The Domino Theory

The Domino Theory originated back in the good old cold war days when I was just a kid. It was explained by President Eisenhower as: "...broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences."

As we have all learned since those days, the Domino Theory applies to things other than politics and fascinating YouTube videos. A very expensive Domino Theory seems to be going on inside my mouth recently but you don't want to know about it and I don't want to talk about it.

However, something resembling Ike's 'most profound disintegration'  is also taking place in my condo. It all started with what seemed like an innocent plan to get rid of a very large stash of old magazines. There were two stacks of mags in a closet and about 20 mag storage boxes in the studio. It made sense to work on them while I wasted much of my weekends watching Premier League Football (British Soccer) so I started bringing them into my bedroom where I have a small table set up. Makes sense, right?

First domino falling...I keep a stash of magazine pages to make envelopes, I keep them sorted. So the single page stash came into my bedroom so I could sort and file as I went along.
Second domino falling...Some of the pages didn't fit in the storage boxes so I made them into envelopes as I went along, which meant I needed to bring in the box of envelopes (sorted, of course) to file as I went along.
Third domino falling...I kept finding pictures and articles that I thought certain friends and family would enjoy so I sorted them out into a couple stacks to be mailed in my handmade envelopes.
Fourth domino falling...So many wonderful photos I needed to save for reference, which needed cropping, sorting and filling in the two big bins of hanging files which - you guessed it - came into the bedroom.
Fifth....Sixth...Seventh...

It might still have ended safely if I hadn't reached the years of British travel & history mags. In addition to reference photo clippings, scrapbook photo clippings, reference travel articles, and bits for my Anglophile friends, I had to put aside articles pertaining to my upcoming travels.

I can still walk in my bedroom but just barely. The massive influx of clippings has necessitated the purchase of several additional storage bins waiting to be filled - I may be crazy, but I am organized crazy. I'll be lucky to finish going through the articles for the rapidly approaching trip, so I will come home to a bedroom filled with hours and hours of sorting and filing waiting for me. Oddly enough, this would be quite satisfying if not for one major problem...by then the EPL season will be finished and I'll have nothing to keep me stuck in my bedroom for hours each week.

The good news? I have dumped at least twenty big brown grocery bags of torn down magazines into the recycling dumpster.

I came across an interesting undocumented quote recently: "I keep records, if you don't keep records you're just a hoarder." Well, I keep records, and files, and folders...sorted by subject, color, or usage.

"I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested."

On Safari in Montana

My cousin lives about 15 minutes outside of the very small town of Absarokee in Southeast Montana. Visiting there is always a pleasure - I love my cousin & his wife, I love Absarokee, and I love the trip from Seattle across to Eastern Montana.

In 2010 I visited for a wedding and late one afternoon my cousin took me for a ride up into the hills to enjoy the scenery and the wildlife. In addition to a pair of Sandhill cranes, we saw 275 deer. I am not stretching the truth - there were three of us in the car and we counted very carefully. In fact, we surely must have missed some. There were a few small groups of 15 or so, most of them consisted of groups of 2-5 grazing peacefully. I very badly wanted to see some elk - or even 'an' elk, but the closest we came was a man on a bicycle that had us fooled for a few minutes. (you are more apt to see an elk than a man on a bicycle in the Montana mountains) It was an amazing experience, this was not 'managed' wildlife - this was the real thing.

Last August year I visited again and requested that we find time for what is referred to as The Safari. My cousin and his wife take this drive fairly often, with varying routes, depending on the amount of time they want to spend and where they want to end up. They always count the cranes, and the deer, and the elk. Their all time record is something over a thousand total.

We set off in the afternoon a little early for the deer to be down grazing, but we had planned a dinner out so it was in fact a little late when we started spotting deer. Just as previously, the deer were plentiful and the total grew rapidly. Pretty soon we were well over 200 (counting several Sandhill Cranes) and I was wearing a permanent grin.  I was quite pleased, but still holding out hope for a couple of elk.

And then it happened. We came around a long slow curve in the road and we saw elk - lots of elk, lots and lots of elk - spread across four or five hills. It was breath-taking to see this enormous herd moving slowly across the hills almost like a cloud shadow. As soon as we took in the vision, the sound hit us. This herd was almost equal parts cows & calves, and as they traveled they kept in constant communication. It was surprisingly loud and unlike anything I had ever heard before. It was a sound experience that will stay with me forever.

