The Hunger Around the Corner

 Yes, it has been over a year since I have written.  For the past several years everything has been political, and that is not the type of blog I wished to have. I would start to write and then it would turn into a political rant that I really wanted to keep to myself.

I am back, at least at this moment, we will see about any future moments.

 I live in the 18th richest county in the country, according to the American Community Survey of 2016, put out by the US Census Bureau,. I have trouble connecting that to my personal experience. 

Since April, I have participated in food distributions through the Boys and Girls Club of Southern Maryland.  Last week we fed 576 people. I talk to the people to whom we are giving food. Many have severe health issues requiring several surgeries, some have cancer, some were laid off due to Covid-19, some work jobs that just don't pay enough to pay the rent, and have the luxury of eating too. Many of them are seniors who were working in the service industry, who had their hours cut and cannot pay the bills. They are well past the normal retirement age. Some are social workers picking up food for their clients, special needs adults. Some are middle class families, who found themselves unemployed suddenly, with no hope of employment until the pandemic has passed. They have consumed their emergency funds and now are reaching a point of desperation. They did all of the things they were supposed to, and now find themselves waiting in line for 2.5 hours for $48 worth of groceries.

The older women seem the saddest. They seem tired. I see older woman in the line, when I ask her how she is doing oftentimes there is a pause, a catch in their throat, before they answer. They almost always say they are fine, but I know that they are not fine. One, outlined her cut in work hours, rent overdue, her car needed $1500 worth of repairs and that she needs it to get to work.  It all came out in a rush, in a smothered sob.  

These same folks will in conversation mention that if they have extra carrots from the pantry they will share them with a needy neighbor, so that they don't go hungry.  These are the people who have virtually nothing, and they are sharing their food. 

 Cars in the line often have adults from several families in them. Each one represents a separate household with babies and seniors included. They share a ride because poverty does not allow car payments, insurance and gas money.  We have had two cars break down in the line. We have rushed people through the line because their engine was running on just the vapors in the tank.

Many of the volunteers helping us go home with bags of food.  They want to help others, and also are uncomfortable taking charity, they have pride and a work ethic. They come regularly, they work hard.  One is 92 years old. One was laid off six weeks ago and has three kids. They want to be part of the solution, and they are hungry. They are giving what they can to others.

These are people living in the 18th richest county in the United States. Within a few of miles of this food line there are houses with three garage stalls, filled with Mercedes. The county does not have many of the services for the underserved populations (I have always hated that term, if you scan it quickly it can mis-read as un-deserved), because we are rich.  If your neighbors have garages filled with leather seated luxury cars, it doesn't fill your belly.  It makes it feel more empty. The people donating cash and food aren't driving up in fancy cars, most give regularly. Some stop and tell us that they are donating because they went through periods of hunger as a child, and they didn't want others to have to go through that.

The food programs are all supposed to be supplemental, but what if the people have nothing? The feeding of the hungry is left up to churches and non-profit organizations. The need has outstripped the resources of both of these groups. Many of the grants from the Cares Act were funneled into corporations that money could have fed all of these hungry people. The poor, working class and the middle class are feeding the hungry, if they can.  If they care.

We are going to have to scale back the food distribution because the funding is not available and the donations just cannot keep up with the need. We are cutting back to once a month, I try to tell each family in the car line the date of the next distribution as part of my conversation, some looked as if I had punched them in the gut when I gave them a date that was a month away.  Some questioned why, and then responded that they were glad we had been able to do it for eight months, because it helped them survive.  Others gripped the steering wheel and sighed, "A month. Oh."

There needs to be a state level and a federal level response to hunger in America. We are a rich country, where many go hungry. We have seven food pantries in the 18th richest county. Something is wrong.

We need to fix it.

Politics in Everything

I never wanted to write a political blog, but it seems today, everything is political.  Try to talk about the weather without touching for a moment on climate change. Talk about family health without talking about the costs of prescription drugs. Talk about the scenery without mentioning that all of the regulations have changed and that the EPA has been gutted and that climate change will make the whole world look different in the next 50 years.

I keep trying to write blog posts that cover a topic and aren't political and I can't seem to do that anymore.

So, I'm going to write about how my exercise plans for the fall were completely destroyed on my first day of my new exercise program, let's see if I can avoid politics. 

I had planned to start walking three times a week and swimming once a week.  Mixing it up a bit here and there with other activities, hitting the weight room at the public pool from time to time, etc.

Violet, my hound dog (hound melange-50% Treeing Walker Coonhound, 25% Bluetick Coonhound and 25% mystery-mutt according to her DNA results) (the politics-did I invade my dog's privacy by taking her DNA sample without her permission? She was not keen on the procedure.), was/is completely on-board with my exercise plans. When I walk, she walks, which makes us both mellower and healthier beings. She waited patiently while I moved objects out of her way and then hopped up into the back of the station wagon, scooted toward the back of the seat and gave me the signal that she was ready with her big brown eyes and waited, so that the hatch didn't whack her in the head. I drove to the local nature preserve that, unlike every other nature preserve I know of, allows dogs on lead. (the politics-what is natural? What is a natural state in a world completely changed by man?)

We arrived, all is perfectly normal, I choose a route that would give us just shy of two miles. Enough exercise to keep her from chewing random objects for a couple of days. The path starts with an overgrown, patch full of invasive species, multiflora roses make it beautiful in the spring, but this is early fall and it looks like a pile of brambles.  (the politics- Multiflora rose was once part of a beautification program, until they realized that it took over everywhere, oops) Violet charges from one spot to another, and then pauses excessively long for any exercise program, to take in the scents of every dog in the area and any small furry or feathered critter that might have passed by. (the politics- the population of birds in the Americas has plummeted possibly due to various factors including urbanization, climate change and pesticides) We amble down the path to the one hill down to the stream (the politics-eroded hill and the sediment that it adds to the body of  water below it) and the one hill away from the stream, the  rest is flat and mostly level packed sandy soil. 

