The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

We humans have walked upright on this planet for 6 million years. About 90,000 years ago we learned how to use tools. And then, only 12,000 years ago, we became farmers, grew our food instead of hunting it and developed towns and cities, nation states and countries. Civilization, on a planet that’s 4 and a half billion years old, is fairly short-lived, although most of us homo sapiens think of it as fairly permanent, all of us crowns of creation, made in God’s image. Took Her awhile to get around to us, but now that we’re here, probably forever, right?

But if something happened to our species, god forbid, and in some distant future another civilization rose from the ashes, would they even know we were here once? Or put another way, if a civilization preceded this one, maybe before the dinosaurs, how would we know? The fossil records? Planet Earth is a churning waring blender, continents in movement, mountains forming and disappearing, oceans rising and falling, the climate in constant flux with or without human intervention. Those dinosaur prints archeologists find represent a minute record of life on this planet. Even in our lifetime entire civilizations disappear beneath the jungles — imagine millions of lifetimes, billions even.

You think maybe the Empire State Building will be the clue to past cultures? You think steel and concrete are forever? Better think again. If aliens landed on this third planet from our sun and set up shop, managed to make this their home for a few million years then died or immigrated elsewhere, how would you know? Not like you could go down to the salvage yards and find rusting spaceships to prove there were folks here before us. Even nuclear waste has a limited half-life. Nothing is permanent, not even us. Suns burn out, God herself gets tired, and all us infinitely egotistical humans, well, maybe we should get over ourselves. The dinosaurs thought they were pretty hot shit too….

For most of my life I’ve had this quaint notion that school was, for the most part, meant to give you skills that you could use AFTER you LEFT school. Teach you, for instance, how to read so you could, on your own, pursue further education. Teach you, as an example, how to reason, how to analyze, how to navigate the world after graduation. Sure, I know, school was a means to acquiring the skills to get you employment, a job, even a career. But mostly I’d hoped it would encourage curiosity and offer the skills to explore that curiosity.

When I taught 8th grade back in the Dark Ages before computers or AI, my goal was to convince my little students that reading was the KEY to it all. You can’t read, well, life was going to be a rough ride. Now, of course, you can watch You-Tubes and even let ChatGPT substitute for your own thinking. Reading the 21st Century is like using a slide rule to do your math problems — are you kidding?? You got a computer to do that crap.

Now I know I sound like an old fogey, possibly even a Luddite, but I still believe in reading more than a few sentences of Google articles and calling it knowledge. More than half of us don’t read one single book in a year. 50% of us can’t read at 8th grade comprehension. I don’t think you have to go to college to be an intelligent person. I went to college with plenty of dumbasses. I’ve known plenty of people who never even cracked a book — and were proud of it. Some of these were actually intelligent, they just decided being an ignorant dumbass was perfectly fine.

I don’t know where the kids I taught reading to in 8th grade are now. Plenty didn’t want to read even though I let them pick Anything to read, just read, goddammit. I read them great books just to convince them reading could be enjoyable. We had entire classes, outside even, for reading days. Just read!!

My guess — just a wild shot in the dark — 50% never cracked a book after high school or college. Call me Old School. Call me Mr. Chips. But I’d hate to be a teacher now. Books? They don’t need no stinking books!

Cafes come and go on the island about as fast as the weather. Open up one day, seems like a month later they’ve put the CLOSED sign in the window, locked the doors and another business bites the beach sand. When I first got off the banana boat down by the Yacht Club, a boutique café hung a shingle where the first Senior Center thrift store would eventually take over. Seeing’s how there wasn’t much food service on the island, you’d figure a breakfast and lunch joint would have a pretty easy time making a success of it.

But you’d be wrong. The yuppie couple who ran the place offered macadamia nut waffles, strong fresh ground coffee (long before Starbucks ruled the world) and a menu of fresh vegetables, sprouts, whole wheat breads and local eggs and meats. They were maybe half a century ahead of their time.

I took a boatload of pals up from the smog-smitten city who were crashing at the shack for a wholesome breakfast and a little relief from the hangovers from the previous night’s revelries. We ordered big mugs of coffee and the owners went around the table studiously writing down our orders. Since they were the chief/cook/ and bottle washers, we waited a long time for our servings even though we were the only customers, but the coffee was refilled, our lethargy seemed to subside and life on this side of our foggy island was good once again.

At some point – about a gallon into the coffee – one of us inquired where the restroom might be. We were solemnly informed there was none. This was dire news indeed for nearly all of us. We shrugged it off and waited patiently for our breakfasts. And waited for our breakfasts. When they came, they came one at a time, with five minute intervals in between. Fine fare, however, and we ate our plate’s worth, individually as the rest watched enviously while our bladders swelled like a Guernsey at a dairy where the farmer overslept.

