In general, I prefer radio for many reasons.  It’s not that I
don’t find visuals compelling and revealing.  It may well be true
that, “one picture is worth a thousand words.”  This one for
example –

- says a million.

I suppose I am a predominately aural person, though.  I tend to
ask, “Did you hear…” where others might ask, “Did you
see….”   However, my most compelling reasons for preferring
radio over TV are these:  those highly creative and mind-grabbing
commercials on TV are maddening to me, and I can do other things while
I listen to the radio.

Having spent my formative years with a radio going in the background,
when I had a TV I tended to treat it like a radio and go about my
business while I listened.  Early TV soaps were designed to
accomodate the stay-at-home wives who were their main audience. 
The drama was carried in the soundtrack and there was always a musical
cue when a significant bit of video was upcoming.  But even though
those early commercials weren’t very creative, they were just as
maddening.

In 1960, I was at my Aunt Nora’s apartment during the first
Nixon-Kennedy debate.  She sat on her sofa and watched the men,
while I was working at the ironing board in the hallway,
listening.  As with nearly everyone else who either heard or saw
those debates, she thought Kennedy won and I thought Nixon had the more
compelling arguments.  If I’d been watching, I might have
preferred JFK’s bright, fresh, red-haired image over Tricky Dicky’s
five o’clock shadowed jowls, too.

I usually play the PS2 with the sound off, while I listen to the
radio.  Last night, I was playing my birthday present from Doug,
Disgaea 2, when one of my favorite public radio (no commercials at all)
programs came on.  The speaker this week on Alternative Radio was investigative reporter Greg Palast, talking about his latest book, Armed Madhouse. 
Now, just the fact that I am a regular and enthusiastic listener to
Alternative Radio reveals a lot about my political views.  I’m
predisposed to appreciate anyone who will stand up and say out loud
that the emperor has no clothes, especially when he paints vivid word
pictures, as Palast does, with facts and figures to prove it.

If there’s any problem at all for me in this, it is that hearing just
how Bush and his co-conspirators connived to steal his election to this
catastrophic second term is every bit as maddening as any commercial
can be.

Late last week, the public radio station in Anchorage mentioned that
the Alaska Volcano Observatory had gotten lots of calls from people in
Homer who had noticed volcanic activity across Cook Inlet.  It
wasn’t until Sunday that the weather permitted an overflight.  I
gave it a couple of days for the pictures to be posted.

Coming back from the outhouse this morning, I noticed a plump cluster of Coprinus under the cat ramp.

After I’d gone in and gotten my camera and captured the Coprinus, I noticed Faust watching me from a nearby tree.

It was only raining lightly, so I decided to walkabout and see if I
could see more shrooms.  In particular, I hoped to find some
photogenic Russulae.  Faust decided to go with me.

I found no mushrooms at first, but saw lots of berries. 
These are one of my favorites, lingonberries, known to sourdoughs as
lowbush cranberries as opposed to currants, which are highbush
cranberries.

No rosehips on this rosebush, and very few at all in the woods around here this year.

Faust stayed with me, even when I ventured through the trees to the edge of the muskeg.

Since it wasn’t raining hard enough to discourage the mosquitoes, I soon turned back toward home.

I followed Faust off the road and into the woods,

…where we found this Boletus in a patch of lichen,

…and a scattering of LBMs (little brown mushrooms, very plentiful everywhere) amid the moss.

I also found two specimens of a small glaucous-capped fungus with flat
translucent stalks.  I’ve never seen this type before.

Last Friday, weary of trying to decide if it would be worth the expense
to have a little hotel getaway and some soak-time in a hot bath, I
asked Greyfox to do an oracle reading for me on the question of my
spending that weekend in a hotel in town.  His reading was an
unqualified yes, so I started checking hotel discount
websites.   It came down to a choice between two
places.  One was a new hotel on a corner where two heavily
traveled roads meet, with no trees or landscaping on the bare
lot.  The other was a beautiful established place at lakeside with
a restaurant I’ve been to occassionally and always enjoyed the
experience.

