Happy Birthday Ernie Banks

(Now if this ain’t serendipity... I’ve been spinning this essay ‘round my brain for a couple of weeks or more, but while floating the web lookin’ for good images as illustrations for the piece, I discover that today, January 31st, is Ernie Bank’s 77th birthday. Now I’m a fan as you’ll soon see, but not so idiotically fanatical as to have actually known this date before the fact. But knowing it now, this collection of memories begs to be written today.)

Way back in 1969, we lived in downtown Chicago. I was a mere 6 and a half that summer. Dad was attending the Unitarian Theological Seminary. Mom was a mom to four of us. We lived in a brick townhouse on South Kimbark Avenue in a racially diverse neighborhood not far from the University of Chicago. My best friends were a Jewish kid named Charles who lived in the townhouse next to ours; Tony, the son of our black babysitter Lula, and was a year older than us; and Charlotte, my first love, the blonde daughter of first generation Swedish immigrants who lived in another townhouse around the corner next to the park with the playground jungle gym, who's mother once served us pancakes for lunch.

I discovered baseball the summer before ‘69. 1968 was a tumultuous year, especially in Chicago. Much of the maelstrom passed well over the head of this first grader at the U of Chicago Lab School. (I’m assuming the Lab School is where they trained new teachers and/or experimented with new methods of schoolin’ youngsters.) I do remember our family riding our bikes down to the shores of Lake Michigan to see the gathering of National Guard tanks and troops, though I don’t recall whether that was after the Bobby Kennedy assassination, the Martin Luther King assassination, or the riots at the Democratic Convention. Whatever the occasion, seeing green army men and tanks in my neighborhood was pretty cool.

But at six and a half, only baseball and my friends really mattered. The Chicago Cubs were my first team, a team who’s starting line-up I can still recite today. I spent hours cross-legged in front of a black and white television (you know, the kind where you actually had to get up to change the channel or adjust the volume) watching my team win every game.

Charles and I both started our baseball card collections during the summer of ’68. On Saturday mornings, after we’d each received our weekly allowance, we’d walk down to the local drug store in the tiny strip mall just past the playground. (Gotta wonder whether I’d allow my 6 year old to walk down an inner city Chicago street without adult chaperones today. We haven’t let ‘em walk alone to the Arcata Plaza yet!) We’d carefully finger our way through the stack of waxed packs inside a thin cardboard box at the checkout counter trying to identify the best cards by touch, before selecting the fore-ordained pack of Topps baseball cards that would be ours. Ten cards and a stick of pink bubblegum for a dime. (10 cards for a dime! There ain’t no value like the baseball collectibles world anymore.)

As soon as we exited the front door, the wax paper was ripped away and tossed into the trash can at the corner of the storefront, and we rustled through the small stack of cardboard pictures searching for our favorite Cubs or other players we recognized. Charles, Tony and I held elaborate card trading sessions on the cement front steps of the townhouse.

Some of the older kids in the neighborhood showed us how to flip cards against the step. We quickly abandoned this game when we learned you lost your card when your flip landed short of the other guy’s flip. And it’s no fun to lose the cards you just paid a whole ten cents for. (I still have that stack of cards from 1968 and 1969, held apart in a special box, separate from the several thousand other baseball cards in a chest in the back of the closet.)

On May 13, 1969, I went to my first game at Wrigley Field. Mom had somehow gotten her hands on a couple of tickets. She arranged to pick me up early from school (since this was two decades before there were lights at Wrigley). I remember handing the early dismissal note to my teacher that morning, then watching the clock on the wall, counting the eternal minutes until 12:15 when I could abandon my classmates with a grin and leave penmanship and spelling lessons to go see a Cubs game!

12:15 finally arrived. The young blonde teacher motioned to me quietly while the rest of the class worked on their papers. I walked down the empty hall, unescorted, pushed open the large wooden school doors, and stepped out on to the granite stairway. True to form, my mother wasn’t there. She was then, and still is, at least 15 minutes slower than everyone else in getting anywhere. But soon enough, I saw her coming down the street in our white, wood-paneled Ford station wagon and away we went.

