Horses, Horses,

One never knows what one can find driving in the country but the sweet scene below is no surprise...

Then again, driving to the strip mall can also be a sweet surprise...

Pushing Air

The hot weather arrived a few days ago. We will still have days of moderate or temperate weather, but the hot and humid days will return again and again until they arrive to stay.  Every year I hold off turning on the air-conditioner until June 1 if I can.  I live in the middle south and our summers are always hot and humid for at least two months.  With global climate change, it will be for three months (or more) in the years to come.

I closed my windows to create my climate cave shutting out all the sounds from outdoors.  I lose the bird and animal sounds and the sound of the wind pushing through the fat green leaves, but I do not mind closing out the teenage girl's loud radio that sits on her dock across the river every weekend.  I do not mind missing the sound of the lawn mowers and speed boats and barking dogs.   I do not mind muffling the loud museum concert that is being held just two miles away in the outdoor garden that I help weed!  I live in the woods where there should be little sound, but the water is a perfect surface for carrying the abundance of man-made noise on weekends.

Once the AC is on, we become spoiled.  We go outside to work or shop or visit early in the day until the sweat drips from our brows and nose and then we quickly retreat to the cool space of this house and rarely go out again.  We tend to hide and find indoor things to do in the middle of the day.  We get better about combining errands.

I find that I must also remember to bring sweaters to restaurants and movie theaters and museums because they crank up the AC much higher than I do.  I am always amazed at the way stores in the beautiful climate of Hawaii find it necessary to create rooms like refrigerators for shopping.

When I flipped the switch this year I was even more aware of how big a decision this was.  Even with zoned cooling, I am burning fossil fuels to heat rooms with high ceilings that I rarely use.  I am pushing artificially cooled air down hallways and into upstairs bedrooms.  What a luxury to burn this fossil fuel while people all over the world deal with the climate into which they were born, without AC!  Here in the mid-south people used to quit housework early and sit on porches under fans and pant until the sun set and they could move once again.  What a luxury to be able to afford this expense...for now.  I cannot help but think we as a society in North America are at the peak of of our life style.  I cannot help but think generations to follow will have many compromises to make in how they live their lives that would surprise us if we were here 40 years from now.

Today

 

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!  ~Maya Angelou

Indexing This blog

I rarely look at my stats from Blogger since that is not my motivation for writing, but the other day I was curious as to the searches that lead to this blog...

famous russian drawings--4
osprey feather--3
zen--7
bad karma stories--6
bob marley hold hands with president--2
chinese help americans during wwii--2
how does people dress in jamaica--2
how much is scrap metal worth in michigan--2
i think too far ahead--2
osprey feathers--10
fiddle and faddle photos--8

These searches were entered over the past month I think.  Anyway, while some of these are really nice, and others are very confusing,  I clearly need to do a better job in wording my titles and in creating subject labels for my posts!

Yesterday we took a drive to the north part of the county and I captured some lovely scenery.  Lets see what descriptions I can give these to get more interesting hits!

This is the historic George Peters house and I could find absolutely nothing on this house on the Internet.  Guess I will have to look around locally!

This is why the chicken crossed the road, because this was on the exact opposite side.  The beauty captured me so I almost walked into an oncoming car on this lonely stretch of road.

Speaking of chickens crossing the road...we were weren't we?... this was a surprise bird that was crossing the road!

He is so stunning that he could stop traffic anywhere!  (Now I am waiting for Purdue hits or maybe KFC--that is an inside U.S. joke.)

Procrastination

This is such a repetitive theme with my blog that I should start a separate blog devoted totally to how creative or stubborn I can become in putting things off.  (Yes, I know I ended that sentence with a preposition.)  Many of these tasks are so easy, I just do not understand why I set them aside until they create sour thoughts when I look at my lists and they continue to sit at the top of a long list with nary a line through them.  Yes, I am a list maker, but that does not mean I regularly accomplish all on my list.  Some of the items I put on the list because I am a masochist, surely.

Cleaning the house items get ticked off cleanly and rapidly.  Bill paying, gardening chores, shopping items are all routinely completed.  BUT, answering invitations (those rare items) to weddings, graduations, and dinners get put off until the very last minute whether I am saying yes or no.  What is up with that?  Why do I find these so hard to complete?

Returning phone calls get postponed over returning emails and FB comments every time.

AND, of course, anything to do with exercise can be postponed until hell freezes over if my lack of guilt allows.  I have gone through periods of regular exercise activities...free weights, elliptical walking, aerobics tapes (Just the fact that I use the word tapes gives you a clue to how long ago I did that!) and yoga.  I felt so good after doing these each and every time.  But this period is easily interrupted by a trip, house guests, and most recently my ankle injury.  I still do lots of woods walking, but that is the exercise of last resort.  That is the exercise that people brag about...and it really is not exercise.  Admit it.  Do you work up a sweat?  Do you have sore muscles that need to be stretched at the end?  See, it is not exercise.  It is what we do...just like eating.

I still have a stiff ankle now and again and I readily use this as an excuse, a weak excuse, to avoid exercise.  I was going to start an exercise routine May 1.  I promised myself.  But then one day it rained and the next day the sun was shining.  OMG it is May 22 already!  Yesterday I ran after two rabbits that were in my flower bed and was shocked to find how strange and stiff running felt!

I absolutely must get off this pillow of fat on which I sit...after my second cup of coffee.

Tail End of the City

This famous city was surprisingly clean and non-odoriferous.  At least not lots of bad odors.  Cleaning up car emissions over the years has improved the air in cities everywhere.  There was some noise due to car honking but around Central Park the most obvious noise was bird song!  Birds sing louder in cities and urban areas because they are competing with all the ambient noise.  The sidewalks and street gutters were also clean for such a large and busy city.   I felt very safe almost anywhere I went and we even walked all the way back after our evening dinner without incident.  We passed the Today Show studio and noticed it was directly across the street from a nice bakery.  We made a note to head that way in the morning for breakfast as it would be Sunday and the studio should not be open and therefore not much competition for breakfast.

