More Than Ordinary Lives

During the early 1900s, a dam was built to generate electricity on Washington’s Elwha River. In 1938, Olympic National Park was created and surrounded the dam site. The road to the dam became one of the few access places into the park with a Ranger Station, camping areas, picnic tables, entrance booth, and many service buildings.

In the 1990s, Kit and I read about the Park Services’ plan to remove the dam and visited it. See the picture of the dam wall. As an engineer, I wondered, “How will they manage this?” Well, they didn’t entirely. In 2014, they merely breached the wall and left the floodgates and spillway to the right of the wall. Now you can stand on the edge of the breach and look down 108 feet into a narrow gorge of rushing river.

However, the unrestrained river soon washed out two bridges on the road and left the Park Service’s facilities isolated. The abandoned buildings and dam exude an enticing ghostly feel. The round trip hike is a relatively easy seven miles.

A waste? I don’t think so. The hike along the tumbling river is beyond lovely. Fishery people speculated on the decades required to renew the massive salmon runs. In mere months, salmon nosed into places where none had been for over a hundred years. Wildlife, especially bears, are already benefitting from the salmon.

Visiting Elwha River recently was a wonderful experience. See me at the abandoned ranger station.

Low interest rates and inflation have forced some of us into the stock market trying to protect the purchasing value of our old-age-care savings. I prefer dull businesses like utility companies. I found one electricity-generating company with a twelve-year record of increasing dividends and plenty of earnings to continue increasing. Stock rating services gave them a “Strong Buy” recommendation. So I bought.

A bigger company thought they were a great investment too and offered to buy them outright at 20% UNDER the current stock price. The power company’s directors agreed “for the good of the company.” I didn’t know directors could do that! As a stockholder, I didn’t get a vote. I wanted to ask, “What about the good of us shareholders?”

Excuse me for being cynical, but I smell the smoke of insider deals. I’m certain they all have their butts somehow covered legally with $10,000 $/hour lawyers and an FTC favoring billionaires. For the thousandth time, I’m reminded that legal isn’t the same as just.  Remember, ALWAYS DIVERSIFY, which I had fortunately done.

Drew

Picking blackberries was a summertime passion of mine as a boy and has remained so until recently. Before moving to Washington, I cultivated commercial thorn-less blackberries. Washington’s abundance of robust wild blackberries surrounding our property, albeit with thorns, delighted me.

Three years ago I suffered a blackberry cobbler induced bout of diverticulitis. Full of seeds, blackberries are now off my menu. Only then did I notice blackberry vines encroaching on our cleared space like hordes of mindless zombies. Cutting them back seemed to stimulate them. During the summer, I’ve seen some grow literally forty feet. They climb up into trees and choke out daylight.

“Out by the roots is the only way,” I realized. Easier said than done. Blackberries intertwine their roots with trees, bushes, and our ubiquitous sword ferns. Some varieties will re-sprout from a mere shard of root left behind. And because they grow in patches, as you dig out one blackberry, others will attack you from behind with vicious thorns.

Once you’ve dug out a plant, discarding it is nightmarish. The needle-sharp thorns catch on everything. I’ve cleared old rusty barbed wire fences with less difficulty. And digging them out hardly matters, because birds and other creatures eat the fruit and plant new blackberry plants via their droppings.

I’m not winning the blackberry war. The best I can hope for is a stalemate. I’ve told Kit that If I die before her to get out before our enemy overwhelms the house.

Drew

I’ve taken another of The Great Courses. The premise is that the Middle Ages weren’t stagnant but had great technological advancements. This course is a thousand times better than History of Engineering a required course for my mechanical engineering degree. The primary reason is that Dr. Ressler has working models to demonstrate everything. Although I graduated with enough science to help design the Space Shuttle, I still didn’t know how many machines worked. In addition, the thorough course is entertaining because he puts developments into surprising historical contexts.

The biggest surprise was Dr. Ressler describing Cistercian monasteries as centers of technology development. According to the Rule of St. Benedict monasteries should be self-sufficient. But monks had many demands on their time including meeting for prayer and worship eight times daily. Therefore the monks became great innovators in human-labor saving technology such as indoor plumbing.

I meet a lot of older people who appear to be stagnant in personal development. This is counter to what aging experts recommend. I’m grateful for a nerdy sense of curiosity that makes learning things I don’t NEED to know enjoyable. Nerdy in my case makes life fun and more-than-ordinary.

