Farm News 10-21-07

Sunday morning, after chores, 76°

Joyce, rest in peace, dear friend.

Barn Events

Where are the kittens? Shotgun has kittens hidden somewhere, and has been hiding them for several weeks, but where are they? An experienced ten year old Kitten Searcher [KS], with an able assistant KS, have been unable to locate the kittens after two visits to the barn. Where are they?

They can't hide too much longer, because, being kittens, they will start yowling and complaining whenever things aren't just perfect. Today, I have to travel to Wellsville to see my nephews, but I hope that the KS team will appear sometime and search for the kittens, even if I'm not there. Of course, if one of them breaks her leg or suffers a similarly severe injury during the search, I'm not responsible and she is kicked off the KS team. (Disclaimer courtesy of common sense.)

Suzette's bunnies have progressed from sausage shape, long and skinny, to ball shape, nice round bunnies that fit in the hand. They are delightful, and quite tame. However, it is probably time for the KS team to take some time to handle the bunnies. The more bunnies are handled the gentler they become, and it all starts with 9-15 year old girls, and 11-17 year old boys. They are the cohorts who, now through 4-H, learn to totally domesticate young animals. Evolution-wise, that makes sense to me.

The black mother duck might be learning something, or, more likely, the ducklings are learning. Anyway, the result is that there are still five baby ducks, and they are growing fast. Ducks make a huge difference in the number of grasshoppers in the summer, a flock of four to ten ducks will cut the number of grasshoppers in severe summers down to tolerable levels. I had ducks the year there were two periodic cicada emergences, the 11 year and 17 year, I think. The ducks each ate huge numbers of cicadas. Ducks are definitely the great way to convert cicadas and grasshoppers into dinner.

A predator picked off Gunny, the young male goose who was learning to be the leader of the gaggle, leaving me with only three female geese, Bebe, Beth, and an unnamed one who looks like Bebe, her mother. I'm afraid I need another dog, a male that will aggressively protect his territory. Tessie is totally deaf and almost blind. Weasel is in good shape, but very laid back when it comes to chasing off varmints. The females stay at home and off the highway, but they aren't protecting the livestock. Every male dog we have had has eventually chased something out onto the highway and been hit. 'Car smarts' disappear when they are hot on the tail of a coyote or raccoon.

I'd like to fence the yard with a hot wire, but it really isn't practical. A hot (electric) wire needs to be 10-14” above the ground for the best protection. That won't stop possums, but it will repel taller predators, including coyotes, coons, and bobcats the top three domestic poultry gourmets. Occasional predation I expect, but when a predator moves in and expects me to provide him with prey, I object. And, I can't help it, but I always think of the replacement cost for a lost animal. The predators were here before me, but that doesn't mean I'm obligated to feed them. (Sounds like Rush Limbaugh's bullshit, to my distress).

nnukers private radio

I like weird music, especially while writing. As this was being written, I started by listening to some pieces by LustMord on nnukers private radio, an internet station. I found nnukers in the station index of Nexus player, but when I Googled 'nnukers' I only had six hits, and none of them gave any further identification. When I ran the internet Whois? I learned nothing more than the IP address of the station, 85.30.207.8:8000, which I already knew. The IP address is unnamed, has no web server, and seems to have nothing besides occasional music streaming out of port 8000. I'm certain that an internet wizard could discover much more, but I'll give nnukers the benefit of anonymity. Anyway, nnukers streams MP3 format music from port 8000, and if you download the Nexus player, you can hear it on that and don't need to bother with all the IP gobbledygook.

What was interesting about all this was what the searches didn't return. Google has only a few hits for nnukers. Using internet tools tells me nothing about the owner of the IP address used by nnukers. Finally (duh), it hit me. This is a pirate site! There is no registered owner of the IP address 85.30.207.8, ergo it must be a pirate station.

