I will post here throughout the weekend. It being the weekend, its likely that hardly any of it will be about flutes. Well some might be flute-related. We’ll see…
Hurricane Ida (UPDATED): This Sunday Morning Hurricane Ida is landing west of New Orleans as a near Category 5 storm. This storm arrives as on this coast at a time when all of the hospitals and emergency rooms in Louisiana and adjacent states are at or above maximum capacity due to the highly infectious COVID Delta Variant and the relatively low vaccination rates due to mostly Republican politicians catering to the politics of our former President. We worry for our friend Claudette’s family which is right in the path.
Lately Afghanistan has been sucking the air out of the room in the media. They are blaming the last 40 years of failed American Policy on Biden’s shoulders. For those who weren’t around President Reagan once hosted some Mujahideen at the White House and called them “The Moral Equivalent of our Founding Fathers”. Kevin McCarthy wants to investigate Biden Benghazi-style as soon as his party steals both houses and says that this investigation will make the Benghazi investigation seem like a walk in the park. The next statement out of his mouth was shocking. He said that Trump should be allowed to invoke Executive Privilege for him and his underlings in the investigation on the January 6th attack on Congress and attempted Coup. McCarthy actually went there.
Instead all eyes will be focused on New Orleans if Ida follows the same path as her predecessor Katrina exactly 16 years ago to the day. They just awoke to the fact that this was happening and ordered evacuations and preparations just yesterday. For Katrina some such as Jeff Masters at Wunderground were sounding the alarm a week before and the media largely ignored these warnings. he now posts at Yale Climate Connections and here is the link: https://yaleclimateconnections.org
They are predicting it to be at Category 3 when it lands on the coast. My guess is that assessment will go up as these have been rapidly intensifying faster than before, thanks to a warmer atmosphere.
FALL MIGRATION! Check this out. The Birds are headed south for the winter already. It has been cool here lately, compared with the Heat Dome of June. I just hope we don;’t get a Heat Dome in September as I plan a few days of travel and will otherwise be working hard to get these Glass Flutes up and running. The worst time for major fires west of the Cascades starts about now. Last year it was SE of Portland and the year before, the Gorge blew up. No wonder the birds are getting out of the way while they still can!
I load up the animated Doppler Radar at https://atmos.uw.edu/current-weather/northwest-radar/ and set it to the time range I want and simply film the screen with my iPhone. Its best to do this on cloudless nights, though usually the weather shears across from the SW or NW. One can see where the birds squeeze around the mountains and where the also settle to sleep or refuel during the day (usually both). Right at the edges of larger bodies of water such as the Straits of Juan De Fuca are the places where these birds pause. Best time to see this is right at sunset or sunrise, depending upon the season.
ANIMAL CONTROL: This is actually highly desired. We’ve had a nesting pair of Red Tailed Hawks hanging out. I’ll post a picture of one later this morning. These birds have to provide their babies and they are getting some of the best Hawk Chow in the County in the form of Free Range Chestnut-fattened Eastern Grey Squirrels which are an invasive here. Usually these and the Steller’s Jays get all of my nuts and I have to go out there 2-4 weeks before these drop and literally harvest the burrs by hand. This year may be different and even the Jays are avoiding the neighborhood.
Earlier this summer it was a Bald Eagle devouring the large Matriarch of the Opossums. I tossed what was left after the eagle was done into the woods so that Stella wouldn’t roll in it. That thing was large and heavy! There are all sorts of Opossums and Lyme Tic memes on the web that endears people to them - I don’t fall for that having previously had to dispatch or relocate these animals out of the walls of a house in Portland. The fleas that remained were enough to force us out of the house as we were the next host.
Its unclear how they made it to the West Coast but the most common story is that they were intentionally released here as a quickly expanding protein source during or before the Great Depression. Apparently they are something like a Gamey Pork and there are all sorts of Southern recipes for these. Uhm….I’ll stick to Hazelnut-finished pork from Tails and Trotters in Portland. Best pork on the planet even when compared side by side with the Iberico from Spain. Even when cured. T&T holds court across the street from where my famous Slug Imitation was born on NE 24th between Sandy and Glisan. Their Prosciutto Pacifico is as excellent as Jamon Iberico. They usually have a booth on the east side of the Portland Farmers Market in the Park Blocks at Portland State University.
We have had loud coyotes every night and apparently this was a good year for pups. Protect your Chickens and Small Pets and don’t leave your babies out overnight. Don’t bother putting up any Lost Cat signs. These are long since digested. Same for the squirrels. The bunnies are barely maintaining their presence. With Red Tailed Hawks, Barred and other Owls at night, Eagles and Weasels, their outlook isn’t good. Our Goldendoodle Stella loves to chase them and even she wonders where they all went. I know where they went - they or what was left of them are now keeping our house warmer. Amazingly we haven’t smelled this new form of insulation and I suspect we now have a higher R-value.
This leaves the Cervids. It would be cool if the Elk herds came back. It would be fun to have moose here and they get these in NE Washington occasionally. I saw some back in 1984 while bicycling up in the Yaak near Libby Montana. All we have are the common orchard rats known as Deer. We should have fenced our place before we attempted to plant anything. We pruned the fruit trees to stimulate root growth as Rain Tree Nursery instructed. So did the deer and they continue to do this some 30 years later. These trees are stunted. One finally produced a bumper crop of 4 Santa Rosa Plums!
For the past 3 years a buck with his harem of 2-3 deer and their kids have been hanging out. He’s a 6 point the last time I looked. Sometimes Highway 104 takes care of such problems and one year we had a cougar that hung out. He preferred goats however. The State set up their trap just across the fence some 40 feet from my workshop and we were instructed to avoid the area. The cougar was too smart and went on to other goat pastures and is still seem in the area. My friend Jon Soini down in Coyle had one use his outdoor covered blacksmithing workshop as the only dry cat box on the Peninsula. Jon would have to rake everything back to flat every morning and finally solved things for good by literally marking his territory. It was also more convenient than rinning into the house. So for a week he upped his tea intake and the problem disappeared. I once saw that cougar run across the road.
My new friend Mike who fishes out of Suquamish said that he and his friends can camp out here and solve my deer problem as soon as the season opens. I am setting up my camera tonight to see if these are still hanging around.
Das Boot: Before we took my sister-in-law Alice to the airport, we stopped at the Naval Undersea Warfare Museum in Keyport to see the family boat - or that is, the 2nd rendition of this. This is the Naval Undersea Rescue Vehicle. The 2nd rendition used many parts and much technology off of the 1st. The Navy commissioned this project after the Thresher Accident. Nancy and Alice’s uncle Captain August Ball was the Navy’s Project Manager for this. Alice also spotted the end cap for one of the Sealab vehicles - apparently he was also the Project Manager for this and other special projects that the Navy undertook as well. This is something we are very proud of!
Parked just to the north is the Trieste II, also built with parts off of the Trieste I. The Trieste boats were the first to bring Humans down to the deepest part of the ocean - the Challenger Deep of the Mariannas Trench (36,200 feet or 10,924 meters). Two could fit in the tiny Titanium sphere with a 6” thick fused quartz window to peer out of. Most of that boat was a big tank filled with gasoline for buoyancy. My friend Porter Kier, who was once the head of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History expected the seafloor to be full of interesting and weird sea life. Instead, he found only the discarded junk of humanity in the form of a discarded Coca Cola bottle, probably discarded a few days previously by a sailor on one of the support ships.
Red Caviar! This is a great way to finish the weekend. Fresh Red Coho Salmon Caviar with a Purple Potato and Butter. I will be back in the workshop tomorrow.