Ornaments

A family member recently asked on her Facebook page if people let their kids decorate the family Christmas tree, or if they did it themselves, because they wanted it to look "picture perfect."

The majority of her friends who responded said that they had the kids help. Some admitted to tweaking the placement after the kids were in bed, but only slightly. I remember doing that; I have a photo of my two year old hanging every ornament that she had on the same branch. We told her what a big helper she was, and moved them after she was asleep. I'm not going to have a discussion about ideal placement (and branch strength) with someone in diapers.

The discussion made me think of a conversation that I had with a friend, years ago. She wanted a perfect living room, so she put up a tree in another room, not visible to visitors, and, in her words, "made it a junk tree." I looked really confused, so she explained - "You know - hanging up all those crappy looking things the kids made." Oh. Well. Those are some of my favorite ornaments. My daughter was thrilled at 5 when I used the angel she made out of a paper plate for the top of our tree; at 15, she was mortified. I still loved it.

I admire trees with matching, themed, color coordinated ornaments. I really do. They're lovely. But I want my tree to hold memories.

Every year, we got the children a new ornament. When they got old enough, we let them choose their own. We end up with ornaments like this on our tree:

We get a little grief for it. "Oh, yeah," one visitor said. "Nothing says Christmas like Darth Vader." Hey, that Vader makes my son happy, and it makes me happy.

So does Darth Maul; he's from the year that my son dressed as Darth Maul at the Disneyland Halloween party.

You can tell a lot about my childrens' interests by the ornaments they chose.

These came in children's meals at a fast food place one year; all of my kids got the full set of 4 (there's also a Whoville house, and Max the dog with a tied on antler).

My son made this one at Scout camp.

We generally commemorate events of the year with ornaments. This is from the year that my youngest daughter danced in "The Nutcracker" on a local showroom stage.

These were actually on an onstage tree the year 4 of us were in "A Christmas Carol." That's a laminated ticket tied on when the ornament came home after the show, and went on our tree.

Years ago, we decided to start collecting ornaments when we travel. Most of these were bought on vacation; sometimes, we buy something after we've gotten home that reminds us of the trip. (There's no shortage of Eiffel Tower ornaments in stores!) The photo is from the Big Island of Hawaii, commemorating our hike in to the island's green sand beach. We've also printed wedding photos onto metal ornaments.

 

These are from Germany. My maternal grandmother's family emigrated from there; I bought these when I visited Germany for the first time. The visit helped explain some of my grandma's taste; there were red geraniums everywhere.

Sometimes, we go with things that aren't actually designed to be ornaments. The one from Hawaii is supposed to be a bookmark; the Minnie hat is an antennae ball. The swordfish was just what my son chose one year when he couldn't find an ornament that he liked. Hey, we can adapt.

Until this year, when our immediate family reached 9 with the addition of spouses, we tried to add a personalized family ornament every year. Sometimes, they're travel reminders, too. We got the orca the year we went to San Diego at Christmas.

Some of our ornaments are more traditional. I cherish my mother's delicate glass ornaments. I remember breaking many of them during my childhood.

All together, they make for a beautiful tree that makes me happy every time I see it.

When You've Gotta Go

There used to be a Pepto Bismol commercial that started with a nervous man saying, "I'm here to talk to you about... diarrhea. Don't change the channel!" That's kind of how I feel right now. I'm going to talk about public restrooms. Please don't leave.

I'm going to let you know, too, right up front, that I'm going to be talking about how other countries do this better than we do.

On the one hand, I tend to dislike and dismiss people who whine that this or that place is better than here - wherever here is. It's pretentious, and begs the question, "Then why aren't you there?"

On the other hand, something that's far more annoying, and damaging, is clinging to an idea or practice that doesn't work, just because it's "ours," and "this is how we do things here." The inability to assess, learn from, and implement new ideas is crippling, personally and societally.

So let's talk about how other countries handle public restrooms better than we do.

Let's start with the name. We call these rooms "restrooms," but there's no resting being done in them. It's a ridiculous, inaccurate euphemism, because we're apparently too embarrassed to discuss the fact that we have bodily functions. It makes us, collectively, look like we're children.

I remember the first time I heard the term "restroom." I was a child, and I was in a restaurant with my family. We didn't eat out often, so this was not an ordinary occurrence; I wasn't used to the way things worked. My mother got up and left the table, which puzzled me, especially when she didn't come right back.

"Where's Mom?" I asked Dad.

"She's in the restroom."

A whole room for resting? That sounded great. As a kid I didn't take naps (I make up for that now), but I've always been easily exhausted by crowds, noise, excessive human interaction (even when it's positive and fun), so it was easy for me to imagine that Mom had just reached the point that she needed a room in soothing blues and greens, with soft music, chaises and cold compresses. I mean, who doesn't? But at a restaurant? In the middle of lunch?

"Could I go, too?"

"Do you have to?"

"Well, I don't have to, but I could."

I was so disappointed. The "restroom" was a tiny room with two toilet stalls and a sink, in faded white paint. No potted plants, no gentle flower fragrance, no resting. Just cramped toilet stalls in gunmetal gray.

We make fun of other countries' euphemisms - oh, those silly British and their "water closets." Hey, it's a tiny room with plumbing - "water closet" is a far more accurate description than "restroom."

Most other countries get it right - if you need to tend to your bodily elimination functions, you ask for the toilets, or look for the sign that says "toilet." Straightforward, no childish snickering, the way humans should act.

The other obvious way in which other countries get it right is their stall doors and walls. Last year, we took a trip that took us across 8 countries, and do you know what every non-US nation had? Actual doors and walls in their stalls, as in up to the ceiling, down to the floor, doors that close fully. Genius!

The most obvious advantage is that they didn't have to close the facilities for cleaning, no matter what sex the janitor was. My children mock my bladder, and tell me that I have the bladder of a two year old, because I need toilet facilities frequently. I tell them that they can talk to me after their bladder has been squashed by repeated pregnancies, as well as fibroids up to the size of a cantaloupe. But the thing is, I have been deeply inconvenienced on numerous occasions by really needing a restroom, and having it closed for cleaning. AUGH! The first time I was in a public restroom while a man was cleaning it, I was surprised and then delighted. It was fantastic! He didn't have to wait for me, and I didn't have to wait for him! Woo hoo!

Another plus is the added privacy. I remember being seriously stressed when I was in a fast food restaurant during a road trip, in one of those towns that is two hours or more from the next town, so the facilities are packed. We were in year 5 of an extensive drought, with reservoirs and rivers dry, and serious water rationing in place. A woman using the toilet insisted that those of us waiting run the faucets in the sink, so that we couldn't hear what she was doing. I wanted to scream, "We KNOW what you're doing! Especially if the sound of water will muffle it! We're all here to do the exact same thing! There's only two real purposes for this room! If you're doing something not intended, please find somewhere else to do it!" But I didn't. I just watched the water run down the drain as my blood pressure rose. There is no reason to waste finite resources because you are embarrassed by ordinary bodily functions. Solid walls and doors will let those people avoid the waste.

That leads me to a third advantage - it's not soundproof, but it's a whole lot harder to hear or smell what your neighbor is doing, which should make both of you more comfortable. And no more worrying about how awkward the open row of urinals is.

Yet another advantage, in my opinion, is that it should also end the need for sex segregated facilities. If I, and everyone else, are in our own room, there's no reason for us to worry about who's in the next room. No more worrying about the fact that the line in the ladies' room is always longer than the line in the men's room. No more stressing about which restroom transgender people should use. (Having spent their lives with enclosed facilities, Europeans probably think that Americans sound silly arguing about that.)

I really have little patience for the reasons people have given me to not like full doors and walls.

One is, "But I also want to arrange my clothes, and fix my hair and makeup." Fix your clothes behind the door, and quit worrying that fixing your hair and makeup are acts that you must hide from others. Seriously.

"You don't want things totally enclosed like that, because child molestation and sexual assaults will go up!" Wow; if you seriously believe that the only reason people are not assaulting others is the gaps in stall walls, you have a view of humanity that deeply concerns me. You are also advocating a society in which it is impossible, and inadvisable, to have any privacy in public, and I am not a fan. You're also overlooking the fact that many public restrooms, in places like parks, end up closed or with restricted hours because of frequent prostitution taking place there, with the gaps in the stalls. I'm not making this up; it happens in my area more often than I want to think about. Trashy behavior does not depend on walls.

Plus, many foreign restrooms have a small fee for usage, and with that, they often pay attendants. There will be far fewer shenanigans of any kind with watchful eyes in place. (It also means that the rooms are comparatively spotless and well stocked.)

"But the construction will cost more." I don't think that cancels out the plusses, but if you do, again, usage fees. Plus, drywall is cheap, and doesn't have to be custom manufactured.

Yes, finding coins in order to pee can be annoying, but obviously, there are advantages. And, you can install card readers, like those on parking meters.

The only thing other countries don't do better: water fountains next to the restrooms. The only time I have ever been more dehydrated on a vacation than I was this last trip, I required medical attention. Water, people! Free water! You have the plumbing already in place! Most of the restroom sinks were even too shallow for me to refill my water bottle in them.

There you have it: the recipe for perfect public toilet facilities. Listen up, America!