We leave the invasives on the edges of the woods and head deeper in. We follow the path of the stream, which due to the moderate drought, was much smaller that it had been a month earlier. (the politics-the drought is part of the more extreme weather that is occurring due to global warming) I like this part of the trail, the path is narrow and covered in beech and oak leaves, Water trickles over the rocks. None of the trees are very old, so I figure that the area once had tobacco growing on it, like most of the land in the area a hundred years ago. (The politics-anything having to do with tobacco and small farm abandonment)

There are few other walkers.  (the politics-Americans' unhealthy habits, and a lack of engagement with the environment/outdoors) I breathe  trying to keep my brain from wandering through the crazy busy week scheduled ahead, county fair week and with my job, that makes it one of the two busiest weeks of the year. (the politics-anything having to do with the county fair) I look for patterns in bark, newly fallen trees, and anything different from the last time I had walked the path diverting my brain from my schedule. I see no one.  The path with the stream next to it turns and overlooks the small bay from atop a cliff, if you can peer through the leaves of all of the trees.  I'm sure a few years back there was a sweeping view, but it has all grown in.

We veer away from the cliff side and  head deeper into the woods again. There are more pines in this area.  There are some logs piled up near the trail, Violet gives them a thorough sniff, halting my progress, but any critters who might live there are apparently not home. We come to an unmarked intersection of paths (the politics-the under funding of parks and recreational areas), but since I carry the map of the area in my head, it isn't a problem. We turn right, in the direction of the car, we are at our half-way point. The path is an old road, wide, flat, and sandy Violet continues at a more consistent pace, the zoomies, as one of my friends calls them, have subsided. My mind keeps veering back to the million things I need to do in the next few days, I keep trying to focus on the present.  The sun was out, a few cumulus clouds puffing about, the temperature was veering on a bit too warm. 

Remember to bring the display, bring a snack the first few days because there's no food that I can eat there. Did I print enough brochures? Which shoes should I wear to make sure my back doesn't hurt? Where did I put the stuff for the geocaches that will be put out on Youth Day? What time should I get up? Did I buy the right stuff for the rest of the family to eat while I am crazy busy? Which volunteer said they could do the bake sale? Stop. Focus. Breathe. Walk. Enjoy the woods. You have been looking forward to this. I will walk on the days when I go in a little later. Violet needs this as much as me, gee, she looks much more relaxed.

I wonder how close I will be able to park. I don't have my parking pass yet. I need to remember to bring my club's entries on entry day, crud I left them at the office, I'll have to go in, another hour. Has the weather forecast changed? Is there a tablecloth in the tote? I need more pens.

Hey, wait, my foot didn't plant right. My ankle is turning, jeez that was an awful loud pop. How did I end up on the ground? I hope I didn't do what I think I just did. Oh no. I let go of the leash.  I am so glad I spent the time training her, this better work now I really need it or she will follow her very long nose and I won't be able to find her. "Violet, wait, now come! Good girl! Ooh, you don't have to sit in my lap"  Dog secured, check.  Check the area. Completely smooth, hard packed sandy soil.  A leaf here and there no sticks, holes or other trip hazards.  Why the heck did this happen? Oh, there's a bit of blood on my knee and elbow, okay, just scrapes.

Walking possible? I plant my good foot,formerly my bad foot, broken 20 years before and now great for predicting thunderstorms and pull myself up onto the one that twisted and popped. I can put weight on it, but it doesn't feel right. Deep breath. Start walking to the car, you can do this, it's a half mile to the car. Phone in back pocket still, check, just in case I need to call home for help, but then I would have to wait 30 minutes and the foot would swell in the meantime, just walk, let's see how far I can make it.  Down the hill, back to the stream, over the little bridge, up the hill through the brambles, and there's the car. I feel pressure inside my ankle, it twinges as I get into the car, it has been twinging for fifteen minutes. Ten minute drive home, I can do this.

I spent the afternoon in Urgent Care (Politics- $40 copay for urgent care, $1000 copay for the emergency room if not admitted to the hospital, guess I know my choice, oh that's really not a choice is it? All the bills haven't come yet, I wonder if there are any surprises.), x-raying, etc. convinced it was a twisted ankle, since I was able to walk out of the woods. Maybe the wincing look on the woman waiting for her granddaughter should have told me otherwise. Maybe the avocado sized swelling on my ankle could have been a clue.  Fractured. All my plans fly out the window. Taking walks and swimming in the winter, yeah, that's how I will get into shape again.

It Doesn't Matter if You Don't Believe in Climate Change

As the weather in Maryland is reminding me more and more of Florida each year...we can't pretend we don't see what is happening.

Why do some of the media outlets support climate denying positions?

Because of their business model, of course. Their source of income is from advertisers.  Advertisers want us to buy things, in order for us to stop climate change we have to drastically stop buying things, and using energy.  The advertisers don't make money if we really take the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra to heart, because the most important piece of those big three is the Reduce.  Reduce consuming meat and cheese, reduce consuming factory produced items that have been shipped a long ways, reduce the amounts of electricity and gasoline, reduce flights, reduce food waste, reduce eating highly processed foods, reduce the size of homes...all this means that we need to spend less and the current American consumer economy is not designed to flourish under that model. The economy needs us to spend more each year or we end up in a recession. 

 

We need to change, this is not a political position, it is a scientific position, it is a survival position. If we do not change we will change the climate of the world so quickly that there will be mass migrations and upheaval as land floods, wells go dry and the rains either wash away the soil or the rains don't come at all.

