A Gathering of Friends

Hygge. It's a Danish word that roughly means "eating and drinking and being together with friends". We don't have any such word in the English language, and life for many people seems to rarely accommodate such a ritual.

I can be insular (which is a kind way of saying "loner", unlike the word "pensive" which is often a kind way of saying "clueless"). There are days I just want to turn over the welcome mat, leaving a few spent shotgun shells on the porch, put out a trash bag with a hazmat sign on it and a few glow in the dark golf balls inside, turn off the phone and curl up with a good book. Yet, I am also driven to lead, to be a part of a team with a goal and a purpose, able to do most things on our own. I replaced a man that had been a two star General and was the first woman to lead the team. It's a responsibility and an honor. At work, I take no quarter and am not intimidated by blood, storms or bureaucrats. Yet by many I would be considered to be old-fashioned in my enjoyment in a role as caregiver to friends and family, as my Mom was with us, keeping the house warm, safe, a place where my Dad could shine as a man and a Father; Mom both the support and the glue that kept us together.

Even when she was not feeling well, as she battled cancer much of my early childhood, she would make us homemade cookies and pastries to have after school with our lunch. Shortening scrapped from it's can, dough formed and rounded, rolled flat, and rolled up, carefully studded with fragrant spices and baked golden.

When at school, I'd open up my lunchbox, and find every given day, a peanut butter sandwich, an apple, a dime for milk and an ice cream and a small tinfoil packet I'd unfold with great care. Inside, the scraps of her making, dusted with cinnamon and sugar, soft and whole. I do not share. I scrape the foil clean.

When I was ready, Mom taught me to bake, sewing me my own little oven mitts that looked like puppets, teaching me to make the scraps of dough, the amazing tastes of family.

All the recipes seemed to call for lots and lots of flour. Why? Probably because my family could go through these cookies like locust on a summer day. Hours of work gone in minutes. I never knew how much energy, how much time, effort and love Mom and Grandma wrapped up in all those holiday treats until she taught me to make them with her. Only then, when I worked along side of her, did I realize how much love went into what she created.


Such are the memories of childhood, something to which we all must submit, from which memories, good or bad, remain with us always. For me, such memories, despite whatever our family got through, and ultimately lost, brings back only a smile. The memory simply being the smell of cinnamon in the morning, fresh roast coffee, and the sound of someone singing in the kitchen as I awoke.

We can't duplicate those memories from long ago, what we have, never being exactly what we have in our mind's memory. But that is part of the wonder of it, those things of value that can never fully be realized, those relationships which sustain even from a distance, and so then, all the more reason to attempt them.


So now, I still show my affection in the warm fragrance of the kitchen. Even when my family is not around, the partners we make, the families we can create in cities of strangers surround me. Some I've met, play with and work with and some being simply connected by a tip tap of a finger on a keyboard. Some that I love and all whom I hold dear, wanting to make sure they are feed, warm and as safe as I can make them.

These quiet times in the kitchen are my way of regrouping after a a long day or a long road trip. It's a time, wherein the faith I have, that can take a beating during the work week, is repaired, threads of hope and strength woven back into the areas that feel tattered as the leaves clinging stubbornly to the trees outside my window.


So it was hard to find myself not able to do anything, even to get dressed or get a shower or cook a meal for myself or anyone else, My laptop on the kitchen table, everything within close reach, I was reduced to hopping around on crutches which took the wind out of my sails, even getting from room to room. It's such times where friends do gather around, some in person, some just taking time from a work deadline to chat, to take care of me the way I tend to care for other people. One such friend even cancelled his Christmas with family to get me home from where I was hurt and make sure I was OK during what had been looking to be a pretty miserable Christmas. He took care of the homestead and Barkley, cooking up the food fresh from the store and what others provided (Amish Bacon, thanks Midwest Chick and Mr. B.!)

So I slept, a lot, moving forever and without progress it seemed, between rooms, brandishing a crutch like Don Quixote at the shower curtain that was intent on taking me down. We played Dominoes and watched movies and CD's of old TV shows ("I kill Moose and Squirrel"). Friends called and emailed. Og and I discussed Sherpas and Steam Gauges and debate was had on just how wrong the model was on the train at the end of 3:10 to Yuma given the year it was supposed to be. I slept some more. Barkley was walked and all the chores were done around the place until, even for the hardiest of companions, sleep was in order.


