Month: September 2023

Every time Chuck and I do new amazing things, he says, “check that off your bucket list!” And I repeat to him… “I don’t have a bucket list.”

What do I yearn for? *To be an influencer. *To encourage and teach reading and thinking. *To laugh out loud.

Chuck’s wish: That I would get dressed so I could go for a walk to Craft Local … a bar (across the street from our hotel) with music and craft beers. This wish was said from under the covers we both plowed under after a late lunch and 5 hours on Montana roads. Chuck’s needs are simple. He never had a bucket list. He did what was in front of him, and he did things to make me happy.

Four years ago Chuck tried to show me the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park after a Panama Canal Cruise, but I got pneumonia, landed in the hospital in Kingman Arizona, and scared the willies out of the doctors by presenting with an ascending aortic aneyrysm. “Go home!” the emergency room doctor said! “Get to a BIG hospital where you can be treated by a thoracic surgeon.” “What’s that?” I asked, coughing, hard. Here we are four years later, fulfilling Chuck’s list of getting me to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, but adding so much more!!!! We have added seeing Las Cruces, New Mexico (a wonderful small town near the border, artsy, mural strewn walls, festivals, a small Spanish village with a beautiful church.) The Tucson desert and the Biosphere where astronauts trained for a space station stay of 2 years. Tombstone (home of Val Kilmer and Kurt Russell)! Bisbee, a tiny copper mining town with great red pits of abandoned copper mines. Bisbee is home to the old “Copper Queen Hotel” which features in “Desert Heat” by J.A. Jance. I picked up the book in a quaint artsy book store in Bisbee…. It is a series about a murdered sheriff’s wife (the sheriff is murdered, the wife will solve it)… anyhow… we were there, and the story meanders between Bisbee and Tombstone. Never thought that I’d go there! “Been there, done that!” and it was wonderful. But I never thought about the four lovely towns before planning this trip. What am I? boring???? not a dreamer?

On this trip we remembered my Assumption student whom we haven’t seen in over 45 years… So I facebooked her and she answered with an address in a tiny town near Missoula, Montana. The little meander to Cathy’s house led us up to the Glacier National Park!!!! We did not do the edges of the 10,000 foot high mountains as edges scare me!!!! We drove around the park and it was wonderful. We are now headed for Mount Rushmore and the Bad Lands!!! more later.

I guess what I want is to know what you want to do? Have you thought about it? Done it? I am sad that I haven’t been an influencer. I was not able to give my nieces and nephews the kind of education and dreams I had… We were all too spread out, and I didn’t get along too well with my Sister, their mother, who is gone now. She passed away while we were on this trip. Without being too pushy, I help where I can with love. That’s all we can do, isn’t it. Pray and Love. God bless us; God help us to see his grandeur!

Everyone knows that water is scarce in America and everywhere now. Countries are failing due to desert incursion and Florida is experiencing salt water incursion. With more people moving in, who knows when Florida will get giant holes from soil erosion from underneath and salt water incursion? I realize this is rather grim to start with while I sit on the banks of a mighty river that has been dammed 5 times to provide electric power for a great deal of Montana. The Great River, the Missouri, flows out of the mountains of Glacier National Park. From the west she flows, dammed 5 times here in Great Falls alone, she flows into the Mississippi. The town we are currently visiting, Great Falls, marks in her history the words of the Missouri’s greetings to Lewis and Clark… Lewis said, “the river is too big, we have to find a way around it!” It is big and the land around it is glorious and huge. Today we drove out to the 5th dam and the land stretched out all around us – wheat fields for miles! As we drove, I wrote: “Wheat fields. How big! Plowed fields, stubble fields. Light brown for as far as I can see, and blue sky! Wind blowing cool in 83 degree mild heat. Open the windows and let the wind in!” “I wonder what this land was like 150 years ago before people dammed this river. It looks to me like another case of glacier water gouging out giant crevasses that now are filled with the Missouri river and those brilliant wheat fields. Were the roads horse tracks?”

