Rain and Mosquitoes

Anyone who believes humankind is at the top of the food chain does not live around mosquitoes.  In fact, if you believe my former microbiology professor, we have 10¹² human cells, and 10¹³ microbial cells, so we are only ten percent human.  Perhaps we are merely mini-universes for the skin and gut flora, and the viruses and bacteria that make our respiratory tracts and other organic neighborhoods their homes.  Bottom line is humankind’s highest and best purpose may be to provide food and habitat for insects, viruses, and unicellular organisms.

This brings me to monotheism, the anthro-centric belief in a male-like supreme being who is detached and dominant, competitive, and paternalistic, omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect.

What does the monotheistic tradition have to do with mosquitoes, a reasonable person might ask.  Well, this God, according to tradition, has placed man above the animals, nature, and certainly above the lowly insects, bacteria, and viruses.  This God also must think cruelty is funny, because He torments man and woman with these miniature vampires that He could eradicate with a flip of a life-switch, if He so chose.  No, instead, He puts humanity in the position of alleviating his own misery through insecticides like malathion, or genetic engineering to produce sterile male mosquitoes under patent, for release in Key West, Florida.

In other words, this control-freak God, who seems to enjoy stirring up wars between the competitive monotheists descended from The Fall, must love mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, sand gnats, horseflies, lice, mites, and other fast-mutating species, more than He loves man.  This preference for more mutable life forms is charmingly depicted in Rats, Lice, and History:  The Biography of a Bacillus, by Hans Zinsser (1934), the original author of the microbiology textbook still used in medical schools today.  In it, Zinsser claims lice and other microbes win more wars than armies.  In any case, it offers even more proof that man has not evolved to the point where he understands how stupid he is to fight Mother Nature.

Speaking of Mother Nature, I recently finished reading The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers.  This book was derived from a PBS documentary aired in 1988.  Campbell was a professor of comparative mythology at Sarah Lawrence College, well versed in the various beliefs around the world. He made a clear distinction between the monotheistic God as above-it-all creator; and the mother-goddess traditions in which the goddess is “within as well as without.”  He claimed these earth-centered traditions placed animals equal to man and sometimes superior. As mothers generally have unconditional love for all their children, the mother-goddess traditions evolved as naturally compassionate and what we might now call “eco-friendly.”

In the “deistic” or “animistic” belief systems of the Native American mythology, for instance, the natural and supernatural worlds are intimately interconnected.  While some of the ritualistic religious ceremonies may seem brutal now, they respected man’s role as a part of and totally dependent on nature’s bounty.   The primary food animal of a tribe was revered, respected, and often deified.  Feasting ceremonies prayed to the spirit of the animal, asking it to be re-born to provide food again.

Another of my books describes the Hopi Snake Society rain dances.  In these, dancers hold rattlesnakes in their mouths, as part of the ceremony appealing for rain.  The snakes are then released, in order to appeal to the rain gods on humankind’s behalf.  The book claims cloudbursts often follow.  (National Geographic Society’s Indians of the Americas, 1955).

A few years ago, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, responding to drought conditions, prayed for rain.  His prayers were followed by torrents in the mountains which caused flooding and a couple of fatalities.

I figured he prayed to the wrong God.  He should have prayed to Mother Nature, who loves all her creatures, even people, and knows that the right amount of rain at the right time and place benefits all equally.

So, for those interested in “climate change,” perhaps we need to redefine the problem and re-work the strategy, and turn thoughts toward changing the climate in more desirable ways.  Even Seth of the Jane Roberts series asserts that man’s thoughts influence weather.

While I haven’t resorted to dancing with rattlesnakes, I have made appeals to Mother Nature for a milder summer, here in the swamps of Savannah.  I have asked the plants and animals to join me in this weather-making experiment.  My chickens seem particularly good at it.  I’ve even reminded Ma Nature that it will help mosquitoes.  This latest twist on “climate change” is a conversation starter and actually elicits a few smiles.  That we could perhaps influence the weather in universally beneficial ways may be the stuff of science fiction today, but the concept is as inspiring as a rainbow, should you choose to believe.  And, no government help required.