Just a fraction of the herd

There were a couple of other trucks stopped along the road, binoculars out. And we spoke softly among ourselves, spooking the elk only slightly.  I wanted to take pictures, but more than that I just wanted to stand and watch and listen. So I did, openmouthed and a bit verklempt. There was no way we could possibly count this herd, it was the largest my cousin had ever seen, but we estimated upwards of 300. I couldn't even begin to get them all in my camera viewfinder. Eventually, an approaching car at one end spooked the herd enough that it turned on itself. My cousin, educated in animal behavior, decided we needed to move on as the signs of stress were becoming evident among the cows with calves.

We counted at least another 100 deer on the way home - and it would have been more but we ran out of light. They are hard enough to spot in daylight, but they fade away entirely as dusk deepens.

Speculation was that extensive forest fires in the mountains had driven the elk down as one large group. I choose to believe it was just time for me to see some elk - lots and lots of elk!

Mr & Mrs Heron

Anthropomorphism: Any attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to humans) to other animals (or birds)

I have mentioned before my great good fortune in living near a heronry. This morning, as I do as often as possible at this time of year, I stopped for a few minutes to drink my Starbucks and watch the birds. This is what I saw...

Mr & Mrs Heron perched on either side of their nest at the top of one of the trees, looking rather bored with the world. Before long Mr Heron took off and flew over my head to a stand of trees within my view. He wandered around a bit until he found just the perfect twig then soared back to the heronry, circling once (so everyone would take notice that he had brought home the PERFECT twig) and then landing right next to Mrs. Heron. She smiled, I presume, took the twig from him and turned to the nest to insert it in the very spot she had in mind for improvement. As she leaned forward to do this Mr Heron seized the opportunity and jumped her bones.

Awwww, Nature!

Mr. Heron Choosing his branch

An Ordinary Tourist

Note: this blog entry is REALLY about book vs online research. I just always make it about England if I can!

High on the list of things that make me happy would be "Planning a trip to England". I am happy!

The first thing I do upon returning from a trip to England is to begin thinking about the next trip, whether I have any hope of ever going again or not. So when I returned from my 2009 trip with a group of friends, I decided I wanted to spend more time in London and explore East Anglia, but I quite frankly did not expect it to happen. Thanks to a little unexpected windfall and the good graces of my daughter and son-in-law (hereafter to be referred to as 'the kids') I am in the midst of planning my seventh visit to England.

My first trip was in 1986 and it was while planning for it that I began what is now a very substantial collection of books about England. When I came home, thoroughly besotted with England, I collected more books and read everything I could get my hands on...I had already begun thinking about another trip with my daughter for 1989 ostensibly a graduation gift, not that I was fooling anyone.

Overflow from my bookshelves

One of the things that upset me as I did my research was how often during the first trip we had been within a few miles or even a few yards of something I later wished I had seen but didn't know about at the time. The compactness of England, coupled with it's incredible wealth of history and great literature makes this inevitable. Determined not to let this happen again, I began accumulating information in any way I could and - no surprise to anyone who knows me - set up several databases on my new computer. I also began collecting postcards, primarily English views, which also went into a database.
After the 1989 trip it was nine long years before I could manage another and my research in 1997 was almost entirely done on the computer. Countless other Anglo-nerds had spent precious hours and resources setting up websites detailing everything from who is buried where, to the best tearooms or the best fish & chip shops. The big cities all had websites. My trip in 2000 was also researched online, as well as the 2007 trip.

When I started planning about two months ago, I went straight to the computer, but surprisingly, before long I found myself back at my books...many of which I had contemplated getting rid of! Many of the wonderful sites I had used earlier had disappeared or hadn't been updated in years. In their place I found websites for every city, town and even most villages. The problem was, these websites were all about where to stay, eat, or shop. The information on local history or attractions was all about the commercial ventures. I began to suspect that the way to be listed on these sites was to pay for advertising.

So I am back to my books for inspiration. Books like:
     One Thousand Buildings of London
     Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide
     Insiders England
     The English Village
Even a travel series that dates from the 1920's has been tremendously helpful, and browsing my picture books equally so.

