Politix Xtreme

Okay, it's time for me to say something. We both know that it's very seldom that I make any sort of political comment. In fact, I think this will be the first time I make one here.
-I saw An Inconvenient Truth in biology class. It struck me as rather astoundingly good and I figured that one of the main reasons people are doing so little about global warming is that they know so little about it and they think it might not even be happening or that it's a trivial little thing (1.7°C - it sounds so meaningless!), and then I figured that if people watch this movie they'll finally be educated, and that's the first step to solving the problem. That's what Al Gore was thinking when he made it.
-So I encouraged Mom and Dad to watch it. The results were less than spectacular, but enlightening in a couple different ways. To begin, Mom rented it as a one-night rental at about 2300. Dad refused to let us use the living room TV on the pretense that he was currently watching Romancing the Stone (which, not more than half an hour earlier, he had called a "throwaway movie"). I plugged the external DVD player in anyway and it started playing. He said: "Unplug the fucking thing and let me watch the movie. Now." Mom, Micah, and I watched it in Micah's room on a small television in a cramped space.
-Over the next few days after the viewing, Mom and Dad did all they could to refute all of Al's points. Dad was the most diligent at it. He pointed me to a slideshow (to see: click on "view slideshow"). In the interest of impartiality, I'll tell you a few things the slideshow got right:
-It admitted that global warming is happening.
-It pointed out a couple graphs that Al Gore cut off before 1947, making them misleading.
-It noted that the international science community says Al is overstating things a bit. (This does not mean that it is a trivial problem. It means that Al overstated it a bit to make it even bigger. It's possible to overstate even very large problems: for example, I could say, "Global warming will cause the earth to collapse in upon itself and become a black hole, and any spacecraft escaping from the planet will not be able to get far enough away and will be sucked in and destroyed.")
But, let me quote myself here. When I finished reading the slideshow, I told Dad: "There were two or three good points, and the rest was BS." He said, "Yes!" trimphantly. I had to inform him, "I was talking about the slideshow, not the movie." Here are some problems.
-Right off the bat, it suggests that global warming is actually a good thing! Think of how much better all our trees will grow with all the extra carbon dioxide in the air! This completely misses the point that there's more carbon dioxide because (partially) there are too few trees to use it! And it reminds me of the premise for the Colbert Report's "The Convenientest Truth", although I didn't watch that (I read what the premise was online).
-It misses the point: "There has been no increase in the rate of warming since the mid-1970s." But there is warming!
-It tries to make things that are bad sound less bad. It criticizes Al for describing a breaking ice shelf as being "the size of Rhode Island" because it sounds scary, and then says that's only 1/246 the size of the sheet it's part of. 1/246 is rather a lot, all things considered, and that is one heck of a big ice sheet that broke off.
-On page 40 (my favorite page) it forecasts doom and death for the whole world if the United States isn't allowed to burn fossil fuels like crazy, by implying that our carbon dioxide emissions are the only thing that enables us to be a force of good in the world. "Without our CO2 emissions, the world would be poorer, sicker, and less free."
-It ascribes scientists' viewpoints solely to their desire for money (on page 42).
-It's overall almost totally inconclusive, picking on little bits of the movie and failing to discount the main point.
I've taken the time out to criticize this to show how much some people - in this case, Dad - will seek out and believe in the name of politics. Let the record show that I believe as much as the next person that Al Gore is something of a joke. Look at his personal emissions, for instance; he uses I think 30 times more energy than the average American. But this does not mean that he's wrong about everything; just that he's hypocritical there. Dad thinks it does mean he's wrong about everything. Actually, he thinks Al Gore is wrong about everything because he's a Democrat. And that is the point of this story.
-Why do politics turn people against each other so viciously? Dad now won't hear a word said in defense of anything Al Gore says or does. Gore is a godless, nonscientific Democrat. Dad has a deep loathing of Democrats as people, as far as I can tell. He's not the only one. I was recently in his truck and got the treat of listening to talk radio spouted forth by Rush Limbaugh. Talk about a man who can't stand Democrats. Anything a Democrat says, for him, is instantly wrong; his callers who try to tell him something from an opposing viewpoint are "idiots" (though it doesn't help that many of them actually are, such as the woman who called in to protest clubbing baby seals and then admitted to wearing leather and couldn't, despite all efforts, be made to see the conflict of interests). What must it be like to be so deeply prejudiced, have such an all-consuming hatred, for something like half of America? How can he walk in public - is he afraid he'll breathe air that Democrats have breathed? Is it like being a member of the KKK? Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, George W. Bush, and an extensive list of others. It's incredible, to me. It's incredible how blind a person can be if there's an opposition of principles, even if the principles are irrelevant to the issue at hand. It's incredible how nitpicking differences in principles can drive two sane people to hate each other so completely. I will not join a political party. George Washington knew the dangers of parties, but nobody wanted to listen. I will, at least.

