It Was The Very Last Day of October

 

            The wind blew through the trees. In the case of those with a few yellow leaves left, it tossed those yellow leaves and more of them fell to the ground. Alders don’t make much of a fall display, but they do what they can. Maples just outside the Great Forest turn a brighter yellow, but those leaves also gave up, falling and twirling downward. The earth was dotted with yellow fallen leaves.
            A chilly rain splattered down. The sky was gray and low. It would have been a nice day to be inside by a fire, with curtains closed and something tasty somewhere out in the kitchen smelling wonderfully savory. Maybe some oven baked chicken and a spicy pumpkin pie.
            After her exciting morning meeting Thaga, Ooog, and Harold the cat, Minnie the young lady black bear felt a bit thirsty. The breakfast of whole wheat bread, and nut pie sat very well in her tummy but now she needed a drink.
            Taking a bear-like wandering path, Minnie wandered to the little creek she remembered located between the stone cottage and the dirt road. She shoved her way down the bank through berry vines and salal plants and grass and this and that to the water’s edge and had a good long drink. That felt much better.
            The days are so short in October, especially if it’s a gray low day. It feels like night in the afternoon. All that Minnie knew was that it was getting dark soon and she wanted to have a little nap. There was no nice warm bed in the offing, so she had to take her chances with the forest. But, since bears sleep in the forest all the time, she was fine in a little nest place under some saplings.
            As she slept, deep in her ursine little heart and brain, she began to receive a message. It spoke of a sweetness beyond her comprehension. She woke. She smelled something on the breeze. You know how it is with bears. Hesitation is not in their software.
            The beguiling scent was coming from the direction of the little dirt road where Marge’s mom and stepdad lived. There were small houses dotted all along the road all the way to the paved highway. There were maybe about 8 front doors, porch lights on, and some were decorated with Jack-o-lanterns and such.
            Minnie waddled out to the road. The scent was stronger there.
            Coming the other direction, heading towards Minnie, were three small humans in colorful garb of orange and black, and strange face paint. Minnie thought nothing of that. Her nose told her that the source of the delicious odor emanated from bags in their hands. She advanced. She was noticed.
            “What’s that down the road,” said a small girl’s voice.
            “I don’t see anything,” said a boy’s voice.
            “Well, I do!” said another little girl’s voice.
            “It’s a bear! I see a bear!” said the first girl. “We have to run!” And run they did back the way they had come from, dropping their bags on the road in their panic.
            Well, what could Minnie do? It wasn’t exactly like thievery; it was more like finding treasure trove. A goldmine right there in the road. She sat on her rump and ate a good five pounds of Mounds bars, Reese’s cups, and Hershey bars. It was wonderful.
            Minnie was the happiest bear in the whole forest that night.
            Later when the children all returned home empty  handed, one set of parents thought the children must have panicked over nothing, maybe dog or something. A second set of parents suspected a plot by older children to steal the younger one’s goodies.
            The third set of parents told their girl that she was probably right that it was most likely a black bear who had smelled their candy and that they had done right to leave the area, and that dropping the bags had kept the bear from following them.
            Of course, Minnie didn’t unwrap her candies, so she had a bit of indigestion the next day.
            The last day of October was the most interesting day she had ever experienced.
            So, if you find yourself walking a dark road some night near the Great Forest carrying a bag of goodies, look out for Minnie, now that she has tasted sugar!

🤎

Purrsday's Child

 Mew-onday's child is fur of face.

Tootsday's child lands full of grace.

B.Y. C. day's child is full of "whoah!"

Purrsday's child sees far to go.

F'lineday's child is purring and giving.

Saturday's child hunts hard for a living.

But the kitten who's born on Suzy's day is

funny and lithe and

good at play!

🤍

A Question of Manmade "Intelligence"

             I'm sure you remember that on Mew-onday, just a couple of days back, we had an opportunity to listen to Emad M. discourse on the end of capitalism and how AI is going to change every thing in 1000 days!
           It was a very long interview. I listened to all of it. 
          Of course, I am not qualified to judge the value of the information presented. So, I decide to forward it to an expert, my son, who has been doing all sorts of such work as internet security and like that since he started doing IT for a cardiologist's office when he was 18. I think it might be more accurate to say that he is an internet engineer? 
        Anyhow, below I have included his review of the video. I have also included the video itself, so that you can compare the two. 

_______________________________________________

Okay, so i watched most of that video. They ramble a bit, so i don't remember it all.

AI replacing humans? There are still some big gaps to cover. We context switch constantly and i don't see any indication of them doing that well. We constantly learn, and as i understand it, in the big wonderful complex models learning and running are distinct phases and once the model is 'taught' it doesn't learn more from its day to day operations. 

I expect that some highly specialized tasks could be done by machines, but at least for a while they will still need human overseers for when they screw up. I can envision certain classes of work being done poorly, but at ever more frenetic pace, by machines.

