Tracking myself

The snow is very telling; I know who looks in my windows at night. Deer tracks run everywhere, and rabbit tracks, and something larger than a deer. Could there be a shy elk in my neighborhood? There could be. Believe me, I have a tracking chart. I know the difference between a mountain lion track and a German Shepherd track. Shepherds, like wolves, have four toes. Mountain lions have four also. You have to tell the difference between the canines and the cats by the pads. The canine pad track is like a triangle, while the mountain lion is more like a wide trapezoid. The toes are much further apart. So far, no mountain lions. And no bears of course, because they are asleep.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could track our lives and see where we had been the way we see animal tracks in the snow. Memory is subjective, tracks are real. No, the deer didn't run that way- look, their tracks are here. No revision is possible, just the facts, Maam, please.

Maybe it's a good thing, though, that we can't see our tracks, because we'd spend too much time looking at them and playing the blame game. I am all for looking forward and trying to achieve something, rather than analyzing something to death. Where's the achievement in that?

Here's to the newly revived Martin Luther King National Day of Service coming up. I know we all have our pet charities and causes, but on the 19th, we all get to do something extra to jump start our nation into conscious awakeness. Yes, I say awakeness, rather than awareness. We need to take our brains out of our everyday separate realities that we have created via our Blogs (yes, me too), our texting, our iPod collections, our television shows, our movies, our video games, our digital games, our "I'm ignoring the reality around me and creating my own" games- and see the world around us, of which we are part. And DO something.

My resolution for 2009: Strive not to acquire, but to achieve. List not what I want to own, but what I want to do. Buy not much, do much more.

So I have my lists of what I want to achieve, and I am seeing that any small thing that I do to work towards a goal makes me feel just as good as going out and acquiring something new for myself.

I finish writing a new poem or song or story or novel, rather than buying a new whatever, and I feel just as good. In fact, I feel better. I am sorry that the GNP will now go down a bit more, but really, this spending spree just has to end. Not that I've been a BIG spender, just that spending has to be conscious (I must wake up), and saving. . . OMG, what's THAT? . . . . has to begin. And if I'm busy DOING, then maybe I won't mind saving.

And while we're on it, I don't mean following the slick color department store sales sheets that entice with. . . "Buy one, get one free." That's saving 50% of what was too much in the first place. But, as my grandmother pointed out to me long ago, in the case of sales like this, "You have to spend to save." What I'm talking about (cringe) is refraining from going to the sales at all. I mean not looking at the sales sheets in the papers. I mean, only buying something when I absolutely need it and it's on a list. Wow. I am ever so glad that I can't see all the tracks I have made to malls, discount stores, home improvement stores, pet stores, lingerie stores, cosmetic stores, shoe stores, craft supply stores, office supply stores, and now horse tack stores (really, a bright pink halter for my horse was necessary?)etc, etc, when I didn't NEED something. It's a sad revelation to know that shopping has become THE main pastime in the United States for the millions of unfit who are not sweating it out on some sports team or gym (me) or who don't have some purpose that takes up all their time so they cannot go shopping. Time to change. I think I'll change into a mushroom-- that's a useful fungus. Or not.

Seriously, I am excited about this. I am trying to tear my consciousness away from all the ads, all the ads, all the ads, and become myself in this screaming world of materialism. And I think I'm doing it, although I had to bury myself in Montana to get to a place of introspection and honesty. Honestly, it's been enlightening. I have enough. More than enough. There are 400 homeless people in the Flathead Valley- many are young familes with jobs. They sleep at night in the homeless shelter in Kalispell.

OK, on a lighter note, the horsies are great, thank you for asking. They like the snow, and yes, the fat little pony can move, which she does quite well. Check the video, and thanks for reading. And no, I won't go shopping with you.

Back to the Basics on Christmas

So much has happened since I've last written, everything from President George Bush handily ducking shoes to Israel going nuts on the Gaza Strip. But, through all the political BS, here I am in the cold freeze of winter. I really recommend finding a cold climate to chill in for awhile, it really calms the hot nerves of uncertainty. Suddenly, keeping the house warm, the drive cleared, the chain saw and the generator ready, and the cupboard stocked are all that matter. Sharing with the neighbors and the extended family- from rides to recipes to snowplows to saws to sewing machines- becomes the focus, and the national news may not be turned on for days, depending on how much snow is falling.

