So? 2023? Your Best Memory This Year?

 An assortment of fireworks displays.

In Honor Of The New Year

Requested by Nana,

So for the 4th or the 1st...

This one is German.

Japanese!

New York!

Paris!

And Most Importantly, Tulalip!

Home of the incomparable Boom City!

This is the new location. The old one was right on the bay near our place!

War Zone on the night of July 4th any year!

Totally nuts.

But, back to 2023. I wonder what your greatest moments were during this waning, almost over, year? 

Some of mine were just yakking with you guys.  Also, writing the Ralph stories, and that crazy thing about OZ, the Thumbie! I don't know where that came out of!

Bless all your sweet little hearts.  Here's hoping for the best in 2024, in spite of it all!

Wheels!

  
Inside, Aunt Julia was tucked into her usual chair with that Navajo blanket with the red, black and white stripes on her lap. Billy was in his usual place there too. Both items would help with the chill. She had a small woodstove, but no fire was lit yet.

“You’re a good-looking woman Beth, but you’ll need a dentist one of these days,” she said suddenly.

“If those thugs have any reach nationally, they will be looking for a woman with missing teeth. This is a good place to disappear. And it’s not like there aren’t others but still something to think about. I know an old lady dentist who works out here on the res a few days a month. She also has an office in Joe. We could drop in on her one of these days if you want.”

There was a mirror on the wall over the sofa. It was one of those horizontal ones, like a landscape. Standing there I looked at myself. There was just a trace of yellow where the bruising around my eyes had been. I have dark blue eyes. I hadn’t been wearing my usual makeup since coming to Arizona. What I saw in the mirror was a woman who was no longer twenty years old but still rather nice looking. My streaky brown and sun-bleached hair was braided in one long plait that hung over my left shoulder. I am tallish for a woman and not thin.

The broken left hand had not been bothering me much. I hadn’t been using it and it seemed to be healing fine. That beating seemed to have been a long time ago to me now. The memory of my whole old life had a dreamlike feel to it in fact.

If I kept my mouth shut you wouldn’t notice the missing teeth, but as soon as I smiled or spoke you would. Aunt Julia was right. Something needed to be done.

“OK,” I said. “I can see that you are right. I just couldn’t imagine what we were going to do about it.”

“When you get your bedroom put together, we should get my grandson to drive us into town to see her,” she said. “I’ll call her.”

She patted Billy and closed her eyes. I went out to the kitchen thinking about some lunch. I thought about grocery shopping too. It seemed obvious to me that we were going to need some kind of vehicle to live out here. Ben couldn’t continue driving us all the time.

This was a problem for the near future, as was some way of making money.

I called out “Aunt Julia, would you like a sandwich?” She said yes, so I made tuna salad sandwiches, and we had them sitting together in the living room with Billy. I also made us some tea.

The afternoon drifted on pleasantly with talk of family and history and projects for the next few days. She seemed to be pleased by it all. I had never met anyone like her before. She was still. There was an air of quiet finality around her. Maybe it was a sense of knowing that I was noticing. Though she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds she seemed powerful. A tiny crinkled black-eyed matriarch. Jessie said she was 85 years old.

Finally, Ben’s old pickup rolled slowly up the driveway. It had a big load in the back. He parked it in the usual spot at the end of the mobile as there was no way to get closer to the hogan with it. Because of my hand being broken, Jessie and Ben did all the lifting and carrying. It didn’t take long. They set up the bed and carried in the bedding and made the bed too.

In a local thrift store in Winslow, they had found a little dresser, a small wooden table with two matching chairs. Those went in too.

I walked out there and watched. It was beginning to look habitable. I sat on the bed. This was going to be our home. I tried not to worry about how the lion had gotten in there earlier. For some reason, I still didn’t feel like discussing her yet with any of them, not even Jessie.

Ben was shorter than Jessie. He had a sweet round face and the usual black hair and eyes. I noticed that they looked related but not just alike. He still looked like a young kid. Jessie was thin and severe in general type. Back up in Washington I hadn’t really been aware of how “Indian” Jessie looked. It didn’t really come to mind. He was just Jessie to me.

Ben said he needed to get home, but agreed to help us with the dentist trip whenever it was arranged. He got out of his chair, kissed his grandma, and got ready to walk out of the door.

“Wait a minute Jessie, my dad has Grampa’s old Chevy pickup. It’s super old, like a ’57, but I bet you could drive it around. It runs, but my dad hardly ever uses it,” said Ben thoughtfully. “I’ll hype him on the idea when I get home.”