But as they (whomever they are) say...the best laid plans are easily thwarted.  We got up bright and early and headed out only to discover that all the streets within two blocks of that bakery were blocked off.  When we asked if we could head to the bakery a young woman in jeans that were so tight they must stop circulation, barely looked up from her I-phone and said she was sorry but they had just flipped a car.  "They" we later learned was the movie crew who were filming  The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller.  My daughter sighed and then said...well he is not exactly eye candy, and thus we walked on trying on her phone to find another bakery, and we did.  We were in New York, after all.  Below is one of the movie trucks although I am sure they have some special fancy name for them like grip wagon.

After breakfast we headed out to see the Frick Gallery which had been suggested by blogger guy, Stephen, The Chubby Chatterbox.  This was a perfect suggestion on Stephen's part as it was within walking distance, and I had never heard of it, and it ended up being a gorgeous collection of artwork by the masters.  We were surprised to see the beginning of a line 30 minutes before the museum opened and once inside we learned this was a donation Sunday.  Pay what you want!  I treated my daughter and I and paid the full price because I can afford it and it is a good cause.

The museum is a mansion on Central Park once owned by Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919).   I could not take pictures inside, but you can read all about it here.  At the end of this tour we headed out for lunch and found a street-side deli and had sandwiches and were most incorruptible by avoiding all the delicious bakery items in the case by the door.

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to street walking and shopping.  Daughter wanted to supplement her work wardrobe and I actually found a very few things that fit me.  Everyone is size 0 to 4 in those shops!  Once I tried on the Large size I actually found something that fit!  Those skinny Europeans do not play fair.

We then enjoyed the architecture of the city before catching our train back home.  While there was no time for a show or play, there is always time for another trip in the future.

City Life Part II

My trip to the city was paid for by my daughter. For those who wondered where I stayed, it was at the Marriott in Mid-town and my daughter used her many points to pay for the overnight bill. My daughter figures that we walked an average of 20 blocks each day...but I think it must have been more. My ankle did not give me pain although my daughter showed due concern. My issue was just the old joints and muscles that reminded me I must slow down. Actually, if I kept walking I was fine.  Once we sat for an extensive time to rest on a Central Park bench both on the Saturday and the Sunday, moving again was a real challenge. Those of you who are my age realize how your joints fill with lactic acid when you have moved extensively and then refuse to move smoothly after extensive rest until you have forced the walk for another 10 minutes through the stiffness and pain and finally you return to the normal walking mode.

We paid for taxies as the day progressed and the deadines to be somewhere else were closing in on us, and these came to an average of about $8.00 each time.

The very first visit we made was to the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art because I have been to N.Y. City only twice and never to this museum.  Most of my relatives are not into museums and I have given in to their interests on prior trips.  But Mother's Day was mine!  We saw only a tiny part of this HUGE museum.  We saw the Egyptian special exhibit which was not nearly as romantic or exotic or dusty as when I wandered the museum in Cairo many years ago.   But it was very informative.

Then we visited the Dutch gallery, saw some Vermeer, and of course, Rembrandt.  Then a short walk to see the Degas collection.  With over two million works housed here there were so many artists we missed, but we had the audio and those paintings that we actually studied were rich in audio description.  For lunch we ate at the museum 'wine bar" and had just a salad and wine. The waiting area was filled with shadows and light and created a feeling of magic as if stepping back in time.

We waited in the lunch line next to an elderly woman who was alone and nicely dressed.  We got to talking and she explained that she lived near the museum and came often.  When I perused the entire collection in the brochure I realized she could come every day for years and years and never really catch up.  She must have had lots of money because living off of Central Park is not for the middle class and for a brief time I was envious.

After lunch, my daughter wanted to peruse the flea market at Hell's Kitchen and this was certainly a dramatic change from the atmosphere at the Met.  It was like going from the Palace to the market place in a medieval city.  She likes to look at antique costume jewelry.  There was lots in the way of junky treasures sitting on folding tables under plastic tents, and even those old pieces that were most intersting could be priced over a hundred dollars unless you were a good bargainer.  We looked at clothing, purses, hats, kitchen ware, lamps, 'antique' books, and junk without definition.  I thought about those men and women who sat each day selling this stuff and wondered if, indeed, it supplemented their disability or social security income.  I also thought about the many prior owners of all of this stuff.  Had they passed on and their relatives sold this stuff or did they sell it because they needed the money?  Or was this stuff found in dumpsters along the streets of New York?  We did not buy anything.

This flea market was in sharp contrast to the antique store on 5th Avenue that we had walked through.  Every piece in the antique store was thousands of dollars even though it was at a marked down price because of the store's closing.  I looked at the jewelry and mused (out loud) about what had occurred to force the owners to sell their diamonds and emeralds and rubies and works of art.  The nephew (mentioned in the prior post) chuckled and told me not to be concerned.  Most of these people were trading up for larger pieces of jewelry he said.  I keep forgetting about the 1%.  I am so out of orbit with these folks!

We ate that evening at A Voce – the Columbia location, a new Italian restaurant that had a write up in our hotel's brochure as one of the top ten new restaurants in the area.  We were impressed because there are hundreds of high end restaurants in the area to write about.  Alas, I was disappointed in the food.  Al dente was too chewy and nothing was exceptional in my estimation, other than an exceptional 'by the glass' wine list.  Neither of us finished our expensive meals, but I did not complain as this was my treat from daughter.

Sunday's activities in the next post...so you can skip this blog for a while if following someone's boring travel is not to your tastes.

