Father knows best?

In the midst of my sleepless morning, I decided to make my telephone calls. When I talked to Father, we talked about the usual things and I mentioned my canoeing trip last week with PF. He immediately jumped on that and told me maybe I shouldn't do things with "another man." Then he quoted the Bible to me: "Avoid all appearance of evil." Not only that, but what are this man's motives for going canoeing with you? Well, I told him that I appreciated the concern, but didn't see a problem. j. likes me to have someone to do outdoor activities that he doesn't enjoy with. Father conceded about a tenth of a point, then told me to avoid emotional intimicy with other men.

Being in a particularly shovenistic mood today, he then started talking about how "Women now expect to work the same jobs as men and get paid the same wage. When I was a boy, women knew they were just expected to be wives and mothers and homemakers. NOW has planted all kinds of bad ideas in women's heads. They're even encouraging women to pursue careers in math, science and engineering." I try not to engage in charged discussions with anyone, especially Father. I bit my tongue and didn't point out that his own mother was the major wage-earner in their family and had an advanced degree in Mathematics. He wouldn't get it anyway.

He continued in the same vein, noting that he had heard on the radio that fewer people are getting married, people are getting married at a later age and having fewer children. I again bit my tongue to keep from pointing out that he had so many that he couldn't devote personal time to any of us as children. This could have gone on for some time, but fortunately Father had many things to do and had to go.

I love Father and he is a good man in many ways, but today he was a major bigot.

two headed baby- dream journal

(I finally got back to sleep.)

Little Sister and Mother were visiting, so I decided to take the baby out of the womb for air. I didn't even know I was pregnant. They admired the pretty baby girl with lots of dark hair and bright blue eyes. When they left, I went to put the baby back and noticed that she was not only much too large to put back, but had an extra head growing out of her bottom. I told j. that we needed to go to the emergency room right away. Our ER said, "Go elsewhere, we're not equipped for this." We made the drive to a larger hospital. As time passed, the second head shrunk and by the time we got there, it was gone altogether. We finally saw a doctor and he said the baby had a kidney problem and needed a procedure. He gave us the name of a doctor who had "talked to someone who once saw it done" and said he could help us. I said I wanted someone who had actually done it before. "By the way, how far along is this baby? I didn't even know I was pregnant." Doc said the baby was about six months gestation; doing great for a preemie.

Sronnoc Esor

contretemps- word of the day

Word of the Day for Monday July 31, 2006

contretemps \KAHN-truh-tahn\, noun;plural contretemps \-tahnz\:An inopportune or embarrassing situation or event; a hitch.

Mrs. Post was the center of a notable contretemps when she spilled a spoonful of berries at a dinner of the Gourmet Society here in 1938.-- "Emily Post Is Dead Here at 86; Writer was Arbiter of Etiquette", New York Times, September 27, 1960

He looked worried, distressed, more distressed than one should look in the face of a slight contretemps.-- Anita Brookner, Undue Influence

Nathan was a fiercely ambitious and competitive man, as quick to take offenceas to give it in his business dealings, and it is not difficult to imagine him responding impetuously to such a contretemps.-- Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild

Contretemps comes from French, from contre, "against" (from Latin contra) + temps, "time" (from Latin tempus).

menage a trois- dream journal

(I'm too hot to go back to sleep and I don't feel too good either.)

I arrive at a hotel in my hometown with my lover and another woman who I also perceive to be with him. We didn't live in town, but my Grandma did and that's what our mail said. There are no hotels there. We check into a very nice suite with two large rooms. The other woman says she'll take the single bed and let me sleep with man. I have the distinct impression that it's very nice of her, since she's known him longer. I am suddenly very worried about a hangnail and start looking for a nail file. The other woman goes out onto the deck and I follow her. There is a little anteroom and then a big private deck with a wooden fence around it. We can see out to the Creek and the Big Bridge to the right and the railroad to the left. It's still the same white trash neighborhood. People playing music too loudly, dogs barking, and old cars in the yards. We go back in and I start looking for something to wear to bed. I can't decide whether or not to wear the silk nightgown that I brought. All I can find in my luggage are things that I don't need or want. After that I don't remember anything.

