Rainy day thoughts

Incendies

2012-01-28T02:09:00.000-08:00

I wish all the people who talk so loosely of revolution, insurrection or civil war would see the Quebec film, Incendies. I won't say they'd enjoy it, but they'd have a lot better idea of the real cost of such wars for ordinary people, those who didn't ask for it, but end up brutalized by it.

Today we hear a lot of lose talk on the war on Christmas, the war on the rich, the war on the poor, and on it goes with blame being dispersed many different ways as to who is guilty of the problems in our country. Well one thing that is not going on is anything like what the main character in Incendies experienced when she was born into a country where there was a real, violent and very brutal civil war between Muslims and Christians. Although it's not specifically mentioned, it is likely based on what Lebanon went through in the 70s.

The story begins in modern times as a brother and sister, twins living in Canada, discover, when their recently deceased mother, Naval's will is being read, by her employer, their family benefactor, and a notary, that she wants them to contact their father and brother and deliver a letter to each.

Jeanne and Simon not only didn't know they had a brother but had thought their father had been killed. Jeanne feels an obligation to find the truth of her mother's past and travels to her homeland for the answers. If there is a father still alive, she wants to find out. Simon doesn't want to open this can of worms and only reluctantly joins her after Jeanne calls him begging for his help as the story she has discovered is more complex than she can bear alone. Lebel, the notary, comes with him as a help that likely without the mystery would not be able to be unraveled.

The sub-titled film is brilliantly done but violent and about subjects that many of us would rather not think as in the complexity of life, the consequences of actions, and sometimes how things beyond our control can mark us for life. I do recommend it; but if you are already convinced civil wars are bad, if you cannot tolerate facing how brutal life can be (it's not graphic but emotional in the impact of the violence), it probably is one to skip.

I am glad I saw it as once in awhile I think I need such reminders for why it's important to speak out for peaceful solutions to our own national problems. It is also a good reminder of how fortunate we are to have been born into countries without such vicious, government-led violence. Oh I know our police sometimes hit those they consider out of line or breaking the law. The violence these people experienced was on a whole different level. Let's keep it that way.

Marketing-- 'From Here to There'

2012-01-25T01:38:00.000-08:00

Whatever you do in life, you are involved with marketing if you expect to get money for it. Sometimes you are marketing yourself, sometimes a product, sometimes something someone else made. The exchange of labor for money or some object of value is about marketing. Most of the time people forget that as a regular job can seem as though it's not involved with that-- right up until the company downsizes, and you realize if you can't convince them you are contributing something of value, you are done for.

Now I knew when I got into eBooks that it would involve marketing them myself. There is no publishing house behind me to do it. I did not come in through an organization like Smashwords which has a marketing arm that can help with many aspects of getting the books out because they have been paid to do it. Many such companies have motivation as they receive a percentage of whatever the book gets.

So this has been a learning experience to say the least (although we run into marketing problems with our beef and lamb too). I'm still in the process of learning more ways to reach possible readers with these books-- some seem to work for me and some not so much.

One thing my publisher (Farm Boss) and I opted to do is put one of my books into what Amazon calls Prime which means someone can rent them for free with it being possible to rent one book a month for a yearly fee which also enables the user to access streaming of DVDs.

I did this not because I thought my books would particularly attract renters that way. I pretty well figured those renters would opt for more expensive books than mine, but it enabled some other promotional features-- the main one being free days which don't involve being in Prime or paying any money. In short, $0.00 purchase for the reader. So we finally figured out how to use that feature (we being him), and I wanted readers here to know ahead of time in case they'd like to try out one of my books (which I consider to be a hybrid between romance, suspense, pop fiction, with sometimes a western or metaphysical topic) without any cost to themselves.

If you don't have an eReader, you can still read any of the Kindles by adding a free app to your computer and reading it there. Anyway on January 26-27, 2012, From Here to There will be available free by going to the link below. Always be sure when you do that with any special offer that the price is correct before you push click for purchase.

From Here to There

More about this contemporary story, set in the west, is on blogs- Rain Trueax and From Here to There.

If you have been curious about what it's like to read a book this way, have wondered what I mean about my indie (what they call books not coming through a publisher) romances that are but aren't just romances, you can give it a try for free on Thursday or Friday.

The reason for life?

2012-01-22T01:50:00.000-08:00

This is more a time of questioning for me than one of having answers. Some of that might've been due to having had one cold after another and then maybe a dose of salmonella following Farm Boss having one. When you don't feel so good, you tend to lay around more, be less eager to run around outside; so ruminating happens.

I have thought recently (again that is) about what life is all about. IF I only live once, then what are the things I am doing right now really about? Do they have meaning or just filling space? The skills I have developed, the things I know, the experiences I have had, if it's all over when I die, what were they for?

If it's crowns in heaven, then there is a supernatural reward (or punishment) attached to all actions and even thoughts. Therefore what I do or didn't do is judged by a deity and not even myself. Although supposedly there is kind of a reckoning where the soul could look at it all and agree with the deity since the deity would always be right. That could be very depressing or uplifting depending on what we saw.

If there is reincarnation, what we do here will carry over with us-- positive and negative. Depending on your belief of whether it's a corporate or individual continuing on (corporate meaning your tribe breaks up the pieces and part of what you did might go to this one or that but not stay with you as a new individual).

Either of these beliefs that there is more to life than biology gives motivation to see your choices as either making a next life better (hopefully) or gaining crowns (whatever that means). Dust to dust means we must find a different meaning to it all-- assuming we think having one is important.

Especially where it comes to reincarnation, I think about what it'd be like to find myself again a 20-year old with the talents and insights I have today. I'd make such different choices, I think. Not to say that I wasted my life, but I knew so little in comparison to now (which means if there is reincarnation, not sure I carried much with me for this lifetime although I did have natural talents maybe that could have come from prior lives... or then again).

It's not as though at 68 I am suggesting I cannot continue to use the skills or knowledge I have gleaned from living so many years. But there are certainly less years ahead to use them. Some choices are behind me forever. With increased aging, options will begin to shrink. Abilities deteriorate. It's just reality. Not depressing because those last years do still serve purposes but the question I am asking myself now is what is the purpose of life period? This is especially true if this is all biology.

If there is one lifetime and when we die, it's over, then all we can leave behind is what we taught and inspired in those who are coming after us whether family members, friends or even strangers impacted by something that was impacted by us. Accumulating money or wealth, things, even education for ourselves, it won't matter except in that context. And the fact that we accrued wealth doesn't mean it will benefit our descendents' lives. Giving them dollars or fancy homes alone doesn't insure them better lives for it. What does if anything?

So back to what I was asking myself and Farm Boss as we drove back from a lovely family outing at Sunriver over one of the snowy Cascade passes-- What is life really all about? How do we decide one was well lived and another wasted?

One answer for me is to feel I have lived life fully, experienced what I could, done both my duty, and understood my own dream, doing the things that were possible for me. That doesn't mean a race around the earth for instance to see the 1000 things somebody else decreed everybody should see, but rather what was it that I should see which might be a microcosmic look at a pond on my own property.

A satisfying purpose to a lifetime might be keeping a set of journals that records a whole life and is burned when the person neared the end except one that was passed onto one relative (I explored the results of that in one of the stories I wrote).

The thing I was thinking about on that drive home, before photography took my mind off in a different direction is for my own life what has been its purpose and have I achieved it or is there something still out there that I missed?

Don't tell me I think too much (I've been told that all my life and if it was going to change, it likely would've years ago). Just tell me what you think life is about-- if you have also found your mind wandering that direction and maybe come up with an answer that helped you. Maybe you accepted the answer from a religion, and it works for you. I'd just like to hear what you think this life is really all about. Then, of course, comes the next question to be answered personally once one has decided on the purpose.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

from poet Mary Oliver

mid valley flood from the air

2012-01-21T09:56:00.000-08:00

I saw this YouTube from the air showing what was going on with the flooding places other than where I live. I've seen it this high before but fortunately it doesn't happen often that we get 7" of rain in just a couple of days.

flooding from the air in the mid-valley

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow... I think :)

Flood watch

2012-01-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

Most of the time living on a creek is a major plus; but every now and again along comes a weather reminder that it's not all beer and skittles (where that expression came from, I have no clue). This is one of those winters and when I least expected a lot of flooding as the usual conditions to make it happen weren't there as in lots of snow that melted rapidly.

This is also, in my 35 years here, one of the more unusual floods I have seen in that our creek isn't just backing up water from a nearby river but it's got a lot of its own current. The photos are amazing. A little scary too as I am not sure how much higher it will get. Theoretically the crest was supposed to be this morning but now they are saying this evening where we live.

We do have a plan for such a situation if it reaches the driveway in front of the house which we have never seen, but the former owners told us happened once. My part of the plan involves getting out the cat carriers and rolling up the Oriental rug-- just kidding, I think.

A lot of the roads on the way to out here are already closed as we are a land of many small rivers and creeks. For today, cross out the small :). Unless people do something stupid, like try to drive through running water on the road, there is no danger in this kind of situation. It's just-- let's say different for how you get around and what you have to do-- like in create dikes out of plywood (the other part of our emergency plan for our creek and us.

As a reference for anyone not familiar with what our creek is supposed to look like, I took this photo January 3rd right below our house. When the water finally goes down, thanks to all this current, it won't look the same for probably years as trees will have been swept away.

Pineapple Express

2012-01-19T01:19:00.000-08:00

When temperatures turn abruptly warm up here (for a winter) and then a storm with a lot of rain arrives from the south, we call it a Pineapple Express. So in hours, my part of the country has gone from this--

to this

and this (latest photo of the barn when it's too dark for photos would show the creek right below it-- as in two feet below it).

Our creek is obviously way over its banks which is no big surprise as are many other rivers in the Willamette Valley with more heavy rains due.

The question is where is this storm heading and how high will our creek be before it's over?

The garden is likewise drowned as water runs off the fields.

Definitely makes for interesting weather. The only thing good I can say about it is-- I have had a miserable cold where I don't feel like doing a lot anyway. Well, the creek had been pretty low; fortunately leaving it a lot of space to absorb more water-- for awhile.

Nature is an energy builder

2012-01-17T06:09:00.000-08:00

Without a doubt, nature is one of my stars, moments with it bring energy to me. During the month of January when we had problems with our plumbing and bad colds that were hard to knock, as in they'd go away and we'd either get a new one or they would not really have gone away, being out in nature, cold though it was was the main energy builder.

One morning, the alpenglow was all around our valley as a rosy glow ringed the horizon just as the sun was rising. To see the setting moon above it, just before 8, was the cherry on top of the sundae.

Then there was a visit to our favorite wildlife refuge one Sunday as we watched the geese and ducks, with an extra treat of a coyote hunting in one of the meadows. He was at a bit of a distance for great photos but to watch him hunt, how he worked a field, that was interesting and enjoyable (unlike when it's watching them go after our sheep).

It looked like he/she got at least one meal while hunting as we saw him jump and then appear to eat something. Maybe a frog as he was near a small pond.

We were actually there to take photos of the geese but sometimes they simply don't cooperate with where they land and take off. The sounds though of them and being there, was restorative with or without photos.

Sunriver

2012-01-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

Stars

2012-01-14T02:15:00.000-08:00

From a symbolic perspective, besides black holes, space has stars. They give energy to all around them. Sometimes a little too brightly as in burn up what is too close; but like with the star that is our sun, they send out energy that we can absorb to build our own energy.

Stars in our own lives are those things that bring us joy, teach us, bless our lives, and lets us help others. Some of the brightest stars will be what we do for others as that energy bounces back on us. That is why politics is not all a bad thing. Bad if it's a black hole that we let suck our energy but if we are out working for the causes in which we believe, it becomes a star that not only can shine on our lives but that of others.

When I was thinking about 2011 in my life, reliving the events, I read an encouragement to think over what you could remember of the year and then look at your journal to fill it in more of the year. Well my journal wouldn't help me much as when I counted up how many pages I wrote last year-- it was eighteen-- and they weren't even all the best moments of the year by a long shot.

The camera did a better job recording the stars in my life. It was many wonderful trips with our kids and grandkids, the whole family together at the beach or in the mountains. Those kind of things don't come all the time but last year they came more frequently than they might in the future or even had in the past. Those moments were stars without a doubt.

Then were were my manuscripts that I worked on editing for becoming eBooks and a new one I began. Writing was a renewed joy for me to be working on them, improving them, creating digital covers. The stories pulled me back into them and whether they work out to be successful sales wise (look back on black holes for that), they have been among the stars of my 2011.

To bring that to life, I did digital images from many of the special places; which I then put into a slideshow with music and a song that seems to totally say it all about how I believe about living. The songs speaks of the secret of making every moment into a star-- loving it, relishing it, but not trying to hold onto it.

Only a Moment

For my life, my daily life here at the farm, the following are black (and black and white), but they are not black holes. They give me energy and much joy. Our new cat is such a pleasure with her interesting personality and how she is adjusting into our family. With the three of them, it's off and on rather like having toddlers again. Little by little though they are all accepting each other.

Well BB has the hardest time as he is alpha cat and he evidently feels the need to establish that fact with her (lots of luck on that one) or feels she is challenging him by her being here as she moves into the mainstream of the home. He doesn't really attack her but just follows and gives her a look that has her yowling and running back to the bedroom.

Our dignified, Blackie has a more casual attitude toward the whole thing; in fact he has actually protected her the first time BB seemed to be about to attack her. Blackie jumped over him and got between them; but then Blackie is our peacemaker. If Farm Boss and I are having an argument (yes, we have them), he will come to me to try and make peace.

I don't know if there is reincarnation, but this little cat was born about the same time my little buddy, Persia, died. She is so much like her in personality and looks that sometimes it's hard not to wonder. She is usually right near me somewhere and she has filled a hole that has been there since I lost Persia 2 1/2 years ago. Her name is Pepper. For awhile it was impossible to get a photo of her as she'd see the camera and run. She is much more relaxed... well kind of... about the flash.

Black Holes

2012-01-11T01:51:00.000-08:00

Warning: After writing this blog and rewriting it and realizing my mind is not only in hyper-drive these days but has a bit of a chaos issue going on with too many issues roiling around, it may not flow well or make a lot of sense to you. I know the subject makes sense-- black holes. Explaining them, well that's a whole other story; but if the blog is ever going to go out, it has to go-- as is.

The other day Parapluie and I were talking as I mentioned waking up at 3 AM and feeling depressed about the black holes in my life. She asked what that meant. As we talked, I thought how I had mentioned black holes earlier in this blog, and it would be a good topic to explore more deeply here.

In space, a black hole is a bit of a space mystery. They are part of the energy continuum, at least as best I understand them. They are a region which can suck energy into them, and it cannot escape. Scientists, with better telescopes and able to look from further out, are learning more about them; but in general they appear to take energy for what seem to be unknown purposes. They are sinkholes, quicksand, suctions that draw into them energy but never (apparently) release it. Black holes continue to grow by absorbing energy through taking what is around them. When something goes into a black hole, science can no longer see or measure it. The term is obviously complex and my simple explanation doesn't do it justice but for my purposes, it explains how I use the term for my own life. Wikipedia on Black Holes.

Okay so that's the science end of it. My end of how I see my own black holes. They are energy gobblers, and there are several types. My dividing them that way leads to what I try to do about them. Black holes to me represent those things that are not all I want them to be and that fact is bothering me.

When a black hole is just about worrying; but I can't do a thing about it, I try to eliminate them from my mind. This can especially be politics when it's in regions I have no influence at all. Other black holes seem more positive as they show me there is a problem and I can fix it if I just want to enough. Waking up at 3 AM and fretting over something is good motivation to do exactly that.

So maybe in our lives, black holes can have a purpose if we recognize them as sucking our energy and then break them into piles. One pile for those where we have no control. These are good ones to list on a piece of paper that is then burned. Whenever they come into our minds, we push them away. If we have no part of being a solution, weren't part of the problem, then they are sucking energy away from us for no purpose.

Politics can be that way. When politics start reaching a level where I am not just learning what is going on but actually worrying about it, I know I need a break. Politics is one of those areas that can though be a negative but also a positive where it comes to energy. When we can write about it, talk about it to possibly influence others, donate and volunteer, it's a positive. When it's just worrying, it's a black hole that needs to go.

There are other things in a person's life that are the kind of black hole you want to eliminate from any time. One example is relationships you cannot fix. If say you have a parent who did wrong by you, but you cannot fix it; you didn't cause it; it's past being repaired, then what is the point of letting it suck energy? These make for great books but not necessarily good in our lives as they can ruin what we can fix.

So a positive use of a black hole, for those things I cannot change, is two-fold. One is stop letting it have any airtime if I really cannot do anything regarding it. But supposing what I need to do is not external but internal as in forgiving that person, even though they are no longer in my life? Than the constant awareness of this energy sucker is actually a warning to do something about it because it is bothering us and could pop up as a physical problem next. Often when a black hole has been bugging me like this, there is something I need to do. When I do it, it disappears.

In the let-it-be category, right now for me, would fit whether my books ever sell on eBook sites. That's obviously not easy to do. I have things I can do like get places where people, who might like stories that aren't a standard genre, actually would find them. But in the end, I can't impact what others choose to buy. Worrying about it would be a pointless black hole but working to get the books to be all I can make them as well as to find the places I can do promotions, that's a positive use of a black hole.

I think my attitude toward this, which is do the best job I can while releasing the results, that comes from years of doing creative work like painting and sculpting and having to face the same issue-- control the work and let how others see it be their thing not mine.

The best use of black holes is when I let them alert me to things where I can change it but am not. When I lie awake at night thinking-- I am not eating right. I am not exercising enough, it sucks my energy and why? Because I won't do what I could do. Waking at 3 AM and finding it hard to go back to sleep because of fretting over something I can change alerts me. I then recognize not only do I have something I am not being healthy about but I could change it. My awareness they are bugging me in the middle of the night increases my motivation to deal with them more effectively when daylight comes.

Black holes can be the same kind of warning signals that pain is. They are an alert that energy is draining away and we can either stop letting it or fix the problem.

Next is a blog on an example of positive energy from the skies-- and closer to home.

Mao's Last Dancer

2012-01-08T01:29:00.000-08:00

When I have seen a particularly good film, I ask later what made it so exceptional? I mean I watch quite a lot of movies, many of which I enjoy; but only once in awhile does one move me so deeply that I am in tears. Mao's Last Dancer, based on the autobiography of world ballet star Li Cunxin, is one of those.

What makes a film so moving? This one is very beautiful which alone can touch emotions. It is well done as it tells the story of Li Cunxin from his childhood in China where he was chosen from a poor village to be trained in ballet, his teen years as he began to perfect his skills and develop his emotional strength, and finally as an adult when he comes to America to perform for three months with the Houston Ballet Company. Three different actors portray the dancer through those stages of growth-- the beginning, the development and finally the reward.

To go back and forth in time, as Li remembers his experiences while he is in Houston, is certainly the sign of a gifted director when it works. Australian director, Bruce Beresford, fits the criteria and he brought it altogether beautifully for viewers. To understand from where Cunxin has come is to understand what comes next when he announces at the end of his three month time in Houston that he does not want to immediately return to China.

This was in 1981 and our relationship with China was still back and forth. Although Mao had died in 1976, China was working out who it was, who it wanted to be in the world. Tienanmen Square was eight years in the future. This defection was something the Chinese leadership had feared in allowing him to go to America, and they would do what they could to stop it happening. His defection would be bad publicity for them in the world and among their own people. Li wanted freedom but really not to lose his connection with his own people.

However, the reason this film is so moving goes beyond a wonderful story to the deeper elements that lie within it. Tears come from realizing the price someone pays for greatness, for understanding the value of freedom, and how important family and culture are to our life. Besides being so moving, it is the kind of film that leaves a person thinking long after it has ended.

In the last few years the term American exceptionalism has been much touted. Anybody who doesn't say that Americans are the best must not be a true lover of country. Well what this film brings out, I think, is that it's human exceptionalism that so awes us, and it can be found many places and among many peoples.

Most of us live lives that really leave us with no clue of how difficult it can be to rise to our highest potential. We either don't even try or our highest potential is not that much of a challenge for us-- perhaps we never even discover what it is. What Li Cunxin reminds us is what it takes to rise to the top in a world where there are not many, the price that is paid, but also the sacrifices of those who love us and whom we love.

The illustration that inspired him of a man learning to draw back a bow, the strength required to do that, and how it applied to dancing, that his muscles would let him fly, that is true of so much in life on many levels.

The film (and probably his book which I now want to read) also emphasizes how important freedom really is. It illustrates what we can sometimes be asked to sacrifice to attain it and why we should not easily give it up-- especially not in the name of security. It is secure in a cage. Want to live in one? Yes, in a culture, we do need rules. We need some protections, but we should be wary of those who ask us to give up our individual freedoms without a very powerful reason because often what they really want is to grow their power.

I highly recommend this film. It's on Netflix. After we saw it, I bought it from Amazon as I know I will want to see it many times if for no other reason than the marvelous dancing. There is nothing more awesome than watching gifted ballet stars at their height. Awesome doesn't begin to describe it. Li Cunxin was that kind of dancer and so was the actor who portrayed him, Chi Cao.

Mao's Last Dancer

Three new pots from Westwood Gallery

2012-01-05T02:01:00.000-08:00

For quite a few years I tended to buy pottery every so often. Not that it was an addiction, but it might have come close as I just love pots. I love Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Navajo pots, some of mine still reside in Arizona, as well as the ones various artists create sometimes with unbelievable glazes.

I have bought them to use as serving pieces for a meal, to hold flowers, or just to sit in the house and look beautiful. But I had enough or so I told myself and I broke the purchasing habit a few years ago. Then last year we saw Walter Ruston's work at his gallery, Westwood, and I really did hanker for buying myself one... or two or... Well I resisted-- at the time.

Because on that visit I hadn't a camera with me, I told the potter that I'd like to do a blog on his lovely gallery but would have to come back. Life tends to get in the way where it comes to such plans.

Finally, on the second day of the new year, we decided to wander around the hills, checking out the backwoods (further back than us even). I love owner built homes sometimes hidden in narrow canyons, along creeks or under big fir and cedar trees. Days like this one, when it's raining and the mist hangs heavy in the air, it pretty much is as good as it gets for me. I think that comes from being a native born Northwesterner.

Farm Boss and I talked about how we had always wanted to build a home like the one above with lots of natural wood and various wings sprouting out different directions. I have books full of the stories and photos of people who have built ones like that. We are iffy about whether that would be a little too much work at our ages; but the yearning for it hasn't lessened even as much as we do like our home and land.

One of the things on my mind this drive was to revisit Westwood Gallery, and I came both with a camera in hand and in the mood to buy. I am very happy with the three pieces I added to our farmhouse. The stoneware bowl is microwave and dishwasher safe which makes its practical for serving meals.

The other two are fired in a pit, not the kind of process that enables them to be flower vases but they sure do look pretty. The first one he calls horsehair for the process which means horsehair is laid into the glaze to cause the dark patterns by reducing the glaze from a clear oxide to a dark pattern.

On our mantle, they join a Navajo wedding vase and a sculpture we bought some years back when in Nogales, Sonora.

I do admire those owner built type homes, would enjoy having more space in this one for a studio; but I also love the feel of my house which is much enhanced by the many works of art we have collected over the years. I am happy for the new additions for 2012. I had mentioned we have two Navajo rugs. The first one we ever bought, when our children were small, is at the top of this blog.

Westwood Gallery

2012-01-03T02:15:00.000-08:00

Most galleries are in tourist locations or the center of downtowns; but some are sprinkled into the forests and wild places for their artist owners to have the inspiration of nature around them as they work and then share that energy with the people who drive up a gravel road to find them. Westwood Gallery is one of the latter.

Potter, Walter Ruston built his own gallery as an adjunct to his home and studio. The gallery is a delight with high ceilings, good lighting, lots of shelves to display his creative stoneware, raku and pit fired pots. I was really taken with the horsehair pots and remembered them from the year before when I thought I'd come back sooner but didn't make it until the second day of a new year.

Perhaps it's because I was born in Oregon, but a day like we had when we revisited Westwood Gallery was absolutely perfect, deep, misty forests, rain falling, owner built homes set back in the hills, and lovely surprises which we received the first time we saw the sign for [Westwood Gallery]. If you live in Oregon or are traveling through, and someday go roaming around the Coast Range, definitely look this one up (driving instructions on the link).

The following photos are from Westwood Gallery.

Below are photos of the exterior of the gallery and water features. This setting is beautiful by itself but the owner has obviously gone out of his way to build a creative environment to showcase his life's work.

The three pots I purchased will have to wait for the next blog to share.

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T01:00:00.000-08:00

The week between Christmas and New Year's is always a favorite time of mine to stop and think about where my life is heading as well as where it's been. For me, that week is normally a quiet time although this year (and for that matter last) not so much. This year, not only did we have a nice trip with friends, but our plumbing has picked the end of December to act up. That took days of figuring out what went wrong as well as a lot of muscle and trips to town for this or that. Call a plumber? No way... I'll let you guess who said which of those statements.

Back to more positive thinking. This has always seemed a good time to think what I want to experience in the year ahead. I also ask myself if I made progress on my previous goals. It's a time to focus on what needs changing and whether previous goals are still active.

For years I used to write goal statements, with steps that might prove helpful, but it's not a rigid thing and in the last couple years, I have not written down anything although I always think about it. One thing I love about life is that no matter what I planned, there are always things that pop up that were unexpected. One thing I hate about life is there are...

2012 will be an interesting year if for no other reason than the people in my country will be choosing the direction they want the nation to go. Do they dislike helping others? They can change that and help... well only the rich anyway. Do they want to dictate other people's moral choices? They can do that based on their own religious views. Do they want wars around the world? Well they may not be able to stop that given both parties lately end up warlike no matter what they say, but one party will give them more wars as they believe in more of the empire concept which they prefer to not call colonizing but instead 'utilizing'. It sounds nicer.

