No matter how worthless a white person’s opinion is, the media will eventually seek it out. On a recent episode of CBS News Originals’ Reverb series, the network sent a reporter to find out what the fuck is up with critical race theory. Because we white folk are apparently the...
Most of us saw or heard the campaign ads for the gubernatorial race for Florida. Ron DeSantis, dressing his infant daughter in MAGA motif pajamas, helping her with border wall building blocks, and reading her a faux bedtime story about the fanciful mind of Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the internal xenophobic...
Former President Trump ordered the Pentagon to release all of its information on “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP) within 18 days in his last coronavirus relief bill in December 2020. More inexplicable sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) will be released for public scrutiny in June — including a UFO that broke...
The Biden administration has disclosed for the first time that a Russian agent who received internal polling data from the Trump campaign in 2016 passed it along to Russia’s intelligence services. Biden to deliver remarks on Russia at 4:30 p.m./2030 GMT https://t.co/SP3vkqtDEX — Fichman (@ukrlaa) April 15, 2021 The White...
Rye Development is proposing a massive pumped storage power plant uphill from the site of the closed Goldendale smelter, next to the Columbia River. This facility will take over a closed pumped storage plant. Native American tribes, including tribes from Asia, originally migrated to this vicinity as a group with common languages and...
About 15 years ago, my son and I dug out two back yard fish ponds with a back hoe, to my wife’s surprise. A backhoe. (not in my backyard.) This pond was about 12 X eight feet. We stocked it with dime-a-dance aquarium goldfish. The goldfish grew rapidly. I operate...
Hi, Hoomans! The last couple of months have been a whirl! All I remember is waking up really horny and cold in the middle of January. “Hey,” I thought to my self, I remember these ponds from before.” At dusk, I heard a dozen male chorus frogs making their crude and...
The local internet buzzed. The local goose had tangled itself in a loose strand of fishing line, with a barbed lure tearing at her throat. The local goose was an odd duck. My best effort called her a Greylag or an Anser Anser. She was mean and would chase children. ...
The January rains struck parts of NW Oregon with near-biblical storms. Bethany Lake flooded to new heights. Two inches fell overnight and never let up. The Wood Duck Island vanished. The shallow turbid muddy stream turned into a 100-foot-wide version of a real river. While I’ve often joked this weather...
By January Bethany Lake in NW Oregon, just west of Portland, gathers storm waters from hundreds of acres of avoided wetlands. Effluent also drains from the thousands of manicured yards and miles of streets in the surrounding suburban areas. The Lake and its tributaries discharges to Rock Creek, which slithers down...
Name’s Red. Red Woodman, Major Mammal Crimes Detective. This is supposed to be my last day on the job is I can make it through. Cough. They’ve assigned me a kid nick-named “Lucky” I’m supposed to train to take my place. I’m looking through his resume. He’d flunked out of...
Edward Abbey memorialized environmental resistance to mindless development in his tome The Monkey Wrench Gang. It essentially endorsed sabotage to thwart degrading of the natural world, for instance, putting sugar in the gas tanks of bulldozers that are about to plow under a nice area. However, advances in surveillance make...
The hummingbirds dash around my back yard, as hard to track as a feathered 3-card monte game; are there 2 or 3 or 4 hummers? Any hummer that sits in our Bartlett pear tree is automatically named Bart. It fights any other hummer using any one of five feeders below...
But there are 40-odd cinder cones of once-active volcanos clustered near the bucolic town of Boring, just east of Portland Oregon. These, and the related lava flows, are part of the Boring formation. I live off this map to the left (west of Beaverton). I am intensely interested in this Boring...
For starters, this “No Trespassing” sign isn’t on private property. It’s on Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation Lands that are open to the public as the Rock Creek Greenway, west of Portland Oregon. Fortunately there are many anglers who are simply crazed about catching fish and who would wade through Hell fire for...
Hard rains just swept across NW Oregon and vicinity. The creeks climbed their banks. I watch Rock Creek, and its tributaries that flow through Bethany Lake, ten miles west of Portland Oregon. Upstream of Bethany Lake, a half mile wide grassy meadow has transformed into a nicely braided creek with...
