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The Death of a Friend

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Nature, tagged trees on June 28, 2016| 15 Comments »

“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.” – John Muir

This tree with the split personalty was my favorite tree when I was a campground host at Lake Walcott State Park in Southern Idaho. -- Poto by Pat Bean

This tree with the split personality was my favorite tree when I was a campground host at Lake Walcott State Park in Southern Idaho. — Photo by Pat Bean

Life Happens to us All

My Tree Fell Down. The huge one in which, over the past three and a half years, I’ve watched great-horned owls and Cooper’s hawks try to claim a nesting site — each succeeding once. They laid their eggs in the very same nest..

But on Monday evening, when a kind of mini-tornado blew through the complex, the tree toppled. The giant took out the balcony next to mine as it crashed against my 30-residences apartment building. Thankfully no person was injured.

Me being silly and hugging a tree in Custer State Park in South Dakota.

The mess is still being cleaned up by workmen with shovels, saws and ladders. I figure it will take at least a couple of trucks to haul off all the wood that was once the awesome tree. I would show you pictures, but Windows 10 ate the driver that I need to import pictures from my camera to my computer.*

The loss of my tree, as I felt it was, makes me sad. My eyes dampened this morning as I sat on my front balcony looking at the empty air where the tree once towered above the three-story apartment building across the way.

I’ve listened as gila woodpeckers rapped on the tree’s trunk, and watched as hawks, owls, ravens and, doves frequently visited its branches — while I leaned back in my chair, as I drank my morning coffee, and observed them with my binoculars.

I feel as if a good friend has died. Actually, that is exactly what happened.

Bean Pat: Deidra Alexandra’s Blog http://tinyurl.com/zr9oh4g A funny story that made me smile – and I needed to smile. Don’t you?

*By the way, does anybody have any good, inexpensive suggestions on how to fix the import driver on my four-year-old computer, or, as I suspect, am I going to have to get a new computer?

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Connections

Posted in Birds, Books, Journeys, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged connections, Elizard Bard, Fools, Mary Louise Wilson, Neil Simon on June 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »

“Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” — Charles Eames

“People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections.” Khaled Hosseini

This photo was taken over 30 years ago, when I played Mrs. Zubrisky, as did actress and author Mary Louise Wilson. That's a very young looking me sitting on the left. What a wonderful memory

This photo was taken over 30 years ago, when I played Mrs. Zubritsky, as did actress and author Mary Louise Wilson. That’s a very young looking me sitting on the left. What a wonderful memory

Books Bring Me Joy

I just started reading Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard when a small sentence let me know how much I was going to enjoy this book. “But then some people bird watch,” said the book’s protagonist, which let me know, in a whispered writer’s voice, that the author knew all about crazy bird watchers – like me.

A bit later on she said of her husband: “It takes more than 10 years in bed with an American to cure a European of his natural reserve.” I connected with this sentence because I understand how different people are, and that you never truly get to know them – even if you sleep with them for years.

It’s these kinds of personal connections that give me so much pleasure in reading these days. And since I have a lot of living behind me, I’m able to make more and more connections with each passing year.

I thought about this as I was reading My first Hundred Years in Show Business by Mary Louise Wilson this

Mary Louise Wilson

morning. I’m not sure anyone but someone involved in theater would truly understand and appreciate the book. But, since I was very involved with amateur Little Theater during the 22 years I lived in Ogden, I’m loving it.

Even so, I didn’t have any real connection with the author until she began writing about her role in Neil Simon’s little known play “Fools.” It’s a fantastic play about this village that has been cursed with stupidness, and Mary Louise and I both played the role of the intellectually-challenged wife, Mrs. Zubritsky.

When she described how in the play, when she was supposed to open a door but couldn’t, that she decided to pull on the handle instead of push, I connected. It was exactly how I had dealt with the same door scene. And we also reacted the same way in the play when the husband asks his wife to lower her voice. To comply, we both decided to bend our knees.

Reading My First Hundred Years in Show Business is bringing back wonderful memories – what fun!

There is no question but that books are wonderful. But when you can make a connection with them, they become magical.

