Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise?

Oo-ee, oo-ee baby, ocean liner cruises have changed a lot since the Titanic ruled the waves (briefly) along with her luxurious sister ships. Having just returned from a Carnival cruise to the â€œMexican Riviera,â€ I can tell you that these behemoths are equal to anything White Star set afloat in terms of size, amenities, and food quantity.

Notice the careful choice of words. Our cruise offered tasty meals in addition to the cardboard pizza, deep-fried hard boiled eggs, and fried cheese (all technically â€œfoodâ€), but to get anything remotely resembling the poached salmon with mousseline sauce, filet mignons Lili, and lamb with mint sauce served with the Titanicâ€™s final eveningâ€™s 10-course dinner, passengers had to pay an extra $30 at the elegant â€œPinacle.â€

Of course, more than half of the Titanicâ€™s 2,207 passengers went down with the ship, paying fares as high as $124,000 in todayâ€™s dollars (unrefunded), while all 3,000 of us were able to waddle off the boat at the end of the cruise, some of us paying far less than $1,000 for the week of self-indulgence. Modern day cruises are a bargain, no question.

But not quite the bargain they seem to be when you sign on. The sticker shock sets in on the final day of gluttony and sloth when you read your credit card charges for drinks, souvenirs, shore excursions, photographs, massages, Internet fees, room charges (the recommended â€œtipâ€ is $10 per person per day), and other things you might have imagined would be included (such as bottled water). I think the cruise lines would charge for the air we breathe if they could figure out a way to do it.

The really big item unless you are tee-totaling aboard is booze.

But wait! Why not bring your own favorite adult beverage and stow it in your stateroom for the cocktail hour? (Ice is free). Unfortunately, most cruise lines have rules about spirits. Holland America allows a case of wine but Carnival only permits one bottle per adult. No hard liquor in any case. What to do, what to do.

Strictly in the interest of research, I googled â€œsmuggling liquor aboard cruise ships,â€ and discovered 9,750 entries, along with commentary from successful alcohol felons (one of whom noted, â€œYou cannot enjoy cruises without being constantly drunk).â€

I can tell you that the BAS (best available science) for getting demon rum aboard without detection is far more advanced than anything the San Juan County community of regulators has managed to produce locally for its zealous environmental agenda.

You might want to take a look at the literature on this subject - as an objective scholar (like me). Anecdotal evidence suggests that no one with a slightly defective moral compass should have to pay inflated drink prices on a cruise.

The best time to appreciate just how many guests the Splendor will hold is when they are getting on or off the boat. A couple thousand eager tourists with pockets full of pesos being strategically routed into shops full of genuine sterling silver jewelry (on sale! special deal just for you, today onlyâ€) and cantinas serving jumbo margaritas and beer at a fraction of the shipboard price.

It was blazing hot in port and the cervezas were ice cold. You can imagine the result. About a half hour before the boat sailed out of Cabo, the woozy line of sun-wrecked turistas waiting to re-board stretched half way to the Pedregal (thatâ€™s a long way). Entertainment for the sweltering crowd was provided by two locals posing as statues of an Aztec warrior and a cowboy, sprayed head to foot in copper and silver paint. When someone contributed a few coins, they shifted position just enough to make the crowd ooh and aah politely. Oh my gosh, Look! Theyâ€™re real! What a way to make a living.

Each of our shore excursions put us in line behind the elderly lady with the walker who could not find her ship I.D. card in her shopping bag of a purse. She pursues and torments us wherever we go, taking over for the crying baby as soon as we get off planes and start our vacations.

Cruise devotees certainly do more than drink on and off the ship. They also eatâ€¦ and eat and eat. Serious chow hounds can find something to munch 24/7 even if itâ€™s only pizza and ice cream cones. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sometimes midnight buffets supplement the dining room faire (which is better). Truly inspired epicures can partake of such wonders as the chocolate buffet. Cakes, pudding, cookies, won tons, mousses, cheesecakes, and more â€" all made of or smothered in chocolate. No one would eat like this at home, at least I hope not.

Healthful and entertaining activities aboard ship are plentiful but Carnival does seem to cater to our inner slob, and there is something to be said for slouching in a deck chair by the pool with a big plate of fries.

