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Report from Blizzard Country
I had planned to write about stoic virtue and what it means for the good life today but shoveling snow and a long walk in the snow took it out of me.
If you’ve been reading you know I just moved into a new house. I had been pushing to get everything moved before the snow but that didn’t happen. We did get all the big things moved and I managed to get the canoe moved right as it started to spit yesterday afternoon.
Our piece of Snowmageddon began as sleet and freezing rain and everything was covered in ice by dark. It made for an exciting last load of stuff. I went to pick up the 18 yo at work and stopped by the hardware store for a dryer vent. A big dually was side ways on the hill leading the hardware and I ended up turning around and going to Home Despot.
We made it home on the ice and I made Swiss steaks that came out well. It was cold enough that when it switched to snow it absorbed with the ice and there doesn’t seem to be a coat of ice below the snow.
I walked to the old house to let the water drip as the temps drop but forgot the key. A four mile walk through the snow was still an adventure. Tomorrow it drops to single digits with negatives in the forecast. Our 10″ of snow is blowing. I might shovel the van out again to take the 18 yo to work or on an errand.
Hopefully I’ll get some work done and write a more substantive blog post. Until tomorrow faithful readers.
A long day and a nice meal
Hello constant reader. It’s been a long day so I’m going to go concrete. I baked the New Year’s ham a day late and with a bit of a rush job. I was pinched for time on New Year day so sliced off some steaks and pan fried them to speed along dinner.
I had a honey glazed ham which was half the price per pound as ham hocks. The invisible hand is pretty funny sometimes. I did the package directions but had already eaten most of the slices so it wasn’t as sugary which is a good thing. A little goes a long way.
I note the glaze is sugar, brown sugar, and dried honey so I’ll use the rest next time we run out of sugar at least.
For a side I took some pinto beans I’d made for chili and mashed them up with a red pepper and a sweet onion with cumin, ranch seasoning, crushed red pepper, a few drips ghost pepper sauce and after I added the beans I added a pack of taco sauce. I mashed them some and they were pretty good.
I had made cranberry salad yesterday out of a can of the jelled and some smashed blackberries and was pleased the 15 y/o smashed them who always mocks canned cranberries.
I finished it with a simple salad of mixed greens and yellow pepper. For a dressing I did a red wine vinaigrette with red wine, a nice olive oil, apple cider vinegar, apple butter, a shit ton of basil and cilantro, white pepper, and garlic powder. It was excellent.
Mostly though it felt good to be loved and all of us are still giddy about the wonderful new home. Shae said it’s like being in love again where you have to stop and just be in awe about how great life is.
To work hard and come home to someone who loves you and is excited to show you what she arranged during her kick back time it’s pretty special.
A Holiday Letter 2023
Today or tomorrow is Epiphany and if I see a Spanish bakery I’ll try to get the special loaf. If you get the Baby Jesus you are supposed to host the midwinter party.
I’m camped at an off road vehicle camp outside of Santa Clara. I spent last night here and it was great. All the off-roaders leaves before dark. Yesterday there was a class or group or something but it was a bunch of 4-5 year olds rising motorbikes and 4 wheelers around the giant parking lot. Pretty adorable.
I found some good hiking today and went on a heritage trail and a visitors center that had displays on the indigenous folks. Big time weavers. I also hiked to a little waterfall and also climbed up into the hills.
For the holiday season which is wrapping up now I often do an annual recap. I’ll do so now even though I’m way behind on my epic road trip narrative. I’ll probably abandon the play by play of campsites and activities.
2023 found me living in Leavenworth in an apartment in the old Jewish Temple and working as the Executive Director for the Alliance, a domestic violence and sexual assault shelter and program. In January I joined the Executive Board of the Leavenworth/Lansing Chamber of Commerce as the Second Vice Chair.
I submitted a corrective action plan for our certification site visit and the Alliance was granted provisional accreditation. We spent most of 2023 improving sexual assault services and staff training which. We had our targeted site visit in the Fall but we had not received a response before I left in November.
In the spring I slipped on my stairs and hyper-extended my knee. I also learned my knee was a mass of degenerative garbage. I was on crutches and missed a few days of work. It was a real low for me. I had gotten back to 280 pounds, what I weighed when I graduated high school but I’m not 17 anymore.
