The world has changed. Here is one way that I know it has changed. We are parked at a lovely Washington State Park on the edge of Padilla Bay with a view of Fildalgo Island and other islands of the San Juans. The campground is in a heritage forest with Douglas Fir trees that are over 100 feet tall. It is quiet and a good place to be with our grandchildren. I just took out my laptop to write and it has detected more than a dozen wi-fi hot spots. There is no public Internet here in the park. One of those private networks might be at the campground office for official use. The rest of them are most likely other campers in the sites around us. Many of them are connected through Starlink, a satellite service. For a monthly subscription fee and the purchase of equipment, a user can connect to the Internet virtually anywhere. I know people who have installed Starlink on boats, in cars, and one person who has a Starlink antenna installed in an experimental two-seat airplane.

I use the Internet a lot. I publish daily. However, I haven’t yet been tempted to subscribe to Starlink for a couple of reasons. The first is that I can access the Internet through the cell phone network, and I don’t often go places where there is no cell phone service these days. When I finish writing this essay, I will publish it using my cellphone hotspot.
Furthermore, my cellphone is now able to connect to the Internet over the Starlink network in areas without regular cellphone service. I haven’t tested the satellite properties of my phone yet, as the service is new and I haven’t been in a place without service. The service I have is designed for emergency text messages and data downloads. I don’t think it would work to upload an essay, but it is probably only a matter of time before I can connect to the Internet anywhere I travel.

I greet this changing world with a bit of caution. Newness isn’t always progress. Thirty years ago, I was a bit reluctant to obtain my first cell phone. I enjoyed he privacy of a car trip without phone service. My car was a place where I could get away from some of the pressures and stresses of everyday life. When people couldn’t reach me, they could leave a message and I would get back to them. I rarely was in a place where I couldn’t access my voicemail for more than a day or so. However, once I got my first cell phone, I quickly became an eager user, carrying my phone with me anywhere I went. Others who worked at the church were able to contact me when I was working away from the office. Calls could be transferred from the office system directly to my cell phone. I could call in to advise the office of changes in plans and other concerns. I could contact church members before I visited.

With access to the Internet, I remain connected to my home even when I am not present. My dishwasher sends me a notification through an application when it finishes a cycle. I can check to see that the refrigerator door is closed from anywhere with cell phone service. Our daughter and her husband can monitor their home through cameras installed to give them a view of the doors and other areas around their home when they are away.

We have friends who are currently driving toward the Arctic Circle on a grand vacation trek. They have a clever auto-response set up on their email telling correspondents that they will not be checking their email for a while. The road they are driving has long stretches without any cell phone service. It is a remote place. However, I have been following their trip through fairly regular Facebook posts. It is evident that they have the Facebook app on their phone and that they check it whenever they have service.

Remote isn’t as remote as it once was.

Some things, however, remain the same. We had a supper of baked beans and hot dogs cooked over the campfire. Grandparents and grandchildren have been having a similar menu for generations. On the other hand, our campfire was a propane stove because there currently is a ban on wood and charcoal fires in this state park. After supper, we walked down to the beach to watch a gorgeous sunset. Three grandchildren shared our awe and joy at being surrounded by such beauty. They also were eager to go back to our campsite to roast marshmallows and make s’mores. A few games and a few stories rounded out the evening. No internet connection was required for our activities. One of the reasons we take our grandchildren camping is that we believe it is good for them to disconnect. Even though they do not yet have personal cell phones, they are allowed to connect to the Internet using an iPad or a desktop computer in their home. They take constant connection for granted.

All of this technological connection threatens another connection that is critical to our lives. Whether or not we are aware of it, we are connected to the world around us. The indigenous Coast Salish people who have lived in this area since time immemorial have understood the sea, islands, fish, land animals, trees, and all else around them as family. Their ancestors felt connected to creation.

We, too, can experience our connection with the natural world. One way to have that experience is to disconnect from technology. For us, last night it was a walk to the beach at sunset. Today we’ll paddle kayaks around on the bay and ride bicycles alongside the shore. We will walk through the trees and reconnect. It is another gift we want to share with our grandchildren. They will grow up taking technological connections for granted. It might take more effort for them to experience their connections with the natural world. We hope they will grow up making time in their lives to connect with nature.

When I was a sheriff’s chaplain, I learned that the job of patrol deputies could be tedious at times. We used to joke that people became deputies because they like to drive cars fast and shoot guns. Then they find out that the job involves a lot of sitting in parked cars and that they discharge their weapons only at the practice range. A single shot from an officer’s weapon outside of the practice range can involve hours of paperwork. Another way that the job has been described is two minutes of sheer terror out of every ten years of service. Of course, those memes are all exaggerations. Officers have varied duties. Public safety can involve search and rescue, directing traffic, responding to accidents, and venturing out in severe weather.

I posted a note to our son last night that, for a while, it seemed as if the local sheriff had sent all of the deputies to the coast. There were plenty of marked sheriff’s department vehicles heading down the road along the beach last night. It turned out to be a test of the system to prevent death and serious injury from tsunami waves following a massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake southeast of the Russian city of Petropavlovsk. Tsunami waves can travel at the speed of a jet, but the Pacific Ocean is massive, so we had plenty of warning. The US National Tsunami Warning Center issued a general tsunami warning about six hours before waves were expected to reach our area. As time passed and the tsunami was observed, our area was placed on advisory status. An advisory means residents should move away from the ocean and stay alert for more instructions from officials. In our case, no significant flooding was expected. Waves were predicted to be only one foot or so high. However, the waves bring with them strong and unusual currents that can affect boats operating in coastal areas as well as in harbors, marinas, and beaches.

The deputies were given the job of monitoring the situation and ensuring that people on the beaches and in the marinas were informed of the potential danger. Since the waves were predicted to arrive shortly after 1 a.m. this morning, I suppose a few deputies worked a bit of overtime and missed some of their sleep. On the other hand, our beaches are generally empty after the folks watching the sunset have retired.

All of this activity is in response to an event that likely does not involve any significant danger. When the tsunami reached the Hawaiian islands, many areas experienced waves of one foot or less. Higher waves were experienced in some places, with a 5.7-foot wave in Kahului and 4.9 wave in Hilo. However, no significant damage was reported, and the earlier warning for Hawaii has now been downgraded to an advisory. The initial wave of a tsunami often is not the largest, and higher-than-normal waves can occur for hours after the initial wave reaches a shoreline.

Shortly before I went to bed last night, I commented that I hoped that they didn’t have to blow the tsunami warning sirens at 1 am. We have sirens located around the area that would be used to alert of an evacuation of the tsunami zone should a threat be imminent. So far, since we have lived here, we have heard the sirens only during testing. In those cases, they are blasted at noon, and announcements on a public address system advise that it is only a test.

Our house is above the tsunami zone. One of the assembly areas for those evacuated is located just around the corner from our home. Being someone who has lived most of my life a thousand miles from the coast, I doubt that I would be comfortable living in a house that is inside the tsunami zone. We have, however, gotten used to the blue warning signs and learned the evacuation routes for the coastal areas that we visit.

The earthquake and tsunami provide an opportunity to remind ourselves that there are forces in the world that are far mightier than we. We live in a protected area that generally feels safe, but we are not immune to the forces of nature. Although this particular earthquake and tsunami are not posing an immediate threat to us, we live within the Pacific Ring of Fire, where earthquakes are more common than in other areas, and large tsunamis are possible. Having a warning system and a plan in place is as essential to coastal living in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California as it is in island places such as Hawaii.

There are quite a few individuals and families that live aboard boats in Drayton Harbor, a short bike ride from our house. I don’t think they were directed to evacuate as a result of the advisory, but I suppose it is possible. If one chooses to live aboard a boat, a plan for what to do in the event of an evacuation would be essential. As one who is new to coastal living, I am constantly reminded that there are many details that I have not yet learned about life in this place.

We are safe, and all of the folks around us are safe. Soon, the deputies will be reassigned to other duties and activities around the county. It doesn’t look like we’ll have any exciting stories to tell as a result of this particular earthquake and tsunami. I’m certainly comfortable with that. We will be camping with three of our grandchildren at a state park that is right on the coast for the next couple of nights. It is reassuring that the warning system works. We received plenty of notice about the potential threat and are confident that, should another threat arise, we would be able to take necessary action to keep our family safe.

Next time there is a warning, advisory, watch or threat, I will understand the warning system and know what those designations mean.

A while ago, a pair of pit bull dogs came into our son’s farmyard and started to attack chickens. It was after most of the garden harvest was completed, so some of the laying hens were allowed to roam freely outside of the coop. After killing some of those birds, the dogs got into the coop. I was at the farm at the time, and when I heard the ruckus, I went to the coop and found the dogs inside. They had broken the fence that separated the two sides of the coop, and one dog was in a chamber that was closed, trapping the chickens. I yelled at the dogs, but they did not respond. I looked around for a weapon and grabbed a spade from the toolshed. By that time, the dogs had left the coop and were chasing the chickens around the yard, and our son had come outside to see what was going on. I chased one of the dogs, and it turned on me. I was able to fend it off with the shovel, but the second dog came around and attacked from a different side. I retreated into the porch of the house.
Meanwhile, our son was forced into the garage, but did end up with one bite. By the time the dogs left the yard, they had killed 14 chickens. They headed toward the neighbors. Phone calls were quickly made as the dogs found no animals outside at the first place they went after leaving our son’s farm. Animal control officers caught up with them at the second place and were able to capture them before they got to other neighborhood chickens and just before a neighbor with a shotgun dispatched them. We later found out that the dogs had been returned to the owners just the day before, after having been confined by animal control in response to another attack. This time, partly because they had bitten our son and partly because the owners had repeatedly failed to be responsible with their dogs, they were euthanized by animal control. Later, the landlord of the dog owners began remodeling the property, and they were forced to find alternative housing.

That is as close as I have ever come to being part of an animal attack. After it was over, I tried to reassess my strategy, which hadn’t been effective. I wondered if it would have been better to choose a sharp weapon. A pitchfork could have caused puncture wounds, but I’m not sure that an injured pit bull is preferable to one that is not injured. I don’t own a gun and don't have enough training and experience to fire accurately at a rapidly moving creature. At the time, I had no intention of dispatching the dogs. I simply wanted them to stop killing chickens and leave the yard. Because our son has young children, I wanted a strategy that would keep them away from the children. Fortunately, the children remained in the house during the entire attack.

I grew up in a place where bear sightings were common. We spoke of how to respond to a bear attack. I knew stories of people who had responded to black bears by making a lot of noise and holding up their jackets so they appeared larger than they were. I had been told stories of one who successfully survived a grizzly attack by playing dead. I wondered if I had what it took for either form of attack. However, I never found myself alone and face-to-face with a bear. On the occasions when I sighted bears in the wild, I was able to maintain a safe distance away from the animals.

Cougars were rare in our part of the state. There were cougar sightings in the northwest corner of Montana, and my uncle had killed one while hunting. I had seen one briefly from a car when we were driving near his home. The folklore surrounding cougars differed from that of bears. Generally, most advice about animals is to avoid running. I knew that bears run uphill faster than they run downhill and that black bears are adept at climbing trees. With cougars, the advice is a bit stronger. NEVER run if you see a cougar. They are adapted to chase creatures that run, and they will enter attack mode. Cougars can outrun any human and have been known to run fast enough to attack a person riding a bicycle. The second piece of advice with a cougar is always to fight back and never play dead. Cougars feed on dead meat. I had been bitten and scratched enough by domestic house cats to be pretty sure that I would not be able to fight off a cougar. The combination of sharp teeth and sharp claws is effective.

Over the weekend, however, near the center of British Columbia, a man was working near Lake Kathlyn when a cougar took a swipe at him. He punched the cougar in the face multiple times, and the big cat disengaged. The man escaped with only minor scratches and did not need hospitalization. Reports of cougars attacking people are rare, even in places where the cats are more common. Most of the calls about cougars received by British Columbia conservation officers are simply reports of their presence in a particular location. In the case of the cat that the man punched, it has yet to be located. A live trap was set, and officers watched the area, but so far, the cat has not been found.

I live in a protected residential neighborhood. Although I enjoy camping and visiting more remote locations, it is unlikely that I will ever encounter a large animal intent on attacking me. Most bear attacks are the result of invading bear territory. Black bears rarely attack. Generally, an attack is an attempt to defend cubs. Grizzlies seem to be the most dangerous just after they have emerged from hibernation and are hungry. Bears and cougars generally do not attack humans in groups. Still, I wonder. I’m not a boxer. I’m not sure I could punch hard enough to deter an attack. Fortunately, the man who found himself face to face with a cougar in BC last weekend was strong enough and knew the right way to respond.

We still have a crew cab long box pickup. It is 22 feet long, and it has one of the worst turning radii of any vehicle I have ever owned. I know it is big, and I am careful when I park it to avoid being a nuisance to others. I have learned some valuable lessons from experience. One is that the overhang is longer at the back of the truck than at the front. That means there are some places where I stick out less if I back into a parking space than if I pull in head-first. I do have to be careful about that overhang, however. If there are trees, shrubs, or other objects near the curb, the advantage is diminished. I also know that even though my truck does not have electrically folding mirrors, taking time to fold them can help in narrow parking spaces. Most parking lots around here are striped with enough width for the truck, but it is common for the length to be a couple of feet longer than the indicated space. In many parking lots, I can take up a bit of extra space if I park farther from the store. The edges of parking lots often have plenty of space.

I see other drivers of large vehicles bully their way into spaces. It is common for others with big trucks like mine to take up four spaces in a parking lot. I try to avoid that as much as possible. Most of the time, I can park my truck without being in the way simply by walking a few steps further. When I visit my favorite bookstore, the diagonal parking around the store leaves the back end of my pickup sticking out into the traffic lanes. However, I can park curbside just two blocks away without inconveniencing others.

As a bike rider, I am aware of the hazards of large vehicles in small spaces. The road alongside the bay in our town has a bike lane outside of the traffic lanes. However, long vehicles are routinely parked in diagonal parking spaces with their backsides extending into the bike lane. Some vehicles block the bike lane entirely, forcing bike riders to enter the traffic lanes to get around them. I have a rearview mirror on my bike and know how to navigate those hazards safely, but I have seen some close calls involving other, less aware cyclists.

Diagonal parking is common around here. It allows cities to park more cars in a block, provided there is enough width in the street to accommodate them. I don’t know the statistics, but it seems plausible to me that even with the hazards of cars backing into the traffic lane, there might be fewer accidents simply because people are not skilled at parallel parking. That is another skill that I appreciate. It allows me to park in places rejected by other drivers when parking our small car. Often, I can squeeze my pickup into spaces that drivers of shorter vehicles reject.

Recently, the city of Bellingham announced that a section of State Street in the downtown core will have its diagonal parking reversed starting this morning. Instead of pulling forward into parking places, cars will back into them. Reverse angled parking offers improved visibility when exiting spaces and provides easier loading and unloading. The primary reason cited by city officials for the change, however, is increased safety for cyclists and pedestrians. Too many drivers focus on cars when pulling out of parking spaces and fail to see pedestrians and cyclists. I understand this because I’ve had cars pull out right in front of me when riding my bike. Fortunately, I have good brakes on my bike and I have learned to look for reverse lights on parked cars. So far, I have escaped injury, but I understand the desire to make conditions safer.

It will be interesting to see whether or not the new system works. I think I will like it, but my observation is that many drivers aren’t very practiced at reversing their cars. I expect people to have trouble lining up their cars in the parking spaces.

When I was learning to drive, I was allowed to practice my skills by arranging tractors and vehicles on the sales lot of my father’s business. They were generally backed into their parking spaces, so their fronts were displayed. We also had trucks that were backed into their garages. I had plenty of opportunities to practice backing up, including backing trailers into tight spots. When our children were learning to drive, I had them spend time in an empty parking lot, pulling into one space and then backing into the next. They repeated the process until they could align the vehicle properly, whether going forward or reverse. Both of our children regularly back their cars into parking spaces. My pickup is too tall to fit into our garage, so it sits in our driveway and I back it into its parking space. This allows for a much easier entrance into our narrow street, where cars are often parked alongside the curb.

The city claims that its new reverse-angle parking allows for approximately 30% more parking than parallel parking and will reduce parking accidents. I’m not confident about the second part of that prediction. My observation is that many drivers struggle with reversing. They don’t know how to estimate the distance ahead of the space and are unaware of the turning radius of their vehicles. It is different in reverse than when going forward. Many drivers fail to use their mirrors effectively, resulting in trouble seeing the rear corners of their car from the driver’s seat. However, once they have become adjusted to the new parking scheme, it will force them to practice, and I predict that, like youth learning to drive, practice makes a bit of a difference. For a few days, however, I will avoid the area of the new plan. I expect a bit of chaos to attend the learning of other drivers.