Decompression

I find it more noticeable the changes in feelings that I have when returning home from a very different place than I am used to.  I no longer adjust with slippery ease.  New York City (and the mid-town Manhattan area where I stayed) is a totally different planet than that in my woods where I live. The rigid buildings standing high and imposing block all but a few hours of sunshine.  When you think about all the people and all the activities taking place just above your head it is very imposing.  Cars and taxis are moving to "important" places constantly.  I also saw my share of stretch limos and a Rolls Royce or two...probably paid for in some strategic way by my tax payments!  I think the magic of this place is the compression of all of humanity in one place...rich, poor, lucky, unlucky, smart, not-so-smart, old and young.

Some streets are so full of tourists (everyone else is in in their offices working hard paying for the high rent on the closet where they live) that you can barely pass.  We all seem to adjust as we cross streets, avoid hot coffee and limp cigarettes.  I saw Park Avenue matrons in spring suits walking tiny whippet dogs.  I saw a transvestite or two.  Various gay guys dressed so carefully casual.  Lots of families with strollers.  Mothers and sons and daughters carrying bouquets and lost in the love of their mom on Mother's Day.  The young man below was delivering Mother's Day bouquets to women who lived overlooking Central Park!

I saw many people from other countries speaking in languages I did not recognize and wearing clothing styles that were clearly European.  I saw a few women in Burkas and a few nuns in traditional dress.  I also viewed several wealthy Asians enjoying their money spending vacation.  Many typical New Yorkers of every ethnicity working the streets, the cabs, the hotel lobbies, the storefronts with resigned looks on their faces accepting another day, and a few college age couples enjoying spring.  People watching is the best past time in New York.  Every human phenom on the planet is there.  I did not see any celebrities but I am sure some ran past me in sweaty exercise gear.  My daughter and I sat for a few hours on a Central Park bench resting my weary feet and I was fascinated!  As we people-watched we visited with a new grandfather who was touring with his daughter and her new born grandchild from Boston...the conversation was interspersed with that musical accent that Bostonian' s have.

I soon learned that you cannot walk more than two blocks before you encounter either building, sidewalk, or street construction.  This city is used to pieces!  But I did find that all the locals whether waiting on me or standing in line waiting with me were extremely polite and helpful.  I did not get the finger once, although I did have to be aggressive with a taxi that wanted to drive where I was walking once!! "Hey, I am walking here!"

We shopped an antique store that was closing due to retirement of the owner.  I talked to his nephew (my age) who explained his uncle was 88 and retiring to his horse ranch in Ocala, Florida next door to John Travolta.  It appears they share an airplane runway!  I hope he lives a long time.

A few places including one on the famous 5th Avenue were empty and looking for tenants.

I cannot even begin to think how expensive the rental on this retail space would be...but as the ad tells you...YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT.  And in New York, if you have to ask...you cannot afford it.  More next post.

New YAWK! New YAWK!

Off to New YAWK city for a girlie weekend with my daughter. She had planned on taking me to the photography museum when she made train reservations several months ago and we now find it is closed for several weeks! She is more disappointed than I because I just love her to death and want to spend time with her.
So some window shopping and maybe the Metropolitan Museum and certainly some eating!  No posting for a while, but maybe some New York photos later.

Standards

As you begin to read this, please realize this is not a 'political' post. Many of my American readers will remember Governor Romney's comment where he said he "liked to fire people."  Of course, the Democrats ran with that statement and used it ad nauseum to show how distant he was from the common man.  Those with common sense realize that Mr. Romney did not mean he liked to fire people...he does not have the Donald Trump personality which gets off on making people smaller.  Mr. Romney meant he had no resistance in firing people he hired who did not meet the standards he expected when he hired them. 

This might be a clue why he and I are different in fair and honest ways.  Recently we hired a small landscape company run by a 'good old boy' to tackle our lawn every other week.  Hubby likes to mow for the exercise, but sometimes it gets away from him if he has to travel or we get busy, so I talked him into hiring this young man and his crew.  They did a good job last year and their weed-eating saved me lots of time and it looked great!

This year we signed a new contract with them.  I read it carefully and since they had listed an agreement to mow into November I crossed that out and said only through October.  They showed up the second week of April and did a very nice job.  They are quick and the three of them race through our yard in an hour.  The next time they were supposed to be here they did not show.  The days passed and the lawn got high and the weeds went to seed heads!  I am so clearly a liberal because I thought perhaps they did not really want our contract and they had better money makers on their list.  (Romney would have called and fired them then and there.)  Hubby finally called and he got some whiney excuse from the young man that they had not seen the grass growing much in their area and so did not head to our yard.

Well, when they did show up 6 days LATE, the young man admitted that he had taken on a large mulching contract in the early spring and had fallen way behind!  He and hubby talked about how to run an effective business and how to make sure you communicate with your customers.  The young man apologized and admitted he had been completely at fault and said that he did not want to lose us as a customer.  He had looked so different, he had changed his eating habits and lost 60 pounds, which made us even more supportive of his efforts.

We are dyed in the wool liberals, because we are giving them another chance.  They are due in two days...we will see.

Your Visions

In my prior post I wanted to see what my readers thought of as personal peace and beauty.  I also wanted to see how similar we might all be in our visions.  I thank those of you who were brave and honest enough to post an answer.  My little mental picture is written below.  I wrote the description before I posted the prior post and read your answers for an honest comparison.  It is interesting to see how similar many of us are in our need for water which I am sure psychologists will say has something to do with our mother's womb.  Most of us also needed the outdoors, and some of us our loved ones.  Granny was the adventurer and just wanted to be out and about and Peruby and Gigihawaii went back in time to a magic moment.