Goddess Pele

I wanted to see Kilauea for most of my life. I'm lucky enough to live somewhere with access to volcanoes, so the concept of "volcano" wasn't new to me. Mountains with names like Lassen and Shasta are familiar places for me; plus, I've been to Yellowstone. I've walked through lava tubes, seen a hillside of obsidian, watched boiling mud pots. But the idea of an erupting volcano was so exciting, especially an eruption that you could get close enough to safely watch. When Kilauea started erupting, she became a "must do" sight.

My brother can see volcanoes - Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams - from his front porch. He narrowly missed being in the Mt. St. Helens blast zone in 1980, and he brought me a jar of flour-fine ash the next time he came to visit. As a scenic and wildlife photographer, though, he too wanted to see Kilauea.

We both finally got to see her in our middle age years, on separate trips. I was not really prepared for how Hawaiian volcanoes differed from the ones I knew. I was used cone shaped mountains, steeply rising and covered in snow. Sometimes, age and eruption would round the summit, but they still had a recognizable look. I'd been on Oahu before, and thought that the Big Island's volcanoes might look like Oahu's mountains.

Instead, by my frame of reference, they barely looked like mountains. Even Mauna Loa, the distance from her summit to the ocean floor making her the largest mountain on Earth, just looked like a long, gradual, unspectacular rise, ending in more of a plateau than a peak.

Kilauea doesn't even look like a separate mountain to me. I can't see any definition between her and the surrounding area. Plus, her caldera is lower than the surrounding area, not on a peak, like I'd expected.

"It's a steaming pit," said a man close to us, on his first visit there. Well, OK, technically, if you have no poetry in your soul.

It was fascinating, but not what I'd expected.

On our first visit, we were staying about three and a half hours away, so we only saw Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in the daylight. We saw the caldera, participated in a ranger led program, walked through Thurston Lava Tube, saw steam vents. I was happy to see someplace I'd wanted to go for so long.

My brother enjoyed his first trip to the park, but he was on a guided excursion from Oahu, so he had even less time there than we did.

None of us got to see live lava flows, the volcano at night, or (on our wish list) lava flows hitting the sea.

When we came back years later on a family trip, with my husband, most of my children and my brother together, we had wish lists of experiences that we missed the first time. Topping my brother's list were 1. a helicopter tour, and 2. seeing the caldera at night. Those things were on our list, as well.

There were seven of us, all arriving at different times. The first day we were all there, we planned to spend all day in the park. We did everything we'd done before and more, including a drive down the length of Chain of Craters Road.

Before sunset, we staked out spots near the Jagger Museum and waited for dark. For the seven of us, we had 5 regular cameras and 6 cell phone cameras. This spot is the closest observation area to the caldera, and the cameras clicked with regularity.

Then it happened - the first glow of orange in the steam.

Can't see it? Don't worry; it got more and more pronounced as darkness fell.

 

It was just gorgeous. Click, click, click!

Then it was dark, and the view went from stunning to magical.

I thought that it couldn't get much better than that.

But we still had our helicopter ride!

Do you see what we're all packing? Of course - cameras. We had wide lenses, telephoto lenses, a GoPro; this would be one well recorded flight.

(That fanny pack kind of thing we're all wearing? That's a parachute. Or, maybe a flotation device. I'm not kidding. They're mandatory.)

We took off from the far side of the island and headed inland, over the "shoulder road" between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, headed for Kilauea. "Are there any active lava flows right now?" my son asked. We're aware that nature doesn't take orders or requests, but we were hoping.

"I'm sure we'll see something exciting. For one thing, the floor of the caldera fell last night," the pilot said. That means that the hard crust on an area had crumbled, and left the flowing lava underneath visible. For the pilot, this was an everyday occurrence, but for mainlanders, it was very exciting.

As we approached the caldera, my husband, shooting with the wide angle lens, was shooting images like this:

When we got closer, my zoom lens allowed me allowed me to shoot straight down into the caldera. The pilot circled over the volcano, one direction and then another.

OH MY GOODNESS! It was amazing.

As we flew on, the pilot said, "I'll just watch for smoke." That was likely, he said, to indicate something that we'd want to see.

A rising wisp of smoke led to this:

The next led to this:

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! It looked just like something on the National Geographic Channel. "That's new," the pilot said. "It'll be gone in about 15 minutes."

It's hard to estimate from the air, but I think the drip was about ten feet long. I zoomed out to get a bit of perspective, and in again to watch it ooze.

The next sight of rising smoke was larger. An isolated stand of trees was smoking, then catching fire, from the lava at their feet.

"They avoided the last few flows. Poor things, they're goners now," the pilot said.

I felt for the trees, but it was fascinating. Shooting through the moving, curved helicopter windows was difficult, but all of us managed to get numerous shots of this truly once in a lifetime experience.

Mahalo, Goddess Pele, for a look into your home.

All photos, copyright 2015, The Reflection Works Photography