 Of course a lot of their economics talk is well over my head. but i do have a fairly strong contempt for economics at all. I don´t think economics as a 'science' describes some objective reality. I think their 'reality' is a shared human-created consensus and essentially arbitrary. Of course a lot of people make their gelt by reinforcing the consensus, so it probably isn't going anywhere. I don't have the wisdom or charisma to immanentize my particular eschaton. the guest's utopia seemed to be based on paying people for being human -- right after he's been talking about how AI's will be able to do everything we can do. So by that argument, the AI's should be able to fraudulently claim to be human and short circuit his particular secular prosperity gospel.

Towards the end when the host is groping for some actionable advice from his guest, the Brit says people should learn how to use AI. No matter what I think about their convo, that seems to be where i am. I'm trying to get stablediffusion running on one of my computers for practice. Then maybe try jan.ai next. Not so i can talk to them, but so can learn the mechanics of running their software.

_______________________________________________

           I would be very interested to know what any of you think of the video, or the review.
           My thanks, also, to LoneStar for posting it. It's really something to think about.  
           Could our whole economy change like that? What say you?     

❓❓❓

Just Bearly Possible

 

            At the very teeny tiny crack of dawn one day, Thaga dressed warmly in the dark bedroom, so as not to wake Ooog, putting on a heavy long dress, her prettiest striped apron, and on top a nice green woolly sweater. She was off to meet one of her contacts. This time she was trading some wild plum leather for a 5lb roll of butter. She had to walk to the lady’s house who had the two cows, so she wanted to get an early start. A two mile hike was nothing to Thaga. She’s of sturdy Neanderthal stock.
            Before she left the house she called out to Ooog, “I’m off to go see Janet and her cows to get some butter, Dear.” He didn’t even grunt, but she was sure he had heard her. Her voice was a good carrying sort of a voice.
            She shut the door after stepping out to the porch, but for some reason known only to the Lord of all, she didn’t quite get it latched. This lapse on Thaga’s part is the catalyst of our wee tale.
            As it happens, Minnie, a young lady black bear was making her way along the river near Thaga and Ooog’s stone cottage. She was hungry of course, because though demure and quite pretty for a bear, she was after all, a bear. Nearing the cottage, she began to receive a message on the breeze. It went straight to the business part of her brain. Thaga had left two loaves of whole wheat bread and a nut pie, which is outrageously sweet, on the big wooden table in her kitchen.
            Minnie followed her twitching nostrils to the aforementioned front door. It looked closed, but what the heck, she gave it a shove with her right front paw. Glory! It opened smooth and quiet as could be wished for.
            Bears have little beady eyes, but they work and soon she found her way to Thaga’s nice warm clean kitchen full of good stuff. Minnie, being just a slender young thing, for a bear, pulled a nice homemade wooden chair right up to the table and helped herself. First she lapped up the pie, quite neatly. Then for good measure she ate both of those large rather sturdy loaves of bread. Next she noticed the butter dish and dealt with that in the selfsame manner as the rest of it.
            Oh, but Minnie was sleepy then! Her eyes wanted to shut ever so badly but she was sitting in a chair and would roll out for sure if she allowed herself to sleep right then. So, she roused her self and went looking for a comfy place to take a nap.
            She looked in the living room, no. Not just right. Then she found the hall leading to the bedroom and spied Ooog and Thaga’s very large bed, made by Ooog himself. It was at least King size, maybe even Emperor size. Minnie didn’t see Ooog sleeping there with his sock hat pulled down over his eyes. Since he didn’t have to leave home to go to work, he often slept quite late into the morning, before doing all the things he did around the house and garden.
            Minnie, the sleepy little bear lady, climbed into Thaga place in the bed, put her head on Thaga’s pillow, and pulled a nice quilt up from the foot of the bed, covered herself up and slept the sleep of the blessed.
            Two hours went by. The sun came up. Thaga was still having coffee and Nanaimo bars with Janet two miles down the road. Ooog began to wake up a bit, but not all the way, just a little.
            Meanwhile, Harold the cat had gotten hungry and was thinking about his breakfast. He began to yowl piteously.
            Ooog reached over and shoved Minnie gently and said, “Will you go feed Harold, to stop that racket?”
            Minnie was surprised. She hadn’t noticed the old man in the bed, but to be agreeable, she dutifully removed herself from Thaga’s side of the bed and went into the kitchen where Harold the cat was calling from. She was looking around the kitchen for something to feed Harold, but she had eaten everything that she knew about.
            Harold took one look at Minnie coming out of the hall and split out of the still open front door, with out a backward thought for his breakfast.
            Since Harold was quiet now, Minnie took herself back to bed. She was still sleepy after all.
            Soon Thaga came walking home full of Nanaimo bars, black coffee and a lot of chat and a five lb. roll of very fine Jersey cow butter. As she approached her front door, she could see that it was wide open.
            Thaga approached cautiously. What in the world was going on here, anyhow? It wasn’t like Ooog to leave the front door hanging open!
            Her heart gave a lurch when she got to her kitchen and saw the pie and the bread both gone and very few crumbs left to tell the tale. She knew Ooog had a good appetite, but not that good. She began to fear for the old guy. Something awful might have happened!
            Putting the roll of wax paper wrapped butter on the table she ran into the bedroom all aflutter!
            Ah! There was Ooog still snoring peacefully with his woolly hat pulled down over his eyes against the morning light. Quite alive!
            But what was this? Someone was in her side of the bed. Someone quite large, who had a long black snout laid on her very own pillow! There was a bear sleeping in her place!
            “Ooog, wake up!” Thaga said in her very carrying sort of a voice. “There’s a bear in bed with you! In my place!”
            Ooog sat up suddenly. To say that it was a rude awakening is to minimize his shock.
            Minnie woke about then also. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, she exited the bed, dodged Thaga and ran as fast as a stuffed bear can go out of the open front door.
            “Thaga,” said Ooog, “How did a bear get in here?”
            “Why, Ooog, I just don’t know,” said Thaga. Then she ran out into the kitchen to make sure Minnie hadn’t gotten the roll of butter on her way out. Thankfully, Minnie had been in too much of a hurry to deal with the butter.
            Thaga began to clean up her table and sweep the crumbs up from the floor and to plan some more baking for later in the day.
            Harold was still hungry, and he made that clear as he followed Thaga around the kitchen.
            Finally, Harold got his late breakfast, Ooog got out of bed and had his rather plain breakfast, since there was no pie. Thaga couldn’t help it, but she had to change the sheets on the bed, even though Minnie was pretty clean for a bear.
            As Thaga worked through her day, she wondered if it were possible that she had not gotten the door shut right that morning.

