The TREE HOUSE

Since so many of you have asked about the house in the Poconos, I decided to repost this from 2006.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

THE TREE HOUSE

The Tree House
Do the words Tree House conjure up some image from your childhood, a place where you could go and hide out, hang out, do pretty much what you wanted with no thoughts about the rest of the world? Most people associate tree houses with carefree little boys, messy places, usually, I mean, who “cleans” up a tree house? Most tree houses are in trees but I remember a friend who built one high on the rocks back behind his “real” house in the mountains overlooking the trees below, accessible by a torturous little path up the cliff face. It looked out into and over the tree tops.
Well, some years ago, Anna named the apartment we have in White Haven the Tree House, partially because it is on tree level in the front but mostly because when we went up there, we would have to spend several days cleaning up after my father and brother who had spent time up there the previous fall. Well, my brother used to come up more often when his aunt lived next door. With the aunt gone, he no longer seems to have any interest in going there. And, my father just turned 89 in May, so his visits are fewer and fewer. Pennsylvania is a long way from Florida, especially when you are 89 years old and driving all alone. I live 300 miles away and dread the drive up!
Four generations of our family have lived in this house and my great-grandparents were not the first owners of the house. I remember coming here to visit my father’s parents as a very little child. My grandfather and I used to sit in a big old swing on the front porch during thunderstorms. It was on this porch that he taught me how to tell how far away the lightning was by counting the seconds from the light to the thunder. He taught me distances and directions this way, also. “Now that one hit over near Freeland. That is 8 miles away,” he’d say. And he’d point and tell me the compass directions for Freeland.
The house is divided in to the Big House and a small 2 room apartment. Well, it isn’t all that small, really, but it is 2 rooms and a bath, an entry way and the “cave,” a small storage room in the hillside where we keep the garden tools, snow shovels, coolers, camping equipment, etc. The temperature in the cave stays in the 50-60º range year round. The living room doubles as a bedroom. The kitchen has a modern electric stove and an old wood or coal cooking stove that used to bake the best cookies! Years ago, Gram used to rent out the little apartment, then she moved into it in her old age when my step mother and brother were evacuated from Vietnam and they lived in the big house. That side has a lot of rooms. When my dad was young, it had 6 bedrooms. Now most of the bedrooms are storage rooms or empty. Dad took two of the rooms and made them into one very large master bedroom. We rent out the big side of the house – well, sorta. E is a tenant but also the caretaker. She keeps the grass cut in the summer and the snow shoveled or plowed in the winter and lets my brother know when something isn’t working right.
You can enter the house from different levels as it is built into the mountainside. From the road, there are 6 steps up to the front yard where there is a porch with a door leading into the cellar. Personally, I would love to turn that into a little apartment – stone walls, etc. The cellar is divided into four rooms, one completely underground, one partly in the side of the hill. There is a set of steps up the side to the first floor level, the front porch, a flower garden, the patio, a sun porch and around back to the entrance to the apartment.
We have a driveway at what amounts to a block away (as measured by the block across the street, but we don’t have any streets crossing on our side) and it goes up to a parking area level with the second floor. Therefore one has to go up or down a flight of steps to get in or out of the house no matter where you park. In my old age, this sucks! The old stone steps are narrow and steep. The property then continues on up the mountain where Bill cuts little paths up to the old stone walls and some great old boulders where I used to climb up and have my morning coffee and watch the sun come up over the mountain and the morning fog burn off the river which is probably about 500 feet away if measured in a straight line. However, in the mountains, there is no such thing as a straight line. There is a very steep bank leading down to the river owned by the state now and is part of the Lehigh Gorge State Park. I used to climb up and down that bank like a little mountain goat when I was a kid. It has its own tiny waterfalls, two of them, actually, from the creek that runs thru my lot across the street. The Lehigh River, even on the hottest day of the year is cold. Seriously cold. But, we used to swim in it as kids.
There used to be a house down there, a great little place, and the people had kids my age and they used to let us run all over their place. Their yard was our “beach!” Then the state wanted it for their Park. The people would not sell. This went on for a couple of years. The state tried to take the place by condemning it. The owners fought back. Then one night, it mysteriously burned to the ground. The fire Marshall could not determine the cause of the fire. Right. But I digress, again. So, of course, the people sold it – the land, that is, since the house was gone – even the garage somehow burned down, too. Amazing, huh? And now it is all weeds and rock as part of the naturalized park.
Anyway, here are some pictures of the house, the mountain side (if you live in the Rockies, please don’t laugh at my use of the word mountain here – that is what it is called) the steps, the view from up back. The plants that line the road for a few hundred feet are peonies my grandfather planted eons ago. Grandpop died in 1954. The trees around the house make it impossible to get a picture of the house in a way to show its size, etc. I will do my best to put the pictures on so you can tell what is what, but I haven’t figured out quite how to arrange things on blogger yet. 

