Birds in flight…

Unashamedly, I’ll continue to try to foist environmental issues on Ellen and Reid. Same as my dad did to me; I just hope the lessons sink in a little quicker than they did with their old man.

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May 21, 2013

Ellen/Reid: The little blue birds are testing their wings for flight. I could see them flitting around in their nesting box this morning. Their maiden voyage can’t be but a few days away. I wish I would have put a small dowel just below the entrance hole as a safety net of sorts since the nearest limb would be a 3 – 4 yard stretch for a little one. The parent birds are flying themselves ragged

The blue birds are gone. We didn’t get to see their grand entrance into their brave new world, but we wish the fledglings well.

trying to feed however many voracious nestlings are in the box. I hope I get to see them as they try to fly for the first time. It makes putting up the nest worthwhile if it contributes a bird or two to the population. We placed a second box about 40 yards away but it doesn’t have any activity.

It looks as if I’m going to retire at 65. There’s no particular rhyme or reason to it, it just feels right. The health scare a couple of years ago figures into it a bit – live now while you can. A friend of mine was saying last week that the average life span of men is about 78 years. We can do that math. I want to spend time writing and blogging and riding the bike, golfing if I must, and, of course, seeing you two dweebs a lot more. There would be nothing wrong with working 20 hours a week at a store or golf shop to fill some idle time. I have to talk to John about the specifics but that’s sort of where things rest at this point. Your uncle seems on board with it although

Emma sneaks a peek…

Maybe there’s something to the adage ‘one picture is worth a thousand words’.

The shot of Emma pretty much sums up the week that was (there was no letter written) when I was in St. Paul with Ellen and Reid for Emma’s first birthday; i.e. we were

Emma sneaks a peek as her uncle Reid goes beardless.

all together in the same place, Emma is plenty old enough to be inquisitive as she watched her uncle Reid shear off his three year beard for Liz, his girlfriend, and it was good to play that old family game of ‘catch up’.

But the letter that will be posted next week went in the mail this morning.

Watching Game of Thrones…and retrieving plastic

April 1, 2013

Ellen/Reid: My friend Tom is under the surgeon’s knife this morning with triple bypass. The doctor makes it all seem so simple although he’s not the one lying on the table. But the doc says Tom will be as good as new so the Bridger excursion will be on next year. Reid, you should go with us.

I do have my tickets in hand for Emma’s birthday extravaganza. No thought has been given to lodging but I can take care of myself. I will get a rental car, too. I will take part of Friday to head down to Owatonna to play golf with Steve Allen and a couple of other friends who will meander up from Des Moines. Reid, consider this an appeal about what dates work for you for us

Reid (right) and his dad in ’10 after a visit to his ailing grandfather. Time to see the boy’s new digs in Chicago.

to visit you and Liz in Chicago.

I’m looking down upon the quiet little stream this morning from my third floor window and it’s sad to see a mess

The green belt as a nice backdrop…

I can’t count the times these letters have touched on or skirted environmental points over the years. It’s an important touch-point for me and one of the few hot button issues that I consistently push.

————–

March 11, 2013

Ellen/Reid: The trees out back are beginning to bud, a sure sign that before long we will be completely shut off from view of the units 75-100 yards away. Felicia nosed around at some other single floor condos and she couldn’t find any that had the appeal of ours. The green belt is a nice backdrop, and I suspect that of all the units here, we have the best in that respect. What

The green belt is safe refuge from marauding feral cats for the birds that visit our window feeder. We have a room with a view – and it’s all green.

we don’t have is the warmest unit around. That’s what got us looking around at potentials. Heat rises, and it rises quickly up and out of the room where we want to stay warmest. The fireplace has been on almost non-stop and Felicia vegs in front of it most evenings while I stay

A roomie and going berserk over some snow…

February 18, 2013

Ellen/Reid: Wow, what a weekend.  Naturally, Emma calls the shots of when to do what and how long we take to do it, but that’s just the scheme of things.  That’s what babies do.  She is a dear little one; so quick to smile, so vocal and good natured.  And she works her gramps like a bass drum.  She squawked and I came running.  Yeah, by the time Reid and I return, she’ll be walking up a storm and changing your family dynamics that much more, Ellen.  It is truly amazing how fast they change.

Find someone you can confide and trust in…

January 7, 2013

Ellen/Reid: It’s not until you go to clear out closets that you truly know how much of your stuff is stodgy, passé, embarrassing to have been worn at all and should simply be put out to pasture (aka, given to Goodwill).  I’ve been trying to clear out available closet space for Felicia, and even by my low standards, much of my garb was awful by any measure.  One thing that the total lack of a sense of style does is make the decision making easy when you think “bletch, this was just a fashion travesty.”  I stumbled upon some more sorry items in the garage this morning.  Those will go, too.

