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.

HAPPY WHATEVER ?

Apparntly Merry Christmas versus just about everything else is beginning to heat up again. The story he refers to is in the Biblical Apocrapha which is found in Bibles using translations accepted by the Caholic and Orthodox versions of the Bible.* The books Maccabees 1 and 2 where the roots of Hanukkah can be found. The exchange is a little testy but his "be polite as possible" tank may have run dry.

I've had a very subversive thought. We have this whole crop of fundies with their "if it isn't in the Bible it isn't 'Christian.'"

News flash Christmas isn't in the Bible. Yes, the story of the birth of the future footsore rabbi from Nazareth IS in the Bible. But, if I have my history straight official commemoration of the birth started during the reign of Constantine.

Christmas? Christ's mass. Yep, the December date close to the solstice is part of what became the yearly liturgical cycle starting with what has become Advent and ending with Pentecost. Which is sort of where the twelve days of Christmas carol comes from. So didn't you Protestants just kind of borrow this any and try to squeeze everthing into one mad day.

Christmas season s follows

December 24 Eve of the Nativity That was when our Methodist church did a candle light service. Partly because they knew no one would be there the next day.

December 25 Feast of the Nativity First day of the Octave of Christmas

December 26 Feast of St. Stephen (first official martyr)

December 27 Feast of St. John the Baptist

December 28 Feast of the Holy Innocents (Herod's blood bath)

December 29 Fifth day of the liturgy of Christmas

December 30 Feast of the Holy Family

December 31 Eve of the Feast of the Holy Name

January 1 The Feast of the Holy Name Jesus' circumcision, either one

Jaunuary 6 Epiphany when the three kings arrived with gifts.. And in many countries THAT day is the day gifts are exchanged.

All of these traditions were added years or centuries after the Bible was written. So, the whole argument about what to say is really, well totally weird. We get all hung up on the words while conveniently forgetting that Jesus (if he existed) was a Jewish guy who was crying in the wilderness with the messages of the old Hebrew prophets in the hope that maybe, just maybe people would listen this time around.

Of the few of you who actually know me you will know that my sense of humor is well, sort of off the wall. Out in far left field actually.

God has sent prophets over the years from Amos through Jeremiah to Zechariah with mixed and apparently futile results. This is how it goes in my weird imagination,

"Son we need to have a talk. Remember that conversation we had a three or four eons ago on the other side of the Milky Way."

"Yeah, the one where I end up on earth eventually learning the difference between oak and cedar and end up walking the length and breadth of the Holy Land?"

"That's the one. It's time. I've got a great family chosen for you. Joseph is a carpenter and Mary is willing to take the risk."

"OK dad, Catch you on the flip side. I've got a feeling I'm going to get into more trouble that all the other prophets put together."

"Afraid so, Son."

*Most versions of the Bible accepted by Protestants begin with the Hebrew Bible. Catholicswork from the Septuagint. The Greek translation by seventy Jewish scholars in Alexandria at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphius. Who was probably a pagan but he loved knowlege.

SPRINGFIELD ART

 

Cartoonist Matt Groening was born in Portland, Oregon. He has admitted that The Simpson's hometown was modelled in part after Portland. He has said he named Springfield,Springfied because there are so many of them in the U.S, The story is that Springfield was not named after any other Springfield, Oregonians were practicle minded even in the 1840's. There was a spring in a field within what was to be city limits so Springfield it is. So the story goes. 

After all Portland was named on the flip of a coin. One sea captain was from Boston the other from Portland. They flipped a coin and Portland it became. 

The mural is on 5th street just of Main. Yes, we have a Main Street. Goes straight through town until it becomes the McKenzie Highway. Head wast through Eugene and it becomes Highway 126. That will take you to Florence on the coast. Connects with 101 and that will take you to either Canada or Mexico. Not as fast as the 5 but a heck of a lot more fun. 

WHO NEEDS PERFECTON?

 

A morning's sample of ads on the Weather Channel. Products for the perfect skin. Enough lights to blind the neighborhood for the perfect Christmas display. The perfect vehicle that will carry you up over the rocky trail to I'm not sure what. The perfect fake tree already decorated. All you have to do is plug it in. For all I know it comes with a little spray bottle so the room will smell something like the real thing.

