Back from the Deeps

We're back from our camp trip to the Deep Creek Range. More later.

Hotel Nevada, Ely

Homestead junker, Utah

Gone camping

Evening in the Bird Park

Hasta luego mis amigos. Hasta la vista la próxima semana.

Crow talk

photo by Life Writer

"I shall live bad if I do not write, and I shall write bad if I do not live." ~ Françoise Sagan


And to this end, Mr. Lee has dedicated himself to see that I LIVE. Fuck him. Tomorrow he is dragging me out into the Great Basin for an off road, off the grid, out in the true heart of fucking Nowhere for yet another wilderness experience. I am sneak writing this. Mr. Lee has his eye on me because, at this point, TIME HAS RUN OUT. I should be packing but I am barely packed however I am charging my two camera batteries and have amassed a pile of pens, pencils, erasers, notebooks, and sketch pads to comfort me out there. We go to very remote places. In one favorite location, a military plane crashed and wasn't found for 50 years. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?

For the last few days I have been scaling down the amount of food I shovel out into the Bird Park so that it won't be a total shock when the food dries up but, even as I write this, my old friend Minerva, and her similarity decrepit buddy, have showed up for a mid-morning peanut. I am sorry to say that the crows are winning the contest of who trains who. The other day Minerva landed and clomped (crows don't hop, they clomp) straight to my bedroom window (she not only knows where my office is, she knows where I sleep!) and demanded a treat. Unchecked, this will not end well. Crows have a hot-line. I fear that, before long, hundreds, perhaps thousands, will take up cawing at my window. I suppose it is better we go to the desert a while. Let things cool off.

And when we get back, if we do, it's off to Portland to see Baby Thea (a good thing), then LA (a just okay thing), Tonapah (an okay thing) and, on October 1, we leave for Costa Rica. Yikes and ey yi yi! It feels like a yawning chasm has opened up beneath me into which I plummet.

Local news at 12:56

Detail in a painting
Getty Museum in LA.

It is all in the details and today the details are driving me crazy so I thought I'd drop in here and complain a bit. Not only are we leaving for Costa Rica on Oct. 1, we are busy pretty much up to that time. It's all good but I am overwhelmed.

Do you like the photo? Sorry I don't remember the artist or the painting, something at the Getty. You'll have to go and see for yourself. One of the many great things about the Getty is that you are allowed to take photos, JUST NO FLASH. But back to work. Thanks for the shoulder.

Local news at 11:24

The Bird Park is full of little birds today. They must be fueling up for bad weather. Snow is predicted above 9000 ft. in the lovely Sierra at whose feet we are nestled. I am in the hamster wheel today. Too much to do and too little time to do it all. We are going to Costa Rica on Nov. 1 for six weeks and already the long shadow is upon me. It would be wise to layout the newsletters through the end of the year. And I just volunteered to do a blog for a local animal welfare group. I got the url and did a mock up for it last night but much remains to be done before it's functional. So far I am 0 for 2 on this kind of thing but what the hell? Three is supposed to be a charm. The one I started for the shelter in Nicaragua turned out to be a terrible experience. The director was impossible to work with. Anyway, I should already be out the door, but just had to come here first and cry. It's a tradition.

Oh, and Baby Thea is now 12 lbs. 6 oz.
and more beautiful than ever, if that is even possible.

FOUND! Who gives a fuck?

The missing Who Gives a Fuck? icon was found today and, as promised, a grand prize will awarded to the finder.

Me.

i just want to make one thing clear. I did not rummage though my archives looking for it. I just happened to find it when I was looking though the E Drive for a photo I want to submit to a magazine. Anyway, I get to choose my prize from three things ... either a peanut TLC bar, a cool Nevada rock, or an ice cold Pepsi.

Seeing as how I just had a bar and the rock is already "mine", as much as anyone can "own" a rock given that the rock is already about a million years old and will still be around when the sun implodes, I'm going to chose the Pepsi, gas station soda fountain in a cup with ice style. We don't drink soda much anymore, not since finally admitting to ourselves how terribly unhealthy it is. So soda. Tomorrow, when I go to Reno, I will buy a soda.