🐻

A Joyous Mew-on-day Configuration!

 

 

            “So, Suzy, how is Mr. Baby Sir getting along at your house?” said Charley Cat the next time the cats got together for a confab. “Ma’am misses him a lot and would like to know that he is happy.”

            “Charley, Mr. Baby Sir is a fine gentleman with delicate manners! It’s quite impressive. He also has the most incredible whiskers, unlike any others I have seen,” said Suzy dreamily.

            “I hear that he looks a lot like myself! That’s certainly saying something in his favor,” said Buddy, who was visiting with everyone this time, unlike the last. “I hear that he has a fine singing voice also!”

            “There’s certainly something to be said for a fine large fluffy tabby. I am quite fond of him myself, actually,” said Charley Cat. “I used to hold him down and clean those ears very carefully!”

            “I’ve never met him, except in fleeting glances when we meet. He was quite extraordinarily handsome. Sammie thinks so too!” said Toots, who was grinning at Sammie.

            If cats could blush, Sammie would probably have been blushing under her coat.

            “I think his whiskers are his best feature,” said Toots. Then she blushed!

            Willie, who had been pretending to sleep, but keeping on eye on the shiny glass door, said “Do you cats want to hear the truth of the matter? Or do you want to live in a delusion?” He looked from face to face, trying to read the temper of the group.

            Toots and Suzy raised their eyebrows at each other and broke down into kitty giggles.

            “Here we go!” said Suzy to no one in particular, but to everyone at the same time.

            “The facts of the matter are these: people are making fools of themselves over that fluff bag, as I’ve heard him called, and it is appropriate. I think if I hear one them tell him how wonderful his whiskers are, or what a good boy he is, well, I may explode!

            “He’s making terrible inroads into the Cat Buffet! I have to really chow down to stay ahead of him! The nerve of that guy!”

            Warming up to his subject, Willie strode back and forth on the back porch floor, taking an occasional glace at the glass to see how he looked. He seemed pleased.

            “He sucks up to them in an appalling manner! He cries Mrrr Mrrr Mrrr as he runs back and forth. He’s a big old kitten, and I don’t approve!” grunted Willie, finally.

            “Give the kid a break, Willie,” said Buddy. “You’re not a mean cat. What’s a matter anyhow? You’re not jealous, are you??”

            “No! I’m not!” said Willie, petulantly.

            “You are too!” said Suzy. “You’re afraid he’ll steal Her heart away from you!”

            “He holds Mr. Booby on his lap. Every day!” said Willie. Then he mewed sadly.

            Sammie spoke up at last, now that she could see what the problem was. Simple jealousy.

            “Willie, it’s your job to be a kind host to Mr. Baby Sir. That’s all there is to it! And I’ll tell you something else. If you behave kindly to him you will begin to like him more every day. You’ll stop worrying that he might be better or more loveable than you. This is the way the heart works. You must trust me on this!” she said. “And you will be happier!”

            “That sounds very wise to me,” said Charley Cat. And everyone nodded.