“Let’s call him now,” said Aunt Julia. “Maybe you guys can drive over there now and pick it up today. Why not?

“It’s still licensed to your grampa,” she said, “so, it’s really mine, isn’t it?”

The call was made. Ben senior agreed. He said he would be glad to have it out of his back yard. So, Ben and Jessie got back into the pickup and took off down the driveway again.

While Jessie was gone, I fed and watered the six hens. I brought them a wooden box, just in case they wanted a place to put an egg or two. They still needed a way to get up off the ground during the night. I promised them again that we would see to that. Even just a section of log to sit on would be an improvement I thought. I chatted them up a bit, hoping they would see me as friendly after the undignified way that I had carried them by their feet the night we moved them.

Then I thought about what to make for dinner. It was just like being home.

Just as it was getting dark Jessie rattled up the driveway in a rusty old Chevy pickup. Rusty with pale blue paint remaining in some areas of the body. It looked good to me. It sounded OK too. One by one our needs were being met.

After spaghetti and a little chop salad Jessie made a fire in Aunt Julia’s stove and we said goodnight to Aunt Julia. Jessie and I made our way out to our new bedroom in the hogan. He locked the door with the simple hook mechanism. He built a fire in the stove, and it began to be quite cozy.

“Beth, I saw the Phoenix paper while we were in Winslow. The headline was Cult Leader Vanishes. They published a smudgy photo that looked somewhat like you.

“Ben didn’t seem to notice it.

“I wouldn’t have thought people down here gave a hoot about high strangeness up in Washington,” said Jessie.

Link to the whole story so far; They haven't taken my phone yet.docx

Days Are Still Awfully Short

 Another Year Has Slipped Away

And here we have another open thread!

   My initial thought last night was that it's always night in space. But maybe that's wrong. In photos it looks dark out there. Maybe it only seems dark.

   Maybe sunny days and nearby light are special gifts given to us, right here, on this planet, surrounded by that apparent darkness.

   I do know that we await longer days and spring quite eagerly. 

   What a heartbreakingly beautiful planet we have been given to live on.

   Summer or winter, night or day, He is with us.

What Say You?

A Problem Solved

 

Frank Wilson was what they used to call a drifter, or even a hobo, long ago. He was in his fifties and had never had a real job in his life. Not the kind of job that you get up in the morning for every day. 

It was cold and dark, and he was tired of walking up the two-lane highway heading north away from Joe City. He had walked this road before and he knew who lived where, though most of the inhabitants locally didn’t know him. When he saw the Chee’s long dirt driveway, he had an idea. He decided to walk into the place and see what was there that might be of use to him. Maybe there would be some kind of shelter for the night.

It was plenty dark there. He only heard his own muffled steps in the dust.

He wore a flannel lined denim jacket, jeans and well-worn western boots. He carried a small old backpack. Over his two gray braids he wore a black western hat. In any crowd of men at any country function you would not have particularly noticed him, though we was rather good looking. He was wiry and thin.

To tell the truth Frank was a thief.

There was a dark colored old Honda in the yard, parked at the end of the mobile home. No lights were on in the mobile. There was no dog in the yard to bark at him. The Honda’s doors were not locked. Frank began to feel hopeful.

There are a couple of places people are likely to put their car keys just to hide them a little bit, in the area around the car. One of these is under one of the two front seats. The keys were not in either of these places. Sometimes people will put them up on top of a tire. He checked all four tires. No keys were on the tires. He got into the driver’s seat and sat there for a minute before opening the glovebox. Yep. Jessie had put the keys in there. He was not expecting Frank or anyone like him to come snooping around in the middle of the night.

A Honda starting up doesn’t make a lot of noise. They are quiet usually. So, when Frank started it up and rolled down the dusty driveway no one in the house woke or even rolled over in their sleep. Billy heard, but he had no opinion on the matter. The six hens shifted a little in their sleep. Night resumed its silence.

Beth was the first to awaken the next morning. She stepped quietly out to the small kitchen to start some coffee. She glanced out of the kitchen window. No car waited there in the yard. Unaccountably, it was gone. She had the weird feeling that Jessie must have gone somewhere, but she knew he hadn’t. He was back there in his aunt’s bedroom asleep.

She leaned on the counter for a moment and then went back there to give him the news. Someone had taken their Honda.

Of course, he was upset. It was one of those things that a person can’t really do anything about. He didn’t think it would be wise to get the police involved. After all they were trying to remain off of official radar.

