Being with Good Old Friends

When I was a student in Göttingen as a student in 1964-65 I lived in an independent student housing building.  There were about 30 private rooms on three floors with bathrooms and little kitchens down the halls.  It was a bit of a strange situation.  Residents had to be approved by the people already there and there were occasional get-togethers, but it wasn't anything like a fraternity and not as restrictive as a dormitory. 

Upstairs in a small apartment lived a married couple and before long I found myself invited for Abendbrot ("evening bread") several times a week.  HG would get his doctorate in Chemistry that year and we would become very good friends.  I have visited them maybe five or six times since then.  Over that time HG took an interest in monitor lizards and has since become one of the world's experts on the giant reptiles.  He and his growing family moved out of the town where he was teaching into an old farmhouse so they could keep the monitors in the basement.

Last time we were here I think he had about 30.  In fact, I was able to find his email before this trip through a Monitor Lizard journal.  We have been here a little over 24 hours and so far we haven't gone down to the basement.  I'm saving that.  Maybe this evening.  I think he said he was down to about ten animals now, but there are other creatures that populate the house. 

HG is retired from his chemistry professorship at the university, but he continues to write and research on monitors.  The life he leads would be impossible without his wife I who with incredibly good humor does all the administrative work necessary to run a household - especially one in a 100 year plus old farmhouse - and keep connected with the rest of the world.  Here's a still life she prepared last night. 

It was after nine when we took the dogs out of a walk.  The family is truly lucky to live in crowded Germany in such a beautiful little pocket of green open space. 

This house just feels so comfortable to me. 

Part of the household includes this hedgehog their daughter rescued last winter.  It should be release out into the wild already, but the spring has been so cold that they are waiting a little longer for the insects the hedgehog eats come out. 

Here's HG in his office with these great windows looking out into the woods.  And the view, with the birch trees, reminds me of home. 


We've been discussing everything under the sun from Yiddish folk songs to Muslims in Europe to raising children and, of course, monitor lizards. 

Another member of the household, who keeps checking on me now that I've connected to the internet in the computer room. 

Back in the kitchen for lunch where I has prepared a sort of quiche/pizza combination. 

Small World, More First Friday, New Friends, Feeding Ravens, etc.

This is a catch up post.  After the museum Friday, we went down to the Canvas, which in addition to its First Friday exhibit of Magil Pratt's Miniatures, a bunch of which had red sold stickers on,  also had a pottery sale and we got a couple of little bowls to give us a little bit more in our minimalist Juneau household.  I also ran into someone I know from Juneau who lived in the house where we're living.  Our basement apartment was already here when she was a child.  

Then down the block to the Silverbow where an exhibit of pictures sponsored by the  Juneau Homeless Coalition.  Here's Gail, Lance, Teri, and Gil.

Scott Ciambor's Zen caught my eye.  This wall had landscapes of the homeless.  Here, under a bridge.












We ended our art crawl with dinner at Silverbow.








Our friend Sharman was down from Anchorage last weekend and in the four days she was here, we ran into her three different times before we met her for dinner with her Juneau friends last Sunday.

Last night we had dinner with the Juneau friends who live three blocks down the hill in a wonderful ol house with high ceilings, wood trim, and lots of green plants, and, last night, lit candles. 

A delicious dinner with good folks and cats.  












Today, I took a lazy run over the bridge to Douglas to get this picture I missed last week when I discovered - at this spot - that my credit card was missing.  Grey and drizzly, but still a great view back toward Juneau.

And then I stopped at the Foodland on the way home and as I came out there was someone feeding the ravens.  Not sure this is a good idea. 

And as I made it to the stairs up the hill I ran into Lisa Demer, the ADN reporter who's in town for three weeks replacing Sean Cockerham.

Tonight we're headed to dinner with people we've never met, but  I met their daughter a while back - a former Peace Corps volunteer whose parents, she told me were volunteers in Thailand 1967-69, the same time I was there.  The teacher Joan volunteers with gave her a note with their phone number and a message they wanted us over for dinner.  Small, small world.  But no, I didn't know them in Thailand, but they did know one of the people in my group who was near them. 

The bread is almost done in the oven, the Saints are up by fourteen with just a few minutes to go, and we need to go pretty soon.

