Primordial Goo

If you are a regular reader of this column, you might have noticed that I like to spend time on my kitchen porch.

It is my form of meditation. I sit there watching the trees sway in the breeze, and the birds duking it out over the suet cakes and the bird seed. It is a quiet and lovely place to sit and not think.

“Your little slice of heaven,” a friend called it, and so it is.

About a week ago I went out to enjoy quiet time. I saw the trees, I heard the birds, and I smelled … ew. What was that? A whiff of something not pleasant.

I looked around to see if there was anything in sight to which I could attribute this odor. I couldn’t see anything. I wondered if one of the neighbors had brought home some compost from the tofu factory – that stuff is certainly rich with nutrients, if you know what I mean.

Well, I figured it would pass.

But it didn’t. Day by day the odor became worse.

Today I walked out on the porch and nearly staggered when I hit the stank. Oh my gosh.

I finally realized that it seemed to be coming from under the porch.

Did something die under there? But it didn’t smell like something dead. I know the smell of decomposition. There is the regular pong of dead deer along island roads. These poor deer were hit by cars and got off the road and into the underbrush, but not very far. Drive around on a warm summer day with your windows down and you might catch, or be caught by, the smell of one of these works in progress.

So, it did not smell like something had died. It had a sweetish tang to it, but still was strong enough to, as the late, much lamented cartoonist John Callahan would say, knock a buzzard off a s--- wagon.

Near as I could tell it was under the porch.

In order to look under the porch I would have to do some physical bending and twisting which does not come easily to me anymore, not to mention moving several items – vegetation, empty pots, miscellaneous unknown objects that have disappeared over the side of the porch into the summer foliage, and so on.

On the other hand, isn’t it better to know, than not? Maybe I could find it and fix it.

So, I put on my gardening shoes (size 10, Granny’s, many years ago when they were still down at the Nike site) and my gardening gloves (a much-appreciated gift from my neighbor Caitlin. Who knew what I might have to grab?) and set out to see if I could solve this mystery.

 I went to the south side of the porch first because it was less obscured than the north side. I found a brass hose nozzle, a circular lawn sprinkler, and a weeding tool, all things that had fallen on that side. Of course, I could not get to them until I ripped out the morning glory that was wrapped around the various tools leaning against the wall there.

Digression: you garden and horticulture types probably know this, but it was only a few days ago that I noticed that morning glory curls counterclockwise as it covers the world. Again, I am so grateful to be learning something new at my age, and again, I wonder why it took me so long to notice.

Anyway – I looked under the porch. I could not see much, but I did not see anything dead or alive under there.

Went around to the north side of the porch and began pushing foliage aside. First thing I came to under the bush was a large stainless steel bowl. It had been an animal water dish on the porch, until it fell off, and landed upright. 

It was full of water that had an oily slick on top, and was bubbling, and it smelled terrible.

Eureka. I tipped the bowl over, dumping whatever was inside. First, the water, and then, what looked like slimy, sandy mud. A wave of the nauseating smell rose up from the flow. Ugh.

Yup, that was the problem.

Within minutes the kitchen porch was habitable again.

There have been a few times in my life when I have encountered stinky mud and water, so I looked up the phenomenon. In this case, from what I read, I believe that there were some anaerobic bacteria kicking butt and taking names in that bowl.

Maybe if I’d left it there for a few billion years, new life would have risen out of that bowl. But I couldn’t wait. That’s human beings for you. Always in a hurry.

We Have Arrived

In September 2018 the Public Broadcasting System debuted a one-hour special which documented the rise of fascism in Western Europe in the 20th Century. It traced how fascism in Italy and Germany rose out of the aftermath of World War I.

Germany was blamed for starting World War I, though a lot of the responsibility belonged to Kaiser Wilhelm, the hotheaded eldest grandson of Queen Victoria. At the end of that war he fled to the Netherlands and lived there in exile until his death in 1941 at the age of 82, while Germany took the punishment for the war.

The documentary shows footage of both Hitler and Mussolini speaking passionately to huge crowds of people, and great masses of people cheering and waving.

