A "Light Snow Winter"

I don't keep track of our snowfall as I do the rain we get, but I know it has been an exceptionally snowless winter so far. It seems we will make up for that this month. Wednesday we had 7 inches of light, fluffy snow. Forecast for tomorrow is more snow, but of the heavy wet category. The amount we are to get keeps changing, so....? It is the bitter cold and way below zero wind chills that have me concerned.

February's Full Snow Moon - February 12

I had to wait for it to snow before I could share this poem by Mary Oliver:

Snowy Night

Last night, an owl
in the blue dark
tossed
an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something,
and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever is knowable – would have hurried
over the fields
to name it – the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world,
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.

Another Valentine's Day together and another beautiful bouquet from the wonderful and thoughtful Hubby Dearest. 💞

"Every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favorite." 💗

January '25 Books

 Launching a new year with an average number of books read - eight for this month.

the Husband's Secret and Apples Never Fall are by Liane Moriarty an author I have been reading my way through. It looks like I have one more of her's to get from the library.

The Blue Hour, a Good Morning America Book Club pick, is another suspenseful tale by Paula Hawkins. Her novels seem to have the most surprising endings.

On The Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is another of the Reese's Book Club picks.

As is Outlawed by Anna North. This book is a whole new take on the Hole in the Wall gang.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak was my favorite read this month. To quote Goodreads: "A moving, beautifly written and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history and eco-consciouness." With my love of/for trees, this book was wonderful.

Wrong Place Wrong Time, also a Reese's Book Club pick, is the first novel I've read by Gillian McCallister. A hard-to keep-track-of time travel tale.

The House In The Pines by Ana Reyes is the same as the above - new author; Reese's pick. So far, I am not overly impressed by any of them.

Hopefully February's reads will be more stimulating.

What I Was Born For

To look, to listen, to ask why, to dig, to explore, to be aware, to figure out - I believe I was born with it - curiosity.

Sunset - January 30, 2019

Mindful By Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Sunrise, Nags Head, Outer Banks, NC 

Burns Supper and The Selkirk Grace

 

January 25 has always meant one thing to me - my Mother's birthday. She was born 106 years ago today.

Choosing this photo of her to share is the first time I realized how much my sister Betty looked like her.

It is also the birthday of our friend Carter. He celebrates his 53rd today. 

We became friends of his after he and Kari met when she worked at Barnes and Noble in West Des Moines.

His personality is of the "Hail-fellow-well-met" manner. I doubt he has ever met a stranger.

Well known Scottish poet Robert Burns was also born on this date in 1759. Scots celebrate Rabbie Burns Day or Burns Night with a traditional Burns Supper which begins with his Selkirk Grace:

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

Probably Burns' best known poem, and my favorite is this one:

A Red, Red Rose

O my luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonny lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun
O I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run:

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.

Putting Up With The Cold Weather

 

Cold Poem By Mary Oliver

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

I forget very quickly that we've had some above average temperatures this month and many normal days of moderate cold, but given a few days of bitter cold and below zero wind chills and it seems like it has been forever. 

Respite is on the way! A January Thaw! A few days of warmer temperatures. I associate a/the January Thaw with my Mom. She is the one I learned the term from and, in my mind, it always seems to happen right around her birthdate, January 25.

Beginning this afternoon our forecast for the coming week is highs in the 30's and 40's. Thanks Mom.  💛🌞

(Note: My photo is from January 16, 2022. We have had very little snow this month.) 

Happy New Year - Mostly cloudy and overcast with just a bit of blue sky peeking through here and there. Temperature of 28° with the wind chill, it feels like 18°. I drove up to Lake McKinley in a warm car to take HD's first of the month (also first of the year) photo. I was only out of the car a few minutes and about froze! Of course, as Bud said, I wasn't dressed for the weather. Mr. Iron Man (aka Hubby Dearest) walked almost four miles in a bit more than one hour. 

As has been my practice for many years, I do not make any New Year's resolutions, but, reading some of my January 1st journal entries from years past, it is obvious I was always looking to improve myself. 

January 1, 2000 was the big Y2K worry but the lights stayed on. The only problem at work was that the computer did not back up. Two weeks later I went to Des Moines to pick up my new car - Scilla - the sweet little manual 5-speed, '93 Ford Escort station wagon, with only 30,000 miles, that I had picked out, made the deal for and bought all by myself. 

January 1, 2001 - I was keeping track of everything I ate and how many calories were in it. (That must have been when I weighed almost 200 lbs.) 😔

January 1, 2006 - I was once again promising myself I would journal every day! (Didn't happen.) Only three others entries in January and then nothing until December. My entry on January 3 was this quote: "Regrets are a waste of time. They are the past crippling you in the present." (Federico Fellini)

January 1, 2009 - I was still "going to make an effort to write ((journal) more". But I was exercising! We had joined the Y when we moved to Creston. I was walking one mile, biking five miles, doing multiple reps on all the weight machines, at least five days a week.

In August 2009 I began writing a blog which has almost entirely taken the place of journaling.

In August 2020 I repurposed my Dream Journal to a Quotes Journal. Following is a sampling of some of those quotes.

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." (Anais Nin)

"Nature always wears the colors of the spirit." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"The leaves of memory seem to make a mournful rustling in the dark." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

"These pictures of her, like everything else, are drenched in time." (Margaret Atwood in Cat's Eye)

"The who you are with others is not you. To be lonesome is to be who you most fully are." (Charles Frazier in Varina)

"The essential self is fixed well before the 13th birthday. It may be influenced by experiences but it is seldom changed." (P.D. James in her short story The Yo-yo)

"The grab bag nature of my mind." (Ivan Doig in Last Bus To Wisdom)

"Nature reserves some of her choice rewards for days when her mood may appear to be somber." (Rachel Carson) 

"Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt." (Oscar Wilde)

"A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life." (Mary Oliver)

"Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life." (Rachel Carson)

"Poetry begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a loneliness." (Robert Frost)

"The child I was is with me in the present hour. It will be with me in the grave." (Mary Oliver)

"Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself." (Hermann Hesse)

"Writing is that oddest of anomolies: an intimate letter to a stranger." (Pico Iyer)

"True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation." (Wendell Berry)

"To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone gives you courage." (Lao Tzu)

                 

Lastly, as the first day of January winds down:   

"And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been." (Rainer Maria Rilke) 💖

December 2024 Reading List

Nine books read this last month of 2024, including some new authors.

Taken and Threads of Suspicion are both by Dee Henderson, a new author for me. They were okay reads but not quite my cup of tea.

Here One Moment is the second book I've read by Liane Moriarty an author recommended to me by a friend in 2019. I 'rediscovered' her while looking through my authors list. I'm glad I did.

What Alice Forgot and Big Little Lies are also by Liane Moriarty. Her books are set in Australia and have a different style, but one I like. I have two more on my list for the next 'stock up on books' trip.

Moral Disorder and The Year Of The Flood are both by Margaret Atwood. These were the only two books of her's at my library that I had not read. It was time. The first is a collection of connected short stories. The second is one of her dystopian novels. I do not like dystopian works. They come too close to what I fear for our world. But Atwood is an excellent writer. The flood of the title is not water but a pandemic. 

Slow Dance and Landline are both by Rainbow Rowell an Omaha author also new to me. I decided to read some of Reese's Book Club picks and Slow Dance is one of those. Again, not quite my cup of tea.

That's a total of 85 books read this year, down slightly from 2023. I'm already looking forward to '25 - there are several books on my list by some of my favorite authors. Hopefully a few of them will be on the shelves in January.

Happy New Year - and Happy Reading!