Down home, this summer, we have had more rain than in recent years, along with more cloud cover and more breeze.  Even the little blood-suckers have held off, for reasons only known to Ma Nature, but I thank her nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The View from Below

I shoveled the dock steps the other day.  This was part of my latest health initiative, with the purpose of swimming in the river.

Now, most people don’t have a dock or concrete steps to a polluted river where they can swim.  Most people haven’t grown up on said river and watched it change gradually over the past 60 or so years.  It is a blessing and a curse.

While doing this mundane labor, which with clean-up took about two hours, I had time to ponder many worldwide concerns.  First, I listened to the constant buzz of helicopters at Hunter Army Airfield, only a couple of miles–as the helicopter flies–from my house.  There were also military aircraft flying overhead, as I live only 28 degrees off Hunter’s flight paths, and those planes fly low, low, low over my head. This reminded me that the US is engaged in perpetual wars, and I live in a war zone, what with the strong military presence loud, clear, and constant.

Next, I thought about the Clean Water Act of 1972, when the Army Corps of Engineers got jurisdiction over all “wetlands” including the “hydrophytic” marsh that surrounds my small spit of land.  I wondered if the AC of E would fine me for taking mud off the steps and depositing it in the center of my land, which is mine but not mine in that I pay property taxes but can’t modify it.  This spit of land has been sliding into the river for years and now becomes flooded in spring and fall tides.  The channels in the area are also filling in, because no one dredges them anymore, even though the drainage ditches are perpetually clogged and contribute to frequent, severe flooding in Savannah.

The local movers and shakers would prefer to dump poisonous malathion by helicopter on the entire ecosystem than drain the bogs where mosquitoes breed. That the Army Corps of Engineers pays Chatham County to control mosquitoes, yet operates the largest mosquito habitat in two states does not seem important to anyone but me.  That the dredge material from current harbor deepening project will increase the mosquito habitat at this international port presents no red flags to those who are developing vaccines for mosquito-borne disease but are blithely nonchalant about the cushy habitat they are creating.

This brings me home to the polluted river, which still has fish and shrimp, but not as many as in my childhood.  I figure if fish can swim in it, so can I.  I’ve been stomping around, crabbing, shrimping, boating, water skiing, and swimming in that water since I can remember, so know it well.  While shoveling, I thought about “climate change,” and the claim that the oceans are rising.  I also remembered reading about how land is washing into the oceans and wondered if the oceanic rise is relative to the land’s sinking, in a leveling out that would lead to the oceans’ getting shallower. Shallow water heats more quickly than deep water, as any swimmer knows, and holds more heat, so this could explain some of the climatic changes.

So then I thought about President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord and wondered whether it makes any difference in the long run.  I’ve never been a fan of government solutions to government-supported problems, like the fact that deforestation is a major contributor to climate change.  I don’t believe in paying corporations not to cut trees (as in “carbon credits”) and would prefer instead to reduce demand for paper, like junk mail and single-use packaging.  International Paper, the owner of primo rain forest in South America, and a huge polluter of the Savannah River and air, does not recycle paper.

That got me to thinking about the enormous amount of methane produced by the marsh, the fact that methane and natural gas are the same thing, and that Germany is the world’s leader in recycling (70%).  In addition, Germany has to import garbage to fuel its waste-to-energy plants that provide so much of its heat and electricity. There is also new technology to capture methane produced by landfill, but the US lags behind places like China in its adoption of these promising technologies.  No wonder Angela Merkel was frustrated by Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord. Germany is the world leader in sustainability, and should be so acknowledged.

So, Donald Trump may believe coal gives the US a financial advantage, but this is short-sighted.  Apparently China is the largest purchaser of US coal exports, but China built 431 waste-to-energy plants in 2016, so it may not need our coal much longer.  With the reduced cost of solar, India is also going greener.  China is the biggest carbon-emission nation in the world, and the US is second.  Russia is third, and India fourth, according to Google 2011 data.  Americans probably generate the most waste, though, 4.5 pounds of garbage per person per day, and recycling has decreased, now down to about 30 percent.

