Fisherman Past

I have always had an obsession with boats. I think its part of my DNA. One summer I found myself in Maine as the captain of a beautiful, brightly painted, and fast former racing catamaran converted for day charter trade and tourists.

Even after the conversion from steed to cattle wagon, the cat was still fast. The word got out and soon I was busily making two trips a day from our berth along the working waterfront of Portland. The cat would be filled with tourists wanting to experience the beauty of the many islands sprinkled throughout Casco Bay.

In the evening, after the cat was put safely to bed, I would often walk up the cobblestone streets of the town to have some dinner and wash down the salt spray with a few beers. Some nights I'd run into other friends and the few beers sometimes turned into a few too many. On those nights I’d walk back down to the dock and crawl aboard the cat for a peaceful night’s sleep swaying with the tug of the tide and hearing the wonderful sound of the stretch of dock lines. It sometimes made me think the cat was alive, tugging at her leash, just waiting to run again – perhaps for warmer water and sunnier climes south.

One, "too late night", I slowly wondered back to the boat. Sitting on a bench right in front of the cat was what appeared to be another drunken sailor. When he saw me it gave him the opportunity to launch into a diatribe about what is wrong with the world. Everything that he was spewing about was embodied in the brightly colored cat taking tourists out to his old fishing grounds that had now been fished out and the world was in ruin.

This man’s name was Fawny Dowdy. He had more wrinkles in his face than I had ever seen and that one distinction, I learned later, earned him the cover of National Fisherman Magazine. His hands were like leather and although he must have been well into his 80s he still had the appearance of a very strong man. I listened carefully to his rant and even though I had too much to drink too, I was alert and the chill of a Maine summer evening was reviving me. He carried on for what must have been an hour and when he realized I was the captain of this evil machine, the hatred was now directed to me personally. I continued to listen until he finally had to come up for air. I took that pause to say that I understood what he was talking about.

Portland had a wonderful working waterfront that was being taken over by pleasure boat marinas and condo developers. We were sitting on one of the last two working piers. Fishing grounds had been decimated by new techniques, GPS, factory ships, and the greed of distant ship owners supplying an ever increasing and demanding market with no consideration of the finite limits of a fishery. The population grew along the waterfront and the houses men of the sea like Fawny lived in were no longer affordable.

I think when I said I understood, he had a realization that perhaps he and I were closer than he first thought. He loved boats, knew them all, all the designs, he knew how they all sailed. He loved the big schooners he went off to fish on and he loved little dinghies to play around the harbor in when he was home. He loved rowing a good peapod and he loved the look and feel of a good lobster boat. I actually was cut from the same cloth.

As we discussed our mutual love for boats in general and special appreciation of the right curve of a bow or the sweet shape of tumblehome we developed a friendship. I explained to him that I respected all that he knew and helped to develop to get us to this point where I could now still work in boats. My boat was a crazy colored cat meant to catch tourists but there were more similarities than differences. He explained to me how in days past they would sail big schooners right onto an island beach at high tide. Then at low they would scrape, repair, and paint the bottoms before the tide filled back in, then on the next tide they would let her layover on her other side. Then I would shoot back excitedly with a story of how we hit 18 knots on a broad reach. He was interested and excited too at that number never having gone that fast.

It ended up a beautiful night and by the time the sun was brightening the eastern sky, we had sobered up and were just having fun talking story. It was time for Fawny to go off to wherever he actually lived and I needed a few hours sleep before the first group of tourists came aboard. I invited Fawny to come sailing on the cat with me and while he said I will one day, I knew it wouldn’t happen.

The world of Fawny Dowdy had passed. It was a different day when a wooden schooner could lie on her side at low tide for some maintenance. Today, you would need permission from the waterfront landowner who lived in New York and would then need to get a permit and that would only be after an environmental impact study was done by a certified company specializing in waterfront studies. When that study was reviewed, instructions would then be given as to what tides it were allowed to happen, the most extreme angle the schooner was allowed to lay over, the number of people required to guide her down all wearing lifejackets and hard hats of course. Then a floating boom would surround the area so as to not let any debris escape and a certified hazardous waste crew would need to be standing by in case some fuel from any of the cabin lamps spilled into the water. This would need to be applied for approximately two years before the attempted grounding because of the backlog of paperwork in the different agencies offices. In addition fish counts had to be checked to see if this schooner was in compliance with limits set by an expert in Washington while the Japanese factory ship sits out 12 ¼ miles off the coast basically stealing everything this schooner was meant to work in.

