POLITICS AND RANTS

EDITOR'S ANALYSIS: Sustainability through electric cars, hens and gardens

CHELAN -- If you didn't already know, the city of Chelan's Sustainability Committee included a survey form in its utility bills recently asking the citizens what they might, or might not, like to see in their utopia.
About 400 people responded to the surveys and the comments and results were very interesting.
As a new resident of Chelan, my first response would have been: What the heck does sustainability mean, exactly? Truth is, the city doesn't even know yet. The committee spent about a year and $20,000 to figure it out and even one of the committee members is frustrated by the results, or lack thereof.
(If I sound a little snarky, please forgive me as I move from the cynical stage of life, past curmudgeon and right on to grouchy middle-aged man. When someone asked me what I thought about the city's Sister City in Canada, my reply was something like, Sister City? Can't we just fill in the potholes?)
Considering all the stupid and wasteful things the city is mandated to do by the feds, the state and whatever else, it's interesting that forming a Sustainability Committee would even be considered.
So for laymen's sake, I will try to give it a crude definition: Sustainability has something to do with being able to feed ourselves and keep ourselves safe without blighting the planet or the neighbor's begonias.
Either that, or it has something to do with Viagra.
If it is the former, then we will be asked to reduce, recycle and reuse, which always reminds me of a weight-loss program. But I digress. I do know that the city's sustainability committee has reused some hot air, recycled some old environmental ideals and reduced the city coffers by 20 grand. If that's the definition of sustainability, they've accomplished that already.
If not, what do we do about it?
The charming Wendy Isenhart is one of my favorite people because she seems to lack my cynicism. Then again, I might be cynical and senile, which is why I'm off track again.
Anyway, Isenhart thought a survey would give the committee some feedback from the voters. A real democratic idea.
Then I got to see the questions -- and the answers.
The questions had to do with allowing folks to keep chickens within city limits (for eggs, avian flu, bubonic plague and feline entertainment, I'm guessing), building electric car charging stations in town (because, by God, if The Jetsons can do it, so can we) and using city-owned property for neighborhood gardens (because it worked against the Axis Powers).
SURVEY RESPONSES
Question 1: Should Chelan households be able to raise up to four hens?
Answers: Yes 184, No 136, Maybe if - 31
Voter comments: No Roosters! X11; Too noisy and smelly X2; and my favorite: Are you serious with the chickens? Please! (I swear I didn't send that one in.) As a Libertarian, people should be allowed to do pretty much what they want. As a kid who grew up with chickens all over the place, I can tell you a few things: The eggs are nice. Roosters are the Devil. Chickens are almost impossible to catch or run over. They smell like a cross between dirty gym socks and room-temperature sauerkraut. They, like lobsters and crabs, deserve to be eaten. In this particular case, I support chickens as long as they live next door to Wendy and not me.
Question 2: Should the city provide public charging stations for electric cars?
Answers: Yes 107, No 155, Maybe if - 86
Voter comments: If city charges a fee, O.K. X20; If need/demand is there X14; Where is funding coming from for charging stations and/or electricity? X7; Not enough car owners yet, revisit in 1-2 years X3; Private enterprise needs to pay for this. X2, (and my favorite response) No! No! No! Those of you who read my April 13 rant about electric cars already know how I feel about them, so let me use a line from a story someone else wrote about electric charging stations: If (Washington) puts in the 13 charging stations is proposes to, that would mean the state has as many car owners who would use the stations as there are stations.
QUESTION 3: Should community gardens be encouraged on vacant city lots?
Answers: Yes 273, No 33, Maybe, if - 44
Comments: Who would pay for water hookup and monthly bill? X6; No ifs-this is a great idea!; Food could assist food bank, the homeless and needy; Food is 100 percent better local; Animal waste and unkempt gardens are breeding grounds for mice and rats (See bubonic plague comment above); Chelan is rural enough, most people have gardens.
Now here's my suggestion: Put the chickens in the community gardens. The chickens can keep the weeds down and produce solid waste that would fertilize the plants and create enough methane gas to produce electricity for a free electric car charger!
Then Chelan can bill itself as the Waste-Based Sustainable Community. I can see the chamber's billboards now: The Chelan Chicken, wearing a little cape and cowl, frantically sprinting across Gibson Avenue in front of an oncoming semi-tractor trailer. The cutline reads: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the community garden!
So did this analysis help? Was it insightful or funny? Should I write another one next week?
Does a chicken have lips?
(Read Michelle Lovato's well-timed book review about raising urban chickens in this edition.)