People often bring up Hitler when talking about Trump, but after seeing news coverage of Trump’s first official 2020 campaign rally, and then seeing film of Mussolini giving a speech, I was struck by Trump’s similarity to Mussolini - the similarity of body language, the braggadocio, the hubris, and the self-satisfied smugness. Both stood back and smiled while their crowds cheered, Mussolini with his arms crossed and that huge chin in the air, Trump smirking and smiling.

Still, Trump’s rise has been Hitler-esque. First perceived as a clown, he astonished us and ended up president.

Hitler and Mussolini promised jobs and prosperity to their people, and those promises were key to their rise to power. In the early years of their regimes the German and Italian economies were gaining ground.

In 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Dachau was opened. It was a place to send dissidents. For some reason I always thought the camps came later, but no. They, or the intentions of having them, were in place right from the start.

America has camps now, for children, some of whom have died, all of whom are separated from family, and are living in crowded, unhealthy conditions.

Recently reporters were invited to tour a children’s facility, where the administrator of the camp said his feelings were hurt that people had said bad things about his camp. Three hundred children were shipped out before the reporters came, and the reporters said that the camp was clean, and not crowded, and the children were well-dressed and happy.

This story reminded me of Theresienstadt. Do you know what Theresienstadt was? Look it up.

I wonder how history will speak of us. Will America now be remembered as we remember Nazi Germany? America with a leader who gave speeches that got the crowds calling for, and sometimes shedding, blood? America making scapegoats of Hispanic families seeking asylum?

America with concentration camps.

You know, when I started writing this column back in 2002, I aspired to write humor. I still do that sometimes, and I will when I can, but it is impossible not to speak out now.

Trump is not Hitler. We are not Nazi Germany. We can stop making those comparisons. We have arrived: we are the same old evil in a contemporary package. We don’t have a short catchy name for our era yet, like “Nazi Germany,” but someone will come up with one.

There was a 7.1 earthquake in California last night (as I write). I was watching a live news report of first responders speaking about what happened, damage assessment, injuries or deaths, and as the video played, emojis flew up the side of the screen. Many of them were laughter emojis, which puzzled me. What was so funny about a huge earthquake, people losing electricity and water and gas lines fracturing and homes burning?

Then I started reading the comments scrolling at the side. Most were people saying, “Praying for you,” “Wishing you well,” and such sentiments, but some were, “This is God’s punishment on California,” and “The whole state should fall into the sea,” and “This happened because of the evil liberals in California.”

This basin in the Sierras, east of the San Joaquin Valley, where the earthquake took place, is hardly what I would think of as a liberal stronghold – we’re talking the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, farmers, working people, the Mojave Desert, and the routes to Death Valley and Mount Whitney.

The haters on the web page were part of the Trump base.

This era, this administration, is the culmination of years of propaganda (Rush Limbaugh, Fox News), hard times for working people, and the unenlightened self-interest of the people running the show.

Not to mention the unwillingness of a lot of people like me to believe that our political opponents would stoop this low.

For what it is worth, earthquakes are caused by the shifting of tectonic plates. If they were caused by God’s wrath, I think his (because you do believe God is a guy, right?) aim would have been better.

Hand Me Down My Walkin’ Cane

In January 2000, I was in a rollover car accident. A few weeks later I woke up one morning to find the room whirling around me. It was like being in the middle of a carousel, in a way. Maybe it was because of the painkillers they had me on for my broken back, but I enjoyed this feeling. Also, I was not throwing up like some people do when they have vertigo. That would have really harshed my mellow.

This vertigo was an after effect of the accident, I was told. Over the next few weeks the whirling went away, but I would have sporadic attacks later. Sometimes even now I get a little swirly feeling.

So that’s my history of fragile stability, but lately my balance has become downright precarious. I have started falling.

One night I got out of the car, my foot caught on something, and I went down. That was the night I stopped wearing Birkenstock sandals.

Usually I fall in the house, while walking from the living room to the kitchen or back. It doesn’t take much to bring me down once I’ve lost my balance.

I googled balance problems and the first thing that came up was “balance problems in the elderly.”

