Use Up and Then Re-use.

Above is my sugar bowl after too much holiday celebrating.  This photo was taken after I added the leftover powdered sugar with red sprinkles from my holiday cookie baking, just a little recycling of the more attractive variety.

We have a small lidded jar on the kitchen counter that gets all the vegetable and fruit peelings, the coffee grounds, the wilted lettuce and anything else that will work to our benefit in the compost pile in the garden.  We do get the rare batch of hatching fruit flies, but if we are careful, they only last a few days.

We take out the leftover grease from the pot roast and carry it to the ravine for the squirrels and foxes.  We dump the shells from clams and oysters at the far edge of the river for the raccoons and otters to clean.  The stale crackers go to the birds and the stale bread to the ducks, and recently, some spoiled raw lamb stew meat to the crows, which was most interesting to watch.

We use the newspaper to mulch the weeds in the garden and recycle all the magazines at the dump along with the rinsed glass and metal and plastic and foil.

We take the clothes, shoes, games, books and other stuff we no longer use to the church store.

We usually take our own cloth bags to the grocery store, but when we forget, we still find uses for the plastic bags that we bring home.  They help group all the zip-locked garden vegetables by type in the chest freezer or they are used for carrying stuff up to my daughter's house or holding the used batteries until we take them in.  We tuck them in our backpacks to carry out any trash we may find on our hiking adventures.  They are useful as shoe-bags in the suitcase.

I return my printer cartridges to the office supply store for a discount on expensive new printer cartridges.

We combine our errands so that we take fewer car trips to the store and post office.

But I am not patting myself on the back because these are such teeny-tiny and common gestures to help reduce our footprint on this planet.  We are not handy types and thus fail to repair or replace broken machinery or appliance items so that they can be used once again.  We are not as careful as we should be on our use of oil and electricity since we are only two people using a big house,  and we tend to move to new technology as soon as we can afford it...me with my camera and PC and my husband with his GPS and boat.

I sincerely believe that global climate change, removal of fossil fuels, disposal of toxic waste, and accidental introduction of non-indigenous species to areas is changing this planet at a hugely rapid rate.  Just watching the natural disaster news for a month proves that.  I work regularly to help my grandchildren learn what fresh natural food tastes like, how being careful with toys and turning off batteries help the planet, and keeping them aware of the fragility of our natural environment as they tramp through it.  But my overall battle plan seems so small and weak and any help you all can give will make this much better.

Thursday Thoughts #31 ---13 Things I Have Learned

1. Working on photos has a lot to do with math and precision and I am not good at either in spite of being known as somewhat an anal retentive bitch.
2. Any other person who called me 2 hours ahead to let me know he was coming to spend the night with a guest would get a piece of my mind or at the very least a lie about our sudden plans...except for my son whom I see not often enough.  Instead, he got a piece of my pot roast.
3. I need to drink more water...really!  (Wine and tea and coffee are not enough.)
4. You don't always get what you ask for or want and more often than not you get something you did not ask for.  I asked for bubble bath for the holidays, and since I found none in my stocking, I ended buying it on sale after Christmas.  I did not ask for a Kindle and did get that.
5. It is hard to find meaningful volunteer work in a rural area if you do not belong to a church.
6. I am a good and patient teacher, except when trying to teach my husband Windows stuff and I think this has more to do with Windows than either him or me (or is that he or I ?).
7. My daughter had dinner with Rob Lowe recently and while they were prepared to talk entertainment industry, to my relief he really wanted to talk politics.  No air head there.
8. Thread was recently found that was 30,000 years old made by humans using plant fibers (wild flax) in different colors on pottery.  It seems mankind has always wanted to make and decorate cloth.
9. Flamingos use a makeup they secrete from a gland near their tail to keep their color bright during the breeding season when the colorful shrimp they eat are not available.  (How long before H. Couture starts selling lipstick made with essence of flamingo butt for thousands of dollars?)
10. One of the most moving exhibits I have ever seen is the Pulitzer Prize Photos Gallery displayed at the Newseum in Washington, DC.  It brought me to tears several times and reinforced my love of the power of photography.
11. A 47 F degree gray day with gusty wind is much colder than a 27 F degree sunny day with no wind.
12. I fear the world will go to 'hell in a hand basket' if my children's generation continue to value "reality" television over reality.  I stumbled across The Bachelor while waiting for another movie to start and actually got nauseous watching the last ten minutes. Why in the hell we spent time burning bras....?
13. And finally, the best thing I learned this year, is that no matter how many new years come around each is a valuable opportunity to do it better this time.

