The rejuvenative power of Christmas

This will be my fifty-sixth Christmas. That's quite a number of Christmases under my belt. As the rush began this year, as it does every year, I tended to avoid thinking about it, because real life continued to intrude: problems with students (and parents who find it easier to blame the teacher than to discipline their little darlings), demands from school administration, and a constant struggle to keep up with grading papers and to maintain the gradebook. My father dying in September. Problems with my brother, the "executor" of my father's estate (a position I turned down originally because I thought that having an involved family member in a position such as that was a mistake), who declared, after I objected to the fact that in over a month's time passing I had gotten one sentence from him about how affairs were proceeding which amounted to "Don't worry about it," that he had no interest in maintaining a relationship with me after everything was finished(I'm now just dealing directly with the lawyer, and my brother can continue to think of himself as Very Important, which seems to be essential to his personality).

I've made starting plans to go to the Peruvian jungle next year on a hunt for bushmasters -- the largest venomous snake in the Western Hemisphere and the largest pit viper of them all -- because capturing one has been a childhood dream as yet unfulfilled. It sounds as though I'll be going with just a guide, and a cook and interpreter, into the middle of nowhere for two or three weeks -- I'm not a tour kind of guy, plus I doubt they'd let you capture and photograph big venomous snakes on tours.

Lots of things tend to wear you down, and to put aside the things you found important as a younger person because "real life" is more "important" than "childish things," but Christmas always reminds me of these things, brings them back to me, and makes me realize that it would be a shame if one let trivial (or perhaps not so trivial) occurrences in one's life erase the beauty and meaning of Christmas. And so, each December, I force myself to haul my butt out of the morass of self-pity, the "what-ifs," the "should haves," etc., and to remember what Christmas means to me.

I remember, around this time every year, what my Christmases were like as a youth. They looked like the photo up there at the top of this page: smiling mom, huge tree with BIG lights and tinsel, nativity scene on the mantel, and my dad's old World War II olive green GI stockings hung on the fireplace screen, full of things from Santa. And I continue to wait for Santa every year, because as far as I am concerned (let me go on record as saying this to the World Wide Web) Santa Claus is real.



I see Santa in children's eyes around this time of year, my daughter's eyes particularly. There's magic in just saying the name, Santa Claus, for me. When I think about Santa, I am instantly transported to a time where I had no interest in, or knowledge of, politics, wars, or the bad things people do to each other just because they can do them. I remember the smells of my mom's Christmas cookies, and the sights, on Christmas morning, of a huge tree that Santa Claus magically brought to our house every Christmas Eve, where before there was a plain living room with perhaps a few Christmas cards as decorations but nothing else. Santa also brought candy canes, and left a palpable presence in our house that I could almost feel, as I realized that the great Christmas saint had actually been in our living room, and had taken the time to do something nice for yet another family.

I tend to forget that presence over the year following Christmas, and, upon reflection, have come to think that's a shame. The Christmas feeling, fleeting as it is, should not be fleeting at all, but remain in one's heart throughout the year, and it's sad that this feeling tends to be driven out or squashed by events that really should have no effect upon one's happiness at all. It comes back to me occasionally, if only as a brief thought passing through my mind, when I smell cinnamon (my mom's spice of choice at Christmas) and I instantly think of this time of year, even in July. I think, at those times, the things I'm thinking now: how sad it is to have that Christmas Feeling driven out of one's life every year, when it is that sort of feeling that should help to sustain us. To give us hope for the future. Yes, Santa is part of that feeling; he will always be intertwined, in my heart, with the story of the Christ Child's birth, and I have always associated the presents brought by Santa Claus with those given to the Child in Bethlehem by the three wise men.

As I begin a new chapter in my life -- that of retiree, young enough to enjoy things I've always dreamed of, be it bushmasters, Australia, England and the sparkle in my daughter's eyes when she thinks of Santa -- I hereby resolve that Christmas will never leave my heart. God bless it. God bless Santa, whose visit I will await with as much excitement as I had as a kid. And God bless us -- every one.

Herp

Reflections on my dad

My father died on September 21st, and I have had some time to reflect upon what was a long and unique life for the person who was Frank Ford.

