The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Just this week a researcher looking for a substitute antibiotic found a thousand year old recipe for eye balm, no doubt one of Merlin the Magician’s potions passed down witch to witch. The formula for this consisted of garlic and herbals and bile from the belly of a cow. I think eye of newt was optional. The whole concoction was aged in a brass or copper vessel for exactly 9 days, full moon or not. Our intrepid researcher followed directions precisely and at the end of 9 days, applied the ointment to petri dishes of various strains of disease-causing bacteria. To her surprise, the stuff killed MERSA, the staph infection nothing we have in our medical arsenal can touch. Killed it 90% dead. If we can keep from adding it to chicken and livestock feed, or prescribing it to every patient with a runny nose or a mild headache, maybe we can stop MERSA for a few years until it develops immunity to fermented cow bile.

Down here on the pharma-centric South End, our labs will soon be scouring medieval manuscripts, Egyptian hieroglyphs, shaman’s diairies, sorceror’s journals and Sumerian tablets for the lost cures of our less advanced civilizations. Jimmy the Pestil is working out in his detached garage with puddle water growing strains of fungus gathered from his clogged gutters. He claims it kills lots of things, but nothing like SARS or E-bola. His cat nearly died drinking some nasty vetch with floating fungus, but that didn’t stop his neighbor’s wife Sarah from ordering up the recipe in hopes it would, in small but regular doses, cure her husband Hal’s erectile dysfunction if she added it discreetly to his coffee every morning.

Why not? If our scientists have to resort to alchemy and the potions of wizards back in King Arthur’s time, what have we got to lose? Bubble bubble, boil and trouble, put a fire under the iron kettle and start stirring in nettles and the saliva of wild rabbits, let it age a few days, take notes and give it to the neighbors for their ills. Every night on the Boomer News, the pharmacies are offering their own remedies for everything from twitchy toe syndrome to roving eye disorder, then they spend a minute or two warning us of the side effects, everything from psychotic episodes to jaundice to death. If ever the cure was worse than the disease, half of these are. Let’s face it, Jimmy the Pestil’s potions couldn’t be half as bad. Plus, with a little blind faith, the placebo effect should cure most of what ails us. I know Sarah thinks so, judging by her smile lately, and that’s good enough for me. The rest of you, go ahead and consult a physician. Or your local sorcerer.

The ill-fated Nettle Festival was conceived as the kick-off to Rev. Ralph Fisher’s tent revival for the Little Church of the Ravine. THE END IS NEAR, his readerboard sign announced months ahead of the scheduled event, THE SOUTH END REVIVAL IS COMING! The congregation might have known what was slouching toward us, but the rest of us down here were bemused or amused, depending on our degree of what the good reverend referred to as ‘heathenism’. The South End was in mighty need of missionary work itself, he was fond of preaching, but their puny tithing went instead to saving the natives of New Guinea and east Africa. I figure they were easier to convert than us locals who were fairly content to wallow in our puddles of iniquity.

The Nettle Festival itself wasn’t such a bad idea. In fact, the Tyee Store tried to revive it a few intervening years after what was referred to as ‘the tragedy’. But even today there are members of the congregation who break into sobs over their coffees when mention is made. And this is 35 years after ‘the tragedy.’ I speak of it now in hushed tones and never around Mildred’s family who still live down the road. Some events in this mean old world aren’t meant for sarcasm or ridicule, although you would have to admit, even the pious among you, that Rev. Ralph overdid it with the Nettle Maze, his Labyrinth of Itching Hell.

Stigmata wipe-off tattoos are one thing, but the Nettle Maze crossed the line. By the weekend of the Revival, the Little Church had erected a tent worthy of Ringling Brothers. Churches from as far away as Sedro-Wooley and Darrington had come in converted school buses and rickety vans, hauling the Believers and their children from far and wide for a day of righteous fun and old time religion. Pastor Philip of Pentecostal fame arrived the night before from his circuit riding, prayed with Rev. Ralph and his long-suffering wife Mildred and slept the peaceful sleep of the Godly before that morning’s first sermon of fire and brimstone-laden admonitions blistered the varnish off the old pulpit.

