This eagle head was carved out of wood. Pretty impressive.
More on birds next time.

Wednesday already

Today is dentist day.

Miriam broke a tooth last week, we called our family dentist (also a very good friend) and he had a look.

Tooth must come out said Doctor Gary and he does not do complex extractions, so we go to the big clinic where all they do is remove teeth.

As a two time customer, I know they are very proficient and skilled.

But there goes some of our travel budget!

Oh well.


BTW, today is daughter three and son-in-law's anniversary. About a hundred years I think it has been. OK it has been 20, which is close.

Love you both and I am very proud of you and yours!

Shavings on a well loved Jeep.

wood heat

We heat our house with a wood burning stove. Right out of a Laura and Mary book, sorta.

Our house is better insulated (by miles) then theirs was and our stove is a LOT more efficient, but we still heat our house by burning wood.

The interesting thing is that each fall I fill, or nearly fill, my smallish wood shed and then trust it will be enough to take us through the winter. The shed holds about 3 cords and we can get by with half that amount if we are careful and have good wood.

Lately I have been burning wood that others have donated, plus the trimmings from the many trees on our place. Odd sized palettes, remodel debris and such, with an occasional boughten cord.

This winter we had “enough” but a lot of it was small wood we got from others remodeling. Small wood burns hot, but does not burn long. Right now we are getting close to being out. We will make it alright, but there won't be a lot left over – maybe a couple wheelbarrows worth.

But that is how it works.

This summer I want to make a wood getting forage into the mountains. I can get a wood cutting permit, and we can take the pickup and the teardrop trailer and spend whatever it takes to get a pickup load of good wood.

Our definition of good wood is ours! We don't have hardwood forests out here. We have pine and fir and spruce, but no oak or maple or beech. If I am lucky I might get some good Douglas Fir, but probably I'll get lodge pole pine.

But, in the middle of the winter, when the wind blows and it is cold, what kind of wood I am burning is less important to me than the fact that I (and my Miriam) are reasonably warm.

I am not sure I can wash my dishes as clean as this car!

wrong?

In the last few days I have been reminded of some troubling times.

Our country has a pretty good legal system, it may be as good or better than any around, but our system makes horrible mistakes sometimes. Without doubt we have executed innocent people. Other times in a rush to find someone guilty for a crime, we have rushed into action that later proves to be woefully wrong.

Tonight I was reminded of the story of Ferdinando Socco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. They were Italian immigrants that were executed for a murder they most certainly did not commit. But they were immigrants, so it did not matter (some one, at that time, actually wrote a line similar to that) that they died.

Every one in prison (I am told) claims to be “innocent”, but some actually are.

I am always troubled by the way we treated the Japanese/Americans at the beginning of WWII. There are quite a few Japanese people around here, they are some of our best citizens. But then, our country was so frightened that we walked all over innocent people. It took a long time for us to apologize about that one.

Although we are a nation of immigrants (most of us any way), we are not too good to others who come after us, whether Irish, Italian, Chinese or Muslims.

All of this reminds me that even though we (I) have great intentions, even though my course of action seems right at the moment, it may turn out to be hurtful to people who deserve better.

I wish it were not so.

Way back, spare tires were shown with pride.
This Packard had two of them.
Now we make them very small and hide them.
But we don't use them as often either.
Our 18 year old car still has the original tiny spare tire and it has not been on the ground yet!

reunion

I attended a small private high school.

The school is down the road a couple of miles from where we live (go the other way a mile to where I was born).

About twenty of my family members attended the same small school. Miriam and I met there. I thought that was a huge number but one other family has had 71 members attend!

This weekend was the annual home coming. For a small school the alumni are an active group. Each year several hundred return to talk and smile and shake hands and listen. Something like a fourth of the graduates are married to other graduates. Wow.

It was my 55th anniversary, Miriam's 54th. It was not a big deal year (we have another one of those in 5 and 6 years). I was the only one who stood for our year during the class roll call. But there were a few others there.

In the afternoon 5 of us: Lorraine and Eddie (married to each other) Wilmer, Miriam and I found a quiet corner and sat and talked for several hours. Like my talk with Charlie a couple of months ago, it was the first time that we had ever been able to share time together.

It was a rich wonderful experience. We shared our ups and downs. Wilmer has had a kidney transplant. Eddie had a minor stroke. We are getting older. How many of us will be around in 5 years for our next “big deal” gathering? Only time will tell.

