Screw You, Entire Town of Derby! Happy Christmas Eve-Eve

On Christmas Eve-Eve, I went back to Michigan for a few days. I was coming down with flu symptoms, was stressed out from the "re-org" at work, and was also really really nervous to see a brother I hadn't seen in nine years. When I was going through the divorce, it came out that he had been playing a sort of double agent between us--calling me to see how I was feeling, then reporting back to him and assuring him that the whole family was on "his side" and they sort of preferred him anyway. This hurt me very deeply, and I now have some trust issues with this brother.

I think it's safe to say I got myself worked up over nothing. I was afraid there would be a big fight, based on politics or sexism. I steeled myself to just leave the room anytime I felt sexist remarks coming on. Nothing of the sort happened. I think we all tried really hard.

Sometime I want to write about the fine line a woman walks as she faces such demeaning remarks. My number one priority was not to fight, so I chose conversation topics carefully.

It was brief visit, just Saturday through Tuesday. My flu worsened once I arrived, and I took naps and tried to avoid spreading germs.

On Saturday night, I was about to go to bed. I was worn out from stress and had the chills and a headache that wouldn't quit. My dad mentioned to my brother the holiday light display on the bluff in downtown St. Joe. I had always wanted to see the lights but never had due to the timing of my visits at Christmastime. I always have to work the day before and day after Christmas so I am usually there only a few days. My dad suddenly said, "Hey, wanna go now?" to Chuck and me. My mom was about to go to bed too but seemed happy about the spontaneous diversion.

It was freezing on the bluff above Lake Michigan. The wind was blowing hard. The brick streets and tiny shops and restaurants looked lonely. My dad decided to get out and walk under the lights and invited any takers. I hopped out, and Mom and my brother stayed in the car.

My dad turned into someone I'd never met. He said things, such as, "I think this is nice. I like walking with your mom here. The lights are pretty. There's usually music playing but it's late." It occurred to me, "I'm walking with my dad under Christmas lights. This is what normal people do. This is weird!"

When we got to the end of the bluff, Chuckie whipped around and picked us up, and on the way home, Dad decided that Chuckie needed to see what the old farm looks like now. 

The old farm. That's where I spent my childhood. My dad bought an old farm in 1975. I moved out in 88. They stayed there until 2006. The farm is a character in itself. I wrote a play about it in 2012 called "Junk Yard Dogs." 

A couple purchased it on a land contract. Several years later, they defaulted. They kinda destroyed the house with dogs. They stole a refrigerator. They were assholes.

A rich couple bought it the following year, and turned the land and barn into something out of a magazine. They never lived in the house, just rented it. The updated barns, pastures, paddock, and addition of  a pond (all for the couple's horses) has caused my dad to obsess over a milllion "coulda woulda shoulda-s." 

He seems to think we all hold this fascination of the farm's transformation and drive by it on the regular. We don't. Some of us live many states away, and yet the first thing he asks is, "Have you been by the farm lately?" Like, when? Would we make a special trip to come look at the farm? He thinks we must do this, otherwise why would he ask.

After trespassing, we drove back to their beautiful home where they have resided since 2006. It's a great house on a great ravine. Of course he constantly wants to get rid of it to go find another shitty farm or a depressing cabin on a lake--or rather "really nice mobile home" on a "really nice lake." Nope and Nope. 

It's rural. A few small businesses dot the road. Dad asked Chuckie to pull over in front of a storage unit place: "I haven't done this in a while."

He rolls down the window and starts shouting abuse in German at the storage facility.

"Chuck..." my mothers says, mildly yet absentmindedly scolding him.

Chuckie then rolls his down window. "Oh yeah?! Well screw you, Ballard Printing!" he yells to the business on the other side of the street.

Then I roll down my window, "Up yours, Boelcke heating and air conditioning!"

Then Chuckie, "Go to hell, Scott Berry Productions!"

Then me, "Suck it, Ace Hardware!"

"Eat shit and die! Hoffman Realty!"

