up
they rose
in a flutter of wings
the blue jay
and cardinal
like riding together in
a pneumatic tube
without a cylinder
like
beam me up
in a suction cup, scotty!
with nobody at the controls

a leaf fell to the ground

i painted a picture
of no one i knew
then he drove by in a truck
looked me in the eye
as I walked down the street
hey mister! hey!
wait!
i waved my arm
he kept driving away
my footsteps faster
the truck growing smaller... .
bye bye so long.
i live in the oh
so slow lane

After the last post, I looked up grapes on wiki. I looked up redcurrants, black currants, gooseberries. (The page for gooseberries was not available.) I looked up a couple of Bible quotes referring to grapes (and found that the majority of versions of the Bible online come through a source called BibleGateway). I looked up a couple of pieces of research regarding grapes and health, science articles listed in the Grapes bibliography on Wikipedia.

(An aside - if it seems I've come to rely upon Wiki too much, ignoring other more specialized resources from varied sources, it's because I have little access to other resources. Wiki is still easily accessible, and seems to have self-correcting mechanisms when articles are tampered with.)

A few observations after skimming through these articles:

One can learn a lot about our world beginning with the word grapes.

Grapes grow on vines. If we have no vines we have no grapes.

There's a sentence in the Wiki article that mentions that yeast naturally exists on the skins of grapes, enhancing the course of natural fermentation into wine.

Red wines have more active properties than whites because red wines are fermented with the grape skins. They also have a stronger fragrance.

I don't like to say grapes have medicinal properties because then we get into the issue of drugs and does it really work on this or that? and how much is good for you and who should have access to it and who should not. Grapes simply have a lot to offer toward our well-being and pleasure in life. Ideally, grapes would be available to us all: jams and raisins and wines and right off the vines. The content of the articles, and memories of the poignant, sweet piercing feeling the body has in response to a single wild berry such as a gooseberry or currant or a wild grape - the taste containing the essence of sun, rain, dirt - reminds me, yes - this is good.

When looking last night for a quote I recall that connects grapes to the sun and the matter of the universe (which I never did find) I came instead upon a web page that reprints Benjamin Franklin's recipe for making wine, first printed in his Poor Richard's Almanack, 1743. Below, find the beginning of his recipe and the link.



'Benjamin Franklin - Winemaking Instructions

'Friendly READER,

'Because I would have every Man make Advantage of the Blessings of Providence, and few are acquainted with the Method of making Wine of the Grapes which grow wild in our Woods, I do here present them with a few easy Directions, drawn from some Years Experience, which, if they will follow, they may furnish themselves with a wholesome sprightly Claret, which will keep for several Years, and is not inferior to that which passeth for French Claret.

'Begin to gather Grapes from the 10th of September (the ripest first) to the last of October, and having clear'd them of Spider webs, and dead Leaves, put them into a large Molosses- or Rum-Hogshead....'

He ends his article, writing: 'These Directions are not design'd for those who are skill'd in making Wine, but for those who have hitherto had no Acquaintance with that Art.'


The link to the image of the Almanack (from Wikimedia Commons): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Poor_Richard_Almanack_1739.jpg

The link to the winemaking article from the website wineintro.com : http://www.wineintro.com/history/regions/franklinwm.html

After the kids were in bed, 'Star Trek: The next generation' reruns would be on the television, and that would be how I treated myself at the end of the day. There were many episodes of the crew during their adventures in outer space, and some I saw more than once. It now seems odd to me that there is only one scene that stands out in my memory, and that scene takes place on planet earth.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard has retired. So, how does the commander of a starship with a dynamic crew that's been all over the galaxy and then some spend his time off? Working alone in a vineyard wearing a great straw hat to shield himself from the sun. Picard becomes a link between the infiniteness of space and the tangible weight of sun-warmed grapes in one's hand, the very smell of earth.

the metronome is set
each minute, sixty beats
(tic toc tic toc)
the fiddler draws her bow

time
the metaphysical brat
leaps forward and past
the steady beat;
it twirls and pauses
and leaps again
atop a surge of notes.

time bends down to study
a dandelion's petals -
the metronome's beat
holds steady
(tic toc tic toc)
the fiddler draws her bow

knitting under folded sky

this is a detail from one of my paintings last October (2012)

Looking back, it was an odd week in the summer of 1977, when we were airboated to and deposited at Cottonwood Creek to camp on the banks of the Snake River in Idaho to search for fossils as part of a research project. We set up the tent near a tree some 40 yards or so above the river. We were in a small canyon, so the sun rose late and set early above us, and the twilight was lengthy. Some birds had hatched, and we watched the parents flitter to and fro bearing food for their hatchlings who were madly chirping. There was a log under the tree where we'd sit to remove our hiking boots and socks. One afternoon, as I flexed my sore feet, I spotted a small snake. Within a few minutes, we discovered maybe half a dozen of the snakes, baby rattlers, emerging from where they must have hatched beneath the log. We considered our options, and together hoisted the little dome tent and moved it a more comfortable distance away from the tree and log, which apparently was a popular spot for critters long before we had arrived. You'd think snakes and baby birds might be awkward company for each other, but they all seemed content to do their own thing.