I toss in my sleep, grabbing for the water bottle. I have to push the straw deep for the last few drops of precious cool water. Even the dregs are sweet. And in that moment between a memory and a dream, I was not sure if I was a hummingbird...
For six years, tadpoles have morphed into tiny chorus frogs in my backyard ponds. But once they’ve turned into frogs I seldom see them again. For the first few days into July, I find them near their birth ponds. Their default move is to hop back into the water for...
A former member of U.S. Senator Susan Collins’ (R. ME) staff released a very compelling op-ed piece in the Press Herald where she talks about how she was date raped by her boyfriend and another man. She explains how getting her job working Collins helped her cope and move on...
Here’s the latest news today out of Arizona courtesy of OH Predictive Insights: In the state’s other race with national consequences, former astronaut Mark Kelly maintains his advantage over incumbent Sen. Martha McSally. Half (50%) of Arizona voters prefer Kelly while 45% prefer McSally. One of the unique aspects of...
If we lose the Arctic, we lose the whole world. President Niinistö of Finland There is a record open ocean in the Arctic as a delayed freeze in sea ice formation due to record-shattering heat in the Laptev Sea. Siberia has been freakishly hot recently, resulting in the loss of bone-chilling winds...
For 20 years, I’ve tracked the movements of herons and egrets where I’ve worked and walked. I’d been working at a golf course in Banks Oregon, 20 miles west of Portland. We had a year-round heron, and every autumn, an egret visited and fished for a few days, angering the...
A backyard pond turns oily. A DIY oil test confirms it’s more than iron oxide, I found tiny broken eggs and cat-sized poop nearby (not pictured). I suspect coon. I found knocked over plants in another pond. I put rounded rocks into abandoned birds’ nests and set them on the...
“Oyez! The Summer Session of Frog Court is called to order, Judge Jeramiah Bullfrog presiding,” honked the Bailiff, who was a Canadian goose. In strode two robed judges, who were six foot tall bullfrogs, trying to walk on two legs, but instead hopping from foot to foot. The third bullfrog...
Chuck Todd, in an uncharacteristically combative manner, grilled Republican Senator John Barrasso about the hypocrisy of the GOP not delaying Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's replacement till after the election. A Combative Chuck Todd x x YouTube Video See full episodes here. Chuck Todd was almost perfect in this one except that...
But even bold purply flowers, like this welcome offering from my hacked-down artichokes, seem washed out, as if horror author Stephen King’s Tommyknockers are draining colors from view. I’ve offered some purple, now for the Haze. In some ways this is scarier than a Nebraska tornado cloud. No where to...
Some more good news out of Wisconsin courtesy of Rasmussen’s latest poll: President Trump trails Democratic nominee Joe Biden by eight points in the key battleground state of Wisconsin. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone and online survey of Likely Voters in Wisconsin shows Biden with 51% support to Trump’s 43%....
An Oregon developer of a proposed gas station next to a creek and wetlands has withdrawn his application. In short: Victory! Withdrawn App, how sweet the sound, Saving trees … thirty feet around. They were doomed on this place, but now are saved, thanks to Grace. The nearby neighborhoods’ coveys...
The skies have not yield a moment of rain for months. But I knew how to make it rain. I hung clothes outdoors on our new fancy clothesline. It’s passive solar at its best. Except the Rain Gods, laughing, then made it rain twice. But not much, just enough to...
I’m Red Woodman, Senior Investigator for what we call the “Frog Court.” If I can just get through today, I can retire with a pension. But a whole bunch of new cases just hit my in-basket and I came to work to find a guy sobbing over a couple of baby...
Devastating and scary news from the Arctic as Greenland has reached the tipping point. The melting of our northern freezer which allows our civilization to flourish has reached the point of no return, even if we cut our emissions to zero. The tipping point is where snowfall “that replenishes the ice...
Trigger warning for sadness. The sun shown through the russet and tawny and cream of what seemed to be a feathered explosion in the robin’s nest. I watched from a few feet away, with only enough time to lift a hand. Two Robin sentinels sped to the scene but the hawk’s...
The World is colors everywhere here and there And the sky’s blinding blue is right in front of you. The burgeoning flowers send new blossoms out for hours. I admire the colors of each different lily, Or the Dragon’s Tongue; a little silly. My Dragon’s Tongue managed to survive all these...
