More About The Snowstorm in Spokane

I've just been looking at Picasa's new web album feature and discovered I can insert little slide shows into the blog. Here is a reprise of the pictures I put up yesterday plus some new ones. All photos by Patrushka.

The Pondering Pig Visits Phoenix

I've returned to my Pigsty in the airy heights above Spokane and find myself wandering around the yard looking for an angry fix...or even a carrot. Don't know why this silly next chapter of The Walrus is taking so long. Maybe it was all that Hi-Jinx! in Phoenix AZ last week.

What a city! The whole town was built last week, except for the suburbs which were built yesterday. Phoenix is like a roach hotel - the people fly in, but they don't fly out again. They just build another town house on the outskirts of town in a development called Quaintsy Cactus and stay on forever. People must make a million dollars a year though, because they're all driving Ferraris. Except for the hoi-polloi, who have to drive Mercedes Benzes.

This is proof global warming must be great. The temperature is 113 degrees all summer long but the skies are full of planes bringing more people who want to lay out by the pool in it while they cut million dollar deals on their iPhones.

Actually, while riding down the freeway with my snout pressed to the glass I noticed a barrio. So maybe there's another side to the city I missed.

Anyway, all rebuttals are accepted. I have to finish the next chapter so I can start on the next chapter. And so on until I get to the part where everybody lives happily ever after (if the story turns out to be a comedy) or dies (if I discover I've written a tragedy). What a life!

So here is my question for all you student ponderers. Since in real life everybody dies at the end, does that mean life is a tragedy? If so, how do you explain cats and dogs?

Photo Credit: PD Photo

Mormons, Paiutes and Kiva

Never try to run a blog from a dial-up connection. I'll wait till we get home to upload a photo. Dum tee tum tee tum....

Patruska and I are visiting our park ranger kids at Pipe Spring National Monument, way out on the rabbitbrush covered high plateau of the Arizona Strip.

The Arizona Strip is literally a strip of land between the Grand Canyon and the Utah border. Hundreds of miles of mesa and snakeweed and vermillion cliff faces glowing in the sunset, billions of stars at night with Orion getting dizzy up there from his wheeling and wheeling. The Paiute tribe rules the back country and the Mormons rule everything else. We're on the frontier of the nineteenth century Mormon Empire- in fact, Pipe Spring is the remains of a Mormon cattle ranch, built like a fort against Navajo raids.

No cell phone towers, no cable TV, no high-speed internet. In fact, the Arizona Strip is so isolated that until they built the bridge over the Colorado river, the county sheriff had to go around through three states to get here, and all kind of owlhoots holed up on the Strip playing pinochle, drinking redeye whiskey, and planning their next stagecoach robbery. Except no stagecoaches ever came this way. Maybe they could raid the cheese wagon from the Pipe Spring ranch, loaded down with butter and cheese bound for the little town of St. George, seventy-five miles away. The Mormons who kept on practicing polygamy after their church and the government outlawed it - they moved down here too. Colorado City, fifteen miles up the road, is still their headquarters. Their womenfolk still wear old-fashioned long dresses - but with jeans and sneaks and elaborate Gibson Girl hairstyles embellished with a long braid ending in a ponytail. Even the little kids...

Hey, I snagged a new country for the Kiva Investment Group yesterday - Cameroon. Magdalene Mankah was up for a few hours yesterday. She wanted $300 for sticks and nails to mend her pig fence. Needs a year and a half to repay it. A terrible business investment. But I have a feeling she'll pay it back if she can, and I want her pigs to be safe from lions...

Hey again, here's a question for the KIGsters. How can we maintain communication in the group when the Pondering Pig is off wandering around in the forest looking for truffles? This happens. I have a tendency to go off rambling at a moment's notice. So what if an investment opportunity comes up while I am gallavanting? Is the comment section of the blog enough? Or should we get something else going? Like a separate group blog or a Yahoo Group? The great thing about the KIG is that we are all starting to know each other a bit. There's a friendly feeling. And I'd hate to see it dissipate just cause I don't have a high-speed connection for a couple of weeks.

