2.6.15 Thing Is, I Remember

 Thing is, I remember 

being 18

working at the restaurant

going to college

living with my boyfriend

planning future occupations

When we saw Gloria Steinem speak in Central Park

blowing our minds about sexism and male pronouns

Still, I'd think to myself 

and I remember it clearly

that I'd be an 

inexpensive woman 

to keep

2.7.15 "Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." W.H.Auden

 

   

2.6.15 Still, As First World Problems Go,

Yet, as some would surely remind us, the past is littered, or dominated, by eras of lawlessness; of danger and illness and famines; marauding and wars. Of shifting alliances, of edicts as to what language or religion or beliefs you were mandated to exhibit allegiance to. 

Places you were allowed to live. Things you were and were not allowed to do. 

Of great unknown, where survival as a babe was an unusual thing, choices as an adolescent limited no matter your class or wealth, occupation possibilities uncertain and difficult, and the options for every single female, people with 'different ' appearances, abilities, or color severely impacted. 

So I suppose the choices we have, today, regarding technology and the prevalence of such a flood of information, is no real big deal, in comparison,

 and simply something we each learn to moderate, and navigate, the best way we know how.

As First World problems go, it isn't war or poverty, starvation or freezing; a lack of clean water, jobs, or safety. Simply a skill we'll all find our way with.

2.6.15 Then we will remember Things we said today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJW69RFXTgY

2.6.15 Dealing With News Information : Second Verse Same As The First

Funny. I had this idea that, having a week off, for the most part, from news and contentious ideas in the world, and information about people doing and thinking and saying mean spirited, angry, thoughtless reactive things, that I would be ready again to peruse a bit what is going on in the world. But I'm not. 

Not at all. Sure, I really intend to know about certain things enough to have a voice about them. But it seems like standing in front of a typhoon. I know, I know, from all those years of activism. The big fish chased by the zillion tiny fish. The U.S. forced out of El Salvador and Nicaragua, at least, due to education and trouble stirred up by activism. Vietnam. Yes. 

But, somehow, it tires me now. The mean-spirited stuff.

The easy accessibility; or rather, the overwhelming deluge of information about so much wrong.

The surprise of mistakenly accessing places online where people relish being provocative and idiotic, saying stupid stuff just because it's fun and they maybe get their rocks off. 

And yes, everyone...everyone who has any access online or via newspapers or magazines, has this situation.
We now have yet another generation, older than my own children, growing up making choices about how to create their own balance, between being informed, making their opinions known, and not overwhelming their experience in life.

The entitled being the ones most blind to actual entitlement.

We all encounter the sheer volume of information regarding places all over the world, much of it important to know, and yet intolerable to live with. 

Seems like it all comes down to second verse, same as the first.

2.6.15 Every picture tells a story. The one about the adolescent Broadwing hungry enough to luck out at the feeder once again. Ah well.

2.6.15 Counting My Blessings On My Fingers, Over and Over and Over

      I return home with Dante, after a boisterous on-leash walk, to find the bird feeding feeders and picnic table seed strewn area subdued. All the birds in the trees, peering down. 
     I take note of that, and then notice , as we walk toward the house , the place where the adolescent Broadwing Hawk struck again, capturing yet another Morning Dove. 
     A few feathers are strewn here and there, the marks of the dove's wings as they struggled, barely any marks of the hawk.
     And I feel subdued also, Dante quiet, as he sniffs the feathers, learning the ways of the world.
We had just been on a walk along a flat straight Street not far from our home, created just before The economy crashed. Kind of an empty neighborhood, with snowbanks that Dante leaps up upon on one side, sinks into the deep snow, hopping about like a bunny, big chunk of ice in his mouth, then races down and back up the other snowbank on the opposite side.
     I cheered him on, whooping and clapping, holding tight to the retractable leash with my gloves on, gazing at the pale blue clouds overhead, -1°.
     But somebody very kind offered me an acupressure session, and after getting all I could out of his walk, to move his big muscles, and this being a time where I can't go trudging up mountains in deep snow, we had returned home to drop him off.
     Now we're are standing on the snow blowed walkway to the house, and I'm looking up in the trees to see if I can see the young hawk, which you often can, as they actually don't weigh very much, they just have big looking fluffy feathers. So it's not easiest thing to lift a Dove, that is instantly died, and get up hungrily to a branch,, to stave off hunger, to survive.
     This morning as we left when it was -5°, I left to my husband, although it's not a laughing matter, about how Darwin would've been interested in today, this time of year being the Academy of survival of the fittest. Both for humans features I like.
     For the native peoples who lived in the northern lands hundreds and hundreds of years ago, before we decimated and relocated and did everything we could to run them, they would call these the hunger times.
They anticipated that they can put only so much food by, and that they would all be on a sort of a fast, WA. They accepted it as part of the lifecycle, and tried to stave off the possibility of young, old, and vulnerable dying off. But I asked they did. Until March, and then April, hunting was my possible, and the green shoots of living things emerged.
     So here we enter the hunger times of the wild creatures, the cold temperatures necessitating increased caloric intake. The inexperienced hocks heading for the birdfeeders. Heading for the morning dives. The only ones they really can take, as they both are rather unwieldy.
     The pup seems quieted too, by the smell of death upon the ground. As we go into our warm home, the has food, from the car that we do have, the washer in the dryer. If you've ever lived without a washer in the dryer, you know what amazing advantages they are.
     We settle the pup down before I leave for my appointment, counting my blessings upon my fingers, over and over and over.

2.6.15 Winter blooms at Smith College greenhouse

2.5.15 What can I say? The small avian familia, tucked in on a snowy winter's day, with the Grey goose as the eminent protector.

2.5.15 Here Is Something: Outside Your Window

Here is something:

Outside your window

in winter's dusk as the

snowstorm passes by

There are the tree limbs

sublime, layered into a 

stark choreography

black against grey sky 

You feel love; you send your love

To the soft lit branches 

To those powerful trees

and the ardent love remains

It stays there in the 

world across ages

with other love, come out of

humans and raccoons 

beetles and weasels

that remains, after they're gone

We come into the world and

regardless of whether 

we are met up with

cruelty or kindness

still, all about us lies

all the love ever felt

Given up to life

Soaked into earth's tissues 

this fertile devotion filled love

2.5.15 The Tiny Little Picture

I like watching Neil deGrasse Tyson.

 Everything he talks about

is all about the big picture,

which reminds me once again

 how tiny the little picture is.

2.5.15 While Sumac Trees

Simply a perfect New England 

winter's day

16 degrees, clear skies with

intermittent cloud formations 

The horizon  aquamarine

while Sumac trees

by the side of the road are

filled with Robins feasting