Early one afternoon, I was walking alone toward the tent in its new location. I heard voices echoing from the river. That summer, rafters floated by every now and again, and that's what was happening except this group had pulled ashore on our little beach, looking for a place to camp for the night. A gentleman around my age was approaching. He had a long braid of black straight hair, a squared, open face, a hand extended to introduce himself, and a question about the possibility of camping nearby. But all of that was nothing because as he grew closer, I saw not only was he shirtless, he was wearing nothing at all. Now this wasn't completely out of the ordinary back then toward the end of the era of flower children, that people might raft down river in the nude. But this was someone who had never met me swiftly approaching, confidant of a friendly exchange.

I shook his extended hand, but experienced a very difficult time following what he was saying, and keeping my eyes focused on his face. A brief tour of the area convinced him there was not enough room for their group, and he said it was a pleasure meeting me, but they would float further down river. I watched him walk away down to the river, the braid of hair hanging down his back.

some fragments of a fragmented day:

a red-headed woodpecker and four roseate spoonbills appear at the same moment and direction.

****
They would put an eagle in a box and expect it to show them how to fly.

****
from a letter from the April 1998 issue of Smithsonian:

Gerald Dumas wrote that while drinking beer at 2 A.M. and reading Mark Twain, he "came to a page that said, 'Last night I was still up at 2 A.M., drinking beer and reading Dumas.'" ...

Ken Chowder
Oakland, California

****
how is it that a small bird goes from the ground to the top of a six-foot fence in a direct vertical line without flapping its wings or hopping?

****
Cy Twombly wrote on his painting: 'Wilder shores of love'

****
painting a picture of a cardinal that turned out not really to be a cardinal, and sketching scribbles that turned out not to be really scribbles

****
the 'aha!' of remembering the movie 'Cool Runnings'

****
learning from a familiar stranger how to rent a movie from a booth outside a pharmacy

****
the joy of sandwich cookies, and your dad's four-day-old curly fries

****
to buy two bowls and come out with a foot-long ribbon of receipt

****
pouring milk into the earth

Letterboxing

Letterboxing, a British pastime, dates back to 1854 in an out-of-the-way part of Dartmoor. Starting out as a form of message-in-a-bottle, individuals left a calling card, and perhaps a self-addressed postcard, in a hidden spot. The finder would leave his or her card, and take the postcard to message the original 'boxer' that their bottle had been found.

The pastime faded, and then resurfaced as a form of orienteering with lots of hiking and fiddling with compasses. Instead of calling cards, a rubber stamp and visitors booklet are left in the hidden bottle. Letterboxers carry their own personal booklet and stamp with them. When they find a letterbox (actually a plastic pharmacy bottle), they leave their mark in the book in the bottle, and they use the stamp in the bottle to mark their own books, as evidence of their find. There have been stamps that commemorate local farmers, stamps of local birds. A snowman. A smuggler. There are hand-crafted stamps. Some enthusiasts have found and collected thousands of stamps.

Members of letterboxer clubs meet at pubs to exchange 'clue sheets'. The participant uses the clue sheet to start the search for a specific letterbox. Clues include landmarks, and compass measurements. (From the certain spot where you can see a cairn at 107 degrees, and an old trail at 96 degrees, note the crevice in a large boulder.)

Letterboxers look to be rugged and healthy from all the trampling around, and are self-described as 'the greatest eccentrics of all'.

The above information about this custom was gleaned from the April 1998 issue of Smithsonian. The article,'They Live and Breathe Letterboxing', is by Chris Granstrom with photos by Patrick Ward.

music is passion on wheels. music wends its way between the cracks of our preconceived notions, our defenses, our wordy attempts to grapple with the ways of life, and pierces to the core. it is not hobby; it is not extraneous; it is not an elective; it's something keyed into our genetic code from the beginning. it touches our collective awareness. music conveys the intricacies of our feelings better than words or statistics ever will. music's the auditory balm that eases our most sore spots. it creates a unity, however briefly, among the most disparate of minds and souls. it synchronizes the pulse of our hearts. it unlocks little doors we didn't even know were within us and carries us away from our uptight isolation into liberation, into new territory we haven't imagined but recognize, oh, this is where i'm going and this is where i want to go.

