Summer Storms, Brown Bears ,Powerful Potatoes and More!

August 2020 was one for the books with record high heat days, numerous bear sightings in rural northwest Connecticut, and storms that put the power out for days on end.

I planted potatoes earlier in the garden season and they were blooming just fine by August, ready to dig and enjoy with butter, salt and pepper and toppings of my choosing whether sour cream, cilantro, parsley, chives, basil and even tomatoes and cheese.

When I was out West visiting family we had a baked potato with a toppings bar that worked our well feeding over a dozen adults with good appetites. I thought to cook up a heap of mushrooms and a pot of broccoli which my relatives appreciated. That was all back in February 2020, pre-COVID times. Remember those days?

I had dashed off to Hawaii of all places, taking up an offer from the wondrous Dr. Laurie Moore to join a few others in a special week she had planned. There had been the prospect of ‘free air miles’ to cover the flight from the mainland to Hawaii for a ‘one swipe’ of a the Hawaiian Airlines credit card that would cost $100 to have as an annual fee.

That was all new language and thinking for me, both travelling from CT to anywhere on a plane, especially out of the US, and having an affordable way to get there.

But I worked enough to feel I might have some ‘mad money’ for people in their 90s who had traveled the world and were always delighted to recount their travels and even those of their friends and parents.

The lovely woman had a mother who had gone to Hawaii and “loved it” and came back with mu-mu dresses she enjoyed wearing to remind her of the trip.

I felt I was due to make some mu-mu memories of my own and recalled how my mother had taken a batch of us young ones to Puerto Rico for a week when I turned nine.

This trip would be mine. I gave myself a few weeks to decide and Dr. Laurie asked me initially if I was sure I was sure, and even without the guarantee of an affordable (mostly free) airplane trip. I had decided I shouldn’t let a thousand dollars keep me from something that was hatching out and seemed ‘meant to be for me.’

Throwing a lot of What-Ifs to the wind, I emerged from the winter gray and cold of the Northeast of the country and flew from NYC to Phoenix AZ from morning to evening, with the three hour time difference. Then there wasn’t enough time to get to the next American Airlines flight which I have found out is rather common.

I was accommodated however, and had to fly to Honolulu in Oahu then to the Big Island of Hawaii for no extra fee. I was impressed I could handle the challenge and had gotten a good run in just catching that next leg of the trip from AZ.

I felt I really had paddled my canoe like a native in terms of shuffling myself and luggage about in the midst of the journey. When I finally got a shuttle to the rental car place a few minutes from the airport in Kona, I was ready to spend the night in the car. I hadn’t driven a modern car with a GPS or way to use my phone with, so I am glad I had written out my directions from the car place. Once I got to my first air Bnb, that was a huge relief, arriving by 9 pm their time…and more like 1am my time from NY.

I’ll reflect another time about what happened next on that side of the world, but wanted to mention what an amazing trip the universe, divine and I cooked up with many others along the way over the next month.

I met hundreds of people at some events I went to along the way, some for a few hours such as a volunteer dinner in Farmington NM or a day such as a gathering of women of faith who sang, prayed and studied for hours and enjoyed lunch, and a conference with Gregg Braden at the Hilton at Bell Rock in Sedona AZ.

The other times I stayed in a tent in with a tropical habitat in Hawaii a mile from the ocean, a hostile in Kona, with friends and relatives in AZ and NM and then a nice trading post motel near the Grand Canyon in NM. I saw the Phoenix Zoo on my last day in AZ, so again mingled with many.

So if anyone would have been at risk to get or bring Corona from the West to the East, that could have been me. But thankfully I am hearing that non-symptomatic people don’t transfer the virus to others (from online reliable resources, but I will double check.) I shared my travels with my area newspaper feeling that travel could be curtailed shortly, and it certainly came to a grinding halt.

I suggested everyone double-back on their life adventures and recount for others and future generations where they went, who they say and what they did to get more mileage out of such adventures.

Our local CT Lakeville Journal newspaper (accessible online at tricornernews.com) has an array of such tales from locals and even those hiking the Appalachian Trail and people who speak at The Salisbury Forum (which is also online for all to enjoy past speakers.) This area of CT, near Dutchess County NY and the Southern Berkshires of MA as well as an hour from Hartford CT offers plenty of cultural, historical and natural resources for the rest of the country and world.