LOVATO AT LARGE

Trains, buses

and automobiles

Sep 04, 2013

If I were cast in a movie sequel of Plains, Trains and Automobiles, I'd play the John Candy character. No one wants to sit by the Big Fat Dude (BFD) with the mole next to his nose, a bald spot, a four-day beard, a woman’s set of Liz Claiborne designer luggage and a man-purse.

In my case, it's been two days of trains, buses and automobiles but there is one plus: Because I am the BFD, I almost always had the open seat next to me. There are advantages to being the BFD in coach seating when the vehicles aren't packed.

As all personal challenges go, this has been a learning experience. I noticed how sensitive I am to people coughing hacking, sneezing and scratching in an enclosed space. I find myself keeping the restroom paper towel to use as a barrier between my hand, the door knob, and whatever the infected leper before me might have slathered on said doorknob.

I have noticed that since the kids grew up and moved away and stopped bringing all sort of pathogens and scourge from the schools, I have enjoyed almost perfect health.

I seldom get as much as a sniffle and I haven't been sick enough to miss a day of work since I moved to Chelan three years ago. No more choir performances, volleyball matches and children importing the latest social virus from school.

Now, back to the train.

Every cough, sneeze and sniff seemed amplified as I imagined the air-borne germs and viruses filling the claustrophobic enclosure and landing on or in everything I eat, drink, touch or breathe.

I picture myself as John Candy-James Bond character ordering at the snack bar: I'll have a virus-martini, shaken not stirred.

Meanwhile, there's a college kid behind me with a slack look on his face and ear buds dangling from his supposedly getting-educated face. He props his Vans against the back of my seat, already cramped with 6-foot-3 inches of height and about that much girth, and regularly pushes to the beat of a silent alternative rock song. His shirt says Atomic Shrimp Peelings with a picture of a tasty crustacean whaling on a lemon-and-butter keyboard.

As he pulls of his buds to return an urgent text to a Dude who thought something was “sick,” I catch a line of the tune:

I want to use my claws
to rip into your shell
then use butter and garlic
after the dinner bell

Your meat is tenderer
than any old fish
Eating your tail
is on my wish list

Actually, I kinda liked it. It sounded like the B-52s fused with Elvis Costello.

Just to prove no deed goes unpunished, I helped an old lady take her bags out of the train. It wasn't until I schlepped the two ragged sofa cushions to the platform that I realized she had a chronically weepy eye and some sort of fingernail infection that looked like she was holding a funnel cake...with the powdered sugar on it. That would have been tolerable, until she decided to thank me profusely, touching my forearm and telling me how I reminded her of John Candy.

There are other incidents including one involving the handicapped bathroom that looked like someone made boysenberry frozen yogurt on the stainless steel counter top then threw the mixing spoon in the toilet. It was either a mixing spoon or an old sock but my disgust overcame my curiosity.

Last but not least, there was a weak attempt to get some long-term sleep while sitting up, a feat I have never been able to accomplish. So instead of elbowing the person next to me all night, I went downstairs and found a wide-open room the conductor called the observation room. There was nothing in it! Disbelieving my luck, I grabbed my hoody and a few T-shirts, used my shoes as a pillow, cuddled up in a cool, dark corner, and knocked out a good four hours of REM sleep. That's not much even for me, but, hey, my legs were straight for the first time in 30 hours.

Of course, if it seems to good to be true, it is.

The conductor nudged me awake to let me know we were in Sacramento and it was time for me to transfer and he did so with a curled lip, like the guy who tells you there's toilet paper dragging from your heel.