Aunt Julia was disgusted. She said no one had ever come up into her yard and stolen anything ever before. She had always felt safe here, even though she was alone most of the time. She had never even felt the need to lock her door.

So, as the light came up, they sat at the small table in the kitchen, drinking coffee and having some oatmeal. Jessie said “well, Beth, there is one good thing about it. No one can follow the car to us now. It’s gone.”


Since there was nothing to be done about the car but forget it, we decided to spend that day cleaning out the hogan. We wanted to give Aunt Julia back her bed, so we needed to be able to sleep out there.

Sweeping and scrubbing are sweeping and scrubbing. Nothing much to report there. Once the dust was removed, Julia was proven right. The hogan was in pretty good repair. Jessie made a fire in the stove. It worked fine. The smoke went up the chimney just like it was supposed to. It became nice and warm and pleasant inside. But it was dark. Jessie said we would bring a wire out from the house so we could have light. But the next thing to do was buy bedding and maybe a small dresser and probably get a table and two chairs also.

“Let’s call Ben,” said Aunt Julia. “He’ll help. But you will have to fill him in a little bit, you know?”

So, she called her grandson and asked him to come out. Half an hour later he was there in an old Ford pickup.

She was proven right once more, as Ben was a nice guy with an easy smile and an intact sense of humor. We took him somewhat into our confidence, and he was more than willing to play along. Jessie said my name was Linda. I would have to be careful to keep that in mind.

We would have needed help to bring a mattress and box springs out here anyhow. You can’t really carry those things on top of a smallish car.

There is no place to buy furniture in Joseph City, so Ben agreed to drive Jessie out to Winslow to a store there. That was probably better anyhow because no one would notice a couple of guys buying some stuff with cash and connect it in any way to Julia Chee in Joseph City.

They would look for a small dresser also. I thought maybe we could get some of what we needed second hand.

So, I decided to stay with Julia while Ben drove Jessie the 22 miles to Winslow and back with our new stuff. I thought I would like to get to know her better.

Before going into the house, I decided to go look inside the hogan again. I was trying to arrange living there, in my imagination. I wanted to be there and think about it some more.

I pulled the door open and stepped inside. It was shady in there. I wasn’t expecting anything but the stove and Uncle John’s toolbox. However, as I took a couple more steps, I noticed that there was something else. Sitting on her haunches in the gloom was what was apparently the same mountain lion that I had seen on our first day here. We stared at each other, and she rose to her feet and silently padded past me, so close I could have stroked her back, and out the door. I ran to the doorway and looked out. There was no lion in sight.

Link to all of the story so far; They haven't taken my phone yet^.docx

Longing

 A Hymn Of Glory

Anim Zemirot    אַנְעִים זְמִירוֹת

Translation: 1A Soothing songs and poems I weave because my soul longs for You. 1B My soul desires the shadow of your hand, to know every one of Your secrets. 2A Each time I speak of Your glory, my heart longs for Your love. 2B Therefore​ I will speak about You, about Your glories. Your name I shall honor with love songs. 3A I’ll tell of Your glory, though I have never seen You. I’ll give people images for You and names for You, but I do not even know You. 3B By the hand of Your prophets or through private counsel with Your worshippe​rs, You provided images of the beauty and glory of Your power. 4A They named Your powerful deeds: "Your greatness​," "Your strength.​" 4B They imagined You, but not as You really are. They tried to describe You according​ to Your deeds. 5A They made parables about You and provided a myriad of visions of You, yet here You are, One in all the different​ forms. 5B They envisione​d You as an old man and as a young man, the hair on Your head as that of a man satisfied​ in days or just at his dawn. 6A Old on the day of judgment,​ and young at the battle front: a man of war with many hands. 6B You wear salvation​ as a hat; Salvation​ is Yours, exhibited​ by your holy right arm. 7A His curls are as black as a downpour at night, but only light reflects in the drops. 7B He will be glorified​ through me. He wants me. He is the crown of my desire. 8A Fine pure gold is my image for His head; on His forehead His glorious holy name is engraved.​ 8B With grace, honor, and a magnifice​nt desire, His people wreath Him with a crown. 9A The locks of His hair are like a youth's; they are mounds of black curls. 9B A garden of justice is His greatest desire; it rises above His greatest joy. 10A When He holds His treasured​ people as a crown in His hand, we are like a royal turban, a sign of His desire. 10B He carries us all, each of us with a crown. He values us. He honors us. 11A He adorns Himself for me and I adorn myself for Him. He is close to me when I call. 11B Bright and red, His garment is red. He makes his way on the path from Edom. [Sounds like "adom" which means "red".] 12A He showed the teffilin knot [he was wearing (at the base of the back of his head)] to His humble one [Moses]; an image of Adonai, seen with his own eyes. 12B He accepts His people, adorning the humble and being adorned by them, as He dwells among their praises. 13A Your chief word is "truth"; You've called it out since the beginning​. In each generatio​n people interpret​ You and find meaning. 13B I humbly place before You this noise, my songs, so that my joy will draw near to You. 14A May my praise be a crown for Your head, my prayers be accepted like incense. 14B May the poor person's song be dear to You, like the songs that were offered with the sacrifice​s. 15A May my blessing rise up to You, the Sustainer​, the one who stirs up [the status quo], giving birth to justice like [water from] a well [quenches​ thirst]. 15B Please nod to acknowled​ge my blessing;​ take it for Yourself as You took from the incense of old. 16 I hope that these words were sweet; they came out of my longing for You. [17 He who verbalize​s God's strengths​ will voice his (own) glory]

