News From Hell

The past six days have been an amazing news cycle, one of the busiest we've seen in ages.  A lot of very important stuff happened, and there was something for everybody to love and hate.

First off, last Friday the jury in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse trial came back with 45 guilty counts out of 48 charges.  The whole situation is pretty dreadful and awful, and is an object lesson in how things can get completely out of control when authority figures feel they can do whatever they damned well please and the "good ol' boy" network will shield and protect them.  Sandusky's predation on young boys is stomach-turning in the extreme, and the administration of Penn State University choosing to do nothing in the face of undeniable evidence is something they will have to answer to and pay for dearly.

One has to wonder how such horrendous abuse seemed so easy.  There has been a lot of investigation into the mindset of child molesters, and a lot of them pick occupations or endeavors that place them in direct contact with their quarry.  Sports coaches in the past have been automatically assumed to be benign and the vast majority of them are, but for the small percentage who are child predators, it provides an ideal shield and opportunity for their nefarious activities.

When I was a child, I was taught that adults were to be obeyed unconditionally and they were always right.  For me it was a fact of life that if the teacher gave you a beating in school for doing something wrong, when you got home you got another beating, because the teacher was always right, and you were always wrong.  That kind of blind, abject deference to "authority" creates the perfect climate for abuse.  It's like if a burglar comes to your home to rob it, and you welcome him with open arms and make him a nice dinner as he ransacks your house.

Sandusky will die in prison, as he deserves, but what of the lives he has destroyed with his sick activities?  There are no winners in this whole sorry situation, just pain and wreckage.

The following Monday had the Supreme Court striking down most of Arizona's hateful, racist SB1070, the draconian anti-immigration law passed in 2010, much to the delight of the bigots and hate-mongers in this wretched, godforsaken state.  Governor Jan "The Walking Dead" Brewer signed it with much fanfare, and used the resulting court challenges as a tool to raise nearly $4 million to defend it.  Even as recently as last week, when conventional wisdom indicated (incorrectly, it turns out) the Court would uphold the legality of SB1070, that dried-up old corpse was gleefully sending training materials out to police officials.  So it was particularly gratifying when the Court struck down most of the provisions of the law, and left the door wide open for future legal challenges to the part of it that was left standing.  Brewer immediately went on the news media and we were treated to the pathetic sight of that delusional, hatchet-faced old hag trying in vain to spin the ruling in her favor.  It's been obvious for a very long time that Brewer is incredibly stupid and most likely mentally disturbed, and she can add pathetic embarrassment to the very long list of reasons why she needs to go.

There was also a ruling in a Montana case which very tragically affirmed the vile, loathsome Citizens United ruling of 2010, which opened the floodgates to a deluge of corporate money into the election process.  This is plainly astonishing, as nearly everyone except the Republicans agree that the original ruling was a horrendous, horrific abomination and probably one of the very worst Supreme Court rulings in the history of this country.  As Mannequin Romney says, "Corporations are people!" and much to the detriment of this country, the Court agrees.  Another terrible, awful ruling from a Court that seems to take the side of corporations over the welfare of the American people.

Of course in the midst of all this history there just has to be some batshit-craziness, and that was provided by the witch hunt tight-assed douchebag Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca) is waging against Attorney General Eric Holder.  There was this little sting operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives called "Fast and Furious." started during the George W. Bush administration, which sought to trace firearms used by Mexican drug cartels back to sellers in the US.  They ran into a little snag due to the incredibly lax and ridiculous gun laws in (where else?) Arizona.  It seems that a couple of people plopped down $350,000 for 650 guns, got them, and just waltzed across the border to the south where drug cartels got an early Navidad, because according to AZ gun laws, there wasn't anything illegal or suspicious about a purchase that size. Now that this fiasco has blown up all over the place, AG Holder is getting blamed for everything, and the 2nd Amendment gun nuts are all bent out of shape, saying the failed sting operation is all a big scheme by the Obama administration to ram stricter gun laws down everyone's throats.  Because it's so important to be able to spend $350K on guns without some law enforcement agency asking you a lot of inconvenient questions.  Yeah, they really ARE that stupid.  They're gun nuts.

The big-deal ruling dropped this morning, when the Supreme Court basically reaffirmed the constitutionality of Obama's centerpiece Affordable Health Care Act, individual mandate and all.  There is still much to discuss and learn about this ruling, but the important take-away is that Republicans and right-wingers are crapping broken glass now, and will do so for the foreseeable future.  It is extremely gratifying to see all the right-wingers losing their shit in a very public fashion.  Anything that makes conservative right-wingers unhappy makes me EXTREMELY happy, and I have a great deal to be happy about this morning.

