Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Critters Just Shelley

The Yellow and Black Skunk

When I was a young’un, I lived on a farm several miles outside of Kettle Falls, in Washington state. Below the farm was an undeveloped field with a dirt road running through it that connected several homes. And below the road and the field was Lake Roosevelt. Surrounding all of this was bits and pieces of the Colville National Forest.

Back in those more innocent days, my mother let me go down to the field by myself as long as I didn’t go down to the water.

I loved this field of tall golden weeds. Since I was only about five at the time, the weeds would come up to my chest and I could look out on a sea of waving fronds and imagine I was on a ship in the ocean.

I loved the dust of the dirt road and would walk it slowly, sucking on the end of a grass blade pulled from the side of the road, occasionally chasing after a grasshopper or butterfly. Every once in a while I would see another critter such as a deer or a skunk, always trying to entice the former towards me, always giving considerable room to the latter.

Imagine a soft, warm summer afternoon, blue sky, glimmer of light reflection off of the water in the distance, the sound of insects and birds the only noise. And absolutely nothing to do but walk along the road and think thoughts of faraway places and strange new doings, such as my cousin coming for a visit and my Uncle giving my brother a rifle and not me because I was a girl. I got a stupid china tea set. You know the kind of thoughts — a child’s thoughts.

One day, there was a movement in the field towards my left. I stopped and looked, hand over eyes to shade the sun, squinting my eyes al-most tight (sign of glasses to come the following year), trying to see what was causing the motion.

Up a head pops and then down it goes.

What?

Up a head pops and then down it goes again.

What is that?

Again, the head appears and I have a better view. It’s golden and kind of flat and has black markings.

That’s not a deer. Too small for a deer.

Up the head pops and then down it goes again.

That’s not a bunny. It’s too big.

Up and down.

That’s not a skunk though it does have markings like a skunk.

I watched this strange creature for some time. I wasn’t frightened. If anything I thought this new experience was a huge treat considering the usual activity associated with a warm sunny afternoon, such as standing in the middle of a road of dust, listening to the insects rub wings and legs.

Up the head would pop, down it would go, each jump moving it farther away until with a last rustle, it disappeared into the woods.

I ran home and opened the door and there was my mother, washing something in the sink, the smell of good things to eat hanging in the late afternoon air. I remembered running up to her, excited, telling her in the jumbled child manner about this creature in the field that had these black markings and it jumped up and down and up and down and up…

“That’s a skunk, honey, You just saw a skunk is all.”

A yellow and black skunk? Well, okay. If you say so, Mama.

So I went for the just the longest, longest time, with this memory in my head of my warm, sunny afternoon and the field of gold and the dusty road, and my yellow and black skunk.

Until the day when I was looking at a new picture book and realized that my skunk was a bobcat.

Categories
Weblogging

The Dizzy saga continues

I’ve been pestering and pestering Allan Moult to continue with his Dizzy series and today he posted a new entry.

Regardless of whether you like cats or not, you’re going to like these stories. Tasty sample from today’s posting:

I ended up in hospital for a tetanus shot, a bandage and a helluva lot of snickering from the nurses when confronted with the ‘fierce cat’ that attacked me.

Stories are accompanied by an excellent photo of Dizzy — probably one of the best cat photos I’ve seen.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

And the truth shall set you free

I suffered a bit of an eye opener today when I read Jonathon’s response to my weblog posting and follow up from yesterday regarding self-justification. He wrote:

Yet, even though I don’t regard Oblivio as a weblog, others might. I suppose it could be mistaken for a weblog, just as Michael Barrish could be mistaken for a real person. He probably is a real person since he also uses the website to solicit web development work (though he maintains separate sites for each purpose, for reasons he explains in the story Motherfucker ). But Barrish is also a character who appears in his own stories. As does Rachel, his girlfriend. Whether she really exists and whether she’s his girlfriend is impossible to determine, without knowing Michael Barrish. Even then, the real-life Rachel may bear only a fleeting resemblance to the Rachel in the stories. (Just like the women in some of my stories.)

