Tag: writing

That Autumn Air That Just Talks Back

I just filled the bird feeders. My goodness those sparrows can squabble. Mostly male I might add.

You may or may not notice two sparrows flapping around the left hand feeder about to shove in, claiming their turns–the four on the perches have had enough time. Two more are on the sunflower feeder on the right. Also, somewhere in this picture, in motion thus a blur, is a nuthatch fearlessly approaching the sparrows crowd
Nuthatch has landed, all sparrows are amiable for the moment.

It must, the sparrow dynamic din, have something to do with the verbose air, the chattering light, the clatter of drying and dried leaves. Not in these pictures, because I cropped it out is the dogwood tree. Oh, here, below:

I wish you could see how deep-dark the red of the leaves really is. iphone 12 mini doesn’t really offer the means (or maybe it’s the photographer)

You know, it’s funny, bright color, clear red, yellow, green, also seems loud, very distinctly present–they correlate, light and sound, and, for that matter, clarity and sound. Light is just plain louder. Clarity is just plain loud. Is it so? Is it something in my body, in my mind that makes it so? Is it so without me present? Is a bell louder than a gong? Or just to me?

Ah questions. They run my life.

I’ll be back. I have to take the clothes out of the dryer.

Lovely, all done. I’m back and watching a young bicyclist pedaling up and down the street in front of my house. It’s also funny, this street, after one block length then jogs _/- and continues along for three or four blocks until it dead ends in front of a middle school. Well, this street can get quite busy during certain hours associated with schoolday start and finish, and it can also be suddenly busy for no known reason. Most of the time, I guess, if you clock it for 24 hours, it is quite unbusy. Anyway, the jog which is one house west of me, busy or not, is a challenge, in particular when a driver comes east on the street at a speed worthy of an urban arterial. Yet, kids bicycle it centerline, little kids play on it maneuvering and running behind their remotely operated small vehicles, and the local driving school has brand new learners pull to the curb, back up, initiate a U-turn or K-turn, generally in front of my across the street neighbor’s and my house (have you ever seen a brand new learning driver execute this turn, it usually takes long enough to hardboil an egg with much of that span of time spanning the width of the street!) I’m just saying…

So, this is turning out to be a bit of a rant on — on what? things that I notice that are unpeaceful.

However! They are small, they are manageable, they have caught my attention this moment, and will now be forgotten, until the next time they capture me, which could be five minutes from now or weeks. Anyway, there you are, I have groused into your life for a few minutes.

Think Robert Frost again, good fences make good neighbors–or not. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. (same poem, opening line).

Mending Walls

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Robert Frost

From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine

Still July 2025

It would appear you can’t shut me up this month.

Yesterday I spent the day at the annual Folk Festival in Lowell, Massachusetts. I’ve been attending regularly for 21 years, so, since 2004. It has gone on since at least 10 maybe 15 years before than that. Parents have borne their newborns to the Folk Festival. White haireds move sibilantly to music they remember from their child-bearing, no, their child-selves lives every year, now, some, themselves, having begun as a thought, or a stroller rider at an earlier Festival; many having begun their lives not only not in Lowell, not in Massachusetts, and not in English. And the Lowell Folk Festival honors that, celebrates it–the music each year is different from the year before, with different artists, and different music traditions, different regions, and different nations. It’s always a musical adventure. Yesterday–note, the Festival is always on the last weekend in July, aka, it’s hot! and each year, the Festival putter-oners get better at providing shade in the four concurrent stage areas, yesterday, one act dressing in traditional clothing wore fur hats. Oh, I could feel their sweat rolling down their faces, necks, while they fingered on stringed instruments complex, complex tunes to which they added words. And each act, no matter how overdressed, how active–and salsa music does not allow static musicians, nor audience; nor does Quebecois; nor does Chicago blues; nor does cajun; nor, even, Irish folk, or klezmer, nor many I haven’t named. The audiences, the myriad visitors roaming the multi-national food stations strategically located near the four stages, sitting within the well covered (by a combination of trees and tree shade–So Valuable, those trees!!! and huge canvas roofs) audience spaces at each stage are all ages, and are all aware of and mindful of everyone else. And, this is a free event operated by volunteers, hundreds maybe a thousand of them (even though it, being an arts thing, non-profit funded both by donations-personal and from some sponsors, and by public funds as a non-profit art thing, got its approved public funding removed in May or June…) It is OMG my favorite place and time each year. If you have not been, consider it next year, make a trip of it from wherever you live.