The S.S. Minnow…

December 17, 2012

Ellen/Reid: Reid, I don’t know as if you’ll have a chance to receive this let alone read it before you fly out for Charlotte, but we’ll keep the string intact.

By now it is hoped you will have figured out where

We did fish and Reid did catch fish. Not as many as the better times of year, but enough.

to take Tim and Liz, respectively, for the nice dinners.  Ellen, if there’s anything left over you might buy Emma some sort of designer baby food.  Not that there is anything wrong with strained-diluted-tasteless peas and such, but maybe there is something else on the market at Whole (“Paycheck”) Foods.  I’m not up to speed these days on baby food.  Reid, you can spring for a little pricier

Fasten your seat belts…

December 10, 2012

Ellen/Reid: Fasten your seat belts, your dad is about to go ballistic.

I am disappointed, taken aback and steamed beyond belief about the stinky white gunk this morning floating in the otherwise tranquil little stream behind the house.  You should have a photo of this environmental snafu by now.  How the hell can people dump stuff like this down a storm drain?  It’s the same body of water I watch birds wash themselves in, little fish and tadpoles swim around madly to escape herons and where deer stoop for a drink.   I know it’s only a small stream that emerges from a culvert and that you could jump across without a running start but holy smokes, this is my back yard.  In another 400 yards it empties into McMullen Creek and so whatever damage it may cause here will be multiplied down there.

The white goo that seeped into the stream behind the house. There was no rain to shove it downstream or dilute it; whatever it was stayed this way for most of the day.

It just sickens me that this is how we deem to treat our small chunk of the world.  If Mother Nature has a temper, then it has to be screw ups like this that would set her off.  I sent an email along about the situation with my phone, offered to send an email with a cell phone photo of the white water (and left a voice mail, too), to the pollution control folks at Mecklenburg County but no response so far, which infuriates me.  It is supposed to rain later today, and that will accelerate the problem, literally, by flushing it out of my back yard where it will then become someone else’s problem further down the watershed.  I suppose this is why some of my donations go to the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation.  Excuse the rant but it drives me nuts.

After you’ve just read the first paragraph, don’t drive me any more nuts by getting me anything for Christmas.  Those iPhone Facetimes with Emma, and your trip to CLT, Reid, are all the gifts I need.  Also, I’ve taken to leaving on the Christmas tree lights at night because when I come downstairs about 5:15 in the morning to make coffee and retrieve the paper, its multi-color glow seems pretty welcoming.  A gift-laden tree it’s not, but that’s okay.  By now you should have received just about everything you’re gonna get.

The newspaper delivery lady got $25 as a holiday gift.  I was up Saturday morning (ugh) about 5:30 and her truck was running in the common area.  I scribbled out the check and carried it outside just as she was getting back into her rig.  It wasn’t much, but enough for her to at least get some thanks.  She delivers the paper like clockwork, rain or shine.  I didn’t say, ‘rain or shine or snow’ because we don’t seem to be on the verge of snow.  Saw that you guys got dumped on in the Twin Cities, Ellen.  Too bad.  I played golf in shirt sleeves yesterday, although don’t read that as trying to rub it in.  Ha.

Reid, you will meet Felicia for the first time when you arrive.  She will meet us at Mac’s for some wings as soon as you step off the curb at the airport.  She won’t go with us to Oak Island, and a word to the wise: we will likely get up pretty early in the morning on Saturday to give ourselves a head start on what should be about a four hour drive.  Those cursed fisher-guides still have not returned my calls.  Hell, we ought to rent our own boat.  If by any chances one of them does call, we may get up really early so we can fish about 11:30 or noon for a half-day.  I’ll be so disappointed if we don’t get out on the water, but at least you can say you’ll have driven through Laurenberg, Monroe, Rockingham and countless other eastern NC bergs.  Trust me, you will see how the other half lives.

Okay.  Outta here.  Work to be done.  Unfortunately, no one to pass the buck to.  Happy holidays!

On a need-to-know basis…

The hot-shot diet I pontificated about last week isn’t going so well.  And I made such a big deal of it with Ellen and Reid.

Since then I’ve consumed: two hamburgers, fries, a breakfast sandwich with sausage and bacon, and sausage and pancakes for dinner.  That doesn’t include the wine, gin and tonics, beer, and fish & chips (with mo’ fries) I ate last week on a Florida vacation (all of which was dissected in the letter written and mailed today that will be published next week).  But I promise to do better.  Really.

