Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

     This past week, we were expecting two of our good friends, Mark and Sarah Smith, formerly from Hoonah to come for a visit for a few days. We hadn't seen them for several years and we'd planned a few day trips locally, as well as a few hours at the bowling alley, totally humiliating ourselves, but having fun nonetheless. I was expecting to spend the better part of at least one evening looking over my stamp collection. When Mark was the Hoonah post master, he went out of his way to order the latest, most interesting stamps that became available. In a large part, I owe my fascination as a philatelist to him. He was a deep well of knowledge and we spent many  hours not only discussing stamps, but a variety of other subjects, both appropriate and not so much so while he was collecting a wage from the government. It was time well spent though. There was some talk of a pod cast, though I don't know anything about those things or how they would work. No doubt it would r...

 About a month or so ago, my good friends, Mark and Sarah Smith sent up a delightful assortment of snacks for me to try. I think they were hoping to see my reaction. I'm not sure if they expected me to eat them all in one fell swoop or what, but in the best of times I wouldn't be able to do that. My daughter, Autumn took some video to send to them. I had an ongoing commentary about each snack, trying to pronounce them the best I could. I wish I had hung on to the empty packages of the snacks that I've already tried. The first to go were some Mexican knock-offs of some Hostess products. There was a package of Snow balls, I can't remember what they were called- Snowso Ballistos or some such thing- actually that's not true, I just can't remember and want to fill in the blank. Then I of course had to try the Mexi-cupcake. It was good, but it wasn't as big as the American counterpart, and they only put one in the package. What is that about? Maybe south of the bo...

 Those who know me know that winter isn't my favorite time of year. Cold air, snow, slush, frozen ground, frozen pipes, frozen hands, frozen equipment- not a big fan. I'm watching my friends' dog again while they're in sunny Mexico. Don't think I'd care to be there either- drug cartels, shootings, bad water. I pretty much manage to find something wrong with everywhere. Anyway, dogs need to be taken outside, for their sanity and yours, so I was taking my canine charge down to the park yesterday for a walk. We were having a good enough time; or at least he was. I'm not too interested in sniffing the deposits of my friends and colleagues, but he was in seventh heaven. As it was, another person showed up with their dog, and since Rabano doesn't get along well with any other dogs, and only a few people as far as I can tell, we took a hike down near the harbor. I was already having some difficulty walking since I woke up with an ...