"Sod off! Spot Not Car wash!:

Then Chuckie ties it up neatly: ""Screw You and the Horse you Came in On, Entire Burg of Derby."

That's so dumb that you have to live there for it to be funny.

After the Bizzaro world of walking under Christmas lights like normal human beings, shouting abuse at the small businesses of Stevensville on Christmas Eve-Eve all was right again. Now things feel normal!

Pretty soon my mom says, "Don't you know what Dad was doing back there?"

Silence. Confusion. Bafflement. (Bafflement is a word????)

"He was yelling at the people in the house behind the storage unit. They're the ones that wrecked the farm house."

Yes, because that makes sense. That's what you do. Yell at them in German from a moving car.

This is my Christmas and this is my family and this is normal!

Venice: a year ago

We took a plane to Rome. We rented through AirBnb in a neighborhood called San Giovanni. We stayed in a spacious apartment full of art and color and books and cooking fragrances and marble and sunlight. We had a balcony and strawberry plants and tomato plants and pepper plants. We took breakfast at a corner cafe, where I cried over my cappuccino every morning because it tasted so good.

We explored on foot and by Metro from sun-up til midnight, when the trains stopped running. We hired guides to take us through archaeological sites--crypts, chapels made of bones, ancient fortresses and palaces. We walked to the Vatican. We were greeted by soldiers with machine guns and tanks. Then we saw the mile long line of desperate souls, coin in hand, to go in and say a prayer. Pay to pray, I guess. It was a bit disgusting in my opinion. Then we encountered the homeless encampment. Outside the biggest church in the world. So much for faith, hope, and charity.

We hired one to show us haunted Rome. Acqua Tofana. My comeback. Watch. We walked along the Tiber one night, thinking it would be romantic. It smelled like piss and we almost got mugged. We ate gelato for lunch. We ate dinner in a tiny alley restaurant a block from our apartment. It was the best food I ever had. I loved Rome and also couldn't wait to leave to see what was next. Waiting in the train station sealed the deal--we loved Rome, but we also loved leaving Rome.

We took several trains to get to Cinque Terre. We had a tiny apartment in Corniglio, the smallest of the five towns. We ate breakfast in the cafe owned by our AirBnb host. Croissants and pastries and cappuccino. We picked up cheese/meat pastries from a sandwich shop, stuffed them in our back packs. We hiked through the mountains on a trail thousands of years old. We caught a train back when it got dark and a storm kicked up.

A few days later, we caught a series of trains to Venice. We switched trains three times. We went to Genoa. We ran ran across ten platforms, literally caught the train as it was leaving. It was packed. The bathroom door wouldn't latch. The train lurched. The train toilet water splashed up on Larry. He was also over trains and Rome.

We saw Venice shimmering in the distance. We almost started crying.

We had anAirBnb on a canal near a bridge. 300 years old. Walk inside, looks like a catalog for IKEA. This is the thing in Europe. Leave it old on the outside; inside ruin it with modern furnishings by IKEA. We got lost trying to find San Marco. We enjoyed being lost.
We had a romantic dinner outside on a quiet canal, red table cloth, candle-lit lanterns. Red wine, rich dessert. Flirtatious waiter. We passed a theater. Coming Soon: Merchant of Venice. Oh wouldn't that be wonderful?

We went to the Doges Palace. Saw the dungeon, the courtroom, the bridge of sighs, where women threw their dresses open for their lovers passing through to their doom, the weapons, the art, the courtyard.

We walked all of Venice day and night.

We loved it and loved leaving it. We loved boarding a luxury ship. Can't help it. Loved it.

More to come.

This was part of a larger painting that captivated me. The lion seemed so real.

Another Tragedy

Sunday night, a white man massacred 58 people and injured over 500 others in a fifteen-minute shooting spree in Las Vegas.

I'm tired of writing blogs on this topic.

Let it be known that the NRA can go fuck itself in the mouth.

Come Back to Me

I'm talking to me.

But see, I've been busy.

