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WHO? WHO? WHO?

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Journeys, Writing, tagged birds of prey, ernest hemingway, great horned owl, pat bean on February 3, 2014| 13 Comments »

“A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.” – Ernest Hemingway.

This is Gandolf, a great horned owl that my son, Lewis, and I discovered on the side of a road on the Texas Gulf Coast. He was in shock, probably after being struck by a passing vehicle, my son and I suspected. We got him to a wildlife rehabilitator, who dubbed him Gandolf. Three weeks later he was well and released back into the wild. — Photo by Pat Bean.

A Great Horned Owl, That’s Who

I’m not sure I understand Hemingway’s words. But they’re fun to ponder.

I made this card for a grandson's graduation. It tickles my fancy.

I made this card for a grandson’s graduation. I guess I have owls on the brain, but they tickle my fancy.

Just as it’s been fun to ponder the great horned owl, whose hooting has been taunting me awake each morning, and serenading me to sleep each night, for the past two weeks.

The hooter has annoyingly been avoiding my sight, but I finally caught a glimpse of it two days ago from my third-floor balcony window. The owl was sitting, just above my eye level, in a tree about 30 feet away.

Then, early yesterday morning, as I was once again looking for the owner of the hoots coming from the trees, a great horned owl flew directly over my head, wings stretched out like a sheltering canvas. It was big, and it landed on the roof top of an adjacent apartment building.

And this is one of my great horned owl doodles. I did it from memory after the Gandolf incident.

Pepper, whom I was walking at the time, and I wandered closer, and the owl briefly looked down on us with its great golden eyes. I was mesmerized, but glad that my canine companion was standing close. This was a mighty big owl, much larger, I realized than the one that I had seen a few days before from my balcony.

A surge of joy, like a big yippee, went through my bones. I suspected my apartment complex was now home to a mating pair of owls. The one I was looking at had to be the female, who is always larger than her male mate.

The big owl didn’t linger, but quickly disappeared beyond the roof line, leaving me pondering where her nest was, and did it already contain eggs. I’m sure I’ll be looking for it every time Pepper and I go walking during February.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Texas Tweeties http://tinyurl.com/mgovo9e Bringing home dinner. Bob’s one of my favorite bloggers. I’ve been privileged to see an osprey spring from the Snake River, and from a couple of lakes, with a fish in its talons, but it’s a sight worth seeing over and over again.

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I Love a Good Mystery

Posted in Art, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged bird watching, Dorthy Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey, mystery books, writers on January 30, 2014| 8 Comments »

“Without mysteries, life would be dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?” — Charles de Lint

Can you identify this bird? Or will it remain a mystery?

Which Is Why I Enjoy Bird Watching

“My detective story begins brightly, with a fat lady found dead in her bath with nothing on but her pince-nez. Now why did she wear a pince-nez in her bath? If you can guess, you will be in a position to lay hands upon the murderer, but he’s a very cool and cunning fellow…” – wrote Dorothy Sayers as she plotted her first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery in the early 1920s.

Cover of Are Women Human?, which contains two of Sayers’ feminist essays. — Wikimedia

When the book, “Whose Body” came out in 1923, the naked victim was male, but the pince-nez clue was still there. Many Lord Peter Wimsey books followed. I think I’ve read them all.

Along with writing the Wimsey mysteries, which like Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple books, continue to be popular today, Sayers was a poet, playwright and advertising writer.

One of the latter efforts included a toucan jingle for Guinness Beer: “If he can say as you can. Guinness is good for you. How grand to be a Toucan. Just think what Toucan do?”

This same kind of humor continues in the Wimsey mysteries, which is consistent with the character’s name-play on the word whimsy.

DVDs of some of the Lord Wimsey films I checked out of the library get the credit for this blog idea.

The joy of reading Dorothy Sayers’ mysteries for me is that it is all about figuring out whodunit before the killer is revealed.

It’s sort of the same with bird watching. You have to read all the clues – profile, coloring, beak size, and a jillion other field marks – if you want to make an identification before the bird flies away.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: She’s a Maineaic http://tinyurl.com/psgwdqx Einstein said what about anger?

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“Writing Down the River”

Posted in Art, Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged " female writers, "Writing Down tthe River, grand canyon on January 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »

” Hunter S. Thompson

The first time I rafted down the Grand Canyon, the Little Colorado River entrance to the mightier Colorado River was red and thick with mud from recent upstream rains. The second time it was crystal clean, and we floated in its current. I’m the middle blonde, and I was 60 when the photograph was taken.

A fantastic read.

