tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-221716212024-03-12T18:43:25.744-07:00Mountains and IslandsTonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.comBlogger388125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-52523214604071776192014-12-03T22:10:00.002-08:002014-12-03T23:26:03.165-08:00Honey! I'm Home!The fledgling nest never matches an old bird's memory. A family of cowbirds has moved in. Or maybe the tree is gone and there's a tennis court or gas station in its place. Return to your childhood home and find it bears no resemblance to the place where you grew up. The houses in the hood are smaller; some of their roofs are sagging. The neighbors have all moved or passed on. That safe, familiar suburb and the people who gave it its vibe are long gone. Even the smell is different. Only in your imagination, and in cyberspace, can you truly go home again. <br />
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That brings us here, to this blog. It's been neglected, and yet, no cowbirds have moved in. It's not been paved over. The roof is intact.<br />
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"I miss your writing," said the last, lonely commenter. How can I stay away with encouragement like that?<br />
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Here's what's kept me occupied:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir7aU1kyBLqjcVoE09Z5IwiX4c-LtlIT4yZd5cdvT18oIApA2yw75uxhTecSTWfcr6nH0lioQY2B3MTy-UiLrLLzlEuTjWNEnMoA4dwHulniwjdXq0Kn_UHEd22VZkVATjT_KWlg/s1600/1201civildefense04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir7aU1kyBLqjcVoE09Z5IwiX4c-LtlIT4yZd5cdvT18oIApA2yw75uxhTecSTWfcr6nH0lioQY2B3MTy-UiLrLLzlEuTjWNEnMoA4dwHulniwjdXq0Kn_UHEd22VZkVATjT_KWlg/s1600/1201civildefense04.jpg" height="320" width="266" /></a>Moulding young minds (mwahahahaha) is time consuming, or rather, all-consuming, especially when you're new at it. Bits of spare time are filled playing the ukulele. Teaching, strumming and skiing, are my current obsessions.<br />
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The islands are still across the great blue pacific, percolating, smoldering. Coffee on the rainforest plantation is thriving. I check on Pele's path or wrath daily to see if my favorite Thai restaurant in Pahoa Town will be there when I visit over the holidays.<br />
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The mountains are still here too, demanding my attention. A current season pass with a 10-year-old photo dangles from a new pair of skis leaning in a corner of this cabin. Those shiny new planks will likely get their inaugural scratches later this week.<br />
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The plan -- or rather, the delusion -- is to teach for 10 years, or longer if the current university or some other institution of higher learning will have me. I'll ski for as long as the legs and back will allow. Despite digits less nimble by the day, I'll work to become a respectable ukulele player. When I retire, I'll supplement my income playing ditties in bars and coffee shops for tips and sandwiches and beers, spinning a yarns and writing songs here and there, a little in Gunnison, a little in Hawaii. Call it a pipe dream, a fantasy no beginner with short, chubby fingers stumbling across the fretboard should entertain. However unaccomplished, however slow between chord changes and uncoordinated my fingerpicking, I find it impossible to be in a bad mood while playing the ukulele. It's an instrument of joy. Happiness in hardwood.<br />
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Pipe dream: a saying inspired by the illusions experienced by opium smokers.<br />
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It's good to be home.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-49309506777847563832013-08-31T22:08:00.001-07:002013-08-31T22:08:04.996-07:00Born and bredThe creature stared at me, wide-eyed through the florescent glare, Saran Wrap stretched tight across its broad back. Alone in the seafood cooler, he was the only one of his kind, there among the farmed, color-added Atlantic salmon and mud-flavored tilapia, perched on a blue foam tray, legs tucked 'round him like a comfy kitten. He didn't blink. He was dead, red, cooked and chilled, ready to eat. Such a find is rare in the City Market fish department in Gunnison, Colorado.<br />
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</i> <i>What if nobody takes him home? </i>I thought. This beautiful animal will have died needlessly, ripped from his home, family and friends (Dory, Nemo, Crush and Gill?) only to be tossed in the trash when his expiration date came and went. I lifted him for closer inspection, checked that date, felt the heft of him, scanned his surface for cracks and blemishes. The creature was perfect. I lowered him back into the cooler, nodded farewell, turned to walk away, took one step, and stopped. Shoppers strolled past, studied lists, analyzed packages and placed them into carts. A man approached the seafood area, glanced into the cooler and rolled on. <i>What if a local buys him?</i> This was no trout. <i>What if he's snapped up by a transplant from Indiana or Michigan? </i>Good luck finding that walleye, pilgrim. I looked at my cool friend. Let's call him Shelly. <i>What if the person who buys him is a Texan? From Dallas. Or Plano. What kind of a name for a town is Plano, anyway? Welcome to Plano, a no-frills, plain-o town. There was a town, a Texas town, and Plano was it's name-o.</i> What would these people know of bottom-dwelling, sidestepping, urchin-gobbling brachyura? Like Shelly, I am Pacific Northwest born and bred. He and I are cut from the same, salty cloth, never mind that the Willamette Valley has no ocean view. I panicked, imagining my dead-eyed compatriot on the platter of a Plano Texan, the man's napkin tucked into the snap collar of his western shirt, steak knife gripped tight in a beefy Texas fist. <i>S.O.S! KELP!</i> I've hauled relatives of Shelly's from the depths to the docs, claw-snapping clusters of crustaceans in netted frenzy around a mangled fish head wired tight into the floor of a mesh trap. I couldn't let this happen. Better that poor, dead Shelly land in the belly of a native daughter. His bar code scanned without a glitch.<br />
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Maine's got lobsters, Alaska, its deadliest catches. They're all delicious. There is, however, nothing finer from the murky depths, or from terra firma, than the sweet, cold flesh of a fresh, dungeness crab.<br />
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Dipping morsels into drawn, organic, grass-fed butter, I lifted the first bite as a toast to the two of us. "You are what you eat, Shelly, and you eat what you are."<br />
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Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-38521244399127616062013-08-05T14:10:00.001-07:002013-08-05T14:10:31.644-07:00This essay may blow, but there are no colons and the goose is far from cooked<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have not traveled recently to Mexico. Nonetheless, I'm stuck home today, mere steps from the water closet for a mild case of food poisoning. Montezuma's Revenge. Like Kings Kamehameha and Luis, there were several Montezuma's, but it's Monty II who is the namesake of this expression, so soundly trounced by Spanish Conquistador Herman Cortéz in 1519. Herman, it would seem, was not a nice man. It's like the Indigo Girls' re-incarnation song, "Galileo." Montezuma got the shit kicked out of him, and today, I am literally living that legacy.<br />
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Hard to believe the guy who looks like a pansy, beatnik poet (not that there's anything wrong with that) prevailed over the loin-clothed stud. This is the lesson of history through the ages. Greed and firepower always trump righteousness. Strike a manly pose with spear and shield. Stand fast to defend your people. You look good, but you're no match for a pouty, well-groomed, beret-capped Spaniard backed by a gold-hungry king and battalions of well-armed, well-fed soldiers, a slew of traitor-natives and a healthy roll of canons thrown in for affect. Sure. Invite the beatnik into your village. Look at him. He's harmless. Present him with gifts. He'll smile, shake your hand, be gracious, then kick your Aztec ass. It was the ultimate checkmate of the 16th century. No wonder poor, beefy Montezuma II has to get his revenge this way, through the likes of me and my non-Aztec ass.<br />
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Red sky at morning, geese take warning.</div>
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Today, the rain falls with a Montezuma-like vengeance. Canada geese in the pasture behind the cabin ride out the deluge like champs. That parcel is a kind of goose hotel. They stop in twice a year for an extended stay, en-route north, en-route south. The geese landed a few days ago, announcing their arrival in a riot of squawks and honks, letting the marmot and rabbit bell-hops know to be ready for their baggage, and the chef (a man-made wetlands meadow) to prep the worms and bugs and seeds for their semi-annual, welcome-to-the-Rockies feast. The geese are early, an omen, natures way of telling us to split and stack the firewood, now. Change is in the air and on the wing. It's early August, and summer lingers. But here in the mountains, winter is always coming.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-33931710167075983582013-07-25T23:24:00.000-07:002013-07-25T23:24:58.494-07:00Back at itIt's been some time since I've written. My mom died in February, and I haven't had the gumption to write much, other than a couple of feature stories for the paper and the occasional pithy email to a friend. Tonight, sitting in my favorite burger joint with a pile of fries in front of me, I dunk them into a deep pool of ketchup mixed with a hot sauce. That's how Mom liked 'em. My burger? The Spicy Hawaiian, a nod to my 808 connections. It's a brilliant combination of peppers and pineapple, a favorite on the Power Stop menu. I'm sure she'd have loved it, too. There's a bubbly beer with a lime in it. That's not a homage to anything. I just like beer.<br />
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These past months, I've done little but work, search and apply for jobs. Two rejection letters have landed in my email this week. Search-and-apply has become a futile obsession. It's time for a break, at least until I hear back from all those applications still floating around out there. I am a writer, after all. Writers write, and so it is that I resurrect the blog.<br />
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Where I work, initials rule. We scratch them on tickets and sheets of paper, line after line. I was here. These are my initials. Everywhere. Everyday.<br />
"Who's TD?" My scrutinizing associate asked a few weeks ago. I looked at the letters with her. Cool and flashy, my initials did, in fact, looked more like TD than TT.<br />
This week, I made a modification to the moniker, to change it up a bit, retain the flair, but with bit more clarity.<br />
What do you think?" I asked.<br />
"It's pretty," said one colleague. "But I like the original. Who cares if it looks like TD. We know your symbol."<br />
"You're like Prince," said the other.<br />
"I'm the teller formerly known as Toni," I said.<br />
"OMG, you are cracking me up today," she said.<br />
"Today?"<br />
"Hahahahahahaha!"<br />
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Why is comic relief never listed as a job requirement?<br />
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This afternoon, I gave a young woman cash back on her deposit. Fifty bucks. Two twenties and a ten. She lingered at my window, fumbled through the bills, staring at them with the focus of a border collie on a flock of sheep.<br />
"Everything OK?" I asked.<br />
"I have to have all the bills in serial number order in my wallet," she said. "I'm somewhat OCD that way."<br />
She shrugged and walked away. I waited 'til she cleared the door, turned to my co-worker, raised my eyebrows. Her eyebrows raised back. In stereo, we blurted, "Somewhat?"<br />
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And now, a shameless lapse into present tense.<br />
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Quarter to five. A woman walks in. I know the instant the door swings shut that she's from Crested Butte. She has three bags of coins. We've already balanced our vault and shut down the machine. My co-worker explains this, her tact and politeness a customer service work of art. She presents the most reasonable of options. "How 'bout if we lock this away in our vault for the evening, then deposit it into your account first thing in the morning?" It's such a great idea, proposed with such confidence and logic, it makes no sense not to. I'm sure the woman will agree.<br />
"I'm leaving on a trip first thing in the morning," says Ms. Moneypenny (not her real name), sliding the heavy canvas totes across my counter. I smile and grab a bags. <i>"</i>We'll start with this one. It'll take a couple of trips."<br />
"Can I help?" she asks. "Oh, I guess I can't come back there."<br />
