Posted in space

Are We Alone?

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by Bob Sparrow

Just the Milky Way galaxy

Haven’t we all wondered at one time or another . . . are we alone?  Yes, you may very well be alone while reading this blog and hopefully you were alone when you went to the bathroom this morning, but the graphic gives us the real intent of the question: Are we the only people in the universe, in all of space?

If we include ‘all of space’, first we don’t even have a clue as to how big ‘all of space’ is, but what we do know is that just in our Milky Way galaxy, there are trillions of planets with many of them orbiting stars just like our sun.  And if you consider space beyond our galaxy, the odds are pretty good that there is intelligent life out there somewhere; and to complicate matters in our search for intelligent life, lately we’re not even sure we can find intelligent life here on Earth!

A comment from famous American-Italian and Manhattan Project physicist, Enrico Fermi, is one of my favorites when contemplating the mystery of intelligent life ‘out there’..  After hearing how vast space is and the probable odds of having life out there somewhere, he said, “Where is everybody?”  This is known as the ‘Fermi Paradox’.

The process of ‘looking for life’ out there, includes first looking at how life on Earth began, which we’re really not sure about; we do know approximately when life started here on Earth (about 4 billion years ago), but we don’t know how it started!  Which complicates things when looking for life elsewhere. It’s been said that “If we played Earth’s history again, the emergence of intelligent life as we know it, is actually somewhat unlikely.”

Apollo 12 astronauts

However, there is a story that claims that when Apollo 11 reached the surface of the moon, Armstrong expressed astonishment at finding two unknown spacecraft already present on the moon. Armstrong further described these UFOs as being huge and lined up on the far side of the crater’s edge observing the Earth.  The theory originated from NASA’s claim about losing transmission from Apollo 11 for roughly two minutes. Did Armstrong really see aliens during that time?  Apollo 10 astronauts, Stafford, Young, and Cernan heard a certain whistling sort of music while circling the moon. The music lasted for almost an hour and creeped the living daylights out of the astronauts.  The Apollo 12 astronaut, Allen Bean saw a mysterious shining object on the moon.  American astronaut Leroy Chiao was the commander of the International Space Station in 2005, after seeing a series of lights outside the ISS, claims he is 100 percent convinced he was visited by aliens.

These are well-respected, educated men who did not just take up space in school.  So, if we assume that we are being watched, let’s look at some of the theories of how ‘they’ may be watching us:

  1. The ‘Dark Forrest Theory’ says that the reason we can’t see these alien civilizations is because they’re all in hiding. Unlike humanity—whose radio transmissions have long echoed throughout our local galactic neighborhood—these societies have all concluded that it’s simply too dangerous to broadcast their location to potentially hostile neighbors.
  2. The ‘Snow Glob Theory’ says that yes, there are aliens, but they are so much more advanced than us, that they have no interest in watching us for very long. It’s like looking at a snow globe and every once in a while, you’ll turn it upside down to see something a little different, and then leave it alone.
  3.  3. The ‘Zoo Theory’ says that aliens can and are watching us with some interest, but are so much more advanced than we are, that they are really not bothering to interfere with our simple, mundane existence. It’s sort of like us watching an ant colony.
  4. The ‘Been There, Done That Theory’ This is believed by people who can’t otherwise explain things like the Great Pyramids, saying that aliens were here for a while, built some stuff, got bored, and went home.

Fermi, “Where is everybody?”

The fact is that the universe is so vast and the building blocks of life are so abundant in the cosmos, and the number of planets in the cosmos is so large that it’s very unlikely that life on Earth is the only form of life that exists out there,

Whether you believe any of this stuff or not, it is with us to stay.  Earlier this year, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified that he had been told that the United States is in possession not only of crashed spacecraft of “non-human” origin but also alien “biologics.”

I’ll probably continue to take up space in the future and keep you posted on any further discoveries of life in space or here on Earth.

 

 

 

Posted in opinion

GOOD PARENTING

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

A group of friends and I were talking about parenting the other day.  We remarked that when we were growing up our parents sent us out the door in the morning and asked us not to return until dinner.  I think they had a general sense of where we were, but I wouldn’t swear to it.  Of course, we all grew up in small towns, where everyone knew everyone else, and you couldn’t get into too much trouble without being observed by someone who would rat you out to your parents.  And, in general, it was a safer time for kids to roam around unsupervised.  Still, even into the 80’s I remember my husband and I standing at the end of our driveway, waving to our daughter and her best friend as they drove off for spring break in Palm Desert.  She called to let us know they arrived safely, and we didn’t hear from her again until they set out for home.  I’m not sure we want to know what they were up to that week, but that is her fun memory to have and since we weren’t asked for bail money, I’m assuming she didn’t get into too much trouble.  But back to the discussion with my friends – we were commenting about how the advent of cell phones has allowed parents to track every movement of their kids. There are good and bad aspects to that.  There’s no question the cell phone has kept many an anxious parent from lying awake half the night wondering where their kids (and car) were.  On the other hand, I learned a lot of lessons on how to get myself out of a jam because no one was just a phone call away to help me out.

