Musing, the eve of turning sixty

Winnie (our dog) just turned 4, which translates to 28 in human years. In dog years, I am now between 8 and 9. Winnie is one of those beings who is younger than I am.

Rocks are definitely older. Geologic processes have been happening on our planet for 4.7 billion years – and in our part of the world for a few hundred million years – at very slow rates.

The second most active volcano in Washington, Mt. Baker is less than one million years old.

The hills on which our house perches were formed by the pressure of a shoving match between tectonic plates, as well as the Holocene glaciations from the last Ice Age, which covered Whatcom County in 5,500 feet of ice and ended 10,000 years ago.

The Douglas fir trees which give us precious shade and habitat for the birds in our yard are probably 80 to 100 years old, but could live to be 600 years or more.

The orange and black Varied Thrushes who showed up at our bird feeders in the extreme cold last week are so elusive that no one knows how long they live, but the educated guess is five years. Two of them froze to death and fell onto our side patio during the night.

I’m about to turn sixty. It’s funny how the closer I am to 60 the younger it seems.





People who are younger than I am:

• The kids in the neighborhood who were playing in the snow Thanksgiving morning and let me play too.

• Their parents.
• In some cases, their grandparents.
• Everyone I work with.
• Some of their parents.
• Some people who have died already.





Older than I am:

• Lynne.
• Many of our friends, like Bonnie.
• Ken and Phyllis, our neighbors down the street who are in their mid 70s and active and healthy.
• Lynne’s brother, Richard. He is 73, still works full time. He and Viv, his wife went for a good hike with us on Mt. Baker when they visited in the fall.
• Grace and Allen, our good friends from Lexington, who encouraged us to buy our first popup camper, and who are still camping in a popup camper in their early seventies. Allen is still teaching full time.
• My older siblings, Martha, Kit, Doug and Thom, who are 68, 64, 63 and 61 respectively. They are all doing well.
• My mother, who is 94 1/3. Ice cream is a mainstay in her nutritional plan.

I don’t know how much time I have left--one minute or 50 years, but I do think about it.

I suggested to Lynne that we set some goals for our next 20 years. Goals? she said. What for?

So I took a different approach. What do I hope for in the next 40 years?
• That Lynne and I live out our lives together.

• That we live in a peaceful and safe neighborhood.
• That Winnie stays with us for as long as her tail wags.
• That we build and sustain connections with friends and family.
• That our savings and pensions sustain us free of financial insecurity.
• That we express ourselves artistically.
• That we are good stewards of the earth’s environment.

Then I thought some more. Here is the rest of the list:

• That you live out your life with those whom you love.
• That neighborhoods worldwide are peaceful and safe.
• That whatever makes your heart swell stays with you a long long time.
• That you build and sustain connections with friends and family.
• That you are free of financial insecurity.
• That you express yourself, artistically or otherwise.
• That all of us are good stewards of the earth’s environment.

How old are you? What do you hope for?

Alpine moments, magical thinking

Step after climbing step, we moved up a narrow rocky path towards Herman’s Saddle, high above us. The short growing season at this elevation, which is snow covered for most of the year, explained the show of subalpine flowers in September: heather, fleabane, monkey-flower, asters. There we were last week, following a trail suggested by the park ranger towards a promised view of snowy Mt. Baker. Lynne and I had started the morning driving east from Bellingham through the coastal fog.  It dissipated the closer we got to Mt. Baker, until we were gifted with an intense blue sky, one of the natural wonders of the Pacific Northwest. Three of us were now heading up, counting Winnie, our shy rescue turned perfect trail dog whose solar collecting black coat was causing her to pant and hunt for shade as we rose above the tree line. We had already crossed many sparkling streams of water tumbling down to the lake in the retreating valley below, often hearing the stream before we could see it. I doused Winnie with this icy water to cool her off. She stood quietly and let me do it.

Lynne and I have spent many memorable days hiking mountains together, in the Canadian Rockies, the Appalachian Mountains, the Olympics, the Cascades, around Mt. McKinley in Alaska, the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and Montana. We even hiked up to 15,000 feet on Carihuairazo in Ecuador. Our longest and most spectacular day hike was a 2378 feet elevation gain up to Sentinel Pass above Moraine Lake in Canada, a challenging and spectacular hike that we have held to be our greatest achievement.

