Tourist Town

Changes in scenery are usually a good challenge.  This time was for two nights in an 1800's old B&B.  It was once a ship builder's house and still has pretty solid structure to this day.  It is a bit of a high end place in that the rooms have sherry bottles or carafes of wine waiting upon your return from the day of walking about the mile long town of St. Michael's, Maryland.  The view above was the early morning from our porch on the second story.

I probably should have straightened the picture before taking a picture.

The innkeeper shops estates sales ( seems there are many old people dying out here) for antiques which can be found all over the Inn.  The breakfasts were good if not great.  The bed left some firmness to be desired, though.

The county and town are somewhat schizophrenic.  There are about 2,000 locals who live year round and work the restaurants and retail scene and boating docks.  Much of it is high-end clothing, unique art, antiques and some very top notch food.  The people that come here are those super rich from New York, Boston, Washington D.C., etc.  Some of  those who come stay here and have 'second homes' that we would consider mansions.  They are the reasons that we could find some excellent places to eat.

It was a bit of a disappointing 6+ mile canoe paddle up to the end of the river as we had hoped to see more marsh and wilderness and fewer ego trips.  One of the homes had a number of signs stating that video surveillance was in effect.  The video grounds were probably Dick Cheney's summer/winter palace.  It did prove a challenge when looking for a place to relieve oneself midday.  I hope I didn't blind some poor security guard, but I had no choice!

Took lots of photos, bought no souvenirs and we did walk around a wildlife refuge on the following day as we headed home.

How Did I Get Myself Into This?

These are the last three days with the 10-year-old who has been an exhausting pleasure to have.  But as my brain no longer works as fast or as well as it used to, as my body tells me to go take a nap every few hours, I cannot help but wonder how I will handle a second set of grandchildren if my son is finally blessed with one or two.  They keep trying and do not talk about it and neither do I.

This weekend my daughter and her two other children come to stay through Sunday.  Then Monday it is time to clean the house and pack because hubby and I are heading  to the Eastern Shore for a three day anniversary trip. ( We have been married 45 years and he has not even come close to killing me yet, but I AM fast.)  I also have to get an agenda with project reports written and sent before we leave.  Thursday  I return and try to adjust to re-entry.  I have a few days off except for a bunch of volunteer stuff (more on that later).  But that coming weekend we have some very old friends from Florida coming to stay for a few days

The following weekend some very young friends are coming down for two days and that will  keep me busy.  I am so flattered when 30-somethings want to spend time with us!

The weekend following that one, my son and daughter-in-law are having a BBQ for 50(!) people, so we will go up and help with that.  Then the next day, Sunday, my 8-year-old granddaughter comes down for the week.  Unlike my grandson, she does not do things on her own, but wants people to do things with her, so I will be sitting even less.  She was also the one stung not once but twice by wasps during the last visit.  This will be a challenge. I will be busy.

The second week of September looks like smooth sailing except for my volunteer work.  I realize this is a very normal life style for some people.  But it is NOT for me.  Please tell  me this is keeping me young and not aging me unduly faster.

Egad!!

This past weekend was one with house full of kids, and young adults, and boating, and picnicking, and watching the grands in the Spartan race under the hot sun, and eating crabs, and watching movies, and getting up one night with the 8-year-old throwing up and getting up the second night with 4-year-old with a wet bed, and nursing the 8-year-old from a wasp sting (her second of the weekend by the way) which was like DYING(!), and cooking for everyone and cleaning and laundry of beach towels, sheets, etc.!! You will be lucky if you hear from me for days!  I have the ten-year-old this week and Monday morning has already been busy with his amazing ability to talk without breathing from the moment he gets up.

I Won't Be Here

Our summer weather (not climate) has been unusually pleasant.  Hot but not hotter than hell, humid but not a sauna, and as a result we have enjoyed being outside for a change.  The other day my dear spouse wanted to "run the motor" on the boat to make sure it was still working.  (He really wanted an excuse to fish the Bay.)  We hadn't used the boat in weeks and he gets nervous if it sits/hangs on the lift too long.

The weather was predicted to have clear skies and the wind was minimal so we decided to take a longer trip across the Bay, and burn our share of fossil fuels,  a twenty minute ride to the other side which is part refuge and part old-school fishing village.

We first visited an eagle's nest.  The eagles had fledged months ago, but the nest remained in stark contrast against the sky.

The coast line is mostly marsh which is home to red-wing black birds, boat tail blackbirds, marsh wrens herons, and marsh ducks.  Most of the birds were not there when we coasted in.  You can see the crow(?) on the left snag in the photo above checking out the eagle's nest.  He is probably remembering a number of arguments on the wing as he chased the eagle incessantly this past spring.  I have seen three crows gang up on a bald eagle and cause him to have an emotional breakdown.  Really!  He/she sat crying on a lower branch of a tree in my back yard for twenty minutes that time.

Above we are cruising slowly into a wider mouth of a distant river off the Eastern side of the Bay.

On the other side of this river, the pine trees shown above have no lower branches because the trees that were on each side of them were hiding the inner trees from the sun.  What outer trees?  The ones that have now died and lay in the shrubs/small pines below.  These tall still-standing sentinels will be gone in a few years as well.

Above is a starker example.  Why are all these trees dying?  Old age?  Actually, this is real evidence of ocean rise, and brackish water intrusion to freshwater root systems.  Yes, the water levels are being measured by scientists and the water has been rising for quite some time.  Pines were the last to hang on at these little spots of high ground.

