Union-Bulletin Blog Mix

Sheila started it…

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:28 GMT

So my colleague, Sheila Hagar, went and posted photos of the toys she has on her desk. Then she asked for others to post photos of their stuff.

So here goes.

First off there's the minature Zen garden being admired by punks, bendable wire figures and others…

Then there's the Singing Christmas Dog right next to them…

And over on another desk is the orgami figure in the planter pot…

Then there's the dragon on Jim Buchan's monitor…

That enough for you?

Come play at my desk

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:04 GMT

Today's post has absolutely no importance in the universe. However, as I was packing up the Mac and cleaning my desk Friday, it struck me I may have an inordinate number of toys at work.

First came the turtle, donated by the Middle Child.

Then came the bear in the duck costume.

Then the Magic 8 Ball, the wiggly frog, the obnoxiously loud duck…

I love them all!

Do you have toys at your desk? C'mon, spit it out. Share. No need to send pictures, but I'd love it if you do. What is your favorite work toy?

Darn, now what am I gonna do with all this liquid nitrogen?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:39 GMT

Well, I'm sure glad we got this issue cleared up. Thanks, Cecil.

TODAY!! This happened…

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:30 GMT

Two things happened this morning, one huge and one just wonderful. OK! Wonderful first:

Today I realized I have done at least one parenting job right. As we all worked to get ready for the day — which is quite a scene, even with our reduced census, all that hair and makeup and getting Jack into the crate (we hate to say goodbye, so it's quite drawn out some mornings) — my daughters were talking about some iSomethings (you can add “pod, touch, nano and shuffle” and you will know as much as I do) their friends have.

We, save for one second generation iPod shuffle, have none of those things. And I am not planning to buy them, either.

But my girls were talking about this group of kids they adore and the electronic stash they have among themselves. As I listened about movies on tiny screens and this feature and that, it dawned on me…my daughters had nothing but delight for their friends in their voices. Not a note of jealousy, feigned disdain or whiny entitlement was to be heard.

Like a choir of angels it was! Meaning, somehow, I managed not to blow that parenting assignment. OK, yes, this is a written pat on the back for myself, but I don't care…it was like seeing the first daffodils outside. Unexpectedly wonderful and a bright spot of hope.

Alrighty then, let's move on to HUGE! And, yes, I realize I have used up a year's allotment of exclamation points in this post.

Today, as I applied makeup in the same spot my husband died (well, a few feet higher to be precise), I asked myself my usual question — will mascara be a good idea today? The answer is almost always “No. Nope, forget it, it's too embarrassing when it runs.”

And, as always, on the heels of that reasoning comes the cloud my guilt trails behind like toxic gas: “If you would have just called the ambulance sooner, David might be alive.”

But today, TODAY, in a blinding flash came another thought, “Yep, alive and in crushing agony.”

People often talk to me about the suddenness of David's death. And it totally was — sudden and terrible in how it came about.

What I don't talk about enough is what preceded that Jan. 27.

In April, 2008, David had an industrial accident that caused a spinal cord injury. A severe enough event that a surgeon later told me it was a miracle my sweet boy was able to get up and walk, after being knocked unconscious.

His spinal cord swelled, becoming a Nerf ball crammed into a Lifesaver candy.

It happened just over nine months before he died, a detail I find fascinating — just about enough time to be birthed into a new life.

The surgery meant to stabilize his neck came two months later and added a bonus serving of torture, a pile atop his already-severe suffering.

It never dissipated. In the last months of his life David was, at best, highly uncomfortable. At worst and most, in absolutely excruciating pain.

Hasn't every loving spouse of an ill person longed to absorb some of the load? Yes, of course, because that's what a good relationship is — a sharing of woes, a innate desire to alleviate suffering in a partner.

I know I said this before, what Grandpa Vern told me, that I was left behind to do the hardest work of all — to grieve.

And TODAY, this very morning, my heart accepted that. I DID take over David's suffering. He WOULD have continued to be in unbearable torment, wishing he could die and be done. I AM here, Baby Boy, to take this on my shoulders.

Exactly what I would have chosen to do, my love, because you had had enough.

Grandpa Vern is right, David. It's my turn. Not calling the ambulance in time came at exactly the right moment for you.

And I finally BELIEVE it! But I should not have worn mascara.

I'm buying pizza for the newsroom today, it's that kind of day. Anyone need a hug? C'mon over! It's on David.