FROM ALAN GRAYSON

"How You Tried To Set Them Free"

Aaron Swartz was an internet leader and free-speech advocate. He helped organize the worldwide movement to keep the internet free from censorship and corporate control. After Aaron downloaded a large number of scholarly articles from the JSTOR website without JSTOR's permission, he was indicted for violating JSTOR's terms of service. Facing long years in prison, Aaron committed suicide last month, at the age of 26. At a recent memorial service for Aaron in Washington, DC, Congressman Alan Grayson was invited to speak. Here is what he said:
CONGRESSMAN GRAYSON: Aaron worked in my office as an intern. He had a quality that I found unnerving. He could come up with better things for him to do than I could come up with for him to do. Time and time again, I would give him something to do, and he'd say, "Is it okay if I also work on this other thing?" And "this other thing" turned out to be much more important than anything that I could come up with.
I learned to live with that. I learned to live with that shortcoming, which I took to be a shortcoming of my own, not one of his.
The other unnerving quality that I found in him was the fact that when he would conjure these assignments, they actually came to fruition — an unusual phenomenon here on Capitol Hill. [Laughter.] He'd give himself something to do, I would recognize that it was very worthwhile, I let him do it, and it got done! He was a remarkable human being.
Another thing that I found unnerving — but also very endearing — about Aaron was that Aaron wanted to rock the boat. Now, we all hear from a very, very young age, "Don't rock the boat." I would venture to say that of the 2000 languages spoken on this planet, probably every single one of them has an idiom in that language for that term: "Don't rock the boat." And yet Aaron wanted to rock the boat. Not just for the sake of boat-rocking, but for the sake of improving the lives of ordinary people. And that's a beautiful, a wonderful quality.
We're talking about somebody here who helped to create Reddit, an important world-wide service, at the age of nineteen. Honestly, somebody who probably could have spent the rest of his life in bed, ordering pizzas, and left it at that. And yet he didn't. He continued to strive to do good — good as he saw it. And that's a rare quality in people. Many of us, we just have to do our best to get through the day. That's the way it is. Many of us struggle to do just that. Very few of us actually can think big thoughts, and make them happen. But Aaron was one of those rare people.
And he was willing to take the heat for rocking the boat. Now, you know, sometimes when you rock the boat, the boat tries to rock you. That is exactly what he encountered, right up until the end.
And it's a sad thing, that that's the price you have to pay. For some of us who rock the boat, we end up losing our property. For some of us who rock the boat, we end up losing our freedom. For some of us who rock the boat, we end up losing our families. And in Aaron's case, his life.
And yet, he was willing to face the facts, and to let that happen. To keep striving, to keep struggling, to keep trying to shake things up.
Aaron's life reminded me about a different life that came to the same end. It's the life of Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician. He lived in England, and was born one hundred years ago. Alan Turing was the greatest mathematician of the 20th Century. He not only invented the Turing Machine, which is the basis for all modern computing, but Alan Turing also broke the Nazi codes during World War II, and allowed the English and the Americans to defeat the Nazis.
You would think that someone like that would be cherished. Someone like that who, if he had managed to have a full life, might have won one, or two, or even three, Nobel Prizes. But in fact he was vilified, because he was a homosexual, which, at that point in England, in those days, was illegal. And I'm sure that at that point in England, in those days, there were people who said, "Well, the law is the law. And if you disobey the law, then you should go to prison." Because of that, because his boyfriend turned him in, Alan Turing was convicted of perversity, and sentenced to prison.
Given the choice between spending hard time — years and years of his life — instead of doing the mathematics that he loved, or alternatively, to accept estrogen injections, well, Turing took the estrogen injection choice. And that broke not only his body, but his mind. He found that he could not do the thing he loved the most, mathematics, any longer. So after two years of this, Alan Turing committed suicide.
And who lost, out of that? Well, Alan Turing lost. But so did all of we. We lost as well. All of us who would have benefitted from that first, and second, and the third Nobel Prizes that Alan Turing had in him. And that Aaron Swartz had in him.
We're the ones who lose.
If we let our prejudices, our desires to restrain those with creativity — if we let that lead us to the point where that creativity is restrained, then going back all the way to the time of Socrates, what we engage in is human sacrifice. We sacrifice their lives, out of the misguided sense that we need to protect ourselves from them, when in fact it's the opposite.
Our lives have meaning, our lives have greater meaning, from the things that they create. So we're here today to remember Aaron — and also to try to learn from the experience. To understand that prosecution should not be persecution.
This morning I reached into the closet, randomly took out this tie [showing necktie], and wore it. And I have a sense that sometimes, things are connected in ways that are not exactly obvious. It happens that this tie is a painting of "Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh, someone else whose life ended all too soon.
In a Don McLean song about Vincent Van Gogh, it ends this way: "They would not listen. They're not listening still. Perhaps they never will."
It's time to listen.

