It's Tuesday--Mystery Solved--Stop Obsessing

At about 2 am, I was kicked off the Internet. I had both my old and new computers on and couldn't figure out what was wrong. After too many tries to get on my new computer, it closed me down. This morning, I looked at my old computer and saw it was in airplane mode. In my hazy late night, early morning stupor, I thought, as the cat walked back and forth over the keyboard, he had changed settings before, so I closed it. Too late. He had turned on airplane mode and said, "For Heaven's sake, go to bed." So, how was your night?

Chapter 49

My Friend Bill

"Life, you know, is a constantly chuckling teacher of unexpected lessons."

—Bill Fisher

 

"The human brain is genetically disposed toward organization…I knew her, she was a managerial fragment to another on the flimsiest pretense and in the most freewheeling manner, as if it takes a kind of organic pleasure in creative association without regard for logic or chronological sequence."

—Tom Robbins.

Isn't that what I said?

Hardly. I do not have the elocution of a Tom Robbins. 

I had to laugh, though, when I read it. Not only does it weirdly, creatively, and articulately describe how the mind works, but it also reminds me of Bill Fisher, my old buddy from far away. 

Bill loved Tom Robbins' writing style. And his dream was to write in that vein.

This morning, as I searched through old emails, I found an email from Bill Fisher. I knew I was missing some and wondered where they were. It was one of Bill Fisher's final letters to me.

For years, Bill and I shared our writings with each other. I loved Bill like a brother and his wife Beverly equally. Bill had a Ph.D. in medieval literature. He was a former Real Estate Agent, and during the time I knew him, he made his living writing a weekly newsletter called The Wednesday Wrap. He sold The Wrap to various Real Estate Agencies, which published it under their brand.

He taught writing in Colorado in the summers and dreamed of being a published Robbinest novelist. (Robbins described ordering Thai dishes as "sounding like a harelip pleading for a package of thumbtacks." Now, what sort of mind comes up with those things?)

Bill, Beverly, and our family lived in the San Diego area. Shortly after we ended our two consecutive training sessions at The World Healing Center, both families moved to the Pacific Northwest. Bill and Beverly moved to Olympia, Washington, and we moved to Eugene, Oregon. And we kept in touch.  

In his letter, Bill told me that Bank of America wanted him and his colleagues in the newsletter trade to take over the writing of three monthly 4-page newsletters, plus a weekly economic summary. He said the pay was remarkably good, but the work was soul-deadening. "I had to unlearn much of what comes naturally to me now as a writer. They wanted 8th-grade level, simple, uncontroversial, and uninspired. We would go round and round over a piece. They don't believe dashes should be used. Vocabulary should be simple. Humor should be avoided (good old humor usually offends at least one person.) And everything I wrote was reviewed by roughly six VPs, and one or two from the legal staff (speaking of an unimaginative, humorless bunch)."

 Bill had recently taken a trip with his family to Portugal.

"I knew from the get-go that there was nothing I would love more than to create a book out of the travel experience and intuited that the experience would have much to teach me. Little did I know. The central learning experience was a broken ankle--my right leg broke in two places, actually, when I fell on a hike, we were attempting as a shortcut to a close-by secluded beach. I continued to walk on that leg for ten days in huge pain but nonetheless loved every moment of the trip. I tried to convince myself and everyone else that it was a sprain, not a break. I was wrong."—Bill Fisher.

 The doctor in the States said he would have operated on Bill's leg immediately, but since he had walked on it, the leg had set, and it was healing, he put a boot on him and sent him on his way. 

 Wow.

During one of Bill's and my sessions at The World Healing Center, a young man from our twice-a-week, full-day group meetings was emoting, sharing how he, a white boy in Africa, loved the comradery of the other boys. They would play and walk down the street with their arms around each other. Here, he felt lost and had no such friends.

From the back of the room came a voice in Swahili.

