Helping Even When It Hurts

That's when it really counts. Let me give you an example.

I have a stepson who lives in the Knoxville area of Tennessee. He drives for a company much like Uber. Naturally the recent high gas prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its consequences are hurting his bottom line. He'd called his father before and let him know what the impact and his frustration with it were.

Yesterday he transported somebody to just a few miles from the Wears Valley fire. It was expanding quickly at the time due to high winds. An evacuation was mandated, and he got caught in the traffic. I got a call while his father was sleeping and heard a few details, like how it took him over an hour to go just a mile in the congestion and smoke.

His father talked to him later in the day to make sure his son was home safe, which he was. But once he'd dropped his customer off, he returned to the area people were evacuating from, and gave rides to several carfuls of them to help them flee. He never charged them a penny.

That's the kind of action which matters.

Robo Call

Ring..... Ring....

Caller ID gives a Minnesota area code, 651-478-3825. No other info.

"Hello?"  .....

Nothing. I'm already suspicious. But what the heck? Again, "Hello?"

A recorded "Hello?" comes back to me. 

Pause, slight click.

Then, as if the recording hadn't already just said "hello", an uninflected voice continues,  "Hello, this is Sarah from the Department of Visa and Master Card. How are you today?"

"Not answering robo-callers. Bye."

Click.

Seriously? There's a "Department of Visa and MasterCard?" Department within what? A department is a subset of something bigger, but what? Aren't Visa and Master Card competitors? And why just pick those two? Don't they like Discover? American Express? I'm sure they have no clue whom they just dialed, and fully expect me to cough up that information for them, along with account numbers, etc. Just how dumb do they think we are? AKA how dumb are they? And for that matter, since these kinds of people keep calling, there must be something in it for them, begging the question just how dumb are we?

*   *   *   *

I've gotten similar calls over the years from somebody forgettable offering to let - uhh, help - me screw my credit card companies by $10 grand each to minimize my debt. I never took them up on it, though I'd heard there was a way to do so legally. Even when my main card was nearly at its max, I wouldn't consider doing that. I've worked for many years to establish and grow my credit rating. Why would I mess with that? Even when my balance was high and I unexpectedly retired ahead of time, I wouldn't consider it. I just kept working to shrink that balance  down. Right now I have two cards, nevermind which: one's a debit card so no actual balance, the other with several hundred sitting on it. Periodically something comes up and the balance goes up, like when we returned last fall and needed a new oven. The last of that lingering expense will be gone in a couple weeks. So no, whatever the heck they're offering, no way I'm buying.

Perhaps, however, some day when I have enough spare time for a little mischief, I might decide to engage with them for a few chuckles. 

Or then again, maybe not.

One Lasting Image

I'm pretty Ukrained out. Not that I've stopped caring. No, I follow the news still, to an extent. I just don't - can't - embed myself in it, every offered source, any medium, every hour. One or two stories a day, noting how video keeps repeating, some losses here, a bit of progress there, that's my limit.

There is one image that keeps with me, along with all the questions I likely will never find the answers to that go along with it. How did he get to this point? What became of him? What kind of scars will it leave? If there will be one image that tells the story of the awfulness of war, for me it will be this one. Not the rows upon rows of demolished buildings, broken bridges, stalled convoys of tanks.  Not the burning Russian ships in harbor, suddenly unable to unload their cargos of destruction. Not even any of those shots of Zelenski, staying in his country, leading, encouraging all his countrymen to follow his example, and still begging for more help.

The image which haunts me, etched in my brain, is from the very early days, when evacations of women and children were starting. It is of a single child, perhaps 4, perhaps 8, nothing giving a better hint of age besides the roundness in the features of his face and short stature. He's bundled in a puffy coat, a scarf around his neck. Somebody cared enough to protect him from the winter weather. He's walking on whatever road was the way to hope for those leaving. There is a small group several yards ahead of him. Another walks several yards behind. 

He walks alone, frozen for all time in my mind, crying.

Grieving, In Advance

Steve is grieving these days. Even little reminders will set it off. He somehow believes he needs to apologize to me for the tears running down his face and the quaver in his voice, once he can get himself together enough to speak again. I have to remind him that no apologies are ever required for that.

He has a treasured childhood friend named Gene. Unlike what many of us have had, this is a relationship which has lasted through the decades. They might have not spoken for a year or more at times, but they always reconnected as if they'd just spoken, but now had some more news to share.

I got introduced to Gene as a concept, hearing about him and their childhood games. The boys were in elementary school, and Gene's house had that magic prop for all their adventures, a back porch. It was a fort, a house, a wagon, whatever imagination and need turned it into. 

