Jellyfish Stew – poem

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In looking around online, lo and behold I discover there’s a poem called Jellyfish Stew. And here I thought it was a new term, invented by friend, Radha, when she found herself swimming at a bay on the island of St. John — She said, “There were so many jelly fish, it was like swimming in a jellyfish stew!”

I found this information about the author of this poem: In 2006, the Poetry Foundation named Prelutsky the inaugural winner of the Children’s Poet Laureate award.  He appeared on the popular animated television series Arthur, in the episode “I’m a Poet.” His book Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Other Poems (illustrated by Carin Berger) won the 2007 Scandiuzzi Children’s Book Award of the Washington State Book Awards in the Picture Book category. Jack Prelutsky lives in Seattle.

JELLYFISH STEW

Jellyfish stew,

I’m loony for you,

I dearly adore you,

 

you’re creepy to see

revolting to chew,

you slide down inside

with hullabaloo.

 

You’re soggy, you’re smelly,

you taste like shampoo,

you bog down my belly

with oodles of goo,

 

yet I would glue noodles

and prunes to my shoe,

for one oozy spoonful

of jellyfish stew.

By – Jack Prelutsky

 

Where’s the love?

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I am participating in the Where’s the Love Blog Hop

WHEN

  • The hop goes live February 14th & 15th

 WHAT YOU GET OUT OF IT

  • Free feedback on your scene from readers, plus the fun of being enraptured by all of those love-ly scenes. Meeting writer friends is a bonus!
  • There will also be a random drawing for a chocolatey and delicious prize.

This is an excerpt from my novel The Bluebird House — A Brothel. A Diary. A Murder. And in this Valentine’s Day piece, A Rescue!

RAETheBluebirdHouse

Ben removes his parka and folds it around my feet and legs before he unbuttons his thick shirt, lifts me onto his lap and holds me against his chest, wrapping his shirt over me and covering my face. He bows his head and I feel his hot breath on my face and the furnace warmth from his huge chest.

“Molly, Molly,” he says, rocking me like a baby. “Started out as soon as I heard Chug barking. Ran as fast as I could. You’ll be all right. As soon as you’re warm enough, I’ll take you home to my cabin.”

He picks me up and carries me out of the tree well I had skied into, and wraps me again, this time in each side of his open parka. I rest against the warmth. As he steps forward on each snowshoe, I move with his body—a rhythmic, swimming motion. My legs dangle, lifeless and numb, off to the side like loose ropes. At one point he walks so fast that the motion is jerky. I groan, and he slows down again. And then I remember—when Ben first arrived, he called me darling.

The creak of a door stirs me. The sudden warmth of a room flows over me and I feel myself being laid out onto a bed. My ski boots are being unlaced, my ski pants unzipped and pulled off. As if I’m a small helpless child, I feel Ben’s large hands fumble as he removes my jacket, my sweater, my pullover. Wearing only my wool socks and silk long underwear, I am rolled to one side and covered, head to toe, with blankets and quilts. My teeth are chattering. Ben lies down beside me. What is happening?  But I am too cold, too weak, to resist. Wrapped in his arms, as if in a cocoon, Ben holds my body against his, against the warm thin wool of his long underwear.

He caresses my hair as he speaks. “I’m so glad I found you. You’re safe now. You’ll be all right.”

I’d appreciate any feedback! And please also go and visit other these other awesome Blog Hop participants: Candie Campbell, Kris Waldherr, Tonia Marie Harris, Janet Oakley, Donna Barker, Julianne Douglas, Betsy Ashton, Jess Shira, Arabella Stokes, Megan Hennessey, Barb Taub, Janet B. Taylor and Laura Kenyon

Happy Valentine’s Day to all you beautiful bloghoppers.

One Indie Author’s Flash of Insight

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In an attempt to post more often to my blog without worrying that it “ain’t gonna change the world,” here’s a mini rant/blurt from a writing practice session I did with Nancy Canyon:

I sniff my armpits. My deodorant has failed again from the stress of trying to “indie” publish my second novel while promoting the three books I already have “out there,” books hardly anyone knows exists.  A writing pal with time on her hands drops by. She has some suggestions on how to work smarter, not harder.

“Oh,” she says. “Just get 15 good reviews. There are websites that will post interviews with you.”