Whaddaya think?

A Wyatt Earp Town, Where The Citizens Are Underground

Many readers visit The Pondering Pig just to keep abreast of Wyatt Earp news. You'll want to know the NY Times is running an exclusive profile of Colma, California, Earp's last known address. (see The Strange Case of Wyatt Earp's Tombstone) . For even more on Colma, ask the Pig to put up Patrushka's photo essay on that toddling town.

What Patrushka Saw: The Birdseed Capital

Looking at Andreea's pics just now reminded me of all the images from The Pondering Pig and Patrushka's travels across America this summer in their little gypsy cart.

Here is the little world of Flagler, lost and forgotten on the plains of eastern Colorado. Except for the local bird seed farmers, of course, to whom it is found and remembered every day.

Bird Seed Central


What America's Sparrows Need


Technology for the Sparrows


In the Lonely Country

Corn Dog Girl

How’s this for a life style? You go down to the barn, get out your traveling corn dog stand, and your traveling pizza stand, and your supply trailer with batter and cheese and stuff and off you go over the mountains to the Mendocino County Fair, or the California State Fair, or the Fresno County fair, the Rodeo, up and down Northern California, filling hungry giant California bellies with fresh deep fried corn dogs, lemonade (“our lemonade made with real lemons”) and gooey slabs of cheesy pizza.

The County fair wasn’t even open yet. We were just wandering around watching setup, watching the 4-H Ag kids putting the last bean in their all-bean display about the top 10 crops of Mendocino County – (trees are number one, grapes number two, apples number ten, pot number nothing), stopping by the Methodist Ladies Homemade Apple Pie and Ice Cream Stand to see if it was open yet and the corn dog business was already jumping. The workers, the 4-H Dads, the guy from the cowboy hat and saddles concession, and even some of the Methodist apple pie ladies were standing around waiting for their custom fried corn dogs to come out hot and brown.

Corn Dog Girl told me they've been deep frying up corn dogs for many a year. Her partner started out in 1970 with icies and they went pretty well, but when he added hamburgers, the business took off. It was hard decision, moving into corn dogs but once he decided his future was corn dogs and lots of them, he never looked back.
He built the sign one rainy winter. Pretty cool too. Yellow. Purple. The letters light up one after the other in a hungry sort of way.

Hey, they’re just a carny couple, right? Hardscrabble life in a trailer behind the ferris wheel, right? Wrong, On corn dog profits, they just bought a twenty acre ranch in the Sierra foothills.

See You In September

If you've been wondering why the Pondering Pig is getting a little thin lately, a post here, a post there, but sort of random - Patrushka and I are putting our lives into an entirely new order. We are leaving our temporary summer quarters here on the far coast in 1910, and heading home - to our new home in Washington State up against the edge of the Rocky Mountains where the grizzly bears roam.

We have chosen the year 1925 as our time location, although I will be visiting the present to report on our adventures, discuss the pondering business with other talking pigs, and pick up our supply of Cheerios.

We've been sweating the deal and the financing and how to move all our gear over a thousand miles and packing Grandma's sewing machine (yes, Patrushka's greyhaired Saxon mother is coming to live with us) and besides that, we left our gypsy cart in a field in Washington State and I have had to hitchike to the library to post.

By the end of September we will be living in our new home, surrounded by boxes but with an internet connection again. And, I promise you, a whole new exactly the same Pondering Pig ready for new adventures. So keep your RSS feed connected.

Pondering Pig's Tour of San Francisco

Planning your big trip to San Francisco? Don't forget your coat! I know you want to see Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum real bad, and, oh those cable cars climbing halfway to the stars, they’ve got to be great. How about a trip to the Haight-Ashbury to see where the Grateful Dead lived? Maybe a topless bar (wink wink nod nod), and a nightcap in the bar of the Holiday Inn.

But hold on for a minute. There’s another city hidden beneath the glitter and gloss of "My Enchanted City”. A city with hidden treasures and landmarks that only the talking pigs know about. Let me take you down, cause I'm going to...San Francisco's Richmond District, Home of the Talking Pigs!