This part of Northwest Montana doesn't have enough money to keep the roads as cleared as they do in New England, so it took a bit of getting used to. The family has spent more than two thousand dollars on three vehicles worth of snow tires to get us around safely this winter. But one broken bone in the hospital, caused by sliding off the road, would far exceed that, and we haven't slid off the roads, though lots of people have.

The economy out here has been trounced. The aluminum plant is shutting down, a sand and gravel and cement company has shut down, the plywood companies have laid off, the tooling companies have laid off, the subdividing and building business has slowed to an idle. People are sober and grim, especially young teens and college students. They've never heard their parents sound so desperate. For Christmas, we decided our major presents would be donations to some of the local institutions that are now faltering. We donated dozens of turkey Christmas dinners to the Samaritan House, the homeless shelter and soup kitchen in Kalispell. The director told me, after showing me the super clean facility, that there are 400 homeless people in Flathead County, most of them young couples with children.

We had a fun happy Christmas with a Charlie Brown tree cut from our property. The family came over for present opening, a turkey dinner and an afternoon of sliding with our nine year old granddaughter. We made a rule that you had to scream all the way down the hill. We didn't drive a mile. We didn't go see new movies that were opening. We didn't move from our own little world. How relaxing. As a challenge to being laid back, I wore my PJ's all day, even under my snow suit out in the fresh cold air.

The day after Christmas, we received the e-mailed announcement from Kazakhstan that our son and his wife had a successful court day, and were granted permission to adopt the little two-year old girl they have been visiting for three weeks. Now, their four year old boy will have a little sister. And I will have a new granddaughter. I cannot wait to meet her. What a wonderful piece of holiday news! She will be arriving in this country in a few weeks, and her new Grampie and I will be traveling to Cape Cod to welcome her. She's from a land that is as cold as it is here.

It's still snowing out there. The horses love it, they gallop around knee deep in soft white stuff, and the dogs come in dragging snowballs on their fur. We have boots, mittens, and snow pants drying in rotation. We have good books to read, and modest little jobs that will pull us through. And it is beautiful beautiful beautiful.

Check out Grampie sliding, below.

Good things and bad things

Don't be afraid to buy a tree for Christmas. They are a "green" cash crop, and the farmers that live near me are meticulous in their care of the trees. They've got the rotation down to a science, and I am amazed by the precision of different sizes of trees growing in different fields. These farm grown trees are much better for the planet than factory produced artifical trees, believe me.

Happy "I did it" day to me. I have completed my eighth edit on my first novel, and at last, after four years, I am satisfied and shopping for an agent. The work has left my little computer here in Bigfork, and been electronically transmitted to several agents in Manhattan. I now have visions of my novel flitting around the skyscrapers of Manhattan like a little yellow finch, and I wonder who is going to open the window and let it in. But, it is off. And so, I am moving on to the NEXT novel. In the meantime. . .

So much is happening! So many questions asked and answered. I couldn't sleep on Friday night, wondering if anyone in the nation could figure out what needed to be done to save us from a re-run of the Great Depression. And then our Pres To Be made his Saturday remarks on infrastructure and education and other avenues of redemption. And so, now I can sleep again, because Obama has named avenues, which I hope are open to travel soon.

In Montana. . . always a startling assortment of news. W.R. Grace has been on the front page lately. Yes, easterners, the W.R. Grace of A Civil Action, where John Travolta played high profile attorney Jan Schlichtmann. The chemical company was accused and found guilty of dumping toxic waste in Woburn, MA, and causing the poisoning of drinking water and the deaths of children. Remember that movie? 1999? Great movie.

Well. . . . some things you just don't move away from. Here in North West Montana there is a town named Libby. W.R.Grace had a vermiculite (sort of light and fluffy type of mineral related to asbestos) mine there, knew that the substance was dangerous, never told the miners, and bagged the stuff up and shipped it around the country as insulation, called Zonolite. I remember my Dad kneeling in the attic under and eaves and pouring bags of Zonolite down between the studs of our New England farmhouse. It was dusty. The mine was in operation for 70 years. The EPA knew all about it, too.

