cathleen's place

Enough

2008-07-23T17:42:00.001-04:00

I’ve decided blogging isn’t for me. I’ll leave this blog here to be a nice reminder for me of my struggle to quit smoking. I’ve enjoyed finding unusual things to share with any who happened to stop by. I’ve also enjoyed telling about our travels. And of course, who doesn’t like to rant about the nuttiness and injustices in the world?

There simply are too many blogs. There are millions of them, millions of people with something to say. I no longer wish to add to the noise, confusion, whining, opinions, and conceit.

The journey

2008-07-13T01:18:00.004-04:00

"To engage with the summons of our souls is to step into the deepest ocean, uncertain whether we will be able to swim to some new, distant shore. And yet, until we have consented to swim beyond the familiar lights of the port left behind, we will never arrive at a newer shore."

~James Hollis, from Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

I cried, I laughed, I enjoyed every minute of it, over and over

2008-07-11T17:02:00.008-04:00

This is the best video I've ever seen. Best = most uplifting, happiest, most amazing in it's scope, and even most educational. I watch it over and over. (The video is Dancing 2008, the image is from his earlier video.)

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I hope you'll go visit Matt. His site is wonderful.

Oh, and buy some Stride gum.

Just for laughs

2008-07-09T18:40:00.003-04:00

I found out what lolcats are and I'm addicted. I'm usually a little late for these parties, but oh well, who cares? Amirite?

And who doesn't like Maxine? Oh, really?

Ron Mueck

2008-07-09T16:01:00.003-04:00

Artists. They do the most amazing things. Like:

Ron Mueck - For more of the funniest videos, click here

A sort of funny thing, but not exactly

2008-07-09T15:03:00.005-04:00

I read an article about lawsuits against Wal-Mart (or is it WalMart, I can't remember and am too lazy to look it up and they keep changing it). It looks like the company could face over $2 billion in fines. Yowza! I hate WalMart. I feel like I lose about 100 IQ points just walking in the door, not to mention feeling guilty for being willing to purchase anything that they sell.

The article is by Inspired Protagonist over at Seventh Generation. Here's part of the article:

Altogether, Wal-Mart faces more than 70 lawsuits, filed throughout the country, in which employees have accused the company of making them work off the clock or miss required breaks. Cheating people who make so little is pretty unconscionable. But to learn that the practice was part of a national strategy, well, that’s a sad statement on big business.

Now, here's the part that I thought was sort of funny: In the comments section, there are WalMart apologists! Yes! It's so weird to me that people would go to an article in the Seventh Generation Newsletter and write nice things about WalMart, or worse, criticize people who are damning WalMart. It's sort of funny because it reminds me of $cientology trolls who make a habit of flaming all over stories/articles/comment sections that are critical of $cientology. But not exactly funny because it's disgusting.

I'm just saying.

Rodrigo Y Gabriela

2008-07-07T21:22:00.001-04:00

Like guitar music? Like new, young, fresh musicians? Try this:

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Anonymous strikes again!!

2008-07-03T13:18:00.006-04:00

This is the best Anonymous video so far. Nothing shows how much fun they are having like this great piece. It's 4 1/2 minutes of pure pleasure.

Your Mission: Spy vs Sci from LRonHu88ard on Vimeo.

Join us on July 12 for Spy vs. Sci. It's a very fun way to change the world.

The Kid Safe Chemicals Act

2008-07-03T11:53:00.002-04:00

From Environmental Working Group:

"The human race is now polluted with hundreds of industrial chemicals with little or no understanding of the consequences. Babies are born pre-polluted with as many as 300 industrial chemicals in their bodies when they enter the world. Testing by Environmental Working Group has identified 455 chemicals in people, and again, no one has any idea if these exposures are safe."

Do you get it? It seems to me that global warming isn't going to matter -- our species won't be able to reproduce in a few generations. Visit EWG and see what you think.

Exploring Portland: Audubon Society

2008-07-02T19:26:00.007-04:00

Kim and I and Jeff spent an hour on Sunday looking at possible houses, even though we've made up our minds that Blueberry Hill is the absolute best. I haven't written about this house, but as soon as it's ours, I'll show you why we held out for it.

After wasting some gas driving all over Portland, we needed some good physical exercise. Haris had told me that a visit to the Audubon Society was a must, so that's where we headed. It's at 5151 NW Cornell Rd., right on the edge of Forest Park. I wanted to see some rescued birds and hike in the lush Oregon primeval forest -- and I wasn't disappointed.

I love trees. Even that awful tree in our front yard in Clearwater -- we spent hours pulling up the sprouted seeds from that tree -- was truly a beautiful tree.

That's our favorite bird, the turkey vulture. This poor guy was enjoying some road kill when a motorist tried to make him into someone else's dinner. He won't be released -- he was too badly injured. But he's extremely well cared for here.

I'm a big fan of helping folks who are doing good works. The Audubon Society has been around forever and I've never really paid much attention to all the good they do and the myriad ways they improve our world. So I dropped a few thousand dollars in the gift store to help them out.

Just because

2008-07-01T20:16:00.006-04:00

"Greg thought he was so clever to make this rigid mesh bag to hold our clams alive on our boat anchor while we are at the island--- but the sunflower sea stars are more clever, as they can eat the clams right through the bag!"

This is from Lauri, our lovely friend up north. You can read more about her life in Alaska here.

Alien Boy...

2008-06-27T14:19:00.004-04:00

...is the name of a documentary film being made here in Portland. Matt Davis is the writer and Brian Lindstrom is the director. (The picture to the right is James Chasse in 2004.)

From the Alien Boy site:

In September 2006 James Chasse was tackled by three law officers on a downtown street corner before a dozen eyewitnesses. James was not suspected of a crime, he had not committed a crime.

The officers beat him, kicked him, broke 17 ribs and his shoulder. They used a Taser on him repeatedly. He screamed for mercy. The officers thought James was a drug dealer, a homeless person, a non-person, a ghost. They were wrong. James was a poet, a musician, he had a family which loved him, friends, neighbors, dreams and hopes. He was an artist; a small, shy, gentle person. And he was a person with schizophrenia.

James was sent by paramedics to jail. Jail nurses refused to admit him. He died en route to a hospital in a police car driven by the same officers who had earlier beaten him.

A grand jury refused to indict those officers. The City and County refused to terminate or discipline them.

Alien Boy is a feature length documentary film about the life and death of James Chasse.

I'd like to encourage everyone who reads this to support the efforts of the filmmakers to get this project done. That, of course, means $$. Help them out. It's important. And read up on what happened to James Chasse. Whew.

Road trip: Anna, Illinois

2008-06-25T15:38:00.014-04:00

After our night in Chattanooga, we drove to Paducah, Kentucky (a short trip, only 267 miles). The next morning, we decided that a side trip was in order, so we headed out early and took a county road instead of the freeway.

One of the coolest parts of a long road trip is not being in a hurry -- feeling that exploration is time well spent, especially in small towns. We chose Anna, Illinois. Just because.

A little research into the town of Anna tells us that it was a sundown town (non-whites were not allowed to live in or pass through the town after the sun went down) and that as of the 2000 census, Anna is 96.2% white. Anna is the name of the founder's wife, but there is a story that in 2005 a store clerk told James Loewen (the inventor of the neologism "sundown town") that Anna stood for "ain't no niggers allowed." Yuck. The town has a total area of 3.4 square miles and the area around it is primarily farm land, as it has been since it was founded in 1854. (If you want bigger pictures, click 'em.)

Of course we had to stop for breakfast on our way to Anna. Somewhere outside of town we found this little place and had us some greasy eggs and really bad coffee. Yum. At least the waitress was nice. The rest of the people looked at us like we were from Mars.

The first thing we saw when we got to Anna proper was this antique store. It turned out that inside was the very famous Anna Kirkpatrick Pottery Museum. The pottery itself is fascinating and the stories about the two brothers who created it are fabulous. If you're into old stuff and funny stuff, follow the link -- you'll love it.

After an hour of Mr. Isom's great storytelling, we wandered around the little town. It's mostly old buildings in various stages of decay, but it's got life and spirit and I'll wager their 4th of July celebrations offer up the best BBQ, apple pie and fireworks you'll find anywhere.

These are the kinds of pictures I like -- sort of for flavor, you know? Flowers, old bricks, windows, and so on. It's an interesting little town. I suspect it would be okay to live there, everybody knowing your business, hearing every detail of other people's lives. Hmmm, but not for me.

We wanted to follow a road along the Mississippi River up to St. Louis, but we never could quite find it, in fact, we got really lost. Oh well. We saw some beautiful countryside and we did get a glimpse of the Mighty River.

It was a long day. We drove over 500 miles that day. And the first town we got to outside of St. Louis happened to be hosting some gigantic soccer thing and every hotel/motel was booked. We got back on the road. Arghh. Gotta love it. That's a road trip at it's finest.

Slayde spends the summer in Juneau

2008-06-17T16:57:00.011-04:00

Slayde and Ben have gone off to the far north for the summer. She is doing an internship with a law firm there. Have I mentioned that she's going to slay dragons for us? It's an environmental law law firm. Heh heh. Don't we love it?

Well, Slayde and Ben are both outdoor enthusiasts -- fishing, hiking, shooting Bambi, oh wait, that's not them. So here they are, out in some serious wilderness, right outside their front door.

Slayde writes:
"Here are some pictures from our first couple of weeks here. The first is the view down our street as I walk to work, with Mt. Juneau in the background. The day is characteristically overcast - its rained pretty much every day, and it's COLD.

Next is a wharf where Ben has gone fishing a few times, and a bald eagle that came to visit when someone (unfortunately not Ben) caught a salmon. The eagle came flying in really low - I wish I had been able to get a picture of it as it was swooping in.

Then there is one of Ben and my co-intern fishing off of Douglas Island, which is the island across the Strait from Juneau. They got stranded, as you can see, when the tide came in. We've done a fair amount of fishing (well, mostly Ben has - I just go out and read and stare at things and take pictures), but no salmon yet. We are going to try another fishing spot this weekend.
Then we have a few pictures from our epic hike. I think I told you about this one. We climbed Mt. Juneau (3,500 vertical feet), hiked the Juneau ridge (5-6 miles, maybe, and another 1000 vertical feet), tobogganed down into Glacier Valley on our butts (yay!) and then hiked another 6 miles out, mostly through snow. The whole thing took about eight hours. I should probably have started smaller for my first Juneau hike, and was too preoccupied with how much I hurt to take pictures, but Ben got a few. He was really quite amazing at coaxing me along, considering that I wasn't sure I had it in me for the last three quarters of the hike or so. The first picture is of my backside just as we were about to reach the top.

Then one of some of us plodding up the ridge. The first group picture from the hike was really just a test picture when Ben was setting up the camera, but I attached it because of the incredible color of the little snow lake behind us. It really is that brilliant color. Amazing. Everyone we went with is in incredible shape. They seem to do this sort of thing all year round, and the guy on the left in particular is one speedy hiker. My co worker was telling me he can do the hike in four hours (I think that would have to be at at least a jog), and that he doesn't really have a slower speed. So they all marched on ahead, then waited for Ben and I to catch up periodically."

I don't know about you, but personally I'm impressed as hell. I think I'm doing good to "hike" up to a little waterfall and it takes about 15 minutes to get to it. Huh.

Back Fence PDX

2008-06-16T15:01:00.005-04:00

What's this? you ask. Well, it's a fabulous idea dreamt up by these two lovelies. And I'm very honored to be one of the inaugural speakers.

Yes, I am going to tell a $cientology story -- all about escaping from the evil cult's clutches...the first time.

You are all invited, please bring family and friends. The other storytellers are amazing.

(Click on that bad boy on the left so it gets big enough to read.)

Inspiration: Beautiful, ethereal photography

2008-06-15T22:16:00.004-04:00

I found this today and thought you might enjoy a visit. Her photography is truly lovely and special. Be sure to read her artist statement.

Friends and blogs

2008-06-12T13:31:00.008-04:00

I've been thinking about how having a blog affects me, even if only a tiny bit. One thing I discovered is that I've been expecting everyone I know to read the blog, check the blog, comment on the blog, et cetera ad nauseum. Then I figured out that there are people who are not the least bit interested in blogs, mine or anyone else's -- in the same way that I'm not interested in television programs, at all, none, forget about it. But I like blogs. I've learned a lot from other people's blogs and I've enjoyed some very, very funny writing. I enjoy blogs and I mostly enjoy blogging. But the moment I caught myself being annoyed because my friends were not reading my blog regularly, was the moment I seriously considered deleting it. When I don't have time to communicate directly and personally with my dearest friends, there is something very wrong. I imagine that all other bloggers figured this out ages ago and I'm just a little slow on the uptake. Whatever. Just my 2cents worth.

And, because I love to flaunt my photographs, here are some random old shots I thought you might enjoy.

Oregon stories: Oak Knoll Winery

2008-06-11T16:42:00.008-04:00

Who knew there were hundreds of wineries in this area? Of course, if you're like me, and you had not made the connection between Willamette River and Willamette Valley (of the you-can-grow-anything-and-it-will-be-awesome fame), you would have been one of the ones who did NOT know. Okay, that's fine. Now I know and now I get that thing about Willamette Valley.

I went out to Oak Knoll Winery (that little red pin) (don't forget the part about clicking the picture so you can actually SEE what I'm talking about) to visit Haris. Occasionally she sings there and sometimes she runs the tasting room there.

It was incredibly fun driving around out in farm country. There are even alpaca ranches out there. And huge tree farms and wonderful nurseries with every conceivable kind of flowering thing. Oh. My. God. I really need my own yard. Now.

This was my first ever visit to a winery. I didn't even manage to visit a winery in Napa for crying out loud. It probably has to do with not particularly caring about wine. I went to Oak Knoll because Haris invited me and I love Haris.

Portland Exploring: Ladd's Addition

2008-06-10T19:36:00.009-04:00

Ladd's Addition is one of the oldest residential districts in Portland. It's known for its peculiar diagonal street pattern relative to the rest of the area. It is roughly eight blocks (east-west) by ten blocks (north-south) in size (by reference to the external grid) and is bordered by SE Hawthorne, Division, 12th, and 20th. Locally, Ladd's Addition is known as the neighborhood to get "lost" in, since unsuspecting drivers who enter the development commonly find themselves disoriented as they drive around in circles trying to get out. (You can embiggen -- thanks to BloomingWriter for that wonderful word -- any image by clicking on it. Try it, you'll see.)

Last Saturday, Jeff and Kim and I were out rambling around, looking at houses, wandering down NW 23rd Ave. (very fun, kind of trendy) and we decided to "get lost" in Ladd's Addition. This is the central round-about and there's a lovely hidden space inside all these humongous bushes where you can have a little cocktail party or wedding reception.

