tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-493731418138282242024-02-19T02:56:58.196-08:00CAMera Focusing on Life, Love, People and Places.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.comBlogger148125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-50750950949311763152015-11-05T21:51:00.000-08:002015-11-05T21:51:00.068-08:00Life as a Garden<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: small;">I can feel the moisture from the damp grass seeping into the fabric of my jeans as I kneel, pulling up the sunflower seedlings that have sprouted beneath the bird feeder. I push my hair back and accidentally smear a bit of mud across my cheek. A row of house finches sits on the telephone line above my head, calling to one another as they watch me work, waiting for a chance to swoop in and scatter more seeds as they feast. Sure enough, the moment I stand up and move away they fly in.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> It is so early that most of the neighbors are still asleep and as I work it feels as though I have the street to myself. Deadheading the roses, snipping lavender buds to dry, staking up a drooping delphinium, I am alone with my thoughts and I relish the quiet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"> If you were to ask me if I am a gardener, I would say no. I never quite feel as though I am entitled to own the title. I don’t know enough. The evidence of my mistakes surrounds me each time I step out my back door. That phlox was planted too close to the front of the border. This rose is too shaded. That Hosta is wilting in a spot with too much sun. I am constantly planting and transplanting, adjusting to the demands of my tiny space. I do and then undo and do again. And that, I have decided, is precisely the appeal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The harshest lesson life teaches us is that there are few do-overs. We get one chance and then have to live with our mistakes. We make our beds and learn to lie in them. But a flower bed is another story. We make it, unmake it and then make it again. As often as we please. This, I think as I stand and survey what I have done, I can control. There is not much else in my life that I can say that about.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Another appeal of a garden is that it gives back. It returns the love we plant into the soil. A garden allows us to chart our progress. This is a rare thing in an ordinary life. Most of us work at marriages, at parenting and careers without the space and leisure to step back and take measure of what we’re doing. It’s only later, sometimes too much later, that we can see our mistakes, but by then its too late. But my garden guides me as I go. Too little water, too much sun, not enough fertilizer and I know. All I have to do is take the time to really look. And then I can make it right.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">There is a spot on the patio where I can stand and trace the growth of a young tree I planted this spring , measuring its height against the back of the garage on the lot behind mine. Each day its uppermost branches stretch a but more and soon it will be as tall as the structure behind the fence. The tree will be here long after I’m gone and it pleases me to watch it grow.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> I can’t wish away the the physical effects of the years behind me. I cannot undo the mistakes I have made in my life. But what I can do is step out the back door each morning, coffee in hand, and take a good long look at what’s in front of me. And if something isn’t right I can dig right in and start all over again.</span><br /><br /><br /><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s writes for The Spokesman-Review. This essay appeared in The Spokesman-Review's "Pinch" edition. Cheryl-Anne is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-69008052887725756932015-11-05T09:24:00.000-08:002015-11-05T09:24:48.899-08:00Doing nothing? Nothing doing.<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;"> The plan was to do nothing. To spend a week enjoying my garden, relaxing in a quiet house and taking advantage of the solitude.</span></span></span></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">As usual, I didn</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t follow the plan.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;">For one whole week</span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;"> I was going to have the place to myself and I was going to enjoy my tidy little house
and not lift a finger if I didn</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t want to. </span></span><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">The problem is, I just can</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t sit still that long and almo</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">st immediately I was surrounded by a chaos and clutter. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;"> For some reason, I can</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t
remember what I was looking for, I went to the basement storeroom and
dug around in a couple of boxes. In the process I unearthed, among other
things, a package of slides that had been missing for several years and
I completely lost track of time while I held paper-framed squares of
film up to the light. Of course I brought the box upstairs with me and
soon they were scattered across the top of the dining room table. I didn</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t want to put them away again until I got them marked and sorted so they're still there.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">The next day I realized that this would be a good time to wash summer</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">s
dust and dirt out of the slipcovers that cover the sofa and chairs in
the living room. Now the room is tumbled with cushions and furniture
wearing only its white muslin </span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">“</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">underwear.</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">”</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">The rug store called to say the old rug I</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">d bought online and had cleaned was ready, so I picked it up and dropped the long, heavy, rolled carpet in a corner. I</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">ll put it down after I wrestle the furniture back into the slipcovers. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">I ran a few errands one day and couldn</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t resist stopping by one of my favorite antiques stores. Wouldn</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t you know, just as I was leaving with empty hands, one of the dealers walked in with the little bedside table I</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">d been searching for. I brought it home and put it in place, but now the old table has no place so it</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">s pushed into a corner until I can take it down to the store room. And I</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">m afraid of what will happen if I go back down there.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">I
woke up one cool morning and pulled out
a sweater. I decided, while I was at it, to put away all the
linen and lightweight pieces and bring out the rest of my sweaters and winter clothing. It
was easier to sort everything while it was all out and soon there was a
big pile of giveaway items in the dining room, beside the table still
littered with photographs. </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">I
watched a movie one night and instead of making a nest on the sofa I organized the linen closet while it
played. More sorting and a stack of old towels and sheets added to the
giveaway pile.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">I
have no one but myself to blame for this mess, but the tidy little
house I was going to enjoy is now a wreck. And the book I was dying to
read? Still unopened on the (new) little table by the bed.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">Why is it some of us just can</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t sit still? Can</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t leave well enough alone? I think of myself as semi-retired. I</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">ve
stopped working full time and have even cut back on my part-time
writing assignments. I wanted more free time to take care of myself and
the flexibility to enjoy time with my family. But for the life of me, I
just can</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t get the knack of it. </span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">If there isn</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t a project, I invent one.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">My solo staycation ends tomorrow. I have a dinner party coming up. And my house is a disaster.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;"> I have a lot of work to do, but this time I mean it. I</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">m going to get everything straightened up, put away and organized and I</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">m going to leave it that way. </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.6px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">Right after I paint the bathroom. I hadn</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">’</span></span><span style="line-height: 13.2px;"><span style="line-height: 19.8px;">t noticed how drab it looks.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);"><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 13.199999809265137px;"><span style="line-height: 19.799999237060547px;">This essay first appeared in Spokane's "Prime" magazine and in The Spokesman-Review's "Pinch" edition. Cheryl-Anne Millsap</span></span><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 13.199999809265137px;"><span style="line-height: 19.799999237060547px;">’</span></span><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 13.199999809265137px;"><span style="line-height: 19.799999237060547px;">s audio essays can be heard each week on Spokane Public Radio. She is the author of </span></span><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 13.199999809265137px;"><span style="line-height: 19.799999237060547px;">“</span></span><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 13.199999809265137px;"><span style="line-height: 19.799999237060547px;">Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons</span></span><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 13.199999809265137px;"><span style="line-height: 19.799999237060547px;">” </span></span><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 13.199999809265137px;"><span style="line-height: 19.799999237060547px;">and can be reached at <a href="mailto:catmillsap@gmail.com" target="_blank">catmillsap@gmail.com</a></span></span></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-54540511794746025672015-07-19T12:18:00.002-07:002015-07-19T12:19:46.557-07:00Put the phone down and look up at what you're missing!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7-m5AKdTJVHrx1MPNawCZH0GATsbvya0fWoL-tOAOzUxE1JKrNxJ45rOR4i-a3dS1O_LCNexdbS7sA77yPq3iP0bmkhMWBkKecPVoLy4O4aB4QU74tBPZlE9donyqWDZIXZWO3w4p2Q/s1600/Baby+iPhone+wm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7-m5AKdTJVHrx1MPNawCZH0GATsbvya0fWoL-tOAOzUxE1JKrNxJ45rOR4i-a3dS1O_LCNexdbS7sA77yPq3iP0bmkhMWBkKecPVoLy4O4aB4QU74tBPZlE9donyqWDZIXZWO3w4p2Q/s400/Baby+iPhone+wm.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Having spent so much time in airports and on airplanes the last few years, I’ve had a lot of time to watch parents and children all over the world. Sadly, the one thing they all seem to have in common, no matter where I am, no matter where they are, is distance.<br />
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The children, from preschoolers to teenagers, are almost always focused on tablets and iPads, watching a movie or playing a game. Beside them, their parents are hunched over the smartphones in their own hands scrolling through emails or Facebook posts. Occasionally one will speak to the other but for the most part they are lost in their personal entertainment. There is a brief flurry of activity as we board but once the seat belts are on everyone either goes back to their handheld toy or turns on the seat-back screen.<br />
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I find it all vaguely alarming. <br />