A government study that ended in 1998 showed that death by asbestos related causes was 40 to 80 times higher in Libby than expected. The cemetery was full of former miners and their family members. Two hundred deaths are attributed to the mine's activities. The whole town was covered with dust, you see. It took a major battle to have the place declared a super fund site, but it finally was, in 2001, by a reluctant publicty seeking governor. She had been so pro-industry and anti-people that she really had to be held to the fire and face the people of Libby.

Well, la de da, this past week a class action suit has been settled, and old WR will be paying out millions of dollars (140 million in all) to a trust fund to pay people who can prove and have the receipts and/or the empty bags that they used Zonolite in their homes, and their health has been damaged. The catch is, each family or household can only receive a maximum of around five thousand dollars. Our EPA has made no formal announcements that the time bomb of Zonolite has been poured into millions of homes across the US. You just have to know about it.

Other news from Montana: (sorry, but it seems to be all about death right now)

The full reintroduced and growing wolf pack in the Hog Heaven area, south west of Kalispell, had to be killed this week. They were hungry, and had killed cattle and llamas over the last two months. More than a dozen wolves were shot. There was no place to relocate them to, given the wolf growth across the state. Sad, but the ranchers aren't sad.

And finally, some good news about death. Montana just made history by being the third state in the nation (Washington and Oregon are the other two) to de-criminalize physician assisted suicide in the case of terminal illness. Ten years ago on Cape Cod, I remember how much my mother suffered for months after she couldn't even stand, couldn't even lift her hands up off her chest. And how she begged for mercy. But it was illegal to grant her wish, so she had to continue suffering in the most horrible manner as she died of lung cancer. And she never smoked. She just kept asking, "Why, why, why?" And so, BRAVO to Judge Dorothy McCarter, who issued her ruling on Friday that a mentally competent person who is terminally ill can now make a choice and die with dignity in the state of Montana. Of course, there will be a battle, and some people will want the suffering to continue. But, I am happy that finally, the legal system is beginning to see the light in realizing that it is inhumane to force people to go through extreme pain and debilitation at the end of their lives. Judge McCarter's decision was based on the right to privacy. The case had been brought by a man with terminal cancer who sued the state because he wanted to be able to make the choice as to when it would be the right time to die with dignity. BRAVO to the Judge.

It's been warm out here, with not much snow. That meant it was hard to track the deer during hunting season, which is now over. The deer take was down by 20 percent, the lowest take since 1997. (25,000 hunters with tags, 1543 deer taken, 147 elk) That means a lot of hungry deer will be munching in my yard this winter. Now if we could only get the wolves and the deer together. . . This management of large wild animals is quite the thing, and not easy. There are only about a million people here in the state, and the state is huge huge huge, and still, there can never be perfection.

The ski areas are not open yet. This is unheard of . . . the slowest snow start for over fifty years.

But. . . this weekend it is supposed to drop in temperature down to 35 degrees below zero. From 40 degrees today to there is a 75 degree drop that I don't want to be outside for. The water heaters are in the horse water, the barn is ready, I guess we are ready. Wow, Montana is really something.

Curious about Libby? Here's a good book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Z_wUNQuVXr4C&dq=Jan+Schlichtmann+Libby+Montana&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

Snow on the mountain tippity tops

It's December, and the turkey left-overs have been vanquished. I'm really going to miss the cranberry sauce that Little Bear made. First she took the hand-picked wild cranberries that had been sent to her by her Provincetown grandmother. (Thanks, Gramie M., that made the day!)Then Little Bear made up her own recipe transforming the berries into a delicious strained cranberry sauce that she poured into a heart mold. The whole thing was carried out in top secrecy with her Grandpa Jim, but it involved boiling, lots of sugar, a pinch of nutmeg, a half teaspoon of cinnamon, and two or three strainings. It was the best cranberry sauce I've ever tasted.

I'm already planning to cook another turkey, but I don't think I'll be able to replicate my granddaughter's secret recipe for the cranberry sauce.