Well there might be one who would get us out of wars overseas. Vote for Ron Paul (who also as a libertarian would dictate his own religious values into laws) and he says he'll end any overseas involvement. A step too far some would believe. He won't be the Republican nominee but might he run a third party race? He says not but who knows. I would naturally be happy if he did as I made my choice for who I'll be supporting for president right after I saw who the other side could possibly run given the make-up of their party at this point.

Anyway I could go on with what the country will be deciding about its direction where no matter who wins, the other side will feel no way, not possible, must have cheated to get that result and start talking revolution. At least that's been how it's been most recently; and maybe it's just human nature, and the first tribe with the first members, who chose a leader, perhaps grumbled later how it was fixed in whatever limited language they had.

For some 2012 will mean the possible end of the earth as we know it (some will think that in the US after the November election also) because the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, and everybody knows how prescient the Mayans were about future events. They did so well with maintaining their own culture against conquest.

For me, I don't concern myself so much with any of that as to think what I want 2012 to hold on a personal level. 2011 was pretty good to me. There were lots of quality family gatherings. I spent time in some wonderful places, saw some beautiful things. Creativity was active and going well in my life with my bigger issue being which things to pursue not whether there is anything. My kids and grandkids are growing and doing well. I feel like even with some personal black holes, overall I focused in on what I wanted in 2011.

That does not mean, where it comes to those areas where I have control, that all is as I want it to be. I hope I never get to where I think I have it all together. I can feel satisfied and still have dreams and goals for something new. I think I am the kind of person who will always have hopes for what I might change or make better in the future. I like knowing change is possible even if I don't change a thing.

Actually it has surprised me how life is at 68. I expected it to be more limited, with me more set in my ways. Although I do believe I could change things now, if I was willing to pay the prices for doing so, I expect that to not be so true with the coming years as aging necessarily does narrow down our options. In my case, however, much of what being 68 would have already narrowed, I didn't/don't want. By this age, I know myself and what means the most to me. I believe that where I am locked in, I made and am making that choice based on other considerations.

In 2010 I had gotten into doing snow digital images. I found a piece of music for a slide show illustrating the feeling I have about the nostalgia I often feel around now. I don't think I could say it better this year; so here it is again as a mix of dreams and reality, the things that still swirl around in my head.

releasing but not forgetting

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY!!!!!

After I had written this blog, I was skimming around in the blog world and came across some suggestions for ways to evaluate our last year and the one to come. It was from the woman who created the Tarot cards I bought this fall. Check out her ideas [Gaian Soul].

Kind of an interesting thing happened as I was reading her blog. She said when she does such an end of year evaluation, she considers the Three of Air to be the right card for the process. I read in the comments that one of the women had drawn that card before she came to read the blog that day.

So, of course, I couldn't resist giving it a try myself. Shuffle, cut, deal one card-- Three of Air. I just looked at it with surprise. I cannot explain why it would come up that way out of 78 cards, but I never have totally gotten how Tarot can work. Coincidence some would say. Okay but what are the odds? If you want to know what the Three of Air means, and how appropriate it is for looking at one's year or toward a future set of goals, check out her link.

Oregon Coast in storm

2011-12-29T01:44:00.000-08:00

Right after Christmas, Farm Boss and I drove to the Oregon Coast to spend a couple of nights sharing a rental house with our long-time friends, Parapluie and her husband Fisherman. I think I have mentioned before that Fisherman and Farm Boss were friends before either she or I came along.

Through the years, we have done a lot of things together and nothing is better than a relaxing couple of days to talk, laugh, cook, eat, enjoy the beach, read, and watch a movie or so. This trip we got lucky with a perfect storm, lots of wind and some heavy rain but not so much of either as to knock out power or make the drive back home difficult-- well anymore than ever where it comes to Oregon. Photos are from the Seal Rock area to north as far as Neskowin.

The rocks below look pretty vacant, other than one resting gull, but enlarge the photo. With binoculars and knowing for what they were looking, everybody but me could see the Black Oystercatchers. On blind faith that a photo would let me see them, I shot the rock formation about where I was told they were supposed to be. When I had the photo, Parapluie pointed out their long legs and red bills. Finally I could begin to pick them out also. Talk about camouflage.

Incidentally Parapluie started a painting of oystercatchers while down there. Before she left, It looked like she had an interesting start on what is obviously a challenging subject

Snow falling on the past

2011-12-26T02:18:00.000-08:00

Putting snow onto my own digital images has become kind of addictive. I made quite a few snow digital paintings last year because in my part of the Pacific Northwest, winter more often looks like the next two photos-- and I am not complaining about that because not only is snow inconvenient, but around here, when it comes, it often melts fast and that means flooding.

For creating more snowing images, I'd like a software program that lets me do it on my computer, not requiring going online, and lets me enlarge it to a full screen. It seems to me it'd be a very meditative thing to do. Although I have seen snow globe sites, they aren't generally with the kind of images I prefer. I'm going to look for that possibility next time I get into Staples. Where it comes to online, Blingee is the best for a free program that easily lets me create the volume of snow I want.

Doing something like this right now is especially good for me as a way to not think. When I do think, my mind is in hyper-drive. I had been working on a new story which will be another historical romance which was requiring research to get the setting and times right. I got into it because I thought I had finished editing my contemporary manuscripts right up until I went back and looked briefly at Desert Inferno, which was already on Kindle, only to find a lot of minor glitches. How the heck did that happen? I had put a lot of time into editing them all and yet it still wasn't as right as I could make it.

So I set aside the new project and went back to re-edit it (which fortunately Kindle allows you to resubmit and they offer the corrected version to those who already bought the story-- I know about that as one of the ones I had bought had that happen). Then rather than let the next one, From Here to There, just go out (which I had also thought was in fine shape), I edited it again too. Now I am onto what will be the third one, Golden Chains, which is the one that actually follows Desert Inferno with one of the characters from that story.

If that all sounds confusing to you, it does to me too. Anyway I think I will have a third one ready to go by the end of the coming week. I also feel very good about From Here to There. Of course, I naturally like all of my stories-- they are my children. For anyone interested in information about them, check out the Rain Trueax link alongside this blog which will take you also to Romance with an Edge or to Amazon to purchase the books.

Whenever I get these all done to where I feel good about them, finally I can go back to the new story. Any wonder I like some time watching a snow globe?

The above snow scene is in Wupatki National Monument in Northern Arizona, a Sinagua site of dwellings north of Flagstaff. I've only been there in good weather which meant this digital required imagining. I think it'd be great to be there when it was snowing-- assuming the roads weren't closed.

Tis the Season

2011-12-24T02:20:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve this year comes with a New Moon. Anybody who pays attention to moon cycles knows that a new moon is for planting-- in this case, how about planting dreams for the new year?

Maybe because I get very little of the white stuff, I love the snowy images I can create online. My favorites are snow with cabins. This particular cabin is one of my dream cabins, mostly a dream that by now I've given up on other than still in my thoughts once in awhile.

Christmas is a time for that-- reminiscing on what was and what we might wish had been. It is both a time of sadness and joy, a time to be grateful for what is but nothing wrong with imagining what might yet be when Christmas rolls around in 2012.

Winter Solstice 2011

2011-12-22T02:34:00.000-08:00

We made it. The longest night and shortest day of the year and we are on our way to more light. Not that it will seem like it for awhile, but we'll know it and that helps during the darkest part of winter. Well actually theoretically we did just get to winter; but most of us have been experiencing it for a few months and we know it even if the calendar doesn't tell us.

Winter Solstice is one of my favorite days not that I celebrate it with any sort of Pagan festival. There are some good ones with lots of candles and fires as we welcome back the sun. Most religious observations for this season, from Hanukkah, Saturnalia, Solstice, and Christmas, do have lights as some part for obvious reasons of darkness in the Northern Hemisphere from where so many of our traditions originated.

I am really not a holiday person-- not any of them. I did decorate the house this year because two grandsons were coming for a day. For me, decorating means a few angels, white candles, snow villages, and those evergreen strings with red berries and pine cones that all look real but don't give an allergic reaction, and no Christmas tree which would hurt our allergies if the real deal and I have had no reason to want a real or artificial one.

The reason I don't generally decorate anymore (and I used to go all out for it) isn't about a war on Christmas or some angst about that holiday. It's just I have other things to do than put up and then down decorations. Truth be told I just don't care that much. Now the decorations I put out this year are pretty subtle, not so much about a religious look at Christmas but more seasonal for the Solstice as well as a few objects that have come to me through various family members over many years. I like them well enough but other than having little ones here, why would I have put them out?

Absolutely I was not going to send out any cards (notice the past tense). Much of my list is now on Facebook; so it's easy to share family events there. I don't believe the Christmas story as in being historic; so I stopped long ago sending religious cards. This used to be a season I would proselytize a bit. Actually, I guess I still do but just something different.

For the second year running, I did draw the line at sending out a Christmas letter even though I used to find them fun to put together as we always have a colorful year at the least. I began to have a negative feeling about writing them as I knew I was only putting in what somebody else might enjoy seeing or doing. I was leaving out the stuff that wasn't so much fun during the year. What was it all about anyway? It's kind of like an illusion of the best parts of a life. Maybe that's what we usually present to others anyway unless they are close to our lives.

The mythology behind this season-- the giving without asking return--certainly has value whether it's oil that never runs out, a spirit who goes around giving gifts to especially children, or a god who came to earth to die for all mankind asking nothing in return, but that's not exactly the way these celebrations usually end up. It becomes instead of gratitude, a time of conspicuous consumption which is required to keep the economy bolstered up. As for giving and asking nothing-- most people at least want gratitude (even gods who sacrifice it all)

I enjoy the giving part of all this, but really like it best when during the year I have seen something and buy it, not holding it for six months, but giving it right then; or we are in a store and I tell the grandkids they can pick out something. To do it for a specific day has never appealed to me even if I go along with it as part of communal expectation.

When I was involved in the church-- any of them, Christmas made more sense to me with Christmas programs or Midnight Masses; but now it seems more a high pressure time with a lot of expectations leading to pain for those where life hasn't dealt with them as they had hoped.

It always seems ironic to me that this season of glitter and gold would be based around a man who taught none of that as the way to live, a man who did have concern for the poor without blaming them, a man who talked of love as mattering more than all the possessions one can accumulate. How did corporations, with the gifts, the wrappings and the cards, end up taking over a day that should be about minimalism? Never mind. I know the answer to that one.

This last photo was pure luck. I was trying to get the colors adjusted on my webcam and happened to look behind me and there was our newest cat (who we are still trying to decide on a name she likes). She is still in hide and run mode; so this was surprising. My cam has a 3 second delay; so I was only hoping she'd still be there by the time it took the photo. I got luckier than that as she reached up with what can only be called a model pose to more closely observe one of the village buildings and snap.

Doing one of my own readings

2011-12-19T02:02:00.000-08:00

Because of writing about the new Tarot deck, Journey through the Gaian Heart, I thought I'd share an example of the first reading I did for myself using this deck. It might give someone an idea of how Tarot can be used.

My most common reading is to look at a situation and ask for help in understanding the past of it, the present, and the future. I do not ask for future predictions but rather insights to where something came from, where it is and where it's going if things stay as they are.

The reading is intended to draw out what I might already know but need encouragement to believe. They are to help me get under the layers I often put up between me and my inner voice; and believe in a god or not, we all hear that inner voice. It is in our thoughts which can sometimes be filled with so much that it's hard for us to focus. The cards help us do that-- focus. I do not believe in cards for fortunetelling and although I have had readers give me such readings, I can't say any came true.

In this case, I asked about an event that had come into my life some years ago, which still impacts me, and about which I have wondered what it meant to my life. I asked what was the past of why it happened; what is the present for what it is bringing to me today; and finally what could be the end result of having gone through it? I do not need to share what the event was as it's not the point.

So to do this type of reading, I set my mind on my purpose, try to still my thinking, ask for results that would be true and helpful for my wisdom and insights, shuffle, cut, and finally lay out three cards. I lay them face down so that I can study them for a moment to see if all three seem to go together. Say one didn't seem right, I'd put it aside, draw another for that place but keep that extra card to read later and see whether it was an added insight or simply out of place. This whole thing is very intuitive which means if you don't trust your inner self, if you are going to argue for some kind of factual measurement, you won't like doing cards.

I should mention here that the creator of this deck has renamed the suits as well as the court cards. Children = Pages; Explorers = Knights; Guardians = Queens; and Elders = Kings . She likewise uses Fire = Wands; Air = Swords; Earth = Pentacles; and Water = Cups. They still represent the same court cards but using imagery that she explains means more to her in doing readings. You know the first tarot cards were playing cards and the use of them goes way way back in man's history. It does require a bit of rethinking for someone used to the way it has been with Rider-Waite; but the book helps with that and I liked the renaming for giving meaning. The book helps with this also.

The first card I turned over was to represent the past at the time this came into my life, representing where I was and possibly the purpose for which it came:

"The Guardian of Fire is someone who quietly knows his own worth. He doesn't have to be the center of attention in order to feel good about himself, although he is sometimes quite naturally in the spotlight. This is someone who attracts others because of a warm heart and natural radiance. Remember when the flame of creativity is shared, all benefit, and no single fire is diminished. Passions shared and combined can create a bonfire big enough to light up the entire sky." *

The Guardian set me back in a way that it would not have had it been the Queen-- although to be honest in all the times I did Tarot, the Queen of Wands never showed up in a reading for me (yes, when you do readings some cards tend to show up a lot and others you might only see if you are doing a reading for someone else).

I think, with a new deck, a person has to put aside any different definitions from the earlier decks to work with a new one-- accepting its meanings as the ones to use. These decks are mostly recreations of a concept that is old but that can be updated for different cultures and generations. Aritsts are free to look at the meaning of a card and interpret it as it suits them.

To me guardians are nurturers and in this case the illustration on the deck appears as though possibly it was an outside force who was stoking that fire, in short encouraging something but for what reason?

When this event came into my life, I did believe it was influenced by an outside force. Is that all that the card was telling me now-- what I thought then? Or is the card saying I was right all along and there was a spiritual force behind what happened and that it had a reason for coming unrelated that was not clear at the time? That is the question the card stirs in me as a person who believes in such possibilities. Someone who didn't believe in those possibilities, that of someone else tweaking our lives or even that there is someone else, would not have such a deck to wonder about.

Okay, so now what about the present card, what has this event brought to my life today? How am I using it?

Three of Fire: "When you get this card, you are on fire with the joy of creativity, sexuality, and self-empowerment. Nothing will hold you back from expressing yourself with great abandonment and rowdiness. This is no time to hide your light under a bushel. Be proud of who you are and what you've accomplished. It's an exciting time for you! Who knows where your passion, creativity, and magic will take you next?" *

Now that one I can say does fit me very well today. If I picked a card out of the deck to say something about who I am today, it could have easily been that one. (well except for this irritating December cold anyway). To me this card is saying that event, not without pain, was part of helping me become the woman I am today, that it was giving me an energy I needed for my creative work. I guess you could say everything does; but that card really hits the mark for how I feel about myself in terms of creativity and really life right now.

Do we welcome such painful events-- those that never really leave us? Not hardly but we can choose to use them or not. We can let them weaken or strengthen us. (And no I don't believe that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger as many things can weaken us but, short of debilitating events, we can use whatever has come to us as best we can. One option is taken away and another opens up or we can sit and stew over what was taken. It is a choice.) This card is indicating I am using it at least for today. I believe that is so. Both of those cards were fire cards.

So the unknown factor in this reading will be how accurate the future card will be as in where this event will put me someday. I obviously cannot answer this question yet.

Nine of Earth: "You're enjoying a time of accomplishment and comfort. You're at the peak of your creative powers, and well-paid for your work. You are connected to your family and community, yet have time alone for creative and spiritual pursuits. It is a time of peace and plenty in your life both internal and external."*

Whether that will prove to be the case, it is a hope I do have for it. I can't say more than that as who can know. If I look back on this in say five or ten years, I might be able to say more about how accurate this card was. For now, it is encouragement that I am going the right direction.

As I saw it, all three cards answered the question that the event was about encouraging my creativity, feeding it and finally (hopefully) rewarding it. I can't put into words what I feel inside that it was saying to me. I can see it though like stairsteps along the way. The fire is bringing me finally a return to the earth which is the groundedness I always believe I want. Those three cards represent creativity, production and result.

Was the purpose the cards indicated what I had wanted that event to be about? Not a chance. Back then, I had a different goal in mind; but maybe in ten years I will see that otherwise also. It does totally fit my life though for the past and present. We'll see about the future.

*From Journey through the Gaian Tarot by Joanna Powell Colbert

Reading the cards

2011-12-17T02:05:00.000-08:00

No, it's not Christmas cards I'm talking about...

One of those times when I was surfing through some of the blogs I read, I came across an interesting one in "Beyond the Fields We Know" as she wrote about a new Tarot deck. I clicked on the link, went to the creator's site, and from there straight to Amazon as I really liked this deck.

When it arrived, I was quite pleased with the earthy designs for the cards as well as the book, "Journey through the Gaian Tarot" by Joanna Powell Colbert. I have several decks and when I have done readings, I have often chosen the most common Rider-Waite as I understand the meanings of the cards best there.

When I got the new deck, it had been months since I'd done any readings. I have liked knowing I could when the mood strikes or when I felt stuck. I don't see Tarot as supernatural or occult. I see it as helping a person get into their own intuition which can sometimes be blocked for assorted reasons. It also is satisfying to do a reading. Dare I say fun?

The Gaian Tarot is mostly aimed at connecting with earth, our intuitive side, rather than divinatory. I especially like how easy this deck is to shuffle as often a new deck takes some breaking in, but it has not. It was ready to work from the get go.

I might actually try a card or reading from it for inspiration occasionally on the new book I am writing. Like where should I go next in terms of a character. I won't use it to determine what will end up happening with this story as I know the general outline. I could use it though in small events and to add some variety of thinking, getting myself out of my own rut and into the way my characters might think. Right now I am just enjoying its beauty.

What brings you energy?

2011-12-15T01:25:00.000-08:00

When I have a dream with some kind of message, I always wonder what it's about. Recently, one night I woke from such a dream.

The basic story was my being in a line of sorts with quite a few people as we were waiting our turn to talk to man sitting at a table. He appeared to be kind of a writer or motivational speaker. What we were to do was come up with a piece of paper on which we had written five things that gave us energy. He would then give us some words of wisdom about what we had said.

By the time I got there, and it seemed to take forever, I told him my first thing which was sleeping in a tent in the woods with a candle for light and a campfire. He looked dismissively at me and said that was a front, not a real thing, that I was putting up a mask of who I really was. Before I could look at the list for whatever else I'd written and see if he'd think more highly of my next choice, I woke up.

Now that was annoying to wake before I got any mystical answers, to have all that time in line and lose the dream before any great words of wisdom came. But I did remember the question, and it made me think later because, when awake, I had a hard time coming up with five such things and that surprised me.

It was easier for me to think about what drains energy than from what I draw it. Writing can be very rewarding, but it takes energy as much as gives it. Yes, there are the times when I write something and feel exhilarated, but equally there are the times it seems to pull it from me. Painting is the same way.

So I was talking about it with Parapluie; and as we discussed it, recognize that there are different kinds of energy. For instance there is physical. Then there is emotional. Probably there is also spiritual if you separate out the emotional from the spiritual anyway.

So it seemed to be a good question to ask here:

Name five things that give you physical energy.

Name five things that give you emotional energy.

For me, the physical is easy-- the right exercise; healthy food; dark, nearly bitter chocolate; light whether that be sunlight or from special light bulbs; and physical touch like massage, hugs and kisses.

Emotionally though what gives me energy, and it gets trickier. For instance I get energy from being at the ocean without a doubt, walking in sand, feeling the wind in my face down there, smelling the salt air-- but the drive down and back on a winding road with some traffic driving too fast-- not so much.

Anyway I'm still thinking about those five things for me emotionally...

Incidentally under that plus and minus category, we got a new cat. I had been wanting a female to replace my little buddy who I lost to old age 2 1/2 years ago. I kind of wanted her to come to me (most of our cats have been strays who were dumped out here); and then in October it appeared she did. She was the cat who was dying by the time she got her, and we had to have her put to sleep.

So on the week-end, I went into the pet store that handles adoptees from a rescue organization (they do such cool work, all of them). I saw the cat. She's very similar in coloring to the one I lost, actually was born about the same time my cat died. She had been adopted two years ago and turned back to the organization in November. She sounded right for us, and we took her home.

Well it's been and up and down since as she's adorable, our two male cats have taken it pretty well, but her--she's had a tough time adjusting to the strange house, the two cats, and us. We had not had this problem before as most of our cats have chosen us since they were strays out there on their own.

Her coming here went through a worrisome phase that maybe she wouldn't like our home and it'd be a bad fit for her. It is looking good now after a tense week-end. She still has a sleeping schedule that is off as in she wants to sleep all day, then romp around the house, running down the hall at full speed, likewise exploring for cubbyholes cupboards that don't close tightly( which means dumping stuff onto the floor), and jumping up onto our bed and rolling around wanting to be petted. I can handle all of that though if she just ends up liking being here. So far it's looking good, but it's been a mix of taking and giving energy.

Desert Inferno

2011-12-13T18:28:00.000-08:00

When we got the first book up on Kindle, I told readers here I'd let them know how to find it. There was a lot of work involved with learning how to do this digital book thing and it was all done by Farm Boss-- sometimes with great frustration. This morning, he figured out the last glitch and tonight we got notice the first one had been published.

There will be more following in varying rates. If you are interested in taking a look at this first one, check in with either Romance with an Edge (a banner alongside here), which is also about the writing process or in the blog that I created for Rain Trueax as a place for readers to find the books as they arrive without turning this site into a big advertisement, which as I have said, I really didn't want to do.

I actually had a blog set but now will put that off until the 15th on a recent dream of mine about energy. I would say this whole process of getting these stories ready has been both about bringing and using energy.

The process has been stimulating enough for me, as I spent six months editing them, that I began a new one. I am really enjoying the writing knowing that I have a way to get the books out with my own covers and stories as I want them to be seen.

DESERT INFERNO

Under the Greenwood Tree

2011-12-11T01:39:00.000-08:00

Possibly because of all the turmoil we are experiencing in the world, maybe because I can, thanks to Netflix, I have been watching a lot of period dramas especially those put out originally by BBC, A&E, or one of the major film studios. Sometimes I watch the same drama by every possible producer just to see the difference in techniques and ideas for bringing the stories to life.

Some stories are such classics like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, or The Scarlett Pimpernel, that you can find them done in different eras with the adjustments that the producers and directors see would be preferred by the modern culture. As best I know it, I have seen every version of all of Jane Austen's stories.

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was recently turned out again by a big studio and I have now seen every version of Jane Eyre that has been made. There are a lot of them. The best, by the way, are those done as miniseries because it's such a complex story to turn out in two hours. A miniseries can take its time and flesh out the nuances, tone and shadows.

There is one of these old classics I have deliberately skipped but might give it a try, or at least the newest version, and that's Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. I have only seen it with Sir Lawrence Olivier. The problem I have with it seems to be a difficult story to want to view or to spend time but maybe my view of it will have changed with my age. I have mentioned before that I don't like tragedies. I see too many of those in real life.

This last week we worked our way through one of those period dramas, a miniseries, George Eliot's Middlemarch which although not exactly upbeat in the characters and events, is certainly an excellent story about how we can create illusions that ruin our lives, how money is both used to control and the lack of good sense regarding it can ruin a life. The characters really are fleshed out and it brings the viewer to that time and how people often do react in good or bad ways.

There is one though that as far as I know has only been done once and it might be my very favorite-- Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree. It is also the only one of these films based on a book written by a male. When I began watching it (rented it through Netflix taking a chance as I didn't know the story), I thought uh oh. This is Thomas Hardy. Will I regret renting it? I not only did not, I happily ordered it to have my own copy for whenever I want to return to Mellstock and more time with Dick Dewy, Reverend Maybold, Farmer Shiner, Fancy Day, and all the delightful secondary characters.

Under the Greenwood Tree is a romance but also a story about motivations, Victorian England where the mores were strict for what was right to do, and about social interactions where people must find their self-worth. It is very well-acted. The side characters are as much fun as the four main protagonists as Fancy must choose between three very different men. Will she make the right choice? Well that's why someone watches such a story, to find out.

I do think there is value in watching these stories of earlier times where often people did wrestle with the same problems we do today. Life has changed a lot but human interactions sometimes not so much.

Compartmentalizing Life II

2011-12-08T01:23:00.000-08:00

Where compartmentalizing my life is particularly useful is with certain kinds of creative work. I realize I use it in many places (family, health, relationships, farm, personal issues, obligations, etc. etc.) but creativity and political awareness are two which illustrate what I mean about it probably best.

I do not spend my life ranting or thinking about politics even though I do write a political blog, Rainy Day Things, where I cover whatever strikes me on the latest issues. I do read a lot about what is going on culturally and politically. Sure, I get mad over this or that, but overall, it's in a compartment that I can leave behind.

So when I read about how deceptive, almost Machiavellian (except it's not clever enough to qualify for that) Newt Gingrich has been about accepting money from the very group he's busy slamming elsewhere, I am more amazed that anybody says they'd vote for him. Seriously, the Republicans want this guy, who has lived very comfortably with being a hypocrite? What the heck is that all about for the voters?

Having grandchildren in schools, it gets me when Gingrich wants to change the work laws to allow the poorest of the poor 9-year olds to serve as janitors in schools to teach them work ethics as though no rich children ever have a problem with work ethics. When do the 9-year olds do their homework, oh never mind.

