The "Fairness Argument"

I'm puzzled. Why can't folks just have faith in intelligent design, huh, huh, huh, huh?

Four Legged Chickens

Zoran saw the chicken too late to stop his speeding car from clipping it with the right front fender. He pulled over to the side of the road to check on the chicken. The bird had looked odd as it crossed the road. The farmer sauntered over as Zoran was standing over the dead chicken.
"It's dead, is it?" the farmer said.
"Yes, yes, it's dead alright."
The farmer leaned in to get a better look at the dead chicken. He made a low clucking sound in his throat.
Zoran looked at the farmer. "Please," he said, "can you tell me about this chicken?"
"What about it?" the farmer said.
"Well, it has four legs," Zoran said.
"Oh that," said the farmer. "Well everybody around here has grown to love barbecued chicken legs."
Zoran looked at the farmer. "And?"
"And we crossed the chickens with rabbits and got four legged chickens."
"Oh, I see," said Zoran. "Very clever. And how do they taste?"
"Don't know," said the farmer. "Never able to catch one until now."

Well, we aren’t seeing farmers cross-breeding rabbits with chickens, but a Massachusetts company says it's on the verge of receiving federal approval to market a quick-growing Atlantic salmon that's been genetically modified with help from a Pacific Chinook salmon. If approved by the FDA, this fast growing salmon will be the first transgenic animal headed for our dinner tables.

Transgenic? Is that anything like transgender, you might ask. No. It’s a genetically engineered organism that has inserted DNA that originated in a different species. According to an article by Les Blumenthal (McClatchy), researchers have added a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon as well as an on-switch gene from the ocean pout, a distant relative of the salmon, to a normal Atlantic salmon's roughly 40,000 genes. Salmon normally feed only during the spring and summer, but when the on-switch from the pout's gene is triggered, they eat year round. Like us. The result is a transgenic salmon that grows to market size in about half the time as a normal salmon — 16 to 18 months, rather than three years. Just the way we grow to over sized in about the same length of time. I wonder if there’s a gene that can turn off my desire for ice cream?

Genetic engineering of our food crops has been going on for some time, but this will be the first time an animal that we commonly eat will undergo the procedure. Unless you eat mice, that is. The majority of transgenic animals produced so far are mice. In fact, they pioneered the technology; the clever little cuties.


Rabbits, pigs, sheep, and cattle have also undergone the procedure experimentally, but we aren’t eating them – as far as I know.

Are there any dangers involved in genetically engineering stuff we eat? None whatsoever. Just as there’s no danger in deep-ocean drilling for oil...oh, yeah. I forgot.

Well, let's exam the pros and cons of genetically engineering these fast growing salmon and see what conclusions we can draw generally. We’ll do that in a future post on An Unexpected Error. For now, bon appetite.

A grandfather's hand

The Will

Dad had opened the garage door for me so that I could come in through the door to the laundry room. This was his regular routine and I had long ago stopped asking him why he didn’t just let me use my key and come in through the front door. I walked past the space heater he had going in the garage to keep his plants warm during the winter. Another subject I no longer bothered to debate.

I found dad in the TV room sitting on the couch with his head down wringing his hands. I sat down next to him, put my hand on his shoulder, “What’s the problem, Dad?”

“I’m shaky,” he said in a high, squeaky voice.

“Why are you shaky?”

“I don’t have a will,” he croaked. “What’s going to happen when I die?”

This business of the will came out of left field, because he and mom had made out their wills long ago, and then updated them when they’d moved up here to be close to us.

“You have a will, dad,” I said, in what I hoped was a reassuring voice.

Dad glared at me and waved his index finger at me like I was a naughty boy. “No I don’t!” he shot back.

“Well, let’s just check,” I said. I went to the desk where my mom had organized all their important documents and quickly found the will.

Dad hardly looked at the will when I brought it over to him.

“Your mom was very organized,” he said.

“Did we leave any money to Joey’s kids?” Dad asked.

“Joey’s kids?”

“You know, the gambler, and the…”

“The alcoholic?” I finished the sentence for him. Joey, Dad’s long deceased second cousin from New York, had two children, Chuckie, a compulsive gambler, and Dominick, an unreformed alcoholic.

Dad looked at me. “Yeah,” he said, uncertainly.

“You think that’s a good idea, Dad; giving the gambler and the alcoholic money?”

Dad switched gears without blinking an eye.

“What about that guy, Corlini?”

“Corlini?”

“Yeah. He’s been nice to us.”

“Wasn’t he the guy that you gave the jewelry to on consignment?”

“Yeah, that’s the guy. Your mother liked him.”

“Dad, he disappeared with that jewelry.”

Dad squinted at me through smeary bifocals.

“Anyone else we should leave money to?”

Sagebrush Pen

Typical farmers' market, not ours, we don't have tomatoes yet and our location doesn't have those nice trees.

