Pics ‘n’ Thoughts

Am I naive?  I haven’t thought of myself as innocent or naive
since I was a teenaged single mother and convicted felon more than four
decades ago.  But like everything else in this finite observable
universe, naivete is relative.  As time passed, I began seeing my
earlier, younger self as quite naive, even though that self hadn’t seen
it at the time.  Every time some obvious fact jumps up and catches
me by surprise, I marvel at how obtuse and/or naive and/or blind I’ve
been.

While I ponder on that for a while, let me show you some more of those
pictures I took during the eleven weeks we were without a home
computer.  The bunch today were all taken in mid-May, which is
early spring here.  Traditionally, the last spring frost comes
around Memorial Day at the end of May.  This year was wet and warm
and I don’t think we had any more frost after these shots were taken.







Above, behind Doug as he fills a water jug from the spring at mile 89
of the Parks Highway, where we and many of our neighbors get all our
water, the expanse of water in which you can see those rocks reflected
is a sign of how wet the season was this year.  That’s a puddle of
run-off from the roadside ditch.  In shadow below that reflecting
puddle is a waterfall, flowing down around the pipe that carries the
clean water from the spring into the pool and down the little unnamed
stream into the big muskeg along Sheep Creek.



That nameless stream that carries the run-off from our spring is shown
below.  Don’t be impressed by the green there, if you have any
temptation in that direction.  Remember, this was early spring,
right after the last frosts.  On our most recent water run, when
I’d left the camera home because I had barely enough energy to fetch
water and none to spare for documentary or artistic photography, the
green was a deeper richer shade and the shade from those trees and
bushes was dense.  The grasses and weeds now arch over the stream
and the sun barely penetrates.  I’ll try to remember the camera
next time we get water, so I can show you. 

To get back to those thoughts on my continuing failure to notice the
obvious, I recently was made aware of how larcenous, dishonest a bunch
of scofflaws my fellow humans are.  I’ve known for three quarters
of my life that I’m an outlaw, a maverick, occasionally a fugitive and
usually open to some illegal game or drug or profitable venture. 
I endeavor to conform to a fairly stringent code of conduct, but it
doesn’t conform to the letter of the law sometimes.  However, I’ve
always thought that my personal code was much more at odds with the
social mores of my culture than it really is.

You may recall Captain Louis in the Bogart classic Casablanca,
accepting bribes to look the other way as he feigned being shocked by
the thieves and gamblers he was supposed to arrest.  My shock
wasn’t feigned.  But then I gave it a second thought and laughed
at myself.  On some level, I knew it all along.  When I drive
on the highway, I often have trouble keeping up with the flow of
traffic because my car shimmies at 75 MPH.  The speed limit is
65.  Meth labs operate in my neighborhood and people occasionally
approach Greyfox at his stand, trying to sell him merchandise that is
apparently stolen.  I observe crime wherever I go, don’t need the
news to clue me in.  I dunno, I guess I just wanted to think of
myself as some kind of a maverick instead of just an ordinary scofflaw
like everyone else.

The next pic, below, was taken at the edge of the big expanse of muskeg
across the highway from the spring.  I took some overviews, but in
long shots it just looked like a lawn, a big grassy field.  It’s
all horsetail and by now has branched out and begun putting on a bronze
tone.  I put the camera on the ground to get this closeup. 
Imagine a field of that stretching to the horizon.  It extends
that far.  The Susitna River is over a mile west of that point and
the muskeg goes all the way, with just a few islands of trees here and
there.







The next picture was taken about 1 AM on May 19.  It’s
Kashwitna Lake, one of my favorite local roadside attractions.  LuckyStars
will recognize that light on the opposite shore.  Someone lives
over there.  I’m not sure there’s even a road to that place. 
Access may be by float plane (ski plane in the winter).  There
used to be an air taxi service based on the highway side of the lake,
but Susitna Air moved into Willow and their land, cabins, boathouses,
piers, etc., are for sale.  Maybe not a great business
opportunity, but who needs money in a place like this?