We live in an unincorporated area of our county. Our small community, however, functions as a village or small town. A process is underway for us to become incorporated. However, I haven’t been involved in the process and am unaware of its progress; I understand that it is a multi-year process. The road around the bay and the area with shops and restaurants, as well as much of the housing in our community, are places where cars, pedestrians, bicycles, and golf carts all share the roads. The area extends to where our house is located and is designated a “golf cart zone.” The maximum speed for the entire area is 25 miles per hour. Most of the time, it works well. We walk and I ride my bike daily on the streets without problems.

In my coming and going, I have observed several things that help me keep myself and others safe.

People who walk with their backs to traffic tend to be less aware of their surroundings. The law is clear. Pedestrians should walk on the left side of the street, facing traffic. However, plenty of pedestrians do not follow that rule. When I ride my bike, I assume that pedestrians have the right of way regardless of which side of the street they choose. When they are walking facing my direction of travel, I can pull from the bike and walking lane into the traffic lane to give them room. My bike has a rear-view mirror that enables me to be aware of the cars behind me and change lanes when it is safe. My bike is also equipped with a bell to let pedestrians know I am behind them. When I ring the bell, most pedestrians are surprised. They turn around to look, they jump, and they often cry out. I don’t mean to startle them, but the reaction is widespread. It may be due to the use of cell phones and headphones, which make it harder for them to hear. It's possible that they are not paying attention. I do not know.

Drivers leaving a congested area are more likely to exceed the speed limit. Yesterday a sand castle completion along the beach drew a large crowd. Parking was difficult to find, and the constant stream of pedestrians, many of whom were carrying umbrellas, buckets, chairs, and other objects, meant that all traffic had to slow down on the drive along the beach. There were volunteer crossing guards at several locations that stopped traffic briefly to allow pedestrians to cross. Riding my bike through the congested area, I was going between 5 and 10 mph and had to stop several times. Once we cleared the area of congestion, however, many of the cars accelerated to 35 to 40 mph on streets where the limit is still 25 mph. It was as if they were driving as fast as the cars in front of them allowed. This presented a challenge for us when we walked down to the beach, as not only was traffic heavier than usual, but it was also moving much faster than usual in the area where we were walking.

There are many different kinds of golf carts. Some are electric and very quiet. Others have small engines that are pretty noisy. Some have a top speed of around 10 or 15 mph. Others can go 35 mph or faster. There is a wide variety of vehicles designated as golf carts in our area. Some have fancy wheels and large tires. Others operate on tiny wheels and tires. Some have obvious places to carry golf bags. Others are designed for passengers. There are carts with as many as six seats. Some have all seats facing forward. Others have seats at the rear facing backwards. The variety results in cart drivers being a bit unsure of where to drive. Some drive in the traffic lanes, which is legal in our area. Others drive in the bike/pedestrian lanes. The choice of where to drive does not seem to be dictated by the speed at which the cart is going. I don’t know if golf carts hit more pedestrians than regular vehicles, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that is the case.

There is a big difference between regular bikes and scooters and motorized versions. I ride an e-bike most of the time and I am able to go 15 - 20 mph with moderate effort. That is faster than regular bikes. However, there are e-bikes that are much faster than my bike. I have also observed that many e-bikes can be ridden without pedaling. Mine only has pedal assist, so I have to pedal to make it work. There are also many types of scooters, ranging from one-wheeled devices to motorized skateboards and other variations. Some of them go very fast. Some turn very quickly. Sometimes it is a challenge for bikes and scooters to share the same lane.

Although our area does not have separate lanes for pedestrians and bikes, there are some places where it might make sense. We have an excellent walking trail along the beach that some cyclists use. I choose not to ride on that trail, feeling that it works best to leave it for pedestrians. There is also a wide shoulder marked by paint on many of the streets. That is where I ride my bike. Some people walk in that lane, and sharing it with pedestrians seems to work. However, changing the painting of the street might improve traffic flow in congested areas by designating separate lanes for pedestrians, bikes, and larger vehicles. It would make sense to make pedestrian and bike lanes narrow enough to discourage carts from driving in them. The result would also narrow the driving lanes. Narrow lanes are more effective than speed bumps and traffic patrols at slowing traffic. Drivers will slow down for a narrow lane when they won’t slow down for pedestrians and cyclists. I’d like to see our village experiment with designating different lanes by paint. This process would be inexpensive and could be changed in the future as needed.

I enjoy living in an area where people use different modes of travel. I hope we can continue to cooperate and watch out for one another to keep everyone safe.

It is quiet at our house, so quiet that we can hear the ticking of the clocks. Of course, that isn’t particularly quiet, as we have two clocks that tick quite loudly. What makes our house quiet right now is that, after a wonderful week’s visit, our daughter and her family are returning home to South Carolina. They boarded a red-eye flight to Washington, D.C., last night and will arrive in South Carolina this morning. If their connections go smoothly, they will get home in time to retrieve their dog from the boarder today. They’ll have the rest of today and tomorrow to rest and recover before going back to work on Monday.

We’ve had a marvelous visit. Eleven for dinner makes the meal a celebration. Seeing our grandchildren getting to know their cousins is a delight. Having meaningful conversations with our children is priceless. I’m feeling blessed and full of gratitude. Life has been good to me.

Now it is time for me to get to the list of chores that I allowed to go on the back burner during the visit. I have a list on a pad of paper by my computer. There is a bit of yard work, a few errands that need to be done, some preparation for an upcoming trip, and the usual household chores. The laundry hamper is full, and the refrigerator is filled with leftovers. We served leftovers for lunch yesterday before departing for the airport and had a conversation about our approach to food. I am a fan of serving leftovers. Good food should not go to waste. I’ve known some people and have some relatives who don’t enjoy leftovers. They are as quick to put food in the garbage as we are to put it into the freezer.

When we were children, in the days before microwave ovens in household kitchens, we would have a meal at least once a week that mother called a smorgasbord. Her version was based on a set of small casserole dishes that she had collected. She would gather various leftovers, re-heat them in the oven, and place them out along with bits of leftover salads and other cold foods. We would fill our plates and come back for seconds. Each of us had a different assortment of foods on our plates as the casserole dishes emptied.

We were given responsibility for determining our portions, even at meals that weren’t labeled as smorgasbords. I learned to eat family style by living in a family. The rule at our house was that no one took a bite of food until all of the dishes had been passed around the table. We filled our plates from the serving dishes under the watchful eyes of our parents, who advised us to take only what we could eat. Leaving uneaten food on our plates was discouraged. Because we had the luxury of plentiful food, we could take small portions and then ask for dishes to be passed again for second helpings. The lesson of putting a small portion on my plate has been helpful as I have grown older. The abundance of food has been a constant throughout my life, and the shape of my belly is a testament to the simple fact that I have not yet fully mastered the art of portion control.

Having a lot of leftovers doesn’t help me. I am tempted to eat all the contents of the food container so that I can clean it and make more room in the refrigerator. We make a game of trying to match the amount of leftover food to a container that is just the right size, and if we have leftovers after a second serving, the food will likely end up in a new container. The cupboard where we keep containers for leftover food is frequently disorganized. Unlike my mother’s set of small casserole dishes, we have a hodgepodge of plastic containers saved from various foods we have purchased. Empty containers from sour cream, yogurt, and other dairy products are washed out and saved to store leftovers. We also have a good collection of containers designed for food storage. We try to limit the use of plastic containers in the microwave, preferring to transfer the food to a plate before reheating.

I learned a lesson from my wife’s grandparents. At their home, potatoes were served at every meal. Frequently, but not always, fresh potatoes were served baked or mashed as part of dinner. Leftovers might appear as hash browns at breakfast or scalloped potatoes at lunch. We went out for dinner a couple of days ago, and I brought home a container of uneaten French fries that I chopped up and served as breakfast potatoes the next day. I had my potatoes with my eggs, but our grandson had them with warmed-up chicken from his dinner from the previous evening. He also informed me that chicken nuggets weren’t his favorite breakfast. I asked about his favorite breakfast, suggesting that pancakes or waffles are among my favorites. He told me that pizza is his favorite breakfast. If he continues with his current preferences, he will be well-positioned to reduce food waste when he begins to live on his own.

One of my incentives for reducing food waste comes from the daily news of hunger and starvation experienced by so many people in other parts of the world. The daily barrage of stories of the suffering of people in Gaza is heartbreaking. It certainly seems that starvation is being used as a weapon of war. Food aid for hungry people has been withheld. Aid workers have become the victims of attacks. People have been killed waiting in line for food. I feel helpless in the face of these tragedies. Still, it seems necessary for me to be careful not to waste the food I have. Being frugal with my grocery dollars gives me more ability to share. Now is the time to open my heart and share as much as I am able.

We are settling into our retirement lifestyle. It was a more challenging adjustment than I anticipated in some ways. Unlike some people who have jobs that they don’t enjoy, I loved the work I was doing. During my career, I didn’t give much thought to retirement in part because I was in no hurry to retire. I did attend pre-retirement planning sessions offered by the Pension Boards of our church, and I had a few conversations with investment professionals about managing our small investments. However, I didn’t put much energy into creating complex plans. When the time to retire came, we decided that moving to a new place would be part of the process for several reasons. After serving the same congregation for 25 years, we felt that we would need to relocate to avoid having undue influence on the decisions the congregation would make about leadership. It would be natural for members to seek us out after retirement with various issues, including asking us to assist with funerals and other special worship services, seeking our advice on decisions facing the church, and other matters. We wanted the church to be free to make its own choices without us exerting influence.

As important as it was to adhere to the highest standards of professional ethics in retirement, we also wanted to live near our family. Our adult children had moved away from South Dakota. They moved in different directions, so we couldn’t live near both of them, but we consulted with both before making our decision about where to locate. Being near grandchildren has been one of the profound blessings of retirement. Having more time to travel means we are blessed to see our other child and her family more often.

The move is working out for us. There are a lot of details involved in moving from one state to another. Obvious ones like changing the registration and license plates on our vehicles took a bit of effort and resulted in some expense, but were easily handled. In the era of cell phones we did not have to change our phone numbers, but we had to register change of address with banks and businesses as well as with friends and family. One of the ongoing tasks has been updating my email addresses and removing those that are no longer in use. I suppose this will be a part of my life from here on as others make changes in their lives.

Another challenge of which we were aware, but which has proven to be a bit more difficult than anticipated has been developing relationships with health care providers. Finding new doctors who accept the insurance we have is only the start of the process for us. Changing health conditions have meant needing to add a few specialists to our list of medical providers. The biggest challenge, however, is the ever-changing nature of health insurance. In addition to Medicare, we have a supplemental policy that we purchase through the church as part of our pension and retirement program. The church, in turn, contracts with a private company called a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO). Although Medicare allows seniors to change PPO plans, we have so far chosen to stay with the plan offered by the church. What we had not anticipated was that the plan would change which physicians and practices are considered preferred. After establishing care with a local family practice, we have been notified that they are no longer on our plans list. We are being asked to establish care with different providers. This task is complicated because not all providers accept new patients, and the complexity of transferring records, medical histories, and other aspects of healthcare. This challenge, however, is not the focus of today’s journal entry. I will likely write more about it in the future.

One task we have accomplished is drafting new end-of-life documents. To ensure that our documents complied with state and local laws, we had new wills, powers of attorney, and advance directives drafted. The cost of that legal work was approximately ten times the amount we paid the first time we had similar documents drafted. We have, however, waded through all of the legal jargon and navigated the system to have our documents in place. The visit of our daughter and her family this week has allowed us to review our plans with both of our children and their spouses. From my perspective, the conversations with our children are far more valuable than the legal documents. Being able to speak frankly about my wishes and intentions and realizing how deeply I trust the loved ones who will make decisions for me when I am no longer able makes a big difference. I know that the legal documents are most likely to come into play in the event of a disagreement or dispute. Having discussed them with our children and their spouses in advance leads me to believe that they have the relationship and skills to navigate complex decisions without conflict. Should disagreement arise, I am confident that they have the love and skill to resolve that conflict. To paraphrase the slogan, “Having wills and directives drafted: thousands of dollars. Having open and honest conversations with our children: priceless.”

I did not expect retirement to be easy. I have worked my entire life and am comfortable navigating challenges. I am aware that there are decisions and challenges ahead for me and my family. I also know that I don’t have to face those decisions and challenges alone. I have a wife and children who will share those with me. I am blessed with a community of people who care about me and will support me in times of need.

I may never fully figure out retirement, but I have taken some steps in the right direction. I have become more comfortable with being retired. There are a few things that I’ve been able to cross off of my “to do” list. The journey continues.

We have been having a marvelous time with our daughter and her family's visit. Our son has been able to take a bit more time off from work, and his family has been able to join ours in hosting several activities and events together. When we are all together, we are eleven people. We can be a bit loud at times, with the children joining in conversation, and sometimes it seems like everyone is talking at the same time. We’ve had some excellent meals and had some fun times outside at a nearby campground and on the beach. Yesterday afternoon, the whole gang headed to a spot on Drayton Harbor with a sandy beach. It was an excellent place for the children to get some water play. We have a good ratio of adults and children, so there are plenty of eyes to watch as the young ones play in the water.

While the others loaded into cars to head for the beach, I grabbed my bicycle and rode the eight miles. I left the beach earlier than the rest of the family and rode my bicycle home as I needed time to prepare dinner for the family. The time I was riding my bicycle was a valuable moment in a busy week. For a short time, I was alone. I wasn’t talking or listening to other people. I was looking at the world around and allowing my mind to wander.

I love living in a family. I treasure the broader community that surrounds us. But I also value time alone. When things get hectic, I have learned to seek moments when I can be by myself. I have observed a similar quality in other members of our family. Often, several children will be playing a game while one sits quietly at a table drawing. Our youngest grandson will play a game with toy cars by himself in the corner, while the rest of the family continues to engage in conversation and group activities. Each person has their way of seeking a bit of privacy and time alone.

I grew up in a large family. I always shared a bedroom with at least one of my brothers. I didn’t have any problem staying in a cabin full of other boys at camp. However, when I arrived at college, I struggled to find a roommate with whom to share a space. By my sophomore year, I worked out a way to have a private room without roommate. The main issue in college was that my schedule differed from that of other students. My work study job started early in the morning. I wanted to go to bed early and rise early, something that is not common on a college campus. After two years in a private room, I got married. I’ve enjoyed having a roommate ever since. One of the interesting aspects of our marriage is that I am still a morning person, while my wife is a bit of a night owl. Our usual pattern is for me to go to bed before her and to rise before her. We both get a bit of private time at the end of the day, which works well for us.

Finding the balance of time alone and time with others is an important life skill.

Last week, the World Health Organization designated loneliness as a “global public health concern.” U.S. surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy was appointed to lead an international commission to seek solutions to the problems of loneliness. According to the WHO, research has shown that loneliness is as bad for people’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

The isolation that came with the Global COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the issue of loneliness. Dr. Jeremy Nobel, a professor at Harvard Medical School, has said that loneliness is “probably the biggest preventable risk factor” for mental health concerns such as depression, addiction, and suicidality. Research in older adults shows that chronic levels of loneliness exacerbate physical ailments. Increases in risk of death by heart attack and stroke have been documented, as well as increases in dementia and diabetes. Humans thrive in community and struggle in isolation.

Loneliness is not simply a matter of how many people are sharing the same space. People can feel lonely and isolated, even if they have plenty of contact with others. If they feel excluded because of factors such as race, gender, or disability, they can be lonely even if they are constantly in the presence of other people. Conversely, many people who live alone nurture strong connections with their community and do not suffer from loneliness. In our circle of friends, there are several widows whose life partners died after years of happy marriage. Those widows have developed strong relationships outside of their homes and know that others love them and have their backs in times of need. Solo living does not always equate to loneliness.

I have noticed that whenever I see a doctor recently I am asked about my living status. It usually is a very brief conversation as I am happily married and surrounded by family. I am active in my church community and have many friends. But it is obvious to me that my health care providers have included a question about loneliness to their routine taking of vital signs. In addition to checking my pulse and blood pressure, taking my temperature, and counting my respiration rate, health screeners are being trained to inquire about loneliness as part of a routine taking of vital signs.

As many as one in five adults identify themselves as lonely. Chronic loneliness is more than just a feeling that sometimes comes at one’s lowest moments. Doctors are now describing a lasting sense of loneliness as an epidemic and contributing to early mortality. With research identifying a connection between loneliness and anxiety, dementia, heart disease, and diabetes, loneliness deserves more research into its causes and solutions.

So far, I have not suffered from chronic loneliness. I do, however, seek time to be alone as part of maintaining my health. Fortunately, I have a bicycle and beautiful places to ride.

