Blubbery Infamy

It was a moment sure to live forever in the annals of Oregon Infamy. Read about it (here).

 

Honk If You Love Whales

 I’m really tired of being burned when it comes to bumper stickers and artwork on other people’s cars. Responding to these attention grabbers over the years hasn’t always yielded positive results. Read about it (here).

 

Sunshine On A Rainy Day

It was a cold and dreary day here in Portland, Oregon, when a bright spot of sunshine came my way in the form of the Sunshine Award, given to me by a great writer and humanitarian in South Africa whose blogs I’ve been enjoying for some time. Check out Sarchasm 2 (http://sarchasm2wordpress.com/ ) or any of Roly Clulow’s other blogs. ( I particularly enjoy Beelzebug (http://beelzebug.blogspot/. )

The rules of the Sunshine Blog Award are simple…

#1 Thank the person who nominated you with a link back to their blog.

#2 Answer a few questions about yourself.

Favorite color: Alizarin Crimson (It really is a color and painters adore it.)

Favorite animal: Whales, even though I have yet to actually see one.

Favorite number: 74; for 1974, the year I got married.

Favorite non-alcoholic drink: grapefruit juice. I could drink it by the gallon if it wasn’t so loaded with sugar since I’m a diabetic.

Facebook or Twitter: Both strike me as narcissistic, but if I had to choose, Facebook.

My passion: Venice, art history and telling stories.

Favorite flower: Iris…Bird of Paradise is a close second.

Favorite movie: The Lion in Winter. Historical, but one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.

Favorite painting: Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer by Rembrandt.

And finally, nominate a few other blogs and include links to them:

#1 Abroad with a View (http://www.abroadwithaview.com/ )

#2 Charlotte’s Menagerie (http://charlottesmenagerie.blogspot.com/ )

#3 In Search of Balance (http://balancebypark.blogspot.com/ )

#4 Laurel’s Quill (http://laurelsquill.blogspot.com/ )

#5 Oddball Observations ( http://oddballobservations.blogspot.com/)

Feel free to paste this pretty award on your blogs to show that you’re held in high esteem. I hope I get more awards because there are other great bloggers I’d like to nominate.

Mission accomplished.

Whales And The "F" Word

It was an all-too-common situation; cocky college kid comes home eager to impress his blue collar parents with his newly acquired knowledge. The topic? Not politics or religion or social values. The topic was…whales. Dad was wise enough to rise from his chair and scurry from the kitchen before Mom and I drew our weapons. In my defense, I had no idea this topic would prompt a yelling match, or that I’d resort to yelling out the “F” word in our house for the first time.

It started out as a harmless comment. “We’ve been studying whales in my zoology class. They’re certainly incredible creatures.” This was back in the early Seventies when whales were being hunted to extinction.

Mom agreed. “They certainly are.” It wasn’t a given that she’d agree because Mom, to my shame, liked to broadcast that her Portuguese grandfather had been a whaler.

“We need to do all that we can to protect them,” I said.

She nodded, and pulled a drag on one of her Virginia Slims.

So we weren’t going to have an argument after all. Finally, we agreed on something. Mom and I had argued about everything under the sun, but here at last was something we could agree on. Her next statement was also something I could agree with. “The Japanese are the culprits. They’re the reason whales are going extinct.”

“The Japanese are certainly contributing to the problem.” I admitted.

“That’s because whale meat is the mainstay of the Japanese diet.”

I had to take issue with her on this one. “You’re right about Japan killing the most whales, but rice and fish are the mainstay of the Japanese diet.”

She looked down her sharp nose and said, “I don’t know what they’re teaching you at UCLA, but everybody knows Japanese people eat whale every day. They survive on it.”

Granted, Mom was a voracious reader, and even if she didn’t go to college she was knowledgeable about many things, but what she was suggesting was impossible. “Numbers don’t back up what you’re saying,” I said.

“I don’t care about numbers; I know what I’m talking about.”

In my mind I saw a giant McDonald's in downtown Tokyo with a sign that read ten million whales served. We went back and forth on the issue for nearly two hours, screaming at each other as usual. She remained adamant; Japanese kids went off to school every day with whale blubber sandwiches in their lunchboxes. As far as she was concerned, every morning when the sun rose over Mt. Fuji, the Japanese tucked into a breakfast of whale and eggs.

I became exasperated, as I often did when stuck in these vexing situations of my own making. My final argument was a long winded shriek that went like this: “Mom, you’re right about the Japanese being culprits in the destruction of whale populations, but the Japanese don’t eat whale meat every day! It just isn’t possible. There are twenty million people in Tokyo alone! There are 120 million people living in Japan, not to mention another fifty million scattered throughout the Pacific rim. Conservative scientific estimates put whale populations at only 100,000, and I don’t give a flying F*#K how big whales are, a 100,000 whales can’t feed over 200 million Japanese!!!!”

Since we’d started arguing about whales, she’d burned through three Virginia Slims. She dropped a butt into a nearby ashtray, a curious expression spreading over her face. I wondered if my brilliant logic was about to pull off a rare accomplishment—convince my mother to change her mind about something. But I was wrong. She pointed her finger at me and said, “Young man, what was that word you just used?”

“What word?”

“The one after…flying.”

I repeated the word. That was when the conversation really heated up.