But we were ten, twenty, thirty years younger. Today we still treasure the pristine landscapes, the clear air, the chance to see wildlife, the quiet, the solitude, the physical challenge, but we take it at a slower pace. We take three hours to descend 300 feet from the Visitor Center and then climb up this 2 ½ mile trail, gaining 1100 feet in elevation from the valley bottom to the saddle. We stopped frequently, peering up the mountain to see if we were there yet, chatting with hikers passing us on their way down, filling our filtered water bottle with cool stream water, peeling off layers of clothes and assessing the state of our feet, knees, thigh muscles. We listen to the eagle’s high pitched cry as it flies around the valley. We see some tiny figures coming back down on the trail above us. The top of the mountain looks close until we get closer, when it keeps receding, just beyond this one switchback, across one more boulder field, one more unexpected uphill stretch, getting steeper as we approach the top.

Lynne is the one who had set the goal; I was happy to take up the challenge. Winnie gets to be off leash as we go further into wilderness, and never asks “How much further?” Lynne carries the daypack with our lunch and our extra clothing. I am dangling the binoculars off one shoulder and carrying water and her leash in the other. We alternate taking pictures. We chat with two men who are heading down. “25 minutes,” he said, “since we left the top.” It takes us another hour to get there. On the way we express appreciation for hiking with each other, comfortable to go at our own gentle pace, neither of us competitive or impatient.

At the top, the view of elusive Mt. Baker rewards us as promised, raising its white crown above drifting clouds, dwarfing Table Mountain to our left and one of the Chain Lakes below. Winnie also had a reward: a field of snow to romp in, roll in, be a puppy again in, and finally, to lie in to cool off. Finding a boulder as a seat and leaning against each other, Lynne and I trade off taking pictures for munching our pb&j sandwiches and taking in the majesty of a mountain up close. A few other people, mostly in twos, crest the trail and stop for the view and lunch also. Too soon, it seems, we are also contemplating the distance back to our car.

It's called “magical thinking”: “climbing back down will be easier than going up”, “gravity is on our side”, and “it won’t seem as long”. Those theories are quickly discarded when the reality of bracing ourselves step by slippery step down the rocky path sets in. The rocks seem sharper, the path seems more uneven, and the picturesque Visitor’s Center seems further away than we remembered as we head back. Two younger women approach us from behind, intriguing me with a story about clearing out an older brother’s belongings after he died. We exchange cheerful hellos as they pass, still chatting and quickly disappearing down the mountain. We check the time. Only thirty minutes have passed since we were at the top. I notice that the front of my toes are becoming tender as they get smashed by the full weight of my body with each downward step. My thigh muscles feel weaker each time I brace myself against the pull of gravity, stepping down from a tall rock to the path below. We remind each other to be careful, to focus on our feet, a warning that is usually prompted when one of us has been distracted by the spectacular views around us, and ends up catching ourselves from falling. We hear the chirp of a hoary marmot, or is it a pika? We meet a man from Utah wearing Vibram Five-Finger shoes and leading a boisterous Labradoodle on his way up, and then again, as he passes us on the way down. Several people with fishing poles pass us going up.

We are alone again when we finally reach the cliffs above the lake. Ahead of us is about 20 feet where the path is chipped out of a steep rock face. The footing is narrow and there’s nothing much to hold on to and nothing much to keep us from sliding down into the lake, 50 feet below. Lynne is in front with Winnie, now back on her leash, and turns to give me a hand. “I don’t remember this part at all,” I said. My legs feel weaker than one would want them to be crossing this rock face. She has hesitated also, angling for the best place for her feet, not finding a good place to hold on to. I hold her hand as she begins across, then she turns to hold mine. I lean my body lightly into the rock with one hand supporting it, and the other holding on to her. We help each other as we creep across this hazard, and then there we are, back on a wider path and almost home. I have this feeling of joy, at our accomplishment, at the wilderness, at our connection with each other, at the fun of hiking with an equally matched aging crone, at our 33 years together. Happy Anniversary, Lynne.

When they came for me

Is it coincidence or a cosmic intention that this year Eid may fall on the anniversary of the horrific attacks on America by Al-Qaeda? The end of fasting during the month of Ramadan (Eid ul-Fitr) may be celebrated on September 11th, based on the first spotting of the moon for the tenth month of the Islamic calendar. Muslims believe Ramadan to be an auspicious month for the revelations of God to humankind (Wikipedia). The convergence of Eid with the anniversary of 9/11 is being used as an excuse to terrorize Muslims in America. Just this morning, Lynne read me an article from the New York Times (New York Times  ) about a church in Florida that will make a bonfire of Korans on the anniversary of 9/11.


