Make Me Think Monday Archives - Page 28 of 34

15 09, 2014

An Unexpected (and Uninvited) Summer Visitor

By judythemorgan|2021-09-22T05:50:25-05:00September 15th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

This summer has been a revolving door of visitors at our house and we’ve loved it!

We’ve seen folks we haven’t seen in thirty years and caught up. Plus we’ve gotten to spend time with family.

There has been, however, a surprise and frequent visitor recently.

It’s that time of year in the forest. Black bears, who are actually brown or cinnamon-colored, are feeding up for the long winter hibernation.

A bear’s natural wariness to find food overrides his fear of humans and his nose is one hundred times more sensitive than ours.

Bird and hummingbird feeders provide as much as twelve hundred calories so the bears prowl around looking for easy food. We do our part to keep the bears wild by bearproofing our house, which means we take our bird feeders in at night.

Only, our visitor came mid-morning!

On his first visit, Buddy Bear, as my sister named him, emptied our homemade feeder, and ignored the hummingbird feeder hanging ten feet above his head according to the bearproofing pamphlet instructions. It was too high for him to reach.

Finished, Buddy sat a spell before he moseyed off.

Buddy returned for a second sniff and, finding none, wandered off again.

Next day he came again. This time sniffing no food, he sauntered up to the rock outcropping above our house. We watched him from the large dining room window. He watched us. We wondered if he thought we were in a people zoo.

Eventually he traveled on. But Buddy returned a third day.

Finding the feeder gone. He decided to take a rest up next to the house.

That was when my husband decided that Buddy was becoming too friendly and used one of our forest ranger provided firecrackers.

The loud bang sent Buddy scurrying away.

A fourth time, he ambled by, pausing mid-way up the hill and looking down, but kept going as if remembering the firecracker. (Bears are very smart and have great memories.)

We’re hoping that the firecracker did its job. If you look closely, you’ll noticed that Buddy has tags on both his ears.

He’d been a very bad boy. A bear is tagged and relocated from an area where he’s done some damage or been a threat to humans.

Bears only get two chances. Third time the animal is destroyed.

We don’t want that to happen. They lived in this place first and we’re willing to share unless the visitor is very, very bad.

Btw, we never use firecrackers on our human house guests — even if they are very, very bad.

1 09, 2014

Naming Children, Pets, and Characters

By judythemorgan|2023-03-19T06:17:16-05:00September 1st, 2014|Make Me Think Monday, Uncategorized|0 Comments

A person’s name has power and all sorts of things should be considered when naming a child, a pet, or a character in a book.

But choosing the perfect name isn’t easy.

After three children, eight dogs, and multiple characters in my novels, I should know.

Back when my husband and I were choosing children’s names, we didn’t have the option to know the sex. You had to come up with a male and a female name. It took us the full nine months during each pregnancy.

In fact, when our second child came early, we had no names picked out and it looked like he’d go home from the hospital as Baby Boy.

Totally not acceptable.

We finally agreed on his daddy’s name and his great-granddaddy’s for a middle name. Ultimately, we used the initials to avoid confusion between two people with the same name.

Coming up with pet names was relatively easy.

We chose common names like Lucky and Buster. Our Old English sheepdogs we gave Biblical names: Obadiah, Micah, Rhinestone, and Tobias.

Okay, Rhinestone isn’t in the Bible, but Tobias comes from the Old Testament. Rhinestone was our rescue OES and came with her name. We didn’t want to cause her more stress by changing her name to Esther.

Naming characters for the stories I write isn’t much easier than naming children or dogs.

Sometimes authors use A & B for their character names and fill in names later using the search and replace function in their word processor. Others change their characters’ names during the editing stage.

I can’t do that. I name my characters before I write a single word. Their names give them personalities, and they become bona fide people to me.

There are all sorts of things to consider when naming a child. Here’s a list of twenty-five in case you’re interested.

There are also guidelines for naming pets. Check here.

I use many of those rules when naming my book characters. Chiefly, I consider these questions.

Is the name easily pronounceable or sounded out without difficulty?
Do the first name and surname sound good together?
Do the names start with the same letter or sound similar? (It may be clever in a family setting to have all the kids’ names begin with the same letter, but similar-sounding names can lead to confusion for readers.)

When I’m coming up with names, I also

Consider the number of syllables and vary the number in each character’s names.
Choose names appropriate for the story setting, era, and genre.
Avoid names of friends and family members.
Make the name fit the story and the personality of the character.

