symphony of one

Overheard in the checkout line:  "ya know, I worked, I slaved, I RUINT my health for thirty years,  and the thanks I get from those two ungrateful kids?  Nuthin.  I put my daughter through school, my son through college, not once did either of them come to me and say, 'ma, thanks, you did a great job.'  Mother's day?  I get a card, for crissakes, my DAUGHTER has to be somewhere else, can't even spend time with her mother,  my son showed up for ten minutes and left, and there I am (pending tears here) all alone on  a day that HONORS MOTHERS." (sympathetic murmurs from her new best friend)  NEVER brought their friends around, how do I know what kind of trash they're hanging out with, I worried over them, fed them, and never a thank you.  Kids, I don't know why I kept it up, (murmur murmur) all the thanks you get, that's all I can say..."

deja vu /Ursula LeGuin

Im up to the fourth book in the Earthsea cycle;  the pleasure comes from the reading, which is dark, and visual, and compelling.  However, in reading each of the first three I realized that I had read them before, apparently long enough ago to not remember What Happens Next but still, as it happens, I think, ah, I remember this...the fourth book so far hasn't given me any deja vu moments, so I'm cool with that.
The pain comes from having bought the entire set (two at a used book table and two in the bookstore at full price), apparently, again.  The fourth book wasn't published until 1990, and that may explain why I've not read it.  Thank heaven for small favors.

Its about the parts not the machine

Reading yesterday at another site, someone was saying how fragmented they felt with all the technology swirling around them.  I understand the feeling, big time.  Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook, iphones and smart phones and tablets and a new social network every week, it seems, all staring at me across the breakfast table. 

It's a bit like keeping up with a very powerful, insistent, Jones family.

When I first came online in the mid 90s message boards were the big deal, and once I realized what 'interactive' really meant I was hooked.  At one point I was in a board fight at one, writing poetry in another and finding people with whom I am still friends, even now, and joining at least four other boards, all in the space of two years.  How I managed to do that on dial up and a shared machine amazes me. 

But, it was the words, the communication, the interchanges, that mattered.  The day I found the 'net, was the day I gave up television. 

And I realize now, looking back, that I only went where I wanted or needed to go, avoiding that ferocious paddling some people indulge in in order to keep up with the rest of the world.  Simplify, simplify.  I don't do peripherals, I don't do cellphones or smart phones or kindle or Nook or social networks.  Not bragging, here,  just sayin'.  The only way I can keep this entire mess from taking over my life and brain any more than it already does is to skim off the stuff I don't need, don't want, and don't care about. 

Take what you need, let the rest go.

And I do miss the old (good) Speakeasy.  It was an amazing place to be part of.

Hollyhock and fuzzy bee

Book day

The four book trilogy by Ursula LeGuin, Earthsea,  a Ted Kooser and (to even up the sides) a Merwin, and one Jesse Stone/Parker mystery.  This should keep me going (if you factor in the last half of my yearly hike through the Discworld series) until maybe September. 

I think of this as my sick stash,  and add them to the ever changing pile of books by the bed;  the last time I got sick enough to not move for several days I managed to work my way through an entire collection of these things, and that worried me.  What happens, I think, if I got REALLY immobilized?  what if I ran out?  The mind reels. 

What a well cap looks like

Losing an artesian (drilled) well is embarrassing.  Luckily we didnt need to find it (as in, emergency situation) but rather locate it now before we have to play Hunt the Slipper in the middle of the winter...

and YES we are going to mark it really really clearly this time...

now we get serious

I know I left it out here somewhere

sometimes, through no fault of our own, things go missing.  We'll find it, yes we will.

been a looong summer

We seem to do a lot, here, with things of the earth;  stones, gardens, wood.  It keeps us connected in some way, reminds me that this, really, is all there is.  Under the city, or the parking lot, or the interstate. is the memory of stone, flowers, wood.  If you leave it unrepaired long enough, whatever was there will soon enough revert back to what it once was.  Man can only make a temporary mark on the land (Mt. Rushmore being one horrid exception) and that's somehow comforting to know.

twelve spotted skimmer

baby's breath and daisies

yay tomato

Silly and sad

Silly, isn't it.  Im not writing, so people say, oh what a good time to submit--you've got the time to rework, to revise, to put together stuff for all sorts of magazines...trouble is, submitting takes energy, and it takes the creative shove to get it moving.  And no, I don't revise or rework when I'm in this cicadian pattern.   Over is over,  clean to the floor.  I wish it were other, but this is the way this particular system works.  And reading improving 'how to write a poem" books, or journaling (that's another word I don't much like, right  up there
with scrapbooking), exercises, or all the other helpful things that simply do not work.  if, by some miracle a poem does appear, the fireworks go up, and the journal, the exercises, etc, get the credit. 

It's sort of like believing in a higher power to the point where if you succeed he/she/it/they gets the credit, and if you fail you get the blame. 

Couple more years. I just hope I can still remember my name by then.

the MOM-ing of America

I have learned to hate the word 'mom'.  Period.

Oh, wait. Is this a Sarah Palin word?  In the same way that Al Gore gifted  us with 'global warming',  did by some stroke of luck Sarah turn all our mothers into Moms?

Progress is progressing, albeit slowly

Finally got my 6 Roma paste tomato plants in, yesterday.  Between the rain and the ticks (shudder) and the rain and all the other 'hafta' things that needed doing, the tomatoes just had to wait.  I think theyll be okay, September babies instead of August.  Something tells me I am about to have a LOT of tomato paste.

We also have the shed half full of wood,  all of it either cut ourselves, or was left from last winter.  any day now I shall rush over to the phone and ask our wood guy if he will deliver us six more cords.  Yep.  Some part of me feels like this five cords of wood we have will (of COURSE) last us all through the winter. Luckily it's a very small part, easily shouted down by the older, wiser, chillier parts.