Or the Occupy movement which, sympathetic though I have been to the problem, has had a title that irked me from the start. Occupy, doesn't that mean take? What are they planning to take and who is going to do the taking? I just read something from the guy who claims credit for the term Occupy as to what he wants from it. Kalle Lasn-- The branding of the occupy movement. Now I understand that many in the Occupy movement don't want to claim anybody speaks for them, he said what his goal is-- “somehow change the power balance and make the world into a much more grass-roots, bottom-up kind of a place rather than the top-down Wall Street mega-corporate-driven system we now have.” That doesn't ring right with me, sounds impractical, and a lot like communism that has failed everywhere it's been tried, but...

I could go nuts thinking about any of this if I went too far with it. So I debate with myself whether I want to write about it. I don't stay in a rage over it-- even though some clearly think I should. I think what I can do; and if the answer is nothing, I put it aside for sometime in the future when there will be something. The ideas and thoughts don't go away, but they are pushed into their own compartment for access when needed but to avoid being so emotionally swamped that I'd lose my ability to function on anything else. It would be easy to have that happen today, to even convince ourselves that our rage was doing something, but I don't believe that it does. It's just unhealthy.

Some of what I think has let me do this, not have to fear learning about these controversial issues, reading both sides of an issue, and avoiding being swallowed by them, is my creative side which has always been important to me, whether it was sculpture, painting, writing, or something else.

I go to the creative work and totally leave behind that compartment of political angst; but the creative work doesn't swallow me either. It's another compartment that I can set aside when an emergency arises, someone needs me. or I need to move out of it which might even be visiting with someone who has zero interest in what I am researching or writing.

Right now I am involved in putting together a new manuscript, something I haven't done for eight or more years. Because it's a romance but based in a real historic period, it has involved researching Oregon in 1865-66. Even there, I compartmentalize. I want to know what happened in a certain geographic zone and that historic point in time which means I don't read about more than that-- unless I need to know a motivation that requires knowing. I am not easily distracted and with researching history boy would that be easy to have happen. I focus on what influenced my characters and stick to it.

Working on this new story has been a prime example of the compartmentalizing as I didn't start writing as my first ideas began to gel. I mentally created characters and events while doing that research mentioned above. It was rather a fun time as I could create a character, take them quite a ways into the story, decide they don't work and literally erase their existence without having written a word down anywhere.

Sometimes my compartmentalizing is quite handy as it means I can go off and spend time with the family, be gone from a creative project for days, let other problems enter my head like how are the grandchildren doing and do I have any ideas from my past that might help with their current problems and all the while the story I had had being everything is seemingly gone except it isn't. It's waiting in that compartment.

There are distractions to this tidy arrangement-- those mentioned emergencies... or something outside my world that enters and doesn't fit in any compartment. I put that under the category of flexibility. That could be the music from Oklahoma, which I watched again recently, and the songs keep popping up in the middle of other things. And worse-- drat, not even my favorite song Oklahoma but one or more of the others, one of the more sticky ones, and it just won't leave me alone. The same thing can happen with a movie where a scene is coming back again and again and has zero to do with my own projects or compartments. It doesn't fit and manages to move through them all.

Oklahoma where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain...

Compartmentalizing life

2011-12-04T01:35:00.000-08:00

It used to seem to me that the ideal of living a life would be that it all be integrated. One part of who we are would neatly flow into another. Probably on some level that happens, but I more often feel, at least for me, it's not how it is. I compartmentalize, and there are likely reasons I learned to do that-- one protective and the other functional.

Now, it's not that I am a different person from one compartment to another; but rather it's different aspects of the same person, different roles, different masks. Masks aren't really pretense. They are more what we use to communicate with others, to connect and depict who we are but not all of who we are.

When people leave a compartment, they will be back to pick it up later. How successful this is will probably indicate how many activities can be ongoing at the apparent same time. Shifting into different modes, enables having more diversity than if struggling to hold onto a compartment that isn't fitting a new location.

I am wondering if I always knew how to do this or simply learned because of my lifestyle which is not only close to nature but with life and death with responsibility for livestock. It has been a lifestyle I have known almost all of my life where I grew up in the country at the edge of wilderness and with parents who also raised livestock. The life I lead today I chose because I had enjoyed it as a child and wanted it for my adult self. I well understood the struggles it would demand.

In our nation it's more unusual to live my lifestyle as most people have found something they prefer-- suburban living where it is a compartment that is more controlled. Your neighbor's home will look rather like yours, their yard will be maintained like yours, and they will likely be of about your economic level. This is not so true of those in the inner city nor those in the country. In those places, compartments are jumbled together. Since I know the most about country living, it's about what I will be writing.

Things go quickly wrong out here. It will all be going along swimmingly, and there is a predator attack changing the whole day or a sick animal. Sometimes those events can be life threatening for not only the animals but us-- and it's in an instant.

There is one other thing that can happen because we live just off a state highway, the kind of thing which I don't write about often because it only happens rarely; but when it does, it changes everything for that time-- it's the unexpected and unpredictable human encounter.

Our neighborhood had one of those last week when after we had gone to sleep we got a call from one of the three nearby homes, this the wife of a pastor. Her husband was not there (he'd just gotten his elk, was driving it home and then had to skin and cut it up); and she was scared because of a threatening incident that came into her driveway. It was the kind of event that was loud, frightening, and involves stranger to stranger. Her husband had told her if she was scared, to call Farm Boss. Which is what she had done.

At first we thought she was just letting us know about the incident for our information; and we started to go back to sleep; but then she called again asking if Farm Boss would come over. He quickly got dressed and drove there about the time the police arrived, who she had also called.

The person who had led to the scare had gone on but the scare remained for her. Scares have to be one of the harder things we face, wherever we live, and most difficult to put into a compartment and keep it locked away while we go on to a different realm. After Farm Boss was assured all was well, learned the details of what had happened, he returned home where I was reading a book until he got back. We talked about it for a bit before we went back to sleep.

It reminded me of many edgy events over the years we have lived in this farm just off the highway, events with strangers, which can come on so fast. Some concern over that, for me, has been alleviated by our having a driveway gate that keeps in the sheep and that house being built over there which now gets a lot of the stray traffic coming to their door not ours.

Yes, troublemakers could still come past our gate. Neighbors all know the code. The gate is not padlocked nor would it be hard to push open, but it is a visible barrier that doesn't make it look simple as it used to appear in the years where I used to even have nightmares about it happening.

One thing we learned from Farm Boss talking to the police-- we have even less protection out here at night than we had. They were out here this time so rapidly because they had had a call only seven miles off. At night, there are only two county officers to answer calls anywhere in our county-- and it's a big county, a mix of rural and town. To top it off, there is only one Oregon State Highway Patrolman for three counties. Basically you are on your own in dealing with a violent episode unless you get lucky with where the officers were when you made the call. I am pretty much okay with that as the price of living out so far; but it doesn't mean it can't get scary.

And then what happens afterward? The scare leaves when the event does? Not so much. If you can't compartmentalize, you keep it within, buried under a lot of daily minutia. Compartmentalizing lets you set it aside and pick it back up if the situation arises again or you must plan for how to change your response. Basically you figure out what you'd do the next time it arises, hoping it won't, but you then set it aside, not living and reliving what happened. That's the tricky part.

In some ways we are compartmentalized in more than our fear reactions. If we get all our news from like-minded sources, if those we talk to always think like we do, we can get to thinking it is the only way. It's easy to do that these days with news especially where we can come to believe it's the same everywhere in the country at large.

Compartmentalizing even happened here with my blogs although it more evolved that way than I planned it as I more or less keep various topics separated. I do that mostly so readers won't go somewhere they have liked and find a hot button topic that upsets them. By compartmentalizing the blogs (art, politics, metaphysics, general), I can write freely without worrying I'll offend someone (who didn't know it could be coming) leaving me free to write whatever is on my mind.

So, to me compartments are tools but can prove to be limiting like a box where we cannot get out of it even when required. The end result can be what is truth? How scared should I be? If I don't get out of my compartment is there any way to know, and yet if I do, it's not comfortable! We can stay with these like-minded groups, in our boxes, and it seems comfortable but it doesn't really tell us how the area over the hill is thinking or living. We just know how it is in our compartment.

Compartmentalizing can be both a limitation or a healthy tool. When we use it well, it enables us to find what is going on around us but without constantly dwelling on it. We simply cannot healthily stay in a rage or a fear all the time and not pay a physical price. For that reason some avoid knowing anything uncomfortable but who does that benefit? Working on our compartmentalizing skills can enable us to both be informed and lead a life without sinking into depression.

The photo on top was one of eight taken by a friend recently as he flew over this farm on his way back from the Coast. The house is hidden in the oak trees at the bottom. The trailer above it is where my mother lived and we haven't yet figured out how to get if off the place (I have a compartment that frets over that). You can see the creek shining with the state highway just below it. The creek mostly cuts our farm off from that road but not from access as we also live on a road even though it is gravel.

What looks like pick-up sticks are irrigation pipes.The dried looking grass at the top right of the photo is the newly leased land we have arranged for the cattle. What I like is how you can see the sheep and cattle grazing (taken before we got the lease land set up. If I'd known my friend was planning to do it, I'd have stepped out to wave ;)

Southern Oregon

2011-12-01T02:14:00.000-08:00

We were fortunate to spend Thanksgiving in Southern Oregon with our children and grandchildren. It's a very lovely area with a strong sense of history. Because for the last month I have been immersing myself in Oregon history (although not this particular region), I really enjoyed being in some of these very old communities and time with the whole family together is always a treat. We did our after Thanksgiving shopping in small, locally owned shops in Jacksonville, a pioneer Oregon town. No parking lot struggles, no chain bargains, but interesting merchandise, like this American made pillow created from a Pendleton blanket and a design not still being made, as well as a relaxing place to have lunch.

Please check this out

2011-11-29T14:08:00.000-08:00

For anyone who values the Internet as it's been, please check this out for more information. Our freedoms are constantly being infringed upon and it's only us staying informed that changes that.

Congress is close to destroying the Internet.

What steps can we take to get economic fairness?

2011-11-26T01:30:00.000-08:00

Following along with the last post, I want to suggest some of the things that I think we can do to get our country back on the right path (and also welcome other ideas from readers who may not see it the same way). Writing about this is hard to keep cultural and not partisan. It's also hard for me not to make everybody mad-- on both sides of the current divide. It's a lot easier to be someone who follows one ideology rather than to think for yourself (right or wrong) and end up making one-third of the people mad every time you express your own ideas).

If you don't live in a bubble, you know that we have a country divided. One-third wants one thing, one-third wants another, and one-third isn't sure what the heck is going on but it better not interfere with their games and television programs.

If you are one of those who care, I present some possible actions you can take. If you have totally given up, say you won't vote, don't donate, don't work for any cause, might I suggest immigrating although I rather doubt you'll find human nature different anywhere else.

I do NOT believe we cannot make our government work. I do NOT believe in revolution. I do NOT want the loudest persons to take over our businesses, public schools or government offices without at least winning the vote. I do believe in government and see much need for there to be a strong one-- but one that is accountable to the people. I DO believe there are things we can do that will get it back for us and do it using our Constitutional rights.

Here's the thing on government and business. Currently both are being painted as the bad guys depending on what pundit you turn on. The evil is government-- give business total power and you will see Utopia reborn (not that it ever existed). The evil is business-- give government rigid controls over it and voila you experience nirvana.

Both are wrong. Business (you can substitute government also) with no controls will concern itself only with gaining more power for itself. Business is not evil. The people on Wall Street are not evil. They are shortsighted and think that what they do to benefit themselves with the help of government regulations being pulled back is the right thing to do. They don't look at the long range and it's up to somebody else to limit their powers.

We just watched 1982's 'The Scarlet Pimpernel,' which, in my opinion, short of reading Baroness Orczy's books, is the gold standard for Scarlet Pimpernels; but whatever version you see, the story is about a culture that has been convinced all the evil is in the wealthy and rich classes of people. Sound familiar? Well our people aren't about to get out the guillotine, character assassination is more our thing. Pretty much, in history, there is always a sector that will encourage mobs to go toward violent solutions as they then will use it as their own chance to gain power. Seriously get that film through Netflix and rewatch it as I imagine most have seen it before. The 1982 version with Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour is a good reminder of what can happen to a culture when it gets out of whack-- also a warning to those who ruthlessly amass power with no concern for others.

In our country, some even got elected into office just to destroy our government's ability to do anything. Some work to block any sort of regulations on business. Business and government are both hero and villain in the same story but depending on from which side someone is viewing it. I think they go together actually for whether they really are good or bad. They are both in need of oversight and require a populace who cares and pays attention.

So anyway, I have some ideas that I think would help us get our situation under our control. They come in no particular order of importance but just as I am thinking of them while at this keyboard.

Be informed or don't donate money to any cause. Do not sign any petition and definitely do not make phone calls if you don't know the full situation. There are a ton of those floating around right now to tell you to call here, petition there, and donate donate donate. Even though the callers doubtless mean well, they are screaming loudly the sky is falling and can you help pay to prop it up. They are told what to say, sometimes paid to say it. But it's up to you to be informed or not go along with it. Find out what the 'others' are saying about it. If you don't, you can do more damage than the 1/3 who are sitting home watching their television. These calls use facts often loosely and are aimed at getting power for their side. It's not that hard today to find out what's fully going on before you run around like a chicken with its head cut off-- and I've seen chickens do that-- it accomplishes nothing.

So, if you are informed, donate but don't worry if it's a lot of money. The thing is the politician, who you have researched and know stands for your causes, he/she needs to have numbers to show power. Those demonstrations or going to hear them speak, they are looked at as significant. Getting together legally to demonstrate is a good thing-- if you know what you want from it. When they have a million followers, that's a big deal. So your $10 is significant. Of course, it puts you on their donor list, hence those calls above and being informed and not signing that petition etc. etc.

Now this isn't just about government. It is also about business that has lost controls thanks to their own manipulations and their own if I can do it, it must be fair actions. So how to put pressure on them? Well watching The Scarlett Pimpernel should be required viewing in banking seminars as it shows you can only push a people so far before something really ugly erupts. That doesn't make it okay to have these revolutions. I think everybody loses; but since business is determined only the dollar decides their actions, there are things citizens can do to put pressure on them short of picketing their homes and trying to shut down businesses on the street and much much short of Madam Guillotine.

Take your money out of big banks and put it in small ones and credit unions. Frankly I favor having it in a mix of two because it is safer if this whole thing does fall apart. Keep some cash on hand too or trade goods. Protect yourselves.

If you do not though likewise put pressure on your Congress to get better regulations in place, the small banks will become large and voila, you are back where you were. So changing banks is a pressure tactic but human beings being human beings, there must be government regulation in place to limit banking behaviors or it's kind of a tiresome process... and if you guillotine them, it's hard to find others who know how to run banks; so think long and hard on that one.

Buy something from a small business on November 26th but keep on doing it past the day set up for it. It might cost a bit more to support small business but is this supposed to get changed with no sacrifice? Reading labels is good but frankly we sent so much of our clothing manufacturing overseas that it's pretty hard to find anything made in the USA-- even jeans.

For those of us who are Democrats, let's take back our party from the establishment. Sadly to say the Republicans already started that process with their insistence on Tea Party orthodoxy; so here we are now with needing to elect people who are hard line lefties to counteract that. Woe unto a moderate in today's political climate.

We get in new leaders by supporting alternative candidates in the primaries for the House and Senate. Yes, your guy has been delivering pork but unless he's also been fighting for progressive causes, dump him. It will take a bit of jaw clenching but give that OWS person a chance and keep doing it as they turn out to be just as greedy once they get there as the one they replaced.

We do NOT need a revolution in this country. We just need to occupy the government we already have. It can be fixed just fine with the right people in office, those who have energy, responsible ideas (in other words if you want to have it, you have to figure out how to pay for it) and can think long-sighted-- something in short supply these days.

If he runs (not a given right now) eventually donate to Obama (give me a break like what's the alternative if you believe in progressive values); but wait a bit on that and let him know what you expect. We fairly often get calls asking us to donate to him right now and we always take time to speak to the caller and tell them why we are holding off.

We tell them all, any political calls asking for money, that our main concern right now is taking back Congress. The Tea Party got in their people and if you don't like what they are doing, get in yours!

Pay attention to the Republican primaries. Those guys are telling you what they will do if elected president. Look at the words they say today, when they want the Tea Party voter, versus what they have been saying and what they will say if they get the nomination.

It is hard for me to believe Republican voters will really choose the totally corrupt and superficially slick talking Gingrich; so I think Romney still appears most likely-- not that he wouldn't sell out his brother to get that office. Just once, why doesn't someone ask him in one of those debates how he'd pay for that new war in Iran which he virtually promised he'd start. Can anybody trust he won't also support, once in office, say a national personhood bill like Mississippi's? And Gingrich, don't get me started on him. I'll save that for Rainy Day Things after Thanksgiving.

Look for candidates who write, can speak, and indicate they understand how trade policies have contributed to this economic disaster, who believe in progressive taxation but not to the point of confiscation. There are tax policies that would punish sending manufacturing overseas and reward having jobs here. Look into what they are-- then support those who would work toward that.

Support candidates who believe in reaffirming our Bill of Rights and not some meaningless sentiment on our currency. For God's sake really, that's what they thought mattered when the document that our Founders gave has been eaten away at in the name of safety-- supposedly anyway *gagging*. You do not give up your rights just because someone convinced you the sky was falling. People who sell those rights for their personal security don't deserve this country nor those who died to preserve it.

Vote for those who know a corporation is not a single voter and doesn't deserve those rights. If it takes a Constitutional Amendment to overthrow that dreadful Supreme Court decision, research what this means, then sign petitions and support that drive. That this business of considering corporations to be the same as any single voter, that it would even be debated is a sign of the nuttiness of our times. The owners of that corporation already are voters, can already donate as individuals. Now, even if they are part of a foreign conglomerate, we are giving them a second personhood?

I believe in a mix of capitalism and socialism and when someone says they can't go together, it means they can't think outside the box. We need people who can think outside the box because it is there that solutions will be found to new problems.

So, despite the naysayers, I do not believe it is too late to get our government back. We are not Egypt who needs to do that with a gun. We are a country with the vote. We won't do it though with the current crew in office. If your own guy is fighting for progressive values, fine, keep him but be sure you know how he votes. Robert Reich (boy do I disagree with him a lot these days but he was right on this) called for an Occupy Democracy.

Oh I know it's showy to sit on sidewalks or camp in parks and get pepper sprayed where you can get on television and eventually sue over it happening. It might seem satisfying to watch people screaming at the police, but it won't turn this country around. There are things that can be done by progressive leaders if we get them in power. The other method will only lead to anarchy (as said above-- watch The Scarlett Pimpernel 1982 version for a good film and a reminder why you don't want anarchy).

You know, it might sound good, but if you really had these occupiers take over Wall Street, would they have any idea how to do it? What would that do to people's savings and investments? Let's get real about this and realize it's not just about making noise but about accomplishing something that works.

If you really divided up what everybody has in this country-- and that includes you-- you'd have less than you currently do, and some of those who got what you worked for and saved to get, they will not appreciate it and quickly lose it. It's how it goes. You see it time and again with the lottery winners. Some use their money wisely. Some go through it like it was water. That's what they call human nature.

Finally, anarchy might be what some want but I got some news for them. There is another side in this country-- one that buys AK47s and believes exactly the opposite things should be done. If you think this cannot descend into out and out civil war, you aren't paying attention to either history or what is going on right now.

Photo of Bannack, Montana, a silver mining camp in the late 1800s and today a ghost town. Sometimes a community just does cease to exist.

The Sky is Falling-- or not-- or yes or....

2011-11-23T01:40:00.000-08:00

Most people, who are interested in the economic situation of our country and who can think beyond 9-9-9, have been reading the recent economic statistics indicating the growth of poverty and extreme wealth with the diminishing of the middle classes.The questions have to be asked-- what can we do about it; and if there is something, should we do it?

What we should also ask-- is this a time of change as earth has seen since its beginning not only in geology but human history? Is it a natural occurrence or is it manipulated; and if manipulated, can we stand up against it?

If you, like us, were pretty major donors to the Democratic party and various Democratic candidates (or if you were on the other side and likewise donating to the causes in which you believed), you are probably getting the same kinds of phone calls we are getting to ask if we can do it again. They always start with some variation of the sky is falling.

Now our personal situation has changed economically since the last time we had an election, but we do plan to donate. I told the caller yesterday that it would not, however, be to the Democratic party. He was then questioning as to why. I said we will be choosing individual candidates and donate directly to them as well as those who have not run before but do have the agenda in which we believe.

He then asked-- don't you like your own senators? Well we like one but not the other. The one we don't like already got in because the Democratic party ran nobody of consequence against him. That could happen with a lot of these offices and we end up with those who won't then work for progressive principles and sometimes, even though they are Democrats, I wonder who the heck they are working for as it doesn't appear to be the causes in which I believe. From us, nobody gets donations this go round who doesn't support those things we think are important like single payer health insurance.

Nobody should blame Obama for not doing what they wanted if they have not worked to get people in the House and Senate who will also support those issues. That is what the Republican party found the Tea Party bunch decided and with that viewpoint, they took over the House. What those Tea Party types want to do is an abomination to me; and it has galvanized me to think we, who believe in progressive causes, have to think outside the box and be supporting those who have come from outside the party structure-- unless our guys/gals inside have track records to show it's more than talk.

If this OWS bunch is to have any longevity, it's what it'll have to do-- run for office and support those in their group who do. Otherwise it's only leading toward obstructionism and anarchy with the kind of logic that leads Republicans to believe tax cuts will yield manna from heaven. I don't see the evidence for either. Take over government or keep having your nose ground into the dirt.

Now there is just a possibility that we cannot turn it around. If you look at earth and human history, change is inherent in it. The longest we can really look back on human history is around 10,000 years-- in earth's time a drop in the proverbial bucket.

So is the sky really falling? If we base our answer on the history of the United States, which only goes back a few hundred years, we would have to admit we have no clue. Have our recent choices for government been sustainable? Are we willing to pay for the things in which we claim to believe? How about actually work for them? Oh, that all sound soooo hard.

Today we have a world population that has just claimed the seven billionth person-- living on a planet that has a hard time supporting that many people (certainly not as the so-called advanced world has been accustomed). Things will not stay as they have been and that's a given if you look at human history.

Because it impacts me the greatest, I am most concerned with what America has experienced and what it faces. People my age were born into a time of affluence-- especially if you look at what human history has known. I, who was born in 1943, was born when people didn't possess so much but rapidly came into that period where almost everybody had more than they ever expected. Old people, who once would have faced either poverty or been forced into their children's home, assuming they had children, could know independence with a pension that provided their basic needs.

I've seen changes in what the average person expected to have in their home like central heating, never mind even imagining central air conditioning. There was no television in the average home when I was born and radio was our main form of entertainment. My parents had known a time when that wasn't there, and on it went with changes coming fast particularly where it comes to communication.

When I was a child, there weren't so many high earning jobs for everyone, but it was not a problem to put a chicken in every pot (my parents remembered times that was not true). In my growing up years, there weren't as many things to buy, but a pretty good education was possible for anybody. Higher education was affordable and not only for the middle class but lower economic classes without big loans or government grants.

During those years, education was being subsidized through government by a culture that believed in education as a way to success not only for the individual but for the society. Trade schools and trade guilds taught young people skills needed for other kinds of jobs.

Frankly I have called it a golden time and it economically it was. Movie stars, sports heroes, and corporate CEOs earned a lot of money, but it wasn't anywhere near the sums they get today but then the dollar wasn't worth the same either-- it was worth a lot more. CEOs were also more respected as the ones who made companies work. Investments were something to be proud of making, not considered part of greed. Now that's not to say everybody could afford to make such but it wasn't considered crooked if someone did. Americans had gone through the Great Depressions, understood the risk of investing but also the benefits.

People were not inherently better back then. Human nature simply is what it is and that means some good guys and some not so good-- in every economic, social and yes, religious group. Right now Wall Street is not made up of all evil people despite what some want to think. It's made up of people where regulations were pulled out and you saw the same thing you see in any unregulated group of people-- those who will take advantage of freedom for their own gain regardless of its morality or concern for the overall good.

When humans can be convinced either that no government is good or that government is the solution to all problems, they are on their way to trouble. In reality some will not cheat others even if they can, and some spend all their time trying to figure out how to cheat others.

With transitions comes the ability to move things around. In the case of our country, government did more than remove regulations, it actually began to encourage the practices that sent jobs overseas. Corporations saw profit as primary over any other standards short of not being arrested.

I have heard a quote saying-- paraphrasing here-- that all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. If you only pay attention to what profits you, the end result is it makes it easier for corruption to occur. If you ignore what is going on with your government, the wrong people will end up running it-- and this is in either current political party in the United States. It's about human nature-- all you have to see is the rise of Newt Gingrich once again to prove it.

Government, which is the collective us, became the bad guy to a lot of people who actually need it to be there. If you think you don't, tell me who regulates the safety of your food when you cannot buy it from the local farmer? Who makes sure the freeways are built to standards that will insure they don't collapse or maintains them as they get old? Who keeps the airways safe? How do you take care of those who would threaten you? Starvation is really okay for 'other' people? How about your own money in a bank-- who keeps it from collapsing or if it does, guarantees your deposits? Who makes sure that an education means an education and not a lot of propaganda with a degree handed out at the end? Who makes sure that another large group of people don't arrive and take over your land such as happened to America's earlier citizens?

The idea that we are rugged individualists and don't need to have a government is rubbish and only bought into by those who prefer simple answers to all problems. Oh how they are selling the power of the rugged individualist today to convince people that they don't need a strong, functioning and honorable government, and they are doing it because it serves an agenda. This isn't just the right wing but part of the left also if you look at what they actually are doing and what is happening. The following article is well worth reading to try and grasp this with charts and directions.