We drove around trying to get lost, but Kim is actually a GPS device so we always knew where we were. It's a fantastic neighborhood, very well kept and unusual in that it has alleys. (I haven't seen that anywhere else in Portland -- that doesn't mean there aren't alleys anyplace else, I just haven't seen them.) I love alleys. You get to see parts of people's yards that ordinarily would be hidden. And sometimes you get to warp back to San Diego accidentally (when you stumble upon a killer whale, wtf?).

Oregon stories: Elowa and Upper McCord Creek Falls

2008-06-01T15:49:00.013-04:00

Yesterday, Kim and Jeff and I went out to the Columbia River Gorge for some hiking and waterfall enjoyment.

It was a perfect day for it too. Come on with me and I'll show you what was there:

Elowa Falls

The bridge

Survey marker

Kim and Jeff

Succulents growing in a rock crevice

One of the little blue butterflies that Jeff mentions

Kim pondering a very old, very rusty pipe

Gigantic slug

A tiny little path carved out of the cliff

Lots of mud

The Upper McCord Creek Falls

The Upper McCord Creek

Thanks for coming with me. Where would you like to go next time? How about Astoria?

June 14th Sea Arrrgh, Join in the fun!

2008-06-01T01:44:00.004-04:00

I'd like to invite anyone who's been sitting on the sidelines and thinking how great it is that someone else is taking on the cult of $cientology to jump right in (with both feet) on June 14th. You are most welcome.

We are Anonymous. We are legion. Expect us.

Join the Sea Arrrgh, make yer mark and fly the colors -- June 14 protest of the Cult of Scientology. from TheDonzerlyLight on Vimeo.

Road trip: Chattanooga, Tennessee

2008-05-25T18:35:00.010-04:00

I've procrastinated long enough. It's time to tell some stories about driving across the country.

Our first night away from Clearwater, Florida was spent in Valdosta, Georgia -- not a place I recommend. But I most likely wouldn't recommend any town or city in Georgia, simply because it's the deep south and I'm not fond of deep south, deep fried food. And you must understand, everything is deep fried. Everything. Even your salad. We went to find some dinner and stopped at what looked like a real restaurant, you know, the kind with chefs and real food. The first tip-off that everything wasn't quite right was the distance between the booth seat and the table. Hmmm. I had to sit on the very edge of the seat to be near the table. I was at a loss until I looked around and realized that for most Valdostans, that huge space was necessary. Enough said. Our choice for an appetizer was stuffed mushrooms, because how difficult is that and it was one of the only things that didn't have the word fried in front of it. Guess what? The stuffed mushrooms ARE fried. Deep fried. In old oil. We gasped when we saw them and sent them back. The rest of the dinner was actually fabulous (nice fish with rice, simple food, not fried).

The next day we drove through Georgia and into Tennessee. (Refer to the map if your geography skills are as horrible as mine.) Crossing into TN from GA, we chose Chattanooga as a place that looked interesting and worthy of a bit of exploring. Consulting our trusty AAA guidebook, we find that the old Mayor's Mansion has been converted into a Bed and Breakfast, so off we went.

THIS is the Mansion. It has been lovingly restored and gently updated for the comfort of paying guests.

We arrived early enough in the day to take a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood. Of course, even though we were in a new place, never before seen, I only have eyes for the flowers. I've said it before and I'll say it again: flowers are the best.

I love big, old trees. I'm also fond of flowering trees. And I cannot resist napping cats.

The Mayor's Mansion has a first-class manager/chef and the breakfast was incredible. I was in too big a hurry to taste the second course (the baked eggs/cheese/asparagus) so I only got pictures of the first and third courses. Amazing, wonderful food, served in a lovely dining room.

What I know about Human Rights abuses: Scientology

2008-05-15T20:03:00.008-04:00

I'm a little bit behind the curve here -- I just now found out that today is a Bloggers Unite day and the topic is Human Rights. There are plenty of excellent posts on excellent blogs.

I have a pretty limited view. I don't read the papers or listen to TV/radio news. I'm woefully uninformed. It's a bad habit that comes from being afraid to know about all the pain in this world. I don't like admitting it, but it's true. I can't see what I can do to help.

So, what I know personally about Human Rights abuses has to do with the Church of $cientology and their horrible treatment of Sea Org members. I experienced a tiny bit of this treatment in 1969: I was locked in a basement because I said I wanted to go home. I was 3 months pregnant and was not getting enough sleep or good nutrition. I just wanted to go home and take good care of myself and my baby. That made me an enemy of theirs and that's what they do with enemies -- they lock them up. (Or they declare them Suppressive Persons and then sic the dogs on them.) I eventually talked my way out of the basement and out of the office and into my sister's car. She drove me home. The "church" began calling the next day -- I should come back immediately, they'll take good care of me, etc., etc. And this is a mild story. It's fairly unbelievable what they are doing at this very moment and in this country. They have forced labor prison camps in Hemet and Los Angeles, California and in Clearwater, Florida. They force young women to get abortions or face losing "everything." Most Sea Org members work about 126 hours a week for $25 - $30 dollars/week (if that). They live on rice and beans for months at a time. They are physically, mentally and spiritually abused day in and day out. And they are told that if they leave, they will starve and be bums on the street.

Here are a few places you can go if you want to inform yourself about this evil cult and it's Human Rights abuses:

Counterfeit Dreams
Ex-Scientology Kids
Exposing the Con
Scientology Disconnection
Why I Left Scientology
Ask the Scientologist

And there are things you can do. Find out about the next Anonymous protest and maybe participate: Enturbulation.org -- A Source for Information on Activism Against the Scientology Organization.

I've been to all the Anonymous protests so far and they are great. These people are courageous, fun, funny and very committed to making the evil cult known as $cientology crumble.

Rock on Anonymous!

Oregon stories: Sauvie Island

2008-05-09T00:54:00.016-04:00

What a glorious place! Absolutely luscious, rich, bucolic (this doesn't mean a sick baby, it means pastoral, which I didn't know until a few weeks ago), and very down home. Here's the Wikipedia page if you're interested in the history. I did a quick search and found out that unless a whole lot of you want to donate a whole lot of dinero, Kim and I won't be living on Sauvie Island any time soon. *sigh*

Melissa and I (and the little guy) drove around the island, stopping to tempt a horse, take a few photos, check in at the local market/car repair/chicken farm for a day parking pass and a map. The thing to do is spend one day per weekend out there, all summer long, picking the fresh organic fruits and vegetables. Mmmmmmmm, yes. And you'll want to check out the Maize Maze at the Pumpkin Patch in September and October. Rumor has it traffic can be a bit nuts, so plan accordingly.

Shouting from my soapbox: Is it so hard to do it right?

2008-05-08T02:32:00.008-04:00

We unloaded our ABF U-Pack truck last Saturday and were horrified at the amount of damage to our belongings. One chair in particular, which had been re-upholstered just six months ago, was ripped in two places and one leg was busted off. I was inside the truck the entire time it was being unloaded and saw the chair when it was time to take it out. It had been tossed on top of 2-3 stacks of boxes along with loose yard tools. The chair had not been covered with a furniture pad -- the other important or special pieces of furniture had been carefully covered and taped. This chair had been thrown in like an afterthought.

The other things that were damaged are not quite as important to me as that chair. The other things I can probably repair or replace easily. Not that chair.

When we were making our plans to leave Florida, we debated about what method to use to get our stuff across the country. We had used a major moving line when we went the other way and, believe it or not, had a good experience. Why didn't we just do that again? Such a good question, one I don't have an answer for. In any case, we chose U-Pack and they recommended Moving Staffers if we wanted to hire professionals to load the truck. Moving Staffers used Knight's; it's on the t-shirts of the guys in the truck.

So when the busted up stuff came out of the truck, I called Knight's Moving and Hauling and spoke to Frank. He said he was the owner. He also said he was on our job that day when the truck was being loaded in Clearwater. He was NOT there that day. The guys who loaded our truck were Eddie and Alex. Frank had other details wrong as well. He obviously was looking at the wrong paperwork, but he wouldn't admit it. He kept insisting he was right. When I told him about the chair, he said it could not have been the case that the chair wasn't covered. His guys are trained, they would never do that, etc. I have four people who will say that when the chair came down off that pile of stuff, there was no cover, pad, or blanket anywhere near it. But that's not the point.

The point is that Frank, even though he was sorry my chair was ruined and he would be upset if it was his chair, would not in any way admit his company was responsible for the damage. His finger was pointed firmly at ABF and he told me repeatedly how unethical, irresponsible, lazy and awful ABF is. It was their fault, definitely. They drive like maniacs to get their loads across the country, their trucks are sub-standard, they have no shock-absorbers, etc.

I'm so sorry I chose ABF U-Pack and I'm so sorry that Moving Staffers chose Knight's Moving and Hauling and I'm so sorry Knight's sent Eddie and Alex. I wish I had gone with Mayflower or American or National Van Lines. It's too late now. The damage is done.

Frank kept telling me to put in a claim with ABF, they'd take care of me, they're really good about those things. But, you see, I know that that chair was NOT damaged by ABF. It was carelessly packed. That's the point.

Every now and then, I have an exceptional experience where someone goes about their job competently and confidently. That happened this week when we called the cable company because we were getting bad reception. The cable company sent a technician to see what was wrong. And may I just say what a remarkable young man he was? He looked and looked and looked for what was causing the problem; he was tenacious, calm, friendly, confident that he would find it. And he did. And then he fixed it. He did it right. And he didn't blame anyone else at any time about how the problem came to be. Perfect. So I called his boss and told him to give this young man a raise.

Oregon stories: First we live in a hotel, eew

2008-04-30T13:47:00.003-04:00

What else could we do?

When we moved to Florida, we had spent a whirlwind weekend buying a house a month before we sent all our stuff and hopped in our car and drove across the country. We arrived two days before escrow closed and the moving truck showed up 15 minutes after signing the last piece of paper at the title company. Whew, it was close all the way -- and way too fast.

It's small but somehow there's enough room for our two computers. Kim can continue working, while I wander around Portland trying to figure out what to do next.

At least I still have a great view.

First things first: find an apartment. Ok, I did that. Actually, I really did and we move in on Saturday. I'm praying for lots of help, hint hint.

Road trip: The big picture

2008-04-29T13:21:00.004-04:00

We traveled 3,202.4 miles on our trip across this huge country. Some days, like jamming through Kansas and Missouri, we drove over 450 miles. One day we only drove 143 miles -- that was the day we drove from Limon, Colorado to Ft. Collins, Colorado, where we spent some great time with Patti and Walter, who we knew in San Diego.

Our route took us from Florida through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and finally, to Oregon.

We realized how much we don't know about the people of middle America -- how they live, what they do, what matters in their lives. We don't consider ourselves as being in that group, I'm not quite sure why, but we don't. Maybe we think we're better or smarter. I know I made plenty of jokes about hicks and red-necks and very over-weight people. I've lived in a bubble of one kind or another for the last 10 years. I'd like to see beyond my own nose for a change.

Road trip: Hello Portland!

2008-04-27T13:32:00.002-04:00

And 3200 miles later:

I have 100s of photos to edit and sort and clean up and write about, so it will be a little while before the story gets filled in. We had a safe and wonderful journey to our new ~~home~~ state.

Road trip: Goodbye Florida

2008-04-17T22:33:00.008-04:00

We really did do it. We really did leave Florida. And we're never going back.

(all the pictures get huge if you click on them)

On Monday the truck showed up, two guys loaded all our stuff and the truck went away. On Tuesday, we finished the house sale, cleaned the house for the new owners, turned in our cable box and made one last stop at the Betty Lane Thrift Store.

We thought that it would take us all day to do that stuff but we breezed through it and hit the road. This is the main road/bridge out of Clearwater -- over to Tampa and the major freeway.

There are 30 pages in our handy little TripTik. On Tuesday we flew through 3 of them.

Our only desire was to drive and drive and drive until we were out of the state.

And that's exactly what we did. I wanted to stop the car and kiss the red Georgia clay. Instead, we quietly left Florida behind.

Florida stories: Goodbye Clearwater

2008-04-13T09:28:00.007-04:00

The moving truck comes tomorrow morning. This is our last night in this house. I actually remember our first night. I hated it. That pink color in the master bedroom was so loud, it kept me up all night.
I may or may not post while we're on the road. I will be taking lots of pictures and I will have the cable for downloading and I will have access to the internets and Kim's laptop, so I'll have to see how I feel. I might like to have a vacation -- from everything, but not from you, gentle reader.

Sure, let's go to St. Martens for a week

2008-04-12T14:04:00.006-04:00

Think they had a good time? Isn't it so wonderful that they brought back a picture of a lizard? I think that was just for me. Certainly I like the other pictures, but the lizard? Hey, he's perfect.

A Florida story told by flowers: Every cloud has a silver lining

2008-04-11T08:46:00.006-04:00

I guess it makes sense that as we're about to leave Florida forever that I would think of things that I like about it. I'm also thinking of reasons to be glad we came here. I'm not sure I would go so far as to say that moving to Florida was a good thing, but good things have come out of being here:

We completely and totally removed ourselves from $cientology, not as a result of moving here, but nevertheless, while we were here. And I think it helped being here when the decision was made. This is, after all, the "mecca of the Church of $cientology." That made it much easier to witness the wrongness of this "church."

We learned a great deal about home renovation, building trades, permits (or not), building codes and how to ensure that people doing work for you do it right. We have lots of new skills and we've picked up some really nice tools (yes, we could have acquired them anywhere, but oh well).

We met Stephanie. And, believe me, Stephanie has pretty much saved my life. I won't bore you with the gruesome stories of all the injuries I've had, but suffice it to say, I was in some pain. That pain is gone and I feel better than I have for many years.

We learned to laugh again.

We went to the Kennedy Space Center.

I got to live in another place (like San Diego) that has beautiful flowers all year 'round.

The things people do

2008-04-09T17:12:00.002-04:00

I was just rummaging around, reading other blogs, which is good for getting my mind off the nuttiness of packing and calling the utility companies and running out of bubble-wrap and bugging Kim every ten seconds with some lame new thing to worry about. Here's what I found:

I'd never heard of Mr. Heavyfoot before, had you? It's a bit that Kids in the Hall made up and they're very popular (somewhere) but, of course, if you're as culturally illiterate as I am, there's no way you'd have the faintest clue who they are.

Go right now and read this. Right now. Go.

2008-04-09T15:29:00.005-04:00

You Are All That

Florida stories: It's not always sunny

2008-04-09T15:10:00.004-04:00

click to see great big version of the picture, you can see every raindrop

Florida stories: Lizards

2008-04-09T13:53:00.012-04:00

I've always been crazy about lizards, I love to watch them run all over the place. They're really fascinating to me. San Diego, California had lots of them. Clearwater, Florida has lots of them. I have it on good authority that Portland, Oregon has none of them. Oh, my heart is breaking.

