The Rogue Valley was still here, and thankfully cooler, when we got back from our Alaska trip. I was looking forward to the cooler weather. Not that it had been that hot: only a few days of triple digits all summer. My main interest was the fall harvest. Early September is great for visiting the Farmer's Markets and the farms. The sweet corn, strawberries, etc. are to die for.

Although, having just been in Alaska and seeing their bounty of seafood coming in as well, you'd think a simple exchange of the surplus on both ends would be doable. After all, my great-grandfather accomplished it in the 1800s between Norway and Spain. The surplus of smoked black cod is something I'm definitely interested in.

If folk here in the Rogue Valley knew what they were missing regarding the smoked black cod, I could accomplish the trade. Then fund the missing couple grand to get my patented labor saving wheelchair made, and live happily ever after. Well, when you're behind the eight ball, seems like everything is a fairy tale. But on the other hand, hope is one of the 'Big Three' we live by, as in "faith, hope and love."

At least that's how we should live. It's hard to see much of it in a Mid-term Election season. Jet-setters have nothing on candidates: the bull flies regularly. Not that I keep up on Oregon politics much, just as it concerns fish, and that hasn't been good.

In a nutshell, the legislators representing the Columbia salmon stranglers, I mean gillnetters, team up with the Eastern Oregon legislators representing free range cattle folk. The gillnetters have the backing to keep snagging everything that moves in 'the River' and the ranchers can turn their cows loose on all of creation. The collateral damage is collosal: the elk habitat, the endangered salmon and steelhead, and welfare of all the folk who could use these other resources.

I won't give any current politicians much credit for recent dam removal to help the fish stocks. Those efforts have taken twenty years. It still isn't clear to me why the ODFW would be happy with LESS king salmon in the Rogue River, but nevertheless, they do. I've heard it from them with my own ears. Wow! But then why is the FDA given a mandate to help out the genetically modified industry when 95% of the public is ag'in it?

Well, you can't catch any fish around here cuz the bureaucrats don't want the bother, as long as they can keep skimming the public for their paychecks and pensions and health care. And now the farmed salmon in the store might not be full-blooded salmon at all. To be technical, farmed Atlantic salmon aren't salmon in the first place. Only the Pacific salmons are real salmons. The Atlantics, which they are fixing to gene splice with ocean pout or arctic char, are really steelhead trout. They would have had grey flesh if they didn't feed them shrimp meal to dye the meat. And they are skipping the shrimp meal and just going for a red dye.

Anyway, there isn't any plan to require a label warning the public that their salmon is only part salmon. What if the ocean pout has some appendage that starts to grow on people eating the new 'fish.' And the FDA is terming the new fish a 'drug.' Don't that beat all. We are being used as a real-life, mass laboratory experiment. Good luck to whoever is eating the stuff.

Me, I'm trying to figure out a way to get good Alaska seafood down here to eat. And I don't mean from the usual suspects, the processors who pay the fishermen too little, and charge the stores too much. You know, an Alaska hook and line fisherman only gets about thirty cents a pound for a beautiful big Pacific cod. I think they paid thirty eight cents a pound for Pink salmon this summer in Alaska, and they were a record large size. They would have been beautiful if taken care of properly. But the obsolescence of seafood processing and marketing is another subject altogether.

I don't know why I get so hung up on fish. Is it because I have Viking blood in my veins? Well, only three quarters at most. Are my other projects, like the breakthrough in home caregiving, the transfer wheelchair, being forsaken for a Don Quixote kind of cause? As far as the wheelchair goes though, I just found a master tool and die maker who is supremely capable of making my production model. One that can be quickly duplicated and done en-mass. Exciting times.

So, I'll forget about the political pandering thunderclouds and forge ahead with what I wanted to do to begin with. I'd suggest the same for you too. The bad news all around us is almost paralyzing. Don't fall into the trap.

I saw a good quote in a National Geographic 'Traveler' magazine. It went like this: "Now it isn't about finding a plot of land, but about finding our own village." I've recently made some long overdue calls to some guys I went to college with . They sounded just the same and weren't really all that surprised at my call. That's where we live the best: in our connectedness to others. I'm growing my village in an honest a way as I can. That might sound like I'm becoming a recluse. No, just slowing down to take a breath for a minute.

The Rogue Valley is a good location to have a house. Lots of things I want to do with the kids. If I can call my oldest a kid. But me and Jesse and little Connor try to get out in the hills as often as we can. Jesse sent in his application for volunteer work with the Jackson County Sheriffs Office based on his two hitches in Iraq in recon. They couldn't get any better. I told him he should show them how to start and run a UAV program, and only for the price of a patrol car.

The funny thing is, I had a flash of inspiration that Jesse would make a dynamite Jackson County Sheriff someday. I'll never forget the first sign of where his heart is at: he was only about six years old and he passed a downcast looking lady in a parking lot and simply said, "Cheer up lady." I see no-nonsense mixed with a servant's heart in everything he does(except in turning off every light when he's done with it). Keep it up, Jesse.