Two Steps Back

 

We've had some sobering news. Three close friends have Covid. Coming on the heels of Mollie and Chris having had it too. We had already started wearing masks in indoor public situations. Now we are considering foregoing indoor public events again. So, no restaurants. theaters, etc. I suppose I should postpone my plan to begin travelling on public conveniences too. 

They are working on a new vaccine. It will be the same story though. Half the people here don't want it. Most of the world can't get it. This is a plan to fail.

Life is a Hurricane

 

Have you seen any of the James Webb Telescope images? I have been enthralled by them, watching them at night before I go to bed. It's very calming. 

But it struck me that in it's natural state, all of life is a spiral. Nature uses them to grab our attention: tornadoes, cyclones, hurricanes, time. Ancient people drew them, lived in them, danced in them, built temples with them. 

And when I nearly died, I remember the tunnel that swirled with fog and twinkling lights. I remember the bright light in the center. 

Sunday Selections

Sunday Selections is a meme that I was introduced to by Elephant's Child. The rule is simple, post pictures that are chilling in the camera folder, and link back to her. Her pictures are always amazing, so you should go see them. 

My theme for this weeks seems to be what I do most, pictures from draft posts that never see the light of day...

This picture is from a blog very recently. I took it to talk about the wonderful summer weather we were having. Then I learned about the terrible heatwave that the rest of the country was having. Only to be shortly followed by news that Britain and Europe were in the same dire straits. It really didn't seem appropriate to publish that one. 

I take almost as many pictures of this shaded walk as I do the mountain. And I keep trying to work one of them into a blog. But nothing so far seems to fit well with the way it feels to me. The walk seems almost spiritual, like a protected place to me. It's very peaceful and meditative. 

I was just walking through the walkway once, when this little creature ran quickly by, from behind me. He scared me as much as I think I scared him. Then ridiculously, I wondered if the walk was his cathedral and I had just disturbed his prayers. He certainly brought a surprised halt to my meditations. 

I don't see many wild rabbits here. I suppose they have to may predators. One of our neighbors used to free range some domestic hares, but they have stopped keeping them. Presumably for the same reason.

I love the wild flowers here. My walks are beautiful all summer long. It is a good thing that I can now snap a picture and leave the flowers undisturbed. When I was a child, I was constantly in trouble for picking flowers I thought grew freely along the sidewalks. I don't suppose the PNW homeowners would take it any better than the southern women did back in the day. I've only ever had one person complain about me taking a picture, and she's kind of strange.

This picture was taken with the thought of talking about my grandmother. She grew them in her flower garden every year. She had roses, tulips, iris' and hyacinths too, but when I think of her garden, I think of the glads. 

She would fill a large crystal vase full of them and place them on the table in front of the pulpit at church on Sunday morning. She wanted everyone admiring her gardening abilities while she played the organ for them.  

In the south, they are a spring flower. I don't recall seeing them much after the 4th of July. Here, the sun lovers like glads don't bloom until after then. 

As much as glads remind me of my grandmother, hydrangeas remind me of Woodstock, which I've taken to calling "Home" in my thoughts. While it was my home for many years, it isn't now. Home is here. I do miss Woodstock. Hydrangea bloomed well all summer there. But the one's there were all one color, whether it was blue, white, purple or pink. Here, they can be multicolored. 

I take as many pictures of sunflowers as possible while they are bloomed for the summer. This is the flower that I associate with summer, but it really is an autumn flower. 

Do you want to know who really appreciates the sunflowers we grow?

Happy New Week...

Deja Vu

I did not get out today. My excuse is that it was another warm day. But that isn't the truth. I was preoccupied with the upcoming televised hearing. 

As I have been watching the hearings, I keep getting a deja-vu feeling., as if I had heard this, or read it somewhere before. When I was a teenager I was really in to a lot of counter culture literature. I read things like "Steal This Book", "The Whole Earth Catalog", and "The Anarchist's Cookbook" along with many less notable and much less reputable writings. Mostly I thought it was amusing. I really didn't want to build any bombs or steal sodas or cigarettes from vending machines. I just thought it was cool that I could find out how to do it. Back then, counter culture seemed to be more about getting high and discussing things we knew nothing about, than it was about starting civil wars. I wonder what the people who cooked up this whole insurrection plan had been reading back in the 70's. Looks like some people took it much more seriously than I did. 

The end of that story is that I then went off to Bible College and never did build a bomb or steal cigarettes. 

I never tried to overthrow the Constitution either.

Yet even with strong deja vu going on, I am left with jaw dropping amazement with every hearing. Mostly at how much of it was done brazenly out in the open and nobody stopped it. But then, during the years of Trump, we hardly knew which nightly scandal to pay attention too. 

