So, either Bern or I go the the Farmington Canal--the horizonal park that runs through Cheshire and Hamden and is being developed in Meriden--every day to walk the dog.
We normally walk about 1.75 miles along the water and the swamp. We talk about our experiences a lot because the canal is full of experience.
Bern had told me several times about the Blue Heron she's seen on the canal. I never saw it until last week. People were pointing and making noises, moving their pointing fingers up the canal. And there it was, this great bird, flying beneath the trees, it's legs and feet straight back, skimming near the surface of the water. It must be four or five feet tall and blue/gray and graceful and lovely.
One thing we talk about from time to time are the people who let their dogs off lead as they walk the Canal. I can't be sure this is true, but almost all of the people who let their dogs off leash have Yellow Labs. Some of my best friends have Yellow Labs, but the truth is, no dog, not even one so benign and goofy as a Yellow Lab should be off lead on a crowded strip of pavement about six feet wide. There are lots of little kids, really little--2 or 3--toddling along the canal. A hundred pound dog might mean just to lick them but know them down on to asphalt. Plus there are a multitude of people on bikes and a lesser multitude on roller blades and a few people in wheel chairs and a number of people who are frail and elderly that a 100 pound dog could mess up pretty royally. Especially since the small children surrounded by bikes and roller bladers, are usually accompanied my a parent on a cell phone. Cell phones and ear plugs are two more things Bern and I commiserate about. And, there is our dog, who doesn't much like other dogs, Yellow Labs in particular, who, when the Lab's companion (not an owner or in charge) says, "can they say hello?" and I'm choking the hell out of Bela and screaming "he's not friendly with other dogs!" the Lab keeps coming, going "Du-de-du, i'm a friendly dog" and Bela is about to bite their snouts off and the dog's human has no way to stop the dog from a near death experience (Puli's can give you a hurtin') because the dog doesn't have on a leash!!! Bern yells at them that CT has a leash law. I just shake my head in wonderment that such cluelessness exists....
TURN ON YOUR CELL PHONE ON THE CANAL. I have no need to hear about how your nephew is on drugs or your hairdresser cancelled your appointment or how you are looking at new cars or what happened on "Jersey Shore" last night (actual conversations I've heard recently). Plus, if you have in your care a child--a toddler or 5 year old or a kid on a bike with training wheels--FOR GOD'S SAKE, TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE! There are people riding bikes at 20 miles an hour and people on roller blades going almost that fast and the occasional kid on a skateboard with ear plugs and an attitude who may or may not see your child. Plus, there are 100 pound Yellow Labs off lead wandering around. Watch your child, for heaven's sake, and listen to the birds and see the blue heron and the baby ducks....
Ah, the baby ducks....
I've noticed over the past week or two that all I saw swimming on the Canal were Male ducks. I saw a fight between two of them that rivaled Muhammad Ali's "rumble in the jungle". This was the "conflict in the canal". But no females for a week or more.
Today I saw why. Three females swimming with what looked like thirty baby ducks, all seeing how fast they could swim, bumping into each other and the bank of the canal, splashing up a storm, careening down the narrow bit of water. All the papa's were near the parking lot, doubtless smoking duck cigars and congratulating themselves while the Mama ducks were directing traffic in vain.
I watched them for ten minutes, tried to urge several people on cell phones or ear plugs to join me and they didn't, lost in some world or another other than the one than contained the baby ducks.....
Baby ducks, one reason I'm not giving up on the Universe quite yet.
Baby ducks, what a joy and privilege to share a planet and 10 minutes with them. Such clowns and full to bursting of new life and new hope and spring.
Baby ducks make up for the people on cell phones and with ear phones and letting their dogs off lead.
Baby ducks--not much better....
Monday, May 9, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
pebbles in your shoe
OK, so here's something I don't understand.
How do pebbles get in your shoes?
One of the major questions about the Meaning of the Universe in my book.
I always get pebbles in my shoes when I walk the dog on the Canal. Now, you need to know this, I wear sneakers that are a half size too big (I like loose shoes) and I tie them so I can take them off and put them on without untying them (I really, really like loose shoes).
