I need an ice cream scoop!

wind

Motorhomes and busses are intreating creatures.

They are big aluminum tubes, not unlike “tube steaks.” And they are designed for 60 or 75 mile winds, coming from the front. This rig is a big 70’s Greyhound bus.

Today it is windy, pretty stiff winds, from the SW. It is a warm wind, so it is not cold. In the winter a warm wind like this is called a Chinook wind around here.

If the wind was blowing into the front of the bus it would be just as the designers figured, but from the back or side it is a bit different. So we rock a bit.

Most RV’s that are parked have jacks of some sort in the 4 corners, making it solid. This vintage capsule has a glitch in it’s built in leveling jacks, and I was sure I could live with that, and we have. In the morning when I am awake and Miriam is still in bed, I can feel slight movements when she gets up to go to the bathroom.

So today we sit here, being slightly rocked back and forth.

When I was 18 I spent a summer on a 60 foot high forest service fire look out tower. When the wind blew at all the tower rocked slightly. I found that strangely comforting.

And so it is here more than half a century later.

Logging lodging or was it lodging logging?

Pastor Emily

At church this week we had a woman preacher.

We attend a large church, membership in the multiple thousands. The church is part of a smallish bible college (2000 enrollment), hence the outsized enrollment.

My church is hardly on the leading edge of the women’s equality movement. The world church is dominated (numbers, at least) by Latino’s and Africans who are not about to let their women be equal, it is just not part of their system.

But this woman is on the staff of the church. She is young and she is attractive and she is a very good speaker.

She talked about hugs and how much we need to be hugged each day. We need mental hugs, but we also need physical hugs. She did not use the phrase, but we are all in this together, we need each other much more than we might think.

The push to strong individualism flies in the face of this reality. We can think we are independent and above the need for other humans, but we are not. Their happiness contributes to our happiness. Their freedom to ours.

So I return in my thoughts to Pastor Emily. As the father of daughters and the grandfather of granddaughters (and the grandfather of an Emily), I am really interested in my women getting a fair shake in this world.

They need to be strong, they need to be capable, but they also need each other. We all do.

rain

I am not much into rain.

Having lived in the desert most of my life, rain is not what we did a whole lot. I would joke that our rain came in the irrigation canal. We got lots of snow in the high country, when it melted the water ends up in the canals (eventually).

So today when it rained a good share of the time it was not what I was used to. Besides, there really is not too much to do here. I fed Miriam a couple of times, made a run to the grocery store, and played a hundred thousand rounds of a stupid computer game.

It is going to be a long time until spring!