Happy Halcyon Days

Admittedly, "halcyon days" is an obscure expression. A dear friend, for whom Christmas means work throughout most of the year rather than celebrations at year-end, introduced me to the expression. I quickly adopted it because any inclusive expression of good cheer for year-end has my vote.

The word "halcyon" is obscure. It comes from the ancient Greek and refers to a species of kingfisher bird that was associated with calm weather during the winter solstice. Look it up. Calm sea is a nice association if you are an ancient Greek whose livelihood depended upon sailing the Aegean in open rowboats with a flat sail.

Winter solstice by Aravaipa Creek.

The meaning of halcyon days is an obscurity within an obscurity. The calm weather associated with kingfishers mating in the open sea during a period of calm in winter gave rise to another association: memories of good times.

If anything defines the winter holiday season, it's the memory and celebration of the good days of yore. Arguably, that's what Christmas has become. It's a lot less a celebration of the birth of any particular spiritual Master or religion, than it is a celebration of customs that we associate with the arrival of winter. Some of the "Christmas" traditions (Santa Claus, reindeer, and Christmas tree decorations) have roots in shamanic culture. (The part about Amanita mascara mushrooms as an origin of Christmas tree baubles is intriguing.)

The last weeks of the year are a great time to slow down, reflect, and celebrate; to at least get out of the groove of ordinary life. Actually, each season offers its opportunity to celebrate, but winter may be the grandest opportunity because we need the celebration most when it's getting old and dark outside. In this seasonal context, Christmas is only one night and a day, only one set of celebrations and expressions within a larger and longer context.

Hence I have no problem with "Season's Greetings", "Happy Holidays", "Happy Hanukkah", "God Jul", "Happy Diwali", or "Let's Get Loose for Saturnalia". Some are closer to my traditions than others. Sadly, literal Muslims make it a religious duty to eschew any celebration of a solstice, a bit like literal Christians who complain about Starbuck's plain red holiday cups. But even in the world of Islam, such traditions survive; e.g., Yalda festival. "Happy Halcyon Days" ought not offend Muslims or Christians, but it may be too obscure. I'm open to suggestions.

Happy Winter Solstice Celebrations! May the New Year bring us all happiness, health, friendships, and a modicum of prosperity!

Happy Hundredth

73rd Birthday.

Today is my father's hundredth birthday.

Paul kept a framed copy of this 1916
photo of him with his mother.

Paul Palotás (the family name was Paulik when he was born) was born a hundred years ago, on December 13 in 1915, in Nagyszombat, Upper Hungary (Felvidék). He passed away in 2007, about five weeks short of ninety-two.

The world has seen intense and unsettling changes in his century. He was a child of the First World War of cavalry sabres, massed attacks, water-cooled machine guns, trenches and poisonous gas. That war dismembered his parents' country. They became refugees, his parents lost their savings, then he and his brother became orphaned young teenagers.

Graduation photo, 1937.

In the next World War, a war of revenge, he was twenty-eight and a first lieutentant on the Don River front. The Soviet army counter-attacked and destroyed a Hungarian army, and then his world. He, his wife Irene, and three small children became refugees.

From Austria to Australia, Paul and his wife worked odd jobs until they salvaged a discarded, hand-powered knitting machine. That was the beginning of a successful knitwear manufacturing business in Sydney which they named Suzy Parker.

After eighteen years in Australia, they had raised five children complete with private schools, private music, ballet and acrobatics classes, and our own private Hungarian language world. They sold the business and we moved to America. We became not refugees but immigrants.

"1967 Édesapád" - "Your sweet father"

The business went bankrupt, promises to pay became worthless, and Dad became impoverished while his university-educated kids embarked upon their successful careers in the States. He got a job working graveyard shift in a Greek owned knitwear factory in the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard.

Paul never realized his get-rich-quick dreams literally, but in a much more real and meaningful sense. After his five kids were on their own and he was struggling with the career of a commercial real estate broker, he met Darany Mingmaninakin. Together they shared three decades of affection, traditions, travel, occasional business, and generosity.

He enjoyed a long semi-retirement: frugal but rich in experience. He taught himself to use a computer and wrote the initial draft of his autobiography in a self-taught foreign language, English. He wrote it very well. He taught himself to use computer and email to correspond with military academy colleagues around the world.

With Darany in Hárkány, Hungary, two weeks before his passing.

He and Darany traveled extensively: Thailand, China, Indonesia, Australia, Hungary, Romania, Egypt, Venezuela and Turkey, to name a few. Only two weeks before his death, at the age of almost 92, he happily endured the long flights from Seattle to Budapest without bother or complaint.