The rest of the group didn't know what it said, but the kid did. He fell apart, and the room exploded into hugs, kisses, and whooping. It was Bill's voice, and the words meant, "Welcome, Brother!"

Bill had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa.

'' Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.” - Abe Lincoln 

In my dreams...

This is the 1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt election results.

Stop Obsessing over the polls says Michael Moore:

Jeez, my mailbox is exploding! Everyone is freaking out over the latest polls, the pessimistic pundits, the sudden (?) rise of Trump, the warnings of doom and gloom! Mike! Mike! Please tell us he’s gonna lose! She’s gonna win! Flowers will bloom in December! Unicorns will ride on the backs of lions! The McRib will return!

Whoa. Everybody please calm down. We’ve all been here before. Exactly 3 weeks til Election Day — so that means it’s official, folks! We’ve entered the fear-mongering, pendulum-swing stage of the election season. We are no longer basking in the glow of Biden’s withdrawal and the adrenaline shot from Kamala’s injection into this race...

For more, Read Michael Moore on Substack

https://substack.com/@michaelmoore

Life Beyond the Horizon

 

I love my clothes dryer.

I don't want to wash clothes by hand, either, so I love my washing machine too.

My electric company caused this machine love by suggesting I dry my clothes on an outside line to save electricity and money.

Really? Let's find electricity that is cheaper and safer for the environment.

I remember, though, the fragrance of fresh sheets dried outside. One summer, between school semesters, Neil and I drove back from Oklahoma to work for our old bosses in McMinnville, OR. There, we rented a little house with an outside clothesline. I washed our clothes that summer in a wringer washing machine and hung them on a line. A year later, I opened a box where I had stored a few bed sheets. They still held the fragrance of outside fresh air.

After that clothesline suggestion, I wondered what I would be willing to return to. Having clothing freeze on the line and taken into the house where they would stand on their own like paper dolls? Please no. (Eventually, those paper doll clothes would puddle on the floor.)

How about running outside to save the dried clothing from a sudden rainstorm?

Nada.

 I see there are advantages of thinking in decades and wondering if I have something to contribute to our present times. And what could we do to slow down climate change or reverse it?

(Is all the present unrest distracting us from thinking about our home—our planet—that it is heating up, (I see the hump-backed whales are suffering from water that is too warm.)

What could we do to slow the process to give us time to perhaps halt it. This distraction threatens our sanity, security, and way of living. Is it taking away our love, ability to cooperate, negotiate, have rational thought, and treat people kindly, especially those who think differently from us?)

Once, we burned our garbage in a large steel drum. My family lived on a farm for a while, and it was during a time when most everything we burned was paper. We didn't even carry home packages in plastic or cardboard, and there were no straws or plastic cups by the gross. If we bought a Sub sandwich at our local Hand Out—(They were great, by the way) it came wrapped in paper.

Our water came from a well, so there is no need to recycle plastic water bottles. 

Occasionally, we threw cans into the incinerator. The fire burnt off the labels and sterilized them, and we swept up the rusted cans after the fire was out and, about once a year, carried them to the dump. Our plastic was built into radios and TV’s—that is things we actually used for years.  

Our school or picnic sandwiches were wrapped in waxed paper—that worked fine.

Our meat, purchased from the butcher, was wrapped in brown waxed paper and tied up with twine. That worked, too. And I remember we rented a freezer in town, and the meat was wrapped in waxed paper. Do they have freezers like swimming pool lockers now?

I could go back to that.

I guess, instead of placing our produce in a plastic bag, we carried it home and put it in the "Freshener." (My husband calls it "the Rotter.”) But then, we had abundant fruit and fresh produce on a farm. Fruit was sold or canned. (Please, no canning. Oh, but I long for my mother's pickled crabapples. When mom had peaches canned at a cannery, that saved her and my hands. I hated washing the jars.).

