I was gifted a most important item yesterday. It is a little piece of ground in a peaceful pretty place with neighborhood friends all around. Given to me by a kind friend was a plot at the Vashon Cemetery. I went and looked at it for the first time this morning. Couldn’t be happier about this development.

My Rebecca and I went and had an hour with the local Funeral Director, also a friend and total wonderful person yesterday. We hammered out some important details for the future. It was time for that or maybe way past time for that really. So, good for us!

And Thanksgiving on our doorstep. We have a turkey thawing. And the time now to gather ingredients for the meal. Wiley and Henna will be here. Henna to make mac and cheese as a side dish. That was to please me as I wanted to try it. So we will be small but mighty.

Last year we were at a large family gathering with Henna’s fam here locally. It was really fun and of course we are mourning the loss of such excitement but here we are. Well, we are all promising to be good this year and are keeping it small and local, right?

I heard some optimistic news on the radio this morning about how the States could have half of our population vaccinated by May coming up. This would put a major crimp in the plague. Is there hope for Veranda 2021? Do we have dates for that?

that’s all for now loves, Felipé.

Clear, clear and clear. There is a wind and the leaves are falling like snow. Soon, in days, they will be all down for the year. Overhead the clouds are scudding by. We hunker down by our fires thinking our thoughts.

Geez, by the sound of that we are living in a cave somewhere in the land before time. Well, we still remember all that I am sure. And in some ways we are reliving it with the darn hunkerdown pandemic shrouding the entire globe.

I thought that it would be a good idea if I made a few phone calls to check in on friends that I haven’t seen for a while. I have gotten some awfully nice emails from friends lately that mean a lot to me. Maybe it would be good to keep that going.

Just that simple thing on my mind today, to check in. Let’s make sure that we are all OK.

off to walk loves, Felipé.

It’s like living in a cloud, this fog. I suppose it is good for the complexion, how could a wrinkle survive? It is moist out to the nth degree. Visibility sort of comes and goes on a whim. Driving is hazardous. Your car could get wrinkles pretty easily.

So, we walk and say our rosary here in a minute. It will be eerie and mysterious like the Holy Spirit is. We will be walking inside the Holy Spirit and we will produce a glow which will be mysterious. We could become part of the mystery, hopefully.

I have to go and gear up, it’s time.

be where you are loves, Felipé.

Monday 0900-1000
Tuesday 1530-1630
Thursday 0900-1000
Sunday 1530-1630

Felipé.

A month to the solstice today. The sun though today out is behind the majestic fir trees. It’s that winter sun that never makes it far from the horizon. And yes the solstice, roughly December 21st, will be the seventh anniversary of the opening of Phil’s Camino. I wonder if I can get a few people that were here that day to come and walk this year. That seems like a worthy project.

And what other seasonal goodies have we. Cris wanted me to make a Advent calendar to December 16th when my biopsy results will be revealed. That seems like a worthy project.

I need to post a walking schedule here at the blog soon. We are still open with the inclusion of Covid precautions. People seem to have the time but not the inclination to get out and get over here these days. So, if you are staying away because you think a lot of folks will be here that is defiantly not the story. 95% percent of the time I am alone.

Last evening Annie and I were Zooming with a cancer support group out of LA. We watched the Phil’s Camino documentary and had a QandA session. They are always fun and rewarding for me. If you belong to a group and want to have something like that we can rig it up.

Thanksgiving (US) is coming our way quickly. We have the turkey corralled in our freezer. Looking forward to cornbread dressing once again. This is our chance to proclaim our thankfulness even in these sparse times!

So, that was kind of a newsy post, have to have one now and again here.

Zooming loves, Felipé.

Last evening a comment can through channels to me here at headquarters, it was Becky. I was so happy to know that I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing up. But it was her and her story matched mine so I am happy.

Here are her words:

“Phil! I am here and sorry for the delayed response! Meeting you Wednesday was such a treasured moment! I sent our selfie to my family text thread knowing they would freak out. And they sure did. I recounted our encounter and my shock when you answered my surprised holler ‘Phil’s Camino?!’ With ‘yes, I’m Phil’. I told them I had a speechless moment with so many questions and topics to cover, as anyone who has walked the Camino can relate to. Alas, our respective 8am appointments saved me from embarrassing myself too much, but am thankful you obliged me with a selfie!

My folks have walked the camino a number of times, I was privileged to join them for 2 weeks in October 2016. It is an experience like no other, to say the least.
My folks were staying with me after a recent surgery and they brought your video to watch during their visit. What an honor and encouragement to know your story! Thank you for sharing and continuing your Camino with such grace.
We had contemplated going to Vashon for a ‘get out of the city’ drive. It is still on our list!

That Wednesday morning, I’m thankful I followed by dad’s rule/encouragement to talk to strangers.“

And I’m happy to announce the the whole coincidence/synchronicity phenomenon is alive and well in this world! Here I was pushing open my most feared door and who should arrive to go through with me. I don’t know, one can’t make this stuff up apparently. Thank you Becky for tweaking me there at that exact instant.

The phrase, “we can’t help ourselves”, thank you Annie, goes a long way to explain this. And it all seems to have a mind of it’s own, this synchronicity, just ambulating down the boulevard like it’s reality is all the norm. Hmm. It sort of lives in us now but it has it’s own agenda.