My vision:
The waters are like a mirror and it is end of a warm and sunny day.  Everything is now being bathed with golden and peachy light.  I see a friend returning in a kayak at the mouth of the river waving and I wave back.  I see another friend tacking his sailboat one last time into his dock.  I hear my grandchildren laughing and running down the hill to join me at the dock in watching the sunset with their parents talking quietly behind.  Birds are still singing but beginning to sing more calmly as they tuck in.  Hubby joins me and brings an iced tea for him and a glass of white wine for me.  We watch the shorebirds begin their flight away to safer areas for the night.  (I also have a nice little mutt that sits at my feet adoringly which is not true in real life.)

A Little Experiment

Imagine you are in a room of diverse people who are there to learn how to prioritize their goals, how to evaluate issues and how to reduce stress.  The instructor asks each person to close their eyes and to describe a scene (real or imagined) that is their favorite scene or would be a favorite situation if they could be there.  What would you describe?

Vanity

There are more days lately when I ponder at the strange hands that have attached themselves to my arms.  The skin has thinned around the bones arteries and tendons, and while they do not look claw-like, they are no longer smooth and plump.  They are spotted with liver spots...what an ugly term!  The spots clearly appear on the top half of my hand that would be most exposed to the sun over the decades I have lived on this earth.  They appeared gently a few years ago and now they have settled in and darkened to a nice dotted tan.

I remember once shopping with my mother-in-law before her dementia took her personality away.  She was looking for a Porcelana cream that was purported to remove age spots.  I, without any sensitivity, thought it was a foolish project, but politely did not say that out loud and helped find the magic potion.  She was in her 80's.  I was thinking that of course she would have liver spots and she should just accept that!  Why would anyone have any vanity left when they reached their 80's?

Now, in my mid-sixties I realize that a little vanity is healthy and an example of how we hope to live longer and to be admired a little longer.  That is only human nature and not a foolish project trying to look younger and healthier.  I accept the fact that only major surgery would achieve any erasing of the years in my case.  A jar of cream isn't going to do anything much but empty my pocket book, but creams for softer skin, gentle coloring for gray hair, careful purchase of bright and stylish clothes that flatter (hide) the gravity prone figure are all acceptable moves.  Even teeth whitening makes one look healthier if it can be afforded. 

I realize that who I am in my heart is the most important trait I have.  I also have learned in old age that most of society will not even notice I am in the room unless I speak out boldly to demand attention.  But a little gilding of the aging lily is not such a bad thing, as long as it does not become a blind obsession attached to unrealistic expectations..

Only Me

As I have written before, I keep this blog site somewhat anonymous. It is mostly for my own freedom of thought. I do not have to second guess what I will write and how it may affect those of an opposite political persuasion, different spiritual path, or those who are related to me and are just sadly ignorant.

Therefore, on this blog I can admit that I am somewhat a ghost of myself.  I was taking photos on the deck with my point and shoot trying to determine what settings would help bring depth to the over the top pink on my geranium blossoms when I noticed that  I had forgotten to zoom and had instead taken a picture of myself!  So for those of you curious as to kind of -  sort of - what I look like, this photo above is for you.

Photography and "photoshopy" has been taking up a great deal of my time.  Other than bill paying, I spend more time at the computer trying to sort through and delete hundreds of photos that would have been considered good by me when I started taking pictures more seriously about 5 years ago.  Now I have enough experience to see how bad I am and how much I depend on post processing.  Purists will turn up their noses at me, but I have over 6 decades on this planet and no longer care what others think!

Above is an un-retouched photo of my pink columbine.  Taken with a telephoto to give it that bokeh effect.  It has spots in the back ground not yet removed and a distracting leaf in the lower right.

Above is the same photo with a different texture in the background and with the contrast and hue enhanced.  Both have been reduced in pixel size so they do not fully capture the changes.  What do you think anyway?

Not a Luddite

I am married to a man who is not a Luddite.  He understands the importance of technology to improve accuracy, speed processes, make discoveries, etc.  He does not fear technology, but he does not really embrace it either.  For years I have had to help him with his computers.  He could never understand the concept of menus and folders and lost every download.  He has come a little way from that.

He is an outdoors type.  Loves to garden, fish, birdwatch, hike, and explore.  But this love has caused him to destroy and/or lose about 8 mobile phones over the last 10 years.  The most recent he bought this past year and was told it had a gorilla case.  Well, he cracked the screen not once but twice!  So the other day he comes home with a smart phone at some bargain price, of course.  My husband has little sales resistance.

Smart phone?  Is this like Adult movies?  Reality television?  Fat free?  Free lunch?  Microsoft Works?  Wireless Cable?

The phone may be smart, but the user also has to be smarter.  The problem is that my husband has had this phone for about 5 days and it is a nightmare.  It took him the entire day to figure out how to answer the phone and make calls.  It has taken 5 days and he finds the icon with the videos that show him how to use the phone, except the videos go too fast for him to understand them!  I have avoided the phone entirely in self-defense, but picked it up off the table today and asked what the various portholes were on the back.  He said he didn't know and then he picked it up and looked at them closely and said one was the camera lens, the other was the camera flash and the long one on top was the earphone and the little hole on the bottom was the microphone.  I held it to my head to test the length of the microphone and earpiece for my head.  He then inhaled sharply and said,  "Ah, maybe one of my problems with my calls is that I have been holding the phone screen side to my face when making calls!  I have been having trouble hearing and they have been having trouble hearing me."  OMG!!!!

Yesterday his 'business' partner who has been lobbying for him to get a smart phone for over a year suggested that he download an APP that allows business conferences among individuals and groups.  This project kept him busy most of the afternoon.  Seems he had downloaded it dozens of times, but couldn't find it.  The download folder is a fairly new concept to him.

