MiFi

Here is a picture of the little wireless portable router that I carry around with me and conventional wireless or ethernet is not close at hand. Press the power button, and voila, you have internet. It's a pretty nifty device, and I'll no longer need to seek out seemingly elusive free wifi in airports or strange coffee houses in the shady parts of town.

I was going to write last night but something happened. Again. After sleeping and reading for a chunk of the evening, I decided to go to the grocery store around eleven pm - the Haggen over on Meridian. So my journey (that should've been about a mile and a half) turned into heading into to town, turning right on Holly, up through Columbia and onto Northwest, all the way past the interstate and up to Bellis Fair. Then back down Meridian to the Dark Haggen. Running a simple errand can sometimes evolve into an extended jaunt around town on my bicycle. And what a beautiful night it was to ride. So needless to say, I got home much later than I'd anticipated and didn't feel like writing.

So it's another cloudy, chilly sixty-one degree Saturday morning here in Bellingham.

Chill

Another picture from a few days back. The sun has been appearing closer in the past few days. Much larger than in this picture. Maybe the earth is careening towards the sun and the mainstream media is keeping this from us, the masses. Evil CNN and FOX.

But you couldn't tell today. I wore fleece atop a thick Woolrich shirt. Summer? And the kids (those that were born here, at least) are running around in swimsuits and bare feet. I am getting used the the maritime chill that may never be too far from the heels of a sweltering heat.

But I stepped into this century's technology with a MiFi card, something that I'd better quickly get in the habit putting it in one place. It's convenient, and gives me a WiFi hot spot by pressing a little button. And it's a little bigger than a credit card. And about ten times as thick. Unfortunatley, I only get 5GB of bandwith a month. But I don't even know how much that is, so maybe I shouldn't be too concerned yet.

Ship

Someone told me that this ship is a stand-by in case another is ever out of service with this shipping lines. I've personally never seen it move. But that's alright. It stays docked in the middle of town and helps me to recall that I live where I do. Fortunately, I volunteer at the food bank on Wednesdays, otherwise I might never know what day of the week it is. Other than that, my schedule never remains consistent. The food bank helps ground my week.

Another glorious sunset tonight. And then to the Honeymoon to see the open mike, and the people were plaiying little ukuleles and mandolins. We left when the big guns (the steel guitar) came out. More tomorrow. I ran out of things to say. Summer is waning and there is too little of it left.

Subdued

Wow. As I pull up my Firefox, my home page tells of a shooting near Pittsburgh, a city where I spent ten years of this life. But there hasn't been a good shooting spree in this country in a while, which is odd because of everyone in this country being so uptight with the economy and everything in the crapper, as well as the passing of Michael Jackson. Things are bad, I tell ya. For some reason, there will probably be a few more shortly.

But this web log is frequently read by people searching Bellingham and gangs (Blogger.com has some neat analytic tools to play around with). Now I'm sure that there are guns and drugs and wannabe ganstas here in The 'Ham, and maybe a few fringe groups that I've been told about down in Happy Valley, and possibly off Northwest or Alabama. But the view from the 4,000 square feet of grounds of my estate where my 800 square foot manor over here in Sunnyland is that any town will have bad people, but I see little evidence of anything of substance regarding gangs. People still sleep with doors and windows wide open here. And shootings are rare. Maybe the gangs too are subdued here in this City of Subdued Excitement.

And speaking of subdued, the Subdued Stringband Jamboree is coming up. There are way too few weekends left in this summer and I am panicking when I think of things I'd still like to do. But the jamboree might be a weekend to camp somewhere up Mount Baker way on Thursday and come back to the festival on Friday. And I think I can do most of it by bus. (Okay, and a mile or two by thumbing past Glacier.)

Monday

A night where I was subjected to CNN Headline News. How shallow and tasteless. I couldn't wait to turn that bile spewing box back to the reggae channel (#6084) on Sirius. And later the Grateful Dead (#6032). I've read (and do not know how true this is) that in North Korea it is mandatory for every home to have a radio on at all times for the occupants to listen to propaganda broadcast by the government. How different is this than the few corporate run media outlets are where the majority of Americans get their news. Alarming.

But oddly enough, democracies (although actually we are a republic; I wonder why a republic - take the United States, for example - would kill millions in the name of democracy?) are relatively short lived and through our military overstretch, financial tailspin, crumbling infrastructure, threadworn social safety net, and the list can go on...but what will the future hold for our aging oligarchy? And now the market-state (ie, corporatism) shadows the traditional nation-state, which replaced the church-state, replacing the city-state (way back in something like the Medieval times, although history is not my cup of tea).

And the picture was taken a few weeks back while sailing: more Chinese crap coming into the country so we can send out dollars (assets) to China to turn around and buy our debt (a liability) from us. And if I get this right, dollars that are enacted by Congress that appear out of thin air to be lent electronically (few dollars are actually printed) by the Federal Reserve (a private bank whose books have never been audited and whose shareholders are cloaked in secrecy) to lend to national banks at the arbitrarily determined fed funds rates, and you and I incur record levels of debt and are required to pay interest for your home, car, boat, or other crap on a fiat currency that really doesn't even exist. Creating some of such substance out of nothing fascinating.

I remember back in the seventies how the increased productivity would give us much more leisure time and create an entire leisure class. But unfortunately American doubled the square footage of their homes, the number of cars they owned, and myriad other things (including their waste lines, probably) and now we work more than any other industrialized nation, as well as being more in debt, less healthy, etc. Forty hours a year more the average American works, I've read, than their workaholic Japanese counterparts. All for a lifestyle that Madison Avenue told us would make us happier, sexier, more successful,...

Yeah, it's Monday. Where did that blather come from?

Some interesting and varied news sites I read, mostly finance and economics:
Naked Capitalism
Doctor Housing Bubble
The Daily Reckoning
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Z Facts
Brookings Institute

Trouble ahead, trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.
- Robert Hunter

Gardens!

This was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my like. A true inspiration with an unmatched vibrancy of colors and scents. And the garden went on and on and I wasn't even able to even see as much of it as I'd've liked, as I was busy trying to stay on a schedule, which is impossible in relaxed mode of my Bellingham contemporaries - especially amongst such utter beauty.

Today, sun. Working and gardening and glad that I can wear shorts most days (with occasional khakis thrown in there) and can regain my personal stock of Vitamin D and get a nice tan in the process. It's always cool to have sandal tan lines on your feet. I did splurge and bought a pair Olukai sandals at Hinton's Shoes in town a month or so back.

I always think of something during the day that I want to bitch about on this web log, but it always seems to dissipate by the time I sit down to write. And I finally think I devised a fencing configuration that will keep the crafty chickens enclosed in their pen. We'll see.

Garden

So today was the Summer Tour of urban gardens in Bellingham. We left me place around eleven and went to two different places in Sunnyland, a community garden in Lettered Streets (picture), and then two more, both (I think) in Birchwood and at the last one we had a great meal. And the possibility arose of going to a conference in September down on the Hood Canal.

The temperatures have returned to a tolerable level here. A beuatiful day in Bellingham and the one garden we toured (I am sure you'll see a picture soon) inspired me to keep forging ahead with my small lot. I finally planted the salmonberry and added a bit more fencing for the chicken coop. Four feet is not enough to keep the chickens in, so I added anouther four. And another twenty-five bucks for food and not one single egg yet. Humph.