The women who are afraid to wear their traditional headscarves this week, the people who are frightened by media frenzy about Muslims celebrating on the anniversary of 9/11, the families who are worried about violence against the Muslim community but are telling themselves that this will blow over are our neighbors, the Muslim family across the street. Monem and Iman invited us to break their fast (Iftar) with them and their three delightful children last year during Ramadan, and this year invited us to Iftar again to raise money for victims of the Pakistani floods. Iman shared stories of the fear in the Muslim community to celebrate Eid this year.

I, who have taken the stories of the Nazis and the Holocaust to heart and have always feared the coming of that type of hatred and violence towards gay people, now witness the effect of that energy on Muslims in America. Ursula Hegi, in "Stone from the River" portrayed life in a small German city during the rise of the Nazi movement. Many younger Jewish people fled as conditions worsened, yet she portrays many older Jewish people putting up with the increasingly oppressive limitations and degradations of their lives, rather than trying to escape, telling themselves that the time of oppression would pass. I was startled last night to hear Iman, our Muslim neighbor, mimic that same point of view. "It will blow over," she said, after describing the many fears expressed by her Facebook friends.

Lynne and I, as lesbians, have increasingly integrated ourselves with our neighbors and coworkers, a process that involves some risk and requires us to overcome our own worries of humiliation or rejection. We would like to be "neighbors", not "gay neighbors". We have been affirmed by the welcome that we have received from all our new neighbors in Bellingham. Yet in my mind is the apprehension that these times of openness may be temporary. I have imagined future scenes where we are rounded up and taken away, and our non-gay neighbors, paralyzed with fear themselves, tearfully reflect that we were kind and friendly people.

Here is my reality check. We are not the only minority in Bellingham, in Washington, in America with a tentative foothold on living peaceful, mainstream lives. Iman introduced herself as president of the Bellingham Association of Muslims, and then went on to joke "There are three of us here in Bellingham." She and her family, her American Muslim friends and the larger American Muslim community, are more afraid of attacks from fellow Americans today then they were on September 12, 2001.

Here comes alive the famous poem "When the Nazis Came For Me", first spoken in 1946 by Pastor Martin Niemöller,

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist..

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.


When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.


When they came for the Jews,
I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.


When they came for me,
there was no-one left
to speak out.

This week is our chance to speak out, to support our Muslim neighbors.

You can order a DVD of “A Wing and A Prayer, An American Muslim Learns to Fly”, the movie that tells Monem and Iman’s story at http://www.peacefulcommunications.org/ .

Working for the Alaska Ferry

I'm driving the Malaspina!

The three of us were standing on the metal walkway laughing. We were suspended 40 feet above the harbor and ten feet from the side of the ferry vessel, the Malaspina, which looms over our heads. It has just sidled up to the dock. We are decked out in red winter- weight life vests; their bulk provides welcome warmth against the wind and the rain of this early June day in Ketchikan, Alaska. Our job at the moment, explains experienced Jen to the two of us newbies, is to toss the weighted end of the rope, the “monkey claw”, high over our heads to the top deck of the ship. The crew is waiting for the two monkey claws that we are holding in our hands. Moments before, the deck hand had thrown two monkey claws down to us, and Jen had pulled on the ropes attached to them until the heavy loops that moored the ship was in her hands. She dropped each loop over a cleat to secure the ship to the dock. Our job was to send it back to him.

The deck

How is it that I am standing here in Ketchikan’s harbor, with these new acquaintances, trying my hand at throwing monkey claws? I who have been land locked in Kentucky for 32 years and have made my home on the coast of Washington for just the last 11 months? I coil the rope and apologize in advance for my poor throwing skills. “I throw like a girl,” I had just admitted a few minutes before. Youthful Lauren, 37 years my junior, had tried to throw it on board, but missed on her first try. On her determined second try, she succeeded. My turn next. I hesitated to try but Jen, who had been pressed into service as our trainer all week, encouraged me. I focused on the railing high over my head, and gave it my best underhand pitch. The monkey claw arched over the bow of the ship and landed on deck. I cheered, and we all laughed. It was a suitable end to my first week employed as a terminal agent for the Alaska Marine Highway System, which operates ferries that transport cars, trucks, RVs, dogs, motorcycles, kayaks, bicycles and all manner of people to points along the coast of Alaska.

This is the vessel that took me to Alaska.

The only place to board the Alaska Ferry in the lower 48 states is in Bellingham, and I beat out 200 applicants to be hired for a part-time position selling tickets and lining up vehicles for the ferry. One of the outstanding perks of the job was that a week after I was hired, they sent me up to Alaska on the ferry for training.

