Time to check in with you, wherever you are. Word Press my blog guys came up with a year end report on facts regarding my bloging career. Stuff like people in 37 different countries have checked in to read something over our six plus months now. USA, was first, followed by Spain and then Brazil was next. We even had some readers in Equador and Egypt. Wonder who they were?
Well, today I have a couple of links for you to some interesting stuff. Things that I have bumped into in the last few days. So, OK, here we go:
Then Rebecca rolled in with this link which is very fun (20 reasons for you to drop everything and go to Spain):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/minube/-20-reasons-to-drop-every_b_4601059.html?utm_hp_ref=travel&utm_content=buffer4bd9d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
OK,and finally as if you weren’t having enough fun, there is this in from Mary Margaret about the benefits of long distance walking:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11323460/Go-wild-take-life-in-your-stride.html
So, there are some things to keep you occupied and out of trouble for the time being. Just trying to get through the winter can be a major endeavor so glad to help you out with that. We here are looking forward to a four day visit from Mary Margaret next week. Maybe we will do something special for the blog. Yea, stay tuned, love, Felipe.
Just listening to some oldies. That one, I Wanna Walk You Home is Fats Domino. Some Arethia, some Ray Charles. Dark winter night here. Otis Redding. Tomorrow the Christmas decorations are coming down for another year. Garnet Mimms. Got the chimney cleaned today which marks the half way point of the winter, the wood burning season. Tab Benoit with Bring It On Home To Me.
I got to get up here in a minute and add the veggies and barley to the oxtail soup. I have been building a soup a week now for a while. This is one of my favorites. But they are all good and will warm you up quickly. I fell the same way about this music, all good and will warm you up quickly. Just some low keyed loves for you, Felipe.
January fourth today. It started out pretty slow but it is picking up speed. I was pretty convinced that I would not be able to come up with a topic today on my own. So, I thought a Camino thought and I went with it. Knowing that everyone that you meet brings you a message I said that I will blog on the next person that I meet. Sounds like a plan.
So, my good buddy Stephen calls to say that he is over in Tacoma picking up some gear and he is going to swing by on his way home. There you go, Stephen it is. Stephen is a guy trained to be a chef and loves stuff outdoors. He is fun to take on hunting trips because he knows his way around a Dutch oven and a campfire. He also cooks big meals for events for our island sportmen’s club for hundreds of eager eaters. I learned a lot about cooking helping him with those events. Being around people that know what they are doing is an education.
So along comes Stephen today and he is bearing gifts. He knows that I have been passionate about cooking after being in Spain so he has cooking gifts. He brings some very nice olive oil and balsamic vinegar for me to play with. What a guy.
Back when I first got back home I expressed to Stephen why I came back with this passion for cooking. I said that I had a new appreciation for my friends and I wanted to show that. I wanted to show what we had felt on the trail. We were all passionate about each other and we were all passionate about our food, our calories, our fuel. And he looked at me and said, “Why do you think that I have been doing this for thirty five years?” OK, there it is.
January third it is. Not a day with a special name but still rich in leftovers and other benefits of the holidays. Rebecca and I are fighting with colds and a particular nasty type this year. So, here I am trying to dig around for something upbeat and inspirational and all I got so far is leftovers. Hmmm.
I’ll just have to dig deeper, hey? What do I have in my bag of tricks? One quote that will make due always is the old Jewish one, “This too shall pass.” But I could say, “Yea, well when?” Which brings up the idea that Laura brought up of the fact that we should practice Patience with a capital P. There is something vital to be learned through the practice of Patience.
My mind brings up the vision of the Coke machine along the foggy trail that we talked about recently. The Coke machine that we were talking about kicking because it wasn’t working fast enough. How do we get some perspective on the big picture so that we can develop a Patience that really has a calital P?
A Patience that will really serve us well.
Yea, all days aren’t ones of glory. What about these Janurary thirds that I spend with a bad cold? Can I learn something important here? Hmmm. Love, Felipe.
Well yea, I’m not that old but I feel like it today. I think that this cold is ganging up with my chemo side effects to produce the perfect storm. I’ll survive but am a mess today.
