To meet the wizard.

Picking up last minute camping food from Idylwilde and admiring the night sky.

View image

Jim, of Katahdin Air, the man who flies what Chris refers to as Fred Flintstone’s plane, called me yesterday to ask, “Do you realize fishing season ends the 30th, the day you guys are going into Rainbow Lake?”

It seems as soon as we cross the state line, The Maine Mantra Question we get asked is, “You huntin’ ?” or “You fishin’?” Why a bunch of guys would wander off into the woods without the intent of bringing back something dead is unfathomable.

“Jim, you must not remember us. We’re the guys who go up there and do nothing. We don’t care that it’ll be out of season. “

“I guess I didn’t recognize your name.”

“You’ve flown us into Henderson Pond and the Antler Camps. When you see us coming, you run the other way because we bring so much gear.”

“Oh, now I remember.”

A must read website.

Peter standing outside Coffee Talk in Wailea, Oahu. He’s balancing his laptop, and his computer connected camera while talking to me on his cellphone. Yes, he could have been talking directly into his laptop, but he thought that might look too strange.

Unsuspecting patrons inside the coffee shop.
My new goal is to have rakkity buy a video camera, connect it to his mini and then, once he’s healthy, to play his racquetball nemesis on a wifi court while I watch.

On important things, Jim and Susan were almost always on the same page and when not could usually get there without contention. However, they did argue about stuff that didn’t count much. Those fights were almost always funny. In one of our phone conversations after Jim died, Susan told me tearfully that she didn’t know how she could spend the rest of her life without the funny fights. She sent me this description of one they had last winter.

It was a Saturday morning in the depths of last winter. We had a petrillion errands to run, so set out in Ranger Rick, shinydome’s beloved 1990 Ford pickup. By the time we had lurched down our avenue, the township road, and the county road ‚Äì a distance of not more than two miles ‚Äì to reach State Highway 55, I was not sure I had a filling left in my head.

“Rick’s lurching,”I said.

“It’ll be better when he warms up,”shinydome responded.

“Would that be in a few miles or Spring?”I asked, possibly a bit snottily.

No response. Disdain clear.

As we neared our first stop, the ride had definitely gotten smoother. We did our errand, quite congenially working together. It took maybe 11 minutes.

We then lurched through the parking lot, back onto the highway, and eastward a while before smoother set in again. This pattern continued through three or four stops. I held my tongue. Truly. At least about the lurching. But during one of the longer stretches between stops, I broached a related topic. Here’s how that convo went:

FB: Have you noticed that we rarely, if ever, have both Carmen and Rick on the road? Maybe we should think about replacing two older, not so great vehicles with one really good one.
SD: I’ve actually thought that myself.
FB: What kind of vehicle are you thinking about?
SD: SUV. Ford. The big one.
FB: You’ve got to be kidding. They are terrible gas guzzlers and much more vehicle than we would ever need. Besides, we’d have to get a gun rack and one of those ribbon things that says, “Support Our Troops” to put on the back
SD: You are such a bigot.
FB: So.

A few minutes of silence.

FB: And do you know how much one of those honkers costs?
SD: Thirteen, fourteen thousand.
FB: You have been living under a rock. Multiply by three and a half and you might be close.
SD: No way.

At this point, we were near the Ford dealer in Buffalo, MN. shinydome swung Rick onto the lot, parked, and in we went. He paled as he looked at the sticker. Out we went, quickly, and began the homeward lurching.

FB: It is not cute.
SD: We are not spending that kind of money based on cuteness.
FB: And it doesn’t even come in green.
SD: You’ve never wanted a green car.
FB: And I don’t now. However, if we are going to spend that kind of money, we should at least be able to get a green one if that’s what we want.
SD: You’ve passed rational.

Once home, I went online and researched some smaller SUVs. I printed out the pictures and info for three of them and presented same to himself in the order I preferred them, my favorite being the Honda CR-V.

We both spent the rest of the afternoon doing our own things, coming together again just before dinner.

SD: Well, I’ll give you this much; the Honda is cute.
FB: Very.
SD (with that s___-eating grin spreading from ear to ear): It’s just too bad it doesn’t come in green.

Yesterday, I traded Carmen in on a silver Honda CR-V. His name is Shiny Stochl. shinydome would smile.

