The Day Trip with a Detour Down Memory Lane

It's been a long time since I've been on a day trip and I've forgotten how good for our mental health they can be. They get us out of our ruts and give us new fodder for our brains to mull over. My husband and I used to do a lot of day trips and after he died I went on five or six a year with the senior hall crowd in my old neighborhood. After moving to my continuum care complex there are still plenty of opportunities to get off campus for a full day but what's changed is the size of the buses. The senior hall day trips usually used 50 passenger motor coaches with bathrooms on board while my CCC takes our 20 passenger mini bus. Having the security of knowing that bathroom was there for emergencies made a huge difference in my willingness to sign up for any excursions that start before 10:00 AM, which most of them do.

Drum Roll please. This week my oldest niece picked me up for a two hour ride up north to my cousin's cottage. It was a beautiful day and along the way we stopped at an Amish farm to buy honey, peaches and tomatoes. I don't know what there is about seeing horse draw buggies and laundry hanging outside on clotheslines that speaks to me in a way that probably lowers my blood pressure but it happens every time I'm passing through Amish communities. 

 

photo by Jim Fisher

As a little kid my mom would take me and my brother with her when she'd visit her sister down in Indiana and that was my first introduction to both day trips and seeing women dressed in long dark colored dresses and men driving horse drawn buggies down the road. My aunt and uncle weren't Amish but they lived in close proximity. My uncle was a traveling Bible salesman and an odd duck who fit right in with his straight-laced neighbors. He wasn't the Paper Moon, door-to-door kind of salesman. (Great movie, by the way.) He called on churches with his sample cases full Bibles, hymnals and candlesticks, collars, collection plates and choir robes. My uncle's prayers before meals were long enough to make you forget why you sat down at the table. At least that's the way my child's eye saw them.

Fast forward to a time when I was hooked on reading romances books with an Amish theme. They represented a simpler time and place when the worst thing that could happen is a fox gets into the hen house. (A naive view of Amish farm life, I know, but just go with it.) My favorite plot device was heroines being placed on Amish farms by the Federal Witness Protection Program. Back then---shortly after 9-11 when the outside world was a scary place---I could daydream myself as that heroine separated from mainstream civilization and my FWPP handler would be a hunky guy who'd fall in love with me and keep me safe until the danger passed and we could go back to the modern world with running hot water and daily showers. Isn't the power of imagination a wonderful thing! And, yes, there really is a sub-genre of romance books labeled 'Amish Witness Protection Romances'. Google it if you don't believe me.

My niece was a teacher and on the drive we got to talking about home schooling, private schools and charter schools verses public schools. I'm strongly opposed to charter schools that are mostly run by churches---at least where I live they are. But the Amish community we were driving through got us wondering why I find it acceptable for them to have their own schools but not acceptable for other religious groups to have them. The new MAGA nominee for Vice President probably would say I don't have a right to an opinion on schools since I don't have any kids. I don't have any cats either but that's just because I allergic. I still can't believe he didn't know he'd be poking a sleeping giant with his cat lady insults.

Back on topic: My niece and I had no trouble filling the drive up and back with conversation about politics, family and past travel experiences. And after getting to my cousin's place the three of us continued on with an organic conversation that flowed easily between current events, decades old memories and cottage life. Her cottage has all the iconic things that a cottage needs to have to live up to the Title: a porch glider, a puzzle table, wind chimes, lots of secondhand furniture and knickknacks that all come with stories, lawn chairs and a great view of the lake. And, of course, a pontoon. 

After lunch we went for a pontoon ride on her lake that only has cottages on about a third of its shoreline. (See the photo at the top.) The uninhabited, wooded and swampy shoreline on the other two thirds of the lake gives you the feel of being farther up north than we were. From the pontoon we saw Loons on the water which are protected divers that unlike ducks can't walk on land. We also saw a bald eagle's nest. After the ride and parking the pontoon we sat there gentling rocking with the waves while we ate pie and swapped hilarious stories involving run-ins with skunks and bats---also part of cottage life. It was a perfect afternoon of fun and relaxation. It's a powerful thing, isn't it, when you can see someone on rare occasions like weddings and funerals but still be able to pick up on lively conversations and warm feelings as if you see each other every day.

I also brought my cousin a gift, a sweater my mom made for me back in the early 1960s. She's a master knitter who does all kinds of fancy stitches and when she visited me last spring I showed her the sweater (pictured below). She mentioned if I ever wanted to part with it she has a daughter-in-law who loves wearing vintage clothing like that. After asking both my nieces if they had an interest in the sweater I decided it couldn't go to a better home. But after my cousin put it on she said her daughter-in-law was not going to get it. It looked so darn cute on my cousin, as if it were custom-made for her. My only regret in giving it away was that I didn't get a photo of my cousin wearing it. Proof that I've made another great placement in my Personal Antique Adoption Program. ©

Until Next Wednesday!

A Political Pollster Finally Called Me!

