A Return to Tannery Creek Reserve...

A stroll through the redwoods seemed ideal on this misty NorCal day. It could not have been more idyllic.

Tannery Creek Reserve is a 187 acre parcel of redwoods, fir, oak and bay trees has been protected as “forever wild” within the Bodega Land Trust since 2011.






“And into the forest I go,
to lose my mind
and find my soul.”
– John Muir

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Less Blogs, More Family Time

We are heading to the Bay Area to spend time with our sons and their families. I just wanted you to know I won't be blogging as frequently. Believe it or not, not every day is blogworthy, though I do try! I'll post when possible.

Austria, 2000
"The surest measure of the things that really matter in life is that they generate anniversaries and reunions." ~Robert Brault


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Tahoe Today: What A Difference

The storms have passed and we just needed to get to the shore to actually gaze upon the Lake.

Interestingly, on average, there are 273 sunny or partly sunny days per year in South Lake Tahoe (the US average is 205 sunny days). Just another reason we love it here!
One of the most important reasons we chose our cabin is its walkability. "Studies show people who live in neighborhoods with a high walkability score weigh six to 10 pounds less than those who don’t (not sure about this statistic). A higher walk score also influences the amount of time a resident spends in their community." This view is ours after a less than ten minute walk. This is truly our happy place!
“A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature.
It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder
measures the depth of his own nature.”
- Henry David Thoreau

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Undercover Blues Movie: The Sailboat

Lately, I have been recommending a lot of our old time favorite movies since it's stay inside weather. The one that has the most connection to us, personally, is Undercover Blues, which we still love almost 30 years since its release.

Undercover Blues is a 1993 action comedy film about a family of secret agents starring Kathleen Turner, Dennis Quaid and Stanley Tucci, among other talented cast members. Jane and Jefferson Blue are a wise-cracking couple of spies, for an unnamed U.S. covert organization, on maternity leave in New Orleans with their baby daughter. With the baby's arrival, they have decided to move on to Chapter Two of their marriage, retiring from field assignment in an attempt to give their daughter a normal life. While they enjoy the tourism of the city, they are the repeated targets of a low-level mugger called 'Muerte' (Tucci) who they foil with relative ease each time he tries to attack them (one of Stanley Tucci's funniest roles).
Kathleen Turner Starboard Side
SPOILER ALERT: Frank, their former handler from Jeff and Jane's espionage days, asks the duo for one more mission in exchange for longer maternity leave and an added bonus to their salary. Long story short, they accept the assignment, foil an evil former Czech Secret Police officer, retrieve an experimental plastic explosive, and at the end, celebrate their victory by leaving New Orleans by this Transpac sailboat.
Ross Port Side
So how did we hear about this movie, whose box office earnings were only half of its $25 million budget? In 1993, Steve's dad bought the actual boat, Papela, the Blues sailed off in. The yacht salesman used that fact in his sales pitch. To think, I sat where Dennis Quaid sat just months before. Fun right?!
Kathleen & Dennis
Ross & Betty
Interesting film faux pas, "On the compass binnacle in the sailboat at the end of the movie, it has two dymo label strips for bearings "DANA PT. - AVALON 244M" and "NEWPORT - AVALON 224M" which would be for a sailboat used off of the California coast, and not New Orleans." Our maiden voyage departed Dana Point for Papela's new home in Newport.
I am always delighted to have memories evoked, for whatever reason. How fun that a rainy day movie recommendation would do just that.

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Snowy Morning: A Silly Poem

It's two months before Christmas and all about the Lake; wintertime memories Steve and I did make.

We bundled up to explore in the morning's snow; slushing and slogging we gently did go.
But alas, at the shore there was not much to see; though we were happy to be there even with poor visibility.
We rejoiced in the higher water level the storm did bring; briefly believing that winter is in full swing.
We meandered and even sat in an old chair lift; expressing gratitude for this much needed wintery gift.
And while the rest of our day will be spent cozy at home; we are happy for our wonderful morning roam.

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Fashionable Mail Art...

On a blustery afternoon, with a desire to get creative, Karen and I hung out in my backyard doing Mail Art. It is one of my favorite things to do and I never seem to have the time. We had made a date weeks ago.


The illustrations I used came from this exceptional book by John Peacock.
The background papers came from this Simplicity pattern I purchased at a thrift store. This never used pattern was purchased in 1999 (the receipt was tucked inside). It made me feel less bad about my unused hoarded supplies.

These are two of my finished cards. I really like them a lot. Oh, and the 'buttons'... those were created with a punch I purchased, yep you guessed it, at a thrift store!

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Last Hike of the Season...

With an atmospheric river storm predicted for tomorrow, we got out in nature with our final Van Sickle Bi-State Park hike for this season. 









It's about to get exciting. Winter Storm Warning issued October 23 at 11:43AM PDT until October 25 at 11:00PM PDT by NWS Reno Greater Lake Tahoe Area.

* WHAT...Heavy wet snow expected above 7000 feet. Total snow accumulations of 4-8 inches for Donner Pass and Echo Summit, 3-5 inches for Spooner Summit, 12-18 inches for Mt Rose Summit, with multiple feet of snow for higher mountains. Communities around Truckee and the Tahoe Basin are likely to only get an inch or two, with mainly rain falling, however there is a 30% chance of 6 inches of snow if snow levels fall faster than forecasted.

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Early Morning Full Moon...

I woke early, as usual, and stepped outside to smell Tahoe. I was greeted, surprisingly, by the Hunter's Moon.

