To Die For A Cause You Believe In

Patrick Pearse was an Irish teacher, writer and poet. He was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, also known as the Easter Rebellion which occured 108 years ago this week. (April 24-29, 1916) Pearse and fourteen others who took part in the attempt to establish Ireland's independence were arrested, court-martialed and executed in the weeks following.

This is the poem Pearse wrote the night before his execution at Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, May 3, 1916.

The Wayfarer By Patrick Pearse

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.

And this is the courtyard at Kilmainham where the executions took place. I took this photo when I went there during my trip to Ireland in 1994. It was one of my must see destinations. ❤

Admiring A Favorite Poet on His 85th Birthday

 So This Is Nebraska By Ted Kooser

The gravel road rides with a slow gallop

over the fields, the telephone lines

streaming behind, its billow of dust

full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds.

On either side, those dear old ladies,

the loosening barns, their little windows

dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs

hide broken tractors under their skirts.

So this is Nebraska. A Sunday

afternoon; July. Driving along

with your hand out squeezing the air,

a meadowlark waiting on every post.

Behind a shelterbelt of cedars,

top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,

a pickup kicks its fenders off

and settles back to read the clouds.

You feel like that; you feel like letting

your tires go flat, like letting the mice

build a nest in your muffler, like being

no more than a truck in the weeds,

clucking with chickens or sticky with honey

or holding a skinny old man in your lap

while he watches the road, waiting

for someone to wave to. You feel like

waving. You feel like stopping the car

and dancing around on the road. You wave

instead and leave your hand out gliding

larklike over the wheat, over the houses.

April, A Night, A Full Moon And ...

 April's Full Pink Moon rising....

April By Mary Oliver

I wanted to speak at length about 

The happiness of my body and the

Delight of my mind for it was

April, a night, a full moon and ...

But something in myself for maybe

From somewhere other said: not too

Many words, please, in the muddy shallows the

Frogs are singing.

March 2024 Reading List

 A more eclectic mix - eight books read in March.

Canary Girls by Jennifer Chiaverini was a very interesting novel based on facts about the women who worked in the arms factories during WWI.

Sterling House by Alix E. Harrow is the second book I've read by this author - and it is just as intriguing as the first one. (The Ten Thousand Doors of January.)

The Cutting Edge by Jeffery Deaver continues my reading through his Lincoln Rhyme series.

Mrs. Lincoln's Rival is also by Jennifer Chiaverini and also a novel based on fact. The protaganist is Kate Chase Sprague a young woman who served as her father's hostess while he was senator and then cabinet member in Washington D.C. There was a mutual dislike and rivalry between her and Mary Todd Lincoln. This was a very interesting look into those times and of a woman I had never before heard about.

The Hunter by Tana French is the second of her books about Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago police detective who moves to Ireland. In both books he becomes involved in solving some murders near the small village of Ardnakelty. I love these books and their setting. Tana French is one of my favorite authors as well as my 'adopted' author for Gibson Memorial Library.

Judgement Prey is John Sandford's latest novel featuring both Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers who have teamed up to solve the triple murders of a man and his two sons. His next book will be released in 10 days, but I will probably have to wait awhile before I get to read it because his books are so popular. But that's okay - they are always good reads and ones I look forward to.

The Island House by Nancy Thayer is another of her novels set on Nantucket. I have decided I need to mix a little light reading in with the usual whodunnits I read. 

North Woods by Daniel Mason is the first book I've read of his and I hope to read more. (My library does have one more which I will be reading.) North Woods relates the story of one piece of land over hundreds of years. What I especially liked about it was not so much the people but the flora and fauna and the changes to both over those years. Really an enchanting achievement in story telling and another month of good reading.

How Do You Pronounce My Name?

 My daughter-in-law, Shalea, posted this on FB yesterday and tagged two of her children, Ki and Deise.

