Just a Guy in Everyday Ramblings

Mrs. Sherlock wanted to explore in more detail a hike she took with the local Trails Club folks last Wednesday this weekend so we started out here south of Portland in a very affluent neighborhood with a wonderfully reclaimed iron works made into a park that connects Oswego Lake to the Willamette River.

The walk we did was mostly on a broad shoulder of a road that wends along the river so not that interesting in terms of gardens or homes and the river was mostly screened from view but I hadn’t spent any real time with her (or Frida) in a month and it was nice to catch up.

We did end up doing extensive wandering on the almost eerily deserted campus of a local private liberal arts college, Marylhurst University. We explored behind a few buildings where the woods abut the campus and saw a doe and her offspring, which explained the high extensive fencing around the campus garden, which was quite lovely.

There was no racial diversity at all in the people we saw, no homeless or obviously mentally ill and all the women were thin. Mrs. Sherlock says I comment on that often when we go places together. It was like taking a break on another planet. The people were friendly too. Frida was wearing her bright pink poodle raincoat and we were both wearing bright orange jackets and a woman running by commented on this. Lots of folks participating in recreational activities talked to us.

I think it was a tribal thing. We both didn’t quite fit the profile.

Mrs. Sherlock has been telling me for a couple of years she is going to cut back on travel and her carbon footprint as her husband gets a bit older and needs more nudging to take care of himself. I had to laugh then when she told me on Saturday she is going to Wisconsin in two weeks, Japan in about five and on a bike trip through the Everglades in late February. Not to mention her rescheduled bike trip in the Netherlands in the fall.

She loves the stimulation of being in new places and she has over the years developed many friendships with older women who also like to and can afford to travel. They encourage each other and that is what has gone on here.

There was a touching moment before my class on Friday where Mrs. Sherlock asked the group if they were watching the PBS documentary on Vietnam and I asked her if she had seen the medical ship she was stationed on in the Da Nang Harbor in the footage. Realizing that this meant she had witnessed the war personally one of the other students gently touched her shoulder and thanked her for her service. She doesn’t talk about herself very much but was a navy nurse at a critical time in our nation’s history.

Anyway we had an enjoyable walk and I got to see the chapel where her husband took organ lessons for a time when they were younger and newer to Portland.

I was reading a quote by someone who knew the Las Vegas shooter this morning saying, “He was just a guy”.

Yeah. A guy with 10 high-powered assault rifles in his hotel room.

There is something really really wrong with this picture.

How do people who profit off the manufacture these weapons sleep at night?

Oh, I know, partially because they have the support of a man who can do or say anything he wants to because he is the President of the United States even though he is not even close to being mentally capable of holding this critical position.

It makes one question why we even have elections. I have been listening to world history this weekend and there have been a fair share of monarchs that have behaved as egregiously as our bone spurred Commander in Chief.

Really, dedicating a golf trophy to the victims of Irma and Maria? Really?

I am sorry, I don’t meant to offend anyone but considering the life and service of my weekly hiking companion I think it is about time, women moved in to take charge.

Last updated October 02, 2017