RUBBISH...RUBBISH EVERYWHERE

True, I'm paraphrasing Coleridge. I must say I loooove that overwhelming sense of greatness and defeat in his words "Water, water everywhere..." while dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean. 

I'm also overwhelmed by a sense of greatness and defeat, not by the vastness of the ocean but by the rubbish. Rubbish in Barrydale is ubiquitous and unbeatable, a cosmic force against which it seems useless to rebel, like gravity. And although I'm certainly not on the verge of dying because of it, the rubbish - everywhere - always triggers in me a sense of depression. 

Admittedly depression is quite a personal feeling and in order to be depressed by rubbish one has to be a particular kind of person - the wrong one. The other one litters and lives happily ever after.

Obeying to an inner masochistic streak, I took my camera and went for some pictures hunting - some things MUST be immortalized. 

The first item in this collection of images is actually a pearl: Barrydale's welcome sign to visitors. It talks loads about municipal standards and criteria. And plenty more about pride, care, dignity, as well as attracting tourism and promoting local business. 

It looks like a joke. I suggest either we remove the sign or we remove the rubbish. As nobody seems to understand that rubbish doesn't necessarily belongs to the landscape, I guess removing the sign would be a better and more permanent solution.

 

Pictures 1 and 2 describe the situation at the school's sports ground. Here the pictures seem to emphasize education, cultural models and local legacy to future generations. Useless wasting more words.

 

Finally a surprise for those who seem "to know" where littering comes from. Pictures 3 and 4 show a massive illegal dumping of rubbles at the side of the road (the so called Escape road). Ie. a smart ass' clandestine operation gone wrong: there have been witnesses - Barrydale is too small for smart asses. 

In 15 days time charges will be laid.

Why in 15 days time?

Well, perhaps in the meantime the offender will reconsider and clean up the mess.

What can I say? Ducks are real "softies". 

Die Manne on The Track of Extintion

I just received from John Sachs some alarming news. 

As it requires urgent attention (and the due amount of consideration), I'm going to publish it straight away: 

Dear agony auntie Bertha from Barrydale.

The fear of God – F.O.G.

Barrydale is blessed with some mighty woman who have put the fear of the almighty into our group. They have ever so politely informed me that ‘Males’ or as we say in Barrydale ‘Die Manne’ have reached their ‘best before’ date and it’s only a matter of time before the whole species reaches its ‘sell by’ date. This is to occur in 2012 with the dawning of the age of ‘Aquarius’. On this date ‘die manne’ will become subservient to the woman. According to our very respected and beloved Nola, this shift has already taken place in our primate forefathers - the baboons. She has noticed that the Alpha males no longer dominate troops; Alpha females have replaced them. I will ask her to please gather all possible information on the new leaders ruling habits so that ‘Die manne’ can prepare for the future. My first question to you my dear auntie is:

will the dominance of females be the same as it was by the men? (This worries me very much because we men have some rather large skeletons in out closets)

Can we observe and use baboon behaviour in females as a yardstick as to the kind of behaviour we can expect from ‘die vroumense’ in the future? I have personally witnessed such behavioural patterns.

A while ago some marine scientists informed me that the males of the innocent sea horse carry the offspring. They get pregnant and carry the babies. I spoke to the manne about this and it has caused great concern in the village. We have heard from very reliable sources that some women have got together and have dried some sea horses, smoked them with Mpephu (a herb) and have sprinkled it in our precious spring water that we get from the pass. I do not know how long this has been going on for, but my breasts have definitely gotten bigger and now I am truly worried. Questions????

Should groups of ‘die manne’ get together and begin breast-feeding classes? What age groups will be targeted in the future? Will the over fifties be given a break? (Especially those with a low sperm count). Will women who presently suffer from penis envy be given lower status in the future or perhaps higher? What current penis envy tests are available at present?

It has also come to my attention that some women in the village are taking up welding classes and one has even taken up sword fighting. This is of deep concern. The mustering has begun.

Now on to a more serious matter. Will there be Nuremberg type trails in 2012, or will a truth and reconciliation commission be the order of the day? Will gay men be given a reprieve and what means tests will be given to find out if they really are gay? If it helps being gay then maybe I will consider changing my orientation now before the rush. 

Very, very concerned

 The Foggers (the name of our interest group – fear of godders, we thought the name would give us credability in the future.)

John Sachs

SOMEBODY UP THERE DOESN'T LIKE US

Today I want to talk about weather and chemtrails. 

Chemtrails ("friendly" and shortly for chemical trails) are those strange long whitish lines that we can see at times in the sky.  "Oh! you mean the airplane's condensation trails!". 

No, I don't! 

Condensation trails are something and chemical trails are something else. Even if to a superficial glance they might seem the same thing, they are not: condensation trails can only happen above a certain altitude (26,000 to 30,000 feet) and remain visible for a short time; chemtrails instead happen much lower, just above or at the same level with the clouds, and remain in the sky for much longer, sometimes for hours.

Always, when I talk about chemtrails, I'm met by a wall of skepticism. And I don't understand why - people, generally speaking, believe in almost anything: aliens, fairies, lost continents, you name it, they even believe in what politicians say, but for some reason they seem completely unable to accept the existence of the chemtrails.  Even more puzzling, considering that, contrary to aliens, fairies etc. chemtrails can be seen, have been photographed, there is quite some literature about them, and it is enough to google them to see that they are not just matter for conspiracy theorists.

