the beginning of January 2010, which led to all sorts of hilarious and intractable problems until I reset the date and time - then it shook itself like a wet dog, groomed all of it's software into place, rolled over and let me scratch it's belly, and then finally worked normally. "Unplanned" power outages bad. "Planned" power outages good. Oh if only we had been in on the "plan".

BUT

What if we had "needed" electricity instead of just wanted it for heating, cooking, light, furnace, computers and communications, alarms, etc? What if we had a breathing machine, or something not fault tolerant to sudden power outages? Or some other vital bit of medical machinery which needed power? Might they have told us about their "planned" outage?  Then we could have "planned" too.  I wonder if the businesses had been notified or if they got blind-sided too? And why would "they" (the "planners"), wait until the winter took it's coldest turn this winter so far? At this moment it is 3 (three) degrees here in Ammon, Idaho. Call me suspicious, but do I sense a rate increase on the near horizon? I mean they were not earning money during the "planned" outage - so they have to make up the revenue shortfall some way - and the ratepayers have "extra" money we hadn't "planned" for since we did not pay them for the time our electricity was turned off during 17 degree weather so . . . I mean it's what I would do if I were a soul-less artificial "entity" legally required to maximize shareholder value.

Back-tracking to Thanksgiving.

Dustin worked the night and morning before and when he got home around 8 am - he had a few bites to eat and then made his recipes - a blended cashews and quinoa bake - which was excellent!, and some maple baked parsnips. Then he went to bed. Glenn made mushroom caps stuffed with Italian bread crumbs and parmesan, and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon with a sweet barbeque sauce which were both very very tasty. I made the turkey; cauliflower, broccoli and mushrooms roasted together; Italian roast potatoes cooked in my convection oven; and baked a pie using the apple filling I made from our next door neighbor's apples with a graham cracker crust. I ate that with vanilla ice cream, no one else had or has had any of it - so I am slowly eating it a slice every couple days. It's really good but I guess I didn't think I would have to eat it all.
We ate after 6 pm when Dustin woke up and it was very nice. We missed our friend JM who had to go home early, but we were glad things at home got better.

I have to say that I was horrified by and ashamed of the following things over the Thanksgiving holiday: Walmart putting out boxes to collect food for their "associates" instead of paying them a living wage (and the corollary that they were really knocking themselves out to care about their employees in that way); extending the shopping madness to Thanksgiving Day; the shopping madness including but not limited to: chaos, beatings, shootings and other killings during the shopping rush; the fact that a church that was feeding the homeless at a park was stopped and dispersed by the police; the so sad fact that police were made available to arrest protestors and strikers and none to prevent and few to respond to the violence that rose like an evil perfume from the "Black Friday" shoppers.
I watched sadly the events we are shown unfolding across the globe: the increasing tension over the South China Sea; unrest and violence in Thailand and the Ukraine; Saudi Arabia considering getting atomic weapons; the town where so many of the people committed suicide because their lake water source was privatized by Nestle and their access too limited to sustain life.

I was proud of the people who made it to dinner with their families, blood and extended; the people who worked because they had to; the people who fed other people that day, Glenn and Dustin for working so hard and so well to make our dinner special, progress toward a treaty and a chance to improve world relations with Iran - I hope it results in improved conditions for the Iranian people; the Pope for his brave advocacy on behalf of the poor.

I continue to believe that we are despite appearances, heading toward a future that is better - more responsible ecologically; more decent to each other and to all life forms, acting in love and respect; continuing to improve the quality of life for all.

Now for a recipe -
Italian Angel Wing Cookies (Crispellis in the Sabatini family)
Prep time: 1 hr +
Cook time: Frying time between 1 - 2 minutes per batch
Deep Fryer Temp: 350 Degrees F
INGREDIENTS:
2 Cups All Purpose Flour
2 Whole Eggs
2 Egg Yolks
1 TBSP of Confectioners' Sugar for the pasta dough mix
¾ cup of powdered sugar to sprinkle on to dust the finished cookies
1/4 tsp of salt
Vegetable Oil for Deep Frying (Use a good high temperature oil – NOT corn or olive oil).
A deep fryer or electric skillet because controlling the temperature at 350 degrees is important to this recipe
A pasta machine - I use my manual pasta machine.
Put flour into a mixing bowl, and make a well in the center. Add the eggs, sugar and salt. Mix well until forms a dough. You can also do this with a mixer. If you use a food processor or mixer then the dough is ready once it forms a ball comprising all the ingredients.
Let the dough rest covered by a damp towel for 1/2 hour.
Cut the dough ball into fourths. Work with a quarter of the dough ball at a time. Roll out the dough through the pasta machine. Use floured surfaces for the dough including the counter and the pasta rollers.
Roll it through until it is thin - using the largest aperture for the first run, dust with flour, then the next setting, dust, then the next setting. Cut into strips about 7" long and about 1/2" wide. Cut a slit in the center of the strip - lengthwise about 3/4" to 1". Pull both ends of the dough through the slit and cross them over each other.
Lay them out on a floured surface.
Heat oil about 3-4" deep to 350 degrees. Place dough ties into oil and gently flip them a few times. Fry them for about 2 min. and when they get golden then take them out and let them drain on paper towel. Dust with remaining powdered sugar on both sides. Enjoy.

I'm working on an essay about Water - next time here at NFTNIF.

NFTNIF - Episode 15

Can Mankind destroy life on Earth?

A long quote from Michael Crichton - author of Jurassic Park -
“You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.”


How do we harm thee? Let me count the ways ....

Deforestation: http://inhabitat.com/google-launches-worlds-first-high-resolution-interactive-map-of-global-deforestation/
We are both cutting and planting forests, but the trend is negative - in other words we are every year losing more forest than we plant. How does this affect us? Forests are rich biomes - supporting plant and animal life. Under the canopy of the trees other smaller plants flourish, fertilized by the fallen leaves. Birds and a huge variety of mammals, reptiles and bugs (insects, arachnids and other small animals) as well as mosses, lichens, fungi and many others co-habitate in a lush world of interdependence. When we cut forests we lose those species.
The problem is complicated by the fact that much of the re-foresting is of a single species, instead of the multiple and competing types of trees found in most "natural" forest areas. A single species of tree cannot support a multiplicity of other species, and it is far more vulnerable to disease - a single tree disease can wipe out an entire forest, leaping from tree to tree with no intervening trees of different types unaffected by the disease to slow or stop its advance. We have not improved matters by instituting monoculture into our stewardship of the forests, we are setting up a huge games of teetering dominoes.
 
Extinction: http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/worldclock/ This is a very cool website which tracks all sorts of "progress", including the disappearance of species, aka extinction. The number represented here is the number of species that have gone extinct this calendar year. What most people fail to realize is that life is a complex web - a weaving of many strands of which humanity is only one. Every time a species goes extinct, one of the threads of this rich and marvelous tapestry is pulled out of the whole. How many strands can we lose before the whole fabric of our ecosystem begins to unravel on it's own? Frighteningly, we do not know the answer, but we proceed, in our ignorant power to destroy as if everything we do made no difference to the whole.
 
Desertification: http://www.maps.com/ref_map.aspx?pid=12874 Desertification is the advance of deserts - the consumption of fertile areas by shifting sands and blowing dust. It's not that there is no life in a desert, it's simply that the life that exists there is thin, fragile, and incapable of supporting many people. North Africa used to be the breadbasket of the Roman Empire - now it is an area of bleak sand and rock, larger than the continental United States, and advancing south at a frightening 43 kilometers per year along a front 1500 miles across.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_fast_is_the_Sahara_desert_expanding_each_year#slide1
This is only 1 of several areas where the desert is slowly, inexorably, and at this point, unstoppably consuming the areas on which we depend for our food, wood, water and the rest.
Pollution: http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/nasa-earth-map-illuminates-where-pollution-kills-130928.htm This map shows areas where pollution contributes to human deaths. There are many kinds of pollution - air, water and ground pollution are familiar to most people. http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/pollution/?ar_a=1 But there are other kinds - light pollution, from man-made light sources disturb plants and animals that depend on a period of darkness to survive. Noise pollution disturbs sleep and hibernation cycles, interrupting processes which depend on relative quiet. Noise pollution can also include systems like sonar, which confuse the migration of aquatic species., interfere with their communication with one another, and generally mess up the natural order of things.
A sampling of the other kinds of pollution - pesticides, oil spills and diffusion of petroleum by products, trash including heavy metals and plastics, which persist for tens of thousand of years, including our large and growing garbage continents [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch], smog, runoff, fertilizer, algal blooms which consume the oxygen dissolved in water and suffocate life forms which breathe, http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-worldwide-marine-dead-zones-2013-6 agriculture which crowds out more diverse ecosystems and, well, you get the point. Our activities produce substances in large quantities which the world has a hard time processing and eliminating, and in the meantime, we wreck havoc on the existing life forms and ecologies.
 