Finding the perfect name is not easy. I have been known to change a character’s name, but not often. Once in a book sequel, I killed off a character because I no longer liked her name. It’s one of the perks of being a writer. I get to kill off people. :-)

How’d you come up with the name you chose for your child, pet, or character in your book? Any hints you’d like to offer on choosing names?

25 08, 2014

Seasons – They are changing

By judythemorgan|2014-08-25T06:00:31-05:00August 25th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday, Uncategorized|1 Comment

My internal body clock is set for early morning wakeups. Time zones don’t matter. With or without an alarm, I’m up and moving before the sun crests the horizon.

For me, it’s not a problem. I love getting up at the crack of dawn and walking the dogs in the still of daybreak.

Living in suburban Houston, I didn’t worry about walking in the dark. Streetlights lit my way.

Now that I live in the forest in a state that supports a night sky (meaning streetlights are limited and rare), walking in the dark is a different story. Too many critters like the twilight hours for their prowling.

So before I leave the house, I check on weather.com for local sunrise time and start walking about ten minutes before or just as the sky begins to lighten.

On a recent walk, I spotted sure signs that summer is ending and fall is in the air.

First, shadows are changing. You can see what I mean in this photo.

Another clue—temperatures are dropping. This morning it was 42 degrees. The scent of wood burning in fireplaces hovered around some cabins.

For those of you facing triple digit highs, I’m sure that sounds heavenly. Truthfully, it was chilly. I was thankful for my gloves and hooded jacket.

Another hint is our shrinking population. South Fork is a summer tourist town. Our numbers swell from three hundred year round to 3,000-4,000 during May, June, July and August. RV parks are emptying. Shutters cover windows of summer cabins. The exodus has begun. Summer folk are heading home.

The absolute confirmation that winter is heading our way is found in the Aspens along our walking route.

Yep. That’s yellow among the green. The Aspens are turning.

Fall is on the way, which means wildlife is on the move scavenging for food.

Bears have started their annual bulk up for hibernation and need 12,000 calories a day. That means lots of overturned trash and destroyed barbeque grills. Time to seriously heed the signs posted all along our walk.

11 08, 2014

Foray for Mushrooms

By judythemorgan|2014-08-11T06:00:51-05:00August 11th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

Options for summer outings in our little corner of the Rio Grande National Forest are plentiful. There’s something different and fun every weekend. Don’t believe me, check out our South Fork website.

Last weekend we joined the fun on the 14th annual Mushroom Foray.

What’s a Mushroom Foray you ask?

I wondered myself knowing foray is to raid and plunder. Surely, that wasn’t the intent.

I contacted the Visitor Center for information and learned the Mushroom Foray is a simple adventure into the forest to learn to identify edible mushrooms.

And, if you check Dictionary.com, you’ll find that venturing into something new is a less used meaning of the word.

So off we went into the forest on one of the many Rio Grande Forest Service trails. We stopped at three different elevations to find different species of mushrooms.

At the first stop, we gathered our paper sacks and hiked up the hill into the woods. My husband and I were a little fearful that we’d be the only ones of the twenty folks on the foray that didn’t find specimens, but we soldiered on.

Our fears were found less for we quickly located a mushroom by a fallen log and prepared to extract the bloom from its habitat. I dutifully made notes of the location on the sack and carefully dug the mushroom then dropped it in the sack. My husband, meantime, kept searching.

We found six different varieties of mushrooms and proudly dumped our cache for identification along with the mushrooms others had collected. Alas, only one of our finds was an edible variety.

On our third and last stop, we ate our sack lunch then started searching again. More sure this time of what to look for, we were careful to dig only the ones we thought were edible.

In the picture below, the large white mushroom was the star of the pickings. It was the biggest example for the day of an edible mushroom…and it was ours.

The day provided a truly fun foray and an educational adventure. Now, if we are ever stranded in the forest, we won’t starve. We know what mushrooms we can eat.

Although my husband isn’t so sure eating a mushroom is better than starving. Me, I love the fungus blooms.

4 08, 2014

The Scoop on the Ice Cream Cone

By judythemorgan|2014-08-04T06:00:21-05:00August 4th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|4 Comments

Last month was National Ice Cream Month. Did you know?

I didn’t either until I read Kovel’s Newsletter about ice cream-related memorabilia. Though I’m not in the antiques business full time anymore I often assist friends and neighbors with estate liquidatons so I read Kovel’s to keep up with trends and prices.

One of the articles gave the origins of the waffle cone.

Italo Marchiony, an 1896 New York City ice cream pushcart vendor, wanted to stop customers from walking away with his serving dishes and invented the edible cone. He patented the special mold for waffle cups with sloping sides in 1903.