The One in Three

I have been doing cottontail rehab for a couple of years now, and I can't think of anything else I have ever done in my life that can be so rewarding and so emotionally devastating at the same time.

My survival rate with the little bunnies is not good at all, probably one in three babies I get survive to be released into the wild.  But in this business a 50% survival rate is considered pretty good, so I'm not that far behind.  Still, losing any little babies that come into my care can be very painful.

One in three is just not good enough.

Two young cottontails came to me recently.  Nine days ago, when I was working at the thrift store, a woman and her daughter came in carrying a glass aquarium with a little bunny inside.  They said it was in danger of being a snack for a bull snake when it was saved, and they wondered if we could take it in, since they had no clue what to do.  I said sure, and brought home the little ball of fluff with the huge ears.  This is a picture of the bunny:

This little bun is probably close to a month in age, older than most cottontails I get.  He or she is doing very well, eating with great enthusiasm, and exhibited genuine outrage and indignance when I tried to clean his enclosure the other day, standing his ground and boxing my hand with the greatest of attitude.  And you can't help but love that.

Three days ago I got a much younger and tinier cottontail, brought to me by my friend Kathy in Payson.  Looking a lot like a furry golf ball with ears, his eyes had just opened up that day, which would put him between 10 and 14 days old.

He looked so very small and fragile, and Kathy asked me to take him because she had never cared for a bunny so tiny.  I agreed, since we have a nursing domestic mother rabbit, Tilly, and usually the mother rabbit will accept another tiny mouth to feed with no problem.  Tilly's four babies, born nearly three weeks ago, were about 4 times as big as the little cottontail, but I would try to place the baby with Tilly.

Unfortunately that did not work out, and the baby for some reason could not get enough milk from Tilly, even though she was loaded with it.  I took the baby back and started to feed him with goat's milk through an eyedropper, standard procedure with cottontail babies that size.

The goat's milk seemed to upset the babies stomach, and appeared to be doing more harm than good.  With my options dwindling, I started the baby on kitten replacement formula, and that seemed to work much better.  The baby sometimes got an "Ewww" face when I fed it, but it seemed to be doing well being fed three times a day.

The little one spent a lot of time sleeping, as do all bunnies that age, but could be very active and spry.  He (or she) got to recognize my voice and ran out of his little cardboard box when I came up to his enclosure.  I would put my hand inside his tank and he would scramble up into my palm.  He loved to be rubbed and gently stroked, and would lick my hands and fingers quite vigorously, until he fell asleep five minutes later.  This is a picture of the little one:

I spent a lot of time holding the little baby, since it seemed to crave physical contact and enjoy it so much.  I loved holding that tiny, incredibly fragile, little droplet of life.  How could that little ball of fuzz with the tiny ears, barely weighing an ounce (less than 1/3000th of my body weight), steal my heart in less than 24 hours?  I swear that if someone came in and stuck a gun to my head and told me to crush the life out of that little speck in my hand, I would say go ahead and shoot.  A bullet to the brain would be fast and quick, as opposed to a lifetime of remembering the alternative.

The little bunny ate fairly well, but never enough, and it didn't seem to grow much at all over the past couple of days.  It always seemed skinny and thin, and it was not putting on weight as it should.  It would consume a bit of kitten formula, but soon started to bat the eyedropper away from its mouth.  In spite of that I was cautiously optimistic, but I knew the little one was by no means out of the woods yet.

Today everything seemed normal, and this afternoon I held him in my hand for a while.  As usual, he licked my fingers and then snuggled in for a little snooze.  I put him back in his enclosure and went to the gym.

I returned to find him lying on his side, breathing in shallow gasps.  He had crashed on me, as is all too typical for these delicate little creatures.  He was dying, and his internal organs were slowly shutting down.

I picked him up and held him in the palm of my hand, cradling his failing body and trying to let him know I was there.  He looked at me with his tiny dark eyes as if to say, "Why?"  I could not answer.  I didn't know why his little life was being ended after such an incredibly short time.  I still can't come up with an answer.

He did not want to go, and fought his impending death for a good 20 minutes.  He gasped, stretched his arms and legs out several times, and endured a series of twitches and spasms.  Finally, he took one last gasp, and reared his head back.  His body went limp, and his breathing stopped.