That’s easy for her to say. She writes fantasy, and you know those readers. They don’t work; they just sit around all day writing book reviews.

Well, let me tell you,” I say, but she’s already out the door, headed for her brand new Prius that’s parked in the driveway behind my old white Toyota pickup with its 237,000 miles on it. And that was before the odometer broke some years back.

And I wonder, How hard could it be to write fantasy instead of regular old books, mostly inspired by my errant choices in life?  When I ask google about the difficulty angle, I end up clicking from one excerpt to the next, and orderg eight e-books to complement my research. “I’ll show you smarter.” I read the books to see how it’s done. This takes ten days. Now I think I’ll just change a few details about my life, like the century, locations and names, and I’ll write me some fantasy, too.

A Sawmill. A Tragedy. A Few Gutsy Women.

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Excerpt from CHEATING THE HOG – a novel.

My new boss, Leroy, walks like a robot as he leads me across the mill yard, past snow banks taller than we are, and around the side of a metal building. He stops and points up. “Your first job’s out here.”

I strain my neck to look into the darkness, about twenty feet up. I can’t say what I’m thinking, and that is, Yer shittin’ me.

“Logs get sent up that ramp and through the debarker,” he says, hands on hips. “See those L-shaped teeth up there?”

The yard light is dim. I can almost see what he’s talking about.

“Those are called dogs,” he says. “They stabilize the logs on their way up the debarker ramp. At the top, the cedar bark peels off in long strips. Gets all tangled up. Freezes in the debarker and the dogs.” He points to a steep metal stairway, more like a ladder. “Need you to climb up there and remove all that frozen bark.” He studies me. “Okay?”

“Sure.” I say, hoping this is one of those initiation gags, like the one where an old lumberjack asks you to go find the knot-puller, that he’s counting on you.

Leroy hands me a heavy round metal bar about three feet long and yells, “Here’s a chisel.”

I guess the foreplay is over.

Gripping the chisel in my leather gloves, I climb the narrow metal stairs up two flights, and creep along a catwalk in the dim night sky, gripping a handrail with my free hand. Dead woman walking. I step onto the debarker ramp and don’t stop to look around at the stars. With the chisel end of the bar, I stab at a clot of tangled, frozen cedar bark, then lay the chisel down on the ramp and, with both hands hanging on tight to the big tooth called a dog, I kick at the loosened bark. I crawl to the next dog to jerk at strips of bark with my frozen fingers in my stiff gloves, grunting and cussing clouds of steam. Frozen bits of bark break loose and fall to the ground. Only rapists and murderers should have to do this job.

If I’m going to reach the frozen cedar bark underneath the dogs, there’s only one way to do it. I’ve gotta hang from the steel I-beam. If there’s an easier way, I can’t see it, and the job didn’t exactly come with instructions. I lock my left arm around the beam, wrap my legs around that same cold hunk of steel, and lock my ankles together. Might’s well be hanging onto a capsized boat out in the ocean, sharks circling. With my right hand gripping the chisel, I stab at the ice, grunting steam in the frigid air. My safety glasses fog up.

While I wait for my glasses to clear, I think about the stages of hypothermia. Then I ponder the uses for cedar—like cedar siding, cedar chests, a trunk to store your valuables in . . . yeah, like a hope chest. All I ever really wanted was to settle down with Dwayne. Except he’s dead, and now’s not a good time to think about that.

I chisel, claw, and pull until I score another loose tongue and let it, too, drop to the ground. Sore, strained body parts are one thing, but now my imagination runs wild. I picture the muscles of my left arm exploding and ripping out of the socket. My legs fail. Down I go, and since I’m frozen stiff, I bounce when I hit the ground. Pieces of me shatter.

Aren’t there laws against jobs like this? Hell, even circus performers have safety nets. Now there’s no feeling left in my arm, the one holding tight to the beam. If I fall and survive, I’ll end up in a wheelchair. I yell into the dark at my new boss, at all my old bosses, at my life, “I can do this job, don’t think I can’t.”

WHAT DARWIN SAID ABOUT MUSIC

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This post relates to a choice I made that prompted me to write my novel, THE BLUEBIRD HOUSE.  Future posts will reveal other choices, and how there’s a fine line between bravery and foolishness–but also how “bad” choices can result in “good” books.