Hunh. Who you calling elderly?

I read a couple of articles and learned the ELDERLY fall down a lot, and get injured, and this is bad. I have been fortunate so far in that my falls have not broken any bones, only beat me up enough to make me go to bed for a day or so and take acetaminophen. The ELDERLY do not bounce as well as the YOUNG.

Elderly people falling and breaking a hip is recognized as a frequent phenomenon, but I read recently that in fact, often the hip breaks and then the person falls. Isn’t that just peachy?

Here’s how it feels inside a fall for me. First, the fall begins, and I do everything I can not to fall. I shift my weight, move my feet, reach for something to grab, and when all that fails, I try to relax and roll into it to minimize the impact.

There is the whump! of landing.

I lie there a minute taking a few breaths, and then there is the inventory: How bad is this? I check myself out – Wrists? Knees? Shoulders? Arms? Ankles? Legs? Head? Torso? Does anything feel broken?

An early sign of a broken bone is nausea, your body’s way of telling you that you really did it this time, sucker.

If all body parts are in working order, I then get back up. That’s not easy when you have two crap knees. I borrow a method from toddlers: I get on all fours, crawl to some nearby piece of sturdy furniture, and push myself up.

When reading about falls online I was astonished to learn that my recovery method after a fall is exactly what you are advised to do. Take some calming breaths, take an inventory, and then crawl to the nearest chair (in my case, nearest furniture that will bear my weight), and with one foot and your other knee pushing you up while you hold on to the furniture, rise, and sit there a while considering your next move.

After I fell down several times in a short period of time, my friends got fed up and did an intervention. They sat me down and talked to me sternly but lovingly: I needed to go to the doctor and get this checked out. I needed to start using a cane or even a walker, especially in the house. I needed to stop falling.

They had a point. Several points. I listened to them. I agreed with them. The frequency of my falls had me worried.

I have the appointment with the doctor. I have a new cane which I like because it is purple. I have a walker which I am using mostly in the house, which is where I have fallen most often.

Why am I so wobbly? I suspect the drugs I take that dehydrate me. One of the factoids online was that the more medications you take, the more likely you are to fall. Great.

Maybe I’m getting old.

That’s the hardest part of this: getting old. No one feels old, excuse me, ELDERLY, inside. Inside I’m the snappy wiseacre I’ve always been, and I am much happier than I was in my earlier years because I’ve lived through so much and acquired a longer perspective on life. 

It’s my body that’s getting old, not my spirit. That is the little joke of living a long time, folks. There is some fine print that goes with the deal.

Procyon Lotor: Hell Spawn of the Suburbs

The Latin name for the raccoon is Procyon Lotor. Procyon, for the star, because raccoons are nocturnal (allegedly), and Lotor, for “washing,” because they wash their food in water.

In the warm months I leave the kitchen door open so the dog and cat can go in and out at their leisure.

The other day I heard a noise in the kitchen. I went to see, and a raccoon was standing on its hind feet at the threshold of the open kitchen door.

The raccoon was about the size of a toddler and because it was standing up on its hind legs looking adorable it was difficult not to anthropomorphize it. Huge “aw” factor.

People have two different takes on raccoons. One group thinks they are so cute, and they put out food and baby talk to raccoons.

The other group thinks raccoons are indeed cute; and, vicious, destructive, disease-carrying, trash pandas.

I belong to the latter group.

Back at the kitchen: the toddler-raccoon did not stand down until I stepped forward. Then it got on all fours and ambled off the porch.

It stood up on its hind legs again in front of the porch, turned and looked back to see if I was still there. I reached for one of the ski poles I keep in an old trash can on the porch (I use them as walking sticks) and that's when the raccoon rambled away, to the ravine, I thought, but more likely under the back porch.

The dog and cat food bags are just inside the kitchen door. Raccoon must have thought she hit the jackpot until I ruined it all.

The next day my housemate was sitting out on the kitchen porch when she spotted the raccoon heading her way. Mayhem ensued. She yelled and threw things at the raccoon. It took the hint and headed back the way it came. It went under the back porch. Rats.