There is a cinder path beside the paved part of the Canal--on the right, across from the water itself. So, I've always thought I got pebbles in my shoes from the cinder path.
But today, as an experiment, I only walked on the pavement or on the grass near the water and I had to stop 3 times to shake pebbles out of my shoes.
What is the physics about that? How does it happen? Is it just me or do other people have that same experience? Am I cursed? Do my feet expel pebbles from inside my soles somehow? What the hell is going on about getting pebbles in my shoes?
Any explanations anyone out there has?
I think if I stayed indoors I would eventually get a pebble in my shoe.
Am I being paranoid and crazy?
Where do those pebbles come from and how do they get in my shoes?
And should I call the pebbles "Dare". (An allusion for Godspell fans....)
How do pebbles get in your shoes?
One of the major questions about the Meaning of the Universe in my book.
I always get pebbles in my shoes when I walk the dog on the Canal. Now, you need to know this, I wear sneakers that are a half size too big (I like loose shoes) and I tie them so I can take them off and put them on without untying them (I really, really like loose shoes).
There is a cinder path beside the paved part of the Canal--on the right, across from the water itself. So, I've always thought I got pebbles in my shoes from the cinder path.
But today, as an experiment, I only walked on the pavement or on the grass near the water and I had to stop 3 times to shake pebbles out of my shoes.
What is the physics about that? How does it happen? Is it just me or do other people have that same experience? Am I cursed? Do my feet expel pebbles from inside my soles somehow? What the hell is going on about getting pebbles in my shoes?
Any explanations anyone out there has?
I think if I stayed indoors I would eventually get a pebble in my shoe.
Am I being paranoid and crazy?
Where do those pebbles come from and how do they get in my shoes?
And should I call the pebbles "Dare". (An allusion for Godspell fans....)
Growing old and forgetting together
Bern and I have know each other for 47 years now. In September we'll have been married 41 years. Amazing.
We are growing old together. And with age comes problems, mostly with memory.
Bern had been looking at houses on the internet, not that we're considering buying by any means, but because she wanted to look at a house near us and see the price and such as that.
She saw a house that she said was where one of Mimi's friends lived--neither of us could remember her name though both of us could remember lots of things about her. The house was on Jinny Hill Road, which is a left going south on Rt 10 just past the McDonald's and what was the last fabric store in Cheshire and is now a Dollar Store. But that's not where what's her name--who did Mimi wrong and it is just as well that she is nameless--lived. She lived on a left off of Wallingford Road, that I know. Bern even remembered it was a left after the retirement condos, which is Wallingford Road. But Bern was insisting it was Jinny Hill Road and I was about to let her be right--which is what keeps you together for over 4 decades--when she realized she was wrong.
Then she said that one of Josh's friends lived on that same road--and I couldn't remember--but she said, "that's where he wrecked that time" and I didn't remember him wrecking there.
So, we're even. Which is another thing that keeps you together for over 40 years...always being even....
We are growing old together. And with age comes problems, mostly with memory.
Bern had been looking at houses on the internet, not that we're considering buying by any means, but because she wanted to look at a house near us and see the price and such as that.
She saw a house that she said was where one of Mimi's friends lived--neither of us could remember her name though both of us could remember lots of things about her. The house was on Jinny Hill Road, which is a left going south on Rt 10 just past the McDonald's and what was the last fabric store in Cheshire and is now a Dollar Store. But that's not where what's her name--who did Mimi wrong and it is just as well that she is nameless--lived. She lived on a left off of Wallingford Road, that I know. Bern even remembered it was a left after the retirement condos, which is Wallingford Road. But Bern was insisting it was Jinny Hill Road and I was about to let her be right--which is what keeps you together for over 4 decades--when she realized she was wrong.
Then she said that one of Josh's friends lived on that same road--and I couldn't remember--but she said, "that's where he wrecked that time" and I didn't remember him wrecking there.
So, we're even. Which is another thing that keeps you together for over 40 years...always being even....