Bean Pat: Wanderlust http://tinyurl.com/j4rbmb5 I easily connected with this blog and blogger because we share a passion for travel.

P.S. If you’re interested you can type in Fools, Neil Simon and find videos of scenes from Fools.

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Born in Another Era

Posted in Birds, Journeys, tagged technology woes on May 25, 2016| 12 Comments »

I would rather watch birds, like this Gambel quail, than television — which is a good thing. — Pat Bean

Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. – Carrie Snow That’s Me

I’m house-sitting my daughter’s house, horse, two dogs and two cats. It’s an opportunity for me to binge on television watching, since I don’t own one. And it means I don’t have to walk up and down three flights of stairs several times a day to take my own canine companion Pepper, who fits in quite well with my daughter’s menagerie, outside to do her business.

A gila woodpecker on a saguaro. — Photo by Pat Bean

I simply open the door and all three dogs go outside. They do their business while I simply sit on the porch and watch the desert outside my daughter’s back door. There’s almost always a gila woodpecker in one of the nearby saguaros and several Gambel quail scurrying about. And on this stay, the backyard has also been full of curved-bill thrashers.

While the yard is unfenced, all three of the dogs stay close by – as do I since the day I discovered Pepper in the horse coral, not more than 100 feet away, surrounded my three coyotes. You can bet your wad on knowing that this mama immediately turned into a screaming maniac and chased the varmint trio back into the desert. I really liked coyotes until that day.

But back to my tale of woe: Somehow or other I messed with the remote control – or perhaps it messed with itself – so I can’t watch TV. I have absolutely no idea how to get it back to the setting my daughter put it on for me before she left.

I also can’t figure out how to change the thermostat, which I asked my grandson, JJ, to turn down when I was fixing him dinner last night. And now he’s at his summer job all day while I have to wear a sweater in the desert because the house is too cold.

All this technology stuff I can’t do reminds me of when I bought my first computer – and discovered a six-year-old granddaughter knew how to operate it better than I did.

You would think I was born in a different era. Oh yes. That’s right. I was.

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Diane Henders http://tinyurl.com/zq7a4x2 Reading this blog made me feel better about my technology black hole.

P.S. JJ fixed the remote and showed me how to work the thermostat. So I’m now comfortable and can watch television – well except there’s nothing worth watching on it.

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How the Magpie came to be my Animal Totem

Posted in Birds, Journeys, tagged animal totems, back to the godddess, Twin Falls Idaho on May 5, 2016| 6 Comments »

“To be a person is to have a story to tell.” —Isak Dinesen

The Snake River Canyon, Idaho. Wikimedia photo

A Story for a Granddaughter

When my children were growing up, I didn’t tell them stories about my childhood because I thought I didn’t have any happy ones, mostly because I thought no one loved me. Once I started looking at things through adult eyes, I realized how wrong I had been. But by then, my children were grown, living in far-away-places, and leading busy lives.

Through this blog, however, my children and grandchildren have learned many things about me they didn’t know, especially when a bit of memoir is thrown into the writing mix. Writing these stories down has also helped me understand myself better. It’s been one of the unexpected benefits of blogging.

So the other day, when I was with my oldest granddaughter, Shanna, and the subject of animal totems came up, I told her how the magpie became my totem. Afterwards, she asked me to write the story down for her. I said I would, and so here it.

My animal totem, the black-billed magpie. — Wikimedia photo

It happened when I was living in Twin Falls, Idaho, and working as regional editor for the Times-News. It was a time in the early 1980s, after my divorce when all my children had left home, and I had moved to this small city where I didn’t know a soul.

I made friends easily, but many of the women I liked best turned out to be New Agers, which is how this non-believing, stick-to-the-facts journalist got invited to attend a “Back to the Goddess” workshop.

The get-together was held beside the Snake River Canyon Gorge, near where Evil Knievel attempted his infamous motorcycle jump. The scenery was fantastic, as were the day’s activities. First, we walked down the canyon, getting rid of all the excess baggage we were carrying in our souls as we descended. On our hike back up the gorge, we picked up all the positive things we wanted in our lives.