All this talk, and I took no photographs this year. Ugh. Go to their website: lowellfolkfestival.org. Treat yourself. I meet friends there I haven’t seen in months, once I met someone I had lost touch with years ago, very nice experience among all the other that come to mind.

Onto the smaller local, my back yard. I am pretty sure I mentioned the plethora of fledglings who graced the space at various times these past two-three months. The last were, a bit to my dismay, grackle and starling youngsters. Usually these bigger, not so nice, neighbors visit for a few days, harrass the songbirds and then move along. Their year they nested (most likely in robbed or otherwise pillaged spaces) and fledged right here. Again, I took NO photos. I was too frustrated on behalf of the finches (gold, purple, and house), the titmice, woodpeckers (downy, hairy, redbellied + flickers), chickadees, nuthatches, robins, cardinals, sparrows, warblers, vireos, wrens, mockingbirds, catbirds — some of whom, admittedly, can be less than kind neighbors, and on behalf of me, because all I got to hear was the rather ratchedy screeching of insistent young grackles and starlings, plus the one teenage bluejay who seems to refuse to move house. I think, as of maybe yesterday, they may have moved on. Teenage bluejay is still here. As is, I think, teenage female downy woodpecker, as every single day I witness dueling downys (sp?) out back.

Upper left, adult downy, bottom right child? or unhappy mate at the turned back

It’s been on and off hot, and on and off humid. Saturday was perfect, hot, not humid, after two days of lie on the floor under the ceiling fan with the cats and pant humid. So there was nothing, nothing to spoil that Festival.

Today it rained. The Festival continues until this evening. Attendees are hardy, they will come, and, besides, the rain was only for the first hour, and, also besides, the tent-roof coverings protect from rain as much as from sun.

So here is where I stepped today:

A friend of mine recently taught me something about hy in hydrangea, that I think was mnemonically focused, but I forget what she said! And her information also included the lo in lobelia. I hope when she reads this, she calls me to remind me of the wisdom I have already let slip.

________________________________

So, as I am sitting here typing this, a “heat advisory” popped up in my computer’s information line down below. Starts tomorrow. Lasts for, looks like (yes, I just popped over to the site) it hangs on for three days.

Take cover.

It is spring today, this April day

Here’s something to consider. Perhaps we no longer assign months/quarters/extended spells of time to a season. Perhaps we identify a season day by day. Today, Monday, 4/14/2025, it is spring. Yesterday, Sunday, 4/13/2025, it is (was) winter. The day before, Saturday, 4/12/2025, it is (was)–I believe, I don’t really hold onto weather (perhaps why I have come up with this scheme), winter. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera [does anyone remember Yul Brynner enunciating this phrase? It was a long time ago. I must admit, nevertheless, I do remember.

But, yes, today it is spring! Orange Fuji and I took to the roads and trails.

moss and seasonal ponding. Leaves, predominantly oak remain, most others having returned to dirt or other elements. I think of it as oak protects. Maple, ash, birch, aspen, beech…. provide.
more moss and seasonal ponding (hmm, seasonal? after I just redefined/shortened the duration of its meaning? Perhaps, day to day ponding)
and amid the leaves in this site, skunk cabbage is emerging; it promises and it delivers
and delivers, and delivers! No stink yet, only one bract of not green in this photograph, but stink it will come!! It’s the smell of life, and then they wither and shrink back to dirt.
this very pretty, tiny green patch is cord moss; it is known also as water moss; a wet dirt dweller.

Then there were these ducks. Not a particularly helpful photograph. But perhaps one of you can see and know just what it is? Not mallards.

Things, life is so much clearer at hand. But I cannot carry everyone on my bicycle, so these photographs bring you with me on this day defined as spring.

It persists. Life persists. Good and bad persist. And we pass between leaning this way and that; rarely knowing which will be the next step, anymore than the next day.

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still

The above two lines are from the last stanza of T.S. Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday.

