Shrouded Cemetery

Roadside Cemetery in Dane County

source url Roadside Cemetery © 2008

Buy Xanax Online Overnight Cemeteries hold a certain fascination for me. On my travels around the state of Wisconsin and in other parts of the country, too, I often see small cemeteries on private lands. Simple family cemeteries filled with crumbling spires and solid squatty granite blocks. Some are decorated with plastic flowers in every hue and variety, some with teddy bears and pin-wheels, some plain – but not forgotten, I hope.

https://anthonynewmancamps.com/soccer-camps/ My favorite grave markers are the ones that incorporate a bench. Not that I will have a bench near my eventual resting place, but I do like the idea of having a place for others to rest a bit, think quiet thoughts, re-consider and make new plans, go on with living. While still taking out a few moments of life to remember and honor.

https://drbatayneh.com/ophthalmic-plastic/ I’m the cemetery visitor in my immediate family. I think, though, that I am the last in a long line of grave site caretakers. My great-grandmother and both grandmothers with whom I grew up  – they were all Sunday-morning-after-church-services visitors to the cemetery. I often accompanied them as I was the one with the young knees and strong arms. I could run along the gravel paths without fear of turning an ankle or falling. We often brought live plants that required digging holes, setting in, mounding, and watering. In Autumn, we brought rakes so that I could rake leaves off the long line of family plots. Even little clippers to trim the summer’s blades of grass that sprang up in the improper of places.

source I still take my mother to the cemetery when I visit my hometown. We now decorate with artificial flowers that can be re-used every year.  And we decorate seasonally – Christmas poinsettias, then red and white carnations for Valentine’s Day, followed in quick procession by spring flowers, Memorial Day in red, white and blue, summer flowers, Fourth of July, and finally fall flowers. In early December we start with Christmas again. And the seasons recycle, each set of flowers returns to the cemetery at just the right time.

Order Xanax No Prescription I’d rather just wander around, look around, examine. But the flower tradition has been in place for a hundred years in my maternal family. I don’t live near the family site. Hundreds of miles away, actually. So I wonder what will happen when I no longer have living relatives to visit in my hometown.

When in Rome, Do as the Romans…

source link Good advice, right? So while I’m in the West, I’m thinking I should do as the Westerners do. Except I can’t find any Westerners to emulate now.

https://www.completerehabsolutions.com/contact/ How on God’s earth do the people out here camp? I know they camp. Surely they camp. But I sure in hell cannot figure out exactly where they camp.

watch As a solid, card-carrying camper – hey, I belong to triple A, and they give campground discounts, correct? – I feel as if I know a little something about camping. Plus, I have been a camper nearly my entire life and I have camped in nearly every state in the country towing along three kids. I know how to pack, plan, and head on out into the wild, wide blue open. And it has always worked.

source At least, it has always worked until now.

Order Clonazepam Online Now, I am not so sure, and I am having a hard time finding any Westerners to ask. I do know that campgrounds seem to be few and far apart out here in the Southwest. But in my prolonged searches, I seem to have uncovered three types of campgrounds.

get link Type I: The National Parks. Now this is my idea of a great place to camp. A bit rustic. Great scenery and knowledgeable rangers who want to expand your camping pleasure by offering you a choice of a hundred things you absolutely must do in the 48 hours you are going to be there. But here is an observation and a problem.

Buy Klonopin Online Overnight The observation? There are not very many Westerners camping in these campgrounds. There are many, many international campers in these campgrounds. (You cannot go by the license plates because most travelers from Europe and Asia rent a car and camp across the West.) In the last few days I’ve met great people from Germany, Holland, Japan, Denmark, Australia, Puerto Rico and the Netherlands. And just a couple of campers from east of the Rockies – one family from Ohio and a couple from South Carolina. I keep wondering just where are the people who live maybe a state or two away from these national wonders.

see And the problem? I camp with a husband who seems to think it is every camper’s right to experience a hot shower in the morning before experiencing mind- and body-defying hikes through the wilderness. And, as hard as I find this to comprehend, he is rather stubborn about this idea. Cold water poured over his head and a bit of soap lather apparently does not count. He’ll appease me for one night, maybe even two if I really get desperate, but he’d really rather do his shower thing in the morning.

https://geneticsandfertility.com/patients/ Type II camping spots – I’m guessing these are the places where the locals camp. The ten- or twelve-unit campgrounds tucked in forests and along streams on federal and state lands. Or a wide spot off the road in the same federal lands – National Forest Service lands, Bureau of Land Management lands, State Parks. Many of these are tucked away so you have to look for them. That’s not the problem. The problem is already listed under Type I campgrounds. No showers. Egad.

Buy Clonazepam Without Prescription So that leaves Type III – the third category of camping places when you are a stranger in these parts, and you mostly rely on published materials. I’m referring to the private campground. These often come with many qualifications in writing.  Horseshoe pits, playgrounds, laundry, WiFi, sometimes a pool, usually a game room and a mini-store. More often than not, they note the availability of that most welcome of commodities – the hot shower.