 

What's to be done? We need the mindset of my grandparents and great grand parents, people who lived through the Depression, don't buy what you don't REALLY need, live frugally, don't waste food, and grow a garden and sometimes do without something. What does get bought is used until it is completely unusable and all types of re-use are expended, then the materials can be recycled.  Recycling should be the last resort, reduce and re-use are where the powerful change happens, recycling consumes more resources in the process.  All of this will come to a head very soon, many countries are now refusing to take our recycling, we don't have the landfill space for all that recycling, nor the capacity to recycle it, nor the markets for the recycled materials.  Soon (actually, it is well past the time, as this has been spoken of for decades), we will need to be more conscious of packaging, single use items like zip bags, bottles and those infuriatingly tough, sealed plastic bubbles that everything seems to be packed in will go the way of the dinosaurs. Shampoo bars, reusable cutlery sets of bamboo (my spouse received one of these at a recent business conference), metal straws (eliminating plastic straws is very low hanging fruit), and water in consumable bubbles are all happening now, there will be more innovations and some return to the "old" ways from before the time of plastics. Maybe the marketers can get behind these new/old ideas.

Lots of people talk about reducing, and very few actually want to do this, but it is getting to the point when we will no longer have the choice. All of the little changes are just little changes, we need big changes.  Better planned cities and towns with transport systems, smaller homes that are closer together to make those transport systems work, businesses integrated into the communities rather than far flung outside the communities to make commutes shorter and/or more teleworking. Solar and wind power used in every community that can use them. The list goes on and on!!

 

Now, if we all start doing our part, the world economy and climate are going to change and how we deal with that change will determine how countries (and species) come through to the next century.  We all need to remember that survival of the fittest, really means survival of the fittest for the current, changing conditions, if we do not adapt quickly we will find out the hard way that we are not the fittest. No one wants that.

If anyone who has made it this far still doubts that climate change is real please come visit my lilac bushes, they don't like our recent warm Decembers after chilly Novembers.  They flower slightly in December and then freeze in January.  They are clearly dying.  We were on the southern edge of being able to grow them successfully and now I think the line has moved farther north, inland and upland. There will be more plants to die off like this.  Still doubt?  Try to go skating on the ponds I skated on as a kid in Southern New England in early January, actually, no, don't try that, that's suicide. Here's some documentation on that, my husband sent me this article right as I clicked post on this Blog the first time, Rhode Island 2.5 degrees warmer!!

 

 I recently taught a group of kids about the impacts of climate change, one child raised her hand and said, "What if you don't believe in climate change?" The answer to that is, it doesn't matter if you believe it or not, it is going to happen anyway. (It turns out that she believes in climate change, but a family member is vehemently denying its existence, and makes fun of her efforts to be green.) Some of the kids asked "But hasn't the climate always changed?" Yes, but the earth on its own takes tens of thousands of years to change as much as it has in the last 150 years. Some of the older kids in the back of the room rolled their eyes, of course, they're 13.

Opening the Giant Can of Worms

I took a group of kids on a walk to a wetland and small wooded area two weeks ago, first many of them whined about the long walk, which was five short blocks. I purposely did it in the morning before it heated up. It seems as if we have gone too far in teaching kids about the dangers of ticks, there were about 8 of the 25 kids who would not approach the woods because of their fear of ticks, bugs, or anything else that might crawl. They complained of the heat in the direct sun on the boardwalk and would not enter the woods, even though the kids who did assured them that it was much cooler there.
They were supposed to be doing a scavenger hunt, but their drama was getting in the way.  It took longer trying to deal with the drama than it would have to actually do the scavenger hunt.

We walked back the five blocks, and I gathered them into the classroom to talk about why I just tortured them with walking five blocks in 83 degree humid weather. I started with the fact that I am trying to get them to understand the importance of the woodland and the wetland since climate change is going to be the biggest issue in their lives.  They seemed puzzled. I pointed out the severe thunderstorms that we had had nearly every evening for the past couple of weeks and asked if they remembered any other summer like this.  They didn't.  I pointed out that climate change was going to create more severe weather and that the severe thunderstorms and threats of tornadoes were going to be a more regular occurrence.  They questioned if I really knew what I was talking about.  I told them that 99.9% of scientists believe that climate change is real and that humans created it, they look bewildered.  I oulined how the increase in carbon in the atomosphere, due to the increased of use of fossil fuels in the last 150 years has created  this disaster.  They wanted to know why they hadn't been told about this.  I think they have been taught some of the science of it, but either the schools are afraid to take a stand politically or they couched it in terms the kids really didn't understand.  The kids felt like they had been lied to about it and said so.  Ah, equal time in the media, controversy gets more viewership than unpleasant truth.

I need to go back this week, to work with them again.  The lesson had veered into the "What can I do about this, I'm just a kid" territory and the "What if my dad doesn't believe in global warming? So, I will be making two meals that release similar amounts of carbon, half a hamburger patty and rice and beans for 11 people, and talk about it with them. We'll see how this goes...I had originally planned an exploratory hands on environmental unit done at the wetland, but that may need to wait.

It's ALIVE!

Ah, you all thought the blog was dead, but it was just dormant.
For a while there I needed to cope with the world in which we live, to face the ugliness that we call "us", you know, the one that precedes "them"?  I couldn't write because all that came out was anger and frustration at the hatefulness that seethes through our society. That's not what I want my blog to be about, and if I couldn't say anything that I would want to read myself, I wasn't going to write.

The problem is that I need to write, there is just some force within me that drives me to write.  I try to imagine who I would be in a society before reading and writing became common, and I can't. The roles for women were pretty circumscribed, and unless your family was noble, the females weren't educated, and even then it wasn't a guarantee.  My family was not noble. My fate would have been to be a spinster in someone else's house, a farmer's wife, or a craftman's wife, the option of the strange woman at the edge of the village, who was assumed to be a witch, would have been possible too.


The other thing to imagine is who am I in this society? What is my role here? I can read and write.  I need to read and write, but to what purpose? To entertain a few of my friends online or a greater good?

I teach.  Many days the lessons seem superficial, at other times some of the kids really seem to understand what I am trying to Say, with a capital S. When it clicks, it is glorious, when it doesn't it's just a day at work and I go home.

