A few things have changed...

...for instance, Genie and I have retired from teaching and moved from Wasilla, AK (formerly known as $arahPalindia) and gone off to Eugene Oregon, where progressivism is actually tolerated, and dare I say, nourished. We're close to the kids and grand kids, go to wineries (yum) and have real summers for the 1st time in about 30 years. Try an outdoors CHICAGO concert at 77 degrees, with stars overhead, and ice cold micro-brew in hand. Not happening in old AK, my friends!

Selling the Casa Siedler was a trial, and selling off most of our earthly possessions for about 10 cents-on-the-dollar nearly put me into the cardiac ward, but we did it, and strangely enough, I don't think about it at all anymore. So all of you that picture yourselves in a different place with less "stuff" and more of everything else, it can be done, and we've proved it. Our 960 square-foot condo seems to get bigger all the time, and Aly-the-dog has even gotten used to it. In fact, with 3 walks a day and a better food regimen, she's lost 5 pounds and I've gained five. Where's the justice in that?
I used to teach in a "portable" 300 yards from the staff kitchen. Now that I'm not working, I spend alot of time at home. I call it "refrigerator proximics." More later...

I'm back...and here's what I have to say about GOP debates:

"If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. If you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon." - Mitt Romney, 11-12-11

"There are a number of ways to be smart about Iran, and a few ways to be stupid. The administration skipped all the ways to be smart." - Newt Gingrich, 11-12-11

I can't remember when I've heard that many unsubstantiated, indefensible, generic, pandering, non-specific and wholly insupportable criticisms of the guy in charge, who's foreign policy has been a boon to the respect and prestige of the US in the world, as opposed to the bane of Bush/Cheney.

Just a thought

...as we begin to liquidate our holdings here, after 32 years in Alaska. My bookshelves just walked out the door yesterday, for the sum of $155.00. If that wasn't bad enough on my psyche, I have given away most of my books, my precious books. It's not as though I owned a library of classical literature, although I did own English translations of both The Iliad and The Odyssey. These others were "classics"to my quirky and yet somewhat pedestrian tastes.

Authors like Martin Cruz Smith (Arkady, when is your next adventure?) and Patrick Tilley (Jesus as a time-traveling warrior from another planet)in his one true opus, "Mission." "Source," certainly James Michener's best work - and it was about archaeology! Ray Bradbury's "Golden Apples of the Sun," And of course the late Patrick O'Brian's 18-tome saga of "Lucky Jack" Aubrey of the Royal Navy. Julian Stockwin's Kydd series is the next best thing,and it, like the "Sharps Rifles series, has gone away as well. So many authors and books. Like friends, only reliable. On the eve of seeing O'Brian's "Master and Commander" leave my possession forever, I began to reread it, and I must say I could read it again, and again.

I've kept a few books, mostly on the Cold War and books that suit my growing humanistic philosophy, a few science books to be housed by my son the science guy.

And I have a "Nook," an e-book, which my wife tells me is all and more of what I want, and takes up a lot less space in our 960 square foot condo (I feel like I should only use the abbreviations "sq"and "ft"when referring to the condo, which of course is an abbreviation for the term "condominium"). In any case, the feeling you get when you give away all of your corporeal, material literature, and settle for "virtual" literature,is a sense, maybe ,not of death or dying, but certainly an adjustment to a new "plane of existence." I guess that's what retirement is, too.

Feel free to send me suggestions from fiction (especially historical fiction), pop science, and history. If I cannot download it onto my Nook, maybe I can sneak out and buy it in its corporeal form.
Posted by ~Bill at 5:31 PM 0 comments

EEK! Stowaway rat delays Alaska Airlines flight

The Associated Press

Published: February 11th, 2011 10:26 PM
Last Modified: February 11th, 2011 10:27 PM

SEATTLE -- Alaska Airlines had to delay a flight about to leave Seattle-Tacoma International Airport when a rat was seen scurrying in the cabin.

The airline says the flight from Seattle to Denver had just pulled away from the gate Thursday morning when the stowaway was spotted. The 737 jetliner returned to the terminal, and passengers and crew boarded another plane about 90 minutes later.

Airline spokeswoman Bobbie Egan says the plane won't be returned to service until maintenance workers make sure the rat didn't damage equipment or chew any wires -- and an exterminator certifies the plane is rodent-free.

Egan says workers also are trying to figure out how the rat got aboard. She says in cold weather, "sometimes rodents can seek shelter in strange places."
________________________

My response?
Flight Attendant: "We don't see many rats flying with Alaska Airlines!"
Rat: "With these prices and this service, I'm not a bit surprised."

So sorry to have been...

