Ok, there are moments...

Ok, there are moments ... when even I can laugh about this election cycle!  I'm no Trump supporter, but this bumper sticker is funny!

A great example...

A great example ... of the American press deliberately (and skillfully) manipulating its audience.  A gullible and intellectually shallow American public starts treating it as fact (and that is exactly what happened with that documentary).

Things like this are what has made me so careful about how my news is sourced these days.  Most of what I read is not mainstream media, but alternative sources that are most commonly overt and honest about their biases – and I read sources with opposing biases so I can get all sides of an issue.  I've been doing this for years now, so it's become habitual.  I don't know any other way to have any chance at all of actually understanding the world, rather than being fooled by our self-proclaimed “elite”...

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's photo collection...

I recovered this photo from a slide, which my mom had carefully put into an envelope and marked it “Negative - Doc Johnston”.  I guess my mom thought every transparency was a negative. :)  It's by far the best photograph I've found of this memorable character, now long gone.  The slide is dated (by the lab) August '72, and while that's a few years after I last saw him, his appearance in it exactly matches my memories of him.

I saw “Doc” (who wasn't an actual doctor of any kind!) most often in the early '60s, on our annual trips to the cabin in Maine.  I was between about 9 and 12 during that period.  He'd come over to visit fairly often, and we'd sometimes visit other friends while he was there.  I believe it's fair to say that Doc Johnston knew just about everybody in the Lincoln, Maine area – and that they all adored him.

He could have been a character out of a Mark Twain or Hemingway novel.  He was justly famous for his one-liners and snappy comebacks.  One that comes to mind: a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses came to his home, knocked on the door, and told him that they wanted to help him find Jesus.  Doc immediately started searching for his jacket and cap, and said “I’ll come help!  I didn’t even know he was lost!”  Locals up there who knew him could tell you a million stories like this about him, and I'm pretty sure most of them were even true! :)

I remember Doc sitting in an old rocking chair we had in the camp, a wood-framed chair with slung carpet upholstery.  He'd call me over to sit in his lap, where I'd sit listening to him and the other adults telling stories.  He was the only one who didn't dial back the profanity just because a little kid was there – he couldn't have cared less.  He also let me take swigs from his glass of beer or spirits when my mom wasn't looking. :)

That rocking chair is now in my barn.  It will take its place in my office someday soon, when I've got the furnishings more in order.  I'll think of Doc and my mom (who owned that chair for many years) every time I see it.

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Debbie had physical therapy yesterday afternoon, and she hit another couple of milestones: she took her first steps without a walker (but with a gait belt so she felt safe), and she got her flexion to 90°.  It sure was nice to see her walking, even if it was just a few halting steps.  We're going to start practicing that at home now.

We celebrated by having a nice dinner at the Black Pearl.  We had a fine meal, made all the better by our cheerful, talkative hostess.  Then we decided to go on a little four-wheeling trip.

A friend here had told us about a place called Bug Lake, about 30 miles from home – one of their favorite destinations.  So we piled Mako and Cabo into the FJ Cruiser, and we took off.  The map at right shows our route – be aware that the topo map altitudes are in meters.  The trip was pretty all the way.  There's a surprising (to me, anyway!) amount of fall color, mostly oaks and maples, as soon as we got over about 6,500'.  The first photo below will give you an idea what we were seeing.

The last part of the trip was through a pretty forest, mostly mixed aspen, fir, and spruce.  Smelled wonderful!

It was pretty good wildlife viewing, too.  We saw an osprey eating a large trout atop a utility pole, quite a few deer, a posing flicker, a gray squirrel, a skunk, and a teensy little chipmunk near the top.  Cabo was practically non-stop speed-sniffing through our open windows, terrifically excited.  Mako spent most of the time asleep, just like Mo'i used to do.  He did wake up, startled, and barked when we drove nearby some big beef cows.  Several times Cabo (especially) and Mako sighted some deer, and got all excited about it.  It was fun to have them along.

When we actually got to Bug Lake, it was a huge disappointment.  It's basically a large mud puddle, surrounded by tromped-down muddy shores where bazillions of cattle had come for water.  The surface of the lake was full of ripples, too small for fish we think – probably bugs, and probably how the place got its name.

The second photo below is one of the gates for the Johnson Ranch (a large cattle ranch in the area).  We were struck by the flag flying proudly in the breeze, way out there in the middle of nowhere...