My relationship with my dad was off-and-on. Never a warm man, my father was a child of the Great Depression, having been born in the first half of the 1920s to a mother who didn't want him, since she wasn't married, and shipped him off to his grandparents to be raised by them. He never liked his mother as a result, but adored his grandmother, as it was she and his grandfather who raised him.

My father grew up poor, often half-humorously telling me that until he grew up the only part of the chicken he ever saw was the gravy; stories were related about spending an entire day in a movie theater for ten cents, with a bag of overripe bananas picked up from the trash at a fruitstand for refreshment. His grandfather dressed him in clothing picked up from second-hand stores, and he told me that when he joined the Army Air Corps to go into World War 2, the best thing about being in the service was the food.

Dad ended up being a bombardier, with a lot of missions under his belt in the European theater of the war (more than was necessary to complete his obligation) and he was about to go to the Asian theater when the bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered.

He went home, met my mother, and lived a fairly frugal existence with their new daughter, Kathleen (my daughter is named for my sister, who is now deceased). My mom had a pretty interesting family, which I might talk about in a later post, but all I can say is, for many reasons, she was the best thing that ever happened to my father. She stuck with him through his moods, through spending money on things that he wanted but that they should have saved, and finally moved to a farm in Oregon with him and all of us kids because he decided he wanted to be a farmer.

I will say that growing up on the farm was the best thing that could have happened to a boy who was surrounded by my grandfather's books on natural history (my grandfather on my mother's side was famous in his own right, having been integral to helping the Japanese reseed the dead US west coast oyster beds in an attempt to revive the oyster industry there). When I wasn't working with animals, I was out catching them. We had a rock quarry where I could practice target shooting, and lots of snakes and lizards to catch. We had ponds where ducks would stop on their way to the game refuge adjacent to our land, and so we always had wild duck in the freezer, as well as quail and venison. It was a lonely way to grow up for most people, but my dad pretty much disliked everyone, and it suited him, so I suppose some of that tendency rubbed off on me.

My mother died a few years ago, and I was there holding her hand in the hospice when she went. Dad, who was always the big macho guy, pretty much went downhill after that, and my brother talked him into selling his home in California and moving to miserable weather in Laramie, Wyoming. Looking back on it, I think my father would have been better off staying in California at an assisted living place, but my brother, who is sort of a bigshot (or perhaps thinks he is, and makes sure everyone hears about it), talked him into leaving, and the rest is history.

My father was a one-of-a-kind guy. Hard to live with, but who gave me a few moral underpinnings that are valuable, mostly around the ideal of keeping one's word. He gave me a few other tendencies that I probably could have done without, such as holding grudges until they shovel dirt over me, but I'm working on that. He wasn't happy without mom, and he's probably better off now. And now all that's left of my immediate family is my brother and myself, and since my brother's too important for anyone to talk to, for all intents and purposes my family is my wife, my daughter, and me, which suits me fine.

I'll miss my father, but it also makes me look upon one's life a little more closely. All the things he did, all his experiences, all the things he collected through the years, and POOF, when you die all the material things mean nothing at all. It makes you realize that your life on earth probably means very little compared to what your life will be like after you pass on -- at least if you make the right choices. All I can say is: I hope my parents made the right choices.

Farewell, Dad.

Summer vacation's coming to an end for this old teacher

This picture is one of the reasons I live in Arizona -- a spring in Arizona's Huachuca Mountains in the southeastern part of the state:



But, as Diane in the old TV show Cheers used to say, I digress.

In a couple of short weeks I'll be back at school working on my room and getting my materials in shape. It's been a fun summer, although I had to forgo doing one of the things I had planned (real life intruded in the form of plumbing repairs and forced me to spend my money elsewhere). But that's OK -- there's always next year.

I found out one thing about my daughter: Katie will probably hate the Tower of Terror at Disney's California Adventure until the day she dies. I didn't think it was all that bad, but she did. My wife said Katie's lips were blue when we got off that thing. However, she's not a wimp!

