In Loving Memory

Mom passed away last Saturday afternoon of just plain old age and wore-outedness. She was comfy in her bed holding her eldest son Bob's  hand with her right, and her youngest daughter Marilyn's hand with her left. She just slowed down and then stopped. The room was clean and well-lighted filled with little objects of comfortable use or beloved decoration.

 We had her memorial service yesterday down in North Bend at the First Christian Church on upper Sherman Avenue, the church all us kids grew up loving and being desperately bored by, the church that represented so much in Mom's life, social and spiritual for more than 60 years. Many of her friends were there, many were awaiting her in that home in the sky, or not, as the case may actually be.
She had such a good long run I can hardly be sad. May we all lead such lives of discovery and refinement and forgiveness.
They buried her the day before, on a hill in the sunshine, next to our Dad, dear long-gone Bob, and very near her latest and second only loveing companion and husband Alan while we all stood around and watched as the serious and well-trained workmen with their precise equipments carted and levered and filled just so.
 I will miss her. I already do, but I have to say also, that I feel extraordinarily free as well, and we shall see whether or not this is a good thing to feel.

Mom

I'm on my way to Ashland tomorrow. Mom is on her way off this coil of sorrow, this vale of tears.

She's comfy. There's not really anything that hurts or that is bothering her, or that can be fixed. Really there isn't anything that even needs fixing. She has a very nice room, and people that love her to check in from time to time, and help her with a sip of this or that or a little spoonful of something yummy. She's just old, at the end of a very long and well played run.

New Process

Bin Laden's Last Facebook Post

Last week I took the boat up the Willamette towards town to see the fireworks. It was so noisy and loud and full of drunks and speedboat wake downtown that I turned right around and went back to Swan Island, the farthest south end on the beach to set up my camp. And I did see the fireworks, the very tops of the colorful highest rockets as they esploded way over the buildings downtown.

The second evening there was an enormous and quite oblivious or maybe extra-hungry beaver that swam up to my camp and proceeded to gather and consume cottonwood shoots for dinner. I will try to get the video to up load after I get home next week. It's a hoot.

Let us see if this new dropbox process will work with the massive panorama I took with my phone over the 4th of July camping trip down to Swan Island- not a spectacularly romantic spot for a vacation but in its own way a very nice place to camp. Especially considering it is well within the urban industrial area I love so much, and that the floating-homeless-camp boaters have so thoroughly fucked up Willamette cove.