"Nope." I say. My colleague senses the figurative stench of an irked vibe oozing from my pores, head to toe, like too much curry and garlic. My co-worker is frustrated too, yet she is far more composed than I feel. We all want to go home, weary of our long day, our long week, our boring job. It's one thing to duck in for a quick, late transaction five minutes before closing. If you make it in before the doors close, you've made it. It's your turn. Welcome. If you've rushed in with your coin container and it's all the money you have and you need it to pay rent TONIGHT or be evicted, or to buy groceries 'cause it's all you've got 'til payday, that's OK too. Happy to help. It's quite another thing to heft in three bags of coins, mostly pennies, nickels and dimes, that were three bags pennies, nickels and dimes yesterday, and this morning. They will be tomorrow, too, and next week when you return from your trip, too. I schlep them into the vault, where the machine sits idle. Irritation notwithstanding, it's my favorite piece of equipment in the whole place, a mechanical marvel. Another co-workers brings in the remaining bags. I flip the switch, pour in the booty, push the button. A riot of coins clatters and whirs, filling and clearing my head.<br />
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Chill, calm, attitude adjusted, I emerge from the vault. It is then that I learn the woman's car has broken down. She has to pay the mechanic. A ripple of sympathy hits, followed by sharp twinges of guilt for my own misguided judgement and internal pissiness. Her account comes up on my computer as a matter of protocol. I feel bad for her, poor woman, car in the shop, road trip planned for first thing in the morning. I glanced at the screen.<br />
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She has enough in there to buy a new Lexus for cash.<br />
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Privy to people's accounts. It's a necessary part of the job, but one I dislike most. "Too much information" my colleague often laments. It's uncomfortable, having seen inside our neighbors' bank accounts. In a small community like this, we're all neighbors.<br />
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To be clear, I love Crested Butte, our sister hamlet up the road, and have great affection for many good people I know who live there. It's long been the kind of place where you could belly up to any bar and not know if the guy sitting next to you was a dishwasher with three jobs or a millionaire. And if you did know, it didn't matter. In recent years, however, a new breed of wealthy and entitled have "discovered" CB. They've swooped in to snap up their piece of paradise, but rather than blending in, they prefer standing out, and expect to be treated accordingly. It's a bummer of a change.<br />
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One more day in the salt mines, then--- The weekend!<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-54373283590911818102013-04-06T22:24:00.000-07:002013-04-06T22:42:34.346-07:00Not yet all wet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Life is rigged. And boring. Seriously, I mean, you know the drill. </div>
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Yes, living without running water has been inconvenient, and you'd think people would sympathize, but all they do is stare at my jugs. </div>
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Everyone should go without water for a few days. She says, as though that were a real hardship. I imagine my Alaska friends splitting a gut over that. "A few days? Hah! Try it for a few months," they'd say. "Or years. Decades!" Yeah, well you last frontier people are mad. I'm talking about the rest of us; sane, normal people, the complacent, wasteful kind who take natural resources like fresh, clean water for granted and piss them away every day without a thought. It takes two gallons to flush a toilet. Two. Gallons. (I'll pause for effect here.) That's a container in one hand poured into the tank -- glug, glug, glug -- and then from the other hand -- glug, glug, glug. It's a lot of water. And when one has to schlep those gallons, only to watch them spiral down the drain to no good effect other than taking the stinkies with them, it gives one pause. Not that eliminating the stinkies is not a good effect. It's just wasteful to use so much perfectly good water to flush poo. But that's what we do with every flush.<br />
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<i>If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.</i> That's good advice, whenever water's scarce. But of course, water's always scares. We just don't act like it. </div>
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The solution to poo-lution is dilution. So we need <i>some</i> water for such things. All the more reason not to waste it.</div>
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It takes gallons to wash a few dishes, too. And how many people just let it run while they're brushing their teeth? Gallons and gallons, right down the drain.<br />
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Talking Head interlude:<br />
<i>Letting the days go by, letting the water pull me down. Letting the days go by, water flowing underground...</i></div>
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Once the well's a well, well, the excavator guy (his name is Chris) will dig a trench six feet deep and about 15 feet long. This will include some sort of mechanical/human interpretation of a mole, as he will tunnel a couple of feet under the slab foundation at the edge of the laundry room. The well guys (Rick, Tom and Frank) will return to install the pump. The plumber (he's Fred) will run pipe and electricity along the bottom of the trench from the pump into the house, direct the water through a pipe that will come up through the cement-slab floor (another hole required there), cross the ceiling overhead and down to the pressure tank. Nothing to it! I should have water spilling from my spigots by week's end.<br />
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I should be paying for this until I'm 94. </div>
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Flowing faucets or not, I vow to be more frugal with this precious, life-sustaining fluid. Shorter showers, fewer baths, less flushing and of course, mellowing. </div>
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<i>They call me mellow, yellow (quite right)....</i><br />
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Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-86482127811720782872013-03-18T22:31:00.001-07:002013-03-18T22:38:53.433-07:00Dream visionsI'd done what I could to get there, to be there with her that Sunday evening, February 24th. I didn't make it. But I DID see her.<br />
<br />
She'd gone into the hospital the Friday before with debilitating abdominal cramps. Doctors were confident they knew the cause of her discomfort, and assured my mom and Jim that a simple, routine procedure would have her home Saturday morning, "feeling like a new woman." What they found instead was a dead colon, killed for lack of blood supply by a tumor that had grown exponentially over the course of three weeks since its initial diagnosis, choking off the main vessel. The surgeon reported, "the cancer was everywhere." I jumped online to book a flight, but a dastardly Rocky Mountain blizzard had other plans, for the Denver airport, for all Western Slope airports, and for me. All Saturday afternoon and evening flights from here were canceled. No sleep, I left early the next morning, drove through the drifting white over four mountain passes from Gunnison to Denver, expecting to catch the only flight I'd found available, scheduled to depart at 11 a.m. I arrived to find that it too had been canceled, along with all other flights that day. My best hope was the last flight of the day to PDX, 7:20 p.m.<br />
<br />
I received regular updates on Mom's condition throughout the afternoon, pacing the vast expanse beneath the peaked, white canvas at DIA, calls from worried uncles and husband. My cousin Amy reported at one point that Mom was resting comfortably, fast asleep. "She looks peaceful, Toni. No pain. She's even snoring, like usual." It was comforting news after a harrowing day and dire prognosis. Settled into a window seat, head against my coat wadded up against the fusilage, I fell asleep, fast, exhausted. And there she was, riding down the escalator toward baggage claim at Hilo airport. She was ready, in her sneakers and shorty socks, light denim capris -- pedal pushers, she called them -- creamy aloha shirt with brilliant red hibiscus flowers, worn open and loose over a matching French vanilla tank, giant canvas purse slung over a shoulder, hair impossibly-cute in short, impossibly-blonde waves. Cheshire grin. Delighted. My mom had arrived. I moved to greet her, awoke, and she was gone.<br />
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When I landed in Portland hours later, I retrieved a message from Jim, her love and life partner. My mom had died. 7:58 p.m.<br />
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I've reached for the phone to call her more than once since returning to Colorado. An unshakable ache and emptiness still overcomes without notice, thoughts of her rolling uninvited, but not unwelcome, through my head. Yesterday, I caught myself imagining the trip we were planning for this summer. She'd wanted to go to Disneyland once more, to celebrate her 75th birthday.<br />
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Jim said that when someone close to you dies, it feels as if the entire world should stop. In deference to the event, everyone and everything should freeze, for a day, or maybe a week, so you can stop too, to grieve, to remember, to be, to feel the loss wholly, without interruption or obligation. It doesn't. The earth spins on, the universe and planet and people ever in motion.<br />
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Ron told me last Saturday that my dog, Doc, was gone. He died the day after my mom's memorial service. Not wanting upset me further during those fragile early days, he waited. Good call. Doc was 14, a quirky, silly dog who lived a long, happy, pampered life. He was our boy, our first puppy. The kitties loved him. Harley still looks for him in the hard, to pass underneath and rub against Doc's legs. BeeCee sleeps on Doc's bed, wondering where his favorite doggie has gone.<br />
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And the world spins on.Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-39372778799542936222013-02-28T00:51:00.002-08:002013-02-28T00:55:05.883-08:00Mom<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This is my beautiful mom. She died last Sunday.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">For those who knew her, my heart breaks with you. For those who did not, here's an introduction to the best confidante, role model and mother a girl could hope for in life. This is the obituary I'd planned to submit to the local paper, but have opted instead to publish here.</span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Obituary: Beverly Todd</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bev -- my mom -- was a longtime caregiver, advocate, and dear friend to countless elderly in South Salem. Hers was a kind and generous spirit. She devoted much of her life to the welfare of others, giving wholly of herself and doing so always with great affection and humor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She was born Beverly Marie Steinberger in Silverton, July 23, 1938, the first child and only daughter of Art and Marie Steinberger. Her brothers called her Bevvy Buns, a nickname she grew fond of and wore proudly within the family circle as an adult. Bev attended St. Paul’s Elementary School in Silverton, Silverton High School and Marylhurst College in Lake Oswego. She also spent a short time waitressing in El Paso, Tex. an early adventure, living with a girlfriend there for a few months before returning to Silverton to marrying Cecil Todd in 1958. They had one daughter, Toni. The couple divorced in 1977. Bev met her true love, Jim Cafferty, shortly thereafter. Except for a short time in the mid-1980s when she lived with her brother, David, in San Francisco, Jim and Bev have been together 36 years. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bev worked through the 1970s as an assistant to an ophthalmologist, Dr. Robert Baum. She was also a member of Queen of Peace Parish, engaged as an involved parent throughout the 1960s and 70s, helping immigrant families with basic needs and teaching catechism classes to junior high kids.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Her career in elder care began when she returned to Salem from the Bay Area in the mid-80s. When asked why she didn’t retire sooner from what proved a rewarding but exhausting profession, she said, “I’d say to myself, ‘When the last one of my people passes, I’ll quit.’ Then one or two would go, and someone new would move in, and I’d grow attached to them.” Bev cared for each as she would and did for her own parents, with respect, companionship, love.