He proceeded to tell me there was a refrigerator failure in the cafe room on the other side of the wall and it happened during a three-day layover for maintenance, so a putrid cocktail of rotten food and melted ice seeped into that room and they were supposed to pull the carpeting out of it as soon as it got back to Seattle.

It did explain why I had such a vivid dream about the odors I overcame the last time I changed out a broken garbage disposal.

With my only option being a trip to the aforementioned handicapped bathroom, I decided it would be best to spritz off at the water fountain, cover myself with deodorant and dream of Monday night, when all I have to deal with is an ornery cat and my daughter’s mini-fridge full of seven-day-old...something.

ATTEMPTS AT HUMOR

LOVATO AT LARGE

I've heard, 'Hey, You!' too often

The concert’s backstage security guard yelled, “Hey, you!” He was looking in my direction.

I didn’t understand why this large man with a muscle on the back of his neck (if he had a neck) would be upset with me for trying to get backstage at a Heart concert armed only with a media badge, a camera and my charming personality.

I looked around me and noticed I was alone, so I pointed at my own chest and cast a questioning, innocent gaze that said, “Sir, are you addressing me?”

To which he replied, “Yeah. You! Where the bleep do you think you’re going?”

“I’m with the media.”

“I see the media badge, Fletch. That’s not a backstage pass.”

By that time Muscle Neck had edged much closer and I noticed he was wearing a badge that said “Corky.” He was swiftly joined by another fridge with a jack-o-lantern head on top wearing a badge that said, “Snot.”

I would usually be amused by guys named Corky and Snot, but they seemed rather displeased and basically said if I didn’t get back in the media area ASAP they would make me AWOL. In my usual weak way of being charming, I asked Corky how he got his name. He said it’s because he corked his baseball bat, which he proceeded to “show” me. I hope I don’t have to be too graphic, but I didn’t have to ask Snot how he got his name.

I’ve been through this, “Hey you! Yeah you!” exchange many times in my life as a journalist. I say it’s because I’m always trying to get into interesting places to get the best stories and pictures for my readers. Michelle says it’s because I am socially retarded.

FROM THE MARGINS...

Attractive to gays and old women?

I must be getting better looking as I get fatter and my hair thins. While at a Drag Queen show at a questionable Chelan bar, I was hit on twice: Once by a 67-year-old woman and once by a gay man.

I couldn’t get too upset but it was confusing.

The woman said she thought I was part of the show. So she must have thought I was a woman in drag -- with a graying beard.

The gay guy walked up to me while I was on the phone. He said, “It looks like you could use a shot, handsome. Can I buy you one?”

I said, “Sure, as soon as I get off the phone with my wife.”

“Wife?” he said. “What a shame.”

But I must say that both were pretty good looking and at my age and mileage, I’ll take whatever I can get.

LOVATO AT LARGE:

'Free' fruit and the demise of Seattle

Some well-intentioned Seattle dwellers decided to grow fruit trees in a city park. The fruit is free to everyone.

I believe it will be very effective.

The vandals and the bums and the birds will destroy the fruit before it ripens. Rotten fruit falls on the ground and kills the grass, and dogs and birds poop on it.

People who step on the poop and rotten fruit and trip over the bums and get ticked off. They find the bums and vandals and beat them to death. They fire BB guns at the birds. The cops arrest the killers and bird assassins, who are easy to find because they have poop on their shoes.

The park now contains no fruit, lots of dead grass, skinny bums and neurotic birds.

The scurvy-suffering vandals move back to the nearby apartment complexes to vandalize and steal and survive on convenience store food.

Chaos breaks out. Martial law is enacted. Communists and right-wing fanatics form a strange union in an attempt to overthrow the government.

In the vacuum, Chinese forces invade the country and take over the U.S. government and we all have to learn how to speak Mandarin, pick up dog poop, plant our own fruit trees, and give 50 percent of the fruit to the government which gives it to the bums and vandals and birds.

Meanwhile, politicians in D.C. become fluent in Mandarin and are re-installed in office once the Chinese discover the politicians were in it for themselves anyway, and they were already running a form of collectivism.

They create subsidies for fruit growers so urban areas can afford to eat fresh fruit (while farmers starve) and it soon creates an over abundance. Well-connected liberal urbanites start giving fruit away to bums, birds and vandals.

