Memorial Day Camping Abigail and I went camping with Michael Totten this weekend. The trip to the Alvord Desert wiped Abigail out and the thundershower on Saturday night was a bit trying, but altogether we had a very nice time.
Here I am in the Alvord. Photo Courtesy of Michael Totten using my camera. I'm holding his (soon to be retired) camera.
Here is Michael in the Alvord, doing his famous book jacket pose. Now if we can get him to write the freaking book...
Sunday after Michael went home to tend his wife and her injured ankle, we went scouting for additional campsites in and about the Malheur National Forest that we had missed on our previous trip. The forest covers over a million acres, and I doubt that we've covered even a third of the available campsites after two scouting trips. We did find one marvelous camping area, and it was deserted during the busy weekend. Where is it? That would be telling.
In Prairie City, we saw what Memorial Day means in flyover country. They do it right and understand that it matters. The clouds and looming mountain really affected me, but not as much as the sincerity of the locals in their support of their war dead.
Averting the Triumph of Fear A friend called to confirm my email address so she could invite me to her graduation party and I stole some of her time to catch up. Her reaction was to recount how her cousin's presence in Baghdad caused her aunt to worry. I reassured her that our troops were more highly valued by their commanders than any in history and that our equipment was so very, very good. She went away from the conversation unconvinced, I suspect.
Upon reflection I realized that she was clinging to fear as the most ascendant of moral postures. What a shame it would be to abandon ourselves to fear, merely because it is the most sustainable of emotions. You can always talk yourself into being afraid, and the unhealthier you are, the more readily your fear is reinforced. The more you are afraid, the more you can be afraid.
The strange thing about this in absolute terms is how strong she is in other aspects of her life. She is a good mother to two children. She has a healthy, loving relationship with a wonderful husband. She is involved in cultural activities on a regular basis within the community. She is scientifically knowledgeable and aware. Her professional life is regularly changing and quite prosperous.
What a damn shame that in order to adhere to her political party's guidance, she must live her life in fear instead of accomplishment. What a waste of her political awareness, to spend it on fear of everything that might reflect well on the domestic political opposition.
Michael Totten Back from Beirut Getting the story straight from a blogger is a lot like drinking beer right at the brewery. Drinking beer at the brewery while a blogger tells you the story is a lot like what I just did after picking up Michael Totten at the airport. The fresh story from Beirut is going to have elections, but it looked like a close thing for a while. Michael is a bit shocky right now, so I don't know if he'll be blogging tonight. ("Bit shocky", defined as the way that traveling halfway around the world, twenty-three hours in a jet leaves you. Spending a month in Beirut on the cusp of a revolution was the cherry on the top of that particular cake.)
Because he's Michael, he was still coherent. I threatened that a bit by greeting him at the airport by waving a Lebanese flag in his face after he got out of the international flight corridor. He says that for a moment he thought that the plane had flown in a big loop. He was very surprised that I could get a Lebanese flag in Portland. They are flying the flags practically everywhere in Beirut, Hezbollah controlled areas excepted. I gave him the flag, since I thought he deserved a trophy for his collection.
The Christmas Cabin I remember the Christmas of 1970 extremely well because that was the year we built our first building on the Bandon property. A lot of good reasons were behind our decision to create a new home in the woods. Mom and Dad had decided that living in Los Angeles was killing us and that the kids needed to grow up someplace healthy. Katy had asthma and LA's air was killing healthy people. Law enforcement types were expressing their appreciation for my father's activism by planting drugs in his campus ministry office safe to discover in raids. Mother participation in the teacher's strike made her continued employment as a substitute doubtful. Since Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Grandpa all had skill at living in the country, getting out made a lot of sense. After a lot of searching from Marin County to British Columbia, it was decided to settle in Bandon.
As a first step in developing the property, we built the Christmas Cabin. The Christmas Cabin was built so we could have someplace to live while we built the other houses. We learned a lot while building that cabin. I learned that a six-year-old can in fact finish nailing floorboards even when it is very cold and you are very tired and complaining a whole lot. I suspect that Dad also learned that windows are important and that you should have a lot of them. We also learned that you can live in a cabin in the woods and be grateful for the shelter.
At the end of the Christmas break, we went back to LA, but not for long. That spring my grandparents went back to Bandon and built their house. Truman V. Lasswell was a formidable man with a keen eye for practical solutions. He built the smaller house as a snug cabin for my Grandma, Mildred Lasswell by himself, using the Christmas Cabin as a base. Although that house might not seem like much by today's McMansion or triple-wide trailer standards, for a man in his sixties and his crippled wife working without nail guns, I think it's pretty good.
When school ended, we moved into the Christmas Cabin while we built the house. That summer is quite a story of its own, but for another time. Later the cabin served as a guest house for our other friends who were escaping from California induced madness. After all of our friends who were going to get out, got out, we used the cabin for storage. But the Christmas Cabin always had a special place in our hearts for the shelter it provided for us and the proof that we could live out in the woods on Bill's Creek Road.
