Mar 29, 2011 by Naomi.

Recently at the Othello Sandhill Crane Festival I donated a copy of SAGESONG, my first publication by iUniverse, to the silent auction. Dixie, who is a dynamite force behind the festival, hunched down beside my chair and whispered in an awestruck voice, “I didn’t know you were a writer.” Well it was never a secret. I am a writer. I blog almost daily, I answer my email with wordy epistles. Now the dictionary definition of disease is: an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism, often medically associated with specific symptoms such as a compulsive response. I can’t not write. It is a disease I refuse to cure.

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Mar 19, 2011 by Naomi.

Days are pretty much the same. I consult my PC to verify what day it is. I do have a few meetings to attend to and I had to check the moon because it shown so bright that I could almost read by its light. By morning clouds had come over and rain fell which will help my spruce babies more than city water I hose on them. I walk the thousand steps and push twenty-five times the belly off the floor. I told Tim this morning that I feel like I’m walking in a fog and he agreed that I needed to get out in the fresh air for walking, fog or not. I didn’t feel the quake that wiggled Puget Sound a day ago but when I saw Wade load a truckload of trash that Buena and Dan brought in after Lorraine moved into assisted living, my jaw fell to my knees. Sure the roof only covers a carport but was tempting to use for storage. Never covered a car for years. Something changed. Maybe an earthquake. Looks at least like a whirlwind came through and blew the stuff away. The neighborhood cats explored the junk pile every morning and so did Wade when he came off Dial-a-ride. He would walk through the stuff shaking his head. But the earth was shaking or some brains were when they looked at the junk for months making plans because like the line of the song goes: Pooof it was gone! What a difference. Will the car finally get a roof over its head?

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Mar 18, 2011 by Naomi.

When I think of exercising I remember how Ethel would fist her hands and place them together then raise her first fingers to a point – and lower into the fist – over and over, up and down, while chanting “watch me do my exercises” and we would howl with laughter. Making meals was her regular. Bob refused to cook. He had been in the CCC’s as a cook and that was enough of that. Ethel loved to drive her car and went to town often. But I regress. I did fifty push-ups against the counter, laid on the floor on my belly and did 25 push-ups, walked around the shop 10 times and walked up and down the stairs at my public library twice then in my backyard I walked to water and recount my newly planted spruce trees. Are they ever cute! But back to my desk. Now my fingers are having a tough time hitting the right keys. Love the backspace key a lot. Enough exercise one day. Well just one more, crawling into bed. Yah!

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Mar 17, 2011 by Naomi.

Down on my knees I managed to plant ten spruce trees before lunch, March 17. In a moment of weakness a month or more ago, I donated ten dollars to the Arbor Day Foundation. In my mail this morning I received ten baby spruce trees which were to be planted immediately or properly “heeled in” until such time that I could take care of them. Never let it be said that I would let those babies go to waste. Hours later with creaking knees and cold hands I can sit back, relieved that they are in my backyard to grow and prosper. They are about a foot high with root systems to match so the holes had to be dug deep and wide. Long time since I did that much digging. By the depth of moisture lacking in my soil I will be watering on a daily basis for some time. But then that is all I really have on my agenda. These babies do not have napies to clean – lucky me.

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Mar 15, 2011 by Naomi.

Earthquakes continue to quiver off the coast of Japan. As of this hour, 10:23 PDT, on March 15, 2011, five hundred epicenters have been identified for earthquakes within that country’s plate boundary. Equipment and people have been disabled therefore data is gathered by the USGS and those quakes are staggering in their consistency. Earthquakes occur when the plates ram together. Or one is pushed up against another. The wide Pacific lies between the western USA and eastern Japan so is the power and weight of the water stressing the earth? I wonder. It is beyond my comprehension to understand. And I sit quite unshaken with the action so should it matter? Well there is nothing I can do about it and worrying will solve nothing but yet I marvel that science has revealed so much about the earth that I can contemplate what takes place on the other side of this sphere on which I live. If the outer layer of the earth was like a layer of skin, is the earth quivering its skin like an animal in the attempt to dislodge a biting fly? That is a flight of fancy but appears to me to be an adequate comparison.

