Last week, I posted a scan of the "Vote No" side's campaign mailer.  The photo on it was sensationalistic, and close examination suggested to me that it might even have been photoshopped.  Whatever, those against the initiative to ban aerial hunting of bears and wolves, are taking the low road in their campaign ads.

The proponents of the initiative are taking the high road:

The "vote no" ad agency has been bearing down hard on the ideas that wolves endanger domestic dogs, and eat the moose and caribou that rural residents depend on for their food.  In reality, moose are more of a danger to domestic dogs than wolves are, and the people who have contributed the most to the "no" campaign are sport hunters from Anchorage and Outside (outside Alaska).  Moose are in no more immediate danger of extinction than the rest of the planet is at present, and there are many clearer, more present hazards to their survival than wolves.

BTW, I'm not doing much if any visiting and reading on others' sites now.  I'm exhausted.  Doug and I moved our old wood stove out yesterday.  We did it by hand, no more mechanical assist than an improvised ramp to get it over the threshold.  It took over an hour of shifting this way and that, to "walk" the 300 pound cast iron object about 8 feet.  We parked it on the edge of the porch and avoided the rotten spots where Doug and the dog have broken through the old boards. 

We still don't know how we are going to move the new stove from the far end of the driveway, up onto the porch and into the house.  We might be getting some help from Doug's dad, Charley, if he doesn't get bogged down in the idea that he has to replace the rotten porch first.  I'm seeking an expedient solution.  Once I get heat in here, I'll feel that we have the leisure to fix the porch.

The challenge is to write about unconditional love.  Here is my love story:

Years ago, at a psychic seminar, my mentor Dick Sutphen started the day with a little talk on one of his favorite subjects:  his belief that our purpose on earth is to transcend fear and practice unconditional love.  Before moving on to other matters, he sent microphones out into the crowd for questions and comments.

First, a man stood up and said he didn't believe that unconditional love was "humanly possible."  (I hope that this story is new to at least one person reading it.  It is one of my favorite stories, and has caused at least one human being to remark on my repetitiveness.)  Each of the other people who stood to speak that day not only believed in unconditional love, but practiced it and endorsed it enthusiastically.

The man's comment, of course, said more about the man himself than it said about love.  It might not even have said anything about his capacity for love.  It could have been entirely semantic, related more to his definition of love than to anything he knew or felt.  Who knows?  It probably says something about his parents.  It certainly says something about the culture in which he grew up.

In our culture, "love" is a euphemism for feelings ranging from lust to insecurity, from biological drives to pathological states.  What those euphemized feelings all have in common is, "because."  "I love you because when I'm with you I am not afraid."  "I love you because my knees go weak and my eyes cross each time you kiss me."  "I love you because we make such a cute couple."

Those are what unconditional love is not.  That's what I mean by "the negative view," not that there is anything negative about unconditional love itself, but only that there are so many "loves" that are NOT unconditional.  Unconditional love doesn't make a good story.  There are no plot twists.  It's not dramatic.  It is the antithesis of a traditional love story.  If we do it, we do it for no reason at all, not even because it needs to be done.

There can be some negative ramifications if one person who is accustomed to loving unconditionally pairs off with one who doesn't know this kind of love.  Person B might desire and require that Person A love only her.  That could leave Person A in a bind because one of the prime characteristics of unconditional love is that it endures.  You can't kill it. 

If I love one or a dozen or a couple of million people unconditionally, I'm not going to be able to turn that off to please a new lover.  If someone needs exclusive love, and decides to leave because his or her lover loves other people, even though that lover might be passionately attached, promise sexual fidelity and/or spend every waking moment with the insecure one, leaving is, of course, one's choice -- and it is one's loss. 

Being together is one of the conditions that can be placed on love.  No conditions can be placed on unconditional love.  Parting can be wrenching and soul destroying for one who loves conditionally, but not if one's love is unconditional. 

Demanding love and/or respect from those one loves, demanding anything at all, degrades love, reveals it as a lesser love.  This doesn't mean we can't have respect.  It just means that demanding it is not a loving thing to do.  Unconditional love is not something that can be traded for anything.  We give it away, or we don't have it.  We don't seek it from others; we do it ourselves.