That night with Fawny was over 20 years ago and he no longer knew how to handle the crazy bureaucratic mess we built. Now more than 20 years on and its only become worse. Email, video games, Facebook, Myspace, social networking, cell phones that can search the internet and play movies and more, lets us avoid any personal contact. There is only a desire to get more for me, not to know how our neighbor is doing, no community support for older folks that can’t go for a walk any longer because the city’s sidewalks are so broken up. I think the world has now passed me by too and now I understand where Fawny was coming from even more.

We are no longer free and the greed and corruption in big business and politics have finally run the course and run our liberty into the dirt. The regulations, deregulations, hidden payoffs, taxes, permits are out in the public eye and no one really seems to care. Known thieves hide out in million dollar penthouses in full public view while devastated elders that had their saving stolen have no recourse and struggle with poverty. How can this be?

Well, I guess one good use of my cell phone will be that it automatically alerts me when my permit is finally ready so I can lay my schooner over on a an island beach at high tide.

Change and Hope

We have elected change and hope and how could anyone disagree with the promise of those two words. I am completely independent (apolitical) so I didn't support Obama (that doesn't mean I supported anyone else either for those of you quick to catagorize) and now that he is President, I wish him well and I truly hope he lives up to some of his promises.

What I fear however, and something I am sure of, is that there are forces far greater than the Presidency at work to shape our future. If you are not sure what this means just follow the money. Even under Obama the rich will get richer and the have nots may slightly improve their position but the group will grow as a whole.

Why would I say this - first it is not the government's job to bail anyone out - Wall St., banks, auto companies or even you! That's right - you either. The minute we let the government bail us out we will be controlled by it even more and then guess what? The rich get richer and there are more ways to keep us in our place. The racial divide won't be among color lines but along net worth lines.

All the conviences we are sold today from cell phones, to Hi-Def TVs, to health care is about controlling us and allowing the rich to get richer (oh and for them to stay that way they need to be able to watch us too). Cell phones today can pinpoint your position on the globe within feet - big brother is watching. What about all the mini video cameras? I recently heard that Manhattan is 80% under camera - big brother is watching. How about the cameras at the stop lights that can send you a ticket and you get nice photos of your license plate and your face - big brother is watching. I don't know how I survived all these years without hi-def and broadband but now it is mandated by the government if you want to watch TV - why? What was wrong with TV before? And health care, who knows what dispicable plans will come forward when the government knows the details of everyone's health history.

Yes, its all sold as convience. You'll be able to get a better picture for the ball game, you will know where your kid is through his cell phone, the cameras make it safer, etc. How many have already agreed to chip implants because it is "easier"? This is taking us down a road of huge big brother government acting as if they are providing social programs for the poor. It looks good to have the government watching your back right?

The nice look of government watching out for us will quickly turn into the sour taste of a government controlling us with even fewer personal and civil rights. The good look of socialism is not the government's domain. We need to let the churches and literally millions of non-profits out there service the poor, etc. In fact there are more programs from non-profits that could be for just about any of us. As the government has encroached into education it has failed and yet more money is thrown at education as if that is the answer. A real stimulus for America should be from a great education with independent thinkers developing creative solutions for the future (and this has nothing to do with grand architecture- while nice, learning can happen anywhere). Government is mandating green programs and many are jumping on that band wagon too but as it is all so new, we don't have accurate measurable ways to determine success.

Government should be small and stay out of our personal business and the government hasn't demostrated its ability to do really anything well except conduct a war - and why is that? War is good for business and so the rich get richer...If you want the government to bail you or anyone or any company out, in fact if you allow this to happen, I say watch your back because it won't be long before the beast is completely out of the cage and when that happens the words change and hope may have drastically different meanings.

What a Wacky World

A billion dollar company gets bailed out by Joe sixpack but the CEO walks with millions while Joe can't make the rent. What is wrong with this picture. These CEOs should all be indicted!

