You Won't Believe This But......

It's the middle of November as I sit here on the banks of the Delaware river. In pennsylvania watching the early evening lights of "town" reflect across the water. I'm indoors. And directly out the front window is the constantly running delaware heading for the nice folks in Philadelphia as it drifts home to the ocean. Thats what rivers do.
It even has mists on it which also appear to be drifting toward Philadepha. Philadelphia is a nice place. The mists are most noteworthy in the early evening or early morning.

I had a story one time about a fish jumping in my boat. Now that did indeed happen.
As any regular reader of any fishing magazine will tell you. It does get reported and it does happen.

My friend says this story didn't happen. I say it did happen when the blush of youth still lightly rested on our cheeks. However it does not lightly bob in the frothy euphoria of the recollection of youth for him as it does for me. So you decide if this story is true.

We were in a flat bottomed pram and I was rowing. It was a little ten footer made out of low grade aluminum . Nice boat but the hull was about as strong as tin foil. Anyway it lasted a long time and was in regular use until I was drafted into the army.

The big call-up got me. Thats what they called it. Big troop build up in Vietnam ordered by Nixon I think or Johnson, nah it was Johnson yes it was. Johnson.
The big call-up got almost everybody I knew. We were the wrong age. The wrong age in a wrong rage.

Anyway out in the river we were in the dark of night sloshing with the row through the water heading for a camp we had out there.

There was always six or seven of us out there playing on the island, fishing, trying to kill river rats or running through the stinging nettle with bare legs sticking out of swimming trunks. You've never lived until you've walked or run through stinging nettle with your bare legs exposed.

Stinging nettle grows along river banks and wet places. It's a very normal looking plant. To the eye I still confuse it with others. It's just a plant that grows about knee high usually. And there's a reason the call it "Stinging". It appears that the stinging nettle has tiny hairs and the hairs have a moistness to them and if you brush up against it you wind up itching and scratching like someone who has a terminal case of the heeby jeebies.

I'll tell you about the heeby jeebies later.
It was a psychiatric diagnosis used by the old ones. The old ones lived here before us see.....
That was before the psychiatric epidemic of scatterbrainedness which pretty much made the Old Ones dissappear for ever. They'd mighta called it the heeby jeebie plant. But as we were uninitated in the ways of the older races we simply called it the seven minute itch.

That about explains the "sting" in stinging nettle; the seven minute itch. It wasn't until years later after the war I found its "real" name. You'd be hopping on one foot to the other holding one leg up at a time for frantic scratching.

It might look a little like a conniption fit but it wasn't. And it wasn't the heeby jeebies either. It was the seven minute itch....thats what we called it.

Supposed to be a folk cure for arthritus.

A conniption fit kinda looks like the heeby jeebies. Oh....Doctors today have all different words for these things.

Okay so...now you ain't gonna believe this but I'll tell ya.

I was telling my friend - he was sitting in the back of the boat - about the time a fish jumped in my boat. And he didn't believe me. So I rowed on a little bit more and a fish jumped in my boat. It bounced off my friend and fell into the bottom of the boat. Today he doesn't remember this episode. So......it still seems like it happened as far as my concerns go.

The odds on somthing like that happening must be astronomical. But it was night and the fish probably freaked and couldn't tell which way was which, couldn't tell up from down.

Somebody's Mom died recently and I met another old friend at the wake and he was telling about the time he caught a pure white Herring in the river. We get the Herring run and the Shad run in the river every spring. He said no one believes his story. I can understand that.

Once I saw a gold snake....like a shinny new copper penny it was. I was fishing with my Dad. I learned to stop talking about it bcause there isn't any such snake in these parts. People simply wouldn't believe me.

Maybe 30 years later I was watching a show on the PBS channel about nature and it said that snakes have a coloring abnormality that produces a gold one every once in a while.
Actually it was stated there were two coloring deviations and one was gold. The other color I forget because I was excited to find confirmation of what I knew I saw.

This has all been predecessory to this next tale of the glories of nature and her mysteries.

Here in ths section of the river right outside that door over there, with the white curtains shrouding the glass, live blue claw crabs.We are approximately five miles above the tidewater. Maybe twenty miles, at least, above the salt water line. Crabs should not be there.

Migratory fish like the Herring and Shad have to go through this complicated internal process to adapt to fresh water from the salt water. They can do it because they are migratory fish. No salt water species can live in fresh water. It isn't possible. Anybody will tell you that. And I'm telling you that three of us "local boys" over a span of many years all reported having seen the blue claw crabs in the river right here....
Right at this location I'm sitting at. Blue claw crabs.

Now this fascinating discusion and discovery of three independent observations which collectively spanned years was refuted on the spot by somebody's relative who no one knew. You know those people at weddings and funerals you're never really sure who they are to the family?

He explained they come in on the tide, he talked about the advances of the salt water coming further up the river now.
He then refuted with.."No, its impossible". When the validity of his scientific expanations was discounted.

See,,,blue claw crabs DO live in the delaware river this far north.