Some of the cruise lines offer lectures by experts on the local culture and provide comfortable, spacious libraries for relaxation with a good book. The Splendor has no lectures and the library is about the size of a prison cell. I dropped by the empty room three or four times to see if there was anything in the book exchange besides romance novels, but not a Robert Parker was to be found.

Still and all, itâ€™s a fun vacation, especially if you are using the cruise as an opportunity to gather your whole family together for a week of smooching babies and having uninterrupted time with the people you love most in the world.

For me, the start and the finish of this trip were full of nostalgia. The cruise terminal is no more than a few miles from where my dad used to work, unloading ships full of copra and coal. Almost within walking distance of the Pike, the Cyclone Racer, and the Wilson Park Plunge, summertime destinations on the bus from Compton with my best friend, Leanna.

All of the embarking and disembarking Carnival passengers walk through the big white dome where Howard Hughesâ€™ flying boat once rested in pure white glory, looking for all the world like it could take off and fly another mile if weird old Howard climbed into the pilotâ€™s seat . Visiting its new home is nice, but McMinnville, Oregon just doesnâ€™t compare to the Spruce Goose and the Queen Mary sitting side by side in Long Beach, California â€" relics of a nearly forgotten era, never to fly or to sail the seas again.

Soâ€¦we had a good time on our sea cruise, although I donâ€™t see another one in the immediate future. A few days journey aboard our Sweet Thursday to Sidney or Victoria is a lot cheaper, less crowded, and just as much fun. The chocolate buffet is a bowl of M&Ms and the gourmet dinner is chicken noodle surprise. Our daughter would like to go back and have a word with the vendor who sold her the solid silver bracelet though. It broke in half before we landed at Seatac.

( Note: Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise? was Written by Huey â€œPianoâ€ Smith; recorded by Frankie Ford in 1959)

(Janice Peterson is a former college professor at Santa Barbara City College in the field of communication, with emphasis on public speaking, argumentation and debate. Janice tries to be a useful member of the community and a willing volunteer. )

Two Fathers

A few weeks ago Mary Kalbert wrote a moving column about â€œTwo Mothers,â€ and, at her suggestion, I would like to offer a tribute to two fathers -my own and my husbandâ€™s- who were in so many ways representative of their generation, sometimes called â€œthe greatest generation.â€

Bill Lindsay and Richard Peterson did not serve in the military (too young for the First World War and two old for the Second), but they were great fathers and that is service to an equally important cause. If all fathers took care of their families as well as these two did, the problems we face as a nation would be far fewer.

Bill and Richard worked hard all their adult lives in â€œblue collarâ€ jobs. My dad was a crane operator for Metropolitan Stevedore Company and Richard worked for the City of Burbank. Both left early every morning wearing work clothes and carrying lunch buckets. When they got home, they were worn out, dirty, and in the mood for supper. Our mothers had the food on the table, the kids ready to sit down, and the house cleaned well enough to know that they had satisfactorily played their own roles that day.

Our dads did not particularly want to hear about our problems at school but they were proud of our grades when they were good and disproving when they were bad. If we werenâ€™t doing well in class, it was not the teacherâ€™s fault, it was ours - and 99% of the time, they were right. There was a lot of talk at my house about getting smacked for sassing, backtalk, and other bratty behavior, but there was seldom any follow-through despite the dread â€œwait until your father gets homeâ€ I heard more times than I could count,

Life did not revolve around children in the Lindsay or the Peterson household, but the center of the universe was family. Our parents didnâ€™t obsess about providing expensive diversions for us. Our dads thought it was their job to take good care of us until we could take care of ourselves. Adults and children lived separate lives. They did not meddle much in our little kid world and we liked it that way. I did not expect Daddy to be my pal but I knew I could depend on him and he would never break a promise.

We didnâ€™t have a lot of money at my house but there was enough for the JC Higgins balloon tire and the Madame Alexander doll at Christmas. Our social life was neighborhood pot lucks. Kids were generally seen but not heard (or not seen at all if we were out building a fort somewhere).