I promised myself I wouldn't write another political post anytime soon but here I am four weeks after the last one and I'm breaking my word. Don't worry, I promise it's not going to be a rant type post that will burn your eyeballs out if you support the Republican ticket. A telephone call from a pollster made me change my mind. At first I thought, Hell no! I'm not taking part in a political poll. But then I remembered how many times I've wondered, who are these people that take those polls? The media loves quoting them.  

Edited to add: The poll itself was taken the morning of the last day of the convention, before Trump's speech and the Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan performances. And this post was written two days before Biden dropped out of the race.

I must say the pollster was very professional. She didn't try to lead me in any particular direction and she didn't react in any way to my answers. It was a long poll taking over 25 minutes. The questions started with the basics: my age, sex, level of education, income, marital status and race. She asked who I voted for in the last election, how likely am I to vote in the next. Did I belong to a union? What are my views on abortion? Then it got down to the nitty-gritty of the call. Did I see any of the Republican convention? "Yes, most of it." Did I see any of the coverage of Trump getting shot? "Yes." Did it make you more likely or less likely to vote for him or no change? "No change." How much do you know about J.D. Vance? And she listed some multi-choice answers. I picked the one that I'd never heard of him before Trump picked him for his Vice President. 

She asked me what two things about the convention stood out the most. I wanted to joke that all the people wearing sympathy patches on their ears cracked me up. Oops, they call them solidarity patches.

But I replied that I thought Sarah Hunkleabee Sanders did a good job fulfilling her mission. The pollster followed up by asking what I meant and I told her Sanders's speech was intended soften Trump's image for women voters, make him seem more likable to that demo-graph as did the speech given by Trump's 17 year old grand-daughter. I had to repeat my answer a couple of times so the pollster could write my answer down word for word. The most genuine smile I've ever seen on Mr Trump's face came after that young girl finished. It made me wonder where has that guy has been all these years. I didn't mention that during to poll.

My answer about my second take-away from the convention was about how much I hated seeing Nikki Haley's speech. That I used to like her and thought she's was a good person to have in government, but her reversal in now kissing Trump's butt after months of saying he's unfit for office proves her values and moral compass can be bought off. (I've since learned that Vance did the same, exact thing.) What I didn’t tell the pollster is the night that J.D. Vance spoke I sat down to watch the convention and I fell asleep while he was on! So there may have been other, more noteworthy take-aways for me if I hadn't slept through his appearance. I did catch some of the highlights later that night but I've been watching both the Republican and Democratic conventions with every election since they've been televised so I felt bad about missing an important part of this one.

After the questions about the Republicans the pollster started in on Biden. She didn't ask me if I thought he should drop out of the race and that omission seemed telling to me. A hint about who contracted the poll? I asked that question but the pollster she said they are not given that information. She did ask me about six other Democrats going up against Trump and how I would vote. For example if the election was between Harris and Trump which one would I pick? If you're a long time reader of this blog you'll know I wouldn't vote for Trump if he was running for the county dog catcher. Which reminds me there was a funny meme on Facebook about Babydog, the bulldog that the governor of West Virginia was pulling around the convention floor in a cart. The meme said something about him keeping the dog away from Kristi Noem, the woman who was on Trump's short list for V.P. She's the North Dakota governor who bragged in her autobiography about how she shot the family's 18 month old puppy in a gravel pit because "he was untrainable." She thought it made her look like she was strong enough to make the tough decisions but it just made her look thickheaded for not taking the advice of her editor and others telling her not to include it. Even after they pointed out the uproar that Mitt Romney caused when a photo surfaced of him on vacation with the family dog in a cage strapped on top of his station wagon, she wouldn't back down about putting the puppy killing in her book. Killing that dog also made her look cold-hearted for not re-homing it to someone who just wanted a family pet and not a hunting dog.

There was only one question I refused to answer and the pollster came back to it three times before giving up. It was the one about do you think the country is headed in the right direction. I've always hated that question because 'the right direction' is too ambiguous. If you answer 'no' they assume you are not happy with the party currently in power. But I think you can say 'no' meaning you're not happy with how the government in general has become so Tribal and how 'compromise' has become a dirty word. We've been on that trend since 2010 when Mitch McConnell announced to the world that his job as senate minority leader was to make sure that Obama was a one term president. That's when the party quit representing the people who elected them and the Cult of Personality was born in the Republican Party.  ©

Until Next Wednesday.... 

No matter how you vote, you've got to admit this meme is funny, given the fact that both Trump and Vance have immigrant wives

 

 

 

 

  

 

Facebook and Green Burials

I love Facebook, especial the Short Reels. I watch them an hour and to an hour and a half every day. I suspect I'm addicted to them so I've resorted to setting a timer to limit my time. I don't feel guilty about spending time this way, however, because I learn things and often I get my post inspirations from the site. One of the most useful things I've learned is to never 'like' something on Facebook unless you want to see a gazillion of similar short videos and/or advertisements. I do follow certain people, though, to make sure I don't miss something they put online: Jon Steward, Stephen Colbert, Josh Johnson, The Good News Girl, and the Texas Beeworks girl are all people I follow for predictable content. 