I have to share my glee at driving through the beauties of America. For my friends who have never left home, or who weren’t blessed to be able to drive through Glacier National Park for example, I would like to describe America. On Sunday we left Stevensville, near Missoula Montana where I visited my student from Assumption Academy. We hugged goodbye and promised to keep reading and to keep singing! Then we entered Glacier National Park where … well, I can’t keep from singing! “O! my goodness! The rugged landscape is raggedy/aggedy. (There isn’t a word for it!!!! ) Awesome, beautiful, rugged, high mountains. All this used to belong to the Native Americans. They lived on the land, thanking their God… Then, the tiny United States bought the land from Louisiana. Yes, the Louisiana Purchase. And the Americans moved in. Now, the Continental Divide is just is a line between America and … America. We took it. Every Native American monument I see hurts my heart. O what we did. There isn’t any reparation and I’m not suggesting it. All I suggest is that we look at at our great land, and we try to keep her beautiful. She belongs to no one except to her God, our God who created. Be loving to our land, and Thank God.

I never knew cold until I traveled to Europe after Chuck and I travelled to Europe with friends from Barry University in Miami. I might have known cold before I was 2, but after that it was sandy beaches and palm trees in Miami! I remember sitting in my underpants in the sand, my little toes curled up and the water of the beach curling up and getting me wet! Hot, hurricanes, green grass. But wait! This trip has taken us through the sandy deserts of I-10 Texas to the deepest reaches of the Grand Canyon in her rosy splendor. The Grand Canyon is a massive, big crevasse that was carved (a long time ago… 14 million years ago?) by receeding water. The area is now water starved. Visitors are begged not to use too much water and not to touch the water in the toilets! Recycle is the name of the game. Our Grand Canyon 5 day visit rewarded us with many amazing rosy and golden views, art work painted on the rims, music played in the Shrine of the Arts… It was wonderful! Then we drove north to Kenab and the amazing Peek a boo canyon! Narrow pink sandstone is still carved by waters that rush through the canyon after a heavy rain. Tree trunks stick in the canyon walls, bourne into the canyon and stuck in the roof. “They’ll be gone after the next rain,” confidently said our guide. I’m looking up at a dark tree trunk stuck in the rust colored colored ceiling. “Wow!” I repeat, taking a clue from my Grand Canyon vocabulary. Mountains, 5500 feet deep canyons, pink rocks, rosy and golden rocks abound in the Grand Canyon area. Head north!

As we travel north, I imagine the woman out on the prairie. She gets out of that covered wagon and stretches out in the deep grass surrounded by nothing but grass, wind, and sun. Maybe a herd of Bison wanders by, their grand furry coats rustling with the wind. The woman is alone with her thoughts. Will Cather imagined the woman’s words and wrote them down in her novels. At the Grand Canyon, the flautist at the concert read from a Willa Cather novel… Imagine what the woman speaks!

As we drive north to Yellowstone, a green river accompanies us and fishermen in small open boats cast their lines into the muddy, cold rainy afternoon. Houses dot the hillsides and cows hang out on the sides of the hills. Old Faithful hisses and roars and gets us wet! The tetons touch the clouds. We sleep in a tiny cabin in the woods near giant Yellowstone Lake. We wrinkle our noses at the stink of sulfer at the mud volcanos and geysers, and we drive on, accompanied by Bison walking along the road with us! Leaving Yellow stone, we enter Montana, land of snow-topped mountains, and we drive along tiny country roads to visit my Assumption student Cathy Sholtens in a sweet farm area in western Montana. We start at the beginning when I taught the Assumption girls in 1974, and we come forward to the beautiful home Cathy and wife Becky have built. Two very happy black dogs stretch at our feet and welcome ear scratches. The girls help us plan the drive north to Glacier National Park. The journey continues.

In Kenab, north of the Beautiful Grand Canyon, we decided to see a Canyon called Peek-a-boo in Kenab. It is amazing… Multi colored rocks starting with pink and orange and multi layering into white… Like the Grand Canyon it was carved by water. The earth in this area was covered by water that went away with great force. Oh how I wished I had paid attention in science and geology to see this happen!!! Our guide showed us fish and snail fossils in the limestone! He showed us water marks and Earth Quake lines!!! I brought out 3 colored rocks. We decided to get ahead of a storm that is possibly coming with snow… We are headed for the great Park Yellowstone which is a giant bubbling future volcano. We are going to go see the Badlands!

I pray for our country as I watch the questioning of Merrick Garland…. My mind is on our natural wonders… but my heart is troubled by politically charged rhetoric. Our country is embroiled in jumping, rambling threats, and yelling… incensed by political anger. I pray that we settle down. Ask a question and wait for an answer. Get answers and believe what people say. God bless us.