Everywhere he explored his Hungarian heritage and connections. His orderly during the war, the soldier who was his personal assistant, perished on the Don River along with a hundred thousand other Hungarians. Paul made it a point to financially support his orderly's widow and descendants. He established a trust for the benefit of Hungarian war orphans. It was Paul's agitation that got a plaque dedicated to the fallen of his Ludovika Military Academy class.

Alaska, 2003

He finished his autobiography in Hungarian, published in Budapest under an optimistic Hungarian title that translates, The Cock Crows, Sunrise Is Coming. He collaborated on another Hungarian publication that translates, We Are an Eastern People, arguing that Hungarians should ally with China and the Far East.

He was a self-made man, two, three times over. He remained outspoken and controversial, intellectually active like a precocious high school student, a proud Hungarian and a man of the world.

It's hard to believe his and my lives overlap and encompass a century. I often look in a mirror and see the features of my father's face looking back.

Boldog születésnapot, Édesapu.

Clay Results with Roshi Roy

My ashtray looks great on the side table outside the dining room window. Neither Shari nor I smoke, but the shiny clear glaze over the porcelain slip and the outline of an African sumac leaf blend perfectly with the outdoor setting and add a distinct touch of class.

My other sumac leaf design also came out nicely.

To make the form, my Clay Guru and I rolled out a piece of flat clay, like flour dough with a roling pin, then I impressed the leaf shapes. A plastic bowl, used for mixing slips and glazes, served as the form. We picked up the piece of flat clay, carefully placed it over the edges of the top of the bowl, then Clay Master Roy picked up both and dropped them together. The clay sank into the bowl. I trimmed the edge and the clay was allowed to dry for the week. ("Like leather," Master Roy kept repeating.)

My first piece was a stick-made vase. Clay Swami Roy showed me how to roll a cylinder of clay on the table with the fingers of my flat hand, then push a pointed stick through its middle. More rolling with the stick, place the clay on end, pull out the stick, and insert a thicker stick. Repeat with increasing thickness until the desired shape is realized.

The bottom is easy. Roll some flat clay, mark the approximate shape of the clay cylinder, rough up and moisten where they will join, then join and trim.

Incising designs on the outside proved challenging because I had no ideas. Clay studios have all sorts of funny specialized tools augmented with an assortment of kitchen gadgets and other bits and stuff commandered to shape clay. I gravitated to a tool that looked like it was made to cut small balls out of a watermelon. I used it to press a circle of rounds.

Then I ran out of ideas. I just scratched the bottom portion, inscribed parallel lines on the top portion and flayed out the rim. I was anxious to get to the glazing, wondering about how to fit brush strokes inside a pretty small pot.

Glazing, as my Clay Swami proved, can be quite simple if you have five-gallon buckets of mixed glaze lying around. We went for plum color. "You haven't done this before, so let me show you." Good advice from Adept Roy.

He grabbed a plastic scoop, actually, a former yogurt container, and ladled gobs of the smooth, dark goop inside my bisqued pot and swirled it around so the insides were evenly coated. Then Clay Rabbi Roy made me hold the pot upside down and dip its top into the bucket of dark goop. Like coating strawberries with chocolate. So much for brushwork.

The following week we saw the fired results. There is a high probability of unpredictability to firing glazed clay. My plum-glazed pot has green blotches. Clay Effendi Roy explained something about minerals in the glaze separating in the firing process. Cobalt oxide? didn't fully understand, except that Clay Sheikh Roy seemed very pleased with the result.

My first ceramic has been pressed into kitchen service. Our copper basket was getting full of whisks, spoons, tongs, spatulas and ladles. Wooden spoons look great in my ceramic pot.

For my next project, I'm thinking of a rectangular casket for holding pens, or an open lantern made with strips of clay. I will defer to the guidance of my Clay Rinpoche Roy, and I still have a leather-dry form of a platter to shape, bisque and glaze. Roshi Roy is inspiring.

Beep Beep

Wiley Coyote cartoons introduced me to roadrunners, but I've never heard a roadrunner go "beep, beep" or seen a coyote open a box of Acme dynamite and read the instructions.

We often see roadrunners on our little acre of the Sonoran Desert. They seem friendly enough and not too afraid.

I suppose they don't confuse people with food or predators. Like hummingbirds, they don't get too concerned about our presence, although they are curious. They go about their business, which seems to involve constantly moving.

It's tough to have enough time to fetch a camera and take a snap, but yesterday, one of these fine looking, graceful birds decided to leisurely stroll through our backyard. That gave me time to grab the camera.

