A GREAT LION OF GOD

 has passed. We may not see his like again. Or at least in our lifetiems. Our loss. 

A LITTLE MORE RESPECT PLEASE

This isn't exactly a Christmas entry, and yes I'm making up for some lost time this month. Perhaps this does fit under Christmas. Of course there was hired help back in the day. Some of them were slaves. Some were dirt poor. And probably just as ignored. It does fit under all the folks who are worried their fast food might get a little more expensive if the minimum wage is raised. 

 Some folks can't seem to think past the ends of their noses.

“If you don't pay at least $12,000 a year in Federal Taxes, you aren't even paying your own way! And less than $2,000 of that is for welfare. So if you have 2 children and a wife, you need to be paying $48,000 a year in Federal Taxes, just to be paying YOUR OWN WAY!

So for all you Party Of Stupid (POS) Whiners...You're welcome! I pay almost $80,000 a year, so I'm paying your way too! 

Unless you are in the 5%, you should stop whining, as it makes you look like an entitlement baby!”

Ran across this charming bit of philosophy on the net yesterday. Frankly I don't know if this person really pays $80.000 a year in taxes or if this is the opening salvo in this election cycles's version of Mitt Romney's “47 percent.” Anyway I decided to have a little fun. 

After spending some time with the IRS tax tables you'd have to be pulling down about sixty grand a year to owe about $12,000 in taxes. And then to have this sorry excuse for human being tell us that if you have a family you should be paying a hell of a lot more. How many average Joe's do you know who make close to two hundred thousand a year?

Anyway that got me thinking. In my scenario this person lives in a big city, say New York or Boston, has a nice apartment and their very own parking space.  Perhaps this is how a  couple of weeks might play out if the little folks who really keep the country going just don't show up.

You're getting ready for work, your housekeeper is due in today. She calls in sick, doesn't know when she'll be in. You usually stop at the local deli for breakfast. It's closed. The owner, the cook and the person who runs the register haven't shown up. Hungry, you head for the office. The doorman is missing. The guy/gal at the front desk is missing. You get to your office. No receptionist, no office assistant. Your computer is wonky. No techies available. The phone is ringing off the hook and you have to answer it yourself. Too bad.

Time to head home. The engine sounds a little rough so you swing by your favorite garage. Nobody there. Guess you'll have to take a cab tomorrow. You get home to your grubby apartment and fix dinner (I'm assuming this doofus is single) cupboards are starting to look a little scant. Better swing by the neighborhood bodega in the next couple of days,

The engine may be running rough but you still have to get to work. The streets are strangely quiet. No cabs, no buses and almost no subways. Nobody to drive them. Ignoring the chattering engine you discover that the situation at the office is the same as yesterday. Recalling the state of the larder you head out a little early via the bodega. It's closed. Not even the owner is in sight. Did you really think that guy made that much money a year?

Your favorite place for dinner is closed. No cooks, bartenders, wait staff or bussers. They sure as hell don't make that kind of money. Hell, tipped staff often don't even make federal minimum wage. The engine may still be missing but tomorrow is Saturday; a good time to head for a real grocery store. Unfortunately the shelves are looking bare. There haven't been any grocery deliveries for three days and most of the stockers, checkers and deli staff appear to have also disappeared into the unknown.

You manage a loaf bread that's a little stale, some lunch meat that hasn't hit the expiration date, some wilted vegetables and some canned goods. To make life even more interesting your gas tank is below half full. The gas station is open but you can't get all you need because there haven't been any fuel deliveries for several days and the manager is trying to stretch supplies. Between explanations he/she is manning the cash register. Don't bother to go searching for another station. They're in the same straights.

You manage to get through the weekend. Comes Monday, oh did I mention it's July and there's a heatwave, and your neighborhood is beginning to smell a little “ripe.” The trash haulers are AWOL, too.

First of the week and no improvement. When you stagger into your apartment that evening the lights are flickering. Turns out your power comes from a coal fired plant and they haven't gotten any deliveries for more than a week. By midweek your apartment is a mess. You're being hit with rolling blackouts and “please don't use the AC” because we don't know when the coal is coming in. As the lights go out again you find yourself wondering if living near a nuclear power plant would be a good or a bad situation.

So Mr. or Ms. (I'm assuming it's a guy since the sign in was OldMan) I pay $80.000 in taxes you've just been brought to your knees because all the peons you dissed in your comment just disappeared a la A Day Without a Mexican. Without all those little people cleaning houses, manning the cash registers, stocking the shelves, waiting tables, delivering the food or gas and picking up the garbage your comfortable life grinds to a halt. It just might be a good idea to show a little respect now and then.