What is it that I am trying to say? The world is fascinating,

Humidity

complex,

Hickory bark

beautiful,

Frost on car

mystifying,

Pine cone in leaves

  wondrous

Box turtle

 and joyful

Land Art

Googly eyed snacks

and that we need to bring these great ideas, concepts and beauty to the forefront. But how?
Ah, my conundrum.

I have been doing some reading to get me out of the paralyzed thought pattern that I have been in since November 2016, some of my recent reading is about joy and nature, two books that aggregate the science on two of my favorite, connected, topics. I highly recommend both books.


The Nature Fix
Joyful

Now to fill this rut and move on.

Snow Track Highway

 We had snow last week and I learned all sorts of things were going on in my yard without my knowledge.

At the north end of the property, I found fox tracks going across the corner leading to and from my neighbors' properties, new ones appeared virtually every day.  They often don't venture far onto the property, and often walk along the northwest boundary which is covered in prickly wineberry vines. The large male fox comes most frequently, and two smaller foxes came along with him once in a while. 

 

Why the highway? Why there? My husband came up with a theory that seems to fit. On either side of our property are the homes of single male humans, both have a history of feeding stray and/or mooching cats. The cats look pretty plump and well cared for, so I am betting mooching. I think the fox may be benefiting from their largess. Picking up an evening snack of kibble may be the reason for the regularity of their visits.  They are not sniffing out the chicken coop or run, they don't get within 100 feet of either, so they are not waiting to see if we make a mistake in locking up the girls.

 

We knew they were here at night, just after Christmas my daughter went to get something out of one of the cars in the driveway.  She donned her new holiday headlamp and zipped out the door without turning on the porch or spotlight. There was a child-like scream followed by  more animalistic noises, coming from a very few feet from where she was sprinting (She doesn't walk outside she runs, that's just how she has always been...). She whipped around and threw and crashed herself back into the house (that's what it sounded like from the kitchen) and breathlessly yelled, "What__ was__ that??!!  Her father heard the animal scream from inside the house, and soon we were googling fox sounds, apparently she had startled a vixen, who in turn then more than startled her.

I guess we need to walk the goofy hunting dog around the edge of the property more often.

Squirrel's Last Stand

The snow revealed other stories, most of them don't end well for the squirrels. Apparently, at least three met their ends by a hawk or an owl not far from the fox tracks.  Their tracks hop out into undisturbed snow, there are  spots where an obvious struggle took place and then no body and no other tracks.

 

Assorted comings and goings

The cats, of course, crossed the yard repeatedly, checking out the bird feeders and heading toward the homes of their favorite middle aged, kibble pouring men. 

 

Until yesterday, there were no chicken tracks in the snow.  The girls had room service when the temperatures were very low, and when it warmed the door was opened for them to sun themselves, but they declined to get snow on their toes. Finally yesterday, they took their opportunity and ran for the bird feeder rather than their own shelter, snacked for a bit and then hung out in their nest box areas.

 Today, after two days of above freezing day temperatures, the snow is almost gone. No more stories in the snow to read for a while.

Touching back on a previous topic:

Recipe Testing, the good the bad and the really ugly.

So far, for the smoothies we have made one berry/banana/spinach smoothie that tasted great, but looked like refried black beans in the glass. Really ugly.

A golden energy smoothie with steamed carrots, pineapple, oj and honey was next, two taste testers couldn't stand the texture, fibrous was their word, one had two sips and dumped the rest. I thought it was too sweet and the third tester thought it might be too tangy for kids  That one is a no.

The third one glowed green with spinach, bananas, maple syrup and vanilla with ground raw cashews and almond milk.  The flavor was good, but the bananas were dominant.  We know our audience is not crazy about bananas, so the banana would have to be toned down a bit. Maybe a bit of yogurt instead or more raw cashews. This would have to be a Ninja  Power Beverage, Alien Sipper or a Hulking Green Special to sell it to the 6-11 year old crowd. I liked the hint of maple.

Snow and Smoothies

Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Three inches of snow and life in MD comes to a screeching halt.  Some of it has to do with temperatures much lower than we are used to and high winds, most everything was cancelled today, as the New Englander in me scoffs. Then I take a sip of decaf, lean back in my chair and think...an unscheduled day...hmmmmmm...the possibilities.

I'll write a blog, make Turkish Roasted Eggplant Salad a la Moosewood, aimlessly watch the birds at the feeder, play in the snow with the dog, and test smoothie recipes that I may do with one of my after school groups--no sense in making the kids drink stuff that's disgusting and turning them off.

Smoothies are very interesting things.  I was going through recipes online yesterday and wondering at the variety of options and thinking--people actually drink this stuff??? There are the standard sugar bombs that are mostly fruit, and some that add all sorts of odd stuff that would require a trip to Whole Paycheck and have questionable flavor, and then there are all those that the authors claim are kid approved.  Hah!!! I don't know where they are finding the kids who approve these things, but they certainly are not the kids who attend the after school programs.  One called for frozen butternut squash, frozen raw cauliflower, and frozen kale, and then adds oat milk, with Medjool dates for sweetness (Have you priced Medjool dates lately??) and a little pumpkin pie spice. So, this parent/blogger is still making baby food, but adding pumpkin spice and feeding it to her 4 year old.

I can already see the looks on the kids faces if I were to attempt to get them to make it.  I can also already hear all the requests to go to the restroom to hide from it.


I skip right past all of the recipes with essential oils, funky mystery protein powders, or anything that smacks of "medicine". I am looking at ones where I start with fruity, creamy flavors and slowly add a little veggie element.  The longer term object is to get the kids to transfer the stuff they learn to home, and if the parents have to buy a million new things, it just isn't going to happen.  A smoothie with fruit with a few salad vegetables tossed in or peanut butter--those might work--but not turmeric, spirulina, maca, and bee pollen.