If you’re wondering what series of events recently got me to thinking
about what a lawless culture I live in, that’s okay.  Go on and
wonder.  Let’s just say that a bunch of criminals even more naive
than I am had revealed their nefarious machinations to me.  They
were so blatantly up-front about it all that I was reminded of some of
the rules I was taught in the 1960s, the rules for a successful life of
crime, such as this one:  “If you’re going to do the crime, don’t
talk about it.  If you talk about it, don’t do it.”

It’s time for this… maybe way past time.

I just logged on here and noticed up there in my banner (started to
type “batter” — Freudian typo?) where it says, “This is where I spill
my guts.”  I didn’t do any of that on those library computers I’ve
been using for eleven weeks (but who’s counting?).  I was thirty
years old before I even learned how to spill all the emotional shit I
was bagging, and it took some hardcore junkies in a therapy group to
drive me to it.  I was always good at rationalizing things,
explaining feelings away, kidding myself that things were just peachy
– even when I was miserable and my life totally out of control.

I claim among my expertise, “staying on good terms with myself.” 
Maybe I should change it to, “getting on good terms,” or, “getting
back….”  Sometimes my self-esteem drifts off the screen.  I
can usually catch it and get it back before something catastrophic
happens.  “Catastrophic,” y’know?  Something like getting
loaded, getting laid by a stranger, loading my gun and going postal –
stuff like that.  When I look at myself clearly and critically, I
know that my potential for destruction and self-destruction is greater
than my potential for greatness.

 Twelve-step program literature calls these things, the personal
failings that distress me, “character defects.”  I can think of
probably a few dozen better, more appropriate and accurate terms, but
why quibble?  The programs have a few defects of their own. 
But realistically, any Virgo can find defects in anything.  The
programs have many virtues, too, not the least of which are the twelve
steps themselves.  One of my favorites is the tenth step: 
“…continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong
promptly admitted it.”

My Divine Sponsor (not having had a group or a human sponsor when I
first found and worked the Steps, I was guided through them by my
Higher Power) sometimes reminds me that an inventory must include both
virtues and failings.  It’s not always obvious to me which is
which, just as I often need to reflect on things at length before I
understand whether I need to accept them or change them. 

I was beating up on myself for about a week over something that program
purists would have (and I had) judged to be an act of betrayal
requiring amends.  I had without thinking told someone something
that I’d learned about someone else at a meeting.  We weren’t
technically IN the meeting at the time, but were on the porch in a
small group of friends offering support to another member whose husband
was out getting loaded and draining his business bank account as fast
as he could within the limits imposed on daily ATM withdrawals.

I probably can’t adequately explain what was said by whom without
actually betraying the confidentiality of the group.  One person,
prior to that meeting, had expressed some concern for our mutual friend
and had passed on to me a mistaken impression about the nature of her
crisis, thinking it was a physical health thing instead of the marital
and monetary crisis it was.  When I next saw that person, I
corrected her misconception and told her what was really going on with
our mutual friend.  Later that night it occurred to me as I lay
awake in bed that I probably should have just kept my mouth shut.

I fretted over it and tried to rehearse just how I would make my
confession and apology when next I saw them both.  When next I saw
them both, the problem evaporated.  The one who had misinformed me
was grateful to have been set straight so she could offer support to
our other friend and that one was grateful for all the support she
could get.  I wish that every mistake I make would fall into that
category of thinking I was wrong when I’m not.

I let those eleven weeks without a computer slip by and we still don’t
have the roof fixed.  Mea culpa.  I have excuses for that
(weather, mosquitoes, illness and Doug’s sleep schedule not coinciding
with mine) and have not had the moral fortitude not to make
excuses.  Mea culpa again.

