Wasps – North America and Philippines

When I used to spend my summers at a cabin on an Island in North America I had a problem one year with wasps.  Yellow jackets.  I harbor an innate fear of the things because I ran into a nest as a small boy and was badly stung.  Anyway our summer cabin was built about five feet off the ground in order to better afford a view of the bay and the not-too-distant mountains.

 

One year we discovered that over the winter months, wasps had built a nest under the cabin that approximated the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.  My wife, of that era, and I were deeply disturbed and when we went to the people responsible for renting the cabin they announced they had no way of knowing how to get rid of the things … (they were idiots anyway) … and the best thing to do was to bring in a pest control expert from the nearest city, several miles distant.

 

The cost of such an enterprise would have been high but necessary and we were about to go ahead when our next door neighbor said that he knew exactly how to get rid of the nest.  Our next door neighbor wasn’t a close personal friend as were a couple of the other renters in our immediate vicinity; we called him “The Mouth” because he never stopped yapping.  He also had two rotten little kids.

 

But he seemed to be sure of himself and although I experienced misgivings, we said to go ahead and get rid of the wasps.  He failed.

 

His plan was to burn them out.  He wrapped a large towel around the end of a pole, soaked it in gasoline and thrust it into the nest.  Most of the people who rented in our area were on hand including several children.   All he really managed to do was to set fire to the cabin itself, largely due to a ferocious flame that shot up when he lit the gas-soaked towel.  I had thoughtfully made sure to have the area garden hose on hand and running.  A good plan because within seconds “The Mouth” had managed not only to set the underneath of the cabin ablaze but stir up the wasps into a terrible temper.  All those watching, especially the little kids, ran as if for their lives

 

Such was the danger that “The Mouth” also fled the scene abandoning his gas-soaked towel/pole where it lay, blazing beside the porch.  It was up to me, dressed as to cover as much skin as possible, to extinguish the fire – both the towel and the one that threatened to consume our cabin.  All this activity had of course raised the ire of the yellow jackets to the extreme and I was running around like a fool trying to spray the flames while dodging the furious creatures.   Eventually both were accomplished but in its wake a cloud of these insects hovered in the vicinity of the rental cabins.

 

Somebody had a friend on the Volunteer Fire Department and later that day the Island’s one truck showed up, hooked up their high powered hose and for more than an hour blasted the nest into oblivion.  Amazingly, the wasps took the hint and slowly the cloud cleared and they were gone, never to return.  There had been some stings but too few to cause any panic.

 

Wasps suck the juice from blackberries and near our cabin was a huge blackberry patch from which they fed. Some people have a ghastly allergy to wasp and bee stings and one day a young lady was enjoying herself plucking when she was stung by one of the wasps.

 

She began screaming and my wife, a nurse, came dashing in the house, put a pot containing a cupful of water on the stove to boil and grabbed a bottle of antihistamine capsules.  When there was enough hot water to dissolve the antihistamine she dumped the powder into the hot water, added cold water and poured the whole mix into an enema bag, raced outside and force fed this poor woman from the rubber enema bag. 

 

Within minutes the Island’s only ambulance arrived and she was whisked over to the nearest cities hospital by helicopter. My wife’s quick thinking had kept her alive until professional help arrived.

 

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We don’t have yellow jackets in the Philippines but we do have wasps.  There are probably a number of varieties, two of which live in my area of the country.  One is called a boo-boo-yoog and the other a poo-tak-tay.   The boo-boo-yoog is as big as a man’s thumb, but thankfully rather scarce.  Having said that I have destroyed several of their small hardened mud nests which look like a small earthenware jug with a hole in one end where the boo-boo-yoog crawls inside.

 

They are indeed ferocious looking and when they fly near, the buzz is loud enough to alert one of their presence.  I have heard where people have been stung buy these monsters and have suffered terribly. 

 

The poo-tak-tay is a somewhat distant cousin — about the size of a house fly except its shape is that of a wasp, the kind that have a stem extending from its fore-quarters to its main body. I have been stung by them twice and have suffered as much as I would from a yellow jacket sting. 