But of course the damsel flies are not really drinking; they are laying eggs. They contort on the edge of a lily pad with their abdomen curved into the water seemingly under the lip of the pad. It’s called ovipositing. I’d seen lots of damselflies joining at the end of their...
The New York Times has a great piece out about how Democrats are eager to not only help Joe Biden take out Trump but also want him to expand the electoral map. The goal is to get to 270 electoral votes and here are the current states Biden’s campaign is...
I am so happy to walk into the back yard and have fledgling birds whirring about, clumsily. New life! I put extra food on the ground for the dummies. Some birds I know. Some I don’t. Colors are vague. Here’s a couple I don’t know. One seems to interact with...
I’m just an old race horse out to pasture, pawing the ground when the race track bugle sounds. I still read the local public notices about developments, reflecting back on 40 years of environmental challenges, wishing someone was doing some more challenging. And then something happened. I am terrible at this...
My prodigal son and his advanced science teaching degree came home awhile ago. While schools are closed, He’d been hiking in the Rockies. His discoveries included a pocket full of cool sparkly rocks and crystals, and some Eastern philosophy. “Hang up these chimes here, “he said when we were out...
A few blocks from my home is the site of the Pulse massacre. We just passed the 4-year anniversary. In the six months that led up to the massacre, Florida Republicans had introduced more than 200 bills attacking freedoms of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. But it’s okay: my right-wing...
I’d always felt there was more than one heron that’s been visiting my backyard ponds for the last ten years. One would land and catch our fish while we gardened 30 feet away. Another one would watch from a neighbor’s roof for half an hour before coming in for lunch,...
Actually, for any day on the Calendar one can find multiple birthdays, deaths, and significant events. But June 12 seems to carry a lot of such occasions to remember. We could skip some birthdays, even if someone like Marv Albert may have been a significant figure to many of us. ...
The inch-an-hour storms have driven the anglers away from my Neighborhood’s Bethany Lake. It’s full of hungry trout but the anglers flee the storms, heading home with a full creel and soaking wet clothes. Bethany Lake’s stocked rainbow trout are fattening up, hopefully on bullfrogs. And when the anglers flee,...
Multiple robins have occupied my yard for months now. Somehow their presence seemed to make the Spring come a few days sooner. I cannot tell the boys from the girls. I thought the female were supposed to be drab, but they all look alike to me. They seemed more like...
But just a day or two after Billy Heron, the patriarch of my back yard gardens and ponds left, Cocky Robin brushed aside the murmured objections from the littler birds, and mounted the Sacred Roof Arch for his own announcement. “Listen up! When Billy Heron’s gone, Cocky Robin is the...
Some very good news today out of Arizona: Retired astronaut Mark Kelly leads Sen. Martha McSally (R) by 9 points in Arizona, one of the states at the heart of the battle for control of the Senate in 2020. A new Arizona Public Opinion Pulse survey conducted by the Phoenix-based...
Here’s the latest news out of Arizona today courtesy of OH Predictive Insights latest poll: As Arizona residents endure a stay-at-home order and thousands of people suffer from coronavirus, President Donald Trump continues to fall in a head-to-head matchup with former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has expanded his lead...
“Oyez, I call Frog Court into session,” rumbled Chief Justice Jeremiah, himself a very large bullfrog. “Bailiff, read the opening Declaration.” The impossibly tall Bailiff stood and began reading: “In accordance with resolution of a civil suit involving a Reagan cabinet member and prescription drugs, The Department of Fish and Wildlife...
These frog eggs sacs presented a vivid image within a few dys of the mating. Shingy white eggs quivered, suspended in a light green jello. Less than one month later, dense algae has covered these once jelly-clear egg sacs. Pond scum’s weight has dragged the sacs to the pond’s bottom. This...
Many edible plants grow in Oregon, including nut trees such as filbert or hazelnut. Our overlords, the squirrels, have commanded us to plant a variety of filbert nut trees in our suburban yard in NW Oregon. These versions of filberts are rated “invasive.” This means they are so tough that...
Although evening temperatures skirt 32 F, the native Chorus Frogs of NW Oregon continue to meet and mate. I spotted an single egg sac with 20 eggs two weeks ago, but now I can see 30 egg sacs, some containing 50 or more eggs. The male and female frogs must...