Who rules America-- money and power?

So we have a problem if we believe in an America that has opportunity for everyone. Anybody, who goes further than their own lives and looks at the whole, can obviously see we have a problem. Oh we can live in our bubble for awhile but if we care about our grandchildren, about this country's future, it's apparent that things are changing in a way that doesn't help what has been known as the middle class and is now called the disappearing middle class. The question is what to do about it and that's where the arguments start and range between the extremes of revolution to doing nothing.

Because of our technology being so advanced where it comes to communication (even if what is communicated might be shallower and shallower), the ability to spread disinformation is immense. It can be spread to frighten us or get us to do things that won't help but will have us thinking we are part of the solution-- except those things are getting us exactly where? The powers, that would rule, love to confuse us as it makes their job easier. Get you out there wearing a flag pin and block thinking about the fact that you don't do anything for say returning veterans in terms of health care or jobs, and their obfuscation is successful. Subterfuge and emotional manipulation doesn't just happen on one side.

Since this blog is primarily intended to be about personal and cultural issues, I won't go into partisanship in this (I save that for Rainy Day Things); but I do have some thoughts on what we can do that don't involve blasting the right or left nor does it involve giving up or destroying our existing system. There are a lot of such ideas out there for things we can do.

We are not helpless. We are not necessarily done as a people even if we might have to change some of our ways. There are NOT simple answers and I go nuts when I hear the left and right trying to convince us that there are. BUT we can take back our democracy from the corporate and big money interests (which is actually better for them also as rampant corruption is not actually good for anyone), can make the existing party system cater to our ideas, not us to theirs. We can do that if we are willing to be informed on what is possible and the costs of various actions.

The main thing is to not get caught up in the hyperbole that is rampant on both sides of this. That just has us running around claiming the sky is falling and potentially damaging any chance we can actually take effective action.

Top photo-- sky in Big Hole Valley in Montana. The second-- John Day fossil beds a reminder that earth changes. We have to be adaptive if we don't want to be left behind. Sometimes we welcome change. Sometimes not so much.

Sexiest Man Alive-- or not

2011-11-20T01:17:00.000-08:00

Now I don't buy the magazine, but every year you can't avoid seeing that People has come out with another sexiest man alive issue. Obviously a man cannot stay sexiest for more than one year. It must be a heavy burden to carry.

It seems to me recently that they pick these girly men and sorry if that's sexist, but they do seem like the kind of guys who get their muscles from a gymnasium, not real work. and this time, they went to the bottom of the sexiest pile in my opinion to pick Bradley Cooper who would be on my list of sleaziest men but never sexiest (based just on his looks, not anything I know about his personality). For me, he looks too much like the guy who would hop onto a bar stool next to you, offer to buy a drink and forget to mention he has a wife at home. I can barely stand him in any movie, and he is sexiest of the year?? Seriously!??

Well somebody else had an opinion on it (link below) and I agree with their idea more-- boy though he also is. They aren't going to pick my actual take after I thought a bit about it-- Stellan Skarsgård (son isn't bad either). I am drawn to Stellan even when he's buried under makeup as he was in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. When a man can look sexy even then, that guy is sexy ;) He took the prize though in Mamma Mia-- tough, sensitive, sexy. Oh my! Okay, so I get it, he's older, but does sexiest guy alive have to be young? Frankly young guys can't possibly qualify ;) but if one did, I nominate Stellan's son-- Alexander

63 reasons Bradley Cooper is not sexiest Man Alive

Cattle on leased pasture

2011-11-17T02:50:00.000-08:00

Generally speaking I don't duplicate images here that I posted elsewhere, but I am making an exception with this one which went up in my Gallery earlier. The thing is it is also about the farm.

More than a month ago Farm Boss began working with a neighbor to arrange a lease for using some of their land to extend the range for our cattle. I had and still have some concerns about this but do see the value in doing it. We don't have enough grass to feed our cattle without supplementing with hay which can get costly. Leasing isn't free, but it's cheaper and easier (once the electric lines are up). My concern is mostly along the lines of more predators back there to possibly endanger the calves, but the herd generally stays together at night and should be able to protect their young from cougars. Once they get used to it, they are probably likely to return to the barn or their familiar nighting places when dark comes.

To move them back there has required putting up electric line for the section they will graze (those sections will change), using a solar panel to make the battery work without electricity to the site, and eventually convincing the cattle, who regularly break through our fences, to go through an open gate to the new land. At one point Farm Boss had several of them through when the bull blocked the way and sent them all running back. Now what the heck was that about? Anyway once enough went through, the rest followed and they were in a cow's version of heaven-- new ground and adventure.

When I went back to take photos of them, the lighting was off which meant the photos didn't come out sharp... but they did come out like a pointillism painting which I liked and inspired me to do a digital of the cows and their enjoyment. So a lucky accident in the photo led to a digital sketch which might lead to an oil painting when I get a break in the other things I am doing.

None of which was what I should have been doing that morning. Sometimes I am sooo easily distracted.

Audio books-- Joseph Campbell

2011-11-14T01:44:00.000-08:00

When we are on road trips, we often take audio books with us. Some are simply for pleasure. Others about subjects in which we have a particular interest. On the last trip we made over to Montana and Eastern Oregon, we took Man and Myth-- lectures by Joseph Campbell.

Joseph Campbell was a lecturer fascinated by cultures and mythology with an ability to link up stories with larger truths. His work has influenced a lot of writers and film makers because he understood not only the mythologies but their value to us. I had first read his books many years back as a way to understand deeper themes in writing, the kinds of things that make books into something more than pleasure while also adding to our understanding of life and ourselves.

Campbell wrote many many books and they are much encouraged for those who want to write. An example is his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, where he lays out the adventure of the hero, which is, after all, the basis of all good fiction and lasting mythologies. There is the call to adventure, the departure into the adventure with the first threshold; then the initiation which requires a set of trials and finally the return which is the satisfactory ending where hopefully the reader as well as the adventurer has learned something valuable.

Campbell believed that with our modern religiosity (and remember he was writing and speaking of all this some years back as he died in 1987) demanding that Biblical stories must be taken historically and factually, can lead you to throw out the whole story without considering the symbolic importance. In short the demand for historicity can cause the loss of why the story was there.

Religious mythologies have broader themes which apply to our life cycles and experiences. This was his take on many stories such as those of Jesus with the virgin birth and the resurrected king, myths that are in many cultures. Now why would that be? Possibly because they offer wisdom for us today.

I decided rather than just write about the fact that I take notes when listening to such audios, I'd share examples (a bit chaotic though they might seem) from these five discs-- Man and Myth, Mythic Living, Society and Symbol, The Necessity of Rites, and Personal Myths. These notes are a flavor, a teaser, not the essence.

********************************

from my notes:
The function of mythology is to give images for roles we play. They form the basis through ritual of transcending self and ego to play the necessary human role we all must. James Joyce is the ideal example as he turned his mind to unknown art.

Symbols of religion are binding when they are not interpreted as symbols but instead taken as facts. In short the symbols can become negative and limiting instead of how they were intended which is to be enriching our understanding.

Jung explored what it means to live with a myth or without and then sought to find his own myth. He decided he could find his own myth by going back in time to when he was a child and asking-- what did I love to do? Jung found for himself that was building with stones which he then did in building his own structures.

Mazlo's theories on the values for which people live like survival, security, prestige, self development, they all disappear when there is a big mythological dream. The jump from what seems prosaic or ordinary to the mythological dream can be called a mystical moment.

Yeats's vision was of two orders of masks. We are born animal, without definition; then comes the model the mask that life puts on the baby-- Primary Mask. We go through life and take on new masks in series.

We can see the cycles of our lives in the moon's with its 28-day cycle. It begins in darkness. With growing light comes growing consciousness. By the eighth night, light begins to dominate awakening of own possibilities. There is then a struggle with light versus darkness for which has most weight. The primary mask appears to be the darkness. The emergence of the individual is the light. Some societies block this emergence and will wipe out people who teach or speak of such.

An open society encourages what Campbell referred to as the antithetical mask, the ability to see the complexities of life, the opposing aspects to all of living, the encouragement of whole leading to fulfillment. Some societies oppose this which gives them control but also limits creativity and an ability to move beyond boxes.

Still using moon cycles as the example, it, with the full moon where light dominates, represents by the fifteenth night, the achievement of fulfillment at what is about our thirty-fifth year.

With the moon, what comes next is increasing darkness with the twenty-second night. In humans, this means you have done your deed. Now what should happen then is actually no less important than the growing of light was as the shadow gains power. You are now moving from solar to lunar world.

Concern of youth is to bring vehicle to fulfillment so that it can be best carrier of consciousness then shift from vehicle to identifying with consciousness. The body can go. Dante illustrates this with his Divine Comedy.

To many people, mythology is other people’s religion. Look instead at your own religion as a mythology. Religion is misunderstood mythology. It is misunderstanding symbols which refer to spiritual symbols as though they refer to facts. If you throw away the symbols because they are not facts, you lose something. All basic mythological symbols refer from all mankind from primary imagination and big dream system not facts. But they use imagery of human life to do this. Images of myth come from the psyche and are reflected through the world through projection. We see this in dream motifs.

Difference between mystic and lunatic is the lunatic has fallen into water where it cannot swim while the mystic swims there with delight-- and can leave when he/she chooses.

Mythological shows you your own face. Art hosts mirror up to nature.

Disengage then from the world. Experience the imagery to engage in society’s work and then disengage.

Orient-Occident example: Isis seated on throne with two students in painting with Hermes at her right, the author of many mystical writings of first century. At her left hand is Moses. Both have learned from Isis.

All imagery that came to Europe, the same symbols were found in Hermetic writings. Spiritual references all come together in symbolisms. Facts or psychological spiritual realization. Facts will bind and limit you.

Cultivating the antithetical mask (in other words being able to deal with opposing conflicting views that collide) conflicted with the Christian tradition.

An example: marriage was a social arrangement that became sacramentalized as though it was a spiritual arrangement. Love became a danger. Rome authoritarian mask. Amore the antithetical mask.

On love—the eyes are scouts of the heart. They go forth to find an image which they can recommend to the heart. If it is a gentle heart, not moved by lust, love will be awakened. Amore is the awakening, the symbol of awakening.

When Arthur, with his Round Table, sent his knights out the search for the Holy Grail, it was part of a Round Table tradition of having an adventure before the meal. The knights then went out to find the Holy Grail as a quest, but they didn't go in a group. They went individually. They went where it was darkest and with no path. If you went by someone else's path, it would be their way, not yours. The antithetical mask is your own path.

From James Joyce the greatest novelist—theory of aesthetics. Proper and improper art. Proper art that is serving a function that is proper to art. Improper serves some other service. Improper art is kinetic. Arouses desire or loathing. Art exciting desire Joyce terms pornography (not our meaning of pornographic). Didactic inspires loathing. And what you should not like. Novels in the service of sociology are didactic.

Symbols of mythology are of the spirit reflected through matter. Leading to the enchantment of the heart. A rhythmical quality of organization that echoes something that awakens beyond the mere pain or reference. It is a vehicle to mystery of the human organism.

Pity and terror are tragic emotions. Comic emotions are joy. Pity the emotion that arrests the mind. Before whatever cannot be changed and ignites it with the human suffering. Terror is before whatever and ignites it with the secret cause. Secret cause is what is grave and constant. Mortality is first possibility. Shadow of moon lives within it.

Static means you cannot go out an reform. Desire and loathing and fear.

Art is affirmative. The object and brings out the radiance.

The word kills. It is the job of the intellectual to see and name. Seeing deviations. Describe the faults. Perfections are not loveable. If you live in the world, you have to accept the faults. Humanity. Sends accurate word with love-- Ironic

We project what the person must be not what they are.

Artist must say yea to life to all of it. Where he says nay, he’s lost his humanity.

A symbol is an energy releasing image.

Are symbols imprinted or inherent?

Adult pattern of responsibility—Initiation rites enter this Ancestral images. First great crisis. Old age diminishing of powers, losing capacity. Images and symbols are there to help the individual cross over

11/11/11

2011-11-11T01:11:00.000-08:00

Dates with matching numbers always seem as though they should have something special about them. Yes, I know this one is Veterans Day; but if I write about that, it would go political and relate how Senator DeMint just voted to block our veterans receiving special help in getting jobs. I mean what do we owe them anyway? (that was satire) Just keep in mind DeMint is one of the party that is supposed to be the patriotic one... Patriotic to what though is becoming more and more obvious and it's not our returning soldiers who have higher unemployment rates than the average.

Okay, leaving behind politics, which we know I don't write about here, next year some are expecting a 12/21/12 to be the end of the world. I guess they didn't favor 12/12/12 because it's not at the Solstice. Anyway I felt it'd be fun to write about 11/11/11 and if I was lucky find something significant... except I couldn't come up with any promised catastrophes or blessings.

There was a suggestion that we use it to meditate on peace and making our world move in that direction. When that comes to mind, it's hard to not think of Penn State and the ignoring by powerful people of multiple molestations and rapes of children. The assaults were bad enough, but what the powerful did about it, that was unbelievable to most of us. What does that say about our culture? Was this all about dollars? About maintaining power positions? About the nearly godlike attitude some have toward sports. Reading the story I found it impossible to believe it and yet know it happens over and over. I guess it would be a good time to meditate or for those who believe in prayer to ask for a better world.

If I was a numerologist, I'd consider 11 to be one of those numbers you cannot break down into something else. It's a life path number, considered a master number i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 22, 33, 44, etc. You get master numbers when you put together all your numbers and cannot break them down farther... except, of course, you could get 2 out of 11 but never mind that. It's not about logic but rather tradition, I suppose.

Now since 11 isn't my number (7 always has been even before numerology came along to tell me it was), I wasn't too aware of any significance to 11 other than it looks cool to write 11/11/11. I actually had a book on numerology but unfortunately for this exercise, I had traded it into the bookstore as I didn't end up feeling it covered anything of value. In short I didn't take it too seriously although when I decided to do a search on this topic, I found what a life path 7 means and that seemed pretty close to me-- except the bad stuff, of course ;). [Life path for 7]

So will 11/11/11 be significant? Who knows. Most likely not... but it is fun to speculate a bit, don't you think. That is if you don't start counting up numbers to plan anything you do or worry that one will mean the end of the world for some undefined reason. Well actually one will but not because it likely fit a numerological profile... probably. Hey, I am a libra, we don't deal in absolutes but in balance-- of course, our definition of balance. *s*

Hmmm when I went to put a label on this one, I realized I need a new one-- speculation...

The maple leaves are from two small maples that we bought several years back for down toward the creek from the house. Since red leaves aren't natural for here, we figured we could add them. So far they've done quite well even though they are beneath the big oaks. They will never grow big enough to challenge them for space.

Autumn colors

2011-11-08T01:50:00.000-08:00

It's November 8th-- be sure you are voting.

My part of the Pacific Northwest had a pretty start to autumn this year with more color than some of the years where we've had more rain.

We're not a showy area with the bright reds like the mountains or New England but the golds and orange, frosting many of our trees, help make up for that.

Our Herefords add to the autumn color. Of course, they do it year round.

Naturally the brilliant color appeals to me as does that I finally can start having fires in the evening. Winter fires in the fireplace are part of what helps me get through a dark season. There is not much more soothing than watching a fire and having a warm spot to sit and warm your back.

eReaders

2011-11-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

When people discuss the eReaders, for some the issue is their familiarity and liking of paper. They have grown up with books being readily available and they are resistant to losing that sensory experience and switching to an electronic media.

For me, this was never a problem. I had been turned off on the weight of reading hardback books; so a plus for me was the lightweight of the Kindle. I got more than one migraine later from reading a heavy book in bed, holding it up, of course, and finding it irritated my neck later. I don't live near a library for borrowing books and had a bookshelf (okay 5 of them) full of books and overflowing. Electronic media means a new way to read without acquiring more 'stuff'.

What I bought to start was both a Nook (for color and internet access) and a Kindle. Very quickly I discovered I favored the Kindle for book reading and color didn't matter for most of what I was buying. I select my books by using my computer (where I do see color), reading the reviews, and then read them later on the Kindle where the text is easy on the eyes, its lightweight is perfect, and I don't look at the cover again anyway. The Nook has the advantage of being lit which is good at night if you are reading in bed with a partner wanting to sleep but otherwise being lit doesn't matter.

Either one is great for exercising with the Nordic Track or if someone had a treadmill. I had been using paperback books but they weren't as easy to read or turn pages. We already had a clipboard on the bar which made it quite easy to use the Kindle or Nook for my (mostly daily) time with it.

The one place that so far I am not thinking I will be using either one is research where I either want to print off things from the Internet or buy books that I can highlight and bookmark. I know I could do that with the Kindle but have this feeling scanning with it would not be as easy as it is with a paper book. Lately I am researching 1865 or thereabouts Oregon and buying the books seems the right answer as I'd save no money with getting them from Kindle and, more over when the project is finished, I couldn't resell them.

Kindle stores the books easily, makes it easy to access what I've been reading or add another. In fact getting new books is too easy. I think the whole thing can be addictive especially since Amazon sends me out emails suggesting I might like this or that book. I don't know if it's a regular event but I got one such email giving me 100 titles for a set span of them at sale prices under $4. Usually I check Kindle and Nook to see if there is a price difference and often the type of books for which I am looking are a bit cheaper with Kindle.

So far if I wanted to read a bestseller, I'd probably still buy the book from say Costco where the price is reduced (making it around the same price) and I could later sell the book at one of my favorite used book outlets. If I am buying a paperback, I won't pay more than I could get it used. Mostly the Kindle prices on the books, not by best selling authors, are cheaper than my used store.

This whole thing is a totally addictive awareness as in it used to be I'd see a book online and think I'd like it but I'd generally have to wait to purchase it. Now I get this heady sense of power that I can have them instantly. One click and it's mine. I need to make a budget.

I have not yet tried library borrowing; but from what I am told one library (where I'd have to pay a yearly fee to join) is only letting readers have a book for a week. That could be a drawback. I know the publishing houses didn't like them being in libraries at all, and wanted to set it up with so many rentals and then their copy disappears. That hardly seems fair as libraries have always been a cheaper way for a lot of people to access books.

I have made some mistakes in what I have bought, but it's easy to delete them as despite reviews and a few sample pages, I do think I get a better sense of whether I'd like a book when I am scanning it in a bookstore. I have learned you want a Table of Contents as that enables easily going here or there in a hurry.

Whichever story you are reading (and I might have two or three going at the same time), when you click on that book, it'll take you instantly to where you were. On mine changing where that is through a different chapter is done by hitting Menu and a Go To option which is where the Table of Contents is useful. I also now have collections set up which will make it easier to find things in the future and keep the collection from being unwieldy.

The Nook, for me, was less intuitive and takes more to figure out how to use it but the Kindle (mine is the mid range without the advertising banner and without color), I could pick it all up without reading the tutorial, which does come with it.

The advantage of the Nook will come later when its battery can be replaced locally but the Kindle will require sending it in (as best I understand it). I have no idea how long a battery will keep being easily recharged.

As things stand, when we put up my own books, I think they will be in both Kindle and Nook and not sure about other places. Each place you submit them requires a different format. Google eReaders can (as I understand it) access off either the Kindle or the Nook with an app.

Using eReaders have more confusing aspects to publishing your own work; but for reading other people's, I am very happy with the service. It is also going to make my bookshelves happy as they were overflowing with books I didn't want to sell. Yes, I have long been a book addict-- I've just now added a new way to be addicted.

You're kidding-- It's November already?

2011-11-02T01:47:00.000-07:00

I can scarcely believe how fast time seems to be going. For a reason, for which I don't have the answer, I am enjoying this fall. That just doesn't generally happen for me. I usually look at this as the beginning of the end with shorter days and colder air. It means winter is coming fast and something to get through to make it back to summer. This fall has been different and maybe some is where I moved my computer giving me more light and a view of the oak leaves as they are turning and falling.

As usual where it comes to planning my workday (as in forget my own plans), this week I looked outside and saw sheep in the main pasture which is not where sheep are supposed to be. Because I could see how they got out and who was responsible, I called the appropriate party at work and told him I was not happy; then went out and tried to get them back by myself.

Now the sheep know when they see me that they are not supposed to be out there, but they also know there is more fresh grass and clover out there. Some persuading is needed. The sheep and possibly even neighbors got to hear my mean voice.

As I got them in, I realized one of the cows was going berserk, running back and forth and bellowing. She's a relatively young mother and she clearly had a problem that her calf was not where she wanted him to be. Unfortunately I could also hear him calling to her and knew that meant he was on the wrong side of a fence. (Is there anything in astrology making this a time conducive to animal breakouts?)

So after I had gotten most of the sheep back inside, I decided to see what I could do about the calf issue. He was lying on the other side of the fence, seemed not at all upset with where he was but also calling to his mama now and then enough to upset her. She watched as I went into the wooded area where he was and seemed to feel she was leaving it up to me to fix the problem-- probably assumed it was either my fault or some humans.

Fortunately he was a pretty mild mannered calf and walked his way down the fence-line, past a back gate and then when I got the gate open, he went through it. I was at this point, having seen how mama had been nearly hysterical acting, feeling I deserved to see how they met. I was expecting a Gone with the Wind moment of deep emotion (might have been reading too many romances).

He meandered across the field to a mother who had turned her back on him and seemed oblivious now that she ever had a problem. When he finally reached her, the closest description I can come to her reaction was-- oh, it's you. There were no apologies, no thanks, no drama. Cows, who can explain them. Not me and I've had many years to get some idea. Farm Boss got some of the drama from me (which he also didn't take nearly seriously enough) when he made a hurried trip home and fixed the fences where each errant critter had gone through.

Otherwise, I am blowing leaves about every other day. With seven huge oaks around this house, it's a full-time task for about a month. When I look up right now, it appears all the leaves are still up there.

This makes about six months since I got started editing on the manuscripts. The ten contemporary romances are as done as I can make them. I have also done two of the historic romances but do not plan to put them online to start. The business of actually putting the contemporaries onto Kindle and Nook will be Farm Boss's problem and he's learning. There is a lot to it; so I haven't been pushing him on his end. He's had a busy farm season with barn cleaning lately and selling wool last week. I want us to get it right when we do it.

The big thing I am asking myself is-- when these are done and that's not far off now with one historical left to do, what will I do with myself? It's been a lot of my life recently-- living with these characters and their problems. I do though have an idea for a new story; so maybe that will come next.

I might add I am loving the Kindle and actually like it more than the Nook to this point. I especially like how Amazon has so many reviews online to help make a decision on whether to buy a book. The only drawback to it so far is that it's nearly addictive and way too easy to buy more than I should. Amazon is tricky with sending out offers sometimes with 100 books at reduced rates. Definitely a potential addiction!

Caregiver Village

2011-10-31T01:13:00.000-07:00

One of the problems that people in my age group often face is helping both their grown children (especially in today's economic situation) and at the same time their aging parents. There is a feeling of being sandwiched between those needs. Those years came from me some time back and now our four parents have been long dead with our children established well in their own lives. I do remember how it was though.

I got an email (actually a couple from one determined lady) about this online site where help for caregivers is to be found. If you are in that situation, you might give it a look to see if it might help you.

Caregiver Village

If we lived in a different culture, one that saw the community as a whole, where we all have needs and can help each other, this kind of thing would be less of a problem. We live though in a time of strained resources where one of our political parties believes it's every man for himself. At the same time, we live in a world where some see Jesus as the only answer to any physical problems and where others only worry about what's in it for them. It's not an easy time for the weak.

So, if you are one of those in a caregiving situation, check out the site to see if its resources can help you.

Protecting the rancher life

2011-10-28T01:54:00.000-07:00

As long as I was writing about ranching and wolves, I might as well mention another concern of mine which I probably have written about before. Where it comes to Republican proposals, there is one with which I agree-- end the estate tax. I consider it unfair, double taxation and especially unfair to small business owners and ranchers. If there must be one at all, start it at a value of over $10,000,000 to keep the small ranches and businesses still possible for the family to continue operating.

I know the reason people think there should be an estate tax-- level out wealth, "social engineering through tax codes". Stop creation of a permanent wealth class. Well, I say do that through income tax laws that are fair and have purpose to encourage investment. Personally, I do not like it for estates, not even that of say a Bill Gates. He earned his money and his family should be able to inherit it if he so desires which he has said he would not as he'd rather they didn't get so much wealth that way. We'll see if he feels that way when he gets to old age and death planning that is more immediate.

What I don't like about estate taxes particularly applies to small ranches and businesses. So say I have a couple of thousand acres of Eastern Oregon land (yes, that's a small ranch over there) where my family has always raised cattle (something I could only wish to have had).

In my scenario, I would like my son or granddaughter to be able to keep doing it. How do I manage that? It can be helped by turning it into a corporation years ahead of my death, but that necessitates my losing control, and sometimes isn't possible or done soon enough. Because a lot of the value of a ranch is the raw land, and doesn't even indicate its value for ranching, the estate taxes can be so high that the family cannot continue working that land.

So who gets it, who takes it out of family operations? Government helped them do it but it's the financial types, those with a lot of wealth, who can then buy those places and might hire that rancher's kids to work the land they once owned-- turning them into sharecroppers basically.

In my view, estate taxes are more a way to keep wealth from growing in the hands of the middle than it is to keep it from the Donald Trumps of the world. It makes it possible for people like Ted Turner to acquire more and more big ranches and who knows what the end of that will be. The really rich have their methods and enough money to protect their estates anyway. Small ranches aren't big enough to do that, and this is part of why more and more land is being consolidated in fewer hands.

