I'm on a "Staycation"

My sister is in the midst of a wonderful vacation.  Won't be home until mid-month. I'm excited for her, because this trip has been in the works since January.  As the months have passed we've talked a great deal about this, so that as the day of departure arrived I was every bit as excited as she.

So, she sent me a copy of her itinerary and I've been following her adventures.  Day by day I can see where she is and what she's doing.  Thank you, Internet.  Yep, I can check out her hotels/motels, the sights they are visiting and even some of the restaurants in which she is eating.  A few days ago they lunched in a bakery, and oooooh, my! What delicious looking, too big to actually fit in your mouth sandwiches, with wedges of pickles on top, and goodies, too.  You should have seen all those desserts, to say nothing about the breakfast oooie-gooies.  Can you imagine having lunch while the odor of baking breads and cakes waft through the dining area....I can.  Boy, am I getting hungry.

Already she and her tour group have done quite a bit, and I'm preparing a bit of a scrap book I intend to send to my sister when she gets home.  A kind of "Staycation" view of her "Vacation".  You know, it will be filled with all the points of interest I liked most.  After she thumbs through it she can do...whatever.

Anyway so far there are two points of interest I've enjoyed the most.  The first being the Perrine Memorial Bridge, where Evil Knievel made a dramatic attempt to cross the Snake River, and the second being the Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre.  Not only is the name fascinating, so is the Centre. The unique architecture so blends in with the colors of the environment I think it could easily be missed.  The Blackfeet Tribe of Native Americans used the Buffalo Jump (cliff) as a means to kill the buffalo in mass by herding them toward the cliff so they had no choice but to 'jump' off.  They would process the meat at the base of the cliff, and after their work was completed they would enjoy a time of recreation.  The "jumps" ended in the 1900's, and the site became a World Heritage Site in 1981 as a testimony of prehistoric life and the customs of aboriginal people.  The legend surrounding the name of this site is a young Blackfoot wanted to watch the buffalo plunge off the cliff from below, but was buried underneath the falling buffalo. He was later found dead under the pile of carcasses, where he had his head smashed in.  

There are many more adventures to come before my sister will be safely home, and I can't wait to be along for the ride.  Best part is, I don't have to worry about luggage, running out of money, gorging myself on too big for my mouth sandwiches...with wedges of pickles on top or sleeping in unfamiliar beds and locations.  Ah, yep, there's nothing quite like a good old fashioned "Staycation". 

My Winter House Guest...

...is

...is

...dead.

I was out drinking my morning cup of coffee, enjoying the cool air, the birds singing, and my flowers flowering.  It was a great start for the day.

Then, you know how something comes into view, at the very edge of your peripheral vision?  That happened.  Out of the corner of my eye, behind a potted fern I see a brown blob.  What the heck is that? Curiosity being what it is, caused me to put my mug of coffee into the other hand, and give the blob a push.

It didn't move.  Whatever this was, was not alive.  With my index finger I bring the blob out from behind the fern.  Hmmm.  I have to confess I did not recognize what this was.  Ah-ha, this thing was belly up, and I could now tell it had been deceased for quite a while, a simple shell of its former self.  Gently with my thumb and forefinger I turn it over.

Gasp!

It was Bobby.  My winter house guest.  I got him standing on what remained of his legs, and stared at him in dismay and sadness.  We had been together for a very long time, and seeing him is this state was very disheartening.  I could not believe our adventure had come to an end.  I guess now there is only one thing to do, make him a tiny little specimen box and add him to my Thoreau collection.

Goodbye Bobby.  Thanks for a wonderful friendship.  You will be missed....sigh...it never occurred to me you would ever die.

Lions, tigers and bears, oh my!

Well, at least cougars,coyotes and bears.

Yes, over the last decade coyotes have been spotted boldly going where one would think coyotes would not care to go.  One morning a coyote stopped at the end of my driveway and pondered me and my furry friends looking out my bay window pondering him.  He was not the least bit spooked we were watching him, and took his good sweet time in sauntering away.  I confess I was a bit unsettled by the encounter, because I could have been out in the front yard with my two dogs at the time Mr/Ms Coyote was taking his morning constitutional.  Who knows what might have happened.

