Julia Barrett's World

There is no place as iconic as Disneyland. I swear. It’s more American than apple pie. For a kid, it’s the ultimate in ultimate. I love Disneyland and I got to ride my fill of Indiana Jones, Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, The Haunted House, Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan - which may be the most beautiful ride in the park.

But I have to wonder if Walt is rolling over in his grave. Tomorrow Land needs, uh, futuristic-type updating? Maybe a major makeover? The only thing there worth riding or even visiting is Space Mountain. The rest of T.L. is flat out depressing. Critter Country should be bulldozed - it’s where all those extra homeless animatronic characters - the Small World rejects - go to die. It’s just scary. Frontier Land has Thunder Mountain - a great ride, but that’s all. New Orleans Square still has it going on and Fantasy Land continues to be every child’s favorite place in the park.

The weird thing was that we arrived at 8:30 a.m. and we’d achieved all our goals and were heading back to the new Rhode Island-sized parking structure by 3 p.m. That’s another thing - the parking garage they put in to make room for California Adventures. You no longer have the opportunity to experience that heart-pounding anticipation and excitement as you approach Disneyland - even the Matterhorn is mostly obscured by the parking structure - a megalithic monstrosity that winds you around and around and around via a nonsensical, circuitous, maze-like route that I can only assume is designed to thwart potential evil-doers. The tram from the parking garage to the front gate drops you off at the new Disney Downtown where you are greeted by…surprise…gift shops.

But hey…there were no lines. We walked right on all the rides. And the churros are still good. It’s funny - the prices in the park seem reasonable, especially compared to what you pay for food at a baseball game, you know, where we pay at least $5.50 for a bottle of water, $8 for a hot dog, $10 for nachos.

Since the occasion was also a reunion for my husband’s family, as you can imagine, we were very busy and didn’t sleep a whole lot. Got home last night pretty beat and found the poor birdie, who seemed to be doing better when we left, on the bottom of the cage. As of this morning, little Alstie is no longer with us. We’re very sad. I ran out and bought a new companion for our parrot since she’s been quite upset about her poor friend. She immediately took the baby parakeet under her wing and began grooming her. Tibby is remarkably gentle for a parrot - at least with other birds.

Tomorrow - why us authors struggle with our websites - a nice answer to Rebecca’s question over at Dirty Sexy Books.

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Off to Santa Barbara tomorrow and then D-land. Saw a whale today in the Bay for the second time in less than a week - I’m sure it’s the same whale and I hope he or she makes it back out into the open ocean.

I’m taking Fran Lee’s newest release, A Brief Moment of Pleasure (which I know will be more than a brief moment of pleasure) with me to read on the trip, along with Cutting for Stone. I’ll maybe write a couple reviews when I get back and as my husband says - finish up this menage/multiple because he’s sick of hearing about it and having to act out the various gymnastic gyrations! Just kidding…

Thanks all you wonderful friends for making the transition to birthday day easier and brighter. I’ve never been a big one for birthdays, except for my kids’ - all I can tell you is that I spent my thirtieth sobbing. I will think of you while I’m riding Thunder Mountain!

Much love, julia

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and it was…

The Giants played thirteen innings of ball today, or yesterday, by the time I post this - At first it was lackluster ball and then great ball - we stayed for the win. Yeah…it was a terrific win and it wasn’t spoiled at all by the loud, foul-mouthed, hilarious, drunken Scots rugby players sitting behind me tugging on my hair, enthusiastically pounding on my back and screaming out all sorts of incomprehensible rugby cheers throughout the game. My hubby even wrapped his arms around me tossed me up in the air when Aaron Rowand hit in the winning run - think he tore my rib cartilage again. Another sports-related injury, ah well…it was worth it!

So yes, it was a great day, but when it was over and we were riding home, dread began to fill me and all I could think about was how work is going to suck this weekend. I mentally kicked myself all the way home for giving notice and then listening to the pleading and agreeing to do another couple of three-day weekends. It is onerous, just onerous. Yes, I do realize how many people are out of a job - members in my own family are among those numbers - but I remembered why I left nursing once before - it was when this woman puked blood on me all night long that I realized I needed a change. I’m feeling the same way now - tomorrow, or rather today, somebody is going to puke blood on me. I know this for a fact, and just like the last time, I am not going to handle it well.