Ran Into A Word

 When I found this photo yesterday it occurred to me to wonder if there was a word that meant longing for the desert. I did not find precisely that.

I ran into an old friend word, fernweh, longing for far away places. German. Farsickness. That's pretty good.  But it is not specific to the glamorous American southwest. Ah no.

I could not find such a word.  But I did find sehnsucht. Die Sehnsucht. ˈzeːnˌzʊχt

A noun with a meaning which is a combination of ‘longing’, ‘pining’ or ‘yearning’, the idea of Sehnsucht is something which can’t be summed up in one word in English.

Some psychologists use the word to represent thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences.[2]

 Oddly enough, when we were visiting the southwest we encountered at least a few Germans who seemed to have had that longing and made good on it.  I remember one young man walking around a pueblo literally holding his hat in both hands in a state of wonder.

Well, how could I not long for such a place?

 

The Greatest Gift

 

❅

Merry Christmas to everyone! May hearts and minds be filled to the brim with Life's blessings of peace, joy, health, and the saving power of grace as we celebrate the nativity of Jesus and the advent of Christ, —the beautiful and perfect earthly manifestation of God's Truth and Love upon all mankind.

❅ 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. —John 3:16

❅  

❅ 

✯

What Would Peace On Earth Look Like?

Wishing you a happy Christmas Eve

 Would it be just Pax, the absence of active warfare? Would that be a good place to start? Bringing it up to a neutral state?

It has to be more than that.  How about Shalom. Hebrew, literally "peace," properly "completeness, soundness, welfare," from stem of shalam "was intact, was complete, was in good health." 

Complete welfare. Soundness. It sounds like health with all needs supplied. Peace on earth, shalom, for everyone. Good will toward men.

It sounds to me like it must start in each human heart, mine in fact. There was a simple directive to that effect. Messiah said, love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.

It's a big neighborhood. Looking around a bit, I see that it includes the stars and all of creation. But right here and now we deal with here and now.

Maybe when we think of the earthly peaceable kingdom we think of something agrarian. 

It doesn't have to be, though it certainly would include that world.  If mankind spent the money and energy on invention and exploration that we spend on warfare and oppression it is beyond imagination what we could do.

We could be swinging on a star!

It's Snow, Man! Just Not Here Yet

   Once upon a time, long ago, 1953, in September a small girl began her school career.
Since she lived on 95th street, which crosses Aurora Avenue in Seattle, she was sent to Oak Lake Elementary. She was barely old enough to be allowed to go to school that year, but her mother had just given birth to baby number four and, well, they needed some way to keep the child occupied.

   Late that fall the class began to be taught a certain song. Possibly this song was the genesis of her constant obsession with snow. It is quite possible that she had never seen real snow. It became magical in her mind. She remembers being so young that she had no idea what coal was. Frosty's eyes were made of coal. Whatever was coal?

   The second verse especially taught her that it is a sorrowful thing when the snow melts!  It was a heartbreaking loss. Rain on snow was impossibly sad.  A green Christmas became a big letdown in spite of the tree with its bubble lights and mystical red ruched cellophane rope, so very beautiful.

Ooh Frosty the snowman
Knew the sun was hot that day
So he said, "Let's run and we'll have some fun
Now before I melt away."
Down to the village
With a broomstick in his hand
Running here and there all around the square
Saying "catch me if you can!"
He led them down the streets of town
Right to the traffic cop
And he only paused a moment when
He heard him holler "Stop!"
Oh, Frosty the snowman
Had to hurry on his way
But he waved goodbye, saying
"Don't you cry, I'll be back again someday."