We ate fast. We refused further refills. We crossed our legs and slapped ourselves with knives and forks. We began low moans. I couldn’t tell you if the food was good. Maybe. Probably. All I know is 8 guys stood in the parking lot as soon as we could pay our bill and let loose the floodgates right beside our Volkswagen bus. If we left a tip, that was it, but near as I can tell, they never took it. A month later the café was closed and another dream bit the dust. Well, hit the mud….

We all make mistakes. So okay, us South Enders make a few more than most. I don’t know whether poverty leads to more tragedy per person or tragedy leads to more poverty. My Republican neighbors think they know. Even the ones who are poor and have more than their fair share of bad drama.

I’m not one who thinks money can buy you luck, but it can sure narrow the odds. And I am a believer in keeping a buffer between me and the wolves outside the shack door. Bad luck comes to us all; I just don’t want it to carry me over the Edge.

Jenny was driving her beat up Chevy station wagon to town a month ago. It’s a relic from the days of cheap gas, wide as a semi and half as long as the Exxon Valdez. She needs it to haul hay for her horses, she says. I could ask, of course, how it is a woman barely able to pay the rent can afford horses, but I’ve learned to keep my prying mouth shut. It’s a free country, they tell me, at least until the credit stops.

Jenny was lighting a Marlboro, trying to reach the length of Kansas to the cigarette lighter gizmo over by Abilene, and hit the CD replay to hear her favorite song one more time, dropped her unlit cig on the floormat and of course reached down to find it. Happens all the time. One brief moment of inattention, next thing you know, you’re in the ditch, wheels up, blood on the dash.

Jenny’s in shock, the ambulance hauls her to the Skagit hospital emergency room, Carl hauls the Exxon Valdez to his South End Towing impound lot back behind O-Zi-Ya trailer court, the sheriff issues a citation for Inattentive Driving, Jenny goes through a few surgeries for lacerations and a torn shoulder, the hospital and doctors bill her more money than she’s earned since 2004, the horses go hungry and are given away, Carl wants $600 to release her wagon, Jenny can’t work with a cast, probably couldn’t work with one, and now the rent is due.

I sure don’t want to cast judgement, but judgement is definitely at issue here. The very least I can say is if you live on the South End, watch where you’re going. It’s a winding narrow road. And trust me, the ditches are damn deep…..

Darlene’s Antique and Collectibles was once an honest to Abe vintage emporium. One hundred year old oak chests of drawers, apple cider presses newly oiled but still glowing with the patina of fruit juices, rusting resort signs, ornate brass beds lascivious with untold stories, dollhouses from the Victorians, real stuff, not facsimile. Old wood stoves she bought from South Enders converting to heat pumps, wringer washers still able to churn a family’s laundry, coil top refrigerators cooled by sulpher dioxide rather than Freon. The one I bought from Darlene punctured a line a year later and the SO2 in combination with moisture, what we chemists call H20, formed sulfuric acid, what I called when I dragged it outside hissing like Assad’s assassins: Chemical Death. Foliage turned brown Right NOW in an invisible line snaking into the woods.

Darlene was a huge woman. Sitting at her table by the front door where her brass cash register sat like a South Sea icon ready for sacrificial offerings, she was half Cajun voo-doo queen, half posterchild for diabetes and definitely mostly intimidating, especially after you got to know her. She had a network of pickers who scoured the thrift stores and junk shops and garage sales throughout the state. And she had a steady supply of sellers, mostly neighbors broke and desperate, willing to part with the mizzus’ prized china or her mother’s silver, rarely some good tool of their own. She could burn a Tennessee horse trader, sell you a knockoff you’d never learn wasn’t really old, spin you a yarn that was finer than spider thread. You had to be on your toes with Darlene. She had the scruples of a southern politician and the aim for the jugular of a gypsy car salesman.

When E-Bay drove her prices down and she wearied of watching the city slickers – what she called ‘cidiots’ – checking prices on their I-pads and tablets, she began to carry ‘gifts’ too, junky look-alikes of vintage signs, antiques knickknacks and craft items –what she called ‘crap’ items – but her sales plummeted despite watering the trade down and she closed up finally.

Rumor has it she moved down to Sedona or maybe Taos and opened up a high end art gallery for tourists. One of my neighbors told me she’d bought a Georgia O’Keefe signed print from a woman with 6 chins wearing a Navajo blanket shawl and enough silver earrings and turquoise bracelets to start a jewelry store. I’m guessing Darlene is still nicking us South Enders, just a longer drive for us to get fleeced.