I was very aware that Deise had always had trouble with people mispronouncing her name, but I hadn't realized that Ki had too. The name is generally spelled Kai, which, from its Hawaiian roots, means 'the sea'. But how else would you pronounce Ki except 'Kye'? Unless it is Key? I should ask Shalea or Ki in what ways it has been mispronounced.

Before he was born, his parents had already decided boy or girl the baby would be named in honor of its two grandmothers' middle names, Kathryn and Irene. Their second child was a girl and she does bear that name while Ki's was shortened to the two first initials. I have seen one other instance of the name spelled the same as his - in a story about a man in Nebraska - surprisingly with the same last name.

(Ki playing in grandma's rain barrel.)

Ahh, but Deise's name. I can totally understand why people have trouble pronouncing it - and it is all my fault. 

Before she was born, I had realized my life long dream of going to Ireland. She was born a few weeks after I returned from there and on my birthday! Her parents decided to give her an Irish name because of the connection and asked me for ideas - what Irish girls' names I liked. 

I named a few, but also mentioned the name of an area I had seen in southeast Ireland in County Waterford. That area was Deise - pronounced Day-sha. And that is how she got her name. (Deise and me eating cake and celebrating our joint birthday.)

And that would be that except that they chose to use the Irish spelling instead of the English pronounciation. They also spelled her middle name Mei instead of May. I don't know if she has ever been tempted to change the spelling, even though it has given her trouble her whole life, but I don't think so.

Other ways of spelling Deise are: Dacia - which is also derived from a place name - formerly a Roman province where Romania is now. The aforementioned Daysha - 'serene' or 'the period of light between dawn and nightfall'.  Daisha - 'the one who is alive'. 

County Waterford is colloquially known as "The Deise", settled sometime between the 4th and 8th centuries by an Irish tribe called the Deisi. People from the area chant the popular term "Up the Deise" in support of their local hurling team.

In addition to my granddaughter's name, when I think of the area I also think of the beautiful crystal made there.

I've could never afford a piece of Waterford cyrstal but I've always admired it.

You might recognize it as being the trophy for winning a golf game. Or as the maker of the ball that drops on New Year's Eve in Times Square. 

I have never had trouble with anyone mispronouncing my name, Ramona, but I have had it misspelled many times: Ramonia, Romona, Romana..... 

International Women's Day

 

 

Bud wished me a Happy International Women's Day this morning. I asked him: "Why? Because I've been to Ireland?" His reply was "Yes." to which I replied: "I don't think that necessarily makes me an international woman." Then he asked, "How many women from Iowa do you think have been to Ireland?" I said, probably more than you think with so many Iowan's claiming Irish heritage.

Naturally that sent me to Google to ask what percentage of Iowan's have Irish roots. The answer: 13%. So, with Iowa's population around three million, that would be 450,000. And if half those are women, that would be around 225,000 women, perhaps, celebrating their Irish heritage on International Women's Day. But I have no way of knowing how many of those have visited Ireland. Ten percent? One percent? And does visiting a foreign country once make someone an international woman?

International Women's Day (IWD) describes it as: "a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women". "The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity." And while I have seen many strides toward equalizing things between men and women, I don't think it will ever truly happen. Still, I consider myself fortunate to have lived in the time and place I have.

By the way, German has the predominant percentage of ancestry in Iowa with 35%. I can trace more of my ancestors to German roots than Irish, but I think of myself as more Irish because of my Irish surname and because I have always 'felt' more Irish. 

Whatever and however you celebrate the day - Happy International Women's Day. 💖🌎

Two Years Ago Today

Two years ago today we were under risk for severe weather with a 30% chance for damaging winds and a 10% risk for tornadoes. At noon the first tornado watch was issued for southern Iowa, northern Missouri, although a major tornado outbreak was not expected. As the afternoon progressed, multiple supercell thunderstorms developed with one in southwest Iowa becoming dominant. It passed north and west of us, but we had the t.v. on for alerts.