I was thrilled to get this part time job, in part because it meant that I could quit substituting. I reasoned that 500 people who are about to depart for a sail up to Alaska are bound to be more pleasant to deal with than the students who didn’t want to be in school. The Alaska ferry arrives every Friday morning at 8:00 a.m. in Bellingham, and departs north again at 6:00 p.m., so basically, I work one long day a week. The ferry terminal is in Fairhaven, a picturesque part of Bellingham with early 20th century houses lining the hills overlooking the bay. From my vantage point when I'm lining up cars, I can see the activity at the Community Boating Center and the Amtrak train station which surround the ferry terminal. For someone with traveling genes like me, it's fun. So far, my prediction about dealing with the ferry passengers has proved to be accurate, but there is one difference. As a teacher, when the students misbehave, I send them to the principal’s office. As a terminal agent…I am there to serve the public, and I am sometimes the brunt of their frustration, anger, or general grumpiness.

Kids in their tent on the top deck of the boat

Here are a few pictures of my trip up to Alaska on the ferry. Because I was a new hire, I was invited up to the bridge and they gave me a chance to steer the boat.  Note the people who pitch tents on deck, the bargain way to travel for anyone who has camping gear and duct tape to secure the tent to the deck!

This blog has been neglected during the last month only because summer and visitors have arrived.  We are having fun and I have more to tell soon.  Greetings from Bellingham, where the one day that the temperature was above 80 the newspaper published heat advisories, warning people how to take care of their pets during this extreme weather.  The sky is indescribably blue and the cool breeze reminds me of why we chose to moor here.  Hello friends!

Narfoo: Working for the 2010 Census

Looking around the room at the other members of my crew, I see real diversity.  The youngest is 19, and the oldest, whose favorite all time job was as a bar tender in Hawaii, won't say her age.  I'm guessing 68. I am not the only underemployed teacher. Besides me, there is another out of work teacher, as well as a University instructor (teaches Argumentation, as in Debate Teams), and two biologists: one works for Fish and Wildlife and specializes in salmon, one former Forest service employee who specializes in Native plants and collects seeds on a seasonal basis.  The youngest is a 19 year old very fresh faced college student. Another young man, recently married, has been an anthropology graduate student, taking a year off before moving to NY to work on his PhD (specializing in "borders"). We include a full-time mother of five, a former city councilwoman and computer specialist, also in her 60's, who would prefer a permanent job but has been working through the temporary agency, a retired masseuse, and our crew leader, a sharp young veteran who used to work for an orthotics/prosthetics company and now works one day a week at a comic book store (and went to the opening showing of IronMan 2 after midnight last week.) 

What has drawn us together is that we all needed work and took the test to be hired to work on the US Census 2010.  In this county (Whatcom), 400 people were hired from 4000 that passed the test.  I read in the newspaper that 64,000 Census workers were hired across the nation, including two of my brothers, who are working for the Census in Florida and in Denver. If I do the math, I estimate that 600,000 people across the country took the test and passed but were not hired, such as my partner, Lynne, who was called when we were downtown and found that the job was already filled when she called back. I am impressed by the number of intelligent, capable, hard-working, responsible Americans who need jobs.

For the most part, people who have answered doors that I have knocked on are friendly enough.  The odd character thinks the Census is an invasion of privacy (at best) or part of a conspiracy (at worst). Some people are clearly home and refuse to open the door when I knock, like the woman who was obviously standing a foot away on the other side of the door who told me she was in the tub. Some, like the elderly woman who answered the first door that I knocked on, enjoy the company and invite us in. Paul, one of the other enumerators, knocked on door of a man who berated him (for about 10 minutes) (through the upstairs window) because Paul had woken him up, along with his wife and children.  It was 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon.  By the way, 10 minutes is about the time it would have taken to answer the enumerator's questions.  Another of my colleagues conducted an interview at the front door of a house that was clearly cooking meth.  One has to wonder what he was thinking...perhaps he knew that we are trained to do only our job and ignore the rest.

