Now it has been written that, at the dawning of the Third Millennium, there was joy in the Land of Sasquatch. For, after years of famine and disappointment, the sports gods did smile upon the people.
   Behold, the Huskies won 11 games, and were victorious at the Bowl of Roses. And Ichiro the Quick and Edgar the Ancient led the lowly Mariners to a hundred victories and more, and they overthrew even the evil Yankees. And the Seahawks, led by Shawn the Sure-Footed, won many victories and were elevated to the Bowl of Bowls. And the lowly Sonics won, owing to the many heroic deeds of Gary the Glove.
     And the people of the Land of Sasquatch were most pleased, praising the shooters of basketballs and hitters of baseballs and carriers of footballs. And they built great Palaces iin honor of  their champions, and paid for them by levying hotel taxes upon innocent visitors.
    Now it came to pass, in the reign of Gregory the XL, that there arose a new master of the Sonics, and his name was Clay the Philistine. And the Philistine desired that the players of basketball should journey from the Land of Sasquatch unto the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey, which he believed to be somewhere in Oklahoma.
   But, yea verily, the Sonics had rendered a solemn oath to play many more years at the Basketball Palace, in the center of the Land of Sasquatch.
    So Clay said unto Gregory XL: “The Basketball Palace is no longer satisfactory, for the wealthy Pharisees demandeth to sit on high upon the skyboxes, but the Basketball Palace hath too few skyboxes. Therefore we beseech thee to construct a greater Basketball Palace.
    At this, Gregory the XL was confused. And he went before the people and asked of them: “Shall we build a greater Basketball Palace for Clay the Philistine?”
     And they people said with a loud voice: “Nay! A thousand times Nay! For verily we hath not yet paid for the old palace.”
   And so Gregory XL said unto the Philistine: There shall be no new palace.
   Now Clay the Philistine was greatly troubled. And he said unto Gregory XL: “Thou hast spurned by request. So therefore I shall take my players of basketball and travel through the wilderness to the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey.”
    But Gregory XL said: “Thou canst not violate thine oath.”
And the Philistine said: “I will make sacrifices and burnt offerings to the people, and thus satisfy my oath to play in the Basketball Palace.”
    But Gregory’s heart was hardened. And he said: “Send us not thy burnt offerings, but only thy players of basketball.”
    So the Philistine said unto him: “Therefore we shall journey to the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey. Let my players go!”
    But Gregory’s heart remained hardened, so that he spurned the Philistine’s entreaties.
    And so the Philistine became angrier so that he fell upon the ground and swooned. And he summoned his magicians for advice. And lo the Philistine held forth his staff, and waved it, and said onto the people of Sasquatch: “Woe upon thee, and especially upon thine sports palaces!”
   And it came to pass that a great cloud descended upon the Land of Sasquatch. And while the rest of the world became warmer, there were only dark clouds and cold rain across the land of Sasquatch, even unto the month of June.
   And Clay said: “Let my players go!” But Gregory’s heart remained hardened.
   So the Philistine waved his rod and caused a Plague of Jocks. And, lo, the Husky football coach bore false witness, so that he was banished into the wilderness. And the Husky players flunked beginning basketweaving, or were arrested for sundry crimes, and were disqualified so that the Huskies could not defeat the Beavers, much less the Trojans.
And the Philistine caused Shawn the Sure-footed to be injured, so that the Seahawks no longer journeyed to the Bowl of Bowls.
    And Jamie, He of the Slow Pitch, was banished to the Land of the Phillies. And Edgar the Ancient and Jay of the Bones retired to green pastures, so that only Ichiro the Quick remained. And the Mariners were victorious no more, but instead humiliated the people of the Land of Sasquatch.
   And the Players of Basketball were scattered asunder unto far-off lands, and were replaced by lesser players. And the people were humiliated further.
   Trouble and discontent spread across the Land of Sasquatch. And the people descended into the streets of the city and fell down to rend their T-shirts. And they erected a great burning altar among the sports palaces, and brought their Ms caps and Ichiro bobblehead dolls and Gary the Glove hooded sweatshirts, and cast them upon the fire, crying aloud: “Woe upon us, for these are indeed the darkest days ever in the Land of Sasquatch.”
    And they went unto the High Priest, and beseeched her to prevent the lesser players of basketball from journeying into the wilderness. And amongst the plaintiffs was one Sherman, the Poet, who said unto the High Priest: “We beseech thee to prevent our players of basketball from journeying to foreign lands. For unto us, the players of basketball are as Greek gods.”
    At this, the clouds parted, and a bright light shone from the Heavens. And the bright light produced a Very Deep Voice which said: “Greek Gods! What hath been wrought upon the Land of Sasquatch?”
   And the Very Deep Voice became deeper still, and said: “Verily I say unto you, people of Sasquatch: Get thee a life.”