Actual working people get nothing.

Commies and socialists declare victory for the people stemming from the City Park Fruit Tree Revolt.

Two percent of the people still control 98 percent of the wealth but now we have to drive badly made Sino-American cars, wear high-collared Nehru jackets, and live in homes where the countertops, toilet seats and windows are too low.

All because some well-intentioned liberals tried to do something nice.

EDITOR'S NOTEPAD:

$2 million and a stubborn can of chili

By Vince Lovato, Live! Editor

(Originally published May 2011)

When you see me writing something during a long, boring meeting, this is what I'm really thinking about:

• An investment counselor said my wife and I made almost $2 million since we started having kids. So why do I have a Walmart wardrobe, an 1988 Mazda and a used dog named Dexter?

• Mayor Bob Goedde holds court most mornings at the Apple Cup Restaurant where he has secured, "the second booth on the left." We had a long conversation and came to the realization that the reason people didn't like us has nothing to do with our strange political beliefs or forceful personalities. They are just jealous because we are so smart, tall and good looking.

• One of the best things I liked about The Mirror when I got here was the Gonzo Mama column by Christina-Marie Wright. Anyone whose raising or raised kids can relate and her narrative style makes the reader feel like she's talking directly to them over coffee. I reviewed her book, Everything I need to Know About Motherhood I learned From Animal House. The title speaks for itself.

• I always see joggers, hikers, bikers running around town. They will tell you they are just trying to stay in shape. But I know as I drive past them with a chicken wing dangling from my lips and my belly spilling over my belt, that they are just trying to make me feel lazy. Smug maladjusted, healthy dweebs. Of course, my wife says I'm so lazy I don't even open my eyelids all the way. But when I made a conscious effort to open them wider, I looked like I was scared all the time. (See her column on the op-ed page today. Better yet, don't.)

• Feedback: We still don't have any consensus on Chelanians, Chelanites or Chelanese. And now the folks in Entiat chimed in. Entiatans, Entiatese, Entiatinites. Maybe I shouldn't have started this.

• Feedback: I wondered why we don't have a Loch Ness Monster even though Lake Chelan is twice as deep as the great Loch Ness. I was told by a smug 13-year-old that a monster here would not be called a Loch Ness Monster but a Lake Chelan Monster. Second, if the lake is twice as deep, we should have two. And Tammy Koch said one of the Ladies of the Lake actually hit an unidentifiable monster. It could have been a hoax or one of the mayor's Pintos.

• For as long as we've been married, which predates cell phones and the Internet, my wife and I argue over can openers. I am an analog guy who likes to take out the thing that looks like a Medieval torture device, lop off the top of a can of chili and put the darn thing back in the drawer so I can have an open counter top to spill the chili on. My wife likes the electric buzz machines that punch a hole in the top and then leave the can tantalizingly partially open until you get the torture device to finish the job.
So I drive 1,200 miles, move in with my "cousin" and I buy my first can of chili. I see the darn electric buzz machine hanging from the cabinet. It's older than my daughter's bad attitude. I sniffed at it and dug through the drawers for the torture device. No luck. So I tried the darn electric buzz machine and it promptly poked a hole in the lid and spun the can around like a miniature DVD player on acid but left the lid mostly sealed with the precious contents teasingly bubbling out a puncture hole. I tried my pocket knife, a hammer and screwdriver, the used dog's teeth, a bowling ball. I had worked up an apatite. Frustrated and perhaps not thinking clearly, I slammed the can in my car door, breaking the door. I set it out on the highway, causing a semi to flip out of control. Took it to the gun range where bullets bounced off it. Threw it at a smug jogger but she was in good shape and I missed her completely, instead striking a late model Volvo. Then I resorted to pure desperation. I went to the store and bought a $5 can opener. The can magically twirled around beneath the torture device and in seconds I was eating the prized chili. I was so euphoric I didn't even bother to pour the chili in a bowl, instead opting to eat it cold right out of the lidless can. Victory over a can tastes great with chili stuck in your beard.