(One thing I wondered about most recently and have not learned is why is bicycle not pronounced like motocycle in the English language?)

The Power of Rhetoric

I wrote a long and complaining post a few weeks ago.  I was smart to sit on it.  I had scheduled it for posting on the 20th of this month and just now I marked it as a draft and will probably not post it, and once I get over myself, will actually delete it.  It was one of those "the world is going to hell in a hand basket" posts.  Since we all know that is true...why belabor the point?  People have enough crud in their minds and probably read blogs for enlightenment or humor...although both of these are in limited amounts on my blog.  The recent Arizona shooting of a large number of people including a Congressman(woman) and a Federal judge brought me to my knees...and most of you know by now that I am not a religious person but certainly spiritual and willing to call on any good powers that be.  But the tragedy also caused me to remove that scheduled post.

This shooting while involving public servants had very little to do with politics, and I think most of the media are missing that point, although by the time I write this, they may be getting more accurate in their questions.  This shooting was no more Republican than President Ronald Reagan's shooting was Democratic.  Drawing a line from this incident to violent rhetoric is also fuzzy and difficult.

The most frightening aspect, to me, was Secretary Gates recent announcement of plans to cut military health care at the same time the talking news heads were discussing the lack of aggressive mental health support for this shooter.  Gates is probably just shaking the bushes as no one will allow this.  He knows that.  He doesn't talk about tighter controls over contracts and lost money in Iraq, unfortunately!  But if anyone needs easy mental health support, it will be our returning troops.

Well enough.  I need to find something more inspiring to post.

Going with the Flow

This is my Chihuly inspired photo of the leaves of fall.  Dave Chihuly, for those who live on the edge of the wilderness, is a famous glass artist.  Born in 1941 his Hungarian, Slavic, Czech, Norwegian, Swedish ancestry may have contributed to his varied and zig-zagged path to glass blowing fame.  He exhibits all over the world and has many permanent and temporary exhibits in museums and hotels and restaurants.  I first saw his work in Las Vegas many years ago.  I recently saw a documentary about him and that inspired my work with the photo of fall leaves above.  I think the fragility of his work lends even more interest as well as controversy to what he does.  The work is mostly beautiful without making a statement as many other art media do.

Below is a photo that I took of pink grasses in the early morning sun at the National Arboretum last fall.  Continuing with the flowing glass theme after some photo-shopping they almost look like glowing or broken glass... no?  My work with digital photos is also just about as fragile as I tend to just experiment without any plan and don't save my steps and therefore, cannot recreate it on a similar photo.  Anyway, I kind of like these, or are people not supposed to say that about their creations?

This Is Your Brain Coral on Hyperbolic Geometry

The photos below are pictures of coral reefs. Well, not actual coral reefs, of course, but reefs replicated through crocheted yarn. Coral forms created by many hands. This was on display in the Hall of Ocean Science at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History this winter.  I could have spent quite a while studying the colors and shapes and there were several displays throughout the room of this incongruous craft at a natural science museum.

Appear to be some soft corals here.

Blue Jellyfish

Coral colored corals.