Think about it. 

SOME CHILDREN SEE HIM

 If we could just keep some of the childhood innocence. Some like Lisa were lucky enough to learn the song in school. The rest of us have to be lucky enough to find the right Christmas album. 

SOME CHILDREN SEE HIM

Some children see Him lily white,
The baby Jesus born this night.
Some children see Him lily white,
With tresses soft and fair.
Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
The Lord of heav'n to earth come down.
Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
With dark and heavy hair.

Some children see Him almond-eyed,
This Savior whom we kneel beside.
Some children see Him almond-eyed,
With skin of yellow hue.
Some children see Him dark as they,
Sweet Mary's Son to whom we pray.
Some children see him dark as they,
And, ah! they love Him, too!

The children in each different place
Will see the baby Jesus' face
Like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,
And filled with holy light.
O lay aside each earthly thing
And with thy heart as offering,
Come worship now the infant King.
'Tis love that's born tonight!

The music was written by a jazz musician, Albert Burt. I believe the words were written by Wilha Hutson. The organist at Burt’s church. The poems were included in family Christmas cards and unknown outside that circle until at least the fifties. It’s been recorded by James Taylor among others. I have the Perry Como version.

Wheneveer I run across one of those "Jesus probably looked like..." articles I remember this carol. If only adults kept the inocence of children. 

SANTA'S FRUITCAKE

 A problem Rudolph's shiny nose can't solve.. Santa found the fruitcake and presents may be a little late this year. Some cooks baked their fruitcakes in the spring and spent the rest of the year basting them with whisky or bourbon. This is incliuded a hard shell Baptist neighbor of my dad. He loved to tease her.

CATS

Sorry the type is kind of small. We had four in the house at one time. One innie/outie. And the two or three ferals eating on the porch. Plus the occaisional racooon and a possum. \\
 

PRAYER FOR THE SOLSTICE

 Now we enter the light. Now the day light will lenghthen until Summer.

Newgrange is a Neolithic mound complex located on the north side of the river Boyne in County Meath Ireland. It is described as a passage tomb although archelogists are not totally certain what the complex was used for. What we do is what happens on the Winter Solstice. At sunrise the light enters the passage, illuminating the interior on that one day a year. It happens whether it's cloudy or not but it is mor impresssive if the sun is actually shining that morning. Newgrange is dated at approximately 3,200 BCE. Making it older than the pyramids.The builders had a fair knowledge of astronomy and a calendar of some kind. 

A Solstice Litany from the book Winter Solstice by James Matthews.

For the return of the sun – Blessings and Peace

For the gifts we give…and receive – Blessings and Peace

For all the gift givers – Blessings and Peace

For the Children of Wonder – Blessings and Peace

For the children everywhere – Blessings and Peace

For sunsets and starlight – Blessings and Peace

For sunlight and moonlight – Blessings and Peace

For streams rippling under the winter’s ice – Blessings and Peace

For raging torrents rushing to the sea – Blessings and Peace

For rain and rainbows – Blessings and Peace

For the warmth of fire in the cold of winter – Blessings and Peace

For the trees on the hill – Blessings and Peace

For the tree in the corner – Blessings and Peace

For the candles in the window – Blessings and Peace

For the gifts of friendship – Blessings and Peace

For Bards and their gifts of poetry – Blessings and Peace

For Singers and the music they share – Blessings and Peace

For the prayers for peace – Blessings and Peace

For those who pray for peace where there is no peace – Blessing and Peace

The authors encourage you to adapt to include whatever you’re thankful for right now. I certainly did. The Matthew's have a soft spot for hand bell ringers, good food and that vital necessity. Good cooks. 

 

NO ANSWERS

 As we run up to Christmas a little blast from the past while I try to reconstruct the entry I lost when the net went down last night. And a few years later I still don't have many answers for my great grandfather. 

Robert Heaton was a Quaker and my great grandfather seven times removed. He sailed to the New World with his family aboard The Lamb in the fall of 1682. Family settled in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. I have mixed feelings about the possibility of running into great grandfather Robert in my spiritual journeyings. I can almost hear him. "We risked bad food, bad water and possible ship wreck. Others suffered typhus, scurvy and small pox. We came searching for religious freedom and to build a better life for ourselves and our families. And a fine mess you've made of it. Daughter we expected better of our children."

And if I did run into him, damned if I'd have an answer for him.