            Willie, and in fact, the whole group were silent for a while, each thinking his or her own thoughts.

            “Oh, pffft, well, I’m not real  happy right now. What the heck. Maybe I’ll pretend I like the big boob until I feel better,” said Willie. “If you think that will work?”

            “I do,” said Sammie.

            At about that point in the meeting a cat with a very straight up the air very fluffy tail wandered into the back porch. Everyone could see him. It was actually Mr. Baby Sir himself.

            “Hi! Oh, we’re having a meeting?” he said. “What’s the occasion?”

            “Oh, you know,” said Toots. “Sometimes we just get together to chew the fat and Purr™ together. You’ve sat in before! Want to stay?”

            So, Mr. Baby Sir sat where he could see everyone in the glass, who was not present with him and Suzy and Willie, and they all lowered their noses and shut their eyes and Purred together.

            Finally, Mr. Baby said, “Tell Ma’am I’m fine, but I miss her. It will be a great day when she comes back!”

            “I’ll tell her,” said Charley Cat warmly.

            “This was a good meeting,” said Buddy. “I’m proud of you guys.”

            “It’s all in the Purring, isn’t it,” laughed Toots.

            Then she adjourned the meeting, until next time.

             

MRRRT!

🤍

He Took A Ride Too!

 

            It was two weeks later, the appointed date of their next meeting at the Gifting Stump, and Marge had a brilliant idea, she thought. The central nub of this idea was based on the fact that she knew very well that Twigg knew how to cloak. She could hardly wait to see him and propose the adventure she had in mind.
            On the drive up into the mountains, she could hardly keep from grinning to herself.
            Marge parked the old Accord by Enid’s house but a little bit more out of sight. She ran in and said hi to her mom and Arthur. She told Enid that she just wanted to clear her head with a walk in the meadow. This was nothing new and didn’t arouse any particular interest on her mother’s part. Marge had been walking out there for years.
            Coming abreast of the stone cottage, she saw that Thaga, and her cat were outside walking sedately in the little bit of front yard. Marge waved.
            “Going to visit with Twigg, Marge?” Thaga called out.
            “Yes! How did you know?” said Marge, rather surprised.
            “Honey, that raven sees all and tells all! Evermore!” Thaga grinned, and said, “Have fun!”
            “I guess so!” said Marge and continued on down the old path to the meadow.
            As usual, it was beautiful out there, with a slightly elevated sense of mystery and excitement. Marge began to feel that something great was afoot. It was always that way in the meadow. She was so near the Home Clearing when she was in the meadow that its influence reached her there.
            Still in her Carhartt overalls and with her hair up in a knot, she plopped down on the little patch of grass by the stump and waited for Twigg to appear. The sun was warm, but she made up her mind not to fall asleep there again, but it was such a comforting place, like a scene in a pleasant folktale. A magical place.
            First his shadow appeared and then he did himself. She continued to be surprised at his size, but was getting more used to it. She hoped this matter wouldn’t preclude her plan for the day.
            “Hi,” she said when he came into view. She had to look way up and shield her eyes with her hand.
            “Hi,” he said, and plopped down beside her. “What do you want to do today?” His smile was as sweet as usual.
            “I do have an idea,” she said. “What do you think about going for a ride with me! In my car! It would work if you can fit in the passenger’s seat and vanish while we’re around people!”
            “I’ve never been out of the forest or here, on the ground level. I guess after that light ride the other day a car ride shouldn’t actually scare me. Hm? Why not?” he said.
            “OK, we’ll have to be careful by my mom’s house. Don’t want her to freak out! My car is parked away from her front window. Wanna do this, Twigg?”
            “Let’s do it!” he said.
            Just for drill and to make sure it worked, he did that 1, 2, 3, and hold your breath thing as they walked out and past the stone cottage. No one noticed either one of them.
            At the passenger side of the gray Honda, Marge opened the door very quietly and pushed the seat as far back as it would go. Twigg was only about 6’5” so he did fit in, tightly, but it was alright. She carefully closed the door and zipped around to her side and started up, turned around in the road and headed back to Milltown. They were both laughing like a couple of loonies.
            “So, what do you think?” said Marge when she regained her composure.
            “It’s like flying in a metal box, but really low to the ground!” said Twigg. “I like it!” he giggled.
            Marge hoped no one noticed her talking and laughing in an apparently empty car, but really why would they. People have their own stuff to deal with, not some crazy girl in a Honda.
            “Let’s get lunch and go to the beach, then I’ll take you home before Ramona starts wondering where you are,” said Marge. “It’s going to have to be drive-up. I can’t do the Harvey scene in some restaurant. I’m brave, but that could get weird fast!”
            “I don’t know who Harvey is, but I can sure see that!” said Twigg.
            She took Highway 20 to the intersection with SR 530, and when she got to Arlington she hopped over to I-5 and drove down to the city.
            Twigg was invisibly goggling out of his window with hardly a word to say. His invisible knees were rather firmly pressed into the car’s dash.
            She got off of the freeway and drove sedately southward on Broadway arriving at the secondary McDonald’s in town. The slow one, but also the not very busy one. She pulled into line, and they looked at the menu board while waiting in line. Twigg didn’t read, so she had to tell him what they had.
            “I don’t know. Just get me something good,” said Twigg.
            She bought him two Big Macs, a ton of fries and a very large Coke. She got herself a Quarter Pounder and a smaller Coke.  Then she drove to a quiet little park nearby, which was a good place to have a car picnic.
            “That building there is really old. It’s almost as old as Milltown. They used to have bands play music there in the summer on weekends, but that was a long time ago,” she said.
            They were quite near the high school, so plenty of kids were walking by, some going for a lunch off campus. Twigg watched them silently.
            He whispered, “I guess I should have thought about it, but I’ve never seen so many human people.”
            “I like this food. It’s very strange, like toys in a way. The drink goes right up my nose, but I like it! This was a really good idea!” he was laughing again.
            “Do you still want to go to the beach?” she asked him.
            “Yes, please. I’ve never seen salt water or waves, Marge, just the river,” said Twigg.
            “Alright!” said Marge and she drove the Honda out of town and down the long road to the ferry terminal at Mukilteo. “Someday it would be fun to take the big boat, but not today,” she said, and made the left turn into the park. It wasn’t very busy. So she was able to park right in front looking out over the water. The tide was out.
            Just in case anyone was looking, she made a big show of getting into the passenger side of the car to get something, her camera, and was able to let Twigg out in the meantime. She locked up and they went for a little walk.
            No one seemed to be paying any attention to the girl in Carhartts walking the beach and snapping a few photos. Many people do walk the beach alone there. Twigg kept quiet but he was looking all around.
            It’s a gravely beach. Twigg’s steps did disarrange some of the pebbles, but they got away with it. No one hollered “ghost” or anything else.
            “I better take you home,” she whispered. “While we’re still doing OK.”
            As she was driving out of the parking lot, she said, “It’s all fixed up now. It used to be rough and old fashioned. I liked it better that way, though I can barely remember it. I was just a toddler. Mom brought me here a few times. It was the beach!”
            It took a good hour and a half to get clear of the afternoon traffic and get back up into the Great Forest. She parked up the road a little from her mom’s house, so she didn’t have to go in and visit again. They sat there quietly for a minute.
            “This isn’t a secret. You can tell your parents all about it if you want to. Was it fun?” said Marge.
            “Yes, it was fun. Thank you! It was interesting to have a peek at your world. It’s sure not my world! I’m a little tired!” he said.
            “Shall I come back in 14 days?” she said.
            “Please come back. Always come back,” he said. “I better see if I can get out of this can and go on home. Mom will be looking for me and my B’s! I told them I was busy today, in case you wondered!”
            “I did wonder,” said Marge. “Thanks for taking a ride with me!”
            “See you again?” said Twigg as he left the car.
            “See you again,” said Marge. She knew he was walking away but he was still vanished for the moment.
            Then she turned around and headed back into town and her rented room in someone else's house. But she was happy.

