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Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Navajo Mountain

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Books, Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on June 13, 2012| 2 Comments »

“Bring me men to match my mountains: Bring me men to match my plains: Men with empires in their purpose and new eras in their brains.” – Sam Walter Foss

Looking beyond Lake Powell to Navajo Mountain — Photo by Pat Bean

And What Changes the Men Have Wrought

Environmentalists have long bemoaned the creation of Lake Powell by the Glen Canyon Dam. The lake drowned the canyon and all its magnificence, wonders that sadly I never got to see. It was done in the name of progress, which requires ever available water and energy.

Lake Powell is popular with boaters — Photo by Pat Bean

The brouhaha about whether it was a good or bad decision continues today – an argument in which I’m not going to take sides. My waffling, fence-straddling, journalistic mind knows both sides have legitimate arguments.

My comment today is just to note how the landscape keeps changing, both by Mother Nature and by men. I thought about this when I stopped to read the roadside marker that points out Navajo Mountain across the lake. This mountain figures prominently in the history and legends of the Navajo people and the ancient Anasazis before that.

Navajo Mountain from space with Lake Powell in the background. — Photo courtesy Johnson Space Center.

The coming of white settlers intruded on these lands, and boundaries were established and re-established until today, when the mountain is once again in the hands of the Navajo Nation. All others have to get a permit to hike the remote areas around the mountain.

Climbing the sacred mountain itself is forbidden.

Thinking of the settlement of the west – I know, my brain hops around like it’s besieged by fire ants – made me think of the “men to match my mountains” quote. I thought Irving Stone, who wrote “Men to Match My Mountains (a really great book), was its author. Instead I discovered it was written by Sam Walter Foss, a 19th century Massachusetts librarian and poet.

Who would have thought? It’s not just fun to wander and wonder. It’s educational, too.

Bean’s Pat:: Hoof Beats and Foot Prints http://tinyurl.com/7ykh73n As a horse lover, I’m fascinated by this blog. But I simply enjoyed the message of this one.

 *This pat-on-the-back recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. June 13, patbean.wordpress.com

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Route 66: With Plenty of Time to Linger

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Books, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 28, 2012| 10 Comments »

 “Life is all about timing … the unreachable becomes reachable. The unavailable becomes available, the unattainable, attainable. Have the patience, wait it out. It’s all about timing.” Stacey Charter.

It’s pretty easy to see why this area of Petrified National Park is called the Tepees. — Photo by Pat Bean

Tepees and Grinning Old Men

But can you see the two grinning old men that I see in these rock formations? — Photo by Pat Bean

Having the time to dawdle as I travel, time to let my imagination run wild, time to stop just to see a dandelion’s fine seeds blow in the wind, to watch a cloud dragon turn into a mouse or a red-tailed hawk circle above is precious.

While I didn’t always keep my nose to the grindstone, the time I could let my mind wander in wonder in my younger years was always way too short. That is not the case these days. And each day I awake with gratitude in my heart for every unrushed second allowed me to on this beautiful planet.

Which is why this blog is still a couple of weeks behind my reality. I don’t want to rush you through the landscape either.

I want to share fully the unhurried day  day I spent in Arizona’s Painted Desert lands, espcially for those who told me they had passed this way but  didn’t have time to linger.

And these reminded me of pawns on a chess board, and then I immediately thought of the chess game in the first Harry Potter book. Perhaps you see something different? I’d love to know what. — Photo by Pat Bean

I hope you enjoy lingering and dawdling with me – and my odd thoughts. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bean’s Pat: A Small Press Life :  http://tinyurl.com/bpnf80c Surfin’ Bird – this one’s for Agatha Christie fans. As one myself, it tickled my funny bone to see this early photo of the Grand Dame of who-done-its. 

*This recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. The Pat on the back is presented with no strings attached. May 28, patbean.wordpress.com

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Books: The Rain Wild Chronicles

Posted in Books, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 31, 2012| 4 Comments »

“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.” – Dr. Seuss

Don’t Do That To Me Robin

Look what you did to me Robin. My hair might not last until the fourth Rain Wilds book is published. -- Art by Pat Bean

I’m a big fan of fantasy books, but particular about which ones I read. Actually I’m that way about all the books I read, which includes just about all genres except horror, or books where the dark side dominates the pages.