Bookish Wednesday

A fairy tale begins with “Once upon a time.” And a river story with “No shit! There I was,” said outspoken journalist Linda Ellerbee in her essay about rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

And there she was — on an adventure one summer taken by 14 other fantastic female writers. The 15 women ranged in age, and in lifestyles that went from city women who had never peed outdoors to athletic women who considered nature their true homes. They each wrote about the Grand Canyon from their own perspective, and about how the fickle river and the high rock walls affected and changed them.

Being a female writer who has been on this same adventure twice in my life – the last time as a birthday present to myself when I turned 60 – my soul triumphed with joy when I came across their book, “Writing Down the River (1998, Northland Publishing, photographed and produced by Kathleen Jo Ryan) in the public library.

Of course I checked it out. Reading the book these past few days has brought back many memories of 32 days, 16 for each trip, that rank high on my list of the best days of my life.

Among my own writings about my Grand Canyon trip was one about the canyon wren, which often serenaded us during our early mornings on the river.

Among my own writings about my Grand Canyon trip was a bird column about the canyon wren, which often serenaded us during our early mornings on the river.

The first time I went down the river, I paddled myself almost the entire 225 miles in a small raft. I came away from the experience a whole person, accepting both my strengths and my weaknesses.

The second time I let the boatman (she was female but she was still called a boatman) oar me down the river, an admission that time had come for me to slow down a bit and take more time to smell the flowers and watch the birds – but also that my adventuring days were still far from over.

I highly recommend this trip for all women who are at turning points in their lives – and if you can’t go, at least read the book. The words and photographs can’t help but touch your heart and make you stronger.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean/s Pat: Where Have All the Flowers Gone http://tinyurl.com/l89g62e In honor of Pete Seeger and my generation of flower-child music.

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Paper Fetish

Posted in Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged Brazos Bend State Park, journaling, paper, pat bean, trees on January 17, 2014| 6 Comments »

Yesterday’s use of paper included adding a kestrel painting to my sketchbook, writing down dates to remember in my diary calendar, which is full of paintings and quotes, and writing in my to-do journal, which includes a hodgepodge of notes and ideas to myself. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with meaning.” – Maya Angelou

I’m So Sorry My Beloved Trees

I love paper, crisp new pages in a book, cold pressed and textured artist sheets, fanciful stationary, designer pages for my scrapbooking and even the thick block of white for my printer.

But I especially love the blank pages that fill new journals, even more so when their artistic creators have filled bits and pieces of the pages with fairies, flowers, dragons or animal images, and even more when they have left words behind to tickle my little gray cells.

Like these words, which I came across yesterday: “Let’s talk about mountains. You start climbing one, you toil, you sweat, you finally reach the top, and what do you get? Well, along with a sense of accomplishment, of peace, of a job well done, along with the satisfaction of doing what you set out to do … you get a great view of the next mountain. Looming, Challenging, Calling your name.” These words were left me behind to ponder from the journal creators, Mark Sanders and Tia Sillers — And ponder I did.

I wonder if the spirits of trees, like this beauty in Brazos Bend State Park in Texas, are infused into the paper I touch and use daily.

These days, I usually have several journals going at once, the most used being a daily journal in which I write to-do lists (Things I want to keep from this journal get rewritten into my computer journal, which I began several years ago to preserve my writing fingers from cramping), and a journal that I keep beside me when I read, and use to write down quotes and a mishmash of thoughts and ideas.

Even though I love computer journaling, which these days includes this blog, I can’t imagine a day without putting my hands on real paper. It’s an oxymoron for me, because I also love trees. Sometimes I wonder about the origin of the paper I write on, and almost feel the trees talking to me. I hope they forgive me.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: The Blood-Red Pencil http://tinyurl.com/lm2k2pg This is for all the writers who have procrastinated until the deadline monster is close enough to bite off our noses.

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After the Rain

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Journeys, Writing, tagged mornings, pat bean, rain on November 22, 2013| 3 Comments »

“Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.” Roger Miller

Morning comes to Tucson’s Catalina Mountains. — Photo by Pat Bean

Morning Walk with Pepper

It was that magical moment before dawn when Pepper and I stepped out for this morning’s walk.

The landscape was all hues of gray, with a stillness over it that spoke louder than words, like the reflections on a lake bereft of a breeze,

I hadn’t heard it, but rain had fallen during the night. The uneven walk and grounds still held puddles that the desert’s dry air had not yet sucked away, or the land claimed for its own. Best of all there was the green smell of trees washed clean of dust, and an earthen spice that wafted up from the ground. No man-made perfume could ever smell as sweet.