Penitentiary Bed & Breakfast

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:08 GMT

Even if it makes it through the next couple of years, the handwriting is on the wall for the old Main Institution (or East Complex) at Washington State Penitentiary.

“In the long term, the Main Institution is going to close. That's the way they're headed,” Port Executive Director Jim Kuntz summed up at a recent meeting of the penitentiary task force.

One of the oldest (if not the oldest) prison facilities in the state of Washington, the MI has been in the crosshairs of budget cutters for a while. It isn't surprising. Despite diligent upkeep and upgrades, only so much can be done with a structure which has some parts dating back to territorial days. You don't have to be a financial wizard to see it just makes sense to replace it with a modern, more cost-efficient building (or buildings).

So if that happens, what's to become of the old “Concrete Mama”?

Well, here's an idea. Make it (or at least part of it) into a B&B.

Surprisingly, this idea has gotten a positive response from more than a few people. Hundreds of tourists visit Alcatraz every year, don't they? How many would be willing to shell out money to spend a night or two in the same digs as Al Capone and other (in)famous characters? And if they would be willing to do that there, why not here?

Think of it. Pitch it to visitors who want a really different place to stay on their vacation, something they can brag about when they get back home. “Inmates” who toughed out their “term in the pen” (complete with a bottle of Walla Walla premium wine over dinner in the old prison cafeteria) could leave with an official certificate certifying they “had earned their discharge” from the Pen.

(And, of course, offers to purchase official T-shirts with “I did time at Washington State Pen” as well as other memorabilia would be no-brainers.)

Of course there's a ton of details to work out, not the least of which would be getting around how to have a B&B on prison grounds. But we've got a lot of bright boys and girls around here. So let's get to work.

Shuttles for sale-Previously owned-Not cheap

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:51 GMT

That's the headline for this article by Guy Gugliotta in the current issue of Air&Space Smithsonian magazine.

After 29 years and hundreds of flights (129 at last count) NASA is getting ready to pull the plug on the Space Transportation System, which is the official name for the space shuttle program.

“Sometime this year – right now it looks like September 30 – NASA plans to shut down the program,” Gugliotta writes. When that happens, the last three space surviving shuttles (Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour) will be donated by NASA “to whoever it feels can provide the best homes.”

For personal reasons, I wouldn't mind getting hold of one of these babies. Unfortunately while the “donate” part is correct, it seems you have to come up with $42 million for shipping and handling ($6 million pays for the Boeing 747 that will piggyback the orbiter to an airport of choice). And, oh yeah, you have to provide a building to display your shuttle indoors and, oh yeah, only U.S. museums and educational institutions are eligible.

Well, darn. Probably just as well. Being 122 feet long, weighing 151,000 pounds and having 78-foot wingspans, one of those guys wouldn't fit in my apartment anyway.

The personal part comes from watching the shuttle Columbia when it landed at Northrop Strip at White Sands Missile Range on March 30, 1982. It was the third space shuttle mission and the only one that ever landed at White Sands, which had been designated as a backup strip in case Edwards Air Force Base was unavailable.

That happened in 1982 after heavy rains flooded the primary strip at Edwards. When it was announced White Sands would be the landing strip, journalists and television crews from around the world converged on Las Cruces. I lucked into the assignment for my newspaper, the Farmington (N.M.) Daily Times because I was the only person on the news staff who was a reporter, a photographer and could also operate single incredibly clunky portable word processor/modem the newspaper owned at that time.

So off I went, zooming down almost the entire length of the Land of Enchantment to Las Cruces, checking into a hotel which didn't have hot water (the proprietors couldn't figure out how to keep the pilot light lit). Other adventures included being sandblasted by a dust storm the shuttle was supposed to land (but didn't) and busting out the wing window of my Ford Fiesta after locking myself out of the car that same morning.

But, busted wing window and all, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

The morning of the landing was incredibly clear and I still have vivid memories of listening to the shuttle crew start their descent, then way sooner than you would think possible spotting the little, dark speck in the sky and watching it rapidly grow into a recognizable shape. Then came the twin sonic booms (one caused by the shock wave off the nose and the other from one off the tail) and finally the landing, a hold-your-breath moment because they didn't drop the nose gear until the last second.

I remember being damn proud of being an American right then and watching the future land in the New Mexico desert. Those are the memories I like to keep of Columbia and the space program, not the ones from later years of the Challenger disaster and then, on a dark morning in February 2003, hearing the Columbia had also suffered a grim fate, breaking up in the sky over Texas 16 minutes from landing.