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I know how hard it is to control a child who is bored, miserable and trapped in some kind of adult environment. Keeping my own four happy—or at least keeping them from spinning out of control—was exhausting. I went to great lengths to be prepared. I kept storybooks and treats in my purse. I cajoled. I made threats. I held them in my lap and whispered made-up stories. I sometimes wore a necklace that had a tiny bottle of bubble solution on a silver chain and I would blow bubbles to amuse them.<br />
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When my son and daughters were small each of them participated in some kind of organized activity. Over the years there were ballet lessons, music lessons, art classes and a variety of sports. While they danced or tumbled or played the scales, I gossiped with the other mothers, flipped through a magazine or, when I didn’t have a little one in tow, read a book. But always with one eye on my child. My daughter just signed up her three-year-old daughter for a movement class and I tagged along for the first one. We took our seat and watched her as she followed the other children and the group leaders. Looking on as she played, I was reminded of all the hours I spent watching my children.<br />
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I looked around at the parents—my daughter’s generation—seated in chairs around the room and I was dismayed to see exactly what I see in so many airports: Men and women bowed over phones, endlessly scrolling and texting. At least half of the parents who’d brought their kids were either looking at their phones or talking on them. My husband often takes her to the park and he tells me it’s the same there. Children play while parents stare at tiny screens.<br />
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Helicopter parents have been replaced by drones.<br />
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How will we ever teach our children to be present in their own lives and the lives of others if we take every opportunity to distract ourselves?<br />
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Sometimes, when my children were small and older women would see me struggling with a stormy toddler, they would smile and remind me to enjoy it. One day, they would say, I would look up and my children would be grown.<br />
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Now I am one of those older women and I find myself wanting to say the same thing every time I see a man or woman missing a moment with a child that will never come again.<br />
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One of these days, I want to say, you’ll wish you’d looked up.<br />
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<i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap is the author of Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons. She can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-39269905192078563822015-06-03T13:54:00.000-07:002015-06-03T15:52:53.483-07:00Dream Season in the City of Lilacs<br />
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In the dream I stepped up on the porch of an old house, walked across weathered and warped floorboards and, cupping my hands around my face to block the outside light, peered into one of the clouded glass panes of one of the front windows. Through the dust I could see a few pieces of furniture—a table and chair in the corner, an old bed frame—but it was obvious the house was empty and had been so for a long time.<br />
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I wasn’t sure how I got to the house but I could tell it had once been someone’s home. As I looked around I noticed a tall lilac tree growing at the end of the porch. It was as tall as the house and its leafy branches, heavy with deep purple blooms, spilled over the rail, forming a canopy around the porch swing. The air was filled with their fragrance.<br />
<br />
At that point something woke me and as the dream slipped away, fading like a wisp of smoke, I opened my eyes to the sound of robins, the early birds who wake up long before the sun rises, calling “Cheer up, Cheer up” to one another.<br />
<br />
Through the window I watched the sky grow slowly lighter. When a light breeze blew and ruffled the curtains at the window, the fragrance of lilacs trailed through the room and I realized the perfume must have stolen into my dreams and become part of what I was imagining as I slept, the way a newborn’s cries or morning voices on the bedside radio might do. I’d caught the scent and my mind had simply written a story to go with it. Isn’t it wonderful what the human brain can do?<br />
<br />
I lay there as long as I could, unwilling to leave the warmth of my bed, the music of the birds and the faint perfume of the lilacs, before I slipped out of bed and into my day.<br />
<br />
The first lilacs in Spokane were planted almost 110 years ago, when J.J. Browne, one of the city’s founders, planted a pair at his home. Others followed and Spokane quickly adopted the fragrant flower and they were planted at homes in every neighborhood. By the 1930s we were the “Lilac City” and a section of Manito Park was planted as a lilac garden. This time of year it is filled with people who stop what they are doing and come to the park to smell the spring flowers.<br />
<br />
That afternoon, after my walk through the park, I went to the corner of my backyard where lilacs grow. I sat down on my grandmother’s wrought iron bench, under an umbrella of branches laden with cascading blooms, and let the day end as it had begun.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-63859992393564543262015-03-29T08:23:00.001-07:002015-03-29T13:22:37.382-07:00Wild Spokane<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> I had a bad case of cabin fever. For days <a href="http://www.visitspokane.com/">Spokane </a>had been cloaked in a dense and heavy winter fog and I’d been buried in the details of a frustrating project that at times seemed as though it would never be wrapped up. I’d been stuck in the house for too long, with only short walks to break the monotony and I needed some kind of distraction. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> Finally, fed up, I closed my computer, put on my raincoat and boots and clipped the leash to my puppy’s soft harness. We walked out of the front door and by habit turned at the corner in the direction of the park. <a href="http://www.manitopark.org/">Mantito Park</a>, this 100-year-old place of gardens and meadows and meandering paths, is where I go when I need respite. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> <br /> The fog had deepened with the twilight, turning into a soft rain that fell on my umbrella and settled onto the puppy’s thick curly coat like a jeweled net of glittering raindrops. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> The windows of the houses we passed on our way glowed and I could see people moving in rooms as they settled in for the evening. They looked like characters in a silent play.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> The dense shrubbery around the pathway of the entrance to the formal garden was blurred by the mist, giving the place a mysterious feel. At that moment I happened to glance up into the low branches of one of the tall trees that line the property and looked right into the wide unblinking eyes of a barred owl as he sat watching me. I stopped in my tracks and for a moment we stared at one another. Then, as if to dismiss me and my silly dog, he turned away and gazed off into the distance.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> He was there watching for a meal and I was just ambling with no particular purpose. His mind was on mouse or rabbit for dinner, prey I’d probably sent scurrying away as I approached. Mine was on work deadlines and family matters and a million other things. And yet, for a moment, our worlds had intersected. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> <a href="https://my.spokanecity.org/parksrec/">Manito Park</a>, for all its groomed and carefully tended elegance, is still— at heart—a wild place. I often see owls and hawks and eagles sweeping over and around the park, their raptor eyes trained on the grassy meadows, scanning for prey. Sometimes I stumble onto a pile of torn feathers and stained snow giving evidence of a meal. I see the tracks of raccoons and the lingering scent of foraging skunks and a large flock of wild turkeys roams the place, parading across neighborhood streets and drawing onlookers as they stroll. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> In the past there have been wilder visitors, like bears or mountain lions, and as if to prove the point, as I followed the path I noticed what I assumed was an off-leash dog—a particular pet peeve—standing beside one of the shadowy trees at the edge of the meadow. The man and woman on the path ahead of me walked right past the large leggy creature without seeing it but I pulled up, not wanting to encounter a strange animal, especially with a young puppy just learning to navigate the world on a leash. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> I turned to take another route home and was almost there before it dawned on me that what I’d seen wasn’t a dog at all. Something that big, with legs like that, had to have been a moose. They still wander the park from time to time and sightings are not all that unusual.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> Still thinking about the owl and the moose, noticing the gauzy moon just rising in the east, I walked back to my own house--its windows bright and warm in the chilly gloom--and the puppy and I stepped in out of the cold and damp. We’d had our walk, our exercise, and our brief taste of the wild, and it was enough. The puppy went back to his basket and I went back to my work. And the moon continued its slow climb behind the curtain of the thick wet sky.<br /> </span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-89548237156181286622015-03-14T10:59:00.000-07:002015-03-14T10:59:03.834-07:00The Mysterious World of Old Maps<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /><br /> An old map of Paris hangs on the wall near my bed and it’s often the first thing I see in the morning. I can lie in bed in Washington State and navigate the narrow winding streets of the left bank or the Seine as it curves around the City of Light.<br /> <br /> In the hallway upstairs, a large 1981 map of a section of Lower Manhattan takes up most of the wall between doors and I often stop to study it as I pass, tracing my finger along avenues and cross streets, picking out familiar buildings and landmarks. I look at it and remember my first visit to the Big Apple that very same year.<br /><br /> A vintage map of Italy hangs just inside my back door and on it is the port out of which my daughter sails on her marine geology assignments. Every time I go out I think of her and through the map I connect with my child who is so far away.<br /><br /> I have many other old maps around the house. They are pinned to my bulletin board, tucked into drawers or slipped between the pages of my favorite books. I love to stumble onto one and stop to study it for a moment.<br /><br /> In this age of GPS and voice-activated navigation, when my phone or my car can get me wherever I want to go, one clearly enunciated command at a time, I am still drawn to these printed relics and I keep bringing them home.<br /> <br /> Some I pick up because they are beautiful, illustrated with elaborate care and tinted by age. Others because they remind me of places I’ve seen or they inspire me to go where I’ve never been. <br /> <br /> But some of the maps in my possession were chosen as much for their mystery as their beauty. Like the WWI era map of Paris and its environs with the name of a British officer of The Queen’s Regiment and the dates 1914-1920 handwritten in ink on the front. <br />
<br /> I found it and bought it online and when it arrived I unwrapped the package and carefully unfolded the 100-year-old paper-on-linen map. Intrigued about the man who’d owned it, I managed to find what appear to be a partial military record for the Captain Francis. The single index card states his medals—the war medals mailed to every veteran— were returned, the package marked with the words “Gone away.” <br />
<br /> Holding the fragile linen and paper remainder of a life I can only imagine, I’m left to wonder what became of the man who must have studied it often as he drove on roads around the city, in a country torn by such a brutal war. Where did he go after the fragile peace was restored? <br />
<br /> Gone away. Such power in two words. I wonder about Captain Francis’s life after the war. Why did he label his map 1914-1920 when the war ended in 1918? Did he remain in France instead of returning to his life in England? Was he one of those who lost themselves somewhere in the shattered landscape?<br />
<br /> So many questions and so few answers.<br />