I started losing weight which accelerated when I learned I may have cirrhosis of the liver. It’s actually more common in obesity then alcohol use. I weighed myself in San Diego and I’m down to 239. I can definitely feel the difference.
I continued to go back to Columbia most months for the Columbia Men’s Book Club. We’re chugging along in maybe our 15th year. I also took a trip to Hays, Kansas because of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egv3IBkBH6Q&pp=ygUaNDkgd2luY2hlc3RlciBoYXlzIGthbnNhcyA%3Dwith with John but 49 Winchester cancelled their show 30 minutes before doors opened.
I went to Harry’s house for Easter and hosted Thanksgiving at John and Flow’s. After Thanksgiving I moved the last of my things to Columbia and cleaned out my apartment. I’d left the Alliance under my former Grants Manager who became the new ED, which made me proud as she is young and off to a great start in her career.
John and Flow and I flew into Maine and went to the Down East, mostly Bar Harbour and Arcadia National Park. It was cool but a lot of traffic and the color was limited.
I left on an Epic Road Trip and have been doing Van Life. I went to Big Bend NP and really enjoyed it. Saw my first javelina and bobcat and a ton of road runners. Great hiking and met Rey who showed me a pictograph and a mortar site by a tank. We heard a mountain lion yowl and found a ton of worked stones.
I also went to Carlsbad Caverns and camped a night with a traveling novelist. I visited Ray, who I met in my epic road trip 2 years ago for Solstice and had a great Yule fire. I also picked up a hitchhiker and took him to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
New Years found me in San Diego reuniting with Steve my best friend in grad school who I hadn’t seen in 25 years. Great visit and I have almost 2 more months for this leg of the trip as I work on my book. I outlined chapter 5 tonight. Going to turn in now and hike in a new spot tomorrow and plan on staying at a Walmart outside of Fresno tomorrow for the rain.
A Holiday Letter 2023
Today or tomorrow is Epiphany and if I see a Spanish bakery I’ll try to get the special loaf. If you get the Baby Jesus you are supposed to host the midwinter party.
I’m camped at an off road vehicle camp outside of Santa Clara. I spent last night here and it was great. All the off-roaders leaves before dark. Yesterday there was a class or group or something but it was a bunch of 4-5 year olds rising motorbikes and 4 wheelers around the giant parking lot. Pretty adorable.
I found some good hiking today and went on a heritage trail and a visitors center that had displays on the indigenous folks. Big time weavers. I also hiked to a little waterfall and also climbed up into the hills.
For the holiday season which is wrapping up now I often do an annual recap. I’ll do so now even though I’m way behind on my epic road trip narrative. I’ll probably abandon the play by play of campsites and activities.
2023 found me living in Leavenworth in an apartment in the old Jewish Temple and working as the Executive Director for the Alliance, a domestic violence and sexual assault shelter and program. In January I joined the Executive Board of the Leavenworth/Lansing Chamber of Commerce as the Second Vice Chair.
I submitted a corrective action plan for our certification site visit and the Alliance was granted provisional accreditation. We spent most of 2023 improving sexual assault services and staff training which. We had our targeted site visit in the Fall but we had not received a response before I left in November.
In the spring I slipped on my stairs and hyper-extended my knee. I also learned my knee was a mass of degenerative garbage. I was on crutches and missed a few days of work. It was a real low for me. I had gotten back to 280 pounds, what I weighed when I graduated high school but I’m not 17 anymore.
I started losing weight which accelerated when I learned I may have cirrhosis of the liver. It’s actually more common in obesity then alcohol use. I weighed myself in San Diego and I’m down to 239. I can definitely feel the difference.
I continued to go back to Columbia most months for the Columbia Men’s Book Club. We’re chugging along in maybe our 15th year. I also took a trip to Hays, Kansas because of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egv3IBkBH6Q&pp=ygUaNDkgd2luY2hlc3RlciBoYXlzIGthbnNhcyA%3Dwith with John but 49 Winchester cancelled their show 30 minutes before doors opened.
