Civility and Rules

I happened to be outside of the country when Representative Joe Wilson made his outburst during the President's address to the joint session of Congress on health care. I had heard his name on a few teasers on the CNN world channel that was available at the Westin in Busan, South Korea, but I didn't grasp the enormity of his actions until getting back to Alaska.

My first thought when I heard the whole story was, "where did he think he was, the lower house of Parliament?" If you haven't seen video footage or heard a tape of someone delivering an address to the House of Commons on a controversial issue, that might be something worthwhile trying to find on You Tube. They are hooting and hollering during the speech and making their displeasure on certain statements quite loudly known before the whole gathering. It seems like it would be unnerving for the speaker, but that is the accepted procedure across the pond.

However, that is not the way that members of the U.S. House and Senate have agreed to comport themselves. There are very specific rules which ensure that the men and women we have elected to represent us in Washington, DC, treat each other with respect and dignity. Mr. Wilson got a slap on the wrist today, but I personally believe he should have gotten a lot more. And the same party who believes that it is not our responsibility to help ensure that all Americans have affordable health care, is holding up Mr. Wilson as a hero. I have a problem with that.

We currently have a health care system that pays a medical team more handsomely for amputating the leg of a person suffering from diabetes, rather than to invest in aggressive preventative measures to help get them healthier by making behavioral changes (better diet, more exercise, etc.) that greatly reduce the threat of potentially losing that limb in the first place. I have a problem with that too.

As my husband says, I like people to follow the rules. But the rules need to apply to everyone equally. And if you don't follow the rules, you need to be punished, not rewarded. That's my two cents, and it is probably worth just about that much!!!

* They also have a really cool shadow cabinet made up of opposition members, which is a practice that I actually think we SHOULD borrow.

Whale Jumping?

A few weeks ago I was out for a ride on my jetski a few weeks ago, and I wasn't able to find the friend that I was trying to meet up with to go halibut fishing. I put Wasabi (picture below) in the water at the Auke Bay ramp and headed up the coast towards Amalga Harbor. The salmon were jumping all around me, and I stopped a few places to try and tempt them to bite my lures. No luck.

As I neared Lena Point, I saw a few whales heading northward. I turned off the engine and could hear them exhaling as they came up to breathe. Up by Amalga a few sea lions were checking me out, surfacing on one side of the jetski, then the other.

When I got back to Auke Bay, I pulled up by the floating pier where some colleagues of mine were running a weigh station for a USCG fishing derby that was going on that weekend. A National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Enforcement Officer that I know walked up and asked to see my license and boat registration. I thought maybe he didn't recognize me at first, and thought I might have some fish he could check.

Then he started asking me questions about where I had been that day, and whether I had seen any whales. I said I had seen some whales near Lena Point, and he told me that he someone had called 911 with a report of a jetskier meeting my description jumping over whales.

"Jumping over whales?!?," I repeated. I just started laughing and almost fell off Wasabi and into the water. Once I sort of regained my composure, I told the NOAA officer that I didn't get closer than 75-100 yards from any of the whales I saw during my ride. He asked if I had seen any other jetskis during my ride. I said I hadn't even seen any other boats within several miles when I saw the whales.

I asked where the people were located who made the report, and he told me they were on shore somewhere near Lena Point. After a little more discussion, we realized that the people who reported my supposed "whale jumping" must have been several miles away and looking through a spotting scope or some high power binoculars. They probably had no idea of the actual depth perception of what they were looking at.

They may have seen me speeding off and creating a wake, and then saw some whales surfacing behind me, but there was no way I was hurtling through the air (on a jetski that weighs 1,000 pounds including me and fishing gear) on an extremely calm day. I may never have taken physics, but I know that I could not have jumped over the whales on that day given the prevailing weather conditions.

Of course now people at work call me the Whale Jumper.

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.