The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was in the South End Trader Jimbo’s the other day looking for those hard-to-get-down-here items in their Land O’Yuppie aisles. Somehow I got waylaid by the organic pine nuts. Organic? Are we growing pine trees in nitrate infused woods now? Further down the aisle I found gluten free kettle corn trumpeting stuff that never had gluten in the first place. Not only that, they were guaranteed nut-free. The products, not Trader Jimbo. When I turned the corner, drove past the chutneys and the soft cheeses, I discovered Aisle 6, the no preservative, no additive, no GMO, no growth hormone, no antibiotic, no gluten, no soy, no MSG, no transfat, no caged animal row. About middle of the aisle there were three cans in a pyramid. Cave water. 12 ounces for $10.95. I took all three. Just so the row would be immaculate for a moment.

A friend of mine has a futon mattress that contains organic cotton. Softer maybe, like his head. Course I grew up with virgin wool — as if I care what the sheep do at night. These are dangerous times. Who knows what’s in those nettles I’ve been brewing beer with? They don’t come with an organic certification and what with acid rain precipitating out from Chinese pollution, I may be toxifying myself inadvertendly. My entire garden may well be a seeping cesspool of multi-syllabic compounds from the prevailing winds of Seattle and Gomorrah or contaminated from the tailings and runoffs of the South End industrial era. Natural? That’s no longer a designation to give anyone peace of mind. No government certification for natural, pal.

They tell me our water has elevated levels of natural arsenic. The neighbors on water systems filtrate for that and other minerals. We’re on our own well. Which means just that, we’re on our own. Forget worrying about contaminated nettles in my homebrew. The water’s got poison in it.

So where do you go to find the purity we so desperately seek? Where do you retreat to escape the toxic leaching of modern society? And where can a yahoo go to avoid the steady drip drip drip of new warnings, new labels, new GMO salmon species, new BMO milk products, new irradiated foods, new afflictions? The South End??? Sorry, we got the bio-hazard tape across the road now. No wonder people are signing up for the Mars mission. Even if it is one way only.

These are fast times we live in. You maybe remember when we talked about the Rat Race, that post-Eisenhower era when the corporations took over the South End and America too in a bloodless coup, ran a few efficiency studies, then busted the unions and paid us serfs paltry wages for long hours. The ‘modern’ citizen isn’t just in a rat race — we’re watching the information tsunami breaking over us, rocketing us forward on wave after wave of googled crap disguised as news or finance or sports, but is really a vehicle for advertising and a prescription for attention deficit when we’re tossed on the rocky beach of a fearful future.

You ask a friend or family member how their summer’s going, they say ‘crazy busy.’ We’re on our own treadmill now. Cellphones, laptops, text messaging, e-mails, sexting, online dating, online shopping, online everything. The truth is we’re not busy, we’re just half crazy, bored to death without a ‘device’ in our hands, constant stimulation but not anything with depth. Couple minutes max. Short text, quick internet search, got to move on to the next stimuli….

We don’t have time anymore for a walk on the beach, for reading a novel, for growing a garden, for learning new pursuits or new hobbies. No, we have to check our e-mails, messages, stock markets, ball scores and Facebook. We have to stay ‘connected’ and being ‘connected’ means keeping up with an accelerating digital glut. Not metaphorically — we’re rewiring physically. I guess you could say we’re evolving if you’re not a faith-based computer user, intelligent design if you are ….

I rowed out in my boat today, fighting wind and swells, to drop some crabpots. From far offshore I could see our house up in the trees back off the road, mostly obscured, but peeking out. I suspect my life is like that now, an anachronism peeking out from behind a woods no one ventures into anymore, a very long distance away as the waves pushed by a new wind crash up against my little dinghy and I’m in two places, but both are growing smaller and smaller, just specks on a receding horizon.

The other day I overheard a conversation at the Diner between Fairlane Freddie and Janet Jorgenson, actually more an argument, precipitated by Fred when he complained about Stanwood upgrading its streets, putting a landscaped separation between lanes, erecting a metal and art entryway coming into town, all upgrades Fred declared were a waste of money. “My god, Freddie,” Janet shot back, “give that town some credit. They’re trying to make improvements.”

“Gimme a break,” Fred retorted hotly, sloshing coffee on the formica between them. “Like that walking trail around the sewer lagoon? You think they needed that?”

Janet shook her head and forked in a mouthful of pancake. When she finally swallowed, she asked, “You ever walk that trail?” Fred, of course, had not. “Why would I?”

“I dunno. Maybe the view of the Olympics, the Sound, the river, our island? They’re making a new park at the Ovenell farm, another by the train depot and I think one past the library, you know, that corner at the Y.”

Fred didn’t know and furthermore, Fred couldn’t care less, all a waste of time and money, he said. “Now they want to build a damn Art Center,” he practically shouted for the rest of us to hear. “Just what we need, more stupid art!”

“Just gonna draw more stupid artists.” Yeah, I said that from two tables over, happy to stir this particular pot. Janet seemed relieved to watch the argument move downstream, give her time to finish her cold pancakes. Anita, our waitress, groaned, half done refilling my coffee mug. “Wind him up,” she muttered, “all we need this morning.”