I am done cursing out the universe or whatever deity is currently in charge.  I can't believe any deity of any kind - even the hateful, vengeful Christian one - would create an innocent life like that, so small and beautiful, only to take it away a short time later.  Some events seem so utterly, completely pointless and without merit.  Why couldn't that little one live?

It's been a rough year so far, with many beloved rabbits going to the Bridge.  Camilla, Babs, Elinor, Georgia, my own bunny Apricot, quite a few others.  At least this newest, tiniest resident at the Rainbow Bridge will be welcomed and cared for by some absolutely wonderful, beautiful rabbits.

And when I get another cottontail baby - and I know I will - so frail and delicate and hanging onto life by a thread, most likely I might have to go through all this again.  Why do I do this?  Why would I subject myself to having my heart ripped apart and stomped on the floor, again and again?

For the one in three, that's why.

R.I.P. Democracy

It would appear that America's rather fanciful 236-year experiment with democracy is officially over. Once given the backhanded compliment of being the "worst form of government on earth, except for all the others," democracy was nonetheless touted as the best that the human race could come up with, and something to which all nations should aspire. And, when it comes to giving the average citizen a say in what happens to their lives, American democracy could once lay claim to being the best of the best. But something called the Citizens United ruling put an end to that, in dramatic fashion.

Democracy itself has a long and storied history, originating with the ancient Greeks and spreading to many areas of the world since then. It has gone through refinements and tweaking, as all dynamic, living ideas will, but there comes a time when a tweak will turn into something much more toxic and poisonous.

Big news this week was the attempted recall of governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Walker and the other Republican bloodsuckers in that state went on a rampage against public sector unions - you know, representing all those greedy and overpaid teachers, police officers and firefighters - and passed unprecedented legislation to take away their collective bargaining rights, which had been in place for decades. Blaming the unions for being the source of a huge budget deficit, Walker and his stooges decided that the bargaining rights were at the root of everything that ever went wrong anywhere since the beginning of time, and they had to go. People of all types went understandably nuts, and huge protests paralyzed the state capitol daily. The country was treated to the extraordinary spectacle of Democratic state legislators fleeing to a neighboring state to avoid a quorum in the legislature to pass the heinous bill.

All this was a blatant and obvious attempt at union busting, since unions are widely seen as sympathetic to Democrats and a source of campaign funds for them. Republicans hate employee unions, for lots of reasons. They're seen as fighting for annoyances such as fair treatment of workers, equitable wages and benefits, and for taking profit out of the coffers of corporations. Back in the 1950s and 1960s unions had great power, but the advent of the right-to-work movements in states, particular southern states, curtailed that power.

Unions have been on the run for a long time now due to rapidly declining membership and influence, and Republicans smelled blood. They took a gamble on creating a showdown with the unions, and Wisconsin became the crucible for that battle. Recall petitions were signed and an election was scheduled. At first it seemed that Walker would be shown the door in quick fashion, but a little problem cropped up.

It seems that the US Supreme Court ruled on something called the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010. That ruling stated that "the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions." This meant that corporations and other outside influences, could dump as much money as they wanted into elections to try and sway the outcome. When the ruling came down, the entire country gasped in stunned disbelief at such an outlandish concept - that corporations have a measure of freedom of speech, and that can somehow be transmuted into enormous amounts of money being allowed to pour into an electoral system already choked to death with special-interest dollars. That's like giving a smoker with stage 4 lung cancer a carton of cigarettes and saying, "Enjoy them, there's lots more where they came from!"

Also aided by a ridiculous loophole in Wisconsin law which imposed a $10K upper limit on contributions to the Democratic challenger, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, but not on incumbent Walker, Republican money poured in. The national Republican Reichstag regarded this as a test case, a prelude to the presidential election this fall, and pulled out all the stops to win. The following graphic tells you everything you need to know about the amount of money that poured into that state, and where it came from:

The Wisconsin media was flooded with nonstop advertising, and Republican Z-listers like Nikki Haley, some trollop governor from somewhere who is portrayed as a Tea Party "rising star" (read: amoral famewhore), was dragged in for campaign appearances. The Republican blitzkrieg worked, and Walker won the election 54% to 45%. And therein came the death of democracy.