Despite an ever-growing collection of junk that’s been growing for
years and is growing faster than ever thanks to Dagda’s Dumpster at
Felony Flats (that’s a whole blog in itself, one best done by Greyfox
– he collects the stuff, I just haul it home and try to find room for
it), I once again have not organized the yard sale I’ve been planning
for a couple of years and probably won’t get it done this summer,
either.

That stuff bothers me, gnaws away at my self-concept, disturbs my rest
and pops into my mind at odd busy moments to blunt my pleasure in
whatever I may be doing.  But that’s the small shit, really, in
terms of my own values.  And it is my values, above all, that
matter here.  We’re talking about my self-esteem.  In my own eyes I’ve been guilty of some much worse transgressions.

I have been influenced.  I’ve allowed myself to be swayed by
others’ beliefs and values.  I have yielded to political
correctness and polite bullshit, gone along to get along.  I have
let other people make excuses for me, instead of adhering to my own
higher standards of behavior.  Horrors!  I gotta quit that
shit.

And, dear readers, despite no longer having to attend to the library’s
timer and limit my blogging accordingly, I still have limits.  It
is dinner time, and I must go cook, and eat, steak, salad and other
tasty stuff.  Seeya.

Okay.

I’m getting the hang of this, I guess, as long as I keep it
simple.  So far, no cropping has been necessary and the light and
colors are acceptable as is.

The last of these three shots from April 29 was taken from the far end
of the cul-de-sac, with the sun at my back.  It had risen fully as
I walked out there.  The POV of the first shot I posted today is
just out of frame to the right, across that icy film over the shallow
part of the marsh.  The second shot was taken through the trees
just inside the frame on the right in the distance.

I suppose this will be the last of these one-shot posts for a
while.  This is all I am posting of the pics I took that
day.  I’ll go back to PhotoShop and work on the next day in my
camera’s memory, a water run Doug and I made in mid-May.   I shall
compile a few of them before I post again.

Alas!

A comment from craftygirl mentioned that
Xanga will “resize” my pics for me.  If only…

The smallest of my
original picture files I’m working with here now is 11 kb over Xanga’s
3 mb limit.  At least some minimal resizing is going to be
necessary.  And, of course, Xanga won’t crop my images or brighten
them or darken them.  I really see no alternative to learning
PhotoShop.  It’s a tired, slow old brain, but I think I can wrap
it around this stuff if I take the time.  I will not, however, do it without a little bitching and venting.

The next shot is the same time as the previous one, sunrise in late
April.  It is a sunward shot across the icy shallows of the
muskeg.  I cut the file size only a little, to retain the detail
in the ice surface.

There!  That one wasn’t so hard.  I only had to resize it, not crop or adjust the brightness or color.

That was at sunrise on the morning after our computer crash: 
April 29, 2005.  Days had been warm and nights freezing. 
Snow runoff the day before had flooded the muskeg so that it overflowed
onto the edge of the road, just across from our house.  The
overflow froze overnight, and that freeze-thaw pattern would continue
for weeks before the water started to recede.

Old, tired, stupid and slow…

Brain-fogged as usual after a trip to town yesterday (and this one was
more strenuous and eventful than most), today I’m trying to master a
new computer system. 

I wanted to do a photo blog of the shots I couldn’t post since late
April when our previous machine crashed.  I anticipated something
that would be somewhat time-consuming but basically simple.  There
was some simple image manipulation software that came with the
camera.  I installed it but it won’t work.  Doug suggests
that it may not be compatible with XP.

Fortunately (or not, depending on where one’s values lie), rosabelle
and Rich sent this machine with PhotoShop installed.  I can play
with the images way beyond what I can imagine and therefore way beyond
what I currently desire.  I have to learn to use PhotoShop before
I can do my photo blog.  I can’t RTFM because I don’t have the
F-ing Manual.

