October 4, 2011 by Dave Rama.

I’m telling you, if it ain’t one thing, it’s eight others.  The latest is this bit about the “sky is falling”, just like Chicken Little predicted.  Bus size chunks of space junk are about to start coming home to roost, so to speak.  Keep an eye on the sky.

The space engineers and mathematical whizzes that fired that junk into the cosmos have no idea where this trash will plunk into the planet.  You may know that 2/3 of the Earth’s surface is water.  If the junk splashes in the Pacific, will that be the trigger for the tsunami/earthquake/ volcanic eruption that wipes out Seattle and Tacoma?  If so, would that event be a natural disaster, or a man-made one?

Can you guess where the buses will land, and try to hide?  Is there time to build a shelter and stock it with cigarettes and beer and prescription drugs?  How do you dodge a falling bus?  Maybe you fake right and go left, like the Republicans.  Is there a siren to signal us of the upcoming crash?  Can we sue the government for failing to protect us from objects falling from the sky?
Can we tell whether this is actually our own garbage coming out of the sky, or is it actually the long-awaited attack by the little green men of far away galaxies?

There are so very many unanswered questions.  The only people who truly know the answers are those who find every big event to be a conspiracy.  The conspiracy experts have the inside scoop on every happening.  There are people in Roswell, New Mexico who have known this event was imminent for decades.  Those Roswellians are first cousins to the fundamentalist minister who predicted the end of the earth (he called it the rapture) for May of this year and then discovered in June that his calculations may have contained an error.  Is this his prediction coming true?  It could be.  It is possible, so it seems prudent (and thrifty!) for us to hold off on any early Christmas shopping expeditions.

If you don’t hear from me again, please consider this my attempt at a heads up.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!!
Dave Rama

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August 17, 2011 by Linda Bergeron.

By Linda Bergeron

It is the cool of the evening in the first week of July. It was nearly 90 degrees in the late afternoon, but now, at an eight o’clock dusk, with the brightness of the sun having long descended westerly over the ridge, the cool greens of the varied tree leaves, the bushes, and the watered lengths of grass create a softening in the quiet.

Where are the evening birds? The drops from the upward cascade of the sprinkler in the strawberry bed also dowse the nearby maple, its bottom leaves bobbing under every hit, while the plaza of a thousand blades of grass are silently drenched. Each small activity is noticeable in the great pause of day’s decline. A single wingéd thing darts through the yard’s low cathedral and is quickly gone.

The moment feels like a whole trail of seasons in a single day. While the slow hours of a distant winter, in memory, would have dragged its long gray drape – occasionally freshened in whiteness – and dulled by the constant cold - here, in summer, a day evolves through many incredible changes.

Long before dawn, when the first solitary bird sounded a meek minor key announcement shyly, and the un-darkness began in the northeast casting change upon the highest places, day moved in. It will be a slow April-almost-May series of moments in these early hours as the sun sends brushstrokes of light to touch further and further down toward the bottom of the hillsides, bringing brightness, cow calls, the slow waking day sounds. Had one looked at the mountains earlier there may have been that glow of pink upon the last snow tops when the un-awakened valley was still in old night’s shadow.

Remnants of spring stand as spent bloomed irises, their now-shabby tops upon still-strong stems; as the decadent poppy leaves, bleached and fallen over; as violet leaves (once the first tiny green when still there was snow), but now like enlarged green hearts thrilled with the early summer moments. Potato plants in rows are vibrant and thirsty; cucurbits are gaining in health, vigor, and size by the hour. The peas are crowding themselves and pendulous, all of white blossoms gone, tendrils reaching, in silence asking, ‘Where’s the string? Oh, I’ll grab hold of you! Upward we go!’ They dangle their pods so they won’t be forgotten, for their peak moments are so very near.

The basil impossibly gets greener in their scant gloss, its leaf edges curling slightly down from their rims so they can thrust their surfaces ever more so toward the sun. The tomatoes are surely deciding this very day if they can proceed upward and bush out now, or if they cannot possibly recover from that earlier weakness, and will look sad or hang low, unexcited by the season….