A little after 4p.m. a t.v. reporter/storm follower on the southwest side of Winterset posted this live shot of a huge tornado heading toward the town. My son and daughter-in-law lived on that side of Winterset. My first thought was to call and make sure they were going to the basement. Then I realized, knowing my son, he was standing in their yard watching it. (He was.)

Strangely enough, I wasn't too concerned about them. I knew that they knew enough to take cover in time. The EF4 tornado struck around 4:26 p.m. about a mile south of their home. There were multiple deaths and injuries along with major damage. 

One of the reasons I wasn't worried was because Preston was a seasoned storm watcher. When we lived near Grimes, we all watched a tornado pass north of us on the way toward Johnston.

The year before this photo of a nine-year-old Preston was taken, when we lived on Tuck Corner, we watched a tornado south of us moving east after touching down in Gravity and before destroying almost everything except the house on the farm of one of my cousin's west of Lenox. Fortunately, they were not hurt.

But I do remember Preston being upset because after watching the tornado from our yard, I sent him and his sister to the basement as I continued watching. "Why do we have to go to the basement?" was his complaint which had merit since any danger to us was already past.

He got his chance to be the storm spotter in 1984 when we were all at my mother's house. We were inside fixing supper and he was out in the front yard watching the weather. He came tearing into the house shouting that a tornado was coming! "Yeah, sure", I said. About then the wind came up, the trees began thrashing around and we all looked out to watch a funnel cloud a mile west, moving northeast. Later we would learn it had destroyed a home one and a half miles west of Mom's, leaving nothing but the basement where a mother and her two children had fortunately sheltered and survived with minor injuries, before moving along to the south side of Corning and causing some damage.

In one of those "it's a small world coincidences, we learned that Preston's future father-in-law was part of the crew sent to repair the large transmission lines west of mom's that the tornado took down that day.

Spring tornadoes are not uncommon. March 22, 2011, I stood on our deck and watched and photographed this tornado west of our current home in Creston.

A year later, April 14, 2012, a tornado struck the northwest corner of Creston, causing major damage to the hospital and destroying the AEA building. 

Severe weather awareness week is not far off - March 25-29. Once again we will be reminded what else spring can bring besides tulips, daffodils and violets. Hopefully, there will be no major tornado outbreaks.

Jack and Jill

 You've probably heard "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after." But do you know the rest of the story?

I recently found these four pages which look as though they came out of a book for children. Because of the date, 1949, it was probably something in Mom's things that I saved.

That fine print in the lower right corner reads: "564 COPR. A.G.C.C. 1949 MADE IN THE U.S.A

Googling the COPR. A.G.C.C. 1949 returned this image showing these as "Greeting Cards with Song Books." But the illustrations were in many colors.

This one, which seems to be more like my Jack and Jill, had the same copyright date but a different number. (576) Was this something I got for my 6th birthday in 1949? Or something my sister received for her 4th birthday? I'll never know. But these four pages, which by the way are still attached even though I showed them as separate, are a reminder of my childhood and how my mother read to us until we could read for ourselves. I credit her for my love of reading and for saving something from all those years ago.

It's National Pig Day

National Pig Day, celebrated annually on March 1, was started in 1972 by two sisters "for the purpose of according the pig it's rightful place as one of the most intelligent domesticated animals". Pigs are smarter even than dogs.

I've shared this photo many times. It illustrates and reminds me of some of the best years of my life. I had moved back home to live the kind of life I had grown up knowing - doing chores, raising livestock and food - but best of all - being independent. I was living life my way, being responsible for all my decisions, and secure in the love of family.

In addition to the pigs shown above, I had raised two runts in the hen house on the acreage near Grimes and a couple more in the hen house on Tuck Corner before raising the above litters in the barn there. I remember the first one at this location was a blind pig named Rupert. I don't remember the name of the other one. Faith, Hope, Charity and Grace were the sows pictured with their litters.