Coincidentally, earlier this week I received an article about old-fashioned parenting styles from one of the historical sites I subscribe to, and it was eye-opening to learn just how far we’ve come in supervising our children.  For example:

People Used to Mail Their Children – on January 1, 1913, the United States Post Office began offering parcel service.  The most brazen early parcel customers trusted the Post Office with their most precious cargo – their children. The first recorded baby delivered via parcel post was James Beagle, an 8-month-old resident of Glen Este, Ohio. His journey wasn’t long: a carrier picked up the “well wrapped” infant from his parents on January 25 and, per the address on an attached card, delivered him to his grandmother just a few miles away. The postage cost 15 cents, and his parents insured him for $50! The practice of mailing children to relatives continued, particularly in rural areas, until 1915, when the government finally made it illegal to pop your kid in the mail.

Kids Were Routinely Given Illegal Drugs – In an era before evidence-based medicine, parents often relied on dubious remedies to treat common childhood ailments. Substances such as Stickney and Poor’s Pure Paregoric syrup and Godfrey’s Cordial were commonly given to babies in the 19th century to relieve gas, soothe teething pain, and treat unexplained fussiness. The secret ingredients? Alcohol and opium.  Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was also a popular treatment at the time. The syrup was said to be suitable for babies as young as newborns. While the vibrant marketing featured cheerful imagery of happy babies and mothers, the syrup, a concoction that included morphine and alcohol, resulted in the loss of thousands of children until it was denounced by the American Medical Association in the early 1900s.

Parents Aired Out Laundry and Children – Dr. Luther Emmett Holt, sort of a 19th century Dr. Spock, introduced the concept of “airing” infants. The practice of “airing” babies subsequently gained traction, and by the early 1900s, people even began placing babies in boxes on flat roofs. Baby cages also became popular as a way for city-dwelling parents to provide their babies with that all-important fresh air from the comfort of an enclosed frame suspended from a windowsill.

No Such Thing as Maternal Affection – In the early 1900s, John B. Watson (no relation!), an American psychologist known for his role in developing the field of behaviorism, stated that children should not receive “too much mother love.”  He argued that children should be greeted with a handshake in the morning, should not be allowed to sit in a parent’s lap, and should never be hugged or kissed, save for a peck on the forehead at bedtime. Many of the leading child psychologists of the day suggested that a baby be handled as little as possible lest it become spoiled.  Touching, they said, would sow indulgence that would reap anger, selfishness, irritability, and unbecomingness.  Instead, they suggested parents turn the baby occasionally from side to side, feed it, change it, keep it warm, and let it alone.  Kind of like you’d do with a hamster.

Such theories are unimaginable these days, but I guess it explains a lot of the stoic behavior in the past.  And if they treated their children like this, I hate to think about the living conditions of the family dog.  Dash the Wonder Dog, like most pets, is fortunate to live in a time when we buy unlimited toys, fluff their pillows, feed them organic food and let them nestle into a soft pillow on our beds.  We’ve come a long way.

Posted in politics

It’s the Most Important Election of Our Lifetime . . . Again

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by Bob Sparrow

Actually, both mascots should be ‘Cheetahs’

We here at ‘From A Birdseye View’, rarely, if ever, wade into the political swamp. Still, I now find myself tip-toeing, very gingerly, into what has become our political cesspool, as it’s simply impossible to ignore and will be for the next couple of months.  While election years typically provide different positions on various subjects, I feel like we’re watching a couple of junior high schoolers bad-mouthing each other.  I keep waiting for one of them to say, “Oh yeah, well I’m rubber, you’re glue, everything that you say, bounces off me and sticks on to you.  Neener, Neener!”

This childish display is partly due to the fact that we have two unique presidential candidates, who both believe and constantly remind us, that if their opponent wins, it will be the end of democracy as we know it.  Spoiler alert: I’m fairly certain that we will still have a democracy, no matter who wins.  Given the uniqueness of each of these two presidential candidates, it is hard to ignore the constant media coverage, which will get worse, as each candidate is vying to be the last one to insult the other.  Whether you’re for the cackling flip-flopper, the self-centered blowhard, or neither, the mud-slinging will only intensify as we get closer to election day.  It makes one wonder, are these the best two candidates we could come up with to become commander-in-chief of our armed forces and president of the most powerful country in the world?

The only thing the two candidates seem to agree on is that “This will be the most important election of our lifetime”.  Which is political babble for, ‘if you vote for the other person, YOU are going to be responsible for the destruction of our country as you know it’.  The use of this phrase sounded so familiar to me that I thought I’d do a little research into it.

Oliver Hardy for President!

The phrase, or something very similar, can actually be traced back to the election of Abraham Lincoln, but it can be found word-for-word dating back to the Great Depression.  Why is this phrase so popular? Because politicians need to make today’s election about tomorrow—which means they need voters to believe that the future literally depends on their vote today. So, while politicians are really just thinking about whether they are going to survive this election, they tend to use hyperbole to say, “It’s the most important election of our lifetime”.  As each candidate poses as someone who can save the world!

Last week’s debate ended with each candidate saying that they won, and of course, we can’t rely on the media to tell us the truth; the general left-slanted media has claimed the victory for Harris, while Fox will give Trump the nod.  Let me go back to what I just said, “we can’t rely on the media to tell us the truth”.  That’s discussing!!  News used to be a reporting of facts so that we could come to our own conclusions, now the so-called news, is trying to tell us how to think.  They have made it so that today you watch a network based on what you want to hear or don’t want to hear.  It’s obvious we can’t get unbiased reporting anywhere. What the hell happened?!!!