At our house, we specialize in banana-peanut butter with cinnamon  or chocolate smoothies, they are kid approved, and usually made after said child has not been feeling well and hasn't been eating much, because it's a huge hunk of calories and fluids. If you have a truly "kid approved" smoothie recipe, I'd love to see it, but all the ingredients have to come from a standard grocery store and not be expensive.

I now pause in writing to try one of the recipes.

The chocolate/berry/spinach/banana/yogurt smoothie gets 2 1/2 thumbs up out of three. The half is because the kid is recovering from a really bad cold and can't really taste anything.  She said she thinks she would like it, if she could taste it. I was going to photograph it, but it had the color of refried black beans, maybe a blind taste test would work better. The recipe called for vanilla yogurt, but I only had plain goat milk yogurt, so I substituted that and added extra vanilla and a little of the forbidden--sugar! I didn't have just frozen blueberries, so I did a frozen mixed berry. We generally don't keep ice cubes in the house, so I used a frozen banana to thicken...as I have said before, I can't follow a recipe. Our blender is showing its multi-decade age, so I blended the spinach and soy milk together first, because I have done this before and chunks of floating greens are not appealing.

Now just to create a nutrition lesson to go with it!

Back in the Chair

It has been more than a year, I know.

Much of the stuff I have wanted to write during this year was not for public consumption, it was for me and only me. I have been ready to write for others again for a little while, but either my schedule or my dead desktop computer got in the way.  Enough of the excuses, I am back and ready to write again.

The important stuff:

My husband found a used 20X zoom Panasonic Lumix  camera, just like the one I dropped in the sand and destroyed, bought it, and gave it to me.  Actually, it is not exactly like my old one, it is the model previous to the one I had.  It doesn't have the GPS on it, which would suck the battery dry, so it is better than the previous one. It looks like someone was given it as a gift and threw it in a drawer, there is absolutely no sign of use on this camera.  Yay! I can play again!!  The cell phone camera just wasn't cutting it for me.

We lost many chickens this year, most of them in one day to a growing fox family.  They were killed on a day that was already horrendously stressful, during a week that I had walked through feeling as if life had punched me in the gut. I came home with the giant hollow inside me and found the backyard full of 3 foot diameter piles of feathers, a separate pile the color of each missing chickie, but one, Ursula, our black Australorp. 

I stood there staring, jaw agape for about five minutes. My neighbor appeared and said she had noticed the piles in the late-morning and offered her condolences. She and I raked up the piles of feathers, so that I could tell my daughter about the loss of the chickens at an appropriate moment rather than have her discover the color coded piles of despair on her way into the house from the school bus. 

 

Over the next couple of days, we kept waiting for Ursula to come home. She and her "I'm in charge here" attitude never returned. 

 

We have three remaining chickens, BB the Buff Brahma who is a little slow in every way. She was injured by the fox, but her massive size might have made it difficult for a fox to whisk her away. She has healed, but is especially skittish. Bubbles the Light Brahma, the beautiful and bossy, is top chick, and Effie, the Amerucana, the loner, but by far, the smartest of the bunch, still hangs at the edge of the flock. I just stopped typing for a few minutes to lock them in for the night, they were already on their perch huddled together, ready for another freezing night in their down jackets.

 

We can't free range them anymore. The fox have found us out. We were resolved not to get any more. Losing them hurts so much, but our resolve has weakened and in March there will be some fluffy little chicks living in our garage, yet again. I think there will be six, which means we will have to find six great female names, suggestions welcomed. We will also need to build an annex onto our run to provide space for the girls.  The projects abound!!

2017 is almost over, the year designation, I know, is completely arbitrary, a human construct, the marking of time beginning and ending is nonsensical, but still I am glad to see 2017 end. Good Riddance.

Messiness, the part I left out

The book on Messiness that I wrote about yesterday covered other types of messiness.  I wrote about them and then deleted them.  After I posted I regretted taking those parts out, I save the biggest chunk I cut, knowing that I needed to say something about it, but it didn't fit in an article about household disorder and the creativity it can inspire.

It has to do with deliberately caused messiness.  Messiness used as a tool for manipulation.  We've seen this employed in the past few weeks, the three AM tweets.  Those were diversionary messiness, messiness to cover, distract from the real issues. It's DT's "look at this outrageous thing I've said, don't read the article on the lawsuit I just settled, it's boring!" situation.  This situation has happened before, whenever a prominent person or organization is under press scrutiny and attention needs to be drawn elsewhere to minimize the actual damage, it happens.  The next time any of these topics are outrageously presented in the news: women's choice, school prayer, flag burning, gay marriage, illegal immigration...anything that gets people really riled up, then scour the news for something that should be front page news, but isn't, because everyone is in an uproar over the hot button issues. It's the movie Wag the Dog, only it's not a movie.
 


Messiness can be a political weapon.  I expect to see much more of it in the next few years, but I hope I'm wrong.

In the meantime, I probably should clean out the stuff in the back of my fridge.

Messiness and Validation

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Change Our Lives by Tim Harford, was sitting there on the "new" books shelf in the library.  Now given that I struggle with a large degree of messiness, and I am the neatest person in my home, I just had to read this one.  When I brought it home I placed it on my husband's pillow, hoping he'd find validation in his piles of stuff, but he thought it was a not so subtle hint that maybe he should clean up a bit. He clearly didn't flip through the book, yet, I'll see if I can get him to do that. I think he'd enjoy it and I think that many of the readers of this blog would enjoy it, so that is why I am writing this.

Maybe it is confirmation bias that made me enjoy it so much, but maybe not.