And the new cats are still 'the new cats' simply because they are.  They are assimilated with the other two, but not with us.  Whoever damaged them to get them to this point should be treated as badly for a few months, see how they like it.  Ive had cats like this before,  and it can sometimes take years for them to really
settle in.  But it's okay.  We gots a big house, and they have new friends, and that's what I was after, after all.

kicking and screaming

slowly, being dragged toward the electronic edge of the latest century.

I am now the owner of earbuds, and a matchbook sized music player.  I ve been collecting 'tickets' from BestBuy when I turn in  monitors for recycling, and finally had enough to get one of these things.  Im still coming to terms with it, much the way you might come to terms with your kid's pet condor; slowly, no sudden movements...

solstice come, solstice go

all year I slowly row
toward the longest day
and then how sadly
row back the other way

how I love the language

on a spray can of spot remover: "Permanently removes stains".   The implication, of course, is that some stains will just creep back when you're not looking, unless you use this product. Forever.

on two different strengths of pain reliever, same brand:  "Maximum dosage:  Do not take more than two in a 24 hour period..."

simplifying things is complicated

We have one of those older beds where the frame is for a 3/4 mattress and we are full mattress sized people.   Consequently the box spring and mattress have been resting on the siderails. I got sick of climbing up into a bed three feet off the floor (not to mention possibly falling out of it at some point),  and suggested that we just ditch the box spring and turn the whole thing into a platform bed.

What I didnt realize was that the platform part that would let the mattress rest on the side rails would need enough support to turn it into a 100 pound monster.  But the bed is now at a normal height, we are both pleased with it, and our old cat no longer has to claw his way up the side of the bed to find us at 4 AM.

However, we are now looking at a box spring with enough spring tension to take out a small army if it was released...

Time magazine covers

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/01/time-magazine-and-global-warming/

gotta love this

On paper, it sounds wonderful...

Our electric company is installing new digital "smart meters", which collect and send the signals back to the main office electronically.  Sounds fairly slick, and since we don't have a lot of say in it, I'm fully prepared to love them.  However. In reading over the literature that they sent out this month (installation of the meters, town by town, has begun) it seems that the signals do not go whizzing  back to the main office directly, but are sent along a chain, meter to meter, and every so often one of THEM is used as the delivery wagon.  Which means that anywhere along the chain, if one of these new meters develops a problem, or gets chopped up by an irate owner, or is hit by lightning,  the whole chain ends, right there. 

The only bright point is that no one will be able to do the old "penny under the contact" trick to lower their own bill, as one of our neighbors used to do.  I take comfort in that one, at least. *g*

Stuff to ponder

If I didn't have a computer I'd never know what day it was.

Two clocks are vital:  at least you know when one of them isnt running, if not which one.

I can remember 17 passwords without looking them up, I can go shopping without the list that I left on the kitchen table and get everything on it,  why can't I remember Saturdays?

And the reason is...

I've not been around for the past few days because the blog (mine and several hundred others as well,  apparently) was in a state of total inaccessiblity.  We all seem to be in the same boat, but each one of us is rowing in a different direction, and has their own set of oars.  How it's possible for that many diverse Operating systems to have identical problems but varying solutions that work here but not there is a puzzle.

So if I fade in and out from view now and then,  it ain't me, and it ain't thee.  Gremlins, that's it. Gremlins.

Looking over my shoulder

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/20/the-rapture-judgment-day-us

ahem. If, as they say, the believers are going to be 'taken up' into heaven, that means they are going to be taken up bodily.  Which makes me wonder:  if you can't take it with you when you die,  why can't you take it with you when you ascend? 
Im not sure if I should be frightened of the coming Rapture (although the earthquakes do seem like a good show for those of us left behind), or more about the people involved in this.  If (and I always do like to hedge my bets about these things. You Just Never Know) it doesn't happen, there are going to be a lot of disappointed people and possibly a lot of penniless believers. 

And when you think about it, why DID they give all their money away?  If they dont need it, and we will be dead...

blossoming pear

Trust

Dogs can be easy.  They want to trust, they will return to an abusive owner again and again, simply because that's the way they are.  It's built in, that they need to be part of a pack, and if the head of that pack walks on two legs, well, it still counts.  Even if he thrashes them soundly, it's part of the strict discipline of the wolf pack, and something their doggy brains comprehend.  They keep coming back.

With cats, you don't command trust,  you just hope for it; and when one honors you with a purr or allows you to pat them, no matter how gingerly,  you feel as if you've been gifted.  These two cats have been damaged.  Hit, struck, things thrown at them, I don't know.  When you reach out to them they wince, they cringe.  I've seen it before, and it breaks my heart.  So we tread lightly,  talk to them, let them have all the time they need.  

It could take all summer, it could take longer. No matter.  It will happen, on their terms, not mine.  And that's cool too.

Exoplanet--kinda neat

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/11/13_exoplanet.shtml

Word to the wise from someone who should know by now

One thing I do NOT like about Google is the way the word "edit" is used.  Click on it at the wrong moment, and you can, as I just did, lose an entire two years' worth of URLs, slowly built up into a pretty impressive string.
Edit can mean, in many instances, 'delete forever', and in many other intstances  'delete permanently' with no warning, no "are you sure you want to do this'. 

sigh.

Small gifts

Some days are like that. In spite of a filling that is about to turn into a root canal, today felt like I was rolling  on oiled ball bearings.  Everything fit together effortlessly.

 yeah, yeah, I know. "don't get used to it, it can't last".  But the point is, it does happen now and then, and it's good to notice, in case the gods are watching, and we all know they do like us to take notice of such gifts.

Global Warming

In olden times when there was a volcano in the area, and it began to erupt, the king would select a lucky girl to be the Designated Virgin. She was tossed into the volcano, probably against her will. If the volcano stopped erupting, well, the gods were appeased.  If it continued to erupt, obviously she wasn't a virgin, and it was her fault for not stopping the erupting.

The other day I saw some comments made by people who should know better, saying that global warming was responsible for all those dreadful tornadoes in the south, in part because the legislators who were voted in by their constituents were doing nothing, simply nothing, about GW.  i.e., they weren't actively pursuing a path toward stopping it.  Which is one of the silliest/saddest statements one can make at this stage. And the implication was fairly clear: you voted those slackers into office, and because of that you got the weather you deserved by being so thoughtless. It's YOUR fault you're having tornadoes. 