It is only mid-morning and dawn was such a long time ago. When the dew is fully surrendered away to the burden of the heated and breathtaking air, and the sky is the bluest blue, and the sun shines down upon it all like a great blessing of life, it is without doubt a summer day.

The heat builds up in the great surround of the valley, lying still to the utmost in some places, shimmering in others. Were we idle enough, we could patiently watch to see the grass blades heighten, or measure the amazing rapid changes in the corn.

It takes nearly a full summer of light for the day to go on toward its end, to the banter of the birds as the radiant light begins to fall from its angle, dwindling ever so slowly into little shadows in the other direction, inching up then dissolving to non-existence.

There is a quiet, and a change of activity. It has been like an evolution of seasons in but 15 hours, as darkness moves closer in, and the cool returns. Indeed, a summer day.

Originally published in Hells Canyon Journal, July 27, 2011

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July 19, 2011 by Dave Rama.

Who are these people and how did their numbers grow so quickly?   In the past five years, this group has grown from zero to 230,000 members.   They treat fallen heroes of this country with respect. They endeavor to shield the families of the fallen from those who want to use the fallen for political and religious purposes. They are male and female, loud and quiet, short and tall, stout and scrawny.  They are witty and wise, and smart and simple.  They know the words to the “Star Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful”.  They display the flag properly.  The Patriot Guard provides an honor guard of Motorcycle riders at funerals for fallen service members and first responders.  When protesters appear to picket and shout, the Patriot Guard shields the families from the signs and the shouts by lowering their flags between the two groups or singing patriotic songs or revving their bikes to drown out the protester’s chants.

The initial impetus for the Patriot Guard’s existence came from the members of a half-baked organization called the Westboro Baptist Church.  The members of the WBC apparently have only one belief, and that belief is that homosexual activity is sinful.  Since the majority of Americans disagree with that philosophy, the WBC has a problem.  They gain attention for their beliefs by picketing military and firefighter and police funerals.   Their expressed theory is that America is wrong to support gay rights, and these soldiers, cops and firefighters have died because of God’s anger with America.  How this tiny group of simple folk got a direct line to the opinions of God remains a puzzle to me.  If there is a difference between this highly limited group and right wing fundamentalist Muslims, I fail to discern that difference.

Westboro was sued by the family of a serviceman who was killed in Iraq.  The protesters disrupted the soldier’s funeral, and refused to allow the soldier’s family to have the dignity of a solemn funeral.  The lawsuit reached the United States Supreme Court.  The Court upheld the right of freedom of speech for the protesters of the Westboro Baptist Church.  I agree with the court’s interpretation.  Voltaire said “I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  That soldier had carried out Voltaire’s very thought.  The very best response to the issue of freedom of speech comes from former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey who explained that “The right to free speech does not include the right to be taken seriously”.

My wife and I are parents of a fallen firefighter.  Each year we get together with other surviving family members.  The past two or three years, the Patriot Guard has provided an honor guard to defend our right to honor our firefighters in peace.  I am grateful for their presence for assorted reasons.    They are everyday folks who are willing to help others keep their dignity and pride of family.  They provide their presence for no charge to do something for others.

You ought to meet my friend Johnny (He and his wife lost two firefighters, a son and a daughter).  Johnny is not a large man, but he has a presence that says “I really am not to be messed with”.  On the occasions that we’ve met he has worn a hat with USMC, or Semper Fi, or some indication that he was at one point, and forever after, a Marine.  When we talked about the Patriot Guard, his response was:  “Why do we need these people to protect us?  I would kind of like to have those idiots show up here without the Patriot Guard to protect them.”  I laughed, and I understood completely.  That’s another reason for my appreciation of the Patriot guard.  I thank the members of the Patriot Guard, not so much for the protection, but for their goodhearted actions and intentions.  You folks help keep people like Johnny and me out of hot water.  Thank you!  Blessings on your house!

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May 23, 2011 by Linda Bergeron.

