Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  Ahhhh... Christmas. It's come and gone for this year. I hope yours was a delight, as mine was. It was fairly quiet this year. All of my children are grown up and gone. I'm left with the memories of Christmas's past when they were all growing up. Prior to moving to Hoonah the kids had never really experienced Christmas with a tree and the presents and a special dinner. The holiday wasn't celebrated at the time on the farm, so for ten years they had little idea that it was any different than any other day. Once we moved to town though, Christmas was celebrated in the Botts home with the tree, the dinner, the gifts and lots of love and laughter and noise. It was a lot of fun, and still is, just on a smaller scale. We had our annual Shoe Box Dinner at my daughter, Jennifer's house. She takes shoe boxes and decorates them with gift wrap and puts in a drink, some fruit, candy, chips and a small gift and then we enjoy a tuna melt sandwich. For me she put in ...

With one paw up waiting for his cereal Cereal is always better with a little milk on it     I'm sorry to say that I've allowed things to get completely out of hand around our house. We ( actually I) have stooped to new lows in coddling our dog Rigby. He was already pretty well spoiled, demanding that we share our food with him. From the red and green peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots that we put into our salad, to slices from our mandarin oranges that Jan receives from work at Christmas. Of course he's always insisted on having a sliver of cheese whenever I imbibe and on those occasions when we barbeque shish-ka-bobs he's unrelenting in his begging. Its enough to want to make you go out for dinner so you can enjoy your meal in peace. In the morning when we have bananas he insists on having a few slices, and if we aren't johnny on the spot in getting it for him, he fairly well squeals with the most intense, shrill bark that I've ever ...

   I was at church a few weeks ago and ran across a paper that said-Billy Graham's Prayer for our nation. This was a prayer that Graham made at the age of 95. He had a birthday this past November. In 95 years of living a person sees a lot of changes. The changes he's seen, and indeed all of us have seen if we've lived any time at all, should cause us to sit up and take notice. You don't have to be a news junkie to know that there is a lot of trouble brewing in this old world. Whether you want to be impacted or not, you will be. There's no hiding from the down hill slide that we seem to be on. Reverend Graham addresses that in this prayer for America that I would like to share with you.   "Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know your word says, " Woe to those who call evil good," but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed ou...

Before After It's wintertime. We established that in the last post, just in case there is anyone living in a climate like Miami where they aren't really sure if it's winter or not, at least not by looking outside. I guess one way to be sure down there is by the influx of pasty white bodies that show up on their shores like beached whales. Anyway, one of the fun things about winter here- ha,ha, ha, I'm just kidding there really isn't anything fun about winter here, at least not in my eyes. But, if there is anything good to be said about winter here in Alaska, it's that all the time spent inside can result in effort in the kitchen. After Thanksgiving I was feeling pretty well bloated on turkey and pie and jello salad. After a few days, it doesn't have the same appeal. Well, it's been a week since Thanksgiving, and I haven't had any pie or jello salad or cake or other sweet and tasty treats for the better part of a week, and today while I was d...

         I don't know if I'm allowed to use this title for this post or not. It's the title of an album by one of my favorite musical artists, Enya. I happen to love the name  and I just happen to love the music as well.  The statement pretty well sums it up. Although we had a pretty mild fall overall, and I guess according to the calendar it's still considered fall, by the time November arrives I usually consider it winter. It really wasn't all that bad until recently. As you can see, we've got a little snow and ice, and believe me, the water is cold enough to steal your breath away should you happen to fall in. As unpleasant as it is, this is the kind of weather that these salmon need. Today it actually got fairly warm- into the mid thirties, but tonight under clear skies it's pretty doggone chilly. My brother used to say that it was as cold as a nun's buns. I don't know how he would know...

 I went into the bathroom today to do something, probably the usual things that you would do in the bathroom, and as I was looking in the mirror I became aware of my eyebrows. If I could have gotten a closeup picture of just my eyebrows I would have. They're so big that I had to grow a mustache just to distract people. I notice that I seem to squint a lot, like I'm looking into the sun. Of course there isn't much sun here normally to look at, so obviously that's not the problem. The reason I seem to squint is that my eyebrows have a tendency to poke me in the eyes- the very thing they're supposed to be protecting! What gives? Periodically I trim them, but it doesn't really seem to help, I think it just causes them to grow at odd angles, mainly all in a downward direction towards my eyeballs. My dad had bushy eyebrows. They were pretty intimidating. It's probably a good thing that men have pretty bushy ones. It would be hard to be a person in authority i...

   There is something about music that touches all of us-at least everyone who can hear. I wonder if songs play in the minds of the deaf but they don't know how to express the melody. I believe Beethoven was deaf, but I'm not sure if he was born that way or if it came upon him later on in life. I guess I should research that. Whether you're riding in an elevator and having Musak piped in or shopping in your favorite department store during the Christmas season and listening to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for the four hundredth time, we're surrounded by music. If I may, I would like to give a word of advice to retailers all over the country. Stop trying to sell Christmas before Halloween is even here. Remember that your customers have already heard the country rendition, the rap rendition, the new age rendition and the original rendition of Hark the Herald Angels Sing more times than they care to ever hear again in their natural lives, long befor...