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   Somewhere in the basement of the Seattle Aquarium, six Port Townsenders gather around a utilitarian saltwater tank, lift the top hatch, and peer into the watery blackness. “Hello, Harry,” somebody says. “ Come on out and see us.”
   A mottled-red tentacle slithers to the surface, up and out of the hatch. It keeps on coming, groping for something – food, or love, or just contact with another intelligent being. Another tentacle follows, finds a humanoid hand and wraps itself around it. The hand recoils, and the rubbery suckers break loose with a bubblewrap-like crackle. 
    “Meet Harry,” says our aquarium guide. “Harry Potter.”
    For 20 minutes or so, we stand around that inelegant tank, shaking hands with a slimey critter named for a wizard and equipped with enough limbs to greet us all at the same time.
    Harry, of course, is not just your everyday octopus. He is O. dofleini -- a giant Pacific Octopus – the world’s largest known octopus species. In addition, he is the aquarium’s octopus in waiting; soon he will be moved upstairs to the main octopus display tank, replacing the present occupant, who is about to be released into Elliott Bay. 
     Port Townsend is home to lots of giant Pacific octopus. They can be found living in the rock jetty at Point Hudson. A single shipwreck in Discovery Bay once proved to a rocky condominium for at least eight big guys. Steve Blazina, a Marrowstone Island diver with a longtime affinity for O.dofleini – recently found one living in a log just offshore from Swain’s ; that critter now resides at the Marine Science Center in Pousbo.
   But, for those without scuba tanks, the Seattle aquarium remains the best place around to get up close and personal. Staff biologist Roland Anderson has been caring for and studying local octopus for some 30 years, and he probably knows them better than anyone.
    At about 30 pounds, Harry is no monster. Giant Pacifics are rumored to exceed 100 pounds, measuring more than 12 feet from the tip of one tentacle to another. (Their smaller cousins, O. rubescens or "red octopuses," are teacup sized.) But most “giants” are more or less Harry’s size.
   Large or small, the octopus is a physiological masterpiece - eight tentacles, each of which can operate independently or in graceful synchrony with the others, all emerging from beneath a soft, hoodlike mantle topped by two eyes that seem to size up visitors with profound skepticism.
   Nothing else on earth moves quite like an octopus. Most of time, they move on the bottom, not so much walking as flowing and oozing, each tentacle doing its share of the work. But, when inspired to do so, they become jet-propelled, ingesting sea water and ejecting it at will through a flexible funnel, hurtling through the water like guided missiles.
   They are masters of disguise, instantly flashing from red to orange to brown to white – reflecting the whim or emotion of the moment, or the color of their environment. Unburdened by a skeleton, they are expert contortionists, squeezing through impossibly small spaces. They are strong enough to lift more than their own weight; if Harry’s tank weren’t latched, he would slither out and across the concrete, searching for an ocean.
    And they are very, very smart -- at least by invertebrate standards. Anderson has spent years studying and illustrating their intelligence.
   Octopuses are born, appropriately enough, under rocks, which is where mom deposits some 50,000 to 75,000 eggs, each the size of a grain of rice, and guards the nest four to six months. Once hatched, the newborn octopus floats with the currents, feeding on plankton, gaining as much as 2 percent of its body weight per day. Most will be gobbled up by larger creatures, but the fortunate few who reach maturity will live three to five years.
   As adults, they live in rocky dens and crevices, in shipwrecks or discarded tires or even beer bottles - any place they can squeeze themselves for protection from predators. Their strictly carnivorous diet soon graduates to crabs, clams and fish.
   Their feeding strategy is unique, Anderson says. Octopus have a rasping tongue, much like a small file. They may just pull a clam apart, or they may use that tongue to drill a pinhole in the shell of a clam and inject a saliva that kills the organism within seconds.
    Anderson has recently learned that they are smart enough to seek the easiest method available. But, given the opportunity, they relish their clams pre-processed – on the halfshell.
    The octopus has a parrotliike beak which, in combination with its venom, gives it a nasty bite. Anderson has never been bitten, but some of his colleagues have been. The toxin causes pain and swelling comparable with a bee sting, he says, and may leave a scar. Ironically, the smaller red octopus is more likely to bite than the giants, whom Anderson describes as "pussycats."
   They are somewhat transient creatures, moving from den to den, staying a month or so until it has depleted the local food supply. In some cases, octopuses will stay in their dens, wait for something tasty to swim by and snag it. Or they may venture out to hunt, gallumphing along the bottom on all eights until they find a crab and surround it. As adults, they use their jets only in emergencies - to chase meals or avoid becoming one.
   There is no reliable data on their populations, but Anderson is confident they’re faring well. Each year, he organizes an informal daylong survey, during which amateur divers are asked to look for octopus and report what they find. The results have been fairly consistent, he says – about 200 divers reporting a total of 70 or so octopus sightings. That suggests there are plenty of O. dofleini out there.
    This despite a rather Spartan sex life. They spawn just once, the male using its specialized tentacle to deliver a "spermatophore," or packet of sperm, to the female, who tucks it away for future use. When she's ready, she uses the sperm to fertilize her thousands of eggs and deposits them under a rock.
   That’s where the fun ends. After mating, the male "goes a little crazy," stops eating and abandons its den, which frees up space for his mate. Then he dies. The female hangs on, guards her brood for several months, manipulating the eggs, using her funnel to keep them clean. She, too, stops eating, her body shrinking until the eggs hatch. And then she dies as well.
    People have been fishing for octopus for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks simply lowered clay pots to known octopus habitat and left them there a day or so; when they hauled them back to the surface, the newly resident octopus became tomorrow's calamari. The strategy still works. Octopuses can be caught with a rubber tire tied to a rope.
    Anderson prefers to catch them by hand, scuba-diving into known "octopus holes" such as Neah Bay, Hood Canal, Tacoma Narrows. Collectors entice them out of their dens, grab a tentacle or two and stuff them into a plastic bag.
    Anderson has spent years figuring out how to keep them in captivity. They are comfortable in small spaces, and don’t seem to mind being handled, he says. And they’ll eat just about anything they are offered. But, if left in the main tank, an octopus will reject frozen herring and other handouts in favor of its live neighbors.
    But perhaps Anderson’s biggest discovery is that octopuses have emotions, and wear them on all eight sleeves. "Color changes seem to be linked to behavior," he says. "We're investigating how and why, but they seem to have a range of messages: `I'm ready to mate now,' or `Predator coming!' or "Leave me alone, I'm taking a nap."
    With its mammallike eyes and brains, the octopus exhibits un-invertebrate behaviors such as sleep. The journal Science recently reported Anderson's research on octopus "play." Each of eight octopuses was provided with a white pill bottle. Some ignored it. Some used their funnels to blow it away. Still others shot it around the tank, retrieved it, and shot it again, and again. Anderson sees this as "repetitive, long-term behavior with no apparent function - except that it feels good, which is the definition of `play.' " 
    Maybe that’s what Harry had on his mind the other day when he reached out and touched his Port Townsend visitors.

