Neighbor's Garage Lights Go Nuts and Me With Them

Book Reviews: Darkest Jungle, Young Men and Fire, Bridges of Madison County

I've read a few books in the last weeks.  Three of them I recall, the others were not even notable enough to recall.  It's a crap shoot, grabbing a book from a thrift store, a garage sale or at the dollar store.

Bridges of Madison County is a love story.  While others hail it, it was unimpressive to me, in all but a few aspects.  My neighbor gave me this book.  It was otherwise headed to Goodwill.

My major complaint with this book is that the author makes from the beginning like such a love story is unusual.  I don't think it is very unusual.  I think these fast and passionate well remembered affairs are common.

I've been in love.  I met a young alcoholic in Alaska way back when I was so young I was muddled in the brain and thought still that everything would work out for me in life, that I would still find a great job, fall in love, have children, go on vacations once a year while managing three kids, pets at home and a career.  Sure, the vision had blurred and tunneled to fantasy terribly by then, with a dark horizon and gathering clouds on all sides.  I loved Jim.   I loved him so much he followed me back to Corvallis.  When he found no work and I was judged mental and put away, he drifted back to Alaska and Sitka, his native island.  Years later, he called me, from Seattle, on my birthday.  Not even my family remembered my birthday that year.  But Jim did.  He'd found Jesus he said, and was off the bottle.  A couple years after that, his father called me, from Sitka, asked me if I had seen or heard from Jim, wanted me to find him and marry him because he said Jim called me the love of his life and I'd make a good man of him. This made me feel silly wonderful and needed and powerful.  But I couldn't find Jim.

Now I have found him.  He's living in an apartment complex, with a wife, up in Sitka.  His father is dead and so too his love for me.  I almost called him two months ago, but I put down the phone.  I am not a home wrecker.

So Bridges of Madison County was no big wonderful rare love story to read.  It's a common love story.  I kept reading thinking something would happen, other than a bored rural house wife, who hated her rural meaningless day to day, encountered a man whose personality, values and life mirrored every longing in her soul.  She didn't ignore her own desires and opened the doors of her soul to a stranger.  And to her house.  And was gloriously happy and fulfilled for a few days times.  So was he.  Her husband was away with the kids at the county fair, who had livestock they were showing.  A funny comment in the book was about how kids love their farm animals then take them to the fair and if they win a ribbon the animal goes up for auction and gets slaughtered.  Contradictions, she says.

The photographer, the other half of the love affair, is on assignment for National Geographic, to photograph the bridges of Madison County. He stops in at her place, lost, looking for one particular bridge. He has long hair, which causes a flurry of comments amongst the small towners.

They have a fling.  The rest of both of their lives is consumed with remembering it.  Her children, once grown, discover the secrets of their mother's life, once she is gone, and, at the beginning of the book, ask a writer to tell the story.  Their pleas include the statement that if the writer will not tell the story he is to tell it no one else ever.  This paragraph at the beginning of the book, made me want to read the book, made me think it would be more than an account of longings unfulfilled and a short love affair that filled both the man and the woman with immense joy.  Enough to last a lifetime maybe?  But that both were too timid, in the end, to change their lives.  However, once again, I was reminded of a discussion in Hemmingways' For Whom the Bell Tolls.  The main characters discuss how long it takes to live a full life.  Can a full life be lived in a week, say, or three days, or one day even, or an hour?

I rate Bridges of Madison County, on a scale of one to five, a two!  If you are a romantic, a poet, or an unfulfilled lover of either sex, you will rate the book higher.

Darkest Jungle is the tale of a segment in American history, when young military men were anxious to gain reputations.  The Panama straits were being used to shorten the trip from European starting points and from the east coast of America, to the gold fields on the west coast.   At this point in history, travellers were deposited by boat, and walked or were mule ferried across the isthmus.  But there were intriguing tales of a passage farther south, in the Darien straits, of a gap in the mountains across a narrow isthmus, through which a canal could easily be built.  The Scotts and the Brits wanted to find and claim this route also.  Ah, the money that could be made.

A crew was assembled in America to make the voyage and explore reports, made by explorers, one a doctor, they thought could believe, including a report by one of these explorers, who, turns out, really concocted a truth of his own making, to make money and to enhance his own reputation, of a point where he  could see from coast to coast.  The Americans planned to find this gap from the east coast to the west coast, suitable for a canal passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific before anyone else did so.