There was one favorite game, always starting the same way before branching off exploring new possibilities. The Civil War had just ended, and our two soldiers, after fighting for opposite sides, met again and paired up. Any conflict from the war was buried: there was A PROBLEM which needed to be solved. Somebody needed to be rescued, whether from wild Indians or rogue bandit ex-soldiers or whoever was evil on the western frontier where their imaginations roamed. Before suppertime, of course all was again well, our two heroes triumphing once again just in time for that call to return home. If you think any of this sounds familiar, there was a John Wayne movie back when that may or may not have stolen the plot from one of their adventures.

I got introduced to Gene in person several years ago. He and his partner Vickie were living in Jacksonville, Florida. We flew out to join them to fulfill one last adventure, along with some socializing, a visit to Homosassa Hot Springs to see manatees and feathered wildlife, and the Atlantic coast which neither of the two of us had visited yet. The adventure in question this time involved visiting one of those costumed photo studios, dressing up in their chosen soldier roles, and getting shots to keep. Nevermind that it was two old men in those pictures. In their own eyes they were forever boys on that back porch.

As a reward for my providing transportation, Steve had me dress up as a fancy lady (lady? well, fancy anyway) of the time, and we got a shot together. Turns out the trick to most of those costumes is they have no backs, and if you are on the large side, and posing carefully, they appear to fit. The cameraman and I - as well as Gene - had disagreements about how our heads should be tilted. With attitude? (Our preferences.) Or chins and hats way up so the entire face shows. The results were kind of in-between. Everybody had to compromise.

Fast forward a few years to the present. Gene has been in a nursing home for a couple months now. No diagnosis for him, or at least none shared. He's wasting away, getting weaker, frailer, and barely able to eat, just a shadow of his former self. He's as tall as Steve but down to 115 pounds. By the time he became unable to reach over and pick up his own cell to answer a call, he also announced he was hoping that he didn't have to live much longer. Steve several times contacted the home and asked for his nurse, or one at his station at least. Sometimes that worked, so Gene at least knew his lifelong friend was still caring and trying to connect, even though calls were necessarily short. Other times nobody seemed interested enough in making the connection possible. 

Gene was finally given hospice status, though it didn't involve relocating to another section of the home. Reaching him became nearly impossible. But just a few days ago, Steve got a call from  Gene's phone. He'd had help making it of course, and it lasted perhaps three tear filled minutes. The messages passed were essentially "I love you" and "Good-bye." For Steve the most important one was Gene telling him that he'd been the closest thing to a brother Gene had ever had.

I doubt either of us believe there will be another call. Well, not except for that very last one telling Steve it's over. He tried to ask Gene if he could put him on the list of people to notify after the end. I'm not sure Gene ever comprehended the message, since Steve broke up several times trying to say it. Hopefully Vickie will call when she's able to so we know. Meanwhile everybody's in a kind of limbo, hanging on to not knowing as if that were actual news, waiting for that final notice that ends any hope.

And Steve grieves.

Warning Received And Noted

I get notices via email from my home and auto insurance companies each month reminding me that they will be pulling $..... from my account of the x-teenth of the month. When it's just that, I give the account a quick check for checking balance, and myself a mental reminder to either shift funds or make sure not to spend them until afterwards, since those are the last large bills each month. No biggie.

When I get something else from them I pay attention. It might be a notice of rate increase, or even a request for current vehicle mileage just so they can check to see if I still qualify for the low distance discount. I always figure that even in my fuel efficient vehicle, when I put less than 10 gallons in the tank a month, I still qualify, even with our annual summer trip north.

Last week it was a notice of annual renewal, with accompanying documents to read, to be followed by actual paper ones IF I ignored their notice to just read the emailed form. Since my email makes me read attachments in about a size minus 1 font, I ignored that. Sure enough the readable paper version showed up a couple days ago.

Today, however, was a different kind of email altogether. It warned me to prepare my home for floods. It assumed I am somebody stupid enough not to realized that even if I'm NOT near a stream or river, that rain, melting snow from the back yard (why not the front? no explanation) or even ice off the roof could flood my home and cause damage. I needed to check out everything to avoid those problems.

What it didn't say but I assume was implied in their warning was my possible need to upgrade my coverage to cover flood damage. I also happen to know that flood insurance only covers you and is only available to buy if you are in a "likely to flood" area, better known as a flood zone. I never have carried it. Never qualified.