I went to Harry’s house for Easter and hosted Thanksgiving at John and Flow’s. After Thanksgiving I moved the last of my things to Columbia and cleaned out my apartment. I’d left the Alliance under my former Grants Manager who became the new ED, which made me proud as she is young and off to a great start in her career.
John and Flow and I flew into Maine and went to the Down East, mostly Bar Harbour and Arcadia National Park. It was cool but a lot of traffic and the color was limited.
I left on an Epic Road Trip and have been doing Van Life. I went to Big Bend NP and really enjoyed it. Saw my first javelina and bobcat and a ton of road runners. Great hiking and met Rey who showed me a pictograph and a mortar site by a tank. We heard a mountain lion yowl and found a ton of worked stones.
I also went to Carlsbad Caverns and camped a night with a traveling novelist. I visited Ray, who I met in my epic road trip 2 years ago for Solstice and had a great Yule fire. I also picked up a hitchhiker and took him to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
New Years found me in San Diego reuniting with Steve my best friend in grad school who I hadn’t seen in 25 years. Great visit and I have almost 2 more months for this leg of the trip as I work on my book. I outlined chapter 5 tonight. Going to turn in now and hike in a new spot tomorrow and plan on staying at a Walmart outside of Fresno tomorrow for the rain.
(epic road trip 2 #7)
It’s Christmas evening and I’m camped at the Cherry Creek Campground in the Gila Mountains. I had a room last night in Silver City and a night with heat and a king size bed got me to go back into the mountains which I hadn’t explored much traveling through them to go to the Cliff Dwellings and back out before dark.
I lounged in the hotel until checkout as is my wont. The travel and hiking and the cold has tended to wear me down so my hotel time is not as productive as I planned. I just want to watch some TV and enjoy the amenities.
I went to The Big Ditch which had been Main Street in Silver City but with logging and grazing big floods would sweep through and dug a big gulch through town. Eventually they built a couple bridges and stabilized it and are trying to turn it into a riparian area. Only 2% of New Mexico is riparian so it’s valuable habitat even in its half-assed form.
After that I planned to see the ghost town, Pinos Altos, in the foothills but there wasn’t much to it. It’s a going concern and ghost town is a misnomer. I hiked a short interpretive hike on early gold mining and grabbed a camp seat. After walking up the creek bed, down the road and climbing around on some rocks I dropped in on my neighbors camp.
I had loaned them my axe and it was 8 young Syrians. They were really gracious and pushed water on me and a nice seed/nut mix. We enjoyed the fire and hiked up the hill above the campground. They were nice young men and 55 seemed old to them which was funny.
The unexpected party and texts, calls and social media connections with family and friends made for a pretty nice Christmas. The full moon is a nice bonus.
I am still quite behind in my narrative. After Guadalupe, I camped at a BLM campground and went from there to Carlsbad Caverns. I met another traveler who was making coffee in the parking lot named Jon and he ended up being on my tour.
The Caverns are amazing. Mostly I stay off the beaten path but sometimes you have to dip into super mainstream country to see something amazing. The Big Room is the largest cave in North America and there are seemingly endless features. I’m writing this without a signal so I’ll add photos later.
I climbed out of the Caverns to get my cardio which I’m glad I did as their were lots of features still to see. Jon invited me for lunch at his camp on BLM land towards Carlsbad. Jon shared a couple chapters of his novel and it was a pleasant afternoon. Lunch was excellent, lentils with broccoli and sausage. We also smoked some of Jon’s mom’s weed and he sent me with a joint to go. It’s nice to be in a legal state.
Post Script: Back in Silver City. Going to hike the Dragonfly Trail to see some petroglyphs then catch the Mimbre pottery exhibit at the local university. Going to try and find some BLM land at lower elevation to camp, it was 19 degrees when I got up this morning.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park (Epic Road Trip 2 #6)
Tonight finds me at a roadside picnic area down the road from Sitting Bull Falls and the North Entrance to the Park. I may not get down to hike the Canyon There since I was invited to my friend Ray’s land in Alamogordo for Solstice. We are going to burn a Yule Log. You remember Ray from my last Epic Road Trip where we met on a hike in the Lincoln National Forest and have stayed in touch.