NO ONE LEFT TO HEAR?

Old protest poster from the Viet Nam era. Nuclear war isn't good for anything, living or not. Poisoned water. Poisoned soil. Blasted landscapes. 

The beautiful carol was written by Noel Regney and his wife Gloria Shayne in 1962. 1962, the same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’m not sure how close we actually came to pushing that first and final button but this carol was their answer. 

A plaintive call for peace. If those missiles had been launched there would have been no one left for the night winds to tell their secrets to. The trees would have been charred skeletons. Branches lifted to ash filled skies in final a futile prayer for their lives. The songs of seabirds and waves silenced. All that would have been left were the stars shining down on a world with no one from kings to shepherd boys left to see them.

 

DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR

Said the night wind to the little lamb,
Do you see what I see
Way up in the sky, little lamb,
Do you see what I see
A star, a star, dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite
With a tail as big as a kite

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy,
Do you hear what I hear
Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy,
Do you hear what I hear.
A song, a song, high above the trees
With a voice as big as the sea
With a voice as big as the sea.

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king
Do you know what I know
In your palace warm, mighty king,
Do you know what I know
A Child, a Child shivers in the cold
Let us bring Him silver and gold
Let us bring Him silver and gold

Said the king to the people everywhere,
Listen to what I say
Pray for peace, people everywhere!
Listen to what I say
The Child, the Child, sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light
He will bring us goodness and light

A KITTY BOUQUET

 Yeah, I've been out for a few days. Let's just say that my chronic cellulitis found a new way to rear up and kick in the ass. It's healing. I'm OK. I'm grateful to the good folks who looked after me. To be honest my brain is just about at the "see Spot run." state tonight so here is a bouquet of cas.

There's something about those gray ones with the copper eyes. The Burmese is grooming.The tortie looks as if she's plotting mischief and the little black one seems to have spotted someone or something. A couple of them look a little spacey. I wonder if there is some catnip in that bouquet. 

BOOKS

 

No other words are needed. Carl we lost you way too soon.

LAYING IT DOWN

 

Good looking couple yes? Mom and da;s wedding picture. Probably the last time anyone caught my dad wearing a tie. And she was in a nice dress. Married in my grandparent's living room. 

This will be short and sweet. My mother, much loved by almost every one, passed last year. 

She was ninety four. She'd had a good long run. Dandled three great grand daughters on her knee.There's a fine old word. Dandled. I'm realizing that for some of us it isn't a matter of dying, it's laying down one life and stepping into another. 

I never got to see my parents dancing. From the stories told he was one smooth one with a waltz. That's how they met, at the weekly Saturday night dances in Eugene. He asked her four weeks running. she said yes on the fifthe one. I don't think either one ever looked back. Well mom I hope you are dancing with dad. I hope it's a waltz. 

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

 Back in the day I created something. Then a friend took part of it, made it hers and created this.

Whatever this light means to you in this season when the year turns away from the dark to the light may you find what you are searching for. Peace and Blessed Be. 

THE SONG AND THE SINGER

This picture was posted on my FB page through a link with Spiritual Ecology's page. I like to think my Singer might look a little like this. This piece was loosely inspired by the hymn God of the Sparrow God of the Whale. Very loosely. Because when I tried to rework it into prose this was the result. And I'm not entirely sure I was working alone. This happens sometimes and I've learned to just go with it when it happens. Some of what I believe is my best work may not all be mine. More like I'm doing the typing and someone else is doing the dictationg. If that makes any sense at all. 

You are the Singer and all of Creation is the Song. When You sang the Song of Creation there was a part for twittering sparrows and for the songs of the great whales. There was a line for the apple trees and another for the dogwoods. Towering oaks can sing a duet with daylilies. Redwoods may provide harmony with the songs of spruce and pine. Rippling brooks provide the soprano to the bass of waves crashing against the basalt headlands of the Northwest. And oh, the songs of the stars. Those dancing stars are a symphony by themselves. As they should be since the elements that built the world were born in the hearts of blazing suns.

You sang a living world into being. But we are reminded that life means change and once power is unleashed we may not be able to stand against the storm. Rolling fields today may play hosts to earthquakes tomorrow. Skies that are peaceful and blue today may be filled with rain, sleet or snow next week. The spring breezes that filled the air with the whisper of pine branches yesterday may be replaced by a tempest that rips the branches from their trunks when winter blizzards howl. Protect us all, from sparrows to whales when the winds rage and the earth shakes.