-Let's leave that melancholy subject and go on to a different one. I turned 18. And it was great.
-Mom and Dad and Micah and I and (I tried to stop it, but still) Micah's friend Tyler went up to Oxford. Grandma took us to Hueston Woods. I decided to hike barefoot. This is a new thing that I'm all enthusiastic about. I like to go around barefoot, even in places where most don't think it's really okay. It is okay. For one thing, there is no law that you have to have shoes on in any establishment. The Health Department doesn't care. As for broken glass, well, it's very little danger if you use your eyes (so that's what those are for!). Feet are also much more resilient than most people think. I didn't sustain any wounds during the whole hike. I was walking on all sorts of terrains: Straight dirt at first, but then I got in the creek. And it was really slick, but, with my keen sense of balance, I managed to stay approximately upright. I finished crossing the creek and I was on low-growing plants in mud. I continued along the creek and found Tyler and Micah behind a few trees. Tyler had lit up a cigarette. I just pulled it out of his mouth and chucked it in the creek. I know it's littering, and I wish I'd done it differently, but it was sort of necessary. Micah got defensive (the best defense is a good offense?) and said, "You know those things cost money?!" I said, "Yep." And without a word we continued walking. I stayed in the creek sometimes and on the bank sometimes. The creekbed is rocky. The rocks are all slick, but I found I could walk with nearly normal stability if I didn't try to stay on the higher ones close to the surface but rather walked indiscriminately on the bottom. I came to the bottom of the cliff, crossed the water, and climbed the cliff, which is made mostly of mud and gravel-type rocks. The cliff affords a disorienting and very pretty view. I met Grandma at the top and kept walking now with her instead of Micah and Tyler. The trail got muddy - that thick black mud that's mixed with leaves. I enjoyed every step of it. We finished the trail and walked back to the van.
-And we had dinner: pork roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli, bread, and salad. Afterwards I had my birthday cake (angel food with white icing). I'm now 18. Can you believe it? Yeah, so can I. But it's an innovative concept. I can now do things minors can't do: withdraw money from my own account (balance: $32), cash checks, stay out after 2300, sign stuff with an official signature, enter strip bars. Now, society regards me as a sovereign entity, though an irresponsible one. It makes you think.
-On Sunday I went to the Symphony for the first time (not that I couldn't before I was 18, but I never had), and they had the biggest chandelier I've ever seen. It was about fifteen feet across and must have weighed at least a ton. It was also suspended about 50 feet above the floor seats, and Mom and I tried to figure out how they change the light bulbs. I finally worked out that they must be able to lower it. The music was also fantastic like a majestic river running through the countryside (that would be Smetana's The Moldau), fantastic with the best piano playing I've ever personally seen from Piotr Anderszewski (Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3), and simply fantastic (Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique).
-And on Monday, I had a couple friends - Matt and Aaron (Keith was invited, but he got grounded) - over to LaRosa's, and we amused ourselves finding strange words in the word search, some of which took some doing and considerable rule-bending to get to. That wasn't all we did, of course: that would make us extraordinarily lame.
-Another item is colleges. My letters are coming in from the colleges I've applied to. I got one from Carleton last week. Something happened that I wasn't expecting: they won't let me in. Neither will Kenyon. I'm still waiting for Grinnell's answer. I expected to have to make a difficult choice between fine institutions. I didn't expect the choice to be made for me. But there it is, all at once. It happened pretty quickly. And it didn't strike me until later the full scope of it. Mom had to convince me that I should be upset before I realized I was. I had envisioned my coming years on a quiet, green campus with a small amount of dedicated students. Carleton. Pine forests, cool weather, Minnesota winters, freezing lakes, "Minnesota Nice". Kenyon. Old friendly buildings, rolling green quad, relaxing air, calmness from being well-established. I realized. Their doors are shut to me for at least another year. They won't let me in. Even if I ask nicely. It's a pretty depressing thought.
-But I'm resilient. I can't stay very sad for very long. Now I have left Miami and maybe Grinnell. Miami doesn't have the relaxed atmosphere and peaceful green campus of Kenyon; it won't have the great winters or two attendant lakes I could have looked forward to at Carleton. But it's not without merits. Its programs, of course, are one. It has a new writing school, just now made with a donation. I can major and take classes in all sorts of things. And Oxford is a nice town. My grandparents found it agreeable enough to live there or forty years so far. Grinnell is still a possibility, too, and it's a good school too. Depending on whether I get in and how much money they give me if I do, I might end up going there. It's certainly a great little place.
-That's all I'm going to write for now, except for this: I've made a couple new shirt designs, and I'm Commanding you to go look at them here. And feel free to check out my other two stores Maybe you'll actually buy one. They are exceedingly nice and well-designed shirts. You coud do a lot worse, if I do say so myself.