Life was leaner at the Petersons,â€™ where Richard painted a neighborâ€™s house one year for holiday money and stayed up late after work in December, out in the cold to make stilts and toys for the kids. They grew their own vegetables, canned whatever was on sale at Ralphâ€™s, seldom had a vacation, and did not worry at all about whether their children were culturally deprived. There was no culture.
If the kids wanted bikes, they settled for second-hand and scrounged parts from the trash in the alley. My husband once traded yard work for dental care. There was no embarrassment about being poor.

Our dads were both Democrats but mine voted Republican most of the time. They despised politicians regardless of party affiliation and believed that government should stay out of their business. They didnâ€™t expect government to take care of them when times were hard.

I have often told friends that my childhood was perfect, and it actually was. My mother was always there when I got home from school, my dad was as reliable and strong as all fathers should be, we had no books in the house but the Readers Digest condensed volumes (which Daddy liked), expectations for my future centered almost completely on finding a good husband (I did), and my father did not lavish affection on me or on my brother. According to todayâ€™s values, we were probably dysfunctional.

Yet what Richard and Bill thought about their kids mattered a whole lot to all of us and maybe there is something telling in this about what makes a good father. We never talked about loving and respecting our dads when we were young, but we did love and respect them more than I can begin to say these many years beyond those oddly magical times of childhood.

Our dads never let us down. Never. Thatâ€™s pretty amazing.

My dad left us when he was far too young. My husbandâ€™s father lived longer and when the time grew close, Richard wanted to say goodbye. He left a note for his kids to let them know that his coin collection was under the bed in the front bedroom.

The last thing he wrote was, â€œYou were all my pride and joy.â€

I wish that for all of you dads on Fathers Day. Earn the love and respect of your children and make sure they know that they are your pride and joy.

Are We As Dumb As a Box of Rocks?

Dr. Henry Kaiser thinks so, if you can believe what he wrote in the May 1st edition of The Onion about our thoughtless behavior toward all rocks great and small -which, of course, you cannot. Kaiser is writing satire and itâ€™s pretty funny satire at that. It got me thinking unseriously about rocks- these precious and ancient residents of planet earth that earn less respect than Rodney Dangerfield.

Think about it. Natureâ€™s own hateful treatment of our potentially endangered rock population leaves pathetic remnants of once-proud boulders behind -victims of earthquakes and other cataclysms. Itâ€™s hard for scientists to even figure out how old they are, so diminished are they by geologic and meteorological forces.

Many scientists have abandoned any pretense at baseline measurements of San Juan County rocks. Some are citing best available rock science from Plymouth Rock and even the Rock of Gibralter, incredible as it seems. Believe you me, it is very difficult to determine if no net loss has occurred when the original granite has been reduced to pebbles and sand, let alone decide on how to regulate human interference in the indigenous igneous rock population.

And we humans ARE making it worse! Non Deniers and anti Nay Sayers (is that a quadruple negative?) thought we were just changing the climate of the planet and making it harder for Al Gore to find a new $9 million house on (but not yet in) the water. In actual fact, the endangerment of our rock community should be right up there on Governor Gregoireâ€™s website with global warming, providing millions of dollars in grants for out-of- work environmental studies majors (all four of them) who have been unable to find a place to feed at the public trough.

A friend of mine (weâ€™ll call him John) is exploring a need for ordinances in critical areas that you may not have considered. As a farmer, he has noted the presence of rocks on his land that our regulatory community may well regard as â€œfarmed rocksâ€ (versus wild native rocks). Although he is unaware of any science which indicates that farmed rocks are a threat to native rocks, he believes that a study might have been conducted in Estonia that could enter into the local decision-making process, assuming, of course, that the research is peer-reviewed.

My friend, Farmer John, has also alerted local regulatory enthusiasts to the increasing number of non-native rocks being transported to San Juan County for counter tops and garden features. We may need a Rock Abatement Board similar to our weed board to deal with this.

We have interfered with the native stone population for eons. Sisyphus, as you recall from Greek legend, aggravated the gods so they condemned him to roll a rock up the side of a mountain for all eternity. We feel sorry for poor Sisyphus. What about the rock?! We acknowledge in modern times that species can be threatened, endangered, and sensitive. Rocks have feelings too, you know.