So, while I solved my personal problem of how to swim without getting mud between my toes and oyster shell cuts on my feet, I also solved a lot of world problems, and I never had to leave home.

 

 

 

 

Here’s How 060616: Ode to Demeter

Corn, Cochran, GA.  Supposedly, 80% of corn sold in the United States is already genetically modified. It’s too late to label GM products.

Ode to Demeter, Goddess of the Corn
daughter of Cronos and Rhea

Microsoft is on the KO! Economic Hit List this week because I just spent $70 to get Windows 7 reinstalled.  This is because Microsoft is busy providing “free” downloads of Windows 10, which my computer doesn’t have enough memory to handle.  Yes I missed the chance to refuse Windows 10, supposedly, but I was in the middle of composing an e-mail on line when Microsoft butted in and commandeered my computer for at least the next 24 hours.  After 48 hours, I called my computer tech for help.  She said this is happening to everyone.  She’s making a lot of money at her hourly rate to uninstall this free gift from one of the richest corporations in the world.  Beware Windows 10 offers unless you know what you’re doing.  And sell Microsoft stock, if you have it.

If that isn’t a good enough reason to sell Microsoft stock, here’s another:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is big into finding a patented vaccine for malaria.  Oprah Winfrey is also involved, probably not realizing what she’s lending her name to.  My guess is Oprah is being used to front for the perpetrators.

Who are the perpetrators?  Any number of ever-shifting pharmaceutical shells.  Trying to keep up with Pharma’s rolling dice is like trying to walk over a room full of billiard balls.

This is how it works.  Bayer has recently offered to buy Monsanto for $62 billion in cash, but Bayer apparently would have to borrow money to supply the cash. Bayer is also a prime mover into genetically modified (mutated) food products, such as soy, corn, and potatoes, among others, products which are fed to livestock as well as humans. Meanwhile, Pfizer is offering to move its international headquarters to Ireland, but the US doesn’t want to let go of Pfizer’s patents.

But Novartis is the most noteworthy player for the anti-malarial/Gates swindle.

There’s an international unsettled question of patents, if you’re an international corporation.  Is any government really obligated to honor another government’s patents?  Since I don’t believe in them (patents or governments), I might choose to live in a country where everything is generic, like artemisia in Africa.  If a country like Cuba, for instance, were to refuse to honor Monsanto’s patents, would that save Cuban agriculture from GMO products?  Same with Dow/Dupont and their plastics and insecticides?  I want to get to Cuba before the litter takes over.

Back to mosquitoes and malaria.  Artemisia is a naturally occurring anti-malarial plant that grows in complement with the malarial parasite in Africa, among other places.  It has been used for generations as a natural antidote to malaria.

Enter Novartis, the drug company, and the Gates foundation, and other advocates of patented, processed, and artificially enhanced traditional remedies.  They buy up or wrest control of huge tracts of formerly food-producing or forested land.  They clear it and plant mono-culture fields of artemisia.  Mono-agriculture is one of the most economically unsound, disease-promoting, and earth-depleting agricultural practices we have going, but you won’t hear this from Big Ag.

Anyway, this dinasour-like take-over of previously sustainable agriculture (for the local population, anyway) is no longer available to natives.  Instead, they are rewarded with local wells gone dry or contaminated by industrial pollutants (as both Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola have done in India*).  Instead of providing locally for extended family and villages, the corporations “create jobs” for those who “live below the poverty line,” partly because they grew or found their own food, and didn’t need so much money.  Now, they are on the tax rolls working for the corporations, at bare sustenance wages, so that shareholders on Wall Street can reap enormous unearned profits.

So this is how the US raises the poverty level worldwide, including at home.

But that’s not all.  It gets worse from here.

The next step is to produce a prototype vaccine using artemisia as a base, but the FDA approval process takes years in the US.  Besides, we’ve eliminated malaria and yellow fever (for the moment) by installing good public works and sanitation programs, like draining mosquito habitats (but not poisoning).  In the 18th and 19th centuries, annual outbreaks of seasonal malaria and yellow fever drove people like Alexander Hamilton and plantation owners from cities to farms in summer to escape the recurrences of deadly disease.