  

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's photo collection...

All four of these are modern copies of older originals that I do not have.  They're all undated.  The subjects in each of them are my mom and her brother (my uncle) Donnie.  I don't recognize the locations, but most likely they're around my mom's childhood home in Lincroft (going by her apparent age in the photos).  All four say “Elinor + Donnie” on the back, in my mom's handwriting.  Guessing at my mom's age in the photos, I'd say she's between 2 and 6 years old, putting these photos at '37 to '41.  Donnie's getup in the last two is interesting – check out those socks and odd poufy shorts!

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  I finished up the electrical work out in our sun room.  Well, it's not actually done ... but it's done enough so that the wallboard can be installed, and what remains after that will be very easy.  In the photo at right you can see cutouts for our new lights (in red circles), the light switch (in the yellow circle), and the outlets (in blue circles).  These cutouts will be covered by wallboard, which I'll then cut out to fit the “old work” electrical boxes that you see lined up on the door sill.  The wallboard holes will be smaller than the holes I've cut in the OSB sheathing – this will allow the “ears” on the electrical boxes to grip the back of the wallboard.  Behind the sheathing that's now all back on the wall is all the new wiring that I've done.  I had to route a total of seven pieces of cable (some 2 conductor, some 3 conductor) to get everything I needed in place.  I also ripped out four old pieces of cable that were used for the old lights (there were just two of them) and the single duplex outlet that was here.  The door you see in the photo is one of the four doors we're replacing in this remodel.  The new door will be centered in the space, with a sidelight on each side of it.  This was a dusty, dirty job, mainly because when I pulled sheathing off I exposed old insulation that contained a lot of dust – and in the relatively small enclosed space of the sun room, the concentration built up quickly.  I'm very glad to be done with that work!

We had visitors yesterday, a pleasant surprise indeed.  Two of the visitors were old friends of Debbie's, from her San Diego area agility competition.  Those two brought a couple of people we hadn't known before, not agility people but most definitely dog people.  They were all up in Salt Lake City for a conference, and drove up yesterday to spend the afternoon with us.  It was a delight to see these people we knew from San Diego, and it gave Debbie a chance to catch up and “talk dog” all afternoon.  We all went to Angie's for a fine late lunch, and everyone left with happy palates and full tummies.  The chicken noodle soup and chocolate pie were particular favorites.  Best part of all: we're going to meet up with them next Saturday afternoon at the Red Iguana in SLC, where a feast is planned.

Just before we went to Angie's yesterday, I took Cabo and Mako for our daily walk.  The fall color on the mountains just east of us is now quite prominent.  If you embiggen the two photos below you can see the orange that's now spreading across the higher altitudes visible there.  From the color I suspect that the plant is scrub oak, a common hillside shrub here.  The visible “peaks” are about 7,000' high, a bit over 2,000' higher than our home.

In the evening yesterday we had a lovely sunset.  This photo was from our back yard, looking west toward our barn, silhouetted...

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's photo collection.  These photos are all undated, and are all modern copies of older originals (which I do not have).

On the back, in my mom's handwriting: “Uncle Arthur - Harry - Mattie”.  I've heard the names of Uncle Arthur and Aunt Mattie before, but I don't really know who they actually are (or even if they're actual relatives, as opposed to good friends).  Her note names only three of the five, and only Mattie is identifiable to me.  I've no idea when or where this photo was taken.  The original had the bottom right corner torn off it; another photo is showing through.  The gentleman on the right sure looks old-timey, doesn't he?  Suspenders, bow tie, goatee, wire-framed glasses.  Anybody know who these people are?

In my mom's handwriting on the back: “Nancy Joy - Elinor + one of my friends in Lincroft”.  I've never heard the name Nancy Joy before, so I've no idea who that is.  The little girl on the right is my mom, at roughly 5, placing this around 1940 – in the happier days toward the end of the Great Depression and before the U.S. entry into the war.  Lincroft, New Jersey was where one of the homes was that my mom grew up in (they moved several times in her childhood).  It's very suburban now, but was mostly rural when she was young.  Check out that “Gulf” gas station logo on the sign in the background – a few of those were still around 20 years later when I was her age!