I don’t recall what I threw away, or what I picked up, only that the experience was enriching. What I remember vividly, however, is what happened that starry Van Gogh night, as we sat beside the canyon around a campfire.

The workshop leader held a talking stick, and said when it came into our hands, we were to name our animal totem. I had never heard of such a thing, and decided all I could do was say I didn’t have one and pass the stick to the next person.

As the stick came around the circle, the women named many impressive totems: lion, wolf, beaver, elephant, golden eagle among them as I recall. When the stick, which I had planned to pass on, touched my hand, the word magpie came out of my mouth without missing a beat. I then went on to explain why this nuisance bird, a member of the crow family, was my totem.

It’s loud and raucous, like this native Texan. It’s also intelligent and playful, and its white and iridescently black feathers, represent a broad mindset of thinking, all traits that I believe I possess. I was still in a state of shock when I quickly passed the talking stick to the next person.

And that my dear granddaughter is how I got my animal totem, a bird that came into my life 15 years before I became a passionate birdwatcher.

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Wayward Spirit http://tinyurl.com/zoa23t7 Writing on the Beach. I know how this feels.

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Rain, Rain, Rain

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Travel, tagged rainy days, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher on April 19, 2016| 5 Comments »

“The reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day.”― Anne Lamott

This was the rainy day view through the windshield of my car when I left Tucson a week ago. — Photo by Pat Bean

It Falls on All of Us

The above photo was taken through the windshield of my car, at the corner of Swan and Sunrise in Tucson, a week ago. Although the photo doesn’t pick them up, I could faintly see the silhouette of the Catalina Mountains directly ahead through my swishing wiper blades.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t see scissor-tailed flycatchers in the rain — and you don’t want to miss that. — Photo by Pat Bean

It was still raining 450 miles later when I pulled into the Whitten Inn in isolated Van Horn Texas, where I would spend the night before driving another 450 miles to Austin, Texas. This day, the sun came out, and I was even rewarded with a few patches of Texas bluebonnets whose blooming had peaked a couple of weeks ahead of my arrival.

After a marvelous, fantastic, awesome four days in Austin mingling with 100 writing sisters, I left Sunday afternoon to drive to my oldest daughter’s home in Dallas. I didn’t take a picture of my leave taking this time, but the top photo – minus the unseen Catalina Mountains – will work perfectly.

Some days we have rain, and some days we have sun. I don’t know about you, but I try to get on with my life whatever the weather.

Bean Pat: Hasty Words http://tinyurl.com/htdt9za For Real? This blog should give you lots to mull over.

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Daylight Saving Time

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Writing, tagged Daylight Saving Time, memories on March 18, 2016| 2 Comments »

“Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow is the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.” – Bil Keane

This is the kind of landscape I was living in when Texas changed to Daylight Saving Time back in 1967. — Photo by Pat Bean

A Memory from the Past

When the change to Daylight Saving Time rolls around each year, my memory bank gets a jolt of fresh power that takes me back to my days as a reporter on a small Texas Gulf Coast newspaper. Texas began its annual clock manipulation, as a way to save on energy costs, the same year that I walked into my first newspaper.

And this is the Arizona landscape where I live now, and which does not participate in Daylight Saving Time. — Photo by Pat Bean

While the benefits of Daylight Savings Time have been much questioned, there’s no question in my mind that this event was a first step on my road to a 37-year journalism career. You see, that 1967 newspaper story about the time change carried my first-ever byline.

I remember the managing editor lecturing me afterwards on how I could have made the article better, like not starting every sentence almost the same way. A few years later, I reread the story and cringed. While it was grammatically correct, it lacked grace. It read like a toddler taking their first step. But then that’s exactly what I had been doing at the time.

It took many, many years after that first story before I could comfortably call myself a writer. And some days, I still question the title.

Meanwhile, I’ll never forget that first timely baby step.

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: On Growing a Spine http://tinyurl.com/jrn97k4 Some people are born with one, and some, like me, have to grow them. This blog reminded me that I, too, was almost 40 before the growth began.