Tonight, I'm thinking about sticks. Not as in hockey or pool, but as in what tree limbs and twigs turn into when they are no longer attached to the trunk of the tree. I'm an amateur about this as far as schoolbook education goes, but I have been a rather passionate visitor to small suburban and rural woodsy areas across the years.

In the city, it's hard to learn about these things because sticks are quickly picked up and taken away after dropping from the tree. Most sticks I've found when living in cities are pretty smooth and hard, and stay intact when you pick them up. They're clean, easy to gather and dispose of in the yard debris pickup programs.

In the country, and in wildlife parks, sticks are very different. They are left on the ground for much longer periods. Depending on how long the stick has been off the tree, and what the weather has been like, sticks soften and grow crumbly. There might be ants or other insects marching through the tunnels they create in the decaying fibers of the wood. Insect eggs may be tucked beneath segments of bark. Lichens and fungi (such as mushrooms) of many shapes and colors may be found growing on the rotting wood. Birds and lizards may feast on what is thriving on the sticks. Critters find shelter beneath and within them. At later stages, the sticks crumble when you lift them from the ground. They gradually return to the stuff of the earth, bringing nutrients to the soil, and sustaining life therein.

I watched a jay a couple of weeks ago in a city neighborhood, trying over and over to snap a small living twig off a tree. It seemed a struggle and I wondered what was going on. But it is nest building time, and there were no old dry dead twigs on that tree that would have been easy to snap. Maybe the jay was trying to gather sticks that were still green as building material for a nest to cradle his or her young.

We're like dust spots ... .

Walter said, "The universe has maybe a hundred billion galaxies in it. And each of those galaxies has somewhere between a billion and a trillion stars."

"Yeah?" I said.

Walter said, "And orbiting around just one of those trillions and trillions of stars is our planet, which has six billion people on it. We're like dust spots on a dust spot in the middle of a dust spot. Mathematically speaking, we average out to absolutely nothing."

... I knew there was a good reason I hated math.

quoted from After Eli
by Rebecca Rupp

Okay-dee. Back to the intimate details of knitting. Today, I worked a bit on a long-term scarf project, simple, straightforward, mostly one color, row after row of identical stitches, hut-two-three-four. A more perfectionist type person might appreciate it for its careful continuum of the original plan with few deviations.

However, today being Tax Day, and other pressures in the works, I made a boo-boo in the middle of a row - not terrible - but an obvious little awkward change, a bulge, a slight opening. It drew the eye. Ooops! error.

So. With the experience earlier this week of 'the same mistake over and over' scarf still in mind, I decided this time I'd stop, back up, repair the problem.

I had to back up several rows to get to the spot, which was easy to fix once I was there. But! it was kind of scary. I pulled the yarn, and the rows quickly unraveled - one steady pull! I could have taken apart five feet of scarf - the whole creation - in a blink.

I mentioned in the earlier post this week that dismantling 'the same mistake over and over' scarf was taking longer than I'd hoped. Well, I never did finish the dismantling. I still have half the scarf. Even though gaping holes were evolving in the thing, it was not easy to dismantle. Its framework is strong, and insistent on survival.

So though it might look scruffy, holy and ratty, it hangs together. It's still here. More integrity than I realized.

I suppose I could come up with some sort of sum-it-up platitude, but I won't. Just finding pleasure in the knitting.

(thank you, Carol....).

first we pay our taxes, and then....

my room tonight is paved with paper.
the classic procrastinator,
i search for my tax info on the next to very last day.
there are hundreds of receipts in duplicate and triplicate,
multiple mailings from banks with special credit card offers,
empty credit checks just begging to be filled out,
catalogs and dogalogs and sample magazines,
flyers tucked in with utility bills;
they're all tossed to the floor,
a visual cacophony.
i swim across a paper pool
in search of sunken documents.
what if this were my very last day?
what a pathetic way to go.

I've hardly begun unraveling the scarf, and lightning has begun to flicker through the blinds. Thunder is fiercely grumbling.