Your Song has verses not only for the rich, but for the poor. For the hungry as well as for those who are filled. Help us to care for those who need it. Help us to be thankful for what we have. For a song filled with harmony, not discord.

Help us to see a neighbor in an enemy. Help us to see that swords can be plowshares and lances can be made into pruning hooks. Help us to realize that love must replace anger in our hearts before it consumes us and Peace is more than just a word we use when "we're not shooting, shouting or trying to put anyone down right now."

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Reconstructon of the possible appearance of the conqueror Timur.

Back in 2013 mom and I were watching CNN's coverage of the Boston Marathon Bombing. And watching the talking heads basically keep repeating themselves even after the bombers were identified. I recognized the name of the older brother, Tamarlan, as a version of the name Tamarlane. Tamaralane, the Europeanized version of the name Timur. One of the last of the nomad conquerors and of Turko Mongol blood. Timur who welded an empire out of what is now Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia.

Sidenote. In an era when generals were expected to lead from the front and were usually expected to outfight as well as outsmart their subordinates there is strong evidence that Timur was disabled. His skeleton has been discovered and examined. There was damage to his right leg that would have left him with a severe limp and an injury to his right shoulder. Mongols had a rep for spending most of their lives on horseback so perhaps the limp didn't matter too much as long as he could wield a sword and out general the enemy. 

Regarded as one of the greateset commanders in history. Also one with the perhaps the highest body coumts. Some historians put the death toll at around seventeen million. An impressive figuare at the time. 

The brothers were  described as being of Chechen descent although they were born in Khirgizstan. Even more curious I did a little digging into recent Chechen history and came up with Dzhokar Dudayev. The first preident of the breakaway republic of Chechnia. President from 1991 to 1996 when he was assissinated by the Russians. 

To be honest I have no idea why their parents named their sons for two men who could be considered heroes to many Muslims. Or that the younger brother was a naturalized citizen of this country. And we were watching CNN so this information may have been presented on another station. Some Americans might have found this background information interesting. Taking some time to present a history lesson or two would have at least broken up the hypnotic repetition of the same material over and over and over. 

The research took me, a retired history nut, less than an hour to dig up the basic facts. No telling what an ambitious, highly motivated intern could have come up with in the same amount of time. I can't imagine anyone from the Ed Murrow school of journalism letting the information just laying there without doing something with it. Heaven knows most Americans including me know damn little about that part of the world and what makes those folks tick. 

MINI RANT

 I started to watch coverage of the Waukesha shootings on News Nation. I bailed almost immediately. One. None of presenters on any station can string more than two sentences together without falling all over themselves. And yes this is a tragedy. The latest in a long list of our "thoughts and prayers are with you." And worth next to nothing. Taking on the gun lobby and making it just a little harder to buy a gun would be a big first step. 

What really sent me over the moon was the maudlin "it's so tragic that these students have to face something like this at such a young age." Or words to that effect. Lady some of these kids are old enought to vote. Some of them are old enough to enlist in the armed forces. Some of them are probably old enough to go out and buy their own guns and not take the one their dad just bought a few days ago. Honestly I don't know how old you have to be to buy a gun in Wisconsin.

Do some research talking heads. About fifty years ago kids that age or youngeer were facing down police dogs and fire hoses to march for civil rights. Students just a little older were gunned down at Kent State in 1970. Stedents were marching. protesting, sitting in to protest the ramping up of the war in Viet Nam. I suppose it's too much to ask to have you treat them with respect. You show so little to everone else. And kids? Ditch the cell phones once in awhile. Look up, stop chasing the latest fashions and the newest phones. 

OK. Rant over. Perhaps my blood pressure will come down. Please feel free to tell me I'm barking up the wrong tree. Except I lived through those days. Like so many Boomers that the memes put down. 

STAR STUFF

 

Absolutely beautiful image lifted from Spritual Ecology on Facebook. They also have a website. Be careful you could become lost in the eye gazing out inviting you to dive in. 

We are made from starstuff. The atoms that built the earth were cooked in the gases of an exploding supernova.

Just think about it. Before you were you, you were a star. What built you also built the tree across the street, the trout in the stream, the mountains half a world away, the moon, the rest of the planets and just maybe a star that's half way across the galaxy from us.

When the Irish poet Amergin made his boast; when he said he'd been a salmon, a stag, a wild boar he spoke more truth than he realized.

If you want to know what the building blocks of a star look like just g look in the mirror.