Before we retired we planned a special celebration for our 40th wedding anniversary. Instead of a party at the church or a public reception, what we wanted most was time with our adult children and their spouses. At the time we had only one grandchild and so the dynamics of getting everyone together were a bit less complex. However, since both of our children lived far from us and far from each other, it took planning and coordination to get everyone together. We decided that meeting in the Pacific Northwest would be best because that is where the family with the grandson lived. We found a resort with spaces for recreational vehicles that also offered camp cabins on Fidalgo Island near Anacortes, and we made reservations. We pulled our camp trailer from South Dakota. Our daughter and her husband flew in, and our son and his family drove up from Olympia, where they were living. One of the highlights of that trip was a cruise on a whale watching boat. We saw a pod of orcas of the Bigg’s/Transient group, and also got a distant view of a Minke whale. Additionally, we saw harbor seals, sea lions, and porpoises. We had a wonderful time on the water and have fond memories of the adventures we shared.

A dozen years later, we now have five grandchildren and the logistics of getting people together are more complex. However, since we now live near our son and his family, the easiest way to get everyone together is for our daughter and her family to come to the Pacific Northwest. They are able to visit most years, and this year we worked out a day to take another whale watching cruise. It was decided that the adventure was a bit long for the youngest grandson, so he and his mother stayed home, but the other nine of us headed to the terminal to board our boat for the day.

I love the marine life of the Salish Sea, and I enjoy watching from the shore nearly every day. We are treated to visits by migrating gray whales each spring, and harbor seals visit our bay and the harbor just north of our home. There are a variety of birds, including several species of cormorants, gulls, herons, eagles, ducks, geese, swans, and more. We see jellyfish, sea stars, and urchins in the tidal pools. Seeing orcas, however, is a relatively rare occurrence. A few Southern Resident orcas entered Drayton Harbor a short while ago, and the newspaper obtained good pictures of them, but we missed seeing them in person.

A whale watching cruise is a pretty reliable way of getting close to orcas. Marine mammals are wild animals and roam free, so a sighting is not guaranteed. However, the cruise operators have a private network called the Pacific Whale Watch Association. The PWWA shares the location of whales using a private radio network and an app. The captains of the cruise boats have a good understanding of where the whales are and which direction they may be traveling before the boat leaves the dock. They plan their routes to give their passengers a good chance of observing the magnificent creatures.

We weren’t disappointed yesterday. A small pod of four of the Biggs/Transient population were spotted and our boat was able to cruise near them for about an hour before we had to turn back to the harbor. We were able to take a lot of pictures and got close enough to hear them as they surfaced.

I have mixed feelings about the cruise boats. Our boat was part of a parade of a dozen or more commercial whale watching operations. The boats follow strict rules about how close to approach the animals and how to operate near them, and they cooperate with law enforcement agencies to help enforce these rules. The animals we observed yesterday are thriving. There is a slight baby boom occurring in the Biggs/Transient pods. The populations of migrating Gray and Humpback whales are also currently growing. The Southern Resident orcas, on the other hand, are threatened. Their numbers are declining, and experts have predicted that they may soon become extinct.

The names “transient” and “resident” are misleading. The two populations of orcas in the Salish Sea are genetically distinct and have different diets, but they share the same territory. The Biggs/transient orcas generally eat larger marine mammals including porpoises, seals, and sea lions. Members of the Southern Resident orcas eat fish, primarily migrating salmon. Salmon populations are in decline due to dams that block their spawning, pollution, and other factors. There have been some locally successful restorations of habitat, including the breaching of dams, where salmon populations are now recovering. However, these have not been large-scale enough to reverse the downward trend in the orca population. Orcas communicate and locate prey using echolocation, and the noise from boats, especially from large tankers and cargo vessels in the shipping lanes, is a threat to their usual patterns of behavior.

When orcas approach close to boats, there are restrictions on the speed at which the boats can be operated, and if they come within 400 yards of a boat, the boat must disengage its engine. Generally, a 1,000-yard distance is maintained by responsible mariners. The animals are wild, however, and may turn toward a vessel. Operators often cannot predict which direction the orcas will go.

We had an excellent day for observing orcas yesterday. The weather was just right, with a few clouds in the morning giving way to blue skies in the afternoon. Our cruise featured a generous lasagna lunch, and we had comfortable seating. We were able to roam around the boat and found good locations to observe and photograph the orcas.

Taking a whale-watching cruise won’t become a regular activity for our family, but it is an occasional activity that we all enjoy. Yesterday, we created memories about which we will be talking for decades, and that is indeed a treasure.

“Grandma, is it time to do the clock?” The question came from our six-year-old grandson who was trying to negotiate just a few more minutes before bedtime. Like our children, our grandchildren don’t always know they are tired. Parents are needed to help them stay healthy by setting reasonable mealtimes and bedtimes. In this case, however, our grandson knew he had hit upon one thing that would delay bedtime, if by only a few minutes.

In our study, in the middle of a wall of bookshelves, is a Seth Thomas mantle clock. It is powered by weights that descend, causing the mechanism to turn. The clock needs to be wound each day. There are two weights, one for the clock, the other for the chime. When we are in our routine, we wind the clock as one of the last tasks before heading upstairs to brush our teeth and get ready for bed. When our grandchildren stay at our house, we modify the routine slightly so that they are included in the ritual. Along with getting to wind the clock with close supervision, they hear the story about its coming to our family over and over again.

According to the man who cleans and adjusts our clocks, the Seth Thomas parlor clock has been called by some the thrashing machine of clocks. It doesn’t require special tools to adjust and repair. The mechanism's operation is evident to an observer, and most people can identify what is wrong when something is not working. The clocks have withstood numerous adjustments by individuals who are not trained in clock repair. Generally, a repair consists of replacing a piece of string or bending a soft piece of metal.

This particular clock was purchased used at a farm sale by my wife’s grandmother’s father. He brought it home under his arm while riding his horse. Our family has had the clock in our house for five generations. The paint on the clock's face is worn, but the cabinet is in good condition and the mechanism functions well. It doesn’t have a second hand, and it is not capable of being adjusted to second-by-second accuracy. But it chimes within a minute of the hour. It isn’t the only mechanical chiming clock in our house, and we rarely have them ringing at the same time. When we do get them synced perfectly, one will vary slightly, and they will get off a bit. Recently, I was counting the chimes without thinking about it, as the first clock and then another began to chime 11 times. Because the chiming was overlapping, I realized that I had counted 14 chimes. You have to be paying close enough attention to distinguish which clock is chiming to know the time.

I wear a digital smartwatch that can connect to wifi and to the cell phone network. It displays the exact time with accuracy. I could have it display the time in numerals, but I prefer a watch face that resembles a traditional clock with hands that rotate to indicate the time. The reason for this preference is the same reason I enjoy having chiming clocks in our house. Most of the time I don’t need to know precisely what time it is. I only need to know about what time it is.
Furthermore, my mind will play tricks on me. If I look at the digital clock on the stove and it says, 10:58, I will think to myself, “Good, it isn’t 11 yet.” If I look at a clock with a face at the same time, I’m more likely to think, “It is nearly 11.” Knowing the exact time has the result of occasionally making me late for an appointment. It is irrational and counterintuitive, but I have grown accustomed to how my mind works well enough to arrive on time for important meetings.

The clock-winding ritual at our house serves a significant purpose. We want our grandchildren to fall in love with our old clocks. We want to pass them down to a future generation. We don’t want to be the last generation of our family to treasure these mechanical devices that were designed and engineered to last longer than the span of a human life. And even if the clocks are sold or given away outside of the family, we want our grandchildren to know their stories. We are not wealthy people. The inheritance we have to pass on to our children and grandchildren has little to do with money. Their inheritance is a wealth of family traditions, ceremonies, and stories.

Much of our culture is designed for throwaway. Many of the objects in our homes are designed to be used and then discarded. Other items will last much longer than the use to which we put them. For example, a piece of furniture can be reupholstered. We have had it done to a few precious pieces we inherited from other family members. In most cases, however, having furniture reupholstered costs more than replacing it with a new piece.

This week the electric mixer in our kitchen suffered a burned out motor. The mixer was bought new by my father as a gift to my mother about 55 years ago. She used it heavily as do we. I replied the transmission in the machine a few years ago. I checked online and I can purchase a replacement motor for it. However the cost of the motor alone is slightly more than 3/4 of the cost of a whole new machine. If I were to pay to have it repaired, the cost would exceed the price of a replacement machine. Since we have a hand mixer and a house full of family to help with any task, we won't be deciding on the mixer this week. We can defer that decision to another day. I suspect, however, that we may end up replacing the machine, which would then present the problem of how to recycle the components of the old one.

It may not make financial sense, but I have a different attachment to the antique clocks than I do to many other items in our home. I will keep them repaired for as long as I am able. After all, the oldest is “the thrashing machine of clocks.” I hope one of our grandchildren will learn to love and treasure it as much as I do.

There were five people in my family before I was born. I made six: four children and two parents. Not long afterwards, my oldest sister was married, leaving three. Then a brother was born, making us four. Another sister married, and two more brothers were adopted. Boys were in the majority for the first time, and we were five children for more than ten years before the next sister got married and moved out of the house. A couple of years later, I was married. When people ask me how many children were in my family, I usually keep it simple and say seven, but we never had seven children at home at the same time. Most of my growing up experience was of five children. I know how to set the table for seven. We sat with three on one side and two on the other, with our parents on the ends. My place was at the end, next to my father, on the side with three plates. We had less room, but passing dishes was easier because the distances were shorter. It was complex. Due to the span of ages, our family was a unique blend of adults and children. To add to the complexity, my oldest sister had six children, and the oldest of those is just two years younger than I. I’ve been an uncle for as long as I can remember.

In terms of experience, I have some insight into what it's like to be one of five children living at home. I don’t know anything about being a parent of five, however. We had two children. One was enough to be overwhelming. Two was a handful. For a year, we had an exchange student, so there were three teens in our house. When I think of my parents raising seven children, I have deep respect for them and all of the work they invested in raising their children.

The number 5 isn’t one of the big numbers in the Bible. There are five books of the law, sometimes referred to as torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Some scholars divide the Psalms into five groups. Sometimes five is seen as a number of blessing.

When I learned to count by fives, it seemed like I had unlocked a key to understanding arithmetic. It was a shorthand way to reach a high number quickly. It helped me estimate the solutions to other problems.

Somehow, through the grace of God, we have ended up with five grandchildren. It's a surprise, because I once joked with our adult children that I thought five would be a good number for grandchildren. I imagined that one might have two children and the other three. Imaginations are never quite as good as reality, however. We have four grandchildren who live just a couple of miles from us. The other one, however, lives across the continent in South Carolina. We laughingly say to each other, at least they are on the same continent. Our daughter lived in England for two years and in Japan for five. Her son was born in Japan.

Having a grandson born in Japan was quite an adventure. We bought airline tickets to be there to support the new family, but he arrived early, and we arrived late. Japan is 15 hours ahead of Rapid City, where we lived at the time. I received a call informing me that our grandson had been born just before a church council meeting. I could accurately announce to the others at the meeting, “My daughter just had a baby boy tomorrow. It was the evening of July 11, but he had been born the morning of July 12. Now that he is six years old, I joke with him that I found out he had been born before he was born. I don’t think he finds that information to be as interesting as I do.

It is a rare occasion when we have all five grandchildren together, and whenever we do, it is a real treat. The children are all different ages: 3, 6, 8, 11, and 14 years old.

Our daughter and her family are here for only a few days, and we're trying to pack as much fun into those days as possible. When we asked her son what he wanted to do during their planned visit, one thing he was quick to say was that he wanted to go camping. We are hardly on a camping trip. Our trailer is in a State Park just over a mile from our house, but it is what worked for this visit. His parents slept in our house. Our son, his wife, and our youngest grandson slept at their home, just a few miles away. We had the whole gang over for burgers and hot dogs for supper, along with watermelon and s’mores for dessert. It is not the same as a more extended camping trip, but it is as much as we could manage with all of the other activities we have planned for their short visit.

We had visions of camping with our grandchildren from the moment we saw this camper. It has a room with four bunks at one end and a double bed at the other. We only had one grandchild at the time, but we had visions of more to come. Our oldest grandson spent the night with us in the camper when he was two years old, and we’ve been camping with the grands as often as we can ever since.

The deep joy of watching the cousins play together is something that I could not have anticipated when I thought about what it might mean to become a grandfather.

Like Tevye and Golde sing in Fiddler on the Roof, sunsets and sunrises come and go, and the years pass quickly. We are aware of how fleeting these opportunities with our grandchildren are. They are growing up, and we are getting older. The time will come to sell this camper and move on to other adventures. Now, for the moment, our time is a treasure, and we are grateful for this camping adventure.

There have been many times in my life when 100 miles didn’t seem like a huge journey. I grew up in a small town. We drove 80 miles one way to reach a city with urban amenities. These days, another town about 60 miles away offers airline service, but when I was young, the larger city was the only place to board an airplane. We thought nothing of making a trip of 160 miles to pick someone up from the airport.

After we graduated from seminary, we were 150 miles from an airport served by airlines in one direction and 180 miles in another direction. We viewed the two destinations as nearly equal and made trips departing from both airports. We visited both cities to purchase items that were not available in our town. We drove our son to medical appointments without thinking much of it.

For my entire pastoral career, I served congregations that were in a different time zone from the conference office. I was used to driving to attend meetings. When we lived in Rapid City, I joked that Chamberlain was the perfect place to hold church meetings because those of us in the west would drive 210 miles to get there, while the people from Sioux Falls would drive 140 miles and believe they had come halfway. Making the round trip and attending a meeting in one day was a standard practice.

It has sometimes been hard for me to explain to colleagues in the eastern parts of the United States how much I enjoy wide open spaces and don’t mind driving distances to visit colleagues, obtain services, and participate in church meetings.

I have noticed, however, that in retirement, I don’t drive as much as I once did. We take a few road trips and plan to embark on a multi-state journey next month, but our lives have settled into a routine with fewer long trips.

When we decided to move to the Pacific Northwest upon retirement, I thought we might go to Seattle frequently, but it has turned out that we don’t make the trip very often. Part of the reason is that Seattle is approximately 100 miles away, while Vancouver, BC, is only about 40 miles away. Both urban centers offer international airports and a full range of city services. Given the differences in healthcare between the two nations, we don’t go to Canada for medical appointments, but we have most services available within a short drive. I did have one procedure performed in Seattle, but that is the only trip of that distance we’ve made since moving.

It isn’t just a matter of distance. Seattle is a big city with a tight urban core. The space between the Puget Sound and the mountains means that the majority of traffic must be compressed into two north-south highways. A trip to SeaTac airport can take between two and three hours, depending on traffic.

Yesterday, however, I was excited to make the trip to SeaTac. Our daughter and her family flew in from their home in South Carolina. They had a long day of riding, flying from South Carolina to Washington, D.C., and then to Seattle. After we picked them up at the airport, they rode another two hours to our house. Their day was further stretched out due to the time zone difference. Their home is three hours ahead of ours.

My trip of a hundred miles to the airport and another hundred back was small compared to theirs. And my reward for making the trip was tremendous. Within a few minutes of our arrival at home, our son pulled into our driveway with his children. Having both our children and all five of our grandchildren in our house is one of those indescribable joys. Soon, our back deck was filled with laughter and stories. We blew soap bubbles and ate popsicles. We took silly pictures, and the children played games.

Even before we had children, I could imagine myself as a grandfather. It is something I have always wanted. Still, it is a bit surprising to me that I have become a patriarch. I’m the older one who hasn’t seen the movies being discussed and is often unfamiliar with the songs being played. My schedule is much more flexible than that of our children, and I am free from some of the pressures they feel when raising children and juggling careers.

Our two children live almost as far apart as possible on the North American continent, and they are not able to be together very often. However, when they do get together, the stories and laughter come quickly. They are not only siblings, but also friends, and their friendship means the world to me. Watching grandchildren greet each other and hug is one of life’s most profound blessings.

We are quick to complain about the challenges of long-distance travel. Among the stories we shared last night were those of all the extra fees one has to pay after purchasing a ticket to fly with the airlines. Seat fees and luggage fees are high enough to dissuade one from buying food on an airliner. All of those services used to be included in the purchase price of an airline ticket. Those days are no more. We had to throw in a few memories of long lines and challenges navigating airport security in our conversation last night.

Whatever it costs, it is well worth it. I might complain about prices, but I am grateful that our children consider family travel a priority and are willing to invest in getting together.

Our time will pass quickly, and it's all too brief. Still, this morning, I’m looking forward to a delightful week in which I lay aside my worries and watch as cousins renew their friendships, siblings share their stories, and everyone is gracious to grandpa, who may move a bit slower and take a bit longer to remember, but who is as happy as anyone can imagine.