There was enough food made and frozen in individual plastic containers that I don't have to cook for over a week. Chicken and rice, beef and potatoes, roasted corn and taco meat and even some Meat Muffins which I was able to assemble myself perched at the counter, using some canned Grands Biscuits flattened out to line muffin tins, filled with some meat sauce (one of my favorite recipes, Spaghetti Sauce for a Crowd) and smoked cheddar cheese and baked for 17 minutes.



Six days out from surgery and over two weeks out from "Brigid on Ice! (*#&$^ Barkley!!) I'm able to get a shower, and put weight down on my leg, making things a lot easier, though I still move with the ungainly rhythm of cold aluminum and outraged ligaments. I won't be back to work for another week, and true field work for another month out (oh boy a desk) but I'm getting there. I'm off the opiate pain meds, able to stand up briefly without aid and was even able to offer a toast to the New Year (albeit at 9:30 at night) with the kindly medicinal administration of good whiskey and shared laughter.

Last night, EJ prepared to leave, not having left my side since I was hurt. I was on the couch, half asleep, watching the window darken with the swift coming of the winter night, when I heard the clear, pure strains of "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" coming from the back of the house. He was cleaning the place thoroughly before he took the train home. I recognized the song and the voice and just smiled, going back to sleep, knowing I would not have to worry about killer dust bunnies or wrestling with the vacuum for another week.

This morning the house is quiet though Midwest Chick just called from home to make sure I was OK, now that the place was empty. It's cool and quiet here, snow falling slowly outside and when I woke up I knew I was alone, knowing by sensation, by sight and sound and place, an absence of the smell of roast coffee and the warm nuzzle of Barkley (who was just dropped at friends for a week, til I'm off the crutches).

I get up and hit the start on the new coffee maker, shadows lingering as I look outside to see how much snow was coming down. I peer out, seeing instead of an immense and uninterrupted daylight, simply myself reflected in the glass, frost on the porch windows turning to mist as the oven heats up.

I'll heat up some leftover abelskivver and with coffee, say a short grace for all that is good as I take my first bite. It will perfume my mouth with its sweetness, as syrup pools on the plate, the smell of coffee in the air, now silent of sound. The house is warm and I'm on the mend. Thank you my friends. For Hygge. For everything.
Love - Brigid

New Year Recipe - Cowboy Baked Beans

My New Years Eve was pretty quiet. The movie 3:10 to Yuma, followed by Wallace and Gromit. My next door neighbor, the police officer, took a moment from his young family and stopped in to check on the Range household, offering New Years Greetings and a cold beer. That was a appreciated though I wasn't up for much more than one Guinness, then sleep. Then a real shower (I've a plastic lawn chair in the tub so I don't have to stand there like a flamingo and tip over washing my hair) followed by a good nights sleep. Not everyone's way to unwind, but it worked for me.

In the old days of the West, people would go to a saloon for a little shot of something and perhaps a good bar fight to let off a little steam. I guess I watched too many westerns where someone insults someone, a shot is fired, and the next thing you know the room is alive with the pandemonium of tossed chairs and screams, while the piano player plays merrily along.

But we all need some way to release the spent up emotions of working long days, be it in a field, on the side of a hill somewhere under the sun, or trapped in a cubicle that has all the homeiness of a dental lab.

Here, I usually just fire up the grill, thaw out some venison for burgers and break out a cold beer to wash down the cowboy beans. But even on a cold, sleety New Years Day, these will go great with a side of oven roast beast that a friend made for me.

These aren't your Mom's baked beans. With a hot Chinese chili pepper baked in the middle of them, they have a decided kick.

You start with a small, chopped and "sauteed until caramelized" onion, a few strips of red pepper, and a little green pepper (I had only a dab left after breakfast eggs). Throw in a Tien Tsin chili pepper (I get mine, you guessed it, at Penzeys). Normally used in Asian cooking (from which you can make really good homemade chili oil for potstickers) these are a hot but flavorful addition to soup, stews and chili. The pods are 1 to 2 and a half inches in length. Use a smaller pod (do not cut a large one in half) for two stars HOT, use a the larger pod for 3 stars hot. (I used the largest one). And do NOT forget to remove it before serving unless you want to see a grown man cry.