But what upsets me the most is that the two people vying for the trust of the American people must be ‘fact-checked‘, as it’s assumed they’re going to be lying to us.  And sure enough, each told us 5-6 lies during the debate.  Honest Abe would never get elected today.

How do I really feel about all this?  To quote slap-stick comedian Oliver Hardy, which seems appropriate:

“It’s another fine kettle of fish we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

 

Posted in opinion

ON SAFARI IN SCOTTSDALE

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Tom the Tarantula

I have always been an animal lover.  Okay, maybe really just a dog lover. I can tolerate the occasional cat.  But last month I reached the limits of my admiration for the animal kingdom when a giant tarantula appeared on my front door.  Now generally I am not afraid of spiders.  Living in Arizona requires that you become adept at squashing any number of arachnoids with the heel of your shoe.  But this thing was roughly the size of the Volkswagen I drove in college.  Our security department takes care of wayward desert animals so I called to see if they could remove the tarantula.  Ten minutes later a young man came walking up to my front entrance with a little grin on his face.  I’m sure he thought I was some gray-haired old lady afraid of a little spider.  When I pointed to Tom the Tarantula (we were on a first-name basis by then), he turned toward the window and his mouth flew open.  “Oh my God,” he shouted. He told me he’d never seen one so large.  He eventually got a piece of paper, scraped it off the window and took it out to the street.  I had visions of Tom returning, perhaps when I was fast asleep.  But the guard assured me that within a few hours he would be eaten by a coyote or snake.  Rest in Peace, Tom.

         Lovely Rattlesnakes

Over the past year I’ve had an unusual number of encounters with local wildlife.  We had rattlesnakes that visited our lot when we were building the house (they are territorial, and we disrupted their space) but since we moved into the house in 2000, we haven’t seen another one.  Until last year.  They usually go into hibernation when the weather turns colder, so you can imagine my surprise when I came home from a dinner at the beginning of November to find a rattlesnake in the yard.  And not just the yard – but in Dash the Wonder Dog’s dog run.  Luckily my flashlight caught the glint of his skin, and I was able to grab Dash before he had an ugly encounter.  And me a $5,000 anti-venom vet bill.  Our security people came and took him out of my yard.  Two weeks later, the day before Thanksgiving, I went out to check my backflow valve and when I lifted the cover, lo and behold, there was a rattlesnake coiled around one of the pipes.  I’ve never run so damn fast in my life.  Again, security came to the rescue, but I’m sure they were beginning to suspect I was running a breeding farm.

         Be Very Afraid

Last fall I also encountered one of the desert’s worst sort – the Colorado River Toad.  These toads are nothing like Kermit the Frog.  These guys are mean.  They are smooth-skinned and dark, with a distinct cranial crest that curves above each eye, giving them a killer look from the outset. They are only semi-aquatic, meaning they burrow around and seek out water sources.  Again, this toad showed up out in the dog run.  He looked so vicious that I immediately looked up types of toads, spotted the species, and learned that their defense mechanism is a poison they emit that is lethal enough to kill a dog.  The next morning he was gone. Two weeks ago, I let Dash out right before bed and saw one sitting underneath my A/C condensation pipe, basking in the water.  I took the Scarlet O’Hara approach and decided to deal with it the next morning.  Unfortunately, the bugger was still there.  Once again, Security came and caught him and remarked on his large size.  My pool man says that he’s seen more of these toads this year than in any of the 30 years he’s been working on pools.  Great.

The owl, critiquing my cooking

Coyotes are a regular part of our existence, in fact, we have a coyote pathway right outside my kitchen window. Since I’ve become accustomed to them over the past 24 years, I’m not frightened by them anymore.  I just double-check they aren’t running to the supermarket when I take Dash out.  Javelinas are another animal we live with, but they usually only cause problems by destroying plants.  We shrug them off; the deer always destroyed our gardens when we lived in California.  We also have regular visits from owls, who I learned are quite cunning.  A friend lost her dog when an owl swooped down, picked it up, and carried it off to who knows where.  I had this one peering in the kitchen window a couple of years ago, but I think the sour look was due to his appraisal of my cooking skills.

         Beautiful bobcat

Every once in a while, we get a beautiful, but equally frightening bobcat that visits our yard.  During Covid I guess he was having a hard time finding food (and it was an especially hot summer) so he camped out on our back patio almost every afternoon, hoping the occasional rabbit would step into his lair.  He truly was a beautiful animal, and I felt sorry for him, as his bony ribs heaved up and down as he panted to try to cool off.  But not sorry enough to set out a of bowl of water.  I’m hoping he found food and shelter at a non-dog owner’s home.

I’ve been tested in many ways this year, but those snakes and toads have just about taken me over the edge.  Thank God for the nice young men in our security department that come to my rescue.  I think I’m going to owe them a big check at Christmas this year.

 

 

Posted in space

Stuck in Space

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by Bob Sparrow

Butch & Suni – “See you next week” NOT!!!