Sronnoc Esor

Banshee hill

In our part of the Oregon dunes, there is a place called Banshee hill. It is a lovely tall mountain of sand dotted with firs. Tourists from all over come here to ride quads, 4 wheelers, rails, ATV's, OHV's up and down this hill. They make a huge tent and RV city in the sand by the roadside. At the hospital at night, the scanner tells us how brakes went out going down the hill and a man died. An ATV rolled over on a man and he broke his pelvis. A man's rail crashed, trapping him inside, unable to feel his legs. A man got off his quad and had a heart attack.

EMS has special dune buggies to rescue these guys. They show up in the ER covered in sand. And often blood. Worrying about fixing up the new, expensive quad. Wives and girlfriends and mothers call from far away or arrive in the entourage, all worried that his expensive, dangerous pasttime has done him in at last. The staff works hard to keep hearts pumping and lungs breathing. Often the adventurer leaves with a bandaid, sometimes he stays with us, occasionally he is flown out by helicopter or shuttled by ambulance to another facility.

I don't usually hear the outcomes. But when I see a 4x4 truck with an ATV in the back parked in the doctor's parking when I arrive at work, I always grimace. Sometimes I feel like crying when, through radio static, they tell us they're bringing another one.

Now, the really scary part. The government sells tickets. That's right. This is all done by permit on federal land. Funded by your tax dollars. Fueled by advertising. And driving the economy of our small town. Writing my paycheck, I suppose. Well, this is the land of opportunity; nobody ever said anything about the land of safety.

R. Connors

Revenge- movie review

Starring Kevin Costner as an American hot shot jet pilot who is retiring. He goes to Mexico to visit his friend who is some kind of mob boss and has an affair with the guy's young wife (accidentally, of course). From here the title tells the story. Mob boss beats up pilot and wife and sends wife to a whore house. She gets so sick that by the time pilot finds her at the end, she is near death in a convent. The end.

What can I possibly say about this movie? It begins pleasantly enough. There was enough graphic violence to keep me from watching some of the scenes. I like Kevin Costner, so that adds some appeal.

What is the message?

1. the sanctity of marriage? Mob boss had a girlfriend, so that can't be it.
2. the power of revenge? After all, that's the title. Maybe it's the ultimate revenge. The wife dies and leaves a broken-hearted lover. No doubt more broken hearted than he would have been if he just left Mexico and forgot about her before getting caught.
3. the power of true love? The passion is so strong that the lovers "do it" for the first time in a coat room. Is love stronger than death? Or is fancy pilot going to find a new girlfriend in a month?
4. love conquers fear?
5. selfish love leads to ruin?
6. be cautious when having an affair?

R.C.

new blog

Here's a hearty welcome to the blogging world for Little Sister!

Follow my link to her blog: where the river flows.

And please, buy her book, when it comes out.

You're going to love her poetic and descriptive gift with words.

Rose

disconnected

I stayed busy last night at work and it was time to go home before I knew it. Nobody went bad and I think everything got done. Then one nurse called in sick and one nurse just flat didn't show up. It turns out she switched with someone who then got confused and thought she wasn't working. This facility is so small that we don't often have backup. Calls were made, someone would be there in a few hours. In the mean time, one nurse was left with eleven patients, so we all pitched in and gave an extra hour to get him started out. Only after I left for home did I realize that j. needed the car so he could go to work.

A quick check of my correspondence before going to bed revealed an email from Little Sister. She doesn't have enough college funding, so won't be able to start nursing school this fall as she had planned. Becoming a nurse would not only help Little Sister with a fulfilling career goal, but help fund her small family so Brother-in-Law could get out of the rut he's been in for 15-20 years managing a practically dead-end pizza business. Must find a way for Little Sister to go to college.

