Live Your Dream: Fulfilling a Dream of Africa

Bruce and I met while SCUBA diving. We love adventure. After we'd been married a year, we yearned to do something different. What about the Peace Corps? We checked into Peace Corps opportunities.

I can't remember a time when I hadn't dreamed of going to Africa. We learned that as Peace Corps volunteers we could fulfill this dream and at the same time help meet desperate needs in a tiny West African country, The Gambia.

In order to make our dream of going to Africa come true, we had to sacrifice. We both gave up good jobs. We had no debts except our mortgage. We rented out our home for the two-year term of service and the rental income paid our mortgage with a little to spare. (Peace Corps volunteers receive no salary but receive a modest living-expense allowance.)

Living in an African Mandinka village 250 miles from the capital city and 120 miles from the nearest paved road was fascinating, but it wasn't easy. Our home was a mud-brick hut with a grass-thatched roof. Temperatures soared to 115 degrees. We had no running water but drew our water from a United Nations well, thankful it was pure. Our latrine, which we shared with another African family, was a hole in the ground, surrounded by a flimsy woven fence in a corner of the compound.

We had no car and walked wherever we went locally. For more distant travel, we took a bush taxi, a small pickup with wooden benches in the back and a canvas roof, reminiscent of a covered wagon.

Bruce worked with a United Nations well-digging unit, providing reliable wells for villages where traditional wells were drying up during a long drought.

As a "health volunteer," I reported to work at a bush hospital, a 32-bed facility that also held well-baby and ante-natal clinics. I'm not a medical professional, but my record keeping skills were welcomed in organizing a system to account for patients seen and medications used. I was the only non-African working at the hospital.

At first I cringed at this medical center which appeared to be so unsanitary. Due to shortages in fuel to operate the generator, we were often without electricity or running water. Flies were everywhere. Food for patients was prepared in large kettles cooked over open fires on the ground. Laundry was done by hand. But eventually I could see that we were accomplishing something--lives were being saved and, through inoculations, diseases at least partially controlled.

I had only heard of many of the Illnesses commonly seen in The Gambia, such as polio, tuberculosis and leprosy. I witnessed several deaths caused by tetanus, snake bite, and countless cases of horrible skin diseases and infections. Still, the majority of deaths were the result of water-born illnesses, especially among the very young and the old.

For two tough years we served in The Gambia, and gained a profound awareness of life at a basic level. To trim away all the extras and live a plain, simple life was to learn new truths about ourselves. We were tougher than we thought--than we ever imagined we could be. Living simply brought great satisfaction.

We both believe we made a contribution in our host African country, but it didn't compare with what we brought home--lasting memories, feelings of accomplishment and dreams fulfilled.

Live Your Dreams:Get Rid of the Clutter in Your Life

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

You can live your dream. One powerful way to make your dream a reality is to get rid of the clutter in your life. At first, this seems a daunting task, but once you get into the swing of it, you’ll find that eliminating the clutter around you frees your mind, your space and your energy. It can even save you money.

Sometimes it seems as though we spend all our time and energy getting ready to live, but we forget...living is a present state, not the future and not the past. We tend to overlook the moment of now. We're constantly rearranging our belongings to fit our current situation, dragging along things from previous lifestyles. We spend precious time and space on "things" that no longer have meaning to us. Basements, garages, drawers, closets and mini storages are filled with clutter, stuff we'll probably never need or use again. Is that accumulation of stuff valuable enough to put up with the clutter, and even expense, of hanging on to it?

Several years ago my husband and I purchased a 40-foot sailboat and realized our dream of sailing throughout the South Pacific. When we returned from our fourteen-month cruise, we sold the boat. Some of our friends were aghast. "How can you bear to sell that boat?" Because we no longer needed it.

Marinas are full of boats that never go anywhere, year after year. Because the boats at one time were important, people can't bear to part with them and as a result they use precious time and pay expensive marina fees and upkeep on something that's become a burden. We did what we set out to do and it was time to go on to other pursuits.

With some of the money from the sale of the boat, we bought a camper and for the last several years have thoroughly enjoyed overland travel. Over time we’ve upgraded our camper, getting a larger one to accommodate our needs. As long as we're using the camper, we'll maintain it, pay the license fee, and enjoy it.