The jungles however were filled with angry native tribes that just wanted these whites of all nationality, to leave them and their lands alone.  Another party, attempting the crossing, had been attacked and at least two of its members killed.

The Americans came into Darien Bay slightly before other ships and set out, with a expeditionary force.   This book recounts their misery, as they follow a river that winds back and forth, once they crest the divide, become lost and nearly starve to death.  Many survived only because of the tenacity of their young leader, who, with another, finally leaves the sluggish party, starving so badly they cannot continue, and makes a run for help.  Somehow, he makes it to a west coast port and survives over a month of starvation.  His men, left behind to wait, finally turn back.  Some die, others go nuts.  And when all hope is lost, around the corner of the river comes their leader, returning for them, with help.  I read this book at least two months ago, so I can't recall many details.  Or even names.  It is a survival story, an enthusiastic expedition gone sour.  There was no gap in the mountains or passageway that could become a canal.  They acted on reports from liars.  Many died as a result and those who survived were lucky.

An interesting quote in the book, attributed to one of explorers, mentions the lack of values he had found among the Americans and settlers in CA.  He did not like their killing, violent and miserable ways.  It seemed funny to me, because people now sometimes refer to the old days, the farther back the better, as the good days when everyone had such high morals.  I've always thought this mentality to be funny.  Our history is anything but moral, beginning when European settlers stole the lands from the natives!!  How moral is stealing?  History is history.  But really people, the old days were better, people had morals?  OMG.

I'll give this book a three, simply because it is a history book and a good read.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon.

I didn't finish the third book:  Young Men and Fire, written by the author of A River Runs Through It, but when he is very old.  It was tedious from the start, a chronicle of the Montana Man Gulch Fire, that killed 9 men.  Much of the book is devoted to the history of wild fire fighting and smoke jumping and the weather that invokes a blow up.  In the case of the Mann Gulch fire lightning sparked it down in the gulch.  It burned uphill and was potted by a look out.  There were flyovers of the fire, out of Missoulla, Montana then 12 smoke jumpers, many under 20, were flown and dropped, except for one, who became too sick in the lurching plane, from unsteady winds.

In the meantime, a recreational ranger had hiked up to the fire from the bottom and was fighting it alone.  He was older and not in the excellent shape the young smoke jumpers were in.  they met up however, and within an hour, nine were dead, including the ranger.  From the bottom, the district ranger had come in with recruited "bar fly" drunks as a crew to attack it from the bottom and create a passage so the smoke jumpers, up top, could come through.

However, as he started up to check out the fire, from the bottom, a man named Dodge, the leader of the smoke jumpers, was seeing something he didn't like, in leading the jumpers down to the fire, and ordered them back, a retreat, on the run, virtually vertical.  The fire had blown up. From the bottom, the district ranger ran from it, passed out, and made it to the river.  The blow out occurred when the hot burning crown fire was smothered somewhat by maybe a thunder cloud with its heavy dense air, and burned all the available oxygen.  Suddenly a wind shift from upgulch, opened a hole in the heavy air, and the sudden oxygen available at the top of the ridge, created a monster.  The fire blew up on a tear up the ridge invigorated by a blast of oxygen. The smoke jumpers were in its path.

Dodge and two young men, one only 17, were the only survivors.  The two young men made it t the ridge and over and found a rock slide without fire fuel, with  only seconds to spare.  Another young man with them had taken only a slightly different route and did not make it.  Dodge made it only because he lit his own fire.  It was unheard of then, and probably his own invention, under the knowledge of certain death.  He pulled out a match and struck it to the waist high grass in front of him.  When it had burned out, which happened quickly a hundred square foot area, he dove into, yelling at the smoke jumpers to follow, and laid down in the middle of the burned bare dirt, put a handkerchief over his face, and buried his face in the charred earth.  Not one fire fighter followed him.  All raced this way and that, for the ridge.  Nobody made it.  Two were alive, when the fire bolted over the ridge and was gone.  Two were so badly burned their skin hung from their bodies and they died later.  And then Dodge survived, in his charred field.  He would not have survived if it had been forest they were racing up and through for the ridge as he could not have set a fire in a forest that would have quickly burned him an safety zone.  But this was waist high dead dry grass.