Of course the real thing only smelled that good for a few days. And then the real fun began. Installing the tree in the tree stand. First you manhandled the tree into the stand. Then someone, probably dad, got on the floor. Then someone else, mom and later me when I was tall enough, held the tree up while dad screwed the darn thing in. Then we all stood back and decided whether the tree was standing up straight. It usually wasn't the first time around. Process reapeated until it was standing up straigt, or close to it. The critical examination began. Were the branches fairly even? Were there any gaps in the branches? If so that side went next to the wall or in a corner. We're talking late forties architectue here. Two bedroom, appriximately nine hundred square feet. It went by the wall or in a corner or else. That's a tree stand down there. WalMart. Eight feet wide. What's it supposed to take a Sitkae Spruce? Ours was more like three feet wide. Of course we only had eight foot ceilings.

Then the real fun began. That shot up above gives you an idea what the tree lights were like. And they were real little electric lights. They got hot just like the big lights. The trick was getting the string to light up. If a light was burned out or loose none of lights came on. We usually had a few spares just in case.Then the lights went on the tree being careful to keep the light bulbs away from the needles. And plugging the darn things in to make sure the lights still came on. LOL. Oh yeah, Those old houses didn't come with a lot of outlets so the tree had to be next to a handy outlet. You didn't leave it lit all the time. We usually plugged it in after supper and pulled the plug at bedtime. 

The rest was easy. Pulling out the carefully wrapped ornaments. Making sure everybody survived from last year. Checking the tinsel supply. Often that and a few light bulbs were all we resupplyed from year to year. Yeah it took time. But we did it together. And man, when we were finished it was a sight to behold. It may not have been perfect but it was ours. You filled the basin with water, had keep and eye on that. Put the tree skirt down to hide the base. Up the week before Christmas. Down by New Years. 

While we were in Oakridge I suspect dad sawed it up and the whole thing went into the burn barrel. In Springfield there were organizations that did pick up. Let you know when your neighborhood ws on the list and you were good for another year. It wasn't perfect. But nothing is. It was ours, those ornaments often had stories behind them added year by year and they were our stories. 

CASUALTIES

 nd my thoughts Veterans day. I wrote this near the beginning of these last decades endless wars. The costs too many of us don't want to aknowledge. As long as we didn't have to see the dead and the maimed. And because what? We didn't want to be called unpatriotic. That we were cowards oir some other damned smear.

There’s an early MASH episode with a storyline about a friend of Hawkeye’s. The guy is a writer and he feels that the only way he can write about combat is to experience it first hand. He’s critically wounded and dies on the table in surgery. As Henry Blake tries to comfort Pierce he tells him about two rules he learned in command school.

 

Rule #1: Young men die in war.

 

Rule #2: Doctor’s can’t change rule #1.

 

I keep running into this really strange attitude about the casualties in the Iraq war. Somehow printing casualty updates, especially fatalities is un-American and supporting the anti war effort.

 

My God, that’s what war is about. Soldiers and civilians are going to die. Usually badly. If you can’t face that then you have no business supporting any kind of war. That they died in a justifiable or unavoidable cause is the only thing that makes these sacrifices remotely bearable. My personal opinion is that the war in Iraq doesn’t fit either definition. It is also my opinion that supporting the war while ignoring the cost in lives shattered or lost is one of the ultimate hypocrisies.

Well I've shot about all the ammuition I have right now. Back to Springfield, reasonably peaceful Springfield, tomorrow.

TATTERED THREADS 2

The other half of those threads.

I appear to be blessed (cursed?) with a mind that’s like a terrier with a bone. Community, like so many things confronts us as Janus-the double-headed Roman god of doors and (it does make a weird kind of sense) of beginnings and endings.

I read William Shirer’s the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when I was a freshman-a high school freshman. Once I was done I don’t think I’ve ever looked at the world the same way.

What the Nazi’s did in their rise to power. What was done during that war. The Final Solution, not only for the six million or so European Jews but also for so many others. The Slavs, the Poles, the Gypsies, gays, the other five million who died on the alter of a diabolical definition of community. I believe I began to realize the kind of actions human beings could commit when they know they are “right.”