Urbanization - as our cities continue to multiply and grow - they take the place of other uses of land. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/06/urbanisation/html/urbanisation.stm Cities are not entirely hostile to life-forms - humans live there in great numbers, along with our partners in urbanization - rats, cockroaches, dogs and cats. As cities grow, other types of landscapes retreat, and the life forms which occupied them die.
 
Anthropogenic global warming: Humans are not the only contributors to global warming - the earth has experienced cycles vast in duration where things get warmer, and then colder. But we certainly contribute to the current cycle http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/06/urbanisation/html/urbanisation.stm . Some species will adapt, some will leap ahead in a warmer earth, others will fail to adapt and perish. Since we still know very little about the effects of a warmer world on our fellow life forms, it is too early to say who will be the winners and who the losers in a warmer world. However, a warmer world with higher levels of carbon dioxide can be shown to have a present and continuing effect in a number of areas - the acidification of the ocean, which harms coral reefs and animals which have shells; a rise in sea level which will result in submergence of much of the current coastlines of the world and forcing the very large human populations resident there to seek other land on which to live. There is a great deal of speculation, argument and information available about these effects so I leave you to it with no further elaboration here.
 
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs): I would like to mention 3 threats of GMOs to our world - 1) loss of biodiversity, 2) unforeseen effects of incipient organisms; 3) economic control of species by the "owners" of the new plant and animal species. briefly then:
1) Biodiversity refers to the complexity of the web of life - roughly - the more diverse an ecology is the healthier it is in terms of resistance to disease, predation, natural or man-made catastrophes. GMO's go hand in hand with monoculture, and thus reduce biodiversity and threaten the robustness of living systems.
2) The world exists as a series of checks and balances - when one species grows too numerous, it's natural enemies also grow numerous and act as a brake on their proliferation. We are introducing species which do not exist in the natural world - and without producing their enemies as the goal is to increase the numbers and geographic extent of the new species in order to enjoy the traits and attributes of our creations more widely. But, we have no idea what the effect of these new life-forms will be on the natural world; there could (and will) be all sorts of effects we have not foreseen by promoting this imbalance. Furthermore, we have no track record of the effect of these GMO's on ourselves - we are only now starting to eat them and wash with them and wear them and so on, so we do not and cannot know if they will be beneficial or harmful to us. This is a gamble the corporations are willing to take and we are the guinea pigs in this giant experiment.
3) The companies which introduce GMO life forms own them, and have every motive to spread them in preference to existing, unpatentable species. They have shown a willingness to be very aggressive in pushing their pet species, and along with the fact that we have to buy them from these corporations, they are selling seeds that do not propagate annually, and advancing legal restrictions on the ability of farmers to keep a portion of crops that do produce fertile seeds. Taken together with the fact that they also sell novel fertilizers for these "frankenfoods", as well as making them pest resistant (killing off the life forms which feed on natural species), we are introducing a new game, with rules made by corporations and their pet politicians. Corporations are legal entities, but they are also immortal, have no feelings, and operate under a set of rules (short-term profits, long term control of markets, elimination of competition, legal responsibility to maximize shareholder value) which would be judged as insane if a human being behaved strictly according to those imperatives.
 
This is by no means an exhaustive study of the effects, intended as well as unintended we are having on our world. Ozone depletion, wars, resource depletion, over-fishing, loss of aquifers, the spread of radioactive materials, strip mining and other habitat loss, the list goes on and on, our effects seemingly advancing faster than we can even begin to realize, much less evaluate or mitigate.
 
You may ask, in the face of this litany of destruction, what can a person do? here are a few suggestions:
 
I. Take your money out of the bank and put it into a credit union. Big banks stand behind the whole corporate system; money is their food, starve them of their food and they will have less scope for their profit-motivated blind mischief.
 
II. Join or form, and shop at a member-owned Cooperative. Form all sorts of cooperatives to provide your necessities. When the organization gets too big, split it into two or more organizations. This means taking an active part in the provision and production of your own necessities.
 
III. Buy local, organic, heirloom foods. Shop whenever possible at small. locally owned businesses. Avoid large corporate-owned stores, restaurants, etc. Remember we are starving the heartless behemoths of their life-blood and encouraging "economic bio-diversity" when we support our small businesses.
 
IV. Start a garden and grow your own food. Be ready to use natural methods of pest control - ladybugs, praying mantises, marigolds to name just a few. Use only natural fertilizers - no man-made petroleum based products. Start a compost pile and reduce your contribution to landfills while keeping the nutrients in your own yard. get rid of as much of your lawn as possible and replace it with with a vegetable garden and plants that flower so we can keep the bees alive.
 
V. Get out of your car and walk, jog or ride a bicycle. If you can, get rid of your car altogether - save money and the planet at the same time. At the very least - always ask yourself - is this trip necessary?
 
VI. Stay informed and involved. Know who your representatives are - learn what they stand for. Always vote for the person who supports the most of what you believe - abandon party politics for the choices which will help save our lives and the richness of the Earth. Take the time to learn about local, regional, national and international topics under discussion - THEY ALL AFFECT YOU and your children and their children.
 
VII) Never ever think things are hopeless, the current situation got this way because most people withdraw from action thinking they cannot make a difference. That philosophy is wrong, and it is the thing the powerbrokers count on to continue having their way. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
 
Thanks for taking the time to read this and remember - the billions of people on earth are the single greatest force for change - we determine, collectively by the sum of our countless daily actions, the direction in which we are taking each other and our irreplaceable world.

Episode 14

NFTNIF Episode 14

Woke to a white world on the 16th – blindingly, glaringly white. Everything was white – distinctions erased by indiscriminate bleaching that fell from the sky. Along with washing out all colors, everything was softened, rounded, blurred. Old Man Winter is here – but will he stay this time? It turns out the answer is no – things started melting as soon as the sun got above the treetops.

And now it has been raining steadily if not very hard for two days. The rain falls and falls, chilly and unsympathetic, melting all the patches of snow that had been hiding in shade. All the sharpness has returned to the world, all the colors. Some colors are even more distinct now – the leaves that dot our lawn have turned darker, richer, almost purplish against the renewed green of the grass.

Our bedroom is in the basement, and the windows are set into wells. There are bubble-like shields over the window wells. Dustin pointed out that there are plants flourishing under the shields – our own little greenhouses. They all have leaves and appear quite healthy and happy – even though their counterparts exposed to the elements in the yard are all dead and brown. I am cheering them on – I hope they make it through the whole winter – it's nice to see them there and be reminded of the persistence of life given the right conditions for it.

There are almost as many dogs in this neighborhood as there were in Ocean Beach. However, the dogs here are much more territorial, aggressive, unfriendly. I think it's because we are about the only ones who walk anywhere – every one either drives or gets a ride, even for 2 blocks. There are two dogs on our corner – one of them a Cujo understudy. He lunges to the fence, wheezing and growling and barking. I have evolved a method of dealing with them, because it is SO annoying to have to walk past them barking and snapping and lunging against the fence. I walk on the far side of the street whenever I pass their house, and I never EVER look at them. After a few weeks of this, they have accepted the fact that my passage does not involve them – they don't bark at me anymore, sometimes don't even bother to get to their feet – unless I walk past with Dustin. Then it's right back to their bad, old ways – I think they sense his dislike of them, and he does not mimic my “I have nothing to do with you” behavior.

I have noticed that there are some sharp differences between living almost a mile high and living almost literally at sea level. Skin dries out and stays dry here – skin which never showed any such tendency living near the beach. Another difference -when I make CalRose rice, I have to add more water and cook it longer. More - it's much easier to get intestinal gas here than at sea level. Still more - exertion gets tiring a bit faster and takes a bit longer to recover from here than it did back in OB.

So I grew up in Detroit, and everyone knew that everyone had a gun. Then I moved to Ann Arbor, where things were different, and it has not been until I moved to Idaho Falls (well, Ammon) that I again lived in a community bristling with guns. This was forcibly brought to my attention the other day as I was standing in line at Speedy Mart. The lady in front of me was panting, puffing and her face was a deep shade of red. She told the poor cashier (who could not get away because she was working) “I am so mad at my Dad for hiding my gun, because it meant I didn't have it in my car today. He's always hiding it from me!”

“What happened?” asked the cashier, quickly ringing up the items the red-faced lady had selected.

“Some guy cut me off on the road, and I reached under my seat for the gun, and it wasn't there!” The cashier and I exchange a swift, significant glance, then red-face continues; “He is really lucky my dad hides my gun because it pissed me off so bad!” (Remember she is still flushed and breathing hard...)

“”I yelled and shook my fist at him but he just drove off. I noticed as he turned that he was a really old man.”

My mouth has a life of its own sometimes, wild and free so I cautiously ventured a remark - “Maybe he didn't see you?”

“He would have noticed if I had my gun with me!”

“Then you are spared a lifetime of regret for shooting an elderly man trying to get home” I say, thinking this will calm her down. Don't I ever get tired of being wrong?