A different account claims a 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair ice cream vendor ran out of paper dishes and made a deal with a neighboring vendor of “zalabia,” a waffle-like pastry. The combine effort of rolling up the waffles to hold ice cream was a big hit with fair goers.

Entrepreneur W.W. Turnbull saw fairgoers enjoying ice cream out of the rolled waffles. Three years later, he invented an ice cream cone vending machine. His Turnbull Cone & Machine Company of Cincinnati, which relocated to Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1918, became one of the country’s largest ice cream cone producers.

Turnbull Cone’s motto: “Eat a cone every day. You’ll feel better in every way.” I would agree!

SOURCE: Kovels.com http://bit.ly/1rTyJiC

This is a “Turnbull’s Crisp Clean Cones” soda fountain ice cream cone dispenser from about 1920.

A light bulb on the inside keeps cones warm and crispy. Push the levers on the outside to release the bottom cone down the chute.

The vintage machine sold for $960 at an auction in Iowa.

The idea of edible cones exploded in popularity after the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and somewhere along the way ice cream businesses like Dairy Queen entered the picture for ice cream lovers.

For those of you living where there are no DQs, Texans call the distinctive sign the Texas stop sign.

I promise my vehicle certainly stops far too often. But only to confirm Mr. Turnbull’s motto, of course.

28 07, 2014

Four Lessons from My Canine Pals

By judythemorgan|2021-07-17T09:27:43-05:00July 28th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

Our Old English sheepdog came to us nine years ago at age nine weeks. Our bond was instant.

He’s been my best friend and trusty companion ever since. He’s constantly by my side. Sleeping in the keyhole of my desk does get a bit crowded sometimes. He didn’t stay eleven pounds for very long.

When Toby was five, Buster joined our family. (He’s stayed at eleven pounds.)

We inherited the little Maltese from my daughter and, since the dogs had spent time together at family gatherings, we didn’t have issues when Buster came to live with us permanently.

Well, not major issues. There is the problem of rawhide bones.

Toby will NOT share and Buster constantly steals the well-chewed and moist pieces. If Toby catches him, there’s gnarling and snapping, but never ever any contact. It’s as though Toby knows he could hurt the little dog.

When Toby realizes a bone has been stolen, he asks me to return his property. (Yep, Toby and I talk to one another.)

Then Buster, with his Napoleonic complex, goes after his much bigger brother as though to eat him alive…again Toby ignores him and settles with his repossessed bone.

Buster and Toby have bonded and rely on one another after four years. Watching the two dogs together has taught me some important lessons.

Be Loyal (but not to a fault)

Dogs are loyal. That’s what they do, who they are. We’ve all seen the pictures and read stories like the heartwarming story of the Labrador Retriever who famously laid down next to the coffin of his US soldier human.

Loyalty can be a huge asset, but my canine boys have taught me blind loyalty is foolish.

Walking is our ritual. Three times a day we hike around the area. I always do the early morning sunrise walk, but if I’m on deadline or absorbed in writing, those noontime and evening walks aren’t going to happen. They might prefer my company, but necessity dictates they have to go with whoever is available.

That can happen in our human lives too. Loyalty is definitely an asset, but often we have to do what it takes to get the job done.

Trust your instincts.

I see this principle often when I walk the dogs. Both will react if they deem someone or some animal we meet along our way as threatening.

Toby is allowed to determine our routes. Sometimes we go the short way, sometimes we walk for five miles, and sometimes we don’t leave the porch.

I trust him. There might be a bear or coyote lurking that I can’t see.

In life, we have to trust instincts too. Sure, it’s important to take time to listen to others’ input. But in the end, we should heed our gut instincts.

Know what you want and be super persistent about securing it.

Dogs know persistence pays.

Consider the last time your dog sat beside you through an entire meal, gazing up with Bambi eyes? Did you cave and toss a bite, impressed by his determination and patience?

Buster and Toby recline by my chair at mealtime like bookends. One on my left, one on my right. They don’t beg unless ice cream or pizza is involved. Then Toby sits in that perfect sit he never seemed to manage in dog obedience class and Buster, not to be ignored, jumps up on the edge of my chair.

I cave.

The scenario reminds me how very, very important dogged persistence can be. We should not give up on our goals.

There might be setbacks or defeats. Poor Toby and Buster don’t always get to lick the ice cream bowl especially if company’s here. Seeing a dog lick a bowl humans use tends to freak some people out. But hey, that’s what the sani-wash option on the dishwasher is for.