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            Nobody killed the electric car. They all got fed up with the traffic in cities like Seattle and moved to Port Townsend, at Puget Sound's entrance, where they are living happily ever after, humming up and down Water Street, doing what cars are supposed to do..     This spring,  a small fleet was parked fender-to-fender at the foot of the high school football scoreboard for an impromptu electric car convention – ten of them, which took about the same space as a bicycle rack. But that was still more electric cars in one place than most people have ever seen.

            It was an odd display of colorful, teardrop-shaped new models and local conversions, all designed to get you from A to B without emitting the slightest whiff of carbon dioxide.    Judging by the buzz on the football field, local drivers were charged by the idea. The state reports 26 electric cars registered in the Port Townsend neighborhood. That’s one for every 1,100 people, compared to 1 per 7,600 statewide and 1 per 5,700 in Seattle.     That’s an impressive statistic for a small town, given that those little cars start at $12,000,  and can easily cost $30,000 or more.  

            But Port Townsend roads and driving distances lend themselves to electric cars.  Steve Evans, a former Californian who recently bought his second-hand GEM (Global Electric Motors),  drove it down to the recent gathering. “We already use it to run most of our errands,” he said. Another owner observed that, compared to conventional cars, her electric is “ a little rattley-bang… But you adjust your expectations.”

