Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
May 30, 2013
Last night Gracie went out about 11 for her last visit to the yard before bed. When she came in, we went upstairs. I saw something out of the corner of my eye, light I thought, but I looked outside and saw nothing so I got comfy in bed to read. All of a sudden the loudest clap of thunder rattled the windows and went on forever. The rain came next, heavy rain, and then more thunder as loud and long as the first. I figured it was lightning I’d seen out of the corner of my eye, a warning of what was to come. I read for about an hour and then fell asleep to the sound of the rain. This morning I woke to sun and warmth. It is supposed to be around 83˚ today: too hot for May on Cape Cod.
It is just so quiet outside. The birds were singing earlier, but I don’t hear them anymore. A few leaves flutter on a branch but make no sound. I do hear Gracie snoring from her crate in the kitchen. It is often her spot for a morning nap. I don’t know where the cats are, but I know they’re sleeping somewhere. Today is my day to buy flowers for the deck and the front yard and vegetables and herbs for the side gardens. I’m going with red and white flowers for the deck, basil for the window boxes and cucumbers and tomatoes again for the garden. I’ll decide one more vegetable and a few more herbs when I roam at Agway. This is one of my favorite days though I usually end up going back at least one more time. I just can’t resist those flowers, and this year I have all those new pots to fill on the shelf I had built on the deck.
I’m leaving deck cleaning for tomorrow if my back cooperates or Saturday if it demands a day of rest which I suspect will happen given all the hauling from the car to the deck to the gardens. Tomorrow will probably be a recuperative day. No complaining here about sitting outside with a cold drink and a good book. I just started another Patterson, an Alex Cross, a perfect book for a summer’s day.
My laundry has been sitting by the cellar door for three days but hasn’t inspired me to do anything about it so it can sit a bit longer. As Scarlett was wont to say, “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
Categories: Musings
Tags: Alex Cross, back problems, dump, flower shopping, flowers, garden shop, leaves, lightning, quiet, rain, reading, Scarlett O'Hara, sun'heat, thunder, veggies
Comments: 14 Comments
May 28, 2013
I’ve returned from my trip to the big city. Traffic was light so I had nothing to curse about.
Today is another beautiful day, as perfect as yesterday, our reward for the rain and the cold. It is lovely, warm and sunny, but the weatherman says a heat wave is on its way. The other night it was in the 30’s and now we can expect the high 80’s. I had the heat on the other morning for a short while and soon enough I’ll be cranking up the air-conditioner.
My red car is lime green as is the deck. Both are covered in pine pollen. The deck is so covered I can see Gracie’s paw prints and my footprints. A cloud of green pollen wafts off the pine trees into the air when any breeze blows. If this were an old sci-fi movie, it would be radiation of sorts released into the air by aliens (I just couldn’t resist). I have only one window opened, the one in my bedroom, because I don’t want every surface in the house covered in green. I’m enjoying the sun, but a good heavy rain storm is great to clear the trees; however, I don’t think there are any in the forecast. I’ll just have to survive the green invasion of the pine pollen.
When I was a kid, this time of year was one of my favorites. I could start riding my bike to school. The to school was all downhill from my street to a smaller hill, more of an incline, around the corner then a straight shot to school. The bike racks were wooden and under trees in the school yard. I didn’t have a lock, none of us did. We just pushed our front tires into the rack and there the bikes stayed all day. The ride home was a bit more strenuous. The incline was an easy ride, but the hill to my house wasn’t. I’d start at the bottom sitting in my seat then I’d have to stand to pedal harder. I’d try and try to get to my house without getting off, but this time of year I didn’t make it. I’d have to get off about half-way up, when the hill got steeper, and walk my bike the rest of the way. Soon enough, though, with all that riding, my legs got stronger and finally I could ride right up to grassy hill in front of my house, the grassy hill sacred to my father. I’d push the bike up the hill and around the back. That time of year the bike stayed outside in the backyard unless it rained. I’d lean the bike against the rail, pull my books out of the basket on the front, run inside, change into my play clothes and go back outside to ride some more. Spring and early summer days were the best for bike riding.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bike rack, bike ride to school, Heat Wave, pine pollen, riding up the hill, sunny day, walking the bike, warm day
Comments: 6 Comments
May 28, 2013
This morning I have an appointment so my daily musing will be on the late side, sometime after 12:30. Admittedly I could have set my alarm and gotten up early enough for coffee, the papers and writing Coffee, but I abhor alarm clocks as being the most disruptive of sounds so I just slept in until my body decided it had slept enough. Now I need to get dressed and head to Hyannis, the big city in these parts. We’ll chat later!