Well, not rats. We got the exterminator to get rid of the rats ten years ago. My housemate chucked some rocks through the openings between the stairs of the back stoop to discourage the raccoon further.

Next afternoon, one of the many times my cat wanted in and I opened the door, I looked outside, and saw the raccoon trundling up the hill.

By now I was speculating that someone was feeding this pest. It seemed so bold and unafraid.

The next day was a warm sunny day, and I went up to town in the afternoon and drove home with the window of the car open. When I got home, I forgot to roll up the window.

Cue the music from Jaws: da-DOM.

The next day when I went to run errands, I noticed that one of my shopping bags was on the front seat. Hm, I thought. Cat?

Shows you how naïve I am.

I headed to town, and I was almost there before I saw the raccoon prints on my windshield.

When I parked, I looked at the shopping bag and found that it was torn to shreds. The paper bag I’d been using for garbage for a couple of weeks had been gone through and its contents distributed.

We were not amused.

Did a little research. Washington state has a law: RCW 77.15.790: “Negligently feeding, attempting to feed, or attracting large wild carnivores to land or a building—Infraction.

“(1) A person may not negligently feed or attempt to feed large wild carnivores or negligently attract large wild carnivores to land or a building.”

Raccoons qualify as large wild carnivores – or large enough. They are wild, they spread parasites (roundworm) and disease (rabies), and they will attack your animals and you. I don’t know what the penalty is for this infraction, but I wish it was enforced.

Feeding raccoons makes them unafraid of us, makes their population grow, and keeps them from foraging, which is how they are supposed to survive.

Vashon is lousy with raccoons. I cannot remember a time when it wasn’t. Don’t feed them. Yes, they are cute, but they are hell spawn.

I’m closing my car windows and the kitchen door now. The Procyon Lotor is the worst kind of guest: uninvited, dangerous, destructive, disease-bearing.

Out in the yard a few minutes ago I was enjoying the bucolic serenity of late afternoon. The flowers, the greenery, the birds, the raccoon emerging from between the porch steps.

I came toward it yelling and it went back under the porch. I threw a fir cone at it under the porch, and it walked over to sniff it. Argh. It was expecting food. I kept yelling, and it didn’t move.

Finally, I began barking like a dog. That made it leave.

Whatever works. Please don’t feed raccoons.

Tie Me Weltschmerz Down, Mate

There was an election in Australia the other week.

I have no understanding of Australian politics, so I read up on the subject.

Their Liberal Party is conservative. The National Party, a smaller party, joined with the Liberal Party to form the Coalition, a group large enough to form a government.

Australia has many parties, and they can make deals and shift votes to gain power and influence decisions. Not like our two-party do or die system.

The Australian Labor party (ALP) is left-centrist. ALP is the party that supports unions and other progressive types and consider themselves social democrats.

The Coalition and ALP were the two main contenders in the recent election. The ALP was expected to win – all the polls said they would – and gain control of the government and take Australia in a more progressive direction.

They did not win.

My Australian goddaughter’s Facebook page reflected her and her friends’ shock and dismay: “Devastating.” “Oh no!” “When I woke up and heard the results, I was so depressed.”

Sound familiar?

So – the government of Australia is firmly in the hands of the conservative Coalition for another few years. Their leader, Scott Morrison, attributes their win to the “Quiet Australian.”

He describes Quiet Australians: “They have their dreams, they have their aspirations, to get a job, to get an apprenticeship, to start a business, to meet someone amazing, to start a family, to buy a home, to work hard and provide the best you can for your kids, to save for your retirement.”

My goddaughter comments: “I want all this PLUS action on climate change, humanitarian treatment of refugees, etc., etc. So does that make me a ‘loud’ Australian? A ‘quiet’ Australian is basically someone who looks toward their own self interest and shuts up about equal rights, climate change, the environment, etc.?”

At least one analyst believed the Coalition got votes with their fear-mongering ads saying that Bill Shorten, leader of the Australian Labor Party, would tax people’s cars, retirement, and small businesses, and would institute a death tax, and that the last time ALP was in power “they let in 50,000 illegal immigrants and cost taxpayers billions of dollars.”