“I wouldn't have regretted it but he would have.”

Happily, she did not even bother to turn around and look at my face, and boy am I glad I don't drive here yet, at least until I have a gun of my own so I could at least return fire if I ever run into her again.

In the absence of a job, I have settled into the role of house-husband. I beguile the tedium of my days with laundry, cooking, dishes, and some light cleaning. I pack Dustin's meals for work, tidy everything up, and wonder how billions of women across thousands of years have managed this without going stark raving mad. It's only been a couple months for me and there are no messy irrational children to clean up after and tote to games and meetings and malls. Luckily I love cooking, otherwise I would feel like I was a sideways version of the I Love Lucy Show where Fred and Ricky make an avalanche of rice and Lucy and Ethel get jobs in the candy factory. Everyone makes a comical hash of the gender role reversal. I'm sure a real house-keeper of whichever sex would find fault with my house-keeping; I don't dust, rarely vacuum and wash up only when the level of dirt becomes evident to me through my field of vision, which is centered at about arms length. Once we have a mop and bucket I will establish a regular schedule for mopping; right now it's all done by bath towels after I am done with them at the finish of my shower. Also luckily, I live with D and Glenn, neither of whom is particularly a Felix Unger clean freak. Glenn does suffer spasms of diligence which lead him to clean up too – but these seem to be getting more infrequent as he relaxes into the pastoral atmosphere of Ammon.

Our friend JM is coming to visit tomorrow – we have been counting down the weeks, then days and now hours. Can hardly wait to have him visit!!!!

Well that ends this episode of NFTNIF – stay tuned!

NFTNIF - Supplemental

NFTNIF Supplemental - Wake-Up Call.

How many people here own their house - and how many have a mortgage, or live in a rental? How many people own their cars, and how many have a car payment, and trade in the car for a new one with it's fresh and probably larger car payment? How many grow their own food, make their own clothing, and how many have to shop for them every week or season? How many of us, if we lost or left our jobs, would be on the street, bereft, hungry, penniless, or have to depend on a government program which is under continuous attack, or the charity and kindness of family, friends and strangers, a church or social organization? Why is it that we buy food from companies that refuse to tell us what that food contains, and this is allowed to go on? Why is it that we hemorrhage our national treasure on wars that resolve nothing, save no one, kill our young men and women and the people of distant lands, expend resources and consume ingenuity, crowding out education, repairs to our bridges, roads, and other vital infrastructure? How can we placidly continue to rape and ravage the earth, seas and sky, displacing the nature we view with such pleasure on pictures, TV and on brief vacations?
How have we become so removed from perception of our common humanity that we can easily hate and despise and destroy people who we have never met? Why is it that we can continue to channel ever-slenderer resources toward researching more ingenious and impersonal methods for murder and war, while neglecting and forgetting research and work on the things that enhance and enrich life? How can we not notice that those inventions are INEVITABLY turned against us to ensure our continued compliance with the world-destroying system that espouses them?
Why is it that if the government ordered all men to begin wearing purple dresses, there would be a revolution overnight, but when we are dragged into war we go so willingly and give our children so open-handedly to the meat grinder?
Why is it that we fall reflexively back on resentment and prejudice to justify our collective inhumanity? Why do we continue to insist on dealing with things in ways that have proven not work? Why do we permit our government to place its colossal foot upon us and lean ever more heavily upon and meekly pay for the privilege of having our liberty shredded in exchange for security that never arrives? Why do we pay lip service to those who have died for freedom and then meekly surrender it at the first opportunity? Why are we so proud of ignorance and intolerance?
How can people believe in God and completely ignore everything we are told He wants us to do? Take care of the poor, the sick, the children - yet complain every time someone suggests that we have to spend money or time or attention to do so?
I am not aware of any country which has ever refused a war.
I see us following, inexplicably, the foul road to annihilation every other empire in history has ever trod.
How can we be so involved in our gladiatorial contests, our little self-serving feelings of superiority, our gadgets and disastrous distractions and be unwilling to spend an hour a day keeping ourselves informed on the workings of our government? A nation built by immigrants has become utterly hostile to immigration. A country based on freedom seems to long for the firm hand of any tyrant which promises safety from a world stimulated to hostility against us by our own policies.
How can we blindly ignore the brutal suppression of choice and self-determination forced upon our mothers and daughters and sisters? How can we wink at the dehumanization and even murder of women everywhere including in our own beloved country? Honor killings, wife-beatings, exhaustion through repeated child-bearing, but contraceptives are evil? Why is it permitted that women be bullied, cowed, murdered and manipulated by a few men who laugh at us from behind their pillared and walled compounds? How did we get to the point that we no longer believe our children will have a better life than we do - but most people would violently attack anyone who suggests a different course than the road to poverty and servility we are so obviously embarked upon?
Why do we meekly acquiesce or actually aggressively enable the theft of our national and global resources, the singling out of small groups, one by one who are stripped of the right to vote, or eat, or even live?
Facing up to the situation in which we find ourselves is terribly hard - but ignoring it will be harder still.
Why do we so easily swallow lies when a modicum of education would expose the lie for what it is - a cynical program to keep us divided and content with a pittance?
We developed drones for warfare abroad, because this impersonal method of warfare spares our lives, and soon those drones will be everywhere in our own skies.
Everywhere you look, peoples who are as alike as two flowers growing in the same field are turned implacably against each other, while the owners of munitions factories take profits from both sides, impartially, caring nothing for anything, no country, no ideal, no religion except profits, continuous and ever-increasing?
How can people think our government is Marxist or socialist when Wall Street is fatter than ever - the great recession wiped out trillions of dollars of wealth for retirees, workers, small investors, but there is more wealth than ever now - and int he hands of fewer and fewer people?
Haliburton can lie, and steal and kill and undermine the governments of countries our people are dying to establish - wars are started based on lies and we turn away and tune into our favorite shows.
Why would people adore the hand that strikes them but reject their own children for trying to realize their own natures?
Why are we content to play games and refuse to do something to change the world for the better?
We consume poison and thank our poisoners, we watch our share of the country's wealth vanish and snarl savagely at those who try to warn us, we cling to the idea that we are different and better, yet refuse to take a responsible portion of our governance, content to let the thieves run everything. We lost control over our own money long ago with the establishment of the Federal reserve, and now another chunk of our sovereignty is being negotiated away in the Trans Pacific Partnership and not 10 of my HUNDREDS of FB friends bothered to learn anything about it.
We squabble with persons of different ethnic backgrounds, religion, party or skin color, while the people who care for nothing except having more of everything stoke the fires and keep us divided and proud of our divisions.
America can never be defeated by a foreign enemy, it will be betrayed from within by those who care nothing for country - only their own wealth and privileges while stripping us of all of both.
We are so busy determining what is good for each other we have lost sight of our own self interests. Why should anyone care what I smoke, or have sex with, or read or believe or who I marry.
The Romans at least had bread and circuses, we are busy denying each other the bread while we throng the circuses.
Our real masters could not be more pleased with us - we are doing their work for them and paying for the privilege, paying with our liberty, our small wealth, our very lives.
If you care about your own children, your neighbors or even YOURSELF, I beg you to wake up and look at what is happening, put aside meaningless differences and demand that we move toward a more sustainable and equitable world - I fear we re in the last hours of mankind as a rational species.
If you took the time to read this- thank you - if not - good luck.

For some ideas on how to create a sustainable and equitable society - watch

THRIVE: What on Earth Will It Take? - Free to Watch Here

www.thrivemovement.com

NFTNIF - Episode 13 - Halloween Edition

We attended a Halloween bash at The Knotty Pine, in Victor Idaho – our first trip out of Idaho Falls since our arrival. Dustin contrived an ambitious costume – “Papi Smurf “– blue skin and proud Smurf hat, finishing with a comfortable and slightly comic pair of pants from Thailand. I am using the occasion as an excuse to wear my magnificent velvet cloak – midnight black and post-sunset purple – totally reversible, with handsome frogs to catch it at the throat and a full hood even a Jedi would envy. My ensemble also comprises leather pants, leather vest and a truly splendid shirt from India. The cloak is courtesy of the laudable skills of Mrs. Karen Youel, and the shirt was a gift from Christopher Singh. The shirt actually excited the most profound admiration of the others at the party, and since I was garbed as a vampire everyone insisted that the shirt came from Transylvania although I insisted that it was from India no one paid any attention to that.

Michelle and Casey, our hostesses with the mostestess went as an 80's slut and pirate respectively. Their many other friends sported a dazzling variety of costumes – but my favorite was the fellow who dressed as a brown trout – a horizontal costume measuring a good six feet from snout to talk fin that was a hazard to mobility all night long. Honorable mention went to the fisherman's hat festooned with hanging bats – a “bat mobile”.

The drive from IF to Victor was a study in silver and white -snow snow snow, fog and a landscape wide rime of silvery frost that gilded everything in sight. It was true culture shock for me – nothing like the wimpy dusting os snow we had earlier – this was snow in earnest, snow with a purpose, radical, aggressive snow that covered the road and the hills and the trees and everything in sight. I finally became acclimatized to snow on this journey – and not a moment too soon I believe.