🌲🚙🌲

Stormy October Day Kinda Open Thread-ish

 

            Ralph would like you to know that the famous rainy season has begun. It’s raining in the Great Forest, hard. The water is falling on Milltown, and on Port Gardner Bay. The whole Cascade and Olympic Ranges are full of rain and dark clouds. The wind is puffing around a little too.
            The sky is dark. It’s only mid afternoon and it looks like time to close the curtains, if you have curtains and all, and turn on the lights, assuming that you live in a house.
            “In the Home Clearing we build up the fire. Since we don’t read books, the light of the fire is all we need. It’s really pretty cozy. Nothing makes ya feel like staying near the cave and the fire like a super rainy dark day,” he says, smiling eyes flashing in the flicker light of the flames.
            “We like to keep the fire hot during these wet days. When Bob and Berry, and Blue get done running around and getting soaked, they can warm up by the fire.
            “My old Birdie does love the rainstorms. I betcha that right now she is up there drifting just below the clouds, looking like a great black elemental spirit! Nothing land born holds her down.
            “Soon there will be snow. But as you know snow doesn’t pile up too high here. Outside the Clearing it will be a different story!
            “That’s pretty much it, Ramona and I, and son and daughter, hope that you enjoy the storm too. In a way, I wish those English reporters had come today! They would have gotten a look at the real wildness of the west, huh?
            “We raise our cups to you! Take er easy!”
 
Love, Ralph & Ramona

💚

It Was Darn Near 58 Years Later

 

 
            The director certainly had a bee in his bonnet or a flea in his ear, to indulge in a couple of adorable Americanisms.
            He had been hearing about the old Patterson-Gimlin film of the mythical Bigfoot since childhood. And he was amused by the fact that Americans still clung to this particular piece of folklore as if it were somehow factual. Sure, the biggest economy in the world, a tremendous landmass, but some of the most guileless people on earth too!