“So, do you make bad choices so you’ll have something to write about?” a new acquaintance once asked.

It was an honest question, one that set me to thinking about my life.  I had made some bonehead decisions.  When any sane person would “just say no,” I’ve often said, “Oh, why not? What the hell.” Maybe it’s because I grew up in rural northern Idaho in the 1950s, where there were no fences, and very few boundaries. Besides, how do you know what works or doesn’t work for you unless you don’t try new things?  It’s a good way to evolve.
In the 1990s I worked in Helena, MT, for the U.S. Forest Service. During this time, I made several choices that would come to haunt me.  Or, as a former boss would say, “We’d better watch out what we do here, or this is gonna rise up and bite us in the future.”
One choice that turned out to have real teeth was this:  For the price of a used car I bought a collection of derelict buildings in an old mining camp about sixteen miles southwest of Helena. You can see ramshackle buildings like these all over Montana, slowly returning to nature. My two log cabins and one-story timber frame structure sat without foundations on the banks of Ten Mile Creek. It was May, 1992, when I first saw the place. The sun was shining and the birds were singing.
I scratched my head and said, “Oh, why not? What the hell.”
Soon after signing the papers, I learned that the two-story building had been one of the seventeen brothels in the Rimini Mining District. I found a newspaper article in the walls, How to Turn a Hotel into a Brothel and Break All Ten Comandments in One Night.  Oh, the novelty.  And the old girl needed me. If she didn’t get a new roof before winter, the whole shitteree would fall to the ground in a pile of kindling.
A new boyfriend said, “What this place needs is a can of gasoline and a match.”
I stopped dating him.
I found a local carpenter, one with vision.  He entered the building, stepped carefully over the rotten floor boards, looked around and announced, “First you’ll need all new rafters to support a new roof.  But see here? The walls are wowed-out half a foot on each side. Before we can do anything, I’ll have to use winches, chains and pulleys to see if we can square the building.”
It worked.  Then after the roof, complete with skylights, was installed, he said, “Now you need a foundation to support the weight of the roof.”
“Oh, why not?  What the hell,” I said.
But I learned you can’t get a home improvement loan on a pile of boards. I’d have to pay cash for all materials and labor.  As I poked around my old building, pondering my dilemma, thoughts of Darwin and his theory of evolution kept entering the picture.  I found another article in a tattered magazine, stuffed in the wall:
WHAT DARWIN SAID ABOUT MUSIC 
“If I had to live my life again I would make a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week, for the loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect and more probably to the moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”
That sealed the deal.  However, in order to afford my project, I had to give up my nice apartment in town and move into the brothel.  Friends helped me move my bed upstairs under the skylights. I brought my stereo system, an antique rocking chair, and my two cats.  Winter was coming on, so I had a wood stove installed and bought firewood. Only a few amenities were lacking–indoor plumbing and running water.
Soon after moving in, the spook factor kicked in.
This tale of choices I’ve made that resulted in three different books will continue.

For more info on THE BLUEBIRD HOUSE at Amazon:  http://tinyurl.com/7yansvo
For print edition see:  http://createspace.com/3772762

What choice have you made that some might call “bad,” but turned out to be good, or at least prompted you to write a book?

WHY NOT APPLY FOR AN ARTISTS RESIDENCY?