We had our friends from England make their yearly visit to us for a couple of weeks, and we went to Arizona's Chiricahua Mountains to stay at a bed-and-breakfast there. Also became acquainted with the people who run the Southwestern Research Station in Cave Creek Canyon near Portal, AZ, and we'll probably be staying there next year. I knew the director in 1972 (Vince Roth, since deceased) and a number of other researchers who worked there on studies. Southeastern Arizona lends itself well to natural history studies, which is why the American Museum of Natural History bought this spot and made it their western outpost in 1955 -- lots of wildlife and being secluded makes for a perfect study area.

Just for fun I took Katie and Ian with me to road hunt for snakes outside of Portal. For those who aren't familiar with this pastime, it can be hours of boredom interspersed with an occasional discovery. What you do is this: find an old, well-established highway, hopefully not heavily-traveled, and the shoulders must not be graded (in other words you want the vegetation to come to the edge of the road; I'll explain why shortly). You choose a section of this road, hopefully a section that runs through country that you have previously scouted out in the daylight hours that looks promising for snakes. I forgot to mention: you drive back and forth on this section of road for as many hours as you can hold up. The purpose -- to find snakes on the prowl for food.

Snakes aren't any stupider than people when it comes to needing shelter from the sun. In the summer months it gets much too hot in the deserts for a hungry snake to be out in midday, so they alter their behavior and emerge after dark. As they're cruising looking for something tasty to eat (oh, heck, I'm being anthropomorphic here -- they're looking for a food item of the correct size that smells right), they may happen upon a road, and for snake hunters this is when having vegetation that comes up to the edge of the blacktop is crucial. If a snake reaches a wide gravel shoulder, it seems to realize that crossing it makes it conspicuous, and they won't cross that to get to the highway as often. If the snake pops out of the grass onto the highway, well, there it is.

Why would a snake be on a highway at all? Well, being ectothermic (cold-blooded is really a misnomer, since snakes wandering around in the desert may have warmer blood than we do -- the environment determines their blood temperature, which is what ectothermic means: outside heat) they like roads that are warmer than the air around them. If the highway has soaked up enough heat to be warmer, the snake will go onto the road, and stop to enjoy the temperature. They'll still cross highways which are colder than the air, but they have no reason to stop, which makes for lousy road hunting nights.

So, for good road hunting conditions you need:
1. Poorly traveled roads with vegetation coming to the road's edge
2. No moon or little moon (snakes are more conspicuous to predators on a brightly moonlit night, which is probably why you don't see as many in a full moon)
3. NO WIND. Windy nights are almost certain doom for snake hunting.

Anyhow, in England they don't do any such thing (being cold, plus having a lousy variety of snakes) so Ian found this interesting. It happens like this: after driving for about forty-five minutes, your eyes get blurry as you scan the road for snakes. Snakes show up white on the road, and are generally easy to spot if you're experienced, but even the most experienced snake hunter starts seeing things after driving for a while without result, which ends up in slamming on the brakes for banana-peel lizards and fanbelt snakes (which really don't even look right, because they aren't white at night in your headlights, but after a while you are just WILLING that object out there to be a snake, so there you are). This night was a good one, however, because from the start of the drive we found snakes up the wazoo -- but unfortunately almost all of them were Mojave rattlesnakes. Note that I say "unfortunately" not because they're dangerous, but because they're common. However, it was interesting for Ian to note that, no, rattlesnakes don't chase you, even when you're annoying them with a snake hook while you're trying to pitch them off the highway to keep them from being mowed down by a semi. All you ever hear around here are people who are terrified of being "chased" by rattlesnakes. A rattler's top crawling speed is around three miles per hour. A toddler does better than that. Even if they DID chase you, if they actually caught you, you probably would deserve to die. Or you might be dead already, as slowly as you ran away.