Here's two photos of my mom and her brother (my uncle) Donnie, both with “Elinor + Don” in her handwriting on the back.  These appear to have been taken at the same place and time, just with two different poses.  Mom looks to be about 4, placing this around 1939, toward the end of the Great Depression.  In the first photo you can see the lower body of a woman in the background, with one of her hands on each child's shoulder.  There's no indication of who this might be.  She looks too thin to be my grandmother Mable.  I don't recognize the trellis in the background, so I can't place this at all.

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  I made quite a bit of progress on installing the new lights and outlets in our new sun room yesterday.  It turned out to be ... nowhere near as simple and easy as I had imagined.  Of course!  At right you can see a photo of what made things more difficult.  The photo shows the area over the doorway into the sun room after I removed some of the OSB sheathing, so I could see what I was up against.

I was expecting studs that ran the entire height of the end wall of our house, which includes a second story.  Instead, I discovered that the first story was framed exactly as if it was a one-story home, then the second floor was built on top of it.  The photo shows that discovery, which was momentarily disheartening.  There's nothing actually wrong with that approach to framing – it just wasn't what I expected.  And ... it made the job of installing wiring much more challenging, because there are no inter-stud voids that made it easy to run wires vertically.  After a couple hours of discovery and cogitation, I finally came up with a way to do it.  The method involves removing a lot of sheathing, fishing wires through small spaces, turning awkward corners by drilling 4" diameter holes to stick my hand it, etc., etc.

Yesterday, after the initial discoveries, I did about half the actual wiring.  This proved out all the techniques I came up with, and (for once!) they all worked just fine.  Today I should easily be able to finish this up.  At that point the wallboard could go on, but that won't actually be done until the mud room is ready to drywall as well.  That won't be until our builder finishes framing it, and they're late on that...

Fifteenth anniversary of 9/11 today...

Fifteenth anniversary of 9/11 today...  As with any dramatic event, certain memories are still clear for me, and others have faded.  Still clear for me: the moment my secretary ran into my office to tell me that something awful was happening.  I was CEO of a company called Previo (the descendant of the much better-known Stac Electronics).  My secretary, Sylvia E., was also a good friend.  Running into my office with a stricken look was something she'd never done before.  It was early in the morning in San Diego, and our day had barely started.  Sylvia came in when the second tower was hit, and the news reports were beginning to consider terrorism as a possibility.

When I left my office with her to see what was going on (we needed a TV back in those days!), I found a gaggle of employees already watching the large TV we had in our boardroom.  I knew we had people in NYC (we had two salespeople covering that area), so I asked our sales VP to check on them.  I then found out we had some technical people there as well (though not in the WTC); I asked our service VP to check on them as well.  We could not get through to them right away, as the phones were overloaded. 

Shortly afterwards we heard about planes being grounded, and there was word at all on when they'd be allowed back in the air.  We had two teams in Europe, and several at various points in the U.S.  Arranging ways for all of these people to get home took several days, and in some cases we arranged for employees to drive to far away cities to pick up stranded employees.  The worst case was one of our U.S. employees on the way back from Europe, who ended up in Nova Scotia staying at the home of a local.  The Canadian government had boats ferrying people to the mainland fairly quickly, and we sent an employee from Massachusetts up to New Brunswick to pick her up and take her back home to Chicago.  All of this was arranged without any real trouble at all – our employees, like most Americans in the first few months after 9/11, were eager to help in any way they could.

As the day at the office progressed, it soon became clear that everyone (not just employees, but customers as well) was so distracted and distraught that no work was getting done.  We had quite a few employees who were close to someone in NYC, naturally they were very worried about them.  Sometime before noon, I decided to shut down the company for the remainder of the day.  I arranged for a few people to stay on until we located our employees in NYC  (whom we still had not managed to contact), and I sent everyone else home.  I went home myself, shortly after noon.  Most of the drive home (50 miles), I was on my cell phone talking with the folks trying to locate our employees in NYC.  Just as I was about to leave cell coverage, they seemed close – so I pulled over and parked, and stayed on the line until we knew what was happening.  Finally, after perhaps a half hour, the last of the employees was on the line: he was safe, and out of Manhattan.  He'd been two blocks from the WTC when the planes hit, setting up for a presentation (which of course never happened).  When I hung up and drove the last few miles to home, I remember very well the sense of relief that all of our employees were accounted for and unharmed.