Watching a spectacular moonrise on the evening of the ‘Supermoon blue moon’ a couple of weeks ago made me wonder about those two astronauts who have been circling the earth since June on a NASA mission that was supposed to last eight days.  NASA now says that they may not be coming home until February 2025!  So, eight days turned into eight months!  And you thought you had it bad when your last flight was delayed a couple of hours.  The two U.S. astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, left Earth in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.  Yes, Boeing, that’s the same company that had trouble keeping a door on an Alaskan 737 aircraft during a flight in January of this year.  I’ve since sold my stock in Boeing!  And while the door didn’t fly off the Starliner, the problem with their spacecraft seems to be that of helium leaks and thruster failure.   To dumb that down for you, if the spacecraft was a man, he would have gas and erectile dysfunction.

Men pushing Boeing Starliner to get it started

I initially imagined these two astronauts circling the earth at 17,505 miles per hour in their 15-foot wide capsule and having to figure out how they were going to survive for the next six months on what they brought with them.  It would be like planning a weekend trip to the mountains and being snowed in all winter – think Donner Party.   When I thought that was the case, here are some things that crossed my mind:

  • Did they pack enough food (and wine) to last that long?
  • Forget the wine, did they pack enough oxygen?
  • OK, don’t forget the wine
  • Who’s taking out the garbage?
  • What if the potty needs emptying?
  • How happy are their spouses with them spending the Christmas holidays in such close quarters with one another?

As it turns out, the Boeing spacecraft isn’t going to be their home for the next six months, as they were able to catch a passing Uber, in the form of the ISS (International Space Station), and successfully dock with it.

ISS Uber

However, the capacity of the ISS they boarded is seven people, and before Butch and Suni joined the party, there were already seven on board – six men, three Russian cosmonauts, an American chemist, an American physician, an American Navy test pilot, and one woman, an American aerospace engineer.  So, I’m guessing there was ‘no room in the Inn’ for these two stranded American astronauts.  We’ve not been told what they were doing to accommodate these additional freeloaders.  I’m hoping it wasn’t something like Russian roulette, where the Russians would seem to have a clear advantage.  With zero gravity, do the newcomers have to sleep by just floating in mid-air in the kitchen, or does everyone just float in mid-air all night when sleeping?  And the big question, is there enough wine to get the nine of them through Christmas and New Year’s, although the Russians probably brought their own vodka?

There is a precedent for being trapped in space, in 1991, Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was told that he could not return home because the country that had promised to bring him back home, the Soviet Union, no longer existed.  He eventually did get back to Earth after 311 days in space.

I’m sure NASA will figure out a way to get our astronauts back home, after all, they’ve got Boeing working on it right now!  Not!!!  Boeing has been fired; the astronauts will be coming home aboard a SpaceX capsule.

As I’ve thought about the pluses and minuses of being isolated in space until next February, I’ve concluded that the big plus is that they will miss out on all the political bullshit the rest of us have to endure from now until November 5th.

Where do I sign up to get lost in space for the next three months?

 

 

Posted in opinion

WHAT A HEEL

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

        The computer shoe

I read the other day that the artifacts collected by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, are going up for auction.  Allen died in 2018 and, as you might imagine, he collected a wide range of items.  One of the most intriguing is the “computer shoe”. It was a re-release of Puma’s 1986 running shoe with a computer chip built into the heel, sort of like an Apple Watch for your feet. Originally designed for runners to track distance, time and calories, the shoes were updated in 2018 with new features that included USB charging and Bluetooth connectivity to a smartphone. Only 86 of the shoes were released and it’s estimated that Allen’s pair will sell for between $1,000 to $2,000.  At that price, one hopes not to step in any dog poop.  Or the New York Subway, for that matter.

       Sneex heel sneaker

Reading the article about the shoes led me down a rabbit hole about shoes in general, and high heels in particular.  And my timing was good, because also making the news this week is that Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, has launched a new company, Sneex,  that produces a shoe that combines a high heel with a tennis shoe.  Brilliant!  As she says, it’s hard to change the world when your feet hurt.  As someone who pounded the pavement of San Francisco’s financial district in high heels, I can attest that a comfortable pair of shoes would have made me a lot less grouchy in meetings.  Blakely’s shoes are engineered to eliminate pain points that are common with high heels, including the narrow toe box, the pitch at which weight is distributed onto the ball of the foot, and the all-to-common gap between the heel of the foot and the shoe. They are priced between $395 to $595, which is a real bargain compared to bunion surgery.

               The Persian fighting shoe

I have heard more than once that if men had to wear high heels a shoe company like Sneex would have been invented long ago.  But as it turns out, men were the original wearers of high heels.  Yep, long before the days of stilettos and pumps, kitten heels and wedges, high-heeled shoes were worn by men. As far back as the 10th century, Persian soldiers and emissaries wore heels when riding, battling, or traveling to faraway lands. These heels weren’t for show, however; they were for function. When a soldier wore heeled boots on a horse, he was able to better steady himself and generate more balance both for riding and fighting. Persian soldiers were also able to stand upright in their stirrups, positioning their feet so the space between the heel and the sole was snug in the stirrup, which gave them an advantage in battle.