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The Quirks of Fame

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Journeys, road trip, tagged Fame, town nicknames on February 10, 2016| 10 Comments »

“Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!” – Davy Crockett

Lake Jackson, where I lived for 15 years and where I still have family, is called the City of Enchantment. Being able to see great egrets — this one was photographed at the city’s Sea Center, but you can also see them in drainage ditches all over town — is enchanting. Don’t you think? — Photo by Pat Bean

Travel is so Enlightening

On road trips, when I’m driving the back roads that take me through the middle of small towns, I look for the one thing that makes one place stand out from another.

For instance, did you know that Venice, Florida, calls itself the Shark Tooth Capital of the World? People actually visit this quaint, snowbird town to find them, which isn’t hard to do as the tide and waves are constantly bringing shark’s teeth and other fossils up onto the city’s beaches.

Ypsilanti's Dick Brick, errrr Water Tower. -- Wikimedia photo

Ypsilanti’s Dick Brick. Oops, I mean Water Tower. — Wikimedia photo

Sharks, which have an abundance of teeth to begin with, are continually replacing any that are lost – and a tiger shark, for instance, can produce as many as 24,000 teeth during its lifetime. That’s according to the web site of Sharky’s Shop, an online store where you can buy shark’s teeth if you don’t want to go beach surfing.

The small town of Woodstock, Vermont, which I passed through one rainy day, as were all the days I spent in this Green Mountain State, doubled up on its privileges to fame. It claimed: to be the only town in America with four Paul Revere bells, to be the site of the first ski tow, to be the birthplace of Hiram Powers, the sculptor of “Greek Slave” for which Elizabeth Barrett Browning created a sonnet, and to be the home of railroad empire builder Frederick Billings.

Perhaps the most outrageous claim to fame by a town I’ve visited, however, is the one made by Ypsilanti, where I spent a few days. This Michigan’s town’s brag is that it is home to the “World’s Most Phallic Structure.” That title was won by the city’s 147-foot limestone water tower during Cabinet magazine’s 2003 contest to find the building most resembling a human phallus.

One look at the tower – built in 1890 by someone either with a macho bent or a sense of humor – and I could see why it must have easily won the contest. Locals call it the “Dick Brick.” It’s said that if an Eastern Michigan University student graduates while still a virgin the tower will fall down. Travel is so enlightening.

Then there’s:

Hico, Texas: Where Everybody is Somebody.

Camden, Arkansas: Home of the Grapette.

Hatch, New Mexico: Chili Pepper Capital of the World.

Green River Utah: Watermelon Capital of the World.

Louisville, Kentucky: City of Beautiful Churches.

Aberdeen, Washington: Port of Missing Men

Rumney, New Hampshire: Crutch Capital of the World

Abbeville, Georgia: Wild Hog Capital of Georgia

Belle Glade, Florida: Muck City

St. John, North Dakota: City at the End of the Rainbow. I’ll stop here, but if you are interested in more town nickname trivia check out: http://tinyurl.com/z9odvg6

So what’s your town’s claim to fame?

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Have Bag, Will Travel http://tinyurl.com/zodt2r4 This blog appealed to me because I’m always visiting odd museums when I travel. This blog about a visit to one such museum made me laugh.

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Art: American Bittern

Posted in Art, Birds, Journeys, Nature, tagged American bittern on January 27, 2016| 2 Comments »

Painting by Pat Bean

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” –Picasso

“A picture is a poem without words.” – Horace

Hiding in Plain Sight

An American bittern in its natural habitat. — Wikimedia photo

I haven’t seen many American bitterns, but the ones I have seen have all been surprises. By that, I mean that I usually had stared at a weedy patch of grass in shallow water for some time before seeing this wading bird.

And then I only saw it because it moved.

The American bittern is one of my favorite birds, perhaps because it’s striped feathers are in themselves art.

“Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished. – Francis Bacon

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Daily Echo http://tinyurl.com/jt9r6rx Meeting on the Moor. My kind of walk.