When finally I am through explaining the difference between contrails and chemtrails, I'm generally dismissed with: "Why somebody should go through the trouble of spraying the sky with chemicals?". That marks the end of the debate - I'm clearly a lunatic and everybody tries to restore "sanity" in the conversation.

Up to a point I can't blame the agnostics. In spite of many investigations throughout the world, the efforts of hundreds of researchers, the countless enquiries in various European parliaments, still nobody really knows the reason of the phenomenon. The best we achieved so far is that these strange trails are the result of top secret military operations and that is it. But are they? I'm not even sure about that.

What is known for sure is that chemtrails appear almost everywhere in the northern hemisphere, except China. Although in the southern hemisphere the spraying of chemicals happens to a much lesser degree, South Africa is subjected to it.

We also know for sure that the spray operations are carried out by either cargo or ex-passenger jet airplanes modified for the task, which are generally painted grey and completely anonymous, ie. they don't display identification marks, colours etc.

For many reasons it is quite a difficult task to analyze the chemical content of the chemtrails. From soil samples taken in areas where an intense activity has taken place, is possible to establish abnormal quantities of Calcium, Potassium, Arsenic and others, but mainly Barium and Aluminum, both metals having the property to absorb humidity from the atmosphere. This aspect of the phenomenon is quite visible as you can see from some pictures - areas of condensation form around the trails and converge towards them. It really looks like the trail is sucking humidity from the air (clicking on the picture should enlarge it - should because nothing IS in the computers' world)

What all this has to do with Barrydale? A lot I'm afraid.

 

It is almost three years that I observe the phenomenon in our skies. The extent of it is not so mind-blogging like in other parts of the world (see pictures), but nevertheless is perfectly visible. In certain days one can see quite a few chemtrails hanging over the mountains, moving from East to West and vice-versa. Then for a week or two nothing happens - a further demostration that chemtrails have nothing to do with normal commercial flights. These spraying activities have been varying considerably in length of time and extent, but have increased substantially in 2008. 

After an intense spraying activity, the weather tends to change. The temperatures rise sharply, winds increase and the air becomes extremely dry. Luminosity also increases and looking in the distance one can perceive an unnatural bluish haze that has nothing to do with dust particles in the air or smoke from fires. 

In almost 100% of the cases, a couple of days later it rains in the Cape and  eventually also inland, but chances of rain in Barrydale remain scarce.

Both the heat-waves we had in the past recent months happened shortly after the sighting of chemtrails. The latest took place a day or two after the third and fourth of November, during which period we had the most intense spraying activity so far. Immediately after that, we had storms and heavy rains in the Cape followed by floods here and all over the western Cape - if we want to talk in terms of coincidence, a quite remarkable one.  

After that, the only time I could spot some chemtrails has been the 18th of November, again followed by heat, wind and rain in the Cape.

As you know, ducks are quite opinionated creatures. Nevertheless the topic at issue is so controversial, so debated worldwide, that I don't feel like adding my opinions to the many already circulating (some of them admittedly quite wild). 

I want to point out only one thing: areas of very high pressures tend to attract low pressures into neighbouring areas, low pressures that would otherwise skip those areas. Having the capacity of creating  high pressures (the technology already exists) I can probably configure, up to a point, the weather pattern of a region. 

Mind you, this is only the opinion of a duck. Think what you like, if you like.

BEST WISHES TO THE BRA

No, nothing to do with female undergarments to support breasts etc. - BRA stays for Barrydale Ratepayers Association. 

I want to wish the BRA a long and productive life, hoping it won't turn into another sleeping beauty. I also recommend all residents to participate to the next Special General Meeting.

I won't be there - sorry, a no-no from my therapist, I've  lost too many feathers at the last IDP meeting.

As ducks can't keep their mouth shut, I can't help noticing the succulent fee of R50 per person to become member of the BRA. A bit of a killer for a new born baby, n'est pas? 

I invite the committee members to rethink it. Make R50 per household: it will dramatically increase the number of members (never a bad thing) and, I can assure, it will increase the total income - wanna bet?

Have a great meeting on the 15th!

Gangs of Barrydale

It's school holidays and kids are everywhere. Nice to see kids around, for a change, even nicer considering that kids are restless and first or late they move somewhere else.

I like kids.  Some of them are very nice and not too noisy, they smile and say hello, and off they go. I like them when they play soccer, possibly not in the street, and I don't mind at all when they roam the village.

Unfortunately... there is always an "unfortunately" in life, some of these kids team up and turn into gangs whose primary endeavour is to chase, brutalize and kill any little creature they can lay their hands on.

And they take things seriously, believe me: they throw stones at dogs in people's properties, chase cats with sticks, torture small animals etc. To make it short, whatever these kids catch is dead. 

Last year I saw some of them trespassing into my property for the pleasure of killing a young hadada chick. But what impressed me the most was to see them poking with sticks the nests of the swifts on the river bank. A thorough job, all nests were destroyed.

WHY? 

What's wrong with these kids? How can anybody be so systematically cruel with animals, and specially with swifts, the most tender harmless creatures?

Yes, all right, kids are kids and here and there do things like that, but in all honesty I've never seen such tenacity and zeal. 

This isn't the occasional cruelty of children. It's more than that, I'm afraid.

I wonder how is it possible that parents, teachers, church ministers or just senior members of the community  never cared to do something about. 

How is it possible that nobody understands that if there is no love or respect for nature and all its creatures, there can never be love, respect and understanding for fellow human beings.

I believe this is an issue that should concern us all. Any suggestions?