The author has great trouble finding a perspective for the story and even admits that readily, referring to himself repeatedly in the book as "the storyteller".  It's a tedious back and forth walk, to get  detailed obsessive facts on why these men died, why the fire blew up the way it did, what could have been done differently, the obsession of the district ranger afterwards, that lasted a lifetime.  You learn a lot about fire, reading this book, but by Section Two, I still knew almost nothing about any of the men who died and I put the book down.

Under Eaves Cat Run Functional!

Miss Daisy was first to try it out.

Jade was second.

I used all sorts of wire to enclose it, including refrigerator shelves and oven racks!

Growing Up Adventist

How did I end up a cat woman, without family, a captive for decades of the destructive mental health system?

Well, now that's a story.  A story as long as my life.

Two factors, primarily, sealed my fate.  My father's dysfunction and the religion I was born to--Adventism.

From my earliest memories of life, I recall fear as the primary ruler of my childhood.  I was afraid of my father.  I could not say anything that was considered controversial or against what he believed.  I was afraid when he came home from work.  He came home from work angry.  Mother worked too, not only at his office, but she did all the household chores, the cleaning, the shopping, the cooking, the running around.  If my father had reason to be tired, end of day, my mother had a million reasons.  Yet she refused to say anything ever against him and came down on us hard if we did.

Later in life, I would ask her why she would say nothing against him, when he was ruthless to her.  Every night, he made a point of insulting her until she ran off to the bathroom sobbing, where she would remain, sometimes for hours.  He would kick back rocking in his chair, after she ran off, at the dinner table, smirking and self-satisfied.  She never fought back.

The bathroom was a refuge for both my parents, an escape.  There, they kept racks of magazines they read while on the toilet.

My mother would sing this sad little song to herself, sometimes when in the bathroom, sometimes out weeding the rock garden..."Nobody loves me.  Everybody hates me.   Guess I'll go eat worms...."  My heart would ache when she sang it.  I wanted to comfort her, hold her, take her away.   "I love you, momma," I'd say sometimes, going to her, wanting to hug her.  "It's ok, honey," she'd say, and put a smile on her face again.


He also hated her parents, who lived just a quarter mile down the road from us.  He made fun of them ceaselessly and once grandpa died, made jokes about "when the old bat would die" so he could get her money.  I believe now, he was just terribly jealous.  My grandfather on my mother's side was very much loved for his generosity in town.  He went to Mexico with grandma every year and worked there at a free clinic, as a volunteer for a month with grandma.

Grandpa was jailed for months once, in Mexico, after a car he was riding in crashed and the other driver died.  He didn't let it get him down.  He learned Spanish while in that Mexican jail and remained friends with his jailer until he died.  The American consulate finally got him free.  Grandma had not been jailed.  He was a positive and upbeat and generous man.  My father was anything but positive.

He was fixated on conservative politics.  He ranted and raged over politics almost daily until I wanted to vomit to hear any of it.  He hated "liberals" and would have been in love with Rush Limbaugh.  He ranted over church members and the way they lived and what they spent money on and didn't.  To disagree, was to garner the focus of his apparently scorching hot inner fires of rage.  His anger was most often expressed in searing criticisms or sarcasm.

Outwardly though, to other people, the public, he was a mouse, unwilling to challenge authority even when in the right.  I suppose this trait made what happened at home inevitable.

At early age, I became afraid to use the bathroom, which was next to my parents bathroom and separated from theirs only by a sliding door.  This was because he started walking in on me, routinely, when I was on the toilet.  The first few times, I thought it was a mistake, as he claimed, but then I realized it wasn't a mistake at all, and became terrified to use the bathroom.  I was taken to the doctor and the doctor told my mother I suffered from chronic constipation and prescribed enemas if necessary, another tribulation I had to bear, bent over naked, with a tube up my butt, in their bathroom, but the truth was very hidden away and even had my mother told the doctor the truth the doctor would not have stuck up for me either or done anything.  In those days, in that area, child abuse was a fairly common challenge to children.  And the children had to suffer it alone.

I also learned very young that my father saw girls and boys very differently.  It was him who told me I needed to help in the kitchen more than I already did.  My brothers did not have to clear or set the table or wash dishes, but I did.    There were many "woman's work" chores added to my list. We were paid no allowance, but sometimes were given a dime or a quarter to sweep walks or clear the front bank of weeds.