Again – familiar?

When I first read the pained reactions of some Australians to the outcome of the election, I thought some words of sympathy might be in order from a country that could feel their pain.

I posted on my goddaughter’s Facebook page:

“Obviously, I’m an Amurrican and don’t understand the ins and outs of your politics – but you sound a little like we did when DT was elected. My deepest condolences.

“Our situation, as you may know, goes from bad to worse, to even worse, day by day.

“My advice, for what it’s worth, is to make sure you have a peaceful place, inside or outside of yourself, and go there often. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

“Remember to be joyful, and love life – what else are we fighting for? A future for our children and grandchildren, yes. But find what’s worth loving in life right now.

“It is too easy to become discouraged by the blind greed, stupidity, and cruelty of politicians. Don’t give them the satisfaction. Run for office. Grow flowers. Practice your art.”

After I wrote that I looked at it and thought, hm, I ought to copy that and print it up to look at when the melancholy and grief of this hard, sad old world get me down.

The Germans have a word for the melancholy and grief of this hard, sad old world: Weltschmerz.

Look, we do not live in a war zone being showered with phosphorous bombs by our own country’s leader, as some people do at present. Many of us benefit from living in the richest country in the world. I certainly do.

However, we do have homeless and starving and addicted and indigent people. We do have children in concentration camps. We do have white guys willing to go to any length to control, torture, and kill the women and people of color they fear and hate: Yeah, let’s imprison women for having miscarriages. Let’s hire ICE agents who sexually abuse the children in their custody. Let’s not give a rat’s behind about missing and murdered indigenous women. Let’s not have sensible gun regulation, because once you are born, your life is worthless.

I try not to allow what I know of this world to keep me from living.

I pray, and sing, and write, and laugh, every day, from my heart, and my belly, and my soul.

That is my resistance to the cognitive dissonance of life in America and the trend toward similar governments around the world these days; to the Weltschmerz.

It ain’t much, but it’s all I’ve got.

This Is Not About Hockey

Happened to be watching CBC, Canadian television, the other day when the Stanley Cup playoffs came on.

Translation for those of you too American to know: the Stanley Cup playoffs are the World Series, the Superbowl, the Final Four, the World Cup, of hockey.

It was the San Jose Sharks against the Colorado Avalanche.

As the teams got ready to begin their match, the announcer asked for a moment of silence in honor of those injured and killed in the shooting yesterday in Colorado. The arena fell silent.

Shooting? In Colorado? Yesterday?

Then the moment was over, and the match began, but I was still sitting here stunned. Quickly googled “shooting in Colorado,” and it came right up – shooting at STEM School, in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, two shooters, one student dead, and eight injured.

The student who died in this shooting was Kendrick Castillo, 18, who lunged at one of the shooters to pin him against the wall. Castillo was shot, and he died, but the other two students who attacked the shooter subdued him and were unhurt.

A second shooter was taken down on another floor by a security guard before anyone was hurt.

Aside from the fact that this took place about two suburbs away from where one of my sons and his family live, what got me was that I did not hear about this shooting until a day after it happened, and then on Canadian television, at the beginning of a hockey match.

Are mass shootings so common that they barely make the news?

No, they make the news, but not with the splash and horror they once did. Ho-hum, another day, another tragic shooting.

Granted I don’t pay attention to the news as I once did. I decided a while back that to have any peace of mind, I needed to stop paying attention, and stop reacting, to every blow.

I get it: Earth’s environment is in the crapper; there is war, flood, famine, earthquake, tsunami, tornado, pestilence … and our country is currently at the mercy of a corrupt and dishonest government. The best government money can buy.

There is a tragic triumph of fundamentalist religious sects in many parts of the world, including our own country, that are typified by simplistic and non-analytical thinking. I.e., a willingness, indeed a mission, to kill anyone who disagrees with them.

I don’t know when the forces of good will be able to reclaim some control in our country, although I do hope and believe that will happen. I do. I don’t know if I will live to see it. I do know that pendulums swing, and that human culture is dynamic, not static.