SEE THE VIDEO

"And when no hope was left in sight,
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you."

-Don McLean, "Starry, Starry Night" (1971).

A REMINDER

IN THIS WORLD of so much self-righteous hatred, I feel the need to share Mother Teresa's words...
“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.”

Mother Teresa

If you believe in God, then you believe we are all His creation...
Love one another. Leave the judging for a power greater than yourselves.
When you show hate for another human being, you show hate to God.
Understand that we are all different, that is part of The Plan. Deal with it.

THAT'S JUST WHAT BUDDHA SAID!

MAY WE BE FORGOTTEN

Just had to share... and then I remembered this quote.... "I have some truly modest wonderful friends, and I thought of them, they are filled with love... I have a couple friends who brag constantly, and I thought of them with saddness, for they are empty but for their noise."

May we be forgotten
by Paulo Coelho on March 31, 2012

At the Sceta monastery, the abbot Lucas gathered the monks for the sermon.
- May you never be remembered – he said.
- What do you mean? – replied one of the brothers. – May our example not help those who might need it?
- In the days when everything was just, no one paid attention to exemplary people – answered the abbot. – Everyone gave their best, without pretensions, and so fulfilled their duty to their fellow men.“They loved their neighbor because they understood that this was part of life, and they thought nothing of respecting a law of nature.“They shared their possessions in order not to accumulate more than they could carry, since journeys last a lifetime.“They lived together in freedom, giving and receiving, without demanding or blaming anything on others.“That is why their deeds were not handed down, and there is no story known about them.
“I hope we can achieve the same thing in the present: to make goodness such a common thing, that there is no need to exalt those who practice it.”

SOME THOUGHTS, SOME GRATITUDE

It has been a crazy couple of weeks, but that is not a complaint… not even really an excuse for not staying in touch, but time has been short for blogging with so many other things to worry about. I have tried to keep up with some of you in private emails as blogger is being uncooperative again. Once again, storms have changed people’s lives. My cousin lost their cabin on the Susquehanna River up near Wilkes Barre, PA. But, that could have been their primary residence, so while a serious loss, they still have their home and all their belongings. And no one lost their lives – most important of all. Check off that little box on your gratitude list!

Normally this is a hectic time of year anyway, tons of things to do as summer winds down, a dozen events going on before it gets too cold, sometimes having to run from one event in the morning to another in the afternoon or evening. I feel like my friend, Ralph, bless his heart, who is running for Senate again and is trying to be in 5 places at once and still maintain a practice at Children’s Hospital. As I listened to his schedule yesterday, I just shook my head wondering how he does it all. But, he is much younger and in better health and has a team making all his arrangements. I am feeling my age! But keeping going keeps me going. Does that make any sense to you? I know if I quit and put my feet up, I won’t be getting back up.

My auntie up in the Wilkes Barre area had to be evacuated. This was not an easy thing to do as she was one of the hard heads who stayed in her house back during Hurricane Agnes (39 years ago) and had folks coming by boat bringing food and water to her thru the 2^nd floor window. But, for some folks, Lee brought more flooding and destruction than Agnes. The river went up to 43 feet. It was a shallow muddy puddle when I crossed it this summer to see her. But, as of last night, she is back in her apartment in her senior apartment building, full of praise for her son and DIL for treating her like royalty (which she is, of course!) My only regret is I was not up there to do anything for her – BUT, my house (up there) is on the other side of 2 rivers with lots of flooding creeks in-between Wilkes Barre and White Haven.