Swedish Tea Ring and Beautiful Cat

We went to friends for a Christmas morning breakfast.  The waffles were good, but the homemade Swedish Tea Ring was superb.  A family recipe she makes once a year.

Last night our host had dogs, a whole sled team worth. But this morning it was cats. I'm much more a cat person. I like an animal that doesn't need me, that's got a life of its own, and whose attention I have to deserve.

Cat Lovers Should Check Out This House

I ran into this post on moderncat.net while working on my animations in competition post for the Anchorage International Film Festival.  Yes, that post is still coming.  But I know that this link will get the cat fan's imaginations running wild.

The photo here plus many are more in the post, "Another Amazing Cat-friendly House Design from Japan"

Hiking to Doi Suthep via Wat Phalad

Guidelines, a free tourist monthly in Chiang Mai, had an article in the December issue on the trail to Wat Doi Suthep, the temple on the mountain above Chiang Mai. I can't find the article by Oliver Hargreaves itself on line, but it was the encouragement and support we needed to find the trail and make it to the top yesterday.

The trail begins not far from our place so we walked Suthep Road to the end of the University wall and turned right, then soon, up the hill.
The trail itself starts near the TV station. You can just barely see the tower in the lower right where the arrow points.




We passed the back entrance to the zoo. Although it says entrance to the zoo, he said you couldn't come in this way without a ticket and the tickets were at the other entrance. But we continued up the road to the left.
On the right is the entrance to the tv station. You can just see the brown sign on the left in the greenery.



The trail goes up. The map in the Hargreaves article suggests a climb of about 600 meters and I'm guessing about 3-5 kilometers distance.
While it was cool in the shade, it was warm walking up in the sunny parts.


Ah, the power of concentration. J chose the safe way across. I had no problem where the log was on the ground, but when it went over air, I paused. It was silly, just concentration. I got across fine. We both walked it without any problem on the way back.

















Then I struggled through a sign in Thai that talked about a 100 year old bridge on the trail to Wat Doi Suthep. The log didn't seem that old. But then I looked up and there, right in front of me was the bridge. And we were now on the grounds of Wat Phalad. Clearly this temple has been recently renovated. A delightful spot along the creek in the woods. Almost no people - we did see a monk - and a few cats.

It's hard to figure out which leg is the cat, which is the shadow in the picture on the right.





















It wasn't clear which way to go past the Wat. I think there was a small road to the main road, but we tried the trail on past the Wat. Fortunately we met two guys coming down the steep incline who told us after we cross the road, there was a sign in Thai. The trail was on the right of the sign, not the left where the waterfall was. OK, that seems easy.




























After being in the woods, we were suddenly back in the world of cars briefly. I looked for a sign that said which way the trail went.








We found the waterfall, but the trail didn't seem to go anywhere. We went to the right, but I didn't see a trail sign. Then I realized that they meant the big sign warning about forest fires. Just a misinterpretation. I assumed that because they said the sign was in Thai, that they didn't know which way to go. But this had a big picture and was clearly not a trail sign and so I hadn't considered it to be 'the sign' they meant.











Here you can see the sign. The waterfall is to the left and the trail is on the far right where the little black arrow is pointing at J's feet.













The trail went up steeply at first, but there were steps, sort of, carved into the sandy soil. I would go on up ahead and then stop and listen to the birds and watch the butterflies and flowers until J caught up and passed me.











This second part of the trail (after crossing the road) followed a powerline. For a while, one of the lines dangled close to and then on the road. We passed another couple at this point. I think we saw a total of four other people on the trail over several hours up and down.


























We got into a thick forest.














This guy was hard to catch on camera. He did hold still a while but it was in the shade and holding the camera still wasn't easy and the first couple of shots were blurry and this one isn't perfect. There was another damselfly that had a yellow head and tail, but that picture is too bad to post.







I figured it would take three or four people to circle the girth of this tree.



































And then, after another short but steep climb, we were back into the world of traffic, just down the road from the entrance to Wat Doi Suthep.



















We were hungry and thirsty and enjoyed Khao Soy while watching people climb up the steps to the Temple. We decided we enjoyed the peace of Wat Phalat better.






There were no shops at Wat Phalat.


Going back was much faster. The black cat was still at Wat Phalad when we got back there.


And as we got near the trailhead, we could see Chiang Mai, bathed in the late afternoon sun that we had lost long ago climbing down the east side of the mountain.