Oh, there’s not many of us left now in the City. We’ve dispersed across the world. I’m an exile myself, sleeping in an abandoned mobile home far down the coast with only an owl and a feral cat for company. (Besides the beautiful Patrushka and her indomitable Mom, of course, both of whom insist they like it)

Oh, perhaps it's quiet, perhaps it's a little lonely today. But there was a time when the Richmond resounded to the throng of happy snorts and grunts, when little curly tails disappeared into the bakeries and came out with pies and cakes and sugar cookies to take home for tea. Young pigs such as myself studied in the libraries and parks of the Richmond and learned to ponder deeply into the mystery of things.

Wandering through the muffled streets, we learned to love the fog and moist grey gloom. For us it was a warm cozy blanket. The wind barreling off the Pacific, it filled the lungs with glee. Ah, for the life of a talking pig in the Richmond District in those golden times of yore.

Certain among you are beginning to wonder when the show starts and I wish you’d have a little more patience. I’m just getting warmed up. But ever it shall be. Okay, next picture, please…

The Temple of Learning. Ah, the lines of merry young pigs that stood outside the Balboa waiting for the box office to open and the Saturday matinee to begin. Some Saturdays we heard a lecture on Aristotle. Other Saturdays it was six color cartoons, a Superman serial, and Mickey Rooney in “Penrod Fights The Gangsters”. Even today, the remnants of the Golden Age remain. Where else could you have your choice of Nacho Libre or Army of Shadows, a phenomenal, magnificent 1969 French film about the Resistance during WWII, and don’t miss it if you trust a talking pig’s judgment). But it’s not coming soon to a theater near you. Sorry. Maybe on DVD.
The Secret Treasure Statue. I boldly proclaim its location because I know how to get to the treasure and you don’t. No, it’s not symbolic of the treasure of the imagination – it’s money. Gold beyond your wildest dreams! And it’s mine, mine mine! Hahahahahahahahah.


Adolf Sutro. How we honor Adolf. Not only did he build San Francisco’s Sutro Park, most beautiful park in the known universe, he was the first talking pig to successfully pass as a human for most of his life. We don’t like to do it, but it’s so much more convenient. People are always asking embarrassing questions like “How come you’re not wearing trousers?” But they never guessed the truth about Adolf. What a pig! Too bad about the name though. It was a perfectly nice name in 1890.












The Old Manse. Pigs lived here once but now they’re gone.




Our tour of San Francisco's Richmond District is about halfway through. We'll be stopping for lunch today at The Blathering Pig. Please try not to encourage the proprietor or we'll never get served!

Patrushka At The Beach

Yeah, It's Sunday at Pismo Beach and the whole world has come to bask and dance and shriek with delight...


Or be young and beautiful for an hour of summer...


Or ponder 'bout why mustard is yellow...


Or sit quietly and wonder if there might be a whale...


Or just be out for a stroll 'cause it's summer,summer, wonderful summer at Pismo Beach.

Photos by Patrushka

Back In California

Ben Lomond Springtime
Originally uploaded by Patrushka.

"This world...and then the next," my Kansas-bred grandmother used to say. I was never really sure what she meant but she said it after she had experienced some small sorrow or exasperation. I think Nana believed this world was a vale of tears to be gotten though by grit, determination, and holding on for dear life. And who knew what the next world would be like? But when she used that expression, she didn't sound too hopeful. In later years, my mother took up the refrain and now I hear it ringing in my own ears.

Where is joy this overcast morning in the backyard of my brother's house in Ben Lomond, CA? The acorn woodpeckers, a whole gang of them, are knocking and banging overhead somewhere, making their 'kacka-kacka' calls to each other. A grey squirrel and a stellar jay are facing off over first rights to the birdbath. Looks like the beginning of another nice California day. So why do I feel grey?