Here on the shore, actually, up in Delaware, one little town received 14 inches of rain in about 6 hours. I have been in the Seaford area when it was under water, drove home from PA in 9 inches of water on Route 13 just before they closed it. Talk about timing! That was June, 2006. We saw cars with water up to their roofs in parking lots, drove past houses with water up to the front doors. So sad!

Anyway, it is very busy here taking care of my own commitments and worrying about family and friends. So, if I neglect you a little bit, forgive me. I will catch up maybe sometime in November!

I hope you have made out all right in the storms!

A NOT QUITE SUMMER MORNING

The calendar tells me that it will soon officially be summer. The thermometer says it is here and has been for a week. The refreshing chill of the morning is history, it seems. I miss needing long sleeves first thing in the morning. My world, so drab not too long ago, is now a contest of greens – each plant is trying to out-green the other. This is about as green as it gets – the end of May. It does not take long for the heat of the summer to dry things up, coat the leaves with dust and make folks grateful for their air-conditioners. I have a love/hate relationship with my air conditioner. I am grateful for the comfort it brings, but I hate to have to use it. I long for my Pocono summers and dream of the Maine island summers of my youth. I have been so fortunate to have spent my summers sampling the climates of many different areas. How lucky is that?

The desert areas of Turkey are about to go back to being deserts. They have been blooming like crazy this year, so I have been told. It is a long, long time since I lived in Turkey, a long time since I saw the beauty of the desert in the spring. Interestingly, I did not mind the dry heat at all, so different from the stifling humidity here. The normally dead looking brown earth gets covered in blankets of beautiful colors and delicious fragrances. If you have never had a bit of desert experience, you don’t know what you’ve missed. Ok, backing up – I am not talking about what my father called “the serious desert,” the sand deserts, the huge blowing, shifting dunes, but the miles and miles of “scrub or barren” land, land that looks like it would not grow anything most of the year… land with cactus, sage, the tumbling tumbleweed type of landscape. Oh, but that month in the spring, sometimes it lasts a bit longer, but that month of awesome flowering, of color, is a month of pure magic.

Here, far from the desert, the air is heavy in the morning with fragrances from so many sources. A visitor once said it felt like you had to push your way thru the sweetness in the air just to get to the car. We have magnolias in bloom, honeysuckle, and the locust trees are just finishing. Even holly trees are fragrant during most of May as they pollinate and make new holly berries. The air is also heavy with the sounds of birds, baby birds begging to be fed, parents fighting to protect their nests, robber birds like crows scouting around to steal eggs or even unguarded babies. Then there are the grackles, the noisy, noisy grackles squawking at each other in the mulberry trees, bragging about what ever grackles brag about – or perhaps they are complaining. Is that what it is? Their noise sometimes grates on my nerves; I hate to admit it.

The grass is wet with dew; strings of pearls hang from the bushes as the spiders wait for breakfast to blunder by. My shoes get soaked as I wander thru the yard in the morning looking at all the beauty around me… late peonies, irises, roses. Even the honeysuckle, a truly invasive “weed” in most cases, is beautiful in the early morning light. Delicate. Beyond fragrant.

The Mountain Laurel has been blooming. I am always amazed that it has survived another year. Friends laugh as I have brought rocks from PA to put around them to make them feel more at home. (We have NO naturally occurring rocks here on the shore. But you can now buy them at garden centers!)

The garden is coming along. The bees are having a good time with all the flowers on the squash, zucchini and cucumbers. I spotted my first cukes of the year this morning – about the size of a kosher dill. They will be ready to pick later this week. I have my first tiny tomatoes, not much bigger than a pea, but there they are. I can almost taste them. I ate my first homegrown lettuce the other day. Best salad I ever had! And we cooked MY peas for supper. I wonder why that gives me such a high!

I guess it is good that having this garden does give me a high, because the work is almost too much sometimes. But I keep in mind the fun of going out and picking enough beans for dinner. And then picking beans (or cukes, or tomatoes) to share with others. And folks covet my produce. They know I do not use any chemicals – no pesticides, ever!

This morning, when I opened the back door, can of Tuna in my hand for Punkie and Spook, I was hit with the almost over powering scent of almost summer. I had to walk out into the yard and just breathe the smells in. I thought of folks in cities who breathe in the fumes of vehicles, exhaust, garbage, that tarry smell of black top in the sun… I thought about the sounds that they hear as I listened to my birds fussing, begging, or just singing their morning songs. Are they thanking their idea of god for another day? Did someone just say thanks for the drink in the bird bath out in the yard?