A new study ( by a NASA scientist who has studied the issue for decades) indicates that ocean rise is going to be even more dramatic than scientists thought.  Ten feet in fifty years is just one estimate, although bolder researchers say we will see dramatic coastal damage in fifteen years.  It is always an unpredictable thing, this research.  A Smithsonian scientist recently found that with marsh grass species one species likes a certain amount of the brackish water intrusion while another does not.  Scientists are always conservative in their approach to future predictions and welcome (intelligent) argument from their peers, so it may very well be worse than we hope.  If you do not live near the coast, it will still impact you because much of our industry and commerce happens near the coast in countries around the world.

Some people refuse to believe scientists.  These are the same people that questioned health experts about vaccines until we had a measles outbreak.  The same people that question researchers regarding dangers of living near fracking sites, even though an increase in fetal mortality has raised its ugly head.  Scientists "have ulterior motives" say politicians, who of course, have absolutely no ulterior motives nor expertise in the area.  A minority of scientists that are employed by the fossil fuel industry also chime in but I do question their motives since they are being paid by the fuel industry.  Even Senator Lindsey Graham, (R. SC) has seen the light and admits that we should listen to the experts, which seems to contradict the majority of his party's views.

What should you do?  What can you do?  Nothing.  You really can't do anything to slow this roller coaster ride now.   You are way to late to this crazy party.  You should have jumped on the bandwagon twenty years ago.  I talked to a scientist (researching this impact on the coastal grasses) the other day and he said that stopping CO2's emissions fully today would not show results for 30-40 years.  The ocean is currently absorbing all the heat and taking it deep below where it will be covered by glacial water from the big melt and it will be years and years before it gets released back into the air, all after ocean currents change dramatically, another long term impact of global warming.  Maybe it won't be so bad for me after all.  I don't live on an island.  My drinking water is 400 feet down, not 100 feet like most.  As a bleeding-heart liberal, I will miss all those cute little critters that crawl and fly and need the coast for their habitat and breeding.  Some of the more dire predictions envision turning London into an Atlantis!   By the way, if you have not seen Venice, Italy, you really should schedule a trip while it is still there or take up SCUBA lessons.  This is going to happen over decades and not fast enough to catch the attention of the reality TV generation that sees marriages dissolve in months, follows crazy celebrities crash and burn scenarios, and relishes how an other's life disappears in an instant.  I won't be here to see the transition anyway.  Maybe my grandchildren will be engineers, city planners, inventors, water chemists...we are going to need those big time!  And, yes, you can do something.  Tell your representatives, local, state and national, to begin planning for this transition NOW.

Wishes and Pipe Dreams

The "photo-painting" above is deceptive in the story you think it tells.  Maybe this boat rarely gets a chance to raise its' sails?
 
One thing I have learned as I moved to this area near the water is that you can read the owners by their boats.  There are new fancy boats both fast and slow, well-used work boats, small pleasure craft and old, old boats.  Boats are usually (not always) like the Velveteen Rabbit.  They can be old and worn, but if well care for, they most certainly are used on a regular basis and used with respect.  If the boats are shiny and very new looking they are either NEW NEW or something that someone with more money than brains bought when his bonus came in.  But they sit idle representing a pipe dream that is slowly dying as the owners find they really do not like the regular outing on the water.  If the boat is worn and beaten down, maybe the owner cares less about life and just wants to make it through the day or has abandoned the effort to use the boat altogether.

I think the boats above are used on the old-fashioned and very wasteful passive fixed gill nets that the owner is supposed to check on a regular basis for trapped turtles, sting rays and other animals as well as make sure that they remove gilled fish before they die.  Fortunately these gill nets are grandfathered in and no new ones are being staked on the water.  They are also a boating hazard in the evenings when fishermen are supposed to put a solar or battery operated night light and do not!

Usually getting a boat ready for any outing and maintaining a boat while it sits idle at anchor or at the dock is for people who love the job or people who rely on the boat for food or people who have lots of money to hire help while they are raking in more money at the office.

But for many who depend on the wild harvest for income it is becoming a rare industry that provides little income as the prices of boat maintenance, fuel, and loss of animals in the ocean available for harvest bring profits down.  As few may know, most of our seafood comes from cultured places outside the U.S., some sustainable and some not.  It is even hard to get blue crab on the East Coast in the summer that does not come from Asia and you have to ask at the restaurants where the seafood comes from.  We always do that just to keep the restaurant owners on their toes.

How Many Lives Do You Have?

Writer's block or blogger's block is not something I panic about.  I know that I will write about something eventually because it is an addiction for me and I am not dependent on income from what I write.  I love how words combine on pages, make nice rhythms or sounds, and paint rudimentary pictures of what I want to express.  When virtual readers join in with remarks or comments, that is the icing on the cake.  Well, this block thing I had was finally broken by death.  Not my death, of course, nor the death of anyone close to me, thankfully,  just several incidents that made death more real than usual.  It got me thinking.

I have been close to dying (in a vague way) several times.  Once when I was about seven(?) I had the mumps.  I got very sick and remember my throat actually swelling shut.  It must not have completely closed because I remember telling my mother that I  couldn't breathe and I remember clearly how frightened I was.  We were poor and did not visit hospitals or doctors needlessly, but this did cause piling brothers and sisters into the car, rushing down the canyon to the nearest village and seeing a doctor who applied cold compresses, gave me some medicine and advice, and I thus I lived!

Another time that I came close to danger and perhaps death (I did say these were vague encounters) was when I was playing alone at about the age of 10 in a big field below the foothills. A man stopped his car on the country road near the field where I had been collecting rocks.  He opened the passenger door and ask me to come over.  I did.  He asked if I would like to go for a ride and as I was wondering why this man was asking this, he tossed some pieces of candy across the car seat beside him.  A major warning light went off in the back of  my head---good survival instincts---and I turned and ran like a gazelle back up the hill toward my house.