Once I started school, my real nightmare began.  The school was a tiny church run school, further isolating me from potential friends.  The highest number of kids ever in my class, from grade 1 through 8, was 8, three girls and three boys.  The other two girls were a whiny fat pimple faced Myrtle Point kid and the preacher's daughter.

My father drove me relentlessly, as a child.  He became angry if I missed even one question on a quiz.  I don't think he did this to the boys--my two brothers, one older, one younger.  I don't remember, however.  He would be angry if we had a foot race across the field playground at school if I didn't come in first and lost to the lanky grasshopper quick Herb, also from Myrtle Point, a town ten or twelve miles from where I lived.

This behavior in my father, blowing in anger if I missed even one question, would continue even through my short college career.  His nickname for me at home was "Dumby".  I would object to my mother, over him calling me this, and my mother would say, "It's a term of endearment, don't worry."  I would say, starting to heave inside in sobs I invariably controlled before they came out, or until I could bury my face privately in my pillow, "No, it's not a term of endearment.  He's insulting me like he does you."

I grew  up thinking I was stupid.  Why would I not think that, when constantly told I was.

He also made fun of my mother's weight.  She was not that much overweight.  In fact, she was often thinner than my father.  He also made fun of my weight, as a kid, until I was very uncomfortable to be seen in a swimming suit, especially around him.  I loved to swim.  My mother took us to the community pool summers.   We took swimming lessons and all of us excelled as swimmers.

It was at the swimming pool where I incurred my first traumatic injury.  Later, I felt it was gift from god, but no one else saw it that way.  After all, I had the same last name as our church's prophet, before she was married.  And she became ill after she was hit in the face with a rock, after which she began having visions.  I was coming out of the small swimming pool dressing room, behind the pool.  There is an alley you would continue down, if you didn't make a left and join your parent and head back to the parking lot. Standing at the edge of that alley was a little girl I did not know.  The moment I stepped out of the dressing room, she hurled a rock at me.  It struck me in the face.  I dropped like a brick.  The other girl ran.  She had been waiting to attack some other girl, only I had come out first.

I don't remember if I was taken to the doctor or not.  Most likely I was not.  I was not able to swim most of the rest of that summer, I remember, while my face and nose recovered.  I think it was probably there that I acquired the deviated septum in my nose.  And it's slightly crooked.

I incurred another injury when I was in the first grade at the church grade school.  We all played dodge ball or volleyball at recess, although grades one through four were usually out in the gym at a different time than grades four through eight.  For some reason, on that day, all eight grades, maybe 20 to 30 students altogether, were playing dodge ball at the same time.  I got backed into, by an eighth grader, and slammed backwards against the cement floor.  I remember waking up on the backseat of someones car.  I was not taken to the doctor, just home.  I'd hit my head hard enough to knock me out for quite some time.  But back then, people didn't go to the doctor or hospital for every little thing.

I had my first surgery when I was just four years old.  I'd gone deaf, from swollen tonsils.  I also had a terrible sore throat.  My father didn't like it if we had to go to the doctor, due to the expense, so I'd said nothing about my fiery throat.  When my parents noticed I could no longer hear, however, I was taken to the doctor, who pronounced I would need my tonsils removed.  It was done in his office.  A rag doused in ether was placed over my mouth and nose and I was told to count backwards from 100 and pretend I was on a rocket ship in space.  So I did count. I got down to about 94 maybe.  I was supposed to get ice cream afterwards.  Everyone told me I would.  But I didn't.  I could hear again though afterwards.

We went to church every Saturday, as Adventists.  As Adventists, who believe the holy day begins at sundown on Friday night and ends at sundown on Saturday, we could not watch TV or engage in any secular activity the second the clock struck the appointed hour of sundown on Friday.  Likewise, there was much clock watching for the moment of sundown on Saturday, so the TV or radio could be turned on again.

Adventists kids, once they grow up and try to find jobs, have a terrible time of it dealing with the sundown issue.  You can't find work.  Adventists are "allowed" to work medical jobs during the holy day including after sundown on Friday.  Even being a janitor if you are a janitor at a hospital or nursing home, say, would be considered ok.  But, you can't work jobs like electrician or fast food worker or so many other jobs, kids get or college graduates get, unless you can somehow find an Adventist boss.

