The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Well, it was only a matter of time, of course, before the social media clamor for more of Skeeter went viral. You can blame yourselves or congratulate you and your Facebook ‘friends’, but either way, expect a full scale frontal cable assault and You-Tube blitzkrieg for that 15 minutes of fame we all so desperately yearn for. Okay, not for you. Roll over Kardashians, Skeeter’s got the news.

Reality TV and its attendant sponsors surely have their fingers on the pulse and wallet of America, possibly the world, more than these poor pathetic politicians vying for the scraps of our attention spans in their sad quest for the Presidency. You think Kim Kardashian would trade places with the Commander in Chief? When every newsstand, Twitter feed, internet ‘news’ spots and Entertainment Tonight covers her every wardrobe, romance and dietary inclinations in minute detail??? The President maybe gets a 20 second spot on what we now think of as the liberal media and endless hours on Fox as their favorite evil dart board. Kim’s nobody’s fool.

And Skeeter’s nobody’s fool either. Awhile back one of the honchos of Island County politics ran into him at a charity fundraiser he was attending incognito and she asked if he knew this Skeeter fellow. He said he did indeed. She asked, “Are you Skeeter?”

“Sometimes,” he answered cautiously, sensing dangerous tectonics. She confided that the Democratic Party wanted someone from Camano Island to run for county commissioner and would he consider? She had heard from her sources that he was a potentially popular candidate. Skeeter said her sources were either unreliable or drug addled. Undeterred, she assumed he was joking. “I’ve heard you have quite a sense of humor,” she chuckled. Skeeter pointed out that there was nothing funny in politics these days. “All the more reason to throw your hat in the ring,” the party charwoman retorted.

Skeeter actually ran for commissioner a couple years earlier. As a joke. Even got a campaign poster in the Stanwood/Camano News and still receives write-in votes to this day. The editor at that time eventually ran — and won — the commissioner seat, never suspecting that Skeeter would be a stalking horse in the campaign, one that he had inadvertently unleashed on an unsuspecting populace.

But no, politics is not a hell Skeeter wants to inhabit. He has bigger fish to fry as we say down on the South End. He has his sights set on What Matters, what’s important, what moves the public’s imagination in this 21st Century hive mentality. He’s taking on Duck Dynasty, the Kardashians, America’s Top Model, Dancing with the Stars and American Idol. He expects to be the next Big Thing. By the 2016 presidential elections, good luck to the candidates. If we even remember their names…..

Down at the laboratories of the South End industrial parks, our scientists are working 24/7 to catch up with the head start all those government subsidized research labs got on us. You might think we’re at a disadvantage, but you haven’t factored in the leg up our innovative crew of experimenters get from the creative ricochet of living near all those artists we got. Practically a Petri dish of teeming mutating e-volved thinking. Ordinary folks should probably suit up in bio-hazard gear. That, or vaccinate themselves with high dosage Prozac.

Our teams of specialists are working on stem cell research. You take some cell tissues, see, and you train em like circus fleas to behave like brains or bones or eyeballs or whatever you need right then and you give the patient a spoonful or two and I tell you what: you got a whole new lease on life, and if you got insurance, well sir, you might as well grow a few spare parts while you’re at it.

Now, we got folks who picket the lab. Neighbors who think we’re in the Frankenstein business, cloning mice and sheep and two headed humans. I tell em we’re not cloning, we’re stem celling. Stem cell selling, actually. Nothing to worry about. We’re curing diseases. We’re making a little money.

Cloning — now that’s putting a hard edge on it, dontchathink? Stem cells, that isn’t a real person, exactly. Dumb as a rock, most stem cells, but the protestors say so are most South Enders – which, I have to admit, is a pretty convincing argument …. Until you think of the lives that could be saved. And the money too, coincidentally. What IF, I say, we could make stem cells SMARTER than us South Enders. What’s so wrong with THAT?? And THEY say, your little friend would have YOU doing the chores while they did the thinking.

I got to admit, it’s a complicated issue. Personally I think we better go slow. Make my little friend not too smart. Maybe just smart enuff to do my chores,,,,,

I overhear the bearded man say to the man of the cloth
what he asked the Disbeliever:
how do you explain You?
And the two of them, conspirators now, chuckle with smug certainty
while a chill wind fans flaming leaves from a nearby woods
into the autumnal park we stand in.

Answers demand questions and science demands religion
and nothing ever ceases, not the chicken, not the egg,
not God and not Galileo.

Nothing is not nothing.

The wind that blows through the hardwoods forces me to believe in Time,
but what is Time?
What is anything but what Is?

What Isn’t, now that’s a bit harder.
An answer is only another question.

The sky never falls, Humpty is the broken egg.

I want to ask my two Believers what answers they never searched for,
What part of This is not them.

But of course they’re not entertaining questions
and Dumpty will never be completely whole again,
not inside this park anyway….

As regular as swallows to Capistrano or buzzards to Hinkley, Ohio, the South End String Band is returning to the South Grange (2227 S. Camano Dr.) for its annual benefit concert. Mark your calendars for Saturday, Nov. 7th at 7 PM for the South Grange Hoedown, a night of ‘music to set your boots on fire’. (Last year’s Strange Grange Ganja Gig caused so much distress among the Literal Minded that this year we add the following disclaimer for those with misaligned funny bones: YOUR BOOTS WILL NOT BURST INTO FLAME. However, your hair might.)

Join us for an evening of old time Camano roots music with a decidedly South End flair. The South End String Band is Erich Schweiger on fiddle, Don Mailloux on bass, Mike Hilley on mandolin, Monika DeNasha on 6 string guitar and Jack Archibald on 5 string banjo. Beer and wine will be available legally and snacks will be served. We’re clearing a dance floor and we’re cranking up the tempo. Hope you can make it. $10 at the door. Free parking. Funny Bone Massage Available.

Someone broke into my shack two weeks ago while I was taking the mizzus to the airport. Broke in is maybe too strong a phrase since the door was open, never locked. I came in that next morning and an electric guitar was gone off its stand. At first I thought maybe I’d moved it. But no, it was missing. So was the acoustic guitar downstairs. I looked around for What Else was purloined, but … apparently my burglar was a musician, not an art lover. Dozens of framed stained glass pieces sat right where I left them, piled up throughout the studio. Tools were left untouched too and most everything else, mostly no value except to me.

My neighbor behind me, nice woman except for poor judgement in men, has a restraining order on her junkie boyfriend. The sheriff has picked him up more than once with stolen property, including my neighbor’s credit cards despite the restraining order. He’s still around. Our sheriff apparently has bigger fish to fry than a heroin addict burglar. This is bad news for me and the rest of the South End.

I just bought a set of locks and a hasp to bolt onto the shack’s not very secure front door. Someone wants to break in, they wouldn’t have any problem — I just want to take off the Welcome sign.

I had hoped — now that the Barefoot Bandit is securely cooling his heels in a federal pen for a few years — we could return to a pastoral innocence lost when the Kid terrorized the South End. I guess not. I doubt the locks will make much difference. Maybe with some luck, the new burglar will realize there isn’t much worth stealing. That, or he’ll take up a career as a lead guitarist, make his fortune, regret the error of his ways and some day return not only my stolen guitars but throw in some classic signed by his new buddy Eric Clapton. Meanwhile I hope he appreciates the loan….