Drew

Before moving to Seattle, the only time I’ve lived in a state with a professional sports franchise was the Auckland Blues rugby team in New Zealand. Although I watch professional football on TV, I’ve never attended a game. Therefore the hoopla leading to Seattle’s Superbowl appearance was entertaining.

Kit and I noticed maybe a third of Washingtonians wearing some sort of Seahawks apparel even without  the diehard fans who had left town to support the team. As the game ended with a Seattle win, local fireworks erupted and continued into the night. A big parade is scheduled for Wednesday. We are happy for our friends and neighbors who are fans. It’s all a bit of fun. Nevertheless their loyalty is perplexing.

That said, I’ll admit to not watching my alma mater, Auburn—Yes, they still have a football team—on TV because I can’t stand the suspense. Maybe we all hope to have winners we feel represent us. Their success gives us a touch of joy and connects us to others who support the same team.

Recently I described an unidentified bird to other bird enthusiasts. “There’s an app for that,” they claimed. “You just take a picture and ask AI.” Kit downloaded the bird app to her phone.

Later I saw a robin hopping on the ground. “Try the bird app,” I suggested. Kit took a picture and we waited.

AI answered, Ruffled Grouse

That’s not it, I responded.

Great Blue Heron

Try again.

Peacock

After Kit provided a zoomed in picture, AI finally answered American Robin correctly. 

The point of the robin example is that AI will give you a definitive answer whether accurate or not. Verify before you believe it. When it comes to values, AI can profile you and provide what you want to hear. This implies from a supposedly authoritative source that yours is the correct value and thereby others are wrong.

Drew

Kit and I have traveled to hundreds of places including many tropical climates but never to Hawaii. Last week we spent on Kaua’i with Kit’s family. Kaua’i is roughly circular and 26 miles across with about 75,000 residents living around the edges. The center has mountains up to an altitude of 5,243 feet. The island has towering cliffs, dense green jungle, clear ocean crashing over black volcanic rocks, and pristine beaches.

Strangely, the place looked familiar to me. Then I learned that 59 major movies have been filmed entirely or in part on Kaua’i including: Jurassic Park, South Pacific, Pirates of the Caribbean, Raiders of the Last Ark, King Kong, Donovan’s Reef (a favorite of mine), Hook, and the TV shows Fantasy Island and Gilligan’s Island.

Pictured are Kit and I at a restaurant celebrating Kit’s sister’s birthday and me on the famous Kalalua Trail along the Na Pali Coast.

Drew  

I’m not advertising for a movie, but rather a type of movie. I’m tired of violence, graphic sex, and larger-than-life heroes or villains. Song Sung Blue, based on a true story, is about ordinary people with yearning hearts who find each other and in the process find themselves. The story highlights committed love and persistence despite tragedy. The well-acted characters achieve our theme of More Than Ordinary Lives. I haven’t cried in a movie since Bambi’s mother was shot.  But I cried with gratitude and joy throughout this movie.

There are no religious themes in Song Sung Blue but the movie oozes with what I’ll call “goodness.” I think we need more models of goodness in imperfect people for America and worldwide. Despair and hopelessness are the non-fictional enemies that nearly everyone faces at some time. Goodness is the antidote to that poison.

Song Sung Blue is the first movie since The Artist I hope wins many Academy Awards.

Feel free to report your own examples of movies with goodness.

Drew

Chicken Soup for the Soul is known for publishing heart-warming true stories. These stories aren’t just for feeling good. Learning from the experiences of others can make peoples’ lives better.

I feel honored to have one of my stories, Tennis Lessons, included in Chicken Soup’s new anthology. New Years’ resolutions need more than resolve. New Year resolution makers also need to know how to change.

Drew

You’ve probably heard about recent flooding in Washington State. Several wrote inquiring about our welfare. Thank you. Our home wasn’t threatened. But Kit and I had paid $250 (non-refundable) for a Christmas fair booth at a fairground in the heart of the flood zone. We hoped the sponsors would cancel the event but that would have meant financial disaster for them. Kit and I debated simply skipping out. But we share a value to finish what we start and so attended.

The fairground, being on higher ground, became the operations center for the Red Cross. They also invited farmers to move threatened livestock there. We had horses, cattle, goats, sheep, goats, chickens, and ducks as neighbors. I’m not sure how ducks are threatened by a flood. Preventing their escape maybe. The highland cow shown is one of the animals rescued.

As always, we met interesting people. Shoppers were understandingly sparse and none of the animals bought books. But unexpectedly, we sold enough printed novels to put us past 2,000 for the year.  Adventures usually involve a bit of risk but frequently pay off.