So, there he is. Have at him. ladies. Thanks Asia and JudyBlueSky. It is great to have the little guy back.

Who gives a fuck?

Asia reminded us about it and JudyBlueSky replied, "I want the icon. I NEED the icon. I AM the icon."

Indeed.

Perhaps I am just being academic but, in case you missed the conversation, I think Mr. Smiley Face's sign said, "WHO GIVES A FUCK?" rather than "WHO GIVES A SHIT?"

But you know how it is. Where once people may have viewed it with a less than passing glance, now that it is lost, this tiny gif is legend, like The One Ring Which Rules Them All. To find it would require battle with titanic forces, in this case, Inertia. Don't laugh. Inertia is responsible, or not responsible, for more of history than exists.

So, you may wonder, why did I lose the Mr. Smiley Face "WHO GIVES A SHIT/FUCK?" icon in the first place? Simple, and here's the moral of the story, I failed to back my icon file up before switching to a new hard drive. However, and this is the good part, the little punk is buried in my blog somewhere but locating it would require an episodic, page by page search. I gave it a quick try but lost heart even though I am looking for a diversion from that inventory of poems I inflicted on myself now that Baby Thea's box is in the mail.

So...to sweeten the pot, I am offering a reward to anyone who manages to unearth the damn thing. It is, after all, very tiny and, on it's own, not worth the effort, so if you find it, I will send you a prize, exactly what TBA. Here's a clue. It's probably with posts that are about two years old. Okay. Now, I've gotta get back to work. At the moment, I am tortured by that horrible feeling I get when squandering irreplaceable time. I set out today, after all, to get a poetry submission in the mail before five.

Inventory time

The time has come for me to inventory my written work, especially the poetry and, to that end, I recently printed out what I have, for years, been filing away. This is why I am currently sitting here in my favorite chair, cup of coffee nearby, writing this blog post. I need to give myself a pep talk.

Poetic license only goes so far, if you are serious about writing well. Likewise, this "body of work" idea can remain amorphous only so long before it becomes, well, pointless. Personally, I have a high tolerance for ambiguity. Granted it's a bit messy, but it also allows me to overestimate exactly how much and what I have done. The downside, of course, is that ambiguity sours in an especially nasty manner. And for me it has. So, it's time to open the box, see what's actually what and, more importantly perhaps, what is not. Face the demons. Crap.

Local news at 6:41 AM

Fat-bellied bird barely
lifting from the dirt
takes a wiggling worm
to the nest.

Local news at 7:31

I've been rummaging around over at the wayback machine this morning. Great place. Anyway, they cached this page from my website years ago, before I nuked it and then lost the backup files. Always, always backup anything you want to keep! I still do not, so there you have it. However, thanks to them, Sweet Lorraine's wonderful silver polishing tip lives on. May she rest in peace. Handy, as my silver is in need of polishing and lately I've been lamenting the loss of her recipe.



If you have trouble getting the polish out of the cracks of your silver jewelry here's a handy trick I learned from my friend Lorraine, who always wore gobs of silver and turquoise jewelry. She was a very cool lady who knew how to do things the easy way. It works. It really does.


Ingredients:
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 sheet of aluminum foil
1 quart water

Add dry ingredients to 1 quart boiling water.
Submerge foil in water.
Drop silver onto foil.
Tarnish will immediately disappear.
Remove silver from water.
Place on drying cloth.
Allow to dry.
To enhance affect, gently rub silver but it's not necessary.
It will come out of the water shiny as new.

Flections

I have been in deep Baby Thea withdrawal since leaving Portland. It's awful. She is growing up too fast and too far away. In four minutes she will be a full 10 days old! I want to reach right though this miserable computer screen, lift her out of the photo, into my arms and cuddle up a cascade of smiles.