Sometimes the land is put into conservancy which has its values (except for those who love the ranch lifestyle and want to live it, of course) but the thing is where does that leave Americans, at least those who do eat lamb and beef? Basically it will leave them buying it all from feedlot productions which turn animals from beings into things. It necessitates pumping them full of antibiotics to keep them alive in unhealthy conditions and hormones to cause them to grow faster while they live a miserable existence until fat enough for Americans to be satisfied. There has to be a price in health for this callousness toward the animals even for those who don't give a damn about ranchers who used to be highly respected and too often today are not seen as of value with Americans living further and further from food production with no clue how any of it works out in reality.

I admit I love cattle. I love their beauty, how they care for each other, and enjoy seeing them have a good life. I am drawn to seeing them wherever I go and enjoy when it looks like a nice place and breaks my heart when it's a feedlot. In the case of the producing cows, on our small ranch, they live out their lives, even if they stop having calves.

I don't like the way Americans don't understand the value of eating grassfed beef, which is as good for health as salmon. Understanding the benefit of grassfed and naturally grown beef means healthier and better for the animals from birth to death. Whoever convinced us to eat the fat stuff sold in stores has not done our health or that of the herds any good. [ConAgra and Monsanto, et.al.,]

When I am on the road somewhere, I always notice whether the rancher is responsible for his land and animals (which means understands raising of grass comes before anything else-- without a healthy habitat, you aren't in business long). You can tell where one ranch begins and another ends by quality of fencing and how tall the grass is. I admire those (and there are plenty of them in agriculture) who show responsibility in both. Ranchers who treat their land well are looking to the future and as good for the country as letting the land lay idle. Livestock raising on ranches does not have to be bad for the environment even if there are certainly examples where it has been.

Top photo taken recently in Montana, second one on our way home along the Middle Fork of the John Day River in Eastern Oregon, and third one of our own cattle.

Wolves vs. Ranchers

2011-10-25T02:19:00.000-07:00

As a livestock producer, a small rancher, I am always interested in anything to do with ranching and raising cattle. I also follow with interest any stories on predators moving into regions where ranches have been established. I go ballistic with those who see no value in ranching, most especially if they are vegans which means they already want to see ranching ended as cruel and inhumane but see that how a wolf kills is not.

Vegan/vegetarians come in various packages; so I know not all feel that everybody should give up meat; but for others, it's exactly how they see it as almost a religious cause. So let the wolves have it all-- including people's pets. Exactly how that fits with caring for living animals is a bit interesting but logic isn't a factor for a lot of things where it comes to human behavior.

First of all if everybody switched to not eating beef, lamb, chicken or fish, any of those animals living on farms or ranches would have to be killed, I guess. No problem to the vegetarian type but would be a little hard on the animals dying to satisfy a politically correct viewpoint about meat.

However, this blog really is about the predator versus the rancher and the animals the rancher is protecting. It was triggered by reading a defense of the cattlemen which I liked a lot as it made sense (of course, since I am one). The issue of moving wolves into the places people live, protecting predator species that can kill big prey (guess what we are without a weapon) has become personal to me where I raise livestock, love my animals, and if wolves can move into NE Oregon, they can move into my backyard.

If grizzlies can grow in numbers due to being protected, they likewise will someday be up my gravel road. Right now we only have to deal with coyotes (yes they can kill calves and do kill sheep), cougar (so far they have stayed off our fenced property but it's not like our fences could keep them out; so it's all about habit), and finally bears which, like the cougar, kill deer up our road but haven't yet our cattle. We rarely see deer any more by our house and that's mainly due to increasing cougar population which also gets the wild turkeys when possible. I mean, come on, predators have to eat and we can't blame them for that.

The thing is as city folks grow in numbers or move into rural areas in little estates, they like the idea of wolves running wild. They think it's needed environmentally and they do not give a damn about a cow being torn apart and eaten while still alive because that's the fault of the men and women who raise those cattle.

This is one of those issues that makes it hard for me to stay sweet and nice in my response; and so I won't try but as articles come up on the subject and the various ideas being presented to deal with the growing problem for cattlemen, which is very much an environmental and political issue, I'll be posting them here under farm and cultural issues. Read it please to be informed.

Wolves vs. Cattle Rancher's Loss

Don't get me wrong on the wolves. I love seeing them when I am in wilderness areas, have spent hours sitting on a ridge to watch them across a valley on a distant hill. It is a thrill to hear them sing, a thrill I can't begin to describe, but they are predators who have to kill to live. They will kill whatever is slower and weaker than they are. They do not kill mercifully because they do not have to. They will even kill their own kind to strengthen their position in a pack or a region.

Men pushed them out of populated areas for a reason. I will fight to keep them in wilderness areas; but when they come down where it's populated, when someone says a cow isn't important, but the wolves are, I will argue my viewpoint on that also.

Yada yada yada I know the spiel how nature needs them. No, nature needs a balance of predators and prey. There are many ways to attain that. When it's done by nature itself, it's not idyllic nor is it often merciful. It's a tough issue for Americans to be thinking through because who we vote for will be deciding a lot of this and the sad part is where I value the environment, a lot of those who would slay all the wolves, do not. So how we work it out, with nobody getting all they might want, isn't easy by any means.

Portrait Photography

2011-10-22T01:49:00.000-07:00

For all the difficulty of taking the ideal landscape photo, even harder, in my opinion, is the really good portrait-- especially one that doesn't look like it came from a studio. At least in my experience, such portraits require the right lighting, angles, background, expression, and often come from pure luck.

The problem is most people have a hard time with even wanting their photo taken and instantly freeze up for the camera or put on a goofy expression that is nothing like their real face. Some believe because they take poor photos that they aren't attractive which is not true. Being photogenic does not relate to how a person appears to others. You can have beautiful people who take terrible photos and people who in person seem rather blah but bloom through the camera lens.

When in Mitchell, we watched a DVD on National Geographic photographers, of which many do specialize in getting interesting photos of people of all ages and from diverse cultures. When you study their results a bit, you notice two things. One, they take a LOT of photos to get one. Two, the lighting they choose is also best for landscapes, strong light with equally strong highlighting shadows.

If you have ever seen a set up for celeb photos by the gifted portrait photographer, Annie Liebovitz, there are often lights and reflectors to get that 'natural' look. Because I really like her work for its creative aspects, I bought the book-- Annie Leibovitz A Photographer's Life 1990-2005. It was very expensive but worth it for me as it's full of mostly black and white portraits of ordinary people as well as celebrities where light and dark are used very excitingly even in real natural settings. The photos of her lover, Susan Sontag, were especially poignant as Susan was dying.

So trying to get good portrait photos, of others as well as set up conditions to get interesting self-portraits or photos of myself, is always a challenge. I can't really explain why I do it other than it's out there like climbing a mountain would be for someone else.

Once in awhile something comes along that leads to a better photo than all the rest and such a moment came in the Painted Hills. The lighting had been fantastic for landscapes with the kind of shadows I always like. The time, around 2 PM would not be good during the summer but fall is a different ballgame.

We were back from our hike; and as I opened the pickup's back door to put the camera inside, I noticed my reflection in the glass. Wow, I really liked it. Kind of a mythic look-- Native American, maybe allegorical, kind of like me and not as it showed the lines, my age, stretched my face a bit but mostly had the angles of light I always want.

So I took one shot which cut off half my face. Then I asked Farm Boss to give it a try which at least got my whole face. Interesting photo but it made me wonder if there was some way to get a direct shot that might capture that lighting.

He took a series of photos from the driver's seat to where I stood outside the passenger side with the high desert view behind me. Some had expressions I didn't like quite so well (like everybody else, I tend to get the same smile on all my photos) but the skin tones and shadows were the most realistic I think I've ever gotten.

Farm Boss thought the results might have been enhanced by reflections of the gold truck door giving me some of what Liebovitz gets with her reflectors. Some was just that autumn light as I saw some of the same color in the top photo here where we had hiked to the end of the trail, a woman, who was eating lunch out there, spontaneously asked if we'd like her to take a photo of the two of us together. I am not sure why but every so often we have someone offer that. A random kindness, I think.

I get no creative credit for the idea of that photo or the fact that it worked so well with the pose which wasn't actually chosen with Farm Boss standing above me on the rim of the trail, and even with us squinting into the sun. I like it as well or better than any joint photo we have had taken.

In the one above (that led to all the rest) when I was looking at the image later, I saw something I hadn't seen when I snapped the photo. Look at it carefully and you see what appears to almost be a ghostlike image and a moon lending it all a mythic quality.

The reality of the image is half the face of a woman, trees reflected against a sky but we had to think a bit about from where that almost Olmec mask had come and decided it was also the clouds reflected against the seat back. The moon is a sun reflection. I mean the whole photo is reflection but the lucky combination created what you'd usually have to create with paints. It doesn't often happen in a photo unless it's photoshopped which this one was not.

The rest were all taken by Farm Boss, first two reflected in glass. Second two trying to duplicate that and not quite making it. Finding the right expressions in a photo is as hard for me as anybody else even having attempted it so many more times.

A really good portrait photograph is not about making it super flattering. Photo shopping out all the lines or sags would turn it into something plastic. The best photos reflect the person as they are at that moment. Such photos are a challenge to get, but part of the joy of mastering photography is facing those challenges. This last one I liked best because it's me and in the kind of country I love very much.

Chasing the Light

2011-10-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

When we took a late vacation, late because we hadn't, for assorted reasons, been able to work in time away earlier, we headed for Montana for one of my favorite kinds of trips-- go wherever the mood strikes with no reservations or firm plans.

For me, I especially wanted a break from months of writing (although I took my computer and had wireless a lot of places), some time in the high country, and photography. I left oil paints and canvases at home based purely on it being impractical to deal with drying oils on this kind of vagabonding trip.

Fishing was on Farm Boss's agenda. I wanted time alongside rivers, trails into the mountains, time in the wilderness, and hoped for some sunshine. We ended up driving a lot and basically getting exceedingly lucky on the light which is something one cannot plan but simply has to be recognize when it's seen.

It was the week of the Hunter Moon, October's full moon. So I had full moon photos in Montana as one goal. Early one morning, not long after first light, we were driving south out of Dillon, where we had taken some good nighttime photos of the rising full moon, and there was that moon. I wanted photos of it with Montana's hills. I think those are the Tendoy Mountains that the moon is sinking toward.

What I had not fully assimilated is how important autumn is to wonderful photographs which are always created by good lighting. You can have the most beautiful scenery in the world and when the lighting is so-so, you are as well off to read a good book as the photos will end up snapshots and none will be the one you recognize as that "ah-ha" moment.

Who knew, well maybe all serious photographers but I didn't, that autumn provides the ingredients for some of the most spectacular possible photos. It is a combination of the low level of the sun at my latitude as well as the potential for clouds coming along to shift the lighting. Then I think when you are at a high elevation (2000-7000 feet is good) the air has a clarity that especially benefits nature photos.

Last year when I was in Yellowstone at this time, I got wonderful photos but hadn't really put it altogether yet-- high elevation, low level light, interesting shifting clouds, autumn colors and "voila" one beautiful shot after another. Some is luck and some is seeing what is coming and waiting for it. Only a tiny bit is working with Photoshop later. I put some of my favorites into a Picasa slideshow.

Chasing the Light

A shot like the one at the beginning of this blog requires waiting and watching for the moment when the light changes and turns what was ordinary into something almost magical. In that case, I wanted that moon to be near the horizon line to enlarge its importance. I also wanted the clouds to send across light bands onto the earth below. A lucky bonus was snow on the highest hills. Zen or 'money shot' photos are always about light.

This full moon was the Hunter's Moon and I have photos from three different locations where it showed up exceptionally well. The first was Dillon, Montana, then the next morning heading south into Idaho (above photo). That one required parking the truck alongside the road, poking my head out the window and taking shot after shot to gain a few that I felt were exceptional. I later took a morning moon shot at Baker City, as we were going into the Interpretive Center for the Oregon Trail. The moon with the sage brush was pure serendipity.

On this trip, we had had serendipitous moments when we happened to be in Missoula when the art museum was having a special show of Ansel Adams photos. Spending time with his photos, the wonderful way he used dark and light, often enhanced in darkrooms, all is good tutoring for taking good photos. I don't have the patience to spend hours or days for a photo but I do recognize the potential for one now when I see it and with the quality of digital cameras today, anybody can take some pretty impressive shots.

One more tip for someone seriously interested in taking the best photos, well besides learning to use shutter speed and f-stop, is having a polarizing lens. I cannot count the years that Farm Boss tried to tell me that while I resisted thinking it'd just get in my way or I'd forget to use it and ruin what could have been a nice shot without it. I am not one of those naturals where it comes to all of this nor am I first up to bat with new ideas. Eventually I did learn to use it and now cannot imagine taking nature photos without one. It gives light options and as you twist it around to get the photo you want, it adds the artistic dimension that a simple snapshot generally won't offer.

Seeing the full moon over Baker City was another of the trip's lucky moments, but I decided to play with the original image in photo-shop to bring it to more what it felt like than what I actually saw, more like a painting can do. Photo-shop can take what is a real image and give it a surreal cast by for instance turning a moon blue.

Art and the movies-- documentaries and otherwise

2011-10-16T01:46:00.000-07:00

Any film about art is usually a bit biographical with some being more accurate than others. Sometimes art is just a tiny part of the story even if an important part. Other times it's at its heart. I have quite a few movies I then purchased for their artistic element. I have seen many more since Netflix came out with their lengthy list of art documentaries. Because it was suggested it might prove interesting to others, I went to look at the ones I own or particularly recommend. They will be titled in bold with only a brief paragraph review as there are too many for anything else.

Georgia O'Keeffe; The Eloquent Eye; O'Keeffe
The first of these three is a drama, kind of a docudrama or something like that where it follows O'Keeffe's life fairly faithfully to everything I know about it (and I know about as much as is possible given she is at the top of my list for a woman whose art I admire as well as her ability to live a life fully). This film is lovingly presented with Joan Allen starring as O'Keeffe and Jeremy Irons as Stieglitz. Any such attempt to portray her life would be better as a mini-series as her was a very full one with her intense love of painting and for the land New Mexico.

The Eloquent Eye and O'Keeffe are both documentaries and well done with interviews and tapes of them both. Stieglitz fascinates me as much as her and that documentary on his work is inspiring to any wantabe photgrapher. He was truly innovative and together they were one of those creative couplings like Kahlo and Rivera that inspires even as their love stories often don't work out so super happy. I recommend all three of these for the art, the philosophy of art, and living the artistic life.

Frida
This is a project of love by Salma Hayek who made this drama happen. Many artistic people admire Frida Kahlo for not only the completely open and revealing paintings she made but for the way she dealt with a life full of pain, both physical and emotional. Great film and highly recommended for more than the painting, which would have been enough, but also how someone overcomes adversity in a way that is strong. Hopefully most of us will never know what Frida went through in terms of her horrific accident and then loving a man so much who simply could not be faithful to her no matter how much he loved her.

Camille Claudel
I liked this film best in the beginning because I sculpt and am a big fan of Auguste Rodin and have actually seen full-sized many of the sculptures he was creating during this period when he met Camille and they began their love affair. I liked it less as it gets into her mental illness that is growing. I don't see her a victim of Rodin because despite her talent, it isn't just talent that enabled her to become well-known as a sculptor in her own right. Rodin was not a 'faithful' man; but when he met her, he had a long-time lover who he would not abandon. It's one of those you walk into it and should realize what is at stake even given youth. If she was victimized (and there are many stories to say her mental illness should have never led her to be hospitalized for most of her life), it was by her own family. Something very scary for those who have mental derivations from what is considered 'normal.'

Andy Goldsworthy Rivers and Tides
This is a lyrical and fascinating documentary that looks at both photography and natural sculpture. Goldsworthy created images and then photographed them. For anybody into photography as an art form, you can learn a lot from the film every time you view it. Although it is the only documentary that I own on photography, I have seen and am crazy about anything about Ansel Adams also. These kind of films inspire and teach.

Sirens
is based on the Australian painter, Norman Lindsay, even filmed at his home in Australia. It's about a lot more than painting though, really about our mores and how we see art. It is very erotic and if you don't like full frontal nudity, sometimes in sexual or fantasy settings, skip it. If you don't mind that, I think it's a good look at the philosophy of art as well as the lifestyle and workings of many artists who have achieved fame but are paying a price for not fitting the mores of their culture. I love this film for its beauty and it has a good cast.

I have less movies about the process of creating writing but I have seen a lot more than I own.

Il Postino
is a foreign film about a postman who becomes fascinated by the poetry of Pablo Neruda. It got me so interested in Neruda's poetry that I bought a book based on the work he did while in Chile. Neruda was, to me, kind of a poet about love and beauty but also politics. The power of his work changed the life of the young postman. Really good foreign film but more on the impact of the writing than the struggle of doing it.

Miss Potter
Fictionalized story of the children's author, Beatrix Potter, who created beloved children's classics that are still must read for children today due to their beauty, whimsy and truth. It presents more of the creative process, the difficulty of achieving recognition, and a very enjoyable film all on its own-- even though I do not think it did well at the box office. Renée Zellweger stars.

Songcatcher
is one of those films that it's hard to categorize because it's kind of a mix of subjects, even if predominantly about hill music and its ancestry. A music professor, who has been passed over for tenure at her college, goes to visit her sister in Appalachia and there discovers the mountain music that the people have carried with them from their Scottish and Irish ancestors who had settled there. She is trying to document the history of the songs while she finds something unexpected there in those people, her sister's true self, and one special man. To record those songs as they were being sung was no light task in that era. I love this lyrical little film.

I consider cooking to also be an art and creative form and there are many wonderful movies about it. I won't review these but just list them and you can find more on Netflix. I liked them well enough to want to own them.

Like Water for Chocolate; Chocolat; Tortilla Soup; Babette's Feast. They are all about how food goes beyond something we eat to an art form and emotional sustenance.

Finally several that don't fit a category as such. I also believe that our own life is the greatest art form we will ever create whether we are writers, artists or whatever. Our life is when we really express the inner us and these three films fit into that category of looking at lifestyle that way. They are very diverse.

First is a documentary-- Searching for Debra Winger which is a look at the life of actresses and the difficulty they have with melding together their creative self with their personal. These are interviews down by Rosanna Arquette and I think something to make women think.

Off the Map is fiction and really about how the landscape in which we live (in this case, New Mexico) can make a life happen and how self-discovery leads to other ways of expression. Lovely film about an alternative lifestyle.

Heading completely off in another direction but about creativity in a lifestyle is Memoirs of a Geisha, based on the novel, which is about how geishas were taught to make their life a work of art.

Where it comes to creative documentaries, I cannot recommend enough what is available through Netflix, although that now depends on renting the DVDs, not having livestreaming as a lot of the documentaries are not available through streaming from what I have been told. I am sticking with the DVDs because I don't care if I have one all the time and care more about the documentaries there than anything else they offer. The rest can be gotten anywhere. Their documentary collection on diverse and often little known artists is the tops in my experience.

Artemisia

2011-10-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

Looking through Netflix, I came across an award winning foreign film, based on real events, that looked interesting to me. I didn't do any more research on the subject than what I got from their blurb and put it on my list. Last week we watched it. If you would rather not read a revealing review of the subtitled film, Artemisia, stop reading right now with one warning from me-- I do not recommend it to anybody.

[Artemisia Gentileschi] was an Italian Baroque painter of the early 1600s. She is someone of whom I had never heard. Why would I? How good can a woman be? This one is, today, regarded as having been a very fine artist, one of the female artists who could do the work as well as any man. She was held back from attending the best fine art schools even though her father, a successful artist of the time, wanted her to have that training. She was just a woman after all.

The French film was not satisfied with telling her story as history tells it. It went to sexing it up with things I don't see how anybody could have known about her early life. It showed her fascinated with nudity, her own and that of males, enjoying watching debauchery, and eager for her own first sexual experience when she was still a teen. My theory on why, besides the desire to sensationalize, is the misapprehension that anyone who likes to paint, draw or sculpt nudes must be perverted in some way. Since I did the first three, without a desire to view debauchery, I know they are wrong.

The film turned what had been an accusation and conviction of rape into a romance of a sort; and if I had read more about it before I ordered it, I'd never have done it as I quit watching about half way through.

I didn't quit for all the nudity. There were plenty of beautiful nude bodies in sexual and artistic settings-- full frontal of men and women. That doesn't bother me at all in a film. I loved the Australian film Sirens which is another film about art, sexuality, and with full frontal nudity-- an interesting film about values in art.

Artemisia though is the story of a very talented woman artist, introduced to art by her father at a young age. She had a natural gift which led to her father letting her paint some of his commissions. The film depicts of how unfairly women were treated in being denied opportunities (yes we have come a long way) while it itself proceeds to objectify a woman by how it portrayed her (in some areas, we haven't come so far).

When I saw it going a way that made me uncomfortable is when I went over to my computer to look for a biography and found the fervent objection feminists had to the film. This film turned what historically has been considered a total rape into the story of a love affair (remember the oversexed parts earlier-- after all how could a female artist want to paint nudes without being oversexed, right???) between a much older man and a younger woman.

Right there, I quit watching as I had no interest in watching gratuitous sex (and there'd been plenty of that already-- with torture of a woman coming up.

What came next, which I read, was that the father discovered the sexual event or events (this is true historically also) and accused his friend of rape and there was a trial. Artemisia also had to be examined to be sure she had been a virgin as that was the real issue here- deflowering; and she was tortured by thumbscrews by the nuns. This appears to have been in the film and also historic. I tell you, the things women do to women sometimes make me more angry than what men do.

The movie leaves historic record because by all evidence, including her own art after it happened-- this was a brutal rape. In the film the writers/directors/producers show Artemisia being tortured by nuns to force her to admit it was rape when she says it was love. Finally the male artist sacrificially steps forward and lies to say it was rape to save her from the torture. Get it women being tortured (thumbs up in a film), it being done by women (more thumbs up).

I consider the film to be an abuse of women also. Oh I know a woman today could go to a top art school even if they won't ever get the career afterward that a man would have with equal talent; but they took the story of a gifted artist who was denied the fame and success she should have had and used it to create some kind of weird amalgamation of art and sex.

Although I don't call myself a feminist, I do see the ways women lose out when their work isn't regarded as serious. Also it's horrifying to me to take a story of rape and sex it up, turning the rapist into the hero and the woman into asking for it. Ack! It's a different kind of abuse, more subtle but equally damaging to women as a whole. I don't blame Gloria Steinem and others for protesting this film as once again it shows today's culture (and a female director) with misusing sexuality in women to sell films. Shame!

(Self portrait as the allegory of painting by Artemisia Gentileschi was in Wikipedia.)

Defining Ourselves Part II

2011-10-11T02:32:00.000-07:00

Where I wrote about the importance of defining ourselves and using definitions we don't lose with age, I thought it'd important to think a bit on what are characteristics not dependent on the opinion of others and that can grow and change with age (if possible).

First of all it's important we see ourselves realistically. That is probably a character quality also whether we can look at ourselves realistically or whether we tend to gloss over whatever doesn't suit our vision. We do bad things regularly but justify it by saying someone else made us-- like say our parents growing up.

See the thing is real character qualities, which is what I think we are looking for in defining ourselves would include being able to realistically assess our inner self not just outer. It's not enough to say I wantabe this or that. Do we have what it takes to do it? Adding to this, I think is that sometimes a character quality that seems a positive can also be a negative, has a shadow side. I better use myself here to illustrate what I mean.

I am a creative person. I have always been and likely always will be and this shows up in the artistic things I do, my writing, my home decor, my own appearance. Being creative I am less prone to be limited by what others think should be done. It has given me a lot of flexibility in my life.

But there has been a downside, and it leads to some of the ways I see myself that are not positive. I have never felt my art/writing/etc. have ended up successful in terms of how they are seen by others. I cannot, in short, make money at any of it. Now it's true I have not worked real hard at making money from them; but I simply have not been successful monetarily with my work and that leads to another aspect of how I define myself.

We can see ourselves as positive, successful to a certain level but to make what we do successful financially, we need others to see it likewise. We cannot dictate to them that they must buy our books, sculptures or paintings. To be monetarily successful in creative endeavors requires not just that we see ourselves as being good. We have to have the 'other' see it also-- and we cannot control the 'other'. It's kind of one of those contradictions in terms of defining that I am not sure of the way to get around.

So we convince ourselves we are gifted, good at it, but if nobody else agrees to the extent of trading their own hard earned dollars for what we did, are we? Well maybe a future generation will see it otherwise like with Van Gogh... most likely though not...

So this business of defining ourselves gets complex with both the light and the shadow side-- ie I am a creative woman who has never gained material success from my endeavors which is the shadow side to what I do. It ends up a positive and also negative attitude which maybe undermines future endeavors...

Photo from a happy day for me-- October 9, 2011-- Kootenai Creek, Montana

Defining ourselves

2011-10-08T01:54:00.000-07:00

Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing yourself is enlightenment. Lao Tzo

Human animals are maybe the only ones who get to define themselves. How we do that often explains how we see all of life. Truthfully, books or movies or whatever else we might bring into our lives including friends, it is how we define ourselves that probably most impacts our choices and all of how we live. We can define ourselves tightly or loosely. We can change the definitions as we age or fight to keep them constant. We can find definitions that can grow with us and are about more than the superficial. We can not define ourselves at all and let others do it.

Our way of defining ourselves might impact not just how we see ourselves but also how others see us. If our definitions are objective, we will be realistic in our goals. If we have let someone else define us, we might find it difficult to even figure out our own dreams.

Naturally after just having been to a reunion of many people the same age, a reunion that took me back fifty years and more; then watching a documentary on female artists and their lives, reading blogs where I hear people defining themselves many different ways, ways I might not define them if I was putting out my own definitions, this subject of defining has been on my mind as to how I would define me.