Poem by Linda Bergeron

talking, tables and their parted chairs, long mirrors
making a so-wide panorama of faces and heads,
tall Carnegie windows opening the walls,
heightening everything, as they do

looking North, the gray spring evening sky glooms
a neutral background, a rustic alleyway fronts red brick,
three-storied and thinly armed in wrought-iron;
a saturation of art awashes the gray
in color, sound, voice, music – and surrounds
like an old shawl that people have worn for ages together,
in the most ancient of practices, as both preamble and stage
for comfortable talk, insightful comment, smiles, retreats,
little shards of deep friendliness, renewed acquaintance

from the East, the distant silent tower,
a fellow building close and eminent,
thick with great stone of other generations, holding
arched windows almost like half-circle starbursts
but dull, staid, and beautifully old

from a long South room - shininess, bright color,
reflections bouncing, capturing, relaying, dancing
all the possibilities: voice and tone,
the dialogues of friends; entries, exits,
stairs to all those other places, where stowed
workshop cupboards await the hands
to paint and paste and pot

in the West, a wall of pebble rock worked, and
finished! and hung in color, textural detail, while
voyeurs’ fingers are stilled against the desire to touch;
the variety of landscapes of color - as light as fog, as potent
as arrays of rock, or ripples of water near autumn grass,
vast intimacies of color, dimension and contrast,
alive with suggestion, and delayed to a pause,
that after silent thoughtfulness before each frame and form
there is the moment’s invitation to be there, really there

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May 16, 2011 by Dave Rama.

Certain people think you have to follow every Biblical instruction.  I seriously doubt that they follow that dictum themselves, but they expect others to do so.  My findings are that it is impossible to carry out every line of Biblical text, even if you skip breakfast.  You have to pick and choose a little bit.

The Bible is somewhere north of a thousand pages, and I’m a slow reader.  I can’t remember all of what I read, except the racy and gory parts.  One of the instructions I try to follow is to make a “joyful noise to the Lord” every day.  God and I talk on a regular basis.  I am polite and say please and thank you.  Good manners coupled with a daily dose of joyful noise may help my cause as a size 42 extra long sinner.  I have been an irregular churchgoer in my life but I suspect that God will let that slide.

While millions of devout folks find church to be a delightful place, the worst experience of my life happened in a Methodist building after I was grown.  I had been there a number of times before, and tried to always sit in about the same spot, so I could find my way out nice and easy.  The seats were close to the door, but in a spot where I hoped I could blend in with other sinners, and not draw any attention.  Well, on this particular Sunday, those seats were taken, and the place was full.  I don’t recall why it was so full that day.  Perhaps they were having their annual sale on redemption that week.   We sat across the church from our usual comfortable seats, and wound up in a nest of old people.  I learned this was a corner called the “Amen section.”

Methodists stand up to sing.  In earlier experiences singing hymns, I would open my mouth and mumble, and then the real singers would drown me out.  If you ever sit in the Amen corner, that strategy will not work.  The amen corner is just where they park the old people who do sing.  They continue to ignore the line from Psalms that says:  “Make a Joyful noise unto the Lord”.   Nobody in that group sings a lick.  It was so dang quiet in that part of the church I could hear myself sing.  My voice awakened numerous people in the Amen section, and a near riot ensued before order was restored.  Nice-looking, gray-haired, well-dressed Christian women were climbing over pews to get to me and shouts of “Sit Down and Shut Up” were heard.  Some of the old men were more radical and called for the younger men to “Bring a Rope!  We mean to hang this man!”

That was a lot of excitement for the Methodists.   Some of them actually put more than a buck in the plate that day because they were so worked up, so my singing actually helped the congregation.  Still, I agreed with the minister when he said he didn’t think it would work twice.  It was a crossroads for me as it was the last time I heard myself sing.  Hearing that noise was the worst experience of my life.  I had no idea beforehand how dreadful  that sound was, but there was no lack of people willing to tell me the truth as they heard it.

The charges were dropped.  There is no law against attempted singing.   However, the next time I tried to enter the Methodist domain I was met by security forces at the door and turned away.

Just because I favor happy endings, I want you to know I do make a joyful noise to the Lord every day.  That joyful noise has nothing to do with singing.  I offer the melody of laughter.

Dave Rama, though he recently got lost Nebraska and has not found his way back, is a regular contributor to WGEO.

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February 10, 2011 by Clair Button.