Thank Walter Reed and William Gorgas (at the turn of the 20th century) for the scientific discovery of mosquitoes as vectors and of habitat drainage for public health.  Reed was head of the original Army Corps of Engineers Panama Canal digging crew but died in 1901.  His assistant, William Gorgas, assumed the task of draining low swampy land to curb the mosquitoes.

They didn’t have industrial pollution, highway runoff, carcinogens, plastic, litter, junk mail, sewage waste, agricultural chemicals, household poisons, and radioactive isotopes to deal with then, and few patented drugs, so they had to rely on brains and brawn working together to survive.

In any case, since we’ve cured these diseases in the US by sane, low-cost, public health measures, the asset plunders and money churners now want to profit from the diseases we’ve eliminated by doing the opposite of what worked.

This is why GoverCorp is imploding.  It is suicidal, homicidal, psychotic, and out of emotional control.  In Savannah and nationwide, it is breeding mosquitoes by the bucketful with its mono-agriculture, poisoning the entire region with with exhaust fumes, machine noise, pesticides, herbicides, rodentocides, chemical fertilizers, industrial waste, depleting and contaminating groundwater, and poisoning or drying up local wells as fast as it can get away with it.  It is replacing tried and true farming techniques, cultural wisdom, heritage, tradition, and land with cheap American hype and the devastation it causes.

And you, Josie Taxpayer are paying for this through your taxes, purchases, and Wall Street investments. I say “Josie Taxpayer” instead the more urbane “Joe,” because women have more chromosomes than men.  This gives them more genes to work with, and a sixth sense, Common Sense.

So, if you want value for your US tax money, start selling international corporation stock.  Your dividends come on the backs of the world’s most disenfranchised people and the eco-rapists at home.  Can you really rest easy with your retirement portfolio, knowing this, when there are so many more rewarding investments closer to home?

The story about patented malaria vaccines continues, because we still have FDA trials to go through, but we need a “cohort” of test subjects.  Unfortunately, the US has eradicated malaria here, as previously noted, so we need to go to a malaria-infested third world country to find our study “cohort.”  We accomplish miracles with very little money by “gifting” that country’s leadership—as we did in Ecuador a few years back—with vaccines and supplies for vaccinating everyone in the infected area.  Volunteer doctors and medical staff help; needles and other tools are supplied.  This is timed with a huge marketing campaign concocted by Madison Avenue and Wall Street, stocks go up, and dividends prosper.

This GoverCorp plot is given full court press by the media.  For instance, a New York Times column by Thomas L. Friedman (of The World is Flat mentality), on April 20, 2007:  Friedman applauds Bill Gates’ and Novartis’ invasion of Africa.  According to Friedman, we “need to channel [Africa’s] wild, unregulated, informal, individual brand of capitalism” into “formal companies.”  We learn Africa “needs capitalists” like Bill Gates.  It also needs Novartis, which through Advanced Bio-Extracts (ABE) and its head Patrick Henfrey, is paying farmers to grow a “green leafy plant ‘artemisia,’ often called ‘sweet wormwood’ and transform it into a pharmaceutical grade artemisinin–a botanical extract that is the key ingredient in the new generation of low-cost effective malaria treatments.”  We also find Mr. Henley has “contracted with 7000 farmers, most with small farms to grow Artemisia in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.  The crop gives farmers four times the financial yield of corn.”

Yes, but it doesn’t feed them, I claim, and when food becomes more expensive than the money can buy, farmers are left worse off than before.  Also, subsequent reports point to growing resistance of the Plasmodium (malaria) parasite to the manufactured drugs.

For world healing to begin, it’s crucial that Americans recognize the hypocrisy of the system we’ve created.  This first essay in the “Here’s How” series hopes to show more than tell how America’s pompous claims to greatness look more and more delusional on the world stage.

*”Killa-Cola,” by Keith Hyams,  the ecologist, April, 2004.

To Pay the Piper

Highest tide on record, Savannah, GA, October 27, 2015

I need $500 to pay the piper. Literally.  That’s the last of the $3000 bill for replacing my old water pump and clearing a calcium blockage out of the well shaft.

