Day 70, 30May10

Well... today was my father's birthday. Happy Birthday Dad. Say "Hi' to Alicia for me.

He would have been 86 today. He had an amazing life and specifically an adventure leaving China during the communist revolution. In combing through his documents, I found several scraps of paper in Chinese dating back to April 1951 with the story of his adventurous trip to the United States. He also recorded his story which I'll have to have someone transcribe for us. I'll write more about his journey later.

Cathie reminded me that life truly is a circle with death just being a portion of the circle. For us right now, we seem to be stuck in this phase. We can not seem to be able to escape where we are right now. We found a picture of four generations of the Lee family with my grandfather, my dad, me, and Alicia. It struck us when we found it, that everyone in the picture is now dead except foe me. I suspect we'll continue to find things like this over time.

On Saturday morning at 2am, a fat raccoon killed Raja and Sultan (2 of the 3 newest chickens). I forgot to put them away this evening after dinner with friends. I did not even think about it when I came home. They were in their home but the raccoon entered and killed em. Jacasta and Jafar escaped. I hear some chicken noise at 2am. I threw on some clothes and ran out with Cathie. The fat raccoon was in the tree about 5 feet away from the bird cage. It just hung in the tree. I grabbed a flash light to keep it trained on the 'coon which Cathie grabbed a garden rake. The raccoon retreated a few feet on the fence after we started advancing on the tree. Cathie found the two in the cage dead. She found Jacasta in the back door alive and later found Jafar hiding in the garden. We kept the birds in the house until the next morning to foil the return of the raccoon. I cleaned up the cage and locked it up tight for the rest of the night/morning.

Also a spouse of someone at work died unexpectedly last week. I was asked to connect with this person and get a sense if she needed anything. I suggested to them a few options/ideas. It took more than a few moments to prepare myself for this conversation. It is never easy to speak with someone in this situation. I had to put myself in a place where I would be able to detach a bit from my emotions. This is not where I have even been close to recently. I am glad I was able to help this person with some ideas and things we did but it was not easy.

I walked down to Tennessee Valley this morning. It has been over 3 weeks since I last hiked down to the bunker. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day today. When I arrived at the bunker, the program and cranes were gone. I peered into the structure and could not find the mini-volleyball and letters. There were a couple of cranes left and the candle. All the rest were gone. I'm glad I was prepared with another program and a few cranes. I was able to rescue these items on the bunker itself. I guess I was not totally surprised. Time moves on and as such, I would venture to guess the Park Rangers 'cleaned up' the bunker. I suspect the items could grossly be considered graffiti or minimally refuse.