Truth really is stranger than fiction, which is why fiction writers have an endless source of material to choose from. And if one human being can make bizarre decisions, imagine what the human race en masse can accomplish.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the stock market.

While many people have simply given up on gambling in the stock market, those of us who think of ourselves as the old coyotes of the financial world look for opportunities to pick off dazed rodents stunned by financial explosions (or maybe implosions is a more appropriate word.)

Take the financial news of the day. Sprint, the cellular phone company whose stock value on paper approaches 15 Billion dollars at nearly $4.5 per share, has been steadily losing money for years.  According to my stock-watching software, this year it’s estimated losses are $1.19 per share, over one quarter the value of each share.  Losses narrowed slightly on reports that the company had added contract customers to it’s rolls for the first time in three years, so the stock rose 3.2% in one day.  Clearly, investors believe it is a good idea to lose less money each year rather than lose more money. Investors put 480 Million dollars to work losing less money.

On the other hand, Cisco Systems, another technology company, with stock “value” somewhere between 110 to 115 Billion dollars at $20 per share dropped over 12% of its value in one morning on news that it had only beat analysts’ expectations of quarterly profit by 2 cents.  The company is estimated to earn $1.36 per share for the year. Conservative money managers at the company have so much cash on hand, they are buying back company stock. However, “Investors” threw away 13 Billion dollars selling off stock on the disappointing news.

No doubt some of them invested in Sprint, so they could lose less money rather than make more money.

Now, if you understand the rationale of those kinds of decisions, you could be getting fat on lemmings.

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January 16, 2011 by Dave Rama.

The word “con” has an assortment of “con”notations in the English language.  A con may be a convict serving a prison term, or if the con has completed his sentence, he might be an ex-con.  If you cheat someone out of money, it is sometimes said that you have run a “con game” on the victim.  It may also be said that a cheater will “con” you out of money, goods, or speeding tickets.  Webster’s dictionary tells us that con means to commit to memory.  If you weigh the pros and cons of an issue, and you decide the negative factors outweigh the positive factors, you are taking a negative or con position.  Ship handlers will tell each other you have the con, which I assume means control of steering the ship

For purposes of clarity, this word is spelled c-o-n.  It should not be confused with James Caan, the actor, or with Madeleine Kahn, the actress.  Cohn is another surname that is very similar, but is frequently pronounced cone.  In the 1940’s, there was a tough Irish kid named Billy Conn who was one of the best boxers in the world.  There was a Turkish leader known as Aga Khan, and of course the Mongol conqueror, Genghis Khan and his descendants.  Anyone who has ever watched the movie, “Jungle Book” will recall the villainous Shere Khan, the Tiger.  I once had a friend named Con Sanchez whose first name was shortened from Concepcion.  I suppose there are Anglo-Saxon men who use Con as a diminutive for Conrad, and women who shortened the name Connie to Con.  These are logical reductions and nicknames that have character. 

I have expressed before the thought that English must be the zaniest of all languages with its multiple meanings of so many words like con and multiple spellings of words that sound alike.  Let us briefly consider what happens when English incorporates words from other languages, like con, into the English usage of the moment.   A common example lies in the world of food.  Restaurants may wish to disguise what a product really is by calling it a French or Spanish name.  For example, the French word escargot sounds much more delicious than snails.  In Spanish, con is a word that usually means with.  So if you order Chile Con Carne, you are expecting chili with meat.  If you order chili con frijoles, you will anticipate chili with beans.  If you ask for salsa con queso, you are going to get salsa with cheese. 

If your dentist says your teeth are suffering concavity, there will follow a period of drilling and filling because you will be with cavity.  If you hire someone to do building work, you will likely call a contractor, or someone with tractor.  The highest rank of this occupation will be general contractor, who will provide more services than a private contractor, and will likely have a larger tractor with which to work.  From this information, you can safely assume that concurrent (with current) means traveling downstream and the community of El Paso, TX can be said to be concave (with cave) due to the existence of Carlsbad Caverns.  Presumably, a constable (with stable) would be the fellow in charge of renting out horses, and a conscience (with science) will be someone working in biology or chemistry and content (with tent) will refer to someone who enjoys camping.  If you have been to a concert to hear Mr. Gill sing, you may have been conVinced. 

