Notes From A Bear's Journey

The Sting of Yellowjackets     Call them what you will --yellowjackets, wasps, hornets-- for some reason I have always (well, at least for the past decade or so) been fascinated by these members of the properly titled hymenopteran Vespidae family (think scooters for in Europe, hornets are part of the Vespa group, while here in the states the common paper wasp belongs to the genus Pilistes ); and all of this despite my being highly allergic to the creatures (yes, I do carry Epipens with me); I can easily put up with the swelling and the stinging, all of which is no big deal unless one of those stings happens to be on my throat (as my doctor pointed out) in which case I would slowly feel as if I had a boa constrictor was closing in on its prey (which in that case would be me).  But still, getting close to these brightly colored insects is a marvel of both nature's beauty and nature's passivity (yes wasps are surprisingly passive, revealing several postures such as ...

Transitions     Things have been a bit hectic with the arrival of summer, a departing of the spring weather leading to an abrupt jump into the summer's heat (and in other parts of the world, an overdose of rain).  All of this meant the pleasures of getting flowers planted and out on the deck, pulling the cacti out of hibernation, turning the sprinklers on (not my favorite thing, that of dealing with outside water and the problems it reveals as shutoff valves and water main cutoffs give way to age and hard water deposits) and of course, my mother's move to a wheelchair.  She now uses it about 50% of the time, finding that her legs are indeed growing more tired and weak and numb, struggling to avoid getting into the lazy gap of giving in, so to speak, and yet discovering that the transition has been easier than expected.     All of this pales to a major transition, that of getting a call in the middle of the night (or anytime, actually), one une...

Expectations     Quite a number of posts back, I wrote a bit about expectations.  We all have them, I said.  And here the moment arrives where this becomes my 300th post, at least on this form of media.  Yet I can probably count on one hand the number of close friends and family members who read this blog or its postings.  Usually this becomes evident during a discussion, say a show they've watched on the high usage of prescription narcotics or the crisis in the food production industry; and I'll nod politely and quietly mention that I had written about that subject in a post some months earlier.  Hmm, they'll say, I'll have to take a look, and generally that's where it ends (not sure if they really follow-up or not).  Even my wife and brother rarely (and that means perhaps once a year) peek at my blog unless I mention that there's something relevant about our immediate family or something about a trip or adventure we'd experienced.  N...

The Force     Call it what you will, the force, the natural order, the flow of the universe, there are days when you feel that you are fighting it, when it seems that you want to go one way and the "it" doesn't.  Bags break, your thumb jams, you need an extra part...the things can all be minor, but bit by bit they all add up throughout the day and before long you feel as if everything is going wrong.  As the Borg would say, resistance is futile.  I often notice this when I swim for even after all these years, there are people older, fatter, more athletically mis-shapen in appearance who plunge in the water and are suddenly gliding past me as if they are Olympic athletes.  How unfair is that?  But surely it is because they are only doing one tiny lap and they are sprinting, I try to rationalize; but often they are swimming as much, or more, than I am?  How can that be?  But long ago I let that go, that comparing myself to others and try...

Mosquitoes -- Updated     Perky rascals, aren't they?  Okay, so they have over 3500 different species within their ranks, big deal (more are being identified each year, however).  And so what if only the females are the ones that bite (the males generally feed on nectar, much as do hummingbirds, although the latter also eat tons of bugs).  And so it should be since the males only live about a week, and the females less than a month.  But they really are everywhere (except Antarctica) and now, because of Zika, are once again making the covers of magazines ( Smithsonian being the most recent) each asking if we (humans) should get rid of mosquitoes entirely.  Our Congress of course, has used the mosquito rage to again mount an effort to give the pesticide industry a way around regulations (the industry runs a big lobby and adds to the re-election coffers of many in Congress) with the House passing the Zika Vector Control Act, a law which has litt...

Sixteen     That number represents the number of phone calls from my mother last night.  A loss of muscle strength in her legs and arms, something that has been happening over the past few weeks, worried her.  She wanted to see a doctor, something was wrong.  It could be fixed, she thought...or maybe not.  She was scared.  And as frustrating as it was for both of us, I couldn't help but put myself into her place and try to recognize all the thoughts that must be happening when you're in your 9th decade on this earth.  Surely, the feeling that the clock is ticking has to be up there, for even if you reach the ripe old age of 95 or so, that basically leaves you only a few years ahead at most.  Then there are the changes happening in your body, whether it is loss of strength or mental clarity (memory) or bowel control, all things that (as the majority of us now still feel) we once thought were fail-safe, things that would go on forever or...

Prick     Defined by the Oxford dictionary as a verb, to "... make a small hole in (something) with a sharp point; pierce slightly" (ex.-- "prick the potatoes with a fork"); as a noun it is "... an act of piercing something with a fine, sharp point." (ex.-- "the pin prick had produced a drop of blood").  Of course, as with every language, there are slang versions of this word which was exactly the version that we had heard (usually meaning someone who's a jerk or has done you wrong).  But our friend was laughing and saying that she hadn't even heard that word used in years; and thus began a series of words and things we felt had more or less faded into the background...pluck, sloe gin and Galliano, even wry.  Here's how the late David Brinkley (of the famed broadcast team Huntley-Brinkley) put it in his biography, Brinkley's Beat (ironically, published in the year he died): One of the words people often used to describe me whe...