The Legend of Black Squirrels

 

What a surprise yesterday afternoon. I happened to look out my magic window at just the right time to see this black squirrel running through the yard. This is the first black squirrel I've seen since we left the farm. I most likely won't see it again because two of the resident red squirrels immediately let it know that it was not welcome.

I posted a photo of it on Facebook. A cousin of Bud's commented that their Uncle Orville had black squirrels in his yard in Corning.

Legend was that in the late 50's black squirrels were introduced into town by the Castello twins, Richard and Robert, classmates of mine. Allegedly they had brought them back to Corning after capturing some while visiting relatives in Council Bluffs. 

Prior to their introduction into Corning, I had always heard that the only locations in Iowa with black squirrrels was Davenport and Council Bluffs.

Here you can see why this squirrel was in the neighborhood - that acorn it is holding. There are plenty of those to go around if only the red squirrels weren't so territorial.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Perhaps the two factions can come to a détante and I'll get to see more of this little visitor and, eventually more like it. 

Child of Depression

 

I don't remember the Depression, but I do remember hearing about it - Dad telling about working for 50 cents a day.

Mom's habits of saving, not wasting, became part of my life. She patched the holes our clothes and shopped the grocery ads for sale items as well as tending a large garden. So, that while I was not alive during the depression, I was affected by it.

For much of my life I was affected by another depression, the one of low self esteem, no energy, feeling worthless and unable to pull myself out of the doldrums. I would suffer those feelings for several days, usually every month or so, before I would feel my mood lifting. I never thought about what caused those moods and as I got older they finally ceased.

I was reading an article about Gloria Steinem, an activist for women's rights I've admired since the late 60's, in which she was quoted as saying: "Depression is an anger turned inward". Now I'm pondering that idea. Wondering if that could have been true about some of my depressions.  

The Chickens of Quiet Harbor

 

When we first moved to this retirement community, there were three concrete chickens with chipped and faded paint setting in the weeds along the fenceline. We were told that at one time there was a 3-hole golf course on the grounds with a chicken marking each hole.

The three, (Shall we name them Cluck, Penny and Peck?) remained in the weeds until a couple years ago when an enterprising maintenance man built this roost for them.

This year our next door neighbor gave them a fresh coat of paint and added those solar powered lights you can see in front of the chickens in the first picture.

It's kind of eerie to see Cluck, Penny and Peck glowing in the night - and yet, in a way, somewhat homey and cheerful.  😊🐔

They Enter Our Dreams

Forty some years ago, I discovered and became an admirer of Wendell Berry. I am sorry to learn that he died yesterday at age 92. I have shared many of his poems and quotes before but not this one:

The Loved Ones By Wendell Berry

The loved ones we call the dead

depart from us and for awhile are absent. And then as if

called back by our love, they come

near us again. They enter our dreams.

We feel they have been near us

when we have not thought of them.

They are simply here, simply waiting

while we are distracted among

our obligations. At last

it comes to us: They live now

in the permanent world.

We are the absent ones.

August '26 Books Read

 Nine books read this month; finally back in my groove. 

November 9, Maybe Someday and Maybe Now are all by Colleen Hoover, an author I had not read before.

Sandra Dallas is an author I have read and like. I thought I had read all her books and was pleasantly surprised I still had one I had not - The Persian Pickle Club.

The same is true about Sandra Brown. I was happy to discover I had missed reading Deadline.

No Rest For The Dead is unlike any book I have read - it was written collectively by twenty-six different authors with the introduction by David Baldacci.

Under The Falls is by Richard Russo, one of my favorite authors.

Strangers in Time by David Baldacci is a bit of a departure from his usual fare. It is set in London during WWII. Two teens are left homeless. They are taken in by a book shop owner where they find healing and hope in one another.

South of Broad is by Pat Conroy, an author I hadn't read since The Prince of Tides in the '80's. I had forgotten how beautiful his prose is - and happy to find the library has one more of his books I haven't read.  

What books will you find on my September reading list? 

School Days - Part II

Almost all of those notebooks I bought over the years were turned into my journals.