One of my favorites

All of these structures have been completed with great accuracy in terms of  relational size and shape...perhaps not in terms of color.  This project reaches across five continents and there are many exhibits in other parts of the globe.  What does this have to do with hyperbolic geometry?  What does it have to do with how gender changes science?  What on earth does it have to do with coral reef science?  Well, go here for a few minutes of blowing your mind and be sure to watch the TED talk linked on the page.  I just love this stuff!  (You should be able to get a closer look if you click on the photos.)

A (Wo)Man and (Her)His Dog

This post is in honor of Barry who touched many of us with his love of his dog and his blogging tales of their many walks together.

We have always had a dog in the family as long as I can remember.  That is until Buster, a mixed breed mutt, passed away about 10 years ago.  Then with the children moving out and with us changing houses we decided to hold off on getting another canine companion for a while.  Dogs have usually been an important part of my life.  I got my first dog, a collie, when I was about seven years old.  Taking hikes and walks with mans best friend has been the best therapy on gray days.

I have always been surprised at how certain dogs can look at me and I can immediately relate to them.  It is as if we are doing a "Vulcan mind-meld" as we lock eyes and even perhaps put our foreheads together.  We seem to understand each other, have the same energy levels and the same fun levels and actually seem to be exchanging ideas.  This happens to certain dogs whether they are at a shelter or out with their master/mistress.  One day I will take one of these mind-meld dogs home if he is free.

While walking around the National Mall last month, and checking out the many museums, I also had time to watch those who had brought their best friend out for the day.  This fellow and his dog in the photo below are very close.  All he had to do was shift an elbow or raise an eyebrow and the dog would respond with glee or by doing a trick.  The dog spent about 5 minutes just following commands for the man before they went on their way.

This gal and her dog had a very different relationship as both were free spirits here mimicked by their flowing locks.  There was a spring in their step as they walked by me.  They exchanged mischievous glances upon discovering the doves gathering on the lawn nearby.  Neither her she nor the dog wanted to follow any commands this day and I could tell when she first saw the doves in the lawn that skipping with her dog to that feathered group was the only fun challenge that was on both their minds as they locked eyes in agreement.  The geese in the far background were also wary of this game and sensed the mischievous nature of their stroll.  The dog remained on a leash, of course.  (Yes, these are two of the dozen or so lost photos...this one only exists on Blogger's Picasa and in condensed format.)

He is my other eyes that can see above the clouds; 
my other ears that hear above the winds. 
He is the part of me 
that can reach out into the sea.....Gene Hill

Wishes

What Makes a Classic?

Above is my granddaughter sitting in the basement TV room of my daughter's house watching TV.  She has self-dressed this morning in a black velvet and red-silk Christmas dress with a "diamond" clipped waist bow.  Since it is winter, she has on leggings with orange stripes and her favorite pink-colored socks.  She reminds me of Pippi Longstalking in this funky outfit with a polka dot headband for some more bling.  She will not let anyone touch her hair and wears pigtails only to school.  The rest of the time it must flow with tangled abandon.  One of her favorite movies is Tangled...surprise, surprise.

Here she sits watching the 1930 movie version of A Christmas Carol with Reginald Owen.  I think she is enthralled because the ghost of Christmas past looks a little like the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz and she is also very much into that tale right now.  She was Dorothy from Oz at Halloween.  She followed this entire movie without break.

I am fascinated that such a classic in black and white and without special effects can hold the interest of a three-year-old in 2010.  It seems a clean story told simply and with universal themes to an un-jaded mind can hold its own and becomes a classic!  What do you think?

Gifting

These are two silver ornaments that are part of the centerpiece on my dining table.

Last year at this time I opened a virtual trunk filled with presents for my bloggers to add to their winter holiday celebrations.  I tried to keep it diverse and filled with love.  I think that some may have enjoyed that because the sizes were correct and the colors were perfect and the style...well, I always have style, don't I?  One of my gifts was not 'just right' for a certain someone and I miss him every single blogging day.  But I cannot help but think he can read blogs without restraint now, and while mine may not be the first blog he reads each day, I know he will get around to it eventually.  I am hoping that whatever holiday you celebrate or honor with holy remembrance in December, it is filled with memories of loved ones now and forever and that you have some wonderful seasonal music to enjoy along with those memories and some delicious seasonal food.  (Like many of you I will be away for the weekend...missing blogging...but loving the time with loved ones.)