However, this year even more wild creatures are moving about the neighborhoods. Bears and cougars to be exact.  Fortunately, some of them have been captured and released to their natural habitats that are (we're lucky) close by.

Last week folks reported several (I think 7) cougar sightings, but it was not until yesterday one was sited and treed in a north-east neighborhood.  The police were called and stood by 'just in case', and eventually the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife authorities showed up, tranquilized the creature and carted it off.
Silly me, I assumed they would release it to the 'natural habitats close by'.

Then, this morning, watching the news, I was curious about the way the media was handling the story, and wondered why they were so vague about what happened to the cougar 'after' it was taken from the neighborhood.  So, being the curious person that I am, I began snooping about the web.  And I learned:
"The approximately 110-pound cougar was euthanized by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) staff, said ODFW spokesperson Meg Kanady, because it had lost its fear of people."

I was stunned.  Once they had this beautiful creature under control, I would have thought euthanizing it would have been the very last resort.  I'd like to know if veterinarians were call to examine the creature or, if they were not call, why?  Was it because it was a holiday, and everyone was disturbed their festivities were interrupted?  I'd hate to think that was the case.  It seems to me the least they could have done was to take it possibly to the zoo, have their medical staff give it a physical, and draw some blood samples to check for disease and illness. Surely the zoo has an area they could have isolated it to prevent possible transfer of illness to the other animals.

Okay, I realize at this point I don't know the whole story, but as an amateur naturalist, this euthanasia really, really disturbs me. I think it disturbs a lot of other people too, otherwise the news report this morning would not have left out the part about the cougar being euthanized.  Matter of fact one website was conducting a poll:

The cougar was "humanely euthanized" because it had lost its fear of humans.  Do you agree with this decision?  The results so far this morning.  Yes, I do: 23.55%.  No, I don't.  76.45%.

Actually, my thinking is all these creatures who have roamed away from their environment is not necessarily because it's summer, and they are hungry, and we are sloppy careless humans that leave garbage, trash and pet food lying about providing them with easy meals.  I think they are trying to tell us something...and I think we should try to find out what that something is.  Where's a good Shaman when you need one?

Anyway, I so very, very sorry about the outcome of yesterday's cougar incident.  My personal opinion is it could have been handled much better.  Maybe the holiday had something to do with it, maybe not.  I simply hope this does not create a prescience, giving the Department of Fish and Wildlife an easy out to get rid of displaced wildlife.

Because THAT would be wrong on more levels than I can count.

Happ-E-birth-Day America

Oh, it's a grand old day, for a grand old America.

This morning my mind wanders back to Fourth of July Family Picnics.  We would stuff ourselves with food, and spend the afternoon playing our own version of the yard game Croquet.  They were wild man, we would have the start point on the west side of the front yard at the curb, and the end point would be at the east side of the front yard at the curb.  We would have to go to the back yard, jump a creek, work our way around shrubs, ferns and other landscape, cross a bridge, and work our way out to the front yard and the end post. I mean those games were great.  Especially for the last two that took turns, because eventually everybody would lose interest in us and we would plot how we were going to 'cheat' and win the game.  Oh, there was a lot of shouting and laughter, and jolly good fun.  My brother and brother-in-law started this new way to play the game, and I thank them greatly, our Fourth of July was never, ever, dull.

But, once more, I've digressed.

What I really want to write about is some of the symbols of America.  Of course, there is the Eagle...which could have been the Wild Turkey (the bird not the whiskey) had Ben Franklin had his way.  There are the Historical Landmarks, Statues of the Fathers of our Nation, and the Declaration of Independence (which occasionally tours America), and the Constitution of the United States.

However, my favorite is the American Flag.  It has changed much in 238 years.  At the time I was born the flag had 48 white stars and 13 red and white stripes.  There was one star to symbolize each state, and the 13 stripes to represent the original states.  I have seen three of those symbols proudly flying overhead, those with 48, 49 and 50 stars.