The Scoville Library and The Lakeville Journal collaborated to put many of the back issues online, with important coverage of the Peter Reilly legal case which changed the criteria for how police interview suspects.

In these modern days of scrutiny of the role of police and their policies, everyone studying federal laws and state laws makes sense before leaving home or allowing anyone in one’s home or even speaking with police.

Families and students need to know their rights regarding schooling options and the issue of vaccines will loom large with addressing COVID and other concerns.

I hear the number of vaccines has escalated over the decades and is only going up, not down, with more mandates and consequences if not complying for other than medical reasons which can be hard to validate.

Now in case you are wondering, all of that was not what I meant to share when sitting down to talk about storms, bears and potatoes…all powerful ones at that.

Maybe there’s a link between potatoes sprouting shoots and vaccines, or storms and COVID and Hawaii, or bears here and out West (not so much in the Southwest, but I recall a friend sharing picture of a huge bear that was a mix of grizzly and polar I believe…more than one would imagine could be real, not unlike the great trip I squeezed in before air travel was shut down no less.)

So here goes with the sharing of the August Summer Storms, Bears and Potatoes. A small but mighty tornado did damage to my small town about a mile from where I live, snapping trees like matchsticks as the description goes more commonly since there was a much more serious one in Cornwall CT back in July of 1990. Some folks gather to recount tales of that time since the destruction up a mountain that leveled Cathedral Pines took weeks to recover from.

This CT tornado was not as bad as one a couple of years ago in May in the Danbury CT area, where I had gone to a lovely event at Hotel Zero (which did remind me of the idea of Ground Zero, but was like a piece of heaven and a delightful event I was counting as a way to celebrate my birthday with 100 people, so thanks Patty Lennon!She offers a lot on her site worth enjoying on pattylennon.com and on FB.

Her support and inspiration to hundreds (even at such events which I’ve been to two of now with hopefully another in the future. The first one was called Mom Grows A Business and I got to go due to winning a raffle I went to in White Plains called Girls Night Out which was a heap of fun even though it was a rainy night but a friend drove me, woo-hoo so I had good company!)

So this much tamer tornado this August was followed by a crazy strong storm, and resulted in our whole area and much of CT losing power Big Time. Eversource is being called ‘Neversource’. Lawsuits and allegations are flying, while others are saying it’s not the workers fault. It’s management. The workers were doing their utmost to make sure downed power lines were off (and not being rebooted by home-powered generators which can feed into the power lines which I didn’t realize.)

Back in that July 1990 tornado aftermath up on Sharon Mountain in Sharon CT, I saw with my own eyes what a fiery snake a downed wire can turn into when the power is turned back on.

I was up in a second floor bedroom and heard a thunderous humming sound growing louder and coming closer and closer! I was afraid but didn’t comprehend where it was coming from other than ‘outside somewhere’.

Then I saw the electric wires and each telephone pole shaking or thereabouts…and suddenly the wife down in the street below started writhing about spewing purple streams of electricity out. Seeing the ball of purple light come toward us, I thought I’d get blown up so grabbed my little one and ran downstairs.

I went to stay at a friend’s even after the power got shut off quickly and it was time to go to sleep. I was too shaken to be in that room. Unfortunately someone was trying to keep me from leaving, but finally let me go when I was able to get in the car.

I realize now they may have felt I was too nervous to drive and it would have been helpful if they’d driven me there and picked me up the next day, but that’s not how we thought in those days.

Maybe my friend would have been willing to pick me up too, but again, our area was the one that had a tree come down, the power lines down and so forth.

All of this reminds me it would be great for more people, especially with little ones or elders or whoever may have special needs (in wheelchairs or mental health needs etc) to have extra people at the ready to care for them and even to move to a more central, secure location Before a Storm Hits…and to even cancel events that may land people in an unsafe situation if weather or viruses and so forth are a concern.

I realize we are all experts about that now, and likely some people have been harmed or have died from getting COVID from someone who had it and spread it inadvertently, not realizing a common cold could be something much worse.

Let’s take a moment and ‘light a candle and realign to that greater sense of care, forgiveness, asking for forgiveness and healing on all levels for time over our lifetimes and even historically for the wrong choices and moves we made that have harmed others or ourselves.’

That can cover a lot of ground and help address the emotional and relationship storms that carry on or kick up over the years whether among family, partners, friends, communities and more.

