The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I must be bored lately cause I’ve been reading the Letters to the Editor page, sort of on par with following the aptly named Yahoo News, which mostly thinks news is the fashion faux pas of movie stars or the recent exploits of the Kardashian Klan.  I guess this may just be the pulse of the nation.  Yesterday an aggrieved writer weighed in on Camano’s ballot measure to build a permanent library.  Waste of money, he concluded, when we could just do it privately.  “Like they do in lots of places.”  Big community fundraiser is what we need, he said.  Privately operated.  Gather up bequests.  Do it ourselves.  Anything but a tax supported quasi-governmental library.

I guess the $40,000 we raised to pay the rent for two years at the current pilot library wasn’t ‘community’ enough for this guy.  That, and the volunteers manning the phone banks for weeks at a time don’t qualify either.  Or voting to tax ourselves isn’t what he considers ‘community-minded.’  Just another example of Big Government.

Some folks just want everything privatized, I guess.  They think that way they won’t have to pay for it.  Fire departments used to be private.  Sign up, they’ll fight a fire when your house catches; skip the payments, they’ll watch it burn.  If you’re poor, tough luck ….

I wouldn’t mind, maybe, all of us community minded yahoos banding together, raising funds, auctioning off art and the usual items, baking cookies for the Bake Sale, organizing a board, volunteering to work for gratis so my tax averse friends can save a dollar or three then use the services for free, but I’m worried we’ll want fire protection privately funded next and police services based on donations soon to follow and road repairs done only if given enough bequests that year.  My guess is this is how you Starve the Beast, but you ask me — and I know you didn’t — this is how you make a jungle.

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Skeeter’s actually got to stop for a few days here and go up to Alaska for a job.   I know, I know, it’s disappointing to have to leave a life of sloth and indolence, but if done occasionally, it adds a fresh perspective on what could easily become the rut and routine of  life.  At least that’s what I tell myself.  I’m traveling without cellphone or laptop.  Practically like the pioneer explorers and trappers of old….  Oh, it’s dangerous and more than a little scary, but hey, living on the edge is the South End Way.  With any luck I’ll be back before the polar bears are extinct and the glaciers are big goopy puddles.   Alaskans don’t really buy into that global warming stuff anyway and I sure don’t plan to bring em any news they don’t want.  After all, they’re my new paycheck.   Hopefully.  Wish old Skeeter luck and I’ll be back down here in the 48 sooner than you can say Drill Baby Drill.  Meanwhile, Sarah Palin has an insightful little blog you might check out.  Or you can rummage through the trash bin here and see what you can wrap old fish in.  Me, I’m off to the midnight sun.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/audio-tool-users.mp3[/podcast]audio –tool users

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I remember a conversation back when the home computers were getting up to speed. The missuz had one and so did a neighbor friend, sort of the digital vanguard of the South End in retrospect. Like a lot of my cronies, I was mostly distrustful of this new-fangled technology, probably the way my monkey forbears worried about fire. I said, being the philosophical ape I am, that this was the equivalent of the spinning jenny, a revolution that would change everything.

Naw, they said, it’s just a Tool. Don’t be afraid, little man, it won’t bite. It’s at least 25 years later now, a quarter of a century, a big chunk of my life, not a long time in geologic terms, but the world isn’t the same now. I’ve got my own computer, my own website, my own blog. The missuz has a cellphone, I-pods, mp-3 players. We order movies off NetFlix, we got wireless connections, most of what we do is on-line. The kids that visit stay right in touch with their friends on Facebook. So do their parents. My truck is half computer. My life is too. Some folks, it’s mostly digital, virtual, instant. They’re Connected most all of the time. The kids, they’re 100%.

I’m not saying this is bad. Sure, I miss a conversation without being interrupted by an urgent Text message telling my visitor about their grocery purchase. The kids who came this weekend wanted to stream sitcoms off Netflix, most frineds ask what our wireless password is second thing after hello.