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Lacking rhythm to comical effect, she enjoyed music nevertheless and was a fine dancer. In their day, she and brother Paul cut-a-rug with enviable jitterbug moves. Or so she claimed. A born story teller, Bev was known to embellished upon and tweak facts for dramatic affect, often placing herself at the center of the action. She’d wax on about any topic, whether she knew much about it or not. To those closest to her, this was one of Bev’s most endearing qualities. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>An avid reader, she enjoyed a good yarn in print, too. Movies, live theater and performance were always a delight, and she relished fun weekends with girlfriends.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Card games were not her forte, but with a sharp wit and appreciation for wordplay, her Scrabble skills were unparalleled. A talented sketch artist and doodler, Bev left a daily legacy of busts and caricatures on Post-it notes and napkins. She was crafty and creative in spades, a fine seamstress and inventive cook who loved to try new recipes and share her favorites. Fascinated by science and history, Bev poured over copies of Smithsonian Magazine and National Geographic, enjoyed discovering any new bit of family lore and visiting museums and historic sites when traveling. Trips to Florida, New Orleans, Hawaii and Colorado were highlights, but her favorite destination was Disneyland. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Her sense of humor was sometimes mischievous, always infectious. She was quick with a smile and kind word toward anyone, senior to toddler, any color or creed. Enter any of her regular haunts at her side, and you’d hear the most genuine, “Hi Bev! Good to see you!” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bev died Sunday, Feb. 25 of unexpected complications from cancer. She was 74. She’s survived by her husband Jim Cafferty, daughter Toni Todd, brothers Paul and David Steinberger, nieces Amy and Nicole Bruntz and Brandi Ferris, nephews Michael and J.D. Steinberger and Brad Bruntz, son-in-law Ron Niederpruem, Sisters-in-law Victoria and Lorna Steinberger, Her lifelong best friend Veronica, Logan the boxer, Sunny the conure parrot and many friends whom she loved and cherished like family. To Bev, the greatest love and affections from everyone.</span></div>
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Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-53721066498344840762013-02-10T20:06:00.000-08:002013-02-10T20:12:49.175-08:00PerplexedHere's a beef. In the United States of America, we have miles of soybeans, rows and rows of those podded, phytoestrogen-laced legumes across hundreds of thousands of acres. Why then, can I not find a bag of frozen edamame that does not say, in tiny print on the back of the package, "Product of China?" Anybody? I even tried the local health food store. They had 'em, compact plastic, post-consumer-waste pouches with "Organic" emblazoned across the front, a blast of eye-catching, eco-graphics. But on the back, way down in the lower left corner, written in letters so small you have to squint to read:"Product of China."<br />
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Speaking of beef, in Hawaii, a place where I occasionally spend time, many of the larger, local cattle ranches ship their animals to the mainland for processing. Meanwhile, island supermarkets are filled with beef from the mainland.<br />
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"There are two things in this world you should never pay for," advises a wise (ass) friend of mine. "Fish and sex." Now, I didn't catch enough trout last summer to stock my freezer. OK, I never got around to buying a fishing license, and ice fishing ain't my scene. So, in these snowbound days, I buck by buddy's admonition and, with actual money, <i>buy fish</i> from the local grocer. It's wild caught Alaskan salmon, not farmed or die-injected, previously frozen but not bad for the middle of winter in the middle of the mountains, and cheaper than most decent cuts of beef. Ah, again with the beef. Beef. It's what's <i>not</i> for dinner, although I see them every day, lines of plump, woolly bovines nosing through hay, strewn thick across nearby pastures. Why is it that a sockeye hauled from the Cook Inlet and flown 3600 miles to land on a pile of crushed ice at City Market here in Gunnison, Colorado, is cheaper than a ribeye I could shoot from my yard if I were so inclined? <br />
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It's a mad world.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-7265257316581451162012-12-23T12:37:00.001-08:002012-12-23T12:37:22.716-08:00Christmas charmThe road toward my first Christmas away from home confirmed a charmed life. I'd abandoned three retail jobs I was working simultaneously and quit the lovely, but WAY out-of-my-price range liberal arts college in Portland I'd attended, where I'd racked up enough debt to bury a Bloomberg (hint: it's Monica Lewinsky's alma mater). My last month's rent at an apartment in Southwest P-Town was the agreed-upon price of a respectable, matching davenport and chair my grandparents had given me some months earlier.<br />
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November, 1981. I was a drop-out, floundering, working my ass off, getting nowhere. On a whim a few weeks earlier, I'd picked up the phone and called the ski school director in Vail, Colo. </div>
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"Are you certified?" he asked.</div>
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"Yes," I said.</div>
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"I can put you to work, but not 'til mid-December.</div>
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"Great! I'll be there."</div>
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Charmed.</div>
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I had assumed the few bucks I'd saved would last until my first paycheck landed. </div>
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They didn't.<br />
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A friendly, dread-locked, trust-funder ski-bum I met within minutes of rolling into town invited me to stay in his den of iniquity, a place packed with roommates and other freeloaders. "Stay as long as you want," he said.<br />
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Charmed.<br />
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That first night in Vail was a sleepless Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, there in a crowded condo where the party never ended and my "room" was a couch in the middle of it all. The next morning...<br />
"You gotta go. Change of plans. Parents are coming in for the weekend."<br />
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A drafty, Victorian flophouse in Minturn, circa 1880s, provided shelter the next several nights, but not much warmth. In those days, Minturn was the anti-Vail, the low-low rent district on the other side of the mountain and the tracks, still little more than the way station it had been for 100 years. The building was three stories, white, tall, skinny and uninsulated, a long, single-paned window looking out from each room. It housed railroad workers on overnighters as they passed through. Rooms were small and bare, plank floors and walls, with a shared bath down the hall. Ten bucks a night, BYO bedding. I threw my sleeping bag on the cot. Shivering by night, searching for better digs by day but with no money to offer, my bitty coffers dwindled.<br />
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That first night out of the flophouse, I hung out in my car till fingers and toes screamed from the cold, then stole into the lobby of the Holiday Inn. I'd grown up in the relative balm of the Pacific Northwest. The Rockies presented a level of cold I'd not experienced. Two hours, maybe three, there in a cushy chair by the fireplace, I checked my watch regularly and looked around, pretending to wait for someone. The desk clerk ignored me for awhile, but his looks grew more frequent, longer with each glance, until I was sure he was onto me. So I cruised downtown to the bus depot, parked my frozen fanny on a hard wood bench, read the paper, dozed. Buses pulled in and out, but I had no place to go. The sun rose. That's when I met Gerry.<br />
"You can stay with us," he said. "Buy groceries when you get paid. Pay a little rent if you can. You'll have to sleep on the sofa, but I'm sure Ed won't mind. Nice guy. We rent a room from him. Ed works graveyard at Safeway. We never see him."<br />
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Charmed.<br />
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Gerry's wife Sue was an engineer with a real job working for a small company in Avon or Eagle, one of those once tiny mountain towns west along the Interstate. Gerry was an instructor like me, tickled that we would be colleagues. Their plan was to enjoy the ski bum life for a few years before returning home to Pennsylvania, where they'd start a business and raise a family. The next morning, warm and well-rested, it seemed a good time to introduce myself at the ski school office, fill out paperwork, pick up my uniform and stash my gear, though I wasn't scheduled to start work for another week.<br />
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Alone in the locker room, I was hanging my parka and pants when a young man burst through the heavy, gray doors.<br />
"You're Toni, right?"<br />
"Yeah?"<br />
"You're certified? I mean, have you taught before?"<br />
"Yeah?"<br />
"I have a group of 12 level never-evers and no instructor. Can you take them? Now?"<br />
"Sure!"<br />
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Charmed.<br />
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Late Christmas Eve, and the village stores were closed. Lights twinkled and snow drifted upon us in fat, soft flakes as we strolled the streets of Vail, peering into shop windows, ogling stoles and coats made from the hides and furs of dead animals.<br />
"You could buy a BMW for that!" I said.<br />
"You could buy a house for that!" Sue said.<br />
We sang carols with revised lyrics. <i>Later on, we'll perspire, as we sweat, by the fire...</i><br />
No gifts, no pressure, no family obligations, we shared a walk, a meal, laughter, and friendship.<br />
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Charmed.<br />
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It was a wonderful Christmas.<br />
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May your holidays be so charmed this year. Peace!<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-20850707134573622122012-12-02T08:45:00.004-08:002012-12-02T12:28:24.445-08:00Maynard lives!I guess the little guy had stored enough chow for a few days and didn't need my offerings. Mice sometimes get into stuff they shouldn't -- that's why they're so easy to poison, on purpose or by accident. I left a bag of bacterial digestive drain stuff on the counter next to the sink some weeks ago. The next morning, microorganism-laden bits were scattered across the counter, a large hole gnawed into the thick plastic container. The label reads, "Harmful if taken internally. Keep out of reach of children."<br />
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Maynard was fine after that incident, and I've seen no evidence of similar mischief since. He's a survivor, like his ancestors, resourceful adaptors like mine. Living softly as we do today, however, no predators to evade, as much food wasted as consumed, all things sanitized and pasteurized for our protection, minds unchallenged, numbed by technology and trivia, I wonder if we aren't sliding backward along a muddied, evolutionary trail.<br />
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We've set ourselves up for the greatest challenge yet, an epic episode of Survivor with all humanity, all life as we know it on planet earth at stake. The predators have morphed. The tracking of sustenance has changed. Our best hope is to avoid our own progress. We're back to discovering food that won't kill us, ways of life that won't poison our environment, stunt our psyches or compromise our ethics. We evade predators daily, the sharks of our time. Maynard has avoided the hawks and foxes that prowl the adjacent pasture by ducking into this cabin. Whether it's by luck or intuition, he's chosen this particular land-ship to stow away. He's safe, for now, lives day to day as best he can, but without assumptions. Maynard is opportunistic, but not exploitative. He's broken away from his pack, or herd, or however mice roll. He's like the risk-takers, rebels and weirdos of our species, the entrepreneurs and self-mades, the mad, reclusive scientists, the nerds who read, write and ponder rather than watch TV, outcasts who eschew what's mass produced, plasticized, homogenized, and pest-resistant, those who pedal or walk rather than drive, create rather than destroy, value life and beauty and nature over things. My bet's on them to save the world. Artists and free-thinkers are not trickling brooks divergent from the main stream, but rather the flourishing, nourishing tributaries that feed it. Concrete or abstract, it is their crazy revelations, their witness to and conveyance of truth that keeps humanity a hair's width ahead of its sprint toward self-destruction.<br />