            It occurred to the old dear that to send Trevor and I to the best known hot spot, the nexus, of the whole relic hominid story, Washington State’s woodsy west side, to expose the foolishness of the whole thing, would be  a wonderful send up of the whole story. And it might just put paid to the whole thing, since the Beeb still has buckets of credibility, even with the credible.
            And so it came to pass, that Trevor Smythe, boy reporter, and I, Claudia LaMotta, a real pro, as these same Americans like say, found ourselves on a British Airways flight to Seattle. We landed, tired and feeling long-flight scruffy late in the afternoon. We got through Customs with no difficulty, gathered our bags at the carousel, and went in search of a room and a car rental. Of course we didn’t checked our backpacks full of precious electronic equipage. Those we had kept in the overhead compartments in the plane.
            Trevor had driven in countries where one drove on the right side before, so he was elected to be James. We ended up with a rather large Mercury. Trevor crept out of the car lot hesitantly, just getting the hang of the thing before seriously entering Seattle traffic, which, by the way, is horrific.
            Since our goal was much to the north, we decided to seek a couple of rooms for the night in a small city nearer to our destination. Lynnwood looked like it would do, so Lynnwood it was.
            Like so many things in America this place was on a large scale. But it was shelter, and an adequate breakfast was included.
            All fresh and beamish in the morning, Trevor and I gathered up all, and set out once more in the mighty Mercury. Soon we were on the motorway and on our way.  
            The further north we drove, the smaller the towns became and the larger the forests grew. We continued on, leaving the freeway for a smaller highway. The GPS was taking us into the Cascade Range of mountains. Soon the landscape looked wild and remote.
            Our first stop was a certain Ranger Station of the Forest Service in a huge parcel of forested land known as the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.
            I began to feel as if our director had given us quite a lot to accomplish. Things didn’t seem so quaintly amusing once traveling through this wilderness. A send up of the Americans had seemed like an easy and amusing project back in the comfort of London while sitting around the director’s desk.
            The Ranger Station proved to be a quite small official looking building at the end of a lesser paved road which diverged from the highway. It huddled in among tremendously tall and stout evergreen trees. There was a small paved parking lot abutting that phenomenal forest.
            I looked over at Trevor, and suddenly he looked wildly out of his element. I wondered where that notion had come from. He was the same stocky young fellow I had known since he started working in the same office with me, but maybe it was the expression on his face more than anything else. He looked more hesitant than I had ever seen him look.
            “Well, Trevor, I suppose we must press on,” I said. He nodded.
            “Claudia, I’m apprehensive about this whole thing,” said Trevor. I nodded.
            But we exited the big white Mercury to make our first contact, the ranger in the office, if  he was there, rangers being rangers who range around and all of that. There was a man sitting behind the desk poking at a laptop computer. If anything he seemed glad of a distraction.
            “Hi, I’m Rick,” he said. “What can I help you with?”
            “Hullo, Rick,” I said. “We’re on assignment from the BBC. We’ve been sent here to locate and document the elusive American Bigfoot. Apparently, this is the place to start looking!
            “Oh, this is my cameraman, Trevor Smythe and I am Claudia LaMotta.”
            Sometimes one must prevaricate a bit to get the story. Yes?
            “Ma’am, Ms. LaMotta, I’m afraid somebody sold you nice people a bill of goods. There are no Bigfoots here. In fact, there is probably no such creature, here or anywhere else.”
            I took a few moments to recalibrate. This was not the attitude we had expected to meet. We had expected rather a lot of enthusiasm instead of this blank denial.
            “I understand an official statement when I hear one, Rick. No problem. According to our information, this is the place to look. Is there any official or legal reason that we shouldn’t explore the forest here round about?” I countered.
            “No, Ma’am, there is no reason that you can’t explore the forest as long as you like. And good luck to you,” said the ranger. I remembered that statement later.
            Trevor got his camera ready, and I had my recorder ready. He locked up the Mercury and into the trees we walked. The most traveled looking path seemed to be located by a large trash receptacle. Well, no matter. This was the wild and woolly American west. Like lambs, off we went down the path.
            I walked behind Trevor, so that if he saw anything interesting he could get it in frame quickly. Plus, it was for safety’s sake. After all! There could be bears, or mountain lions here. I was momentarily unhappy that we weren’t armed.