It is an epically tragic commentary on the political system of this country that, in a very real sense, whoever has the most money wins. Money buys advertising, and with enough of it, opinions can be swayed. It's really sad that so many voters can be influenced by what they see on television or in print, and accept it without one iota of critical thought. Some people believe anything they see on television, and Citizens United just opened up the floodgates for a huge torrent of biased, blatantly prejudiced misinformation to rush in, and the financial backers of this tsunami of bullshit don't even have to tell you who they are.

The Wisconsin recall was only a little glimpse into hell, a tiny preview of the carnage that's going to happen in the upcoming November elections. As a direct result of Citizens United, it's been estimated that the Republican side will raise and spend a billion dollars trying to buy the White House and the Senate. And the gods help us all, they may very well do it.

For democracy to work, it's absolutely critical that those being governed are informed, engaged and fully participating in the process. That's the part that's missing. American voters are by far too lazy, ignorant and uneducated to learn enough about the issues facing them to make intelligent choices. Instead, they choose to let other people tell them what to think and do, and their vote will go for whoever created the slickest and most eye-catching political advertisement. For the vast majority of voters, that is far easier than actually "learning" about the problems they have and "making good choices". Let Rush Limbaugh and the Koch brothers tell you what to do. Just sit back, pop open another brewski, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It will all be over before you know it.

Right after the Citizens United ruling was announced in 2010, I said that in future decades, people will look back at this time and say, "This is where it all started, this is the exact point in time where everything started to go to hell." I believed then and I more firmly believe now, that the Citizens United ruling will go down in history as one of the absolute worst, if not THE worst, Supreme Court ruling ever. The only ways to correct this spectacularly bad ruling is for the Supreme Court to reverse itself in a future case and admit they had made a truly awful, terrible ruling (very unlikely) or for Congress to willingly pass laws turning off the spigot to an unlimited supply of corporate money pouring into their campaigns. Yeah, THAT'LL happen. Citizens United is a stunningly, breathtakingly bad example of how horribly wrong things can go.

I believe the full effect of that ruling in the future will be far, far worse than anything we can imagine today. It will be seen as the day democracy died.

The Tide of Summer

Memorial Day weekend 2012 is upon us, and we in central Phoenix are enjoying an unexpected and most welcome respite from the triple-digit temperatures that burst on to us about a month sooner than they should. The high temperature yesterday was in the mid-80s, a good 14 degrees cooler than what's considered normal. When we get lower-than-normal temperatures in Phoenix anytime from May to October, we have something for which to be thankful.

About a week ago we were broiling through temperatures that reached 108 degrees. That does not bode well for the remainder of the summer, which stretches out in front of us like 500 miles of the ugliest, most pothole-ridden, unpaved road imaginable and we're in a broken-down Ford Pinto with no air conditioning.

The tide of summer is poised to sweep over all of us, like a tsunami of horribleness that we know is coming and are powerless to stop. Last year's summer was brutal, one of the very hottest on record. It's a sure sign of advancing age when I am having more and more trouble getting through this time of the year. I know it's a consequence of living in the desert and you would think after 19 years I would be fairly well accustomed to it, but I'm not, and it's just getting worse. I find myself thinking more often of moving to a more moderate climate, like in New Mexico. Santa Fe and Taos are calling to me, and they sound better and better with each passing degree.

During the very hottest days, which are from mid-June until the monsoon season kicks in mid-July, temps can approach 120 degrees. There are no circumstances under which that amount of heat can be considered necessary or appropriate. I mean, seriously, what's the point? What does a 120-degree temperature accomplish that a 112-degree temp can't? Anything past 114 feels like hot death anyway, what's the purpose of going any higher? Coupled with the fact that the overnight temp sometimes doesn't drop out of the lower 90s, and you got yourself a little slice of hell on earth.

Sometimes I think about other seasons when it gets really hot. It helps a little (though not nearly enough) to remember what it felt like back in December and January, when I would wear my flannel pajama bottoms, wrap myself in a favorite cardigan and sit on a warm blanket on the sofa, insulated from the sharp chill outside. Or during our short autumn in early December when you wake up on a bright, chilly morning and go out to see the tree leaves turning scarlet, burgundy, lemon yellow and russet against a turquoise sky adorned with puffy white cumulus clouds. Or our springtime, which starts around Valentine's Day, when the trees and shrubs are covered with richly-colored flowers, just waiting and hoping for any moisture to come down from the sky like liquid manna.