Then I heard another noise… a soft leaf rustling sound and the snapping of tiny branches. I quietly walked out a bit further. There was a doe standing on her hind legs pulling a branch down from the mulberry tree, chomping down as many berries as she could while the birds fussed at her for eating all their berries – like there isn’t a whole tree full? Or maybe even several trees? The mulberry trees are so heavy with berries this year, I actually had to cut some branches off where they were hanging down into my garden. I stood there, barely breathing, glad the wind was blowing in my direction watching the doe eat when I noticed movement closer to the ground. She had her fawn with her. At first I thought it was my cat, Punkin … no wait, it WAS Punkin, oh where is my camera when I need it! Punkin sat there and watched the doe eating from the tree, the fawn eating (?) the berries that had fallen to the ground.

The bad news is that this year’s new supply of mosquitoes has arrived. I am SOOOOO allergic to bug bites. I hate using sprays, but I pay a huge price. Yesterday, I tried working out in the yard in long pants and a long sleeved shirt. I didn’t last very long. I had to wait until around 7 to go back and cut grass and finish my chores.

It is hard to believe that there is still over 100 inches of snow on the ground in some mountainous areas out west. From my CoCoRaHS coordinator this morning:

As of a few days ago we still had some CoCoRaHS volunteers with snow
left on the ground. Two of our stations in CA, where snowfall had been
so great that it buried residential power lines, still had over 100" of
snow remaining on the ground earlier this week. Here in Colorado we're
waiting for the warm weather to finally arrive and when it does later
this week -- look out. We have huge amounts of snow left in our
mountains -- from 25 to as much as 90 inches of snow water equivalent
(SWE) still up on the slopes in the northern portion of our state --
much, much more than usual. With the sun nearly overhead and the summer
solstice right around the corner, the snow will be melting fast (1-2" of
SWE per day when it gets warm) and the rivers surging.

Friends out in the Midwest can’t even get into their gardens – the land is just too soggy.

Here on the Shore, we are in a state of moderate drought. We don’t need the floods others have been having, but we sure could use some rain. Go figure. How is your garden growing? Still have snow? Is your garden under water? Or do you have to go out there and water every day?

THINKING LIKE A MOUNTAIN

Aldo Leopold, “Thinking Like a Mountain”

“Thinking Like a Mountain”
By Aldo Leopold
.

"For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth,

but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity."
- William Wordsworth

“A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world. Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call. To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf. Those unable to decipher the hidden meaning know nevertheless that it is there, for it is felt in all wolf country, and distinguishes that country from all other land. It tingles in the spine of all who hear wolves by night, or who scan their tracks by day. Even without sight or sound of wolf, it is implicit in a hundred small events: the midnight whinny of a pack horse, the rattle of rolling rocks, the bound of a fleeing deer, the way shadows lie under the spruces. Only the ineducable tyro can fail to sense the presence or absence of wolves, or the fact that mountains have a secret opinion about them.
My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.
In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks. We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes - something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.
Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.
I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf's job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.
We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men."

On VACATIONS…

Numerous friends have been on vacation lately, most of them going pretty much to the same place – Maine. Maine is definitely in my top 5 list of places to go on vacation, and state-side, is probably #1.

I find different people’s ideas of vacations interesting. There are those who go hiking, camping, head out to the more remote parts of the world sometimes hiking miles for that perfect moment, that perfect view that so few ever get to see. For some there is nothing more enjoyable than the smell of coffee brewing over a campfire, a morning dip in the river or a shower under a waterfall. Then there are those who leave the getting there to someone else, have meals prepared by a chef and sleep in a bed they did not have to make, let alone roll up and tuck into a back pack. Somewhere between the cruise people and the back packers fall the majority of us.

In my old age, I do like the convenience of a bed at night, a flush toilet and a hot shower. I am ashamed to admit, the last few times I went to our Powwow, I did pitch my tent… but I slept in a motel a few miles down the road.

I have been blessed by being able to have some wonderful vacations. It would be hard to say which one was the best… but probably at the top of the list would be the spring we spent in Egypt. I was young and brave enough to try anything, go anywhere, including places no longer allowed, like climbing to the top of the pyramids. Riding camels around the pyramids was fun, great shots for the family photo album, but racing the stable boy on a white Arabian thru the desert was breath taking. God! Was I ever that young? Really?

