A post about Moki

This is off-topic, but since we use our blog as a journal, I wanted to document what is going on with Moki, who has been getting laser acupuncture treatments every month since she had an initial treatment on July 28th.  In November, we had one treatment at 3 weeks - so the next was scheduled for 5 weeks instead of four.  About 10 days ago, I had commented that it was hard to know if she was getting any additional benefit from the sessions and perhaps we did not need to put her in the car and drive the 25 minutes for them.

For the week or so before her appointment yesterday, Moki stopped playing with us in the evening.  She will normally jump in the air to bring down flying string toys, or chase a laser light madly (on the well-padded carpet only - she does not play anywhere else.)  She seems rather OCD about everything, and for her to pass up on playtime is not a good sign. The day before her treatment, she would not even play Catch the Crunchy, where we toss a treat and she runs for it, athletically leaping over obstacles anywhere in the room and that is her favorite activity.  She had also been skipping her morning naps on my lap.

However, the night before her appointment I was sitting with her resting on the carpet.  Norris walked into the room and she suddenly went to the top of her cat tree, and started exhibiting this specific behavior which we decided to videotape her for the vet.  The video starts slow and uninteresting, but she was in the middle of an episode of what we're calling Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome that she had begun before we got the camera on her.  She exhibits the classic Hyperesthesia behaviors - frantic cleaning gestures, tail thrashing and skin rippling (not visible in the video) that builds to attacking herself.  At the 24-second mark, you hear an explosive sound. That is the sound of a cat spitting, which I had never noticed from any cat before Moki.

Moki was relatively agitated during our trip to the vet for her treatment yesterday morning, crying the whole way which she does not usually do, but was silent on the way home and calm all day,  She was more interested in playing last night, and although not yet up to running and jumping, she did trot after a couple of crunchy treats if they were thrown close enough to her. And this morning, when I sat down and put my legs up, she came right over and fell asleep on me.

The hyperesthesia symptoms we videotaped and posted here are not as bad as they had been before she started getting treatments. This makes it seem that Moki really needs the kind of help she's getting from acupuncture.  The sessions include photon treatments with a device that was new to Dr. Fochios when we first took Moki to her.  Dr. Fochios believes Moki is in some kind of pain when she does this, and since she doesn't understand it, thinks something else is attacking her.  That certainly explains the frightened look in her eyes and attempts to capture her tail.

Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome is a mysterious condition. The cat whose owners had to call 911 because they were trapped by him in the bedroom has been diagnosed with it and seems to have a more serious underlying problem than Moki does. Usually, it is treated with calming and/or anti-seizure drugs. We did not document her tail-chasing for the year that Moki was on the calming medications, but we believe she has been doing this, or some less extreme version of it, for years.  We simply didn't know it wasn't just the "cat-crazies."

Savannah - The Oldest City in Georgia

At this time last week, we were headed to Savannah for a couple of days to enjoy the historic setting.  Our B&B host gave us a map and excellent advice about what to see and where to eat.

On our first night, we walked through the historic district along the river. We noted a lot of construction all over the city.  And of course, the Spanish Moss hanging from the ever green Live Oak.

Norris spotted the fact that the many of the sidewalks were embedded with oyster shells. We learned that this concrete substitute is called Tabby, and was used as a building material due to the lack of limestone and other rock.  You can see it in the texture of the sidewalk in this photo of Norris.

This is one of several photos we took at the Historic District's 22 squares, one of the more charming aspects of the city.

 

Here are some random photos of the homes and streets we walked. 

 

 Savannah is a very tourist friendly, walk-able city - we put eight or nine miles on our shoes in two days.

The historic district homes reminded us of Charleston, but there were a lot fewer gardens.  Here's one of the more elaborate ones we did find.

This must be one of the largest houses in the city - it's now a law office.

On our second day, we took one of the trolley tours. It was interesting, but not as good as others we've been on - our guide was also the driver and seemed to be reading a script.  We expected to see a pirate come on board as we'd seen the night before, but we had different visitors.  This colorfully-dressed actress represented the Gullah population and culture.

After the tour, we visited the roundhouse at the old Central of Georgia railway....

... and the nearby Savannah Battlefield memorial park, with this recreated fort to represent the 1779 Siege of Savannah, or Second Battle of Savannah.

 

We toured the Green-Meldrim house, which is where General Sherman's headquarters was after the March to the Sea.

 

The home is owned by St. John's Episcopal Church,which operates the tours but also uses it at a parish house. We had lunch at a nearby tea room where we had this view.

We made a stop at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist.

 The interior was bright and lavishly decorated.

We had to stop at Big Duke, the city's Fire Alarm from 1872 to 1985.

 We also toured the Owens-Thomas house. This is a view of the back garden.

This is the front of the Owens-Thomas house, a fine example of English Regency architecture. The architect, one of the first in this country who was professionally trained, designed it with a system of running water for baths, sinks and water closets.  The elegant front porch has twin curved staircases.