Categories: Musings
Comments: Comments Off on ” Grant us a brief delay; impulse in everything is but a worthless servant.”
May 27, 2013
Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that organized women’s groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, “Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping” by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication “To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead.” While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it’s difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860′s tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868. It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.
Memorial Day
“Dulce et decorum est”
The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.
The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.
Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right.
May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.
In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a sword.
Joyce Kilmer
Categories: Musings
Tags: Memorial Day
Comments: 10 Comments
May 26, 2013
The house was winter cold this morning. I actually turned on the heat to warm it up. 61˚ is just too uncomfortable, and I refuse to dress in layers inside the house. My cousin in New Hampshire had snow. The weather has gone topsy-turvy. My sister in Colorado had her air conditioning blowing at full force. Hope, however, springs eternal. If the weatherman is right, tomorrow will be 68˚.
Turner Classic Movies has been my go to channel all weekend. World War II has been the subject of most of the films. Yesterday seemed to be submarine day. Today I get to go back to Bataan, and I just watched John Wayne, the captain of a German freighter, being chased by a British destroyer at the start of the war. Yup, John Wayne was a German, but a good German.
I do need to go out today and I fear the roads. It may not be raining but it is cloudy and damp. I suspect people will be looking for something to do, and they need to ride up and down the main roads to find it.
It’s time to decide my theme for summer movies. Last year it was movies made in Boston. This year I’d go with B science fiction, but I don’t think those movies would get a warm welcome from some members of my audience. July 4th is, of course, reserved for Jaws and Independence Day. I am not a fan of musicals so they’re out except for West Side Story. I’ve always liked that one. Westerns are also not among my favorites though She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is one I could watch, and there’s always Blazing Saddles which makes me think of a Mel Brooks medley of movies. Young Frankenstein always makes me laugh as does The Producers. I’m thinking to put them on the marquee. I love old movies, black and white movies, but they don’t have the best sound for the projector, too low for a couple of people.
For the first film of the season, whatever it is, we’ll have the red carpet and dinner, a deck dinner from the grill. I’ll put out my movie signs and get the popcorn ready. All I need is summer.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cold, heat, John Wayne, Mel Brooks, movies on the deck, popcorn, Snow, summer movies, tourists, Turner Classic Movies
Comments: 12 Comments
May 25, 2013
Last night I again fell asleep to the sound of the rain, but it was far gentler than the torrential rain of the night before so I didn’t need to shut my window. The rain has left the day chilly and damp. More rain is expected later. My grass has grown to such a monumental height several snakes could be hiding in it.
I need to get out of the house. It has been two days of staying home and watching bad movies, really bad movies, all the way through to the end. The worst by far was Dino Wolf. The plot was simple: human DNA was mixed with a prehistoric dire wolf skeleton and resulted in a hybrid monster with a taste for human flesh. The monster was the best actor in the movie, and it had no lines, just a lot of snarling and grunting. I sort of recognized one of the human actors but couldn’t come up with his name. It was Gil Gerard. I’d fire my agent if I were Gil.
I have a high tolerance for bad movies. They make me laugh. My sister Moe shares the same fondness for B movies. Each Christmas we try to out-do each other in finding and gifting the worst movie. Last year I gave her The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a favorite of mine, and the year before I gave her the Christmas movie Santa Claus made in 1959 in Mexico. Santa lives in outer space and is helped by Merlin. He goes to Earth and must defeat the devil who is bothering poor little Lupita. My sister has been out-done the last two years. I think nothing will ever be worse than Santa Claus. In the comment section I’ll leave the link to YouTube and the movie. I watched it all the way through when I bought it. I wanted to see if Santa would win!
The bridges are filled with on-coming cars this morning. I have no idea why. The weather is supposed to be bad today and tomorrow, but it seems the weekenders are not deterred. Next door, at the rental, there are two cars from New York. They come every year for this weekend and usually sit on the deck and party a bit, but they won’t this year. As for me, I’m staying off the main roads. They’ll be clogged with people looking for something to do. Gracie and I will meander on the side roads with no destination in mind. It’s the meandering we want.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bad movies, cars on Cape, chill, clogged main rods, Dino Wolf, Dire Wolf, grass, long weekend, meandering, Mexican movie, monster, rain, Santa Claus, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
Comments: 26 Comments
May 24, 2013
Last night the rains were torrential. When the dog barked and woke me up, I could hear the rain beating on the roof. I called Gracie back upstairs, and she came but was unsettled. She doesn’t mind rain or thunder so I figured she had rung her bells to go out, and I hadn’t heard. The barks were her next hope of waking me. We went downstairs, and I opened the back door. The rain was in sheets and so heavy I could barely see the yard. Gracie poked her head out then right back in again. I insisted she go out, and she did for far longer than I expected. I had translated well Gracie’s barks. When she came inside, she was soaked so I used a towel to dry her. It was 1:30. We both went upstairs. Gracie jumped on the bed and immediately fell asleep. I did not so I started reading and did so for about an hour before I could fall back to sleep. It is still raining but only slightly. Gracie is asleep.