Yes, the tide of summer is coming, and Memorial Day is just the first stop of a long, arduous and debilitating journey, not into a heart of darkness, but a heart of blinding, blazing light and heat. I know there are good days and bad days to come, and just as summer follows spring, autumn will be following summer, although trying to catch of glimpse of it over the vast, parched, desolate wastelands of June, July, August and September, it seems impossibly far-off, like a mirage shimmering in the heat waves far in the distance. You walk toward that mirage and it seems to retreat farther away the closer you get. You will reach the mirage someday, but at a pretty steep price, as it seems like summertime sucks the life out of you like a vampire that hasn't eaten for several centuries and has just been given 15 minutes in a blood bank.

I'm Sorry, Babs

There comes a time in everyone's young life when you begin to realize that the world can be a really harsh, unpleasant and messed-up place.  No matter if you've had a mostly idyllic childhood, as I had; eventually you will see and hear things that will cast a dark shadow on the sheltered, protected life you have lived.  You start to understand that bad things happen.

I clearly remember as a young child, probably 5 or 6 years old, being taken by my parents to a funeral home where there was a viewing of an infant who had died.  I saw a small baby dressed in a fancy white gown laying in something like it was asleep.  I thought that was kind of odd, why was everyone making such a fuss over a baby sleeping.  That was bad enough, but what was really jarring was seeing all the adults in the room all distressed and upset and carrying on in ways I had never seen nor expected.  The worst was when the mother of the deceased baby fainted dead away in the middle of the room and collapsed to the floor.  My parents took me out of there pretty quickly, but I will never forget what I saw that sad day.

By the time you're in your teens, you've seen enough to know that the world can be pretty screwed up.  Some bad stuff happens completely by accident or fate, and are just dumped on you with little or no warning.  Other things happen either because of things you did or didn't do.  One of these is when you get yourself a pet.  I always tell people when you get a companion animal of any kind, you are signing up for a future heartbreak.  In spite of our best efforts, we never seem to have enough time with our beloved companions, and their short lifespans (compared to ours) guarantee that someday we will get our hearts thoroughly and completely broken.  The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the love we give and get while they are here with us.

If you choose to work in animal rescue and welfare, as I and many of my friends do, you've really signed yourself up for a lot of pain.  The things that happen to animals in this cruel, sadistic world are truly awful and hideous, especially since in the vast majority of cases, the animals are innocent victims of the ignorance and evilness of humans.  And that makes it all the more sad and painful.  Such was the fate of Babs.

I was working at the Rabbit Rescue Thrift Store on a Wednesday when a call came in from a woman who said she had gotten a rabbit a day ago and she found she could not keep it because of "allergies" (the lamest and most overused excuse ever). She said it was a Flemish Giant female about 2 years old. Normally calls like that we would refer to another agency since our shelter is perpetually full, but I decided to take the bunny in anyway. Even though my house is filled up with well over 20 rabbits (don't ask) I can't turn my back on a Flemmie. They are usually very sweet, gentle and loving animals, and are a lot like great big puppy dogs. I told the woman to bring the rabbit to the store for me to look at.

I was not prepared for what came in the front door, though. A woman came in carrying a very large gray rabbit, its feet dangling loose, wrapped in a dirty towel. The rabbit's bottom and rear legs were stained and filthy with urine, and the strong, acrid odor was a sure sign of a urinary tract infection. The woman, accompanied by her grubby, dull-eyed toddler, said the rabbit had wet itself on the way over, but you don't get that kind of staining from just a car ride. This rabbit had been in this condition for quite a while.

Now this white-trash, hillbilly moron, whose apparently only useful talent in life is spreading her legs and having children, told me a really convoluted story about her buying the rabbit for $50 from someone moving from a house into an apartment. She said her asthma was acting up and gave out with a couple of wet, loud wheezes to prove her point. I'm sure everything coming out of her mouth was a lie, and when she implied that it would be a good thing if we could reimburse her for the $50 she spent, I sent her back to her miserable, wretched life and concentrated on trying to help this poor rabbit. The woman left a bag of food the rabbit had been eating, a vile, horrible mixture of sunflower seeds, corn kernels and peanuts (shelled and unshelled) - all things a rabbit should never, ever be fed.

The rabbit, who would eventually be named Babs, was the largest bunny I had ever seen. She was enormously, morbidly obese, and was very nearly spherical in shape, weighing I'm sure over 20 lbs. She could barely sit up on her own, and running and hopping was out of the question. I can't imagine the stress and strain on her skeleton and internal organs. Her lungs, kidneys, liver, spleen and especially her heart, were all under dire, extreme pressure and stress.