     Louis and his red shoes

Once heels made their way to Europe in the 16th century, their purpose was much more akin to how we think of these shoes today. Men in the French, Spanish, German, and Russian courts wore heels to project height and physical stature in order to intimidate rivals and foreign diplomats in court. Sort of the modern-day equivalent of the men who put lifts in their shoes (I’m looking at you, Tom Cruise). Perhaps the best-known advocate of heels was Louis XIV, who popularized red shoes long before Christian Louboutin came along. He believed they signified power and prestige. Over time, around the beginning of the 18th century, the tables turned. Men found themselves saying, “Damn, my feet hurt!”, more often so their shoes became wider and lower.  Conversely, women’s shoes became higher, as it was thought that a bit of a shoe toe sticking out from under a skirt indicated daintiness.

These days, when it comes to shoes, I’m less concerned with looks and more interested in staying upright.  I am clumsy by nature, so I may be an early adopter of Sneex.  And I have a Baby Boomer suggestion for them: incorporate siderails on the shoe and you’ll have a huge hit at the retirement home.

Posted in Neighborhood

The Patrick Hike

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by Bob Sparrow

Patrick “Trail Boss” Michael

Last weekend part of our neighborhood gathered on Sunday morning at Peters Canyon for the annual ‘Patrick Hike’, which started in the summer of 2022 by neighbor Bob Pacelli.  It’s a three-mile hike to honor our neighbor and good friend, Patrick Michael, who passed away way too soon in April of 2021 at the age of 62.

If you ask most of the guys in our neighborhood about Patrick, they would say, “He was my best friend”.  And we all felt that way.  What a wonderful tribute to an amazing man.

Patrick was born and raised only a few miles from the ‘hood in Villa Park.  He went to Villa Park High School and completed his education at Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering.  So, he was a very detail-oriented and skilled person, who could fix just about anything and he was always asking a lot of questions (I guess that’s how smart people get and stay smart – I wouldn’t know).  But more than that, he was the best friend that anyone could have, and we all felt that he would do anything for us and we would do anything for him – except he could do a lot of things, while the rest of us were fairly inept in the things we could do.  There is hardly a friend’s house in our ‘hood that doesn’t have something in it that Pat built, fixed, or redesigned.  He just really cared about people and let them know it.  What an amazing trait!

Hikers at Peters Canyon

Like everyone who knew Patrick, he was a special friend to me.  I believe that my close relationship with him started at a neighborhood Christmas party in 2007.  At that party, Patrick talked about how he and a friend had just summited Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the continental United States at 14,508 feet.  A number of fellow neighbors and I expressed an interest in doing that and asked if he would do it again with us.  He agreed but reminded us that the hike is up and back from Whitney Portal to the summit in one day, which is about 22 miles, with an elevation gain of over 6,000 feet. Being naive we said, “No problem”, and said we wanted to do it.  So, Patrick took on the name, ‘Trail Boss’, and laid out a training schedule for us so that we were ready to summit Mt. Whitney that next summer – and we did.

During our training for Whitney, we hiked several of the local mountains, including Mt. San Antonio (Baldy) several times and Mt. San Jacinto, the mountain that overlooks Palm Springs; both mountains are over 10,000 feet in altitude.  Patrick and I also hiked to the top of Half Dome from Yosemite Valley, and although it’s only just under 9,000 feet in altitude, it was probably one of the most beautiful hikes we’d ever been on.

Just last June we passed the 10th anniversary of our most epic hike, in Nepal, a gift from my wife for my 70th birthday.  We spent 10 days trekking in the Himalayas, climbing mountain tops, going through small villages, and spending our nights in ‘teahouses’, which are 8-10 room hostels along the trail, which also provided meals.  The next year we did a four-day hike on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu – another epic hike!  If you’ve been a long time subscriber to the blog, you’ve probably heard more than you needed to about those hikes.

Back to the ‘Hood: A delicious post-hike brunch was prepared by the Michael’s next-door neighbors and good friends, Marc & Lisa Webb.  The day before the hike I was walking the neighborhood and ran into Marc outside of his house and I stopped to chat a bit.  During the conversation, he asked me when our next gig was for the Monday Knights.  I told him that I had just retired from the band, and he then insisted that I bring my guitar to the brunch and get the neighborhood to sing some songs.  I initially refused, but Marc wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer, and the calluses hadn’t worn off my fingers yet, so I agreed.  The neighbors seemed to enjoy singing along to some old favorites.

The passing of Patrick and the passing of time, have unfortunately limited my hiking to a few miles around the neighborhood, but together Patrick and I created some amazing memories that I will cherish forever.

 

Posted in opinion

SCREAMING FOR ICE CREAM

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Well, here we are in the dog days of summer.  The Olympics are over and college football is still a couple of weeks away.  My house is a construction zone, resplendent with caution tape, and the forecast predicts temperatures over 103 for the next week.  So what’s a girl to do? The only solution is to eat ice cream.  I love ice cream in the summer, but the prices of those little pints at the grocery store are ridiculous. So, a couple of months ago I bought the Ninja Creami “frozen treat” machine and I’ve been eating ice cream every day since.  Sometimes twice a day.  The fantastic thing about the Creami is that you really can make anything in it – sorbet, smoothies, gelato and, of course, ice cream.  I realized in researching the machine that there was potential that I could end up with my doctor ordering Ozempic for me by the end of summer – everything made in the machine looked so good.  Luckily I found a couple of groups on Facebook that are dedicated to making healthy, high protein, frozen desserts.  Which is why I have indulged so much and lost weight in the process.  More on that in a bit.

Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar

Eating ice cream every day got me to wondering what genius came up with it to begin with.  Oddly, no specific person has officially been credited with inventing ice cream. Its origins date back as far as 200 B.C., when people in China created a dish of rice mixed with buffalo milk that was then frozen by being packed in snow. Somehow that doesn’t grab me.  Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar of Rome was said to have sent people up to the mountains to collect snow and ice which would then be flavored with juice and fruit—kind of like a first century snow cone. These early “ice creams” were obviously a luxury indulged in by the rich, as not everyone had the ability to send servants up the mountains to collect snow for them.  One of the first places to serve ice cream to the general public was Café Procope in France, which started serving it in the late 17th century. The ice cream was made from a combination of milk, cream, butter, and eggs. However, it was still primarily a treat for the elite and was not yet popular among every class.

Jefferson and his ice cream

The first mention of ice cream in America appeared in 1744, when a Scottish colonist visited the house of Maryland Governor Thomas Bladen wrote about the delicious strawberry ice cream he had while dining there.  Our Founding Fathers were great lovers of ice cream; in between writing up of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote his own recipe for vanilla ice cream.  Talk about multi-tasking! Up until the 1800s, ice cream was mostly a treat reserved for special occasions as it couldn’t be stored for long due to the lack of insulated freezers. People would have ice cut from lakes in the winter and store it in the ground or brick ice houses, which were insulated with straw.

Ice cream wasn’t big business until Jacob Fussell built an ice cream factory in Pennsylvania in 1851 and industrial refrigeration came into being in the 1870’s. In the late 1800s, ice cream soared in popularity and new recipes began to emerge. Soda fountains emerged in 1874, and with them came the invention of the ice cream soda. Religious leaders condemned indulging in ice cream sodas on Sundays and set up “blue laws” banning their serving, which is thought by many to be how ice cream sundaes came about.  Evidence seems to indicate that shop owners got around the problem by serving the ice cream with syrup and none of the carbonation and called them “ice cream Sundays.” Today, it is estimated that over 1.6 billion gallons of ice cream and related frozen dairy products are produced annually in the United States alone.

The latest data I could find indicates that Americans eat four gallons of ice cream per person each year on average. Four gallons is child’s play when you’re eating “healthy” ice cream.  I figure that a conservative estimate is that I’ve eaten 12 gallons of it since Memorial Day.  But here’s the secret:  I use reduced fat milk, almond milk or protein shakes as my base.  I put in a little non-fat cottage cheese and yogurt, then add flavorings (usually cocoa, peppermint or coffee), protein powder, collagen peptides, and truvia to sweeten.  Sometimes if I’m feeling extra healthy, I’ll make a pint of fruit ice cream.  But regardless of the flavor, I ALWAYS add in dark chocolate chips at the end.  I know it sounds like it would taste healthy vs decadent, but believe me, it tastes like the real thing. I never want summer to end.

Posted in Family • Historical

Recalling Vietnam

By Comments:26 Comments

by Bob Sparrow

Warrant Officer Dale Barnes

I recently read the novel, The Women, by Kristin Hannah, which is a #1 bestseller and an excellent read about a woman who volunteers for the Army as a nurse and joins other women nurses in Vietnam during the war. These women were on the receiving end of those MedEvac helicopters that delivered the wounded soldiers to the closest mobile hospital.  It got me thinking about my brother-in-law, Dale Barnes, who was one of those helicopter pilots delivering those wounded soldiers.  When I was back in Minnesota for his mom’s 98th birthday, I had a chance to sit down with him and have him talk about his Vietnam experience.

Dale joined the Army in May 1969, enlisting for helicopter training, as he was always fascinated with helicopters from watching them as a boy on the family’s farm in Minnesota.  He started his basic training in Fort Polk, Louisiana, then went for basic flight training at Fort Walters, Texas, and then to Fort Rucker, Alabama for advanced flight training, where he earned his wings.  He was then sent to Fort Sam Houston, Texas for medical training, as everyone in a rescue helicopter needed to know basic medical procedures.

In August of 1970, he was deployed to Chu Lai, Vietnam, where he was initially a co-pilot on a UH-1H (Huey) helicopter doing MedEvac operations, which meant flying into combat zones, with no gun on board, only a red cross on the chopper, that the Viet Cong ignored.  He soon moved up to the pilot position, with a crew on the Huey consisting of a pilot, a co-pilot, a medic, and a crew chief (sort of a handyman, maintenance guy, who could hopefully fix things that got damaged on the aircraft).

The term given to these pilots was ‘Dust Off Pilot’; DUST OFF was the ‘call sign’ that came from the very first Evac helicopter unit, the 57th Medical Detachment, Medical

Services Corps, U.S. Army.

Dale’s UH-1H “Huey”

If you Google ‘Dust Off Pilot’ here’s what you get:

“During the Vietnam War, 90 Dust Off pilots were killed and nearly 380 were wounded; 121 crew members were killed and 545 were wounded. To be a Dustoff crew member was to accept a 1 in 3 chance of being killed or wounded. Yet everyone who volunteered to fly these missions of mercy accepted the grim odds”

Wow!!!  After I read that, I thanked Dale again for his service!