Yesterday Grace, my former student, not to be confused with Gracie, called and said she had been denied a visitor’s visa. I was devastated as I have been so excited about Grace coming to visit in August. For her visa, we had researched everything she needed to bring to the embassy for the interview, including a letter of invitation from me. She even brought a picture of the two of us together plus a deed to her house, copies of her bank account and several other pieces of documentation proving she has ties to Ghana and will return. Not a single piece of all that documentation was read. She was asked a few questions including whether I lived alone and whether she was married. She is and had a letter from her husband supporting her vacation. Visa denied ten minutes later. No reason was given. I am so furious I can’t speak without spitting. I wrote a letter to the embassy with a copy to the State Department visa section, but I suspect that was an exercise in futility. I spent the morning going from US official site to site, made a few phone calls and listened to each menu none of which addressed my need. I’m stymied. We had all our ducks in a row, and the woman at the embassy didn’t care or even notice. I’m not stopping until I find a way for Grace to be heard!
Okay, I feel a bit better for having ranted a bit, but I just don’t get it. We did everything right, and it didn’t matter. Grace and I are but small voices crying in a sea of bureaucracy, and I am bound and gagged by red tape, compliments of the American Embassy in Accra. (Okay I admit those last two might have been a bit over the top!).
Categories: Musings
Tags: American Embassy Accra, denied a visa, documentation ignored, Gracie, State department, torrential rain
Comments: 22 Comments
May 23, 2013
I wish it would rain. The day is cloudy and a dampness has given the house a bit of a chill so I’ve lowered the downstairs windows. Yesterday I did a few chores and a couple of errands. One stop was for cat food and clay flower pots at Agway. Tomorrow I’ll shop to fill the pots and also get herbs for the herb garden and the deck window boxes. Next week I’ll buy some front garden flowers. I noticed a few empty spots.
The spawns have found a new way to harass me. The tall bird feeder holder with the anti-squirrel baffle at the bottom had to be moved. The spawns were jumping from trees to get at the top of the pole where there are holders for four feeder stations, and the spawns have enjoyed dining at each one. When Skip came last week, I had him move the pole away from all the trees. Now the spawns are flying off the deck to the feeders. The problem, though, is getting off. There is no easy way so they sort of just fall unto the fence below the pole, the fence which is protecting my vegetable garden. The spawns knock over the posts and the wire gets bent down from the force of their bodies falling from so high. It has happened three times and I have fixed the fence three times. Now I have this dream of a hunter dressed in khaki, wearing a pith helmet, also khaki, sitting on my deck steps with an elephant gun in his hand just waiting for the spawns. I think I’ll have them mounted. Meanwhile, the feeders remain empty until I can figure out a solution.
The hunter’s pith helmet got me thinking about hats. When we were little kids, we had two main hats. One was for winter, a woolen hat with ear flaps and a pretty design, and the other was an Easter hat, usually a new one each year to match our dresses. The Easter hats had ribbons in blue, yellow or spring green, but it didn’t matter to me how pretty or flowery or filled with ribbons the hats were because I never liked hats. My mother, however, insisted I wear a hat when I walked to school on blustery cold winter days, but it never helped all that much to keep me warm. My head might have been fine, but my face was always freezing cold with bright red cheeks. Mittens were more essential. The Easter hat went into the closet and was pulled out only for Sundays.
I don’t wear hats any more. In the winter I sprint from the house to the car and back again when I get home. On Easter I wear one to my friends’ house: it’s a wide brim pink hat like those models during the 50’s wore. I don’t wear it to dinner when we go out though I might one year as a lark.
Maybe in my future is me as an eccentric old lady wearing a hat every place I go, even the dentist. I think I’ll start with the old faded red band hat with the plume. I’ll drop feathers everywhere I go.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird feeders, chores, clay pots, Clouds, Easter hat, elephant gun, hats, herbs, hunter, rain, spawns of Satan, Sunday hat, winter hat
Comments: 10 Comments
May 21, 2013
The day is cloudy and has a bit of a chill, a long sleeve shirt sort of day. Everything is really still and quiet. I like a day this way. Sun all the time makes for a dry lawn and garden while clouds all the time make for gloom so I’m happy with a mix of days. Yesterday was a perfectly lovely day so I don’t mind today’s clouds.
