Gnomes at Home

It turns out that once you bring home one gnome, it's really hard not to pick up others wherever you go…here are the gnomes that currently reside in my home:

And no, I haven't gone quite over the Gnome Deep End…yes, as it turns out there is a Gnome Deep End, as evidenced by this photo from the garden of a guy in the UK:

Follow Yoda, I Must

Well, thanks to a meeting with Yoda in my dream last night, the hiatus from blogging that I thought I was about to take was very short lived. I often dream of being back in the Indonesian swamp where I lived for several years, but last night Yoda appeared and talked with me in the swamp.

Yoda said the following, and who am I to argue with Yoda?!:
"Lost you are. Blogging, do you must. Life, an illusion it is. In time, understand you will."

So I will continue blogging as things come up. My life may not be interesting to anyone else, but according to Yoda it is all an illusion anyway. Maybe in time all will become clear. Until then, I will blog about it and see what comes next.

Taking a Break

* TAKING A BREAK from blogging*

When I made the difficult but necessary decision to close my Facebook account 2 years ago, I had to adjust from the illusion that I had hundreds of friends to accepting the reality that only a handful seemed to notice my absence on social media or care enough to get in touch with me in other ways. Sadly, the experience has changed the way I view human relationships, though I think it has made me more of a realist and appreciate the unconditional loyalty of my feline companions even more. If they could speak, my cats would never promise to be loyal, ask for my trust, and walk out of my life as people have the tendency to do. They would probably just say "please snuggle with me and feed me at 3am" and then continue to be the best friends a human primate could have.

In order to keep some sort of a digital record of my life I started this blog, linking it to a field blog I wrote previously to preserve a few memories from nearly a decade of my years of living in the forest. But I don't think many people who actually know me are reading this and I find myself too often living in the past, so feeling digitally connected to people I still care about but realize I haven't heard from in years when blogging only creates an addictive false sense of community that I don't actually have anymore or may never have had in the first place.

My plan is to take a break from blogging, see how it feels and if anyone cares. I'm sure the cats will enjoy the extra snuggles. Logging off.

Peace,
Dr. Pongo

Missing Snail Mail

After returning from a week-long conference I decided to take off Friday and Monday before returning to work. It took me all day Friday to get the cats settled back home after a week with my parents, clean the apartment, do laundry, clean the apartment, etc. Yesterday I worked from home all day and started to catch up on all of the back-logged emails I missed after a week of spotty wireless and no time to check email. Today I literally spent the ENTIRE DAY on email. I am at the point where at times I have practically given up on personal email in order to keep up with work email, though I still have two personal accounts, only one of which I end up checking more than once a month. I remember once also having an inbox of messages to check when I was still on social media nearly two years ago.

Sadly, I only vaguely remember when I still enjoyed reading through emails, before keeping up with them became such a daunting task. I do still remember the excitement of reading a new email back when emails took days to transmit from one part of the country to another shortly after email was invented. But I do still remember as if it was just yesterday how it felt to routinely receive snail mail letters from friends across the country or from other countries. Email and other methods of digital communication is just not the same. At least when I lived in the forest a few friends regularly wrote to me the only way they could - via good old fashioned snail mail letters. This was my only communication with the outside world at times for many months. Now I feel old, but sometimes the ways of the past were simply better (in my humble opinion), of course only in hindsight.

Bridge of Spies

For some reason perhaps having to do with being from DC, I have always enjoyed movies and TV series about espionage. Earlier today I started watching "Covert Affairs" on Netflix and loved "Scarecrow & Mrs. King" growing up and "Alias"while working in Indonesia.

Today my mother and I went to Chinatown to see Tom Hank's new movie "Bridge of Spies" - a true story and excellent movie set during the Cold War. Of course on the way back up to my apartment to grab some things before driving my mother home, she told a complete stranger in the elevator that we just saw a wonderful movie and he responded back in a thick Russian accent...

Of course I can't think of a movie that Tom Hanks has been in that I haven't thoroughly enjoyed. Among my favorites: "Philadelphia", "Castaway", and "Captain Phillips".

This made me start thinking about other actors who I would see in any movie they are in regardless of the movie. My top 3 have always been Robert Redford (favorite movies: "Three Days of the Condor" and "Sneakers"), Jodie Foster (favorite movies: "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Little Man Tate") and Meryl Streep (favorite movies: "Out of Africa", "The Hours" and "The Devil Wears Prada").

Orangutans in Kansas

The Orangutan SSP meeting was in Wichita, Kansas this year, hosted by the Sedgwick County Zoo. Since I participated remotely in the planning meetings last year and didn't attend the Husbandry Workshop, it was nice to see several familiar faces this year. But most familiar was our keynote speaker Lone, who I hadn't seen since I visited her at her rehab site in 2008 after having rescued one of our wild orangutans who had lost her mother to a clouded leopard. Since I saw her last, Lone was knighted in Denmark for her work in Indonesia and for good reason. Such a joy to catch up!

It was also great to see other friends who I only see each year at the SSP meetings.

This was welded by a friend and thanks to our silent auction. It hangs on a wall in my apartment next to a giant cardboard orangutan I won at the auction 4 years ago. 

Good News / Bad News

GOOD NEWS:  Season 4 of American Horror Story is available on Netflix and I have been binge watching it while typing in data, unable to turn away thanks to some great acting (Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates!).

BAD NEWS: There is a clown in every episode. An EVIL clown (I have a true, visceral dislike verging on fear of clowns. Especially evil ones. Now I have a new issue: clowns carrying bowling pins).