January 16, 2016, Prescott-

God is reflected in the everlastings.

My love for my soul mate is everlasting.

Lemuria and Atlantis are not.

The joy taken from hearing children laugh, puppies bark and kittens mewl is.

The ups and downs of the financial markets are not.

A California traffic jam sometimes seems like  it is.

The joy of time spent with good friends definitely is.

The Sun, as vital as it is, is not everlasting.

Beauty and radiance will always be found, somewhere, so they are.

Earth, as familiar as it is, is not everlasting.

The Universe, with neither beginning nor end, is.

The stuff in my cabinets and my refrigerator, definitely is not.

I, in some form, will be- at least I strive to meet with God’s pleasure.

January 14, 2016, Prescott-  (The following is based on a Scavenger Hunt prompt including love letter, werewolves, taxi service, lost key, fish sticks.)

Laszlo had grown up in a Hungarian community in Constanta, a port on Romania’s Black Sea coast. So he found it second nature when, as a young backpacker exploring the outer limits of our world, he decided to stop a while on the island of Lamu, off Kenya’s golden shore.

He camped on the beach,  filleting and grilling the fish that he caught, each morning, and bringing it to a local woman, who dipped the meat in a spicy batter and baked it her beehive oven.  She then sliced the fillets into fish sticks, which were sold to German tourists, who reliably showed up for a quick lunch, each day, nearly ten months out of the year.  Lasz got enough of a percentage from these sales to allow him to live a simple, but satisfying life, under the radar of the National Police.

One day, while walking the beach, with a metal detector he had purchased, Lasz found a lost key.  It turned out to fit the trunk of a taxi, and had been lost by a former Somali pirate who had also settled on Lamu, and used his vehicle as sort of a Lamu-style Uber.  The taxi service was quite lucrative, and the grateful ex-pirate offered Lasz a partnership, making him an alternative driver, three days out of the week.

This, once cleared with a suddenly attentive Kenyan police captain, involved a bit of “gifting” to the captain.  Lasz drove the captain’s children to school, free of charge.  In return, he got a work visa.  Between the fish mongering and taxi service, Laszlo was becoming a fixture on Lamu.

He wrote his long-ago sweetheart, a Romanian girl, who had studied at the London School of Economics, and who was casting about for a future.  Nadia was intrigued by her dear friend’s love letter, and made arrangements to travel to Kenya.  On the night before she was to fly from London to Mombasa, she was approached by two rather scruffy, but suave, men.  They learned of her plans, and asked whether they might accompany her to Africa.  They did not seem to have any ulterior motives, and were not threatening to Nadia, so she agreed to meet them next morning, at Heathrow.

The men showed up on time, documents and tickets in hand, and the three boarded the plane together.  It was a delightful flight, from London, over Europe and the Mediterranean, North Africa and Sudan.  As the plane flew over Uganda, however, night fell.  Then, the two suave, scruffy men started to transform.  Somewhere over Lake Victoria, encountering a full moon, the werewolves appeared.

Laszlo waited several days for his Nadia, until a news flash from the BBC reported that a plane had gone down, with 300 aboard.  All but three were dead.  The three missing passengers were not found, but the word among tribesmen on the north shore of Victoria is that two hairy wolf-apes, and their captive white woman, are occasionally spotted in the rough terrain above the Lake.

January 13, 2016, Prescott- The year is starting to show its own character, as years always do.  There is less of the despair that seemed to hang over from its predecessor.  Maybe the State of the Union speech both reflected the longing for a new rising of national unity, or maybe it will ignite the light of that coming together.

There are issues:  More people’s lives are being snuffed out, both by the forces of authority and by those of anarchy.  David Bowie had not been dead 48 hours, when people began speaking out, regarding a heinous crime he is said to have committed, I believe in the ’70’s.  The forces of irreligion, masquerading as an army of the faithful, continue to wreak havoc, just about anywhere they walk.

Yet, hearing my little 4 and 6-year-old neighbours, riding their tricycle and bicycle along the alley that they rule, I know that several right things will happen in 2016.  The work that I need, in order to accomplish a few immediate goals, is presenting itself, and I get the sense that the Creator wants me to achieve some key tasks.

Regarding the prompt of Winter Planets and Constellations (#5):

Most of us are frozen, far beyond Sol.

Earth’s antennae signal us, calling out for love.

Each of us has our own denizens, living ‘neath the cold.

Microbes and carbonites alike, rarely venture to the ice above.

Terrestrials shall not see us, until the Universe says  “Behold!”

Yet, below the surface, we live unfrozen, in constant communication, undubbed.

We are the Winter Planets, and the constellations who light the chill.

Some clear, cold night, sit by your fire, and let us share our thrills.

January 11, 2016, Prescott-I had a job today, then it was cancelled.  In honour of that, I tended to small business items, like getting the drivers for my printer re-installed in my laptop.  Now, however, it’s time for a tale about a turtle, a bull snake and their minder.

