Skyline Happenings

By Mel Walsh (thanks Mary Jane F. for finding this)

Barnacles….marine undesirables, clinging sea-shelled critters. They grab onto and weigh down everything from sea turtles to boats that have to be put into dry dock to scrape off the cluster of heavy shells.  And then there are the barnacled whales. If you don’t already feel sorry for whales, Google whales and barnacles.

Well, imagine humans, but imagine them being weighed down by invisible barnacles….burdensome emotions and regrets. I have this theory that we are born without barnacles, no ponderous experiences and thoughts have yet attached themselves. But as life commences, we get these imaginary weights…the bad things that happen in every life that pull down our spirits, prospects and hope.

Could be bad parents, addictions, mental illness, job disappointments, poverty, bills, divorce and the deaths of friend and family. (We are all orphans by this time of life.) You have your own list of barnacle events, happenings that squeeze the life right out of your spirit and weigh down hope. Maybe take time here to inventory your own barnacles. Everybody’s got them. Writing your truths in a journal is a good way to take stock.

You may think I am off the chart here, but I see this Covid lockdown as a chance to go into dry dock and get your spiritual barnacles scraped off, emerging lighter and more buoyant at the end of these solitary months.

Yeah, easy to say. How do you scrape off a spiritual barnacle in the middle of a pandemic?  Well, gratitude can melt some barnacles. Gratitude is often talked about, occasionally used,  but needs to be practiced on an expert daily level if it is to have an effect on  outlook.

But why should we geezers be grateful? We have lived most of our lives, are falling apart and can no longer even go out to eat pizza. You’ve got your own list, but at the top of mine is the absolute miracle that in this unimaginably huge universe, in a constellation of stars called the Milky Way, near a so-so star called the Sun, on a blue planet that actually  has water and life, a wiggle of a sperm hit an egg decades ago and that became me. What are the odds of that?

What are the odds of you? So the fact of existence against all odds is certainly something to mull over today. Makes our own little emotional barnacles seem insignificant. Looking at the ocean has the same effect. Best of all, at night, in the ocean, floating on your back, looking at the universe…real remover of any barnacles. Plan a future trip to Hawaii to get this done.

There are other and perhaps easier ways to scrape off the weights of life: Take music. Why do you not have your favorite music on right now? Why don’t I? It’s already in front of me on my computer. It’s on my cable TV, my radio. Get to it girl. Oddly enough, a mix of country music, Beethoven, John Denver and Bach do it for me as does any Dixieland jazz, especially if that jazz has a sax somewhere. Is there anything a saxophone does not make better? Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz can melt barnacles.

And then there are pets. Those eyes that see through you. Well, maybe they just see the possible liver treats coming from you, but, unless they bite, growl or throw up on the couch, they are front line barnacle removers.

As are flowers. If I could not retreat from the hard things in life into my lavender and roses, I would sink beneath the waves…and you know the current waves. They are  named Covid, Politics, Climate, Economy and Loneliness.  Who knew a rambling rose could be a protector against these things?

And, of course, there are friends and family, the other inhabitants of the blue planet. Meetings in the open air, Zooms, phone calls…(those still exist)…emails, texts…everything except carrier pigeons to keep in touch and remember you are part of a big tribe. Also, if you know someone, a so-called friend, a complainer, who has repeatedly weighed down your spirits, a lockdown is a great time to distance. You just can’t meet to go to the movie. Or anywhere.

All the above can lighten the load, but protecting yourself against incoming barnacles is smart too. Maybe we will emerge lighter from lockdown if we avoid the big weights of the media….the constant chatter, the alarming headlines, the lies, the anger,  the always breaking news. The clue is to not let that news break you. Cut down the media input and the barnacles don’t have such a chance to attach.

So that’s my theory….The Barnacle Theory of Life. Does any of it make sense to you? Your comments are welcome.  Thanks for reading.

 By Danny Westneat  Seattle Times columnist

Remember how people would joke about moving to Canada when things would go terribly, politically?

Like, say, after America had invaded the wrong country. People here, especially liberal Seattle people, would vow: “That’s it, I’m moving to Canada.”

Well it turns out we need a new joke. Because Canada isn’t having it anymore. They don’t want us there — at all, no laughing matter.

“We regard the United States right now as the biggest petri dish in the world,” reports George Creek, from Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Creek has been leading a group of volunteer watchdogs to monitor marine traffic, looking for Washington state boaters who have sneaked across the border into Canadian waters. They then report them to Canadian officials to try to keep them from docking and coming ashore. No hard feelings, he told me cheerily by phone this past week. But every American is seen as a loaded vector of disease.

“You need to get the pandemic under control. You need a rational person to take the helm of your country. Until then, all we’re saying to Americans is: Stay away. When you come against our wishes, pardon the expression, it pisses us off.”

Ouch. You know you’re becoming a pariah country when the Canadians go all “pardon the expression” on you.

Earlier this month, three local members of Congress — Democrat Derek Kilmer of Gig Harbor and Republicans Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane and Dan Newhouse of Sunnyside — joined some of their colleagues in sending a seemingly benign letter to the Canadian government. It suggested we talk about reopening our shared 5,500-mile-long border, which remains closed to most travel due to COVID-19.

The letter was fluffed with flowery, binational niceties — such as a call to “restore the social bond that unites our two nations.” But hoo boy, not since the 1859 “pig incident,” when we nearly went to war in the San Juan Islands over one slaughtered hog, have our friends to the north gotten quite so prickly.

“Hard pass on opening the border — we’re a healthy nation with big plans, and you’re a failed society,” one Canadian replied to the congressional letter on Twitter.

“That border stays CLOSED,” wrote another. “Canadians may be polite but we aren’t CRAZY!”

And another: “There’s no reason to believe Americans will care about the health of Canadians, given that relatively few seem to care about the health of other Americans.”

Ouch again. On it went like this, with more than 6,000 tweeted responses to the members of Congress, in what was the social media equivalent of being battered by the wings of a flock of angry Canada geese.

Also this month, in response to news that U.S. boaters were flouting the border closure, the B.C. premier, John Horgan, joined in the stay away chorus.

“Our government fought hard to get the border closed, and it needs to remain closed until the US gets a handle on this pandemic,” he tweeted on July 15. “This is not the time for Americans to be here on vacation & anyone abusing the rules should be penalized accordingly.”

Delivered weekday mornings, this email provides a quick overview of top stories and need-to-know news, including the latest on the novel coronavirus.Sign up

A recent poll of Canadians showed 89% want to keep the border with the U.S. closed through 2020, with the pollster saying they regard America’s mishandling of the virus as “a cautionary tale.”

Remember that election we had, in 2016, when the winner talked about closing our borders to the world? The world ended up closing its borders to us.

It isn’t just the virus. On Wednesday, a Canadian court ruled that a 16-year-old agreement with the U.S. governing refugees and asylum is invalid because the U.S. no longer qualifies as a “safe” place for refugees. The way we treat them is a human rights violation, the court said.

Creek, the Vancouver Island boat monitor, also said the violence in American cities has long been confounding to Canadians. But seeing the willful denial in America about the coronavirus, a known contagion, has Canadians wondering if their neighbors have lost any capacity to reason.

Canada, he said, is averaging fewer than 500 new COVID-19 cases and five deaths per day, in the entire country — yet is scrambling to tamp that down with contact tracing, calling it a “surge.”

“You had 71,000 new cases and more than a thousand deaths today,” he said. “American tourists are normally the most welcome, but we look at all this and we just shake our heads.”