Come fly with me…

I love to have a window seat when I fly so I can look out and take photographs of the world from that perspective. I have pictures of farmland looking like a tidy patchwork quilt in greens and browns and yellows. I have photographed the peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains cloaked in snow. I have a catalogue of cloud formations. On my most recent trip I was able to photograph the distant Statue of Liberty and the skylines of both lower and midtown Manhattan. I had clear views of the Brooklyn and Queensborough Bridges. Once I changed planes at LaGuardia, I took off on another flight and was able to capture images of the bridges of my childhood connecting Long Island to Westchester County and serving as the gateway to New England, a favorite family vacation destination.

I wish I had taken to pulling out my camera much earlier in my flying days. I would love to be able to look back at the tops of the Alps, the outline of Greece, the North Central coast of Africa, where blue water meets the vast shoreline that curves just as it appears on a map. Then onto the Sahara for hundreds and hundreds of miles, finally catching up with the Nile and the swath of green on either side of the river: a stripe amidst the khaki color of the surrounding desert. Oh, how I wish I had taken pictures of the vast frozen north as I returned from Amsterdam by way of Minneapolis, or the view of Hawaii from miles above the Earth while traveling to Australia. All of these represent spectacular scenery on a grand scale.

Once, when I was flying at night, I sat next to a man who worked for Phillips Electric Company. As we crossed the country and saw pockets of light scattered throughout the darkness, he made the comment that seeing all those lights down below made him feel so good about his work. Sometimes one has to take a big step back, or in this case, up to appreciate one’s role in the world.

Escape to Alcatraz

The heat has been so intense in the Midwest these past few weeks that I was delighted to have a good reason to leave it. I had a meeting in San Francisco and left town on Sunday, just before the daytime temperatures rocketed even higher into triple digits. Apparently it reached 105 degrees on Wednesday before a minor cool front came through the area. I returned in the early evening on Thursday to a slightly more bearable 90 degrees.

San Francisco was both uncharacteristically warm at 65 degrees for a high, and amazingly clear with beautiful blue skies. The fog banks that sit offshore just west of the city held back just enough to allow San Francisco to be lovely and not too cold. There is some debate as to whether Mark Twain really said: "The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco", but when the fog does roll in it is nice to have extra layers to wear. In any event it was a most welcome break from the oppressive heat at home, and whatever the weather in the Midwest, it's always delightful to have an excuse to visit the city by the bay.

The Dog Days of Summer

It is early August and the heat is on here in the Midwest. Last night we left the air conditioner on all night. I usually turn it off after the 10 o'clock news, open all the windows, and then switch on the ceiling fan when I head to my room for the night. However, last night the air outdoors was thick and hot and still, even at 10:30 at night. Clearly the ceiling fan would not have been enough to keep the room from becoming a humid, hot chamber in which sleep would have been filled with much tossing and turning and frustration. Unfortunately it looks as though the air conditioner will get a workout this week, as we expect temperatures in the 98-100 range, with high humidity for at least the next five days. May it please hold up as it is rather old! St. Louis in the summertime!

My mother told me stories of her youth in Baltimore, another steamy city, long before the days of air conditioning. On the hottest days she and her sister would spend much time in the bath to keep cool. How did other people manage to bear such intolerable heat? Last night I saw pictures of men in Baghdad, where it is over 120 degrees, sitting on the floor of a shop, fanning themselves. They did not have power, and for that matter, don't on a very regular basis. How do they bear it?

Last summer we had a strong storm that knocked out power in much of the region, and we lost electricity at my house for 4 days. The first day was tolerable because a cool front (cool being a relative term here) had passed through with the storm. The basement, always the center of operations in the summertime, remained comfortable for the first day and a half. As the heat outdoors rose quickly towards 100 over the next couple of days by the final day without power, even the basement was barely a comfortable refuge. That memory alone is enough to make me call first thing on Monday morning to have the air conditioning checked. Note for the future: make sure to call in the experts during the spring to ensure reliable cooling during the dog days of summer.

News in Brief

News in brief as of July 19th:

• A red-shouldered hawk has taken up residence and our rabbit population, which was out of this world, seems to have declined dramatically.
• There are moles in the front yard and now in the back garden. They are leaving large mounds of soil in the lawn. They are unstoppable.
• It is hot and the mosquitoes are bad.
• A cold front is to move through tonight, perhaps violently, and we should experience cooler (low 80's!) and drier conditions.
• I love the summer for its wonderful variety of fruit -- just had a great cantaloupe for breakfast. Plums are plentiful in the markets and are to be found in great variety. Unfortunately our local peach crop was decimated after a very warm spell in the late winter followed by an unusually cold freeze of several days in early spring when the peach trees were in bloom. This is a great loss to both orchards and eaters, as the local peaches are generally a highlight of late July and August.
• I recently finished the fascinating book FLU by Gina Kolata on the 1918 flu pandemic that killed more people around the world than were killed in the whole of World War 1. It is a fascinating look at a horrible plague that raced around the globe and the scientific detective work done over the years to determine its source and why it was so deadly, particularly for those usually able to overcome the flu: people in their 20's, 30's and 40's. I'm anxious to read more on the same topic.

All for now. More soon.

Travels and Travails of Thumper

Mid-June:
I'm going to be one of those women living alone, talking to her animals. I have been home alone a lot recently, having given up my full time job on June 1st, and I'm already explaining what I'm doing to one of the dogs! A sign of things to come?

Speaking of dogs: up until yesterday I was taking care of my sister's dog, Thumper.



Thumper came to me in early January for several months' stay while my sister was in transition. I was set to send her back to Jane on June 12th, and I arose at the ungodly hour of 4:30 a.m. to take her to the airport. I arrived at Northwest Airlines Cargo, and was surprised to find a number of people already in line with pets going who knows where. One gentleman's little dog was refused because the kennel was so small the dog couldn't do the things it was supposed to be able to do -- get up and move around or sit without its head bumping into the top of the crate. The man left hoping to find a store open at that time of day so he could purchase another kennel and still make the flight. Those of us left behind were rather smug about his gross error and our own preparedness.

I awaited my turn, with Thumper in the car, as she is fear aggressive towards certain other dogs (and that's another story, as I have 2 dogs of my own. It was a very interesting 5 months). I was helped by a very nice man, who took all my information, as well as Thumper's international health certificate since she was going to Canada. He was about to process my credit card, when he said, "Now tell me that your crate has ventilation on all 4 sides." Well, I couldn't actually do that, as it only had ventilation on 3 sides. I assured him that it was all right, because she had traveled in this crate to and from Canada and the Caribbean and it hadn't been a problem. He assured me that it was a problem and he would lose his job if he let the crate through. Near tears I asked if they had a drill. Negative. Barely able to control myself until I got back into the car, I cried hard for much of the drive with Thumper back to the house. In addition to frustration, I was angry at myself for allowing myself to rationalize my way to ignoring what was clearly stated in the guidelines: Dogs traveling out of the country need ventilation on all 4 sides. Never mind that the dog was to fly from St. Louis to Houston, then Houston to Newark and that the last leg of her journey, Newark to Halifax was the shortest in a long day of circuitous travel! I was working on false assumptions, as I found out later, when I talked with my sister. Although Thumper had indeed flown before, she had only ever done so domestically. She had traveled from the U.S. Virgin Islands to Boston, from Boston to Florida, and from Florida to St. Louis. Rather than flying to Nova Scotia, she had been chauffeured to Canada in my sister's car. Moral of this story: read the directions, dummy, and follow them!

Two roads diverged...

It is Sunday, Memorial Day weekend. I awoke early to the sound of much needed rain and I can't fall back to sleep. Not just yet anyway. Lots on my mind. I must head into work later this morning to continue the task of clearing out my office. I have a lot of files, both digital and physical to weed through. In April, after twenty years working for the same institution I decided it was time for a change. I'm not actually leaving my field (not yet, anyway) but am going to try my hand at freelancing. I'm excited; really excited about this change. I don't feel at all wistful about leaving a place where I've spent so much of my adult life. I don't feel particularly scared. I feel optimistic and am proud of myself, and those aren't necessarily my natural inclinations. I'm not second guessing myself at all. So in a little while, I'll head into the office, where it will be very quiet on a Sunday morning, and I'll spend an hour or two going through stacks of papers and files, pitching what I can, and saving what might be helpful as I go down this new road.