It is an incredible poem, but read it at your emotional risk.

Here two stanzas that, in rereading it just now, I find speaking to the start of this blog post. I had not held them in my head all the years since I last read the poem. I had not reached back in my memory for them. And yet, here they are, speaking:

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

It is Quiet. Somewhere

In fact, it is quiet in my house. And I am glad of it.

Noise is very crowded, and sometimes I am not ready for it, indeed not even, at times, up to it. You?

Solitude–of me behind the camera, of the seat in the place, of the place. This is not today here in Massachusetts, however, based on predictions this past Friday for northern New Hampshire, it could be a place there, now. Except that, while in New Hampshire on Friday, I heard from a lot of people that they were headed north to ski for the weekend. And I won’t even guess the odds of how many more like the people I heard, had the same plan–manymanymany. Probably no silence nor solitude in much of north of Latitude: 42o 56′ 47.29″

It is almost the last of March. I have raked the oak leaves off most of the bulbs and rhisomatic (?) shoots, so to enable them to emerge undistorted — oak leaves sometimes grip an emerging shoot within one or two of the oak leaf’s sinuses, and if I don’t come to the rescue first, the shoot’s leaves grow into full size with a crimp or two or three in their height, so they look more like a drill shaft than a screwdriver shaft, this is assuming they escape the grip of the oak leaf! I have not raked the oak leaves out of the vegetable beds yet, and it’s just as well, because we here remain in the 30s, despite a day in the 50s a week or two ago. Yesterday, Saturday, March 29th we here were at 35oF while in NYC it was 65oF. I report this because it is unusual For those of you not residing in the Northeast of this country, I report this because it is unusual. Usually we are in relative tandem, maybe 5 or 10 degrees colder up here compared to NYC, and usually with bitterer winds. So while New Yorkers were traipsing about in shorts and brunching at sidewalk cafes, we in mid and northern New England had redonned our winter jackets and leggings.

Clouds and, on most days for the next 10 days, cold-coldish air is predicted for this region. So you may find a second blogpost from me within the next 7-10 days. My bicycle is shivering in the shed; my gloves are still lying on the kitchen radiator warming up; the urge for hot chocolate still prevails. And what better accompaniment to hot chocolate than blogposting (other than reading, my truly favorite indoor timespent)?

All this being said, I also report that the robins, chickadees, cardinals, titmice and carolina wrens, especially are singing their spring love songs. The downy woodpeckers, who have been about all winter, now are enduring competition from a red-bellied woodpecker couple. The tenacious nuthatches care not the season, they “ank ank ank” frequently, day after day. The audacious blue jays seem to have given up in this neighborhood, and the mockingbirds are nosing their inimical (read the almost word in the middle of that word, i.e., mimic, my goodness, a particularly talented mimicking mockingbird around here has fooled the neighboring imitatees, as well as my phone’s Merlin birdsong/birdcall identifier app), way in–to the absolute disgust of the robins!

Each morning, the earliest robin song gets a little earlier. Well, I think so, I can’t really hear through the closed windows, but a couple of the mornings in the past several weeks I was up early, early and peeking out the back door caught a robin at an hour that a month ago would have been a silent one. Aha, I am back to the topic of silence. Just like that the circle has closed.

There are times when silence pervades so thoroughly, you cast about, no, thrash about, just to make sound. Noise, sounds–like robins at 5:00 then 4:00 then 3:00 AM– can delight, as readily as they can not.

It is the dilemma of too much.

U.S. Navy F/A-18 approaching the speed of sound. The white halo is formed by condensed water droplets thought to result from a drop in air pressure around the aircraft

So, a drop in air pressure around the aircraft because it escaped the speed of sound, to quiet just before the sound can be. Here is something to think about, getting ahead of sound–sound/air pressure. Bigger air pressure, pushes down, or back, and the space it permits is now smaller, and anything in that smaller space is — what? — is LOUDER. Too much in too small a space. (Bill Y, please check my conceptualization, and let me know how widely I err).

Too much in too small a space…..

I look around me and wonder. I wonder, why?

I wo wo wo wo wonderrrr, why? my little runaway. {some of the lyrics from a Del Shannon song from, oh I don’t know, 1961?} A run run run run runaway. {“””}