The book explains why my vertical filing system actually works, and how my messy desk can provide links to creative ideas, how seeming disasters can lead to leaps forward that wouldn't have otherwise occurred. It talks about how students who set monthly goals and plans actually do better than one who write daily plans, which connects to how I used to plan eight week units of study for my classes by immersing myself into the material, finding art, science, mathematical and historical connections along the way.  I'd then make a checklist of the activities that needed to be covered over the quarter, some writing, additional types of reading...and then I would provide my students with lots of materials, books on every reading level that I could find, art materials that connected, science books that connected, and then gave them time to preview the materials before we began the unit. The direction the unit took was chosen by the questions the kids asked after looking at the materials, not by me sitting at the kitchen table filling out a plan book on Sunday evening.  It was messy.  It was different every year.  It was rich. It was hard. It worked. The kids scored well on the tests. I could never do this today, messiness is not allowed.

The book validates, my messiness, my nest of books next to my bed. The contents of the pile give a reflection on where I am at the moment, several weeks ago the contents were extremely different heavy on environmental stuff, but then, the election happened. There are several on foods around the world written for children, a book on character, a Korean cookbook, a book on small press books, a book on trails, a book on Roger Williams(8x great grandpa)/separation of church and state, a social history of American art, two novels, one for a book club, several seed catalogs, journals and notebooks.  Now how I will create my future with all this messiness?  We'll have to wait and see, just don't eat the stuff in the back of my fridge, read the book, you'll understand.

Pleasant Surprises

The trip last month did have some pleasant surprises, Nebraska, for instance.

Previous to this trip, I envisioned Nebraska as a giant cornfield or wheat field, flat with a very slight roll to the land with a big insurance company on the eastern side where Marlon Perkins' spent his time when he wasn't encouraging his sidekick, Jim, to be surrounded by hungry hyenas in an open Land Rover.  Like this:

I had told my daughter that she should watch for when the road was long enough and straight enough and flat enough to be a good art lesson on vanishing points, and Nebraska did have its share, like this:

I was pleasantly surprised about Lincoln, Nebraska.  After going through St. Louis, which seemed run down and completely dug up for construction--Lincoln seemed clean, cared for, appreciated, artsy...not at all what I expected.

While some of Nebraska did fit my stereotype, other parts just didn't fit.  Like this:

Chimney Rock, NE

Court House and Jail House Rocks, NE

Scotts Bluff, NE

Chimney Rock, NE

Scotts Bluff, NE

Scotts Bluff, NE

 It was awe inspiring, it was quiet, it was not what I had expected.  I had read the on-line articles about the area and it had seemed interesting, but it certainly was better in real life.  These formations were along the Oregon Trail and I imagined what it would have been like to have to walk the distance we had just driven and what it was like back then to see these rock formations for the first time, without warning and a bunch of electronic images to give you the heads up of what they might have looked like.

We stayed later than we had anticipated, we went into town right as the skies darkened and decided to find a motel instead of a campground after we found dinner at a Mexican restaurant.  We didn't have room reservations, but we were out in the middle of nowhere and the little town had lots of motels.  Bad move.  We had taken more southerly route to Yellowstone to avoid the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, we were a couple of hundred miles from Sturgis, but that didn't seem to matter.  Between the rally, some small medical conference, and highway workers doing a major construction project every motel/hotel room in the town was booked, except two.  The two most expensive ones, of course. We were exhausted, it was completely dark out--dark unlike most East Coast folks can appreciate there were no cities for hundreds of miles, just a few little towns-- it was about 10:30 PM by the time we found our outrageously priced room/suite at the Marriott, dumbfounded that a place so remote could be booked up.

The next day we turned northward to Agate Fossil Beds, it was hot!  If I were to go again I would try to choose a time more into fall or in the spring, the place seemed fascinating, but it was hovering around a hundred and there was no shade.

We didn't end up taking one of the longer hikes, just a shorter two mile hike, it was just too hot! We spent a long time in the visitor center to make up for it.

In between looking at extinct rhino skeletons and an in depth history about the man who donated the land to the US government for the park and Native American relations. The ranger in the building told the girls about what it was like for the kids who attend high school in the area.  My daughter keeps telling everyone about the kids in Nebraska who are 14 and live more than three miles from school, who can drive to school, because they don't have buses.  The ranger's son was valedictorian of his class and the top 25% in his class of 4 kids.  He received a steer roping scholarship,  despite the fact that he doesn't steer rope and another kid in his class did, because there was the requirement that the student be in the top 25% of his class. They did away with having a salutatorian unless the student had a 3.5 GPA or over.  She talked about how they would patch together sports teams with the 16 or so kids in the school.

The best parts of the trip are often when we go off the beaten path and spend time talking to people about the area we were visiting and their lives, like the day we needed a break and stopped off to look at a Pony Express stop and decided to pop in to the local historical society museum.  We saw a barbed wire exhibit, donated by a man who clearly had a different view on life than many.

We chatted with one lady about her family farm, she seemed hesitant to talk about how many acres her family had in corn and soybeans (which they grow when they have to) and seemed shocked that Maryland would have 4-H and farmers!

Yes, Nebraska was a pleasant surprise.  I was supposed to write about the Black Hills today,oops.  Maybe next time.

Weirdness, sorry

Two people have noted that they have received very old blog posting mailed to them.

I have changed my security, so I hope the weirdness stops.

Let me know I you received anything that seemed odd.

Thanks!

Urban Yellowstone

I've had two of my readers tell me that what I wrote in my last post was a bit of a tease and that they want more stories about the trip, so this is for you K.S. and A.S.!

Reflecting on the trip west, I most fondly think of the evening at Boysen State Park in Wyoming.  There were approximately 40 sites in the campground, six were filled.  The river ran right next to the campsite, rising up from the far side of the river was a steep canyon wall. The park description said that there might be big horned sheep about.  We arrived about an hour and a half before sundown, the light on the canyon walls made them glow.  The road that outlined the far side of the campground was not heavily traveled and after dark and in the morning there was even less traffic.

Boysen State Park--the river cannot be seen from this angle, it is just beyond the large trees of our campsite.