In the meantime, we have heard the news that another little one may soon join the Cape Cod side of our family. This news has been a possibility for quite some time, but now I am finally typing our hopes out on my keyboard. My son and his wife and their son have recently traveled from Cape Cod to Kazakhstan (in the former USSR) to visit an orphanage for several weeks. A child has been chosen- a little girl. If all goes well, my grandson will have a sister soon, and we will be an international family. I know there are red tape hurdles to jump, so we are thinking positive thoughts for all to go smoothly, and I will be buying a birthday present for a little two year old in January. So much to look forward to!

Temperatures: Here in Bigfork, Montana: 19 degrees F. Wellfleet, Massachusetts: 51 degrees and breezy. Kazakhastan: 19 degrees. The members of our family are all sharing the same temperature today, while back home on Cape Cod, the weather is impishly warm.

Bigfork, MT: We've got snow on the mountain tops up in back of our house- this is called the Swan Range, which is to the east of Flathead Lake and Valley. Very pretty. Pretty high. Pretty cold. But down here, no snow in my yard yet. Yet is the key word.

Gratitude Stones

Happy Thanksgiving! In Bigfork, Montana, it's sunny, about 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and very very still. The bird is in the oven, the potatoes are ready to fire up, the pumpkin pies are made. There is a dusting of snow on the mountains behind our house- Way up there at the higher elevations, but nothing on our lawn. Yet. I'm looking back at the pictures of the snow from last winter, and know that it's on it's way. But not here yet. The down coats are ready, though. The snow blower and the chain saw are tuned up. The farrier took the horses' shoes off. The electric heaters are in the water troughs to keep the ice from forming. Winter tires are on the vehicles. Pantry is loaded with soup and rice and water and canned goods. Freezer is full of meat. Bank account, now that's another story, but today we'll be thankful for ALL we HAVE. And we'll sit down and know that all can be well with the world if we all want it to be.

Granddaughter Little Bear has collected pretty lake stones from Flathead Lake to use as Gratitude rocks. She recommends putting them in your pocket, and then when you feel them in there, immediately thinking of something to be grateful for. We all have one at our place setting, waiting for us. Peace.

Approaching Thanksgiving

You know, I do love to eat turkey. It smells so good baking in the oven, it tastes so good, and it makes such good soup. I don't know why we all wait for Thanksgiving to eat it. By the pound, it's a great buy.

I also love the live flock of wild turkeys that roams up and down my country road, so much so that I still buy my turkey to eat at the grocery store. Did you know that hen turkeys cheep? I can hear them cheeping as they come across my lawn hoping for handouts.

The flock of wild turkeys actually ate with my rooster every morning until Roo committed rooster suicide. (Jumped into the dog pen with a German Shepherd, cock-a-doodling until the very last moment, when the dog jumped up to catch him, and then wondered why Roo wouldn't play, as the feathers drifted through the air. Life is pretty harsh sometimes. And I really miss Roo. I never thought I would, but I do. He looked so good on my doorstep, with goose, his companion. You've heard of gender confusion. Roo had species confusion. I promise to write more about the deceased Roo soon.)

But the really cool thing that you've got to hear is the very loud gobble gobble gobble of the male turkey. He puffs himself up like a massive beach ball with feathers and comes trotting across the field with his harem of turkey hens, gobbling whenever there is a hint of danger. Danger: When our little black fiend of a rescue dog, Sammy runs out and chases them. Sammy loves to chase turkeys, but he doesn't really want to catch them. He just likes to see the great big huge birds launch suddenly, fly straight up into the air, and land in the the tippity top of the tallest pine trees. Now, that is REALLY something to see.

Ben Franklin was all for naming the turkey our national bird, rather than the eagle. I can see why. They are amazingly spry and strong in spite of their butterball reputations. And, they don't kill other animals to eat (except for the occasional worm) the way the eagles do. Don't get me wrong, eagles are beautiful. But they are also killers, they'll eat fish, mice, other birds, rabbits, cats, small dogs, kid goats- anything with blood, really. As long as they can get their talons into it and carry it away. Turkeys are way cool, not as stupid as the cartoons would have us think, taste good, and are good company. They are peaceful. Isn't that what we all want? Hooray for turkeys.