The Shortest Day

(Been here and done this...so please be patient with me.)

I grab my down coat and pull it over my pajamas and then slip into my plastic clogs still wearing my woolly slipper socks.  The sun is up but it is having a tough time burning through the heavy cold winter fog although the morning is well underway.  There is no wind, so my coat will be perfect in protecting me from winter's breath.

Grabbing my ever-present camera, I plod down to the dock being careful that I do not slip on the thin coating of frost that covers everything on this early morning turning all surfaces to slippery diamond dust.  Snow is predicted, but this is lovely enough for me right now.

Winter is here and while I still marvel at its stark beauty, I also know that I prefer the other three seasons more as I age.  Winter means I have to move more carefully, I have to dress in layers before I go outside, and the dark of night comes before the dinner hour and lasts well after I get up in the morning.  I am a Mediterranean baby.

Today is my birthday and I used to wonder with resentment why I was born on the shortest day of the year...but now I think it is because my birth is the harbinger of longer days to come and the beginning of the return of spring.  I now view my birthday as sign of good things to come!  I am the bearer of good news.

And look what Gaia brought me as a present early on my day of celebration...an eclipse of the moon!

Update

A follow up to the post below I took Hilary's advice (she is an angel as well as punny and an excellent photographer) and while the *.jpg search did not reveal them it did lead me to another of Windows processes called Recovery (I had used a free restore software without success) and lo and behold I think I got about 80% of them in the two corrupted folders.  I am missing some interesting photos on people and their dogs...a new series I am compiling for myself.  Still don't know where some of them went.  My neighbor lost his Windows PC in a lightning storm and now swears by Linux after he built his new PC...if I only was a little smarter.  OK...if only I was a LOT smarter.

The National Tree

I could not resist posting this photo of the National Tree in front of the White House with the Washington Monument in the background.  The star on top of the tree is being backlit by the winter morning sun.  It was somewhat breathtaking in the cold morning air.  The workers were around on all sides busily taking down fences, collapsing cold metal chairs and removing about an acre of snap-together flooring that had been installed for the tree lighting ceremony just a few days before.  The state trees standing in a circle around the big tree, which were fenced off at the time I was there, seemed smaller then when I saw them years ago.  They were only 3 feet high!  Such is recession I am guessing or maybe it is because we are trying to be green?  I know it is not because I have grown taller!  The National Tree greenery is almost hidden and weighted down by the strings of decorations and lighting.  It is sort of an instant decoration kind of thing.

There is a sad postscript to this photo above.  I had just lost all the photos I took in December.  None of my photos are publishable or worth turning into artwork, but they are mine and hold all my December memories and I am sick about this.  This photo and about 500 others are gone, gone, gone.  I did not delete them.  Something very similar to this happened last September when I was working with about 1,000 photos from my Canada trip and tagging them in my software and 100 from the first file disappeared.  A file recovery did not work.

I use PhotoShop Elements 8 which allows me to index photos by adding subject tags, people tags and even GEO/place tags.  I spent several hours going through bird photos tagging them by species and when I was all done, I checked my email and when I came back the entire December folder and most of the Bird folder were missing their files! Nothing was in my recycle bin and I couldn't find them using Windows Explorer.  Therefore, they were not just disconnected from the photo catalog in PSE8...they were gone!  I have tried to find the solution on the web but mostly Adobe just tells people they must have done something wrong because the software does not delete files by itself...!

I have been reasonably good about backing up photos either on CDs or another hard drive I have...but I only do that once a month, so missed that opportunity by a few days as I was still reviewing and weeding files.  I will get over this.  It is not someone's wedding or birthday photos...just my crap...my precious crap!