It also means that the homeless guy down the street has the universe in him too. That the undocumented immigrant in the the desert has the universe in them too. It also means that your crazy conspiracy spouting uncle is made of the same star stuff. Or whaever friend or relative that's no longer on that list of cards to be sent. What a world it would be if we looked at everyone and everything around us with the same wonder we give a full moon or the most beautiful waterfall we've ever seen.

TURN THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN

 

The first Sunday of Advent. I was raised in a Methodist congregation that did Christmas and Easter week but didn't do Advent or Lent. For all I know I may have run across Advent in Rumer Godden's novel In This House of Brede. Most Protestants don't do liturgy. And they sure as heck do not go past the first half of the song. And that half is straight out of the Prophets. They don't get mentioned much either. 

Jim Morin is the cartoonist. Now I wonder who Jesus' first teacher was? See below. 

Note: There is no danger of me heading down the same path as the fundie's Just that my reading has lead me to scripture that doesn't get much notice. 

Luke 1:46-55. What Mary sang after arriving at her cousin Elizabeth and discovering that Elizabeth indeed was with child although supposedly past the age of having children. 

THE MAGNIFICAT Also known as the song of Mary.

.My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour;

he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed;

the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name.

He has mercy on those who fear him,

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm

and has scattered the proud in their conceit,

Casting down the mighty from their thrones

and lifting up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things

and sent the rich away empty.

He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,

to remember his promise of mercy,

The promise made to our ancestors,

Funny most of the time when I’ve heard this it’s just been the first section ending with “all generations will call me blessed.” Then we get to the part that doesn’t get publicly performed very often. And I’m betting that NO part of it gets performed in any mega church pageants. I mean from “ He has shown the strength with his arm to sending the rich away empty.” Revolutionary. And it certainly fits that cartoon at the beginning from Jim Morin. Which I absolutely, totally love

CANARY IN THE COAL MINE

Imange fro the web. Back in the day miners took birds, often canries, down the pit with them. If bird passed out it meant the air was bad and it was time to get out. Well this isn't canaries it's climate change. That darkest brown goes up the backsie of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington. In Oregon it contines east into Umatilla County where yours truly is currently hanging her hat. That part of Oregon is technically designated as desert. Average rainfall is about ten inches or so a year. 
 

More than a decade ago I blasted through Mary Renaults’ series of novels set in ancient Greece. I posted an entry about Greek cities and my opinion that our Greek and Roman ancestors would look at many of our so called cities, scratch their heads and go “?” followed by “I don’t know what this is but it’s not what I’d call a city.” Their cities were built around public market places where citizens could gather. The Romans prized their Forum. There’s little left of the public market place left in too many parts of this country, it’s been strip malled to death. And the first time one of us agreed that we needed a permit to speak in what was left of public space; well that put the rest of the nails in the coffin

Which brings me to high fuel prices, depleted aquifers and more than sixty years of “do it your way.” It isn’t just a matter of big rigs with terrible mileage ratings. It’s decades of live here, work there, shop in four other places and bring water in through pipelines and canals.  Decades of land use decisions that encouraged sprawl, starved mass transit, trucked in food from across the country, allowed our rail lines to decay and depended on water from rapidly depleting aquifers or reservoirs on the Colorado that are shrinking faster than pure wool in boiling water.

Animal Vegetable Miracle author Barbara Kingsolver used to live in Tucson. One of the straws that broke the “where should we live” camel’s back was the notice that the water coming in through a newly constructed pipeline was ok to drink but don’t use it for your aquarium because it wasn’t good for the fish in your aquariums. !?!?!?! 

 I haven’t done any research, but I suspect that many of the so called strip cities in the south west don’t have any kind of mass transit capability at all. And were in the middle of a freakin’ desert. Or damn close to it for cryin’ out loud. Too few of us asked the right questions when decisions were made more than two generations ago. Too few of us realized that the business and civic leaders praising a certain type of development may have had vested interests in their success.

Too many of us didn’t ask questions when we were told we could live anywhere we wanted to if we could afford it.  We could have beautiful green lawns in the middle of a desert. We could still have fresh oranges when the new US crop was gone because they could be shipped in from Australia. Or we could have grapes in December because it’s summer in Chili. A couple can have eighteen or nineteen kids and not only are few eye brows are raised; they got a reality TV show. Remember nineteen and Counting? We could have anything we wanted and any attempt to question those wants was an infringement on our “personal liberties.” Too many of us didn’t seem to notice that the ones telling us about our trampled rights were the ones with their hands in our pockets and that the pea was never under the cup to start with.