Ambien 10 Mg Price They also usually come with pull through sites and 40+ foot RVs that most people on this globe would easily mistake as second homes for royalty, pop stars, and oil magnates.

https://www.52editions.com/congratulations/ All I really want is a shower for my spouse. Instead I get convenience which, when translated, means “next to a very noisy road.” And as a bonus, I also get next to the railroad tracks. I’m figuring every road of any worth west of the Continental Divide also has a train track nearby, complete with freight trains that run approximately every 30 minutes on the hour.

Buy Ambien Online Overnight The trains –something I don’t see (or hear) too often where I live – were charming the first dozen or so times. The novelty has worn thin. Type III campgrounds, as far as the camper in me is concerned, are not really places to camp. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

go site The Type III campground I am writing from at 4 AM this morning is the worst of all possible Type IIIs.

https://www.ztpackaging.com/laminated-bags/ We came in very late – I had a migraine much of the day which threw a big wrench in our travel timetables – and we couldn’t make our planned destination. I’m not certain, but by the light of the half-moon, this area is more than a little seedy. There are trailers parked here that I think have been here since the fifties. There is no WiFi as advertised (one luxury I admit to liking, though it is not at all in the same category as the shower). The showers here are unusable and the bathrooms require a “punch code number” to access.  And the 5 million watt lighting from the truckers’ parking lot next door makes it all feel a little too eerie for comfort.

So, though I am enjoying my trip and the places I am seeing, the camping has been off and on. Tonight is definitely one of the offs. I can hardly wait for daylight so that I can assess where I am, exactly, and then skedaddle as fast as I can away from the place.  In another day, we get a treat – a “not-camping” overnight with a friend who has kindly offered a real bed in a real house. And guaranteed showers, no howling trains for background music, no big rigs running generators all night.

And to sweeten the deal even more, her husband is a hobbyist brewmaster.

(Remember my Wisconsin roots?)

Yow-zaaaaaa!

Red Barn

Barn in Sauk County, Wisconsin

Barn in Sauk County, Wisconsin ©2008 Bo Mackison

I love red barns. I especially love the rusty red roof on this barely red barn, and the red vines creeping around the window frame.

De-clutter? Not Even the Question!

Not for Sale

Someone Else’s Junk ©2008 Bo Mackison

Why do we save the things we save?

When I moved to Chicago 33 years ago to attend school, I arrived with a suitcase of clothes and an army  trunk full of bedding, towels, and everything else I owned. I bought a hot plate and rented a tiny refrigerator. After I got settled and met a few people, I somehow managed to collect other peoples’ cast-offs – and was mighty happy to get them. A folding bed, unfolded, doubled as a couch by day and a bed at night. I found a perfectly acceptable chair on the curbside waiting for the garbage pickup. Some hot water and soap revealed a wood chair made out of oak that gave me the option of offering a guest a seat on a chair or on the floor. Their choice.

Eventually I graduated, married, and started working…and accumulating. Accumulating stuff. Important stuff. Good stuff. But after 32 years of marriage and three kids, I have way too much stuff. Not all of it mine, mind you, but all of it is, well, stuffed into my house.

I recently read about a person who had survived both a flood that destroyed one home and a catastrophic fire that destroyed a second. She bemoaned the loss of work in her studio and her writing samples, her photographs and personal letters, but never once did I read any mention of any stuff. Makes me think I could do more de-cluttering than I already have.

A move into smaller quarters is on the horizon, though a rather far horizon – considering how not-so-quickly I accomplish huge projects. But now that our family of five has dwindled to two, we do not need to inhabit a 9 room house. The two of us have been examining architecture and dwelling spaces, and we are thinking it would be interesting and challenging to try to create a home that is truly designed for the way we live. Smallish, but full of interesting details and open spaces, both inside and out. I’ve been looking at a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright designs and adaptations, and I’m beginning to amass a notebook full of scrawls and sketches and resources and photographs.

But first – I have to get rid of some of this stuff. Think my kids want any of their stuff I’m storing? I’m sure Good Will will be happy to accept some of the extra, too. Maybe I should just pretend I’m moving cross-country and go on a stuff-reduction diet. Gulp!

Red Spires in Utah

Red Rock Spires

Red Rock Spires ©2008 Bo Mackison

Driving from central Colorado to Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, we detoured off the Interstate. Went through a great ghost town – photos of that later – and then followed the Colorado River into the National Park.

When driving through the Rockies, an amazing transformation happens. Cross the Continental Divide heading west, and soon the pine/aspen forested mountains change into pinon/juniper ranges. Sage brush starts crowding the sides of the road, and suddenly red rock formations loom out of the distance.

Sure isn’t Wisconsin, Dorothy!