I can sit in my office (which I will have for four and a half more days) and look out the window and see lizards climbing, jumping, fucking, eating and running. They never bore me. Never. I've been watching them closely the three years we've been here. I can now estimate the age and I can tell the gender. I forgot one of the other fun things to watch: battles! Whew, those guys really go at it. I saw one strapping, little contender lose his tail, wise up and quickly leave.

I love lizards so much, I've started putting them in my house. You know that old lady with the collection of goose-themed decorations, i.e., salt & pepper shakers, napkin holder, cookie jar, etc.? Well, I'm turning into a slightly (only very slightly) hipper version of her.

Maybe I could find a lizard-themed bedroom suite.

Chaos and coming unglued

2008-04-07T17:34:00.004-04:00

Well, the previous post clearly demonstrates the depth of my present confusion. I mean, what was that? But I'm leaving that post in. It's good for me to see what a basket case I've become; it gives me some perspective. (No disrespect to mamabird, I'm glad she could make some sense out of part of it.)

It's just too hectic right now. Chaos. I feel like I'm keeping 5 million things balanced on my nose.

Kim helps. He's always so calm and he reassures me that everything is okay and is going to be okay.

I run into bags and boxes and piles of junk in the middle of the night. I need to get more organized. Every day I think it'll get easier or that I'll get more done than I actually get done. And then the end of the day comes and I feel defeated.

We are making headway. We will be ready for the moving truck next Monday. It will be okay.

The little version of me

2008-04-07T12:57:00.007-04:00

Over the years, I've been told by various people that I have a certain determination and purposefulness about me. I've been told I'm stubborn and hard-headed. My friends have told me that they trust me to always tell them the truth, that I don't pussy-foot around and make up shit just to have something to say. (Side story: Allison's name was chosen because I read somewhere that it means "truth-teller". When she was growing up, I told her the only rule was to always tell the truth. And she does that.) I believe that being honest and straightforward are very high virtues and that it's easier to live with others when the truth is always out there. That said, I know it's not always easy to hear the truth. I love being on the telling side but not so much being on the listening side. Oh well.

So I was a little girl once, but I don't remember ever being particularly carefree. I remember being vigilant and careful. It was great to have a big brother who took care of me as much as he did. I know he was having his own rough time and it's amazing that he was so gentle with others.

I'm grateful for everything that has happened to make me the way I am now. I value my strengths, try hard to admit my shortcomings, and work on accepting others for who and what they are (this is the hardest part for me).

I've read a few things recently that are all about how the world is going to hell, we're all going to die, all politicians and governments are corrupt and evil, and on and on, just miserable, depressing garbage.

If we all give up, if we buckle under this weight of doom and gloom, if we believe all the bad, bad, bad, then that is exactly what we'll get. There's nothing that says we cannot see the problems, know they're wrong, get busy doing something (anything) about them and maintain a cheerful existence while doing so. They are not mutually exclusive.

I'm just saying.

Random old photos, #2

2008-04-06T09:35:00.002-04:00

A sculpture by Henry Miller titled Écoute, at Les Halles, Paris

Fountain, Las Vegas hotel

Cactus flower

Arizona desert, crumbling building

Florida stories: Fixing an ugly house

2008-04-05T12:46:00.032-04:00

A recurring theme on this blog has been the renovation of this house. When we made the bubble-headed decision to move here, we thought we'd better have a house to move to. So we flew in and spent one day looking at property, picked two houses, made offers that were accepted and went back to San Diego. We did the rest of the process remotely. Silly us. We trusted the real estate agent in Clearwater, a $cientologist who was recommended by another $cientologist.

We knew that the house had some problems. We knew we were going to be doing some "remodeling." That was okay, we'd done plenty of that in San Diego. The inspection that was done didn't cause us any particular alarm, so we thought, "It's fine, just some paint, a little tile, no sweat." Well, we'd been in too much of a hurry and hadn't registered a lot of what was wrong. For instance, I'd completely forgotten that three rooms had been coated with thick plaster that had been "pulled" with a wet sponge, so the end result looked surprisingly like meringue (think of a lemon meringue pie, just like that). All that plaster had to be scraped off and the walls resurfaced. That was a lot of work.

We knew the colors weren't quite right and that we'd be painting, but we'd forgotten how weird the house really was -- low ceilings, odd spaces with no right angles, dark rooms, bizarre solutions to add-ons. So when we arrived and started living in this house, we were worried, to say the least. I can't possibly tell you or show you all that we did -- it's simply too much. But here are a few photos that will give you an idea:

So this is the house that we made beautiful and aesthetic and easy to care for and easy to live in. And this is the house we finally sold so that we can get out of Florida and go live in Oregon, where sane, intelligent, good people live (I know that all my friends who don't live in Oregon at the present, will certainly move there as soon as they possibly can).

Next stop, Portland. ROOOOOAD TRIIIIIIIIP!

Famous filmmaker

2008-04-04T16:20:00.007-04:00

You probably didn't know that I was a famous film-maker. Well, that's okay, I don't like to make a big fuss about it. I'm sure if you're ever up at 3AM in some dive motel in Phoenix, you'll see the incredible, phenomenal, amazing, ground-breaking public service announcement I made for the National Forest Service. Yes, you heard correctly, THE National Forest Service.

The program I was in at Arizona State University was called Visual Communications Design. It was in the Design Science Department of the College of Architecture and was started by none other than Neil Miller -- the photography teacher, remember? For our final project, we each made a 30-second PSA for the NFS. There were 12 of us in the program and we each had an advisor from the Forest Service. We pulled the topic for the PSA out of a hat. Really. We did.

Mine was "Protect the Wilderness". Since I'm a movie buff, I immediately thought of two '70s classic sci-fi films that I loved: Soylent Green and Silent Running. I wanted to do something in 30 seconds that was as powerful as either of those movies. (They're both about what happens in the future when we've mostly destroyed the planet's ability to sustain life. And they're both awesome.)

Some day I'll digitize my PSA and put it here. It's kind of funny -- dated looking, but the message is strong: take care today because tomorrow it'll be too late. So original, don't you think?

From there to here

2008-04-03T15:08:00.007-04:00

I've mentioned a few thousand times how crazy I am about Allison, right? I've been going through all our stuff to get us ready for the big move and I've come across some great pictures. My old scanner isn't packed yet, so...

I was thinking Allison might get a little miffed about this baby picture being posted here -- then I saw that she'd written something on the back, a teacher's name and room number. Well, how about that? She'd taken it to school, so that would mean she's okay with folks seeing it. It'll be a few days before she knows it's here since she's on another one of those trips (I'm pretty sure it's St. Martens this time). So if this pic disappears, you'll know what happened. Heh, heh

It is truly amazing to me that that baby grew up to become this woman. This woman is a runner and next November I'll be in New York to watch her run the New York Marathon. Whoa.

You wanna make something of it?

2008-04-02T13:55:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I think this is how I'd really like to approach life and the world. It seems empowering to just be an asshole or a bitch. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't know there's a problem with this attitude. Jeez, where would we be if everyone had a complete 'f*^k you' thing happening? Oh, wait.

Yeah, that's me.

What a difference 2558.6 miles can make

2008-04-01T13:30:00.003-04:00

What do you see out your window at this time of year?

This is Lois' view: a fantastic scene of the desert in spectacular bloom. Whoa. Really beautiful.

And here's Lauri's view: an amazing vision in snow. Yes, also really beautiful.

I'm struck by the contrast of their two environments at this time of year. It's not earth-shattering or miraculous, just wondrous. I also like that my friends share these pictures with me; I like seeing what they see. In fact, I love it. Did you know that Lauri and Lois are friends? We all met in Tempe, Arizona around 1976. I've known them such a wonderful long time.

Don't try this at home, heh heh

2008-03-30T13:01:00.008-04:00

I was tickled when I read that the Asian Times had issued this marital precaution:

Chinese doctors have warned moviegoers not to try some of the more ambitious sexual positions featured in the uncut version of the Ang Lee film "Lust, Caution." Most of the sexual maneuvers in "Lust, Caution" are in abnormal body positions, said Yu Zao, a deputy director at a women's hospital in southern Guangdong province. "Only women with comparatively flexible bodies that have gymnastics or yoga experience are able to perform them."

Oh really? They looked pretty normal to me. Hmmm.

If you haven't seen Lust, Caution this "report" will likely entice you to rush right out and do just that. Unless of course, you're offended by full frontal nudity, explicit scenes of sexual intercourse or hot, steamy, passionate film-making.

This is a powerful movie. It's set in WWII-era Shanghai, not a great time for the Chinese. They've been overrun with Japanese and they're fighting for their freedom. This movie has love, sex, intrigue, guns, sex, great acting, believable characters, great costumes, sex.

I love Ang Lee: Eat Drink Man Woman; Brokeback Mountain; Sense and Sensibility; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I suspect actors love him too, they do such a fabulous job for him and seem willing to do just about anything on screen. Amazing.

Florida stories: Mailboxes

2008-03-26T16:15:00.008-04:00

Well, we're coming to the end of Florida stories. It won't be long and there'll be no more from this part of the country. But hey! You're going to love Oregon stories.

There are so many things that seem peculiar to me about Clearwater. High on the list is the Department of Sanitation and that would include the "recycling" program, of course. Hah! What recycling? Ok, yes, we're given yellow bins to put out paper, aluminum, tin and that's about it. No cardboard, no glass. Some plastic. Oh well. And then there's what we started calling Tuesday pick-up. That's when you can put anything out on the curb and the city will cart it away. No kidding. It's a fantastic service. Needless to say, with two houses needing major renovations, we took full advantage.

But today we're talking about mailboxes. Some of the Florida stories could have taken place anywhere. But I never saw mailboxes like this anyplace else. Certainly not in San Diego. They're almost cute.

There are fish mailboxes. They look like a kit you put together and then paint.

Other aquatic creatures.

A couple of hand-painted beach scenes and a few with just ordinary contact paper stuck on.

Some appropriately tropical birds.

And finally, a fishing lure, a school bus and...a yellow submarine.

The Hawkins family, starting with Jefferson

2008-03-26T15:05:00.010-04:00

I am incredibly blessed to have married into such a phenomenal family. The Hawkins' are a lovely, rowdy, smart, funny, and oh so talented bunch. I've mentioned so many times already how creative Kim is and it turns out his big brother Jeff is too. It's really hard to know where to start, Jeff's talents are very diverse. He is the go-to person if you have a product that you want people to know about and desire. He is the absolute bomb photographer. And most recently, he's taken up 3D modeling software -- completely self taught.

Jeff is one of the reasons we want to live in Portland. He's been there about a year and is loving it. We visited last August and were sold immediately. Kim has two sons living there as well. And we're hoping Slayde will move there when she's finished law school. (My not so secret wish is that Allison and Carl will want to move to Portland some day.) I'll be telling you more about sons Abe and Shue in another post. Also, more about Slayde and her lovely grandmother Evelyn, later.

This is one of my most favorites of Jeff's photographs. Yes, it was PhotoShopped. And what a great job of it! The woman and the outfit are real, Jeff took out all the people around her and put her in the sky.

On Jeff's main blog, he posts a lot about his travels around Portland, over to the Oregon coast, San Fransisco and Texas. His photography is simply awesome. Here's the underneath part of St. John's Bridge, one of the most beautiful bridges in this country, IMHO.

Here is Jeff's take on what's happening to $cientology. It's a project he's doing to teach himself the 3D modeling software. I love it.

Shouting from my soapbox: I'm sorry, okay?

2008-03-23T17:14:00.011-04:00

Did you ever have somebody bring up something mean or stupid that you did years earlier? How did that make you feel? Certainly you didn’t intend to do harm…well, okay, maybe you did once. But let’s all just admit that we’ve made some mistakes, yeah? That seems like a good place to start.

In the last six months I’ve been reminded by 4 people of things I did years ago that were hurtful to them.

In one case, the event was 42 years ago. I will admit that what happened was pretty bad and that the injured party really suffered. I do understand. I truly fucked up.

Number two was a chatty letter I got from a relative. He recounted, between innocuous personal stories, some genuinely awful things I did or said to him during a visit he made to our house. That visit would have been, umm, let’s see, about 10 years ago. And, again, he was right – I had been very thoughtless and cruel.

The third reminder was in an email from one of my new “old” friends. I guess I was rude to her too. Apparently, in my youth, I had cussed her out. In this case I can’t say that I actually remember what happened. I recall being mostly a wuss at that age and not the sort of person who would go off on someone. I didn’t have that kind of bravado, in my recollection of myself at 17.

And last, but not least, a recent email reminding me of an insensitivity 5 years ago. That was someone I snubbed because they made some remark about $cientology. And you probably thought I was exaggerating about dumping people who didn’t like my “church?” Nope, did it all the time. But in this particular case, I probably would have snubbed that person anyway. He was hard for me to get along with, I didn’t have anything in common with him and he’d moved far away. It’s this damn blog. I’m so easily found. I should have left well enough alone. I could have ignored his email, but nooo, I’m trained to be polite.

Which brings us to one of the points of all this: How to handle other people’s upsets when they’re old news. I have no problem with apologizing and I certainly have been doing a lot of that lately. That’s completely fine with me. And I’m not glib about it, I feel their pain, I hear that I’ve done damage. I sincerely wish I could take it back, have an undo or a do-over, or something so that that thing never happened to them. But I can’t.

Here would be another point of this rant: What is their reason for telling me about it now? Have they been waiting all this time for that apology? Is there more I should do to make up for my screw-ups? Now, see, I feel pretty strongly that holding onto old hurts is counter-productive – I can’t think of a way that it would help a person, can you? To me it comes under the heading of “get over it.” I was trying to think of things that family or friends had done to me that had upset me, hurt me, pissed me off, etc. I was able to remember a few things, but nothing so huge that I thought I should bring it up in the now. Nothing. Maybe this is one of the important variables here: how big was the hurtful thing? Wouldn't that have something to do with whether or not you held onto it? And for how long?

I have to say here that I know this is a complicated issue. I think “getting over it” and “moving on” are very important. I believe that holding onto old hurts just makes a person sour, unhappy, a sad sack and someone who cannot trust others. That said, here’s a story about my own experience on the other side: I was an abused child, from age 5 to age 12. The abuse was at the hands of my father, who died when I was 12. I tried once, when I was in my early 20s, to talk to my mother about what had happened. I really had to work up my courage to have that conversation, trust me. So I carefully brought up the past, carefully said something about feeling damaged by what had happened, carefully, walking on eggshells here, tried to engage my mother in the conversation. She had two responses, neither of them an apology. The first was, “It happens to all little girls,” and the second was, “Can’t you just move on?!”