            That means: Expect to drive slower, over shorter distances. You will not be taking your electric onto freeways. And you won’t be driving it to Seattle.  But, then again, the car doesn't want to go there anyway.

            This, however, will change, says Steve Mayeda, of MC Electric Vehicles in Seattle, who trailered two of his electric cars to Port Townsend for the gathering.

            The key factor is batteries.   Electric cars are fueled by stored electricity, and at present that means banks of deep-cycle lead batteries not unlike the battery in your conventional car.   Instead of refueling, drivers must recharge those batteries by plugging them into household power circuits.  To run a tiny car at about 35 mph and up to 50 miles between plug-ins requires at least six conventional batteries, which are stored behind and under the seats.   To travel further, you have to add more heavy batteries, which increases the vehicle weight, which gobbles still more power, and so forth. And there lies the rub.

            But rising gas prices and environmental awareness have recharged efforts to invent a new battery that can store more energy in a smaller, lighter package, Mayeda says. “We’re on the verge of that breakthrough.”    The result could be a technological leap comparable with the development of lithium batteries for cellular phones, which were virtually inconceivable a generation ago.

            Meanwhile, Mayeda finds himself adjusting the expectations of prospective buyers.        “Guarantee me that this car will make it to Seattle and back, and I’ll buy one,” said one woman as she inspected one of his electric models.

            “It won’t,” Mayeda responded. “Maybe in a couple of years. But not now.”

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   Forty years ago today, I spent the day on a packed airliner over the Atlantic, bound from Glasgow to New York’s John F Kennedy Airport.
    The world was stumbling through a turbulent year. During my year’s study at Edinburgh University, I had glimpsed my society from abroad. I’d watched the news clips of Martin Luther King’s assassination, and of the rioting that followed. I’d watched the Johnson Administration drawn ever deeper into a war that made no sense. My British friends were astounded that America in the 20th century seemed determined to repeat each and every mistake that the British had made in the 19th.
    For these and other reasons, I had mixed feelings about coming home. When we landed at JFK and filed off the airplane, the airport was strangely silent, funereal. Passengers and airline employees wept openly. We soon learned the reason.
    While we were in flight, Robert F. Kennedy had been shot in Los Angeles.
    Less than five years after the death of John Kennedy, and just weeks after the shooting of Martin Luther King Jr., the nation had lost another young voice of promise and hope. And Bobby, with his tousled hair and weathered smile, had seemed the greatest promise of them all.
     Dazed by the news, I wandered into a coffee shop and stopped at the door to gawk at the back of a New York cop, sitting at the counter, his service revolver hanging in its holster. During my year in the UK, where handguns are banned and shootings are rare, my only experience with guns was in museums.
     But now I was home.
     At first, the murder felt like another shot fired by that same evil, rightwing conspiracy that killed King and JFK. But the conspiracy theories never worked. Like his brother, Bobby Kennedy was killed by a young wacko with a gun.
    So it became a commentary on guns. How can a society continue to operate while allowing crazy people to carry loaded weapons designed only to kill other people? Yet, even then, I was aware that we are not Olde England, that we are shaped by revolution and the mythology of the Wild West, and that you can’t blithely ban handguns unless you have a practical way to deal with the countless millions already in circulation; and nobody knows how to do that.
   So, if we’ll never know why Bobby Kennedy was killed, we can still ask: What if he had not been? What if Sirhan Sirhan had decided on that fateful day to watch the speech on TV, or to take a day at the beach?
    Given the tight margin in the fall of 1968,, Kennedy probably would have been nominated and elected in November. There would have been no President Nixon, no Spiro Agnew, no Watergate plumbers.
     We can never know what Kennedy would have done with the office. We assume he would have got the nation out of Southeast Asia; but we also know that Bobby had been a staunch cold warrior who worried about Communist China’s influence in the region. To some degree, he had helped get us into Vietnam, making it far more difficult to pull us out.
    I would like to believe he would have pursued racial segregation and women’s rights and universal health insurance. But Bobby’s politics had been shifting, so who knows?
      Perhaps the lesson to be drawn this remarkable week, as a transcendent Barack Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee for President, is that elections matter. Forty years ago, it mattered a great deal that Bobby Kennedy was not elected President, and that Richard Nixon was.
    This year, nobody knows what Obama or John McCain would do in the White House. But it still matters which of them is elected. In 2008, much like 1968, the nation yearns to extricate itself from an overseas war and focus on what’s happening at home. Wherever we sit on the ideological spectrum, we yearn for new vision and direction. For many, Obama seems to offer the same charisma and intelligence and eloquence that RFK promised in ’68.
   And, as a nation, we are quietly, desperately afraid we will squander the opportunity.