Add to that the large can of Bush's (my favorite canned bean) maple baked beans (about 3 and a half cups), 1 and 1/2 to 2 cups leftover cooked pintos (or one small can, drained), 2 heaping teaspoons of yellow mustard, 2 Tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, 1 and 1/4 teaspoons of Penzey's Northwoods seasoning (coarse flake salt, paprika, chipotle pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper, thyme, rosemary and garlic) and a pinch of dried jalapeno .

If you don't have Northwoods seasoning, use your favorite all purpose seasoning plus a dash of Paprika and garlic powder but it's worth a trip to Penzeys Spices online or one of their stores (there's one in Indy).

Lastly, stir in 1/2 cup of your favorite barbecue sauce (I love Cattlemens, which is getting harder to find. More stores need to carry this stuff), 1/4 cup packed brown sugar and a tablespoon or two of beer. (You know, so you can say, "but honey the recipe CALLED for some beer and I don't want to waste the rest".)

Fry up 6 strips of extra thick smoked bacon. Remove 4 strips when only partially cooked. and continue cooking the last two. Chop the two fully cooked pieces extra fine and put in the beans. Lay the partially cooked strips on top (they will finish cooking but will be sof,t but partially cooking gets rid of a lot of the grease). Here's what it looked like as it went into the oven.

Bake at 250 F. for two to two and a half hours. (Note: If you want a wimpy version, remove the red chili with a slotted spoon halfway through cooking). Chop up the soft bacon on top and stir in. This will feed 4-5 hungry folks as a side dish and can easily be doubled.

Thick, rich, smoky, sweet, HOT. Make plenty, because if you run out, you just MAY have a fight on your hands.

Click to enlarge photo.

Barkley - Always the Source of Mischief

Everyone asks about the knee and it's hard to admit that I took it out walking Barkley. OK, ice, the wrong angles between leash, knee and canine were involved but still. . . .

You never know what trouble the furry one will get into.

Officer, I was just fetching my toy.

Ship? What ship? I didn't see any ship, we're just playing with a ball.

Chasing it was more fun than catching it.

Hey, I always choose wisely.

You all be safe out there. Happy New Year Everyone!

- B.

Putting the "O" in Mobility

I've been getting my share of knee jokes, "old age" jokes, and scooter jokes with the knee injury. When I hit age 40, I started getting the AARP cards in the mail. Those folks just don't give up. Given the liberal policies that AARP has supported, we will all be 70 before we can retire so I find that a bit ironic. I saved the last one I got, to send back to them in a personal manner.

Even worse, with the AARP card, came an envelope from the Scooter Store (with FREE mobility assessment). Actually this last week, I did use one of the store scooters at the big box mart as there was no way I could get through the store on crutches for what I needed for the house prior to doing the surgery thing. Although friends visiting offered to go buy everything I needed, I wanted to see if I could do it myself once we got there.

The scooter was sort of fun, though one of the greeters came over and asked if I needed help operating the controls (which consisted of forward, backwards, right and left). Granted it might be more difficult than the T-39 (which was built when someone was having a sale on Relays) but I was good to go, thanking them for their help. Speed wise it was a fair it less than the INDY 500 and more than a snail on demoral. But I was not only able to do a cookie in the chicken aisle, I found that the displays in electronic made for great S patterns at top speed. I also disovered that fat guys with carts containing 200 bags of Tater Tots can move surprisingly fast when faced with a redhead in a Springfield Armory T-shirt, converging at top scooter speed.

Dealing with the crutches and the scooter was the hardest part. I tried holding them up, but that made it hard to work the controls. I put one one out front. Jousting - WalMart Style. (if you can knock a Billy Bass out of someone's cart with it, it's bonus points). I finally gave in and let my friend carry them while I tried to burn rubber doing .02 mph watching that the WalMart manager was not involved in radar trail tactics.

So although it was handy, I will NOT be getting my own scooter and I wanted to make sure the scooter people realized that when I got my special scooter offer in the mail not long back.


The targets are set up. For my "mobility assessment" about 40 or so feet with iron sights.



BLAM! A shot first at a regular target at 30 feet to check for windage. .