We made a couple stops for refreshments, dined on enchiladas prepared by Michele, and then swept off along the frozen street the two blocks to the Knotty Pine, a charmingly bucolic lodge peopled by creatures out of fable and nightmare. Lyrics Born was supposed to come on at 10, but it was past midnight when they burst onto the stage and with a roar that didn't end pumped us all full of magical music and rap lyrics. They soon had everyone gyrating or at least shouting to be heard. Many people were amazed that I had left the “big city” of Idaho Falls to come to tiny Victor for Halloween – they all kept telling me how much more there was to do here in Idaho Falls!

Back at Michele's house, a disc jockey erected his set-up, and the party continued as folks returned in ones and twos to take up where Lyrics Born had left off. Somehow I found the strength to continue, and it was I who finally turned off the lights once everyone else had left or fallen asleep sometime after 5 a.m. In any case – a wonderful time was had by all and thanks to Michele and Casey for kindly hosting us and giving us a ride both ways.

Dustin and I are sleeping on a queen size (no sniggering) inflatable bed, courtesy of John C. And Adrienne in San Diego. The bed grumpily requires us to inflate it every day or endure a science experiment in the curvature of space time. I think inflatable beds should be a part of physics class – no one could miss the lesson of the attractive power of mass if they had to sleep on a partially deflated bed – primal forces impel any bodies toward one another as gravity forces objects to attract one another in the remainder of the universe outside our bedroom

Can ANYONE tell me why nurses schedules are so all over the place? Most employers (Proflowers temp workers to one side) create a schedule which allows their workers to know when they will work week after week, and build the rest of their schedules around a fixed worktime. Not so in the nursing profession – the scheduled times seem almost as random as if they were selected by a group of drunks throwing darts at a dartboard with 7 days and 24 hours on it. Does anyone know why this is so? I will be deeply grateful for an explanation if any of you have one.

My beard came within a whisker (haha) of being shaved off – the comforting warmth I expected it to impart is a laughable fraction of what I had hoped – it is shot through with silver that deeply wounds my reputation for not aging, and it conspires with my nose hairs to knit together and poke and tickle me everywhere it can reach. True, it affords me some protective coloration here in mountain country, but it partakes unnecessarily of my meals, and though I can ignore for for minutes at a time, it gathers moisture from my breathing in the cold, and is generally a pain in the face. However, D loves it and so I will let it grow until I resemble an old testament prophet, which, combined with my penetrating gaze, should fend off unwanted attention.

Ever since I was a kid, occupying the only bedroom on the first floor of our house, with the rest of my family upstairs behind a locked door at the top of the steps, I have learned to make my way through my living space in the dark. Our house here is no exception – at night I move like a shadow through the dark, my eyes straining vision from blackness. Once I have been in a place long enough I move by counting steps, which usually serves me well. I have only had one awful episode – when I lived in the house on Nixon Rd outside of Ann Arbor. A late night phone call failed to wake Mike Benz, and as I confidently moved through the dark house to his bedroom door I did not see the chair Mike had put in the middle of the room. I walked into it with full force and the pain in my shin was only equaled by that in my foot as, galvanized by sudden fury, I kicked the offending chair across the room – shouting (perhaps unnecessarily at that point) for Mike to wake up and take his phone call. Since that day, my childlike faith that I know where everything is has never returned, but I have not given up the habit of moving in the dark – I am simply more cautious about it. Does anyone else do this or does everyone else turn on lights? Let me know if you have a chance, gentle readers.

What would an episode of NFTNIF be these days without a recipe? So here is the recipe for Baked Macaroni and Cheese Gilday – developed especially for Family Dinners in a group of 5-6 people with 4 separate and disparate diets:

1 lb of your favorite macaroni (I prefer rotini for this recipe)
1 lb of cheddar
1 lb of Monterrey Jack
1 cup of sour cream
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
6-8 oz of plain yogurt
1 lb of mushrooms – minced
1 medium head of broccoli – peeled minced fine
1 medium to large onion, minced
6-8 garlic buds, minced
soy sauce, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese.

Saute minced onion until just carmelized, reserve oil and set onions aside to cool. Fry the broccoli in the onion oil until tender, add to onion to cool. Refresh the oil, add garlic, then fry the mushrooms, adding pepper, soy sauce, garlic and chili powder. Drain and add mushrooms to the other veggies.

Cook the macaroni, removing from the water with 2-3 minutes remaining until it would be fully cooked. Mix macaroni with the veggies, add the sour cream, cream of mushroom soup, yogurt and mix thoroughly. Grate the cheese and add the Monty jack and half the cheddar, stir thoroughly. Put the mixture in a baking pan of your choice (the shallower it is the more crunchy cheese you get along the bottom and sides), sprinkle the remaining cheddar on top and finish with the Parmesan. Cook at 400 for 30-40 minutes, remove, allow to cool and serve. NOTE: - you may get people becoming possessive over the crunchy sides and bottom – so be sure to serve equitably or risk violence. Enjoy!

Every Saturday, all over Idaho Falls and Ammon, my fellow citizens troop out and mow, rake and blow leaves until there is nothing left except pristine green lawns. Our house is the exception, although our neighbors periodically apply gentle and irresistible pressure on us, offering the loan of tools or actually performing the work themselves. I got into a discussion of this on FaceBook with some dear friends, and discovered the following:

On the origin of lawns – (From the Wikipedia) - “A lawn is an area of land planted with grasses or (rarely) other durable plants, which are maintained at a short height and used for aesthetic and recreational purposes. Common characteristics of a lawn are that it is composed only of grass species, it is subject to weed and pest control, it is subject to practices aimed at maintaining its green color, and it is regularly mowed to ensure an acceptable length,[1] although these characteristics are not binding as a definition. In recreational contexts, the specialised names turf, pitch, field or green may be used, depending on the sport and the continent.

The term lawn, referring to a managed grass space, dates to no earlier than the 16th century. Tied to suburban expansion and the creation of the household aesthetic, the lawn is an important aspect of the interaction between the natural environment and the constructed urban and suburban space.”

If you say so – I see lawns as a complete waste of time, energy, labor, nutrients, machinery and space that could be growing food. But at least now I know that the lawn is an archaism, demonstrating once more the power of social inertia, tradition, and unquestioning faith in the past to shape our lives today.

As for leaf blowers – (the following is abstracted from the FaceBook account of my beloved friend H.M.) - “Bill Nye the Science Guy just said leaf blowers pollute the environment more in just 30 minutes than your car manages in two months. Now I hate them more than I did before. He also said they go at 150 mph per hour (hurricane category 5 strength) and spray pollen, pet waste, pesticides, fungus, and soil all over the neighborhood. Now I hate them more than I did before. He suggested letting the leaves nourish the yard as compost (good suggestion Heather E Stockwell) or uh, using a rake. “

My question is – who thought it was a good idea to blow things off of your own property to somewhere else instead of raking like we used to in the good old days? Is this some vast conspiracy on the part of lazy groundskeepers, outdoor appliance manufacturers and the energy companies?

I plan to use Bill Nye as my authority when I refuse to let any more of our leaves be removed – they are good compost for the lawn (which I wish would die so I could plant something useful and edible). After viewing a video about the disappearance of the bees, we have determined to plant flowers and welcome bees to our yard as a haven without dogs where they may rest and feed in comfort.

A lot of people have been asking me how we are adjusting to Idaho Falls (actually Ammon). I have given the matter a lot of thought and here is my answer.

After a life of almost continuous company, from childhood until the day we left to drive up here, now that the novelty has worn off, I am a tiny bit lonely. My efforts to make friends before we got here have not panned out as rewardingly as it seemed at first, my telephone died an un-mourned death in the toilet and has not yet been replaced, distance and increasingly unfriendly weather combined with no car have left me more isolated than at any other time in my life. My bicycle has stubbornly refused to be repaired – I have had the rear tire fixed 3 times now and it goes flat with more enthusiasm than it ever stayed inflated. I have given up on it until Spring.

Our neighbors combine austere friendliness with studied neglect – never have lived in a less sociable environment. Of course since we are gay and unshriven sinners I can hardly blame them – we moved here they did not move next to us. The sense of isolation is compounded by the fact that we literally live on the edge of nothingness – a couple blocks from us begins the wind-swept plain leading to the snow crested hills which generate most of our weather. When we walk down he streets everyone waves, as they zoom by in their trucks and SUVs, but the wave may as well be a dismissal as a greeting for all the substance it carries. I spend more time on FaceBook.

Add to this the fact that I do not have a job (I seem to be unemployable here – my resume is too liberal – last job at an organic Cooperative??!!) my resources for adding friends are limited to websites until we have some transportation. Other than that, I still love our house, and solitude is conducive to writing – hence these NFTNIF. We are expecting a visitor over Thanksgiving and looking forward to that. Well, that's it for this 13th episode, tune in for the next installment!