The scents intrigued Pepper, whose furry black nose searched everywhere. I simply breathed in Mother Nature’s bounty and felt blessed, and my soul rejoiced that I was a writer. Although words could never fully capture and expel all that I felt during my short morning walk with a beloved canine companion, they were there in my head. And I knew I had to write them down and share.

And now that I’ve done just that, I’ll go have my morning cup of coffee.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Take an armchair walk in France http://tinyurl.com/mfjc37m While the architectural details of the palaces are magnificent, the walk through the trees is what drew me into this blog.

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The Pain of Living

Posted in Journeys, Writing, tagged books, death, joy, paint on November 20, 2013| 3 Comments »

“Find a place inside where there is joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” – Joseph Campbell

Life is full of rainbows, and life is full of storms. The first without the second wouldn’t be as sweet. — Photo by Pat Bean

You Can’t Escape

I’ve been reading books for a female memoir writing contest. Several of them deal with surviving the pain of losing loved ones – and most of these books left me feeling a bit cynical. Everyone who lives to a ripe age loses loved ones. It’s part of life’s journey.

If we’re lucky we get to smell the flowers along the way. — Photo by Pat Bean

Sure it hurts. I’m still hurting from the loss of my mother, and I can only imagine the pain I will have to live through if one of my children dies before I do. That’s not the order in which life is supposed to be lived.

But why, I asked myself, did some of these authors act like their suffering was the only loss in the world? Get over it, I wanted to tell them.

But one of the memoirs involving death got to me. It was written by a woman whose activities included research involving hospice patients nearing death. She spent time with these people, recording their feelings and coming to care for them.

The researcher became especially close to one woman on the verge of death. This was a woman who had lived a hard street life, and admitted stealing, lying and prostituting herself to get the drugs she craved. “I cared for nobody else but myself,” she related.

And occasionally simply have time to sit and let the world go by. — Photo by Pat Bean

Before this woman died, the researcher herself found herself with cancer, and facing possible death. The news upset the former drug addict so much that she bullied her hospice attendants into transporting her in a wheelchair to the researcher’s side in a hospital.

When the researcher apologized for causing the dying woman pain, the woman thanked her instead.

“For the first time, I know what it feels like to care about someone besides myself. It makes me feel alive in a way that I never did before,” she told the researcher

These words caused tears to flow from my eyes. I, too, in a moment of sorrow had once been grateful for pain. While it was a love that was rejected that had given me the pain, it was this same pain that let me know I still had the capacity to love.

In my book, that was treasured knowledge.

Bean’s Pat: Grateful for one more day http://tinyurl.com/kcnd7fa And hopeful for many more

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The Highways of Life

Posted in Journeys, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged decisions, highways of life, pat bean, Ursula K. Le Guin on October 8, 2013| 6 Comments »

Oops! I think I turned wrong somewhere. — Photo by Pat Bean

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to reach my destination.” — Jimmy Dean

Should I Turn South — Or West?

Have you ever felt that you knew exactly where you were going, and then suddenly discovered you were headed in the wrong direction?

Should I hike the high trail or the low trail? Perhaps I should do both. — Photo by Pat Bean

This happens to me a lot. And I’m not talking about making a wrong turn when traveling down the road – although I certainly do that a lot, too.

Life has taken me down many paths, some not so pretty, but all educational. Some paths presented themselves because of decisions I made – or didn’t make, which in itself is a decision. Some were made for me because I let someone else lead.

Today, the only person who takes the lead away from me is my canine companion, Pepper – when I take her for a walk. So I have no one to blame for where I end up than myself.

But lately, I’ve not been quite so sure that I’ve been heading in the right direction, although there is certainly nothing wrong with the path I’m on. Perhaps it’s just because life has taught me that the more paths I explore, the more I enjoy life.

I guess I’m one of those people who believe Ursula K. Le Guin’s quote – which is permanently on my blog site — “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.”

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Life in Edit Mode http://tinyurl.com/kk6hmhz I laughed at the cartoon, and am now thinking, as I’m at the final rewriting process of Travel with Maggie, which has come down to the nitty-gritty dotting of every I and crossing of every T, that I need just such a muse.

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The Value of Journals and Scrapbooks

Posted in Journeys, Writing, tagged editors, Grandparents Day, journals, pat bean, scrapbooking on September 18, 2013| 3 Comments »

The joys of being the first female editor to invade the editors’ meeting at the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah.

Managing to Survive my First Job as an Editor

When I sold my home in 2004, and rid myself of almost all my possessions so I could spend the next leg of my life’s journey traveling this country in a small RV, I packed away the few things I couldn’t part with in bins, which eventually ended up here in Tucson with my youngest daughter.

