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September 18, 2006
Apples, apples everywhere
We had a busy but enjoyable Saturday. It was our turn to take care of Delaney and Ella, so we took them out to pick apples at Stuckey Farm. (We have been doing that every year since 1983, and many of those years I went multiple times bewteen family and preschool trips!) The girls wore their prairie bonnets and aprons from Walnut Grove, and they had a great time. We dropped our apples and cider off here at home and then went over to Woodfield Crossing for the Washington Township Safety Fair. So many different activites and give-aways of course! Delaney shied away from most of the hands-on activities, but Ella tried her hand at spraying the huge fire hose (assisted by a firefighter!), sat on a huge gleaming Harley belonging to a state motorcycle sheriff, and put on a real fireman’s coat and hat for a photo op with a genuine firefighter! They even had a “rock band” whose musicians were all firefighters in uniforms. We ended the day by doing some birthday shopping for Melissa, and then meeting Taylor and Melissa for bday dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s. And then back to their house for cake and gifts. Delaney came home with us to spend the night, and needless to say we were ready to just sit and relax!
Posted by Carol at 1:29 PM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2006
Another poem - the beautiful words of Mary Oliver
Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond
As for life
I'm humbled,
I'm without words
sufficient to say
how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond
both of these
and over and over,
and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched
though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen—
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.
Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort—
along with human love,
dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about
stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,
and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can't wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?
Poem: "Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond" by Mary Oliver from Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press.
Posted by Carol at 9:22 AM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2006
September 11
An Early Morning Cafe
I
One hundred and seven stories into the air
the Windows on the World Cafe
served pate and poached salmon
to diners staring over Manhattan,
but early this September morning,
the sommelier and maitre d'
were still asleep in their faraway flats,
only the sous-chef and banquet staff
had arrived to peel the shrimp,
trim the artichokes and wash
the leaves of the escarole.
II
Simple work with your mates
in a quiet early morning cafe
is a pleasure: jokes, mild complaining,
a hummed tune or two,
when suddenly a berserk machine
decides to murder a building with fire.
Like a badly shot elephant,
the hundred-and-six stories holding up
your peeling knife and lettuce drier
wobbled and shook a little while,
but when flames melted the bones
it all tumbled down on top of itself
in a gray heap, shrimp,
artichokes, escarole, fifty thousand
bottles of elegant wine,
and you yourself, unless you leapt
out one of the windows of the world
to finish with imaginary wings
the flight to the city of angels.
Ill
Humans so riddled with hate they turned
from men to bombs smashed the girders
under your cafe, though they'd never met you,
to murder you for the glory of God
with your apron still smeared with shrimp guts.
It was always thus. Try to kill an abstraction
by murdering a building from the air,
but all you kill is Bob and Edna
and Sollie and Rodrigo and Mei-Mei.
A building is only a set of artificial legs
to hold up human beings in the air,
and an airplane only a sheet of folded paper.
But fifty thousand bottles of good wine
and a hundred pounds of fresh Gulf shrimp,
and Bob and Edna and all the rest--
that is something real!
IV
If you think you've bagged the one truth
and that truth wants final sacrifice,
then you've stepped outside the human race,
and your plane will not land in heaven
wherever you think it might be.
Heaven is an early morning cafe
wherever you are.
--Bill Holm
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Though born in the middle of the North American continent, Bill Holm is a devotee of islands as well as an essayist, musician, and poet. His books include Eccentric Islands, Coming Home Crazy, The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth, The Dead Get By With Everything, and Box-Elder Bug Variations. He is currently working on a collection of essays about contemporary America from the vantage of Iceland. He divides his time between Minneota, Minnesota and Iceland.
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Copyright © 2004 by Bill Holm. From Playing the Black Piano published by Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, Minnesota. All rights reserved. www.milkweed.org
Posted by Carol at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)
September 7, 2006
Lovely Day
What a fine wedding on Sunday! It was a lovely ceremony, containing Korean, Norwegian and American elements and music. Caitlin looked stunning, as did the rest of the attendants, including Delaney! When the Hardanger fiddler walked up and down the aisles preceeding the ceremony, playing Norwegian wedding music, I reached for my first kleenex of many. Much love and devotion was evident in the beaming smiles of Caitlin and Mike, now honeymooning in Norway. I should think they will return with a Norwegian sweater or two and hopefully a picture of a troll as did I a few years back!
Posted by Carol at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)