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
being a Patriot
I had a brief email exchange with Bill, who reads my blog, about Osama bin Laden. In my response to his email and the blog from, of all places, The Wall Street Journal, that he suggested (and was helpful) I commented that I am a Patriot but not a compliant 'citizen'.
Here's why I am a Patriot: every morning I wake up, I am grateful I wake up in the US.
I love this land--literally, 'this land', every place I put my foot, the ground beneath me and the privilege to walk on it as a free person.
I love my house, my family, my neighborhood.
And that love keeps me from being a pacifist.
I would engage and try to kill anyone who sought to take any of that away from me.
In the summer of 1969, I went on a bus from Welch, WV with 23 other young men to have a physical to see if I was eligible to serve in the armed forces of the United States. I took lots of medical records that showed that my eye-sight, my allergies, my asthma would disqualify me from being a soldier.
The Army doctor told me, "they told us we need bodies, even bodies like yours" and ignored my medical files.
That fall, on my second day at Harvard Divinity School, I received my draft notice. It did, really, begin with 'Greetings'. I called the Chaplain at WVU, Snork Roberts, to ask him what to do. He told me he'd call the Bishop of West Virginia. Snork called me back and gave me The Rt. Rev. Wilburn Camrock Campbell's phone number. I called him--all this from the hall phone in Divinity Hall (no cell phones back then).
Bishop Campbell asked me about my father--my father served in the WWII. He was in the Engineer Corps. He built bridges for Patten's tanks and after the tanks crossed the bridges, my father blew them up. "We weren't coming back that way," he once told me. About the only thing he ever told me about 'the war'. Most people, I've come to know, who were 'really' in a war don't say much about it.
Bishop Campbell asked me what I was going to do.
I wasn't sure. But I told him I was a lot closer to Canada than I was to West Virginia.
"Are you a conscientious objector?" he asked.
I told him I wasn't, that I wouldn't bat an eye about killing someone coming up my street to do harm to me or those I loved or the ground beneath my feet. Then I told him I hated and abhored the war in Viet Nam. I didn't believe it was just or right or defending my street and my family and the ground beneath my feet. So I wouldn't go.
"What would your father think if you went to Canada?" he asked me.
"It would break his heart," I told the bishop, who had confirmed me at Trinity Church in Morgantown, WV, but who I really didn't know beyond his hands on my head.
"I'll call you back," the bishop told me.
A half-an-hour later, he did. And he told me my draft order had been 'rescinded' and I was a 'Postulate for Holy Orders'. I didn't know what that meant, but it was good enough for me. I didn't have to go to Canada and I wasn't going to break my father's heart.
I was, what?, 21 or 22 when all this happened.
I would have enlisted in WWII, but I didn't believe in Viet Nam. Seemed simple to me.
I am not happy with our wars--the longest in our history--in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wish we'd never started them. I wish we had sought out the 9/11 monsters in covert ways and not killed so many people (our own, enemies and the innocent). I would have gone to Canada rather than gone to those wars.
And, I am a patriot--red, white and blue through and through.
I love this land, this dirt, this remarkably naive experiment in democracy, with all it's flaws and madness and craziness.
But I am not a compliant 'citizen'. I object to much that my government (which I support and would die for) does.
And I am proud that it is 'my government', my nation, my neighborhood, my house, the dirt beneath my feet.
That much is truer than true.
Here's why I am a Patriot: every morning I wake up, I am grateful I wake up in the US.
I love this land--literally, 'this land', every place I put my foot, the ground beneath me and the privilege to walk on it as a free person.
I love my house, my family, my neighborhood.
And that love keeps me from being a pacifist.
I would engage and try to kill anyone who sought to take any of that away from me.
In the summer of 1969, I went on a bus from Welch, WV with 23 other young men to have a physical to see if I was eligible to serve in the armed forces of the United States. I took lots of medical records that showed that my eye-sight, my allergies, my asthma would disqualify me from being a soldier.
The Army doctor told me, "they told us we need bodies, even bodies like yours" and ignored my medical files.
