Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Last Match
The following is from the beginning of a chapter from my book, Tales of Whitethorn:
The rain roars out of the darkness splashing over our windshield like waves crashing on a beach. Our headlights catch flashes of huge redwood roots lining the dark road, threatening to catch our battered old pickup if we drive too close. It’s ten o’clock at night and Ruby and I are on our way home. We’ve been visiting Ruby’s sister, Doris who lives in Eureka. We started late because she insisted we eat dinner before we left. Of course she couldn’t start cooking until she and Uncle Max finished doing the evening milking.
“Can you see the road?” Ruby asks.
I squint my eyes. “Not very well. But I think that’s the white line in the middle of the road. We seem to be a few inches to the right side of it.”
This part of 101 highway is lined thick with giant redwoods and it would be easy to make a mistake and run head on into one of them. We are both scared and we still have about forty miles to go before we get home to Whitethorn. The Whitethorn gravel road that twists up into the mountains will be even more dangerous in this storm
The rain roars out of the darkness splashing over our windshield like waves crashing on a beach. Our headlights catch flashes of huge redwood roots lining the dark road, threatening to catch our battered old pickup if we drive too close. It’s ten o’clock at night and Ruby and I are on our way home. We’ve been visiting Ruby’s sister, Doris who lives in Eureka. We started late because she insisted we eat dinner before we left. Of course she couldn’t start cooking until she and Uncle Max finished doing the evening milking.
“Can you see the road?” Ruby asks.
I squint my eyes. “Not very well. But I think that’s the white line in the middle of the road. We seem to be a few inches to the right side of it.”
This part of 101 highway is lined thick with giant redwoods and it would be easy to make a mistake and run head on into one of them. We are both scared and we still have about forty miles to go before we get home to Whitethorn. The Whitethorn gravel road that twists up into the mountains will be even more dangerous in this storm
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Trip to Humboldt County, California
Hi: I just got back from a trip to Eureka where I was born. Found lots of information for the book I am writing about my childhood in Whitethorn, California. I bought a book called, two Peoples, One Place, by Ray Raphael and Freeman House. It is a historical account of the Indians and the white folks in the area.
When I was a child at Whitethorn, my mother told me about a terrible attack on the Indians by the local people in Eureka. She said the indians lived on an island in Humboldt Bay and the locals sneaked out to the island at night carrying hatchets and knives and killed every Indian on the island. They did not carry guns because they didn't want to make noise. Most of the indians were women and children. Hearing this from my mother only, I did not have the facts to back it up. Ray and Freeman document the event in their book describing a partial list of Massacres.
Date: February 1860 on Indian Island (Humboldt Bay). Fifty five Wiyot women and children were killed.
I find it interesting that my mother, born in 1916, knew about this awful event that took place decades after she was born.
When I was a child at Whitethorn, my mother told me about a terrible attack on the Indians by the local people in Eureka. She said the indians lived on an island in Humboldt Bay and the locals sneaked out to the island at night carrying hatchets and knives and killed every Indian on the island. They did not carry guns because they didn't want to make noise. Most of the indians were women and children. Hearing this from my mother only, I did not have the facts to back it up. Ray and Freeman document the event in their book describing a partial list of Massacres.
Date: February 1860 on Indian Island (Humboldt Bay). Fifty five Wiyot women and children were killed.
I find it interesting that my mother, born in 1916, knew about this awful event that took place decades after she was born.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Lost Coast?
Question: Where is the Lost Coast?
Answer: The Lost Coast is in Humboldt County, California. You take the Redway turn 2 miles north of Garberville. From Redway you travel to Briceland and will eventually find a road turning right, off the Thorn-Briceland Road to Shelter Cove. Shelter Cove is a beautiful part of the the lost Coast. It has wonderful fishing and hiking trails and shouldn't be missed by adventurous travelers.
Answer: The Lost Coast is in Humboldt County, California. You take the Redway turn 2 miles north of Garberville. From Redway you travel to Briceland and will eventually find a road turning right, off the Thorn-Briceland Road to Shelter Cove. Shelter Cove is a beautiful part of the the lost Coast. It has wonderful fishing and hiking trails and shouldn't be missed by adventurous travelers.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Answer to yesterdays question.