Purple State

It's three days after the elections, and Montana is still stunned. By what? By the fact that Obama won. The hunters bought into the NRA bull, and are waiting for Obama to come and rip their rifles right of their hands. It's hunting season. Check out these tasty venison steaks.

But there are plenty of ecstactic people about. I like to say that Montana is a purple state. We've got the unique Democrat Governor Schweitzer with his Lieutenant Gov. Bollinger- a Republican. They were re-elected, crushing their Republican opponent by 2 - 1.

McCain won in Montana , winning 50 percent of the vote, Obama winning 47 percent. Ron Paul of the Constitution Party caught 2 percent of the vote, and Ralph Nader, 1 percent. So, we are pretty purple. We have less then a million people, children included, living out here. Over 450,000 voted. We had three electoral votes, the same number of votes that Washington DC, Delaware, Rhode Island, North Dakota, Alaska and Hawaii had. Pretty small potatoes, so it was flattering that we were courted so nicely.

Obama visited Montana three times, including on the 4th of July. McCain and Palin never came by. Obama opened 18 offices around the state, and hired dozens of staffers.

Jim and I spent Election Eve in a Democrat bar called Reds (go figure) in Kalispell. It was amazing watching CNN on the big screen. New England went blue pretty fast. The cheers were heard all the way to the court house, where they were still voting until 8 PM Mountain Time, when Ohio turned blue. We were nervous though. Exit polls have been wrong before. We got kind of tired, and a little apprehensive. California was nowhere near coming in yet, so we booted twenty miles for home, hitting our living room just in time to hear McCain.

What a concession speech McCain gave, one of the best and most sincere of his campaign. Luckily, Palin was told not to speak. Golly gosh, didn't want to hear her. Then the pressure built to hear Obama's speech. The Grand Park field in Chicago was so crowded. I am old enough to remember Jon and Bobby Kennedy, and got very nervous about the tall buildings surrounding the park. Oprah and Jesse Jackson were crying along with thousands of other people in the field.

And then the future President of the United States stepped out with his family and wowwed us. He gave us all the audacity of hope. He was sober, he was serious, he was realistic, he was ready to work. A momentous moment in time, indeed. We called some relatives, because this was really it. People have been working for months to hear this speech, and man, was it good to hear.

We all got to hear it out here in Montana, and it was two hours earlier for us than it was for Cape Cod. The next day, people asked me, Is he really a Muslim? Wasn't he born in Kenya? Doesn't he have a fake birth certificate? Has he even voted in the Senate recently? They asked me, because I've been driving around with an Obama sticker on my bumper since pre-primaries; there is no Biden on my sticker, it was manufactured pre-Biden. I'm glad I could tell them all about Obama, and could even tell them to go to Google Maps to follow "Barack Obama's Journey" which is right there and ready to go and show. Very cool. And how he flew in to make key votes in the Senate. And how, of course he is an executive. Have you any idea of how much money he raised twenty dollar bill by twenty dollar bill, how many citizens he encouraged to sign up to vote, how many offices are set up around the country, how many people are working for him, and how he keeps tabs on all of it? Show me any other executive with that kind of energy going right now, please.

I spent Wednesday watching CSPAN and the positively wonderful reaction from around the world that we have elected Obama. It made me realize how very important we are to the whole world, and the importance of the meaning of the word American, and how it has changed so drastically in the past eight years.

It amazes me how people will believe anything when it's convenient. Now the McCain supporters have to play catch up, and they really want to know- who is our new president? Some are truly scared. But President Bush is relieved. He gets to hand over his wars to Obama. He had a thousand staffers out on the White House lawn yesterday, emotionally instructing them to do all possible to make this transition as easy as possible. It's the first time in decades that a president has been able to just hand over his wars and walk away from all the stress. Yes, I would say Bush is relieved.

And I am relieved. Jim and I had our passports out, and have been considering Canada, Costa Rica and Mexico as our country slowly tricked away from us through the Bush years. Now, the audicity of hope is upon us, and we're staying put.