Echo's voice

American Bison, Buffalo, China, Guatemala and Me

2012-01-31T09:05:00.000-08:00

I have not always lived in the eternally green and damp redwood coast.
As a baby, born and until I was 21, raised in Wyoming - there were only one kind of magnificent creatures called to my mind when I heard the term Buffalo and it wasn't these domesticated animals or anything safe or controlled.

I had seen these beautiful American Buffalo, alone and in vast herds. I had watched them tear apart a tree to scratch an itchy spot, and form huge bare bowls in the prairie where they rolled in the dust.

I had learned that the very contrasting colors of the red calf and the green grass which made them so visible to my eyes, was perfectly the same tone when seen with the eyes of a predator.

I don't have a picture, well I do, but in a non digital stack somewhere, of the "magical Moon" white Buffalo I was lucky enough to see and feed, in Custer South Dakota. The legends and the fact of these strong and wild animals has been a part of the fabric of my life since I was a baby.

One of my friends had an Uncle with a bull he could saddle and ride in the Fourth of July parade, but over-all I knew the result of getting too close to these animals, was trampling or being gored. So even when I lived with a herd in Custer State Park, I treated them with awe, and respect from a distance, even though one would come and gaze in my window and leave big nose prints on the glass.

My son is farther away from the bison than it looks, and I want to warn people, don't put your loved ones near buffalo to get a picture. I've seen it, it is DANGEROUS!

http://365project.org/pandorasecho/365/2012-01-25

A Series of Pictures that I took for The Same Subject Challenge on 365 Project got me remembering why I had these little mementoes in my life in the first place

and reminded me that it is fun to be playful

Watering Hole

I'm having way too much fun with this. Starting to feel like someone is going to catch me out playing in the mud puddles with my toys.

Return to old watering holes for more than water; friends and dreams are there to meet you.
African Proverb

My water buffalo have gone wallowing in the silk kimono, in front of the 1987 calendar I got when I was a student there. This includes and ancient selfie because the button on the bottom of the calendar is my husband and I in the imperial gardens in Xiamen. I had to include the Happiest Buddha

Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator

The breath of a buffalo in winter

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

Caught at play with my buffalo

Then in 1987, My husband and I were lucky enough to be able to attend a college for Teacher prep. in Beijing, China.

This is where I first saw the other kind of buffalo, the hard working, domesticated, seen with birds and children on their back, water loving BUFFALO

They were so different, but equally powerful and amazing. I only managed a few pictures but filled my memory with them

My pottery buffalo came from China and the Wooden one was carved and purchased on a trip I took with my Mom and sons, to Guatemala in the mid 1990's

Just for your viewing pleasure (I hope) here are a few of the other things and places we saw in China

Mongolian Hot pot, cooking lamb and cabbage at the table

My husband, our history teacher, and I
"We" are not amused"
but hopefully we are amusing

Zai Jian 再见(until later)

Rain, Rain and More Rain

2012-01-24T12:47:00.000-08:00

According to the local paper, the Del Norte Triplicate, we have gotten 9 inches of rain in 4 days, while just a few miles up the hill, they got 18. Unfortunately their water quickly flooded down hill through us on its mad dash to the sea. Fortunately this area is good at absorbing water and the salmon and redwoods thrive

This is really a tiny creek meandering over a sandy beach.

Here the waves were breaking over Whaler Island, really a peninsula where the Coast Guard are stationed

This was the soccer field where my boys used to play, funny, we called it flock of seagull soccer because the teams of 4 and 5 year olds ran and turned in unison, rarely following the ball.

Often this is a beach where you can walk, and where the community sets up camp to watch the 4th of July fireworks from the pier.

The sad "Star" a sailboat which washed onto the rock retaining wall. A lot of that wall is chunks of concrete and tile from the old swimming pool, destroyed by the March 28, 1964 tsunami which killed 11 people and tore up the town.

Every area has dangers which only the locals really understand. Growing up in Yellowstone the "tourons" would stand on a thin crust over boiling hot water, or try to pose their children next to a bear or buffalo. Here they want to get close to a basking sea lion, 1,000 pounds and teeth like a wolf and can move fast on land

or

this is the jetty, a breakwater built after the tsunami in March of 1964 killed 11 people and flattened most of the town. On sunny days its wide concrete top looks like a good place for a walk or even to drive your car out and watch the whales

I've lived here 23 years and lost count of the tragedies, when a pedestrian, or even a volkswagon full of people, are suddenly swept off the wall and onto the rocks by sneaker waves like this, and yet the power and beauty of the sea draws me back over and over

With our intense storms lately, there have been huge waves breaking over the wall continuously for days, and yet, there were two grey bearded windsurfers out just in front of me too.

I mock the stupidity of the tourist, yet in some ways I think better to die in the act of loving life than to die, old and afraid and never having dared the wind and the beasts.

God!
I need coffee and to gat awake enough to do some work, this half dreaming mind of mine is strange this dark, stormy morning

Seriously, don't drive around the danger sign to park on this jetty.

I love crabbing on the B street pier, or just talking to people there.

See the sailboat on the rocks and the windsurfer, an old graybeard, in the mid ground

after this March 12, 2011 tsunami, our harbor was devastated, but the crabbing has now resumed and there are some places to dock the boats.

This sea lion can move amazingly fast and his teeth resemble a wolf's, but isn't he cute?

Crabby snowmen waving hello

Summer and Winter in the Redwoods

2012-01-21T12:41:00.000-08:00

Here on the Redwood Coast, water is a given. There is the pacific and the wild rivers and the redwood trees need 5 00 gallons of water a day, most absorbed from the fog. Winter rain comes hard and brutally with winds in excess of 110 miles and blasts of hail, but the summers are deliciously warm and inviting without becoming scorchers.

We go to the rivers to fish and swim and kayak much more to the ocean. The rivers are warmer and at the beach, there is clouds and fog except when it is blown away by sandblasting wind. Oh, sure, there are soft, easy days at the beach that fool the tourists into moving here, but the locals know they are an illusion and if you can stand a solar free zone is the only way you will ever be happy here long term.

The previous pictures are all summer, the ones which follow are from January, when we got 8 inches of rain in two days and are bracing for more

This picture shows the same spot, and the same giant rock as the sunny shot where people play on the gravel beach up above

So winter is green here, and grey and unlike the whited out world many of you experience. We rarely scrape snow from the sidewalks, and seldom have frosty windows, but there are months of rain, and the sun becomes a faint memory. I need to lock myself to my computer and write, but even in the stormy drama, it is wonderful to get out in a landscape with so much beauty.

The Redwood Tree

2012-01-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

There was a small cone from an evergreen tree. It would have been as small and round as a maybe, except that marbles would not be invented for many hundreds of years yet.

The cone hung from a thin, flat branch whose needles would have looked like the strands of a feather but no animal had yet produced a feather.

A hard, strong wind, like many before it, whipped the little cone's branch. This time it was drier and browner than during those past wind storms.

This time the little branch, with the cone at its tip, tore loose from the tree and rode the wind until it came to rest on a bed of ferns and rich soil. The little cone snagged in a fruit tree and then dropped to the ground and lay where it fell and slowly was buried beneath other branches and tree bark and dirt. It lay there as many rains came and quenched its dryness

It lay there until it felt itself bursting apart with the new life of the tiny sprout which pushed up and out and reached for the sun which only reached back to it because the tree which had sprouted there before had been removed by a roaring fire.

The sprout grew and grew and seasons came and went. It reached up so high into the air that it towered over the grey snag of its parent tree and the green newness of its siblings growing from the burl wood of the parent's enormous base.

It reached so high that it needed to drink from low lying clouds, with the help of the fungus on its bark and it drank up nearly 500 gallons of water each day.

It lived so long that feathered animals appeared and began to nest in its branches. It survived heat and cold when many of its type perished in ice age or draught. It survived a fire which roared into its heart and left a big black cave which for awhile was a den to a family of mountain lions.

Then the wind tore its roots from the ground and it fell. It crashed to the ground in many shattered lengths and lay there a long time

but then it felt its burls bursting with new life and sprouting and reaching for the sun. Around the shattered stump it grew into four, strong, proud trees which stretched up high and drew strength from the fallen trunk even as it melted back into the earth and fed the insects and ferns and bitter sorrel.

The four trees stood with their roots forming snaking tunnels where opossums nested for awhile and Tolowa babies sheltered while their parents gathered juicy blackberries or pulled fat salmon from the river.

One tree fell and became a plank house and one was cut and became a dug out canoe

One stopped growing and dried into a snag where owls and woodpeckers lived. The fourth became a hollow shell and for awhile it seemed as if the little cone's life force was no more.

