Back to looking askance -- viewing with disapproval, suspicion or distrust. These days one looks askance most of the time. Let's take an issue local to where I live near Mount Shasta in far north California. Nestlé, the largest food and beverage corporation in the world, based in Switzerland, sent representatives to a small rural special district near here to negotiate for exclusive rights to the water flowing from a spring within the jurisdiction. The little special district had once been a thriving logging and mill company town, but was now in decline, relying on vacation home building and tourism. When Nestlé arrived with the promise of jobs and money, the district manager and his local board of directors were eager to make a deal. They were so eager that they neglected to involve the residents of the district and the rest of the county. Before many people knew it, there was a contract. Nestlé would get 521,000,000 gallons of rare spring water a year for at most $400,000 per annum. That works out to about seven tenths of a cent a gallon. Nestlé's Arrowhead spring water sells retail for about $2.50 a gallon. It should be a profitable operation. Don't forget the jobs. There might be as many as 100 in a one million square foot, fully automated plant. One might ask, how are they going to transport those millions of gallons of water to market? The plan is to use 300 big rigs a day on a twelve mile stretch of two lane mountain highway already carrying lots of logging trucks and RVs. It's enough to make one Look Askance, and a judge did. He threw out the contract until an environmental impact review and report can be completed. I'll keep you posted.

It's unfortunate that Blogger does not work well with Apple's Safari browser. Spell check doesn't function and trying to upload a photo crashes Safari. But I must say that "Blog This" works well for just posting text such I'm doing now.

Wow! It was way back in aught three that I started my blogging. Who knows what influence I might have by now if I'd kept it up. Oh well, other things were accomplished. What pulled me back into blogging was a new dad started posting comments about his experience leading up to fatherhood and now that his daughter -- my grand daughter -- has arrived he continues to comment on this exciting new experience. So, thanks, Bob & Cheri for Samantha and for rekindling my long dormant desire to Look Askance at the world and make comments about what I see.