Floaters

Official Mandy Mae Portrait

In river travel floaters are a constant threat to a boat.  Anywhere else, they're just short bits of flotsam that pass by in life.

A post I worked on yesterday is destined for the trash.  The long narrative could be broken down into several sentences.  When doing research, how reliable is your source?  The post described the future owner of a house I put on the market who went next door to my house before he made an offer to purchase.  An MD, he talked to the owners about the neighborhood.  The next door neighbors were a quarreling couple, he a philanderer and she a housebound shrew.

A nice couple in our present area comes over to swap info about gardening.  Specifically, they want to know the details concerning row covers.  I explain the pros and cons and the little tidbits I found out from the school of gardening by experience. We have an enjoyable morning swapping stories.

In the course of several cups of coffee I spout off about the environment. "If you want to know just how bad the state of the environment is, take a trip down a river."  Then I read them a passage from  River Horse by William Least Heat Moon. In this excerpt one of the crew runs into a person running for political office who disagreed with every statement the crew member made about his concern for the environment. The Republican politician says bluntly that Nature has to give when people won't. 

At breakfast the crew and a Game and Fish man deride the politician.  A crew member says he'll go down to the river and tell it to "shape up and flow right."  The Game and Fish man says tongue in cheek that the plovers on the river need to "learn how to nest in trees."  Then, another crew member remarks that 80% of the population favors strong environmental protections but Republican politicians typically oppose them.  "Why?" 

"The 80% isn't paying for their campaigns."

We stop by the couple's 120 farm on the way to a Chinese lunch just down the road a piece to drop off a bottle of wine and some breakfast sausage I'd made recently. I've already learned to tread lightly when spouting off.  I criticize a local Chinese buffet for poor sanitary practices and find it's a favored place.

Inside their restored 150 year old log house, we're flipping through a scrapbook documenting the restoration.  One picture shows the husband standing proudly in front of the birthplace of the Republican party in Ripon, Wis.  Oh shoot.  There goes another wonderful possible connection down the outhouse of politcs.

The local school district begins the process of laying off 38 teachers.  The news is full of Skippy Walker's antics.  Michael Moore addresses a Madison crowd of 30,000 and 40,000 ending his speech with the Wisconsin Fight song title On Wisconsin, saying we're not broke, we're not broke, the money's in the wrong hands.While the government bails out the banks the rest of us have to worry about how were going to afford the cost of gas if indeed it reaches $5 a gallon. 

Look At The Size of Those Whiskers

And why pray tell do the stats for this blog indicate that I have more pageviews from Iran and The United Arb Emirates than from the United States. Oh cripes.