We flew down from Spokane on Saturday. My oldest pal, Way Out Willy, and his wife Kay picked us up at the San Jose Airport. We went out to dinner and laughed about nothing in particular, as we always have. "Joshed" as they used to say. I've known Will since we were Baby Beatniks together nearly fifty years ago. He's become as strange and crotchety as I have but I'm okay with his crotchets -- you don't get that many best friends in a lifetime and God gave me one. Someday I'll write about him, but I'll have to disguise his name so he won't get mad. Maybe I'll call him Way Out Billy.

Will was out on his adventures for a long time but he made harbor at last. Now he has a sweet wife, and a cool little house in the manzanita thickets and an old dog Miles who remebers Patruska and I when we come to vist and wags his tail and grins.

How I long for a safe harbor. A place I can put my stuff. A place where I can get up in the morning and know where everything is, know that today will be a lot like yesterday, pondering and writing and going down to the coffee house to see what the other talking pigs are doing.

This is just a phase, of course. Too much experience, too much chaos. Too many days just trying to get through to the end - like the homeless guys experience every day of their lives. No wonder so many take drugs! When we do get a home again, and peace, and a fire to sit by on winter evenings, I know I'll get restless and start planning a new adventure. Perhaps a voyage to Kerguelen Island, the far away land. But for now, this grey California morning, my sciatica hurts and I just want to go home. If I had one.

Sorry. I don't usually get this personal. Next I'll be telling you about Sniffy's birthday party. With luck, I won't make a habit of it, but you never know. I may be going into a new phase.

A Mystery Tour of Spokane

This blog of rumination and imagination is perilously close to becoming a personal blog. You know, one of those boring "what I did today" blogs so beloved of millions. Well, they're not boring to them, of course. But wandering surfers like me and possibly you go - "oops, not this one", and race on. I haven't been posting much because I've never wanted the Pigsty to go that direction.

But,truth is, I'm not doing any pondering. I'm looking for a place to live, and by evening I am too tired to think about anything except Willa Cather's travels through England in 1902 and how come Christiane Amanpour doesn't look tired? People launch missiles at her all day.

My daughter Hannah says the reason everywhere we look is so expensive is because we only look in the most expensive places. She sent me this little map to prove her point.


Here's the link if you want to see for yourself in more detail: Big link to big mortgage map

The most expensive homes is America are in the dark green states. So let's see, that looks like...California! and...New Jersey! and...why, even little Rhode Island! Yes, folks, it's true, the Pondering Pig and his kinfolk have been wandering and squandering their whole lives long though the fattest, most delicious pastures of plenty this country offers. I grew up in San Francisco. Raised my piglets in the Garden State (that be New Jersey, you denizens of other climes). Those are the states where the pigs of my own generation live, and where all my old pals still live.

But if we bought a house in any of those states, I would have to go back to work - at Wal-Mart probably, welcoming you to the store and hoping you have a good day. Or maybe I would learn how to do your income tax for a small fee. Or I might have to sell my first edition of Beatrix Potter's greatest work, The Tale of Pigling Bland on eBay.

Or -- we could move to another state where we don't know a soul. Somewhere where houses cost well under a million dollars.

So we came to Spokane - yes, we have wandered and pondered all the way up to Washington State. So far we like it. Nice small city. Pretty good library. Free concerts in the park.

We've looked at lots of great 1910-20 era bungalows -- our favorite kind of house. There's flowers, and a river runs through the middle of town -- but down in a big gulch so it's not really part of the city's life. There's a lovely old urban park that makes me think of my dear beautiful Golden Gate Park back home in San Francisco. A really good bookstore called Auntie's. Lots of Willa Cather and Jack Kerouac in the Classics section. That's good. No Freddy the Pig in the children's section - that's bad. In the magazine section they were selling little literary journals. Probably doesn't mean much to you but to me it's a clue - somewhere in Spokane are people who are interested in writing and young writers, and those will be my kind of people.

Only drawbacks I can see so far: no foreign movies! Such a nuisance, I really want to see that new samurai movie The Hidden Blade. In San Francisco the papers were all reviewing it. Here I don't think they know there are such things as Japanese movies.

