March Book List

Blustery March made for a month of good reading - a total of fifteen books.

Forever and Forever by Josi S. Kilpack is the story of the courtship of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Frances (Fanny) Gold Appleton. An interesting read based on letters and journals.

Mad River, Storm Front, Deadline, and Escape Clause are all by John Sandford. These feature MBA agent, Virgil Flowers. Obviously, I'm reading my way through the series.

Crazy Like A Fox by Rita Mae Brown is the tenth book of her Sister Jane Arnold series. These Virginia fox hunt mysteries are among my favorites.

Malice Prepense and Heaven Is High by Kate Wilhelm are both set in Oregon where the author lives. Both feature Attorney Beth Holloway and both are very well written. I like them for the story lines and for the Oregon locations.

Last Bus to Wisdom is Ivan Doig's final book. I am really going to miss this author, his books have all been a treat to read. This is a coming of age book. I have to think young Donal's adventures mirror some of Doig's own.

Delights and Shadows is Nebraska poet Ted Kooser's Pulitzer Prize winner. It contains two of my favorites of his, Mother and Father. Even though I've read my way through this slender volume, it is one I will re-read many times.

The Forever Girl is one of Alexander McCall Smith's stand alone books. This one is about a young girl and a young boy who are friends growing up on Grand Cayman Island. She decides early on that he is the only boy for her, but as they grow up, their paths don't seem likely to ever merge again. This author is always good for a thoughtful read.

Deep Freeze by John Sandford is the last in the Virgil Flowers series until the new one comes out in October. I may delve into one of his other series just to keep me going until then. 

Shroud For A Nightingale by P.D. James is one of her early Adam Dalgliesh, Scotland Yard, mysteries. Her books are so finely written. Even at the end, when you think the murder(s) have been solved, there's always a twist.

Death of an Honest Man is M. C. Beaton's 33rd Hamish Macbeth, Scottish Highland mystery. These are always entertaining, light, reads.

The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian is my favorite book this month. What a treat it is to be checking the new books shelves at the library and find the latest Chris Bohjalian when you didn't even know it was out! He has to be one of the best authors there is.

I will pass my Ivan Doig book on to eldest son, Douglas, because he is also a Doig fan. And I think I'll see if my youngest son, Preston, would like the P. D. James book since it is the same age as he.

The second full moon of the month hadn't set yet when I got up this morning. I had such a neat photo of a flock of blackbirds flying in front of it. Unfortunately, it was blurry.

Now It Is Official

Yesterday, Bud saw the heron up at Lake McKinley. I've been watching for him/her to show up at our pond. I've also been looking for the return of turkey buzzards - a sure sign of spring.

This morning, I saw the first buzzard, or, more correctly, turkey vulture, circling over the pond - the same date as five years ago. A year ago they were earlier, March 25.

And last night, when I was out taking photos of the full moon, I heard, for the first time this year, the spring peepers.

These two things make it official, now it is spring!

Magpie Nursery Rhyme

"One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret 
Never to be told.
Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,
Ten for a bird,
You must not miss."

Note the number of birds in the tree, though not the tenth I'd like to 'not miss':

A Magpie, about which this old nursery rhyme was originally written. (The above rhyme is the 'modern' version.) The Black-billed magpie's territory is further west, though they have been seen as far east as Iowa, so I'll keep watching and hoping.

I took the zoomed in photo of the blackbirds to see if they were the red-winged variety. The conk-la-ree, conk-la-ree of the red-wings is a sound I associate with spring.

No red-winged blackbirds for me, but Bud said there were many in the marsh north of the bridge at Lake McKinley when he took his walk/run this morning. (My photo of that wetland habitat is from June, 2016.) If I want to see/hear/photograph them, I'd better get up there soon. I know from childhood experiences once they start nesting, you don't want to get too close!

March is supposed to be the kite flying month, but I think it was too cold and snowy for kite flying. Today isn't bad, at least it is sunny, but all next week is supposed to be below average temps. I'm ready for April showers. We need the rain, and warmer temps, I hope!

Singing in the Sunshine

For the first time in what seems like ages, we have some sunshine today. And it is supposed to be almost 60°! That's enough to make one think about singing. Which is what made me think of a favorite song of mine from 1964 - Gale Garnett's hit -
We'll Sing In The Sunshine.