When Doug wanted to buy PhotoShop a few years ago, he found that his
budget could accomodate the much cheaper Paint Shop.  I’d mastered
some of its simple features, so I suppose I can learn to use
PhotoShop.  …tell you what — I’ll go now and give it a
try.  When I get a pic resized for Xanga, I’ll post it.  By
then, I’ll probably be ready for a nap or a walk in the great sunny
outdoors.

Just a Quickie

Yeah, it’s Thursday again and I’m on the library’s computer.  This time, I’m not concerned with the timer.  I won’t be here long.

Josh’s associate David from the comp shop called me Tuesday to let me know our new machine is ready to be picked up.  Nearly all of the important (expensive) components had survived, including the hard drive and its OS data — XP and Red Hat Linux.  They had to replace a RAM stick and the cooling fan and heat sink, and the case, of course.  Ever see a computer case that’s dented both inside and out, from being tossed around with a heavy copper heat sink rattling around inside?  Not a pretty site.

I wouldn’t be scheduled to drive the rehab van until next Thursday, but my alternate driver Jennifer had a family crisis so I’m covering for her this week.  With this trip looming ahead and my knowing that with this damned chronic fatigue I’d still be recuperating today if I’d run into town Tuesday, I decided to wait.  I spent the intervening time cleaning the computer desk.  It was reassuring to find that the top was still the same color it was when we assembled it, after I removed the jillions of scraps of paper that had been laid down in geological strata in the three years or so since we put the desk together.

Something funny is going on here with my HTML.  The words “computer” and “van” are highlighted and underlined.  Xanga did it, not me.  What gives? 

Okay, I said I’d be out of here quickly.  Gotta go.

Developments

I feel as if a loved one is in surgery and I’m anxiously awaiting news.  Josh, the tech doing the rebuild job on the computer the post office trashed when rosabelle and Rich, her roommate, so generously put it together and donated it to me, called yesterday.  He was getting my last-minute instructions.  He saw fit to warn me that Doug is incompetent to install the XP and Red Hat OS, and to recover the data on the old hard drive.  I tried to reassure him that not only has the kid studied the manuals and practiced that stuff, but he has a friend who is a certifiec tech.  I don’t think he was reassured.  His parting shot was, “When it crashes, come see me.”  Yeah, okay, Josh.  Meanwhile, we’re saving over $400 on the cost of this rebuild job.  If that insurance check can be stretched to buy a new printer (our old one was made by Gutenberg and we can no longer find ink cartridges for it) Josh’s little store will get at least part of that money, anyway.

Meanwhile, I wait for further developments.  I’m on my way to Wasilla, and intend to stop in at the comp shop this afternoon just in case.  Stay tuned….

Watching Amphibians and Birds

A couple of weeks ago I heard a bird sound I’d not heard before, a simple “pip” repeated on a single note.  I looked, and spotted two pretty little birds (smaller than the usual run of waterfowl I see, about the size of robins), one in a tree near the edge of the muskeg and the other swimming nearby.  I took a mental snapshot and checked the field guide when I got home.  It was a pair of phalaropes I saw, first time I’ve observed any of those species.  From the maps of their range, I suppose they are most probably northern phalaropes.

The occasion on which I saw them was one of my frequent (several times a week) trips to the amphibian viewing station in the park.  Okay, okay… it’s really just a gap in the shrubbery where snowmachines and and four-wheelers have left the road to the cul-de-sac to cross the muskeg.  The muskeg (marsh, swamp) is protected wetlands and the developers of this subdivision marked it as “parkland” on the plats.  I sit there on the edge of the road and watch tadpoles turning to frogs.  As an added pleasure, I see violet-green swallows swooping to snatch mosquitoes out of the air, and two species of diving beetles eating the skeeters’ aquatic larvae.

Over the course of the last two weeks, I’ve watched the frogs develop and change dramatically.  They have become ever shyer as they transform from tadpoles.  Originally, the tiny polliwogs that were beetle prey didn’t seem to notice my presence.  Later on, I’d see bigger tadpoles gathered on under-water rocks just below the surface, sunning themselves.  They’d dive as I moved closer, then come back when I settled on the bank to watch.

