Mountains and Islands

Here'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." 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. "There are two things in this world you should never pay for," advises a wise (ass) friend o...

The 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. 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.  "Are you certified?" he asked. "Yes," I said. "I can put you to work, but not 'til mid-December. "Great! I'll be there." Charmed. I had assumed the few bucks I'd saved would last until my first paycheck lan...

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." 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. We...

I'm worried about Maynard.      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."      "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.      "You can't live with a mouse in your house," she said. "And where there's one, there are always more."      "Nope. There's just the one," I said. "I'm sure of it."      "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."      "Hantavirus?"      "That's it!"      "If my mouse had hantavirus, I'd be in the ICU or dead by now. And anyway, operation relocation is underway, ...

I 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, manufactur...

I 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. 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. 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 ...

I 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: 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...

I was taken by an interview with Nora Ephron this morning on NPR. 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. 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. 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." "If on...

(Seals and Crofts, eat your 70s pop-duo-harmony hearts out.)  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. 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 pleasa...

Last 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. 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...

Every 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, whic...

This 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. "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, wh...

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 turned out (not so terrible, if I don't say so myself), modest indulgence of one's children doesn't ruin them. 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. "What do you want for Christmas this year?" Mom would ask. "All I want is _______________." When I was seven it was a horse, of course. "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 the...

I 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. Hi. I'm Penny. Wanna meet ...

Ron called the other day to say he'd roasted the last of our coffee for this year and it's already sold. "That's great," I said. "It has an oriental flavor," he said. "What does?" "Our coffee. That's what they said." "That's what who said?" "The people who roasted it. That's how they think we should market it." "So, our coffee tastes like shoyu and mono sodium glutamate?" 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." 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....

It 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. My pal, Mike Ritchey, now a student of writing at Portland State with his own fine blog entitled, Retire...

Pay 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. Day one at the bank went ...

Here'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. "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 ...

I have arrived in the land of the immortal tractor, a place where the cattle are hearty and the grass will not need mowing for another seven months. The sun is bright, the nights are cold and the magpies are feisty. When I'm in Hawaii, I miss this place. Now that I'm here, I miss the island.  As it turns out, I missed a classic Hawaii day today. Some weeks ago, Ron and I disassembled an old, dead dehumidifier to see if we might recycled the innards rather than throw it all into the rubbish, since there's no practical way to dispose of stuff like that on the island. There was some copper tubing inside, plus other metals. We're constantly hearing about copper thieves in the islands, so we figured it must be worth something. He took the contraption to Reynolds Recycling in Hilo yesterday. The scene goes something like this: Ron pulls in and after waiting for a few minutes, an employee asks if he can please move his car. The man signals Ron to back up, stands behind t...

     When we first moved to the Big Island, jobs were scarce. That hasn't changed, except to get worse. I know that's true everywhere, but Hawaii Island has long been notorious for its dearth of decent paying employment, unless you're an astronomer or work for the government. It's a challenging place to start a business, too, more expensive and arduous than any place in the nation. If you want to be an entrepreneur here, you've really got to want it. Perseverance and plenty of capital is crucial, for it's more likely to take years than months to acquire all the permits and open the doors. I can think of three large, empty buildings -- two new and one restored historic site -- sitting empty right now, waiting to open their doors for business. It's disheartening how many people who live on the windward side make the three-hour drive to work the upscale resorts of Kona and Waikaloa (a.k.a. Haolewood) on the leeward (west) side. One of my neighbors, just up the ...