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January 15, 2019 by Pat Bean

A Week with No Internet

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer

I did finish this painting during my no-internet agony. Watercolor by Pat Bean

It Wasn’t Intentional

A few months ago, my Wi-Fi was down because I needed an updated modem. As a stop gap, I realized the Wi-Fi connection of my brother was near enough by so that I could use it.  It worked well and my life wasn’t interrupted while I waited for a new modem to arrive.

A few months later when the contract for my internet provider expired, I learned that the company wanted to increase the cost of my internet-only service – I don’t own a TV – from $70 a month to over a hundred dollars, I was incensed. I talked to my brother, and he encouraged me simply to cancel and use his Wi-Fi, which I already knew worked quite well for me.

The Internet lets me see my youngest great-grandchild Cora grow up, and lets others see me with this precious one when I do get to see her in person. — Photo was taken by another family member during our Christmas get-away in Florida.

Great, I thought. My limited, fixed-income budget was grateful for the brotherly love. And it was — for a couple of months. But then things began to go haywire, and after I was without internet for a couple of days, I knew I had to get my own. I found a different provider, however, one that was only going to charge me $45 a month for life –well there was another $10 for monthly modem rental and the life was only good for as long as I never moved from my current location, which I almost certainly will.

Of course, it took time to get reconnected to my own Wi-Fi, which left me almost a whole week without internet. It was agony. It made me realize how much I need and enjoy being connected to the world.

I begin my days by reading the New York Times online. I stay in touch with friends and family, getting to see my great-grandchildren who live far away grow up day by day.  I blog. I submit writing to potential publication markets and search out potential writing jobs.  I use the internet prolifically to find answers to my always questioning mind. I stream TV and movies on my computer or Kindle. I do research for my essays and blogs. I play computer games. I look at maps to see where I’m going or want to go. I shop online. I read Amazon reviews of my book Travels with Maggie online, and I download books from Amazon and the library. And I moderate a daily writing forum called Writer2Writer for Story Circle Network.

That’s a haystack made entirely of needles to this old broad, seeing as my family didn’t get a TV until I was 14 years old.

The world changed, and I guess I changed with it.

Bean Pat: First you must believe you’re a writer https://lithub.com/how-to-say-im-a-writer-and-mean-it/  A blog for writers.

Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Pepper. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder and is always searching for life’s silver lining. Check out her book Travels with Maggie, available on Amazon, to learn more. She can be reached at patbean@msn.com

Posted in Art, Journeys, Writing | Tagged | 6 Comments »

A Recipe for a Lucky Year

January 3, 2019 by Pat Bean

Hoppin’ John: A southern recipe — Wikimedia photo

“Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational – but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?” — Judith Viorst

Black-Eyed Peas and Hoppin’ John

I had my black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. My brother, who lives in a first-floor apartment beneath my third-floor apartment gave me some. They were good, and I am grateful. He cooked them with ham and onion. No telling how much bad luck I would have had if I hadn’t eaten them.

I’m not sure everyone knows what I’m talking about, but my southern readers almost certainly do. You eat black-eyed pea on New Year’s Day so you will have luck during the coming year. Why, you ask? Until I did a little bit of research yesterday, I would have probably answered: “Just because.”

Pepper. on right, and her best friend Dusty, enjoying a lazy day. It’s cold outside today in Tucson. — Photo by Pat Bean

But, thanks to the good ole Internet, here’s what I discovered.

“The practice of eating black-eyed peas for luck is generally believed to date back to the Civil War. At first, planted as food for livestock, and later a food staple for slaves in the South, the fields of black-eyed peas were ignored as Sherman’s troops destroyed or stole other crops, thereby giving the humble, but nourishing, black-eyed pea an important role as a major food source for surviving Confederates.”  — TripSavy

Wikipedia, which repeats but doubts the Sherman story, also suggests that black-eyed peas were a symbol of emancipation for African-Americans who had previously been enslaved, and who after the Civil War were officially freed on New Year’s Day.

My favorite black-eyed pea dish, which I also cook during the year and not just on New Year’s Day is Hoppin’ John. My version includes dried black-eyed peas cooked with ham hock, onion, and salt to taste, with rice added at the end as well as a goodly dousing of Worchester Sauce.