There was an “oh shit” moment on The Weather Channel a some seasons back before NBC bought them out and fucked up the programming. For a short time there was a program called Forecast Earth that focused on threats to the environment. Part of a segment on diminishing water supplies focused on huge development being built in Arizona or New Mexico; more than five thousand homes. In near desert that’s been in moderate to severe drought for over ten years now. Trouble is, we don’t have records that go back all that far, and what we assumed was normal back in say, the seventies may have been unusually wet. What we’re seeing now may either be is truly normal or worse, aggravated by Climate Change.

Anyway, one of the prospective buyers, an older man, was asked if he was worried about water being available. His reply made me mad enough to spit. “There’s no water shortage as long as you can afford it.” His companion, presumably his wife, had the grace to look a little embarrassed but her comment was almost as bad. It was basically “well, they wouldn’t build it if everything wasn’t ok, would they?”

Honey, yes they would if they figured they could get away with it. The builder will have the money and be looking for more sheep to shear. As for you folks, you’ll be left holding the bag and/or the dry faucet.

That segment aired back in 2008.  Before the housing market went down the tubes thanks to the Great Recession. I’ve wondered sometimes how that five thousand unit subdivision has fared over the years. I hate to sound judgmental but frankly I hope he lost his shirt.  The fuel prices are still as high if not higher than they were when I posted this the first time and the drought is getting worse year by year.

SPIRIT CAN

 Created by Reamus Wilson and originally posted on FB by a good friend, Lisa. She has a blog worth checking out. In fact she's the one who got me started. 

This reminds me of something Tom Cowan wrote in Yearning for the Wind. That he wasn't a body carrying his soul through life, but the other way around. He was a soul that just happened to have a body right now. His body might be tethered to the earth but his soul could travel to the ends of the universe. 

THE SEA LONGING

 

Image courtesy of wildbeauty.com

Family isn't just the people around you now it's all those ancestors. If you can go back far enough that is a lot of people from many different places. 

Our family tree is mostly boringly British. There’s some Scots Irish. A little Welsh way back in the day. There’s one whole branch from dad’s family that’s Pennsylvania German. But, beyond that we are boringly British. When I Google dad’s last name, Heaton, I end up in Yorkshire, a coastal county in northwestern England.  Over time what became Yorkshire was settled by Celts, Romans, Angles, Sasons and Norse. And there were Viking settlements in Northern Ireland and the north west of England so there’s a fair amout of the Scandinavian in the mix too. Mom’s family is much the same mix. Without the Germans.

 Scandinavia, highland Scotland, parts of England, the Welsh mountains, these countries have one thing in common, the people who live there are never very far from the sea. Maximum in England. About one hundred fifty miles. And Hadrian’s Wall that divided Roman Britain from what became Scotland is less than eighty miles long. And, except for most of Ireland, Holland and much of Germany; if you aren’t dealing with the ocean, you’re trying to get over a mountain. That may explain why none of the branches of the family didn’t waste any time getting from the east coast to the west coast.

One of grandma Heaton’s ancestors was born in Vermont in the early 1800’s. His wife represents the branch of  the family that came in from Germany in the early 1700’s. They were in Iowa by the time she was born in 1889 and she was in Oregon before dad was born in 1915. If there had been more land west of Oregon, I don’t think she’d have stopped until she reached the Pacific.

 For me the sea longing is always there. A gossamer thread most of the time, but when I really stop to think about it, an ache that won’t go away.

We give the oceans names and think the naming gives us some sort of control. A name on a map.  A barrier to be crossed in a cocoon of pressurized air. Or the support of a sea going city as we flee the familiar while surrounded by the familiar on the way to more of the same.

When it could be so much more if we could only remember. If we could only remember the time when

I was a snow covered evergreen, gnarled roots clinging to the cliffs of an icy fjord;

I was a gull, wind tossed in a North Sea gale;

I was a wave, a crashing rainbow on black cliffs;

I was a branch, left on a beach as the tide ebbed;

I was a grain of sand, cut from the cliffs by the wind;

I was the sun, lost in the mists;

I was a cloud, pushed inland to be caught snow by capped peaks;

I was a drop of rain; at home in a mountain stream;

I was the river; caught between two shores;

I was the sand bar; carved by the tides;

I was all these things and will be again.

FAMILY

 Graphic from the web on FB. 

Here we go.The beginning of the "holiday season." A time, we hope, for family. The family you born into, married into, or just lucked out you're family no matter who your blood releties are. 