Once when I was eighteen and on a first date with a local boy we drove up the canyon to a popular tourist dance hall.  We had both consumed too much beer over the evening and not been able to dance it off before heading home.  While going down the canyon we skidded around a curve and did a complete 360 before coming to the edge of the steep side of the road and were lucky no one was coming either up or down the canyon at that time.  Both of us were suddenly sober realizing we were inches from death as we headed on home.  I never dated the boy again, as I guess we decided we were not the best for each other.

In my early twenties while living on an island in the South Pacific I got food poisoning.  It was a dreadful case and there were no really suitable doctors on this island.  I went for almost a week unable to down much more than a tablespoon of water every now and again.  On the sixth day I actually remember thinking that I wanted to die.  I was tired of this horrible intestinal battle and just wanted to "give up the ghost."  The seventh day I made the turn around as luck would  have it and survived!

In my thirties my husband and I visited a ski place in New Zealand.  We had gone up just for the day and not even planned to ski.  We just wanted to see the scenery and enjoy the lodge.  During mid-day a big snowstorm started to fall.  It was so lovely and heavy and steady that almost all of the skiers came in to wait it out as you needed windshield wipers on goggles if you were heading down on skies.  In the late afternoon we boarded the bus to take us back down to the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain.  I  will never forget that trip as the bus fishtailed from side to side either threatening to dash us against a rock interface or throw us down the side of the mountain.  Even hubby who is pretty carefree said he was going to get off the bus and walk down several times getting louder each time.  We made it without serious incident, but it was really pure luck.

I have had other scares such as getting the early stage of the bends when SCUBA diving, getting caught on a rushing muddy trail during a torrential downpour in a tropical rain forest, being stuck on the canvas of a trimaran in an electrical storm while pregnant, etc. but none of these brought me close to death...injury perhaps..but not death.  All of the above were nothing like being caught in a war or riot or plague outbreak and many were the result of carelessness.  But they affected me enough to remember them clearly.

Please feel free to share in a comment below or link to a more lengthy blog post telling my why you are lucky to still be here!

Bloggers' Block

I have looked and looked and I've got nothin'.  Hang in there until I get back to you.  Thanks.

The Problem

I have been trying to post something about a book I am reading, a minor controversial book, but a book which is important to us all and I cannot seem to get my thoughts into several cogent tangents or a few reasonable ideas or even some significant retorts...so you are going to get some quotes from it.  (Tell me if you have read this book.)

" Calculating the background extinction rate is a laborious task that entails combing through whole databases’ worth of fossils. For what’s probably the best-studied group, which is mammals, it’s been reckoned to be roughly .25 per million species-years. This means that, since there are about fifty-five hundred mammal species wandering around today, at the background extinction rate you’d expect— once again, very roughly— one species to disappear every seven hundred years."

“I sought a career in herpetology because I enjoy working with animals,” Joseph Mendelson, a herpetologist at Zoo Atlanta, has written. “I did not anticipate that it would come to resemble paleontology.”

"But extinction rates among many other groups are approaching amphibian levels. It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all freshwater mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion."

"SINCE the start of the industrial revolution, humans have burned through enough fossil fuels— coal, oil, and natural gas— to add some 365 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere. Deforestation has contributed another 180 billion tons. Each year, we throw up another nine billion tons or so, an amount that’s been increasing by as much as six percent annually."

I have only read a third of this book thus far and it carefully follows the extinction of species over billions of years as we have grown in our knowledge and comprehension and insight.  It discusses the causes, the patterns, the results.  It introduced me to thousands of living things I never new had existed.  Complicated life forms that hold my amazement at their survival.

Of course, there are those who say we will all go extinct anyway in the future, why focus on it?  My response is:   why go extinct sooner rather than later?  And why at the expense of everything else?

Kolbert, Elizabeth (2014-02-11). The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (p. 113). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition.

Dinner at My House

I am fortunate in that my husband likes to cook.  He is very good at making sure a steak or piece of fish is not overcooked...both of which require different attention.  The only thing he overcooks is scrambled eggs, but he likes them that way!  He also likes to make sauces and use spices and has a few stir fry Thai dishes he has developed.   He is an intense cook because he really does not cook  often enough to be a casual cook.

While I also like to cook, and am the primary chef in the house, I try to step back now and again to give him an opportunity to find his creative talents.

We finally caught some perch for bait the other day and were able to bait our crab traps appropriately to FINALLY catch blue crabs.  We did not get a lot, but were able to steam five big crabs for dinner.  Hubby was excited and so I asked if he would like cook dinner while I continued to photograph with my new tripod (my old one broke!)

He was excited.  We had our first harvest of eggplant, there was a bunch of lemon basil growing, blueberries on the vine, etc. etc.

I had forgotten that as a cook he gets easily distracted by reading a recipe or two or 40 for ideas, spending extensive time meditatively harvesting in the garden and then beginning the sauce or two!  An hour before we usually eat dinner he had a pound of lemon basil in the sink being washed.  A pound!  I am a medium fan of  lemon basil, preferring Italian, or red or many of the others, but he likes it.  And lemon basil was the only basil that had not been eaten to the ground by a rabbit or ground hog in my un-fenced herb bed.  Yes, I know!  Basil!  Never eaten before in my herb bed, but with the tons of rain, perhaps it is less pungent to the animals.

There was lots of chopping and mashing and slicing and dicing and steaming in the kitchen.  I  begged him to use one pesto recipe if he was going to try to make a pesto after he asked if he should  use sugar in it.   So there was walking back and forth studying the cook book and several thousand trips to the pantry.

