Peninsula Living, Part 2

SUMMARY: But don’t you have to drive a while to GET someplace? Lol

Answering this friend's question on Facebook Sept 11, 2023

Depends on what you mean by "someplace". Within 5 minutes I have Costco, Home Depot, Safeway (and 2 or 3 other local/organic/nonchain groceries), Walgreens, Rite Aid, YMCA, local medical center, hiking opportunities, Dairy Queen, Burger King, McDonald's, Papa Murphy, Applebees, Taco Bell (plus nonchain restaurants and cafes)... and Walmart if you're inclined. 15 minutes to Toyota dealer if I want them to do things on my car, Wendy's... trying to identify local places by familiar names.

I *do* miss: Target, Macy's, Trader Joe's, Penney's (yes there is one up here!), Panera, major movie theaters, ... but all and many more are in Silverdale usually <60 minutes from here, so we just make it a day (or morning or afternoon) and go enjoy ourselves and do the shopping we need.

The biggest issue: Closest 24 hour emergency vet is also in Silverdale.

Most of my doctors are in Port Townsend (by choice--that's where I started up here and I like the facility and the docs etc) which is 35-45 minutes, but I'm so used to driving it that it doesn't bother me at all, AND... no traffic! The only traffic lights are at the onramp to 101 by my house and maybe one in Port Townsend--and within town they use roundabouts.

But NO TRAFFIC getting to all these places is such an amazing benefit--

I mean, it could take me an hour to get home from work in San Jose because freeways were jammed (15-20 minutes on a weekend). So driving freely through quiet mostly wooded areas for 40-60 minutes is nothing.

Not everyone else up here thinks that way. They just shop at walmart and online.

Yes, then I do have to consider gas prices. [shrug] I'm far from wealthy, but it's not like I make those drives every week.

I do avoid going to events in Seattle--it looks close, but it's either a 2-plus-hour drive or a 2-hour trip with less driving but waiting for and riding a ferry, less gas, plus ferry ticket. Ferries are pretty reliable.

You can drive around locally and find eggs and fruits and veggies and flowers and more at people's homes or at local small farms etc. And often it's just a small booth with the product and a sign stating the price and a place for you to drop your payment. Pretty cool. Of course, as population grows and more thieves arrive, that might go away.

Any more-specific questions? 😉

• My previous post about ferries: https://dogblog.finchester.org/2023/04/peninsula-living.html 

Photos from various  visits  to Silverdale (I have selected a whole bunch more, but from blogger into photos on my iPad, there's no way I can find the ones that I want. So I'll have to come back later on my Mac and figure it out.) ...(OK, I give up, the captioning and things don't even work right on my iPad. Here's what I've got so far kinda.)

This is a couch I've been considering for months. Then I bought that tie-dye thing. Oh well.

Sister and husband buying rugs at Macy's in Silverdale.

9-11 Twenty-two years later

SUMMARY: We'll never forget, but we can't remember every day of every year

From a reply to another blog about today

My dad's photo of the New York city skyline, when we visited in1975
The World Trade Center only 2 years old

I didn't realize what day it was until I had to write the date on something. It doesn't kick me in the gut so much any more. Not like the first day, watching the videos (on TV of course--most channels it seemed) over and over in shock. Not like the 2nd day, watching again. And, by afternoon, realizing that if I kept that up, I might never climb out of that hole. I recorded a couple of hours of the news, then turned off the TV and didn't go back to it. But there was no escaping the numbing realization of what had happened -- not just to the iconic buildings, but so so many people who had nothing to do with anything. Just people. Dead. Hundreds of men, women, children; moms, dads, sisters, brothers, business partners, cousins, lovers, husbands, wives, teammates, best friends--whole departments of companies wiped out-- and all of the first responders who paid the worst price of their professions.

But now--it was a long time ago.

Twenty-two years. More than a generation. My youngest--barely adult--niece wasn't born yet and the next youngest was only a year old. Over 13,000 babies were born in the US on that day (this article from 2021 shares some of the things that these adults will never know as a result of the fallout from the event). Imagine 22 years more of that many babies born every day, making well over a million US-born residents who have no idea what life was like. And it was different!

Day after day now, we encounter restrictions that didn't exist. There's a boundary of Before and After, like a black line drawn across time. A curtain beyond which, looking back, can't be seen through, really, unless you were there and already know.

But I don't think about it much, any more, really. Life is what it is and it's hard to stay angry and afraid this long. Still, today, and 9-11s in the future, I'll remember.

https://news.yahoo.com/babies-born-on-9-11-turn-20-sept-11-anniversary-090055997.html

A couple of my photos from 1983 from atop the towers (unedited, sorry). The tower was 10 years old.

It fell at age 28.

Some of the bridges across the East River into Manhattan (where the towers were); I think the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges

It was a long, long way down.
You can barely see how many taxis there are (yellow)
I haven't taken the time to identify the streets or buildings--
but I wonder how many of these still exist after the disaster--