Virginia Creeper Details

Big bluestem seedhead shadow

Indian grass seedhead shadow

Virginia Creeper Doing Its Fall Thing

Fall It Is

The crowds were at the Morton Arboretum on Sunday hoping to catch the 'fall color' but most were probably disappointed. It was a bit early and the only conventional signs of fall were the occasional brilliant scarlet of leaves of the Virginia creeper vines on the tree trunks. I suspect it will be a disappointing fall for leaf color, as the Virginia creeper that makes my garage/office into the bat cave turned reddish and dropped its leaves pretty much at the same time. There was probably not even a minute where the whole thing was red, as some were already falling off by the time others colored. This makes me expect other trees to drop their leaves soon after they color. But the determined can find signs of autumn other than the turning color of tree leaves. Purple and pink and white asters and yellow sneezeweed bloom in the fall. Seeds are nature's way of making sure there will be new plants after the killing freeze of winter. Seeds come in many forms, from berries to stalks of seeds at the former site of flowers to grassy seed plumes to acorns and black walnuts that were dropping from the car to plunk of car roofs. It is scary when they are landing all around you and missing your delicate skull by only a couple feet. We've put it off as long as we can: We finally have to admit that fall is here.

Savage Blood Sucking Beasts

I took one for this photo.

Shopping at the Kiosk

Shoppin' at the St. Mary's Chapel Self-Serve Religious Trinkets And Pamphlets Kiosk

Saints Medals













Keychain Rosaries














Plastic Dashboard Jesuses














Palm-size Crucifixes

Vices and Virtues: Never Quit

I am sure you have fallen victim to this one at some point in your life: Don't be a quitter! Stick with it! Finish what you start! The virtues of commitment, diligence, perseverance. Yet imagine a life where you were never allowed to quit anything that didn't work out? Imagine how much time would be wasted in pursuit of useless things. Gone to the store for Dial soap and there is none? You can buy the Dove or you can drive all over town looking for the right brand. Imagine the risks that would never get taken if you had to be sure up front. We would never try a new art or skill, never start a risky project, never meet new people or enter into new friendships if we didn't have the power and freedom to bail out of it if it wasn't working out. Never quit! Hah! The trick is to find the balance between what to give up and what to stick with. It is, yes, a wise course of action not giving up on a truly good thing just because the path to it turns out to be a little difficult. If it is going to take a little longer or be a little harder or require a little help from someone or require a little more work or effort or difficulty, but if it is truly achievable and worth it, then by all means, soldier on. Do what it takes, rally the forces, give yourself a pep talk and keep on keeping on. But if it is a lost cause, taking more time or energy than it is worth, causing unforeseen damage or harm or pain, turning out to be less important or less valuable than initially thought, by all means, give it up and move on. Move on to things more worthy of your time and effort and more likely to yield good benefit in proportion to the input required. It can be difficult to recognize that point in time where something is no longer worth it and it is time to give up and move on. Or it can be just as difficult to recognize in time of discouragement and pain that the thing really is worth never quitting on. But to recognize that we possess the free will to decide that and to reexamine and re-decide it frequently throughout the process is a valuable realization indeed. Never Quit. Unless it makes sense to quit. Then quit promptly, clean up the mess, and move on to something else. Guilt free, because sometimes quitting really is the right thing to do.

The Door of the Hospital Courtyard

I love signs like these. No one planned this hospital courtyard and decided in advance of its opening in the planning phases that such signage would be a good idea. No, this sign is there because somebody tried it. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to go into the courtyard of dignfied serious St. Mary's hospital with antique chapel spires with ornate stone pillars, a courtyard looked out onto by patients' rooms, visitor waiting rooms, exam rooms, and doctors' and staff offices, and take off some significant measure of their clothing to take in the sun's rays. I would love to know the back story that lead to this sign, who it was that attempted their bold bathe in the sun, when it was, what they were thinking. Was it just once that riled someone up so much that the signs went up on every door, or was it a number of times that it happened, leading to a calmer approach and voting at a meeting that lead to these signs? People can be funny, on both sides of these signs: The people who triggered the rules and the people who made the rules and put up the signs to enforce them.