We are working our way back home but at the moment are in Southern Oregon celebrating my other granddaughter's graduation from high school. Things were different when she was born. It's very painful to recall but I didn't participate much in her birth or early years so spending time with her is especially sweet.

Funny how life turns. I hate to admit what an idiot I was but I once considered almost everything "maya". What else have I totally scrambled? At least I finally turned the corner and see life as an exquisite, fragile gift rather than a "sentence" to be "endured".

Baby Girl Nelson

I know you guys have been waiting for photos of The Babeh and I'm sorry to be so slow posting any. I can be painfully private sometimes, but I wanted to make sure it was okay with her Mama first. Of course, it's fine. In fact, Baby Thea now has her own personal Flickr account, so if you'd like to see more photos of her you can find them at Baby Girl Nelson. Isn't she beautiful? I am totally smitten.

There is a baby!

YAY!!! Whew!

Local news at 10:11

No baby yet. Twenty-three hours and counting. It's been a long day.

Local news at 8:44

I've been busy lately. Lots going on and it hasn't slowed down yet. I just wanted to check and refresh the page but, at the moment, don't have time for more than this quick note. Number one, we are now in the single digit countdown waiting for the baby. Mr. Lee and I have reserved a room in Portland starting next Sunday. I hope she waits till then but babies are on their own time. My friend here, whose due date was the 21st, had her baby yesterday so there you have it. It could be any moment. I just hope, if she comes "early", that we arrive before she does.

Other than that, my complimentary issue of Skidrow Penthouse #10 arrived the other day. I'd completely forgotten I submitted poems to them so it was a pleasant surprise. Now that they are published, I will post them at my other blog when I get the time. And I spent the weekend at a Parelli workshop in Reno this weekend. I don't have a horse and I doubt I ever will have a horse but I got a super saver ticket through the HSUS and couldn't pass it up. I've always wanted to sit in on one of these sessions. Parelli is the real deal. Like their tshit says, "Change horses can believe in." Okay. More later. Gotta go.

Oh. And I testified at a sub-committee hearing on the Senate Bill 132, the Anti-Tethering Bill. In the final vote, it passed 32 to 8. Now it goes on to our infamous Governor Jim Gibbons for signing. He'll probably sign it. As one of the Legislators pointed out, Gibbons dog gets better treatment than his wife. Nevada. Gotta love it. We are the last state in the Union to make dog and cock fighting illegal, that is, if the bill before the Legislature passed this session. Anyway, I'll post my testimony later as well. It was really fun.

Tic

The deadline for the newsletter I edit is a week off and I have spent my morning slogging through a bog of niggling details. It is time to revisit one of my all-time favorite video Superstars. I love this guy!

TIC

Friends

A photo from the neighborhood...

Baby T

Uncle Monkey, Baby T, Sweet William, Ugly Bear

Today Uncle Monkey proudly introduced Baby T to the troupe here at the Invisible Theatre. Everyone made a huge fuss over her. They were smitten.

Local news at 8:24

How's your day going? It's 8:23 AM and I am already overwhelmed. Ah well. This too shall pass.

Window in the sea

Words in the dark 3.15

The floor of my mind is littered with crumpled, scribbled out, scrawled and often illegible words, some strung together, some adrift on their own. They are like leaves running before the wind and the next time I look they are spindly sprouts growing in the fetid dark. At other times they appear to be like bugs skittering by and I shudder. Or they are annoying the way sharp rocks are to bare feet or threatening like broken glass. Some of them are frivolous like photos in a collage, interesting only in relationship to something else, or provocative like the preview of a film and some are merely blobs of paint that didn't make it to the canvas, perhaps the best part, but dried and beyond recall. I hear them mumbling and whispering. I kick my way through them, sweep some aside, pick others up and place them under the light for a closer look. Observed they change. They have strange magnetic properties that do not obey the rules. They erratically change poles, attracting then repelling one another. Some are lurkers, suspect, shifty and resistant.