A cloudless morning here at Raven Ranch. Maybe it is the number one day statistically to be cloudless, it could very well be. I remember this being a big deal with climbers planning an ascent of Mt Rainer here in the neighborhood. Seems like a particular day in July is mentioned as the most likely to be the one to see the grand view when you reached the summit.

Yea, as I remember July 25th in 2014 it was the day Kelly and Phil flew out of Seattle and into Madrid. That was back before Phil was Felipé. And back then we, Kelly and I that is, had no idea when St James Day was. We had plenty of things that we were juggling at that point. We were the young and the willing and knew little of the power of St James. But it didn’t take the long for him to wrestle us into submission, a week or so, with nasty tactics like sleep deprivation, heat, pain, smiles, hugs and chocolate croissants. Well, you know!

So, this is his day. As I have learned, correct me if I am wrong, these Saint’s Days are the days of the death of that particular person. We celebrate the day they were martyred although not all Saints were martyred. But James the Greater was martyred although I am not sure anyone is sure of the actually day on the calendar. He was the first of the Apostles to be killed for his faith and he was beheaded by a Herod. I think that was the son of the Herod that was ruling at the time of the birth of Jesus.

Anyway, somehow, some way his body is spirited to western Spain, the end of the earth, to be with us there these days in the Cathedral at Santiago. But we don’t need all our factoid ducks in a row hopefully. The important thing is that we went, experienced and drank of the “flow of pilgrims” and that somehow we internalized that thing. It was the grain of sand that turned into the beautiful pearl in our shell.

So, today at some point drink a toast to our alma mater wherever you find yourself and in whatever shape you are in. Thank you St James for giving us something that has totally enriched our lives and that can’t be taken away. Yes we got the t-shirt but we also got something profoundly deep and enduring. We are thankful for our most important ducks being totally lined up.

ducky loves, Felipé.

I’m off to Spain in ten days to spend a month walking my beloved Camino Frances before starting six months of chemo in early September. My cancer is ultimately life limiting and I’m probably as well now as I’ll ever be. A friend is going with me and I’ll be walking just 10km or so a day. I’m not strong enough at the moment to do more.

It has been interesting to experience people’s reactions. These have ranged from “you go girl” to “are you mad” to “you are putting other people’s life at risk”.

I’ve sat with the question of going. If I had all the time in the world, I’d delay til next year. But I don’t. I also I think have a different attitude to risk than some. Yes, there is risk involved. But my entire life is risky these days. Living is risky. I think many of us including me have been insulated from life risk. We haven’t had wars or famines to deal with. So the “new normal” feels frightening. I have many healthy friends who won’t leave the house at the moment.

But we have to choose. I have to choose. Do I engage with the world with all it’s wonderful and beauty and also with its Covid risk. Or do I hide. I’m choosing not to hide. I’m choosing to go to Spain and walk. I won’t be stupid. I’ll be wearing my mask and keeping my distance, but I’m going.

And it’s given my life a new urgency and joy it hasn’t had for a while.

Karen, Cambridge. Caminoheads England Bureau Chief.

Sorry if I used the title “Nothing About Fish” before in one of my million blogposts. I can’t remember. But when our daughter Tesia was in grade school her class had an assignment to put together a book of recipes. This is all ancient history and I don’t remember the details but that is what it was entitled. I have always chuckled over that.

It is sort of off center like everything else around this crazy Island. One of our Island friends stopped over to chat a couple of days back. We love him dearly but man is he quirky. Of course we are not quirky ourselves only other people. Anyway he is struggling through a hard period in his life with a cancer project and resulting nasty chemo. No hair is just a minor part of it. He was telling us the details to all that and yes I can remember stuff like that for sure and he had a lot to carry all at once. Somewhere during his visit we switched over to talking about his bible class and he got so amazing animated at that point like a switch was flipped, total drama.

This is so us. We may have all these crazy things happening in our lives, good and bad, and most of the time we are as reasonable as heck but then there is one area of our lives where all our drama oozes out. And we defend our drama like it is totally reasonable and if you have a problem with it it must be your fault. I have car and truck drama and here is a good one, plumbing drama. Plumbing really brings out the best and worst in me. And I think my carrying on is perfectly reasonable of course.

Now here is a crazy one. My Rebecca practices, are you ready, knitting drama. Can you believe that, I say? Just how important could knitting possibly be, right? But it just all comes gushing and oozing out at that point. See that’s the point, to someone else your drama seems the ultimate in goofy while their drama is something to pay attention to.

Of course this tendency probably is amplified by our current quarantine situation. I saw a good FaceBook thought today. It was, remember when your Mom said, “Keep it up and I will slap you into the middle of next year!” Is that offer still open? Hold my beer.

middle of next year loves, Felipé.

