Notes From A Bear's Journey

   The spelling is incorrect no matter how you look at it.  The animal would be spelled leopard, its spots (and whiskers) as distinctive as our freckles or fingerprints, which is often how animals biologists keep track of them.*  And then there are lepers, as in those in a leper colony; and even there the spelling for the affliction becomes leprosy.  The skin disease is both treatable and curable (often within 6 months if caught early enough) and spreads with a sneeze or cough.  But the thing is, I somehow thought that --as with smallpox-- it was basically no longer.  Such was the reaction early in Dr. Victoria Sweet's career when she was puzzled about a patient and was told by the attending doctor: "Well see, it's the ulnar nerve hypertrophy here," she said, showing me the lumps at Jose's elbows,  "And the distal wasting here."  She showed me his fingers.  "The nerves at the elbow enlarge, and that damages the nerves to his fingers, so they get n

Grasshopper State Park, Sedona, Arizona      Our days were winding down, our hikes shifting from the exposed trails to that of the shaded canyons.  We ventured into a state park and listened to the ranger's tales of growing up in the area, getting lost as a teenager on the trail we were considering; "no problem," he said, "I had my sleeping bag with me."  Uh, perhaps that trail was a bit longer than we had thought, even with the hiking books.*  He mentioned an easier trail for us, then held up a rather used picture and with a wink said that if we turned right instead of left we'd run into a swimming hole (as it turned out it was quite a well-known place, or so it seemed, as there were families and young people more than happy to jump off the rock ledges into the chilly water).  Which might be causing you readers to ask, what's a swimming hole doing in the middle of the desert?       Water in a desert city is nothing new, especially for those of you l

     So there we were, back in Sedona, contentedly sore and tired after hiking each day, our eyes almost as exhausted as our legs from the beautiful walls of the canyons around us.  Scanning the town from above (there's an overlook trail near the airport, its quick walk up a well-marked trail and steps providing you a 360-degree view of the valley and city) gave us the impression that some things seemed to have changed, the roofs of the homes now more visible, the arterial roads now as clear as scars.  But one needed only to look up from that, to gaze at the cliffs and rocks and even the red sand and broken century plants near our feet to realize that much of that impression was merely an illusion.  Things had and were changing but not at any speed that our eyes could record.  We would likely be generations gone before we would be able to notice any real change in the towering spires or massive arches that adorned the steep walls surrounding us.  The waters from the nearby creeks a

    A long drive seems to always become a chance to do things that you just don't seem to have time for...like listen.  You watch scenery, you pay attention to the roads and dodge the cars moving in and out; but before long you are out in the open and your driving is now inevitably four or five hours ahead and not just thirty or forty minutes.  So you listen to new music, new podcasts (we thoroughly enjoyed Kristy Young's extended interview with the laughing enigmatic artist, Academy Award winner, photographer, and former Talking Heads front man, David Byrne ) and new thoughts between yourselves.  Then, after a short overnight break, we arrived back in Sedona and not unsurprisngly, my phone went out; WiFi was there and linked, but nothing worked, no 4G, no web updates, no personal beeps, nothing for 4+ hours.  My phone had become little more than a camera -- it was perfect.     Part of this acceptance by me was because it thus became a time to just read in those quiet hours,

   This was a surprise to me, for I always have used the word "slurry" to describe a jumbled mix of things, as in a variety of fruits tossed into a blender would become a slurry.  In true definition, the word is quite specific according to one online dictionary: a thin mixture of an insoluble substance, as cement, clay, or coal, with a liquid, as water or oil ; granted that other dictionaries are a bit more generous to basically say that it's a watery mixture blended with a powdery or gravelly substance, so my fruit blend just might qualify.  But I wasn't ready for this definition from the Urban Dictionary for the word, slurry: A meretricious woman.  A dirty little slutbag moll.  A whore.  A slut.  A woman of ill-repute.  A ho.  Okay, what happened?  Certainly I won't pretend to keep up with the most recent trends of those much younger than me but really??  Can a slurry of emotions or feelings be turned into something so negative that it takes the person right out

    Those of you who peek at this now and then may have noticed a bit of a gap since the last post; and this one now has taken quite a turn from a few other posts that began and sputtered as things came up.  For one thing I've been gathering a few dozen art prints to donate to various causes as their fundraising efforts near; on my side this involves shrink-wrapping the pieces (or having it done for the larger pieces), pricing them out and writing the descriptions, then delivering them well ahead of the auction date so that they can be posted onto their sites.  The values of these prints range from $50 to well over $1000 if purchased from a gallery, but for bidding purposes, they'll be priced from $20 to $200 in the hopes that other bidders will recognize the chance to not only get a signed & numbered, limited edition print (some of them being canvas giclees) at a bargain price, but also to help the struggling groups in the process.  So far, there's been a dedicated gro