More of spring

Appearing in my backyard and woods, for a very limited engagement, is this delicate little wildflower. I'm still hunting for the name.

Easter 2007

I drove down to Redding to visit my mother and brother Bob for Easter. Stopping at the rest area north of Mt. Shasta in Weed, I noticed clouds beginning to surround the mountain and got that tingling feeling like something was about to happen. Having lived in the town of Mount Shasta for 5 years, that tingling feeling usually prefaces some kind of cosmic event. I waited around for a few minutes and sure enough, a lenticular pattern began to appear! I wish the sun hadn't been about 5 degrees north of my camera lens, but at least you can see some of what was happening.

Pretty cool, huh?

Then I arrived in Redding, where my mother and my brother Bob and I had a quick snack before heading over to the Titanic exhibit at the Turtle Bay Museum. Since I had done so much research on sunken ships for my first novel, a lot of the stuff was familiar, although they had great "Living History" people and sound ambiance. The thing that would interest family and friends most though, was that they handed out "boarding passes" when you first went in, each one corresponding to an actual person who'd boarded Titanic. At the very end of the exhibit there was a big wall where you could look up your person to see if they had survived.
I was Miss Marie Grice Young, age 36, of New York, NY., traveling 1st class. "An accomplished musician returning to Washington D.C., where she had been a music instructor to Ethel Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt's daughter. Marie and her traveling companion were shipping some very expensive live chickens with them on Titanic. Each day, one of the Ship's carpenters would escort Marie to the cargo hold to inspect her brood."
Her fate: Rescued! (Although not her chickens...)