But around the stump of the one which rode the sea waves, little sprouts began to burst with life until they had to push up and out and reach for the sun.

As they grew, a baby was born in Bethlehem and a strange man set foot on a continent that was new to him. Men walked, then rode, then flew and the stump melted back into the soil.

Men stood on the moon and looking back at their world, saw not counties, but a tiny round marble, shared by many living things.

And in the cathedral of redwood trees, an ant crawled, a banana slug slid, a raccoon ran and a child stood, head thrown back in wonder, as its soul stretched up and up and reached for the sun.

Of Christmas Trees and Memories

2011-11-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

Brookings Harbor, Oregon

1998 at home

I have been browsing back through old Christmas pictures and old Christmas letters from the early days of my 30 year relationship with my husband to the most recent Christmas celebrations. MY boys are getting to be adults, and many of their early memories are shared only by my husband and I but I wanted them to know all the places they have been and the people who have loved them, so I mean to assemble a Christmas scrapbook for them to take into the world as they move on.

My Sister-In-Law's home in Salem, OR

There have been Christmases at Cody, Newcastle, and Laramie, Wyoming with two sets of grandparents and 7 sets of aunts, uncles and cousins, and uncounted great aunts and uncles and second or third cousins. There were Christmases at home here, where it is filled with red maple leaves and redwood trees and green grass, and Christmases in the hospice where my dad lay dying while the snow fell 24 inches deep and the boys made snow angels in the hospital parking lot. There were times we were at Salem with my husband's sister, before she died hiking the Grand Canyon, and times we were in Ashland, Oregon with best friends creating a new set of traditions. There have been births, deaths, marriages and divorces, so my boys were born into an extended family, and live in one now, but they are not exactly the same, and of course, those who are gone, are missed, but those who have been added are celebrated.

Son playing with Crescent City Youth Orchestra

Me, at home

There were 22 people in the extended family, and now there are 27, but there has been the loss of a grandfather, a sister, and a nephew due to death, and of a sister-in-law through divorce, and so the family has become something different, and the roles of the people in it now are not the same.

Love the home made ornaments the most

And there appeared a light in the darkness

What I have learned for sure, is that Christmas isn't about the tree and the package and the place but it is about the Love and the people you get to share that with, and you have to celebrate the now, because the next time that the season rolls around, it will be different, maybe equally special, but never again will you get the chance to celebrate your 2011 family.

This 2008 ice storm closed the roads and snowbound us 1/3 of the way to Grandma's
but still a great Christmas happened, unplanned

Christmas with friends who are family/ Ashland, OR

Christmas Roses

Lake Selmac, Days after Christmas

This is the red and green we usually have in our yard Christmas to New Years and beyond

pheasant visiting under bird feeder

Crescent City Harbor Crab pots

Winter above Ashland

Fun Christmas scene across from cemetery in Salem, OR

Finally letting go of Christmas tree in January

Tree in my dining room

Mom's yard in Cody, Wyoming

My first "real tree" after getting married
I'd grown up with artificial and kept this up until Valentines day

combined two old Kodak snapshots of the tree we had every year as a child

Mother-in-law's tree in Newcastle, WY

Mom's Yard

My son visiting my classroom

hallway in Evanston, Wyoming the year we got snowed into a motel there

Home, with the tallest tree we ever had

Party at "Daycare Grandma's"

The first puppy my husband and I had

I hope you enjoyed my little trip down memory lane, and I'd love it if you logged off of here with the renewed determination to spend some time, loving your family, both the ones you were born with and the ones you chose to add. There are a lot of packages in these pictures, and I can't remember much about what was in any of them, but I remember who I was with, and why I love the Holidays.

Family is the real Gift.

My first nephew, RIP Cody Kid

November Mid-Point - Waiting for Hope to Appear

2011-11-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

Today, I should be at 25,000 words on my newest NaNoWriMo novel, but I am not. I should be at work, but I didn't get a call to sub for anyone today. I should . . . but I won't do many things.

What I did do, was spend the morning with my boys and a girlfriend - and I drove a load, a major load of clothing that had been cleared from my closet for months but hadn't made it out the door, to a clothing give-away that was happening today, so that I keep going in now and smiling at nothing.

Nothing is so worth smiling at when it used to be a mountain of clutter and now it will be helping someone else stay warm through the coming cold season.

After the drop off, I drove down next to the beach and instead of seagulls and pelicans, smiled at the nosy pair of crows and then I came home and smiled at the full woodstove and the warmth it promises me.

I have been smiling a lot lately, even though the bills and the kids have added a lot of stress to my daily life.

Why the smiles?

I think it has to do with an experiment.

I promised myself that I would not just be Thankful on Thanksgiving, but that I would find something to be thankful for every day this month.

It wasn't easy to begin but now it is easy to continue. Even for a perpetual grumbler like I sometimes am.

So I have looked around me with my eyes open to the gifts that life has just deposited in my hands

and I remember a quote I one had hanging above my sink,

"thank God for dirty dishes,
at least you had food"

Today I was reading a book of meditations, and I have to admit, I'm about a month behind in that too

but my stomach was in knots over the shortage of cash between now and the end of the month, and the abundance of bills

and the meditation brought me back into peace, so I want to share it with you,

I don't care what your faith is, so I hope you do not turn away from the wisdom here, if I tell you it is from Lamentations

"When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don't ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. Don't run from trouble. Take it full-face. The "worst" is never the worst."
Lamentations 3:28-30 (MSG)

My Brother Has Down's Syndrome! (and I love him.)

2011-10-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

LANCE!

I got to pick that name, as I was 12 (and very much into the Once and Future King at a Time). My parents didn't know for quite awhile that Mom was expecting a baby. She had me when se was 24 and he was 28, and went into an early menopause, so when I was almost 5 they adopted a 6 mont old baby boy. So when I was 12, and she was being treated for an ulcer, it was a shock to learn that the ulcer had a heartbeat. Dad was nervous about being a Dad to a baby again at 40 and joked that he would have to play catch while leaning on a walker. Then when he was born a week before halloween, there were complications from a blood condition similar to the Rh factor (ABO incompatibility) which had caused me to need a complete transfusion 12 years earlier, and he had to be airlifted to a city 100 miles away for a week stay under a light in a NICU.

My Mom came home to the empty crib and there were tears that hadn't stopped when the community health nurse arrived to try and talk them into signing their baby into the home for mentally impaired people. "He will never sit up, he probably won't ever recognize you. He certainly won't know you gave him up, and you have to think of what is best for your other children."

My Dad didn't anger easily, but he threw that nurse out of our home, the words she had spoken ringing in the sudden stillness, "Mongoloid Idiot."

I remember the joyful anticipation of the birth giving away to whispered conversations and tears and I overheard my Grandma say, "He'll have one tough row to hoe in his life." and I wanted to take all the pain he would suffer and hold it to me instead. I fell in love fast with that red faced monkey baby when we got to pick him up a week later and bring him home.

He was a happy baby, laughing and constantly making eye contact and proved a social master from birth. Then at 6 months, right when he had begun to speak, "MaMa, Ice Cream" coming already. He got sick, and the Dr. tested his blood and told mom to give him fluids, but he stopped eating, and over the weeks she tried to force feed him, forcing baby food between his lips as he cried, and holding his jaw closed until he swallowed, tears on both their cheeks as he fought, and wasted away. He lost half his body weight and then Mom went to yet another Dr. appt., begging the Dr. "If you don't do something, He will die."

The man who had been our family Dr. since my Mom was a child, calmly said, "Wouldn't that be the best thing for your family?"

"NO!"

So then he says he can save the baby, and a shot of penicillin for simple Giardia, or "Backpackers disease" cured him. But he was deaf.

An early intervention preschool in the next town over, taught sign language to Lance and gave me the first taste of the special ed. classroom that would become my career. Then when he was 5, a new surgical technique inserted tubes in his ears and drained the fluid. First he had to be admitted to the hospital and under general anesthesia, have his ears cut off and taped to the side of his head, so they could be glued on again following surgery. That has changed a lot since 1980. His first sound in 4 1/2 years was when he awoke in the recovery room and heard a toilet flush on the other side of the wall. It startled him and he began to cry, but he'd no memory of hearing himself cry and that scared him more, and Mom picked hi up and patted his back and murmured,"you will be fine, it's OK." but the patting and her voice and his screaming ad the Dr. talking all overwhelmed him like explosions of painfully loud noise.

So even 31 years later he is not fond of loud noises, but he had a really hard time for a few years, with indoor things like basketball games or concerts.

Then he was old enough for public school and they wanted to ship him out of the county to a "State School" but the Public mainstreaming law had just passed and my parents stood firm and a class was begun. At first they had to fight for everything. There were a few other kids who came too, and some things were good, but some discipline was things like being locked in a dark closet during lunch for refusing to pick up puzzle pieces.