In 1956, when I was in England, I started listening to pirate radio on one of my first prizes from the PX, a Grundig all-band radio. Then, the pirate stations were actual radio stations that you tuned in with a radio, and they were located on ships floating in international waters somewhere in the English Channel. They had no rules, no licenses, but a surprising number of inhibitions. The pirate stations and Radio Luxembourg, the only station in the duchy of Luxembourg, a town that could lay legitimate claim to being the birth place of the EU, were the only stations in central western Europe where one could hear Jerry Lee Lewis. Fifty one years later, 85.30.207.8.:8000 is possibly the only place on the planet where you can hear LustMord, and it is a pirate station.

There must be some way to locate nnukers, at least the nation of the source, but I don't know how to do it. In 1957 sound pirates roved only in west central Europe. Now they have the entire globe.

The song just changed to Abalus playing Lux Boutique, then to East of the River Ganges playing Mango in my Flute. This is definitely a good station for people who like strange music. Mango in my Flute is a good piece of music. It's 12:35 long, and can be found here. [Steph, you'd like Lustmord, expecially XAXAAR.]

In Bratislava, Slovakia, you will find a station called, “the mixing of particulate solids radio.” It isn't a pirate station, and it has three channels that are usually available. Sound has escaped. In 1967, when I wanted to hear White Rabbit, I had KJHK, a student station with a range of less than ten miles, the only station that ever played anything as revolutionary as White Rabbit. Today, too old for following the White Rabbit, I have the mixing of particulate solids.

Pirate sound is a refuge of the leading edge. It brings to the public the messages of artists. A true Leftist, I am enheartened.

The Dancing Bear

“Brizzley,” Bear said (he called me 'Brizzley'), “some people have therapeutic personalities. I do, and people with problems are attracted to me, because they know I might be able to make them feel better.” Bear was the finest drug and alcohol counselor I ever knew. He led the effort to merge the Kansas drug counselor group with the alcohol counselor group to form KADAC, the Kansas Association of Drug and Alcohol Counselors, and he was the first president of the association. Hundreds of now dry alcoholics remember him with gratitude, as do dozens of former cocaine, heroin, and speed addicts. Bear was widely recognized as being successful working with groups of Native American female alcoholics, an amazing accomplishment.

Bear was the worst doper I ever knew, he could consume drugs in quantities and mixtures that violated all the laws of pharmacology. His idea of a nice evening with friends was to open a jug of Mad Dog 20-20, drop in 30 hits of speed and 20 hits of acid, and start passing it around while someone rolled a joint. Bear liked drugs, and he liked them in excess. Bob, a mutual friend, called me one summer and said, “Bear is in trouble. We need to get him off the street, and we need to do it now. There are people here wanting to kill him.” Bob explained that Bear was seriously strung out on heroin and had some dealers were wanting money or blood. Also, he had been running a couple of working girls who another pimp had picked up and the other pimp was wanting to kill Bear to consolidate the business.

Me, I'm not therapeutic. My trick is to intervene in crises and get the people involved connected with someone who is therapeutic. Bear was in a crisis, so I did my trick, spending two days in Wichita tracking him down, then tossing him into the back seat of the car, and taking him to safety. I took him to the VA hospital in Topeka and checked him in as an alcoholic. Hospitals are great places to hide, and I figured that Bear could make it through withdrawal from heroin while listening to alcoholics talk about beating their wives.

He not only withdrew from heroin, he found his place in the world. From treatment, he went straight to training, and spent two years going through the training that the VA thought was necessary for budding counselors. That gave him professional credentials. With professional certification, his income came up to the point that he could usually support his drug habits without the problems of running working girls. And, he was good. He was successful.

He did what any successful person like him would do: he bought a place in the country and started raising pot and opium poppies. The pot crop was usually the best; opium is very labor intensive, a situation which minimizes the poppy productivity of pot smokers. He could usually sell enough pot every year to pay for the booze, speed, cocaine, and other manufactured drugs he desired.

Bear was happy. Not so happy he could live without the assistance of drugs, but happier than he had ever been before.

I met Bear after the Summer of Love. When I left San Francisco, I went to Wichita, and Bear was one of the first fringe people I met there. He had just spent two years in prison and had temporarily given up running girls and hanging out in the clubs. Sam, one of Bear's friends, and Bear were shacked up with some teenage girls in a condemned building, living the good life. I stayed in Wichita for a while and developed a close friendship with Bear and Sam before I moved on to Kansas City.

