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Archive for January, 2012

Birds!

Posted in bird watching, tagged , , , on January 28, 2012| 8 Comments »

I am so jazzed tonight: new bird in the bird feeder – and a rare one for a bird feeder, at that.

It was actually a pretty slow day for the bird feeder. It started frosty and cold, but once the sun was up, it warmed wonderfully. The birds tend to forage on their own when it is nice out.

Still, I had a couple Eurasian Starlings come in.

I was raised to hate starlings. They’re an invasive species, introduced from Europe, noisy and rather obnoxious. I have known a birder or two (or three or four) to take drastic measures to keep starlings out of the feeder. In fact, I have been known to quit feeding birds until the starlings move on.

This winter I decided to watch them. I am beginning to see them in a different light (my dad would roll over in his grave if he was in a grave – probably a good thing we cremated him). They’re a rather showy bird with an interesting repertoire of songs. I don’t think I will ever actually like starlings, but I think I can get used to their presence. They are, after all, here and here  to stay.

Two Band-tailed Pigeons dropped in. They didn’t stay long: my house is on a corner lot and people sometimes top at the stop sign for long minutes. Today someone got out and readjusted the load in the back of their pick-up and the pigeons decided not to hang out. They’re very shy birds, not at all like the rock doves you see congregating on public statues, under overpasses and on power lines. They are also native birds, unlike rock doves. And cleaner, I might add.

I don’t like rock doves much.

But that was it for birds until around 4:15 this afternoon, just before the sun went down. Then all the chickadees and usual little birds started filtering in. Or is that flitting in? They’re a nervous lot.

My friendly Townsend’s Warbler always takes time to pose for my camera.

But then there was the Stranger. At first I thought I had a lone Bushtit, but that would be unusual and this bird was considerably larger and slightly more yellow. It was too gray for a Goldfinch, but maybe a Lesser Goldfinch?

I snapped a photo and hoped that it would come out.

This was the best photo of the ones I took. The bird would never turn sideways to me and was entirely too nervous out in the open. I didn’t have the tripod set up to stabilize the camera (with the 75-300mm lens on it, the auto stabilization is not guaranteed to work). But the photo  is adequate.

I thought it might be a vireo because of the eye, but seeing a vireo in the feeder would be entirely unusual: they eat insects. Still… that is insect suet, full of tiny bug parts for the bug-lovers.

I usually check my birds against a couple different field guides when I am unsure about what I am looking at. Our old Peterson’s Guide that sits in the kitchen is reasonably reliable but I wasn’t satisfied with the choices. So I turned to the computer and the Cornell All About Birds web site.

Ta da! I have a definite ID on this fellow: Cassin’s Vireo (used to be Solitary Vireo, which is what Peterson’s Guide called it).

I’m jazzed.

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Letters From the Dead and Other Dreams

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on January 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I am going to do a little cut-and-paste project tonight. I have to because I simply can’t remember all of the words. And this is important to me: to remember the words.

It started with a dream I had which I posted on a homeschool forum that I have been a member of since, um, 1997. I think 1997: I joined when I first started homeschooling my kids who are now grown and moved away. The women on the list are old friends and some I know in real life (IRL). Kris is one I know IRL.

I have a photo of us somewhere in my vast collection of digital photos, but I have no idea where.

I posted my dream, Kris posted an interpretation of that dream that brought tears to my eyes (I think she was very close to right), and then Kris had a dream. The following are excerpts from those exchanges:

