Spring poem

Green

While you were away

the seasons passed

from dark to light:

leaves fell, snow fell.

Now the fruit trees

bloom with rare abundance

as if they knew

of your return

and so rejoice.

More than once your shadow

fell across my dreams:

this was, after all,

the place you started from.

The seasons changed.

Now green again

and fruitful

I, too, rejoice.     

spelling--ruminations and an apology

The English language is filled with spelling traps (I often wonder about other languages, but I KNOW this one for sure) that we spend most of our lives navigating like mine fields.  It doesn't help that we now have elf-sized keyboards to turn even decent spellers into typo kings.

Some words are spelled the way they sound, and some are spelled very very strangely: brougham, trough, Worcestershire,  sough,  Wednesday...

The root of the problem is genetic: we are born with the spelling gene either intact, or with it just wandering around out there making cute typos and errors that the good spellers pounce on, endlessly.  I am cursed (some would say) with the Good Spelling Gene.  It's not pretty, trust me.

Sometimes I think we exist just to annoy the rest of the world,  and our penance is to always come in first in those horrible Spelling Bees (do they even have those now?) and sometimes make it all the way to the semi finals and the final finals, only to be defeated by some snip called Marcy who rips out the proper spelling for "discotheque" and you, who have never seen it in print, spell it as 'discoteque" and the audience "awwww" resonates in your ears for the next hour...

Our life long curse is to see words spelled (spelt) badly and wildly, and are unable or unwilling to correct what we see.  Ugly, I tell ya. Ugly.  With the advent of Tablets, teeny keyboards,  people who think they can touch type but can't,  people who touch type and shouldn't, and a new wave of phonitic speling (as someone said, "you can figure it out, right?") and Spell-Check that threatens to undermine even the Spelling Bee proponents, and I do begin to wonder, why bother.  I can figure it out, right?





(but I don't want to...)

The Gentle Slap in the Face (6WS)

When you go into a store--thrift shop, used furniture,  etc--and discover that the mixer/serving dishes/utensils you bought as a bride have now been upgraded to "Vintage".

When an old classmate recognizes you and you not only have no idea who he/she is (even when they introduce themselves) and you realize that  he/she thinks you're someone else...even when you introduce yourself back, and they say, "no you're not"--and now you are suddenly in a world of alternate universes

The books you loved as a child are now in the category online of  "collector's items"

Everyone you went to school with, were a bridesmaid for, or you threw baby showers for, is a grandparent.  They are suddenly old.   Too.

This is charming

The new memory

As we get older our memory becomes a strange and wondrous experience. Today I was once more confronted, for some reason, with what appears to be a periodic 'cleansing" by Google to make sure we are all where we should be and not someone else.  When this happens I quietly go to pieces, because I know a terrible thing is going to happen.

You see, I have about 80 skillion email addies at Yahoo, and have over the years been adding and removing them as the tides turn and the weather changes.

One of them I use in here.

Easy, right?  heh

I also have two email addresses for Google.  One of them I use in here.

When I am asked, on occasion, to sign in rather than just hit the button and begin posting,  the panic starts to prickle down my spine.  Which one oh my which one is it...

So I dab at one, and it says, 'your  password was changed three months ago. is this true?" and they ask me to verify it. [see paragraph 2.]  If you hit the wrong one you are asked to reset your password and the first time it went swimmingly until I was asked to sign in here with it and  realized that I had forgotten to write it down...

Finally I found one that would work, after being told repeatedly that Google now keeps track of your passwords and you cannot, simply cannot use that again, its already in use on another account.   It gets better.

After carefully writing this down and having it approved you are asked to present a verification email address in case of lord alone knows what,  which means another search for another yahoo address and another password and finally, an hour later and (should have been a five minute event) i have a new password, and this time I took a screen shot and saved it in my photo program...

I just hope I can remember what name I used to save it under.

Frozen Lakes

   The first heavy autumn rain soon became a week-long torrent, and then two more unexpected weeks of it; a steady numbing downpour that invaded their souls, filling the otherwise silent rooms with the sound of  a river rushing through a ravine.  Leaving the house was nearly impossible--Katy said it was like swimming through a waterfall, the radio reminding anyone listening to head for higher ground, as the autumn floods were rampant and getting worse as streams further north began to rise and join the swollen rivers in the valleys that surrounded them.   

   After the power went out on the first weekend they slowly began to revert to a rhythm much like that of their not so distant ancestors--eat, tend the fireplaces, sleep, read; turn on the generator just long enough to keep the freezer and refrigerator cold.  The radio stopped working, and they finally understood that the stations were no longer broadcasting. 

   Long unused board games and dusty decks of cards were unearthed and the days were filled with Monopoly, Parcheesi, Gin Rummy, and Chess.  There was plenty of food and fuel for the present but, aware of long term possibilities, they instinctively meted out their supplies carefully--"good time to go on a diet" they agreed, laughing a bit too hard...

   After the rains stopped and the sun reluctantly came out they waited, like Noah's Ark inhabitants, until  the waters abated a bit and the road became a passable if not driveable road again;  living on the highest point of land meant flooding was ordinarily from the ground up, and as Peter said more than once, if we flood, the rest of the world is in trouble.

   The road of course was impassable in a vehicle, so they ventured out on foot to see what had happened to the valley; without even a telephone for communication they had been utterly isolated for almost the entire three weeks--even the cell phones had stopped working, and they were simply unprepared for what met them halfway to the end of the long steep driveway.

   They saw trees bent and broken, uprooted, floating in a glistening lake of brown water that glowed serenely in the sunlight. Houses along where the main road had been were gone,  although here and there stubborn chimneys were still showing above the stinking water, and debris still contained dead animals, floating bodies, household possessions buoyant enough to float. 

   The silence was complete, except for the sound of water moving steadily and firmly past them, and now and then a tree giving up its muddy struggle with gravity;   no one spoke--they finally turned, stunned, and struggled up the devastated road toward the house and warmth and the reality of a shrinking food supply, dwindling fuel, and a winter, if they survived that long, of frozen lakes.