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About The upper left edge. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1992-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 2001)
"UPPER LEFT EDGE, FREE! voluml J Q number . AUGUST200 UPPER LtFTCOAST PRODUCTIONS ♦ RO. BOX ¿2.2.2. COMMON &ERCH OR WHO ♦ SO3 *f3fc Z?<f5 * email W lyfupperle^je.con ♦www.upperleneJ5e.com “All is Chaos under Heaven, and the Situation is Excellent.” Mao Tse-Tung W ASHINGTON AND OREGON COAS T S 2001 OAIf DAY Behind the Times abducted by aliens. Nothing (although I could be in posthypnotic denial) has been implanted in any of my orifices, no tissue samples have been scooped out and no degrading sexual procedures inflicted on me while my body was oddly immobilized, although some nights I might have welcomed it. I have no memories, even vague ones, of short gray beings with large black eyes and questionable agendas; there are no missing blocks of time that cannot be accounted for either by friends, immediate family or the authorities. I have had, in short, no close encounters of any kind. I have not had even distant ones. None of which shakes my belief in unidentified flying objects or, by extension, who or whatever is flying them. I am, I admit without apology, a consummate and congenital believer. I have no trouble believing in unproven facts and objects or events I may never see. I believe, devoutly as a matter of fact, in things I know I'll never see. I believe in electrons, although no one has ever seen one, because 1 believe in the truth and beauty of quantum physics. I believe in fairies, which many swear they’ve seen, because I believe in the truth and beauty of physical reality and the swarming, pregnant world of possibilities we know lies giggling behind it. I believe in alien life forms because I believe the universe itself is alive, and because the notion we’re the most intelligent life form in an act of creation that’s been going on for the first half of forever is, for anyone with the brains of a crowbar, a real chuckle. What becomes clear when you take the time to look is that humans have been seeing odd things in the sky for at least as long as civilization has kept a diary. While our ancestors may have slogged through life without the Discovery Channel and Yahoo, they were not uniformly stupid and, even for me, it’s difficult to believe every one of the thousands of eye witnesses over the thousands of years was a raving lunatic or a liar. Some of them; absolutely. Many of them; possibly. All of them? Not a chance. Indeed, after decades of prodding and derisive laughter, the federal government now admits there have been sightings that, okay, might not actually have been weather balloons, swamp Michael Burgess Our conversation took a turn to the apocalyptic, hardly a surprise. We’re of an age, my friend and I, to have seen much handwriting on the wall; more than a little of it darkly hilarious, filled with portents of irony and merciless consequence. Always something to laugh about. My friend brought up evolution and wondered, not idly, if the latest version of homo sapiens might not have painted itself into a comer. If the driving engine of evolution is variation, he wondered, doesn’t that make homogenizing world culture a suicidal act? As a social animal, do we or do we not need difference, and the alchemical birth and rebirth that comes of it, to become, not just all we can be, but what we may just need to be in order to stay in the game? Does, for instance, the appearance of a McDonald’s in Bombay and dengue fever in Connecticut send the same signal as a canary dropping over in a coal mine? Does gathering the family around the cable’s burning bush to watch Survivor make us more or less likely to survive when, not if, push comes to shove? Does eating the same food, drinking the same bottled water, reading the same books, watching the same movies (even if they’re films), listening to the same music and not thinking the same unpleasant thoughts make us the chosen species or the most likely doomed? Culture is more than the reflection of a group; it molds and determines the group’s perception and definition of reality. We build our lives, our hopes and our dreams on, not necessarily the way things are, but the way we see things. If we all embrace, or are embraced by, the same reality, what happens when, once again not if, large scale reality changes? Are we inventing the best of all possible worlds or, like mildly suspicious, hard partying salmon, swimming toward the turbine blades of our manifest destiny? Should any of the many unthinkably bad scenarios occur, will we bend in the wind of large scale karma or snap like a cheap plastic spoon? Take, for example, invasion from outer space. Before we go further, you need to know this. I have never, to the best of my knowledge, been A Continued on Page 7 V ■ K K d if. V I - v A Ì M T ' r r T O T ' i i ■ OOTS- GUKX PM PM n TM FT TME n 66 11:19 12:52 82 132 81 2:09 8.2 68 69 7.0^ 550 6 34 713 7 49 -09 -10 -10 -09 2.6 2.5 2.4 2.3 80 79 77 73 69 64 59 7.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 5:27 6:15 6:59 7:41 8Ï19 FT TMC TM( l 2 3 4 Wed Thur Fri Sat • 12 08 • • 002 • 043 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 SUN Mon Tues Wed Thur Fn Sat • • • • • • • 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 SUN • Mon• Tues • Wed • Thur • Fn • Sat • 6 59 822 939 1044 11 40 12:29 54 6:39 53 738 56 842 60 9:46 65 10:47 6.9 11:44 115 2.1 822 -08 8.52 -0.6 8:57 2.0 920 -03 9:34 18 947 00 10:12 1.7 7.4 1016 05 10:55 1.5 7.5 1049 10 11:44 1.4 15 7.6 1128 12 12:18 T i 7.6 045 7.7 155 08 1:22 26 8.0 308 03 2:35 2.9 8 3 414 -03 3:48 28 8.6 512 -09 4:53 2.5 9.0 604 -1.5 5:52 2.1 7.4 652 -18 6:48 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 SUN • Mon • Tues • Wed • Thur • Fn • Sat • TET 91 91 88 83 76 68 62 7.7 7 38 8.1 821 8.3 903 84 944 84 1026 8.2 1111 7.9 015 26 27 28 29 30 31 SUN Mon Tues Wed Thur Fn 121 159 2 36 315 3 57 4 45 544 134 2.27 320 4 ,6 516 623 I 7 37 2:43 3:13 3:42 410 438 5:11 5:51 158 2:39 3.20 400 442 5:26 6:15 58 7:12 57 8:14 60 9:16 63 10:13 67 11:03 6.9 11 48 • 8 53 • • 1000 • 1057 • 1144 • 12:24 7.6 7.4 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 -1 9 7:41 1.1 -17 8:33 0 6 -13 9:25 0 3 -07 10:18 0.1 00 11:14 0.1 08 02 12:01 1.6 121 2 32 3 39 4 37 526 608 02 01 -01 -03 -05 -07 1:00 23 2:07 2.7 3:17 28 4:19 26 5:13 23 6:00 20 • PM TIDES u - tetvpe DAYLIGHT TIME BOLDTYPE Okay, now this is getting serious W e are past the half way point in the season and our beloved Cubs are hanging onto first place in their division People arc beginning to notice There is a quote "Despair is not the problem, I can handle despair, i f s the hope that I can't handle " The Cubs fans arc use to despair as well as abuse and ridicule, but hope bnngs the fear o f disappointment once again Oh, please. G o Cubbies'! Okay, that was written before "The C n m e Dog" started covering first Y es, w e would have preferred to have Grace for the stretch run, but and yes, he deserves Io be there, but .w e work with the cards we have W hy are we trying to remember "Casey at the Bat"? "Hope springs eternal within the human breast?" Yep, that’s the line Oh. my. 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