For too many of the years after the war too many of us-me included bought the line that what the Nazi’s did was something unique to the Nazi philosophy. Heaven knows there was enough evidence before the war of what human beings can do to each other because the ones we’re attacking don’t fit some definition “us.” Since the forties we’ve seen all to much evidence of what we can do those we see as “other.” We can all recite the litany that just keeps getting longer. From Cambodia to Darfur with the Balkans and Rwanda in between. We’re too civilized here in America to go in for wholesale extermination these days. We use words instead of guns and act surprised when the words cut more deeply than a knife ever could.

Want to hear something really weird? When I started this entry this was not the direction I thought it was going to go. Once I started to type this is where the words led me. They seemed to flow on their own. They do that sometimes. And then the really unexpected reaction kicks in. I never realized what kind of emotions an entry like this would dredge up. I usually keep them firmly leashed and I think there may be two people on the planet who’ve seen or heard me royally po’d. The smile I have to wear at work and with most of the members of my family feels more and more forced. Keeping it there is getting harder and harder. Thank you cyber space for someplace to express just a little of what I’m feeling.

There are threads, connections, whatever you want to call them that tie us to each other, the earth and to the other creatures that ride this world with us They are trapped with us and dependent on our actions to preserve this fragile ball of earth, air and water. Somehow we have to get beyond a definition of community that is so narrow that almost all of us are “other.”

We have a shot at repairing some of those theads between us ahd the rest of creation if we can just stop shooting ourselves in the foot.

TATTERED THREADS

 From 2005. The Christmas ads for "stuff" are cranking up and it isn't even Thanksgiving. Heck they didn'.t even wait for Halloween.

It looke like my cranky genes are rearing their heads big time. This has been simmering just below the surface and it finally had to come out.

William Raspberry had a column in the paper Monday discussing the changes in our community life since the end of WWII. I believe I understand where he’s coming from. I’m not sure I want to give up ease of travel that the car gives us or the fingertip access to entertainment and information that television and computers give us but the loss of community that has crept into our lives over the past forty or fifty years frankly scares the bejesus out of me.

When my folks got married they moved into a little place on D Street in Springfield. Basically the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker were within a dozen blocks of the house. Folks walked a lot more and the meat cutter knew just how you liked your pot roast trimmed. They used an ice box for the basic needs, the milkman still made deliveries, there was a garden in the back, mom canned anything that wasn’t nailed down or failed to salute and if you needed to store frozen food you rented a locker at the market on main street.

We moved to Oakridge right after I was born and came back to Springfield eighteen years later. Richer by two sisters and poorer by a disabled stove-up logger. Dad wore himself out working in the logging industry. When his legs gave out he ended up on the scrap heap. Thank you FDR for Social Security Disability. We finally ended up all of ten blocks from where we started. All the basic shops are gone from Main Street except for a large fabric store. They’ve been replaced by second hand stores, small offices and vacant storefronts. The closest grocery store is a Fred Meyer. It’s about a mile and half away on the other side of several very busy streets. Nobody walks there if they can help it, nobody really knows you and everything comes wrapped in plastic. You drive there in your individual tinted window vehicle and you drive home behind your tinted windows and nobody looks you in the eye if they can help it.

We’ve been sold self-service in the name of convenience but all it really does is cut down the number of people they need to hire and pay employee taxes on. The trick is to tell us we're getting it our way, when what they're selling is their way. Orwells’ Newspeak is alive and well. Marketing managers are fluent in it.

Instead they use the money they save on people to try to convince me to buy stuff I probably don’t need, didn’t even know existed until I saw the commercial and isn’t worth half what they want for it in the first place, if that. When mom talks about what she and dad had when they got married it wasn't much but they seemed think it was enough. Madison Avenue was just getting into the game of convincing us that no matter how much we have it isn't enough. That somehow if we buy just the right combinations of stuff we’ll  somehow be smarter or sexier or some darn thing. We keep shoveling things into the black hole at the center of our spirits and wonder why all we keep hearing is the sucking sound as little pieces of our selves follow them in

I don't want to make those early days of mom's marriage sound better than they were. People spent a most of their time just making sure the basics got done. A lot of time was spent doing the wash in a wringer washer, hanging the clothes to dry and then ironing the blessed things. And man, you did not want to let my grandmother get near the laundry. Dad used to say she could shrink a house if she put her mind to it and no button was safe. There were just as many gossips per square mile as there are now. They just had to be nosy closer to home and most of the local nosiness stayed local

I really don’t know how the repair the tatters of the threads that tie us all to each other but I think we’d better start mending………real fast

I wouldn't change a word.

