ConneCTingLines

FIELD NOTES: Storm Alfred's haiku...

2011-11-06T17:28:00.000-05:00

Found: red feather, while
collecting tree arms turned to
harpoons, arrows, rams.

My Top 10 Gifts From Storm Alfred - Java

FIELD NOTES: Trick or treat...

2011-10-31T15:40:00.000-04:00

...has pretty much been the theme of the entire year, but it is especially true after this record-breaking weekend. Our class jack-o-lantern expresses my feelings accurately enough! Throughout the afternoon and night, continual cracking and thudding kept me on alert and indoors. It was nature's battle and all we humans could do was take cover. It sounded like a snowball fight on the roof...or ammo...trees fell like soldiers being hit...one after another. I appreciate my lessons from nature...this one demonstrated the power of small things in large numbers...think of each leaf catching wet, heavy snow and multiply that by hundreds...thousands...there aren't usually leaves on the trees when we get 15" of snow (needled trees have the better design for this)...it pressed me to think further...a penny, a pushup, an Occupier on Wall Street...none represent much by themselves...neither do votes...except when you add them all up, which may be the hardest part of all...

Lucky..

...not so lucky.

FIELD NOTES: Now that it is long past, I can write about it...

2011-10-02T13:46:00.000-04:00

…the month of August that is. It is not the Ides of March the soothsayer warns to me, but the Ides of August!...and perhaps the Kalends and the Nones of August as well. I do not approach its advent with predictions of calamity like a horoscope, omen or phase of the moon…I am naturally optimistic and hopelessly hopeful…but yet it comes. What used to be a month full of weddings, births, a summer fling squeezed out before going back to school, is now pock-marked with deaths of friends, parents, emergencies and the destruction of property from hurricanes and floods. But I cannot stay angry long at nature. It is human nature that assigns to us our curses.

FIELD NOTES: Check out these Celebrity tomatoes!

2011-09-20T18:49:00.000-04:00

I finally grew some big tomatoes! What a satisfying reward after blizzard, tornado, earthquake and hurricane! DELICIOUS!

FIELD NOTES: Life's still a beach...

2011-08-17T21:31:00.000-04:00

...Is this the old idea that you only notice more red cars on the road after you buy a red car? Is there more news about beaches lately...or do I just have beaches on my mind? I don't think it really matters...being aware, being engaged, is what perpetuates the things that really matter to you...the things you love...

NYT BOOKS ON SCIENCE: Shorelines, Sandy or Otherwise, That May Not Last

FIELD NOTES: In a way...the beach still lingers...

2011-08-11T20:48:00.000-04:00

...a week later....still in my mind...how on the way down, I noticed interesting little shops & stops...how on the way back, I didn't need to stop anywhere...because I still remember how it felt to have everything I needed...with me...in a way...

DONATE to drowning victim Rocky Daddio

FIELD NOTES: It wasn't just a day at the beach....

2011-08-04T15:17:00.001-04:00

...I haven’t been to this sort of beach in a very long time…so, like someone who doesn’t know when they are thirsty, I begin to drink…the moment I open the door from the air-conditioned car, I smell the Sound...I smell the coconut of sun lotion…I turn my face to the Long Island breeze as if there are Sirens haunting Charles Island…and if I were not so sane and responsible, I might have just wandered off, leaving the car door agape, my bag spilling out…but my intent is to use a good summer’s day to cleverly study for my Child Development Psychology test...in relaxation...good for my concentration...motivation…I used to do this in a different age…the time travel makes me smile…reflexively…how old am I?...if you ask me, I will have to think about it…on my right a young couple spoons under an umbrella, behind me three college girls chat with immediacy, to my left a large extended family sets up: squeezing-squealing- settling down…and down in front are boys and girls and babies in the surf….each time has its beauty, each time overlaps in this one place…the beach…

See this post in poetry form: Silver Sands

PLEASE OBEY THE BEACH SIGNS!

FIELD NOTES: Coming soon...

2011-07-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

Seattle: Part II and lots of other stuff....

FIELD NOTES: I spoke too soon...

2011-03-14T21:50:00.001-04:00

...and rocked the boat. This calls for haiku:

Sunday Afternoon @ Harrybrooke (post 3/11/11)

Geese swim where lawns mowed;

Ice melt, rains poured; but Japan:

makes my trouble: puddle

FIELD NOTES: Everyone's talking about it....

2011-02-20T13:01:00.001-05:00

...winter, that is…particularly this one…as if something ripped open the canopy we call sky at the start of the year and its contents has been hemorrhaging ever since. Going on history, this is usually followed by a rise in temperature and lots of rain. With no rest for the weary, we put down our shovels and took up our tools and machines to remove ice dams and uncover drains and although Mother Nature is still acting as strict as a British nanny, she has also shown temperance, rocking us back and forth between snow and sun, wind and warmth, sparing us the road-closing flooding. But I don’t mind a ‘good hunkering down’ as I did last Sunday night with Chinese take-out of hot & sour soup and vegetable lo-mein in front of PBS’s Nature episode of The Himalayas…spiritually sensual, beautiful, ancient and new, reflective, personal in interpretation, unique. In the act of creating - whether it be written, sung or performed - we strive to produce something unique, but sometimes finding a human collectiveness is just as heady. I noticed the snow level around my house going down, the tops of things vegetable and mineral reappearing, as well as newspapers and fast food containers along the road…and on last night’s Prairie Home Companion, so did Garrison Keillor make note of candy wrappers and trash, the snow shovel you’d thought you’d lost revealing itself on your neighbor’s lawn…we seem to all be finding sunken treasure…

PBS Nature: The Himalayas
Full Episode

FIELD NOTES: Crazy Winter Caption Contest

2011-02-06T19:23:00.000-05:00

...can't think of a prize, but just for the fun of it....

Disclaimer: No squirrels were harmed in this photo. It's a plastic solar one from Home Depot that sits in my perennial garden atop a faux-bicycle plant stand.

FIELD NOTES: Harrybrooke Meets Benedict...

2011-01-13T21:23:00.000-05:00

Snowstorm Haiku

It's a whole new world,

perspective changed/nowhere fast:

Cancel, dig...relax.

VISUAL POETRY: Christmas Remains

2011-01-13T13:42:00.000-05:00

Life IS like a box of chocolates...eat it ALL!

Bridgewater Chocolate

FIELD NOTES: Visual Poetry

2011-01-09T16:37:00.001-05:00

Clementines in a ramekin

on a Sunday morning

in winter.

FIELD NOTES: The heron has flown back...

2011-01-04T17:18:00.001-05:00

Some of Marissa's photo shoots

A Story of Thanksgiving for Christmas...or The 1st Thanksgiving:

2011-01-01T15:26:00.009-05:00

Navigating new territory with no device on the dash...

It is not until I come up to that familiar hill that the idea of it all strikes me; I am going to my parent’s house for Thanksgiving, as usual…but, there will be no parents there. I have an inkling that perhaps a professional colleague was right: maybe don’t go there…order a package deal from the grocery store…or go out? “Or hop a cruise ship and eat Spam?” I replied with tongue in cheek. But my youngest brother had suggested “the house” (which now legally belongs to my oldest brother) and so I took great pains for the day, trying to think of everything my mother would have thought of…and the men would not…and then some:

I had started with what I knew best: pies. There was Mom’s “secret” piecrust recipe for my homemade mince that my oldest brother anticipates yearly, and my crumb-topped French apple and the pumpkin adorned with shiny hand-cut leaves. They turned out to be works of art this year – inspiration from heaven. The second thing I knew best: ambiance (my brothers told me it was all mine!). I inherited the family silver, but all the china remained at the house. Tablecloth? Centerpiece? Candles? Napkins? Condiments? Servers and potholders and pots and pans? A mixer, a masher, a gravy boat? My list was sounding like an old-fashioned nursery rhyme and I packed it all up like a Conestoga wagon with cloth carry bags and baskets and Rubbermaid containers. Like moving up a company ladder - ready or not - I found my usually relaxed pace of a holiday morning transfigured and I would not know until I got there if I had packed too little…or too much…

I arrive at the house; my brother says he spent the entire day yesterday vacuuming and dusting. The dining table is out; its brown table pads are lying naked like a patient waiting to be attended to. My tablecloths are too short for the leaves - my brother doesn’t know where Mom’s tablecloths are – but like experienced stagehands, my elder son and I make scenery appear. I go to my mother’s kitchen, her cabinets still familiar to me even after all these years, albeit my brother has had the fortitude to throw out the burnt, the broken, and the hopelessly obsolete. I discover that somehow, as the only daughter of an only daughter, instincts and tradition suddenly kick in on automatic pilot. And without much compunction, I ease in some changes. I stand at my mother’s sink peeling organic yellow potatoes, smiling about how hers were lumpy and ordinary because they were too-much-work-why-else-would-they-have-figured-out-how-to-put-them-in-a-box? She also puzzled annually about how to keep food warm at the table, but eschewed my idea of purchasing warming dishes like she was going to come up with an easier way for an easier way without buying something new. As if to tease my critiquing, a little gray mouse motored across the floor but I chided him in return by informing him I used coupons to buy the warming dishes…so there!

What’s more, I tell the mouse, I have been kindly ushered in by strangers to this new way of celebrating holidays. At Bed, Bath and Beyond, I had circled around the island display of serving dishes, electric and candle-powered, setting my sights on a white ceramic set that matched my French White Corning ware at home. They would be perfect – and practical enough for Mom – but the shelf was empty. A store worker came by and seemed only too glad to help. He searched around the stock shelves, wheeled two over and gave me the cart. My face must have lit up; I thanked him and he added cheerfully “It was my pleasure! I hope you enjoy your holiday!” which is what I expect store workers are trained to do, but he appeared much more sincere than that. Then, at the grocery store, as close to Thanksgiving as I dared, the path to the deli was gridlocked, an elderly woman was proceeding like a slow-moving vehicle in a passing lane because another pair of women were chatting obliviously on the shoulders; the man that had entered the store about the same time I did joined in this bumper car venue along with me. He edged his way to the number dispenser, pulled out a tag, turned around and handed it to me with a smile. I was taken aback, not by his action, but by the doubt that perhaps I had not appeared as outwardly phlegmatic as I had thought. With straightened shoulders, I put in my deli order expediently. Later, while looking over the squash, the man touched me on the shoulder and with his well-padded cheeks up to his eyebrows, said “You have a nice holiday now.” Two men, two different skin colors, neither one with mien that would turn a lady’s head, perhaps appearing like Clarence Oddbodies to remind me of something lost.

At the end of the day, nothing important is lost. After a cooperative (if not disquieting) search it is my oldest son who triumphantly holds up the yellow gravy boat from where my mother had put it last. I remember to check the high cabinet in the stairwell for the tablecloths. And like new heirs we sit in our parents’ chairs: one brother in my father’s, I in my mother’s. We say grace and most heartily thank our parents for being our parents. My grandmother would promise every year to do something in the next, God-willing, and with a collective, not-evolved-yet groan, we would push her crystallizing words away like a snowball down a hill, not cognizant that she was (in her very Polish way) molding a handle for us to take with natural grace. We start passing plates; I am here by inertia, like a vending product filling the empty slot up front.

There is one more thing to do. The dishwasher conked out long ago, my parents believing a new one at that point in their lives unnecessary, and I ceremoniously wash the china and silverware in the sink, distracting my brother with small-talk. My mother shooed away would-be assistants, and I remember seeing her back as she faced the yellow-flowered wallpaper under the fluorescent light in an almost meditative glow. What did she think about?

I am warm with satisfaction on the drive home. I think about doing a good thing for my brothers. I think about getting this first holiday “just right”. I think about my parents giving us the thumbs up.

I can’t think any farther than that…

Christmas "Health Food"?

2010-12-19T15:59:00.001-05:00

I can't believe I made all these...NOW EAT THEM!

10 Minute Poem

2010-11-03T22:08:00.001-04:00

Museum of Sorrows

(on being Polish)

Some show

hearts on sleeves,

unashamed

public displays,

everyone knows,

even those who don't

need

(or want)

to know:

but

not Polish.

Polish are like statues

- beautiful statues -

marble,

mute,

and statuesque,

that viewers want to touch

but can't

beyond

the velvet ropes,

the cordoned rooms,

the carefully crafted

chambers

in a long museum

of sorrows

end to end.

Henryk Gorecki, Polish Composer

FIELD NOTES: Halloween Soup

2010-10-31T16:38:00.105-04:00

Recreating Gramma's pumpkin soup with potato dumplings in my happy blue pot...

except I cheated by using pre-cut butternut squash...needs more flavoring, too....

A RECIPE: Hers, Mom's, Mine & Theirs

Dumplings:

2 c. grated potatoes with or w/o skins,

1 egg, 1 c. flour, dash salt, tsp. sugar

Grate potatoes and remove excess moisture by squeezing & draining. In large bowl, beat egg; add salt, sugar and flour; add potatoes; consistency should be able to form small balls by hand to drop into boiling water. Coat hands with flour if sticky.

Soup:

20 oz. pumpkin* or butternut squash, peeled, cut into squares

2 c. water + 1 1/2 c. water

1/4 c. butter or margarine

1 1/2 c. milk or cream (your choice)

In large soup pot, cook pumpkin in 2c. water until soft (15-20 min.); drain, reserving water, then mash pumpkin in another bowl. Return reserved water to soup pot, add another 1 1/2 c. water to pumpkin water, bring to boil to cook dumplings. Drop dumplings in for several minutes until dough is cooked, then immediately add mashed pumpkin, butter, and milk. DO NOT BOIL milk. Finish with seasonings of choice: salt, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg.

*Try canned pumpkin or squash

FIELD NOTES: I have been to another world...

