Paw Lee is the official office cat at 4 Paws Pet Hospital where I take our kitties for their veterinary care. Paw Lee was found wondering around in a park and brought into the clinic to see if he was microchipped. He wasn't, so Dr. Robertson decided to keep him as the office kitty. Paw Lee has an extra couple of  toes on each of his front paws, which makes him look like he has mittens with thumbs (I think he could probably learn to develop a roll of film with those paws). He is very Spunk-like, and was being quite a help at the front desk when I brought Sasha in to have her incision checked yesterday.

Wild turkeys, a hen with eight poults (ferrel turkeys really), have been hanging around in the yard. A group of turkeys is called a "Rafter", in case you were wondering, but "A Band of Wild Turkeys" made a better title. This may be the same hen that has been visiting us for the past couple of years, but it's hard to tell. This is the first time I have seen a hen with little ones hanging out on the property.

Mama turkey looking at me through the grass

Laurie started to go on her run and came back in the house, I asked her what she forgot — "Nothing, the turkeys are on the path and I didn't want to chase them away!" I grabbed my camera and when we got close to the turkeys, the mama crouched down to hide and was trying to get her poults to do the same. Half of them crouched down, the other half stood there looking confused.

As I got closer they all started standing up like they recognized the stupid paparazzo who has been following them around. Mama turkey finally stood up and they followed her into the grass.

He would be called a racist today. He called black people the “N” word, and when he couldn’t find where he left a tool, he would tell me “I need to hire a little n••••r boy to follow me around and keep track of my tools for me!”  That kind of talk always irritated me, but Mr. Haagenson was a old Southerner, and that’s how he always talked. 

Mr Haagenson owned Haagenson Motor Company, a small garage on 1st street not too far from downtown Albuquerque. He was pretty much a one man shop, and my dad would help Mr Haagenson on most weekends for as long as I could remember. Dad would trade helping Mr. Haagenson for use of his shop and tools to service and repair his cars. Once I got old enough to tag along, I would go with dad occasionally, but after I started riding motorcycles and then driving cars, I spent many a weekend helping Mr Haagenson in trade for shop space and tools as well.

Haagenson Motor Company was Mr. Haagenson’s life. He was at the shop at 4:30 every morning and typically worked until 8:00 or 9:00 every night. On occasion he would take off a Sunday to do something other than mechanics, but he could normally be found at the shop seven days a week.

Mr Haaganson had two sons, Phillip and Paul, who were both older than me. Both of them worked for Mr. Haagenson as they got older and after they finished school. Paul went on to work for the phone company, but Phillip worked for his dad until he died from alcoholism in the spring of 1985. Mr. Haagenson was old enough to retire in 1985, so after Phillip died, he started clearing his work load, but he still had fleet contracts to fulfill, and would still take in cars and trucks to repair.  I was finishing up my Master’s degree in the Spring of 1985, and after completing my thesis, I started working for Mr. Haagenson part-time to help him out.

One afternoon about 6:00 pm an old station wagon filled with people and luggage came chugging, bucking and smoking along 1st Street and pulled up to the bay. A black couple and their six children piled out of the car. The man told us they were on their way to California and the car started missing, chugging and barely running just outside of Albuquerque — every place he stopped told him they couldn’t get the car in, and the last place he had been directed to was closing. A mechanic at the last garage gave him directions to Haagenson Motors and told him Mr. Haagenson would still be there.

Mr. Haagenson handed me $50 and told me to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and get 3 buckets of chicken with all the sides. KFC was the only place Mr. Haagenson ever bought fast food as long as I knew him. I came back with the food, opened everything up and let the family serve themselves. Mr Haagenson had me open the Coke machine so the kids could get whatever soft drinks they wanted, and the family ate while Mr. Haagenson worked under the hood of their car diagnosing the problem. 

It didn’t take him much time to find the problem, gave me a list of parts and another $30, and sent me to NAPA Auto Parts — the wholesale parts distributer had closed at 5:00 pm, but NAPA stayed open until 9:00 pm. They had all the parts, which took all $30 plus some of the change from the chicken to pay for them. About 30 minutes after I got back to the garage with the parts, Mr. Haagenson had them on the car. He started it up and took the car for a drive around the block to make sure it was running right. 

I let the kids and parents take more soft drinks from the Coke machine and then they piled back into the car with their drinks in hand. The man asked Mr. Haagenson what he owed him, and Mr. Haagenson told him nothing, handed him a $20 bill and told him he noticed he needed gas when he took the car for the test drive. The man protested, but Mr Haageson would hear nothing of it, and insisted that man take the $20. He finally took it with many thanks and gratitude for everything Mr. Haagenson had done for them.

My dad had long given up trying to get Mr Haagenson to go to church and get “saved”, but Mr. Haagenson was always a good man, hardworking, generous, and he could always sense when people needed the help more than he needed the money. It bothered me much less when he called blacks the “N” word after that.

The same NAPA Auto Parts I bought parts for the station wagon back in 1985 is still in the same location

Mr Haagenson's building is still used as an auto repair garage

The sea keeps secret the names of the souls who dwell in its depths, and Sam Harris will no more allow anyone to learn the name given her at birth than the sea will give up its dead. Abandoned by her father, 16 year old Sam moves from England to the Scottish coast with her mother and younger brother to start anew after their lives are shattered by their father walking out on them.

While taking a break driving to their new home, Sam finds a piece of sea glass walking alone on a stretch of beach. Whether the sea glass or something special in her psyche, Sam begins to see people from the past. Ghosts? A time warp? Whichever, she sees people who others cannot, and soon she discovers the alcove below the house where she ends up living is enchanted.