Feeling that the latter place would be quieter and more restful than
the new hotel, but willing to go to the newer one if there was a big
price difference, I input some data into the rate calculation form, and
then misread the results.  I’d said I wanted a two-day stay and
thought that the rate I was given, which was only a few dollars more
than twice the daily rate stated for the first, bare, new hotel,
covered both nights.  I was wrong, but I didn’t discover that
until I got my bill at the end of my  three-day
stay.  Fortunately, since I have virtually no income of my own and
he’ll end up paying the credit card bill, Greyfox has been reading a
lot of Neale Donald Walsch and Deepak Chopra lately.  With his
elevated spiritual perspective, he didn’t go into a panic of sticker
shock.

That’s especially fortunate, because just about everything either of us
has been doing lately has taken more time and cost more money than we
expected.  My extra unscheduled night at the hotel was largely
dictated by the inability of the mechanic to get the parts he needed to
fix my car until Monday.  I had taken it in to him for diagnosis
on Saturday afternoon before I checked in at the lakeside hotel. 
I was relieved when he said that my throw-out bearing wasn’t the cause
of the high-pitched warble.  He said that was probably just
because the transmission needed lubrication.

He checked the brakes and offered the opinion that the metal-on-metal
squeal I’d heard a couple of times had been caused by a rock.  It
wasn’t making that noise when he checked it.  However, while he
was looking at the brakes, he discovered that my front CV axles needed
to be replaced.  He gave me a reasonable estimate on that job and
said he’d do it early Monday.  As it turned out, parts were not
available as he’d been told when he called the parts house, and he had
to wait until Monday afternoon for one of the axles to come out from
Anchorage. 

Additionally, when he got into the job he discovered a bad wheel
bearing which delayed the job and increased the total price.  The
work he did elimitated the rhythmic clunking noise (apparently the
wheel bearing), but I still have the high-pitched warble unless I
depress the clutch pedal, and apparently I got another rock in the
brakes because on the way home yesterday that squeal was back. 
The car’s not quite stopping as fast as it used to, and pulls to the
right when I use the brakes, too.

But I’m home, and that’s the important thing.  The hotel rate
wasn’t my only miscalculation on this little getaway.  I’d figured
on getting a lot of rest, but I ended up fatigued and very ill at the
end of those three nights in town.  The bubble baths and
aromatherapy soaks in my room, and the time in the hotel’s sauna and
jacuzzi, felt very good and I was okay, feeling better than when I’d
gotten there, through most of Sunday.  By Tuesday morning, I was
so sick and shaky that I had a hard time getting my gear packed and
ready by checkout time.

All things considered, I’d rather have a getaway that leaves me glad to
be home than to take a vacation from which I hate having to
return.  This one had its pleasant moments and I’m glad I
went.  I just wasn’t ready for the amount of walking I’d had to
do, for that extra day because of the car-parts delay, or for the
toxins in air and/or water that might have contributed to my alarming
new symptoms.  I’d like to take a few days to recuperate from my
vacation, but my driver’s license is about to expire and I forgot to
buy stovepipe while I was in town, so before the end of this week I
have to go out again.  For today, though, I’m doing as little as
possible.

Sometimes I need to be reminded of the advantages and comforts I have
in this life, especially at times such as these when my physical
abilities are impaired and I’m faced with tough decisions.  This
M.E. exacerbation has been dragging on and on, and I’ve had colds and
various infections making this a summer of discomfort and
inactivity.  That tends to get me down, and this time it’s not all
I have to brood on.

My car’s clutch cable broke, and as I was paying for having that
repaired I learned that the throw-out bearing is on its way out. 
Greyfox and I have been discussing the pros and cons of getting my old
junker repaired versus buying a different and newer junker.  Any
car that’s worth what I could afford to pay for it wouldn’t be worth
much.  My most optimistic hope there would be to find someone down
on his luck and willing to sell a good vehicle for less than it’s
worth, or someone who has made a pessimistic judgment on some minor
mechanical problem and decided to dump a basically sound vehicle.

On the other hand, even if the transmission repair my car needs isn’t
too expensive, the car itself isn’t really worth sinking much money
into at this stage.  The latch on the hatch is broken.  One
back door doesn’t open at all and the other back door sticks so that
only someone who knows the “combination” can open it, and then only in
favorable weather conditions.  That means that Greyfox can’t open
it at all, Doug can open it sometimes, and I can usually get it open
from May through November.