A week that was not a typical week and had abnormally bad and abnormally good parts both

This week the sophomores had OGT testing, which, entirely by the way, is stupid. None of the teachers are one hundred percent on board with it, and a few, I believe, are rather vehemently opposed to OGTs. These are the Ohio Graduation Tests, instituted after the No Child Left Behind Act. They make it so that teachers teach to a test. That sort of stuff should have been through with after the Proficiency Tests in, what grades were they, 4th, 6th, and 9th? So the compound has had to rearrange its whole curriculum. Now, no child is getting left behind: rather, we're all equally behind. Behind Japan and a host of other smart countries, that is to say. Entirely by the way. So anyhow, because of OGTs, and the way the schedule works, it happened that everyone had to be given a two-hour delay every day. However, we in the band had a contest on Friday, and we had to prepare. So we still had X-Period, which is a bell before the regular schedule starts, and we had it at the same time, 0720. Then, after it, band people had two unused hours until compound started at 1000.
-On Monday we had a bio lab during the two hours, because Dr White was afeared of us getting behind and saw an opportunity to keep us caught up by scheduling a lab in that time.
-On Tuesday I used the time to go home, and Dad took me to Angelo's.
-On Wednesday I went to Panera, which was tasty.
-On Thursday I was going to bike to Winton Woods, but as i was biking to school I couldn't help but realize that there was a driving rain and it was freezing cold and I became soaked for four or more hours. So I didn't bike to Winton Woods. Instead I slept in the Media Center (real schools have a library, but we have a Media Center).
-On Friday, Caitlin Pantano's mom made all the band seniors breakfast for before the contest as a mood improver, and it worked. Few things are better than a really good breakfast.

Those were just the mornings. In the afternoons I was booked with absurd amounts of work. On Thursday I had a Spanish take-home test and the band concert. On Friday we had the contest. We gave a total great performance. But we got a II. I'm not too impressed with OMEA (the organization in charge here). But on the plus side, we're finished with them now, and we're playing whatever the hell we feel like for the rest of the year. So we'll be playing Vesuvius by Frank Ticheli, which I strongly recommend plugging into an audio search such as AltaVista's. It must have been annoying to have to write "Vesuvius" back before there was a difference between U and V. Vesvvivs. "Where? Vest Viv's?" Whatever.
-Saturday was great, though. I got a new bike. It's a Fuji Crosstown 3.0. It has shocks! And fenders! It's straight luxury. It's my birthday present, by the way, although my birthday is this Saturday. I will be 18 years old and no longer a minor but rather a major. My possessions become legally my property! I can withdraw money from my own bank account! I won't have to obey a stoopid 2300 curfew law! How am I to celebrate this new freedom? Well, I'm going to my grandparents' house. I'll probably play some Scrabble. I should try to organize a krokay game this weekend with my friends and then we can go out to a restaurant afterwards! That will be rather more exciting than playing Scrabble with Grandma. No offense, Grandma. And, she's going to take me to Hueston Woods, which is infinitely superior to Winton Woods, where I went today. I was breaking in my new bike. Maybe I'll name it. Maybe not. In any case, it's the best bike I've ever ridden.
-And, no X-Period Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week. Right awesome!

