Take a Hike

Take a hike she said. 

So, I did. 

She and I and six other gals at Point Reyes in the rain, hiked to

 the beach, dodging rain drops.

 I saw taller than I am Cow Parsnips.

 

Finally, up close, I was able to differentiate their bigger than a large-man-hand-five fingered fuzzy leaves from the feathery carrot top leaves of poison Hemlock. Both have convex white umbels. Both grow in dense wild areas. Apart from the leaves being very different, the Hemlock has distinguishing reddish purple blotches on its stalks. Knowing the difference could save a life. 

In my twenties, I heard about a boy on the beach where Malibu Creek let out onto the sand at the base of a cliff. His family watched from their picnic blanket with pride as their ten-year-old son fashioned a flute from a reed that grew along the creek and began to blow it, making a whistle like sound. They were horror struck when he keeled over. At the lifeguard’s directions, they rushed him to the closest medical facility. On the way, the boy died. The family were in shock, disbelief, and grief-struck. Autopsy showed concentrations of Poison Hemlock in his mouth and trachea. That stuck with me. Socrates’ mandatory “suicide” is chalked up to drinking Hemlock. Potent poison. Glad to know the difference!

The day after hiking to the beach from the Hostel in Point Reyes, we hiked at Abbot’s Lagoon and again all the way to a different beach along the less than peaceful Pacific. More Hemlock, more Cow Parsnip, purple Irises, 

orange Monkey Face Flowers, red Paintbrush, 

Coastal Poppies,

Thimble Berries,

and plentiful bird species greeted and delighted us.

Male Quail was keeping a watchful eye as chicks foraged in the underbrush.

Volunteering to help remove invasive species at Half Moon Bay a few years ago, gave me better perspective on just how invasive and persistent Hemlock is. Ditto Ox Tongue’s pretty yellow flowers on prickly prickly stalks springing from ouchy ouchy leaves. Gloves mandatory.

Tujunga wash is a tried and true favorite place to hike. Recently, friend Julie and I hiked, on another rainy day, and marveled at the sound of rushing, gushing Tujunga Wash. Everything was in bloom. Including human hubris.

This has been a Super Bloom year. Golden Poppies Purple Lupine. Bees are happy. No glyphosate in the wild. We hope.

Point Reyes Book Store had this in the window:

Celebrating Mothers!

Mothers allow life to flow through them. Whether a woman has consciously asked to become a vessel for life, or was unwittingly caught off guard, or violently entered and, and, due to varied circumstances, had to succumb to growing within her womb what may be a frightful reminder of rape, babies are born or found in want of a mother by a woman (usually) who wants to be one and scoops that babe to her breast. 

Babies are life's yearning for itself said Kahlil Gibran. Nurturing a life is the task offered. Women (and men) cannot help but want to support new life to thrive. Distractions, poverty, illness, whether mental or physical, get in the way, but I believe that children, for the most part, highlight our instincts to make sure the next generation thrives. We do the best we can.

Children grow and become adults who beget more children. Insidiously, we have been distracted from the all important task of truly nurturing life and find ourselves in an environmental crisis on Planet Earth. Here we are, trying not to destroy ourselves as we destroy everything around us with our super smart brains and ZERO spiritual intelligence. Our hubris is so big, it's as water is to fish. We are blind to the fact that we're steeping in stupidity, avarice, arrogance, and greed, but we are.

Friday, my cozy and privileged Nor Cal family and I took BART to San Francisco to see the musical "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." The Roald Dahl classic children's book has been updated and rearranged to provide a timely message for us all. Scintillating singers and daring dancers bond to make this musical magical.

What DO we do with gluttony? Ask Augustus Gloop who falls into the Chocolate River he's trying to drink-up. What do we do about entitlement and acquisitiveness? Ask Veruca Salt who, in this version, is a Russian bad nut (Verushka!), who wants everything and she wants it NOW! Her father is a slippery-slope-soto-voce-deal-making sinister tycoon in furs, also accustomed to getting his way. How do we deal with those who take what they want and damn the consequences? Ask Violet Beauregard. In this case, poor Violet is not a shrinking violet, but rather a grab and go gal who despite Mr. Wonka's protestations grabs the gum that is not yet ready for consumption. She is 'Queen of Pop' and just HAS to keep chewing.... until she does pop, when the blueberry pie dessert portion of the great-tasting three-course dinner flavored-gum ball goes wrong, causing her to swell to the proportions and color of a gigantic blueberry until she  *pops*. Spectacularly, she pops, splattering her cheering-her-on-disregard-the-rules-father. She pops like one of her own bubblegum bubbles. The fourth child, Mike TV, is addicted to screens, hand held or big. His mother is also addicted, but to drink.

