Monks on You Tube

One no longer just checks email. These days one also has to check wall postings on Facebook and any recent tweets on Twitter. (Why does it feel like writing in a foreign language?)

Imagine my surprise to find a few of the monks out at Holy Resurrection Monastery on You Tube! The Pope has nothing on these guys.

http://www2.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1205738687260575876

We Are Doomed

TWO THOUSAND YEARS LATER So what have we learned in over two millennia? "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

---- Cicero - 55 BC

...Evidently NOTHING.

AND FROM THE EMAIL GRAB BAG--

This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using

the Q and A format:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?

A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?

A. From taxpayers

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?

A. Only a smidgen

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?

A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China ?

A. Shut up.

Amusing Little Wine Story

I'm sure my Faithful 22 readers can appreciate the irony of returning to Sonoma County while on medication that doesn't allow wine consumption. This situation is, in a word, intolerable.

However, we were the recipients of one of our favorite wines for Christmas and I went off my meds for 24 hours so I could enjoy a glass--or two. It was well worth it! So--the next day I placed a call to Windsor Winery to see about picking up some of that wine at their tasting room.

Surprise! There is no more tasting room. But their system of obtaining wine is what prompts this post.

My call was answered and I followed the usual automated number punching system to finally get to a real person--and what a person I got! I got VICTOR, my personal Wine Consultant. He is mine forever. According to the follow up email, Victor has worked there for 17 years, likes salmon, a tossed green salad with a Sauvignon Blanc for his favorite meal, and is also a wine judge. There were several other personal tidbits to help me feel more acquainted with Victor.

But--back to ordering the wine. I inquired about getting 6 bottles of Meritage--which I pronounced Merry-tahge. I was quickly informed it's pronounced "Merri-tege"(rhymes with heritage)--a combination of Meritorious Vintage. Fine. How do I get it?

I have to go through Victor and then,after 1-2 weeks, I drive to the neighboring town of Windsor and go to a loading dock behind the McDonald's and pick up my wine. And no, I can't just go into a store and pick it up. BUT--I get to choose my own wine label and wording for the 6 bottles.

Say what? Yes--and what would I like? So further conversation is spent choosing the design and wording for my Meritage. And Victor also is interested in what other wines I like. I just casually mention a wine from a Russian River winery that has since changed hands. Not to worry! The winemaker for that wine now works for them and they have a wonderful Petit Sirah Victor will be happy to have me taste while I wait for my 6 bottles to be loaded into the Jeep. I'm beginning to like this system of buying wine!

I will keep you posted when the pick up call finally comes.

Where are the Women?

The year was 1979 and it was January. I was teaching English and Music at Wilson Jr. High School in Pasadena and was asked by the principal to arrange the display cases in the main hall to honor 2 great civil rights leaders: Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King, Jr. Although it was not a nationally observed holiday, in California the push was to have a day where suffrage for all Americans was commemorated. That was the original flavor of the holiday.

In 1983, President Reagan signed a law making Martin Luther King, Jr., Day a national holiday and it was first observed by all 50 states in 2000.

But what happened to Susan B. Anthony? The same thing that happened to her dollar, the "Susie." It's gone--a relic. Both my mother and my grandmother were born in a country that did not allow women to vote.

We forget too quickly.

Susan Brownell Anthony February 15, 1820–March 13, 1906

Martin Luther King, Jr. January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968

Mojave Vista

I just heard that Microsoft is going to be phasing out Vista. How can they do that? Is it legal? When I bought this POS Dell laptop nearly 2 years ago I never thought Vista had anything to do with the problems I’ve had. Really, how could one blame Vista because the keyboard didn’t work? It wasn’t Vista’s fault that Dell Customer so-called Service nearly put me over the edge.


And Microsoft is thinking of calling it MOJAVE??? Are you kidding? To me, a Mojave Green is the most lethal snake you’ll find on the desert. In fact, Mojave is the whole desert!
http://www.californiaherps.com/snakes/pages/c.s.scutulatus.html

Oh well, if they want pictures of the desert, I’m the person they need to see for marketing and screen savers.

More techno chat—went to Costco yesterday looking for a computer monitor and speakers. I will not explain why I needed those items except to let you all know that Mr. T still lives. My old computer—XP—does not.



Speakers, it seems, are passé. The Nice Man suggested something called a docking station for my iPod. Ah ha! He remembered me!

