Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Camp Connell, Ca -- Mar. 25, 2011 -- As of yesterday a neighbor had measured approximately 27 feet of snowfall this winter. And it is still snowing.

Our average, we think, is around 15 feet, so this has been an unusual year.

Long-time locals recall a similar winter in the 1970s, or maybe early 1980s.

Several neighbors have found they have urgent business down the hill, usually in the Bay Area with family or friends. After a certain point snow just becomes, well, snow.

The snow plow operators are worn out, and deserve a break.

I admit I am ready for a real Spring, not one on the calendar only.

But it is still pretty.

The video is very amateurish, shot with my little Flip Video camera. The editing -- such as it is -- is all my fault.

I do hope you notice the music. It was as appropriate as I could find.

Come see us.

Bring a shovel.

Deforestation American Style

View Larger Map

Camp Connell, CA -- Thanks to Google, you can explore my neighborhood.
You can't really see the people or the general store, but you get an idea where we are located. In the woods.
Zoom in and out for an even better look.
There are no towns nearby, just villages and housing areas: Dorrington and Camp Connell and Big Trees Village subdivision.

Probably 90 per cent of the nearly thousand homes and cabins within three miles of us are unoccupied 95 per cent of the time. This is vacation cabin country, and most owners are absentee.
For example, there are 12 cabins on my road, and we are the only people who actually live here full-time. This Thanksgiving weekend, three other cabins on our road have been temporarily occupied, and that's about average for a holiday week at this time of year.
Maybe 200 or so people live in the immediate area.

We are all surrounded by tall trees; Ponderosa Pine, Sugar Pine, Incense Cedar, Oak, White Fir and a few Giant Redwoods planted in the last 100 years. The neighborhood is usually very quiet, and we really like it.

But if you take a close look at the Google map you will see it is not an untouched paradise. Large chunks have been removed, legally. It is sort of a a de-forestation blessed by local and state and federal governments.

Most of the forest immediately around us is owned by Sierra Pacific Industries, California's largest land-owner, and they have been cutting trees rapidly in the past few years. The pace has slowed a bit because of the housing industry collapse, but SPI's public relations department remains quite active selling the idea that the fault is elsewhere. They have to do it, they claim, because the Stanislaus National Forest lands where they used to cut trees owned by the public has tighter regulations.

Like a politician's "talking points," the corporation sells certain ideas: clear cutting is efficient and businesslike; herbicides are good for us; mono-culture forests are a sensible way to replant when they clear-cut a mixed conifer forest; the company is environmentally friendly and just wants to reduce the fire hazards, and problems for the industry are primarily caused by over-zealous environmentalists who don't understand good business practices.
I don't happen to believe it, and few of the people who actually live here do, but enough politicians accept the public relations pitch and the effective lobbying so the clear-cutting continues.

Look at the checkerboard pattern in the Google map, including acres adjacent to a major grove of Giant Sequoias protected by the state park.
The clear-cuts almost always leave a thin screen of trees to hide the scalped land from being visible from the roads.

None of my neighbors are anti-lumberjack, or against the use of timber, and almost no one here suggests trees should not be cut. We all live in wooden houses, burn wood in the fireplace, and sit on wooden-framed furniture.
But we'd like a more sensible approach.

The local economy is almost entirely dependent upon tourism: skiing, hiking, camping, fishing and hunting provide what little economy survives. In our mountain region, the biggest employer is the ski resort which is usually open five months at the most, and pays minimum wage to a lot of its seasonal employees.

Despite the massive tree cutting in the past few years, very few jobs in this economically depressed county are directly related to the corporate land owners. Their people mostly live in other areas, they have no mills operating in the county. The trucks come in, cut the trees, and haul them away to some other place. I suspect they pay a very small tax bill, if any.
The industry has created its own "green" non-profit organization to sell the idea that clear-cutting and mono-culture forest and herbicides are good for us, but people who live here know better.

Take a look for yourself.