So. There are mass shootings, but they are not such big news anymore. A friend pointed out to me that there is now an effort by the media not to give shooters the attention they are seeking. This is to give potential shooters less motivation. This may partially explain more discreet news coverage.

Out of curiosity I googled, “How many mass shootings have there been in the United States in 2019?” A Wikipedia entry came up.

Different news sources and statisticians have varying criteria for what makes a mass shooting. The most common denominator for a mass shooting is four people shot. Wikipedia counts incidents considered mass shootings by at least two of the sources they listed.

We don’t believe everything we read on the internet, do we? But let’s call this a near, inexact, estimate. Between January 1, 2019, and April 30, 2019, the total number of mass shooting events in the United States: 105. Total number of people killed: 120. Total number of people wounded: 387.

Between May 1 and May 8, there were eleven mass shootings. Five dead, one of whom was Kendrick Castillo. Forty-nine wounded.

Every number represents a human being, a real person, like you or me, darlin’. These numbers do not include incidents in which one, two, or three people were shot.

Schools conduct active shooter drills these days. The students at STEM School asked when the alarm went off, “Is this real or a drill?” Those who could hear gunshots texted to others, “This is real.”

Tip for students and teachers: every drill is the real thing. You hope not, but act like it is. That’s why you’re having drills, so you don’t give some lunatic the pleasure of ending or ruining your life.

May there never be an active shooter at your school, or anywhere else for that matter. May the forces of good prevail sooner rather than later.

San Jose beat Colorado 3-2 that night, by the way, but it’s still a long way to the Stanley Cup. Don’t break out the celebratory Molson’s yet.

Making Set Lists

In a world gone mad – well, not all the world, but a few people with power disproportionate to their ability to handle power – it is consoling to find something that has remained the same.

What I have in mind is the making of set lists.

Throughout childhood I sang songs accompanied by my mother playing the piano. One song was the limit at the PTA Music Festival, and the 4-H and County Fair Talent Contests.

When I got to college, I began singing and playing with other musicians and doing gigs for which I had to make set lists.

Making a set list is both an art and a craft. You must have in mind your audience, your tempo, key changes, moods, and tunings, if you play the guitar. All these things go into making a set.

You want to start with a song that grabs people’s attention, then you want to pace the songs deliberately while traversing the middle of the set, and then you want to end on a high note, always keeping in mind that you must read every audience and be prepared to shift one direction or another if necessary, so keep that master list nearby.

In my twenties while performing solo I put together a collection of original songs, love songs, story songs, country songs, folk songs, funny songs, and of course my baby done left me/men are no damn good songs.

In 1974 I met Malvina Reynolds, a truly great songwriter and a truly great human being. She was a socialist – a real one. I knew her long enough and well enough that when people shriek “Socialist!” about somebody these days, I think, you wouldn’t know a real socialist if one bit you in the butt.

Anyway.

I added some of Malvina’s songs to my repertoire, and my sets perked right up.

So this was great. I was traveling to gigs in Oregon, California, and British Columbia as well as Washington, and I worked hard on my sets.

I sang on the island frequently. In those years I often played at Sound Food on a Saturday night.

I suppose I must explain for some of you newbies (if any newbies read the Loop) that Sound Food was a restaurant on the corner of the Main Highway and SW 206th Street. It opened in 1974 with high hopes and a hippie ambiance. Some of the waitresses wore halter dresses that didn’t even cover their aspirations to do something besides waitressing, and older customers clutched their pearls when young moms nursed their babies right there at the table. Ah, the good old days.

Sound Food went through many iterations, and, sadly, closed permanently a few years ago, but in the seventies, the joint was jumping.

The restaurant was noisy, and cheerful, and usually there were toddlers who got up to dance and run around.

 The live music was background noise.

After making careful set lists for the first year or two when I went to play at Sound Food, one day I thought, nuts. I began singing the songs from my master list alphabetically.

No one ever noticed.

I kept singing and making set lists for most of my adult life, as a solo act and in groups, in between being a mom and having dead end jobs to support my music and child-feeding and clothing habits.