 

At the end of the rainy season (now) these things build their paper nests just about anywhere and I’ve come across several in the immediate vicinity of our premises, several even constructed outside on the sides and in the corners of the house. 

 

Unlike boo-boo-yoogs these little monstrosities can number as many as 100 to a nest so extreme care must be taken to avoid getting stung.  The answer is Raid. 

 

I have developed a system where I swipe the nest with a large bolo knife on the end of a pole which knocks much of the nest to the ground and then, quick like a bunny, soak the squirming little buggers with Raid as well as soaking what part is still attached to the house or tree or whatever.  Unlike the swarming yellow jackets these wasps do not form a cloud or swarm — and one is able to escape being attacked quite easily.  

 

Yesterday I destroyed four of the nests and too my knowledge a fifth is the only one left.  It goes by sundown.

 

I have tried to find the value in wasps.  They are lousy pollinators and seem to live for no other reason than to cause grief to man and beast alike — a vast distinction from bees which can cause pain and even trauma but are generally creatures bent on their work and happy to leave us alone as well as being highly productive.

 

Although Buddhists would frown on me for being a wanton murderer, I still live in fear of the small wasps finding a way into our home and God forbid a boo-boo-yoog should somehow find its way inside … a situation which would cause instant evacuation while a solution was determined.  By somebody else. 

 

 

How It’s (Supposed) To Work

The last full week of campaigning for the US presidency is being fought under a cloud of ashes, the detritus of trillions of dollars that have gone up in smoke at the expense of, for want of a better example, Joe the Plumber.  (Last week I inadvertently spelled Joe’s name Plummer and caught a pretty hot blast from some of my critics who must have thought I’d taken leave of my senses having seen his name in every publication from Newsweek to Mad.  Sorry Joe).

I’ve spoken to several friends whose speculation turned to destruction literally overnight.  A pervading gloom fosters frowns on commuters in Chicago, London, Moscow and Tokyo – those who still have a job to go to or enough money to ride the subway. 

If you live in the Philippines it’s not too much of a concern because people create their own employment just like they did when Alley-Oop was riding dinosaurs.  You get a cheap little used bicycle, weld a third-wheel-wagon on the side, scrape together a few hens and a rooster and in six months you’re selling chickens door to door — no control, no Income Tax, no gas, no cares. 

Bird ‘flu – this is an Island country, nobody gets much of anything.  The odd sniffle now and then but Filipinos are immune to almost everything having lived in squalor most of their existence. The AIDS Virus is something that happens somewhere else; a lot of the food comes from the farm to the market to the belly in less than 12 hours.  The hospitals are full of flies and a particular type of four-inch lizard my wife calls Felix plus a retinue of rats; medical waste — did I hear medical waste? what’s it look like?

The local currency, what there is of it, is stable.  It doesn’t go anywhere and as for the Philippine Foreign Income, the country sells a few hundred thousand mangoes off-shore and a lot of mango jam, a bit of tobacco, okra, fish and little pouches of purple pudding to the Chinese.  As for Gross National Income – Richard Branson’s seen bigger dinner checks.

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There’s not much point of an old git in Paradise pretending to have answers to questions that are all one word: Why? The recession (does Bush still refuse to use the word?), the rash of world economic meetings, bail-outs, leverage, sub-prime lending?  You can read about all that in The Wall Street Journal or the Tokyo Shimbun, the Buenos Aires Herald, the Berliner Kurier, The Guardian, the International Herald Trib – or watch it “live” on CNN.

I don’t have the answers and I’m damn sure John McCain and Barack Obama don’t either.  Neither does Sarah Palin unless she qualifies for the old adage ‘if the world is in bad financial shape, go out and buy stuff’.  (It’s not really an old adage; I just made it up with a little help from the Gov).