History records that a woman named Besty Ross, a seamstress by trade, an upholsterer actually, was commissioned by George Washington to design the first national flag, and while researching for this blog, I read that George wanted a six pointed star, but Betsy knowing how difficult a six pointed star was to cut, showed him she could cut out a five pointed star with one clip of the scissors.  (Whether this is true or not...well, let's just leave this to American legend.)  At any rate, our nation's flag was born with five pointed stars.

I think I've mentioned how much I enjoy old time television shows, one of my favorites just happens to be a half hour show called Green Acres.  It's a silly little show, but its story lines are always unique, and I never know what the topic will be. But, I'm pretty sure yesterday's show was specifically chosen to be shown because...if you know the show at all, is about a New York City lawyer (Oliver Wendell Douglas) who always wanted to be a farmer, and watch the little seeds 'shooots' up into the air and grow into something wonderful.

However, rather than wearing farmer attire he had his lawyer suits for every occasion, plowing, fence pole digging, barn painting, etc.  Well, yesterday the local farmers were in the general store discussing that somebody had to speak to Oliver about not dressing like a farmer.  No one could, but he began to get the message when everywhere he went his 'plowin' suit was the general topic for discussion.

Oliver needed to wear coveralls.  Farmers wear coveralls.  The local farmers then have a discussion of where coveralls came from, and who actually made the first pair of coveralls?

Why, of course.

Betsy Ross.

And, the story line grew from there.  The farmers tried farming in suits, Lisa had Oliver's tailor make him a $150.00 pair of coveralls with mink straps, the farmers wives burned their husbands coveralls cause they liked their husbands working in suits.  It was a very funny show.

We all know Betsy Ross did not sew together the first pair of coveralls.  But she did do a bang up, firecracker job on the first flag.  For which we are all most thankful and a great many of us will display ours in our yards today in honor of America's birthday.

It's A Grand Old Flag

Written and composed by

George M. Cohan,

Chorus

You're a grand old flag,

You're a high-flying flag,

And forever in peace may you wave.

You're the emblem of the land I love,

The home of the free and the brave.

Ev'ry heart beats true

'Neath the Red, White and Blue,

Where there's never a boast or brag.

But should auld acquaintance be forgot,

Keep your eye on the grand old flag.

  Happ-E-birth-Day America!

Sully

Just as I was contemplating what to write about today, I heard my mailman's truck on the street and the familiar dull click of my neighbor's mailbox door being shut.  So, I waited a while and soon I heard the mail truck (sounding as though it needed a tune-up) at the end of my driveway, and then the dull click of my box door going shut.

Zorro and I made the trek to the mailbox, and there within were two pieces of mail. One from a local Realtor, the other the newest AARP Bulletin.  I took my cup of coffee and sat outside on my back patio and began to thumb through the Bulletin.

On page 10, I saw the picture of a guy I admire greatly. The headline read Conversation With Sully Sullenberger.  By Hugh Delehanty.  You do remember Sully, don't you.  The pilot that landed his jet liner in, (on) the Hudson River.  An event that came to be known as "Miracle on the Hudson".

What a great guy!  So humble, so 'not' wanting to be a hero. So eager to want the episode to blend into the background, like a grey tapestry.  To this day he continues to tell people that 'miracle' was a group effort, saying, "...(that) experience and the judgment my crew and I developed over many decades allowed us to have the creative reserve to deliver the airplane full of people to the surface intact".

Anyway, anytime I hear or see anything new about Sully, I'm immediately interested.  And so it was this morning I read the entire interview.

Here are two of the questions that were asked, and Sully's answers.

Q:  It's been five years since the "miracle on the Hudson," How did that event change your life?
A:  It was, at first, very difficult, very shocking, but with time you have to make it part of you, not simply something that happened to you.

Q:  What about you is different?
A:  It's made me think that whatever trivial things I have to deal with don't even hold a candle to that.

I thought they were great questions, and about all the ways Sully could have answered them.  If a proud and pompous man, he could have given puffed up, peacock pretty answers.  Instead, he gave (in my opinion) true hero answers.  The Miracle on the Hudson, was simply one square, one part of all the colors in his tapestry of life.  Simply put, part of him.  