Well, time moves on. The space shuttles will be replaced, but it's not clear exactly by what or when. But I've still got a few mementos from the White Sands gig, and here's one:

MAIL ORDER NAG

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:34 GMT

You may recall that Amazon.com and I had a very touching moment during the holidays when I screwed up my order, they screwed up my cancellation of the screwed-up order, then they magically made everything right at the very moment I was watching Christmas gifts dissipate into thin air.

We salvaged our affair — I love them, they love my money — and came away from the near disaster with the understanding that such a relationship cannot be taken for granted.

Like so often happens, one of us has already forgotten the lesson learned. And it's not me.

This year, for the first time I guess, I shrugged off my hesitation to use Amazon's marketplace, buying from other vendors listed at the ginormous Web store.

Am I sorry now. About every ten days I get an e-mail from Amazon, on behalf of an affiliated vendor, begging me to go online to review the product I purchased. That amounts to about 10 products, including some calcium chews that were in the right place at the right price.

“Dear Sheila Hagar,
Thank you for your recent purchases from Amazon.com.

We invite you to submit reviews for the products you purchased or share an image that would benefit other customers. Your input will help customers choose the best products on Amazon.com.

It's easy to submit a review–just click the Review this product button next to the product.”

This actually started before Christmas, when the gifts I bought had not even been given to my children. And it hasn't stopped, not as of this morning.

I don't WANT to review my purchases. It's like Safeway calling me and saying,” Hey! Howja like those frozen vegetables you bought from us last week? Huh? Huh? You gonna recommend them to some friends? Are ya? Are ya?”

No, Safeway and other grocery stores don't do that. Why? Because they know if they just leave well enough alone, I'll come back when the cupboard is bare.

Just now I finally clicked the link and hit the “Opt out” button. I can get all the nagging I need from the kids and the dog. Thanks anyway, Amazon.

Positively spudacious

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:10 GMT

Maybe you've seen this, but a friend sent this on and I thought I can't be the only one who hasn't. Plus, who can resist a Gilligan's Island reference?

Please excuse me, I have some potato salad to prepare.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Holton Secret Lab

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:05 GMT

Marci Holton, who with her husband Bill run Holton Secret Lab over in Helix, e-mailed the other day.

“We have posted a new video to YouTube as of late last night. I actually uploaded it on Sunday but then YouTube was not happy with my music so yesterday I had to find music that they approved…..oh well. I hope you enjoy the video, it is my first attempt and I had fun. It runs about 8 minutes long. I am already working on a large video to run at the shows this year.”

If you want to check it out, just go over to YouTube and search for “Holton Secret Lab.” It should pop right up. Marcy's blog is also fun to check out. You can link to it here.

I've made a couple of visits out to the Holton's place and it's always been a hoot. Here's a couple living out where the deer probably outnumber the people with an awesome auto shop that turns out eye-popping hot rods, custom cars and restorations that look like they just rolled off the factory floor.

Right now Bill is working on a 1928 Dodge Coupe to which he's added a V-12 Jaguar engine “that (was) just sitting in the corner.” According to Marcy's blog, Bill fired it up the other night “and it was LOUD.” However, it seems the original carburetors are a bear to work with, which means that Bill is now “in the process of building a tunnel ram manifold so he can put a trustworthy American Edlebrock on it…What would the Brits say? Stay tuned.”

This is the sort of stuff we used to fantasize about back when we were motor-infatuated teens listing to Jan & Dean and the Beach Boys. In fact, now got the song “She's Real Fine, My 409″ stuck in my head. Thanks a lot guys.

Rated S for sad

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:24 GMT

From Tuesday's Home Place column:

On the day you read this, I'll be getting ready. Ready to walk through the one-year anniversary of my husband David's death. His unexpected, unprepared-for death.

I started chronicling just days after David left me on Jan. 27. My first blog entry, written at 86 hours post-death, was titled “That phrase, ‘I'm no longer someone's wife,' is not rolling off the tongue.”

The posting was a mass of pain and the only sure move I could make at that moment, spilling my trauma all over your monitors.

I'm at a loss how to adequately describe these last 365 days, so I hope you'll forgive this stream-of-consciousness writing. Just getting the words from head to hand took all the effort I could expend — there was no leftover energy for structure. No spirit to try for the tightly woven or delicious turn-of-phrase that makes writing so fun.