Legs

It is said that one goal in life is to grow old gracefully...

On short stubby legs the goal in life was to learn to walk and not fall, to cover as much of the huge world's surface before nap-time and then the next day to learn to run.

On longer, coordinated, energetic legs the goal was to make the goal, to beat the boys, to win the races, to get there first.

On shapely legs the goal was to walk on red stilted shoes without twisting an ankle and with studied grace, and to ignore the cold drafts as the skirts were kept short and the legs were kept bare throughout the long winter.

On efficient nylon-covered legs and librarian style heels the goal was to meet the deadlines and hurry home to feed the short stubby legs without a stumble in the same day.

On varicose and freckled and not-yet-shaved legs the goal was to keep them hidden from critical eyes and be thankful you didn't need a walker or cane like your Aunt.

On arthritic legs the goal was to push through the pain and stiffness and to dance every single dance on through the long wedding evening.

Now the goal is to rise out of bed each morning and learn to walk once again and cover as much of the huge world's surface before nap-time and to be thankful you don't want to run.

Those were the days...!

Reflecting On A 'Reasonable' Request

Years ago when I was in my twenties and thirties I was a big American football fan. I started my interest while in college watching various college football games and then male friends spurred (?...in oh so many ways?) my interest in professional football.  I knew the players and the team rankings.  I think it was after my children were all potty-trained that I realized I had outgrown this sport. The talking heads talked way too much, the replays from every angle possible went on too long and the drugs and money were too mind boggling for me to look at these guys as athletes anymore. I began to see that a 10 second play took more than three minutes to review/discuss/repeat.  (This was not the fall of the Berlin Wall, after all.)  Football is now the absolutely SLOWEST game on the planet in a culture that encourages video games with numerous explosions and demolition derbies.  In America there are homes where games can be on back to back for 9 hours on a weekend day!  When get-togethers were just the blood relatives I would busy myself with cleaning up dishes after Thanksgiving or watching something else somewhere else while the gang watched their games.

Today if there is a game (and puleeze when isn't there a game?) I retreat to read in the bedroom or hubby heads to our TV downstairs while I watch something I had previously recorded.  If the game becomes a bore, he re-joins me in a short time.  A few weekends ago I had planned a nice dinner for my daughter, who with two little ones and a pending child, rarely gets a break.  I selected several CD's for nice casual dining atmosphere and had them playing.  When they all arrived I was outside on the deck handling a small emergency for my husband involving a deer, a gun and the neighbors.  I was greeted on the deck by daughter and kids but after 10 minutes wondered where S.I.L. was.  I went back inside to find he had turned off the music and turned on the football game.  He was standing watching it even before he had greeted his host or hostess!  I let him know in no uncertain terms that I at least expected a hug and greeting BEFORE football took his total attention!  This real issue, which a mother-in-law will bravely admit, is that I do not get a chance to visit with my daughter as I would like because she is the one babysitting while her husband is watching the game.  There are some men that can do two things at one time...but I do not know many of them.

My son's 'new' girlfriend recently turned 33.  She had planned a birthday party at her house with the theme on threes.  She set up her Ipod for her favorite music.  She had cooked various meals with three ingredients or three in the name but was dismayed to find when she emerged with snacks from her kitchen the guys had turned off her Ipod speakers and turned on the TV for their Alma Mater game!  Their argument was that it was THEIR college and they really wanted to see this.  Her argument was that it was HER birthday and she wanted conversation and music!  She, being the hostess and knowing her mind, won.

Does anyone else find football addiction as rude and intrusive as I do?  Shouldn't the hostess be the one to determine if she wants a pseudo tail-gate party or an actual get-together where you play games or talk with friends and family or break-up into sports and mind groups?  If someone says lets get together and eat before the game...that is different.  But does every weekend get-together have to be a game day?  Am I being hopelessly narrow-minded or very naive or heading down a path of no return?