Little Charlie and his Grandpa Joe are the last men standing after all the other kids who've won golden tickets to tour the Chocolate Factory and their chaperones have been eliminated for cheating or not following Wonka's rules. There is magic afoot in the story. Wonka and Charlie Bucket are alike in their zeal to create new and wonderfully workable solutions to problems in the world. Love and Kindness prevail in their set of values. May it always be so. (Personally, my hope for our world is dimming.)

Not sure we're gonna survive ourselves in fifty or even twenty years. At the rate of species extinction, perhaps we have thirty years MAX to turn things around before the Luna Option* is tried as last resort.

Is our human nature to be greedy, like Augustus? Not sure about that. What is it we really want? Is our human nature to be self-important and entitled, like Veruka? Seems that way, doesn't it? Is our human nature to be altruistic, generous, and kind, like Charlie? Hah! Where did you get THAT notion? Not visible anywhere in our leaders 'round the world, is it? 

Charlie is kind. Charlie is self-deprecating and wants to share with his parents and grandparents whatever wee bit of joy he finds in the world. Where'd he come from? Where will he land, now that he's been made part-owner and collaborator on Wonka's factory and knows how to work the Great Glass Elevator? Will fame and fortune spoil Charlie Bucket?

One of the most thrilling scenes of the evening for me was looking sideways to witness nearly ten-year-old Grandie Devlyn as she devoured the eye candy of the musical's grandeur. Clearly, she enjoyed the spectacle.

Last October, for my birthday, Mark got primo tickets for the four of us in the center of the Orchestra row J! Spectacular seats! Not so close that we were drenched in flop sweat from the dancers, but not far away enough to warrant opera glasses. We could see the actors' facial expressions! 

Before the curtain swooped up with opening strains of the overture, Devlyn and I had a chance to visit with some of the musicians tuning up in the pit. We counted three Saxophones, two Clarinets, six Guitars, three Keyboards, one Violin, Cello and Bass, four Brass Horns, and a Drum Set. She knew by name quite a few of the instruments. Thrilling to see them up close and personal and have musicians light up as Miss D showed interest.

Glad to be a mama of two and Gra'Moose to Miss D! Glad I had a choice when I was nineteen not to become a mom, then choice-fully conscious when I was ready for Life to flow through me at twenty-eight. SO glad to have (finally) chosen the perfect mate for all this magic to happen! I am very very lucky and grateful.

For all of us humans, male and female, there is a creative womb space where creativity dwells. Whether we design and build musical instruments, clothing, mechanical tools, or write stories, sing, dance, creatively support friends, or become parents, necessity is the mother of invention. Each of us is mother to some idea, artifact or creation We're all artists fashioning our lives. Pure Imagination, sings Willy Wonka.

Happy Mother's Day.

* Luna is the name for Earth's colonized moon after Earth dies in a Sci-Fi short story I wrote.

Anniversary

April 30, my beloved and I celebrated forty-seven years of wedded bliss. When we tied the knot it was in a field adjacent the home where I grew up in Echo Park. Surrounded by our families and friends we followed the promptings of the "right on Rabbi" Alan Secher, as we recited our self-crafted vows to one another. It was a beautiful ceremony and party. We absented ourselves before dinner and drove to Santa Barbara just a couple of hours up the coast to a motel with waterbeds. We only had the weekend away from work, but enjoyed the mini-vacation tremendously - walking around the historic downtown and relaxing by the pool and walking on the breakwater.

For this 47th anniversary, we took ourselves to the mountains. We enjoyed three meals a day for the long weekend, also wonderful company, arts 'n' crafts, fishing, boating, archery and a talent show Saturday evening. We went to The Painted Turtle Camp to be volunteer counselors!

Such fun to interact with families and play with kids. I got to meet a young author I'd heard about for the past two years who wrote the book, "Campity Camp Camp Camp!" Fourteen- year-old E, wrote the book during another family camp when she was twelve and she only had one other sibling  This time, her two young brothers, E and E, Dad Joe, and Mom E were there along with twenty-eight other families for this weekend of PIDD (Primary Imuno-Deficiency Disorder), Liver Transplant, and Arthritis diagnoses. Mom E explained to me that all three kids also had middle names beginning with the letter "E." With a surname that begins with "P," that means all three have initials spelling EEP! Saves on monogramming, for sure! And perhaps serves as family cheer. Eep, Eep, Eeeeep Eeeep Eeeeeeep!