We could cite a good many other examples of this phenomenon, but I believe the safe course of action in this case is to conclude.

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October 25, 2010 by Dave Rama.

(Except for those that don’t.)

It is not true that my parents were mean people.There was never any beating, or physical mistreatment in our home.There was food to eat and clothes to wear, and we were allowed to sleep inside. Still, during the middle part of my first childhood, I wondered why I had been placed in their care. Why was I forced into a situation for which I had so little aptitude and zero interest?

In the course of their own childhood experiences, each parent had learned to play a musical instrument. My mother had been a violin player, and also played something called a French horn. My father had played the clarinet in the school band. The cool people called a clarinet a “licorice stick” for its black color. There is or was some divergence of opinion about the quality of my mother’s playing. Her brother, my uncle, remembers her violin practice sessions with something less than admiration.

My own experience at playing music consisted of Grandma’s attempts to interest me in playing the piano. I loved my Grandma, so I was dutiful in learning to play the scale. Given enough time (say, maybe an hour), I could also figure out what note I was supposed to play from the location of the note on the staff. The notes placed in the spaces on the staff spelled out f-a-c-e. The notes placed on the staff lines generated the sentence “every good boy does fine” by using the initials e-g-b-d-f. At this point, I have no idea whether these memory tricks read from top to bottom or vice versa. Music becomes far too complex for me after this basic instruction.

There are notes of all shapes and sizes and different tempos like 4/4, and 3/4 and 6/8. In addition, notes have an assortment of flags to tell you how long to hold that particular note, and this changes with each piece or when the tempo changes. When you have advanced far enough to understand this part of the business, some clever person will start tying two or more notes together with their respective flags. These might be called chords but I am not really clear on that. The other business about notes is that they not only have an identifying letter, but they also have fractional values. It turns out that music is a mathematical function.

I did learn to find middle C on a piano keyboard. I found it the same way I find the book of Psalms in the Bible. Look in the middle. Here is a question: Does a guitar have middle C, or are all the C notes the same? Another question: Is there a middle D or middle A? Where are they? The truth is I have no idea of the difference in sound from one note to the next. If you asked me to find any note other than middle C on a piano, it would be lucky guesswork if I got any of the other 87 keys right. To her credit, my Grandma had long since given up on my imaginary musical ability.

In our school however, there was a musical nimrod who felt there should be a grade school band. There were also a lot of people in our town who could not mind their own business. They shared the gossip about this hypothetical band with my parents. There was an available used clarinet somewhere in the family attic, and it was placed before me with the direction that I would play this creation in the grade school band.

No one bothered to tell me what hole to cover for C or any other letter/fraction, so I was pretty lost. In addition, my fine motor skills are non-existent. I could usually get the reed end of the clarinet in my mouth all right, but that was about the highlight of the day, clarinet-wise. I know at this point in my life that the clarinet and saxophone are my favorite instruments to hear someone else play. When played well, these horns make nice mellow sounds.

In my feeble attempts to blow air through this pipe, I could occasionally make a noise, but I never knew what it was going to sound like. One time it would sound very much like an enraged Rhode Island Red chicken, and the next time, it would sound like a sissified cougar. NEVER did I get a satisfying, finger-snapping, melodious tootle. It was always the sound of an angry Daffy Duck.

Trying to transfer the highly complex information on the sheet music into a rhythmic activity from my fingers and lungs and thumbs and make a pleasant sound was and is simply impossible for me. It might as well be written in Cyrillic. I was always two pages behind every other person in the band.

On the rare occasions when my horn made a noise, people in the room (including me) would stare in bewilderment, wondering if the Russians were about to bomb us to extinction. (Of course that was a silly idea. We were really well protected from that event because we had been trained to hide under our wooden desks so we would be safe). Happily, there will be no reunion of the third and fourth grade band. My career in band was actually quite brief, although at the time, I was sure that I would dwell in the band room forever.

In the intervening years following my attempted tooting, I have had the opportunity to walk through a schoolhouse where a music teacher has been entrapped to teach grade school band. One always wonders whether they were lured into accepting that position by offers of love or money. When I heard the sounds of grade school band in the hall, I promptly broke into a rash, and sprinted outside. Later, after the children were gone, I walked back past the room, and I could hear the soft sobbing of the music teacher.