I mentioned it to a cop once at a boat ramp near here and he was clearly well experianced with the resident crab population. I've seen them years apart in this same section of water myself.
And I am aware it's impossible for them to survive biochemically in fresh water.
I have no doubt about that. The problem is....I have no doubt there are blue claw crabs out there in that river.

I'll tell you but you won't believe me.
The story of my life????
oh....never mind.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

New Writting Begins
It's probably the fifth of January.

"Pontificate".
Seems to be the word of the moment.
It's a verb.
I guess the pontiff pontificates.
A lot of people pontificate.
I guess a pontificater is a pontiff.
Lots of times I find out that when I thought I was having conversation I was talking to a pontiff instead. I remember drinking in Mundy's bar. years ago it was, at this point. Pontificating doesn't go over too well there.

I think I'm rambling.
I haven't had a real rambling essay in a while.

Just read the new paperback release of "Timeline" by Michael Crichton.

I should be getting back to my "problems", the stuff about the congressman's office and all.

Frantically trying to practice guitar.
I'm trying to learn new songs.

If I can get another CD out by mid-february I could get a few dollars from it from my friends.
Please trust that my fascination for the music and performance are my base motivations. However, like I've heard it said,"Money plays a part in it."

There was a chance for a hearing in December but I didn't get it.
So.....it seems to suggest that I get to wait until March for the benefits hearing.

Getting pressure to go to welfare offices.
Get food stamps and medical, that stuff.

It feels like with only two months more to go I should keep running at the "guitar player" aspects of my circumstance.
It seems like it might be more fruitful.
Spend the day developing new material.

Why waste days sitting in a government office when at any moment between now and March I could receive notice that within 20 days I could have my day in court. At least my day before the administrative law judge. And....that would invalidate all the welfare effort.

So.

And if the money is forever to be a bone of contention between me and the Government I'd better work on a means of legitimate escape.
(assuming I lose in court)
Cause.....I'm not inclined to ask for forgiveness of some 93,000 debt they dreamed up with creative accounting and fantasy book keeping.

One way...would be for me to acquire a skill I could leave the country with.
Otherwise the future will be one big pain in the wazoolie.
Cause.....I ain't asking for forgiveness.
(Maybe I will...but much later.
Ecconmic coercion may carry the day, n the end.)

And.....that means I'll lose lotsa other benefits I could have had and be seen a welfare cheat. Unless I accept guilt.
Then I could get some form of local disability management money.
But....
But.....
It would be far less income.
And I'd have to be guilt for somethng they didn't do ten years ago.
Screw ten years....Now it's up to twelve years.

So....by trying to make it on the guitar at least there'd be a chance for me escape the financial persecution I'd be facing here in the states.

It's easier for me to face what I'm facing knowing that at the end if all is lost I could still escape. Escape to the free world. Of course I'd have to be able to make some money with my guitar and my story.

I'd rather live in a damn shack with a shower out in the woods and collect my "crazy money".

I'd prefer that to bein driven out of the country.
But..in a sense I already was driven out when I discovered Belize and the rainforest. I only returned to tidy up a few papers and to organize my stuff.
I was going back to the first sane place I ever found.

But....there's an extradition treaty in place with Belize concerning tax evaders so I wouldn't be safe there anymore.
I'd have to base my resistance in some other country.

Gosh....and now there's my girlfriend of almost three months to consider.

The congresman's office said of the Social Security"s reply that it was self evident.

So I read it.

It was self evidentiary.

"However, he continued to collect benefits for the next ten years".

However? Because of some anomaly in their books of twelve years ago they ignore my medical and work history and decide I'm off retrospectively and owe 93,000 dollars?

No.
Thats not how you address this problem if your mission is to provide benefits to the disabled.

They're the criminals and thieves, not me.

Now I've gotta try and get the dear congessman's people to state that they agree with this self explanatory note.
In writing.

Thats the next step. According to information I received from one of the congressman's fellow federal representatives.

It's a real hassal to be the victim of a government plot. Geesh. Let me tell you.

It's with a belief in grace that I continue.
Because I don't see how they would ever choose t accept me as a human being with just concerns. It was totally unexpected that my CD of Christmas Carols came out to be a banner of me and my story. And that my political base has extended into the local arena.
My web involvements already has developed a national and small third country nationals' support system and letter writers.

Once he accepts that self explanatory letter implicitly?
Then I'll need a local base of voters and letter writers.
Cause then comes the bite stomp kick and gouge fighting I suspect.

I'll post the contents of the self explanatory letter. Thats all they called it and they said if I need help again to contact them. I suppose they agreed with it.
Gotta be sure about that.
Need it in writing.
...................
....
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
So....
Today is 23 February and I am taking this opertunity to apoligize to any faithful and/or concerned readers of this website. I've been away too long I realize.
I miss writting here.
I'll return here shortly and post a new essay.
I have to gve this site a higher priority in my "Do" as there are many distractions within y Bio involvements. I hunger for the silent serenity and eternally receptive ear of my cyber involvements.
Things have been happening and I will return with the news .
I assume there are people, or even one who is out there. This is a brave assumption.