Maryka sent this lovely poem which I will put here for your enjoyment and call it good for today:
Let other mornings honor the miraculous.
Eternity has festivals enough.
This is the feast of our mortality,
The most mundane and human holiday…
The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along—to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.
(Dana Gioia, 1950 – )
I am going to keep walking even though it will be one of those short days. See you tomorrow, love you, Felipe.
Hey, we made it gang! A milestone, a touchstone, a reason to celebrate it is. Time to turn over a new leaf or to continue on a good course that is already going or some of both maybe. Here we are. Guys made any resolutions?
How about, “Getting off the schnide (sp?)”. It is a baseball term that comes from something before it in the card game gin rummy and then from something before that in German/Yiddish. Needs more research. But in baseball it means getting off a scoreless streak or a hitless streak. Getting going to where you are supposed to be.
Last year was an incredible year for me and I feel like I got off the schnide big time. So I want to keep that going. I talked with Annie and Sister Joyce to ask, is it greedy of me to ask for a better year for 2015? They both said, no way, go for it. So, that is my resolution to make 2015 better than 2014!
I’m at the hospital today to get part of my treatment. This place never closes except Christmas Day. So I have to go in to get that accomplished. So let’s all get off the schnide or some reasonable facsimile if you haven’t got some resolution cooking already. Love you, Felipe.
First of all I have to apologize to Queenie because she is not fat but has her feathers all puffed up because of the cold conditions. Sorry Queenie it was just my first impression. And then Rebecca said those are the Anna’s Hummingbirds that do winter over. OK.
I broke out my two trusty bird books and checked on what was written about the Anna. The Peterson said it was basically an Oregon, California, Mexico bird and casual (means marginal) up to southern Vancouver Island, Canada. And the Audubon guide said it stays year around near Victoria which is at the south end of Vancouver Island which is a little north of us here in Seattle. OK, so it seems given the right micro environment and some food source which I suspect has to be human provided would suffice to hold them over this far north. So, Queenie’s color, size and markings lined up with the Anna also, not that she knows that word. For habitat the Peterson said chaparral, broken woodlands, gardens. Maybe add hospitals, don’t you think?
Why is this even remotely important I had to ask myself? Did I just need something to blog about? Am I boring my readers with random baloney? I really had to think about this last evening. And what I came up with was that one of the lessons of the Camino was that everything and everyone that we come into contact with on our daily walk has a message for us. First we have to recognize that fact and then second we have to learn how to decode it and then to interpret it. Somethings are easy as getting handed an orange by a smiling pilgrim that you don’t know. Or have the tip of the perfect pyramidal rock come up though your boot sole and line up perfectly with your perfectly painful blister. Yike isn’t really the word that you scream. Or maybe it something more subtle like coming across a perfect little patch of shade or the perfect or imperfect wildflower.
Maryka, the dear, reminded me of the heart rocks that would appear as you walked and especially on a tough uphill stretches would they be welcomed. They were saying that you have the heart to do this, keep going. Thanks Maryka.
So, what does Queenie say? Here I am stuck at the hospital on a beautiful day getting a gallon chemo cocktail pumped into me and feeling pretty marginal. And just out the window is this little fat hummingbird living her life on her species margins and doing her very best. Aren’t we kind of “birds of a feather” as they say? I like it, can you tell?
Hey, it’s New Year’s Eve here but Brisbane and Sydney are about three and a half hours into New Years Day. Yea! Looks like Sherif is next in Cairo. OK, it looks like we should just give a big global Happy New Year at this point. Love you all wherever you find yourself now, Felipe.
It’s a she and she is in a little patch of bamboo in a planter outside the window here at the hospital. Hummingbirds shouldn’t be here this time of year but people feed them and they figure out how to get through the cold weather somehow. It’s a gorgeous day today which means that it is cold. Cold and dry or warm and wet is the drill for Seattle. She is neverously fliting from one perch to another. Hummingbirds are pretty nervous and this may be just her version of rest or my theory is that she sees her reflection in the window and it is making her agitated. She sees a rival.
She sat on the same branch for three minutes, an eternity, but is off again. Even while she is sitting in the same place she is constantly dinking with the leaves around her. What a nervous creature.
