Thinking about travel instead of death.

 It's been far too long since I left the country, not counting all the times I leave the country (and the planet) in my mind. I've flown to Oregon and Arizona in the past two years, which hardly counts as barely leaving the state. But in ten days  I will be on a jet blazing across the sky to Europe and I must admit I am equally a bit fearful and excited. 

Flying is an unnatural act: humans were never built to soar thousands of feet about their habitats.  Wings, anyone?  Nope. But some crazy person was determined to lift off of the terra firma and stuck to that dream until a flying machine was created, which then got bigger and bigger and possibly safer and more accessible and now we have the ability to have breakfast in California and dinner in a foreign land. (And by foreign land I don't mean Arizona.)

Off I go. Visiting Paris for a week, my favorite city. And then up to Copenhagen, of which I know very little other than what's online and in a guidebook. A new city always presents a quandary:  should one read up on the place and scout out where to go, what to do, who to see?  Or just wing it, arrive, get a map and start walking? I'm in that second camp. Copenhagen will unfold before me, what I see and discover will be great and what I miss will be unknown to me.  All of that suits me fine.

Death, or DEATH?

What is it about death that occupies us so totally? Once we get to 60 or 70 or 80 years old, it is on our mind all the time. (Well, not all the time, but quite often.)  No matter if it's smoke and mirrors and floating souls or simply blood and bones and guts, it's there. It skirts the periphery of our consciousness constantly, it's on the edge of our thoughts while at the market, floating in like fog when we're out walking, even creeping along the top of the hedge when we're simply sitting in the backyard. Death. Darkness. Deep-sixed.  

Well, of course we are occupied with it: it's the only thing left out there, the last real adventure. Who knows what waits for us after we die? We all hope it's something but what if it's nothing?  What if those "after life" experiences we all read about with great hope are nothing but nothing? When we die, is that it? 

Or maybe there's something else, something not redemptive but another reality. Something not defined but parallel to our current existence.  But probably not. 

No answers here, of course, just more ruminations. We wish that those who have died could give us a sign of their not-yet-vanished presence and I believe that they often do. But we mortals are not always paying enough attention to catch those small signs, and that's okay. One cannot be on the alert 24-7 for something that might not exist.

That's it. Settle the scores that seem unresolved to you just in case you die tonight. The last thing a soul wants is to exit this physical world with debts unpaid and love unrequited. Or so I think. But again, who knows?

Personal food heritage?

 Because I needed something mindless to watch, a few episodes of Top Chef found their way to my TV. There's something soothing about watching strangers prepare odd food, sometimes succeeding and often failing miserably.  Truly mindless.

In one episode the bossy hosts demanded that the contestants cook something from their "personal food heritage." This might be easy if you were raised in a house that had a heritage, like Italian or Southern or African or Russian. Even if you barely had such a heritage, one could probably come up with a reasonable facsimile, like a modern-day borscht or some fancy and weird take on Mississippi fried chicken. 

But this assignment made me wonder what I would cook if I had to come up with something from my "heritage."  There wasn't any heritage when I was a kid. There was barely anything resembling any sort of cuisine, let alone something that spoke of my parents' roots. Tuna-noodle casserole or hot-dog-canned-bean casserole don't really call to mind  recipes handed down generation to generation. Gray ground beef fried up and thickened with flour and water served over boiled russet potatoes isn't in any version of "Joy of Cooking."  So what would I prepare in this situation?

Honestly, I couldn't think of anything. My Mom was a pretty bad cook, but she did make good fried chicken, but it wasn't part of our heritage, it was just something she made that tasted good. She made good pies, but again, that's not a "family recipe" sort of thing. No one waxed poetic while eating a slice of apple pie.  We just ate it and were happy to have pie for dessert. My Dad grew up on a farm, a real honest-to-dirt farm, so his cooking skills stopped at eggs fried in bacon grease. 

This made me wonder what my kids would pick as a "family heritage recipe."  They had an Italian grandmother, so that would help guide the needle to an ethnic food choice. My cooking was good but it wasn't ethnic at all.  There are a few things I made when they were growing up that they actually liked, but to riff on flambeed chicken with almonds seems sad and definitely not Top Chef fare. 

In the end, the contestants all made something that had meaning to them, like deconstructed spaghetti and meatballs or a hearty soup with cabbage and cod. My dish would have to be a remake of a Swanson's frozen pot pie, one of the only things I remember getting excited about as a kid. We only got to have them a couple of times a year, when our parents went out to dinner by themselves and left us home alone. They were terrible, of course, but the idea of frozen food was so luxurious that we were all overjoyed at the prospect of eating what everyone else in America was eating on a Saturday night.  Swanson's pot pies and Swanson's TV dinners, with the four little compartments of food: main course, veggie, mashed potatoes and a teeny nub of dessert: now that was incredibly fine dining!  

Reading a great book.....

 ... and I know it's been a while but since only three people read this, just accept my absence as part of real life.

"Fire Weather" by John Vaillant. I cannot impart how amazing and suspenseful and frightening this book is.  (Bad grammar there.) All of us who live in California, especially NorCal, know the terror of fire season.  Almost everyone I know as a friend has had to evacuate more than once in the past seven years and some of us have seen the fires from a block away from where we live.  I personally know five people who lost their homes in the Tubbs fire of 2017 and I am acquainted with many more who lost homes in the fires of 2018 - 2020.  Just go to the Cal Fire website and look at "incidents" for those years and the statistics are staggering.

The book "Fire Weather" is a comprehensive look at the fire in Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada in 2016, before our onslaught of local fires began in 2017.  The first 50 pages or so document the creation of Fort McMurray as a mining town and the chemicals and products mined there. But once the author begins to document the fire there in May 2016, the book takes off like a blast furnace. 