Along with wanting a good plot that keeps me turning the page, a book’s characters must have both strengths and failings and grow in depth as the story progresses.

Without a character with whom I can connect, a book gets tossed aside at my self-imposed 50-page benchmark — or at the end of the first free chapter that Amazon provides Kindle users.

Poor writing, naturally, will turn me off much sooner.

I have many mystery authors that I follow but far fewer fantasy authors. That’s because an abundance of them seem not to measure up to my 50-page limit. This means when I find an author I enjoy, I usually read everything they write, and eagerly await their new offerings.

I took this photo today at the Sonora Desert Museum in an area that talked about prehistoric Arizona. It's only connection to this blog is that it reminded me of the kind of creatures on finds in fantasy books. -- Photo by Pat Bean

George Martin, whose series, “Game of Thrones,” I started reading when it first came out, taught me a lesson, however. His lengthy sabbatical between books convinced me to wait until a series was completed before beginning it.

With this in mind, it was with great delight that a few years ago I came across the work of Robin Hobb. I read her first book, “Assassin’s Apprentice,” in the Farseer Trilogy and was deeply hooked. In rapid succession, I absorbed the other two books in the trilogy and then continued n with her Liveship, Tawny Man and Soldier Son trilogies.

Soldier Son was weird, but even that I couldn’t put down. Of the other three trilogies, I would be hard-pressed to name a favorite as I loved each and every one of them.

At the time I discovered her, Hobb was still writing her Rain Wilds Chronicles. I patiently waited until the trilogy was finished before I began reading them. Last night, I finished the third in the series, only to be left hanging.

Unbeknownst to me, this series has a fourth book, which isn’t out yet.

AAAAccccchhhhh!!!!

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We’re All Many People in One

Posted in Birds, Books, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on February 22, 2012| 17 Comments »

“There come a time when you have to stand up and shout: This is me … I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel … I am a whole complex package .. Do not try to make me feel like less of a person just because I don’t fit your idea of who I should me.” – Stacey Charter

Travels With Maggie

 

This award was started in 2008 by Norwegian, Hulda Husfrue, or so I've read.

Michelle Gilles at Silk Purse Productions Blog (how to make silk purses out of a sow’s ear) nominated me for a Kreative Blogger award. Thank you Michelle at: http://silkpurseproductions.wordpress.com

I’ll use my Bean’s Pat to play it back. This “Pat” on the back goes to my personal choice of the best blog of the day. My choices are eclectic and I hope my readers have been checking them out.

As part of the acceptance. I’m supposed to tell you seven things about myself that you might not already know. I’ve done this before, but this part’s actually fun, especially trying to think of things my blabber-fingers haven’t already told you. So here goes.

Miss Clairol’s Nice and Easy, No. 99 has been my friend for umpteen years. My original color was dishwater blonde. I haven’t the foggiest idea what color it is these days because I try hard to never let my roots show.

I stuck into college without ever graduating from high school, just one among many ways I’ve lived my life backwards.

OK. I admit it. I'm a tree-hugging flower child who believes that some day this planet will be a peaceful place to live. -- Photo by a stranger sharing my day at Custer State Park in South Dakota.

I’m a prolific reader of just about everything – including cereal boxes, bumper stickers, roadside signs and blogs — with the exception of horror. When much younger I watched a Vincent Price horror flick – Murders at the Wax Museum I think it was called, and spent the next year expecting a missing head to turn up in my washing machine every time I opened the lid.

I once zoomed up behind a police car doing 100 mph while driving between Salt Lake City and Wendover, Nevada. I thought I was only doing 70 until I looked down at the speedometer. I’m not sure why I didn’t get a ticket. Perhaps the officer was day-dreaming.

I was 37 years old before alcohol of any kind touched my lips, well if you don’t count my grandmother’s beer, which I’ve been told I stole and drank when I was 3 years old.

I’m speaking tonight at a Blue and Gold Banquet for my daughter’s Cub Scout Pack on Compassion for Animals. I’m going to play the wolf howl-video that I mentioned on yesterday’s blog.