Eggs were kept in" water glass." (A sodium silicate/water solution.). Preserved eggs will keep up to 18 months. The trouble with that egg preservation is the eggs need to be clean and unwashed. (Eggs have a natural cuticle or "bloom" that seals the shell from bacterial invasion. However, it is easily washed off. The result is that eggs don’t keep as long.)

See, I do like modern conveniences. However, I would be willing to go back to some of these ways. (Yet today, hypocrite that I am, I used plastic bags to bring home produce. But if plastic was not available, and paper bags were I would happily use them.

Our Christmas packages were beautifully wrapped using licked stickers (No cellophane tape until later.)  Mom tied our gifts up gloriously in pretty ribbon. Toys were hidden until Christmas Eve, then placed under the tree.  That worked. It was fun.

I could go back to that.

I could go back to a horse and carriage if my family lived close by, but they live about 29 miles away, which would take a day on horseback or carriage. It takes about 33 minutes by car.

Many families live across the country from each other, so a visit requires flying or a long trip by vehicle.  

Once, I rode my horse Boots from our farm to our best friend's house across the town of The Dalles for the adventure. It was ten or fifteen miles, and I spent the night with her, so it was a two-day trip. I had taken a less-traveled route across town and encountered little traffic. (I used a saddle, that McClellan saddle my dad thought was so great, but it was more pain than pleasure, but it made me look somewhat presentable.) My second mother-type friend took the picture in front of her house with her little dog and me on Boots. She sent it to me years later. It is the only picture I can find of Boots and me.

 

 

The other day, I saw an entire trainload of lumber wrapped in plastic. Is that necessary? As a kid, we regularly saw great flotillas of logs chained in their own corral of logs floating or tug-boated down the Columbia River. Logs are kept wet until they are cut into timber. Keeping them wet reduces bugs, keeps the logs from "checking" (splitting), reduces fungi, and makes them easier to cut. I suppose the plastic wrap comes after they have been kiln-dried. I wonder about the value of that. That seems extravagant while telling us to reduce our use of plastic.

Hay is sometimes wrapped up in plastic. That hay needs to be kept dry, or it will turn to silage. (Never serve those big bales to your horse; they sometimes spoil in the center. Bovines can handle it; horses can't.)

Great pallets of merchandise are wrapped in plastic, and the packaging of foods has become extreme for the ease of preserving, storing, and shelving them.

We tried eliminating plastic bags for carry-outs from the grocery store. Then we debated which harmed the environment less: creating plastic or cutting down trees. Do you have an answer to that?

We do recycle. We save glass. We are trying.

I saw a story about a woman who tried to shop plastic-free for a week. It was a challenge, and she said her meals were boring. Yogurt?—in plastic. Cheese?—in plastic. Meat—in plastic. Even the pasta box had a little plastic window. And why oh why oh do Kleenex boxes have a plastic pull-through space in their cardboard box? Our recycle pickup warns against mixing plastic with paper.

This could give city planners a challenge as many people live in apartments. Some apartment complexes have incorporated parks and playgrounds into their plan, some even with gardening spaces, so we don't all have to live on a farm.

Time for us to give our creativity a workout.

Wouldn't it be fun to do designing for housing units? Consider the possibilities.

I read once that in France (The Land of Milk), they had pastures and milk cows next to villages, and their cows were healthy, lived much longer, and produce milk for more years than American cows.

Let’s eliminate the crowding of cattle into stinking, filthy, disease infested feed lots. Animals do not like to stand in their own dung. If given a chance they will choose a restroom area.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I was so impressed with my two horses who used one side of their 24 x 12 foot run -in barn, that is three sided, and the size of two stalls. They had their hay on one side and used the other side for a bathroom. I cleaned it every morning.

Okay Dokey, Chapter 44 from Your Story Matters

 

 44

 What? Hawaii Again?

 Or, “Life Exists Beyond the Horizon.

 Although the Hawaiian experience is in my book The Frog's Song, it only includes some of the incidents; thus, I keep returning and trying to make sense of it all. 