Then it's time to put the "A" in "AARP".

Next the Membership Card itself.

"Nice Shootin Tex" I hear, as Mycroft, one of the IND bloggers who was there, wandered over to see what is going on.

And it's goodbye Mr. AARP Membership Card. The perforated card splintered into fragments and fell to the ground. The pieces will go in the envelope with the custom return address and be sent back to them.



Along with my "Free Mobility Assessment for the Scooter Store". (I didn't quite get the shot placement I wanted, putting the "O" in mobility" but I think they'll still be surprised when they receive this back in the mail).


We all have things that arrive in our lives that remind us as to how quickly time passes. Shadows stir, the season shifts and before you know it, another year is behind you. The summer is past, with days on the run, and still evenings aloft, and all too soon you're herded inside walls, the routine of chilled mornings and dark nights, cold absolution for the time you spent out in the sun in months past. The days themselves were unchanged, but what you were able to do in them was, with mornings and nights passing in the immaculate intervals of quick daylight and long nights in front of the fire wishing for the cold to pass and Spring to arrive. Yet, when Spring does start, you think again of how quickly another season flew away, and of the last months you ask yourself - did you really accomplish anything to warrant the passing of precious time?

I remember one cold night in front of the fire pondering over Joseph Conrad's story "Youth", an old man's story of his perilous experiences as a young seaman on a storm-wracked coal liner. Having always been a headstrong girl, taking on one dangerous job after another, I empathized with what he said. "I remember my youth and the feeling that I will never come back anymore, the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men".


How easy as a child, a teen, even into your 20's to think you are invincible. Certainly some of my adventures would indicate that I too subscribed to this vision. But with adulthood, not only comes responsibility, but loss. Suddenly, for myriads of reasons, aging, illness, war; the people around you, as reliable as the sunrise, leave. Someone I knew casually through work was ill, and terminally. All of us had been trying to visit and as I passed through the door after our last time together, she said. . "when will you be back?". I said, brightly, "soon" and the moment it was out I knew that I'd never see her again, and that we both knew it. We simply refused to give voice to it, as to do so, would be to admit our own mortality.

If I had the chance to be 20 again I wouldn't. Time and memory is what has made me who I am. Events in my life, even the ones I'd rather not repeat, all served to awaken within me a stranger who was strong enough to survive it, to grow, becoming someone forged new, honed sharper and stronger.
When I was a teen I thought 30 was ancient, now that I am past it I realize to get older is to be slowly born again.

I remember it as a childlike leap from a boat deck into pristine waters, as an aircraft frantic in a stiff wind over the Sierras, as a night camped out in the woods before a hunt with my black lab, pouring into my head every star, every smell - of newly cut grass and cordite, of black soil and wood smoke, baked honey wheat bread and deep red wine. I recall the breeze off the reserve, the cascade of air coming down Big Creek, the cleansing of a badly broken heart, the release of youthful rivalries and grudges, a discarding of impatient thoughts and anger, as in these last years I gained patience, persistence and trust. I've moved past the deception of Conrad's youth, to a place where my soul is still, my life is full and when I leap from a runway with the wind in my hair, I know I will not live forever on this earth.

But I still don't need a damn scooter.

Happy Birthday Brigid, Jr.

12/29/2011

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I'm not sure where the phrase came from, but in looking at our children, those we love, it stands to reason. When we hold them for the first time, we move with such caution, speaking in hushed tones, recognizing something within us that had always slumbered, sightly alive, just waiting to be born.

I didn't meet Brigid Jr. until she was in college. It was an open adoption. I always knew where she was, who her Mom and Dad were. I had OK'd every detail of the small, home town adoption arranged through the local doctor. But I'd made a promise not to try and contact them or see her until she could make that decision for herself and if the decisions was not to acknowledge me, I would respect that. They in turn said they would support whatever made her happy. I was 18 years old.

I moved from the State, finding it easier to keep my promise from a distance. I'd like to say the span of years passed quickly, but the reality was more protracted. There's a line in Shakespeare's Othello that says "There are many events in the womb of time that will be delivered". Womb of time? Yes. The sweat of endurance, the agony of spreading bone. Nothing worthwhile is easy or quick, but oh, at the end, it is worth the travail of time.