2010-10-19T21:40:00.002-04:00

THE EULOGY I COULD NOT DELIVER

Victoria Rose Embros Kucinskas

March 22, 1922-August 27, 2010

Donald Kucinskas

January 1, 1921-January 6, 2009

I am not sure how a daughter actually delivers a eulogy about a mother, how her voice can hold still if her mind is actually aware of what her mouth is saying, how her eyes can remain a dam against the release of thoughts that are not yet fully translatable even to herself, and to be articulated intelligibly before a gathering of people who surely knew her mother in different ways, their vibrations filling the atmosphere around the speaker; it does not seem possible…or adequate. But I will write it now…at least some of it…

In the folder from her 60^th High School Reunion, there are pages of “Fun Type Questionnaires for the Graduates of the Class of 1940”. To the question “After you graduated were you doing what you always thought you would be doing the rest of your life?” my mother wrote: “Yes – being a wife, a mother and a grandmother.” She added a note to the bottom of the questionnaire: “I just want to thank God for all the blessings he’s bestowed upon our lives.”

As children of immigrant parents in the Great Depression, she and my father were taught not to throw away anything that might be reincarnated into an alternative use or buy anything new unless something had truly worn out (read: disintegrated). She could sew, cook and nurture plants; he could wire, plumb and construct. Therefore, we children grew up not a house of “treats” but a house of resourcefulness, ingenuity, integrity and respect for stewardship. If my parents couldn’t repair something, it truly was broken…and you didn’t necessarily get another…

My mother’s world was very small; she was proud of saying she lived in Terryville all her life in a great big triangle. She remembered moving from their first rent by walking down the street carrying her little celluloid duck under her arm. As she grew up at the second rent, she made a point of going out to the icebox in the hallway when she heard a certain young man coming down the stairs, a certain young man whose father owned the White Eagle Bakery and whom had delivered bread, for a time, by horse and cart. She was third in her class of thirty-six and was voted Best-Looking. She wanted to be a nurse, and volunteered as a Candy-Striper at the Bristol Hospital, but on her mother’s insistence, she became a secretary and found a place at the Phoenix Insurance Company because it was handy to ride the trolley into Hartford. There she made more life-long friendships with a group of women who called themselves the Gabby Girls until, one day, she said yes to a tipsy baker-turned-sailor on the phone from California; she and her mother planned a wedding in two weeks. After the war, the three-family house on the hill that her father had always greatly admired was for sale. She and my dad and my grandparents never left it. Her world was small, but the space she leaves is large.

I did not know my mother as the beautiful, young woman with the great legs in the black and white photographs that showed off her inherited skill for sewing fashionable outfits, but I do know that friendship and family were very important to her as evidenced by all the little pieces of writing and drawing and cards in piles around her house. Visually, I knew her mostly in the teased hair of the 60’s and 70’s and enjoyed playing with her pointy, shiny high-heels. I characterize her personality as the good sport at family picnics and the “nice lady” around the town when we went on errands or shopped. Later, I admired her as a “business lady” in my dad’s new adventure called Cheshire Wayside Furniture, her grace to withstand local politics when my dad was mayor and her humbleness at drawing the attention of Polish customers at the bank when they discovered a teller who could speak their native language. She married a sailor, but she never liked to make waves.

All I wanted to say was this: “I had good parents.”

If you can read between these four simple words, then you know how much weight they carry, how little else needs to be said in our complex, grownup world. Now, as a teacher of other people’s children and having had to learn the language of educational standards, I am struck by the idea that my parents somehow supported all the best practices of parenting without even knowing what they were called.

Thanks and Ja Cie Kocham

(that’s “I Love You” in Polish, pronounced Yacha kocham)

Victoria Rose Embros Kucinskas obituary

FIELD NOTES: Insider Edition (too hot to go outside!)

2010-07-25T13:31:00.000-04:00

Periphery

Mind on chore in laundry room,
aside I sense some movement.
Sliding in
and sliding out
at lower right periphery
I guess a dust ball I hadn't time for.
But recurring like a rhythm,
reflexively my head turns,
then does the double take
in noticing the near invisible.
Without glasses I bend forward
peering in on a tiny tug-o-war
made of threads
and transparent film,
daddy-long-legs versus dragonfly
shifting weightlessness
back
and forth.
From my superior height
I judge this event
futile without victor,
so skipping consideration,
I act
to 'put them out of their misery'
with one sweeping-handed motion.
I continue
tugging twisted jeans from tub.

FIELD NOTES: Meeting My Enemies

2010-06-06T12:18:00.002-04:00

(Noted: This is the 113th anniversary of the birth of Anna Maria Gromala Embros, in Poland)

Been dealing with little devils......haven’t written for a month…fighting frustration…but not defeated yet…continuing with this year’s goal of productive purging, I charged up to the attic - a forgettable dumping ground with a very small window of opportunity to work in if you know New England weather extremes - with my skin, nose and eyes being indiscriminate hosts to all things allergic and my long limbs telescoped into unnatural configurations…it began…then moved out into the landscape where hardy and nasty weeds seem to flourish in the blink of an eye and the climate seems to have fast-forwarded to mid-August - Atlas losing his grip, leaving Connecticut on a tropical cant…I came away with bruised muscles, respiratory distress, scratches, poison ivy and whole new list of purges…and through the window I see a big white butt cruising through the backyard brush…ire wells up – I did not work so hard to create a salad bar - then I see a fawn frantically following…it may have gotten stuck in the old wire fence, so I am obliged to investigate…on my approach, it collapses its legs in self-defense… its body and breathing tinier than I imagined…I am meeting my enemy…knowing nature, I look but don’t touch…there is safe egress…Mama will return. In having the capacity to smile and coo at things smaller than ourselves, we recognize innocence fresh from Eden, project hope onto them and invent happiness…there is no way of knowing what this innocent will turn into, what fate will befall it, if it will bring grief or harm to me…or me to it…that goes for my own children, too.

For me, the struggle remains process versus product…to be conscious of joy in the job, the focus of the moment…which is why I didn’t have a camera…which is why there is no fawn photo to go ‘viral’ on the web…which is why I can only show you where it was...

FIELD NOTES: “It’s ten o’clock. The day’s almost over...”

2010-05-01T10:00:00.004-04:00

Sunday morning

...is something I say that makes my children laugh. I am a morning person…I can get up easily…that is to say, at whatever time the sun breaks and the birds chirp …not when it is thirty degrees out and still as hard and black as cast iron at five or six…then, I do have to force myself out of my quilty nest to prepare for work…but this morning, it is Sunday…it is spring…the windows are open – they have been all night – due to above average temperatures (whatever ‘average’ is for New England) and I notice a perfect Symphony of Quiet…an adagio of birds and people sleeping…I go to brush my hair and can still hear the arpeggio of my bacon and eggs in their little skillet and the whispering rondo of the coffee pot…I write a little, surf a little…and then comes ten o’clock…like the surface of water or snow, the air does not stay undisturbed…a crescendo of working vehicles, tools and machines…the neighbors have started their weekender’s construction project…hammers, drills, power saws, male voices in a language I do not understand…I hope they will be finished soon…and then, oh, if I could have a week of spring-like Sunday mornings, what a vacation that would be!

The World's Quietest Places

HAPPY 40TH EARTH DAY!

2010-04-22T11:52:00.002-04:00

REDUCE...REUSE...RECYCLE...REPEAT

Just a few encouraging words to be kind to our planet with simple, small steps...

ONE: Try composting from your kitchen...it's EASY!...it really is! (email me if you have concerns)...I'm excited about the new compost-able Sun Chip bag and also the corn starch packing peanuts I received in a recent mail order (why aren't ALL packing peanuts dis-solvable like these???)...then I'll bring this compost to my preschool's science center for the kiddies to experiment with too!

TWO: limit plastic water bottles

THREE: recycle as much as you can

Side note: one of my favorite parts of visiting my daughter in Seattle, was how much she was able to recycle...how ironic that there is now a garbage strike in progress...

The Plastiki Expedition
The Cove: Japan Dolphins

FIELD NOTES: Behind the scenes is where I am most content…

2010-04-18T21:29:00.003-04:00

Through the window

…I went to visit mom…she was lonely…we had tea and read the newspapers…I did the crossword puzzle my father used to do…I drove home…alone,not lonely…transported elsewhere by public radio’s Echoes…cutting through the hills on 254 to Litchfield, imagining the horizon line like former tribes of Connecticut…the day was a confusion of weather…cloud-cover one minute, a peek of sun the next…wind…calm…drizzle…I felt taken back behind the scenes to nature’s weather board…cue: cloud blanket above horizon…now spotlight trees in hills, cue: sunlight…wait…cue: raindrops…just a few…no, cue ominous dusk…ah yes, I am home…behind the scenes.

FIELD NOTES: It's all the same to me...

2010-04-15T21:40:00.003-04:00

A walk in the park

…I drive out of my neighborhood…notice a dog with his nose to the ground on his front lawn…a young man sits on his front stoop playing his guitar…at Harrybrooke I notice the reflection on the water looks just like the photograph I took one April ago. Wasn’t I just raking? Wasn’t I just bracing for a long hibernation? And here it is…the closed bridge that used to be the way to town…the horizontal branch I admire like grandma’s arm guiding the river water below…watching her adorn herself…and un-adorn herself…for seventeen years…someday she will collapse…and the bridge…and me…but not today… today, spring’s white-noise water falls from the rocks in twenty-thousand tones to make it all the same…back in the neighborhood, I notice the dog…in the exact same place…as is the young man and his guitar…my heart hasn’t missed a beat…like a wheel, I have been nowhere…and everywhere…because it’s all the same to me…

FIELD NOTES: First Rake Haiku

2010-03-21T10:33:00.001-04:00

Saturday, the First Day of Spring 2010

Piquant green on tines,
Extension of my fingers,
The scratch ‘n sniff of spring.

FIELD NOTES: I hear one bird…

2010-02-21T11:42:00.003-05:00

Through the (weekday) window

...its song muffled through the closed up winter window sashes. The heat clicks through the hot water baseboards in my bathroom, the morning news speaks so thinly from its cave in the other room that I can barely hear what’s new in the world today…but this one bird is what alerts me that I have been in a stupor of sorts, buried in snow and government paperwork. But that is the character of February. It is a good month for Lent. It is the month in which I write the least…move the least…eat the most and sleep the most. The attic overhead feels pregnant and overdue. The household file box needs its yearly purging. I take stock in my inventory, both in what I have collected and in what has somehow slid in around me like a storage facility. In February, its closeness turns claustrophobic and fills my nostrils like so much dust. I mull over things, incubate ideas about what’s next, brood and hibernate and absorb and fidget. What relief the one bird is, nature’s town crier, chirping that what is not here now, is preparing to return. Bulbs are energizing underground; they simply cannot be flowers all year round. So, back to the drawing board...

FIELD NOTES: So what exactly happened under that blue moon on New Year’s Eve?

2010-01-24T13:41:00.005-05:00

Catching up on a Sunday morning

...to answer a question with more questions…what looks like busywork, but isn’t? A spider spinning? A bee buzzing? A bird building? A woman cleaning?...I went to my studio in the basement. It had become coated with dust not from neglect but from a certain unfortunate condition of busyness. Relatives were preoccupied with other things, but apart from that, it just happened that I was feeling more reflective than social and, moreover, was willing to embrace it even though that eve is intended for partying. The word ‘evening’ may mean the closing part of the day and the early part of the night, but the word ‘eve’ is not merely its shortened form; it brings with it other connotations. A second definition - its commonly acknowledged sense - is “the period just before some important event” or “a period of decline”. Imaginings of last light, owl-light, twilight, dusk, nightfall, soiree, sunset and the poetic gloaming are conjured. Who has not experienced how differently things look when you are in the dark?...I grabbed a bottle of Bellini, piped in some dusky jazz and pulled out an onerous bin filled with fabric scraps…probably some thirty years worth because I used to sew everything: shirts, skirts, gowns, pants, jackets, purses, pajamas, curtains, cushions, even dolls. The bin turned into a magician’s hat with endless strips from the striated layers of my life that I could color-date. A heap lay before me like a new map or fitted sheet impossible to return to its container once sprung. Midnight was on the march. Should I: Discard it and not look back until I discover I have nothing to show my grandchildren and no memory of my handiwork? Give in to burden and hang onto it like someone hiding in their obesity?...Neither...Though the blue moon ended up being hidden by cloudiness, it illuminated my night. I gathered the expensive or exotic specimens into a sequestered group, then folded the useful pieces that were big enough to actually be made into something and placed them strategically back into the bin. I took a sample swatch from everything that remained, editing this economically industrious period of my life into a small box. Before the ball dropped, I turned out the light, went upstairs and opened a bottle of champagne. The box of swatches will be reincarnated into a collage…perhaps…under the next blue moon…

FIELD NOTES: A Happy Blue Pot

2010-01-17T17:35:00.005-05:00

A Happy Blue Pot
(For Haitians & Others, January 2010)

I bought a pot;
(enameled cast iron,
cobalt blue on the outside, milk white on the in)
not because I needed it
at the time
but because it caught my eye
like love at first sight.
I first cooked in it
the bean casserole
for Wigilia*
and when I found myself smiling
unconsciously as a babe
I called it “my happy pot”.
I have since made soup
and rice,
and smile each time
for not much reason
other than delight in gathered senses
from a sometimes senseless world.
I do not wash the pot;
I bathe it
like a child of mine
when s/he was a baby
and wrap it gently in a towel.
Out from this Aladdin’s lamp
wafts wishes, memory and dreams,
and I would want it with me
if my earth should shake.
I clang my spoon,
call out,
how can I
give it
to you?