Little Sister also reveals that Granny is in the hospital again after breaking her pelvis. She is 88 years old and this is one in a series of hip and collarbone. Granny doesn't want to leave the farm where she has lived for 65-70 years to go to a nursing home where she will have help. She fires the home care aides that the family finds and has been increasingly difficult for even family to help care for.

Granny raised five children on the farm, taught upper level high school math, earned her master's degree and basically supported the family. Pappy never made a living from the farm and supplemented his income as a bus driver. I thought three times before saying anything to Granny to make sure it wouldn't sound too stupid. She probably still accomplishes more on an average day than I do.

Granny is a devout Christian and it is hard to see her suffer. She believes that when she dies, she will go to a better place, and she doesn't understand why God is leaving her on earth to suffer. Pappy died almost forty years ago and she has been alone for a long time. I say the odd prayer that if God is up there, He will spare Granny from her suffering.

Rose

Lawnmowers and the environment

The following statistics are taken from the July/August 2006 issue of "Health" magazine.

800 Millions of gallons of gas used each year by lawnmowers.
11 Number of new cars it takes to create the same amount of pollution that one lawn mower makes in an hour.
11 Millions of gallons of crude oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez in the largest oil spill in history.
17 Millions of gallons of fuel spilled each year while filling lawn mowers, tractors, and the like.

Now I will grant that these numbers are not cross-referenced and not very specific either. It is likely, however, that they are from our good old U.S. of A.

What bothers me about these numbers? The noise of lawnmowers in my small community, where it seems someone is mowing nearly every day, has caused me to start thinking about a natural, no-mow lawn. (We are renters, so this is a moot question until we purchase a home.) My idea is to plant native species that don't get very tall and are pretty to look at. Who came up with this notion of neatly mowed grass anyway? What's wrong with white clover, for instance?

So far, the only impediment I can think of to this plan is bugs, specifically ticks. I'll have to do some more thinking about that one. Of course, the people who make lawn tractors would also hate this idea.

I remember as a child the joy of rolling in clover; it is very soft and pleasantly aromatic. This would reduce human-hours of labor spent on lawn care as well as fuel consumption and resulting noise pollution, air pollution, and ground water pollution caused by spills. This would bring the hyperactive modern American one step closer to spending quality time with family, self-improvement, or some calming practice like exercise or meditation.

It would also help us to appreciate the diversity in small things. The number of tiny gems of blooming wildflowers that I find when I go hiking always amazes me. These lovely specimens could be interspersed throughout the lawn, a lesson in the beauty of small things and the value of diversity. After all, that's just what white-bread America needs: a lesson in accepting small differences in people like gender, sexual preference, skin color, ethnic background, opinion, relgious belief, and moral creed.

Am I reading too much into a lawn care question? Maybe. But I don't think so.

R.C.

two kinds of bad- dream journal

Another confusing work dream. We were acting like we were working in a hospital, only it wasn't a hospital, more like a dormitory or a hotel. It seems the nurses lived there too. One old man that I was working with got very sick and had to move to another institution and I was going with him on a permanent basis. I had two things to do: pack my belongings and give report on the other patients to the nurses that were staying. I gave a poor report during which the nurses kept asking questions I didn't know the answers to and criticizing what I had done. Then I went looking for boxes to pack in. There was a movie theater and game room downstairs and I thought for sure they would have boxes. There were many boxes in the dingy downstairs hallway, but they were all falling apart. I then had to find my way up the maze of stairs, some seeming to "go nowhere just for show". In the game room I was shocked to see that it cost fifty cents just to watch someone play chess. It cost a dollar to play. I returned without boxes and hadn't even begun packing when it was time to go. Someone had brought cookies and my co-workers encouraged me to get some, but the fat nurse had her hand in the cookie jar and I decided not to have any.

Recurring (scary) elements: not being packed in time and doing a bad job at work.