View larger image

I’ve posted this Spoon’s Pond (near rakkity’s place in NH)sequence before, but this time I’ve animated it. Matt and Robby, typically potential energy to Joe’s kinetic, are all lounging on a floating dock, less than half a football field from the land based dock on which Adam and I stand.

The most natural thing to do on this dock, besides tossing your friends off, is to haul the cinder block anchor up from the stinky bottom. Even I’ve done that, but I’ve never taken the next logical step, which is to realize I now have a raft Tom Finn might envy.

In the first frame, the anchor’s up and the boys are lulling around, though Matt innocently swishes the water with his left paddle, er, hand. In the second frame, a light shines in Robby’s head as he looks toward shore. In the third, he and Matt up tempo, but Joe has yet to catch on. In the fourth, the energy engine kicks in and the front of the dock lifts out of the water.
It’s a large file so give it a minute to load after you click on
raft trip

Hi Mike,

Just to disabuse you of the idea that I haven’t been working
on the latest mountain E-pic….

A tale of OS woes

I’ve been trying to get all of my recent mountain pictures onto my Mac mini with limited success. Previouly I had found that a direct camera-to-mini transfer wasn’t working, and I also had had problems with reading my flash drives with the mini. Then yesterday I had the bright idea that I’d make a CD of the pictures I had previously transferred to my MS laptop, and use that to transfer them to my wonderful Mac mini.But what a can of worms I opened up.

First, let me give (as much as I hate to) an A+ to Microsoft for making camera-to-PC transfers easy. But wait just a minute, Microsoft, don’t get smug, that grade is about to be counterbalanced!) After looking at a couple of slideshows on the laptop PC, I convinced myself that all the pictures were readable and proceeded to make a CD of them. That seemed to go well–I could view all the CD pictures on the laptop, so I pulled out the CD and stuck it into my Linux desktop machine.

Uh Oh. Only about 10% of the pictures were readable there, even with my bullet-proof old workhorse, never-fail, Linux/Unix “xv”. So back to Microsloth laptop. Figuring that the CD-R disk must have been bad, I made another CD. Reading the new CD on the same machine suddenly led to an application crash. Up pops a text advisory” “Please tell Microsoft about this driver crash”. I passed on the info, so they can add it to their database/blackhole. Microsoft gets an F for that, averaging to a C.

Despite the crash, testing the new CD on my Linux desktop surprisingly produced slightly better results–I could read more of the CD pictures than before. (Linux’s grade is indeterminate. Maybe
both CDs were bad.) I set the CDs aside for later when I could put them into the Mac mini.

Back at home that night I put one of the CDs into my Macmini. After a colorful wheel spun on the screen, up popped a CD icon. I clicked on the icon, set the View option to thumbnails and perused the 208 pictures. Apparently about a dozen of them were unreadable, as indicated by the text window that popped up when I clicked some of the icons. Well, at least there were 196 good ones, so I’ll give Apple a provisional “A”.

To save the picture files to the machine, I dragged and dropped the CD icon into a new folder on the desktop. After the transfer, I opened up the new folder, and “whammo!”, the folder vanished from the screen, with a text message saying, “Folder application crashed irretreviably. OS X still operational.” Yes, the desktop was still running, but my new folder was gone to the bit bucket in the sky. Apple gets a provisional “F” for that. The CD icon was there, so I opened it, created a new desktop folder, and hand dragged-and-dropped 196 thumbnails into it from the CD folder. The new folder was fine, and I did a bunch of editing in it. So let’s erase the provisional “F” from Apple’s report card and transfer it to Microsoft for making such a cruddy CD. Perhaps Apple should get an “A” for being able to read it at all.

However, that’s not the end of the story. To eject the CD, I dragged the CD icon to the Trash folder, and the word “eject” appeared over it, but the CD didn’t move out of its slot. I tried right-clicking on the CD and selecting “eject” from the menu, but nothing happened. It was getting late, so I shut the mini down. What grade should Apple get for that?”F-“? A bad CD can’t be ejected? Maybe the problem will fix itself when I turn the mini back on tonight? Stay tuned.

rakkity

Peter Rodd and Patti
The Big Picture

Peter Rodd and Patti
The Big Picture

Eulogy to My Mother Bertha Downing, 11/1/1919 ‚ 9/7/2005
Presented at the Mass at Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, 9/10/05

Its pretty hard to summarize the life of a person, especially when father Ignacio said I only had 45 minutes‚ just kidding‚ he said I had five minutes.