I think parental diet is on the menu of what kids ought to know about.  They’re on a need-to-know basis and they ought to know.  They already know a lot of personal things anyway (see last week’s post) and that’s okay.  We’re all adults here (as they near their upper 20′s) so very little is off limits.  That’s probably the largest change to the letters over the years; as my two have grown, they get to read things now that were held a bit closer to the vest not so many years ago.

Today’s letter  to the kids (which you will read next week) deals with a trip to Florida where this beach vine inched its way closer to the ocean’s edge.

I told the kids that there is a marginal chance that I might-possibly-maybe-perhaps start to run again.  I need to compensate for a metabolism that has slowed to a snail’s pace while the adding of pounds is occurring with Usain Bolt-like speed.

Here is last week’s letter:

————

October 1, 2012

Ellen/Reid: It’s been more than 10 days since I’ve had any beef, but there hasn’t been any tofu during that span, either.  But one has to start somewhere.  We tried ‘beer can chicken’ on the grill Saturday night – until the grill ran out of gas and we transferred the whole caboodle to the oven.  It was okay but not great although we’re not sure how someone can manage to mess up such a simple meal.  I’ve also started to take the Omega 3 lozenges you recommended Ellen but am still somewhat uncertain what those are supposed to do.  I’d look it up but the new MacAir is in the shop while the files from the decrepit Acer are transferred over to the new machine.  I bought a series of one-on-one lessons at the Mac store and I’ll probably begin to step up to the counter in terms of attendance.  It’s a slick machine but I’m slow on the uptake so the classes will no doubt be helpful.  I’m tired of reveling in my technology stupidity.  Time to enter the new age.

There has been some thought given to resuming a schedule of running on a limited basis.  It’s a weight thing.  I’m not ready to return to the days of what it took to run a 2:24 marathon, but a light jog of a couple of miles a few days a week wouldn’t seem to hurt things.  The only reservation is what even a light dose of pavement pounding might do to the ankles.  Perhaps low impact exercise is the way to go.  At any rate I’ll keep trying to walk it off on the 2.5 mile circuit we take most every weeknight.  Felicia has to slow down to accommodate my lack of speed.

I head to Florida on Thursday to join Bob and the two Daves (Hemminger and Dahlquist).  This is our third such annual adventure, and I suppose we have Jane H. to thank for that.  She keeps pushing us down this path and we are all too eager to follow it.  We will be situated near Tampa but I don’t know the exact location.  I rent the car and the others ride along and tell me where to go.  It will mostly be golf, B.S.ing and a little fishing off the coast followed by more B.S.ing.  The fishing is what I’m really excited about.  The captain of the boat keeps saying what nice fish they’ve been catching but that is code for ‘You should’ve been here last week’ and we all know how most of those turn out.  There doesn’t appear to be any hurricanes in the forecast beyond the ones that have ice in a glass.  Really, we’re pretty much a wine group.  I’ll try to stick to the new diet although there are no guarantees given that surf & turf will likely be on our menu.

Ellen, here are the printed checks from the cleaning service.  I think they are trying to take you to the cleaners, no pun intended.  Their bookkeeping isn’t what it should probably be.  If for some reason we are shown to be wrong – but I don’t think so – then we will make them whole.

Reid, I promise to get your Christmas flight ticket this week.  Thanks for the dates you provided.  Since we won’t get a timeshare, we might drive over to Oak Island and stay at some seedy place on the beach.  But we will still have a good time for a couple of nights.  Oak Island must be about four hours or so.  It’s just this side of Wilmington, which we will probably get over to for one night.

Work is going okay aside from working with the &*%^$#@ attorneys.  They could clog up a culvert with all the legalisms they spew which I have to wade through and translate to useable English.  But monkeys and pigs will fly in formation before lawyers ever write something in plain terms.

It will be great to see you guys at Thanksgiving.  The free range, organic turkey sounds divine, Ellen.  Reid and I will volunteer (won’t we, Reid?) to do most if not all the cooking.  On my oath I will not forget sugar in the pies this year.  Get some of those good green apples and a couple of tins of pumpkin pie filling, and we’ll be in business.

Not ready to put Portland behind me…

I’m not ready to put Portland behind me.  Not yet.

Maybe because it’s simply out West, but there is something about Portland. The Willamette flows into the Columbia at Portland and splits the city in two. The river is a good focal point.

The priority items in last week’s letter (and rightfully so) didn’t leave me enough space to praise that city to Ellen and Reid.  Not that I want them moving further away from me than they already are, but the popularity of Oregon, and Portland in particular, are such that they advertise for visitors as long as they don’t become residents.

The City of Roses (that moniker is even stamped on their manhole covers) seems to have traits of all good cities: attractive, lively, great food, good architecture, and very habitable.