In the coming days, we learned that several of our employees lost loved ones in the attacks.  None of them were immediate family members, but there were three people who died at the WTC who were close to some of our employees, and one who died in the Pentagon who was the aunt of one of our engineers.  To the best of my knowledge, those were all the direct connections we had.  More distant connections we had many of, as did many other Americans. 

The weeks following 9/11 were full of challenges for us as a business.  In a couple of years, we'd declare Previo a failure and shut it down, and the business impact of 9/11 was definitely a contributing factor – I think not a deciding factor, however.   Another clear memory is from a couple of weeks after 9/11, when my sales VP came to me with an idea for a promotion.  He wanted to offer our product (a system for backing up laptops) as a response to 9/11 at a special price, with the claim that it would help protect against terrorist attacks.  My clear memory here is one of feeling revulsion at the very idea of leveraging 9/11 as a marketing tool.  I considered the utility of it, though ... and couldn't bring myself to believe that our product was really a useful anti-terrorism too.  So I thought of a response: I told my sales VP that he was free to flog our product as an anti-terrorism tool, with a price tag of $0 – but that his salespeople would get credit for full price toward their commission.  The condition was that in order for the customer to qualify, I had to have a conversation with a senior exec that would convince me that they genuinely wanted the product as an anti-terrorism tool.  No such conversation was ever arranged, and my sales VP told me later that even though they presented the notion to several customers (including a couple of large ones), no customer ever was interested in pursuing it.  Funny how that event sticks in my mind, all these years later.

In the years since 9/11, I've worked with quite a few people much younger than I, including many who had no clear memory of 9/11.  Even people who were teenagers in 2001 generally don't seem to have had the event imprinted on them.  I find this strange, because I have a few events that happened when I was younger very thoroughly imprinted on me: Sputnik, Kennedy's assassination, King's assassination, Kent State, etc.  I'd like to understand why 9/11 seems to have had less of an impact on younger people.  There are way too many I've talked with who seem to know 9/11 only as a remote historical event, and not as a matter of personal experience.  Thinking about this makes me sad.

For me, 9/11 anniversaries will always be the day after my birthday...

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's photo collection.  The photos in this post are all modern copies of older photos.  I do not have the originals.

Here my mom is holding her little sister (my aunt) Bonnie on her shoulders.  On the back, in mom's handwriting: “Bonnie + Elinor 50-51”.  I recognize the front yard as my maternal grandparent's home, the one I knew as a little boy.  This was roughly a year before she married my dad.  How young she looks!  At that point my dad was 27 years old, returned from the war and starting his own business – quite an age and experience difference.

This was taken in the living room of my maternal grandparent's house.  On the back, in my mom's handwriting: “Christmas 53-4?”.  I'm remembering it from a few years later, I'm sure.  I remember that wallpaper, though – thought it was terribly ugly even then! :)  Left-to-right in the photo are my mom's dad (my grandfather) Donald, her sisters Bonnie and Betty (my aunts), Betty's son Mike (my cousin), and my mom's mom (my grandmother) Mable.  I've discovered that my grandmother's name is spelled “Mable” on her birth certificate, and “Mabel” in many other places (including some official documents).  Even my mom spelled it differently at different times.  I'm going with the birth certificate as authoritative, but for all I know that was the typo!

This bevy of bathing beauties all looked like strangers to me, but on the back in my mom's handwriting it says: “Mom – top right”.  The bathing suits were the height of fashion in the '20s.  I don't know my maternal grandmother's birth year, but it must have been in the first few years of the 1900s – which would make her 20 years old around 1925, so that actually fits the scenario.  That means this photo was taken sometime around then, which makes it (so far, at least) the oldest photo of my mom's family that I've found.

Finally, there's this photo of (left-to-right) my mom, my maternal grandfather Donald, and my uncle Donnie.  On the back, in my mom's handwriting: “Dad Don & Elinor”.  I don't recognize the house, but from the city-style mailbox it must be their Locust, New Jersey home – I know from mom's stories that it was actually in the city, unlike their later homes.  Mom looks to be 3 or 4, which would place this in '38 or '39.  My grandfather certainly looks very young there!

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Another birthday slipped by, and now I'm 64.  I don't feel like I'm 64, but no matter how many times I do the math, that's how it turns out.  Next year: MediCare.  Sheesh...