I sometimes get bored with non-fiction because of the incredible amount of details that don't resonate with me. But not here. Reading this had my heart pounding because it's an hour by hour look at this fire that began small (as most fires do) and within a couple of hours turned historically extraordinary. The descriptions of the fire's ferociousness and the immediacy of its horrible path of destruction are written so clearly that you feel like you are there. This is the best documentation of fire that I have read.

You know a book is getting to you when you take to your computer to find out more and get led down a rabbit hole about the subject you are chasing. Today was a stormy day, no need to go outside, so finding those videos about fires in the last seven or eight years, reading the transcripts of firefighters who experienced fire storms so bizarre and unprecedented, seeing footage from people trying to escape with fire all around them, listening to the trauma, five years later, of families who were convinced they would die in their cars as they tried to flee......it was all incredibly intense and frightening.

There is no way I could read this book if it wasn't a stormy, rainy day. In fire season this book would be the monster under the bed, coming out to burn everything to the ground. Vaillant's vivid written pictures of neighborhoods being consumed by fire, houses gone in less than 3 minutes from roof to basement, the often heroic but useless actions of firemen trying to save their own homes, their own neighborhoods, their own city, all of it is gripping, terrifying and profoundly tearful and moving.

Put this on your library list, or buy it if you are lucky to be a book buyer. Read it, pass it on, think about it. It is powerfully written and it is important in the study of climate change and our increasingly heated planet.  It should make you think about the precariousness of life, about personal safety and the power of weather and what we are doing about the new century of fire.

Three Months Later, Back to the Dogs

 It's about time!  Pain or no pain, I needed to get back to my early Wednesday morning dog walking job at the local humane society because I miss the dogs! Up at 6:00 am, quick shower and off to the kennels! Of course, most of the dogs I knew in September are gone now, having found forever-homes, for which we volunteers are very grateful.  

There were a few dogs I recognized, most of them were dogs I wouldn't walk because of their jumpiness and bad manners.  One lovely little pitbull, Shamira (aka Marley) was still there, however, and I got to reintroduce myself to her and take her out for a stroll. She is a reddish color, not huge but quite strong and very alert to her surroundings. She just wants to be petted and has a ton of love to give. Sadly, she hates men and so her adoptability is limited because of that. I am sure that she could be persuaded to cut men some slack if someone was willing to put in the time and training with her. Samira is too young and lively for me, sadly, but she has been at the humane society for almost a year, way too long.

Two other lovely dogs were Muffin, a low-to-the-ground 5 year old pit bull, a scruffy girl but very low key and great on the leash. And then there was Felt, a young tripod (three legs) that is full of energy, very alert and rambunctious. He needs a young kid to play with and I hope he finds a good home.

Yes, I am still on the lookout for a dog for myself. It's time.  But there's no rush, at some point the dog will find me as I find the dog. That's how it works, you cannot force these things. Until then I will be content with helping out when I can by walking these love-bugs.

This is Samira, the beautiful red-head.

The Holly Days

 Maybe it should be Holly Daze. The holidays are always a dazzling time, aren't they?  All those sparkling lights everywhere, the glittery wrapping paper, bubbles in glass after glass of champagne, everyone smiling with white, shiny teeth. Makes one walk around in a daze with all that dazzle. 

I don't mean to sound like a cynic. The holidays aren't bad, with the exception of spending too much money, eating too much fattening food, overloading on sugar (cookies!  chocolate!  eggnog and pie!) and being very slothful (i.e. no exercise, blame it on the rainy weather.)  Who doesn't like this time of year, when fake trees abound and fake happiness takes its toll?  All that smiling.  At least those bubbles in that champagne glass serve a purpose: dulling the ennui.

But wait, seriously now. Some holiday things are actually enjoyable.  There is something nice about buying a gift or two and getting to watch the recipient open them, seeing a happy face. Baking cookies and cinnamon bread, filling the house up with great smells. Turning on Christmas tree lights every night, even on a fake tree. Gathering with my kids for a Christmas Eve dinner and laughing at the dogs with their clear disdain for the holiday, especially when made to wear reindeer ears.

In these troubled times throughout the world it is good to have a couple of days to welcome joy into our lives.  With wishes of kindness and peace for the new year, let's all raise a glass of anything to the hope of a bright future.  Or at least a less tarnished one.

Travel on my mind

 Having knee surgery does not lend itself to travel.  Hell, it's sometimes too painful to walk out the front door and get a whiff of fresh air, let alone hobble down corridors in an airport. But even without the ways and means, the desire is always there. 

Sometimes I stop myself from looking at hotel websites when I get the "too-long-in-the-house-jitters" but usually I succumb and indulge in the pleasure of vicarious living. Mind you, I don't usually look at hotels I can actually afford (where's the fun in that?) so it is all fantasy and I can live with that.  What's the harm in checking for availability at the Hotel Plaza Athenee in Paris or the St. Regis in Rome?  Seeing the Christmas trees in the lobbies, the fine dining options, the $2500 per night suites with outstanding views, it all makes me happy and not too envious of those who can afford it. But I do wonder: if you can afford that price, what do you look at and drool over? 

The answer is this: you google "worlds most expensive hotel rooms" and you get a look at suites around the world that cost upwards of $30,000 a night, all the way to $150,000 for an underwater hotel in the Maldives.  But seriously, looking at photos of those incredibly pricey places, they all look like hotel lobbies, not rooms. They are huge, yes, and have great views and wonderful amenities (private butlers, private chefs, free massages, free booze) but they don't look as inviting as the $3,000 per night room at the Four Seasons in New York.

Hey, a girl can dream, right?  And a girl can scale back that dream to a $200 a night room in a cozy hotel in Oregon or Chicago or along the Mendocino coast.  As the knee heals, so my travel world will turn.