Here's one of the pitfalls in the writing process

Vintage WWII VD poster

Picture a small town along the Alaska coast where everyone recognizes everyone else, and most are at least passing acquaintances. Among these citizens a writer toils in the days before Internet and with access only to a limited library. He often has to find a local expert in something or other to confirm the accuracy of a tidbit he is writing.

A favorite source is the nurse practitioner in the town's clinic. his go-to reference for medical information. So, while involved with the intricacies of a plot involving the denizens of a harbor, he discovered one of his characters needed a venereal disease, wait, an STD in modern terminology. He chose Chlamydia as one that is barely noticeable and definitely not life-threatening. He only needed it so the character would have to face an embarrassing situation with a nurse he had met in a bar the same night the woman who gave him the disease told him about it.

Having written the sequence of discovery, anxiety. well, how about anger, bargaining, denial. depression, acceptance,  and sending the poor protagonist off to be cured by the nurse who had become the object of his affections, the author approached his friend for a medical opinion of his prose.

Within a day she came back to him, changing only one little detail and handing back his manuscript with pinched fingers as if it were somehow soiled, an affectation he barely noticed.

A week later, having progressed further into his plot he came upon a question. Instead of a phone call, that evening he approached the nurse practitioner in the bleachers of a Little League baseball game where she sat with a group of several players' mothers. Giving it little thought, he sat next to her and asked over the sound of a cheer, "If Chlamydia has no symptoms how do you know if you are cured or not?"

The cheering stopped in the same instant he realized his mistake. That instant of deadening silence was broken by his friend's almost fiendish laughter. Face flushed, his mouth hanging open and  panic in his eyes begging for understanding, he mumbled something about the scoreboard and raced away from that crowd knowing full well by morning the story of his disease would have spread all over that small town.

This may be one reason people hear of cloistered writers, at least that is what happened with me. Oops, did I say "me?" Damn. I avoided society for weeks after that incident, hoping that my friend had been able to tell the truth and perhaps at least dampen the gossip, but I never did know for sure and I would panic every time I suspected disapproval in the faces of some of the people I encountered. 

A new visitor in the neighborhood

As I was passing the living room window on the way to the kitchen tonight I caught some motion in my peripheral vision of a larger bird with wings spread, landing, definite yellow showing through the feathers as the sun hit them. I immediately suspected a flicker, a species I have never seen before.

Immediately I knew this was something different and I ducked down crawled over to where my camera was ready. I slowly rose to see my initial guess had been right, a flicker was dipping into the water in the bird bath. I managed six shots and two of them are close to being in focus. Although I enjoy the birds tremendously, I seldom get excited about seeing one, but a new one is special, especially such a colorful one.

It took a while to figure out exactly what it was. I usually use the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America and at first the citation was confusing. According to the illustration this one is a yellow-shafted woodpecker. But there were no words for that particular bird. I googled it and got northern flicker. Going deeper it turns out some time ago three variations of flicker were combined into the catch-all northern flicker. Each of the three has slightly different markings but they are considered one species. So it goes.

Mostly I am just happy to see a new species and such a colorful one at that.

A sea otter mother's devotion

All the mentions of sea otters in the popular media make them out to be cute, furry huggables. They aren't. They are nasty, aggressive at times and dangerous to other animals including other otters. Nevertheless they are interesting to watch and were a popular feature on the tours I used to drive. They were particularly helpful on gray, foggy days when our sightseeing boat plunged into the fog and you could barely see the railing on the bow, let alone shore.

On those days I could tune the radar so finely that it would pick up one of the rafts of sea otters that used to hang out in the bay we departed from. Once I saw the collection of small blips, I'd head straight for it and as soon as we spotted them, the gloom among the passengers began to lift. On those days I spent extra time with the otters to raise the optimism.  The crew knew that once we escaped the bay we would most likely break out into sunshine but the tourists never bought it when we told them that, at least not until we saw the otters. That improved the mood on the boat tremendously and people relaxed a little.

Over the years of observing otters I learned a little about their habits. As one example, you usually see otters floating on their backs with their heads up as if their chins are on their chests. This creates a blind spot directly behind them, and if you watch, you will often see them turn their heads nervously to see what might be approaching from behind. I learned that if I positioned the boat so they could see it and stayed within their sight range they would remain on the surface. But if I started moving around and it looked to them like I might be trying to get behind then into that blind spot, they would submerge and disappear. As a result our passengers usually got as much sea otter viewing as they could stand.

The most unusual behavior I ever saw was one day when I was anchored in a quiet bay while a couple of clients spent the night ashore on a mountainside. I was sitting on the weather deck toward dusk when I saw an otter drifting in the bay. Though light was low making it difficult to make out detail, it looked like she had a pup on her belly, they way they carry them sometimes. They moved around the bay for an hour or more, the mother leaving the pup floating on the surface while she dove for food. They were still at it when I gave up and went to bed and were there in the morning and most of the next day.

Though she always maintained a good distance between us, I noticed the pup never seemed very animated on her belly or when she left it on the surface while she foraged.

In time the clients came down from the mountain and signaled from shore for me to go get them. Once I had them ferried to the boat and all their equipment loaded, I pulled the anchor and headed slowly out of the bay. As I did I hadn't noticed the otter and heard her splash as she dove for cover leaving the pup on the surface. I drove the boat closer to the floating pup not wanting to scare it, but I shouldn't have worried. Very quickly we realized the reason it had not been animated. The pup was dead.