Today we will move into the Grand Canyon. We will stay for 4 days while artists paint the beauty of the reds, oranges, browns, yellows and every color in between. This country of ours has amazing beauties, and the Grand Canyon IS AMAZING!!! but there is little water to sustain… We have driven through a lot of barren land… Any water there is, is buried underground. To me, the Colorado River, from a helicopter, looked small and sandy…. The helicopter guide/pilot said, “when the rains come, it will swell up and become blue and green again…” As we drove across Texas and New Mexico, I complained in my heart about the dry wasteland. I had hoped I would see cattle… but no!!! Just dirt. So if anyone says, “we have plenty,” we need to realize that, what we have left, must be husbanded. Remember the dust bowls… It could happen again.

I don’t see much news, but I am talking to Europeans who tell me that, if they look east, the war Russia is waging isn’t going to end soon. War to them, and it shouldn’t be, is like a fact of life. Pray, the big bear Russia stops thinking they can just “take.” We don’t talk about the internal war in the United States, but on my mind is a government shut down… I’ve heard about that and an impeachment on snippets and bits of news I hear. Please… Let’s build bridges and improve the highways! The interstate entering Texas from the east (I -10) is absolutely horrible… I do not think that is what Eisenhower meant when he established the interstate road system. Let’s stop fighting and get to work… together. My dears, after weeping over September 11, let us build America with love!!! God bless us!

We are runnin’ down the road, standing on corners… There’s a flat bed ford with a girl!!!! Well no girl at this time, but there was when Jackson Brown and Glen Frey wrote “Take it Easy” in 1971 and released it in 1972. Yes! We are in Winslow Arizona, a small part of route 66 is under our feet, and we’ve taken pictures of every mural in town! A beautiful 9-11 Memorial waits for a ceremony tomorrow. We are staying in town for that.

Chuck and I visited the 9-11 memorial yesterday in Winslow, Arizona. We stood in the shade under a lone tree and talked to a parks ranger and a corrections officer. As we talked of “where we were at 9:01 am on September 11”, corrections inmates had volunteered to replace some flags of the countries of the people killed in 9-11. Previously it was all American flags, but there were people of many origins killed in the atrocities of 9-11. Flags fill in squares representing the two towers, the Pentagon, the field at Somerset County, Pa where flight 93 crashed… Chuck and I have visited the field of flight 93. There was a pregnant lady killed, so her unborn baby is a 9-11 angel also. Pray that hating and killing stop. Pray that the killing “stops with me”. When I see someone of whom I don’t approve due to his progressive evil attitudes, or his conservative evil attitudes, or his religious belief, let me remember he is my brother. He is made by God; child of God. If he’s gone astray, well there was a time I went astray also. Did that make me evil? I pray not.

Last night we watched the University of Miami play football. YES! Football has begun! A UM player, Kam Kinchens, was hit and lay still on the ground. The entire stadium stood. I read this morning that he is OK. A hair’s breadth harder hit or twist might have had horrible results. After the trauma… he will be OK! Despite football rivalries; despite bad things that might have been done to us by certain schools, despite our grievances, I pray we love. Just enjoy the game! Try to teach good. God bless us! Have a good weekend dear friends.

This Sunday morning Chuck and I were up at 5am to get ready to drive friends Rick and Penny down to Tucson airport. When we got back to the hotel, I met with a convention person who was holding two presents that I won yesterday, and then Chuck and I sat down in the lobby to have coffee. Chuck said, “What time am I taking you to Mass?” I said, “not going…” I examined the computer for a Mass after 9am but couldn’t find a nearby church or a 9am Mass. Why, that was not acceptable! so Chuck said, “Tim, can you help us?” The guy who parks cars and is a wonderful source of what’s what and where, was passing by. He slid into a chair next to us and asked, “What can I do for you?” “We need a Catholic Mass,” Chuck said, do you know of any nearby? “Of course!” Tim volunteered, I’m Irish Catholic from birth!” He whipped out his cell and found St Elizabeth Ann Seton, “Not too far from here. Mass at 9am.” I was astounded. They were not on my search. Chuck bundled me into the truck and I walked in to another beautiful church. “Angels?” you ask? Referring to the title…

Every day, we are surrounded by angels. They are whisking around, trying to help us. If we don’t believe in them, or don’t want to do the right thing, the angels can’t help us. Is Tim an angel? No, but he’s letting his angels guide him to help me.