Prompt # 3:  “It was most assuredly NOT my doing!”, fumed Dr. Pletenick, the lead herpetologist at San Saba Reptile Sanctuary.  The broken glasses, which belonged to his chief assistant, Gret (short for Margaret) Artursson, were a source of minor tension around the center, as she had left them on his desk, by mistake, before having to unexpectedly head home, yesterday.  Gret, at only 22, was facing cataract surgery, in a month. Her other pair of glasses were at home, 27 miles away, east of San Saba, which, as anyone familiar with the area knows, is tantamount to going to Timbuktu.

Ross Pletenick, for all his expertise about things reptilian, was a bit of that ilk himself, when it came to dealing with human beings.  Gret thought to herself that, were it not for the lucre coming from her job, and her own love of turtles and tortoises, she would be far away from THAT creature, and THIS place.  It was not the first time old Pletenick had dismissed her plight.  Yet, the insurance was bounteous, and would make her surgery that much more affordable.

Her unusual medical history was outlined in some obscure records, some of which were written in Icelandic, regarding her father’s line.  “There aren’t too many of us Arturssons in the world”, thought Gret, “but we are said to be descended from the old Anglo-Saxon king, himself.  How his descendants got up to Iceland, I’ll never figure out.  Maybe some of them drifted over to Ireland, after the Norman invasion, and went north with the monks.”

Her reverie was broken by the nudge of one of her favourite turtles, Micah.  The  juvenile  leatherback had been rescued from the Gulf, off Dauphin Island, following the Deepwater Horizon fiasco.  The Mid-Texas desert was an odd place of refuge, indeed, for a sea creature, but here he was, having been brought out here by a Gulf native, who had relocated to Odessa, but had no room for a marine turtle.

“Let’s play some nudge the beach ball, Babykins”, Gret cheerfully chirped to her chelonian friend, “then I must get over to check on the Aldabrans, referring to the three Indian Ocean giant tortoises who had been brought here by the Bush Brothers, following the Tsunami of 2004.  So, the two rolled the beach ball back and forth,for about 30 minutes, it being Micah’s favourite pastime.  Then it was back to the salt water pool with him.  Dr. Pletenick, for his part, was busy tending a pregnant bull snake, whom he goofily referred to as Cow Snake.  Gret rolled her eyes quite frequently, on this job.

Twenty minutes after setting the sea turtle back in his safe haven, Gret was sitting out on the deck, relaxing with a cool iced dark roast coffee. That was one saving grace about Dr. Ross Pletenick.  He knew how to whip up a mean pot of Joe. “I think I will come back here, after the surgery”, she mused, “after taking out a pair of dice, and randomly rolling snake eyes.”  Then, she called her father, for a ride home.

These two shorts are drawn from # 2 and 3, of  Mark's Winter Scavenger Hunt.

#2- It was almost 8 A.M., and the sun was getting a bit too high in the sky for the swamp creatures to stay close to the water’s surface.  Alphonse, being a grouchy sort of alligator, decided to stop checking out the nosy, noisy humans who were standing around his corner of the pond.

The bayou is fairly close to the Gulf, and the water in this particular pond was getting to be a bit brackish.  Alphonse was getting used to more salt in his food and drink, though it was giving him a fair amount of indigestion, though not nearly as much as he had after that oil spill.

It seems funny now, but he had somehow managed to end up wearing a child’s bonnet, after that accident.  It had fallen into the water, been carried to the bayou and covered Al’s head and eyes.  He bonked into a rather large retaining wall stone, while thrashing around, trying to get the darned thing off.  Tourists gathered and were photographing the hapless alligator.  One, who was eating butterscotch pudding, from a cup, listened to Alphonse’s growling and moaning.  He said the gator reminded him of a mermaid playing an oboe.

It’s not all fun and games, being an alligator.

#3- Doctor Miranda’s wife was a bit ill today, so he generously offered to take her enchiladas con pollo to the parish potluck. He placed the recipe in his suit pocket, in case any of the other ladies wanted it, after eating some of his dear Luisa’s signature dish.

As he was going towards the parish meeting room, after church services were finished, he took the recipe out to make sure he understood all the terms.  A gust of wind came up and blew the recipe out of the good doctor’s hands and off into a copse of trees.

Everyone raved about the enchiladas, though.

January 9, 2016, Prescott-  I read a discussion about the current downturn in investments, even as the economy is improving, overall.  It was explained there that what is happening is the repricing of stocks, akin to maintenance that is done on equipment, necessitating a brief shutdown.  This will supposedly take another week to complete, and stocks will decline a bit more.  Then, things will reset themselves, more realistically. That is a bit less threatening than the disorganized freefalls we saw in 1987 and 2008, to say nothing of the horrors our parents and grandparents saw in the Thirties.

It set me to thinking.  I have been in transition mode, since returning from southern California, last July.  Work is more urgent, and my sense of community is more front and center. We reprice ourselves, so to speak, whenever a change is felt to be needed.  Nobody, it seems, stays in a holding pattern, even when they think that’s what’s going on.

On my recent visit to the place of my childhood, I didn’t always get the feeling that I was understood by those around me.  I tended to speak more slowly and act more cautiously when there, and it wasn’t always comfortable.  Maybe because I had a fair amount of baggage, and often felt in the way, when I was growing up, I fell into a default pattern of behaviour.