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   Out on Mystery Bay, the nautical small talk usually revolves around winds and waves and tidal currents – the crucial factors to spending a day on Puget Sound.
   These days, a new topic has been added to the mix – fecal coliforms. And these microscopic bacteria, usually associated with four-letter words, could become the most significant maritime variable of all.
   Mystery Bay is the pastoral cove on Marrowstone Island, tucked deep in Kilisut Harbor. It has to be one of the lovelier bays in the area, surrounded by treed shores and broad oyster beds. In recent years, it’s also become a popular, year-round anchorage, home to dozens of pleasure craft whose owners have fled the rising moorage rates in Port Townsend.
    And thereby hangs our tale. State officials who regularly test the water quality in Mystery Bay and other shellfish areas recently downgraded the bay from “approved” to “conditionally approved” for shellfish.
    What this means is that the Department of Health is concerned that the number of boats will cause an increase in fecal coliform counts around the bay. And this, in turn, could affect the shellfish, including the family-owned Marrowstone Island Shellfish Co, which owns and leases tidelands in the area.
   Boatowners are worried. Most keep their boats attached to buoys which may or may not have up-to-date state and county permits, on tidelands managed by the state Department of Natural Resources. If they get kicked out, it’s not at all clear where else they could go.
   “This is ridiculous,’ grumbles one boat-owner who does not want to be identified, and who keeps his sailboat on a Mystery Bay buoy. “ I don’t know of anybody who is dumping their waste into the bay. This isn’t a problem.” 
    He’s right. State health reports  make it clear that there is no fecal coliform problem in Mystery Bay. The state regularly tests the water at five stations in the bay and the results range from 1.7 to 33 bacteria per 100 mililiters. The average count is just two critters per 100 ml -- well below the state imposed limit. It is as good or better than test results from Port Townsend Bay, or even from the famous oyster beds down in Quilcene Bay.
   All five stations in Mystery Bay meet the state standard, and the station considered most suspect – Mystery Bay State Park – was among the cleanest.
   So what’s the beef?
    “It’s not about fecal coliforms,” says Al Scalf, of Jefferson County Community Development. “It’s about too many boats.”
    State officials acknowledged this. Any place where ten or more boats are gathered together must be considered a “marina.” When I checked last week, there were about 45 boats of every size and shape scattered across Mystery Bay, and many of them near the dock at the state park, the area that state officials are watching closely.
     The conditional approval is based on “the potential for discharge from vessels,” according to Scott Berbells of the state Department of Health. If people start dumping their waste, the bacteria could begin to accumulate in local shellfish, with dire consequences.
    But people don’t dump their sewage in the bay, my friend insists. If they use their onboard head, they discharge the sewage at a pumpout station at the park. No problemo.
    Still, the flap become the subject of a meeting involving four different government agencies, shellfish growers and local Native American tribes who have shellfish rights. “We’re trying to come up with a plan,” says Scalf.
    State officials reiterated their concern that all those boats could create a pollution problem. OK, but so far they haven’t, local officials argued. And evicting the boats would create major problems in a region where boat moorage is scarce and expensive. Kick them out of Mystery Bay, and some of these boatowners might find something new. But why put them through all that if there is no problem?
   Mystery Bay’s little predicament appears to be much ado about nothing. But it is symptomatic of the broader challenge of restoring and protecting Puget Sound. Virtually everybody here understands that our inland sea is in trouble, and most are willing to spend whatever is necessary to fix it.
    But what exactly is the problem, and what can we do about it? I’ve been writing about these things for three decades, and every few years the conventional wisdom changes. At one time or another, it has been a problem of overfishing, or of suburban sprawl, or of urban sewage, or industrial wastes, or rural septic tanks, or of too much asphalt, or not enough eelgrass. It’s probably safe to say it’s all of the above, but that doesn’t help shape a smart set of solutions.
     In September, we’ll start over when the new Puget Sound Partnership issues its recommendations for a new strategy. Who knows what they’ll ask for? 
   But here’s some free advice. If you want to preserve Puget Sound, start by NOT wasting time and energy attacking water quality problems that don’t exist.

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