After I cleaned her up at the store, I took her home and set her up in a pen, and tried to do everything I could to help her. I started her on medicine to help her urinary tract infection, and gave her some fluids because she seemed to be very thirsty. It became clear to me that it was going to be a very difficult task keeping her alive until she could start to lose some of the weight that was crushing her body. She needed to lose at least 5 pounds, and that would take a very long time. I slowly came to the realization that keeping her alive until she could begin to realize benefits from weight loss was going to be a very tough task.

Babs was an extremely sweet, docile and lovable girl. She had wonderful salt-and-pepper chinchilla-type fur, and long, dark eyelashes surrounding open and trustful eyes. Even after all she had endured, she could still trust a stranger and show him affection. I fell in love with her instantly, and vowed to do everything I could to help her. She didn't show much interest in eating anything other than a little bit of vegetables, and any movement was an exhausting, uncomfortable ordeal. Along with her critical obesity, her urinary tract infection was complicating matters immensely. Inside, I was losing hope, but knew I had to do everything I could. All the humans in her life had let her down. I would be goddamned if I was going to be another one.

The next day things looked much worse. Babs had not eaten any vegetables I left the night before. She was unable or unwilling to move at all, and pretty soon was laying down on her side. I took her out of the pen and let her lay on the cool tile floor. She flattened out like a huge, furry pancake and just laid there, breathing heavily. I think she knew, as did I, that she was losing her battle to live.

The end came later that afternoon, barely 24 hours after I first saw her. She was still laying flat on the tile floor, when I found her. There was a look of sad disbelief frozen on her face, as if she could not understand how such a terrible fate could befall a good bunny who never did anything wrong in her all-too-brief life, other than be born and want to be loved.

I knew that I had not let Babs down. I did everything I could to help her. Other humans had let her down. Their ignorance and stupidity led them to tend to her so poorly that her body got completely out of control. I am so sad that I could not have gotten her sooner, and maybe could have caught her downward spiral in time to change the outcome. I don't know, and will never know.

But I am also sure of one thing. Babs' physical problems were obviously extremely severe, but what you couldn't see was how depressed and sad she was with all the dislocation and abandonment that she suffered recently. Even though the humans that had her were vile, ignorant, loathsome assholes, they were her family and she missed them dearly. Even though she came from an undoubtedly shitty environment, to her it was home. When she came to me, she had no will to live, no fight left in her. She had given up, and she was tired and wanted to rest. Her body became a prison to her, her life filled with pain and discomfort. She would suffer no longer, and I believe she chose to go when she did. I am very very glad I was able to provide her with a place to transition to the next life. I am sure she knew she was safe, she was valued, and she was loved.

I'm sorry, Babs, that I could not help you more. I'm sorry that the previous humans you had to deal with were some of the worst examples of the wretchedness and inhumanity of people. I'm sorry that you did not get to live a happy, fun-filled life with a family who treasured you and made sure you stayed the healthy, perfect creature you once were. I'm sorry you didn't get more chances to run and play in a yard on a bright spring morning, and I'm sorry you didn't get more opportunities to prairie-dog up on your hindquarters and beg for more tasty treats. I am so sorry that humans let you down.

What happened to you was truly criminal - a heinous, cowardly assault on an innocent and defenseless soul. It was profoundly unjust, outrageously cruel and - worst of all - completely, utterly unnecessary. I'm sorry, Babs, and I hope you can forgive us someday.

You deserved so much better.

ECLIPSE!

Sunday 20 May 2012 brought the prospect of a solar eclipse practically to my backyard.  I've seen plenty of partial eclipses in my time; that's when the moon slides across the sun in the sky and blocks part of the solar disk.  While interesting, nothing apparently tops a total solar eclipse, when the moon completely obscures the sun, making a pearly corona visible and plunging lucky viewers into a false, temporary nighttime.  From all accounts it is probably the most awesome thing you can ever hope to see in the sky.

Halfway between a partial and a total eclipse is something called an annular eclipse.  That's when the moon crosses the solar disk but is a bit too far away to cover the sun completely.  What you end up seeing is a "ring of fire," a brilliant circle of sunlight in the sky.  This is the kind of eclipse that happened last Sunday.

Usually eclipses happen in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or Antarctica or the Kamchatka peninsula or some other gawd-awful corner of the world.  So I was completely psyched when I learned months ago that one will be visible from northern Arizona, a mere 200 miles from my home in Phoenix.  Even better, the event was going to happen at 6:30pm, as opposed to sunrise, which would give me plenty of time to get there and set up.