This makes life very hard on Adventist youths trying to exit the womb, so to speak, thrive on their own.

Adventist youth often grow up feeling their bodies are dirty and nasty.  We were not allowed to wear jewelry, not allowed to listen to most music, and certainly not allowed to dance.  I grew up completely illiterate of my own body and had to ask a neighbor girl why I was bleeding, when I got my first period.  She explained nothing, just tossed me a box of pads and told me to read the inserts.

This is a first installment.  I grew up dysfunctional.  As I get older, however, I find out almost everyone grows up in dysfunctional families, to some degree.

Early in my life, the weight of my entire world fell directly on my shoulders.  I wanted to create peace and love in a family where there was never to be either.  The church compounded my imposed responsibility.  I believed what was preached, at least up until I was eleven.  But nothing preached was practised at home, or, as far as I could tell, by any of the other church members.  This bothered my young soul and kept me up wrestling with this contradiction, late into sleepless nights.

Avoidance of my father's wrath, comfort of my mother, these things became my life.

69 Kittens, Cats Have Moved Through My Hands This Spring, Summer

It's hard to recall all the kittens and cats so far this spring and summer who have moved through my hands, from fixing situations, on to other rescues and shelters or homes.  But this has been a huge year so far and a terrible kitten season.  I am trying not to take in more cats.  I have too many.  I had only one extra from the last year, Posey, from Spicer Origins colony and she has now got a home.  So far so good too.

I also lost Feather this year and found Valentino a home, reducing my overall number here by two.

I lost my beloved Dex last spring, to kidney failure.

The youngest cats here are:  Honey, Teddy and Starr, from the homeless camp, now three and half years old.  The Quirky Sisters, Fantasia and Echo, now two and half years old.  Nemo and Starry, two and a half years old.  And Slurpy, three years old.  Four of the Apathetic Albany business cat nine are only two years old, also.  Those are my youngest!

Most of the other cats here would be considered senior, over six and several, over ten.  It's become a nursing home!  My oldest cat is former Corvallis river cat, Vision, who is now 18 years old, at least.  Deaf Miss Daisy is closing in on 9 years old, which makes me sick to think about.  Comet is nine now. Electra is 14.  Comet, Vision, Miss Daisy and Electra are the only cats here now whom I moved here with.

Since most of the cats and kittens went to rescues and shelters, I want to thank them.  I am no good at adoptions, so appreciate so much the help I have received from the following groups and individuals:  PAWS, in West Linn, Heartland Humane in Corvallis whose help has been a lifesaver.  They are so good to me and to the kittens and cats in need I encounter.  KATA in Foster, Sweet Home.  Safehaven, who took in one of the 61, a teen.  Poppa Inc's president, Keni, who took in two kittens from Albany.  Karmen in Wilsonville, who acts as an intermediary, holding cats or kittens until she can get them into Portland area rescues.  Oregon Humane, who took in the FIV positive three legged Albany male Mac, after another Portland rescue acted as an intermediary, holding him then getting him to OHS.  Oregon Cat, who took in five Albany kittens.  And the unnamed Portland rescue who took in the five Lebanon kittens and 8 more from the Riverside Cemetery colony.

Ok, here's the list, just the ones I can remember:

3--Harrisburg colony---3 bottle babes.  I trapped 18 adults and teens, there, returned them after they were fixed, and took three tiny bottle babes, found in the barn, to PAWS, up in West Linn.  Thank you Sharon and PAWS.

1--white male teen, roaming around begging at the Circle K on Queen.  Employees said someone living behind them moved, leaving their cats.  I put him in my car and took him to Safehaven.

3--Three kittens from Albany, to Heartland.  I took in the mom to be fixed, after a KATA referral. They confessed to giving away the kittens in front of Walmart in Albany until Walmart told them to leave.  There were three left.  I took them, then got them to Heartland.

2--Two Corvallis river business kittens to Heartland.  I trapped so far at this business six adult males and three adult females, two teens, then the two small female kittens, who tamed quickly, and who Heartland took in.

2--One Albany young Scottish Fold Munchkin stray and her kitten.  I trapped this stray female, an old couple fed, got her fixed, determined she was tame, and found her a home.  I'd already taken her one surviving kitten, a male, to Heartland.  Two more off the streets.

1-Mac--one legged FIV positive Albany adult stray male, who went to a Portland rescue, then to OHS, and finally got a home.