Having lived in the Middle East, I had the good fortune to be able to go to places most people only visit in a text book or on a PBS special. Many of those places are not there anymore – or I guess I should say are in ruins or have been rebuilt like Beirut, Baghdad, or are off limits like Tehran. When people around here brag about something that was built a hundred, two hundred years ago, I nod and smile, but after being in Istanbul, where the University was founded before Columbus even set sail, I tend to not be real impressed. If you’ve wandered the ancient streets of Ephesus or Bergama or Troy, 200 years is just yesterday. Probably my favorite camping out experience was camping in a cave in Cappadocia. (google it!)

For many years we went to Montserrat, in the British West Indies, spending weeks at Vue Pointe, now closed forever under a dusting of volcanic ash, and hanging out in Plymouth which is now buried under tons of volcanic ash. So, even though the island is still there, much of it is buried today, and that breaks my heart. I enjoyed the other islands, but there was just something special about Montserrat.

Probably my most special vacation was my last trip to Maine… a few years ago when I took my sister and her husband back for one last trip. My sister, 12 years younger than I, had cancer, and it had spread. She wanted to see the place where she was born. All she really remembered was a green door. The last time my sister and I had been together in Maine, I think she was only 4 years old. It was a bitter sweet trip knowing that it would no doubt be the last time we would ever see each other. She was gone 3 months later.

Maine, for me, is the rocky coast, the water, the smells and sounds associated with the water. Though we lived in Portland most of the time, we also lived with an aunt and uncle and a bunch of cousins on Peaks Island in Casco Bay. It was on Peaks Island that I fell in love with the sea.

I loved falling asleep listening to the waves lap up on the rocks (no sand on our beach,) listening to the lullaby of the fog horn at night and the clang, clang, clang of the bell buoys.

I have a few of them hanging out in my yard, though today their clanging usually means a stiff breeze is blowing. In the morning, if the wind was just right, we would awaken to the toots of the boats pulling out from the docks on the other side of the point…a beautiful but unreliable alarm clock. There are so many places in Maine to fall in love with, but I am hooked on being as close to the water as I can. I wonder how many islands there are in Maine. We’ll only count at high tide. I remember learning the Maine State Song in 6^th grade. To this day, I remember every word and every word is true. The part I remember best is:

Oh, Pine Tree State
Your woods, fields and hills
Your lakes, streams and rockbound coast
Will ever fill our hearts with thrills
And tho' we seek far and wide
Our search will be in vain
To find a fairer spot on earth
Than Maine! Maine! Maine!

Well, there you have it. that says it all.

Probably my second favorite spot in Maine would be what I learned to pronounce as Arcadia, but amazingly is spelled Acadia and is near the little town of BaHaba, but spelled Bar Harbor and Mt Desert Island, whoops, there you go, another island. I don’t think I would ever get tired of being there, well, um, that is, until the snow started to fall. Oh, I have become such a wimp living here in coastal Virginia. No hills, little snow, flowers in bloom most winters… wimp, an old wimp. But I used to not mind the Maine winters – I was a kid, I didn’t know any better. What can I say? See the Whale Watcher boat just sittin’ and waitin’ and I am not there! (Geddy’s webcam) A perfect morning is waking up with the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks, the smell of a fresh brewed pot of coffee mingling with the fresh salt air. I used to love to walk down to the head of the rocks and watch the morning fog burn off, the city was far away buried in a cloud of soft grey, the sounds of the lobstah boats chug, chugging by. It was so much fun to climb down to inspect the tidal pools, see who or what was there today. Sometimes I would pick wild berries in the field beside the house to put on my cereal. Life was good.

There are so many places to go in Maine. I do believe it is the most beautiful state on the Eastern half of the United States. I am not sure just which part of Maine I like the most. One of my fantasies has always been to rent the Pemaquid Light House for a week. You can visit it here - http://www.pemaquidpoint.org/wc.cfm. Oh, my, I can smell the salt air…

You would think that with my love of the sea I would be a cruise person – but, I am not a cruise enthusiast, and I cannot imagine taking a cruise to Leaf Peep… but plenty of folks do. This big beauty was docked in Portland, Maine. I guess there are advantages to a moving hotel, but, like I said, I am not a cruise person. I HATE the dressing up part, the cocktail hour… I love ships and boats, but I hate the “cruise” scene. If I can’t wear my jeans to dinner, I ain’t goin’! I hate playing dress up! I like the boat small enough I can feel the spray of the waves on my face.

Most ferry lines have island tour cruises, some have light house cruises, but I like just getting on the mail boat and going from one island to the next with the locals, not even getting off, just BEING there. Sometimes you can just bribe someone to take you out for the day!