Sronnoc Esor

Jeremiah Johnson- movie review

In this classic movie, Robert Redford plays an ex-soldier turned mountain man. He gets stuck with a boy whose family has been killed by Indians and receives an Indian wife as a gift. It takes him awhile, but he becomes connected to this conglomeration of a family, and when they are killed in an Indian attack he takes vengeance on the party that did it. As a result, the Indians keep sending assassins after him, all of whom he manages to kill. In the end, the narrator leaves us with an image of mountain man Johnson, wondering if he's still roaming the mountains somewhere.

First of all, who doesn't want to watch Robert Redford in the prime of youth? Add to that the sweeping panoramas of the Wasatach Mountains in Utah and the beautiful red rock canyons and you have a feast for the eyes, with or without a story.

Which raises the question, is there a story? We watch J.J. go from basically greenhorn, nearly starving in the beginning, to seasoned mountain man, able to meet whatever comes along head on. We never get too much of an inside track on how he or anyone else really feels about anything. Is that the intention? Are we to believe that the mountain man is a recluse who doesn't really care much for people and can take them (in small doses) or do without companionship entirely?

J.J. gets a rifle that he wanted off the dead body of an old mountain man who got his legs broken by a bear and froze to death after shooting the bear. In the note that the old guy writes, he expresses no regret at his death; his biggest concern seems to be that a white man and not an Indian gets his rifle. That sounds like detachment to me.

Another mountain man that J.J. meets, a grizzly hunter who has run out of grizzlies, doesn't even want to bother with a "night woman", he basically shies away from people altogether.

So is the message of the movie that mountain men were the social misfits of the time?

Or is it a roundabout way of telling us how beautiful the wilderness is and how the native inhabitants, human and animal were killed off and opressed by encroaching civilization?

It could be interpreted as a noble savage story, with J.J. making a journey from civilized soldier to savage.

Or, since it is supposed to be based on the life of a real man, it could be just telling a story.

R.C.

touring an old town- dream journal

I was with Little Sister and my mother going through all the old buildings in some ex-town. Many of the buildings had been converted to gift shops or junk shops. As we were getting ready to call it a day, some ships pulled up to the dock. If you went down to the ships, you could get free food, a hairut for a nickel and other good deals.

The sailor serving the fruit clearly liked Little Sister a lot because he gave her a double helping and wouldn't give me any more. I guess I got my feelings hurt over this. After that, I climbed up in a bell tower someplace that I wasn't supposed to be. (I typed that phrase yesterday, too.)

Sronnoc Esor

professional milestones or how I became a nurse, part one

Science Woman's post and subsequent query about professional milestones has decided the topic of today's blog. That long road to "RN" and what has happened since.

The reason I originally wanted to become a nurse was actually pretty convoluted. As you recall, as a child I wanted to be African missionary Mary Baker. In high school I became enamored with India. At the time anyway, India was closed to American missionaries. Two ways around that were to be an English teacher or a medical worker. So I chose nursing, having no idea what that would entail.

I enrolled in aforementioned Bob Jones University as a nursing major. The first year they throw the hard stuff at you: Chemistry, Bio-chem, Anatomy and Physiology. Okay, I know some people reading here are thinking that isn't hard.

For me, just being at college was hard. I never took class notes one time in high school. I often skipped out on homework and required reading and was one of those "bad" students who only studied for tests on the bus on the way to school.

I was used to about ten hours of sleep and was getting less than eight. In addition, I had some mysterious stomach ailment that caused me to wake up nauseous every morning. (No, I wasn't pregnant. I didn't even know what sex was.) I would sleep through Biology first hour, go to the bathroom and throw up, sit through Chemistry second hour in the same lecture hall where the prof pointed me out in class and wondered when I would start taking notes. By virtue of going to summer school, I managed to pass all those classes.

The second year, we started clinical. I must have blocked this experience. At BJU, the RN students wear navy blue polyester dresses covered by a white pinafore, and an old-fashioned white cap. The girls who were really studious did their homework after required bedtime using a flashlight.