Encounters between lovers whose needs are incompatible are usually traumatic for everyone involved.  Encounters between one who loves unconditionally and one who does not, can be painful for the one who puts conditions on his love.  There can be some annoyance or mild disappointment for anyone who meets with "loving demands," but if one's love is unconditional, there's no major trauma involved.  An unconditional lover can even love a demanding lover.

It is possible that through loving an insecure, demanding person, that person can grow to love unconditionally.  Unconditional love is contagious.  It is a form of energy that can be passed from person to person.  Pass it on.
 

I have been listening to Science Friday on NPR.  The guest who really got me going was David Blume.  He was talking about biofuel processes that could increase food production and supplement the food supply instead of increasing scarcity the way the current agri-biz biofuel model is doing.

I was going in and out and caught only parts of the interview, but one bit I caught excited me.  He spoke about the by-product of one process providing food for mushrooms, and the by-product of that one feeding fish, and the fish water nourishing plants.

I have been jazzed about frog water (which I suppose is chemically similar to fish water) since last summer when I discovered how my rhubarb flourished when fed the water that I dipped from Rana Ranch each day when I refreshed the tadpoles' water.

This sustainable agriculture thing is something we (the species) really need to do, and sooner better than later.

Gotta get that book.

  This week's subject is suggested by Zimbo:
 
Where you live - the word.

Just one word won't do.  It is at least two.

This is the Upper Susitna Valley of Alaska.

We are near the highway Y where the road turns off to Talkeetna, where those who wish to climb Mount McKinley can catch a flight to base camp.

The community surrounding that crossroads area is called Sunshine.

  In a little less than 2 weeks, we will be having a primary election.  I don't want to address the issue of the "split primary" that forces each of us to choose one of two ballots, either the Republican one, or the other one, that includes Democratic, Libertarian, Green, and Alaskan Independence candidates, as well as everyone else.  I don't want to address it because I think I understand it, and I don't like what I'm thinking.

I have mentioned how distressing and harmful to health I find politics to be.  If anything has changed there, it has only intensified.  Below is a scan of a flyer that came in the mail recently.

The wolf hunting issue will always be associated in my mind with Xanga, because the first time I ever really pissed off another Xangan was when I commented on an entry about wolf hunting by presenting the Alaskan bush perspective, that wolves compete with subsistence hunters for moose and caribou, and represent a threat to domestic animals and even to small children.  In my comment, I didn't say I agreed with that view.  I only stated that there was another viewpoint than that of the majority of urban nature lovers.

Ballot measure 2 proposes to prohibit same-day fly-and-shoot wolf hunting.  That means that hunters can be flown out to the hunting grounds and begin hunting on the ground the following day, but can't spot wolves from the air and either shoot from planes or land and immediately kill them on the ground.  I don't know anyone who really likes that idea.  To the game managers whose job is to kill wolves that threaten the herds of game animals, it makes the job virtually impossible.  To villagers and remote dwellers who crave protection from wolves, it gives the wolves an unfair edge.  To the urban nature lovers that most Alaskans call "tree huggers," it isn't enough, because it doesn't entirely prohibit the killing of wolves.

Another issue this year is ballot measure 4, which deals with water quality.  It proposes to restrict the release and storage of toxic pollutants from mines into the water.  Opponents, particularly those intent on developing the proposed Pebble Mine, are trying to make it an economic issue, saying the law would shut down all mining in the state and throw a bazillion Alaskans out of work.  The other side points out that more Alaskans work in fishing than in mining, and that the polluters are ruining the fishery.  Both sides are exaggerating and slanting their positions, and I'm sick of it all.

Yesterday, after I blogged, I lazed around for a while until Doug woke up.  Then I supervised his removal of the stovepipe from the old woodstove and removal of the adaptor from the top end of it.  Big job, that-- everything was glued together with creosote, but he did it, with the help of a Wiffle bat.