As if for the sole benefit of this six year old at his first-ever baseball game, the Cubs provided a certifiable rout: 19 to nothing over the hapless expansion San Diego Padres. I have the still fresh memory of sitting on the third base line, probably 20 or 30 rows up, underneath the overhanging roof. The light green grass and dark green ivy walls were brilliant, lit by the spring sun and viewed from the cool, dark shade of the grandstand. All day long there were Cubs on base, balls from our white pin-striped good guys spinning past the gray and brown suited opponents into the outfield grass, blue-capped runners rounding third – right in front of me! – on their way home again and again.

And leading the way, the man who became my baseball hero (to this day), Ernie Banks. Mr Cub, closing in the end of his Hall of Fame career though I didn’t know or care about his past at that point, hit three home runs and knocked in seven RBIs just for me that sunny afternoon. I was on the edge of my seat for every one of his at bats, waiting for the Cubs star to shine, and shine he did, for me, at my first ball game. A few years ago, I read a book on those 1969 Cubs, and damned if Ernie, who never made it to the World Series, didn’t recall that very game as one of his favorites too.

History, of course, shows that Ernie Banks and the Cubs’ 1969 magic lasted only ‘til early September. A near total and unexplainable collapse combined with the Amazin’ Mets run up from the cellar of the National League’s Eastern division, led to one of baseball’s most storied season endings. I don’t recall my feelings during that crashing, crushing end of the season. Perhaps the trauma wiped the tears from my memory. Or maybe it was 2nd grade, or the vision of Charlotte on a jungle gym, that took its place in those neural corners of my brain. I can tell you though, that that season embedded a deep hatred of those damned Mets that’s going on 40 years now. That those same Mets pinned a stunning 1986 World Series loss on my now favorite Boston Red Sox – where we moved in ‘72 – doesn’t help their cause.

Happy Birthday, Ernie Banks. In a single afternoon, you created a lifelong love of the world’s greatest game, a passion handed down to my little girls, who’ve never been to Wrigley, but who know to respect an experience at Fenway Park as if they’re in the Notre Dame Cathedral (with hollering, flat Cokes, and red licorice ropes permissible). I wore your number 14 on every little league jersey I had as a kid, and it’s on my fat guys, beer league softball jersey even now.

And I recite Ernie Banks’ catch phrase at near every girls softball game I coach: “It’s a great day for a ballgame. Let’s Play Two!” Even on a day such as this, maybe especially on a drenched day like this, give me a ball, a bat, a glove and a couple of old friends, I’d be out there lookin’ to play two.

A day to match the mood

There are days to match our moods, aren’t there? A rainy, mid-winter Tuesday slowly wasted at my desk doing little tasks while bigger, more significant, immediately pending things wait for me.

Too little sleep over the past few nights doesn’t help. There’ve been at least four nights now laying awake with images of conferences to plan, articles to write, league schedules to draft, science fair projects to shepherd, unpaid bills, the neighbor’s possible pot grow, Barack v. the Clintons, all of it bouncing around my head at 3am for several nights in a row like agitated electrons under the glare of a microscope with no pattern at all played to a musical score that consists solely of the repeating chorus to the Bee Gees “My World”. (My world is our world and this world is your world and your world is my world and my world is your world is mine.)

Noon passes. The remains of last night’s leftovers sit on my desk. Outside the rain is finally letting up though the clouds refuse to open and allow in the blue and gold of sky and sun. It’s time for a walk. All of the rest of this shit can wait.

Ten minutes finds me in the snow-strewn parking lot of Lady Bird Johnson Grove. A solitary snowman adorned with the tight-needled branches from the highest points of the redwoods greets me. He’s been here a couple of days. His once smoothed, rounded paunch is dimpled by the just-a-bit-too-warm-for-him temperature. The white skirt around his ankles oozes slowly into the blacktop. His eyes are sunken and his bushy green moustache droops, the gaunt look of a tired old man who knows he’s already seen his best days.

A sense of heaviness pervades as I slosh up the path. Wet mounds of melting snow gather on the edges of the trail. The surrounding cold gray fog blankets the forest, veiling the tops of the trees.

Large branches have fallen here in the week’s heavy storms, more from the crushing weight of wet snow than the wind I’d guess. Several new widowmakers have impaled themselves solidly beside the trail. A hemlock, nearly a foot in diameter, is snapped about ten feet above the forest floor and fallen to the ground, it’s pale heartwood splintered and pointing jaggedly upwards shaking its fist at the sky for denying it the opportunity to reach the canopy with its brethren.