I’ve never used the food delivery service Instacart. I have used both Uber and Lyft services when traveling. With their phone apps, those services are easier to use than conventional cabs, at least for me. I don’t travel very often, and I don’t routinely use ride services. However, when I have a meeting in a distant city, I usually use a ride service to get from the airport to a hotel. Since I have the ride services apps on my phone, I keep getting alerts about using Instacart. “Free” phone apps typically use advertising as a means to generate income. When it comes to Instacart, I generally don’t know what I’m talking about.

However, I did notice when Instacart recently published the results of a survey of the favorite Ice Cream flavors in the United States. In addition to the national statistics, the report included state-by-state findings. It came as no surprise to me that in the US, vanilla is the favorite flavor, followed by chocolate in second place. I was surprised that cookies & cream is more popular than strawberry, but I would have correctly selected mint chocolate chip to round out the top five.

I make it a point to keep ice cream in the freezer even though we live within walking distance of an excellent ice cream store. Ice cream is a grandparent treat. As grandparents, we can indulge our grandchildren a bit more than parents. Our grandchildren have access to healthy, nutritious foods at home and have parents who are careful to ensure that they get good food. But they don’t always have dessert after a good meal. When they come to their grandparents’ house, dessert is a tradition, even though we don’t always have dessert when the grandkids aren’t around.

Last evening, when our son told our youngest grandson that it was time to go home, he replied, “Ice cream first.” He has been known to go to the freezer in our kitchen to remind us that a sweet treat is part of a visit. We do try to respect the parents’ wishes and have been known to enforce their usual limit of one ice cream per day.

At our house, vanilla is usually available. It goes well with cherry pie, birthday cake, and other desserts. Lately, I have been keeping mint chip on hand because our grandchildren also enjoy it. The other state around here is moose tracks. When it comes to that flavor, the Instacart survey surprised me. It also raised questions about my understanding of the flavor's history.

When I was growing up in Montana, Moose Tracks ice cream was available from only one brand. Wilcoxson’s Ice Cream in Livingston, Montana, has been producing the treat since 1912. We lived 30 miles from the original dairy. They had some delicious and unique flavors. I’m sure that the first time I tasted peppermint stick ice cream, it came from Wilcoxson’s. I thought that moose tracks was a flavor developed by Wilcoxson’s.

After I grew up and moved away from Montana, one of the highlights of visiting home was a dish of Moose Tracks ice cream. I’ve told my grandchildren about the old days when you couldn’t get moose tracks in every grocery store, and different companies didn’t sell it. I thought that the flavor was eventually licensed to the Albertsons grocery chain.

The Instacart survey, however, says that Moose Tracks was first developed in Michigan. My version of the history of the flavor might be wrong. According to the Instacart survey, Moose Tracks is the most popular flavor in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Ohio. I get Michigan and Wisconsin, but seriously, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio? You would live your whole life in Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio and never see a moose.

I get butter pecan in North and South Carolina. They even pronounce pecan differently than I do, and they grow the nuts there. But Neapolitan in Rhode Island? Can that be the truth? I understand peanut butter chocolate being the favorite flavor in Maine. People up there think in their unique way. Coffee, as the favorite of Massachusetts and Vermont, isn’t a surprise. It matches some of my reactions to my infrequent visits to those states.
On the other hand, chocolate as the favorite of New Hampshire flies in the face of my hopes for the home state of Ben & Jerry’s. I suppose that company has too many flavors for any one to stand out. Still, I wonder how many people have never tasted Cherry Garcia.

All of the states in which I have lived, except Illinois, polled vanilla as the favorite flavor. I guess I’m glad I went to graduate school in Chicago, but I’m certain that moose tracks wasn’t the Illinois favorite when I lived there.

I learned from the Instacart survey that Rocky Road was developed by the California-based company Dreyer’s. It’s no surprise that it's the favorite flavor in California and Nevada. Nevada usually has more visitors from California than local Nevadans.

I was also interested in the Instacart list of top ice cream brands. Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s topped the list, with Tillamook coming in third. I have family in Tillamook, Oregon, and I have visited the original Tillamook creamery. They make excellent dairy products, including cheese, butter, and ice cream. I assumed that it was a local brand. However, it is marketed through most major grocery chains. I thought, however, that the fact that it is sold in all of the grocery stores around here might not mean that it is generally available in other parts of the country. I guess I was wrong about that.

According to the Instacart survey, I am not as knowledgeable about ice cream as I thought. Still, you don’t need to tell that fact to my grandchildren. Chances are pretty good that they wouldn’t believe you anyway. They seem to all agree that while Grandpa might not be much of an expert on technology and he definitely has strange tastes in music, he is a good source of ice cream.

Yesterday morning, I was sitting on a log in a campground, talking to our 14-year-old grandson. He was reporting how his arms and shoulders were stiff from having bucked hay bales a couple of days before. I knew that the baler was working in their meadow and that there would be more bales to buck when he got home after lunch. I'd spoken to their ranch partner and promised that we’d get him home by 3 in the afternoon so he could help put hay into the loft. The process is pretty basic. They put up their hay in small square bales that are tied with two strings each. The bales weigh around 50 pounds each. Once the hay is baled, a driver pulls a trailer through the field. Two teens walk alongside the trailer, pick up bales from the field, and place them on the trailer. Two more stack them on the trailer. The two stackers have to be tall enough to stack the bales five rows high. Our grandson isn’t quite tall enough for the fifth row, so he is left with the job of picking bales and putting them on the deck of the trailer. It is hard work, and when the trailer is full, it's a short trip from the field to their barn. They have an elevator to take the bales from the trailer to the hay loft where they are stacked. In the winter, they can feed the hay directly from the loft by simply cutting and removing the plastic twine and pushing the hay into the feed troughs below. Our son’s farm is relatively small, and they usually winter only four or five cows, so they only have to feed a couple of bales a day. They have extra hay to sell each year.

I bucked bales the summer I turned 14, and I can remember how tired I got. We each had a one-gallon bleach bottle that had been rinsed out, filled with water, and placed in the freezer. The ice would melt throughout the day, and we’d drink the cold water. I emptied that one-gallon container every day. I also ended the summer in good physical condition.

There was a big difference between my experience and my grandson’s. We were hauling hay from fields my cousin had leased, which were about an hour from the home place, at least in the old truck we were using. That meant we had an hour to ride and rest before unloading and repeating the process. That meant only two trips per day. Our truck was smaller than the trailer used at our son’s place, so each load was probably only two-thirds of the loads they are making with the trailer. We did have to toss the bales higher onto the truck bed, but once you get the technique of swinging the bale, the height isn’t too much of a challenge, even for a short person like me. My grandson and I are the same height right now, so he’ll be taller than I by next year.

It has been pretty warm here, so they have been bucking hay for two or three hours in the evening, giving our grandson most of his days free while still being able to make a few dollars of spending money.

It has been a long time since I was a teenager, and the world has changed significantly. I had a bank account, but debit cards didn’t exist. I wrote checks. Our grandson uses a plastic card for all of his withdrawals. I received a paper statement in the mail and balanced my checkbook. He goes online to check his balance. Although his account is strictly monitored and he has limits on where he can spend money online, he is allowed to make some online purchases. I couldn’t have imagined online shopping when I was his age. I haven’t kept up with music and musicians, and often don’t know the bands he talks about. There is a lot in his world that is unfamiliar to me, and there are many things from my childhood that are ancient history to him. The bales I bucked were tied with sisal twine. He grabs plastic string when he bucks a bale.

But we both know the feeling of lying in bed with our shoulders throbbing. We know what it feels like to be so tired that it's a relief to have the truck filled to get a break, no matter how short. We know the feeling of working so hard that you don’t talk, and the relief of stopping work to talk, even for a few minutes. We both know what it is like to be so thirsty that a single glass of water isn’t enough. And we both know that when you work outside in the sun, a bit of shade and a breath of breeze are enough.

Susan and I didn’t raise our children on a farm. They didn’t learn to work from farm chores. Still, they both became hard workers. Our son comes home from a long day at work and spends an hour bucking and stacking hay in the evening before dinner. In the winter, he feeds a couple of bales to the cows before heading off to the office. More importantly, he is giving his children opportunities to work and to learn the benefits of working.

Childcare experts write articles about the importance of getting children away from screens and outdoors. Our grandchildren are growing up with outdoor chores built into their lives. In addition to stacking hay, there is firewood to stack, potatoes to dig, and plenty of other chores. In the winter, bringing in firewood and feeding animals is part of their routine. They have a computer and are learning the ways of contemporary society, but they also live on a farm that beckons them outdoors every day.

I’m grateful that our grandson and I share similar experiences. I hope he one day finds that kind of connection with his grandchildren.

We had four pieces of camping equipment in our family when I was a child. The first was an eight-person wall tent. The tent was erected with two vertical poles and a ridge pole between them. There were quite a few ropes and stakes that held everything up. There was no floor in the tent, but the canvas was waterproof unless you touched it from the inside. The second was a Coleman white gas lantern with fragile mantles. We always carried a few extra mantles that glowed once they burned to ash. The third was a two-burner white gas stove. Both the stove and the lantern required pumping them up to make pressure for the gas to burn. The fourth piece of camping equipment was a homemade picnic box with places to store plates, cups, silverware, cooking and serving utensils. We car camped as a family and I have fond memories of those trips, even one when it rained all night and several of us got sick, probably from food poisoning. We had stopped at a cafe for supper instead of cooking our own and it turned out to be a mistake. Perhaps the hamburger was less than fresh.

My first piece of personal camping gear was a boy scout canteen. It was metal and had a canvas cover with a strap so it could be carried over the shoulder. Later I got a knapsack. I built my first pack frame and carried the knapsack on that frame. The frame was made out of laminations of soft wood according to plans that appeared in Boys Life Magazine. By the time I went on camping trips with our scout troop, I had my own sleeping bag. It wasn’t a fancy, lightweight model, but it worked unless it got too cold.

Later, we backpacked with minimal equipment. We didn’t have a tent, so we built a lean-to out of a ground cloth. We had a simple kit of cooking and eating utensils and I carried a hatchet for cutting firewood. We made simple fire rings that we cleaned up before moving on and dug shallow privy holes to bury our waste. Everything else we packed out what we had packed in, which usually involved a few empty cans.

Before we were married, I bought a backpack as a gift for Susan. She never packed with that pack. I always carried it while she used my old pack. It probably isn’t the only time I purchased something I wanted aa a gift for her. Nonetheless, she agreed to marry me and we are now in our sixth decade of camping together.

When our children were little we purchased a good four-person tent with a vestibule. It was compact and served us well for decades. As they entered their teenage years we purchased a used popup trailer that had two beds, a simple dining area, and a small galley with a sink and a two-burner cooktop.

Around the time our children headed off on their own adventures, we got a popup pickup camper. We could leave the bed made up when we traveled and had a simple bathroom with a shower. We camped in that camper across the US and Canada. On summer we lived in the camper for a month as we traveled.

When grandchildren arrived, we sold the pickup camper and bought a pull trailer with four bunks at one end and a double bed at the other. Between the sleeping quarters is a kitchen, a bathroom with a shower an ample dining area and a sofa. It is a pretty luxurious vehicle. Most of the years we’ve owned the trailer, we’ve towed it multiple thousands of miles. The year after we retired, we pulled it form Washington to South Carolina and back. The 6,000-mile trip involved lots of interesting camping adventures.

We have never been limited by equipment when it comes to camping. Even in the early days before we owned a tent, we always had adequate shelter, a way to cook our meals, and a way to take care of our needs. We also had a sense of adventure and joy as we explored the world around us.

Lately I have begun to realize that what I seek in our next change in camping equipment is to downsize. We’re camping with three of our grandchildren right now and we’ve got short trips with grandchildren planned for the next two weeks. Getting ready for these trips involved removing a cover and pulling the camper out of the barn, getting it washed, filling water tanks and draining antifreeze, making sure that all of the systems were working and giving the interior a cleaning. The camper had to be stocked with groceries and made ready for te trip. Then I had to hitch it to our pickup and use caution while pulling it. When we arrived at the campground, I had to back it into our camping space. We are not connected to electricity or water in this location, so I had to make sure that our batteries worked and we had enough water in our tank.

While we have never been limited by a lack of equipment when it comes to camping, I realize that if we want to continue to camp in the next decades of our lives, we may be burdened by too much equipment. I suspect that I won’t want to be backing up a 25 foot trailer with a long-bed diesel pickup when I am in my eighties. There is no rush and no pressure to make changes, but it makes sense that somehow we need to shed a bit of our equipment in order to keep camping. We probably don’t need a jackknife sofa and two sets of bunkbeds for grandchildren on every trip. Our grandchildren are quickly going up. Our oldest grandson is starting to get a bit big for the kids beds. Soon they will be able to go on camping trips of their own and probably will start out with a tent and a sleeping bag.

It never has been about the equipment. It always has been about the adventure.

For a few years, I have been tending several colonies of domestic honeybees. The hives are at our son’s farm, a couple of miles from our house. I have a spreadsheet on my computer that tracks my expenses and records the amount of honey I harvest. I am not disciplined at tracking my expenses, and sometimes forget to record them. I do know that I am not producing a profit. I spend more money on the bees than the honey they produce is worth. My goal is not profit. I don’t keep bees as a source of income. Nonetheless, tending bees is considered an agricultural practice by the Washington State Department of Agriculture. My colonies are registered, and I hold a state license to keep them.

One of the sayings that I often repeat is: “The only reason to keep bees is because you are fascinated by them. If you want honey, make friends with a beekeeper.”

In ancient times, bees weren’t kept. Wild colonies were discovered, and people developed techniques for harvesting honey. Many of those techniques involved killing the bees. At some point, those who observed bees began to develop methods of keeping the bees in a predictable location. They discovered designs for hives that attracted bees and allowed for the harvesting of a portion of the honey without disrupting the brood. They learned about how new queens are produced and colonies are split.

In nature, honeybee hives are generally located in trees, off the ground. Early beekeepers sought locations to keep their hives off the ground. Church roofs and towers became sought-after locations. In the process, a tradition of priests and pastors keeping bees formed. A Congregational Minister developed the most popular design of modern beehives. Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth was a nineteenth-century minister in Massachusetts who recognized the concept of bee space. In hives, bees leave a minimum space that is not sealed to allow them to move about within the hive. Earlier beekeepers recognized this space, but Langstroth utilized the concept to design rectangular frames inserted into boxes in a manner that allows the bees to leave the frames separate, enabling the beekeeper to withdraw an individual frame. The standard in commercial beekeeping is a box of ten frames. An active hive typically consists of two deep boxes, each containing a total of 10 frames. Once the colony is established, a grate that is large enough to allow worker bees to pass through but fine enough to prevent the queen from doing so is placed on top of the two boxes, with another box, generally shallower, called a super, on top. The bees use the upper chamber to store honey. Because the queen cannot enter that space, no eggs are laid in the cells in the super. The beekeepers remove the frames from the super and harvest the honey. This system is known as a Langstroth hive.

I have traditional Langstroth hives and one horizontal hive. It is the same principle, but instead of stacking the boxes, a single set of frames is placed side by side with the queen excluder inserted as a divider in the hive.

Beekeeping is a craft that is often passed down from one generation to the next. Many beekeepers learned their skills from a parent who kept bees. Commercial operations are often family businesses with multiple generations working together. Beekeeping as a career requires a great deal of practical knowledge but less formal schooling than some other careers. However, commercial beekeeping has been threatened by several factors in recent years. One of the significant problems is the varroa mite. The tiny creatures can result in the demise of a colony within a short period of time. There are chemical treatments, but commercial and amateur apiaries often see losses as high as 35 - 40% despite treatment. This is frustrating for amateurs, and it removes the profit margin from commercial operations.

Commercial beekeepers often don’t make the majority of their profit from honey sales. They provide bees for the pollination of other crops and are paid to place colonies in farmers’ fields. Bees are often trucked from one location to another. It is common for bees to spend the winter in Arizona among almond trees and summer in Washington in alfalfa fields. The costs of transportation must be considered in a business plan. Recent years of drought have resulted in fewer almond producers having sufficient water to sustain their orchards. This has resulted in fewer payments for pollinating bees, thereby reducing the potential for profit from beekeeping.

I have no interest in commercial beekeeping. So far, I have endured the losses of colonies and replaced them by purchasing bees from a local source with connections to California honeybee producers. I do appreciate being able to harvest honey for our family’s use and gifts to friends.

Mostly, however, I am fascinated by the bees. Tending the bees requires some effort in the winter. I feed the bees syrup and ensure that the hives are well-insulated. I have some passive solar heaters that help the bees survive the coldest days. Winters are mild here, and the work of tending bees is light.

