While You Were Gone

“What happened while we were gone Peaches? Sorry I had to leave you, but it was 107 degrees in Las Vegas.”

I know Mom, I forgive you. You might think I lay around and slept, but you see, this happened:  I was skulking through the garden when I came upon a rodent bigger than a house. It had teeth the size of a T-Rex’s and slobber dripped—it was disgusting. Well, do you think I was scared?  Yep, I was, so I called Bear. Now Bear is big. Bear’s a Newfoundland, and they are big, but that rodent was bigger. Maybe it was a T-Rex.

It was red and yellow, and its eyes shone even in the daytime.

Bear and I hid behind the rose bush and planned what we could do about this invader monster rodent. We couldn’t let it wander around the property, it would scare you when you got home.

Did I tell you steam spouted from its nostrils? And it was bigger than Big Rock Candy Mountain across the road?

Well, it was.

Bear and I hatched a plan, we would sneak up behind it at night while it was sleeping. We would tie a rope around its feet, and hook it to the truck. When Dad drove away—bye bye monster rodent.

Our paws really can’t tie a rope, but we can bark. So we barked as loud as we could. We even barked into a garbage can which made our voices sound like 100 dogs. And you know what? That rodent ran right over the fence into the next yard.

Now neighbor dogs have big hairy monster.

And we have none.

Yep, that’s what we did while you were gone. 

So help me me.

 Peaches

O2 to You too

When I was eight years old and fresh from Illinois, a flatland state, and plunked down in Oregon where hills abound, and the Cascade mountain Range runs right smack dab down its middle, I was in an almost perpetual state of awe. Mt. Hood was visible from almost everywhere in the little town where I grew up, and then if that wasn’t enough, one day we drove down the Columbia River Gorge and visited Multnomah Falls. 

I had never seen anything that big, that tall, or that much water pouring over a cliff. The falls and I have had a love-affair going ever since. 

Yes, I know I have blogged about the falls before, but I have to tell you I walked to the bridge yesterday. I felt the roar of the water coursing over the edge of a 620-foot cliff—louder than I had ever heard it, and more water than I had ever seen there before. 

Mist flew from the falls, and rain was drizzling as well, but it was not cold, so I took off my hood and let the water fall on my head and the mist spritz my face. And that was me, who is fussy about keeping my head warm. It was tremendous.

When I first exited my car in the parking lot at the Falls yesterday, people smiled at me. The excitement from the falls must have reached across the road, and through a pedestrian tunnel that ran under it. I figured all those positive ions from rushing water pumped people up.

(You know how you feel like singing in the shower?)

It was a trip to the mountain as I speak about in The Wisdom Seekers, a boon, from a trip. Joseph Campbell speaks of the heroes journey and at the completion, he takes home a boon, a treasure from the trip. It is something to benefit the village back home.

You know we are all heroes in our own journey. And while I’m not sure this can benefit my village, it is an experience I share. In coming home I felt a let-down as often happens with trips, but this morning in telling you, I feel uplifted.  I know this is the stuff of life. 

Abraham speaks of a Rampage of Appreciation, meaning to bombard your life and the Universe with how appreciative you are. 

You know how easy it is to say what’s wrong with the world. It is easy to complain and rant and rave. We are geared to see what’s wrong and must be taught to notice what’s right. It’s that old negative bias again that gets us. 

One of my readers wanted to know more about the mind-body connection, and I am no authority on that, but I can say this APPRECIATE. Be grateful. It will boost both your mind and your body. You might even have a better immune system because of it.

Do you think maybe I’m talking to myself? 

Well, I am, but I hope you join me.

I know people search the web for answers. They tune into blogs that answer questions, and mainly it is about being successful, about blogging, how to sell, how to make money, and how to cure something. 

If we all stood around smiling we wouldn’t have anything to talk about, complain about, or rail against. But we would be happy.

I have been watching a Netflix series called, “One Strange Rock” narrated by Will Smith, and contributed to by eight astronauts who have spent time on the Space Station. Talk about looking down and appreciating their home. What a view.

I believe the first episode impacted me the most. It was about Oxygen. (O2) You know that stuff that we must breathe to live. And here the earth manufactures it for us. 

And that thin-film we call atmosphere is so delicate we can climb a mountain and be in the outer limits of it. Talk about feeling vulnerable.

We have heard that the rain forests are the lungs of the earth, well they are, but not in the way that we think. All the oxygen that is created by the trees in the rain forest stay there.   Enough animals live in the rain forest to use it. 

But wait.

Water is drawn from the soil into the roots of the trees. The water travels up the trunks, limbs and into the leaves. Have you seen those little droplets of water that seep from a leaf? You might think it is water on the leaf, but its water from inside seeping out. That is the cell’s transpiration. Those droplets leap from the leaves into the air and are caught by with the wind. They called it a river in the sky.

That sky river carries that moisture over to the desert where it picks up dust. That dust is carried to the ocean and dropped where it fertilizes the diatoms that live there. The diatoms gobble it up, make more of themselves, and become photosynthetic, and give off oxygen—more oxygen than the rain forest produces.

Applaud!

When I was snorkeling in Hawaii I saw a big fish swim up to a rock and take an audible crunch. I called them Rock Crunchers. Well, I learned from another episode of One Strange Rock, that those so-called Rock Crunchers, are Parrotfish, and they chew up coral. Parrotfish eat coral and poop out sand, and they can produce a ton of it a year. 

So, the next time you are lounging on an island possibly made up of sand, or Parrotfish poop, as you squish your toes into the sand and watch the kids make sand castles, you can thank the Parrotfishes.

 Now look at that face.