An apology at that moment would have helped me move on, would have helped me heal. An apology would have said to me that she knew she was partly accountable and that she didn't take it lightly. It certainly would have been a step in the right direction. I can see how that apology, even decades after the fact, is crucial.

Unless, of course, it's something little. Then, if someone's hanging on, waiting for you to grovel and whip yourself, it's a whole different story. Then it's their problem, I think.

All of this raises many questions for me: What about the moment the hurt occurs? Isn't that the best time of all to say, "Hey, asshole, get off my foot!"? But maybe you, like me, aren't the brave sort of person you would like to be. I may be able to rant, especially here, where I have lots of time to write and rewrite. That's not the same as having the guts to tell someone that I feel hurt. And how about this: Do you always know that you've been hurt, right at the moment it happens? I have a delay thing -- it may take a while for me to catch up, so to speak. I may not know for a week that I should have stood up for myself. And if I had known right at the moment, would I have been up to the task?

It is a complex thing, human nature. There's all the stuff we're taught about "please" and "thank you" and being polite. There's all the stuff about being female and not feeling entitled to throw a punch occasionally. There's all the stuff about being male and not allowing your feelings to show, or, for that matter, to be known to yourself.

I believe we must have conversations with ourselves about these things. And somehow, we have to find our own balance, what are the lines that we will not cross and that we will not allow others to cross with us. And once we've figured that out, how do we communicate those things to others? If someone is standing on your toe, is smacking them upside the head the first thing you would do? I know people who are so angry most of the time, that that is what they would do. But if you've "moved on" from the hurts in your life, wouldn't you be more inclined to say, "Excuse me, would you please get off my toe?"

Florida stories: The best plumber

2008-03-21T16:34:00.006-04:00

We moved into a house, here in Florida, that badly needed renovation. We gutted almost every room in this house and started over, ceiling to floor. We did an incredible job and now this house is gorgeous. As I've said many times before (and of course you're really tired of hearing it), we moved here to do bigger and better things in our "church." So, naturally, our first contacts were other $cientologists. Kim and I needed massive numbers of recommendations for people to help us with contracting, electrical, masonry, plumbing, etc. We had so much work to do and we only trusted $cnists to tell us who to hire. Interestingly, some of the recommendations were for non-$cientologist tradesmen. Okay. We'll take a chance. We'll try them.

To be perfectly honest, some of the worst work was done by $cnists and some of the most irresponsible tradesmen were $cnists. One electrician (who was a $cnist) started the work we contracted for and then disappeared without a trace for about 2 months. Then he just showed up one day and asked if we were too mad at him to have him finish the work. Right. That's a good way to do business.

Of all the people we met through this process, the most marvelous one is Eddie. He is a first-rate plumber and a glorious human being. He's in his 70s and can still do the work of a much younger man. Yes, he is slowing down now. We called him this week to take care of a few things that came up on the inspection and he said he couldn't crawl under the house. He also wasn't going to let me pay him for the two things he did fix because of our long term relationship. Eddie told us a few stories of his dealings with $cnists -- they weren't happy stories.

I cried when Eddie left the other day. I know I won't see him again. Even though we weren't "friends," I feel a loss and I will miss him.

Other people's lives

2008-03-21T16:18:00.008-04:00

I think I have the most amazing friends. Haven't I said that a few thousand times? No matter. I will say it and say it and then I'll just say it some more. I'm very lonely here in Florida. The "friends" we had were $cientologists and they're not allowed to speak to us any more. We had great friends in San Diego -- many who had nothing at all to do with $cn. And we have sorely missed them. I also have fantastic friends from when I lived in Arizona.

As Kim and I have worked through our disconnection from $cn and made our plans to relocate to Oregon, a remarkable number of people I'd lost track of started to surface. Or, in other cases, stronger bonds were made with friends who had been shunted aside because they weren't interested in our "religion."

Well, all this is just prelude to these fabulous photos that three lovely friends have shared with me and I am now sharing with you.

Lois visits a Caribbean island.

Haris dresses up Sadie.

Lauri zooms down a slide carved out of ice.

Have I mentioned that we know a lot of people in Oregon? It really boggles my mind that we're going to have so many friends the moment we move there. It's awesome. In fact, we already have our first dinner invitation!

I'm just trying to distract you

2008-03-20T18:38:00.005-04:00

I usually put up something like these cartoons or a video when I'm trying to figure out what I want to say next. Just relax.

This is another wonderful funny from xkcd.

I popped this out of an email with a bunch of Easter stuff. I liked it the best.

March 19, 2008 End the War in Iraq Blogswarm

2008-03-19T14:59:00.006-04:00

Jim Barron, 80, poses at his home in New Haven, Conn., Thursday, March 13, 2008. Barron, who wears hearing aids and has a pacemaker, says he plans to risk arrest by participating in an act of civil disobedience next Wednesday, March 19 on the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. Barron served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper in the 1950's. (AP Photo/Bob Child)

War: the ignorant against the innocent.

Bush is not the son who's gonna tote the gun.

Loyalty to my country: always.
Loyalty to my government: when it deserves it.
~Mark Twain

Many years ago, when I was working at University City High School, a war called Desert Storm started. The students were electrified and could talk of nothing else. UC High is in very conservative country, for the most part, but there were quite a few kids who understood that going to war for oil was insane. The students who thought it was great came to school wearing red, white and blue top hats, little pins with pro-war slogans and waving baby American flags. They'd ask, "Aren't you so proud to be an American?" They were baffled by my negative response. I always added, "I may not be proud to be an American, but I am always grateful to have been born in America."

I've tried to reconcile my various feelings about war. What would have happened if the different armies that stood against Hitler had stayed home? It is truly unacceptable that a madman with genocide on his mind is left to his own devices. No good. So, then come people with guns. I'm not good with this issue because I tend to be too narrow in my thinking: all war is bad. It is likely true that all war is bad, but some wars are not wrong.

If you would like to find all the blogs who participated in this blogswarm, go here.

Musical Inspiration UPDATED

2008-03-18T11:00:00.017-04:00

It turns out that I know more musicians than I thought I did. I introduced you to Haris a while back. And I recently received two MP3 files in emails, neither one from Haris.

The first one is from Bruce. I've known Bruce since the mid 1970's -- we worked together in the AudioVisual Department at Arizona State University. He's always been a brilliant sound engineer and was part owner of a recording studio in Phoenix for many years. He was the producer on Killer Pussy's first album, Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage. He's also a respectable musician himself.

(There's a picture of Bruce and Celia getting married over on the right side. See if you can find it.)

Bruce writes:
"Attached is an mp3 of my latest musical endeavor with my friend Chris. Recorded on an old souped up Mac G4 with Protools. Shows what a coupla middle aged guys can do with a computer in the spare bedroom."

Chris Daly is an actor and a bad magician (as he demonstrates here with his disappearing brick trick). Heh heh.

The tune is called Empty Space. Enjoy.

And here's another one of those weird re-connecting things that's been going on with me: I got an email from Carl, who was my boss at the last place I worked in San Diego. Carl was writing to let me know he'd found me through this blog and had passed along the contact info to John Frazer, a former co-worker who wanted to talk to me. So. Now I'm back in touch with Carl and Harmonica John, as he's known in the music biz.

Here's the tune John sent. It's called Help Me. Enjoy.

Six month anniversary

2008-03-17T10:51:00.004-04:00

Today marks six months of no cigarettes.

I've done my share of whining and complaining about not smoking, but I must say it's getting easier and easier to ignore the little urges I still get. Fortunately, I have vivid dreams of smoking and when I wake up, I feel satisfied. How odd. I wish I could learn to do that with food. Oh well.

image by duchesssa at sxc

Florida Stories: Why do we want to get out of Florida so badly?

2008-03-14T09:27:00.009-04:00

To answer that question, I must explain how we came to be here in the first place. Since Clearwater, Florida is definitely not a place we would have chosen to live, what in the world would make us move here? Well, brainwashing is the simplest answer. We were "good" members of $cientology and we did what was expected of us -- and we didn't think about it. We sold our house in San Diego and moved to Florida. We didn't like it much at first and we hoped that it would get better. It didn't.

Here's what we didn't like:
The heat.
The humidity.
The bugs.
The mold and mildew.
The humidity combined with the heat.
The rats.
The really stupid people.
The ugliness of the town of Clearwater.
The deadness of the town.
The humidity.
There are no freeways.
There's nothing pretty or beautiful to look at (okay, there must be something.)

Once we woke up and knew that we were not $cientologists any more, all that was left was selling this house and getting out of here. The waking up was in the summer of 2006; the selling of the house was last week.

So, of course, one of the reasons we want to leave is that Clearwater is buried in $cientology. The biggest of their organizations is here and attracts people from all over the world. They've bought and renovated several of the historical buildings in Clearwater. And of course, there's the Super Power Building, which they've been working on for ten years. They hit up $cientologists for the money to build this monstrosity to the tune of $142 million. The building is not finished and the thing that it was built for isn't finished and the city of Clearwater has been fining them for being so overdue on finishing, but they don't care. They can't finish the building because they have nothing and no one to put in it.

There are also many businesses owned by $cientologists -- I worked for one until we were declared "suppressive persons," at which time I was fired. Our tax preparer was a $cieno and now she won't do our taxes. The contractor who did all the major projects on our house is a $cieno. I ran into him at the market, he wouldn't look at me. The $cieno friends we had likewise won't acknowledge that they know us. They are very weird.

$cientology casts a pall over this part of Florida. Clearwater is a dying town and many long-time residents believe it is directly because of the presence of $cientology. You can look up all the awful things this "church" did when they arrived here. Just Google Gabe Cazeres.

But the really good news is $cientology itself is dying. There have been outspoken critics for years and they've chipped away at the cult while being targets of harassment and worse. Now comes Anonymous. I'm so happy they're here. They're like the calvary arriving in the old westerns. They've put together an excellent video. It's only 14 minutes but will show you why they're involved. We didn't join in the protest on February 10, but we will tomorrow.

We haven't enjoyed living in Florida, and it's possible that we came here just so we could wake up from our nightmare. We are so happy to be out of the cult of greed and power. We are so happy to be moving on.

How would you meet the news of your impending death?

2008-03-10T13:24:00.006-04:00

This video is Dr. Randy Pausch's last lecture to his students at Carnegie Mellon. Randy has cancer and was told last September that he had only a few months left to live. Want to be inspired (even as you sob)?

It's 12 minutes. I think you'll like it.

I just want to mention also, this is how Kim sees things. He's been helping me get to this place for the past couple of years and I'm very grateful.

Florida stories: Lions and tigers and panthers, oh my!

2008-03-09T10:56:00.009-04:00

But they're all in cages. It's very hard to see beautiful wild animals cooped up. It's so wrong, every bit of me cries for them and the injustice that brought them to this point.

I have always admired people who work for important causes like Big Cat Rescue (BCR), who give selflessly of their time and energy to help. The woman standing in front of the cage is Jennifer, the volunteer staff member who gave us our tour. She knows her stuff and she made our visit really wonderful.

This is Shaquille, a male leopard who has been at BCR for 12 years. He came from a Vegas circus act where he was brutally beaten. His partner in the act didn't survive the cruel treatment.

Caracels can perform unbelievable acrobatics -- jumping high enough to swat birds out of the sky. There are two at BCR, both born there.

There are several leopards at BCR: the black Shaquille, some spotted leopards and an amazing snow leopard (we'll get to her, don't worry). They've been rescued from breeders, the entertainment industry or private owners who figured out that they weren't pets.

"At Big Cat Rescue our philosophy is that NO wild animal should be bred for life in a cage." Bred for life in a cage is how Hercules started life, but because there was a "surplus" of his blood line, he had to be taken out of the mix of animals used for breeding. He now spends his days at BCR with Cloe, a female who was purchased as a gift and then abandoned.

Here ends part one of our adventures at Big Cat Rescue. More later.

Miracles do happen

2008-03-06T15:41:00.004-05:00

Back in January, Stephanie told me that our house would sell on March 5th. I thought, "Wow, that's so specific. How can she know that?" I think she said she dreamed about it.

And yesterday, our house sold. We've had it for sale since last July.

We're moving to Oregon. Finally.

This is so silly, but don't you love it?

2008-03-06T15:13:00.005-05:00

(click the image, it'll get big enough to read)

It's a site devoted to pictures of people flipping off Hummer2s. It just feels so right. And I'm not apologizing to any owner of one of these beasts. Getting the finga is only fair.

Birthday bowling

2008-03-05T10:49:00.003-05:00

Allison recently celebrated a birthday -- she turned 28 (just kidding). She and Carl and a bunch of friends went bowling. Yes, bowling. I haven't done that in years. My mom was a bowling champ; she was in a league and everything. I might get a little yelled at for putting these up here, but oh well, what are kids for? (I did, after all, put up a picture of myself vacuuming the yard.)

xkcd

2008-03-04T16:44:00.005-05:00

A webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language.

We went to New York, last part

2008-03-04T10:03:00.014-05:00

Sunday was a very busy, but laid back day. We knew that at some point we were going to hook up with Liora, who was in the city visiting friends (before leaving on yet another globe-trot). Once we figured out that she wasn't arriving until the afternoon, we set off for brunch -- yay! This time we went to Brown on Hester Street. It's tiny and wonderful and has the best service. Here's an excellent review that really covers much more than I could say. The review ends with this:

"Someday I'd like to hunker down with a bottle from Brown's very reasonably priced wine list ($22 to $32) and see just how many side orders of that gratin I could put away. Until then I'll stick to ordering too many of Brown's super smooth espressos, each lovingly teased from the handsome espresso machine, no matter how late it gets." (That's for you, CM.)

We wandered around the neighborhood before going back to Al and Carl's place to wait for Liora. You can come sight-seeing with us, here's what we saw:

And here's my all-time favorite:

It was great seeing Liora. I hadn't see her for a very long time and she's been all over the world since then -- southeast Asia, New Zealand, Australia, Japan. So many adventures to hear about.

Even after all her travels around the world, just before this trip to New York she went with her mom to China and Tibet.
But I digress...

We all walked to the subway together -- Liora was off to visit her sister who's a student at Columbia and the four of us to see Evidence - A Dance Company. Oh yeah, now you're talking.