I have the greatest respect and admiration for anyone who can teach beginning band without turning into a psychopathic sniper. I feel empathy for those men and women, because they, too, have come to a greater understanding of what eternity really entails. The good news is these gentle folks have no fear of dying. They have already been to Hell.

Dave Rama still contributes bits of humor despite the fact that he has been self-exiled to Chadron, Nebraska.

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October 11, 2010 by Linda Bergeron.

By Linda Bergeron

This is all about change, and growth, and personal development. Ah, it can be a nice view in the rear view mirror of life.

I was a shy child, knew that I was loved, and had the fortune of a solid, enjoyable childhood with both parents and a sister. I grew up in a modest home with my needs met, and nice surprises. (Dad liked to celebrate birthdays by taking us to high-class restaurants requiring that we dress up, and Mom made sure that a couple of trips into the city for a Broadway show or two covered a few other celebrations.) There were aunts and uncles, cousins older than I, visits to others’ homes over the holidays.

Importantly I think, all the oldsters had lived their childhoods and adolescent years through the Great Depression, so having plenty to eat, small gifts to give, good jobs, homes, and good times together were occasions that were full of stories, jokes, many, many smiles. They were thankful for all they had and their lives showed it.

I was a watcher. I was hugged and entreated to join in. I warmed up slowly and smiled and ate, and lapped up the goodness of ‘family’ like a happy pup.

School was a challenge, but I strived to do my best, and winced when I heard another oral report announced. Dad had finished the ample attic of our Cape Cod house into a bedroom each for my sister and I, and sitting in the seat of the front dormer was a favorite reading place for me.

Mom and Dad were fine models of affectionate parents. She took care of the house, had us girls do dishes, clean our rooms, hang laundry; she worked part-time when we were older; enlivened our home with her sewing, crochet, and painting. Dad loved his drafting work in an office with a friendly mentor Sam; always had a building project in the works, with wood, or concrete or something; took the small downstairs bedroom for his den (why he built those upstairs rooms, of course); was up late working on his book, about a math higher math than I could understand as an elementary student. He loved the yard, the woods, driving to beautiful places, and camping. The out of doors was his church, he said, and I loved his church.

They all accepted me as quiet and reserved, and egged me on as gently as they could. The unspoken family motto was that we were a unity of support for one another, and the blessing words were, “I love you.”

Then my sister became a teenager, Dad’s health got trickier, Mom got sick, my best friend of all time moved away, and Mom and Dad decided to sell our house and move too. She became very ill very fast; I was not told she was dying; I struggled with a new school and classmates (in the south) who were about two years further developed socially than I.

I could of course write an entire long book about my high school years, long marriage of challenges and how I emerged, divorced and raising a last child, alone, at 46.

Now you know my background, reader. I believe our childhood is like the foundation of our whole house – our beliefs, our ability to trust, that spiritual knowledge that we grow up with (or without). That beginning is what we fall back on when life throws us fast balls, or when we make horrendous mistakes and have to scramble back to an even road. It’s what we have for answers in the middle of the night when our first child is very sick, or when a letter in the mail changes a day from normal to unthinkable. It is the great underlying realm that we view our world from (even as we dream), our lens that, over time, we learn to polish and aim and carry at our sternum from which we look and look and look.

I did not mention that I was a fearful child - only learning to ride a bike at age fourteen because I was afraid of falling, avoiding ladders and cliff edges because I was afraid of heights (Mom had vertigo), afraid to speak up because listening was so much more interesting, and my inner voice always so much more dependable. I grew in manageable, safe areas, but it was very slow.

Even as an adult I had never traveled alone. I was in my fifties, and my sister (the first-born, independent, very traveled person) was visiting from the great diagonal line of Florida to Oregon in her van. She would be driving back soon and I suddenly wanted to travel with her. We made the plan that we would drive away together, stop in Salt Lake City overnight, and I’d catch the short air flight hop back to Boise, and home. It was a perfect first time: a short flight, great plane ride, do-able. And done! I definitely felt that leap of growth.