This is a man who is very smart.  He has several graduate degrees in difficult subjects, has been a fast enough thinker to actually have saved two lives, and has been able to keep track of major concepts when running large meetings.  But he is also the guy who back in the late 1980's asked a colleague how a 'virus' could live in a computer?  He asked if it had found a way to live off the plastic.  He is also a person who finds details chaotic and a bother.

I will stick to my old fashioned Razor phone which was all the rage almost a decade ago!  I can rest assured that it is not smarter than me.

Those Good Old Guys

Many arguments regarding changes and laws proposed this past few years in Congress have repeatedly been held against the yardstick of the Constitution and measured against what some think our legislators think the founding fathers wanted.  People such as Sarah Palin frequently draw upon the ideas and ideals of our founding fathers (on her part usually inaccurately) for argumentative support for their arguments.  I personally think Bush was far more cavalier with our constitution than Obama could ever be.

The latest drama has been the Supreme Court case on the mandate for universal health care.  It was argued so poorly by the White House representatives that I do fear for its survival. Our current President was not the first to propose universal health care.  Before him, key Republicans in Congress endorsed it in 1993, the Heritage Foundation promoted it in 1990 and in 1973, Richard Nixon even considered it.

But most recently I have been surprised to learn that such mandates are even older.  It might surprise Americans to learn that our forefathers mandated citizens to purchase weapons for each family.  They also mandated that certain citizens must purchase health insurance!


For more information on our forefathers vision you can read here or here.

Never Too Old to Learn Something New

I have once again conned my husband into following me down the path on a new project. We are both taking a class on birding given at the local community college. There are only 5 evening classes and the teacher is a milk-toast (and I say this in the nicest of descriptions) of a little man who actually reminds me of my brother (a former teacher). Our teacher has experience banding birds and studying birds, but his background must be in something else currently.  

Only four students arrived the first evening and one of those students was his wife, so I am letting you know that there are only three students, really, with hubby and I making up two-thirds of the bulk of the discussion. Small town college stuff! The class has, therefore, become an informal meet-up allowing all of us to share our anecdotes to enhance the discussion as it moves along.  We also discovered that the teacher works just up the road from us on a nearby private preserve of several dozen acres.  We now have access to a new nearby area for exploration, within walking distance.

I am a perpetual student and love taking classes if they are more than just philosophical improve your life or spiritual growth stuff.   It has to be something more practical like science, history, literature or art.  I always did love school and my intellectual curiosity has been my passion since I was a child. I loved school.  My husband is most generous to come along on this because he has a PhD in zoology and probably could teach the class himself with a little planning. And yet after the first class and a quick field trip we both have learned to listen better when bird watching and have learned the songs of the little flycatcher and the ovenbird among others. AND most importantly while practicing what we learned, we have discovered that these two songsters exist in our yard, which we did not know.

If you have ever wandered to my other blog, you will know that it contains a number of entries on birds.  I try to study them before I post so that I can add a little knowledge about the species.  So now I can add more fact and less theory?

I encourage others to take classes of all stripes as they age.  Even if it is something you know a lot about, the world is changing, we are learning so much more and I guarantee you will learn something new.

Silly

Once again Tabor encounters an eye-opening cultural event as she runs errands.  This time she was in the local Target department store trying to find lip gloss among other items.  I love Burts Bee's colored lip balm and no longer use lipstick since I discovered it.

I reached an aisle that was crowded with a young mother and her toddler sitting in a shopping cart.  At the other end of the aisle was a man in his 70's, well dressed, with a paper list in his hands.  He was scanning the shelves with a frown on his face.  The young mother carefully worked her way past him as she selected something from the shelf on the other side.  I was scanning the shelves as I approached slowly.

Suddenly he lifted his head and said in a rather loud voice, "Can you ladies help me?"

We both looked up accommodatingly.

"Do you know where the bar soap is?"

I looked down to the lower shelves just beside me and pointed as it was filled with various brands of bar soap.

"Okay, can you tell me where the Dove bar soap is?" he continued.

I hesitated, and then the young mother pointed just beyond me and said, "It is over there at the end of the shelf."

He smiled and moved slowly in that direction as we both moved down the aisle in the opposite direction.

He turned to us after we passed and said,  "My wife has broken her ankle and I have to do all this shopping!"   He groaned and then added, "Maybe I should just take her out to the back yard and hose her off and be done with all this soap!"

I explained that I had hurt my ankle recently and my husband had taken on the cooking, cleaning and everything else for several months.

He smiled.  "I can cook,  I just hate these errands and looking for all  this silly stuff."

I moved on to the next aisle thinking how lucky I was to be married to someone who was adaptable and didn't consider bath soap silly!

Bear Denigration

The scene is a small town post office (one that is not closing) where I am picking up my mail. Just around the corner I hear the voice of a woman and a small child.  When they turn the corner I see a woman whose age is hard to determine.  She has dyed blonde hair, is a little overweight, but could be the child's mother, grandmother or aunt.  The child is a small boy about five of mixed race.  The little boy has some type of electronic game or tablet in his hand that is taking most of his attention.

Mom:  Remember that big black bear on the TV?  Remember the man who was texting and not watching where he was going?  He almost got eaten by that bear!

Boy:  That was a BIG bear!

Mom:  And that man almost died!  He wasn't paying attention.  You need to pay attention.

They headed toward their car still talking.

I agreed with the Mom that walking and looking at an electronic screen were not the safest of things to do and certainly not safe when done by a little boy who had only learned to walk a few years ago.  But I am not sure that the correlation of being eaten by a bear when texting or playing a game is quite the argument I would have presented.  I think falling down and breaking one's nose was more compelling and certainly more likely or being hit by a car while crossing the parking lot.  Do we have to pick on those poor bears?