I was devastated to learn recently that a 10 year-old member of my own family has started a rock collection. Unbeknownst to me, he has been heartlessly plucking them off the beach, completely disrupting their functions, values, and pebblesystem. Dozens of them cower in a shoe box under his bed, orphaned and alone. I can only hope that the POPS (Pals of Puget Sound) laboring off-shore with clip boards in their little boats, taking notes on the leaves of eel grass beneath our mooring buoy were not distracted from their critical task.

That stone displacement is potentially harmful to species in addition to the sensitive rocks themselves, is indicated by the introduction of non-native rocks to an aquarium on San Juan Island where numerous fish deaths have taken place, suggesting a strong causal correlation between rocks and aquarium mortality. Interested citizens should watch for upcoming guest editorials in the local paper on this very subject.

Legislation should be enacted immediately to regulate touching, displacing, or removing rocks from our beaches. In fact, new regulations to prohibit children and other miscreants from walking on the shoreline are clearly indicated. If there was ever a time for a no-go zone, it is now!

This talk of beaches and shorelines brings to mind the danger that houses and other unnecessary structures pose for our rock community. Rumors abound in San Juan County that houses are so destructive to aesthetics (and other things this writer has been unable to discover) as perceived by some rock lovers that in a few generations, our regulatory community will see to it that all stone, rock, and tragically endangered boulders will once again be free of the distasteful nonconformity of human presence. Peace and conformity will be restored to San Juan County.

Edna St. Vincent Millay famously noted, â€œSafe upon the solid rock, the ugly houses stand; Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand.â€ Too bad for you, Edna, sand is composed of collectively maimed and mutilated rocks, so your palace has got to go too.

I am certain that if we set our minds to it, we can save our inorganic community from the extinction that looms unless all of us with rocks in our heads prevail. The time has come for the Precautionary Principle to triumph. Let us immediately appoint a blue ribbon panel of consultants to investigate the procedures for establishing prescriptive buffers between people and rocks the likes of which the world has never seen.

Is TEOTWAWKI coming soon to a planet near you?

Well-known to thousands of misfits, crazies, and ordinary people who find speculation on the Apocalypse at once creepy and alluring, The End Of The World As We Know It is a source of endless fascination. According to interpretations of writings from the Bible, Nostradamus, the Mayans and others, we may be only years, months, or even days from TEOTWAWKI.

In case you want to start getting ready, the Mayan calendar stopped on December 21, 2012, the date the world was expected to end. Various Biblical interpretations also target 2012 as the Day of Judgment, collision with a comet, and other extinctions. If we get safely through all of that, 2013, the first 13 of the new millennium will be coming right on the heels of 2012, carrying all manner of mischief along with it. Science tells us that morbid speculation aside, we are all going the way of the dinosaurs sooner or later.

Throughout history, pessimists have been predicting the literal end of the world. (Repent! The end of the world is at hand). One of the most poignant in recent memory was the 1997 visit of the Hale Bopp comet. In March of that year, while the rest of us watched Hale Boppâ€™s stunning brilliance, 35 members of a group called â€œHeavenâ€™s Gate,â€ put on new Nikes, laid down on their bunks, and poisoned themselves in anticipation of a ride on the space ship trailing the comet which would take their souls to glory as the earth ended.

When the clock ticked over to the 21st century, there were fears that the Y2K virus would wipe out everything electronic. Weâ€™ve all put that worry behind us but there are new concerns about TEOTWAWKI arising from the destruction of our computers. One Second After by William Forstchen tells a compelling story about the EMP -electromagnetic pulse- a relatively simple but breathtakingly successful device used against the U.S. Itâ€™s pretty much back to the dark ages from then on out and it is disturbingly believable.

Although some of us harbor the notion that sudden adversity would bring out the best in us as we bravely sacrificed ourselves for others to the gentle refrain of Nearer my God to Thee on the sinking decks of the Titanic, I suspect we would more likely find the thin veneer of civilization peeled away quickly with the prospect of personal suffering. William Goldingâ€™s Lord of the Flies might be a more apt scenario. Weâ€™re a fairly soft bunch of people, without much in the way of survival skills.

Some of us, however, will be ready to rock and roll if/when the bad times come.

Save yourself, serve yourself.
World serves its own needs,
Listen to your heart bleed.
Itâ€™s the end of the world as we know it.
R.E.M.