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Nature: Winter Trees

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Favorite Hikes, Journeys, Nature, tagged Arivaca Cienega hiking trail, trees on January 26, 2016| 4 Comments »

Winter gives this tree a stark beauty that spoke to me. — Photo by Pat Bean

“If you look closely at a tree you’ll notice it’s knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully. – Matthew Fox

I didn’t realize until I got home and compared my photos with ones I had taken earlier at Arivaca Cienega that the same tree had spoken to me when it was decked out in spring finery. — Photo by Pat Bean

There’s Beauty in Starkness

I took a friend and her dog with me and my canine companion Pepper this past weekend to hike the Arivaca-Cienega trail 70 miles southeast of Tucson. It’s an important birding area, and a place where I’ve hiked before, only in the months when everything was lush and verdant..

I realized, looking at the naked branches of trees on the narrow, winding and rough backroad that we traveled to get there, that today was going to be different. It was winter and the color green was almost nowhere to be found.

But as before, beauty was around every corner. It was just different, a starkness that let you see deeper into the heart and soul and bones of Mother Nature.

It was an awesome day, even though we got there late and the birds were taking a nap somewhere out of sight. The exception was a pair of greater roadrunners that scurried across the road ahead of us as we headed back to Tucson.

I will return… Perhaps I can catch the tree in autumn.

Blog pick of the Day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Open Suitcase http://tinyurl.com/zohd9u6 Take an armchair train ride through Africa.

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Catching Interstate 17 in Phoenix

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Journeys, tagged arizona, Black Canyon, Fird Focus woes on October 22, 2015| 6 Comments »

I made a brief stop at Sunset Point Rest Area north of Phoenix, but didn’t stay long as it was crowded. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.” – Lawrence Durrell

Then Sedona Side Trip Woes

My favorite road trips include backroads. But this day’s road trip, I knew, would not include them. I had 400 miles to drive before I would lay my head to rest at a Super 8 Motel in Page, Arizona, and most of that would be on freeways. I did expect, however, that Interstate 17, once past Phoenix, would have less traffic than Interstate 10. I was wrong, it had more.

I stopped in Sedona to enjoy the red-rock scenery, despite Cayenne’s woes. Road trips are too precious to be wasted. — Photo by Pat Bean.

The scenery, however, was somewhat more interesting, and during the 150-mile journey from Phoenix, where I-17 begins, and Flagstaff, where it ends. the landscapes and my journey climbed 6,000 feet in elevation.

Just outside Phoenix, my route took me through Black Canyon Recreation Area, with marked exits to such places as Horsethief Basin and Bloody Basin Road, leaving me wondering how those places had gotten their names. If I had time, I would have loved to have explored them. My mother claimed that I had inherited my grandfather’s wanderlust, and the need to explore every sideroad I came across. The only thing is there are way more sideroads these days then there were in his time – and I’ve discovered I can’t explore them all.

Cayenne, Pepper and me shortly after I bought my Ford Focus.

On this day, I did get off the interstate to take the back route through Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff. I expected to leave the traffic behind but nearing Sedona it became even more congested. And the stop-and-go 15 mph and roundabouts in Sedona brought out the worst in my 2014 Ford Focus, which has a stuttering/rattling problem when it’s in first gear, a problem that already had my car on a waiting list for the manufacturer to fix. I’m just one of many Focus owners with the default.

I believed my mechanic when he said it was OK for me to drive Cayenne, and that the problem wouldn’t leave me stranded; I just hadn’t expected it to be so grumpy and loud, but then that’s what I was when I returned to my Ford dealer back home. The mechanic drove my car when I returned to Tucson, but of course it’s didn’t misbehave as badly for him as it did for me in Sedona, where it was almost constantly in first gear.

But once past Sedona, Cayenne drove fine, with only an occasional and silent stutter in first gear, and gave me 40 mpg as well. Maybe I’ll forgive her, and Ford, too, if she drives as good as they tell me she will once she’s fixed. Too be continued …

Bean Pat: Glenrosa Journeys http://tinyurl.com/ocb7n5n Fall birds you might see if you live in Arizona. I especially liked the juvenile green heron photos.

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