Given the lack of animation I had noticed, I realized  it had been dead the whole time I had been watching the otters in the bay. All through that time the mother kept with the baby as if it were still alive. We didn't touch it and motored away from it and I remember wondering how long the mother would keep it with her; how long after a pup dies does a mother hold onto her offspring?

Science fiction – or is it?

I've never been very interested in science fiction. Of course there's "Star Wars" and, oh yeah, "Firefly," oh, and can't leave out "Hunger Games," and then, well, you get the picture. Let's say I've never been much interested in writing science fiction although I did dabble with it once upon a time.

The inspiration came in a supermarket of all places. To begin with I can not stand the odor of the universal coverup scent, Febreze. A friend from the old days would have said it smells like a Dutch whore on a Saturday night. However I know lots of people stand by it. It's called an air freshener and is designed to eliminate odors. All I can see that it does is overload the olfactory lobes with a heavy scent only slightly less obnoxious than one might like to mask.

What happened in the supermarket was I was picking out trash bags when one box I looked at smelled different. Sure enough, it had the Febreze logo on the box. Somebody decided more garbage bags could be sold if they smelled like that obnoxious spray. I quickly put that one back on the shelf and picked out an unscented variety. But it didn't stop there; whether that scent was stuck in my nose or whether I passed another product I wasn't sure, but when I looked, there was some laundry detergent with the foul stuff included. There's usually enough perfume in laundry soap without including that crap, but there it was.

Then I saw it on toilet paper and again on wet wipes. In time I came to peruse products to make sure Febreze wasn't in them and was surprised how many included it.

That's when the science fiction story came along. Think about all the super-villain plots in all the science fiction that were aimed at taking over the world. Not one succeeded largely because of some clever intervention or simply overwhelming force from a super hero.

Now, suppose someone mixed some odorless toxic goop with whatever the concoction is that makes up Febreze. Worldwide as people put out the garbage, sprayed behind a cigarette smoker, wiped their asses, washed their clothes and performed any of a myriad of  domestic chores they got one good whiff of this odor eliminator and were eliminated themselves, along with their families, pets and plants. Double your pleasure because the widespread use of it would also mask the stench of decaying bodies.

Before long clouds of the lethal gas would be hovering everywhere (if they aren't already) spreading the deadly air freshener.

Or it could go another way. I once discovered some mold in a tent I owned and asked a friend how you get rid of it. She suggested Febreze. That was my introduction. I fired one shot of the stuff at the mold, got a whiff of the perfumey junk and thought about sleeping in a tent with that sweet smell in bear country. No thanks. We all know the odors that can collect inside a closed tent, so picture a tent manufacturer infusing the fabric with Febreze to cover them up. In my fictional world over time the powers that be trying to figure out why there were increased numbers of bear attacks in camp grounds.

Years ago the town where I lived started spreading a de-icer on the streets. That de-icer when splashed up on car finishes attached itself with the tenacity and color of road tar. Someone discovered Febreze was the only thing that would take that junk off the paint. That ought to have been a warming for reals.

My journey into science fiction ended with those thoughts, at least until a couple of days ago when a story showed up on Facebook called "The Dangers of Febreze – A real eye-opener." The article confirms the product does not remove odors, it simply gives you a stronger odor to cover them. The article goes on to list 16 of the chemicals in the soup, many of them carcinogens, allergens, irritants to eyes, lungs, skin and ears among others. It holds dangers for just about all living things. It's one of the scariest lists of ingredients I've ever read and I am glad now that I've avoided its use all these years.

But it sure does make the case for a good super villain to take over the world in a cloud of sweet-smelling carcinogenic goop. Who would notice one more lethal ingredient in that concoction?

Here's the article. It lists those 16 ingredients and their dangers and also offers some natural alternatives. All about wellness solutions   

How does your garden grow July 2015 edition

First zucchini.

Sometimes it feels trivial to be writing about a garden when there is so much going on in the world to talk about. Of course, pick a subject and you will find lots of people willing to tackle the problems no matter whether they know anything about their subjects beyond some bull dust punch line or not. So, then, it's like why not put a little positive green into the mix and see what pops up.

Lettuce and spinach with a whole garbage bag full gone.

Yesterday a friend asked how my garden was doing and the only adjective that came to mind was overflowing. In that came the realization that I haven’t put up any photos in maybe a month. So at least the blog isn't overflowing with garden pictures not until today anyway. 

Unfortunately my daughter and her family came out yesterday and we did some harvesting so it is not as overflowing as it was a couple of days ago. Still I think it looks pretty good so I went out today, did a little more harvesting and made some pictures.

Joseph Wambaugh is not impressed.

Potatoes after two harvests.

More squash, zucchini and acorn.

My daughter took one of those white tall kitchen garbage bags full of lettuce, a standard plastic shopping bag full of spinach, a small bag of onion tops and a small bag of small potatoes, not a bad haul in midseason. So, anyway. these pictures are what's left.


Isn't that much better than announcing another candidate crawling out of the Republican clown car?

Third spinach harvest.

Garden dilemma solved
What a difference a day makes
Shoveling dirt in the hot sun