Hereâ€™s a clue on what some Americans expect when TEOTWAWKI looms:

Hundreds of Internet sites offer advice, information, survival packages, and weapons to help you survive The End. Forums invite participants to discuss the relative merits of a glock, AR, Marlin in .44 or .357, AK, and dozens of other guns. One spirited debate went back and forth on the â€œSo WWII planâ€ to coat the arsenal with Cosmoline versus using mylar bags and dessicants. One participantâ€™s tag line is â€œGod is love - 1 John 4:8.â€

Survival packages to keep you going for a week or longer range in price from $100 to $thousands. (Vegetarian survival kits are twice as expensive as those for carnivores). You can even buy a pet survival kit for $50 which includes a leash, a can opener, a rope, and â€œ2 foods.â€ Doesnâ€™t sound like a terrific bargain.

Survivalism is probably a bigger deal than most of us on our safe little islands can begin to imagine. I found a book to illustrate survivalist thinking titled, Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse by James Wesley Rawes. The book is actually more of a survival manual than a serious piece of writing (one of the worst books Iâ€™ve ever read, in fact).

If you want to know what goes on in the minds of avid survivalists, this dreadful book is what you need. According to recent polls, 75% of Americans think economic collapse is not a farfetched possibility so maybe we should all be looking at this stuff. I have to admit that my own confidence in a secure economic future for the country has been shaken a bit in recent times.

To some extent, the fictional inspiration for dystopian novels arises from real worries about current problems. (I should stop and say that I canâ€™t resist a new word, â€œdystopian,â€ which is defined as â€œa work of fiction describing an imaginary place where life is extremely bad because of deprivation, oppression, or terror.â€ Dystopian is the opposite of Utopian. Admit it, you didnâ€™t know that either).

The dystopian books coming out now reflect our concerns about the economy, the uncertain state of the world, the potential for dirty work undertaken with the aid of new technologies, and so forth. There must be hundreds of global warming novels in progress as I write that will beat us over the head with our transgressions before we all drown.

Some of the best TEOTWAWKI novels of the past originated, of course, with the threat of nuclear holocaust. Nevil Shuteâ€™s On the Beach is my favorite, and one of the few Iâ€™ve read that was not quite as good as the film it inspired. Who can forget the image of the coke bottle caught on the shade clicking the telegraph key with the backdrop of the dead world beyond the window.

The lesser known but almost as good, Testament, portrayed a family living and dying with nuclear devastation and radioactivity. William Devane appeared briefly at the beginning of the film and was only heard afterward on an answering machine (over and over again) telling his wife heâ€™d be home soon. The effect of that present but stilled voice was chilling.

Chilling. Thatâ€™s part of the vicarious TEOTWAWKI appeal. Itâ€™s about the scariest thought possible and we can creep up to it, touch it, and run away. Sometimes no one survives, but it isnâ€™t real anyway. And often, we endure the wretched conditions Under the Dome with Stephen King and others who briefly open the door to the dark side for us, and then the dome lifts and all is right with the world again. Relief. Catharsis.

Thereâ€™s still time, brother. Life as we know it goes on.

Letâ€™s Touch Base On This No Brainer

Basically, and to be honest, I would like to say (even though Iâ€™ve been there and done that) that we need to move forward. I am going to give 110% to this column, maybe even 120%! Actually, wouldnâ€™t you agree that you canâ€™t just talk the talk, you have to walk the walk?

Hereâ€™s the real deal, and I am being completely transparent. I canâ€™t get my head around it but Iâ€™m afraid that our ability to use the English language effectively has gone missing, We canâ€™t seem to put four corners around a coherently expressed idea without jamming it into intellectual lockdown. I mean, canâ€™t we connect the dots here?

The two paragraphs above (plus the title) contain more than 15 threadbare clichÃ©s many of us are still dragging around for immediate and effort-free use. No thinking required. In the interest of my affection for the mother tongue, I hope you will indulge this little essay and maybe rid your own vocabulary of one or two hackneyed words and phrases that should be sent to the transfer station for immediate deportation to wherever it is our worn-out junk goes.

