By the book,
it was a White-fronted Goose.
The reasoning behind its name?
Well, that is a little abstruse.
But it made perfect sense
when by the sheerest of luck
a day or so later,
I profiled a Ring-necked Duck.
WTF?!
White-fronted Goose
White-fronted Geese
Ring-necked Duck
On a recent visit to the Consumnes River Preserve, I was able to capture some candid Crane moments……..Poetry in motion:
Scroll through slideshow with side arrows or hover over and press play at top.
Yes, it looks like we will be fighting the commercial rezone of the valley below me for a fifth year. 
As I was writing my speech for last night’s Council meeting, I spotted these eagles taking advantage of the windy day. I was hoping it was a good omen. Nope.
At the end of the day, the vote went as expected: 4 to 3 in favor of redoing the Environmental Impact Statement in order to get the needed approval from the Growth Management Board for the rezone. Several of us tried our best to get these four to justify their decision based on the environmental realities of the property or the best interests of the City, but they stuck with simply calling it a property rights issue.
The process will take another nine months to a year to complete. The City will need an extension on the Board’s time-line for compliance. I will petition the board to refuse to grant that extension, but I don’t anticipate having much luck there. Our side has a great deal more experience advocating for this property now, so I am reasonably confident we will prevail once again, but it is such a colossal waste of everybody’s time and taxpayer money.
The church offered to pay the cost of the new Environmental Impact statement so long as the engineering firm that did the last one—which was 95% BS—prepared the new one. We just discovered that this engineering firm has had a lien on the property for the entire cost of their work since the beginning. So they have their own reasons for wanting to continue since they seem to think the property has no value unless rezoned. Even so, the amount the church is willing to shoulder represents only about a third of the cost the city will incur going through the process again. My theory is that someone, most likely the Pastor’s son—a former council member, now political consultant—put the screws to his two political proteges who broke ranks and voted to stop the bleeding at the October 14 council meeting. These two council members and the two who remained true to the cause came to last night’s council meeting united in the suspicion that the large cost estimates they were given earlier were the result of a conspiracy between the new mayor and the planning department staff—a conspiracy intended to bring the issue to an end. The mayor responded that he had been taken aback by the numbers in the estimate himself, and had questioned the staff extensively on their reasoning for those numbers. One of the more perceptive council members pointed out that these four united council members had, earlier in the year, heaped praise on this same planning staff for ushering through the failed EIS, but now when their cost estimates do not support continuing with the rezone effort, the staff’s numbers are suspect. The reality is, as with most government estimates, they are probably low.
As usual, I took up my entire 5 minutes, down to the second. I mostly pointed out that the huge legal costs to the City were the result of their acceptance of the many obvious inaccuracies and deceptions in the first EIS and that it really didn’t seem prudent to give the same firm another go at it. No matter, at the end of the meeting, one of them announced he would move to rescind the October 14 decision at the December 2 council meeting. It looks like I am in for another year of this. The chances this property would or even could be developed commercially seem almost nil, but my experience in this saga tells me that trusting government officials to act in the best interest of the community, in accordance with law, or using common sense is a bad bet.
Cowzer!
It was a frosty morning and I had gotten up to check the sunrise for pictorial magnificence. Too clear, but as I watched the ground fog moving on the valley floor, I kept thinking, I should get a video of this. Unfortunately for you, it was too fascinating to watch for me to break away and get the camera. It really did look a bit like the ghostly figures of a band of horses rising up out of the fog hundreds of feet in the air and then disappearing—all within a few seconds. The underlying herd was in a stampede down the valley. When it eventually settled down, I did go out and take a couple of pictures of a much calmer scene.
I always thought the ads were the best part of the Super Bowl. In fact, I don’t think I have watched the actual game for at least 25 years. Maybe that explains how I missed the fact that Doritos has been running a contest for their Superbowl ads since 2006. Anyway, a Facebook friend clued me on the opportunity last week. The deadline for submission was last night. I had a lot of fun yesterday putting this together and I am looking forward to seeing Harry Lipz on the Jumbo-Tron. Just click the image below:
Harry Lipz Does Doritos
Yes, Jan, it was a dutch baby. I often make myself a dutch baby for breakfast. When I pull it out of the oven, I set it on the nearest heat-resistant-trivet-like surface—a burner coil on the stove. On this particular day, about an hour after breakfast—as I was talking on the phone and a little distracted—I decided to heat some water for coffee. Fortunately, I had moved about 15 feet away when from behind me came a gunshot-like bang and shards of glass were everywhere. Oops, wrong burner.
Your mission, friends, should you decide to accept it, is to figure out what the subject of this photograph is and how it came to be. I did add some art filters and distortion to make it less obvious. Here is the riddle that provides the answer:
For me it was just a typical morn
as the babe from the fiery furnace was born.
The crib was hot and ready for rest,
but where in the world could stand such a test?
Lacking for space, it lay down on a burner
and waited in ambush for me, the wrong turner.
The water was cold, though it wanted to boil,
when the beast with a bang sprang from its coil.
Lucky for me, I was just out of its reach,
but for your future well-being, I thee beseech,
if it is fire you need, and proceed with dispatch,
be more than certain you light the right match.
Chaplain, priest, pastor, abbot
Can they uplift your soul as can a rabbit?
It was not Easter, but October twenty
She liked my oregano, but I have plenty
This one is an occasional visitor to my yard, but this was the first opportunity to get some decent photos.
This star fell out of the sky a couple of days ago and landed on my patio. It isn’t often you get to see where a falling star lands. I should have seen it as a good omen, because Tuesday night’s City Council vote went our way—the commercial rezone of this beautiful stretch of the Skykomish River Valley is finally a dead issue. This time, I am reasonably confident that a future zombie sequel is unlikely. When presented with an estimate of $195,000 to prepare a third Environmental Impact Statement that would have any chance of surviving appeals, two Councilmen threw in the towel. The vote went 5 – 2 in our favor. Of the two stalwarts for continuing, one was the guy who pushed for rescinding the same decision three weeks ago—he stuck with his argument that it was worth it just to change the color of the map, because having 43 acres of red on the map would draw the attention of developers to Monroe even if nobody could or would actually build on that particular acreage; the other was a guy who has seen it as purely a property rights issue and at this point the City owes it to the property owner to see it through to the bitter end.
If not for a few votes in the last election, that second guy would have been our mayor. He was on the Planning Commission four years ago when this rezone proposal was finally docketed—after many years of failing to get past the Planning Commission (because it is insane!).
Ostensibly, the actual owner of this property is a baptist fellowship. They purchased it in 1999 and shortly thereafter began lobbying to get it rezoned. The pastor of that fellowship, and the only representative of that fellowship I have seen or heard from in the four years that I’ve been involved, did get up and speak this time. He basically said all our arguments were lies and fear-mongering to selfishly protect our view and our appeals are the reason for the enormous cost to the City. There is some truth to the cost issue, but it’s a little like observing that the father is in jail for beating his wife and it is the kid’s fault for calling the police. Certainly, had a shopping center gone in on this property, it would have left the City scarred and crippled for many years. The pastor also said that the reason no one other than him among the Baptist community had shown up to support the rezone—at least in the last four years—is because they are too busy building orphanages in the mountains of Honduras (no, really, that is what he said). I spoke with someone afterward who seemed to know some members of his congregation, and this person’s take was that none of them had ever showed up because they were sick of the whole affair. I do have to say that the pastor and his son, a former City Councilman (now, political consultant) worked very hard and skilfully over many years to engineer a political window of opportunity for the rezone. I think that window is now closed. Hallelujah!