So I will cut to the chase. If you knew my father, you know that he was the head of our family. I don’t just mean he was the head of our family, I mean he was the HEAD of our family‚ the analytical, thinking, logical part, and he imparted to all of us the practical and analytical skills for life.

Well my Mom was the HEART of our family. She taught us about loving.

She taught us to love deeply, which she demonstrated with unreserved love for her children, for her husband Emerson of 52 years, and for all our family members, even ones that may have been temporarily estranged through life’s sometimes entangled circumstances.

From her we learned that expressing our feelings was a show of strength and not of weakness. She often felt and expressed our own feelings for us, when we could not get in touch with them ourselves.

She taught us to love broadly, through the nurturing of friends near and far, cultivated through their rich social lives in Mexico and Texas, and through their travels in Central America, Europe, and Canada. She nurtured relationships and mourned the deaths of friends near and far throughout her long life.

She made many friends here in the Valley, including people in her literature class, many of whom are here today, and she loved and admired their teacher, Dr. Rovira.

Our friends were also her friends, and she was warm and accepting of them, and always welcomed them into her house. (And I brought home some pretty strange people)

She taught us to express our love creatively, through her painting, playing the piano, preparing loving and nourishing meals, and creative writing (though the painting unfortunately never stuck with any of us).

She taught us that the boundaries of love were not limited to this physical world, through her deep religious faith and her relived and re-told memories of family members that had passed on.

The three of us had the fortune to spend her last few days at her side, have the last rights administered, and encourage her to let go and join Pop. On the morning of her death, after we had said our final good-byes and her cold body was removed from Cristy’s house, the three of us hugged each other, and one of us whispered “She is gone now, it is not up to us to keep her love going.

As for Cristy and Carlos, they have already been doing this through caring for her in their house all these years. And Lilly and Chet also, both close at hand, and Chet always thoughtful of her, bringing her books and suggesting food he thought she would enjoy.

For me, I can only hope that I learn to grow my heart large enough in my remaining years to fill the void that Bertha leaves behind.

She touched the lives of many, as all of you in attendance today know personally. Many that are not able to be here have emailed remembrances and poems that we put together on the large poster some of you have seen. I would like to share a couple of these with you.

The first was sent by my best friend in Boston, Michael Miller, who met my parents in way back in 1969 and several times after that.

Twenty years ago, shortly after Dan and Linda were married, I dropped by Sunnyside Lane to see Dan’s visiting parents. It was summer, it was humid and it was hot. That morning I’d grabbed a pair of white pants that were no longer work-worthy and ripped off the legs at mid-thigh. I thought I looked pretty good in my new shorts.

As I walked up to Bertha in the living room, flattered to be in the presence of this woman who taught Dan about emotional strength, I said, “Welcome to Lincoln.” She greeted me with a broad smile and an open heart as she had the first day we met, some ten years earlier. With Emerson I sometimes felt I had to prove myself, with Bertha I only felt I had to be myself.

She sat upright, with her perfectly combed dark hair, her hands crossed on her lap, and exuded elegance. I suddenly felt that maybe these new white shorts with the frayed legs weren’t so nifty. Bertha must have sensed my unease because she said, “Take off those shorts and I’ll hem them.”

I slipped my pants off in front of her and then, fifteen minutes later, back on, newly hemmed. I looked down for the third time that day and I thought, “Bertha made a better me.”

Bertha, you made all of us better. We’ll miss you.

This second is from my cousin Stephanie Bloem now living in North Carolina:

I remember Tia Bertha as being immensely kindhearted and loving and I remember these qualities as being especially noticeable when she visited her older (and – we all know meaner) sister Aida, my mom …

I remember how my dad (Bill Clark) used to call her “the Pink Lady” because she always did such great volunteer work at the hospital …

I remember her pastel Moctezuma …

I remember her singing Mr. Sandman …

I loved her very much and if I close my eyes I can see her playing canasta with your dad and with my parents somewhere on the other side …

This last one is from my son Greg.

I remember Aba best, through the eyes of a child.

As a child, I lived for her smile, for her laugh. I remember the feel of her and the sound of her voice; gentle, loving, calling me ‘sweetie’.