I just heard the head of Lehman, when asked if the loans that were made for more than the value of a property and then repackaged was a bit like stealing if the buyer of that reapckaged security wasn't informed. Huh? HELL YES!!! it was stealing at the least, fraudulent for sure, and the fact that the Lehman exec said he didn't realize that was happening is lying under oath in front of congress and he should go immediately to jail without the possibility of parole.

There were national ads advertisng for 125% mortages - how could he not know! Yet the exec got millions for playing dumb. How did he ever get to be a CEO if he were truly that stupid and how can he sleep at night blatantly lying like that?

I recently read a wonderful book by William S. Coperthwaite called "A Handmade Life". It was fantastic and spoke about a simple way of living with respect for the land and one another. In one sense it made me want to homestead in rural Maine.

I have a problem though. I love art and photography and architecture and women's shoes from Paris and style and beauty and grace - and all of this, dear reader, in the most natural sense. I have no tolerance for silcone in the body or chemicals on one's hair. There is such grace in a woman getting older with gray and yet still oozing with her natural beauty. Growing older like this is a way of letting God's grace shine through.

But this problem of mine keeps me in a more urban setting. Stealing away to the occassional tropical place, going for a sail, or a quiet retreat is a good thing but I don't think I can live fully in this setting. I am unfortunately stuck with one foot in each place. And I appreciate and respect both for what they are.

Back to the current day wolves that parade around as Masters of the Universe...where did we go wrong? Was it after WWII when war still carried on with so little respect for life? Was it after the war when it became fashionable to own a home in the suburbs with poor quality and no architectural value just so we could say we owned a piece of the American dream and the developers learned to line their pockets? Or was it in the 60's when we all learned of the truly scary possibility of nuclear war but kept stock piling these deadly weapons anyway? Perhaps it was the 70's when we learned nothing from the first oil shortage about renewable energy or sustainability. The 80's came along and taught us all that "Greed is Good" and we all fought for our piece with little regard for who got hurt in the process. Disrespect for people reached new heights in the 90's when our President goes on national TV and says, "I did not have sex with that woman!", which was wrong in so many ways but this guy is still so popular today - we wouldn't put up with this behavior from our own spouse or children yet he still is shown on TV as such a great leader - WTF&*#$!!!

We had a glimmer of hope at the end of '01 and it took a tragic event to bring us all back together, but that only lasted mere seconds in the span of time. We are now more divided than ever. We are a country of right and left, have and have not, and our choice for the future is between twins sons of different mothers. It's laughable - but not really.

When will someone really have the strength to stand up and tell it like it is? An internet piece goes around putting Bill Cosby up for President and we all laugh but secretly wish some of his agenda was real. Today we are all being treated like mushrooms - kept in the dark and living on bullshit.

The congressional hearings are themselves a joke! How can the congress take a hard line when most if not all do the same things - maybe with one or two less zeros at the end of the number but the same nonetheless. The only difference really is they haven't yet had the opportunity the others have.

It is such a wacky world that it would be easy to want to escape or check out for good but I'm not going to do that. No, I have two beautiful daughters that I hope will have the chance to see the beauty and majesty I have, plus I love Paris shoes....

Free Health Care and Economic Stimulus

Here is how to get free health care!

Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go, etc.. Free Medical, Mental and Dental care for the duration of your stay. Transplants included.

The state of California is spending $7 billion toward existing and new facilities for the healthcare and mental hospitals for the more than 170,000 state inmates that use them. The math will show that is more $41,000 per inmate! Like me, I bet you're feeling a bit queasy just reading that.

Spent otherwise, $7 billion split amongst the state residents could go a long way.

While we are at it, lets reapportion the Iraq war money: Cancel the war and divvy up all the funds that would have been used and disburse the money to ...well, you do your own math. $1 - $3 trillion (likely more) can go a long way - no matter how it's divided.

Altogether, that would be quite an economic stimulus package - without wasting resources.

As to the convicts, I say, put the criminals to work picking crops, providing public services such as forestry/brush management for fire minimization or just hook 'em up to the power grid with a watt generating exercycle and let 'em get their workouts that way. Plus they'll be healthier for the exercise.

Think From The Perspective of our Grandchildren

This is an essay from Jim Gilbert, author, entrepreneur, sailor, surfer, fisherman... he says it clearly and better than I.

