In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

I respect and enjoy Mary Oliver's poetry and thought you might too. - Rob

Racism in the inbox

I will finish the travelogue soon, but in the mean time, I have to comment on two emails I received in the last week.

1st: Subject: Traffic Alert!
"I-90 will be closed this weekend across South Dakota. They are hauling a 250 ton lump of coal so they can add Obama to Mt. Rushmore..."

2nd: Subject: Nokia has Designed a Cell phone...
"Nokia has finally Designed a Cell Phone for nervous White people who need to make a Cell phone call while in Jacksonville , East Saint Louis , New Orleans , Memphis , South Chicago, South Dallas, Houston, L.A. , Miami , Detroit , Washington D.C., parts of New York City and Buffalo , Oakland , and parts of Atlanta or other bad places

And it shows a picture of a handgun with a cell phone keypad in the handle.

These emails came from mature professional people whom I respect. These are not kids. Nor are they uneducated or uninformed people. College graduates over 55 years old.

I don't know if you are receiving these kinds of racist emails from your freinds, but if you do, please name the racism in your reply to them. I wrote back "This is so racist!"

The more white people who stand up and call racist actions "RACISM" the better progress we will make on eradicating the prejudice and oppression that we perpetrate on other people.

Travelogue: East Coast Family Tour

Cami and I are traveling on the east coast to visit family. I will enter some pictures here and make some notes about our travels. All photos are posted on Snapfish at this site:

http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=285020535/a=2377640_2377640/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish









Leaving Juneau we waited while they de-iced the plane. It snowed a little on the day we left, March 29, 2009.























It was sunny and nice in Seattle, kind of unusual...




















































Here are Cami, Barbara and Mary Campbell outside of the townhouse in Alexandria, just outside of DC.








Cami and I visited Mary and Gordon Campbell in Mt. Vernon, and we were able to walk through George and Mary Washington's plantation at Mt. Vernon. Isn't she lovely?

Spring in Juneau!

Here are some photos from around Juneau from the last week:

I took Bruce the dog for a walk today and snapped this by Mendenhall River, fed by a glacier, behind the shopping mall...

This must be the most scenic Walmart in the country!

This is another shot from the Walmart parking lot:

After Walmart I went to the dump to recycle stuff. Here is the dump in Juneau:

Here is the snow in my backyard today, about three feet deep still...

Here is a shot of the terrain park at Eaglecrest Ski Area on Saturday. Gorgeous day, warm sun and cold snow. Cami and I went to have lunch and watch our (step)son Charlie snow boarding off of big jumps. That is him busting off of the jump in a cloud of snow.

After that Cami and I went to a sandy beach (the only one around) just south of town a couple of miles and saw this avalanche that came down a couple of weeks ago. That closed the road to Thane for a few days!

Anyway, there are a few shots of Juneau from the last week. Beautiful, no?

Rob

Delete Me First - an outstanding website

My twin brother David has been publishing a weekly blog since before there were blogs, more than ten years now.

It is called Delete Me First and here is the link: http://deletemefirstdave.blogspot.com/

He emailed them to everyone for many years, then created a blog and continues to publish every week.

Try the “follow this blog” feature. There is a comments section at the bottom of the blog. Feel
free to comment.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Delete Me First reminder list, send a blank email with “subscribe DMF” or “unsubscribe DMF” in the subject line to DaveSeward695@Yahoo.com

Happy bloggin'

Rob

Treatment for the disease of addiction!

Good news today on the front lines of the so-called war on drugs. Our leaders intend to emphasize treatment and prevention to reduce illegal drug use. Gil Kerlikowske will be the new drug czar. Read an article in the Washington Post about the appointment:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/11/AR2009031103567.html

Reduce demand for drugs, reduce the business of illegal drug suppliers. I would like to hear drug dealers saying stuff like "I can't stay in business, too many of my clients are going into treatment and getting recovery!"

We have known for a long time that the so-called "war on drugs" is not working:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123535114271444981.html

Too many of our nation's prisoners (more than half) are primarily addicts who suffer from the disease of addiction.

If we made chemo-therapy and radiation treatment illegal and cancer patients had to break the law to obtain treatment, would we lock them up and refuse to treat them too?

One freind of the new drug czar said this:

"If all we do is arrest people for drugs, we're missing the
opportunity to get involved in the beginning and take people out of
drugs. Gil gets that concept." San Jose, Calif., Police Chief Rob Davis

Makes sense to me, what do you think?

Cami drew my portrait today

Isn't this wonderful!