Yea, speaking of Annie I have a zoom this evening with a group that has recently watched Phil’s Camino. It is a QandA. They are always fun. Annie rigs up these deals and I tag along.

Alperfect loves all the time, Felipé.

(our moon is a waxing crescent, 33% illumination)

Something very synchronistic happened yesterday that made my day only it was early and it got lost in the shuffle of all the drama. I need to recount it because it was at least as important as all the hospital junk, no more.

I got up yesterday at 0430 to make the trip to the Hospital for my 0800 appointment for the biopsy. All very important. And the Hospital is not just the Hospital anymore since the Covid and even more so just now because of the Governor’s latest tightening. The facility is all compartmentalized like a ship ready for battle. There are locked doors and blocked hallways and you can only get places by going through the right checkpoints for screening. At one point I set off any alarm and then I got busted for not being screened, geez!

Anyway that is on top of my own years of fears of the whole situation. I know that I have written about how it is the hardest thing in the world is just to go through the door from the parking lot to the Treatment Center. One second you are independent and free and you go through a door and next you are willingly getting poisoned.

And that is where I was yesterday poised to open that door when I caught a glimpse of a woman coming up behind me. So, I pushed the door open extra wide so she would have room to pass behind me at a good distance. And as she goes by she reads the patch on my daypack. She yells, “Phil’s Camino!”.

And she had seen the documentary and her parents had walked the Camino five times. And she wanted to take a selfie with me. And I said go to my blog Caminoheads and comment and I will pick up your email address and we can communicate. And we both ran on, she into an elevator and me around a corner and I yelled back, “You are making my morning!”.

so sometimes you get lucky loves, Felipé.

Breaking my fast with a Starbucks Americano. No food or drink forever before my biopsy procedure and now I am celebrating. That wasn’t so bad just time consuming. Now I am waiting on Nugget to collect the vital info and give me his interpretation of the situation.

I am thinking a lot about the film we watched Netflix last evening. It is brand new and free of charge, how can that be? It feature’s Sonia Loren at 86 years old. Entitled The Life Ahead it is directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. All I can say is that she still has it! And it will probably be an award winner. This is your hot tip for the week.

Well, it is something to distract me from this anxiety producing wait for my results. I don’t know what is worse waiting for biopsy results or scan results? And then there are all new Covid restrictions here at the Hospital and Institute. I set off an alarm trying to get to where I was going early this morning. Gee wiz anyway. Adventures in health care.

Well, I guess I miss understood the time required for the biopsy to be processed and it will take a month. So I am going back in four weeks to see Nugget, a vacation!

Listing to port loves, Felipé.

I am talking about Cris our esteemed representative in Buenos Aires. She works in clinical research and I just wanted to let you know this since vaccines and clinical trials are so much in the news lately. The last few days Moderna announced their vaccine reaching a certain level of completion. This was on the heels of Pfizer’s vaccine. So great that this progress is being made. And our Cris works for PPD which is a partner of Moderna and handling the clinical trials (my best guess at an explanation). I Googled and Googled and all the info refers to PPD with just the abbreviation, no explanation.

“PPD which is the company I work for, has 1200 employees working in the Moderna vaccine clinical trial… a huge number of my work colleagues working really hard to get it done… We are all hopeful and while this is not the trial I work on, I am proud of the work we do…“ Cris.

Our Cris, there as part of that big picture. Thank you Cris! And she is invaluable to us at Caminoheads also. Apparently we were all supposed to get together here at Caminoheads and here we are.

So, it’s mid November and the Covid clock keeps ticking. We in the States are now facing big new rules on gatherings to mute down the holiday partying. Yea, 2020 hitting a flaming crescendo with all it’s special fun. So the vaccine will be welcomed but that will be for 2021.

And here the leaves are quickly being removed from their trees or the trees are being separated from their leaves. The winds are here. It looks like it is snowing out there and the electric lights are blinking inside.

So, off to Swedish Hospital for a biopsy in the morning and an interpretation of that by Nugget in the afternoon. Never ending fun I’ll tell ya. So, prayers for Felipé please. And as long as you are praying, one for Janet who does energy work with me. She suffered a fall yesterday and she is recovering. Thanks all.

prayers and loves, Felipé.

I am reading American Guerrilla in the Philippines for another time. I am on the last few pages of this book that I have read at least twenty times. It seems each time I read it I am doing something different. This time I am studying the various parts of it to see how they translate to my own life. Each event or chapter has an equivalent.

It is a great story of a US Naval Officer who lives out in the bush and barrios of Southern P.I. through the entire years of the Japanese occupation in World War Two. He chooses to make himself useful instead of blending into the background. It is daring and full of escapes and full of mistakes and things going bad but it ultimately somehow achieves victory as he outlives the invaders and gets recognized for his work. He over those years ran a radio network that fed information to the American Forces to facilitate the retaking of the Philippine Islands. A true story.

A true story and somehow to me a truer story in that it was a guidebook of a Way to deal with the invasion of cancer into my body. An allegorical tale that was of ultimate usefulness to me. The remarkable part to me is that I started reading and studying it at least ten years before my diagnosis, like I was training for it. That part is remarkably woo woo!

But even as it speaks to me it may be unintelligible to another in my same position. I have recommended this book to people but that may be a mistake as it may have been meant for me personally. But someone else may have another story that speaks loudly to them. And this is how I am looking at it as I reread it again.

sometimes things are amazing loves, Felipé.