SEP-B-7

TAKEOFF FOR A WEEKEND VISIT TO IOWA,

THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY FOR ME TO SEE THE NEW HOUSE, TRUCK, TRAILER, AND THE LIVESTOCK INHABITANTS

OF EACH IN INDIANOLA, IA

ADJACENT TO SIMPSON COLLEGE CAMPUS,

WHERE I AM EVEN BOOKED TO TALK WITH A VOICE PEDAGOGY CLASS ON HEARING SOUND IN MUSIC

Sep 25, 2003

It is a good thing that I took off early! I am here in DCA, probably having worked harder to get here in the “waitperson” lounge today than I did to run here two days ago from the Wellness and Health Center (WHC from now on). I had packed up my carryon bag with the minimal requirements for a number of different circumstances, from giving lectures to riding a horse, to general meeting and greeting. Then I added only the last four months of photo albums June through September to date. Do you have any idea how much the massive memories of such a period witches? I have a better idea now. The five albums that are overstuffed into the pristine and strong carryon bag fit only when I staggered them in the bag, but it has a carrying strap that fits over the shoulder that has made it easier to carry in the past. It had such a strap. It parted somewhere in the long and “moving-sidewalk-free” corridor from the furthest entrance of Terminal B at DCA to the furthest point in Terminal A—a very long aerobic exercise away. Couple that with the carryon backpack in which I had packed this machine and all my photography stuff etc (to take out the clearly marked “800 ASA film speed” Photo Works cameras so that they would not be ruined by the check in gate X-Rays) and an extra Photo Album Volume IX which I had planned to continue labeling since the time before cruising altitude and away from electric outlets will not make it likely that I can type very long—and I was carrying much more than when I was packing out moose meat down tundra covered mountains or running the Potomac River Bank flooded trails. I allotted just over two hours and used up two of those in the process of getting onto and off Metro (the lesser of the time spent in transit) and then schlepping all the way across the whole of DCA to get the fine tooth combing of the new security regulations in the old part of the Ronald Reagan National Airport.

I got up early to find ( a rare event when anything carefully stored away in a box somewhere can be retrieved—where nearly all my stuff is stored –I hope—in one of four locations) a paper I had written on the cultural transition that had allowed tropical equatorial dwelling dark skinned Africans to migrate into Temperate Zones with decreased sunlight and decreased skin exposure to that sunlight due to cold weather clothing and the seasonal variation in the light availability meaning that they would be deficient in the fat soluble vitamins—particularly Vitamin D. To overcome that deficiency, which would cause pelvic rickets and make it impossible to deliver a next generation, they had to adapt to new ways of getting fresh meat higher up in the food chain. For this reason they had to get fresh meat from fish or game and had to ambush at a distance rather than forage on what others had killed. Hafted technology on arrows and atl-atl made this improved hunting technique more consistently reliable and allowed northern hunters to emerge from tropical hunters before the genetic changes of skin color lightening and other longer term adaptations. I found this paper, which I see now I had written ten years ago, and copied it (when the Xerox machine once again agreed to work after an early morning period of petulance) and sent it through the fax to Guy Goliath at the Washington Post who had interviewed me once before on subjects of medicine and nutrition. I also got a call from Russ Elwell who assures me that he had secured the spots at Cumberland by sending in the certified checks despite uncertainty on whether he or any other Elwell can be in attendance since young Russell has chosen January, sometime, as a good time for him and Leah to get married on Anagoda Island in the Caribbean, but do not yet know when. Rich Reinert has been trying to call to talk moose and its missing meat, and Craig called, each of them now attuned to the September 26 deadline for what may be the final Cumberland hunt. I left email and phone messages for both Donald and Michael but have not heard from either, but all the others are accounted for for this January 9 weekend through January 14, through the hunt weekend of reunions and a chosen few hog hunt.

I made copies of an anatomy and physiology of the ear simple outline suitable for college students. I did not get over to the bookstore, since I am already overloaded—both literally true for avoirdupois, and for reading material which will have to follow when I return to begin the reports on the six books I should have been reading for the ELDP program.

THE PHOTO ALBUMS THAT HAVE BROKEN THE STRAP,

IF NOT MY BACK, IN CARRYING THEM ALONG,

ARE NOW IN ORDER, AND LABELED THROUGH THE SECOND TO LAST

The habit of organizing the cascade of photos into the print albums may seem strange to some, but I do accumulate a lot of them in the course of a typical adventure-filled year, and the whole collection would be overwhelming if I did not keep up with it. This is why I had worked diligently on the Ladakh and Lingshed trips putting them into order before taking off on the Alaska trip, and now should do that one to completion before abandoning Volume XI for this year and starting up on the run of Sikkim, which is a place I have never yet been. So, I am playing with this organization before going to Indianola Iowa, home of Simpson College for my first visit to see the new Dodge Ram diesel truck, the Trail-ette horse trailer, the new house and the various livestock to which yet another has been added—a retired foxhound, whose days as a champion fox hunter, show dog and now breeder have passed, so he has been kicked out of the barn and would be put down but for the adoption by a Ms Virginia who has taken this old hound in, and he has gone directly from a straw pallet to Chintz covered floral print couches in the equivalent of Foxhound heaven! I should be so lucky!

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