GW has become the buzzword for heat in the summer, blizzards in the winter, and melting ice caps.  Which, by the way, are apparently re-forming. It is bad science coupled with people all too willing to spend entirely too much money to discuss a problem that does not exist, rather than actually spend that money in different directions that might just  help reduce emissions and stuff that does exist, and would make our quality of life on this planet a bit better. 

There's a lot of history behind us, stretching back before dinosaurs, and the temperatures have soared and plummeted dramatically, cycles within cycles, for millions of years. As the earth wobbles (wouldn't that make a great title for a soap opera) and tilts, and the sunspots erupt, climate changes.  Trying to stop those changes is as pointless as bailing the ocean into a bucket to lower the levels at high tide.  Or teaching a cow not to fart.

Works for me

There's a kind of lassitude that happens when you've put in a full complement of hours doing something you love, pacing yourself so that at the end of the day you're comfortably tired and when you look back at how much you accomplished,  a certain pleasure in it all. My garden never got its autumn cleaning, for various reasons,  and now I have to do that and the spring stuff as well.  I've learned not to look beyond where I am,
or toward where I will be in a week, because that way lies mental overload.  One of the few things my Dad taught me that was positive, was never look too far ahead, or you end up doing your work twice.  So instead I look at where Ive been, and how much got done. 

Kinda sad, when you think about it

This week here in NH it was officially declared that the northeastern mountain lion, puma, mountain cat, whatever you care to call it, was now considred extinct in New Hampshire.  The last one shot was in 1934.
There have been sightings of what some people considered to be a mountain lion, and I know I heard something years ago in the  woods that definitely was not a bear and defintitely not anything other than some kind of big roaring critter, and it is amazing  how quickly one can execute a 180 turn on snowshoes...most of me hopes that they are not extinct, but hiding out in the thousands of acres of forest we now have in this state,  moving from place to place like some nomadic tribe...

spring again

Down in the run below the house the peepers have finally started their chorus.  Later in the season if you listen carefully you'll hear bullfrogs as a kind of background noise.  It's not quite 8 PM and still light enough out to see detail.  And warm enough (albeit a bit damp around the edges) not to need heavy jackets, or even any jacket.  All the jonquils are up, and the beginnings of trillium in the woods.  All the promise is there.

Sammy

Toby

So far, so good

it was a very complicated journey but i am now the proud if uncertain adoptive owner of two stunning tiger tomcats, one grey, the other  brown. They  have, unlike female cats, recovered from their trip, and are slowly exploring the house, one room, one hidey place, at a time.  Turn around and there is a cat with a strange face, looking at you.  Now and then they  meet Albert and Isabel on the stairs, or under a table, and someone hisses and moves away. 

so far, no arguments.  they arent pushy,  Just careful and curious. 

The names will be changed.  Right now I don't know which is which, but one was called Bear and the other, Micro.  The kinds of names guys give cats or dogs, why I do not know.  Once I can see them together and find some distinguishing marks,  Ill start working on names.

So far they don't seem frightened, or even particularly shy, just cautious.

Pictures will follow. Eventually.

Deconstructing Autumn

He thinned out the color with turpentine,
turning the leafy glare of cadmium and chrome yellow
into watery pastels; the house no longer seemed to fit,
and ended up on the palette knife.
With the autumn leaves turned pale and lusterless
October's bright blue dome seemed overdone.
Grey skies, he thought. Much better.
The country road narrowed, finally morphing into woods;
the horse-pasture lost its barn, the horses
transformed into dogs chasing an unseen deer
(you could almost hear the baying),
then disappeared with one stroke
beneath a row of trees that sprang up overnight.
A few boulders appeared and faded; the small
brook evolved into a larger stream but nothing
came to drink and it soon was painted out.
The barren field, now struck by frost, turned yellow and brittle,
a few weeds still bobbing--no, wait--someone mowed it flat
and took the hay, and that bit of blue water to the east
became a tidal wave, clearing the landscape,
leaving only a canvas scraped clean of everything
but grey sky and one determined, distant, goose,
rapidly flying south, and gone.

Cbecking in

Been a busy and productive two weeks, we've been cutting up a huge number of logs that someone told us we could have for the taking, and when we're done it should figure out to about a cord of beech.  That, and getting the shed ready for the leftover wood from last winter to make room for the new batch coming in June.  Always working a year ahead, it seems. 

Next year, we say, we need to do this or that.  And suddenly it's not next year, it's last year.

Someone Forgot to Take Down the Sign

The national weather service has issued a winter storm warning for this area.  In general terms this is equivalent to shouting, LOOK  OUT,  ITS GONNA SNOW.  However,  Im not quite sure how the six inches that fell overnight should be classified;  if this is the appetizer to the real storm I do not want to be here when it hits.  If it isnt here yet,  what are we seeing?  Mirage snow?  Is this just a sample, and the true storm is yet to come? 

And happy April Fool's Day.  yep yep.  The man who invented this day was probably in a snit, standing knee deep  in snow,  wondering where his garden went. The one he just planted.

Stone Bridge

Transitions

The two cats remaining are now in the process of taking back the house. Albert is 15, little, white, and entirely too chubby, but quite sanguine about the newly expanded living area.  He is slowly reacquainting himself with the chairs, the warm place in front of the stove, the front storm door, where he can sit in the sun and look out over the fields--Isabel  is pretty tightly wrapped, less trustful, even after 10 years of living here, and while she uses the cat door she prefers to be let out, and has to be reminded that she's got her house back, too. 

And even now both the humans still reach for the screen door that separated the two floors, and that too will take time to adjust to.  Having a cat  or dog arrive, or leave, in whatever shape, changes the entire fabric of the household. 