Where cities like Charlotte should pay attention is another common denominator: effective and widespread mass transit.  The light rail strings the city together, from the airport to the city center and the ‘burbs beyond.

Charlotte could borrow a page from Portland. A wonderful light rail system ties the city together, with noticeably less motor traffic.

I wouldn’t dream of pedaling around Charlotte.  Bikers here are an afterthought if not a nuisance and the news of car-inflicted injuries on the narrow ‘bike lanes’ here are all too common.  In Portland though, the bike lanes are spacious and biking to work and play is the norm; Minneapolis and Portland square off in a running (biking?) argument as to which is the more biking-est city.  On a year ’round basis, Portland has to get the nod.

The one disappointing thing was the cleanliness.  The streets were trashy and not picked up to the extent a visitor would hope to see.  If I was to grade Portland, it would get a B- if only because they make a concerted effort to get the locals to recycle.  Bins to separate waste are a great idea.

Street corner bins allow walkers to separate recyclable waste. Unfortunately, walkers could go a few feet left or right to find enough litter to fill these containers.

Finally, Portland has Powell’s Bookstore.  Best brick-and-mortar bookstore.  Ever.

Now I’m done with Portland.  Here is what E & R received a couple of weeks ago.

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September 10, 2012

Ellen/Reid: I head out to Portland on Thursday morning and get in about 2:30 local time.  My lodgings are a C (or D) grade joint in the downtown near to the church and where Henry and Mary lived, and that’s good enough for me.  Tom mentioned staying with them at their home in Eugene, but my thinking is his and the family’s plate is full enough without having to worry about guests.  So I feel better about the arrangements.  Tom bumped me the obituary this weekend, and today I’ll place it in the Omaha paper so those in Henry’s hometown can be brought up to speed on things.  They sound relatively at peace with things, and Tom says the passing was calm and serene, all things considered.  I’m looking forward to it.  There’s a family gathering Friday night, and on Thursday night my nephew Eli addresses a crowd at a Patagonia store about his exploits paddling the Pacific coast.  Patagonia is one of his sponsors, so that’s a bonus of sorts.

The weekend was pretty quiet.  Friday night, and for the first time in more than four years, Felicia cooked and it was delicious which caused me to raise the issue ‘why haven’t you done this more often?’  We went out and had a couple of drinks and heard some passable live music at Mac’s.  Our intent was to ride to Shelby on Saturday night for reputed excellent BBQ (is chopped meat really BBQ?) but got rained out.  Instead, we grilled a couple of beefy New York strips while we watched Nebraska stumble badly against a so-so UCLA team.  The best days for the Big Red appear to be behind them.  We also dog-sat her daughter’s lab/Weimaraner mix.  It’s a sweet dog.  Walked a couple of courses and played shoddy golf for the most part but the walking part was enjoyable.  My best days at golf also appear to be well behind me.

I do have the 12 page Caldwell newsletter to crank out in the next couple of days before heading West.  Nothing – zero – is on paper as of this writing.  That’s always a work in progress that comes together at the 11^th hour or the last second, whichever comes first.  Just when there appears to be no news, there is always some sort of divine intervention because a cover story or some other substantive item always pops up.  John seems to appreciate it (Reid, you’ve not met him) and that’s sort of what keeps me going on it.  This will be my 46^th or 47^th issue although no one is really counting.  John’s starting to preach on the plight of the poor, and given that neither party really addressed the issue at their recent conventions, it is timely.  I’m starting to sound like a church goer.

Ellen, I’ll make t-day reservations this week, and Reid, we need to move off the snide to get your Christmas tickets too.  Be sure to give me the dates on when you want to arrive and depart.  I’ll try to secure us a place on the beach somewhere, possibly Oak Island.  It’s about four hours due East of here.  It will spare you having to look at nothing under the Christmas tree, and maybe we can cook like we did on that Thanksgiving at Hilton Head a few years back if we are fortunate enough to have a kitchenette.  That was enormous fun.  Of course, it will be December and you never know what the weather will hold.  That’s okay.  You’re from Chicago.  Even the 30’s would be an upgrade for you.

Here I was all set to think about retirement at 64 or 65 – and then I logged onto the Social Security website and found, to my dismay, that the retirement age is now 66.  Bummer.  I was all set to do something else with the rest of my life, like write or play more bad golf.  I wouldn’t mind a part-time gig at a sporting goods store or something like that.  I don’t think I’m cut out to be a barista since I loathe coffees that involve foam, milk, soy products, and other ersatz flavor enhancers.  All that stuff is bogus and gets in the way of a good cup o’ joe.  When Emma’s old enough for coffee, her Gramps will teach her what’s right and wrong.