The first item on my list is to give praise. The love, the pure grace that has been extended to my family has been life-changing. I've said to any number of people, “If you have to lose your spouse, I don't think there is any better place to be.”

The community on both sides of the state line has buffered this loss, given us all manner of physical, emotional and spiritual gifts. Amazing mercy has been poured out, bringing “Love thy neighbor as thyself” to life.

There are too many examples to record in one newspaper column, but understand that every light you lit for us, we hope to emulate — it's too beautiful not to share.

But even as David is arguably the most written-about, recently dead guy in the Valley, I've refused to relinquish some things. Example: Except for a handful of paragraphs, I've not read a single self-help book about grieving. I'm sorry for the hard-earned money some of you spent and I do expect to one day be able to pick those up. But not yet.

By every account the local grief support group run by Hospice is great medicine, but I turned down that invitation, as well. In dissecting my response, I found I wanted this pain of mine to stay pure, undiluted, to sear me to the core. Why? Because when you lose the love of your life, it seems like it should hurt like hell. The way ripping off one half of your heart feels … pain insurmountable, unsurvivable. Never wavering.

When that finally eases, it will be by the grace of God. Maybe I'm the guy on the rooftop shunning lifeboats while waiting for rescue from the flood … we'll know if I end up drowning.

I have learned some quirky things about this situation, which I suspect are not widely known. They seem too weird to put in writing. Like going into the closet and donning my husband's shirt, hoping some of his skin cells fall on mine. Who can say why.

Or hugging his pillow to my side, saying “Get over here, you.”

I run my fingers over the pages of last year's calendar, thinking, “The last time I touched this page, I was married.”

There's the Jan. 19 square — 11:30, XXXX Pleasant St., blue/white, flat roof, before bridge.

When I wrote that appointment, I was writing as a whole person. I was going home to a husband. I haven't touched the squares past Jan. 26, 2009.

You find yourself playing the most awful games with yourself. If I go into Safeway and lose track of time, will David somehow be in the dairy case, waiting to scare me when I reach for the milk?

If I go to St. Mary and skip down the up staircase, might he not still be cooking in the cafeteria, his infectious grin like dessert?

The worst came when the kids and I finally played Wii again. For those who don't have this Nintendo game, you need to know that each player creates an animated character, an avatar, called a “Mii.”

Typically you design it to look like yourself — mine is chunky, wears glasses and can't decide on brown or blond hair.

So we selected Wii baseball, and who comes trotting out onto the field? David, in Wii fashion ¬≠– gray hair and beard, square-framed glasses, blue eyes … it took my breath away. How can David be alive in Nintendo land but not here? He's batting, for goodness sake! He pitched a no-hitter inning! How can he be dead?

I've called the old cell phone number to see if someone else has it. When someone answered I said, “I'm sorry, I have the wrong number.” And now it is the wrong number.

There is the stack of pictures I keep handy to look through, searching for any hint in my husband's eyes of what was ahead for us. Here, on Christmas Day, was there something foretold in the way he didn't quite smile the same?

It's enough to make me crazy, which seems like a nice respite from the darker moments.

Did you know, when you've lost the love of your life, that flickers of suicide will jump out at you without warning? When you're waiting to pull out of a parking lot, say, and your brain registers a Kenworth truck barreling down toward you. Your foot thinks about lifting off the brake for a slimmest slice of time. It's unnerving and seems disconnected with my real self.

Because my real self is too exhausted to do more than pour milk for the kids and wash my face before bed, frankly. My real self can only read fiction, for the most part, and watch happy movies. More than one sad country song and I switch stations. And no NPR, it's damned depressing.

Suicide would just be too much to manage.

I know some of this is simply raw and I'm sorry about that. You'll recall I worried early on about how much to say, when it would be too much sadness. But you guys … I don't know how to say all that should be said. You've let me be myself, you've taken it all and no one — to my face, anyway — has said, “Enough.”

You gave me permission to be brutally honest and I've taken it to my broken heart.

I no longer cry every hour, not even every day. I suspect soon I'll write a little less about David's death, that life will offer up new material. Because, I've been assured, that's what life does.

I wonder if I'll ever date again, if I would ever have the courage to let someone into my life in that way. If I'm attractive enough, how I feel about dating while I have kids at home, if anyone else will ever make me laugh “that way.” Or if that time is over for good. If there even is “someone.”

I'm guessing you'll know when I do.