   But her very young mother, who also loved snow, assured her that snow and snow's magic would come again some winter when she arose from sleep and ran to the windows to check.

   She still waits for snow every Christmas season and still has hope every winter to see the world miraculously transformed in that breathless silent heavenly way.

  

   

 

Remind Me Not To Forget

 

forget (v.)

Old English forgietan "lose the power of recalling to the mind; fail to remember; neglect inadvertently," from for-, used here probably with privative force, "away, amiss, opposite" + gietan "to grasp" (see get (v.)). To "un-get," hence "to lose" from the mind. A common Germanic construction (compare Old Saxon fargetan, Old Frisian forjeta, Dutch vergeten, Old High German firgezzan, German vergessen "to forget"). The physical sense would be "to lose (one's) grip on," but that is not recorded in any historical Germanic language. Figurative sense of "lose care for" is from late 13c. Related: Forgetting; forgot; forgotten.

remind (v.) 

1640s, "to remember, recall (something) to one's mind" (a sense now obsolete); 1650s as "put (someone) in mind of (something), bring to the remembrance of;" from re- "again" + mind (v.). A Latin-Germanic hybrid. Related: Reminded; reminding.

memory (n.)

late 13c., "recollection (of someone or something); remembrance, awareness or consciousness (of someone or something)," also "fame, renown, reputation;" from Anglo-French memorie (Old French memoire, 11c., "mind, memory, remembrance; memorial, record") and directly from Latin memoria "memory, remembrance, faculty of remembering," abstract noun from memor "mindful, remembering," from PIE root *(s)mer- (1) "to remember."

____________________________________________

Three words.

Memory may be considered to be the cornerstone of the mind. Without memory no one is there. There is only a biological entity. It is in memory where the knowledge of self and reality lives.

As Mike Adams and Dr. Nehls were discussing yesterday, the powers of our dysfunctional world are implementing a program of removing the native mentality of men and women and replacing it with artificial constructs of their own design.

This reprogramming causes people to forget. To lose themselves, to become robotic worker ants in their army. Their brain functions, but it is possessed.

We all know people who cannot be reasoned with. I think there are two kinds of unreasonable people. The mindless reprogrammed kind is one. They have forgotten. I think the other one has thought it out using their own reasoning and has come to a wrong conclusion. Actually, there is hope for the person who has reasoned incorrectly but has reasoned.

 

*The word that got me all excited was re-mind or remind. To remake the mind. What an excellent possibility!

I know there is that possibility because I have some experience with coming back into myself. As I have tiresomely stated before, in 2015 I was very ill with sepsis and near death. Sepsis is very hard on the brain. I lost a lot. Much of my life I simply did not remember.

What to do. Well, I found that as people reminded me of parts of my history those parts rejoined my mind and stayed.

But I think there is a greater re-minding that can be done. This re-minding fills in valleys and makes level mountaintops. It replaces that which has been destroyed or lost with a better mind.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Or mind.  The principle is there. 

Safety lies in great care in feeding the mind.  First of all, continually meditating on the word of God.  I have fallen woefully short here, but I can improve that.  Then if we do that we are re-minded in the most healthful and constructive ways.  Of course, there is a world of other worthwhile material also. It is all helpful.

 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

      Eph. 4:14 

 There is a lot to be eschewed also. Most media is merely hypnotic suggestion.

There is no need to be a victim, to be re-programmed by the world.

Maybe I don’t always make perfect sense, but writing to you people all these months has helped me immeasurably. It has materially improved my mind. In ways I am better now than I was before I lost so much of my memory. I look back at that woman with sympathy, but she has been reformed.

For your forbearance and attention, I thank you.

It's The Thursday Before Christmas

 Wishing you all the happiness your hearts can hold today and everyday.

And kittens.  Always kittens.

Happy Wednesday Before Christmas Open Thread

 Wishing you the most happy, festive Wednesday before Christmas that there ever was!

I don't see myself making cookies....

but there could be a sort of 

Christmas Miracle.

 

A Fine Squatchy Winter Solstice Dinner 

Hey Meowsters, this is Ramona. I bet you wonder what it was that I was cooking for Ralph the other day while he shooed that goofy girl out of the woods.

It’s natural to wonder, since until recently we Forest People did not cook our food. But it’s also natural to change with the times, and it is quite possible to learn from each other. So, now I often do cook. I have a few pans and some implements. I have a pretty good knife that Thaga gave me for my birthday one year also. I’m not trying to outdo Julia Child. (come to think of it she was a little Sqatchy herself!)