Needless to say, this is NOT my photo -- I found it on a college site, promoting the appearance of Ronald Brown and his Company. (I know it's silly but I like that we had brunch at Brown and the dance company was founded by Brown -- just a nice coinkydink.) The concert was fabulous and remarkable and wonderful and such lovely movements/gestures. The experience was slightly spoiled by an idiot in front of us who kept taking pictures with her f&^%*ng cell phone. I know what you're thinking: Nobody would do that, it's unthinkable. Yes she did! AND she was eating. No, I didn't say anything to her, but I did ask an usher to speak to her. Oh well. I should know that given my proclivity for being offended by other people's behavior (and perfume) that I should just NOT GO OUT.

Okay. I'm fine now. After the concert we had THE MOST AMAZING MEAL. We ate at the Rocking Horse Cafe in Chelsea. You must go there when you're in the city. ("in the city" of course means New York -- is there another city? I don't think so.)

I stole this from their site. Let me just say that all four of us had such incredible meals, each thing that came to the table was extraordinary, including the drinks. God, what an unforgettable dinner. And Chelsea is so fun to walk around in. This is another must.

And then Monday arrived and it was time to head back to Florida, yuck. We took the AirTrain again, but a different subway train. Allison and Carl do such a good job of looking out for us when we visit them. When we're all out walking and it's crowded, if Kim and I get separated from them, we just quack like baby ducks. Al quacks back and we find her. So easy. I think she was a bit embarrassed the first time we did that, but she realized it makes no difference what you do on the street in New York -- it's New York. Ah, I digress again. Allison and Carl had figured out a way to cut about 1/2 hour off our trip to the airport. That was cool. This train took us through neighborhoods in Queens.

And then we were at the airport.

Bye-bye New York. We were sad to go because spending time with Allison and Carl is always a great joy. But we were not so sad to leave the parts of New York that are difficult to take: really rude people; dog shit everywhere so that you better watch where you walk all the time; angry, aggressive people who come after you for any imagined slight (hmm, that almost sounds like me...nah.). This is not to say that there aren't lovely, friendly, happy people in New York, of course there are -- we met many. But it's easy to understand the aloofness of New Yorkers -- they have so little personal space, what else can they do? I'm sure I'd be quite a bit more standoffish if I lived there.

My next trip to the city will be in November when Allison runs in the NY marathon. Woohoo!

Florida Stories: Impractical and unattractive front doors

2008-03-03T15:12:00.009-05:00

We moved to Clearwater in the month of May, so we immediately got the worst of the Florida weather: hot and wet and buggy. Very hot and very wet. It rains a lot in the summer here. It probably rains every day. So imagine my shock to see front doors like these. I mean, yes, they're unappealing generally, but for heaven's sake, in a place with this much bad weather, you would truly expect some sort of overhang, wouldn't you?!

Well, you decide.

And then there's a house like this:
Beautiful, isn't it? Don't you love the red door? This is our house, of course. You'd think it would have sold by now, as lovely as it is. Soon. Pray for us.

Today we're going to Big Cat Rescue

2008-03-02T09:38:00.004-05:00

I'll post the pictures later, but I wanted you to see this video right now. Enjoy.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Oops, I really thought today was Saturday. Big Cat Rescue is closed on Sunday. Hmmm -- guess we'll go next weekend. I've been wanting to see it and maybe volunteer.

We went to New York, Part 2

2008-03-01T08:12:00.014-05:00

Part 1 was about Friday -- arriving, enjoying the view from the new balcony and eating the best pizza ever. The next day, Kim and I went out for an early walk (we wake up much earlier than our hosts) and we found the most amazing place. Allison and Carl live on the lower East side, north and east of Chinatown. It's a fabulous, history-rich area. And the place we found Saturday morning truly epitomizes this area: Doughnut Plant New York. Check out the history of this shop.

If you've ever said to yourself "Self, I'm not eating any more doughnuts, they're too lardy and they leave this nasty coating in my mouth and they feel like a huge weight in my gut -- yeah, that's it, no more doughnuts," I will completely understand if you think I've lost it because I'm recommending doughnuts. But these are not just any doughnuts. Believe me. And you'll just have to try them to get what I'm talking about. Ummmmmm. That doughnut in the upper right corner? Those are rose petals under the glaze. We didn't try that one Saturday morning, thinking we'd go back another time. Our next morning walk was Monday -- they're closed Mondays. Such a bummer.

Before we left Florida I'd gotten in touch with old friend, former student, and incredible photographer Donna, who I hadn't seen in many years and asked her to meet us for brunch Saturday. We met up at Sarabeth's on the upper East side, about 45 minutes of walking and subway from Al's place. Again, another fantastic meal. I had a spinach and goat cheese omelette. Ohmygod. There are five Sarabeths in New York (one of those is just a bakery, no restaurant) and there's one in Key West, Florida (go figure). The best part of being there was catching up with Donna. She told us wonderful stories of being a professional photographer in New York -- really fascinating and surprising, about how wealthy people spend $1,000s to have a pro photographer at their child's birthday party. It isn't that that's so weird, but for most of us it's out of reach. Donna's in that world regularly. She looked great and she was obviously happy. (Don't ask why I have no pictures of her. Just don't.)

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the upper West side, mostly at Columbia University. In all the trips we've taken to New York, we'd never been there. It is magnificent. In a fantasy life, I would be a full-time student at Columbia. I wouldn't have to work, I would immerse myself in some area of academia and then, when I was done, I would DO something. I get a bit confounded when I think about choosing an area to study: they all seem good. I had that trouble when I was 17, starting at ASU. My academic counselor asked me what my major was going to be and all I could think of was "everything."

We had dinner at Brassierie 8 1/2 in midtown. According to Allison and Carl, midtown restaurants are mostly for week nights, not weekends. It was a forgettable meal. The waiter was the old-fashioned kind of New York server: snooty. I spoke to the manager on our way out, he seemed to care that our experience hadn't been completely positive. I suspect though, that Allison and Carl won't go back.

I'll leave you with this: one of the thousands of phenomenal tile mosaics in the subway.

If dogs were teachers, we would learn things like....

2008-02-29T14:41:00.004-05:00

1. When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
2. Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
3. Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.
4. When it's in your best interest, practice obedience.
5. Let others know when they've invaded your territory.
6. Take naps. Stretch before rising.
7. Run, romp, and play daily.
8. Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
9. Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
10. On warm days, stop to lie on your back on the grass.
11. On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
12. When you're happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
13. No matter how often you're scolded, don't buy into the guilt thing and pout...run right back and make friends.
14. Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.
15. Eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Stop when you have had enough.
16. Be loyal.
17. Never pretend to be something you're not.
18. If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
19. When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.
20. And finally...Never trust anyone until you sniff their butt.

The two best Oscar moments

2008-02-27T10:05:00.007-05:00

I have always loved movies and I've always loved the Academy Awards show. When I was a kid I imagined being on the stage and making my speech. I dreamed, like many girls, of being beautiful and famous. These days I just enjoy seeing which movies are getting all the attention and trying to figure out why. For instance, I hated Ratatouille, really hated it, turned it off half way through in disgust. I completely do not understand what the fuss was about that movie.

So this year, as most years, I had seen some of the movies, but not all of them. I had my favorites, the ones I was rooting for. I still haven't seen No Country for Old Men or There Will be Blood -- as soon as they're out on DVD I'll get them from Netflix. And here I'd like to interject a shameless plug (although I have nothing to gain) for Netflix. This is the greatest invention for people like me who LOVE movies and want to just see everything they can and do it effortlessly. I love it.

When I saw that Marion Cotillard had been nominated for Best Actress I was very happy -- she did the most incredible job of anyone I've ever seen. After watching La Vie en Rose, I thought there must have been at least 6 women who played Edith. I understood there were two children, but I was sure that the adult Edith had been portrayed by many women. Imagine how dumbfounded I was to learn that it was only one. I knew she deserved the Oscar. I wanted to see if everyone else realized it.

Here's some great old footage of the actual Edith Piaf singing La Vie en Rose. I hope you enjoy it. And if you haven't seen this incredible film, rush right out and do it now.

Then there's this movie. Words like sweet, lovely, quiet, come to mind. It's a love story and a musical and a testament to people making dreams come true. The making dreams come true part is in the story, but it's also the story of the movie: no budget, actors barely getting paid, a filmmaker with a dream. Did you hear Glen Hansard's speech? How precious was that? And Marketa Irglova being cut off before she can utter one word of thanks?! What on earth was that? But somebody (I wonder if it was Jon Stewart) had the good graces to give her her moment. Did you know that Glen and Marketa wrote that hauntingly beautiful song that won? Here's the song and some scenes from the movie. See it, if you haven't already.

We went to New York

2008-02-24T11:35:00.005-05:00

This was the first time we didn't take a cab into the city from JFK. The city finally finished the AirTrain so travelers can save big bucks getting to and from the airport. After the AirTrain, we took the J train into Manhattan -- it's above ground all the way across Queens and Brooklyn and the Williamsburg Bridge, then it drops underground just as it arrives on the Lower East Side. Allison and Carl live two blocks from that stop.

This is the view from their balcony late in the afternoon, which is when we got there.

Pala Pizza Romano

That night we went out for the most incredible pizza we'd ever had. Al and Carl have these favorite places they take us, oooh, so yummy. This place is voted best pizza year after year.

So, this is part one of our trip. More later. Kiss kiss.

Mating season

2008-02-14T13:42:00.004-05:00

If you object to sex or "messages," don't watch this. Otherwise, enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T10:20:00.001-05:00

These are for my twoo wuv -- you know who you are...

Florida stories: Winter visitors

2008-02-13T13:19:00.012-05:00

The first year we lived in Florida, we were delighted to see these big black birds magically appear in October and take up residence in the Australian pines near our house. After a bit of checking with people who'd lived here longer and some googling, we learned that these are Black Vultures. They come here from Texas, they don't build nests and, as far as we can tell, they do not come here to breed. We've never seen a young 'un. By the way, these are all Kim's photographs, some with the new camera even.

It's a bunch of fun to watch them soar and glide. They are really beautiful flyers -- a few flaps to get them out of the tree and they're away. (As an interesting side note, we mentioned to a $cientologist we knew that we thought the birds were lovely and fun to watch. His response? Yuck, they're low-toned [meaning they're not "happy" or "inspiring" or "cheerful"], they're carrion-eaters, and they most definitely are not to be admired! Gotta love those $cienos, huh?)

There's an old dead tree across the street where they congregate in the morning to dry their wings.

One morning when it was foggy (something that doesn't happen often), they came down to our roof and hung out there for a while, apparently waiting for some sun or a breeze.

Sometimes I just lay (lie?) in the grass and watch. They move so gracefully and it's a kick to watch a group of them, slipping and sliding through the sky.

But they are not particularly attractive creatures when they're not flying. They are, after all, vultures.

Shouting from my soapbox: Who the hell's responsible here?

2008-02-13T10:10:00.008-05:00

I picked up the book true green, published by National Geographic, with a foreward by Ian Kiernan, Chairman and Founder of Clean Up the World. The subtitle is "100 everyday ways you can contribute to a healthier planet." The cover says the book is by Kim McKay and Jenny Bonnin. I've heard of National Geographic, haven't heard of the rest of these folks. It's broken down into areas of your life where you can "make a difference," like 'in the home,' 'at work,' etc. So this Clean Up the World thing is huge apparently. According to the blurb in the back:
"Fifteen years after its launch, the campaign has become a successful action program that spans more than 120 countries, encouraging communities to take control of their own destiny by improving the health of their community and environment." Have you heard of this program, outfit, whatever you want to call it? It started as Clean Up Australia and morphed into this version.

Here's my problem: I'm reading through the things I can do, around my house, in my yard and the thought occurs to me, "Is there a book like this for ginormous corporations?" Since the federal government obviously doesn't give a rat's ass about the environment or our health, who's helping Proctor & Gamble or SCJohnson or General Motors or L'Oreal or Jack in the Box be true green? The agencies, both federal and state, that might hold a large corporation's feet to the fire, have made it clear they're not interested in passing laws OR enforcing existing laws that will move us closer to a safer, cleaner, healthier world. My personal opinion is that the individuals who make up the governmental groups are getting rich off the individuals from these special interest groups and lobbyists. I can just see it: a couple good 'ol boys (although I'm very aware that there are good 'ol gals too) yukking it up about the toxic dump that's NOT going to get cleaned up or the chemicals that ARE going to go into air fresheners or the emissions of the newest cars that WON'T pass any tests, yuk yuk. Have another whiskey?

See, that's the thing that really jerks my chain. We have to do our part AND we have to make these overgrown bullies do their part too! WTF??!! I'm really tired of carefully taking canvas bags to the market, carefully turning off every unused light, carefully reading labels (until I think I'm going to go blind), carefully getting rid of the toxically poisonous products from our house, carefully trying to educate the stupid imbeciles we have for neighbors, and so on ad nauseum. I want the really gigantic, huge, humongous, gargantuan, great big companies to HAVE TO DO their careful part. You get what I'm talking about here?

Remember Donovan? That wonderful, funny, kind of flipped out singer from the '60's? He said it perfectly in Riki Tiki Tavi. We have to do it ourselves. We have to kill the snakes. Us. You and me. We have to make the big corporations sweat, we have to hold their feet to the fire. How? Fuck if I know. But it seems to me it's time to bring back the Monkey Wrench Gang. In the meantime, here's our old friend to sing it out for us:

This is why we need Slayde to hurry up and finish Law School. She's going to help us kill these fucking snakes.

I finished this but had to come back and add this: do you have any idea how many goddammed eco-friendly, environmentally conscious, green-e, etc. new programs, companies, groups are cashing in on global warming? I am stunned and thoroughly pissed off at people who are touting wind and solar power as if they'd just been discovered. Oh my god. This is so crazy. When Allison was about 5, I knew a guy who was trying to get wind mills used all over California. That was ages ago and now there are those big wind farm things and people are all proud of themselves. Argh!

Fabulous Saturday morning inspiration

2008-02-09T11:22:00.000-05:00

Well, I just finished my morning blog surfing and I just have to share a few things with you.

First, there's spit-fire, two time published author Melissa, railing against stupid mofos who insist on telling her she cannot make it as a writer in Portland. I agree with her: Who says that? Obviously envious, insecure, mean-spirited folks say that. In her post she points us to an interview with Ariel Gore on Bookslut.com. I have to admit I'd never heard of Ms. Gore before, and that's okay, there are thousands of wonderful people I've never heard of. But thanks to blogging and surfing the web, I'm finding out about many of them and enjoying the hell of it. I'm grateful for the pointers from other bloggers to other blogs or sites or whatevs (little nod to Melissa). The interview with Ms. Gore was inspirational. It reminded me of my youthful self-confidence, promises I made to myself, and the fearlessness that one must have to survive, nay, not just survive, but flourish, thrive, blossom. The words were from Ariel, about Ariel, but I saw Melissa there as well.