We waited until late morning, after the fog and mist had begun to lift, to enter a narrow, braided section of the King Salmon River. “It’s full of grizzly,” our fishing guide had explained. “The last thing we want to do is turn a corner in the fog and startle one!”

The water was so shallow it forced us out of our aluminum skiff. Banging on the sides as we went, we slowly pushed the boat downstream, staring at the hundreds of fresh bear tracks pressed deeply into the nearby sandy banks.

After a quarter of a mile, the stream became wider and straighter and the water grew smooth and still except for the swirls and splashes of thousands upon thousands of fish. Under the brightening mid-August Alaskan sky, the river turned crimson with sockeye salmon, their teeming, spawning bodies pressed together as far as we could see over the gently rolling gravel bars. “Welcome to the Red Sea,” our guide said reverently. “This is a sight few people see.”
My fly-fishing pal Jeff and I were in Alaska searching for trophy-sized wild trout that follow the salmon up the many rivers and creeks of the Bristol Bay drainage. We flew by float plane into a tiny, six-tent camp at the very edge of the tundra more than 100 miles from the nearest settlement. The drainage is a land of grizzly bears, caribou, moose and eagles living much as they have since the last ice age. It is a fragile place of short, intense summers and long, dark, numbing winters, where every living thing -- from the simplest lichens and insects of the tundra, to the largest carnivore in North America -- owes its existence to the salmon. Starting in early summer, successive runs of salmon – first chums, then kings, then sockeye and finally coho – make their way into every navigable creek and lake to lay their eggs and then die. All together, more 30-60 million fish return each year to spawn, making the Bristol Bay drainage one of the largest, most sustainable and best-managed fisheries in a world that is quickly running out of fish. More than 30 percent of the world’s salmon harvest comes from the waters of Bristol Bay, providing a livelihood for tens of thousands and a healthy, renewable source of food for millions of people around the world.

As we walked through the sockeye wonderland, casting our flies to the large trout darting in and out of the salmon redds, or nests, we passed hundreds of decaying carcasses, some more than three feet long, slowly depositing nutrients carried up from the far-off Bering Sea into the hungry, spongy soil of the tundra. It was odd to be in a place of so much life utterly dependent on so much death.

If there was wonder for us in the Red Sea, there was also sadness in the pall cast over this remote and fragile wilderness by the proposed Pebble Mine. Projected to be one of the world’s largest open-pit mines, Pebble Mine will be located in the fertile Bristol Bay drainage headwaters, which also contains some of the world’s largest gold and copper deposits. The project will build enormous dams across several salmon and trout streams to create vast settling lakes for the acidic mine run-off that, thanks to gravity, the forces of nature and the law of probability, will inevitably wreak havoc with spawning areas farther downstream. Roads will be cut through the pristine wilderness on the shores of Lake Iliamna, Alaska’s largest fresh water lake, which is now traversable only in winter when the frozen tundra permits travel by snowmobile or dogsled.

Walking past the seemingly endless schools of sockeye, following the same call to gather and multiply as their species has obeyed for more than 40 million years, I was struck by the thought that we all suffer from a blindness borne of our own self-interest, judging the acceptability of decline of a reef, river or forest based on the limitations of our own personal experiences and aspirations. Thus we are able to entertain the truly horrendous prospect of losing the world’s largest sustainable fishery as acceptable solely in terms of short-term economic benefits. By their own reports, Pebble Mine’s 3.75-square-mile open pit mine will be played out in 50-80 years. So the math is simple: a potential windfall of $150 billion versus the existing $400 million-a-year revenues from the existing resource. What doesn’t show up in this equation is that few, if any, of us will be around to clean up the 2.5 billion tons of toxic waste choking the bottoms of 1800-foot-deep lakes held in place by massive, 740-foot-tall earthquake-prone earthen dams. Managed properly, the salmon will provide food and jobs for hundreds of generations.
Every generation plays its own cost-benefit analysis at the expense of future generations, which enjoy none of the profit but get stuck with 100% of the negative consequences. This same mentality allows us to continue over-harvesting the sea, killing coral reefs, polluting our shores and filling wetlands. Our tendency to this sort of unenlightened self interest is perhaps our single most diminishing trait as a species and a perpetual challenge for those of us promoting the importance of sustainable marine ecosystems. I felt a moment of sadness in the Red Sea that, knowing what we know now, a project such as Pebble Mine would even be seriously entertained. I thought, if only we could see the world through the eyes of our great-grandchildren, what different decisions we would make.