 Before moving to Hawaii, both DD and I felt it was something we had to do. That day in the horse paddock, when I asked the Great Spirit where I would be happy, the first thought that came to me was, "Look up Hawaii on the Internet."

We had already been looking around for other places, but none seemed right. When I found our Hawaiian house on the first search, I felt a hit of “this is it.”

I called down to Nina in her apartment. "There's 10 acres and a cute house for sale in Hawaii for a quarter what we are paying here."

 "Let's do it," she said.

 And we did.

 I chose the Big Island because it was large enough to suit my wandering needs. Once there, though, I heard that the Big Island draws in people who need cleansing. 

 Uncanny. 

 And, they say, it spits them out once the cleansing is complete.

 Maybe the cleansing was complete, but it didn’t settle in until a while after we moved to California.

 Before moving, back in Oregon, we were over our heads and needed cleansing. DD said later that we would never have sold the horses. (We didn't sell them; we gave them away.) Our first intention was to ship the horses, thus the 10 acres, but we decided against it. Still, we ended up with a piece of land and orchards.

One of my favorite things about living in Hawaii was becoming one with the weather and the sun. Hawaii has a 12-hour day and a 12-hour night. We had limited solar power and would, on occasion, overuse it. Suddenly, it would go off, and we would be in the dark. Thus, I guarded our electricity like a Hottentot guards his tot. 

 We needed electricity for the computers. A computer was necessary for Neil's design job. DD needed hers for an internet business, and I wanted mine for writing. So, to ensure I had electricity for my computer and thus save it for others, I often ran an electrical cord out the bedroom window to the carport and gave the Prius the job of supplying juice for my computer.

We didn't watch TV, as DD had sworn off it before we moved, and we didn't miss it. But we watched movies, and we needed electricity for that.

I loved the mornings at my desk in front of the window, where I could watch the morning's first light sneak over the trees and paint a glow on the field of green grass that grew between the main house and the Tiki Room. The green became enlightened, as though the Sun Goddess was slowly turning up her rheostat.

On one airplane trip, Little Boy Darling became so excited about the sunrise that we heard someone say, "I've never seen anyone so excited about a sunrise," and wanted a high five. Soon, everyone around us wanted a high five. And I thought we needed to get that child off the island and into the world.

At the Hawaiian City of Refuge, a native Hawaiian told the story that further solidified my intention to leave the Island. The storyteller said that when he was a boy, an elder would sit the children down and ask them, "What lies beyond the horizon?" They hemmed and hawed. Some said, "The ocean," And another, "The sky." They thought the island was their entire world. 

 "No, said the elder, "Life exists beyond the horizon."

 That is one of the reasons we left.

 For the writer, the creative, the hell-bent on pursuing their dream person, there comes a "Gun and badge moment," as Steven Pressfield writes in his "Wednesday's Writings."

 In the film, it is called the "All is lost moment." It is when the protagonist is stripped of their credentials; they must turn in their gun and badge. To further punish them, they are threatened with imprisonment, disbarment, slavery, or told they have no talent and suck at what they do.

 Do they stop?

 Did Jodie Foster stop in the movie Silence of the Lambs? Did Tom Cruise in Top Gun? 

Neither did we when we were hell-bent on moving to Hawaii., and hell-bent on moving back. And neither am I on my road to writing 50,000 words for this memoir.

I sold the horse panels in Hawaii, and DD sold the cast iron-footed bathtub she took to put in her bathroom. That airplane engine?

 We still have it. 

 

 

 

 

The Good in Us. We Deserve to Thrive. (Plus another chapter)

 

The Good in Us. We Deserve to Thrive.

Remember that song I Believe? It begins: “For every drop of rain…” We can’t print many words from song lyrics, so I trust you’ll remember that song. Hint, “a flower grows.”

It’s hard to maintain a positive attitude, isn’t it?

First on my list right now is this: "Keep the White House free of dictators living there."

