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Athenian Subway Tour

 in Gratitude / Greece / travel  tagged Athena / Athens / avoiding pickpockets / GoAhead Tours / pickpockets / subway / travel by

Tour director Rachel recruited my husband Steve to help haul excess luggage across Athens, then treated him to a Metro ride back. She knew that taking the Metro was dicey. During the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, Greece had no resources to prevent illegal immigrants from flooding in, so Athens was overrun with desperate people, some of whom still struggle to survive. Many have turned to picking pockets, and the subway is an ideal locale for getting hands-on. After having Rachel point out a few likely candidates, Steve noticed that though pickpockets dress like tourists, they reek of body […]

Loose-Leash Encounters

 in camping / travel / Wildlife/animals  tagged baby fawn / bears / dog leash / hiking / moose / Sawtooth Mountains by

    High in the Sawtooth Mountains, my Molly mutt charged into a small valley. Through the trees, I glimpsed the creature she’d spotted. It was a little bigger than Molly, dark, and slow. Bear cub? The glance I’d gotten had left a calf shaped impression, but rough-cut, like a Gumby character. Bear or bovine, that critter’s mama was not going to stand for this. I shouted with little hope. I knew that Molly was too excited to hear me, and that my lumbering pace would make me a fine target for that mama’s wrath. This sort of situation is […]

A Memorial for Lily Marie Payton Womack

 in ancestors / Colorado / Gratitude  tagged Colorado General Hospital / Delta Colorado / Fruitvale Highline Canal / Grand Junction Colorado / Great Depression / Lily Payton Womack / memorial / Mont Ida Kansas / National Youth Administration / No Market for 'Em / obituary / Redlands Colorado / Rifle Colorado / San Jose California / Wendy the Welder / World War II tinner by

      My Aunt Lily was wonderfully friendly and fun. She lived in San Jose, California, so even though we Coloradans didn’t see much of her, I felt like I knew her well. When our daughters attended West Coast colleges, I sent them to meet Aunt Lily, and they agreed that Lily was a “cool aunt.” I will always appreciate Lily’s kindness to me and my girls, as well as her help with the book No Market for ‘Em which is excerpted below. Lily’s wholehearted enthusiasm over my first book also encouraged me to follow through on the next. […]

Are Turkey Tails Truly Colorful?

 in Colorado / Wildlife/animals by

Sometimes my family hangs around with a bunch of turkeys. I was lucky enough to get a nice shot of them, or at least one with a background I love. It seems strange to me that these gobblers are black. As a kid I learned turkey anatomy by way of art projects featuring a tail of brightly colored feathers. I’ve never seen a turkey with a tail like that, but then I’ve seen few turkeys–none of them very close. I only started siting the big birds around our family’s western Colorado ranch in the last couple decades, probably because turkeys […]

Freaky Finds of a Litter Picker

 in Colorado / Inspiration  tagged bullet hole / Litter picking / Parachute / strange finds by

I often applaud people who post photos of the litter they’ve gathered while walking. I’ve never taken pics of my hauls, until last week when I came across a head. What mystery writer could pass up a decapitated cranium?Today, I asked my walking friend to take some shots of another favorite find. It was hanging on a road sign along a country road near Parachute, Colorado, and I didn’t want to make off with it before the owner had a chance to reclaim it, so I watched it for a couple days. My plan was to wash it and donate […]

Have You Seen the Painted Ladies?

 in Colorado / travel / Wildlife/animals by

     “The painted ladies are migrating.”        Puzzled looks prompted our biology teacher to describe the butterflies he’d noticed.        Sure enough, as I drove home that afternoon, I glimpsed a smallish orange and black butterfly wafting along. Then a few more and a few more, all fluttering north. Unreal! As a lifelong Puebloan, I’d lived in the path of the great painted lady migration for 35 years and never noticed. That evening, I shared the news with my mother. She’d seen no signs of a butterfly migration in her area of Colorado’s Grand Valley. […]

Who’s the Helper in Helper, Utah?

 in camping / travel by

Why did the folks in Helper, Utah choose that name? Knowing that Utah is predominantly Morman, I thought of a Morman friend who once told me that she was happy to watch my little ones on our moving day because God rewarded her good deeds with blessings. So, maybe the town fathers chose the name to promote neighborly cooperation? No, according to a historical marker, Helper began as a railway stop where extra (helper) engines were added to power coal trains over the mountain. In any case, Helper is a well-kept, welcoming community. I was impressed to see an antique […]

From Hero to Rat-Bit Crack-Up 2

 in Colorado / Our Quest / Wildlife/animals  tagged book launch party / Colorado / hero / lab cart / Mile High Lab Rat / Pueblo Community College / rats by

After my Mile High Lab Rat book launch, we wheeled the scientist photo props back toward the van. Unfortunately, one of the cart wheels hung up on a sidewalk crack and upset the load. The crash was gentle, thank goodness. Nothing broke, but one of the live rats in the terrarium bailed. The rats were breeders on loan from a raptor center and highly replaceable—I’d guess, but I didn’t want to find out. Also, the college staff had been so accommodating in hosting my book launch party. Introducing a rat infestation to their campus seemed seriously shabby. I’d tried not […]

How Pueblo Community College Metamorphed a Lab Rat into an Author

 in Colorado / Our Quest / Wildlife/animals  tagged college safety / CSU-Pueblo Chemistry Day / Dr. Mike Davis / Kids Chemistry Kits / mentors / Mile High Lab Rat / Packard Foundation / Pueblo Community College / reaching for stars / Rocky Mountain Walkabout / science lab coordinator by

Not long after becoming Pueblo Community College’s science lab coordinator, I saw a notice that the Packard Foundation was offering small grants to boost preschool learning programs. I’d just left a preschool teaching job, and I’d been admiring the lab gizmos and thinking how much kids could get out of experiencing them, so I had a brainwave: wouldn’t it be cool if we could check kits out to teachers, so every kid in class could have a set of bottles full of magical but harmless chemicals to explore? I talked to my bosses Regis Opferman, who approved the project, and […]