If I define myself realistically, I will be ahead for my life. If I see myself as I want to be or how others see me, not how I am, I will make poor choices. I could make my life one long string of grievances against the 'other.' Some of us were given more natural gifts, some of us less but it's what we do with what we have been given that most impacts our living. Knowing ourselves and defining who we are in a way that works is why I especially liked the above quote by Lao Tzu which will be for the month of March on my 2012 calendar (Nirvana).

We live in a culture that is eager to define us-- fat, thin, old, young, pretty, plain, etc etc. That can be accurate or not. We start being given definitions by our parents and then our peer group. We accept or fight against those definitions all of our life. I think it takes down time with ourselves to come up with our own definitions, ones with which we can live the enlightened lives Lao Tzu was talking about.

Sometimes when I see myself, with no makeup and glasses, my hair maybe needing to be washed, I still see that little girl of 12 (top photo) who was just starting to not only define herself but become the woman she would be. I guess that's the case with us all-- we are still that child but also the adult or old person we developed into.

Beauty or handsomeness is one of those definitions for a culture. Whether we are lovely/handsome (whether those words even have firm definitions), it's how others see us that could end up a lot of what we believe. That will vary with different cultures as what one group sees as gorgeous, even in one generation to the next, will vary.

How many though have decided they are beautiful or not based purely on the other? How many have based their worth on the others' definition of their beauty/handsomeness which as they age will naturally change and leave them with no sense of who they are short of plastic surgery which can NEVER reach what nature naturally created-- no matter how many dollars are spent. And kid yourself not, dollars are what most of that surgery is about.

What if we define ourselves by gender? We are men or we are women. We are straight or we are gay. Is that a good way to define us as human beings? We are certainly encouraged to do that in a myriad of ways, not just our sexuality but also our age. When we use those kinds of definition as well as that of beauty, it will change and be impacted by how others saw us more than even ourselves. That leads to dividing ourselves as we go to war, emotionally at the least, with the 'other'.

I honestly think that coming up with a definition of who we are that is not impacted by the 'other' is one of the perks of a long life. We're the ones lucky enough to have a lifetime to look back upon and the time now to do it if we so choose. To have a realistic view of ourselves is something I think most of us learn with the wisdom of age. It is more likely to go beyond the superficial to deeper values-- the kind that last. We can then go anywhere confident in us because it's not about someone else's view of us.

Now that doesn't mean we should not work on the culture's being realistic about its values. It doesn't mean we look the other way at discrimination based on the 'other' grabbing power. I think it's important to do that as part of not only defining ourselves but living in a culture where we can be proud of what it represents. The catch is to not let media or hype convince us we are something we are not. They as well as others are willing to do it. Nobody else should.

Sometimes I jokingly say, when I am going somewhere, that I am putting on me and that means the public me which is like this photo. That isn't really me though, not even for how I look.

Farm Boss told me, when I was talking about this concept of identity, that no photo really shows how others see us as that is full of moving action and energy. Mirrors or photos are the only way we ever really see ourselves and that's an illusion as much as anything else.

Who does she think she is?

2011-10-05T02:28:00.000-07:00

[Who does she think she is?] is a documentary by the same filmmaker who did 'Born in Brothels.' The subject here is women artists, from many medias, and how their work impacted their marriages, child rearing and creative output. I thought it was an interesting look at quite a variety of women and the price they paid for what they felt it crucial to do as creative women.

I had not realized how few women artists actually get shows in museums or are able to make a living from their art. The ratio is like 10 women (at the best) to over 100 men for having their work in museums. Is it possible that's because women aren't as good? Unlikely. In many cases, with top museums, the ratios are even less for work in their collections. Why would this be?

Men complain every time women bring these things up as though this is all about nature for men to be so far in the front; and women are being bitches to even mention it. The evils of feminism was painted as hatred of men instead of looking for fairness or even for understanding why something is as it is. Can we really blame men for the way it is or do women share in the blame by both their acceptance and possibly even encouragement of the status quo?

It is not that a woman cannot have a job. Certainly they can and most women at least in America must work-- married or not. The problem comes when a woman is in a career that doesn't stop after eight hours. Art is one of those, and it is even more complicated if the work is little rewarded financially. You receive money for something, and it has value. No money equal no value in the eyes of many people.

Some of the husbands in this film were proud of what their wives did; but others were threatened by what it demanded and it led to failed marriages. These were all women who had decided to have children. I think it is particularly difficult for women who want to be in a relationship and have children while also earning respect and a living in the arts where they have to fight harder to gain recognition than a male would have to do.

The documentary is on Netflix, and I do recommend it for the art it displays but also the stories of these women and the price they have paid in terms of broken marriages and sometimes children who don't have as much of mom as they might wish. It is about real people and not the artists on the top of the heap like a Georgia O'Keeffe but those who are struggling in the ranks.

Our boys

2011-10-02T02:02:00.000-07:00

The photo is of our two male cats-- BB and Blackie. BB is probably 15 or possibly even 16 years old while Blackie is about 6. Both came to us as adult strays. BB arrived in Tucson in 2000 and Blackie here at the farm in 2005 or thereabouts. Their being strays is why I cannot be sure of age. They are our boys though.

They squabble like brothers with hitting and swatting at each other and then turning around and licking one another. BB, being the oldest, has been the more subdued, but he is the Alpha without a doubt. He shows his power by his restraint to avoid being yelled at by one of us.

This particular photo was taken because it's totally amazing how BB has responded to something new that our veterinarian son-in-law and his office manager (our daughter) sent to us (was meant to be for our son and daughter-in-law with their two cats). It is for old cats to rejuvenate them, give them more limberness and boy has it worked to a level that amazes us and has Farm Boss wondering if he could take it for himself.

S3 Gel has glucosamine among other ingredients and it really has worked on BB. Being on top of that piano that way a month ago simply would not have happened. Everytime I see him bound around, I am in amazement.

About two months ago (before we began this with BB) I started taking glucosamine and religiously now take it twice a day. I had tried it before but it didn't seem to do much. That might have been because I didn't do it all the time. I was interested in it because with all my typing, my fingers were hurting. Now they don't hurt and whether it is helping other joints, I don't know as other joints didn't seem to be sending out warning signs.

For old cats though I definitely recommend checking with your vet or maybe pet supply store as I don't know where you can buy it for Synovial Support Supplement. It's worth a try and it's been a big deal for us. I don't know how much longer we will have BB, given his age, but to have him more active and happier, that's the big thing.

Blackie also has health problems which evidently are based on a congenital sinus weakness. We are trying multiple things with him to try and make sure he lives a good long life. For now I don't have one solution though; so won't get into it until maybe we come up with an answer.

Going back in time

2011-09-29T02:02:00.000-07:00

My high school's 50th reunion was the middle of September. I debated before, and even after, whether I wanted to write about it in this blog. One reason for not is wanting to give others privacy. It's not like I write about everything that goes on in my life. On the other hand, I wrote about Farm Boss's and maybe it was only fair to write a bit about mine. Reunions of all sorts are part of our culture as well as this one being my personal experience.

The first thing I felt is the same as at Farm Boss's. It is just so amazing to be nearly 68 years old and in a room with most others around the same age. Wow, how did that happen? I made it? Really, I made it? When I got the small booklet the organizers gave us, I learned the names of 20 of my classmates who would never make it. That is out of a class of about 112. That many deaths seem like a lot and not sure if it's the average or maybe relates to being part of the Vietnam generation as well as growing up in a mill town.

For the actual reunion, I felt mine was well put together. That was doubtless helped by the planners being many of the same people who have served on the committees for all the others. They have been quite faithful in having one every five years which means they have probably learned a thing or two along the way. Interestingly I talked to several attendees for whom, like me, this was their first reunion. I think that number fifty had power.

This one was more costly than Farm Boss', but the cost all went into having it in a setting where the food was excellent, the rented conference room was lovely, the country club provided great service, and the setting of tables and room made it very easy for people to connect with each other. They had music in the beginning that fit the era of our high school, and I thought that was a lovely addition even though in mingling around the room I only could hear it at one side which actually is also good as it means it wasn't too loud to be able to hear people talking. For entertainment they asked several of the students to discuss memories from those years which is what such an event is all about.

Overall, I felt the attendees were nice people with whom to spend an evening which was not a surprise as basically they were pretty nice people back in 1961 at least in my experience. I think high school can be a difficult time, but mine pretty well yielded typical experiences of dances, sporting events, clubs, and classes. (Three of our teachers attended the dinner). I have good memories from my high school years. The things that weren't so terrific were part of experiences where we don't just learn from the easy things but also the hard. Even though I was taking classes aimed at entering college, I think I was a bit shallow back then; but let's face it, teen years are bound to be a bit that way and maybe that's not bad as a part of growth.

One thing which I think made the experience particularly relaxing for me was (and a tip I might suggest for anybody facing such a reunion after many many years of not seeing people) I went as me. The dress I ended up wearing is at least twenty years old if not more, which did require taking it to the cleaners to remove the dust accumulated (it is one of the few things I own that being 100% rayon did need drycleaning and could not be hand-washed).

Those high-heeled sandals might be ten or more years old but are the most comfortable pair of heels I have owned. My feet never hurt once even though I was on them most of the evening. So, a comfortable dress, bare legs and sandals, how much more can you ask to help an evening physically work well.

As anyone would know, who has seen my photos in this blog, I also wore my hair as I generally do and no more make-up than usual. For me, that was a lot more relaxing than something more phony like a glamor look which might be someone else but wouldn't be me.

I don't think the woman that night was who I was in high school (not to say there aren't pieces of that girl), but overall to not be that same person today is something I find to be exactly how I want it to be. I like the idea of change as part of life. Milestone events like a reunion lead one to assess those things in a way I likely wouldn't otherwise.

Farm Boss and I were doing photos for the dinner, and that was fun as it always is for me. It was a bit more complicated in this case because I also wanted to do some visiting which I didn't feel personally was needed as much by me when it was his. I think I learned a few things about what would make the photographs better if I, in the future, do it again for some other group.

For instance, I had expected that the lighting would stay the same since it was all indoors, but it did not due to outside lighting changing or maybe even some within the room since this was a service provided. I'd pay more attention to that in the future. I'd also be sure to offer those who wanted couple or best friend shots to have pictures taken at a set time. Some hate having their photos taken and others might have liked it and we missed them. Live and learn with doing this as it's not like I am a professional.

When I wanted to adjust the group shot, the ones that Farm Boss had taken, I found anything that covered everybody, was small, missed a few, or seemed too dark. I managed to find three he had done one-two-three, in wallpaper like segments and was able, using my ever faithful Corel Photo-Paint 7, to meld them together as in the top photo. I'd do a better job on that kind of thing in the future.

What surprised me the most about the whole affair was that I felt more stress after it was over than I had before going. I think it was a sort of overload of blending together memories of the high school years with who those people appeared to be today. They went from 18 years old to 68 in a few hours. Sometimes I would have known who they were; but often, I'd have not had a clue until I saw their name badges or they told me.

Also I found myself (this happens to me a lot of times after big social gatherings) wishing I had said less or more, etc etc. For a couple of days afterward, I actually felt as though I had moved back in time to a place I had long ago left. There were emotions from those days of the both good and the insecure sort.

None of that was what I had been expecting as I had thought it was just a social gathering. It was not. A reunion with people, with whom I started grade school and had known in various classes and social settings for 12 years, was not just a social gathering. It was a meshing of emotions, stories and memories of all sorts. It took awhile to leave that behind again.

One final thing, I really appreciated the support I got from Farm Boss beforehand, while there, and letting me stress out afterward. It's nice to go to something like that where you know at least one person there has your back. He gave me freedom to mingle with old friends while he did his own thing as he took half the photos. I was proud of the man I married 47 years ago (our anniversary was two days later).

1961 High School Reunion

The concept of Li (Confucian)

2011-09-26T02:15:00.000-07:00

One of the problems that I think we face in America today is we don't seem to have a collected sense of what morality means. Some claim they get their morality from the Bible; but when they try to apply it to say today's government, they are left claiming there should be little government because I do not think they can figure out how to apply something like the Sermon on the Mount. Or they seek to vote for someone who claims they have a direct pipeline to God which means they themselves do not have to figure out how to apply say Leviticus 20:9 (and many more like it) to today's laws or regulations.

When I was reading one of the books I have recently been sorting, I came across the word 'li' which I then had to go looking to see what the heck it meant as I thought I understood Oriental teachings at least on a rudimentary level but had never heard this word. Which meant I didn't understand as much as I had thought.

Wikipedia had this to say in a general sense about li in [Li (Confucian)]. Here is what particularly attracted me to thinking of what it means for us today:

"Confucius envisioned proper government being guided by the principles of li. Since Confucian ideals proposed the perfectibility of all human beings (through the practices of li) as well as propriety being its own reward, government prescribed punishment was not seen as being necessary. Confucius stressed the importance of the rites as fundamental to proper governmental leadership. In his writings, Confucius regarded feudal lords in China that adopted the Chinese rites as being just rulers of the Central States. Contrarily, feudal lords that did not adopt these rites were considered barbarians, not worthy of being considered Chinese or part of the Central States. (Spring and Autumn Annals)."

I believe our founders had this idea in mind with their attempt to found a country with this kind of potential goodness. In the Preamble to the Constitution, they laid out some goals:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The ones who wrote the Constitution were a learned bunch. They laid out a basic structure but also left room for growth and change. Whether they knew the word li, it seems to me that they were striving toward that concept in how government should work.

For us all now, instead of taking the view that government fails and can never be trusted, as is pretty much the view of the tea party, what if we thought of government as something that should serve a purpose and people needed to be trained how that would be achieved? Of course, this is the ideal. It's like Plato or any other philosophical concept but without the ideal, can we do anything?

Li and Confucian

"Just as li is the outward expression of the superior man, jen (goodness, humaneness, love) is the inner ideal. Confucius taught that men should love one another and practice respect and courtesy. If li and jen were operative in a person, the end product would be the Confucian goal: the superior man. Confucius believed in the natural goodness or at least the natural perfectibility of man. He stressed government by virtue (Te) and the arts of peace (Wen)."

What I like about this word li is I think we need something simple rather than a whole set of complex laws, as some would claim say the Bible offers in the Old Testament but where many of them have no application to today (like whether to eat shellfish or have cloth blended of weaves). It has enabled forgetting the meaning behind the laws and frankly it is what Jesus attempted to teach but whose teachings seem to have been discarded by many today who claim to be followers. He reduced it to a simple commandment where it applies to human interaction-- love others as you love yourself. They call that empathy.

The assumption of some today is that man is inherently evil and has to be schooled to be anything else. If we instead assumed man was inherently good; but it's human experiences which change that, we might have a better way to look at fixing what so many believe is broken. I do not believe that babies are born the same. They are born with inherent traits, but then experience takes those and begins them on the road to where they will end up.

The concept of li is very applicable to government and what it should be here to accomplish. The idea that we don't need government is ridiculous for anyone who lives in a community of people. The idea that local government is superior to federal is equally foolish.

Government needs to have a purpose defined; but in the end, it's run by human beings who often have on set of standards by which to judge any of what they do. They are operating on one need after another but too often with no overlying sense of purpose. What if we just thought of government as li, and when it is not, we would demand change? What if we expected it to work; and when it did not, we redirected it to the higher standard which we knew we had the right to demand.

This would take training and getting away from partisanship to a moral set of standards that worked to make things function smoothly. Someone just saying we need tax cuts would not work unless they could explain how that helped the whole. Taxes aren't evil as you'd think some would suggest today. They are necessary to pay for services. Too many today see government as some evil entity separate from us and only there to hurt them. Plenty of politicians have played that game even as they ran for an office to put themselves in government also.

I believe we need li thinking in our daily lives, in our businesses and we should expect it from our government. But we are becoming told instead to expect nothing from government so instead we give up on it. Today it seems to be the slick ad or quip that leads people to vote for this or that person. We don't have that inner balance and therefore cannot recognize it in someone we are electing to higher office.

For anyone who is familiar with the concept of li, I'd like to hear a more concise definition than I was able to find online. The author who had used it was not using it in terms of government but more in the sense of another word I like very much-- the Navajo word hozho which means harmony, beauty, balance, tranquility, equilibrium, rightness, centeredness, truth, clarity of action, and thought. It sounds like it would mean what above is discussed as jen.

On a personal level, we need this sense of balance, and I also think we need it as part of our government where the rituals and its form serves to help it function on a higher level. Without it, we are where we are today, and we have people yelling out that when someone is hurt without insurance-- let them die, cheering at the idea of executions, and booing that someone wants to be able to live true to who they are. Are we the kind of people I don't think many of us would like very much? We can turn this thing around. We can reach toward our highest ideals, not stoop to our lowest. I really believe we can, and we start with us.

Georgia triumphs and we all lose

2011-09-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

This will be a cultural issue and a rant. It dips into a political realm and how our country has divided itself; so if that is bothersome, come back another day as I need to write about it because another of our country's cultural dichotomies just slammed me in the face when I got up this morning and read the online papers.

Here's the thing. How can one group of people say government cannot do anything right and turn around and defend the right of a government process to execute anybody through a jury trial? If that makes sense to you, you are a right winger and further right than you maybe admit.

Having served on a felony jury trial this summer, I learned some things that come home to you more when you do something than when you read about it. You, the jury member, do not get all the evidence or all you might want to know. During the trial, you cannot raise your hand and say, how reliable is this witness? You cannot ask if there was a deal cut to shorten one person's sentence to insure that another is found guilty. You do not know everything; but you must find a verdict and it is a heavy weight that you have to do with those limitations. A death penalty case would have to be many times harder.

Now the state of Georgia and our Supreme Court have basically decreed that the jury system is perfect and it doesn't matter if new evidence arises as it did with Troy Davis, as seven witnesses recanted and there never was any solid evidence against him. Never mind that. The government process must be protected.

Okay, I understand their logic, those who believe government is perfect and it must be protected, in a tragic sort of way. It causes me to nearly cry when people cheer at death row executions or when I read that Troy Davis said with his last words that he was innocent of this crime, which he has said all along he didn't do. Even the jury has said they'd find a different verdict today than they did back then. The main remaining evidence is the word of a man who admitted to someone else later that he did the shooting. It does not matter because Georgia did justice; but explain to me how the same people who would cheer that fact are the ones who don't think government can do anything right. Does that make sense to you?

If you read anything about this case or heard what Rick Perry said in one of the debates about his having no doubts at all about executing people based on a government system, you know that as with many other moral dilemmas in this country, logic is thrown out the window. I am trying to understand what we are getting in exchange and that makes me want to cry all over again.

The family of the slain police officer wanted closure and they wanted Troy Davis executed for the murder of their loved one. Well what if they didn't get justice? What if they still have the murderer out there, a man who has threatened the person he told he did it? That family was grieving still; but the nation, our system of government, should have had more ability to use logic and decide that keeping a man in prison for life gives an opportunity to say you were wrong and have it mean something.

I actually pity the ones who sent Davis to death, despite the changing stories of the witnesses, because someday they'll have to deal with what they did. They will have to recognize it. These are the same kind of people who yelled they wanted Jesus executed to protect their system of government. Do they understand that?

The people as in the whole of the government should rise above that. Government is not inviolate. It can make mistakes. I don't know what's wrong with a people who on the one hand say government is the problem and on the other hand say you have to say everything it does is perfect.

This is a dark day for our country and it is not just lefties who believe it. I read a very good piece by [Bob Barr] who is anything but a left winger where he made the case that this should not have been a death penalty verdict.

When there is doubt, and there sure was in this case, we should not be allowing anyone to be executed. There are other principles at play here, ones that those, who say government cannot do anything right, should be considering. This execution might or might not be an issue of race but how the death penalty is enforced is definitely one of class and economics.

Troy Davis Legal Issues

I have supported the use of the death penalty in cases where there is no doubt as to the killer, where the slaying is particularly brutal or of many people but when there is no doubt. If we can't function better than this, I'll be signing petitions to end the death penalty because life in prison at least can say I am sorry.

Another piece I read later which added to the understanding: Execution in Georgia amounts to state sanctioned murder Reading the comments below it, particularly from the right, adds to understanding how some see this.

The shift of seasons

2011-09-20T02:28:00.000-07:00

With the Equinox officially tomorrow, fall is here, with the golden and orange colors, the shift in the air. We've been selling livestock as part of seasonal work and getting the place ready for winter. Lots of hay in the barns. I can't say I am ready for the shift of seasons but it comes ready or not.

A creek at the end of summer

2011-09-17T01:36:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year when wading our creek is easy as it's lazy and slow moving. It has places where the silt is deep enough to make the wader wonder about a little quicksand (not really). Other places are rock shelves or gravel bars. It is mostly from ankle to thigh deep on me.

Tracks along the banks reveal the other creatures here before us. Crayfish scurry for cover as we wade past. Once we startle a pair of wood ducks who fly off in a huff. Sometimes there are fallen trees to get over or under. This creek, as probably all creeks, is a living treasure for those are fortunate enough to live along its banks.

We waded it last week-end with our son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons. Sharing it added tremendously to the joy it always yields.

This is kind of an odd entry into fall for me as it seems a lot is going on but the days are slowed into a rhythm of preparing, waiting, waiting for fall, for the leaves to turn and drop, for something new to come.

I look at a clock and see only moments have gone by when it seems hours should have or it's the reverse. What's that all about!

Harvest Moon

2011-09-14T01:38:00.000-07:00

We don't try to photograph every full moon. I must admit some I barely notice other than to find it's quite bright at night if it's necessary to look out toward the barns and determine if a sheep is in trouble or just whining. Sometimes when I can't sleep well, I'll think is it a full moon and it will be. I do usually notice and particularly like three full moons, one of which is this one-- the Harvest Moon.

We went out with the tripod and telephoto and got some shots early on that showed the detail quite well. There was a lot of dust and some smoke in the air from the dryness and forest fires in the Cascades. It gave the moon a delicious yellow color which by playing around with settings we were able to capture with the camera requiring no color adjustment through editing.

It is one of those little pleasure in life to go out at night when the moon is rising just over the tops of the trees, when it's quiet with only the sound of crickets and sometimes a frog down by the creek or a disturbed deer that bounds out of the brush. I can watch the moon from the house windows, but it's not the same as being out there. Right now our nights aren't cool enough to require even a sweater at night. It's changing fast though.

What 9/11 did to us?

2011-09-11T02:17:00.000-07:00

Although I seldom write about events/holidays, sometimes I feel culturally they are so significant that there is no way to avoid looking at their impact. Pearl Harbor had been one of those for an earlier generation of people. 9/11 is for another. The question is what do events like these do to us as a people when we enshrine them? Who do they make us into? I won't go backward into past ones, but I'd like to just look at 9/11 because here comes its tenth anniversary. It's not a holiday yet but it probably will be if some get their way. It's a day media and politicians can use and they all will be. I am swimming against the stream to say what I am going to here as I know how Americans see this.

To begin, yes, it was a horrible tragedy, and you cannot get past that part of it. Most of us know exactly where we were when we heard; and if we had on the television because of the first World Trade Center being hit, we actually watched helplessly and in shock as the second plane plowed into the second tower. We saw the horror of people being trapped in those buildings and unable to get to them to save them, we learned of the rescue teams running in to die with them. We learned what looks like a very strong building can collapse like a pancake if it was not structurally sound, and we didn't know some of them were not. None of us will ever forget it, it became part of the lexicon of our people.

Immediately, by the politicians, it was turned into a cause to use and a cause it remains. The cause wasn't to get the author of the disaster. The cause wasn't about the victims because some people quickly resented the survivors complaining or receiving money and help. The cause wasn't to make sure it never happened again because that's a combination of paying attention, luck and timing whether it happened in the first place [The missed signals of 9/11].

We know there are those who would do it wherever people believe taking innocent human life is a valid sacrifice to greed. Yes, it is greed because it's about attaining power and power is one of the most heady temptations of greed that there is. The murderers who died expect power for themselves on the other side and they expected their side to gain power over here.

So it happened. We went to war over it, and the first war made some degree of sense because we were going after those who had planned the attack. It made sense until at Tora Bora when our men were held back, and we let the author of 9/11 escape. 9/11 was the original tragedy but the tragedies were just beginning for those sent to war, the ones in foreign countries who would feel its impact on their homes and bodies.

We were told it didn't matter why the original murderers had done it. We did not need to look at motivations that led to the attack. For years then our government took the gun and bomb as the solution and we as a people supported that.

A war in Iraq was supposed to be quick and paid for by oil revenues in that country. The connection to 9/11 was never there, but it didn't stop our vice-president from claiming and insinuating it to those who only listen to him. By the time of the invasion of Iraq, our president said, whenever he was asked, that the terrorist leader was irrelevant. He said this while other terrorist attacks linked to that group were happening around the world.

Why didn't our leaders want him or should I say our president at that time want him? Was it because we needed the terrorist leader out there as a symbol? Did our president believe they could get him whenever they wanted? Or did he believe they couldn't and he wanted to distract Americans from the failure? We will NEVER know.

If you want to have a war, symbols are important. "Remember the Maine!" You can insert many other names in the place of Maine. How else can you motivate people to go to war, to in this case ruin their economy over the war and throw their young people into harm's way. It takes a big symbol and to begin with that symbol was a man's face. That was before somebody figured out another symbol to replace it-- democracy for everybody.

So here we are ten years later with a big anniversary to once again be lived and relived by everybody because it's what we do as Americans-- glory in tragedies?

There is little doubt there will be much posturing and politicking today. Oh it'll be along with somber sad faces, while speeches are given, but let's look at where we are ten years later and what not 9/11 but the reaction to it did to our country. We cannot control events and actions from others. We can control our reaction. Our people's reaction to the attacks ended up more catastrophic in the long run than the attacks as it has torn at the very fabric of our country leading us to become a nation at risk of losing our values.