<br /> I’ll probably never the mystery of N.B. Francis. I keep looking but so many records of the First World War were destroyed by the second and there is precious little to go on. <br /> A man who was a stranger to me lived and died decades ago, but I can still follow his shadow back through time and into a period of history that changed the world. He left a map.<br /><br /><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s writes the <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/homeplanet">Home Planet </a>column for The Spokesman-Review. Her audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-34827820229825242532015-02-12T08:00:00.001-08:002015-02-12T08:00:39.448-08:00Cooper's Hawk<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> A light snow had been falling all morning, just enough to dust the streets and tree branches, just enough to freshen the dirty crust of old snow without making the roads treacherous. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> We were each in our favorite spots in the living room. I was in my chair, my feet on the ottoman, and he was stretched out on the sofa. We had our coffee and the Sunday papers and no particular plans for the day. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> When my husband got up to refill our cups he stopped at the window that looks out on the tree in the front yard, the one with the bird feeders in it. All morning we’d been watching the bird show as small, hungry finches flew in and out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> “There’s a bird out here eating one of your birds,” he said.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> I looked up from the New York Times and blinked at him, trying to make sense of what he’d said. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> “What?’<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> “A bird is eating another bird.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> I chase away the neighborhood’s young cats all the time, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d told me a cat had struck. But a bird had killed a bird?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> I walked over to the window and peered through the curtain. Sure enough, a small hawk was on the front walk that leads to my front door and he was devouring the remains of a goldfinch.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> I was surprised to see there were still a few finches and Junco’s at the feeder, but they seemed to have one eye on the feeding predator below them. I guess the death of one of the flock had just bought them all a little time. Danger was distracted for at least a few minutes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> I looked down at the hawk again and I realized he was not a stranger to me. <br /> Late last summer my son spent a few days with us and as he was leaving we stood outside and said our goodbyes. Suddenly a large bird flew low, right over our heads, and landed clumsily in a small tree nearby.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> We moved closer and he peered down at us through the screen of the branches. It was a young Cooper’s hawk, still wearing his juvenile spots, and I suspected he was out doing his first solo hunting. He’d made a lot of noise for a bird that is known for moving with great bursts of silent speed. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and snapped his photo before he launched himself out of the ornamental tree and moved to one of the tall Chestnut trees on the corner. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> As my son put the last of his things in his truck we talked about our good fortune, about feeling lucky to get such a close look at a beautiful raptor. Then, one more hug and he was on is way. Later, I sent him the photo I’d taken.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> Now, in mid-winter, I can’t prove it, but I have the feeling the proud hunter calmly devouring his catch as we watched was the same bird I’d seen all those months ago. Like most of his kind, in the winter he stakes out urban feeders hoping for an easy meal and that morning, at the feeder in my front yard, his patience had paid off.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> The hawk finished his meal—leaving nothing but feathers scattered on the fresh powder—and flew up to the high branches of one of the Ponderosa pines across the street. I stayed by the window, wondering what would happen next. After a while a few goldfinches and pine siskins returned to the feeders. They were hesitant and nervous, but the winter day was cold and raw and to survive they had to eat</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> Suddenly, the hawk swept in again with a stealth and speed that shocked me. One moment the birds were alone quietly feeding and the next they were scattering in all directions, fleeing from danger. He didn’t get lucky that time but the tiny birds took the hint. They stayed away for the rest of the day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /> A few days later I watched the goldfinches gather again in the Chestnut branches at the end of the street, dozens of them watching my feeder, chattering loudly as if discussing what to do. Suddenly, as if warned by one of their number, in one smooth motion the entire flock lifted, flew in a circle over my house. Arcing gracefully, they turned toward the park, flying over chimneys and treetops, off to a safer address until the hawk moves on.</span><br /><br /><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s is a columnist at Spokesman.com. Her audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-20218785495475995112015-01-29T08:05:00.000-08:002015-01-29T10:26:43.397-08:00Spokane in Soft Focus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i>The fog comes in <br />on little cat feet<br /><br />It sits looking<br />over harbor and city<br />on silent haunches<br />and then moves on. </i></b><br /><br /> That short poem, Carl Sandburg’s classic American haiku, is the first poetry I remember learning. I must have been in the 2nd or 3rd grade, in the 1960s when rote learning was still part of the general curriculum. Our teacher wrote it across the flat black surface of the blackboard in her perfect looping script. From our desks, we read it out of the books we held in our hands and repeated it in unison, a chorus of high lilting, singsong, voices. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> The imagery of Sandburg’s “Fog” is elemental and perfectly captures the silent, deliberate movement of fog as it takes over the landscape. That short poem has come to mind numerous times this winter, what has seemed to be an especially foggy winter in Spokane. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> Each morning I get out of bed before light and make my way downstairs. I take my first cup of coffee and my laptop to my favorite chair next to the fireplace in the living room. The chair faces the big front window and as I write I am able to watch as the day comes to life. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> Most mornings this winter the light has come on soft and white, shrouded in the heavy mist that sinks from the sky to meet the mist that rises from the river at the bottom of the “hill.” </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> The fog steals through the tall Ponderosa pine trees, wrapping my view in gauze, freezing as it falls onto bare branches, forming a slick sheen on the city’s and streets leaving Spokane in soft focus. Ordinary, familiar, streets and buildings become mysterious as they disappear into or loom out of the fog. Even the birds in the Hawthorn tree in front of my window are filtered, like performers on stage behind a scrim. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> This time of year we expect snow. We expect to look out the window in January and see fat flakes drifting down and collecting. We expect to shovel the walks and driveway and curse the berms left behind by the city’s plows. But so far, with only a few exceptions, the real snow has stayed away leaving us only the tough grey crust of old snowfall. And winter has replaced it with heavy fog that doesn’t burn off until late in the day, if it burns off at all. Some days the day ends as it began, draped in moisture.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> Winter will come, I’m sure. It always does. The sky will clear and if we’re lucky it will freeze and deliver the snow that piles up on the mountains and then melts into rushing rivers and refills the aquifer that quenches the thirst of a a dry land.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> And then, like a cat that comes and goes as it pleases, the fog will lift on graceful silent haunches and move silently on. </span></span><br />
<br />
<i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com</i><br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-10944954698254334462015-01-18T07:52:00.002-08:002015-01-18T07:52:48.318-08:00Bird Watching for Beginners<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /> <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My husband handed me a large lightweight box to open on Christmas
morning and for once he had me stumped. I hadn’t asked for anything in
particular and I couldn’t imagine what he’d put under the tree.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When I peeled away the wrapping paper I saw it was an oversized finch feeding station, three long tubes dissected by perches for 24 birds. The big station made the individual feeders I already had hanging--each with no more than 6 perches--look ridiculously small. He helped me fill the tubes with the Nijer seed and with my son's help hung it from a branch in the tree outside the big front window of our Cape Cod cottage. They teased me about the possibility of ever seeing it full of birds. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But the next morning, as light began to filter through the darkness, I was up and I looked out the front window. There were already a few visitors to the feeder—the proverbial early birds—and by the time the sun was completely up, what sun there was on such a cold grey winter day, there was a busy goldfinch or pine siskin on every perch with at least another dozen flitting around the tree waiting for a turn or trying to bully someone into abandoning their spot. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Snow began to fall, drifting into soft piles on the limbs, and the tree was alive with tiny, hungry, beautiful birds. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">One by one as my son and daughters, home for the holiday, woke up and made their way downstairs, they walked by the window and stopped to comment on what was going on in the branches. Their delight mirrored my own.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">On
New Year’s Eve we discovered the small frozen body of a bird beneath
the feeder. I don’t know if it succumbed to the bitter cold or was the
victim of a predator, maybe it died of old age, but after a holiday
season that was marked by our family’s own loss, the tableau at the
feeder just outside the window was a reminder that life can be unfair,
and that even when there’s enough for all, not everyone is strong enough
to survive. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Now, weeks into the new year, with everyone back to work or away at school I have the house to myself and the birds, the finches, iskins and chickadees are still busy in the tree. They are good company.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Writing is a solitary occupation. Most of my work is done alone in a quiet house. The quick, determined movement of the birds as they feed is a welcome distraction when I look up from my computer. Off and on throughout the day I find myself standing in front of the wide north-facing window in my living room, a hot cup of tea in my cold hands, daydreaming as I watch the birds fly in and out of the tree.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It is not lost on me that what I am enjoying is actually their struggle to survive. The need to fuel the constant movement that keeps them warm. their constant vulnerability to cats and other predators that stalk and hunt them, mocks my search for the right word or anxiety about meeting some kind of trivial deadline. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Every day I watch the birds and they keep a wary eye on me as I stand at the window. And the fluttering on either side of the glass is really nothing more than the work of getting up and going on.</span><br /> <br /><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com</i><br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-6678099781136523442014-12-23T08:12:00.000-08:002014-12-23T08:12:32.381-08:00Do You Hear What I Hear?<div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Saturday after Thanksgiving, my daughters and I went to breakfast at the grand Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane. Then, after eggs and bacon and pastries in the elegant ballroom, we walked a few short blocks to the mall. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We do this every year. It’s how we officially kick off the holiday season. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We spend a day in the city to do a little shopping, wave at Santa sitting in his big chair beneath the giant tree, and enjoy the crowd. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By the time we made it to the toy store, I was tired. My favorite boots were pinching my feet, so I motioned toward the bench in the mall just outside the store and told my youngest daughter that’s where I would be. Her sister was in another store.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Take your time,” I said, glad for the chance to sit for a minute. “Take as long as you want.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">While she looked at the art supplies and the model horses, I looked at the people around me. There were busy men and women carrying shopping bags and hurrying from one stop to the next. And there were strollers who were only window-shopping, moving leisurely through the crowd. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A group of carolers, dressed in Victorian costumes, appeared and began to sing. The songs were old and very familiar to me. I didn’t need a book to sing along, I had heard them since the day I was born. Songs I had sung and songs that had been sung to me for as long as I could remember. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As I sat on the bench listening, I noticed a man sitting at a table nearby. He didn’t look like the other shoppers thronging the mall. His clothes were dirty and ill-fitting. His hair was too long and shaggy. His shoelaces were tied around his ankles to keep his hand-me-down shoes from slipping off his feet. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The man was someone who had come into the mall, away from the street, to get in out of the cold. He wasn’t a shopper, he was just passing through. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When the carolers started singing, the man looked up and then slowly rose and left the table. He moved, a bit unsteadily, in their direction. And it was the way he walked, like a sleepwalker or a toy being pulled by a string, that held my attention. I watched him as he found a place to stand and watch the performers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The carolers sang one song after another. And the man never moved. He stood there, focused on the four young singers and the music. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As I studied him, struck by his reaction, I wondered where the music was taking him. I wondered if the old familiar carols filled some empty place inside him. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I suppose it’s possible he was remembering some really dreadful holidays, when hands were raised, voices were harsh and comfort was in short supply. But I don’t think he was.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When something triggers a memory like that we move away, not toward, the reminder. We duck our heads and hurry past, anxious to get out of the line of fire. But the man in the mall did everything but levitate in the direction of the singers. His face was rapt and open. He was pulled into the music, not pushed away.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">My daughter called me to come into the store with her so I got up off the bench and did as she asked. When we came back out into the mall and met up with her sister, the man was gone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I looked down at my little girl’s face and I linked arms with her sister. I thought about the man. Somewhere, some time, he’d been someone’s little boy. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I don’t know where he went at the end of the day. I went home. But deep inside us both, we sang the same song.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This column first appeared in The Spokesman-Review in December 2006. </i></span></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-50315819591909308042014-12-20T12:28:00.000-08:002014-12-20T15:41:45.591-08:00Ebenezer's Ghosts Still Carry the Spirit of Christmas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFFU8HvylNs7ui3PfmLxUuNYnc9Pp8rEGGr6C5tIlM1D3fgO94Lg8YIZWZ1GdXW1mAPeQd26Rl54vWgFpLi3lsNisTO9GetlqZmIl1S_1F1jRw80xaRwMu3dMCex9cBe4_TVU5CYbmGQ/s1600/Christmas+Carol+illus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFFU8HvylNs7ui3PfmLxUuNYnc9Pp8rEGGr6C5tIlM1D3fgO94Lg8YIZWZ1GdXW1mAPeQd26Rl54vWgFpLi3lsNisTO9GetlqZmIl1S_1F1jRw80xaRwMu3dMCex9cBe4_TVU5CYbmGQ/s1600/Christmas+Carol+illus.jpg" height="400" width="282" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>This column first ran in The Spokesman-Review in 2007 under the headline <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2007/dec/24/revisiting-scrooge/">Revisiting Scrooge.</a> </i></span></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This week, losing the fight with a miserable cold, I decided to surrender and rest. I turned off my phone and crawled back under the covers with my copy of Dickens' <b>A Christmas Carol.</b> When I finished the book I may not have lost the cold but I was warm and comfortable and filled with the spirit of Christmas. </span></span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> I</i> pulled the book off the shelf,
plumped up the pillows on my bed and settled in for a good read. The
book is old, almost 100 years old, and the pages are dog-eared and as
brown and fragile as dried leaves. I’ve had it since I was a girl.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Alone in the room, a blanket over my feet, I opened it and read the first line: “Marley was dead; to begin with.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Six little words and I am deep in a familiar landscape.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Over
the years I’ve picked up my old copy of Charles Dickens’ <i>A Christmas
Carol </i>many times. I don’t read it every year – I should – but I do try
to read it often enough to retain the feel of the piece. There’s simply
nothing else like it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This year, like every other time, I was
struck by the power of the bleak and frigid scene described. By the
vivid images painted by words.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">You know the story … It is
Christmas Eve, but that doesn’t matter to Ebenezer Scrooge. He doesn’t
keep the holiday. Scrooge is a cold man, frozen by the coldness within
him. He is a bitter and lonely and miserly man who has forsaken every
human comfort. He eats only what he needs to live. He has no use for
celebration or financial – or emotional – extravagance. He is, Dickens tells us, as self contained and solitary as an oyster. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">By
the time I’d finished the first chapter I was so deeply absorbed that
when I looked up I realized I had burrowed down under the comforter
until it covered me completely. It was even draped over my head. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When
I peeked out, still under the spell of the book, thinking of the
“piercing, biting, searching cold” of London streets, I half expected to
see my breath hang in the air like little clouds. But the lamps were on
and the room was warm and cozy.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I covered my head and went back
to my book. I was swept up in the visits by the spirits. By the quiet
dignity of Bob Cratchit. By the gradual softening of Scrooge’s heart.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
was interrupted and had to put the book down and I didn’t pick it up
again for a few days. When I did, I fell quickly back into the story and
read it to the end.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s a shame about Scrooge. Oh, I don’t mean what happened to him the night the spirits came to show him the error of his ways. I mean what has happened to him in the more than 160 years since he was created by Charles Dickens.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To
most people, Ebenezer Scrooge is a cantankerous character from a movie
or a cartoon. He is an actor dressed in stylized Victorian garb, a
caricature of greed and heartlessness. He scowls and spits Bah Humbug to
anyone who approaches. He is a symbol of penny pinching and stinginess.
The lack of Christmas spirit. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But the real Scrooge only comes alive when you read the book. That’s when you see the deepest message in the tale. It
wasn’t just his greed and lack of charity that nearly destroyed the
man. It was the isolation. The lack of human closeness and comfort. His
world drew in tightly around him and he learned “To edge his way along
the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its
distance.” He forgot how to be tender. He grew hard and flinty. He
became “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous
old sinner.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That is what the spirits revealed to him. When he saw
the damage done to himself and others, Scrooge begged to be allowed to
make amends. And his gift – his Christmas miracle – was that the night
was rewound and he was allowed a fresh start.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For the rest of his life, “Scrooge was better than his word,” Dickens tells us. “He did it all and infinitely more.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tonight
is Christmas Eve. The night when each of us, in our own way, is visited
by the ghost of Christmas present and that yet to come. And when, like
poor old Ebenezer Scrooge as he clung to the ghost of Christmas past, we
will be “conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one
connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys and cares long,
long, forgotten.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">God bless us every one.</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-66540282596685210262014-12-18T18:54:00.000-08:002014-12-18T18:54:57.188-08:00Holiday reality isn't wrapped with ribbon and pretty paper<h1>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">This column appeared in The Spokesman-Review on December 5 2005, and is one of my most popular public radio audio essays. I think that's because it addresses something most of us learn sooner or later: Life, even when we wrap it in pretty paper and decorate it with bows and ribbon, isn't always pretty. CAM</span></span></i></span></h1>
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<em>M</em>y daughter came to me fighting back tears. She hovered at
my side for a moment before drooping dramatically and bonelessly, the
way girls do so well, onto the sofa beside me.<br />
<br />
“What’s wrong,” I asked, warily because I never know what’s coming.<br />
<br />
“I don’t know,” she said with a long sigh. “Christmas just isn’t the same anymore.”<br />
<br />
It
was my turn to heave a deep sigh. There were still Thanksgiving
leftovers in the refrigerator, for goodness sake. It wasn’t
even December.<br />
<br />
I offered hugs and sympathy, and gave a little pep
talk about how we see things differently as we age and it’s really up to
us as individuals to make any day, not just the holidays, wonderful,
but what I wanted to say was, “Oh yes it is. Christmas is exactly
the same.”<br />
<br />
The truth is the picture-perfect Christmas my child was
pining for never really existed. It was the magic castle at the top of a
fairytale beanstalk that I planted for her.<br />
<br />
She was blissfully
unaware of the times the checkbook wouldn’t balance or I was reduced to
tears over a must-have toy that couldn’t be found anywhere in town.<br />
<br />
She didn’t worry about the tree that died weeks before Christmas and stood in the living room like ornamented kindling.<br />
<br />
It all looked perfect to her.<br />
<br />
In
some ways the holiday season is a beautiful but empty package. We’re
driven by the belief that we can create this one perfect day, or season,
and the warmth generated by it will carry us through the rest of the
year. We spend, bake and shop. We decorate around worry, unhappiness and
dissatisfaction pretending they aren’t there.<br />
<br />
As my daughter
rested her head on my shoulder, I recalled a conversation with a friend.
We met for coffee, and she told me she was getting a divorce. “The
thing is, the marriage has been over a long time” she told me, slowly
stirring the lukewarm coffee in her cup. “But every year I’d make this
gut-wrenching decision to leave and then I’d think about the holidays,
and I just couldn’t do it.”<br />
<br />
It was bad enough to know she was ruining her children’s lives, but the holidays, too? That was too much.<br />
<br />
Facing
the truth that the divorce would tarnish every Christmas, and every
other special occasion the family would celebrate in the future, she
surrendered. It was that important to her.<br />
<br />
Year after year she put on another perfect Christmas for a family that was broken but just didn’t know it.<br />
<br />
Finally,
no amount of scotch tape and silk ribbon could keep it all together.