Katie, my seven-year-old sidekick (she knows the word "sidekick" as a result of watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with me; in that movie he had a little Asian sidekick named Short Round; therefore she has decided to call herself Short Ford, which made me laugh uproariously when she first said that), got out of the truck, snake sacks and tools in hand in case I needed them, and got her first really good look at big rattlers in the wild. She followed my instructions not to get too close, and they made a lot of noise for her as I tossed them off the highway, which impressed her. I have a feeling she's going to be following in my footsteps in a few years, unless boys impress her more than snakes. If nothing else, teaching kids about things like this is GOOD for them. They learn that most of the scary stuff in movies is BS, and that gaining a healthy respect for wild creatures is far better than being terrified of them. Knowledge is power; an old over-used saying, but true nonetheless. I grew up being not much afraid of anything, because I learned how animals react in given situations and have always been careful to stay within those parameters. Oh, no animal is like a robot; they're all individuals. Even snakes. Every one can act SLIGHTLY differently, but I can tell you this: after about forty years of working with rattlers, mambas, bushmasters, Old World vipers, cobras, you name it, I've yet to be "chased" by a snake. Oh, I've had lots of them take swings at me, generally because I've annoyed them beyond what they think they need to accept. But they are unable to leap through the air, and typically can only strike about a third of their length. You learn to judge these things. Here's a Mojave (no, not Mojave "Green", just Mojave -- I don't know WHY people insist on that "Mojave Green" label. They aren't green!) Rattlesnake that we found that night:



Not a bad snake, and by the time I got it off the road it "sang" very well for Katie. I don't like pissing animals off, but given the alternative of ending up a pancake after an encounter with a car, I figure it's better off.

So, Tower of Terror notwithstanding, Katie is a pretty cool kid.

Anyhow, Ian went home with some stories to tell. We went up into the mountains at about 9000 feet at the base of a rockslide where northern twin-spotted rattlers live. Huge slide, and to get around on it to find snakes requires a lot from an old guy who normally lives at about 1000 feet above sea level. Here are some shots of good old Arizona for people who think that it's all desert:

An Arizona ridge-nosed rattlesnake (our state reptile) shot I took a few years ago in a different mountain range, but typical of what the ground cover looks like in high-elevation Arizona -- I'm posting this for my friend Rebecca:



Us having a picnic in a Douglas fir/ponderosa pine forest at about 9000 feet in the Chiricahua mountains:



My sidekick Katie telling me to go ahead up the rockslide, lol:



and a little higher-up view from the middle of the slide:



Not much desert to look at, is there?

Anyhow, between Disneyland, and our trip to the mountains (and to Roswell, NM, to visit the aliens) plus starting off the summer by taking my wife to a Fleetwood Mac concert (I never listened to them much, but I had to admit I was impressed by Lindsey Buckingham's guitar work) it's been fun. But now, it's back to work.

I had to take the Arizona state exam for teachers of history. Passed it, which is lucky, because I'll be teaching world history on top of earth science and biology this year. I'm also finishing up teaching requirements for ELL teaching (English Language Learners). So teachers' summers aren't all fun and games. But it's all been fun. And I've gotten a lot of toys this summer: new Toyota Tundra, an entire set of authentic Indiana Jones stuff to wear, from the whip to the hat and the jacket made in England by the people who made Harrison Ford's jacket. Plus this really cool guy:



Arnie now graces the top of my piano. A figure of Indiana Jones with the idol in his hand (from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the best of all the Indy movies) is on the other end, and Spiderman and the Green Goblin battle in the middle.

It's been a fun summer. Now to see if I can have a good school year. I hope!

P.S. Hey, I forgot one other important thing -- we went to the Smokey Bear Museum in Capitan, NM. Smokey was an ever-present part of the lives of my generation when I was a kid. He was a real bear, and was buried here when he died at the National Zoo. Katie is carrying on his message: "Remember -- only YOU can prevent forest fires!"

We've been abducted!

We were just innocently visiting Roswell, New Mexico, with our British friends who expressed a desire to see the site of the 1947 crash site, and I pooh-poohed it until we looked up and ... and I'll be damned! The captain of the saucer looks like Ron Paul!

Nah, we're OK. Just a fast note here, while I'm thinking about it. Good snake hunting near the Chiricahuas for a couple of nights, and even caught a nice little Arizona alligator lizard next to our cabin. A few days more in alien country, a visit to Carlsbad Caverns, and then back home for a week of resting up. Even if it has to be in Phoenix.

Now if I can just get out of this spacecraft...

We survived Disneyland!