A new CD

I've got a new Béla Bartók CD playing; I got it at Borders a little while ago. Let's see, what's happened?
-Lamont has commented. Way to go, Lamont. That is the right on. I will militarize against the compound. Here's something to think about.
-Ms Miller is very frequently missing from klass, often for days at a time. (Note: since at the compound many of our classes aren't real classes, I elect to spell the not real ones "klass".) I've given up hope of finding out where my teachers are when they're not in class; they never tell you. (Is this a Finneytown phenomenon?) On Thursday she was gone again. In her place was Mr Byers. All of our substitute teachers are at least slightly insane. Mr Byers is quite simply strange. Example: Last year in English class, Sam Battistone asked someone, "How'd your day go?" Mr Byers, from across the room, asked Sam, "Where did you learn Ilonggo?" He later explained that there was a phrase in the Ilonggo language that sounded like "How'd your day go?" that means "man with fierce countenance".
-Our klass plan for the day was to watch the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet, which we're studying. We put the tape in. Before the movie was an amount of footage of Mel talking to a class in some school about the play. After that was footage from a different class. We fast-forwarded and he was still talking to a class. Someone thought to look at the tape box. It said:
"Mel Gibson goes BACK TO SCHOOL"
And it described the video: a series of lessons given by Mel Gibson about Hamlet to middle- and high-school kids. After that, tell me: Is this a real school?!
-Okay, what else has happened?
-It's spring now, pretty much. The first day of spring was yesterday. And doggone if it didn't feel pretty nice. I still love winter. But I'm coming to realize that it's because I like contrast, and in Cincinnati and other lousy-winter places there's no contrast: it's just warm all year, getting cooler in winter. I want a marked difference when I get into the later months of the year. I want three-foot snowfalls and lakes you can drive a truck over. I want subzero temperatures and roaring fireplaces. I want real winters. None of this watered-down crap. But that's not all I want. I want the rest of the seasons too, in their correct time. And now, I suppose I must admit, it's the right time for spring. Micah and I walked to Warder, barefoot.
-Not something that most sane people would consider. Walking outside barefoot doesn't seem to be in the realm of reasonable things on most people's lists. But Micah and I had no problem with it. I was quite giddy. Who cares about sticks and stuff? Not us! We walked back through the more obscure paths, ones that haven't been traveled for a while, and had fun. I returned to a tree I've found, one that's split and fallen over, but is still partially connected at the break, so it makes a long beam in the air. I did exercises on it, such as a variation on sit-ups wherein the practitioner hangs upside-down off the branch and curls upward to it. Micah gathered wood to build a fire, which we're going to light off tomorrow after dark. We need to get some marshmallows. Brian showed up, by chance, and I ran off home, because I can't stand him. Quite literally, I ran, through an area of bamboo and a lot of rugged grounds, but my feet are just fine, because human feet are a lot sturdier than most people give them credit for. They were thoroughly mudded through when I got home, which was cool.
-Oh, and I'm going to write a book. I haven't got all the details worked out yet, but I'm going to work on them in my mind and start writing at some point in the not-very-distant future.

And wrap-up

Three new posts today; this is the third.