ME – “My dream is really bugging me.Most of it was the usual dream stuff: rooms and loud noises and things you can’t control. But the interesting part was when we went into the living room of the house. It was dark: dark wood, like all the houses I lived in as a kid. Curtains could all be open but it still seemed dark. There was a flagstone hearth in one corner but no fireplace. The house was a MESS: visibly dirty carpets, litter, things not put away. Not really as messy as dad’s old house is now in real life (with my nephew the pig at the helm), but certainly not presentable. I felt overwhelmed and wondered WHERE to start???  I decided to go with picking up, then vacuuming afterward. I zeroed in on the flagstone corner and went there to pick up newspapers &… Christmas ornaments? Silver, gold & blue glass balls with red curling ribbon, neatly arranged on the hearth by my mother’s hand. i thought how sweet: my dad never put the Christmas stuff away after Mom died (in reality, he got rid of it all or gave it to the mice in the garage). As I started to pick up the ornaments, I noticed there were several creations made out of heavy duty aluminum foil. I called my brother over to show him: Dad made little aluminum foil replicas of our baby shoes (Terry’s, mine, Deni’s), but he converted them into silver sailing ships with long “sails” of aluminum foil. There was also a pair of either my mom’s shoes or my dad’s shoes (the dream gets fuzzy, but I think it was Mom’s). I wanted to preserve these perfect little replicas but you know how fragile aluminum foil is? We had to figure out a ways to store them so the foil wouldn’t dent or the shoes lose shape.
I cut the “sails” away, deciding to preserve the foil shoes only. Then we boxed them individually in shoe boxes: one foil shoe per box. And stacked the weightless boxes in a corner in an attic, labeled. We couldn’t even put tissue paper in the boxes for fear the shoe-boats would crumple. And we were going to pull them out again next Christmas.

There was much more to the dream, but that part was so vivid. My mom felt much the same about Christmas as I do, so no surprise on the Christmas theme. But my dad creating little aluminum foil shoe-boats? My mom was the creative one. My dad sometimes rolled his eyes at her creations…”

KRIS: “A couple of things occurred to me, ornaments are fragile, especially the foil ones you found.  The ornament represent people, loved ones, and people are fragile.  Ornaments also represent memories, Christmas is a ritual that unites family.

 Your dad was a keeper of memories but your mom was an active memory maker.  She made the most fragile ornaments, also the ones with the most meaning.  They are extremely personal and individual.  They make those people part of every Christmas and the care you took with them is what you give to the memories of those people.
The fact that your dad never put them away seems to say that although he valued them he wasn’t sure how to handle them.  My dad, being from the same generation of men, was sentimental but uncomfortable being so.  The sails, to me, represent mobility.  I think with your father’s passing it could feel that those bonds are slipping/sailing away.  Taking the sails off means they can’t take off.  You needed to remove the sails and take possession of the ornaments/memories and keep them safe.
You know, already, that these cannot be taken from you but some part of you needs reassurance, needs to make sure they are safe and preserved.  You’re coming to terms with physical death but also that memories and love are more concrete than items.
That was the picture I got when I read your dream.”
And KRIS (again): “My dream…was about Jaci!  Last night I was thinking how cool Jaci’s dream was, so detailed and full of forward motion.  I guess I have dream envy, lol.

Anyway, then I was sitting in my living room (not my actual living room but a different one that, in the dream, was mine).  Jaci came in and said that she had been told that I had a letter from her father that he had sent.  Even though I had no clue what she was talking about I felt guilty, then I realized that I DID have the letter and that it had been opened because I had spilled soda on it.  I was afraid she would think I had opened it to read it but she didn’t really care why it was open, she just wanted to read it.
I handed it to her, it was stiff like paper that has been wet and then dried.  It was on blue paper, was hand written and had a title like it was a short story or poem.  The title was “Tears Of the Son”, interesting because I had just seen something on TV where the people were watching a movie called “Tears Of The Sun” but this was spelled S-O-N.
Jaci, read the letter then asked where the “signature page” was, I looked and there WAS another page with her dad’s signature on it.  I gave her this and she read it as well.  She then put her hand, still holding the letter, in her lap and began to weep.  I stayed with her and held her hand.  We sat there for some time and then went shopping at Big Lots and were talking excitedly about living frugally.
So, perhaps it is the curse of being the “dreamer”, I have only a couple of clues on what it means.  Of course, it could be just a jumble of my thoughts over the past few days.”
Now, I don’t really have a clue why we were shopping at Big Lots and talking excitedly about living frugally, but what the heck. I’m just excited that my dad thought to write me a letter, even though he sent it to Kris (a woman he never had the privilege of meeting). And I can guess at the meaning of Kris’ dream and the letter my dad wrote me, but once again Kris jumps in with deep insight:
“The only part that seems clear to me is that the dream was from your dad.  The title being significant, Tears Of The Son, seems to be an explanation of how his childhood and generation left him less able to express love and sentiment.  He sees it clearly now and wants you to know.  I didn’t read the letter, no idea what it said, obviously only you and your dad would be able to know what he would say to you.