            The nice broad path narrowed almost immediately. Various bushes of unfamiliar types pushed in from the sides of the path. It was pretty scratchy going. There were sounds. I didn’t know what was supposed to be out here, so I wasn’t sure if these soft whispers and whistles and chirps were normal.
            “Are you hearing all of that, Trevor?” I said.
            “Yes. Uh, Claudia, I thought we were supposed to be proving how silly the American believers were. They don’t seem very silly right now. Anything could be out here, including some kind of giants,” muttered my cameraman.
            “Why don’t you just film this whole trek, Trevor? It’s bound to be good for something,” I said, in spite of mounting unease. “I’ll get the sound. Just in case.”
            A sort of mist or fog rose up from the forest floor. We kept walking. There were small sparkles of light in the mist. Do fireflies fly in mist, I wondered. Surely not, but I didn’t know. Soon the vegetation vanished from view. We were almost walking blind.
            But the mist cleared soon and we kept walking. This was better! The path widened. I could see some sunlight among the trees. I kept up with Trevor.
            In a moment we walked back out by the trash receptacle, facing the same parking lot and the rented Mercury. Somehow we had gotten turned around. Well, the day was young, and we could try again. So, we did. We went right back in.
            It looked like a different path. The underbrush diminished to almost nothing. Huge trunks pressed around us. There wasn’t much sunlight in here. I heard distant laughter, and I thought I got it recorded too. I had become unsure of why Trevor and I were walking this trail. The sense of the project became vague in my mind. My vision and my waking mind were all taken up with the grandeur of this forest. A wonderful dreamlike sensation came over me.
            “Do you feel that, Trevor?” I asked.
            “You mean like being a little high?” he said, and laughed quietly.
            “I guess you could call it that,” I said. And I laughed too, as we toddled along the pretty path among the trees. As we walked a huge black bird flew over. I had to guess it was a raven, but had no idea they were so large.
            At last our walk ended at a huge dead log lying on the forest floor. It seemed special somehow. With what was left of my good sense, I wondered where these ideas were coming from.
            “Are you looking for me?” said a voice so low that it was almost out of my range, but I did hear it. I hoped that my recorder was getting this.
            “Who are you?” said Trevor, as if this were some sort of pantomime joke.
            “I am who you seek,” said the voice, perhaps continuing the joke.
            “How do you know whom we seek?” I said, laughingly.
            “It’s easy to hear your thoughts, Lady,” said the almost sub-audible voice.
            “Alright. That’s fair, I guess. Are you a ghost?” I quizzed the voice.
            “No ghost. Though in a sense I am the spirit of this place. Natives called me one thing, and others have called me various things. My mother named me a name your tongue could not say,” he said.
            “Are you flesh and blood then?” I said.
            “I have flesh and blood. I am not flesh and blood,” he said, sounding rather pleased at the notion. “I will show you, if you can bear it.” He waited for an answer.
            “Yes,” said Trevor. “We can bear truth.”
            “Yes, show us,” I said.
            And there he was. Sitting up on the massive old log, as if it were his sofa. There he was, the end of the search, and the destruction of our project for the Beeb.
            There he was, maybe nine feet tall and so many stone of weight that I had no way of estimating it. He was dark brown, covered except for his face and hands in soft wavy hair. His eyes were brown and twinkled with the elation of joking with us. He looked healthy and strong, but in a way very old. There were many crinkles around his eyes, and he had two white streaks in his beard. The effect was beyond majestic.
            “People just call me Ralph,” he said. I could hear him more clearly then. I don’t know if he was speaking in a slightly higher register or if seeing him helped me to hear him.
            “I decided that I should introduce myself to you. By the way, cameras and sound recorders don’t work out here. I’m sorry. There is no way you can prove you met me. Just the way it is!” said Ralph.
            “Yes, I can see that,” said I.
            “I hope you can salvage something from your trip across the world,” said Ralph.
            “It won’t be the story our director wants, but yes, we can salvage something,” I told him.
            “I’m glad. If you just turn back the way you came you can walk right out of here, with no fog or anything this time,” he said.
            Back at the parking lot, Rick was getting into  his service vehicle, but he stopped first.
            “Did you two find what you were looking for,” he asked.
            “Just a lot of trees,” said I
            “That’s right,” said Rick. “Just a lot of trees." But he was smiling. “Safe trip home, Claudia and Trevor!”
            In the car on the way back to SeaTac, I happened to think of the date. October 20^th. I just shook my head.
            “Trevor, I don’t know what we are going to tell the old man. Maybe we’ll both get fired!” I said.
            “Maybe we will,” he admitted.