NFTNIF12

NFTNIF Episode 12

Last week we took a giant stride toward functionality – we bought 3 chairs for the dining room! Chairs! We got them at the resale store next to WinCo when we went grocery shopping. WinCo is a life saver by the way on a tight budget. Two of the chairs have a pale green tough plastic covering, and the third is maroon leather. We can now all sit down to a meal at once, and using the desk chair we can even have a guest! All sitting down! Inside the house (instead of on the deck which is the only place we have been able to sit down to a meal – and it's getting way too cold for that to last).

The colors have fallen from the sunrise into the foliage - color changes – a pair of willow became the palest yellow; flaming golden aspen, rusty gold on aspen; maroon burning bush, crimson and scarlet maple, some bush I don't recognize - bright orange, another tree I don't recognize, the leaves are a deep purple.

The last sunset I missed but I caught the polychromatic wash of post-sunset colors, and the most fascinating was rust red mixed seamlessly with the palest blue – both existing at once, blending somehow but still discernible as individuals. No human artist can achieve these effects, only nature can give us something that vivid, that rich, that heart breaking. Well, I suppose a human artist can manage heart-break too.

Dustin and I walked on the first nice day to buy winter boots. We went to “Boot World”, confident that we would both find something. The courteous salesperson was apologetic, chagrined and spoke as to a pair of long-time confidants – there were no winter boots in the store! We were the 3rd party to come in that day asking for boots yet none had been delivered. His every entreaty to Boot World corporate had fallen on deaf ears – he implored our understanding. We promised to call him back in 2 weeks. We walked to the next store – they had 3 pairs only! They were also waiting for their boots. What's up with that? Don't people realize we need boots BEFORE the snow flies since we are walking to the store?!?! Of course they don't realize that – everyone drives everywhere here in Idaho Falls.

Our next door neighbor Donna got a burn permit from the city of Ammon. Her nephew came over to help, D., Glenn and I gathered all the sticks, stems, branches and brush taken from our yard and put them over the fence in her yard. There the nephew sawed up the cherry branches trimmed by D. from our cherry tree (!!!) and Donna kept the thickest pieces for smoking. In her field, now stripped of everything growing, we made a heap of sticks and set it to burning. There was a persistent breeze and it fanned the flames as we stood guard and kept the blaze flaming with everything we had gathered. We chatted about the neighborhood, about our house – it turns out that our house came from another town where, in a flood, it floated off of its foundation. It was moved to this lot and that explains many of the novel and kludgy set-ups here such as the gas pipe that winds around the house to the back where it enters to feed our utilities – then about China and our Congress, about food and college. Finally we had a mound of white ash and lumpy cinders, which we raked about and then soaked from the hose.

Meanwhile, having chatted with the neighbors on the other side of the house earlier that day, I gave the mother a quantity of fresh apple butter. In return, the entire family came over with rakes and bags, and in a trice they had cleaned up all the leaves in the yard. They took them to their yard, piled them with their own leaves, and mom and kids ran and jumped in the pile! Everything worked out for everyone! They also told me that there will be some trick-or-treaters but not many. They advised us to only get candy we will eat and not too much of it unless we planned to eat it all anyway.

Speaking of candy – D and my friend Diana sent us some Halloween candy! We were so happy to get it – thanks very very much Diana!!!!!!

Aside from Glenn's birthday lasagne (see Episode 11), garlic bread and the regular fare of breakfast 'taters I have not made anything too notable except - potatos au gratin. I will say that the neighbors on both sides got some lasagne, just to keep up our end of things – remember this if you forget everything else from NFTNIF - “who feeds me is my friend” - this is a basic human truth, extending to other species as well. It's worth noting here that I am still eating plums and apples – both still so delicious!

Potatoes au gratin recipe – start with 3 cups of freeze-dried sliced potatoes from WinCo! Pour 3 cups of boiling water onto the potatoes, make sure the water covers them, stir a bit and let them soak for 10 mins, then drain and discard remaining water. In a small sauce pan, melt 2 TBSP butter, and stir in 2 TBSP of flour and 1 tsp of salt, and mix until well blended. Remove pot from heat and add 2 cups milk. Return to heat and boil mixture stirring constantly. Stir while boiling for one minute. Butter a baking pan and lay down a layer of potatoes. Mix 2 cups grated cheese (I used medium cheddar) and ½ cup of chopped green onion and put half onto the potatoes layer. Add half of the milk/flour/butter/salt mix, then repeat. - potatoes, cheese, sauce mix. Cover with grated Parmesan. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, let sit for 5 minutes before serving. It's amazing!

Next time I am going to use some cream, and add chopped garlic to the sauce mix. If anyone tries these or has a variant – let me know! You could also start with fresh potatoes, wash and slice them into thin slices, then quarter the slices so that they cook through.

We have been very grateful for our Indian summer – it has been 6 days of perfectly clear, cloudless warm days and deep sky at night – elegant Cassiopeia reclines languorously on her couch, mighty Orion watching with unsleeping vigilance and at his heels his dog Sirius! Jewels on a geometry of black velvet.

That's it for this episode – stay tuned for more NFTNIF!

NFTNIF Episode 11

NFTNIF - Episode 11

Well I have been in a cooking frenzy since the last report.

Pizza – used store-bought dough, made my sauce from; 1 small can tomato paste – mixed with a can of water. Add oil, pepper, garlic and onion powder, pepper, italian seasoning and salt. Spread half of this over the dough for the crust, top with chopped black olives, pineapple pieces, sliced tomato and fresh grated mozzarella and grated parmesan. Bake and eat! Delicious!

Old fashioned apple butter – wash & section 40 apples, removing the core, seeds and any insect habitats/inhabitants. Grate in food processor. Place into slow cooker with ½ cup brown sugar, juice from half a lime and a whole lemon, 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon, ½ teaspoon chili powder. Cook (stirring occasionally) on high for 6 hours, on low for 26 hours. Cool, put into containers. Since I did not add a lot of sugar and cooked it for so long, this apple butter is brown, very rich and slightly tart. I gave some to the neighbor (Donna) who let us pick the apples.

Stewed apples – clean and slice apples, cook with brown sugar, cinnamon, a dab of balsamic vinegar, stir occasionally. Delicious over pancakes, ice cream or in a pie. Donna got some too.

Lasagne stuffing – chop 1 bunch red swiss chard, 1 bunch of spinach. Peel and chop ½ of a bulb of garlic (about 10-12 buds), fry in canola oil. When garlic starts to turn golden, add the chopped greens, 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar, a couple splashes of soy sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, italian seasoning. Chop 14 crimini mushrooms and add once greens are reduced to about half of their original volume. Dice a medium onion small, then add after mushrooms are reduced to about half THEIR original size. Stir fry until greens, onion and mushrooms are cooked. Set aside and allow to cool. Add 1 lb ricotta cheese and stir.

Lasagne noodles – 1 cup of flour, 1 large egg, very small amounts of oil and water. Blend until dough coheres into a ball. Roll out dough into thin, lasagne size strips, dust with flour and spread to dry. Repeat until you have enough noodles for your dish. When you are ready to make the lasagne, brush off the dusting of flour, cook the pasta strips in boiling water until slightly tender then drain. Using the pasta sauce from Episode 10, construct lasagne: cover bottom of baking pan with a layer of sauce, lay down strips, slightly overlapping until they cover the sauce. Cover the strips with another layer of sauce. Add a layer of stuffing, then cover with sauce. Repeat until stuffing is used up, or pan is almost full to the top. The last layers should be – in ascending order, sauce, pasta strips, sauce. Cover with grated mozzarella and parmesan, bake in oven at 400 until cheese topping is bubbly and beginning to brown (25-30 mins). Remove, let cool, cut and serve!

I won't bore you with reports of breakfast (breakfast potatoes with onion), lunches (whatever is handy) – just the highlights. I found the recipe for pumpkin log, and will make that after Halloween (when we can sacrifice one of our ornamental pumpkins to the cause of cuisine); this will be spread with apple butter, rolled and topped with cream cheese whipped with powdered sugar. If you have never had pumpkin log, it's totally amazing. Recipe to be made available in the report on me making it in November.

The neighbors have fresh reasons for feeling unhappy about us besides the shaggy lawn, which is, after all, only something they have to look at, not actually deal with. All of the trees on our property are starting to shed their leaves, and the tree in the front yard has leaves falling continuously - raining - covering our yard, obscuring pavement and shaggy lawn, now blowing across the street to the pristine lawn there. That lawn used to look like a golf course, now it is dotted with autumnal leaves – all from our yard. Happily that family seems to be out of town – I dread their return. Will they lend us a rake?