Donâ€™t you hate it when you have to listen politely when youâ€™re out walking Fido and someone hollers, â€œHey are you walking that dog or is he walking you?â€ followed by guffaws. Another of my special favorites is, â€œa trillion here a trillion there; pretty soon youâ€™re talking about real money.â€ (It used to be a million but inflation has hit this old chestnut). And then thereâ€™s the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the camel with his nose under the tent, and the cats we find it impossible to herd, Animals are good for lots of overused expressions.

Obviously, all these not-so-clever lines were clever and cute once ï¿½" when they were young and hadnâ€™t been around the block so many times. The first time I heard, â€œItâ€™s done, put a fork in it,â€ I repeated it constantly until I realized I was hearing it everywhere, The same was true of sentimental interactions described as â€œKumbayaâ€ experiences, and â€œteachable moments.â€ â€œIâ€™m having a senior momentâ€ never caught on with me because I donâ€™t like to admit that Iâ€™m getting old and even less like to acknowledge that my synapses donâ€™t pop as well as they used to. The same is true for â€œI think heâ€™s passed his sell-by dateâ€ or, â€œThat ideaâ€™s shelf-life expired a long time ago.â€

Television has its own language strategies for beating us over the head with clichÃ©s that probably do a great job selling whatever is being advertised. â€œItâ€™s only $19.95, (regularly $49.95), but wait thereâ€™s more.â€ Good old Billy Mays. â€œNot sold in stores!â€ One of the worst is, â€œAsk your doctor if X Drug is right for you.â€ This follows a legally mandated list of side effects ranging from dizziness to death.

The lexicon of political correctness is a whole ballgame of its own, but letâ€™s donâ€™t go there. I have enough trouble staying out of trouble for the stuff I write.

The language choices of the young have their own preferences and clubby peculiarities. There is nothing more pathetic than an adult who tries to horn in on the current kid vernacular, so anything beyond the all-purpose â€œawesomeâ€ should be avoided (like the plague) by anyone over 30. I miss the language of my own youth, especially the perfect adjective, â€œbitchen,â€ which may be regarded as profane so I hope it isnâ€™t cut by my diligent editor.

Speaking of editing, Iâ€™m told that my writing, if not exactly bloated or turgid (two great words), misses brevity by a mile. So Iâ€™m going to submit a shorter essay this time, try to stay under the radar and out of the weeds, and hope that I wonâ€™t end up looking like the wrong end of a horse. This last is my very favorite simile (unfortunately not original) and I use it all the time, hoping it will catch on, but no luck so far. Whatever.

San Juan Islands National Monument?

A government big enough to supply you with everything you need
Is a government big enough to take away everything you haveâ€¦
The course of liberty shows that as government grows, liberty decreases. -Thomas Jefferson

Conspiracy theorists unite! The orchestrated plot to bring you the most massive government possible is looking more authentic by the day. When President Obama took office and right wingers immediately started carping about big government and socialistic ambitions, more restrained voices counseled a wait and see approach. More than a year later, we have waited and we have seen, and itâ€™s looking a little scary out there in the homeland.

At all levels of government, people in charge are -as my mother used to say- busy as cranberry merchants, working to make government bigger, tax us more, spend that revenue like thereâ€™s no tomorrow, and expand the web of rules and regulations that control our lives to the point where the government, not the individual, is the defining and deciding voice in human affairs.

Locally, a mood of distrust has arisen toward those who have the temerity to own property and believe that this gives them some sort of privilege in deciding what to do with it. Some officials, bureaucrats, and environmental experts are moving toward a stance that values rights by permission of the government far in excess of the quaint (and antiquated?) constitutional provision bestowing inalienable rights on the individual.

The assumption weâ€™ve enjoyed since the nation was founded that government exists to protect the individual may be giving way to a notion that the individual exists to serve the government.

The underlying premises include the belief that government can do almost everything better than we can. Yikes! When government is in a good mood, it will maybe give you permission to build something or sell something or remodel something, although it will cost you a lot of money.

Permits and experts donâ€™t come cheap. If you own some land on the waterfront with a wetland, filling out forms, spending money, and hiring experts may not get you anywhere at all because weâ€™re still trying to figure out exactly what to do about regulating those areas of the land and dampscape. This despite the dearth of evidence (Best Available Science) to demonstrate that we are bad stewards/owners.

If you would like to sell or buy property locked in this wonderland of possible new regulations, good luck trying to get any clarity on what will and will not be allowed.