Bean Pat: The Value of One Chicken https://windbreakhouse.wordpress.com/2019/01/03/a-chicken-in-every-house/

Now available on Amazon

Common sense from one of my favorite writers.

Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Pepper. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder and is always searching for life’s silver lining. Check out her book Travels with Maggie, available on Amazon, to learn more.

Posted in Food, Journeys | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

What We See

January 2, 2019 by Pat Bean

Besides always looking — and seeing — birds, they have become my favorite subject to paint. — Great horned in a tree by Pat Bean

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” — Mark Twain

And What We Don’t

I was out driving around Tucson the other day with my friend Jean when she spotted a garage-sale sign.  She usually sees three or four every time we go out together while I see zero. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that she likes garage sales and I don’t.

Also my favorite subject to photograph. — Great Blue Heron at Brazos Bend State Park in Texas photo by Pat Bean

My thoughts about this oddity touched my memory of a day back before I became an addicted bird watcher. I was riding in a van with seven members of HawkWatch, an organization whose goal is to protect raptors. They were going to check on hawks flying over the Goshute Mountains, and I was tagging along as a reporter doing a story on HawkWatch.

We were driving on Interstate 80 through the Bountiful Salt Flats between Salt Lake City and the Nevada border, and every few minutes one of my fellow passengers called out sighting of a bird, most often a red-tailed hawk or a turkey vulture.

This seemed strange, as I had driven this same, desolate route many times and had never spotted a bird. It then got stranger. After we left the highway for an unpaved backroad, one of the guys in the van yelled: “Stop! There’s an owl in that cottonwood tree.”

The driver stopped, and all of the guys oohed over the owl, which they had quickly identified as a great-horned. Even after one of the men pointed out to me where the bird was sitting, it took me a couple of minutes to actually see it. But when I did, its giant yellow eyes popped open and it stared straight at me. “Wow” was all I could think as we piled back in the van. I was changed forever. After that, I started seeing birds everywhere. Now I can’t not see them.

Thinking about this, as Jean suggested we might want to check out the garage sale, I realized how blind we can be to the world around us, simply because we’re not interested.

Perhaps, along with walking in another person’s shoes once in a while, we should also try looking at the world through another person’s eyes. There is no telling what we will see.

Bean Pat: Winter visitors https://cindyknoke.com/2018/12/04/the-canadians-are-coming/ From Canada.

Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Pepper. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder and is always searching for life’s silver lining. Check out her book Travels with Maggie, available on Amazon, to learn more.

Posted in Birds, Journeys | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

Resolutions for a New Year

January 1, 2019 by Pat Bean

“Trust in what you love, continue to do it and it will take you where you need to go.”  – Natalie Goldberg

Sometimes it’s the holes, or flaws, in our lives that are the most interesting. View of the Ajo Mountains in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument near Tucson. — Photo by Pat Bean.

I’ve taken up a challenge to write every day, even if it is only one sentence. I’m refining the challenge, issued by Jo Hawk at https://www.facebook.com/ to mean that I write every day on a work-in-progress, as I already write almost every day in my journals.

A second resolution is to make good use of time, because as an old broad who will turn 80 in April, I realize just how precious my remaining days on earth are.

A third, and final resolution, is to be kind because my heart tells me that kindness is the one thing the world could use more of these days.

So, what are your resolutions for the New Year?

Bean Pat: Ring out Wild Bells https://middlemaybooks.com/2018/12/31/ring-out-wild-bells-by-alfred-tennyson/?wref=pil An oldie but still a great poem for a new year.

Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Pepper. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder and is always searching for life’s silver lining. Check out her book Travels with Maggie, available on Amazon, to learn more.

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Tucson Points of Interest | Tagged | 4 Comments »

DFW Flashback

December 24, 2018 by Pat Bean

One of the trams at DFW airport that transport passengers from gate to gate and terminal to terminal. — Wikimedia photo

     ‘Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.’ — Samuel Ullman

Surviving Teenagers

Friday evening, I found myself sitting in a tram at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, hoping to get from Terminal C to Terminal A in time to catch a connecting flight to Orlando, Florida. Sitting across from me was my youngest daughter, T.C., who is a quite responsible and protective mom these days to the three boys she and her husband are raising after she raised three girls who are grown and given her grandchildren.