There are so many of them, I sometimes name the scarves I knit. There are the banana tree scarves, and there is the cloud scarf. There is the voodoo scarf, and the mouse scarf. There are several scarves I call 'rugged start', and they tend to come out pretty handsomely. Then, one night, I went all out. I knitted the scarf called 'the same mistake over and over'. Early on, I could tell I'd done something wrong, but decided to see if I could turn the mistake into a triumph. I repeated the mistake, and repeated the mistake. The result was rather beautiful, a good yarn with a pattern of soft little tufts that had been entirely unplanned. However, after I was finished binding off, I soon discovered the scarf lacked integrity. A tug here and there, and a gaping hole appeared, and another.

I tried to find a way to knit onto it, to repair it, but I'm not that advanced in my skills. So finally, tonight, I decided to disassemble the thing, first time ever. It's not taking as long as it took to assemble, but it's taking longer than I hoped. And the thunder continues to be loud and crackling.

Every day, almost, except Sunday when they're closed, I walk to the corner store. It's about half a mile away, say. They don't have everything we need at all times, but they have most everything, and the other stuff, well, it can wait. I dress for the weather and don't worry because I know I'm going to go - no decision to fret about. I carry a tote bag or two, and buy what we want for the day. Yesterday it was bananas, orange sherbet, and V-8.

Those who work there have faces that are familiar. They say, how you doing, and I say I'm alright, how about you, and they say good, good.

It feels very good coming back with the goods in my bag, not a chore, even when it's a little heavy. The dogs along the way have come to know me, and wag their tails, barking just enough for government work and no more. My feet know where the cracks in the sidewalk are, and to cross the street where there's the least traffic. There's the school crosswalk man with his reflective vest. Sometimes, kids are out walking to school, or riding their bikes. They look so unguarded, so real; you can tell the weather by their gait, by their faces, by the pitch of their voices.

'The Frozen Thames' (1677)
by Dutch painter Abraham Hondius (?-1691)
This image is from Wikimedia Commons.

This paragraph and the above image captured my interest today.

'In the 1600s, caravans of oxen carts laden with metal and hides departed from what is now Santa Fe, New Mexico; traveled 330 miles south; and then crossed over the frozen surface of the Rio Grande into what we know today as Mexico. From 1607 to 1814, citizens in England periodically held huge ice fairs on the frozen Thames River. In 1780, it was so cold that people walked from Manhattan to Staten Island over the frozen New York Harbor.'

'When the Sun Takes a Vacation: The effects of an extended leave'
Evelyn Browning Garriss
The Old Farmer's Almanac 2013

i'm sorry
i keep forgetting
it's on the tip of my tongue
my feet are heading
straight for the destination
in their grownup shoes
snap! my mind goes blank.
i take a left
or maybe a right
or turn 180 degrees
and when i remember
(my mind filled with daisies,
or beans simmering on the stove)
if i remember
(the class, the reunion, your birthday)
is so long long past

Been listening to Moody Blues' 1967 album, 'In Search of the Lost Chord' (which I've never listened to before), reading about ribbon, and about Armadillium vulgare (more commonly known as roly-poly bug, pill bug, doodle bug), and knitting soft blonde-gold yarn into a scarf. Today, I watered trees, and made a clover chain. The wind is whirling outside my window. Life's a kind of richness....

the wind is blowing
in secular circles
cats and birds and bats
look for something to eat
lizards invade the kitchen
seeking a little shade,
and protection...
everything is making faces.


the parched earth
the sanitized petri dish
needs a little
water and dirt
a few ugly germs
nasty bacteria
to grow something

old new
it doesn't matter
anything
just grow me something to eat!

the dog poops at the edge of the yard
the old lady collects
gunked up food stuff from the fridge
funky matter behind the trashcan bins
as long as she's half sure
it's not chemical petro
radio active

into the garden it goes
with a cup of water
and a welcoming prayer please
for worms, mites, fungus and ants
to get this dirty
garden party growing

It started here. I looked up the artist Wassily Kandinsky, a master of abstract composition, via the internet this morning, and came upon awkward, muddied images instead of the lovely whimsy he created on canvas with paint. I tried to give feedback to one of the generally reliable, well-intentioned sites. I got into a kind of loop where I was directed to point A, which directed me to point B, which redirected me to Point A, which directed me to point B.

For several years on the internet, I've run into doctored information, pictures, identities, missing famous artists, but the problem now is on a grander, more pervasive, culture-altering scale.

One part of the solution would be to seek information the 'old-fashioned' way, such as through books, libraries, museums. Unfortunately, the same problem exists outside of the internet as well as in. I've met libraries, new and old, in the United States with oddly limited and amended selections, and whose books have been brazenly altered. The books in my own collection have disappeared or been seriously tampered with, including classic children's books. The museums I have most recently visited are violated - works dated in the 1600s show obvious signs of having been painted recently, museum store books of Chihuly's works and about van Gogh are filled with images of awkward, somewhat offensive art. I'm familiar enough with these artists to know these are not their works.