I also had chickens, both here and at the place we next moved to. Eventually I even had a flock of sheep. But pigs were always my favorites. I never thought about it, but maybe it was because they were so intelligent. Intelligence is one of the attributes I most admire.

Happy Pig Day. 🐖💗

February 2024 Reading List

The fewest books read in a month for how many years?!! Even with an extra day in February, only three books read! 

The Skin Collector and The Steel Kiss by Jeffery Deaver are the first two I've read in his Lincoln Rhyme series, although not the first two of the series. The library does not have all his books.

The Burial Hour, also by Jeffery Deaver, was the third book read this month. I believe this is the first author I've ever read who has, as the main character, a quadriplegic. Rhyme was a NYPD homicide detective before his accident. Now he is a forensic criminalist solving crimes with his knowledge, experience and a room full of testing equipment. 

Daylight savings time begins in ten days. We will gain and extra hour of daylight at the end of each day.

This morning I gained an extra hour - of sleep. I slept until 7:00 a.m.! I couldn't believe it! I haven't done that in years! I am almost always up between 4:45 and 5:30 a.m.; rarely sleeping until six. And it is all thanks to HD.

In the last couple of weeks I began waking up with headaches. They would go away after I'd been up awhile. Monday night I had a headache so bad it woke me up. I started thinking about what the cause might be and finally hit upon blood pressure. I hadn't checked mine in ages. When I did it was 167 over 89. No wonder I had a headache. As soon as my BP medicine had a chance to work, the numbers went down.

When I told Bud about it, he asked if I had ever talked to the doctor about taking my blood pressure medicine at night. He said his doctor had advised him to do that. So I tried it. Tuesday night I slept great and woke up without a headache. Same thing yesterday and I slept until 6:30. Today, as noted, I slept until 7a.m. - and felt great! No headaches. The only downside is that I feel like I've lost a good portion of my morning - not that I do anything important - but those two hours were my alone time. I'm sure I will still have mornings when I get up early, but getting more sleep, especially headache free sleep, is wonderful.

Thinking About My Mom

Although my mother physically left us more than twenty years ago, I still feel her presence. A day rarely goes by that I don't think of her for one reason or another.

Ten days ago it was because I posted this photo of her with my younger brother because it was his 70th birthday.

Back then being pregnant after your mid-thirties was considered high risk, but all went well. My sister and I were as delighted with a baby brother as mom was with another son.

There was something else familiar about this photo - the skirt she was wearing.

I remembered the red with white swirls matching skirts she made for Betty and me, but had forgotten that she made one for herself, too. 

She either really liked the material or got a good deal on a bolt end. There were a few other times she dressed to match us, but it was not as often as she made the same matching outfits for the two of us. 

And a week ago we had to get this new coffee maker. I got up that morning, switched on the previous one and nothing happened.

 "Oh no! What am I going to do without my coffee?" 

Improvise, that's what. I boiled some water, poured it through the coffee grounds and drank serviceable, if not great, coffee that day.

I don't need anything fancy. A basic Mr. Coffee does just fine.

The reason all that made me think of Mom was because I had been using her last coffee maker. I had kept it as a back-up in case my previous Mr. Coffee quit.

In addition to being much more than 20 years old, her's had been free with the purchase of Gevalia Kaffee. Her pot was black rather than the green shown here, but the same model. 

Gevalia was a Swedish company which, in 1983, began offering a free coffee maker if you bought a box (four packages) of their coffee. Mom saw one their ads in a magazine and sent for it. The agreement was to continue monthly purchase of coffee, but you could cancel that at any time. I think the coffee was $9.98 a box. The packaging at that time looked like this picture.

I thought it was such a good deal that I also sent for a free coffee maker and coffee. I don't remember how long my coffee maker lasted but I had it for quite awhile. When it quit I also stopped getting their coffee and switched to other brands. I'm not sure, but I think my younger brother still uses Gevalia coffee which is now available in grocery stores. 