Of course, we have no rake and it's not in our budget at this time. See what happens when poor people from California move into the neighborhood? Luckily we are otherwise blameless neighbors – we are quiet, do not have visitors, do not bother others; only we are not properly programmed for lawns and yards. It never ceases to amaze me when I see our neighbors riding their riding mowers twice a week, using leaf blowers; investing astonishing amounts of time, labor, gasoline and all to maintain a smooth green living carpet. What could Americans accomplish if they did not have this obsession with their lawns? Where did lawns come from anyway? Who started this colossal waste of time? Can anyone break this frantic cycle?

Our entire Halloween decore consists of 1 white pumpkin, 1 orange pumpkin the same size that is laced and veined with ropy greenery, and the orange squash given to us shortly after we moved in by the kids next door; the squash they said “This one is for Ralph!” I already intend on sacrificing the pumpkins to haute cuisine after Halloween – and the neighbor with the kids decorated their yard to the teeth so we don't feel so bad. Actually we are the middle of the continuum formed by ourselves and our neighbors on each side – the kids' house is a nightmare on Maple; our house a tasteful exercise in minimalism, and Donna has done nothing at all for Halloween, although our leaves are contributing to a slight air of fall festivity (until she breaks out her formidable armament of lawn care machinery).

Every morning is silvered by frost now – and it is later each day that the sun unsheathes all those blades of grass. The full moon shone into our basement bedroom like a police spotlight last night. The nights are terribly cold and the days, if sunny become very pleasant; if cloudy then they are also cold and windy.

My beard has finally grown long enough that it no longer looks like simple negligence – but it is far from the full mountain-man face fur I am hoping for. It went through a SECOND phase of curling around enough to stab my face – like needles, jabbing into my lips and other facial skin one does not even think of until it is suddenly pierced by the curling hairs. I have to say it brought tears to my eyes more than once. I came within an ace of shaving it all off, but I noticed that my face is slightly warmer under the beard.

That's all for NFTNIF, Episode 11. Drop me a line or comment if you like – especially anyone who tries a recipe. Much Love from Idaho Falls!

NFTNIF Episode 10

Notes From the North IF Decimus Parte

Most days begin like a fire kindling to life from smoldering coals. The blackness gives grudging way to the faintest of lightness, then asudden deep and rich colors are aborning. Ocher, umber, charcoal, maroon, burnt orange, ashes and coals mixed in the horizon. And, like fire, the clouds catch color, burning swiftly to yellow and pink and rose and molten gold and swiftly the colors burn their way across and through the clouds and they fall to ash colors - smeary gray and lighter gray and gatherings of silvery white and finally the colors draw free of the clouds leaving only ash colors - the colors that are left when the fire is gone.

Most mornings now the lawn is silvered with frost - the whole of it dipped in mercury and then frozen to a brittle but scintillating sculpture of grass. This silvering yields most reluctantly to the warmth of morning - every pocket of shadow clings to its galvanized coat until it's burned away in the wan sunlight, a feeble but (for now) irresistible energy weapon turned on the shielding of frost.

The advance of winter has enforced some behaviors on me. For one, I have returned to my Michigan practice of wearing layers. Layers allow you to maintain the desired body temperature irrespective of the environment. Underneath, a t-shirt. Next layer, a long sleeve shirt, maybe a turtle neck. Next, a sweat shirt. Next, a hoody, maybe two. If it's really cold, a winter coat over everything. That's not even counting a scarf (have not had to go there yet!), mittens or gloves, thermal underwear, multiple pairs of socks - some really thick and heavy. Winter - I am ready for you!

To get even more ready, I have started to grow a beard. Growing a beard has to be one of the more uncomfortable things a body can do. First, it's an unsightly, prickly mess warning everyone that you are at least unkempt, probably low-class, maybe even desperate in some way. Then, as the growth continues, the hairs curve around, picking and poking the skin that supports them. Itchy, ugly, uncomfortable, affording little or no extra warmth for the pain and discomfort.

Slowly it grows, covering more of my face, getting longer and curling once more away from my beleaguered epidermis. Some of the hairs do not break entirely free of their genetive hollows, burrowing under the skin, exciting an immune response - the body at war with itself. I smile and smile and sigh and wait. Finally, once the hair is long enough that it forms its own shield against the growing hair, it starts to infiltrate nostrils, mouth, like my awful lawn, growing and growing insensibly, following it's own imperatives. What have I done?

And the insult to a host on minute injuries - the hair that grows now is not the dark, anarchistic beard of yesteryear - it is the silver shot beard of an Old Testament prophet, returned from mind-blasting visions and conversations with God in the desert, only our desert is cold, and the vision stares back at me from the mirror. This better keep my face warm.

D finally got paid, so we paid bills and then went shopping. D's friend Michelle drove into town to go grocery shopping and we hitched a ride with her. We bought food and food and food. That began my spate of cooking.

Our lawn looks like someone randomly shaved the head of a drunk friend. Parts of it are too heaped with trench dirt, other parts of it are blotched like a leper with patches of clay and ostrich-egg-sized stones. All of those parts have not been mowed. The rest was mowed to the quick when we had the chance. The guys who did the digging and strewing and changing of the pipe left some tools here along with the mess. The boss, Mr. E. came back over here quickly and quietly - trying to sneak back out with his tools, but Glenn caught him and asked when he would be cleaning up the lawn. Mr. E. was totally non-plussed by being caught, stammered some vague answer and left, leaving behind his wheel-barrow in earnest of finishing the job.

Since it's harvest time, and our neighbor keeps begging us to take more fruit, D and I walk over to her place and pick a bazillion plums. I go back later and pick a mere whajillion apples. Since it's impossible to eat them all even though we try, it's time for cooking and freezing!

I made the following recipes:
Apple/plum/apricot jam.
Mince the flesh of 40 italian plums, 20 tart, firm apples and a package of dried turkish apricots. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon, half a cup of brown sugar, half a teaspoon of chili powder, 3 oz. of red cooking wine and cook in a slow cooker all day, stirring frequently. Made 40 oz. of jam.

Plum jam.
Mince the flesh of a lot of Italian plums. Add 1/4 teaspoon of ground red pepper, the juice of half a lime, 2 oz of red cooking wine. Stew all day. made 4 cups of lovely jam.

Cinnamon, apple-lime pie.
Slice 24 apples into thin crescents. Sprinkle with the juice of half a lime, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 6 oz. of brown sugar. Mix well and set into 2 graham cracker pie crusts. Cook at 425 for 20-25 minutes, remove from oven and cover with aluminum foil. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Spaghetti sauce.
Mince 30 field fresh tomatoes. Mince 10-15 garlic buds and saute them in (canola) oil. Add the tomatoes as garlic begins to brown. Add 2 teaspoons italian seasoning, 1/2 teaspoon sea salt, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper, 1/4 cup red cooking wine, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, 1/2 teaspoon onion powder, 2 bay laurel leaves. Stew at a low heat for 4-5 hours. If you use fresh tomatoes like we did - it's amazing!

Spaghetti squash casserole.
Cut a spaghetti squash in half along the long axis. Remove the seeds. Place cut-side down in a baking tray or dish along with enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. bake at 425 for 25 minutes. Remove from oven and cut side up to cool. remove the flesh.
Stir fry broccoli and onion with soy sauce, black pepper and garlic powder. Stir fry mushrooms cut into thick slices with minced garlic, white wine, white pepper (or black if no white pepper available).
Put a layer of spaghetti sauce (see above) into a baking pan, add the squash in a layer over the sauce. Add the broccoli/onion mix, cover with the mushrooms. Cover once more with spaghetti sauce. Top with cheese, and cook uncovered at 425 for 25-30 minutes, until cheese is browning.

I froze half of the spaghetti squash for later, put up one pies worth of pie filling, and stocked the refrigerator with jams.

The cat I have seen in our yard actually lives with the neighbor with kids. I saw it arrange itself into it's house - then we gazed at each other across our domains, two friendly monarchs secure in our realms. 

It turns out that I am going to be covered on D's health insurance, as his "other". So no ACA plan for me at this point.

We picked some more apples today, and I will be making apple butter next. I also decided to freeze plum halves since you can't even buy these in stores.

So another day spirals down into night - fires burning out in a great gush of color and burning the day to ash. A blanket of gray covers the sky, over us and under the stars.

That's it for this report. Except,
The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones both start soon!!!!!! WOOT!

Episode 9 - Madness Takes it's Toll

Notes From the North IF Episode 9

One of our neighbors invited us to pick plums from her tree. These are Italian plums, a greenish purple with a lighter blue dust on them - shaped like a pecan and fitting comfortably in a closed hand. My uncle used to have a tree with these plums and we greedily waited for them to be ripe every year. Their flesh is light yellowy-greenish shading to the color of crystallized honey. We ate unknown numbers of them and then I chopped several of them and added fresh-squeezed lime juice, a tiny bit of chili powder and a half teaspoon of brown sugar and cooked it down on a low flame until it turned a dark red. We ate it on pancakes and will use the rest on peanut butter and "jelly" sandwiches - delicious!