It has been our experience that after the fervor of thoroughly enjoying an interest, such as scuba diving, which we did for several years, we move on to other activities and rarely return to that particular hobby.

The idea that we'll get back to that scuba gear or that old ham radio equipment encourages us to hang on to this stuff. But the reality is that if we should want to return to that particular hobby, we're going to find our equipment archaic. With technology as it is today, yesterday's state-of-the-art is almost antique now. When I see scuba divers enter the water today, I marvel at the difference between the equipment they carry and what we used a few years ago.

Here are a few tips on freeing your life of clutter:

-- Learn to let go. Give magazines you’ve already read to schools or convalescence centers. Give all but your really special books to book drives that collect them for a cause. Give clothes to thrift shops or to shelters. Dig deep–you’ll be surprised when you discover you don’t even miss those things.

-- Start with one room and clear out all the stuff you don’t need. Make five piles:
1) Throw away
2) Give away
3) Sell
4) May need to keep
5) Need to keep

Ask yourself these questions as you sort through these items: Do I still need this? How long as it been since I used it last? As you toughen up, you’ll find more and more items fit in the first three piles. Go from room to room–you’ll be amazed at the wonderful sense of freedom this will give you.

-- Selling items can be rewarding in more ways than building your income. Don’t use the money to buy more "stuff" unless it’s something that will add significantly to your life. Tuck the money away to help make your dreams come true. Sell items through:
1) Garage sales – either your own or jointly with neighbors or community groups
2) Place ads in the local paper or a classified ads paper
3) On-line through a website such as Craig’s List

-- Curtail your spending. Sooner than you think, the items you feel you must have today are tomorrow’s clutter. Before you buy, give yourself at least a one day "cooling off period." More often than not, you’ll reconsider making that purchase.

Clutter, the accumulation of old stuff, holds us back. It dictates where we live, what we do with our time. It gobbles up our money in storage fees, or even in housing requirements--we could live in smaller, compact homes if we didn't have so much stuff. Or, we could enjoy the luxury of larger more spacious feeling without a lot of clutter. Just imagine--without all that clutter, you could park your car in the garage! What a concept.

Cut through the clutter of your life. It takes a little determination, but the rewards are great. You'll find it tremendously freeing. With a critical eye, check your home, look around your storage areas, and see what can be eliminated. The newly created space, the freedom from clutter, will be its own treasure.

Now that you have less clutter in your lives, can’t you see your way more clearly to realizing your dream?

Heidi Thomas: Growing Up in Rural Montana

Jordan Dormitory alumni: Heidi’s Dad, class of 1942; Heidi, class of 1968







It is my pleasure to have Heidi Thomas as my guest during her blog tour. Heidi’s coming-of-age novel, Cowgirl Dreams, a story about her grandmother, has met with wide acclaim. At one time she mentioned to me that during her high school years she lived in a dorm during the school week, since their family ranch was too far from school for a daily commute. I find this fascinating and have asked her to tell us more about that part of her background.

What do you do when you live 150 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart (or K-Mart, etc.)?

Actually, when I was growing up on a ranch in eastern Montana during the 1950s and ‘60s, there weren’t any of those ’Marts, so I didn’t know what I was missing! The nearest town of any size was Jordan, population about 200.

You might say that I lived a life that was rather similar to that of my grandmother’s in many ways. So, in that respect I feel like I could identify with how she grew up.

We did live a mile and a half from a little country grocery store and Post Office at Sand Springs, so we could go there for groceries. But many people lived 30 to 50 miles farther from the main highway and they would take their big cattle or grain trucks in to a larger city in the fall to stock up for the winter. If it was a long winter with a lot of snow, we might not see them for four or five months!

So, because there was no bus service, when I attended high school, I stayed in a dormitory during the week and came home on weekends. About 60 out of the 150 students in high school, lived in the dorm, a two-story building across the street from the school.

Boys lived on the first floor and girls on the second and we had a no-nonsense dorm matron who made sure we adhered to the rules. After school hours, we were required to sign out and in, we each had chores assigned for a month at a time, we had to be present for meals, and we had a 9 p.m. curfew. The exception to that was the one or two nights a movie showed at the local theater. If the movie ran longer than 9 p.m., we were excused.