Nice Man: “I know—I home.”
Me: “You is?”
Nice Man: “no, iHome—it hooks into your computer if you have a (unrecognizable term) jack.”
Me: “I don’t know Jack”
Nice Man: “You sure don’t, Lady.” Actually he didn’t say that last part but he was thinking it. Apparently one can get a device that plugs into the CPU(I think) that will give sound as well as play the iPod as well as show you the time of day. Be still my beating heart.
Me: “Okay, I’ll take one—and throw a monitor in the basket while you’re at it.”

All of this is to get my old computer which has been in storage for a year up and running so I can get my docs and pics off of it and onto my laptop which I now find out is going to be obsolete because Microsoft decided to interfere with my life YET AGAIN.

I have some suggestions for making life easier:
1) Get an Operating System and stay with it for ten years
2) Require all gas caps to be on the same side of all cars
3) Abolish time changes—pick a time and leave the clocks alone!

Although the day was calm and beautiful on the Valley floor, Titus Canyon was once again closed. According to Ranger Snow, the canyon was practically a “glacier” up there and the only way anyone could get through was to clear a way with a “sledge hammer.” We heard the words “sledge hammer” several times as we were trying to cajole those in authority to open up Titus. It is our 4th trip in a row to Death Valley when Titus Canyon has been closed. We are beginning to take it personally. No exceptions were made for whiney boomers although we were given Ranger Snow’s number to call next time to find out in advance if Titus would be open.

We actually drove to Titus Canyon anyway but it was barricaded and padlocked. No one was getting in.

We found a dirt road that paralleled the paved highway and bounced along over to the ghost town of Rhyolite. No big surprise—it was all in ruins. There were some ghost sculptures of the Last Supper and ghosts riding bicycles. There was also a psychedelic couch that might have been left from the 60ies. I think we had one like it when we were grad students.

From Rhyolite we meandered over to the Beatty candy store where we traded legal tender for 5 sacks of good candy. Then we booked it all the way across Death Valley to the Artist’s Drive and the special rocks of color known as Artist’s Palette. The lighting was perfect and I got some of my best photos here.

By now the sun was starting to go down. We had left the RV back on the Beatty cut off—so—back across the Valley to get the Minnie and try to get to Mesquite Campground before dark.

As I was driving that lonely road the sun started to turn everything gold and warm. It reminded me of Heidi where Peter tells Heidi that the sunsets on the Alp are beautiful so the mountain won’t forget the sun during the night. The already striking colors and textures of Death Valley start to glow gold. You will even feel your skin and face glowing with the golden shock the sun puts out just before setting. Then the light begins to fade and the streaks of pink and red that are so distinctive of desert sunsets take over. And then suddenly on the Valley floor, it goes to shadows and very quickly to darkness. It becomes cold and dark and inhospitable. But that last flush of sun glow stays on the cheeks just a bit longer so you won’t forget.

Beginning the New Year in the Valley of Death

A TWO, two ZEROES and a NINE. I do not care for these numbers. They feel unstable, not friendly—all in all, a most unsettled set of digits. And we will have to live with them for an entire year. Oh well—nine years ago when the number in the thousand’s column switched from ONE to TWO I knew I would be in for a lot of years of numerical uneasiness. It does not help matters any that Mr. T insists that the correct word is INTEGER. I assumed that “number” and “numeral” and “digit” were all interchangeable—but he informs me they are not. This is a conversation I am sorry was ever begun. I shall use “number” and let the reader infer the sense of the word from the context—the context of which will now be zero.

We left Tecopa and headed into Death Valley. The weather is holding at absolutely perfect. I realize that not everyone understands the beauty and tranquility that I find out here but Death Valley has to be one of the most spectacular places on the planet. It is surprisingly uncrowded right now.

We are in Stove Pipe Wells for tonight and enjoyed a trip up a canyon to Aguereberry Point. There was snow and ice on the road and a great vista encompassing Badwater to Furnace Creek. We could also see Charleston Mountain where we were yesterday—80 miles away!
If we hoof it over to the motel there is a small room equipped with wifi. It would be so easy to feel totally cut off from the world out here. Instead, I will try to contact my cyberfriends in the chat room as well as post to the blog. Isolation is a horse of a different color these days. And is it true that the governor of Oregon is considering using GPS coordinates on citizens’ cars so that the state can levy a tax on miles driven now that gasoline tax revenue is drying up with the use of hybrids and conservation? Perhaps the time has come for term limits on all our politicians who seem incapable of not succumbing to “stick-it-to-the-taxpayeritis.”