It’s not raining right now, but a secondary rain falls. Rain drops collected in the highest branches cascade down, falling only short distances at first, from branch to branch, needle tip to needle tip until there are no more branches to slow their fall and they pour from a million needles in a thousand trees to be absorbed in the ferns and saturated duff far below.

The ferns and huckleberries and rhododendrons bend under the weight of a week’s snow. They’re held low to the ground opening broad vistas through the lower forest that don’t exist in drier times.

The trail is half covered in half gray, half white snow, snow that is pockmarked with round water drops and depressed by muddy bootprints. The remaining snow is littered with fallen debris: thin redwood branches, some dead and brown, others recently alive and bright green, are strewn casually alongside dark green rhododendron and tanoak leaves.

In a tanoak cluster near the end of the trail, there’s a quick flash of pale yellow. A small warbler or vireo flits around in front of me. I stand still, watching her for a moment and she comes closer, curious, as if she wonders what I’m doing out in the cold, wet forest on a day like this. I wonder the same of her.

I try hard to not see this colorful, carefree little bird as a sappy, sugar-coated omen that spring is just around the corner and better days are just ahead. But I fail. The walk has done me some good after all. The pressures of life have been lifted, if only momentarily. And perhaps, as soon as I’ve finished this little piece of non-fiction, I’ll actually get back to something my boss considers worthwhile. Perhaps.

The ocean above me

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to get to the mouth of the creek. Work. Holidays. Meetings. Bill Clinton. Jury duty. All have conspired to keep me off my favorite stretch of sand of late. But with rain on the horizon yet standing off shore for the time being, and knowing I won’t have the opportunity again ‘til sometime next week, I seized the moment, albeit a quick one, for a short saunter in the sand.

It’s warmer on the beach today than it is in the woods. I spent a little time on the Lady Bird Johnson Trail where the wind whistled above while the trees surrounding me remained near motionless. The cold and damp of the higher forest was not doin’ the soul proper though, so I decamped for what I hoped would be warmer climes.

And it was indeed warmer on the beach, with a gentle breeze blowing along the shoreline.

The slope from dry sand to the surf is steeper than it was a few weeks ago. The stronger storms of recent weeks have carved out a high-angle bench along much of the beach. The waves are a respectable eight to ten feet or so, and the tide is moving in. Two or three glistening pebble fields decorate the beach to the north, providing a tinkling treble melody to the booming rhythmic bass of the crashing surf.

The surf is higher and the sky is grayer than when I drove past the beach on the way in this morning. The sea is a dusty jade green, just a shade or two paler than my jeans. Off to the north, beyond the Gold Bluffs as the coast winds up to the mouth of the Klamath, silvery virga streak a distant blue sky just below the steel gray line of the incoming storm system.

The mouth of Redwood Creek remains wide and turbulent as it has been all winter. High waves roll in through the creek’s mouth, cresting past the hundred gulls standing on the south shore. (I wonder why the gulls are always massed on the south side of the creek, and rarely on the north?)

I almost trip over a dead harbor seal. He (she?) has been dead for a while. The soft fur is unmarked and there’s no sign of injury or assault. The critter’s eyes and insides of its head have been eaten or decayed away. (The incoming tide apparently returned this seal to the sea shortly after my wandering. My coworker couldn’t find it on her walk a couple hours later this day.)

I make my way to the very edge of the mouth of the creek, down the tiny peninsula of sand between the Pacific and the estuary. I feel like I’m standing below sea level, which I probably am. From this vantage point, the waves appear to rise and crash above me, spilling downhill and past me into the estuary. It’s a dizzying, discombobulating sensation if you think about it too much, which I tend to do.

I don’t have the chance to linger there as a series of three or four large and closely spaced waves rush into the channel. A few inches of foam-led water pour over the top of the sand berm from the west, while perpendicular running waves ease up the channel’s bank from the north. And from the east, the estuary swells as the incoming saltwater fills its banks. My broad and dry peninsula becomes very narrow, and very wet very quickly forcing me back and up to safe ground.

