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Showing posts from October, 2008

Well View

Gee, ever since a handful of vacationers bought second homes in Bellevue , they have become quite uppity down there. Next thing you know, they will pass a pallet ordinance, to inspect everyone’s deck for quality woodsmanship. So somebody please tell me; if you are secretly living off a well in Bellevue, connected to ancient waters spurting up from pristine Idaho batholiths, instead of attached to metered city services, does that make you an awful grid sinner? And that you should shift to sip meekly from the consecrated city waters? http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005123407&var_Year=2008&var_Month=10&var_Day=31 Seems that living off the grid or being homeless now, is either against the law, or on the cusp of being against the law, in so many communities. In some areas, we now have more foreclosed homes than we do homeless people. Fortunately, community leaders in a handful of places have seen what a crisis our nation is in and have thus gained enough empathy to l
U.S. Slaughterhouse ban creates new dilemmas… …is what I originally titled this letter to the Times-News, last winter solstice; until the editors improved it, to the more aptly titled “Horses need our protection.” H ere is the jist of it: After 1986 Kentucky Derby contender Ferdinand overcame 18-to-1 odds to becom e champion, he was later sold to stud in Japan. Then in 2002, the victor was evidently sent to slaughter, prompting a “from winner to dinner” hearkening slogan used by the outraged thoroughbred community in its successful campaign to ban the last of U.S. horse slaughterhouses meant for human consumption. They still kill U.S. horses for food, you know. And a bad hitch is that many of these once-beloved creatures are beginning to face horrifically longer transports to Mexico and Canada , which excludes federal jurisdiction, from our monitoring for humane treatment. Deplorably overcrowded trailers and more obfuscated slaughterhouses continuing with questionable sanitary prac
Ginormous Whale Tale A dozen years back, a whale beached itself directly in front of my Brother David’s seashore apartment. This uncanny event occurred on one of the rare occasions that he was out of town. We considered this symbolic, since David is a top-notch wildlife protector for the State of North Carolina . While he has a rascally background, Officer Banholzer takes his job as seriously as I do mine -as if our lives depended on them. Once a whale beaches itself; that’s about it for the creature. The weight of its body, adapted to buoyancy, crushes itself without the encompassing ocean-water to buttress its gravity. Many people wonder why so many of these creatures continuously thrust themselves onto our sandy shores. Some say that whales are becoming disoriented by modern sea vessel sonar and other mitigating factors –known and unknown. Ever since TV first radiated, we have placed technology on fancy pedestals, while allowing vital nature impact studies to become mostly burning
The little collider that could dance Friends asked me to try to determine what the secretive construction project at the old Drug Store is, so I spied up the hill and saw right away that they appear to be building an extension of the Great European Hadron Collider , in the subterranean tunnels beneath Hailey’s streets! The reasoning behind this is that European dance floors close their doors, around the same time that bands in the Western U.S. are beginning to warm up. In this manner, we will be able to transport our European partying pals here and decompress them in time, so they may buy dinner at a local restaurant, before dancing the night away. The ambiti ous project will soon extend into a great zero beneath Hailey’s busiest streets and will be a positive boon for our fledging economy. Sworn-to-secrecy archaeologists will take great care overseeing documentation of every opium pipe and historical artifact unearthed from the ancient Chinese tunnels. An extra benefit to Hailey’s Ha
I have a Disc-Golf Dream By Jim Banholzer Men spend their time in following a ball or a hare; it is the pleasure even of kings. - Blaise Pascal - The Penses: 141 Ever since my friend Colt - who we sometimes call the Dick Fosbury of Disc Golf - turned me on to the sport two decades ago by showing me some thrilling trick shots, I felt that Disc Golf was going to have a great future, perhaps someday even evolving into an Olympic demonstration sport. For those who don’t know much about Disc Golf, and would like to learn more; perusing through a few linked websites is informative ; while even more instructive are several in-depth YouTube demonstrations. A common theme is that courses can be found in almost every city, with the majority accessible at no cost. Unfortunately, our area of Idaho is one of the rare exceptions. The good news for disc-enthusiasts, though, is that this could soon change, with a recent Sun Valley Online poll indicating that our community has more than a passi