So, after helping out at Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue Sunday adoptions, I packed up my camera gear and headed north.  On the way to Flagstaff I drove by the site of the Gladiator wildfire, and could see huge columns of smoke rising in the distance.  The smoke turned the entire sky a dirty beige color, and it was surreal and claustrophobic to see such an angry, damaged sky from an out-of-control fire.

The drive was very pleasant if uneventful, and I haven't been up north of Flagstaff in a very long time.  I had forgotten how beautiful the landscape is up there.  All along Route 89 north I spotted people off the road in little clearing areas, setting up their cameras and their telescopes, getting ready for the event.  After 3 hours of driving I made my turn-off onto Route 64, with the Vermilion mountains a muted magenta color in the distance.  I was planning on going to the Grand Canyon to watch but I was too cheap to pay the $25 entrance fee, and chose instead a speck on the map called the Little Colorado River Gorge Overlook.  The name of the place is bigger than the place itself.  I had an hour before the high point of the eclipse, and I used that time to explore the Gorge Overlook, which was very much bigger and deeper than I had ever imagined, and it turned out to be a marvelous and very impressive thing to see.

The Gorge Overlook site turned out to be pretty popular with astronomy nerds like me, and there were at least 20 other people that had come there to do the same thing I was - observe the eclipse.  We all had a very good time laughing and talking, and everyone was as excited and thrilled as I was at the approaching sky show.

I set my camera up and sat down to wait for the event.  The minutes ticked by and I could see a bite taken out of the right side of the sun.  The bite slowly, inexorably got larger, and by the time the sun was one third covered, the brightness of the sun was noticeably diminished.  The moon slid further across the sun and my anticipation was building with each passing second.  I started furiously snapping pictures, getting more and more excited.  Finally, the moment I had been waiting for happened.  The moon crossed the limb of the sun and the annular phase had started.  A thin, brilliant ring of sunlight surrounded the moon, and the area was plunged into a strange kind of twilight, almost like the sun was being filtered behind some clouds, but there were no clouds in the cerulean blue northern Arizona sky.  This is a composite photo I made of some of my best eclipse shots:

Two minutes later, it was over.  The moon breached the opposite side of the sun and the ring of fire turned back into a thin crescent.  The eclipse was finished, but the memories it left with me I know will last the rest of my lifetime.  It was an awesome and awe-inspiring sight, and it left me absolutely exhilarated and feeling like I had just witnessed something extremely rare and special and magical, which I had.

Even better, it made me feel very excited about something I had never seen before. I was almost giddy with anticipation, and felt that there are still wonderful things to marvel at in the beautiful, complex, sometimes terrifying and always fascinating universe in which we live. It was good to know that I can still be impressed and humbled by nature, and I'm not quite so jaded that I can't be made to feel like a young child again.

A Republican Primary Dictionary

If nothing else, this blog is all about public service. You may think a major reason why I write Careless Whispers is to satisfy some deep-seated need in me for attention and an obsession-level quest for fame and media notoriety, and you would be pretty much correct. But mixed in with all that psychological stuff is my desire to bring clarity and enlightenment into a world so often choked and obfuscated with dullness and stupidity.

In my mind, nothing more clearly illustrates the innate tawdriness and runaway putrefaction of the American political system than the Republican presidential primaries. Rising like a rancid zombie out of a pile of garbage in a junior-high-school drama class reenactment of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, the primaries or caucuses or "preference polls" or whatever the hell they call themselves reared up on their cloven hooves for about two seconds and then immediately started a headlong and inexorable plunge to the lower depths of Stupid Hell, trying to drag us all down with it.

But fret not, help is on the way. I have created this guide to the political language of the primaries, which I hope will allow the Gentle Reader to understand the hidden meaning behind all the lies, deliberate misstatements, and dog-whistle rhetoric which so often these days tries to pass as legitimate discourse. Consider this your political life preserver, and please, don't thank me. My reward is spreading around the awareness of what utter pieces of shit the Republican candidates are.