The return spring on the ignition switch is broken, so I have to gently
turn it back to disengage the starter after it starts, and have to
remember to leave a note to that effect on the steering wheel whenever
someone else is going to be starting the car.  The body is rusted
out in many places, weather stripping hangs loose in many places where
it’s not missing altogether.  The dipstick Greyfox got to replace
the one that was thrown out when a belt broke isn’t quite the same
length as the old one, so I have to make mental adjustments when I
check the oil.  There’s more, but why dwell on it?  Greyfox
and I have already been doing that ad nauseam.  The question
remains undecided.

Then there is the matter of my upcoming birthday.  Unconsciously
(if I don’t consciously transcend the tendency), as my birthday
approaches I tense up and start expecting disaster.  “Disaster,”
or unfavorable aspects of the stars, is an apt word since each solar
return brings a mixed bag of strong aspects to my heavily aspected
natal sun.  But astrology aside, birthdays have tended to be rough
for me most years.  It’s not the idea of time passing, of
aging.  That’s a triumph to me, a marker of survival in a life
that has already far exceeded anyone’s early expectations for me. 
It’s the legacy of hard experience, a case of PTSD with seasonal
associations.  Both times in my life when I was raped, it was on a
birthday.  There were other traumatic birthday experiences, too,
but that’s not the point.

The point is that that was then and this is now.  This year, I had
hatched a scheme to give myself a somewhat extravagant birthday treat,
a couple of nights in a motel where I could take some hot epsom salts
soaks and enjoy the luxuries of running water and maid service.  I
was going to go to Wasilla on a Wednesday and take some pics of Greyfox
at the Farmer’s Market (as he requested), stay over that night and
catch the Thursday NA meeting between bubble baths, then spend another
night of luxury before shopping for groceries and heading home all
rested.  This is in contrast to my usual town trips where I take
pics, go to meetings, relate with Greyfox, shop and drive home
exhausted the same night.

Now, with the automotive dilemma, I’m questioning the feasibility of
the birthday luxury plan.  It would have had to go on a credit
card anyway, what with this summer’s wet weather and reduced
income.  I’m not questioning whether I deserve a couple of days
and nights of comfort and luxury (relatively speaking).  I’m not
worried that the family will go cold or hungry because of the
extravagance.  It’s just that it does seem such an extravagance,
and I’m questioning whether it’s worth the benefit I’d get out of it.

I was dragging my body around here this morning, watering houseplants,
running my twin dilemmas through my mind and feeling low, with the
radio on in the background.  In close succession there were
stories that involved people with much worse and more immediate cases
of PTSD than mine, with much more severe illnesses and more desperate
material and economic situations, reminding me that despite my dilemmas
and my handicaps, life is good.  I’ll figure it out and I’ll
muddle through.

Just after reading about a recent assault on Xanga’s free speech, I was listening to attorney Stephen Weiswasser on NPR’s Fresh Air discussing the FCC’s crackdown on “indecency”. 
He pointed out that a few noisy activists can generate thousands of
complaints, thereby forcing the standards of a small minority onto a
complacent and apathetic majority.

Other guests speaking on that program included TV producer Louis Wiley and Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein
of the FCC.  I came away from the experience with, among other
things, a renewed appreciation for the snow-shoveling mishap that cost
us our TV reception, and my subsequent decision not to restore
it.   The idea of a “safe haven” time on broadcast TV, that
it is okay to show and say things after 10 PM that are forbidden before
then, strikes me as absurd.

Those who read my take on censorship
last February, know that I find the whole concept of censorship not
only absurd but even harmful in a psychosocial sense.  The
Grundies of the world have been mentally warped and they work to
impress their own fear-born pathology on everyone else. 
Admittedly, some people go to sick and shocking extremes in reaction to
repression, but without repression we would not have those extreme
reactions. 