Dropping the new pump into the well. July, 2015

This isn’t just any old well. This well taps into the great Florida aquifer, source of water for South Georgia, Florida, and part of Alabama.  One of the most productive in the world, according to the US Geological Survey.  Its most predominant cations (positively charged ions) are calcium, magnesium, and sodium.  Most common anions (negatively charged ions) are bicarbonate, chloride, and sulfate.  Note these are elements, part of nature’s natural cycle.

When it comes to the Savannah River, we have a different story. The Savannah River floats atop the Florida aquifer, upstream from me. This puts me in direct line of fire should anything go awry with the much touted Savannah Harbor deepening project.

The Savannah River. Hutchinson Island and Convention Center at right.

The Savannah River has a sordid history. It is rated among the ten most toxic rivers in the country.  It is full of human and industrial waste from the last 280 years.  We have an untold number of rusting and decaying pipelines running under the river, pipes that carry an unreported variety of potentially toxic chemicals. We also have the chemicals, litter, garbage, and human waste dumped along its navigable course, all washed downstream toward the ocean. We have the daily oil leaks and other pollution from the nation’s 4^th largest port, exhaust fumes, and all the industrial muck generated by modern civilization.

The Savannah River supplies the city of Savannah’s drinking water. Beneath the industrial pipes and the river-bottom sludge lies the pristine Florida aquifer, source of my drinking water, as well as that of all points south of Savannah. Corporate giant International Paper also gets its water directly from the Florida aquifer, through its eight 6-inch wells.

The current Savannah harbor deepening project was initiated by the Department of Defense d/b/a the Army Corps of Engineers, to expand military capacity in the Southeast. This is not stated outright, but one need only look at the multiplicity of military bases located in the area, and the fact that deployments for our interminable foreign wars fly 200 feet over my house.

The harbor deepening, which has already begun as I write this article, has a few logistical problems ahead. A primary problem is where the Corps is going to dump six feet of river bottom sludge.  The Savannah Harbor is 17 miles inland, and the channel is about 500 feet wide.  There is separate funding for Tybee Beach “re-nourishment,” engineered simultaneously with some harbor deepening money by former US Representative Jack Kingston.

At the same time, retired Corps insiders worry about intrusion into the Florida aquifer, but this is not discussed in public meetings.

The Army Corps of Engineers is also responsible for the largest mosquito nest in two states. This site is the last AC of E dump site for dredged river muck.   This sits on the north side of the Savannah River, where international ships with their passengers and vectors float daily by.  (Point of reference:  The Savannah River was originally 12 feet deep.  It is now 42 feet deep with plans to deepen it to 48 feet.)

Hutchinson Island exit off Hwy. 17

The Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA), the Georgia Ports Authority, the State of Georgia, local government, and the Corps have ganged up in support of the harbor deepening.   SEDA’s home is on Hutchinson Island, an earlier dump site for Savannah River dredging.  Hutchinson Island now boasts a SPLOST-funded convention center and a SPLOST-funded exit off Highway 17, to help bury value in toxic waste.

By further deepening the river and dumping toxic waste from the bottom of the river onto an as-yet-undetermined site, the Corps will further concentrate the toxins above land and breed more mosquitoes, now filled with lead, arsenic, and mercury.

“Yes, but it’s great bird habitat,” says a retired Corps employee.

My point exactly. These mosquitoes are eaten by birds, which are eaten by raccoons, hawks, and other creatures, and up the food chain the toxins go.  Remember that mosquitoes carry disease, like West Nile Virus, and a host of other mosquito-borne illnesses.

The United States Geological Survey has noted effects of metal contaminants in dredge material, including elevated levels of arsenic, copper, mercury, selenium, and zinc in birds and raccoons, as well as “significantly elevated” levels of cadmium, mercury, lead, and selenium in raccoons, with the bioaccumulation in their livers.

And then we have the rats, which carry fleas, eat through walls and wiring, and fill Savannah sewers. Their fleas spread bubonic plague, among other diseases.  Ships bring mosquitoes and rats as a part of their cargo.  There is no human being on the planet as smart as a rat.  If there is food, a rat will find it.  They have fleas to feed.