When we did meet, several things struck me, especially in that I had not seen her since birth. She looked exactly like me. Not just the face, the coloring, the unusual almond shaped eyes . We had the same, identical haircut, identical ewer, and the same color shirt. We ordered the same item on the menu, had the same habits, the same mannerisms, the same laugh. It was almost spooky. OK she liked Glocks and I liked Smith and Wessons, but still. Yet she is who she is, the loving heart, the talent, the drive, from the two wonderful people who raised my child, their daughter, one Hawaiian, one Irish.

Genes or environment? Who's to say. It's both, it's neither, it's something we can only watch in wonder. But whether they are like us, or simply their own person, we see something in them. We see a journey, ours, theirs. We're the rim and they're the spoke, spreading out, seeking ground, moving away, yet always close to us. We're both a part of a journey that is worth every bit of the wear, every mile.


Such thoughts came to me when I was out in the field, within that quiet, questing about the scene, gathering, watching. It's harder in that sometimes children are involved. But underneath my gear, I felt the trace of a wallet in my back pocket, in it a well worn, tear stained photo of a beautiful, fair haired girl with blue eyes.

It's why I do what I do. It's why, when we look in to the trusting eyes of a child, we see, not ourselves, but the foretaste of responsibility, the fierce need to keep them safe, no matter what.

And so it was I reflected on such things, that last day out in the field, looking up at branches shattered by forces bigger than themselves, hanging in the air as if part of the earth was thrust upward, a spectral tracing to a loss more profound than simply lost years.

Somewhere that night a family would grieve. Somewhere that night, through no effort of mine but a heart laid wide open, my child lay safe.

I looked up at broken trees to a heaven unbroken and simply said thanks.

Update from friends

Brigid asked that I let everyone know the surgery went well. She is home and safe (all office chairs have been limited to linear motion only.) Between the Morphine, Demerol, and Hydrocodone she is not up to posting, but all is well.

Midwest Chick and Mr. B are on standby, Barkley is fed, and I'll make sure she doesn't start doing fancy footwork on the crutches at 2AM. (It might scare the neighbors.)

She sends her love and thanks for everyone's prayers.

-EJ

Off to surgery

I had surgery less than 12 months ago. So, when am I officially Borg?

They are going to have to remove a portion of the meniscus, as it is torn beyond repair. That may bring some arthritis problems as I get older, but the doc said he'd do what he could, to save what he could,. The dislocated knee? They will adjust and I start PT on Friday for that.

Just a word of advice. If you've spent 30 something years running, carrying big back packs, flying jets, rock climbing, dodging trouble and giving a cat a bath, do NOT try and walk your 90 pound lab down an icy sidewalk when a female golden retriever is going the opposite direction. Just saying.

I've a post saved to come up later if I'm on line. If it does not, do not worry. I've friends staying with me through Sunday to take care of Barkley and myself, He is sticking by my side, not knowing what happened exactly, but knowing that Mom is not doing her best.

Brigid and Barkley (aka "the mangler")

HOTR Deadly Sins - Updated

I saw somewhere that the Vatican added hurting the environment to the list of the seven deadly sins.
The current list:
Lust
Gluttony (does bacon count?)
Greed
Sloth (three toed or the other kind?)
Wrath
Envy (but it's the XDM .45 in green and stainless)
Pride

Well, with all due respect to the church, if they can add "damaging the environment" to the list, I'm going to add a few of my own.

The Home on the Range List of Additional Deadly Sins (abridged)

Feel free to add your own.

Last Donut
Carjacking
Welfare
Second Place
Monday Mornings
Monday Morning Breath
Cathy Lee Gifford
Pink firearms (sorry ladies, it's not a fashion accessory)
High metabolic rates
Women who treat other women as rivals
Express Lane Abuse

Barkley says - "Hey, you in the 12 item /cash only line - you have 33 bags of Doritos and a second party check from the Bank of Kazakhstan? I don't think so "