By afternoon the sun came out like a prophecy and the festival cranked up its volume. Chainsaw carvers sent cedar chips flying and the face of Jesus appeared in chiseled log sculpture. Stigmata wash-off tattoos made the teenager giggle, 666’s on foreheads being by far the favorite of the boys. Glossalalia crossword puzzles didn’t work out so well, but the Biblical action figures of Moses in combat with John the Baptist and Jesus himself down by the firepit were a huge hit with the younger kids.

And of course there was the Nettle Maze. The Labyrinth of Itching Hell itself! Half an acre of loops and turns and dead ends so intricate not even Jimmy Randall, the church caretaker who’d carved the trails over the past three weeks, starting when the plants were three feet tall and he could see over them, could navigate safely. Now, of course, they were higher than the tallest man’s head and impossible to survey beyond the impenetrable wall of stinging stalks that held each entrant locked into the maze. Dozens were wandering hopelessly lost in there when a foul wind came up like the cold breath of Beelzebub himself, the one Pastor Philip of the Pentecost had predicted only half an hour earlier in fiery prose. Hell had come to the South End or surely would arrive soon, the unsuspecting crowd had been informed and sure enough, a mighty howl rose from the ravine like the thousand laments of the Lost. The sun blotted out behind dark and treacherous clouds and that cold wind became a tempest and the circus tent became a shaking thing, alive and monstrous, tearing at its ropes, sending one and all running for the safety of the field before the cords tore loose and the canvas tent set sail like an ungodly wing, flapping into the distance before it shrouded the chapel itself and caught on the belfry where it ripped itself to pieces on the steeple. Torn asunder, Rev. Ralph would tell of it for years. Torn asunder!

But those inside the Maze had nowhere to turn. Children and adults alike wheeled and fled, down paths that went nowhere, flayed by the wind-whipped stalks of stinging death. Well, not death, literally, but who knows what went through those terrified minds besotted with brimstone stories? Their screams reached the field beyond, but what could we outsiders do except listen in horror. One by one the survivors stumbled out into the raging storm, rashes covering their faces and hands, tears streaming down their pockmarked faces. The Little Chapel opened its double doors to lead these blinded sheep inside, to calm them and offer balm, to offer shelter from the storm. Pastor Philip was in 7th Heaven, finding in the calamity further proof of the Scriptures. He was in fine form, everyone agreed later.

But it was later Rev. Ralph realized Mildred was missing. He went from person to person asking if they’d seen Mildred. No one had. A boy sporting 666 on his forehead said he’d seen her go in the Maze. “Are you sure,” the congregation cried, nearly in unison. He was certain. Rev. Ralph led the search party. The wind had abated nearly as quickly as it had come up. Down at the Labyrinth the nettles had been laid down in haphazard rows as if the horn of Jericho had blown and there, in the exact center, stood Mildred, stone still, a strange statue of a woman staring into the sky, not moving, not crying out, just frozen in time and space. Between Heaven and Hell, Pastor Philip would say more than a few times in the following days. Only Rev. Ralph dared approach and he did so with the utmost trepidation as everyone watched in dread.

Mildred was never the same. Some say she wasn’t quite right to begin with, but that’s uncharitable. She spoke in tongues a day later. Unintelligible garble, strange utterances, ugly curses. But I’ve never heard that from anyone who was actually there. I do know it’s hard to be with her even now. She doesn’t actually engage and looks right through you while she perpetually scratches at her arms. It may be she’s lost forever in that maze. It may even be, as the Bible thumping Pastor Philip would say, we’re everyone of us lost in that maze.