I usually stop in at FakePlasticFish to see what's up with Beth, what progress she's making in eliminating plastic from her life, what new tips she has for the rest of us. I invite you to read Giving up the struggle: stories of ants and cats and hair products gone awry. I found my muscles relaxing, my breathing grew calmer. Whew. I needed that. And she throws in a great book recommendation as well. Don't be misled by the title, she has not given up her purpose to rid herself of unnecessary plastic, but, like any good introspective human, she acknowledges that there are layers of the onion. That is, the battle is waged in diverse ways. This is something I sorely need to keep in my wee brain. There are no absolutes, there is no black or white. We do what we can do. And we must treasure each other more than we must assert ourselves over each other.

Enjoy. Be inspired. Put your thinking cap on. Go for it. Join the race. Live large.

You go girl!

Florida stories: Winter

2008-02-07T13:57:00.001-05:00

This is what you might expect when you hear "winter." Thanks to Lauri (in Kasilof) for this picture of her version of winter.

Or, perhaps this. Thanks to Bruce and Celia for this picture from their recent skiing vacation.

Winter could even look like this (Portland). I stole this from Melissa's blog post titled It Snow Joke. I had to read that about a dozen times before I got it. omg (if you don't know what omg means, use the acronym finder I told you about earlier.) (Yes, I'm being snotty. Deal with it.)

But this?? Please. I know I have no business whining and complaining about the lovely, warm weather here in Florida, but you must understand how incredibly monotonous and boring it is. It's f*&%$*g 75° and 75% humidity for chrissakes. It's unpleasant to have this weather all the time. There needs to be change. Oh, I forgot. It did get cold a few weeks ago, it dropped down to 50, we were really shivering that night.

But, we need to move on, right? We can talk about this tree. It's lovely when it's in bloom. Then it drops all the flowers. That's a bit messy. After the flowers, of course, come the seed pods. Naturally, that's the order of things. Now, this is where it gets truly nightmarish. There are tens of thousands of seed pods and each one has about a dozen seeds. Remember when I showed you the picture of vacuuming the yard? Well, one of the reasons for doing that was the hope (ridiculous, I know) that I could somehow mitigate all the baby trees that I knew were about to spring up.

There they are. And don't tell me you can't see them. Millions and millions of tiny baby trees. The entire yard covered with them. I have just spent two whole days carefully pulling them up, making sure to get the root. I filled my bucket 20 times. Kim took breaks and came outside to help. He pulled hundreds just on his breaks. We still have the back yard to do.

This morning the guy from the lawn care service was here to apply fertilizer. He said, "Oh, don't worry about those little trees, they die after they've been mowed down a few times."

Huh.

Overcome by thankfulness today

2008-02-03T13:18:00.000-05:00

One of the many things that was horrible about being a $cientologist was having the arrogant attitude that anyone not interested in it was an enemy. Because of that mindset, I intentionally stopped talking to some of the best people I've ever known.

I just want to take this moment to say how grateful I am that Kim and I no longer belong to such a disgusting organization and that I now count as friends people I almost lost forever.

To my almost lost friends: click this.

ROAD TRIP!

2008-02-03T11:04:00.000-05:00

But not with me and Kim. We're going with Lorelei and Roland. Woohoo! Today's trip is to Kinnitty Castle which is almost smack dab in the middle of Ireland.

We're going to see some great stuff on the way and stay over in one of the castle's exciting haunted rooms. Oooooo.

And here we are!! Looks just like you'd expect a castle to look, yeah? From the website:

Kinnitty Castle is located in the heart of Ireland, close to the picturesque village of Kinnitty in County Offaly. Approximately one hour 30 minutes from both Dublin and Shannon airports, it nestles in the foothills of the beautiful Slieve Bloom Mountains and is in Ireland's only designated Environment Park. The whole area is steeped in Irish history and there is a wide range of things to see and do.

Things to see and do? How about horseback riding?

And here's our room:

Well, what a great day! Reminds me of the time Allison and I were visiting Ireland. We drove across the country, from Dublin to the Dingle Peninsula in an afternoon (AND I had managed to pick up a cold on the ferry boat from Wales). It is a glorious place to drive. Roads are awful, getting used to driving on the left side is a nightmare, but the scenery is unbelievable. Truly magnificent. I recommend an Ireland road trip as soon as you can possibly get yourself over there.

100s Frozen in Grand Central

2008-02-03T08:10:00.000-05:00

Fractals and fractal math

2008-02-02T10:14:00.000-05:00

Leibniz, Karl Weierstrasse, Helge von Koch, Waclaw Sierpinski, Paul Pierre Lévy, Georg Cantor, Henri Poincaré, Felix Klein, Pierre Fatou, Gaston Julia, Lewis Fry Richardson, Benoit Mandelbrot.

And my point is? Well, I'll tell you: They were philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists. And these were the people who made

possible. This particular image is from Decadent Tranquility, which is the "home of Kyra, Zeke and Bravo-Four-Zero (a crew of eight Hynerians). Each chapter (post) features original art in the form of fractals, 3D and 2D renders, or sketches and paintings. The Story, as it is called, is an image driven saga, which is to say, the image comes first, then the prose is written to move the story forward." Check it out.

So, what exactly are fractals? From the Infinite Fractal Loop web ring comes this:

"Simply put, fractals are shapes which show similar features at different sizes. Much as a very close inspection of a rock can show similar features to an aerial view of a mountain, fractal shapes are characterized by this property of self-similarity." Read more...

Fractal math can be very complicated or very simple. In any case, it takes an artist's eye to create these beautiful images:

Red Flowers from the Chaos Gallery

Knots from the Chaos Gallery

So what is my interest in fractals or fractal math, you may well ask? Simple. As a photographer who wants to get out of the darkroom (meaning go digital), fractal math makes it possible to make large prints that look gorgeous from small-ish digital files. There's a great piece of software that works with PhotoShop called Genuine Fractals -- I've made 13" x 19" prints that are drop-dead gorgeous from puny digital files. That may not seem like such a big deal, but trust me, it's a big deal.

My very gifted brother

2008-01-31T11:35:00.000-05:00

His name is Doug and he's an extraordinary artist, has been since he was 8 years old. His other passions are lepidoptery (butterflies) and baseball. He's loved those things all his life, with a side trip into building race cars some years ago. Except for that detour, he's been completely faithful to making art, playing ball, and finding and raising butterflies. As I mentioned earlier, our family hasn't been big on staying in touch, being close, or knowing what's going on with each other. I found out the other day that this brother of mine has published papers on the subject of butterflies. He's a known and respected lepidopterist -- this is my brother we're talking about here. Not that he couldn't be a known and respected butterfly guy, but gee whiz, what a thing to find out. Most of the articles and papers were published 20 years ago, but there are still people referring to him and his research and his methods even now. I'm really proud of him.

What I love about Doug is his imagination. I love his paintings, especially this one. It hangs in our house and it's fantastic. He's very talented but has never had representation, has never figured out the "art scene," hasn't had a show in a gallery. He's had his work in an artist's coop in Tucson, where he and his wife Mary live, and he used to take the time to get in the local art and craft fairs.

Fusion of Light

Fusion Alchemy

This one hangs in our house too. It's a much older painting than the others. This was done before he started adding other materials to the surface. Nowadays he puts pieces of mirror or metal or cloth or candy wrappers, whatever makes the texture more interesting. I admire him so much.

Kim and I had dinner with Doug and Mary a few years ago. We were on our way from San Diego to Florida. So I haven't completely lost touch with him, but to be honest, I've never tried very hard to know him. I like him. Being the self-righteous jerk that I can be sometimes, I don't think I've let him be himself. I keep wanting to make him into someone else. My bad.

Doug made this set. I've owned this for 20+ years and I've actually used it a few times. It's exquisite. I don't think we have any other things that he made.

Self Portrait by Doug Mullins

Noah and the Whale, Five Years Time

2008-01-29T11:27:00.000-05:00

While you're waiting for me to finish my next post (a long one about my talented brother Doug) watch this! It's so fun. I'm happy that I found it -- the song was on [redacted], which I was visiting this morning (even though I hate that the Bruce Willis movie clip starts automatically, drives me crazy).

Gentle Ride

2008-01-24T18:54:00.001-05:00

Would you like to feel your heart expand about 10 sizes? Would you like to fill up with high-test love and happiness? I know I love that feeling, when I feel peace and love and hope, when I cry tears of joy, when my heart just feels like it's going to burst out of my chest. Well, I've just spent the morning digging those feelings brought to me courtesy of Haris Blackwood, a very old friend of mine. I met Haris in Tempe, Arizona (where I've met the best people in my whole life). She's a song-writer, singer, musician and humanitarian. She teaches love, compassion, understanding and joy.

I've just listened to her first CD, Gentle Ride, which she recorded in 2002. The album is a lovely mix of Haris' original songs and her favorites from other song-writers. I had tears streaming down my face listening to Don't Laugh at Me by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin. There's a whole program around this song to teach youngsters about caring and empathy for others. And it's just the sort of thing Haris embraces. Her rendering of From a Distance likewise had me bawling (in a good way). You'll also find Willie Nelson, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon represented on this album. The three Haris original songs are Gentle Ride, Restless and Ace of Hearts -- all captivating songs. But Haris told me recently she particularly likes Gentle Ride (so do I).

You grab the dogs and I'll make sure there's gas in the car;
We'll drive until sunset and sleep wherever we are.

Here's Gentle Ride, have a listen:

This is the CD -- I love this photograph. Now, for those of you fortunate enough to live in Portland (Oregon, of course), you can hear and see her in person. See, this is one of the reasons we've got to get to Portland right away. She's actually playing January 26th at the Plantation House (St. Helen's) and at the Bethany Village Grill on the 30th. Get out there and see her Portland. Bring your friends and make an evening of it!

Florida stories: Our neighborhood, some things we saw

2008-01-21T13:50:00.000-05:00

We went for a long, long walk on Sunday -- the day after the humongous rainstorm. The drainage ditches had enough water for the ducks. It's not a big deal because there are so many lakes and ponds all over the place anyway. (Just in case there's not enough humidity in the summer.) click on photos for larger images

Very few of the small creeks have bridges this nice. I love this one, love the rust, the shape, the boards. And I particularly love that it's overkill. It's right beside the road and not close to anything important, on a street with no sidewalks or bike lanes. So very Florida.

Oh, and this. Coles guns and ammo store. The owner just fixed up the outside with this great new paint job. We almost missed it, it blends so perfectly into the jungle of foliage around it. There's such a weird mix of stuff around where we live -- see the blue dome, that's the Greek Orthodox Church across the street from Coles. What's even weirder about Coles is that usually on a Sunday the parking lot is jammed with trucks and SUVs, all of them with gun racks, of course.

There aren't a lot of things that are fun or inspirational or particularly aesthetic around Clearwater, but we found this just a few blocks from our house. I adore it. It's splendid in its simplicity.

Here's Stevens Creek, looking at it from the east and then from the west, the tide obviously way far out. This is a wonderful place to watch birds. Speaking of which...

As you can see, we don't quite have the hang of the new camera's auto focus ability. Hmmm. I imagine we'll figure out what we need to do so this doesn't happen again. Sadly, I don't know what kind of bird this is. I'm pretty sure it's a heron of some sort. Lovely, even if his head is out of focus. (Please don't be all up in my face about not putting it here, taking another one, etc. I like the photo.)

When I put this shirt on there were a couple of things I thought: 1) I like that the biology teacher in Upstream wears brighter and brighter Hawaiian print shirts as the winter in Homer, Alaska gets colder and darker; and 2) I like wearing this because it was my brother's -- the brother I hadn't spoken to in over 20 years; my sister asked me to pick something from his things that she'd brought home after he died.

This is what Spanish moss looks like before it attaches itself to something else, like an oak tree. Spanish-moss, also called Florida moss, long moss, or graybeard, is not a true moss. It is an epiphytic plant, which grows on another plant, but does not rely on the host plant for nutrients; epiphytes make their own food. Orchids are epiphytes.

And here's the way you most often see it. There are trees in our neighborhood that are almost completely covered with this stuff. Some people love the way it looks, associating it with romantic notions of the South. Bah! Even though it isn't a parasite, it looks like a parasite and can appear to take over a tree.

After we'd been walking about an hour we were both whining and complaining about aches and pains and the need to rest. We tried to book it home but took a wrong turn down a dead-end street and had to double back. So. We hopped into a Comfort Suites motel that was deserted and helped ourselves to hot chocolate and coffee. We had a nice rest.

And this is the Pinellas Trail. The very famous Pinellas Trail. It stretches from the southern tip of Pinellas County (where St. Petersburg is) north into Tarpon Springs, about 34 miles and is a testament to what hard-headed people can accomplish. This path was railroad tracks. The train stopped running and some clever citizens organized and fought for this as a solution to abandoned tracks. Nice, huh? Anyway, our house is just up there about 100', right off the trail. We're going home now.

The new balcony

2008-01-21T10:37:00.000-05:00

Allison and Carl moved into their new apartment just before Christmas. This is the first place they've had that has a balcony. See the strings of red lights behind the tree? That would be the balcony. It's really wonderful because they have a totally awesome view that you don't have to climb three flights of stairs to see. I have lots of photos taken from the roof of their last place.

So, the other day Carl is enjoying the scenery from his new balcony and you'll never guess what he saw. A peregrine falcon.

The falcon is in there. Somewhere. In there. But isn't that a gorgeous view? Even, or maybe especially, in wintertime.

Okay, we've zoomed in a bit and the falcon is right there -- about the middle of this picture. Do you see him (her)?

There. Now you can see him, yes? He's so beautiful. There are lots of stories about birds of prey making their home in New York City. Fascinating. But that's just me.

Pen and ink and more

2008-01-20T16:54:00.000-05:00

I've always loved pen and ink drawings. I tried for years to learn even the rudimentary skills necessary to make a decent drawing. I got pretty good at abstract drawings and I liked them a lot. But the genes for drawing and painting went to my older brother, I got different creative juices.

I was visiting at Flawless Beauty and she introduced me to Kayte Terry, who has the blog love forever and Kayte introduced me to Kristy Hall, who, among other things, has just finished The Diary Project. Okay, did you follow that? In other words, I was blog surfing and I'm so very glad I did and in the direction I did. I enjoy fb for her tips on natural skin/body care. I'd never wandered into any other places from hers and just decided on a whim to go over to lf. love forever is awesome. I'll be going back for lots more of that lady's inspiration.

But I was telling you about my love of pen and ink drawings. And that would be why I mentioned The Diary Project. Kristy describes it this way:

"The Diary Project is a year long art project. Every day in 2007 I am drawing on an envelope, placing something secret inside and posting it to myself before my midnight deadline. When these envelopes return to me they will be kept unopened until they can be exhibited as a whole artwork. Members of the public will then be able to open the letters and investigate the contents. Once the letters have been opened, the contents will be displayed on the Diary Project blog. If you're a gallery owner who would like to exhibit the completed project in 2008, please email me."