Two seals appear to stand up in the channel, the upper third of their bodies out of the water, their dark eyes watching my retreat. I’m momentarily jealous of these two characters, and their ability to float effortlessly up and down the swells.

A few more waves send me higher up the beach while sending me the message that real world responsibilities await. I’ve promised a lunch break and an couple hours wandering time out of “the store” to a coworker ‘fore it rains.

Hasta la proxima.

Oh, what a night! Bill Clinton comes to town

About 6:45 last night, as we waited inside the cozy fairground hall in humble Humboldt County for the former leader of the free world, I saw him. Briefly. Through a gap in the temporary white privacy curtains at the north end of the hall. The dark blazer, the shock of white hair. "He's here! I saw him" For a few brief moments, I was standing less than 20 feet from frikkin' Bill Clinton.

Yes, it was a long afternoon of waiting in a brisk north coast winter breeze. I planted my chair on the concrete around 130 in the afternoon when there were only about 70 people in front of me and precisely in the center of the shade shadow created by the Redwood Acres grandstand. By the time the scrap paper and highlighter tickets were passed out, my wife and 9-year old daughter were tickets 119, 120, 121.

Rumors and gossip rolled up and down the line like ocean waves, and were fun to follow all afternoon. Only 377 people were gonnna get in. Then only 240 would have seats. There was a sign-in list and if you weren't on it you weren't getting in. No, wait, there wasn't a sign-in list. Hold on, yes there was. A required Secret Service questionnaire...passed out by a 10 year old boy which looked suspiciously like a Hillary campaign flyer to gin up emails and addresses of potential donors. The tickets mean nothing. Oh, yes they do.

In the end, even though many of us had stood in line for several hours, kept our places, organized ourselves in numerical order as the event volunteers had asked us to, there were many people who pushed their way to the front, forgetting the Democratic ideals of fairness to others and concern for their fellow citizens, and cut the line into the hall since those numbered tickets that had been handed out to the first few hundred of us never mattered anyways. (My great thanks anways to all of you hardworking Dem volunteers who pulled off this massive event on just a couple days notice....despite the whining, you done great!)

But that's all prologue. Once in, the excitement of anticipation permeated the place. Smiles. Laughs. A rolicking gospel choir.














Then Bill showed up. I kept thinkin', "This is Bill Clinton...in Eureka. What the hell is he doin' here?" I remembered having the same thoughts 10 years ago when Willie Nelson came to Carlsbad, New Mexico, a town of 20,000 in the backwaters of the southwest. Why? It didn't matter though, cuz the big dog was here.

Bill's hour-long speech was fun as spectacle, though probably typical of campaign stump speeches. He pumped Hillary as the only logical choice in this race. He promoted her as someone who not only promotes change but as the only surviving candidate that has actually changed people's lives.

His not-so-subtle digs at Hillary's most prominent competitor came in the question, asked several times, (and I'm paraphrasing) "Does it make sense to promote change by tossing away all the candidates who've spent their lives making real change and starting over?" He tossed in his admirations of Sen's Biden and Dodd, and Governor Richardson to bolster his case.

And he made a good case. My wife, a Richardson then Obama follower before 7pm last night, is almost convinced. Me? It was an effective argument, though I'm gonna withhold judgment 'til the stars in my eyes have a chance to clear. As effective as Bill was last night in garnering new Hillary supporters, I wonder what happens if Obama or Edwards shows up to turn on a Humboldt County crowd. Will we follow them and their star power just as eagerly into the fray? That bouncing from inspiration to inspiration in such close proximity to our real political superstars must be what it's like living in Iowa or New Hampshire, eh?

The moment of the night came after the speech. While Bill walked the cordoned line at the front of the stage, shaking hands, hugging crying women, passing autographables over his shoulder to his handlers, my 9-year old daughter managed to squeeze her way underneath and through the throng of giddy adults who were pushing and jostling for position to shake the president's hand.

She got not just a handshake, but a brief conversation with the president. OK, so it was just him asking her name three times since it was loud and she's on the quiet and shy side. But Bill Clinton, the former leader of the whole frikkin' free world, Democratic party saviour, most famous guy on the planet, leaned down, put his hand on my kids' shoulder, asked her name, and signed her now-not-so-worthless piece of scrap paper with the orange highlighted number 119, as Mom and Dad giggled like schoolkids behind her.