In Kansas City I became involved in a project called The Ecstatic Umbrella. It was such a success in KC at taking money from churches and giving it to hippie, that we opened a branch in Wichita, the Wichita Umbrella. As anyone who has lived there knows, Wichita is the true asshole of the universe, and definitely not a place whose name you would want included in the name of an organization devoted to transferring money from churches to hippies. Calling it the Wichita Umbrella was Sam's idea, and Bear knew it was a mistake. Anyway, it got started, with Bear running the operation and Sam providing the color commentary.

The Wichita Umbrella, at it's prime, occupied a two building retired church. They usually had a pot of soup on the stove, coffee, a warm place for the homeless to sit or sleep, a group of political activists meeting in a back room, a few young teenagers wandering around wide-eyed, and a half dozen hippies and lunatics to operate the place. The lunatics were generally artists and musicians, and the hippies were more like New York hippies than California hippies. The Wichita hippie culture had a hard, criminal edge and their politics were more confrontational. California hippies grew up in white collar households, and Wichita hippies grew up in blue collar households.

A year or so after they started operations, on a cold winter day, Bear was sitting in his office, smoking a joint, when he suddenly had an overwhelming desire for a cup of coffee. The coffeepot in the kitchen was empty and all its internal surfaces were covered with polychromatic fungi, so he left to go to a nearby cafe to have a cup of coffee. He stepped out the back door, went to the alley, and walked north to the first cross street, where he turned to the left. As he stepped from the alley he noticed a police car entering at the other end, so he moved on briskly to the coffee shop.

While Bear sat in the coffee shop, sipping his coffee, an unofficial police raid was going on at the Wichita Umbrella, with guns, clubs, dogs, mace, and all the other trimmings. He had shot up some speed that morning when he woke up, and, by then, was feeling in need of a boost, so he slowly drank several cups of coffee. Meanwhile, back at the Umbrella, all the occupants of the two buildings: drag queens, hookers, hippies, junkies, poets, stone-masons, other dope dealers, Sam, Sam's brother, and a delegation from a local junior high school journalism class who were trying to write a story about the hippies, were lined up in the driveway between the two buildings, facing a brick wall, with their hands over their heads, while various authority figures lectured them on the inappropriate nature of their behavior.

Most of those lined up against the wall were unaffected by the display of police power, they were Wichita veterans and had been through it many times before. A few young women cried, only one of them sincerely, and the preteen journalism students all held up bravely. The teacher who had brought them to the Umbrella was wearing a peace symbol around her neck, so it took almost an hour for her to reach one of the authority figures and suggest to him, for they were all men, of course, that arresting a bunch of 11 year old journalism students could possibly cause public relations difficulties for the police department. The authority figure, looking at all the dejected figures lined up along the wall, decided that the message had been delivered, and the police returned to the station. At the coffee shop, Bear got up and paid his bill.

That was a typical Bear situation: blind dumb luck saved him time after time. When he stepped into his office again he was full of caffeine and had seven offended preteens, with their politically liberal teacher, in his office looking for a knight on a white horse. Bear didn't have a horse, but he had enough horse shit to deal with any preteen or teacher. Before the day was out the story was even farther out, with a local underground newspaper (published in the building), calling for police action to end the lynching of hippies caught having drug maddened sex with 11 year old children. Bear would decide what to tell the reporters, tell Sam, and Sam would interpret it to the press; it was a terrific combination, guaranteed to make headlines.

Authority figures are often comical but they take themselves very seriously, which, of course, is essential to their comic aspects, but, when one is dealing with people who use guns, clubs, and dogs to enforce their will, the fact that they take it all seriously is something which should be taken into consideration. The great raid was probably the first note of the death knell for the Wichita Umbrella. The great powers of Wichita were offended, and the Wichita Umbrella was to be destroyed. It was, and Bear started on a terrible downward spiral. Without the daily challenge of keeping a collection of crazies alive and functioning, Bear became one of the crazies. Six months after death of the Umbrella, Bob called me, and I went to Wichita to find Bear and take him to the hospital.

