Summer 2018 - Bend, Oregon... Higher Ground Cohousing

This summer I'm staying in Bend, OR and plan to return to San Diego in the fall. I'm staying at Higher Ground, a Bend co-housing community and am doing a combination of pet sitting, house sitting, and renting a room. When I arrived in late May I stayed with my friends Perry and Carol for a few days before starting a pet/house sitting gig for the month of June...then another pet/house sitting gig for a couple of weeks... and now I'm renting a room... to be interrupted by another week of pet sitting in early September. The video shows a bit ofHigher Ground... the Cohousing Common House, the pond, and Perry & Carol's house and where I'm renting a room at Ellen's.

Watch the video! [click here]

Jungle Tiger

Jungle Tiger author, Mark Rainbolt, was my neighbor and I read his book shortly before his death in 2014. I thought it was a terrific book and fortunately I had the chance to tell him so before he died.

I'm pretty sure he and I were on opposing sides of the political spectrum but I always found him to be an interesting and articulate person to talk with on any subject. Jungle Tiger shows that he could write as well as he spoke. 

Jungle Tiger

2014 Reading and Movie Favs

Reading
Robert B. Parker's Wonderland - Ace Atkins
Raylan - Elmore Leonard
Plum Lovin' - Janet Evanovich
Bad Business - Robt. B. Parker
Calico Joe - John Grisham
Walking Shadow - Robt. B. Parker
Jungle Tiger - Mark Rainbolt
Explosive 18 - Janet Evanovich
Benjamin Franklin - Brandon Miller
Detroit - Scott Martelle
Drift - Rachel Maddow
Heads in Beds - Jacob Tomsky - *2014 favorite
The Cheapskate Next Door - Jeff Yeager
Killing the Blues - Robt. B. Parker
I Suck at Girls - Justin Halpern

Movies
Blue Jasmine
The Big Year
Dallas Buyers Club
American Hustle
The Wolf of Wall Street
Captain America: the Winter Soldier
Heaven is Real
Draft Day
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Our Idiot Brother
Enough Said
Love Serenade
Adventureland
22 Jump Street
Girl Most Unlikely
Edge of Tomorrow
Muscle Shoals
And So It Goes
A Walk Among the Tombstones
Mud
St. Vincent
Citizen 4

Faux Kombucha

I like kombucha but can't tolerate any amount of cafeine at all so wanted to come up with a no cafeine alternative.  As it turns out it's just not possible to make kombucha from herbal tea.

I've come up with the following kombucha-like herbal tea drink that is pretty easy to make myself.

2 quarts boiling water
3 - rooibos tea bags
1 - licorice mint tea bag
1/3 cup stevia
1/2 cup vinegar or lemon juice
Chill overnight in the frig

To serve:
Fill a glass 2/3 full with tea and three ice cubes; then fill with soda or seltzer water.

Huyler's Chocolate at the Mingei

I only discovered this art museum in Balboa Park a couple of months ago.  I had walked by it many times on free Tuesdays thinking it wasn't a free museum.  Well, my loss...  Every visit has been a pleasant surprise.

Today I went in and ran across this odd exhibit called "A Golden Age of Marketing Design" about Huyler's Chocolate.  ...never heard of it.  It turns out Huylers was in business for fifty years and for much of that time it was the biggest chocolate company in the country.  The company and it's products have now  completely disappeared.  The Huyler family sold the business in 1925 and it went bankrupt during the depression a few short years later.   I was born in 1952 and have never heard of this company before today.  Can you imagine Microsoft going out of business and within 20 years nobody has ever heard of it before.

Huyler's was the first candy company in the U.S. to use large-scale advertising to market its products-- as a result it became the major candy company in the U.S. during its fifty years.  By 1915 Huyler's was producing over 1600 varieties of candies.

During this period in our history few women worked outside the home, and those that did were often grossly underpaid and slaved in conditions that were pitifully unhealthy.  Huyler's factories were models of egalitarian reform which was very rare in that time.  Most of Hulyer's 2000 employees were women and given managable workloads, paid holidays, medical aid and disability compensation.

By the time the business was sold by the family in 1925 fourteen factories produced the chocolates that were sold in fifty-one Huyler's Stores and soda fountains throughout the East Coast while its products were sold in over 5000 small businesses nationwide.  Despite the rapid expansion Huyler's chocolates were never mass-produced.  The business relied on maintaining its reputation for supplying the best chocolate in America.

Ummm...