October and November 2016: visited five countries in Europe! By foot, by train, by plane, by ferry, by ship, by taxi. High rises in Rome, mountain-top perch in Cinque Terre, 500 year-old flat in Venice, a suite on a Viking cruise (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Greece)  a studio on a beach on an island in Greece, a room in Istanbul.

July 2017: Month long road trip called America the Beautiful but changed to America the Weird. 9 National Parks. 2 State parks. 10 states.

New job! Permanent position! Software Engineer. Loving the perks!

I must return here to remember it all. 

No cosmic orphan

“I will take my rightful place on stage

and I will be myself.

I am not a cosmic orphan.

I have no reason to be timid.

I will respond as I feel;

awkwardly, vulgarly,

but respond.

I will have my throat open,

I will have my heart open,

I will be vulnerable.

I may have anything or everything

the world has to offer, but the thing

I need most, and want most,

is to be myself.

I will admit rejection, admit pain,

admit frustration, admit even pettiness,

admit shame, admit outrage,

admit anything and everything

that happens to me.

The best and most human parts of

me are those I have inhabited

and hidden from the world.

I will work on it.

I will raise my voice.

I will be heard.”

-Elia Kazan

It Was So Beautiful / I Couldn't Stop Crying

It's a newbie's mistake.

I couldn't wait to write my first official travel blog, based on my recent travels to Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia. I wanted to travel light and stay true to the spirit of adventure, choosing a notebook over a laptop, so that I'd have room for my new camera and new lenses.

Every night of my trip, I'd write about my day: the things I saw, the things I felt, the people I met.

But somewhere along the way, I got tired of hauling the camera bag. And when I got home, I realized that my old clunker of a PC can't read my brand new camera's software. And then I realized that I left my travel journal on the airplane. All my precious little notes and bits of poetry and wisdom I learned along the way, now gone forever.

I've lost documents before and know you can never recreate them. You can re-do them, but you can't get it all back. I was so devastated about my loss that I just sort of gave up on writing. But that would be a mistake.

Little by little, I'm going to try to piece those memories together, even if they're just bullet points.

And soon I'll buy a new computer that can read my camera's software. In the meantime, I can post some pics taken on my crummy phone and on my partner's iphone, which I sometimes fear takes pictures of identical quality to those taken with professional cameras. We soon shall see.


Bits & Pieces of Paradise

Seattle

• Stayed in a really cool old Sears Craftsman House in the really cool neighborhood of Ballard in Seattle. All the houses sat on steep hillsides, sloping up from well worn sidewalks, flanked by walls of brilliant rhododendrons.

• Walked to a neighborhood tradition, Ray's, for dinner. Drank Columbia Valley wine, local crab cakes, the best oysters I've ever had, local seafood paella, and cheese puffs.

• Seattle neighborhoods--quaint, vibrant, discrete. Tea houses tucked in among houses.

• Puget Sound--every night the beaches were packed full of people enjoying fire rings
• Pyramid Brewery
• Mariners game. Don't understand athlete worship. Never have. Never will.
• Pike Place Fish Market. Touristy. Eh. But, oh if I'd had time to cook! Only tourists take pictures, so I took no pictures. Instead, I'll post some I found online. If I lived in Seattle, I'd stop here every night to pick up food to cook for dinner. Who needs a restaurant in this town?

Olympic National Park

• River Otters
• Crystal River, a river the color and clarity of the Carribean
• Crescent Lake
• Stopping every ten minutes to take pictures
• Waterfalls
• Sol Duc Hot Springs
• Hoh National Rainforest
• Trees so tall and prehistoric, I felt like I was in the Land of the Lost
• Hurricane Ridge. The smell of pure snow and invigorating pine resin
• Sea Stacks Rialto Beach at LaPush
• "Dinosaur Bone" Beach
• "Hole in the Wall." Running for miles on the beach trying to cross the river before the tide came in, afraid I would get trapped on the other side of the island. Remembering how great it felt to run barefoot for so long and so fast. How truly alive and healthy I felt.
• Starfish
• Tide pools
• Symphony of tree frogs singing us to sleep every night in our cabin
• Cascades of giant tropical-looking flowers on every wall
• Cooking fresh local seafood, drinking beer from Portland and wine from Washington
• Salt Creek, overlooking the Juan De Fuca straits
• Dungeness Wildlife Refuge
• Harbinger Winery
• Lavender Fields
• Ferries
• Whidbey Island bridges