Bear never lived in Wichita again. When he finished his drug counselor certification, he moved to Lawrence, where I was living, also. It wasn't long until we were both living in the country on a farm owned by a retired organic farmer, milking cows and goats, growing a garden, and working for a research project in Kansas City studying the habits of dopers. We both had a lot, a whole lot, of experience in hanging out with dopers and were delighted to find jobs that paid us to continue hanging out with dopers during the day and while being country hippies evenings and weekends.

The whole arrangement was working fairly well. I was still too angry with the world to work comfortably with anybody, but we got along fairly well, Bear, in fact, quite well. They finally fired me for being too obnoxious, but, hell, I was an angel compared to many of the people they wanted to talk to.

The day finally arrived when Bear had located, interviewed, and smoked a joint with most of the dopers in Kansas City, and the data collection phase of the research project was over. It was time for the great computer to mutter over the numbers and produce more numbers, from which people with Masters degrees could hand draw various graphs showing the behaviors of dopers in Kansas City. Bear went to work in Topeka at a residential treatment facility called the Cat House.

The Cat House handled prison parolees who, as a condition of their parole, had to successfully complete a residential treatment program. If they were kicked out of the program at the Cat House they didn't go out on the streets, they went back to prison. These guys were the heavies, and the population included some people Bear had met in Kansas City. I had calmed down enough that I thought I might be able to put up with working again, so I went to work in the same place. Almost all of the residents had been convicted of various violent crimes and were fairly dangerous characters, which helped make the job more interesting.

Bear and I purchased an old clunker which we used to go back and forth to Topeka. In the mornings we drank coffee on the way to work, and in the evenings we drank peppermint schnapps and smoked a couple of joints on the way home. It was generally tolerable, but I still didn't care much for working around a lot of people, although criminals were a class of people I found easier to deal with than most others. Bear, though, was enjoying the job but still slowly breaking down. Soon he was drinking a full pint of peppermint schnapps on the way home and then shooting some cocaine to brighten the evening.

At the same time he was one of the most respected drug counselors in the state. Many of his clients knew he was sliding into trouble, but they listened to him and wished he had a counselor as good as they had. The trouble, when it came, was from an unexpected direction.

Drunk and high on cocaine, Bear went out to the barn one Saturday morning to clean out under the rabbit hutches. In the process he stabbed himself in the foot with a dirty pitchfork. He was too loaded to pay attention to the wound and it was several weeks before the infection became so bad that he could no longer ignore it. Antibiotics cleared it up, but the little germs had already made it to his heart and infected one of the valves. A few months later he had his first heart attack.

He went into a hospital in Kansas City, where they cut him open and put a new mitral valve in his heart. He survived the surgery and subsequent stay in the hospital, returning home to the farm (by this time we had purchased five acres with an old house near Oskaloosa). A few minutes after he got out of the car he turned to me and said, “Brizzley, I've learned my lesson.” As he said it, he took out a cigarette, which he then lit. I wondered what lesson he had learned.

Bear went back to work, but he had slowed down. His drug use became worse. He would stay up for two or three days on speed or cocaine, drinking, and smoking pot. After about 40 hours he would start to have sleep deprivation symptoms, especially paranoid hallucinations. One morning, after an overnight snow fall of several inches, I went out to do morning chores and found Bear stalking back and forth in the yard, carrying his deer rifle. He came over, stood beside me, and, out of the corner of his mouth, said, “It's the guys in camouflage suits, they're sitting in the trees over there, watching us.”

I went to the trees in which the guys in camouflage suits were sitting, looked at the snow, and saw no tracks other than my own. I came back to Bear and reported my findings, but he insisted they were there. I told him he was hallucinating. “Brizzley, I know when I'm hallucinating, and I'm not hallucinating now. Those guys are there. You just can't see them.”

Intravenous injection of cocaine or speed is not a wise course of action for someone who has deep in his heart a borrowed valve from a pig. It took seven or eight years, but Bear had another heart attack. If the first heart attach doesn't kill you, then usually the second or third will. Bear survived the second, but not the third.

I still miss him, and over half my close friends miss him, too; he was a good member of the clan.