He kept drifting back into Dwarfortress, and I kept dragging him out to do more work toward installing the new wood stove.  First, there was the old old stove on the porch, there when we moved in, that had to be shoved over to make room for the new old stove when we manage to muscle it out of here.  In doing that, he discovered that the porch is rotten, so we will go to our old place across the highway when he gets up today, to find some boards to repair and reinforce the porch.

One thing that was in the way of moving the stove out of here was a box of unsorted paper:  receipts, old bills and statements, the cards and letters whose return addresses are the closest thing I have to an address book, catalogs -- a lot of stuff that had piled up on my bedside table, BIG lot, filling a box bigger than a case of canned veggies, with its flaps tied up to make a taller box, and heaped up on top.  Covered with an old sheet, it had made a comfy bed for cats near the wood stove for a couple of winters.

I got into bed, sitting against the wall, and had Doug haul the box of papers over and find me an assortment of containers for sorting.  Through the course of the evening, he hauled three grocery bags of trash out, and I ended up with three smaller boxes of sorted stuff that will need resorting and collating with other paper when the rest of my documentary mess turns up during housecleaning.  Throughout the process I muttered a lot about being so flaky that I disgust myself, and once I lifted my voice to impart this bit of wisdom to my son:  "Organizing one's paperwork needs to be done more often than once a decade."  One of the boxes I didn't get resorted before I crashed, I labeled, "credit card statements, early twenty-first century."

When I found the receipt for the stovepipe adaptor, I was doubly glad Doug got it loose and we are able to reuse it.  We paid about fifty dollars for the thing.  I didn't recall its having been that much, probably because I was originally incredulous at the price, and just blocked the sticker shock from my mind.

Early in the process of sorting, I came up with some unopened mail that had been delivered during one of the times I was very ill and mostly out of it.  It contained $25.00, payment from a longtime client, for a reading I had done.  That alone would have been enough for me, along with the sheer joy of some organization, and the virtuous feeling of disposing of a clot of clutter.  But down near the bottom of the big box I found something I had searched for and eventually come to believe I'd lost -- fallen into the trash somehow and hauled away:  a $50 cash gift received about six years ago from a SIL.  Yay!

One of the toughest parts of having this damned disease, for me, is the sleep disturbance.  If I do just a little too much, I get "too tired to sleep."  If I keep going after I feel tired, until I run into the wall and can't go any more, it can take weeks for me to make up the sleep deficit.

I don't remember when it happened, or what I did to start the sleep loss this latest time, but I have been short on sleep for--as I said, I don't know how long.  It might have been as long as a year or more, ever since I got pneumonia.  I don't think I have had a full night's sleep since before I went into the hospital last December.  They filled me so full of Albuterol there that I trembled for hours and didn't sleep at all for a couple of days.

Last night, I was down for almost 8 hours, and was awake only three times during the night.  Today, impelled by an urgent request, I got enough of my work table cleared off to make space to lay out my Tarot cards, and did two reality checks.  Yay, me!

After that housework, and then the other psychic work, I went on and did some cyber housework on the KaiOaty site, stuff that has gone neglected for a couple of years, through the hiatus caused by my literal reading of Xanga's new Terms of Use.  Now that I have done enough productive work to feel a lot less like a slug, I think the prudent course is to slug on over to the couch and rest, so I won't render myself sleepless again tonight.

Short version:  not much.

Yesterday afternoon, when Doug was up and had breakfast, we went out in the yard, flipped back the tarp I'd thrown over the new stove, and just looked.  Well, maybe we gloated and glowed a little, too.  This old one was a hassle and a worry from the time the baffle broke loose inside and fell, until it was warm enough to let the fire go out.

After a little looking, we agreed that the new one is wider than the old one.  For fire safety, we can't have it too close to the end of the couch, and the only space into which we could displace the couch is now occupied by a shelf of reference books we keep handy by the computer.   These include ephemerides, Hortus Third, and several dungeon master's guides--in other words, indispensable tools.