And the Secret Service? Just because of where they serve, these are men of power. They know how it works. The excuse they are giving for not turning over the texts is ludicrous. They aren't even trying to make reasonable people believe them. The attitude seems to be more "Whadda you gonna do aboudit?" Absolutely astounding that this could be happening. And there is no guarantee that it is going to be stopped. 

Back in the day, counter-culture talk among the people I was around centered on ending the war and legalizing pot. No one wanted anything more ambitious than to build a cabin and catch rainbow trout. We were children pretending we knew what we were playing with.

These people, republicans? They want to set up Gilead meets Animal Farm. They really don't want the power so that they can govern. They proved that in the Trump years. They want it so they can enrich themselves. 

I feel so much more about this subject than I can adequately communicate here. Negative things mostly, like anger, disgust, anxiety. How can so many people with no respect for Democracy be in power? How did they take over a whole party? Why are so many people fooled by them?

I've told you more about my misguided youth than I had planned to.  

I'm sorry about this rambling nonsense. I am just blown away by what has happened..

Got Books?

Does your neighborhood have any of these? The first time I saw one was when I visited Mollie in Chicago shortly after I retired. They were everywhere in the Ukrainian Village where she lived until just the other day. I thought they were charming. I hoped that Auburn would have them too, but sadly they didn't when I first came here.

When I arrived, the town was thriving. There was a lot to do here in this town and in the ones around us. But I was disappointed by the litter I found everywhere. There is a myth in the south that the PNW is full of a bunch of barefoot hippie folk wandering around the mountains in search of nuts and berries to sustain themselves. I was hopeful to leave the disrespectful thoughtlessness of people who felt it fine to drop their trash where it landed and walk a way to leave it for someone else to clean up. My dreams of a clean street utopia were short-lived. People here are every bit as slovenly as those in the south. But there were street fairs and farmers markets and the community center arranged day trips to the wine country and the shore. But that changed with Covid, and it has been slow to re-emerge. Probably just as well, if it was available, I'm sure I'd have gotten Covid a few times over 

As Covid restrictions began closing down our town, these started appearing in the neighborhood. The first one I noticed was in front of the Episcopalian/Presbyterian church. They seem to be a good community citizen, but their books were mostly of the Christian Self Help genre. I've read quite a few of those. So I left them for others who may want them more than I do. Soon this one appeared on J Street. What the picture doesn't show is that there is a shelf below it, on the fence where they also leave fruit and vegetables and even snacks sometimes. The books are mostly romance novels and some children's books for a pre-teen. I have taken a tomato and an apple or two, but the books aren't really what I read. 

Then Yesterday I took my old route home from the park. I had given up walking that way for a while due to street construction. But it is a shaded walk and the weather was warm. To my extreme pleasure, there is a new street library box on 7th street. And the owner has excellent taste in reading material. I had to exercise self control to only take one book. This is the one I chose. It is great, full of all the wisdom that I somehow failed to learn through osmosis and being raised by southern women. I will go by tomorrow to drop off one of mine that I have already read. It makes me feel so much better about the community culture here. I feel like I'm not the only one who wants to build one.

It's More Than Just Summer

I have no reason to complain about the summer heat. I am in one of the few parts of the country where we aren't receiving triple digit temperatures. But it is warm enough here that I have been taking it easy and working on keeping myself and the pets cool during the hot part of the day. Today the cats laid on my bed in front of the fan while I puttered around. I played with my water colors and deleted more than a thousand pictures off my cloud drive. 

Don't worry, the pictures weren't any good. Not really the one's I painted nor the ones I deleted. Taking pictures on a moving train, through a dirty window is challenging. I pretty much took a dozen picture to get one that is decent. And the only decent ones are of such beautiful country, I decided to keep them. I do have a few that I am somewhat amazed  that I took. The sunflower is pretty sad, but there is something I like about it. 

 

What I Was Trying to Show You

It is a beautiful day out. It started cool and overcast, but just after noon the sun came out and it warmed up nicely. I had gone for a walk in the morning and enjoyed the coolness. But when the afternoon happened, I knew I needed to go test the camera on my new phone. I don't know who I'm fooling, I have a new camera that people can call and text me on. I am thrilled with it. I can get a picture of the mountain that looks close to what I actually see. 

 

Well, It's Not Like I Don't Have A Calendar

Yes, well...I really do have a calendar. Many, actually. One on each of the seven electronic screened devices in the room which I am sitting. I could easily find out what day it actually is if I'd bother to look at any of them. My last post is the second post since the first of the year where I have misrepresented the day, only because I erroneously thought it was a different day. Maybe I should try one of those jellyfish brain vitamin supplements. Only I can't remember what it is called. Happy Friday 😉

Friday, Already?

