A Memorial Day Surprise!

One of the biggest fears we all have as parents is that our kids grow up somehow deficient and with no moral compass.  I am blessed in that both my girls have turned into grownups with empathy and a strong sense of right and wrong.

I wish I could say the same for my sons!

This morning, as is my wont, I arose at 7:30pm on another beautiful day here in South Florida, and sleepily put on my shorts and T-shirt.  My wife was silently dozing as I closed the bedroom door and was being led by my "son" Cody (100lb Labrador Retriever), toward the back door and outside for his morning constitutional.

He has always been a pretty regular guy, albeit with some rather strange bowel preferences for a dog.  He really doesn't like the grass very much, so as we amble down the brick paver driveway, when the urge hits him, he gingerly puts his front paws only as far onto the grass as necessary to delude himself into thinking that he is completely off the driveway.  Then he assumes the position, and lo and behold,  50% of the time, his morning deliverance winds up on the bricks.  This was one of those mornings.

I had passed him by on my way to the end of the driveway to retrieve the morning paper.  I bent down to pick it up and when I turned around, I noticed that he was still giving it all he had, and finally after some extra effort to expell what looked like something foreign trapped in the deposit, which is not by any means unusual, he completed the task.  I realized that I had come all the way down the driveway without my trusty pooper rake, and needed to go back to the garage to get it.  Starting back up the drive, as I glanced over at the 'challenge' waiting for me on the side of the drive I noticed something unusual sticking up out of the 'bowels' of the pile, so to speak.  Upon closer examination I was shocked to realize that I was seeing the number 10 sticking up on a green piece of paper!  As I gaped in horror, I saw that there was yet another piece of paper with a 5 on it at another spot in the pile, and also what looked like a picture of the father of our county peeping at me from beneath a rather brown smudge.

I stared at it for a moment or two not able to believe what was before my eyes!  It suddenly dawned on me that my concern, only yesterday, for the sudden disappearance of several bills that were laid out on the kitchen counter to dry after they got soaked when I jumped into the water with my wallet was now justified and explained!

What a cruel epiphany to discover that your dog has eaten your money!  I tried to imagine how he would have been able to a) know the money was there, and b) get at it by snatching it off the five foot counter.  Even for a Labrador, the amount of effort to get it was beyond his physical capability.  That's when I was horrified to realize that he must have had a co-conspirator in this fiendish plot.  Meese the cat!

Now it all made sense!  I knew that Meese had been pissed off at me for the last three weeks  since I forbade him to go outside because of his allergy to fleas.  His constant mewling was driving us crazy!  Understanding how his resentment had finally devolved into the pursuit of revenge and escape, it was clear that he had jumped onto the counter top and pushed the bills to the floor.  Maybe his devilish plan was to use the money to get a bus ticket to Immokalee or points north, and he had undoubtedly talked Cody into going with him, but whatever the plan, the fact that the two of them had turned against me was greatly discouraging.

I can only surmise that when the bills hit the floor, Cody, who is actually a goat in disguise, and has no short term memory, lost all pretense of cooperation with Meese and just couldn't resist the salty taste of a $16 treat that had just come out of the ocean (who knew he liked seafood!).  He gobbled them down--

Ergo, what I was seeing in front of me was the unfortunate but inevitable result of his greedy penchant to eat anything.  As he trotted beside me back to the house, he didn't seem the least bit concerned that he had just been revealed as 'just another son who steals from his Dad's wallet'.

After donning bright yellow rubber gloves, I faced the task of extracting the money from the organic clutches of Cody's indescretion.  Imagine my dismay when my first attempt to parse the pile resulted in only shreds of paper, not the whole bill!  Apparently the acid bitterness of the Cody's gastric channel had left the bills in tatters!

So, after I thought I had seen the last days of money disappearing mysteriously from my billfold during the years when the kids were younger, I guess I can still claim the dubious honor of being the world's smelliest human wallet! 