I wonder what you people have learned from us!

I have a little hearth near the front of the cave, so the smoke draws outside, you know? Over the top of the circle of stones I have a metal grill Ralph picked up somewhere. I never know where he gets this stuff. 

Now, earlier that same day he caught a rabbit. OK. That’s a start. So, I grabbed Twigg and a basket, yep, I have one, and set out to look for mushrooms. Twigg kind of rides on my back hanging on to my hair. I had to venture out of the deep forest for those, but I found a couple of good handfuls near the highway. I hope we didn’t cause heart failure for anyone if they saw us. 

I wanted an onion. But they don’t grow in the woods and all the local gardens were asleep for the winter. Salt and pepper and some thyme and garlic powder would have to do. I would have liked a couple of tomatoes too, but fat chance of that.

While Ralph was out snooping around the forest, I dealt with that rabbit. When I was done with it, it looked like this. Neat huh? 

I had a little bacon, don’t ask. So, the first thing I did was to chop it up fine and throw a few more pieces of branches on the fire. The fire is always burning if I have anything to do with it, and I generally do!

I put my large iron pot on the grill and dumped in the bacon and we’re off! I just about wept for the lack of an onion. It’s just not right I tell you! After that I browned the bunny in the bacon fat, salted and peppered and garlicked it, threw in some thyme that had been growing in a pot outside the cave, and let it go for a while.

While it was cooking, I snuggled with Twigg and fed him.

Next, I tossed in those mushrooms and a little water just to juicy it up a little. I let the fire die down, put the lid on the pan and figured that soon his hungry self would arrive, and he did.

He seemed remarkably pleased with himself for some reason too! It’s sort of horrible when he grins and giggles like that. You know? Aw, but a girl can't help but love him.

A past example!

Werifesteria? Wait? What?

 

“Ralph. Hey, Ralph. Do you remember me?” The voice came from overhead. A large tan cat of the Cougar variety was draped over a branch of a very respectable Douglas Fir. "Hiss! Hey!"

Ralph had been stretched out on a fallen log contemplating various air molecules and thinking in between molecules of the vagaries of family life. Oh, Ralph was as happy as he could be, though he was an older first-time father and had been rather settled in his ways. Things had changed a lot lately. Twigg, for instance, was growing fast and could scamper up a leg and clear up onto his head like a, well, like a monkey!

“Ralph, listen, I’m the cat that friend of yours captured twice and brought to you to be a pet. Uncle Bob. That guy! The stoner one.”

Ralph looked up, squinting, to locate the source of the voice.

“Oh, yeah. I remember that!” Ralph giggled. It sounded like someone beating on a 55 gallon drum with a sack of ducks.

“What’s up Catty, ma’am?”

“I’ve been following some chick in a long green dress ever since she ducked into the woods a couple of miles north of here on Highway 9. I think she might be looking for you.” The cat sat up on her branch and looked behind herself into the dark thicket of blackberry and bracken. “Honestly, I think she is in a state of some kind of dippy euphoria. She’s singing and doing little prancy dance dips and dabs. Maybe she is demented, Ralph.

“She has a camera, and she is looking for you! Bet me! She wants proof, dude. Do you understand what I am suggesting here, Ralph?”

Ralph rotates to place his size 22 feet on the forest floor, sits up and scratches his short thick neck back where it’s hard to get at. He grunts happily.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“You’re supposed to be in charge here. King of Snohomish County, ladeedah! Do you realize what it will be like if she gets some clear photos of you and Ramona and Twigg? The forest will be crawling with people like Dave P.

“Maybe you can stand it, but I am meant to be a ghost of the forest! I have no desire to be discovered,” she said, getting just a bit hysterical.

“I have two cubs stashed in a hollow log back there. I don’t want them to even know there is such a thing as some crazy woman flitting through the trees!” She screams piercingly, glaring right at him.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” admits Ralph. “She’s my problem too.”

He stands up reluctantly, stretches. He’s put on some weight recently. He could reach that cat if he wanted to. He’s that tall. When he moves around his essential aroma permeates the area. A mix of musk and something resinous, and maybe a touch of rotted fish.
“Tell ya what Ma Cat, I’ll scare the loopty loos out of the gal. She’ll be back in downtown Milltown before the Tasty Freeze closes for the night. I’ll give her a mystery to remember. She’ll never come out here again!” Ralph sniggers to himself.