The marriage fell apart, she left – in the summer – and the family
learned how to do things, how to do everything, differently.<br />
<br />
It wasn’t
pretty or perfect, and it wasn’t easy, but it eventually worked. She
told me later, after she had remarried and reconciled with the child who
had struggled the most with the situation, that if she hadn’t been so
focused on making perfect memories for her children she might have made
better decisions about a lot of things.<br />
<br />
As I petted and consoled my daughter I tried to tell her what we so often gloss over this time of year: the truth.<br />
<br />
Nothing shines quite as bright in real life as it does in our memory.<br />
<br />
Growing
up is hard because it means our eyes are opened to what a gift box
won’t cover. We make peace with what was and what is and, eventually,
move on to caring more about making the ones we love happy.<br />
<br />
What I
wanted to tell my child, but I’m not sure I got across, is that the
real gift of any season is learning to find a way to see the magic in
the holidays – in every day – even when you know better.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-53724131146795681112014-11-12T20:50:00.000-08:002014-11-12T21:40:41.130-08:00Falling into Winter<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was standing on the walkway in front of my house, watering the climbing roses that grow along the big front window, when I began to pay attention to a particular sound. I couldn't quite place what I was hearing. It was like raindrops but the sky was big and blue, without a cloud. It was like a wave of applause, but I was alone on the street. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Still listening, I stopped and looked around and realized it was the sound of leaves falling. Not just a few autumn leaves, drifting lazily down to the ground. It was a shower of big, curling, gold leaves from the towering horse chestnut trees on the corner. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There was no wind to shake them free, but one after another the leaves on the uppermost branches simply let go, dropping straight down with purpose, sometimes knocking down leaves on lower branches as they went.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I stood where I was for a moment, struck by the show. The cascade of broad papery leaves increased as more and more leaves fell to the ground.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was as if the big trees had simply shrugged them off, </span>like weary mothers tired of clinging leafy children<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The spiked husks holding the smooth brown chestnuts had already fallen and for weeks the squirrels had been busy, running across wires overhead, holding the prize in their mouths as they hurried back to the cache with more provisions for winter. I'd watched them bury chestnuts in my flower beds and in the potted plants around the patio. We’d gathered a big bowl to put out as squirrel treats in the deepest part of winter, to make amends for the nuts I’d taken out of the pots on the patio.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All that remained of the trees' industry of spring and summer and early fall--the unfurling of soft green, the messy blooms, the abundance of chestnuts--were the golden leaves. And now, one after another they fell from the branches and collected around my feet. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I pulled my phone from my pocket and recorded a short video, a private movie of a splendid moment. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How often had I looked up and commented that the trees seemed to have shed their leaves overnight. One day the canopy of color was there and the next it was gone. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I felt fortunate, as is so often the case with nature, to have been in the right place at the right time to see something beautiful. In just minutes, the branches were bare with only the most tenacious leaves left behind. All was quiet again. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I could imagine each tree heaving a great sigh. Her work was done for the year. Now she could rest. Now she could sleep. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The calendar might disagree but I could not argue with what the trees were telling me. Fall is over and winter is coming. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I walked back to my own yard, back to the roses, kicking at the leaves on the ground just to see them to scatter, and I thought about the things we see and the things we miss as we go about our day.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Before long the city's sweepers will scour the street and take away the litter of leaves. One morning, any day now, the gold will be gone and we will wake to the season's first snow, to a dusting of winter white on bare black branches. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at <a href="mailto:catmillsap@gmail.com"><span style="color: #000c5e; letter-spacing: 0px;">catmillsap@gmail.com</span></a></i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-81938162136313883372014-11-01T07:47:00.001-07:002014-11-01T07:52:37.996-07:00Grounded by Love<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My granddaughter walked through the door and ran up to me. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’re not on a plane anymore!” she said as she wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her tightly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No. I’m here with you.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She's growing and she's hungry these days. The first thing she wanted was a snack: Carrots. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“More carrots, Nana!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>While she ate she chattered, swinging her legs, wrapping her feet around the cared legs of her old oak “youth” chair. I stood at the kitchen counter peeling carrots and cutting them into toddler-friendly slices.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After she’d eaten her fill of vegetables and hummus, she asked to take a walk. The day had been cloudy and cool and already the light was beginning to fade. We put on our jackets and she asked to take her balloon along. The shiny orange Jack-O-Lantern was a gift from one of her aunts and she wears it like jewelry.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I tied the end of the ribbon that trails from the mylar balloon around her right wrist, to keep it from floating away as we walked. She also wanted her “flower,” a plastic tie-hanger that surfaced after a closet clean-out. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The object, white plastic ‘“spokes” that hold and separate a man’s ties, is curved at the end to fit over a closet rod. When held upside down, it looks exactly like a daisy. But you’d never know this, of course, without seeing it through a toddler’s eyes. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So, ornamented with the pumpkin balloon, holding the plastic “flower,” we stepped out into the chilly late-afternoon air. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She automatically turned toward the park, heading for the playground we visit most afternoons, but I knew our light jackets wouldn’t be enough as the temperature dropped. So I steered us in the opposite direction, down the street and deeper into the neighborhood.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She slipped her hand into mine and I tucked my sleeve over us like a glove. As we walked she chattered the way small children do. She stopped to look at the maple leaves collaged across the sidewalk, exclaiming at the yellows and reds. A dog barked and she stopped to look around, trying to pinpoint the “Boof.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the corner, intimidated by the ribbon of headlights threading up and down the hill, she stopped and pressed closer to me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Too many cars!” she said and tightened her grip on my hand.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We waited for a break in the home-from-work traffic and crossed the street. The next block is canopied by tall sycamore trees, a tunnel of gold this time of year, and the lawns and sidewalks are littered with fallen leaves. Some homeowners had cleared their sidewalks but others hadn’t yet caught up and in places the leaves were ankle-deep. I waded in and kicked my way through. This startled her. She stopped, again, and looked down at her feet. Then she did the same thing, pushing the leaves ahead with each step.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“We are kicking leaves!” she shouted. “We kick the leaves!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We walked another block and then crossed to the other side of the street and turned back toward my house. Again and again we plowed through leaves when we found them and she laughed out loud each time.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We crossed the busy street again, not so threatening now that the rush was over, and, what with one interesting thing after another, it took another quarter of an hour to walk the last block home. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> I was, I realized, in that shining second, as happy as I have ever been. I’d been given the gift of uncomplicated time with a small child, something I’ve missed since my own have grown up and away. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> I have always been a little afraid of the secret part of me that is not unlike the balloon tied to my granddaughter's wrist. I could have floated away, drifting from one adventure to another, but my children were my ballast. In becoming a mother I chose to tie myself to them and that grounded me. And now, when I am free again, able to fly if I want to, I find myself making the same choice again.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We walked up the front steps, past the pumpkin on the stoop, and through the front door. Still holding hands we stepped into the warmth of the house. That must have triggered something in her memory because she turned to me again.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You’re not on a plane anymore,” she said with a smile.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No. I’m here with you,” I replied, smiling down at her. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And of all the wonderful places I have ever been, of all the places I would like to go, none is, or could ever be, as fine as where I was at that moment.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at </i><a href="mailto:catmillsap@gmail.com"><span style="color: #000c5e; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i>catmillsap@gmail.com</i></b></span></a></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-32000466645491569382014-09-08T19:12:00.000-07:002014-09-08T19:22:16.503-07:00My Life as a Superhero<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyjOmrahlPeTziPE9c_Ywk_OSi5Jtoj7hiNg4gcEtEXYMwvchapb3EM4-mpFVeAoRlbNHTA8sXd96CePgJK5n7gAJMqXzUPccG5Myrq-DpCwbYFCadD_lcvsrnnKkklxcsasP2XmtoDA/s1600/Superhero+fade+wm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyjOmrahlPeTziPE9c_Ywk_OSi5Jtoj7hiNg4gcEtEXYMwvchapb3EM4-mpFVeAoRlbNHTA8sXd96CePgJK5n7gAJMqXzUPccG5Myrq-DpCwbYFCadD_lcvsrnnKkklxcsasP2XmtoDA/s1600/Superhero+fade+wm.jpg" height="395" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The square of purple cotton, a dinner napkin, is always out because the minute she arrives at my house--Nana’s house--she demands it. What might look like a simple piece of cloth, meant to keep the crumbs off my lap, is to her as good as a set of wings. It is the source of her power.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> When she asks, I fasten it to her collar or the back of her dress with one of those clips you use to close the potato chip bag, and she immediately starts running in a circle, looking over her shoulder to see if the fabric is billowing behind her. Satisfied her cape is functioning as it should, she turns, puts her hands on her hips and her face up to the sky and bellows “SUPER HERO, on the way!”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> She runs and runs--“flying” and shouting--until she’s distracted by something: a butterfly, an airplane, a dog barking on the other side of the fence. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Really, everyone should spend time in the company of a 2-year-old. There is no creature more fierce, more determined or more charming. Most 2-year-olds walk an invisible line between reality and imagination and they’re always honest. Don’t ask a 2-year-old how your hair looks unless you really want to know.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> A 2-year-old is fast. Last week she watched me pick a spent bloom on the rose that climbs the corner of the house last week and before I could stop her she’d stripped the rest of the buds off the branch.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> A 2-year-old is unpredictable. We were tossing her big blue ball to one another when, like some kind of miniature NBA star, she whirled, rocketed the ball across the patio and bounced it off the fat belly of one of the cats who’d been sprawled on his back, sleeping away the hot afternoon. The cat, while uninjured, was sorely aggrieved. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Want to see pleasure at its most basic? Watch a two-and-a-half year old eat crackers and honey.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> A 2-year-old is strong. Her hands are small but she can still manage to squeeze the nozzle of the hose with enough force to soak me the minute I turn my back.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> My 2-year-old granddaughter rations hugs and kisses and when she says no, she means it. Conversely, when she’s feeling affectionate she shows it with a spontaneous full-body hug, wrapping her arms and legs around you, patting your back.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> A 2-year-old is an inspiration. The other day I finally finished a complicated project, an assignment that had been a source of stress for weeks. I sent it on its way, closed my computer and walked out to the garden, happy to be done with something so difficult. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sitting in my favorite spot, watching a hummingbird dip into the petunias in a corner of the garden, I could see the baby’s “cape” where she’d left it a few hours before. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It made me smile. Somewhere deep within me, the little girl who lives there still did just what my 2-year-old granddaughter would do. I didn’t wear her cape, I didn’t get out of my chair and run in circles, but I did turn my face up to the sun. I stretched my arms and legs and celebrated my superpower to get the job done.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at </i><span style="color: #011172; letter-spacing: 0px;"><i><a href="mailto:catmillsap@gmail.com">catmillsap@gmail.com</a></i></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-46114183450646860592014-08-20T09:22:00.001-07:002014-08-20T09:23:29.446-07:00The Sweetest Gift of Summer<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5NmE3dJLZteYlJSi2fLcz6I3Jl0YKo_54GoKszGnf1g4VHxuIjsNRGMot582YQ-wZh5YoqxcMcEXsVlKpDpxDCwX12fXP_Ovda8b4_GCuBytLUm2SCDWkZBEpppFwjuBpTgmFNewZxA/s1600/Blue+clouds+wm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5NmE3dJLZteYlJSi2fLcz6I3Jl0YKo_54GoKszGnf1g4VHxuIjsNRGMot582YQ-wZh5YoqxcMcEXsVlKpDpxDCwX12fXP_Ovda8b4_GCuBytLUm2SCDWkZBEpppFwjuBpTgmFNewZxA/s1600/Blue+clouds+wm.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I was a girl, after dinner and after chasing lightning bugs to fill the mayonaise jar I would put beside my bed so I could watch them flicker and blink until I fell asleep, I would sometimes lie on my back in the field next to my house and watch the stars come out. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Never mind that the grass stuck to my sweaty legs and mosquitoes hummed in my ears, it was a fine show. Later, as a mother with young children, we piled onto a daybed on the patio and counted satellites and shooting stars, calling out each time we spotted one.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, with no lightning bugs to catch and no small children to keep me company, it is my habit to end the day on a lounge chair on the patio behind my house. I stretch out and stare at the sky until one by one the stars start to appear. The other night, as I lay there, I looked up between two pine trees in my neighbor’s yard and noticed a star just at the inner edge of one of the trees. Something distracted me and I looked away but when I looked back at the space between the trees, I noticed the star had moved, or, to be more precise, the planet on which I was lazing, had moved. The star was not as close to the tree as it had been. Time, and the star, had moved on while I was lost in thought.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This was no surprise. All throughout the day I look at my watch or the clock on my computer and I’m surprised to see how many minutes have flown while I was working or daydreaming. But alone in the dark, the ability to mark the passage of time by the stars was somehow satisfying. An ancient pleasure.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The neighborhood grew quiet as everyone left their backyards to move indoors. The parade of people walking dogs </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">to the park </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">on the sidewalk in front of my house ended. The cats gave up chasing insects in the grass and were curled up beside my chair. My little dog was snoring at my feet.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I could, if I listened closely, hear the sounds of traffic in the distance; a siren wailed somewhere downtown, a plane flew overhead. Slowly, steadily, the moved star to the other tree. And then it was gone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Making my way indoors, putting away the cushion so the cats wouldn’t take the chair as soon as I left it, picking up the book I’d been reading that afternoon, I closed the door behind me. But n a way I could never have been when I was a girl, and was often too busy to comprehend when I was a young mother, I was aware of the sweetest gift: time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at </i><a href="mailto:catmillsap@gmail.com"><span style="color: #011172; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i>catmillsap@gmail.com</i></b></span></a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-80978029502878880932014-08-04T16:17:00.000-07:002014-08-04T16:17:46.038-07:00100th Anniversary of The Great War<br />
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<i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span>Photo: Members of the A.E.F 316th Engineers march into Ypres, Belgium. Taken by a soldier from Havre, Montana.</i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Today is the <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/homeplanet/2014/feb/03/travel-great-war-centennial-1914-1918-flanders-fields/">100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War</a>. On August 4, 1914, England declared war on Germany.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The war was sure to be over by Christmas so men rushed to join up, to get in on the fun before it was over.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But that was before the battle of Marne. Before the first of the three major battles at Ypres. Before the first trenches were dug in September.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Christmas 1914 came and went. There was the 9-month horror of Gallipoli. The Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine. The battle of Verdun took 700,00 lives and at the end of Battle of the Somme more than one million men were dead. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The “little” war didn’t end for another four years. </span>Men lived in filth and unimaginable conditions in deep trenches, dug in between fields of barbed wire and death and they died in horrifying numbers while gaining little ground. <span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The United States entered in 1917 and in the remaining 18 months of the war we lost more than 100,000 men, almost half due to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By the time peace was restored by the 1918 Armstice, parts of France and Belgium were a wasteland and more than 37 million men, women and children were dead due to injury, disease and starvation. Countless more were broken, "shellshocked" by the experience.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve been reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Guns-August-Pulitzer-Prize-Winning/dp/0345476093"><i>The Guns of August,</i> </a>Barbara W. Tuchman’s Pulitzer prize-winning book on the events--the posturing, baiting, catastrophic bungling and arrogance of leaders--that brought about the beginning of the end of the world as it had been. A war that was so terrible, so brutal and, with the toxic combination of modern weaponry and archaic tactics, so inhumane, that by the time it ended an entire generation was lost. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The book is fascinating. It’s well-researched and incredibly well written--Tuchman’s style is fluid and eloquent and her narrative brings the events leading up to the declarations of war on August 4, 1914 to life. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But it is impossible to read it and not draw some chilling parallels to the modern political machinations in the headlines. Tyrants, bullies and zealots didn’t disappear when the trenches were filled. Before the ink was dry in 1918, the seeds of the next great war had been planted. And the wars that followed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And here we are today, a century later, not much wiser. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">History is fascinating but what it ultimately reveals about human nature is discouraging. To some, power alone is never enough. They want a war. They need a war. The lesson that never seems to stick is that no one ever really wins a war, not even the victor. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here it is, another August, <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/homeplanet/2014/feb/03/travel-great-war-centennial-1914-1918-flanders-fields/">100 years after the First World War.</a> Just a few weeks ago we marked the</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;"> 70th anniversary</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> of D-Day, another series of epic battles in another part of France during the <i>Second </i></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>World War</i>. And yet dangerous lines are still being drawn in the sand, secret alliances are being formed and deals are still being struck behind closed doors. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I’ve had to put the book down for a few days. I needed a breath of fresh air because every word reminds me that even as we make history, we never seem to let it teach us anything.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at </i><a href="mailto:catmillsap@gmail.com"><span style="color: #011172; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i>catmillsap@gmail.com</i></b></span></a></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-79255055872337428102014-08-01T10:25:00.000-07:002014-08-01T12:27:44.069-07:00Royal Canadian Air Force to the Rescue<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On my July cruise from Seattle to Alaska aboard the <a href="http://www.carnival.com/cruise-ships/carnival-miracle.aspx">Carnival Miracle</a>, (read more about that <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/homeplanet/2014/jul/18/travel-alaska-cruise-brings-tale-whale/">here</a>) there were two medical emergencies that required assistance from both the U.S. Coast Guard and the <a href="http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/index.page">Royal Canadian Air Force</a>. In both cases passengers were transported from the ship to hospitals on shore. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The first was pretty straightforward. A <a href="http://www.uscg.mil/">U. S. Coast Guard</a> boat pulled alongside the Miracle near the entrance to Tracy Arm Fjord and the passenger walked down the gangplank and onto the boat. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The other was not so simple. In dense fog and battling 25 knot winds, the <a href="http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/19-wing/442-squadron.page">422 Transport and Rescue Squadron</a>’s CH-149 Cormorant helicopter crew, using night vision goggles, had to hover just above the bow, lower a cable and a diver to the deck, secure the cable, hoist one of the ship's medical staff to the copter followed by the sick passenger and then the diver. I watched from a deck just below the helicopter and it was intense. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The airlift procedure took almost an hour and the pilot's skill was impressive. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">With thousands of people on a floating hotel, it's not uncommon to have medical emergencies arise. I've been on ships that had to detour to meet an ambulance or medical transport, but standing in the wind and fog on the deck of the Miracle as the helicopter hovered overhead was a new experience. I hope I’m never in need of that kind of rescue, but, if it happens, it's nice to know the experts are at the ready.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-87681929566454052142014-07-31T14:24:00.002-07:002014-07-31T14:26:42.954-07:00Just born this way<br />