If we were allowed free expression of everything,
and there was no Grundian censor there to impose fearful filters and
lay the judgement of “wrong” on natural functions and innocent
expressions, we could eventually sort out the pathology, I am
sure.  Why, in a sane world, would there be prohibitions and
restrictions on picturing or speaking of normal functions such as
excretion and reproduction?  Everybody does it.  To deny it
is sick and to “shield” children from it warps their minds.

What is even more unjustly ridiculous is the reality that there are
legal penalties for telling the truth and picturing reality, while
there are no similar sanctions against suppressing the truth and
distorting reality.  If I were not such a dedicated anarchist, I
might begin to think that there oughtta be a law….

  

I have been on a book binge.  I read a lot, ordinarily, one book
after another, most of them discards from local libraries or books
Greyfox finds in the dumpster at Felony Flats and passes on to
me.  During August this year I wasn’t just chain-reading.  I
had several books going at once, skipping from one to another the way
some people click through TV channels, but probably not that fast.

This extraordinary reading binge began with my trip to town on Doug’s
birthday near the end of July.  He went to a bookstore for some
roleplaying guides and a manga.  While we were there, I got four
paperbacks for myself.  They were All the Flowers are Dying a Matt Scudder thriller by Lawrence Block, Die Trying a Jack Reacher thriller by Lee Child, Indigo Slam an Elvis Cole novel by Robert Crais, and Michael Connelly’s Void Moon, which does not feature my favorite Connelly detective, Harry Bosch.

None of them is a new book, but all were new to me.  What they
have in common is that all are page turners and were written by some of
my favorite writers.  The heady novelty of having so many
intensely interesting books at one time led me to neglect blogging,
photography, the PS2, and everything else for days and daze of nonstop
reading – about three days.  After powering through those books, I
dug around in the stacks of recent acquisitions and found a few more
books of moderate interest, then brought a few more home from the
library.

The binge  is winding down now.  I am back to the old
pattern, reading a few pages or a chapter or two in bed at night before
I sleep.  The main reason for that is one of the library discards,
a book that captured my interest but is far from being a page
turner.  It examines politics and American culture at the time of
the first World War and Prohibition.  It has reconfirmed for me
that the more things change the more they stay the same.

---

The images here were captured a few days ago on a water run.  I
was unable to save them to my hard drive for a few days due to software
glitches, but finally yesterday Doug was able to transfer them. 
The first one is the highway turnout across from the spring where we
get our water.  The others are muskeg.  One muskeg looks
pretty much like another, but this one is not the one across the street
from where we live.  It is the big one that extends from the
highway to the Big Susitna River about a mile away.

I must continue to remind myself of our legal system’s presumption of
innocence.  It is ‘way too tempting to just assume these corrupt
bastards are really corrupt bastards.

Yesterday, when FBI and IRS agents raided congressional offices in
Juneau and Anchorage, and also served a search warrant in Girdwood,
where the Stevens family has a residence, the items listed on the
warrant included, hats or garments labeled “Corrupt Bastards Club” or “Corrupt Bastards Caucus.”.

Just about everyone I know assumes that both Ben Stevens, the President
of our State Senate, and his father, U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, are
corrupt.  Many Alaskans take pride in Ted Stevens’s power in
Washington DC and the monetary benefits he brings to the state, and
some of them don’t care how much money he may be socking away privately
in the process.

Ben Stevens earned a lot of enmity around here a year or two ago for
the response he made to an email from a woman who called him a “whore”
for his practice of taking money from corporations with interests in
the legislation he and his co-conspirators in Juneau enacted. 
Stevens emailed back to the woman, saying something like, “What would
you know about anything?  You’re just more Valley trash.”

He apologized for the words, and many people saw that as an
acknowledgement of how he views those of us who live here in this
valley that’s approximately the size of the state of
Pennsylvania.  Local entrepreneurs made some money for a while,
selling “Proud to be Valley Trash” t-shirts.

The agents involved in yesterday’s raids instructed people not to talk
about the raids, and news has been sketchy.  The “Corrupt
Bastards” clothing has the sound of a joke, but you never know. 
There are still people who don’t believe in the existence of the Skull
and Bones Club, too.  It’s not completely unbelievable, if some of
us are proud to be Valley trash, that those other guys might be equally
proud of their profitable corruption.