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Artist-in-residence programs have been part of the international art world for over a century. Some residency programs cover all costs, some offer stipends, others don’t cover any costs at all, still others provide lodging reserved for artists but require that you pay rent.  In most cases, artists are required to apply. Documents may include a curriculum vitae, references, and sometimes a project statement or proposal. Participation is planned well in advance, often six months to two years.
I’ve been participated in three residencies.  The first one, The Montana Artists’ Refuge, in Basin, MT, was for the month of September, 2005.  I didn’t have a place to live for a month. I contacted them a month in advance, and they had an opening—a one-bedroom apartment in an historic building, for which I paid $250. (Note: This residency program no longer exists.) I enjoyed interacting with the two other residents and the townspeople. We participated in a fun artwalk/ evening in Butte, MT, and met other artists from the area.  One of the other artists told me about Jentel, another program she’d been to.  She said, “You’ll love it there.”
So I applied to the Jentel Foundation for the Arts in January 2006, and was accepted for the period April 15 – May 13, 2007.  Jentel is located on a working cattle ranch near Banner, WY.  The closest town of any size is Sheridan, WY. While each of the six residents (two writers; four visual artists) paid our own way to/from the residency, Jentel paid a stipend of $100 a week. They took us to Sheridan once a week to buy groceries, which we cooked cooperatively in a lovely kitchen. Our private bedrooms were suitable for visiting royalty, and the common area featured soaring windows facing the Bighorn Mountains.  Separate studios were provided. Besides the time to focus on a project for the month (I wrote 20,000 words on my second memoir), I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with the other residents in the evenings. We had bicycles to ride, and over 1000 acres to roam.  More information on this incredible place can be found at http://www.jentelarts.org.  Also, we visited back and forth with artists in residence from nearby Ucross Artists Residency, on another working cattle ranch. The link to Ucross is http://www.ucrossfoundation.org.
Because I’d been a resident at Jentel, I received an invitation to apply for a new program in southern Wyoming, The Brush Creek Ranch Foundation for the Arts near Saratoga. I completed my application package in the fall of 2011 and was accepted for a two-week residency for April 3-17, 2012. The artists’ residency is a philonthropic program that is separate from the guest ranch and spa, all on a working cattle ranch of 13,000 acres. The website with information is http://www.brushcreekarts.org. Residents pay their travel expenses to/from the ranch (or the Laramie airport), but there are no other charges. Meals are provided. There are eight residents at a time (writers, visual artists and composers). This is where I’m at right now. The other residents include a brilliant young composer originally from Hong Kong and a visual artist, age 72, from Santa Fe. Again, interacting with the other residents has been stimulating and enjoyable. In this particular group, I believe I’m the only one without an MFA or PhD, but we’ve all “let our hair down,” so to speak. We talk and play and eat chef-prepared meals well together. Lodging and studios are furnished with upscale ranch décor and are totally comfortable. We can wander most places on the 13,000-acre ranch (except the bison range), and last Friday afternoon, we were treated to a guided horseback ride.
Another residency, where I visited a friend one time, is the Wurlitzer Foundation for the Arts in Taos, NM. There are three-month residencies are free for eleven artists at a time. The individual casitas are furnished, and you sleep and work in the same unit. You purchase and prepare your own meals. I’d apply for this situation except that pets are not allowed, and I don’t want to leave my dog for that long. That link is: http://www.wurlitzerfoundation.org/.
If you’re interested in a retreat where you can focus on your writing (or other creative discipline), I highly recommend applying for a residency (or maybe several, to increase your chances). There are hundreds of opportunities worldwide.  A simple search online will turn up several links, probably even blog posts and Facebook entries by various residents, but one umbrella organization to check out is: http://www.artisticcommunities.org/residencies/directory. There’s competition for these situations, of course, but if you can demonstrate that you’re earnestly working on a project and can fulfill the application requirements, you have as good a chance as anyone.

WHY ST. JOHN & WHY DOESN’T THE ISLAND FLOAT AWAY?

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The first time we visited St. John we said we were doing research for a novel. When we left Helena, Montana, that day in late November, 1996, it was minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit. The moment we stepped off that airplane into the warm, moist, 80-degree F air, we were goners. The next thing you know, we were no longer wearing underwear. And we were drooling slightly out of both sides of our mouths.

By the end of our ten-day visit, during which time we forgot to do book research, we found ourselves pondering life’s big questions: how could such a small piece of land sustain so many feral cats, goats, safari taxis, bananaquit birds, roosters, and massage therapists?

Life’s big questions remain a mystery, but I have uncovered some facts and made some observations. For instance, the number of visitors to St. John during the last 20 years has ranged from 700,000 to 1 million a year, many of them doctors and lawyers and such. If your personal physician or legal advisor was among them, he or she probably experienced “vacation brain,” the way we did. This syndrome is caused by the cells’ reaction to the sudden change of climate, especially when said cells have been working overtime to keep the host body alive in a frosty climate. After encountering a big red rooster wandering out of an open shop door, visitors from The City have been known to say, “Oh . . . I didn’t know you had peacocks here.” Or, standing knee-deep in the ocean, he or she might look puzzled and blurt, “Where are we in relation to sea level?” It’s true. Perfectly intelligent human beings, including those who claim status as the valedictorian of their high school graduating class, have asked, “So, what keeps these islands from floating away?” The Tradewinds newspaper police log once reported that a visitor renting a villa at Peter Bay, where the millionaires stay, called to report a dinosaur on his deck. Don’t let this happen to you. Those prehistoric-looking creatures are iguanas, and they’re quite harmless unless you’re wearing I’m Not Really a Waitress Red toenail polish.