Maybe because my dad had childhood trauma and came from the same generation, God was able to give me the dream to share with you.  Who knows?
As for the shopping, I think it just expresses how you and I are both on a journey of taking on the power of what we allow into our lives.  It’s about taking positive control, going out towards the world and expecting to find what we need.
Whatcha think?”
What I think is this: Kris & I need to meet for coffee & shopping in the near future. She lost her mom last year, so her grief is just as palpable as mine. That reads like chocolate and coffee and a shopping date at Big Lots.
Whatcha think??

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Rainy Days and… um, Fridays

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on January 21, 2012| 4 Comments »

I had Friday off. It wasn’t for fun that I had Friday off, but on-going research into the deep mystery of the Kidney Stone That Will Not Be Moved (I had a procedure called an IVP which is, simply put, a series of x-rays taken while an iodine dye solution courses through my kidneys.

But that is not what I am going to bore you with.

Since I had the day off and we were on the tail end of one whopper of a “Pineapple Express” (which followed our brush with snow), I knew that the Willamette River would be running high and it might be a good time to go down and take a few photos. I was not the only person who thought it would be fun to stand and watch big trees cascade down the Willamette Falls: the little parking lot overlooking the falls from Highway 99 was packed with sight-seers.

Willamette Falls is the second-largest water falls in the USA and 18th largest in the world (the latter is by volume, not size).

This is what the Falls look like on a nice day (photo was taken 11/11/2009).

This is what they looked like yesterday, as the river was working its way up flood levels. The most recent article I read put the Willamette at 64′, which is just shy of major flood stage (67′).

Panorama of a calm Willamette Falls (November 2009).

Compared to the flood stage Willamette Falls.

And then, because I am such an astute sort of person, it dawned on me that my new camera also takes video. VIDEO.  As in, I could take an amateur video of the flood…

 

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The Conclusion (of Winter Weather Reports)

Posted in Uncategorized on January 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

Sorry I missed yesterday. I was going to write about the “o-my-god-it’s-snowing!” drivers but, really, once I got into a lane that was going faster than they were, I got to work on time and without any scary moments. All the snow that fell melted as soon as it touched the ground, and what’s the fun in that?

It was still spitting snow off and on all day yesterday and sometimes it was sticking. The REAL storm was supposed to move through last night, dumping up to 4″ of snow on the hills around Portland and up to 8″ in Seattle. There was hope early in the evening that we’d get real snow, but it all moved north and east of us.

I read on Facebook that, “Washington (State) stole our snow! Who’s in favor of demanding they give it back?”

I’m not. Seattle can have the excitement.

That isn’t to say it wasn’t sort of exciting here.

Sometime around two in the morning I woke up and looked for my alarm clock. My alarm clock is hard to miss. Sometimes I lay it on its face so the red LED lights don’t blind me when I wake up in the night. Since I couldn’t see it this morning, my first groggy thought was that I’d done that. But I looked for Don’s alarm clock and it wasn’t there, either.

“UGH. The power’s out.”

Don groaned. “I have a travel clock but I don’t know where it is…”

“I have a cell phone.” I said this in my most smug ‘don’t-you-wish-you-were-part-of-the-21st-Century’ voice because he does not have a cell phone and he doesn’t know how useful one is when the power is out.

I set my cell phone alarm for 4AM so Don could go to work. When he left for work at 5:15, he brought me the flashlight. I reset my cell phone for 6:30. I figured I probably wasn’t going to be taking a shower in the cold, dark house… But I did get to light all those odorifous candles that people have given me over the years and the house smelled pretty while I tried to put make-up on in the dark. I even managed to put on matching shoes and socks (I can’t do that with the lights on some mornings).