Also, I don't see so far any sign of hi-tech or software or and other industries that might attract creative young people to come to live here. And I place a high priority on creative young people. Keep us creative old people on our toes.

Weather's been excessively hot, but at 102 tops, it's still cooler than most of the country.

And I think we can find a place big enough that Patruska's Mom can come live with us. At 87, she's tired of facing life on her own, and I don't blame her.

We might actually grow to like it.

Graves of Lincoln County, Kansas

We drove down through Kansas towns,


looking for their graves,the first ones...


It was hot.


No birds were singing.


In fact, it was pretty quiet.



Hush now.

Complaint of the Pondering Pig

Such an uncomfortable life we’ve led the last few days. Would you mind dreadfully if I sit down and complain for a moment? It won't take long and I'll feel ever so much better. After our long journey across the continent we’ve landed for a few days at Grandma's mobile home on the California coast. Interrupting her neat and tidy schedule and not knowing where to flop. Trying to remember to squeegee out the shower and wipe it down with a cloth provided for the purpose.

Well, our horse Gabbin is enjoying the rest anyway. He winked at me as he dug into his oats. He said he talked to a red fox coming through the iceplant below the neighbor's retaining wall at dawn this morning. Fox said he's doing fine in between the mobile homes. Lots of cats to eat.

The German home cooking here is tops. Grandma makes cabbage rolls just like they did in her home town in Lower Saxony when she was a little girl. With white sauce, not tomato sauce. Mashed potatoes and gravy and a special kind of cole slaw she learned how to make when she was waiting table at a fish n chips place in East LA in the Thirties. It's fabulous even if you don't like cole slaw.

No internet connection of course. We’re talking an 87 year old lady who won’t even push the ‘on’ button on my computer because she might break it. So here is the closest place with free wi-fi, temporarily the office of the Pondering Pig:


Office of the Pondering Pig

Why do people want to come to the California Coast so bad? I can’t figure it out. Here's what it looks like around here...


Hey, palm trees in the parking lots. Not bad.

Plenty of shopping for everyone...


Did I mention the parking? Unbeatable. And every lot has palm trees. I think it's a law.


Well, people are strange. They have strange desires. I'm glad I'm a pig - - yet pigs have strange desires too – here‘s mine: I want to live in a nice little nineteen twenties bungalow out on the edge of town. Still has the original wood paneling and plenty of room for books. Big garden with tomatoes and chilies and cantaloupes getting ripe and a fast cable connection and a little office where I can write The History of the Talking Pigs in peace and every once in a while gaze out my window and there is Patrushka, the princess who married a pig, in her floppy sunhat doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more? Out behind I can see our horse Gabbin standing by the fence gabbing with the other horses about all his adventures since he came to live with us.

Who could ask for more? Well, actually...since you asked, I still want to go to Europe every year and hitchhike down wet northern highways to an overgrown, haunted spa where dukes and duchesses took the waters in 1827. And I still want to find the ruins of Great-Great-Great-Grandma Pig’s farm on the misty flatlands of Ostfrisia where my ancestors Hisko and Gerhardt Pig built the dragon that frightened off the Duke's soldiers.

Wait, I’m not done complaining yet…I don’t want to live in a 1970’s subdivision ranchburger with corroding aluminum windows, the garage made over into a huge room nobody knows what to do with, there's nobody home but me on the block but the driveways all have gigantic pick-up trucks parked in them and there’s a big German Shepherd behind the chain-link fence next door who won’t stop barking. Could I not live there, please?

Right now at least one of my readers is saying, “Hey, what’s with this pig? I live in a 1970’s subdivision and there’s a big pickup truck in MY driveway and I have a big German Shepherd and he’s really nice. So what’s wrong with that, you stupid pig?”