Finding our collective way to make sense of things, respect nature in her many aspects among people, animals, plants and trees, rivers and mountains, storms and microbes is something we are now all officially qualified to care about and weigh in on.

The more we can manage to understand and pursue with safety in our own lives whether with safer distancing and being aware of the foundations for physical, emotional, nutritional and practical safety and sanity, the better we can face the future.

We don’t have companion robots to monitor our every move and what we eat, but basically ‘we’re getting there’ due to the modern world and possibilities.

I was walking down my sidewalk eating a cup of yogurt with blueberries one August morning, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, coming up the steps toward me, but a young brown bear!

I was talking on the phone, looking down at my cup when I caught the movement of something I thought might be a dog, but my mind realized quickly with all that fur was more in the bear department. At least it wasn’t huge, so wouldn’t eat me in one bite. My friend heard my alarm when I gave a frantic ,“Uh-oh.”

I was stuttering a bit as I was stumbling back toward my front door just 10 feet away, and thankfully the bear took a left toward a tree and out to the back yard! Close call, but I could get back to my call.

I had to sit down inside and laugh about it for a minute to let my nerves calibrate that the potential risk that was potentially curtains for me was now back to simple zero.

The storm that took the state of CT by storm had its way with the power off for up to five days. We were in that group but did have a generator from time to time, and really not that much food to have to worry about.

We also have a river nearby so easy enough to get some buckets of water to flush toilets. A friend not far away had water we got in jugs and we could buy some.

Our town was providing some too I learned later on, so good to know. That said it was like one big camp out, and that’s not a problem in the country. I haven’t been driving places since late January when I left for my trip.

That said I did clear off a counter in the kitchen area. There was a box that had potatoes in it with other crackers and bread I put on top to make way for that shuffle when we moved a small freezer out of the house.

With the concerns about having enough food in store I had bought a bit extra even though our pantry had plenty of canned goods and pasta, peanut butter and jelly. So I put these boxes in a room I stay in on a counter.

With the warmer weather I sometimes keep a window open a bit. Last night I thought of closing it in case a bear would detect the food in my room. I’ve thought of that possibility more since bears have broken into places to get garbage out of a shed or even into a kitchen pantry when the person is home!

I noticed a bear had gotten into someone’s garbage down the road so wanted to make the effort to put the boxes in the kitchen. I did so and went through to see what was in them, only to discover the potatoes were hatching out with spouts six inches high. I could plant those possibly, but some had gone bad…

Nothing smells as bad as a rotten potato (unless there’s a rotten egg so I had to be glad it wasn’t that.) I didn’t know if I put those outside if that would attract bears so I have to consider my options today..whether to plant and see what new potatoes could grow from the old, or ‘let it go, let it go…”

These stories are offshoots of my adventures from the first part of this year and the last set of storms over the past 30 years in CT.

I am grateful to find time to catch a few of the exciting and even alarming episodes of my real life to share with others especially in these mainly getting together over the net times.

Let’s keep track of our amazing life journeys, whether in the city or the country and aim for a collective way to evolve with love.

I share lots more on my Livfully.org blog and on forums I am part of on FB including the Deb Poneman Yes to Success which just wrapped up last night with some tragic stories shared.

Consider how all of our life stories can merge when sharing in such forums. Debra Poneman’s son went to grade school with Jacob Blake, that 28- year -old father of three who was shot by police seven times and thankfully survived, but may not walk again.

She had told us an uplifting story naming him as part of her son’s social circle on a class trip. So a thousand of us had that connection and vision of Jake as a young man going out into the world.

Now that I’m thinking of it, it seems that was a guided telling at that time, to help our hearts lean into this set of events, bringing it closer to home which of course for Debra Poneman was clear with her sharing and her tears and then her prayers which we joined in with during the session.

Keeping everyone in the realm of the normal range of being human hasn’t been easy when there is a lot of media playing up differences and pitting people against one another, often to benefit corporate marketing or allowing their rule over the masses.

Keeping more people out of the loop rather than including everyone on a meaningful team has been a winning strategy for those in power and control, particularly shortchanging more vulnerable groups of people…of color, of youth, of the female gender and more throughout the world.

As we heal on many levels, including as Ali Storm is sharing in Project One, the divine feminine resonance, so women can be healed and heal others. Men also can heal by connecting with this resonance in their heart area.