Think of it this way:

The Republican Presidential Candidate got his trial sentencing delayed until after the election. If he wins, he will have Presidential immunity. When his term of office is over he will be up for grabs again regarding sentencing. Do you think he would let that happen? There are words in the wind say he wants to be President FOR LIFE. (And according to the Rolling Stone Magazine, he has his people at strategic positions in the swing states. Hum. What do you suppose that means?)

That's a dictator folks!

I don’t care where you are on the abortion issue (Well, I do care, but I’m keeping my mouth shut). Vote for Kamala Harris to keep a dictator out of the white house, then address the abortion issue.

Do you think a woman has a right to her own body, or should the government decide?

Do you like the way the Supreme Court is set up?

Do you think the US ought to send any military equipment into wars outside the US? Remember the Vietnam War? Great protest movements helped grind that to a halt.

Remember the Iraq war? We ended that after 20 years.

Do you believe that we should support our NATO allies?

Do you think it’s OK to insult people who do not have children?

Do you think it’s OK to insult people who have a different Faith than yours?

What happened to the separation of church and state? Is it all right with you to let that go?

Should we argue over climate change or work together to see that everything within our powers is done TO KEEP THE EARTH INHABITABLE TO HUMANS?

Do you think the ones with the money ought to run our country or that people without children should NOT run for office?

Do you think that childless people don’t care about the future?

Do you want internment camps?

Do you think it’s OK for a man who is running for President to say that women are fat and ugly—but he wants their vote?

Do you think it’s alright for a man who is running for President to believe it’s his right to grab the women he considers pretty by their private parts?

Remember the Divine Right of Kings?

Do you think it’s OK to place a man in the white house who wants to abolish our two-term Presidential system? What about the ones who come after him? That edict would still be in place.  Our Republican Candidate won’t live forever—unless he knows something we don’t know.

Do you think our Republican Presidential candidate is a Messiah? (I’ve heard of a more loving one.)

Are we OK with our country being run by corporations and that the rich can run the show, or that one man can throw millions into a Presidential campaign to help determine the it's outcome?

Is money speaking for us?

Do you believe that we the people have a voice?

Keep the Present Republican Candidate out of the White House and then address those concerns individually.

We can do it.

This Candidate must win by a landslide, or he will never believe he lost.

If you can’t stand Kamala Harris, grit your teeth and vote for her anyway. WE DO NOT WANT A DICTATOR IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

We are good people. We deserve to thrive.

Do we remember that we have the power to make changes, advance civilization, and get along with each other?

I think so.

"Never doubt that a group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, its the only thing that every has."--Margaret Mead

WE CAN DO IT--PEACEFULLY.

 

"My wife's cat," says one reader.

 

 

And now dear ones, from an earlier time when the living was easier and the air was fresher, the sun brighter, and the heart lighter—like 14 years ago. It’s an excerpt from my book.

Thank you for reading so far. I love all my readers.

 It’s strange, I am getting a good number of hits on this site, however most are from out of the U.S. I guess they don’t like me so well here in my homeland. It must have been something I said.

  

 

 34

 On the Road

 When Daughter Dear was on maternity leave and her son was two months old, we set out for an eight-state road trip.

We rented a van and loaded Bear into the back and Peaches in the front. The baby had the seat behind us, and thus we took off—limited only by the needs of a two-month-old. It was the best vacation of my life—to do what we wanted, when we wanted, and stop when we felt like it. 

I had heart palpitations after going up and down a Colorado mountain too fast, coupled with an area in New Mexico that held both a mental institution and a Prison. Both DD and I felt odd, and my chest hurt all night. Don't ask me to explain it; it seemed like something was in the air, something negative. A person at our hotel told us that area wasn’t good.

Both DD and I felt similar negativity in some areas of Hawaii, one of the reasons we wanted to leave. No heart palpitations there, though. I don't tend to get too woo-woo, but when woo-woo strikes, I pay attention.