I woke up camped on some BLM land too close to a paved road with this epic roadtripper Jon. He is a cancer survivor taking some time to just be and be happy. I had met him at Carlsbad Caverns and he invited me to lunch at his campsite. He was a great camp cook and we had lentils with sausage and broccoli and it was delicious. He also read me the first couple chapters of his novel and I shared a few poems (Untitled #1, my Christmas Carol, and i am a pattern, you can find them in my poetry page).
I wanted to get an earlier start than Job but just as I pulled in a gas station to use the facilities and get a cup of coffee it started steaming. The first place I called couldn’t get me in until mid January but the next place got it in and replaced the heater control valve.
I walked some of the river walk and used their outdoor exercise machines. I also went to the thrift store and the library to read a bit and send out thank yous and post cards. Now I’m waiting for the Falls to open and getting my narrative closer to caught up.
A few days ago I camped at the Roadside park right before you get to Guadalupe. I went to the Ranger Station for info and a map. I walked over to the Butterfield Station Ruins. It was about the fourth or fifth Butterfield site I’ve seen on this trip. It ran a stagecoach from St Louis to San Francisco in 25 days. About 90 miles a day which is about what I average. Gives you a better appreciation for the scale of the country.
After that I did some backwards walking and hiked most of the Frijole Trail. Most people hike it from the Frijole Ranch and come back the ridge trail as a loop. I hiked up until I’d had enough and then hiked back. I didn’t really get into the trees much and it was mostly desert stuff. There were rock wrens and some towhe (sp ?).
After my bike I checked out the turn of the century ranch house where some truck farmers lived who served a lot of beans, hence the name.
I went back to Van Horn because I had forgotten something at a truckstop and couldn’t reach anyone. I got a keto pizza and a hotel.
My friend Kevin recommended the McKitrick Canyon Trail. At the trailhead is a nature trail which has some good info and is definitely worth doing. The McKitrick Trail is a really great trail. You hike through typical Chihuahuan Desert and then go into a woods of oak and Texas Mahogany. It’s a great tree with an edible berry in the winter.
About 2 1/2 miles there is a stone cabin from the late 20’s and in the Fall and Winter weekends they have a volunteer to answer questions. It was her first day but she had hiked the trail and had some recommendations in the surrounding area. Further up the trail there is a grotto with some formations and then another stone cabin from the same era.
PostScript: Definitely behind in my narrative. Currently in Silver City in a Motel 6 gearing up to see some sites in town and then head southwest for some desert camping. It’s cold and would like to get out of the mountains.
Epic Road Trip 2 #3 (4 forts in Texas)
Well constant reader, I have made it Great Bend National Park and have been here about 4 days. I made much better time than I planned and the trip has become more and more magical. I am in a campsite in the Cottonwood campground drinking a cup of herbal tea and winding down from the drive in before I turn in. I don’t have a signal so I will work in some photos if I get the chance, if I don’t please excuse the wall of text.
I believe I left off in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has a lack of outdoor recreation that makes it really standout, not only in the West but nationally. The conservation area I camped at probably required a hunting permit. My second night in Oklahoma was in a Walmart parking lot.
The bright spot was the Seminole Museum. They have a number of very cool artifacts and their interpretation tells their story very well. I was somewhat familiar but definitely learned something. They had the longest campaign to force their relocation of any tribe. Basically in 3 waves they were defeated militarily and forced to move over 80 years I believe. A remnant was able to maintain in the swamps and that group ultimately received tribal recognition.
The British encouraged slaves to flee to Florida and they were taken into the Seminole Tribe. I also learned the Seminole were a composite group of remnant tribes decimated by disease that formed the Seminole fairly late in history. A lot of their tribal traditions, like dress, were based on trade goods. Trade cloth was a lot better than buckskins for the Florida heat.
They originally started more northerly in Alabama, Georgia and the panhandle but were pushed deeper into Florida. The museum had cultural artifacts and a lot of contemporary art. I did enjoy driving the back roads through Oklahoma. I found a conservation area to camp in after crossing into Texas.
I got an early start but backtracked back a bit to Tulsa and went to a park and botanical gardens that also had the historical museum. The Japanese maple were in all their Fall glory and it has been fun to turn back time to the leaves changing as I’ve traveled south.