Of Vices and Virtues: Procrastination

Talking to an artist friend the other day, we explored a concept familiar to the creative person: Procrastination. Self-help books and articles covering procrastination lean to attempts to aid one in 'overcoming' procrastination or 'eliminating' it from your life. Organization and time management are seen as the weapons against procrastination, as though it is an evil that needs management. And yet, as my son studies practical economics, he is finding that delivering too much too early are not good business models. In the arts, procrastination is a tool that allows maximum creative time and minimal production time. Doing the job too early often results in the desire to redo. Obviously, if one were to just ignore the creative project until the last possible moment, there could be problems, such as under-estimating the time needed for the project and failing to finish it. But in my experience, most creatives look at the problem early and then let it sit in the back of their minds where they think it through and muddle it over and try various options and possibilities while they work on other things. So at the 'last minute', quite a bit of mental work has already gone into it and a number of versions and alternatives have been explored. So for most creative people, procrastination is not a vice, but the virtue of optimization of time and effort and the realisation of the best quality work we are capable of. Is it time to move it from the list of vices to the list of virtues and explore and understand how useful procrastination really is?

Fire

Fire has long been a friend of humanity. Perhaps that is what separated us from beasts, when we tamed fire. What made us human? What thing distinguished the first real human from all its primate ancestors before? Some say it was language, some say tools. Maybe it was fire? Are other primates afraid of fire like many animals are? Was it when a primate first allowed curiosity to conquer fear of fire that we became human? Fire keeps predators away. Was it the protection of the circle of light of the campfire that freed us from fear so that we could gather and learn to communicate and plan and think and dream? Indigenous people of North America used fire to keep the prairie from becoming woodland and to bring in game to hunt and to clear land to deny invaders cover from which to attack. Some say it was there at the edge of the circle of light made by the campfire that wild wolves scavenged human leavings and learned to accept the proximity of people and so the domestication of the dog began. Fire can be a blessing and fire can be a curse. A warm fire in the hearth or at the center of camp is comforting and soothing. A burn is the worst sort of pain a person can be asked to endure. A fire cooks food and lights our way and melts metals for our use but a fire can also destroy. Fire, tamed, used, is a good thing. Fire unleashed and allowed to burn out of control is a bad thing. When one speaks of fire, one may be speaking of actual flame, of the energy released in that state change, but often,when one speaks of fire, it is a euphemism for something entirely else. One can be alive with a fiery energy, one can speak with a tongue of fire, one can experience the spark of creativity to design or invent a new thing, or one's words can burn with passion or anger. Lovers hearts are aflame for each other. A spark of lightening can burn down the barn or light a prairie fire that leads to purity and renewal. How can you know for sure when you strike that match whether your flame will comfort or destroy?

Tour Bus - Fiction

When we were younger and less known, we toured in a bus with our name on every surface along with lots of flash and dancing eye candy, hoping we would be as famous as we thought our bus's paint job made us seem to be. Then, when we were actually famous and well-known and sought after and tired of the attention when we were tired of being 'on' after a show, we started to tour in 2 plain white unadorned buses with heavily tinted windows. These sleek white beasts glide barely noticed through town after town and earn us the quiet our old bodies and brains need to sleep off the adrenaline and then pump it up again for another show in another town. But back when we partied all night on the road in our flashy bus, we were burning ourselves out and not all of us made it out alive. Somewhere on the road between Chicago and Milwaukee on one such trip, one of our bass players took on a bit too much of something or a bit too many of some things together and his heart stopped beating in the second seat of the 5th row. After that, nobody would sit in that seat, or even in that row, really, and there was frequently a disturbance when someone would forget, one of us or some lowly lighting guy or one of the costume girls would plunk down with a beer and the bus would gradually go dead silent as we gaped at him or her. They would remember and leap up or maybe have to be told and pulled into the aisle. One night, we were waiting in a parking lot in one of those big L towns in Kentucky, waiting to find out if the last minute add in some nearby college field house was a go or if we were going to hit the interstate for Georgia instead. We sat around in our funk of uncertainty and someone and someone else got into an argument that lead to people taking sides that lead to someone mentioning the dead bass player's name and that shut us all down. We sat in the gloom staring at the empty seat and each other when finally one of the drummers said "I'm gonna torch that seat," and started pushing and pulling on it. A couple others joined in and only managed to get the arm wrenched akimbo. Jimmie finally got up and skulked through the aisle glaring, which made most of us shut up and sit down. He went to the driver and asked for the toolbox. They went outside and underbins were opened and closed and Jimmie came back with a yellow plastic box. He yanked up the carpet and poked his head around under the seat and one of the sound guys joined him. Pretty soon they had the seat unbolted and 3 or 4 of them were carrying it over the other seats to the door. They set it down a few parking places away. We all sat there stunned for a few seconds before we poured out of the bus and gathered in a circle around the seat. There were a few whispers about how we might be arrested but a couple others were rolling up paper towels from the lavatory and wedging them between the seat and the back and pretty soon, the paper was lit and the flames started to creep. Well, it wasn't as dramatic as we'd hoped, for instead of bursting into wild and brilliant towering roaring flame, it mostly just sizzled as the flames crept around and over and under, melting then actually burning the polycarbons of which it was made. It took a long time and there were little plumes of black smoke now and then, yet no fire trucks roared up, no police cars with flashing lights zoomed in. Soon it was a twisted framework of angled metal and sinewave curving springs and then it was over. We left the metal remains there on the pavement and trickled back onto the bus as the driver radioed to dispatch for our directions. The spot in the row of seats stayed empty for years, until we got the new white buses, and became the place where the ice chest full of bottled water and yogurt that reflected our cleaner habits was kept. We fondly remember the removal of the seat as more violent, we remember the flames as higher and hotter, we remember cheering and yelling instead of the somber quiet observance that actually took place, and at least some remember the driver cleverly talking our way out of trouble with police or fire officials, but in the end, "the day we burned Eddie's seat" was a turning point for us. We lived cleaner and worked harder and played better music and earned more money. Remember the day we "torched the bus seat"?