Of all possible outcomes of yesterday’s writing, what I didn’t expect is that the story that originated my passion might be allegorical rather than experience. I am left wondering whether I am a sophisticated patron of the arts or an incredibly gullible fool. And that’s the inherent danger of mixing the art of creation within the context of experiential recounting.

Jonathon continues with:

So, you might be asking, what’s the point of all this? The point is this: there seems to be an implicit agreement amongst webloggers to speak with an authentic voice, to tell the truth as they see it, to give witness, according to the dictates of journalism.

…

Storytelling depends on a belief that an artfully constructed fiction is frequently more truthful than a carefully described fact.

Must all webloggers speak of true experiences? Not at all, as witness the excellent satire of Wealth Bondage or the historical recountings of Bloggus Caesari.

However, in my opinion, if webloggers establish a truthful context for their words, then they do have a pact with their readers that says, “React honestly to my story because what I tell you is true”.

Something to think about. And write more about later because now I am off to spend the rest of the day in the hallowed halls of Hippocrates.

Categories
Connecting Diversity People Places

The kindness of strangers

If you know San Francisco than you know the Castro district. It’s colorful, interesting, lively, unique, and the center of gay activities in a city that’s known to be very gay friendly. All in all, it’s a fun place to walk, shop, whatever, because the people in the area are about the friendliest there are in the city.

Every year, the citizens of the Castro area throw a huge Halloween party. Cross dressers will spend months creating the outfits they’ll wear this night, and travel — by limo — from place to place showing off their finery. Over time, the straights discovered that, hey, the folks in Castro are having a great time. Next thing you know, the street party in Castro is _the_ place to be, Halloween night.

Unfortunately, the last few years, there’s been some good Christian boys who have deemed it their moral duty to show up on Halloween in order to attempt to beat to death anyone gay they might find.

It’s interesting, but in my quest to see how many people I can piss off with my “left coast leftist liberal” bias, I’ve talked about every “right” in this weblog except gay rights and the right to die. I’ll leave the right to die to another day.

Gay rights: I’m straight. I have gay and straight friends. I don’t understand homophobia. And the government and everyone’s neighbor does NOT have to be involved with how a person practices their own form of sexuality as long as the practice is between consenting adults. And if two people want to get married, let them. End of story.

I was in Castro today to go the clinic. My doctor was wonderful. In fact, the clinic is full of doctors who entered medicine because they care about people rather than to make as much money as possible. Gives one a lot of hope for the medical community.

Categories
Political

The Middle East conflict

I watched a gentleman on news last night. I wish I had caught his name because he had some of the most quietly brilliant views on the Middle East conflict that I’ve ever heard. If you read this and you watch KRON evening news in the San Francisco area and did catch his name, please let me know what it is.

Meanwhile, this gentleman said things that made a lot of sense, including the fact that he would like to see Sharon and Arafat gone from the picture because both are so concerned with their own egos, their hatreds of each other, that they’ll never work towards peace. If both were gone, perhaps more reasonable people could replace them and peace could be found.

I found this echoed by an article at Time, What are they thinking?, that looks, critically, at Sharon and Arafat. However, a key element in the article, to me, is that both men’s popularity seems to be tied with their more violent actions. Even with Sharon and Arafat gone from the picture, it would take a miracle worker — on both sides of the issue — to bring about peace.

The gentleman on the news also said that we, the United States, could never be a peace broker in the Middle East because we have too much invested in our support of Israel. We are not disinterested.

From CNN today, the Middle East conflict is impacting on our fragile technology rebound. And resulting in higher oil prices. I wish I could say that our government will need to monitor the oil companies in this country to ensure they don’t overly profit from these difficulties, but then I remember whom I speak — Bush and Cheney — and realize that this statement is laughable.

I am not going to focus this weblog on the Middle East conflict, but it does weight heavily on me this week. I don’t see any possibility that war in the Middle East can be avoided. And I don’t see any possibility that the rest of the world won’t get pulled, heavily, into this war. And there will be people in this country who will rejoice the war. And I don’t understand this.