Honeybees are unlikely to sting away from the colony. Stings only occur when a bee is stepped on or becomes entangled in a person’s hair or is somehow otherwise threatened. When the neighbors complain that they are being stung by my bees, I put up wasp traps around their place. The offending insects are wasps, not the bees from my colonies. Around the colony, however, it can be a different matter. I try to gauge the stress of the colony when approaching it. If the bees are flying directly at me, as I approach, I know that they are not in a happy mood. Sometimes the best thing to do is to walk away and come back at another time. I like to tend the bees in the mornings or evenings when temperatures are cooler. I have protective clothing that allows me to work with bees when they are more aggressive. I know beekeepers who get stung hundreds of times each year. I am rarely stung, less than 10 times per year. It is another advantage of not being a commercial producer. I can walk away from my hives when I need to.

Chain grocery stores often sell honey from China, Argentina, Brazil, and other countries due to the lower cost. Like other agricultural products, you sometimes have to pay more for locally produced goods. Although I rarely purchase honey, when I do, I make sure it comes from my neighborhood.

There is a trope we often repeat at our house when a trip to the grocery store is needed. I’ll say, “I can remember three things, but if there are four or more, I need a list.” It seems to be true. Although most trips to the grocery store involve more than three items, there are times when there is just one or two things that were forgotten on a recent shopping trip or that we have consumed at a greater rate than anticipated. For example, if our grandchildren stop by for lunch, we might make sandwiches and use as much bread in one meal as Susan and I use in a week. There are two tiny grocery stores just a few blocks from our home, and a larger supermarket-style store about five miles away. Unless we need a lot of groceries, I often ride my bike to any of those stores.

The thing about my claim that I can remember three things, but need a list if there are more, is that it has been true for a long time, for all of our married life. It doesn’t apply to just groceries. I keep all kinds of lists. I have a task list related to my writing projects and a different one for household chores I want to accomplish. I keep lists of possible ideas for essays for my journal, of prompts for poems I hope to write, and of occasions of prayer. I keep lists on paper and also on an application on my smartphone. We have a running joke about keeping a list of the lists we have so that we don’t forget one. Most of the time, if one of my lists goes missing, the items on the list are retrieved and added to other lists. Then, when an old list is discovered, it is no longer needed.

Another practice I have when it comes to lists is that when a list gets short with most items crossed off, I will consolidate the items into a new list, sometimes combining with items from other lists, sometimes adding additional items to the list from my memory.

I was interested and a bit relieved to read an article about Natasha Rajah, who is a psychology professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research indicates that the ability to retain memory remains intact in old age. In the article, she said that the use of lists can help improve memory.

At age 72, I am certain that my memory is not as good as it once was. However, I am unsure when the decline began. I often joke that I reached the peak of my intellectual powers at age 25, but that joke is a bit of self-deprecation about my overconfidence and inflated ego when I was in my mid-20s. I’ve developed a modicum of humility since. I may not be more or less intelligent, but I am more able to admit my mistakes. It turns out, however, that there is evidence that there are a few mental powers that do reach their peak in a person’s mid-twenties. The prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain important for encoding and retrieving memories, does not become fully developed until a person reaches their mid-twenties. It declines with age and shrinks slightly over time. This process begins around the age of 30. Peak prefrontal cortex function occurs between the ages of 24 and 30 for most people. Maybe I was smarter back then.

However, I am not aware of a specific point when my memory began to decline. I do notice some signs of aging. I find it harder to memorize certain things than I used to when I was younger. I frequently memorize portions of scripture or story outlines for preaching. When I was very young, I could memorize lines for a play and recall them later with ease. Now, when I want to learn something, I generally use the technique of writing it out over and over as opposed to just reading it. This may be due, in part, to having accumulated a lot of memories. For example, I’ve read three or four times as many books now as I did at age 25. I’ve met many more people and registered many more names in my memory. I’ve opened more computer accounts and learned more passwords. I’ve had more addresses and memorized house numbers. There is more information stored in my brain than was once the case.

I often struggle to access a particular memory. A memory might include specific details such as the name of an individual, the order of events, or the location of an event. The metaphor for this type of memory is “tip of the tongue.” I know the memory is there, but I can’t recall it in the moment. Often stopping forcing the memory, relaxing, and even shifting to another task will allow the memory to surface. Those are memories that continue to exist, but sometimes I cannot access them at the moment I want them. I’m pretty sure that this phenomenon is a bit frustrating to family members and friends who are much younger than I. When I am with people around my age, I find a lot of sympathy for those momentary lapses of memory.

It is good to know that brain researchers agree that people with healthy brains maintain the ability to form new memories and learn new skills. I am sure that belonging to writing and poetry groups is helping me develop my skills as a poet and essayist.

Psychologists emphasize that our brains are not independent from the rest of our bodies. Our brains are not limited to the physical organ contained in our skull. They are connected to a complex network of nerves throughout our bodies. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind. This is not to say that a physical disability always results in a mental disability. Instead, our brains are dependent on circulation. Healthy lungs and a healthy heart are required to keep the brain functioning. I have noticed that when I struggle with a memory, taking a walk or going for a bike ride can help me move past an impasse and recall what I need.

I plan to teach myself to accurately remember five items without a list when I ride my bike to the grocery store. I think it is an achievable goal even at 72 years old.

We live in Bigfoot country. There are stories of sightings of the large, hairy, ape-like creature throughout the Pacific Northwest. Those stories go back before the settlement by Europeans. My favorite name for the beast is Sasquatch. That word comes from the Coast Salish word “Sasq’ets”, meaning “wild man” or “hairy man.” Sasquatch is not to be confused with Yeti, a similar creature reported to inhabit the Himalayan mountain range in Asia. Stories of Sasquatch sightings are familiar around here. After all, we live northwest of the locations where the television series “Twin Peaks” was filmed.

We frequently see a man in a Sasquatch costume walking around the streets of Blaine. We know it is a man in a costume because it is human-sized. The beast of legend is reported to be much larger than a grown human. There is a giant sculpture of Sasquatch at the visitor center in downtown Blaine, a few miles from our house. Locals have a lot of fun with the creature, which is covered with fur in the summer. The fur has to be removed in the winter to prevent mould in our rainy season, but the underlying sculpture is crafted to appear to be a hairy creature. There are seasonal costumes for the Blaine Sasquatch, including special outfits for Halloween, Christmas, and the 4th of July.

Other than artwork, I have not seen a Sasquatch even though I frequently walk in the North Cascades where the creature is purported to live. I don’t expect ever to see one. As I have explained to my grandchildren, the fact that I don’t believe in Sasquatch prevents me from seeing Sasquatch. It is the same thing with ghosts. Because I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t think I’ll ever see one.

I am well entertained by creatures that do exist. I like to watch the bunnies, gulls, crows, eagles, herons, hummingbirds, and songbirds that make frequent appearances as I walk and bike around the neighborhood. I’ve made friends with the dogs of several of our neighbors. I know the names of some of the dogs whose owners’ names I have not yet learned. I agree with the dogs in the fenced yards around here that their owners don’t take them for walks often enough, and I know the barks of several dogs whose yards are next to a path we take to go to the beach. A couple have dug under their fences enough for them to peer at passersby under the boards. I talk to them as we pass.

Some days, I take my camera and a long lens when I ride my bike and stop to take pictures. Great Blue Herons and Bald Eagles are among my most frequent subjects. I love images of birds in flight and occasionally manage to capture photos of multiple birds together.

However, there have been several new sightings of Sasquatch in Whatcom County, and I can confirm at least a couple of them. In the middle of last week, murals appeared on the garage doors of our next-door neighbor, featuring orcas and teal-colored Sasquatch creatures. I might not have recognized them as Sasquatch. They are quite stylized. However, the murals are part of a series by a Seattle artist who is quite famous for his murals around the area. Ryan Henry Ward signs his artwork with a printed “Henry.” He has painted murals at the Subaru dealership where I have work done on my car and on several other buildings in the area. One of my favorite murals is the one he painted on the inside of the pedestrian tunnel under the railroad at Laramie State Park. That mural is a memorial to his brother, who died at the age of 25.

According to his website, Henry is on a creative mission. Beginning this year, he plans to paint one thousand Sasquatch Heads on garage doors, walls, homes, and public spaces across the Pacific Northwest. He has no shortage of places to paint. Over 1,500 homes and businesses had signed up to receive the murals by the deadline for enrollment in May. Henry has a significant social media presence with videos on YouTube, an official Facebook Page, and an Instagram account where photos of his murals can be found.

An article on the King News website says that he can paint as many as ten murals a day. He chose his version of Sasquatch because he loves the creature and because he believes that the paintings can help unite the people of our region. "It's my favorite thing to do," he said. "On a bigger scale, I kind of see it as a Pacific Northwest connection. I just feel like right now we just need to be more connected. This is like my favorite thing to do. Yeah, I can do this guy in my sleep." 

The Sasquatch project is part of Ward’s commitment to public art outside of museums. In previous years, the artist has engaged in several other street art campaigns. One such campaign featured a mythical bird wearing a shirt with the words, “You can’t unsee me” on it. The Bird Alley mural and street art campaign responded to the need of unhoused and other marginalized people to be seen and recognized in our communities.

In addition to Sasquatch, Ward paints other animals, including octopus, fish, moose, and orcas. There are some murals, like the one outside of Flatstick Pub in Bellingham, that depict the whole Sasquatch creature. The murals on our neighbor’s garage show just the head and shoulders. Ward’s version of the beast is cartoonish and distinct from the sculpture at the visitor center. That’s one of the advantages of artwork that focuses on a mythological creature. The artist has the freedom to imagine the creature however they like. Ward’s choice of colors for the creature is quite different than many other artists. I think that the Sasquatch heads on our neighbor’s garage doors are colors chosen to coordinate with the paint on the house.

It is all in good fun and a pleasant addition to our area. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for more Sasquatch sightings. I don’t expect to see a real beast, but for me, a mural with the signature “Henry” is delightful enough.

We’ve had some memorable vacations over the years. Pastors sometimes receive mild criticism for the amount of vacation that is typically negotiated into the terms of call. For our working lives, we almost always had four weeks of vacation each year. Most of the people we served had only two weeks of vacation. When asked about it, I sometimes would respond with a question: “Would you trade all of your weekends for two more weeks of vacation?” Weekends are more common for pastors these days. I know several who take Fridays and Saturdays off each week. However, we did not. We generally considered Mondays to be our day off each week, but worked on Mondays if there was a funeral, a special church event, or another reason. Our family generally planned special events for Thanksgiving because it was typical for us to take Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off, giving us the only three-day weekend of the year.

There are many justifications for the amount of vacation we took. What we quickly learned after becoming ordained is that the nature of the work we did was demanding, and we often neglected time off. Remembering the Sabbath and taking time for rest is a serious commandment, and we had to learn how to honor it. Some years, we took our vacation in segments, taking a week here or there throughout the year. Other years, we took an entire month off. Although Susan and I are both ordained ministers and we worked together for the same church, often job sharing a single call, we still had to make accommodations for our children’s schedules as they grew through various stages of their lives.

One fall, after our children were grown, we used our vacation time to visit several national parks. Our daughter was attending college in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and our son was living in Los Angeles, California. Between visiting our children, we drove through Utah and Arizona and visited some of the National Parks along the way. We had a tent and car camped. In those days, campground reservations were generally not needed during the off-season, so we had some flexibility about where to stay.

After visiting Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, we camped near the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We planned to set up our camp and drive to the North Rim to view it at sunset. The next morning, we would drive around to the South Rim and view the canyon from that perspective. The plan didn’t work out because a wildfire had closed the North Rim viewing points. The smoke was not blowing toward the campground, and we had a pleasant and relaxing evening before proceeding to view the canyon from the South Rim the next day.

I have been thinking of that trip because a rapidly growing wildfire is currently causing the North Rim viewpoints to be closed. The fire is quickly increasing. At one point, it expanded more than 10 times in less than 24 hours. The National Park Service has evacuated visitors and staff from the fire zones. It has been very hot and dry in the region. Daytime temperatures have exceeded 100 degrees, and the Park Service is advising against hiking into the Grand Canyon.

I am grateful that we have been able to visit some of the famous natural wonders. We have explored the wonders of Yellowstone, marveled at Niagara Falls, walked around Uluru in Australia, stood on the Columbia ice fields in Alberta, peered into a volcano in Costa Rica, and wandered in Acadia National Park. We have had many experiences of natural beauty in public lands in several different countries. We have been fortunate to travel.

As great as it has been to see such beauty and to experience nature in those places, one of the unexpected gifts of retirement for me has been the discovery of such beauty right in the place where I live. It is a lesson that we have been learning for a long time. Before our retirement, we lived for 25 years in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Deer had their fawns in our yard. Wild turkeys crossed our lawn each day. Summer thunderstorms treated us with spectacular rainbows. Buffalo, Elk, Big Horn sheep, and mountain lions gave us glimpses. The iris and sunflowers in our garden treated us with indescribable beauty.

These days, we often walk the same route each day. Around our neighborhood, down the hill to the sea, along the beach, and back up to our house. It seems that each trip involves the discovery of something that we haven’t previously seen. Hummingbirds clustered around flowers, new blossoms in the yards of our neighbors, tiny baby bunnies, eagles overhead, and great blue herons fishing in the shallows are among the many beauties we witness. The ocean is constantly changing with different levels as the tides roll in and out, different lighting as the sun rises and sets, and various moods as fog descends and lifts. The seagulls entertain us with their clam-smashing drops from high, followed by a quick descent to eat the contents before another gull comes along. There is always something new to discover. There is always beauty to behold.

Our grandchildren have been excellent teachers to me as I have learned to slow down and look more closely. Our granddaughter discovered a mason bee nest and showed me where it was located. Our grandson helped me pull weeds, but instead of tossing them into the bucket to go to the compost, he examined the roots of each one, shaking the soil off and spreading out the thread-like extensions of fine roots. They are fascinating and beautiful when one invests the time to look closely.

The glory of creation is all around us, and we are not separate from that glory. Our bodies are composed of the same elements as the world around us. We are constantly exchanging air, water, and other elements with the wider creation. As wonderful as it is to see the grand vistas that have become tourist destinations, we don’t have to travel to behold the wonders of the world. They surround us wherever we are.

Our daughter-in-law and grandchildren dug some potatoes yesterday. New potatoes and garden peas dictated the menu for dinner last night. I couldn’t resist potatoes and peas in white gravy. I made country-fried chicken. The menu would have been complete had I baked a few biscuits, but we had a small loaf of French bread and some Gouda cheese, so I made bruschetta with store-bought tomatoes. The basil was fresh from our plant, but our tomatoes aren’t ripe yet. Even better than the taste of the food was the taste of nostalgia that the menu brought to mind.

Both my father and Susan’s father grew up in North Dakota, and both wanted new potatoes and peas as soon as the peas were ready to pick. It was Susan’s father, however, whose story taught me to appreciate peas and new potatoes every summer.

Like all of my stories, there is a story behind the story. The story behind the story is of Susan’s grandfather, the father of her father. And like many family stories, I am not sure of exact dates or even the precise order of events. His name was Clarence, and I met him around the time he turned eighty, hearing only some of the stories of his life. Clarence was born in the last decade of the nineteenth century. He and his wife settled onto a dryland farm in central North Dakota, where they raised their two children. They faced some hard times. The Great Depression was not kind to farmers. Markets dried up. Crops failed. Dust storms ravaged the plains. Somehow, they survived. Clarence’s wife taught school. He found various jobs.

Sometime around the start of the Second World War, Clarence suffered a heart attack. I don’t know the exact timing, and I don’t know the details. The only story of the event Clarence ever related to me was that the doctor who attended him at the time told Clarence that the attack was severe enough that he didn’t have long to live. Having met Clarence, I would be surprised if he went to the doctor when his heart symptoms started. I imagine he felt a twinge of pain, consulted the farmer’s almanac, and mixed up a bit of tonic of cayenne, vinegar, honey, and aspirin rather than consulting a doctor.

When the attack occurred and forced him to consult the doctor, he was advised to go south to a warmer climate. When Clarence told me the story, he was expressing a bit of skepticism about doctors and ended his story by saying that he attended the funeral of that doctor. It is clear that if the doctor had predicted that Clarence’s life was nearly over, he was wrong. Clarence was still alive 40 years later. He lived to the age of 92 and got to meet his great-grandson.

However, Clarence did take the doctor’s advice about going south. He spent at least one winter in Arizona, leaving the farm behind in the care of his young adult son. They were raising turkeys at the time, shipping them live on the train. I guess that the war effort provided a market for all kinds of fresh meat, and turkeys became a reasonable cash crop for a small acreage farm emerging from the hard times of the depression. I’ve seen a few pictures of the hundreds of turkeys in the farm yard. Clarence’s son, who 30 years later became my father-in-law, ran the farm single-handedly while his parents went to Arizona.

Clarence didn’t stay in Arizona. He came back to small-town North Dakota life, had the farmhouse moved into town, and served in a variety of positions until he retired. When I married into the family, one of the staples of their life was potatoes. Clarence ate potatoes three meals a day. Fried potatoes for breakfast, boiled potatoes at lunch, sometimes in potato salad, and baked or mashed potatoes for dinner. I think the practice of eating potatoes at every meal was a long-standing habit in his life.