Mother

We were at my grandmother's house for some family holiday with all the aunts and uncles and cousins and I was feeling sad and alone because the older cousins would not play with me. She took me home and read books to me alone and talked to me about how hurt I was by the cousins' snub and discussed with me things I might say when we got back that might get them to include me. It was obvious that day that my mother loved me dearly and greatly and would do anything to make me feel happy and secure, but it was also implicit that I would get back out there and take responsibility and do my part to make things better for myself. I don't remember what books we read nor what specific advice she gave or what the issues with the cousins even were, but I know it worked when we rejoined the gathering and I know that my mother has always loved me and given me her best so that I might find my way and make a good and happy life for myself. Today I am old enough to have been on my own for most of my days, yet she still supports and guides and encourages me; she is still there for me just as she was that sad and lonely day so long ago, kind and wise and there for me, my mother!

You Owe Them Your Good Story

Not everyone in the ICU waiting room is going to have a good outcome. For some the outcome hangs in the balance. For some, a so-so outcome is the best they can hope for. For some, the possibility of a good outcome dwindles daily. Some are merely waiting for the moment of the inevitable bad outcome. When someone asks you about your story, no matter how late it is and how tired you are and how much you really want to get back to the hotel and just go to sleep, if your story is good, you should share it with them. If you are one of the lucky ones this time, they need your good news. They need to know there is hope. They need to know there are good outcomes. They need to know there are people who will go home better off then when they came in. If your story is good, stop and take the time to share it with them. Even if it means they will hug you!

Same But Not

In Minnesota with my sister and my mom, did a little shopping, talked and talked, ate too much at dinner, talked more until we couldn't keep our eyes open, doing my nails, eating fresh fruit, reading a magazine, even a little solitaire on the old laptop. It sure has a lot in common with the old days at Star Lake, on fabulously fun and restful annual vacations. Except this time it is different. We are in a different Minnesota town for a different reason. Rochester, in a hotel a pebble's throw from the Mayo hospital where she will have major surgery in two days. We talk, we laugh, we enjoy stories about the kids and relatives and current events. It is just the same as always. But different. Can you still have fun when you are scared? Is that an okay thing to be doing?

Self Interest

Adam Smith:... "Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By…directing that [labour] in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."

This is saying that everyone is guided by self-interest and nothing else. I want to work for the environment not out of altruism, according to this thinking, but to make a good place for my kids because my kids are my accomplishment, my achievement, so I do better by them doing better. I promote parks and walking trails to have them available for my use and the use of my own family. I promote gay rights . . . because I have gay friends? Because I want to be seem as fair and open-minded and a little radical? A politician gets in the game for the job stability and the fame and so in general acts right to keep up the fame and to get re-elected? When an elected official is in their last term and re-election is not longer part of their self-interest, are they more likely to do corrupt things for more money? It was said many times that George W only did things in view of how his legacy would read. The more closely a person defines themselves by a religious organization, the more likely they are to promote the organization's goals because "self=organization" so things in the interest of the organization are self-interest? What self-interest is there really in the things you do that you think you do for others? Is there anything you do for others that has NO benefit to you, but only to the other? Do we delude ourselves in claiming that there is anything BUT self-interest operation for anyone? And indeed, those who give up too much self-interest to a job or cause often have families that suffer. Or taking care of a relative with an illness but not making sure you are eating and sleeping merely results in you being a less effective caregiver, so isn't it necessary that evolution shaped us first for self-interest? A parent must be strong and healthy to care for young, so cannot give up too much self-interest in their care. We care then, after self, about a hierarchy of others: Immediate family, extended family, those in our social group, those in other similar social groups, humankind, mammals, animals, and on out, which may explain why we have done so badly to the plant and mineral world, allowing such damage to ecosystems. The plant world is seen as to far removed from us to warrant out care? What would we do differently if we assumed self-interest was the sole and only motivation? If we were more honest about our motivation and made choices consciously in this regard? Just asking. Discuss freely among yourselves.