Braille signs at the drive thru
Jealousy (even prisoners get time off for good behavior)
The Slim Fast "sensible meal"
Fat men in speedos
Fat women in spandex
Trophy Wife
Dumping someone by email
Barney the Dinosaur
Occupy Wall Street
Botox
Gun Bans
Edible Underwear (bacon boxers, perhaps, otherwise, no)
The Jennings .22lr
CNN
Comcast
Misfeeds
Turkey Bacon
Foreign Call Centers
Cosmopolitans
Clingy women
Clingy men
Spitting
Star Trek Voyager (Gilligan got home quicker than this crew)
Celebrity Fitness DVD's (picking up brass will do more for your gluts)
"Celebrity Designers" (Put "Kardashian" on a cow patty, it's still a cow patty)
Drinks with Umbrellas (EJ just informed me that if it is served on a beach, by a topless supermodel, that does NOT count).
Enzyte ads (buying a new .45 will put that smile on your face too)
Lack of Muzzle Control
And finally. . .

People that think the Government owes them a living.

That Which Remains

Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense
Which seem, in their simplicity, to own
An intellectual charm; that calm delight
Which, if I err not, surely must belong
To those first-born affinities that fit
Our new existence to existing things

William Wordsworth

Most of us get the little things around us, from simple to sublime, some posting them cursively on paper, others capturing them in photos, some just cataloging them away in the brain for quiet afternoons of reflective thought. Some walk through life with a remote in their hand and blinders on, not realizing what they missed until all they hear is the final shut of a door.

Not I. For me, I'll take the slow path, the closer look, the unseen poetry in a drop of melting snow, the land and soul that thirst.

I've never been one to collect things, thimbles, figurines, little knick knacks that will require dusting long after I am dust. I've moved too many times over the years to even think about it. I have some cookbooks, I have some of my favorite brass, I have a well loved violin that follows me around, annoying the neighbors.

But I learned early to note and catalog things, starting with plants in my first botany class, then working on up to so many small bones. It's why I always liked science museums, having an ingrained curiosity since childhood as to what made things tick. But it wasn't just plants and animals, machines as well needed to be understood. It's why in high school, while the girls were gossiping and buying clothes, I was learning how to put Purple Hornies headers on my car.

Certainly now, with the Internet, much of the mystery is gone, the average person being able to learn how to do just about anything on a home computer. Even with graphics, computer animations and YouTube, there are still some ways we learn that are best learned hands on (probably why I'm not seen a book entitled Disassembling the Ruger Mark III for Dummies).


But with the Internet, you miss those integral steps, that human interaction that provides a corporate experience. It's physical interaction with emotional understanding that you are not going to get with a 57 inch TV. Comparing a TVshow on a subject to hands on looking, touching and watching what it's made of, is like seeing a picture of fresh pie, and tasting it on your tongue. The subject area may be the same, but the experiences are light years apart.

For I like to learn hands on, be it in the field or in a museum, taking a close look at it, holding it close (it's not ticking is it?), feeling the heft of weight in my hand, the form of it under my fingers. All the senses involved. I'd read everything there was about dinosaurs in books as a kid, fascinated with both the size and the structure, but the first time I lay my hand on a dinosaur bone, I was awestruck. I remember it to this day, loitering there in a blaze of sunlight, hand outreached, besieged by the huge strangeness of what I was seeing, the unfamiliar feeling of comprehending for the first time, how old the world really was, and how ALIVE I was. It wasn't just a dinosaur, it was seeing the world as it was, not fairy tales or fables, but true, as that unfamiliarity divided into rivers of wondering that I would follow for years. Including that moment in the theater when I yelled out, "Jurassic Park? Those things with big teeth are from the Cretaceous era!"


But the wandering adventure never ended. Even as a pilot, it continued. I'd look through the window of the aircraft as if it was a doorway to another dimension, wild, tremendous landscape stretching farther than even the eagle could see, blue-green mountains reaching up from the vermilion shores of the high plains. I would dash out into the sky, like a kid released from school, dodging cloudbursts raining down unnamed canyons, looking down with a god's eyes onto the desert homes of the cliff dwellers, hundreds of houses built into stone before you were even born, abandoned thousands of years ago, seemingly close enough to touch.

There were always the museums, including the space museums. Actual vehicles that had returned from space. No story or animation can give you the feeling of seeing up close something that HAD "been there, done that". Some of the early designs looked like Frank Genry designs on crack. Or something my brother and I would have attempted to build with our erector sets, giant tinker toy constructions, resembling bulky 1960's foil Christmas trees more than modern spacecraft, topped with antennas that could have been placed on top by someones Norwegian Uncle after too much glogg.