Oh what a night!

Three Presidents Visit Humboldt County

News of Bill Clinton's visit tomorrow has me wonderin' how often we get visits from this pols of this stature in the hinterlands of northern California. A few quickie Google searches begs the following question: Has it really been 38 years since a US President found his way to Humboldt County?

As near as I can tell, not since August 27, 1969 when President Nixon (before The Fall), former President Johnson (Lyndon, not Andrew), and then-Governator (and future president) Reagan gathered in a 300 acre redwood grove a few miles off the highway in the newly minted Redwood National Park, have we witnessed American royalty this high up the north coast. (And those of you who've been here much longer than me, please, don't hesitate to correct my attempt at county history.)

For 'twas on that cloudless August afternoon that three presidents - past, present and future - deplaned at the Arcata Airport, took the short drive up Highway 101, breezed through the little town of Orick to dedicate the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. Lady Bird herself had already visited the area in November of '68 to formally dedicate the National Park. This day's visit named this one grove of ancient redwoods in honor of the former first lady and her "Beautify America" efforts.

August 27th just happened to be LBJ's 61st birthday, and for the occasion the Nixons had flown Lyndon, Lady Bird, and the girls all out to San Clemente for a roast beast feast, a lemon birthday cake decorated with yellow roses and bluebonnets, and a 19"bonsai tree with its requisite "Bonsai for Beginners" handbook. Tossed in were a couple hours of meetings between the two presidents and dastardly notable Nixonites Kissinger, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman.

After lunch, the party retired to Air Force One, trusting the military's finest designated drivers to find their way northward the redwood coast. It was not a direct flight however. The revellers pit-stopped at Orange County's El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to pick up Governor Reagan, the good Reverend Billy Graham and soon-to-be House Majority Leader (D) Hale Boggs , better known today as the father of NPR's Cokie Roberts.

A signing ceremony, a few quick, mostly forgettable remarks (check 'em out here if you like), and some great pictures of three American presidents, side by side, literally, in our neck of the woods. I know we can all go on about the three President's debatable "greatness" as we will about Bill and Hillary when their run is done, but a great day for the county nonetheless (or at least for our local historians and chambers of commerce).

***

For the record, Herbert Hoover visited the county on a few occasions after his presidency ended in '32, including a night camping under the redwoods on Bull Creek as well as occasional fly fishing forays on Redwood Creek and nights at the Orick Inn on his way to his private fishin' cabin on the Klamath.

Were there others?

Mr Hillary Clinton on his way to Eureka later this week. (Wednesday)

Carol and Greg are reporting that Bill Clinton, husband of presidential candidate & former 1st lady Hillary Clinton is coming to Eureka....maybe. Word has it that Wednesday is the day, noonish the time. KHUM was interviewing Milt Boyd, Humboldt County's Democratic Party Chair a little while ago, who said the rumor's true, and they've been talking to Bill's people, though there are lots of details and likely lots of schedule changing possibilities between now and then. Even if I'm not firmly in the Hillary camp (leaning Obama now that Bill Richardson's returned to Governoring) but if the big guy's coming to our neighborhood, we'll be there to holler out our loud and proud Democratic cheers from somewhere in the teeming crowd.

Updating around 820pm: Looks like it's pretty much gonna happen, though sometime between 4-5pm according to the NCJ Blog and other sources. See y'all there.

Updating again, Tuesday 2ish: The afternoon guy on KHUM was phone talking to someone, I believe from the local Dems office, saying the hoopla happens between 400 and 630 tomorrow at Redwood Acres. (I'm hoping someone else can confirm this before too long so me and the 2 readers of this tripe aren't the only ones showing up there.)

Tuesday, just after 5pm: Over at the NCJ Blogthing, they're sayin' the gates open at 4:30 for a 6:30 event. Perhaps my girls will get to watch the boys play basketball and see Bill after all. It was gonna be a tough call for them, though boys in shorts were winning the debate last I checked.

Humboldt Democrats finally have an "official notice" up about the visit. They're sayin' gates open a 5:30, but I'm thinkin' there'll be a couple others in town wanting to witness the spectacle so we'll be there early I suppose.

That was the kind of house it was.