It was still very dark when I left at 7:20AM. Dark, not as cold, definitely raining hard.In short, except for the little trace of last night’s snow on the ground, it looked like a very normal January morning in the metro area.

And there, traced across the remnants of the snow, were the tracks of a burglar.

He’d been casing the parked cars.

I hopped to it and took several photos of the evidence before deciding I’d better put the car in gear and see what traffic was like.

I’ll spare you most of the details, but I probably would have made better time with an outboard motor on the back of my car. Wheeeeee!

So Seattle got our snow and we were without power for hours so I didn’t get to shower before I went to work. It was a brutal winter snow storm in my neighborhood. That’s usually how it goes when all of our news stations tell us to be prepared for the “Big Snow Event”: it doesn’t happen.

But now we have a Pineapple Express bearing down on us instead and the predictions are altered to lots of flooding.

And in that, they will be accurate. lots of wind and lots of rain. I may invest in that outboard motor.

Meanwhile, I am wondering about our early morning burglar…

I got a pretty clear hand, er- paw, print. Rocky, we have you “red-handed”!

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Day Two – Portland Winter Weather

Posted in Uncategorized on January 16, 2012| 2 Comments »

Here’s the article on preparing your car for winter weather: Read the comments. Best.Comments. Ever.

I got up this morning hoping for at least a dusting of snow. No go, except on my windshield which I foolishly neglected to scrape on Sunday. If I had brushed the snow off on Sunday, I would not have had to wait for the defroster to thaw it out enough to move the wipers.

It was a tad bit slick on my street (clue to Portland drivers: test the street before you drive ten feet. It’s easy – slam on the brakes at 10mph). But de-icer had been applied everywhere else and the snow had melted, so the roads were pretty darn clear. I had to follow a woman in a minivan who stood on her brakes all the way down the hill.

Winter driving tip: do not stand on the brakes, especially going downhill. If you’re on ice, you just tend to go faster because your wheels are locked up.

I down-shifted. Do you know that you can down-shift in an automatic? It’s called Drive 1. In theory, it will hold your engine back just like putting it into first gear (if it was a manual). It doesn’t really work quite that well in some vehicles but in my Kia Sportage, it works exactly like it is designed to and holds my speed at 25MPH or less on on a downhill. I love it in dry weather because I live in a hilly area where the speed limit is 25 and I dislike riding my brakes any time. It isn’t good on the brakes.

The freeway was pretty wet. In theory, the more vehicles that pass over the asphalt, the lass chance there is for black ice. Friction creates heat and tires against pavement create friction and busy freeways dry out quickly. But there are overpasses (notoriously colder and icier), shady spots where the water never dried out, and acts of God. I wasn’t scared or worried about it, but when the guy in the big 4×4 dually pick-up started tail-gating me at 65 MPH, I did get sort of irritated.

BACK OFF. You can’t see black ice. It looks like dry pavement. If it’s inclement weather and there’s a remote possibility of ice, do not tail gate. Tail gating means you are driving so close to the car in front of you that your headlights light up their dashboard. On a normal, dry day you should observe the 2-second rule; on an inclement weather day, you should increase the distance slightly. That’s in case the car(s) in front of you suddenly do amazing things like sliding sideways. Or you lose control.

Okay, I couldn’t do anything about that idiot besides getting out of his way as soon as the opportunity arose (and since I was driving the speed limit around people who were obviously petrified of driving because there were snowflakes in the air, that took awhile. I didn’t want to have to suddenly drop my speed to 45 because it was SNOWING).

Then there was the racing duo. Okay folks: that’s not terribly smart on dry pavement. Zipping in and out of lanes, trying to beat the center lane before the gap closes on the slow lane…

No wonder there were accidents and fatalities in the area. People in big, heavy SUVs assume they are safe because of the size of their car and the 4×4 on-the-fly feature zoom on down the road over the speed limit, tail-gating. Oh, wait – SOME of those drivers I had to deal with today were driving lightweight compact cars and gas-saver pick-ups! Dang: stupidity is pretty much across the board, isn’t it?