This Tool we got has rocked our world. This Tool is picking up speed, accelerating exponentially and it’s all most of me and my pals can do not to watch it disappear over the Event Horizon. There’s a notion called a Singularity, a point of time where there’s a break, a complete quantum leap, from what was to what is completely different, something like the Tool making itself, fixing itself, designing new selves. Something like a moment when the Tool Users – me and my cronies – become irrelevant. We won’t know, of course, because we’ll be mostly digital component parts ourselves, happily dependent on the Tool.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/audio-Where-the-Grass-Is-Truly-Greener.mp3[/podcast]audio — Where the Grass Is Truly Greener

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I’m on septic watch. My 1000 gallon outhouse replacement is exposed beside the driveway and I’m waiting for South End Septic’s pump truck to come, open up its concrete ports and haul away my decade of toilet flushes and sink drainage and bathtub water. Used to be, we just moved the outhouse over a new hole, but now we got a modern system, one with multiple chambers, 3 access holes and a dedicated drainage area where the grass grows twice as fast as anywhere else.

This is the second pumping since the vault was dropped into the hole the backhoe dug back in 1993. It’s the second time I’ve had to dig up shrubs, move paving bricks and search three feet down for those hundred pound access ports because we couldn’t afford the expensive riser extensions that stick up to the surface like dirty reverse periscopes – think colonoscopy – and preclude ever digging again. After tunneling hallway thru the earth’s crust this time, I’m buying the tubes no matter if I have to sell two favorite banjos to pay for them. I shoulda learned the first dig! But with the County wanting an inspection every two or three years, my excavation career needs to end.

It will be, happily, the end of an inglorious era. The old shack had a cesspool when we came to the South End. A cesspool, for you uninitiated, is a hole in the ground instead of a concrete or plastic vault. It works only because the soil here drains well. And whatever cover you put over it hasn’t rotted and collapsed. Which ours did every few years. You think pumping a septic tank is nasty business, dig a new cesspool and connect up the old lines from the plumbing. Then deal with the scowls from the missuz who considers this criminal behavior. Which, of course, like a lot of customs down here, it is.

I suppose modernization is a good thing. You know, if you can afford it. My grandparents had outhouses until they were in their 50’s. We got one ‘just in case.’ You ever waited for a teenage fashion queen to apply her make-up while you’re hopping on one leg, you’d build one too, just for that ‘just in case.’

Well, like I said, the pump truck is on its way. I’m expecting a reduced fee, naturally, because – and I’m not bragging, just being factual – mine don’t stink the way others’ do. I’m sure the septic guy will be more than a little appreciative.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/audio-at-work-in-the-fields-of-eden.mp3[/podcast]audio — at work in the fields of eden

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I got a truckload of friends and neighbors moving away.  Selling their parcel and their view homes, moving down the road to Arizona, New Mexico, Montana and beyond.  They’re tired, they say, of mowing lawns and pulling weeds.  Too damn much work!  And … the dandelions and the fescue grow faster than cows on growth hormones.

I’m sure there’s other reasons.  Too dreary here in the winter.  Too boring in retirement.  Too lonely now that the kids have flown the nest, married and have careers and separate lives.  Somewhere ELSE the grass is greener.  But it never grows very fast, if at all over near somewhere else.

We’re all looking for something, I guess.  That’s what keeps religion in business.  Folks are always happy to tell you what you’re missing, what you need, what they can offer.  We’re a little bored, a little lonely, a little tired of crappy TV.  We think maybe a change of scenery might do us good.  It’s how I ended up Here, so I’d be the last fella standing if I said Don’t Go.  Sometimes a change of latitude does create a change of attitude.  Why we take vacations …..

Course, it’s temporary.  Unless you live here on the South End.  I mow a helluva lot of lawn.  I weed a lot of garden.  So does the missuz — and she has a full time job.  Sometimes it feels like a chore, but most of the time I feel like Heaven’s Gardener.  Pruning the orchards, harvesting the crops, trimming the flowers, planting the shrubs, cutting firewood —- yah, it takes a lot of time, sweat and sore backs.  I’d be lying if I said I never minded.  I’d be less than honest if I didn’t mention it’s a labor of love.

I suspect Adam and Eve didn’t get booted out of the Garden.  I bet they just didn’t like taking care of the place.  Too damn much work.  And the serpent told them they weren’t being paid enough to do it.  Paradise, I suspect my emigrant neighbors and friends will learn soon, doesn’t come for free.  But the rewards aren’t measured in minimum wage either.

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