And, isn't it true, that like Sully, our lives too, are squares? With each event, large or small, brightly coloring our tapestry of life.  It is how we allow the events of our lives to affect us that make us who we are.

Here is how I would answer those two questions.

Q:  "In the last five years how have the events of your life changed you?"
A:  I want to believe they have become part of me, and are not just things that happened to me. So that whether earth shattering or minuscule they are woven into me, and have become part of my life tapestry.  

Q: "What about you is different?"
A:  I'm older and hopefully wiser, so that "whatever trivial things I have to deal with" in the future nothing will "hold a candle" to all the things that have happened in my past.

I think I would be uncomfortable living in a 'hero's' skin, I want to be a Sully and simply enjoy each moment, remembering it could be my last.

Breathe deeply, friends, breathe deeply

Yesterday was hot.  I'm not complaining you understand, but for me 99 degrees is hot.  I drug out my fans and set them up and had them going 'full steam' by mid afternoon.  I also had just about every window in the house wide open...with drapes, closed, keeping the sun out, while allowing fresh air to circulate through the house.

I do this, because I've discovered (through trial and error) that keeping the house tightly closed during hot spells, DOES NOT, keep my house cool.  Matter of fact by 5 O'clock my house is every bit as hot as the out of doors, plus, it STINKS.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen...it STINKS.  The air is so stale, thin and re breathed I dash around the house like a loon-a-tick, throwing open windows and doors as though my life depended on it...because it does.  I'd sell my soul for a good, lungs filling, deep breath of outside air.

I have a window air conditioner, but I don't use it much.  Only when I know we are going to have several days of near hundred degree temperatures and my furry friends and I hibernate in the only cool room of the house.  Yes, we eat, hang out, watch TV and sleep in that air conditioned room.  It's nice...but makes me appreciate that I'm not a bear...living in a 'den' for months on end would drive me insane...well more insane than I already am.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not an idiot.  I know better than to leave my house 'wide open' during heat spells and every night I have a ritual, I methodically walk through the house and, as my mother would say "close up". Windows and doors are checked, re-checked then re-checked again.   However, I love having fresh air coming in my room while I sleep, even during the winter. I'm very careful.  I follow police directions and make sure the opening is too small for someone to crawl through, and I keep a 'stick' in the window's track, so it cannot be pushed open, nor can the stick be pulled out should someone try to reach in and remove it.  I've always felt pretty safe and secure.  But, that pretty much 'went out the window' yesterday when I saw on the news some woman had left her window slightly ajar, and three men removed the screen and entered her home.  Her dogs alerted her, and she was able to call 911 and all ended well.

Here's the thing.  I don't know whether she had her window blocked or not, the report didn't say, but the report did say we should CLOSE our windows every night. That's right, apparently the police now say we need to CLOSE our windows at night. Oh, my goodness, I'm hyperventilating just contemplating that. CLOSE my window. Gasp.  I'm not sure I can do that.  Gasp, gasp.  The thought of breathing the same air all   night   long is like contemplating somebody throwing a pillow over my head and expecting me to continue to breathe   all   night   long.  We all know I'd be gone in minutes.  So, I've been thinking about what to do ever since I got up this morning.

I've really got no good solution, but maybe one, that might work.  I've got a little fan that I can attach to the edge of my night stand, I just might have to use it year round instead of when the temperatures hover in the nineties.  That way I can close the window, but still have air 'circulating', hopefully giving me the allusion fresh air is washing over me.  Is this a bummer situation or what?

I guess it's a sign of our times.  As a kid we didn't worry about locking the house at night, windows were always wide open, we stayed out till dark and never worried about a Boogie Man.  Today, our doors have double and triple locks, windows have blocks, and we hustle around to be indoors at dusk because Boogie Men lurk around every corner.

Breathe deeply, friends, breathed deeply, because as Mrs. 'Lovey' Thurston Howell the Third would say.  "We're doomed I tell you, doomed."

Heck in a hand basket

If there is one thing I've learned, once a day has gone to heck in a handbasket...there's no chance of getting it out of that dang basket.