Where I Live

During my preteen and teenage years growing up on a chore-filled small farm in rural Colorado I longed to be anywhere else.  The world was full of sophisticated lifestyles and exotic locations and I was sure that I was missing out on all of it  As an avid reader of all kinds of books I knew that the world was turning fast everywhere else except in my little farming town.  The commonness of my hometown was suffocating my soul and my greatest promise to myself was to find a way out as soon as I could.

When I was 22 I managed to save enough to go to graduate school, and as luck would have it, there were only two or three schools with accredited programs in my field.  The cheapest one was in Hawaii.  I could afford the plane ticket, but not the place to live.  As my faithful readers know, I became an au pair to a nice middle class Jewish family on the island of Oahu and was able to attend graduate school at the same time.  Poor though my life was as a grad student, living in Hawaii was a phenomenal experience and fulfilled my earliest expectations on the rewards of seeing a 'distant' part of the world.  If you must be poor then the Pacific Islands are most accommodating to such a frugal lifestyle.  My story continued with even more distant travel upon graduation, lucky soul that I was, and my regular readers have heard tales on this.

I sit here this afternoon and listen to music from the Beamer Brothers.   Music is wonderful for taking us away and this one puts me on a slow moving outrigger canoe within sight of a beach.  The music is like soft waves on a distant shore.

My winter has been mild but still cool and while I love my woods, nothing is big-leaved green and exotically fragrant and the ocean is not in view filled with lovely colorful fish and exotic shellfish.  Fresh ripened fruit does not grow on nearby trees year round.  People who live on the Pacific Islands this morning wake up to a very different lifestyle.  Warmer air, sweeter smells, perhaps a slower pace for some islanders, and I am envious and I would live there in an instant during the cold winter days except for my loves that live nearby and hold me fast with a chord that is stronger than anything I can imagine. 

Is there another place on this great earth that sometimes calls to you and that you would live if you could?

(This was written before the news of the recent earthquake in the South Pacific, and I would still live there.)

In Sync

I am was staying in the hoitty toitty Palm Beach area of Florida.  The mansions are multi-million dollar monstrosities, the shopping is fantastic if you have the reserves, and just outside the luxurious resort areas are some very striking neighborhoods of poverty and crime. Yesterday afternoon, within a few blocks of the infinity edge swimming pool at one of the hotels, stood an inebriated woman dressed for her night work outside a nightclub, if you get my drift.

The place where I am staying is a place where people (usually from Chicago or New York) wear rather elaborate jaw-dropping jewelry to the swimming pool.  Their children are stocky verging on fat and have rather intense attitudes about who is in charge of their lives...they or their parents.  Then the parents open their mouths and you wonder where they got their education as well and you forgive the children.  (Sorry for my prejudices.)  Still the place is really uncrowded for an Easter week and my grandchildren can find plenty of room for fun either at the beach or one of the two pools or the playground. 

As I sit on the balcony of the condo where we are staying, I have my little grandson who will turn one in a few days in my lap with his heavy head resting against my breasts.  He is fighting stomach flu and lying lethargically with the side of his face tucked into my arm as he watches the waves greet the shore.  We are sitting outside because every time he sees one of his parents he demands they take him away from this old lady, but once they are out of sight, he is my little surrendered lover.  The only sound is that of  the soothing waves and some distant music from the swimming pools fifteen stories below us.  I am enjoying the way he has given himself over totally to my arms in spite of being in that stage where mommy and daddy are the preferred mode of transportation and rest.

An ocean breeze floats wisps of his baby hair up and down near my cheek. 

I sing a little lullaby and even though I am off-key he looks up at me with such adoration that I keep on singing.  He has that honest innocence of love in his eyes that your dog has when he sees you each day.  The kind of love you probably do not fully deserve, but are more than willing to take.

There is a three-quarter moon hanging in the mid-morning sky and the gang of 12 pelicans is making their routine morning rounds up and down catching the rising air drifts over the beach.  We both watch them wishing we could fly like kites up high.

I have caught his stomach flu and not been able to enjoy any of the expensive and inexpensive meals we have eaten out.  I have been on a liquid diet for 4 days with no appetite for anything including my favorite wine, but I really do not care when he is in my arms and we are avoiding the beach packing chaos that is taking place back inside the condo.  For this brief precious time in his life and mine, we are in sync and I am totally happy.

For You

I am on travel but always thinking of my readers and wanted to share this screen saver for those for whom spring seems a bit late.  This native columbine was one small plant two years ago and today I have at least 6 or maybe eight coming up!

Or perhaps you are in a blue mood and would rather have this one...

Difficulties in Aging---Not What You are Thinking

Ronnie at Time Goes By and Rain at Rainy Day Thoughts both wrote about aging and all its discomforts and our honesty with that.  So I had to add my two cents.

Remember when people carried you everywhere and wouldn't put you down so that you could explore freedom on your own...no?  Well at my age I can explore all I want and society provides artificial joints, walkers, mobile wheel chairs, pain killers and nice level boardwalks so that I can continue to do this exploration and I can do it on my own.

Difficulties in aging as a toddler:  I remember when I was a toddler the first time I hit my head on the doorknob, and I realized that getting taller had its disadvantages. The next time I had to wear pants that were too tight and a dress that cut me under the armpits because I had outgrown them overnight.  Now I am only slightly smaller than I was a few years ago and I have stopped growing and I like my height just fine, thank you. I no longer have to worry about doorknobs or clothes.  If I outgrow my clothes, it is my own damn fault.

I remember when getting dressed was something that required intense study.  The right length skirt, the perfect blouse, those awful bad hair days.  Those were my teen years.  Today getting dressed is primarily getting clean and finding something clean and comfortable to wear.  I sometimes care that I don't look like a bag lady, but I don't dwell on it, because I do not care all that much what others think about how I look.