            

🌲🍁🌲

Out Where The West Begins

 

        

            I have a little confession to make. That is, though almost all of my life was spent in the cloudy cool state of Washington on the rainy, sometimes, west side, I never felt that it was my true home.
            This may be, and probably is, because while her children were young and she wasn’t working outside the home, my mother used to take us to spend the summer break down to Idaho to stay with her parents on their farm in Wendell.

            Her excitement to be going home was infectious. We caught it, or at least I know I did. We often rode the train there. Hence, the love of trains too. Pulling into the Gooding station was so wonderful. There her father, in his farmer’s overalls would pick us up and we would make the short drive to the farm outside of the very small town of Wendell.
            What followed were endless weeks of relative freedom. My grandparent’s first grandchild was me! They prized me very highly. That’s really something, to be not only loved, but prized.
            I remember every inch of that old farm. It wasn’t very big, maybe 40 acres. My grandmother milked cows and grandfather raised beans and alfalfa, but also he raised things for their seeds, such as carrot seed. You don’t need a huge lot of acreage to raise carrot seed!

When they were very young.

            It was a pretty relaxed operation.
            To get to the subject I have in mind, and back on track, one of the things they liked to do was to gather whichever relatives were handy and have me perform. I remember singing Shenandoah for the assembled family. I believe I did America too. They compared me to Kate Smith, which I didn’t appreciate when I found out who she was. But I believe they meant it kindly. I was not a skinny kid.
            Once my grampa wanted me to read aloud a poem about the west that he liked. Just now, I wasn’t sure which poem that was, but I found it online, because it’s pretty ubiquitous really. I have copied it below:

“Out Where The West Begins”
Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger,
Out where the smile dwells a little longer,
   That’s where the West begins;
Out where the sun is a little brighter,
Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter,
Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter,
   That’s where the West begins.
Out where the skies are a trifle bluer,
Out where friendship’s a little truer,
   That’s where the West begins;
Out where a fresher breeze is blowing,
Where there’s laughter in every streamlet flowing,
Where there’s more of reaping and less of sowing,
   That’s where the West begins;
Out where the world is in the making,
Where fewer hearts in despair are aching,
   That’s where the West begins;
Where there’s more of singing and less of sighing,
Where there’s more of giving and less of buying,
And a man makes friends without half trying,
   That’s where the West begins.
Arthur Chapman

            I’ll include a link to the story of how the poem came to be written. It's a pretty interesting story.

            An Enduring Western Poem

Getting picked up at the Gooding station.

The Journey Begins, #1

 

 

            “OK. I see some of you. It’s night now and I have a dark window I can get to,” said Charley, from the RV barreling through the desert night.
            “I see you too,” answered Suzy. “What’s up? Are you safe? Where are you?”
            “This was the second day. I never expected this!” continued Charley.
            “What?” Suzy sucked in her breath suddenly!
            “We’re moving. It’s not a car, but it’s moving. We don’t have a house and I’m alone!” said Charley. “Well, Ma’am is here, and those other two.”
            “What do you mean you’re alone, Charley? You’re talking crazy-mews!” insisted Suzy.
            “Do you see Mr. Baby Sir here? No, you don’t because he’s not here. Hence I am alone,” Charley announced. “Ipso facto!”
            “What does that mean?” said Willie, butting in.
            “Hipso fatso,” whispered Suzy, giggling.
            “I heard that!” yelped Willie.
            “Will you two knock it off! I’m trying to start a travelog here! Now, then. Here goes.
            “Yesterday we left the town where Ma’am’s family lives. I think they dumped Mr. Baby there. But nobody explains anything to me! Anyhow, we moved in this bus thing all day. During the day I hung around this window. All I could see were trees. Big trees and little trees, and hills and long boring highways. We drove all day until we got to the desert.

            “Then the trees were gone. It was rocks and dirt and bushes.
            “I was kind of missing that big fluff bag…” mewed Charley, as if to herself.
            “Yeah, yeah,” said Mr. Baby. He was borrowing the back porch glass door for a reflective surface to gaze into. “I’m kind of in jail. I’m stuck in the house here, while you get to go off on a big adventure.”
            “That’s because you kept running off and making them wait for you to come back!” said Charley primly. “I know better.”
            “Today Ma’am and those other two wanted to explore a cave, which is basically a large hole inside the rocks. She leashed me up and took me to the hole where the cave starts, but I couldn’t stand it. I started hissing and backing up. So, she put me back in this bus thing. That’s where I stayed, not knowing if any of them would survive the cave.

            “They did. I guess there were no bears in there. All three came back and we rolled back out onto the highway. She said we were in Nevada. Well, it looked an awful lot like California.
            “Next, we’re going to Arizona. I wonder what that will look like? I’m not sure what they’re up to. But I will find out. You may be sure,” said Charley with a sharp nod into the glass.
            Toots, who had been silent, finally said wistfully, “I think you’re awfully lucky to get to go so many places! I hope you keep us all filled in on everything you see outside!”
            “I will, Toots. But, I’m not scampering around anywhere my whimsey takes me either! She says that I’m a good traveling cat. That’s because I stay where she leaves me, right in here and I look out of the windows. I will say that the scenes changes! There is that!
            “I’ll let you all know,” said Charley.
            “Please keep in touch, Charley! So we know you’re OK,” said Suzy.
            “Yes, please,” said Toots.
            Willie and Mr. Baby were busy making faces at each other and practicing their best hissing, so they weren’t paying attention.
            “Mrrrrp out!,” said Charley and everyone went back to their own business.

🐈