1-Kiwi, Albany unwanted Siamese.  Kiwi's owner missed two spay appointments then gave her away free on craigslist.  She immediately went missing.  Neither the new owner nor her old owner went looking for her, so when I heard about it, I did.  Two months later, after going through terrible floods we had, then snow, she showed on a porch of a woman I'd contacted about her, since she feeds strays.  Kiwi eventually went to a WA state rescue and almost immediately got a home, being a wonderful kitty.  Not a good traveller though.  OMG, that trip up with Vivian from Brownsville with her, was hell on earth.  Kiwi howled, sprayed the car with diarrhea, tore out of carriers and made both of us consider suicide as a viable out!

17--17 kittens from Kitten Production colony in Lebanon.  Got all the adults fixed there about 16, I think, and took out 17 of  24 kittens.  KATA took four and Heartland took 13 of them.  Some died and some made it and on to homes.

5--Around the corner from the above colony, have so far taken in 11 more adults and teens to be fixed, and found a Portland rescue who took in five kittens from the colony, all with severe issues, that include ringworm, URI's, worms and one kitten had a dead bulging eye.  Another three week old had two dead glazed over eyes.

9--Albany Two Legged torti colony.  8 kittens taken from this colony and nine adults fixed.  Five of the kittens went to Karmen in Wilsonville then to Oregon Cat in Lake Oswego.  Three of them went to Heartland. The ninth kitten, a male, was adopted by a friend in Newport.

6--Two adults and three male kittens from 16th street in Albany and one adult male Siamese with embedded collar.  Vivian in Brownsville took in the Black tux tame female, Betsy, mom of the adult Siamese she also took in, while Betsy's latest litter, the three boys, went to different places.  Karmen, then Keni, took in the black male and his brother the black tux, while Simon, the Siamese brother, went off with two Siamese kittens from the seed warehouse to a Siamese rescue in WA state.  The embedded collar damaged adult Siamese male is at Heartland.

8--8 kittens from colony near a cemetery.  Four others, three adults and a teen, were fixed and returned.

6--Five kittens in all from the seed warehouse south of Corvallis were rehomed and one adult.  Two black males kittens from different moms went to Heartland Humane while a third black female kitten was fixed then I adopted her to a Lebanon couple.  Also, from the same place, Juno, and her two Siamese kittens were saved.  Juno went to Brownsville while her two kittens went off to the WA state rescue.

5--Three orange tabby kittens, crawling in fleas, from a Lebanon woman, who failed to pick up her two carriers, were taken in by Heartland Humane and two adult males from the same woman, were fixed at the FCCO and taken in by Karmen of Wilsonville, who eventually will get them into OHS, for adoption.

69 cats and kittens so far this spring, but I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting some cats and kittens. I didn't count Posey in that number. The list, nonetheless, is impressive so far, and highlights the need for spay neuter, education and rescue.

Seven Albany Cats Fixed Yesterday

Yesterday, I took seven Albany cats up to be fixed at the FCCO.  I took up four trapped at a colony in Albany (two males to catch still there), a stray male a couple had taken in, but needed fixed, a female taken in off craigslist very pregnant, who promptly had kittens, and another female from a house with lots of kittens, kids and unfixed cats in general.

There are still many people out there who have no understanding of the overpopulation problem and its costs, to cats and to shelters, rescues and communities.

Orange tabby female, also a mom, fixed yesterday, taken in pregnant. Now needs a home.

Black tux Albany female, mom of six kittens, fixed yesterday.

Lucky Albany male.  Was a stray, taken in by a couple, fixed yesterday.

Gray tabby adult female fixed yesterday, mom of two male gray tux kittens.

One of two long hair male gray tux kittens fixed yesterday.

Second gray tux long hair male kitten fixed yesterday.

White male fixed yesterday.

After I dropped off the seven cats at the clinic, I headed out to Sauvie Island.  Someone at the clinic suggested I try the beaches there.  I had never been to Sauvie Island before, but I still have a photo my brother sent me years ago, of him and his daughter, when she was very young, out at the pumpkin patch on Sauvie Island prior to Halloween.  That, before yesterday, was my only attachment to Sauvie.  Except for the news.

When Kyron Hormon went missing from his school over a year ago, end of May, and his step mom came out as the most likely culprit in his disappearance, Sauvie Island was searched several times.  Guess she had connections there.