Every so often, you run across a passage in a book that sticks with ya. I found one of those last night, marveling at the ability of a great writer to paint a picture. Suppose that's why they're considered great writers, and I'm not.

Here, from All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (p32 in my copy):

It looked like those farmhouses you ride by in the country in the middle of the afternoon, with the chickens under the trees and the dog asleep, and you know the only person in the house is the woman who has finished washing up the dishes and has swept the kitchen and has gone upstairs to lie down for half an hour and has pulled off her dress and kicked off her shoes and is lying there on her back on the bed in the shadowy room with her eyes closed and a strand of her hair still matted down on her forehead with the perspiration. She listens to the flies cruising around the room, then she listens to your motor getting big out on the road, then it shrinks off into the distance and she listens to the flies. That was the kind of house it was.

More hirsute political analysis from the frozen steppes of Iowa

Yes, you heard it here first. Or at least you would have if anyone read this insignificant slice of tripe. Obama wins Iowa with Edwards nosing out Clinton, while Huck musses up Mitt’s hair of inevitability with a 34% noogie courtesy of Iowa’s churchgoers.

Not that all this means much of anything. It’s just a first chapter, and an oddly constructed one at that, in an intense and condensed process. I don’t expect Hillary to fold quickly, and Edwards should play well in New Hampshire and beyond too.

My man Richardson is playin’ up his 1.7% finish as “making the final four”. He’ll need to improve that a tad bit to survive beyond next week. I’d humbly suggest that if he doesn’t reach at least the 15% mark and make this a 4-Dem race, he’s off the table and workin’ the VP angle for real.

(By the by, farewell Messers Biden and Dodd. Both of y’all would’ve been great guys in the White House if only you’d’ve been a tad bit more interesting.)

A couple interesting results not being played up amid all the noise of voter turnout, young 1st-time voters, and evangelical yayhoos:

Heisted from the Daily Kos, an interesting look at the results en toto (I believe just invented that latinish sounding phrase so don’t go lookin’ for it in Wikipedia.): If you look at all the voters combined (all 356,000 of ‘em, R & D & I & L), the results read:

Obama 24.5%
Edwards 20.5%
Clinton 19.8%
Huckabee 11.4%

I know it’s not a square-up comparison ‘cuz caucusing rules vary by party and you’re only choosing a candidate in one party. But it’s interesting, no, that the top dog Republican gathers only 11% of everyone who slogged their way through the fallow cornfields. It’s kinda like the Colorado Rockies emerging victorious from a pathetic National League field just so they can lose to any of the top 3 or 4 AL teams.

Another interesting result (though not really pointed out quite yet in the press…again you hear it here first) is that of Dems, 68% of ‘em chose candidates who idealize change and progressive new directions in Obama and Edwards over the political establishment’s cautious status quo and Hillary’s barely 29%. I’m guessing here that if/when Obama or Edwards have to fold, their voters will slide more easily towards each other rather than to the stolid, cautious, DC establishment-propped Hillary.

Predictions for next week? Hillary gets ugly with both Obama and Edwards ‘cuz she has to win. I’m guessing, here and now, she doesn’t win New Hampshire either, not with Obama’s message, momentum, and money. She should do well enough to edge Mr Edwards, narrowly, enabling the Dems to maintain the 3some for a while longer. Governor Bill slips upwards to perhaps 6 yet not more than 10%, just not enough to matter, but retaining his floppy gravitas to serve us entertainingly somehow, somewhere in the near future.

The R’s? A 3-way nastiness ensues between Mitt, Huck, and McCain. Ron Paul could be interesting in NH with its “Live Free or Die” sympathies, but not interesting enough to make a difference. Giuliani? Fred? They’ll continue on past NH but nobody knows quite why.

Enjoy the primary season goofiness. This’ll all be over in less than a month. We’ll have a short breathing period to concern ourselves with Britney’s next rehab and terrifying tiger tales before the real-life intensity of the national campaign commences in earnest come spring.