***

I apparently avoided having to pack stuff up - I just woke up at 0600, put in a few things that hadn't made it into the Limos, and climbed in. A few last pictures. Of course I wish I were still there. I get used to it, somewhat.
-We had taken the drive through the dense Canadian forest and then the brisk ride across Big Whiteshell and packed our stuff onto the van by 0646. Then it was smooth, boring sailing. We stopped for dry ice in Canada while I was half-asleep, and I woke up somewhere before Fort Frances. And there was a line to get through the border. First we did some stuff at a cluster of buildings on the Canadian side, - Grandpa got his GST tax back or whatever that is - and then we joined up the queue. It was set to have ten minutes of absolute standstill followed by a minute of brisk movement and then a repeat. We joined the line at 1130 and finally got to the interrogation booth at 1230. The line was at least a mile long. (I had Aunt Ellen listen to Long Line of Cars [by Cake].) At the booth a sour-faced man gave us a stern warning that we weren't supposed to carry all the fish back from the trip, just the share from the people in our car, and if a conservation officer caught us the fine would be $200 per fish. (We were only four over limit, so it's not like we'd be fined for all 39 fish.) We learned that the line was due to a composite of things: construction, and an orange terror alert due to a foisted plot in England. We had lunch after a fashion at Sandy's Place in International Falls - my burger was okay, but the older folks said the soup they got was WAY too salty - and moved on again.
-Next stop of note: Eau Claire, our motel for the night. We found our rooms in the Antlers Inn (all 15 of us), and then walked to a great restaurant called Draganetti's. Six of us ate outdoors, three indoors (the older ones), and Dave's family had pizza at the motel. I couldn't eat it all, but it was superb.
-So now we're back at the motel. Dad and I watched a crappy community band on community TV, and then we all watched Comedy Central for a while. I borrowed Dad's pen from his shirt and wrote my journal. That's all.

***

Here's something that for some reason never made it to the journal.
One day - maybe day 4 or 5 - Dan instituted a scheme he'd heard about for keeping bees away. What you do is fill a bottle with Kool-Aid, and then they all flock to that instead of to your drinks. So he made some and put it in a little 16-ounce water bottle, and put that on top of the disused concrete barbecue in front of Cabin 6.
-The next day someone glanced over at it and noticed something decidedly strange. There was a dead mouse in the bottle. Here's what apparently happened: It smelled or saw the Kool-Aid. Then it climbed three vertical feet up some concrete blocks. Then it somehow got in through the mouth of the bottle - and remember, this bottle's mouth is the same size as a typical pop bottle's - without toppling the precariously placed bottle at any point during the process. Once inside, it realized its folly, but was unable to tip the bottle over, even though it was probably at least a third of its weight. So it drowned, and we found it the next day. I'll probably use that at some point when I eventually write books. Want something so bad, and your downfall is when you finally get it. Are animals eligible for the Darwin Awards?

***

And, since you've all been clamoring for it, here's that picture of me that I mentioned the other day, dutifully scanned into my computer. It's not the ideal picture (for example, much of my face is cut out and you can't see all the tons of snow that were in my hair), but I was taking it myself with my camera at arm's length, so I didn't have any way to aim it just right.