I have two more items on my list of repairs to my truck. OK, three if you count washing which will be last. One more appointment with the local mechanic to replace the wiper switch and me getting a new antenna installed will get a working AM/FM radio going for the other item.

Have to drive into town in a minute to get some connectors for this antenna project. That will be fun and here is were the cheap thrills come in. While I drive to town which takes fifteen minutes I can try out all my truck stuff that I got fixed in the last two weeks. Yea, lock and unlock the doors, roll the windows up and down, flip light switches and the biggie, fire off the windshield washer. We know how to party! Woohoo!

So, why is this so important Felipé? Well, remember when I came to the realization that I was concentrating so much on my cancer problem that there were a bunch of minor problems with my body that I had put off that were really mounting up? So, I went to the hand doc, foot doc and the tooth doc. Well, I feel immensely better for all that. And the same thing was happening to my trusty truck and now with some TLC it is a joy to drive and not a chore. There is a definite parallel.

cheap thrills all around loves, Felipé.

THIS IS A DISCLAIMER, there will be nothing about this topic in this whole blogpost so you will have to go elsewhere for recipes and such. Sorry. We might be talking about bacon milkshakes for the mind and spirit perhaps. OK, we have that out of the way.

It is so fun to be working with the great Catalina on the archives of this blog. She is compiling a reasonably sized book from all the major blather of my years of blogging. But at some point I did have a post about the topic of bacon milkshakes and I attracted a whole bunch of visitors that particular day. I think those folks were probably highly disappointed about not getting a bright and shiny recipe or some such token. It was just the usual unusual Felipébabble.

So it is fun reading over Catalina’s shoulder as she goes through the days, months and years of it. Today we were talking about a phrase that I used “cloud of believers” That is related to communion of saints or the flow of pilgrims. Catalina has called it communitas. It speaks to the community of belief that we shared on the Camino and that we still share.

To me now I realize that this is the big payoff, the big takeaway for the walkers of the Camino that “get it” at some point, there or later at home. It is that connnectivity that is so missing in our normal world and that we didn’t know that we craved so.

OK, off to my day.

get it loves, Felipé.

I was out walking this morning and something occurred to me. Usually though I get the blogpost done before I walk but today I had a water emergency to contend with so that took up several hours. But things under control for the moment, knock on wood. Anyway, it occurred to me that this year of 2020 being such a different year with in which we are seeing all kinds of things that hadn’t occurred to us before. It is ironic that the phrase twenty-twenty or 20/20 means good normal eyesight. So in this year of 2020 we see what we haven’t seen before.

Now before us are flaws or shortcomings. There are things to do and things that we don’t know how to do. There are insights were last year there were normalities. We see pain and suffering and death. We see too much sometimes and become depressed, It is a different world and 20/20 is a good name for it.

Well, I don’t know if there is too much more on that. I am out of time today.

Loving you loves, Felipé.

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A beautiful sunny Sunday morn happening. It looks like something out of Spain happening out there. I got the corn fertilized and watered heavily yesterday so maybe with the help of St James things will happen out there height wise.

Henna our beautiful and charming daughter-in-law has a Dad who lives locally and his name is Jim. Henna uses “Jim” as a verb. “Yea, he came by and Jim-ed it”. In other words he was here and fixed it. But not only fixed it but did it with a minimum of swear words and in record time! Well, I drove my bucket of bolts old truck over to his place yesterday to see if he had the “special” tool for this one deal that I had been wresting with for a day and a half. Of course he Jim-ed it without the stinking “special” tool in fifteen minutes. You see, well worth two six packs but he makes me feel like such a rookie!

And comet, yes? That was a car once, wasn’t it, a Mercury Comet? Anyway, I think I saw the darn thing. I’m still pissed about Kohotek (sp?) Which was a comet or supposed comet back in the 70’s, the 1970’s, that we all stayed up all night to see it and it never happened or we don’t remember. Anyway, I think that I saw the one last night. There is this strange visual phenomenon that I remember from Sea Scout days. Well, I wasn’t really one but loved the manual. Anyway, sometimes on faint objects you have to look at the space next to it and then you see it. Weird!

And yesterday I never made it through the hurtles and wickets to get to the QandA on Zoom that I was supposed to be at. But I was able to watch and listen to the recording. It looked so fantastic with old and new friends there. We will try and do it again l hope. But I learned a new fact that beside Cris translating the documentary into Spanish a woman named Sue is working on a Korean version! This is so exciting!

Off I go, Catherine coming. We are going to St John Vianney’s to take Communion at 10, we have an appointment.

miscellaneous loves, Felipé.