Let the games begin: Punctual political punditry from the flannel drop-seat of my tartan plaid Christmas pajamas

The Presidential Primary season officially kicks off tonight in the frozen, fallow cornfields of America’s heartland. The pandering in Iowa ends around 430ish (left coast time) when Iowans can finally watch Jeopardy without attack ads, and dine at the local eatery without TV camera’s following well-coifed temporary coffee attendants who’d rather shake your hand than refill your mug. Later of course, we’ll have to listen to blithering TV analysts for a few hours to figure out who won the damn thing, and let them tell us what this means for next week’s primary in similarly tiny, similarly frozen, and similarly Caucasian New Hampshire.

Ya want my opinion? I thought you might.

If I was Republican: I’d throw up my hands, pour myself a strong drink or three, and consider leaving the country and traveling for a spell ‘cuz ‘taint nothin’ there. Take your pick from the following: A mis-speaking fundamentalist preacher. A newly-minted fundamentalist Mormon flip-flopping Bush-suck-up. A Gotham mob henchman whose hometown’s greatest tragedy occurred while he was in charge…and he’s proud of it. Two geriatrics, one who’s having trouble staying awake during this process. And a goofy libertarian, government-hating, former government rep who wants to be the guy that runs the hated government.

It appears this one’s coming down to whether conservative white religious pastoralists can swallow the good-looking Yankee from a century-old cult who’s changed all his positions to run as a right-wing fundamentalist. Or, will they choose the lifelong right-wing fundamentalist preacher of a two-millenia old cult, owner of a blessed bookcase and who’s skinnier than he once was, but really doesn’t really understand much of the world outside of Dogpatch.

My money’s on Arkansas’ Huck tonight, figgerin’ that Iowa’s bachelor farmers will choose to hang their John Deere ball caps with the historically safe preacher/governor/formerly fat guy rather than a slippery-principled slick-haired New English Mormon.

And, should I be a Democrat (which in the name of full disclosure I have been since my Mama drug me out leafleting for George McGovern in ’72), here’s how I’d spend a pleasant yet frigid January evening:

From what I understand of the Iowa voting process, you gather together with 14% of your neighbors of similar political persuasion in someone’s parlor. The kids have taped hand-crayoned faux campaign signs for each candidate in different corners of the room. The three candidates officially sanctioned by the national news media – the girl, the black guy, and the guy with good hair – each get a corner of their own. The last corner of the room is available for “The Others”: the paunchy, flop-haired Mexican, a couple of eastern white guys, and the short guy with the hot wife.

After coffee is served and everyone’s had a fair chance at the cream cheese finger sandwiches and powder-sugared almond cookies, the caucus host invites everyone to sit in the corner correspondent with their pre-selected fave. When the attendees have all gathered in their chosen corners, the calculators are pulled out while the caucus-goers try to remember how to figure out percentages. Once the remedial mathematics arguments are resolved, those misbegotten fools who sat momentarily for a candidate that couldn’t garner 15% of the 14 people in the room, have to move to the already crowded corners pre-selected for the girl, the black guy, or the guy with good hair.

Me, I’d start in “The Others” corner, throwing my support to Bill Richardson – diplomat, congressman, governor, backslapper and global do-gooder. He wants us out of Iraq now. He’s taken New Mexico forward in green energy leadership. He’s got the personality and experience to talk to foreign leaders. And he’s wasted an entire career working with Republicans and other despots getting things done whether they’ve wanted to cooperate or not. Following 16 years of ugly partisanship, couldn’t we use a domestic diplomat who can tell a good joke for a change?

Unfortunately, the national media says Bill’s just running for VP and refuses to include him in any discussion of leading Democrats. So I’d reluctantly abandon my butt depression in the couch, along with the lonely heart supporters of Dodd, Biden, and Kucinich and try to fall in love with someone, if only for the night.

Likely, I’d snuggle up with the Obama crowd. I like his message of hope and change. If anyone’s capable of moving the national discussion in a new direction, with a new voice, I believe he can and will. I also like John Edwards' message of middle-class resurrection, particularly the class warfare angle he’s taken of late. Hillary, I’m sorry. You may be a brilliant policy wonk and a hard working and effective senator, but you’re much too centrist and all too politically cautious for me. We don’t need your triangulating and parsed and pallid support for action or inaction (which is it?) in the Middle East. And I just can’t stomach the thought of another 4 to 8 years of counterproductive political mud wrestling that you and Bill and Rush and Sean would bring us.