Shamelessly Lame Quoting of Song Lyrics

Sometimes when things crash around you, all you have to do is ask for help and help is there. That is one of the best things about friends and family and life. "You don't always get what you want . . . " but "you get what you need" and "you get by with a little help from your friends" and family. Yeah, life IS good.

Beauty in Strange Places

The Man In The Gallery

He had to have been able to tell I was trying to close. It was long past five o'clock and I was outside taking down my flags and bringing in my "Open" sign when he wandered in. He was rude. He was impatient. He dallied among the beautiful and amazing works of my two dozen talented artists talking only and endlessly about himself. I wished impatiently for him to go. He irritated and aggravated and annoyed me with his arrogant and self-absorbed attitude. When he finally moved on, I followed him out and locked the door behind me to go find dinner. I met up with a fellow shopkeep, and relayed the story of the annoying visitor. After exchanging a few details of physical description, she told he "Oh, he's famous. They are reading his play down at the theatre right now." And it struck me then: It does not matter what you have done or achieved or accomplished. It really only matters what you are. If you have published books or won awards or saved lives, no one can tell, unless you tell them. But if you are nice and kind and interested in others, they can tell that right away. And you will be liked rather than disdained like my 'visitor' was.
Life really is less about what you have accomplished and mostly about the kind of person you have made yourself into and how you treat others because of the kind of person you are.

Bittersweet

Sometimes things that make you very very happy can also make you very very sad.
The boys and I had this CD once and it had this song. It was called "How Can I Keep From Singing" by Ken Brown and it pretty much captured how I felt about being with my kids on vacation in the beautiful places filled with amazing nature that we visited on our vacations. Okay, it pretty much was my theme song about how I feel about everything. I played it so much that I wore it out. Well, the musician was one of those singer-songwriter types that travels around to festivals and small venues so I couldn't just go to the store and buy a replacement like when I wear out a Mick Jagger CD or a Dave Matthews CD, and I had searched on line a number of times to no avail. The other night, I got what you call a hankerin' to hear that song again. I was kinda in a bum mood for no logical particular reason and thought it might remind me of happy times and cheer me up, so I started to look around, And lo and behold I found it! Not the CD, but a blog by the artist with links to a few of the songs from the CD, including the coveted one. And I also found there some really lovely new songs that made me pretty happy too.




And I found this little poem by the artist:


Until
The wind makes no sound until it wraps itself in the leaves of the trees
and that sound is just a noise
until it makes someone feel something
then it’s music

Well, I titled this post 'bittersweet' and at this point you might be thinking this is all pretty good 'sweet' happy wonderful news, to have found the artist and the songs and some bonus good writing, so where is the 'bitter' part? Oh, it is there, because you see in my reading around the website, what I found out is that Ken Brown is 'retired' for health reasons and not touring anymore really, and that makes me a little sad that I probably will never hear him in concert anymore and that is a selfish reason, but mostly it makes me sad for him, that such a talented person that brought light to my life should suffer misfortune. That makes me very sad, even in the middle of the great joy of finding the old songs and the new songs and the sweet writings.

There's a lot of that in the world, isn't there? Sweet joy all entangled with bitter sadness.

Songs by Ken Brown

I never do this, copy stuff from other blogs or just post a link, but never say never, because here is an exeption. I have been wanting to hear this song again for years and finally found it:

the song –>How Can I Keep From Singing–from the CD ‘letters from home’, 1997 (NHC 401)

But before I found that old song, I found this wonderful new song and want to share it with you too:

the song–>These Are the Times from the CD ‘The Long View’, 2006 (LV001)

This is the blog entry where the first song resides: Songs and Tunes–How Can I Keep From Singing . You can click on the 'songs' tag at the bottom and follow it to other songs, new and old, by Ken Brown and pretty soon, you will be a 'huge fan' too!

Wisconsin Screws

While shopping for screws to mount hooks on the deck rail for wet bathing suits at the Wisconsin lake house, I came across these drawers in the hardware aisle. Could there really be, in the land of dairy where locals are affectionately referred to as 'cheeseheads', such a thing as cheese head screws?

Turns out, information courtesy of several online encyclopedias and hardware description sites, that screws can be classified by their screw portion and by their head portion. A "wood" screw had a portion of the shaft near the head that is free from threads. The idea is that when attaching a piece of wood to another, the threaded portion will bite into the wood below and but not into the thing being attached. The thing being attached to the wood will merely be pulled into it tighter, rather than the screw being pulled deeper into that thing being attached. A "machine" or a "sheet metal" screw has threads all the way along it, because it holding stiffer parts to each other that can be held in position more accurately prior to beginning screwing.