My hands look like a war zone, and I really don't know why.  I have one large, deep blue bruise under my right thumbnail.  There are two places where my skin has cracked in a crease.  There are two other places where a piece of skin has been pulled off somehow (those hurt!).  Then there are three or more scrapes and punctures of various types.  The weird thing is that I have no idea how I managed to get any of these wounds!

I've started walking every day with the puppies, between two and three miles on each walk, with (usually) 700' of elevation change in the walk.  With our current cool weather, these walks are very pleasant affairs – it's usually in the 50s, with clear blue skies and a light breeze.  There are sunflowers everywhere.  Barley and oat fields have all turned a golden brown.  Alfalfa fields are mostly about ready for the year's third cutting; many of them are being irrigated right now.  The air is crisp and clean-smelling, full of farming's botanical perfumes (the field north of our home was just baled, and smells wonderfully of mown hay).  The foothills to our east are getting tinged with fall color, less than 1,000' above us – it's looking like an early fall here on the valley floor, possibly as early as the end of September.  Yesterday we saw a pair of Sandhill cranes browsing in a oat field that had recently been cut for straw.  They're actually visible near the center of the first photo below, if you embiggen it enough.  Some photos from the last couple of walks:

Despite many other things competing for my time, I was able to get a bit of work done on the electrical wiring for our sun room.  The job I thought was going to be easy has (of course!) gotten a bit more complicated.  It turns out that the end wall (of our house) that I'm trying to get the wiring into wasn't made with single studs that are two stories high, as I expected.  Instead the first story was framed exactly like a one-story house, then a second story was built right on top of it.  That means I can't just slip wires down in the void between two studs.  Instead, I have to drill through the upper plate on the first story, the lower plate on the second story, and the sub-floor on the second story – and then thread the wiring through all three of those holes.  Oh, such fun that will be!  I have to do this in two places, too.

This morning on the dog's first outing, around 5 am, I had a beautiful encounter with a big barn owl.  It's really eerie how silently they fly!  I was sitting on a lawn chair in a spot that was shaded from our rear porch lights, but the owl, flying about 10' over our heads, was fully lit up.  It circled us, slowly, about three times – as if trying to make up it's mind about whether a dog would be good prey.  It finally gave up and flew up and over our house to the south.  But for 30 seconds or so I had a spectacular view of it.  The dogs, of course, never saw a thing...

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's photo collection.  The photos in this post are all modern copies of older originals, and I do not have the originals.  They are all undated.

On the back of this photo, in my mom's handwriting: “Dad in his glory”.  That's her dad, my maternal grandfather, and he's standing up facing the camera.  He's in a nursery stock field, presumably on his nursery, which he had while my mom was growing up.  Before my mom was born he had tried other occupations (so my mom once told me), including carpentry and taxi driving.  I'm not at all sure how he settled on horticulture and a retail nursery.  I don't know the other two men, but it looks like they're planting a small bush, so I'm guessing they're employees.  My grandfather looks a bit younger than my earliest memories of him, so I'm guessing this was taken in the late '40s.

My mom wrote simply “Dad” on the back of this photo.  It's my maternal grandfather, looking about like my earliest memories of him.  That would place this somewhere in the mid-'50s.  I remember the paper nailed up to the walls in his greenhouse, so I'm guessing that's where this photo was taken.  He's wearing the hat and plaid shirt that my memories of him are full of.  I can still remember the smell of that hat – an odoriferous combination of sweat, cigarette smoke, beer, and dirt.  Those little plants are in “peat pots” – seedling pots made by wetting peat moss, pressing it in a mold, then drying it with heat.  These pots are still available today, though pricey, but not in the same quality that I remember growing up.  One big advantage of them is that you can plant them right in the ground; the plants roots will grow right through the peat moss, which will eventually deteriorate and disappear.  The rightmost plant has just been watered – you can see the dark part where the peat moss is wet.  That greenhouse of his, like our old greenhouse, was full of a particular smell that I instantly associate with greenhouses: a sort of hot, wet dirt smell with a hint of rotting wood (the humid greenhouses encourage algae and fungus).

