My Solution

Royal Shell Oil's rig, parked in Port Angeles, WA harbor.

There is a huge, 300-ft. tall, bright yellow oil rig parked almost at my front door. It's not really 'my front door,' but it is the door to the Olympic National Forest. And you can't miss this thing as you drive into town.

So, I started thinking of it in a more positive light.

And I wrote a letter to the Peninsula Daily News about it.

"I recently learned that the huge oil drilling rig that is parked in full view of anyone driving near Port Angeles Harbor is here to stay for a while (“Giant Oil Rig Probably Will Stick Around,” PDN, May 5).

This depressed economic climate clamors for some creative solutions, and that ugly rig just demands a colorful makeover.

How about we see if Shell will moderate its rigid stance of using it just for oil drilling and allow us to have it as a water slide for the summer?

And when the next rig arrives, perhaps we could set them up close enough to run zip-lines between the two of them so folks could have some more fun?

Even having tours of the oil rig would offer a tourist attraction.

When is the last time you were on one? Or even curious about what they are like?

Water taxis would make money taking folks out to the slide and zip-line or tours, concession people could set up hotdog stands and liquid refreshments nearby, and tourists would flock here from British Columbia and points eastward for a never-to-be-experienced-again, once-in-a-lifetime, oil-rig summer fun trip.

Hotels would have no-vacancy signs out because lots of other fun things would come from the energy of having a purpose in our harbor at long last.

Anyone with other ideas is welcome to submit them [to letters@peninsuladailynews.com. Or register a comment in the Reader Comments, below.]

I'm not wedded to these but wanted to get people thinking instead of complaining.

Sandy Banks,
Sequim"

And, you know, there were some interesting replies and a few 'got' what I was suggesting... that you can take this huge yellow thing and make lemonade out of it.

I kinda wish Shell Oil would take my ideas to heart... and at least let us have some tours... my old Public Relations brain started working and I began thinking about all the positive ways they could turn around public opinion, including by starting with little kids getting on board with drilling.

Not that I really would want that, but my experience has shown me that when you want to shift public opinion for good, you start young.

Well, that's all the news that fits tonight.

Childhood stories

When I was about 9 or 10, I lived in a small town in New Hampshire. It was one of those places where no one locked their doors, the car keys were left in the ignition, and pretty much everyone trusted everyone else.

I had a couple of pals, (who are still living, so I won't use their names) that I hung around with after school. And we used to go to a small store that served ice cream sodas, coffee, hamburgers and also had all the elements of a small town "drug store."

The owner, Mike, has made his transition and he was one of the kindest men. He was always doing nice things for others, and I never knew what his religion was.

My pals, in their misguided desire for getting something they wanted, asked me to join them in what turned out to be a lawless afternoon and caused me to be put in jail - for a few hours. They, however, escaped, and I never snitched on them, knowing early on that that alone could make my life miserable forever onward.

The plan was that I would distract Mike, by talking to him, while the other three went to the candy bar section and helped themselves. My reward would be that I could have some of the 'take.'

Ten year olds are so sure they know how the world works, and in discussing the plan I am sure we all thought Mike would be deceived by my blather. He wasn't, and he grabbed my arm, held me in place and yelled to the others to stop. They took off running. I am sure he knew who they were.

As he held on to my arm, he told his wife to call the police.

I about fainted.

And soon Chief Picard showed up in his uniform, gun on his hip, baton on the other side, all his buttons and badge glistening through the tears in my eyes.

Mike let go of me and after telling him what had happened, Chief put handcuffs on one hand and led me out of the store.

We had to cross the main intersection to get to City Hall and to the jail. I was so humiliated that anyone might see me, my head was very low. I wished to be invisible.

No words were spoken until we arrived at the jail. I was ushered in to a small cell and Chief said he was going to call my mother. I would be waiting inside the bars until she came.

It stank in there. And I cried and cried at what had happened.

I could hear the Chief calling my mother. I knew she would be coming downtown, but however long it was going to take, it felt like forever. Then he came back into the jail area and asked me some questions (this could never happen today, could it, questioning a minor without an adult guardian present?) about who else was there with me, what was I doing, etc.

He knew I had not done this dastardly act alone. He knew I was part of a 'gang.' And my just talking to Mike was not in itself a crime, but I was an 'accomplice' to the theft, because those other girls did get away with some candy - worth about 30 cents back then.

My mother did show up and I was released to her but the net effect of this overwhelming experience was that for years, literally, I could not go into Mike's store. I was so ashamed of my performance and treatment of this nice man that I could not even face him.

Perhaps it was an act that was precipitated by my parents' discord (a divorce was looming), but when I was about 16, I was with my father on a Sunday in October and he wanted to stop in and get something at Mike's and he asked me to come in and have something to eat with him. I sat in the car and told him the whole story, which he apparently never knew, and he then insisted I come in with him and talk to Mike.

We went in and sat in a back booth and I wept as I apologized to Mike for what had been my only criminal undertaking and as he took my hands in his big ones, he forgave me. He said to me, with tears in his eyes, "You have deprived me of your presence by staying away. You have punished yourself and me by not sharing this burden. Please accept my apology for allowing you to be treated as a criminal when you clearly were not."