Bellingham, WA

• One night in this beautiful harbor town for dinner at locally famed Anthony's. Spectacular sunset over the Pacific ocean as we ate fresh Copper River salmon on Alderwood and drank local beer from Chuckanut.

Alaska

• Chicagohof Island--hired a boat to take us for whale watching. Saw probably half a dozen. Reminded us of the whale we saw in Dana Point, CA, a  year earlier, who was late in her migration, and who seemed to be letting her baby play in the seaweed for a little while. 
• Icy Strait Point, a tiny quaint town that embraces its heritage. "Gary Brown," our Tlingit ("klinkit") guide for the bear trails shared with us language, his heritage, his land, his knowledge of bears. We saw TWO grizzly bears! It was a beautiful day in ISP--sunny and warm. He taught us how they "read" the plants to know the time of year--the salmon berries are red/ripe when the salmon are running. A certain plant flowers at the end of the summer. Showed us the plants that the bears eat after hibernation--skunk cabbage. Looks like a lily. Not poisonous to humans, but if a human eats it, he will not able to talk for days, as the plant contains calcium carbonite, which forms as crystals in the throat. (Humans cannot digest this compound.)  Showed us medicinal plants--Devil's Club, Devil's Thumb. Showed us the Muskeg! Looks like a tall grass prairie, but is actually a vast system of underground creeks and ponds. Mud puddles are actually abysmal mud holes, sometimes over twenty feet deep! The fish come to this area to spawn. If you step in the wrong place, you could actually drown. Trucks and bulldozers have been swallowed hole after drivers ignored warnings not to drive on the Muskeg.Shared typical life of a Tlingit. Shared with us very personal story of his own--how he became an alcoholic and how he overcame it. This was something I wrote about a lot in my journal, as he emphasized the importance of knowing and living your passion--learning and living that has kept him sober and focused. Sometimes people speak with so much emotion that even if their words are simple and the sentiment familiar, you know they have a secret to something. They had a secret pain and and perhaps a very public flaw, and they found a way out of their own prison. After years of hardship, he learned that his passion was restoring and sharing the Tlingit culture. He speaks the language and taught it to his children and grand children. "Sometimes these people with their degrees like to come in and fix a lot of things that aren't broken." After our hike with Gary, we sat on the beach and watched the sun go down on one side of the island and the moon rise on the other. As we sat on the beach, a whale swam near the shore (the shores have an astonishing drop off) and breached right in front of us. Icy Strait Point's gift to us! Lovely day here. No jewelry shops, no tshirt shops, and the tourism industry is operated by the Tlingits.

• Hubbard Glacier
• Hired a boat to take us to the glacier bay to watch the glaciers calve. "White Thunder!" (Sounds like an earthquake.) Glorious blue ice creating tidal waves in giant blue ocean.

• Juneau/Hilbert Glacier
• Patsy Ann, Alaska's best dog ever!
• Helicopter to Hilbert Glacier. Never been in a helicopter. Felt like the most natural thing in the world, just like parasailing felt over the Virgin Islands.

Note--The inside passage and the Caribbean Islands look very similar, only Alaska is more beautiful. In fact, I got misty around the eyes almost every day as we sailed through the hundreds of thousands of islands, atolls, and archipelagos. It was so beautiful, I couldn't stop crying.

• Blue Kennels dog sled camp! We went to a sled dog camp and learned how to drive a team! The dogs were hilarious. I laughed the entire time. Ate some "blue" snow. The snow is pure there that when you step in it, your footprint looks blue. No words can describe this, and I wasn't allowed to bring my big camera, so I'll post some pics from the iphone. 