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I found this 2nd Grade letter in some papers my grandparents had saved. I'm guessing we were told to write a letter to our <i>parrunts</i> and I was living with them at the time.<br />
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I have no memory of writing the letter so I don't know what was on my mind at the time, but after formally inquiring about my sister and brother (who lived there with me, as a matter of fact) I got right to the point. It would would seem there was <i>waerk</i> to be done and I was willing to do it. I would do the work like Daniel Boone. </div>
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This morning I sat down to make a to-do list. And even as I wrote it, I was aware that more than half the list was made up of projects I've assigned myself, things no one is making me do. </div>
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Are worker bees born or made? I guess it's in my DNA. I can't change who I am. But I did change one thing. A year or so after I wrote this note, when someone checked my birth certificate, I learned I'd been spelling my name wrong. My mother had forgotten that my Anne had an 'e' on the end.<br />
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Ok, enough about the letter. I need to get back to work.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-72932854774201157412014-07-27T23:10:00.000-07:002014-07-28T07:50:05.066-07:00A room of my own and all the time in the world<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> I want a tree house. I want a play house. I want a fort with a cardboard sign on the door that says <b>Keep Out</b>. I want what Virginia said. I want a room of my own.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> On the surface, it’s a ridiculous wish. After all, now that the children are gone, and the youngest is either away at school or away at her job as a camp counselor, I have the whole house to myself every day without anyone here to distract me. I can work in any room--or all of them if I want to--but it isn’t a longing for space that creeps up on me. It’s a longing for my <i>own </i>space.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Anyone who works from home knows how it is. The rooms around me are full of distraction. Too many years of being the cook and bottle washer, of fitting my work into the time leftover after the family’s needs were met, have left me struggling to separate myself from that previous life. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I sit down to write and suddenly remember the laundry that needs to go into the dryer or on the line. I need to edit but it’s 3pm and I have no idea what we’ll have for dinner. I want to sit quietly and think but the sofa is covered in dog hair, again, and I know if I don’t get it now it will only get worse. The grandbaby wants to come to Nana’s and Nana drops everything.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I do a lot of traveling these days. I spend a lot of time in hotel rooms or staterooms aboard ship. If I’m not exhausted, I can get a lot done there and it finally dawned on me that I’m more productive because I don’t feel pulled to keep house or take care of anyone else.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I put my towels back on the rack and my belongings in the suitcase or closet. Beyond that, my time is my own. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Like anyone who transitions from one life to another, I’m slowly retraining. I’m working on breaking the habit of writing at night, a necessity when I had a house full of children. Now, I keep banker’s hours. Well, I try.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I remind myself the world won’t end if my husband comes home and has to make a sandwich or salad for dinner. It doesn’t matter to him, I’m the one who feels guilty if we end up with scrambled eggs and toast.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Now that it’s summer I keep thinking about the big Hackberry tree in my backyard when I was a girl. It was ancient and its limbs sprawled away from the massive trunk, casting shade across my grandparent’s house. The remains of my mother’s treehouse were still in the crook of the two biggest limbs, a platform of splintery boards that curled at the ends. Once my weekend or summer chores were done, usually dusting, watering plants or sweeping the front porch, I would shimmy up the slats nailed to the tree, often with a book tucked under my arm, and hide away. My younger brother and sister couldn’t follow me and my grandmother, probably relieved I wasn’t hanging on her heels, left me alone.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="letter-spacing: 0px; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">From that perch I could watch the world go by. Or daydream. Or lose myself in my book.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I think that's why I want my treehouse back. I want my own playhouse. I want a room of my own where I can hide away with nothing but my laptop and an idea and all the time in the world. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at </i><span style="color: #011172; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i><a href="mailto:catmillsap@gmail.com">catmillsap@gmail.com</a></i></b></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-25805742189085293402014-06-13T04:02:00.001-07:002014-06-13T04:03:18.195-07:00Navigating the Northwest on the S.S. Legacy<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOZJ9FxtGEun0PLL9Iqaa4d7nYNSA6xWqIxzPeZ7YJe-VPRJWPp9vuwVu4cJqHyoclpVn4UviIxLD92G3U_IM1_xBcP-kbjlbPVYICx567_K8PZ-ek11h269RoIbSbgbmsPdujbZWWng/s640/blogger-image-373857047.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOZJ9FxtGEun0PLL9Iqaa4d7nYNSA6xWqIxzPeZ7YJe-VPRJWPp9vuwVu4cJqHyoclpVn4UviIxLD92G3U_IM1_xBcP-kbjlbPVYICx567_K8PZ-ek11h269RoIbSbgbmsPdujbZWWng/s640/blogger-image-373857047.jpg"></a></div></div><div><br></div>I've driven along the great Columbia River and I've looked out on the gorge from the observation car of an Antrak train. I've flown over the river in a plane and by helicopter. All of these modes give a great view of the river but until a few weeks ago I'd never actually been on the river. <div><br><div>That changed when I boarded Un-Cruise Adventures S.S.Legacy in Portland for a 7-day cruise up the Columbia and Snake Rivers. </div><div><br></div><div>The small-ship Heritage excursion was much more than a week on the water. It was an immersion into the history and culture of the Northwest. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQA4jU5PF9C2BjryuEJD_Ju4_1TR24M3bU5TCZWnwvup7_XwZ1C8jZWL6kOKKU3vI7EscT-pbE6CFXuWrZrWFIFwQpy3b2qE5QogUSWMZcRmyiiAhjFjctnZMC3KQkWJpEPryxYYAAQ/s640/blogger-image-217545495.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQA4jU5PF9C2BjryuEJD_Ju4_1TR24M3bU5TCZWnwvup7_XwZ1C8jZWL6kOKKU3vI7EscT-pbE6CFXuWrZrWFIFwQpy3b2qE5QogUSWMZcRmyiiAhjFjctnZMC3KQkWJpEPryxYYAAQ/s640/blogger-image-217545495.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>I've traveled with Un-Cruise Adventures before, on a similar small-ship excursion in Alaska. I wasn't sure what to expect on the river cruise but I quickly realized I was going to have the same kind of immersive, authentic, experience. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDGJzVfZihYIiAlqKb8Qrkby5UCBLVCZp_c8XdHjdbeWwsQ1moJ4P7jq1eNymHzdbk8qluMOYis1xaSZDjjuZdSlNzbQ1DdC2uovZ3ICN4Ur9cbs5GMTDGB8s5YED4RwBJyLK4bQ26BQ/s640/blogger-image-1927909191.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDGJzVfZihYIiAlqKb8Qrkby5UCBLVCZp_c8XdHjdbeWwsQ1moJ4P7jq1eNymHzdbk8qluMOYis1xaSZDjjuZdSlNzbQ1DdC2uovZ3ICN4Ur9cbs5GMTDGB8s5YED4RwBJyLK4bQ26BQ/s640/blogger-image-1927909191.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>Unless you've experienced the dramatic changes in the landscape as you move from the Pacific Northwest to the interior of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, it's hard to comprehend. </div><div><br></div><div>As we passed through the series of locks and dams that have tamed the wild, fierce, river I heard people talking about the view. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlVerb1gv6lvwHN6at54MC6nuWazcz8VPUDRohZVHxONICwZDxmx2bKn937yCKa7mTnxWA_ndkC8KStWw0qKjO6WcJwjzim5tZVG4FD3cV_oQrEfWmZ1m26b9rH5qXO5oYR7XIsgDyFA/s640/blogger-image-520030640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlVerb1gv6lvwHN6at54MC6nuWazcz8VPUDRohZVHxONICwZDxmx2bKn937yCKa7mTnxWA_ndkC8KStWw0qKjO6WcJwjzim5tZVG4FD3cV_oQrEfWmZ1m26b9rH5qXO5oYR7XIsgDyFA/s640/blogger-image-520030640.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>With a maximum of 92 passengers, the S.S.Legacy is intimate and informal. The food is outstanding and each day as the chef announced the meals for the day, it just seemed to get better and better. (This is another Un-Cruise hallmark.)</div><div>Wine and spirits are included in the cost of the cruise and each evening's cocktail hour was a great way to get to know the other passengers. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJSAmBriA2I0rPI-wwzm6zRlHb7mVIKdZoraNUUE2McX5M2wCNZ6sm1ePo2pO2KLITonGSB1rYw5K5ewfgHlXUeTqHewG2xJv0BVP_-hz4QxtGobu9e2MCjFDyncb0LMIl0Umd7SAFSQ/s640/blogger-image--1982381252.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJSAmBriA2I0rPI-wwzm6zRlHb7mVIKdZoraNUUE2McX5M2wCNZ6sm1ePo2pO2KLITonGSB1rYw5K5ewfgHlXUeTqHewG2xJv0BVP_-hz4QxtGobu9e2MCjFDyncb0LMIl0Umd7SAFSQ/s640/blogger-image--1982381252.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>Captain Dano Quinn's open bridge policy added another dimension to the trip. My husband loften walked up there after dinner to sit and talk with the crew as they navigated. </div><div><br></div><div>We took advantage of the ship's library and I noticed quite a few others refreshing their Lewis and Clark history while we followed in the footsteps of the Corps of Discovery. </div><div><br></div><div><div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">Each day brought a new encounter. </div><div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">From the Native Americans who lived there for centuries before the first fur traders ventured into the area. From Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, to the men women and children who traveled the Oregon Trail, we explored museums and historic sites. Costumed interpreters on board brought to life the lives of historical figures and everyday people whose life stories were entwined in the development of modern life in the region.</div><div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><br></div><div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioGp0_171a-G6ofJAolhTX8hSbjUQd8f_cLsUf-D0SX1Fw_Kh_p6SAhxE-4OSHQaLKuxSdwSIuGR4Qgioqyn_rHuwsBbT4POete4VW6qVjhHZv1S2Geq43qlIEGNvxCOYm6sSI0Goq0w/s640/blogger-image--60517921.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioGp0_171a-G6ofJAolhTX8hSbjUQd8f_cLsUf-D0SX1Fw_Kh_p6SAhxE-4OSHQaLKuxSdwSIuGR4Qgioqyn_rHuwsBbT4POete4VW6qVjhHZv1S2Geq43qlIEGNvxCOYm6sSI0Goq0w/s640/blogger-image--60517921.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">By the time we returned, I knew much more than I'd known when we departed and I had a deeper, richer, understanding of my own back yard. </div><div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><br></div><div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "> </div></div><div><br></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-73983955911257696362014-05-26T12:09:00.001-07:002014-05-26T13:30:27.350-07:00Un-Cruising the Columbia River<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTM7wsLnGhBvJs0bKOYTO2L3dAM5BQ70BGEZLhS5PH-SER48usmRlakiV_iqxqCKQpAmYB1yqm_KitKRF9ovd8s9aYgOQNc4k04PjuKTyyT79KKt4DvDhL6WN4sQCugDiEvKfD82HJmg/s640/blogger-image--1970425923.