I remember the strain of new job interviews, the pain of writing proposals, the agony of public speaking, the careful dance of arguments with colleagues and the constipation of biting my tongue during my adult years when dealing with a crazy person in the office.  I no longer worry about any of that stuff.  I will not argue with you if I think I cannot win you over to my way of thinking, but I also do not hide my beliefs nor fear them.  I will also listen to your side because I also do not think my beliefs are carved in stone.

I remember the agony of watching my children grow and leave me to pursue adventures of their own.  The sad dullness of an empty house and my being fired as a parent.  That was a real difficult age.  I have out grown that agony and in these elder years I find I can accept the fact that I must allow my children to make their own mistakes and live their own lives, because that is what I wished from my parents.  I also welcome all the free time I now have.

I remember during my 50's the concern and a little dread about aging and the difficulty of looking into those elder years ahead and becoming an old person who would have little to do with their time.  Now that I have arrived here, I find it is just like being a younger person.  It has its challenges and rewards and it is what you make of it.  Some of the challenges can be overcome and others must be accepted with grace and compromise, like that teenage figure you were given.  And the rewards at this time in my life are are a morning sunrise and and an evening sunset and all the time in the world to enjoy them.

So difficulties in aging are just a part of life at any age and if we did not have them, I am thinking we would not enjoy life nearly as much.

I saw an interview with the poet, Christian Wiman, who was diagnosed with a serious cancer in his 30's and I was amazed and pleased by the grace that he shows day to day.  So difficulties must be handled at every age.  Quit your whining.

The Mystery of Mist

Once we have checked out how the garden is doing and put to permanent sleep the weeds that have been awakened by spring we sometimes get the urge to take a drive and see how the rest of the land is doing.

We went for just such a drive the other day (the day I took those peach blossom photos in the orchard that I posted on my other blog) and as we headed across this large peninsula to the side that greets the large bay we noticed the fog had banked inland and was holding its own even though the morning was waning.  Since it was just before lunch we headed to a little town down the road.

A heavy fog rolls in off the bay on many of these spring days as the night air is just cold enough to capture the water and hold it, and if there is no wind, the mist just floats around hiding the corners of life.  This white cloud gets a short way inland and then the heat of the land and/or the heat of the sun seems to make it melt before our eyes.

This little town we reached was once an escape for city folk who were tired of summer heat and wanted a respite by the shore.  There is a small beach here and several nearby marshes that are just perfect for a change from city life.  It is still a tourist town, but the ability to travel greater distances to much larger beaches has pulled most of the tourists further away from this area, and I think that has helped this little community retain its charm.

The horizon line of the bay was hidden by deep fog and yet the warmth and quiet of the morning brought people out.  Various water birds were enjoying new algal growth or building nests. There were two naked toddlers playing at the edge of the water under the peaceful eyes of parents.  Three ladies sat in beach chairs and chatted quietly while one knitted.   And, of course, there were lots of dog walkers.

We took a walk along the newly constructed boardwalk beneath the spring blossoms of various trees and enjoyed the magical mist along with several others who had taken the morning off.  As with most small towns that have not yet been drowned in tourism people were ever so friendly and smiling.  We greeted them and patted their dogs on the head, commented on the strange weather, and talked about the good old days, even though we had shared different good old days.  It was lovely with temperatures in the 70s.  We had lunch at a small table just outside one of the local restaurants that was close to the local Post Office, which of course, provided us the perfect "Andy from Mayberry" experience...just thought I would share.

War is Addictive

My heart goes out to the family of the Army Staff Sgt. that I wrote about in the poem in the earlier post.  They suffer so much when he is stationed in danger and they worry about him every day when he is overseas.  They worry about his emotional happiness when he returns to a regular life style at home.  But they never expected this new hell that has entered their life.

When the expert talking heads were reviewing the situation, which was a violent and horrible killing of 16 Afghan civilians including children one evening outside a U.S. military base in that country, on television and discussing the diagnosis of PTSD they also talked about how many of those who are wounded in battle work very hard to return to the front as they feel they are needed to make sure that those they have left behind are covered.  The territory they must defend is not their homeland or their backyard but the area where those soldiers are stationed. The call of the brotherhood is stronger than anything else.  This is what war does to these brave young men.

Years ago I saw the movie The Hurt Locker which is a war movie created and directed by a woman.  It was a compelling movie to watch because it has a very different and more nuanced approach to the characters in the movie and the reality of war.  I remember a scene without dialogue where the protagonist who is on leave stands in a well-stocked store aisle looking for something on his wife's grocery list.  He just stands there as if looking at thousands of brands of the same product and as if he cannot possibly make such a complicated decision.  His brain just shuts down.  He finds himself in a surreal position.  He is OK with diffusing bombs but deciding on laundry soap is too crazy and too frivolous a waste of his time. He loves his family but grows more attached to a young Iraqi boy in the village where he is stationed.

Clearly this Roger Bale's brain just shut down over something else on his 4th tour to this area after being wounded twice.  War is hell and I continue to wonder about all those young men that will return in the coming year who have had their senses honed for battle and we ask them to return to a 'normal' life.

Dying Tulips

 

Red tulip petals fall to the ground

Not as precious as the splash of blood on desert sand,

But lovely in their death no less.

This early spring day is so quiet it makes you panic.

The bird chatter so squeaky I see you wince.

I saw you study the warm wind out of the East

And I felt the anxiousness growing in your soul.

The time of year for contact was upon them once again.

And you wanted to go and shout once more

I got your back,

I'VE GOT YOUR BACK!

You wanted to return

And finish

And be a part of the final push.

The winter was almost behind them now.

They no longer hunkered.

They no longer bunkered.

They were no longer cold statues in camouflage

Watching sand rifts come and go

Against the walls of empty houses.

The spring was upon them as well

Calling for

A patrol to revolutionize the villages

To win the trust of the poor

And to kill all the others.