We are still at war. We are still run by a government that has kept up the wars even when the face of one of the terrorist leader is now dead, actually the face of two of them since another face was superimposed over that second war to justify it. Governments used to like to justify wars but do they need to anymore or do Americans just accept whatever the government wants to do without a reason? It's barely mentioned that if we ended both of them tomorrow, we would cut our deficit, and we could start paying down our debt without hurting the poorest among us.

Before 9/11, despite our previous wars (and this country has rarely been out of war somewhere), we justified those wars by their being needed for one main reason. We were fighting over there (doesn't matter where over there was) to avoid fighting here. After 9/11, that argument was gone forever as obviously we can be attacked here and nobody can realistically pretend it cannot happen again, but I still hear the same argument-- we are fighting them over there to keep the homeland safe. Yeah right.

Well we do have the most powerful military in the world. No denying that. It might not stay that way given the way the world changes and China's emergence but for now we can go beat up anybody on the block. We paid a high price for that and are continuing to do so and it's not always appreciated elsewhere but we do have that military might.

Now their role though is complicated as we don't just go to war with rogue nations or to catch terrorists, now we go to pound democracy into other nations, to install leaders we want no matter whether the country would prefer a different regime. (And some of those leaders who we want. Good Lord, what are we thinking with that?) We do this to sovereign nations because a certain bunch don't see it matters so long as they are in power and they maintain that through justifying themselves to themselves if to nobody else.

Do we need those wars to convince ourselves of something else with which we are bombarded-- American Exceptionalism (that wasn't even a word we heard much, if at all, before all of this rah rah stuff began). Oh yeah, we are the best in the world huzzah huzzah and therefore, it's okay whatever we do. Everybody should know we are the very best of the best; and if any politician dares to say any other country is even as good, they can kiss off being elected. We are a people who like being stroked. We don't care if it's true. Just say it.

We don't care if our death rate in babies is among the world's highest-- matching some Third World countries. It's not about reality for us. It's about what we say. We don't care that nearly 50% of our young people cannot get jobs unless they join the military (where those wars come in handy). We don't care if other Americans fear catastrophic illness not just for the debility and pain but for the loss of their homes and everything they own. No, that's not what matters to us exceptional types. We just want the yellow ribbons, flag pins, patriotic songs, rah rah speeches, and I guess going to war somewhere because by now we don't have to have a reason. So, we borrow the money and take away yet more public services, let more infrastructure crumble. We support the world's best military, mercenaries for the world want us or not, and we are paying for it by sacrificing our young people, our bridges, our schools, our future generations' hope for a future.

Did the author of 9/11 win? You tell me. With the help of Cheney and Bush, we turned our whole ability to function as a government around. Our people became so frightened of another attack that we let the government tell us what to do and we let that include taking away some of our rights under the Bill of Rights. Cowards that we are. Willing that we are to let someone else be tortured, all of it was done to keep us safe. We gave up ethics when we accepted torture and rendition with secret prisons. We gave up personal autonomy and the right to not be spied upon without cause. The generations who came before us must be so proud of what we have accomplished.

Before 9/11, we were on a path to show that government worked, and we were not only providing jobs to our citizens but also services. We were doing that and beginning to pay down past debts. Somebody benefited from 9/11, somebody grew rich from it, got satisfaction from it, proved government can't ever do anything right (that viewpoint was heavily pushed by Reagan), but it hasn't helped the average American citizen.

And if I hear that word exceptionalism again, I am turning off whatever TV show or politician that/who used it. Right then and there, whoever it is, rightie or leftie, it's going off. I could tell them a little secret but they won't listen. You don't need to tell people you are exceptional if you really are. They will know it.

I won't look at one single memorial event or the reliving of it that is on television now and has been the last week. I am very sorry for those who died so horribly as I am for their families and the tragic loss they suffered that day. The cost has been high for our people going in many directions; and that cost today came from our reaction to what happened more than anything else. As a nation, we let our leaders scare us into losing track of our values. I don't know if I have faith that we learned anything from that reaction.

The Dilemma

2011-09-09T01:03:00.000-07:00

Through Netflix, we took a chance on a Ron Howard film starring Vince Vaughn called The Dilemma. It's a comedy but one of those ensemble stories which also confronts a serious issue. If you know something detrimental about a friend, say that their partner is having an affair, do you tell them or not?

Not only does it explore friendship, what we owe to a friend; but also how well do we really know anybody. It's funny but more than funny, it's about a real issue that we all have to think about once in awhile if we have close friendships-- when do we interfere in their life? If we do interfere, are we helping or hurting?

I don't really know if the film got good reviews, but we enjoyed it for a slice of life kind of movie with, of course, larger than life comedy tweaks.

Sex in books

2011-09-06T01:17:00.000-07:00

Consider this to be a kind of disclaimer or maybe warning regarding my books that later this month or maybe the beginning of October will begin to be in various eBook outlets (and I will mention here where and when). I do not want any reader to be blindsided by the fact that these books contain sex as a component of the story. I do not consider them to be either erotica or porn; but imagine to some readers, who have remained rather innocent in terms of their reading choices, they might seem that way. To a fan of either erotica or porn, they will be disappointing likewise.

If sex in a story makes you uncomfortable, please do not buy my eBooks. I don't think you will be happy with them, and I'd hate to lose readers here based on becoming offended by a broadside they weren't expecting.

I also want to say that when reading fiction, never assume that the writer has experienced any of what they write about. It's hard to say exactly from where stories come; but where it comes to sex, it'd be easy for a reader to imagine an author with a very exciting sex life or maybe one totally warped. Neither have to be true. It's creative, and it's fiction.

When I decided to put some of my stories onto the internet, I debated whether to take all the sex out of them. I could have done that as none that I write about takes up pages of text. Even in published books, there are romances where there is zero sex between the main characters. Think Jane Austen and there may not even be a first kiss. Since I am not trying to please a genre with these books, I had the freedom to do whatever I wished.

The thing is I like to have some sex in them. I enjoy writing about a whole experience where it comes to the coming together of two people. I had read a lot of steamy romances before I began to think about putting sexuality into my own stories. There are romance books where a sexual encounter can take pages and pages to describe and I have to admit after having read a few of those, I tended to simply skip over the descriptions, as not embarrassing but boring, until it got back to the story.

There is a reason to have sex as part of the story when it is describing the soul and emotional connection between two people where finally the physical (which could come before either of the first two) becomes an important part of their experience. It can also be challenging. The sex in a romantic story can serve a purpose, but it's not there to gratify prurient interests even if it can be pretty sensual.

My belief is, to tell my stories, sexuality is part of the relationship as it comes together. Some of mine have more detail. Others brush over what is happening. The couples do have a level of commitment to become sexually involved but that does not mean marriage.

How to write about a sexual encounter is something I think about when I am writing as I don't want the action to seem phony, but on the other hand, the events have to have some creativity or what is the point? I also ask myself how comfortable would I be if my kids read what I wrote. My thirteen year old granddaughter asked if my eBooks would be ones she could read, and I said not yet. She said she had been afraid of that. Well, it's not just the sex where it comes to her (although that would definitely be a factor), but I don't want her, at her age to be thinking that much about romance period-- well any more than already is there.

To date, my main characters have all been pretty much in their twenties to early forties. They have beautiful bodies and appreciate each other's bodies very much. They are heterosexual only because it's what I know most about, but the stories sometimes have gay characters who are friends.

My favorite villains are not defined as to gender and might use the threat of sex to subjugate (I don't write about kink) because sex for them isn't about attraction but power. Now I am not sure why I like these kind of villains; but maybe it's because by the nature of being outlaw types, they obviously are people who break all the rules and where we like to have people's sexuality put into tidy boxes, a villain who can't be pegged, adds a dimension. He, as a user of people, becomes equally a threat to the heroine and hero.

My romances and their sexual encounters between the hero and heroine are fantasies. These are soul mates who know how to please each other or very rapidly will be learning how. The sex is idyllic.

I never write about sex that is not voluntary on the part of both. They used to have a category of romance (maybe still do) called bodice rippers where the hero was likely to rape the heroine their first time because the heroine would say no when she wanted to say yes. I find that revolting. Sex, to me, should be a choice that both make; and if someone says no, they should mean it; and the other person should respect that decision. If the one saying no has been a tease, something my father told me was not good to do when I was just a girl, it might mean the relationship ends right there. I am not interested in writing about such women-- unless they'd be villains.

Not long ago I watched a German film about sex between seniors-- Cloud Nine. The three people in it ranged from late 60s to late 70s and looked their ages. It is a story about an affair and the consequences. It was not in the fantasy category for the sex it portrayed, but it was pretty graphic and honest about sexuality. It could not have been made in the United States as here, if two old people are going to have sex, they better look like Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren!

So maybe someday I'll write a story about older people and romance. I mostly have kept my characters close to my own age, which means a future story could be about an older woman; and if that happens, sex would be part of the story and the characters would not have perfect bodies but rather ones appropriate to their ages. The very idea of an old woman being obsessed with keeping her body youthful through surgery, rigid diet or radical exercise programs is abhorrent to me and not a character I'd be interested in spending much time with as is required in developing a story.

It can be complex for me to write about sex, to feel comfortable with what I have the characters doing. I don't add it without thought. In my stories, it will be there when I think it's what would have happened and where I feel it is important to the story to take these characters and the reader through the experience as part of the character development. I admit, I enjoy writing about it and trying to make it beautiful. Romance after all is about fantasy, in my opinion. and should be satisfying, making the reader feel mmmmm that was nice, not ack!

The photos of heat and steam are from the Yellowstone Geyser Basin and taken last September.

Religion questions

2011-09-03T02:24:00.000-07:00

Warning: even though I don't write about partisan issues here, I do write about cultural ones. Religion is as negative for some to discuss as politics-- the two no-nos of polite conversation. Well you cannot discuss religion in this country today without it getting political. So a smattering of politics will follow. I want to add-- I don't like writing about this anymore than some of you will like reading it. I am concerned about our country and sometimes you can't ignore what you see. You have to take a stand and speak your piece... as the cowboys say :).

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Mahatma Gandhi

I don't know if any of my readers can help me with a couple of questions but they have been bothering me regarding the religion calling itself Christianity today.

The first is hard for me to even write about because it's filled with contradictions but I'm going to give it a shot. When I pass some churches, I almost always read the little signs they have outside, you know the ones that come out a book of such quotes (yes, when I used to go to Christian bookstores, I saw the books). The message of the average such sign is (like the one I saw driving home from town the other day) that God/church can solve their problems and more importantly if the reader has problems, it's because God isn't ruling their lives and they are.

It's about me is presented as a problem when you consider the meaning of that message. Down with ME.

And yet, the big push by the religious right today, which has become a political movement, is that government (which in the United States is all of us together) is the problem. Their big quote is-- you can manage your money better than the government (don't ask how you build bridges with that view as this is not about logic).

In short what they are saying is-- It's about me is the solution. Way to go ME power!

I get it why a secularist might say such a thing. I get it for someone who is into an independence movement or those who believe in the Western mythology of individualism. I get it how someone who followed a very conservative view of life that some people are profligate and if they worked harder, it'd have gone better.

But a Christian? Isn't it kind of a contradiction to the Christian who is taught by Christ that we are all ONE in God and we owe not just our religious brothers but all brothers (check out story of the Good Samaritan in New Testament) whatever help we can give because when we do it for the least of us, we do it for God.

Confusing the issue, for me, is one of the political arms of the religious right where I see things like this: FAMiLY means the family takes precedent over the individual. This movement is pressuring politicians to sign away their future autonomy in voting in order to receive the support of the FAMiLY movement to get elected.

FAMiLY clearly is taking ME out of the picture... It's all about them and what they consider important.

How does that fit into the government the religious right wants? Or perhaps don't want and really just prefer that the church gains power and every other group loses it?

After I had been thinking about writing this, I saw the following article in a right wing newspaper column about how Democrats are inciting fear of people like Perry and Bachmann but that their fear is foolishness. So let me get this right. It's okay for candidates to emphasize their religious values to get votes but not okay for someone else to emphasize what those religious values mean practically speaking to block votes.

Left paints this as religious war

It doesn't take any left wing group mandating feeling that we are in a religious conflict. It just takes listening to Richard Perry or Michelle Bachmann for awhile-- as you try to avoid having your head explode. It takes understanding that the only 'thinking' conservative running for the Republican nomination is Jon Hunstman and he's not religious or radical enough to suit this right wing movement.

So what is it for this bunch? Me is the problem or Me is the answer?

Here's the second question. Why do so many Christians feel they are being abused as though they have forgotten where they live and what their freedoms are in this country, forgotten that they are the dominant religion? If you criticize what is passing for Christianity* today, the righteous scream persecution.

Let's look at that concern. No candidate for the presidency could possibly win if they didn't proclaim themselves to be a Christian-- this is true right or left wing. In the Republican party of today, they have to be a fundamentalist Christian to boot. There are churches in every town and they all are tax free. The donations to the church all count as a tax deduction. And with all of that, they feel put upon. Does it go with the territory?

* What someone says they are, doesn't mean it's what they are. Words are cheap and actions not so much. I believe there is a movement in this country calling itself Christian; but if you look at the teachings, the actions, and know the Gospels, you shake your head. Gandhi would like Christians who followed Christ's teachings; so it's not about true Christianity that he was speaking but something that's been with us a long time where it comes to that religion. Andrew Sullivan calls this movement christianists and I think for good reason.

Third question doesn't really relate to Christianity specifically. Would people value human life more if they were agnostics or atheists? I mean let's consider how many wars are encouraged by religious leaders and their teaching of a reward in heaven and life after death-- not just the Crusades, not just the religious right permeating our military with requirements to attend religious meetings, not just the current Islamic terrorist movement--but all of them.

Does war end up happening mostly because people believe there is an afterlife or they will come back again? What if they thought-- this is it for all of us? Dust to dust. One precious chance for life. Would anyone believing that way be so quick to throw away lives-- those of others or their own?

The photos are of my blooming rose of sharon, a plant I love, which is symbolically taken to mean Christ in the Bible. I have three of them and always love the late summer when they bloom. It can also be called a hibiscus. I used it for the title in one of my manuscripts because of the way pioneer women would bring the cutting with them to Oregon and from a narrow little stick would come this beautiful flowering bush. In symbolism, it's rich.

The Big One

2011-08-31T01:48:00.000-07:00

Every so often a big quake hits and people are devastated and killed by the disaster. All of my life I have been told about the big one expected in Oregon and Washington-- actually overdue now as it's been 311 years since the last megaquake off our coast and they come about every 244 years.

I've been in a couple of small quakes, nothing of that magnitude, but enough to know when the ground starts to sway, you get down on your hands and knees. When that happens and you are in a city, there are a few other things to know. This article also describes what one might expect if they live or are along the Coast regarding the resultant tsunami.

Some would rather not think about such things. My opinion is know what to do, release the fear, and then be ready to put your plan into action if the worse happens-- someday it could.

Totally Psyched for the Full Rip Nine

Happy Endings

2011-08-29T01:52:00.000-07:00

You know life doesn't give us a lot of happy endings. In fact in life, I am not exactly sure what a happy ending would constitute. Basically life gives us moments that are happy and sometimes whole strings of them, but the endings are not only not guaranteed, but they will end with death sometime-- whether that's a gentle death or a cruel one, premature or as desired.

Turn on the news to stay up on the day's events, and it's a string of bad happenings. I don't blame news for this. They are not there to report the good stuff but that for which we need to be aware and watch. They want-- need to keep us coming back for our fixes. I believe in spending time making myself aware of what is going on only when I can do something about it which means voting, working for various causes, staying informed about the world, donating when possible. To just hear bad stuff and feel helpless to deal with it is detrimental. Media flourishes on it though.

A farm or ranch is a string of not happy endings. It goes with the territory and even when things work out as well as possible, it's tough (even counting in the happy moments within). We raise these animals to be eaten which means sold at some point, or we would go bankrupt doing it. It's not a hobby, but it's also not a happy ending when we get a nice check; but when a lot of lambs, who had no idea how life was going to be, are shipped off in a big truck as happened last week.

Which is why I like movies and books with happy endings. Frankly culturally it used to almost be guaranteed that any movie had to have one. If the book they were based on did not, then they would manipulate it in the film to all work out-- or look like it might. Then we went through a phase where it was only art if it was a tragedy. Sorry, but I simply am not interested in putting my entertainment time (and books and movies are entertainment or should be) into something that makes me feel worse when it's finished than I did when I started.

Here comes a confession. One that will horrify purists in reading. I read endings first. I rarely even bother with a book that doesn't make me feel better at the end than at the beginning. If the end is good, I'll go back and read the whole thing. Otherwise, forget it. Oh once in awhile I'll give myself a literary moment and follow the rules by reading the book from start to finish; but generally I simply want books and movies that make me feel better and I do what I can to guarantee that will happen. Which is why I don't read mysteries as they are all about not knowing all the way through what is going to happen. To heck with that. If I want that, I can turn on the news.

Last week we had rented a Netflix film. I will not mention the title but a few minutes into the film I felt compelled to go to my computer (which handily is now in a corner of the living room) to check out a synopsis for this film (should have done this before I rented it). Not a happy ending. In fact a whole string of unhappy events, one right after another-- in other words two hours of them.

I told Farm Boss, not the ending, but that it was not going to end well. He said what I also felt-- turn it off. We watched Rio Grande for the umpteenth time instead.

Call me shallow for all of this. I can live with that; but I do not want unhappy endings to movies or even worse for books when I have put more hours into reading them. I feel, for my own life, it's all about building positive energy wherever possible and how I can gather that to myself. Tell me I miss a lot by not reading tragedies, by not wallowing in angst with no redeeming end to the suffering, fine; but I'll keep right on missing it.

Aging: genetics, environment and dollars

2011-08-26T01:48:00.000-07:00

One thing about life that is definite and for sure. It's all about aging. From the geological to the biological everything is aging or weathering from the impact of the environment and time. We often push such thoughts aside. Even with a rose bush, we cut off the aging blossoms, wanting mostly the buds. Sometimes we do things to try and hold onto the bud of our own lives. We fool ourselves about it until something happens to remind us-- like a reunion which brings together those who have not seen each other for maybe as much as fifty years.

Before we attended Farm Boss's 50th high school reunion, he got to talking to someone who had been to his 40th earlier this summer. He (still very fit looking ) warned Farm Boss to expect to feel shocked by all those already in wheelchairs. Like us, he had never attended one and hence everybody was still eighteen in his mind. He wasn't ready to think about the different rates at which we age and how we will face old age.

At Farm Boss's, there were no wheelchairs but was one walker which I think was from a recent hip replacement and hence doesn't count. There were some canes. Based on looks, if I had not known better by their name badges and photos, I'd have thought the people ranged in age from their 50s to their 80s. It was hard to believe they all graduated from high school in June 1961.

I thought it was pretty cool that the organizers had made name badges with the photos of the students as seniors. It was especially good for someone like me, who had known none of these people, to be able to see them now and a photo at 18. Sometimes I could still see the teen-ager, sometimes not.

So I thought about it afterward-- what makes some look older than they are or for that matter others younger? I came up with three things but there are probably more-- genetics, environment and dollars. I include in environment things like food supply, exercise, sun exposure, habits that might prove negative for a longer life span. I also recognize that looking old doesn't mean one will die any sooner than someone who appears younger facially and body-wise. We all know of the skinny, regular jogger, who drops dead at 55; so looks aren't a criteria for longevity. They relate mostly to looks.

I can't evaluate the genetics of the people at this reunion as I don't know their parents or family medical history. I also don't have a way to know about their financial situation. Some came from a long way off as in Southeast Asia and Switzerland being the farthest but they were spread all across the United States. Probably though the oldest appearing hadn't gone far from their high school (just guessing), but I also talked to quite a few who hadn't gone far and looked quite youthful; so region wasn't a factor in it.

Where it came to dollars, these alumni had all begun their adult life in a middle class, rural/suburban community with very little poverty at least of the monetary sort and also very little (if any) extreme wealth.

The ones I talked to ran a gamut for what they did or had done from truck drivers to doctors and everything in between. Some were retired. Some still worked at physically demanding jobs. That didn't appear to indicate who looked older either. I actually didn't talk to any of the oldest appearing as they were sitting in lawn chairs, and I was standing or walking around except when we ate. We had brought lawn chairs at an email's suggestion but didn't get them out of the vehicle because it would have limited mingling.

So I don't know if being physically active there related to being physically active other places. Had those who seemed older been hit by some serious illness earlier which limited their mobility? I don't know that either. I do know people who walk with small steps and move slowly appear older than those who can stride and walk more quickly. A stroke, hip or knee replacement can change that all very fast.

The reunion described earlier to Farm Boss probably had more people without much money (based on from where they came) than this one. That could explain the wheelchairs there as if you can't afford to see a doctor in your 40s, don't get the proper medications for things like high blood pressure, your chances of a stroke are probably greater in your 50s. Even diabetes might be influenced by diet as well as genetics. By now everybody at this reunion had Medicare, but it doesn't cover all health problems as some cannot afford the Medicare supplement and run into a catastrophic problem where 10% is a lot of money.

Weight wasn't all of it either as there were skinny or fat people who looked older or younger. Some women, about half, dyed their hair but that doesn't make someone look younger. It just makes them look like they dye their hair. I didn't really see anyone I'd say had had a face lift or was using Botox although who knows for sure on that unless you have known the person a while. Makeup can make a difference for women as too harsh of makeup on an old face is not flattering. Think an aging Joan Crawford.

I don't think looking old before someone else totally relates to smoking or alcohol use as the ones that looked the oldest would surprise me if I found out they smoked or drank much. Actually the oldest looking ones looked like what I thought grandmas and grandpas were supposed to look like and did when I was growing up.

Of course, whether we look older or younger isn't really a big deal in terms of longevity. But being able to stay physically active might be. I don't know but the only thing concrete I got from this is that a number doesn't tell much about how old someone appears to be. I've thought this before though sometimes when I am being slowed in a grocery store by someone appearing much older ahead of me, and I realize they might actually be younger. Is that mostly complements of my ancestors?

A 50th High School Reunion album on Picasa

High school reunions

2011-08-23T02:23:00.000-07:00

There were three things for which I was not looking forward this summer-- two high school reunions and one jury duty. One I had a choice about, two I did not. I got the jury duty over in July with one pretty nearly day-long trial. The first of the high school reunions happened last week-end with Farm Boss's 50th. This was the first one he and I have either attended and unless something unexpected comes along, September will see my last one.

There were reasons I had never gone to one. Mostly because I thought they would be shallow gatherings all oriented around something that ended __ number of years ago. I figured mostly they'd be for those who felt their high school years were their best and wanted to relive them however shallowly they could do it. I did understand they also are a time to reconnect with friends lost along the way. Maybe for some they also serve to assess-- did I do better than my classmates or worse? Sort of like yearly Christmas letters only enhanced.

His 50th has my praise for the organizers setting it in a lovely, wooded location on one of the farms of an alumni. It was also pretty inexpensive at $20 a person which might have included the gifts (more on that later) name tags, rental tables, and definitely included the meal which had been catered and frankly was blah to bad (the restaurant should not have wanted their name attached to it as I don't imagine many who ate it would want to eat there afterward-- something for restaurant caterers to consider).

The setting outdoors more or less made up for the food. I also liked how the organizers said because of donations, from other alumni, anybody who could not afford the $20 would be covered privately. The attendees who I met were very nice, polite, some funny, interesting in the different ways they have spent these 50 years. The men Farm Boss had known as friends back then probably would still be friends if he lived nearer to them today.

Now understand that for me, as an appendage there with no shared history with these alumni, I was there more as an observer. Up until the planned events, I stuck to asking people a few questions about themselves, giving Farm Boss the freedom to mingle but really I was kind of just 'there' for wont of a better word.

Then came the planned 'entertainment'. First came a little test that they had all supposedly filled out the answers to these questions which were minutia that only someone obsessed with high school would possibly remember. Farm Boss said he knew only one of the answers (name of the hangout next to their high school) and didn't bother filling it out. There was a prize for the person getting the most answers right but that didn't end up being many of them.

Then came a set of questions for prizes that were oriented toward who these people were today. As each one would come up, I'd think, nah, the organizers wouldn't really ask that and then they would. It did tweak my sense of humor-- to be able to laugh inside while maintaining a public decorum that was appropriate and didn't ridicule what other people needed to feel good about themselves where it hurts no one else.

Here's an example: Who still looks the most like they did in high school? Now is that a slam or a compliment? The question about who had most grandchildren seems innocuous unless you think how some cannot have children. Still by this age, they are probably used to those questions and let that roll off their backs. The answer was by the way 22. Seriously-- who has 22 grandchildren these days and how did they manage it? In addition that person already had two greats...

No surprise probably then that there was a question about who looked youngest. When five names had been called out (don't ask me how they were selected as it wasn't really looking youngest so far as I could tell-- but might be how cheerleaders used to be selected), as they stood there rather than stooping to an even lower level by voting for the very youngest, they let all five have a prize. (Yes, I think everybody does wonder at such an event about aging and how it shows up, but to bring it into the spotlight that just seemed wrong to me.)

Answering who still had the most hair probably only related to the men and it might have been won by the man who also had the youngest child (another question and bet nobody expected the answer to be nine years old-- not hard to see how that one happened).

And yeah, I gotta say, those questions were the total expectation I had had for people who wanted to travel back in time to the values they had had in high school. At least they didn't ask who looked oldest. Saner minds might have prevailed.

It's easy to make fun of that kind of planned entertainment except the persons organizing something like this cannot find it easy, and they probably were trying to make it fun for everybody. Putting it together does deserve praise as if it depended on someone like me (who could plan a big event and has but would not choose to for a high school reunion) nothing would happen.