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTM7wsLnGhBvJs0bKOYTO2L3dAM5BQ70BGEZLhS5PH-SER48usmRlakiV_iqxqCKQpAmYB1yqm_KitKRF9ovd8s9aYgOQNc4k04PjuKTyyT79KKt4DvDhL6WN4sQCugDiEvKfD82HJmg/s640/blogger-image--1970425923.jpg"></a></div>There is something to be said for being a tourist in your own back yard. Especially when you live in a place like the Northwest, a region rich with a diversity of stunning landscapes. <div><br></div><div>That's what drew me to the Un-Cruise Adventures Columbia River and Snake River cruise aboard the S.S.Legacy. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7tnfgjVoEpqgPnF5nZJpvBM0dk-zzQNkLhEvMXSzzdYW_3zAnxiEIZvfUq1wxebsZw6bd9TNlvxfTC0YGQHNfh_oFB2mRdHFjTt2BU3pwcLGi8rxjYvfqyNSTVMxfuVDCt-ba0CiEfg/s640/blogger-image--1190918891.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7tnfgjVoEpqgPnF5nZJpvBM0dk-zzQNkLhEvMXSzzdYW_3zAnxiEIZvfUq1wxebsZw6bd9TNlvxfTC0YGQHNfh_oFB2mRdHFjTt2BU3pwcLGi8rxjYvfqyNSTVMxfuVDCt-ba0CiEfg/s640/blogger-image--1190918891.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>I've travelled the route between Portland and Spokane many times. I've gone by train, automobile and by air. The missing mode of transportation was water. I'd never navigated the river by boat. </div><div><br></div><div>This week I'm cruising the Columbia and a portion of the Snake River on a beautiful 1890s replica coastal steamer. </div><div><br></div><div>So far, the trip has been wonderful. We're following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark and I'm in the company of smart, adventurous, enthusiastic travelers from across the United States. They ask good questions and have interesting stories to share. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO5A0LRERfZKNY8g7V2s43dkQ4s_RpKVG-2I6kVVnCi7M-glK-U3Udr7RlGg2LFm0SGywLchs55WKJQz_RLPdchW2OnPSagZpXPLKFfsnPdQkEqkdvNS83tlpS985TrCjn3OimvExxhA/s640/blogger-image--985760859.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO5A0LRERfZKNY8g7V2s43dkQ4s_RpKVG-2I6kVVnCi7M-glK-U3Udr7RlGg2LFm0SGywLchs55WKJQz_RLPdchW2OnPSagZpXPLKFfsnPdQkEqkdvNS83tlpS985TrCjn3OimvExxhA/s640/blogger-image--985760859.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>This is the third day and we've passed through four locks and watched the landscape change from the verdant green of the Pacific Northwest to the arid high desert of the east side of the Cascades Range. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMT8z6yrEVDEpKm_b0WgGQKeZ8fvcoHDU5uTytz7C2CikxSBSxiow2lUgEB-bZMcWOh27nD1A8XahPvcN9vtikaQpw73A7SjeQebzhteZVpn9VjykBlI67niVekH3sNhz7xVOnr0ElAw/s640/blogger-image--1705458903.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMT8z6yrEVDEpKm_b0WgGQKeZ8fvcoHDU5uTytz7C2CikxSBSxiow2lUgEB-bZMcWOh27nD1A8XahPvcN9vtikaQpw73A7SjeQebzhteZVpn9VjykBlI67niVekH3sNhz7xVOnr0ElAw/s640/blogger-image--1705458903.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>We spent time off the boat yesterday, exploring Multnomah Falls and the power house and fish ladders of the Bonneville Dam. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimyfJuHatYf_57ERoQHvtSEo8Yw89LvqSjMb5XcqjQPFTibbkJVmUFxl9C3hth2ZcGqNGJMCfIhbYEkjCB66T_EXpOGsMteTJbofuAfU65Fa5CP9hVcC3m7Nkj-6NeOUmg5LQt56bkAg/s640/blogger-image--1595180396.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimyfJuHatYf_57ERoQHvtSEo8Yw89LvqSjMb5XcqjQPFTibbkJVmUFxl9C3hth2ZcGqNGJMCfIhbYEkjCB66T_EXpOGsMteTJbofuAfU65Fa5CP9hVcC3m7Nkj-6NeOUmg5LQt56bkAg/s640/blogger-image--1595180396.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Today, we're heading to the junction of the Snake River. It's been a great trip so far. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-8941519941208610402014-05-12T10:24:00.001-07:002014-05-12T10:26:54.847-07:00(Not) Far From the Crowd: Cruise Zen<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzdxIAJZUaFfkeuheHbCgNl-NwmVXsieHSt-UUF0Ymnlztx_0DE_iNHLBqoHxIIBv0MFl7PUw6SGKwCZPBLGDbTdZ5ZQPG1BXWwKcUuskqp-wpVSXDXXil6XB14IytEVZ76eGyIQqyAw/s640/blogger-image-1347352777.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzdxIAJZUaFfkeuheHbCgNl-NwmVXsieHSt-UUF0Ymnlztx_0DE_iNHLBqoHxIIBv0MFl7PUw6SGKwCZPBLGDbTdZ5ZQPG1BXWwKcUuskqp-wpVSXDXXil6XB14IytEVZ76eGyIQqyAw/s640/blogger-image-1347352777.jpg"></a></div><br></div>I'm doing a story on themed cruises and that has me in Miami onboard the Carnival Ecstasy for the Martina McBride performance as part of the Carnival Live concert series. <div><br></div><div>The ship departs this afternoon for a four-day cruise with stops at Key West and Cozumel. <div><br></div><div>After checking in and boarding at noon, I have a little time to kill until my room's ready at 1:30. I could have gone to the lunch buffet on the Lido Deck but I'm still full from breakfast. So, I looked around for a quiet spot and I found one: the Blue Saphire Lounge. This is where Martina will be performing on Thursday night. It will look a lot different then. </div></div><div><br></div><div>One of the most common reasons people give for not cruising is the idea of being in such close quarters with the 2,000-3,000 people on board. That's valid. I don't care for crowds either. Just ask my family. I have a Do-Not-Disturb bubble around me the size of Manhattan.</div><div> </div><div>But I love to cruise because I've discovered it's always possible to find a quiet corner somewhere. The crowds are on the Lido Deck or around the pool. When I need a break, I go to another part of the ship. </div><div><br></div><div>Like now. </div><div><br></div><div>While the rest of the passengers board the ship, I'll enjoy the peace and quite and get a little work done. </div><div><br></div><div>Like this. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-58301611662930524052014-02-17T12:50:00.000-08:002014-02-18T09:04:02.632-08:00What Comes and Goes: Organizing Your Travel Essentials<br>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> There is a set of five drawers built into the wall of the guest room of my 1940‘s Cape Cod house. That’s where I stash all my travel things.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Whenever I pack for a trip, I know I can find what I need in one of those drawers and what I pick up along the way comes home with me and is stashed there. That means, after a busy year of travel, the drawers are stuffed, crammed with luggage tags, eye masks, adapters, hotel amenities, little cosmetic bags from airlines, tubes of lip balm and toothpaste, refillable 3 oz bottles and all the other travel-related odds and ends one collects.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> It’s interesting what we rely on to make travel more comfortable and what we bring back with us. I have a stash of airline socks from overnight international flights and tiny sewing kits from hotels; one makes long flights more comfortable and the other keeps me supplied with spare buttons. I always keep one or two hotel shower caps in my cosmetic bag and I’ve used them for much more than keeping my hair dry. They can wrap a sandwich, protect my camera from the rain or hold shells and sea glass from the beach. I always take a spare when I check out.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> One drawer holds the compression bags that help me fit more in a suitcase, crumpled boarding passes, a luggage scale, a travel-sized hair dryer and flat iron and--amid a jumble of camera chargers-- little notebooks and discarded makeup. Opening another I find city maps and sunglasses and little souvenirs I’d forgotten I bought.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> January and February are good months to reorganize and get rid of the clutter. I put on a movie or catch up on an entire season of <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/downtonabbey/">Downton Abbey</a> and go through each drawer, organizing the things I need and tossing what is no longer useful. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I sort through the various quart-size resealable plastic bags left over from trips, each with one or two half-empty bottles of mouthwash or hand lotion. I pull out the all the extra tiny shampoo and conditioner bottles and miniature bars of soap from favorite hotels to give to my daughters or donate to programs like <a href="http://www.aaawa.com/about/newsroom/relations/soapforhope/">AAA’s Soap for Hope.</a></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> By the time I’m done there is room in each drawer. I’m up to day with the Dowager Countess and Lord and Lady Grantham’s headstrong girls. Things are tidy and easy to find and I’m <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/homeplanet/2013/jun/10/travel-five-cheap-tricks-packing-pro/">organized for another year </a>of adventures.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Cheryl-Anne Millsap is a travel writer whose audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” (available at Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane) and can be reached at </i><a href="mailto:catmillsap@gmail.com"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i>catmillsap@gmail.com</i></b></span></a></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49373141813828224.post-63816299515834945422014-02-06T19:45:00.003-08:002014-02-06T19:45:50.670-08:00The Weight of Words<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Lately, I have been editing my collection of books, thinning the shelves, lightening the load of reading material I’ve accumulated over the last decade or so.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Each day I take an empty shopping bag, the sturdy fabric kind with strong handles, down to the storeroom in my basement and I bring it back up full of books. I take the heavy bag to the “used book” counter at the bookstore downtown. They take what they want, give me store credit and I donate the rest to a favorite charity. This has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Over and over again I descend to the storeroom and return with as much as I can carry away. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I have never been one to resist a good book. It’s not in my DNA. I pick them up at garage sales, at bookstores--new and used-- at airports and library sales. I’m swayed by an illustration, a subject, a cover, an author. I hold the book in my hands and in my mind’s eye I can actually see myself reading it, swathed in afghans, sipping tea, reclining on the chaise lounge in my room. Each book holds the promise of a few moments to myself, the chance that it will improve me, educate me, enthrall me. So I am sold. Then, the book comes home to sit beside my chair, gather dust beside my bed until it is read and, finally, rest on the shelves in my basement. Sometimes I buy a book because someone I know might like it but I either forget to give it to them or realize it wasn’t the right gift after all, and on the shelf it goes.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Every once in a while, when the weight of books becomes too much for the shelves ------and my conscience--to support, I hold myself accountable for the clutter and decide what I will keep for a bit longer and what I will let go.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Some of the books on those shelves are old friends. They are my family. Those books will stay there until I’m the one carried out of the house. Others were impossible to resist at the time, but they’ve lost their appeal. Some were fun to read but not something I want to keep forever. Others--the travel guides and how-to books, for instance--are obsolete and others are no longer up-to-date. Into the bag they all go. Carrying one bag at a time up the stairs, I feel like I’m secretly tunneling my way out a fortress of words.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course, there is that store credit. And I have already brought home one or two new books from my book-selling trips. But that’s something to worry about in a few years. When the shelves fill up again.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><a href="http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/homeplanet/">Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s weekly column</a> is published by Spokesman.com. Her audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” (available at Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane) and can be reached at </i><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i><a href="mailto:catmillsap@gmail.com">catmillsap@gmail.com</a></i></b></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11694538233236194768noreply@blogger.com0