I visited 4 forts in Texas under different arrangements and in different conditions. Fort Richardson is in a State Park and has preserved buildings and some recreational similar to Fort Scott. The state park has more buildings open but less interpretation and archeology than the feds but provided an overall better experience. The Fort
Fort Phantom Hill was ruins, mostly chimneys and some stone foundations. Fort Chadbourn was privately owned and run by a foundation, with like 4 people doing it. It has a little bit of ruins but mostly reconstruction. It also had the best collection of artifacts. Lots of guns including guns from the Little Big Horn.
The Comanche had killed a couple guys on a mail run, it was precipitated by one of the soldiers but it got them both killed. The Comanche were confronted and threatened with arrest so they seized an officers barracks and forted up. A Lieutenant kicked the door in and got killed for his trouble but the Comanche were defeated. You could still see the bullet holes. There was also soldier graffiti writing Tecumseh, Michigan about 20 miles from where I grew up. Warmed my Yankee heart.
I had a nice talk about running a nonprofit with my museum tour guide and met the ranch owner who grew up with the ruins and learned they were important in college and built the museum and led the reconstruction. His workman consulted on the stabilization of the chimneys at Fort Phantom Hill, which did have an existent magazine. Ammunition storage buildings are mad so thick they stand the test of time.
The last fort was Fort Stockton. It’s owned by the city and run by the local historical society. Not much to it. It was a Buffalo Soldier fort. Noticed it’s guardhouse had chains on the wall and it was the first fort without a bakehouse. They fed those fellows leftover hardtack from the Civil War in 1858. The chaining up was reflective of the harshness of Civil War discipline the interpretation said but I wondered if it wasn’t the fact that they had white officers and Black soldiers?
I got my first hotel a week into the trip at Fort Stockton knowing it was the last cheap city before Big Bend. I finished my tea and will take another trip to the pit toilet before calling it a night.
PostScript: I am at a McDonald’s in Alpine Texas enjoying access to a sink and flush toilet, a second cup of coffee, a couple of sausage biscuits (one would have been better) and crappy wifi. I’m going to slow track to Marfa camping at roadside parks unless I find something better. Researching on how to do Guadalupe Mountains National Park with camping full.
Epic Road Trip 2 #1
I cleaned out my apartment and dropped off keys and stuff I was donating and dropped off my router at the Spectrum Store in Olathe. I had also packed the van for the trip. I forgot my cooler and cooler food but I don’t normally travel with that and was as much relieved not to have to mess with it as disappointed.
I set out for my first campsite a little over an hour south. Since it was night and raining I took the interstate. The next morning I put the “avoid highways” option on Google Maps so I’ll probably end up on more gravel roads than interstate like my last Epic Road Trip. It was a municipal fishing lake with dispersed camping. I think I was the only one there.
I heated water in my new heated pitcher that runs off the cigarette lighter. It took about 40 minutes but I made some drip coffee. I have some home roasted to get me started. I only slept fair but that will get easier as I’m more tired. I had some leg cramps from the 40 flights of stairs I climbed packing and cleaning out my second floor apartment.
I did a short hike at a Fort Scott municipal park and read about the flood in the 80’s. The big attraction was the fort which is preserved buildings and some recreated. It was really well done with interesting exhibits. One of the better forts I’ve seen and I’ve been to a bunch.
Fort Scott abuts the fort and I had some lunch and walked around downtown.
I also learned Gordon Parks was from Fort Scott. I went to his museum at the local community college. He was a renaissance man as an important photographer, civil rights activist and directed Shaft amongst other things.
I half assed looked for his grave but it was wet and I was tired and I settled for a monument with some quotations on being a Black guy from there that was pretty cool.
I’m tired so I’ll leave it at that for now. I’m hunkered down in a Walmart parking lot a little north of the Texas border. It was cold and drizzly so I made more miles than I planned. I’ll try to get more succinct and share less pics in future posts.
Ambling Around Down East
I keep hoping to get regular about writing posts but being on vacation I may just do it. It’s day three of vacation and I am starting to settle in. Being relaxed and away from work and getting lots of exercise, eating fresh seafood and seeing really cool stuff is good for my state of mind.