You might think, what with a war in Ukraine and the destruction of Gaza by the ally we supply weapons to, the Commander-in-Chief would be a little too busy to concern myself with edicts banning modern architecture for future Federal buildings. Or task himself with running the Kennedy Center for the Arts in order to inflict his own artistic sensibilities. Or take on the interior decoration of the White House right down to the final gold filigree. And still find the time to play plenty of round of golf, pardon friends accused or convicted of crimes, market Trump crypto, MAGA hats and tennis shoes, choose unilaterally what actors and artists are to be honored at the Kennedy Center awards plus manage the dozens of lawsuits his policies and firings have generated.

The other day he held a 3 hour cabinet meeting —- not to discuss policy but to give each member the opportunity to praise and flatter him. Which all in obsequious turn, they did. Without a hint of embarrassment, no less! It was like watching POW’s paraded out by their captors for the camera to tape their confessions, each one testifying their treatment was very good despite obvious wounds and evident emaciation.

Hitler hated modern art too. His architecture leaned toward the brutal. Trump’s harken to Louis the 14th, maybe with Golden Arches for the entryway and plenty more gold throughout. Gaudy is back, gaudy is good. He’s building a ballroom for the White House. No doubt he’ll design it, choose the chandeliers, pick the color scheme (gold, of course) and declare it the greatest single architecture conceived since Jefferson’s Monitcello.

When he’s finished composing the inaugural music for the first grand ball, he can turn his attention to rewriting history for the Smithsonian. Eventually, maybe, he’ll end the Ukraine war, declare Gaza a Palestinian-free zone and award himself the Nobel Peace Prize. But first, there’s the Emmy, the Academy Award, the Pritzker for architecture, the Pulitzer for news that isn’t fake. He may need to remodel the Oval Office to fit it all in, but … he’s the man to do it.

You’re married to a historian, you live a part of your life in the past. This vacation we’re in the mountain town of Index, population about 150. Yesterday we got the full tour of the Historical Museum and its Annex from the town historian. Plenty of mining tools, crosscut saws, old toasters, pieces of the Post Office, kraut cutters — about what we got half of at home. Not exactly like viewing the aqueducts of ancient Rome, more like a postcard of early life on the South End when we were the pioneers.

History is a tough sell. Not many folks tour these museums. And those that do whip through, skip reading the captions on the black and white flood photos or the loggers square dancing on a 15 foot diameter fir stump. Most of it looks like Grandma’s old house they visited as kids. A few folks come to find Grandma’s house — or at least a small record that their family actually lived in this hick burg. Genealogy they’re interested in, the history of the area, not so much.

Our own Museum, like the one here, draws virtually no one the one or two days they’re open. Even most residents are devoid of curiosity, a little busy raising kids and paying the mortgage on the subdivisions outside the newly annexed city limits. Way of the world, I guess.

We’re zooming headlong into the future, technology accelerating, AI no longer on the horizon, it’s right here right now and dragging us along. There’s no time for lolly-gagging about what was when last month feels like the distant past and tomorrow fills us with dread. Doomsday scrolling, not old histories, fills our time. We don’t have time for the old stuff. What’s in the rearview is definitely not closer than it appears, it’s way far back, almost out of sight. And most definitely out of mind.

So I don’t mind a few days spent here in the past. More and more it’s where I live. Just one of the benefits of living with a historian.

Used to be Midlife Crises came when we were shocked to realize youth had lost its bloom and wouldn’t be coming back. Although … guys bought red sportscars and their wives dyed their grey hairs and considered plastic surgery. A new set of wheels or breasts usually didn’t work — truth was, what they mourned was the end of dreams. The corporate man was never going to backpack Europe or write the Great American Novel. And his trophy wife was not going back to college for a degree in sociology. Even if the kids were….

But I’m seeing friends who are going through a different crisis, the one where mortality is closing in and so is the realization that their life was mostly mortgaged, maybe even subprimed and now the equity seems puny and someone else may actually foreclose on it. They’re retired, time is not on their side and may never have been, and now the prospect of another hard winter is really bearing down. They think maybe a move might help. Go south, go back to their hometowns, look for a second childhood or adolescence, start over and see if the dice come up Lucky Sevens. They ask me: do you think I’m nuts to do this? And I say sure, (as if I got anything against being nuts)  but … if you’re not happy here, with what you got, with the life you made, I’d take a roll of the dice too.  Plus, it’s America.  We’re supposedly the adventurous, the brave, the pioneers.  We leave the known for the unknown.  We let optimism be our guide.  Complacency is the enemy.  Reinvent yourself!  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Go west, young man!  At least …. that’s what we tell ourselves.  Even if most of us have settled for a secure banality.