 

A Spiral Notebook By Ted Kooser

The bright wire rolls like a porpoise 

in and out of the calm blue sea

of the cover, or perhaps like a sleeper

twisting in and out of his dreams,

for it could hold a record of dreams

if you wanted to buy it for that,

though it seems to be meant for

more serious work, with its cover 

that states in emphatic white letters,

5 SUBJECT NOTEBOOK. It seems

a part of growing old is no longer

to have five subjects, each 

demanding an equal share of attention,

set apart by brown cardboard dividers,

but instead to stand in a drugstore

and hang on to one subject

a little too long, like this notebook

you weigh in your hands, passing

your fingers over its surfaces

as if it were some kind of wonder.

No surprise here - my 5 SUBJECT NOTEBOOK was yellow, not blue. I started it in December 8, 1972 the same way I began other journals: "Oh, how I have put off soiling this notebook for fear that I might write something that I would later wish I hadn't -- or that what I wrote wouldn't be up to par for what I want to write."

On the first of those brown cardboard dividers, I had stylishly written "Le Cahier Jaune" - "The Yellow Notebook". I had been reading Jennie - The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill about Jennie Jerome Churchill (Winston Churchill's mother) and read that she kept a yellow journal referred to as 'Le Cahier Jaune'. How could I not name mine the same?

The first section was a record of the end of '72 and the year of '73 - when I turned 30 in November. The second cardboard divider did not have a name and only five entries - three in January and two in April.

Section three was labeled "Thoughts" and had only one half page entry. It began: "Sometimes I think there is nothing better than the honesty of a cup of hot tea."

Section four, "Poems" contained five poems I had written, one of which was:

The Art of Being

Be still.

Quiet. Stop the racing mind and

Pacing feet. 

Don't think for moments.

Give yourself back to you.

Troubling it out

Won't help, 

Just confuse.

Let peace and quiet

Creep back in.

Then, then you will

Be able to understand

What it is. What to do.

Quiet, peace, 

Being, Transcend.

Section five was labeled "Affairs" and had one line: "Preserving herself in the amber of solitude."

There are pleasant memories in this journal but also two very sad entries. The first in December when my brother Ron and his wife had their first child. Jennifer Lynn lived only three days. The following October our sister Betty died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 28. There are only two entries in '74 and one in '77 when I put the yellow notebook aside and began a new journal - a pattern I would continue over the years. 

A quick count shows at least ten incomplete notebooks laying around including the one I took with me to Ireland and one designated as my Spiritual Journey Journal. If I combined them all one or two of those five subjects notebooks would probably have held everything I wrote during those thirty some years.

School Days - Part I

The last time I was at Walmart, about ten days before the start of the new school year, as I walked past the aisle of school supplies I paused because I felt the pull of all those notebooks, pencils, pens, crayons, etc. just waiting for me to lovingly fondle; to pick up and put in my cart.

It was hard, but I resisted. I already have more notebooks, pens and pencils, etc. than I will ever use. My addiction is twofold, first the memories from my own grade school days when I was outfitted with a big chief tablet, two pencils and a box of eight crayons, second the memories of school supply shopping with my own children.

In addition to all those new supplies I purchased in the past, I also have things from our Saturday morning garage sale quests.

Some of which have never been used, by the person selling them, or by me! 

A Box of Pastels By Ted Kooser

I once held on my knees a simple wooden box

in which a rainbow lay dusty and broken.

It was a set of pastels that had years before

belonged to the painter Mary Cassatt,

and all the colors she'd used in her work

lay open before me. Those hues she'd most used,

the peaches and pinks, were worn down to stubs,

while the cool colors -- violet, ultramarine --

had been set, scarcely touched, to one side.

She'd had little patience with darkness, and her heart

held only a measure of shadow. I touched

the warm dust of those colors, her tools,

and left there with light on the tips of my fingers.

Cassatt is one of the artists I have long admired. She often painted pictures of mothers and children.

When Kari was in third grade, her teacher was a Miss Cassatt who said she was related to the artist.