Then I take my notes from the books to the computer. Online I find out opening times and entrance fees, parking information and train schedules. I pull up maps and plot our roads from village to village. I zero in and walk the Strand in London. But I never forget that without the books I would just be following in the footsteps of every other ordinary tourist. And I don't ever want to be an ordinary tourist.

My LibraryThing book list (not yet complete) Tere's Books

All Free Wi-Fi is not Equal

I have been traveling for 10 days now, and every night when I find a motel I make sure it offers free Wi-Fi. All but one of my motels has been in the $60 to $100 range and all of them have had signal that varied between low and non-existant. The one motel I paid $130 for (it was Moving-In week at MSU in Bozeman and I was lucky to find a bed anywhere) had a good signal. So it is clear, you get what you pay for.

Starbucks is my drink of choice and traveling through Montana can be trying for those of us Seattleites addicted to their particular taste & menu. There aren't a dozen Starbucks locations in all of Montana and I have that many within 5 miles of my home. I know Starbucks is an expensive way to quench your thirst, but I also know that when I sat down at the Missoula Starbucks on North Reserve the free Wi-Fi signal read excellent. Same thing at the Starbucks on South Reserve. Evidently coffee is like free Wi-Fi...you get what you pay for.

None of this would be so important if the replacement phone I got from Sprint two months ago hadn't crapped out as soon as I crossed the border into Montana. Using my little notebook and the nightly free Wi-Fi was my only way to communicate with home - where my 97 yr old mother is failing and my family worries about a 67 yr old woman traveling alone with a thirteen year old Toyota. I passed 120,000 miles on this trip and took took my Camry to the top of more than one mountain and it never missed a beat.

So the verdict is in...Starbucks & Toyota - YES!  Sprint - NO! Free Wi-Fi - you get what you pay for.

I Love Doing My Laundry

One of the positive things about living alone, and with very little expectation of that changing, is that you can decorate any way you wish. This is even more positive if your taste in decorating leans toward the whimsical or the cluttered. In both cases, that would be me.

When I moved into my condo, faced with the normal problems of storage in such cases, I decided to put shelves in my laundry closet and paint it a lovely Cornish Blue. The shelves then became home to parts of my collections of Nippon China and Cornishware.

I firmly believe that collections should be displayed where you can enjoy them, this is in keeping with the philosophy that you shouldn't collect anything unless you love it. I do love both my Cornishware and my Nippon. Everytime I open the doors to do a load of laundry, I am delighted by the sight. Most people cannot say this.

Last week I was looking for a particular roll of tape in my tape drawer (yes, I have a tape drawer) and when I looked at the roll of blue painter's tape, I realized how close it is to the blue used in Cornishware. I thought, surely, there must be something clever I can do with this. It wasn't until I sat at my son-in-law's table and saw his roll of painter's tape that it hit me. My tape was the normal 5/8” tape, his was 2-3 times as wide. I asked him if I could have it. And being the lovely boy he is, he said yes, without even asking why. I am sure he could tell by the look on my face that I wouldn't tell him anyway.

And so.....here we are!

Soon, I will tell you what I did with my guest bathroom.

Sunshine Comes Softly

"Sunshine comes softly through my window today."  (Now those of you old enough to remember Donovan can sing it, if only in your heads.)

Rarely do I wake up to sunshine coming through my window without that line running through my head. In fact, rarely do I wake up with sunshine coming through my window - full stop. Here in the Pacific Northwest, even lovely sunshiney spring days rarely start first thing in the morning. There is usually an hour or two of fog, or high clouds, or "overcast", before it burns away and the sun is well and truly shining.

We've had a few lovely spring days this year, but this morning I opened my eyes (a little before 7:) to actual rays of sunshine. For a few moments, I simply laid there, feeling the warmth on my skin. Then I opened my eyes, looked to the window, and realized how incredibly dirty my bedroom window is.  While I waited for my coffee, I walked to the sliding doors, gazed out the window, then back again to my desk...covered with a fine layer of dust...okay, not so fine, a pretty thick layer of dust. Now, as I sit at my computer, the sun is shining through the very dirty glass on the door to the deck.

The sunshine may come softly, but it carries a big stick - Time to do some Spring Cleaning!