Of course the presidential candidates and their VP hopefuls all tell you they know the answer.  I got news: they’re lying.  This mess is gonna be around until McCain needs a walker and Obama finally bowls over 100.  Palin’ll be eating Moose stew because she has to and nobody’s yet got anything to say about Biden, one way or the other.   

It appears that the Republicans are beginning to squabble.  Sarah Palin is getting testy over some of the McCain policies and she’s not one to keep quiet.  Could it be that she smells the sweet stink of defeat and wants to come out of the gate, a full blown presidential candidate in 2012?  Re maverick-itized — blasting onto the country wearing a bear-skin cap, hauling four new grandchildren and riding a snowmobile, with a vintage Springfield 30-0-6 lashed on the track-guard.  “Kin I call ya Hilleree?”     

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To those of you who may read this in a foreign land it might be a good time to explain how the American Election System works.  Be mindful that this includes all the states plus the District of Columbia, a total of 51. 

After the major candidates are picked at the two conventions, the delegates will vote on The Electors. Each state has its own way of choosing electors and it’s not really necessary to know how, just that these electors cannot work for the Federal Government. When all the electors have been chosen, they make up a body known as The Electoral College.  

The US goes by the vote of the Electoral College.  On November 4^th, (and those who have voted in the advance polls) Americans cast their votes, not for the president, but for electors.  Some states don’t even have the names of the candidates on the ballot – just the electors. Each state has as many electors as it does Senators (two per state ) and Representatives (438 in country-wide total, including three for Washington DC).  Simple mathematics tells us that the winner of the election must have 270 electors, called in the media: electoral votes, in his column.

Each state is awarded its electoral votes as in the old saying “Representation by population”.  The most populous state is California (55), the second, Texas (34), third New York (31).  Smallest: Alaska and Delaware (home of Palin & Biden respectively) plus several Dakota-type states, Vermont and Washington DC with three votes each.

On the 15^th of December of this year members of the Electoral College will meet in their state capitols and chose the president.  Of course we will know who that is because television will have told us (with hope) when the polls close across the nation.  A little known fact is that these electors are not bound by any law that says they must vote for the candidate they represent (Democrat or Republican) but that would be like entrusting a million dollars to a chronic, drunken, spendthrift with a passion for large yachts.

The votes of the electors are then sent to Washington and on January 6^th their votes are counted in front of the full Congress and the winner is formally announced and will be sworn into office on January 20^th, 2009: Inauguration Day.

I feel I should add, considering the kind of election this has been with its twists, turns and pratfalls … should neither Senator McCain nor Senator Obama receive a clear majority, the president is chosen by the House of Representatives with groups of Congressmen bunched together voting by state.  If they can’t decide it’s up to a simple Senate majority.

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What all this really means is: on November 4^th, Wolf Blitzer and his ilk will — as the polls close and using a combination of “exit polls” (reporter’s mic in people’s faces “whojavotefor”), a combination of proven district voting records, or the actual vote count — will declare each state for the winning candidate and award that candidate the electoral votes representative of that state.  Usually a small percentage can send the TV folks into a pretty accurate state tally.

One way to look at it is — the United States does not vote as a country but as a combination of 51 small elections.

 And in case you are from a country where the president and the vice-presidential candidates run for different parties — that is not the case in the US.  This will ensure that should he be elected, Barack Obama will not end up with Sarah Palin as his Vice President.   

Red Blue and Purple

Before any discussion about the upcoming US election, I think one quote stands out to describe the whole process and needs repeating to sharpen the focus.  By that I mean how this election has been presented by the media.  And because the voting public (as well as those watching in every, single country in the world) are influenced by what they see on television and in print they should be fore-armed with what the media has managed to do to energize, or assist, disrupt or distort the facts as they have unfolded and been presented.

Erica Jong, the off-quoted author and recipient of the 1998 United Nations Award of Excellence in Literature makes the following statement: “Our press has become a sea of triviality, meanness and irrelevant chatter”.   Ms Jong is not alone in her condemnation; there is a long list.  Media Institutions whether they are television networks, newspapers or weekly periodicals will continue to plug away at either candidate with little thought to truth and a lot of thought to Headlines.