Most of the time when they were called in to pick up the wounded, they were escorted by gunship helicopters that went in before them to help quell any enemy fire.  But, gunships weren’t always available, so the pilot would have to ask his crew if they still wanted to go in, as they could say ‘No’ and they would not go in.  Dale says there were a number of occasions when they didn’t have gunships go in before them, and everytime he asked his crew if they still wanted to go in to pick up wounded soldiers, they always said ‘Yes’.

I asked ‘Chopper’ (Dale’s call sign) about a typical day in the life of a Dust Off pilot in Vietnam during the war.  He said there really wasn’t a ‘typical day’, as one day you may have a

‘Jungle Penetration’ pick up

clear landing zone, without enemy fire, so it’s a routine pick-up, but that rarely happened.  A typical ‘day’, might be at night, when they always flew ‘dark’ (no lights at landing), no GPS, all visual flying.  Or they might be asked to do a ’Jungle Penetration’ pick up, where there is no landing zone, so the helicopter hovers over the trees and lowers a long cable with three seats on it for pickup of men who did not need to be on a stretcher and could hold on to the cable while being lifted into the helicopter.  Dale estimates that during the year he was in Vietnam, he flew about 750 missions!  During that time, he was shot at all the time, but his helicopter was never shot down and he was never injured.  He says he’s most proud of never recieving a Purple Heart!  His closest call was when he had a bullet fly about a foot over his head and rattle around in the cockpit.

Dale, as civilian Medivac pilot

After his tour of duty, he came back to the states and remained in the Army the next 20 years doing various jobs – being a flight instructor, flying VIPs around, as well as tours of duty in Japan and Germany.  After retiring from the service, Dale became an AirEvac pilot in civilian life – doing that for the next 24 years! 

There’s an old pilot adage that says, “You always want your number of landings to equal your number of takeoffs.”  In just over 45 years of flying a helicopter, Dale flew over 12,000 hours WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT and without being injured!

Thank you for your service, Dale, for saving countless lives, both military and civilian!

 

Posted in opinion

A YEAR

By Comments:46 Comments

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Yesterday marked one year since Alan died.  Some days it seems like yesterday, others like it was 100 years ago. His death hit me harder than I had anticipated, and I was surprised by that. Logically, I should have been prepared for it. After all, in the last ten months of his life he was diagnosed with both early Alzheimer’s and oral cancer.  Add to that he was nine years older than me; even the planning documents from our financial advisor and estate attorney assumed he would die first. I’ve also spent a lot of time over the past few years researching and co-writing a book about widowhood. Given all of this, I presumed I was mentally braced for the day when he was no longer by my side. I wasn’t. His death shattered my heart into a million pieces and at times I felt that it was almost too hard to go on. In the weeks after Alan died a widowed friend called me often to check on me and at one point I told her none of the widows I knew, nor any of the ones I’d researched, had accurately described how horrible it is to become a widow.  Her response was, “No one wanted to scare you.”

When I mentioned this conversation to Bob, he told me that maybe I should take a stab at writing a book or article on the subject.  I contemplated that, but in the end, decided it was more productive to focus on gaining strength than delving further into the subject of widowhood.  I have not written about my experiences as a widow in this blog, and after today, my intent is not to write about them again.  But I have learned some things that might be helpful to others who will experience the loss of a spouse, and some tips for those who want to support a widowed friend.  So here goes.

It is impossible to overemphasize how much it means to have people reach out to express their sympathy. I was overwhelmed by all the wonderful cards, notes, texts, and emails that I received after Alan died.  I have kept all of them and occasionally read them again.  It reminds me that other people also remembered him, and in ways large and small, they also shared my loss.  On the flip side, I was stunned by the people who never acknowledged his death.  People he had played golf with on a regular basis, others I had socialized with for years.  When I mentioned to a friend how hurt I was by this, she said, “Well, you know, some people just don’t know what to say.”

I find it odd that grown people can’t express the most basic of condolences.  There are social skills we should cultivate in this regard as we grow older, and that is one of them. When we are young our parents teach us to say “please” and “thank you”. As we advance in years, the polite phrase we need to learn is, “I’m sorry for your loss”. The sad fact is that it will come in handy on an increasingly frequent basis. That simple acknowledgement might seem minor or even trite, but believe me, it means the world to someone who has lost their loved one. I will never forget all the people who reached out – nor will I ever forget those who didn’t.

I quickly discovered that widowhood is one of those life experiences that you can’t understand until you go through it. Nothing really prepares you for the complete absence of your spouse; when they are gone there is a gaping hole that cannot be filled by any amount of activity or companionship of others. One of my favorite authors, Joan Didion, wrote a book, The Year of Living Magically, after her husband died.  Didion brilliantly wrote, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know before we reach it. So, when someone says to you, ‘I can’t imagine what you’re going through’, they are right.  Here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is: the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.”

If that sounds depressing, it is. Widowhood kicks the hell out of your confidence and outlook. For most of the past year I lamented that I would never be happy again, that my peak of happiness was my marriage to Alan, and it died with him. There were times when I went three days without showering or seeing another human being. I woke up early every day, crying before I even got out of bed. I not only missed him and all the wonderful times we had, but I missed being married.  I missed having someone in my life to plan with, to depend on for companionship, to care for, and who loved me beyond measure. Many days I didn’t see how I was going to survive and often felt overwhelmed.