• Juneau was clean and modern but not my kind of town. A local directed us to a local bar, The Rendezvous. Ordered Alaskan Amber from Alaskan Brewery. Yummy. Everyone in Juneau seems to be from somewhere else. Seems to have its share of junkies and prostitutes. Some come with gold on the brain, others come with nature in their hearts. Perhaps both are quickly disheartened. Since we weren't really enjoying the tourist trap of Juneau we went back to the ship and basically had it to ourselves. Clear blue sunny warm skies, open pool deck, whirlpools. It was one of our favorite days. 

• Ketchikan  
• We hiked the national park here, high up in the tundra and through the ravines, and back down to the city. 
• Fascinating visit to the totem pole museum.

2016: Italy: Cinque Terre

We loved our week of exploring the "architectural lasagna" of Rome. From the ancient history of Ancient Rome--talk about going back to the '50s! We went to the ACTUAL 50s!-- to palaces and crypts and art museums and the Metro adventures, and tiny alley bistros and gelato and red wine and trying to find a f***ing bathroom, we soaked it all in until we were saturated.

Next, we caught a train out of Termini headed for the Ligurian coast in the Apennine mountains for hiking adventures to Cinque Terre, a national park and UNESCO World Heritage site. We stayed in a tiny, charming room, high on a cliff overlooking the village and sea. Our host, Cristiana, owned a little bodega and served us delicious cappuccino and croissants every morning and a divine flight of local wines with cheeses and olives every evening. 

We stayed in the tiny village of Corniglio (pop. 103) for a few nights. The hiking was treacherous and glorious. I found muscles I never knew I had. We hiked all five villages in one day! One of the best days of our lives! We barely missed darkness and a thunderstorm coming down the treacherous mountainside between Manorola and Corniglio on our final leg. As the rain came down and darkness swelled up, we saw a sign about wild boars. We headed to the village and caught a train then a bus back to our charming room where a hot shower and cozy bed awaited us. We opened the curtains to watch a magnificent electrical storm discharge miles-long lightning streaks into the sea. It was the most fantastic display of nature we've ever seen!

Balcony off our tiny room

Something like 900 steps from the train station up to the trail.

Fresh oranges and cafe!

Blood oranges and chocolate torte

Beautiful view from bed!

A wild and rocky coastline with improbably steep, terraced vineyards seeming to rise directly from the sea joins the dots of the Cinque Terre, five tiny villages that have remained practically unchanged since medieval times.

The dry-stone walls supporting the narrow terraces are the result of centuries of gruelling work and have led to UNESCO recognition as an extraordinary cultural landscape resulting from man’s harmonious interaction with nature. That harmony is reinforced by a refreshing lack of traffic; the sheer slopes leave no room for cars and the roads that do exist are long and winding, if panoramic, so transport is dependent on the railway, a dense network of footpaths, and ferries in high season. Olives, agaves and prickly pears add to the spectacular scenery and, as both a national park and marine reserve, the environment is carefully protected.

Our little town as seen from a mountain peak a few miles away.

Morning after the storm. Air scrubbed clean of humidity and fog!

Train from Rome to La Spezia, with a change or two in between. 

First glimpse of Ligurian Sea from the train!

Little outdoor bar and restaurant

Christiana, our hostess. 

I like this photo of my handsome man on Via Freschi one night in October

Christiana brought a nice flight of whites along with some bread, cheese, olives, and charcuterie.

Seafood stew. We were the only patrons in this restaurant. The staff seemed to be a husband, his mother, and his wife. Mother and wife hated each other, and the husband seemed to the favor the mother. Love and marriage! Lots of yelling from behind the kitchen door. Interesting meal.

Lightning discharging into the sea

Orange tree supporting satellite TV. 