I never knew grandpa Heaton. He passed in the mid thirties.From the stories dad told it was probably heart disease. They'd finished chores, grandpa sat on the steps and petted the dogs. He went inside and a few minutes later the dogs started howling. Seems like the four legged, furry ones are part of the family too.

I never knew grandpa Freeman. He died in 1933. Influenza. This is kind of cliche but he asked his best friend to look after his family. Did more than that. He married my grandmother and became a father to mom and her brothers. He was the only grandfather I knew. I believe I was in junior high when it finally sunk in that I had two uncles named Freeman and a third named Parks. It just didn't seem to make a differrence. He pretty much treated everyone the same. And I have to tell you family, full family, get togethers were a riot. That didn't happen all that often. Uncle Jack lived in LA so they didn't get up to Springfield or Portland that often. But, in the end, fifteen kids called him grandpa. Stll miss him. Lost him in the seventies.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        `                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

TWO THOUSAND YEARS

 Photo by Ellen Fontana from the FB page Ancient Forests and Champion Trees.

If they had olives in Middle Earth there might have been a gnarled old ent. I mean when I first saw the picture I immediatly thought of Treebeard. Estimated age on this gnarled old olive tree? Two thousand years. Two thousand years and still producing olives every year. The entry didn't give the town this tree is close to, but it is in the region of Puglia. Publis a a long narrow region that forms the heel of boot that if Italy. I looked at some shots and that region has some serious rocks and cliffs. Sometimes being out in the boonies has its advantages. Real estate that is hard to move armies on may not see as many battles. 

Cliffside town in the Puglia region. Love the colors of the water. Too bad the beach isn't all that big but it looks very, very popular. And notice how the houses are built right to edge of the cliffs.

Although in many areas where the olive is grown the trees are often not destroyed even if the neighboring farms and villages are. With the vine and barley the olive was the foundation of life in the Mediterranean. Wine, bread and the olive for food and oil. Oil for light. Oil for cooking. Oil to trade for what the rocky soil with hot dry summers couldn't grow.

Two thousand years. Augustus, the invasions of the so called Barbarians, wars back and forth over the centuries. Too bad that tree can't talk. I suspect it has some great stories to tell. 

A CAT'S NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

OK so it's a long way to New Years but it's never too late to be thinking about it. I maight also add "I will not deposite the bugs I catch in my human's cereal. Fainting, stomach pumping and projectile vomitng may interfere with my meal times. "

My human will never let me eat her pet hamster, and I am at peace with that.

I will not puff my entire body to twice its size for no reason after my human has finished watching a horror movie. 

I will not slurp fish food from the surface of the aquarium. 

I must not help myself to Q-tips, and I must certainly not proceed to stuff them down the sink's drain. 
I will not eat large numbers of assorted bugs, then come home and puke them up so the humans can see that I'm getting plenty of roughage. 

I will not lean way over to drink out of the tub, fall in, and then pelt right for the box of clumping cat litter. (It took FOREVER to get the stuff out of my fur.) 

I will not stand on the bathroom counter, stare down the hall, and growl at NOTHING after my human has finished watching The X-Files. 

I will not use the bathtub to store live mice for late-night snacks. 

I will not perch on my human's chest in the middle of the night and stare into her eyes until she wakes up. 

We will not play Herd of Thundering Wildebeests Stampeding Across the Plains of the Serengeti over any humans' bed while they're trying to sleep. 

Screaming at the can of food will not make it open itself. 

I cannot leap through closed windows to catch birds outside. If I forget this and bonk my head on the window and fall behind the couch in my attempt, I will not get up and do the same thing again. 

I will not assume the patio door is open when I race outside to chase leaves

I will not intrude on my human's candle-lit bubble bath and singe my bottom. 

I will not stick my paw into any container to see if there is something in it. If I do, I will not hiss and scratch when my human has to shave me to get the rubber cement out of my fur. 

If I bite the cactus, it will bite back. 

When it rains, it will be raining on all sides of the house. It is not necessary to check every door. 

Birds do not come from the bird feeder. I will not knock it down and try to open it up to get the birds out. 

The dog can see me coming when I stalk her. She can see me and will move out of the way when I pounce, letting me smash into floors and walls. That does not mean I should take it as a personal insult when my humans sit there and laugh. 

I will not play "dead cat on the stairs" while people are trying to bring in groceries or laundry, or else one of these days, it will really come true. 

When the humans play darts, I will not leap into the air and attempt to catch them. 

I will not swat my human's head repeatedly when she's on the family room floor trying to do sit ups. 