I observed that even with the incredibly long days as family camp pals, my honey and I were still able to complete our physical therapy routines each morning at camp. I had to get up at five a.m. in order to get through all my routines for whiplash and shoulder tears and still have time to bathe, dress, and eat a small pre-breakfast snack before meeting my family at the High Ropes Course by 6:50.

I was assigned to a wonderful veteran family. The B family is comprised of Mom G & Dad R, older sister A and younger sister S. Such a lovely and loving family, well-versed in the rules of camp and the joys and pleasures of family projects. We hung out a lot in the Arts and Crafts building. S and I made binoculars as part of this session's "WHO-DUNNIT?" A Mystery-Solving theme. The family also painted multiple Tee-Shirts supplied to camp by Abercrombie Fitch of the softest cotton EVER! S made one that proclaimed in bright green hand-painted letters: "TPT (The Painted Turtle) OR TPP (The Tinted Poodle).

Fifteen-year-old S missed her nineteen-year-old sister who was studying for law classes when I accompanied S to activities, but soon got into archery and the satisfying THWACK of arrow hitting target. We got to pet and groom miniature horse Carlitos, watch kids catching fish, which she decidedly did NOT want to do, and she FLEW down the zip line after climbing the high-ropes course that early Saturday morning. Among other things, S is an accomplished dancer and for stage night composed and performed an intricate dance to one of the currently popular rock songs. We had fun after each meal dancing to many songs choreographed and led by volunteer counselors at the front of the dining hall.

Saturday night, all the teens are invited to LNTC (Late Nite Turtle Crew) held in a room just off the main gymnasium. Pun, as my husband is known at camp is the facilitator of the ninety-minute program. Forty five years ago "Pun" nicknamed me "Moose," because he said I'm too big to call deer. It stuck, and at camps I've been Moose ever since.

This past Saturday night to celebrate our anniversary, we were both with the teens and several college-age counselors who adore hanging out with the teens and with Pun. He holds their attention while playing games utilizing the big TV screen. Our wonderfully talented friend John Ricci rigged up several templates for Pun to play Talk About, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and See-More Hints. Kids love shouting out the answers in these non-competitive games. 

We also got to play truth or fiction, responding to a written question that also contained the correct answer. Each team of about twenty campers and counselors could decide if we'd bluff or give the correct answer to the printed question. Our opposing team had to guess if we were telling the truth or bluffing an answer. 

The best part of the evening for me was watching my honey shine in the eyes of these young people and to watch their faces as he led them in a pretty fantastic closing where he teaches them that even when the going gets tough out there in the "real world," all they have to do to return to their happy place (camp) is to close their right eye, close their left eye, open their heart and they'll be back at TPT surrounded by love and permission to be who they are. Such wonderful advice.

Our happy place is camp too and it was perfectly magical to celebrate our love there.

Crochety Old Broad

Maybe I will be a crochety old broad after all!

My knitting group has been invited to help out a church member who's recovering from breast cancer surgery. Cathy wants to complete a Granny Square Quilt before daughter Elizabeth's trip across country to attend her first year of college. 

We knitters all agreed. We'll show up next Thursday at our mentor's home with yarn, hooks and embroidery needles to get this project in hand while Cathy tends to her healing. 

There's something so satisfying about picking up the pieces that necessarily drop out of a friend's hand because s/he's trying to fend off one of Life's Curve Balls. It's almost as if we're thumbing our noses at the hubris of Life to think it could thwart one human's dreams. Strength in numbers.

*.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  

Many grocery stores used to accept clean plastic bags and send them to recyclers who then had them shipped in BULK to China.  Evidently, China got tired of taking the plethora of plastic from the teeming shores of the US of A, and is no longer admitting our refuse to spill over onto their shores. Neither is Safeway taking them elsewhere.

What if...

We shred the plastic film bags, twist the strips into "yarn" and crochet colorful windshield shades? They can be held up with hooks sit into silicone suction cups stuck to the windshield. I think it could be a win-win situation. 

Inhabitants of a warming climate need shades for their gas guzzling cars! We can use them forever, because - HEY! Plastic does NOT bio-degrade! Once made, it lasts FOREVER!  But cars don't, so we will continue to need new shades for quite some time. 