Halfway through second semester, we started labor and delivery. I really loved this rotation, but it's also the part where I failed. I was watching the fetal monitor on my patient, noticed the decelerations (danger!), but remembered that we had been told that can be a result of artifact from the machine and said nothing. The nurse was at the bedside in moments and the woman was rushed for an emergency c-section. I had to stand in front of a remediation board of about 10 people including the director. My punishment was being babysat by my nursing instructor. One of the few nice ones.

The babysitting went okay until one day when my nursing instructor was "helping" me teach a new mother to breastfeed. The infant wouldn't latch and it wasn't going well. My attention strayed to what the new father was watching on television and we made a few comments to each other. Believe it or not, this turned into another remediation for watching television instead of helping the patient. The verdict was that I could complete the semester, but I was unlikely to pass.

After much soul searching, I decided to change my major to Christian Missions, which is a harmless liberal arts degree with a fair amount of religion thrown in. Up to that point in my life, that was the hardest decision I had ever made, only complicated by family and friends who encouraged me that I could finish nursing if I trusted God. I completed the degree, getting a BA in four and a half years and taught school for a few years at a small church school in Utah, not giving much thought to nursing in the intervening years.

Although I enjoyed my two years molding young minds, I knew that it was not where I was meant to be. I resigned after my second year and moved back to Pennsylvania, where I moved in with my brother in his bachelor pad and got a job at an airport car rental.

It didn't take much of that to motivate me, and I started thinking about nursing again. I submitted my application to Penn State University, their branch campus was the closest nursing program, and waited. I was as surprised as anyone to be accepted. This turned out to be an excellent program. It had recently been started from a local hospital's diploma program and the instructors were trying to fit what they used to teach in three years into the new two year associate's degree program.

(continued later.)

slow day

J. has been working hard lately getting his personal training business off the ground. He gets up very early and gets home about the time I wake up. Since I work nights, that usually is sometime around noon. Then he takes a nap in the afternoon. We watched the disc of "The Lone Gunmen", a spinoff of "The X-Files that came in the mail today. I cooked some dinner. Now we're going to bed. I'll read for a while before I fall asleep. Tomorrow I need to get out and do something again. Too much of this schedule makes me crazy.

Rose

Wound up watching a movie after all. Will review it tomorrow.

r.

dead squirrel in the bedroom-dream journal

I was sleeping in the corner of the barn in a sleeping bag on the floor. I went out for some reason and when I came back, a dead squirrel was belly-up in the middle of the floor. I went to bed and pretended it wasn't there, but when I woke up it had moved. If it moved, then it must be alive ...eekk! Then I started seeing more little squirrels playing dead. I was throwing coffee cans at them and trying to hit them, but I wasn't causing any damage and I just cowered on my pallet hoping none of them would decide to get in bed with me.

Later on, I was wandering around outside trying to escape detection, so I guess I was where I shouldn't have been, although I have no idea why.

Sronnoc Esor

21 Grams- movie review

Introducing a new blog feature to let you know what I think of recently viewed movies. We don't have cable television, but subscribe to Netlfix, so we watch lots of movies.

Don't read on if you don't want to know the ending.

Sean Penn plays Paul Rivers, who is awaiting a heart transplant; his wife Mary is trying to get pregnant. Jack Jordan, played by Benicio del Toro is a born-again ex-con who volunteers at some kind of boy's club and attends a church where they sing songs that I remember from childhood. Jack hits Christina Peck's (played by Naomi Watts) husband and two young daughters, who are all fatally injured. Jack drives home without stopping. Paul gets Mr. Peck's heart, hires a PI to find out where it came from and makes friends with Christina, who has returned to using cocaine and other drugs in her grief. Paul and Christina connive to kill Jack, but Paul can't bring himself to do it and winds up shooting himself in the struggle that ensues and eventualy dying in ICU. Christina discovers that she is pregnant when she tries to give blood to help Paul.