But I digress. We were talking about conspiracies. It is arguable that local, state, and federal governmental agencies are working in tandem and with above-standard zeal to narrow and reduce our rights to the point where we will look around us and wonder what happened to our freedoms. How far do we take such lofty aims as the â€œgreater goodâ€ when they make hash out of individual freedoms doing no harm to the collective?

We voted in favor of our charter a few years ago. It changed the structure of local government and it put serious emphasis on problem-solving from the ground up. Grass roots, local rule, whenever possible. Have you noticed how many state agencies such as the Department of Ecology seem involved in decisions that should emanate from controlling local authority? Read up on it if you like. The state loves to tell us what to do.

The federal government does too. The word, â€œprotectionâ€ is popular in legislation that comes to us via congressional activity and executive orders that land on our doorstep by presidential decree. A president canâ€™t create a national park without congressional approval, but he can declare your county a national monument all by himself in order to â€œprotectâ€ it.

You can see where this is going. The San Juan Islands are on a list of 14 sites encompassing approximately 13 million acres being considered as national monuments. Many local residents will see this as a wonderful thing. Others will wonder exactly what this â€œprotectionâ€ would mean to the people of the San Juans. Rules and regulations within national monuments vary but frequently include restrictions on bicycles, collecting, disturbing plants, firearms, fires, fishing, hiking, horseback riding, and motorized vehicles. Some articles consulted for this column rhapsodize about the monument designation and criticize the â€œshort-sightedâ€ viewpoints that oppose it. The more â€œprotectionsâ€ (as perceived by the group in charge of the government), the better, although they usually amount to less freedom for the individual.

There will likely be a public comment period on the monument status idea for our county. There is a public comment period for almost all of the big ideas our government wants to put into effect. It would be easy to spend every waking hour of every single day trying to keep track of and comment on proposed government plans that affect our lives, sometimes dramatically. If you have tried to keep up with legislation proposed for enactment on issues related to the environment, you know that this is not an exaggeration.

Historically (since 1906 when the Antiquities Act gave presidents the power to create national monuments), the selection of sites, the size of the affected areas, the appropriateness of the designation, the impact on locals, and a raft of other issues have surfaced to make them contentious.

Nationwide, the federal government owns about 30% of the entire territory of the United States. How much more land does the government need? How much more land are we willing to relinquish to government control? President Obama is reportedly expected to choose two or three sites from the list. Do you hope that we will be on his list? Or not?

Thank You Robert Parker

So passeth in the passing of a day,
Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower. -Edmund Spenser

The truly important books are the ones you take along on vacation. Unless you have a Kindle, you have to consider the weighty tomes in terms of how ponderous they are on planes, stuffed in luggage, and dragged to the beach. You have to think about whether you want to haul them back home again and whether they are really exactly whatâ€™s needed to keep your mind occupied when all the familiar parts of life are absent.

Robert Parker travels with me. When we were in Croatia a few years ago, I took three of his Spenser novels along to ward off homesickness, and when I finished the last one, I could hardly stand another day away from Friday Harbor. More Hawk, please. More Susan Silverman, and more Pearl.

With about four dozen Robert Parker novels to choose from, those of us who are committed fans with imperfect recall can pretty much keep reading his crime fiction until we die. Certainly there are more worthy books, more sophisticated, and more impressive on our book shelves, but none more engaging than a good visit with Spenser or Jesse Stone or Sunny Randall.

Robert Parker really knew how to write. He was able to unselfconsciously insert himself in his charactersâ€™ lives. You just know that Spenser, with all of his smarts, confidence, wit, and devotion to his friends has to be a reflection of his creator. Spenserâ€™s love for Susan Silverman is unequivocal and eternal although intermittently fraught with challenge. She can be a pain but she is Spenserâ€™s perfect love. Gorgeous damsels in distress may cross his threshold to tempt him but Spenser never cheats. Robert Parkerâ€™s own attachment to his wife, Joan, lasted for more than five decades - until this week when she found him slumped at his desk in the middle of writing another book. Parker once told an interviewer, â€œI had achieved the most important things in my life when I married Joan and had the sons. Given the choice between Joan and the boys, and being a writer, I world give up being a writer without a blink.â€ I believe it.