*(pronounced: /vi.ˈɡi.ʎa/ or vee-GHEE-lee-uh, the traditional Christmas Eve vigil supper in Poland)

FIELD NOTES: I am not fascinated by the moon for its science…

2009-12-27T10:06:00.003-05:00

Last Sunday in December, 2009

...but for its mystery…and rhythm…for the comfort of its constancy and its reminder of a celestial presence far beyond my human comprehension. Under the moon I find illumination like no other…I indulge in imagination and folklore…I hope for the future and enjoin the idea that someone who is important to me (or perhaps will be important to me) is looking at it the same time I am…is thinking and feeling the same things I am…is as uncertain (or as optimistic) as I am. I try to think primitively, to empathize with ancients who explained the inexplicable with stories and assigned names in the absence of technology either to calm fears or wield power and how their images and words have stayed with us. On this New Year’s Eve the Full Long Nights Moon will occur, the second full moon in a month, and we still call it a Blue Moon. I like to use the moon as the pivot point of a drafting compass, scribing a perfect circle around the world where the reflection of the unseen sun is directed down in a cone of white light. On Christmas Eve, the moon with its top half covered in the first quarter peeked out like a flashlight from under the covers…covers where someone was reading secretly…silently…hungrily...forming their own hypotheses…making their own discoveries…in private, but for all the world to see.

FIELD NOTES: Sweet nothings...

2009-12-14T22:01:00.005-05:00

...from a Sunday morning...

...hadn't filled the feeder on the deck for some time since the raccoons made off with the can filled with about 30 pounds of black oil sunflower seed...but a storm was brewing and I was missing my wild "pets"...so I loaded up on seed and suet...and they came! There they were...all of them: the tufted titmouse, black capped chickadee, nuthatch, wren, sparrow, downy woodpecker, flicker, a cardinal couple and, of course, the spoiler blue jay whom the male cardinal lost his patience with and flew up from the deck post to claim a turn. They hadn't forgotten me...

...and then on the TV (yes, the intrusive TV!) came a sweet nothing from the past, the early 1970's to be exact...R.O. Blechman's delightful animation...(please, treat yourself)

Never forget the things that make you smile from the inside out...they don't forget you...Joyeux Noel!

FIELD NOTES: A Story of Pie

2009-12-06T13:00:00.007-05:00

First Sunday of December

The kitchen is quiet except for the clearing of her throat and the squeak of the table as she works. The old sash windows draw the pale November sun through its panes, filmy with the environment, and strain it onto the blue, cracked-ice Formica tabletop with the chrome trim. The Spry shortening is measured out using a cup filled with water, then drained and plopped into a big bowl as the kettle on the gas stove is working up a boil. An eyeballed tablespoon of milk is splashed onto the shortening directly from the bottle. The stainless steel sifter is filled with the correct proportions of King Arthur Flour and Morton Salt. The kettle’s whistle is answered and a quarter cup of its contents is poured into the mixing bowl. She tilts the bowl, raises her fork and with the precision of a fan blade begins whipping the concoction until it rises up into peaks. It is doubtful if even a fire could call her away from the next step of quickly cranking the sifter and covering the mixture in a blizzard of powdery white. In a miracle of kitchen chemistry, within minutes a soft ball of pie dough is rounded up and delivered into her bare hands. Sprinkles of water are flicked from her fingertips onto the Formica. A crisp sheet of waxed paper is snapped, serrated and suctioned to the moistened tabletop. The warm, pliable dough ball is coaxed down onto the paper and another sheet is used to cover it. A heavy wooden rolling pin squeals pleasurably as she rocks it back and forth over the sandwiched dough. Every now and then the rolling pin is silenced; her fingers, creased now with age and the labors of the hand, feel around the waxy, unctuous layers testing for consistency in thickness, estimating if the current circumference will sufficiently drape a nine inch pie plate. Now the moment of truth:

As if a button on a remote has been pushed to change the channel, the blue tabletop is gone and I am in my own kitchen. My hands are the hands making the pie dough in a November light. The heavy wooden rolling pin is here, as is a stainless steel sifter, King Arthur flour and the Morton Salt Umbrella Girl, but there is a CD playing and a microwave beeping. It is still the moment of truth: the wax paper is repositioned and the top sheet is discarded. In a confusion of bravery, faith and dexterity, the circle reaches its target, the paper is peeled away and the dough settles gratefully into the plate to officially become Crust. Knuckles, fingertips and the round handle-end of a fork flute the edges unconsciously. This handcrafting is impossible to translate into any recipe. It must be observed, it must be practiced and it must be failed before it is perfected.

I am the third pie maker and I get to choose the fillings now. My brother gets his homemade mince of light & dark raisins, candied lemon & orange peel, apples and spices, complete with a good dose of rum and a pie bird vent stuck in the middle to prevent the copious juices from spitting out into the oven. There is pumpkin simply for the reason that there must be pumpkin (whether one likes it or not) with a maple leaf shape cut from the dough trimmings. This year I got adventurous and made Bosc pear with ginger and lemon. Then there is the apple: French Apple from Cortlands with a single crust and a crumb topping (straight from Betty Crocker’s All-Time Favorites, copyright 1971). When I measured the sugar, my hand got a little heavier because I realized I didn’t have to hold back for the diabetes any more. My dad was the Pie man; even on his birthday, he wanted pie. I thought of leaving a slice at his resting place, but he would have thought it a waste of a good pie! My story of pie is sweet and warm and full of strong hands and colors and kitchen music. It is a wonderful story of pie.

Spry Water Whip Pie Crust Recipe

FIELD NOTES: In pure New England style, there has been a reprieve…

2009-11-08T09:50:00.001-05:00

Sunday: Before & After

…from the predicted rainy weekend and now I can take a swipe or two at those leaves that last weekend were doomed to overwinter on the lawn. At the stroke of 9:30, the first leaf blower has sounded in the neighborhood giving me the go-ahead to put on my work clothes and head out, although I will be quietly hand raking and then mulching the piles with the lawn mower. Never buy a house before you research its trees; dangerously old oaks with leaves as leathery and large as baseball mitts and the spindly locusts with confetti for leaves that will hang on nearly until new buds evict them do not respond very well to mulching. Oh for a stand of compliant primary colored maples! Mercifully, the entry on Lawns in Wikipedia has given me a place to lay blame for my love-hate relationship with lawn and leaf:

“In the United States, it was not until after the Civil War that lawns began to appear outside middle-class residences. Most people did not have the hired labor needed to cut a field of grass with scythes; average home owners either raised vegetables in their yards or left them alone. If weeds sprouted that was fine. Toward the end of the 19th century, suburbs appeared on the American scene, along with the sprinkler, greatly improved lawn mowers, new ideas about landscaping and a shorter workweek.”

...and towards the bottom of the entry, further explanation (and a long list) of the meaning of ‘maintenance’ in the ‘burbs:

“There is often heavy social pressure to mow one's lawn regularly and to keep up with the Joneses. Maintaining higher quality lawns may require special maintenance procedures:”

But I feel more like Pooh today, so perhaps I’ll rake a pile…and just jump right in!

FIELD NOTES: It’s the morning after Halloween, yet I hear…

2009-11-01T09:52:00.000-05:00

Through the window

…the clatter of little bicycle wheels in the circle…and sweetened giggles. Last night, even though it was oddly seventy degrees, the trick-or-treaters came early to beat the pouring rain and swelling wind. The lights went out prematurely. The weather forecast for the coming week classically mirrors my daughter’s in Seattle: partly cloudy, fifty…and then more rain for the weekend, so…it’s official: the leaves will prevail and overwinter on my lawn. So be it. Some gentle folks are beginning to mourn the season’s passing but, by my (Polish) nature, I gravitate toward the bittersweet, towards its mysteries and challenges. Even when I set out to be gloomy - because like Eeyore it is pleasantly self-indulgent to be so - inevitable sleep, or…a mug of coffee, or…a cup of tea, or…antics out the window, or…something…rallies me…which can be annoying if you’ve just gotten yourself into a good funk…and there is plenty to be funky about! As I write, a new wind - like a sharp-nailed witch’s hand - has just yanked the jack-o-lantern flag hanging out by the front door…and then…disappeared, as if to snidely remind me that it is not all honey in The Hundred Acre Wood, there are Heffalumps…and Woozles…and it is time to walk the plank…to bravely find deeply hidden beauty…

“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus, 1913-1960, French novelist, author and philosopher, 1957 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature

Optimism and Pessimism Quotes and Quotations

FIELD NOTES: To be of few words...

2009-10-25T11:26:00.006-04:00

Harrybrooke Haiku

...is sometimes to be wished for…

October Walking

Leaves tattle: Feet! Feet!
Soft brown needle shower, I
seal lips, hold breath…fall…

My Seattle Bento Box

2009-10-11T12:45:00.002-04:00

Title inspired by a New York Times article

FIELD NOTES: My head cold has been replaced with a new malady….

2009-10-11T11:48:00.011-04:00

Sunday morning musings

…fall festival overload. Unlike summer, fall does not unfurl like a satin runner down a long aisle, affording the opportunity to smile and wave as you step, lightly-clothed, down its path. Autumn, especially in New England, bursts overhead like a comet; you catch its full beauty only if your timing is right. There are so many ‘festivals’ available this weekend, that yesterday I woke up with a headache and, after managing to tutor a student for several hours in the morning, took a 3 hour nap on a sunny bed. As if to prove there was nothing wrong with me, I got up and mowed the front lawn, stopped to rake the pine cones and needles covering half of it, then roasted a chicken for supper, listened to Prairie Home Companion and Thistle & Shamrock before hunkering down under the covers with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, my latest book club selection. There…that’s about as ‘twittery’ as I’ll get…and only to emphasize the point that I have ‘festival overload’. My town has been going through an identity crisis for the past decade or so as it tries to transition from agrarian to touristy and also to meld the two. Every group and organization wants a piece of the apple pie which usually includes fund-raising and/or merchandising. When I was growing up a few towns over, there was no need for farm festivals; if you wanted to see farm animals or needed to buy some corn or squash or pumpkins or apples or cider, you stopped at one. Fall wasn’t advertised, it just happened. Just about every other house in my neighborhood has a version of a scarecrow on a stick purchased at the store for $4.99…including yours truly! To revive creativity, we had our preschool class stuff some extra kid’s clothes in our classroom with paper leaves, tape a ball on for the head, prop him in a little rocking chair and they named our ‘new student’ Macy. It was refreshing to see them excitedly take ownership of this half-planned activity. I love fall…I guess it’s just too brief…it’s time again to clean the patio & garden and put away all their charming accessories. There is urgency unlike summer because, ready or not, winter can now strike at any time putting an abrupt end to autumnal tasks…and pleasures. Not a good year for tomatoes, the prettiest things in my vegetable garden are the pinwheels I weaved into the wire fencing so, in the afternoon that promises to be a gorgeous fall day, I will break it down and take a trip to the local farm shop to decorate it with some mums, ornamental cabbage, straw bale and maybe a pumpkin or two. In the end, it is not the fall festivals that I am actually critical of; it is not having enough time to enjoy all the nooks and crannies of the season. If the workday talk after this long Columbus Day weekend begs the question “How come you didn’t go the _____ festival?” I will say I did…at home…

6pm Postscript: 'round about 3 p.m., I had lots of company outdoors...the rev and lurch of tractors and mowers, the rhythm of rakes, the whoops of little boys filled the air...it seems everyone was done with the festivals...and it turns out we all have similiar needs...especially in New England...

FIELD NOTES: A day for stones...

2009-10-04T12:25:00.006-04:00

Sunday rest

…home doing nothing, (a rare occurrence only because I have a head cold) I am eating breakfast on the couch with the CBS Sunday Morning show. Bill Geist brings out a gentle segment about stone skipping and a competition in Franklin, PA. It looks so simple, so pleasantly old-fashioned and countrified, I wish I was there! I am fascinated not by the stone skipping as much as I am fascinated about how it relaxes me, takes me to the summery memory of my father showing off one of his ’dad skills’ by demonstrating how to skip stones across our favorite swimming hole, a pastime he perfected during his Depression-era childhood. It may seem like a waste of time, to go around collecting potential skipping rocks like world record setter Russ Byars does, but what a refreshing step back from the world of business…&…it must be no coincidence that I chose river stones for wallpaper on my laptop because I find them soothing to look at…&...it must also be no coincidence that a card slipped out of the medicine cabinet today for Magic River Stones™, the ones I had purchased to arrange around the lucky bamboo plant in the green-glazed pot. I stopped to read the card: “These beautiful stones are jasper, quartz and agate. They were naturally shaped by an ancient river in China, which for more than 2,000 years has been a pilgrimage site for people collecting lucky stones. Beautiful stones have always held a fascination for people from every culture. They are wonderful to carry as personal talismans or for use in fountains or to put around plants to slow moisture evaporation and to add a bit of beauty, luck and magic to your life.”…&…another non-coincidence must be the trail I followed from a blog comment that led me to wildramblings.com and an article about a stone wall in the woods adventure…&…might it be another coincidence that I created a “Zen rock bottle” for myself. On Labor Day, I quelled my impatience waiting for a family member by sitting on the front steps and counting the tiny pea gravel from the walkway as I dropped them one by one into a Soave Italia wine bottle. The wine was not particularly memorable – I had been persuaded by the bottle’s balletic bend of the neck and its green tint with spare silvery gray graphics – but it was a calming, meditative physical action to wait by dropping stones into a bottle. I got up to 400 and when I picked up the bottle to put it back inside, the glass with the rocks was warm against by body. And I would remember that. Today, I needed some vitamin D for my cold, so I put 200 more stones into the bottle. It was a good day for stones….and all because I have a cold….

(Yes, this is what 600 tiny stones amount to!)

FIELD NOTES: Food in the air...