NEW ISLANDS

 

Aerial shot of Island Park in Springfield. The park is on the river and it looks like it's summer. Of course I've never seen the park from the air. That's probably Glenwood, a sort of suburb between Springfield and Eugene. There;s a great pizza place up there next to the rapids. 

Anyway you have to cross the river bridges to get to Eugene. Nestled under the bridges, is Island Park. I can remember when the islands the park is named for didn't exist. It must have been the mid sixties and we were visiting the grandparents. As we crossed the bridge I noticed some gravel bars. Over the years the bars got bigger, drift wood and brush got cought, bushes began to grow. 

As the years passed the islands began to sprout tree saplings. There was one right next to the bank under the bridge and two more further up the river. The other two were in the curve of the bank and slowlow formed an oxbow island. You can get to the one right next to the bank and barely get your feet wet. 

Those islands are the the children of the flood control dams. Without the dams the folks in Glenwood would be heading for high ground every time it rained just in case. Now that I remember the whole park is an island. There used to be a mill on the south side of town. Before there was a lumber mill, there was a grist mill. In fact the canal/mill race was dug with the aid of ox teams and shovels back in 1852. It connects the Middle Fork of the Willamette with the main river. I've learned some new information today and I need to do a little digesting

CHRSTMAS 1964

. 

This is Willamette Falls. On the Willamette River with Oregon City of one side and West Linn on the bank. The falls are horseshoe shaped, approximately 1,500 feet wide and forty feet high. It's the largest waterfall by volume in the NW part of the US and the seventeenth widest in the world. This impressive in itself. It's a lead up to what happened around Christmas 1964. 

About December 13, 1964 it got cold. Really, really cold in the Northwest. Ground froze follwed by heavy snow. Then the weather changed. By December 18 a weather system similar to what's hitting right about now, but stronger, moved into Northern California, Oregon and Washington. It rained. Man oh man did it rain. Temperatures increased from below freezing by thirty to forty degrees. The snow melted but the ground didn't get a chance to thaw. 

Many areas in Oregon received almost double the usual December rain in just a few days. Rivers burst their banks. Hillsides slid. Bridges were either destroyed or severly damaged. Livestock was lost almost twenty people lost their lives. That shot is Willamette Falls on a good day. 

This is a shot from the Oregonian newspaper. The falls are unrecognizable and Oregon City was under several feet of water. Oakridge is on the Middle Fork of the Willamette. The river was always there. The highway runs along side it when you drive north west to Springfield. Runs into the reservoir behind Look Out Point Dam and then into the lake behind Fall Creek Dam. Lucky for us that the dam on thetributary Hills Creek was finished in 1961. Ironically one of the engineers who worked on Hills Creek lived behind us. Dad got to talking to him and asked how they'd managed to get the dam built without the weather getting in the way. They'd studied the weather data and it looked like there would be enough years of fairly dry weather to get the dam completed. That was in 1961. BTW it's a nice drive around the lake. Some good camp grounds. Watch out for the poison oak. 

Then 1964 came along three years later. The Middle Fork of the Willamette took out Hwy 58 above town and the bridge at Deception Creek below town. Lucky for us Oakridge itself is high enough above the river that we were inconvenienced. We got really wet but not flooded.  We got sent home early a couple of days before Christmas Break. Didn't even have time to clean out the refrigerators in the Home Ec room. That was our first job in January and the Christmas concert was held in January. 

It was called a one hundred year flood. It broke all the records that had been kept since the late 1800's. Some folks down in Northern California called it a thousand year flood when mother nature staged a refun in January. All the planned flood control dams were in place. 

I'm reminded of this because we are getting some good early snow. More than good in some areas. It's a reminder to not count that snow pack until say, March. Man plans and God or the Universe laughs.