As I looked across the aisle at T.C., I suddenly remembered a night in 1978 when it was just her and me living together in Arlington, Texas, just a few miles from the DFW airport that had opened in 1974. My daughter was out with friends, and had an 8 p.m. curfew. By 10 minutes after 8, I was fuming and by 20 minutes after 8, I was worried and fuming.

Have a joyous one,

Shortly afterwards, I got a call from my daughter telling me she and her friends were at the airport riding the trams for fun, and asking if she could stay a bit longer. Of course, I screamed at her to get her butt home instantly.  I told this story to my grandson Patrick, who was sitting beside.  “How was that even possible?” he asked.

“That was before 9-11,” I said, realizing that he had never lived in a time before today’s paranoid airport security measures, back when anybody could follow a loved one all the way to the take-off gate, or meet them at the arrival gate. And even teenagers could explore an airport or ride the trams without the proper ID or a body pat, one of which I had before getting on my flight from Tucson to Dallas. I guess terrorists these days can even look like old broads.

“Wow!” Patrick responded to my information about the “old days.”  But I wasn’t sure he understood those days. And it made me sad.” But remembering how Patrick said he loved to come to my place because he didn’t get screamed at, I told him he should have heard me scream and howl at his mom. “It’s a mom’s responsibility to their children to scream at them,” I said, “especially if they’re teenagers. If you think it’s noisy at your house now, you should have heard the ruckus I made when I was raising your mom and her four siblings.”

I’m not sure he believed me. But I’m sure my children would love to back me up and tell him just how much they got yelled at by his Nana. Thankfully I survived those days – and so did my children. Now if we can all just survive these days.

Now available on Amazon

Bean Pat: Christmas. https://aipetcher.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/christmas-eve/ When life was simpler.

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie would make a great last-minute Christmas gift for all those who wander but are not lost. You can order it on Kindle or in paperback. Merry Christmas all.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

Grand Canyon Rapids, Cave and a Waterfall

December 18, 2018 by Pat Bean

Deer Creek Falls

“Who I am, what I am, is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, a lifetime of stories. And there are still so many more books to read. I’m a work in progress.” — Sarah Addison Allen

John McPhee’s Encounters  

I’m reading A Colorado River Reader, an anthology of essays that range from the exploration days of John Wesley Powell to modern-day river runners. The stories have both enlightened and educated me, and brought to the forefront my own experiences of time spent on the river.

Granite Rapid: I was tossed out of the boat at the top of this rapid, and wasn’t pulled back in until the raft got to the end. What an adventure.

In 1991, and again in 1999 as a gift to myself on my 60th birthday, I escaped from the world for 16 days and rafted 225 miles down the Colorado as it flows through the Grand Canyon. On the first trip, I spent most of my time in a six-person paddle raft, communing with the river when it was gentle, screaming with glee at it when it was wild, and straining with the five others in the boat to power our way safely down the river and through the rapids.

By the time of the 1999 trip, I was content to ride in a larger oar boat and let a boatman, or boatwoman, do all the work, leaving me just to hang on for the ride. The two trips were different in experiences, but every second of both were 100 percent joyous and worth remembering, which is why I so relished the memories of those trips that were refreshed and brought to the forefront of my brain when I read John McPhee’s piece in the anthology.

Tunnel, far right, dug to access rock structure for proposed Marble Canyon Dam.

The essay, “Encounters with an Archdruid,” was about a trip down the river with David Brower, a prominent environmentalist who opposed dam building (and whom I had met and wrote about as a journalist) and Floyd Dominy of the Bureau of Reclamation, who built dams. He got the Glen Canyon Dam built, but failed to get the one he wanted to be built in Grand Canyon’s Marble Canyon, although he got as far as getting a tunnel dug in the side of a cliff at the proposed dam site to access the rock structure.

I got to walk into this tunnel during my second trip down the Colorado River.

McPhee’s essay took me along on this now legendary white-water float through the Grand Canyon, dousing my memories with the cold-water waves of Deubendorff Rapid and sprinkling them with the rainbow-lit drops of mist coming off Deer Creek Falls, an awesome side canyon waterfall whose music filled my ears as I sat by it and ate lunch one day.