As it was, it really wasn’t a bad commute, just a normal one. No close calls, a few nasty words exhaled under my breath as I watched idiots weave in and out, and no sudden braking.

Now, they are telling us that tomorrow’s commute will be a huge mess. But I have a question: if we know it is coming, why don’t we have the de-icers and snow plows at the ready? As soon as that snow/ice starts to stick/form, roar to life.

Oh. the news article. I always travel with most of that stuff in my car during the winter. I also have my Sorels, several blankets, and car chains. And most importantly, I try to remember common sense.

Now, if we would really get that awful weather they are predicting…

 

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January Weather

Posted in Uncategorized on January 15, 2012| 1 Comment »

The god Janus is a two-faced god according to mythology. He is looking both to the future and the past, but in my mind, he is two-faced because he can’t decide what January weather ought to be like. Should Spring arrive with the first robins? Or should we shut down in an Arctic freeze as the Jet Stream drops down from the Yukon Territory onto the rest of North America?

We have had a mild winter so far. But this morning, we woke up to a smattering of snow on everything.

Well, almost everywhere. There wasn’t enough snow to fill in the gaps underneath trees or furniture.

It was pretty much gone by noon and despite several attempts to put down more snow, everything that has fallen from the heavens has melted just as quickly.

We get pretty excited about snow here in the temperate zone.

We have several days of cold and wet weather looming in our forecast, so the smattering of white stuff we had this morning could turn into something a bit more exciting. Or it could be a complete bust of meteorological hypothetical scenarios. Around here, there’s no way to know until you’re actually in the weather and it is (or isn’t) what was predicted.

Just yesterday the season’s first Spring American Robin was taking a bath in this (in the rain, mind you). Today, not a bird.

Apparently we are having both Spring and Winter this week.

(Hang on – there may be more weather-related posts as this week drags on. Because either we’re going to have a lot of snow and ice or it is going to rain and all the dire predictions will have flown off with the first robins.)

So while the rest of the Nation sniggers at our paltry amount of snow, we are hoping that this is the worst of the driving conditions here. No ice. And No More Snow during the work week.

Now why would I wish that when I learned how to drive in snow country? Oh, not for me. But for every other driver out there in Portland-land. Because this is what happens when a couple inches of snow fall in the Greater Portland Metro Area:

 

Ah yes, snow. I’ll be quite content if today’s smattering is all we get.
Happy Driving…

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In Light of My Last Post

Posted in Uncategorized on January 10, 2012| 1 Comment »

May I share someone else’s Love of Books?

Enjoy!!

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books! books! AGH!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on January 8, 2012| 6 Comments »

I had this grand plan when I got out of bed this morning: today I was going to tackle the books that are stored in the loft. I was going to get a handle on the genres of fiction and the non-fiction subjects. Somehow, I was going to tame the un-tameable.

I got up the stairs and stared at the book cases lining the wall.

Then I retreated back down the stairs where I armed myself with more caffeine, a dust mop, a ceiling duster thingie-ma-bob, a can of dusting spray. I returned to the top of the stairs.

I decided I needed to put away the loose books first, finding space for them in the general location of the same subjects. Only there were no gaps where there needed to be gaps and I ended up stuffing the loose books where ever they would fit. I reasoned that once I figured out what my subject categories would be, I could start moving the books around to the right book case.

I removed all obstacles. This is a feat in itself because not only are there books on the bookcases and in the crates, I have old bottles, rocks, an old lava lamp, more rocks, more old bottles, marbles and large pine cones also stored on the shelves. It’s a magpie’s treasure trove.

I could get rid of the rocks.

No, I can’t. I collected half of those rocks. Half of them were collected by Don. There are pieces of jade, picture rock, sandstone, agates, petrified somethings, petrified wood, obsidian, arrowheads, coup clubs, grinding stones, gill net anchors, and a myriad of other little stones picked up along a wooded path. Pretties.

I stuffed the loose books into the gaps in the book cases. I swept, dust mopped, and knocked cobwebs off the ceiling. The ceiling has nothing to do with the books, it’s just that periodically I need to knock cobwebs down or we start to look like a haunted house.