After dinner, I stared down the river and drew in a deep breath, as I scanned for goats. It was stunning, it was quiet, it was a great moment to be alive.  I wanted to spend more time there, but our reservations for Yellowstone started the next day, and if we missed the first night we'd lose the whole reservation.  The girls weren't happy with the pit toilets, so they were very happy to move along.


The next morning we drove through the Wind River Canyon and the Native American reservation there.  It was the first time either of the girls (my daughter's friend, who has become a regular in our explorations, joined us for the trip) had been in a canyon, behind us in the car they gasped at the height of the walls and the rock formations.

We continued on through somewhat less stunning parts of Wyoming.

Side note--thirty-ish years ago I traveled through Wyoming and the choices of music on the radio were Country, Western, or Christian.  This summer we found a really cool alternative rock station, NPR and quite a lot of heavy metal. Things have been a-changing in Wyoming.  Side note on a side note, I had to submit my work time card while we were in Cody, WY, so we located the local library to get a hard connection because the previous attempt on a Wi-Fi connection didn't go through.  I should have taken pictures of that library.  There were sculptures, chairs that were arranged in ways that could encourage conversations, open spaces, quiet corners, tasteful color combinations that didn't come across as if the lowest bidder won the contract.  The bathroom was nicer than most bathrooms in fancy restaurants. I wanted to take the library home with me, but we just couldn't fit it in the car, not with the tissue boxes and everything.  Side note on the side note, in the parking lot for the library was a pick-up truck, it had a sticker on its bumper that read, " Welcome to Wyoming - Now go home & take a wolf with you."

That afternoon we drove into Yellowstone.  Mile after mile of the hillsides were covered with gray, leafless, branch-less, bark-less, scorched trees left from the fire of 1988.  A few small trees were attempting to make a go of it, but with little success.  I kept hoping that around the next curve there would be lush green forest, only to be disappointed. After the uplifting experience of drinking coffee alongside Wind River that morning, I started to think, "We left that awe inspiring place for this???"

Eventually, we did arrive at a point where the new trees were growing and there was a bit of hope rising from the forest floor.  We passed some small lakes and caught a view of Yellowstone Lake, things were looking up.  We drove into Fishing Bridge Village, there were cars everywhere.  Pedestrians were crossing willy-nilly, RV's were trying to make turns they couldn't make, parking lots were full to capacity.  The traffic was stop and go for a few minutes.  We didn't end up with a campsite at the campground at Fishing Village, because there were too many bears hanging about in the area and sleeping in a tent was prohibited.

We drove on a few more minutes to Bridge Bay Campground and checked in.  We were in section E.  We drove past a giant open field with campers and tents, and on to an area that had trees between the sites, which is where we ended up. We set up camp, relieved that were were not going to be taking it down again the next day, since we were staying four nights. As we started dinner the people from the neighboring campsite arrived back at their site.  They had been there several days.  They warned us to get up and out early, because the parking lots near Old Faithful, West Thumb, and Mammoth Hot Springs  and others all filled up later in the day, making it difficult to see anything.

The next morning we were up at six and out by seven.  By 10 AM, the tour buses started rolling in to the lots, disgorging hundreds of tourists from virtually every country in the world.  We arrived at Old Faithful around 11 AM, after making several stops along the way.  The lot was three quarters filled, and by the time we left cars were following people leaving the site to their cars, so that they could snag their parking spot. It was like the mall the day after Thanksgiving.  We ate an early lunch of peanut butter sandwiches as we watched ravens vandalize Harley Davidsons, stealing their snacks from their packs, as on-lookers tried to shoo them away, being very careful not to touch the motorcycles, because, no human with a shred of sense would mess with someone's Harley. Ravens apparently don't care.

Peanuts!!

It kept turning right as I was snapping pictures, I guess it didn't want to be identified.

It appears that other brands of bikes are inspected also.

We followed the crowd to Old Faithful, there was a Trex deck with benches forming a huge semi-circle, so that we could share this wonder of nature with a couple thousand other people.  There was a large hotel complex, several shops, restaurants, and finally, the Old Lodge, which was the only thing that I remembered from my last two visits in '87 and '90.  The rest were brand new.  We waited 20 or so minutes for the geyser, watched it spew for about three minutes and then moved with the wide river of people into the interpretive area. When it came time to find our car, we first had to figure out which lot we had parked in, and then had to use the remote to make our huge beast of an SUV beep, so that we could find it in the sea of SUV's and RV's.  I wasn't feeling connected to nature from this experience.

It wasn't until much later in the day when we saw a herd of elk that I started to feel a connection.  Later in the afternoon we experienced a long "bison jam" south of Yellowstone Canyon, complete with photographers getting too close to the animals.  We sang Dumb Ways to Die for the lady who risked everything to get a better angle.

We continued to be up and out of the site early, because we saw the truth in what the other campers had told us.  Later in the day it was a very urban experience, not what we had anticipated.  Crowds of people milling about, trying to keep tabs on the girls in the knots of people, waiting for people to leave to be able to use a picnic table in a picnic area, not seeing some things because we couldn't park, it wasn't how I had pictured our experience in my mind.  My last visits were nothing like this, it had all seemed so remote to me at that time.  At times during this trip, I just wanted to leave and go back to Wind River or Scotts Bluff, NE.  Sure, Yellowstone was beautiful and I'm glad the girls were able to experience it, but I wish it was a little more like my first experiences there.

Later in our visit, a lone bison arrived in the field next to our campground loop and it settled in for a snooze around sunset.  The following evening a herd of deer grazed their way through the back of our site and on to a patch of grass just on the other side of the road.  The girls froze in place as the deer walked around them.  The deer seemed to pay no attention to us.

A few sites down young kids were whooping it up, but the deer seemed unflustered by it all and eventually wandered off a half-hour later. Those are the things I want to remember, not the hot parking lots and the crowds and the desolate hills scorched thirty years ago.

When it was time to move on, I was ready.  The Black Hills were our nest destination, with Mt Rushmore...but that is my next post.