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Hyperbolic you say? A little mouse's escapades analogous to all that? Maybe....<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-81414784703364899142012-11-26T21:43:00.000-08:002012-11-27T20:01:26.361-08:00Scat, scatI'm worried about Maynard.<br />
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When I told my mother some months ago that I had a mouse living behind the dishwasher here at the cabin, she said, "Time to get some Decon."<br />
"You must have me confused with your sane daughter, the one who doesn't rescue spiders from the tub and ferry them to safety in the garage," I said. To be clear, I am an only child.<br />
"You can't live with a mouse in your house," she said. "And where there's one, there are always more."<br />
"Nope. There's just the one," I said. "I'm sure of it."<br />
"They carry diseases," she said. "I read about a woman somewhere near where you live, New Mexico or Wyoming, and she contracted some horrible disease from rodents."<br />
"Hantavirus?"<br />
"That's it!"<br />
"If my mouse had hantavirus, I'd be in the ICU or dead by now. And anyway, operation relocation is underway, so don't you worry. I'll capture him, then release him in a well-covered spot behind the barn. Give the little guy a chance."<br />
She let out one of those motherly sighs through the phone, the ones that don't require accompanying body language to interpret. Translation? "Tsk, tsk. Good grief. Who are you, and what have you done with my rational, practical daughter?" Never mind that I've never possessed either of those traits in more than trace quantities.<br />
There are dozens of ways to catch a mouse, alive or dead, but the trap I found at Ace was just so ingenius in its design, I had to have it. Forget about electronics or chemicals. I'm a sucker for cool mechanics. This contraption -- or conTRAPtion as I'd have named it -- is friggin' brilliant. I brought it home, played with the tiny, spring-loaded ramps, inspected the cavity, marveled at the see-through top, the way it slides away to let the little buggah out, with plenty of room inside to add a little sustenance in the event he's stuck in there for a few hours. The night I brought the trap home, my wheat-hued, round-eared pal got his name: Maynard.<br />
"I'll wait until the weekend, so you're not stuck in there all day," I told him. Yeah, I talked to him. What of it?<br />
That first weekend came and passed, then another, and another. The trap is still in the box. I've come to listen for him at night. A clink in the dark, and I sneak down the hall in my slippers, a cat on the prowl, a native hunter, silent, slinking toward the kitchen. Flick goes the beam of a flashlight. Maynard freezes, there on the counter against the wall, an unprepared performer caught by a spotlight onstage. He stares back at me, aghast, looks both ways, then scurries, behind the faucet, across the countertop onto the refrigerator plug, along the coils and poof. Gone. In the morning, behind the coffee pot, a tiny trail of bitsy black Maynard turds shows me his path. A spritz and a wipe, and the evidence is gone. Scat, scat.<br />
My initial theory was that if I left munchies in a safe place on the floor, he'd have no need to scavenge the countertops. Ah, but Maynard is a born explorer, like the Vikings, Magellan, the Hawaiians in their single hulled canoes, Lewis and Clark across the plains to the Pacific. He is Lawrence of Arabia, bound to uncover the tiniest mysteries of a barren, formica landscape.<br />
It's been two days since Maynard snatched up my offerings of granola and veggies, neatly contained in a jar lid behind the fridge. There have been no clinks, or rustling, no dash in a blur of fur when I flick on the kitchen light in the wee hours.<br />
Nothing smells weird. There's no detectable decomp. Maybe he found his way back through whatever hole lead him in. Maybe he found a mouse spouse under the house, and the happy couple chose to settle somewhere else. Maybe he's exhausted the intrigue of this place, and has moved on to other adventures. Hope clings like droppings to a stovetop.<br />
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Wherever you are, adios, Maynard.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-67634120033567462582012-10-08T19:55:00.000-07:002012-10-08T19:55:49.342-07:00Preposterous ponderingsI realize this forthcoming statement makes me an anomaly among women, a freak if you will, but here goes: I HATE shopping! Clothes are the worst, especially pants. (Well, especially swimwear, but that's its own sordid, traumatic topic, not suited -- ehem! -- for the annals of this blog.) Whatever happened to simple choices? Khakis or chinos? Or are those the same thing? Levis or Wranglers? Today, there's curvy fit, straight fit, trouser fit, low rise, mid rise, high rise, moon rise, sun rise, crotch creepers (OK nobody calls them that, but come on). There's mid rise curvy skinny, low rise straight skinny, mid rise curvy relaxed, natural rise pleated, mid rise easy, tapered legs, straight legs, boot cut, ultra flare.... it goes on and on and on. Some companies have names for each of these: the Blakely Fit, the Mercer Fit, Fit 1, Fit 2, Fit 3, Fit 26.7. None of them fit me. I found a pair today that was close, mostly not synthetic, mostly not crappy craftsmanship, manufactured in a democracy. The kicker: They were three inches too long. I could have them altered, but that would cost more than the pants themselves. I could hem them myself, if I didn't care how they look. So I left the pants on the rack and bought other stuff-- a nice pan, tighty black-ies, grey-ies, blue-ies. The whities just seemed so...white. Why no pastels for the boys? Tough enough to wear pink-- briefs? Or a practical color, like brown? Socks, dog treats, licorice, and an oil change for the car. All but the pan and the oil change will be sent across the ocean to the coffee farming entourage that is my family. I found some great stuff at Murdoch's Ranch Store that had me lingering in defiance of shopping disdain, adorable flannel shirts and Carhartts everything, but I can't wear any of that to work at the bank. I hate the bank for many reasons, but especially for its refusal to accommodate my preferred wardrobe. I'm parked all day behind a waist-high counter, and nobody sees my pants or shoes. Sweatpants, sneakers and a Brother's Brother blouse would work just fine, in my opinion, but no-o-o-o. They won't have it. When it comes to appropriate, non-jeans leg&butt wear, polyester, rayon, microfiber or otherwise clingy, bulletproof, flammable fabrics abound, materials that melt when held to a match, but come out of the dryer looking swell. What ever happened to wool for sheep's sake? And apparently, cotton is no longer the fabric of our lives.<br />
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Columbus Day reminds me of the famous storm that struck the Pacific Northwest in 1962, also known as The Big Blow. My tricycle flew down the driveway. My parents and I watched through the window as it disappeared. There were candles. Lots of them. The power was out, the house was dark but for the glow of tiny flames, and we were all three together, safe inside as the gale raged outside. I think my mom and dad must have been frightened, but I had no clue. To me, The Columbus Day Storm was a blast. The next day, we and the neighbors "discovered" that their garage had been crushed by a tree.<br />
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Shopping bust aside, this chilly morning yielded to an Indian summer day custom made to recognize, respect and honor the contributions of native Americans, consciously, if not actively. Rustlings of my paternal grandmother's insistence that we are descended from the Algonquin Blackfoot rang in my head as I listened to Sherman Alexie on NPR, then meandered along the river, through the canyon and over the pass toward the sprawling metropolis of Montrose. It's called Discoverers' Day in Hawaii, the irony obviously lost on those who name holidays there, considering the well-documented fate of that infamous island "discoverer," Captain Cook. But let's examine Columbus. Besides being an exploitative, treasure-hunting dick-wad, he missed. Two huge continents, their combined length spanning most of the globe north to south, and he lands on a tiny island not connected to either one. What kind of navigation skills are those? The Hawaiians, some 1500 years earlier than Topher C. (He's gotta be a Topher. With that hat?), sailing in canoes, managed to stick their landing on a tiny archipelago in the middle of nowhere. Maybe <i>those</i> are the discoverers Hawaii's talking about with their version of the Holiday. In that case, never mind about the Captain Cook crack. Those intrepid Hawaiians are worthy of celebration. And what of my maternal ancestors, those wacky, horny Vikings? The helmets. That's what was horny. Although, after a long journey at sea... Anyway, where's Vikings Day? Why are we not all eating lutefisk with our fries?<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-7251830804266138002012-09-10T23:39:00.000-07:002012-09-14T21:45:58.609-07:00Mill LakeI learned a new word a couple of weeks ago, hangin' wit' my California homey Gail in the big city of Denver. Our waitress at the Breckenridge Brewery was excruciatingly young. Literally, it made my joints ache and my jaw clench just to look at her. She was sweet, helpful and oh-so talkative, giving us directions to parks and bars. The word she taught us? Dank. Dank, you see, is the new sick, which was, and still is in some circles, the new bad, which everyone knows is good. Get it? Got it. Dank.<br />
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My pal Gail and I walked the streets of Denver, 8.5 miles. This, according to a cool app loaded onto her iPhone that tells her how far and where she's gone, using GPS satellite positioning to accomplish this and displaying a map to show the exact route. Dank.<br />
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One of our first assignments as fledgling MFA students (about 100 years ago), was to introduce ourselves in a representative way by describing a favorite place. The image that faded into view like a developing Polaroid was here, Mill Lake, Fossil Ridge Wilderness, Gunnison County, Colorado. I vowed then that I would return to this place, and last Sunday, I did. Mill Lake should not to be confused with Mill Creek, an equally picturesque if more heavily traveled area. To get to Mill Lake, you pass through the metropolis of Ohio City, not to be confused with Ohio Creek, which does not flow through Ohio City but rather connects with Mill Creek. Mill Creek and Mill Lake are just a bit further apart than Ohio Creek and Ohio City, in exactly the same direction. Get it? Got it. Dank.<br />
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A woman from Ohio City came into the bank this morning. She lives on Broadway, not far from its intersection with Wall Street. I'm not sure if Ohio City was an especially ambitious place in it's early days, or if its founders just appreciated sarcasm. I like to think it's the latter.</div>
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Solitude is a curious thing, not to be confused with loneliness.<br />
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You encounter no one along the trail, and within moments, it belongs to you alone, never mind the fact that its very existence is proof otherwise. The conifer forest smells like home. Higher by the inch, footfalls become the backbeat to a serenade of stuttering woodpeckers and squawking magpies. Ten thousand feet, then eleven thousand. A jet passes overhead. Surely it's flying low. Here's a better thought: the plane's not low, but rather you are especially high. Trudge, in segments of random time, measured by the sound of your own heartbeat, and when it overtakes the rustle of the wind in the boughs and the chatter of the jays, you stop, breath, shoot a photo and tip a drink from your bottle. Switchback after rocky switchback leads you here, where the breeze tickles cones from needled perches and becomes visible in ripples across the jaded lake. Marmots sing warnings to surrounding creatures of your arrival. A lunatic trout leaps from the surface. The caldera, chiseled by winter slides and spring waterfalls, contains you. A snow globe in summer, a bug in a jar, you are walled in, to solitude. Alone here is not the same as alone in your car or alone in your house or alone with your thoughts. If, as Kurt Cobain insisted, "All alone is all we are," then here is as good a place as any to meet that loneliness and embrace it. Here, solitude feels like a favorite sweater.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-17677949329285322562012-07-23T22:42:00.001-07:002012-07-23T22:42:53.928-07:00The planI put out the hint recently that I had an idea for a new venture. It may be some time before I figure out what I'm doing or how to do it, but since several people have asked, here's the gist:<br />
