Wolf Quest Part VIII: Why Wolves?

I left off in Part VI once I managed to get the van started again near Mont Groulx and instead of wisely turning around and driving south, I pushed all my chips into the middle and headed north on the only road in all of northern Quebec, Route 389. Labrador City lay like a gleaming emerald on the horizon and maybe if I could sort out all the problems with the van then I could continue the quest further north to Ellesmere Island where I would see the Arctic wolf with my own eyes. But this is a good chance to explore why wolves became the goal of my quest.

Recall that it was on Puta Lobo in Baja California that I had a vision about a trans-continental journey during the dark economic recession caused by land hungry financial consultants. Puta Lobo probably is dedicated to a coyote, not a wolf, as Puta Coyote doesn't have the same ring to it. But coyotes, not wolves, are what live in the desert. I thought, if I've never visited Labrador, the only political boundary in North America that I've yet to visit, then I should have a good reason. And the wolf quest started to take shape. But it actually started earlier than that.

He Always Goes Farther Than Father

He Always Goes Farther Than Father
1921
Words and Music by Blanche Franklyn
Key: Eb Major
4/4

Looks like a kid scribbled on the front of this one.

I found this title interesting and in case you want to cry sexism, the song was written by a woman. Even odder is the fact that the 19th amendment was ratified one year before this song was published. So, women got the right to vote and Blanche Franklyn immediately pens a novelty comic song about a father and son who compete at seducing women. I like Blanche's spirit. We would've gotten along well because she followed her instincts and wrote the song that occurred to her and didn't dismiss her muse even if it was sexist. This is the life of an artist.

It's noteworthy that about 50% of women, like men, immediately declined the opportunity to vote. Of course the deep south states all opposed women voting rights, integrated schools, civil rights, etc. Mississippi, for example, ratified the 19th amendment in 1984, 64 years after the country had technically given women the right to vote. This poisonous State makes ISIS look progressive. It's living proof that all the benefits to be won from exploitation of slave labor will eventually be lost ten times over until your culture is actually more stunted than if you'd never left the year 1780. If you want to know what the punishment is for embracing slavery then go visit Mississippi. They've regressed to a kind of suspended larval state where education has become the enemy.

Not much info available about Blanche. She was a vaudeville singer/writer worked through the war years. Her song requires a steady tempo and also a top hat and a spinet piano on a stage on a Bowery vaudeville theater. I don't have these things at my disposal so I did the best I could do.

Hat Considering another Patch

A cotton hat with a hook and loop adjustment back may be getting a new look. Despite the objections of his parents and the likelihood of having authority figures looking down their nose at him, the hat wants another embroidered patch.

A growing trend? 65% of hats get embroidery decorations

Referring to the embroidered patch in the center of his head, "I figure once I have one [patch] and I know it doesn't hurt too bad, then I'll get another. I really want a unicorn."

Hat: "I think it looks good. I want another stitch."

"Every hat gets 'stitched'," said the hat, using the slang word for embroidery. "I wouldn't want my sister to get stitched, but that's her decision to make."
The hat's sister is a handbag.

"Do I care what others think? No. It's my choice. I think it looks good."

Wolf Quest: Part VII - Short Fuse

Beards are popular in the future

So, the last chapter ended with my learning the van had a dead battery near the Manicougan Reservoir in North Eastern Quebec. And upon further investigation, the battery wasn't simply dead, as in discharged, I opened the caps and realized I'd neglected to refill them in my preparations in New England. The electrolyte level was low. Furthermore, because the level was low I could visibly see inside the battery and could tell a battery cell wall had broken. It looked like a row of dominoes tumbling in one direction but not all of them had fallen over. So the battery was finished. If this had happened on the Alaskan Highway I could expect someone to come along to help me, but on 389 N in Quebec there's hardly any traffic. The road itself is not very dangerous, not remotely as dangerous as the roads in Guatemala, but the distance was so far, like traveling from Boston to Miami on a dirt road, and gas cost around $7 a gallon so I didn't see much traffic.

Street Scenes

extrajudicial electrical use

 There's talk of nationalizing Guatemala's electrical infrastructure, which would definitely lead to a seizure of foreign assets such as clothing factories* and fruit plantations. I admit I support these developments but I would advise caution with the electrical services because it takes some training to keep that running. Something like 1/3 of utilities users pay for the other 2/3 who simply patch into the electrical grid, bypassing meters. Well, that would be an improvement, actually, in the eyes of the utilities folks because what's really happening is 1/3 are getting billed for the other 2/3 and of the 1/3 about 1/8 of those billed actually pay their full bill. So the math gets a little complicated because the common denominator is something like 24. Only around 1/24th of electricity usage is covered by customer payments. This leads to a totally intentional blackouts caused by the utility as a kind of ransom to get their payment, which is a 'blood from stone' situation. And that leads to street demonstrations. One departamento (state) declared an emergency because they had no power for a year.

As with all revolutions there can't be success without a thorough infiltration of the military, and with some training to actually run the utilities without an Atlas Shrugged scenario arising where electrical engineers have to be kidnapped and enslaved to keep the hydro-electric and coal plants working. That would be utterly distasteful to Oggy. The concept of seizure of the infrastructure isn't at all distasteful although the hell that would be unleashed by 'Noble Peace Prize winner' ObombanotherCountry would surely be horrific. These companies made investments in the wrong country. Caveat Emptor. I'd apply that to Cuba also, the fruit company asset seizure is absolutely no different than Bank of America seizing all the twisted loans offered by Lehman bros. People lost their houses...and BofA took them. Well in 1959 Che Guevara and Fidel Castro did basically the same thing and seized property that was tenuously built on the impoverished lifestyles of Cubans. Who is to blame? I guess it gets political at that point.

Oggy's taco fix

The south side of the central park becomes a late night market. I get goat tacos and french fries.

*I recently bought a factory second t-shirt at a big used clothing store down here. Oddly, the shirt was manufactured in Guatemala and is a Lucky Brand shirt I know costs $40 in Los Angeles and it's worth exactly $1.30 here in the origin. It's like flying to United Arab Emirates to buy a hair scrunchie destined for Hot Topic at the local mall in St. Louis. Of course the shirt was too big and I had to take it to a tailor, who took in the sides for another $1. I hunted for a palm frond hat in Quiche but those workshops must be hidden well. I know they export fine palm hats to the United States but I learned two things: 1) No one wears palm hats in Quiche. 2) No one sells palm hats in Quiche. In fact, the Panama palm hats they offer in the bigger cities are often listed as being made in Ecuador. This is insane to me since Guatemala has the finest palm hats anywhere...but Guatemalans buy Ecuadorian palm hats and ship their own palm hats so Americans can wear Guatemalan palm hats. I gave up.