My 1992 year-end letter where I write about living in a leaky trailer with no electricity or running water while trying to build a cabin in rural Oregon.
A modern-day homesteader?
1992 Highlights: Modern Day Homesteader in a Leaky Trailer
Author Archives: Theresa McCracken
1991 Highlights: A Drive Across America & Nature Walks for the Disabled
The year-end letter I sent in 1991 describing driving the back roads of America in a 1951 Plymouth and taking disabled kids into the woods.
1990 Highlights: A Hung Jury or a Hostage Crisis?
My 1990 year-end letter where I describe the ordeal of being trapped for two weeks in a small room with eleven other jurors.
Head naturalist at Siuslaw National Forest’s Cape Perpetua Interpretive Center
1989 Highlights: An Off Beat Dominican Republic Vacation
My 1989 year-end letter about an unconventional vacation on a tropical island, the Cartoonist Association’s annual cocktail party, and forest fire fighting in Hells Canyon.
On a donkey in the Dominican Republic
1988 Highlights: Forest Restoration After A Fire
This is the year-end letter I sent in 1988 about a fire crew’s life after a major fire.
My Fire Crew
1987 Highlights: First Year as a Forest Fire Fighter
The internet? Friend or foe? Now I need not limit myself to boring friends and family with my year-end letters. I can now bore complete strangers. And why settle for posting only one year-end letter when it’s almost as easy to post two, three, five, or even twenty-five? This month I’m planning on posting one letter a day until Christmas. This is the first year-end letter I wrote after my first summer as a forest firefighter in 1987.
Setting a Back Fire
Is It Art or Is It Gross Anatomy?
It’s squished frog season here on the Oregon coast.
The Skin Man
I passed at least 20 on my morning dog walk. I feel sorry for them, but I am also have a morbid fascination with them and often examine what’s left of them. That’s not surprising since when I lived in Washington D.C. in the 1980s and 90s one of my favorite haunts was the Walter Reed Medical Museum. Among other things it had very graphic displays of reconstructed faces after they’d been mutilated in various wars, the leg of a Civil War general who ordered a medic to preserve what was left of it after it had been severed by a cannon ball, the bloated leg of someone who had died of elephantiasis, lots other diseased, abnormal and normal body parts in jars, the bullet that killed Lincoln, and what I believe was the worlds largest collection of human embryos. Obviously it was not a museum suitable for everyone. Then again, I’m not suitable for everyone since the only thing I found gross in gross anatomy was the smell of formaldehyde. Continue reading
Coast Guard Helicopter
They’re going to get rid of Newport, Oregon’s Coast Guard Helicopter because supposedly it’ll save $6,000,000 a year.
Six million dollars is a lot of money. Is it more than a drone strike? I don’t know. How many American lives does a drone strike save? I don’t know. How many American lives does the Coast Guard Helicopter save in Newport? I’m not sure. Is it more than a single drone strike. Once again, I don’t know. I do know that a few years ago the Newport Coast Guard station made 400 plus rescues, not all of them as sea. Newport is home to the largest fishing fleet on the Oregon Coast, Oregon State University’s oceanography department, and home to the NOAA’s Pacific fleet. Ship crews and passengers are not the only one’s needing help by the Coast Guard, though. Tourists who are awed by the ocean and don’t realize the danger they’re in when straying off a path are many of the rescuees. This new’s footage happened near my place on the same week that the “budget saving” measure was announced.
Cheap Boat Cartoons for use in ads, newsletters, etc.
Hiking in Siuslaw National Forest
Last week I led hikes for a Road Scholar (formerly known as Elderhostel) on trails in the Sisulaw National Forest in Oregon. Here are a few photos I took.
T- and Sammy at Sweet Creek
They don’t do justice to the magnificent scenery. Going through them now I realize I didn’t even take a single photo of the 500-year-old trees we walked under on the Gwynn Creek trail. That’s because I don’t want to see the world through a teeny lens. Consequently, I rarely take photos. Continue reading
Raking Leaves Goes Against Nature
When I was in my 20s I lived in Washington D.C. next door to Miss Eleanore, a woman in her 80s.
License Leaf Blower Cartoon 9326
Get it printed on stuff at CafePress or Zazzle
She was absolutely compulsive when it came to yard work and seemed to rake our leaves more often than I bathed, and I’ve always been pretty compulsive about that. I’ve never understood the purpose of raking at all, and I’m even more confused why if one is going to go through all that work, people don’t wait until all the leaves are down before pulling out the plastic bags. Of course, having the reputation I have, it’s pretty hard to convince people that this isn’t the justification of a lazy lout who doesn’t want to rake. Continue reading