What's
worse than a Boomerang “Kid”? A Parasite “Kid“.
While the Boomeranger comes home to rely on its host for
room, board and Mama’s cooking, the Parasite will eventually
kill its host -- latching on and sucking dry retirement
savings while out living on its own. Long distance leeching,
in a manner of speaking.
In generations
past only rich kids that acted like this. We are now seeing
a new breed --the middle class Parasite Kid. These bloodsuckers
have gotten it into their heads that the
job of raising them never ends.
Wanting
the best for our kids doesn't stop when they leave the nest.
This is not always easy. As all parents
eventually learn,
easy doesn’t always mean better -- there is not a shortcut
for many lessons.
Our grade-schoolers
would have never learned their alphabet or multiplication tables
without those long hours of repetition. Sometimes they failed,
picked themselves up, dug in deeper and, as a result, learned
to keep trying. A great feeling of pride is achieved when a goal
is reached by WORKING for an outcome. Grasping the concept of
reward for effort or repercussions for transgressions is impossible
without paying a price along the way.
Hopefully
we taught those lessons well, so why go back on them now?
Coughing up
money for an adult spawn’s monthly expenses may feel altruistic,
but in reality teaches nothing but reliance -- and not of the
self variety. The leeching spawn learn to expect everything handed
to them while the parents learn that their retirement savings
is being spent by bloodsuckers who should be earning and saving
for themselves.
Taken to the
extreme, and we have personally seen this, Parasite “Kids”
expect their bills paid into their 40s and 50s. How do you supposed
this “kid” will get along in a few years when the parents
die broke? Like a parasite, they have killed the host -- never
a good move -- everybody loses.
All good intentions
aside, the parents have left their offspring completely incapable...continue
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Timber!
For over one hundred years that dreaded cry filled the forests
of the northern California coastal region. Redwoods over three
hundred feet high and a thousand years old came crashing to
the ground at a frightening pace. Over two million acres of
these majestic trees were reduced to a few
groves.
Thankfully
the State of California stepped in and established Prairie
Creek, Del Norte Coast, Humboldt and Jedediah Smith Redwoods
State Parks to protect the last of the Coastal Redwoods.
The National Park Service didn't come on board until 1968,
when 96% of the old growth forests were already gone. A sad
commentary on the power that logging interests had on our
government.
We assumed (and everyone knows what happens when you do that)
that the biggest and best redwoods would be in Redwoods National
Park.
Wrong. Because
of their late entry into the save-the-redwoods movement, the National
Park is a distant second to the State Parks when it comes to preserving
big, tall, fat, ginormous, skyscraping trees.
Pure
dumb luck brought us in from the north where we discovered
Jedediah Smith State Park -- and boy are we glad we did.
It turns out that this is where the Star Wars Return of The
Jedi chase scene on the flying motor bike speeder thingys
was filmed. You know: the
Forest
Moon of the planet Endor, home to those adorable little kick-ass
teddy bears
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Looking
up at the night sky at an out-in-the-boondocks National Park
sent my thoughts wandering, as only the night sky can. And
then a shocking thought -- how long until we humans can no
longer see the stars?
Sitting
up and scanning the land around me I saw the bright dots
from tiny little towns -- and, alas, the Park itself --
enough “light
pollution”
to hinder me from observing what The Ancients or Magellan or even
Shakespeare would have seen in their day.
Growing up
in the desert of California the stars danced over my head. As
a Girl Scout I consulted a guidebook, sought out the major constellations
and relished the romantic stories behind them. The kids now living
in my old house most likely never see those big beautiful balls
of gas -- the area has grown too much and too bright.
Don’t
get me wrong -- I enjoy being able to see where I’m going
at night without tripping and breaking my face. Human progress
has given me much -- the ability to read comfortably in bed or
not getting attacked in a dark alley being among my very favorites.
As long as I’m being honest, I’ll admit that the entire
space business, for me, is a bit frightening. I find it rather
daunting to think that I’m but a speck on a speck dancing
around this outrageously huge universe. I don’t cotton to
being insignificant -- it messes with my self-centered human sensibilities.