Hmmmm.... What ELSE might we crochet out of plastic bags?? 

Earth Day Blues

Inhabitants of Beautiful Blue Third Planet from the Sun blew it!

They fouled their nest to the point of no return causing the slow and painful demise of species after species, as they died out until the last man standing on the spot labeled "North Pole" took his last breath.

From the colonized moon, we looked down at the spectacle in disgust and disbelief.

Able to save some of the species - at least two hundred humans, several plants and a couple of remaining critters before rocketing off for lunar landing number one hundred and eight in 2052, we felt relief at being "saved," deep grief at the loss of unparalleled magnitude, and disbelief at human's stupidity and hubris.

No other animal fouls its own nest. No other animal puts on blinders so as not to see danger rising around it. No other animal willfully destroys its own home just to gather unto itself more of a cache - in this case "cash." You can't take it with you!

Coal, oil, the blood of the Mother, when burned sullies her delicate breath - turning the sun into a magnified heater. 

One side of the moon used to be ever dark, but we found a way to set it spinning so night and day can happen here, in short cycles, but at least they happen. At one-quarter the diameter of Earth, now a dead marble spinning below us, Luna has six hours of daylight and the same amount of dark, before the sun rises again. It has been quite an adjustment under the dome where oxygen is manufactured by plants for all of us to breathe. We haven't got the ratio quite right yet. Gravity boosters keep us from going osteoporotic, but our existence is nearly as precarious on Luna as it was on Earth. We hope the dead planet Gaia will rise again to the task of supporting life once the pollution and toxicity diminish.

Meanwhile, we've learned to overlook petty differences among all species and all people here on Luna and to recognize we're all made of the same stuff.

Tragically, no people with white skin or light eyes survived the Heat Blast of 2034, only those humans with darker skin tones. There was an automatic bonding - trauma bonding, to be sure, because of what darker toned people endured for millennia at the hands of their lighter skinned brothers and sisters, but bonding happened nonetheless.

We here on Luna are grateful for life itself and watch with horror and fascination as Earth seems to grow more and more dead before what we hope will be full resurrection... before it's too late for all her children. 

Meanwhile there's a certain beauty in seeing Luna reflected back to us from the black-tides which cover more than fifty percent of the formerly Blue Planet's surface. Is there life beneath those black-tides? We can only hope.

Modernity Leave

I want Modernity Leave. Could I simply take time off from the scuttle and warp-speed techno catapult called daily life as we know it?

I want modernity leave. I want to wake up with the sun rise, not with an alarm clock. I want to go to sleep with the moon rise, not with electric lights lengthening my days for hours on end. 

I want modernity leave to experience the sound of tree roots moving downward through the earth, sucking up the rains deposited directly into the water table rather than running off our asphalt roads and concrete patios straight into the ocean.

I want modernity leave to walk to places of beauty I may be able to reach on foot or on scooter. (Bicycles seem too tall for me at this time of life when the ground is farther away from my head than it was when I was a kid, and I don't want an ambulance to wail its way toward my limp body should I fall off the damn bike!)

I want a modernity break so I may putter around and make things of beauty and utility. A friend recently took a workshop at The Crucible - a place for hot art: Kiln work and copper enamel. She fired tiles and used them to make mosaic stepping stones. Her garden is criss-crossed with these beautiful mosaic-lined pathways lacing together rows upon rows of pots holding vegetables from Artichokes and Zucchini, and flowers as perennial as asters, buttercups, and zinnias. I love that you can wander on any of the paths and come back to where you began having seen bees at work, wind whipping vines, and sunlight dancing on leaves of every size and shape. Fragrant flowers festoon the fences, activating the senses.

Modernity leave sounds juicy... like something creative and ultimately productive. 

Modernity leave sounds doable, where maternity leave would be ridiculous at seventy. 

Modernity leave sounds implausible but not impossible. But modernity leave also sounds idealistic and not intrinsic to how enmeshed my life has become with techno gadgets. 

Speaking with a client today, I told her I don't use an electronic calendar, because I don't like it beeping at me when I forget to look at it. I use a pencil and a paper calendar with pretty photos of animals and landscapes from snow-covered mountains to deep green algae ponds. The client and I set an appointment. When I remember where I set it down, I can always find what I'm doing for the day/week/month -- simply by looking at it. Silently.