Once these guys get used to the new spaces I'll be heading out for the local humane society and see what I can find for playmates for them.  I looked over the website for Cocheco Valley Humane Society, and came away wanting all the middle aged lady cats and their life long buddies.  All of them.

Transmogrification

Somewhere along the way to heaven
the music, which was lovely,
migrated from the hymnals and the church chorales
became music for its own sake
inspiring not only celestial hopes
but earthly joy.

Memorial rites became proscribed rituals;
prayer was transformed into poetry
even as the bible was morphing
into annotated metaphorical
stories for the young, and the crucifix
impaled on the wall above
our childhood beds
became a horrific symbol
of torture in living color
and plaster of paris.

We prayed to a panoply of saints
who died for their beliefs, often horribly.
Joyous. You have to wonder how many of them
at that last burning moment
repented of their holiness
and begged of their God to be restored,
left in peace in a small damp hut
at the edge of the forest
content to weave straw into brooms
for the rest of their days.

On the fourth day

I finally broke down and restarted the second stove.  The woodpile shrinketh, the wind bloweth, and even the sun is pale and wan.  The gods saw, and chuckled. 

and at dawn on the third day

there was a wailing and a gnashing of teeth in the land, and the sound of snowblowers broke the stillness

And on the second day of spring

it snowed.  The gods were not happy.

First day of spring

the robins seem to have arrived by tour bus. this morning there were half a dozen in the field,  by late afternoon there were at least 50-60, not to mention crows, chickadees, and the occasional pileated woodpecker. 
A very young (late summer) doe was at the garden, chowing down on my century plants, which tend to stay green all winter and as soon as warm weather comes they turn brown and fall over. so at least she was getting some greens to go with the icky frozen/thawed applesauce under the trees...

Still cold, but most of the snow is gone from the fields. I actually got all the way out to the little shed without touching snow. wow. it will be a few weeks yet before the frost goes out of the ground and I can get the door open, though.  One corner of the door rock rises up each year just enough, and we have to wait it out.

yes, yes, I know. raise the shed. lower the rock. something.

When you have an old cat, and it gets sick and dies, you sort of expect it. You see it age, and slow, and then the day comes when you realize it's time to see the vet for the last time.   But when you have a young seemingly vigorous cat like Cuffy,  its an outrage to have to have them put down.  He had stopped eating because his mouth hurt.  There was nothing that could be done in that direction, except keep him alive a little longer, and that wasn't fair to him, or us. 
But it's damned hard to wrap your head around the idea of losing such a beautiful cat, and so young.  He had three good solid years here, which is three more than he would have had where he came from.  So, there is that.  He got to sleep on the porch, and in all the chairs, and had his pick of the cupboard for snacks.

Sadly he was too hostile and too alpha to be allowed near the others, and the house became downstairs and upstairs with doors between.  The dynamics of the place changed.  Now, with him gone, the other two have been reintroduced to the cat door, the downstairs chairs, all the things they had been missing.  Albert has been out 10 times and its only early afternoon.   It's quieter.  The catfood cans no longer build up in the sink, waiting to be rinsed and stored for recycling.  

I miss the hell out of him.

Cuffy 2007-2011

after the aftermath

Now and then there are things that happen which are almost beyond the comprehension of people not involved.  I watched yesterday the videos of the tsunami moving relentlessly across the  Japanese landscape at such an amazing speed, taking huge buildings, cars, anything in its path.  It was awesome, in the true sense of the word.

there truly is nothing to say beyond that.

Ruminations

I envy people who truly believe in the god they believe in.  They pass through this life with such surety that if they do this or don't do that there will be a  place for them in their christian or jewish or muslim or rastafarian heaven.  Some people even believe that this is hell and they must endure it to go to the 'real' existence, the next stage in their journey.
Oh, granted, there are the shouters and the hysterics, bible thumpers and scripture quoters, trying to get me on their side because they're afraid of what might really be out there, and they want company to reinforce what they're afraid not to believe in. 

I wonder sometimes if the believers ever wake in the middle of the night, terrified that there might not really BE a god, or a heaven, or a better life...when I wake like that, all I can see ahead of me is darkness, and nothing. Like looking down into the dark water that signals deep water, really really deep water...

But what that does is make me much more appreciative--and careful--of what's here, and what I've done, or will do. It's the only legacy I have,  and the only comfort, knowing that one very small piece of ground is a bit better than it was, at least for a little while.   My mother used to dismiss things she wanted to ignore by saying, 'well, after Im gone that leaky roof  won't matter,  someone else can fix it'.  Yeah, ma,  it does matter.

We're all connected, not only to each other, but to the earth, the oceans, everything.  What we do affects what other people do, even in a very small way.  And I truly wish I had a belief that involved an afterlife,  if only to be able to speculate on what it might be.  But all I see is the darkness out there, and silence. 

Passwords are taking over the world, arrrgghhh

Companies LOVE passwords. This morning I realized that my electric company was still sending me notifications using our old email. uh-oh.  So I clawed my way into their website, cheerily registered, only to discover that I had done so weeks ago.  No idea what the password was.

In order to have them give it back to me (mine, I say,  mine!)I had to submit a form and then they promised to email me the seekrit word. what I got was a page with a cryptic box-that-would-not-open. click click click click.  Aha. Down at the bottom, a tab. (all those years of playing computer games just paid off) Click on the new tab, a new window opens." In order to access your password, you must register here.with a valid email address, street address, and password which must be 8 characters and contain a number."

Now I have a "secure password recovery site" where I can go securely and safely to retrieve my password anytime I need it. click on another tab and lo and behold there's my old password. Log BACK in to the site and THEN change my email address.  It only took half an hour, but I am now part of the power company happy family once again.

The Horses--Edwin Muir

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

Edwin Muir

why i no longer burn brushpiles in the middle of the winter

hark to the voice

There is an upper register, just-this-side-of-hysterical that is (at least to me) considered the voice of the true fanatic. Fast, loud, high.  They don't use commas, and they wave their hands a lot--slash, slash, punctuate. 