My ex-neighbor Rich picked us up at 4:30 bless his heart and we had smooth flights. We changed planes at JFK and that is a long terminal. When we arrived in Bangor and took our rental car to our Motel in Trenton. It’s really cute, they have a pen with a couple sheep and goats. There is a nice view of a bay and a little mountain across the airport we abut.
We slept in so arrived with the crowds and had traffic jams and had to skip many things because there was no parking. We did get the lay of the land and saw cool stuff at Otter Bay and some other area with granite rocks going down to the bay. It was sunny and t-shirt weather. I slipped and fell on some slick spots but no harm was done.
If I haven’t mentioned it I blew out my knee in March and was on crutches for awhile. I’ve been focusing on being more active and building my capacity back up for about 2 1/2 months. The first 2 months it was just walking though I got up to a lot of 7 mile days.
I moved my big plant from my apartment back to my house in Columbia and just getting it down a flight of stairs kicked my ass and made me realize how puny I’d gotten in Leavenworth just walking.
I’ve been working on it moving steel bunk beds a couple of days for work, loading my van with books and furniture and helping Rich move has gotten me in a pattern of a full body workout. I got some of that on our first full day at the park where I was doing some climbing around on the rocks.
There were some nice overlooks and places to walk around on the rocks. I slipped and fell more than once navigating on the wet rocks. I’ve worn the tread off some key spots on my Chacos I learned. We also added a second loop after dinner and after a traffic jam that kind of made it not worth it even though it’s a pretty cool site we checked out a lighthouse.
The next day we headed back to Acadia, more informed and a bit earlier and we did the loop again stopping at different sites. We walked some on a carriage trail and took a bit of a side hike on a cool trail. We’ve been limited on what we can do as one of us can’t walk far or tackle tough terrain.
The fog was in so not much on the scenic outlook. It did thin the crowds.
Day three we had planned a whale watching trip. Took us awhile to figure out parking and find a spot with the traffic. We were paying and discussing what we were going to do when we learned to check and see if it were cancelled, which it was.
We went to the Abbe Museum instead. It had a all collection of artifacts but some really nice stuff and contemporary and neat contemporary exhibits that have some cool stuff.
We grabbed breakfast at the This Way Cafe and it was excellent. The Ploughman’s Plate was popular with a boiled egg, pickles, mustard, maple link sausage, candied walnuts, and some chunks of cheese all local. I wanted that too but I had a good feeling about the hash which was billed as homemade. Sure enough it was the ground kind and not fried meat and potato chunks that most places bill as hash.
Good time to mention the food. We tried to go to Helen’s the first night but the crowd scared us off so we got cold cuts and such at the store near our house. The. Next night we went there early. I had the halibut which was ok but a bit underpriced. I had a bite of Flow’s lobster roll and some of John’s clam strips. All pretty yummy.
Last night we went to a lobster barbecue place and I had a lobster tail but got some pulled pork French fries to share. Wish I would have gotten the barbecue. I probably won’t get a lobster roll.
Tropical Storm Phillipe gave us a rain day today and tomorrow. This morning we went to Cordelia Stanford’s house and grounds which are now a bird sanctuary and nature center. She’d had a nervous breakdown and started photographing birds to recover and became an ornithologist.
We saw some raptors, a nice looking red tail hawk and a black vulture stood out. The timid looking great horned owl was a sight as well. We took a stroll in the woods and a boardwalk and saw a lot of mossy woods and fungi.
The house was closed so we couldn’t see her photos.
Incorruptible Body
Back on Memorial Day weekend I started seeing news stories about an incorruptible Body drawing large crowds in Missouri. It seems an elderly nun had died 4 years ago, not embalmed and buried in a pine box was disinterred and found to be in pretty good shape. I was intrigued enough to find a story of her life and that had pictures and she did look pretty good, all things considering.
As I lay in bed Sunday night I decided to map out how far Gower was and if it was less than an hour I’d road trip over there. How often do you get to see a full on miracle?
I usually get up with the sun and I learned Gower was only 45 minutes from Leavenworth. The convent requested you not arrive before 8:00 am, people live there, for God’s sake, and they were going to inter her in a glass coffin in the afternoon so I really had my last chance to see her aur natural.