Pilot Butte Burger

Last night's Pilot Butte Burger for 4.

Carol sits river side during yesterday's hike along the Deschutes River to Dillon Falls.

The High Desert Museum

When my friends Phil and Jody were here in Bend we spent a day a out at the High Desert Museum just sound of Bend.  The raptor house is part of the museum and houses all kinds of disabled raptors-- a Peregrine Falcon is shown here.

They had a display of disgustingly cute river otters too.

Higher Ground Fourth of July

A group of us at Bend, Oregon's Higher Ground Co-housing Community played to a sell out crowd during the 4th of July picnic...

Higher Ground Co-housing Community-- Bend, Oregon

I'm spending the summer house sitting here in Bend's Higher Ground Co-housing Community[https://sites.google.com/site/highergroundcohousing/] for my friends Perry and Carol who are leaving next week to bike across the U.S.

This is Higher Ground's Common House where various events are held.  On Wednesday night in the summer there is a potluck dinner.  Last night's was pretty well attended.  A fairly full house with several dozen people attending.





I've been getting out for a short morning walk to get familiar with the local critters since I arrived on Sunday afternoon.  It's going to take me awhile to figure out what all I'm seeing but here are a couple that I spotted this morning:

House sparrow.

Western Scrub Jay

And this grey squirrel was pretty curious about what I was up to.

Ogden's Union Station Railway Museum

It was hotter than blazes here in Ogden today so instead of hiking I took a short afternoon bike ride to see the rail museum at Ogden's Union Station.

[Click on the image to see full sized.]

This 4-8-4 Northern locomotive is the biggest, and most impressive, piece of old iron they have here at the museum.

See all of the large bolt heads here on the boiler?  What the heck are those things? I'm guessing it has something to do with the firebox...  Let me know if you have an idea.

[Click on the image to see full sized.]

This is certainly another impressive piece of old railroad iron too.  Interesting that its useful service life was only 9 years compared to almost 20 years for the Northern steam engine.

Ogden Bluegrass and Acoustic Music Festival

I came to this festival thinking it was strictly a bluegrass festival but was pleasantly surprised to find that it included all kinds of acoustic music.  The picture below is of The Boxcars, my favorite bluegrass band of all time.  In this picture they're conducting a "band dynamics" workshop for only about six of us-- it was terrific!  

Pima Air and Space Museum - Tucson

Wow, this place was a gold mine of old airplanes!  For me the best display was the restored World War II B-29 bomber.















After graduating from high school in 1941 then completing two years of college and then over two years of pilot training my dad was mobilized to the Pacific in the spring of 1945 shortly before Japan's surrender.

I always knew that my dad had been a B-29 pilot in WWII but since he seldom discussed details about it there was a lot that I didn't know.  As luck would have it a still-living 90 year old[the same age my dad would be] B-17 bomber pilot was speaking at the B-17 display when we got there.

For the birds...

Bird watching has become a new past time for me while staying here at Lake Havasu.  I've been going for a daily morning bird walk for an hour since mid-January.  About twice a week I've been going on a guided bird walk in the state park next to where I'm staying.  The walk is lead by volunteer Jim Scott on Wednesday through Sunday.  Thanks to Jim I've seen 52 kinds of birds.  You can visit his blog at: cascaderamblings.blogspot.com/ .

Havasu Birds

I'm seeing a lot of really great birds in the state park here in Lake Havasu.  In the past couple of days I've seen these[pics not by me]...

Ladderback Woodpecker

Red tailed Hawk

Lake Havasu Sunsets

We just keep having these great sunsets over Lake Havasu...

Lake Havasu Hiking Fun

My brother and sister-in-law have been visiting and we're getting out for lots of hikes.  Everybody got to slide down this dry waterfall...

On the hike out we ran across these mountain sheep...

I never had them let me get this close.

Uncle Stub's Bull Fiddle

I really like this picture of my Uncle Stub [Alton Knsiley-- actually my dad's uncle] and his bull fiddle.  He used to play it at square dances in Lansing, Michigan.  Dance steps can be called by the fiddle player into the fiddles megaphone.

Favorite Lake Havasu Birds

The place where I'm staying here in Havasu is only about 200 yards from the shore of Lake Havasu and I've been taking a morning bird walk on the shore of the lake.  Here are some of my favorites so far [all the bird pics were robbed from the web]:

Anna's Humming Bird

Double Crested Corrmorant

Great Egret.

Northern Harrier.

Belted Kingfisher.  [My favorite bird ever!]