So, I made an effort to stop myself, reprice, as it were, my worth and make the effort to do for others, this time around.  It wasn’t understood, or accepted, back there, but I am going with my renewed sense of self, anyway.  Revaluing myself means that no one, no matter how important they were in my life at one time, can knock me back down to a dependent state.  I have work to do, goals to accomplish and people to love.

January 7, 2016, Prescott-  This is a short ditty, in honour of a friend’s Winter, 2016 Scavenger Hunt.  (You realize this means I may do two posts a day, for the near future. )

Eyes doing a two-seventy

Surveying the snowscape

for signs that a small, gray meal

might attempt an escape.

Silly raptor,

the meals are all underground

Safe and warm,

in their nests nicely bound.

What is left for an owl to do,

but let out a plaintive

“HOO, HOO,HOO, HOO”?

January 7, 2016, Prescott- I haven’t posted a reading list in quite a while, so here goes.

Reads in progress:  Terra in Cognita, William Barnes;  Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin; Keep Moving, Dick Van Dyke; The Dinosaur Heresies, Robert T. Bakker; The Witches:  Salem, 1692, Stacy Schiff.  The last two are tomes, so they will take longer than the others.

January-February:  The Disappearance of the Universe, Gary R. Renard; Marco Polo, John Man; John Adams, David McCullough.

March- Sphere, Michael Crichton; All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr; Prairie Erth, William Least Heat-Moon.

These are all fascinating books, of various lengths and levels of intensity.  I will also be adding books to my Kindle, the efforts of Carsten Aretz and Ally Larkin, as well as anything that Jeff Markowitz and John E. Glaze come up with, in the near future.

January 6, 2016, Prescott- I woke this morning to two things:  There was a not totally expected, fresh coating of snow on the ground and I found an e-warning that taking down holiday decorations, before today, is “just plain wrong”.

Prescott being in central Arizona, the streets were cleared by late morning sunshine, though more snow is in the offing, between now and Friday. As for the rather stern warning to those of us on Facebook, it’s a non-issue.  I know all about the Twelve Days of Christmas, and have had my part in several choral renditions of the song, over the years.  I’m also familiar with the Shakespearean romantic comedy.

Like Saul, who became Paul, I have had my share of divine revelations.   The most significant of those led me to accepting the Baha’i Faith, thirty-five years ago, next month, after nine years of holding it at arm’s length. Those were nine rather futile years, as  I recall, with nothing to show for them, other than a Bachelor’s Degree, and a middling Grade Point Average.

I am presently reading a book, “Extreme Ownership”, which describes the Navy SEALS method of dealing with challenges, and applies it to business models.  I have done my share of blame-casting, over the years, so a beloved family member thought it would be good for me to read, and absorb, lest I be tempted to resort to further ascribing of my difficulties in life to others’ actions and attitudes.

There is always SOMETHING that a person can do, to turn adversity into a beneficial lesson.  Saul the Tax-Collector determined he would do better to be a servant of God.  The SEALS who wrote the above-mentioned book determined they would do best to seek to understand the reasons for the actions of their superiors.  I am learning, from them, that coping and transcending all conditions, without blamecasting, is not only doable, but is far superior to the almost Pavlovian tendency to hand off responsibility.

Joyous Epiphany, one and all!

At the behest of one of my Xanga friends, here goes:

List 3 names you go by:
1. Gary

2. Mr. B (used by my students)

3. Gare Bear (rarely heard anymore, but used by ex-Xangans, back when I was Cyberbear on this Social Medium)

Name 3 places you've lived:
1. Saugus, MA (from the time I was six months old until I left for the Army, and again in 1972)

2. Cheju, Korea (1986-92)

3. Prescott, AZ ( 3 separate stints-1992, for six months; 2000-01, for twelve months; 2011-Present)

List 3 places you've worked:
1.  Star Market ( I was terrible at bagging, but I did work for one of my two best bosses- Bob Powers)

2. Jeddito School (The best job I ever had:  School Counselor, K-8, a job into which I grew)

3. Mingus Springs Charter School (Red-tape led to a short tenure, but I proved I could teach coherently, day-to-day)

What are 3 things you love to watch:
1.  People treating each other nicely

2.  Animals in the wild

3.  Children feeling genuinely happy

Name 3 places you've visited:
1.  Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska

2.  Mt. Halla,South Korea

3.  Utah Beach, Normandy

List 3 foods you love to eat:
1.  Baked stuffed shrimp                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       2. Lasagne                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               3. Hummus

What are your 3 favorite drinks:
1.  Coffee (Cream only)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         2. Mango iced tea                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   3 . Filtered water

Name 3 things you are looking forward to:
1. Working with children & teens, for at least five more years.

2. Resuming summer travel, starting with the Philippines and nearby countries, in 2017.

3. Seeing my son and other family members realize their dreams.

I've been asked to solicit others to respond, but all those I know, who are still on Xanga, either already have responded or don't care to.