Our neighbors on the other side lent us their lawnmower and weed whacker yesterday and the 3 of us took turns attacking our junglawn. It took all 3 of us - and several hours, and I am afraid that their lawnmower will never be the same. It huffed, and chuffed, groaned, belched blue smoke, stalled and sat sullenly, refusing to start again. We clustered around it, speaking in low tones as though we were discussing an accident victim bleeding at our feet. I don't think I have ever felt such compassion for an inanimate object - it's suffering was so tangible. We took a solemn vow never to use it again, and I almost looked around for a priest to give it extreme unction, but once I got underneath it and removed the 15 or so pounds of grass clippings glued to it's underside it started with a full-throated roar and ran at a high rev - surely a sign of it's continuing (albeit fragile) health. We tenderly refilled it's gas tank and returned it, trying not to blush with shame. I gave the neighbors a large bag of plums (!), which they gratefully accepted. Still, my last thoughts, tossing and turning before I fell asleep were of the lawnmower and how I had never so abused the evilest of creatures that crossed my path much less an innocent, hard-workin, helpful lawnmower. I will bear this guilt to my dying day.
 
Ironically, because of the repairs to our water main - the side of our lawn bordering our most scrupulous and finicky neighbor remains unmowed. We did not have the heart to subject the poor lawnmower to mowing grass laced with indestructible clods of clay and the kind of stones that made farming in New England so hellish - resulting in the countryside being webbed with stone walls everywhere you look. Those walls remain today, even though farming moved to the midwest as soon as the lands there were opened up to settlement. The neighbor on the side with the unmown lawn is the one who killed a foot-wide strip along our fence with roundup - which even killed two of our trees. The first words she spoke to us were about how much she hated the weeds which grew beyond easy casting distance of the round-up. (Dustin immediately pulled, hacked and otherwise removed the weeds over the next 3 days). But her plums are delicious. Sad about the lawn on that side though. Hee-hee, ahem.

Since I left my job to move here, there were some things I needed to attend to. One of them is a monthly, automatic payment to the Southern Poverty Law Center, for their work on education and monitoring extremist groups. (See SPLC.org for more information). Since I am not earning money right now, I called my credit union to tell them to discontinue the payments.

The polite representative there told me that I had to call SPLC and ask them to discontinue it from their side. I was confused, and said so. He repeated that I needed to call them to stop the payments.

"Let me test my understanding," I said. "I voluntarily set-up these donations. It is coming from my account and it is my money. I am not under any obligation to make these donations. But I can't stop paying without their say-so?"

"If it was a credit card you would have other options - but since it's a debit card we have to do it this way."

"So, if they decided to keep on taking the money, there's nothing I could do"?!?

"We can only stop it by blocking the card, and then you would need to get another card."

"Forgive me, but that is the most backward way of doing things I can imagine. This is MY money, I thought it was My account, not theirs, but you can't stop paying someone my money on just my say-so?"

"I'm sorry sir, that's the policy."

I almost asked why they would let me start paying someone money since they don't trust me to stop, but it's not his policy and that would just be childish.

Let me say that I reached the SPLC today and they GRACIOUSLY consented to stop taking my money. Whew! Thank goodness for that! God forbid that someone hostile to me found a way into my account and helped themselves to my funds and then refused to stop when I went begging to them. Did anyone else know that things worked this way?

This leads me to state what I call Ralph's Law of Organizations - Any organization over 40 people, (and that is the absolute maximum number), becomes chaotic and impossible to manage by rational means. A and B work at cross-purposes, common sense becomes a rarity, and any manner of foolishness becomes the order of the day. Remember my words as you move and plan and attempt to cope with the insanity that dogs our every step, attending even the most routine and simple of transactions. It may not be a comfort to you unless understanding the madness engulfing you offers some comfort simply by making it less incomprehensible. No one really MEANS to make life hellishly stupid, it just works out that way with the operation of so many sovereign egos in play.

Well that's it for now - stay tuned for the next episode of NFTNIF!

Episode 8

Notes From the North IF Episode 8

It occurred to me today walking to the Speedy Mart (our replacement for the missing Seven Elevens) that the sky here is - (are you ready?) - 50 shades of grey! It snowed here early in the morning on the 27th September; snowed but did not stick in our yard, except, for a time, on our toolshed. The snow did stick on the foothills around us. Nevertheless, as I walked bundled in layer after layer of clothing, I saw the native children running around in shirtsleeves and in at least one case, shorts!

Has my blood thinned so much during my life beside the mighty Pacific, and thickened so very little despite our having been here a month? The answers must be, yes and yes. This snowfall, such a trauma and shock to me was literally nothing to these children. I will observe them closely so that I know when real winter has arrived; they must sometime break out winter coats, mittens, scarves and so on.

We are seeing signs everywhere for haunted houses, spook houses, haunted mansions - the harbingers of Halloween. I had briefly thought that this pagan revelry might be minimized here in such a Godly place, but no. I suppose that it has become a holiday almost as secular as Christmas - that celebration of consumption, that orgy of consumerism. Costumes, spook houses, trick or treating, I suddenly realize that with all the neighbors, all the children, we had better be ready with candy on the night set aside for begging. Surely hordes of glittering princesses, sheet-swathed ghosts, black-clad and warty witches, legions of tiny spider-men, diminutive Hulks, scampering little soldiers and the whole panoply of costumed beggars will troop down our block, under the watchful and indulgent eyes of their parents, filling bags with tooth-rotting prizes, and we had best be ready for it. By golly - we need at least a jack-o-lantern, maybe some artfully deployed cobwebs, perhaps even a tombstone? We had better be ready with costumes ourselves.

And cold on the heels of Halloween will be winter, real winter, not the gentle almost comical dusting of snow we got the other day, but cold enough to freeze the ground down 2 feet (so we have been told), cold enough to draw armies of skiers and snow boarders to the nearby "champagne snow", certainly cold enough to at last stop our lawn from getting even longer.

The repairs to our water main have left their mark. There remains, despite their earnest promises to return and tidy up, a 40 foot long, 2 foot wide snake of humped dirt, broken in several places where the little backhoe rolled over it. In addition, dirt was broadcast over the lawn in generous portions, muddy dirt full of clay that clings with the slightest opportunity to everything it touches. I have 2 pairs of shoes laying sole up, encouraging the adhesive soil to dry with the hope that it might someday be coaxed loose. I avoid the backyard and the sideyard where the trench was dug, as the soil in some paces lurks under the nodding fronds of grass, waiting for any host to come so it can wed itself to anything touching it.

I have noticed that our yard has it's own cat - white with black splotches - or is it black with white swaths? The cat spends much of the day in our yard, under the bushes around the edge of the yard, leisurely hunting the birds who also use our yard. I finally decided that since our yard is one of the few without a dog or dogs, the rest of nature sees it as a protected reserve. The cat has condescended to let us live here - after the first days of furtive scrutiny it is becoming bolder. In the evening it sits on our back deck and watches us through the sliding glass doors. A human zoological exhibit? Fair enough. It tolerates us being in the yard with it, but any motion which it interprets as an approach sends it teleporting away with that sudden instantaneity which is the province of the housecat everywhere.

D has gotten his benefit package from his employer, and careful scrutiny of the domestic partner benefit requirements shows that I will not be eligible. Obamacare here I come! I will report on my expriences with that furiously contested program when and if it begins and when and if I enroll.

Stay tuned for more episodes of NFTNIF!

Episode 7

Notes From the North IF Episode 7

Summer is gone - the Autumnal Equinox and Harvest Moon are behind us. Our days have run the gamut from bitterly cold and dismally gray to innocently warm, sunny and clear - as though the weather itself is confused, or the battlefield of contending seasons and influences. We have experienced both the ghosts of summer in 70+ degree weather and the chilly fingers of wind that are harbingers of a bitter winter ahead. Birds still abound, and flies, both seemingly utterly insensible of what lies ahead. Oh, some of the birds must know what awaits us, but many of them I am informed will winter along the Snake River, enduring what we endure with only their frail bones and plumage to stand in for our central heating and double-paned glass windows.

The ever-changing kaleidoscopic clouds give us what we lost when we departed from the coast - the skyscape is our ocean now - mightier by far than any body of water lapping our little planet. The sky is in fact what gave to the ocean it's palette of colors even in San Diego - aquamarine, emerald, orange and pink, dizzying blue and plum, rose and ocher - only now we experience it without reflection or intermediary. I had forgotten how much variety the sky can evince - cotton and slate, granite and fleece, wispy, ponderous, all-encompassing. Our lawn seems as unmoved by the relentless advances of seasonal metamorphosis as ever; I long daily for goats or some ruminant to curb it's indescribable verdancy.

However, I can report, that in two days of heroic labor the uncle of our landlady and even moreso his sturdy helper have at last staunched the hemorrhage of water. By my calculations 224,640 gallons of purified water have been returned to the earth since we arrived - God alone knows how much before we got here.