There are still signs along Highway 30 and on Sauvie about Kyron.  He's still missing and no one has ever been held accountable.  Kyron's bio mom has now filed a lawsuit against the step mom, for millions, hoping a civil case can garner information since the criminal investigation has floundered from the start.

Looking west along the Mighty Columbia.  I always refer, in my mind, to the Columbia as "Mighty", because the Columbia  River is too big for my mind to comprehend, too awe inspiring for me to otherwise describe.

Sauvie Island public beach.

I drove the entire island, to get to the public beach.  It is farmland, primarily.  There is even a you pick lavender farm, along with blueberry farms, wheat farms and cattle.  The beaches are along the Columbia River.  For the privilege of using these sandy strips, however, the public must pay a $7 day use fee, that goes to the Fish and Wildlife service, for god knows what.  The porta potties there, interspersed along a lengthy parking area, were filthy.  The two I tried to use were stuffed in people's trash, brimming in shit, and filthy.  The beach sand was littered in cigarette butts.  The bathrooms, the butts and the hefty use fee were enough to turn me off and around.

I was happy to be able to see Sauvie Island for myself, with my own eyes.  It is a great place, I could  understand quickly, for farming, for wildlife and for bikes.

I decided to cut my losses and head to my usual spot, Hagg Lake.  I cut across from highway 30 to highway 26 via Cornelius Pass road.  Cornelius Pass road also invokes strong memories.  Used to be, Poppa Inc. ran  a nursery there, in an old barn, up on the hill, not far from West Union's intersection with Cornelius Pass road.  Recycled Gardens.  To glance up the hill now, see that once vibrant barn shrouded in brush, made me gulp back a rush of horror.

I spent a couple hours at Hagg Lake.  There is also a user fee there--$5, but worth it, as far as public lands user fees go.  We, the public, now must pay hefty fees to use our own lands.  Because they are not ours.  They belong to the government and the government and its employees are no longer us.  So we have to pay them to use anything or get on our knees and beg.

I was already in my old old shorts and a T-shirt.  I had my $4 boogie board, bought at Goodwill years ago, in hand.  I waded into the muddy water, churned by other feet, by dogs, kids, fishermen and moms chasing kids.

I swam across the arm, then back, then with my body in the water, rested my head on the boogie board, floating, and lazed.

Mostly, this day, there were fishermen.  A black family's elder father sat in a chair on the bank with a pole sticking out beside and beyond him.  His grandson sat nearby.  Three older kids from the same family were tooling around in a small metal boat with an electric motor.  The wind came up shortly after I arrived, tossing float toys into the air.  Kids chased them.  One man grabbed a flying float toy in mid air and returned it to its owners.  The black family decided to leave.  Grandpa had a cat fish he'd caught on a line through its gills and offered it to anyone who wanted it.  I thought about taking it, making cat food of it, but I had no ice and the fish was still alive.  He took the line out and turned it loose back into the lake.

Hagg Lake is a haven for swimmers, fishermen, boaters, kayakers, hikers and bikers.  One can park, unload their bike and peddle in peace, free of horrific killer road traffic, around the perimeter.  One can also hike a trail around the lake.  An entire end is devoted to a no wake zone, leaving those in rafts, canoes, kayaks and swimmers safe from roaring speeding motor boats.

Traffic back to the clinic on the east side was awful, bumper to bumper, on the Sunset across the Fremont Bridge.  After I picked up the cats, the traffic back through Portland was bumper to bumper.  Took me over an hour to get south of Wilsonville.  Was so miserable I began making up alternate realities in my mind.

I'm not here, I told myself.  I'm really on some tropical beach.  This is a beach, I repeated to myself dreamily, drifting there, losing here.  I turned the cars into boats, dolphins and buoys.

Finally, finally I got out of the traffic mess to encounter another north of Salem.  Everyone going somewhere else. Too many of us and our cars, and the car trails too narrow for everybody.  Reminds me of the top of Everest, where, it is said, so many people are climbing there are huge jams of people waiting to cross narrow  areas of the trail on the way up and back.  Even the tallest mountain in the world cannot hide itself from our numbers.

Goodbye Posey. Hello Robinhood!

Posey!