I could have used it at the last house, once. It was built just after state laws were changed to mandate an egress window, such-and-such sized, for the basement. My builder, we found out later, was battling the bottle more than maintaining construction standards, and had the back yard graded so that our egress from said window was made easier by having a nice wide swath of yard slope gently up from that window to meet the rest of the yard. Translation: A nice wide swath of the yard sloped down into the window, carrying the entire load of rain falling there right through the window into the basement. Of course, by the time that 10" rainfall occurred, the documents had been long signed and no monetary damages were obtainable. Thus started my many treks to a local compost pile with a shovel and tarp in the back of the hatchback, delivery via wheelbarrow to the back of the (fenced in) yard by the window, raising the ground level via concrete retaining wall blocks, until that couldn't happen again. Made a nice spot for hostas, tiger lilies, and a bazillion suddenly well-fed weeds, including a few trees I worked hard to kill off last summer. It kind of kills the point of an egress window when trees prevent its opening outward.

By the way, the hatchback survived nicely, even if the tires looked a little squished on a few of the drives home.

Now I am about two miles from a river here.  I know that because there is a sign announcing it every time I cross it on a bridge. The sign is the only reason I know that large open space is considered a river and not somebody's open dumping space, or to-be-developed-once-prices-get-high-enough land, or something. There are no cottonwood trees lining the banks to point out its path. There is no channel visible from any of the bridges while I'm driving on them, and not just because the car is a compact and the bridge walls are high enough to almost keep trucks from driving off them. There just isn't any water in the Agua Fria River, despite its claims, neither cold nor warm. There are homeless people encamped there, along with typical Arizona desert wildlife: birds, coyotes, rattlesnakes, brown recluse spiders, ants, bees, and the occasional javelina, none of which apparently discourage the homeless population from seeking the shade under one of the overhead bridges. They do tend to sleep on high ground there, though I suspect it's because of the shorter distance for them that way to local streets and businesses rather than fear of being swept away.

I have on a couple occasions actually seen water pooling in small areas of the backyard, I must admit. Mostly in very scattered spots, low enough to get the runoff from other scattered slightly higher spots. In a daylight downpour, it looks to get to be about an inch deep in the low places. My slab which the house is built on sits up about 2 - 5" above ground level. 

I think we're pretty safe here from spring flooding. 

(Delete)

The Free Rock Sale

OK, it started as a sale. That's before the club discovered we had well over twice as many rocks taking up unnecessary space in the club as we thought. There was a whole other room! They HAD to go.

We did advertising via email out to the club membership. A few - relatively - of them were polished or tumbled. Many were slabs ready to cut and polish for cabochons. Wayyyyyy too many more were chunks. Some huge chunks. Yard rocks. So we had to let everybody know that however they desired another hundred rocks, we pretty much had  it for them. For the yard, check. Line a flower pot, check. Make coasters, check. Work your lapidary skills on, check. Gather a variety for your favorite children to interest them in rocks, check.

By the time the second room yielded its bounty, the officers all decided that since we HAD TO get rid of all of them, we'd change our pricing system and make them all free. We all agreed to show up Monday an hour before the sale started to gather them, spread them out on the set of tables that stretched about 24 feet long, and organize them. Silly us, thinking first that all of us would show up then, and that it was enough time to get the job done.

I worried about that enough to come into the club on Saturday. First task was taking all the various pieces of carpet and foam rectangles, line them edge to edge all the way along the tables, just to protect the surfaces from the rocks. That took the first 15 minutes. By then three other people showed up, planning to do their own something-else in the quiet of a Saturday morning. They wound up hauling boxes and 5 gallon buckets and totes of rocks out and onto the tables, organized somewhat by size, large to small. The large ones got spaced just far enough apart that they could be picked up without smashing fingers. The smallest ones - 8 foot of table worth, got stacked about 5" deep because they needed to be. (This had the benefit of revealing real beauties to latecomers after having been buried by several previous layers.) 

The middle of the length of tables was mostly rock slabs, standing on end in boxes and totes so pretty much all of them were visible and easily picked out. Possibly the oddest items in the sale were various size rocks attached to 2x4s. When I say attached, I mean they were not coming off. The point of the wood was for our very large rock saws, the kind that turn round rocks into a series of slabs, ready for further cutting and polishing, etc. The wood goes into a clamp, the clamp moved into place so the saw cuts through the rock in a series of parallel cuts, avoiding all fingers and any other inadvertent body parts. Wood can be separated from rock, possibly with a wood saw judiciously used, possibly by freezing if the adhesive is wax,  partly by the old good-luck-to-you-finding-the-right-solvent method. If necessary they can always have the wood buried in the ground to "keep it from rolling away" as rocks are wont to do when others envy them.