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Mar 15, 2011 by Naomi.

There is more disaster today than has been tabulated mostly because not only tens of thousands of lives were ended but the records were erased. Those people have been effectively wiped away as if they never existed. The results of the earthquakes washed inland, damaged nuclear reactors, and released untold numbers of radioactive isotopes. We can only hope that the updraft over the Pacific Ocean carried the danger above us into the atmosphere. What goes up also goes around so time and many measurements later some data will be gathered. Released? Maybe. No ordinary citizen can do the measurements of those elements like we can measure the rainfall or the sunshine. I worked on the Hanford site for many years and often was scanned to check for absorption of radiation. Never any to worry about. Maybe that’s why I am overweight. Well I have to point the blame at something. The fat just fell through my skin out of the atmosphere. Who said “You are what you eat?”

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Mar 15, 2011 by Naomi.

What is money for if not to spend? A dental assistant cleaned my teeth this morning, March 15, 2011, and found some decay that must be reckoned with. Among the options I chose to get a crown although on a non chewing tooth. It will keep my jaw line straight and strong. I could ignore it as I have ignored my teeth for most of my life but the sight of a toothless old lady is not compelling. I will have a crown installed to strengthen the tooth on each side of it. Some money has accumulated in my “slush” fund and a good tooth to me appears to be a sound investment. So it will be done. And to make this an even better day, rain is falling to put off cleanup for another day. I don’t want to be too pessimistic but the rate at which radioactivity is escaping from the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan may put some nasty stuff in our atmosphere. That bears watching. (or is it bares)?

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Mar 13, 2011 by Naomi.

Population is not as dense in Illinois as in Japan but when it comes to flood waters endangering property, human anxiety has no less bounds in one location than in another. As I write on March 13, 2011, thunderstorms with hail are sweeping northeast along the Wabash and other rivers that are 5 feet or more above flood stage. Even without the force of ocean waves, water coming toward my border would be darned scary. People can climb on roof tops or drive to higher ground. Pigs, horses, cows and other animals cannot. We know they feel the panic but with luck the disaster will pass when the rain stops. I hear rain on my roof. Am I glad I have a two foot foundation under my house. I hope I don’t have to set up my ladder.

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Mar 13, 2011 by Naomi.

Two hundred and sixty-six earthquakes are shown on the USGS map this morning, March 13, 2011 (Sunday), at 8am, my time, with three at 5.2 on the Ricther scale within the last hour at the epicenters 150 miles off the east coast of Japan. This is the total of the quakes registered within the week, the most recent three are 20 to 27 miles deep, that is below the level of the earth not the distance from the ocean surface. The largest was reported at 8.9 with Tsnamie waves of 2 feet first reported on Japan. Lines of communication were disrupted and it may be days or even weeks before the full details of lives lost or people displaced and property destroyed can be tabulated. Information may never be found of hundreds of those citizens. Only by the requests of those who knew that friends and relatives were actually on the island will a list of the lost be verified.

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Mar 11, 2011 by Naomi.

The steps are a pleasant place to sit and admire the silence in my backyard while I rest from the thousand feet I walked around my shop for the second time today. Light from a waxing crescent moon doesn’t show much detail in my path but the ground is flat and familiar so I can keep up a fairly brisk pace. The sun set about six o’clock and the sky is a very pale blue or dark white – well you would have to make that call when you see it for yourself. The air is still like its holding its breath or resting after blowing hard all day yesterday. The early evening traffic is swift and steady on George Washington Way shattering the silence. My morning walk was cool. The sun brought out the stinking roofers making it difficult for me to catch the scent of sage over the heated asphalt that is being applied, probably to seal up leaks discovered during the past several days of rain. My house is snug and I am reassessing an earlier plan I thought to leave home for a drive around the USA. Do I want to spend thirty-five dollars to fill my gas tank every 350 miles? That is what a fill cost me this morning. Should I add my little Hyundai wheels to the road noise? Well not tonight. The old Democrats will just have to get along without me.

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