While dinner was late we did have steamed crabs with a lime butter sauce, fried eggplant with a lemon pesto basil sauce, corn on the cob and freshly sliced cucumbers as our salad.  The pesto was a little strong in lemon basil, but complimented the gentle nutty flavor  of  fried eggplant nicely.  Crab is always good and the rest of the veggies were a nice change from the rich and spicy foods.

My payment for this good dinner was about an hour of cleaning a kitchen that looked as if six chefs had prepared some banquet and then left in a hurry.  I clean as I cook.  Men do not usually do that.  They just move to the next clean counter and begin again.  The counter was covered in tiny green  leaves, oily puddles, the floor in tiny garlic skins, the sink in corn husks and there were measuring cups and bowls everywhere.  But I stuck to my guns and worked off those calories nicely as I returned the kitchen to its former glory to use another day.

Sucked In but Good for the Elder Brain if Not the Pocket Book

I do not know how this happened.  I really do NOT, except for a fear that I would lose my precious data or lose my connection with the virtual reality in my life...FB, Blogger, email, RedBubble, etc., or be left behind in other ways...but I own all of this stuff below.

The big machine is close to 10 years old...maybe older, as I do not remember when it was purchased.  I have done one major back-up on it and then yearly just back up files, because I am not smart enough to figure out how to back it up correctly!  I own three separate hard drives.

The next in size (laptop) is a Gateway computer I purchased a long time ago.  I searched the drive properties and it said it was a 2006 version.  Almost ten years ago, and it WAS working pretty well until a small crack on one corner (near the electrical input) started to grow and now bits of plastic could fall off if I did not tape them with package tape, as I am doing, on the back and cannot be seen in the photo.  It also would overheat if I dd not check the position of the bits of plastic each time I use it...I even resorted to using an ice bag below at times!

One Christmas I got an old Kindle as a gift which just stopped working after a few years!  So I went to Amazon and got a new one (turquoise turtle covered) and they still have all my reading purchases in their cloud and transferred to the new Kindle.  Then in a weird fit of jealousy, greed, fear of being left behind(?) I followed hubby when he decided he wanted a Nook a few years ago and since they were on sale...I also got one (orange)!  I have a bunch of books on it, some in the cloud, and I also check out from the local library when I do not mind being rushed to finish a read. It works for blogging, FB and other stuff as well.  Easy to transport, uses the charge pretty fast.

Since my old laptop was scary, I decided I had better get a new one and back up stuff from the old laptop.  I researched and bought a laptop/tablet...Lenova (the silver gray).  No detachable keyboard,but folds completely back and works like a tablet.  Geek squad was supposed to transfer stuff, refused to transfer software, etc.  Now I have to figure out how to do that.

Oh, I also have a phone where I can pretty much do virtual reality stuff on a tiny keyboard if I am in a self-flagellating mood and even do some photographic stuff on a very small scale.

BUT, this story is not over yet.  I want a graphics tablet!  I want it so badly I can see it...just out of reach.  My photography hobby is reaching new levels that only a graphics tablet can meet.  I have limited time on this earth and want to try that out!

I will need a larger surge protector to keep all of these charged!  So much for a small carbon footprint. I have to label and keep together all charging cords...a real nightmare.

Now, you may ask, why is this good for an elder brain?  Well some of these devices have touch screens, various devices use various control key commands (and while most are OS Windows, they are still different), menu drop downs are sometimes sideways, ESC key works for some and only for others in certain windows, in some cases I have to remember some other key combination, some are touch screen and I forget others are not, one uses a mouse and two others a touch pad....I find that my brain strains to learn each of the subtle language differences when communicating with, through, and on these devices.  That must be good for the brain if not the pocket-book, right?  And, just think of all the extra  chances to have my ID stolen, now that the Federal database has been broken into and my Social Security number is available to some nefarious Chinese entities!

Dedicated Servants

So thankful to all the policemen and policewomen and firefighters and medics that gave up their holiday yesterday to keep us all safer.

Just thought I would add some photos of future dedicated dudes, you know, the preview of help to come. I was sitting on one of the tiny local beaches with grandson when a larger boat anchored at the side of the channel and these young men jumped in the water and swam towards us.

The shallow shore can have pockets of sea nettles (stinging jelly fish) this time of year, so these guys were pretty brave.

Maybe it was ignorance, because as I heard their conversations, they were not too smart about the waters because they were complaining about the jelly fish.

When they reached the beach we talked to them and realized they were taking the afternoon off after a day of training at the Sheriff's office...our future Deputies.

I feel safer already, and other stuff...;-)

Geography or Finding Your Way Home

On the restroom wall at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

My world grows even smaller in this little county of mine on a daily basis.  Some days I feel as if I have crawled back into a little cave and rolled back a large stone behind me as I settle in with the strange but nice cave people who are afraid of bright white lights because no one ever told them about electricity or perhaps even the sun.

What has brought on this perspective you might ask?  While I was talking to my doctor of less than one year (who did indeed give me a referral/transfer to another female doctor in the same practice and from whom I already have an appointment for follow-up blood work in a few months) we discussed the culture of this county that she was gleefully leaving---see prior post.

The doctor and I are both well educated and have opportunities that allow us to seek answers to our questions in this universe and to which we can sometimes add actual experiences. We also do not fear questioning our experiences.

I had mentioned to this Doctor that upon our return from France my husband had been talking to one of the landscapers at the museum, a young man of about 35 with a pleasant disposition and a happy personality.  The young man asked my husband where we had gone.  When my husband told him "France" the young many looked up and then asked, "France?  Where is that?"