It's the voice of extremism, of causes (lost and otherwise), of people who make dogmatic statements and hold opinions that have hardened into truths.  Tonight I was in one room and my husband was in his, watching some news interview on the computer.  The voice of the woman being interviewed went on and on,  high pitched, didactic and militant.  an Avon Lady on speed.  I kept thinking, Im waiting for it to be an old Rosanne Rosannadana clip...
and when I went in to ask my husband who that WAS, he looked mildly shocked and said, why, that's Sarah Palin.

Ne-ver mind...

The stuff dreams are made of

in the last decade or so every dream Ive had that is memorable to, uh, remember, has, with a few exceptions, involved a car/truck and incredible frustration with it. It either gets stolen, moved, trashed, hashed, or taken away from me.  Sometimes when I go back the street isnt even there.  This time I was drummed out of the library where I volunteer in a kind of one-librarian tribunal,  and told never to speak or communicate with anyone on the staff ever again. Then I was conducted to my car, informed that it had been impounded, the keys were taken, and the head librarian left me in the middle of a place that was definitely city, definitely not Concord, with a locked car and no way to get home.  Waking up was my only alternative, so I did.

Librarians are tough, i'll tell ya.

You can't read it if you can't find it

Thinking about why people don't read poetry anymore.  When I was a kid, nearly every women's magazine carried poetry, tucked away in odd spots, so even though you might be reading a very good serialized story by Willa Cather, here was a poem by someone you never heard of, or someone you had, like May Sarton, or Robert Graves,  and often they would be so amazing you found yourself cutting them out of the magazine to save and to savor.  I had a whole small scrapbook just for things like that.  And in magazines of the 20s and 30s and later, there was always a full section devoted to a serial novel, several very long short stories, and a dozen poems, often. 
It was there, and you read it. Not tucked away in a precious lit mag that required a subscription and often could not be found anywhere else.  It was accessible.  It was written to be read, not to impress other poets.

One by one those markets dried up,  and now people say, well, I love poetry, but I can't find it anywhere.
It's the law of diminishing returns. You cant find it, because fewer and fewer newsstand magazines carry it,
and their excuse is, well, no one READS it anymore...sigh.

Too good to pass up

http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html

oh, look, look, it's snowing again

hard to believe that in a month I will be snowshoeing out to the garden to see what's working its way
up through the dirt snow...

now and then i am reminded of the journal I once saw kept by one man for 60+ years.   In it, he had a weather diary;  every day for all of those years he would describe the weather. "Jan. 3, 1804.  Cold. Some snow.  Jan. 4, 1804.  Colder. More snow.  Jan 5,  1804.  Warmer.  Sunny."    Whatever else went on in his life, once a day he took down this huge volume, found the right page, sharpened his pen nib, and wrote, "Jan. 6, 1804. Very cold.  Windy."  ...  

                                                                                                      

Thought for the Day

If we're always protecting our kids from danger, real or imagined, if we're always shielding them from bullies and slings n arrows,  and water pistols that look like guns, from violence and poverty and strangers, how will they ever learn how to  handle themselves as adults?

How do they learn to distinguish real danger or violence or threats from the pretend kind?  Im not saying we have to throw them out into traffic to see if they can survive, only give them the chance to make their own choices now, when the choices are still small, and their own mistakes NOW, when the mistakes are (to our eyes) minor, and know that they need to find their own levels of fear and comfort.  

I dunno. It's a jungle out there,  and we won't always be around to navigate it for them.  

 When I start ignoring the chill seeping in around my ankles, and forgetting to check the stoves when I go downstairs, that tells me, that as far as this hibernating little bear is concerned, winter is over.  Oh, yeah, I know, we got lots more, but the psychological part is done with,  and I no longer have that push to get the wood--burn the wood--tinker tinker that I had all winter.
Burn or go out, damn you.

http://armorgames.com/play/4839/wake-up-the-box

its stupid, it's silly, it's insanely addictive (oh, just one more level...)
and gets progressively trickier. 

Hi, Im Denny

I love what our local  shelter does to downplay 'difficult' dogs like this.  And for the past week have been thinking about what "leave it" actually entails: hands, feet, dead skunks, small cats...one reason I never go to shelters is the real possiblity that I would come  home with a Denny, a litter of something, and at least five new cats and a ferret.

Winter Meditation

All day we face the sun,
winter blooming lilies grateful
for any thin light
while clouds overflow
with snow, covering the moon,
dimming the sun.

Life slows
to the rhythm of a hibernating heart
as the long night begins,
with that terrible sleep
and winter reverie
of darkness and cold yet to come.

We burrow into ourselves
and one another like puppies
blindly scenting warmth and comfort,
waking only to turn
in our cocoon of blankets and sleep.

Balanced on a point of time
while snow falls steadily around us
we begin the journey
across that far bridge
from longest night to longest day.

Dog and Butterfly

Happy New Month

Made it through January and to celebrate it looks like a goodly half of the country is going to be sharing a blizzard--all relative to where you are,  of course, since blizzard means different things to different people, and what is barely noticeable  here can be a snow of major proportions in a place like Georgia, or DC, or Texas.  I have a friend in Nevada who feels that no one should be allowed to live in a place where the temps drop below 32 deg.  I did tell him, well, when it gets chilly like that we do put our shoes back on and wear sweaters...

Our woodpile is shrinking at an alarming rate.  Partly because it took most of the winter to learn  how to use the new cook stove more efficiently,  partly because when my MIL was ill this fall it came in mid-September, and we just did not have the time or energy to deal with the mountain of wood outside--we're about two cords short of 'enough' to feel that we'll make it.  Oh, the wood is there, just Out There and not In There.

We'll survive, and if we have to hack wood out of the snow we will. Not for the first time.

You have got to love a weather map that looks like this...

Recipe

this is a recipe a friend of my mother-in-law's gave her.  Spelling has not been corrected.

1 Carnation Instant Breakfast
1 2t Milk, 1 Egg, spoonful cooked cerial
2 Tblsp Brandy
1/2 Banana or any fruit you like

Put in blender or beat vigorously until liquidified.
Drink one glass three times a day.
This is equivalent (in nourishment) to three meals.

