YouTube channel, Zoo Outing & Emerson

The day has been cold here in Vernonia, but the sun tends to come out in the afternoon. It's supposed to get to 30 degrees tonight. I thought of washing the little car of mine yesterday, but it was too late in the evening. The doors may have been frozen shut in the morning. The hose would have had to be drained, and the sun was sinking when I answered another phone call.

I have successfully procrastinated filing for weeks. I feel miserable about it. Tonight I think after I make some fresh juice with carrots, an apple, cilantro, celery, spinach and red grapes, I will do dishes by my YouTube music list. Drop by sometime and let me know if you enjoy some of the songs that I do. You can read more about me on my channel, also, and feel free to comment.

www.youtube.com/user/rare1walking

Maybe I'll make those enchiladas and some hummus before the chickpeas I cooked go bad. I have a recipe using a Chipotle pepper and some roasted red peppers and sundried tomatoes to try. I'll post it on my www.leangreencafe.blogspot.com blog if it's a good one.

So, should the filing get done, as I finish laundry and water plants, I will be pleased. For me, an uncluttered, organized business world is essential to good functioning. I tend to feel like a bear in the winter, and yearn to hibernate. Had I hooked up my wood stove, I could have easily fallen asleep any night with a book or laptop.

The Portland Zoo had a free day for all the kids and their folks on Martin Luther King Day. I took my 12 year-old grandson, Joseph. He loved it so much, he thought we should do that every year. He'll probably always remember the colorful bird that drank the juice he offered in a little paper cup supplied by the zoo workers to get the feathered beasties to land on your hand and drink. They sometimes fly off as the juice shoots out the bottom end. Joe got the results on his sweatshirt, much to his horror. Life is for living. A favorite quote on my fridge from Emerson reads:

"To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty;
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded."
`Emerson


"

Red-winged Blackbirds and Sunny Weather...

Cattails Filling a 3-Yard Tipper During Nesting Season at Vernonia Lake...

So, a walk around Vernonia on a Sunday afternoon with sun that was actually warm, revealed people cleaning up their yards from the winter storms. I shared the trail around the lake with a new friend. A fragile ice coat on the lake cracked and shimmered under the rays. Moles are pushing up dirt all over the grass by the lake. A river otter was so busy moving about a few days ago, I wonder if he even noticed me.

The male red-winged blackbirds are beginning to stake out their territory, preparing for the return of the females. Hopefully the lake will be filled prior to the nesting season, (as it leaks into the Nehalem), so the nests with eggs and young will be safe from drowning. KUPL sponsors a fishing derby each year, and unfortunately, lake filling prior to that event has caused casualties among the nesting blackbirds in past years. The bullrushes and habitat were chopped down in many places during the nesting season also, to make room for fishing fathers and family. When I saw the destruction, I called the Mayor, as it is against Federal Law to violate songbirds' habitat or young.

Mother blackbirds panicked with rising waters, as the lake filled that year, and the previous one. Two park hosts told me in these two separate years that the nesting season was over, when online searches verified otherwise, and blackbirds flew at lake trail-walkers to protect their young. (These birds raise more than one batch of young.) The mayor never called me back. I finally called a string of Wildlife agencies, until one promised to send Vernonia a warning. I was gone last summer, but I will send a copy of this blog to KUPL and hope that they will schedule their Fishing Derby before or after nesting season so as not to disturb the 'nursery'. The mother red-wing blackbirds took a back seat in consideration a city worker explained to me, as they had been busy with construction, etc. The day before I wrote the following poem after a walk at the lake, where I viewed the wildlife from a park bench.

Life in Vernonia…….by Pamela Cohen 5-16-07
Blackbird, Blackbird brown and plain,
Clutching on the bulrush cane.
Sleek and black, and very able
Your mate lands on the picnic table.
Warbling, flashing orange red
Lifting wings and bobbing head
What a saucy pair you make
Residents of Vernonia Lake
Eagle, osprey, darting bat
Northwest forest habitat,
River otters swimming, too
Sharing fish with that canoe
Floating, floating on the waves
Wind and sparkling sun behave
To paint a picture like a Kinkaid print
Waiting for that moonlight hint
Black bird, black bird some domain!
A kingdom viewed from your bulrush cane.
And for the moment, life is good
In Vernonia, ‘the little town that could.’

(Did you know that in some areas, the cattail or bulrush is grown to purify the water? Used for weaving. Bullrush or bulrush or cattail. A papyrus plant.)

Vernonia Treasures

Small towns have a tighter weave of history with a person's business floating around at a faster pace perhaps, but like the normal family in America, or so it seems, assumptions are rampant among the island-building humans, pretending to know each other, in brief encounters. Sometimes the toaster gets more touch in our homes, the media or electronics our committed and precious time.The very reasons small places are chosen bring individualistic curtain calls on privacy, yet no matter how disillusioned, bitter, sordid or soiled our outlook, I believe mankind has an innate yearning to be known and understood, appreciated and cared for, or at least to be acknowledged for our existence in some way. Oh that a neon sign would blink that we have passed this way, contributed to make the world better than when we found it, or left a footprint of caring or kindness despite the valley or desert.

To think that my creative late night self came out, when all I wanted to do was to share the poem I spoke of in the last blog, and comment on one of Vernonia's Treasures. There is an 80+ yr. old retired logger, still in shape, still ruggedly handsome who connects to people everywhere with a smile or a pat on the back, a chocolate cream pie he has made or a wonderful shared dinner. He speaks of his late wife with love and respect, of his perfect love affair for 50 years, how they never quarreled, and he never stepped out on her. She has been gone almost ten years, and when he hears the music and verse of "You were the wind beneath my wings" and he is alone, he cannot help but tear up. Some have said with irritation or jealousy that he is a skirt chaser, (happily, they have their own reputation :-} )or he is a Cock of the Walk, and he can take a different woman to dinner every day of the week, but this confident, white-haired Rooster is nothing short of a treasure. I have had to remind him to behave if he's been drinking, but there is a beauty in the respectful restraint of profound loneliness.

This gentleman just lost his son, and though his impeccably clean and pressed white shirt may allude to assumed roles and settings in this stage called life, beneath his hardy chiseled chest and despite his strong work-veined arms a heart beats moistened by tears. The journey taken in this "Pocket in the Woods" is complete with all the templates: difficult and tentative, courageous, bawdy and friendly.

I must say the pork with fresh onions and celery over a bowl of noodles in broth was very good tonight, and he steamed his broccoli and cauliflower and tossed it with a little diced bacon. For a wonderful flavor, he suggested I sprinkle rice vinegar over it. I couldn't get enough.

On 5-23-91 I wrote the following poem called Homecoming. I lived in Spokane, Washington in first and second grade where sun-spread smells of pine needles during the walk home from school will be savored in my long term memory some day like a guilty pleasure wrapped in a silver box with a red bow...if I make it to the rest home.

Homecoming
Back to the fir trees I walk again
As that little girl did many years ago.
Warm washing rain, soft moss and ferns
Heal and soothe my weary soul.

Peace from turmoil-rest with us
Curtain out the madding crowd,
Tread dark and musty forest floor,
Feel sun and shade and look about.

You'll see a peaceful harmoney
Of bark and needles green and dead,
New life and old-reminding that
Your world will change. Time moves ahead.

A woman now, with traveled feet
Finds her way back, and in respect
Remembers the young one years ago
Looking for solace-on her forest trek.