Hubby had the good grace not to laugh or ridicule or disbelieve and said it was in Europe.  The young man said. "Oh..,"  and we will never know if any of this made any sense to him at all because the subject of the conversation changed.

After relating this tale to my Doctor she responded with another more disturbing tale.  She had been in line in the local hardware store, and while waiting, struck up a conversation with another customer.  The customer asked where she lived.  She responded with the name of a small town in this area (let us say for this story's sake it was called Colorado).  The person she was talking to responded, "Oh, that is across the bridge and by the military base."  She smiled and said, "Yes.  Some people think I mean the state Colorado when I say that."

The person said, "The state?"

She turned to them,"  Yes, you know, the STATE of Colorado, not the town."

The person responded in all seriousness with," Oh, is there a state named Colorado?"

In both of these cases the persons in these stories were well dressed, bright eyed, spoke English without an accent, and would give no indication they were tremendously sheltered or unsophisticated or part of a dysfunctional education system.  Anecdotal stories like these help me understand accept why some people can take seriously a Presidential candidate such as Donald Trump while people in Europe shake their heads in wonder at us and our backwardness and wasted prosperity.  (I do not live in Appalachia or the Deep South, I live in a place much like where you live.)

"Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the for the benefit of their parents.  It exists for the benefit of the social order.  We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population.  You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education.  Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.  So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school:  It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people. " John Green

Three Letter Word

Some people who read this blog may remember that last year I was looking for a new doctor. I had a good doctor but I felt he had social issues. He never asked me to take a single item of clothing off in the eight years that I saw him. He listened to my heart through my clothes and diagnosed me mainly by what I said my symptoms were.  He also spent more time looking at his laptop than me.  While I am an elder, I was in good enough health to ignore this. Then I decided it was time to change doctors. I live in a county where it is not easy to find a good doctor, a doctor who takes my insurance, a doctor who is still taking patients, and I also was hoping to find a woman doctor for a change.

After a six month's search I found my female doctor (a geriatrician but that is OK) and have been seeing her for about a year. Prior to changing to her, I had heard a rumor she was leaving but I ignored that, and sure enough, last week was my last appointment with her.

I asked her where she was going and she said to a medical practice up north affiliated with one of our Universities that maintained a better budget. She then opened up to explain that this county, in which I live, (very conservative and never going to raise taxes) was just too backward for her. Her heart patients had to drive almost two hours to the north to get decent care. She said that the elderly could not get decent care, elderly that were used to good health care, not poor elderly.  County health support was nil and she felt she could no longer do her job.  She also added that at least five doctors she knew were also job hunting outside the county further reducing our limited selection of doctors and putting strain on our one hospital.

Our county once had a surplus budget years ago and continues to have a record number of wealthy residents with the highest of incomes, mostly retired, but some working. What happened?  Is it that we have a large population of very poor and uneducated people. Was it the recent recession from which it never recovered? Was it because the state moved education retirement funding responsibilities to the counties without warning? Is it because two of our seven elected county commissioners are owners of liquor stores rather than something reflective of a broader view of society?  Is it this conservative county's refusal to even consider raising taxes as we plunge in tighter budgets?

Salaries of teachers have been flat for two years. How long before the more mobile and smart ones also head to parts up north putting our children at risk?

The county is in the process of supporting the development of a liquid natural gas facility within walking distance of many homes.  No other facility of this kind exists so close to where people live in the United States.  There were months of protests, but like Texas, these were overridden.  Do they think/hope this will save the day?  Maybe by blowing a number of taxpayers sky high?  I wait to see how our conservative liquor store owners work this out.  I am afraid it will be like sports stadiums that never create the job markets they promise while forcing the move of lower middle class home owners elsewhere.

No, I would not want to be Commissioner.  Since I do not run, maybe I should not complain.  Since I do not have a clear cut solution, maybe I should just sit down.  But I would accept a ding in my taxes.

The Volunteer Snob

During the summer months I am involved in master gardener projects. One project could involve several hours 4 days a week, but I have decided that as much as I love sharing my love of growing things, I do not want to spend that much time in other gardens! I like doing nothing and running a house (which was always my secondary job) continues to take some time. Hubby, on the other hand, seems to be driven to find something to do every single day. I think it is much harder for men to retire and not have the responsibilities that they used to have.

I also was looking for a change in types of volunteering. I wanted to maybe work more one on one with people. I also wanted something more intellectual and less physical. I am still searching.

This past January I called our local office of Public Literacy to see if they needed teachers of English or reading or similar. They asked me to fill out a few forms, welcomed my skills, and set up an afternoon of training. I went and one other woman was there for the training at the same time. I learned that five of us had volunteered and they could only get two of us to come on this particular day and would train the other three the following week.

The training was easy and predictable. The structure of the process for each class and data input from the lessons with a student would be more challenging, but something I would learn to do with time.

I left them eager for a call to assist. It is now 6 months later and I have not received even a follow-up call from that office. It is not clear to me why no one needs assistance in my part of the county since I have been told they don't have any literacy volunteers down this way.

I realize that before the days of fall and less gardening start I am going to have to research once again for some volunteer work of an intellectual nature. Both Hospice and Meals on Wheels need help, but neither of these are something I want to do. Driving is something I hate and I do not think I am ready yet for hospice work emotionally. The museum wants someone for data entry...lonely and tedious work.

I think I just realized that I am a bit of a volunteer snob.

