You have to think you are in trouble to want to be saved!

One of my old bosses used to tell a great story about some communications with a lobster fisherman off the coast of Maine. Whether the story was actually true or not, it illustrates a great point.

It starts with the fisherman calling in to the Coast Guard to report that he is taking on water, he is the only one on the boat, but he just wanted to let someone know about his situation. The watchstander asks if he is in distress or needs any Coast Guard assistance. The man says no, but the Station puts him on a communications schedule where they agree to contact one another every half hour.

When the watchstander reports the call up the chain, since the Station has a boat underway doing some training, the Chief decides to send it in the direction of the lobsterman. The next time the watchstander talks to the fisherman, he says that the water is still coming on board, but it's not that bad. The watchstander asks if there are any other boats in the area that might be able to help, but there aren't any. The fisherman thinks he can get things under control fairly soon.

Ten minutes later the fisherman calls the Station, and says that, maybe he could use a little help, if it's not too much trouble. When the small boat gets on scene a few minutes later, the fishing boat is nearly swamped and the man is just about to abandon ship into his raft (if he had one).

It's all about perspective. Someone who hadn't spent most of their life on the water, or had a different view of the current circumstances, might have asked for someone to rescue them at the first sign of a little leak.

I don't consider myself a godless heathen, but I don't consider myself a religious person either. However, I also don't think that I need to be saved. I try to treat everyone with respect and concern, as I would like them to deal with me. It's that whole golden rule thing.

Giant Blob of Goo

Don't worry, our shores are fairly safe up here in Southeast Alaska, unless the giant blob of goo starts to come thru the Bering Strait, passes by Unimak Island in the Aleutian chain, hangs a big left and takes the same trackline as all those cruise ships that come up in the summer. It may not look like algae, but that's what it is. Not as photogenic as the seaweed salad I love to get with my sushi, but algae nonetheless.

Here is a cool video that a local search and rescue plane first took of the blob.

http://storyballoon.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/video-blob-of-bio-goo-floating-around-the-artic-sea/

(somebody hasn't learned how to spell Arctic yet; it actually took me a while too....)

I'm going to change gears here a bit, and type about something that is even more frightening to me than a big glob of algae that is trying to impersonate an oil spill.

Now that our governor has decided that she has better things to do than finish our her term, I feel a little bit better about the threat from within as well. Of course the governor didn't live here in Juneau after the first year of her term anyway, so I guess the threat was always as far away as Anchorage (or Wasilla, or the campaign trail) anyway, but there were plenty of her minions down here in the panhandle as well.

I didn't vote for her, but even though I had only been a resident for a few months, I welcomed a change from a Murkowski administration that seemed to be a bit misguided. I actually listened to her entire inauguration speech, and liked how she joked about the fact that her family cleaned up very well when they had to wear something other than Carhartts (a Michigan clothing company that makes jeans/coveralls/outerwear that are very popular here in AK). Then she started making decisions that were not quite to my liking.

I don't think that the new governor will be more to my democratic liking, but at least he won't be a complete publicity hog like the one who will give up the reins of the 49th state in five days.

Why do they call it the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ)?

In March of 2009, I had the opportunity to take a trip to the DMZ between North and South Korea. I was in Seoul for a North Pacific Coast Guard Forum meeting, as a member of the fisheries working group. The tour was just for the USCG folks attending this meeting, and it was arranged by the USCG officer working with the State Department at the US Embassy in Seoul.

The trip from Seoul took an hour or so, and we traveled north along the Han River for much of the transit. Almost immediately after leaving the downtown area, there was barbed wire on top of the tall fences along the river. Then we started seeing guard posts painted in green/blue camo designs every quarter mile or so.

As we entered the checkposts into the DMZ, I started to wonder why they called it that. Seems like there were a WHOLE bunch of military folks every where you looked. When we were first allowed to get off the bus, we were reminded that we shouldn't wander off the road or paths, because the woods were heavily mined.

When we reached the observation post, we were met by a New Zealand military member who was our primary tour guide. We also had a US Army sergeant as our armed escort. The visibility was quite good that day, so you could see the North Korean ghost town with the 300+ foot tower with the huge flag flying from it. People used to live in the town, but right now it is abandoned. Soldier of Fortune magazine has offered a million dollar prize for anyone who can infiltrate the border and bring back a section of the flag. Of course the North Koreans would never admit that anyone had taken a piece of the flag, and presumably would replace the damaged flag, or delude their people into thinking it hadn't been taken, so I'm not sure how you could get the reward without US military assistance.

One thing that is not militarized about the DMZ is that their is a lot of fertile farm land on the South Korean side. The farmers who live there are not required to complete the military service requirements to which the rest of their fellow citizens are subject, and they have a better standard of living than your average South Korean. They also are not allowed to possess any firearms. No hunting allowed for these farmers, but I suppose that they are able to trap some game.

One other thing that I didn't know about the DMZ is that it is rife with malaria. I discovered this when I tried to give blood upon returning to Juneau. So I am deferred for the next two years.