It was foggy one of the days we went hiking

Trail marker

Here's the little shack where they check to make sure you have purchased the pass to walk the trails. They check it only between the "touristy" towns of Veranazza and Monterossa. The other trails are so rugged that not many people hike them. But we did!

Sadly, asshole tourists think it's okay to steal grapes from the vineyards. They do not understand that they are stealing the family's livelihood. This is a problem with people who have no contact with an agrarian culture. They have no respect where food comes from or how difficult it is to raise and harvest. Farmers have put up "toxic" signs to keep tourist thieves from eating their grapes.

Harvesting is still done by hand—there is no room for machinery. Once upon a time vineyard workers would carry their wicker baskets for miles up and down ladder-like trails that are a challenge even when you hike on them unloaded. In the last 20 years, however, the Cinque Terre cooperative winery (and some other, independent grape-growers and winemakers) has installed several dozen miniature cog-wheel monorails that snake through the vineyards stopping at collection points, many of them on this trail.

Sometimes, vintners allow hikers to "ride" down these cogs. Rollercoaster of Certain Death!

Olive trees grow in the wild.

It felt kind of biblical. Stone path beneath the olive trees.

I appreciated someone deciphering the pictogram: "Avalanche de Balls."

Telephone wires

It is called “heroic winemaking” because of the back-breaking effort that goes into each and every bottle of wine made in the Cinque Terre. Wine making has been the crucially important to the formation and growth of the Cinque Terre villages throughout their history. The incredible terracing which defines the coastline surrounding the towns was created over the course of a thousand years to create space to place the vines. The entire economy revolved around the sale of wine.

Of the Cinque Terre’s approximately 5,000 residents today about 700 belong to the local cooperative winery. Just about every family bottles its own private stock.

Walked under this "cave" to get to the sea. It went from medieval to prehistoric!

Trying to find the trail. Sometimes we got lost in the little villages, which is a big deal when you have to climb some 900 steps to get the to village then have to go back down then up again.

Beautiful morning glories on trail.

Atop Vernazza, which is kind of touristy now due to cruise ships offering a ferry ride here as a "day trip." I wouldn't want to "day trip" here, which would be shopping and eating in substandard yet expensive restaurants. I would much rather hike the trails and see the cities on my way through!

High in the Apennine mountains was a little feral cat city. Someone put out houses, food, water, and collection boxes.

A little pop-up shop in Monterossa.

The beach. Hmmm. The U.S. truly has some of the best beaches in the world!

I actually didn't appreciate this graffiti. This is a UNESCO world heritage site.

A little tunnel under the mountain in Riomaggiore. It was so pretty.

Drank some beer and ate some foccacia here. Two other people in the place. Of course they were from Seattle.

I had complained that Larry always complained when I wanted to take his picture, so he tried to cheer up. 

I wanted to knock on this door in Manorola so badly!

We could see the train station but couldn't figure out how to get there from where we were.

One of my favorite things was walking past everyone's gardens. Even in Rome, you saw tiny patches of lush gardens wherever there was dirt. Vegetables and herbs give all food all the flavor, yet most Americans are too lazy to grow anything even though we have huge yards.

A little storybook bridge over a storybook brook in the mountains

Manarola. It was difficult to reach on foot.

In a tiny bodega the size of a broom closet in a tiny village thousands of years old that can be reached only by foot, you can buy Muddy Waters--on vinyl!

Inside the little church near our room.

This is the plaza in tiny Cornoglio. I thought it was beautiful and spooky at night!

Menu at one of the restaurants

A creepy alley in Corniglio

View from bedroom balcony in morning

These cute dogs came to greet me whenever I walked by. They'd bring me a lemon and I'd throw it. Italian tennis balls!

Little church down the way from our place. It was ancient and rustic and the bells chimed at random times: 6:10, 7:04, 8:16, 9:01...you get the picture. The other church in town also had chimes that went off all day at random times. We found this to be true in all of Cinque Terre. Winding clocks is "not so much" in Italy!

Picture perfect morning

We stayed in the pink one, top floor.

Sunset in the Ligurian