I had to learn the lingo: NRFU (pronounced narfoo) is the code for Non-Response FollowUp, the job for which I have been hired.  I am known as an Enumerator, someone who goes to HUs (Housing Units) of people (known as Respondents) who have not returned their Census form in the mail (that's the Non-Response part). Every day we fill our the D-308, which normal people would call the daily payroll form. The D1Es are also known as the EQs, the Enumerator Questionnaires (with the script we must follow verbatim to ask you questions).  The D1E(S) is the Spanish version.  I have my official Census satchel, stuffed with the appropriate forms like the Info-Comm, used to send a message to someone else, such as my Crew Leader (boss) (whom I see every day) and the NV, the form to leave at someone's door if they don't answer (Notice of Visit) (D-26), filled out with valuable data like the LCO, the CLD, and my ID.   There are more, my favorite being the WHUHE (pronounced woo-he) (Whole Household Usual Home Elsewhere).  I only got (an embarrassing) 82% on the final (open book) test over this material, the test which serves as the final assessment of my readiness.

Following the script, we have to ask some funny things, like we have to ask everyone whether they are male or female, even if we think we know the answer.  This translates to funny questions, like "Your son, is he male or female?"   We have to ask what race the respondent is, even though, for example, Wikipedia says "human races are said not to exist, as taxonomically all humans are classified as the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens."  Still, the Census gives you a choice of twelve races, which seem a lot like ethnic groups to me, including White, Asian Indian, Japanese, Native Hawaiian, Black (including African American or Negro), Chinese...and the box for "Some other race," which is what you should choose if you are Hispanic.  Very strange that a huge segment of the US population does not merit its inclusion on the list of suggested "races."  A few respondents have checked "Some other race" and filled in "Human Race."

Despite the high probability that the training class could be so boring as to be deadly, our crew leader, Pete, managed to inject some fun into the process by telling us from the first day that we were the "Best Crew Ever."  For a few nanoseconds, I fell for it. Then I realized that he was having fun and setting us up for a competition with the other crews, a competition that would perhaps motivate us to be more efficient and productive and perhaps prolong his employment with the Census.  That point, I get.  I think everyone on our crew, and I would guess, everyone working for the Census across the country, wishes that the job was more than temporary, that the work would not end in three weeks and would lift us a while longer from the stress of unemployment or underemployment.  From this vantage point, the WPA (which gave eight million Americans from 1935 - 1943 jobs and resulted in the construction of many bridges, state park lodges and schools that are still testifying to the capability of the American workers) was a great idea.  One wonders why the current government has not taken this page from the history books.

Tulip kisses and tsunamis

The Jesuit priest who sometimes led the children's mass at the Catholic elementary school (where I started my teaching career) caused a ripple of twitters to go through the church when he said that tulips always made him think of kisses.  It was during the spring that he made this remark, and the tulips were blooming beautifully everywhere you turned.  This statement and the rest of his homily on the poetry of tulips, kisses, and spring spread panic among the middle school teachers who were responsible for the (hormonal) middle school students.  They spent the rest of the school day disputing the homily, in this case saying that the church was clearly mistaken, trying to squelch the kissing theme tsunami that Father Gino had started with his alarmingly innocent remarks. 

In an effort to earn an honest living, I have been in the midst of such classroom tsunamis many times:  attempting to lead our precious flock alongside calm waters, getting all the young heads bent over their math worksheets focused and working quietly, and then, bam, a crow flies into the window.  The easily distracted kids are instantly out of their seats peering out the window to see the poor bird and the rest are now loudly telling anyone who would listen every bird or loud noise or window story that they can think of.  I as the shepherd, I mean, the teacher, spend the next ten minutes trying to re-establish calm and re-motivate the flock to keep on working.

This brings me to my most recent scheme for fame and fortune.  I will write a best selling book, and here's how I came up with the idea. I was in the humble position of substitute librarian for an elementary school a couple of weeks ago, and the cute little second graders had come in for their libary time.  They were seated quietly at my feet (criss cross hands on lap) gazing up at me while I was showing them a poster and talking up the imminent Book Fair. Suddenly, all hell broke loose because a little blond haired rascal in the back row "emitted gas," (intentionally or not is up for debate.)  The first wave is the kids around him suddenly scooting away, laughing and pointing to make it clear that they didn't do it, while he sat there red-faced and obvious, vainly trying to pretend that he wasn't the source. The second wave is kids holding their noses and casting aspersions as the malodorous cloud passed spread over the room.  This activity catches on until I have to ask all the students to take their hands away from their nose and turn towards me. Unfortunately, at that point, no matter what the teacher does, the kids are paying attention only to the stink bomb.  So strong is the tribal response to farting that I, as a teacher, could stand on my head and click my heels together and they would not have noticed.  Hence my inspiration came for the title of the book:  "How To Deal With A Fart And Other Classroom Tsunamis."  (Progress on this book is...slow.)