The heads are named for their profile shape. A head that tapers down into the object is called 'flat' because it ends up flush with the surface when screwed in. There are a number of names for screws that stay above the surface, such as dome, round, pan, and button, that describe the profile of the shape that stays above the surface. An 'oval' screw is not quite accurately named, but has a part of the head that is sunk below the surface and a bit that domes up above the surface to catch the screw driver. A cheese head screw is a special form of the raised head. The head is cylindrical and deep, like a teeny tiny wheel of cheese there on the surface, according to definitions I found, though the pictures on these drawers, taken with my phone, seem to show them with rounded edges and not all that deep. At any rate, cheese head screws is a name that makes me chuckle.

Journals - I

I am certain that some people keep journals the 'right' way with precisely dated entries and logs of their activities and descriptive whole proper sentences in flowing beautiful cursive or precise hand lettering, such that they are a chronological window to their activities and thoughts over time. I have journals, yes. Many of them. All over the place. Rare is the sentence in them, however. They are lists of priorities, lists of impressions, questions, ideas, half-baked thoughts in no particular order, rarely dated with so much as the year, in sloppy barely legible mostly lower case printing that rambles across the page and even onto the next one. Often the entries are sideways or at some jaunty angle if jotted in the car or in a tent or on a hike. Tiny messy sketches of art and design ideas are interspersed with to do lists and chore lists and shopping lists and phone numbers with no owner specified and addresses with no city or zip.
But half the fun in coming across of of these oddities in a pile of magazines or maps or books or knitting or at the bottom of a suitcase or the pocket of a messenger bag is interpreting the words and then trying to place them at a time, a place, an event.
This is an entry from camping in the park at the first WomanSong I attended in Grand Rapids, North Dakota in 2007:


"Coyotes

Cottonwood leaves

Sunsets

Shadows of branches

Star-filled skies

Mist

Rain

Cold - So?"

A Common "Disorder"?

They tell us in school that we are not normal, that we don't conform. They tell us that we can't pay attention like the other kids, that we are distracted, distractible, that our minds wander. They tell us that we have too much energy and need to learn to sit still. They disapprove when we sit and stare out the window, lost in thought, thinking through questions or traveling in our mind to a far off place or living in a story of our own making. They are frustrated that we cannot finish a worksheet or long set of problems past the point where we get it and any more of the same is just tedious. And when we get absorbed into a project that we DO like, and lose track of time, and do not want to be interrupted or distracted on to something else, they get angry and call us stubborn and blockheaded. Sometimes, if locked into thoughts or concentrating on a treasured activity, we don't even notice their request and they wonder at our ability to hear or they doubt our intelligence. They called us melodramatic for our overly sensitive feelings, the ease with which we are hurt, and for our eager enthusiasm for beautiful and interesting and new things, our overexcitement in a rewarding social event.
Some of them insisted that we be medicated to make us normal, that we spend our school days in a conforming trance of boredom and vague disinterest, void of enthusiasm for much of any of it, waiting it out until we can go home and the drugs wear off and we can engage in some building or making or exploring activity on our own time. For some of us, the meds are a constant numbing dumbing thing and we never know we are failing to escape them.
But some of us got good teachers who left us alone to learn by doing projects exploring ideas and left us to read book after book about the subjects we loved and let us leave the worksheet unfinished if we could satisfy them that we understood the material and they let us fill our time with art projects and making things and trying things and leading others in study sessions.
If we are not so lucky, we have jobs that we hate that make us conform and do repetitive tasks that are torture to us. If we are lucky, we have jobs that are varied and challenging and interesting and we can thrive under bosses who value our quirkiness and creativity. And we have coworkers that forgive that we miss a meeting now and then because we lose track of time absorbed in the project.
If we are not so lucky, we have families who force us into routine pattern and make us conform to normal, but is we are lucky, we have spouses and children who tolerate our nighttime prowlings, our late nights some times and our early mornings others, who tolerate our project spread over the dining room table for weeks on end.
In the old days, we were the watchers, the keepers, the seekers.
We stayed up and watched for predators or invaders or bad weather and sounded the warnings. Only at the first faint light of dawn were we able to sleep peacefully, sure that the tribe or village had survived safely through another night. We lead the celebrations of the seasons and of the bounty of the world around us. We told the stories and made the art and brought pretty things into the village or camp. We were perceptive of the signs that said it was time to move on to some other area, that it was time to go out in search of game or to gather the food or other materials that nature provided for us. We remembered the signs of where to find these things and lead the expeditions to them and worked with fervor until the last nut was gathered and the last berry picked and the last rice grain harvested.
There are not a lot of us so statistically, we ARE not 'normal' but certainly to fall outside the norm must provide the village, the tribe, the family, society, some benefit. It must make society more adaptable, more flexible, more able to recognize signs and trends and to adapt and change to meet them. Surely we have some value today in the modern world. Can we stop calling it a 'disorder' and start valuing the watchers and keepers and seekers of today? Can we stop drugging our children and find ways to educate them that conform to their quirkiness and to their needs for hands-on and involvement instead of worksheets and memorization? Can we find jobs that are not driven by the clock and routine and that utilize our creativity and flexibility and dogged dedication to that which interests and challenges us? Can we find ways to appreciate that which we now label Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and begin to view this way of being as different but completely normal? Can we maybe even begin to accept that people like us might have some evolutionary benefit to society and some irreplaceable future value to the survival of humanity?