“You guys never stop,” Fairlane replied. “Took Terry’s Corner off the tax roles to build your goofy Visitor Center, run that Mother’s Day Tour that clogs traffic every year — who asked for all that? Used to be a nice rural island and Stanwood was a quiet little town. Couldn’t just leave well enough alone?”

“Aw, Fred, you know us artists, the last thing we could do would be to leave well enough alone. You drive that ’63 Ford, plenty good enough for you, but big fins and dual exhaust dinosaurs got to make way for the Jetsons’ flying cars, probably EV’s.”

“I spoze you’re all FOR that new art center,” he sneered.

“What, me?” I said. “What have you got against new growth down in the floodplain? Give it some new life, maybe draw folks down to the Pearson House, The Floyd Cultural Center, the History Museum. Hell, Fred, you could stop in at the old library, probably hate our new one on the island. Stanwoodtown is up the hill now – you want to save the old, might as well embrace the new down below.”

The couple at the table between ours, figuring they’d stumbled into a DMZ no-man’s land, hastily finished their breakfasts and headed for the safety of the cash register by the door, no point becoming collateral damage in the Culture War.

“We better stop, Fred — we’re scaring away the tourists,” I said. Janet laughed. “Pretty soon they’ll be coming to that Art Center,” she said.

“Swell,” Fred grumbled. “More damn art.”

“You’ll probably survive the shock, Fred,” I told him. Anita was going to get a big tip from me this morning….

I got a friend who has turned into a Day Trader, buying and selling stocks, ebullient that in the past year or more, the Market is running wild, setting new record highs, making him even richer than he was before. The rich, maybe you’ve heard, are getting richer. Most of consumer spending isn’t spread across the nation’s demographics equally, it’s the result of spending by the wealthy. If you think they’re worried about the cost of groceries or the price of gas, you obviously aren’t in the 1%, maybe not even the 10%. Should have maybe taken out a second mortgage and tossed it into the S&P 500. Or better yet, any of the stocks hitched to the Artificial Intelligence bet.

Folks I know who are betting their farm on the AI wave think all stocks rise on an expanding bubble. The Dutch who paid thousands of guilders for rare bulbs thought the price of tulips had no ceiling, same as the banks who collateralized shaky mortgage loans, same as the investors of the Roaring 20’s who bought on 10% margins. I’m not envious of their profits — while there are profits — I just hate the collateral damage when the bubble bursts and the economy crashes.

What goes up, I tell my friend, inevitably comes down. But he doesn’t believe that old chestnut. AI is different, he claims, nothing like the tech bubble of the 90’s, totally impervious to the laws of gravity. Sure, I reply, and rare tulips still hold their value today.

Probably time to buy Trump meme crypto, if for no other reason than to hedge the bets.

I was in the checkout line of the local pharmacy — and no, I don’t mean the Bud Hut — behind an older fella who had a joint remedy, some kind of modern snake oil guaranteed to alleviate arthritis, hair loss and lack of sexual desire. Wendy, the cashier, rang his cure-all up, something like $19.99, cheap, I guess, for a panacea. “My husband takes this too,” she told the geriatric gent. The customer nodded imperceptibly, swiped his credit card and waited for his receipt.

I’m always annoyed at folks who treat their checkout people the way they’d treat a store mannequin, just seems rude to me. The auto checkout was tailor made for these yahoos. So I asked, just to fill the awkward silence, “Well, did it work for him?” Our customer perked up at this; after all, this is close to a testimonial if not a full-fledged pharmaceutical double blind test. Wendy paused. “Jimmy says it does, so I guess it’s worth the money.” Her tone of voice suggested maybe Jimmy was BS’ing and the money was going down a rathole. “I hope that works miracles,” she said to the Arthritis Kid.

Exactly, I thought. We’re hoping for miracles at $19.99, why not throw the dice? I was over at a buddy’s house later on and asked him how his girlfriend’s broken arm was doing. You ask health questions at my age, you’re either desperate for conversation or you need counseling yourself. “Not great,” Billy said. “It isn’t healing up like it should. But … we’re taking Bone Broth.”

“Bone Broth?” I asked. “Yeah,” he answered, “lemme show ya.” Dr. Billy went to the fridge and extracted a quart jar of brown jello with lard on top. He gets bones from the local butcher, dumps them in a crockpot and boils em down for 3 days. Bone Broth!

“And you what?” I asked, “rub it on as a liniment?” “No, man,” Billy said, “you heat the liquid up and drink it.”

This, I guess, is homeopathic remedy writ strange. You got a broken bone, drink bone broth. You got hair loss, boil up some hair. Osteoporosis, well, bone broth again. Alzheimers, okay let’s not get into sweet meats. If you’re in pain, you’ll try most anything, if looks like, I get that. And maybe the placebo effect will actually kick in and work. What I don’t want to see are new ads from the pharmaceuticals for bone broth, replete with the warnings, may cause permanent rigidity, hardening of the spinal cord and permanent priapism. Course, they won’t call it bone broth, something pseudo-scientific like fibulagelomex or osteoglanulax. Or maybe just Elmer’s Glue.