Then there are whale watching tours and best of all, Puffin trips! But you have to do the puffin tours before late August because they leave about then. Talk about snow birds!

I have promised myself another trip back to Maine, my friends are forever bugging me about going back to Turkey (next to Maine I love Istanbul) but these days I feel lucky to get over to Virginia Beach! (I used to get a room on the ocean front and sleep with the door to the balcony open so I could hear the waves crashing in as I fell asleep.) sigh. Oh well, maybe one of these days. It seems it takes all my energy just to get up and going and getting the dishes done! But, until then, I can listen to my friends, look at their pictures (those kind enough to share them) or read their blogs and keep an eye out for pictures of the waves on the rocks…(surely you must have been to the water’s edge by now!) who knows, one day I might just take off…

BREAK FAST

 

A week or so ago, I did a post about Ramazan (Ramadan) and the comments to the blog were few, but I did get a number of emails about the post. http://possumlane.blogspot.com/2010/08/ramadan-ramazan.html.

As most folks who know me at all know that I used to live in Turkey and that I have traveled extensively throughout the Middle East. I have a number of close Turkish friends here on the Shore. There are several restaurants here on the Eastern Shore of Virginia that are owned by Turks. I can think of 8 without straining my brain all that hard…

Anyway, my Turkish friends seem to appreciate my pitiful attempts at speaking their language (which I had not spoken for nearly 50 years, except for a selection of cuss words when needed – that my boss could not understand) and they appreciate my love of their country, food, and understanding and acceptance of their customs. So, I and some friends that I hang out with were invited to a Break Fast at an American Turkish cultural center in Georgetown, Delaware. If you read my post on Ramazan, you will remember that they do not eat or drink during daylight hours, which is a long stretch when Ramazan falls in the summer months. Remember Ramazan is based on the lunar calendar, so it is about 11 days earlier every year. Next year the days will be even longer as Ramazan will start about the 1^st of August. So, last night, our dinner was served at 8 PM, just after sunset.

Most of the women were dressed in their finest headscarves and long sleeved, floor length dresses. Most of the women and children sat on one side of the room, most of the men and visitors on the other. It just seemed to work that way for ease in feeding and caring for the children, not as a segregation thing. Think about your home at Thanksgiving, the men in front of the TV set or hanging out on the porch or gazebo, the women gathered around in the kitchen… I remember G-ma threatening the men with a spatula if they did not get out of her way… the gazebo was the escape from work or just being underfoot.

Our host, Asher, served us.

 

My friend, Mehmet, sat with me. My friends, Beatrice and Grenville, who kindly drove me to the dinner – a wonderful thing since I don’t drive after dark - and sat across from me.

We had a delicious dinner, lentil soup and fresh baked rolls, Turkish meatballs (Köfte – pronounced kind of like Kurftah), pilaf with beef and chickpeas, and a salad, and a sauce to eat with the pilaf. The sauce is a mixture of yogurt, cucumbers, onion and light garlic. All this was followed by fresh made baklava and çay (chai).

It was an emotional experience for me.

If you’ve read much of my blog or if you have known me for a while, you will know I dearly loved the few years I spent in Turkey, I was treated like royalty wherever I went, and I was most fortunate to be able to travel throughout much of the country. That might not look like much on the map, but back in the early 60s, the only paved roads were in the major cities, and there were often no bridges over the shallower rivers, one drove thru them. So travel was slow and yet it gave one a chance to experience the country in a way today’s tourists will miss whizzing by things at 70 mph. Part of my dad’s job was to help set up facilities for building roads and bridges. And being young (I graduated high school in Ankara) I picked up a bit of the language – enough to get in or out of trouble, get something to eat or drink, and find the bathroom! For some reason some of the words have always been part of my thinking vocabulary and just pop out from time to time and I don’t even realize it. I learned to eat eggplant in Turkey, so I learned it as patlican (pot-la-john) and still have to pause and think of the English for it, which in my old age can take some time.

An imam called us to prayer. It has been 46 years since I have heard an actual live voice do the call to prayer. It brought tears to my eyes. I felt very homesick for Turkey. There was prayer both before and after dinner giving thanks for the food and fellowship.

I got to visit with my dear friend, Ülkü, and her daughter I will call Bebek. You might remember them from the post about visiting the Virginia Museum of Marine Science. http://possumlane.blogspot.com/2010/03/missing-in-action-once-again.html

So I want to thank my dear friend, Asher, for inviting me and my friends, Grenville for offering to drive, Beatrice for her company, Mehmet for being my dinner companion, Ülkü and her friends for preparing a wonderful dinner, and the Turkish community for sharing a special occasion with us.