If so, I refer you to the Comments section below. We have learned to give free expression to all and welcome your comments, no matter how rude and unfortunate. It’s just not for me, not for Patrushka. We're not Seventies people. In our little hovel we neither wear bump-toed shoes nor play disco music. Except for “Shake, Shake, Shake Your Bootie” of course. We read William Wordsworth and walk on the cliffs at midnight reciting "The Lay of the Last Minstrel". We tune in our crystal sets to see if we can pick up Ashtabula. We have tea by the fire with just a tot of brandy in it. I spend a lot of time blathering on like this while Patrushka calls the doctor.

Hey, thanks for listening. I think I really do feel better!

Red Cloud: One More Chorus

Webster Street Morning 2. Red Cloud is kind of like Lodi in that old Creedence Clearwater song - it's not that easy to get up and leave. It's just a burned old Nebraska town but there's something about it. Something haunting. I don't know. I'm not done. Got to post a few more pictures...


Dusk on Willa's Prairie


Ride For The Riches


Red Cloud Last Supper


Dusk on Willa's Prairie


Sunset On The Edge of Town

All photos by Patrushka

What Patrushka Saw: Red Cloud, Nebraska

Webster Street Morning


June Afternoon, Seward Street


Reflections: Seward Street


Reflections: Old Baptist Church


On Willa's Prairie

Pure Willa Cather

Red Cloud, Nebraska is not your normal farm town. There are giants walking around here. I saw them, and I am just an ordinary guy:
-- your typical Pondering Piggo who thinks Willa Cather is the best writer in the barnyard,
-- who just sinks into her pure visual exact images and deep understanding of human nature with delight,
-- your normal pigsty piggo with big tears rolling down his snout because little sixteen year old Leslie Ferguesson caught pneumonia and died out on Mrs. Somebody's farm when she had her whole life to live in front of her (The Best Years).
-- who gets big crinkles of smiles because the twins came in from the yard to fix up Grandma's sickroom when nobody told them to (Old Mrs. Harris). And, in the same story, when Vickie wins the scholarship to the University of Michigan, what relief! And what subtlety of understanding in that story. How your loyalties shift as Cather reveals the Templeton family first from their neighbor's perspective, then from the mother's perspective, then Grandma's perspective.
-- who is not a sentimental sap (ok, maybe I am a sap), but a pig who lets Cather's true vision translate into his mindscreen and from there percolate into his heart. She took the time to tell it true, folks.

Those stories, plus the pure hometown blues of Song of the Lark (the Red Cloud half, anyway) and the for the ages My Antonia - they all happened in Red Cloud, no matter what name she gives the town in story after story. And Red Cloud, because the railroad's hub moved to another town, kind of got left behind in the mad American scramble for wealth and status.

So it still looks like Willa Cather's 1890 town. Walking through it is the strangest experience.

For instance...

This is Thea Kronborg's house. No, sorry, it's Vickie Templeton's house. No, sorry, it's Willa Cather's childhood home. Walk inside, and Cather readers will recognize the geography right away.

Here's where Dr. Archie visited Thea when she was deathly sick and slept in the parlor. Through the door you can see the Templeton's bedroom, where Victoria locked herself in when she learned she was pregnant for the sixth time.

Thea Kronborg's bedroom where she would lay in bed reading wrapped in blankets with a hot brick at her feet because the air was about minus twenty. No, wait. It's Leslie Ferguesson's bedroom where her parents made her sleep because it was only proper that a budding schoolteacher should have her own room. No, wait a minute - it's Willa Cather's bedroom papered with the very wallpaper she earned when she was thirteen years old working at the dry goods store and taking wallpaper for wages. It's not a reasonable facsimile - it's the same wallpaper she put up about 1886. That's Red Cloud, Nebraska!

Finally, this is the house where Antonia worked as a housemaid when she was nearly raped by that disgusting Wick Cutter.

If you like to read the good stuff, and you've never read Willa Cather (I was probably fifty before I gave her a try), pick up one of her stories. You could be in for a whole lot of pleasure and mental delight.

And, if you are already a Cather fan, well, there's a great B&B in Red Cloud called Cather's Retreat (402-746-2599). The house belonged to the Cather family and Willa stayed there when she came to visit her parents in the Twenties. Hey, go for it. I'm going back as soon as I can.