Then I surveyed my handiwork.

I was still overwhelmed and nowhere near my goal of figuring out the subjects of most of our books.

How am I going to separate these into subjects? Antique Maps, Touring Nevada, Physical Geography, Fifteen Decisive Battles (!?), Irish Wit & Wisdom, and several books on Native Americans.

This shelf gets more interesting: Big Wall Climbing, some philatelic titles like Airmail Antics, Small Gas Engines, Croquet the Sport, and some Jean Auel novels.

Like all those belong on one shelf. Although I think I can safely say that Ayla, the character in the Jean Auel novels, probably invented everything from postmarks to stamps to small gas engines. Personally, I never got beyond The Valley of the Horses before I got bored with Ayla’s obvious brilliance and her insatiable capacity for orgasms.

But, hey, if you’re a Jean Auel fan, no offense meant. She can write in minute detail. Really. Minute. Detail. My favorite part in all the books I read was when Ayla invented a comb to tame her matted hair. That was after she befriended the lion and escaped from the Neanderthals and gave birth (by herself) to her child and before she met the heart-stoppingly handsome (and virile) Jondalar.

Other mileage may vary.

Fast forward to the end of another shelf. Bird books. Lots and lots of bird books. Tucked in there is the Burgess Bird Book for Children by none other than Thornton W. Burgess. If you have never opened one of Thornton W. Burgess‘ delightful children’s books, this is a good one to start with.

What is really cool is that I did not know there was a Thornton W. Burgess Foundation until exactly 30 seconds ago when I googled his name for a reference for this blog. I grew up on Burgess’ writing. When my son discovered reading was fun and that he could read chapter books, he read every Thornton W. Burgess book at Lake Oswego Public Library.

Ecclectic would be a good word to use around here. Books like Young Men & Fire by Norman MacLean, The Journey Home by Edward Abbey and The Pine Barrens by John McPhee are filed with books about geology, Into Thin Air by Jonathon Krakauer and The Naming of Names which is about plant taxonomy.

Field guides are stuffed alongside more Norman MacLean, Roadside Geology, Ancient Inventions, Butterflies, and The World of Harvester Ants.

I kid you not: the ant book was a hard one to find but one my husband wanted for Christmas one year.

Then there are my private bookshelves where my books are not comingled with Donald’s decidedly non-fiction tastes (in case you haven’t guessed it already, 99% of the non-fiction titles belong to my husband although the history books have a slightly better ratio of ownership).

I recently donated a number of my own books to the local library used book store. When I donated them, the woman who took them asked me, “Have you any Zane Grey?”

I laughed. Snorted. “Oh, I have Zane Grey but you will not see my Zane Grey in a box of books to give away!” I promised her I would will them to her. In turn, she snorted, “You’re twenty years younger than I am. I will never see them.”

Point.

I didn’t tell her I only have five Zane Gray.

Cubby In Wonderland was the first chapter book my dad ever read. It has great plates of Yellowstone in the 1910’s.

Poetry… Just a few of my poetry books. And old books. I love old, old, old books.

I tried to count the books but got muddled somewhere around 200.

I decided the best thing to do was data enter them into an Excel program and sort them later. I still have all those books in boxes in Reno. And the books on the bookshelf next to my bed. And the books next to my computer.

And the books in the living room.

Which brings me to one of my shelves. And if you have survived this long in my blog about books, I commend you. The next shelf hardly represents my collection.

In the insanity of insanities that is book collecting, I collect Bibles. Nearly all of the Bibles are mine. A few are Don’s. Okay, maybe two are his. The rest are mine. There are no less than four on the shelf above this one, two in the book case next to my computer, one (or maybe two) in my car, and at least two in my bedroom. While the rest of the world struggles with King James English, most of my Bibles are in the same language Jesus spoke in: King James English.

It’s a joke!