Speaking of helping others… the first reading today is from the Book of Jeremiah (chapter 20). God chose Jeremiah to preach when he was very young. “Oh no, not me,” he said to God, “I’m too young. Nope, can’t.” Sound familiar? The Lord wouldn’t take no, and delivered a “You-Me small-Great” type speech, and the Lord sent Jeremiah off to preach. But his own people couldn’t stand his words, and they ended up throwing him in a well, and, according to some commentators, his own people killed him. The message of the Book of Jeremiah is that we must do what God asks. Speak out! Speak of the love of God. How will the little ones know if we don’t speak? We must spark the love of God in people with words of love. Now, I have a friend who once told me, “All you talk about is, ‘love love love!'” I was shocked at his words because, what else is there in Jesus’ teaching? He didn’t turn on his killers who gave him horrible injury. “Father, forgive them.” “Love one another.” I usually try to let Jesus do the talking. A few days ago, the Gospel talked about Jesus really letting the Pharisees have it…”You hypocrities! Taking all the good, and not teaching the little ones.” Our priest today ended with some amazing words, “Let your lips, stained with the love of Christ (the Eucharist you receive here) speak God’s words.” “Lord of all gentleness… give us Peace in our hearts.” Angels with us!

Yesterday in the lobby of our hotel in Tucson, a woman dressed in a beautiful Native American Jacket played a big wooden wind instrument. Plaintive music filled the lobby. I was drawn to her Native American Spirit!  She was beautiful! Later, a man took over the piano and played Navy songs!  “Anchors away, my boys!!!”  We have a great heritage. Let us thank God for our lives here in America. Let us not say our country is evil and dying as some people do, let us not hate… rather let us take care of each other no matter what political beliefs are. Rather, let us use the power within us to save and bolster our country, with Love. 

I was brought up in Miami… I lived my young married years in the Keys… Big Pine Key … We spent a lot of time in Key West surrounded with Jimmy Buffett music. My friends and I sang Keys music and loved Jimmy. Today he is “another one gone…” Let us rock to the music and believe in the magic and beauty of God’s beautiful creation… He was only 76 at his death. When I hear of a death like this… I say, “He was young!” When I say this, people look at me… gray and scar-faced and they think, “What does she know about young?” Maybe it is the young at heart years we lived. While my boyfriend was in the Navy, on a submarine, “deterring war”, I was engaged in reading literature and loving California dreamin’, flowers, protests of the Viet Nam war, oh dear! We lived through assassinations that scarred our hearts… and we had to survive.  Now I beg and pray that people love and try to be happy.  Today I tell sailors how proud I am of them, how much I love their patriotism, and how much I love our country.  God bless us. Lift up your hearts and say… God job America. Thank God.

From my patio here in Tucson I see cactus, sand, and orange flowers. I was worried the other day coming across lower Texas and New Mexico that all I would see is brown dirt… and I’m getting used to it. Today we will visit the Sonoran desert. Two days ago we saw the “bone fields” where unused airplanes are preserved in the desert dryness, but I saw rust on those beautiful old planes. Yesterday we went to a presentation of a new memorial that is still in the building/planning stage… The USS Phoenix will be preserved in downtown Phoenix as a memorial to Cold War submariners. The Phoenix was commissioned in 1981 and taken out of service in 1998. She has been cut into parts… and her parts are already rusting. The memorial presenter said: the goal of the memorial is to teach the youth of America about the Cold War when we tried to deter and prevent nuclear war. He said: “we did our job!” submarines patrolled the deep and stayed in hiding. The goal of the submarine secrecy was to keep “the Soviets” from knowing where we were so they wouldn’t “start anything.” A lot happened towards keeping the peace during the Cold War: NATO was founded, the Berlin Air life, the Cuban missile crisis, The Warsaw pact. Our Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps grew. We held off war “with the Soviets.” But can we continue? The submarine parts are rusting from the inside out… Even the dry desert can’t preserve “things” from rusting….

Can we hold off war in a time when nature is rusting our memorials from the inside out? I am one person smiling and talking, praying for peace while war rages in many hearts. Real hate rages as “the right” calls the “left” “evil,” and the right… remains silent to some extent. I put the words in quotes because, to me, the words do not represent reality. Rather the words are labels. I think we are all human beings, children of God. Trying our best in very small ways to preserve peace. May the Peace of the Risen Christ be with us today. God bless us.