When Hills Brothers discontinued our favorite coffee we tried several different brands, including Gevalia, but none were quite right. We finally settled on McCafé Columbian which we now have to order through Amazon since Walmart discontinued stocking it. 

"Life doesn't come with a manual, it comes with a mother."

And I had the very best. 💖

Spring In February?

After January's bitter cold and frozen water lines, February's spring like weather has been wonderful - although it does make me apprehensive about what may be ahead of us this summer.

The weather isn't the only thing that has me in a good mood. I have been bummed because my trusty Nikon Coolpix S7000 camera has quit taking quality photos. I've been debating whether or not to get a new camera or to be content with the pics I do get. Monday I was 'this close' to ordering a new camera when it occurred to me that there are more settings than Auto which is what I've always used. The camera will zoom to 20X on auto setting, but less on all other settings. I decided to try one of the Scene settings for some sunset photos and this was the result. Yay! Nice and clear and crisp again. 

It was so nice Tuesday afternoon that we drove out to Green Valley State Park/Lake to see if there was anything going on. On the way past the marsh between Green Valley Lake and Summit Lake we noted all the Canada geese and Snow geese. But when we got to the park there were only a few Canada geese and very little else going on.

Until we neared the beach area and could see some white birds way out on the middle of the lake. I assumed it was snow geese, or possibly pelicans, but when I zoomed in with my camera, I really got excited because it was swans! I had heard that swans had been sighted at the lake a few times over the years, but we had never seen them. It was a case of right place, right time because they flew off seconds after I took this picture. Bud said I should send my photo to Channel 13, so I did, and both Jeriann, at 4p.m. and Ed at, 6p.m., used it on their weather reports. 

Yesterday's sunrise was gorgeous. I used one of my photos of it as my 'good morning' shot on FB with the quote: "It's a new dawn, it's a new day.....and I'm feeling good" mostly because it was the birthdate of Nina Simone and those are the words from one of her biggest hit songs - but also because I was still feeling good.

And those feelings continued into this morning when I got up early and saw the 'almost full' Snow Moon before it set. Taking photos and combining them with poems or words from songs or even my own musings, is one of my greatest pleasures. I'm so glad changing settings on my camera made all the difference. 

I had another feel good moment a little later when I checked my email and found a very nice message from a fellow Iowan. She had stumbled across my blog when searching for something akin to a phrase I had used. She commented how amazed she was by how much we had in common after reading my bio and some of my posts....how she, too, looks for signs and symbols. 

She wrote: "....it was an awesome case of synchronicity that really prompted me to reach out to you. I had read "The Swan" (Mary Oliver's poem) on your blog which I loved and was eager to comment on, but got sidetracked this past week. Then lo and behold, while watching the local news on WHO the other night, I saw your beautiful photo of the swans!"

So, I wrote that this was another feel good moment this morning. It was more than that, to borrow a current phrase: "I feel seen."

One last picture - not only to show how well my camera works on a different setting, but also how long my Valentine's bouquet is lasting.

I hope you are feeling as good, happy and seen as am I. 😊💛

It Had To Be You

The day after all the hearts and flowers and candy, this is the tune in my mind when I woke up:

It Had To Be You

Why do I do just as you say
Why must I just give you your way
Why do I sigh, why don't I try to forget
It must have been that something lovers call fate
Kept me saying I have to wait
I saw them all, just couldn't fall, 'til we met

It had to be you
It had to be you
I wandered around, and I finally found
The somebody who
Could make me be true
And could make me be blue
And even be glad
Just to be sad - thinking of you

Some others I've seen
Might never be mean
Might never be cross, or try to be boss
But they wouldn't do

For nobody else gave me a thrill
With all your faults, I love you still
It had to be you
Wonderful you
It had to be you

For nobody else gave me a thrill
With all your faults, I love you still
It had to be you
Wonderful you
It had to be you

I thought about those eleven years of being a single parent after I vowed to never marry again and the twenty or so years between high school and when we met again and then the lyrics of the song going through my thoughts.