...gone so long, but really, I've discovered an activity that has been so addictive, it reminds me why I always put down all the "Dungeons and Dragons" geeks back in the day. I am now an on-line commenter, involved, thus far in the on-line versions of our local Valley Frontiersman, and the Anchorage Daily News. What's worse, it seems I've been accepted by these denizens of the daily (or thrice weekly, in the case of the Frontiersman). In a way, it's like being an accepted member of NYC's "unter-subway community" of homeless, yet at home souls. We don't have the power to change anything on the surface, but we're still here!
I haven't commented on some of the publications I read: HuffPo, Daily Kos, The Nation and others, only because they want you to access through "Facebook"and I haven't capitulated to that extent - yet.

You can get involved yourselves, or you can check on what bon mots I may toss in from time-to-time. You will easily guess my "handle" if you been reading my blog. Both Pubs are on-line. From time to time I will endeavor to share some of what goes on in this small pocket of the on-line under-belly. I wonder if in our new home, the Eugene Register Guard newspaper has such a place?

In the wake of the Gabriel Giffords shooting...

I am posting this collection from the blogosphere from Mike Stanfill through P.Z. Meyers (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/). Resonate with you? BTW: Alaska's gun laws are as lax as AZ's. Any 21 year-old moron with a self perceived beef and a history of mental instability can get a Glock 19 just like this mass murderer.

If a Detroit Muslim put a map on the web with crosshairs on 20 pols, then 1 of them got shot, where would he be sitting right now? Just asking. - Michael Moore

A physician cannot treat an illness s/he willfully refuses to diagnose. Violent political rhetoric is not fault of "both sides." - Tom Tomorrow

Inspiring that our media pundits are so quick to reach for "everyone's to blame" when no conservative events have been terrorized by gunmen. - Jeffrey Feldman

Weird: rightwingers say movies, video games affect behavior -- but real world violent rhetoric from leaders & radio talkers have NO impact! - Tom Tomorrow

Jared Lougnner: drug arrests, too crazy for Army or for college or anything else, but getting a legal gun? No problem. - Tom Tomorrow

I find it abhorrent that Sarah Palin would stoke the coals of extremism with dangerous messaging, then delete it when something bad happens. - Jason Pollock

Sure, Sarah Palin didn't pull the trigger. But then, neither did Charles Manson. - auntbeast

Christina Taylor Green was Born on September 11, 2001, and killed today by terrorist fuckheads in Arizona. Irony much? - geeksofdoom

Sarah Palin rummages online frantically erasing her rabble-rousing Tweets like a Stalinist trimming non-persons out of photos. - Roger Ebert

I'll say this, if your first instinct after hearing about a tragedy is to scrub yr websites, you have a problem as a political movement. - digby56

CNN's Dana Bash says "this could be a wake-up call." THIS ... ? The whole Tea Party, carrying guns to rallies WASN'T?? - hololio2

Teaparty asses have been asking for this to happen, and how they're pissed off that we're calling them out on it. - TLW3

STOP SAYING"BOTH PARTIES"!! The Left has not been advocating Violence. @CNN assholes. - YatPundit

[Concludes P.Z.]: Do not sit there cowering, trying to make excuses for teabaggers and violent morons. This is supposed to be the part where you stand up, look at the shouters on the other side, and tell them, "This is wrong, and this is the harm you bring to our country." Instead, I see a rush to postures of submission.

Alaska's governator...

Sean Parnell is getting all uppity over management of federal lands and waters. Here's what I wrote the Anchorage Daily News, which will probably not be published, if recent history is any indication:

So our governor ("Parnell warns of too much federal control," ADN Jan. 8) is getting all Rick Perry (Texas' guv) on the feds. Parnell's (empty, of course) threat: "We want our state back and we will take it back." Is this a small-man's-syndrome thing? Has Parnell been taking lessons from Kim Il Sung? Is his tossing of the "states' rights" card an early reelection gambit? Finally, does Parnell not know that federal lands in this state are held in trust for all Americans, and that neither he, nor I nor any Alaskan has any more say in how those lands (and waters) are managed than a little old lady living in Ohio? Like it or no, that's the way it is, guv. You should concentrate on doing a good job of managing what we already have.
Bill Siedler,
Wasilla

Maybe I'm just getting more mouthy because we plan to leave the "Greatland" soon, but teaching (and learning) Alaska History has shown me that without the federal largess that has flowed in Alaska since 1900, we'd be like Al Capp's "Lower Slobbovia" and still a province of Guggenheim, JP Morgan and the salmon syndicate.

It's "semi-official"...

Looks as though we'll be "restructuring" (some call it retiring) from our respective school district careers at the end of this school year. Gonna move on down to Eugene, Oregon to be closer to family, and escape another Alaskan winter. The last few years, I've noticed that each succeeding winter seems a little colder, a little darker, and a little longer than the one before (global warming models say I'm wrong about the "colder," but it sure feels like it!).

Not only are the winters warmer - if wetter - in Oregon, but the political climate suits wife and I better than "The Land of Sarah." I tire of tilting uber-conservative windmills, and windbags here...but that's a story for later. Suffice it to say that I will miss this place, and nearly every one of it's inhabitants - bipeds included.

But hush! The gestation period of a logistical triumph the likes of which we have never seen (moving) has begun!