But this sexagenarian remembers when we still had lightning bugs and could see the north star at night. Over the years, she has observed the drainage ditches clogging, the mosquitoes growing bigger and meaner than ever, the streets flooding, and the rampant public safety hazards on public land.  Streets, sidewalks, curbs, and parking lots are concrete obstacle courses.

The Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA), the Georgia Ports Authority, Southern Company, International Paper, Imperial Sugar and other mega-corporate air, water, and earth polluters, are fine with poisoning Savannah, since their shareholders live mostly out of town. It appears that since we are busy selling last year’s weapons to our past and future enemies, to stimulate “the economy,” we are heavily invested in suicide.

Local officialdom is all for this. Bureaucrats, who work behind the scenes but who manipulate the publically accountable elected officials, can’t be fired, and their tenures last through many elected mayors and county commissioners.  Bureaucratic pensions and benefits are also invested on Wall Street, the commodities markets, corporate bonds, and treasuries.

But, back to my pump problem . . .

My water pump died at six p.m. on a Friday in July. I saw it coming.  Water pressure dropped too fast, and the old pump was working too hard to re-fill the 120 gallon tank.

Last fall, the last time I needed pump service, Mr. Turner told me it was only a matter of time before I would need a new one. “The old pumps lasted longer,” he said.  “Now you can expect about a 20-year life span.”  He replaced the voltage regulator and used his air compressor to put a head of pressure in the tank.

He’s an octogenarian who has been in the business since the 1940s, along with his 76-year-old brother.   Mr. T. hoped to retire by the end of the year but despaired there was no one he could recommend to replace him.

So when the pump died this time, I tried calling Mr. Turner, but his number had been disconnected. I noticed a small display ad in my old 2011 telephone book yellow pages, for L&S Pump and Well Service.  The “24/7 service” notation jumped off the page.

At 6:30 p.m. on this particular Friday, I called Louis Smith of L&S. He said Mr. Turner had retired two weeks ago.  Louis (Loo-ie) said he would be happy to come to my house immediately, but he would have to leave his granddaughter’s birthday party.

I said my problem can wait until the morning. I have jugs of water stored for emergencies.  What time in the morning can you come?

“I like to sleep late on Saturdays,” says he. “At least until 6:30.”

We agreed to a 7:30 a.m. appointment. He was here by 7:20.  Yes, my pump was dead and needed replacement.  Yes, he would have to roll back the panel on my greenhouse above the well shaft.  Yes, he could do it today, but it would take some doing, as suppliers and crew take weekends off.  Yes it would cost $2000.  He doesn’t usually extend credit, especially to customers he has never met, but I’m land poor, living on Social Security, and can only pay half up front.

So he says he’ll do the job, and I say let’s wait until Monday. Enjoy your weekend.  I know how to make water last.

Typical Chatham County drainage ditch, August, 2015

I also know how to make the most of a difficult situation. I have been particularly interested in water issues lately, everything from the river deepening to the mosquito nest, to Savannah’s clogged drainage ditches, to the nuclear power plants upriver from me.

The Savannah River site, home of an old nuclear bomb factory and nuclear power plants, near Augusta, GA and 100 miles upriver from my well, has been cited as the “most severely radiation-polluted place on Earth,” by brainz.org. There are rumors of tritium and other radioactive isotopes downstream as far as Savannah, but this has not been substantiated.

At the moment, Southern Company is busy building two new nuclear power plants at this site, the first new reactors approved in the United States in over 20 years. We are already paying in taxes and increased utility bills for this, despite the fact that energy usage is going down nationwide.  Southern Company is reporting cost overruns and wants more money.  This is a Fortune 500 company, mind you, that routinely reports huge profits and pays large dividends derived from its double-dip into taxpayer wallets.

Nuclear power plants use enormous amounts of water for cooling, a third of which evaporates, with the remaining heated water discharged back into—in our case—the Savannah River. Raising the temperature of the water unbalances the ecosystem and contributes to further problems with fish and wildlife habitat.