Take, for instance, Joe the Plummer.  Both Joe the Plummer’s for that matter, the one in Seattle and the one in Ohio.  Michael Dourasch of D.C., writing in a publication known as the Planet Chiropractic.com says quote “I have to imagine the search traffic in the plumbing industry has significantly been affected these past few days — likely clogging some plumber web-sites with lots of unexpected traffic.” 

What Mike says is sounder than the twisted symbolism wasted on the public senses over what some guy said about his 250,000 dollar company and how the candidates reacted, especially McCain.

Trying to make a sexist image out of a Reuters News Agency shot of a college kid parallel to Sarah Palin’s ankles (which were in the extreme foreground) is plain nonsense.  The photo eclipsed the TV camera showing John McCain presumably checking out Ms Palin’s derriere during her initial introduction in Ohio weeks ago.  Who cares?

And then we have William Ayers, the terrorist.  I find it hard to believe that Colin Powell would endorse Barack Obama if he thought the Senator was palling around with terrorists.  Powell’s endorsement (figuratively speaking) cut Bill Ayers off at the knees and Ms Palin can forget her remarks of two weeks ago and even her rescinding such remarks against Obama.  Powell shut the door. 

Don’t let’s forget another media darling: Acorn.  The American Spectator would have you believe that Senator Obama is in favor of filling voter’s lists with names like Dick Tracy, Mary Poppins, Jive Turkey and Leon Spinks.  Is Obama really that dumb?  In a word: Acorn is a fraudulent organization that has been caught and punished and Obama is out of it. 

He can no longer be tagged with Acorn than he can by that dim-witted woman who told John McCain that she couldn’t vote Democrat because Obama was a Muslim.  I thought one of McCain’s finest moments was when he stared the woman in the eyes and said “No he’s not.  He’s a good family man with whom I have to disagree politically” — words to that effect.

 

 

The 2008 Election is going to come down to one or two – or even several – of what are known as the Battleground states.  You can also call them Swing states should you wish.  There is a difference but for the purposes of this piece, the difference isn’t worth worrying about. They are basically states that vote for different parties in each election and they are the ones in which the final, heavy campaigning is done.  

Initially, a few weeks ago there were approximately a dozen of these states depending on which publication you were reading.  But it was generally agreed that there were two groups of Battleground states and they were divided into the “big” ones and the “small” ones.   Forida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan were the big, important states because the winner  collected the most Electoral College votes.   (I’ll explain the Electoral College closer to the election). 

Since a few weeks ago the race has tightened.  John McCain, for reasons not fully understood by all, decided not to contest the state of Michigan thereby throwing its 17 votes to Obama.  As time went by it looked as if the Democratic candidate would pick up Pennsylvania and North Carolina while the state of Missouri seemed to be swinging towards McCain.  Missouri is a special animal.  Every election for the past 104 years Missouri has voted for the man who became president and therefore earns the title of bellwether.

As it stands now, closer to election time, Barack Obama has either a slight lead of around two percent — or a slim lead of one percent or less in all but a few of these battleground states.  And it is also conceded that John McCain pretty well has to win both the state of Florida and the state of Ohio to gain the presidency.  Together those two represent 47 Electoral College votes.

McCain must also win Georgia, Indiana and the lightly populated states of Montana, West Virginia and South Carolina as well as New Mexico, New Hampshire and West Virginia.  Things are not looking too good for him.  He cannot be assured of either Ohio or Florida as they are leaning ever so slightly to the Democratic ticket.  He was once assured of Wisconsin but that state too with its 9 votes is slipping away.

It also should be noted that the candidates are now appealing to only about two-thirds of the electorate.  Thirty Three percent have already voted in the advance polls.  But as has been said time and again, anything can happen.  It’s really a form of Murphy’s Law.  If it can happen—it will. And in this election the only thing that would argue the point is that … it already has.