And when he was 7 he was going down a slide in the backyard as our puppy jumped up to meet him at the bottom. His arm met the puppy's claws and the flesh tore. We rushed him to the emergency room, where the Dr. in charge strapped him to a gurney and began to stitch up the arm. Without pain medicine. Mom and Lance both screamed.

The Dr. Looked at my Mom in all sincerity and assured her, "Kids like this don't feel pain. He's just crying out of reflex." And my sweet Mom threatened to make the Dr. feel pain if he didn't get a different Dr. in there sooner than now.

But attitudes were changing, there was a boy with Down's syndrome on a popular TV show, and mainstream activities like swim lessons, bowling, sunday school, boy scouts and school choir all introduced the town to a boy with a sense of humor, a joy in life, a passion for sports, and an uncanny ability to make people love him. By the time Lance was 15, he started working in a work study program with WalMart and the High School, and when he graduated in 1996, just before our Dad died of cancer, he kept working 3 days a week. And has for 18 years now. The City of Cody has accepted him in amazing ways and he can't go out to a store or restaurant without people saying "There's Lance! Hi, Lance" and he knows everybody.

Yesterday, he turned 36. He's still going strong, which is a victory since we were assured he would never make it to 25. Wrong!! Happy Birthday to my Hero!

And All I Got was a Crummy T-Shirt

2011-10-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

My ______ went to ________, and ALL I got was this Crummy T-Shirt!

Sunbonnet Sue quilt my Grandma Grace made from my Mom's childhood dresses for my crib

I have mentioned before that I come from a long line of pack-rats and one of the problems is that we are a close, and busy family with a connection maintained between extended family in many parts of the world, and the firm belief that some of the best memories might be lost, FOREVER, if we lose the physical thing that triggers the memory.

I grew up in a time when t-shirts were the normal prize for participating in something and the standard souvenir of any trip, and I have a bunch of t-shirts, of course. My favorites, unfortunately, are the ones which become worn to shreds, the arm pits get thin and then give out, the belly picks up coffee and spaghetti stains. The ones with no memories attached stay safely in the back of my closet.

I thought I had the perfect solution. My maternal grandmother, Grace Slack, made beautiful quilts that I still cherish, from my dresses and her dresses and my brothers pearl snapped cowboy shirts. I wanted to make a quilt of 18 inch t-shirt blocks with a border from old denim.

On minor issue. I do not sew. Oh, I can thread a needle and replace a button, but when I got into weaving, I ended up with yards of material I had to pay someone else to hem. My bathroom curtain is still a beach towel, push-pinned to the wall. So the squares piled up and eventually I had enough I could have sewn quilts for India, if I could have sewn.

This DQ was only open in summer, and my brother, Lance, with Down's syndrome, talked them into staying open through his Oct. 24th birthday each year. The MTNs, are Cedar and Rattlesnake and the statue of Buffalo Bill is on Main Street.
I love the DQ because eery day of summer, my Mom, Grandma, brothers and I would go there in the afternoon and get a milkshake to take to where my grandpa sold Antlers and Jack-a-lope to tourists by the hot Yellowstone Highway

What can I do? I write, and I take pictures and sometimes paint. Now, if I weave, I make tapestries. I will never sew a quilt. So I am sharing some of the stories behind the T-shirts. And then the pile will be gone, well diminished anyway.

My Mother-In-Law was really sick, for 6 weeks we stayed in a travelodge in Rochester, by the Mayo Clinic and spent the days in the Hospital, thinking we'd lose her. The one fun day, we took our sons to the Mississippi and to Cabela's to see the dioramas ad eat elk sandwiches.
I also smile because that was 2006 and we STILL have her.

We went to Disneyland when the boys were 9 and 10 and to medieval times for a chance to watch jousting and tear at chicken with our teeth and fingers and feel like royalty. Our yellow knight was the best!

My husband is a Music Teacher, and he started a Community Children's Choir. Both my boys were in it and the shows were awesome and I was so proud of my guys.

Being a Cody Bronc was partly torture, but also there were great moments. I'm glad I don't have to relive those years but I am who I am, and that is partly because I survived the bad and good of high school.

Nothing was more fun than watching the Broadway version of the Lion King, but after we came home, my youngest son wanted to sleep in on a Sunday, and I made him get up and go to church. He was 5 and made his opinion clear by stomping out to the car wearing this.

My husband taught here, I subbed in every grade level, and both boys attended. There are a lot of good schools but Pine Grove was FAMILY!

Ahh, Keiko. Loved the "Free Willie" Whale and spent many times standing face to face cross a glass pane, watching the gentle whale move his flipper when I moved my hand

The incredible, lion faced Golden Tamarins are the creatures which inspired my favorite characters in my novels.

Growing up in Cody, I loved the Rodeo clowns, and this t-shirt was illustrated by my brother's Mother-in-law

My husband grew up near the Flintstones of Custer, South Dakota, and I had loved to stop there when we were on road trips, so now we still stop for a sherbet twist cone when we are in the neighborhood. Plus, I was born, a redheaded baby girl, the season Pebbles was born, and my mom dressed me in fake leopard print too long.

I wasn't a Trek fan until I was married and it was long into re-runs, but sharing them with my husband, led to sharing AL the novels and games and finally being in a movie one day at universal studios.

Just married, 1984, we spent the summer as counselors at a wheelchair Camp outside Susanville, CA where only jeeps could haul the campers from the inner city. Easter Seals Rocks!

We bought 14 parrots and I painted this to wear while teaching art to preschoolers.

Powell Wyoming Junior College where I met the Man I have loved these last 30 years.

Enough said!

This on-line community jump started me and led me to write both my published novels and start a couple more still "In Progress"

The best school for kindergarten in out county, I do believe, largely thanks to Mrs. LaFazio

Where I attended the second half of my college years and learned to love the coastal redwoods on spring break.

We went to Copenhagen as part of a choir tour. It was strange to see the sun set and come back up in one smooth movement at 3 AM. Tivoli Gardens and the City were beautiful and a couple redheads felt right at home there.

Pittsburgh! My Dad Grew up going here on school field trips, and one of my best days ever was when it poured rain, most people went home and we rode all day, with no lines and a lot of soaked laughter.

This just says, "Home" plus my Sister-in-law was a mail carrier when it was issued.

Thyme began in a garden, the Gardening Angel

My husband loves his Tie dye and my birds
and I love him

Judy, the toy I told all my secrets too, sports a t-shirt my baby brother wore which was a gift from a pen-pal I had in London when he was born.

OK, that is all I am up to for now. Nostalgia is exhausting and there is much to do in the here and now.

Crescent City, Still Dredging out the Tsunami Damage

2011-10-09T15:15:00.000-07:00

Back in March, when the Tsunami stuck Crescent City Harbor the same day the Japan was hit, we were lucky that only one person lost his life. Even that one, brought pain to a community where the sea has a history of reaching out and claiming lives. Still a lot of people lost their income and their family boats as the busy, crabbing and fishing harbor went through a full day of flushing like a giant toilet as the water rushed in and out and churned the docks to pieces, sank the boats and filled the boat basin with sludge.

Now nearly 7 months later, There is progress. The parking lot has a huge pile of boken docks and boulders and the silt is being dredged out and hauled away, one barge load at a time, but except that barge and a few boats tied to the side, the basin is empty of the life it once had bustling there. Still many of the daily routines have resumed. The sun alternates with rain and fog but gives no clue that it holds the strength we were hit with that day.

There is so much that is lovely and peaceful here
and the people who make their home here have a quiet strength and a generous nature and a willingness to rebuild again and again

Yet they also have a barely suppressed violence and a coldness that shows up in violent crimes and murder far more often that is easy to live with. The women and children of this community are no strangers to being victims and the claim that "there is no law north of the Klamath" is repeated often enough to let you know it contains at least a grain of truth.

Where docks and crab boats filled the harbor before March, now silt fills it and must be removed one barge at a time

View of Battery point lighthouse

So now that the harbor is filled with a huge floating platform, dredging up black and stinking ooze from the bottom of the boat basin and sending barge after barge of it away, to make room for the rebuilding of docks and the return of a working commercial fleet. Now that Battery Point lighthouse shines its beacon on the hope of a fresh start to the community as we rebuild

Let us also shine the light into the darker places, the meth addictions and drug and gambling addictions, the families in crisis and the abused and neglected children, the homeless population that drifts here for the milder weather but finds few recourses and few resources offered. Let us not deny that our children and young men and women have been front page news in grizzly murders again and again.