We came back in when I got too shaky and breathless to stay on my feet, and I sat and walked Doug through the steps for removing the Metalbestos® flue pipe and putting a temporary patch over the hole it leaves in the roof.  Fortunately, thrifty me, I had saved some cat food bags made from the same material as the tarps that cover our roof, and a large foil pie pan to support it over the hole so that it doesn't slump and form a drippy pool, but let the rain drain off.  He pulled up the pipe, laid down the patch, taped it to the roof, and put away the pipe in case we need it later. 

As advised for safety, we bought new Metalbestos® with the stove, but the old stuff still has some use in it, and we've had times before when it would have been convenient to have a replacement on hand.  Besides that, I'm a packrat.  I was reared by parents who were young adults during the Great Depression, who taught me, "Just as sure as you throw it away, you'll need it someday."

With the two upper sections of Metalbestos® gone, I noticed what I had forgotten to buy:  the adaptor that secures the fancy insulated pipe on top to the plain black stovepipe below.  We discussed what might be done to unstick it from the old pipe and reuse it, and Doug was going to do that during the night.  As I sit here, the stove sits over there with two sections of black stovepipe sticking up out of it, topped by a Metalbestos® adaptor.  I guess Doug got busy online or on the XBox.

While I sat gathering energy and catching my breath, I was thinking about the stove width issue.  I put on my shoes, picked up a tape measure, measured the old stove on my way out, and then measured the new one.  We both have good eyes.  It is wider, by an inch.  That won't be a problem.

We still haven't found anyone to help us muscle the old stove out and the new one in.  We concluded that we could do it ourselves with a hand truck and a ramp.  I assume we can borrow or rent them somewhere, but there's no point in doing that until we've gotten the pipes off, the path cleared, and the old stove out of the way.  It would be nice to have a sunny day for the job, or at the least, a dry one.  I may need to consult Tlaloc on that.

Maybe blogging about this will allow me to get it off my mind.  For a couple of years I have been occasionally pausing in my usually serene daily activities to scowl and grind my teeth over Ted Stevens's ignorance and/or indifference.

In 2006 and 2007, the Snowe-Dorgan Internet Freedom Preservation Act (S.215) was "considered" in the Senate.  The first time, "Senate leaders did not allow it to come to a vote." [1]  One of those leaders was undoubtedly Ted Stevens.

The 2006 elections brought new people into the picture, and the bill was reintroduced.  What happened to it?  I don't know.  I don't keep up with politics.  I can't keep up with politics.  As much as I enjoy keeping up with news on the local NPR station, KSKA, sometimes I turn my radio off for weeks or months just because the political bullshit raises my blood pressure and lowers my serenity.

One such occurrence of  BS was on a statewide call-in show featuring Ted Stevens as guest.  A woman from a bush village called in to ask him what his position was on net neutrality.  He hummed for a moment, then said he didn't know much about the internet and would have an aide look into it.  She didn't let it drop, but gave him a concise rundown of the issue and the bill, after which he said, "It won't get my vote," and told the show's host to take the next caller.

It stands to reason that old Ted wouldn't support net neutrality. The gatekeepers and their pet users who would be squeezed by it are probably among his campaign contributors, and perhaps, knowing the sorts of personal perks the man "allegedly" received from Bill Allen and VECO, they could be more to him than just political supporters.  Never mind that they are not among the constituency that elected him.

In 2008, "Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Chip Pickering (R-Miss.)... launched
the latest salvo in the struggle to keep the Internet free from
gatekeepers with the introduction of the “Internet Freedom Preservation
Act of 2008” (HR 5353)." [2].  It failed in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

What do you think?  Is this, or should it be, the people's net?  Will the fat cat gatekeepers keep winning?  Will Alaskan voters re-elect Ted Stevens?  My idealist/cynical answers to the above are yes/maybe/probably.

BTW, I turned the radio off again a few days ago.  Somebody let me know if anything important happens, okay?

PS:  CASH OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU AND ME:  Clicking HERE
(if you are a US resident and haven't already done so) will enter you in a sweepstakes for a new BMW sedan or an alternate
cash prize of US$85,000, or lesser prizes of $5,000 and $10,000 gift
certificates to Best Buy, and
your entry will also add an extra entry for me.