==========================
*If you want to learn more, check out the website of a local organization that tries to balance economic necessity with smart forest practices: www.forestwatchers.org

The Snow Dance worked

Tioga Pass in Yosemite via webcam

Camp Connell, CA -- A training class for people who lead snow shoe walks ended early this week with this encouragement from the leader: "Now let's go home and do the snow dance!"
We did, and it worked.
The snow started falling about 2 p.m. today while we were having lunch at the Just Delicious Cafe in Arnold, almost 1,000 feet down the mountain from where we live.
When we got home it became a steady drop, quietly hiding and healing all the scars of a long summer and Fall. This is one of the loveliest times of year here in the mountains. Come to think of it, there are no bad times.
But this is really nice.
The video was taken from our porch, and the still photograph borrowed from a web camera at Tioga Pass, in Yosemite National Park, a few miles south of us and at 9,900 feet.
Eventually snow gets old, particularly if I have to shovel a lot or the plow shows up late.
But for now, we love it.
Earlier in the week we attended the training session for snow shoe walks in Calaveras Big Trees State Park, bought brand new snow tires for Pat's Subaru. And then today I bought a new pair of downhill skis.
All I have to do now is get in some shape other than portly.

Bring it on!

Connections to good times/friends

Camp Connell, CA - Labor Day Weekend -- The photo which tops this blog really requires little arrows pointing in various directions, because each element of the picture has a story to tell about friendship, travel, adventure and maybe even aging well in good company.
Since I do not have the computer hardware to make the arrows go where I want, I'll try to do this simply in text so all my relatives can understand...
(That didn't sound right, but you can ask questions later in the comments section. Be sure and state exactly how we are related before asking anything serious.)

First, the location is the front deck of our home in the Sierra Nevada mountains, about 100 miles due east of San Francisco and 4,980 feet up Ebbetts Pass Highway.

Second, the time was Sunday morning, after everyone woke up after an evening of music and food, and a little wine, got cleaned up, and all were ready to smile.

Here comes the complicated part: how six different people came to be know each other.

From left to right, that's me with the umbrella growing out of my head. I would normally be wearing shorts and a T-shirt from Mexico, but I've worn most of them out hauling firewood so the shirt is a "Stomping Grayzies" team shirt from the annual Grape Stomp Festival in the gold-and-tourist-mining town of Murphys. My grand-daughter and son-in-law made up a team and I was a cheerleader. Symbolic of a slight shift in life style, don't you think?
Next is my beautiful spousal unit Pat, wearing normal clothes and a smile, and including a red flannel shirt to keep warm as it is beginning to feel like Fall in the early mornings.
Third in line is Dan Olson, sailor and retired state bigwig, from San Diego Sacramento El Dorado Hills in the past and this year from Cartagena Columbia. Dan stood in back because he is very tall. His wife Lorraine, dressed like a normal person, is probably the quietest of this group, which is a reflection of her high tolerance level. Maybe she is just being polite.
Dan is wearing a bright green T-shirt that says "Sabbatical" on it, even though his boats are named Zephyr and Zephrus. Sabbatical was a big sailboat owned by the couple on the far right (photographically, not politically) who have since swallowed the hook (translation: sold the boat) and moved to Mexico (more on that later, it gets too confusing).
Pat and I met Dan and Lorraine in San Diego almost ten years ago on a dock, and they were present the day we took ownership of our sailboat Good News. They showed up on a New Years Eve with champagne and a suggestion for the boat's name, which stuck. We since have been with them in places ranging from the Oakland Estuary to the backwaters of Tenacatita Bay in Mexico. Dan even hauled me up my 50 foot mast in a bosun's chair, once so you know I trust him.
Their current home is on a small sailboat in Alameda, near our boat Good News, and their normal home is a larger sailboat waiting for them in Columbia where they plan to continue their cruising the Western Hemisphere lifestyle in October. We may see them next in Belize, or maybe the Caribbean. Probably Oakland.
Next in line is Prof. Sylvia Fox, who with husband Michael Fitzgerald, also a professor, have been entangled with Olsons and LaMonts for years in various ways.
Michael is wearing a Tenacatita Bay Regatta T-shirt from several years back, the year he helped win the big race. Or came close. Or something like that.
Other than playing the fiddle, teaching journalism, marrying Michael, living aboard a sailboat, having a home on Seneca Lake in New York and the other in a small Mexican village with no other gringo residents, Sylvia's pretty normal. She is the brains behind a lot of the mischief these six people cook up, and almost all the fun.
Michael is part sailor part journalist, part politician and part musician. His current instrument is the ukulele, and his current residence in a shared home in Sacramento near the University where they both teach the Fall semesters. He shares those other homes in Mexico and New York, and may be planning to have a few more before he and Sylvia decide which continent is best. Don't be fooled by the smile and the happy uke songs, Michael is also a sharp critic of foolish politicians everywhere, and particularly anti-union forces in California. (We met through journalism, but got over it.)
Together Michael and Sylvia have begun to bring positive change to their village by providing a veterinarian to help the residents. More important, probably, is the bridges of friendship they have forged with Mexican neighbors and friends, and helping their animals get healthy, and providing free English language lessons for the village children. No guessing what they will do next, but it will be interesting.
It's hard to believe that we only go back a decade. We've shared interests in government, newspapers, politics, the web, sailing, Mexico, music, wine, and each other's families for long enough to feel thoroughly connected. We've lived together in shared homes a few times, even shared a great old dog once, and watched the children and grandchildren grow and mature.
We enjoy music together and I am pretty sure that our band "The Four Headlamps" has now become the "Six Headlamps" since we added Dan on a noisy apple-shaker and Lorraine played sticks this weekend. Someone suggested the "Dim Bulbs" would be a better name, but that did not carry the vote. Check out the band on one of Michael's blogs: http://thefourheadlamps.blogspot.com/

I'm sure we six would never agree on everything, but then again, we wouldn't care about that. Friendship does not require agreement.

None of these folks will ever starve so long as I have a can of beans in my cupboard.

They're on my friends "list" even without Facebook.

Even without arrows drawn on the picture, we are all connected.

A week for the ISMISOB* sign

Things have been pretty quiet here in Camp Connell, my home town. But that doesn't mean nothing at all has been happening.

-- The governor announced, and the legislature may go along with, shutting down 80% of the state parks to save money in the budget crunch. He acts like parks don't employ real people-- just scientists, interpreters, law enforcers, and maintenance folks. Here in one of the smaller counties in the biggest state the local park draws 300,000 tourists a year and generates more than double the expenses in the local economy. Everybody is mad at him about something, and now I am joining the angry throng. What can he be thinking?

-- The weather has been unusual for the first week of June. Temps in the 40s in the morning, with a fair amount of rain, even thunder and lightening. I think I lived in this part of the world almost ten years before I ever heard the sound of thunder. What's up with that? Can I blame this on George Bush and the GOP?

-- Thinking about the state park, and the weather, I was on volunteer duty yesterday on the slightly wet trail through the giant Sequoias when I noticed that some visitor left a just-emptied beer bottle hidden under a bench, rather than take it to a trash or recycle bin. His mother raised an idiot. Enjoy nature and dump your trash for folks to admire?

-- We supported the national economic recovery this week by purchasing a brand new car. It's another Subaru Forester, the best snow/ice vehicle for the mountains. And then I discovered they put bigger and fancier wheels on the new car and our almost-brand-new snow tires won't fit. Zapped by the fashion mavens of the auto industry. Why would they do that?

-- Went to a musical today at the historical Fallon Playhouse in Columbia State Park (another place that may close) to see a performance about the Andrews Sisters. Lots of music, dance, attractive young women who sing well, and a very funny man (the only male in the play). The costumes were great. The dancing right on the mark. The singing was absolutely first rate, and the humor had the entire audience rocking. But I made the mistake of reading two reviews in local newspapers. They were luke warm, pointing out that the audience was older (which it almost always is), and even though it was pretty good, the audience (being older, I assume) didn't leap to its collective feet and make the house thump. Don't these part-time reviewers understand there actually was good music before Eminem?

-- A right-wing loudmouth, who didn't notice how the last national election turned out, is trying to take over local websites that report news. He comments on every item regarding state or national government, usually quoting misinformation heard on talk radio and insulting elected officials by accusing them of being Marxist Commie Pinkos. Anyone who disagrees he calls a fool, and he is getting uglier all the time. It has the effect of spoiling useful public forums. He also is testing my boundless belief in unlimited free speech, but I'll stick with it so far. What sort of manners do you suppose he has at the dinner table?

He would certainly qualify for the "ISMISOB" award.

Many years ago my wife and another woman worked in a Cape Canaveral NASA office dominated by older males who thought they were very important. When the men got out of line and the ladies who did the real work could not take it any more, the women had a little ceremony. They delivered a brass and wooden plaque with "ISMISOB" stamped on the face to the egregious offender. It took the guys a while to figure out that the initials stood for "Inconsiderate Self Made Insufferable Son Of a Bitch."*
They got the message.

I have to be very careful not to move from the "merely grouchy" category to something deserving a plaque.

(Added late: I just learned some numbers this morning that REALLY make me grouchy. From the New York Times:
"According to a 2008 survey of physician salaries by the American Medical Group Association, their average annual salary is $201,555, versus $356,166 for a general surgeon and $614,536 for a neurological surgeon."
Now THAT explains a lot about why we have a health care problem.)

Spring in the Mountains - a video

Camp Connell, CA -- Spring is trying to arrive here, but it is a challenge.

In the past week we have seen sunshine, breezes, rain, sleet, snow, and finally more sunshine late today.

The video is a first attempt, so forgive the rough cuts. But it is less than two minutes long and gives you a picture of what this week has been like.

And now, for a look at the weather

Camp Connell, Ca. -- We needed some snow.
Well, we got it. The photo shows the scene out our living room window at noon today, with the "more snow" weather forecast on TV. They say it may quit tonight for two days, then start again.
In the last eight days or so we have five to six feet of new snow.
It is enough to satisfy me, actually, but the TV folks say we are still behind the snowpack needed to avoid another drought year this summer and fall.
Don't get me wrong, we really like snow to admire and play in. But there are certain issues: Pat had to spend the night down the mountain to make a scheduled 7:30 a.m. meeting at our granddaughter's school; the meeting was canceled because of snowy roads; we missed church Sunday, and two board meetings were canceled due to icy roads; I can't go skiing either because the roads are too bad, or I am too timid to ski in deep powder, or as we call it here, Sierra Cement.

I could not get out the dirt road to the highway this morning even in my truck because of 18 inches of new, very wet, snow.

It was so wet Mr.Miller, the plow fellow, had to use a giant front-end loader to clear the road enough for his snow blowers to get to our driveway.
The top photo shows him clearing the road at the top of my driveway, and the bottom photo shows the blower clearing the drive by our doorway. My semi-buried truck is barely visible.




They did get it cleared enough for us to get in and out.
For now I am using this blogging break as an excuse not to go outside and shovel the garage entrance clear of the snow now piled up against it.

No problem.

Tonight, I will just throw a burger on the barbie and kick back and, probably, watch the snow. That's the barbie in the picture. It took about an hour to get the deck cleaned off, less than normal thanks to son Zack repairing the deck blower.




I think I'll have some fun and stay in and work on my taxes.

Living in a post card

Our local web site posted a short video today of the road conditions in our neighborhood, after about a foot of new snow.

The webmaster referred to the scenery here as "living in a post card."
You can see what he means by following the link and clicking on the YouTube video.

The entire video is over seven minutes, maybe too much for most of you. If it is, advance to the last minute. Those who know this part of the country, or who have visited our home, will recognize the last minute of the video as showing the ride from Dorrington, home of the Lube Room saloon/ bar and grill, a quarter mile to the Camp Connell General Store (and our post office), and the turnoff to our side road.

www.bigtreestech.com/home/

Or the direct YouTube link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnugUK2JZNo

If you check the links too late, you'll have a chance to see how a local non-profit web site provides news and information and community links to the 104 full time, and hundreds more weekend and vacation folk who call this area home.

Enjoy.

(Technical stuff) The picture below is of granddaughter Delaney during a snowball fight with Pat a week or so ago. The drive photos are of the new snow that fell this week.

Transportation or Personality?

Camp Connell, CA -- I've always chuckled at people who buy vehicles to reflect, or pretend to reflect, their self image.
Not any more.
I just bought a pickup truck, and I'm going to name it after George W. Bush.
It reflects where I am currently in my life; irritated with the current administration; wearing out slowly; a few chips and dents showing, but with several hundred thousand good miles remaining in the future-- I hope. (Me and my truck - not GW.)

I'll describe this vehicular avatar later. First, the history indicates I did buy cars that said something about me at the time. (Thank goodness I never bought a Hummer, a sexual substitute for mental inadequacy.)

As soon as I had a real full-time job after graduation from college in 1962 I stood in line at the Atlanta dealership and ordered my new foam green VW, with no options. When it came it had a hundred dollars worth of extras I did not want, and I was told to take it or leave it or wait another six to eight weeks. I took it, for around $1,700.
That was my practical transportation-only purchase, and my cheap years, and it worked fine for a few years.
When I got out of the Army and started reporting for the Miami Herald in Florida I bought a brand new 1965 British Racing Green Triumph Spitfire. It sounded great, cost $2,400, and the engine blew on the way home from the dealer. The engine was never quite right, but I loved that car.
The Triumph was the symbol of my bachelorhood. I courted my wife in it, used it for our honeymoon and drove back and forth to Apollo launches.

Even though it had junky engine, I felt really cool in that car until the day our daughter Ruth was born. You don't drive Florida's causeways in a tiny sports car at 65 mph with a cement truck on your bumper and a baby in your lap. At least, not if you want your wife to go along.
So we entered our practical vehicular years: another VW, two plain Chevy Biscaynes, and then at mid-career(not mid-life crisis), a new 1977 bright orange VW Camper to leave Florida and the East, and work our way West. We gave our last Chevy to the Salvation Army.
The camper took us everywhere until we ruined the engine climbing the western mountains.
Fortunately for me, that was during the era when newspaper companies were generous, not cheap, and company-provided cars solved the transportation problems for the next 20 years or so. We had a series of vehicles that fit the dark suits I wore to work, including one four-door Oldsmobile. I finally felt secure and moved through a series of SUVs -- Jeeps and Ford Explorers suited us quite well.
About the time I joined AARP and started having senior moments, we had a Northern California car (1999 Subaru for winter trips), I retired and then sold our last Explorer in Florida and replaced it with a Toyota van -- for traveling, not soccer games.
That was it until this week.
For more than a year I'd been contemplating buying a new truck, focusing primarily on Ford and Toyota 4X4s, generally around $30,000, using proceeds from stocks.
I had never owned a truck.
Every guy needs a truck at some point in his life. My son has had two or three, and my son-in-law has a very nice Tundra even as we speak.
I needed a truck.
Then the economy went into the toilet, thanks to eight years of fiscal conservatism focused on making the rich much richer. (That's why I named it for the President.)
So I bought a truck this week that fits the community, my personal needs, and my pocketbook(about one-tenth the price of new).
It is a 1986 GMC Sierra full-sized pickup truck. The silver paint is peeling, and the left blinker doesn't work right, but it has a new engine and is in reasonably good condition.
I always swore I'd never buy a Chevy, but I consider GMC a cut above.
It will haul wood or brush, get us out to the highway through two feet of fresh snow, make trips to the dump without concern for the polished finish, and give me an excuse to go offroad.
It seems a good fit. Just don't ask about the mileage.
I probably won't take it to San Francisco, or to the yacht club for dinner. But it will work just fine to get to the Camp Connell store for a beer on a Saturday night.
And that's where I am most of the time.

Home again

No, this is not our home, but it is a cabin just up the road a bit from where we live at a place called Mosquito Lake.

Camp Connell, CA -- We arrived home just after dark on Sunday night after a four hour drive from Yosemite.
Everything in the van smells like a campfire, a nice reminder of our five weeks living in a campground. It will take a while to get the smoky smell out of our clothing.
We were not aware that we missed anything while we were away, we had such a great time, but here are a few things we appreciated when we got back here on home ground:
-- Friendly folks at the Camp Connell General Store, who watched out for our place while we were away. We had a local beer on our first afternoon home, visited, watched a card game, and just enjoyed the feeling of being back;
-- A warm bathroom. I'm not overly sensitive, but a seat that isn't icy and a spigot that puts out warm water are luxuries I missed;
-- The smells and sounds of the forest around our home has a welcome-home feel to me. Yosemite certainly smells good too, but this place smells like home, with a mix of cedar and oak and pine, and the bird calls are familiar and comfortable;
-- A warm house. We had learned what it was like to go to bed cold, and wake up to much colder. Here it was a balmy 40 degrees this morning, and I did not have to wear fleece to dash for the facilities;
-- And, of course, family. It is always such a joy to see children and grandchildren, and re-engage in their lives. Even when we are watching from a distance it is a joy to hear about school, basketball games, Cub scout meetings, and archery classes.
We still appreciate the opportunity to have been in such a beautiful place.
I miss seeing coyote chasing ground squirrels as I hike across a meadow to work. Or the sight of a Harrier hawk soaring low to the ground, looking for lunch. I miss the great hikes in the high Sierra, and the sound of animals unseen but nearby. I miss the new friends we made and worked with, and the very interesting people from all over the world we met almost every day.
I even miss the sound of someone banging pots and pans to chase a bear away from the garbage they accidentally left outside.
But it is very nice to be warm, to be comfortable, to be close to family and neighbors. To be home.

Snow, snow, beautiful snow

Camp Connell, CA -- While it wasn't the storm of the century, it was a beautiful BIG dump of snow.
We had about four feet within three days, most of it yesterday (Saturday) after days of off-and-on snow and rain.

Here's what our closest paved road -- it leads to our dirt lane --look like after a big snow while the power company crews work to restore power:

Here's what Pat looks like when she is wearing snow shoes for the first time--she only fell down a couple of times -- and that's a pretty good view of the house behind her:

Here's what Sanders looks like when digging out the Subaru, or at least thinking about it:

And here's what our summer toy -- the canoe -- looks like, with our stalled garage construction project (foundation only) not quite obvious to the left, marked by the rope:


We holed up in the cabin for a couple of days, and there were minor inconveniences: the power was off 16 hours, and we got a chance to test our little camp/boat stove, and all our flashlights; the snowplow showed up about 5:30 a.m., which was a rude but welcomed awakening, and it took me several hours of shoveling to clean up walkways, decks and the edges of the driveway.

But all in all, a pretty interesting couple of days.

Tomorrow, I go skiing for the first time this year.

Then, weather permitting, we'll go sailing later this week. THAT's why people live in California.

Storm of the century -- not quite!

Camp Connell, CA -- The weatherman had been warning us all week, and the regional television stations were bordering on hysteria. A REALLY big series of storms was heading our way from the Gulf of Alaska.

As of this writing, the third storm in the series is passing over us, and we are okay. Just fine, in fact.


Friends (from Virginia, Mexico, Maryland and California) had contacted us, concerned for our safety.

Rest assured, dear friends, we are surviving quite well. We have cut back on our driving activity, as the roads have been pretty messy, but we have lots of wood stacked, extra food stored, and our trusty all-wheel-drive Subaru full of gas and supplied with a winter emergency kit in the back (sleeping bag, flares, chains, wool hats and granola bars). And I watched two John Wayne movies (Rio Bravo and The Searchers), to toughen me up.

We were SO prepared.

And now, in the almost aftermath of the big storms, Pat is baking cookies, I am eating cookies and messing with the computer and making sure the birds have extra seed scattered on the snow. All is well. We may take a walk later.



The major concession we made to the storms so far was to sleep downstairs last night, in what is normally our guest room. With high winds predicted during the night, and living in a house surrounded by 150-foot-tall trees, we decided that would be a good idea. A few years ago one of these big trees fell through a nearby cabin and neatly sliced it in half. We can't control that, but we can be cautious in high winds.

It was very interesting yesterday to stand by the sliding glass doors and watch the tree tops sway wildly back and forth while the snow swirled around.

So far the blizzard did not turn out to be a blizzard. The first two storms brought gusty winds, but not extreme, and about a foot of new snow. The mountain passes above us got more -- three or four feet -- but nowhere near the ten feet predicted. So far.

It is currently snowing hard again, naturally, just after the snowplow came through to clean out the lane. And right after I shoveled a walkway. We expect another foot or two by morning.

So we may have to skip church if the roads are bad, but by Monday I think I need to drive UP the mountain to the ski resort and see if my aging knees have one more season in them.

It beats shoveling snow.

And then I can respond appropriately to my friends in Mexico who keep sending me pictures of them strolling on the beach, and at an open-air tango party in LaManzanilla.

Meanwhile, here I am testing our camp stove -- just in case.


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For a picture of what is happening weather-wise in our neighborhood, check this link:

http://www.bigtreestech.com/weather/live.php

Ode to Donna

To some folks outside beautiful downtown Camp Connell, California, Donna Manning may just appear to be a normal human being, one who happens to run a store along Highway 4 on the Ebbetts Pass Scenic Byway.
But for the people who live here (all 105 of us) and those who visit (several thousand in a big week), they know better.
Judy Caverly, one of the more respectable residents of the area, and a real Yankee too, put her feelings about Donna into a semi-epic poem on her last birthday. It works best if you read it aloud in a Down-east accent. Pretend you are a Kennedy clan member.

Here 'tis:

ODE TO DONNA

I’m sitting here with pen in hand
Deciding how to honor Camp Connell’s lady proprietress,
The enigma we call DONNA

Surprises always lie in store when entering
Camp Connell’s door. A happy greeting? Yes! I’ll take it.
One thing’s for sure, she’ll never fake it!

The loving side we all have seen, pinch yourself,
it’s not a dream.
Gaze amongst the “artsy fartsy,” you might meet
the “Paper Nazi.”
If all you buy is black and white, you might be in for quite a fright!

The morning crew arrive in mass, tormenting our poor Donna’s ass.
No burritos to start the day?
Watch out Donna, you’re bound to pay!

People come into the store and hug her,
For they all adore
The lady with the snappy wit.
(She’s apt to call your kid a twit)!

She may not call you by your name
(Can’t remember, what a shame)!

Those of us who gather here to honor her this day will all agree,
She’s one fine dame--
We’ll take her any way.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DONNA