Not a cheap vacation, but one of the best times I have had, if only just to watch Katie go nuts at the place. Four and a half days at the Happiest Place on Earth, and really I have to admit that I enjoy myself every time I walk in there. I tend to be a little nostalgic about things that were created personally by Walt Disney, and so attractions like the Enchanted Tiki Room (opened in 1963), Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Haunted Mansion always hold a special spot in my heart. And best of all, those are Katie's favorites, too, with Pirates holding the top spot. An exciting thing (for me, anyway) is hearing that they are planning to bring back Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln, Disney's audioanimatronic presentation of Abraham Lincoln talking, standing, gesturing -- when I took my mom in there years ago (she's a sucker for American history like I am) the tears started flowing down her face when Lincoln stood up and began to speak. I did write to Disney personnel after I went to Disneyland last October, pointing out that taking the Lincoln exhibit out of operation just as his 200th birthday was being celebrated probably wasn't the best move, so I am glad that he'll be back. This does mean, however, that I will probably have to go back there this year to see President Lincoln all over again, if my wallet holds out.

Several notes for Disneyland vacationers: if you're planning to stay at the Disneyland Hotel, once the premier hotel for Disneyland enthusiasts, you might want to rethink that option. The Best Westerns across the street give you breakfasts. The Disneyland Hotel gives you coffee at 6:30, at which time I have normally been awake for about two hours. The big selling point for me was the idea of taking the monorail to the park and avoiding the huge lines outside the front gates, but the blasted monorail was either late or out of service more times than not. They really need to work on that thing. In any case, when I go back, I'll save a few bucks by staying at a Best Western motel where they will actually feed me in the morning, and I'll just count on waiting at the front gates.



Upon coming back, I had to take an Arizona state test on World History for my teaching work. We'll see how I did in about a month. Once that was over with, I got to pick up my new truck. Yep, a new one. Still hooked on Toyota Tundras, so I decided to get a new truck once my 2006 turned 30000 miles. I could have kept the old one, but the new ones have a lot of things my old truck didn't have, not to mention it was new, lol.

Now I was expecting Katie to be thrilled at a new vehicle, but she yelled at me for getting rid of her old friend Bob the Truck, and it took a while for her to get over it. However, I just had sidesteps put on, and finished it off by having a bedliner sprayed in, and she's warmed up to the new one now. She decided to name this one Indy, which I think isn't a bad name at all.

So, since I always like to take a few photos of new vehicles before they get rock and door dings, here's Indy:







I'm going to try to keep this guy for about five years this time, instead of three. Unless I get rich, which is doubtful. He'll get his trial run on our vacation with our British friends to Roswell and Carlsbad Caverns. I think he should do nicely.

So, anyhow, the first vacation installment is done, I got new toys, and life's good. Despite Obama, who I try not to think about. At least when I go back to Springfield, Illinois in July to visit Lincoln sites I can be comforted by the fact that he's not in town anymore, even when he's having a $40000 date with his wife at the taxpayers' expense. I can't believe guys like that telling US to economize, and he blows THOUSANDS to take his wife to a show with full Secret Service protection, and...

Aw, hell, there I go thinking about the guy again.

Nuts on that stuff. Disneyland was fun, and so's my new truck. I'm going to be out making a really big carbon footprint with Indy in preparation for getting taxed to death for doing it. Burn that gas! Be greater than God and destroy the planet (yeah, right)!

Have a nice day, folks...

Herp

What a summer!

Hasn't even started yet, and boy do we have plans. After a year of teaching high school science (with an attempt at teaching a class of junior-high kids to write) we're going to Disneyland! Four days in the Happiest Place on Earth (and I can definitely use a happy place after a school year of attitude problems) -- and we're even going to stay in the Disneyland Hotel. Never stayed there before, and the prospect of just getting on the monorail into Disneyland and avoiding a million people waiting at the gates is pretty cool. We're all pretty jazzed about that. But wait -- there's more!

