The Arches National Park

This week included a trip to Moab, Utah and Arches National Park, a short visit from a Denver friend, and a new recipe that was pretty tasty.

Regarding the park, the above site says:

Arches contains one of the largest concentrations of natural sandstone arches in the world. The arches and numerous other extraordinary geologic features, such as spires, pinnacles, pedestals and balanced rocks, are highlighted in striking foreground and background views created by contrasting colors, landforms and textures. With the addition of the Lost Spring Canyon area, the park is 76,519 acres in size.

Above is a picture of The Three Gossips, one of many unique rock formations found in the park.

Water and ice, extreme temperatures and underground salt movement are responsible for the sculptured rock scenery of Arches National Park. On clear days with blue skies, it is hard to imagine such violent forces, or the 100 million years of erosion that created this land that boasts the greatest density of natural arches in the world. The more than 2,000 cataloged arches range in size from a three-foot opening, the minimum considered an arch, to the longest one, Landscape Arch, which measures 306 feet from base to base. New arches are being formed and old ones are being destroyed. Erosion and weathering are relatively slow but are relentlessly creating dynamic landforms that gradually change through time. Occasionally change occurs more dramatically. In 1991 a slab of rock about 60 feet long, 11 feet wide and 4 feet thick fell from the underside of Landscape Arch, leaving behind an even thinner ribbon of rock. Delicate Arch, an isolated remnant of a bygone fin, stands on the brink of a canyon, with the dramatic La Sal Mountains for a backdrop. Towering spires, pinnacles and balanced rocks perched atop seemingly inadequate bases vie with the arches as scenic spectacles.

The weather was sunny and warm and a perfect day for a car trip and sightseeing.

Here is a quick recipe that was ready for us when we returned home, since the crockpot did the cooking:

Tangy Chicken

2 ½ - 3 lb. meaty chicken (boneless thighs or a package of frozen, skinless, boneless chicken pieces)
¼ tsp. salt
½ of a 12 oz. can frozen lemonade (3/4 cup)
5 oz. can of chopped green chilies
3 Tbsp. packed brown sugar
3 Tbsp. Ketchup
1 Tbsp. vinegar
2 Tbsp. corn starch
2 Tbsp. cold water
Put chicken pieces in slow cooker. In small bowl combine lemonade, sugar, ketchup, salt, vinegar and green chilies. Pour over chicken. Cook on low 6-7 hours or on high for 3-3 ½ hours. Take chicken out, cover and keep warm. Put the sauce in a small pan, skim off fat, combine corn starch and water and stir into liquid. Cook til thick and bubbly. Cook for 2 minutes more and pour over chicken.

Cashews or peanuts added at the last with a garnish of chopped green onions tops it off!  Served with rice, this is a fast and tasty dinner. (Thank you for the recipe, Darlene.)

St. Patrick's Day

Top o' the morning to all you Irish and others!

Two years now I have been blogging!  This blog experiment started around St. Patrick's Day in 2008.   It has been a self indulgent journey of archiving projects, places, and eclectic facts that are of no particular interest to anyone (except me). 

Tonite, Gene, the Cook, is making a traditional Irish corned beef and cabbage dinner for family and friends.  I'll be whipping up an emerald dessert to keep us in the spirit of the Green.

A short pub crawl in downtown Grand Junction will finish off the evening's activities.

Pretty Birds

Pretty Birds at the Bloedel Conservatory in Queen Elizabeth Park, Vancouver, BC:

Daybreak Scarf (2)

Notes: Ensure that the edges are very loose as the scarf has a tendency to pull inwards.  Blocking and then ironing with steam will set the edges nicely.  This was a pattern download from Stephen West.

Imagination hand painted sock yarn from KnitPicks in the Munchkin colorway was used along with a plain green acrylic yarn.

Vancouver Pictures

A Week In Vancouver


Create Your Own

Knitting for Pleasure with Betsy McCarthy

This is worth watching; it is a video is with Jane Pauley (NBC) and a Betsy McCarthy, a woman who has traded a professional life for a less stressful retirement of knitting full time.   Her passion has also led to teaching the art of knitting.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Is your life calling?  Can you relate to Betsy?  As an understatement, I surely can.

Moments in the Healthcare Setting

There have been many eventful moments I have been privileged to share with patients hospitalized for myriad reasons, and also with individuals involved in the hospice experience.  Sometimes, the clients have shared personal thoughts and fears.  And quite often, when conversing with those in their last months of life, people have shared inspirational moments.