The kids grew up and left, and a few years later my husband Rick became ill. I spent five years being his caregiver before he died. No music in those years.

Now I sing with Listen in the Kitchen, five women (including me) who are brilliant and talented musicians, not to mention women with the wild sense of humor you want in the friends who accompany you in this life. We sing marvelous harmonies. We play toe tappin’ tunes. We have fun.

We work hard on our set lists.

Sometimes these days I sing solo. More set lists.

You know, when I lost Rick, it felt like my world had burned to the ground and I had lost everything. There were times I thought I was going to die or wondered why I didn’t, with life so empty. Times when I wondered why I was still here.

Unfortunately for that attitude, after a few years I decided that I might not know why I was still here, but I might as well do the two things which I seem to do well, singing and writing, and see how that goes.

So far, so good.

I’ll be singing at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, May 18, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. That’s a busy place, with lots of people walking around. Noisy, crowded.

Maybe I’ll sing my songs alphabetically.

Just kidding. I will make set lists.

Kissadee, Chickadee

The cat and I were enjoying some sweet repose on the kitchen porch this morning, when we both heard a thump at the far end of the house.

The cat was off like a shot, straight to the back porch. He stood on his hind legs, peered through the glass door and pawed at it furiously.

His behavior convinced me that the thump had been caused by some living creature, so I walked over to the door myself, hoping it wasn’t a rat.

When I looked through the door I saw a squirrel frantically bouncing around the room, jumping from window to wall to shelf to cabinet, up and down and around again, defying gravity, trying to find a way out.

The cat was ready to implode in his eagerness to get into that room.

In the sure certainty that the cat would never be able to get close to that squirrel, much less lay one claw on it, I opened the door and let the cat inside.

The squirrel was not as certain of its safety as I was. When it saw the cat, it went straight up to the top of the wall, found the gap between the top of the wall and the roof (probably how it got in), and slithered out into the ivy, and down, and away.

I walked back out the door and looked the direction the squirrel had gone, into the blackberries under the maple tree. I could hear it grousing in squirrel.

Meanwhile the cat was looking around, wondering where that big splendid squirrel had gone.

My cat suffers so many disappointments.

The backyard narrative has picked up in both plot and characters as spring has come on. Oh, there are always squirrels, but the birds I haven’t seen for a while are beginning to show up.

Yesterday a downy woodpecker lit on the suet cake, and he was back this morning. “He” because he had the distinctive red patch on his head. His mate came by yesterday afternoon. “His mate” because she had no red patch.

The house sparrow pair that has been hanging around all through March and early April is still here. One day a couple of weeks ago I looked up from my computer and saw the two of them perched outside my office window side by side, peering in at me. It was a little unsettling. It never occurred to me that birds might watch humans.

The juncos, chestnut-backed chickadees, and Steller’s jays are always with us. Haven’t heard any red breasted sapsuckers banging on street signs, trying to attract a mate. I don’t know why that would attract a mate, but there’s no accounting for taste.

Last week a red shafted Northern Flicker lit on the suet cake and I was so awed by its beauty that I spontaneously broke into song: “You are so beautiful …” I was inside the house so that didn’t scare it away. He stayed for several minutes, turning this way and that so I could see him from every side and angle and I had no trouble identifying him in the bird book. What a looker.

Of course the bosses of the neighborhood are the crows. When a crow arrives, everyone else leaves. Then the crow goes ahead and eats as much of everything as it wishes, for as long as it wishes.

Watching the birds and squirrels is a great pleasure. Bird behavior makes sense. They have basic aims – to eat, to find a safe place to nest or perch – and they endeavor to achieve those aims in a straightforward manner.

No bird has ever lied to me. Neither has a squirrel. Nor has either one hit me, verbally abused me, betrayed me, or cheated me.

Humans, on the other hand, have done all those things.

It is a scary world. We seem to be on track to make our own species extinct, one way or another, faster (war) or more slowly (climate change, or bad water, etc.). In the meantime, “man’s inhumanity to man” is flourishing.

Flourishing.

Some days it seems there is little hope for our kind, brilliant, altruistic, boneheaded, heartless, species.