PS. I tried to download a video and it failed. If interested in a cruise by the Falls with music, check out Instagram joycedavis747. It has the roar of the falls, plus a music tape that was playing in my recorder, except that it cut off before Ethyl Merman began to sing, Everything's Coming Up Roses.

Come Share Your Meniscus Injury With Us

Art by Dr. Seuss--they soon forgot who had a star on their belly and who didn't.

Let’s begin at the beginning.

Before I met my woman of the day, I ran the gamut of Books, Publishers, and Journals at the AWP (American Writers and Publishers Conference and Book fair) located in Portland Oregon.

I wanted to meet my publisher so I preregistered for the conference, and come Thursday morning I got my butt out of bed, and into the car and drove the hour and a half to Portland—that with two stops took three hours. 

When I got to the Regal Publishing table the number of which had been sent to me, she was not there.

She was busy getting a book out and sent her cohorts instead.

She was on the East Coast, I was in the West.

 Rats.

Oh well, no problem, I was here for some reason and happy that she is so conscientious and on target in getting her books out—mine will be happening in May. I love that woman. 

And then I saw something that lightened my heart and gave me a good chuckle. A creative soul had tacked a huge sign behind their booth. “Come share your meniscus injury with us.”

Until a few months ago, I wouldn’t have known what a meniscus was. When mine folded over and tore into bits it gave me a good reason to learn about it. The meniscus is the cartilage pad in the joint of the knee. 

The publisher said a meniscus tear is common in writers. 

Really?

Maybe we sit too long at a computer, abruptly stand, and whamo, a crunch. I don’t know what causes that cartilage to slip from its joint, sometimes it’s an athletic injury, sometimes age, sometimes arthritis, maybe a lightning bolt from the sky.

Whatever their cause, their sign got my attention.

Another vendor said to give them a magic act—I don’t remember what they would pay in return. (I'm sure it wasn't a publishing contract.)

As I walked the aisles of AWP where writers displayed their books, publishers advertised themselves, one thing surprised me—that Universities were promoting their journals and their MFA programs. (Masters of Fine Arts in Writing.)

MFA’s were another thing I didn’t know about until recently when I read an article titled, “Will an MFA get you published?’

The answer:  Not necessarily, but it will make you $19,000 to $48,000 poorer.

Oh my. 

That rather colored my decision not to stay for the keynote address that night, as it was sponsored by the Oregon State University’s MFA in Creative Writing.

The speaker might have been wonderful. But I’m sure he wasn’t a Bill Clinton.

You see I attended such a Book Fair the year Bill Clinton’s book, My Life, came out. And that masterful speaker gave the keynote address. He spoke about writing his book, and was motivational. I remember him saying that his publisher admonished him, “Bill, you don’t have to mention every person you have ever met in your book.”

Okay, back to the AWP floor:

I walked along dousing the people and the vendors. You know what I mean by dousing, you are attracted to this one, that one, to certain people, not so much with others. I was drawn to a live-wire beautiful young woman promoting her book, To Black Parents Visiting Earth.

I so believed in (author) Janet Stickmon’s, premise, “If black parents from outer space visited earth what advice would she give them?” I bought her book on the spot.

When my legs felt like rubber from all the walking I sat and began to read her book.  When I read this, “To Black parents planning to visit Earth, it is not safe for you to come here. Now now.” My heart sank, I wanted to go back, find her booth, hug her and ask if she felt safe.”

Alas, I missed my chance, so I will write to her, and write a good review on Amazon.

I have said, that if I were Black I would be afraid to walk down the street by myself, and here was a woman affirming my fears.

She told the story of her husband seeing a little black boy about twelve get his face slammed to the ground when his skateboard slipped from beneath him and hit the rear passenger tire of a police car. Her husband went over to the officers attempting to explain that it was an accident. One officer asked, if he, “wanted some,” and unbuttoned the holster to his pistol. Luckily two more officers approached, and one knew her husband. All ended well for her husband and the boy.

Except that night, she, her husband, and little daughter stood in their home holding each other and crying thankful that Daddy was still alive.

 

I want to quote her for she is an astounding woman.

“I want Baby girl—my firecracker, my spark plug” wrote Stickmon, “to continue being the compassionate, talkative ,quick-witted, feisty, funny, smart child that she’s always been. Thought we’re not experts. I think my husband and I are doing a great job making this happen, especially considering all we’ve exposed her to, all the conversations we’ve had, and all the laughs we’ve shared.

“But I must admit that I’m tired.  Molding counterhegemonic armour for a 6-year-old child, making sure it is small and light enough for her to wear, is some kind of sick, warped task Black parents perform daily without exploding. Meanwhile, the white world remains clueless about how our time is spent. There are many hours in my day when I resent the burden of this task. But I will continue to do it for my daughter’s protection, especially if it means my work will preserve her silly laugh and bright eyes.”

 And then OMG I was hit again with her fears. She explained that with the Obama administration she felt that great strides had been taken, and she enumerates them, but when Trump was elected she felt betrayed like a slap in the face. 

But more than she feared Trump, she feared his supporters. People that had been hating silently were now given permission to hate publicly.

She wondered why her tax dollars should go to a country that allows a sexist, Islamophobic, KKK-endorsed raciest, one who wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico to stop illegal immigration, who thinks climate change is a hoax made up by the Chinese, to become president of the United States.


The Dr. Seuss's characters are from the book The Sneeches, where the Sneeches with stars on the bellies thought they were the best Sneeches on the beaches, but soon an enterprising entrepreneur put stars of the bellies of the ones without. Then the ones with stars had them removed. Soon nobody knew who started with stars and who ended with them. The entrepreneur left with their money, and The Sneeches got it, that it made no difference whether they had stars on their bellies or not.