Time flies like a banana

There is a lot to be said for getting older.  One of the things that I tend to view positively is the way time just hurtles by.  Some days it's tomorrow before I even know it's today.  Some days it's next week.  I plan on putting the rest of the christmas lights away, if I ever get a chance, but at the rate things are going, I may have to dust them and put them back in the windows before that. 

One other nice thing is,  no matter how awful January almost was,  boy did it go fast.  February is the next speeding bullet we have to dodge, and after that, March, the Month of Many Blizzards.  Damn,  we're almost into April already. Wasnt that easy?

Upscale Shopping Adventures

Went to a grocery store Ive rarely bothered with before. This one  has a specialty cheese and wine section, the herbs are now by themselves on a huge rack nearby, (SIX kinds of salt?  Oh, please) the visible milk case is heavy on soy milk and imported yogurt (some, Im sure, with bits of yurt added for authenticity), and gourmet/organic everything.  Upscale all the way. I felt like I should have dressed better.

I had to ask a clerk where the eggs, bread, and regular milk were. I also mentioned how hard it was to find what I wanted.  She laughed and said, "well, I think the designers wanted people to have a real Shopping Experience when they come here. They put that stuff out so you have to go past it, maybe try something new."  Really.  I told her I dont buy groceries to get a Shopping Experience, I buy grocieries to eat.

The regular food was way the hell at the other end of the store in a plain brown wrapper, so to speak, and the bread aisle wasn't even marked.  I think they were embarrassed to have to sell Wonder Bread at all. *g*
I like my aisles to make shopping sense.  Dairy has all the dairy stuff, the bread is all together in one aisle, and let's have the spices in the cooking aisle, please. Where you want them to be. 

Never did find the hand soap.

cedar waxwing

There were a whole bunch of them in our old apple tree this afternnon;  they don't show up often,  but when they do they eat everything in sight.  really have to click on this to see him better...

http://www.birdzilla.com/birds/Cedar-Waxwing/distribution.html?Itemid=1044

Minnesota East

-20 this morning.  And we were in the warm spot.  Maine hit -35 in some spots, and I know Vermont was much colder too.  The good news is,  February is only one week away.  March is five weeks over the next hill.

And the even better news is, as you get older, time seems to move much more quickly,  and that includes winter.  It has been a wonderfully fast winter.  someone this morning said, if this kind of global warming keeps up we could die of frostbite and hypothermia...

Emily and the two Marks

in an effort to broaden my poetry horizons, i have begun delving into Emily Dickinson on more than a superficial level,  same with Mark Jarman and Mark Strand.  I read "The Continuous Life" by Strand, all the way through, and then went back and started reading more closely.  The more I read it, the more I see
why people call him a dark poet.  He does tend to drift off into fascinating  and occasionally disturbing 'what ifs' and while the writing itself seems at first fairly plain, the more you read the more it grabs at you.

 Emily is doing the same thing.  It isnt so much the individual poems but the body of work and your own speculations as to how much is metaphor and how much isnt.  Poets write about what they know, what they dream, what is familiar, in one way or the other.  From that premise, I'd say the only thing that kept  her sane was the poetry.  It seems to be almost dragged out of her, forcefully. 

I had mark jarman as an instructor several years back at a poetry festival in West Chester, PA. I wasnt all that impressed with him as such,  and his poetry at that time interested me only barely.  But in reading what I can find online, I wish I had read more of it then. 

And yes I have worked my way through Rilke.  I'm gainin' on him.

Since im not writing much right now and probably won't for a few more years, this seems a good time to absorb what's out there.  Whatever we read comes back later, changed, but there in some way.

weather report: mebbe a foot of snow, light and fluffy. More on the way. 

Snacks

its always nice to know you won't run out soon (although he has made a gallant effort here to lower the level)

Cuffy's new bed

the new bed, near the woodstove but not too near.  I dont know if the box just happens to be the shape of the cat or Cuffy manages to become right-angled to accomodate the corners.

Kinda pretty, innit.

Lost chances

The trouble with being adopted within the family you were born into, is that if it's kept secret (as it was in my case) from the child but not the rest of the family,  there is a huge burden imposed on everyone to keep that secret from that child until he or she knows.  

In my mother's family this meant forever.  It also meant that I was subtly kept isolated from relatives  as I grew older,  including my birth mother, who I grew up believing was my aunt.  I was never encouraged to write to anyone, aunts, uncles,  cousins.  Mother was terrified, I think,  someone would slip. 

I had three remaining cousins, with whom I have over the years lost any contact with. Last night, out of curiosity, I opened up the SSDI site, and found my cousin Jimmy had been dead for seven years. His brother Jack died a year later. Where cousin Marie is I have no idea, since I never could remember her married name. And this morning I finally understood that those three people were what I leaned against, knowing  they were out there, somewhere. Missed opportunites, lost chances, all the way. I feel sadder right now about that than anything else.

Barred owl looking backward .  He's been swooping around the yard lately, I suspect there's some damn good feeding out there right now.  The ground is cold and wet and muddy and if any fool mole or vole sticks its head up, there's mister owl, waiting   If this is our January thaw it's about three weeks early, but, then, we did have an early cold spell, too.  Split the difference, I'm cool with that...

yay it's christmas yay it's over

Not that we do much about it on a personal basis, but at least I won't be hearing Alvin and the Chipmunks for another year,  and all the pre Christmas sales  have turned into post Christmas sales,  and my latent guilt at not sending cards or buying gifts can go back in the carton with the tree we didnt put up this year.

I know, I know, bah humbug. Go, Scrooge.

Now we can settle back into the process of getting in and out of winter in time for spring.  Some years it's a close call.