Seriously,
I totally get why the stories behind the constellations were written
and how the stars were tied up with so many belief systems. People
like me have to bring the stars “down to earth” somehow
or the entire thing just gets too much for us. If I didn’t
have anything to do at night but look at the stars, I’d be
connecting with them like a big dog -- just to make sense of the
whole thing.
Following
along dutifully as our Park Ranger pointed out the Pleiades --
those seven beautiful, virginal sisters sent off into the sky
for the safekeeping of their virtue while poor pent-up Orion chases
after them for eternity…
P-Town, Bridgetown, Little Beirut, Stumptown, Rip City, The City
of Roses, Beervana or Beertown, what is this all about? Let's
see... it starts with the letter P, has a lot of bridges, protested
the visits of the first President Bush so much that his staff
compared it to Beirut, grew so fast that the cleared trees left
stumps everywhere, had a play-by-play announcer named Bill Schonely
who used odd phrases, has a lot of roses and a ton of micro breweries...
must be Portland, Oregon.
So
with all of these informal handles, how did the official name
come about? How about a flip of a coin?
It's true, back in the 1840s Francis W. Pettygrove of Portland,
Maine and Asa Lovejoy of Boston, Massachusetts were
co-owners of
the land and each wanted to name the new town after their old homes
back east. How to break the deadlock?
Believe it or not, Portland was named in a best two out of three
coin toss. The “Portland Penny” used to decide the matter
is on display at the Oregon Historical Society. Wonder what would
be on display if they'd used “rock, paper, scissors” method?
We
decided to mount our trusty cycles for a tour of Rip City.
The Willamette River runs right through Downtown and bike
trails skirt both banks. Eleven (that's one more, isn't it)
bridges connect the two sides of Bridgetown and supply great
viewpoints for The City of Rose's landmarks.
We pedaled past The Rose Garden, no, not a plot of flowers
but the home of the NBA Trailblazers, viewed the Aerial Tram
from the Hawthorne Bridge and wheeled around the Historic
District. While
rolling through Chinatown we found the Chinese gardens, which
DOES sport a collection
of flowers, displayed
based on traditional Chinese landscape paintings. The design is
from Suzhou, China during the Ming Dynasty.
As
usual, it didn't take long for our thoughts to turn to food.
When in P-town, a growling belly leads to a stop at Voodoo
Doughnuts where “The Magic Is In The Hole.” Maybe
their slogan should say Hole in the Wall, because this place
For
the first few years of my life I didn't get around much.
I suppose the fact that I couldn't walk, talk or feed myself
hindered me somewhat, so I didn't travel much, or I don't
remember it if I did.
As I
grew, childhood summers found me in the waaaaay back seat
(you know, the one that faced backwards) of a fake wood
paneled, school bus sized Pontiac station wagon pounding
down the two lane blacktop of the Rocky Mountain West. Yellowstone,
The Grand Canyon, Four Corners, Mesa Verde, The Great Sand
Dunes... we made all the hot spots... mom, dad, five kids
and a pop-up
trailer. Funny,
I don't remember ever actually being inside the trailer.
By my teenage
years I was fortunate enough to really start seeing some of the
world. I looked into a volcano in Hawaii, swam with sharks in
the Yucatan and listened to great music in Montreaux. My dad is
a geologist and sometimes took me along, he is also a musician
and didn't want to listen alone, lucky for me. The wanderlust
took hold.
In my adult
life I chose a profession that required insane amounts of travel...
and liked it. Playing music gave me the opportunity to see new
places, try new things and learn about the world. I never understood
the guys who would just hole up all day in the hotel until the
show.
As a touring
musician, sometimes I was on the road over three hundred days
out of the year. Some years I was overseas more than I was here
in the states. Buses, airplanes, vans, limos, boats, trains, cars,
trams, water taxis, cable cars, subways, you name it, if it can
carry people, I've had one carry me to a gig somewhere.
I'm not sure
when, but somewhere along the road, I started keeping track of
where I had been. Perhaps it was waking up in Delaware or falling
asleep in Idaho and wondering “if I'm here, where else have
I been?” Looking at a map, it was easy to pick out the states
that I had visited at one time or another. By the time my crazy
road trips had slowed to a crawl, I had been to 48 out of our
50 states. I lacked Maine and ...continue
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Queen
Victoria of England dubbed the westernmost region of Canada
British Columbia in 1858 -- in tribute, her name remains on
B. C. 's capital city and our destination, Victoria.
The chilled salt sea air was in our faces as we steamed north
aboard the good ship Coho, crossing The Strait of
Juan de Fuco
toward the southern tip of Vancouver Island.