Let us shine a beacon not only on the face of the sea, but on the face of our community, and as we come together to rebuild, let us rebuild a home where every child has a champion and a hand willing to reach out with support and protection. Let us make our town a real community, where homes are safe and people are valued and the storms of life bring us together to help.

Beautiful Memories

2011-09-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

I come from a long line of pack-rats. In my family there seems to be less concern about not having something when you finally get around to needing it, and more concern that letting go of an item will also mean letting go of your memories, especially of the people and the places that gave you the most happiness, but oddly, even a clinging on to memories that only bring pain.

I finally made progress with that issue when I lucked into Flylady.com and started doing her magnificent 27 fling boogie, and believing that babysteps and only holding on to what you love or need or use, and that you can do anything for 15 minutes at a time are small steps to a hugely improved life.

Still my memories and the things I love have to have some record, so I began snapping pictures and writing in a journal / scrapbook about why those memories are important to me. So I have one shelf of scrapbooks instead of 8 rooms of clutter

but I do still have my dolls and my camera and the quilts my grandmother stitched by hand, and now that the clutter is mostly gone, /i have started turning my camera on the yard and the items that really do make me feel at home and make me smile when I see them.

This Chimpanzee doll sat on my Mom's college bed, but when I was a toddler and fell in love with Clarence the cross-eyed lion, and Judy the Chimpanzee from the TV show, Daktarri, She became my constant, tear soaked, laughter filled, secret keeping best friend.

This little girl is not "Jessie the Cowgirl doll" from Toy Story 2, but she was a great playmate who allowed my brothers Breyer horse toys to be something my Doll Loving self could share with my brother for hours, on the living room floor, with the wooden barn and Corral my Dad Made for them.

Fall finds me outdoors, trying to create photo opportunities for my photo a day at 365project and for the fun of it, the beloved Dolls are getting outside again. Uh, Yeah, if you read my last post about getting near the empty nest, it's probably not too big a stretch to assume I'm trying to fill the space of having my boys around as easy models for my camera.

This China Doll came from the old Stone Barn in Northern Illinois where my Grandma Grace Grew up. I named her "Rose" and felt like a soul mate to Laura Ingalls when I played with her.

The quilt was hand stitched by Grandma. I often crawl under it with my notebook when I am writing my novels.

There is so much beauty in the world, and that is the one thing that I hope my memory pictures help you to remember too.

Life Moves Fast, Don't Blink

2011-09-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

Today is a day our family celebrates. Sept. 22 was the day I found out I was pregnant for the first time, and that meant that my second son would be arriving when our first boy turned One. September 22 is, in our Family, "Discovery Day" because that is the day, the Dr., who was evaluating the health of the baby we were adopting for his six month check-up, told me, "Think POSITIVE!" It wasn't my appointment but moments before, I mentioned that I wasn't feeling right, and even though, I couldn't have kids - she suggested a pregnancy test. I laughed skeptically but pee'd in the cup anyway.

After 10 years of waiting to be a Mom, I finally got to hold my 14 hour old adopted son, and fall in love with him and take him home. Life was Perfect. A year and 18 days later, it was even more so.

I love being a Mom. It was everything I dreamed of and more. My boys were lovable, frustrating, exhausting, rewarding, beautiful monsters. But every time I blinked they got older.

Now the oldest of my two first-born sons graduated from High School last June and my youngest is a senior. The house I waited so long to fill, is quieter and lonelier already now that the older one has moved out. Yes, he visits, and texts and gives me hugs and brings his puppy over to play. But it will never be the same again. I never realized how the empty nest syndrome could truly feel like mourning. I dread the next graduation even as I celebrate the success and growth of my youngest from 7 week premie to six foot two, young man.

Cousins

I know that I had a life before kids and some of that was put on hold and is coming back. Only recently did I finally realize my goal of being a published writer, with two novels in a year - but the life with the kids, I have always know was the peak of my mountain, the cream in my donut, the star in the sky of my life.

I thought he'd be a pirate forever.

Best Friends

Well of course they are not anything, Forever.

I miss the children they were. I'm glad we celebrate them each at least twice a year, Birthday's, Discovery Day and Adoption Day. In reality I celebrate them with every breath I take.

I am so proud of the men they have become but wish that it did not happen so fast!

So if you have kids, don't think it lasts forever. Don't think the other stuff won't wait. It is the baby who won't be there forever; the chance to say "yes" to telling a story, or going to a soccer game, or swimming instead of working. I have a few regrets of paychecks i didn't earn, but no regrets of things I couldn't but, My house isn't new, or fancy, but it is filled with the most loving memories, and when we all move on, I don't care if none of the stuff comes with us - but I know the love will.

Brothers

Today the baby I tried to have for 10 years is a High School Senior.

Somehow, a life flies by and the one thing you can do to make it worth while, is spend it on the people you love. My children and my students, my siblings and parents and cousins and neighbors and always and all ways my spouse, have all added frustration and problems to my life, and pain when I have had to say good-by

But they have all added to my life, joy, and more good moments than any one person could ever deserve.

Accepting Gifts

2011-09-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

Sunflowers are late due to cool summer

Is it an wonder that so many places have Fall Festivals and celebrate the Harvest Moon? Summer is beautiful, and yet requires a certain amount of endurance to survive the battles with children and weeds and, (unless you live here) HEAT. Fall is the time when surviving brings easily gathered rewards. You straighten your aching back and feel the cool breeze dry your sweaty brow.

My baskets are usually full, but barely bloomed in the fog

You walk through the skin temperature air and breathe in the delightfully cedar and blackberry scented breeze. The Thorny bramble draws blood but the berries are so sweet and abundant. Apples fall into your lap as you read in the grass below the tree. No, sorry, you don't get to discover gravity but you do get to discover peace, the time to pause, while the kids are in school and remember your successes and treasure the gifts you are usually too busy to see.

The dredge barge fills the boat basin and crowds the boats to side tie

Our harbor was devastated in spring storms but fall sees an ongoing rebuilding project as barges full of stinking silt are dredges up and carted away. The fall renews the harbor and the school year and the pantry shelves. Soon crab boats will have docks again, jam will fill the cupboards and schools will be filled. Life in the come-back town will be renewed once again. September is my New Years birth.

dredging away the 3-11-11 tsunami's deposit

three sisters in the harbor

Battery Point lighthouse

sea lion napping away from the crowd

summer weather??

This summer was cool and foggy and the plants grew slowly but the end product is sweet and only a month late.

walnut tree producing blackberries

future pie or jam

apples on atee that fell 5 years ago, and redwood stump

Me loving rare sunshiny day

red bean mooncakes

When I was a student at Beijing Teachers College, I adored the sweet red bean filled MoonCakes of the Harvest Moon Festival and barely could have imagined that I would not taste them again for a couple decades. Finally I have found them on-line! Amazingly familiar calebratory taste.

Loved these and went 22 years without!

I loved the moon cakes when I was a student at Beijing Teacher's College in 1987, but I have never had any more since returning to the states. Until i found them on-line this year. I adore them but the taste is really different from most american pastries. Sweet Red Bean fills most of them, or lotus seed paste and the most desirable ones have a whole yolk inside to look like the moon.

Celebrated on the 15th of the 8th lunar month, you might see Chang Er dancing on the moon where she has lived ever since she flew there. The moon Festival is a romantic time to remember that you can be together emotionally with those you love if you can both see the moon from where ever you are.

Jam TODAY!

9-11 in the CC Harbor

Fallen apple tree by redwoods in my yard

So today, I settled in with a hot bath ad a good book, then a walk around the yard with bucket in hand and a fresh slice of blackberry pie for lunch.

I will teach, I will be exhausted and overwhelmed by bills and debt and work and the demands of life, but I will look at the jars of jam, and remember that some gifts come to balance the work, some things are free and all you have to do is open your hands to receive them.

Howard Prairie; above Ashland, Oregon

2011-08-30T12:15:00.000-07:00

Knowing that the school year would soon be starting again was the final push needed to get my family, and my friends to set a date and rent a campsite and finally do the camping trip we've been promising since May. Our children were babies together in he same sweet, grandma Daycare and lived more like siblings who just did sleepovers in different houses, but now they are graduating, starting lives independently and it all begins in two days, so we had to go, NOW if we were to do it together.

trees growing in landslide area

of course, we never do adventures without miscues and false starts, so our camping van, with lots of room for food and tents and people, lost it's brakes and we had to load the small car. Then 40 minutes from home, after being cramped into the tiny back seat with a cooler that kept falling on me at each corer, we realized we had forgotten the tent, we turned around, but the lost time meant the whole trip was then in a major line of RV's and cars filled with people who drive slow and were heading the same place as us.

Getting those legs ready for hiking?