Clearly, I have an altitude problem. That trip up and down the mountain showed me. Altitude, not attitude. Well, that, too.

 A young woman Neil knew from Nikon Inc. told me that if I had walked that mountain instead of driving it, I wouldn't have had a problem. 

That woman, a slight person who looked like a runner, climbed Mt Everest to the base Camp. Yes, she did. I was astounded. She said, "You climb high and sleep low." You climb higher than where you plan to sleep and then return to your campsite. That will help acclimate you to the altitude. 

While driving in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I declared, "I want to find one of those pottery shops…”

“Like that one?” DD pointed.

Directly beside us was the best pottery shop I had ever seen. It had rows of pottery, beautiful glazes and designs, dishes, pots, wall hangings, and those chocolate tiles Nina bought, carried to Hawaii, and left as the countertop of a bar in her Hawaiian Tiki Room.  

Coming home from that trip, we found ourselves 100 miles from Disneyland, DD's favorite place on the planet. Being that close, we had to go. We found a hotel with a shaded parking lot, and as we had a large van, we left the windows slightly ajar for the dogs, walked a couple of blocks to Disneyland, and partied hardy. At night the dogs came into the room with us.

After that Colorado Mountain High, I breathed a sigh of relief upon entering Disneyland, where I noticed a sign at the train station stating the elevation. I thought it said one foot. But when I checked the Internet to verify the elevation, a sign on the train station read 138 feet. Either way, I was comfortable.

 Little Boy Darling's first visit to Disneyland, at two-months old, was fun, and he liked the submarine ride where he watched fishes swimming past the port hole window.

We skipped all scary rides.

Once, for the heck of it, way before our grandson was a glint in anyone's eye, and after reading that the Cavalia Horse Show featuring exquisite white horses, a Cirque du Soleil sort of event, was being performed in Dallas, Texas, DD, and I flew there. A pond appeared in the sand on the floor of their mammoth white tent. After their horses had raced through it, splattering water and clearly getting wet, the water disappeared beneath the sand.  

Witnessing the love expressed between the horses and the trainer was worth the ticket price, and the girl who came racing into the arena at breakneck speed riding two horses, Roman style, almost had me on the floor.

After we had accrued numerous frequent-flyer miles and often asked to be bumped from a flight on purpose so we could earn more, DD and I used them to go as far as we could. That was to Niagara Falls, where a humongous amount of water separates the US and Canada.

We took the Maid of the Mist boat into the tumultuous mist on the American side. At that time, we didn't need a passport to cross the border, so we drove to Canada across the river to see the Niagara River fall from a different country.  On the Canadian side, we ate the best chocolate-covered pretzels at the Hersey factory and, by chance, saw that Madonna was performing that night at the Ontario Sports Arena. 

We had to attend that concert.

Our tickets were in the nosebleed section behind a column. From our perspective, we could see Madonna rise from beneath the stage. On giant TVs, we watched that woman sing while doing a handstand, and nary a muscle quivered from the strain of it.

Our seat companion, a young, enthusiastic fellow, had flown from Texas especially to see Madonna's performance, so the three of us were flying high. 

We fell in love with Canada—the people and their attitude. They gently suggest wearing seat belts: "Be protected, not projected." They also have "Traffic calming zones" in the city where drivers can pull over and calm down. Some ads alongside the road presented exquisite lawn plantings with the vendor's name spelled out in flowers. 

It was strange driving up to the falls; we traveled over the flat country following the Niagara River until, WHAP, an abyss. I had expected to hear a roar before arriving but only heard it when we were practically upon it. A good thing a native, not knowing the falls were there, didn't come along riding his horse at breakneck speed. 

But then the horse would have heard it.

💕 

 

       joshappytrails@gmail.com (copy and paste)

 

(Long ago we used to drink champagne and eat Oreo cookies in the hot tub. I wish we could do it again. And that you could join us.)