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Cleverness and wit haven't gotten me far in this world, but like Obi-Wan Kanobe, they're my only hope. There's a need for it out there; all those websites, newsletters, blogs, tweets and such have to say something, and if they're not clever, or witty, or at least interesting... click. I realize this is not a new concept. There are gobs of copywriting businesses, companies and individuals who make a living writing for other people who don't have time or skill to write for themselves, writers more clever and witty than I. Whether you pen novels or ad copy, it's likely been done before. So why bother? Every writer comes to her craft with a unique perspective on the world, telling stories only she can tell, in a way only she can tell them. There may be a cornucopia of copywriters and essayists and memoirists and fiction writers out there, selling their "wares" as it were, hocking words by the penny, but they're not you, and they're not me. So, that's my plan-- Have keyboard, will travel. Bartleby's Copywriting Services, coming soon. Unless somebody makes me a better offer or I hit the Lotto.<br />
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On an aside, if you haven't told those around you love them lately, you really should get on that. Say it straight out. Hug them. Kiss them. Gush if you have to. The Columbine Memorial Garden at IOOF Park in Gunnison is in full bloom, as flags fly half-mast in honor of the fallen in Aurora. In this world, you can go to school or to the movies on any random, regular day and end up dead at the hands of a madman and his arsenal. So hold on tight, cherish those close to you, do what you can to make every moment count with each of them.<br />
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Peace and love. It's really that simple.</div>
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</div>Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-27445422506453380852012-06-27T22:21:00.002-07:002012-06-27T22:37:50.462-07:00There is no tryI was taken by an interview with <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155810062/nora-ephron-filmmaker-is-dead-at-71">Nora Ephron this morning on NPR.</a> She told of a dear friend with whom she often played the game, "Last meal." It's not so much a game as a conversation, where you share you're favorite foods, those you'd request on death row the night before your execution. She noted that the last time they played, her friend was dying of throat cancer and could not have eaten her favorite meal even if she'd wanted to. Ephron's advice: whatever your last meal is, eat it. Everyday if you can. Whatever it is you want to do, do it now.<br />
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My friend Gail and I do something similar, discussing our bucket lists. She recently took her 80-year-old mother zip-lining. That's the gist of this rambling thought bubble.<br />
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The Ephron interview has lingered with me all day. I mentioned it to a friend and co-worker, a woman who would love to escape the pressure of her day-to-day, retire and motor-coach the country, but "can't."<br />
"If only we could all afford to do that," she said. What she doesn't know is that Nora's favorite food was a hot dog. Certainly, money does buy opportunity, and if your heart's desire is beluga caviar and Kobe filet mignon and you currently live under a bridge in a cardboard box, meager means are an obstacle. But in many cases, our reticence to go after what we want is not for poverty's sake, but for simple fear of failure, aversion to change, unwillingness or lack of confidence to believe that, in doing our best, we will, in fact, do well. The stars don't have to be perfectly aligned, nor must our venture be amply capitalized to succeed. To quote <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3hn6fFTxeo">Yoda, "Do or do not. There is no try."</a> My co-worker has postponed surgery, forsaken time off and made undue sacrifices over the years, giving up bits of her life to a corporation that doesn't give a gnats toenail about her. She's now postponed her retirement another two years. Two years is forever. It's also a blip.<br />
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Outside the bank, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive in <a href="http://www.visitgunnison.com/navigate.cfm?nav=profile.cfm">Gunnison</a>. It has to be. The economy is soft everywhere these days, but this has never been a place where regular jobs are the norm. Few get rich, but they seem happier here, masters of their own destiny.<br />
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I'm impressed by the creative, resourceful ways friends make a living here. Even my husband, half a world away, is inspiring, for his undaunted pursuit of coffee perfection in the rainforest. I credit their influence with sparking this epiphany. And Nora Ephron, for fanning the flame.<br />
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I am not cut out for corporate life, nor am I suited for government work. It's all I can do not to roll my eyes in most staff meetings. The superficial rah-rah? Can't do it. And yet, I've been searching, applying for, scouring the employment posts for just such a job. I hold one of them right now. Starting your own business, doing your own thing -- that's a huge risk. It takes enormous cojones. There are plenty of practical, well-meaning loved ones happy to point out the merits of a secure paycheck and benefits, reminding you of all the obstacles and pitfalls with each numskull idea you've -- I've -- ever hatched. High risk of failure and discouragement have kept me employed by someone, or searching for so-called secure employment -- lately in vein -- all my life. The crux of this revelation, the lightbulb over the head part, is that I've finally hit on something, a business idea I can pursue now, without huge capital investment, utilizing my only two skills. (One of which, if I may be so bold to say, is writing.)<br />
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What is it, you ask? Patience, grasshopper. I'll unveil it soon. Stay tuned.<br />
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The crazy, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-drawers kid has returned from a rumplestiltskinian nap, ready to break free of adulthood's evil, stifling clutches. From now on, spontaneity rules. Ideas rule. Creativity rules.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-87747663584644512712012-05-27T09:48:00.001-07:002012-05-27T10:03:33.910-07:00Summer breeze, makin' me whine, blowing too much crap around my YA-A-A-RD!!!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Calm. This morning, the quakies aren't quaking, the cottonwoods, quiet. No debris flies across the land, and the house is not threatening to twist off its foundation, spin upward and over the mountains, toward Kansas. Actually, I'd have more likely landed in Crested Butte than Topeka, or maybe Missoula. There's no doubt from which direction the wind has come lately. Ehem... New Mexico? Please keep your blasted wind to yourself, thank-you-very-much! And no, it's not because Colorado sucks. The Memorial Day flag that hangs over the highway had been layed out flat and stiff, completely horizontal as it points me northward from town to home.</div>
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One day last week, my co-workers and I were enjoying an especially fine morning. The sun shone, brilliant and warm. The holiday weekend was approaching, and in anticipation of the official kickoff to summer, a positive vibe prevailed. Folks were especially pleasant, issuing forth the most sincere, "You have a great day," sentiments you can imagine. Then the wind picked up, and the transformation was palpable.<br />
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A woman comes in to access her safety deposit box. We pull it out together, and I move to escort her to the room, a small, private enclave with a desk, a chair and a door that closes.<br />
"I'll just be a minute," she says. "I can do what I need to right here." She stands firm, there in the vault.<br />
"I'm sorry, but we're not allowed to let anyone open a box in here," I say, in my best, most encouraging, ultra-friendly way. We lowly tellers are not supposed to see what people have in their boxes, and that's hard to accomplish within the tight confines of the vault. There's also no place to put the box, unwieldy and heavy even when it's empty, and it would be easy to drop something while holding it with one hand, opening it with the other, and having no extra hands to retrieve or add stuff. It's a long standing rule, in place for years, decades, maybe even centuries, one which most people appreciate, and to my knowledge is applied at every bank.<br />
"Well, that's NEW," she says, with an undisguised, over-the-top sigh of pissiness. "You people." She jerks the box in close to her, for lack of anything else to jerk, and fairly stomps through the vault door toward the room. "You wouldn't believe what I've been through today already. Those people at the post office. And now I'm running late and still have to drive all the way across town." The door to the tiny room closes behind her.<br />
I glance at my co-worker, who has undoubtedly heard this, since her work station is right there.<br />
"Ooh, all the way across town," I wink and whisper. The woman remains in the room for about a minute, then bursts out.<br />
"Well, that was fast," I say.<br />
"I told you it would just be a minute."<br />
We return her box to its slot, lock it in and leave the vault, and as she marches across the lobby toward the exit I say, "You have a great day."<br />
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The rest of the afternoon was no better. The wind makes people cranky, anxious, irritable, impatient. The blowing has been relentless, for days, and to make matters worse, the Saturday morning sky had turned smog brown, like mid-summer over Los Angeles, the West Elks standing in for The San Gabriels, an unmistakable scent in the air. "It begins," I thought. Fire.<br />
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I understand why the suicide rate was so high among early homesteaders on the Great Plains. Tiny sod farmhouses, specks on the vast, treeless prairie, the wind's howl tormenting, ever pushing them to the brink of insanity. Of course, we have mountains here, and trees, and know the wind will, eventually, let up. In fact, it has, and this Sunday morning couldn't be prettier if it were Miss America in the Rose Parade.<br />
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I left town for a few hours yesterday, to take care of some newly-discovered, unresolved banking for my dad. It seems he had a checking account that was still active, four years after his passing, with just enough money in it to pay the senior citizen rate ($5) for an empty safe deposit box into perpetuity. Or at least for a couple more years. His bank has a branch in Montrose, so I secured all the proper official documentation I needed to close it out.<br />
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Heading out of Gunnison, our little town was teaming with cyclists, here for The Growler, a bike race. Cyclists are the best tourists. As a rule, they're well behaved, pleasant and happy, and they seemed that way yesterday too, despite the wind and smoky air. Cyclists were everywhere, in every direction, fit and looking fast in their bright, snug jerseys and lycra shorts, leaning against cars, chatting as they screwed on their shoes, lifting bikes from racks, torquing this spot or that on their iron horses with alan wrenches, stretching, hydrating, stuffing energy bars into their mouths, clipping on helmets, cruising the streets in small packs toward the main gathering spot and starting line at IOOF Park. A dozen iron horses of a different sort, a breed known as Harley Davidson, were hitched in a shiny row along the curb at Ol' Miner Steakhouse, where the bikers know they served a pretty tasty, hearty breakfast. Campers, trailers, cars and pickups topped with bikes and kayaks, fishing poles in gun racks-- the hive is alive. You can hear it abuzzin'.<br />
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Montrose was busy too, with local traffic and passers through. It's a city now, sprawled too far, too fast, but with a pittance of small-town charm that clings tenaciously by it's fraying fingernails, mostly for the efforts and attitudes of long-timers, who don't seem so keen on the rapid pace of development in their community. Growth has slowed in recent years due to what Gary, the Big O Tire shuttle driver called, "The downturn." What a friendly fellow. "Oh I suppose it'll pick back up again," he said, with more than a hint of lament in his voice. I feel a little bad about buying my tires there. I'm a big proponent of buying local, even if the price is a little higher, but the difference this time was enough to justify the drive. I also had a coupon, and they're open on Saturdays, and I had to go to Montrose anyway, so there you go. "Service," says Gary. "Our customers take care of us, so we take care of them." Simple.<br />
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Sprawling cities do have their amenities, however. A Chinese food restaurant that once stood on Main Street is now an Indian-Himalayan joint with a lunch buffet. Chicken Tikka Masala and Saag Paneer? I'm there! They had my favorite Indian desserts, too-- brown rice balls floating in a honey sauce (don't know what those things are called, but they're yummy) and rice pudding. More raisins, please. The Guru is a cultural detour in a sea of meat and spuds. In Hilo Town, Hawaii, you can't throw a lava rock without hitting a Thai restaurant. (In Gunnison, that same adage applies to Mexican restaurants.) Here, passing a large, exotic building on Townsend (the main, north/south drag through Montrose), it caught my eye like a house ablaze. I could almost smell the Panang. But they were closed for lunch, and I was headed home. So growth isn't all bad. With it comes diversity. I'll have to try the Thai place next time I'm in town.<br />