Sam meets a young man named Sneddon, who has beautiful, icy blue eyes, but his presence muddles Sam’s thoughts and, although she is attracted to him, he makes her uncomfortable. While out trying to climb a rock on the edge of the sea, Sam finds herself in trouble and is rescued by another young man named Seb. Seb has quite the opposite effect on Sam. She can talk to him and she feels comfortable with him. Seb is average looking and has webbed toes. But she soon learns there is an age old rivalry between Seb’s and Sneddon’s ancestors — Selkies and Whalers — the former being the seal people, and the later the people who hated and killed the Selkies.

Sam gets stuck between the young men and the apparitions she sees at the alcove, and what is supposed to be the beginning of her new life on the Scottish coast becomes deadly serious.

“Selkie” is Julia Lund’s second novel. It’s a delightful read, quick paced and exciting. “Selkie” is available on Amazon US at Selkie by Julia Lund  and Amazon UK at Selkie by Julia Lund.

Julia’s blog is JULIA LUND: CREATING WORLDS WHERE ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN

I’ve been reading fellow blogger’s novels for the past few years. I sometimes write reviews on Amazon, but I get busy, lazy and often don’t do it. So I decided to expand into writing book reviews on my blog along with “Tales from My Youth…” and my daily photos.

He may be tiny; he may be cute; but you don't mess with a hummingbird with a mohawk! While I was trying to photograph the spider below, the hummingbird in the first and last photo kept buzzing me. When I turned my lens toward the hummingbird, it flew up into the neighbor's tree, pricked up its head feathers, like a mohawk and looked mad. 

July 2, 2015

July 10, 2015

July 17, 2015

“Don’t forget to bring your snake tomorrow when you come to work on the house. I really want to meet him!” Tom reminded me as we were saying our goodbyes at the end of a Friday evening service. I was around 11 years old when my parents got involved with a rogue Episcopal priest who started Dove Ranch out of his house in Albuquerque’s south valley. He held services there several nights a week and ministered to people who needed spiritual guidance. On Saturdays, my dad and I would go help Tom with maintenance on his old adobe house, because, as a man of the cloth, he was not very skilled in much of anything outside being a minister.

The following morning we packed tools into the truck, and I put my boa constrictor, Mortimer, into a box, and we were off to Dove Ranch for the day. Mortimer was about 5 feet long at the time, and after he met Tom, and we had done some work around the house, I sat down in Tom’s wing backed “preaching chair” with Mortimer. While I was sitting there thinking, Mortimer found a way to crawl inside the chair. We didn’t want to cut the chair open to get the snake out, so we loaded the chair into our truck, took it home, and set it in the middle of our den. The lump where the snake was disappeared by the next morning, and since we couldn’t feel any evidence of Mortimer by pressing in on the fabric on the back, sides and bottom of the chair, we assumed he had crawled out and was hiding somewhere in the house, so we took the chair back to Tom’s.

A few days later, Tom called to tell us he had my boa constrictor. Mortimer had shifted positions in the chair where we couldn’t feel him, and he was still in the chair when we took it back to Dove Ranch. Tom said he was delivering a sermon to a group of about 20 people when Mortimer crawled out of the chair onto Tom, so he held Mortimer in his lap until he finished his sermon, much to the astonishment of the people seated on the floor around him (scared the holy crap out of some of them, I’m sure). When we picked up Mortimer he told us the snake crawling out of the chair was perfect timing for his sermon/teaching. I don’t remember if he told us what he was preaching about, but Mark Chapter 16, Verse 18 comes to mind “...they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” 

Those were the last words Jesus spoke before being taken up into Heaven according to the Gospel of Mark.

This Question Mark butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis) had been flying around the property for a few days, but it wouldn't let me get close enough to photograph it. Then I snuck up on it sunning itself on a grape leaf in the late afternoon sunshine. The silver lining on the edge of the wings with the dots look somewhat like question marks (I think it's more pronounced of other variations), thus it's common name the Question Mark. 

Broken strap eyelet on the right side of the camera body

Who would have thought that such a little thing could be such a big deal? The strap eyelet on my Fujifilm X-Pro1 carry camera broke. Fortunately, I caught the camera before it hit the ground, but the broken strap eyelet makes it so I cannot have a strap on the camera, which means I cannot carry it around my neck like I have for the past three and half years. This camera has gone everywhere with me during that time, even in the shower, and has produced most of the photos that have appeared on this blog. I looked up repair centers for Fujifilm cameras and there are only a few around the country. I called the closest one, in Chandler Arizona, but they are not authorized to work on the X-Pro1, so they directed me to the main service center in New Jersey. I called them and learned that I send the camera and lens into the service center with a description of the service and repairs I want done; after they inspect the camera and lens, they send me an estimate for the service and repair. The minimum fee for service is $140 and it goes up from there (quite a bit pricier than Canon's factory service).

What is one to do? Since mirrorless cameras are all the rage, I decided I'll start carrying the most portable of the three mirrorless cameras I have. It's a little larger than the X-pro1, which will prove a bit challenging for drive-by photos, and not quite as convenient as the X-Pro1, but it will have to do.

Close-up of the broken strap eyelet

My mirrorless Speed Graphic 4X5 "carry" camera with Rosencrantz in the background taken by Laurie

A photo of me taken by Laurie of me taking a photo of Guildenstern doing what Guildenstern does best with my mirrorless Speed Graphic 4X5 "carry" camera

The photo from the above photo of Guildenstern taken with my mirrorless Speed Graphic 4X5 "carry" camera