Letting Go

My friends lost someone this week. Their family had a nanny from far away who went back home. They are sad. They 'bonded', learned to love her and she them. I am sad for my friends. And it made me remember caregivers that my children had in their daycare. One, a quite elderly lady, was a favorite of theirs. She was from South Dakota and I, from North Dakota, so we talked many times when I was dropping off and picking up my kids. She wanted nothing more than a piano for her room, and was too shy to ask management for one, so I mentioned to the director that she had once started and lead a band at school where she had taught, and wouldn't it be wonderful if she could teach some music to the kids? That lead to her getting her piano! She loved it and the kids loved it. But not long after, she was gone. I asked about her and the director told me she had been diagnosed with fatal throat cancer and had quit. I missed her and so did my kids so I made a decision to try to find her. I had an idea of where she lived, because we had talked about how when she had car trouble, she would just walk to work. So I went driving around that neighborhood a couple times until I saw her car. She had a unique license plate so I knew it was the right car. I took a chance and knocked on the door. Oh, she was so glad to see us! She had not actually quit, but been let go as they did not trust that she would have the energy to teach during cancer treatments. It seemed unfair to me that they did not give her a chance and wait to see what happened. We had a lovely visit.

But I had a decision to make. When you purposefully guide your children to develop relationships with people, you usually assume they will last forever. That might be an incredibly naive assumption, yes. But rarely do you know that if you allow your kids to get close to person, you will be setting them up to soon deal with a death and the mourning that follows. I decided it was more important, for her sake and ours, to keep seeing her. We visited every couple months, dropping in if we saw her car there, until finally, she no longer answered the door. Turns out she had been taken to a son's house because she was too sick to live alone. We called there and they said they would call us if she was strong enough for visitors. They never called. I doubt that was her choice. Then one day, I read a local newspaper that I hardly ever read and there was her obituary and notice of her funeral on the following Saturday. Our family went to 'say goodbye' and I encouraged the boys to tell her son how much they liked his mother. It was a very sad day for us.

And one I could have certainly prevented, by just not continuing the relationship with her, by not taking my kids to visit her. Was it worth it? Is it worth it to bond with people that you know for certain you will have to say goodbye to? Was it fair of me to let my kids love her, knowing she was going to die soon?

I am pretty sure the answers to those questions are all yes.

Telling Time

Some people wear a watch. I did for many years. One year, I forgot my watch on vacation and the first place we went on landing at our destination was to buy a replacement. Oh, I loved those Timex ones that had a button to light up their dials! But then, one year, also on vacation, my watchband irritated my wrist, making me unable to wear a watch for many days. And we were able to make it to destinations, see the sights, find meals, and even make the airplane home without a watch. I have not worn one since. Today, the great Stephen Colbert said "Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Get 720 broken clocks!" That lead me to wonder: How accurate do you need to be? If you knew the time to say, 10 minutes, would that be acceptable? There are 6 10 minute periods in an hour and 24 hours in a day and that is 144 time slots and you only need half that because each clock is right twice a day. So get 72 clocks and set them 10 minutes apart and that is all you ever need.
If you are a slave to your watch, if you find yourself checking it more than a few times a day, take it off. Leave it lie somewhere for a week. See how life is different. And no cheating by carrying your cell phone and checking it as often as you would a watch. Pocket the cell phone so it is hard to check the time. Wing it. Look at a wall clock when you need to. Eat when you are hungry. Sleep when you are sleepy. Get up when you feel rested. Give up all things that need careful timing like television shows. Do check the time for social appointments and work appointments. But let everything else happen when it happens. See if life doesn't get just a little more laid back and see if your lifestyle can handle that change. I bet it can.