But for a few wonderful glorious hours 5 friendships that had laid largely dormant for so many years were rekindled for a brief shining hour and it was so good.

hay fever

I inherited a few things from my mother.

Each spring I am especially aware of one. We used to call it “hay fever”, which sounds like something from the African jungles.

But it wasn't. I think “allergies” is what most call it now. Mom's allergies were pretty well developed. Each spring she had this bout of blow and sneeze and trudge. It was long before any affective antihistamine and mom just toughed it through.

I did pretty well for some years, but when we went to Texas I discovered that anything I could be allergic to grew in abundance around there. There was a tree that had bad pollen, that affected a lot of Texans, but it grew a couple hundred miles north in Oklahoma or Kansas, but those nice people shared it with us.

Each spring I was miserable.

There were by then, two types of antihistamines. One was very effective, but it would make you very sleepy. “Do not take this while operating machines,” the labels darkly warned, and ther was the “non-drowsy” formulas, but they did not work very well.

So I took the first kind, then tanked up on caffein to function. I was teaching two classes and was a full time graduate student as well. It was a wild ride each spring.

Then the drug genii came out with Claratin and my whole world changed. I wrangled a prescription. It worked and I could function with out all of that caffein.

Here in Idaho I get a shot of this allergy each spring. It goes about a month, so I can buy the generic formula to make it through the spring.

We are there right now!

Where did I put that bottle?

As you moved the colors on this paint job moved too.
Massively spendy I'd guess.
The car was an early '50's Plymouth, something you don't see in car shows too often.
Old cars are great to look at, but I don't have a lot of good memories of my cars of that vintage.

reconnect

I live a rather alone life.

Not really lonely, as long as I have my Miriam's mind even a bit, but largely alone.

In my life I have not had a great number of really close friends, but neither have most of my contemporaries. I am not sure Miriam has had any other than me.

The longest close friendship has been with Gene. We were freshmen in high school and in the 55 years since we graduated from high school, we have kept a conversion going. Mostly.

We have never lived in the same time zone during those years. Gene is a genuine scientist and teacher. I am an artist and doer (maybe).

We will have a rabid conversation for a few years and it tapers off and we are out of touch for a while, then it begins again with great intensity. We have been out of touch now for some years now. When we met at our 50th anniversary of graduating from high school Gene introduced me to his new wife and we visited a few minutes.

He was moving and did not have an address and neither of us followed up.

Then this week I got an email saying that a Gene had asked to be my friend on Facebook. I am on Facebook, but I am not very into it, I don't follow it too closely.


He was anxious to reconnect. He lives in Wisconsin now. He and his wife have been caring for her aging parents. Mom is gone now, but at 93 Dad keeps plugging along.

Gene was a college Biology professor for most of his life, so talking to him is like having a genial conversation with the wizened Professor.

We don't have to agree on much of anything. We just throw ideas back and forth, sometimes in very rapid form. It is that exchange of ideas and thoughts that has kept this conversation going.

Glad we are back in touch old friend.

Controlled fire!
This is history. Matt had his 14th birthday a few weeks ago.

fire

Last week my neighbor had a noisy party.

The neighbor has a fire pit in his rather small back yard and he had a good sized fire going.

The noisemakers were standing around the fire talking – a bit loudly perhaps.

The noise was not a serious impediment to the reading I was doing, but it did bother me a bit. On the other hand, we live just a ways from the high school football field and some noise could be coming from that direction.

So I slipped on some shoes and went outside to check out the source.

First thing I noticed was a figure coming toward me. In the dark I could not see who it was so I spoke to the person. It was Juan my across the street neighbor.

“Dave, your house is on fire.”

I looked past Juan to his house across the street. Juan's wife Sylvia was standing on their front porch with a phone to her ear.

From Juan and Sylvia's front window the fire pit is in direct line with the back of my house and like good neighbors, they were on the alert.

Juan had not even bothered to put his shoes on, but had come running across the street in his stocking feet.

He called across the street to Sylvia, who terminated he call to the 911 operator.

The neighbor's fire does bother me. It is not too far from a cedar fence which is a few feet from a cedar shaked wall on my house. If things got out of control, it could get nasty.

On the other hand the owner (yet another Dave in my life) was reasonably careful.

I thanked Juan for his concern. When Dave had begun the big fire thing I decided not to hassel him with the legals of it all.

My nutty solution was to make sure I kept my fire insurance policy up to date.