Thursday Thoughts 13... #30: Blogging Along

Doesn't this look so neat and clean   ;-)

1. According to my Blogger statistics readers have searched and found my blog with the phrase "i think too far ahead" and "bad karma stories."  Is that flattering or scary and should I be concerned?
2. I used to have 58 followers here.  I know that is not many for those of you in the solid 3 and even 4 figures, but I lost one follower the other day.  Was it something I wrote?  That hurts because while I love my followers I am not very good at cultivating them. A 'princess' has joined my entourage since I wrote this...so I am back to 58...no back to 57!  Did I lose another one?
3. I am currently using '50.7%' of my Picasa photo storage for Blogger.  As a person who took almost 900 photos just last month and deleted only 400, the fear of the eventual need to upgrade storage in my blog photos stalks my every post.
4. I am trying to wean myself from checking Blogger a half dozen times a day (or more!) when I am home alone.  I need to enrich my life, I guess.  I am so addicted to your comments and to the fact that you read what I say and I even do not mind criticism (polite suggestions on viewing things a little differently) although most bloggers are too polite.  Maybe I could be Fran Lebowitz and not care what people think.
5. I also am dismayed by the bloggers that I link to that have quit posting...I just can't seem to find the courage to remove those links from my list.  I also feel the same way about FB.  People befriend me and then NEVER post anything!  I wish I had the courage to defriend them as they have become stalkers in my mind...but they KNOW me, so it is not as easy to do as it might be in my blogging network.
6. I actually am trying to consciously keep my blogger reader demographics broad.  I know that I have much in common with those my age and with my interests, but for the same reason I will never live in a retirement community, I am trying to proactively add younger readers and readers with different views to my lists.
7. If you think you have been blogging a long time, the first blog (daily online journal) was published electronically in 1994 by a young man named Justin Hall and the link to that blog is still ongoing and here.
8. In 2004, "blog" was the word of the year...I didn't know they had a word-of-the-year.  I am so stupid sometimes.
9. The precursor in naming a blogger or online journalist was escribitionist.  Maybe that should be a word of the year.  (Colleen, see if you can work that into your next Scrabble game.)
10. I look at blogging as chapters of a diary of someone's life and Facebook as the footnotes (which are sometimes more like anecdotes or my   daily boring life activity notes).
11. Is it true that a new blog is created every second around the world?  How many die every second?
12. Perhaps the most important change blogging has made is allowing social activism from the smallest 'end of the tail' and not just from the large and 'popular' opinions.  Information is powerful, especially when we find others thinking like us.
13. The most important change for me is learning that you do not have to meet someone face to face to get to know them and sometimes there is a little magic that happens in blogland and we become very good friends.  I can remember how shy and intimidated I was about blogging when I first started.  

One-liners.

Working on Thursday Thoughts... and since, perhaps, some of you are stopping at the blogger bar on the way home hoping to find some lovin' comfort here is all I could dredge up between now and then.

Happy Shopping Day

In the 'Western' world during the months of November and December we go through an amazing transformational panic to try and buy things for gifts that can show our loved ones, our enemies and our bosses (with which have that love/hate thing going) that we are smart, efficient, rich and worthwhile as human beings.  Each gift purchase opens us to years of angst and cringing if we get it wrong.  We have a religious holiday called Black Friday which follows the Thursday of Thanksgiving and devout pilgrims of this procurement ceremony Friday wait in long lines outside malls and stores in the dark of earliest morning drinking hot drinks and chatting amiably only to be seriously maimed or even trampled to death by their greedy fellow shoppers when the store opens before the sun rises.  This is followed by a recent acquisition holiday called Cyber Monday where the rest of the rich sit on their fat butts in front of computer screens checking their emails and tweets and perusing the web sites of their favorite stores for that deal of deals...sometimes forgetting they are buying for others and find something that they will buy for their greedy selves.