Just One More Step

10:00 PM on Tuesday evening the 23rd and I am off to bed!
11:00 PM and for a half hour after thunder and lightning that raises the bed!
2:00 AM my 4-year-old grandson awakens with a nightmare, so I crawl in bed with him.
3:00 AM he is leaning on me looking at my face.
4:00 AM I have a knee in my back.
5:00 AM hubby is up and packing for his Scout trip and while he is being quiet I am a very light sleeper.  I walk back down to my bed and throw the covers over my head.
7:00 AM the 4-year-old who usually sleeps until 8:00 awakens me with his call.
7:30 AM breakfast
8:00 AM dressed and check email
8:30 AM head out to bike with grandson--he covers a little less than 2 miles!
8:50 AM we bat some tennis balls back and forth
9:00 AM we head off to the art museum to walk and search for fairy houses on their grounds.
11:00 AM we tour the museum itself
11:30 AM we play in the children's playground
12:00 AM we eat at FAST FOOD for lunch
1:00 PM we get home
1:30 PM I set up the paint and brushes and his very own fairy castle and supervise
2:30 PM we let it dry and he plays with his new car while I sort, wash, and freeze several pints of newly picked raspberries
3:00 PM he gets a snack of raspberries
3:30 PM he watches a movie and I blog.
I have a small backache, am pretty tired, and he really seems to want a nap, but is on the edge where he will probably remain awake until this evening.
Is it only 3:30???

Nests

 Living in "good-old-boy" country means that things get done on a time warp.  It is not like the living in the city or suburbs where you call for repairs, they give a window of time, they show up, they get the job done and they charge you a small fortune.  Here in the country the square dance goes a little differently.  First, their motivation is not to become millionaires so they charge a 'little' less.  They give you a day and vague time and usually show up hours later or even the next day.  They never call.  They usually (not always) do excellent work, but it takes them three times longer than you would reasonably expect.  If you also have a scheduled life then it can take five times longer to get done!  I have been living with the mess below for a month!

The tape on the ceilings was buckling and had to be re-mudded, sanded and re-painted.  There was also other similar work in two bedrooms ceilings although in smaller, less difficult areas.  Furniture gets moved, drop clothes get placed and I sigh as they move equipment from room to room.

The older I am, the more I like things in their place where I can find them.  I tend to get up in the middle of the night once a week or so and do some wandering and do not want to be surprised by chaos that I might have forgotten.

This house is not as large as these pictures may convey.  It is the high ceilings that give it a feeling of spaciousness and also require paying professionals when work needs to be done or light bulbs changed!

Our good-old-boy was an interesting charmer.  He had 7 kids - all home schooled - he has a HUGE range of talents as he was able to fix a bunch of stuff.  He loves nature as we do, raises bees, among many other animals and while a bit laissez faire about projects he gets it done quite nicely 99% of the time.  He also was very mellow about my asking him to re-do a few small things or add a few new small things to be done.  So while I am not a priority in his life, I can live with it.

I am learning to bend and not break as I live in another culture!

Remembrance

The five-year-old is coming to visit all week, next week.  My husband will  be here the first two days of that week, and then he is off to a camping trip with the 10-year-old.  Yes, we are used if not abused in this world.  I am somewhat jealous of the free babysitting my children have access to.  I never had parents who could or would step forward so that I  had a day off  here or there.  When my first was small I  lived on an island in the South Pacific and had a young girl to help.  But if we were traveling, the baby always came along.  When we got stateside, both sets of parents lived far away.  When we visited them, Hubby's mother was busy taking care of hubby's father and could not take care of a grandchild, until that child was of school age.  My mother was resentful of any babysitting I might request.  She had raised five of her own and had no desire to go back to that time.  I did  "dump" the children (7 and 11)  on her for three weeks one summer as we had a business trip to Egypt.  Let us just say it was a character building experience for both of my children. and a miserable time for my mother.

So now this grandma camp has to kick into gear soon and I am happy!  I over-think this stuff and am trying to be better and more relaxed about it.  Wanting  to make sure there is laughter and amazement, and of course, memories to last a life time, but accepting the days will not be perfection.  I also try to throw in a lesson or two about mother nature, since their lives are limited in that area.

I secretly want my immortality to be encased in conversations that begin "When I used to visit Grandma, I remember...it was so much fun."  Now that death (hopefully decades away) is clearly my final big act, I want to be remembered for the good stuff in the hearts and minds of these little ones. We all do want remembrance, don't we?  Whether it is by our accomplishments in our community, our accomplishments in our career, or our activities with those we love we must leave a mark, however small, to justify our existence.

Just Once More!

I cannot in all good conscience leave France without some broader more traditional less contextual examples of what wonderful things can be seen in this country.  Only seven photos were selected from 2,250 that I took.  I deleted away another 600 or so before I even started!  As a photographer I really want to share some of the diversity of this place and I hope you have patience with my interest.  I also hope you enjoyed visiting France vicariously or returning vicariously, whatever the case may be.  I have no immediate plan to return, but who knows... (As always, click on the photos for a closer view.)

All About the People -- Part III

(First, Hattie asked a while back if all the photos from my French trip were mine and they are!   I am a little flattered.  As a copyright freak, I always clearly provide a link to photos that are taken from elsewhere or by someone else.)  ( As another prescript you will note that the demographics of these cruises is elderly, upper-middle class, white (except for two Asian women) and therefore, not as interesting as it could have been in other ways.)

I did not get many pictures of the passengers on the ship because I am not one to store these away and try to remember who was who (or is that who was whom)?  There were close to 190 passengers on each of the two ships that I took.  I must have met about 40 on each due to guided tours we took together or eating at the same table.  (Photos included below are street shots of the French and tourists and no one I met.  You can tell the French, as they are in great shape!)