If I win, I'll get a
window replaced that got broken while Doug was shoveling ice and snow
from the roof last winter (it is covered with duct tape now); pay for the new thousand-dollar wood stove I charged because logic, oracles, and expert advice told me it was unsafe to try and get through a whole winter with the one that
sorta fell apart last winter; pay off
my doctor, the ambulance, EMTs, and other medical bills from last December; and have some rewiring done in here to
make the place safer and get rid of this snarl of extension cords.

My trip to Willow Hardware yesterday was a waste of time.  On the phone, someone had said they had a catalog of woodstoves and would order one for me if I found what I wanted.  I got there, and was told that they do that for oil stoves and gas stoves, but not wood.  But, I'd had to go to the library anyway, and was feeling energetic enough to go on down to Wasilla, so the trip wasn't entirely wasted. Between Willow and Wasilla, I watched a big mushroom cloud develop.  When I found a suitable place to pull over, I did, and got this shot.  It quickly morphed into an ordinary rain cloud by the time we got to Greyfox's place on the edge of town, and it rained on us a bit later in the supermarket parking lot.

For the first time, yesterday I did my shopping in a motorized scooter.  I call it the crip cart.  I had operated one once before, when Greyfox was bringing me home from the hospital last December.  I was going to wait in the car for him, but it was too cold.  After I froze out, I buzzed around the store, practiced backing up, and got used to the abrupt steering.  It's a hoot.

My doctor and my family have been telling me I should use the things for a while now.  My previous two trips to town, I intended to use one, but when I got to the store, all were in use, so I went ahead and used the shopping cart as a walker, as usual.  That wore me out.  Yesterday, with the scooter, and with Doug there to get things off shelves for me, it was a breeze.  It has the added advantage of making me nearly invisible.  People see the scooter and pointedly ignore the driver.  I've always had ninja fantasies, and love disappearing in crowds.

On the way home, we stopped at Greyfox's cabin to pick up some stuff he had collected for us.  As I was starting my car to leave, he came out of the cabin in a "new" hat he had found after someone discarded it.  That does sound better than, "in the dumpster," doesn't it? After laughing hysterically until I got out of breath, I got out with the camera.  He immediately started mugging, with his stock "funny" face, and I asked him to just be natural.  He complied and I got the shot at left.  Then I told him he could go ahead and do something funny, and got the shot at right.

This morning, Koji was looking especially comfortable and smug, in the place where Doug or I sit when one of us is playing the PS2 or the XBox.  We recline against the cushions next to the arm, stretch out our legs, and face the monitor that is just beyond the opposite arm of the sofa.  Koji was curled up in the hollow created by years of primate butts.  This is not his usual place, so I thought it worth a shot.

The last pic was captured before any of the others in this post, on the same evening I got the shot of the little Amanita mushroom in yesterday's post.  That night, the one immediately after the one on which I climbed to the roof to capture the sunset, the sky was again colorful, but I was too weak and shaky to climb the ladder, so I captured a little slice of it through the trees.  Gorgeous, I think.

Oh, BTW, I bought a woodstove at a builder's supply store in Wasilla, and it was delivered this morning.  It cost more than I could afford, but lately living costs more than I can afford, and I keep getting deeper into debt.  Now, Doug and I have to find a way to get the old broken one out and the new one in before it gets so cold we can't stand it in here without heat, and/or before snowfalls, which historically has come as early as the first week of September.  We need some muscular help.  Each stove weighs approximately 300 pounds.

PS:  Clicking HERE
(if you are a US resident and haven't already done so) will enter you in a sweepstakes for a new BMW sedan or an alternate
cash prize of US$85,000, or lesser prizes of $5,000 and $10,000 gift
certificates to Best Buy, and
your entry will also add an extra entry for me.  If I win, I'll pay off
my doctor and the ambulance and EMT bills from last December, get a
window replaced that got broken while Doug was shoveling ice and snow
from the roof last winter, pay for our new wood stove to replace the one that
sorta fell apart last winter, and have some rewiring done in here to
make the place safer and get rid of this mess of extension cords.