We'll sing in the sunshine
We'll laugh every day
We'll sing in the sunshine
Then I'll be on my way

I will never love you
The cost of love's too dear
But though I'll never love you
I'll stay with you one year

And we can sing in the sunshine
We'll laugh every day
We'll sing in the sunshine
Then I'll be on my way

I'll sing to you each morning
I'll kiss you every night
But darlin' don't cling to me
I'll soon be out of sight

But we can sing in the sunshine
We'll laugh every day
We'll sing in the sunshine
Then I'll be on my way

My daddy he once told me
"Hey don't you love you any man
Just take what they may give you
And give but what you can -

And you can sing in the sunshine
You'll laugh every day
You'll sing in the sunshine
Then be on your way"

And when our year has ended
And I have gone away
You'll often speak about me
And this is what you'll say

"We sang in the sunshine
We laughed every day
We sang in the sunshine
Then she went on her way"

Probably one of the main reasons I liked the song so much was because I related to it. My marriage of three years was already in trouble and I was wishing I had opted for a year of being together and happy rather than in a more permanent union and miserable.

I don't have a sunrise photo to cheer this post up a bit, but here is one my daughter took a week ago. Portland is noted for its rainy weather, so maybe the sunshine made her feel like singing, too.

A Full Bag

Remember that idea I saw for Lent and decided to try? The one about cleaning out your closet by adding an article a day to donate? I did it! And Bud did, too. Only he filled his bag in about an hour. I finished the last few items this morning so I could drop the bags off today. It was a good idea and one that worked for me.

Last night when I came into the 'office' to shut my computer down, I noticed there was a train coming through the fog, off in the distance. That is a sight I'm always trying to photograph. I took a few shots, put the camera down and started out of the room when I heard a noise. The light was off for the photos so I thought I might have knocked something off the shelf. I turned around to look and there was a face looking in the window. A cat had jumped up on the screen. Scared the bejeebers out of me!

A slap on the window made it jump down, but it just sat there looking at me. So I raised the window to shoo it away and it acted like it was going to jump back up. Trying to get in? Many times I've thought about getting a cat again. Maybe instead of me adopting a cat, a cat was trying to adopt me?

A Gray Day

Before 8:00 a.m. this morning as our weather for the day moved in.

Looked like there was some wind in those clouds. We were promised  the chance for thunderstorms.

We did have thunder, and a day of steady rain, but no wind. No storms. I haven't put the glass rain guage out yet this year, so I don't know how much rain we have had. But I swear I can see the grass turning green right before my eyes.

I like the color gray, but I am ready for some sun and warm days.

The Color of Sunshine

Our weather has been so gloomy that yesterday Hubby Dearest decided to brighten up our home. He brought me a big bouquet of ten yellow roses and four pink carnations which I split among three vases to perk up some rooms.

Of course the pink carnations reminded me of Marty Robbins 1957 hit song, 'A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation)' - because, yes, I'm that old.

While the yellow roses brought to mind Dolly Parton's song --

Yellow Roses

Hello you said the day we met
Handing me a yellow rose
You asked me out
And to your surprise
And to mine, I said I'd go
I thought it so romantic
And I found you sweet and bold
Though we'd only met
I still said yes
To a single yellow rose
And for years to come
You were the one
To sleep with me at night
To laugh and talk 
And share my thoughts
And hold me when I'd cry
And on every occasion
And for no good reason to
A big bouquet or a single yellow rose
Was sent from you

Bud knows yellow is my favorite color of roses and they certainly do add a touch of spring on an otherwise wintry day.

Hippity, Hoppity, Peter Rabbit

In time for Easter, I just unearthed this cute set of Beatrix Potter Doorknob Books, purchased a couple of years ago at a garage sale. The box has a carry handle on top in addition to the hole to slip over a doorknob. The set is in brand new condition and you can tell the books had never even been opened.

The remains of a price sticker in the upper right corner looks like the set may have come from a Dollar Store, which is what I paid at the garage sale. I don't know what the price was when it was introduced by Paradise Press in 1999, but the little books are individually marked $4.95.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit in Mr. McGregor's garden seems like one I've known since I was a child. I even remember Beatrix Potter's lovely illustrations. Don't I?

Probably not. Even if I did have a copy of this 1942 Peter Rabbit book, the illustrations were by 'Masha'.

Hmm, this 1955 version looks familiar. It must be the one I read to my little brother, Leslie and possibly to my eldest, Douglas.

This one looks very familiar, too. The 1970's Little Golden version I read to Kari and Preston?

I may not remember for certain which Tale of Peter Rabbit book was read to me and which ones I read to others, but I do remember that my boss and his wife gave Preston a Wedgewood child's set like this one when he was born. I was so impressed. It was probably the most expensive baby gift any of my kids received.