The Trip West and Back, highlights

Before the trip the drama began.  My husband called me at work.  He never calls me at work. We had a new radiator put in our monster van, Bluehemoth, and the result was a pressure change in the engine that popped a couple of freeze plugs.  The prognosis from the mechanic was that we could drive it locally, but he wouldn't recommend that we drive it in the dessert or anything like that.  Um, most of the West is a desert.  We rapidly executed plan D or E or Q (I've lost track), found a relatively cheap rental for a mini van on Hotwire, and said we are going on this vacation this year dammit, and that stupid van will not get in the way again. (The computer in the van went right before we were supposed to go last year, so we cancelled and went to WV instead, fun, but not quite what we had had in mind.)

I went home and furiously started paring down the stuff in the pile to pack into the van.
I had had everything organized in plastic tubs, labelled with their contents, etc.  It was a work of art.  Instead we took tubs jammed to bursting, with stuff crammed in to take up less space.  There was a pile in the dining room of the stuff that did not get to go and a pile in the living room that we would attempt to cram into the van.

Then we went to pick up the rental the after work the evening before we are set to leave at 5AM. Because it was a Hotwire transaction, we had to drive 50 minutes to Baltimore to pick up the van at the airport, and then drive back home. They tried to get us to pay for an upgrade for an SUV, but we decided not to go with it.  Once we were in the garage waiting for our van, and waiting for our van some more, the attendant came over and broke the news to us that there were no more vans available and would we like a 2017 Ford Excursion instead?
 Sure! We got the SUV, but didn't have to pay the extra $$$ for it.  An Excursion was an aptly named vehicle for this trip. I climbed up into it, there's a reason they put running boards on the thing, and sat in it for the first time and was terrified by its enormity in the close space of the parking garage.  I pulled out of the parking space while warning a family standing nearby to clear the way, because I usually drive a compact car and this was out of my league. They stepped aside and chuckled.

We made it home by 10 PM, packed it to the ceiling until about 11:30 and collapsed into bed until the alarm went off at 4 AM. My daughter's friend, who accompanied us on the trip, showed up promptly at 5 AM and we crammed her stuff into our ginormous shiny black box of a vehicle and began our journey.

Now, every trip of this kind generate some stories and memes.  One meme of the vacation was the evil tissue box.  It seemed no matter where it was placed in the car it either fell out, landed corner first on someone's head or was no where to be seen when it was needed, right now!  By the end of the trip that evil tissue box was mashed and twisted, and pliable from all the bending, but it seems to have ceased to be evil.  It sits quietly next to my side of the bed, it seems contrite.

One song that we sang over and over again was  Dumb Ways to Die  
after hearing over and over again about tourists doing thoughtless things and doing themselves serious damage last year at Yellowstone (5 or 6 gored by bison while taking selfies) or the person who stepped into the acidic water to rescue his dog (who shouldn't have been near the hotsprings--the signs are everywhere--no pets allowed here--dangerous ground)...we saw some potential of the events repeating themselves, but we did not witness any injuries.  We drove along watching the huffing bull bison from our car and saw at least two women put their lives at risk to get good photos,

 we saw people walking out too far on unstable cliffs, people wrestling with their handbag dogs to keep them from hopping into the beautiful hot springs and mud pots, filled with boiling water. Whenever the girls proposed wandering off a little ways I told them that I didn't want anyone singing "Dumb Ways to Die" for them, so they better think before doing anything.

Some of the trip was a great surprise for me, Nebraska, for instance, the western side of Nebraska had amazing rock formations and fossils. 

I loved it.  I hadn't expected to.  The people were really nice, we chatted with one lady in a historic site for quite a while.  The site featured a barbed wire collection, the things I had never thought of. Lincoln Nebraska looked like a nice city (in August).

We were able to see the Cahokia Mounds, a place I had never heard of until I was around thirty.  A student in my class, Miguel, did a paper on the Cahokia. Puzzled, I did a search on the brand, new internet connection (we had just had it put in at the school, it was 1994-ish).  It turns out that in the late 1100's Cahokia was larger than London was at that time.  It had giant man made pyramids made out of what they had, soil.  Pyramids made with over 50,000,000 baskets of soil, that must have been some undertaking.  Since that time I have wanted to see these North American pyramids that history seems to have ignored, so we stopped in Collinsville, IL, which is near St. Louis, MO and climbed the mounds. From the top, I took a picture of St. Louis.

St Louis is under construction, everything seems to be getting dug up, the GPS was pretty useless, because the roads were closed and then there was the semi that tipped over on the bridge at rush hour, right after the GPS told us to turn down a road after we had passed it. It seemed run down and dirty. The experience did not make me wish to return to St Louis.

Then there was the time the GPS sent us on loop-de-loops around a small town, until we decided to ignore it and get back onto the highway. Then "U-Turn in 639 miles"...really?

There are little things we noticed along the way.  In order to be a campground host you must have at least one, if not two, cute little dogs.

This pooch was at Boysen State Park in the Wind River Canyon in Wyoming.  It is a beautiful spot with a river alongside the sites and the facing canyon wall.  There are notes to look for bighorn sheep, but we didn't see any there, we had to wait until we arrived at the Badlands in South Dakota to see those.

Our site in Boysen State Park

One of the most fun stories of the trip is from when we arrived in the parking lot of Old Faithful.  We had some time before the next predicted eruption, so we made PB sandwiches and ate them in the parking lot.  While sitting there we spotted a couple of ravens climbing all over a couple of Harley Davidson motorcycles, people kept trying to shoo them away, but they kept coming back. A few minutes later we realized that they were rummaging through the packs of the bikes and removing things.  They stopped when they scored what appeared to be a bag of nuts, soon other ravens appeared, as if on cue to share the booty.

There were so many things we passed by on this trip that seemed interesting, but we just didn't have time for it all.  Maybe next time.