While anticipating fame and fortune, Lynne and Winnie and I had a spectacular field trip to Skagit County (about 30 miles south of Bellingham) to see the tulip fields in bloom on Friday (thus returning the reader to paragraph one).  Skagit County has an expansive agricultural valley where tulips are grown commercially, bounded on the west by the Salish Sea and on the east by the Cascade Mountains, so when you walk among the quiet rows of thousands of vibrant purple, or red, or yellow, or pink tulips, planted in ribbons of color, you only have shift your gaze to the horizon to see the snow covered mountains.  The tulips are raised for their bulbs, rather than to sell the cut flowers, so the flowers are left to bloom fully in the fields.  It truly is a tsunami of brilliant color! Here are some of the views that we had, including yours truly and our family.

Many tulip kisses and happy spring, from Sky, Lynne and Winnie!

kd lang at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies

I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
You don't really care for music, do ya?

OK, so I didn’t recognize the song. Lynne and I were watching the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics (on Canadian TV) when I heard those lines for the first time. OK, yeah, I know. I didn’t recognize the singer, either, which is probably even more embarassing. I may possibly be the last person on earth (Lynne excluded) to have heard this song, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". Wikipedia says that, prior to late 2008, more than five million copies of the song sold, and that it has been the subject of a BBC Radio documentary and been featured in the soundtracks of numerous films and television programs. You may wonder how the song could be new to me, since it was sung by Alexandra Burke, the winner of the fifth series of British reality television show, The X Factor in 2008. The embarrassing list goes on and on. It was even sung by k.d. lang in 2004 on her album Hymns of the 49th Parallel and she has several times been chosen to sing the song at major events, such as at the Canadian Juno Awards of 2005. Plus, if you are old enough to be a Leonard Cohen fan (I am old enough but I wouldn’t really say I was a fan), you would have heard them back in 1984 when he first released his song, “Hallelujah.” All I can say is, I turned off the tv in 1968, and that's what happens.

For me, it was a mesmerizing first hearing of a beautiful song.

It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
The voice that was singing this song was so on, so empathetic, so expressive, so powerful. “Who is that man?” I asked Lynne. She said, “It’s a woman.” I said, “It is not, look, it’s a man.” The layers of clothes: white shirt, white vest, white jacket and white pants, all a little too big, the full sized body, the no makeup and the fashionable but ambiguous haircut were all clues. Plus, I suspected that the singer was some Canadian evangelist with a good voice. All those beautiful hallelujahs. But really, I didn’t care, I just wanted to hear more of the song.

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya

It was strangely coincidental to hear this recounting of the biblical story of David and Bathsheba. We had just gotten home from eating out with two friends with whom we had been discussing spirituality. The conversation had hit on one of the (many) sticking points of the Old Testament, the story of (married) David vanquishing a woman (Bathsheba) whom he spies taking a bath a few roofs away. This is Kind David, reverred author of many psalms, also the same David who brought back 200 foreskins as proof of a military victory to Saul.
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
By now the dark flashlight lit Olympic stadium is completely synchronous as the barefoot white figure on the upraised podium enchants the audience, who are waving their flashlights back in forth in time with this song. Visually, it was a scene of uplifting unity. “It’s a man,” I continue. “It is not,” Lynne counters.

Baby I've been here before,
I've seen this room I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew ya
But I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Our love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

The power of the song, the concept of the cold and broken hallelujah, the sense of a someone who feels the divine, talking with someone who turns a deaf ear, the expression of the brokenness of life erupting into hallelujah, this singer who is leaning back and single handedly filling the Olympic stadium with hallelujahs…

Maybe there's a God above,
But all I've ever learned from love
Is how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya
It's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not someone who has seen the light
It's a cold and broken Hallelujah

The cynic’s view of love, the cynic’s view of humanity, the cynic’s view of God.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,

Hallelujah
The music stops. The applause rises like a tsunami, the announcer’s voice thanks k.d. lang, and the Olympic opening ceremonies continue. I am stunned, “That was k.d. lang?” The Canadian singer whom I knew from many years ago? The young woman with a kind of goofy cowgirl/punk affect? The Patsy Cline fan, who was most famous to me because she came out as a lesbian in the midst of her successful career in popular music? Lynne goes to the Internet to read more, and I sit back and reflect: how powerful it is that the Canadian Olympic committee chose to include her, an out lesbian dressed in manly clothes, to be a centerpiece of their presentation of Canadian talent to the world. 