I’ve been living and traveling now in a small RV with my canine traveling companion, Maggie, for over seven years. By the end of this year I should have visited all 50 states. I did Hawaii and Alaska in earlier days, just FYI.

Now I’d love it if my readers would tell me something quirky about themselves.

Bean’s Pat: 10,000 Birds http://10000birds.com Great blog for anyone who likes birds, especially if you’re passionate about them — like me.

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The Victory-Lap Years

Posted in Books, Journeys, Nature, tagged , , , , , , on January 31, 2012| 5 Comments »

 “Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.” Louis L”Amour

While I haven't taken a walk through Alaska's wilderness, I have driven the Top of the World Highway past Chicken. It was an awesome drive. -- Wikipedia Photo

Book Talk

I just finished Lynn Schooler’s “Walking Home,” a true story about Alaska, Mother Nature’s fierce side, a crippled grizzly bear that wanted to eat a human, and coping with loss.

Lynn survived the bear, plus a raging creek, and heart-wrenching, although self-imposed, solitude – I’m not giving away the ending because of course he had to survive to write the book – with the comment that his next adventure might just be a drive in a rented car around Hawaii.

“Why not? I am fifty-five years old; they are all victory laps now.”

He said a whole lot more that resonated with who this wandering/wondering, nature-loving old broad is, but that comment made me laugh with joy. I’m 72 years old so certainly my life is now nothing but victory laps. It’s fun to think of it that way.

And I spent all day in a bus traveling this road in Denali National Park to Wonder Lake. Mount McKinley, shown above, hid behind the clouds for most of that day. -- Wikipedia photo

Lynn said it after surviving an awesome environment that suddenly turned mean and realizing that his wife no longer wanted to be with him.

His book, one of those slow-reading ones so you have time to ponder the words, made me think of the things I had survived. While nothing so deadly as Lynn’s adventure, I had survived my own marital breakup, teenage-children with rebellion in their makeup, 37 years as a journalist and even being thrown out of a raft in the middle of a raft-eating rapid on the Colorado River as it flowed through the Grand River.

These are indeed my victory-lap years. Thanks Lynn for allowing me to think of them this way.

Bean’s Pat: Everywhere Once: American Safari http://tinyurl.com/7932lx2 Who said you had to go to Africa to be on safari?

 

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Favorite Places: Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

Posted in Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , on January 30, 2012| 4 Comments »

 “Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.” – Terry Tempest Williams

Travels With Maggie

Yellow-headed blackbirds are common sights at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. -- Photo by Pat Beans

I first visited the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge east of the Great Salt Lake in Northern Utah in the 1970s. It was lush with vegetation and full of twittering birds.

Then came the early 1980s, when the lake reached a historical high and its briny waters took out roads, causeways and buried the refuge. It killed all the sanctuary’s green-growing plants and took out the visitor center as a warning of Mother Nature’s fickleness. .

It took a long time for the refuge to recharge itself, a period in which Terry Tempest Williams wrote “Refuge,” a book published in 1991 that was written when Williams’ mother was dying. The book weaves the landscape of the refuge and nature into a tangled web with the author’s struggle to come to grips with her own life. A very good read, in case you’re interested.

Another common refuge inhabitant is the snowy egret. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Since both the refuge and I existed at that time in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains, the refuge drew me to it – often. I enjoyed its quiet sanctuary from the chaotic and stressful world of journalism, and also wrote about the refuge’s recovery for my newspaper readers.

I still vividly remember the first green-growing thing that returned. It was pickleweed, a salt loving plant that would help heal the soil for other plants. Those tiny nubs of green poking up seemed like a miracle.

Today, the refuge,is once again lush and a thriving habitat for birds and other wildlife. It’s there for anyone willing to endure a drive down a 10-mile, bumpy unpaved road from Interstate 15.

Maggie and I’ve driven the slow-going, rough miles several times in Gypsy Lee, who shakes, rattles and rolls over the bumpier spots. She’s used to such detours, however, and so far has not complained.

For those less passionate nature lovers, there is now a new Visitor’s Center just a few hundred yards off the freeway. It was built there instead of on the refuge proper just in case Mother Nature decided to get a wild hair again.

