Jul 19, 2010 by Naomi.

Summer was just going good but what did I find this morning? A serious sign summer was drawing to a close. Two cones of newly harvested wheat at the Burbank grain terminal! Columbia Basin threshers are going full speed ahead. And last year’s stored piles haven’t been uncovered to be hauled away! How will that affect grain futures? Will China take the stuff off our hands to cancel their debt? Or can we silence Iraq guns by filling them with grain? Picture an armada of B-17s flying over there dropping hundred pound bags of wheat. How many children will one bag kill? How many gun barrels will one bag fill? What a thing to contemplate. Summer is racing past. And I didn’t begin to get a tan!

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Jul 18, 2010 by Naomi.

Chemistry and physics didn’t dominate the conversation at the Freethought meeting this morning being as it is so often overridden by several “historians” who insist on rehashing old Christian stuff. However several of us removed to a hamburger joint to discuss earliest knowledge of the double helix that occurred in the 1960’s – an idea then shrugged off by many scientists at the time but more recently verified by later research. My public library has no books by either James Watson or Francis Crick on the subject so once again I am off to Wikipedia for the information. When I became computer savvy it was exciting to have the world of encyclopedias at my fingertips. How did the world ever make progress before? Does that make for better understanding of science? Not until I learn how to fit all the stuff together that I learn. Maybe I should live so long!

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Jul 16, 2010 by Naomi.

Last night was a night of shakes. When the first episode hit me I rolled up in my blankets and shook. Finally got up and took an aspirin and an ibprofin. Yesterday I felt sick during the Friends staff meeting at the Refuge. And went to Costco to be fitted with the hearing aids they had set up for me then I walked around in the store and parking lot to listen to the noises and came straight home and wore them all day. Now my shoulders hurt, my legs hurt, my stomach aches and my headaches. I ate a banana for breakfast with cheerios and wheat mini bites. At 11 oclock I ate a very sweet orange, almost nauseating. The temperature is 90 F and going up. I turned on the A/C to keep it cool inside. Put my ears in and played card games. Too cold to sit at my computer in the draft with it on. Had a cold cup of milk at 3:30 and sat back and read some into a Calder novel – one I read long time back. Old friends from the Triple C. Removed my ears at 0730. Have to concentrate on focussing my eyes. Haven’t had shakes all day.

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Jul 13, 2010 by Naomi.

As in I reached my goal. There. I accomplished a lot of things since I got out of bed. Completing the apricot harvest and preserving the fruit was a very good thing. I have sauce in the fridge for my dessert for the remainder of the week. Chris stopped by to pick up the key from the Refuge I brought home by mistake so I did not have to make a special trip to return it. Greg Greger picked me up and we attended a planning session for Sacajawea Days celebration on the anniversary of Lewis & Clark’s stopover along the Snake River in September. I always did McNary Ed Center but this year we have an assertive Friends leader and our participation will take on a different dimension. Hand over the reins. That’s a good goal. There.

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Jul 13, 2010 by Naomi.

Apricot harvest is really over. I thought so yesterday but I noticed the ladder was still under the branch of the apricot tree AND there were apricots hanging on it. I picked those and did get them washed and pitted. I cooked some but ran out of glass jars so there are 4 more quarts that will go into a bowl and be available for yogurt flavoring. If anybody brings me more I will take them to the Food Bank. Now it is on to bigger and better things. First I will sit back with a great big sigh of relief.

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Jul 13, 2010 by Naomi.

Early this morning I finished processing my apricot crop - cooked four quarts. I canned 8 quarts of sauce and put eleven quart bags in the freezer. Not one apricot went to waste. Oh I had to sacrifice several very green ones and one with a messy occupant otherwise, an impressive harvest. So the Refuge is a once a week commitment but there are six other days to devise rewarding activities. I go so far as pulling weeds but mostly I wander the back yard explaining to a squatter, the cat, that eating birds is off limits. I am very certain she listens and also as certain she will go right on eating birds if that’s her pleasure. I am free to leave town if I tire of chastising that big fat cat. Summer is far from over.

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Jul 12, 2010 by Naomi.

The last of my apricots are cleaned and pitted in bowls and refrigerated. There are eight quart freezer packages chilling for the freezer. I began cooking and canning the first batches. Those are very tasty when added to yogurt. I got tired of the fussiness of canning and just dumped them with sugar into freezer bags. I can prepare them for whatever in the winter when I want fresh fruit. What a joy to have all taken care of. They are beautiful fruit, hardly a blemish. None with insects inside. I got started late because I was at McNary until two pm. By that time the sun was hot and as it fell further toward the earth the rays hit me full in the eyes. I took time out for dinner. And guess what for dessert? Apricots. Freshly washed and pitted!

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Jul 12, 2010 by Naomi.

No wind that blew dismayed the crew or troubled the captain’s mind — so goes the seaman’s ditty. One of famous Columbia Basin winds blew and though it made the carrying of large cardboard sheets from the Ed Center across the street to our cars a challenge we did not dismay. Rather we joked about being boats and sailing across the lot. There were many large pieces to move because the people who do the recycling had dared to go off on vacation for a month and boxes just clung to each other for support until they could go to where they were wanted. However the wind made a very hot day more pleasant when I had a chance to relax on my own back steps. Among my trees the wind became a soothing breeze which I very much appreciated. All my cares were blown away.

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Jul 11, 2010 by Naomi.

McNary Education Center holds a Second Saturday event each month. July 10 brought into focus the wonders of natural materials and encouraged visitors to create some work with those materials which had been gathered beforehand by staff in order to prevent unnecessary pilaging and destruction of the Refuge. The most common creation was a fairy house. Now I object to letting people believe there are fairies in forests and glens but the magic is indisputable. Nature is full of magic and I sincerely hope synapses in the human brain allow for that distinction. The fact of evolution and our presence on earth is a kind of magic. Something which is very difficult to assimilate. But it did not occur from a poof of breath from a conjured being. It occurred naturally from reactions of physics and proteins of earth, the same stuff which fills the universe and the cosmos. Too deep for me to fully understand but too many scientists far wiser than I have proven the fact.

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Jul 11, 2010 by Naomi.

Conversation at our Sunday Freethought always takes unusual paths. Discussion began with shared information on individual telescopes with diagrams on napkins to illustrate size and mechanics. Talk deteriorated into my dog-is-bigger-than-your-dog and Al Stellwagon lost interest and asked if I would mind listening to his very short pitch about nanobacteria and the origin of life on earth. A thousand times more intriguing than Christianity’s foibles, we got a table and two junior meals at Burger King. Well Al does not proceed to do anything short. He explained the way he understood the concept in which I often interjected a helpful Thesaurus noun or adjective. Three hours later, food devoured, I headed home to refer to the Scientific American articles which he had dropped off for me last week. A U of Texas geologist had been working with rock specimens and found tiny bacteria as small as 200 nanometers fossilized in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic periods along with metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – raw materials involved in biological processes. Talk about a heady subject. No wonder it spanned three hours. What fun to review the knowledge of life’s origin! Profound yet exciting. Keep tuned, more is likely to follow.

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