I am still smiling. Çok teşekkür ederim.

AND THE NEW LIBRARY (in maybe 8 months time…)

I just posted pics of the White Haven (Pennsylvania) library as it is today, nestled in a coffee shop (Coffeeworks on Main St in the basement of the old hardware store that only we old timers apparently remember.)  See previous post. But this is where it will be this time next year when they finish renovating this building. The outside is quite impressive, isn’t it? This is called the Engine House Project and this is an effort to rehab a former Lehigh Valley Railroad engine repair shop into a multi-purpose library and Heritage visitor’s center.

It has been used for a few fund raising events and programs, but you can see the inside has a lot of work left to be done. check out the beautiful stone walls.

White Haven has a lot of tourist potential as it is in the center of an area that includes 3 state parks (Hickory Run, Lehigh Gorge [which took some of my land] and Nescopeck, all within 6 miles, the Gorge being within feet of the bldg) and welcomes over 400,000 tourists annually. Interstate 80 runs thru one side of the town and 940 goes thru the middle. White Haven is 4 miles from the NE extension of the PA Turnpike and is on the Lehigh River which separates White Haven from East Side, where my house is, on the East Side of the river. East Side is in Carbon County and somewhere in the middle of the river is the county line, with White Haven in Luzerne County which is known as “the Gateway to the Poconos.” 

The library that will be housed inside these walls will meet the needs of children from Crestwood, Weatherly, and Hazleton school districts by providing hard copy resources, literacy programs and state of the art communications technology. But I bet people will miss the coffee! Think they will at least have an espresso machine???? a Starbucks vending machine????

Train and history buffs will appreciate the magnificent structure as it is believed to be the last railroad repair shop still intact in the Commonwealth of PA. I have known the building all my life and I am still impressed. It cleaned up good, as they say.

“Green” people will appreciate the fact that the building will be climate controlled with geothermal wells… a bit ironic (a double pun, that word) since the railroad was practically invented to move coal from the area and the coal was used to make iron that previously had been imported from England. Did you know the FIRST rails for the FIRST railroad were made out of WOOD? Funny, they didn’t last long. Did you know that people laughed when Josiah White tried to get people to burn those black rocks he found in these hills? They were very different from the coal found in England, big shiny black rocks that were slow to ignite, but burned much hotter than wood, hot enough to melt the ore to make iron. The railroad was first made to move the black rocks to the canal locks he built on the river. If you are interested, you might want to read a book that is both interesting and boring all at the same time on Josiah White, for whom the town was named. He was the founder of Lehigh Coal and Navigation and the Lehigh Valley Railroad – whose logo is on the building. 

The Project is a true community, grass roots effort, with the White Haven Borough council members voting to purchase the building in 2002 in response to hundreds of signatures (including mine) asking them to do so on the community’s behalf.

The library has been in existence, in one place or another, for 13 years, most recently in the coffee shop, so you can imagine how exciting it will be to have ALL the books unpacked and on shelves and available to the public. You can learn more at www.whitehavenlibrary. Years ago, my step mother (a librarian) used to drive 28 miles one way to Wilkes-Barre to check out a stack of books to last her a week or so, to help her survive “this god forsaken back woods place.” This was back when she had just recently been evacuated from Saigon with the rest of the American dependents and found herself in the old family home. I guess it was too quiet for her… no bombs going off day and night, that sort of thing… sigh. Anyway, she started back then to push for a local library, but nothing happened for many, many years. She gave up and moved to Bradenton, Fla. Fortunately, others kept up the fight, but it has been a struggle. That ride over the mountains to WB was a rough haul in the winter! Trust me.

Train buffs will recognize the brick pattern in the parking lot. Anybody want to guess why it is there? What it once was? (that is a clue). Both the circle and the straight section????? See the tracks currently in use just a few feet from the parking lot and building, like mid point in the picture?

A view from the entrance to the parking lot.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.
As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up. Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
Free your heart from hatred - Forgive....
Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.
Live simply and appreciate what you have.
Give more. Expect less

NOW ............ Enough of that crap . . .. The donkey later came back, and bit the farmer who had tried to bury him. The gash from the bite got infected and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.
MORAL FROM TODAY'S LESSON:
When you do something wrong, and try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you.