Ayden, Greyson and Jack were the youngest of the great-grands when I bought the Beatrix Potter Doorknob Books. Did I intend giving them to one of those boys? Or keep them here to be read when they visited? I don't remember. But I put them aside and forgot I had them.

Since then, I've had a couple more great-grands. Maybe the set should go to Brynley. She already has a reading corner in her room.
I know, they could be passed around --
The Cousinhood of the Traveling Rabbits.

A Sloth By Comparison

Five years ago today I posted this on Facebook: "Read my Mom's 1994 diary. It is so EMBARRASSING! She was mowing, weeding, taking care of her cows, cooking/baking every day, helping neighbors, visiting relatives, attending meetings, having company, cleaning house, etc. etc. every day.
By comparison, I am a sloth. I am the embarrassed one."

This made me think about a conversation my daughter-in-law, Shelly, and I had at Brynley's birthday party (where we also met Maverick for the first time). If you look closely at the picture, you can see that Shelly's arm is in a sling. The blue is an ice pack. She had just had shoulder surgery. We were comparing our shoulder surgery stories (mine was seven years ago) about how long it would take to heal, physical therapy, etc. I said I was glad mine was my left arm and not the right as hers was - both of us being right handed. She related how she had tried to get her house all cleaned ahead of the surgery, but hadn't gotten as much done as she thought she would. Then we started comparing ourselves to our mothers - how much better they were at 'doing what needed done, regardless of illness or injury' - and how poorly we measured up and how that made us feel less capable than them.
Which is when I asked, "Why do we do that? Why do we compare ourselves to our Mothers (or anyone else) and think we're failures if we don't get as much done as they do/did or even as much as we expect from ourselves?"  We were not able to answer the why questions that day; I doubt either of us ever will. Our mothers were raised in a different time. Their lives were very different than ours.

Somehow, Shelly and I (and probably millions of other women) need to learn to love and accept ourselves. Period. No excuses, no castigations. We are who we are. Let it be enough.

Here, again, is one of my favorite photos of Mom with her little herd of cows and calves.

Ever Hear of Gosport, Iowa?

There are two reasons Megan Salois is my favorite meteorologist. One, because she is the most articulate and straight forward of all the Channel 13 forecasters. Two, she almost always uses pictures sent in by viewers during her weather segments. I've been lucky to have several of my photos shown by her, but I don't care whose shots she shares because I love seeing them all.

Tuesday, the first day of Spring, she had a couple of very pretty pink sunrises. One of them was from someone in Gosport, Iowa. Gosport? I even backed up the telecast and looked at it again. Where the heck is Gosport; never heard of it. I won't claim I am familiar with every town in Iowa, but I've at least heard of most of them and can usually tell you what part of the state they are in.

But not Gosport. It wasn't listed on my official Iowa Transportation Map. Maybe Google knows?  And Google did know. Gosport was once a town in Washington Township, Marion County. It was south of Knoxville, in the vicinity of the intersection of Highway 14 and County road G76. It was surveyed and platted in 1853. It once had a hotel, a post office and two churches, but by 1914, all that remained of Gosport was three houses and the two churches.
Gosport is such an unusual name. Is it pronounced go sport or gos port? And where did founders John Stipp and John Hessenflow come up with the name? Perhaps one or both of them was from South Hampshire, England where there is a town named Gosport on the Western side of Portsmouth Harbor. That particular city name is pronounced Goss-port. So now I know where Gosport, Iowa is/was and how to pronounce it.

I thought it was unusual that the person sending the photo to WHO-TV would identify as being from a town that no longer exists. Why wouldn't they just say Knoxville or Melcher-Dallas or whatever their post office address is? It would be like me saying I lived at Holt when we lived on Tuck Corner because once upon a time many, many years ago, there had been a small town with a post office named Holt across the road from our house. (Most people would not be able to say where Holt had been, though almost everyone knew where Tuck Corner was.) There must be hundreds of such 'locations' around Iowa.

There was something else that caught my eye on that Google map of Gosport, the nearby notation of the '1865 Memorial for 40 Boys'. Curiosity about that sent me on another search.

I did find that it was a small area identified as Elm Tree Memorial Park with a bronze plaque on a rock placed there by the D.A.R in 1938. This photo is credited to the Find A Grave website.
A search for 'Elm Tree Memorial Park, Marion County, Iowa' led me to the 'Iowa Civil War Monuments' web page and this information:
"This monument marks the spot under an elm tree where a number of Iowa boys assembled and marched to Davenport - then joined a variety of regiments."

The most informative piece I found about Gosport and the '40 Boys' memorial wa posted by a blogger from Lucas County. You can read his post and see more photos here.