Yet, in all their dated technology, I paused in wonder, seeing it all and thinking that all of the things I built as a child and a teen, the weather radio, the rockets, could have become something like that, with no more imagination, but simply more education. Museums are like that for me, a humanness of history that brushes my skin as I pass each display, clinging to me even as I leave with the genius, fixations and wonder of humanity waiting outside the door.


Like all things mechanical, all things living, what we look at is much more than a sum of its parts. Those early space ships, the eroded surfaces speaking of the intense heat of reentry, the thin outer skin belying the courage of the man that it cradled, just waiting to be blasted into the unknown. A Mercury wonder of heat and design and engineering unheard of in its day. Compare it with the Soviet ships, odd instruments with Cyrillic labels, foreign yet familiar. An animation can never give you that little surge of awe I got on seeing that warning stenciled on a Soyuz reentry module: “Man inside! Help!” -- words that are dense testimony to both the dangers of a landing and the human ignorance that may exacerbate it.

The best way to figure out how something works is to take it apart.My brother and I started with the TV at age 12. The only reason I am not STILL grounded is that we got it back together before we were busted. Somethings are easy, radios, artichokes, a Cuisinart, easy pickings for the inquisitive geek. Hearing about or watching a TV show about taking something apart is one thing. But seeing it, laying your hands on it, hearing it, smelling it, is another. Those are the type of museums I like, boneyards of man and machine, unlikely mechanics in action, dismantled into their core components, laid out for us to wonder. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry had this heart the size of a small kitchen in which you could walk through. In it, you experienced each chamber of the heart, complete with sounds, and as a child there on holiday, I would sometimes just stand in it for the longest time, before I could bear to leave it to go stare at the wall of bees. I still have fun in the children's section of science museums where there are no "don't touch" signs and the world is one big laboratory.


In the Berlin Museum of Communications there is a postal service stagecoach, dismantled into its components, hanging up. Most walk past it, eager to get to the computer modules. Some look at it as only as a dusty visage, long divorced from reality, decaying quietly as only a glimpse of something no longer needed. I see structure, form, load bearing surfaces, joints and sinew of wood, made by people that perhaps could not read or write, but oh, they could build.

Give me cross sections, give me actual animals, preserved and on display, don't show me computer videos of things I can watch at home on the discovery channel. Give me not just knowledge, but touch, for when I do it's a tiny chill, partly the warmth of recognition. Early science was imitation and magic but it was more than that. If you go into the caves of Lascaux, the innermost and highest paintings were done at such elevation that they would never have been visible with the light possessed in that age, to anyone other than the artist who painted them. For he was not painting for them, he was painting for something else, a vision that only he saw and wished to document for time.

Unfortunately, most of the technology and science museums today cater to the computer generation with entire floors dedicated to Genetics with wall displays of the codes GAG, GAT TAC ACT, ACP (wait, that's the shooters code) and huge stylized double helices of plastic, all a high tech but impersonal submersion into something that to me, is the Rosetta stone of life. The genetic code is almost universal. The same codons are assigned to the same amino acids and to the same START and STOP signals in the vast majority of genes in animals, plants, and microorganisms. We are all more closely bound than we think.

I didn't want to see plastic models of DNA, I wanted to see the real thing. If you want to show me DNA, then show me DNA - in test tubes, or through an actual working electron microscope.


Which is why a trip overseas a short while back and a chance to visit a museum in Dublin on the way back meant a lot to me. It's unchanged since Victorian days, the ground floor being dedicated to Irish animals, featuring giant deer skeletons and a variety of mammals, birds and fish. Among the locals it's known as the "Dead Zoo" and when I heard that I knew I was going to spend a day of personal leave there. The upper floors of the building were laid out in the 19th Century in a scientific arrangement showing animals by taxonomic group, an incredible diversity, the interrelations of species through the evolutionary tree.

And my favorite, the bones, the incredible biotechnology of the animal machine, the structure and dentition, the vertebrate body scheme working and adapting. Sure a plastic model of a skull will give you an idea, but it can't possibly show you the exquisite detail of a creature dead hundreds of years. Photos weren't allowed, but I looked and with sketchpad I drew, bone gleaming though splendors last decay, eyes nothing but two empty pools in which the stationary world lurked gravely in miniature.