I remember the softness of the couch in her old home. The pine trees that would stand in the corner on the Christmases that I visited. The fruit trees that sat in the back yard that I would sit and look out at.

I remember, amusingly, that she bought me my first hand-held video game, though I cannot remember the name of it. Only her smile and my joy at her gift.

It is through the eyes of the child that I was, that a part of me will always hold her, wishing for those simpler days again. But it is with the heart of a man that I love and miss her so terribly now.

Wind to thy wings, Aba.

I will close with a poem by Hugh Robert Orr, sent by my favorite mother-in-law, retired Unitarian Universalist, Reverend Polly Guild:

They are not gone who pass
Beyond the clasp of hand,
Out from the strong embrace.
They are but come so close
We need not grope with hands,
Nor look to see, nor try
To catch the sound of feet.
They have put off their shoes
Softly to walk by day
Within our thoughts, to tread
At night our dream-led paths of sleep.

They are not lost who find the sunset gate,
The goal of all their faithful years.
Not lost are they who reach
The summit of their climb,
The peak above the clouds
And storm. They are not lost
Who find the light of sun
And stars and God.

They are not dead who live
in hearts they leave behind
In those whom they have blessed
They live a life again,
And shall live through the years
Eternal life, and grow
Each day more beautiful
As time declares their good
Forgets the rest, and proves
Their immortality.

Presented at the Roselawn Cemetery, 9/10/05

While they finish preparing the grave, now that we have all the time in the world, I would like to read another memory, this one from my cousin Pinky from Guatemala.

I remember with special tenderness watching her on Sundays celebrate Holy Mass. I found Mass boring in those youthful days, but Tia gave me something to think about — seeing her kneeling, attentive to the teachings, and absorbed in her meditation when the little bell rang during the consecration.

So mystical her conduct — that was the seed that grew in my heart: the desire to know what she knew and feel what she felt.

God bless you Tia — your example was the backbone of my life. Thank you for your patience and your kindness.

Good-bye Mom. By the way, I asked Chet if he had a good book to leave with you…but the said that he hopes instead now to inherit some of your prized ones.

Eulogy to My Mother Bertha Downing, 11/1/1919 ‚ 9/7/2005
Presented at the Mass at Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, 9/10/05

Its pretty hard to summarize the life of a person, especially when father Ignacio said I only had 45 minutes‚ just kidding‚ he said I had five minutes.

So I will cut to the chase. If you knew my father, you know that he was the head of our family. I don’t just mean he was the head of our family, I mean he was the HEAD of our family‚ the analytical, thinking, logical part, and he imparted to all of us the practical and analytical skills for life.

Well my Mom was the HEART of our family. She taught us about loving.

She taught us to love deeply, which she demonstrated with unreserved love for her children, for her husband Emerson of 52 years, and for all our family members, even ones that may have been temporarily estranged through life’s sometimes entangled circumstances.

From her we learned that expressing our feelings was a show of strength and not of weakness. She often felt and expressed our own feelings for us, when we could not get in touch with them ourselves.

She taught us to love broadly, through the nurturing of friends near and far, cultivated through their rich social lives in Mexico and Texas, and through their travels in Central America, Europe, and Canada. She nurtured relationships and mourned the deaths of friends near and far throughout her long life.

She made many friends here in the Valley, including people in her literature class, many of whom are here today, and she loved and admired their teacher, Dr. Rovira.

Our friends were also her friends, and she was warm and accepting of them, and always welcomed them into her house. (And I brought home some pretty strange people)

She taught us to express our love creatively, through her painting, playing the piano, preparing loving and nourishing meals, and creative writing (though the painting unfortunately never stuck with any of us).

She taught us that the boundaries of love were not limited to this physical world, through her deep religious faith and her relived and re-told memories of family members that had passed on.

The three of us had the fortune to spend her last few days at her side, have the last rights administered, and encourage her to let go and join Pop. On the morning of her death, after we had said our final good-byes and her cold body was removed from Cristy’s house, the three of us hugged each other, and one of us whispered “She is gone now, it is not up to us to keep her love going.

As for Cristy and Carlos, they have already been doing this through caring for her in their house all these years. And Lilly and Chet also, both close at hand, and Chet always thoughtful of her, bringing her books and suggesting food he thought she would enjoy.