While I feel blessed to have been able to see this part of the world, we don’t actually have to visit a place to know it’s worth saving. We humans are blessed with an extraordinary capacity to accumulate knowledge and experience to make sensible decisions. For instance, we know from history that all resources are ultimately finite. We know from business that we must calculate all the risks and benefits, both short- and long-term, to create accurate profit-and-loss projections. We also experience things with our heart that we have never seen with our eyes. If nothing else, just knowing that fragile wildernesses like the Nushagak and King Salmon Rivers still thrive in a world threatened by rapid global change and human development offers profound reassurance that we are heeding the lessons of the past and that we are, indeed, capable of sustaining the beautiful, bountiful paradise God has given us.

I Want The Truth!

The Navy is about to shoot a so called "spy" satellite out of the sky. According to a recent article, this missle will attempt to destroy a 5000 lb satellite, 1000 lbs of which is the fuel tank with Hydrazine. The experts say that the missle may not even destroy the fuel tank but would allow the fuel into the atmosphere.

In case you are not familiar with Hydrazine, according to Wikipedia Hydrazine is highly toxic and dangerously unstable. The liquid is corrosive and may produce dermatitis from skin contact in humans and animals. Effects to the lungs, liver, spleen, and thyroid have been reported in animals chronically exposed to hydrazine via inhalation. Increased incidences of lung, nasal cavity, and liver tumors have been observed.

In addition, the cost of the missle shot is estimated at $40 million! Unbelievable!

Then there is this headline below which leaves me wondering what the real truth is...

Satellite Shot Offers Navy Key Space Defense Trial: How It Works

Free and Fair Elections

While I have received many great comments on my "voting" piece, I failed to get the real intent across. Most focused on giving up the right to vote however my intent was to focus on our choices. From all I've heard back, together with media info, Obama seems to have a lot of momentum yet just as many people said they would vote for Obama as a vote against McCain or Hillary - this is the real point.

When our vote becomes a "lesser of two evils" vote or even an "against" vote, we are still not choosing greatness. Why are we short of great leaders? Obama might be ok but what scares me as much as anything is when people get on the "kool aid". Right now I believe many people are on the Obama kool aid and don't really know much about him. Most likely most people will never take the time to find out. Kool aid tastes so good!

Anyway in the midst of this a friend sends me the article below regarding voting so now I'm really confused...

A vote against voting in Pakistan

By Imran Khan
February 17, 2008
ISLAMABAD

As Pakistan gears up for its parliamentary election tomorrow, many observers hope that the vote will usher in a period of stability and calm by lending popular legitimacy to the government.
But sometimes democracy is best served by refusing to participate. Tomorrow's election, to be held under the illegal Provisional Constitutional Order implemented following President Pervez Musharraf's state of emergency declaration on Nov. 3, 2007, is such a case, which is why my party and its coalition partners are boycotting the vote….

….So it is a shock to us that the U.S. State Department keeps talking about free and fair elections and abolishing the state of emergency, but without mentioning the reinstatement of the judges – including the chief justice of the Supreme Court – that Musharraf illegally dismissed. If the judges are not reinstated, how can there be free and fair elections? Who decides what is free and fair? Musharraf? …

….Unfortunately, most of the political parties have failed to stand up for the democratic process. Major parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) have decided to participate, following the lead of the late Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. And, of all the major parties that are contesting the election, only the Nawaz is demanding reinstatement of the judges. …

….The solution to dysfunctional democracy is not military dictatorship, but more democracy. Pakistanis understand democracy, because we have a democratic culture. Our founder was a great constitutionalist, and Pakistan came into being through the vote. The problem has been that because we have lacked an independent judiciary, we have not had an independent election commission, so all our elections, except for one in 1970, have been rigged.

India, with which Pakistan shares a similar background, went through 40 years of dysfunctional democracy with a one-party system. But in the last 16 years, it has begun to reap the fruits of genuine democratic competition, because an independent judiciary and electoral commission give people confidence that their votes can make a difference. Until we have the same in Pakistan, no election can be free and fair. …….