The song was right: It had to be you. 💘

More Like Four Decades

A Decade By Amy Lowell

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,

And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.

Now you are like morning bread, 

Smooth and pleasant.

I hardly taste you at all, for I know your savour,

But I am completely nourished. 💞

January 2024 Reading List

Seven books read in January --

Tom Lake is the latest book by one of my favorite authors, Ann Patchett. She is an excellent writer and I will read anything she writes, regardless of storyline.

The Cellist by Daniel Silva is #21 in his Gabriel Allon series. I only have his newest book left to read to complete all he has written in this series.

Roadside Crosses and Solitude Creek by Jeffrey Deaver are books two and four in his Kathryn Dance series. These are the only books in this series that my library has.

Mad Honey is a collaboration by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan is an absolutely captivating book written so seamlessly that one would never know two people wrote it. Picoult is another one of the authors I will read regardless of the storyline. But the storyline in this one is terrific.

Lost & Hound is the fifteenth book in the Sister Jane series by Rita Mae Brown and possibly the last I will read even if she writes more. As I noted about the last one I read, this one also seems rushed - as though she has a deadline and is in a hurry to meet it. Even though I still like the characters, I think I can better spend my time with books that have more substance.

The Girl Before is by JP Delaney, a new author for me and a book I picked up by random. Even though it is compared to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, I did not care as much for this book as I did those. Maybe I will suggest to HD that we watch the limited series based on the book to see how it compares.

On February's reading list - some books in Jeffrey Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series.

Oh Rowen Tree - A Scottish Folk Song

 

I always thought of Oh Rowen Tree as an Irish folk song - most likely because I first encountered the Celtic tradition of them providing protection against evil spirits in books I read about Ireland.

This is a photo of the Mountain Ash/aka/Rowen that grew across the street when we first moved here.

I don't know what killed this beautiful tree, but I did manage to save a small branch from it which I later made into a walking stick.

I also don't know what made me think of the song this morning. These are the lyrics:

Oh Rowan Tree

Oh rowan tree, oh rowan tree
Thou'lt aya be dear to thee
Entwined thou art wi' many ties
O'hame and infancy
Thy leaves were aye the first of spring
Thy flowers the summer's pride
There was nae sic a bonnie tree
In a' the country side
Oh rowan tree

How fair was thou in summer time
Wi' a'thy clusters white
How rich and gay thy autumn dress,
Wi' berries red and bright!
On thy fair stem were mony names
Which now nae mair I see
But they're engraven on my heart,
Forget they ne'er can be
Oh rowan tree

We sat aneath thy spreadin' shade
The bairnies round thee ran
They pu'd they bonnie berries red,
And necklaces they strang
My mither, oh! I see her still,
She smil'd our sports to see
Wi' little jeannie on her lap,
And jamie on her knee
Oh rowan tree

Oh there arose my father's pray'r
In holy ev'ning's calm
How sweet was them my mother's voice,
In the martyrs' psalm
Now a'are gane!
We meet nae mair aneath the rowan tree
But hallow'd thoughts around thee twine
O'hame and infancy
Oh rowan tree

My walking stick.

In addition to protection against evil, the Rowan tree also represents healing and transformation.

Intimidated By My Sisters-In-Law

I only have two brothers but I've had five sisters-in-law. There have been only two that I felt intimidated by - and by intimidated I mean it's meaning of overawed, not frightened. Coincidently both were nurses and both were the second wives of my brothers. 

I was so nervous about meeting Ruthie when Ron brought her home to meet his family. I wanted her to like me and ironically she felt the same way about meeting me, although I didn't know that until years later.

My fears were due to my feelings of inadequacy - she was educated with degrees. I was not. She was urbane. I was not. She had never been divorced. I had. But neither of us should have worried, we became the best of friends. I truly felt that she was a sister to me.

(Ruthie died twenty years ago and Ron did remarry. 