The sun is starting to go down and it is 3 o’clock in the afternoon. The day’s are getting longer supposedly but hard to see yet. It Is pretty right now ou the window to the west and will take a pic unless I can get a shot of Queenie. I named her.
New Years coming and it is hard to imagine a better year than 2014 but heck lets go for even better. What do you say? Alperfect, Felipe.
Yes, what could be better. She’s here visiting for the holidays and this was our chance for time together. We walked around Phil’s Camino and caught up since I hadn’t seen or talked with her since Santiago in August. Long time really. Well, I mean that a lot has happened for her and for me.
She is involved with some graduate studies that are very demanding at Columbia University in New York City. She is a little dynamo to keep up with this and to do well at it to boot. We are proud of her to say the least.
So, my trusty little iPad just ate the rest of my post so maybe that wasn’t supposed to happen. You didn’t have time to read it all anyway. But the important point is to relate the story of the Coke machine. This happened on the first day of her walking:
October 23, 2014
A Remberance Concerning Maryka.
I had the great pleasure to be with my Vashon buddy Rick (Quick) and his lovely daughter Maryka for the last part of my Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. Having her there was a totally suprise to me although apparently everyone was in on it. Anyway I got to spend a lot of time with her just doing what we seem to do best, walking and talking. And it was just a continuation of our walking and talking that we did in the rain and the snow during the winter here on Vashon.
Have to interject something here from our good friend and serious Angel, Laura from Barcelona. She emailed yesterday and reminded me/us to have Patience. And she called for capitalizaton on that since she thought that it was so important. I trust Laura on this so I am going with it. And since I was having one of those mornings when I had no idea what I was going to blog about, she also provided me with that. Thanks Laura.
Patience, yes. And this is my remembrance: We were up early, from I think the monastery at Samos, and it was dark and foggy. We were walking mostly along the shoulder of a paved road with some occasional traffic. It was a little hairy since the footing was questionable and with the real possibility that we would miss a sign and be headed off in the wrong direction. Rick was ahead or behind on some scouting mission. Anyway, Maryka and I got on the topic of Patience. Don’t remember how it started but we were throwing our best most inspired thoughts into the mix of our conversation as we felt our way along in the fog.
I remember talking about us Americans being so impatient, being a spray can society. If we can’t do it quickly and easily and just by pushing a button we are not interested. The conversation went on and I was talking about how we would put our money in the Coke machine and if things were too slow or non functional we would start kicking it, like that was going to do some good. And no sooner did that come out of my mouth than in the distance we spied this weird red glow. And as we got closer it grew in size until we recognized it as a, guess what, a Coke machine. No joke just there with nothing else around it and with an extension cord running off into the fog. It was the first one that I saw that had the Cathedral at Santigo image on the front. We just stood and stared at it. Message, you think?!?
I’m down with a cold, poor me, but everything else marches on. The blog is back after Christmas break, the documentary is being edited, the fund raising continues. Let’s cover those one at a time.
You will notice that even though I “took” a break from blogging I couldn’t keep totally from it. And others sent material in which is tres cool. Cherry with a TGIF and Laura with the video. So, it is starting to have a life of it’s own which is important.
The handsome Todd and the beautiful Jessica have taken on the challenge of the editing of the Phil’s Camino Documentary. This is as it should be in my mind. They will have a feel for the heat, dust and blisters of it all.
And the fund raising is something that needs to continue to get the life blood to our shoestring operation. Remember this kind of endeavor takes hundreds of thousands of dollars usually and we are doing it on tens. We are making up for that with raw talent, frugality and being nimble. That’s us!
So just a reminder that if you have anybody with a big heart and the idea to support something worthwhile please direct them toward www.philscamino.com . Or the donation account is open still at US Bank and a check made out to “Phil Volker Documentary” and sent to the following address will be put to good use.
US Bank
POB 428
Vashon,WA 98070
I am behind on getting out the thank yous to people who have contributed but it is getting closer to the top of my list. We own many thanks to be sure. We are counting on people’s generousity to provide the needed horsepower to carry this to the finish line.
Ok, Maryka is coming to walk this morning. I haven’t seen her since Santiago. So, that and “Go Seahawks!” Only the best to you, Love, Felipe.