2009-09-27T17:45:00.005-04:00

First Sunday of Fall

...I tend not to do my power walking in the rain, but today it was just a mist…and I really needed a walk…the diminutive swan family that I had seen streaming by me in Harrybrooke awhile back was waiting for me, but in a much larger form…clustered on the island looking like great scoops of mashed potatoes rather than the delicate floating line they once were…the water is getting colder now…the newly colored leaves of autumn are making a pretty collage on the wet black pavement and altering the aroma of the air…the Fish & Game Club is hosting a picnic in the pavilion and on my first walk around there is the charred salty scent of hot dogs…I don’t crave hot dogs, or even eat much meat, but this smell makes me believe that I once lived in a cave in the woods and hunted, tearing apart roasted meat with my canines, wild-haired, wiping my mouth with the back of my earthy hand…on the second go ‘round, the smell is toasty sweet…marshmallows on slender sticks…and I arrive at gentle thoughts of civilized campfires…I smooth my hair from the frizzling rain and think about standing in my kitchen making Cortland applesauce…

FIELD NOTES: It was as if I saw my backyard for the first time…

2009-09-20T13:47:00.004-04:00

Through the window
Monday, September 14, 2009

…newborn… primal…existing in its own place and time…rather than mine. A mist of fog at dawn softened all its blemishes…its rough spots at areas of neglect or natural consequences were out of focus. It was the opening day of my preschool class and it was a gentle…and very lovely…reminder to fine tune what I see, to put on a shelf my frustration with actions of true innocence that may come by the way of the wild things or the young charges in my life at present. Years ago, I had to drive late at night to pick up teenagers in a very thick fog and recall the nerve-wracking lack of visibility, but this day, there were no nerves, there was just a blanket tucked in around me, the birds chirping like a wind-up crib mobile and remembered feelings of safety and comfort and the hedge of childhood that guarded me against the hard edges that would come…

FIELD NOTES: A little something for friends & family...

2009-09-13T20:21:00.003-04:00

Seattle Synopsis

Unless you know me personally, have been to Seattle, or are planning a trip out west... you may find the above link...well, boring. Let's face it, nothing brings out squirming and forced smiles more than the words "Let me show you my vacation photos!" I take photos of odd things and am still working on presenting the images I find artistically interesting - they'll probably turn up in my blog somewhere along the way. The PDF document above does have lots of interesting links to all things Seattle, so you can always skip my notes and go directly to those...my favorites are Gas Works Park, the Fremont ones, and the bicycles.

FIELD NOTES: The shape of things took form as I drove through our New England hills…

2009-09-07T22:45:00.005-04:00

Labor Day

...to my childhood home to keep my mother company on her first Labor Day without Dad. I took ‘the shady way’ via Woodbury instead of Litchfield because I had been driving 202 all week for staff development. It’s my favorite kind of driving: old fashioned highways with trees, places to pull over and room to think. Yesterday’s worm and last Friday’s behavior workshop came to mind, as well as tomorrow’s puzzlingly controversial Presidential school speech. I’ve also been thinking about the landscapes we grow up in since last March when I saw my first mountain west of the Mississippi. Landscapes shape us. The worm, with no eyes, legs or arms, saw me in a way I never will. In the behavior class, we discovered that we are all difficult to somebody. On the coasts, I look out to the ends of the earth and to the depths of the ocean; in the east, I see Boston Common, in the west, Pioneer Square. In the mid-sections, I kept looking up with awe to heights I could never imagine reaching or, looking ahead to focus on driving through the flatland that seemed to spread out forever before me. In the south, I see only paradise in palm trees and perpetual sun. In Maine, I look for trees and lobsters and the Way Life Should Be slogan. The landscapes we grow up in shape us…how we eat, work, worship, recreate and opinionate. The next time I vote or offer an opinion, I will have something new to consider: what if I had been born into a different landscape?

FIELD NOTES: I have never seen my garden in such a sorry state...

2009-09-06T22:35:00.003-04:00

Sunday afternoon, Labor Day Weekend

...between recreation, vacation, extreme weather, and work, I had left them to nature’s reactions of self-preservation and opportunity. The zebra grass is of jungle proportions, leaning out over the stone walkway like switchblades. I give it a good haircut and rein it in with green garden twine like an unruly mop of hair. The weeds are as large as my perennials…and look healthier. As I dig them out and rejuvenate the beds with the red cedar mulch that has been lying in bags on my driveway all summer, I feel something cool on my foot. Thinking it is a spear of zebra grass I look down and squeak, not because I am repelled, but because it is surprising to see a large earthworm weaving itself through the thong of my blue rubber flip-flop. I slip the sandal off and the worm transfers itself to the moist insole. Trying to be sensitive to the worm’s needs, I slide it back onto the soil, but this creature with no legs, arms or eyes, seems to be seeking out my foot with its head, sensing and breathing through its skin. What am I to this worm? I have no clitellum for mating. What does it want, what does it need? Charles Darwin, who studied the earthworm for thirty-nine years, had this to say: "The plow is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed, the land was in fact regularly plowed and still continues to be thus plowed by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures."

FIELD NOTES: I'd been away...

2009-08-30T11:47:00.003-04:00

Sunday morning

...then jumped right into a new school year - hadn’t walked or considered my home place in weeks. Finally, sitting down with a glass of wine and a novel at my back deck ‘bistro’, a feathered friend reminded me - no, reprimanded me. “Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten?” Its partner (some variety of sparrow) joined in the trill that was somewhere between aria and lecture, delight and indignation…..somewhere between “nice to see you” and “where the hell have you been?” With unusual boldness, they perched practically in my face, causing me to put down my book, remove my reading glasses, get aroused from a mentally dulling week and respond audibly with “thanks, I needed that.” I see missing relatives in the actions of creatures around me because my grandmother, my father and his brothers, would recognize it as a reliable conduit for uncommon communication. I needed that kind of jolt from the minutiae of management, from packing and unpacking, laundering and bill paying, food shopping and cooking, cleaning and sorting and realigning with routine. The next morning on my way north, an ethereal image of heron-on-green-pond-in-morning-fog appeared. Had I heeded the advice of the sparrows, I would have had my camera with me and would have stopped - staff development be damned – because there can be value, and very personal liberation, in having that 'cat who ate the canary' feeling.

FIELD NOTES: Preparing for the west coast...

2009-08-02T12:22:00.007-04:00

Real summer life has kept me from virtual life...not much posting, browsing and commenting...and I won't be very active the next two weeks because I'm finally visiting my daughter in Seattle. Haven't taken a vacation in years...hope to have quality items for Show and Tell upon my return. Meanwhile, I've left a July album and added a new guestbook for the enjoyment of anyone who stumbles here...and while you're at it, check out my older posts...this is a journal blog rather than one that contains time-sensitive material...

Good thoughts!
Diane

FIELD NOTES: She never returned...

2009-07-26T11:38:00.002-04:00

Sunday morning musings

…after I last wrote about Charlotte, her web became erratic and haphazard for a few days, her construction too feeble to withstand ordinary rain and wind. Like her namesake in the book, I wondered if she had produced her magnum opus and then proceeded to die. As if to say farewell to my apprehensive daughter who had been in New York City for a few days, the web reappeared towards the end of the week and then, no more. She was gone. For the first few nights, I kept flicking the front light on and off and then I stopped, got out of the habit. Without having to think, without purpose or planning, we could now use the new front door. A burden had been lifted. But my oldest son was the first to say out loud: “I miss her.” Isn’t it just that way, when we have taken the time to perhaps not wholly love, but certainly appreciate, a web of life? Oh that I should be a burden missed! Quite the compliment…

FIELD NOTES: The eye is sometimes the lens best suited for the subject…

2009-07-12T08:16:00.004-04:00

Sunday morning musing

…and so it goes for spiders in the night. Charlotte has become our nightly fascination and has even found converts among us. I discovered my daughter (who is ‘grossed out’ by bugs of any sort) trying to best me with her camera shots, but joined me in stronger appreciation for professional nature photographers instead. She also called out the window one afternoon when I drove into the driveway that it was alright to use the front door because the web had blown away. I sensed that we both felt some sort of remorseful gladness. We don’t really ‘like’ spiders; small spiders tend to get squished when they appear in the bed or bath, but Charlotte is BIG. She is big in more ways than one. Initial suggestions were made to perhaps relocate her so we could actually use our new front door, but the nightly lantern, the gutter and close proximity to the garden seems to be an ideal encampment. Wanting to spread appreciation, the teacher in me called the little neighbor boy over to see The Great Web that had stayed intact for most of Wednesday. He was properly fascinated and returned later with a friend…(Ah, a taste of the old days!...B.C. - before computers - when every kid was an entrepreneur by ‘charging admission’ to anything that constituted a ‘show’). So as we continue to use the garage or back door, kudos to Charlotte for her tour de force; it was difficult to use the front entry on a summer’s night anyway because the screen door is usually loaded with moths, Japanese beetles and the like. I counted twelve ‘packets’ in her web last night and watched as more unfortunates careened into the sticky trap for the love of lamplight…Love is blind?

FIELD NOTES: America's got talent....

2009-07-05T12:10:00.010-04:00

Red, White & Blue

...so much so that I found myself entertained late in the evening with choreographed bungee jumping, intuitive engineering and delicate balance, not on the television, but across my front door. Determined to have my new front door painted bright red for Independence Day (my favorite front door color), I had locked the storm door with the top screen down to let the paint dry overnight and, in the light of the hanging lantern, discovered at work a sizable spider…more sizable than one usually cares to have inside the home. To be repulsed or impressed, that was the question, but lucky for me deep fascination trumped instant rejection and I was treated to a free show. My fifth grade teacher gave me the wonderful gift of E.B. White in Charlotte’s Web…insight and judicious writing all in one place…and now this night, some forty years later, I could reap a benefit. The spider’s dramatic downward dives caught my heartbeat, popped my eyes and canted my head. She moved with such complete confidence, determined and adept in weaving her own safety net, that she took my amazement to some level of envy. She instantly responded to a vibration and from the center of the web, speedily sidled out on a spoke and shrink-wrapped a meal for herself in a matter of seconds. As I prepared myself and the house for sleep, I kept checking on Charlotte and saw that her web spanned the entire width of the door. I left the front light on for her and the new American flag I had hung to go with the new door. In the morning, the flag was briskly flapping in a beautifully crisp breeze…at last, a break in the weeks of daily rain storms…but alas, the web was pathetically disheveled like the morning after a wild party. But, come nightfall, Charlotte climbed down from the gutter and saw opportunity…again. I texted my younger son to use the basement entry instead. In the morning, I found a sticky note on the kitchen table from my daughter that read “There is a big ass spider in the front door!” and she explained she had to turn the light off because it “grossed” her out. Her younger brother on the other hand, just walked through the front door as usual. But, Charlotte keeps working, after all, she has to make a living…and this is America …and America’s got talent…naturally. Today’s sticky note is from my oldest son: “Spider made a new web. Don’t destroy it this time.”

FIELD NOTES: Her favorite color was green...

2009-06-14T12:14:00.007-04:00

Sunday morning musing

...that’s what I remember my mother telling me when I asked her that question. Little-girl-me turned up her nose as if a piece of cabbage had just been put in her mouth. Green?...how boring. Back then I was all about purple and pink…BRIGHT purple and pink…even going so far as to paint the bathroom tile with grape juice. I still can admire violet and fuchsia in the garden, but I have recently noticed I am going ‘green’ in a different context…my appreciation moving farther down the plant…sliding down the slender slipperiness of the stem…to water sipping, life-sustaining…green. Perhaps it is me getting better with age…like fine wine and cheese…or…becoming more like my mother (a mode some swear they’ll never allow)…but as most conditions go, so goes green with both positive and negative connotations. I do find myself unconsciously attracted to green in my clothing choices, accessories and home décor…and if I gathered it together like a bushel of vegetables, it might make a serenely self-describing still-life…..…but then of course…….there’s blue!

Garden: Day 20

Garden 'camo' (NOT green)

FIELD NOTES: Rescued from the fall...

2009-06-07T09:36:00.005-04:00

...a beloved Edith Wolford iris, from the famous White Flower Farm in Litchfield, a gift of one rhizome now repeated a dozen times around my perennial garden, fell to earth because of rain and my previous lack of foresight. The house came with an awkward rectangle of grass between the front of the house and the walkway that leads down to the driveway, so I scooped it out and planted. I should have replaced the old pressure-treated border and raised the bed to level the landscape, but too late now. Stem and stamen tilt forward whenever weighted with water and I find myself propping things up with rocks and ornaments and wiry devices...a dependent relationship. The senior citizens of my garden - the baby's breath and an inherited lavender - have finally lived out their expected lifespan and failed to return this year...and the tiger lilies that stood sentry in the background seem to have been choked out by a relative newcomer, Moonbeam Coreopsis, that I didn't keep my eye on. So I owed it to the one who fell to prop her up in place that was complementary to her complexion and where everyone could continue to view her elaborate tiers of ruffles in pale yellow and violet that I would never keep in my own wardrobe, but in nature's dress shop, anything goes, everything is always in style and grand old ladies deserve to go gracefully.

FIELD NOTES: Birthday haiku...

2009-06-01T22:17:00.002-04:00

Teach. Learn. Visit. Explore.
Revel. Relax. Read. React. Write. Walk.
Find chi. Make art. Live more.

FIELD NOTES: My own Flower of the Day...

2009-05-31T10:50:00.006-04:00

Last day of May

...a picture-perfect weekend...and I am head over heels for the temperature and sun and breeze and blooms...barely have time to compose the words to express it. Although I always have hopes, I don't quite know what I will get when I plant things, but...if we consider the potential in what we sow and do our best to nurture its growth, we can love whatever comes of it; we can feel joy at its birth and accomplishment at its blooming...or, if it fails, take the opportunity to assess and develop the patience to persevere. Gardens teach us a lot...take care in choosing what you think you will love, know the care you will need to commit to and understand the power of weeds...

Featured flowers: Peony and Edith Wolford iris

FIELD NOTES: Memorial Day tradition...