We stopped at our friends house, 127 miles from ours, and took a brief, air conditioned break. We have lived at 58* this whole summer, so the 97* felt brutal. Then up to the campground at Howard prairie. I love it there, but the 4,700 foot elevation and higher temperature had me breathless with every exertion, unless I was swimming in the lake.

My Beautiful Husband

The Reservoir at the camping area was created when Beaver Creek, in the Klamath River watershed, was damed. The Lake is stocked with Trout and Bass and has sailboats, jet skis and motorboats and swimmers using it heavily. It is 80 feet deep at its maximum and the average surface area is 1,990 acres. The campground is too manicured to be anything near primitive, and there is a marina, showers and a restaurant with amazing food, even a camp WiFi. It may not be rustic, but you still get to eat ashes, and smell lie woodsmoke and wander around under stars and wake inside your tent. It was a great place to be with family.

Some of the scenery was so breathtakingly beautiful, but interpreted differently by the various members of our group. I, grown up around Yellowstone, still see the trees there as huge and towering over the camp. My children, raised in the redwoods were talking about how small the trees are.

Mt. McLoughlin

Sunsets were softly beautiful and came on fast! the darkness invited sitting around a campfire and sharing memories and trying to tell really bad jokes.

Angel Fire

I am not a morning person, althou my job makes me pretend to be, but I might be, if this is where I woke up every day to the crisp, fresh air and the light filtering down through the trees.

Morning View

Lake Steaming in the AM

This root was begging for a fern to be planted there.

I don't know why scrubbing pans with water warmed by a fire is so much more restful than standing at a sink with instantly hot water. I don't know why being dirty feels so good in the open air, and food that I'd never look at at home is delicious there. I just know that it is true.

Here the light filtered past all the older trees, gently spotlighting the youngest tree there.

No, I didn't get to go down the slide.

But I did get to swim, and then walked out along the handicapped fishing pier, and sat at the end, to read, and dry while the chipmunk darted out, checking for food and watching to see if I would suddenly have any.

While I sat and read, he begged to be fed

Yes, school starts, yes I had to return, somewhat gratefully, to the cool fog belt I call home, but the blue sky and warm friendship and fresh air have refreshed my spirit in a way that I knew they would, even while I was cussing the effort involved in packing and the time away from the "to-do list"

Well nothing un-done on that list has caused me any grief.

Beautiful People

No one else looks at these three and still sees babies, but I do

In Memory of Cody Raben

2011-08-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Cody,

The last time I saw you, you were a young Father - hopeful but exhausted. Nervous but proud. Attentive and eager and yet overwhelmed. I remember watching you as you rode away on your bike, thinking I'd see you again soon, hoping you were going to finally have an easier time of it.

Loving you was easy, you always had a sense of warmth and humor

but your life was anything but easy

so much of how you lived and how you were born was determined by the saturation of alcohol in the lives of the people around you.

And now you are dead, stepping out of the dying light with a cooler filled with lunch fixings and beer, into the path of a train, taking your final breath so quickly and then gone

Yet your memory is here, wrapped up in all of us who loved you and still do. I remember you as the exuberant child flinging yourself into my boyfriend's arms when he brought me home to meet the family, and as the exhausted, lonely boy sucking your thumb and curling in on yourself to sleep on the living room floor while the grown-ups reconnected at family reunions.

This is the smile I loved

You, in Vertical stripes

You were the star on the top of this family tree

Your children have your beauty

I don't remember you this young, but the stories I heard and the pictures I saw made me feel like I'd known you from the first, and when I married your uncle, it was you who made me welcome and made me an Aunt for the first time.

you, far right, and me in the rear, middle at Wendy and John's Wedding

When the other grandkids started arriving, you were already grown, and they had a life so much more abundant than yours, but you were never jealous or hateful, but gave them your attention and love from the start

Your High school Graduation with you Mom and grandparents

I know that wherever you go now, wherever that joyful, enthusiastic spark that was most YOU, gets carried - you will define it with your love and laughter, and as your children grow they will know your love and look at the world through your eyes.

God Speed Spook - Rest in peace

Aunt Dixie

August Begins in Del Norte

2011-08-08T10:06:00.000-07:00

Greyback Creek by Oregon Caves

I have always loved Summer, for the warmth, and the slower pace and the family get togethers. I see friends and nephews and people who matter but are often not a part of my daily work-a-day life. This summer has had heat, but not so much in my neck of the woods, where the highs have rarely been above the low 60's and the average rainfall was left behind 20 inches ago as we came in at nearly 100 inches this year.

So we went inland yesterday, driving only an hour but hitting a completely different climate, warmer, dryer, SUMMER.

Here I am cold, so we went Inland and then needed the shade and water below the bridge

Near Oregon Caves, is a little, lovely campground which is usually almost empty thanks to the fact that it has outhouses and no running water, no showers or flush toilets. But what it lacks in comfort, it more than makes up for in beauty. Greyback Creek flows through, cold and sharp enough to make you gasp and warm enough to allow you to get over the chill and linger all afternoon.

We met one of our best friends and one of her children there. I say children but he now towers over both of us, stretching up toward the blue sky the way these trees do. We had a picnic and played in the water and soaked up the sun and then returned home, bringing the extra teenager along for a week of band camp and coastal life.

Rope Swing

Love reflections in still water

When we arrived, a lab was churning up the water and leaving it muddy, so by the time we strolled back to that spot I was surprised to see the cool, calm water both clearly showing the bottom and reflecting trees and sky.

One of the great gifts that the United States has scattered through out it are "Day Use Areas" and I encourage everyone to take advantage of those near to you.

Water Bobbles at Del Norte County Fair

The other thing I love about summer is FairTime and these new "Rides" are almost enough inspiration to convince me that I need to lose 100 pounds! Who invented weight limits on them anyway. Sigh!

Amazing

I always stroll through the arts and Crafts building to take a break from the crowds and either the wind or the sun. This year there were less exhibits submitted and I believe that to be a direct result of the overemphasis on testing in the schools these days. since art is not a tested curriculum subject it becomes taught less and less. The school kids no longer have a room full of projects to submit.

Walking stick in Arts and Crafts display

Sea Kelp Lampshade

I find that both sad and tragic. It has been proven that creativity improved thinking, Art and music make for better math and science reasoning. Life is emptier and sadder without the beauty of the arts, and kids who go to school because they love their electives will not stay in if there is only "Core Subjects'

Redwood burl carved into bowl

Freezing to watch a concert

One of my husband's former music students won the Colgate Country Showdown and got to be the opening act for Sammy kershaw's Concert.

So enough of my personal soap-box. Mostly life is really good. Where it isn't - Create beauty and Goodness.

Enough said.

Wizards Named Harry

2011-08-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

Today I am allowing my fan nerdiness to have full reign.

I blogged about how I got in to Pottermore with the right answer to the day 2 clue at

http://duffybarkley.blogspot.com/2011/08/pottermore-more-or-less-i-got-in.html

I stayed up until 3 o'clock trying to get into pottermore and even when I went to bed my mind was rapidly going over the story of the boy wizard and all the many times it has been a part of my life. I am 48 and my two children are bots who grew up with Harry Potter and are now 17 and 18. We travel a lot, because family is all 1,000 miles away, so we did most of the 7 novels as books on tape, yes my van is old enough it was tape, no CD player. And we listened to others while soaking in the hot tub on our deck - until we felt like a Goode family stew. "Just one more chapter."

I have been on-line today, on twitter and have added a lot of potter fans to follow, and wouldn't it be amazing if one or two of them should pass on word of my own fantasy novels? By the way, that is Duffy Barkley :)

But the other big, nerdy fandom in my life is another wizard name Harry, and this is one who actually gave me a bit of magic. Jim Butcher writes a series called "The Dresden Files" More adult and twister than Potter, but just as addictive, Harry Dresden is a Wizard for Hire, PI, and now he's a ghost and his new book, not to be confused with the excellent Peter Straub book of the same title, is Ghost Stoty.

My son and I are addicted to Dresden and Company and Jim Butchers Other series as well, but I owe Harry a big thank you for how he taught me to clear pain from my body with a little mind magic.

There is a scene, several books ago, where Harry is beaten and almost dead, and there is a fallen angel who is trying to take him over. Harry hears her voice in his head, telling him to imagine wrapping up his pain into a big ball, drawing it out of his body like a cord and then tossing the ball as far away as he can. Interesting visualization exercise, but i was suffering torn ligaments in my back as I read it, and I finished that page and realized my pain was gone. Sure it came back many times, but that mind exercise banished it every time. Headaches too. So now, I have done it enough that by the time I consider starting the visualization, my body has responded and the pain is blocked.

So, you may think I am crazy. I guess that is not always a bad thing. Just let me say, between JK Rowling and Jim Butcher, my life has been filled with imaginary wizards named Harry - And i am so glad of it.