Telling Stories

Sometimes, when you sit down with friends you haven't seen in a while, you find yourself telling them stories about your life. It is in those moments that you realize, by what you chose to tell the and what you chose to leave out, the things and people that are important to you. In those moments, you find yourself maybe bragging a little about the accomplishments or successes of another friend and you realize how proud you are of them. You might find yourself whitewashng the gossip they heard about another person and you realize that you care about that person and want to protect them as best you can. You might find yourself telling of something you did and notching it back a little bit because it sounds too good to be true and in that moment you realize what an amazing accomplishment you really did achieve and so you tell the whole story with pride. Sometimes, when you are telling good friends about your life and your experiences and the other people in your life, it is in the telling and not telling that you realize the stuff you are really made of. You hear yourself telling the things and people that are important to you. The audience to your stories smiles and nods and says nice things and reflects back on you and lets you feel proud and amazed at your own self and proud and amazed at the friends and family that make your life so rich.

Just One Thing

I learned a trick from a friend yesterday. She has a chronic illness that robs her of energy and puts her in pain a great deal of the time, and when things are just overwhelming her, she makes an effort to do 'just one thing'. You know, when you take a look at the living room and it is just a giant crappy mess and you are too tired to clean it and so you turn on the TV instead? You know, when you need to do laundry and you look at the baskets in the various rooms and the stuff in the basement laundry chute and it is all just too much to contemplate so you take a nap instead? You know, how the back yard is a mess with downed branches and weeds and trash blown in so you go back inside and pretend you didn't notice? You know, you have that paper to write and it is just too too much to wrap your brain around, so you read a novel instead? Well, if you walk into the living room and do just one thing, like gather up all 18 of the Mountain Dew cans and take them to the recycling bin, or just pull all the whites out of the laundry, or just pick up the branches out of the lawn, or gather up all the reference books for the paper and write down the outline, you will find you DO have the energy for that one thing. Then later you can do just one more one thing and pretty soon, things start to look better all around. Or, after you get the whites pulled out, you might have energy right then and there to pull out all the jeans and then maybe actually start one load. After you gather up the Dew cans, you might gather up all the dishes and take them to the sink. After you pick up the branches, you might go after the litter. After you write the outline, you might take a crack at the intro paragraph too. One aspect that makes "Just One Thing" work is that you allow yourself the satisfaction of achieving a small part of the whole goal instead of beating yourself up for not getting the whole job done. Another aspect is that often, once you get one little thing done, you find you actually have energy for one or two more little things and you make even more progress on the big task. But maybe the most important aspect to "Just One Thing" is that it will train you to break a big overwhelming job into smaller achievable tasks. It will teach you to think of it not as a big hard deal but as a cluster of totally doable little things. It is a mindset that can help take the overwhelming out of life and lead to getting more done, even if that more is done in bits and pieces. And that is how life works. The tree doesn't grow in one day, but a little bit at a time. The bird doesn't build the nest all in one session, but a little bit now, then some snacking, then a little bit more. "Just One Thing." Like I am writing this down now, in the afternoon, and later, maybe in the morning, I will find a photo and post it. This can work for me!

My Last Post Ever, Really

Stuffed up head. Sinuses clogged. Ears full. Eyes gooey. Too much for you to hear? TRY LIVING IT, WIMP! Fever. Sore throat. Losing voice. Cough. Sleepy. Can't sleep.
Had a prescription 'in case' this happened, but that only works if you can FIND the damn thing when you need it and you could get a replacement if only your doctor was not on VACATION. What was she THINKING? NOW!!! "Go to the local ER." Yeah, Get dressed, walk to the car, drive, cough and hack, wait and wait and wait, explain the symptoms to a strange doctor and lose voice again and cough. Until it looks like I am faking it to get meds? I don't think so. I hate this. I want my mommy. She would put a cool clean sheet on the sofa to keep the upholstery from scratching me and put a fresh pillowcase on my own bed pillow and bring me orange juice with a bendy straw and aspirin and chicken noodle soup with those tiny puffy crackers. Bring me a Trixie Beldon book to reread or close the curtians so I could nap. I hate being sick! I think I am going to die. Or worse. So this will probably be my last posting here. Will you miss me? Did I spell everything right?

Trust

She worked at a bank. She was well-liked there. She was kind and helpful and honest. One day, her drawer was a hundred dollars short. It was counted and recounted. All the drawers were counted together to make sure there was not some error. The bank was one hundred dollars short that day. Some looked at her with suspicion, knowing how easy it would be to slip a single hundred dollar bill into a pocket or a sleeve or under papers somehow. Others were one hundred percent certain she would not take money from the bank or anyone ever. There must have been talk among management of what to do, maybe even talk of letting her go. But it was dropped and no more was said. I don't know what magic the bank did to make it go away. And I am sure some still had suspicions. Maybe management even did. Maybe her best friends even did. Maybe her husband even did. Maybe she even did. Maybe she thought she took it and repressed it. Did she search her own purse and pockets that night to make sure? She knew that there were mistakes making change and mistakes in data entry but she had seen the tallies and the counts and she knew this time that it was really and truly actually missing. From her drawer. How did she explain it to herself?