This photo again just has “Dad” written on the back of it.  The car is an early '50s Cadillac, looks like '51 or '52.  It's license plate is a New Jersey plate, with the silver metal year indicator in the bottom center.  Those plates came in several colors; most of them had a white background, but the black background was available for people with dark colored cars.  The two small letters on the left, and three bigger ones on the right, were a “tell” for New Jersey plates in the '40s and early '50s.  I'm guessing that was my grandfather's car; he liked Cadillacs and Buicks.  The photo is out-of-focus, so I can't guess what age he is, but given the model year of the car it's safe to say this was taken in the early '50s.

My mom wrote “Dad, Elinor & Dad” on the back of this one.  That seems a bit unlikely! :)  Most likely the second “dad” is a typo for “Don”, her brother (and my uncle).  That would be my mom on the left (looking to be about 3 or 4 years old), my grandfather in the middle, and my uncle Don on the right.  I don't remember that house, and with those interesting awnings I think I would have if I had ever seen it!  From my mom's apparent age, this must have been taken in the late '30s: before the U.S. entry to the war, and at the height of the Great Depression.  My mom remembered very little of the Great Depression, mostly (she once told me) memories of her parents being worried about having enough good food to eat, and of her father despairing at times of every finding customers for his plants – people who couldn't even buy food to eat are unlikely to be splurging on landscaping.  His customers were by definition wealthy people – and those were few and far between in those years...

Paradise Ward 3 High Priest's picnic...

Paradise Ward 3 High Priest's picnic...  A “high priest” in the Mormon Church isn't what it sounds like to non-Mormon ears.  The locals tell me that it's basically the older men in the ward, and in practical terms that's true: most of the local men over about 55 years old are high priests.  But if you read the linked article above, you'll see that it's a bit more than that.

In our local wards (at least; it may well be a church-wide practice), the High Priests of each ward hold an annual picnic.  Though we're not Mormons ourselves, we've been invited to four of these now.  Sometimes it's just me who's invited, as the gathering is men-only.  Sometimes the wives are invited, so we both go.  Obviously the picnics are open to invited guest as well, because we got to go!

A couple days ago, our neighbors Gary and Elaine invited us to the Paradise Ward 3 High Priest's picnic.  We actually live in ward 2, but the border between ward 2 and ward 3 is State 165, which separates Gary and Elaine from us.  The picnic was held at the Paradise town park, and the festivities started off with a blessing on the meal and some spectacular prime rib.  Gary (in photo at right) – who doesn't look like he could possibly eat a hunk of meat like that – ate two servings of prime rib, along with a healthy selection of the other goodies on offer: rolls, fruit, potato salad in several varieties, cole slaw, and about twenty kinds of desserts.  Debbie and I stuffed our faces very well.  I particularly enjoyed the prime rib (nice and rare like I like it!) and one particular potato salad made with lots of dill and homemade mayonnaise.  Yum!  Debbie destroyed a giant chocolate chip cookie for dessert; I was too full to partake.  Someone there made homemade chocolate sodas that were delicious.  The recipe was simple enough: club soda, a little cream, and some unusually good chocolate syrup (Ghirardelli Black Label Chocolate Sauce).  Good stuff, that was!

After the meal there were a series of people giving us a little entertainment.  First there was a sing-along to a song I didn't know: Homegrown Tomatoes.  Debbie and I sang along, but we noticed that not too many other people were. :)  After that, we had a reading of cowboy poetry – a funny poem about someone trying to tag a calf by pulling its head into the truck window.  It didn't end well, but it was definitely funny.  Then someone else read a short story, also a very funny one, about getting lost and survival.  All of it was great good fun, with lots of good-natured ribbing and smiling involved.  We got to see a few people we already knew, but a great many more that we'd never met before.  Even though we're not LDS ourselves (and therefore not a member of a ward), most of our neighbors belong to ward 2 and many of the things we get involved with are ward 2 activities – so those are the people we're most likely to meet.  That's a direct consequence of the concentration of LDS members here.  Our closest non-Mormon neighbor is about a mile north of us – quite literally everyone else within about a mile radius of us is a member of the LDS church, including, of course, every single one of our neighbors.

It's a good thing for us that the Mormons are so accepting of non-members in their midst, as we're seriously outnumbered!