Next time, only a few years later, we planned a reunion on the east coast to visit relations. We would travel up through the states in my sister’s van, and I’d fly in to join the trip in Raleigh, NC and, at travels’ end, fly back home in the west out of Washington, D.C. This was a much longer ride, and when all was done, and I had a full journal and many photos of this memorable trip, I felt like a woman of the world, capable of all kinds of things.

Then last year, after my oldest son had waited several years for me to take him up on his invitation to visit him in Alaska, I did. It was a marvelous flight along the coast with a window seat where I could view all the bays, the long line of cresting waves far below, the wondrous view upon the marriageable terrain to ocean world.

I knew there was an offer in Denali Park for a guest trip in an eight-seater, two-engine plane that was ‘flight-seeing’ around Mount McKinley and the giant world of huge sloped valleys, highways of glaciers, braided riverbeds and crusted peaks of snow in clouds. I said Yes to this, was appropriately nervous the day of, but followed through, finding myself in no less than the co-pilot seat for a grand escort and fear left behind on the ground.

Imagine me, doing these things? My sister, my daughter, this eldest son – they all know me, have known me through the years, and see me now. See the pictures that I could only have taken from where I truly sat! (And my son was in the rear of the plane, so he really saw me get on and off.)

The adventure of life is available each day. It was there when I struggled with feeding and caring for young children, and my concern about what they learned and how they felt. It was there, inherent and strong as ever, when I felt the onslaught of obstacles and cried and would have beat my chest if it had done any good, learning lessons, getting through it.

Adventure lives as I read a wide array of history and commentary and feel the strands of understanding catching to one another, and having conversations of discovery and insight with another who reads, late at night.

I think I learn the most when I stand outside listening to the morning; sometimes it is silent and I wait for that one bird that may call from afar. Traveling in a solo rhythm over miles, beside rivers, paralleled by crags and wild growing things and the flow of thoughts that arise as I, in the present and moving forward, carry my history, the ancestor spirits alive in me, and the wherever that I am moving toward.

If the moment is blessed, the eagle will let you see him, or the formation of the rock will be alive to your eye and the feeling that comes to you.

It has been pointed out to me that the eagle is so revered because he can go higher than any person can, that in his lofty world he can linger on the current of air, relaxed and beautiful, that his eyes can see further, of the wide and rounding view of earth, and if we imagined ourselves looking out from his eyes, we could see far also.

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July 22, 2010 by Clair Button.

I recently found myself studying grocery ads like I was reading an incisive book. “Beef rump roast at $1.99 per pound,” I remarked to my wife, “not bad if you are willing to chew on a cow’s butt.” For some unknown reason, perhaps consumer psychology related to the Gulf oil spill, fish is no longer within our normal budgetary allowance.

“I’ll write that down,” she replied. “Which store?”

So it goes. This is a small town. You cannot visit a grocery store without seeing people you know, so we stopped to speak with an old friend who was reading the small print on the tags posted on the shelves. “Being retired means you shop more and buy less,” he said.

I guess that is true. Given the age demographics in our town, you would think the grocery stores would pay a bit more attention to scaling down the prices on the basic, unprocessed food items, while charging the profligate more for their potato chips and beer. Unfortunately, we live in a cold climate, and growing peppers is an act of faith. When green peppers went from 50 cents apiece to 2 bucks, and red peppers approached 4 bucks, we declined the offer. The problem with age is that you don’t always develop dementia. We can still remember sweet corn at 10 cents an ear.

We just returned from visiting my wife’s father in Boulder, Colorado. There, among the privileged generation of Lady Gaga, we found strawberries at a buck a pound, red peppers so cheap we bought a dozen, and fresh Washington cherries cheaper than in Oregon. We binged so completely that the gastric distress could have powered my truck on the way home, if only we had a flex-fuel hose to the cab.

However, after a week in the frantic flow of traffic in Boulder, cheaper gas prices notwithstanding, we were quite happy to return to our little town at the end of the earth. Quality of life means a lot. You pay for what you get.

Clair Button makes irregular contributions of (ill-?) reputed humor to this column from time to time.

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