We never talked politics or religion at meals, but with our country as politically divided as it is and with some groups making subjects more politically argumentative than they need to be, we found ourselves tiptoeing around subjects such as the environment, the weather, education, French protests, French labor, French socialism, French economy and even the global economy and  ship labor.  Yet we seemed to find that most of the passengers regardless of the state from which they hailed or the career they chose were in philosophical agreement with us, and thus we were able to be more honest in sharing and learning about others ideas for solutions to problems. 

It was easy to be in agreement with the University of Wisconsin young (50s) professor who was devastated by his governor's cuts to education and then seeing the gov applying the same amount of money as in the cut to a new (unneeded) sports venue and as we later learned selling the public land valued at 9 million to the billionaire sports owners for one dollar.  At the next dinner it was even more interesting to find that the retired geologist, who had worked for decades for most of the big oil companies in the U.S., was very much in agreement with our ideas toward the environment and also our hope to move toward more sustainable energy.  He also had a hobby working archeological digs in the U.S. and encouraged us to contact the Forestry Service to volunteer on one of their expeditions!

No one seems happy in this photo, neither the tourists in the background nor the Frenchman in the foreground.  I can see where this could lend itself to a story.

We were energized by the 80-something British couple who had many grandchildren.  We loved that the male part of this duo was able to walk on all the tours after a double knee replacement surgery a few years ago.  There were at least two other gentlemen with canes that did not let some of the more challenging walking tours up the hills on cobbled streets slow them down.

We enjoyed the couple from California.  The wife was originally from Georgia and we both loved the gentility of the south and the southern authors that we read and mutually enjoyed.  She was the gracious lady that made sure one of the passengers got a birthday card signed by many of us and was also a help with her command of the French language.

It is the same everywhere.  Wouldn't it be funny if they were talking to each other?

We enjoyed the Arizona couple who were not deep conservatives as we expected and fully on board with funding more science research and supporting socialized medicine.  Their son has been working on both an Ebola vaccine and a bird flu vaccine and now so close to success trying to get funding for both projects.  It was fun listening to how much work raising the boy was as a rebellious teenager and then evolving into such a success.  The other son, more conservative and less difficult to raise, was a success on Wall Street.  Proud parents they were.

Must be a new mother model.

We did find one gentleman our age that seemed to be on the verge of a heart attack in the middle of each walking tour.  His face was flushed and he sometimes seemed disoriented.  On the way back from a castle walk up a reasonable hill he actually collapsed just as he was going to go onto the gangplank of our ship.  They put him in a wheelchair and rolled him on in. Later on the second cruise he got lost and was left behind on one of the tours, missed the departure of our ship, and stayed two nights in a hotel in the French town before he contacted the Viking company and finally was reunited for the last two days.  We (the whole group) worried about him until we noticed he did a lot of drinking as well as taking pain pills on this trip.  He was wealthy, traveling alone, and we just shook our heads and felt sorry for the crew who were responsible.

One of our last dinners was with an 80 something woman traveling with her unmarried 40 something daughter.  The daughter was beautiful and wore expensive clothes and jewelry to dinner each evening, good taste stuff, not the turn your head stuff.  She was in real estate in Seattle and seemed to be very successful.  She was strong and opinionated and plotting about her future and search for a marriage partner.  She was trying to date online, but the questions she posed to possible candidates were pretty incisive and like a scalpel cut to the heart of things.  I am sure she was way over the head of most candidates that approached her.  She also seemed concerned about some woman in Seattle who had been on welfare her whole life who wanted her wedding paid for by the government.  I had no real comment for this, as I felt very strongly no one was going to pay for this welfare wedding!

I will let you add your own caption here.

Her mother was also very strong and outspoken and with some quiet "under her breath" comments, made it clear that she did not like the service in the dining room.  (In all honesty they did get my order mixed up twice!)  I later learned from another Seattle resident that this elderly woman lived in an area of multimillion dollar apartments.  Clearly they both were used to much higher standards.  Yet, even though both were strong headed, they seemed ever so supportive and polite and loving to each other and disagreements were quickly brushed aside.

In one of the conversations, the mother ever-so-lightly mentioned she had won a number of medals in the Olympics for Alpine skiing many years ago.  She did not brag, did not elaborate, but it fit into some part of the conversation, some yacht racing story, so she dropped it like a little diamond.  When I got home I researched Olympic medal winners and I am pretty sure that one of the biographies I came upon was her!  The photo was a dead ringer, although taken decades ago.  I now understood her so much better as she has always set high standards for herself and for others.

This post is too lengthy so I have to leave out the details of the Nigerian brother, a business man, and the Nigerian sister, a nun, who were leaving our airport going back to Nigeria with the body of their father who had been honored with an Army military funeral in Washington, DC.  He had been a chaplain. There was the robust engineer with the terrific laugh and his quiet wife who used to teach school that told the story of how they met in the elevator of their apartment building.  There was also the funny lawyer who let his wife do all the arrangements on the cruise, the Jewish history teacher who was so soft and inspiring and such a fount of knowledge for us along with his Catholic wife who had been a high level administrator for some state education office, and I will even leave out the fun wine tastings/map readings with my sister and brother-in-law or my sister's too much wine conversation scolding the Brits (gently) for their support of the "expensive"' monarchy and the Brits explaining to her how the Queen pretty much gave more than she got.  Oh well, just shows I had a great "people" time.  But I do love people and their stories.