2009-05-25T20:30:00.001-04:00

The Garden: Day 1

Garden Friend:

Ready to Go:

FIELD NOTES: The lilacs are gone but still remain...

2009-05-17T11:00:00.001-04:00

...I had a lilac house in the place where I grew up. It was just a row of bushes separating our driveway from the neighbor's backyard, but to me it was another world…the world of my imagination. I wore a path through the shrubs creating an entryway, a kitchen and a rear patio. An old saw horse was the kitchen counter where I made pies and cakes with mud and leaves in my toy aluminum pan. After a good summer rain, I could pretend to take a shower by shaking the branches overhead. Those looking out their windows would see a little girl standing in the bushes, perhaps thinking that I was lonely…or weird…but in my lilac house, I was confident and creative, brave and independent and in control…now isn’t that a wonderful place for a little girl to be?

Find favorite mother-daughter book share: Mud Pies and Other Recipes - A Cookbook for Dolls at Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves

FIELD NOTES: Only the haiku remains...

2009-05-11T19:15:00.014-04:00

Walk in Harrybrooke...
Red-winged Blackbird in the marsh!
Camera not; but...EYES.

Image link found at mayo.personcounty.net

HAIKU for PEOPLE

I and the Bird #100: Most Said in Less Award (22nd on the list)

JUST HAD TO SAY...

2009-05-06T22:44:00.008-04:00

Comment on a post by The Everyday Adventurer
Snake Attack
"In defense of the garter snake, king snakes eat garter snakes as well as rattlesnakes, birds eat them, cats eat them, so one man's snake may be another man's dinner! Having grown up as a nature girl, I guess I learned to accept the indelicate side of the natural world early on, but find the beauties of nature intensified by virtue of this contrast. Respect in the natural world is very important, sometimes for our own safety. As a teacher, I try to challenge myself to bring these two sides together because as the saying goes: "We hate some persons because, we do not know them and we will not know them because we hate them" can go for all creatures (bugs, snakes). Frogs and ladybugs can seem cute so we like them! I wouldn't say I 'like' snakes, but I felt awfully bad when I accidentally ran over one with my lawn mower! That was NOT a pretty story and I will spare you the details! If anyone would like to take the challenge, here's a good site for easing into the world of snakes: Dave's Garden"

FIELD NOTES: Uncommon scenery....

2009-05-03T10:44:00.007-04:00

...I was not looking for on my walk, but this has been hanging on a tree at the back parking area for weeks and, for humor's sake, I finally documented it. I remember going for a walk near our favorite 'swimming hole' with my grandmother. She spied a nice pair of pants lying in the woods and used her walking stick to lift them out of the brush. Her enthusiasm curdled when a swarm of flies was released from what was covered up there. I am sure any of us who walk have encountered strange articles and I always wonder...where do their owners think this stuff is going? My PBS station 'happened' to show Dances With Wolves last night...and I 'happened' to think of the saying below...which 'happens' to be from a Native American chief named Seattle...where my daughter 'happens' to live...connecting lines...

"Leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but memories."
- Seattle, Chief

SPRING BLOOM-ERS?

...............ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACK?

FULL RAINBOW IN FRONT OF GROCERY STORE.............

...........................HILLSIDE FULL OF TRASH BEHIND IT.

FIELD NOTES: Ticket not required...

2009-04-26T10:58:00.002-04:00

Through the window

...but the birdsong is so amazing this morning, it seems like it ought to be. The eighties are much too hot for April in New England - early morning and all the windows open from the night before. A lumbering breeze tries to stir the indoor air as I try to smooth out the night from my face and hair in the bathroom mirror – not an easy task as I’ve just recovered from my first stomach ‘bug’ in about ten years. But the cardinal is as brilliant as a soprano at the Met and the other small birds in chorus add their melodious backup with verve, as well as the raucous crows that try out like high school ne’er-do-wells who think Chorus will be less boring than Study Hall. Birdsong trampolines my soul…rebounding whatever is weighing it down to airy heights…over and over and over. Good thing no one is listening as they’d be bored with how many times I utter words like…beautiful… gorgeous…amazing…alright already! This will be the most comfortable portion of the day…early morning is my favorite and I wish it would last all day, but then of course it wouldn’t be morning. But imagine having to have a ticket issued in order to hear morning birds or bells or chimes, to smell flowers or rain shower or fresh wash on the line, or view an amazing spider web or bird’s nest. Maybe it would cultivate a culture of new values; values for things not currently taxed, calculated, counted, packaged, adulterated, tested or hyped. As for me, I thank my feathered friends…well, maybe just not the woodpecker jack hammering my cedar shakes!

My Life in Birds (a winter story) short PDF

FIELD NOTES: I have a compost bin...

2009-04-17T22:19:00.008-04:00

Not your usual TGIF (the end of Spring Break)

...of chicken wire and pressure-treated wood at the side of the shade garden where red worms (the good ones for composts) are free to come and digest…banana peels, melon rinds, wilted lettuce, eggshells, coffee grounds…I flip over a season’s worth of dirt and organic scraps from the left side, sift it through the homemade screen into the storage barrel and toss what’s left (usually the last scraps added before a hard freeze) back into the right side of the bin. Left, right, left, right, lift, sift, toss…it is repetitive, physical labor, but out in the new spring air, one of my first…and most satisfying and meditative…outdoor chores. I love jumping right into the bin and filling my shoes and cuffs as I work. To gardeners, this is real ‘black gold’. I will churn it in the vegetable garden or fertilize the plants with compost tea. My father made the compost bin for me when we bought our little house fifteen years ago…and it’s still holding up…it’s still returning to the earth what belongs to the earth, and turning plain, old dirt into beautiful soil. I have a compost bin…

I have discovered there are about as many different ways to make a compost as there are to make meatloaf - and you can't screw it up! Email or leave a comment if you have any questions about simple - and free - backyard composting - I'm not an expert, but I've made plenty of mistakes!

Here are some links - when I find more I like, I'll add to the list:

Tips for the Lazy Gardener
Smartgardening
Groundwater
Better Connecticut urban compost video

FIELD NOTES: Amethyst stands in the seed aisle next to me…

2009-04-16T20:03:00.000-04:00

a Spring Break afternoon

...and she wants all the flower seeds, but her mother tells her that they don’t have all the different kind of suns in their yard. I only know her name because her mother sings it. I think it is a beautiful name. It means stability, peace, balance, courage, inner strength, sincerity and a calm disposition and I always wished that the February birthstone were mine because I loved purple when I was Amethyst’s age. I want to tell her mother to go ahead, let her buy all the seeds you can afford, don’t discourage for one bit this enthusiastic little gardener. She could be a Miss Rumphius. But Amethyst is content to joyfully skip away after her mother…a picture perfect pair…I choose sunflowers, large bottle gourds and Kentucky Wonder beans, then with a smile, I move on to pick out garden gloves and quick-release hose connectors. Everyone in the store seems giddy with the coming of spring…especially Amethyst!

FIELD NOTES: Less talk...

2009-04-05T19:22:00.007-04:00

...more walk.

...I am spellbound by the colors on the water…so much so that after my walk in Harrybrooke, I drive back home to get my camera, and return, even though I know I am a mediocre photographer even in digital terms. I keep shooting and shooting and shooting, but none does justice in interpreting what my eye can see…and in that moment, I have a deeper, and more personal, understanding of the impressionists. I am Monet, I am Cezanne, I am Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Cassatt and even beyond to Van Gogh and Gauguin…because I have their eyes…

FIELD NOTES: How do you see it?

2009-03-21T17:10:00.004-04:00

A walk in Harrybrooke on the first full day of spring...

Comment with your gut reaction...

FIELD NOTES: I have never seen mountains....

2009-03-15T12:48:00.009-04:00

NYT Art Review: Mythic West of Dreams and Nightmares

Through the window

...I realized as the plane descended into Salt Lake City and I experienced for the first time in my fifty years the American landscape west of Chicago. Only the robotic female voice of the GPS kept my rental car where it should be …headed to Ogden…as I glided past white peaks as if I were in some IMAX theater. There are no words…and no photographs…that can adequately translate this experience…because it is about ‘having to be there’ to the ultimate degree. And I got to ‘be there’ because I was flown from CT to UT for the weekend as a birthday present for my daughter's 21st birthday to see her dance professionally…a surprise gift for both of us from her director. I am not ordinarily a spur of the moment person, so this was a challenge…a ‘monumental’ one for me…and in retrospect, it is as close as I have ever come to ‘running away’. She performed an emotionally (and physically) exhausting interpretation of the human artistic expression lost in the Holocaust and, after the all too brief live contact with my daughter, along with little sleep or food, I was already flying back out of Utah early the next morning with heightened senses and a golden opportunity to observe the changing landscape across the country in a way I had never imagined. Progressing back towards the middle of the country the land smoothed out, the roads appeared like a grid on a tablecloth and the buildings of Minneapolis became the highest peaks. On the approach into Connecticut, I saw the contrast. My daughter was right…we don’t have mountains here. Incredibly bumpy, pock-marked with little lakes and the roads coiling around and up and over the wooded hills like piles of giant garden hoses…I wondered why anyone would choose to settle this landscape. I had brought along a book I had started reading (Three Cups of Tea) which turned out to be a strange kind of coincidence…or not. The setting of the book is in the Himalayas where the mountains are more than twice the elevation as the ones I saw in Utah...so...I still have never seen mountains…but I now can feel, and appreciate, their presence daily…

Excerpt from Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin:

“Nearly a century earlier, Filippo De Filippi, doctor for and chronicler of the duke of Abruzzi’s expedition to the Karakoram, recorded the desolation he felt among these mountains. Despite the fact that he was in the company of two dozen Europeans and 260 local porters, that they carried folding chairs and silver tea services and had European newspapers delivered to them regularly by a fleet of runners, he felt crushed into insignificance by the character of this landscape. ‘Profound silence would brood over the valley,’ he wrote, ‘even weighing down our spirits with indefinable heaviness. There can be no other place in the world where man feels himself so alone, so isolated, so completely ignored by Nature, so incapable of entering into communion with her.’”

FIELD NOTES: My head is turned by the sound of something coming out of water...

2009-03-01T21:54:00.009-05:00

Early Sunday afternoon

...but it is too cold for what comes to mind. A late winter storm predicted and some of us are out at Harrybrooke as if we need to take a deep breath before we are submerged yet again. New England creates greediness for the smallest scrap of palatable weather and, at the same time, an abiding appreciation because we are so often waiting outside paradise looking in. Later, I will take a drive by Candlewood Lake and marvel at the way its surface motion from the sixty degree day we had on Friday has been frozen as if stopped in mid-stir. But just now, the sound of a lone man in a sleek canoe, slicing through the cold in the low water with conservancy and control is the score and choreography of the day…and my head is turned as if it were a swan…

FIELD NOTES: We have left the month of my father’s birth…

2009-02-01T15:53:00.011-05:00

A new month begins

…and my father’s death…and the inauguration of President Obama. We have left the month of ice storms and school snow days and unreliable walking paths. It was a notable…and harsh…month, but it was true to itself. It did not tease me with false warmth or promise to be comfortable. It made me think and work in ways I did not expect. It even made me work at taking a walk to find comfort. It did not hold my hand, but pushed me forward…into the month of Valentine’s Day…and Presidents’ Day…and the arrival of seed catalogs and the beginning of the impatient transitioning to spring…a season that is not necessarily prettier or gentler (depending on how you look at things) but one that hopefully will be true to itself. It is forty degrees today so I have more company at Harrybrooke, not like the days that required gumption. I suddenly have a flash of understanding as to why people climb mountains...in a word, it is resolve. Many of the frozen patches I hopped around last week in Harrybrooke have turned to puddles. I marvel at the give and take of the season, how it just happens and how I almost miss noticing a melted puddle as the pleasure of the day…and suddenly, two Canada geese appear on my second go around. There is evidence of lots of activity in the footprints left all over the snow-covered landscape - hungry deer, comic squirrels, feral cats, and maybe a logy skunk or raccoon - and I sense the interruption of hibernation, of dormancy, right under my feet…and I enter the month of births…Lincoln and Washington and Susan B. Anthony…and the births of my sons… days to celebrate.

FIELD NOTES: It's a lot like pepper...

2009-01-25T11:10:00.004-05:00

Saturday walk

...It is known by my children that I hand grind peppercorns on the largest setting over my homemade turkey soup…or eggs…or pork roast. They chuckle and shake their heads in dismay when I choke out the words “I…love… pepper!” They don’t understand. It has finally managed to get near the freezing point this week so, being desperate to take a break from death and taxes, I gather mittens, ear muffs, leggings, hooded sweatshirt, down vest and head to Harrybrooke. Because it has been so frigid, most of the way is packed tight with slick snow and black ice. My speed is impeded by having to constantly skip to where I think the best traction might be and when I feel my heel slip, I envision my first broken bone…and my children shaking their heads in dismay that I walked this way not once, but twice. They don’t understand. But here comes an older woman wrapped as crazily as I am…and a grandpa with a pink papoose…the wind chill stinging us all. I remember as a child the beige pepper shaker my parents had - a 1960’s “space age” styled thing - which I decided to clean one suppertime by blowing off the pepper residue inside its recessed top. I’ll never forget the burning sensation on my eyes and in my nose…and yet…I do love pepper. My life isn’t like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, it’s more like pepper…and, just like braving the wind chill, there is real satisfaction…once you get past the sting.