Some to whom I chatted, when I asked, told me they had been to every reunion ever offered and by some I mean there were a sprinkling of partners like me who had come to offer support or maybe defend their ground, whoever knows why anybody comes to something like that. A fair number of graduates had come alone but that might relate more to the distance from which they had traveled like Switzerland and the cost of airfare.

I felt I would like three things about doing it and each was fulfilled. One-- sometimes you just need to go outside your comfort zone and a big gathering of people, who are coming together based on who they were as youths, has to be one of those for me. Two-- I felt that I would enjoy photographing it. Three-- I was interested in what a large gathering (over 70 returning alumni) of people mostly the age of 68 would look. Now that's the part that is most interesting to me on several levels, and after I got started thinking about it, I decided it deserved its own blog.

Education in the United States

2011-08-21T01:56:00.000-07:00

When I first began hearing right wing bloggers talking about ending public education, I wondered what that was all about. All of them benefited from such education and I might add cheaper tuition for higher ed than we have today. So why might they think this way? Oh I knew about the desire for vouchers where they'd take the tax money I pay on property and give it to somebody who only wanted their child educated in a right wing religious school. That's been around a long while. But really seeing an end to public education, who would want that? Now I not only have a clue but also the who and why of it.

from MandT links to the Koch fight to resegregate

I said I'd keep politics out of this blog, and I have but this is cultural. Our nation, as a democracy is based on the people being educated well enough to understand history, logic, and even reading. Without that, how does it work? I suggest the desire from people like the Kochs is that only a few will vote and they are doing their best to insure that happens!

For anybody who does value public education, the one they got, the one they hope future generations will get, pay attention to what is happening. Ending a vital educational system for the majority of Americans is the desire of some. Sure I know there are good private schools, which are not religious, but the average citizen cannot afford the cost. If people, who can, end up only caring about their private school, thinking-- great, my kid is taken care of-- the end result will be a very uneducated populace for their child to grow up having to work and live near because nobody can stay in a ritzy community or behind a gate forever.

The question driven life

2011-08-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

My writing here has been thin, very thin because my mind isn't working this way, but my reading is all over the map. I particularly liked this article by Richard Brooks in the New York Times on a man and the family that grew him. Genetics or environment to create this kind of person?

The Question-driven Life

It's how I like the idea of living and do to the very best of my ability. I do not have all the answers and am not driven to prove I do. The ones I have today might turn out to not be ones for tomorrow. I like that idea which probably says something about the woman that I am.

At this point in my life, I live fully, sometimes joyfully and sometimes sorrowfully, with those answers I do have. To wait for the forever answer would for me mean not fully living.

All my life I have loved questions, both asking and being asked them, and hope my own life never runs out of them. It is not that I don't want the definitive answer to say life; but it's that I have seen in my almost 68 years, that what it seemed to be this year may not be what it seems to be next year. Viva Life!

Open doors

2011-08-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

What I love about summer is open doors and windows. When my grandchildren were here last week, one of them said that our living room is almost all windows and pretty much that is what it is although we gave ourselves back one wall when we replaced one big window with a smaller one and a partial wall. We did that to have some room to put up paintings.

There is nothing I appreciate more about summer than having all my doors and windows open all day and night long. The season doesn't last forever but I make the most of it while it does.

Influences

2011-08-13T07:57:00.000-07:00

It is hard to write anything right now because a lot of what is on my mind is political or about the books or grandchildren or I don't know what. Maybe a blank space between entries. Summer is kind of winding down, even though it is early August, and maybe that's part of it.

We had two of our granchildren staying at the farm this week with two others visiting often for cousin time which I really love to have happen. One of the things we did was to take two of them up to Portland to experience a big city as they hadn't spent time in one. I'd like to take them back for an over nighter but this wasn't the week with time for that. So we did part of what we had hoped to do with more saved for their future trips.

One thing that is on my mind was what I was thinking while looking through the young adult books. The majority of titles seem oriented toward a fantasy world of mysticism and sometimes animal hero/heroine like say warrior cats. There is nothing wrong with that and after Twilight, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Watership Down and maybe even Winnie the Pooh, it makes sense. It's not like fairy tales were realistic, but in terms of books themselves, I could not help but think how different the stories were from the main ones I remember from when I was growing up.

At Powells Bookstore (a wonderful whole block and three story bookstore full of used and new books) my grandkids found books they each liked which were part of series they had already been reading. I didn't spend time looking at their choices, as they had been pre-approved by their mother (necessary especially in the young adult section where my granddaughter found most of her books); but I did buy two of my own from the children's classic section which were books I had loved by Gene Stratton Porter who was one of those authors who wrote about the importance of nature to our lives. Those books aren't in the primary section that young people want today, and I wonder what difference that will make for the future. I know what a difference these kind of stories made in my life.

Stratton Porter, an Indiana naturalist, photographer, and author, wrote about characters who found depths to their souls through their experiences in nature. Her characters or at least the heroes/heroines, were noble in their thinking, idealistic. She wrote about the relationship between man and his environment and described nature in a way that inspired many people to see it with more depth in their own lives. A lot of books back then taught that kind of thing.

I don't worry about my grandchildren where it comes to this as they are being raised by parents who do revere nature and are taking them camping, canoeing, hiking, and bicycling in wilderness areas, but I wonder how it will impact those who do not for themselves have access to the beauty of nature and how it impacts souls. I am not sure and it is a concern for me for our culture.

In our American psyche used to be a respect and value of the wilderness as a necessary part of life; and it was depicted by writers like John Muir, by nature photographers like Ansel Adams, and in children's books by authors like Stratton Porter. This way of thinking influenced those like Teddy Roosevelt who was instrumental in large tracts of land being set aside for national parks and future generations. I see little of this concern in many Americans who have decided that's not needed and the dollar is what is to be revered or their concept of a god being that doesn't care if forests exist as he can recreate them in the wink of an eye if he so desired.

If young people are growing up with less of this respect for the natural world, where will this leave humans in the future? I don't have an answer and don't right now know for sure that the books out there aren't also teaching this reverence for the natural world. I do intend to do some looking into exactly what they are teaching because I think children's books that teach about nature, about working for what one wants, of fighting for a noble cause, I think those are going to be increasingly important in a world that appears to be becoming more and more challenging to find a good life.

Rango

2011-08-09T02:36:00.000-07:00

When I ordered Rango from Netflix, I had little confidence that I'd like it. It seemed kind of odd, a chameleon as a western hero??? But it had two things that drew me to it. One was two of my grandkids had said they really liked it. The other that it had the voice of Johnny Depp for Rango.

What I didn't know is how much fun it would be as it served on one level as a children's movie (although likely not real young ones as it does have some scary stuff) but on the other level as a spoof on westerns-- in fact on any genre films or books.

After we were a bit into it, given how much writing and analyzing of manuscripts I have been doing, I started laughing as it was lampooning all the things I love as well as the things I am writing. Westerns do have those elements that must be in them. The tops though was the Spirit of the West (based on something that was not Western at all), and the surprise as who voiced it.

For anybody who wants a break from depressing stuff and who has been a fan of western movies (we had just watched Tall T with Randolph Scott as our previous Netflix), this movie is a lot of fun. I plan to buy it eventually as part of our collection of kid flicks. For any fan of westerns, there is a lot of humor in it, some great character voices who pretty well cover what a Western must have to be true to its genre.

August

2011-08-06T07:19:00.000-07:00

As I've been mentioning, it's hard to write here with a lot going on that I don't write about and with my time at the keyboard concentrating on fixing the things that were wrong with my earlier manuscript wantabes, which sometimes is very little and sometimes requires major revisions. I feel divided in a lot of directions and it won't get easier fast given a busy week ahead.

I did find the dress that will work for my 50th high school reunion as well as something that I think will work for me to wear to Farm Boss'. I learned something about my taste in clothing which I hadn't thought about before. I like to have me wear my clothes, not my clothes wear me. I don't like showy dresses or tops or anything that makes the dress show up first. I like understated clothes but want them to fit well. Since I have a more than ample chest size, if I don't pick tops and dresses that come in, I look like I am filling out the whole thing. So drape or fit is the ticket. I also hope not to go shopping again for another six months. Oh wait, I will be going next week with my granddaughter as we take her on a shopping binge when she is here for her coming birthday presents.

Nothing more has been going wrong with the farm. The irrigation is in full swing and that's good exercise which will be made easier next week with the two older grandkids here. They like doing it-- for now.

Our August has been quite nice for weather. Warm, gray, almost beach mornings with sunny afternoons, not too hot. We are lucky for the weather. Soon we will be selling lambs and shipping out some cattle but for the next week it will all be grandkid time again.

Oh and politics. I swear I get more frustrated by the day with that but I will save those rants for Rainy Day Things!

Collecting bones

2011-08-04T02:06:00.000-07:00

With politics as they are right now, it seems a good time to find distractions. It's not as though most of us can do anything but rant about what is happening-- whichever side we happen to believe is right. It seems to me that nobody is winning although there might be secret winners with goals that escape my understanding. One of my distractions is the beauty of nature.

When we took our grandsons back along the creek to wade and look for crawdads, we found the skull of a young beaver upon which a coyote had dined. The oldest of the two asked for the bones which he'll get when it's been cleaned up by nature. (no photos until then as right now-- grody!) The coyote skull from the one Farm Boss shot will go to our veterinarian son-in-law after it also has been cleaned by natural forces. We are a family who much values bones especially those found out in the wilds somewhere. The creek kind of qualifies as the wilds these days.

I absolutely love bones and have had four skulls (cattle and mountain sheep) on my walls, most outside. The mountain sheep below was found in Eastern Oregon by my parents many years ago. [Correction: Farm Boss said that they actually found it in Arizona on one of their winters in the area between Yuma and Quartzite]. The cow skulls were up the valley from our home here-- likewise had them a long while.

When we walked back to the creek, we saw the skull of the ram that died last year. Farm Boss had buried the carcass, but it was dug up and this lovely skull left in perfect condition. I didn't really feel I would have taken it otherwise given I felt I knew its owner but then here it was handed to me and I don't ignore a gift of nature.

Otherwise summer is going too rapidly and we've been busy with getting hay in, sheep sheared, time with grandchildren, Farm Boss's outside work, my manuscript editing, and I even got the jury duty over by being on one that took most of a day, but ended my obligation for two years-- unless a different court calls me in :( When I turn 70, it would be sufficient to say I don't want to serve again which I really don't. I am not a person who likes to take responsibility for other people's lives. Oh I speak my mind, say what I think, but don't want to make that final decision. In a jury, you have no choice about that. I understand it's an important thing for our legal system though.

The next month will be busy with more grandchildren time and a 50th high school reunion for Farm Boss. Boy time flies. Really, it was 50 years ago??? Mine will be in September, and I am starting to think about a dress for it. It doesn't have to be fancy, but I don't have a lot of need for dresses, hence do not have anything that would work. I am thinking-- sundress but not sure what will be in the stores that won't be so short I can't visualize wearing it anywhere but around the house! I looked online and it seemed that every dress I saw (that wasn't over $200) was meant for a twenty something. What's that all about?!

This last skull is not one we found unless you count buying one in Nogales, Sonora as found. I have it in the solarium.

Animal husbandry-- the down side

2011-08-01T01:53:00.000-07:00

The end of my week turned exceedingly busy, lasting through the week-end, which means I didn't really have much time to sit down and write this blog. Since I had committed to it, I felt I should try to get it down anyway; but it'll be rapidly written and maybe not make as much sense as I usually hope.

It is also the one that if you are tenderhearted toward animals, I suggest you skip and come back another day. There will be a photo at the end that you will not want to see.

The last month has been one of life and death on the farm which is always tough, but this time in a lot of ways that came so close together that it's hard to ignore the emotional impact nor the fact that it's all connected-- life and death.

Given this whole spring, I can't say it began with losing the ewe to the probability of a toxin she had consumed. I came out and saw that a black ewe was down in the alley leading to their shelter. It was warm enough that I knew it could not be by choice. She had her legs straight out, and when I tried to get her up, I could not get her to stay up. I was able to drag and get her to move with great difficulty but got her out of the direct sun putting her in a small pen.

A few hours later a lamb wanted in with her. That was the toughest part of this whole thing as I let the lamb in and watched as it tried to nuzzle her mother's face, then to nurse. Farm Boss did all he could to save the ewe, tried all his tricks when he came home from work after my phone call. He sheared her to see if that would help which her lamb then went to and nuzzled. That always confuses sheep when it's their mother who suddenly is shorn. Now this lamb can make it without its mother's milk by its age but I cannot tell you how upsetting it is that she had to-- and she did as within the day, the ewe died. For anybody who thinks animals don't love each other, they are wrong.

So we went along with the usual, and then came the next very upsetting animal event. I woke up one morning to go out onto the deck when I let the cats out only to see a small cat seeming relaxed and lying in my flower bed. She meowed and came to me when I called to her. Black, manx and went into the house right away, ate, found a chair to sleep in, got along with our two males.

I will tell you that I have wanted my Persia back as a reincarnated cat, which I don't even know can happen; but twice over the years we have lived here, I have had a cat just show up and act as though she belonged. Both I had until they died of old age. So you can see what I had hoped here...

Except almost immediately we realized this cat had something wrong with her, (no details on what) and we knew we might not be able to save her life. We had been planning to go down to visit our daughter's family for the week-end; and we pushed the timing up to that morning to rush down and have our son-in-law who is a veterinarian help us decide if she could be saved.

I wanted her. I felt maybe she was my cat returned to me. It was not to be and the determination was that we could not save her even if we had been willing (and I was) to put a lot of money into her treatment. What was wrong was too severe, had been ignored by someone too long. She had been mistreated by someone, no medical care, skin and bones, by the time she came to me, there was nothing we could do except agree to have her put to sleep, bring her back here and bury her when our week-end was over.

I have no logical explanation for how this cat came to be in my garden, but the loss of her broke my heart because it wasn't just losing a cat I hadn't had long. It was feeling I had back my little buddy only to lose her immediately. Given her age, the timing was right for her to have been born not long after I had lost Persia... But it was not meant to be and I cried a lot of tears over it.

Do animals reincarnate? Given how some are treated by their owners, having a pet we have loved and knowing we might not get them back and someone else might do that to them, well it could make a person hope they do not.

Final incident was coming home from our recent John Day vacation. I had felt we needed to come straight home because of the sheep and cattle. At the house, I stepped out of the pick-up to get the mail while Farm Boss drove it on down the driveway. As soon as he got to the house, he saw in the field a coyote trying to get into the sheep. He ran in, got his rifle and by that time we saw there were two of them. This is really unusual. He got off a shot but missed and they split for the back getting away.

We hoped we had avoided a loss but found a dead lamb down by the creek where that coyote had gotten into the sheep pasture where they are supposed to be safe but were not.

We knew it wasn't going to be the end of the predations; and when he came home early from work Wednesday, about noon or thereabouts, there was another dead lamb out in another field that was supposed to be safe. This one had barely been wounded, all marks that killed it were by the neck. I give coyotes credit for being quick and merciful hunters.

Farm Boss dragged it where it could be seen from the house. We had the guns loaded and ready to go, then came the moment when I had seen the vultures desert the carcass, and told him an eagle was now on it. When he came in to watch that, he saw a coyote coming from the back, leap the fence, and head toward its kill. He aimed his 30-06 and ended its life within a moment. It died pointed toward its kill and only a few feet between their bodies.

There is no joy in this story. Coyotes are only doing what they must; but there is a need to do it when they start killing lambs as there is no stopping them once that begins. Coyotes are beautiful creatures, serve a necessary ecological function for the land; but if you cannot harden yourself to killing them, it's the end of sheep on your place.

The eagle that came to feast on this disaster is the one in the top photo as it soared overhead. Nothing about this is fun to write or remember but it's part of this life and I felt that the emotional ups and downs were important to now and then write down.

There are times I wonder if I can keep doing this as it is so much about life and death and I get that experience a lot more frequently than someone living in town might expect. It's like an emotional torrent at times and then it'll go months with nothing going wrong. This summer wasn't one of those times.

Back of Beyond

2011-07-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

Sitting at my computer in the living room, having nearly made the transition from my beloved nearly 10 year old, much updated desktop PC, I am now pretty much committed to my laptop which has many advantages for speed, ability to take with me and continue working when on a trip, but I LOVED the energy of my old computer and only gave it up after something started happening that made writing fiction on it impossible-- sudden black screens and reboots.

Years ago, I remember writing with a PC that would do what was then called a blue screen of death. It was caused by various complications involving insufficient operating memory. This time there is plenty of operating memory, and I think instead the catastrophic failure has been caused by one of the updates from Thunderbird, Mozilla or Microsoft and something didn't work with my old machine. You can only update these machines so far maybe, possibly, who knows.

In short, neither I nor the local techie (Farm Boss) have any clue why it happened, but the second time, after a restore hadn't stopped it, I was outta there and onto this one, which in June got set up in the corner of the living room. No way am I going to voluntarily edit a chunk of text only to have it disappear before I can hit save. The second time is NEVER as good-- at least not in my memory, and since the first is no longer there to compare, my memory is all that counts.

For the last month, my high point emotionally was renting a house on the Middle Fork of the John Day River, a very old farm house with four bedrooms and one bathroom (they claimed it had an outhouse but turns out it only had the building part and no hole which means they did not have an outhouse-- besides which after our daughter related one of her archaeology field school experiences where, when they took down the outhouse after the dig, they found the bottom full of black widow spiders, I think there was limited enthusiasm for using one) and with ten of us at assorted ages from 68 to 3 one bathroom, even inside, felt like going back in time.

The experiences the kids got from being in that area, at that house, seeing the fossil beds, were, I think very good as it was a lot like stepping back in time with only some additions to what would have been there 50 or even 100 years ago. What we did next took is all even farther back.

Farm Boss and I took the upstairs bedroom even though that is about the last thing I really wanted to do. It made sense though as in the middle of the night I'd rather it be us getting up and going down narrow stairs than the kids. The owners had installed a window a/c; so it wasn't too bad for sleeping other than the necessary once during the night trip down the stairs hoping nobody else was in that bathroom.

The kids loved the two hammocks on the screened porch which ran around two sides of the house. They also had a lot of fun on a hammock type chair that was outside hanging from one of the locust branches. Basically they had fun doing what kids long ago would have had fun doing.

The house was not far off a main east west road through the middle of Oregon which meant traffic noise even up in the locust tree grove where the house set.

Conveniently, it was not far from the John Day Fossil Beds, an excellent interpretive museum, and the South Fork of the John Day River for swimming and fishing. It is in the middle of some of Oregon's prettiest and least seen country as it is five driving hours from our farm home and about that from anybody else's the west side of the Cascades.

With walking in the canyons where they have so many fossils and where this area has been preserved for future generations as a National Monument, with an excellent museum and talk explaining how life hhas shifted on earth as this is all from the Age of the Mammals, we also had time to swim in the South Fork (current just amazed me as the rivers have more water than they have had in years) and fishing, throwing rocks (ideally not in the same pools, drinking wine (not the kids), playing cards (not the oldsters), eating good food, and having lots of conversations, it was a good time I think for everybody.

When Farm Boss and I drove north from the house on an exploration of our own, we ran into a cattle drive down the middle of the highway. The photo above is the vanguard of the drive with the major part of what looked to us like 200 head of cattle being behind us. I always love those kind of experiences for photos, and the good feeling I get from seeing what looked like a family, of all ages, about fifteen of them on horseback and two with a pickup truck (likely grandma and grandpa), moving the cattle herd from one grazing ground, through the little town of Spray, and to a new pasture.

Cattle drives like that are part of the old West but very much a factor still in today's West at least in some parts of the country. I can relate because we have our cattle get out on the highway once in awhile which requires some of the same techniques to move them excluding the horses.

Anyway this family trip was the high point of my month from a positive perspective (although writing has gone very well). I also had what appear to me now to be a set of experiences that weren't so high but were emotionally powerful and will actually write about those too as part of what it means to live a country and ranching life.

So I am warning anybody who has a tender heart-- skip my next blog which will be for August 1st. I had debated not writing about any of it; but it seems it's part of at least my story for this summer and really for the life I lead and who I am as a woman. The warning comes because while it's what I experienced, it's not what everyone must.

Energy from what we read

2011-07-27T02:55:00.000-07:00

Before I leave this topic, I have one last thought regarding the energy we get from whatever we are reading or writing whether that is fiction or non-fiction. Our choices for what we read and write do become energy for our lives. We choose what we do partly due to that but maybe sometimes it's more subconscious and we are getting something we never intended from this reading or writing.

Through my months of working on my writing, I came to have more faith in my own stories, see the value of romances or action books or so many other types of fiction that have an emotional roller coaster ride at the center of their plot. It's similar to how once in awhile I want a Jurassic Park fix.

Romantic fiction, as an example of what I mean, is a kind of mythology. Reading it requires a bit of your own gatekeeper experience. You are ushered into a different world and follow vicariously a set of experiences as you leave your need to find logic in every situation behind, and you do it to get energy that you can use other places in your life. To me, as a writer, it's not necessary to make someone believe what happens did happen. That's for non-fiction. We also don't have to think we would want it to happen. It's not about reality.

Everything we read gives us something, and we should choose the kind of books for the things we want elsewhere in our lives. To read an adventure thriller does not mean the reader wants to have bad guys chasing them around town. It means there likely was going to be a take-charge moment, a time of using skills, a time to get strong, and it might apply to anything in that person's life but not likely what the protagonist in the story got.

I believe romantic fiction can be empowering but not in that you go out the door trying to find that beautiful woman or handsome man. It's that you feel more internal juice, more ability to do the things you must for your own life. I believe choosing the right kind of books to read, which will be different at different times in our lives, can provide that vibrant energy along with an awwww moment or oh no or a lot of other emotions. It feeds emotions in a way that is uplifting where so many other places we're bombarded by emotions that are anything but uplifting.

As an example of this reading for energy, think about one of the most popular fiction types right now in teen and pretty popular in adult fiction-- vampires. If you look at the book table at Costco, you can't miss these books. If you go through the teen books to find something for a teen, you can't get past not only them but other adventure fantasy stories.

Vampire stories give the one who reads them something, and it's good to stop when looking at it or any type of literature to figure out what it is and whether it's what we wanted. Better to know than to be subconsciously bombarded by something that undermines what we are trying to do in our daily lives. In that, it is no different than any entertainment or media including music.

I will be writing more about what I think a romance yields for energy when I open up the Romance on the Edge blog.

The ending

2011-07-25T02:47:00.000-07:00

So there are several stages to writing a full length, finished manuscript. First the ideas, then the beginning to get down the bones, add the meat... and then comes the last stage. Editing, editing and re-editing. Writers used to have editors who did some of this for them but not so anymore. If someone wants to go the publisher route, they have to present a very nearly print ready book which might get some tweaking but basically will stay as it is.

I have heard of writers who can lay down a story that is print ready from the get go. That's certainly not me. I get that story laid out (mine run from 80,000-138,000 words), have the characters and gist of it about as they will stay, check all my spelling and punctuation as I go, and then try to let it set at least a month in what I thought was finished form.

When I come back to it with fresh eyes, I do it all again because no matter how much I thought I caught, there seems to always be more. Does a computer faerie come along and insert such glaring errors? The blog also has that happen. The work of editing happens whenever I have time and I'll come and go from it as this or that gets reworked.

Then for me comes what I hope will be the final edit. I think it works best if I have a block of time to read it through pretty much in a couple of settings-- close together. The reason for this is to see the continuity that I might've missed when I was fitting it into many other activities. That isn't likely to be the last time I tweak something, but it is the time I hope I got it all as good as it gets.

This spring and summer, where I was editing a lot of my stories, I had a couple of additional pluses to this work. I got to see my body of work at one time which told me where I wasn't putting out fresh ideas, what my patterns were, where I might want to break them for future writing. I saw protagonists I liked better than others and had a chance to look at the ones that had a good story but maybe not so strong of characters with the idea of strengthening them. Working on one of the stories brought me back to the cover because I simply didn't see the face there as fitting the story. The new improved model seems better.

So basically editing is to look at the story for good writing, plot, character consistency. Does it all flow? Does it make sense that that person did that? It's when you find inconsistencies of character, names, appearance, location, etc etc.

Now if one is just writing for their own pleasure, this is the last stage. If, however the intent is to send to a publisher, there is the toughest part yet to come-- query letter, synopsis and outline. None of these are easy for me and although I did work with that consulting writer on doing them, did several times get past that stage to have an editor actually request full manuscripts before rejecting them, I never liked it. It is though part of selling.

Because my plan this time is to use EPUB, which means electronically published online in various formats, I do not need query letters or outlines. I will need instead a promotional paragraph.

The more I thought about EPUB, about not losing control over my stories, over creating covers that had meaning to them, I knew it's my first choice for getting these stories out. I still, however, have a concern about whether putting them out online would end up with the stories being ripped off as in someone else taking them and putting their own name on them. What protects the work from that?

EPUB requires more than a finished manuscript. There must be those covers, brief teasers to interest a reader in finding out more about the story. The latter means a killer sentence, as often that's all the chance someone gets, and a blurb to let a reader know what they would be getting if they bought my book. I also will write each a short essay regarding what they were about and my feeling toward them which will go into the blog devoted to promoting them-- Romance with an Edge.

Come fall, when I put out the first of my stories, a blog called Romance with an Edge is where future writings on these books will be going. It will come out about the time the first eBook goes online. It will have more about my writing philosophy as I don't want to use this blog to sell books. I've seen writers who do this, but this blog has its own purpose, one I don't want to change. The new one will though be in my blog lists for those interested in more info on those books as they come along.

Whatever a person does in the creative line there often does come a time to put it out there and take the risk that their baby will be rejected by either a publisher or today those with eReaders of one sort or another. It's painful to have that happen but equally so to do something that we put our heart and soul into but then never show another person. The sales part is secondary to the primary creative effort, but it's no less a part of it.