Thanks for reading this
and remember

Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog

Thanks

Dixie

July in Crescent City, CA

2011-07-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

Published my second Duffy Barkley Book

Basil, figs, grape tomato & Cherries

Second Bridge

My son on rope swing

My Grand-puppy

Smith River looks like melted Jade

patiently awaiting attention

Usually, summer has a blend of poverty and required work, mixed with family and fun and the time to do outdoor fun. As teachers, my husband and I, often have to take on extra jobs, and do required classes in the summer, and we don't get a paycheck from June until the last day of September. But we always have a lot of time with our sons and our siblings and parents.

I walked near my son's truck and the dogs climbed me.

Grey Whale in Klamath River

This July has been one with a lot of rain and cold weather, and my husband has been working on paint crew, painting the school buildings, but I have been publishing my books and feeling exhausted and stressed. So it was a delight to have my husband's sister and her 2 boys and her husband, come from Laramie, Wyoming and give us an excuse to play tourist in our home territory.

especially cool right now is the whale and her baby, who have made their way into our river and continue to hand out after 4 weeks.

View from Klamath Bridge

Mama Grey

most of the Jet boat was my family

At Mouth of River

Bald Eagle

We went on the Klamath Jet Boat up the river and saw a lot of the whale as well as deer, river otter, seals, and several Eagles and Osprey and the home of a family of Beaver

Twins

Spinning the boat

Add caption

mouth of Smith River with sea Gulls in a line

We also just went up the coast and stopped everytime the beach looked inviting, so we only made it 100 miles before turning around for the night.

Harbor seals

My Sister -in-law at Cape Sebastion

Walking in sand is exhausting

Bandon, OR

Lighthouse in Bandon

Sea Cliff at Face Rock overlook

horsetail, or puzzle grass

hydrangea

ocean World Tide pools

Today we went to a little, local aquarium where we saw a sea lion performing, a seal swimming, and we pet the leopard sharks and anemone.

Leopard Shark

7-gill cow shark

Harbor seal

Sea lion

My family has posed here for 20 years.

We know that life is always going to have chores to do, and money needed, but it is nice sometimes to stop, admire the place where we live and play with the people we love.

Happy Summertime to you!

Looks Like . . .

2011-07-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

I call this Alice's Sunflower, because it looks like it should be gasping at the impudence of a young weedy girl in it's garden in Wonderland.

I think one of my earliest memories was of being told that I had to take a nap, and could not get out of my crib until . . . and so staying quiet, but exploring the room with my eyes, telling myself stories about the faces I saw in the wood grain on my closet door and the textured pattern on my wall and the shadows that danced across my wall.

This was entertaining in the daytime and terrifying after dark, when the shadows became claws which were just waiting for me to stick a foot out of the covers or close my eyes for a moment

Snow horse

Now I am 48 and I still see things everywhere I look, which remind me of other things. My family has long been used to seeing me stop, and point and say, "Doesn't that look like . . .?"

I am not the first to see this, as the beach is called "Whale's Head Beach"

I was teaching at a Catholic School, so stunned to see a Black Madonna where I had hung my hand towel

Did not see this until after the picture was shot, but it was our first family get together after my Sister-In-Law died.
Her sisters and husband are on the rafts

Some are fun, and some are scary and some feel almost Holy. Thanks to the fact that I now have my digital, point and shoot camera on me nearly all the time, I have captured several over the years. So Today I feel like sharing some with you.

I call this the Goddess of Fire

This driftwood horse was many years ago

Do you see a couple, and she is waving "hi?"

An Angel or fairy?

another, developed in the camera, Cross

Royalty of the sea, striding down the beach

Another Human looking, Bride like, sea rock

Ghost of young girl, under window on the right?

Eye, ear and forehead of a bear?

the tide washed in an Angel

Another Angel Angle

Sketch of Heart Mountain, realistic

Sketch of how I see Heart Mountain

Dragon fire

Goddess silhouette with leaf in her hair, on a steamed up mirror

This one obviously had some help coming to life

Angel with gown of light

Two handled Guitar

Tree with evil face near the top

Old Lady watching Sunset on the Sea

Really Driftwood

Love this face

And below I include a poem that I wrote back in High school

Shadows

Shadows dance

twisting - entwining - flickering

THAT ONE

IT'S AN ARM

a hand

A CLAW

   help! it's grabbing at me

oh please

   no

go away

that shadow
   it's a heart
pulsing
   beating

trying to pull me in

MA MA
   MA MAAAAAA

The Light Flashes ON
the shadows run
  scurrying
  under my bed
waiting
   to get me

Feeling Blue

2011-07-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

Lake Earl

Salem, OR

Castle Rock

Today my life feels perfect

That frightens me

I feel change coming

and can't imagine a change

which isn't also a loss

Unicorn cloud

Battery Point Lighthouse

Home

I want to hold on to each loved one
who today, is breathing and
freeze the moment

I want the young man to stay young
The old Lady to stay healthy
The pets to stay irritating

Guatemalan Bullrushes

Life is good
It has been good before
in different ways
on different days
at different shores

but it has never been
like this

and
never will again

Tomorrow I might awake to beauty

But right now

I'm already here.

Handmade vase and Calla Lily

Moving on beyond Grace

2011-06-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since the house has been quiet and my mind has been active enough to flip through my pictures and into my feelings and find anything that I wanted to share here. The last I wrote was about the death of Grace, my greyhound.

Of course life has a way of moving forward, even if you do not take the time to examine it, or choose to share it. My spring has been filled, even though my blog pages have not.

I have planted sunflowers and let the grass grow rampant.

My 18 year old son saw his birthday as his chance to make all those grown-up decisions I have been trying to hold him back from. He turned 18 and got a tattoo and a puppy and moved in with his girlfriend, and yet managed also to plod his way through those last two required classes and get the precious high school diploma.

I tried to tell him that he was rushing this adult thing, and ask him how he intended to take care of all these new responsibilities but with adult decisions come adult consequences and so far he is doing OK and still swinging by to give me a hug and let me cuddle the puppy when I am missing Grace.

I have taken some time to go to the beach, and to admire the bloom's

painting by one of my students

and I have been teaching a middle school class of severely handicapped students. I have a love/hate relationship with Special Ed. I love the kids, love teaching them to be creative and to like who they are, but I hate the getting spit on and kicked and having to do hours of testing and meetings and paperwork. i actually don't mind the physical stuff like diapers on a kid who is bigger than I am, but I struggle with the bullying they encounter in the playground and lunchroom every day.

I used to feel tall!

I took some time just to celebrate the two wonderful young men I am lucky enough to be "Mom" to. and to remember the marvelous supportive friends that we have found in this adopted town of ours.

Celebrating Graduation.

I also had two really sad, frightening episodes to deal with. One was the city wide lock-down of schools for the Tuesday of the last week of school, and the fear and boredom of the kids when they had to keep the room dark and quiet for the day without really knowing why, then the sadness of finding out that one of the girls at our school, and her mother had both been shot in the head at their home, just before school started, and the man who did it was missing, and known to still have his gun, for 11 and 1/2 hours until he shot himself to death as a policeman approached the sea cliff picnic table where he was located, 5 blocks from our school.

The other was the drowning death of a 26 year old man who had been a 4 year old in the very first class of special ed. kids that I ever taught. His body has yet to be recovered from the Rogue River where he went missing 9 days ago.

We fought the lawn and the lawn won

My husband and youngest son got to go to San Francisco to see Blue Man Group, while I used the time alone to walk and read and take hot baths and remember how the good outweighs the bad in this life.

So I go into the Summer, relieved that my life has a chance to get back on a more even keel, a better time to hug my man, and cheer my kids, and run into my students and former students and be able to have a smile on my face. You have a good summer too and I will try to write more, take more pictures and find more beauty to share.

RIP Cecilia and Robbie

Love Mrs. Goode

Adopting Retired Racing Greyhounds

2011-05-06T17:39:00.000-07:00

George and Grace in Motion

My husband was the first to say that he would be interested in adopting retired racing dogs, but I didn't think much about it until I took my two young sons to the Chetco Community Library and met a woman who had adopted three and dreamed of having a six pack.

The dog at the library, was polite and regal, and named Jamie. She looked like she had stepped out of an Egyptian mural from the age of the Pharaohs. I talked to her owner and began to do research, falling more in love with the regal breed even though there was something almost deformed looking to me in the narrow waist and needle nosed look. The strange dog could walk right out of an ordinary collar because her head and neck kept getting narrower as you moved up from the shoulders.