It’s really a nice center, with a created wetlands through which a boardwalk winds to give visitors a chance to see Mother Nature at her best. If you’re ever in Northern Utah, you might like to check it out. Perhaps you’d even like to take the 10-mile bumpy drive.

Bean’s Pat: Travel Photography: Most Unexpected Rainbow http://tinyurl.com/867pogm Have you ever seen a full rainbow? I haven’t. But this photographer did.

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Technology Miracles and Boo-Boos

Posted in Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , , on January 26, 2012| 6 Comments »

“If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

I found Estero Llano State Park in Welasco, Texas, the old-fashioned-way, with a map. I'm not sure how the anhinga found its way here. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

I was in Dallas, returning from taking my daughter to work so I could use her car for the day. All I had to do to get back home was follow the GPS map installed on the dashboard of her Toyota Highlander.

But I decided I wanted to get a different view of the map. Silly me. As I’m sure you have already guessed, I pressed the wrong button and lost everything on the screen — and couldn’t get it back.

Because I had depended solely on the GPS to get me from one place to the next, I was confusingly lost with morning rush-hour traffic zooming all around me.

I was fortunate that I eventually came to a landmark I recognized and, although it took an extra 40 minutes, I did eventually get back to my daughter’s house.

I then used a map, and my own handcrafted cheat-sheet of right and left turns, to complete the day’s errands and to find my place back to pick up my daughter from work later that day.

The truth is that I’ve had to be pulled, while screaming, into most technological changes. I was one of the last to finally get a cell phone, and it was only this past Christmas, and only because it was a gift from my son, that I got a “smart” phone.

On the other hand, I was one of the first to get a home computer. After using one at work to write my newspaper stories, I found using a typewriter for my personal writings impossible.

Without GPS, Monarch butterflies, like this one I found at Quintana Neotropic Bird Sanctuary on Texas' Gulf Coast, migrate annually between Mexico and Canada, although it may take three generations to complete the journey. -- Photo by Pat Bean

My first computer didn’t even have a hard drive. Everything ran from floppy disks. And the word-processing program on it came with a black screen and green type, or you could make the type orange.

Today, I can’t imagine life without my computer and the Internet. Such a thought sounds barbaric.

Ditto life without my Kindle, which was also a gift and which I’ve now had for a year. I thought I would miss the feel of a real book in my hand, but I haven’t. I think the fact I can be reading almost any book I want almost instantly is a miracle – well until I discover how much I’ve spent at Amazon each month.

I still haven’t got a GPS, however. My canine traveling companion, Maggie, and I still use maps, albeit it computer ones, to find our way across the country.  It seems a GPS might be as difficult for me to use as an electric can opener, which is why I still use a manual one. 

But I’ve got a Twitter account, maggieandpat. And when I announced it, my oldest granddaughter laughed and said: “Who would have thought it would take my Nana to make me get a Twitter account?” 

Her comment made this wandering/wondering old broad feel young – well at least until a pain in one of my joints announced a change in the weather.

Bean’s Pat: Vimeo: My Friend Maia by Julie Warr http://vimeo.com/31733784 A video to inspire all us old broads, and perhaps those still young among us, too.

 

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An Uncozy Murder Mystery

Posted in Books, Travels With Maggie, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on January 5, 2012| 7 Comments »

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” – Mark Twain

New York Times best seller, "Neon Rain"

Travels With Maggie

Last night, after Maggie and I had crawled into bed in the childhood bedroom of my grown granddaughter, Shanna, where I sleep at my oldest daughter’s home because I can’t plug into an electrical outlet, I turned on my Kindle.

My neck started getting uncomfortable after I had read for about a half hour. But since I still wasn’t ready for the sandman, I switched to one of the audible books I had downloaded.

I had put off getting a Kindle for a long time because I loved the magic of holding a real book in my hand. It took all of about 10 minutes, however, before I decided the Kindle had just as much magic, perhaps even more so because if I decided I wanted a certain book, I could be reading it in less than a minute.