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Well, we had a bit of progress on our construction projects yesterday, a relief to see after a week of nothing.  Our roofers came over, marked and cut the roof over the mudroom where the new gable will go.  That means the framers can now frame the roof on the mud room, and then the roofers can come put the new roof on that.  Nothing else happened, though – the fellow who's going to do our sprinklers (and grading) is now two weeks late, the framers a week and a half, and the custom doors we ordered are now three weeks late.  After living through this (and far more) doing our barn, I'm kind of used to it.  Debbie's ready to shoot everybody, just on general principle :)

I stared working on the electrical part of the sun room project.  The first step on that was some simple demolition work: taking off the siding on the part of the exterior wall that's now inside the sun room (photos below).  Once I had it down to the bare OSB sheath, I pulled apart the electrical wiring from the two old lights and a GFI outlet to figure them out.  It was oddly wired (no surprise there!), so it took me a bit of work to figure out what they did.  There were two light fixtures, one one either side of the door.  The outlet was near the floor on the right, and the light switch was on the inside, to the left of the door from this perspective.  I'm going to be installing three light fixtures, one in the center high up, the other two on either side of the door but further out than they were.  I'm also going to install an outlet on either side of the door, and a three-way switch both inside and outside the door.  I was hoping to re-use some of the existing wiring, but after scoping it all out I've concluded that it will have to be entirely redone.  Oh, well.  To get the wire installed behind the sheathing, I'll have to remove a horizontal strip of sheathing so that I can drill holes through the studs.  I can “fish” the wires vertically behind the sheathing without much trouble, but horizontally I have to do it the hard way.

I've been walking with the puppies every day, generally on a route that takes us for a two mile round trip with about 700' of elevation change.  This is great exercise for both me and the puppies!  Yesterday morning on the way out, I spotted some interesting shadows (see photo at right, click to embiggen).  The giant sprinkler my neighbor was running spewed spray over a roughly 125' long swath.  His barn (yes, that's a barn in the photo!) casts shadows from the morning sun right into that spray, where they had an interesting three-dimensionality about them.  Meanwhile, our blue spruce nicely shaded my camera lens to make it possible for this almost-straight-into-the-sun photo.

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's collection of photos.  All of these photos are modern copies of older photos; I do not have the originals.

On the back of this undated photo, in my mom's handwriting: “Grandmom Johnson”.  That means this is my great-grandmother Johnson, my mom's mother's mother.  I have no memory of that face; I don't know if I ever met this woman.  I don't remember any of the parents of my mom's parents, which makes me think that none of them were alive by the time I was four or five years old.  I have no idea of the location.

What a photo!  It's undated, and on the back, in my mom's handwriting: “Don - Elinor Janet Myra & Kay”.  Dapper Don would be my mom's brother Donald, my uncle.  My mom is second from the left.  If she's 7 in that photo, this would be '42 – wartime.  I have no idea who Janet, Myra, and Kay are, but I'm pretty sure they're not my mom's siblings.  This would have been taken in either Locust or Highlands New Jersey, where my mom lived as a child.

This is undated, and on the back in my mom's handwriting it says simply “Elinor”.  So this is my mom as an infant, probably in '36.  That carriage appears to be made of reeds, like a basket.  She's smiling as though she has no idea there's a Great Depression going on, which of course she wouldn't have.  I can only guess that this was taken in Locust or Highlands, where her family lived.

This photo is also undated, but has a longer note in my mom's handwriting on the back:

Don MacLaughlin & Elinor & German couple who worked for Henschel's early '40s – they were put in concentration camp during World War II.

The girl on the left is my mom.  She looks to be about 5 or 6, which would put this in '40 or '41, just before the U.S. entered WWII.  That's her dad whose lap she's sitting on, my grandfather, looking very much younger than my memories of him.  I don't know the German couple at all.  I hope they fared all right during their incarceration.  My mom's hair looks very light – blond – in this photo.  I wonder if it really was?  I don't know where the photo was taken, and of course I have no clue why it was taken.  Did the German couple have some sort of relationship with my mom's family?  Friends, perhaps?  I don't think I'll ever find that out...

This could be here, except for the f-bomb...

This could be here, except for the f-bomb...

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's collection of photos.  The four photos here are modern copies of older photos; I don't have the originals.

I think this is my mom, at 2 or 3 (so '37 or '38).  I have no idea where the photo was taken.  There is no date on it, but in the back, in my mom's handwriting, this:

Oh - oh -
Donnie's name for me stuck with Dad

I have no idea what that actually means, nor what name stuck with her dad.  I'm inferring that this is a photo of mom from that note.