Posey left me today.  She was adopted by an older Philomath woman.  Posey could well outlive the woman, but the old woman is in good shape.  She has one other very old cat.  She was actually interested in Slurpy as Slurpy is a mother hen type, but Slurpy was nowhere to be seen, once she and her grandson came inside and Posey cozied up immediately to both.  I was happy about that because I didn't think Slurpy would be a good fit anyhow.  She loves too many of the cats here so much.

I ran into the old Mormon I butted heads with over near Posey's colony. He fed a colony around the corner and was a big problem the entire time I was trying to get them fixed, moving traps, closing them, letting cats out, just hard on me.  I'd yell at him, he'd yell back and he finally told me to get my equipment and get the hell away, which I did, gladly, after getting the four teens fixed and two big roam in males, one of whom I placed in a home.  I felt bad because I did nto catch the mother.  He didn't donate a dime and even argued that what possibly could have cost me any money if someone else had paid for the fixes.  Since I got them all fixed at S/nipped, I said, "Gas, for one thing, and lots of it."  Then he claimed nobody was twisting my arm, which was true, but I was helping him out, at other church members request, and he should not have cost me money doing so.  One other trapper he had sought help with had bowed out after similar troubles with him.

I ran into him over at Fred Meyer and we talked.  He claims there are only two.  I said "What happened to the third teen?"  I had placed one with KATA, but had returned three.  He claims a woman took it.  Then he claimed the original trapper took the mom, when he finally trapped her.  But then he talked about taking one of the cats, don't know which, out to a dairy and was about to turn her loose, when the woman came out and asked that he not do that. 

He's so full of baloney, that I don't know what really happened to the mom or the third teen.  I hope the Lebanon rescuer did take both.  I finally hugged him but I don't like his ways at all and was glad to be free of him once I left the store.

Today I also found out Robinhood was taken back to Heartland.  I took in Robinhood after the city asked me to intervene at a duplex.  Neighbors complained they had too many uncared for cats and the place stunk.  Turns out, I knew the people living there amidst their own trash and parasites.  I'd run into them at Camp Boondoggle, the homeless camp Albany bought from Millersburg and afterwards, forced the homeless out to make a park of it.  There were three dozen unfixed cats roaming there, like everywhere in Albany.  The city asked me to remove them.  I don't know why.  For gosh sakes, I lived in Corvallis at the time, on SSI no less. 

It was a terrible time for me.  But anyhow, to run into these people, with more cats now, living in their own trash again, was unsettling.  Maybe it should nto have been.  That's what they thought was normal.   The guy was toothless and chronically unbathed and had a cat he kept in a spiked choke collar on a chain.  He'd adopted that one from Safehaven.  Poor cat was crawling in fleas.  Made me mad and I let Safehaven have it over adopting a cat to such a situation.  They had two other cats, an unfixed male they were "breeding a female with" and the female, with her underweight flea ridden kittens.  And outside, they fed a stray.  That stray was the placid light gray and white male I named Robinhood.

At the same time, I was trapping over on campus and ran into a woman who wanted to know what I was doing.  We talked.  She worked at the vet college, then, I think she said.  She was impressive to me, a professional.  I told her what I did and even told her about Robinhood, still living outside the putrid duplex, and how he needed somewhere to go.  She said she'd take him.  So off he went.

A couple years later, I was inside Heartland Humane and noticed a big light gray stately male with a right ear tip.  I thought "I know that cat."  It came to me later.  Robinhood.  Robinhood had had a right ear tip already, when I first met him being fed as a stray outside that duplex.  But I didn't recognize him as a cat I'd taken to be fixed. I don't know who got him fixed, where he got an ear tip, then abandoned him.  I called the family who had adopted him after seeing him there at Heartland.  Seems a neighbor had brought him to Heartland knowing full well he was their cat.  The owners took him home. 

Robinhood back in 2008, before he went to yet another home.

Robinhood now, taken at Heartland, where he remains, again unwanted.

His owner e-mailed me a couple days ago, asking if I'd seen Robinhood at Heartland, that he was missing again and a neighbor was acting strange about it.  I e-mailed Heartland and sure enough, he's there again, brought in by the same asshole neighbor.  But this time, his owners say they're leaving him there.  I was so upset.  They figure he's in danger at their place, from the neighbor who has now stolen him twice and taken him to Heartland.

What will become of Robinhood?  He's had such a hard time of it with humans already.