I was lucky to be surrounded by widowed friends who offered guidance that came from their hard-won experience. They reached out with wise advice: “Take it an hour at a time”, “Don’t do anything you don’t feel like doing”, “Put one foot in front of the other and just keep going”, “Write a journal so you can look back on your journey and mark your progress”, were just some of the suggestions.  One of the best was: “Write down the events and conversations that occurred directly before and after his death. Ten years from now those details will have faded in your memory, and you’ll be glad you have that memorialized.” I didn’t need to wait ten years. Just two weeks ago I re-read my notes and discovered I had mis-remembered a critical detail.  I was so glad I had a contemporaneous account of events to set my memory straight.

Hopefully you have a good support network, because when you’re widowed the love and support of family and good friends are critical to moving forward.  I am lucky to have had both.  Every day I would receive a phone call from someone to either check on me or ask me to join them for lunch or dinner.  Those moments brought me relief from the grief, even if it was temporary. Which brings me to the subject of asking for and receiving help. People really want to help, and to be asked to help you actually makes them feel better.  As we age, we all seek a greater sense of community with those who are on the same path. So, asking a friend to pick something up at the grocery store or help lift a heavy package, or just come sit with you, is to allow them to do something meaningful for you.  This was – and still is – a hard lesson for me.  I consider myself to be independent and hate to ask favors, but it is another essential skill to learn.

Everyone’s journey is different, and one wise piece of advice I got early on was “You do grief your way”.  So, despite people encouraging me to socialize more, I know that I require a lot of “processing” and alone time. I went to see a counselor once, and she said I had PTSD caused by the nine-day interval between the diagnosis of Alan’s cancer metastasis and his death. The month before he died his oncologist talked about a procedure he might do two years down the line, the week before he was out pruning bushes in the yard. So, his rather sudden death simply didn’t allow enough time for me to process the events I’d experienced.  Much like a dog that goes into a corner when it’s not feeling well, I needed time and space. The people in my support system all wanted to do something to make my life better, they wanted to help “fix” me and get me back to my old self. But I am a believer that “fixing” cannot come from an external source.  It’s up to us as individuals to set ourselves right, so I selectively accepted, and rejected, their invitations. The counselor also cautioned that I should only be around people who could fill me up, not drain me.  A widowed friend said something similar, “You don’t have anything to give right now, so spend time with people who can help fill your tank.” My close friends and family understood – and supported – my need for limited social engagement and didn’t push me.  I will forever be grateful to them for that.

Conversely, I believe that when you’re grieving and you accept a social invitation, there is an obligation to be as cheerful as possible.  No one wants to be around someone who is sad or, worse yet, crying.  I took the attitude that if I could slap a smile on my face and be good company, the likelihood of me receiving invitations to socialize again would rise exponentially.  At first, I found that very hard. At my weekly dinner with my bocce ball team, I would sit next to my best friend, Marge, and she could always sense my struggle. She would grab my hand under the table and give it a squeeze of encouragement and I would make it through the night. In time, the dinners became easier.

People told me I was strong, and I’d come through this, but they were remembering the person I used to be.  When you’re widowed you realize that life is never going to be the same, you are never going to be the same, and regaining confidence and resilience is not a given. It’s very hard to hear people call you strong when you’re not. For almost a year I couldn’t imagine ever feeling happy or competent – much less strong – again. I kept thinking about my younger, more capable, self. In my early 30’s I lived on my own, bought a three-bedroom ranch house, had a good career and an active social life.  Over the past year I often wondered where that young woman had gone.

But by early June I was sick of myself; sick of feeling depressed, sick of every room needing a Kleenex box, sick of not seeing a future. And then as often happens in life, a small thing caused me to turn a corner: I decided to recover the leather headboard on my bed.  I could see some indentations where Alan had leaned against it while reading every night.  Every time I entered the room, I saw his imprint on it.  So, I went to a local upholstery store and picked out some lovely fabric to recover it.  Just making that small change gave me a feeling of control and empowerment. Maybe too much. A few weeks ago, I hired a contractor to update several areas of the house. Alan loved this house and before he died, he urged me to keep it.  I have decided to do so, and I can’t think of a better tribute to him than to finish updating it as we had intended.

A few days after visiting the upholstery store I realized the heaviness I felt for so many months had lifted. I tried to analyze what I was feeling and concluded that it was happiness.  Had it really been so long since I’d been happy that I didn’t even recognize it anymore?  Apparently so. But having been so far down has made the rise even sweeter. I’ve earned this happiness.  I don’t often give myself credit, but I will say that I’m proud that I have survived the storm and come out the other side stronger.  Not yet strong, but getting there. I know that I will still have some tough times ahead, and I now have confidence that I can get through them.

I’ve also reconciled that the aggressive cancer that spelled Alan’s demise prevented a much longer, more painful journey for both of us from his early Alzheimer’s diagnosis.  Thirty years ago, after witnessing his father’s journey with Alzheimer’s, he asked me to promise that I would never let him get to that point. An understandable request, but a hard one to fulfill.  I thank God we were spared that journey.

Alan, and our marriage, will forever be the best chapter in the story of my life. I will miss him always and will carry him in my heart until the day I die.  But I’ve come to realize that life unfolds with a purpose and a plan.  I now believe that he is at peace. And finally – at last – so am I.