If you missed it, (I think it was shown after midnight in the eastern time zone) here’s a link:
 http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=49bc5f18-a712-4f1c-b71d-73c8debb9adb.html  What’s totally annoying is that you have to allow Microsoft’s Silverlight to be installed on your computer if it's not already before you can watch it. Grrr, except that its worth being able to see this moment again.



Here's a link to her singing the same song in 2004: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE

I'm sorry that I've missed out on this great performer and this great song.  You can stop laughing at me now!

Sky

Time Zones

As the long mild days of fall gave way to the dark and rainy November in Bellingham, I met a woman who gave me some good advice:  schedule yourself a vacation to a sunny place in January or February.  I didn't need to hear those words of wisdom twice, as apprehensive as I was about winter in the northwest. My mother lives in Florida, so I promptly spent some frequent flyer miles to make a reservation to fly diagonally across the country, connecting two dots that are as far away as possible and still be in the US.  We went from Seattle to Melbourne (east coast of Florida, south of Orlando) for the first week of February.  Many of our fellow Bellingham-sters have gone on similar journeys to the sun in recent months, taking trips to Hawaii or Mexico, returning with a healthy tan and exhibiting the level of relaxation that comes from days on the beach . I anticipated that we would be leaving behind rain, darkness and cold to fly into clear skies, sunny days and warmth.

El Nino has made a mockery of that plan.  While we have enjoyed a balmy, dry winter in Bellingham (as in, the snow machines are working around the clock for the winter Olympics, just an hour north of here), the east of the US, including Kentucky, has had the dramatic storms that make for great winter beauty and/or survival stories (depending on your perspective).  So when we flew to Melbourne last week, we de-planed to cooler temperatures there as here in Bellingham, and to top it off, rain that turned off and on all week.  Nature still had a show for us to enjoy, and to remind me of the epic diversity found within the US.

Lynne and I did get to saunter on the boardwalk through a Florida forest at Erna Nixon Nature Preserve, where we were greeted by the sight of about 30 volunteers making artificial oyster beds by cable tying oyster shells to plastic mats which will then be dropped in a bay to encourage the return of oysters to the ecosystem.  Past the tables where they were working was a boardwalk that led us through a grove of live oak trees covered with Spanish moss (above), and by the colorful and muscular bark of Simpson's Stopper (right), a native tree that I was pleased to meet.  Lynne paid the price for the plane ride by coming down with a nasty rendition of a cold that kept her in bed for the rest of the week.

The foamy ocean waves rolling in, with wind too strong to enjoy being exposed to, led my mother and me to settle down at a cozy table in the Crown Plaza restaurant one day, where we had a lesisurely feast on crab cakes, cheesecake and apple pie a la mode while vicariously enjoying the ocean through the salt etched window.  The waitress was particularly friendly, as in, she didn't have many customers, so we chatted with her about the surf and the wind, and enjoyed speculating about the few other customers who showed up while we were there.  A few days later, I enjoyed a windy walk on the beach under cloudy skies with two of my brothers and my sister-in-law from Denver. It was the type of day where the beach patrol is bundled up in winter clothes and the attendant is vainly trying to stay warm, waiting for somebody to rent an umbrella or lounge chair outside the high rise hotel.  The weather cleared the beach of the usual crowds, which made for a good time watching the busy sanderlings whose little legs worked overtime running up as the water came in and then down again to graze in the wet sand just above the waterline.  Acutally, I had to look them up in our bird books to learn their proper names, where I also was introduced to the correct name for the willetts.

The warmth we missed in terms of temperature we got instead from visiting with my two oldest brothers and their wives. We cooked up some epic meals, including pompano (a fish native to Florida), bananas foster and paella with tons of fresh seafood.  Weather doesn't really interfere with time spent with my mother.  The formula for fun includes time together, going to church, and a visit to her favorite restaurant: Friendly's.  My mother is 93 and has found a good home for herself in an independent living facility where she can walk down the hall to physical therapy, or to play Bingo, or to eat dinner. Now that she is in her second year there, she has friends to chat with too.  Her best friend, Connie, is from her church.  Connie is the angel who drives my mother to many church activities and to the grocery store, so the good news is that my mother is doing well for herself in Florida.