During the winter, Clarence went to Arizona, and the root cellar was filled with potatoes. His son ate potatoes all through the winter. Potatoes keep well in the cool, dark cellar, which was deep enough to keep them from freezing. But as time passes, some of the eyes begin to grow. Some of the potatoes will become seed for the following year’s crop. Some potatoes in the cellar develop soft spots and begin to rot a bit. If you are eating them, they need to be washed and have the bad spots cut out. Safe food can be harvested from a bin of stale potatoes, but it takes a bit of work.

When spring finally comes, which can be slow in North Dakota, the ground finally thaws, and root crops can be planted. The potatoes go into the ground and will emerge in their own time, depending on how warm the spring is. The potatoes can get by on subsoil moisture and don’t need much tending until the plants have emerged. Peas are another spring crop. Dried peas from the previous year are planted and are among the first crops in the garden to flower and produce food. Sometime in late June and early July, the peas are ready to be picked. Although most of the potatoes will be left in the ground for a month or more, a few small potatoes can be dug.

After a winter of eating potatoes from the cellar, those first new potatoes must have tasted wonderful to my father-in-law. Wash and boil the potatoes with the skin on. Add the shelled peas to the same pot. In the skillet, melt butter, whisk in some flour, season with salt and pepper, and add milk while stirring until you’ve got gravy. Drain the potatoes and peas and stir them into the cream sauce, and you’ve got a meal worth remembering.

It's been nearly forty years since Clarence died and fifteen since his son died. I tell their stories to our grandchildren, but I don’t know all of the details. We don’t have a root cellar, and while the garden at the farm produces good potatoes, they don’t last us year-round. We buy potatoes from the store during the winter. We live in a milder climate and have an easier life than Dakota farmers in the 1930s and 40s. But when our grandchildren dig potatoes on their farm and offer me a few fresh from the soil, I appreciate the taste of a new crop in ways that would be impossible without the stories of their great-great-grandfather.

We used to sing a camp song that involved campers hitting their chests to make percussive sounds. Campers would complain that it hurt to hit themselves. I began to introduce the song by telling campers that they didn’t need to hit themselves, and if they did, to be gentle with themselves. “If you pound on our chest and it hurts,” I would say, “please stop hitting yourself so hard.” Eventually, I stopped leading that song. There are plenty of other camp songs, and I didn’t want the process of singing camp songs to be unpleasant for anyone. It isn’t the only time I’ve witnessed children and youth engaging in behavior that causes them pain. Our daughter learned to walk when she was very short. At one point, she could stand up under our dining room table without hitting her head. Then she grew. One day, she stood up under the table, bumped her head, and broke into tears at the pain. I felt like laughing and crying at the same time. I didn’t want her to hit her head. I knew that it hurt, but I also knew that she had to learn that she was the one who had caused the pain, and she could control it.

I was thinking of children and youth who cause pain to themselves and then complain as if the pain had been caused by someone else earlier this week when it was reported in the news that Republican members of the House of Representatives Tom tiffany and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin; and Brad Instead, Michelle Fishbach, Peter Stauber, and Tom Emmer of Minnesota, wrote a letter to Canada’s ambassador in Washington complaining about wildfire smoke drifting from Canadian fires into their states.

First of all, shame on all six congresspersons for trivializing the pain and suffering of people who are in the midst of devastating fires. Entire communities have had to be evacuated. Many people have had to evacuate multiple times. Moreover, many firefighters from the US have gone north to help combat the fires. Complaining that the smoke hampers the outdoor activities of their constituents without considering the suffering of those who have lost their homes and faced even more ill health effects of wildfire is juvenile.

Even worse, the six lawmakers have all voted for legislation that cuts back efforts to control global warming, provide alternatives to carbon emissions from fossil fuels, while increasing subsidies and tax benefits to some of the world’s worst polluters. While other members of the Republican party, including the president, have made claims that wildfires are the result of poor forest management, there is no evidence to support those claims. Canada has some of the world's most advanced forest management practices. However, it is a vast country with extensive natural forests. And no nation can control the weather by itself.

Congresspersons, don’t go crying to Canada when you are responsible for the pain and suffering.

International boundaries do not restrict the spread of wildfire smoke. Increasing the number of agents on the border will not stop the smoke. And for the information of those misinformed congresspersons, wildfire smoke goes both ways. People in Canada have had to limit their outdoor activities and have suffered health effects due to wildfire smoke from fires in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana.

The international community is aware of the adverse effects of wildfires and has taken some steps to address the issue. The 2025 G7 summit in June produced the Kananaskis Wildfire Charter, which pledged to boost global cooperation in preventing, fighting, and recovering from wildfires. The agreement includes “Encouraging research to better understand local conditions to support and scale-up ecological restoration, finding best methods for sustainable forest management to help prevent and mitigate wildfires, including in rapidly shifting conditions, and using community-based, whole of society approaches that incorporate local and, where opportunities exist, Indigenous practices, and increased participation by women.”

The statement also includes the following pledge: “We will align with commitments to halt and reverse deforestation and forest and land degradation by 2030 globally.” The statement invited non-G7 countries, including Australia, India, Mexico, the Republic of Korea, and South Africa, to join their global efforts.

Addressing the dangerous effects of global warming will require an international response. No single country is the cause, and no single country can solve the issues of the worldwide climate crisis. A handful of legislators pounding their chests and crying about the pain does nothing to address the real issues.

We live in a time of unprecedented polarization in US politics. The world is witnessing multiple actions where legislators put party loyalty over the concerns of the people they serve. Although the letter was addressed to Canada’s ambassador in Washington, it was primarily intended for a domestic audience, serving as a means of grandstanding. Voters in the United States, however, are intelligent and capable of understanding that such a letter does nothing to address the root causes of dangerous wildfires. It is just a group of lawmakers acting like children and pounding their chests.

Do they know the camp song?

In case they are as ignorant of the world's realities, here are a few lessons for lawmakers. While the United States is a large country, it isn’t the largest. Russia, Canada, and China all have more area than the US. The fourth-largest country in the world, however, is the second-largest emitter of CO2. Energy consumption in the US far exceeds that of Canada. The conditions that underlie the increased frequency of wildfires cannot be addressed without changing U.S. energy policy. The lawmakers may also benefit from understanding that while Canada is a world leader in forest management policy, the US has significantly cut back support for its agencies that manage forests and provide research into long-term management solutions for forests. Those cuts have been supported by the votes of those six members of Congress.

I am not a fan of wildfire smoke. I’ve had to change my plans due to the unhealthy air outside. I find smoky skies to be depressing. And I don’t see a group of reactionary lawmakers blowing smoke to help.

Like almost everyone else I know, I keep trying to figure out the Internet and how to use it. When I was working, I managed websites for our church and several nonprofit organizations with which I was affiliated. I created my website where I publish my journal. I have discovered a few trusted news sources, and I appreciate the way the Internet has given me access to information I might not have otherwise been able to find.

One example of how I use the Internet is as a dictionary. I used to keep an unabridged dictionary at hand, but these days I use my Internet-connected phone to look up words. I can easily navigate to several different dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary, and Webster's Dictionary. I have a favorite online thesaurus and routinely use an online rhyming dictionary.

The Internet, however, is not a solution to all the issues and problems we face, and I have begun to experiment with ways to reduce my use of the Internet. For several months, I’ve been intentionally decreasing my online purchases. I canceled my Amazon Prime membership and removed my credit card information, which had enabled one-click shopping on Amazon. I did the same thing with the Target website, although it was more difficult on that particular one. It appears to continue storing deleted information. I checked, and although I deleted “ship to” addresses from that site, my default address remains one where I no longer live. Additionally, when I deleted my contact information, it continued to retain an email address that is no longer active. My account on that website is so confusing that I don’t dare order anything there, fearing it will be shipped to the wrong address.

I have discovered some excellent alternatives to online shopping. My favorite local independent bookstore is a great place to browse books before making a purchase. And, when I do need to order a book, I can do so on their website without having to pay until the book arrives at the store. Although they have a feature that allows books to be sent directly to my home, I’ve found that I prefer having them shipped to the store. It gives me a reason to spend time looking at the books on their shelves.

One large online supplier of parts and accessories for recreational vehicles has a warehouse store not far from my home. I can go to the store and select the merchandise I want by looking directly at their inventory. Shopping at a regular store also works well for bicycle parts and accessories, hardware, lumber, and other items I purchase. Here in the Pacific Northwest, there are specialty shops for various types of lumber that do not have an online presence, but offer a large selection of different products when you visit their store.

I am currently working offline to create a new website to replace this one. I’ll still have the same URL, but I hope to simplify the site and change the way that I archive my essays. I confess that part of the motivation for the change is marketing. I have a book scheduled for publication later this year, and my publisher is working with me to help with marketing. It turns out that there is more to being an author than writing. I am, however, seeking ways to circumvent some of the conventional methods of online marketing. To sell books, one cannot ignore that approximately 50% of all book sales are made on Amazon. However, I am working with the publisher to ensure that the book will be available from other sources, including Barnes & Noble, Libro, independent bookstores, and libraries.

However, some aspects of the Internet are beyond my control. The modern internet continues to be overrun with ads, hateful trolls, aggressive algorithms, AI-generated garbage, and a lack of privacy. Here are some of my complaints:

Search engines are much slower and less likely to reveal the information sought than they were a couple of decades ago. This is because search engines exist to produce income through advertising. If I go to a search engine, enter my query, and immediately get the information I need, I would spend less time on the Internet and be exposed to fewer advertisements. Since the search engine generates revenue through ads, algorithms are written into it to produce less accurate search results, keeping users on the site longer and exposing them to more advertising. Cory Doctorow coined the word “enshittification” to describe this process of intentionally making search engines less accurate and less reliable. Now, not only do the algorithms steer users away from reliable sources, but most default to inaccurate AI-generated answers. The first response to most queries is often a bit of AI-generated content. I quickly scroll past that to actual websites, searching for sources that I can trust.

I’m not the only one who is discovering that the Internet is not good at everything. There have recently been dramatic decreases in the use of online dating sites. People seeking meaningful relationships are becoming aware that 10% or fewer marriages come from online dating. Relationships that begin online are less stable and less likely to lead to a commitment. The best way to meet another person and form a lasting relationship is (surprise, surprise) in person. Churches and volunteer organizations are much better ways to meet prospective partners. Internet dating services encourage looking at the surface and discourage getting to know another person in depth.

While using the Internet is part of modern job sites, most online applications do not result in interviews. Employers are overwhelmed by the number of online applicants and use AI to screen them. A human does not review the majority of online applications. Personal connections remain important in successful job searches.

The internet remains a significant aspect of modern life, but learning to navigate its less desirable elements can enhance the user experience. While I intend to use the internet to connect with friends around the world, I also continue to learn about other ways to make and maintain relationships offline. Like many different aspects of life, balance is crucial.

Christina Baldwin has written a delightfully complex novel, “The Beekeeper’s Question: Love and Honey, War and Reckoning, A Novel of WWII.” People who know me recommended the book to me because it is set in Montana, and some of its principal characters are beekeepers. As someone who grew up in Montana and is an amateur beekeeper, I found the book to offer accurate descriptions of both the state and the hobby. One of the characters in the book, a Blackfeet medicine woman trained in indigenous wisdom whose husband was raised in a settler family, offers a bit of wisdom: “Creator didn’t choose human beings because we are so advanced but because we need teaching.”

I'm not sure if that idea is part of traditional Blackfeet spirituality. It wouldn’t surprise me if it is. It aligns with the teachings I have received from Lakota elders. My cousin lived near the area in which the novel is set and spent considerable time among Blackfeet teachers. He would agree with the idea.

The idea of being chosen by God is deeply ingrained in Christian theology. We received the concept from our Jewish forebears. The idea of chosenness is deeply rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures. The people of Israel are chosen for a covenant with God, which holds them to specific commandments regarding how they treat others and how they relate to God. Jesus picks up on this theme by quoting the prophet Isaiah. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all report him saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

One of the requirements on my journey to becoming an ordained minister was writing a theological paper on my call to the ministry. That paper was read and defended before an ecclesiastical council that voted on my fitness for the ministry. On the one hand, the paper wasn’t the most challenging assignment of my theological education. On the other hand, I wrestled with the concept of being called. I do not experience God as a cosmic voice that speaks directly to me in human language. Unlike some of my colleagues, I have not had an experience in which God speaks English. My call to ministry was, instead, communicated in the words of pastors and teachers who encouraged me to pursue the path of ministry. It was experiences of the glory of nature and many encounters with the divine in the beauty of creation. It was nurtured by being part of a loving community that challenged and supported me.

As a result, I am more at home with the idea that all human beings are chosen, as opposed to thinking that any particular group is more chosen than another. I find myself closely aligned with the contemporary liturgical greeting: “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here!” In my understanding, God chooses every human being.

We are not chosen because we have somehow arrived at the correct set of beliefs. We are not chosen because we have recited the correct words or made the appropriate confession. We are not chosen to be set aside and identified as different or better than others. We are chosen because God loves all humans. We are beloved of God simply because we exist.

Because of the broadly inclusive nature of my theology of chosenness, I resonate with the idea that we are chosen not because we are advanced, but because we need teaching. Being chosen to learn certainly resonates with my life experience.

Last night, a small group of us gathered at the edge of the Salish Sea for a few moments of meditation on creation and our call to care for the environment. I arrived at the gathering with a feeling of frustration. A typographical error in an email message sent by our church caused confusion about the meeting time. Some people arrived an hour and a half early and had to leave before the designated time. I had tried to correct the misunderstanding, but had missed some people. I allowed my frustration to show. We proceeded with our gathering despite the misunderstanding. The opening invitation was to take the place of our gathering. We were invited to take a few breaths and to listen to the sounds, smell the aroma, and take in the visual beauty of standing on the shore of a bay in a sea dotted by islands. As we shared that experience, paddlers went by in canoes, sailors in small boats passed within our vision, gulls and herons flew overhead and landed near us, and the breeze brought us the aromas of the sea. I thought of how people have stood on that shore since time immemorial. The sea offered rich sustenance for the indigenous people who lived here for thousands of years before settlers arrived. The sea and land provided resources for those who came to settle in later times. The shore has nurtured my soul as I transitioned from an active pastor to a retired person. The sound of the gentle waves lapping on shore released me from my frustration and invited me to relax into the moment. The small group gathered was loving and supportive. I became aware of God's presence.

That is how I experience being chosen. Sometimes I am chosen to release my frustration and become present in the moment, among the people who have gathered. After 72 years of living and 47 years as an ordained minister, I continue to discover that there is much that I have to learn. Fortunately for me and all of us in this generation, God is a patient teacher. Creation is amazingly resilient. Life presents us with new opportunities to learn from our mistakes, make adjustments, and move in new directions. I am among those chosen because I need learning.

For our grandson, who was born in 2011, anything before 2000 is ancient history. He understands that we were born in the early 1950s, but anything from the various decades of our lives seems to him impossibly ancient. Even though he has studied history in school, he lacks the experience that enables him to connect with timescales measured in decades, let alone centuries. Recently, we were discussing some Matchbox cars that we have. The bin of toys is most often used to entertain his 3-year-old brother, but he enjoys looking at the cars and talking about them. He is currently interested in cars and has asked about the cars we owned before his time. We’ve collected some of them as matchbox models. For example, we have a 1958 Ford F-100 matchbox. I drove a '58 F-100 when I was dating my wife. So far, we haven’t found a 1966 Opel Kadette, which was the car we had when we got married. Nor do we have a 1977 Ford Pinto, the first new car we purchased.

As I was talking with our grandson, the chiming clock in the room struck the half hour, and I commented on how much I enjoyed the clock. Somehow, in the conversation, I realized that he wasn’t making a distinction between the age of the clock and the age of the cars in our discussion. The clock is 100 years older than those cars. The distinction between the 19th and 20th centuries isn’t essential to him. Both represent former times - “the olden days.”

I am intrigued by his perspective on time and enjoy discussing things that occurred before he was born. I am equally fascinated by how my perspective on time has shifted as I have grown older. I recall a time when ten years seemed like a substantial amount of time. When I turned 40, 50 seemed a long way off, and retirement was far enough away that I didn’t give it much thought. Now, in my seventies, I occasionally catch myself thinking about events and activities that occurred 30 or 40 years ago as “recent.”