Just in time for Christmas

Solstice Poem

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


WINTER SOLSTICE

At any time of the year
you measure the dimensions of the sky
one constellation at a time
give it perspective in terms
that you can understand

but at this darkest point
the nadir of the calendar
stars become much more
than pinpoints on a chart
sometimes it's all you have to steer by
and you begin to weary of the darkness
there is so much of it

Having lost the light
you announce yourself with candles
in every window
drape strings of icicles
from eave to eave
calling softly into the winter sky
over here over here

memories that never quiiiite fade

Everyone has from time to time been visited by the ghost of  a particular song, the kind of thing that drifts into your mind but seemingly never drifts away, just lingers behind a potted fern for the appropriate moment.  You are sorting socks and realize you're humming Yankee Doodle Dandy, and have been doing so since breakfast.  Yikes. Or riding to work, the strains of OOOOOKlahoma...suddenly careen around the corner of your mind,  and you know you'll be mentally singing "OOOOOklahoma where the winds blow heavy da da da" for the next eight hours.

It may be "London Bridge," or the Hallelujah Chorus, the entire "Memories", or "Old Man River" (even worse, Stan Freberg's version, "Elderly Man River") anything that plants itself squarely in your brain and sticks, wearing an ever deeper groove in the record up there. 

My own bete noir is  the Oscar Meyer Weiner song, with alternate endings, and on really bad days, Eddie Fisher singing "Oh My Papa".  Feel free to borrow either of these  if you feel the need for different material. 


Hope this  helps.

Earth cycles, 1, Global Warming 0

This morning at 5:am the thermometer read -1.  In Britain they are experiencing the coldest winter in 100 years.  Europe is digging out its long johns and wondering where they put the snow plows. 

Last year during the much-touted Global Warming conference in Denmark there was a blizzard.  Probably directly over the conference center.  This year the Global Warming folks are in Cancun and if I lived there, I'd bring in my pets and buy some warmer clothing.  It seems, somehow, that every time they decide to meet (and very expensive meetings these are, indeed) to 'discuss' global warming",  the thermometers plunge, and the conference tables turn to blocks of ice.   Perhaps if they turned all that money into actually doing something instead of actively discussing doing something,  I'd be a bit less cynical about the whole deal. 

Time to feed the stoves.  It's turning into a 3 stove day, for sure. 

Any forward motion helps at this point

In two weeks the days will begin to grow longer.  The one thing at this stage that gets me through the drama and drek of January, February, and ice storms, is knowing this.  Minute by minute, the day grows brighter sooner. 

A bit of nostalgia for what is now 'the good old days"

Something has gone out of message boards, as a general rule, and I miss it. There is no longer that free-wheeling sense of creativity there once was, bounded only by your imagination and what the board itself would tolerate. 

I cannot fathom any board out there now allowing the freedom to "spin" that we once had at places like Excite, or the old Speakeasy, Fresh Press, or even Multiverse  in all its strange incarnations. 

There are message boards, to be sure,  but they are specific; writing, talking about writing,  tractors, skate boarding, politics, etc etc.  The freedom to get down and stream-of-conciousness creative seems to have disappeared.  That may be why I have such a difficult time sticking with any one board, these days,   there's simply no room to haul in the bean bag chairs and the new bar stools. 

signage

Brought to you by the good folks who last year on their church marquee proclaimed, "BLESS GOD, AMERICA"--this year they ask us,  "IF GOD CARRIED A WALLET, WOULD YOUR PICTURE BE IN IT?"
It is hard to imagine the mind that could imagine God carrying a wallet in the first place. Strange questions arise. 

Does he have credit cards?
How much cash would God carry?
What about a driver's license? 
Insurance? 

the migratory habits of butterflies sometimes go awry

Thinking Out Loud

When you're a kid, you spend most of your time peering into the future, mostly because there's not much past to recall.  When you get really old, a lot of your time is spent looking  back, remembering what was because what's much too near at hand is often nothing we want to contemplate too deeply.  It catches us all, eventually,  and I think by then we  have sorted out what memories we will keep for comfort food, and which we will ignore, deny, or forget entirely.

But somewhere in the middle I think a lot of us begin to look back at what our childhood was like, and our parents, relatives, and friends,  and wonder how much of that shaped us directly, gave us a gentle shove in a particular direction, seemed to have no influence at all--or became something that we learned to work around or tunnel away from, in order to survive. 

Many people spend a lot of time denying the past,  pretending it doesnt matter, when in fact it's all we have of who we were.  How we reacted to it, from the inside, often has a great influence over the rest of our lives.   And equally interesting,  as we mature,  our point of view changes--we become, often, more dispassionate about things, and now and then have some pretty heavy insights into not what our parents did to  or for or about us,  but why.

The why is the key.  And denying that childhood, that base we all stand on,  is denying that we ever had one, sort of.  And sometimes it says, if it didnt matter, then I don't, either.  I think it's the key to everything, to us, and to how we deal with our own kids and grandkids.  It matters, if only to us.

I love new appliance day

My old  washer died two weeks ago, or rather it began to breathe funny, and make a clickclickclick sound around the agitator.  So I did my famous appliance hunt, which mostly means walk in, find the cheapest one, and work my way up from there to the one I really want.
Two days ago I went back and the new one wagged its little stubby tail and looked as wan-but-expectant as any puppy in a pet store--the clerk knew, I could see him approaching from one side.  Can I help you, he asked.(sly devil, he already knew I was hooked). Why yes, I answered, pointing.  That one. And it was. 

Of Mice and Men and Microsoft

We've been running Avast (the cheap guy version) anti-virus for several  years, since Norton got so big it couldnt fit through the doors.  Worked well,  but now they want us to download the new spiffy version, 5.0.   I tried it and it just about ate my computer.  No thanks, I said.  so for the last few months they've been hitting me with reminders, daily, much the way Norton did. Nag, nag, nag. 
My cynical elf suggests that the free version is deliberately made buggy, and the pay to use version runs very well indeed.  But I don't want to invest 29 bucks to find out for sure.

So.  The mister suggested I get, heaven help us, MSN.  The downside is, you have to accept alllllll the security downloads Ive been avoiding for the past three years.  All of'em.  If you refuse the honor, they won't let you run MSN Anti virus stuff.  If you decide to let 'em in,  and then delete, everyone of them requires a restart.  They gotcha.  No one wants to restart their computer 200 times in a day.

sulk.