If a tree comes down the wrong way a logger has to run like a jackrabbit. If their pant leg gets caught on a limb, they can be smashed like a pancake. The few extra seconds it takes to tear loose a seam can mean the difference between life and death.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Loggers with ruffles
Today's question: Why do loggers cut off the seams on the bottom of their pants? I will give the answer tomorrow.
Friday, October 17, 2008
How Many did I miss
Still new to this game. The link to How Many did I miss: http://www.pendulum.org/stories/howmany.htm
How many did I miss
The above link displays a first person account of my life as a school psychologist. It was first published in the California Alliance for the Mentally Ill and is now published on the bipolar focus website.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
My URL
Hi: I am still struggling with setting up my blog. I can't figure out how to write my URl since I don't know what it is when I set up feeds. Help?
Woman in the Mirror
This is a good day. My article on my relationship with my mother just got published in the local monthly paper. Hope you like it.
WOMAN IN THE MIRROR
My mother died two years ago. She was 90 years old and had the good fortune to have an active body and mind until the last year of her life. Her amazing lungs survived the assault of seventy years of smoking but finally succumbed to unforgiving lung cancer. She might have lived to be a hundred.
For almost half my life I’ve had mixed feelings about my mother. Although I loved her, I felt she had not been the kind of mother I deserved. Her mothering tended to swing between neglect and loving nurture. She was a beautiful woman, a redhead who looked like the old-time movie star Susan Hayward. In addition, she charmed almost everyone she met. When I was five years old, she divorced my father and was subsequently wined and dined by hopeful suitors for several years. During this time, she often left me home, feeling deserted and forlorn, with my grandmother All in all she married four times.
As a young child I loved her blindly. But when I reached puberty, my new found ability to judge and assess resulted in countless she didn’t, she should have, and why didn’t shes.
Over the years, my fury grew like a well fertilized plant. Although she bought me a life-saver in the form of a little horse named Stardust, it made no difference. During my teen years, she even devoted herself to following me to horseshows, where I won many trophies and ribbons. But it was too late. The fires of my anger had spread and burned into my consciousness like the cancer in her lungs. In following decades, I unburdened myself to more than a few therapists who listened in quiet support, sustaining my claims of injustice.
Growing up, I looked very much like my father, a handsome dark-haired man with deep brown eyes. His looks were the complete opposite of my mother. And as the absent parent, my visits with him were filled with attention and fun, unhindered by the snags of daily living.
My resentment towards my mother caused me to carefully examine and savor every one of my photographs that echoed my father’s features. My hair was almost black and my skin tanned easily to a dark brown bronze. The last thing in the world I wanted was to look like my mother, a woman who couldn’t get a tan if she lay on the Healdsburg beach for a week.
I enjoyed my bittersweet resentment towards my mother until my late thirties. At that time I became deeply depressed and unable to take care of myself. My father was long deceased and she was the only parent I had. Given no other choice, I crawled home to mother.
As I lay on my mother’s couch bemoaning my life through the dark veil of depression, I watched the woman I had rejected doing everything she could to comfort me. Yes, she still didn’t do the best job taking care of me. But I could see how hard she must have tried when I was a child. Imperfect but loving. From the vantage point of lying flat on my back, I forgave my mother. Forever. Months later, after I recovered from my depression, I found that my mother had become a great friend and companion. In fact, she became my best friend and throughout the remaining years of her life, we enjoyed many good times together.
In my fifties, a strange thing happened. The image of my father was gradually fading from the mirror. Instead, the lines in my face drew in a person I had never wanted to resemble, my mother. Not only did I begin to look like her, I started noticing the many ways we were alike. As a mother, I too tried my best, but shared some of her failings. During my early adulthood, I also got caught up in my own life and didn’t give my daughter as much attention as she needed and deserved. On the positive side, I also found that my mother and I shared many of the same interests and values.
Now, after my mother’s passing, I know I will never talk with her again or enjoy her company. But as I approach seventy, the lines in my face have deepened and have brought into clearer focus the woman I see in the mirror. It is uncanny but there in the mirror is my lost mother and I am glad to see her. This apparition is not my imagination for when meeting people who knew my mother, they often react in shock. “You look just like your mother!”