Meanwhile, Atlanta is worried about its drinking water supply. Three states are fighting over water from Lake Lanier, near Atlanta, and the Chattahoochee River that flows out of it.  The state of Georgia is considering piping water upstream from the lower Savannah to supply Atlanta’s future water needs.

Can you find the drainage ditch? It is impassible.

This validates my assertion that my individual problems are intimately connected to the world’s problems. Rather than clear the drainage ditches, including the one alongside my property, our local government purchases helicopters to dump malathion on our collective heads. The Corps pays local government to provide this overkill and to discharge its responsibility for its mosquito breeding grounds.

Apparently the Corps has forgotten what its own Walter Reed and William Gorgas discovered in the first Panama Canal project in 1900. Attending to drainage and destroying habitat for pests is far more cost effective and gentler on all of us than the pesticides dumped over the entire coast at random.

In an ideal world, common sense exists in the public domain. The drainage method for combating mosquitoes, reducing flooding, and potentially assisting irrigation, discovered by Gorgas and Reed in 1900 and thereabouts, successfully eliminated yellow fever and malaria in this country the first time.

Johnston Street flood. Savannah, GA. June, 1999

Besides breeding mosquitoes within Chatham County, the clogged drainage ditches and stagnant water contribute to massive flooding, mold, mildew, and a variety of disease-producing microorganisms. The 12 inches of rain that fell during high tide in 1999 flooded my office on Johnston Street, across Abercorn from 12 Oaks Shopping Center.  The site of the flood is now home to two huge new developments, a Hilton, and some huge monstrosity where Konter Realty used to be.  This will only exacerbate the flooding problems in mid-town Savannah.

Local government, meanwhile, has now extended its water lines into the marshy part of the county where I live, and does whatever it can to discourage private wells. However, considering the high potential of flooding into the county water supply, this taxpayer prefers to keep her private well. Already, 20 years ago, the county was working to ensnare as many taxpayers as possible into dependency on government for water.  Even then the bureaucratic hassle for getting a well permit was a nightmare.

So back to my current saga, which ended with a sigh of relief, but not before we encountered an unanticipated $1000 problem.

Louis, left, and Roy at work. July, 2015

On Monday, Louis and his helper, Roy, arrived at daylight. The weather was hot and muggy, already 83 degrees.  They worked quickly, unscrewing the fiberglass panel over the well shaft, pulling up the old pump, and putting the new one down.  Water gushed and stopped, gushed and stopped.  This happened repeatedly, at which point Louis finally determined there was a blockage in the shaft.  He rubbed his head and looked serious.

“You might have to get county water, after all,” he said. He added he might be able to clear the blockage, but he would have to find a welder to make a special bit to drill through the deposit, and that it would cost an extra $1000.

Knowing what I know about county government, and knowing it would cost at least that much to run a pipe from the county’s water line, I urged Louis to try to clear the blockage. He left for lunch and to find his welder, and I left for errands, wondering when, if ever, I would have running water again.

By the time I returned from errands, he and Roy had cleared  the well shaft, and water was gushing out of the well. They had removed a calcium deposit at 185 feet in the 300 foot shaft.  The water level was at 57 feet.  He showed me the bit, which was four inches in diameter, with teeth on three rollers that ground down the calcium.

But here’s the real kicker to this story. Louis looked confused when I mentioned his ad in the yellow pages.  It seemed he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I went to look for the ad and couldn’t find it.  I wondered if I had the wrong phone book, checking several pages, over and over, but the ad I so clearly remembered—and used to call him the first time—was not there.  His listing, I discovered, was on an entirely separate page from all the other well drillers and servicers, but there was no ad.   He had told me the phone company had done him dirty, and now I understand what he meant.  Lucky for me—and for him, I suppose, once I pay him off—that the phantom ad brought us together.

Universal Domain Technology and Patents

A decent bike rack is hard to find in Savannah.

My reusable shopping bag collection

I have a future in product design.  I plan to specialize in universal domain technology, remain small and focused, invent things that I need, use all the potentially useful materials that clutter house, yard, and tool shed, and produce prototypes rather than patents.

Neither Benjamin Franklin nor Thomas Jefferson believed in patents.  I’m on their side.  Patents foster secrecy, such that everybody is so busy working alone and spying on “competition,” that we have a technological revolution of incompatible electronic equipment.