At the end of the week, we slingshotted back to Seattle,  intentionally sitting on the left side of the plane, poised for good views of the Cascades and possibly Mt. Rainier to the south.  We were rewarded for our efforts (see left view of the Cascades). Once on the ground, the sky was clear and blue, so as we drove north from Seattle to Bellingham, driving through the expanses of rural Skagit Valley, the vista was framed with good views of the Olympic Mountains to the west, the Cascades to the right and the Canadian mountains to the north.  I felt a fresh appreciation of the beauty of northwest Washington. As I said to Lynne, "I can't believe that we live here now."

We miss our Kentucky friends and hope that you will enjoy some time with us in this beautiful corner of the world.

Sky

Time to wander

While I won't win any photography contests, I have tried.  We have a great opportunity to see bald eagles up close.  The migratory bald eagles are lured to this area by the carcasses of chum salmon which have returned to rivers (the Nooksack, the Skagit, the Sauk, among others within easy driving distance of our home) to spawn and then to die.  The resourceful eagles are attracted by this convenient food supply and perch in the hardwood trees overlooking the rivers.

We have made it our mission to find the eagles on several occasions.  One was an Eagle Tour organized by the Whatcom Land Trust on January 2nd.  That day was one of those rainy days when we had to talk ourselves into leaving our warm and dry abode to stand out in the chill and rain looking for birds.  We thought it would be worth it and we were totally correct.  Besides spending the afternoon with some pleasant birders, we also learned more than we bargained for from the leader, a recent retiree from Fish and Wildlife.  Having spent part of his career "protecting" bald eagles when they were considered endangered, he also had experience with salmon and elk and plenty of energy for answering any question in extensive detail.  So much so, that he was the last man standing on the side of the creek when the chill of the rain motivated the less hardy of us to seek the shelter of the car. 

Some bald eagles are permanent residents of the coast and islands off the coast of Washington, which explains our close encounter with two eagles along Semiahmoo Spit in July.  The transients are summer residents of Alaska and British Columbia, who move down south as the weather gets cold up north.  We drove back to the same site a few days later, in part so that Lynne could get a reference photo for a painting she wants to do. We continued driving east to Mt. Baker, which does have snow, and enjoyed seeing skiers swooping down the mountain.  Winnie, the snow dog, also got to do some serious romping. We have had a relatively mild winter here so far--the record low was 18 degrees F.  (I try to explain to friends here that in Kentucky, some days it only gets up to 18!)  We did have two snow delays for school in December, when we had one inch of snow, which seems like a better deal than the storm that just blew through Kentucky and even chilled Florida.  The eagles will start migrating north again by February.  Two other winter visitors are the trumpeter swans and the snow geese.  When I hear an off key flock of Canada geese flying over, I look up and see their long necks so I know that they are actually trumpeter swans.  The snow geese take up winter residence in the fields of Skagit Valley, just south of Bellingham.  The farmers don't actually want them because they eat up their winter crops, so this year Lynne and I have seen some snow geese (like maybe 50), but not the hundreds that have been seen in previous years.  Here's a link to some good pictures: http://wdfw.wa.gov/wlm/game/water/snow_goose/#swans and here's a link to more about snow geese: http://www.greatnorthern.net/~dye/snow-geese.htm .

Yesterday I took Winnie down to the bay for a walk on the beach.  The temperature warmed up to 50.  Now that's a plus:  to live someplace where you can drop in on the beach, and stop at the hardware store on the way home!

Our time to wander Washington may increase as both of us have been hit by the "why are we doing this?" bug about our jobs.  Lynne has decided to stop torturing herself with her home-health-job-from-hell, which involved driving 30 miles to get to work, then driving up to a hundred miles more to find her patients who are scattered east and west.  To top it off, the Medicare charting requirements were designed by an obsessive personality, which means after she gets home she has a minimum of 3, and often 5 hours of charting to do.  The bonus is being on call all night for $25, during which time she could be called back down to Skagit County in the middle of the night to solve a patient's problem.  She has been encouraged by the response to her painting of Cape Alava (far west end of the Olympic Peninsula) that she submitted to the Blue Horse Gallery for a show that opened on Friday night.  The gallery owner made her increase the price that she was asking!  So Lynne and I have been pouring over the financial statements, and Lynne gave notice that she's leaving this job at the end of January.  She hopes to devote more time to painting, and I am working on building a web page that channels kids to safe and constructive web sites.  I'm hoping that the web page will be a resource for both parents and kids.  The links that I will provide come from an extensive list of safe websites that I developed during my years of teaching.  I haven't stopped substitute teaching, but my goal is to taper it off.

The sands keep shifting, which makes life fascinating.  We continue to think of you all, and look forward to your emails, letters and hopefully, your visits when you are in the area.

Sky