Ma Cat heads back to that hollow log silently. Like a ghost you know.

Off to stage left there is heard some girlish warbling song. I won’t embarrass the girl by repeating the words of her song. Suffice it to say that it is very foolish indeed.

Ralph passes to the right and becomes One With The Forest. He pretty much can’t be seen. He fades. He waits happily and confidently. These are his best moments. Well, I mean when he is away from his Ramona and small son Twigg, of course.

“Trala, la la la,” the silly voice drifts closer to center stage. Some staggering steps are heard. Vines are torn, little branches crunch. 

Ralph fills his lungs. His eyes glow dark green in the gloom. He feels his powers build! His mighty chest is full to bursting with the joy of a good terrorizing. 

He lets out a yell like an elephant with kidney stones. His bellows and whoops shake the air! Portals pop open and then clap shut! Fir cones drop out of trees! Birds leave the general area just to be safe… 

Again and again, he brutalizes the forest soundscape! (It’s really rather awful.) He finishes with a fit of wheezing and some cryptid giggles and snorts. 

Ms Greendress experiences a kind of life-changing mental shift. Her goals change rapidly to those involving getting the hell out of the local area as efficiently as possible. In a word she is stampeded. She is perfectly safe, but not aware of that fact. Soon she is safely tucked into her nice little Volvo and purring southward down Highway 9 with a new resolution in her trembling heart. 

Ralph clears his throat and thinks he might be getting a little hungry. So, he strolls on back toward that nice cave and Ramona and Twigg and a good Squatchy dinner. He wonders what she has cooked up for him. His tummy rumbles and he smiles to himself.

Dreaming In Situ

 

Upon observing an elegant flint spear point.

 
I look upon merely its photograph. This is no cloddish lump of wrought stone. It sings. Its perfection is astonishing. Little bits of a tale begin moving forward.  Rivers reverse. Time runs back and back and back.  I begin to sense him, deep in his time on earth. He is a hazy image still. Is it urgency or resignation in his heart as he works away? Why does a man sit chipping stones as if it were the only work? Is he sick of bloodletting? Or is it just life?

He is no clownish cave dweller such as in people's awkward beliefs.

He knows more about the animals his people hunt than we know about ours now.

So what then, Long Dead Man, if I could hold this elegant thing in my hand and run my curious forefinger along its delicately chipped edges?  Could I squeeze my eyes shut and see you there, in the world as it was? Are you rough, with all hairiness intact or are you groomed, a specialist and a respected man?  Or are you everyman making your own points?  Are you sleek? Are you dark or fair?

I say that you are fair, and fairly young.  In your thirties, but somewhat more worn than most men are now. You are tanned for sure. You are profoundly muscular.

 
I think there is a woman who braids your hair long and that you are blue eyed. She loves colors. I think she braids colored strands into your hair and that you are a little vain. I think you might wear scents and use face paint too.

Perhaps this woman has learned to weave cloth. Perhaps she works skins.  In any case she makes the coverings you wear, as you sit there day in and day out, a heavy skin on your knee, working when the light is good.

When he was five or six his father started him chipping flint. Out in the daylight on dry days they worked together. The boy getting better and finer in his work until he pleased his father enough that his points were finally used for small game. Birds and rabbits and other little things.

I imagine placing the point carefully back down, the moment passing. He tumbles back into his unknowable time. But for that moment I knew him.

Just dreaming.

A Chicken Rodeo In Arizona

 

As it turned out Aunt Julia had to sleep on her sofa for a few more nights. The idea that we could move right into the old hogan was optimistic to say the least. The cleaning and furnishing would have to wait on a few things. 

After I made breakfast, fried potatoes with onions and sausages, we all sat together and talked chickens over coffee. Jessie and I decided to drive into town for the chicken wire and some chicken feed, since the girls wouldn’t be able to feed themselves as much while confined. We knew that being seen too much was not really very stealthy, but we took cash so there would not be a digital trail to us from our purchases.

When we got to Howdy Hank’s feed store, which was a rather rustic place with a teepee outside, we didn’t mention whose chickens this stuff was for, who we were, or where we were living. Cashier, an old guy named Pete, with a gray ponytail, in a denim jacket and jeans, didn’t seem to pay much attention to us at all. But I bet he wondered later. 

Driving home felt nice. We were already changing into locals in our own minds. 

Julia was nothing if not a good sport. I think she enjoyed the excitement or maybe disruption of having us there moving her life around. She also seemed to like my cooking, fortunately. Sometimes a different cook is a relief from one’s own old dishes. She was teaching me some things they ate around there, such as the fry bread, and what to do with chilis.