I had been on a small roll a few weeks ago. Elephant's Child's Sunday Selections meme had energized my blogging, at least to give me a subject once a week. And I was working on my post a few weeks ago when Karen asked me if I wanted to go to Wilkeson to get some pizza.

 Wilkeson is a somewhat renovated, small mining and logging town not all that far from where we live. Unfortunately, you can see everything there really is to see in maybe twenty minutes. It isn't that big of a town. But it is home to the best pizza you will find anywhere, and I say that having eaten a Due in Chicago. 

The Carlson Block, the restaurant is open during limited hours first due to Covid and then claiming they can't find anyone to work. Ordinarily I would suspect they weren't paying their staff well, but this is Washington state and minimum wage is fifteen dollars an hour here. I suppose if you kill off a million members of your workforce in a year in a half, you should expect staffing shortages. Regardless of what I think of it, they are only open for a few hours in the evenings on weekends. And we have driven all the way up there only to find a note on  the door explaining they were closed to attend a cousin's wedding and would be closed for a couple of weeks. This weekend though, we were able to get the treat we had gone for. We ate our pizza, went and explored the bridge, then went back to Wilkeson to a different restaurant and had soft serve ice cream. When we got home I decided that I was no longer in the mood and that I could pick up Sunday Selections in the next week. 

Little did I know that the following Sunday, Father's day, my mother-in-law decided that it was as good a day as any to pass over a bridge all of her own. She stepped out into eternity. It was far from unexpected. She was diagnosed with dementia maybe fifteen years ago. It's been years since she even recognized anyone. But as always in these cases, even one's that are expected, it could have come at a better time. Everyone had just travelled for the wedding and were now having to expense it again in a time when travelling smoothly is an issue. Plane travel isn't the given that it used to be. And the worst was that my father-in-law was in the hospital himself because he'd fallen and broken his leg; He wasn't able to be with her in her final hours. I will be surprised if everyone isn't summoned for another family event before Christmas. Sadly, they had just finished their life's works and translated the entire bible from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts into the Aztec languages. The dedication ceremony had been delayed due to Covid and unrest in Oaxaca, Mexico where they are spoken.. They finished the work, but she didn't get to go to the party. 

Please do not feel the need to console me. I am completely at peace with her death, as I am sure I will be when my father-in-law joins her. Her life was more than full. She lived it well. And now she is Home.

During any one of those weeks, I could have taken a minute (more like a couple of hours when it all is said and done) to put out a blog, but I have been frustrated in the attempt since the wedding. Mollie had sent everyone a Lyft voucher to help with transportation. I downloaded the app and that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back for my phone. Three thousand plus photo's didn't help much either. It was a cheap Samsung that wasn't meant to last the six years that it did. And I never really liked the phone all that much to begin with. During the wedding it started doing annoying things like refusing to read QR codes to pull up menu's and not allowing use of the Google Pay app. And it was a good thing that I had a back-up for my train ticket or I would have had to walk home...From Chicago. The phone has been begging to be replaced and finally got to a place where I couldn't even get photos off it easily anymore. I replaced it with a new iPhone SE 2020, and I couldn't be happier that I did. Even with the learning curve and setting up all my apps again, it is so much better. And I love the crispness of the new camera. 

That isn't a promise that I will be more consistent with writing, but the ease of getting my pictures to upload will make the idea a whole lot more palatable.

In other news, Mollie and Chris got Covid, but are better. Tim and Jenn have signed their divorce papers and are awaiting the final court order. Matt built out a van and has joined the nomadic movement. And Jack decided that he's giving scouting a break. He's no longer interested in going for Eagle Scout. All of this is stuff for other blog posts. It really is a lot to unwrap here. And it is time for bed. 

Lazy Day

 

I spent a lazy day today. That is not to imply that I really have busy days anymore. I'm really kind of glad for that. Yesterday was the first Farmer's Market of the year. I ate lunch from a food truck, and it didn't really agree with me. As a result, I have been completely unable to eat any of the delicious cheeses, breads and hummus that I purchased while there and have felt wiped out all day. But I am getting better. 

The Farmer's Market was better than it was last year. The cheese guy was chatty and said that a lot of vendors weren't there due to the rain forecast. I was quite surprised to find that a lot of the vendors that are regulars actually don't live locally. Quite a few of them travel in from the eastern side of the state. I find that disappointing. One of the things I liked about the PNW is the community spirit that I found in most towns when I first moved here. That kind of took a nosedive because of Covid. A lot of our downtown mysteriously burned down. Other businesses closed their doors and didn't re-open. The community center stopped having events like hikes and tours and sadly have abandoned it for now. The Markets seem to be one of the few things that survived, and now I find the goods aren't even from this community. Oh well, maybe if I go to the eastern side of the Cascades I will find the vendors from Auburn.