Even if we fail, persistence helps us learn what to do better next time or what techniques or approaches work, and what don’t.

Last, and probably the most significant, thing…

Go outside and play.

Writing is a solitary occupation. I tend to spend hour upon hour at my laptop. For Toby and Buster, it’s boring.

With technology penetrating every portion of our lives and jobs, it’s easy to be online and working 24-7. We forget the importance of refreshing our minds and body.

After a while, Toby will nudge my elbow and Buster will whine – not a pretty sound or sight, but effective – until I give up and push away from the computer, iPad, or iPhone.

I never regret spending time with them. I return renewed and I’m not imagining the effect research suggests exercise can actually improve productivity.

What about you do you have a trusted canine companion? What lessons have you learned from your dog?

21 07, 2014

Déjà vu Wildfires and Round Rabbits

By judythemorgan|2014-07-21T06:00:42-05:00July 21st, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

This time last year, we were settling back in to our home after a mandatory evacuation for The West Fork Complex fire. If you missed those blogs, you can find the full story here, here, and here

On July 19, 2013 the last incident update reported a total area of 109,615 acres lost and 66% containment with 43 personnel engaged in combating the blazes.

Not a fun time and very scary. My heart goes out to those in the Pacific NW and particularly Washington State who are fighting so many wildfires right now, and I pray that all will be safe.

Things can be replaced people can’t.

That truth that was brought home last week as I participated in a public tour of the Papoose Fire burn site, smallest of three fires of the West Fork Complex. The Papoose Fire destroyed more than 49,000 acres. It’s the area on the bottom right in the picture above.

Even though a total of over one hundred thousand acres burned, there was no loss of human life or homes. That is an amazing accomplishment and the West Fork Fire Complex has become a study model for methods of fighting future wildfires.

Before we left the Creede Forest Service office, I picked up a tour partner. I named him Round Rabbit after Flat Stanley, who traveled with me on many other adventures.

Mike Blakeman, with the Rio Grande National Forest Service, and Emma, a natural resource coordinator with the Rio Grande Watershed Emergency Action Coordination Team (RWEACT), conducted the tour.

A lump formed in my throat seeing all the charred and blackened pillars that used to be trees on the drive up to Fern Creek.Yet as we traveled up the mountain to the burn site, spectacular groups of purple and yellow wildflowers that Ranger Mike called fire flowers flourished in the ash. The high intensity fire had burned or seared the surface, but underground seeds of the perennial plants survived.

Clusters of Aspens, which also spread via a root system, were everywhere along our route. Soon the former green mountain views will be dusted gold and yellow every fall. Aspens can grow to heights of ten to fifteen feet in ten years.

So while the old views of the Rio Grande Forest have been permanently changed and the vision of so many burned trees is devastating, the new growth testifies to how things can be replaced.

The pine and spruce trees will take hundreds of years to repopulate making the look of the forest very different from the past, but nature has a way of balancing itself.

We went to a RWEACT site where Emma and Ranger Mike explained how RWEACT is conducting controlled studies of methods to reclaim and prevent runoff damage. The group is also working with the Forest Service to explore how to use the acres and acres of burned wood for the development of biomass as an alternative energy source.

Learn more about the recovery work of RWEACT here.

Some of the burn areas remain unstable as the dead and burned trees can easily topple to the ground. But, the good news is Forest Service has stabilized and opened most of the trails and fishing sites…and the fish are biting.

You’ll enjoy the scenery in the Rio Grande National Forest campsites even though it’s not exactly beautiful (except for the lovely purple and yellow fire flowers). You can see how things are okay after a fire’s devastation and maybe you’ll catch some fish.

In August, Round Rabbit and I will join a similar tour of the West Fork Fire burn area.

Count on another blog with pictures of the recover in that area of the West Fork Fire Complex.

14 07, 2014

Wasting time or recharging?

By judythemorgan|2014-07-14T06:00:51-05:00July 14th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|4 Comments

Edie Melson posted this image from her recent trip to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. The scene and the quote made me think about how much time I sit on my porch enjoying the quiet and nature all around.

It’s so peaceful listening to the hummingbirds dive-bombing the feeders and the birds chirping at the birdfeeder filled with birdseed.

I love waving to the neighbors and summer folk walking on the street and meeting them at the fence to chat.

It’s like the Shakespeare quote says, “I like this place and willingly waste my time in it.”

I don’t like to consider that I’m wasting time and I feel guilty when I willingly do nothing.

I find myself thinking of so much I should be doing instead of idling way time (…like writing) and usually get up and go to work.