October’s full moon is called the hunter's moon as it is the time of year when hunters begin collecting food and storing it for the long and cold winter months ahead, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Other nicknames for October’s full moon include the falling leaves moon, the migrating moon, the drying rice moon, and the freezing moon. I just call it beautiful!
This sight makes getting up early so worth it!

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Dead Letter Office...

I have been delighting in the National Postal Museum's Wine & Design programs, since the pandemic began.

"Our October virtual postal-themed crafting happy hour will feature the ominously named Dead Letter Office (DLO). After a lively talk with curator Lynn Heidelbaugh, the National Postal Museum’s Dead Letter Office expert, participants will explore the crafting side of the indecipherable with a demonstration led by artist Michelle Chen instructing how to clearly write your own calligraphy using supplies you have at home." Doesn't that sound like a really fun hour?
In 2016, Steve and I toured the Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum where I first learned of the Dead Letter Office.
The caption I put with this image was, "This display was just plain sad, to me. From mystery addresses and deficient postage to unclaimed items, undeliverable mail fell to the care and handling of the Dead Letter Office. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Dead Letter Office functioned to ensure all measures were taken to uphold the bargain that postage paid assured delivery."
The United States postal system was established on July 26, 1775, and mail started going “dead” very soon after. They’re called dead letters because they are missives that can’t be delivered to their intended recipient or returned to sender, usually because there’s no return address. The USPS officially opened a dead letter office in 1825, but the idea of having one is older than the national postal service itself.
I had to share my desk where all my missives are drafted and fretted over, wondering if they too would become dead letters.
The thing about dead letters is that the postal service doesn’t want them to stay dead. By the 1860s, with the nation's men busy fighting in the Civil War, women employees outnumbered the men 38 to 7. These mostly female clerks acted as “skilled dead letter detectives,” inspecting the mail for potential clues about who sent it or where it was going. “Basically, dead letter clerks handled three types of mystery mail,” wrote James H. Bruns for the Smithsonian National Postal Museum:  Misdirected letters, which were those which had all of the right information necessary to get them delivered, but for some reason were sidetracked, largely either because they weren't handled correctly by postal employees or had been abandoned at the designated post office; "Blind Readings," so called because to the average postal worker the address would appear as though it was read blindfolded; and prank mail.

In 1893, the DLO handled about 20,000 items every day. In 2006, approximately 90 million undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) items ended up in the dead-letter office of the U.S. Postal Service; when the rightful owners cannot be identified, the correspondence is destroyed to protect customer privacy, and enclosed items of value are removed. Items of value that cannot be returned are sold at auction.
Who were these letter detectives? At the turn of the last century, a widow named Patti Lyle Collins was its star employee. Toward the end of the 19th century, the postal service was swimming in undeliverable mail—about 7 million letters each year, according to one account. Rising migration both within and to the country, combined with comparatively low literacy, had produced a mass of mail with undecipherable addresses—considered “dead” unless the crack detectives of the DLO could interpret them.

To handle the rising tide, the post office hired a number of retired clergymen (deemed trustworthy enough to handle the money often inside the mail) and dozens of women, whose deft analytical skills, the postal service felt, were well-suited to untangling the confusing scrawls arriving en masse at post offices around the nation. These postal detectives used reference books, travel guides, and their own super-sleuth skills to help the letters find their rightful home.

Patti Lyle Collins, who began working in the Dead Letter Office in the early 1880s, was queen of them all. She reportedly handled about a thousand almost-dead letters a day, cracking the addresses on almost all of them. In 1893, Ladies Home Journal called Collins the office’s “presiding genius.” One source in 1901 called her "the greatest living expert in deciphering illegible and defective letter addresses.” Who knew?
What intrigued me a great deal was the variety of items that ended up in the DLO: brass knuckles, accordions and, according to this photo from 1922, tires of all kinds.
These DLO facilities are now known as mail recovery centers (MRC). The USPS MRC is located in Atlanta, Georgia. Since April 2013, the postal auctions have been held online and include not only material lost in the U.S. but also material from other national postal authorities who consign them to the USPS for auction. Needless-to-say, I'm going to be looking for this auction! What fun (though sad, too). I still find it difficult to fathom that any of my mail ends up at a mail recovery center. I always include my return address and I usually over postage, when in doubt. That said, I am happy to learn that there is still effort to get the mail to its destination. I continue to have hope for all mail sent.
Our calligraphy lesson was hosted by Michelle Chen, a muralist, painter, and calligrapher based in the Washington, DC area. Her early study of Chinese calligraphy informs her handling of brush and spray can to evoke the expressive economy of that tradition. In her work, she investigates stories, new and inherited, that we weave to build realities of self, community, and culture. She has conducted arts workshops in painting, graffiti, calligraphy, and origami with youth and adults.

I have been a fan of calligraphy for decades yet I can't help but wonder how many exquisitely written addresses have ended up in the dead letter office.

This lecture was one that compelled me. I always wonder if a letter I send will actually be received (and I love our USPS). Knowing more about the postal employees whose job it is to get our mail to its destination comforts me.

Messenger of Sympathy and Love
Servant of Parted Friends
Consoler of the Lonely
Bond of the Scattered Family
Enlarger of the Common Life
Carrier of News and Knowledge
Instrument of Trade and Industry
Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance
Of Peace and of Goodwill Among Men and Nations
-Words carved above the Old Post Office, Washington DC

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