Above left is a bicycle rack, with my lone bicycle parked in it.  Above right is my reusable shopping bag collection, two of them hand-sewn by yours truly.  I used left-over drapery material to make the floral one.

The bike rack is part of a local campaign to embarrass our city and county government into making our streets and sidewalks more wheel friendly.  I’m also on a picture-taking campaign of public safety hazards on public land, planning to e-mail said pictures to those who are wasting taxpayer money on new highway construction and new schools where nobody lives.

Public safety hazards on public land abound in Savannah, where I live, but this appears to be a national problem.  Think of all the wheels that must traverse these areas.  Not only bicycles, but wheelchairs, rolling walkers, shopping carts, delivery carts, skateboards, roller skates, as well as cars and trucks.  In Savannah, tree branches hang in front of traffic lights and street signs.  High curbs, speed bumps, little islands of bushes at eye level prevent drivers from seeing small children and oncoming traffic.

Drainage is another major problem in this backwater burg.  The city and county do not maintain the drainage ditches, such that the mosquito problem is magnified.  When we have heavy rain and high tide together, downtown and midtown Savannah are prone to heavy flooding.

Our city parents (fathers and mothers) solve these problems by purchasing cute but loud little yellow jacket helicopters to dump malathion on the entire coast.  They purchase street signs to tell us the street is closed when flooded.  The helicopters pay special attention to the largest mosquito nest in Georgia and South Carolina that sits on the northern bank of the Savannah River.  This is site of previous Savannah River dredgings.  Our famous Hutchinson Island is an earlier site.  These toxic waste dumps come to us courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers, but the Corps pays Chatham County to control the mosquitoes with malathion.  They do not want to drain it, because it attracts birds, but the birds and racoons are showing dangerous levels of lead and other toxins.

Yet the Corps and the county and the state of Georgia are hot to deepen the Savannah River even more, from 42 to 47 feet, even though nobody knows where they will put the millions of tons of toxic waste accumulated over 250-plus years of industrialization.

This ambitious project to stimulate imports and exports comes at a time when the “global economy” is dying on the vine.  The dollar is strong right now, great for the domestic economy.  Domestic goods are cheaper, labor is cheaper.  Only the bankers, the governments, and Wall Street are suffering, because they are the profit-skimmers who produce nothing of value on their own.

How do I get from bike racks and reusable bags to the global economy?  It’s simple.  Anyone can make them.  No patents or patent attorneys required.  They give solid, dependable returns on time and money investment for years, and cost nothing in taxes.

Ram Dass and Mosquitoes

Notes from My Journal

Sunday, June 17, 2007 – I keep seeing a mosquito flying around but have yet to see her land. Most mysterious. If I were more evolved, I wouldn’t have mosquitoes, or I wouldn’t react to them, I suppose, so I’m not perfect yet, despite what others think I believe.

I remember Ram Dass – the 70s guru you don’t hear much about these days – writing about a mosquito landing on his nose and sucking his blood while he meditated. I was contemptuous at the time but respect him more for it now. I’ve never been able to sit still for such assaults and could never rise above my extreme emotional reaction to being a victim of the little blood suckers.

But that’s why Ram Dass is a guru, and I’m not.

It would be nice to sleep through mosquito attacks. Seth (of the series by Jane Roberts) says it’s wrong to kill, yet I inadvertently kill untold critters and creatures just by walking across grass, planting trees, driving, and going about my daily routine. Does the intent make a difference? I suspect so. I have murderous intent toward mosquitoes, assume they will attack me if I don’t get them first. Maybe there are vegetarian mosquitoes out there, but in 2/3 killings last night, the red blood on the curtains proved their guilt.

It is the mosquito’s nature to be vampiristic. Do I feel compelled to eliminate all of them? No. Just the ones who bleed me to fuel their genetic continuance. Egalitarian that I am, I feel similarly about the government, or any vibe sucker in my vibespace. I figure there are dimensions where mosquitoes and their food supply are happy in their co-dependency, but that dimension is not one I choose to inhabit.