If you read Spenser novels, you know that he has no first name. The story goes that Parker thought to name him â€œDavid,â€ after one of his sons, but didnâ€™t want his other son, Daniel, to feel left out.

Robert Parker wrote about people who seem better than real. His heroes are constant in friendship, they encounter great obstacles, and they always triumph in the end. They are rich in texture and never boring. They are not politically correct. Spenser and Hawke are an unbeatable combination and you know from page one that things are going to end happily. The good guys will trounce the bad guys, often with soul-satisfying humiliation.

Parkerâ€™s band of fictional regulars express such dimension of real-life that I find myself wondering exactly how old Susan has to be in a 2009 novel, remembering that I first met her in the seventies. Susan Silverman does not age. She is forever young.

Pearl, wonderful Pearl, did age through the pages and books and eventually die, to be replaced by another loveable dog. I go back to the early books sometimes to revisit Pearl when she was a puppy.

I like to put a face on the authors whose books I read so I always check out that photo on the back cover. I scrutinize Parker, hoping always that he is actually that young-looking despite bulking up over the years and getting a little squinchy around the eyes. I know he served in Korea and has to be in his seventies but I want him to live forever. I donâ€™t want my Spenser supply to ever run dry.

But Parker was not forever young. 77 is an ok number of years I guess but I wish heâ€™d had more. I am a selfish reader who never gets enough of a good thing. Fortunately, Robert Parker was such a dedicated writer that he had a few books in progress and weâ€™ll get to read them. And then Iâ€™ll go back to The Godwulf Manuscript, written in 1973. â€œSay a lot in a little. Put the most meaning in the fewest words.â€ That was Parkerâ€™s good advice.

Sheâ€™s Baacck! Part Two

In an earlier segment of this article, I looked at Ayn Randâ€™s resurrection as a literary force of the 21st century. This revived enthusiasm may be evidence of a well-earned backlash against a leftward-leaning political philosophy that has over-stressed national and local patience with mandated altruism. Some would even go so far as to argue that the moochers and parasites are now in charge and that change we can believe in is becoming a rare commodity

Ayn Randâ€™s own words (underlined below) may begin to explain why so many people are attracted to her ideas:

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. She despaired of the collectivist mentality that denied the rights of individual citizens through force and coercive governmental actions. She believed that people have a fundamental right to be free, free to own property, free to make a living, and not be oppressed by those who seize wealth earned by others because they have the power to do it.

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motivesâ€¦Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities

Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off. Government in a free society is supposed to be the servant, not the master of people. Private industry is the generative mechanism for jobs, not government.

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. As citizens of the United States, the state of Washington, and San Juan County, we are asked/told more and more that we must make sacrifices - more tax money, more regulation on our lives and property, less freedom. Government is playing an ever-expanding role in our lives, as we are subjected more and more to coercion applied by those in power. Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. I believe these prophetic words are profoundly applicable to the times in which we live. Those who govern are spending money faster than they can appropriate it from the people who earn it. Millions and millions of dollars are disbursed to favored groups and individuals in the form of grants which have become routinely referred to as â€œfree money,â€ - grants which, of course, have conditions and the conditions frequently expand and deepen the regulatory web in which we become more enmeshed by the day. Almost everything we do is taxed, almost nothing we do is without strings attached, and all around us waste is rampant.

Ayn Randâ€™s sentiments articulate the inexpressible frustration I felt a few weeks ago listening to a representative from a very expensive local government consulting group bemoan the fact that â€œour property owners donâ€™t know what they can do with their land.â€ Are we losing the presumption of individual freedoms and rights inherent in property ownership? Are we approaching a time when we can only act with the permission of our government?

Two new Ayn Rand biographies have recently appeared on book shelves across the country. Maybe you would like to read about her. For all the challenges Iâ€™ve had over the years with Objectivism, I wouldnâ€™t trade the experience for anything. Ultimately, like most endeavors, an affiliation with Randâ€™s ideas should be an exercise in thought and critical evaluation, not slavish adherence to absolutes. She still speaks to me through all these years I have wrestled with Objectivism and her ideas remain in my consciousness. I am not alone.

I am not at all surprised to see that Ayn Rand is back, and Iâ€™m glad.