Once we get home, we get a week to recuperate, and then our old friends from England come over for their yearly two-week visit. They always get to pick what they want to do, and this year it's Roswell, New Mexico! LOL, gotta love those aliens. Works out pretty well, because we have relatives in Roswell, and we haven't seen them for a while, plus it's not all that far from Carlsbad Caverns and some pretty good Billy the Kid stuff (Lincoln, NM is a hot spot), so it should be a good short trip. Plus they're bringing me my yearly supply of Earl Grey tea from Fortnum and Mason, not to mention an authentic Indiana Jones shirt and pants from the place in England that makes the stuff for the movies. Can't complain! I've just about got every piece of authentic Indy gear I can find, right down to the hats and the Mark VII gas mask bag that he used in the movies, not to mention the jacket, whip, and holster, so this ought to set me up pretty good for this year's Halloween -- plus I may have to start wearing this stuff, just because, when it cools off later in the year (that leather jacket looks great in the movies, but it ain't summer-in-Arizona apparel).

I haven't done anything of this scope in one summer since I've had summers -- and boy, there have been a lot of summers in my life -- and I'm looking forward to it. I hope it will be fun for my daughter, too. Making memories -- that's really what life is about. Let's hope there are some good ones this year.

Herp

Happy birthday to my sister -- the anti-role model

I was talking on Skype the other day to my old childhood friend Becky (we were around 5 years old when we first met) about my big sister Kathy. Kathy was my best friend as a child. We did all sorts of stuff together; she called me "T" and whenever I had a problem she was always there to help me sort things out.

We grew up together on a farm in Oregon; I don't know if she particularly liked it or not, but she did have her own horse (which she couldn't ride for beans) and was a pretty normal girl. Until she went to college at the University of Oregon.

This was back in the '60s; the heyday of Abbie Hoffman, the Black Panthers, and Students for a Democratic Society. Whatever happened, my sister was sucked into the maw of leftist philosophy, and turned, seemingly overnight, from a normal farm girl to a fist-shaking, snarling protester, who hated capitalist pigs, sexists, racists, the "pigs," the establishment, etc.

I was due to go to college in 1970, and her present to me was to send me a little essay by some guy, whose name escapes me, entitled "The Student as Nigger." This was to get me ready to crap on all of my college professors and to begin attacking anyone over the age of thirty as members of the establishment or white devil slavemasters (or whatever came to mind that sounded protest-appropriate). I sent my sister a letter telling her that I wasn't interested in such things, not having been indoctrinated yet, and not to bother sending me anything else like that. She was offended, and a few years later told me that my response to her "sounded like Dad." I was, and am, still annoyed over the transformation of my sister from a normal girl to a nut, all due to leftists.

At the time, I was too young to have formulated a political philosophy, but if I were to trace it back to the beginning, I would say that my sister's complete personality change when she went to college was the trigger. For years afterwards she would send Christmas presents back to my mother that had been sent to her children, saying she didn't want her children to accept anything from her evil parents. The only time she ever came around and made an attempt to be somewhat polite was when she was short of cash. Otherwise, there she was in Canada. Yep, Canada. During the Vietnam War she married a draft-dodger and moved to Canada. My dad, a WW2 vet, didn't think much of that. Then she dumped the guy, got pregnant by a black guy, and ended up with HIM. Again, my father (possibly the prototype for Archie Bunker) didn't think much of THAT, either, and Kathy pretty much became a non-entity.

I don't remember hearing from her for years; then one morning at work I got a call from my mother. Kathy had been killed in a fall from a horse (I told you earlier she couldn't ride for beans). Apparently she'd been tossed onto her head, just like Christopher Reeve would be some years in the future, but she was dead just about as soon as she hit the ground. And the last I remembered hearing from her, it was seeing my best childhood friend yelling and spouting epithets about our family, all a result of leftist ideology. And I realized in a flash that, being suddenly gone, there would never be a time where Kathy and I could sit down and make up, or reminisce about growing up. She died hating her family, estranged from all of us due to leftist ideology, and went to her grave shaking her fist. And for that I can't forgive leftists.

So I suppose, on Kathy's birthday: April Fool's Day, the 1st of April -- I can say that I trace my disgust with leftists to a horseback-riding accident years ago. Leftists took my sister away, and turned a young, impressionable girl into a screaming harpy, and with her death, all chances of a reconciliation ended. But no biggie for them; lose one footsoldier but there are millions more to indoctrinate.

Happy birthday, big sister. Sorry I lost you. Was it worth it?