I appreciate that some folks have immaculate desks where they can see the wood gleaming or formica shining - free of clutter. I appreciate that electronic devices save trees from being chewed up to make paper. I appreciate that 'smarter-than-I- am-phones' can do the work of several people in keeping track of my mileage, maps, money, and managing my time, calendar, phone messages and more. I'm just not equipped to handle the noise of the digital world. I don't like things beeping, buzzing, boring into my head space with reminders and updates.  I have lots of little slips of paper always giving me the slip... where DID I write that address? But then, I find it amidst the piles on the desk and find something else I was looking for weeks ago, and all's well with the world. Hidden surprises!

I want modernity leave so I may commune with the grasses, birds, trees, and flowers. I want modernity leave so I may sit down to tea with a friend and look her in the eyes and have a real conversation. No phones ringing for an hour will allow that conversation to run along smoothly, coherently, without hiccups caused by someone excusing herself to return an important call or an email because goddess forbid there should be a delay in responding to someone who isn't even in the same state, let alone the same city as oneself, leaving the tea partner feeling like chopped liver!

Modernity leave would allow me to walk instead of drive to the store. Of course, where I live that would be a day's journey there and back. As my husband jokes, we could walk downhill to the store just fine. The return trip uphill would be so much faster because the ambulance would put its siren on to get us home quickly!

*.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *

In 1929 my grand parents had one car and two children. The work they shared was caring for the kids and a chicken ranch in San Bernardino -- until the crash left them ranchless, but still with four mouths wanting food. They moved into Los Angeles and a small bungalow owned by Grammy's sister Mary Polly and her husband Jack. My mother was then ten years of age, and Uncle Larry six. Gramps sought work building airplanes for McDonnell Douglas. Back to his roots in early aircraft. He began with Glenn L. Martin, building airplanes in Seattle, 1910, just thee years after the Wright Brothers' first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

When she was small and still living on the chicken ranch, my mother tied turkey feathers to her belt and jumped off the barn roof, knowing, thinking, believing she could fly. From that jump forward, until she died and was cremated at nearly ninety-three years of age, she had a metal rod in her right arm that kept her bones straight after the fall when she didn't fly off the roof after all. Gravity sucked. I wonder if they used the Model T to drive little Barbara to the hospital for doctoring up, or if the country doctor made a house call? I'll never know. Still, I dream of flying. Modern times give me different images of flying from turkey feathers tied to my waist and shoulders. 

Gimme that olde time volare-ing any time over modernity... that's good enough for me. Maybe I could do with Selecto-Techno? Have my convection-oven baked cake and eat antibiotics with robotic arms when needed too? 

I Have One Word for You, Benjamin...

Plastics

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was so mad that people were being unkind to the earth that she stopped people on the street and in the supermarket and told them how bad plastic was for the creatures of the world and did they know that sea turtles were dying because of our ignorance and selfishness and stupidity? Did they know that every time they bought something in a plastic container it was ending up on Midway and other islands in the Pacific Ocean and creating a giant gyre that keeps spinning around and spinning around out there and the birds dive into it and think the red floating things are food and they eat them and when their bellies are full of plastic, they cannot fit their accustomed diet of fish into their bellies and so they die of starvation. This little girl was so mad that she stomped around and stomped around being angry all the time at the stupidity of her fellow humans. 

Then she got an idea to use her anger as energy. She began to hand out postcards addressed to the plastic manufacturers and manufacturers of goods that got bottled in plastic and she asked the people she met to send the postcards to the companies to say they thought it was a very bad idea to sell their products in plastic containers that had only one use and then were tossed. She worded the postcards so politely that no one could refuse to help out the cause of reducing plastic streams from ending up in the ocean. Pretty soon, people stopped using plastic soda straws and one-time-only-use bottles and containers and pretty soon after that, people started taking their glass bottles to the bulk section, getting them weighed, filling them up with what they wanted to buy, and not long after, that became habit!  Not quite soon enough, but soon, the stream of plastic slowed and grew smaller and finally diminished so much that the people who cared enough to save the whales, dolphins, albatrosses and other sea birds and animals that were still alive, were able to dismantle the plastic mass out there in the pacific ocean little by little until it was all taken back to the mainland and awaited being eaten by mushroom spores or some other innovative natural reversal of turning the whole world into plastic. 

The next thing that made the little girl really mad was the globe getting warmer and warmer and she knew that it was due to carbon emissions mostly coming from cars burning fossil fuels, so again, she planned a postcard campaign and ...