Mukilteo Musings

Meaningful Morning....

And all before 8 AM!! Kaley has a delayed schedule on Wednesday mornings so when I get up, it is light outside. First thing I do in the mornings is get my three newspapers. The Seattle Times and The Seattle PI are always up on my porch but the Everett Herald is thrown in our driveway. Lately, because we have no rain anymore, I have been running down the steps to the driveway without shoes to grab my third newspaper. However, today there is dampness--I will not even call it rain--but I ran for it anyway. You see, I was excited to see the front pages because Mount St. Helens is acting up again with a huge ash plume last evening.

While I was reading the papers and drinking my French Press coffee with my Costco croissant, I listened to the local news on King5. Red-haired Jim Foreman is King5's man of action and last night he was having a great time in a helicopter flying around Mount St. Helens. We Seattleites make fun of Jim because he is the one they send to snow storms, to fly over the Space Needle on New Year's, to report from mudslides, etc. And he gets so animated. But this morning the local news instead had an interview with a woman near the mountain who said she knew it was going to explode because her cats went flying all over her trees.

Next, I heard the distinctive call of our neighborhood bald eagles and sure enough I watched one of them land on his perch in a high tree. He had prey in his beak (I assume a small fish) and he ate it. Shortly thereafter, he was joined by his partner. I tried to take a photo but it is a little gray this morning. I returned to my reading about the affair the married CEO of Boeing had with another executive which cost him his job when I noticed a tug boat. The tug was pulling a log jamb which I call a "seal cruise ship". I grabbed my super duper binocs and watched those freeloader seals and at least one sea lion enjoying a free Puget Sound cruise.



Finally, Kaley was ready for school and in the car she needed money. She needed money for a green bracelet that Lucas took and she sold two more to me. The green bracelets she is selling are to protest the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, tortured and raped and the United States barely pays attention. I am proud that my children care about these horrors.
http://www.savedarfur.org/

"The Save Darfur Coalition is an alliance of over 100 diverse faith-based, humanitarian, and human rights organizations that was formed in response to the massive crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. Our mission is to raise public awareness and to mobilize efforts to help end the atrocities and reduce the suffering in Darfur and nearby refugee camps."


So at this moment as I type, my daughter is at school, I wear a green bracelet, my eagle still sits in the tree but the seals are in Everett by now. Mount St. Helens is quiet. I think King5 should send Jim Foreman and his helicopter to Darfur! And all of this happened before 8 AM.