This is the woman we called “Aunt Kitty” (though really she wasn't related), and the child is my mom's younger sister Bonnie (my aunt).  It's undated.  I'd have recognized both, but my mom's note on the back clinches it: “Aunt Kitty & Bonnie”.  Interesting that my mom called her Aunt Kitty, just as we did!  If Bonnie was around 7 in that photo, it would have been taken somewhere around '46 or '47, toward the end of the war.  Is it just me, or do Bonnie's head and arms look too big for her body?

 This one, according to my mom's note on the back, shows “Vivian, Betty, and Lillian Audey”.  Betty was her older sister and my aunt.  Lillian was another sister (and my aunt).  I don't recognize Vivian and Audey as sisters, though they both could be – I didn't actually know my mom's family all that well, and other than Aunt Betty and Aunt Bonnie, we didn't see them very often.  I don't know the date or the location.

On the back of this photo, in my mom's handwriting, this:

Elinor Donnie Bonnie – "Bum" Steven Hauxhurst (neighbor in Locust)

From this I'm inferring that the two older kids are (left-to-right) my mom and her brother (my uncle) Donnie, and the two younger kids (left-to-right) are her sister (my aunt) Bonnie, and a neighbor kid Steven.  The dog I'm sure is named “Bum”; mom told stories about that dog, but I'd never seen a photo of him before.  I'm also assuming it was taken in Locust (given Steven's presence), though the house behind them isn't the house I knew in Locust.

Philae has been found!

Philae has been found!  Details here.  Congratulations to the Rosetta/Philae team for the successful detective work...

A morning walk in the country...

A morning walk in the country...  With Mako and Cabo.  They're getting noticeably better with each walk.  This time, though, we did have one small catastrophe: Mako freaked a little bit when our neighbor's horses came running over to see us.  Somehow he managed to wrap his leash around my leg in such a way that it ripped my iPhone right out of my belt pack, and it went tumbling to the concrete in front of our neighbor's barn.  My screen now has two big cracks across it. :(  Everything still seems to work fine, amazingly, so for the moment at least I'm just going to ignore it as strictly a cosmetic issue. 

Today the horses were brave enough to approach us (which caused the little freak out on Mako's part), and the puppies were brave enough to approach them.  Noses were touched, and tails were wagged.  Cuteness hung in the crisp morning air. :)  Some photos:

Debbie made it to Inspiration Point...

Debbie made it to Inspiration Point...  And she saw about 15 Rocky Mountain goats, including 5 or 6 babies.  Woo hoo!  The trip wasn't nearly as hard on her knee as I was expecting.  In fact, the worst part about the trip for her wasn't the rough road – it was the simple length of the trip (five hours).  In that time her left foot got quite swollen and painful.  This is normal for a foot that's not being walked on, and that issue will go away once she starts putting her full weight on it while walking.  It looks like the practical limit for a drive for her is about three hours until that happy day.

We left around 4 pm, and didn't get home until after 9 pm.  When we arrived at Inspiration Point, around 7 pm, it was quite dark from thick clouds overhead, and there was a light rain.  The visibility wasn't the best, and the mountain goats weren't as near by as when Tim and I were here earlier in the week – but they were still closer than any we saw in the San Juan Mountains two years ago, and we had great views of them through binoculars and telescope.  No photos, though.

We left Inspiration Point for home around 7:30 pm.  Within a half hour or so it was dark enough that we needed our headlights – and by the time we reached Mantua it was pitch black out.  I used the overhead lights for most of that time; really appreciated the visibility all that light (four high-power headlight bulbs) provided.

The road was incredibly busy with traffic on the weekend.  Lesson there: never go on a weekend!  Despite the high volume of traffic, though, there weren't many people actually at Inspiration Point.  That part, at least, was quite pleasant.

We took Cabo and Mako with us for their first four-wheeling trip, and for the new altitude high for them (9,400').  They did just fine.  Mako was either asleep or sleepy for nearly the entire trip.  Cabo was awake, observing, and sniffing like mad for nearly the entire trip.  Both were good car riders, with (as with all our other field spaniels) not the slightest hint of car sickness or fear.  I walked them once, at Inspiration Point, and despite having other people and even a dog around, they didn't get afraid or overly excited.  Good puppies!

There were some pretty scenes as we headed back, looking west: