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How One Town Rallied: A Story of Hope

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With both our nation and our world in such disarray this week and with all the personal struggles and uncertainties our family and friends are experiencing, I offer this true story of hope.

Lakeview, Oregon is the Lake County seat, with a population of 2,418 (2020 Census.) It dubbed itself as the “Tallest Town in Oregon,” for its elevation of over 4,700 feet above sea level, and its residents are primarily loggers, ranchers, or government employees. This past spring, the town officials informed the community, there were no funds to open the public swimming pool, due to a hefty loss in tax revenues. Realizing the importance of providing that recreation, the folks came together and donated enough money to open the pool.

Then as summer edged toward fall, town officials delivered worse news: there were no funds to plow snow this winter in a town that typically gets 44+ inches of snow! Why? After all, Lake County is nearly the size of New Jersey, yet inhabited by less than 9,000 people. Most of the land is under the Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service control, and thus it is not taxable, which further contributes to the town’s financial woes.

Faced with this potentially critical dilemma, the community had to do something. How would their children get safely to and from school? How would mail be delivered? How would stores and offices be able to open? Thanks to the ingenuity and creativity of several community members, they decided to print and sell a 2026 calendar–not just any calendar–but an Outback Naked calendar, and dedicate 100% of the sales for snowplowing. Using volunteers from senior citizens to those in their mid-forties as the monthly models in scanty clothing, they published a most hilarious calendar, which went viral. Even The New York Times published this article: One Town’s Plan to Address a Financial Crisis: Nude Calendars by R. Fernandez. (Don’t be alarmed, the models don’t let it all hang out; it’s no more skin than you’d see at the swimming pool.) The Drew Barrymore Show is also scheduled to feature Lakeview’s project.

I would urge you to join me in supporting Lakeview’s endeavor. Check out: Outback Naked Calendar’s Shop on zeffy.com Trust me, you’ll get a kick out of each month and applaud the resilience of a town who refused to accept the unacceptable.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Dr. Suze

(Photo courtesy of: Tiffany Paull. Model: Kenda Fuhriman)

Chasing Dolly

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Neither the clone sheep, nor Dolly Levi, but the Dolly…Parton. On Monday, I learned that the Dolly was going to perform in Las Vegas in December, and tickets for her six shows would go on sale Wednesday morning. Some of you probably are wondering why I would care, but it’s a family thing. My maternal grandparents were from a small holler, Kodak, in east Tennessee, where my great grandfather was the Sevier County sheriff. The county seat is Sevierville and home to the Parton family. Given the size of the community my relatives knew the Partons, and until my grandmother’s death she was an avid follower of Dolly’s rising success. (My youngest kid somehow inherited my grandmother’s admiration for Dolly and exclusively uses her cake and brownie mixes.) Given this quasi-familial relationship, I set out on a mission to get concert tickets. Just 8 tickets, which according to the website would cost $600 at the high end, and $25 at the low.

Wednesday morning, 9:00 AM: I entered the queue. WTF? 54,569 folk in front of me! My kid was in the queue with 13,000 ahead. Thank God. We’d score tickets for sure. 10:00 AM the sale began. 10:30 AM all six concerts were sold out! By 11:00AM, the alleged $600 seats were being sold by brokers for $13,929!

Talk about shock and awe for this old broad. My dreams of spectacular Christmas presents shattered, I schlepped away with a determination to figure out what happened. After too many hours of research, I’m still not an authority on what happened. My simplistic explanation is: ticket scalping in the digital age due to (ro)bots. If you want to further understand, consider reading Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped by Budnick and Baron. Supposedly, His Highness, at the urging of Kid Rock, issued an Executive Order in March to curtail this practice, but obviously that’s yet to come to fruition.

When a nation is run by billionaires, the rest of us don’t matter. Sorry. I’ve got to go. I’m late for the Bezos’s wedding!

WTH Is That?

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Last week my Texas niece, her husband, and their children came to Phoenix for a whirlwind fifty-five hour visit. Since their kids had never been to Arizona, we crammed an Arizona experience into a very tight time frame, including a dip in my 68-degree swimming pool, a hike in the Mountain Preserve, dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and a trip to the zoo.

Now, the zoo trip did not focus on primarily on the lions, tigers, and monkeys, but on the fauna indigenous to the desert. My five-year-old great nephew, D-Dog, particularly enjoyed the creepy crawly exhibit of snakes, lizards, scorpions, and such, which he explained to me in great detail. (I wouldn’t have known, since I refuse to look at those creatures.) His sister liked the roadrunner who was munching on a white mouse and the Mexican wolves who were devouring rabbit entrails.

I was dawdling along attempting to avoid being caught in the midst of an elementary school trip when I saw it. At first, I thought it was a submerged black bear when it suddenly rose out of the man-made creek and took to the air, flapping its wings and dousing me with water. WTH is that? A freaking California Condor with an over eight-foot wing span. Now even though this massive bird was in a netted habitat I ducked. I flashed back to my terror of watching Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Admittedly, I was less worried about having my eyes pecked out than I was of it snatching me in his talons and carrying me off to Papago Buttes.

Of course, D-Dog was most amused by his great aunt’s fear, and he even had the audacity to label me a fraidy cat. I’m okay with that; I’m just happy to have survived and lived to write about my condor encounter. In fact, this old gal is happy to have survived their whirlwind visit.