As I read, my mind wandered off to give thanks to the person who taught me to read. I can’t remember who it was, just that I truly can’t remember a time in my life that I couldn’t read. Reading has enlarged and brightened my world for as long as I can remember. And I’m thankful for this great gift.

I believe Ray Bradbury said it best when he wrote that not reading books was worse than burning them.

Bean Pat: Don’t call me sweet  https://awindowintothewoods.com/2018/12/18/dont-call-me-sweet/  Take a break from the holiday chaos.

Now available on Amazon

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon. It would make a great Christmas gift for all those who wander but are not lost.

Posted in Books, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

Too Much Stuff

December 5, 2018 by Pat Bean

“The most important things in life aren’t things.” – Anthony J. D’Angelo

I promised myself when I moved into my new apartment that I wouldn’t bring anything into it that I didn’t love. And I do love these tin birds which were a gift, and my home will always have room for flowers. — Photo by Pat Bean

Once Again I’m at that Point

            Back in 2004, when I downsized from my two-bedroom home in Utah to a 21-foot RV, I was amazed at how much stuff I had. That was nothing, however, to the stuff I had when I moved from a six-bedroom family home, after three of my five children had grown up and started life on their own, into a two-bedroom apartment.

And I love having a simple place where I can read and write, and look out at the world. — Photo by Pat Bean

That time I finally called the local thrift store to come empty out my large unfinished basement. It seems if you have plenty of storage space, you tend to fill it up.

Space in my small RV during the nine years it was my home on wheels hardly existed, and I quickly learned that if I brought one item into my life, another item had to go out.

I was thinking about this the day I drove through the small town of Leakey, Texas, and saw a sign on an antique store that read: “Sophisticated Junk for the Elite.” That was worth one of my loud belly laughs.

I turned to my canine companion Maggie and asked her if we should

Having a great view, as I do from my writing chair is important, too. It’s better than stuff. — Photo by Pat Bean

stop. She looked up at me from her co-pilot seat in my RV and yawned. I guess not, I told her. Sophisticated or not, there was no room in my RV for old, or even new, doodads.

When I retired from my traveling RV life, settling into a small one-bedroom, third-floor apartment with a view of the Catalina Mountains out my bedroom balcony window, I felt as if I had moved into a mansion, and loved its spaciousness.

Looking around, six years later, I realized that it wasn’t quite as spacious. It’s time to go back to the practice of when one thing comes in, another goes out.

Bean Pat: Bo’s Café Life https://boscafelife.wordpress.com/2018/12/05/11561/ Life shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Now available on Amazon

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon. Currently, she is writing a book, she is calling Bird Droppings, which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com

Posted in Journeys, Travels With Maggie, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 8 Comments »

Road Trip Oddities

December 3, 2018 by Pat Bean

The abandoned cement mixer that’s been turned into and abandoned space capsule by an artist. The oddity sits eats of Phoenix near the Casa Grade exit on the south side of the road.

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.: — Rosalia de Castro

Between Phoenix and Tucson

I was heading home to Tucson from Phoenix on Interstate 10 with my friend Jean when I saw a strange object in a barren farm field off the road to my right. It kind of looked like part of a rocket, was my immediate thought,

The cement tree that sits off Interstate 80 between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Wendover, Nevada.

“What’s that?” I asked Jean.

Truly a woman of the times, Jean said she didn’t know but she would find out.

“I doubt you’ll find that on your smartphone,” I said as she began tapping its keypad.

“Wanna bet?” she replied. Fortunately, I didn’t because a few minutes later she

Told me exactly what we had passed. It was an abandoned cement mixer from an old truck that artist Jack Milliard had painted to look like a downed space capsule. The abandoned mixer had sat in the field for 30 years before that.

Weird, I thought. Then my mind went to the cement tree that sits in the middle of the Bountiful Salt

The two-story outhouse in Gays, Illinois. — Photo by Pat Bean

Flats between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Wendover, Nevada. As a journalist, I had written about this 83-foot-tall structure that was built to withstand desert winds gusting at over 130 miles an hour, and earthquakes in the order of 7.5 on the Richter scale.

According to the local Highway Patrol, and Wikipedia, more than two million cars travel past the tree annually, and five to seven an hour of these cars stop for a more thorough look. When Utah pumped water out of Great Salt Lake onto the West Desert to avoid the lake from flooding in the 1980s, the joke was that the state was doing so to water the cement tree.