So maybe  it’s the winter of our discontent. Friends are dying, not a lot, but a start and our turn is in there somewhere. The community volunteerism isn’t working, the house has a leaky roof and the deck is rotted, retirement is surprisingly BORING, the walls are closing in and the trips to town are maddeningly uneventful. It’s as if the life we thought we’d built on sturdy foundations is sliding toward the bluff in incremental but steady tectonic lurches. We aren’t going to be rich and famous, money didn’t buy us love, religion was dumbed down to an embarrassingly blind faith devoid of anything resembling much more than a hope for another life in the after-world or prayers for winning the Lotto. We’re adrift, unmoored and untethered, and definitely uneasy.

I know. This is how I felt when I came here. For you pilgrims, be of cheerful heart! Sometimes the grass IS greener. Occasionally you CAN start over. Dreams DO come true in the once upon a times…. And happiness may actually be just over the next hill, the one you won’t find if you don’t go looking. Good luck!

I recently got an inquiry from an artist who was perplexed by the name of our upcoming 6th annual Small Craft Advisory Show, thinking that it was downright inconsiderate toward our artists to label it small … and worse, small craft. Craft, of course, for her and a large percentage of the population, connotes macrame plant hangers, popsickle stick whirligigs, knitted baby caps, stained glass suncatchers, scented candles, glass plates on rebar yard ornaments, custom keychains, handmade soaps and of course, plenty of birdhouses. I get it.

I tried to explain that the name was intended as a humorous nod to a weatherman’s warning for vessels to be prepared for stormy seas. And hopefully the title would evoke in the general public a sense that these crafts would be a small tsunami in their impact.

I’m afraid that argument didn’t work, but trust me, our artistic vision is anything but small. And unlike many of the artists who dismiss craft as somehow inferior to their watercolor sunsets and their numbered reproduction prints, these are craftspeople creating one-of-a-kind artworks from wood, from clay, from found objects, from glass to fabrics.

You won’t find a kitschy birdhouse here … but if you did, it would rock your boat, believe me, and that small craft warning might be welcome. What you will find are Don Metke’s museum quality wood assemblages, Russ Riddle’s exquisite Japanese inspired furniture with delicate gingko marquetry, Shannon Kirby’s carved driftwood sculpture, Chuck Hamilton’s incredible turned bowls, Monika De Nasha’s native American otter bags with traditional beadwork, Erin Marie’s organic fueled jewelry, Persis Gayle’s distinctive clay creations, Elizabeth Moncrief’s fabulous fabric wearables, David Taber’s NW inspired wood and stoneworking that one year featured a gigantic octopus with moveable tentacles, Mark Eikeland’s unique pottery and my own stained glass panels many of which became inspiration for huge public art installations.

We run the entire gamut of crafts that are definitely fine art. We aren’t what you’ve come to expect from a ‘craft’ show — we’re what Artificial Intelligence will never reproduce. We’re crafters who love our work and want to share it. Not all of it is for sale. This is an exhibition, admission is free. This is fine craft and most definitely fine art. Come down to the Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center, 10-4, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 20 and 21. But be advised, this is the Small Craft Advisory Show. www.smallcraftadvisory.net

I forget sometimes that the island here is a vacation get-away still, even after the resorts were shuttered, sold and torn down. Even Cama Beach State Park with its dozens of refurbished cabins has closed them to habitation, maybe the last hurrah from the Resort Era when salmon were still plentiful and Camano was a fishing destination. Now folks come to their cottages or stay with family and friends, walk the beach and kayak the shorelines.

Today, though, Labor Day, the yearly Exodus begins. Range Rovers pulling trailers with dirt bikes, SUV’s with kayaks shoved onto roof racks, cars loaded with rubber rafts, coolers, paddle boards, grills and the kids — they all pack it in, head back to jobs and school, bid adieu to our sunsets, our clamming and crabbing, our desolate beaches, and drive off into their last island sunset for another year. Boats that have moored offshore get hauled in, trailered up behind trucks and driven back to a winter drydock, crab pots piled, buoys stashed, off they go, adios, vaya con dios!

For nine months we get our peace and quiet back. Walking the beaches below I won’t find my fellow hikers tomorrow. Old footprints in the sand will be gone by morning, just me and the herons now, seagulls barking, eagles overhead, hardly a boat out in the Saratoga Straits. Call me selfish but c’mon, I shared all summer with the motorcycles, the jetskis, the family reunions, the 4th of July bombardments, the traffic …. Just give me a few months of tranquillity, the least an old codger can ask.

And sure, I know these folks leaving are returning to 40 hour weeks in jobs they probably hate back in congested cities but we can’t all live in Paradise, can we? Adam and Eve didn’t have tourism, airbnb’s, VRBO’s, timeshare condos, did they? So it seems like an okay compromise to me, let a few folks share this place for a few days, weeks, months. But then they’ve got to leave. Labor Day is check out time. Seems fair to me.