Then he told me the story of Yom Kippur and how it is a day when all your sins are forgiven, when a person can be purified, and how in his religion he could 'start over' and essentially have a clean slate.

I really liked that concept and it felt good to have him absolve me, to verbally wash me clean.

The net effect of this event was probably a good thing in that I have never stolen anything from anyone. For years I could not even go into a store and walk out without buying something and not feel as if I was being watched. My anxiety about being 'good' was constantly present.

When my own daughter was caught stuffing candy into her pants as we were waiting in a checkout line in Ketchum, Idaho, I took appropriate action... she was forced to go and speak to the owner of the store right then and there and to hear from him how stealing affected his business.

In reflection all these decades later, I think putting a ten-year old in cuffs and hauling her off to a smelly jail was a little over the top. I think the humiliation effect was enormous and not necessarily beneficial.

But I have forgiven Mike and the Chief and my mother and even my best friend and the others for the culmination of events that brought me to that moment. And I have remembered the feelings of being absolved and have returned that to those who asked for it from me.

I know there were other things I did as an adult of which I am not proud, mistakes I made in parenting and in relationships, things I wished later I could change. I tried hard to be good enough and fell short enough to keep me humble.

In many religions there are ways to receive absolution, a cleansing of the soul. If thoughts are 'things' that never go away, then I choose to convert this earlier thought of humiliation into a glorious flower of growth, to give it as a gift to parents who have children needing guidance to not 'overdo' the correction, to offer it up as a way to review all of life's path events, and to cleanse it totally as Mike so graciously did for me decades ago.

Spring is a time for renewal...

The Cost of Carrying Resentments

I have been studying a variety of modalities in my quest to rebuild my life after being in Colombia.

It has taken me several years to discover some new things, even at this age.

And a few are old ideas revisited.

About a decade ago I went to a Radical Forgiveness Ceremony in Phoenix, taught by Colin Tipping.

There I learned the importance of forgiving all those people that I had viewed as "doing me wrong," or that I wanted to blame for some negative aspect of my life. It was a huge shift for me and I made a leap forward in my personal growth.

But clearly it wasn't enough. Today in another class I was advised that failing to completely release those 'old feelings,' that a re-telling the stories of those events only perpetuates the negative energy and it sticks to you/me. There is another aspect to forgiveness and that is 'forgetness.'

So I have an assignment this month; to list all those people I forgave for something and for once and for all to release the event or memory into the cosmos so I am clear of it forever.

After my mother died, it took me four years to address and bring out a negative thing with someone that was preventing me from fully grieving her death. What a relief when it was released!

Recently I had the occasion at a family event to see a man I was married to for almost eight years. We  created two wonderful children who are now two fabulous adults.  We were able to laugh and joke and be the two individuals we needed to be for the circumstances, with a few shared memories to pass on. I hope he felt as I did, that we were a valued part of the tapestry of the woven history with nothing disagreeable to mar the joyous event.

But there are other folks in my past with whom I need to finish things and forget...maybe not forget them, but certainly forget whatever might be negative between us.

If every resentment could actually be weighed, I wonder if it would be like that albatross from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, where the psychological burden of (in this story) killing a bird of good luck becomes a curse to the sailor telling the story.

You have probably heard the expression "like an albatross around his/her neck," meaning the problem is so weighty it is a heavy burden or penance (either actually or imagined). The albatross is actually quite a large bird; it has a wing span of 11 feet! So a dead one would weigh a lot and stink, too.

So it is with resentments.

I''m working on them, and in days to come perhaps I will have some more stories to share. But probably nothing quite so dramatic as the Rime was... read it recently?

Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks

Had I from old and young !

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung.

Absence makes the heart...

Solmar reservoir is full right now; source of my water.

Have you missed me?

I've missed you, my dear readers. But my life has been significantly challenged with a car that needed a new transmission. Which, once it was fixed, needed to go back in again because the frammis was rubbing up against the jixmas and causing the gears to wobble and they needed to replace the flabgesty so that didn't happen anymore.

(If you didn't understand that, it's because I didn't either... all I know now is that it is finally fixed right.)

These two segments of four-day repairs had me living somewhere other than in my own house with good internet access, so I didn't even try to write here.

Spring has come early to the Olympics and bees are buzzing around all kinds of flowering flowers, shrubs and trees. But our water situation is not good. The mountains only received about 20 percent of the snow required. (It must have all been shipped east to Boston and points north!)

I continue to enjoy the delights of a loving relationship with F and the challenges of it as well.

But if there is anything I am significantly grateful for it is hearing news that my 17-year old grandson is OK after totaling his vehicle yesterday.

Deer are boldly coming into neighborhoods to feed on
new plant growth; they are fearless for the most part.

As I listen to the birds and watch the bees, I realize how precariously we are connected to life and how if this accident had happened in any other way I might be grieving deeply.

And I completely understood how my daughter was feeling, because my own 17-year old son did just that same thing years ago, causing his angels to work overtime as well.