Grace used to race as "Enchanted Dream"

We finally found two dogs from a track in Arizona and they were due to be flown up to our local airport on September 15, 2001

Then the World Trade Towers were attacked and flights by small planes without navigational computers were halted for quite a while and That fell through. I still hope those hounds found homes, instead of the early death that many racers face.

In October of the same year, a race track adoption group, called "Homes For Hounds" agreed to bring us down two from the Willamette Race Track near Portland, Oregon and they brought several others to try to place in this area as well.

So we got a 2 year old, red Brindled female named "Enchanted Dream" and a 5 year old, red male named "Hard Drive Kid" Since I wanted friendlier names and had adored George Burns and Gracie Allen, We re-named them George and Grace. They came, hard muscled, bone thin, used to all kinds of noise and chaos, but unsure how to live in a house, stairs and glass windows and snuggling were alien to them. They would lie there unafraid as we vacuumed around them but stare at the flight of stairs with fear. They had no sense of where home was and could run far and fast and be lost quickly. We had a few close calls when they slipped under the fence or out of a collar.

We thought that racing dogs would be hyper, but they were so mellow in the house we called them our speed bumps. They were not the best for bonding with children, instead they focused on the adults and followed us loyally. They even had been cat tested, to see if they reacted aggressively and these two barely ever glanced at out two feline family members.

playing with neighbor dog

George was getting older but still all heart

"Hard Drive Kid" on the tracks, George at home

A racing hound is bred to be strong and any puppy with any weakness has been ruthlessly culled. The one advantage of this is that the breed has no disposition to weakness and ailments like many specific breeds do.

Our hounds lived long and happy lives right up until the week they died. George two years ago, and Grace this week. They were such a delight and will live forever in our hearts.

"Say Good-Night Gracie"

Spring Again

2011-04-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

The winter was long and extremely stormy here. Wet, grey day followed wet grey day until we forgot that the sky was ever meant to be anything but a place where the ocean gathered over our heads.

At last the sun has begun to make brief appearances and the spongy earth has yielded a host of blooms, eager to grow as soon as they felt that first flush of warmth kissing their sleeping cheek.The darkness lingers in my house but the sun beckons me outside, the beaches and trails are scrubbed clean from a barrage of winter storms, except for the fallen branches and driftwood.

Easter season always speaks of rebirth and new life, but this year, more than most, there was a need in me to see the newness, to feel the warmth, and hear how silent it can be when the wind stopped.

The Azalea in a pot in my house has bloomed pink every year, but this year and last, it has featured one albino bloom as well. I don't know why that one snowy bloom amid the rosy others, seems so promising, but I keep coming back to stare and feed my soul on its beauty.

I wrote last fall, of the death of my beloved yellow cat, and how I buried her in the rain, with daffodil bulbs. Now her grave has become a flower bed and I find peace in that as well.

My only remaining cat has found himself wanting more companionship and is often under my feet when I haul firewood or work in the yard.

Even down at the Crescent City harbor, so recently devastated by the Tsunami and the loss of a fleet of commercial boats, There is a renewal and a sense of hope. The enormous floating crane, hired to raise the sunken boats, has completed the task.

The animals have survived without a one being found with oil on its fur or feathers. The city is pulling together to cheer for Crescent City on the Reader's Digest, We Hear You competition and life resumes where chaos reigned for a month.

I find it easy in the spring, to be an optimist. I choose to remember that it is the simple, inexpensive, treats in my life that make me the happiest. Talking to my teenagers, typing on a story, focusing my camera on a beauty; I find it imposible to feel the cold, grey of winter anymore.

We Need Teamwork and Old-Fashioned Neighbors.

2011-03-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

a 90 foot spruce and the tip of a redwood tree fell from our property across the neighbors road,

I grew up loving the Little House on the Prairie books and Caddie Woodlawn and the concept of neighbors joining together to do seemingly huge things in a day. I think that is why I love "Extreme Makeover, Home Edition" so very much. I know it is why, when I wrote my first novel, I made sure that the resolution to the Crisis, required both the villain and the hero to work together to shore up each other's weaknesses and form a strong and united whole. What Duffy Barkley found in uniting forces, what the pioneers knew when they had barn-raisings and quilting Bees, I finally discovered in my own neighbors the weekend Crescent City, CA had our 34th Tsunami since 1933.

My husband was out of town at a music festival with his High School music Students, and my teenage sons were out at a friends house overnight. I had just been offered a job teaching in a new classroom and had done 4 days when the Tsunami cancelled school. Friday was the Tsunami, and Sunday the house started shaking with wind gusts and lightning whipped in and was followed by window rattling thunder. One loud crack was followed by another, the power blinked, the house shook, hail splattered the windows and was gone just as quickly.

Then as I settled in in front of a rented movie, my neighbor knocked on the door. "Your tree fell into our yard." I turned to grab my shoes and tripped and fell in my kitchen, knowing that would be a sign of how the rest of the day would go. I looked up from rubbing my wounded leg and saw the clock reading 1 PM. Without even stepping outside, I knew this would be a huge mess. I do not have any small trees.

The first glance confirmed that one of the 90 foot spruce trees had tipped over, tearing a hole in the ground as it uprooted and taking off the top half of a nearby redwood as it fell. The road that winds through our 2 acres doesn't go to our house, but there are 5 or six houses beyond where the tree lay across the road and about 2/ 3 of the neighbors lawn.

I could not imagine where I could find help on a Sunday, or how the people in those homes would get to their homes or their jobs, but even as I walked around, snapping pictures for the home insurance, the neighbors were at work. Some of them are roofers and some are loggers and all of them are the type to see what needs one and do it immediately. They called for chainsaws, and a friend with a loader and with raingear and gloves and a cooler of beer, they attacked the limbing of the trees as they waited for the loader.

They attached a strap to the smaller redwood log and drug it away with a pick-up truck

Some of the limbs tower above a truck

These limbs were as big as some trees my Dad logged in Wyoming

Then the loader arrived and lifted one end of the spruce and pushed it off the road. Limbs were piled out of the way, and although a lot of clean-up remained, the road was once again passable.

You know you live in the country when neighbors have a loader handy to lift fallen giants

The loader pushed the tree off the road

even the dog was ready to celebrate

three hours after they fell, the road was "clear"

I went along the road, looking for asphalt damage, and was delighted not to find any. I looked at the clock and saw that it was 4 PM. Then I found out later that that sudden gust of wind had moved through here, overturning two cars in Smith River, blowing down trees and power lines in the canyon toward Grant's Pass, OR and closing down hwy. 199 so my husband and his bus load of music kids had to take a winding detour which included a rickety, one way bridge. It even knocked out trees 127 miles away in Medford and Ashland.

Some of the Good people

With that wind storm, and the Tsunami, the help available to complete the clean-up has been a bit slow, but the teamwork of good, country neighbors turned it from a catastrophe into a minor annoyance at worst, and at best, reminded us that we live surrounded by good people.

Tsunamis do more than wave at Crescent City, CA

2011-03-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

I Grew up in Wyoming, and the word Tsunami wasn't even in my vocabulary. I had heard about Tidal waves of course, and earthquakes were a concern there on the edge of Yellowstone where my own cousins had barely escaped death in the Hebgen Lake earthquake on their wedding night. The most impact that we felt from forces of nature were in the Blizzards that would bury us and the 100 mile an hour winds that were not rare.

When I married and moved to the Pacific Coast, on the OR/CA border it didn't take long to hear about tsunamis, but my main focus was delight that it rarely ever snowed and that the blistering heat of summer was a thing of my past. Sure there were signs halfway up the wall at the KFC saying Tsunami High water mark, and there were black and white pictures of jumbled docks and fires and shattered buildings in many businesses but this was 1989 and the tsunami landing and tsunmi lanes were named after things that happened when I was only a year old, 25 years before.

Then in 2004 the Indonesian Tsunami brought that word to world attention again, and the images in black and white were suddenly live, colorful, loud and beyond anything I had imagined.

Little tsunamis hit Crescent City frequently. 31 times they have been documented since 1933. In 2007 one did $20 million dollars in damage to the harbor and the community began to get serious about being prepared for the next big one. These evacuation maps were published and the community started practicing the live evacuation drills, holding one full scale evacuation last year.

I listened carefully to the instructions and made sure that our house was not in the evacuation zone. I felt relieved to note that on the map just below we were about where the v lies in the word valley. Safe I figured. Of course, after hearing that the wave hit Japan and travelled over 6 miles inland, I'm not thinking my house is so safe anymore.

On Friday morning, March 11, 2011, just after midnight, my oldest son woke me by jiggling my foot, "Mom, There was just a huge earthquake in Japan and we are under Tsunami alert." Ok, nothing new, I thought, why did you wake me up I thought,

"Go back to bed" My husband murmured and we fell back into unconsciousness. Then when the alarm rang I saw my phone lit up with messages from my brother in Virginia and My Mother in Wyoming asking if we were safe. Then the school web site posted that all schools were cancelled and when I turned on the radio the evacuations had begun around 3 AM.