Well, I have an idea.  Now that both of those important signpost days have passed, and if you still have empty places on your list of gifts for loved ones and un-loved ones, you might consider these socially conscious shopping sites for a change:

CharityGiftCertificates.org

GiftsThatGive.com

Globalexchangestore.org

Globalgirlfriend.com

Goodshop.com

Teesforchange.com

WorldofGood.com

I have gotten these links from reliable sources but I have not actually used them...yet...and, if you really want to get into the spirit, go to your local big box store and buy a few cases of non-perishable food items (some of your favorite stuff AND something healthy) and drop it off at your local food bank.

Happy Shopping.

The Ship of Life

(My prior post was about shipwrecks...so I will continue the theme.)

Life is something that has its own energy and schedule and pace even though we think we can control this ship of state fate.  We are here only as passengers on this ride, and while we try to steer the ship as best as possible, we are not aware of hidden shoals or unpredictable zephyrs that will delay our progress or throw us way way off course.

The stylish lady in the photo above was my mother-in-law.  The gentle beauty on her face reveals what a good and generous person she was.  She grew up in a small town in Michigan.  Her parents ran a sometimes successful photography shop with her father giving his work away and her mother holding customers strictly to paying their bills.  This dance between the two of them provided a reasonable income for the family and respect in the community.  She also had a younger brother.  As a teenager she probably had the best start in life that anyone could ask for.  Her life was like a Mickey Rooney movie.

But her ship was destined to go through a number of perfect storms. After high school she used her lovely singing voice and sang for several large mid-west orchestras before she went on the vaudeville road.  While in vaudeville she met and married another singer whose love of alcohol destroyed the marriage.  This was a terrible embarrassment during that time as divorce was something discussed only in whispers.  Then another hidden shoal, a goiter, brought her singing career to an abrupt halt.  She returned home broken but unbowed to help her father in his shop.  Her second husband (my husband's father) fell in love with her photograph when dropping off some film and pursued her until she married him.

He had been married before and had three children.  His first marriage broke up violently and his drinking probably contributed to that.  My mother-in-law was not going to give up on another marriage and stuck by his violent outbursts and his frequent job changes and many moves, and in her late thirties gave birth to my husband.  My husband was the golden child doted on by both parents and probably very much the reason the marriage held together.  She also became a binge drinker when life got too stressful and after her son moved to college which contributed to bringing fog to the years as she aged.

During this time her only brother, who had married and had a daughter, was badly beaten in a robbery in California and his brain was so damaged that he never returned to full mental capacity leaving his family to struggle through poverty.  There were rumors that he had been visiting a prostitute at the time.  It broke my M.I.L.'s heart.

A decade later after her mother's death (the stronger soldier in the parental unit) my mother-in-law had to put her father in a rest home in Virginia because her husband could not bear to see him aging and would not let him live with them.  She was very close to her father and this must have been almost unbearable for her to drop him off among strangers so far from what both of them knew as home.

Years past and I met her as the single daughter-in-law.  I knew my own mind and my independence was probably a little strange to her.  Within weeks after the birth of my first child I watched her go through some serious heart surgery and then a few years later watched her manage the 24-hour care of her husband who had emphysema from his years of smoking.  She survived in spite of our fear that she would pass first.  After she was widowed she came to live near us, and then eventually moved in with us, as her dementia set in.  I am of the opinion that dementia can bring blissful routine when yesterday's tragedies are pretty much forgotten.

The last years of her life as she stayed with us, she was sure she was visiting with her brother and his wife and going home as soon as she felt better.  We went along with the painful charade because she was a very special person and it was easier that way.  Perhaps her life would have been much different if just one of those storms went off-track.  But, then again, perhaps not.

A Little Bay

There were 20 tons of bolt metal per ship.

I live in the mid-Atlantic and am surrounded by interesting history.  There is a ghostly and mystical place nearby that I had always wanted to visit, but did not have the opportunity until recently when the access had been created.  This was another one of those special canoe trips.  There is something about a canoe that lets you slide right up and hear the ghost's sigh and smell the ancient air and sneak behind the bright day to snatch the history.  Besides you really cannot get deeply into this shallow and maze-ridden area by anything other than a canoe or kayak.