This is so exciting! I am sharing it with you first thing and say that I have no details but just the headline. But Cris our beloved Caminoheads South America Bureau Chief was asked by Annie O’Neil the Producer/Director of Phil’s Camino to do a translation of the film into Spanish. This would mean that the film could be distributed with Spanish subtitles for the Spanish speaking audience! Wow!

This has actually been talked about for years but the time must be right for this to happen. Saint James must be Afoot, that’s all I can think of. We all know what happens when he is on the loose, THINGS HAPPEN! Maybe I could have him come and take a look at my corn?

I can see Cris having so much fun with this. She is SO the right person to do this. I pray that she will have enough hours in her day to tackle this and have it be fun and not a burden. Won’t it be great to have this whole new audience out there. It just occurred to little old me that Spanish speaking audiences could be much more familiar with pilgrimage than English speaking audiences. Yea, maybe.

Speaking of Phil’s Camino documentary. It is being shown with a QandA afterward today and you can get it in your living room during lockdown. I’ll be there. Annie will be there. No masks required. You have to go to the FaceBook group Pilgrimage in Place and follow directions. You must register to get links. But the QandA starts at 3PM Pacific Time. So the film must start 2 or 2:30.

OK, it is a beautiful no cloud in the blue sky sunny day here. I must go and get with my projects and chores. Once again, thanks so much for being here.

good news loves, Felipé.

“The Grandfather Clock, USS BONHEMME RICHARD, and Robert Redford.”

Saw a “Twilight Zone” last night. The 1950’s version. One about a man who was always told by his father and grandfather that the Grandfather Clock that he had, represented his life. The clock was handed down to him from generation to generation. He was told that he had to always keep it wound up. If he forgot to wind it, then the clock would wind down and his heart would stop right along with the clock. As long as he kept the clock wound, he would remain alive. The man had his clock taken away from him. The clock was sent to another home. The man was petrified that the clock would not be wound and that it would wind down and then he would die with the dying beat of the clock. So as he lay in bed, as the clock wound down, he knew he was going to die, because that is what was told to him this whole time. Only he did not. The clock wound down and he did not die. As it turned out, this whole time, they were all wrong. He realized at that very moment that his heart was beating to its own rhythm. Not dependent on anything else. I loved that “Twilight Zone” episode. I am thinking I had already wrote about another one in here, maybe….but I love the parables.
The man’s life was not dependent on anything or anyone else’s. What a thought I had as I watched that episode. I watched a documentary about Quincy Jones recently. He said, “We only got about 20,000 days here. We gotta make them all count”.
I say, more like 30,000++…
Also, I thought, how lucky we are to get older, at any age. What a gift. A boy I grew up with died at the ripe young age of 19…..Too damn young.
Someone told me, “Ryck, getting old is not for the weak”.

I am getting a Grandfather clock, but let me tell you, that damn thing will be electric and it will have backup batteries in it:)

The Ship. “Don’t give up the ship!” As we say in the Navy. The USS BONHEMME RICHARD, on fire. Blazing, uncontrolled. Sailors kept fighting the fire as the American Flag waved onboard, meanwhile, the belly of the ship was on fire. Sailors kept fighting the fire. Now the fire is out. “Don’t give up the ship!”
There is a movie named, “All is Lost” with Robert Redford. He has about one sentence in the entire movie. The movie is merely him and a sailboat. Man against nature. My favorite part of the movie is when there is bad damage to the hull of his boat and he is mending it back together, leaning over the side in his harness, slopping and mixing the glue together and lathering it in the fibers of the fiberglass hull. Forehead dripping with sweat. I don’t know what about that scene I love so much. Maybe it was because he was not willing to give up the ship yet.
I have no clue about this blog post I wrote…., what comes out, comes out….kind of like I am merely the conduit….

Love you guys!
Hot and balmy here in the D.C./Maryland/Virginia. (DMV) area of our country.
Cheers:))
Ryck.

Yea, I am off my clinical trial for three weeks. I was at the Institute yesterday and did not pass muster with my pancreas numbers. This is a side effect of the drug to raise a little trouble with the pancreas but it was the first time for me. I didn’t have any of the physical symptoms that are associated with it. So, three weeks off to see if those numbers cooperate. Nugget and David (my research nurse) are working extremely hard on this. They are reading all the small print and keeping us in the protocol.

But I did get to touch base with two of my favorite people, Patti Kwok and Debra Jarvis. They are both authors and chaplain/councilors. Patti came all the way out here to help me plant corn in May. Debra did the Veranda and the Camino last year. I never tire of those two.

Today here at the ranch it is overcast but warm. We had two sunny days in a row, Tuesday and Wednesday, so I guess that is it for the sun. Walking in a minute.

sitting in the shade of the hanger loves, Felipé