Perhaps boys of 17 should not be driving because they do not appear to have the same abilities to multi-task that girls of that age do. A glance away at something else, just long enough to distract and require over-correction can be the instant of change.

It is a reminder that when we are behind the wheel, whether alone or driving with others, we have a huge responsibility to pay attention to the task at hand - driving. No texting, no getting directions, no passing toys to toddlers, no turning around to see where something is in the back seat, etc.

Bus drivers are not allowed to even have music on their busses because of the potential distraction, and they are carrying upwards of 40 people to their destinations.

There are so many things to pull our attention away... personal concerns, business issues, weather challenges and global news to suggest a few areas. As parents and grandparents we have the obligation to add to our instruction repertoire the importance of staying focused.

"Be here now," not be partly here and partly there... because your absence from my life will make my heart very heavy.

What's your reality?

My son sent me a movie for Christmas.

It was "Inception," with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Have you ever heard of it? I had not, and so postponed actually getting around to watching it until this weekend.

Released in 2010, it's the story of a guy who has made his living stealing ideas from people's subconscious and, like any good script, there's a twist at the end.

But in a way it arrived at just the right time and waited until I had come to place where addressing the issue of reality, dreams and being positive reached a critical point.

In my life there has been a pattern of trying to control that which is uncontrollable. Thanks to the co-dependency created by childhood experiences, I was a life-long worrier and had unknown anxiety issues. Some of that came to light when two years ago I discovered that my 'battery' (adrenal glands) was failing.

All these decades of living off adrenaline and worrying had taken their toll.

Thanks to hypnosis/counseling, many of the issues of the past have been laid to rest, the positive shifts are having good results and I'm hopeful for the future on many levels.

We've had so much rain that the bluffs are
being eroded. Interesting to see, but a little
scary walking near them.

Hypnosis is all about getting down to the subconscious level and establishing new neural pathways to change behaviors for lifelong results. Not dissimilar from the movie... except that I don't think my counselor was stealing my ideas for monetary gain. Only planting new ideas about getting more exercise and drinking more water.

But the movie did stir up some anxiety... how easy it would be to get into a brain and create an individual with vastly different core beliefs and life objectives.

Only that wasn't really what the message was... when I go back to some 'interpretive' training about movies, it was clear that the woman (representing the church) felt there was betrayal since the main character, a man, strayed from religious structure by venturing into new, unapproved areas... and the man was challenging the concepts of life and death with this adventure.

This would indeed be scary for the church because if people believe that we create our own reality, that all we do is connect by our 'dreaming' our future, then the church must significantly change it's way of controlling the masses, because free-thinkers are not easily brought under the thumbs of those with restrictive thought.

And when I ponder the concepts I've been re-visiting, it is clear that I have less need of a structured church and more need for the exploration of ways of bringing my mind into focus so that I am creating my reality in a positive way.

That's really what I've been doing a lot of anyhow - intending, visualizing, dreaming, imagining. And it's the creative artist in me that then produces something... a meal, a picture, a dress. But it applies to everything else as well, I'm discovering.

Ahhhhh, well... tonight I am just enjoying a reality that does not include shoveling tons of snow and sending out warming thoughts to my friends and family who are deep into it.

I dreamed of you...

And then we met.

Sundays will always be an extra special day for me because you came into my life on that day, my beloved.

I really did dream of you.

After years of hoping I might meet someone who liked a lot of things I like, someone who was real, a man who was really a man but not overly full of himself, a kind and gentle soul who walks on the land with an appreciation for it, a traveler, a dancer, someone who has a basically optimistic attitude and a sense of humor (he's got me laughing right now...) and healthy enough to last a few years, I've found him.

About six months ago I went to sleep asking the Universe to please let me see the guy I might meet, if indeed I would ever do so. That very night I dreamt of a tall, smiling fellow with white hair and a mustache. He smiled at me and drifted back into the ether.

Snow on the Olympic range is not lasting due to warm temps.

I was on Plenty of Fish, one of the myriad online dating sites, and had met a couple of guys who were companionable, but not "The One," and none that would pass muster with my older daughter. I was just about to give up even looking when one profile looked appealing.

His interests dovetailed with mine and he is a motorcycle rider, something I had to give up when I left Florida. I clicked on "Want to Meet" and got an immediate response. His picture was close to what I thought I was looking for, but I figured it was just going to be another meet-and-greet, possible friend for going to movies or dances, nothing remarkable.

But when he got out of his car and started walking toward me, I knew... I absolutely KNEW he was the one I dreamed of.

We ordered lattes and talked like old friends for several hours. And we are still talking and laughing, dancing, planning travel adventures and deliciously enjoying our new friendship with love that keeps on growing.

He won't be able to retire from his full-time job for a couple of years, but it will give us time to make a plan for adventures that allow us to continue to be involved in family (his and mine) and since we both love where we live now, on the Olympic Peninsula, it's not likely we'll be moving.

So in this season of giving, I give you, my dear readers, the gift of hope that no matter how old you are, in whatever circumstances you might find yourself, love is still waiting for you to discover and receive it... Happy Solstice to you all!