A chickadee is building a nest in one of my bird houses or at least I think so as I have seen her going in and out of the house which is a flamingo with swaying legs. It is pink as flamingos are and has a small opening, perfect for a chickadee. I’ll keep an eye.
Dandelions get a bum rap. They appear in the lawn and are dug up or summarily destroyed. They were the first flowers I ever gave my mother. Nothing so beautiful could possibly have been anything but a flower to me. Dandelions reminded me of the sun: round and bright yellow. My mother always took my gift, the bouquet of dandelions, with profuse thanks and put them in a vase in the middle of the table. She never saw them as weeds. They were a gift.
Before I visit my sister, I go up the hill to the house where, other than this house, I have lived the longest time. I know every part of that house and can close my eyes and see each room. The kitchen was small with only a little counter space, a corner which barely fit the table and chairs and a small stove on the same wall as the table. The fridge was beside the back door, my mother’s bugaboo. The door was wooden and painted green and in the summer had a screen instead of a storm door. My sisters, who played in the yard most summers, went out that back door which always slammed behind them. That drove my mother crazy. Her warning, “Don’t slam the door,” always seemed just a bit too late, drowned out by the sound of the slam. For some reason my mother and that door are a strong memory from that house.
I have this mind which seems to hold on to so many things though words and some names are beginning to escape me. I have to think long and hard to remember some of them. The other day I was trying to come up with Pierce Brosnan, don’t ask me why as I don’t remember, and I was with a friend who couldn’t remember either. I gave her hints: he was Remington Steele and James Bond. Neither one of us came up with his name. In the background, while we were talking, music from the mid 60’s was playing, and we knew every word. Once I told a friend how many traffic lights she would encounter on her route through Boston. I just closed my eyes and drove the route in my head. I remember odd things of little importance, but sometimes I forget why I am in the kitchen or I lose forever that small list I thought I’d memorized. Even mnemonics don’t help as much any more. I sometimes forget what they mean. I do, however, have a hold on so many past memories, long ago memories, the best memories like the dandelions and the back door.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird house, chickadee, chilly, cloudy, dandelions, flamingo, forgetting names, forgetting words, memories, quiet, screen door, slamming door, small kitchen
Comments: 16 Comments
May 20, 2013
Last night it rained, not a furious rain falling in sheets but a steady drop by drop rain. I had my bedroom window opened, and I fell asleep to the sound of the drops. This morning when I woke up, the day was cloudy and damp. Since then the sun has taken over the sky and brightened the day. It’s a pretty morning.
The window view from here in the den is one of my favorites. The branches of the tall oak tree fill the window, and I get to watch the tree change every season. The leaves now are young and a bright green. Hanging off a couple of the branches are bird feeders, and I get to watch the birds zoom in and out or stay for a while at the suet feeder. The winter view through that window is bleak. I can see only bare branches and dead leaves fluttering in the wind. When the first buds appear, it’s time for a celebration as I know the tree will soon be full and beautiful. It’s almost there now.
Sometimes I ponder my life and every time I do, I realize how lucky I have been. First of all I had great parents though I didn’t always appreciate them, especially when I got sent to my room or yelled at or had a slipper thrown at me by my mother who had absolutely no aim. She never once got any of us. We always ducked if it came close. I got to wander my town and go to the zoo or the swamp or play in the woods. I had a bike which took me even as far as East Boston to see my grandparents which scared the bejesus out of my mother as we had to travel on Route 1A, a busy highway which didn’t always have sidewalks. That bike was one of my childhood joys. My parents took us to museums which developed in us all a love of museums. They let us dream our dreams. I went to college and had no debt when I graduated because my father thought it was is responsibility to pay for school. My parents once told me they never thought any of their kids would go to college as no one in our whole family had ever gone. They were thrilled one of us did and so was I as I had chosen well. I loved Merrimack. The Peace Corps was the defining moment in my life which gave me a love of teaching, two years living in Africa of all places and friends for life.
I have traveled many places in the world and have filled my memory drawers with those adventures, those vistas, the bumpy roads and crowded busses, the tastes of unknown foods and the joy of seeing all those pictures from my geography books come to life. Every year I went somewhere foreign, somewhere to satisfy my wanderlust. I got to retire early and since then have been to Africa three times: once to Morocco and twice to Ghana. My retirement has been so much fun: greeting the sun on the first of spring, sloth days, game nights with my friends, sitting on the deck doing absolutely nothing, movie nights and on and on and on.
Every now and then, like today, I give thanks for the life I have been privileged to lead. I don’t ever want to forget that.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Africa, bike, college, Dreams, games, Ghana, life, love of life, Luck, Morocco, museums, pondering, retirement, thanks, travel
Comments: 4 Comments
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