"Class Warfare" - This is one of the most patently hilarious things the Republicans have come up with yet, other than Sarah Palin running for anything other than Queen of the Inbred. Oh, those poor, sad, downtrodden billionaires - the Republicans would have you believe they are the most misunderstood and unfairly persecuted minority in this country . Imagine, they bleat out as they squeeze the crocodile tear or two from their rheumy old eyes, all the unwashed multitudes attacking the uppermost 0.5% of wage earners in this country solely because of their wealth and success! Yeah, you need to watch out for the middle class, they'll turn on you in a second. They start making 25, maybe 30 thousand bucks a year and all of a sudden they get uppity and bite the hand that feeds them. Why can't they just be satisfied sitting in their worthless, over-mortgaged homes watching Donald Trump's comb-over terrorize the mentally handicapped on "The Apprentice," or be happy with the crumbs that trickle down from the more fortunate? Never you mind the decades of tax cuts, offshore tax havens and specialized financial instruments you can access when you have a lot of money. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain - just heap disdain upon the Democrats for daring to criticize the people who underwrite and benefit from every wasteful, deficit-expanding thing the Republicans do.

"Phony Theology" - This is a rather late entry to the Sweepstakes of Stupidity the Republicans are running, but it's pretty good. It seems that, according to the priggish, sanctimonious Rick Santorum, President Obama has some kind of "phony theology" going on with his energy policy. Yeah, it sounds stupid because it IS stupid; I don't know what he means, either, and who really cares? However let us savor for a little while the delicious irony of Rick Santorum opining that someone else has a "phony theology." Santorum should know all about phony theologies because fundamentalists like him are world-class experts in "pretending" to be Christians while "doing" the exact opposite. To wit: Fundamentalists believe that you should use any means necessary to keep a fetus from being aborted but the instant they're born you turn your back on them and they are on their own. Fundamentalists don't believe you should feed the hungry or provide medical care for those who can't afford it. Let's see, where have we heard that before? If I'm not mistaken someone named Jesus Christ thought that was a good idea. Fundamentalists, not so much. Santorum also believes gay marriage is an abomination and wants a constitutional amendment to outlaw it. It will destroy traditional marriage, he bellows. He misses the irony that the 50% divorce rate among traditional marriages is what's destroying it. I guess serial adulterer Newt Gingrich is also irony-resistant because because his cheating on two of his wives is doing so much to keep traditional marriage alive and well. Now I realize that for fundamentalists, irony is so much of their daily lives and belief systems that after a while they just become inured to it and don't even notice when it jumps up and slaps them in the face, but someone like Santorum preaching about "phony theology" is absolutely astounding. The fact that he doesn't get how stupid and hypocritical it makes him sound is really amusing.

"Secure the Border" - Here in Arizona we hear a lot about "securing the border," but what that really means is keep brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people out of our country unless they're picking our crops, tending to our lawns or cleaning our houses.

"Anti-religious Social Agenda" - Another one of those catch-all phrases that can be stretched and shaped to cover any number of perceived problems, from marriage equality to access to contraceptives. Any time you push back on the fundamentalists when they try to shove their religious biases on the general population, all of a sudden you're "anti-religious," and you "hate Christianity." While I gladly and proudly admit to both, a lot of people aren't, and they resist the fundamentalist urge to conflate "standing up for your rights" with "taking away their right to practice their religion". No one is taking away anyone's right to believe in the delusion of their choice, but I have a HUGE problem when they try to make everyone else defer to their beliefs, as if their beliefs are preeminent and trump everyone else's. I don't suppose it matters to most of them that the majority of people on this planet are either Hindu or Muslim, and that their beliefs are in the minority. As for contraceptives, conservatives are blanching at the fact that a church-affiliated employer might have to provide contraceptives to their employees, against their religious beliefs. Tell that to the 98% of Catholics who already use some form of contraceptive.

"Food Stamp President" - Newt Gingrich came up with that one, and it's only fitting because he looks like he really knows his way around a dinner table. Nothing like making a less-than-subtle racial comment because 1) Obama is black and 2) everyone knows the majority of people using food stamps are black. Except that they aren't. Only 22% of food stamp recipients are black; the rest are white, Hispanic, Asian, Native Americans, and others. But why let facts get in the way of a good racial slur?

These are only some of the interesting linguistic stunts the Republicans are pulling in this very bizarre primary season. One might have thought with the exit of the truly moronic wing of the candidate roster - Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain - we could maybe get into a little more substantive discussion of the great challenges this country faces, and you know, actually talk about ideas and stuff, but that was wishful thinking. The Republicans are looking for someone who can get their ultra-conservative base all riled up and ready to hit those voting booths come November, so they know they have to appeal to the very lowest, basest nature of the obese, knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who vote for them. It is truly a shame that, in their haste to get to the slimy muck at the bottom of the voter pool to find their support, they have to pull the rest of the country down with them.