Check it out: "Members of the public will then be able to open the letters and investigate the contents." Wow. I'd go to that exhibit. I love that she was willing to draw an envelope every day. I love that she was thinking of a year of envelopes. She used lots of other things (media?) besides ink, like gouache, pencils, watercolor. Here are a few of the envelopes:

In The Diary Project, each envelope is described, the materials used, sometimes the inspiration for the drawing. It truly is fascinating and inspirational. She makes it look so easy. Go visit, you'll like it.

And after that, if you're really inspired and you want more, more, more, you MUST go see her other artworks.

Florida stories: Driving home in a gully washer

2008-01-20T14:40:00.001-05:00

The mysteries of the blogosphere

2008-01-18T12:14:00.001-05:00

1. How can bloggers be "stumped" for what to write about? WTF. Why would they have a blog in the first place? I’m stunned at the number of sites devoted to “how to think of something to write about on your blog.”

2. Are there some rules of etiquette a newbie needs to know? I've posted comments that were not that disagreeable or argumentative that got deleted. I have to assume the blogger was offended. (See #4)

3. Is it against the bloglaw to do a search by keyword for blogs you want to have a conversation with? I posted a comment that challenged the post and the blogger said I shouldn't be key word searching and to cut it out, kiss-kiss. Another WTF. I actually hadn't done a search, but her response got me thinking. I sometimes do have an agenda but so do most bloggers. Which brings us to the next question.

4. Are bloggers unwilling to enter into debate? Are they only interested in preaching to the choir? I know I would delete a comment if it was spam or an attack on me personally, but it seems stupid to not be willing to have a discussion about something. I don't know, nobody has left any kind of comment that challenged me.

5. Do non-bloggers jump from blog to blog through the various blogrolls? It would make sense, yes? You don’t have to be working on a blog to be interested in what other people are doing on their blogs, right?

6. How do I get people to read the f#%^&ing blog in the first place? Only 2 or 3 of my real-life friends and my daughters read it. I can’t even get my other friends to visit. I thought one of the ways was to visit other blogs, leave comments (only agreeable, cheerleading type comments, of course) and something that links back to my blog. OK, a couple of people have visited because of that. I’ve seen posts that have 75 comments, some have over a hundred. Is it the length of time that that blog has been around? Is it the fame of the blogger from some other activity, i.e., [redacted] is a blog done by a guy who writes for Esquire.

7. Is it unusual to obsess about the number of comments you receive? Can someone tell me how to stop worrying about it? It has occurred to me that there are visitors who do not comment, therefore there are more people reading than I am aware of. Like Cyndi. She must have been reading for a while, but didn’t leave a comment until something really bit. And how did she find it in the first place?

8. Here’s a good one, not exactly a question, but certainly food for thought. A soldier dies in Iraq and the next day a new post appears on his blog. He had sent the post to a friend with the instruction that if something happened to him, she was to post it. It’s a little odd, but when you read the message it makes perfect sense.

9. And then there's the question of whether or not to respond to comments in the comment section. I've seen blogs where the author will reply to every comment, even when they're getting 70, 80 comments. Are you kidding? And the responses to the comments take on a conversational tone, which is cool, but again, no disagreeing allowed. Are the people leaving the comments personal friends of the author? Are they just other bloggers who drop in so regularly that it seems like a bunch of friends? Do the commenters come back and read the reply to their comment? It's way too complicated. I need to know how this works.

I don’t think that’s all of my questions, not by a long shot. But now that I’m participating in this cultural phenomenon, I’d like to understand more parts of it. I realize I’m a little behind the curve, everybody else has been doing it for years; they’ve learned some of the tricks. I even registered at a site called Blog Ninjas where a blogger can get “help.” Hmmm, we’ll see about that. In the meantime, if you’re reading this and you don’t leave a comment, could you at least send another person to my blog? Hell, even if you DO leave a comment, send a couple more people here. Thanks.

Ahhhh, yes, watch this

2008-01-17T16:38:00.000-05:00

It's been such a very long time since I've thought about, looked at, or experienced in any way, the joys of dance. I'm particularly fond of modern dance -- sure, I've seen some really stupid stuff and have even taken a few really stupid classes. But for the most part, the modern dance that I've seen or been taught has been exciting, inventive, fresh and liberating.

I took a lot of dance classes at Arizona State, some modern, some ballet, a little jazz. And I met some incredible people, very dedicated to their art. That kind of dedication is not something I have or know too much about (except where Kim is concerned). I was married to a dancer/choreographer/teacher and his inability to function outside of the dance world eventually eroded our marriage. For him, a wife was sort of like a light bulb or groceries, it blows out, you get another one. Weird, but I can see how a person would have to do that to succeed. Many of the dancers I knew were like that. People, both dancers and not, were either useful or not.

I miss dancing. I miss it a lot. I'm hoping that I'll get back into it when we move, that somehow I'll be in good enough shape that I can take a class or two. Since the new me wants to exercise, then, what the hell, let's dance!

I have tons of great images of dance -- I was the photographer for the dance program at San Diego State University for a couple years. But they're all packed, waiting to go to Oregon. I'll show them to you when we get to the other side.

I found this today while I was looking for something (I have no idea what) and really really really love it. I hope you enjoy it too. The choreographer is Nadia Oussenko, and she's just a whole lot of fun and energy.

Stories told by flowers: New digital camera

2008-01-17T16:35:00.001-05:00

I'm sure you've figured out that Kim is a gadget geek, a lover of all things techno. Which is good. It means he keeps up on stuff that, if it were up to me, we'd be in the way back. He reads Popular Science and Wired and he gets feeds (what the %#$^??) of things moderne. So. He's owned a great Pentax 35mm camera for years and he's bought great lenses for it at no small cost. But who in the world is shooting film these days? It's just not right. I bought a Nikon Coolpix some years back and was mostly liking it. Recently we bought a little nothing digital camera, the kind you see people pull out of a pocket while sightseeing. It works -- it's good for the web, email, etc. You take pics with this camera, not images (see Photography sidebar).

Ta-da! We got a new digital Pentax that will accept the lenses from the old Pentax!! Yay! What a great idea. But this sucker is complicated, at least for me it is, Kim is patient and studies manuals. Well, naturally we needed to go try it out, right? Naturally. But where? We decided, after a brief foray on the web, to go to the West Tampa Historical District. That sounds good, doesn't it?

Here it is. I'm not kidding. And we were lucky to find this. We debated buying a Tampa map and NOT buying one won. Oh well. We drove around, trying to remember the streets that bordered the Historical District. What we didn't know is that West Tampa is primarily a very old, rundown area and the Historical District designation is an attempt to clean it up. Oh well again. We figured there were probably lots of old, getting-ready-to-be-renovated buildings like this one, if we could just find them.

But there was a small problem -- we hadn't eaten in hours and we were both starving. Plus, we didn't have a map. Plus, what passed for restaurants in this area were not places we could actually eat. We got back on the only freeway we recognized and headed back toward Clearwater, thinking we'd go to one of the places we were familiar with. Nope, you can't get there from here. Not without a map.
This is where we ended up -- a resort hotel restaurant on Tampa Bay. Works for me. I was so hungry and really needed a restroom. I do love a fancy, full-of-itself eatery with a chef. And this chef makes his own potato chips! Oh. My. God. They were marvelous. So was the rest of the food. It was lovely lounging on the deck, nice umbrella, being waited on. Maybe you think I'm going to say that something happened to wreck the idyllic scene, but no, nothing like that. It just stayed wonderful.

The first thing that came to the table was the usual bread and butter, but this time it included a special dish of salt. Salt. I don't know. Of course, the people waiting on us think we're completely bonkers, we're snapping pictures of the bread, the dishes, the chips. We probably did look sort of silly, but do you think I care?

Not me, I've got this little bit of paradise -- gorgeous day in January, nobody else on the patio (I hate perfume, even when I'm outside), tasty food, happy husband with his new toy. Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I could sit here all day, sip my iced tea, watch the birds and the clouds. Mmmmm.

This was the best desert I've had in ages and ages. It was just this tiny glass of key lime pie with some graham cracker crust bits scattered around in it, topped with really sugary meringue. Yummy, yummy, yummy. Kim liked it too, darn it. It's probably better that we shared it. I would have moaned and groaned and whined about it if I'd eaten all of it myself. Isn't it so cute, with the little berries and the sauce kind of raked like that? Yes, this place thinks a lot of itself.
We admired this wall decor -- a fabulous sculpture of different kinds of birds, made just from different thicknesses of wire. I could do that. Just as soon as I get my new shop up and running. Heh, heh.

So, instead of the West Tampa Hysterical District photography day-trip, we took the let's-eat-at-the-
most-pretentious-restaurant-on-Tampa-Bay photography day-trip. And it was lovely. Just lovely.

We had a good time, a delicious, if overpriced, lunch and learned lots of cool stuff about the new camera. Next time, we'll take you along with us, okay? Don't worry, we'll go dutch.

And now for something completely different

2008-01-15T17:39:00.000-05:00

Ok, just sit back and watch. Maybe Kim and I will build one of these in Oregon.

Some geeky things

2008-01-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

Kim is the serious geek in our family and I learned about these two things from him. I want to pass them along because they are very useful in this digital-email-linkedup (or is it linkedin, or maybe it's linkedto, whatever)-bloggy-yahoogroup kind of world.

The first thing is a place where you can type in an acronym and find out what the hell other people are talking about when they talk in abbreviations. This is very annoying to me, this talking in initials. Like IMVHO or LMAO or LGBQ or any of the thousands of other irritating shorthands. Butsoanyway, it's called acronym finder and I use it about 200 times a day. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration.

The other is a site where you can paste in a ridiculously long url and get back a little bitty url. This is very handy. I have seriously cursed people who throw gigantic urls into a post without realizing that it gets broken into pieces and then, if you want to actually go look at it, you have to fumble around with copying it and pasting it. Too much work. So. In the interest of making your links in your posts really easy to use, check out tinyurl.

You can thank me later.

A voice from the past

2008-01-13T15:15:00.000-05:00

Cyndi writes:
"I was crouched next to you when you first met Kim. We were on a mattress in a corner of Terry's living room at Contempo. There were suddenly lots of strange people there that night in May.

Then Kim came over and talked to us for a long time, and made you laugh a lot.

I didn't ever know you felt that way. I never felt that way. I wish you had told me.

One of the things I remember Kim saying to me was about how he thought a good couple would be one where you would read together, different books, and then sit and tell each other what you read.

Kim was filled with significance of thought and interesting ideas. All the traits you ascribe to him here are true from my memory of him. Seen through your eyes, I see how very special he is, and that you are able to appreciate each other for who you each are.

How good to know now, knowing you each from the start, and what happened to each of us that first decade or so, that you and Kim found each other finally, in a way and at a time when you could finally become a couple.

As soon as I saw, a few months ago, you had got back with Kim, I realized, yes, that is who she should have been with all along. And now, reading this, I wanted to tell you so.

I was there at the beginning, but I have gone a very different way, which can't be very surprising to either of you.

Looks like none of us live in the southwest anymore, but we left very strong impressions behind us there. Endings can be the best part of a positive experience."

This is mind blowing to me. I've tried numerous times over the years to find this person and here she is, reading something I put on my blog and then writing this astonishing response to it. It's hard for me to describe how weird this is.

Cyndi was my only friend in high school. I would pick her up in the morning, we'd go for coffee and a few smokes, then maybe we'd make it to school. We'd eat lunch together and then, when school was over, we went to her house and drank Coca-cola and ate SaraLee marble cake. We listened to Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and occasionally Broadway show tunes -- go figure, right? I think there was a girl named Sherry who hung around with us once in a while, but we weren't super good friends with her like we were with each other.

Cyndi and I were in a couple of the plays our senior year. I think we were both in Cyrano de Bergerac and maybe we worked backstage on The Sound of Music. The two of us were oddballs. We didn't really fit in too well -- we weren't jocks or nerds or cheerleader-types or even very sociable, for that matter. We stuck together and were pretty much ignored. On Friday and Saturday nights we'd go to Terry's apartment in Tempe, where I'd get blasted as quickly as I could and spend the rest of the evening trying to get sober enough to drive us home. Understand, this was 1966: "don't drink and drive" had not been beaten into us, we'd probably never heard anyone say it, hell, my car didn't even have seat belts!

I hounded Cyndi into going to Arizona State with me. It was great fun moving into our own apartment a few blocks from campus. Can I just interject here how strange this is, remembering all this stuff? I haven't thought about any of this for years and years. Strange, but fun too. Anyway, we got a one bedroom apartment for $66.00, close enough to walk or ride a bike to class.

It was at the end of that school year that Kim and I went to San Francisco in my old 1949 Mercury with the pillows in the back instead of a back seat. Cyndi went to New York to do summer stock. That was the summer I stumbled into $cientology, which, in my drug stupor seemed like an answer to something. When the new school year started, Kim and Cyndi were both back in Tempe. I was heavy into $cn and made it my mission to convert as many people as I could. So I did. It was because of my involvement that Kim, Cyndi and another friend of ours, Irv, got into the cult. Cyndi even married a $cnist a few years later. I know that she got out and divorced the $cnist and raised her son.

I lost track of Cyndi for quite a few years and then we hooked up somehow, not too long after Allison was born. We drifted into and out of each other's lives for years, until about 1990, when we had a falling out. I haven't talked to her since then. From the tone of this message she left in the comments section of Kim, she has changed quite a bit. I really want to talk to her, but I don't have any way to do that other than write to her here and hope she reads it.

Hi Cyndi.

Upstream

2008-01-11T16:58:00.001-05:00

I finished reading this book today. I stuck it in an envelope and mailed it to Lauri. She's lived in Alaska for the past 30 years and will love reading it. She'll love it for its wistful heroine Marty as much as for its setting: Homer, Alaska. (I just this minute found out that Lauri has run out of reading material. . .how serendipitous.) I rummaged around and found a few reviews of it. One reviewer said, "Melissa Lion approaches her second book, Upstream (she debuted in Swollen), with tender-loving-care." Another did an interview with Melissa as a companion piece to her review. I liked this interview because Melissa talked a lot about her writing and how it works for her. You can Google Melissa Lion and find all kinds of interesting stuff.

I'm not a book reviewer, but if I was I'd say that teenage girls will love this book. I don't think this book is just for teenagers, though. It's a really good read. I like Melissa's style, it's tart and sassy and the teenage narrator feels very real, if just a touch mature. I don't always believe everything in the story, but I loved reading it and I definitely cared about Marty and Dottie and Gwen and their mom. Oh, and Katherine too.