My boys fishing at small boat basin, Crescent City

KCRE & KPOD radio were amazing. They stayed with the station all day, passing on information and letting people know what to do and where it was safe to go. They kept a lot of people informed and out of the danger areas and the evacuation proceeded so smoothly thanks to them and all of our emergency services people like the CHP officers who were everywhere at once it seemed.

Del Norte High school and Smith River school were used to sheltered evacuees and other people headed up the hill to Hiouchi.

Sea lions on slip by Chartroom Restaurant

visitors always ignore the law about staying back from wild animals here but these guys move fast and have nasty teeth.

Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftan Tall Ships come here frequently

Commercial boat basin before the Tsunami

When the surges did start coming in at 8:30 AM, they were like flushing and refilling the commercial boat basin every 10 minutes for over 12 hours. the docks shattered, boats sank or were sucked out to sea. Those that escaped had no place to come back to and had to make their way up and down the coast to find a safe haven.

This community once had sawmills and logging but is now largely a fishing community, bringing in Dungeouness Crab, prawns and salmon, steelhead and halibut. Some people live on their boats but many more made their living on their boats.

The Bountiful before the Tsunami, she is one of the few to survive.

Small boat marina

Commercial boat basin again.

crab pots in harbor

The harbor looking peaceful and sleepy wrapped in mist

the day after , the citizens Dock still standing.

Still we were lucky, one person died as a result of being washed out while taking pictures at the Klamath river, others that were washed to sea at Pistol river made it back. One person died on a boat in the Brookings / Harbor harbor but that was determined to be un-related to the tsunami.

After Tsunami even the parking lot was scattered with asphalt, boulders, logs and a chunk of sidewalk was missing

past missing walkway to Beacon Burger

toward south beach in Chartroom parking lot

You Think?

Already life is picking up the pieces and moving on, and our thoughts and prayers are with those in Japan who were far less lucky than we this time.

South Coast Writer's Conference Gold Beach, OR

2011-02-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

This year marked the 16th annual South Coast Writers Conference on Presidents' Day weekend in Gold Beach, Oregon. A couple of years ago I attended the free keynote speaker and Author readings event on a Friday evening, because my science fiction loving son wanted to see one of his heroes, Timothy Zahn. The event was great and we still treasure our autographed Star Wars novels.

Now that I have published, Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog, I wanted to participate in the full conference so I managed to shell out the money, and rent a cabin, and promise myself I would eat out of the grocery store and not buy a carload of books. (4 is not a carload, right?)

Since my husband, not only did not have the day off, but had to work from 7 AM to 10:30 PM with a before school Stag band and an evening basketball game with his choir singing the "Banner" and his Pep band playing the game, I went alone.

The drive up the coast offered both a rare view of snow on the hills and a stunning rainbow!

Oddly, this was on the "Rainbow Rock Overlook"

Must be sunken gold under here

snow on the hills, beachside with fireplaces.

Melissa Hart, Author of Gringo

Of course, I was trying to learn how to add drama and suspense to my writing. My 17 year old son showed that he had already mastered that, when he interrupted one of my classes with a six word text, "sittin' in the ER LOVE YOU"

He is still suffering a nastily burned hand from trying to deal with an exhaust pipe that came loose and was dragging the asphalt.

Workshop and my Flylady.com water bottle :)

The weather was cold and rainy, but that was good, as most of our time was spent in High School Classrooms or at the Curry County Fairgrounds. BTW, the fish fry fund raiser held to earn money for the Fire Department was a delightfully timed extra and gave me a wonderful chance to sit and visit with the locals.

workshop by Naseem Rakha author of The Crying Tree

Gold Beach Books Selling local authors works

I am extremely fond of this local bookstore. Not only do they carry my novel, they have an astonishingly large collection of local art in their gallery, a yummy bakery and coffeeshop, and the entire upstairs is an amazingly, clean and organized used book section. The whole building is large, open, airy and sunlit. They served a delicious array of warm shortbreads, caramel rolls or clam chowder while hosting an Author's critique meeting.

Sun sets over the Jetty

Between the last workshop and an evening of author critiques and music, the sun came out and I scrambled over the jetty to enjoy the beach at sunset. Some luckier people found a few of the glass floats that were scattered around the beach at this time each year. (February, March, and April)

I walked quietly so as not to disturb this lady meditating on the sunset

Then found out "she" was driftwood

What was the best part of the Writers Conference? The fact that there were so many people there, and they were extremely diverse. You would look at a young person, or a tired old person and make a snap judgment and then find yourself overwhelmed at the strange and unexpectedly moving stories that they had to tell. I met a woman who survived a nasty divorce by becoming an Alaskan Fishing Boat owner. I met a man who loved all that same authors I did and a young woman who had found her need for the family farm by traveling to Peru. I met a high school boy who looked shy but had the bravery to read his novel to a crowd of strangers. I met a woman who teaches writing memoir's that people are moved by, to murderers and a man who teaches writing down your like stories to people in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

There was no way to predict what you would find out about someone next, but in these strangers, whom I would smile at, but never talk too in most settings, I kept finding co-incidences which amazed and delighted my mind.

I found a woman knitting in class because it helps her to be a better listener. I do the same with doodles but used to knit or tat, and she once wove and I ran a college weaving lab. She raises alpaca and spins her own yarn. I don't but COOL!

The most extreme link I discovered was one woman, who every time I said something about my life, echoed it about hers, to the point where it felt eerie. I have a brother, with down's syndrome, born in 1975, a time when most down's kids were institutionalized but my parents insisted on raising him as normally as possible. So does she. I became a special Ed. teacher for awhile and have now published a novel. Her too. I adopted a child. I love hiking. Ditto. But on the surface we would not look to have much in common if you were studying us in a grocery line.

Would I recommend this experience, or go again? Of Course. But next time, I would plan on buying more books. The ones I brought home with me are the kind of books that call me back to them once I have put them down.

January in Del Norte

2011-01-21T09:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder why I moved away from the mountains and prairie and the rugged loveliness of Wyoming. I was never one who hated the blizzards, but I was never one who had to get out and work all day in them either. Then I get out of the house on one of the perfect January days in Del Norte County (remember, here it rhymes with "snort")

I can drive less than ten minutes and be on the beach, or walk out the door and be in the redwoods, and while I love snow and we have had it less than a handful of times since I moved here in 1989, I can drive 45 minutes and be up 4000 feet and play in the snow to my hearts content. My heart is contented fairly easily when it comes to snow.

There are always fairly barren spots to enjoy nature from, a lot like Wyoming that way, but there are also a few brave souls dragging their surfboards down even in January, my son among them. Brrrr.

The wind sculpted snow drifts are replaced in my sight by wind and water sculpted sand formations and trees carved into bonsai tortured shapes

The sky here is often obscured by fog and clouds and we get close to 7 feet of rain a year instead of the 7 inches I grew up with, but when we do have the sun break through, it is just as lovely.

This day the clouds looked like the water they are made of in a way that they normally do not, and reminded me that there is also an ocean above our heads.

We get the little birds when Wyoming loses them, and out January yard is filled with robins, flickers, woodpeckers, sparrows and an occasional Osprey.

The maple tree always provides red and green for Christmas, and in January is still gorgeous wearing its coat of frost

The house I moved into 15 years ago had white walls and carpet. I have not done much in the way of maintenance but I have made it look a bit like living in a crayon box, and the ancient linoleum I found under the carpet looks like an old rug but is easy to control the pet hair on it.

Yesterday the sun came out, and I forced myself to do the dishes and start a load of laundry and write an hour on Duffy Barkley, Seek Well but then I succumbed to the siren call and found myself and my camera enjoying this area. Then I called my Mom, because of all the parts of Wyoming I do miss - family is first on the list.

Blooms I have loved

2011-01-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

It is bleak and wintery here in the Northern hemisphere and with the end of the holidays, the bright colored lights and decorations are no longer around to relieve the gloom. I have been browsing the cache of flower photographs and realize that if they can cheer me up, as they have today, then I should share them, so maybe they can remind other people as well

that even in the mid winter, when the buds have not appeared, and the seeds are invisible, and everything is wet and cold

life is gathering its strength, sleeping but not dead, waiting only to be kissed awake by the warming spring sun and burst into bloom once more.

Live the winter months with as much enthusiasm as you live the spring, find the beauty that exists in the world around you and in memory as well, create warmth in the love of your friends and family

Hold on to hope

With love, from echo

AKA Dixie Goode