FIELD NOTES: I am taken aback by my own reaction…

2009-01-23T20:46:00.003-05:00

Friday afternoon

...the pure child-like intensity of it…it’s just a box, but I dance around the kitchen because it contains my spice order from Penzeys. There is minced onion and garlic and parsley…tenderness and sweetness plucked from nature, dried and preserved until cooking will bring it back to life…as old as human nature itself, driving joy, passion, lust, trade, exploration, exploitation and conquest throughout its history in the world. But my unabashed joy is not false or tainted with the instant gratification of consumerism. It is me finding a vacuum that has been created by the absence of simple daily pleasures due to the recent nature of things. It is me inhaling a memory…and the anticipation of creating new ones…of taste, of family pleasure, of growing seasons, of the miracle of the human body filtered through our senses. And what else is in the box?...Penzeys first cookbook, a jewel of a book in any category, not just cooking…and still more…their usual generosity of throwing in a free sample jar of one of their spices is multiplied by three…and it happens to be all of my favorite spice, Tuscan Sunset. As I begin to read about the Penzey family in the book, I would like them to know how much they lightened my day with just a box…

FIELD NOTES: Special soil...

2009-01-09T21:10:00.007-05:00

The day of the funeral

We are thankful for the sun today even though its rays are not rays, but icicles. As we drive up the long cemetery road in the black limo, there are sailors frozen in the landscape reminding me of the little sailor from my parents’ 1945 wedding cake top that I used to play with. I wonder if the bugler standing next to the flag pole will get his lips stuck to his instrument. I see four more in a line over the horizon readying their rifles. It is not the part of nature I seek to observe, but it will be observed none the less. As we calculate how we will navigate the frozen ground from the car to the green carpet, my mother worries that my father would not have liked putting us all out like this on a January day, but I want to see the flag on his casket and the marker on his grave because, even though only a fraction of the world knew this man in his eighty-eight years, it will be made known to the entire world that he was a veteran of the Second World War…and that says a lot….

Not that I didn’t know it before, but with my father’s passing, it comes to my forefront that being a teacher (in any capacity) is the greatest service there is. As the Chinese Taoist philosopher, Lao Tzu puts it: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” In my experience as a Head Start preschool teacher, I can say with certainty that any child would be lucky to have a father like mine who is capable of preparing you for the world, who questions you, but lets you question him as well, who warns you of mistakes, but lets you make them on your own anyway, who doesn’t give you answers, but tells you where you can look them up. It’s astonishing how much he taught me and, I suppose, I have to give credit to his generation – the one that came out of a great depression and war - as well as the immigrant community he grew up in that never whined because they knew about bootstraps, the horns of bulls, where the buck was supposed to stop and that the impossible just takes a little longer. I hugged and kissed him, but he was not a “hand holding” type. I knew he was telling me he loved me when he asked how the car was and if the outside faucets were turned off for winter and if the mortgage was being kept up-to-date and when he fixed my appliances. It is a fact that he did not get everything he wanted; most of the “luck” he was allotted at birth went to the coin toss that took him to the gedunk for ice cream instead of putting him in the path of the torpedo that struck the USS North Carolina. In his retirement we sometimes ribbed him by calling him an “old fart” or a “stick in the mud” as he confined his world to clipping coupons, tracking down senior discounts and broken things to repair, doing crossword puzzles (in ink!) and watching the UCONN Huskies on TV…or Animal Planet…or Suze Orman. But we knew from his stories (the ones he was willing to tell) that he had had his fill of “adventures”…and that there was too much plastic in the world because it was harder for him to repair things now…I don’t quite know what he is doing in heaven, because there can’t be much to “fix” up there, but I know when it’s my turn to go through those pearly gates, they will be swinging smoothly, evenly and with nary a squeak.

We stand like tents in a downpour – holding up unless the sides are touched – but... Taps must be played, the rifles fired, the flag folded with mechanical protocol and placed in my mother’s hands along with the eight shells that were just fired. As cold as it is, as hard as it seems, there is an affirming landscape that presses our feet to the ground. I recall telling a young Ugandan student of mine who was relating a Sponge Bob cartoon segment to me, that Sponge Bob doesn’t get hurt when he falls down because he is not made of flesh and bones as we are. “Well, we are made of soil. Not what you see here,” he said in his accented English as he gestured with a sweep of his hand and a finger point to the air, “but special soil. From Heaven.”

Death is Nothing At All by Henry Scott Holland: Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room, I am I and you are you, Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, Speak to me in the easy way which you always used, Put no difference in your tone, Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow, Laugh as we always laughed, At the little jokes we enjoyed together. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, Without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant, It is the same that it ever was. There is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind, Because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, Somewhere very near, Just around the corner, all is well.

Kucinskas Family Tree Online

FIELD NOTES: The sunshine will be busy today...

2009-01-04T11:39:00.009-05:00

Through the bedroom window

…coming and going, welcoming and warming…or distracting and glaring depending upon my needs…brilliant and all too brief for this time of year. It will radiate through the cold winter air and I will remember its warmth on my body for as long as possible…like a daughter. I have a daughter and I am a daughter…my mother was a daughter and her mother was a daughter…we are a steady stream of light-years. Yesterday the sunshine escorted us as we drove through Hartford to the airport while 30 mph winds tried to push us back. Today the light behind the curtain drew me from slumber. It will take me to Harrybrooke for a much needed walk...and back light for me the black knitted glove stuck on the end of a branch reaching up in an unrequited handshake to last spring’s tattered kite. It will disappear on the horizon, but I will know it is still there…behind something…or shining on another part of the world…it is always somewhere. It will help me remember the way my grandmother sang 'You Are My Sunshine’ in her Polish accent…and its solar power stored within me. The weather forecast for Seattle is rain and 40 for the coming week. Yesterday I had my daughter and the sunshine with me; today I have the sunshine.

Personal Holiday Note to Friends & Family

2009-01-01T13:16:00.003-05:00

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY DAD, Donald Kucinskas (January 1, 1921-January 6, 2009)
Obit Funeral

(This post is a temporary departure from the usual content of this blog and was originally written on December 31, 2008).

I started out 2008 with a "good feeling" about the coming year, but we all now know there were some less than stellar moments...and yet there were some victories...So what exactly 'ordered’ our days this past year?

Well...in June, Jordan (18) graduated with honors from Henry Abbott Technical High School, also earning a certificate in Computer Graphics and is currently a Communications major at the University of Hartford. He also does design work for a Danbury print shop when he is at home. Also in June, Marissa (20) returned to Seattle for her second year, now a professional modern dancer with Spectrum Dance Theater. In August, Jonathan (23) who is a software tester at Pitney-Bowes had emergency open-heart surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian in NYC to replace a malformed heart valve that had developed an infection. After a harrowing experience, he is now fully recovered and trying to cope with labyrinthine medical bills. Bob works many shifts as a CNA at The Kent Specialty Care Center about 40 minutes away and I have two jobs as a Head Start preschool teacher based at our neighborhood school, then tutor evenings, Saturdays and summers at The Huntington Learning Center about a mile up the street. Grateful that my own children came home alive and well for the holidays, I have been rewarded with opportunities to help struggling children who do not belong to me also stay alive and well.

And what happens when we are ‘out of order’?

Well...stroll through the blog and hidden here and there you may find pleasant surprises or interesting snippets of what goes on at all hours of the day and night. I’ll try to add photos and gadgets for fun and maybe an audio clip if I can. It won’t stay the same because life doesn’t (and shouldn’t) always stay the same. I love to write and ‘muck about’ my blog and hopefully give some small gift to all who visit.

Thanks for stopping by, leave a comment at the bottom of this post or email me at ConnectingLines@gmail.com and do come again! If you would like to hear the SOUNDTRACK to the slide show below, click the loudspeaker icon on the upper left. This year I'm leaving my 'feelings' about the coming year very open-ended...and open to prayer.

"NATURE GOES HER OWN WAY AND ALL THAT TO US SEEMS AN EXCEPTION IS REALLY ACCORDING TO ORDER." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

FIELD NOTES: “Celebrate! Starting tomorrow, the days get longer”...

2008-12-21T11:24:00.004-05:00

Winter Solstice

...is what it says on my Old Farmer’s Almanac gardening calendar today. Small comfort when outside my window our second dose of snow falls. First it was Austin and now it is Brooke laying a blanket of snow. Sheets of snow thud from the trees like miniature avalanches. On Friday, the stores were bereft of bread and milk, as if we would never get out again. Instead of a walk, there will be shoveling and scraping. I hear the voices of the neighbor boys, the voices that aren’t concerned with ramifications and exhaustion other than how long they can romp outside before they have to go to the bathroom - a play-consuming effort best avoided. I still remember that ‘oh, goody’ feeling of seeing the snow piling up and school cancellations. Here in Connecticut we used to have a showing of ‘Snowbound Theater’ that featured some old black and white movie (like “Heidi” with Shirley Temple) to keep us amused while Mother worked around the house. That was in the days before cable television and videos, Velcro and lightweight polar fleece, microwave popcorn and Cream of Wheat in a pouch. In some ways winter was heavier then…but lighter in our hearts…

FIELD NOTES: Hey, that can in the woods looks familiar!

2008-12-19T13:33:00.007-05:00

Through the kitchen window

...it’s the one that I keep on the deck, handle locked and bungee corded! It’s still lightweight because I haven’t filled it up yet with a fresh forty pounds of black oil sunflower seeds…and someone just couldn’t wait. The wild ones have carted it off and made fun with the lid like kids in a cookie jar. The first snowstorm is predicted today – a BIG one – possibly followed by another, so I should haul the can back, clean off the dirt clods, load the feeder and hang the suet cage as soon as I can. When the snow does come, I will be entertained by the chickadee and cardinal, nuthatch and tufted titmouse, junco and wren, sparrow and yes…even the blue jay…and woodpecker…and squirrel. There is no point in being angry with instincts and clever survival skills…after all, if you open up a “soup kitchen”, they will come. I verbally fuss about the deck being a mess with excrement and shells...but I think what I am more annoyed about, is that I failed to wake up to the racket and gypped myself out of watching their antics…

FIELD NOTES: When I heard the snowplow in the early morning...

2008-12-07T17:33:00.003-05:00

Afternoon, top of December

...I thought about being able to take my first snowy walk of the season, easy to think of in a warm, cozy bed on a Sunday morning. But when I do get to Harrybrooke at three with the temp on the dashboard reading 33, I am surprised by a powerful slap of wind and consider turning back. Not wanting to be a fair weather friend, I think “maybe, just once around” and doesn’t the ice trimming the waters’ edge look beautiful…like white lace? Then my stiffened cheeks mound up at the sight of a tiny snowman atop the post that holds up a small metal trash can. There is playfulness in winter, though the brisk wind continues to test my friendship as the huge white pines swoop down to flap at me like some fraternity initiation. The wind sounds vast and hollow and searching. The earth has turned one cheek away from the sun. Through cold-induced tears, I blink up at the sun that is no longer a radiant sunflower yellow, but so pale that if a sunbeam were to reach me, it would break over my head like a thin pane of ice. Over the river and through the bare trees, the flags on the golf course still standing in their holes bring soldiers to mind – so incredibly dutiful in their discomfort. I pass a few hearty souls…women walking…the passing greetings are less warm and more earnest, mostly an acknowledgment of what we must continue to do. I walk by a pair of lanky, layered, knit-capped figures blending in with the tree trunks…except for the cigarette and cell phone. A different purpose. After one mile around the park, the wind calms for a moment and, as if I have proven my mettle, Harrybrooke grasps me with steely arms, acknowledging my admiration, my respect and…that I am still here. My fingertips are warm now; the blood circulates under my frozen outer core like the mud of hibernating ponds. I feel as if I have been swallowed into the warm belly of a beast, welcomed now, although my body’s survival strategies are not nearly as ingenious as the frog’s with its antifreeze and adaptable metabolism that allows it to sleep winter away. The only sound today is a rhythmic whacking – firewood being split? In the periphery I see the movement of two sweatshirt hooded figures on a back deck. I guess it’s the whack of a staple gun installing Christmas lights – more dutiful discomfort. I have to watch my step on the way out; the wet pavement is icing up before me. Returned to my car, I find I don’t really need to crank up the heat because, except for my exposed face feeling like a drawstring is tightening around it, in the warmer interior there is enough contrast to feel the comfort. I am a lucky one; I can choose to survive this climate, I can choose to challenge myself in the cold because…I am not homeless, because there is certain warmth awaiting me. Really, I am only toying with survival …at least for today….

FIELD NOTES: Maybe it is a feeling of history repeating itself...

2008-11-27T22:42:00.002-05:00

Thanksgiving, 2008

...the dizziness of bobble-heads with lessons not remembered wobbling around Wall St. and beyond, that it has occurred to me for the first time in my fifty years to ask how my grandparents celebrated Thanksgiving when their children were young, when there was the Great Depression. But my grandparents are all dead. I find that my parents and their remaining siblings do not remember celebrating Thanksgiving as children. President Lincoln declared it a national holiday in 1863, but it was only randomly celebrated until FDR fixed it at the fourth Thursday of November in a controversial move to create more shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I see commercialism has been around for a long time, the economy being at the heart of everything – that is, the heart of the machinery - the “everything” that keeps the manmade world in the constant motion of production, decline and redevelopment. Thanksgiving up until now has had no beginning and no end for me. It always was…and now I find…it wasn’t always. My grandmother was fond of repeating her favorite advice to “not get old” but I try to counter that with words from one of my favorite James Taylor songs “the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” I step outside to fill the birdfeeder with black oil sunflower seeds and look up at the sky – yup, still there.…a constant in the heavens and constant thanksgiving…

FIELD NOTES: From a distance, they look like broken eggshells...