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The fire causing all that smoke yesterday seems to have died. But there are still others burning, and the with great likelihood of more to come through the summer, all over the southwest. So let's be careful out there, folks. Smokey's watching....<br />
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Oh, and, you have a great day!<br />
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A hui hou. Aloha.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-84118656758926873072012-04-19T18:52:00.000-07:002012-04-19T19:01:40.840-07:00Montrose adventureLast weekend, I ventured to the mini-metropolis of Montrose, CO. I call it that with impunity, for it's clear that Montrose aspires to be just like every other sprawling, mall-strewn city in America. The place has always been aesthetically challenged but for the might San Juan Range as a distant backdrop. There's a new development to the north that wants to be Highlands Ranch, a cookie-cutter housing tract smack in the middle of corn fields. It won't be long before the farmland is gobbled up by insatiable suburbia. North Townsend, a road that leads south to better places like Ridgeway and Telluride, Ophir and Ouray, looks like a miniature version of Denver or Colorado Springs or Anycity, USA. Generica.<br />
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Montrose does have a few things going for it, thing you'll have look hard or stop awhile to notice, but worth the effort. There's Murdoch's ranch store and Russell Stover Candies. A quaint downtown with a brewery, a coffee shops and a bakery, surrounded by a few blocks worth of old Victorian homes, give the place some character. There's also a cool, old movie theater and a nice library. At a little place called <a href="http://sushitinis.com/Sushitinis/Welcome.html">Sushitini</a>, you'll find surprisingly fresh, well-presented offerings that belie its location so far from the sea. And then there's the clear, booming reception of <a href="http://www.kvnf.org/">KVNF Mountain Grown Public Radio</a>, broadcast live from beautiful, downtown Paonia. <br />
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My late start getting to the big city turned into a later one heading home. As I popped sushi rolls and mango mochi ice cream balls into my mouth chatting with Nick, the sushi guy, the twilight faded. Within ten minutes toward Cerro Summit to the east, Betty and I (she's the car) slammed into a massive spring blizzard. In an instant, there were no lines to follow, no road at all. Switching to high beams made visibility worse, illuminating a barrage of fat kamikaze flakes, mesmerizing as they hurled themselves toward the windshield. The young, fearless me, the one with less brains, good snow tires and 20-20 vision, would have powered through that storm, whiteout and darkness be damned. The <i>new</i> me, or to clarify, the new <i>old </i>me, the chicken-shit, near-sighted one with crappy tires, turned around. Clearly, I've lost my caginess. I spent the night in a comfy motor-lodge bed, heater cranked, a long soak in the tub reading the oxymoronic <i>Montrose Style </i>Magazine. Next morning, I grabbed a so-so but oh-so filling country breakfast buffet, before heading once again toward the summit, over the crest, and home.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-38034224253733861092012-02-22T21:28:00.000-08:002012-02-22T21:51:00.490-08:00Small town observationsEvery day at noon, a siren blares from atop the city government building in Gunnison. Each time I hear it, I want to shout, “Yabba dabba doo!” even though it’s nowhere near happy hour. I’ve blurted this once or twice, only to elicit blank stares in response. Am I that old? Doesn’t anyone remember the The Flintstones? I hear that horn and imagine Fred sliding down the long neck of his gravel-quarry dino-dozer (which, thanks to Jurassic Park and the miracle of Google we all recognize now as riojasaurus). Quitting time! Fred flees, his fleet feet slapping toward a rack o’ ribs and a night of good times with Wilma, Barney, Betty and Dino. That’s Dino the dino, pronounced Deeno the dyno. Think that’s delusional? Another day, walking downtown near the source of the noontime wale, it struck me, a revelation it was, that the ramp up to full blast sounds just like the introduction to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, only this is a mega-air-raid, civil-defense siren solo rather than a clarinet, which admittedly changes the vibe from blue to bomb shelter. But it’s Gershwin. I’m sure of that. <br />
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In another daily-life homage to The Flintstones, I have a coworker at the bank who laughs EXACTLY like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0bvNQVbfOw">the staccato giggle of Betty Rubble.</a> It’s a little lower key, but it’s Betty. I’m sure of that, too.<br />
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A young man came in to retrieve his lost debit card today. Someone had turned it in, and we’d called to let him know. He approached the window, reached across, flashed me his passport and a crooked grin. <i>Dude!</i> He was like Pigpen, but the cloud around him wasn’t dust. Catching an instant contact high, I swayed a little, then staggered to the vault to retrieve the card for the boy, refreshed that some college traditions refuse to die. Here was a fine young man carrying on the All-American stoner tradition established in generations past, a cultural hallmark of higher education. “Here ya go!” I smiled. Made bloodshot eye contact. “Glad you could make it in so quickly to pick that up. Thanks for choosing Bank of the West. <i>Yo Homes, smell ya later!</i><br />
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Extreme climate, extreme town, extreme hats. People are insanely proud of their headwear here, the more unique the better, and always happy to share interesting tidbits about its origins. Here’s how a typical conversation might go:<br />
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“That’s a cute hat."<br />
“Thanks. It was made by a 95 year-old indigenous, armless Peruvian woman who lives at 15,000 feet in the Andes. She knitted it with her toes!”<br />
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What’s my point in all this rambling? I have no point... Yet. But as a writer, it is my obligation to pay attention, to observe the world from my exclusive vantage point, collecting the fodder I will use to tell stories only I can tell. If you have a compulsion to write stories, I encourage you to do the same.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-54211962652213165132012-01-02T18:11:00.000-08:002012-01-02T18:11:49.856-08:00Last day of a long weekendThis afternoon, in pursuit of a story, I was rebuffed by a prospective interviewee who refused to talk to me and was adamant that she did not want to be quoted or named.<br />
"I don't trust reporters," she said, to me, the reporter, but her voice, her tone, implied less distrust than outright hatred. "I had a bad experience with a reporter once, so I refuse to talk to them." I once had bad service at a restaurant, but it didn't make me despise all waitresses. Why is blatant disdain OK when it's directed at journalists -- or lawyers -- but not mechanics or plumbers or even priests, for God's sake? OK, the lawyer thing I get. But reporters? Yes, some are despicable. Those TMZ guys, for example. But they're not real journalists. Reporters are keepers of the faith, guardians of The Bill of Rights, bulwarks of the first amendment, for patriot's sake. I wrote a very nice piece, one sure to shed only positive light on the subjects and subject matter, which was <i>peace</i> by the way--hard not to shed positive light there (unless you're Ann Coulter or something). She, the testy reporter-hater, will not be in my fine story. That's justice enough for me.<br />
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A three day weekend has come and gone, and I've been about as productive as a lone turnip in the Mojave. Without irrigation. A withered vegetable. I feel rested.<br />
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It's been raining so much and so hard at our home in Hawaii that Ron spent today -- finally a nice one -- righting crooked trees, their shallow roots letting go of the mud and leaning like amputees without their prostheses. He fought fertilizer dilution with yet more fertilizer and mowed the impossibly soggy grass with no small measure of difficulty. Meanwhile, I gazed out at an impossibly brown landscape, broken by evergreens and mountain peaks, up and out to the brilliant blue, awaiting snow that so far this winter has been illusive, rendering my pending purchase of knobby tires moot. I did make my way to Gene Taylor's Sporting Goods today to drool over a pair of skis. I'm old school, and they all seem kinda fat to me. I'll buy them when it snows, but not until. No reason to thrash a brand new pair or planks on the rocks.<br />
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Speaking of fat, it wouldn't kill me to get into a little better shape before I go. Tomorrow night, I shall hit the treadmill and the leg press in ernest. Or <i>with</i> ernest. Whoever Ernest is. Actually, he is my grandfather, my uncle and my cousin. I have a very Ernest family. Of course, I won't hit the machines (or the Ernests) literally. People would stare, and the owners of the gym might frown on my abuse of their equipment. Surely, you know what I mean. You're not Shirley? OK, I'll stop.<br />
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Don't you just totally miss Leslie Nielsen?<br />
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A hui hou. Aloha!<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-21089376709799228332011-12-25T09:35:00.000-08:002011-12-25T10:55:11.699-08:00Christmas memory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Do you have a favorite Christmas memory? I revisit mine every Christmas morning, and each time, it reminds me what great parents I had, a childhood charmed. As it turns out, or at least as <i>I</i> turned out (not so terrible, if I don't say so myself), modest indulgence of one's children doesn't ruin them.<br />
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I was a one-big-thing kind of kid. Many of my friends produced annual litanies of Christmas wants, long lists for Santa well beyond the believing years. My style was to hold out for a single, impossible gift.<br />
"What do you want for Christmas this year?" Mom would ask.<br />
"All I want is _______________." When I was seven it was a horse, of course.<br />
"Where are we going to keep him?" Mom asked. "In the garage?" My second-grade brain imagined that as not such a bad place for a horse to live, and dad would no longer have to mow the lawn and we never parked the cars in there anyway and I'd take care of him, I promised. Each Christmas thereafter, I asked for something I had little hope of getting. Some years, I came close. The year I asked for skis, for example, I got <i>lessons</i> instead, which included a bus ride to the mountain every Saturday. I had to pay for my own equipment rental, but I was thrilled nonetheless. The following year, I asked for the lessons again and got them, then bought the skis myself, from J.C. Penney, with money I'd saved picking berries and babysitting. I knew most years that my one-big-thing was often just out of my parents' budgetary reach (and, looking back, I realize that may have broken their hearts some). I asked anyway, but was never too disappointed when I did not get what I'd requested. <br />
My junior year in high school, I wanted a stereo. I had it picked out; it was an Onkyo, pretty high end, with separate components, and a cassette player. It was expensive, and would have taken years to save for on teenage wages. The stereo of my dreams was more than pie in the sky. It was an entire bakery in the stratosphere. I asked anyway, but only once, humbly and contrite, with the disclaimer, "I know there's no way, but that is all I want. So if you want to skip this year, and maybe pay half next year, and I could pay the other half, and that could be my present for two years-- I really can't think of anything else I want."<br />
That Christmas, I opened my gifts -- a nice collection of clothes, pajamas, socks, lotions and ornaments. Most of it I already knew. My mom was terrible at keeping Christmas secrets. She'd always divulge the best gifts well before the big day, unable to contain herself. She'd done so with the ski lessons. And the hot wheels I got when I was ten. So I knew when I unwrapped the last of the packages under the tree that was it, and I was content. My dad rose from the couch, Christmas toddy in hand. He stretched and wandered toward the tree, then veered to an adjacent chair and reached behind it with his free hand, careful not to spill his "coffee."<br />