These snaps were taken through various back windows as the roadrunner took its exploratory stroll. It ended up by the goldfish pond, seemingly puzzled by the cinderblock walls that enclose our backyard. It explored the mineral garden by our ash reliquary.

It was curious about the water in the pond. It may have taken a drink. I don't know. I was running from bedroom to bedroom, poking the camera through window shutters.

The bird made no attempt at fishing. I suppose goldfish are not a part of its routine diet. Do roadrunners swim? Probably not.

Finally it took advantage of the African sumac tree behind the pond to scamper up to the top of the wall. A few minutes later, it had disappeared.

In life, roadrunners (and coyotes) are impressive and graceful creatures. To see such a being is like getting a warm smile from a stranger.

Clay

One of Shari's pieces, naturally formed.
It's bisqued and ready
to be glazed and fired.

It's good to have hobbies in one's dotage, to be creative in the gnarly years of old age retirement. Why not pottery?

It helps that our very good friend Roy Lizama is not only a master potter who helps run a studio, but also has the patience to instruct a complete wonker — your author.

The author, carefully brushing
a porcelain slip onto his
ashtray masterpiece.

I come to clay with only the childhood experience of playing with small tubes of colored plasticine.

Shari immediately went to the top of the class with a couple of stunning vases that copy a style we admire so much in Roy's work:  make a cylinder in dark clay, roll it in dry, powdered white porcelain, then stretch it so cracks appear. Simple? Try it.

My goal is more humble. I am working on an ash tray.

We've had four classes so far. Our works have been bisqued (the preliminary firing) and last week we played with glaze. Perhaps next Tuesday we will see the final results.

Stay tuned.

Living in a Park

Shari and I live in a park. We have park benches, cleared areas and various tended plantings, paths, different park attractions and follies, and a couple of parking areas.

What's a park? A place someone takes care of. Or, in correct English, a place of which someone takes care.

Attractions we have. There's Coathanger Valley and views from its East, West and North Rims. There's a white quartz quarry by the East Rim.

In the cirque we have a thicket of giant agave americanus and a seasonal creek. When it rains heavily enough, water drains from the scuppers and a torrent flows into the cirque.

The Valley has its arroyo, but it's mostly dry. Someone blocked its natural flow with a house, the cirque, and a driveway, so it takes a lot of heavy rain and drenching for the arroyo to trickle to the creosote flats below. But I've seen it flow and flood several times over the last few months.

We have a much admired and remarkable golden barrel specimen. Not only is it a giant by golden barrel standards, it has morphed into three barrels in one.

We have the garden itself which is a reproduction of the wonderous Hanging Gardens of Babylon — minus the Euphrates.

Tomato plants hang and sprawl over elegant mud-brick walls that contain exotic basils, pasillas, and lemon grass, shaded by canopies and framed with varieties of grape vines and all types of fruit trees: apricot, peach, loquat, fig and pomegranate.

On the garden's east side, there is the ramada which provides shade from the bright but nurturing sun. This is where the Laird and Lady of the Park sit and admire their domain, protected by the Great Fence of San Simeon and its three Gates.

We have areas carefully tended to preserve the natural vegetation of the Sonoran Desert. Creosote, sage, palo verde, acacia, pin cushion, cholla, barrel cactus and agaves are plentiful, six mesquite and four ocotillo are growing, and a quick count reveals over thirty mature saguaros and easily as many babies. The Park ranger is reintroducing native wildflowers including brittle bush and globe mallow.

Like a good English garden, we have follies. The Grand Gate is a prominent feature of our Park, and the broken amphora adds a touch of antiquity to the East Rim.

Then our Park has its grand staircase, its minor staircase, several solitary steps, and two boulder-hop staircases.

Particularly convenient for the Laird, Lady and Park rangers, we have guest quarters adjacent to the Park so we don't have to sleep on the park benches or under the palo verde trees. It has showers, beds, a working kitchen, and dish television. And talk about follies! There's the cement pond, a goldfish pond, two automatic cooking pits, and a tower which serves as an observatory.

Autumn and Halloween

Some time about a fortnight ago it became autumn. Overnight, the monsoon heat left and we were wearing long sleeves in the morning.

Cliff and I talked about it last week and again yesterday. Cliff comes weekly to our backyard to maintain the clear water in our cement pond. We both complained about suddenly cool weather and unfamiliar sleeves.

The pool water temperature was down to eighty. That's too cool for Shari so she signed up to swim in the indoor, heated pool at the local Hollywood Fitness gym -- no, Planet LA, or Bodies R Us, or whatever. (Planet of the Apes? Gymnasiums go against my religion.) The point of this paragraph is that we took the pool cover off yesterday.

We'll sweep and dry it off, fold it up and hide it until maybe March. It's like what we do with Christmas decorations, except that we don't have any and, unlike the Holiday Season, Pool Time lasts over half of the year.

So do the five seasons pass in the Sonoran Desert. Halloween is almost upon us.

I know it's Halloween because of the fright I got last night watching just a few minutes of the Republican (and CNBC) Buffoon Show. Those guys are really scary. You think they are pretending? It is the trick-or-treat season. Or maybe they actually believe what they mean? Either way, it was Halloween horrible.

Despite the jack-o-lanterns in the big box stores, Halloween comes and goes in a trice compared to Presidential elections. If we granted Iowa access easements to the oceans, could we have it secede so we don't have to deal with its early primary?

When it takes a year and a half to complete any cyclical season, you know it's out of touch with reality. Heck, even Greece can hold national elections within a week.

Rain in the Old Pueblo

"Just think," says Shari to me at six in the morning. "If we were in the Northwest, it would be like this every day."

Well, not every day, but the point was well understood.

It started raining at about four-thirty. Lightening lit up our dark bedroom. The sound of torrential rain followed thunder. Three hours later, it's still raining. The sky is overcast, it's cold, and our moods are a trifle grey.

"Think of the energy you are saving not having to mow lawns." Once again, Shari was right.

Dr. Ben and Politicians

Last night, Shari and I watched some of Charlie Rose's interview of Ben Carson. We often tune in to Charlie to check out who is on his show. My impression was that Charlie was pretty disgusted with Dr. Ben, but Charlie is an experienced and professional interviewer. He didn't reveal too much in his facial expressions, and nothing in the tone of his questions.

What got my goat, aside from Dr. Ben's glib attitude, was towards the end of the segment when Charlie asked what Dr. Ben thought distinguished him from the other presidential candidates. The answer? "I'm not a politician."

Okay. What do you call someone who has entered an election race for office? An electrician?

Dr. Ben's distinction is that he is a politician without any experience whatsoever. So when is inexperience a qualification for a profession? But, among some of our less critical thinking electorate, inexperience is the ultimate qualification for the highest office in the land.

Which makes Dr. Ben and Donald Trump similarly "qualified". In the world of demagoguery, "inexperience" means "qualified", and up is really down. The two leading Republican candidates for president are similarly inexperienced. So when Dr. Ben answered that not being a politician was his distinction, he also endorsed Trump's qualifications. Some distinction.

But there is an additional quality that Benny, Dumpy, and too many of the other Republican candidates share: intolerance. Among too many of the Republican base, the idea of compromise is heresy. Ask John Boehner. These people live in a world of black and white where facts, understanding, representing other views, and an exchange of ideas all disqualify a person for office. In a world where up is down, the quintessential qualities of a politician in a democracy — representation of others and compromise — are loathed as weaknesses.

Others, notably comedians, have already observed that the same egotistical demagoguery and simplistic intolerance of Trump are the qualities of dictators, not statesmen. I suggest that Dr. Ben is also better suited to serve as a dictator rather than a politician.

It's ironic that Dr. Ben interprets the Nazi holocaust in the light of gun control. Benny may be a highly educated brain surgeon, but he is a complete knee biter when it comes to social studies. Benny, the National Socialists obtained power in Germany during the Great Depression because they were popular. Enough people responded to simplistic demagoguery to form a base for the National Socialist party. Like Trump and Carson, the self-absorbed leader of that inter-war movement didn't care a whit for compromise or people with differing views. Enough people wanted a leader, and the leader thrived on simplistic solutions and scapegoats.

If Dr. Ben wants to draw a lesson from Nazi Germany for the voters in United States today, it's not the dangers of gun control. It's mistaking intolerance for leadership.

Mileage Marker 4, Reddington Pass

My job is to fill two large Waste Management garbage cans each week. I use a regular Rubbermaid can to collect "yard waste", then carry the can-full over to one of the large WM cans and dump the contents. Each Tuesday, the garbage truck comes and collects. In Pima County, WM doesn't segregate yard waste from ordinary garbage. Which is why we pay for two WM cans. On our acre of the Sonoran Desert, I pull a lot of yard waste.

This morning, I was trimming a palo verde tree in front, clipping the unruly, long branches into small pieces so they pack inside the regular garbage can. Then I dumped its contents into the large, two-wheeled WM can by the side of the garage. Twice I dumped and stuffed a load into the big can.

I keep a piece of 4x4 wood there. I use it to stomp down the branches to make room for more. "Stomp, stomp, stomp" as I jammed and flattened the branches inside the big WM can. I clipped another Rubbermaid can full of branches, then again dumped it into the bigger WM can. Again I smashed it down at least a dozen times. I can stuff a lot of branches inside a WM can.

Then I noticed something coiled between the two wheels of the WM can. It's amazing how time slows down as the mind catches up with a dangerous situation. It's a snake. Not just any snake. It's a rattlesnake taking a snooze under the WM can. It doesn't make a move.

I walked backwards really quickly. "Shit," I thought. Actually, I had lots of thoughts, mostly of surprise, fear, and relief. And within the same space of a few seconds, I thought a lot about how damned lucky I was that it was still early in the morning and it was still almost chilly. Maybe the snake wasn't too active to respond. Maybe it hadn't struck because the wheels of the can were facing sideways, so one of the wheels was blocking me from a direct lunge. But even so, "Shit" sums up the tenor of my feelings as the realization sank in that twice I had been standing within a couple of feet from that rattler, blithely smashing down branches inside the can, twenty or thirty times.

I suspect it was the same rattler I saw a month and a half ago sleeping on top of the east side of the gully. See the end of my Two and a Quarter Tons post.

"I have to discourage that snake from hanging around here," I thought to myself. I picked up a small rock and threw it. I had mixed feelings. Part of me doesn't like the idea of hurting snakes. The rest of me was scared and angry. It hissed and rattled. Then I thought, "I better shut the garage door" which was about four feet from the snake. I didn't want the rattler to take refuge inside our cluttered but cozy garage.

I ran inside the front door to get to the garage. I was too frightened to use the garage door. I went around the house away from the rattler. I told Shari about the rattler as I was running back out the front door. She came out to look. She was getting too close for my comfort -- maybe twenty feet away.

Her response to the situation was much more practical than just throwing a rock. She went inside to call Rural Metro. If you pay the monthly fee,* Rural Metro provides not only fire brigade and ambulance service, they also pick up rattlers. (If you don't subscribe and need the service, you pay through the nose.)

I kept an eye on the can and the rattler as I waited for the fire department truck to show up. I could barely see the edge of the rattler's coils in the space between the two wheels.

Same species; different specimen.

It took the guy about a half of a minute and a pair of snake tongs to pick up the writhing, hissing rattler and plop it inside a plastic bucket. "Ring tailed diamondback," he declared.

Shari asked if they dumped the snakes in the Mormon graveyard down the street. We had heard local rumors about the practice.

"No", he said. "We take them to Reddington Pass." Once a week, on Wednesdays, they take their collection there; about a dozen in the summers. "We leave them at mileage marker 4. Probably a place to avoid if you are hiking around."

Good idea.

*Erratum. Rural Metro bills annually.

Turkish Menu

Here's what Shari put together for last Saturday:  a sit-down meal for fourteen people, with thanks for dishes brought by our guests.

Ziyafet!

Feast!

Aperitif

Rakı — Popularly called aslan sütü (lion’s milk), this Turkish national drink is a distilled, anise-flavored liquor served with water on ice.

Honeydew Melon

Provalone and Brie cheeses

Olives

Iraqi Bread

Mezeler  (Appetizers)

Nazuktan — Roasted eggplant and yoghurt salad typical in central Anatolia.

Sıcak Humus — Warm chickpea paste topped with roasted pine nuts, an eastern Anatolian specialty.

Yalançi Dolma — Grape leaves stuffed with rice and lamb

Şakşuka — A classic Turkish meze of fried eggplant and vegetables in a tomato sauce.

Nohütlu Mücver — Spicy fried humus with dill and lemon.

Salatası  (Salads)

Çoban Salatası — Shepherd’s salad.

Cacik — Cucumber and yoghurt salad.

Aksam Yemegi  (Dinner)

Midye Dolması — Mussels stuffed with saffron rice.

Patlacan Mussaka — Ground lamb and eggplant casserole.

Piliç Kababi — Grilled saffron-marinated chicken

Yeşil Fasulye Zeytingaǧli — Green beans in olive oil

Sekleri  (Sweets)

Baklava Fistic — Pistachio baklava.

Gul Suyu Katlimiş Sütlac — Rice pudding with rose water (served with Armenian sour cherries).

Kahve (Turkish coffee)

Two and a Quarter Tons

Actually, it's not that much rock. Well, it is a lot if you have to carry it all at once, or if you had to move it some dozen miles from the landscape rock yard. But if the pile is on your driveway, you have a wheelbarrow and a half an acre of gully, and you want to build terraces, it's not that much rock.

After four days of a few hours each morning (it's really hot this time of year), I have only two small piles left, but the slope by the five steps has some nice rock groupings.

Plus, I burned off the weight I put on visiting Lower Alaska last month and sitting on my derriere for thirty-two hundred miles of driving over two weeks.

The gully with its rock groupings is looking more and more archaic, as if the remnants of some ancient civilization.

Next time, I think I will order four or maybe six tons. I wonder how many tons that truck can carry.

But for today, I think I will let this resting rattler be and work inside the house. Where, oh where are our king snakes?

Two Days, Twenty-Four Hours

The Great Basin, Nevada, south of Ely.

Geography and flora shock us as we sit at home in Tucson two days after we left Lower Alaska, after about twenty-four hours of driving time. We've seen so much change in a short time.

The Salish Sea is so lush with vegetation and water. Drive over Snoqualmie Pass and past Ellensburg, the rolling hills of the almost treeless Inland Empire spreads out. Then the Yakima River and its vineyards and orchards, then bare hills, then the Columbia River, "Welcome to Oregon" near Umatilla, and more bare hills until Pendleton and the Blue Mountains. On and on.

Most of the places we passed and their sequence are fresh in my mind, like a road map inside the head of a wagon train guide.

I was hoping to take a photo of this sign
marking the east end of the
Extraterrestrial Highway . . .

It rained as we left Seattle, it again rained in the Great Basin, our second morning after overnight in Ely, and it rained very heavily just as we pulled into out little dead-end street of San Simeon.

. . . but this was how it looked to us,
blurry. The other snap is off the web.

Indeed, on our drive north two weeks earlier, it had drizzled in Nevada's Great Basin, then just as we drove onto Whidbey Island from the ferry, it started to rain heavily.

Rain is a blessing.

It's impossible to describe what it's like being by the Salish Sea. It's gorgeous. It's impossible to describe countless places of dramatic and subtle beauty along our route — and that's only from the road as we whizzed by. (One of these days I will retire and actually pull off the road occasionally.) It's equally impossible to describe the harsh, stunning, and inspiring beauty of the Sonoran Desert.

I can write that it's good to be home and that I'm glad we have made our home on our little acre of the Sonoran Desert.

Snowbirds and Bedouins

If snowbirds are folks from cold areas wintering in warm areas, what do you call folks from hot areas summering in cool areas? 

Bedouins?

When Shari and I first moved to Tucson, it was mostly for winters. Summers we spent at our house on Whidbey Island. After three years of seasonal migrations, we settled on Baja Arizona and sold our house on Whidbey.

We'd visit Lower Alaska maybe for a couple of weeks in autumn. My last visit was October two years ago. We had fog so thick we didn't see the sun for several days.

This year we're visiting in high summer when afternoons are sunny and hot, locals party for Seafair and get sunburned, and mornings and evenings are moderate enough to wear short pants and sleeves — it's all just like Tucson most of the year.

It's a rural environment on Whidbey Island, isolated by a long wait to get on a ferry boat. Yesterday, the wait was four hours. That's eight ferry boats. There are plenty of weekenders, but the Island is still rustic.

I was walking Nazar this morning, savoring the cool, fresh air of rural Whidbey, enjoying the sunshine, green vegetation, and blue sky. I remembered why we tried the snowbird lifestyle in the first place, migrating like geese over Nevada.

We tried living in two homes in order to savor the best of two very different yet equally beautiful worlds. We boast about the Sonoran Desert, but we still love a rural Lower Alaska that's very familiar and nurturing.

And if staying at Dodi's house overlooking Holmes Harbor is the equivalent of a Bedouin tent, sign me up for Arabic classes.

Holiday in Green and Blue

There are reasons why we regularly return to the Salish Sea: family, friends, and familiar haunts. But the one reason that is powerfully attractive is obvious. It is the magnificent, life-nurturing beauty of its green and blue.

The green is the grass, bushes, and trees. The blue is the pale blue of a clear summer sky and its reflection over the deep blue of the Sea.

Nowhere do Shari and I enjoy the stunning beauty of Lower Alaska's short summers than on Whidbey Island. The realization strikes us as we take in the view overlooking Holmes Harbor, the Cascade Mountains and its volcanos in the distance, or walk its quiet, forested residential streets, or drive through tunnels of giant hemlock, fir and cedar trees. We smell sweet, moist, cool air, admittedly with a hint of decomposition. We come here to absorb the nurturing mix of water, sunshine and earth. We come to Whidbey for a vacation.

South Whidbey on the Salish Sea isn't the congestion and noise of Seattle. No wonder the ferry lines are excruciatingly long in the summers. Most of the license plates are Washington and the cars wear Seahawks paraphernalia. I reckon they are local South Alaskans taking a vacation from the man-made environments that congest I-5 and I-405.

The grey, damp cold of when we lived here is forgotten. We are no longer concerned about mowing lawns, moss on the roof, power-washing walkways, or fighting back stinging nettles and blackberry canes with their flesh-tearing thorns. We can sit on the deck, enjoy the view, stroll through green, and graze on the abundant blackberries —just like the abundant deer. We are visitors. We are tourists.

The madrona trees remind me of the singular, striking beauty of the Sonoran Desert where every shape embodies a unique history. The huge fir, hemlock and cedar trees, even the alders, all adopt a standard shape: large, straight trunks with radiating branches. In dense stands, they are like a super-sized lawn. But the madrona trees twist and turn in their growth, adorned with carefully arranged clumps of leaves, like a banzai contrived to look natural. The madrona's peeling, vibrant red bark creates another one-of-a-kind pattern of shape and color. Each madrona is unique.

The forecast for Lower Alaska is more warm sunshine. Heck, we are tourists in our old stomping grounds. It could be cloudy and raining and we'd still enjoy the place — as long as the rain is warm.

Back in Lower Alaska

Puget Sound, on the Whidbey Island ferry.

I jokingly refer to Puget Sound as "Lower Alaska." It's typically wet, damp and cold, just like the Alaska panhandle coastline. The regular rain makes trees so giant you can't see the sky. Actually, you ordinarily can't see the sky anyway. It's hidden by overcast.

We drove for two and a half days and 1600 miles from Tucson to Whidbey Island. The road in Arizona, Nevada and Idaho is almost entirely through open desert. Big sky. Huge terrain. Even most of Oregon and Washington is open country. Only in the Blue Mountains, around Baker City and La Grande in Oregon, did we see a bit of evergreen forest, followed by the open land of the Inland Empire. Finally, we reached Ellensburg and things got really green. Heading up and over Snoqualamie Pass, we drove through dense forest. Familiar, dense forest.

Shari and I entered a time warp. Were't we in the Mojave Desert yesterday? And the Sonoran Desert the day before? Where did all this dense forest come from? Where's the dirt and the rocks?

Dense forest, vegetation everywhere, and the familiarity of an area where I have lived for four decades but now seems foreign, all that makes for a culture shock and a time warp.

They say it's been unusually hot and dry in Washington this summer so it's unfair to refer to Puget Sound as Lower Alaska. Hard to tell today.

Maybe the local weather spirits wanted to welcome us Baja Arizonans to Lower Alaska. What was cloudy at the Pass became overcast in North Bend. Then as we got off the ferry in Clinton, it started to rain. Welcome home, Whidbey Island ex-pats. Welcome home to Lower Alaska.

In Profit We Trust

The size, power and influence of multi-national corporations rival that of most countries. Wealth is increasingly concentrated among a few who wield disproportionately large influence among our politicians. Makes me think of ancient Rome where generals and the wealthy vied for control over their republican government. Poor plebs. Then there were the medieval kings who struggled with their barons and dukes for resources to raise bigger armies. Poor serfs.

Historical examples are many because the struggle for power hasn’t changed much. Today we have corporations that control the food supply, the financial system, oil, military hardware, health care, pharmaceuticals, and news media, not to mention gangster cartels. They all lobby and effectively control what is supposed to be our democratically elected politicians.

Our government is prohibited from competing. Health care, drug, and insurance companies are all for profit and their profits are protected by statute — or the lack of them. Patents on life forms are protected by statute. Public services (you know, electricity, water, communications, and other monopoly-utilities) are run for profit. We have private prisons run for profit. Education, the great democratic equalizer, is farmed out to subsidized for-profit businesses. College grads are in debt-servitude to banks.

I say we adopt a new national motto, one that better reflects our national values. Our original motto, E Pluribus Unum ("Out of Many, One"), was adopted in 1782. Clearly, it's a passé sentiment. Why, it's downright socialist! Congress replaced it with "In God We Trust" in 1956. But it's not God we trust in, it's the profit incentive.

I suggest a new national motto, one Ayn Rand and any respectable Ferengi from the Star Trek series would approve: "In Profit We Trust." We should emulate Donald Trump who used his wealthy pedigree, arrogant greed, government tax breaks, and even the bankruptcy code to accumulate billions, denigrate the needy, and run for president.

We should recognize that the purpose of life is to accumulate personal power, and anything that regulates that pursuit is bad for us. I'm not exactly sure why it's bad for us, but it's supposed to be bad, very evil, and very un-American.

The Huff of Mindbook

Some people think that after they die, they go to heaven, or maybe purgatory, or hell. Others think they are reborn in a better or worse life depending upon their current conduct and desires. I say, why wait? It's here. It's called the mind. Like the Eveready bunny, it just keeps on going.

In my hell, I get daily notifications.

"A lot has happened"? I don't think so.

Perhaps on a weekend morning, after I tire of playing solitaire, I tap the Facebook logo and scroll down my "newsfeed," which is a compilation of others' mind-chatter. "What's on your mind?" I suppose if my own mind-chatter isn't enough, it's fun to share it and read someone else's.

Posting what's on your mind can be very self-revealing. Sometimes I wonder whether people realize how revealing. As I scroll through my "newsfeed", I see myriads of heavens and hells, and a lot of depressing banality. I think to myself, if there is a hell, it's having to plug into others' mind-chatter. One mind-full of chatter is bad enough. Imagine a world-full.

I check into Huffington Post more often than Facebook. I admit, I lean heavily towards the liberal ("progressive") persuasion, so I enjoy the twist that Huff puts onto the news, and the hypocritical, mucky and salacious tidbits they drag up on politicians.

Like Facebook, Huff contains a lot of mind-chatter, most of it in the Media and Entertainment sections. Huff is a bit more creative than Facebook in that Huff pays people to make mountains out of molehills and think up hyperboles.

This is just a random sample from today's "Breaking News":

• Farrah Abraham Gave Her Daughter $600 For Losing Her Two Front Teeth.
• Jared Padalecki Stunned As Fans Honor His 'Always Keep Fighting' Campaign
• The One Thing Brandy Does Every Day To Find Balance
• Future: Ciara And I Prayed After Sex
• Justin Bieber Defends Kylie Jenner And Her Cornrows
• Mom Of Twins Uses Hilarious Signs To Shut Down Strangers Who Ask Intrusive Questions

Who are these people? Why in God's creation (or why in hell) should I care? It's too funny. I mean, I can't begin to make this stuff up. But "Breaking News"? I don't think so.

Like Facebook, Huff makes me chuckle, dread and joke about the creativity and banality of the modern mind. "What's on your mind?" "Breaking News"?

It's Bastille Day, so as I wonder about minds, heaven & hell, and banality & creativity, a quote comes to my mind, and I imagine that "pimpernel" isn't just a flower, but an expression of creativity.

“They seek him here, they seek him there

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere

Is he in heaven or is he in hell?

That damned elusive Pimpernel”

Is it in heaven or is it in hell?

That damned ellusive -- mind.

Proof of God

That's what I thought when I realized what I was looking at: a miracle; proof of God; higher consciousness.

I was watering Shari's garden early yesterday morning, Wednesday, marveling at the varied vegetation in her small truck garden. Exhilarated, I got into a project I'd been postponing for weeks, planting small octopus agave shoots in dirt and lining up their pots between a grape vine and the loquat. I looked across the driveway towards the neighbor's and admired an ocotillo covered with fresh green leaves.

We had heavy rainfall on Sunday. The ground was still damp and the air humid. I just thought it normal that the ocotillo would be bearing leaves.

Then I realized it was the bare root ocotillo Shari and I had planted three years ago. All of a sudden, it had become magnificent.

It had never really "leafed". For years the plant had been mostly just a clump of sticks in the ground which I would water often enough with the hope it would bear leaves and flower. Last year it had a few leaves, only a few.

There's a large ocotillo in the middle of the circle that is the dead end, roundabout of San Simeon Drive. No one waters it. It bears leaves most of the year and flowers in early spring like clockwork. How tough can it be for my well nursed ocotillo to get established?

Now every possible location for a leaf is occupied. It is covered in leaves.

Sunday's monsoon downpour was the occasion. That downpour itself was a miracle; proof of a higher consciousness.

The rain got heavier and heavier as I carried an umbrella and surveyed out little acre of the Sonoran Desert. Water flowed everywhere. Desert frogs woke up from their torpor and were croaking. (We found two in the pool the next morning.) The driveway flooded and water poured into Coat Hanger Valley. For the first time I witnessed water flowing in our little gully.

I should have taken snapshots during the rain, but it was really wet. (Maybe I should get an underwater camera.) You will have to make do with these snaps of the ocotillo as evidence of Sunday's downpour and the miracle of water in the Sonoran Desert.