Stop and look in a museum, stand in places where history stood still, the courtyard at Monte Alban in quiet sunlight you can almost feel the air shimmering with life, priests, victims, warriors, the ball court where to lose the game was to lose life. Those lives vibrate through you.

"those first firm affinities that fit, our new existence to existing things".

That which remains are all things, past present, they make us what we are, everything the human mind has invented, everything the human heart has loved and grieved for. It may touch only a few, but it connects us all.

As I left the Dublin museum, I felt the hush of the wind, a soft voice that says, remember me, in layer and layer of ash and stone, bones to be studied, new life to be born. There in a puddle at my feet; a small leaf, decaying in the water, the tissue gone, only the delicate fibrous remnants of that which was vein and bone left. Rocking in the water as if in the motion of sleep, they waved their translucent goodbye. Remember me, remember this, from God's intricate creations of blood and bone and sinew, to our own dust, the distance is small.

Merry Christmas

As most of you have already read, Christmas didn't turn out in the least as I planned, being pretty much immobile and in a lot of discomfort with the blown out knee, not able to visit family or friends out of town. But with the warm thoughts of friends, and a couple of companions who refuse to leave my side, it turned out just fine.


To all of you who sent cards and packages, thank you. I'm sitting in some warm and fuzzy outer wear, with slippers and a cup of coffee from my new Kureg coffee machine, books to read (Red Green!), and new videos to watch (Wallace and Gromit with the nefarious penguin, my favorite). And last night, there was wine in new hand painted stemless wine glasses from friends up North, while we listened to the seasons strains of Metallica with the SFO Symphony orchestra (what, you were expecting Burl Ives?)


Santa Paws even remembered Barkley, with a stuffing free fox to mangle and a giant squeaky ball with feet (why yes, Barkley that IS annoying).


Even better, Santa got me a BACON PRESS!!! Breakfast pastry had been premade and frozen so all there was to do to make Christmas breakfast was heat up a new cast iron skillet and tools and get out the Amish Bacon that Midwest Chick and Mr. B brought down for me.


I couldn't do church, I can't even get in and out of the tub without a chair, a crutch and some serious cursing in Norwegian, but I wanted a traditional breakfast even if it took help. Such treats are always a good memory for me.

When I was a kid, we'd usually waffles, abelskivvers or pancakes for Sunday breakfast, but sometimes we'd have them for dinner as well. It was usually when the household budget was tight. My Mom quit her 13 year career as a LEO to be a full time Mom, and Dad took a lesser paying position that allowed him to be home every night. Sacrifices I know we benefited from. Certainly I remember those dinners and the laughter and the love that lived in the house 24 and 7, more than any brand new bike I didn't get.


My brothers and I loved "pancake night". Dad would grumble a little. . unless there was Bacon. Bacon I think could solve any problem. World peace. Through Bacon. Oh wait, well maybe not, but it sounds like a plan.

With or without bacon, I can sit and eat some fluffy, maple infused goodness, and watch the sun go up or down and the taste will take me back.

Sometimes Mom would make two kinds. Sourdough and regular. Or some with nuts and apples, or little bits of sausage inside, along with buttermilk ones. There would be maple syrup, and genuine Lingonberry Jam and real butter from the farm nearby.


Little bits, little bites to try them all. Dad would finally relax after a long stressful day at work, and we'd tell the tales of our day and small childhood victories. For these breakfasts for dinner, no worries about money, or the mortgage or the future. Simply bites of life shared with those you love. I'd savor one flavor, even while anticipating the next, savory, sweet, maybe nutty, the golden disks disappearing like coins well spent. I was never able to figure out which taste I wanted to end with, one taste of time that was almost too sweet to bear, or that which was so dense that I would remember it always.

Like pancakes for dinner, such was this Christmas, unexpected, not ending as planned, but full of little bits of sweetness and caring from those that have become my family.


I usually try and leave comments for all of you on your blogs or send emails but just this little bit has worn me out. Just know that I am thinking of you, even if we are apart, even if I don't say so today. Remember every gift you have, that we all are to each other, through good times and bad. For that is what friends and family are for.

Tis the Season.
With love,
Brigid