The 2010 census registered a population of 4,170 (plus or minus) assorted human beings on St. John, including Fred the Dread, Boiler Al, and Hermon Smith, characters you’ll meet if you hang out on the island for a while.

There are many reasons people come to live on this nipple of land in the Caribbean. Some of those reasons are, obviously, weather related. I’ve read that if you are a person of character, you’re not so apt to be needy when it comes to climate. But why not be somewhere consistently warm and moist and welcoming? Why not live where gentle rains caress your body, and tree frogs and other strange noises tickle your ears in the night? Why not be surrounded by a turquoise sea as warm as bath water to swim in, among green turtles and bright blue fishes, and lie on warm sand the color of honey?

According to a quote by Captain Phil of the s/v The Wayward Sailor in an article in Tradewinds by Allison Smith, “Some people are looking for their destiny, some are looking for their truth, and others are just looking for a parking space.” Others manage to engineer their own witness relocation program, although I enjoy substituting witless for witness. On our second visit to the island, in January 2001, Tom and I rented a car one day, and gave a Bordeaux Mountain resident a ride. He told us that police still come looking for people on the island by their alias or nickname, and that you don’t always get to know someone’s real name until after they die. Then you might learn they’re on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Occasionally, the secret that someone is hiding from the rest of us is the same secret he’s hiding from himself.

MY NEXT HUSBAND WILL BE NORMAL

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I’m pleased to announce that after working on the manuscript off and on for five years, the book is now available for Kindle as well as in paperback.

From the back cover:

“In the memoir My Next Husband Will Be Normal – A St. John Adventure, Rae Ellen Lee and her husband, Tom, ditch their sailboat on the West Coast and fly to the U.S. Virgin Islands with a down payment for a mom and pop business on St. John. The plan: when they aren’t sewing canvas bags at their little shop, The Canvas Factory, they’ll be beach potatoes. But there are risks to living in paradise one cannot anticipate. For soon after unpacking their flip-flops, the husband–a former Republican state legislator with a silver crewcut and solid traditional values–realizes he is really a she. Convinced the world needs more humor, Lee rations the angst in favor of the picturesque and absurd. Adding heat to the story is a cast of colorful cats, customers, and Caribbean personalities. Toss in a few sex toys, some steel pan music, a pinch of voodoo–and stir.”

Reviews are rolling in. A podcast interview with Maura Curley from Virgin Voices is in the works and I’ll include it here as soon as it’s available. In her review, Maura said, “Adventurous readers will relish Lee’s outrageous revelations.” For the full review click the link: http://tinyurl.com/7hqcoqc.

Podcast interview (15 mins.) here:  http://virginvoices.vi/st._john

To purchase this book in print please click here:  https://www.createspace.com/3793650
To purchase this book for Kindle please click here:  http://www.tinyurl.com/6wrge85

Or visit me at my website:  http://www.raeellenlee.com

Also from the back cover:

Lee’s first memoir, I Only Cuss When I’m Sailing (first published as If the Shoe Fits by Sheridan House in 2001), chronicles her move with husband Tom from Montana to the West Coast to live on an old boat, fix it up, learn to sail and set off for the Caribbean.

 “. . . charming, witty, beautifully observed, and above all delightfully genuine.” Living Aboard Magazine

To purchase this book for Kindle please click here:  http://www.tinyurl.com/6s52wap

Still Not Gathering Any Moss

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No, I’m still on the move — this week at my son’s new house across the Clarkfork River from Thompson Falls, Montana — looking out the window at tall Douglas fir and Ponderosa Pine trees. A group of deer are bedded down in the grass not far away, and an exotic donkey just ran through the yard. This is open range, don’t forget. All my belongings are currently stored in my son’s garage, under a tarp, while I housesit (and dog, cat, yard sit) while my son and his little family are on vacation. They are visiting his father — who I was married to briefly several decades ago — in Michigan. Casey the black lab dog and I are having a great time. The orange cat is okay, too, although Scoobey looks like a special needs cat. The yard is another creature altogether. Besides the herd of deer I have learned from the neighbors that we are situated smack dab on top a gravel bar. Landscaping — or rather trying to keep trees alive during the drought — is how lots of people while away their retirement years here. And I’m supposed to be writing, but I have become yard-obsessed too. I took the lawnmower in for a tuneup and I am oh so excited to get it tomorrow so I can mow the front yard. It has to be set up as high as possible to mow OVER the donkey droppings and pinecones and rocks.

Did you know that white vinegar will kill spotted knapweed, just like Roundup will? That’s what a neighbor tells me. And deer will not eat herbs or plants with aromatic leaves — or that everywhere shrub, the potentilla. Isn’t that interesting?

Today I ordered a pair of Talon binoculars. The guy asked, what kind of birds do you look for. Well, there are little gray birds and there are big flappy birds, and I like the big ones best. Mostly I want to look into a moose’s eyeball at a safe distance, see if there’s a reflection. I want to hike high into a cirque basin and look at the rocks walls — like I’m in an art gallery.

The temperature was up to 100 degrees a couple days ago, and now it is about 45. When it warms up again, after I mow the front yard, I’ll load up my kayak and drive up to Fishtrap Lake — high in the mountains northeast of here. I won’t have my binos yet, but I will take my sketch materials and lunch and spend the day. There is a hiking trail around the lake too. And a free Forest Service campground.

Yesterday I drove into Thompson Falls and poked my nose into a pottery shop called Mud Magic. The shop owner, named Eric, looked like he just crawled off a Harley motorcycle but was really nice. He does workshops, hosts art and writing events, sells art supplies — and coffee roasting devices, green Fair Trade coffee beans, and of course his lovely pottery. I didn’t even know I wanted a coffee roaster — although I adore good coffee — and I bought one, a Fresh Roast + 8 Coffee Bean Roaster. For $79.95 I got the roaster, a lb. of coffee beans and the most wonderful pint-sized off white mug with a lid that doubles as a coaster. Eric showed me how to roast beans, but I haven’t worked up to doing it myself. My son has a satellite TV, which I am unable to operate, hard as I’ve tried to follow instructions. So I can’t bear the thought of failing with the coffee roaster quite yet. I’m researching sources for green beans, learning all about coffee roasting, even learned today that you can roast coffee beans in an air popcorn popper just fine. Imagine that! Why don’t more people KNOW about this — and actually DO it. They would drink far superior coffee and save money too (unless they prefer Folgers). I wonder how many other things I don’t yet know about — like this “alternative” way of dealing with coffee — that is better and cheaper and more fun to do? Like using white vinegar to kill spotted knapweed.

I will insert photos when I get set up in Bellingham, WA, where I’m moving to the week of June 18. I will also post pictures and information about my books.

How Not To Gather Any Moss

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This out-of-sequence “weather report” covers Aug 15 – Early Nov 2005.

The trip headline read, From Budapest to Krakow – Across the Carpathian Mountains. In the spring, when I had to choose a trip to celebrate turning 60, I already knew this would be a summer of living life on the skinny branches, only higher up and farther out than normal. So, why not hike with a group over a mountain range I never knew existed, across a country I’d never heard of (Slovakia). Just google Walking Softly Adventures. You, too, might discover new geographies.

En route to Budapest, I landed in Amsterdam to change planes. The greenness was other-worldly, with water everywhere. Everyone in Amsterdam has waterfront property. I’d been living in Montana, where the cheat grass had started to go dormant from lack of moisture. I had turned sixty and, in Montana, looked seventy. My skin was that dry. Cheat grass dry. Next stop Budapest and an easy transfer to a bus that traveled through Budapest, past beautiful Baroque (possibly Mesozoic) architecture, with geraniums sprouting from most window sills. The bus dropped passengers and their luggage off at various hotels. My stop was last – a nice little pension with breakfast, which I usually slept through, thanks to the nine-hour time difference I was adjusting to. By the time I met up with my tour group a few days later, I had watched lots of American TV programs voiced over in Hungarian, and I could see from the news that Switzerland had suffered serious flooding. I was glad to be in Hungary.

My “tribe” for the next ten days consisted of “active seniors,” almost all of them older than me, some of whom also suffered “cheat grass face.” The group included a nice couple in their young eighties from Portland, a portly former football pro turned Dutch Reformed Minister wearing a knee brace, his sassy wife who became my closest buddy on the trip, and five friends from Seattle of Asian descent who hike a lot together and had recently ridden camels out of Tunis — all really nice people. One woman, the only smoker, was in Europe doing one hiking trip after another with various tour companies. Anyway, we all walked and hiked and climbed our way across rolling hills and patterned farmlands into soaring, glacial-carved crags and peaks. We visited wine cellars, fortresses and monasteries that are World Heritage Sites, and listened to our Hungarian guide, Gabor, tell us about his culture. “Be careful not to ask a Hungarian, ‘How are you?’ because he will actually TELL you, and it won’t be pretty,” he said, wryly. He talked a lot about “the change” that gave them all greater freedom, and now what it means to join the European Union. Hearing all of this made me glad I was born in Priest River, Idaho. We all liked Gabor, and he knew his butterflies and storks (seen on many telephone poles in towns we visited or drove through). I took lots of digital photos.

Every night we stayed in castle hotels or four-star inns, always with giant pillows on the beds and buffet meals with more food than I’d ever seen in one place. After living out of a cooler all summer, I was like a hungry pygmy who’d just taken down a water buffalo. I gained weight. We always had hiking choices to make: less strenuous or more strenuous, and I usually opted for the more difficult. One hike took us up a stream gorge (something like a slot canyon in Southwest Utah), which involved walking on wet slippery wood ladders over the stream (I couldn’t have done this without my two new trekking poles).and then up a series of metal ladders, many stories up, that were bolted into vertical rock faces immediately adjacent to the waterfalls. This is the most exciting hike I’ve ever done in my life. I absolutely loved it, and I must go back to Slovakia to do it again. We hiked over a pass across the High Tatras. I was on top of the world – or so I thought – until we hardier folk climbed the highest peak in Poland assisted by chains bolted into the rock, coached by a Tatra Mountain Guide with serious body odor. I wore my Great Old Broads for Wilderness t-shirt. We stayed three nights in Zakopane (pronounced Zokkoponnie), Poland, a charming resort town with nice (cheerful, even) people, special mountain resort architecture, folklore festival and market, and world ski jumping championship on astro turf. Here I finished reading Michener’s book Poland –borrowed from Sherry and hauled with me from Idaho.

The owners of the travel company, out of Portland, led the trip – and I have never been so taken care of in all my life. A trip with this company should be prescribed by psychologists everywhere for caretaker people like me. It was finally my turn. And then all too soon we reached Krakow, and it was time to say goodbye to my tribe. Several of us cried. I bravely took the train from Krakow to Poland to fly home, and discovered that only younger Polish people who work in hotels speak any English. I didn’t know how or when to pay on the bus from the train station to the airport, and there was no one to ask, so when the ticket police came along I nearly ended up in Polish prison because I did not have enough Polish money to pay the fare AND the fine for my criminal act. A total stranger paid my fine and then got off the bus. I will never tell another Polish joke as long as I live; however, I do plan to write a letter to the president of Poland about the incident – because to encourage tourism, they just gotta do better with signs and other languages. I’ve thought about it and decided this notion is not ethnocentric on my part, it’s just good business.

Back in Helena, I stayed a couple days with Jeff, Lee and Madison, before moving to the Montana Artists’ Refuge (MAR) in the tiny town Basin, about 45 minutes south of Helena. They had a space available for a writer. Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t do anything right to snag some illustrious “residency.” I had to pay rent, just like the other two residents – both artists – but it turned out to be the best thing I could have done with the month of September. I worked hard on updating the pages of the book (out first in 1987) for a reprint of Just West of Yellowstone, requested by the bookstores and the Forest Service in West. I’d been collecting new information off and on for a couple years. A member of the Board for the MAR is a graphic designer, and he designed a new cover for the book. I think you’ll like it as much as I do. When I bring out the new edition in the spring, I’ll let you know.

One resident at the MAR, an artist about my age, became a buddy to walk with at the end of a work day – up one of the gulches out of town. The aspens were turning yellow and we watched their progress. Pat talked a lot about other art residencies she’d done, and we also discussed how to determine where to live when we grew up. New Mexico, she thought. In fact, several of my friends are thinking about where to live and talking about New Mexico as a possibility. But maybe not – and this question about where to live keeps coming up, so I’m considering writing a book about that too. I mean, when you find yourself suddenly open to finding a home for yourself – because a hurricane displaces you, or a divorce, or your spouse dies, or it’s simply time for a change — and you can move to wherever you want (within reason) – how to you go about deciding??? What aids are there “out there” to help you find your place? Proximity to family members can play a role, of course, but it isn’t always necessary to live near them, either, given the ease of air travel. And they may not even WANT you to be close.

Then during the first half of October I drove back to Big Foggy north of Priest River to stay at the cabin there and visit my favorite population on the fringe, the GBTC. I continued work on my update for Just West. The weather was cooling and the aspens and cottonwoods along the river were golden in the fog. It was a beautiful and magical time, as always. Almost every evening, Sherry and I watched on DVD the first season of MONK – a television series about an obsessive-compulsive detective. Highly entertaining. On the weekend, I drove to Sandpoint to stay over night with friend Bobbie Ryder-Johanson at her little cottage on Lake Pend O’reille. We had a lovely time catching up with each other’s lives, since we were neighbors and classmates at the Univ. of Idaho from 1979 – 81. We shared photos and stories. We sat at water’s edge and sketched and talked in the warm fall sunlight. I even toyed with the idea of buying a lot near Bobbie’s place, one with an old rundown cabin on it complete with thick moss on the roof, but it’s too expensive, and the location is too isolated for me. Bobbie and her family live near Pullman, WA, and are only there about one weekend a month.

Back to Helena for a few more days with Jeff, Lee and Madison – before leaving MT for the next 6-1/2 months. I must say that my son and his wife were patient and generous with me in my comings and goings all summer, and I know that I disrupted their lives on more than one occasion. I miss my granddaughter like crazy, but Jeff and Lee are good about sending me pictures, and I can send her cards and presents – like a first globe of the world with a little sign on a movable pin that says, Gamma Rae is now HERE.

After Helena, my last stop (before returning to St. John for the winter to work) was in Santa Fe. My friend, Diana, had just moved there from Pullman. Earlier in the summer she said many times, “You’re going to LOVE Santa Fe!” And she was right. For almost two weeks we did all sorts of things around town – plus unpacked some of her boxes. She ended up with too much stuff for her smaller new abode, so she gave me lots of nice clothes. We went on a couple birding hikes at the Audubon center near town, shopped at the Whole Foods Store, went to art galleries, and participated in an art invitational sponsored by the gallery that represents D’s beautiful acrylic flower paintings. Diana painted a pumpkin for the auction. The other artists, mostly from Colorado, painted still life set-ups, architecture, and street scenes, and we all attended the evening critiques as well as a huge reception at an art patron’s house out in the country. Wow! A new employee at the gallery is an opera singer who came to Santa Fe from New Orleans with her family. They just barely escaped with their lives and lost everything else. The Rotary Club of Santa Fe sponsored them, and the family is doing well, however, the 6’ 2” tall opera singer can’t sing soprano in 7000’ high Santa Fe, only (for now) Mezzo. Santa Fe has everything – welcoming, friendly, liberal, creative people; the most incredible art galleries and shops, and beautiful scenery and sky and mountains. My friend Carol from Fort Worth flew up one day for lunch with us, which was great fun. She and I will meet and drive around New Mexico and visit Diana in Santa Fe the first week of May in 2006.

And on October 30 I left Santa Fe for Seattle to catch my breath before my flight to St. John. Friends Katie and Lorna drove the 90 miles down from Bellingham for lunch with me and a great visit around Pike Place Market – a gloriously fun time with these two firecrackers. They plan to go with me (and any other friends I can round up – just let me know) on a goat packing trip into Grand Staircase/Escalante in SW Utah for a week in October 2006. They’ll bring their ukuleles. I’ll bring mine. We’ll paint and write and entertain each other and the goats. Suddenly it was time for Katie and Lorna to leave for Bellingham, and for me to bag my things and get on another plane.

And here I am back on St. John – where new dramas (stacked on top of old ones) continue to unfold, and where the weather’s the same as when I left in May – sunny, warm and moist (no cheat grass here), with a good chance of mosquitoes.