First of all, I love the way the movie was filmed. I'll need to see it again to really understand it. About half the scenes are completely non-sequential. This style of telling what I found to be basically a good story only enhances the movie's value in my opinion.

What I really like about a movie, though, is the light it sheds on interpersonal relationships and personal motivation and actions. This movie really delivers when it comes to that.

1. Bible-thumper Jack. Loves to say, "Jesus knows if a hair on your head moves." Drives a truck all tricked out with Jesus stickers which he won in some kind of contest. Jack has a major struggle with how God gives him a great truck and then lets him kill three people with it. He leaves his family after he gets out of jail for the hit-and-run, but finally returns to them.

Question: A. Did God (assuming his existence) allow the accident, cause the accident, or watch the accident? B. Given the above choices, what was God's role in Jack running away?

2. Recovering addict and mother Christina. Can't believe her father's assurance that life goes on after a death, yet eventually winds up pregnant. Not only has life continued, but a new life is begun. I couldn't find convincing proof of whether the baby belonged to the dead husband or Paul (whose own wife can't conceive).

Question: A. Does this demonstrate the whimsy of fate, favoring a paramour with a child instead of the wife? or B. Does this demonstrate an intrinsic fairness in the universe, replacing a dead child with a new one?

3. Heart transplant recipient and cheater Paul. Receives a heart transplant which ultimately fails, but shoots himself anyway. Of interest, his surgeon suggests that he stay in the hospital until they find him another transplant.

Question: A. Is he doomed to die one way or another? B. Does he shoot himself because he knows he's dying, or would he do it anyway? C. Does a heart transplant change a person's heart?

Having thought of these questions, of course I don't know the answers. I'll close with one more question though: Why does everyone in this movie smoke so much? Don't they know it will kill them for sure?

RC

first date

Here's the blog I promised yesterday about the boy in my dream.

I already mentioned that I was raised an extreme religious conservative. I attended 13 grades of Christian day school and then went to the bastion of conservatism, Bob Jones University.

For those not familiar with it, when I went there (I graduated 10 years ago) the boys and girls dorms were on opposite sides of a closed, fenced campus. No one of the opposite gender was ever allowed in the other's dorm with the exception of boys helping girls moved in accompanied by a crier yelling, "Man in the hall!", and boys picking up girls for special concerts called Artist Series. Pantyhose were required for women at all times outside the dorm. Skirts covering the knee were standard attire; culottes were allowed for weekend intermural sporting events. Boys and girls were never allowed to touch, never allowed to be alone together, and never allowed to speak to one another in the library. Mandatory bedtime at 11pm, mandatory rising by 6:55am for room inspection.

So, to start out with I wasn't a fashion plate and had no idea how to talk to boys. One day I got a note in the intercampus mail systerm. A box was located in the lobby of each dorm and the boys distributed the notes to the appropriate dorm each evening where they were slid under room doors by volunteers. A boy named Stephen Goodwin had noticed me in our English class and wanted to go to dinner. He had earned an associate's degree in missionary aviation and was completing his BA, therefore he was technically a senior, but was still in my freshman English class. My upperclass roommate looked up his picture in last year's yearbook. Looks like a real dorkster, but I try not to pin everything on appearance.

We met at the dining hall for dinner. Stephen was a little over 6' tall (height over 6' is my requirement for a man, excluding XBFRN), skinny as a rail with aviator type glasses and curlyish red hair (I hate red hair in a man; I'm a redhead myself.) But the real problem was that he couldn't carry on a conversation. I bore the burden of the conversation and we said goodbye. Now, no one would expect a second date after that, right?

