Enga mellom fjella

Mist on the mountains...

...damn power lines.

me:

It's odd how the eye doesn't seen certain things. Like power lines... until one points the camera that direction... then they are an obvious nuisance. We have lots of them here in this part of town. Same in Pérez Zeledón in Costa Rica. Hard to take a nice photo with power lines in the forefront.

So.

1. Chapbook:

Fought with Word yesterday and I (may have) won. At least I have copies of "poems" for my chapbook that are well-formated. In other words... I could probably print them "as is". Now to re-read and scrutinize for typos and other stupidity.

2. Travel:

A. Made copies from my journal of three month trip in Costa Rica November 2012 - January 2013. There are names, places, phone numbers, prices... Fought copy machine but finally done. Need to add July-August 2013. It's less crucial but I'd rather have it with me than not. Up coming trip is December 7th - February 4th.

B. I really do think Portugal in March and Norway in May is doable. April would be a journey of getting from Portugal to Norway (by way of Turkey or Montenegro or Poland?).

3. Where do I live?

Not sure... I seem to have lost a couple years. Since I started traveling in 2009 and in earnest in 2011 I haven't been here in Montana much. I do look forward to being here, but friends move on and I don't even realize it. Like, Lavinia has had her "new" car for 2 years? When did that happen? I'm not in Costa Rica enough to consider that home either. Oh well, traveling works for now.

4. Phoebe Snetsinger

Never heard of her? From Wikipedia:

Phoebe was a birder famous for having seen over 8,398 species by the time of her death.

A. Inspired to begin birding after seeing a Blackburnian Warbler in 1965, Phoebe did not follow the hobby ardently until a doctor diagnosed her with terminal melanoma in 1981 (age 50). Instead of convalescence at home, she took a trip to Alaska to watch birds, and returned home to find the cancer in remission. From then on, she would travel to often remote areas, sometimes under dangerous environmental and political conditions, in order to add to her growing life list. As an amateur ornithologist, she took copious field notes, especially regarding distinctive subspecies, many of which have since been reclassified as full species.

B. While on a birding trip in Madagascar in 1999 (age 68), the van she was riding in overturned, killing her instantly. Her final life bird, after almost two decades as a "terminal cancer patient," was the Red-shouldered Vanga, a species which had only been described as new to science in 1997.

Snetsinger's memoir, titled Birding on Borrowed Time, was published posthumously in 2003 by the American Birding Association (ABA). The ABA describes this work as "More than merely a travel narrative, the book is also a profoundly moving human document, as it details how Phoebe Snetsinger's obsession with birds became a way of coping with terminal illness."

5. Maybe I should take up birding? Nah... it's the passion that counts.

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