Because of the “baby-boomer” generation, the dorm was filled to capacity during the four years I lived there. Most rooms housed three (some had four) girls. Can you imagine that many teenagers sharing one tiny closet? We tried to pack clothes for a week at a time, but it was still a little on the crowded side. We shared a communal bathroom, with one shower stall.

Dorm life was something I had in common with my dad, who lived there during his senior year in 1942. He told me out of 109 students in high school, only three had their own cars, so more students stayed through the weekends during the winter.

My parents often took me to school on Monday mornings and picked me up Friday afternoons, or I sometimes rode with neighbors. I did have my own car when I was a senior.
Extra-curricular activities were few in those days. Some kids “cruised the drag” (Main street was about two blocks long), some boys were involved in basketball (no girls team and no football team). I was involved in chorus, band and the school newspaper.

I returned about 20 years later to do an article about the dorm for Montana Magazine. By that time, residents had dwindled to fewer than 20, because of a decline in the general student population as well as added daily bus service to the outlying areas.

In many ways, the landmark founded in 1936 had not changed much. The rooms were spartan by most teen standards. The bunk beds of the ‘60s were dismantled into single beds and some of the rooms were empty. But each still reflected the personality of its occupant.

The Jordan dorm was the last public high school dormitory in the United States when it closed in the mid-1980s.

Thank you, Mary, for hosting me today, and thanks to all of you for joining me on this blog stop. Come back tomorrow for an interview on Teens Read Too http://www.teensreadtoo.com/ and an article on “Connections” on the Women Writing the West blog http://womenwritingthewest.blogspot.com/

ACT NOW TO MAKE YOUR HOME WILDFIRE SAFE

Photo by Randy Fueuriet, Mission Ridge, CO

Each year, wildfires in our country take a terrible toll. With summer coming on, it’s time for homeowners to think about the possibility of wildfire and what we can do to protect our property.

How wildfire safe is your home? Be it a house in the forest, a neighborhood in a woodsy setting, or a home surrounded by wide-open spaces, consider the possibility of wildfire. Are you at the mercy of a careless camper, a stray Fourth of July bottle rocket, a bolt of lightning or even an out-of-control “prescribed burn?”

Firefighters, Departments of Forestry and other fire plan coordinators recognize the need for prevention in ways more complicated than Smokey Bear’s message to be careful with matches, though that rule certainly still applies. In today’s world of high-grade logging, wooded housing areas, and trendy homes built contrary to sound fire prevention standards, homeowners need to understand the risks.

Wildfires present a major threat where wildland and urban areas interface. These fires can be unpredictable and no region is immune to them. Each year, entire towns and hundreds of homes are at risk from wildfire. So what can you do? Plenty. Firewise construction and materials can make a difference and so can wildfire preventive landscaping methods:

● Provide a safe environment for firefighters by providing a clear access and a safe exit. If your home poses too much risk for firefighters, prudence dictates they don’t try to save your house but rather move on to one that can be saved in the limited time available to them.

● Replace your shake roof with non-combustible materials.

● Double-pane windows offer better fire protection than single pane. Also, smaller panes hold up better than large panes. Tempered glass is the better choice over plate glass.

● Vents--around the attic, under the eave soffits, under floors--are a way hot embers can enter your home. Covering vents with wire mesh screen no larger than one-eighth inch helps prevent sparks from entering your home.

● Wooden fences can act as a fuse leading right to your house. Attach the wooden fence to a cement pillar, a section of wire fence or a gate, to act as a firestop.

● Don’t keep flammable materials near your home. Remove anything that can easily burn–firewood, dense or dry vegetation, tall grass, lumber scraps–to a distance at least 30 feet away.
● Thoroughly water all vegetation within 60 feet of your home and outbuildings during dry periods.

● Follow your area’s burning regulations. Restrict a fire to within four feet in diameter, have a shovel, a charged hose, and a person capable of extinguishing a fire present at all times. Extinguish the fire before leaving it.

Don’t be one of this season’s statistics. Act now, and throughout the fire season, to protect your home from wildfire.

