Blogblah

Oh wow! A special Blogger message! Now we can email comments or something. I am so excited I can't contain myself. It's all a conspiracy I know. We, the herd, are cattle prodded into ecstasies by pathetic little pieces of technology that keep us tied to a rectangular area of about 150-200 square inches of bluish, two dimensional surface. People get into frenzies over completely useless little new functions on their sad little cell phones. Meanwhile the earth is going to hell in a hand-basket........ but hey, who the hell cares? Oh yea, I just now noticed that Blogger now SAVES MY DRAFTS AUTOMATICALLY! AND my new improved Hotmail now ranges my text and color options right up front for easy accessibility! Never mind the fact that it is now excruciatingly slow because I'm sure they want to stop supporting 56K modems.

My real kvetch today is that my favorite place within less than a gallon of gas has been vandalized. Yes, Coyote canyon where I love to walk and let my dogs run is being eviscerated by huge trucks and heavy equipment rolling about along the creek bed. I have never found out where they are going or what they are doing, but they are using the vestigial dirt road that goes east into the mountains. The road and the creek are often the same piece of real estate, but it does seem a little intrusive. It is BLM land and I'm sure when I inquire I will be told that it is a necessary activity that is taking place. I'm just wondering if they did an environmental impact study before they drove their equipment up a flowing, beautiful creek in the heart of the desert. I would like to think that in the long run the creek will prevail.
Coyote Canyon is not pristine, not an environmentalist's Eden. ORVs cavort about there, and firearms are discharged and large quantities of alcohol imbibed, but a balance was there with hawks and ravens and butterflies and dragonflies and coyotes and racoons and no doubt cougars and tiny little frogs as I saw today. Humans mostly appeared on weekends. I could start a group called Friends of Coyote Creek. I'd be the only member.

Trinity

The Trinity site in New Mexico is opened to the public twice each year in April and October. This year I went with a friend. It was both sober and underwhelming. A stretch of desert land surrounded by distant mountains. This man who I think was very old, stood long at the photographs ranged along the cyclone fence. Perhaps because of his slight resemblance to the lobotomized nuclear scientist in Repo Man, I decided he must have been one of the team of people at that place on the day when the first bomb was exploded.
Today marks a more inconsequential milestone in the year. It is the first day that I have not been bitten by a single mosquito! Last year it was the first week in November before the last pesky varmint bit the dust. They might be back tomorrow though.

Eating Local

This is the salsa I made today. I love salsa, especially the fresh crunchy stuff. I had so many chili peppers and tomatoes and cucumber and quinces and pomegranites that I decided to get chopping. I added basil and mint and garlic and a tad of vinegar. Everything except the vinegar came from a stone's throw from where I was standing. How satisfying! Still I'm not very happy with the idea of buying only stuff that grows within fifty miles of where one lives. There are minerals and trace elements lacking in localities all over the place. Seems to me selenium is absent from soil in the Pacific NW and people and animals can develop deficiencies.
I remember my Glasgow cousins with their teeth that looked as though they were made from brown paper due to fluoride free water and my aunties' goiters due to lack of iodine. Actually my real objection is that damn it I'm not going to drink chicory instead of coffee --- no not for no-one I ain't. I did that as a child. Drank Camp Coffee Chicory Essence. It looked like soy sauce. On the label there was a picture of a man who seemed to be wearing a kilt and a turban sitting under a palm tree sipping his chicory. I used to wonder who and where he was. I always put a shot of Camp in my milk. It tasted like chicory. Not coffee. Come to think of it I doubt chicory would grow around here either. Or wheat for that matter.
I worked with an American Indian once who could end any conversation on the woes of this earth by shouting in ringing tones POPULATION! Maybe Clinton should have said that instead of the economy stupid. Is there anyone out there with a substitute for growth and greed to keep us all happy?