Sunday, March 18, 2007

En Vog

Well, that's the group I think the Arts Council should bring in if this vog (volcanic-plus-Asian smog) keeps up.

This time it's
Southeast Asia, I guess. I thought I'd read about Drought, caused by little rainfall during the dry season.*

It makes me snarly. I got a headache last night and was circling the building to see which neighbor was burning. Just being safe. A whiff of that old latrine smell on the second trip outside and I knew it was Anatahan. (I don't want to hear about sulfurous emissions from the legislature)

Actually, our neighbor to the north isn't that bad. Maybe you've already forgotten about the periodic eruptions of Mt. Puerto Rico** we used to endure. Now that was nasty, especially when the foul-smelling plume chased squadrons of flies toward the Garapan hotels. It did have the makings of a grade-b horror movie.

Not so good for the tourists, though my business did fine, thank you. By the luck of the draw, our old bar was just outside of the stanky area so the happy hour crowd was huge... and they all had stories to tell.

It's actually nice outside now, but I'm not fooled. I still have that headache and my voice is something like a voghorn. The NWS says one more day.

* If you're paying attention, I cheated. Couldn't find the story about farmers burning forests to prepare for rainy season, so I pulled this one out of an old shoebox of bookmarks.
** For our off-island friends, the WWII era dump which has since been closed was located in Puerto Rico.

4 comments:

Bruce A. Bateman said...

Speaking of dumps, one of the old military dumps above Tanapag/Achugao is being 'mined' again due to increases in the price of recycled metal.

Maybe we will have to import some shopping carts from the US for our indigent population soon.

KAP said...

I've been told there used to be a nice little market for brass shells, one of the few ways to make some bucks after the war. One man somewhat sheepishly admitted to using the powder to fish: "we were more innocent then" he maintained. He also told a few tales of friends who opened shells the wrong way, with the expected results. Seems some were better at disarming them than others.

Bruce A. Bateman said...

Disarming?.....(:-))can't believe you said that. Disfooting if you step on it?

Yes, my older neighbors in Tanapag tell tales of the wild and wooly days of brass hunting. Sometimes in the landfill dumps, often in the ocean dump sites just off shore.

KAP said...

Sometimes you disarm the bomb and sometimes...