What about you? Do you enjoy willingly wasting time in a favorite space or place?

Besides my front porch, there are other places where I love to kick back and relax. My favorite would be wandering around in Ireland.

I don’t even feel guilty when I do. It’s as quaint and quiet in the Irish countryside as it is on my front porch nestled in the Rio Grande forest.

After years and years of the hustle and bustle of a major urban area, I love the slower paced lifestyle offered in our little part of Colorado and Ireland. It’s what keeps us here and draws us repeatedly to Ireland.

I’m working to retrain my Type A self to bury the guilt and use the down time to recharge my creative juices.

Not an easy task, but I am improving.

What places do you love that make you want to waste time? Do you feel guilty or do you relish the time and draw rest and strength from the quiet places?

7 07, 2014

DEVIL eggs or ANGEL eggs?

By judythemorgan|2014-07-07T06:00:19-05:00July 7th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|1 Comment

We had deviled eggs for our cookout on July 4^th. I guessing a lot of holiday cookouts included the dish.

My recipe comes from my mother. She never wrote it out, but I watched her enough to know you mix the egg yolks, mustard, mayonnaise, and sweet relish until the stuffing will fill the hollowed out egg whites.

Sometimes I spice the mixture with dill relish instead of the sweet. Mother would be appalled so don’t tell.

I served our deviled eggs on the plate that belonged to my husband’s sister. It’s a way to include those who have gone before in our celebrations.

We always have my aunt’s baked beans, my mother-in-law’s chocolate cake (the one with the secret coffee ingredient that we never told my father-in-law about–he didn’t like coffee, you see.) and, of course, daddy’s homemade ice cream for family cookouts.

The tradition makes us feel like they’re all with us in spirit.

But I digress. Back to the deviled eggs…

As we sat around waiting on fireworks, we talked about how deviled eggs came to be called deviled.

Surrounded by techno-device-loaded friends and family, the race for the answer commenced. Fingers moved on iPhones, iPads, and Androids.

Soon Google came to the rescue, revealing interesting things about deviled eggs.

Did you know?

Deviled eggs have been around since the first century and ancient Rome.
The recipe was first compiled sometime between the fourth and fifth century A.D.
By the 15th century, stuffed eggs had made their way across much of Europe.
By 1800, deviling became a verb to describe the process of making food spicy.

You can read more fascinating details about the origin of deviled eggs here

Googling also turned up the answer to our quest:

The popular egg hors d’oeuvres are also called “mimosa eggs,” “stuffed eggs,” “dressed eggs” or “salad eggs”—especially when served at church functions.

Why, you wonder…in order to avoid an association with Satan, of course.

We also learned that, though most standard recipes include mayonnaise, the condiment didn’t appear in published deviled egg recipes until the 1940s.

That fact led to a discussion of recipes, which included pickles, dill, bacon, crabmeat, sriracha, kimchi, wasabi, and caviar among other ingredients. Some of which I am so glad were not in my family recipes!

So how do you make your deviled eggs?

More importantly, do you call them angel eggs?

30 06, 2014

BREAKING NEWS – New Book Release!

By judythemorgan|2014-06-30T06:00:44-05:00June 30th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

I’m interrupting our regular Make Me Think Monday blog for some personal news. I promise I’m not turning View from the Front Porch into a promo blog–it’s just I’m so excited about my new inspirational series debuting today.

When Love Blooms is now available for purchase for your Kindle. Nook and paperback versions will soon be ready too.

After a hit-and-run accident leaves her mother confined to a special care facility, Darcy Clark abandons her dream of an art career. Instead, she focuses on helping her father run the struggling family landscape business. She has no time or interest in romance.

When at-risk students from her old high school become her labor force on a city park project, their teacher Andy Fitzpatrick shows up to help and keep an eye on his kids. The chemistry between Darcy and Andy is instant.

Darcy dares to daydream about the possibility of a happily-ever-after until a dark secret connecting Andy to her mother’s accident comes to light. But will the secret kill their attraction before romance can blossom?

If you’ve been around church long then you know the term PK (preacher’s kid), When Love Blooms is the first in the Fitzpatrick family series of novellas about the siblings of Pastor Colin Fitzpatrick and his wife Patricia, who live in a small town in central Texas.

The idea for this new series came from my many years of service in church ministry.

The fact I also happen to be the wife of a PK and the mother of a PhD theologian/preacher means I’ve got lots of good stuff planned for the other seven siblings of the Fitzpatrick family.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading When Love Blooms as much as I loved writing about Andy and Darcy’s love story.

Click here to get your Kindle copy.