When I got back into the house I thought I could hear the Meese saying under his breath, "Foiled again!!"

Our Horizon Looks Darker and Darker---

I have emerged from my self imposed blackout to offer my thoughts about the unfolding ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. All my life, I have seemingly been on the periphery of major catastrophes, never experiencing first hand the traumas that all of us watch on the daily news broadcasts. They always seem to happen to others.

Now suddenly, my little slice of paradise is in the path of this sinister oil spill that won't stop growing. We have not seen any real physical impact yet, although two days after the explosion of the BP 'Deep Water Horizon' oil drilling platform in the Gulf, there was a whiff of petroleum odor over the city for a day or two....just a hint of anxiety in the air. As this disaster continues to grow, it is occupying more space in everyone's consciousness, and the cries of "Drill, baby, drill" seem like a laughable remnant of some bad nightmare.

As I start to think about the impact of this spill on our daily life here in SW Florida, I am fearful. I can visualize a slow death for the West Florida coastal communities as their beaches..the real draw for the billion dollar tourist industry here...are fouled with a sheen of oil that covers everything with an insidious creeping shroud that won't go away. The local paper here reports that hotel reservation desks are starting to get cancellations, just when the tourist business was beginning to revive after the long dark night of the recession gave tourism revenue a black eye last year. If the oil begins to wash up on our beaches a few weeks from now, I wonder if I will smell it all day in my back yard just a mile and a half from the beach. I wonder what will happen to all waterfront related businesses like shrimpers, crabbers, tour guides, fisherman, boat rentals, all marina services, wildlife refuges and sanctuaries, seafood restaurants, et al. What will happen to all the people who make their lives and a living here, not to mention the animals? It is almost too dramatic and horrific to consider how this life style will change. The local price of gasoline has already increased by 7% in the last week and is predicted to increase steadily. The impact of this promises to be so large that we haven't really gotten our heads wrapped around it yet....and the pollution continues to pour forth into the Gulf unabated.

The headline in the local paper this morning is "Does This Kill the Drive to Drill Baby Drill?" A Republican state representative actually proposed last year that we open drilling fields three miles from the Florida coastline. Now he is agreeing with Sen. Bill Nelson that we institute a moratorium on future drilling plans.

In the letters to the editor in the Naples Daily News, there was a terse piece from a man who equated this current spill with water-sprinkler damage in a high rise apartment: "After you replace the drywall, everything will be fine! Is a leaky water pipe a reason to move everyone out of the building? Leaks will happen-get used to it!" Another brilliant writer blamed the whole mess on President Obama:" After working 40 years in the industrial-maintenance field, I find it amazing that this oil platform failure was not backed up with shut-off valves. Isn’t it incredible that under President Barack Obama’s watch we have this huge environmental disaster.  Let’s see if his administration accepts full responsibility for this failure!"

What an idiot! I wonder if people like this know that the shutoff valves for this platform, and (tens of other by the way) were manufactured and installed, along with the cement support pilings by Halliburton--Dick Cheney's company--and that the cement pilings are failing because the standards pushed for and approved by Bush and Cheney were too lax to insure secure shut off valves on these platforms. In fact the inspection on the destroyed platform just prior to the explosion showed that the safety valves and pilings were insufficient in the event of an accident.

We are all waiting here with increasing anxiety as this catastrophe unfolds. I think Floridians are realizing that our lifestyle here is endangered and about to change. There is almost nothing we can do at this point to avoid the approaching storm clouds. All actions now are defensive against this encroaching horror.

This incident is a huge wake up call. The oil nuts need to be silenced. If ever there was a time to wean ourselves off petroleum, this is it. If we don't, you can expect more spills, more environmental catastrophe and more economic disaster. There is no fail-safe technology in oil drilling. All it takes is one mistake, or one greedy politician to eviscerate standards, and the lives of millions are affected.

Right now I am trying to breathe in as much fresh air as possible, before it all goes away!