Review: DIARY OF MURDER By Jean Henry Mead

Distraught over her sister Georgi’s mysterious death, Dana Logan and friend Sarah drive an RV through a snowstorm to her sister’s home in Wyoming. Dana dismisses the theory that her sister committed suicide–Georgi loved life too much to even consider taking her own.

Arriving at her sister’s home, Dana and Sarah have immediate reservations about Rob, the “grieving” widower. A cremation is scheduled too quickly and a housekeeper is already boxing up her sister’s belongings. It’s only been two days since Georgi died and these actions make it appear there is reason to cover up evidence. Dana finds her sister’s diary and a winding, treacherous story begins to unfold.

Although Dana and Sarah have played amateur detectives before, this case taxes even their creative and persistent skills. Dana’s talented daughter soon joins them and together the three take on what becomes a dangerous investigation.

Mead does a masterful job in taking her readers down dark treacherous paths of betrayal, deceit and greed. Many people are involved in this suspense thriller--there’s much more to the story than the death of Dana’s sister. Many characters take part in the story, yet Mead keeps them sorted out, making Diary of Murder a riveting, satisfying read.

The Business of Writing

Most of us write for the love of writing. Yet, for many, in order to continue doing what we love, we must get compensation for our work. The business of writing is just that–a business. As in most business enterprises, record keeping is a vital part of the procedure of maintaining our profession and measuring progress.

For me, the most efficient method of keeping track of article submissions is to have a table listing all my submissions and subsequent activities. I list the name of the article, the publisher, the status (submitted, published, paid, follow-up, rejected) and dates of activities. I place an asterisk beside the article name until all activity is concluded.

At the first of each month I do a search for the asterisk to learn the status of article activity and take the appropriate action. I haven't had many problems with delinquent payment, but occasionally I've sent a payment reminder letter, or perhaps an invoice listing the article, when it was published, and the amount due. I wait for at least two months after publication before sending a payment reminder. Using a simple spreadsheet or table shows me where I need to take action.

Of course, the best scenario is when I’m paid in advance for my work. But the above steps keep me ahead of the game and help me to keep track.

Persistence and good record keeping–for me these practices contribute to my success rate in getting articles published and getting paid to write them.

The Blooming Fields of Skagit Valley

We love the Northwest and one of the reasons is the annual Tulip Festival. It’s like viewing the perfect mural–row upon row of dazzling color–brilliant red, sparkling yellow, vivid pink, rakish purple. Though picture-perfect, they’re real, these delightful tulip fields of the Skagit Valley. Not only tulips, but daffodils and iris grace these lovely fields. Although Mother Nature dictates the bloom dates, daffodils bloom first, followed by tulips and finally, iris.

Now extended to cover the entire month of April, this year’s 26th annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival also features–in addition to viewing the blooming fields--a packed schedule of events including art shows, wood crafting events, barbecues, quilt walks, walking and bicycle tours and kite flying.

Since the mid-1930s, spring-time visitors to the Skagit Valley have marveled at the striking beauty of tulip, daffodil and iris fields. Northwest Washington, particularly the Skagit Valley, has become world- famous for its seasonal showcase and for its commercial bulb production. Washington Bulb Company, the nation’s largest tulip, daffodil and iris producer, makes its headquarters in Skagit Valley.

A favorite local story tells about the Northwest gardener who thought he would buy his bulbs that year from “the source”–Holland. You guessed it–when he received his bulbs from Holland, the package label said the bulbs were grown in the Skagit Valley!

Visitors who return year after year to enjoy the springtime hues will notice that those fields seen last year frequently will not have the same crop this year. That’s because flower bulbs, like many other crops, must be rotated to preserve the soil and reduce pest infestation. The flowers rotate to their original field about every five years.

Tulip Festival maps are available at many Skagit Valley stores, but it isn’t necessary to have a map to enjoy the blossoms. Signs indicate the “Tulip Route,” or you may simply drive along until you see a field. If there is a pull-off, park and enjoy the view, or even walk along designated paths.

Great opportunities await eager photographers. My husband Bruce claims early morning or late afternoon give the best light for picture taking. Many of his pictures include landscape attractions, such as barns or snow-capped Mt. Baker.

If you’re lucky enough to be in the Pacific Northwest during April, join us!