When my human is typing at the computer, her forearms are *not* a hammock. 

Computer and TV screens do not exist to backlight my lovely tail. 

I am a walking static generator. My human doesn't need my help installing a new board in her computer.

WHO DO WE PRAY FOR?

 While we're praying for the health care workers we need to pray for the freedumb fighters, the anti vaxxers, the anti maskers, and the scientific illiterates. May they see the light and join the rest of in the fight to contain this virus. Sometimes survival is just the beginning of the fight. 

NORMAL CAN BE OVER RATED

 

Found this on the web several moons ago. 

When writer's block is a little to much of a real block. It's Sunday afternoon, the only visible life forms are the birds squabbling at the feeders. I swear the sparrows are even bossier than the finches. If that's possible. With luck they are stoking up to go somewhere else. That is what happened last spring. 

I've had a whole covey of quail take off from the deck outside the window. That was a sight. There's one that walks up and down the railing as if it's taking measurements to make an offer on the place. 

As the cat says "normal is highly overrated." 

GAPS IN OUR MAPS

A few years ago I was  slowly working my way through a book on Russian History. Bought it on sale and I'd been staring at it for awhile. Family history sort of gave things a kick start. Turns out a branch of the family tree goes back to ninth century Kiev. The cradle of the Westen Rus. The ruliing family were from Scandinavia bot that's another story.

Working my through sort of confirming what I suspected all along. We not only don’t know a whole lot about Russia, but we didn’t learn a whole lot about anything east of Berlin when I was in high school. Yeah, we took world history when I was a sophomore, at least that’s what they called it. More like Western Civilization with extra footnotes.

Anybody out there know that from about the 14^th to the 16^th century an alliance between Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania created loosely allied state that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea? I sure didn’t. I know you can’t teach EVERYTHING but we certainly got a hefty dose of how great England was at the time. To be honest I don't remember what classes were available . Not much about the Soviets or Chinese or the countries under their domination I suspect.

Sunday school and the stories of the brave missionaries giving up the comforts of home to bring the glories of the Christian message to the heathens who were only too happy to accept the glories of Christian civilization.  Too bad it was pretty much a crock of bull. Clovis I of the Franks was the original covert or else conqueror. Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal. In the sixth century the emperor in the East, Justinian, closed the pagan academies. In the west the popes were doing their level best to exert control over the rising empires in Europe.

In the tenth cetury Vladimir of Kiev (see above) converted and made it very clear that anyone who didn’t show up at the riverbank for a dunking was no “friend of his.” Or words to that effect. Heck I didn't even know Orthodox Christianity existed until I was in college. Why? because most of them lived in Muslim countries or behind the Iron Curtain? They suddenly become invisible or something?

Fourteen hundred and ninety two and Columbus discovered a world that had already been found. But, why were the sailors in Western Europe so interested in sea routes to the east in the fifteenth century. Anyone ever hear of the Silk Road. I hadn’t until I temporarily joined a book club called the Folio Society. One of the books they were offering was The Silk Road and the front piece is a map. A map that traces the caravan routes from western China to the Middle East. And a map in a book on the Vikings then traces the trade routes from the Middle East to Scandinavia. For two thousand years goods made their way from east to west to the Mediterranean powerhouses like Venice. 

So, what happened? Why to push to brave the unknown dangers of the open ocean when they already knew the dangers of the caravan routes? Perhaps the rise of Islam. The break up of the Mongol conquest with the knowledge of who you were dealing with; which palms needed the most "lubrication." And perhaps, finally in the mid 15^th century, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. You want to bring your goods through our territory you can pay our tolls. Geez, isn’t there another way to get those silks and spices to the markets? I mean we know who where the seller's markets were we just had to figure out how to get there. Merchants probably knew about the maritime routes in the east but how to connect the west with the east. 

The Portugese were firsst. Then the Dutch.And the center of Europe shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. But, when it came to the history books it seems there were some blind spots. Perhaps because the Ottomans were Muslim and the rump of Byzantium was a different flavor of Christianity. Not Western Catholic, Not Protestant, but a different tradition altogether.

And we could say pretty much the same things about Africa, or Asia or India or Latin America. And that’s our loss not theirs.

What we know about most of the rest of the world would fill a small thimble. Modern technology makes it easier to fill in the missing puzzle pieces.  It also makes it easier to pick out the pieces that fit the prejudices we already have building the walls higher instead of tearing them down. I don’t want to hide behind those walls sitting in a corner, eyes closed, humming really, really loud.