Watching the birds the world comes down to my back yard, to the birds’ pure beauty as they pick seed out of the feeders or off the ground or sit on a branch of the apple tree, serenading the neighborhood.

So it is a good thing, a restorative thing, a salvific thing, to watch and listen to the birds - and the squirrels. They remind me of the sweetness of life.

They encourage me, and I get up, and I go on.

The cat, meanwhile, sits inside the kitchen door, staring out at the birds. As I said, he suffers many disappointments.

The Earth Will Be Fine – Save Our Species

In 1965, as a college freshman, one of the general education courses I was required to take was Biology.

The man who taught the course was obviously angry that he had to teach this bonehead science class, and clearly of the opinion that everyone should be majoring in the sciences.

His name I do not remember. What I do remember is that he was the first person I ever heard use the word “ecology.”

He spoke of how human beings were, through carelessness, ignorance, arrogance, and greed, ruining the ecology of planet Earth. He spoke of a coming environmental apocalypse and painted a dire picture of species extinctions, famine, rising sea levels, and crazy weather.

It was a doomsday scenario and it scared me, I can tell you. I was seventeen, though, and that doomsday seemed so far off – if it was even real - that it was easy to forget.

In the 1970s ecology popped up again. We began to have Save the Earth rallies. There was talk of recycling, and how what we did affected the environment.

By 1973 I was living here on the island and waiting in line for gasoline. We were being told to drive more slowly to conserve gas. A national speed limit of 55 miles per hour was made into law. Oil was a finite resource and we were running out.

We have short attention spans. The 55 miles per hour speed limit is long gone. Oil is still a finite resource, and it is now being acquired in ways that no one would have considered years ago – e.g., fracking – because it was so easy to drill a well and strike oil.

Now many of us would like to see our country turn to energy sources other than oil: solar panels, wind turbines, hemp oil, and tidal energy are all possible energy sources. But there is still too much money to be made in oil. Those who profit by it will not release their death grip on those profits, regardless of what that means for their children and grandchildren.

For years we heard about “global warming,” and then at some point the term “climate change” began to be used instead. Many people did, and still do, call climate change a hoax, and treat the idea with contumely.

Even if you think it’s a hoax, you can’t deny that we were choking on forest fire smoke last summer, and people were burned out of house and home in California and other Western States. People died in those fires; people died from bad air.

What we are now calling “Fire Season” (remember when we didn’t have a Fire Season?) has already started this year.

Could fire happen on Vashon? It has in the past. It is still moist enough here that we are in slightly less danger of wildfire than dry locales but clear the brush from around your house if you are worried. Seriously.

Then there are those pesky hurricanes (cyclones, typhoons) that are devastating the Caribbean islands and the southern and eastern states of our country, as well as countries in other parts of the world, destroying homes and people and infrastructure, and new storms striking before people have recovered from the last one.

 This winter there was something called a “cyclone bomb” of snow in the Midwest, which along with the heavy rains that followed contributed to flooding of a magnitude people say they’ve never seen before.

If it is your opinion that climate change is a hoax, fine. Believe whatever you wish.

You, and climate change believers, and people who have no opinion on the subject, will still need to roll up your sleeves and deal with the results of the fires, floods, droughts, snows, hurricanes, tornados, rainfall, drought, polluted air, rising sea levels, and accompanying diseases, famines, wars, homelessness, and refugees, and whatever else is thrown at us, because reality does not care what your opinion is.

Reality is impartial and fair that way.

Right now it seems that almost everyone except the people presently running this country understand that we are in deep kimchi and we need to live responsibly if our species is to survive.

I believe that part of being responsible is to vote for people who have more sense than God gave a goose. If anyone like that runs for anything. If not, maybe we should turn our government over to the geese.

My college biology teacher knew what he was talking about, the old curmudgeon, so he really did contribute to my general education, even if I cannot remember zip about biology.

Mind you, we have not even mentioned what happens in Pugetopolis when the Cascadia Fault shifts, or Mt. Rainier erupts.

Let’s face it: life on earth is not for sissies.