This place is a little embayment just off the Potomac River called Mallows Bay.  The day was almost cold and certainly eerily gray and misty with lots of exotic shadows.  Perfect for a ghostly paddle into and over some history.  The cries of a few water birds and the crash of leaves from the rare startled deer in the forest on the shore were about all we heard...except...well let me not get ahead of myself.  First, here is a little history, greatly shortened for there is a whole book on this area.


We have to go back to 1917 and WWI.  President Woodrow Wilson put out a call for building many more ships (ten times more) as we entered this war since we were going to move quickly and supply an American Army in Europe to defeat the Germans.  Because metal ship building was too slow and expensive, an engineer suggested the building of 1000 cheaper wooden cargo steamships to send across the Atlantic and past the many German submarines.  (I wondered if it even crossed the engineer's mind about the greater danger to those sailors making the crossing on these more fragile ships.)  Eighty-seven shipyards across the United States from the east to the west coasts got contracts to build this armada.  Bureaucratic delays and ineptitude and Germany's eventual surrender came as over 100 ships were completed with few to none crossing the Atlantic.  But an additional 200 ships continued to be built as the war wound down, and even as there were charges of poor assembly, leaky design and over contract budgets, the construction continued...sound familiar?


Eventually the fleet was mothballed along the James River at a large expense to the American taxpayer and finally offered for sale 'as is.'  A Virginia marine salvage company bought many for salvage of the metal, but accidental fires and sinking of vessels at their shipyard compromised nearby navigation and threatened the important shad fishery in the area.  The company was forced to move to the more remote area known as Mallows Bay and a massive facility was built to rapidly move this salvage operation along.  In one day a large number that had been towed to the area were torched in the shallow waters to reduce them immediately for metal salvage.  I cannot imagine the water pollution that resulted and the skies filling with acrid smoke.


The area soon became a graveyard for the remaining ships buried there because the stock market crash of the 1920's brought the price of scrap metal to a new low halting salvage operations.  Other entrepreneurial development near the salvage operation included bootleggers and floating brothels.  They were less accessible to the long arm (paddle) of the law due to the abandoned shipwrecks making navigation dangerous in the waters.  Of the 285 steamships built, approximately 152 ended up in this bay and today the remaining 80 or so lie at rest in all states of deterioration.  

The area became important once again when the advent of WWII renewed the value of scrap metal, but this value was only temporary.  The area was soon abandoned and now efforts are being made to keep it as an historic sight and as nature has grown to reclaim the area, an environmentally rich artificial reef has formed.  There has been some wheeling and dealing of a shady nature in recent decades due to the valuable real estate.  Only time will tell how protected the area will remain.


While quietly and carefully going between the sunken hulls and avoiding the dangerously protruding metal spikes that could poke a hole in our aluminum canoe, we did hear, without warning and with breath-taking suddenness, a single large explosion that boomed across the glassy waters' surface and broke the quiet air.  We held our breath waiting.  It must have been from the military testing base nearby, because, after a while, no helicopters or boats raced down the river toward the sound.  Just a ghostly and frightening reminder of wars, I guess.


These photos were taken at high tide and I hope to return in the summer at a low tide for even more interesting shots.

Post TG

Just a little update.  She appears to be a keeper and we are waiting with baited breath for a more serious announcement in the coming months.  Trying to be patient and realistic at the same time.

Well, I overcooked the turkey, but oddly it was delicious and I over-salted the mashed potatoes, and they were oddly enough quite edible as they went back for seconds.  No pumpkin pie this year, just her homemade chocolate chip cookies and my apple/cranberry cake which more than filled the bill for dessert.

Finished with board games and we gals beat the pants off the guys.  And really terrific...no football because no one was addicted that attended this year!  Just nice background music.