When they arrived Monday to survey the job, it seemed that they were going to have to rip up our extensive driveway, drill through the wall and perform other messy and extensive modifications. They chucked all that in favor of a new plan.

It turns out that this house once occupied a different location, and some local disaster necessitated it's removal to the site it now occupies. This meant that the utility connections were kludges - making no sense at all except for that circumstance. The newest arrangement has adhered to that tradition. Instead of breaking up the concrete, they brought in a baby backhoe (which was so cute and so useful I instantly conceived a desire to possess it or one like it) and trenched along the side of the house, along the back and under our deck. There was just barely room to operate under our deck to the requisite depth to allow them to drill a new orifice admitting the new water main. This was then mated untidily but snugly to the existing water infrastructure. the final connection was consecrated today and water service is restored.

May I for a moment relate what it is like to be unable to flush the toilet, or wash your hands or anything else? Water is like breath - only appreciated in it's absence. As I used to tell myself - never to for a day let the beauty of San Diego go unacknowledged, so will I now daily offer a hosannah to the availability of clean water - a commodity unavailable to too many of our fellow humans.

We did learn that the contents of a trench, once abstracted from it are greater than the trenches' capacity when one attempts to restore them. In other words - we have heaps of dirt where once only immortal and vigorous lawn once reigned. Dustin is going to plant tulip bulbs tomorrow when our utility myrmidons have restored it to the best of their ability. I only wish they had treated the rest of our never-to-be-sufficiently damned lawn the same - then I could have a sensible, extensive garden instead of a useless, voluptuous emerald carpet. I watch our neighbors stolidly mowing their own lawns every 3 or 4 days, stoically riding or walking behind their fume-spewing mowers. I think a lawn is a fine hobby for a widower or someone released from hard labor, or suffering from delusions which would be ameliorated by sisyphean toil, or someone seeking a zen release from the real world of profitable activity - but it is surely no good for me, or the environment, or those millions of others who could be shredding paper or doing anything at all which has a beginning, an end and accomplishes something substantive in between.

I had occasion to walk about a mile along the country road which is 2 blocks from our house, and I am ashamed to say that I have not seen litter of that sort of variety and abundance since the crying Indian commercial in 1970. This reaffirms my belief that we have time-warped back to 1965 when we moved here. On the brighter side I did retrieve a rather large plant pot which we will store for use next spring. I walked further than I intended - telling myself that this must be only at the intersection, it must be limited to the last segment of the highway in town, but it continued with no slackening out of sight beyond the point at which I turned back. OK - there were no shopping carts, decapitated bodies or corpses of large animals such as anyone might stumble across in Balboa Park, but it took my breath away to see so much trash discarded so haphazardly along the canal and fields with their dumbly nodding fields of corn.

Perhaps the volcanic origins of this landscape have contributed to a longer-range view of litter than is the norm - in a hundred thousand years, maybe as few as thirty thousand, the Yellowstone super-volcano will explode, rendering all the litter (and much of North American civilization) moot by covering it with basaltic magma and reducing all organic components to incandescent ash. BUT - in the meantime - is it only I who sees the trash? Am I the only one it bothers? Can the entire ecology movement, the whole of the revolution in human thinking have actually passed by Idaho Falls? AND - may I add, superfluously for those who have been reading carefully, this sort of litter would NEVER be permitted on any of these pristine, fast-growing, high-maintenance and low utility lawns!

Tonight I am making spaghetti squash casserole for dinner to celebrate the end of our water flowing, endlessly flowing.

Tune in for the next episode of Notes From the North!

Episode 6 - Pride Edition!

NOTES FROM THE NORTH IF _ PRIDE EDITION!!!

Notes From the North - Pride March Edition

First the background. Idaho Falls is located along a Mormon-settled corridor from Salt Lake City to parts of Colorado. A local politico described IF as ". . .one of the most Mormon places on Earth". On 2 or 3 prior occasions non-discrimination ordinances were defeated.

After considerable debate and lots of community input, the Idaho Falls City Council passed 2/3s of a non-discrimination ordinance. It provides for equality in employment and housing. The third part of the ordinance, which was struck out of the final law provided for non-discrimination in the arena of "public accomodations". Public accommodations include hotels, restaurants, parks, etc.

What does that mean? It means that gay persons can be refused the use of "public accommodations" - or charged a different rate than others. Picture a crowded lunch counter where some people would be waved out the door because they are lesbian or gay; a hotel refusing a room or charging double, a permit not granted for a picnic in a park, etc.

As anyone can see - this is flagrantly discriminatory and gives rise to all sorts of potential absurdity. How will gay/lesbian/bisexual or other non-protected persons be identified? Will they borrow from an older system and have us wear pink triangles? Will there be established a registry of non-straight persons? What will count as criteria for non-protected status? Will hotel, restaurant, and city employees be given crash courses in "gaydar" so that they can identify and this discriminate against these undesirables?

If a person is married and in the closet - which will determine their status? Will "one drop" of gay blood make you gay? As anyone who takes the time to examine this issue can see there is enormous scope for mistakes - for people who are NOT gay to also suffer from this discriminatory policy. Will we elect a Supreme Sexuality Arbiter whose word will be final in determining a persons sexual orientation for the purposes of legal protection or discrimination?

Nevertheless, this represents an enormous and almost inconceivable step forward for Idaho Falls. Forgetting for a moment the inherently ridiculous aspects of the missing "public accommodations" protection, a person can no longer be fired from their job or denied housing solely on the basis of their sexual orientation. My belief is that in time the hopelessness of enforcing a policy of discrimination when the criteria for it are so completely arbitrary means that the missing third part of the ordinance will also be enacted. The alternative is somehow organizing a system for recognizing a persons sexuality, which by the way is an element which can evolve over time. Again - if you used to be straight will you lose legal protection by slipping into the "gay" category? Can a gay or lesbian person advance to protected status by some psychological or legal maneuver - get a 'note' from their minister or analyst?

On to the pride celebration itself - enough of the murky preliminaries.

Saturday, September 14, 2013 dawned bright and sunny. I contacted the gay friends I made online to find out how many were going. One after another they declined, mostly for work, less often because they need to keep a low profile for work or family. At last a gay couple allowed that they wanted to "see how it went" as they had never been to a pride march before. They graciously picked up Dustin and me and we chatted gaily (sorry) until we reached the start of the march at the Unitarian Universalist church. Our pals let us out and promised to position themselves at some point along the parade route. They asked if we would march and we told them we would march if they let us join - otherwise we would cheer from the sides too.

Dustin and I had debated what to wear - having been told by other IF gays that they hoped everyone would be "well-behaved", and refrain from being outrageous, obscene or otherwise too much for the community to tolerate at this first historic Pride.

An opposing pundit scoffed that "there won't be 10 people there altogether - at the most 50". She remembered with fond nostalgia when "you didn't have to put up with diversity", and she lamented the use of public parks and the "waste of taxpayer money".

The group assembled for this Pride celebration included everyone from babes in arms and strollers to seniors in wheelchairs. Married couples with their entire array of children, the children excitedly waving rainbow flags, hair colored in rainbows, faces painted - kids and adults carrying signs and noise makers. My sign read - "Don't Panic" which served to restrain and amuse everyone who saw it. I reflected that these were also tax-payers, enjoying the use of their tax dollars - not wasting them.

The parade organizers during their introductory and organizational remarks exulted at the large and actuarially complete group who had gathered, as gorgeously flamboyant and colorful and spirited a group as I have seen at any of my other Pride events. They cautioned us to decline confrontation and sing, dance, and make some noise. Why else do we call it gay?!?

We set out, music playing, slogans ringing into the air, traffic stopping politely when we crossed the street. The original parade permit had been withdrawn so we simply used a different route (public accommodations indeed)!

At every point along the way more people joined us, people with booths cheered us on. The shoppers at the weekly farmers market made a joyful noise when they saw us coming. Everyone was surprised at how many people participated - the 300-400 at the beginning became 1200-1300 along the way. We saw our friends watching as they said they would, and tried to entice them into joining the parade, but soon passed them as they drew back and continued watching. I did notice several of the friends who said they would not be there actually attended after all.

There were no hecklers, no counter-demonstrators, no opposition at all. A number of Mormons openly attended including a family who gave out "free hugs" and a sticker reading "I was hugged by a Mormon". There were political action groups such as Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), the League of Women Voters, reproductive rights groups, petition gathering groups, food vendors and so on.

The day was beautiful, the people were wonderful, the event was unexpectedly well attended, violence and hatred free and stayed within the tolerance level of a conservative town in its splendor and assertiveness.

Afterwards, our long-time resident friends remarked over and over their surprise at the large group, the total lack of counter-demonstration, and the (relative) respectability of the entire affair.

In conclusion, next year will see even more people - because they saw and heard that this years event was such a success. Beneath the roil of online debate and the heated discussions over the Non-discrimination ordinance - what is that sound I hear? Is it the chime of inevitability?

Thanks for your persistence and stay tuned for the next NFTN!