And years, many years later, when the bank was remodeled and the counter tops that held the drawers were disassembled, torn apart to make way for a new configuration, one worker was astonished to find there clinging, wedged into a wood joint under the countertop over a drawer opening, a nifty crisp clean one hundred dollar bill. The mystery was simply and finally solved after all those many years, and the trust so many had placed in her truly justified.

We should take care that we do not let unjustified, or even justified, suspicions get in the way of our dealings and relationships with good people. It is always best to trust and forgive and allow second chances than it is to let relationships be destroyed over mysteries and suspicions. Some things never get explained, and this counter top could have been dropped into the dumpster without the money ever being found and some would still wonder. Trust is a good thing. Keep it well into play as best you can!

A Dozen Plus One Residents Of The Lake

The House Worked Like It Was Designed To Work

They were on their way from their Boy Scouts High Adventure Wilderness Canoe trip to Quetico, Canada back to their homes in Illinois. They were prohibited by rules from making the car trip in a single day, so they were invited to 'camp out' at the lake house. There were sixteen of them. They parked their uniform shirts and shoes in the welcoming foyer, they lounged around on the deck for a while, then some wandered down to the dock to paddle a bit while others took over the dining room table for a game of Pictionary and others played cards upstairs in the nook and others lounged in the living room. Here and there, individuals browsed the stacks and rows of books and chose one to read. A half dozen engaged themselves in the preparing of dinner. At bedtime. sleeping pads and sleeping bags were spread about the bedroom areas and in the downstairs hall and on the living room and dining room rugs. In the morning, they helped themselves in turns to cereal or toast and jams while some showered in either of the two bathrooms. Everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable time and headed out in the morning a little more recovered from the hard work of their trip and happy for the camaraderie enjoyed and the stories exchanged. That is exactly how I envisioned the house being used through all the design and materials selection and furnishing process. It was success embodied!

Independence Day Memories

When we were kids, we drove into town and lined the streets with all the other cars to watch the fireworks. We kids usually sat on the hood and leaned back against the windshield. Sometimes, black specks would rain down on us if the wind was in a certain direction.
I saw fireworks in 1976 from grandstands in Rugby, North Dakota, the geographical center of North America.
When my kids were little and loved sparklers, I spent the entire time they played with them terrified that someone was going to drop one on the ground and someone was going to step on one of those burning hot sharp pointy wires or worse, fall and put an eye out on one. I hated those damn things!
When the park where they are usually shown was torn up due to renovation, the fireworks were shot off about a block from out house and we sat along a street near that vacant lot. They were so close, we had to lean back to see them. It was the most amazing display ever. We were right there under them!
Fireworks in Mineral Point, the pyrotechnic capital of the world, are simply grand.
One year, we watched them from a boat in the middle of a lake, which was fun, but churning through the water with other boats less than an arm's length away in the dark after most of the drivers had been drinking for hours was one of the most terrifying times of my life.
When one of my kids was little, he loved to look at them but hated the noise, so he sat on my lap with one ear against my chest and my hand pressed over the other. So that he could see them straight on, I had to sit sideways but I did not mind one bit!
In later years, when they were young teens, they would wander off with friends at the park, but when they returned to our blankets to sit on lawn chairs in front of us and exclaim to each other over the best ones, I was happy and proud. I spent as much time watching them as I did the fireworks, my dear boys who, even on Independence Day, put family over friends.

Yellow Daylily

Climbing Roses On A Black Metal Fence

And Suddenly It Really Is Summer

There are flowers everywhere! The daylilies on all the corporate campuses and strip malls are in full smashing bloom. The elderberries and hydrangeas make foamy white on shrubs in landscapes and wild areas. Annual flowers like petunias and geraniums and marigolds in planters and hanging baskets and beds are in beautiful bloom. Oh, shut up about the mosquitoes that are freshly abundant; we are talking about good things here.

We waited out the long dark winter and the wet cold seemingly endless spring and now, for absolutely sure, it is truly summer. Stop and smell the roses whenever you are out there, although most of them in the modern landscape have lost their fragrance in the process of being bred to favor flower size. But at least pause now and then to appreciate the brilliant floral display that is going on, and maybe, as a favor to me, walk up to some flowers and take a look at them up really close, so that you can see the texture of the petals and look at the structure of the flower and maybe even touch it. Enjoy! There are flowers everywhere and they can make any day a little more cheerful if you take the time to let them.