It’s easy to fall prey to the incessant alarm bells of our media looking for the ‘hook’ 24/7. The E-bola scare seems to have subsided after a month’s frenzy. Last time I looked we had two cases in this country of 350 million people, not a statistically significant number really, but enough apparently to bring the pundits to full boil and generate a clamor to close the borders. We have the Islamic State chopping heads off captives and burning folks alive, great stuff for the purveyors of panic, but so far we don’t have one single case on our own shores.

This week we get the report that the measles epidemic, the disease we thought we eradicated, is sweeping the country from its launch site in Disneyland. Now, I don’t blame Walt or even Mickey for this outbreak — we’ll let the liability attorneys ascribe blame and monetary redress — but I do blame the news media for fanning the flames. Course, now we got endless public debates on vaccines and vaccinations. You know we’re in trouble when the politicians weigh in. Usually they’ll tell you, ‘I’m not a scientist, but…. I think there’s serious people who question the roundness of the planet.’ This time they’re not even starting out with the ‘I’m not a doctor’ before they start playing one on TV. I mean, it’s not like Walt had a kiddie fun ride on giant flying syringes called Infection World. Just bad luck. For his stockholders, anyway. Put the QUARANTINE sign up and lock the gate.

Yesterday we were told there were 4 verified cases at this state alone! And 140 more across the Land of the Brave and Home of the Free. The sky is falling, the boy is calling wolf, the enemy is at the door! One doctor interviewed said the contagion rate was 90% certain if you were in the same airspace as the infected. 90%!!! He was standing in what looked like a plastic greenhouse with an enclosed airspace in the parking lot next to a hospital Emergency Room where newly arrived victims could be diagnosed and hustled into the ER. 90% of those exposed non-inoculated yahoos would catch measles!!

The doc’s greenhouse was empty right then, not much activity … although he looked prepared for the coming hordes. 4 already!! I know, doesn’t sound like a lot. Actually seems kinda small. All I can say is he better hurry it up, the press can’t wait because they know, even if we don’t, the next Crisis is just around the corner, already rearing its ugly head.

I read the other day that the most trusted news organization in America was … are you ready for this? … ta-da … Fox News. 29% of respondents said it was the network they trusted the most. 22 % cited CNN and the CBS/ABC/NBC lamestream media stations polled at 10% or less. If you go to partisan opinion, 58% of Republicans trusted Fox the most with 3% of Democrats. Democrats went with CNN at 32%.

Down here on the black and blue South End this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it did for me. My folks watch Fox pretty much all day long. They think of it as news when I think of it as opinion based right wing fear mongering. Course my folks think Obama is worse than Attila the Hun, that he’s not an American, that he’s a Muslim terrorist and god only knows what else this Pretender is capable of, being a hater of the country he is trying to destroy from within that only the talking heads of the most trusted news station can prevent.

Maybe we should’ve expected this. After all, even science has become a political football. Evolution, the Big Bang, Global Climate Change, they’re all suspect to the folks who trust political opinion over political fact. A recent poll showed educated Republicans’ belief in these scientific theories diminished radically the MORE education they had. Democrats’ beliefs rose with additional education. Now, maybe I’m deluded here, but I always felt like facts mattered and science was something we Americans embraced. You got a theory on how things work, you put it to the test, run some experiments, see if there’s validity. At least that’s what I was taught in my public school system.

Apparently we don’t buy that baloney anymore. The Senator who heads up the committee on the Environmental Protection Agency walked in last week with a snowball to show how global warming was bunk. God, he said, was the only power capable of changing the weather. Says so in the Good Book. Case closed.

Now, I don’t mind a difference of opinion. Put your facts on the table and I’ll put mine there and we’ll see whose add up and whose don’t. But when I have to argue against the Word of God and you got the only correct interpretation of His point of view, well, the argument is pretty much moot, isn’t it? Might as well go debate the Taliban or Isis. And, no offense, it’s getting harder and harder for me to tell the difference between the religiously righteous, whether it’s us, them or the heathens.  Next year I expect the Fox News Network to declare themselves a church and apply for non-profit status.