Category Archives: Seasonal

BAM

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Naps are grand but I don’t like the idea of second sleep. I prefer to slam down into unconsciousness and have absolutely no interaction with the outside world for 855 contiguous minutes. I don’t want to wake for the (imaginary) dog barking or the ringing phone or to feed the wood stove. I don’t even want to have to get up to pee.

Cartoon Cat thanks to OCALIn the far reaches of history, before the advent of the electric light orchestra or Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist TV, most people slept in two separate phases, divided by an hour or more of wakefulness. Writers have long liked the uninterrupted time to write and crooks to steal. Field workers could awaken to have sex. Priests might use the time to pray.

Hmmm. Four hours of sleep. Hot weasel sex. Four more hours of sleep.

Yeah, that has a good ring to it.

I was particularly awake at 6 this morning, enough that I considered getting up after just 5-1/2 hours sleep. Shotgun fire woke me again at ten-to-seven and kept doing so for more than an hour. The 2012 Vermont Migratory Bird Hunting season for Ducks, Coots and Mergansers restarted at 6:50 this ayem. Somewhere in there I dreamed that I was feeding the (imaginary) dog who was romping across a chopped corn field.

Did you know that coots are medium-sized water birds with mostly black feathers except for their white forehead which gives rise to the expression “bald as a …” And the common merganser is a really big duck while the brant is a really small goose.

Duck Cartoon thanks to Luis TorresAs far as I can tell, duck hunting is like fishing from a boat except colder. You go out, motor across the lake burning a lot of gas, then sit around all day in a 4×6 room. You end up spending $500 per pound for something I don’t want to eat anyway.

Now deer hunting, on the other hand, means you get to take a tramp in the woods, shoot off as many as a few $1 cartridges, and stock your freezer for pennies a pound. Mmmm. Bambi steaks. Bamburgers. Bambighetti sauce. I understand deer hunting.

Tom Ripley’s father-in-law is a deer hunter. He keeps inviting me to deer camp.

“At the end of the season he shoots our Christmas tree,” Tom said. “BAM BAM. BAM BAM BAM. Then he calls everyone out to ‘see what I got.’ Of course that means everyone (else) gets to drag the tree back to camp.”

Duck hunting just got a lot more attractive.

Burn Baby Burn

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Everybody I know is either in Black Rock City today, on their way to Black Rock City today, or packing to leave for Black Rock City today. OK, everybody but Rufus and Fredo “Two Fingers” Caronia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BurningMan-picture.jpgBurning Man builds Black Rock City, Nevada, this week.

Liz Arden left Friday to get assure she would arrive exactly when The Gate opened yesterday at 6 p.m. Brockley Mann, South Puffin’s police chief, won a ticket from his radio station and is a “Burgin”; he arrives Tuesday. Ms. gekko left many hours before sunrise yesterday and should be setting up by the time you read this.

“I counted a dozen vehicles that clearly had Burners,” she said of her trip through northern Arizona and southern Nevada. “I also counted a half dozen dead javelina. Untold numbers of bits of unidentifiable critters.”

Here in Vermont, the state Highway Department scoops fresh killed deer off the highway, cleans out (most of) the glass and other bits, and gives them to the Department of Corrections. I’m thinking the inmates get more venison than the licensed hunters.

And mmmm, javelina. The other white meat. Clean up on Route 95, please!

Burning Man has ten core principles from Radical Inclusion and Radical Self-reliance to Leaving No Trace.

Anyone may be a part of Burning Man; an individual should “discover, exercise, and rely on his or her inner resources.” Perhaps most important is the commitment to leave no trace behind. They clean up after themselves and try to leave the playa in shape than before.

They have a word for that: MOOP (noun) — Matter Out Of Place.

MOOP especially applies to Black Rock City and its citizens. It can be anything: cigarette butts, bottle caps, glowsticks, fireworks, upside down art cars, excess laws. The Burning Man survival guide shows trash and recycling options for Leaving No Trace. Everything that came in gets packed out.

A lot comes in.

Americans in general have a lot of stuff and we are jealous of it. We have junk mail and catalogues and newspapers. Everyone keeps a couple of objets from d’art to d’trash that we could use to fix the furnace or make a collage. Closets overflow with really nice clothes that might be worn again. And who can resist a freebie? To have and to hold, baby.

