I am a geologist with a Bachelor’s Degree in Geology, and Master’s Degree in Teaching Earth Science, along with Washington State Teaching Certificate; teaching college earth and space sciences in face to face, hybrid, and online classes since 1991. I also teach earth and space sciences for seniors in the Puget Sound region, in particular with Creative Retirement Institute (CRI) through Edmonds College.

The “mixed salad” part? I’ve been involved in a variety of creative endeavors over the years; visual arts and photography, poetry, dance, and music. Harp took over my musical life 2 decades ago; watercolor painting and life drawing (human figure) have taken over the past 2 years. What could possibly happen next?

I wonder if people in the wealthier worlds would appreciate their unsupportable water practices (personal, agricultural, industrial) if they went for 2 summer months without running water: buying drinking water or loading up at friends’ homes, borrowing washing machines or using public Laundromats, borrowing showers and re-learning how to sponge bathe, and loading up gallons of nearby lake water for the toilet and a few precious plants while watching the fruit trees crisp in the summer heat. More to the point, I wonder if people (myself included, even after these aforementioned 2 months) would change their practices if they really and truly got it that inexpensive access to seemingly unlimited water resources is a dream and that we are in the process of slowly, painfully, waking up.

ah gosh, I shouldn't try to speak for anyone else, but in my case, a garden, many gardens, have been healing me for as long as I can remember...some gardens are a fabulous wash of flowers under a living room window of a royal blue house...others have fed an entire family, year after year...and now I have found a new garden, or perhaps this garden has found me, has seduced me utterly, and I am its willing lover and worker bee. There is much work ahead, but more than that, there is much pleasure already and I am thrilled to be the new steward of this piece of paradise...we shall heal each other, garden and I.

A story of fraud and theft

You don’t think it can or could or will happen to you, but it can and it could, and I hope it won’t. What follows is the bare-bones outline of my recent experience with credit card fraud and subsequent identity theft, or at least attempted identity theft. Fortunately little long-lasting harm was done but not without significant time, energy, and worry on my part, and follow up efforts on the part of banking and credit officials…to whom I am grateful for their patience in helping me unravel the story, as well as their comforting words as I reached the brink of panic, over and over again.

Still chilly (but sunny) here in the BC hinterlands, but in 2 weeks I'll be in Puerto Morelos, Mexico (1/2 hour south of Cancun) to be the labour coach for my youngest daughter's first baby’s birth! Yow, how did THAT happen??? Well, it does, doesn't it?

It is known as the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. It's also abbreviated as Cancun for the airport, city, and tourist strip that bring the dollars here. But it is really home to the Maya, an ancient people of great strength, artistry, and civilization, and it is now home to my youngest daughter, who has married a fine Maya man, and with whom she is expecting their first baby in April. Our day of celebration spanned December 24 and 25 this year, as we spent it with his family (my first in-laws!) in Opichen, a jungle village south of Merida, about 4 hours drive from their home (and dive shop) on the Caribbean coast at Puerto Morelos.

“It’s turtles all the way down” (Sagan or Hawking?)

The morning to leave the Cabo beaches is always a sad time, but made less so this time because of the coming weeks in Puerto Morelos on the Yucatan coast, with Crescent, William, their unborn first, and the turquoise Caribbean.

We are quiet and awe-struck, cameras clicking, videos purring, as we witness one of nature’s extraordinary adventures in procreation and survival.

It illustrates motion, time, and lives, and it lives within us with every breath. In the raw presence of ocean waves, the cyclic and repetitive but ever-changing nature of existence shows up in the wave form. At Cabo Pulmo on the southeast coast of the Baja peninsula, the waves batter themselves against the granite and coral shore, eroding minerals and shells alike into coarse pink sand. I am inspired anew by these shores, this time to create new labs for my winter 2008 on-line Oceanography course...with still photos and videos of the way the incoming waves interact with the slope and shape of the shoreline.

This time the floor is over my head…a rippling ceiling of pale blue and white, delicate as a petal. I float and paddle quietly, the 2’ chop moving me in every direction. I have only snorkeled a handful of times, but for the first time I am comfortable with the fit of the mask and the reassuring air flow through my snorkel. Under water, my breathing is slow and steady but loud, I sound like a Darth Vader here! At Mermaid Beach I drift over the sandy, rippled bottom, and the small fish roaming the shallows in their bright colours are oblivious of my presence overhead. I have been entranced under the surface in the past, but have never felt this comfortable.

The landscape of cloud beneath our flight has hidden the world far as the eye can see. It is as solid as snow. We could step outside this plane at 30,000 feet and slip right through.

Finally the hard chariot of the sun beams a red shaft into the smoky window and the day has been birthed. We transit the west coast of North America in flight from winter, to the sun, sea and desert of Baja.

“Home(s) again”

Such an elusive concept; I’ve been puzzling over various meanings and implications of the word “home”for many years, most recently after moving from a very satisfactory “home” in Seattle, Washington to my birth or original “home” in the interior country-land of British Columbia, Canada. They were both home. They were each home for different reasons, different lengths of time, with different people, and at different times in my life.

Home has been where my stuff is, that seems to sum it up for me of late! And now I am reunited with my stuff at home in my native land, and it’s all different and new and familiar and wonderful and all I need now is a house in which to put it all…myself and my stuff!