"It looks like we missed one," he said, and handed me a two-foot rectangular package with no ribbon or bow.<br />
"I shook it, weighed it in my hands. Silent, and impossibly light, it felt like nothing.<br />
"What is it?"<br />
"Open it," he said.<br />
"Go ahead," said Mom. Dad looked smug, like he'd just pulled off the ultimate heist. The two of them stood close, hovering. I ripped off the paper. Inside was an empty, plastic box missing one side.<br />
"What is it?" I asked.<br />
"We wanted to get you the stereo," dad said, his tone solemn, "but that's the only part we could afford. We figured we'd start with that, and get the rest later, piece by piece."<br />
I looked more closely at the flimsy object in my lap. It was the cover to a turntable. My sixteen-year-old brain imagined it sitting atop the entire system. "Thanks!" I meant it, instantly saw the potential and began mulling which component I'd save for next, then next. It didn't seem odd to me that the store would sell them just the cover. They really had tried their best to get me what I wanted for Christmas. I was genuinely grateful and completely clueless.<br />
The two of them burst with laughter.<br />
"What?"<br />
"You believe that?" asked Dad. I was stumped. A stupid look must have overtaken my face. "The rest of it is under our bed."<br />
I sat there, frozen, staring at them, then down at the cover, then back at them.<br />
"Go!" they said together, smiling-- big, rascally, mischievous Cheshire grins. I jumped up from the floor and sprinted down the hall. BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!<br />
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Merry Christmas, everyone. A hui hou. Aloha!<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-11461943399404477192011-12-21T21:36:00.000-08:002011-12-25T10:55:27.342-08:00Look, it's like, you know, sort of, um whateverI work at a bank. When I relayed this tidbit to my buddy Rich, he asked, "Couldn't you find something more ethical? Wasn't the mafia hiring in your area?" Yes, banks are evil. But repugnance comes in degrees, morality in shades of gray. My bank, the one from which I now collect an arguably honorable paycheck, is better than most; it accepted no TARP bailout money and enjoys pretty high ratings for customer service. I can live with that. But if somebody makes me an offer I can't refuse... Most days, it's busy enough. I'm either helping customers with financial transactions, reading up on riveting new banking regulations and internal bank policies and procedures, filing, counting, organizing, sanitizing my hands for handling all that filthy money. But there are occasional lulls, during which a mind like mine is wont to wander. Today, on one such occasion, I was struck with snippets of self-amusing, cliché-riddled bank humor.<br />
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Hi. I'm Penny. Wanna meet my new boyfriend? His name is Bill.<br />
You can always count on me to coin a phrase.<br />
If bankers were gymnasts, they'd specialize in the vault.<br />
Banking. Where nothing is constant but change.<br />
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Hey, it was just a few minutes.<br />
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Another few minutes, on another day -- though to be clear, I was not at the bank, but rather just cleaning the bathroom and listening to a painful interview on the radio -- had me pondering verbal fillers, those devices we all use to buy time to think, or to fill awkward silence between thoughts, especially when we're self conscious. There is, of course, the ubiquitous and timeless <i>um</i> and its famous cousin, <i>uh</i>. These were my favorites as a radio producer, because they're usually drawn out long enough to cut, which I always did, making the speaker sound brilliant. There's the teenager's favorite <i>like</i>, which has bled into the ranks of the middle aged. I have friends pushing 60 who use <i>like</i> like salt and pepper. In college, I had a friend who used <i>all</i> instead: She's all, "They were such jerks," and I'm all, "Why?" and she's all, "Because they were all, 'You look rich and snobby,' which I'm not, so I'm all, 'well, I'm not' and they're all, 'well you seem like it.'" And I'm all, "Wow, they do seem like jerks," and so on. I like <i>all</i>, much better than like.<br />
There's the classy, Obama-esque <i>look, </i>which makes you seem smart as you pause to think of what to say next. It goes like this:<br />
Wolf Blitzer: "Mr. President, you promised us change we can believe in. What happened?"<br />
Barack (that's how he signs his personal emails to me): Well, Wolf, look, being president is not as easy as it seems, or as easy as we thought it would be and, look, we've had some setbacks, and certainly no support from the Republicans..."<br />
There's a proliferation lately of what I'll call the intellectual's verbal filler of choice, <i>sort of.</i> I'm not fond of <i>sort of</i>. It's a pretentious version of like, but no less annoying. It works like an adverb, watering down verbs, diluting whatever follows. She was sort of pregnant. I was driving sort of fast when the cop pulled me over. They were sort of making out when his wife walked in. Right. There's Will Smith's fave, <i>you know, </i>which works well if used sparingly, but gets on people's nerves with overuse. I went through a <i>you know </i>phase as a kid. My mom was relentless with her parody in response, spewing back a plethora of <i>you knows </i>and worse, responding to every <i>you know</i> with, "No, I don't know," until I got the point. I know a fellow who uses <i>please, </i>which is, please, a very polite verbal filler. It's jolting for its weirdness, but effective in diffusing heated conversations. Not surprisingly, he's a lawyer.<br />
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When Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had time to think, they came up with ideas that changed the world. Of course, I don't suppose either of them ever worked at a bank, cleaned a bathroom or spent time splicing the opposite sides of <i>ums</i> together to make a sentence. Still, it appears the old NAACP slogan is true: a mind <i>is </i>a terrible thing to waste. Maybe it's the altitude.<br />
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More musings for Christmas. Until then, a a hui hou. Aloha!<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-49051062606392767152011-12-04T15:07:00.001-08:002011-12-04T21:04:20.100-08:00Chinese food and coffeeRon called the other day to say he'd roasted the last of our coffee for this year and it's already sold.<br />
"That's great," I said.<br />
"It has an oriental flavor," he said.<br />
"What does?"<br />
"Our coffee. That's what they said."<br />
"That's what who said?"<br />
"The people who roasted it. That's how they think we should market it."<br />
"So, our coffee tastes like shoyu and mono sodium glutamate?"<br />
At this, he lost it, cracking up, laughing so hard I had to hold the phone away from my ear. Picture red cheeks, tears of hilarity. Ron collected himself with a signature, exaggerated sign, and said, "Good one, sweetie. I think they though it was kind of floral, like jasmine or something."<br />
Our coffee is mellow and naturally sweet, but otherwise, it tastes like coffee. Really good coffee. Exceptional coffee. No bitterness. No bite. Smooth. Not jasmine or lotus or cherry blossom. Not salty, or sweet and sour. Not like hoisin sauce. It's a little fruity maybe -- it is fruit, after all -- but definitely not oriental. Coffee doesn't even go with Chinese food. "Gee, this pork fried rice and sesame chicken are delicious. I could go for a cup of coffee with this." Who ever says that? Nobody.<br />
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Here in Gunnison, I've enjoyed my grocery shopping excursions. This place is known for high prices, but food feels cheap to me after living in Hawaii. So I called Ron this morning to brag about all the good stuff I got today and the price I paid. He responded with, "How much do you pay for lettuce? I get that free. How about green beans? Free." He says this because he grows them in the garden, year 'round. Point for Ron. Of course, he doesn't count the potting soil he buys to plant it in, or the slug bait, or the fertilizer, nor does he factor in the gas at $4.25/gallon, fifty miles round trip to Hilo to buy it all. He used to feel pretty smug about getting "free" rooms in Las Vegas, too. Clearly, his definition of free is different from mine, but I'll give him the point anyway.<br />
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It's snowy, gray and wintry today. The view through the window looks like an Ansel Adams photograph. I suspect I'll be sick of it by March, but for now, it's nice. I'm a little upset by the notion that we may soon have an offer on the cabin. I've just settled in here. Ron tells me not to fret just yet, that it takes time for people to get pre-approved for loans, if they even can, and then there's escrow, and we haven't seen the offer yet and may not take it if it's too low-ball, and even if we do take it, it'll be weeks before everything is finalized. But weeks go by fast. Meanwhile, they've got me working full time again next week at the bank, and I'm writing more stories for <a href="http://gunnisontimes.com/">The Gunnison Country Times</a>, which you can subscribe to online, if you've a notion to do so. My legs hurt from too many presses at the gym yesterday. As my old boss and friend Jeanette Mushkin used to say (in a blatant rip-off of Sonny and Cher that she made uniquely her own), "And the beat goes on."<br />
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A hui hou. Aloha!<br />
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P.S. Matt Burt shot the photo of the tree, but since he posted it on Facebook, I figured it OK to snatch. I saw some of his photos at the gallery in town the other night, and they are exceptional. Go to <a href="http://mattb.net/">mattb.net</a> to check them out.<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-84997890025115969722011-11-28T10:41:00.001-08:002011-11-30T21:34:04.496-08:00On work, literature, libraries and lifeIt feels good to work, to have my feet aching when I get home at night. My cash drawer has balanced three days straight, and I'm told that's exceptional for a greenhorn teller. Actually, we're not called tellers anymore. We're customer service representatives. The money's nice, but the real value of work goes beyond the paycheck. It comes from knowing you've done something well, something that others value, and that people are counting on you to do. Whether you show up every day matters. There are jobs I'd rather have, those for which I may be better suited, and maybe I'll land one of those someday, but I'm not terrible at this one, and I don't hate it either. People expect their money to be handled with care, and that's what I do. From a writer's perspective, there is plenty of good story material to be had in a bank, I can feel it.<br />
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My pal, Mike Ritchey, now a student of writing at Portland State with his own fine blog entitled, <a href="http://www.retirementfordummiesblog.com/">Retirement for Dummies</a>, reminded me that I should read more David Foster Wallace, whose brilliance scares me. Another pal, David Stevenson, recently recommended Denis Johnson's new novella, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/09/05/110905crbo_books_wood">Train Dreams</a>. Johnson scares me for a different reason. Wallace is out there, too smart, over my head. Johnson creates characters bad to the core, who make whack decisions at every turn, lowlife scoundrels doing deplorable things, and I'm sucked in with them, a partner in crime every time. I wondered if the local library might have the Wallace essays, so I logged onto their website to find out. No luck. I decided to check out the Hawaii Public Library system. They had it-- in Kindle format! I've just checked out my first virtual library book. What will become of brick-n-mortar libraries in the future? I really enjoy libraries, being in them, to read or to study. It's comforting to be surrounded, buffered, protected by all those books. Libraries are a refuge, an escape. They smell good. I love wandering aisles of authors, title after title, overwhelmed and consoled by too many books and not enough time to read them all. I hope there's a place for both the electronic and tactile, the virtual and real, forever into the future.<br />
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Some prospective buyers took a look and then a second at our cabin this week. That's good news, yet it dredged up all kinds of flotsam and jetsam in my turbulent, ever-conflicted brain. I'm just beginning to make some progress on the place. My awesome desk (it was Ron's, but now it's mine, all mine!) has been moved back into the office where it belongs. The kitchen table has been, in turn, retired from its desk duties and returned to the kitchen. A futon mattress is on order, so I will soon have a couch to sit on in front of a crackling fire. I've winterized all the windows. It's cozy. With the desk out of the back bedroom, I'm ready to rip the nasty, smelly carpeting out of there to reveal the pretty hardwood beneath. I've fixed the garage door opener and gotten a new remote, so I'm able to cruise in and out without having to get out of the car on cold mornings or frigid evenings. Civilized. The more I do around here, the less I swear at the place and the more I love it and wish I could keep it forever. <br />