Jessie and I spent our second day there making the fence, which included a gate. The gate was a little bother, but we did it. It opened and closed just like a gate should, swinging on two steel hinges and fastened with a hook and eye. After that, it was matter of catching the six hens and putting them in there. This sounds simple. It may have been simple, but it was not easy.

Neither Jessie nor I had any experience with hens. I guess we thought we would just pick them up when the time came to put them in the enclosure. Therefore, the first attempt was a casual stroll toward a chicken, which neatly evaded the attempted by walking briskly out of arm’s reach. Hm. We found that chickens are wily creatures in their way. She was black. We named her Ruth.

Jessie said that sometimes, he had heard, that if you come straight at a chicken she will just sit down on the ground as if she is frightened into a sort of freeze. Ok, the red one, we called her Matilda, fell for this gambit. I walked right at her, and she sat right down in the dust looking confused really. I picked her up and deposited her on the other side of the fence. She commenced checking the new enclosure out. There was a pan of water prepared for her and some scattered chicken feed. This seemed to suit. None of the other five knew this sitting trick.

Aunt Julia and her cane came out to watch and laugh. “If you wait until dark,” she said, “you can grab them when they go to roost out in the hogan. They don’t try to run away after dark. It’s not in their nature.”

Billy wound himself around her feet then sat watching Matilda moving around the chicken run. He seemed to be near Aunt Julia at all times. Together they walked back up the path and into her little mobile house. The door banged shut and the phone rang.

The caller was Ben Nez, one of her grandchildren. I knew his name and that he was 18 years old, recently graduated from the Joseph City high school. On the way down to Arizona Jessie had filled me in on family members. Julia and John had only two children. A son and a daughter. The son, also Ben Nez, was this caller’s father. Ben was calling to check up on his grandmother and see if she needed anything at the store. She told him that she was fine and didn’t need anything right then. She didn’t mention us.

This introduced a bit of a problem. Who were we? People around here would know Jessie from before he left the reservation to go north. We decided to rename me. For purposes of introductions, I would be Linda Walz, claiming to go by my maiden name.

We knew that continuing to use our own licensed car was a point of vulnerability. It is hard to vanish where people know you, like they did Jessie, but Reservations have some advantages in that way. Something for another day.

Night came early since it was late in the year and dark does fall early anyhow between high hills. It was dark near the ground but above the stars shone in a way I never saw them on Washington’s cloudy west coast.

Time to catch chickens!

You can see in the relative dark if you give your eyes a chance to acclimate. That’s what we did. We waited until we could see where we were walking. I followed Jessie behind the mobile and into the hogan. It was really dark in there. The remaining five chickens made some slight noises in response to being disturbed by our arrival.

The roof timbers were a little too high to reach from the floor, so Jessie had to feel around for his uncle’s toolbox and stand on that to reach the chickens and true to Julia’s word, they did not try to escape. He handed them to me one by one. I was sorry but I had to hold them by their feet in an undignified manner to be able to hold all five until he got down and took some of them. We petted and talked to them, the other three we had named Minnie, Suzy, and Louise.

Then it was an easy matter to take them to their little house and tuck them inside, promising to build a roost inside it soon.

Walking back to the house, I looked up at all those stars and thinking of the time of year, I wondered what Christmas would be like here on the reservation in Arizona.

The day after Christmas on the res.

Link to the whole dealie, They haven't taken my phone yet^.docx

Just An Old Song Today

 

Of course it's just an open thread day.

My Thursday did not allow

Time for writing.

One thing I did manage today was 

Codfish Stew

a'la pbird

1. Saute' one large shallot, finely chopped, in a couple Tablespoons of olive oil.

2. Add two chopped stalks of celery, keep it on the mild saute'.

3. Add four smallish spuds, 1 inch cubes. Could have used more...

4. Add about a pound or so of codfish.  I used frozen and it was fine.

5. Add water to barely cover the contents of the pan. Bring up to simmer.

6. A bay leaf, salt but go easy. Pepper.

7. Add enough tomato sauce or paste to taste, make it look soupy red.

8. I used a couple of Tablespoons of liquid Dashi to brighten the flavor.  If all else fails a little MSG or chicken powder would help.

When it was all nicely done I mixed about a quarter cup of flour into a cup of light cream and stirred that in to give it body and richness. Continue on the simmer until the flour is cooked.

It was pretty rich.

I also made a small batch of biscuits.  No wonder I am sleepy!