Last week, there were no tadpoles sunning on the rocks.  The water level has receded as the marsh grass has grown taller, and what had been a pond about an acre in expanse had shrunken to several small pools.  After I sat still for a few minutes, several of the transitional froggies, with legs and tails, appeared, moving in a combination of hops and sinuous tail strokes. 

This week, the water level is down so far that the only visible puddles are in the 4-wheeler ruts.  I sat there for at least ten minutes without seeing any amphibian activity.  Then I saw several bubbles rise from one particular spot.  I kept focused on it and saw something emerge from the mud at the bottom and pop partially above the surface.  Then this tiny frog, about the size of the first joint of my index finger, hopped away across the muskeg.

Doug’s D& D Date

Did I mention that my 23-year old son Doug was expecting his two best friends from high school to come pick him up Friday evening two weeks ago and take him to town for a weekend of D&D?  Well, it didn’t happen.  Instead, Matt and Seph came to our place, and got there on Thursday while I was in town.  They brought a case of Mountain Dew, a commercial sized bulk tub of Red Vines, and a carton of assorted flavors of Corn Nuts.  Yum!  (said sarcastically — my true reaction is Yeccch!)

They spent many hours in Doug’s room role-playing and somewhat fewer hours competing in fighting games and and Katamari Damaci on the PS2 in the living room.  We also used the PS2 to view Seph’s DVDs of the entire  Chobits series. 

I’d been hearing about Chobits from Seph in phone conversations while he was in Germany even before he went to Iraq, and in Iraq he had told me about collecting some of the dolls spun off from the anime series.  I knew he was a confirmed Chobits fan, and I watched and listened with interest as Matt criticized the first few episodes as dopey and stupid.  He was reacting, I suppose, to the shallow silliness of the teenage Japanese protagonist.  Then, Matt got caught up in the story.  At the end, he asked something to the effect of how that dopey kid turned out so well and I said it was, “character development, a little trick writers use.”

Matt came back from Iraq with a diagnosis of PTSD, and a still-undiagnosed heart problem that sounds to me, from the symptoms, like congestive heart failure.  The doctor he has already seen said it could be linked to Matt’s service in a Bradley fighting vehicle, firing rounds of spent uranium.  The VA was going to get him an appointment with a cardiologist in Anchorage, for further tests.  Meanwhile, Matt tries to avoid excessive physical exertion.  He brought an Australian woman, Kay, home with him when he returned from the Army, but she is now back in Oz working out the paper shuffle for her green card, etc.  She’ll be back.  From what Matt has told me, I’m looking forward to meeting her.

Both of these guys are showing some character development of their own.  In some ways, they have been catching up with Doug in terms of socio-political awareness.  The Kid of my heart has always paid attention to history and world events and viewed them with sardonic humor.  Until recently, his two friends were focused on quite different things.

Sephiroth took off alone on Sunday for a walk.  He was gone long enough that Matt went out looking for him.  A couple of hours later, I saw him striding up the driveway with an expression of grim determination and a very dirty sword.  In case you don’t recall or haven’t read my earlier blogs about Seph, he owns and wields a sword taller than himself.  The sword’s name is Masamune.

He came in the house, cleaned the blade, and said he’d gone down to the Su, the Susitna River from which SuSu, Susitna Sue, got her name.  He said he’d gone maybe half a mile along the bank, using the sword to cut brush until the brush became too heavy for that.  Then he went into the water and waded until he fell in a hole.  With studied calm, he said, “It’s hard to swim with a six-foot sword.”   By the time he got out of the river, he was about three miles downstream from our place.  He laughed and remarked that he’d always thought Link, the little hero in Zelda, was a wimp because he couldn’t swim very well.  Now he understands.

My hour is up, gotta go.  Probably next time you hear from me I won’t be on a timer.