Then I remembered the Two-Story Outhouse in Gays, Illinois. I did a short travel blog for American Profile magazine on this roadside oddity.

Such surprising sights are what make road trips so delightful. Do you have a favorite roadside oddity?  I hope you do. I’d love to hear about it.

Bean Pat Frog Diva thoughts https://frogdivathoughts.com/2018/12/03/all-i-want-is-a-hippopotamus-for-christmas/#like-8863 Do you remember this? I do.

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon. Currently, she is writing a book, she is calling Bird Droppings, which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com

Posted in Favorite Places, Journeys, road trip, Travel | Tagged , , | 3 Comments »

Quotes to Inspire

November 28, 2018 by Pat Bean

 

Painting from a photo I took on the Anhinga Trail in the Everglades. — Watercolor by Pat Bean

“We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful. — Taylor Swift

Or Disagree with

I came across this quote by Rita Mae Brown — “A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all” – while drinking my cream-laced coffee this morning. My instant reaction was to disagree with Rita Mae.

Deadlines, which I had almost daily as a newspaper journalist for 37 years, are my best, and most favorite, writing inspiration. They mean I have a writing job. I also think I do my best work when scrambling to meet a deadline.

I collect quotes. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t write one down in my journals. I want to remember the best of them because their words inspire me, make me laugh, or speak one of my own truths to me in better words than I’ve yet thought out.

But as this old broad gets wiser, I’ve come to question whether some of the more popular quotes are actually true, especially ones that indicate animals have no feelings or reasoning. How do we know the lark is happy, or the owl wise?

The years have taught me that I can’t believe – or agree with – everything I read. It’s a skill that I treasure in the age of the Internet, where anyone can say anything and everything they want, which is not a bad thing unless what they say is malicious.

Meanwhile, the beauty of Rita Mae’s quote is that a deadline isn’t everybody’s favorite thing, and it truly is a negative inspiration for them. In this, as in most things in life, how one looks at deadlines is neither right nor wrong, simply different.

Taylor Swift says it perfectly.

Bean Pat: Baltimore orioles

https://belindagroverphotography.com/2018/11/28/baltimore-oriole-two-photographs-2/?wref=pil  To brighten your winter day. I write about seeing my first Baltimore oriole in Travels with Maggie.

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon and would make the perfect Christmas gift for anyone who likes to travel. Bean is currently writing a second book, which she is calling Bird Droppings, and which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com

Posted in Art, Birds, Journeys | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments »

The Sonoran Desert

November 26, 2018 by Pat Bean

Looking across the valley from the undeveloped ridge near my apartment complex where I often take my morning walks, — Photo by Pat Bean

“… an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.” — Ellsworth Hunting

Just a Happy Accident

A gila woodpecker on a saguaro cactus, one of many I see on my walks in the desert. — Photo by Pat Bean

Six years ago, after spending nine years traveling this country full-time in a small RV with my canine companion Maggie, I made a small third-floor apartment in Tucson my home. It was an unplanned move, but the time had come when I wanted a nightly hot bath instead of a skimpy shower; and I wanted the pleasure of a local library. This southeastern Arizona apartment complex had a nice bathtub, was dog friendly with shady places to walk my pet, a library was close by and, just as important, it was affordable.

It also helped that my youngest daughter lived in town, the area was a great place to watch birds, and my new apartment stood in the shadow of the Catalina Mountains, which are comparable in their 10,000-foot elevation to Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, whose shadows I lived in for 25 years before I retired, sold my home and bought my RV — I’m not sure I could ever again live away from mountains. That I found

A Tucson sunset. — Photo by Pat Bean

myself living in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was just a happy accident.

The surprise has been how much I have learned to love the desert, particularly this morning during my early walk with my current canine companion Pepper – after I read about all the snow storms taking place elsewhere in the country.

Life is good – and this old broad is happy and grateful for her many blessings.

Bean Pat: Good signs https://simpletravelourway.wordpress.com/2018/11/26/consider-this/?wref=pil This goes along with my goal of encouraging people to be kind to one another.

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is available on Amazon.  She is now working on a book tentatively titled Bird Droppings, which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Journeys | Tagged , , | 3 Comments »

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