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Last night, I was pulled over by a Gunnison city police officer, who wrote me a warning for a missing headlight and asked that I get it fixed in the next few days. He was a nice boy, very polite and respectful, and I thanked him for letting me know. I continued on to the gym. Little more than an hour later, less than a quarter mile from home, I was pulled over again, this time by a county sheriff's deputy. Same reason. I showed him the warning. Today, I spent part of my lunch hour at Napa, where I ran into an old friend who now works there. We exchanged hugs, caught up some and vowed to do more over a beer soon. It's a small world, a small town. This evening, I replaced the bulb and am shining brightly once again. What will the cops find to do tonight?<br />
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A hui hou. Aloha!<br />
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<br />Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-32422236950669537982011-11-05T18:19:00.000-07:002011-11-05T18:21:02.775-07:00Finger filet, old friends and bluegrassPay attention when you're chopping vegetables, and never grow too confident of your knife skills. I didn't even feel it at first. The tip of my left index finger, a little chunk, was inadvertently included in the pile of diced peppers and onions on the cutting board this morning, scraped into the saute pan in preparation of a killer breakfast burrito. A few minutes later, it started to bleed. And hurt. Wounded, I called my rainforest-bound husband to whine a little. He told me the belt on the drier drum had slipped off again. In the process of taking the contraption apart to get into the guts of the machine and fix it, he lifted the top panel. Somehow, he thought there was a notch or catch or latch or something that holds it up. There isn't. The heavy, sharp-edged slab o' metal slammed down onto the back of his knuckles. Ouch! My culinary mishap seemed suddenly miniscule. My finger was, and is fine. Life is so often a matter of perspective.<br />
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Day one at the bank went well. There was an orientation conference call, training videos to view, a stack of forms to complete and sign, plenty of corporate rah rah with a little sis-boom-bah, and several nice co-workers to meet. Odd as this sounds, I was comfortable right away. I've never worked for a bank, but I have worked with bankers, so maybe that's why. There's also a reserved western easiness here, and whether you're in a bank for your first day on the job, at the market or the gym, you feel it. </div>
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The other day, washing my favorite Kona Joe coffee mug, da slippery buggah squirted from my soapy hands and broke into a dozen pieces in the sink. It's the only mug I brought, thinking I'd only need one-- one person, one cabin, one fork, one spoon... and of course I counted on finding a few in storage. Damn! So I went to the best place I can think of to find a replacement coffee mug. Not the nicest place, for that is probably The Corner Cupboard, with beautiful, hand-painted, made-in-Colorado offerings, the kinds of mugs you buy for other people, or you hope other people will buy for you. The <i>best</i> place is Six Points, a local thrift store, where proceeds go to support developmentally challenged adults in the community. Many of the beneficiaries also work there. My old pal Donny was manning the cash register that day.</div>
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"What's your name again?" he asked.</div>
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"I'm Toni. Do you remember me, Donny?"</div>
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"Yes." </div>
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"I moved away for awhile, but I'm back now."</div>
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"I remember you. Where'd you go again?"</div>
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"Hawaii. It's good to see you. Glad to see you're still working here."</div>
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"Yes.... You should get a purple mohawk. Only kidding."</div>
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Same ol' Donny. It's a new quip, however. His original was always, "Where's your bikini? Only kidding." As signature lines go, they're both excellent.</div>
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He sold me three, matching Dansk mugs for $1.50. </div>
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We went to lunch together once, years ago, to Donny's favorite, the old Cattlemen's. It burned down not long after that. Yesterday, sitting at The Ol' Miner Steakhouse downtown (they have a nice soup and salad bar combo), I spotted him across the restaurant, finishing his lunch as I began mine. Ol' Miner is kind of a fancy version of Cattlemen's, so it makes sense that Donny would like it there. He wandered over to my table.</div>
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"What's your name again?"</div>
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" It's Toni. Hi Donny."</div>
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"Where's your purple mohawk?"</div>
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"Very funny. I like your hat." It was a homemade ski cap, bright green with a dark, patterned band.</div>
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"Thank you. Can I take your picture?" He lifted the camera hanging from his neck to his eye.</div>
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"Sure, OK." I smiled. </div>
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"See you later," he said.</div>
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"See you later." It's as if I never left.</div>
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I'm sitting in my tight, cozy cabin, <a href="http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/">A Prairie Home Companion</a> playing on <a href="http://www.kbut.org/">KBUT</a>. Outside, a blustery, gray day threatens snow. Garrison Keillor has dedicated his show to Bill Monroe, featuring musicians who knew the man, toured and played with him. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Monroe">Bill Monroe</a> is known as the father of bluegrass. Or as my pal Rich likes to call it, "Insipid barn music." Bluegrass is not for everyone. But here in rural Colorado, it fits. Mountain music. Not a summer weekend goes by without a Bluegrass festival happening somewhere in the Rockies. Bluegrass has been, as my friend <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernestine_Hayes">Ernestine Hayes</a> would say, "appropriated" from the mud poor, southern and Appalachian folk of Celtic ancestry whose lives and culture were its genesis, to the Subaru-driving, ex-hippy vegan crowd, people who have no concept of life in a Kentucky holler. Still, there's no denying the new fans' passion for the music. Like all forms of art, music transcends culture, class and ethnicity to touch people far removed from it's origins and impetus, often on a deep level. That must be what's happening with bluegrass today. Either that, or these legions of modern bluegrass aficionados are all just fakers pretending to be hillbillies, without a clue what that really means. </div>
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Deep, right? I think it's waling fiddles and the steady thump of a washtub base inspiring me to wax so introspectively.</div>
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A hui hou. Aloha!</div>
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<br /></div>Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22171621.post-84481453842531446712011-10-30T10:18:00.000-07:002011-10-30T14:06:15.081-07:00Deer friendsHere's something you may not know about me. I'm a sucker for guys with big, brown eyes. The other day, I spotted the handsome fellow on the far right of this impressive trio for the first time and, I must admit, I was smitten.<br />
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"Nice rack," I said. He seemed to appreciate the compliment. The next day this five-point buck was accompanied by a four-point buddy. The day after that, the day of this photo, there were three. Since then, I've witnessed these musketeers several times near the big, Colorado blue spruce in the southwest corner of my yard. Sometimes, the two smaller ones lower their heads and lock horns, but not fiercely. It's as though they're going through the motions because it's expected of them, but really they'd rather break out the cigars and play a friendly game of poker or something. Hang out here, guys, and you're safe from the camo-clad, neon-hatted crowd milling around this time of year. Of course, a sage, five point buck probably knows that. </div>
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I'm told I've missed scads of action in my other, mid-Pacific community. Our neighbors' son was spotted at a recent county council meeting in Puna, chanting and wielding a lai o mano, a tradition Hawaiian weapon, best described as a hardwood club edged with sharks' teeth. He was deemed harmless at the meeting, but later assaulted a large Samoan man at a local beach park and was arrested a few days later. The neighborhood is all atwitter about this. As I understand it, it's lucky for him the cops got to him before the Samoans. </div>
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The pack of dogs has returned, too, some distance down the road from us. They have killed again, this time the grandma sheep from the farm I featured a few weeks ago in this very blog. So sad. Humans are once again on vigilant watch. You'd think the best approach would be to contact the humane society and ask them to trap the dogs. The sheep farmers did that immediately after the first attack, only to land themselves at the bottom of a months-long waiting list. The humane society is overwhelmed by nuisance wild dog complaints on Hawaii Island. </div>
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All our stuff is out of storage now, and it feels a bit like Christmas as I rediscover some old favorite sweaters and shirts, which I will enjoy in the coming chilly weeks. That said, there's plenty to shake my head over, too. What were we thinking, packing this stuff for eventual transport to Hawaii? The truth is, if you haven't looked at something in six years, you probably don't need it and should toss it or give it to someone who does. Except, of course, what the IRS and the SEC require you to keep for 10 years. In that case, you have no choice. But much of that has expired now, too, so into the burn barrel it goes.</div>
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The house is in great shape. Everything works: the furnace (yay!), the original stove and oven, circa 1951, the fridge, the water heater. I've got some winterizing to do, a little touch up and sealing of the south-facing windows, some pipe wrapping and insulation. But really, this house is solid. It'll stand and provide shelter forever, and would really thrive in the hands of someone who enjoys restoring good old homes. The red oak floors and knotty pine ceilings are amazing. That old growth oak no longer exists on planet earth, other than in classic homes like this one. I just ripped the carpeting out of the office and found more of that beautiful wood underneath, in excellent condition. It's the perfect location for a home/business, too. If this sounds like a sales pitch, it is. I do love this place, but maintaining it from 3500 miles away is impractical. It deserves attention. It's really an awesome house.</div>
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My hunt for a seasonal job on the mountain has not panned out. I've gotten raves from interviewers who tell me I was their second choice (not good enough), that it was a tough decision, they will make complimentary notes in my application file and forward it to the next position in which I express interest, but they've chosen the applicant with "direct experience with the job." My guess is that people who worked those positions last year, having not found year-round, permanent positions out in the world, are returning to seasonal work. I have a few prospects in Gunnison, and one very attractive offer I'm mulling over that will enable me to work remotely and still have time to pick up a class to teach online if the opportunity presents itself, so I am still hopeful. I do miss my family. BeeCee the trouble cat is misbehaving and trying Ron's patience, but mostly, they're all fine, and so am I. Ron continues to tend the farm, and is preparing a spot to plant another 20 trees or so, no doubt dodging raindrops as he plants. Here, the sun is shining, the bucks and I are chillin', and the sky's so blue you'd swear you were halfway to outer space.</div>
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A hui hou. Aloha!</div>
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</div>Tonihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03537414706984005983noreply@blogger.com2