In addition to these celebrities I follow some zoos for content about silverback gorillas, panda bears, sloths and elephants. I also follow or subscribe to Facebook sites about the following topics: Tiny Houses, Unique Trees, Lost Pets, Mid-Century Modern and Atomic Mid-Century Modern decor, cute puppies and kittens, Mahjong and freeing wild animals caught in dangerous situations. Currently I'm fascinated by the turtle pictured above who runs around on a skateboard tormenting the cat that I've actually seen helping the turtle get on his tiny skateboard. As my husband would have phrased it, "That little guy can really haul ass with those wheels under him!" As a kid I spent my summers at a lake so it's probably a sentimental thing, a throwback to when I had baby turtles as pets, that makes the turtles on skateboards so endearing.

I've seen giant tortoises, too, on what I thought had to be custom made skateboards. But I decided to fact check myself before I made that claim and I was shocked to find lots of sources for "Pet Skateboards" and as cheap as seven bucks. There are photos of birds, turtles, bearded dragons, small tortoises, cats, dogs and pigs acting as catalog models for the boards. You can even buy harnesses that go around the boards and your turtles so you can walk them on a leash like a dog. Please do an intervention for me if I start talking about getting a turtle as a pet. Wouldn't I be the talk of my independent living complex if I start walking a turtle? I did do a wee bit of research and learned I'd need at least a 29 gallon aquatic turtle aquarium for a smallish turtle and the water has to be changed weekly. That leaves me out because I can barely lift my gallon watering can to maintain the plants on my deck. 

Still, I miss having a dog. I'd had one in my life from birth to when Levi died a few months before moving here to independent living. Long time readers might remember when I researched getting a cage of canaries and I decided against the idea. There are seven dogs and five cats living here now so I do get to pet a dog almost daily, but I don't think I could find two people who'd agree to care for a dog if something happened to me which is in a document we have to sign to have a dog or cat living with us, plus we pay a $1,000 deposit. That's one of the disadvantages of not having any children or grandchildren or a big estate where I could hire strangers from the pet trust lawyer here in town to be a dog's guardian. The document makes sense in a place like this where every week someone gets hauled off to the hospital. If that person had a pet, the concierge or security guard would call the pet's guardian to come pick it up for temporary or permanent care depending on the outcome of the medical emergency.

Another one of my current fascinations on Facebook are Neil Degrassee Tyson clips. He's an astrophysicist, author, Noble Prize winner and the host of a National Geographics TV show. Not bad for a man with only 132 IQ, which is notably higher than the average person on the street with sixty-eight percent of us falling between 85 and 115. But Neil's is a far cry from smarty-pants public figures like Bill Gates (IQ 150), Elon Musk (155), Mark Zuckerberg (152) and Sunny Doel's 166. What Tyson has that most of these other guys don’t is an ability to communicate advanced theories and technical stuff to ordinary people in a way that we understand it. 

Recently I saw an interview of Neil's where he was asked what happens to us after we die and they got to talking about 'green burials' which is what Neil wants done with his body. I first heard the term on the Netflix series Six Feet Under and the Green Bureau Council defines them this way: “Green burial is a way of caring for the dead with minimal environmental impact that furthers legitimate ecological aims such as the conservation of natural resources, reduction of carbon emissions, protection of worker health, and the restoration and/or preservation of habitat.” What they aren't saying is your body is wrapped in burlap and placed in a shallow grave where the worms and bugs help decompose the body and the open land itself can eventually be reclaimed by nature. 

Neil says he wants this type of burial "so that the energy content contained within it [his body] gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.” Not for me! I'd rather have the energy left in my dead body go up the smoke stack of a crematorium while its still legal. The National Death Centre says, "one cremation uses as much energy in the form of gas and electricity as a 500-mile car trip and releases a staggering 400 kilos of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, not to mention mercury vapor and other pollutants." 

Everything comes full circle if you give it enough time. I predict that 100 years from now our choices in deposing of our deceased will be between green burials and 'sky burials.' There are fourteen places in my state where green burials are legal now, but when I checked while I was binge watching Six Feet Under there were only a couple of places. So clearly this trend is becoming a real thing. They've got to be considerably cheaper without embalming, a casket, a cement vault or a cemetery marker which might account for the trend more than people being concerned about the environment.

Sky or celestial burials were used by indigenous populations and on every continent on earth dating back thousands of years. (How historians know this would fill an entire post.) Sky burials are still legal in Tibet and parts of India and there is a movement to bring them back as an Eco-friendly choice. A sky burial, in case you don't remember involve a raised platform or a tree and either fire or vultures. Yikes! I'm off to Facebook to find some puppy and kitten videos to replace that image in my head. But I'll leave you with this: If you haven't put your preferences in writing, you should because your next of kin might be a penny-pincher and choose something you (may) or may not like.

Until next Wednesday. ©