WOMAN IN THE MIRROR
My mother died two years ago. She was 90 years old and had the good fortune to have an active body and mind until the last year of her life. Her amazing lungs survived the assault of seventy years of smoking but finally succumbed to unforgiving lung cancer. She might have lived to be a hundred.
For almost half my life I’ve had mixed feelings about my mother. Although I loved her, I felt she had not been the kind of mother I deserved. Her mothering tended to swing between neglect and loving nurture. She was a beautiful woman, a redhead who looked like the old-time movie star Susan Hayward. In addition, she charmed almost everyone she met. When I was five years old, she divorced my father and was subsequently wined and dined by hopeful suitors for several years. During this time, she often left me home, feeling deserted and forlorn, with my grandmother All in all she married four times.
As a young child I loved her blindly. But when I reached puberty, my new found ability to judge and assess resulted in countless she didn’t, she should have, and why didn’t shes.
Over the years, my fury grew like a well fertilized plant. Although she bought me a life-saver in the form of a little horse named Stardust, it made no difference. During my teen years, she even devoted herself to following me to horseshows, where I won many trophies and ribbons. But it was too late. The fires of my anger had spread and burned into my consciousness like the cancer in her lungs. In following decades, I unburdened myself to more than a few therapists who listened in quiet support, sustaining my claims of injustice.
Growing up, I looked very much like my father, a handsome dark-haired man with deep brown eyes. His looks were the complete opposite of my mother. And as the absent parent, my visits with him were filled with attention and fun, unhindered by the snags of daily living.
My resentment towards my mother caused me to carefully examine and savor every one of my photographs that echoed my father’s features. My hair was almost black and my skin tanned easily to a dark brown bronze. The last thing in the world I wanted was to look like my mother, a woman who couldn’t get a tan if she lay on the Healdsburg beach for a week.
I enjoyed my bittersweet resentment towards my mother until my late thirties. At that time I became deeply depressed and unable to take care of myself. My father was long deceased and she was the only parent I had. Given no other choice, I crawled home to mother.
As I lay on my mother’s couch bemoaning my life through the dark veil of depression, I watched the woman I had rejected doing everything she could to comfort me. Yes, she still didn’t do the best job taking care of me. But I could see how hard she must have tried when I was a child. Imperfect but loving. From the vantage point of lying flat on my back, I forgave my mother. Forever. Months later, after I recovered from my depression, I found that my mother had become a great friend and companion. In fact, she became my best friend and throughout the remaining years of her life, we enjoyed many good times together.
In my fifties, a strange thing happened. The image of my father was gradually fading from the mirror. Instead, the lines in my face drew in a person I had never wanted to resemble, my mother. Not only did I begin to look like her, I started noticing the many ways we were alike. As a mother, I too tried my best, but shared some of her failings. During my early adulthood, I also got caught up in my own life and didn’t give my daughter as much attention as she needed and deserved. On the positive side, I also found that my mother and I shared many of the same interests and values.
Now, after my mother’s passing, I know I will never talk with her again or enjoy her company. But as I approach seventy, the lines in my face have deepened and have brought into clearer focus the woman I see in the mirror. It is uncanny but there in the mirror is my lost mother and I am glad to see her. This apparition is not my imagination for when meeting people who knew my mother, they often react in shock. “You look just like your mother!”
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Getting Started
This is the second day of my first blog. As soon as I figure it out I am going to jazz up my page and put in a few bells and whistles. For now I will ask a question that readers may want to answer. Few people in Whitethorn in the 1940s had running water. What did people use for a bathtub?
Friday, October 10, 2008
Growing up in Whitethorn
This is my first post so I will introduce myself to my readers. Long before the first desperate backtolander punched his/her first Marijuana into the red soil of Whitethorn, I lived in this community as a girl child growing up in the wilds with loggers, lumberjacks, gamblers and guns. Part of my blog will describe my life as a kid living somewhere near the lost coast.
Ray Raphael has described Humbolt County, California and Whitethorn in his book The Everyday History of Somewhere. I strongly recommend his book.
Ray Raphael has described Humbolt County, California and Whitethorn in his book The Everyday History of Somewhere. I strongly recommend his book.
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