For me, I can only hope that I learn to grow my heart large enough in my remaining years to fill the void that Bertha leaves behind.

She touched the lives of many, as all of you in attendance today know personally. Many that are not able to be here have emailed remembrances and poems that we put together on the large poster some of you have seen. I would like to share a couple of these with you.

The first was sent by my best friend in Boston, Michael Miller, who met my parents in way back in 1969 and several times after that.

Twenty years ago, shortly after Dan and Linda were married, I dropped by Sunnyside Lane to see Dan’s visiting parents. It was summer, it was humid and it was hot. That morning I’d grabbed a pair of white pants that were no longer work-worthy and ripped off the legs at mid-thigh. I thought I looked pretty good in my new shorts.

As I walked up to Bertha in the living room, flattered to be in the presence of this woman who taught Dan about emotional strength, I said, “Welcome to Lincoln.” She greeted me with a broad smile and an open heart as she had the first day we met, some ten years earlier. With Emerson I sometimes felt I had to prove myself, with Bertha I only felt I had to be myself.

She sat upright, with her perfectly combed dark hair, her hands crossed on her lap, and exuded elegance. I suddenly felt that maybe these new white shorts with the frayed legs weren’t so nifty. Bertha must have sensed my unease because she said, “Take off those shorts and I’ll hem them.”

I slipped my pants off in front of her and then, fifteen minutes later, back on, newly hemmed. I looked down for the third time that day and I thought, “Bertha made a better me.”

Bertha, you made all of us better. We’ll miss you.

This second is from my cousin Stephanie Bloem now living in North Carolina:

I remember Tia Bertha as being immensely kindhearted and loving and I remember these qualities as being especially noticeable when she visited her older (and – we all know meaner) sister Aida, my mom …

I remember how my dad (Bill Clark) used to call her “the Pink Lady” because she always did such great volunteer work at the hospital …

I remember her pastel Moctezuma …

I remember her singing Mr. Sandman …

I loved her very much and if I close my eyes I can see her playing canasta with your dad and with my parents somewhere on the other side …

This last one is from my son Greg.

I remember Aba best, through the eyes of a child.

As a child, I lived for her smile, for her laugh. I remember the feel of her and the sound of her voice; gentle, loving, calling me ‘sweetie’.

I remember the softness of the couch in her old home. The pine trees that would stand in the corner on the Christmases that I visited. The fruit trees that sat in the back yard that I would sit and look out at.

I remember, amusingly, that she bought me my first hand-held video game, though I cannot remember the name of it. Only her smile and my joy at her gift.

It is through the eyes of the child that I was, that a part of me will always hold her, wishing for those simpler days again. But it is with the heart of a man that I love and miss her so terribly now.

Wind to thy wings, Aba.

I will close with a poem by Hugh Robert Orr, sent by my favorite mother-in-law, retired Unitarian Universalist, Reverend Polly Guild:

They are not gone who pass
Beyond the clasp of hand,
Out from the strong embrace.
They are but come so close
We need not grope with hands,
Nor look to see, nor try
To catch the sound of feet.
They have put off their shoes
Softly to walk by day
Within our thoughts, to tread
At night our dream-led paths of sleep.

They are not lost who find the sunset gate,
The goal of all their faithful years.
Not lost are they who reach
The summit of their climb,
The peak above the clouds
And storm. They are not lost
Who find the light of sun
And stars and God.

They are not dead who live
in hearts they leave behind
In those whom they have blessed
They live a life again,
And shall live through the years
Eternal life, and grow
Each day more beautiful
As time declares their good
Forgets the rest, and proves
Their immortality.

Presented at the Roselawn Cemetery, 9/10/05

While they finish preparing the grave, now that we have all the time in the world, I would like to read another memory, this one from my cousin Pinky from Guatemala.

I remember with special tenderness watching her on Sundays celebrate Holy Mass. I found Mass boring in those youthful days, but Tia gave me something to think about — seeing her kneeling, attentive to the teachings, and absorbed in her meditation when the little bell rang during the consecration.

So mystical her conduct — that was the seed that grew in my heart: the desire to know what she knew and feel what she felt.

God bless you Tia — your example was the backbone of my life. Thank you for your patience and your kindness.

Good-bye Mom. By the way, I asked Chet if he had a good book to leave with you…but the said that he hopes instead now to inherit some of your prized ones.