It was a pretty drive through the country. The loess hills of Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas aren’t really appreciated for how beautiful they are. My first sign there was spectacle ahead was an LED light sign saying watch for stopped traffic in the middle of nowhere.
There was parking in a field across the street and a long line snaking out of the entrance when I arrived at 8:00. It definitely had a carnival vibe with volunteers pointing where to park and volunteer fire department directing traffic. People were excited to ask where you came from but it was mostly Kansas and Missouri with a smattering of Iowans.
The line started to move a little after 8:00. I listened in on the folks around me. There was a group older Filipino ladies behind me who had been on a lot of pilgrimages and visited other incorruptibles. They were pretty charming as they talked about their adventures on the tour bus to Petra. General impression was “it’s hot there”.
Ahead of me was a Catholic mom and her teen and grown kids. They had a lot of talk about Catholic schools and the brother who didn’t make the trip, apparently because he smokes a lot of weed.
There were a lot of canopies with water and fruit and donation jars for area churches. Mostly staffed by big families of conservative dressed kids. Not a lot of solicitation but some QR codes to support the cause. The newly built chapel which led to all the fuss looked sharp. Before you entered there were teen girls with skirts and scarves for the bare legged and bare shouldered. Yoga pants count as bare legged I learned. It was hot so I had worn shorts but I wasn’t offered a skirt.
Sister Mary Willhemina Lancaster had a compelling story even before she died. She was born in 1924 and grew up in a Black Catholic family and when her Catholic school segregated her dad started their own.
She became a nun in the oblate order and at 76 started the order in Gower. This might be a good time to mention I am going to post a couple of pictures of the body.
After the womenfolk were appropriately clothed we entered the chapel where folks mostly followed the admonishment on the sign to be quiet. There were some super geriatric Knights of Columbus complete with sword and sash as an honor guard and also serving as ushers.
I’d seen pictures in some of the stories so I wasn’t surprised to see a pretty good looking corpse. I don’t know what the typical decomposition is in 4 years but I think you’re mostly bones at that point. I watched season 1 of Dexter and a two year old corpse was bones and stringy meat, assuming the show runners did a little research.
People were coming up in groups and families. It hasn’t struck me that I was the only one who had arrived solo. People were kissing her face and heads and draping her with rosaries and medallions, sometimes a goodly string of them. Everyone would kneel and the usher would take a photo with someone’s camera in a posed kind of way. People stuck to the 45 second rule posted without a lot of promoting. There was a lot of emotion in the room.
At my turn I took some rushed photos and kneeled for a bit. I might have tried to pray, I was more taking it all in then putting it out there. 15 seconds tops, was plenty for me.
After the visit I went to the gravesite and got my teaspoon of grace diet. There was a pretty good sized hole it was hard to reach the bottom. There was another Filipino lady just shoveling it in a bag. She got admonished for breaking the teaspoon rule but she said she was with a group so they let her have a few more solid scoops.
I went over to St Joseph and went for a bike ride and hike on trails, the waterfront and downtown. It was a cool and surreal Memorial Day.
So what does it all mean? Was it a miracle? As I get older I get less and less interested in deciding what I believe about things. Things just are, regardless of what I believe. The folks I was with, without exception treated it as miraculous. Even with the crass and objectified relic hunting it was a sincere expression of belief and kind of beautiful.
There was nothing I saw that was incompatible with a miracle. An admirable life of someone who appeared worthy of esteem and an incorruptible Body. When I talked to my sister who is crazy for the miraculous and my Catholic coworker who is pretty devout it was easy to convey I bore witness to a miracle.
But also I suspect that corpse deteriorate on a bell curve. Probably moisture content and exposure to oxygen, insects and who knows what else are drivers of variability. Some corpses decompose very quickly and some very slowly and most at the typical rate. We note the exceptional and the countless typical examples are not noted. I felt no need to research, hypothesize or explain. Just to bear witness to a phenomenon I had proximity too that interested me
When I told my brother about it he suggested vampirism. I didn’t argue against that either. There was a Christian rock song in the 80’s called Renaissance Man that had these lines: ” How does it help you feed the poor? How does it help you love your wife? Tell me Renaissance Man…” Those questions have stuck with me and what I believe or don’t believe about the apparently miraculous don’t really mean that much.
Multiconstruct 
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