 On our last day, we made a point of visiting the city Farmer's Market in Forsyth Park - we certainly don't see this much color at our markets in November.

 The Italian-made fountain at the Park was ordered from a catalog and is not unique in this country.

The park was bustling with people - these ballet students posing for a photographer just beyond was just one of the most interesting groups we saw.

Later Saturday morning, we headed to Fort Pulaski National Monument. We enjoyed the National Park Service demonstration of a cannon firing.  Two of the "Union Soldiers" are park rangers - the others are volunteers.

 Here's a shortened video showing the end of the firing sequence -

This is the view from the fort out past the mouth of the Savannah river to the ocean.

 We went on the guided tour of the fort. Typical of our National Park Service, the Ranger Guide was passionate about the subject, so we learned a lot about Civil War artillery, tactics and strategies.  The main lesson was that Pulaski, one of our Third System forts built after the War of 1812, was made obsolete by the rifled cannon.The engineers and generals thought these forts were invincible, but it was given up on by the Confederates on the second day of bombardment.

We spent more time at Fort Pulaski than we planned, so we did not climb the Tybee Lighthouse but did stop for a photo.

Our last stop at Tybee Island was a short look at the beach.  The wind and temperatures meant it was empty - but if you look very closely you might see evidence of a couple of kite-surfers out in the ocean.

Trip to Hayden, Part two

After the Six Mile cemetery visit, Ellen and I headed over to the Hayden Historical Museum.  We stopped to admire the monument to one of Hayden's many favorite sons who went on to illustrious careers, Ed Whitcomb, Indiana's 43rd governor.  My photo of the monument is not very good, but you can see it at this link - Friends of Ed Whitcomb. I do have a good closeup of this plaque. 
.

Ed Whitcomb, now 95, is still living in Indiana.  There is a wonderful video about him at this link -Video.  The story of his WWII experience is dramatic enough for a feature film - but after his service as governor and approaching his 80's, he made a solo sailboat trip around the world. I am distantly related to him.

Inside the museum, Ellen might have stayed reading in the library and talking with Museum Director Rodger Ruddick for the entire two hours we were there, but there were things to see.  I published a few photos when I was telling the Civil War history on my quilting blog (several seen at this link) but here's one I didn't publish there. This is needlework done by my great-aunt Carol, made from linen her grandmother and aunts processed during the Civil War.

I think a real treat the museum offers is the new addition, a stand-alone building they named "A Place Called Yesterday."  Lester Tracey, also a Museum Director, donated his collections of parlor instruments and Life Magazines to the museum for display.  Here are two photos of the magazines I took.

But the best part was when Lester demonstrated the instruments. This first one is not really a "parlor" organ - it was loud and you could see how effective it would be at getting the attention of passersby.

I made some audio recordings during my last visit and decided I could post a couple of them here.  First we have the Regina music box - (you can see higher resolution versions of these on YouTube)

The audio from my laptop does nothing to convey how glorious the music emanating from that wooden box is.

And here Lester demonstrates one pre-electrical volume control system -

We kept Lester and Rodger talking past visiting hours and headed back to Louisville for the night. On our return trip Tuesday we stopped in Berea Kentucky at the Artisan Center,  then had lunch in town at the historic Boone Tavern.  I took Ellen's picture while we were waiting for our meal.

It was great to have Ellen's company on my pilgrimage. It was a long trip to make to such an obscure place as Hayden!  What Ellen didn't know when she agreed to come along, is that the Hayden Museum is the Center of Gravity - here's the Congressional Record proof. I don't mind saying the odd force has had its pull on me.  Maybe Ellen too - she says she would go back there.

Six Mile Cemetery, Hayden, Indiana

Readers of my quilting blog are familiar with my Cousin three times removed, Eli W. Hause from the letters he wrote to my great grandfather Calvin in Hayden Indiana while serving with the Union Army in the Civil War.

In August 2014, Norris and I stopped in Hayden, Indiana, to visit the Hayden Historical Museum and visit the cemeteries where my mother's grandparents are buried.  The plot at Six Mile Cemetery where my grandmother buried her father before my mother was born was suffering a lot of damage, some just from age, but some caused by the falling branches of a magnificent but now dead oak tree.

The dead tree is seen in the above photo, right of center.  My great-grandfather's headstone, dating from 1923, was separated in two.

His grandmother's stone was leaning up against the base of the tree with several others.

And Cousin Eli's marker was leaning at about a 45 degree angle - I highlighted the carving with chalk for the photo.

I spoke to the Hayden Historical Museum director, who relayed my concerns about the dead tree to the church that now has the responsibility for this cemetery.  Sometime before my next visit (April 2015), the dead tree was removed.  But Eli's stone was now also broken.