The Kennewick Farmers' Market has been moved from downtown Kennewick out south here to an area called Southridge. There are ambitious long-range plans for developing Southridge, but as one "farmer" told me today, "There's not much out here." This lady was selling Chelan Cherries, which she informed me came in earlier than the I was hoping for. She pushed a bucket of purple cherries toward me and told me to try one. "Don't worry about that," she said, gesturing to the dun-colored powder on the cherries, "That's just dust."

It was windy this afternoon and the farmers' market is set up in a parking lot next to an expanse of land that's being leveled for construction. Dust devils whirled over the parking lot and tented awnings flapped energetically in the wind. The cherry lady was stocky and immovable in the wind, although her should-length, straw-colored hair flew about like Saint Vitus. I bought a pound-and-a-half of cherries and moved on.

I had been looking for gifts for some Slovenian friends we'll see next week and came across a table filled with pens labeled "Sagebrush Pens." I stopped to inspect the pens. A diminutive, bright-eyed older man wearing dog tags and a baseball cap with "U.S. Air Force" written across the front was looking up at the tent he had constructed over his display table. "I may have to take this down," he said. I asked him about the pens. "Made with sagebrush," he said. He gave me his card. It said "DICKS fancy WOODS" and under that his name, "Dick Rambo."

Dick was from Pasco and had been hand making wood products, pens, belt buckles, key rings, etc., since his retirement from the Air Force in 1971. His card said "Wood from your History, Transformed." I asked him about that. "A lot of these things are made from the wood flooring that was torn up from Richland High School during its renovation," he told me. I bought a pen made of sagebrush and told him it was a gift for a friend from Slovenia. "That's a first," he said.

I took my cherries and my pen back to the car and drove away from the flapping tents in the Kennewick Southridge Farmers' Market. A sign at the highway tells me to expect "Burger Bob's soon." It's been there for several months. The farmers will be glad when it finally arrives.

Waiting for my Prescription

I handed Bethany, the pharmacist clerk, my prescription. She held it up to within a few inches of her face and squinted at it.
“Where are your glasses, Bethany?” I asked.
“They're down there gettin fixed,” she said canting her head in the direction of Kroger’s eye clinic.
“Well, are you sure you can read that?” I said. I was used to seeing her with glasses that made her gray eyes look huge.
“Protonix,” she said.
“You’re guessing,” I said. It was the only prescription medication I took and I picked it up every month.
Bethany gave me a rueful little smile and told me it would be ten to fifteen minutes. “You wanna wait?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders, turned, and walked over to a bench and sat next to a stocky, middle-aged woman wearing a hoodie, jeans, and work boots. She smiled at me.
“They are a tad busy this morning,” she said.
“Tuesday,” I said.
“Oh, yah?” she said, puzzled.
“The day the retirement homes bring in their people to shop and pick up prescriptions.”
“Oh, yah,” she said. “They do that on Mondays in Saint Cloud.”
“I thought I noticed an accent. You from Minnesota?”
“Born and raised,” she said. “But we don’t have an accent.” Her smile made her look younger.
“Are you living here, now?” I asked.
“I moved out here in 1973 with my husband. He was a dry land wheat farmer."
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a hard life.”
“Before that, I lived on a farm near Saint Cloud, so I was used to farm living. We raised eight kids, two boys and six girls.”
She began digging around in one of her shopping bags.
I checked my watch and glanced at the pharmacy counter.
“My father raised chickens,” the woman said, a piece of candy stuck in the side of her mouth. “We ate a lot of chicken.”
She held the candy roll out to me.
I took one and smiled. “So, where are your kids now?”
“Mostly in Minnesota, but one son lives in Alaska. Both boys hunt and fish. They get together now and then. They were gonna ice fish last year, but it was too warm. The vans were falling through the ice, don’cha know.”
“Global warming,” I said.
She grimaced and shook her head. “I don't know about that,” she said.
“So what kind of hunting do your sons do?” I said, not wanting to get into a discussion about how warm the earth was getting with a person from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
“Deer, moose, stuff like that,” she said.
“Moose?” I said.
“Oh, yah. I ate some once or twice. Gives me gas.”
I saw Bethany motioning to me.
“Looks like my prescription is ready.” I got up. “Nice talking with you. And by the way, be sure to check that you get the right medication.”
The woman smiled up at me. “Check out the sign at the sushi counter,” she said.
“Uh?”
“The sushi counter,” she said, pointing over towards the deli section.
I nodded, wondering what the hell she was talking about.
On my way out I went by the deli and stopped at the sushi counter. They had their usual assortment of sushi and sashimi in neat little throw-away boxes, with pickled ginger and wasabi. There on the counter was a display of their California Roll. Next to it was a sign that said, “For your own safety, please don’t eat our display.”