Nor, all the dang ants that wound up in it, too.  I've been a scrubbin' and a sweepin' and a movin' pieces of furniture making sure some of those rascals aren't hiding under them. And...it's such a beautiful day, I want to be outside.  Every time I think I can do that...there is a new trail of ants racing up and down the wall.

I think things are good now, and I'm bound and determined to go out and enjoy the summer shade and the lovely east wind that's a blowin' down the gorge.  Maybe I'll take my crocheting and a nice tall glass of iced coffee.

Oh, and speaking of "Heck in a hand basket".  Here's what I learned...(well, the day's shot anyway).

This from the website World Wide Words
(Investigating the English language across the globe)

"Going to hell in a handbasket

Q From Brian Walker: Can you please tell me anything about the origin of the phrase going to hell in a handbasket?

A This is a weird one, which has puzzled and confused many writers. The meaning is clear enough, that some situation is getting rapidly out of hand and is going downhill fast. That explains hell, as the ultimate bad destination, but why a handbasket, of all things?

A couple of similar expressions give a clue. An early one was going to heaven in a wheelbarrow, which paradoxically meant “going to hell”. This may relate to a famous stained-glass window in St Mary’s Church in Fairford in Gloucestershire, which shows a scolding wife being taken away in a wheelbarrow by the devil. (I think this is my favorite.)The saying is obliquely referred to in a sermon by an English clergyman:

Oh, this oppressor must needs go to heaven! what shall hinder him? But it will be, as the byword is, in a wheelbarrow: the fiends, and not the angels, will take hold on him.

God’s Bounty, by Thomas Adams, c1618.

Another version was head in a handbasket:

A committee brought in something about Piscataqua. Govr said he would give his head in a Handbasket as soon as he would pass it.

Diary, by The Reverend Samuel Sewell, 23 Mar. 1714.

This second expression is rare. I can find only one later example, which looks very much like a direct reference:

When Murray first refused the certificate of election to Cannon, the Mormon delegate, there was an almost universal howl, especially from republican papers, and the governor’s head was demanded in a hand basket.

The Daily Ledger-Standard (New Albany, Indiana), 28 Mar. 1881.

Some writers have read into this version that it refers to execution by the guillotine, in which the image — as in the terror associated with the French Revolution — is of the executed person’s head dropping into a basket. Guillotines certainly predate both the French Revolution and Mr Sewell’s time (a famous sixteenth-century one is associated with the Yorkshire city of Halifax) but to make this connection would seem to stretch the imagination.

The version you’re asking about is a fairly common American one. Until recently it was thought to have appeared in the early twentieth century but the digitising of historical records has showed that it dates from at least half a century earlier. The first known instance is linked to a famous conspiracy during the American Civil War by the Order of the Sons of Liberty to release prisoners from Fort Douglas and burn down Chicago. Judge Buckner Morris was a principal agitator and is reported to have made a speech in the autumn of 1864:

He referred to the suspension of the habeas corpus, and said many of our best men were at that moment “rotting in Lincoln’s bastilles;” ... that thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would “send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket”.

The Great North-Western Conspiracy in All its Startling Details, by I Winslow Ayer, 1865.

We may guess that the phrase was already well known by this time. It wasn't long before variations started to appear:

“Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not kill!” yelled a young man, an Irishman, who rushed up to us, holding in his hands a Douay Bible. Then he dashed the book upon a table, and filled the hall with the most fearful oaths and imprecations, closing with the declaration: “We’re all going to hell in a castiron hand basket!”

Corydon Republican (Corydon, Indiana), 2 Jul. 1877.

It has also often been shortened:

Politics never interested me. I know people who spend half their lives worrying about how everything’s going to hell in a basket — and it all goes to hell in a basket anyway.

Blood Risk, by Dean Koontz, 1974.

So why handbasket? I can only assume that the alliteration has had a lot to do with its success, and that handbasket suggests something easily and speedily done."

And, this ends your lesson for today.  Here I come, summer shade, here I come crocheting, here I come iced coffee.