Here are a few incidents of spiritual, or ironic, or pleasant, or perhaps even humorous moments recalled with people who were ill:

• One patient shared that she knew the secret for a happy life in some of her last verbalized thoughts.
• A 96 year old woman who was raised on a ranch once asked if I had ridden my horse over to see her. (This occured in 2009 in an urban setting.)
• An elderly gentleman reportedly asked why Joe Biden was pitching for a televised baseball game he was watching from his recliner.
• A younger woman was having simultaneous conversations with people in the room that I could not see, but she was sure were present.  It appeared to be a one-sided from where I was sitting, but who was I to question it?
• My personal dream when I believed I had died, only to awaken to realize that I was still living. That dream had me puzzled for quite a while.
• A frightened, elderly patient who wanted someone to sit with her, but no conversation would be allowed. ( her wishes were followed.)
• One young man said that he imagined I was a "pretty hot babe" when I was younger. (love this one...how much younger?)
• One woman explained how she was not afraid of death, because she had a near-death experience when she was a teenager.  She was fully expecting and embracing her life after death.
• A friend who told me shortly before she died that she wanted me to do everything I could to make a happy life.  (That conversation could take a lifetime to interpret.)
• A patient with whom the pup and I were visiting shared her last hours with us as we sat on her bed; she stroked Libby Sweetpea between times of lucidity and murmured for us to please stay for a while.
• The painting below tries to capture the last days of a friend's life in a hospital bed as he struggled for breath, yet with his assurance that he would come into eternal life.  He was Catholic, and looking forward to release from this earth:

(original oil by N. McCarroll, 2002)

Along this line, a poem written by Dietrich Bonhöffer, a young theologian of great promise and was martyred by the Nazis for his participation in a plot against the life of Adolf Hitler. He wrote Who Am I? in 1946:

Beginning stanza: Who am I? They often tell me I stepped from my cell’s confinement Calmly, cheerfully, firmly, Like a squire from his country-house. ..... Ending stanza: Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

The entire poem can be found here. 

A reference about Victor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning:

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which respond to it…Forces beyond our control can take away everything we possess except one thing, our freedom to choose how we will respond to the situation. We cannot control what happens to us in life, but we can always control what we will feel and do about what happens to us.

This post on others who have come through difficult situations comes to mind as our daughter Julie is awaiting surgery today at Carolinas Medical Center for an AV shunt revision.  Your prayers for her well being are appreciated.

Julie with Muggsy, 2009

Painting - Lighthouse and Skyscape

Just started a  landscape including a lighthouse (oils, canvas wrapped edges, 24" x 18")

Here is the original print from which I am painting:

(picture was taken in 2009 while visiting New Zealand and Australia)

This is one of the books I am referencing for painting clouds above the lighthouse:

(by Willilam F. Powell, 1998, ISBN 0-929261-48-8)

Dutch Mustard Soup

A friend visited Germany several years ago and was impressed with a mustard soup she had enjoyed several times while on both the cruise ship and in the local towns.  She never found a recipe using mustard as the main ingredient, so my husband, The Cook, found one and made it very quickly.  We consumed it on a painting break, and she was impressed with the flavor and happy that he had found a replication of the recipe she remembered.

Here is the recipe from Dutch Mustard Soup:

Ingredients:

4 cups water
2 vegetable bouillon cubes
1/2 cup creme fraiche
2 tablespoons coarse grain mustard, with whole mustard grains
1/2 cup spreadable soft cheese, you want it to melt well
4 tablespoons cornstarch
salt and pepper
1 spring onion, chopped

Directions:

1  Bring water to boil.
2  Add creme fraiche, mustard and cheese.
3  Stir until smooth.
4  Add cornstarch.
5  Continue stirring.
6  When soup thickens, add salt and pepper to taste.
7  Garnish with chopped spring onion.

 Substitutions: sour cream and cream cheese in equal proportions saves a search (and also saves money) for creme fraiche.  Velveeta cheese could also be substitued, and will result in a more yellow color.

We ate it so quickly that I failed to get a picture of the soup, so this one will do from Flickr:

Ash Wednesday

A solemn day in the ecumenical calendar, today is the day when

the priest, dipping his thumb into ashes previously blessed, marks the forehead -- or in case of clerics upon the place of the tonsure -- of each the sign of the cross, saying the words: "Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." The ashes used in this ceremony are made by burning the remains of the palms blessed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year.

From Rock Hill, SC the Herald reports this is a day when Christians

“...confront our frailness, our failures,” ...“and the ashes symbolize our broken dreams.”

Services will start today around sunrise and will go far past nightfall. It will happen all over the earth. People with ashes on their foreheads dispersing into the day and night to try to make a world of record unemployment, broken dreams, and foreclosures.

The ashes do not always inspire.

“One time, years ago in Rock Hill, so many people left a service at the Oratory on Ash Wednesday and went to the old Revco pharmacy there in the Beatty Plaza on Cherry Road...the clerk thought it was a cult coming in. She called the police.”

The cops came to find people with gray forehead smears in the shape of the cross, hands clasped in prayer. There was no cult.

Just hope.

St. Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all.  Here is a bit of information from Catholic Encyclopedia about how the date and celebration came about:

The popular customs associated with Saint Valentine's Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e. half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer's Parliament of Foules we read:

...For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
...Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers' tokens. Both the French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain allusions to the practice. Perhaps the earliest to be found is in the 34th and 35th Ballades of the bilingual poet, John Gower, written in French; but Lydgate and Clauvowe supply other examples. Those who chose each other under these circumstances seem to have been called by each other their Valentines.

So how did chocolates become associated with this celebration?  Your turn to do a look-up.