Since the No Puffin Perspective™ often covers news and politics, here’s the part that makes this piece tax deductible: Today, scholars don’t even know how many federal criminal laws exist, let alone how many civil and tax and trade and regulatory mandates do. One of my clients, a Vermont attorney, has a law library of state statutes alone that fills a room.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Compulsive_hoarding_Apartment.jpg/220px-Compulsive_hoarding_Apartment.jpgThis computer has 337,252 files listed in 45,071 folders. Of course 164,484 (in almost 34,000 of those folders) of them are for Windows 7, but still. Oh, and Rufus has more than that in his AOL inbox alone.

Burning Man is the most successful cleanup and restoration of any United States event monitored by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management although no trash disposal is provided or available on site. It is contained in one, solitary, remote, dry lake bed about 110 miles north of Reno, Nevada. We can’t all move our stuff to Nevada.

But. A little spread of radical self-reliance and MOOP cleanup wouldn’t hurt us.

337,252 files. That might be a good place to start. Right after I figure out what’s up with these shorts stacked on the living room window fan.

Winter Wonderland

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The squirrels think it may be a mild winter this year. The geese have been flying north this week. The National Weather Service says it may be a mild winter this year.

That must be why the National Weather Service announced yesterday that Winter Weather Awareness Week begins today in North Puffin.

Believe me. No one in North Puffin needs a reminder of winter weather.

Except research shows that about 70 percent of the ice and snow related fatalities occur in automobiles, and about 25 percent of all winter related fatalities are people caught off guard, out in the storm.

The best awareness plan, then, is not to drive; stay inside with your feet next to the wood stove.

Today, the National Weather Service will offer tips on ways to prepare for winter hazards.
I have a winter car kit in each vehicle, the wood stoves and generators have all passed their test run, and I obsess over the weather forecasts.

The harder part of living in the frozen north is the lack of a single planning checklist. That surprised me. In South Puffin, every television station, every radio station, every newspaper inundates us with Hurricane Preparedness guides.

Not here. I found the public information statement from the National Weather Service-Burlington at the Victoria Advocate. (At 165 years old, the Victoria Advocate, is Texas‘ second oldest newspaper. The Advocate can be found exactly where it has been for 62 of those years, on East Constitution Street in downtown Victoria, exactly 1,998 miles from North Puffin.)

A family emergency plan and an accompanying emergency kit is a good thing. This season is a good time to over warn and over-react: “Prepare for the worst. Pray for the best.” I distilled the best advices I could find into a Winter Preparedness Guide on my business site, harperco.net.

On Tuesday: What to do if stranded on the road during a storm.
Reality check. We are all far more likely to be stuck in a parking space than stuck in a snow drift off the Mountain Road. 90% of what you’ll find on the Winter Preparedness Guide will help even if you are in your own driveway. And the other 10%? Why not finish the test so the real test doesn’t finish you?

On Wednesday: Protect yourself from the wind and cold.
Take a look at how skiers, ski patrollers, and your highway guys dress. Take a lesson.

On Thursday: Winter flooding and ice jams across the North Country.
Almost freezing water on your floor? Flooding can come from broken pipes or a broken roof just as easily as it does from the lake or river near your house.

On Friday: Winter weather terminology. What exactly does “A winter storm warning is in effect” mean?
See my better plan below.

On Saturday: Review preparedness activities for winter.

Americans live in the most severe-weather prone country on Earth, so I have a better plan.



I Was Right

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Again. The Obamanation announced it will release 30 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserves and has another 30 million barrels pledged by our energy partners. Two million barrels per day for a month. And they can do it again next month and the month after if prices don’t drop enough.

It is to “make up for Libyan oil,” administration officials say.

Bwahahahahahahahahah hah ha. And hah.

It’s not a hail Mary to jumpstart the economy.

It’s not to fill in the gaps in our oil supply. There is plenty of oil.

It’s not even to ease the summer driving season.

But it is to drive speculators out of the market. See, if the price at the pump drops for 90 days, the third quarter Cost of Living calculations look flat again.

At the beginning of June, I said the Obamanation would try to get gas prices down to $2.47/gallon for July, August, and September, the “window” for Social Security’s 2012 COLA calculations. Artificial Cost of Living Adjustments are a free tax on the back of American seniors and the gummint needs more money. Way to go, Mr. Obama.