This September marks 24 years since a crew of eight people began living in the closed environment of Biosphere 2. Though the isolated environment was designed to last 100 years, the first mission of those eight people was set to last 2 years. They would live within an enclosed system, growing the food they needed, recycling water and air, and maintaining other life-supporting systems. The experiment did not proceed as planned. The sealed system failed to provide 100% of the resources needed to sustain human life. Oxygen levels in the closed system fell, and the crew suffered from illness similar to altitude sickness. Eventually, additional oxygen had to be added to the system. Some oxygen-producing plants proved more challenging to maintain than expected. Trees in an environment without wind failed to develop the strength to support their growth. Bacteria and fungi flourished more than expected, consuming more oxygen than anticipated. The food produced by the crew fell short of what they needed. Pollinator colonies failed. The UV filtering properties of the glass left bees without the information they needed to thrive. The crew had to pollinate some crops by hand. An injury to one of the crew members forced unsealing the biosphere to allow the member to receive medical treatment.

In science, however, much can be learned from experiments that don’t go the way planned. The Biosphere 2 campus remains a hub of scientific research. The campus is a complex of glass pyramids, domes, and towers covering about 3 acres. Inside are an artificial rainforest, a savannah, a fog desert, a wetland, and a saltwater “ocean” with a living coral reef.

Although the campus is now owned by the University of Arizona and managed by Columbia University, it originated as a privately funded experiment conducted by self-taught science enthusiasts rather than scientists with PhDs from academic institutions. Often touted as an experiment to pave the way for colonies living on other planets and traveling long distances in space, the original experiments were more focused on understanding the ecology of Earth. The 2 in the name refers to the planet Earth as biosphere 1.

The campus is now used for multiple ecology experiments, including several that test the impact of global climate change. One experiment raised the temperature. While the forest initially seemed resilient in the heat, it required increased water to thrive. Drought caused more stress for plants than heat alone. The coral reef has been the site of experiments demonstrating the effects of ocean acidification, which occurs when CO2 levels rise. Scientists have also raised the temperature in the ocean pond to test whether supplements, such as probiotics, can help coral survive in conditions of an extreme climate crisis.

When I first learned about Biosphere 2, the idea of a century-long experiment seemed far-reaching. Now, with a quarter of that time having passed, it is clear that we have much more to learn. Hopefully, the somewhat contained systems of Biosphere 2 will yield information on how we can better care for Biosphere 1, our only planet that, for the foreseeable future, needs to sustain human life in the universe.

Despite significant investments from very wealthy individuals, human exploration of other planets is dependent on developing long-term life-sustaining sealed systems. We have yet to create a fully functioning system on this planet, let alone one that is portable enough to be transported by rocket to a distant location.

It is impossible to predict what will be learned in the span of the lives of our grandchildren. They will likely live to see the 22nd century. With an accelerating rate of change, they will experience more change in their lives than we do in ours. The hope, however, is that some of the knowledge of our generation can be passed on to future generations in ways that enable this planet to continue sustaining human life. Our way of living has certainly created problems for future generations. Experiments including Biosphere 2 offer the possibility of making positive contributions to the future as well.

For a little more than a decade before we retired, we made regular trips to the Pacific Northwest. Our son and his wife moved to Washington after he completed his graduate studies. The birth of grandchildren increased the attraction for us to visit as often as possible. One of the things we enjoyed about our visits was the opportunity to purchase fresh fruit from farmers’ markets. After several trips, we discovered a few stands that became our favorites. A trip west usually involved picking up supplies of apples, apricots, peaches, and pears. Most of the time, we’d add a flat of berries, depending on the timing of our visit. The eastern slopes of the Cascades have many fruit orchards, and roadside stands offer opportunities to buy fresh fruit.

Since moving to Washington, we have made it a practice to take an annual trip over the mountains to buy peaches, apples, and other fruits. When it comes to berries, however, we don’t have far to drive. The climate and soil where we now live are just right for growing berries. We have a productive cherry tree in our backyard that allows us to fill our freezer each summer. We have a strawberry patch in our yard that is in its first year, but yielded excellent fruit this year and promises increased harvests in years to come. Our son’s farm has established strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry patches. And we don’t have to drive far to find berry farms with roadside stands.

The majority of the state’s raspberries are grown within 50 miles of our home. Multiple berry farms grow strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries within 10 miles of our house. We have found the you-pick farms to offer great prices for fruit. A while ago, we picked about 35 pounds of strawberries in less than an hour, including our time driving. Today we plan to return to the same farm to pick raspberries.

According to one definition, we live in a food desert because of the distance from our home to a supermarket that sells fresh food. While access to fresh food is a serious problem for many, the term doesn’t apply to us. There are fresh fruits and vegetables available in small grocery stores close to our home, and we don’t need a chain supermarket to obtain fresh, nutritious food. More importantly, we live in an area filled with small farms producing fresh food. For example, we get our eggs from the chickens at our son’s farm. We don’t have to go to the store for them. We grow fresh herbs, salad greens, and tomatoes in our yard. And we can pick berries a short drive from home.

Recently, it was announced that the berry farm where we plan to go today has been sold. Owners Mike and Crystal Boxx are looking forward to retiring, traveling, and spending more time with their grandchildren. We understand the sentiment. The good news for us in the area, however, is that the purchaser of the farm is the local port authority. It has been announced that the farm will become the Whatcom Agricultural Research Station, dedicated to studying and developing ways to help small farms thrive. The 50-acre outdoor lab will continue to produce berries. Research at the farm, conducted by Western Washington University, the Washington Red Raspberry Commission, and other institutions, will help local farmers discover ways to manage pests and diseases that affect the berries. Although the farm may no longer be a place for people to come and harvest berries to take home, the research conducted there will support other area berry farms. We are fortunate to have multiple farms that offer you-pick berries close to our house.

Agriculture is a constantly changing business. For much of the United States, small family farms are being squeezed out by larger corporate farms. The scale of grain and cattle production in the areas where I have lived for most of my life continues to grow. Contemporary farms and ranches are comprised of what once were multiple family farms. Farmers need to have millions of dollars worth of equipment to manage square miles of land. And they do not control the prices of the seeds and fertilizers they need, nor the prices they will receive for the food they produce. They are subject to significant fluctuations in the market. The current trade war poses a substantial threat to large-scale agriculture in the United States. There have been significant shifts in the international grain markets, which are likely to result in crops in the field not being harvested because the cost of harvesting exceeds the price farmers can obtain for crops such as corn and wheat. Corn appears to be especially vulnerable to foreign buyers shifting away from US products.

However, here in the narrow patch of land between the Cascade Mountains and the Salish Sea, small farms remain viable. Berries are among the crops that support small-scale organic farming. A small farm can produce enough income to support a family. And those of us who are not engaged in production agriculture can benefit from living near farms that produce fresh food for roadside stands and farmers’ markets.

Our Fourth of July celebration included a fresh cherry pie made from cherries we grew in our backyard. We’ve got cherries and strawberries in the freezer to provide months of treats. Today we’ll pick raspberries to add to the bounty. Blueberries are not far away.

Unlike the grain markets, the fruit markets, at least in our area, offer more local control. Berry farmers set the prices they charge for their goods. Of course, they have to compete with other producers, but they can consider the cost of production when setting prices for the food they produce. With a local customer base, they are less subject to the pressures of tariffs and trade wars. Selling food to neighbors is a more straightforward process.

When the cost of transportation is eliminated through local sales, more of the money we pay for food goes to the people who grow it, enabling them to continue producing the food we need.

The family story is that when I was six weeks old, our family attended a week of church camp in the mountains. My mother occasionally served as a nurse at the camp, providing general first aid. The camp is over 40 miles from the nearest clinic or hospital, and more than half of that is on gravel and dirt roads that are rocky, washboarded, and winding. The trip takes approximately an hour and a half. The way the story of my first trip to church camp has been reported to me is that my parents emptied the wood box in the cabin where we stayed, lined it with blankets, and used it for my crib. It is just one of the stories of our family that reminds me of how courageous and capable my mother was. She dispensed bandages, pulled slivers, treated insect bites, and was prepared to deal with more challenging medical emergencies while caring for her own four children, one of whom was an infant. The camp was not modern, with pit toilets and a single shower house. There was running water in the kitchen, but all of the water in the small medical treatment area had to be carried in.

I attended camp at that facility every summer for the next 25 years. The year I turned 20, I opened the camp, activated the water system, made plumbing repairs, and cleaned the facility so that it could host a visiting youth group from out of state. I hosted the group and led them on an overnight backpacking trip higher into the mountains. It was at the height of tick season, and the ticks were heavy that year. I removed a large number of ticks from campers and administered a significant amount of first aid. Two years later, I was the manager of the camp for the summer, a job I repeated the following summer. I purchased and hauled all of the groceries. I maintained the buildings, which by then included a larger shower house and a modern bathroom facility. I cut, hauled, and split firewood for fireplaces and an outdoor campfire circle. My wife served as head cook and managed the kitchen.

These days, there is telephone service at the camp. When we were manager and cook, it was a 20-mile drive to the nearest phone. Our emergency plan was to provide emergency care and stabilization in the event of an injury. We would transport the patient to the phone, where the ambulance would be called. We could make it to within eight miles of town before we met the ambulance. Fortunately, we never had to use that plan during the two summers I served as manager.

I do remember a slightly frightening trip to the hospital with a camper who was experiencing an allergic reaction to a bee sting. The camp nurse administered an antihistamine, and we put the camper between us in the cab of our old pickup truck. I drove as quickly as safety allowed, and we got to the local hospital, where they administered an adrenaline shot. The trip back to camp was as challenging as the trip to town had been because the camper, now high from the shot, talked constantly.

I have served at church camps throughout my life and have reviewed various emergency plans and scenarios over the years. As I gained experience, I became more aware of potential dangers. Early in my career, I served as a member of a volunteer ambulance squad, where I received advanced first aid and emergency care training. I became certified as an Emergency Care Technician, but I never completed the national EMT certification. Later, I served on a volunteer search and rescue squad, where I learned more about emergency stabilization and the transportation of injured persons.

Some of the camps where I served were difficult to access, with only one road in and out of the camp. In one camp, we reviewed an emergency evacuation plan with our staff before each group of campers arrived. We planned to walk the campers down the creek if a wildfire cut off evacuation by the road.

Fortunately, I never faced a crisis that required the evacuation of the camp. The worst medical crises we faced over the years were all handled with trips to the emergency room and the release of the injured person to return to camp, sometimes with crutches or stitches. I did, however, worry and plan about potential dangers.

All of that experience makes my heart go out to those involved in the search and rescue operations currently underway in Texas, where flash floods have devastated homes and washed people away. At least 51 people have died, including 15 children. Among the missing are children from a church camp. Twenty-seven children from that camp are still missing. Photos posted on Internet news sites show a dormitory area of Camp Mystic filled with mud, bunk beds in disarray, and clothing and personal items scattered around. The children, many of whom were under the age of 12, were sleeping when the river rose more than 26 feet in less than an hour. Children aged eight and nine are among the victims. At a second camp, Heart O’ the Hills, one of the camp's co-directors is among the victims.

When I was directing a camp, I insisted that each camper who required medical treatment speak directly to their parents as soon as possible. I would make the phone call and hand the phone to the camper so they could tell the story and their parents could hear what happened from their child. Sometimes campers didn’t want to interrupt their summer fun, but I understood how parents might worry and felt that direct communication between parent and child was the best way to address that worry. I repeatedly advised campers to share the stories of camp with their parents and friends. Of course, I wanted them to report the fun and good experiences they had. However, I also felt that one way to protect the youth and ensure the integrity of our programming was to maintain as many open lines of communication with family members as possible.

I am a long way from Texas. I have never visited the camps that were devastated by floods. I know nothing of their programs or plans. I am not in a position to help. But I hope that after the searches have been completed, victims found, families notified, care given, and grief supported, there will be a careful examination of what happened so that we can learn as much as possible about preventing such a tragedy in the future. Every camp in the world should consider the possibility of floods, fires, and other threats. Some facilities need to be upgraded. Some buildings need to be relocated or replaced. Emergency plans need to be made and tested. Evacuation plans need to be realistic and workable.

Our prayers are critical at this time, and in the days and weeks to come, prayers must be turned into actions.

We did small-town things yesterday, and it was the kind of day that reminds me why I like living in a small town. I grew up in a small town, but I have lived in many different-sized cities over the years. At a population of 6,232, Blaine is significantly larger than my hometown, which has a population of around 1,600. That’s about the same size as Hettinger, ND, was when we lived there, but the population of Hettinger has been shrinking and is now only about 1,000. Blaine put on a pretty good Fourth of July parade yesterday. It had the usual small-town features: antique cars, old tractors, politicians, fire trucks, search and rescue vehicles, the high school band, and floats advertising local businesses. The county Sheriff walked in the parade, while the head of the county council rode in a vehicle with a large sunroof through which he could stand and wave. There was plenty of candy for the kids. Our grandkids had a bag that had more than enough.

The day’s activities included a pancake breakfast, a car show, a street fair, a dunk tank, a beer garden, and several venues featuring live music. We didn’t take in everything, but the crowds were big and the street fair was larger than I remember from previous years.

One of the things that Blaine does that is bigger than some of the other small towns where I have lived is the fireworks show. Since the pandemic, when there was no fireworks show, we’ve made it a point to take in the July 4 fireworks over Boundary Bay. We park on Main Street or at the library and walk down to the park near the harbor and join the crowd. I’m not a night owl, so the 10:30 start time is a stretch for me. Our grandchildren remember the tradition of staying up late, having a few extra snacks, and joining in the oohs and ahs as the colorful blasts reflect off the water of the bay. It is a fun tradition.

For me, it was a stress-free time. Our son did all of the driving and searching for parking. All I had to do was join in for the ride. We stretched out blankets on the grass and played cards with the grandkids until it got too dark to read the cards. It was a fun time to feel like we’re becoming part of our small town and its traditions.

We don’t have too many plans for the summer. Our daughter and her family are coming for a visit in a couple of weeks. After that, we’ve planned a trip down to Oregon and across Idaho to Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota to visit family and friends. We haven’t yet taken the big trips that I thought might be part of our retirement, but a relaxing summer seems like a treat, and we’re doing the things we enjoy.

The summer has allowed me to reflect on my writing and my plans for the next phase of my life. July 16 will be the 18th anniversary of my web journal. I first published my journal as a blog on July 16, 2007, and I’ve posted an essay every day since, with no exceptions, making this the 6,559th essay. One of the reasons I started publishing my journal was to cultivate the discipline of daily writing in order to become a better writer. I believe I have refined my craft over the years. However, there have been times when I have gotten into a kind of rut, simply producing the daily essay without learning very much. I have decided to mix things up a bit over the next few months.

Don’t worry. My journal will still be available on this website at least through August, and possibly longer. However, I plan to parallel it with a new style of writing, which I will publish on Substack. My Substack writings will be featured on a new website, and they will also be distributed via email to subscribers. I started experimenting with my Substack yesterday, and I plan to announce the new site sometime in the next few weeks. On that new platform, I plan to publish essays, poems, and prayers. It won’t be every day. My goal is to post approximately three times a week. Early in the process, I may publish some of the journal entries from this website to my Substack. Eventually, I will stop publishing the journal on this website.

In the meantime, I’ve begun designing a new website. The new website will feature information about me, but it will also serve as a platform to promote some of my published writing. I have a new book coming out early this fall, and I have submitted essays to a couple of anthologies. I plan to use my website to promote book sales, among other tasks.

One of my goals is to decrease my screen time slightly and to gain more independence from the Internet. Publishing a journal entry every day means taking a computer with me wherever I go and finding a way to connect to the Internet each day to publish the journal. In the past, I’ve delayed publication because I've been camping or, for some other reason, have been out of range of an Internet connection. I plan to do more off-grid camping and exploring in places without connectivity. Hopefully, the new system will enable me to do so with more ease.

I knew when I started publishing my journal that it would not last forever. In some ways, I am surprised that I have managed to keep it up for as long as I have. On the other hand, I have been grateful for the discipline of daily writing. I want to continue that practice. While I write all of my essays on a keyboard, I write some of my poems and prayers by hand on plain notebook paper. I may write first drafts of essays and longer documents by hand from time to time.

It feels like I’m starting a new phase of my life. I’ve been slow to adjust to retirement, but the process has been meaningful. Making changes and mixing things up is part of the process.

Thanks to all who have been loyal readers of my journal. I am grateful for your participation in my journey. I’ll ensure you can stay connected as I continue to grow and learn.

I grew up in a family that flew. Both of my parents were pilots. My father earned his pilot’s license before World War II and served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a service pilot. Much of his service time was spent instructing new pilots. He also flew executive flights for Army officers who needed to travel. After VJ day, he flew aircraft returning from the war from their arrival at California seaports to a boneyard in Arizona. On one of those flights, the engine in the plane he was flying failed, and he was forced to bail out. He was injured in that incident and was awarded the Purple Heart as a result. After his time in the army, he utilized his G.I. benefits to earn additional aviation-related certifications, including his airframe and engine mechanic licenses. He was a certified instructor and instrument instructor. He and my mother set up their business in a small town that had an airstrip, but no services. They sold aviation fuel and established an air charter and air ambulance service. They taught new pilots to fly and sold airplanes. My father flew spray planes that applied agricultural chemicals. They also provided a variety of aviation services to the National Park Service and the Forest Service, including fire patrol, game counts, search and rescue operations, and executive travel.