Thought I better insert that before some rabid KJV-hater jumped on me. I just happen to like KJV. I also have: Revised Standard Version (the Methodist Bible), New International Version, New King James, The Living Bible, a Parallel Bible, and probably something else. I have a Thompson Reference and two Scofield Reference Versions (my favorite Bible). I have some that are New Testament only and a couple that include the Apocrypha (the Catholic version).

It’s a weakness I have. I see an old Bible at an estate sale and I have to buy it. What’s $0.50? I get someone’s old Bible with their hand-written notes.

It’s my favorite book. KJV, of course.

But don’t worry: I’m currently working my way through a library collection of books. I’m rereading Harry Potter. I have decided I need to buy Harry Potter to add to my collection. So if the Bible scared you off, Harry Potter should bring you back.

Or visa-versa since I know Christians who are terrified of Harry Potter. It’s a book. A very inventive book where Good Triumphs.

Which is why it belongs in my collection.

So – aside from the side notes and ramblings on the Bible and The Children of the Earth series, HOW am I going to organize all of this???

Any suggestions???

Oh – and NO – I cannot throw the rocks away. I’ll have to figure out the rocks later. Stick to the books. (And these are the ones I am KEEPING. I am NOT giving these away!)

Thank you for listening to me… I love books and if you have a suggestion for books I need to add to my library, I am listening…

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A Double Tragedy

Posted in Uncategorized on January 4, 2012| 1 Comment »

This morning I read a blog that reflected my emotions after reading about the terrible murder of Park Ranger Margaret Anderson by a young man who, by all appearances, was an ex-soldier suffering PTSD.

The tragedy of Margaret Anderson was enough, but I felt it was compounded by the death of the shooter – an also needless and senseless death. My heart is torn: for the family, friends and co-workers of Margaret Anderson, first and foremost. I still remember quite vividly the moment I realized my own father carried a concealed handgun with him whenever he went out into the National Forest to patrol. I was around the age of 15 and I asked him, point-blank, why he carried a hand gun.

“There are people out there who would shoot first,” was his candid reply.

It had never occurred to me before that moment that a Forest Ranger or a Park Ranger was a dangerous job (aside from the obvious animal dangers).

The story of the man who killed Margaret Anderson also struck a chord with me: a young man who had been deployed, who was suffering from bouts of PTSD, in trouble with the courts and his ex-wife, who went over the edge. Initial reports claimed he had survival training; his death by hypothermia and drowning suggest otherwise. Personally, I suspect his was a suicide. A very slow suicide.

I don’t want to defend Benjamin Colton Barnes. There is no defense. But I wonder about our country’s response to young men and women returning from war with the scars of PTSD on their psyches. Would it have changed anything if Barnes had been able to seek and find the help he so desperately needed? What triggered him to act out so blindly and aggressively over the weekend? Are we doing enough for our veterans?

I am immensely proud of my own son who is a soldier in the US Army. I love my country. Like my friend, Jodi, who wrote the blog I read this morning, I just am left with some questions.

Sharing this is something I had to think very hard about. It’s a departure from my usual post. I’m breaking a personal rule here: leaping into something that could be construed as a political statement. I just feel the questions need to be asked and they need to be asked by the mothers and the spouses of the soldiers returning from war. Please read with an open mind (including the comments, if you will) this post from The Hidden Springs Hillbillies.

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2011 in review

Posted in Uncategorized on January 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I stuffed Christmas away in the attic today. I am going to hurt like the dickens tomorrow. The attic is an 8×6′ space with sloped walls. I have to put on knee pads to crawl in and out of there and no one can help me because there isn’t enough room for one person to turn around, let alone two. I pity my husband if I ever leave him and he has to figure the attic out on his own.

Bwahahahahaha!

I am posting an email I received from Word Press yesterday. If you are like me and you hate monkeys, please ignore that word in the report. Otherwise, it is pretty fascinating stuff (to me). I’ve never received an “annual report” on my blog before so *I* think it is really cool. 🙂 Here it is:

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

 

Mostly, it says “THANK YOU” to my fans, readers, friends and family. I am still slightly amazed that so many people love my post on canvas water bags (Jodi, I am still looking for one for you so if I find one…)

THANK YOU!

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