Day 7

I got up not in time to go out fishing with anyone, so I had fun with Sierra some more, and Erin and folks too. Eventually I stumbled out and found Mom and Dad on the porch, which was a bit puzzling because what I didn't mention is that I fished off the dock for about an hour and they didn't come in. But then I realized they must've been in the bedroom the whole time. Dad asked if I still wanted to go to the falls, and I said if he was feeling up to it. See, the way to the Falls is really shallow, and this year since it's been so dry the water is down about two feet from last year, maybe one or more from usual, so Dan was giving us stories about how they had to have a spotter on the bow, and even then the engine sometimes hit rocks. Well, Dad was feeling up to it, so we went. It was windy and sort of choppy, and a long ride. And then the narrow channel was very shallow. But the engine never hit any rocks, only maybe sand once or twice. We got to the far-end-of-the-lake dock without incident.
-We had heard it was really the Crowduck Trickle this year, and that was to some extent true. It was still obviously several magnitudes more majestic than anything back home, but there wasn't a whole lot slipping down, and I could easily jump over it, at most places. I like Crowduck Falls, because the water doesn't fall, but rather slides down a steep slope and dashes itself senseless against rocks. Dad and I were able to walk to the bottom and look up to the top. Then I noticed things swimming around at the bottom, lots of them. At first I thought they might be fry, but they proved to be tailfins of a whole bunch of idiot walleye that had fallen over the Falls. Only walleye, too. They were trapped in a trough lined with big rocks on all sides. [There were also two that had ended up on top of rocks and died. It was really eerie, because they had been dead there for so long that they had dried up into desiccated eyeless husks of fish.]
-Well, Dad picked one up [with his hat], and tossed it downstream. He did that for three of them, and then we got the net. There were probably about 25 in that little 5-square-foot trough. It was hard to find them because the Falls constantly renewed our supply of foam atop the water. But eventually we got most of them, and I created an outlet so any newcomers could get out. The [two that were left after I did that] were pretty stupid, and we ended up netting one of them out. But one found its way!
-We brought the boat to North Bay for two pike, one for each of us, and then back to camp and cleaned it out. There was horseshoes: Maria and I finally put an end to Dan and Tracy's 7-0 record! And then dinner. There was too much food, especially baked beans. If everyone had eaten four helpings of beans, we'd probably still have plenty left over. I had a good blueberry muffin courtesy of Tracy.
-After dinner I played bedtime with Sierra: I go to sleep with an imaginary tooth under my pillow and wake up with money, and then I buy something from Sierra. I started the imaginary money at a quarter and I was up to $16 when I decided to let Sierra decide the amounts. (They were $100 and $80.) I bought a new car with $4.
-Then there was poker. Grandpa was in for only one pot, all-in blind. Three people called and Erin won with an Ace-high. Grandpa had 6-2 off-suit. Dave left after one more hand, with no money. So Dan, Micah, Maria, Erin, and I battled it out. Micah bought out soon. I was getting hands! I took Dan for a huge pot where I flopped an eight to triple my pocket eights and then two sixes came up and Dan thought I hit them and thought I had trip sixes with a bad kicker (he had 6-A). That was the high point, though it was early. My streak didn't last long at all, though, because everyone left.
-Also tonight we had the Pretzel Inquisition. After he got out, Micah came in with some pretzels and Dan asked where he got them, and Micah said from (Tracy's famous) Chex Mix. Dan got all mad and asked why Micah had to be told so many times not to just pick stuff out of the Chex Mix, and ended up asking the witnesses if Micah had picked out pretzels, or, as he claimed, taken an indiscriminate handful and eaten the pretzels last. Grandpa said next year he was going to eat whatever he wanted out of the Chex Mix and Dan and Tracy said fine, they wouldn't bring any. I later found out that after a while Tracy went to her bedroom and then came out in a snit and dumped all the Chex Mix in the trash. So now Dan is the Chex Mix Nazi, thanks to Mom, who came up with that.
-We all cooled down and went to bed. Departure at 0600 tomorrow.

Day 6

It rained last night while I was asleep. I got to sleep rather quick - I was tired. I got up at 1000 or so, but I figured it was a lot later than that from the way everyonr had already gotten up and left to East Gull. Since there was nobody in our cabin, I checked out Dave's. Thus, Sierra and erin and I drew stupid stuff for a while; I listened to stuff from Gregor with Erin's headphones; for breakfast/lunch I had bread. Later I took Sierra and Jazmin down to the beach. Micah was there on a large donut-shaped item, with which the four of us had endless fun. The addition of lifejackets for the girls also made things fun. Jazmin caught three tiny toads (actual length about 15 millimeters) and we played with those: tossing toads is fun. I went underwater at least 12½ feet one time, according to my [pressure-sensing] watch.
-After that, Grandpa took me away to a place Dave had described to him not-very-thoroughly. We ended up, Grandpa says, in North Bay, in a terrific weedbed. Grandpa pulled out a pike and a walleye, but I got at least four bass, and we kept two. Dan and Tracy got back from Ritchie with two pike, but they [had] caught about 15 and only kept the damaged ones. It was a good fishing day.
-Dinner was Dad's cabbage rolls, and, though the rice wasn't crunchy this year, I had the interesting suspicion that he deliberately steamed all the flavor away. I still ate three.
-And then there was poker. I started winning, really! I think I sold back a few bucks, and then everyone got out, except three or four of us. I'd had a few good hands and a few where I totatlly bought the pot. With this small game I didn't really go either way. And then Grandpa came back and, for a change of pace, distributed $4.00 apiece to each of the poorest players, of which group I was a member. He also kept raking in huge pots out of sheer luck, going all-in blind, taking all the chips, and then - redistributing them. I think he distributed four times, for various amounts. If he hadn't, he'd probably be up $40 or something absurd like that. He paid his college tuition with poker money back in the day.
-I took a gander at the moon - stunning - and a shower, so now it's off to bed. I like the porch, too. Tonight it's really windy; the breeze is terrific.