I flew my first solo flight as soon as I was old enough and earned my private pilot’s license as soon as I was eligible. I rented an aircraft for private flying early in my career as a minister, and later, we had partial ownership of an airplane, first with three partners and then with four partners. When we sold our portion of that partnership, I decided that I wasn’t flying enough to be a safe pilot. One of the barriers was cost. Our family had different priorities. Since that time, I have not been current and have not flown as a pilot in command. I do not have a valid medical certificate and am not qualified to fly.

However, I enjoy airplanes and discussing them with other pilots. I read several online journals about flying, aircraft, accident reports, and pilot safety. As a result of the various websites I visit, the algorithms on these sites result in some interesting pop-up ads appearing on my browser. One that I frequently see touts the low price of chartering a private jet. The algorithm doesn’t seem to know that, despite my online reading, I don't have the money to charter a jet. I haven’t followed those links, but I know that the cost is more than I am willing to pay. I make a few trips by airline each year. I used to travel more, serving as an educational consultant for the church, and I still occasionally make trips related to church service. My main reason to fly is to visit our daughter and family. They live in South Carolina.

Airline travel generates significant carbon dioxide emissions and contributes to global warming. I am aware of my carbon footprint and its effect on the environment. One of the ways I attempt to offset the impact of airline travel is by planting trees, powering our home with a solar energy system, and reducing my travel in our car.

My carbon footprint, however, is minuscule compared to that of wealthy individuals who frequently use private jets for travel. There is a traveling elite with enormous carbon footprints. Less than one percent of the population is responsible for 50 percent of global aviation emissions. It may be more accurate to refer to this group as the polluting elite.

In 2023, a high school student in Seattle created a website called Climate Jets. Akash Shendure’s website shows the estimated 2022 carbon emissions of dozens of private jets. He used information available online to track the travel patterns of people who frequently fly by private jet. He combined data about the specific types of aircraft used, the number of flights, and the distances traveled. One of the motivations for the website was his hope to raise awareness about the disparity in emissions between the ultra-rich and average Americans.

We Americans are among the world’s highest emitters of greenhouse gases. The average American emits approximately 15.52 tons of carbon dioxide per year. The Climate Jets website compares the emissions of those who use private jets—according to the website, Thomas Siebel, founder of Siebel Systems, which was sold to Oracle in 2006 for $5.8 billion, and who went on to found C3ai, an artificial intelligence software platform, traveled 458 flights in 3 aircraft in 2022. Those jets used 476,898 gallons of jet fuel on his trips, emitting 4,649.75 metric tons of carbon dioxide. His private aircraft emissions exceeded the full carbon emissions of 299 average Americans.

Some of the people whose travel and carbon emissions are reported on the website do participate in a system of carbon offsets and make contributions to environmental organizations. However, the fact remains that travel by private jet is a significant contributor to the climate crisis.

Like others, I grew up expecting to travel. My family loved experiencing the world and connecting with people from other places. One of the reasons I travel is that I love to experience the natural world. I want to see beautiful areas that are not often visited. However, our desire to travel frequently destroys the beauty we seek to experience. Our current trajectory is to reach two degrees of global warming by 2050. Two degrees doesn’t sound like much, but it would mean 99% of all coral reefs are dead, rainforests turned to savannah, more than 700 million climate refugees in Africa alone, with no accurate estimates available of global climate refugees.

The decisions we make about travel now will significantly impact the long-term future of the world. I don’t think that those who travel by private jet intend to decimate the natural world. I believe they want to have a beautiful world for their grandchildren. That beautiful world, however, is going to require that they travel less and pay more for carbon capture technology. Cutting their taxes and allowing them additional money to travel more won’t help them achieve the goal of a sustainable future for those who come after them.

We are heading to a challenge this afternoon. The challenge comes from the bounty of the place where we live. We spent part of an afternoon at a you-pick berry farm gathering strawberries. We ate lots of fresh strawberries. Susan made strawberry pie. And we froze bags of the berries for use during the off-season. Next, the cherries on the tree in our yard began to ripen. We have to pick the cherries aggressively because the tree attracts birds who get their share of berries each year. We are almost to the end of cherry season. Again, we get pie and we eat fresh berries. And we add bags of berries to our freezer. Now raspberries are ready for you to pick, and we plan to gather a few buckets of the delicious berries this afternoon. Our freezers are already quite full, and we’re going to have to engage in some freezer engineering to make everything fit.

The crowding in the freezer isn’t just fruit. We stocked up on frozen food at a local food warehouse this week in anticipation of a visit from our daughter and her family. We want to have lots of food on hand so that we can prepare meals without having to do much shopping while they are here. The time came for processing the cows at the farm, and their freezers are full of beef. We also participated in that bounty, adding to our freezer. And we freeze a few vegetables. Peas were especially prolific this year. We’ve got a large bag of them that need to be shelled, blanched, and frozen in the next couple of days.

The freezers are full, and we’ve got berries coming. A certain amount of space can be obtained by careful organization. We tend to open the freezer and add things when we're in the midst of a berry harvest. Now is a good time to go through the appliance and remove a few items to make space. “Hmm . . . there is half a cheesecake. It would be good with fresh berries. Let’s put it into the refrigerator to thaw. I’ll taste a little slice right now.” Carefully stacking bags of frozen berries can save a bit of space. We try hard to avoid wasting food, but there are probably a few things in the corners of the freezer that have been left there a bit too long.

The real challenge for us is soup. We participated in hosting a soup supper at the church a few weeks ago, and overprepared. We ended up with a large bucket of African Peanut Soup and another of lentil soup. Instead of freezing them in smaller containers, we put two large containers into the freezer simply because we were tired after working at the church meal. We’ve avoided taking them out of the freezer because it means having the same menu for several meals in a row to avoid wasting the soup. Something tells me today is the first of several soup days at our house, even though soup seems like more of a winter food than a summer one. We don’t often heat a bowl of soup and then sit outside on the deck to eat it.

All of that bounty is a luxury, and we know it. There are people in our community who are hungry. Children are living with nutritional insecurity. We have no reason to complain.

Our methods of food preservation differ significantly from those of previous generations. We don’t can at our house. Our grandparents and parents saved mason jars, carefully washed them, and filled them with cooked food. The heated contents were placed into the jars, and a top with a rubber seal was secured in place with a metal ring. The cooling food inside the jar contracted, creating a seal. The jars can be stored in a pantry or other designated area for easy access when needed. It involves a lot of work and a hot kitchen in the summer. We’ve been a bit more lazy, allowing the freezer to preserve our food.

Our son and his family invested in a freeze dryer this year. It is an amazing appliance, and they have had success preserving a variety of different foods. Some foods can be reconstituted using a bit of warm water. Other foods are eaten just as they come out of the freeze dryer. The children eat freeze-dried berries almost as fast as the machine can process them.

There is one food from the farm that requires no special preservation. The bees do all the work with the honey, and by the time we harvest it, all that is needed is separating it from the wax and pouring it into jars. Unlike almost every other food, honey is not susceptible to bacterial contamination that results in mould and spoilage. The process of making the sweet substance is fascinating. Bees harvest nectar from flowers. On the flowers, the warm, watery, sugary fluid is just right to attract bacteria and begin to spoil. However, the bees start to treat the nectar as they fly. They remove some of the water from the nectar through the fanning of their wings. They also infuse enzymes from their bodies into the nectar, which raises its acidity. Acid discourages the growth of certain microorganisms. It is the same principle as using vinegar to preserve by pickling, without the tangy flavor. The result is that by the time the nectar is delivered to the hive, it has already begun a dramatic transformation. The complex sugars in the nectar are broken down into simpler ones.

When nectar reaches the hive, it is deposited in wax chambers, and the bees continue to process the precious food. They fan it with their wings. The fanning causes the remaining water to evaporate. Nectar, when taken from flowers, is 70% to 80% water. When the bees cap the cells with wax, the processed honey is between 15% and 18% water. The sugar in honey is far more concentrated than any syrup made by dissolving sugar in water.

The bees are frugal and make more honey than they need. I harvest a portion of that honey and put it into jars. Honey can crystallize, becoming even thicker, but can be reconstituted easily by placing the jar in hot water. I use a slow cooker on its lowest setting.

I’m grateful to the bees for doing all the work to provide us with one food that doesn’t require space in the freezer.

The first wills we had were executed after our son was born. The motivation to prepare wills was our desire to specify who would assume his care should both of us die. We were living in a small town in North Dakota and hired a local attorney to draw up the document. It cost hundreds of dollars when we didn’t have many extra dollars. However, executing the wills gave us some peace of mind.

When we adopted our daughter, the judge asked us specifically about how she would be treated in our wills, and we wanted her treatment to be the same as her brothers. We wanted them to share equally in any financial resources we would leave. We immediately revised our wills to include her. The same lawyer prepared the revisions, and the bill was again hundreds of dollars. I did not understand why the charge to add her name in a couple of places cost more than drafting the original wills, but we wanted to have the paperwork in place.

Those wills served us for the years our children were growing up. The next time we had wills drafted, they were adults. Custody was no longer an issue. Our lives had changed. We had a few more financial resources. There might be something left when we die. We also provided care for my mother in our home, and Susan’s father was living in a retirement community near our house. New concerns meant new documents. Custody of our children was our primary concern in the first wills we had drafted. This time, the critical document in my mind was the durable power of attorney for health care decisions. I wanted to have a family member make care decisions should I become incapacitated. The new documents sported quite a bit of legal jargon, and we spent quite a bit of time reading them and trying to figure out what they meant.

By the time we had those documents drafted, living wills were common. A living will, also known as an advance directive for health care, outlines a person’s preferences for medical treatment in the event that person becomes unable to make decisions for themselves. It specifically addresses CPR, ventilators, feeding tubes, and other medical procedures and devices used in end-of-life situations. We executed living wills as part of the process.

Shortly after we executed those legal documents, our church had a program where members were given copies of a legal document written in plain English that helped them make their wishes known. The Five Wishes document is a simple form that provides users with some language and allows them to enter their specific issues. The five wishes are:
The person I want to make care decisions for me when I can’t
The kind of medical treatment I want or don’t want
How comfortable I want to be
How I want people to treat me
What I want my loved ones to know

Washington has a similar simple document called Portable Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) that an individual and their physician can execute.

My work with families in the church and community taught me a few things about all of these documents. First, many medical situations cannot be imagined when executing the documents. The document assumes that there will be a time when it is known that the end of life is near. However, families frequently find themselves in positions where they don’t know whether or not the end of life is near. A decision about a surgical procedure often involves unknown consequences. The procedure might extend one’s life, and it might not. Quality of life might be greater or lower after a procedure.

My wife suffered two cardiac arrests on the same day while hospitalized. Either event could have resulted in the end of her life. However, the care provided by the hospital, which included the use of CPR and a ventilator, resulted in her being able to recover and resume her normal activities. We are delighted by the results but did not know the outcome, and she could not make decisions.

We are now retired and have had a law firm specializing in elder law draft new wills, powers of attorney for health care decisions, and living wills for us. The process has been frustrating because of all of the legal jargon and because there is no obvious connection between the cost and the required amount of work. We had to prepay to have the work done without knowing how long it would take or how many drafts would be necessary.. Our documents are pretty simple. The first drafts were templates into which a legal assistant had added our specific information, requiring no professional time from the attorney. There is no connection between the amount of work performed and the amount of money charged.

Furthermore, the living wills are documents designed to prevent hospitals from lawsuits, rather than expressions of our desires. We were told that we could not change some of the provisions of the documents. I know from experiences with many families in hospitals that living wills often do not come into play when making medical decisions. Families are rarely consulted about whether or not to put an individual on a ventilator. They are consulted only after the fact when deciding whether to withdraw the ventilator after it has already been inserted.

The most important aspect of the legal work we are having done is not the fancy documents but rather the conversations they have inspired. We have had conversations with each other and with our children about the care we want. I have complete trust in them to make decisions for me, and I am confident that they will not conflict when making decisions. I have already designated my wife and both of our children as being able to access medical information with all of my health care providers.

We have the paperwork in order, but when the time comes, people will always be more important than paperwork.

Happy Canada Day! Canadians have been celebrating July 1 as a national holiday for 157 years. The Canadian confederation is younger than the United States. The British North America Act of 1867 established the confederation of former colonies of France and Britain on indigenous land north of the 49th parallel. July 1 was the date the confederation went into effect, so in 1868, Governor General Lord Monck signed a proclamation requesting Canadians to celebrate July 1 as the anniversary of Confederation. I don’t know how Canadians view that historic proclamation, but as a U.S. Citizen who has lived in border states for much of my life, I find it very Canadian. The proclamation does not order Canadians to celebrate, but requests that they celebrate. It is the Canadian way to get along and to make requests rather than issue orders.

After the initial celebration, the holiday became known as Dominion Day, a name that remained until 1982. The change in the name of the holiday reflected a much broader process undertaken by Canadians. The people of Canada, working through parliament and national leaders, have undertaken a long and careful process to carve out a Canadian multicultural identity. They have left behind the old identity of a white, British nation, one that never described a country with a province that was primarily settled by the French and vast areas of indigenous land. Among the changes that culminated in the change of the holiday to Canada Day were the adoption of a new maple leaf flag in 1965 and the formal adoption of “O Canada” as the national anthem in 1980. Canadians see multiculturalism as a core value of their nation. In Canada, people are encouraged to maintain their identity and take pride in their ancestral roots while, at the same time, having a sense of belonging to Canada.

There are plenty of Canadian flags flying up here next to the border. Despite heated rhetoric from Washington, DC, we are neighbors and friends. We respect the values and traditions of our neighbors. Dual flag poles at the Peace Arch and several locations around town, including in front of the visitor’s center, display the flag of the United States and the flag of Canada side by side. This year, in addition to those flags, many local businesses proudly display Canadian flags and have signs welcoming Canadians. The trade war has not been good for business. Many Canadians are staying at home and buying local products in response to the trade war started by the US president. Local businesses have seen 30 - 40% customer reductions since the inauguration. Despite what Fox News reports, there is no significant amount of popular support for the 51st state idea in Canada.

You have to be a hockey fan to understand the meaning, but “elbows up” has become a favorite symbol of a particular style of Canadian patriotism that has been on display in recent months.

In addition to the traditional flags, many homes and businesses are sporting flags that are new to me. Those banners combine the flags of both nations. The US flag is in the upper left-hand corner, and the Canadian maple leaf is in the lower right-hand corner, with the flag divided diagonally between the two emblems.

Folks will line up around Boundary Bay to watch the Canada Day fireworks at White Rock. Then on July 4, folks on the Canadian side will watch the US fireworks from their side of the bay. We get two displays close to each other in this corner of the country.

Like the Canadians, we can use our national holiday as an opportunity to reflect on our heritage and the meaning of our flag. Despite recent co-opting of the US flag by right-wing extremists who seem to lack both understanding of the emblem and creativity to come up with a distinct symbol, our flag celebrates not only freedom from tyranny, which was hard fought in the Revolutionary War, but also unity. Each star represents a different state with different histories and cultures. All are brought together on a banner with 13 stripes to remind us how those 50 states represent growth from the 13 original colonies.

I got started with my celebration of freedom a bit early yesterday. After breakfast, I rode my bike to the farm to check on the honeybees. I put my phone in an outside pocket of my bee suit so that it would be available to take pictures of the colonies when I had the top off of the hive. However, I got busy working with the bees and forgot to take photos. After I finished my chores, I folded up my bee suit and put it into a protective case I have. Then I got on my bike and rode home. For the rest of the day, my phone was in the suit pocket, folded up in the case at the farm. I didn’t miss it until we walked in the afternoon. Since I knew where it was and wasn’t worried about it, I waited until just before supper to retrieve it. I had a day of freedom from the phone, and I don’t think I missed anything important. Maybe I am finally learning to be retired.

I will continue my celebration this morning. I have a manuscript of a book that is ready to go to the publisher. According to my editor, it is fourth or fifth in line for book design before going to the printer. It should come out this fall. I’m new to this whole process, so I don’t know exactly what to expect, but so far, the manuscript has gone through at least eight drafts. In May, it was distributed to 12 readers across the US who gave me their comments in writing and by participating in a Zoom conversation. Since that conversation, I’ve worked hard to make necessary changes. Today, the book leaves my hands. Depending on my editor's reaction, it could be sent to a copy editor in a couple of weeks. I will be excited to announce it when it comes out, but today it feels like a significant accomplishment to get it off my plate and send it to the next step.

Freedom takes many forms. May our flags remind us that our countries are made up of many different people with different histories and identities, and there is room for this delightful diversity on the North American continent.