It Is All About the Stories--People Part II

Before I travel I tend to collect a few books of fiction and non-fiction on the place I am going to visit.  I involve myself in the idiomatic expressions, the geography that molded the history of the country, the foods that are most traditional and I try to see what makes the people laugh.  I read one Gertrude Stein book on the people of Paris, but did not find it enlightening.  She refuses to use commas, which can be a distraction for someone, like me, that uses commas like salt.  I also read the novel "The Paris Architect" which I mentioned in a prior post.  It is a fictional account of two very different French sisters that found themselves fighting the Nazis from within their own limited world of that time.

Stop for a minute and think back to when you were 18 years old.  Imagine waking up to a war in your country.  Imagine your father leaving to fight that war and not seeing him for 9 years.  Imagine blackouts, bombings and ration cards.  This prologue leads me to writing about the people one meets on a cruise.

One of the best experiences on these cruises is the open table where you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with other passengers.  You can avoid people to some extent, but the true pleasure is meeting and talking to people who have lived very interesting, long lives and are strong survivors of those lives and are in a great mood because they are on a travel vacation!  (Even an introvert like me gets sucked into the small talk.)

This lady wearing the red scarf above was on the cruise.  She was always dressed to the nines.  Earrings, several bracelets, finely knit sweaters, etc.  She stood about five feet tall and was full of energy and enthusiasm.  She was 80-something and traveling alone. She was also very religious as I saw the time she almost missed the bus because she forgot her audio guide machine she crossed herself while rushing back to her cabin. One evening as we sat at one of the round tables she asked to join us for dinner.  Oddly I had not noticed her on this trip until this time.  Her accent was unusual and while she spoke clearly I had to lean in carefully to understand her.  Asking enough questions I slowly got her life story.

She had owned and helped run a cattle ranch in Ohio.  She even raised meat for the Cincinnati Zoo.  She talked about the price of beef on the hoof and the hard work ranching entailed.  When I asked where she was from originally she said France!  (I thought about it and realized that her accent was a version of French, but after decades in the U.S., not easily identifiable.)

She smiled and said that she had fallen in love with a U.S. soldier when just a teenager in France during WWII.  She and her mother and sister were trying to survive while her father had gone to fight the war and they feared he had become a POW.  She married the U.S. soldier while in France and lived in France with her mother and the soldier where he was stationed for several years.  Late one evening there was a knock at her door.  Although the Germans had fled and the war was almost over, she and her mother were afraid to open the door.  Then they recognized the voice.  It was her father!  They had not seen or heard from him for nine years.  She said she almost did not recognize him when she opened the door as he had lost so much weight and was so bruised and weak.  I cannot imagine the emotional reunion, repeated many times across Europe.

Later when her husband was called back she moved with him to the U.S. only to find he was not the man she thought.  He was cruel and demanding and she eventually divorced.  Perhaps the war had changed him more than they both knew until he was back home.  (I did not know at the time she told this story that she was Catholic, but I should have expected as she was French.)  She tells of meeting  another soldier whom she marries and they went on to Ohio to ranching and that is where she spent the rest of the decades of her life. (A lot of the best story of her life is unquestionably during these times.)  She was most certainly a survivor, one for whom the twists and turns of life were just a dance move to be mastered.   She is now a widow and said that, at the end of the cruise, she was going to visit her married sister who still lived in France. 

On these two cruises we met many people of interest and perhaps in the next post I will touch on a few more.

People---Part 1

The next few posts are about the people.  Without that ingredient, travel becomes solid food without wine or dessert.  The first group of people we dealt with on a daily basis were the Viking crew members.  These people are endlessly polite, happy, caring, and even understand English on a basic level.  Their wages are unknown to me, but since staff attitude is one of the primary ingredients that allows Viking to charge so much for their cruises, I am guessing that is why passengers are encouraged to add a generous tip.  Staff treat you as if they depend upon you, and perhaps, they do!   In 2015 Viking (which is Swiss) announced it was going to change all pay to Euros which resulted in a 13% pay cut.  They are blaming this on the minimum wage law in Germany which includes staff on vessels.  Odd since most of the income comes in pounds or U.S. dollars!  I did not know about this until I returned and did some research.  I would not have changed my purchase, though, I am considering writing a letter.

This sweet lady worked behind the desk and we later found she was married to the Chef, who himself was a handful!

 

 

Here is her husband guiding us through an oyster tasting.

Viking is based in Basil and handles 40 river vessels and 2,000 staff.  They are now adding ocean vessels to the mix (I will most likely never take one of those as I hate big cruise ships). I do know that the upper level staff work about 3 months on and then 2 or 3 weeks off.  They are on 24 hour call, so eventually need such a break.  I am guessing it is unpaid leave?  But I do not know.  Higher level staff are paid decent wages, it is those that work in the bowels of the ship, which are of concern to us all.

Think about having a job where you must be polite to stupid elderly Americans that forget what you told them, do not read their brochure and booklets carefully, assume they can walk cobbled streets and in some cases (a future post) are privileged enough to feel that staff should behave as personal servants expecting perfection and in other cases (perhaps a future post) drink too much and miss the boat.  These staff earn it!

During one of our mooring experiences I saw the woman crew member rushing off and decided to follow and get pictures.  These are for Mage who loves the operations on ships.  This gal (no spring chicken) tried twice to throw the bow line over the dock pipe without a using any pole.  Photos taken from inside the terrace room windows!

She threw twice and failed to capture both side hooks on the mooring bollard.  Immediately the big "guy" shows up to assist.  They seemed to be speaking in German.  He took the rope from her with an air of confidence.

I am sure he thought he was going to do it better than she, but after four failed attempts he looked up and smiled at me and I politely quit taking photos and went back to my wine.  We must have eventually gotten docked correctly as we soon disembarked for our afternoon tour.

Next a post on other people.