When Melissa was in high school, she wrote short stories. They were remarkable. I remember one, it had greenbeans in the title and another one about a girl who becomes the 12th wife in a Mormon family. Such good stories. I remember thinking how extraordinary it was that this 16 year old had so much insight into other people. Melissa does have insight, plenty, and I still don't know where it comes from.

I recommend both her books -- Swollen and Upstream. And I recommend reading her other writing, which you will find by going to Melissa's website. Enjoy!

Florida Stories: Here's to Jeff and Stephanie

2008-01-11T14:12:00.000-05:00

I'm excited to tell you about my trainers (that's right, plural). But first, there's a little back story you need to have: Kim and I moved to Clearwater in May 2005. We had purchased two houses in April. Both houses needed work; the one we were going to use as income property wasn't too bad and the one we intended to live in was majorly awful. I can't even begin to describe how awful it was. Think Florida, and then 100x that. Anyway, it didn't take very long to get the rental ready and then our complete attention was on our house. It was difficult living in it, but we had no choice. So for two solid years, my only job was the renovation of this house. I did all the demolition and 99% of the finish work. I don't do electrical, plumbing, major construction. The house was finished and we put it on the market last July. And I was in very, very, very bad shape. I had not taken care of myself at all. I had worked my body hard and had done virtually nothing to repair all the damage I was doing: long hours, heavy lifting, repetitive movements, etc. At the end of those two years, my right shoulder, elbow, wrist, my back, my hips, my knees, you name it, it hurt. With the house done, I decided to spend my new free time doing things that would be good for me. My first decision was to get acupuncture for the pain, which was a good thing to do. It really helped. The next thing I did was hire a personal trainer. That was the weirdest thing -- the equivalent of deciding to live on Mars. I mean, who hires a personal trainer? Brad Pitt maybe, but ordinary, regular folks? I don't think so. But I did. I did a little bit of research, looked at what kinds of things to be careful about and then, the next I knew, I was going to this gym twice a week. It's not a gym like Gold's is a gym, where you can get a membership and do whatever you want. This place, AMA Fitness (not connected with the American Medical Association, thank god), is like a private club. You go there only to work with a trainer. I knew that I was never going to exercise at home, by myself -- simply not going to happen. So, I work with Jeff. He's a very, very good trainer. That statement is based solely on the changes in my body and attitude over the last 5 months. Jeff is a cyclist and a sports fan -- he knows all about football teams and players. He goes on really long bike rides almost every weekend and his legs are definitely a bicyclist's legs. I like working with him because he gives clear instructions, he's patient, has a wry sense of humor, and is sooo encouraging. He only lets me cheat the tiniest bit, like on walking lunges, but mostly he makes me go further than I think I can. And I feel so good when I do.

My other trainer is Stephanie. She owns Poise Pilates and also works with clients at AMA, which is a good thing for me, otherwise I probably never would have found her. And the difference she has made in my posture, balance, alignment and breathing are priceless. This is one amazing woman. When she set out to learn about Pilates, she didn't just learn Joseph Pilates' method and his exercises. She read medical books so she'd know which muscles were doing what -- not something taught to Pilates instructors. She also prepares future instructors for their certification, and they pass. Like Jeff, she practices what she preaches. A big part of Pilates is breathing and learning to expand the ribcage. Today Stephanie demonstrated for me what breathing is really about. She put my hands on her ribs and stomach so I could feel what happens when a person takes a really deep breath. She inhaled for 35 seconds. You try it -- see how long you breathe in before you run out of room. Stephanie can show me the exact exercise to do for practically any muscle/joint discomfort I'm having. I whine about something and boom! she's got instructions for where my arm should be and how long my neck needs to be and which part of my foot to put my weight on. Amazing. I love how I feel afterwards. I love how my life has changed because I'm so much stronger and taller and more able to see my future.

Thank you Jeff. Thank you Stephanie. I'm more grateful than I can say.

Shouting from my soapbox: Too much plastic

2008-01-11T10:40:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I get very excited about "issues" and like to rant and wave my arms around. Well, here's another one (after the too much perfume one, which was such a big deal to me I started a blog about the evils of perfume/fragrance). This one is plastic. Do you have any idea how much plastic you use and throw away? I was completely appalled when I honestly assessed the amount of plastic waste in our household. And don't tell me it's okay because you put it in the recycle bin. THAT'S EVEN WORSE THAN USING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!! Check out this video about what happens to plastic set out in your recycle bin. (Don't bore me with details about how this news report concerns British plastic -- you can be SURE that the US of A sends tons and tons and tons of recylcing to China.) My friend Lauri sent me the name of a very interesting site: FakePlasticFish. That's where the video is. It's worth spending some time there and educating yourself.
Recycling is a thing of the past. Recycling is part of the problem now. Using shit that gets thrown away is not okay. It's time to examine our trash!! Do you want to help or do you want to continue thinking that you're a good doobee because you gather up all your plastic bags and take them back to the grocery store??? Arghh. In the '60's we shouted "If you're not part of the solution, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!" It was true then and it's true now. Here's an excellent first step: sign the Think Outside the Bottle pledge, that will help. It's important to remember that changes can be tiny, you don't have to solve the entire problem by yourself today. Here are three suggestions: take canvas bags with you everywhere, never let anyone send you home with plastic bags; get a glass bottle with a lid that you can refill with water, never buy bottled water; and pay attention to the things you're buying: how much plastic are you going to have to throw away because of your purchases.
Okay. We can do this. I feel another self-righteous blog coming on.

Kim

2008-01-09T13:00:00.001-05:00

I've loved Kim all my life. I loved him before I even met him. And I knew the moment I saw him that he was the one I had dreamed of. He's been in my heart forever and will always be there.

photo by Donna Padowitz

I love him because he's kind and patient. I think I can be pretty obnoxious but Kim doesn't seem to be bothered -- he likes me the way I am, he loves me with all my warts. We've been married 13 years and he's lost his temper twice. That doesn't mean he isn't passionate, he just isn't an angry person. And he's never petty.

I love that he's so incredibly smart. Sometimes he shows me stuff about computers or math or astronomy and I'm just in awe. He understands a lot about the world and the universe and how things work. He loves to teach me new things; I know I can ask him anything and he'll know the answer or know where to find it.

Kim is creative and playful and intuitive. He has wonderful ideas about making a new life in Portland, what sort of house we'll build or make, the new skills we'll learn, like welding. He's constantly learning new things -- new programs, new tools, he just keeps growing smarter.
And he has much better taste than I do. I think he sees better than I do and I love looking through his eyes.

I love him because he's generous. He would do anything for me, give me anything I asked for. And he wants me to be happy. He gives me happy all the time. It just falls off of him, or beams out of his eyes. We don't argue (anymore). It's so fun to talk about something we feel differently about because we don't get upset when the other person disagrees. And once in a while, one of us is the proud owner of a new point of view, almost always a good thing.

Kim and I got married October 3, 1993. We had written out our vows, purchased rings, cut a boatload of roses from the neighborhood gardens (with permission) and we had some candles. It was just the two of us and after we'd said our vows, given the rings and lit the candles, we opened a couple of beers and giggled. A few years later, we went to a county courthouse and made it legal. A little while after that, we put together a small party for family and friends. It was very fun, very light, with good food, yummy champagne and a dark chocolate cake that said For Always on it.

And later that night, we danced.

Florida stories: Driving

2008-01-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

I know that there are terrible drivers all over the country, but we live in Florida -- no, worse than that, we live in Clearwater -- so my stories about bad drivers are about Florida. Just like there are ugly houses in every state, but my ugly houses are in Florida. Kim and I decided the best way to convey the idiocy of the drivers here, is to write the driving manual to match the way people drive. Ready?

Florida Driver's Manual

Obeying traffic lights is optional. If you want to stop on red, that's okay. If you want to stay put when it turns green, that's okay too. And when you decide to go, you don't want to rush it. Take a moment to remember where you're going and why you're in your car.
Likewise, stop signs are negotiable. Don't worry that there is traffic coming, just ease out very slowly and carefully -- you'll be fine, they'll slow down to let you in.
Whenever you're on a two-lane road, be sure to match the speed of the car beside you. This is a traffic flow control method popular in the South. We call it the "rolling roadblock" and it's excellent for keeping speeders in check.
Multi-tasking is an important skill for all Floridians to have. Feel free, while you're driving, to apply your make-up, make and answer any calls, fix your coffee, yell at your kids, whatever.
Come to a complete stop before making a right turn.
When approaching a red light (that you're going to stop for) begin your stop at least a block before the light. That will give you ample room for creeping. You will be able to move a little at a time up to the place you actually want to stop. (See #8)
(These are the ones Kim reminded me about) If any little thing upsets you, or you get confused for any reason, or you think you might nod off, just slam on the brakes. Pay no attention to the traffic, the lights, the other drivers.
Drive very slowly -- slower than the speed limit would be good. Things can happen that are unexpected. So, be safe, go slowly.
Parking information: allow at least 4 ft. between your vehicle and the curb. Also, the yard is an excellent place to park, frees up the driveway for the plumber or UPS.

Random old photos

2008-01-08T13:08:00.000-05:00

I was just rummaging through an old folder stuck in the back of yet another folder and lo! Look what I found.

A rose in New Orleans, May 2005.

Bamboo shoots, San Diego Zoo. I didn't use a tripod -- it was dark and I liked the blur.

Water and beer glasses, Quigs Restaurant in San Diego, the weekend Bruce and Celia visited.

Very old door, New Orleans, May 2005.

Lost in Space

2008-01-08T10:16:00.000-05:00

Ever write a letter and never ever hear anything back? Or send an email and wait and wait and wait and wait . . .? How about leave a message on someone's machine but it seems to have gotten lost in the ether? Maybe you didn't really write, send, speak. Maybe you only imagined that you did.

This is my worst nightmare: unanswered communication. I believe that lots of people share my feelings about it. I believe that waiting for replies, responses, return calls, rejoinders, ripostes, retorts, reactions accounts for all mental illness. This is the reason people talk to themselves, why they replay what they wrote or said, over and over again in their minds, trying helplessly and hopelessly to figure out what they said that caused the other person to ignore them. Some people, a very few, can live with unanswered letters, emails, phone calls. Some people can just go on about their business, knowing in their hearts, that an answer will come or not, and they are fine either way. I'M NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.

Extraordinary women

2008-01-06T16:30:00.001-05:00

I know some extraordinary women. Some I met when they were teenagers and are now grown women having amazing lives. Two are daughters. A few have passed into another realm, less physical than this one. There are friends, close to me in age and precious to me in their ability to love.

I'm grateful that I know them all. I appreciate their uniquenesses, I'm honored that any one of them would consider me a friend.
(Most of the photos get bigger when you click on them.)

Purple hair. Teenagers do that. And lots of piercings and maybe a few tattoos. Here is Liora. As of June '07, she was living in Hokkaido, Japan, teaching English and hiphop to the locals. But I know that she was planning on going for a Masters in Psychology sometime soon -- not in Japan, here in the U.S.

This is Melissa. She was a handful. But a very fun and fabulously intelligent handful. I wonder if she knew that her teachers tore their hair out because of her. A few years ago, I read her first published novel, Swollen. I'll be reading her second, Upstream, soon.

I stole this picture of Donna from her website. She was my first photography student. She loved it so much, she was willing to come to school at 7:30 a.m. and get NO credit for it. That's extremely unusual. She also passed up a pretty certain career in math (she was very gifted) in order to study commercial photography.

You've met Lorelei if you're a constant reader. If you're just meeting her now, go back and get acquainted with her.
What fun this teenager was!! A delight, a joy, a trip. And now she lives in Dublin, Ireland and is in love with lovable Roland.

This is Slayde. She is Kim's daughter and mine, not by marriage, but by choice. I don't know of any other stepmother who had it so good. Slayde (and her brother Abe) treated me with the utmost kindness and respect. Here she is with Ben, her very cool and very smart boyfriend. Slayde is a law student at Georgetown University Law School. I'm hoping she'll put polluters in jail.

Allison is my first daughter. She's sassy and funny and smart. She should write about traveling since she goes all over the place -- and at the drop of a hat.

My mom. I thought I would die of grief when she passed away. That was such a long time ago. My mother was truly extraordinary. She was a WASP, Women Airforce Service Pilot in WWII, the first women in history to fly US military aircraft. And after her husband (my father) died, she drove 4 kids and a german shepherd from Virginia to Arizona in a pink and black Nash Rambler. She was tough.

Evie was Kim's mother. Here's just one of her amazing and unbelievable stories: she taught at the American School in Tehran while the revolution was going on in 1979 -- the Shah was fleeing while the Ayatollah Khomeini was coming to power. Her friends said they hated Americans, but she was okay. Evie also taught in Paris and in Moshi, Tanzania. Remarkable. She taught ESL in Santa Barbara right up to the day her heart stopped. She was tough, too.

Yup, that's Lauri, queen of the north country. That's a baby halibut she's got there and she says "it's no big thrill." Whew, it would be for me. Lauri is steel wrapped in the softest lambskin.

Here's me and Lois and Elijah, her first grandson. Lois has the best sense of humor of anyone I've ever known. She can make me laugh anytime, anyplace. That is worth everything because without laughter, you're finished.

Belinda is the best high school drama teacher in the country. And the best friend. A therapist told me once that I should check into a mental hospital because I was in such bad shape. I went to Belinda's house instead, where I could get some real care. Whenever I woke up, she was there beside me, asking me what I needed, bringing me delicious muffins and coffee.

These women sustain me. They energize, inspire, comfort, entertain, amuse, and enlighten me. I would like to take this opportunity to say: thanks.

But I don't WANT to quit smoking

2008-01-05T22:16:00.001-05:00

I can't believe I quit smoking. I didn't want to quit. I wanted to want to quit. I wished I wanted to quit. One day I just couldn't keep doing it any more. It's the weirdest thing: I can't bring myself to smoke even though I really really want to. Sometimes I get this strong urge to have a cigarette. STRONG. Know what I mean? Ever been addicted? That book (Easy Way to Stop Smoking) is spooky. I didn't even finish it. I knew there was something strange because I was only about a third of the way through it and I wasn't wanting to smoke very much. We took a trip to Portland and stayed in a hotel that didn't have any smoking rooms left and we had a non-smoking rental car. When I made the arrangements I was pissed -- I couldn't figure out how I was going to enjoy the trip. Once we got there (and I had read more of the book), it was no problem. It's just too weird. I don't understand it. I want to know what happened, how it works. How could I be a smoker one day, with no intention of quitting, and then wake up the next day and say "I'm not smoking ever again?" What is that?