I just retrieved those bins and have been reliving the memories they hold. One of these had me belly laughing until I almost peed myself. It was a printout of an AP photo that had been posted on the board at an editors’ meeting, my first venture into what until then had been an all-male domain— I should note that the year was 1980 when women were just beginning to make themselves a force to be reckoned with in the working world.

On my first day in attendance as an editor at the meeting, one of the macho male newspaper editors boomed out: “OK guys. We all have to watch our language now. We have a lady present.”

I still journal and scrapbook. These 2 pages are from the Nana’s Day celebration my daughter’s family gave me for Grandparents Day.

Perhaps he didn’t mean his words as a put-down, but I took them that way. I didn’t want to be treated different, or special, because of my gender, especially not when I was fighting for equal pay for equal work. While I never cuss (unless you count the S word, and back then not even that) I flared back with: “That’s right. You #$%^&**” guys.” I didn’t spare the offensive adjectives. “Watch your language.”

They all laughed, but I think they got my message. At least there were no similar comments, or vulgar words either, in future editor meetings.

There did, however, continue to be sexism actions from the photographers, who posted the day’s picture selections on a presentation board. Almost every day there would be a cheesecake photo – one time it was Miss Nude America – that had no chance in a zillion of making it into our family-oriented newspaper.

Finally, I piped up: “OK. Fair is fair. What about some beefcake tomorrow?”

The above photo, with stickers identifying me as the blonde, and the caption: “Lets get this editors’ meeting over with, made the presentation board the next day. Everyone laughed, including me. I do have a sense of humor. In fact, I loved the joke so much that I swiped the photo printout and put it into my scrapbook. It still makes me laugh.

The upshot of my beefcake request, meanwhile, is that there were no more cheesecake photos brought into the editors’ meeting. Sometimes you just have to tackle issues by way of a back door.

And always scrapbook, so that memories, and belly laughs, can be relived.

Bean’s Pat: Totsy Mae http://tinyurl.com/ll74neu I absolutely adore this artist’s fantastic watercolors.

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You Gotta Love Rejection

Posted in Art, Journeys, Writing, tagged pat bean, rejection on September 7, 2013| 12 Comments »

I think all great innovations are built on rejections.” – Louis Ferdinand Celine

“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get me going, rather than retreat.” – Sylvester Stallone

I wonder if bears care about rejection, or if they are always all about being themselves — even if they are blue. — Photo by Pat Bean

Life Lessons from an Old Broad

These days I take rejection slips that result from someone not buying one of my writing submissions with great pride. They are evidence that I put myself out there.

And would a giraffe feel rejected if it looked different from the rest of its kind? OK, so I’m being silly. Reject me. See if I care. == Photo by Pat Bean

But that kind of thinking wasn’t always a part of my psyche.

Looking back on my life, as I sometimes find myself doing, I suddenly remembered all the times when I didn’t put myself out there, whether it was not applying for a promotion, or not taking the risk of revealing my true self because I was afraid of being rejected.

It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of rejection, but that I was afraid for others to know, on any level, that I had been rejected.

Now I realize how foolish I was. Not only is it true that nothing ventured means nothing gained, but the only person who can truly reject me is me.

Does that make sense? This wondering-wanderer says: “Yes.” Now I just wonder why it took me so long to come up with the right answer.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Lightning Dropets http://tinyurl.com/kdkr6bn This blog about writing rejections is what got me thinking about rejections on other levels

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What’s Most Important

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged goals, pat bean, rainbows, writing on August 26, 2013| 4 Comments »

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” – Vivian Greene

You may never find that pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but that shouldn’t keep you from looking. — Photo by Pat Bean

Stepping into the Unknown

I’m not a person who likes to give advice. I’ve made too many bad decisions in my own life to think I can mentor anyone else, particularly someone whose end goals may be 180 degrees from my own.

This refrigerator magnet is how I want to be remembered.

But the ages have taught me that if you want something in life, you should go for it. And then, if you don’t get it, you should celebrate yourself for having the guts to have gone for it.

Some things we want, like my fulfilling my dream of travel by selling my home, buying an RV and driving that first mile, only depended on me having the guts to do it.

Other things, like my dream of finding an agent and a publisher for my book, “Travels with Maggie,” depend on others – and it may never happen. So right now, I’m celebrating each rejection slip as a triumph. I’m taking that first step toward my goal – and even if I never achieve it, I’ll know it wasn’t because I didn’t try.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Not Yet There http://tinyurl.com/m8clwct My morning coffee and my journal and list of things to do for the day are the way I start my days. And so this poem and photo spoke to me.

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