But back to last night. My choice of listening pleasure was “The Neon Rain,” a Dave Robicheaux novel by James Lee Burke. The book had

New Orleans' Bourbon Street in 2003 -- Wikipedia photo

been on sale through Amazon’s Audible.com and on a whim I had bought it since I had already used my two monthly credits.

While I’m a big fan of murder mysteries, I quickly realized this one, whose hero is a New Orleans homicide detective with a Vietnam past, is darker than the cozy mysteries I favor. Burke puts into words what the authors I usually read keep hidden behind closed doors.

His descriptive phrases are gritty and complete, and Will Patton, the book’s narrator, captures Robicheaux’s dark character completely.

New Orleans French Quarter -- Wikipedia photo

What kept me reading, however, was that Burke had created Robicheaux in both black and white, and made him likeable. Underneath the toughness was a gentleman with depth, and Burke’s descriptive writing captured both sides.

I recently watched the movie “Salt’ with my daughter and her husband. At the end, the three of us sort of shook our heads.

“Not really a great movie,” my son-in-law, Neal, said.

“That’s because there was never any one to root for,” I replied.

The fact that I can root for Robicheaux, and that Burke is a writer’s writer, will keep me reading/listening  to the end of “The Neon Rain.”

I will, however, continue to favor my more cozy mysteries, where the object is to simply to figure out who-done-it. But I also recognize that it’s good to once in a while be jolted back to reality and the knowledge that there is a dark side to the world – and as Twain says, a dark side within each of us’

Thankfully, most of us keep that side hidden behind closed doors.

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I’m an Old Broad and Proud of It

Posted in Birds, Books, Nature, Travel, Travels With Maggie, Writing, tagged , , , , on January 2, 2012| 18 Comments »

 “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.” – Robert Frost

A tree that doesn't want to die. Now this is what I call a passion for life. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

When I first started writing about my travels, I tried to disguise the fact that I was an old broad. Then one day, after a hint from an online writing colleague that being an old broad was what set me apart from all the glamorous young women out there traveling in search of love. I claimed the honor.

I first heard the term “old broad” back when I was a journalist reporting on the environment. In writing about wilderness issues and the value of protecting it, I came across a group called “Great Old Broads for Wilderness.”

I sent this photo of me taken by my friend, Shirley Lee, in Cozumel to my kids announcing that I had a new boy friend. Even old broads want to have fun.

Wow, I thought, when I met some of these women, like Susan Tixier, the brain behind the organization, and author Terry Tempest Williams, as they exercised their passions to help protect wild lands from disappearing from America. Suddenly the term old broad seemed more honorific than derogatory.

Recently I’ve added a couple of new adjectives to my own old broad-persona that I feel fit perfectly. I’m a wandering-wondering old broad with passions for writing, travel, birds, books and Mother Nature.

One of my goals for this year is to rewrite my travel book with this voice. It’s too bad I didn’t do it the first time around. I won’t make that mistake this year with my blog. It’s a promise.

And my canine traveling companion, Maggie, who is also an old broad, is my witness.

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Worse Than a Bad Hair Day

Posted in Books, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , on December 21, 2011| 6 Comments »

“It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” — Judith Viorst  quoting Alexander

The back side of Mount Ogden. That little peak on the right marked the start of the Men's Downhill for the 2002 Winter Olympics. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

Travels With Maggie

I was sick yesterday with a 24-hour bug. I broke my glasses. My computer is acting up again. And I was up all night with Maggie, whose ears were hurting. And of course, being as it’s the holiday season, I’m already over budget for the month.

This morning I ignored the rule about never feeling sorry for myself, and broke down and cried while on the phone with my oldest daughter.

You can insert the S word here if you like.

So it’s off to take Maggie to the expensive-as-hell vet who never seems to solve the problem,  get a new pair of glasses and visit the geeks.  Hopefully they can fix my computer so I can blog again tomorrow, hopefully about happier things.

Life sometimes is just not fair. Book cover illustration by Ray Cruz

Meanwhile, I thought I’d share a  picture of a happier day with you.  It’s one of my very favorite views taken from Huntsville, Utah.  

Oh, and if you’re looking for a book to give some young person this year, I suggest Judith Viorst’s “Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”

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