That fall, on my second day at Harvard Divinity School, I received my draft notice. It did, really, begin with 'Greetings'. I called the Chaplain at WVU, Snork Roberts, to ask him what to do. He told me he'd call the Bishop of West Virginia. Snork called me back and gave me The Rt. Rev. Wilburn Camrock Campbell's phone number. I called him--all this from the hall phone in Divinity Hall (no cell phones back then).
Bishop Campbell asked me about my father--my father served in the WWII. He was in the Engineer Corps. He built bridges for Patten's tanks and after the tanks crossed the bridges, my father blew them up. "We weren't coming back that way," he once told me. About the only thing he ever told me about 'the war'. Most people, I've come to know, who were 'really' in a war don't say much about it.
Bishop Campbell asked me what I was going to do.
I wasn't sure. But I told him I was a lot closer to Canada than I was to West Virginia.
"Are you a conscientious objector?" he asked.
I told him I wasn't, that I wouldn't bat an eye about killing someone coming up my street to do harm to me or those I loved or the ground beneath my feet. Then I told him I hated and abhored the war in Viet Nam. I didn't believe it was just or right or defending my street and my family and the ground beneath my feet. So I wouldn't go.
"What would your father think if you went to Canada?" he asked me.
"It would break his heart," I told the bishop, who had confirmed me at Trinity Church in Morgantown, WV, but who I really didn't know beyond his hands on my head.
"I'll call you back," the bishop told me.
A half-an-hour later, he did. And he told me my draft order had been 'rescinded' and I was a 'Postulate for Holy Orders'. I didn't know what that meant, but it was good enough for me. I didn't have to go to Canada and I wasn't going to break my father's heart.
I was, what?, 21 or 22 when all this happened.
I would have enlisted in WWII, but I didn't believe in Viet Nam. Seemed simple to me.
I am not happy with our wars--the longest in our history--in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wish we'd never started them. I wish we had sought out the 9/11 monsters in covert ways and not killed so many people (our own, enemies and the innocent). I would have gone to Canada rather than gone to those wars.
And, I am a patriot--red, white and blue through and through.
I love this land, this dirt, this remarkably naive experiment in democracy, with all it's flaws and madness and craziness.
But I am not a compliant 'citizen'. I object to much that my government (which I support and would die for) does.
And I am proud that it is 'my government', my nation, my neighborhood, my house, the dirt beneath my feet.
That much is truer than true.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Ding Dong, the Witch is dead....
I've spent much of my day--as I'm sure you have--hearing more and more details about the death of Osama bin Laden.
Like most sane people, I figure the world is better off without him in it.
And I do understand the joy and relief people feel who lost loved ones in 9/11 and other terrorist attacks.
And I am proud to be defended by such warriors as Navy Seals. God bless them.
And, I must say, I am proud and glad that President Obama is showing up so decisive and thoughtful and masterful in the whole thing. I love the President and am thankful for anything that shows him off as the remarkable man and leader he is.
And, in spite of all that, I harbor deep reservations about a policy that can only be seen as state sponsored assassination (a more politically correct word for 'murder').
What I hear, listening most of the day, is that the mission was not to apprehend or capture...but to kill Osama.
I well know Osama alive would be more trouble, much more trouble than him dead. I well know he couldn't ever be prosecuted in a court in the US with anywhere near a 'fair trial' much less a jury of his 'peers'.
Yet, it troubles me. It just does.
I'm just a purist about the limits on the government. I know, believe me, I know, most people consider him a enemy combatant.
But it gives me pause that we simply went to kill him. It just does.
Like most sane people, I figure the world is better off without him in it.
And I do understand the joy and relief people feel who lost loved ones in 9/11 and other terrorist attacks.
And I am proud to be defended by such warriors as Navy Seals. God bless them.
And, I must say, I am proud and glad that President Obama is showing up so decisive and thoughtful and masterful in the whole thing. I love the President and am thankful for anything that shows him off as the remarkable man and leader he is.
And, in spite of all that, I harbor deep reservations about a policy that can only be seen as state sponsored assassination (a more politically correct word for 'murder').