My predictions? Obama slips in as the winner tonight, with Edwards nosing Hillary for #2. Hillary, a disappointing third remains unbowed with gobs of cash and her all-star status media-assured. Bill maintains his steady fourth place, not quite prime time position to hang in for another couple of primaries, assuring himself of the serious VP consideration the media has allowed for him. Biden, Dodd, Kuch…likely gone and forgotten by mid-January.

We have to do this all again next week with New Hampshire, of course. By then, we’ll have a new set of rules, another round of pundit prognostications, hopefully a smaller cast of characters (unless Mr Bloomberg determines we need another NY mayor in the hunt), and a more comprehensible process beginning in Dixon’s Notch, albeit sans the delicious finger sandwiches.

....and I get paid for this?

Wednesday, 02Jan08, around 1pm, just before low tide:

It’s a hazy gray day. We’re waiting on a storm that should arrive later this afternoon or tonight. There’s a high, dark line of clouds that’s been hanging out at sea for most of the day, yet still hasn’t made its move toward the shoreline. The haze settled after lunch after a morning that was simply overcast. The sun tries to shine through but just can’t penetrate the silvery haze.

The ocean is loud today as the bottom of low tide approaches. It’s difficult to make out the sound of individual waves. Simply a continuous grumbling rumble. The waves are constant, moving, jumbled, anticipating their upslope return trip with the rising tide. Beyond the breaking waves, the ocean matches the silver of the sky, and Redding Rock slowly disappears behind a thin gray veil.

In the distance there’s a huge gathering of gulls at the mouth of Redwood Creek, bigger than I’ve seen in months. To say several hundred gulls is not an exaggeration. They mass on the wet, oval sandbar sitting at the mouth of the creek and on both its north and south shores. They float in the rushing channel of the creek and fly over the churning foam around Little Girl Rock and the two sisters.

On the south shore, 40 to 50 harbor seals have beached themselves. They rest on their bellies, some on their backs, and one reddish fellow leans on his left flipper like he’s waiting at the bar for his girlfriend to come back from the restroom.

They are of all sizes, male and female (and young’uns) though I don’t know how to tell apart from this distance other than relative size. Their colors range from very near white with dark spots, to cream and chocolate brown, as well as the aforementioned ruddy haired gent. They all have the same black-eyed face though, and each pair of dark eyes follow me as I saunter past, making sure I give them adequate personal space. I’m enjoying watching them and don’t want my presence to force them into the chilly rushing waters on this calm afternoon.

The estuary is all but gone. Where two weeks ago there was a placid, near circular pool of fresh water, today there is only Redwood Creek, wider than it was a fortnight ago, rushing straight to the Pacific. The path to the ocean is a broad avenue with no narrowing or tapering at its terminus. No ocean waves push their way into the channel this afternoon. The force of the creek stops the Pacific at the sand bar.

I’ve had this beach to myself on most of my walks in recent months. Today, a solitary birder has joined me here. He kneels on the sand, motionless, keenly focused, his eye pressed into a large spotting scope that almost certainly costs what would take me a couple weeks to earn. What is he looking at? I scan the horizon yet see only gulls. Perhaps he’s peering through the haze to one of the rocks, to something beyond the range of my 20 year old binoculars. Though I’d be well within the expectations of my paid duties to stroll over and chat with him, perhaps inquire as to what he’s found, I’m not willing to interrupt his afternoon simply to satisfy my curiosity.

In the south estuary, some new birds appear for me this afternoon. A black-headed bird with a dark back and striking white patch at the base of the chest, with reddish eyes and a hint of white on the bill - male ring-necked ducks - dot the calm waters. Lesser scaups, so similar to the ring-necked ducks but with a silvery-white back, plod along nearby. Buffleheads and a few coots, both of which have been here before join the throng. And, perhaps a few ruddy ducks, small diving birds with a dark head cap, buff body and grayish-buff back. (I’ll need to check on that last one.)

Hard to believe sometimes that your government pays me to wander around on the beach doing not much of nothin’. On days like this, it’s harder still to wonder why I have the gall to whine about it on occasion. As we enter a new year, I’ll try to remember this task is better than quality counting the elastic threads on a pair of BVD’s in Russell County, Kentucky, cuz it’s really not all that bad, huh?