Not everything went into the sale. We have a long-standing practice of offering small polished rocks free to children, so long as they come in with an adult. (Hopefully the adult is shopping, but that's not a requirement.) We also have tiny ziplock bags one can fill for $.50. Our supply was getting low and there were hundreds of candidates to pick out, painstakingly. More went into a labeled box in the office for later refilling the children's supply. Some complete crap went into a wastebasket or three, or set out on a table with a "free" sign attached. While the sale was announced to start promptly at 10:00 AM Monday, the few of us helping on Saturday got a limited reward for their work. 

Very limited. While we opened the "sale" up to everybody at 9:00 AM for review, and strategy development for getting the most top choice rocks before others did, we refused to officially open until exactly 10:00 before any rocks could be picked off the tables. We wanted to make it fair to everybody.

Recognizing it wouldn't be a case of easily carrying out their selections, several of us provided boxes and bags for everybody to collect their treasures in. I brought in my heavy-duty two-wheeler, aka hand cart, for hauling heavy loads out to cars as they accumulated. Seven or eight people greatly appreciated that, mostly ones gathering yard rocks of course. Including me, also of course.

I took my camera, getting shots of the whole layout before people showed, the layout with folks looking them over, and the actual picking and boxing. My last shot was one person with her box on the two-wheeler heading towards the door. The picture does not show the first two boxes she loaded on her first trip. All those shots will get sent to the club for use on our website. 

There was one very polite discussion when two people wanted, very badly, the same yard rock. They  reconciled it by agreeing to saw the rock in half, literally splitting it. Practically everything else was one of several, even multitudes of others, even some lapis lazuli pieces suitable for making jewelry. Our pair of British members, both rock experts, willingly gave identifications of rocks for any interested. Our two newest members now are seriously considering taking their class in lapidary so they can learn to work with some of their new treasures. That's a win for everybody!

By the time I left, nearly 2:00 PM, the tables were cleared back to a short stack of three bowls of rocks. They will remain through tomorrow morning for one member who requested a look at the remainders and couldn't make it in Monday. Otherwise a different member promised to take the last dregs home to her yard. Those tables are needed tomorrow. Tuesday afternoons are workshop days, and the space is needed. Meanwhile, we can walk into the saws room again without finding a path between 5 gallon buckets of rocks. Half a wall of office space is now available for... well, I'm willing to bet that within a month we have the answer to that as well. My front yard has about 10 new decorations, and a new plan for plantings in between that can actually survive going from full shade to hot summer sun down here. There's a bag of rocks for the great grands, once the youngest is past putting everything in his mouth, to hopefully interest them in the variety out there in the world of rocks. If so, another big win!

Meanwhile it's nap time. Rocks are WORK!

The War Just Got A Little Closer

 It's a tiny thing. It's about a bunch of tiny things. But I just "found out" I have a connection to the Ukriane war.

I've been thinking about ordering some new beads, since some I recently bought to use in jewelry are both selling well and making great gifts. The beads are tiny glass ones, rosebuds, more defined and realistically shaped than the first flower beads I bought, more dainty and delicate than the second large batch I bought. The sales have been doing well enough I thought I'd like to stock up more on a very particular bead along with very similar ones in slightly different colors from the same seller. I've done some "window" shopping, if that term applies to online shopping, where one can put things in their "shopping cart' to be a reminder of what they want in the future, a direct connection to the source selling it, and where one can go back at will and order.

Today was going to be that day. I have a seller who is top on my list of providing the best of its kind, at least so far as I've found. I pulled up the cart, and "this item is unavailable" pops up in red letters. OK, well, I was open to buying from half a dozen more varieties from that shop. The next one said the same. And the next. All the way down the list.

Finally, there was a note on his site that informs his potential customers that he is unable to make beads right now, nor ship them. His shop is closed. It's in Ukraine. And he's gone to fight for his country. It is dated two days ago.

I haven't felt quite so foolish in a while. Of course I knew in the dim dark recesses of my mind where those beads came from. I'd tracked the previous order, though it only registered locations when it departed London on its way to Los Angeles. But the packaging, once here, listed Ukraine as its origin. I forget what part, exactly, not thinking to pay attention, not thinking it mattered that I had a connection, however trivial, with someone over there, not even exactly sure then where it was located in relation to everything else. And of course the wrapping is long gone. After all, I still had the information to connect for another order. What more did I need? Except maybe to give a thought that I knew of somebody involved in that war right now.

He is an exquisite artist. Now he's a soldier. I can only hope he has a chance to be an artist again. This little corner of the world has just gotten a reminder that war is about all the human beings involved in it, not just the refugees, the bombed out apartments, the weapons used, the video shown on TV, the opinions of the world in reaction. Every person involved in it has an individual life, individual dreams, an individual family, and leaves behind an individual mark upon this world. I can only hope that he and others like him don't have to just leave it all.