119K miles later...

Today it goes to Honda heaven. Its been sitting in the back field (the limbo for dead cars, trucks, and assorted motorized things) for 8 years, and we are finally parting with it.  Found some  pennies in there on the dash, that had cupped apparently from the heat over the years.  They look a bit like tiddly winks now.

Gonna miss it, in a strange way, but mostly for what it was, not for what it is now, which is a hunk o junk full of acorns and mouse nests...

Of the Written Word

added in a new member to the "Written Word" list,
http://www.bachelorsdegree.org/2010/11/11/50-best-poetry-books-for-kids/

which while being a bit ad-heavy for my taste does a really nice job with the list, enumerating the strengths of each book on the list itself.  So it's not just a rip and read group of titles.  Some of them I remember fondly, some I had forgotten about, and some make me wish I had a grandchild to read them to.

when good dogs die...

they'll remember this and find us

something to cling to at 7 AM

You look out the window and think, wow it's dark, there must be something wrong with the clock
and then it sweeps over you that it's nearly November and the clock is your reality check.
It really is 7 AM here in Yankee land, and it really is that dark.

However, in seven weeks, give or take (so Im fudging a little. So sue me) the days will be getting longer again. And once we hit the high double hurdle of Christmas and New Year's,  the slide into winter, true winter begins, and the days are still getting longer. 

Book stuff, good and ugly

Just picked up a copy of WS Merwin's "The Shadow of Sirius"  and it blew me away.  an odd thing, though;  I got through the first five or six very lyrical pieces, and had to stop.  Since then I've been carrying it around like a partially opened treasure, almost afraid to keep going.  It's become my Linus blanket of books.  I need it near me, but not to read. Not yet. 

The ugly is Barnes and Noble, a fairly sturdy candidate in the book chains for their attention to poetry--it's been six months or so since I was there last, and the poetry section which once stretched half the length of the store, now stretches three long bookcases, head  high.  No one bothers any longer to keep the books in order, and if you want, say, Kooser, you start at the first book and hunt until you find one. If any.   By next year, I said to the clerk, there won't be any.  He nodded and said, by next year, if that happens, I'm gone.

I think we're seeing a dark ages coming, one store at a time.  I always wondered what it would be like to be at the edge of a new Dark Age,  and it's not much fun.  It's all coming unglued, faster and faster.  Perhaps the computer will be our monks, our scribes,  storing information until such time as people can remember how to read again, how to turn the damn things on, how to use that information.  Im glad in a strange way to have seen that terribly sinster dark edge,  but even gladder I won't be around to watch what happens. 

argh

Snow. Not a lot, lasted maybe ten minutes, but no matter how I tried to pretend it was pollen, (really BIG pollen) or hail...

(heading off to sulk under a warm blanket)

October picture

Almost home

the new bookstore

In the mall in Concord a new bookstore finally opened--however, it's Border's and they have a very limited range of books available.  It almost amounts to censorship but im not entirely sure who is censoring what or why...Im giving them the benefit of the doubt right now, because they havent been there long;  very few shelves in the open spaces, for one thing.  Lots of self help books, history, biography.  No Robert Parker, John P. MacDonald, Lawrence Block, John Irving or Terry Pratchett. Very few women-as-detective series.  And incredibly, Jane Eyre has been relegated to the mystery/detective shelf.  No poetry, not even Shakespeare or Frost. 
It comes across as a Nicholas Sparks/Oprah type store, easy reads,  nothing too difficult.  If you are over 7 you are labeled an indepent reader, even if you are  now reading the final Harry Potter.

This Independent Reader fwowed up and left.

Radio Memories

I am listening to a recording by Tom Rush, "Circle Game".  Hearing this I am once again 19, it's late, really late at night,  and WBZ in Boston is on the radio.  Dick Summer has the late night slot, and he has the privilege of playing whatever he wants.  Most records in those days, the mid sixties, were 3 minutes long, more or less.  This one was endless, and he said, you'll hardly notice how long it is.  He was right.
He introduced us to Tom Rush, Phil Ochs, and Jim Croce and a lot of other music that was just outisde the rim of what passed for "popular".   

Late night radio was amazing, back then.  Every night from 10 to 11 Jean Shepherd would hold forth from WOR in NY, only available on AM, and I was willing to endure the fade in fade out static,  just to hear him.  He played bizarre music,  expounded on everything from car dealers to tornadoes. He was never dull.  He also told the story then that eventually became "A Christmas Memory", now shown every Christmas, with Himself doing the narration. 

Radio was live, and the disc jockeys were more than rip and read music players. They talked about the records, did background, and talked to each other.  Not long ago I happened across Dick Summer's blog, in which he reminisces about those very days.  So it wasnt magic just for me.  That makes it even more special.

Today I am an Old Person

I have just officially become a medicare recipient,  subject to the whims and vagaries of Social Security, from now until they decide what to do with the body, hopefully years down the road.  It's a bit unsettling.

No fawn should be this new this late in the year.  She just stood almost in front of the car when I was coming home today, staring at me. We figure she was born maybe a month ago, and fawns like this worry me.  They keep coming later and later, as if this particular grouping has a slightly longer cycle which pushes the fawns to be born later and later.

And amazingly they do manage to survive the winter. I don't really know how, but they do.

When she started to move away I tooted the horn at her, give her a bit of fear of humans to chew on.

well it HAS been awhile

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
But being about as predictable as baby chicks in a hailstorm, hurricanes can do strange things, both weather-wise and human wise;  people respond in  different ways:  one group hunkers down after cleaning the store shelves of candles (which they never use),  radio batteries, toilet paper, and beer;  another gets ready to party hearty all night long or go surfing, regardless of what cooler heads are suggesting,  one set bundles in the car heading for the beach to "watch the waves come in", and the rest of us just bring in the lawn furniture and hope the roof holds up.