Ho Hum

Another Monday. blah blah blah. At least this Friday I leave for Portland, Oregon to meet up with Julie!! Yippee Skippee!!! We are really stoked for the trip and I am excited to finally meet her in person after talking on the phone and emailing all this year. We'll bop around downtown on Friday, and Saturday is earmarked for a trip to Mt. Hood. I'm going to FORCE Julie to buy at least one kitschy souvenir....I'm hoping to find a tacky tea towel depicting the 9 bridges that span the Willamette River.

Needless to say I'm really looking forward to seeing the Timberline Lodge, as it stood in for "The Overlook" in Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of "The Shining". The interior shots in the movie were from a lodge in Estes Park, CO, but the exterior was shot at Timberline. There's no hedge maze though. I so want to throw open the door of the lodge and announce, "WENDY? I'M HOME!" But I'm sure they've heard that a million times.

Julie's planning a hike up to the Palmer ski lift once we get there, so I'll be hanging out up at the Lodge and shooting pictures till she gets back. The summit of Mt. Hood comes in at a bit over 11,000 feet, so I'm guessing that the Lodge is somewhere in the 6,000 - 8,000 foot area. I'm not at all aclimatized to high altitudes like Julie, so that's one of the many reasons I'm staying below.

Oh and that reminds me, I would prefer not to take, or post, any pictures of my fat ass self either, so don't hold your collective breath.

And speaking of my fat ass self, I'm getting used to the black hair. Brian sent me what he thought was a funny email the other day, when it was cloudy in the morning. He says, "Looks really dark down your way...is your hair sucking all the light out of Tacoma?" So I shot back, "At least I have hair...."

Weekend was quiet....just watched football, football and more football. UW Huskies, WVU and Cal all won so that was cool. Seahawks won their home opener as well. The Michigan and Notre Dame games were pretty ugly though. Spent the rest of my time doing errands and putting the rest of my photos into my various photo albums. Now all I have to do are a couple of scrapbook pages for Sagan's scrapbook and I'll finally be caught up. Just in time for me to take tons of pictures in Portland.

I've been having a mental block regarding what to blog about. I think we can all agree that the anniversary of 9/11 affects us all, consciously or subconsciously. This is the first year that it's fallen on the same day of the week too. And of course it is now the biggest "where were you when....." since Kennedy was killed. I just can't believe it's been 6 years. Last night we watched a documentary that addressed the conspiracy theorists who have opined that there is some deep, dark X-files'esque government-involved element to the disaster, especially regarding the manner in which the WTC collapsed, specifically WTC 7. I have to admit, being the distrustful person that I am added to my absolute disgust and hate for the current Administration, I allowed myself to think that anything was possible. But after watching the documentary, I no longer think that our government was involved, other than knowing that an attack was imminent. Sort of like FDR knew Japan was going to attack us, but let them so that it could justify our getting involved in WW2. I mean, you have to admit, the collapse of the buildings did look like a controlled implosion the way they came straight down. But the engineers showed computer graphics of the way the buildings were built and because of the placement of the trusses in WTC 7, it had no other way to fall except straight down.

Brian had planned on playing Mozart's "Requiem" on his Shakedown Street show yesterday, however, despite the fact that he'd loaded all the music that morning, it absolutely refused to play, so his show was an hour of silence. On September 11, 2002, we went to see one of the "Rolling Requiem" concerts in Tacoma and it was extremely moving.

Summer's hanging on up here like grim death. We had a stretch of cool, cloudy fall weather a few weeks ago, but now there's a stupid high pressure ridge off the coast and it's sunny and hot. At least the sun comes up later and goes down earlier. I'm really hoping this is summer's last gasp.

In other Northwest News, I'm sure you've all heard that 5 members of the Makah Tribe at Neah Bay, Washington, slaughtered a California grey whale with a .50 mm rifle. I'm absolutely sick over it. It took that poor creature 8 hours to die. IMHO, the Makah are the biggest ASSHOLE tribe in this country. I am all for Native American rights and treaty rights, but I fail to see the benefit of allowing the Makah to hunt for whales just because their ancestors did it. At least in 1999 when they killed a whale, they used a hand-thrown harpoon which is at least a bit more sporting than opening fire on a whale with heavy artillery. The photo below depicts various calibers and the .50 is on the far left. The Makah Tribal Council have denounced the act by the 5 so-called "whalers" and promise that justice will be done, but in the tribal court. Brian and I were really involved with the American Indian Movement in 1992, during their "500 Years of Resistance" which was held to coincide with the 500 anniversary of Columbus' invasion. We also ran a Leonard Peltier Defense Support Group for a couple of years, and I was really involved in many writing campaigns for various and sundry Native American and First Nations issues in the USA and Canada. But I will not support whale hunting of any kind, by anyone, for any reason.

Growing up on Cape Cod as a child in the late 60's and early 70's, we were taught to be proud of our whaling heritage. There was this old coot in my hometown, Colonel Clark, who was a whale or whaling expert of some kind. All I know is he used to come to Sandwich Elementary School with slides and films of whales and whaling; and I have to tell you, I was pretty horrified by the whaling films, which showed in graphic detail whales being killed and slaughtered on deck. He even had a giant jawbone in front of his house, like a gate entrance.

Liz may or may not remember our 3rd grade class trip to New Bedford, to the Whaling Museum. Nothing about that trip stands out except for our teacher, Mrs. Alvezi, showing me a sea captain's trunk. The name on the trunk was "Mendonca", but the "c" had the little cedilla squiggle under it and the reason my teacher pointed it out is that she knew my father quite well and knew that our last name, "Mendonza", had been changed from "Mendonca", and perhaps the captain had been a distant relative of my father's family. Maybe, maybe not. He was from British Guiana, South America and his parents came to SA from Portugal or the Canary Islands.

All of us kids knew what a "Nantucket sleighride" was and us girls all owned at least one piece of scrimshaw jewelry. But of course all that stuff fell out of favour by the end of the 70's.

So anyways, if any of you are so inclined to vent your outrage to the Makah Tribal Council over the killing the grey whale, I urge you to do so at http://www.makah.com/. Let's tell them that we won't settle for anything less than full prosecution!!