Wrong. I guess I met his expectations. Another note arrived asking for another meeting. I forget what. My roommates convinced me that I should give him another chance. Maybe he was just nervous. I didn't know anything about dating, since I wasn't allowed to date in high school, so I took their advice. Second date didn't go any better. Then came the real disaster. He asked me to go on a dating outing that my friends were going to and I really wanted to go. A dating outing was a rare opportunity to get off campus and have a little fun. They were sponsored by the literary societies, BJU's answer to fraternities and sororities. Of course I said yes. We traveled to the site by bus, my friends were much too interested in each other to help me out at all so I was bored stiff, but had a great time at the outing.

After that, he asked me on another off campus date: a group roller skating event. Writing this makes me realize how stupid I was. I went, of course. I didn't have the guts to say no when he asked me to Sunday afternoon vespers, a required religious program with singing and speeches. As we walked out of the darkened building into a drizzly day, Stephen asked me for yet another date. I finally told him no. In response, he pointed to a bright spot in the cloudy sky and said, "It looks like it's going to clear up."

I didn't expect to hear from Stephen again, and I didn't. But before the beginning of the next school year, I was sitting on my bunk reading when there was a knock on the door. I had gotten a job on campus and spent the summer there. The student body wasn't back yet and summer storage was being delivered to the rooms. It was Stephen, delivering barrels for my new roommates. He actually made a half-hearted attempt to suggest that we get together. It was no struggle for me to say no this time.

When we returned from Christmas break, I learned that Stephen had gotten engaged. After all, he was graduating in May, and in the Christian conservative world, BJU is a meet (meat) market. If you don't meet someone there, you might never get married.

I never met anyone there, by the way. But that's another blog.

Rose

confusion- dream journal

I can't really get much of a story line out of anything.

In one scene we seemed to be warriors returned from battle having a feast. Those with the highest rank ate first, one by one. I was one of only three women present, none of whom seemed to be warriors.

In another scene a teenage boy was locked in the basement and he kept sneaking out to try to get food. I was trying to help him. There was also a young girl there who had been separated from her family.

There were more that I can't remember.

Sronnoc Esor

Come along for a hike.

I woke up this morning, checked my correspondence, did some accupressure work on the kinks that I made yesterday and geared up to go hiking.

I applied sunscreen in the drive- through, drove to the trailhead, and from there the pictures tell it better than I can.












I don't know what this berry is, but I ate one. Hope it doesn't kill me.




What is this bean? They're everywhere.


The woods are atwitter with chickadees.


This is snowy plover country. That's a protected species.


This daisy-like flower makes me think of Little Sister.


Snowy plovers behind the marker. Stay out!




Now I know what that was: invasive non-native Scotch broom.














Strawberries in the sand. I don't see any berries though.




Purple asters. One of my all time favorites.


Just a few cumulus clouds flying by fast.


The boardwalk cuts through an oxbow- a detour the stream makes.


For XBFRN, what's it look like?


Lunch by the lagoon- Subway spicy Italian, extra jalapenos.


Mixed red and white clover. I think this would make a fine lawn.




Some unknown fungus here. I've always like fungi.


That's the end of the trail. Thanks for coming and don't forget to stretch.



RC

Wikipedia birthday meme

Borrowed from Science Woman, whose blog archives I have been devouring every spare moment.

Type your birthday, sans birthyear, into Wikipedia. Record 3 events, 3 births, and 3 deaths.

May 12.

Events:

1364- Jagiellonian University, the oldest university in Poland, was founded in Kraków, Poland.

1967- At Queen Elizabeth Hall, England, Pink Floyd stages the first-ever quadraphonic rock concert.

2002- Former President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro becoming first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro's 1959 revolution.

Births:

1820 - Florence Nightingale, English nurse (d. 1910)
1828 - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, English poet and painter (d. 1882)
1907 - Katharine Hepburn, American actress (d. 2003)

Deaths:

1784 - Abraham Trembley, Swiss naturalist (b. 1710)
1889 - John Cadbury, English chocolate entrepreneur (b. 1801)
1994 - Erik Erikson, German psychoanalyst (b. 1902)

also Day of Finnishness in Finland

RC