My tulips will stop blooming soon

And I will stare into space

Remembering when you helped me plant them.

(First Draft)(For Sgt. Robert Bales)(Just one more comment and I will move on, I promise.)

Down Music Lane

As a young girl coming of age I never had money for records and popular music was not on TV quite yet. I did have a little transistor radio (the size of a deck of cards) that I got from somewhere and I would listen to it at night when I did my homework. The very first performers that caught my imagination were the Everly Brothers. They would become a little too country for me as I changed toward more "sophisticated" tastes.  But at the age of 12 and 13 I could listen to them forever and just fly on that harmony...and I think it was years before I even knew what they looked like.  Their harmony was stupendous to someone who was from a non-musical family.  I listened to the Beach Boys and while I liked Elvis, I was not crazy about him.  When the teenage generation got to have their own TV shows such as American Band Stand and Ed Sullivan, I was introduced to Paul Anka, and those great musical icons, The Beatles.  Holding the core of the pure liberal that I was destined to become I eventually moved on to loving folk singers and those with a message like Simon and Garfunkel,  Joan Baez and the Mamas and Poppas.  

If you stroll down your musical memory lane, who was the first group or singer that captured you as a teenager or pre-teen?


Boy does THIS ONE bring back memories. Yes, it is a little hokey and unsophisticated by today's tastes. But that harmony is an endless reward.

Gifting

The boot is off and I have been instructed to keep exercise and hiking at bay for another 3 weeks. But I feel free at last. So, to celebrate, I am gifting to my readers my corner in spring glory.  Have a nice week!

My Little Corner

When I built this expensive house (while I am not part of the 1% I did save substantial money by living overseas for several years) I knew that I would probably want space for a few indoor plants.  I included a corner at the end of my kitchen that had a strip of tile next to the wooden floor for protection.  The windows in that corner do not have the glaze on them that filters full sunlight and protects objects from fading.  These windows while double glazed are just plain windows.  They face the Southwest side so that my plants get plenty of winter sun.  In a few weeks when the dangers of very cold nights are gone most of these plants will head outside.  The amaryllis will be done blooming and will be tucked away in a place below the deck but near my patio where they will remain unnoticed until I bring them in for a dormant period in mid-October.  They are removed from their pots, the soil shaken away and the bulbs put in black garbage bags and kept in the coldest part of my basement until January where I start the process all over again.  This year because of my ankle injury I was going to abandon them totally, but hubby generously planted them out and while I would have selected other pots, he did a good job as I have beauteous blooms this time of year.  (I still have the other tropical bulbs in the basement waiting for freedom!)

The tiny tree in the middle on the top shelf is my calamondin lime tree.  I replaced it last year as the one I had purchased a few years ago was stressed in some way and the roots never grew.  The other large tree on the right is my kaffir lime tree.  One of the most interesting plants.  I use both the limes and the leaves in Asian cooking.  It does need full sun through the winter and is somewhat temperamental, but you can see it is going to overtake the space.  In the late spring it goes out on the deck.  I protect it with cloth for a few days so it can adjust to the more intense light, but it eventually adapts and enjoys the summer months.

The jasmine in the white pot was a sale purchase for about $4.00 and looked really sad until I revived it.  I don't think the little white blooms are fragrant enough unless you really get close, so it may be a sale item for the Master Gardeners plants sale this spring.

The ugly grasses are lemon grass which my husband insisted on wintering over.  I find that cooking with lemon grass is a real challenge as ones that grow in this climate are tough and not as flavorful as they are in the tropics.  These two will go outside into the garden next month and they will take off like gang busters, but I am still lobbying for their demise in the fall.

The lime green pot contains a geranium.  They are easy to purchase new in the spring, but I always save at least one for the winter months and pinch it heavily to keep it from being too spindly.

Hidden in the back on the bottom shelf are my succulents.  They survive very well if ignored.  They will go outside soon.  Then this corner might return to an area for a summer buffet table.  (You know, like on Downton Abbey...a side board where hot breakfast waits for guests...yes, I am joking here.)

The Time is Ripe

I have developed a schizophrenic personality.

I have hated this boot and all the compromises that it has made me make.  Spring is teasing outside and I have so much gardening that has fallen behind schedule.  I have turned the corner of my living room into a cluttered office so that I can have everything within reach reducing my need to get up, but it looks so much like an old person's corner.  I can no longer just run upstairs to work on photos, but have to schedule it as part of my day so that my stair climbing is done only once.

Still and yet, I have passively enjoyed being a slug.  It is nice to make meal suggestions and get hubby to do most of the cooking (thank goodness he is a reasonably good cook) and to outline the household chores that need to be done for the week and assign myself all those chores that can be done while sitting...such a folding clothes.  It is great to give him a list of things to bring up from the basement to replenish the larder or the bathroom cleaning supplies.  It is nice to be able to say no to volunteer requests without guilt.

On this Tuesday I get another x-ray, and if the orthopedist confirms, I can take this monster off and return to a "normal" life.

One of the first priorities will be re-entering the world of exercise...I do hate that, but it is a must do or die earlier from immobility.  Dynamic change does not fit easily on one's shoulders as one ages.

It is Now Everywhere

I read the book that the scientific writer in this video wrote and it is very compelling but not as much as this video.  Since I had Lymes over a decade ago and caught it early, I am one of the lucky ones.  This video makes a very strong case for getting Federal oversight on health care.  If not the profit makers will walk you to your grave.

Post Script.  I was surprised at how the disease has spread throughout the world and also how varied all the side infections and parasites can be.

Moment of Zen

Since I have been doing nothing and thinking too much (RL, marine lawsuits, etc.) I will provide (as Jon Stewart says) a moment of Zen.

PEACE!