2008-11-12T17:13:00.004-05:00

After school

...the brown and beige and brittle oval leaves on the pavement scattered in the pattern that their tree chose to let them go in. With childish curiosity, I purposely walk on them to test their strength, to see if I can crush them, make them crunch, but their lifecycle complete, they seem to be apathetic to my footsteps. Some of Harrybrooke’s privacy has disappeared with the leaves; I feel as if I am in the shower tub with no curtains or standing by a bare window, exposed as the early dusk descends. The skeleton that supported the body of summer is now forced to show itself. I still find beauty, albeit coarse and gray and dry. It’s different and takes the sophistication of the senses to appreciate. Bony fingers try to point it out, but passersby linger less and find it necessary to keep warm with rapid movement. I read the Lake Lillinonah announcement of the annual draw down for seasonal service and dam maintenance, but nevertheless it is disappointing to find the Still River wizened. I sense an omnipresent dryness in the air and smell wood fires burning, feel my ears pinched and notice my nostrils dripping. I hear a far-off leaf blower and suppose there is a man at the end of it, earnest in his belief that he can control nature, at least a little part of it, at least for a little part of a day, at least from a distance...

FIELD NOTES: Just for the record, I voted today...

2008-11-04T15:22:00.006-05:00

Election Day

...as I always do. But I don’t always get to vote for hope. Or change. Or for a man of black ancestry. I voted for history. I voted for the next generation that includes my own children. I don’t usually mix politics with my field notes, but in a way politics is always underfoot because in some way I talk about it daily, because I notice when it gets stuck to my shoe or obstructs my path. Because when it gets me discouraged, frustrated, confused or weary I take a walk. Because I find clarity in nature, in motion, in feeling my heart pump blood through my veins, in making my lungs expand to take that glorious breath of fresh air. Because "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world” as John Muir said so insightfully many years ago. Just for the record, I admit I voted for Barack Obama today, knowing it will be for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, and knowing that, I did not vote for perfection, but for transparency and compassion that extends beyond personal ambition…I at least voted for the hope of all that…

FIELD NOTES: The eulogy came from the television weatherman...

2008-11-02T10:24:00.008-05:00

The top of November

...“the growing season has ended” and today I awake an hour ‘too early’ because my body does not know that Eastern Standard Time has now begun. The ancient Celts, 53 latitudinal degrees north from the equator, simply called it the dark time, or Samhain (SAU-en), one of the two great doorways of their year. This Celtic ‘calendar’ of two seasons seems more authentic in design as anyone who has grown up in New England knows there are not four seasons that abide by the division of our mathematical grids. Although I am not a participant in pagan beliefs or rituals, I am intrigued by historical origins and mysteries, like Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Easter Island, Machu Picchu, Pompeii, and the Etruscans. The older I get, the more I relate to the ‘nature’ of nature - its lightness and darkness, its warmth and coldness, its growth and dormancy, its cycle of life that includes dying. I don’t exactly look forward to ‘the dark time’ as I do the summer, but now I can welcome it. For, as written by Mara Freeman, a leading teacher of Celtic spirituality, “…it was understood that in dark silence comes whisperings of new beginnings, the stirring of the seed below the ground.” So, I can welcome it like an estranged relative, the rejected or the ignored, the unaffiliated ones who keep their irregular beauties under covers that often require too much effort for society at large to bother with. The time of light is more pleasant and less challenging to welcome. It is joyful and giddy and less potent. We do not kick up our heels at this time of year. We gather and store. After a pot of strong coffee during this writing, I will cook some bacon for myself, dress and go out to my ‘estate’ (as I like to call my little half-acre!) and rake and prepare to hunker down. I will stuff my jean pockets full of tissues for my sensitive nose that runs like a spigot at temperatures below 50 degrees. There is a kind of devilish pleasure this time of year in putting tingling toes and fingers to hot cups of cider or tea or wood fires or baking ovens just as there is, conversely, in sweating in the sun and plunging into a cold lake. Having memory of senses and observation and inquiry take the edge off the coming of the dark time because I know there will be a time of light.

FIELD NOTES: "Breakdown garden"...

2008-10-12T11:31:00.007-04:00

Columbus Day Weekend

...is on my list because not only do I have a few extra days off from school, but the weather is glorious for October - 70 degrees and sunny! The necks of the sweet basil hang down with the burden of going to seed, two green tomatoes the size of golf balls (and just as hard) still cling to life inside their cage, the Kentucky Wonder green beans are beginning to wonder if there is any longer a point to their existence, there is little evidence left of the pickling cukes and only the parsley remains forlornly looking around for its companions until I break it off at its base and stand it up in a large glass of water to await the supper salad. As I untie the bean poles and prepare to remove the mass of yellow, brown and green vines to the compost, I spy a couple of green pods suspended vertically. They are still tender! I find myself stuffing them into my mouth like a primate in the wild or a person without a home. I go down on my knees into the dark and dry garden soil pawing through the tangle to find more late bloomers. I eat them – maybe four or five – biting off their umbilical tips and spitting them out with no sense of etiquette or propriety while relishing the snap and crunch and green juice inside my mouth. A person of the twenty-first century can still sow a seed, harvest a garden and survive even in the midst of Wall Street collapsing under its virtual importance.

FIELD NOTES: “Please stay away from the snapping turtles”...

2008-09-28T19:54:00.003-04:00

...are the words printed in marker on the copy paper sign posted at the entrance road in Harrybrooke. “No colords” are the sprayed words that had to be scrubbed off the Sri Chinmoy Peace Mile sign on the exit road in Harrybrooke. Cautionary, incendiary, directional, instructive, restrictive, prophetic…..signs.

FIELD NOTES: There is a regatta and sprint...

2008-09-21T22:34:00.009-04:00

Sunday morning through the car window

...that I happen upon this Sunday morning. A small sign at the end of the road tells me so. The weather is as crisp as a fresh Macoun. Spectators are walking along the road from the designated parking areas to the site of the local rowing center on the riverbank of the Housatonic. There are men and women comfortably dressed in shorts and windbreakers wearing expressions of delighted anticipation and I am oddly envious, wishing I could join them even though I am not acquainted with any rowers in the meet. On my drive here, I notice many joggers and cyclists earnestly progressing along the roadside. Leisure, discretionary and purposeful leisure, is all around me. There was a time when I sped along this road each Sunday morning with neatly-dressed children seat-belted in, hurrying to church, hurrying to set up my Sunday school classroom, often questioning the joggers and cyclists and boaters for putting their bodies before their souls even though I already had a pile of weekly sale flyers from the morning paper stacked on the seat next to me with thoughts of the afternoon schedule diluting the intent of where I was going before I even got there. But today I am driving my oldest son to the hospital to complete his month-long course of daily IV antibiotics and, like the cinematic orphan wistfully gazing into an inviting café window, I am resigned, my consciousness harboring the thought that leisure...(and money)...(and worship)...are most enjoyable when they are discretionary and purposeful. In the direction of my peripheral vision I say out loud, “I want to be a part of that; I must have more of that in my life…” There is life inside the car and I am suddenly aware that I am driving right through the point of it.

FIELD NOTES: In the middle of the night, Hanna and Harrybrooke were wed...

2008-09-07T20:58:00.009-04:00

Hurricane season

...and late in the afternoon I went to their reception only to find the green groom still engorged, glistening under the waters that she had poured out over him with no restraint, her rain of passion turning him into an enormous puddle. I could not complete the mile loop and instead walked back and forth avoiding, almost with a sense of embarrassment, the post-coital pond where sky and land had made love with such ferocity. Pent up and bent on fulfilling my two miles, I headed for the bridge. I could hear the Still River roaring uncharacteristically, then saw it tumbling all over itself under the grate, foaming and spitting and thrashing as I quietly made my way out to the road. The road, now closed to through traffic, used to be the main route for commuters looking for a path of least resistance. It felt peculiar walking where automobiles once dominated and as I crossed over a defunct bridge back to my car, I noticed how the trees and weeds and grasses had narrowed it, vigorously reclaiming their territory, thin green blades determined enough to break open the black asphalt and stand in witness: “I, Hanna, take you, Harrybrooke…”

FIELD NOTES: A hum briefly hung outside my writing window;

2008-09-01T11:39:00.003-04:00

Labor Day, the first seconds of September, 2008
...I thought it was a bee or my garden pinwheels oddly spinning without breeze. It lasted only seconds…brrrrt…but luckily sound pulled eyes from computer screen to window screen in the very instant a hummingbird hovered at the window box. Both the bird and I were delighted and deliriously hopeful for a split-second until, as it so often happens, fascination turns to disappointment. We both returned to our quests, astutely aware of our powerful senses, but now, all the more possessive of them because the bright red geraniums in the window box were fake.

FIELD NOTES: The pineapple sage is closed down like an umbrella...

2008-08-28T14:35:00.014-04:00

“Sick” Day, through the window

...due to my unintentional neglect. I called in sick to work because I feel similarly. I rinse the breakfast dishes in the sink and wonder, what now, has blown into the backyard. Sometimes it feels as if I am deliberately placed downwind from the debris of others. But not today, it is not a bright pink candy wrapper, but a lone impatiens blooming in the middle of the lawn! Last summer the deer availed themselves of my hanging baskets as if they were salad bowls and now perhaps they have brought back one of the flowers (albeit with less than delicate means) as a peace offering. I am reminded of my father's wit in the story he liked to curb my wishing moods with, the one about the little girl who wanted a pony and all she got was manure, but her optimism was so great that she declared "Oh goody, goody! I almost got a horse!" How lucky I am today to have gotten a flower. Thanks, Dad.

FIELD NOTES: There are dolls on the side of the road...

2008-08-18T21:47:00.008-04:00

Through the window, 84 West to New York City

...little plastic arms and legs, some with pieces of dolly clothing. The happy yellow-pink-teal of playthings streaming past my driver’s side window refresh my anxiety. I wonder if traveling before me there is a sad small face or a large angry one on the road ahead. How do significant belongings ever get to the side of the road: accident, carelessness, over-indulgence, domestic violence, anger, reaction, revenge, crime, punishment? I am a country-road girl and it does not seem real, this driving to the City to see my 23-year-old son in the ICU after emergency open-heart surgery. The strange image of dollies on the side of the road comes along like a random poke in the stomach and I can't explain why I feel sympathy for the child who lost a suitcase of toys except for the idea that perhaps my own child's anxiety has a great deal of company in the universe...both big and small.

FIELD NOTES: Death came with humor...

2008-08-08T20:46:00.005-04:00

Through the (car) window

...when I drove out of the neighborhood this morning. Transporting my oldest son to yet another doctor’s appointment, the inside of our car was filled with an air of concern, yet a hint of resolution with the sun shining and the radio tuned to NPR for edification. We were interrupted by a coffee klatch of mourning doves congregating on the road. As the flock reluctantly dispersed in slow motion, one bird still sat in the middle of the pavement as if he assumed that no one would have the audacity to run him over. I assumed that no creature capable of flying would procrastinate himself to death. Continuing to talk while automatically glancing in the rear view mirror, I saw feathers pouf up into the air like a pillow bursting open...and a laugh came out like a cannon ball...its black humor surprising me.

FIELD NOTES: Freedom came not from learning to ride my bike, but from leaving...

2008-08-03T18:44:00.008-04:00

August afternoon

...my yard and driving on the mother-forbidden street! At Harrybrooke today there are lucky children, lucky because they have parents who brought them here. A toddler boy jogs alongside his stroller. The preschool teacher in me smiles when I hear the dad ask his boy to count the Canada geese. Although liberated from his stroller, he was not liberated from his parents’ fears: “Don’t go so fast, that’s how you fell last time. Slow down, slow down! That’s how you fell! Don’t go near the geese. Geese are very, very mean. They will bite you!” A helmeted elementary-aged boy learning to ride a two-wheeler is cheered on by his parents until he tumbles in the pathway. As I approach from behind in my power walk, I prepare to root for the boy myself and tell him to keep it up, but Dad is sputtering next to Mom: “Don’t stop pedaling! Come on, pedal, pedal…aw, not again! Don’t stop pedaling! (sigh) He KNOWS how to do it!” I close my mouth not wanting to go into the fray of family frustration. Instead, I notice how the cattails have evolved into their coveted state, brown and velvety and oblong, the frankfurters-on-a-stick of nature and how the voice of Harrybrooke has deepened from the soprano of spring peepers to the bass of bullfrogs. So will the voices of the young boys I notice today. It’s true that geese can bite and boys often don’t learn their lessons as fast as we’d like, but the streets of nature have often taught me to stand back and watch with my hands behind my back. Some things...water, wind, storms, weeds...will take their own courses anyway. And it is I that needs to find freedom in this loss of control. (Sigh)

FIELD NOTES: Ill-will came upon me like a sneeze...

2008-08-03T09:23:00.005-04:00

First weekend of August, 2008

...my rite of ownership reacting to a perceived irritation and briefly closing my eyes to the rite of nature. The mower rolled up the bank by the side of the driveway and I let it roll back over a small gray movement. I had once seen my father stomp on a mole that had percolated up from the earth where we were extracting some woody overgrown yews. My mother and I had winced and screamed while my father asked if I liked the mole tunnels heaving up my lawn. Well, no, but I didn’t have the World War II navy training that conditioned my dad to weigh in a split-second the future consequences of his current actions. So with that in the back of my mind, I now let the mower roll back over the small gray movement. I had once accidentally mowed over a garter snake with bad timing, the result being instantly fatal and not at all pretty, so it surprised me that I would now seek out such an act. In horror I saw the small gray movement was not a mole at all, but a good little toad, eater of garden insects and the sign of a healthy habitat. I peered over the side of the mower as I saw him hopping away and tried to count his little limbs and fingers and toes. He appeared to have them all! I was grateful that I keep the mower blades high because I don’t believe in stressing the lawn with buzz cuts and I was relieved that the most damage I had done that day was to scare the heck out of a toad…and probably make him a little deaf.

FIELD NOTES: If you can feel like a color...