Just
before our arrival we were treated to a breathtaking show.
The captain announced that orcas were sighted off the starboard
bow as he slowed the vessel to a crawl. We bounded to the
forward deck, grinning maniacally. Sure enough, two black
and white “killer whales”
were passing
within a few hundred feet of the ship. The glorious glimpses of
fluke and fin were a wonderful welcome.
Slipping
into the harbor is a picturesque passage in and of itself.
The port is dominated by two grand old buildings, The Parliament
Building and The Empress Hotel. It's not only the structures
of these venerable landmarks that are so impressive but the
grounds as well. Meticulously manicured and managed -- botanical
gardens just a few steps from the
ferry dock.
The
hotel is magnificent. Built between 1904 and 1908, the four
hundred and seventy-seven rooms and four restaurants are all
beautifully restored to their Edwardian era grandeur. High
Tea for over eight hundred people is served every
afternoon in
the Tea Lobby and reservations are required well in advance. Unfortunately,
due to our “the plan is no plan” philosophy, we would
not be partaking in their highfalutin tea time.
Even
more impressive is the Parliament Building with its five hundred
foot andesite facade, white marble and prominent domes. Back
in 1893, the provincial legislature determined a new parliament
building was needed and announced a competition for the
design.
A 25-year-old -- with no formal training -- anonymously submitted
drawings for the project under the moniker of the “A B.C. Architect.”
Nevermind that it sounded like one of those names that serial killers
make up for the media, he won...
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We
started walking a few years ago while we were still living
on St. Croix and the last chick was still in the nest. A lot
of our planning for the post child raising years was done
while ambulating along the roads and shores of that beautiful
island.
Luckily we lived in an area where we could walk to stores
or the post office. I even walked to work. It was good for
us and good for our relationship. We also inadvertently stumbled
upon something else.
One
day while we were walking to the grocery store, Veronica
looked down on
the side of the
road and, lo and behold, a five was laying there. A few more steps
and there was a twenty!
Here's the
deal, once you spot money laying around, you automatically look
for more. Needless to say, we haven't been finding twenties, or
even fives or ones on the shoulder everyday, but coins are almost
always around.
We got in
the habit of looking while we walked. Theories developed. Where
were the best places to find this lost cash?
-- Parking
lots. Outside of grocery stores and quick marts are usually good.
Change seems to fall out when keys are removed. The parking lot
of a bar the morning after a big night is a really happy hunting
ground. Crocked customers either don't notice or don't care when
coins fall from their pockets. While we appreciate their donations,
next time call a cab, nimrod.
-- The side
of the road. Like the $25 Veronica found, it seems that money
sometimes accompanies litter out the window of some slob tossing
crap out of his car. Thanks, but no thanks, dude. Next time try
keeping that Burger King sack inside your '88 POS where it belongs,
OK?
Nothing
draws us GypsyNesters to an event like sticking the word “Fest”
on the end of it. Like moths to flame, kids to candy, cats
to a catbox or flies to.... windshields (what did you think
we were gonna say?) we're there in a heartbeat. We were downright
giddy with excitement to hit Washington State just in time
for Salmon Fest AND Crab Fest.
As we ventured
into the Pacific Northwest, the salmon were running upstream with
their insane, unstoppable urge to spawn. The horniest teenager
ever has nothing on these swimming sex fiends.
Many Cohos
and Chinooks fight their way up Issaquah Creek for their reproductive
romp, desperate to return to The Washington State Fish Hatchery
from whence they came. In the Seattle suburb of Issaquah this
fascinating annual phenomenon spawns the beloved Salmon Fest each
autumn.
As “Fests”
go, this is a winner. For forty years now, hundreds of thousands
of people have come to celebrate and sell-a-brate the return of
the salmon. Scores of booths hock the wares of local artists and
artisans along the closed off streets of downtown Issaquah. Five
stages scattered throughout feature music while humans satisfy
their urges through feeding frenzies at the food vendors. Larger-than-life
salmon are toted throughout...
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Parasite
"Kids"