 

I was not quite as nervous about meeting Les' second wife. I was much older than when I met Ruthie for the first time and more secure in myself.

But again, Susan was more educated and urbane. They lived farther away and our times together were, and still are, less frequent. So it took longer and probably wasn't until after she retired and we had more interactions that I felt like we had established a real friendship.

In my eyes, Ruthie and Susan have both been charming women. I am glad they have been part of my life.

When Your Chickens Come Home To Roost

When we moved here fifteen years ago, the owners/managers of Quiet Harbor told us there had once been a three hole golf course and that, as I recall, these chickens marked the teeing off sites. But by then the chickens had been moved out of the way along the fence. Eventually grass grew up around them and they were forgotten.

Last fall a couple of the workers used some wood from a downed tree and finally gave the chickens their own permanent roost. They are finally home to roost.

As a child I was warned against doing anything regrettable lest my chickens come home to roost. We had chickens and they did roost in the chicken house at night, so maybe I didn't understand what Mom meant when she first used the saying around me, but I came to understand that it meant any harm I did to others would come back to cause me problems. 

So if I wished for something bad to happen to someone, Mom would say, "Be careful what you wish for. Curses, like chickens, come home to roost." The saying probably dates from 1809 when Robert Southey wrote: "Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost."

Mom was right, of course, many times something I had said or done to hurt another came back to haunt me; made me wish I had kept quiet or not acted out. My chickens, indeed, had come home to roost. 😔

Through the Fog

"Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it." (Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)

It is very foggy this morning and fog always makes me think of Carl Sandburg's poem, Fog.

Fog

The fog comes

on little cat feet

it sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

I have used this poem before. I believe I first heard it as a pupil at Jasper #2 when our teacher read it to us.

But here is another Carl Sandburg poem. This is one that I don't recall reading/hearing before today.

 

Under The Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon, 
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker, 
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

 Under the summer roses 
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories, 
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

To quote Om Malik - "I like the muted sounds, the shroud of grey, and the silence that comes with the fog."

I'm just glad I don't have to drive in it.

The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose is the title of Umberto Eco's 1980 debut novel. It caused quite a stir at the time and I 'just had to' read it. I remember not being too impressed mostly because it was hard to understand. I have the feeling I would enjoy it more if I read again now.

But that's beside the point. The point is this quote by Eco that I read in The Marginalian* this morning: "The list is the origin of culture. But, more than that, it can be a priceless map of personal aspiration, as is the case of the kinds of lists we make this time of year -- resolution lists." Then followed this list penned by Woody Guthrie in 1942:

 I especially like #'s 13 - READ LOTS GOOD BOOKS, 17 - DONT GET LONESOME, 19 - KEEP HOPING MACHINE RUNNING, 22 - SAVE DOUGH, 32 - MAKE UP YOUR MIND, and lastly, the reason for this post, #2 - WORK BY A SCHEDULE. 

Relating the making of resolutions lists and working by a schedule took me back to a New Year's Eve in the mid '60's.

Whether it was my resolution list for a new year or just a list I had made for personal self improvement, I had shared it with friends of ours, Darlene and Roger. I think the first thing on my list was "get up at 5:30". It then included the usual, "exercise, lose weight, keep the house clean", etc., etc. I remember one of them was "write more letters". **

What I remember most was Roger saying to his wife: "You should do these things, too." (That's Roger's profile at the edge of this pic - taken in their basement at a New Year's Eve party.)

I read alot of self-improvement books in the 60's and 70's - like just reading them could make me better. I never stuck to that list I shared with our friends, nor any list ever that I can recall. But I've always felt the need to do better. 

As I mentioned yesterday, no New Year's resolutions for me, but one of hope and goals. Like Woody, keeping my hoping machine running.

*The Marginalian is something that just started showing up in my Facebook feed, most likely because of some algorithm. I do enjoy reading it and learning many new and interesting ideas.

** Obviously before the days of social media.