We’ll tighten the belts a tad, I’ll keep my RN license current just in case, and I’ll write and maybe do a little catering again. It will be okay.

So,the fantasy menage is almost finished - I’d hoped to have it done by today, but…next week I’ll be out of town for my birthday and anniversary - going to Disneyland with my honey - I so love Disneyland - and my husband’s cousins are getting his whole family together to help celebrate. Ought to be interesting! I think I can finish the book the following week and by then I’ll probably have more edits for Daughters of Persephone - which is a fun futuristic four-book fantasy series with kick-ass heroines.

I need a new book to read! Ooh, I know…Cutting For Stone, by Abraham Verghese. That oughta do me!

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Ruth Anne Dodge was the wife of General Grenville Dodge, Chief Engineer and Surveyor of the Union Pacific Railroad.

The angel sculpture at the Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial is said to be the translation of a dream experienced by Mrs. Dodge on the three nights preceding her death in 1916. According to the legend, Mrs. Dodge related to family members that she had a vision of being on a rocky shore and, through a mist, seeing a boat approach. In the prow was a beautiful young woman whom Mrs. Dodge thought to be an angel. The woman carried a small bowl under one arm and extended the other arm toward Mrs. Dodge in an invitation to partake of the water flowing from the vessel. Then, according to accounts later published by Mrs. Dodge’s daughter, Anne, the angel spoke twice, saying: “Drink, I bring you both a promise and a blessing.” The daughter wrote that the vision came three times to her mother and, on the third visit, Mrs. Dodge took the drink as offered and felt “transformed into a new and glorious spiritual being.” Mrs. Dodge died immediately after her supposed third vision, on September 5, 1916. She had died in her sleep at her home in New York. Her body was brought back to Council Bluffs where she was buried in a mausoleum in Walnut Hill Cemetery.

Mrs. Dodge’s two daughters, Miss Anne Dodge and Mrs. Frank Pusey, decided to build a memorial in the memory of their mother complete with a statue sculpted in the likeness of the angel that appeared in their mother’s dream. The memorial was commissioned in 1917 to Daniel Chester French, the same man who sculpted the statue of the Minute Man in Concord, Massachusetts and the Lincoln Memorial Statue in Washington DC. The ten foot tall angel statue is made of solid bronze. The Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial is located in a small fenced-in park overlooking and adjacent to the Fairview Cemetery, not the Walnut Hill Cemetery where Ruth Anne was buried.

I’m very familiar with this statue as I grew up nearby. A boyfriend and I also crashed on his motorcycle riding down the wet brick street leading away from the cemetery after we’d spent most of the night at the foot of the statue, waiting for the mythical tears that supposedly flow from the Angel’s eyes…they don’t. The statue is pretty amazing though and gives off a bunch of spiritual energy.

So I became The Black Angel this Valentine’s weekend - the harbinger of death. The nurses I work with have dubbed me the Angel of Death because whenever I’m on it seems as if I hustle from one death bed to another. Of course, that’s what hospice nurses do…and I’m okay with it. Cuz, ya know, I got kilt in a horseback riding accident at sixteen and had a NDE - but came back because I wasn’t dead enough.

Anywhoo - if you happen to find yourself in Council Bluffs, Iowa, pay a visit to The Black Angel and try to swing by the totally - and really - haunted Squirrel Cage jail, check out the ghost residing in the former Carnegie Library - I’ve seen her a bunch of times, plus the Dodge House itself is way haunted as is the old Christian Home building. There’s even a section of the old Underground Railroad that stretches between two pre-Civil War era homes and walking that tunnel is one of the most memorable experiences of my life - the homes may be privately owned now and I’m not sure you can visit, but I’d ask around. Plus you can see where Abraham Lincoln stood and looked over the site of the Union Pacific Railroad, the Lewis and Clark Monument, where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark met with the local Native tribes and the Golden Spike Memorial, which is I think where the Eastern tracks of the UP met the Western tracks of the UP. Oh yeah, across the street and up the bluff from Abraham Lincoln High School, hidden behind a line of condos, is a forgotten cemetery - the stones are weathered and the inscriptions hard to make out, but it’s where the Mormons stopped and buried their dead - mostly women and children - on their trek out west.

Me and the dead - my next book. Love and Happy Valentine’s Day yesterday! julia

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