Day 5

A few brief notes from the present first:
1. This is the third of three sequential new posts.
2. I've made a couple new T-shirts, which you can see at www.cafepress.com/permanentmark3, and maybe you'll buy something from one of my three stores.
Now, on with Crowduck.

***

I got up around 1100 today. I persuaded Micah to come with me to the Square Cove. And man, let me tell you, he did nothing but complain. At first he fished too and just complained that there are never any fish there (a valid complaint, actually), but then his rod crapped out and he decided he only uses his very own (sucky) rod, and none of the other perfectly good ones in the boat would suffice. So I just trolled and drifted or a while, alternately, listening to him complain that he never catches any fish, he wanted to go back to camp, he didn't like the Square Cove, he was bored, [and] his rod was crappy; and it was quite grating. He quoted Dad as saying to go back in if we spotted whitecaps, and Micah found some out in the open water, and after a lengthy wait just to get back at him for complaining, I turned back, but made sure to troll all the way, or a long way at least, back. Dad later noted that he said to move closer if there were whitecaps.
-So, having gotten fed up with Micah, I teamed up with Dad, Mom, and Erin to go out to Gull Rock. It took a while for us to get going, but we eventually did, and it was really windy and choppy. I got soaked by the spray. When we finally reached the rock, the water was so down from last year that our former docking spot was two feet away on dry land. Dad rigged it somehow - it involved him getting waist-deep in the water - and we all started fishing.
-It was a great day at Gull Rock. I sat next to Erin and discussed Homestar and Cake, and everyone pulled in fish. All except me. I got one good-sized bass, and much later on, one tiny one that we didn't keep. Meanwhile Dad and Mom and Erin were pulling out bass (and walleye) one after another, and Erin pulled out this walleye that turned out to be an absolutely enormous bass. The official measurement was 19½ inches, and 18 inches qualifies for a Master Angler certification, so now Erin is a Master Angler. I guess I'm just bad at fishing.
-There was dinner, after Nick (now 79) told his famous Mrs Pitt's Pot joke, and before we even finished eating, I instituted a game of poker for imaginary bets. Some sample bets: three million dollars, six million dollars, eight billion dollars, Greenland, Neptune, Michael Jackson, a dozen empty beer cans plus a pine cone, and a dentist's office. Once, Erin bet Sweden, and I called and raised six grains of sand, but she called my bluff!
-[Then we got real] poker started up. I must really suck at poker, because I lost quite consistently. I lost I think three or six bucks, and then later (I think it was three) $1.50 more. It was down to Dan and Micah head-to-head or a while and Micah was surprisingly kicking Dan to the curb, but then I bought in and Tracy bought in (that was the $1.50 that I lost). (As you can tell, I'm not planning very far ahead with my writing here.) There was hot chocolate courtesy of Grandma. Crowduck is great, isn't it?
-The sky was dark with no moon, but that's because it was covered with clouds. Dan and Tracy and Co. say there's a storm blowing in - they saw it lighting up the sky off in the distance - so I'm going to go look at that.

Day 4

I woke up at 1030 or thereabouts and Dad and I and Micah too got headed to Ritchie at 1100. So, first Dad headed into the complete wrong bay. I told him, "Where are you going?" but he kept on. Then he had to agree that there was no portage, so he asked Dan, who was nearby on Gull Rock, where to go. From there he eventually found it.
-So we took the portage, [we got the canoe,] and we deposited Micah on a rock on one bank, and we paddled. The thing is, the fish weren't biting, at all. There wasn't even a hint. Dad took us about halfway across the Ritchie, which is a respectably-sized lake, and finally we found a kind of nice weed bed. It gave us a hit at least. While we fished we heard across the lake a few canoeists. They got near us just as Dad caught a very nice pike. I asked how it was going and they said good; they asked how fishing was and I reported that after an hour and a half this was our first fish. There were six people in three canoes; they were doing the Mantario Trail ([Whiteshell-]Crowduck-Ritchie-One Lake-Two Lake-Three Lake-Mantario). So they went to the other end of Ritchie and portaged off. Dad stuck around to catch one more fish, and then we had an exhaustive row back to Micah's rock and then (after just a little more fishing) the shore. We portaged back and ended up back at camp at 1600.
-There was a brief break, and then we took Maria to East Gull. Maria is psyched about fishing. but, Dad caught the only fish there too, two bass. I caught a decent walleye, but that doesn't really count.
-There was dinner (onion rings involved today!), and then I did the dishes, ending my successful run of shirking. Oh! There was horseshoes before dinner. Dan and Tracy are 7 and 0, and I had a bee sting my lip when I tried to drink a pop with the bee on it. Anyways, then we did poker. And I was working it! I won some great stuff, but I can't remember any of it now. I do remember that the play turned sour. There was a run where every single time I dealt, Dan won. Dan was the big winner, which makes him the object of all hate. After I got out and he played a little more he cashed in up $14-something. I won't soon forget the hand where I had the nut flush and he had a full house.
-We headed out to see the stars, but we're in a bad moon cycle where it's up higher and fuller each night, and we didn't see anything. We didn't even go out to the Point.
-It's been a day less than totally awesome - no fish to keep, bee sting, sunburn, poker loss - but they say, the best day fishing is better than the best day at (school), and I wouldn't trade today for any day in Finneytown.