It's a kind of apocalyptic messing with our collective soul.

My intention this morning is to continue going back, continue showing up at my favorite book stores and museums. I can calmly report concerns as they arise. I can occupy a library.

This image was taken by D. Gordon E. Robertson at a Maasai shelter at Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania. It is posted here via permission through Wikimedia Commons, and was in the Wikipedia article titled 'Maasai People'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maasai_shelter.jpg

The Maasai People have interested me since I read stories set in Kenya and Tanzania in the early 1900s. The Maasai come across as individuals who live with dignity, and honor their relationships with others. This photo from October, 2009, taken in Tanzania kept showing up in unusual ways today in April, 2013 in south Louisiana, so I thought I'd share it.

(a public image made available through wikimedia commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Natlpark.jpg )

Since I was a little kid, I've been a big fan of the US Postal Service. I feel a kind of happiness when I enter post offices. A most casual and unorganized collector of stamps, I first started saving them off envelopes when I was twenty-one.

The following text of this post consists entirely of quotes from the Wikipedia article 'United States Postal Service'.


'The first postal service in America arose in February 1692, when a grant from King William and Queen Mary empowered Thomas Neale "to erect, settle and establish within the chief parts of their majesties' colonies and plantations in America, an office or offices for the receiving and dispatching letters and pacquets, and to receive, send and deliver the same under such rates and sums of money as the planters shall agree to give, and to hold and enjoy the same for the term of twenty-one years."'


Subsequently: 'The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office and U.S. Mail, [became] an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, where Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general. The cabinet-level Post Office Department was created in 1792 from Franklin's operation and transformed into its current form in 1971 under the Postal Reorganization Act.'


'The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters.'


'The USPS employs over 574,000 workers and operates over 260,000 vehicles. The USPS is the operator of the largest vehicle fleet in the world. The USPS is legally obligated to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality.'





'The first stamp issues [Ben Franklin and George Washington above] were authorized by an act of Congress and approved on March 3, 1847. The earliest known use of the Franklin 5c is July 7, 1847, while the earliest known use of the Washington 10c is July 2, 1847. Remaining in postal circulation for only a few years, these issues were declared invalid for postage on July 1, 1851.'

(a public image made available through wikimedia commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_US_Stamps_1847_Issue.jpg )

Easter 1987 we were roasting hot dogs at a campfire on the top of a hill between Boerne and Fredricksburg, Texas that was strewn with limestone rubble. The sky was dim, not quite long enough after sunset to be truly dark. Sparks were dancing above the wood in the fire, and there was lots of noise from my cousins and family and toddler around the fire ring.

A jack rabbit lean and aging - white around the eyes and face - slowly jumped past. 'Hey! Look at that!' was about the only comment that acknowledged his presence, and the partiers went back to talking and eating and drinking. The jack rabbit passed on by, apparently unafraid. He found a spot between the prickly pear and the sweet agarita. As I stood near, and the others cavorted around, he sat. The jack rabbit had a great stillness. I can still see his silhouette.

Not many days passed before we were surprised to learn of a second child on his way. The two memories - the jack rabbit and the good news - go hand in hand in my mind.

Rip Van Winkle has been in the back of my mind since I learned a couple months ago that a local garden and home, whose location in Louisiana is known as 'Jefferson Island', was established by a fellow named Joseph Jefferson just after the Civil War. (I'd always assumed it was named after President Thomas Jefferson.) Joe Jefferson was a traveling actor, one of a family of actors in the northeastern United States. He gained fame and success performing a one-man show about Rip Van Winkle across many years, in the US and abroad.

'Rip Van Winkle' is a short story that was written by Washington Irving and published in 1820. It has been an established part of American folklore. I'm including a link to the story that I hope is true to the original publication.
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/RipVan.shtml

(this image is of Joseph Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle, taken by Napoleon Sarony in 1869, made available through Wikimedia Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Jefferson_as_Ripvanwinkle_by_Napoleon_SArony_%281821-1896%29.jpg )

This past weekend
I looked for the Periodic Table of Elements -
then the venerable language of Latin.
I looked for the poems of John Donne.

You may remember the movie 'Groundhog Day' where each morning the date resets to February second. Well, apparently somebody's going for a sequel: 'April Fools Day'. Every day I ponder, is this April 1st?

This image is from Wikimedia Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elementspiral.svg