2008-07-27T11:45:00.005-04:00

Sunday morning at the window, July, 2008

...my colors today are sage and periwinkle, all earth and sky, palely trying to hang onto what I love about summer – a refreshing, sweet-smelling breeze tumbling over the sill and through the sheer bedroom curtain, birdsong and baby-song in the near distances because the window can be left open today as the remnants of a pre-dawn thunderstorm sink down into the yard like a giant body on a chaise lounge, fresh plums, vine-ripened tomatoes, a Vidalia onion and one aging peach like a spilled still-life on the kitchen counter…and toast and coffee on the deck ...and I feel like painting the blue sky and puffy clouds (lost due to repair) back onto the hallway ceiling.

FIELD NOTES: I blow my budget in the first row but...

2008-07-13T20:12:00.010-04:00

Sunday morning in July at Elephant’s Trunk Flea Market

...at the end of my tour, I confirm that if I had to choose two things, it would be the two things that I am actually walking out with – a Tibetan bracelet and a recycled caterpillar garden ornament. I found the bracelet sitting on top of a heap of delicious looking blue and green jade necklaces in a wooden box. I have a small wrist that is difficult fit to because anything of quality clunks around annoyingly like a free weight. I look for serpentine designs that can coil and cling at any portion of my arm and this one is slim like silver wishbones jointed by black faceted beads with gold flower bead caps, finished at either end with soft silver tassels of fine chain link that gently brush my skin. I should have bargained – that’s expected at the flea market – but I made the fatal error of being an enamored buyer. “Fifteen,” he said, “and the necklaces are ten apiece.” I could have looked skeptical, it was still young in the day, but I fell into enchantment. As soon as I pulled out the twenty from my pants pocket, I knew I should have asked the dealer to throw in a necklace, too. In a short distance, I found myself enamored again and chatting with a welder with five daughters. He uses re-bars and tool parts and grates and – well, NOT junk, he emphasized, but recycled material – to craft tables and benches and shelves and decorations. He quips that when he was a young man, he wished to always be surrounded by beautiful women, so be careful what you wish for! “Oh, yes,” I concur, “you have to be very specific!” He also relates the story of how one daughter asked when she could start working with him and he replied ‘right now!” as he handed her the broom. I couldn’t resist a souvenir. The caterpillar is made from two metal rake heads, a broken bed knob and two bent screws from the furnace in which he burns scrap to heat his home. His thirteen year-old daughter welded it with him, curving its tines into a body and then painting it green and yellow. “Well, thanks for hanging around!” he says as I leave with the caterpillar, picturing it in my garden as proof of the power of girls and wishing I knew how to weld! Another row is like another country. I wonder about the display of over-sized brushes and the dealer materializes to explain that they are calligraphy brushes from China. “So large?” I say. “Why, yes, they are used on walls and banners. And the crowds will make a clearing in the square where political messages are written with water.” I ask what they are made of and find out the brush is horse hair and the handles are carved from wood or stone. They feel absolutely beautiful in my hand, a fine addition to my studio, but they are seventy-five dollars. My youngest son’s tuition bill and the home heating oil bill in the same day’s mail give me pause. In light of the Beijing Olympic Games beginning in a few weeks, I look up at the dealer and comment that here I am in America, holding a Chinese calligraphy brush in my hand with a Tibetan bracelet wrapped around my wrist. He nods with uplifted eybrows, a chance moment of mutual clarity found at a flea market.

FIELD NOTES: I made a point of finding my way back to the hammock...

2008-07-12T21:14:00.002-04:00

A Saturday evening, July 12^th, 2008

...dinner done. Saturday nights are usually the only times when I can cook leisurely. I do not come from a ‘cooking’ family and only pull off the illusion of cooking to my family because I get a kick out of messing around with herbs and spices (either fresh from my garden or more reliably, ordered from Penzey’s whom I consider to be one of my kitchen gods). My younger son left the hammock out, so before I take it in away from the chance of rain, I sprawl on it. I lay on my back like a flipped turtle, nowhere to look but up. The lanky, overgrown locusts are almost able to hold hands with the ancient oaks on the other side of the yard. The breach in the canopy has gotten disconcertingly smaller over the years; branches frequently tumble down and one night, a giant oak collapsed entirely, thundering down like Goliath for no apparent reason! I have taken to planning an escape route every time I recline in the backyard, calculating whether it would be safer to run toward the falling tree or away from it. Or, if I don’t have time to slip on my flip-flops, will I be able to leap over the split-rail fence into my neighbor’s yard without getting scratched up? But tonight I wonder about something different. Birds are traveling overhead. Their dark silhouettes appear from the south side of the canopy and disappear into the north side or appear from the north side of the canopy and disappear into the south side. It is a veritable freeway. Where are they going? A medium-sized pair urgently flaps straight across as if they are late for some engagement. A tiny couple randomly circles around a bit, the aviary version of cruising on a Saturday night. A large party of birds (perhaps starlings) fills the sky like a gang spoiling for trouble. Where are they all going? I am not going anywhere.

FIELD NOTES: It was the skirt that gave me buoyancy...

2008-07-07T20:24:00.001-04:00

A Monday for fun, July 7, 2008

...a simple Willie Smith design bought on discount at TJ Maxx, and I noticed I was smiling to myself with absolutely no reason to. Except, the skirt is new to me…and also never-worn. The cotton fabric is crisp because it hasn’t been laundered yet. The yellow-black-white-grey graphic floral with the self-tie belt at the side fits perfectly around my hips, gently flares out and ends at my knees. In the kitchen…and in front of the hall mirror…I spin in it. It might attract the bees!

FIELD NOTES: I stooped on my way, the front path was...

2008-07-06T20:41:00.000-04:00

July 6^th, 2008

...sprouting weeds again and, again, I remembered I had forgotten to write myself a sticky note about clipping the peaking lavender at evening for drying and there on the white pea-gravel and flagstones was a dead bumblebee, curled and dry, lying among all my inattentiveness.

FIELD NOTES: My pretty bell-shaped verdigris path lights stopped working...

2008-07-04T22:30:00.000-04:00

The eve of the 4^th of July, 2008

...seasons ago and, lacking the energy to dig up the wires to find out whom perhaps chewed the electrical wires that run under the thick mat of pachysandra, the shade garden remains dark. I stepped out on the deck to admire my recent session of weeding, trimming and mulching my ethereal walkway to the kitchen compost. Above all the lush greenery – the hosta I divided, my fern collection, the accenting columbines and bleeding hearts – fireflies were standing in for the dysfunctional path lights, quiet fireworks in a miniature world, a world that seemed more my size, more at my level of management. It was something to celebrate.

FIELD NOTES: I removed the nest, reluctantly and somewhat remorsefully...

2008-06-30T14:49:00.001-04:00

The last day of June, 2008

...because this was not the first time the nature of birds has come into question around my house. Last year, I was teaching in a first grade classroom where it is traditional that birds are studied every spring. With little effort, you can fascinate this age group with eggs, nests and especially hatching, so it was with great enthusiasm that each day I told a little story about the progress of my robin’s nest with three….no five!... pale blue eggs. At first I hoped that the eggs would hatch before the end of the school year, but when joy turned to tragedy I hoped their short attention spans would spare me from inquiries or else…..I would have to lie. The nest had been situated in a hanging fern plant on my deck just outside the kitchen window above the sink where I could easily keep up with the comings and goings of the young mother. One day, she did not come with strings of worms draped from her beak and the fuzzy peeping heads with giant gaping mouths stopped popping up. Should I investigate? My plant had not been watered except by random rain. I stepped up on the wicker and wrought-iron bistro chair to take a peek. An apparently un-hatched egg had been vandalized, shell remains of the hatchlings were still strewn about the nest and it smelled of death. Tiny shriveled corpses, their oversized heads and eyeballs dangling, met my eyes. Exposed to attack, set up for abandonment, it had been a poorly situated home. Rather than disposing of the whole plant, pot and all, I extracted the nesting material from the fern like shredded wheat from long hair, buried it, hosed down the hanging plant and left it to recuperate in a corner of the patio. So this year – same plant, same place – different bird (a wren I think, judging by the domed stick nest with a side entrance). My back door is too busy; the poor bird would be kept in constant flicker and me in constant startle – too stressful! I tried to keep the nest intact and set the bundle on the child-sized Time Out bench that I use as a garden decoration and anchor for my mosaic frog and potted parsley. And there it sits – a reminder of our choices.

FIELD NOTES: If I repeat myself, it must be good.

2008-06-29T12:53:00.002-04:00

June 29, 2008

Coming upon a complete yearly cycle of making notes, I’m not planning on looking back to see exactly what I made note of. I don’t think I see things the same way twice anyway. I plant my favorite flowers and vegetables, but not always the same way and I often experiment with new varieties. The bugs and critters visit, the weather delights and tortures, but not always with same modus operandi. So if I repeat myself, I figure it must be something really noteworthy, something worthwhile. After all, to notice something more than once, to marvel at something all over again, is not mundane or demented, but like the delight of seasons and the youthful expectation I always want to remember.

FIELD NOTES: So, all of a sudden, a daddy longlegs is crawling across my dashboard.

2008-06-25T19:58:00.001-04:00

June 25^th, 2008

I am a little late for work and taking Jerusalem Hill to try to avoid the traffic and road construction on Route 7. Kind of absurd that an old farm road (read: roller coaster) with hairpin turns designed for tractors at the turn of the last century is the quickest alternative route, but that’s New Milford. Although I am not particularly afraid of spiders, they do always seem to give me a little start and this one is quickly ambulating my way. I lecture my kids on multi-tasking while driving, but here I am trying to fish a tissue out of my pants pocket, keep an eye on the path of the spider and, of course, keep the other eye on the twisty road! I have the capacity to kill…or I could roll down my window and demonstrate my stewardship of nature. I might also be explaining how I went off the road and missed work altogether: “So, all of a sudden, a daddy longlegs is crawling across my dashboard….” Choose your own adventure.

FIELD NOTES: Speaking of backyard murder-mysteries...

2008-06-23T17:21:00.003-04:00

June 23, 2008

...I buried my third squirrel this morning after nearly running over the corpse with the lawn mower. The neighbors must wonder what I keep yelping about because I just can’t help reacting loudly when discovering some sort of crime or violation. Not two weeks ago, I saw something white in the lengthening backyard grass. I wondered what it was; maybe a bag blown into our yard? Upon inspection, my son and daughter inside the house heard my yelping: AAAKH! Oh oh oh oh oh! AAAKH! The white was the underside of a squirrel belly-up on the lawn. My eyes trailed up the ancient oak trees where a labyrinth of dead and dying branches exists and I thought perhaps, like the first squirrel I think I wrote about some time ago, he had fallen from the weak canopy. So today, shovel in hand again, I went to dig a hole at the back of the lawn where brush and leaves are left to mulch naturally and discovered the grave of squirrel number two had been breached. Ah, the animal world, driven by a combination of self-preservation, compulsion, survival and instinct rather than morals. And yet, not always so very different from our own as my active mind raises its inner eyebrow…did these squirrels fall…or were they pushed??

FIELD NOTES: It's a great position to lie in because...

2008-06-03T20:00:00.003-04:00

from a hammock you get a new perspective on your own backyard. There is intrigue, detail, small stuff that is important (to the small) and even the murder-mystery. There is a particular cat – a white one with a black fur cape thrown over his head and back - that frequents my yard, stalking my beloved birds but earning redemption by rounding up the rodents. I think it his cache that I have uncovered under the shed. An old picnic table I use as an outdoor potting bench sits atop a set of wooden pallets where I store odd containers along with seasonal bags of soil and peat. A loose board and the hole underneath bequeathed a lip-curling collection of bones, furry pieces of tails and a shriveled up bird carcass. I know there is an underground system of tunnels from sometimes having the lawn sink beneath my feet and I have seen Mr. Blackcape watching the entrances and exits. I’m lying crosswise in the hammock and spy two pointy ears periscope up, then quickly down, behind the wood pile. I imitate a friendly purr to draw Mr. Blackcape out. Maybe we could be friends? But he interprets my overture as artificial and reacts in either mistrust or condescension. I accept his rejection as a condition of nature and like a lion in the wilderness, we will live parallel lives, respecting an invisible, silent boundary and considering each other’s actions with a pinch of suspicion. I have to do something about not getting enough hammock time.

FIELD NOTES: Just a week ago, I wrote about planting a 'memorial garden'...

2008-06-01T20:21:00.002-04:00

June 1, 2008

...and it is in more ways than one, not just as my Memorial Day ritual, but as a memory of many things - of earth, of my maternal grandmother and even of me. I have a habit of gardening in flip-flops. I do end up destroying them which is why I sigh to myself when I’ve forgotten to slip out of my good flip-flops and into the two dollar ones from the drug store. I don’t do it on purpose, I run out just to do water maintenance and, before I know it, I’m pulling a weed which turns into a hundred weeds. My nails fill with dirt and dinner is delayed, but no matter, it’s summer and dinner can be eaten at eight without much consequence. And that is the memorial to my grandmother who, in the days before jellies and crocs, fashioned her own backyard footwear out of flip-flop bottoms and ruffled elastic lace from the five and dime store because she did NOT like a thong between her toes. She trimmed her toenails with a pocket knife that fascinated and startled me at the same time and her size six shoes were just right for little girls to play dress-up with. I remember her feet brown with soil from walking around her make-shift gardens – the sunny strip behind the garage where green beans crawled and horseradish, rhubard and sour grass for schav (Polish sorrel soup) squatted wherever they could and at the end of the hedgerow atop the steep bank were tomato plants or little cukes in old metal tubs. By memory or design, I pretty much grow the same stuff. And my feet sink into the soft fertile earth, my toenails fill up with garden dirt and I swing my feet, one at a time, into the bathroom sink to scrub them. It would be easier to wear sneakers or garden boots, but it wouldn’t feel nearly as good, it wouldn’t have that glorious connection to ancestors, to earth…to me. It happens to be my fiftieth birthday…and it feels good.