All this just because I saw Gosport on a sunrise photo on a weather segment on a noon news program on the first day of Spring! My natural inquisitiveness takes me to some pretty interesting places - all without leaving home.

The Blue Notebook

Delights & Shadows is the volume of poetry for which Ted Kooser won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.
I am enjoying reading the copy I got last time I went to Des Moines.


This is another poem to which I relate:

A Spiral Notebook

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
if you wanted to buy it for that,
though it seems to be meant for
more serious work, with its
college-ruled lines and 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.

My notebook with the calm blue sea cover is from the early 90's, one I had for practice writing using subject prompts. It is the one I took with me to the writing group that was meeting at Barnes and Noble when the bookstore was at 22nd and University in Clive.  I know that because all the members of the group and their reasons for being there I noted on the back page.
I remember the one man who would not say what his profession was and my daughter correctly guessed he worked for the IRS. He was reluctant to divulge that, worried that someone might have issues with the government service he worked for and judge him accordingly.

I've had a couple five subject notebooks. I'm not particularly fond of them. Like Kooser, I no longer have five subjects each demanding an equal share of my attention. I do well to once in awhile write anything in longhand in a notebook.

But I still treasure those college ruled notebooks I have used. And I still pick up new ones, passing my fingers over the covers, fanning the pristine pages, wondering, "if I had a new notebook, could I, would I write poetry"? Or fill it with those deeper, more private thoughts I don't share here?

Pen and paper; they do evoke in me some kind of wonder.

First Day of Spring?

We are one-half hour away from Spring's official arrival (11:15 a.m. CDT) and we've had snow showers off and on all morning. So much for this portion of Algernon Charles Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon:

For Winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the seasons of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the Spring begins.

These were my daffies six years ago on St. Patrick's Day.....

.....and here they are this year.
As Henry Van Dyke said in his book Fisherman's Luck: "The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month."

Because he is one of my favorite poets, here is Ted Kooser's poem about the first day of Spring:

March 20

     The vernal equinox.

How important it must be
to someone
that I am alive, and walking,
and that I have written
these poems.
This morning the sun stood
right at the end of the road
and waited for me.


Today may not have the feel of spring about it, but that day will be here soon. I will be glad for it - and happy to be here for one more Spring.

I'm In A Hurry

"I'm in a hurry to get things done
Oh I rush and rush until life's no fun
All I really gotta do is live and die
But I'm in a hurry don't know why."

Remember this 1992 hit song from Alabama? (Written by Roger Murrah and Randy VanWarmer) It has been stuck in my head all morning. I've always hated having to hurry. One of the best things about being retired is I no longer have to hurry to get up, shower, dress and off to work on time.

I don't remember what Mom told me about my due date when I was young, only that I was "born late and had been behind ever since." In later years she told me that I had been "the slowest person she had ever been around until she spent some time with one of her nieces" and commented, "I didn't think there was anyone slower than you."

Walking the mile home from our one-room country school, my older brother and younger sister would be home at least fifteen minutes ahead of me. I liked to dawdle along, day-dreaming, looking at plants and birds and snake paths in the dirt, stopping at the bridge to throw rocks into the pool and watching the resultant, ever-widening, circles.

First school and then jobs forced me to be on time! Ugh! Homework was left until the last minute. I was slightly better in the work place, after all, I was being paid to get things done. But most of my jobs weren't that demanding. And my theory was 'better to be slow and methodical and do it right the first time than to make a mistake and have to do it over'. That was especially true with bookkeeping. I might be slower entering data and getting it right, but an error could take a half day or longer to locate and correct.

These days about the only time I hurry is when I'm reading a really good book and I can't wait to get through it to discover the ending. Then I'm sad because the book is done. That could be a metaphor for my life.

A Weekend Pictorial

Relatives In Mexico?

Every once in awhile, Family Search will send me notifications about possible connections for my Family Tree.

This most recent notification was for relatives generations in the past, where a brother or sister of one of my many-times-great-grandparents settled in Mexico. What was interesting was the connection on the left was through my Mother, via the Means all the way back to my 6x great grandfather, John Evans, 1683-1738. While the one on the right was connected to my father via, wait for it, the Richardson's.

Silence Daniels (love that name), was John Richardson's grandmother. You remember, my Great-great grandma Aggie's missing husband.

Grandma Bessie's missing grandpa....

....maybe that last letter from him about "going South" was a clue and he went South all the way to relatives in Mexico? Perhaps that is why we have never been able to trace his disappearance? Something to consider......