What I hear, listening most of the day, is that the mission was not to apprehend or capture...but to kill Osama.
I well know Osama alive would be more trouble, much more trouble than him dead. I well know he couldn't ever be prosecuted in a court in the US with anywhere near a 'fair trial' much less a jury of his 'peers'.
Yet, it troubles me. It just does.
I'm just a purist about the limits on the government. I know, believe me, I know, most people consider him a enemy combatant.
But it gives me pause that we simply went to kill him. It just does.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
more information
So, there was a blog on June 29, 2010 about the end of last year's robin saga.
Just thought I'd let you know.
I'll be keeping you updated on this year's brood....
Everyone needs a robin nest on their front porch....It seems, I think, to make me a better person....
Just thought I'd let you know.
I'll be keeping you updated on this year's brood....
Everyone needs a robin nest on their front porch....It seems, I think, to make me a better person....
They're baaaccckkk....
I went back and checked the archives of my blog--last May 1...2010...I wrote a blog about the robins who built a nest on the old alarm system alarm on our front porch, just to the right of the front door when you walk out of our house.
There are lots more blogs after that--my thinking they abandoned the nest, cow bird problems, lots of thing, finally baby robins and all the joy that entails.
Well, they're back. The same robin couple, I believe, the look the same but how am I to be able to tell one robin from another? Daddy is 'huge', really big. Today, when I was on the back deck, where I can't even see the nest, he sat on a tree near me and yelled at me for a long time. We see him all over, in trees where he can see the nest, guarding.
Mama is sitting on what I can only assume are more eggs. She's always there. On the Monday of Easter week, when Josh and Cathy and the girls were leaving, I showed Josh and Tegan the nest and Mama flew out, almost bumping Tegan's face. Tegan is 18 months old and the look she gave me when the bird flew so close to her would define 'amazement' and 'astonishment'.
She is used to us now, the bird, I mean, and when I go out or come in, I say, "Hey, mama..."
Last year, if you go back and read my blogs, I was anxious to the extreme about her and the nest and her eggs and then babies, who finally flew away.
This year, I'm mellow about the whole thing.
It's just like your second child. We were frantic and crazy and anxious about everything about Josh. When Mimi came along we were like "well, whatever" and so calm and nonplussed about the whole baby thing.
I love the robins on our front porch. This year, I love them without anxiety.
By the way, a storm blew the nest down in construction and I thought they'd leave, but they build it again and Mama is sitting on it non-stop and Dad is guarding it and bringing Mama food.
I can't wait for the second generation of Robin babies....
What joy.....
There are lots more blogs after that--my thinking they abandoned the nest, cow bird problems, lots of thing, finally baby robins and all the joy that entails.
Well, they're back. The same robin couple, I believe, the look the same but how am I to be able to tell one robin from another? Daddy is 'huge', really big. Today, when I was on the back deck, where I can't even see the nest, he sat on a tree near me and yelled at me for a long time. We see him all over, in trees where he can see the nest, guarding.
Mama is sitting on what I can only assume are more eggs. She's always there. On the Monday of Easter week, when Josh and Cathy and the girls were leaving, I showed Josh and Tegan the nest and Mama flew out, almost bumping Tegan's face. Tegan is 18 months old and the look she gave me when the bird flew so close to her would define 'amazement' and 'astonishment'.
She is used to us now, the bird, I mean, and when I go out or come in, I say, "Hey, mama..."
Last year, if you go back and read my blogs, I was anxious to the extreme about her and the nest and her eggs and then babies, who finally flew away.
This year, I'm mellow about the whole thing.
It's just like your second child. We were frantic and crazy and anxious about everything about Josh. When Mimi came along we were like "well, whatever" and so calm and nonplussed about the whole baby thing.
I love the robins on our front porch. This year, I love them without anxiety.
By the way, a storm blew the nest down in construction and I thought they'd leave, but they build it again and Mama is sitting on it non-stop and Dad is guarding it and bringing Mama food.
I can't wait for the second generation of Robin babies....
What joy.....
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