Day 3

I didn't get up until about 1000 today, and then Dad and I went out to that one spot before Darkwater that we keep fishing. We found a real hot spot, too, about twenty yards from shore. We pulled five fish out of it over a two- or three-hour period, I three pike and Dad a pike and a bass. A little later we strayed a bit and Dad found one pike, for a total of six. Toward the end, as per a forecast the dockhands had told us, it started getting really windy, and choppy, setting the scene for the rest of the day. When we pulled back in, the dockhands told us and Grandma and Grandpa (just a little behind us) that they got a call to the effect that the backcountry trail ban is lifted. Ha! Dad got the key to Ritchie right away, but later Dan and Tracy convinced him that with the wind we've got Ritchie is a really bad idea. You'd blow right over to the other side and bust your tail getting back. We also didn't fish Gull today because of the wind.
-Micah and Mom and Dad and I went out a bit later to the same place, in two boats (Micah in mine), but we only pulled in two fish in an hour. Micah got one of them, but it was a walleye.
-The squirrels are a great source of amusement around here. Sierra and Jazmin and some of the adults were doing what they could to vex this one poor little squirrel who was very energetic and always proclaiming his dominion from his treetop in front of Cabin 4. (BREAK) Micah got caught up in the action too, and jumped and went "RAAH!" He landed on the squirrel. There was a a shock, and then it started twitching, and Micah went "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," and Dad told him to take it away to another place. After he did it got a lot quieter in front of the cabin. The squirrel died. I don't know what will become of his tree.
-Later there was a horseshoe game, or rather several, all of which Dan and Tracy won. Then I fished off the dock and watched Jim and Mike, the two dockhands, clear out boats from day trippers. Then there was dinner. Dinner was the same as last night, so, terrific. Micah had been jonesing to play I Doubt It (BS), so we played that for him right after dinner, and while we were playing, Grandma and Tracy came in with his birthday cake and we all sang to him. I had three slices of his cake, which Tracy made (thank you). We played Pig (Spoons), and then got into poker.
-I lost my lead. I think I only took in one good hand all night. No, two. Meanwhile, Grandpa absolutely cleaned up. I think he made $20 on the night. We played some In-Between briefly, but I didn't get in because it's too risky. It ended up Dave put in about $10 and everyone else lost a bunch, and Maria took it all on an A-2. There were so many posts. I was about ready to buy in again, but everyone left. So I got out my journal. Now, I bet you're wondering what that BREAK was back there. That was where some people came and said there were Northern Lights. I went out there. I had already gone, I forgot to mention, with Dan and Ellen, but there was nothing and Aunt Ellen ended up just telling us about whooping cranes. But this time I got to watch an absolutely tremendous display of lights. Now, I am not going to attempt to extemporaneously describe the Northern Lights, but I'll say that at one point they did quite literally take my breath away. They were mostly green, but they were edged with red sometimes. They were mostly concentrated in one sector of the sky, and we watched them from the Point. I saw some that snaked around up closer to me, and one that split like curtains at a theater, and plenty others. You need to see them.
-I understand Dad is taking me to Ritchie early tomorrow, so I need to get to bed. Sheez, it's 0207.