When Eli died in 1877, the government provided headstones for veterans buried in National Cemeteries, but not for those in private cemeteries - that happened only about two years later.  The Veterans Administration will not issue a marker for a grave that already has a headstone.  When I found Eli's simple marker had broken, that cleared the way for me to apply for a Veterans' marker for him. I had to jump through a couple of hoops to prove that Eli was indeed buried here - somewhat difficult because responsibility for the cemetery had changed hands and the cemetery map was lost decades ago.  The museum director came to my aid again, contacting the Jennings County librarian who specializes in genealogical research, who, working from home, found this notice in the North Vernon Plain Dealer of February 15, 1877: "Mrs. C. H. Wilkins of Hardenburg, informed us on Wednesday, of the death of Eli Hause of this place, the night before of pneumonia*.  Mr. Hause was 30 years of age, and leaves a wife and two children." (Hayden was then called Hardenburg.)  That notice, along with my photo of the Hause family marker and the brass plaque the people of Hayden placed in 1980, gave enough proof he was there. (*from Calvin's diary, we know that Eli's pneumonia was a complication of typhoid fever.)

Shaw Monuments in North Vernon helped by authorizing the VA to have the 240 pound granite stone delivered there.

Shaw Monuments placed it for me and also made repairs to other headstones in the family plot. The museum director sent me photos a few weeks back, but I mentioned to my friend Ellen I wanted to go and see the improvements for myself.  She said she'd go along and so we went to Hayden.

Calvin's stone restored.

This is Polly Maynard's stone, set back in its original place next to her husband's.

While I was at it, I asked Shaw Monuments to see what they could do with Eli's son's marker.  John Harris Hause died a few weeks after his father at the age of seven and a half.

It appears they did not repair John's stone but resetting it as they did, it does mark his place next to his father's new granite stone.

I've made a couple of donations to the church for cemetery maintenance and hope that next Memorial Day, the children of Hayden will finally place an American flag on Eli's grave. 

Fall Fun in the Mountains

Brother Roger and his wife Laurie chose to take a longer vacation with us this year than they have in the past. Roger had some legal business work to take care of early in the week, but we managed to fit in some local sight-seeing. We didn't take many photos the first few days, though I did get this one of the quilt garden at the WNC arboretum.

I'm not sure which quilt block this represents - the Arboretum website is out of date and talks about the 2014-15 Rail Fence design.  But it could be Blockbase 1371b, a variation on the flying geese block called Banner Quilt. I colored the block and oriented 16 of them to see if it would look like the garden design -

Back to sightseeing, we took more photos starting on Friday, when we headed up to Mount Mitchell early in the morning.

It was cold and windy -

The angle the camera had in these two photos shows the only place where the sky looked sunny.  The clouds were not like anything we'd ever seen before, forming quickly behind where we were standing, and swiftly blowing over our heads only to be replaced by more clouds, while the skies behind them were blue.

We hiked the .7 mile marked nature look trail at the top. It was definitely winter on top of the highest peak in the Appalachians.

We had planned to hike another trail at the park there, but we decided to head down to a warmer climate.

We made a quick stop at the Glassmine Falls overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway - you can see it if you click on the photo, just to the right of Roger's shoulder.

We continued to move down, landing about a thousand feet lower than Mount Mitchell at Craggy Pinnacle - an easy .7 mile climb up from the parking lot for the 360 degree view.  That is the Asheville water system reservoir behind Roger and Laurie.

On Saturday, we had warmer weather when we headed to the Cataloochee area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Here are some photos we took along the Rough Fork hiking trail.  You can see we thought the creek crossings made good photo ops.

Here's Roger - no hands on one of those narrow foot bridges.

The main attraction at this far eastern edge of the park is the elk, reintroduced in 2001 and now thriving. (From the 52 animals brought in by the National Park Service in 2001, and 2002, there is now a herd of some 200 of them living in the park.) We saw a lot of elk but most of our pictures are about like this:

or like this next one. I included these photos so you could share the view of the open meadow and woodlands. October is mating season and we were actually witnessing an interaction between a large bull and a cow (though they resemble deer, the elk are called bulls and cows, or stags and hinds, but not bucks and does), but they had a slow courtship going on.

 

We were very pleasantly surprised to see the elk at all (and hear the bugling!).  The guidebooks explain that active times are early morning and late evening and we arrived shortly after noon.

This next photo is a digital zoom of a bull with several cows resting in the shade. You may be able to see them if you click on the image -

 A similar scene not far away

 But finally, on our way out of the park, this group was out in the sun and not far from the road.

Park visitors are strictly warned against disturbing the elk, and the park rangers were standing by to make sure everyone was behaving. We shared our views with large crowds of people whose cars lined the road at the edge of these meadows, obviously a great place for elk to hang out. More cars were pouring into the area as we left the park.

It was great to revisit places we've been and venture into some new ones with Roger and Laurie who both appreciate the natural beauty of our local mountains.